The Bitcoin Group #336 - SBF Lawyers Up - Jack in

The Bitcoin Group, the American original, for over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest citossis, the best bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Dan Eave, the crypto raptor. Red five standing by Michael Dupree from easy bit. Got unmute Ben Arck from LN bits. Hello, good evening. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network moving on to issue one. Issue one, SBF

Boston.com is covering the Caroline Ellison story and saying she was a math whiz and Newton native bound for success. Then she got into crypto. CZ is pushing back against SPF, saying that he's one of the greatest fraudsters in history and accuses the media and thought leaders of being manipulated. Sam Bankman freed is hired the same lawyer that defended Giselaan Maxwell and Spanish drug dealer El Chapo.

Ryan Armstrong slams the media for treating Sam Bankman freed with kid gloves. Meanwhile, we've found out what's inside the Alameda portfolio. It was knock off lotions weight loss drugs Chinese news sites. Sounds like a winner. And FTX founder Sam Bankman freed has a greed to testify at the United States House on Tuesday. So this story is still continuing shout out to coffee Zilla who also got

SBF to admit to fraud. IE the co mingling of funds. If you deposit a Bitcoin on FTX, he was supposed to keep it in a separate account. Then the margin trading account. During his interview with coffee Zilla Sam Bankman freed definitely admits to mixing the money. The whole time. So Alameda completely to the side. There is fraud inside of FTX where Sam Bankman freed allowed the

customer funds to be mixed with the margin funds. And that's it. That's all the stories we've got about Sam Bankman freed. Dan Eve, what do you think about this week in Sam Bankman freed? It's definitely unraveling to be some sort of crazy like they there's definitely going to be a documentary about this right now. There's so much going on about it. It's just crazy the way

that the media is treating them with as Brian Armstrong says with kid gloves. These are people that are Bernie Maddoff scale like scammed people effectively by. Number one mixing co mingling funds which they you know he's admitted to and that's pretty much a you know that's an admission of fraud like right there. And then if that's going to be used as evidence. But the fact is

that they it wasn't just the co mingling of funds. There was some really insane investments from this from Alameda. I wonder if the other guy to to trooperca if he ends up getting getting his knuckles wrapped for this as well because obviously he only exited Alameda in in August. I think this year is a co CEO. So he must have been involved in very much you

know most of the operations. Although you could argue that since Caroline and Sam were kind of seeing each other. In this soap story of fraud. Then you know she may be more aware of the trap the fault of dodgy transactions than than he was. But the whole thing's just just crazy. I mean even the exchange with the there's it maxi mortis and the way they just

kind of casually chatting. about such a big incident just seems it's just funny. It's just you wouldn't have expected that sort of level of like you know he's like a kid that that accidentally like ran over someone's flowers when when he you know his ball went over the fence and they're like oh don't worry about it you know it's really good you're honest about what you've

done and that you've admitted that coming into our yard was a mistake and you accidentally hit the flowers and the fact that he's kind of doing this crazy tour. You know his lawyers ended up sacking him. His previous lawyers as you know he's not going to be a big fan of the game. She said he's now using his lane Maxwell sloyer which is just another kind

of crazy part of the story in itself. She's being represented as in Caroline. Edison's being represented by the firm that's representing. Well what's the what's the Madonna against Pfizer. So this look there's some really big kind of players in this whole thing and you'd imagine so for $10 billion of fraud. But that's the one thing that I'm going to say. The whole thing such a shame

that and you know that it's being tied to Bitcoin. It's like you know people's people worried about Bitcoin because of this and it's nothing to do with it. This is a pure scammer. You know this isn't anything to do with Bitcoin. This is someone who's committing fraud. It's like saying when you know when people. Full for fishing attacks that it's it's the banking industries fall it's

you know unfortunately it's the the the fraudsters fault like the you know the banking industry like it's it's as much as we hate it. You know if someone gets defrauded they're not getting defrauded by the banking industry or they are mostly but in this particular case of fishing they're getting defrauded by the fisher. But in this case they're kind of going oh well those people aren't

aren't bad it's crypto that's the bad thing they've been tainted by crypto they were nice young people now they've been tainted you know it's just it's just insane the way it's all been it's all panning out but yeah I'm looking forward to the documentary and the the polycules and all that stuff. I think you're right. And the media coverage has been shocking with Bernie made off

they chased him down the street. They were hounding him with cameras and microphones with this guy. You're right he was talking to representative waters on Twitter as it was no big deal like of sure a Congressman if you think I could be helpful. You know I could drop by after school like yeah I'm just I'm not too busy Congressman but you know I'm really not that

helpful either. And obviously he's not going to show up in person like I think they'd nab him. I still don't understand why no one's nabbing him in the Bahamas what's happening with this guy and to say nothing stories we didn't cover his parents may never teach it Stanford again they're both law professors her parents are from MIT so it's mudding America's institutions to say nothing of

a potential sex tape and as Dan was saying a diagram of the polycule which media organization I think the Daily Mail will come out with a little diagram a little chart where you'll be able to see this one was with that one but not this one and this one and that one is a little bit different. This one and this one connected them all Mike Dupree

what do you think about SBF who also clearly admitted this week to mixing customer funds they were one big pool. I just always keeping things interesting in the crypto space I guess first the magic the gathering guys went from cards you know the wonderful Mt. Gox claps and now we've got these Paul the adverse I don't even know how to describe it. They were going on

there but sounds like kind of a sexual free for all but yeah very interesting people we have that we're trusting our money with I don't I don't understand how people with such a kind of shady setup we're able to to recruit so much investment from so many even non Bitcoin people it just truly surprises me that even people in the proper financial world don't do any

real due diligence so I think that's really the most important thing to do is to make sure that you're not going to be able to do it. I mean it's just a big deal but I think we've got to start with something that we can do to make sure that they're not going to be able to do anything before they're investing in and trading on these

new platforms. It's really shocking to me but I guess you know it's it's a real awakening call for those who are not real crypto people but wanted to get in on some of the action and such it's kind of hey you know welcome to being in control of your own money. Welcome to the reality of unregulated you know basically unregulated you know this kind of stuff

can happen so in the in the scheme of things I think it does kind of put a bit of a dice stratification between Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole to remember the principles of you know Bitcoin in the early days which was to be in control of your own money and you know not to be trusting third party entities with it so I think

it's kind of really driven that that important principle of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency home to those that you know that weren't really careful of it. I'm still just in a bit of disbelief at how how grand of the scale they were able to build so quickly with you know with nobody even really looking under the hood and saying what was going on there but yeah just

again very very shocking very shocking stuff. Hold your own money be your own bank and with this guy and others they just give them the whole farm they hold all the money and we do know a little bit about the character of the other exchange guys and there we are to right Brian Armstrong is essentially a Vulcan doesn't care about anything CZ much the same way

doesn't care about money has billions of dollars and then we have this SPF guy in the Bahamas running around with everybody and apparently he's the one with the best background right the other people their background is you know whatever his background says he should be safe. Caroline in the article she got into that dirty crypto and it destroyed her. Ben Arck what do you think about

the SPF story I know you're tired of it but look at all the drama all the ins and outs and of course billions of dollars missing billions and billions. Yeah it's going to make a there will be a good Netflix TV show to come out of it at least. So I think it's a good point. It's just this crossover period where we're moving from the Lexi

system to the current system where people can have more control over their funds and people are yet to learn why that's important and episodes like this reminds them of why that's important and they're capitalizing on that brief period in time where we're still building the same stuff we built before. But it the way the kids acting and I think like with the media for example they're

just playing nice with him because he'll talk to them and he'll give them information he'll give them stories but they're not on his side they're just playing nice with them now whether they're getting as much information and many stories as they can out of the dude and out of these people and as soon as the trial starts and that's when the mudsling will start I imagine

so it's just a temporary. temporary niceties from from the media sector but yeah the shit show continues it sort of shows the kind of egotistical kid he is or he thinks he can talk his way out of the bad situation. It's often the way with with people who want to ride and then they they they go so big that they just think they can talk the

way out of the situation which I think is what he thinks he can do is talk his way out of it. But yeah it's it's it's certainly going to play the while this this sort of market is clearing the pool of all the all the you know the bad actors and the bad companies and it's it's it's it's making people more aware of why we should

actually use these tools properly and have systems where we actually have control over funds and over keys and ultimately you know this entire space we better for it. For me it's the it's it's it's when we're going down in this bear market and then you have people all the way down saying oh there we are every time it plateaus I was like oh they have seen

