The Bitcoin Group #339 - MicroStrategy Sells - Cub

The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Josh Tagala from thestander.io. Good A mates. Dan Eve, the crypto raptor. Banger no Bitcoiners. Victoria Jones from Satoshi's page. How did he? And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one, issue one, micro strategy

sells Bitcoin for the first time. We all said it was going to happen. And now it's happened. Although only for tax reasons, micro strategy she sold some Bitcoin and quickly bought it back later. However, their stance as a never sell hotler is now in question now that they've sold for tax reasons. Josh Tagala, what do you think about micro strategy selling for the first time? Man,

you know, part of being in Bitcoin, sometimes you got to sell this whole trope of like huddle, huddle, huddle. You know, sometimes things come along. I had to pay for like rental deposits and stuff throughout my time. And it was hundreds of Bitcoin. That have gone because of silly stuff that you have to do. But life is life, you know, you just got to spend money

when you've got to spend money. It's just what it is. Dan Eve is Michael Sailor, still your God. Now that he's sold. Dan is muted. Dan, what do you think about Michael Sailor? Now that he's sold. Oh, sorry, my, my, my sound, my sound cut out. God damn it. Part of me briefly. So I think that's because of my some message, someone messaging. But yeah, what

then today you've got to do what you got to do. It sounds like it was done for a logical reason for tax purposes. Right. So they had a bit of a loss to be able to, to net off against against their, their, against the tax return. So it does sound sensible. But obviously it's coming from, from Sailor who's, who's been peddling the, you know, the never

sells thought sort of thing. So even though they're saying, oh, it's not because we don't trust Bitcoin. Yeah, the headline is, is micro reset rather than, you know, being the logical thing of micro strategy sells Bitcoin for, for tax purposes is micro sell micro strategy sells Bitcoin. So people are going to read the headline and just think, oh, no, Michael started you selling Bitcoin even though

their position is, is higher than the than it was. I think it's in this, it's higher than it was in, in, in about three months ago or something. So they're still, they're still, you know, they're still holding a very significant amount of Bitcoin. But obviously, you know, but the good thing is that the Michael sailor, no kind of, you know, so he's a bit kind of

polarized. Some people are about him. I think ultimately he's, he's kind of, he's, I wouldn't say he's, he's representative in Bitcoin anyway, but he's doing positive things about spreading the words. For Bitcoin, obviously being micro strategy putting their, their guts on the table and being the first sort of big mainstream blue chip company to have Bitcoin on the, on the books is, is a good thing.

Ultimately. So if it's done for taxes, then that's kind of, that's kind of fair. Oh, come on. They had one good thing gone for them. They were micro strategy. It was so simple. All they had to do is buy and hold now everything's all confusing. Victoria, what do you think about micro strategy? Changing their strategy? Well, I can't say I'm all that surprised. I mean, as

much as Michael say, who's very clever and has built a very, a very large business, he's kind of formed the trap that a lot of new Bitcoiners do. And that is, you know, when you actually start to learn about the technology, it's like, there's no way that this is ever going down again. It's just so clever and it's the future of the world and it's very

easy to kind of get stuck in that mind trap. And as an individual, you, you know, you believe that because you figured it out, everyone else is going to figure it out as well. And at the same time. And of course, it doesn't actually work that way. And so what happens is, you know, as other macro economic factors kind of come into play and other people's

emotions come into play, you know, inevitably the price goes down. And of course, you find yourself stuck in a situation that you never thought would happen. I mean, at the moment, I think the average price, even though he holds a lot of Bitcoin, the average price his pace for him is around the region of like 30 grand. So, you know, he's still lost half of, you

know, half of his network, half of the Bitcoin net worth based on what he bought them for. So as much as he puts a brave face on it, because he has to, you know, as part of the company, you know, ultimately, you know, he's made a bit of a boo-boo there by going all in so quickly. And who's to say that who's to say that the

rest of us haven't done it? I mean, I did exactly the same thing in 2018. You know, I never thought it would go any lower and you can't, you think everyone else you saying it's going to go lower as complete Nasea. And then before you know, it's just like, unless I do something, I'm going to be in diastrates. And so you learn. And so what, what,

what then happens is the next time there's a hype cycle, you've got a more Bitcoiners in the space who understand how it works. And so the next time it starts to reach that point in the cycle, more people sell. And so this is what is going to reduce the amplitude, I think, of the price cycles. As we go forward, I think there's people wise up to

how the technology works and how that influences the price cycle. You're going to get the savvy investors who sell at the top and buy the bottom and in traditional investing, it's not wise to do that. But because of the way in which the Bitcoin protocol works, you can absolutely do that if you've gone as far as to understand how it actually works. And so, you know,

next time Michael sailor might be, you know, he'll be saying exactly the same thing, but he'll have sold them last year, rather than this year, because he'll understand what he's doing next time. So. Michael sailors only had a fiat loss. One Bitcoin still equals one Bitcoin, right. Onus question, what about Michael sailor in the lightning network? Microstrategy is going to offer Bitcoin lightning solutions in 2023.

