Straight, No Chaser
Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy
Straight, No Chaser
Monthly Roundup 1: The Monthly Bitcoin Roundup Makes Its Debut
We kick off our new monthly Bitcoin current affairs series where Nikolai, Herman, and Gavin discuss the most significant developments in the Bitcoin space over the past 30 days.
• Debating whether the Bitcoin four-year cycle will break this time around with ETFs now in the picture
• Examining in-kind redemption applications for Bitcoin ETFs and whether they're truly meaningful
• Discussing El Salvador's recent headlines about presidential term extensions and potential journalism crackdowns
• Exploring the reality of quantum computing threats to Bitcoin after IBM's 5-bit encryption breakthrough
• Analyzing the potential of Jack Dorsey's new BitChat app for disaster relief and mesh network communication
• Questioning why we continue putting faith in political figures rather than following Bitcoin's "rules, not rulers" ethos
• Contemplating how technologies like mesh networks might become mainstream without requiring disaster conditions
Join us monthly as we continue to analyze current events in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi
https://x.com/OKIN_17
https://x.com/OrangeSaaS
Links:
www.bitcoinforbusiness.io
X: @gavingre
X: @BTC_4_Biz
Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net
NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta
Hello everybody and welcome to the show. This is the Straight Note Chaser podcast, where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, economics and philosophy. Today's episode is something new. This is going to be a monthly recap where myself, nikolai, who is the Namibian Bitcoin guy, herman from Bitcoin Ikasi and Ricky from Orange Global Services are going to be getting together every single month and we are going to chat about news and headlines in the last 30 days in the Bitcoin space. Think of it pretty much like a current affairs episode.
Speaker 1:Ricky was unfortunately not able to meet us today or join us for the chat. He wasn't feeling well, but we certainly will be catching up with him next time. In the episode we talk about Bitcoin and quantum computing, some recent headlines out of El Salvador. We chat a little bit about Jack Dorsey's new app called BitChat. We chatted a little bit about Jack Dorsey's new app called BitChat, as well as some of the Bitcoin ETF concerns, redemption in kind and things like that. So it's a great chat Looking forward to morning. Welcome everybody. I'm glad to have you on board for this fireside chat about all things Bitcoin, nikola. Pleasure to meet you. Herman, thanks for joining. We are missing Ricky, but hopefully we'll pick him up next time. How's it guys? How are you doing? What's happening on your side? Oh?
Speaker 2:Laka, cold, but good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's cold, very cold where I am. But good, yeah, not a problem.
Speaker 2:I mean actually when, I say it's cold, it's actually not too bad, like there might be some people listening that are thinking it's like minus five or whatever. But it's not actually that bad, it's just cold, considering that we don't build houses for the cold, we build houses for the summer.
Speaker 1:So I think that's a good point for our international audience. When we say cold here, we're actually only kidding. We still see the sun, it still shines. There's no snow yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm see the sun, it still shines. Uh, there's no snow. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not kidding, it's cold. It's nine degrees. Where I am, it's very cold right now for august, and it's windy too.
Speaker 1:So, yes, it's cold nine degrees is a fine summer's day in many places of the world. So, uh, don't knock nine degrees. So don't knock nine degrees. That is true, cool man. So it's interesting. I mean, it's always an interesting month in Bitcoin, I suppose you could say. I don't think there's actually a quiet month that goes by. Whether it's bull market, bear market or sideways market or whatever we happen to be in, there's always something going in. I think traditionally, people always said in the bear markets, you have people building and talking about stuff like that. In the bull markets, everyone's talking about price action. So, guys, where do you think we are in the cycle For your cycle? Is that still a thing? Is that going to be broken? This cycle? Is this time different? Nick, can I just kick off with you? What do you think?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it's a bit early to call whether the four-year cycle will be broken or not, because, either way, the way it's looking, we're still on track for the halving to be the halving. What happens in the meantime, with all these new entries and the class of bitcoin class of 2025 that's coming in as etfs I have landed, there's a there's a whole new ocean of stuff they need to get through to actually get to the point of why bitcoin and real bitcoin, as in bitcoin, you hold in self-custody bitcoin and I think that's that's muddying the waters a bit. Um, and at the same time, we have the node wars. So, like these, these new bitcoiners are confused. You know, there's a there's a lot of confusion going around and I'm not blaming them for it, uh, but I don't think it's time to call into the four-year cycle just yet of how things go up and down.
Speaker 1:Herman, what do you think about this four-year cycle thing? Is it broken? Is this time really different?
Speaker 2:I'd be careful to say that it is different, because I've got PTSD from 20, when was it? I think it was the previous one, 2021, when that guy that's since become a bit of a, anyway, dan Held. Dan Held had the super cycle and um, and I've got some ptsd from listening to some of his podcasts and actually taking him serious for a moment there, um, so yeah, I don't know, I think probably not um, but look, it's gonna. It's gonna happen at some point, like at some point whether it's this cycle or next cycle or the one after that. At some point, like at some point, whether it's this cycle or next cycle or the one after that at some point the four-year cycle will break. It's obviously not going to continue indefinitely.
Speaker 2:I don't think when we're in 2040 or 2050 and I become an old man that we'll still be talking about four-year cycles. But probably a little bit early to say it's broken up. But it could be like something in between as well. It's like not either, or Like you could have like a very subdued bull market and then a very subdued pullback afterwards, and it could look like a cycle to someone who's only seeing that for the first or the second time. But it could look like it's not actually a cycle to someone who's only seeing that for the first or the second time. But it could look like it's not actually a cycle to somebody who was there in 2013, when things were really wild, and 2017, where it was really wild. So yeah, I don't know, like we'll see, I guess.