the bear market. I'm buying the dip blah blah and it's like no like there needs to be blood in the streets there needs to be some catechlysmic thing which happens. And this is that catechlysmic thing which happens. This is the blood in the streets is where one's depressed and the question whether like the whole crypto industry and Bitcoin is all going to implode and there's going

to be nothing left and that's where we are properly it's sort of at the bottom of the bear market in the the depths of depression. So it's a good thing where we're where we want to be so we can we can climb out of this now and and build better tools. So so people don't have this happen again. It's another example of you know not seeing

the the the the the the the the streets for the forest is it's at the phrase where if you have so many people who are interesting somebody or an institution. It's being dependable and and secure and safe and reliable and you look around all the people are trusting it and you're like well this thing must be legit because all these other people are trusting it and

you get this feedback cycle where everybody then trust this thing and underneath you know. Under the hood is this just a big pot of money and there's trucking money into it's a Ponzi and they're just spending that money willy nilly and there's no oversight and and yeah people lose all their money. So it's it's happened before in history it's going to happen again. But we do

have the tools to build that things bad bad bad bad system. So that's what we should look forward to and that's what we should support as we go forward. And yeah just watch the drama. Well, you interrupt this program with. Breaking news sent to me by Dan Eve in the chat. Exclusive axios says that spf secretly funded a crypto news site which crypto news site. It

turns out it's the block and the block CEO has resigned after failure to disclose loans from bankman freeds alimedia. So he also bought his own crypto news site, which he was able to use to promote his allegedly. Ponzi scheme FTX Dan Eve, what do you think about this breaking news that you just sent me right now? It's crazy. Well, it was BTC moon guy that posted

it and I quickly read up and was like, oh wow. So he's literally he's resigned in shame. After you know they've got a disclaimer on their on their site that says you know we're really we're really you know impartial and blah blah blah. And it's just critical that the block is fully transparent about our own financial holdings. So there's devoid any appearance of bias or impropriety.

The most valuable asset that we can hold and strive to earn again every day is our readers trust. To the readers trust now that they're funding the block. So it was like a $15 million loan apparently it was it was behind the backs of everyone else. It was just the CEO. So to part part just part finance his apartment in the in the Bahamas of course.

But also to help the company. So it was it was a dual purpose loan. So that's very very good of Sam Bankman free to you know this is another company that's falling now because of the SPF disaster. So you know it's really a gift that keeps some giving. So and yeah, thanks BTC moon guy for pointing that if you want to see the point out that

out there's a very very interesting to put the cherry on the cherry on the cake. Yes the contagion aspect doesn't it's how many how many companies can this you know. Disaster take down how many other companies can it take down with it. I know of another company which is you know in a bad state because of the FTX. Stuff which is happening. So it's yes it's

the contagion which people are really worried about. And we're yet to see like this is total impact on the industry I think. One thing that about the whole thing is interviews that that reminds me of is you know I'm at the stage in life where I sit down with the Mrs and we watch a we watch a bunch of like murder documentaries. And the amount of

them that have got what's it they call it the gap not this is the ju the the juppers delight or something like that where they it's like they they murder someone and then they're doing all these interviews like yeah I don't know where this person is we're really hoping that we find the murderer blah blah blah and it's and yes it he just seems like that

I mean my opinions completely changed you know I was saying that you know he's the full guy I kind of feel sorry for him you know he did this in you know it in effect of autism whatever it's called the the altrism thing. And but now it just seems like he's a complete scammer and he's like a psychopath that's standing over the dead body and still

saying oh we need to find the murderer we need to find the murderer. and they've been loaning it out to fdx to get that sweet yield money right they wanted a percentage on their money they weren't good enough with the money they made on Bitcoin they wanted more more and the story that broke by coin desk essentially destroyed them and they might have to sell coin

desk and they were talking about whether or not coin desk at least the current incarnation has editorial independence and they were like shit yeah it does they just torpedo their parent company no one would have allowed this. And if you see what it's block had by having a $15 million loan from sandbankment read they obviously couldn't tell you anything about fdx they are obviously biased it's

not going to be a disaster for them and it's a lesson for everyone well-funded projects in the crypto industry I wonder where they got that money they also said that sbf tried to give a hundred million dollars to Taylor Swift to advertise for her company Mike Dupree what do you think about this breaking news that the block took 15 million dollars from sandbankment that's also the

truth and that's an insult to the shark tank guy you think he would have gotten more than some random guy setting up a crypto blog or whatever the block was he's like I'll take it he's like maybe I should try 30 maybe I should have said 45 and his little voice in his hands like you're a Mr. Wonderful you're the greatest negotiator I can't believe he

didn't get a royalty deal where he would get 15 dollars on every Bitcoin sold at ftx that's his style come on yeah it's just absolutely crazy I mean I was looking at I can't remember what website it was on but there was a kind of a flow chart that showed all of the different people that had all the different crypto firms that had investments in the

ftx and it was just like a laundry list of well-known names it was truly surprising that I mean I can understand that you know maybe some of these kind of old school traditional finance guys who you know aren't really used to the high risk of unwritten regulated global trading environments like Bitcoin is crypto in general is you know I can understand a little bit how they

weren't as cautious and you know you have a little bit of understanding because they're you know kind of used to more regulated traditional markets and they're kind of slower to adopt and to change I mean it doesn't excuse ignorance but I mean these crypto firms that jumped right on the boat right along with everybody else even you know just truly shocking to me how I don't

feel at all sorry for any of them they should have known better. Well and DCG made tons of money on the hoddle right they had investments in every player in this industry they looked very above board they said all the right things about Bitcoin but really when it came down to it Sam and ftx offered them a way to make interest to make more money on

their Bitcoin or their Ethereum or whatever it was and they sent it over and they got they got caught trying to make the more money it's just like everyone else who was like buy a car take out a loan get more money and then but they turned out they bought a huge car they bought like a fleet of cars from this guy. Yeah I just I

can't believe that people didn't see the obvious signs of something shady going on when you just looked at the the returns and the you know the yields and stuff like that that they were kind of promising. It doesn't take a financial guru or rocket scientist to to notice a trend there and to you know kind of throw up a red flag and be extra cautious. So

it's just truly shocking to me but I guess in the end of the day maybe it's time that it weeds out some of the people that aren't making good financial decisions and so far as where they're placing not only their own assets but in you know a lot of cases other people's money as well which is very the really scary. So I think it does reinforce

so again the the founding principles of decentralized stateless currency which is that you know the real magic here the real proof is in the putting of storing your own assets being reasonable for your own money and not trusting these. You're third parties. Well it's like that old saying where the the sheep get fleeced the pigs get slaughtered and the wolves get fed something like that. Ben

Arck what do you think about FTX? Secretly backing the block with millions of dollars, 15 million dollars. I guess they're just throwing cash around and it was that they're in that position and there's a lot of Bitcoin companies and which have gone to this position where they just they rely on the money going they rely on the number going up. So they kick in the can

down the road they make some bad investments they start giving money away they think it's going to bolster the industry and then help their own portfolio and then they're going to get a lot of money going up. And they'll be able to dig and it's the same thing which happened with you know the mount got stuff they think they can dig the way out of it

and they just can't let the whole gets bigger the more they try and dig their way out. And yeah I mean I wouldn't necessarily say that these people started off with ill intent and they wanted to fraud everybody they just they were just grossly. It was just this gross misconduct you know they they they they just they were given too much power too much money and

they didn't have an as a expertise there's no oversight and there's too much trust in them being the Savon genius kids whereas in reality they're just egotists making bad decisions and you know ultimately it's the the people who suffer for that are going to be the the the the investors and the people who then use their platform so it's sad is the shame. But imagine if

he had gotten Taylor Swift it all would have been fine if only Taylor Swift would have come on board she would have turned this whole thing around. Really quickly exit question do you think that he'll appear on Tuesday as he said do you think he'll appear on zoo you think they'll treat him nicely and Eve. Oh yeah the way they're going they're just going to be

I mean I don't know about all of them but like certainly some people are going to go quite easy on him if it's anything if the twit is anything to go by whether he turns out in person or not I think it it it might be better for him like to stay in the in the Bahamas right and wait to be potentially extradited by the the

long hand and a lot but yeah so maybe he might he might do it by zoom but I think it's definitely going to be a I think it'll be a mixed bag I think some people are going to go hard on him because it's a they he's going to be questioned by multiple people right it's not just one person it's like isn't it like anyone could

well loads of people can throw questions at him right isn't that how is that how it works. I think a series of congressmen will get maybe like three to five minutes each so they'll be different style to each one we'll be able to say oh that guy went easy that guy doesn't understand anything that lady was nice to him so forth and back and forth. Yeah.