Sounds like they'll even reward you for learning about Bitcoin. Josh Shagall, what do you think about micro strategies getting into lightning network? Yeah, I mean, lightning is Bitcoin. So they should get into it. I don't really even understand what micro strategy does apart from holding Bitcoin. I know that they've been around since the dot com bubble. They even had an ad and I think in the

super bowl. I don't know. So they've been around for a long, long time back back in the day. That was an ad in the super wall during the 2008, you know, even earlier when when was the anyway. So, but I don't, but they pivoted and they've I don't know what they do. So I don't know what they will do with lightning. Then you data analysis, don't

they? That's one of the reasons why he's interested in it. So they, you know, all those all those companies collecting your data behind web pages. He's one of those. And then he's he packages it and sells it on, you know, because they want useful information. Other companies want useful information that they can get by analyzing people's data. He's definitely been around a long time, Josh. I

think you lost money in the original dot com downturn. He would have been the ones telling you to buy pets.com. Dan, you think about lightning network and micro strategy. Well, I, yeah. I actually, you know, I think you're going to be able to get a lot of money. He makes me kind of sad because one of the statements is during the Twitter space conversation, say, to

explain the chief marketing offices can potentially use the lightning network to incentivize customers such as giving out Satoshi rewards for engaging in activities such as posting reviews and completing surveys. So basically he's creating reward portal dot com. But under micro strategy. So I need to get back into that because obviously validates the idea that you can use lightning for for micro payments for all sorts of

social and other tasks. I think it's a great idea, right? He has they've got be I you know that there's a much strategy is as Victoria said, his business intelligence is using data and packaging it and. On for businesses to make some you know, some better to make better decisions. So why not and be able to introduce some form of incentivization by using the lightning network.

It makes it makes perfectly good sense. And for someone who's such a, you know, a, a, he's someone who's pro so pro big big Bitcoin. Why not make use of the technology and your existing infrastructure, especially if you are a software company. So yeah, I think it's a, it's a great, it's a great idea overall. And it's actually it's kind of kind of late coming. And

I think because to me, that would have been one of the first things you do if you buy a load of Bitcoin is, you know, and your own a software company is start building some interesting infrastructure around around Bitcoin, since you're so heavily invested and it's now, you know, what was four billion dollars on the balance sheet is now. Yeah. Two billion dollars. So, all good

for the ecosystem, more development, more tools, the better. Yeah. I think Dan's on to something here they're only finding out about the lightning network now. Well, I think they are. But again, you know, if you've spent any time on the lightning network, you'll realize how early it is. And so there's still a lot of bugs and issues to address. I mean, I think he's got absolutely

the right. Right idea. I think there's going to be several companies doing exactly the same thing in the coming few years. I think the only danger is it might be a little bit too early. But of course, the advantage of that is, you know, you get a chance to see what the bugs are early and fix them early. And also, you know, if you're a data

harvester, he could certainly gave getting some mileage out of that as well, not sure exactly how it works. But yeah, I think you're definitely on something there down. So yeah, if I were Michael sailor, that's exactly what I would be doing. You also want to second what was said earlier, you got to be careful, Michael sailor, when you have your whole stack of money and you

get excited by an investment like Bitcoin, and you just go all in with your millions and millions and millions of dollars, you might want a dollar cost average, you know, invest a million per week or a million per month, something like that, you might get a better deal. The long run. That's not financial advice though. Moving on to issue two, Mark Cuban wants to buy more

