What to Tell That Person

Episode 92 • 23rd January 2023 • Generation Bitcoin • McIntosh

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Hey, Sat Stackers, it's January the 23rd and this is episode 92 of Generational Wealth

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of Cryptocurrency.

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I'm your host, Macintosh.

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Today's episode is about what to tell that person.

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Nobody on this podcast is a financial advisor.

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All information presented on this podcast is for informational purposes only.

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Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way, let's jump on in.

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All right.

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A little bit different tonight.

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Their old gray is hot.

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Tasting pretty good.

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I am actually out of honey.

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I got to get some more, but we're managing.

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So today is a little different.

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I recorded earlier this week the bulk of the episode.

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So you may notice a change in the setup.

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I try and duplicate it as much as possible, but it's just not...

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You just can't make it a hundred percent the same.

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So you may pick that up.

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That's fine.

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Just know what's going on.

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Sometimes I do that, not very frequently, but I try and...

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It helps keep Sunday nights from not being so long.

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And in this case, I already had everything.

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I was ready to go and couldn't sleep one night, so I recorded.

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We'll begin, of course, with our market update.

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Another good week for Bitcoin.

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I will say, let's see here, January the 15th.

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So last week we were at $20,880 for Bitcoin.

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This week we're at $22,720.

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So almost $2,000 up, 10% in the week.

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Ethereum closed at $1,628.38.

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ADA closed at $37.6594.

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All of them up, of course.

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ADA not so much this week.

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Actually, Ethereum not so much this week.

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Bitcoin led the week, it looks like, in terms of percentages.

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But everything was basically up.

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So what's going on here?

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Well, that's a great question.

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We don't know yet.

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Sorry.

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This is not yet proven to be a bull run.

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This could be a fake out.

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It could go back down.

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Although I'll be honest, to me, this has showed a lot more strength than I expected.

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I would encourage everyone to continue to stack Sats and DCA every day, every week,

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every month.

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Of what's going on in terms of the price, because we continue to see the markets not

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do so well.

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We continue to see the US debt mount as well as the world.

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In fact, last week, of course, we forgot to do the news.

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Again, I apologize, but I will have the news this week.

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And part of that will be talking about the debt ceiling of the United States and how

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we are essentially at an impasse for that, which I love, by the way, because I like chaos

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and government because that means government's not sticking its hands in my pockets, too

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busy trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing, which is leading the country,

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by the way.

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Anyways, I'll stop.

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All right.

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So that was our market update.

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I don't really have any technical news this week.

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I saw some things, to be honest, there was actually some cool examples I should have

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clipped out and posted and I didn't.

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In one case, we had a nice retest of a point of resistance, but anyways, I did not take

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the time to clip that out.

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So from here, we'll jump on into our topic.

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So this week's topic is going to be a little different.

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I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who is very close to me and it

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was about a currency, it was specifically it was about XRP.

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And someone had come to them and said, hey, I really like XRP, it's great, great investment,

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you know, they got blah, blah, whatever.

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I mean, I don't remember exactly, but it was being certainly portrayed as a good investment,

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specifically better than Bitcoin.

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And if I recall correctly, better than anything else.

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And this person, of course, knew that I was involved in crypto, knew that I was someone

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who believed very strongly in Bitcoin.

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And they were telling me this and to be honest, I think they caught me off guard and I didn't

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really know what to say.

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And we talked a little bit and, you know, I of course told them, I believe that Bitcoin

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is the safest, most secure investment and had the highest potential long term.

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But later I came away and I'm thinking, how do I explain this to someone in a proper manner?

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And so I've thought about it a little bit and I believe I have a better explanation.

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So what I wanted to do tonight was actually cover that.

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Because if you are involved in this for any length of time, you're going to have people

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who come to you and say, well, I'm looking at XYZ, why should I not invest in those assets?

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So you should be prepared for that yourself.

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Maybe you can direct them to this podcast, this episode specifically, or you might want

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to walk through this with them.

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Or maybe you're one who says, well, ETH is better or XRP is better or ADA is better or

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whatever.

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And as y'all know, yes, I still have investments in actually in ETH and ADA, but I am limiting,

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I'm certainly limiting my exposure to that, not really looking to buy any more of that.

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And my plan at this point is to sell at the top of the next cycle or as close there as

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I can come in about two years into Bitcoin or into US dollars and then keep that for

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the next ride down, so to speak.

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That's not been determined exactly how I'm going to do that.

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But my point is I'm not planning on keeping these assets long term because I don't believe

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in the long term and I mean 10, 20, 30, 50 years that these will be viable assets.

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And let me explain, whenever I look at a cryptocurrency, I need to think about certain things.

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For one thing, of course, Bitcoin has been around for the longest amount of time.

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It started 14 years ago, actually, almost exactly.

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And so 2009, it was created by a gentleman or a man or a woman we don't know named Satoshi

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Nakamoto.

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That's the nine to plume, the whatever you want to call it that they went by.

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That person was involved for what amounts to a short period of time and said, I'm gone

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and left, left Bitcoin development in the hands of a core group of developers and went

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off and lived their life and they've never been heard from again, certainly not under

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that name.

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They also mined approximately one million Bitcoin tokens to kickstart the system, so

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to speak, and show how it was done during the early days.

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And that money is all sitting in a wallet.

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Now you can make the argument, well, that could be sold off at any time.

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I personally don't think that would ever happen, but that could be perceived as the one weakness

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of Bitcoin.

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So you can view all other cryptocurrencies as developing out of Bitcoin.

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So typically here's what happens.

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You get people who get involved and then they think, well, I've got a better idea.

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I can do X, Y or Z and I come over here and make this token.

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And it's easy to create a cryptocurrency, by the way, it's not difficult at all.

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Basically anyone can do it, but it will not be Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin has certain attributes that define it.

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It has a long history of not having any fatal software flaws in it.

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It has moderately slow development of it, which some people view as a downside.

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For example, Ethereum develops much, much quicker, but Ethereum has a lot more problems

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when it comes to bugs in the software.

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There's a reason for the slow development of Bitcoin.

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It's very slow, it's very methodical, it's reviewed by many people when changes are made

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and that's to keep bugs out of this base blockchain layer.

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So that is one aspect.

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Now there's no other crypto that can say I've been around longer than Bitcoin is not true.

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Not Ethereum, not ADA, not XRP, not Polymatic, sorry, Polygon, the Matic token, not any token

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that you can name.

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Let's talk about decentralization.