But yeah I don't think I don't think it'll show up in person I don't know if he could get out of the airport. I mean if you if you really think about how much money this people has lost people you wonder how he can just be in the Bahamas yakking it up on zoom having a good time doesn't make any sense. Mike Dupree what do you

think will he show up to Congress will they treat him nicely. I have no idea but I mean I agree with Ben I don't see I mean I know that there was a news article about him opening up with draws or you know in a little bit early for people in the Bahamas to try to make things right there and you know it's reply to that

when people question it was just that you know that they live there and that they need to make sure that they're safe and such. And that's probably the reality. The situation he's wherever he is right now he's probably very much keeping an eye over his shoulder because of you're talking about a lot of a lot of fortunes that were lost here and probably the safest place

for him right now is just to remain in the Bahamas. And as you say I don't know not only just with people in general trying to trying to get get Adam for you know for losing their money and for playing games with people's futures. I think also that he would risk potentially you know not being able to leave the United States. I'm pretty sure that I

don't know what regulatory body would even be investigating this but I'm sure there's multiple. And I'm sure that he's going to be seeing the inside of a courtroom at some point even if he is ultimately extradited and does remain kind of hiding away over in Bahamas or wherever else he deems is the safest place to be for him but. For him I would be very weary

of you know walking into the United States right now especially with as many people both from the legal side of things as well as just angry customers. So I think it's highly unlikely that he would that he would show up. But yeah I mean I'm still a little bit surprised that in Bahamas that the government I you know as we were saying earlier you know well

with made off of some of these other guys. Why nobody's even brought him in for questioning or anything it seems that he must have broken some regulations even with the more lenient regulations in the Bahamas. I'm sure that it's still not legal to you know to fraud people of their money and to mix leverage and on leverage traders money and stuff like that. So I highly

doubt. But in Bahamas they want to have a reputation as a place for credit. So I think that's probably the reality. If you're throwing cash around these I imagine he's greased a lot of people in the Bahamas. So yeah I think that's probably why there's a little bit of protection there but he's he go get the better of him for some point and he'll go somewhere

he shouldn't go and get arrested. He'll definitely turn up on some of them. At least I'm trying to focus way out of it. And certainly seems pretty happy to take meetings and talk to everybody which I find to be very surprising because you know usually when something like this happens I'm sure he's got some lawyers somewhere that would be advising him that the best thing to

do right now is to remain silent because there's not really not much you can usually in these kind of situations there's not much that you can usually explain your way out of it's usually by even answering questions you know without a very well structured well thought and through even written responses kind of put in yourself at risk of saying something you shouldn't or you know kind

of put in your foot in your mouth kind of like where you go with coffee is all of the other days. So I'm actually surprised how vocal he is about the whole thing and just the whole complacency of him just kind of chilling and you know smiling and having zoom calls and just saying oh well you know we made a mistake or whatever it seems kind

of unreal to me how lightly the regulatory bodies as well as just the company as a whole is it's taking this. I mean when you look at the new CEO I don't remember his name but came out and said that he couldn't believe the entire mess that he'd seen here and he had worked on previously I believe like the N-ron stuff and other companies that have

been similar positions. I just am really surprised that there's not more of a legal spokesperson that's making you know official kind of statements as opposed to these group zoom calls where it's just random people asking him questions kind of off the table. I'm really surprised that he's as vocal as he is but I really don't think that we'll see him in person in Congress. I don't

know why he would what his what the advantage that would be because there is no real at this point there's not much explaining that you're going to be able to do to justify the blatant just the blatant way that they mixed funds the way that they would be able to do that. The even going against throw agreements and their own terms of service and that kind

of stuff so I'm just shocked to how much how vocal he's being in that he's even accessible at all. I mean when you look at for example Mt. Gox went down Carpellis was basically silent for I don't know if it was months but I mean we didn't hear much out of him almost for a couple years before he started posting again and even now he very

rarely discusses the civil rehabilitation and the bankruptcy proceedings and that kind of stuff with Mt. Gox. Yeah and I'm also just still I mean they're still figured it out but just curious kind of where the money went I mean we talk about these you know 15 million year and there and that kind of stuff but there's a lot more than that missing and I just don't

know where all that money went is very confusing to me as well because obviously it's a zero sum game so you know for every dollar lost somebody made a dollar where all those dollars end up. I think he's. So I was just going to say that he keeps on repeating this thing about I've only got 100K in my bank account and that's another thing like again

you watch these like these murder mysteries where the psychopaths talking he repeats a phrase and it's because he's clearly lying about that phrase like you know this guy apparently created back doors for people to shuffle their money out in all sorts of different ways. So there's no way that he came out of it with just 100K in his bank account he would have he could have

had fake companies you know that you saw the I don't know if you see the company structures insane as it is like hundreds of companies underneath you know FTX and that sort of group so that he could have funneled it into into all sorts so the idea that he's you know he's this oh I'm this poor guy who can't afford legal representation I think is yeah

that's definitely not true he's he's definitely hiding a lot of cash under under the bed somewhere. he didn't use math and she didn't use stop losses so it's possible that they simply just accidentally whoopsy gambled the money away it also sounds like they had bad investments into random things it sounded like the movie Brewsters millions where they're intentionally trying to lose the money so I don't

know what's going on there but I agree with what Mike was saying the advantage to Sam showing up in person is I want to see it on TV that's the advantage is no advantage for Sam it would be horrible I agree with Mike he wouldn't be able to get out of the country presumably the US justice department seems so slow would actually act if he was

there in the country and he does keep talking he did fire his lawyers or is Dan said his lawyers fired him for all of this nonsense talking he has been hurting his case I see two ways that could go one he's incredibly naive slash a con artist and this is the only way you can really react is with more of the BS the god I'm here

you figured this worked last time I just lathered up to more people it works this time or he has an exit strategy and I think you take care of himself I don't know about that but that's what I would worry because the kind of fantasy land I can I can help this industry like he really he did that interview with step and offless he said at

the end he's like Sam kept talking about making the victims whole and his part in that so he wants to be a hero and to come back and to give these people money but if you look at what step and offlisted he took his two hours with Sam no it would have down to 15 minutes and then after the bit laughed at Sam's idea that he

could make victims whole and then the three people on the on the panel the other anchors also agreed that it seemed delusional and insane like there's no way we can put Humpty Dumpty back together from this and Sam seems to think that he can or he's you know going to kill himself I don't bend what is he's just he's just like it rationally is it's the

it's the ego thing he thinks he can talk his way out of it he's he's spent a long time giving lots of people money and then all these people around him are smiling him and thanking him for all the money he's giving and always such a and then that just played into his ego and I think you're given him too much credit for being calculating I

think he's just an idiot and he just lost the money on bad bets and gave out a lot of money thinking you know just to make friends basically and yeah I don't think he's calculating as you think he is and I don't think this is an exit strategy or anything he's he'll end up in jail. I think people are getting their money back either. I do

think that the coffee zilla explanation should be anyone's new explanation of explaining why this is fraud. If you deposit a Bitcoin with Sam he's supposed to hold that Bitcoin in a separate account according to that interview what Sam allegedly says that they did was to mix that Bitcoin with other Bitcoin which was for margin trading and lending IE all of the customer deposits were being taken

from one thing and put into another thing and when it was time to withdraw them as Sam again said on coffee zilla. He withdrew them all from the same pool. So anybody who got their transactions in first got their money whereas if you had your money in the customer deposit section it's supposed to stay there if your money's in the margin lending system it's supposed to

be landed out. He says he violated this that has nothing to do with Alameda or any additional things but let's move on although we still this issue persists over everything and now we get to watch him in Congress on Tuesday. Issue 2 Jack Dorsey's block backs Bitcoin mining company that wants to bring 25 cent electricity to rural Africa. Jack Dorsey's digital payment company block and at

least Killian's Bitcoin focused venture firm Stillmark have let a $2 million seed investment into gridless. Gridless designs builds and operates Bitcoin mining sites alongside small scale renewable energy producers in rural Africa where excess energy is not going to be a big deal. Not utilized. That's right they're mining Bitcoin with excess energy but now they're trying to do it in Africa. Mike Dupri what do you think