Speaker 1:So it may be like a traditional finance guy that will be looking at a 5% drawdown and pulling his hair out and screaming like a girl and hitting the sell button no more 50% drawdowns, just maybe 5%. So I guess the thing about the four-year cycle is you've got this definite halving, so there is literally a line in the sand every four years that you that you can't get away from, and I think that's the beauty of the bitcoin protocol. Uh, it just tick, you know, tick, tock. Next block off, it goes. Doesn't really care, um, but each cycle there does seem to be an element of new energy coming in. I suppose this time around is probably the etfs, um, nicolai, that you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1:And an interesting thing is I see some of those ETFs have applied for in-kind redemption of Bitcoin. I'm not sure if it's been approved yet, but it was. You had to buy your ETF with dollars and if you wanted to move that, you had to sell it for dollars and then receive your money and go buy Bitcoin somewhere else or do something else for dollars and then receive your money and go buy bitcoin somewhere else or do something else. Now it sounds like they can actually transfer that bitcoin out in kind. Um, not sure if that's going to make a big difference. It's, uh, I think, for the guys that are etf boys. Um, I wonder if that will be meaningful to them. Do you think it's a game changer?
Speaker 3:Herman, you go first.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I think about that man. I mean, I'm so far removed from the ETF world and what's going on there that I don't know. Does somebody who buys an ETF do they even care about? Like if they wanted to redeem it in kind? Why would they not just go out and buy Bitcoin in the first place? Maybe there's a small percentage of people that are going to do that. Perhaps it's important for symbolic reasons. I guess it's cool that it's possible if it gets approved. I don't know if it was approved, like you say, but I guess for symbolic reasons it's it could be cool, like if, if it, if it was not possible, then it's kind of the the paper nature of that bitcoin becomes even more papery.
Speaker 3:That makes sense I mean, I, I I kind of find it weird. Right, like Herman said, why not just go out and buy the Bitcoin? If you're going to buy an ETF that is going to be redeemable in Bitcoin? Now the thing is, of course the ETFs could outperform the actual price of Bitcoin, but are you going to be able to redeem more Bitcoin, and how do you redeem it? Who gives you the Bitcoin? Where did they get the Bitcoin to hold on to that?
Speaker 3:Currently, we have OTC desks that are begging for more Bitcoin. So, like it's a limited resource, we can't just indefinitely have thousands of ETFs in the world, right, trying to have Bitcoin that is redeemable in kind, how, where did the Bitcoin come from? Is what I'm going to say to that? Because it's not my Bitcoin that you can redeem, it's not going to be Herman's. So whose are you redeeming and what is the mechanism of redemption? If there's a quote-unquote bank run on the ETF, who pays them out immediately around the world? There's so many questions around this and I'm just like why am I not just buying Bitcoin, bitcoin and holding it myself? Um, in my self-dusty? I just unless I don't know. That's that's all I have to say on that, because I don't. It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:It's confusing yeah, no, I hear you, and I think it's really like a product, a specific product for a specific market. You know, um, some guys will never be buying bitcoin on their own, but if they can do it through an etf and it's just part of their stock portfolio and they feel kind of trendy because they can say, hey, I've got a one percent, two percent or five percent allocation, they might think that they're, you know, the big swinging dick at the bar when they're having a beer with their mates because they can say that. But you know, even with the regular bitcoiners, uh, we've got guys that have bitcoin sitting on exchanges, um, and trying to get the message to them to get your stuff off the exchange. They, they look at you, they blink slowly and then they just change the topic like so, you know, there's this like mindset, like what do you talk about? You know, I have to go get some little usb stick and put it on that, and what if I lose my stick? And who's looking after my words?
Speaker 1:And so I guess those etfs are just for those sort of people. Um, they just want to have this little, this little allocation, and they'll probably be the first to sell when things go. Uh, you know a bit of a drawdown. They'll flog that off quickly. Um, who knows, maybe when they see they can sell at any time, 24, 7 maybe they'll go. Hey, hang on a second. Uh, this thing is a bit more than all the other stuff. I don't know, it's a interesting idea. Let's see where it goes I'm also a little skeptical.
Speaker 2:I mean, I, I've, I, I have no, I have no, uh, concrete proof to back this up with, so it's purely speculative. But with all, with all the hype, um and it's not only the etfs, I mean, that's, that's been, that's been live for a while now, um, what's it been? It's been more than a year, definitely, right, um, so, yeah, I think january 24th, yeah, so it's, it's been like it's, it's. It's been a long time, especially in, especially in the Bitcoin world. That's a long time, and demand is supposed to have outpaced supply. For forever, like since the very beginning it's been, I've been seeing how much demand there is and it's like 10, 20 times more than what the supply is. And I don't, I don't think, if you adjust for inflation, that we're actually currently at an all-time high um relative to where the price was, uh, before. So I don't know, like I, I don't.
Speaker 2:These ETFs to me it's just so, it's, it's, it's just so, it's. It's just such a, such a golden opportunity to sell paper Bitcoin that doesn't exist that I, I'm like if all that demand was real and all those ETFs are really buying as much Bitcoin as they say they're buying, because they're selling, they're selling shares in the ETF, and it's just this massive demand, and now you've got these Bitcoin treasury companies on top of that, but that's that's a different topic. But I mean, like, if all this demand is real, then shouldn't, shouldn't the price have been like 10 times what it is right now? I don't know like where, where, where is all the supply coming from? Because everybody seems to be buying, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I did see that there is some very, very early coins that were recently liquidated, but that also wasn't quite enough to satisfy the demand. So I don't know, I'm very skeptical. Let me put it this way I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that some of these etfs were actually selling, selling bitcoin that didn't exist. I it wouldn't surprise me at all. Um, and it also wouldn't surprise me if some of these bitcoin treasury companies who are obviously, I don't think they're doing self-cust, taking self-custody, I think they're holding on exchanges. I also wouldn't be surprised if these exchanges are selling paper Bitcoin to these Bitcoin treasury companies. It wouldn't surprise me at all, because my uninformed, educated guesswork tells me that the price, looking at demand and considering that the supply is so limited, like, ah, the price should have been way higher than what it is now not that I really care too much about the price.