Bitcoin. So I think that's the thing that says that gold investors are dumb. Mark Cuban, previously a fan of ICOs, Ethernet, and even a Ethereum NFTs, everything has now come along to Bitcoin. The founder of broadcast.com, who sold illegal basketball games on the internet to Yahoo.com is now back. Dan Eve, should we welcome Mark Cuban back into the fold now that he's lost a little bit

of money here and there? Well, it's always good to see someone turn from from the dark side, right? If someone who's historically shield Ethereum and ICOs actually realizing the potency of Bitcoin, it does make a good point. All be a bit hardcore about about, you know, when when gold if if the if the world is to fall to the dust, does it work? And people are

doing it. They've stopped their Bitcoin, sorry, their gold, then it's easy to just, you know, hit them with a with a lead pipe and steal their bar of gold. So it's all good kind of hoarding that for for the for Armageddon. In case, you know, the fear collapses and everything, but at least with Bitcoin, they'd have to steal the 12 words or 24 words from your

head. But also just to transacting in gold like, you know, if you if you if you how would you like, how would you even? Like give someone change if you add your gold bar and like, you know, how do you give them half a gold bar of change? Yeah, that's probably going to be still quite difficult for the average Joe. Um, so yeah, I think ultimately,

ultimately Bitcoin is everyone said, as people said, the new gold, but it's like gold on steroids times 50. Um, because of the fact that it's so easy to hide your wealth. And although we've seen all these crazy stories of, you know, the bit Phoenix Bitcoin being being found again and some of the Silk Road Bitcoin being found again, you know, the they were found due to

kind of was the way not complacency, but, but errors in the way the person had stored them, right, putting them on a hard drive underneath the floorboards or something is a much worse way than having like seven words, not so many words, it's a 12 words, discreetly written somewhere, um, that that's getting extremely hard to find. So yeah, I think, uh, gold definitely is not as

good as as Bitcoin. And it's good to see that someone else who's a an ICO Schiller has turned the to the light side. I don't know about Cubans example there. It seems like Bitcoin's only to get you more torture as they torture you to get your 12 or 24 words, at least with the gold bar, they just take it and run away. I've Victoria, what do

you think about Mark Cubans? I'm suddenly joining up with Bitcoin and his strange thoughts about gold. Well, I have to say, when I read the headline of this article, it did make me laugh. And my first thought was, well, he's not wrong. Um, you know, I think again, you know, part of part of the problem is, um, you know, the rest of the world doesn't always

understand things the way that you understand them. And until the rest of the world catches up. Um, you know, if they don't agree with you and they were putting their money in gold, but you're the one putting your money in gold. Money in Bitcoin, then it's not going to work out for you. So in terms of the technology, you know, Dan's absolutely right. You know, it's,

it's definitely got some superior qualities compared to gold. But the thing is, at the moment, the bank still run the world. And in order for gold to work as a means of exchange, it needs the banks. And so ultimately, you know, Bitcoin will be the bank disruptor, but it needs to get to the stage where everybody understands that. And at the moment, it's still too many

people. It's a flummox by it. They don't understand it well. The fluctuations and the prices is very disturbing. And people are very emotionally attached to their money. Um, and to see such huge swings in the price, you know, it's just going to put people off even before they do anything else. Unless they, they have a tendency towards high level risk. Um, so, you know, and there

were a couple of other things. There were a couple of things in the article that I felt weren't inaccurate. So one of the things he said was most digital coins don't derive their value from an underlying entity. And that's not actually true. You know, the underlying, the way in which the underlying software protocol has been written is all about their value. That's why we've got alt

coins that are worth nearly zero. And Bitcoin is the most valuable. So the way in which their program to how decentralized they are, you know, especially if you compare Bitcoin with Ethereum, you know, that all all contributes to their value. But these are subtle distinctions that it takes quite a long time to learn. Um, and fully on understand and, and the general public are just not

going to be there straight away. Um, at the moment, you've got a core group of people who still understand aspects of it, but don't still miss some of these salient features. And so it's going to take a long time before before the rest of the world catches up with that idea, but fundamentally, you know, he's right, but doesn't mean that doesn't mean that Bitcoin's going to

go to the top straight away. And the other thing they mentioned in the article, they kind of made a comparison between the fact that, you know, gold's hardly lost its value this year, whereas Bitcoin's lost a lot of its value. I mean, you know, gold's a 12 trillion dollar market, um, whereas Bitcoin's only 318 billion at the moment. So, you know, when you're dealing with a

much bigger market compared to a small one, you know, those comparisons aren't accurate. And so, you know, sometimes you have to be careful. These articles can be quite misleading and you need to understand the nuances of what they're trying to tell you. And sometimes you have to do further research just to get an accurate, um, just to get an accurate perspective just from one argument. So,