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I looked this up when I did the episode on XRP and XLM just a couple of weeks ago.

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And one of the issues that I saw with XRP was there was a very small number of validators.

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It has roughly 150, which is not a very large number, okay?

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So it's not very decentralized in this case.

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How did it get started?

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Well, as I said with Bitcoin, it was started by Satoshi, this person who disappeared, so

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to speak, after a short period of time, handed off the reins.

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There's nobody in charge of Bitcoin.

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There is not.

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You cannot argue that.

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It is indisputable.

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It is completely decentralized in terms of who does development on Bitcoin.

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What about XRP?

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XRP was started by a few people.

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I went through that in that episode if you're really curious, but it was started by a company

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called Ripple Labs.

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As part of the startup of Ripple, they pre-mined is what it's called, but they basically came

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up with 100 billion Ripple tokens.

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Now, on top of that, as of 2018, I don't have the numbers here in front of me, but fairly

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early in its history, they, the Ripple Labs company, owned 60 billion of those.

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So it was very centralized from that aspect.

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So that's a very concerning thing to me because as we see going on right now, that invites

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systems to be opened to state level attacks, governmental attacks, if you want to call

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it that.

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The US SEC has a lawsuit that's been going on for several years that's consumed millions

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and millions of dollars against XRP, specifically against Ripple Labs and against some of those

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very founders of the company.

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Now, I'm not going to prognosticate about who will win that case, but let's say that

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Britain decides that they're going to sue Bitcoin.

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Who are they going to sue?

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Some anonymous developer?

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I don't know.

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There's no foundation.

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There's no Bitcoin foundation.

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If they are, if there is a foundation that's devoted to Bitcoin, it is not like the locus

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of Bitcoin development or that kind of thing.

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There's no company behind Bitcoin.

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There's no Satoshi Institute that runs Bitcoin.

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So who are they going to sue?

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They can't.

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On the other hand, with Ethereum, as another example, there is a foundation that Vitalik

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started when very early, I don't think they started at the very start, but very early

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in its history and actually very similar to XRP.

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They pre-mined a bunch of Ethereum and guess who got a bunch of that?

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The Ethereum foundation.

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So that actually brings up another issue.

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If Ripple, the company behind XRP, for example, controls all these tokens, that means that

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they can dump them.

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And you know what that does to the price?

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It depresses the price.

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Now what they do in theory is they release some of these over certain amounts of, well,

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it's not predefined, but you know, they're just kind of released out there and whatever.

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And that's how the supply of XRP increases.

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You know how Bitcoin is released?

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It's done roughly every 10 minutes by Bitcoin miners.

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Miners who are not affiliated with Bitcoin in any way, they're there to make a profit.

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They buy their miner, they set it up, they run the Bitcoin mining software, and they

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try and solve the block puzzle.

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And if they do, then they win the reward, the block of Bitcoin, that is how Bitcoin

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gets mined.

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Again, not controlled by any central entity or anything like that.

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So when we talk about Bitcoin is decentralized, it's also censorship resistant.

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Let me tell you something.

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XRP, United States corporation, if the US government gets upset at them enough, they

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will bend the knee to the US government because the government will just shut them down.

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They can do it.

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They can make their life miserable like they are right now.

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And then if it gets bad enough, they'll just say, well, we're going to, I don't know,

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drag you into court for the next 10 years or whatever.

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We can come after you.

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We can blackmail you.

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We can do whatever we want because you're in the US and you're a US company.

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When there are central figures, when there's a Vitalik, when there's the person who started

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ADA, Charles Hoskinson, or any of these other currencies, there's a central figure that

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can be attacked.

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It's a point of weakness.

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So that's another thing that we should look at.

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Is it secure?

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Well, again, Bitcoin has a long track record of being very secure.

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The kind of things that have happened with Bitcoin.

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Take Mt. Gox, for example, one of the exchanges, one of the early exchanges back in 2014.

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It was hacked and a bunch of Bitcoin was stolen, like 100,000 or whatever it was.

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And you know what?

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That wasn't because of a flaw in the Bitcoin protocol.

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It was because of poor management of that exchange.

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And that's the reason why people like me say things like, not your keys, not your coin.

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Don't keep it on an exchange because you don't know what that exchange is doing.

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Let's talk about Ethereum.

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Let's talk about all the fancy stuff they built around Ethereum.

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And let me tell you, for a long time, my eyes were wide open about Ethereum, about oh, contracts,

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smart contracts, and we can build bridges between here and there and this and that.

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The reality is the more complexity you build into a software system, and I should have

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known this, but the more complexity that you build into a software system, the more chance

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there is for there to be bugs, for there to be flaws, for there to be points of weaknesses

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that can be attacked.

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And when something is on the internet and it involves money, in many cases, very large

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amounts of money, it will be attacked.

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So we see things like the Badger DAO being broken, the multiple bridges between different

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currencies that have been hacked, Solana hacks, Solana system failures.

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Talk about a lack of reliability.

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Okay, Macintosh, but I can make more money in XRP because right now it's at, Lord, I

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don't know, 75 cents, say.

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I have no idea what it's at.

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And during this next bull run, I'm sure it'll get up to $3.

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So that's like four times what the current price is.

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And that's great.

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Bitcoin's not going to do that.

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Bitcoin's not going to go to $80,000.

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Well, I don't know that.

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Maybe it does.

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Maybe it doesn't.

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But what I do know is at the end of the day, I can go to bed and not worry about my Bitcoin,

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but I'm worried about what will happen when that judgment is rendered in the SEC case,

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for example, because XRP is so centralized or how the validators, for example, could

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be easily taken over.

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There's only 150 validators.

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Any nation state could buy a bunch of validators, add them to the network, and then inject basically

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and use that as a, to inject malicious code to take over that network.

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What about Ethereum?

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You've got a bunch of validators.

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You've got all these people staking, blah, blah, blah.

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The majority of those run on these cloud services with AWS being the primary one.

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So we can go back.

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If you have a flaw on that, then that can be used to compromise however many validators

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there are on the Ethereum network.

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These points of attack are important because if we're dealing with people's money, with

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people's life savings, we want to be careful.

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We want to be, we want everything to be in the open.

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We don't want things to be centralized down to one person.

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I'm not going to pick on Charles Hoskinson, but as an example, he's the founder of ADA.

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I believe actually that Charles is looking to build something to benefit mankind.

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I do.

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I truly do.

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But he is one person.

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He is much like Vitalik.