Speaker 2:I'm not complaining about it at all. I'm just saying like yeah, yeah, that is, uh.
Speaker 1:So maybe what we need there is actually for a failure and an etf failure, a run on it, uh, and maybe this is where the in-kind redemption will sort of stand on its own. Someone says, hey, man, that exchange or that etf fund, uh, they've fallen over. Uh, send me my bitcoin please. And then people will get caught with their pants around their ankles, uh, because this is the first time in the history of money that we have an asset that you can do that with. You know, you can. Uh, they can't duplicate it, can't. It can't print more of it to send it to you.
Speaker 1:So they will probably have to pay you in dollars if they fall over or whatever. Or they can't, they don't have the Bitcoin. They've got to pay you in the dollars. They'll probably get a, you know, federal Reserve. Step in print, back them up. They pay you the dollars. What do you do then? Do you go buy the bitcoin? Uh? Do you give it back to the etf, say buy some. Uh, do we need a failure? For people to sort of see oh, this, this is different I mean, I think the failure is going to be inevitable.
Speaker 3:One of them is going to fail, right. You're going to have an ftx, um or a celsius type of a failure happen, right? It's just a matter of time because, as Herman said, there's no way that all of them have what they're saying. They have and the exchanges have, and all of the Bitcoiners around the world are buying and DCing. It just doesn't make sense that these guys have all of that, right. Maybe one or two of them have the Bitcoin and have it back somewhere, but I'm just not seeing it.
Speaker 3:It might just be a whole thing of yeah, we're all using Coinbase, you know, and Coinbase has the Bitcoin, and that's where everything is backed up. We're backed by Coinbase. That's another conversation. But to say I think we do need a failure and I think it's inevitable that one will fail, somebody is going to say, hey, I need my Bitcoin back right now, and it's going to be. Oh, I want to redeem Bitcoin for my ETF shares, and it's just not going to be possible, and that's where people are going to be like whoops, let's all check all the other ETFs and find out. But it's going to have to happen that way, I think Because it seems like people forgot about Celsius and BlockFi and FTX. It's almost like it got erased from short-term memory and now they're like oh no the shiny thing, let's keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is such an interesting topic. Each cycle, I suppose, there's new people coming in and they don't know the history, so they have to learn that again. It kind of seems like people in general are really good at forgetting their history and they just keep on repeat, repeat, repeat. You know it's. Uh. I'm always amazed that there's this actual intellectual argument between, like socialism and free market economies for argument's sake. Uh, you know, I think there have been enough examples in the history of the world that shows that the socialism which leads to communism, uh, has failed.
Speaker 1:And yet every flipping university has got like a communist party and the students, you know, want to, uh, you know, go on about this. And politicians seem to I mean our politicians around the world at the moment seem to just be pushing this socialist agenda. Wealth tax government must get bigger, this crazy stuff. So I can almost understand how the Bitcoin noobs don't know anything easily get taken for this when, frankly, very educated people 50, 60, 70 year old are still pushing, you know, socialist things. It's just just, I don't know, man, why are people so stupid? Why do we just like not learn? Why can't we just pass that knowledge on and the next generation goes. Okay, cool, granddad burnt his fingers. I'm not going to do that, but each, each generation just wants to go and do their own thing I don't know why I can't answer that question when you, when you find that answer, you're going to become a billionaire.
Speaker 3:That's for sure, because that's the. Why do cycles repeat? Why does history rhyme, even if it doesn't repeat itself? It's human nature to basically just mess up. I guess, even with the answers in front of us, it's like cool, cool, cool Bitcoin's there hey, how much is that Apple stock? It's like human nature, like no, I'm used to this and I don't think it's more a thing of people are stupid. I just think it's that human beings haven't evolved in a very long time. We've evolved to a certain point and then we didn't evolve further and we're not seeing how we can evolve further, so we just keep repeating the old lessons in new ways.
Speaker 1:I've got a bit of a theory about that. I mean, I think that technical knowledge can be passed down in books and taught in universities and we can learn how to build things better, how to build a better bridge, how to build a better car, how to build a better engine. But human experience cannot be written down in a book and transferred from generation to generation. You know, we all grow up, we all have to ask the first girl out on a date. You know you've got to kiss the girl the first time. There's all these first experiences, the first time you get behind a car and drive your first job, buying your first. You know, whatever, you simply cannot transfer that experience from one person to another.
Speaker 1:And we all know that nobody makes logical decisions. Everybody makes an emotional decision and the prime example is that Ferrari continues to sell cars and so does Toyota. Now, if they both sell cars and a car gets made to be, logically no one should be buying Ferraris. But there's an emotional component and I think that's what it is. People look at this thing. It tugs at the heartstrings, it's the feel good factor and there they go, throw all their money into it.
Speaker 2:That's a very good point, actually. I think you hit the nail on the head there. At the end of the day, people are not logical and rational creatures. For the most part, we are ruled by our emotions, and that's why these things keep happening over and over again. I can't really say who without embarrassing somebody, but I had a one-on-one conversation with somebody who works for a company who's now becoming one of these Bitcoin treasury companies, and I don't think this person has been in Bitcoin for longer than six months Doesn't sound like it anyway.