um, so I like the headline. I thought some of the detail in the article needed a bit of work, but that's just my opinion. Josh, the goal of gold has certainly held up better than some of Mr. Cubans, ICOs, many of which went to zero. What do you think about him joining Bitcoin now? I'm just like for someone to call someone of his statuative called gold

dumb. It is just dumb. I mean, I'm sick of the, I'm sick of the battle between Bitcoin and gold. It's such a fake dichotomy. It's like such a bullshit dichotomy. It's a rare asset. If you have, it's, it's Bitcoin versus Fiat. It's Bitcoin gold versus Fiat. If you can put your money and diversify into rare assets, that's what, that's the goal. Something that no single authority

controls gold. It's great because it's decentralized and it's issuance. It's found all around the world. It's 5,000 years old and being valued in different geographical regions that have nothing to do with each other. All of them, all of them, value it. And, and so yeah, okay. In a, in a, in a full shit hits the fan scenario. Maybe it's not the best, but actually Bitcoin's also

not the best in the, I mean, it's barely the best now because of the network effect. It's kind of hard to find someone that works. That Bitcoin man, I try all the time. You want to accept Bitcoin versus you want to accept any crypto? They're like, no, no, just cash. Thanks. Yeah, cash. Like in a full hitch, shit. It's the fan scenario. You know what? The

best money is whiskey. Whiskey is great. Everyone wants it. It's divisible. You want to, if you're happy, if you're sad and in a full shit, it's the fan scenario. You're pretty sad. So you want to have a whiskey. Like this, this nonsense that these people trope around the world. Get over yourselves. Go. It's not us versus gold. It's us versus fear. And gold is part of

us. So I just don't see it. I just think it's, it's a dumb comparison. I'm sick of hearing about it. And, and like, I just started. These people that, these people that come out of the woodwork, say they're all crypto and then come out with nonsense like that. It means that they still don't understand it. JSCs, ones, I'm not sure. 7776 said it right. Mark Cuban

only half welcome to the party by Josh only half. Moving on to the question, which will happen first? Will the price of Bitcoin hit $1 million? Or will Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks win the NBA championship? Again, Dan Eve, the championship or the million dollars? I have no idea about the Dallas, Dallas, say good. That that that web they call the Dallas Calcutta Calcutta Calcutta. They play

a basketball. It's a lot of handball they use. I see. I see. Well, I'm not going to try and jump for any hoops guessing that as it were. So, so no pun intended. It wasn't intended. And it was terrible. But it's the end of the year. So there's not going to be many of more of those coming in 2022. I'm going to say Bitcoin and a

million dollars. Victoria Bitcoin and a million dollars or the basketball team wins. Huns are welcome. Well, I know nothing about the team. So far, be it for me to comment. But given that it sounds like they probably don't do very well. I'll go for Bitcoin at a million dollars. Looks like all Bitcoin so far, Josh Shagala Bitcoin a million dollars or the Mavericks win. Million bucks

to the moon. Bad news from our Cuban. He needs to buy more players. Moving on, check out World Crypto Network.com. We've got 3000 and 25 videos. You could watch them for three months, 14. 14 days, six hours without sleeping. In moving on to issue three, the upcoming Bitcoin of havening could have this effect on your holdings. Yes, it's the pine of the year where we talk

about nothing, but the havening for the next year and a half. Yes, the Bitcoin havening is coming in March 2024, not 2023. But we're still going to talk about it all year long, because the amount of Bitcoin being produced reduces from something around six and a half to three and a quarter. An incredible reduction as if half of the Bitcoin miners suddenly shut off. Thus everyone

thinks increasing the value of their Bitcoin. Victoria Jones, what do you think about the Bitcoin havening only a year and a half away? Well, a year and a half is still a long time. I mean, considering that we're an all time high year ago and everyone's the most tuning, the fate of the Bitcoin bear market. I mean, it could be, you know, we could be, I

mean, I'd be surprised if we're higher. We're at a higher price this time next year than we are now. And I think we could go lower before that, because the thing is, you know, all of the macroeconomic factors that are going on, I think, is going to have a have a part to play. So, yes, the Bitcoin havening when we finally get there will definitely make

a difference with the price. But, you know, if you remember from 2020, I think the harving was in May, but it didn't, it didn't actually reach the previous all time high, high until towards the end of the year. So these things take a lot longer than people expect. And so, you know, and to constantly bond the edge of your seat is exhausting. It's just like, it's