of Jack Dorsey's plan? I'm surprised they even have that big of an infrastructure in Africa so far as power is concerned but always interesting to see what Jack's up to it seems that he always has some interesting can of worms that he's cracking somewhere in El Salvador in Africa or wherever else but yeah. I guess that's a good plan but I don't again I don't understand

where this extra energy in Africa is becoming such a burden that they're able to be mining there also I don't think that the shipping infrastructure or the data center infrastructure and of course mining in high temperature areas. I'm just very surprised that doesn't sound like Africa would be a very good place for Bitcoin mining in general but I guess I wish in the best of luck

with that. It sounds more like a help the children project than a business doesn't it Mike it seems like all these things add together and then when you talk about the actual constraints of it the air conditioning electrical power consistency shipping the miners to them access to the Internet the actual way of doing this sounds very difficult in practice. Yeah I don't it doesn't make a

lot of logical sense I think there is really a lot more places in the world if you're going to look at it. There's a lot more space in the world that's going to be a global capacity that are just better set up for it where they already have infrastructure in place and they have things such as geothermal mining up in Iceland that they're doing some Bitcoin

mining out there because the power generation is really abundant and it's a you know it's also very green because you're using geothermal electricity which is you know pretty good on the environment. I also I'm kind of skeptical whenever somebody talks about using like solar and these kind of renewable energies for for Bitcoin mining because in general they're just not very dense types of power generation so

I mean how many solar panels do you need to run a Bitcoin miner it's got to be you're talking a lot of them because you know mining is very very very energy heavy so I just think that it kind of sounds like a kind of a blowing smoke kind of idea you know more than it is any real any real meat to it but I guess

we'll see but I think there's probably far better things to do in Africa than try to mine Bitcoin but It has been Bitcoin Africa week on Twitter every tweet I've seen has been Bitcoin Africa everybody's meeting Jack in Africa which is a concrete going on over there right now right? It's timed with the conference so it's good news but I agree with Mike it doesn't seem

like the right project for really mining a little more interesting is the Texas program where they're using the excess gas when they have too much gas and they don't they can't manage it they can use that extra flare gas to mine Bitcoin but then again they think that the Bitcoin miners will turn them off during high power points and I'm not sure about that plan Ben

arc what do you think of this plan to mine Bitcoin in Africa I think it's very good I spoke to I will be about it I'm also very skeptical about using renewables with Bitcoin mining mostly because of the you know we don't you can't use a word in semis and seeds it's what's the what's the wigs the renewable crowd use is predictable predictable so the sun

comes out and then you can use the solar panels to capture some energy but now the the this exists the scheme which gridless is doing is in Africa you have a small hydro plan and that's more hydro plan generate electricity for a town and they have lots of these little hydro plants they've got lots of you know rivers and and where they can you know attach

one of these hydro plants what gridless are going in doing is a going into these hydro plants and saying look we will bolster your hydro plant we'll make it more productive we'll build in for some infrastructure however we're also going to stick this container full of miners next to it and we're going to take the excess energy which is generated so we're going to create enough

energy for your town but then we're going to because we're now running double capacity we could run two towns we're going to use like extra capacity for mining Bitcoin because it's hydro it's fairly constant so your base load is fairly constant with solar you do have this intermittent stuff whereas with hydro particularly where these hydro plants are based it's it's fairly steady so it brings the

the cost of that electricity way down and they benefit from mining Bitcoin using that the hydro plant and then after a certain amount of years then the communities can then use that excess that energy to power more townships but there's I think there's a couple of examples where they've taken one of these hydro plants which is powering a small town and it's now powering three small

towns and that's been made a profitable and sustainable exercise by attaching these extra containers of Bitcoin miners I was very skeptical but there when I spoke to Robin he'd been out there and he's a good guy the guy's a spare heading the Fettiment project he changed my mind I was you know I spoke to him in Bitcoin Amsterdam and he he spoke at me for like

half an hour and he was just so passionate and he was saying look this is this actually works and it's it's working as a way of you can the gridless very honest as well they're saying look we're not a Bitcoin mining operation we're just using this tool so we're going to do that. So we can build these hydro plants and make them more sustainable and as

a way for us to to make the infrastructure and the hydro plant more efficient and better and scale it up so it's I think it's quite an exciting use of renewables because people benefit they get electricity and I think that is one of the more sustainable ideas for using renewables with Bitcoin mining mining. And actually use of renewables with Bitcoin mining is on the rise there

was a Cambridge did a report on it and I think it was it's quite a large percentage is I think 30% or something of Bitcoin mining is done with renewables and another report which came up fairly recently by another guy who went and I think he said it was probably closer more to more like 40% 45% using renewables so for grid stabilization it's not there's a

lot of power. So, the implementation, the flaring stuff in the US burning the gas flares and using that power source to then run some miners. If you've got like a free electricity then you don't have to have those because one of the biggest one of the biggest problems with mining Bitcoin on renewables. Well mining Bitcoin is you need to have your miners on all the time

in order for them to make any money and then if you turn them off when the sun's not shining or whatever then. Your miners are going to make any money but if your base load of electricity is basically free then your miners don't need to be on anywhere near as much. So, Troy Cross, Margot they're doing some great work on this. There's some there's some yeah

there's as an example of using renewables with Bitcoin mining I think this is very promising actually and this is probably why block of investor a couple of million dollars into it. So it's yeah it's quite it's good to see. But I know I also owe me as a friend of the show we met him in London and Elise Killian as well also met at several of

the conferences. Dan Eve what do you think if only solar panels worked at night. Ben's turned me around it sounds like a good plan now I agree with Mike though the logistics are tough. Well I think you're still ultimately really really positive but in the article it's saying and there's always this meme that folks around like saying. If you had if you put this like this

patch of I don't know how big it was it's not very big but in the in the in the middle of the desert in Africa. It would provide you know enough electricity for the world and and the the reason why that's more reliable in the Sahara is you know there's a lot less cloud and there would be so it's kind of as there's been saying it's

less reliable predictable and in a lot in in that place there like you know there's not lots of clouds and not lots of rain so. Take away the the sunshine from the solar panels and I think the else because there's there's like 10 terawatts of solar capacity in Africa 350 gigawatts of hydrogen 110 gigawatts of wind. So that it really does seem like it's time to

start taking advantage of of the sun shining so hardcore you know and and and actually you know using that to to provide energy you know they're saying in this article they're not using Bitcoin for Bitcoin for Bitcoin they're mining it is a I think the quote is like a mean a means to an end right it's like the they they want the Bitcoin to to to

to really a cheap power to the masses rather than just mining it to help secure and running mining it to help secure the network so that's ultimately very positive especially if it does really post to the electricity infrastructure and they say that in again in the article that look it's not like 30% of of school kids still still do their homework in using under candle like

pretty much and so you know it really does mean there is a need for for for for electricity in that part of the world and if you can subsidize it by using Bitcoin then that's that's an incredible thing. The only downside is that I just think to myself like if if it comes to turning miners off and not making money the people running them and like

well we could have a blackout because we are made up and we can't do that. Making lots of money mining Bitcoin right I mean everyone's dealt with blackouts for so long it wouldn't really matter that we just didn't you know give any electricity out tonight because we could just mine a bit more Bitcoin. I think that that could lead to a conflict unless there's you know

there's a lot of kind of a deregulation on how that electricity is distributed to make sure that it does go into the right courses. Then I think that that using Bitcoin as a means to to to really boost and bootstrap the rollout of what's why scale electricity and renewable electricity and that to Africa is an incredible thing and I think yeah I really hope to see

it being successful. I think as well that these so sorry I think as well these hydro plants are owned by kind of the local community under a kind of cooperative thing so that it's less likely I think it's like a relationship they have with the like a business relationship where you know this amount of electricity will be used for the mining so I think it will

be hard for the incentives because I see what you're saying like just turn off the town. One of the one of the power lines fell down but the power lines that connected the Bitcoin miners still worked. Well this is I mean this is the point these things this isn't Africa's not one big connected grid it's lots of little grids where they have a little hydro plant

and it just powers the town. So you know the why is going to the town will continue to operate so it's and the townsfolk I'm sure will go and you know I don't think the mind of the people bringing the mining operation will want to anger the townfolk and take the electricity away. Sounds like pretty soon you're going to need a military and then you're going

to need a government and then this whole thing's going to happen. Nice. Yeah. I love the idea unfortunately as I was going to say a minute ago we still come back to this this boring idea from West Wing that Africa needs roads Africa needs basic infrastructure that would make it faster to ship the miner from point A to point B. I don't know of massive road