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He's the center of that show, so to speak.

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Everything flows through him.

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He makes all the decisions.

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Well, what if he was co-opted for whatever reason?

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So then the entire network is going to be co-opted.

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These are important questions to ask when we're dealing with financial systems.

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And I believe right now we are building the financial systems of the next hundred years.

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These are the systems that will power the movement of money around the world.

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And at the same time, I hope we can build sound money, unlike the money that we've got

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right now in all the industrialized nations.

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In fact, in every nation in the world, fiat, money that's backed by the hope and promise

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of a government, money that routinely fails.

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Nigeria right now spending 80% of their revenue paying debts.

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I think it's Nigeria.

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And so on and so forth.

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So not only can we build the payment rails for the entire world, not only can we build

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a global reserve that's not the US dollar or the Russian ruble or the Chinese yuan or

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whatever they come up with the euro, because that immediately means that country or that

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group of countries in the case of the EU gains an advantage.

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Why would we do that?

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Well, why don't we use something where both parties do not gain an advantage, where both

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parties don't have to trust each other?

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And I present to you Bitcoin.

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And I know, unlike a lot of these other things, that there's only going to be 21 million Bitcoin.

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It is written into the protocol.

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And I also know that each one of those Bitcoin is subdividable down to a hundred million

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tokens, which means that there's a lot of sats floating around in the world.

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When you mine 21 million Bitcoin, you've got 21 million times 100 million satoshis.

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And then technically those could be subdivided down to millisatoshis, which we haven't even

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talked about.

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So Bitcoin itself, even though there's only, and I'm using air quotes around that, 21 million

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tokens can be subdivided down to whatever level we need.

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You can stream to me over a podcasting 2.0 app a satoshi a minute.

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And at the current rate, that's like 5,000 roughly satoshis per US dollar.

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So that's far less than a cent you're sending in one minute if you choose to stream for

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one minute.

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So to go back to the problem though, when we're looking at these, what problem is XRP

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trying to solve?

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Well, XRP is trying to solve the problems of the banking systems.

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Well, I have a better solution for that Bitcoin.

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I've got one that doesn't depend on Ripple Labs, for example.

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Well, what about Ethereum?

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Well, we're trying to create something that businesses can use to create these complex

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systems of smart contracts so that people can do these complex financial instruments

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online without having to trust each other.

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That may be true, but it's, and that's great right up until it breaks.

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And then we see hundreds of millions of dollars being hacked and stolen and frozen and so

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on and so forth.

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Oh, sensor ability.

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Oh, let's just build that right into the protocol.

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Uh-uh.

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When you get into the game of censoring money, it's a very dangerous game.

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And it's one that a neutral currency like Bitcoin should not be playing.

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We don't play favorites.

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We don't say, I'm going to keep you Russia from using Bitcoin.

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And I'm not a fan of what's going on over in Europe right now, but I'm not going to

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censor Russia from using Bitcoin.

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Because why?

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Because censoring money for people can be devastating for the average person.

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I don't care about Putin and all of his pals.

Speaker: 00:25:38

What I care about is the average Russian person out in the countryside who they could get

Speaker: 00:25:45

devastated by losing the ability to save and store wealth.

Speaker: 00:25:51

I hope that makes sense.

Speaker: 00:25:52

We can discuss that on another episode.

Speaker: 00:25:54

I don't want to get bogged down into that.

Speaker: 00:25:57

But you can't censor Bitcoin.

Speaker: 00:25:59

Now, is Bitcoin completely private?

Speaker: 00:26:02

No.

Speaker: 00:26:03

Are there things you can do to make it more private?

Speaker: 00:26:05

Yes.

Speaker: 00:26:06

And we've discussed some of that on here.

Speaker: 00:26:09

But what we cannot do, there's no central registry for Bitcoin that says you can have

Speaker: 00:26:16

it, you can't have it, this country can have it, this country can't have it.

Speaker: 00:26:21

I've got news for you.

Speaker: 00:26:24

Iran, Russia, North Korea, any quote, evil country that you want to include in that list,

Speaker: 00:26:35

they can go out and buy Bitcoin miners and put them online and mine Bitcoin, just like

Speaker: 00:26:40

people here in the United States, just like people in Britain and wherever.

Speaker: 00:26:47

They have the exact same opportunity.

Speaker: 00:26:50

And to be honest, I suspect that's probably going on.

Speaker: 00:26:55

I'm quite certain probably in China and Russia that they are doing that.

Speaker: 00:27:00

Now, you may find that scary.

Speaker: 00:27:03

I find that a completely neutral form of currency that we can't play games with like what we've

Speaker: 00:27:12

been doing for the last 100 years and ruin the entire world's economy in doing it.

Speaker: 00:27:17

I think the trade off is OK.

Speaker: 00:27:20

We have other ways of dealing with countries besides saying you can't mine Bitcoin or we're

Speaker: 00:27:31

not going to accept Bitcoin from Russia or whatever.

Speaker: 00:27:35

All right.

Speaker: 00:27:37

What else?

Speaker: 00:27:38

Oh, speed.

Speaker: 00:27:39

Oh man, my token, XLM actually, and XRP are notorious for this.

Speaker: 00:27:46

My token is so much faster than your token.

Speaker: 00:27:50

I mean, they don't mine a block of Bitcoin for it's like every 10 minutes, sometimes

Speaker: 00:27:55

even more.

Speaker: 00:27:57

So that's slow.

Speaker: 00:27:59

Yes.

Speaker: 00:28:01

But let me introduce you to something called the Lightning Network.

Speaker: 00:28:05

It's built in what's called the layer two.

Speaker: 00:28:07

It's built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and it does operate very quickly and lets

Speaker: 00:28:15

me operate down to that Satoshi level very cheaply.

Speaker: 00:28:20

So I can send cheap, quick payments over the Lightning Network, ultimately over Bitcoin.

Speaker: 00:28:27

All right.

Speaker: 00:28:28

Well, how does XRP do that?

Speaker: 00:28:31

How does XLM do that?

Speaker: 00:28:32

They make compromises in their fundamental design in order to do that.

Speaker: 00:28:38

I'm not going to get into the technical details on that, but it is certainly valid.

Speaker: 00:28:45

You can match up every aspect of whatever token it is to Bitcoin and frankly, I've got

Speaker: 00:28:53

a solution for you.

Speaker: 00:28:55

Well, let's talk about proof of work versus proof of stake.

Speaker: 00:28:59

Oh, we don't use mining to dig out our token.