just like, buy a bit, you know, set up a plan to buy some Bitcoin once a month, and then go on and get on and do something else more interesting with your life. As fun as it is to talk about the price, but it is exhausting to constantly be monitoring the price charts and stuff. Yes, but the kids in the back are kicking the seat. Are

we there yet? Are we there yet? Josh, you're going to have anings coming soon. Surely this will fix everything. Are we there yet? Well, the Bitcoin harving, it's a cut above the rest. Hey, you wanted the puns. You wanted the puns. Yeah, I'm really looking for to and the thing is about the funny thing about the Bitcoin harving is actually, it's all priced. It's in right

because everyone knows it's coming. But I think right now is when it starts to start pricing in, you know, this is when they start to talk about it when people say, Oh, okay, and when they learn about it. So there's now going to be half as much. And so it's, it's the time now to start, I think, not financial advice, but now is the time when

people will start to price in the next harving. And then, generally, I think, I think, I'm going to have a lot of money. And generally, what happens is it's with miners is that happens that the big boom happens about six months, like, like Victoria mentioned, about maybe less three months or something like that after the harvinging that because miners have to hold because Bitcoin, it's never

enough to pay for the electricity. So they have to hold it until it's worth more for the electricity. And if there's a harving, then they have to hold it for longer. And that's the thing. So that's sort of spurs on a spurs on a bit of a boost. And then, and then other people pile into that boost and start buying and buying and start getting these

rockets. So on. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Not only for the, for the price pump, but what I like about the price pump when it happens is that all the businesses start to do well again. You know, in terms of Bitcoin, like the startups in the space, the people hiring the people building stuff start to showcase what they've built through the through the bear

market. So, I think that's the reason why I think that's the reason why I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, harving is coming. It's going to be exciting. Can't wait to talk about it every week. Dan, Eve, surely this time, it must be different this time. Everyone knows that the harving is happening, that it's coming, that it can't be changed, that no matter the economic conditions, the

amount of Bitcoin being produced will go down by half. Well, I say, say, the story of the harving, you know, as, as, as there's always been a pump after the harving and then before I think one of the last cycles we read a couple weeks ago is how around the bottom is usually around 15 months prior to the harving, which is pretty much right around about

now. So there's there's certain rules that Bitcoin has kind of the prices followed based on the harving schedule. But I do think that it's from a slightly, you know, from a slightly negative person or was pessimistic perspective, pessimistic perspective. If you think about like the harving schedule, there's, you know, the first harving, there was 10.5 million Bitcoin mines, when the harving happened from 50 to 25

Bitcoin. And that was so the actual, the percent, as a percentage of supply, it was, it was like 50, 50% of the, you know, 50% harving. But there was only 10 million Bitcoin. So, so the impact of that harving was, was quite significant. So I think that's a big thing. We're going to be doing that. So I think that's a big part of that, you know,

I think that's a big part of what I'm going to do. Quite significant because the amount that was that was still being mine per day was quite a reasonable percentage of what the, the total floating supply was now, but the time you get to 2024 and we're at 3.125 Bitcoin per block, which is about 450 per day. That 450 is a percentage of supplies, only 3.13%.

So it's makes it much less significant than the previous harvings based on the current, circulating supply, which will be around 96.99%. So that's kind of, I think that's why I think there's, there's, you know, this is going to make a quite, it's going to make a bit of a difference still, but I think the, maybe the difference kind of wanes over time. And that's when the,

the fees start to take over, maybe, as, as the kind of the bigger minor reward, rather than the actual block reward, because it becomes, you know, it becomes such a significant, different, sorry, the significant, so, you know, the difference is, is lessened as the harving goes on. I mean, the harving after that in 2028 is going to be 1.56 Bitcoin per block, which is 225 per

day, which is really insignificant, because the, compared to the 98% of Bitcoin that would have been mined by that time. So I do think as much as I believe in the harving cycles, I think that the impact made drop a little bit. But also the fact is that, that the, the, the, the, the price of Bitcoin really needs to kind of keep doubling in order for

the miners to stay kind of profitable. Because if the rewards harving and, and the miners, bunch of miners go bust, et cetera, I think, you know, the price needs to be able to keep up with the decline in block rewards. Either that or the fee structure takes over, but we will, we will see, we will see. People have got to know Bitcoin are rare, they're getting