Speaker 2:For longer than six months. It doesn't sound like it anyway, but and it's it reminded me so much of the hype that surrounded some of these ICO projects in 2017, where it was just well, this is the next big thing, and I think it's becoming more. How can I put it? Um, I mean like, look, my private business has been a bitcoin treasury company since I don't know 2015. Dude, like I've, I've had bitcoin on my balance sheet, like I'm my.
Speaker 2:The reason the reason I the reason covid didn't kill didn't kill our tourism business was because we're a Bitcoin treasury company. If we were not a Bitcoin treasury company, covid would have killed our tourism business. We couldn't operate for two years. There are other tourism businesses where we now employ people who used to own tourism businesses that were bigger than ours, but they were not Bitcoin treasury companies. We were, so you know, own tourism businesses that were bigger than ours, but they were not Bitcoin treasury companies. We were.
Speaker 2:But now, all of a sudden and I don't know how this works, but obviously it's just become like this new hype cycle, and this is what the whole emotional argument that you were alluding to is. It's like it's people people. I mean, for all our appearances of rationality and logic and so on and so forth, I think people are just basically emotional creatures. Nobody likes to admit that, but it's obvious. If you look at what happens, like you know, why would people keep repeating themselves? Why would everybody? I mean, I can't say for sure, but after this conversation, I was 99.9% sure that this person is trying to sell me on hype because it smelled and it smelled exactly the same as some of this shit that people were trying to sell me during 2017, where this, this was going to do that and that was going to do that, and it's just, yeah, I guess. I guess it comes down to that.
Speaker 1:We're not actually very logical or rational at all yeah, yeah, um, so along the lines of something sort of you know, maybe hype, maybe this, maybe it's not what it's cracked up to be. I see El Salvador's popped up in the news a little bit recently where some questions are being asked. And I only mentioned El Salvador because, you know, from a Bitcoin point of view, they were the first nation to go legal tender adoption of Bitcoin. And then, you know, as you know, the World Bank or something or IMF loaned them some money on condition that they move away from this Bitcoin thing. But there's a couple of recent.
Speaker 1:In the last month I saw two news headline items.
Speaker 1:One is looks like there's a little bit of a crackdown on journalism happening in El Salvador and President Bukele's had term extensions approved through parliament or something.
Speaker 1:So I think they're pushing for six-year terms now and then indefinite term rates, which sounds, you know, banana republic. Here we come, who knows. And then there was also something about the one bitcoin a day, uh, which was almost like a meme. Uh, suddenly they got this loan and then they were supposed to not be buying bitcoin anymore as one of the conditions of the loan, and then the president actually tweeted well, we still, you know, he would sort of subtly hint with tweets that they're still continuing to buy one bitcoin a day. Now it sounds like they might have just been moving it from one wallet to another and it might be a bit weird, um, and it's. It's kind of interesting because it was this almost like shining beacon of hope in the bitcoin space as far as nation-state adoption goes, and now it looks like it might not be quite as bright as it was. Time will tell and who knows what the real story is, but what are your thoughts there, guys?
Speaker 3:Please, herman. I haven't been to El Salvador. I can't speak of on the ground Herman's been uh, I, I mean, look.
Speaker 2:I think, first of all, the first thing to say is that anybody, anybody that that is disappointed should have. Uh, should, should, should. Take a long hard look in the mirror, because from day one you should have. You should have. Uh, should, should, should. Take a long hard look in the mirror, because from day one you should have. You should have reminded yourself that, hey, this is all fantastic, but, uh, these are people in positions of power and and and. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So why did, why did that all of a sudden change when, when the president came out and I mean, maybe he's fantastic, maybe he was fantastic, maybe he was fantastic, maybe something changed. He made some good decisions. Is he going to make some bad decisions? 100 guaranteed. Uh, could he turn into a dictator? Uh, yeah, it's possible. Um, is he a dictator right now? No, obviously not, not yet. Uh, if it's going to happen, it's still in the future. Uh, real dictatorships look very different, unless things drastically changed in the last six months. I was there for six weeks in November, december. So, unless things drastically changed in the last six months, on the ground, I did not visit a dictatorship. Maybe slight authoritarian tendencies? Yeah for sure. Could that become worse, of course, but it's kind of like. I mean, I actually think there's a much better example of this, and that's the American president.
Speaker 2:People put so much hope and faith in Donald Trump during the election and when he was almost assassinated, even I started thinking to myself, holy shit, this guy is the real deal. Like, look, look at what you know, look look at that. And I was like, and then you know, you, you listen to influencers and they're all just, you know, singing his praises and and you almost, almost want, almost almost one, because, again, we're, we're this emotional creatures and we're we, we, we have to have hope. It's just that we place our hope in the wrong places. But human beings can't survive without hope. Um, you know, you, you can, you can survive three weeks without without uh, food, three days without water and three seconds without hope, uh, but.
Speaker 2:But the problem is that we place our hope in the wrong places and we put them, and perhaps that's a psyop, perhaps we've been conditioned to place our hope in these individuals who occupy these positions of power. I don't know, perhaps that's a natural tendency. I mean, humans have always lived in tribes and the tribe has always had a strong leader. Um, so you know. But then then we, we put our hope in these individuals and, and I mean, look at what, what's happened since, since trump became president like he, he was supposed to be the anti-war president and he, he, he flew b2 bombers over another country and bombed them to shit. Uh, he was supposed to be the guy that's gonna drain the swamp and now we're told that the ep, he was supposed to be the guy that's going to drain the swamp, and now we're told that the Epstein thing is supposed to be nothing. I mean, come on, like that's, that's the biggest monster in the swamp, one of them, and we're supposed to just go. Oh, okay, well, I guess you know.