Speaker: 00:29:04

We pre-mined it or we use staking or whatever.

Speaker: 00:29:10

So Bitcoin wastes more energy.

Speaker: 00:29:13

So there's been multiple reports that have come out.

Speaker: 00:29:18

One just came out recently that as of right now, Bitcoin is using a Bitcoin mining, I

Speaker: 00:29:24

should say, which of course is the issue, is using 58% of renewable energy.

Speaker: 00:29:31

And there is no other industry that even comes close to that that I'm aware of.

Speaker: 00:29:36

Now another thing is, so let me ask you this with your staking of Ethereum, say, can you

Speaker: 00:29:45

go set up out in the middle of Texas where they're flaring off natural gas, capture that

Speaker: 00:29:52

natural gas into a generator, generate power and mine Bitcoin, make money and take something

Speaker: 00:30:03

that was completely wasted that was polluting the atmosphere and turn it into, again, sound

Speaker: 00:30:10

money, stable money, completely agnostic money?

Speaker: 00:30:15

I doubt it.

Speaker: 00:30:17

What about in Africa where they're using hydropower?

Speaker: 00:30:20

They're going into places.

Speaker: 00:30:22

There's a lot of villages in Africa that don't have reliable power and they'll go in and

Speaker: 00:30:29

part of the problem is they have a lot of running water, they have rivers and this kind

Speaker: 00:30:35

of thing, and they can build hydropower, but it's actually expensive to do that, at least

Speaker: 00:30:42

to get started.

Speaker: 00:30:44

So what we can do is we can partner up with companies who would go in and build a hydro

Speaker: 00:30:52

dam and start selling that power off to the village.

Speaker: 00:30:57

Maybe they build, let's say, a 200 megawatt dam and the village only uses 50 megawatts.

Speaker: 00:31:04

Well, if they did that, the 150 megawatts of energy would just be going to waste.

Speaker: 00:31:11

But on the other hand, guess what we can do?

Speaker: 00:31:13

We can bring in Bitcoin miners and we can set up and we can use that until the village

Speaker: 00:31:20

needs it and then we simply move the miners away.

Speaker: 00:31:24

Headless compute, I think is what they're called, is doing this very thing in Africa.

Speaker: 00:31:30

So tell me about your token doing something like that.

Speaker: 00:31:33

We are literally providing lights to villagers in remote countries, remote villages that

Speaker: 00:31:41

did not have it.

Speaker: 00:31:42

We are improving their standard of living by mining Bitcoin, by again, creating this

Speaker: 00:31:49

stable, secure, sound, agnostic money.

Speaker: 00:31:57

So what else could we say about this token?

Speaker: 00:32:01

Well, it's new.

Speaker: 00:32:03

Okay.

Speaker: 00:32:04

Well, do I want my investment to be based on something new?

Speaker: 00:32:09

That's probably not a good idea for long-term results because most tokens die within a few

Speaker: 00:32:18

years.

Speaker: 00:32:20

Only a very small percentage stay like Ethereum, like ADA, like, I don't know, Polygon, thematic

Speaker: 00:32:30

token.

Speaker: 00:32:31

They've been around for a few years now.

Speaker: 00:32:34

Come back to me in 10 years.

Speaker: 00:32:36

Do we still have an ADA?

Speaker: 00:32:38

Do we still have an Ethereum?

Speaker: 00:32:40

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:32:42

I do not know.

Speaker: 00:32:45

I seriously doubt, to be honest, there'll be tokens like Solana around, Shiba Inu, eventually

Speaker: 00:32:54

that's going to peter out and that token will go away.

Speaker: 00:32:57

Why?

Speaker: 00:32:58

Because it's not doing anything.

Speaker: 00:33:00

It's just a meme coin and those memes only go so far.

Speaker: 00:33:05

We're building something of value.

Speaker: 00:33:07

We're building something solid.

Speaker: 00:33:10

We are thinking in decades, not months, not weeks.

Speaker: 00:33:15

It's not a rug pull.

Speaker: 00:33:16

It's not something where the founders get rich and everybody else loses.

Speaker: 00:33:24

I have an idea for a podcast coming up that I'm not going to let out of the bag, but it's

Speaker: 00:33:30

about that very thing actually.

Speaker: 00:33:34

Looking forward to that.

Speaker: 00:33:37

That may actually be next week.

Speaker: 00:33:40

So don't be afraid when somebody comes to you and says, well, what about this token

Speaker: 00:33:44

or what about this or what about this?

Speaker: 00:33:47

In my opinion, we can compare any token out there to Bitcoin and Bitcoin wins because

Speaker: 00:33:53

Bitcoin has been around.

Speaker: 00:33:55

Bitcoin is decentralized.

Speaker: 00:33:58

Bitcoin has no CEO, no head of development, no lab behind it, no entity that the government

Speaker: 00:34:06

can attack.

Speaker: 00:34:08

It's cross borders.

Speaker: 00:34:10

We've seen entire countries, China, say no Bitcoin mining.

Speaker: 00:34:14

You know what happened?

Speaker: 00:34:15

And at the time, something like approaching 50% of the world's Bitcoin mining was taking

Speaker: 00:34:21

place in China.

Speaker: 00:34:23

Not something I would advise half of it being in any country has nothing to do with China.

Speaker: 00:34:29

But that was the situation because China had cheap power, especially during the rainy season

Speaker: 00:34:36

in the south part of China.

Speaker: 00:34:37

And for whatever reason, they said no mining.

Speaker: 00:34:41

So all those miners left.

Speaker: 00:34:43

And within two months, the hash rate had already recovered.

Speaker: 00:34:48

It's very minimal time.

Speaker: 00:34:51

So it can't be taken down by a government at this point.

Speaker: 00:34:55

In my opinion, it's too expensive.

Speaker: 00:34:59

It can't be taken down.

Speaker: 00:35:01

It's very resistant to attackers because people have been attacking Bitcoin for nine years

Speaker: 00:35:07

now, or 14 years, excuse me.

Speaker: 00:35:11

It has not broken down yet and it's only getting stronger.

Speaker: 00:35:16

We're only building better things on top of it.

Speaker: 00:35:19

All right.

Speaker: 00:35:21

So I hope that helps.

Speaker: 00:35:23

We're going to move on now to our supporters and talk about the people who are helping

Speaker: 00:35:29

out with this podcast.

Speaker: 00:35:32

So this week we did have some support.

Speaker: 00:35:34

Appreciate that.