rare. And now it's your chance to pick. Against the Bitcoin predictor ball and predict the future. Let's see, Josh, the golly will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week. It'll be higher. It'll be higher. We'll be, we'll be higher. Victoria Jones higher or lower. I suspect marginally higher. Dan Eve higher or lower, everyone's pretending to be optimistic, but only for a

week. All right. And going higher as well. Actually, I think he's going to be a little, a little bit of high. But then I think we'll probably dip a bit before the, you know, January, because of taxes and stuff. He's hedging like a weathercaster. He's all over the place. Here we go. Shaking the ball could cause bubbles. Will the price of Bitcoin be higher this time

next week? My sources say no. My sources say no. The ball remains pessimistic, despite you puny humans and your optimism. Moving on to issue four back to F. TX Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda Chief and Gary Wang F. TX co-founder each pled guilty to multiple charges, perhaps hundreds of years of jail time and are now cooperating with the feds against Sam Bankman, freed. Sam Bankman, freed

has been taken to the United States quickly fitted with a ankle bracelet and then released to his parents. So we could have a Mary Mary Christmas at home in California. A top SEC official. The official is stepping down following controversial meetings with Sam Bankman, freed and F. TX lobbyists. Alameda wallets have just become active days after the bail. Duh, duh, duh. Could be trouble there as

the wallets are now moving millions of dollars around. And Sam Bankman, freed welcomes quote unquote sexy crypto journalist while under house arrest Tiffany Wang has visited the Sam at home in California to get the real story in person for you. Josh, she golly, what do you think about all these amazing updates on the F. TX story? Yeah, there's there's so much rot political rot and and

and such. And so it's I'm really hoping that some of that political rot will come out through through the process. But I, I'm not sure if I can do it. I also doubt it's interesting that the judge in the case is apparently the same judge that did the Galein Maxwell. Or was it Jeffrey Epstein? I think that it's the the attorney for Sam is the same

as just in the Maxwell. The judge fascinating enough as we have more fun facts for this case. She put up the $250 million bail, which seemed absurd that he was even getting offering bail. Then she quickly resigned because her husband had worked for a case in the state of the state. So I think that's the reason why he was involved in the F. TX. So minor,

the new judge, apparently the new judge was the one in charge of Epstein or something like that as well. I don't know. But, but anyway, it'll let's see how much comes out in the wash. I really, when I read stuff about the SEC and some of these regulators in bed, you know, and this is why it's defy is so important. This is why decentralized finance for

me is really a big big, big important step towards building something better because humans are fallible. Humans will will cave generally to corruption. Most 99.99% of the time. So even if there's high level regulators who are, you know, called your honor everywhere and and your excellency judge. So, you know, all of these people can be corrupted. And when Sam ran this huge Ponzi scheme and had

billions of dollars, you can really just pay off anybody. I mean, you know, someone that's earning 200K at the most as a judge or whatever it is, you throw a couple of million at them, they're doing what you want. And that goes for regulators as well. If you can make baits in there. And that's what Sam did. And I think that's what I think. And it's,

you know, what really frustrates me though is they'll say like, oh, he stepped down. Like that's like some sort of, you know, awful thing for him. What he lost his job, you know, I think the guy deserves a little bit more sort of heavy handed stuff than just losing his job. I mean, yeah. So I think I hope what will happen through these court cases. And

through this court case is, I think, I think, I hope that this is what I think is the best way to do it. Through the Twitter files and through all of the stuff that's happening that we start to get some real deep understanding of how far the tentacles of FTX went. And as well, how, how much corruption and how much rot there is throughout the entire

system. Unfortunately, Josh, I think you're going to find the corruption on both sides as SBF has said he donated to Republicans as well, although through quiet back channels. So I think they're both going to be corrupt. There I think trying to get this regulation as a defense against new competitors. So smaller players on the market would have to jump through regulatory hoops that a large player

like FTX with an army of lawyers and so forth. Could get by the thing I really worry about is the potential for Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison, whoever else goes in, ratting against Sam for them to get off relatively Scott free. It's interesting. The Caroline said, oh, I feel bad and oh, I took the money and oh, I knew it was wrong. But we're talking about

billions of dollars of people's life savings. If she gets three years, if she gets five years, it doesn't much matter if Sam gets 250 years. If we're letting everybody else go Dan, Eve, Gary Fong went to math camp with Sam in high school, he was his college roommate and Sam said, Gary is scared. And now Gary is gone rat along with his ex girlfriend. I think