infrastructure freeway projects. I don't know if they're going to do it maybe they'll skip to flying cars like India's skip to cell phones but infrastructure roads. What's the real advantage also? To for I mean from a business perspective for the miners to do it in Africa. I mean sure this whole like philanthropy. Cool you know like we're going to do it to help everybody out kind

of stuff sounds great. So I mean I'm sure through that there also you know have less problems with import taxes less problems with you know tax and general regulations and that kind of stuff but what would you know what would be the reason to try and generate Bitcoin and that kind of environment versus elsewhere you know what's the motivating factor. I'm I'm I'm not just doing

it. I'm not that talk but to me it sounds like they're doing some kind of thing where they can get a bigger reactor and they could power more towns if they had this extra slice of Bitcoin mining money. It sounds like a buy a reactor program or buy it's it's they have the hydro plant I'm going to money to make it bigger. And then and maintain

it and then you know they have issues with the hydro plant. Being sustainable so that and buy high by also mining Bitcoin. They're then able to build a more resilient and more get more power generation from the hydro in which they're pulling electricity from. So they're incentivized to work with this company or this operation to put these miners in in place. Yeah. It's it's a funny

thing it's like there's this magic customer that you could always hire up who always wants more energy and all these different places. They're figuring out ways that they can work with that customer but then there's that always problem other problem where that guy always wants more energy like he never stops. So we'll have to see how this turns out it's a fun fun thought experiment. But

we're running out of time check out world crypto network.com we've got 3000 and 22 videos also a great time to give the show a thumbs up. I'd say they're about 40 or 50 people who push the thumbs up button and there's maybe 500 people that watch this show. So join the 40 or 30. 50 push the thumbs up button. It's free. And issue three just 8%

of Americans now have a positive view of crypto currencies according to a CNBC survey. It's down from 20 from 19% in March, which jumped to 43% up from 23% Ben arc. Everyone hates Bitcoin and Bitcoiners. They hate crypto and cryptocurrency. They don't understand it. Other people made money off it. We don't have a lot of time but really quick what do you think about we're down

to 8%? I think 8% is an amazing number considering where we are price wise. I think these are 8% of the population who are like HODL and motherfuckers and they see the technology for what it is. Which is great. The ditch thing are that extra couple of 10% who you don't see the Bitcoin technology for what it is and for its you know ability to to

create a much better world. So yeah, it's a good number. 8% is a great number for where we are currently in our market. All the other focal come on board. I'm sure as the price goes back up eventually. But for where we are 8% is a great good number. Dan Eve Ben has incredible optimism. The 8% are crypto strong. I miss the 25% what do you

think? Yeah, I think Bernan-Mond is a bear market where we're back down to like you know floating above a level that was low. Then the 2017 peak is not too bad. One thing is about this survey is that they said it's a survey of drum roll please 800 Americans nationwide. Now Americans got like a population of 300 and something million. So obviously it's an extremely small

population and it's also of NBC news specifically. So it does depend on if NBC news isn't doesn't run positive that many positive articles on crypto then it's likely to be skewed. So that kind of plays into it. But I'll say crypto. Yeah, okay, a PC moon go a good point crypto bad bad to say crypto but Bitcoin right but it Bitcoin is being dragged into the

the whole you know crypto mess that's happened with FTX. But yeah, I think it's very it's a good position. I think to be in right now considering we are in a band. Okay, I'm with Ben. I think this is positive. And as we come out of it as things probably will get a bit worse probably more ripples from there. From the the SBF FTX disaster and

more companies going down more, more angry people take into the to the streets. But the fact is that Bitcoin still rock it strong. It's like you know it's still got the highest hash rate or the most secure network on earth. I don't know what the hash rate is doing right now. It is at 278. It's just pretty much within about 5% of all time high within

a couple of percent of all time high. So right now, although the prices where it is, the network is almost the strongest as it's ever been bar to specific individual days where it peaked over the current hash rate. So yeah, great position to be in. I'm optimistic like Ben. Don't give me sad about the 8% strong here, Dan, Dan's doubting the poll. But for right now,

the poll is the truth. Mike, to pre what do you think about our 8% remaining or looking at the other way, 8% strong? I have no idea what percentage of people take polls on CNBC these days. But I don't I don't know how reliable. I'm going to how many eggs I'm going to put in the basket of accuracy of a CNBC poll. But I think that

number sounds pretty weak. And I think additionally that things like this FTX crash. A couple of things going on here. I think that you get a lot of people that are irritated that they didn't get in on the gold rush kind of feeling. And then you've got a lot of people that were just jumping on board because everybody else was on the train and they wanted

some to. So you've got people who missed out on making money and you got people who lost money because they didn't really know what they were doing. And you've got a lot of negative publicity and press, especially around the kind of people that we have with this SBF guy. When they're weird sex capades and just the unregulated nature of everything. So I mean, it's not surprising

to me that your average Joe who doesn't really know much about crypto wouldn't be too much. Too much entertained with the recent, with the recent debacle of craziness going down. So I mean, that's not that surprising to me. But I think that polls a little bit inaccurate. I think that there's more and more people using crypto now than there ever have been. I mean, we know

that for a fact. And I think that the market is maturing nicely and that there are, I mean, we only look at these things. That blow up, but in a bad way. But there's lots of also very positive projects right now in the crypto space. And I think that when we do take these, when the price does pull back quite a bit like this. It's actually

very good for crypto as a whole because it kind of weeds out a lot of the people that got lucky and a lot of the people that don't really know what they're doing. And are just kind of playing games and trading and this kind of stuff versus people that are actually building value and creating things that will benefit the crypto industry in the future. So I

think that's the way that we work as a whole or Bitcoin as a whole in a way that you want to look at it. So I guess in a sentence, I'd say that I'm not too worried about CNBC's polls and 8% sounds low, but I'm not nervous and I think we've got a lot of great potential still and a lot of interesting things to come in

the near future. As a generic for Bitcoin and the industry, and I think they're going to keep using it. So the battle to separate Bitcoin from crypto will fail because Bitcoin uses a crypto cryptocurrency that uses cryptography. It's hard to define Bitcoin without the word crypto. But let's move on to. Yeah, it's a whole other thing. Let I want them to fight in the chat. Moving

on to issue four, but Talika warns its fans about a crypto scam. There you go. Nothing to do with us. Man lost more than 25,000 in Bitcoin. Oops. On a fake Metallica themed YouTube channel. Obviously we've talked about these scams before. We've talked about Elon Musk scams. We've talked about SpaceX scams, Microsoft, other people, Steve Dobbs coming back from the dead, willing to double your Bitcoin.

If all you will do is send your Bitcoin to them. As we know Bitcoin is one way money. So the Metallica fan who sent them 25,000. Bitcoin is never going to see it again. What I think is interesting about this story is the expansion from nerds and nerd culture scams to general culture scams. Metallica has a new album coming out. That's why they chose Metallica. They're

music. Absolutely. And it read to one of the best internet animations. It was a flash animation. Metallica bad. Napster good. Metallica bad. Metallica good. That was it. Yeah, exactly. I, you know, I kind of I find it hard to really have sympathy for people who are so dumb with their money. Especially with the FTX stuff, especially these smarter firms and stuff that were crypto. You know,

send in firms that are still got fleeced. I think it's just important that people wake up and start paying attention to their financial, you know, future and not be so reliant upon the banks, the governments and the regulators to, you know, be there and hold their hand the whole time because there's a very intrinsic cost built into trusting and relying upon these traditional financial systems to

protect your wealth. And so, you know, I feel bad for the past. People, yeah, that sucks, man. You know, don't be so stupid next time. I guess would be my best, my best advice. I think that people need to grow up and stop just following, hopping on trains and throwing their money where everybody else does and just kind of, you know, gambling and actually to take

charge of their money and to be responsible for it. So I think it's kind of a blessing into skies that money is getting kind of removed from those that are not being smart with it, especially I, you know, it kind of hurts a lot more when it's fans that are getting fleeced and they're trying to support music. I really do believe that, you know, we got

to support artists and such. But, you know, with the FTX stuff, for example, these large firms losing their money, man, I kind of don't feel sorry for them at all. I think that they got what they deserved. And it's about time that, you know, some people that are riding fine lines and playing these games got burnt. So, you know, that extends down to fans as well

and the people that just aren't paying attention to what they're doing. And you see, it's a lot, I mean, we had back in the ATM space as well where people are getting scammed and you go to people and you tell them, you know, when they're trying to use the machine, you're like, Hey, you're definitely getting robbed. You're going to get scammed. And they still want to