Speaker: 00:35:35

We had some people streaming.

Speaker: 00:35:38

We had some boost.

Speaker: 00:35:39

I'm going to go through these and I know I did have some issues as I do want to say this

Speaker: 00:35:44

real quick.

Speaker: 00:35:46

The Lightning Network is relatively new.

Speaker: 00:35:49

It's only a few years old.

Speaker: 00:35:52

Now the money that people put on the Lightning Network, in some cases on nodes is actually

Speaker: 00:35:57

getting to be fairly significant.

Speaker: 00:36:01

Normally in a Lightning wallet, I mean, I wouldn't recommend you stick more than five

Speaker: 00:36:04

or $10 on it unless you're absolutely fixing to spend that money.

Speaker: 00:36:10

But I have seen cases where maybe I boost a podcast and the boost actually didn't go

Speaker: 00:36:21

through.

Speaker: 00:36:22

It'll show up on the app.

Speaker: 00:36:24

This happens with Fountain, to be honest, and I've made them aware of that.

Speaker: 00:36:28

But it shows up as a boost and you get your confetti and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker: 00:36:34

But then if you go into the transactions in your wallet, you see that it actually failed.

Speaker: 00:36:40

So the money did not actually move out of your wallet.

Speaker: 00:36:44

And then of course it doesn't show up on the Lightning node of the person who was to receive

Speaker: 00:36:50

it.

Speaker: 00:36:51

And that's typically because an issue of what they call channels.

Speaker: 00:36:53

I don't want to get down into that, but channels are used between nodes to pass the money back

Speaker: 00:36:59

and forth.

Speaker: 00:37:01

So it's not a perfect system.

Speaker: 00:37:03

It's not.

Speaker: 00:37:04

And keep that in mind.

Speaker: 00:37:06

But at the same time, it's an incredible technology that in the long run is going to revolutionize

Speaker: 00:37:13

digital payment systems, in my opinion.

Speaker: 00:37:16

Because we take the power and security of Bitcoin and we put the speed of a Lightning

Speaker: 00:37:21

node, which is virtually instantaneous, plus it has some added privacy benefits on top

Speaker: 00:37:26

of it, makes a very powerful system.

Speaker: 00:37:29

I am very excited about what we will see over the next few years.

Speaker: 00:37:33

And even though sometimes it's painful, that's why I'm willing right now to stick my neck

Speaker: 00:37:39

out and start running a node.

Speaker: 00:37:42

That being said, probably not all my stuff got through this week and that's okay.

Speaker: 00:37:47

I don't think anybody lost any sats.

Speaker: 00:37:49

I don't.

Speaker: 00:37:50

I've still not seen that yet.

Speaker: 00:37:53

And if we did, if we didn't, if you boosted something to me and it didn't make it through,

Speaker: 00:37:59

don't worry about it.

Speaker: 00:38:01

It's okay.

Speaker: 00:38:02

All right.

Speaker: 00:38:03

Haterman33100sats.

Speaker: 00:38:04

I might've actually mentioned this one last week.

Speaker: 00:38:10

This was our first one.

Speaker: 00:38:12

Oh, sorry.

Speaker: 00:38:15

Squirrel ran by.

Speaker: 00:38:16

I have ADD.

Speaker: 00:38:19

Anyways, let me finish this up and then I'll tell you about that.

Speaker: 00:38:24

100sats, it's a dilemma, speed security and decentralization.

Speaker: 00:38:30

So that's the promoted episode.

Speaker: 00:38:33

I'd really appreciate that Haterman33.

Speaker: 00:38:36

One of the nice things about running your own node, you can then run what's called Helipad,

Speaker: 00:38:40

which is some software that I believe Dave wrote at Podcasting 2.0.

Speaker: 00:38:47

It'll show you the boost like on a screen in a nice neat format.

Speaker: 00:38:50

It's really cool.

Speaker: 00:38:51

I did get a chance to use that.

Speaker: 00:38:53

I got a boost that I talked about last week on that.

Speaker: 00:38:57

I'm really looking forward actually when I move over completely to that system after

Speaker: 00:39:04

I get everything stabilized, I'll be able to just bring that up every week and there

Speaker: 00:39:09

we go.

Speaker: 00:39:10

There's our boost.

Speaker: 00:39:12

So that'll be awesome.

Speaker: 00:39:13

Okay.

Speaker: 00:39:15

Back on track, user 517-093-1939050220, 100sats, it's a dilemma, security, speed and decentralization.

Speaker: 00:39:25

Thank you user 517.

Speaker: 00:39:29

Do us a favor, please change your name so that it's a little shorter, but I do appreciate

Speaker: 00:39:34

the support.

Speaker: 00:39:35

It's awesome.

Speaker: 00:39:36

Thank you very much.

Speaker: 00:39:37

Kyrin at Mere Mortals boosted in on our What About Debt podcast.

Speaker: 00:39:42

He boosted twice, 2,200sats.

Speaker: 00:39:45

If you want to hear more about my indecision with satvertising, check out the latest convo

Speaker: 00:39:51

I had with Oscar and he did that on the Mere Mortals podcast.

Speaker: 00:39:55

I have not had a chance to listen to that.

Speaker: 00:39:57

I have it queued up in my queue and I will.

Speaker: 00:40:00

We'll make my thoughts a bit clearer to you.

Speaker: 00:40:04

Thanks for doing this debt episode, by the way.

Speaker: 00:40:06

Much appreciated.

Speaker: 00:40:07

Of course, no problem.

Speaker: 00:40:10

I love doing these kinds of episodes.

Speaker: 00:40:12

Maybe, maybe all our listeners don't like them, but I think this stuff is very important.

Speaker: 00:40:17

Look, I'm so boring.

Speaker: 00:40:19

I was trying to go to sleep the other night, started reading a Karl Meninger economics

Speaker: 00:40:25

textbook essentially and it didn't put me to sleep.

Speaker: 00:40:31

So what can I say?

Speaker: 00:40:32

I don't know.

Speaker: 00:40:34

I'm crazy.

Speaker: 00:40:37

And then he boosted 2,321sats.

Speaker: 00:40:41

I think that was the right amount.

Speaker: 00:40:42

I'm not sure.

Speaker: 00:40:43

Actually, I bet the first one was a Roa Ducks 2,2,2,2 and it knocked off.

Speaker: 00:40:49

That's the other thing Helipad does.

Speaker: 00:40:50

I'm so sorry.