the situation sucks in general, but a lot of people that they lost a lot of money in FTX. I see him walking around, you know, fair enough, he's got an ankle bracelet on, but he's sat in a multi million dollar home. He gets to have the internet. He, you know, he fair enough, he's saying, oh, you know, I feel sorry for what I've done, which is,

you know, less than what I want about show remorse, but you know, to get a lighter sentence or whatever. But the fact is that he ran a very messed up operation. And the idea is, that Caroline and Alison and Wang can, can, can, can, can, Gary Wang can, you know, can essentially become snitches and get lighter sentences, even though they did it's pretty much the same

crimes, right? You know, the three of them did, they're all tried for all, I think, or bar a few different other crimes that, that's SPF is, are added to his sheet. They all did pretty much the same thing. I mean, they're all running, you know, they knew exactly where the funds came from, where they were going, they're all, they're all complicit with it. There's, you know,

this, this new craziness that funds are moving around from, from Alameda. Obviously, people speculating the SPF because he doesn't have any restriction on the internet or anything. He can still, you know, he can interact with the outside world. And he can, he is the one that's moving those funds. And he seems like such a brazen cocky, kind of guy, having done his, his, his round of

interviews that it probably, it sounds quite unlikely that he would be the sort of guy to be like, well, I'm just going to move the money and fuck it, you know, the, the, will they find out? I don't know who cares, you know, that sort of thing or I'm going to jail anyway. So I might as well funny fun all the money off. Yeah, it's basically,

he used things like he has services, whoever it was, he's changed now and, and fixed. So he could be siphoning money. It could be obviously siphoning money to be able to pay off certain people in certain places before he goes down and his internet is taken out. So I think I really don't think you could, you can trust him. And the more I look back and

watch those, those interviews and like with the one where the guys like, this is San Benjamin free. He's like, really generous billionaire. And he like gives him $100 or something. The more seedy, the whole thing looks, and I thought, I look back and I'm like, oh my God, I literally was, was, was, was suckered in by the fact that this guy could actually be a nice

guy. Like he's just, he's just the same as, as everyone else. Yeah, you, you drove around in a, in a Toyota Prius or whatever it was and sniff his own parts and all that. The fact is that it was that just in South Park. The fact is that he's a very shady character. And he did, and he, he's screwed with a lot of people's money. And

so it's very sad to see him with these kind of light restrictions. And I did also read that the 20, the 10% of the 250 million, which should have been 25 million. He didn't even have to, he didn't post the full amount. I'm sure I read that it was ended up being just the, the, the, his parents house and someone and someone else's house, maybe a

family members house that was put up for the bond. And so he didn't even need to meet that requirement. Like the, the, the guys like a complete fraud stone and very evidently so by his own admission, mixing customer funds. So on the, was it the coffee zillip podcast? So yeah, it's just a sad situation really. And, and whether or not, you know, the, the fact is,

whoever regardless of who he, he donated to, we, you know, we need to stop this corruption. I mean, I don't live in the US, but I'm sure it's always how it happens over here. But there needs to be more transparency with politicians and, and donations because, yeah, it's very clear from the outside, or at least it very much looks that way that the outside that politicians

still can be very much bought. And that's not how politics should work. No, politicians should be able to be bought. There should be making the decisions based on the right, the, you know, for the right of the people, not the right of themselves and, and enriching their own lives. So very, very bad sand, backman free, very bad, Gary Wang and very bad Carol I don't, and

everyone's pension, steals all the money, kind of laughs about it. Whereas a t-shirt and shorts the whole time. And now he's been visited at home by beautiful crypto currency journalist, Victoria, what do you think about Sam Bankman, freed? And the easy times he's had since he's been arrested, had the nice jail room in Bahamas, got to go to his parents house in the US. It seems

pretty sweet. Got vegan food. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing just smells terrible, doesn't it really? And I mean, when I heard about Carolyn and Gary kind of caving, I was just like, these guys, considering there were meant to be running the best crypto exchange on the planet, are clearly not very smart. They've never studied game theory. I mean, like the number one number one and

game theory is the prisoners dilemma, you know, you don't rat out the other person if you want to survive. I mean, these people are just, I just don't believe that this sophisticated setup was run by these three. I think they're popping up. I think there's way, way, way more to this than any of us realize because they're clearly really weak characters and not very smart. You

know, I think they were just set up as the full guys. I think there's something much deeper, much bigger going on. And if they're going to investigate anything, I hope they get to the bottom of it. But, you know, evidence suggests they're not going to. I mean, you know, they can arrest and prosecute, prosecute, dislay Maxwell, but there were a whole host of other people involved