Speaker 2:So it's just, it's, it's this, it's again. It's another cycle that keeps repeating itself. Leaders come and they do something, and people put hope in them, and then they fuck up. It's like, well, what did you expect? And you know, we're all probably guilty of that to some extent.
Speaker 2:I got drawn into the whole Bukele is the beacon of hope thing, but at the end of the day, he's just a human being and he's probably getting a little power hungry and hopefully things turn out for the better. I don't know. I don't think it's currently a dictatorship. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a crackdown on journalism, because every fucking country in the world does that Cracksdown on journalists I mean, like America cracksdown on journalists. So yeah, I'm not super surprised by it. I just, uh, from the very beginning, would have cautioned against putting hope and faith into any person in a position of centralized power, so that you avoid being disappointed when it turns out that, hey, this guy is just another politician and maybe it's a bit better, maybe he's a bit worse, but it's a. It's a structural problem, like um, it's gonna keep happening until we don't have these structures.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fully agree with what herman's saying in the fact that bitcoiners were supposed to be like uh, you know rules, no rulers. Uh, you know, but now, literally in the last year, what I've seen is Bitcoiners can critically be like oh, I want my favorite politician to be the politician. It's like bro, what happened to no rulers? Like weren't we here for? Like something else? And it literally I'm just I don't even engage as much as I used to on twitter anymore because I'm like what are you guys doing? This wasn't what I signed up for. Or like what I signed up for. Now I'm just talking to the tech guys, I'm doing the dev guys, all that because everybody else is just inundated with the new shiny thing and the the new politician and like I'm like guys, like why are you guys against trump? You know who this guy was like as a president. It's not his first presidency, it's his second presidency, right? So it's not like we should all be shocked about politicians being politicians. We need to do better and I agree with Herman, we need to do better in what we place our trust in. We now have seen placing hope in individuals. They will, because they are human beings. At some point they are, and they're not you, right. They are going to disappoint you. Your parents have disappointed you at some point, your children have this. Your spouse has disappointed you. Everybody will disappoint you at some point because they're human beings, so trying to make them god-like is going to be a bad idea. That's why satoshi left. He was like nope, I'm not doing this right. So I really do think it's.
Speaker 3:It's down to us as individuals to understand that el salvador is a country that made a decision on what to do with bitcoin. I actually think everybody should be talking about Bhutan, the country that nobody knew was mining Bitcoin, but was secretly mining Bitcoin right. And now he's building an airport, paying their what do you call the people that work in government? Again, civil servants, public servants, the public servants. They're getting paid off of the Bitcoin that was mined, like this is going straight back into the community in a way that actually can be measured right. But all everybody wants to talk about is el salvador, and el salvador is great. Again. It's a country that made a really bold decision, but so did buta.
Speaker 3:They said you know what? We're not even going to tell you guys, we're just going to start. We're going to go ahead and do what the bitcoin has said we can do. Apparently, you can just do stuff. So they did it, and I think that is where we should to start focusing our attention, not on is this guy a dictator? They keep voting him in. I'm sorry. What are we supposed to do? Right, if you keep voting somebody into power that is a democratic process that you're going through and you keep voting him in? Hey man, look we're here. We also have our own problems. We also have our own governments. We also you know. But at the same time, there are places that we can talk about and maybe go visit and say hey, bhutan, what's actually going on here? Like what? How are you guys doing your mining? What like software are you guys using? Right? Which miners are you? Nobody's having this conversation on Bitcoin Twitter at all, and that's what I find weird, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean just to wrap up what you're saying there. So you know, El Salvador is like the first born child. Everyone has high hopes in them. Bhutan is like the middle child that one ignores and should be paying maybe more attention to the middle child there, not the first born. Yeah, there we go. Sorry, just one last thing on that.
Speaker 2:I also don't really understand people who are so overly critical of Bukele and what's happening in El Salvador, because at the end of the day, you can you know, two things can be true at the same time, and I don't understand why people don't see that he's made some good decisions and he's probably fucked up in a few different ways too. So, and that's, that's pretty much par for the course. I mean, you can, you can maybe look at some really inspirational leaders and perhaps they fucked up less than the rest. And then you can look at some really bad leaders and maybe they they messed up most of the time and did hardly any good, but at the end, at the end of the day, any leader would do both. It's the same.
Speaker 2:I've become so frustrated listening to politics, political debates, where people fall in either one of two camps and everything this person does is either good or bad. And you've got the people who start calling a guy like Trump a dictator, authoritarian. And now I see people doing the same thing with piquele. Oh, he's a dictator, he's this he's like. Well, no, obviously he's not a dictator. He could become. He could become a real dictator, it's possible.
Speaker 2:Um, he's done some good things. I mean every single person I spoke to in el salvador was happy with, with the way the country was turned around in terms of the gang problem and that was very, very clearly a result of some very tough decisions that he made and, you know, made some enemies along the way outside the country, made some friends outside the country as well, but every single person in the country was very, very appreciative of that and so clearly there's some good things that country as well, but every single person in the country is very appreciative of that and so clearly there's some good things that he's done. Nobody should be surprised if there's some bad things, like in two years from now maybe he does become I don't know when their next election is. I think a couple of years from now, because I used to have four-year terms and he got re-elected two years ago.
Speaker 3:In those five years.
Speaker 2:So let's say, in three or four years from now he gets re-elected again, and then he gets re-elected again and then he starts putting journalists in prison. I don't know, that could happen. But are you going to be surprised if it happens? No, because that's kind of how the story goes, isn't it? Um, so you know, let's, but but let's not, let's not call, call the guy a dictator prematurely, like, because what?