Speaker: 00:40:51

I'm all over the map tonight, but it'll show the actual exact right amount.

Speaker: 00:40:56

So I don't know what Kyrin boosted in, but it was, I got 2,321.

Speaker: 00:41:02

So thanks.

Speaker: 00:41:03

I appreciate that very much.

Speaker: 00:41:05

And sorry, I didn't play my Roa Ducks noise that I don't have because I've not set up

Speaker: 00:41:09

for that yet.

Speaker: 00:41:10

He said, yay, I'd love to come on and chat sometime.

Speaker: 00:41:13

Macintosh just hit me up whenever you feel like it.

Speaker: 00:41:18

And I'd ask him somehow, I don't even remember how, maybe on Telegram, but I'd ask him if

Speaker: 00:41:25

he wanted to come on in.

Speaker: 00:41:26

I'd like to actually discuss this advertising thing with him.

Speaker: 00:41:32

He and I are on similar journeys when it comes to advertising.

Speaker: 00:41:36

Of course, I've never taken advertising.

Speaker: 00:41:39

I've never taken sponsorships, anything like that.

Speaker: 00:41:42

And what he wanted to discuss and what I'm doing by promoting my podcast, I am paying

Speaker: 00:41:49

Fountain to promote that podcast.

Speaker: 00:41:52

So I paid them $100, $50 for the current episode, $50 for the one that I keep bringing up, the

Speaker: 00:42:01

old episode, and that puts it out in front of people.

Speaker: 00:42:07

Those people get sats for listening.

Speaker: 00:42:10

I get a new listener, potentially.

Speaker: 00:42:13

Of course, most of them do not return, but that's okay.

Speaker: 00:42:16

It gives them a chance to check it out.

Speaker: 00:42:19

So he and I'll probably get together on a podcast in the next week or probably the next

Speaker: 00:42:26

couple of weeks.

Speaker: 00:42:27

I don't think it'll be in the next week, but regardless, we'll talk about that.

Speaker: 00:42:31

So I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker: 00:42:34

All the way from Australia, we'll have to figure out our time on that, but that's not

Speaker: 00:42:38

going to be a big deal.

Speaker: 00:42:41

All right.

Speaker: 00:42:42

So we'll go into our news now.

Speaker: 00:42:46

As always, you can follow me online.

Speaker: 00:42:49

I said last week I was done with Twitter.

Speaker: 00:42:54

Twitter has now banned third party apps.

Speaker: 00:42:57

So you have to either go to the Twitter website or have to use a Twitter client, which I do.

Speaker: 00:43:04

I find it annoying.

Speaker: 00:43:07

The problem is people aren't leaving Twitter, which I don't understand personally, but to

Speaker: 00:43:15

each their own.

Speaker: 00:43:17

I will, for the foreseeable future, post on Twitter what I also post on Mastodon.

Speaker: 00:43:29

I would encourage you to follow me on Mastodon.

Speaker: 00:43:32

I would encourage you to explore Mastodon because Twitter will always be a centralized

Speaker: 00:43:42

service that is controlled by a few people who make decisions that you may or may not

Speaker: 00:43:47

agree with, but they do control what's going on.

Speaker: 00:43:52

They are the gatekeepers.

Speaker: 00:43:53

All right.

Speaker: 00:43:54

What did I post this week?

Speaker: 00:43:57

And by the way, if you're not on Mastodon, and one of the reasons that you say you're

Speaker: 00:44:01

not on Mastodon is because there's no traffic on Mastodon, we'll be part of the solution

Speaker: 00:44:06

and go set up an account and start posting stuff.

Speaker: 00:44:10

I find it very disappointing when I go to Twitter and see something that's interesting

Speaker: 00:44:14

and then I go over to Mastodon and try and look up that person and they're not on Mastodon.

Speaker: 00:44:20

All right.

Speaker: 00:44:22

Anyways, that's not really what we're here to talk about.

Speaker: 00:44:25

So this is unproven.

Speaker: 00:44:27

I'll say that upfront, but this is, given what I've seen going on in Canada for the

Speaker: 00:44:33

last several years, this wouldn't actually surprise me.

Speaker: 00:44:37

Canada is legalizing the possession of two and a half grams of drugs, any drugs.

Speaker: 00:44:42

So hey, if you want crack cocaine, but it's less than two and a half grams and more power

Speaker: 00:44:47

to you or cocaine or heroin or fentanyl or whatever, as long as it's less than two and

Speaker: 00:44:53

a half grams, I wonder why two and a half grams.

Speaker: 00:44:57

They're also banning leverage crypto trading and the USDT.

Speaker: 00:45:01

So there you go.

Speaker: 00:45:02

One of the forks of Bitcoin, by the way, is called BSV.

Speaker: 00:45:06

I don't even know what it stands for.

Speaker: 00:45:08

It doesn't matter.

Speaker: 00:45:09

It's broken and useless.

Speaker: 00:45:11

So whatever.

Speaker: 00:45:12

In fact, if I recall, it was actually being delisted from one of the major exchanges because

Speaker: 00:45:17

they said there's no actual traffic on it, which I don't find surprising.

Speaker: 00:45:21

But one of the things that they've done recently is implemented a blacklist.

Speaker: 00:45:27

So hey, if you have coins that for whatever reason they think that shouldn't belong to

Speaker: 00:45:35

you, they'll just take them from you.

Speaker: 00:45:37

It's okay.

Speaker: 00:45:39

So one of the basic tenets of Bitcoin is that it is sensor resistant, that you can't just

Speaker: 00:45:46

claw back stuff like this just because, because we know from history that that ends up hurting

Speaker: 00:45:53

people more than it helps.

Speaker: 00:45:56

Good job, BSV.

Speaker: 00:45:59

As I said in my tweet, blacklists are great until you're on the blacklist, then it's not

Speaker: 00:46:03

so much fun.

Speaker: 00:46:05

The IMF and the World Bank has asked the governments of Ethiopia to devalue its currency by 50%

Speaker: 00:46:11

as a precondition for an extra line of credit to save the country from a stumbling reserves

Speaker: 00:46:18

and the potential defaults on its debt.

Speaker: 00:46:20

Again, the IMF asking Ethiopia to devalue its currency by 50%.

Speaker: 00:46:27

Now I don't know what the Ethiopian currency is.