insist that they know what they're doing and insist that, you know, everybody thinks that they know something that everybody else doesn't. This is one of the things that when, you know, somebody that doesn't know much about crypto, asking you know, should they invest in Bitcoin, should they invest in this, should they invest in that. And it's one of the first points that I was made to

them is not to forget that it's all a zero sum game. And, you know, when you're trading or you're gambling or you're, you know, even just using crypto to pay people, there is, you have to remember that for every dollar, somebody makes somebody else loses a dollar. And before you start playing games, make sure that you're confident that you're knowing enough and that you're smart enough

to ensure that you're not going to be the sucker on the other end of that trade. So I hope that people learn a good lesson. I think it's a valuable lesson to learn. And it's something that's going to come along with crypto for the future, which is that, hey, you're responsible for your own assets now. So don't be trusted in these shady exchange that are, you

know, just brand new and going crazy in the Bahamas and don't be trusting, magic, the gathering card exchanges with your retirement funds. And this kind of stuff. So part of me says, hey, that kind of sucks. I wish that Metallica had gotten the money, although I have my own issues with the way Metallica went after people in those Napster days. But at the same time, I,

you know, I kind of, I think it important that we talk about it and that people hear that it happened. And that hopefully all those people that invested or not in the money, invested, but that donated money or what a bought an album or whatever it is they did with the, with that 25 million, I hope they all tell their friends and family, hey, be careful

when you use Bitcoin being part of your own money. It's a great thing in the capacity that we're not inflationary currency and that we're not debt based and that in the future Bitcoin is going to or historically has always gone up and become more valuable as opposed to any fiat currency in the world where it's always become, you know, inflated and become worth less and less

as time goes by. But that, hey, you know, you got to have that. So we got a powerful tool here, a powerful currency, but hey, you've got to really be careful. So I mean, I just recommended one of the unfortunate things is is that when people do get scam and people do lose money, usually they're not going to be the ones that are most vocal about

telling their friends and family about, hey, fuck, you know, I try to do this with Bitcoin and I lost all my money. Usually only hear about it when people make money and then, you know, everybody else tries to get it on the same train. So hopefully people share their experience with using Bitcoin and with these kind of things with their friends and family. And that in

general, the greater population of the world can become smarter with managing their own money and being responsible for their own money. So maybe the positive that we can see out of this is that maybe some people will educate their friends and family and people will learn a lesson and become more in control and capable of paying attention to what they're doing and less reliance upon third

parties to have their best interest in mind, which as we all know normally they don't. I think you're right, Mike. It is amazing to think about the reality of that. This guy had $25,000 in Bitcoin ready to go. It wasn't in a hardware wallet. It wasn't locked in Coinbase vault or any kind of controlled system. It was ready to go. So I don't know what he

was going to do with it, probably trading in and out of Bitcoin. But in this case, when Metallica offered him, I assume two X maybe three X return on his Bitcoin. He didn't just send some of it. He sent all of it. Because if you're going to double your money, you're going to get a lot of money. Why not double all of your money? Why not

send it all? So it's just a classic thing that happens to people, the excitement, the potential of getting double or triple or even eight times his money. No matter what the lie was that got him to send the impulses were generated. Metallica was going to pay him. It made sense in his mind for 30 seconds and it's all going to be a little bit of logic.

Sometimes goes a long way and just, you know, I hear all the time. These people are getting involved in these trading groups and they're following telegram chats where everybody's telling everybody what to trade and this kind of stuff. And I just don't understand how people really can be so dumb with your money. I've made stupid investments many times in my life. But I look at some

of these things and it's just like, you know, you're kidding me. I mean, maybe that person didn't deserve to have that Bitcoin. I don't know. It's not like it was really stolen from him. It's not like it was somebody else that was doing the trading on his behalf and that he was lied to through an agreement like with FTX or with Bunkox and this kind of

thing. But it was literally, you know, it wasn't a hack. It was literally just somebody who made a conscious financial decision with the information that seemed completely unrealistic from the beginning and they, you know, if you're, you know, it's hard to feel sorry for him. If it's too good to be true, it probably is Ben Arck. What do you think about the guy who gave his

money away to Metallica? Do we know exactly why? Okay, this money went to Metallica was sort of promised of making money. It's a given $25 and then you get to hang out Metallica. No, I think it was pretty straightforward. Generally, these scams promise to double or triple your money. All you have to do is send it to them and they will send it back to you.

Sometimes they go as far as if you send them like five bucks. They'll send you, they'll send you 10 bucks back to, you know, juice the line. But after you put in, you know, a couple thousand, they just keep the money. Hopefully, hopefully they had the money to burn. It's just a rich idiot. Hopefully, you know, and it's, it's, but I agree with you. I think

there's just a lot of margin for people just to learn and get that, not getting scammed. And I think people are more and more time. So I'm like, you know, the good, the good data is rising to the top. And people are becoming more resilient to, to being scammed through something like Bitcoin and, you know, there's only so many times where you can run the same

scam before it becomes sort of a common knowledge. So I'm just saying, like the Nigerian prince or whatever else. So now we have like the Metallica scam. And then this press about it and then people learn. And it's I wrestle with regulation, because I don't want vulnerable people because usually it's vulnerable people who get ripped off in any scamp. And I don't want the vulnerable people

to be ripped off. But I do think that, you know, those people are made vulnerable partly by regulations. So having some consequences and having, you know, some more autonomy is a good thing. And those lessons need to be learned. And it's just a case of education and making sure that, you know, people know a best arm to not get scammed. But yeah, I mean, I don't

know the completons and outs of why exactly they sent $25,000 to Metallica scam, whether it was just a, we will double your money. I kind of envisioned it being more of like a super fun scam. So send us some money and you get to hang out with us or something. And then I imagine some like kid getting on his desk computer and spending his desk Bitcoin

on trying to, you know, hook up with Metallica or something. But whatever. So yeah, people, people will, well, as humans are very good at learning stuff. And humans will get better in where regulation doesn't work as well as it used to. Then people will get much better at being able to spot scams what they are. Unfortunately, the regulation would have to come to YouTube because that's

the company that's hosting the scams is YouTube. And it's that power of the QR code. They put the QR code on the screen. The money can jump right through the screen. And Dan, you've seen these happen before. Is it like I'm saying, it's just a double your money, triple your money. It's an excitement feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was cool. So it was so, so it

was called Metallica 2x.net. And so it was literally as dumb as like you can to it like we're doing a worldwide crypto offering. We're going to give you to celebrate our 25 year out of us. We want to do it. We're giving you twice the crypto you sent us. And people were like, oh my god, that's amazing. And they literally just sent their Bitcoin to them,

which is just insane. If you ask me. Now it says according to this article that the only one person in the US is actually like I feel pretty, I feel like a complete twat if that was me. But like only one person's come forward to the police to actually raise it as a as a crime. According to this article. So that's so I'd be thinking I'd

be thinking about like, you know, I really could fell for that one, Hokeling and Sinker. But I do think there is a bit of a problem with the world. Generally, we seem to be making things more about trust rather than people critically thinking for them for themselves. And that has a problem with with scams. And and even with the original like the, you know, the prints

email scams, they've evolved and people still fall for them. Like the latest one I read about. That a lady in in Japan sent 4.4 million yen. The police investigated it. They sent, which is about $30,000 to a Nigerian who claimed he was lost in space and needed a ticket home on a soya's. Oh my god. And there's even snopes covered this one. They're like, the, the

snow cycle literally is, is an Nigerian astronaut lost in space? And an Nigerian astronaut lost in space. And he's $3 million, $3 million, $3 million to get back home. Fact check by snopes scare. So you know, surely you just, you can fact check that in your brain. Like there's there's there's a with with Mike here. There's there's personal responses. And I know it's really difficult. You

get caught up in the moment. You know, it's, it's their favorite band and they're thinking, well, Metallica did like charity stuff. So maybe they're just going to give people money. But no one gives money away. Like they, or if they do it's, you know, it's not in that way. It's just not like someone going up double your money from over the other side of the internet.