Speaker 3:does that say?
Speaker 2:about actual fucking dictators like there are. There are real dictators in the world that are way, way, way, way worse than what bekele is. Um, who? Bekele is a figure who's done some actual good. I mean, there was the amount of construction that was going on in El Salvador. Reminded me of the Western Cape in South Africa when I was there. It's just like roads being built everywhere, new buildings going up, and that can't be a horrible thing. I mean, if there's development going on and there's economic development then, then people are going to benefit one way or another. So it's not perfect, but it's also not. It's not all all bad, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well said, well said yeah, um so quick change in direction. Little bit techie stuff. Uh, the bitcoin, quantum computing uh, I see that sort of popped its head up recently again. Uh, you know, I listened to a podcast recently and the guy was talking about some ibm machine that has managed to crack a 5-bit encryption code and on the surface it sounded kind of quite impressive. Then they broke it down and a 5-bit. He said do you know how difficult a 5-bit encryption is? And well, clearly I didn't know. I was just listening to the conversation and he said it's 32 possible combinations. That's it. It took this quantum computer 16,000 attempts to correctly guess a maximum of 32 combinations and it did find the correct answer. But it took 16,000 attempts and it could have just gone for 32. Yeah, 5 bit is a 32 combination thing. So it could have just gone for 32 different attempts and would have found it in probably two seconds flat. Um, so kind of. Uh, that was a little bit interesting.
Speaker 1:Like you get this hype news event, possibly a little bit like what we were talking about with El Salvador. You know, news headline designed to get your emotions stirred because we all make emotional decisions, but at the end of the day doesn't really seem to be a great step forward for mankind. Is this thing going to go away? Are we going to keep hearing about quantum for 20 years until some guy decides to give up with it? Or is this going to become, you know, like the early mainframe computers that took up four buildings and it could do one plus one in the 50s. And now you know, now they're in our pocket. What do you guys think?
Speaker 3:The quantum computing conversation is never going away.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I think at some point it will be a problem At some point in the future. It will be a problem at some point in the future. Um, it will be a problem. But bitcoin is not the first one that's going to have to run for the hills. It will be the entire financial system as it exactly exists today. Right, everybody is going to go for that first, like I'm. I'm coming for all of the passwords on every atm card, and it's literally that's what people will go for. All of the hackers in the world. They'll first go for that. That's the honeypot, then the bitcoiners.
Speaker 3:But now here's the kicker whenever something happens in technology, what normally happens like lightning Network wasn't created by bitcoiners. It was on Litecoin, right, but the technology itself was adopted by Bitcoiners. So when new technology comes out, bitcoin literally adopts it, it swallows it up, and then so we'll just have quantum resistant addresses at that point in time. Now the Bitcoin that's already out there. What's going to happen to it? Will those be hacked? Probably, maybe. I mean, they're in very old scripts. You can't upgrade that right now. Or how would you upgrade that? Maybe somebody would find a way, but then you still have to get access to the keys and all. You'd have to maybe move the coins over, but how would you do that? Some of these people died with no heirs. That guy that lost the 8,000 Bitcoin on the trash heap, that just gave up yesterday I mean that 8,000 000. What's going to happen there? Like? So, the whole question here is, firstly, everybody that's alive will upgrade to the new quantum resistant bitcoin wallets right, that's what's going to happen and move their coins immediately, so you won't be able to hack everybody's, but those that are leaving it there, those that are dead okay, cool, that's not going to be bounties, and people are going to start learning how to get there, which for me, means Bitcoin will become more resilient. Right, the people that are working on Bitcoin, that are working on maintaining the actual network and infrastructures, will then build more resilient because they see they now know how to crack the old way with these new technologies.
Speaker 3:But again, when will the individual people have access to quantum computers? That's the next question. Same way that the internet was in existence, but the greater humanity didn't have it until what? 97, 95 or something. Well, same thing, even if quantum computers come out, we are not gonna get them in laptop form for a very long time that we can try to go in. I just I think people are.
Speaker 3:Second thing is it's also a sign of oh don't. Self-custody because, like when quantum computers come in, it's gonna be like really dangerous, you should leave it. All of this is just weird. Technology advances and human beings take that new advancement into account. Same way, everybody is using LLM in different things in their apps and they're integrating it. It's technology moving forward and we're going to employ it. I mean, yeah, people still ride horses, but it's not because they're trying to move from A to B most of the time. Right, there's cars, there's a bus, there's a taxi, there's other ways to get from point A to B. Now that will cut your time down and you don't have to feed the horse and take care of it.
Speaker 2:I've got a question. Actually. I wonder if, with quantum computing when, let's say, that guy who gave up on his 8,000 Bitcoin that's now somewhere in a trash heap, if, hypothetically speaking, there is somebody who has access to a quantum computer that could start hacking public addresses and breaking the cryptography, then I'm pretty sure that somebody would know. So that's my question is would somebody know somebody that's watching the Mempool, for example? Would they be able to tell that that Bitcoin has been hacked?