Speaker: 00:46:30

I know that the people in Ethiopia should have their assets in Bitcoin, but aside from

Speaker: 00:46:35

that, if let's call it the dollar, just for the sake of this discussion, what they're

Speaker: 00:46:40

saying is, if you Ethiopian spent your life and you saved $100, tomorrow morning you'll

Speaker: 00:46:48

wake up and it'll be worth 50, and they've done it time and time again.

Speaker: 00:46:53

It's insanity.

Speaker: 00:46:55

Inflation in Argentina has now hit 95%, the highest level since 1991.

Speaker: 00:47:00

Oh, and on a related note, even though I haven't even tweeted about it yet, Argentina and Brazil

Speaker: 00:47:07

are now talking about putting together a common currency.

Speaker: 00:47:11

Now as far as I know, that's not Bitcoin, even though it should be, because Argentina

Speaker: 00:47:17

has demonstrated time and time again that they will have outrageous inflation.

Speaker: 00:47:22

It's been going on for decades.

Speaker: 00:47:26

So why would we think that changing currencies is suddenly going to fix that unless that

Speaker: 00:47:30

currency has a fixed amount of coinage, 21 million for Bitcoin?

Speaker: 00:47:38

I posted an article from the Mises, I think I'm saying that right, Institute.

Speaker: 00:47:43

You might want to check that out, The Rise and Fall of Good Money about the US.

Speaker: 00:47:51

Earlier this week on the 18th, the government of Texas issued a report endorsing full support

Speaker: 00:47:59

for Bitcoin adoption.

Speaker: 00:48:01

Good job, Texas.

Speaker: 00:48:02

Texas, in a lot of ways, is the leader of the United States of the Bitcoin revolution.

Speaker: 00:48:08

They are out there using it to balance out their power plants in some cases, in a lot

Speaker: 00:48:14

of cases actually, so that when they get something like one of these deep freezes that happens,

Speaker: 00:48:20

those miners can shut down and actually allow more power to be put into the grid to keep

Speaker: 00:48:26

people's heat on and lights on and keep them from freezing.

Speaker: 00:48:31

So good job, and it's a lot more than that, but it became official this week that Genesis

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was filing for bankruptcy.

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I don't even have comments on this anymore except to say, not your keys, not your coin,

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get your coin off of these institutions.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, which is quite a prestigious newspaper in case you

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didn't know that, certainly legitimate, they said that there are over 600 US law enforcement

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entities, departments, branches, whatever, that are using a secret system to track America's

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money transfers.

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I am so sick of this crap.

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I am sorry.

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I am.

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I looked up, you know, I talked about this all the time.

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I looked up the Bill of Rights.

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I'm going to print it out.

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I think I'm just going to print out all the amendments to the constitution along with

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the constitution itself and post it up on my wall.

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And then, I don't know, maybe that'll help me a little bit.

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According to amendment four, the right of the people to be secure in their persons,

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houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated

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and no warrant shall be issued but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and

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particularly describing the place to be searched and the people or things to be seen.

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The surveillance state in this country has to end.

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I could run for office based on that, on that one thing, that and stop spending money.

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We haven't even talked about the debt limit.

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I'll try and get to it in a minute and not go too deep into it.

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I posted about my Lightning node this week just as a point of reference.

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I've been having some trouble.

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So it was working and then it didn't and I think I understand why.

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I was running my node on what's called the Tor network, which is a privacy based network.

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It is supposed to be fine to run a node on the Tor network.

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It does limit who you could communicate with in terms of your direct connections.

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But I opened up two channels actually with different servers that were online.

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In one case, I actually basically paid for some liquidity of about a million sats and

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they both shut off within 24 hours.

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I think it has to do with Tor network being these days it's under basically a denial of

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service attack, not to get too deep into that.

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So I have two choices.

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I can either run my node in clear out in the clear, basically just throw it on a VPS online

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or I can do it in a hybrid mode so that I can connect over Tor, but I can also connect

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over the clear.

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I'm just going to go ahead and put it on the clear because in my mind being a hybrid doesn't

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provide any privacy, which was the whole point of the Tor.

Speaker: 00:51:46

I might as well go ahead and run it in the open and I'm not ashamed of my lightning node.

Speaker: 00:51:51

That's not the point.

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My point is the fourth amendment that I just read and just as a way to keep my affairs

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private because they're my affairs and they're not the concerns of other people.

Speaker: 00:52:06

So anyways, I'm going to go ahead and put that there and then I'll get that back up

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and running.

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In the meantime, I've set Satoshi stream back up and we're using that.

Speaker: 00:52:16

So I did get a few boost this week.

Speaker: 00:52:20

The national bank, by the way, down there, Kyrin has launched a stable coin fully backed

Speaker: 00:52:26

by us dollars.

Speaker: 00:52:27

I would not recommend that you get involved in that.

Speaker: 00:52:30

I would not recommend you get involved in any central bank controlled stable coins,

Speaker: 00:52:35

so-called stable coin or whatever.

Speaker: 00:52:37

Not because the lack of backing, which they probably will back it, but because I promise

Speaker: 00:52:45

you they will be tracking every transaction that you ever do over it.

Speaker: 00:52:50

Not something I want to be involved in.

Speaker: 00:52:53

And finally, well, we will talk about the debt limit, but finally, Cash App is now allowing

Speaker: 00:52:59

sending and receiving a Bitcoin over the Lightning Network.

Speaker: 00:53:02

So I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker: 00:53:04

Not a fan of Cash App itself, by the way, I actually went to go do a demo for Fountain

Speaker: 00:53:10

to help them out on the Cash App and I'm like, oh, I got to put in my photo ID and blah,

Speaker: 00:53:16

blah, blah.

Speaker: 00:53:17

And I'm just like, whatever, I'm not doing it.

Speaker: 00:53:20

But it's cool.

Speaker: 00:53:21

They're using Lightning.

Speaker: 00:53:22

So more, as I said, more adoption.

Speaker: 00:53:24

Oh, there's more.

Speaker: 00:53:27

Sorry, I had more.

Speaker: 00:53:31

Missouri introduces a bill to protect the right to mine Bitcoin and run a node.

Speaker: 00:53:35

And I am glad to hear that.

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I will actually be setting up either one or two nodes in the next few weeks and I will

Speaker: 00:53:42

be reporting on that, of course.

Speaker: 00:53:44

But I will be mining some Bitcoin myself for the first time in my long history.

Speaker: 00:53:51

And I should have been doing it a long time ago and now I really kick myself for that.

Speaker: 00:53:55

C'est la vie, as I said, Twitter banning third party apps.