And the, it was YouTube should be doing more to censor it. I know the idea of regulating it. So really difficult thing. You could argue that the email, email hosts should censor and remove any email that suggests that someone's an Nigerian prince. And then how a Nigerian royalty going to communicate with each other. If their emails keep on getting deleted and they're not actually trying to

scam anyone. You know, but you know, it's, it's, I think there is a thing of personal responsibility. Companies are a lot better about this now. Like, you know, my bank all the time, funnily enough sends me a message saying, about how crypto is you can get scammed easily in crypto. So companies are getting better at warning people about these things. But it's really, you know, there

is a lot of it's down to personal responsibility and making, let people know that, you know, getting, making money isn't like really easy. And maybe you see these kind of tip tockers and stuff like that where people think, oh, they're rich. They must, you know, if they got rich so easily. But like getting rich is comes usually comes with a long and hard. And it's not

just by sending money to something and getting two X back and then repeating until you're a gazillion. And that's what people need to get like, you know, to learn about. Because otherwise we're just going to be this endless loop of. I don't know, of just, I don't know, just yeah, nothing. We're going to be spoon fed everything right and even when you're spoon fed everything. You're

still going to have people that that literally screw up because there'll be. Eating everything that's on a plate and they'll get scammed by whatever surface it is, whether it's, you know, door to door, whether it's a salespeople like doing scams, whether it's the email scams fishing. And some of them are really, really like really intricate. There was a company I worked for. They faked being one

of the legal representatives in order to try and get informational emerge. And this was a really sophisticated scam by fishing. But we had our wits about us. And I was the one that's what they actually email. And I was like, that's dodgy. And, and so yeah, like, you know, that's it. Planned, planned, foiled. But, but then again, not everyone, you know, knows how to watch out

for in their email. So it's a difficult thing. Personal responsibility, definitely. But at the same time, you know, it's, it's everyone knows someone who's done enough to do it. I think we're going to see tons more of the scams. I think it's exciting the way they used Metallica and the new album to power the scam. I think we can say every movie released from now on,

every album release, every major video game relief should have one of these scams. All you have to do is get a video of the person talking, put your little banner out on there, put your QR code, and people just give you money. I also think one of Dan's big points right there is if Metallica is so rich, they can just give the money away. People believe

that when we all know Metallica got rich by not giving the money away. That's the first rule. People's be coming rich, right? You don't just give it away. You save every penny. And I think they forget that. And they're like, oh, they're just being so generous. They're just going to send me money because they don't care anymore. And if it wasn't for them being so stingy

and chasing people about Napster, they wouldn't have had one of my favorite like South Park Quake sever, which is that's Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica. He wanted a gold pleated shark tank bar installed right next to the swimming pool. But because of people like you, he has to wait a few months now. And they slayed them on Napster too. The animation I refer to is

just so good Napster, Napster bad Metallica good. And he talks about how Metallica spent upwards of 24 to 48 hours writing this song. And Jason Newsted set himself on fire. And our drummer just got a gold pleated Ferrari. And you know, they're like, we need this money. You can't be downloaded. But you are going to jail because you downloaded in its sleep into its sleeps on

Napster. You're going to get in trouble in jail. And it was a whole period where there was some MTV Music Awards and they had Sean Parker and Napster. The two Napster guys coming to the other guy and they were doing the comparing for MTV Music Awards. They both had Metallica T-shirts on. Because Metallica was soon with the time. But yeah, they Metallica on the wrong side

of Facebook back then. That's for sure. You know Elena has Metallica, moving on issue five early Bitcoin pioneer, Ian Freeman goes to Trial in New Hampshire. Ian and the other people behind free talk live some of the New Hampshire free state people were allegedly facing eight counts related to tax evasion. And operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, they had several Bitcoin ATMs, they had no licenses,

they had no business, they allegedly were just taking the money. Dan Eve, we've covered this story before obviously they're against kind of government and the whole idea of government and accountability. What do you think will happen in the Ian Freeman trial? Well, at the very least, I mean, you know, I think it's admirable. What like that he's that he's like standing by his ground to like

I think the other ones played made plea deals. Everyone else that's involved. It sounds like his ex girlfriend who's now married to someone else actually turned against him and she's going to be testifying against him. And whilst they made plea deals, he's saying, look, I've done, I've done nothing wrong. And that includes, I think the fact that he hasn't paid tax since 2000 2008. So he's

like hardcore libertarian. He's, you know, he's like really saying, you know, it's in the constitution. Technically, if you really like this, that I don't have to pay tax. But yeah, it does seem like he's probably going to end up. Let's face it, he's going to probably end up with a bigger sentence than sandbag when free and that the sheer scale of the operation. I think it

was 10 10 million that he was associated with in terms of not taxing major, but unlike, unless it's money transmitting just at the volume of 10 million, where a sandbag and free, you know, isn't involved in that. Is it? 10 billion 10 billion dollars plus let alone if you think about the ripple, the the ripples of that and the other companies it brought down. That operation.

But I think, Ian, unfortunately, he's going to get more time than sandbag and freed. He openly admits that he doesn't want to pay taxes. So that's, you know, they've got him on that straight away. They're not going to let that go lightly. They confiscated a bunch of Bitcoin. I think it was in the in the hundreds. So, you know, it's probably not going to be a

lot of money. I don't know if you get fined as well as, you know, as actually going, going in jail, but I think it's not looking. It's not looking. Not looking good. I think for his situation, unfortunately. I think one of the other problems is that Bitcoin went up too much for Ian and them. They were holding on to 100 Bitcoin coins and so forth, which

are astronomical, even to someone who got in relatively early like myself. Mike, to pre you know a little bit about running Bitcoin ATMs wouldn't be great. If you could just run them without a license and keep some of the money and give some of the money to someone else and just, you know, kind of do whatever you want, which allegedly seems to be what they were

operating. Yeah, I mean, I am partially libertarian and, you know, I think a lot of us that watch this show agree that, you know, the taxation is getting a little bit out of control, especially in the United States. And I'm not a true believer in regulators having too much to do with. With our money, but, you know, it is kind of a necessary evil in some

capacities. I just think it should be more limited than it currently is. That being said, it's set some advice. You know, many other activists both in the tax and regulatory stuff as well as back when I used to be involved in the medical marijuana industry and that kind of stuff. Really the way to make change is not going to be from a jail cell. So I

mean, if you want to, if you really want to make change, bring people together and, you know, work on changing. The rules and changing the, the, the fact of way that things work, not just by blatantly violating it because you don't agree with it. So I mean, if you don't agree with something, change the rules, don't just blatantly ignore it and be so vocal about it

because, you know, once you're, once they take your funds and they throw you in a jail cell, then there's very little you're going to be able to do to ever actually progress any of these legislations and regulations and that kind of stuff. So I wish the best of luck. And everything and, you know, it's it's always sad to see people that are true believers and people

who are out there actually building products and building services that actually did benefit the crypto community as a whole. It's sad to see them get locked up and to see them going through all this trouble and get their hard earned money taken away from them. But it's again kind of hard to be, you know, feel bad for somebody that was being so blatant in their disrespect

for the, for the laws, whether they agree with them or not. So, yeah, I wish him the best of luck and, you know, it's sad to see that everything went to nothing, but, you know, we'll see how it goes. And let's also acknowledge that in and in Freeman did a lot of good work with free talk live. He turned a lot of people on the Bitcoin.

A lot of people got their first Bitcoin's because of in they heard about it on the show. They got incredible deals on Bitcoin, like a dollar, $30, like incredible deals on early Bitcoin and they owe it to free talk live and in Freeman. So respect to that. There's even even there though he was very extreme in his libertarianism. And I believe that he exited free talk

live under bad circumstances with disagreements over how the age of consent. Basically young girls should have the right to make their own choice. At what age and, you know, to a certain kind of person, everything is debatable. And I think he got in trouble for that debate as well. Ben Arck, what do you think about Ian Freeman, his chances at trial? And of course his contributions

to Bitcoin. Yeah, sad mind. I mean, like disregarding what have we said about age consent, whatever. Like the money comes to Bitcoin. Bitcoin. He was providing good services, local Bitcoin trader. And from what I can tell, read in the article from what's lawyers saying that, you know, he did do some KYC with customers. And then if there was ever a customer who was trying to buy

or deal with Bitcoin for a list of purposes and he was made aware of it, then he didn't deal with them. There was an entrapment. Part of the case where I think some some some some. Police guys, they tried to like. They said we're herring dealers and we want to sell $20,000 worth of Bitcoin or something. So one of them anywhere near you to see what