Speaker 2:And now I mean I don't know how to phrase this because my technical knowledge is a little limited, but basically what I'm asking is wouldn't it just turn into a situation where all the Bitcoin that gets hacked simply ends up with miners and mining fees? Because if one person was able to hack that, surely there's another person who's able to do something very similar at more or less the same time and he's trying to send the same Bitcoin to a different address, and then somebody else is going to come in, and so they end up that that they basically end up outbidding themselves in a war of who pays the highest fee to get that Bitcoin onto an address that they control. And so by the time the Bitcoin gets mined in the next block. There's nothing left. They've basically fee sniped each other to the point where what they've hacked is a small fraction. There's only a small fraction of it left. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:I hear what you're saying. I don't know if that's possible. So yeah, that's why we might need somebody way more technical than any of us to answer how this would actually, in theory, go down.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting question If you've got a quantum computer and you can hack the old. You can basically break the encryption on the old addresses. You'd have a copy of the blockchain. You can just go all the way back to the beginning Genesis block, start trawling through looking for addresses that still have the old non-quantum resistant address type and you just break the encryption on there and now you just move that Bitcoin into another address that you control. So is this almost not a good thing? Because all the Bitcoiners that are alive into another address that you control? So is this almost not a good thing? Would you win? Because all the Bitcoiners that are alive, when they see this quantum computing bullet flying towards them, they just sidestep their Bitcoin into a new address that's quantum resistant and they carry on as normal. Maybe the old Bitcoins that the lost Bitcoin will actually now be recoverable and go back into circulation. Is that even possible?
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't, it should be possible, but if, if, uh, I mean what? What's the most likely scenario? I think the most likely scenario is that there there is an upgrade to bitcoin and that everybody who does own bitcoin moves their bitcoin to quantum resistant addresses, and then those that don't move. You can safely assume that the people who used to own those private keys either the keys are lost or the person is dead. And if we move to a quantum resistant address format long before quantum computers become a real threat, by the time they do become a real threat, it's going to be very obvious, if that happens, right, and so I, I just don't.
Speaker 2:I just don't understand and this is this is basically the question I was asking earlier I just don't understand this idea of okay, so there's one person or one actor with a quantum computer and they're the only ones that are able to do this. Like, surely, surely, if that time comes, there's going to be multiple actors all trying to do this at the same time, and if quantum computers are such a massive threat, how is one of them going to stay ahead of the rest? Like it's? I just don't. How, how, how is this one person or this one actor, unless it's like a massive state, or this one actor, unless it's like a massive state entity, you know, like the NSA or something like that then, okay, fair enough, I can understand how they could have access to machines that nobody else has access to. But, you know, but with the way that private companies or not private, but with the way that companies like Google that are not under the control of a single state, or Meta or whatever, like these companies, are just as likely to develop, or IBM or whatever, they're just as likely to develop quantum computing before the state.
Speaker 2:So how do we end up in a place where there's only one actor that are trolling the blockchain, looking for old addresses, and they start hacking these things? Surely there's going to be almost like an explosion of them all at the same time. And then, if you can hack a quantum, if you can hack a Bitcoin address, then I just don't see how that actor is going to move that Bitcoin to their own new address quick enough so that somebody else doesn't come up with a clever scheme to intercept that and actually try and do that. And then somebody else comes in front of them and it just I don't know. Yeah, it's like the.
Speaker 3:AI race. Right, it's like the AI race right now. Like everybody has an AI chatbot, ai agent, ai, something has an AI chatbot, ai agent AI, something. Like it's not one person, like, oh okay, I figured out AI, there's Grok, there's Gemini, there's so many different. So, again, when it happens, it's like technology.
Speaker 3:Again, I almost look at creativity and things like this right, like an ether, think of an ether that just sits in like the sky and when you pull an idea or a creative thought from there, somebody else is also pulling from that same ether. The question is who executes first? That's it right, and that's why sometimes you're like, hey, I came up with this idea, but I saw somebody else did it. How did they? Where did they read about it? Like, how did they? No, dude, the idea was up there. How you wanted to implement? It is what makes it, you know, unique and whatnot. But we can all come up with the idea that creativity is in a limited resource. It's up there, we could all draw from it. But the same thing goes for me when it comes to like my, my site on like how people, when technology is there, when people figure it out, everybody pulls from it and creates from there, right?
Speaker 3:So there is no. I don't want to say there's no first mover advantage, but there's no sustainable first mover advantage when everybody can do the same thing. It's like why, when, when bitcoin was released as free and open source software, everybody could make a coin right. That's what crypto is. Banks are we get to print money. Bitcoin is nobody gets to print money, and crypto is everybody gets to print money. And that's literally what happens with most. Tech is crypto, everybody gets to do it, and that's the fun part. So, yeah, I just I agree with Herman completely. I don't see how this becomes a real problem beyond everybody going for the bounties Like, hey man, even little kids are gonna be like those legacy addresses that start with one. That's where we're gonna start letting out a hack, and then you move up the chain till you get to BC one right, and then after that, the new ones. It will be an interesting time to be alive, that much I can tell you.
Speaker 1:Super cool, man. Guys, we're getting close to time here. Any last comments or thoughts? One thing I just made a note of was the new BitChat app from Jack Dorsey. Kind of of interesting. Seems to run on mesh net and bluetooth and it just looks like another step in privacy. Uh, freedom, sovereignty. Uh, I haven't tried it. It's not available in the google app store. Um, I haven't tried it. Have any of you guys used it? What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I haven't used it. Download it on your wife's phone too, so you can use it bro.
Speaker 2:That was my plan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I got. So I got the bug for bitch ads, or bitch ads whichever way you want to see it.