Speaker: 00:54:01

Alex Gladstein has been a champion on this IMF stuff.

Speaker: 00:54:06

I've mentioned his paper before.

Speaker: 00:54:09

Here is an IMF paper that he actually quoted.

Speaker: 00:54:14

So this is coming from the IMF, recommending that governments consider financial oppression,

Speaker: 00:54:19

i.e. taking public money, public savings by pinning interest rates below inflation as

Speaker: 00:54:27

a tool for reducing national debt.

Speaker: 00:54:30

Good job, IMF.

Speaker: 00:54:31

Maybe if y'all would stop ripping countries off.

Speaker: 00:54:35

I posted a chart of the debt ceiling.

Speaker: 00:54:39

Here is where we will talk about the debt ceiling real quick.

Speaker: 00:54:43

The United States has a debt ceiling, I would assume, that other countries have something

Speaker: 00:54:48

similar.

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It's $31.4 trillion, which, by the way, happens to be the national debt, and we've hit that

Speaker: 00:54:57

debt ceiling.

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And what that means is that we are not allowed to create any more debt.

Speaker: 00:55:03

And that's freaked everybody in Washington out, at least the current administration and

Speaker: 00:55:11

various and other political parties.

Speaker: 00:55:16

The Republicans are kind of trapped in the middle on this, to be honest.

Speaker: 00:55:20

One of the reasons that Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, was elected is because

Speaker: 00:55:26

he agreed not to raise the debt ceiling.

Speaker: 00:55:29

So now he's over here saying, we're not raising the debt ceiling, and frankly, the Democrats

Speaker: 00:55:34

are screaming, but you got to raise the debt ceiling or we'll default and the whole world

Speaker: 00:55:39

will end.

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And I'm over here going, why can't y'all just stop spending so much money?

Speaker: 00:55:44

I mean, seriously, people, I talked about this last week and I won't get into it.

Speaker: 00:55:50

It's funny because I did not know this was coming up.

Speaker: 00:55:53

I should have, but I did not, honestly.

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But they're going to do some things probably to kind of kick the can down the road until

Speaker: 00:56:03

June and then we'll see.

Speaker: 00:56:06

Now, the US government has never defaulted, technically they did back in the late 70s

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there was a very late agreement on the debt ceiling and they basically had paperwork that

Speaker: 00:56:20

I think it was 1979 from what I understand.

Speaker: 00:56:24

Anyways, that didn't go out until after we were technically in default.

Speaker: 00:56:29

We were not in default, but you should look, you should follow me on Twitter, follow me

Speaker: 00:56:34

on Mastodon too, and I'm going to try my hardest to post everything on both platforms.

Speaker: 00:56:41

But regardless, you should look at this chart.

Speaker: 00:56:43

It starts in 1980 and it goes up to now and it looks like it's almost a 45 degree angle.

Speaker: 00:56:51

It's crazy.

Speaker: 00:56:53

We just keep raising the debt, but they're okay with that.

Speaker: 00:56:55

Just keep raising it because we're Keynesians and we don't care.

Speaker: 00:56:59

That's not bad.

Speaker: 00:57:04

So as I was talking about earlier, the Generational Wealth podcast is a podcast in 2.0 podcast.

Speaker: 00:57:12

We are a value for value podcast.

Speaker: 00:57:14

We don't have any sponsors.

Speaker: 00:57:16

We don't have any advertising.

Speaker: 00:57:17

You can support this podcast in three different ways with time, with talent and with treasure.

Speaker: 00:57:23

If you want to support the podcast and you have some technical skills of some kind or

Speaker: 00:57:30

you're just proficient with a computer, you can probably help me out.

Speaker: 00:57:33

I could use help with transcripts.

Speaker: 00:57:36

I am eternally behind on those.

Speaker: 00:57:38

I would like to change my website.

Speaker: 00:57:40

There are a number of things that need to be done and I do not have the bandwidth to

Speaker: 00:57:45

do them all and it would be a great way to support the show frankly.

Speaker: 00:57:50

If you want, you can support with treasure.

Speaker: 00:57:53

If this podcast is bringing you value, I would love it if you would use a podcast in 2.0

Speaker: 00:57:59

pop and stream some sats my way or boost like Kyrin, like these other people did earlier

Speaker: 00:58:07

tonight and support the show.

Speaker: 00:58:10

You can send me a message that way as well, certainly.

Speaker: 00:58:13

You can also message me on Twitter and on Mastodon.

Speaker: 00:58:18

My Twitter handle is McintoshFinTech.

Speaker: 00:58:21

My Mastodon handle is macintosh at podcastindex.social.

Speaker: 00:58:27

So various ways you can reach me.

Speaker: 00:58:31

I'd love to hear from you if you've got ideas for a new episode or whatever.

Speaker: 00:58:36

I take those very much under advisement.

Speaker: 00:58:39

Sometimes it takes me a while to get to them like with the XRP and XLM episode, but we

Speaker: 00:58:45

get there as long as it's something reasonable and something we can accommodate.

Speaker: 00:58:52

So that's cool.

Speaker: 00:58:54

If you like our content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the Generational

Speaker: 00:58:58

Wealth podcast.

Speaker: 00:58:59

I appreciate Fountain and the ability to promote our podcast, but the best way for people to

Speaker: 00:59:05

come on board is simply for you to tell our friends.

Speaker: 00:59:09

And honestly, I'm already on the 22nd of the month, I've already reached a high.

Speaker: 00:59:15

I think we've kind of reached, if you want to tell the Bitcoin bottom, the bull market

Speaker: 00:59:22

starting back up or whatever, we may be in chop for a while, but regardless, you can

Speaker: 00:59:28

look at the graph of the last few months and you can see I went down, down, down level

Speaker: 00:59:35

and now I'm starting back up.

Speaker: 00:59:36

So that's really cool.

Speaker: 00:59:39

Thanks for being here.

Speaker: 00:59:40

I hope this has been helpful.

Speaker: 00:59:42

I would love to hear from you.

Speaker: 00:59:43

I'm on Twitter, like I said, at McintoshFinTech.

Speaker: 00:59:46

I'm on Mastodon at macintosh at podcastindex.social.

Speaker: 00:59:50

You can reach out to me by email as well at macintosh at chinwealthcrypto.com.

Speaker: 00:59:56

I've got some really big announcements coming up over the next few weeks.

Speaker: 01:00:00

I am really looking forward to it.

Speaker: 01:00:03

You guys stay humble, go out and make it a great week.

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