I do. And then they dropped into one of the 80ms or something. So it's. He tried his best to not. You know, to operate in as moral a way as possible. But then at the same time, obviously he's not paying his taxes and you know it's the old adish death and taxes just fucking pay taxes man. It's not worth it like like the pre says like

chat. They're trying to challenge these things, but challenge them in such a way that you will continue to be free and be able to challenge them. Because you know, you're just to they'll make a scapegoat. They won't they want their tax dollar. They won't they tax money. Hopefully they had, I think, out of the 25 charges, 18 of the charts have been dropped. And then they've

got 70s got seven charges left. And now it's going to court. Hopefully some of the other charges will be kicked out of court. I think so far is facing a max of 70 years. So. If he has some of those other charges kicked out, then hopefully maybe you'll just get, you know, five years or something. Some sort of you know, it's a much smaller sentence because

you said all in all, but I can tell a decent guy like doing decent things, building decent services and trying to operate in a moral way. There's some good question marks like I think there was one of the. One of the the main points against similar as as a lady who got ripped off. Like I think it's 75,000, which went through his local bitcoins. And the

the the woman who's being ripped off, it was issues being scammed some some scam issues. And then their argument as well, you know, the bank allowed within a very short period of time and less than a week for 75,000 grand score of a bank account. Like surely that should have flight some problems and maybe it shouldn't just be in freemen who's up there on in, you

know, in the docs. Maybe it should be the. The bank manager who allowed 75,000 to leave this woman's account and go to local bitcoins. So yeah, wish them all the best. Hopefully, you know, the means inevitably going to face some jail time over the tax stuff, but hopefully it's it's much smaller than the 70 years, which you could get my centers for now. Good luck to

the dude. Well, as Hunter has Thompson said many fine books have been written in prison. And I'd also give that right advice to the dread pirate rock. Roberts has been with saying it sounds like Ian did try to run a clean market with his Bitcoin ATMs as the dread pirate Roberts tried to run a clean drug market. He wouldn't allow certain things on there and all

this. He ran a nice market. But at the end of the day, he ran a drug market and has been and many others have said Ian didn't pay his taxes. So he's going to lose by default. He's he's starting off in a bad position against the government here. Let's see. Where's the guy? There's our next article. We're almost out of time. But we've got one more

article issue six Tim Draper predicts that Bitcoin will reach 250,000 dollars. A coin next year despite the FTX collapse. He says the dam is about to break. And he predicts that women will join crypto causing arise and saving the day. No matter what about the FTX collapse. Of course, Tim Draper also predicted the Bitcoin would be 250,000 dollars at the end of the day. The end

of this year, which is right now, he also bought the Silk Road Bitcoins, which should have been saved to build new Smithsonian, new universities or missing museums in the United States. Mike to pre what to think about Tim Draper's prediction 250,000 dollars of Bitcoin. Sounds good to be. I'm going to go get some more. I wait for it to drop a little bit lower first though.

Ben arc what do you think about Tim Draper a little positive news to end the day. I think that's you know that's some point like so that's where we're targeting for when it next goes up is sort of that 250,000 dollar range. Sounds crazy for where we are, but it always sounds crazy for my to the bottom of the price. But yeah, like historically, if you

look up whenever Bitcoin is pumped and it's if you just take those pumps and you just superimpose it's to where we are now like it's possible like we get to change from $5,000 Bitcoin. People are far more educated now than ever have been there's so much talent in Bitcoin. I've been to a bunch of conferences over the past year, even though the Bitcoin price has been

dropping and just the level of knowledge people have about Bitcoin now is so much more superior than it used to be. And just the amount of services and actually people accepting Bitcoin websites accepting Bitcoin. There's more and more. In my little local village, I've got like there's about six businesses, which you're really keen on accepting Bitcoin and using Bitcoin. So it's it's and you know the

people who run those businesses are interested in Bitcoin despite the price. So yeah, I think this eight percent fucking HODL a bad rock motherfuckers. I think they can it's a good place to start from and I can I can see Tim Draper's dream coming true. He's right. He wasn't right for this year, but you'll be right for next year. I'm sure. Dan Eve the sky is

the limit ending with optimism. Yeah, I think so. I end goal right. I'm still short term. I'm still short term a bit in negiancy or neggy nelly. Whichever. But the you know, it's the end of the year, historically, Bitcoin kind of doesn't do that good at the end of the year. You know, there's people like selling for taxes and stuff like that. And so I think

that there's probably going to be another little drop up against part of the ripples from the whole SVF SVTX thing. Um, a bit of a mouthful that but ultimately that's the that's where we're heading right the the scarcity of Bitcoin is its power. And there's still money being printed out of thinner and it's going to continue. There's there's not really any letting up on that on

that monetary policy or really admitting that it's actually bad for the economy. So I think we're just history is just going to keep on repeating itself. Um, I'd like to I'd like to think that the cycles at the harvining is still going to pay a big part of that. So whether that 250 K prediction, it'd be great if it is next year, but it kind of

you know, it kind of would be seemed like it would be more likely to be placed at the end of 2024, you know, after the next harvining rather than before it. But if it does go before the next harvining to 250 K and all that hype is surrounding it when the harvining happens, then it'll be an ultra mega ding dong pump when the harvining happens because

everyone already be hyped up because Bitcoin's 250 K, then the harvining is going to happen now. I'd be like, oh my god, it's 250 K on steroids because there's harvining now. So yeah, I'd like I'd like it to be next year, but I don't think it'll be for a little while. It's almost too much optimism in this room. But going back to earth, Sam testifies on

Tuesday, exit question predicting against the Bitcoin predictor ball, the baldest source of truth in the Bitcoin industry, Mike Dupree, the price of Bitcoin this time next week, higher. Lower Dan Eve. Despite you to me, sir, my team lower Ben Ark. Hi, I'm going to get a pump higher. And arc says higher. Everyone else says lower. Let's ask the ball. Remember shaking it could cause bubbles. Will

the price of Bitcoin be higher this time next week? Yes. Yes, unequivocal. Yes, from the ball. The ball. Has spoken, but we're running out of time. Dan, Eve, do you have a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. My prediction is that is that. Okay. I'm going to go. I think out of the blue, maybe. I think, oh, when is the SPF thing? Sorry,

there, when's he actually in court? Right? When's he in Parliament? Or whatever is with Parliament? Saying Tuesday. That's, but it's unclear. It should him first, right? He'd be your first witness. So there would be potential. Then after that, if that goes completely tits up. So my prediction is that he's actually going to get like he's going to get charges put against him. Cause I reckon he's

going to stuff it up while he's in there. So I think as a consequence of that, he'll have charges against him. But ultimately still think he'll end up wiggling his way out of it. Incredible wishful thinking. Mike Dupree prediction or a story of the week. Yeah, I just think that there's going to be a lot more, not just with FTX, but just in general, a lot

more hesitancy now of people getting in. And I think that we're already kind of in a bear market. So I just think it's going to go down a bit more for the next few months, maybe even below 10k, but we'll see. Then arc prediction or a story of the week. I just going to say I think nothing to praise backdrop is just the for the years

that the winning backdrop. If you had an award for the so jealous of that sun and sea and. It's an excellent green screen goodness me. It's a really high quality green screener. You got like a miniature in the background of the mackerel. So the story of the week. So Cali is one of the main Ellen bits developers. He created the cashew extension for Ellen bits. And

it's the easiest way this ever existed to create a e-cashment. So the minute itself which you create you send sats to it and then it gives you an e-cash which you can then send and redeem for sats. So you can actually pay lightning invoice very exciting. So it's cashew. You can actually play around the demo service if you go to legend. And a bit calm and

just enable the cashew extension and then start playing around with it. It's really exciting. If you think David trauma. He wrote his paper bucket back in 1982. And now four years later we've now finally. It's really got like the easiest way. It's like click click click. I have a trauma in e-cashment. Fantastic. It's pegged to Bitcoin. It's it's it's an e-cash was redeemable from this. And

a bit service which using. So yeah. So it's very exciting. Well done Cali. To me he's forever immortalized in the. The cypherpon call of fame. But it's it's it's quite an achievement. So that's the story of the week was was that. Excellent. Excellent story of the week. Ben. Sounds good. And we're going to do our year ends spectacular in just a few weeks December 22nd and

a spoiler on the inside track to be Bitcoin or of the year. Other of course then you know mad bit coins who's always Bitcoin or the. Ben arc with Ellen bits really knocking it out of the park there traveling around. Given these seminars teaching people how to build the little boxes. Like people all over the world. No Ben now and we're just totally impressed with your

work. Ben you're doing great stuff at Ellen bits. They have you on the show and stuff. Thank you. There we go. And we're out of time. Well try to do better next time. But until then. Bye. Bye. Bye.