Speaker 3:It's such a weird way to phrase that thing. But yeah, no man, I think it's amazing. I don't think people understand the real use cases that can come from this and I'll give you a quick one Disaster when there's a disaster, literally right If there's flooding or whatever to be able to tell people hey, I am stuck on the fifth floor in the elevator. You can now do that because you don't have internet access, but you have bluetooth and as long as there's a repeater and that's what we, that's where the real money is going to come who creates the best bluetooth repeaters to carry on these? But chat messages right, with real range? Because if you can do a whole town, you've now made sure there's a secondary res like like um communication layout for things like getting to the hospital, getting like uh, uh, sorry, not hospital getting uh, what the things?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, but like the vans and stuff I can't remember the name like the er vans, getting them actually to the people that need them, because I can't remember the name. Like the er vans, getting them actually to the people that need them, because I don't ambulances, there we go, that's the name. Um, I don't know how to get that word, but, like some people, literally like there's an emergency they don't have, they don't have any money, they don't have air time, what, what? They could still get the ambulance to come out and save this person's life. You can still get the police there, you can still get whatever like real help you need, because this exists and it doesn't cost you any money to send a message, right, that is amazing. That is just like the thought of even people in villages, you know where you just have bluetooth, you don't have internet access, but now you can literally have people communicating and sharing information, right, because that's what is real. Oil is information. That's crazy. That's for free, it's wild. But disaster relief especially, I think, is going to be amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1:Talking in airplanes. I was lucky enough to be at a presentation in the US when, just after those floods in North Carolina happened. This is about six months ago, maybe, maybe a bit longer eight, nine months and the guys that went in there members of the public that were like first responders went in and a lot of these guys are ex-military guys, so they understand how to move into an area, cordon off, set up communication, start organizing resources and they would go in and the first thing they did was start putting up those little mesh-tastic devices. They dotted them all over the countryside and they were able to get text messages in and out and when the official aid guys rocked up, they could actually tell them we've got these people here, those people over there, we've got food moving in this area, and that was amazing.
Speaker 1:Just cool to hear how that whole thing would work. Do you think we'll see Wi-Fi routers suddenly incorporating Meshnet and Bluetooth as part of the router? And then you know, as people buy new routers, you just automatically have this rollout of tech, because it almost seems like a cell phone. You know, cell phones had these NFC chips in them for years before anybody actually started using NFC, so maybe it's something like that they can start pushing stuff in and start switching on down the line when it becomes viable.
Speaker 3:It's a great idea, Gavin. I think that's a good push to have. I think you should start that conversation on Twitter almost immediately, so that people that are working on routers can start thinking hey, man, there's other use cases here that we might have forgotten about. Bluetooth isn't as old as we thought.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what I'll do. The tweet you repost like, everyone repost like and get the message out.
Speaker 2:There's another side to this conversation, which is that this is all fantastic, but how bad are things going to have to become for the average person to even care about the fact that this exists? You know, I'm obsessed with Bitcoin and I love Bitcoin, adjacent technologies like Noster, and so on. I haven't even gotten to the point where I've put the app on my wife's phone so that I can try it out from my phone to hers. So for the average person to even care about the fact that this exists, things are going to have to. I mean, disaster situations might be the exception where it gets used in a particular location for a short period of time, but for there to be wide adoption of these types of things. Yeah, I don't want to end the conversation on a dark note, but it always feels to me like.
Speaker 2:You know, there's what I was. I had my VPN location on the Netherlands the other day and I opened a random tweet and I saw, hey, shit, I've got to verify my age here to look at somebody spending sats in Kenya. And I thought what shit, I've got to verify my age here to look at somebody spending sats in Kenya. And I thought what the fuck is this? And so there's actual censorship of some kind. It's not super extreme, but it's some kind of a censorship happening in Europe where now, all of a sudden, you have to verify your age just to look at, like regular tweets. It's not even. It's not even like it's adult content or anything. It's just like it's a guy spending sats in Kenya like you know what.
Speaker 2:What's so, what's so hectic about that? But um, and and and people and people just don't. People just go along with it and it's like um, so so at what point? At what point does this technology become not just a niche thing that people like us care about, but actually something useful for a vast number of people? I don't want to think about how bad things have to become for it to actually become widely adopted so I'm going to throw a positive spin in there, so we don't end on a negative note.
Speaker 1:And my positive spin is this so we don't end on a negative note, uh, and my positive spin is this might be like the next voip where, yeah, we all had perfectly working landlines and then some smart oak came up with a cell phone, uh, and we all had cell phones and we were paying per call, then it was per minute, then it was per second, and then someone came up with voip and half the in fact most people, didn't even know what voip was. And then suddenly whatsapp puts it in their app and now you can phone someone free of charge, uh, just using a wi-fi connection. So I think that this bit chat idea, mesh net, bluetooth thing might just be the next evolutionary hop where suddenly your phones can just communicate with each other, you can make phone calls, send video and that sort of thing, and now it's like really free, it's not even per second billing anymore or you don't need to have paid for a wi-fi connection, point. So I would like to think that might be the next view, uh, the next evolution in it, and and maybe it takes 15, 20 years to get there, who knows?
Speaker 1:But um, and maybe it's. Maybe it takes 15, 20 years to get there, who knows? And maybe it doesn't go anywhere. That's the beauty of technology. You know? Lots of shite. I almost said shite. I did say shite, sorry, lots of shiny things out there.
Speaker 1:And some of them turn out to be shite. I'll just clear my thought like that Correct, Cool man Parting thoughts before we wrap up.
Speaker 2:Herman, from your side. Yeah, I mean, I don't know it's fun doing this.
Speaker 3:Look forward to the next one, nikolai. For sure, for sure, it was fun. My parting thought is remember that technology is just a tool. What you do with it is what matters. Just like a hammer, you can build something or you can destroy something. What you do with it is what matters.
Speaker 1:That is awesome, guys. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. This has been amazing. I think we covered two topics, or maybe three. Well, it doesn't matter. Fun was had and everyone was smiling. That's all that matters cool guys sure thanks. Have a good one, cheers.
Speaker 3:Thank you have a good one, gentlemen. Outro Music.