with Jeff, Jeff Riapstein. You know, and what was going on there and we've not seen anything else, you know, connected to that. So I don't have much faith. I mean, I think they've just been set up as the full guy. And it's like over Christmas, I watch national treasure again with my, with my family. And of course, at the end, the CIA guy goes, someone has

to go to prison. So, you know, they may not, they may not be their perpetrators. But as long as they've got someone for everyone to project their hate act, then whoever's getting away with it behind the scenes. And I think the whole thing is, is happy about that. And I actually feel sorry for these kids. I think they've been completely set up. They were completely unprepared

for this position. Yes, they've done bad things and they didn't have a strong enough moral character to say no and not get involved with it. But God knows what's happened to them in their past, which has resulted in that. I mean, I think the whole things just complete tragedy for them and everyone else has lost money as a result of them. And you know, the entire

industry, I mean the only blessing in this situation is the fact that it's happened now. So, I don't know if we've got any other side than further along the line. And this gives an opportunity for people to see exactly the kind of corruption that happens with these organis systems. Because you know, what's happening on this exchange is similar to what's happened with other banks and the

past like Enranon. I still think the simplest solution might be the best one. And that's that they're just idiots. If you look at average intelligence, that means half the people are dumber than average intelligence. I don't think they'd ever heard about the prisoners dilemma. I don't think they'd ever seen movies or good mob movies that would have helped them work through these ideas in their mind.

And I don't think they tried to stick together at all. If you look at that strange interview where Sam Brankman Fried says Gary is worried. Gary is afraid. He knows his buddies worried yet he's not over there comforting him. He's having these ridiculous Twitter spaces on the internet. And we don't know anything about Caroline except the strange blog interview she gave. But other than that, she

seems very sharp. Probably got a holder herself quick and was up there trying to rat out her boyfriend and just ride this thing out. You know, just rat him out till the end. So I don't know. I just I think they should receive significant punishment as well. You can't just be driving this car at the front and then say, well, he was driving. We had nothing

to do with it. They were right there the whole time. Exit question, predict the future. Will we see a Sam Brankman Fried? Will he run? Will other things happen to him? Josh Sugala predict the future? I don't I don't think he'll run. I think there's too many cameras pointed at him. I think but but I do agree with Victoria. I think they are really they don't

they're not clever. Sam, if you ever see him, he's like the shaking mess from all the pills. He's popping all the time. I just don't think he's. I do. I also agree. I think there's something a lot more. I'm not to say that they're not guilty that they shouldn't be punished because they're obviously smarter than just absolute. Patsies, but there is some bigger, bigger hands holding

those puppet strings, I think, and and playing this full game. Yeah. I don't know. You know, Mr. Wonderful's there's stuff behind him and he would have brought people in Sequoia. How how did this these guys get all that funding? You know, it just none of it has never made sense. None of it has never made sense. How this thing came in 2017 through a bear market

became so big. After 2017, sorry, went, you know, when it started collapsing. And they got so big over that time. I don't I don't understand it. Mostly Ponzi mechanics, but but yeah, crazy. Crazy. This kind of amazing thing where people don't ask the basic questions. If you can get past a certain stage, where no one's asked the basic questions. So you just sneak right by. I

don't want to get too political here. But we have a situation in the US where a soon to be Congress person. He's been elected. George Santos has lied about his basic resume. He said he worked for these companies. He didn't work for them. He said his religious background was Jewish. Now he's saying it's Jewish. If anyone has done basic, and yeah, and it's just absurd, George.

I mean, the guy's he's just on his face. It's a liar. It's not a political question. It's just he was dishonest. And if anyone had done the basic opposition research, he also said he graduated from a college. He didn't graduate from. It's very obvious. But no one picked up the phone and called that college. No one picked up the phone and called those corporations and said,

hey, this guy worked care. These years we got him running for Congress. Nobody did that. And it's shocking that no one did that. But it's also incredibly possible. Like obvious mistakes are sometimes the hardest ones to avoid. A lot of these people, Sequoia or whatever, they said, oh, we figured the other company did the due diligence. We figured the other company did it. And yes, it

sounds very stupid, especially when they're investing millions of dollars of clients money. But these kind of stupid things happen. Dan Eve predict the future. What will happen next in FTX soap opera? I'd like to think that there's going to be. So I do personally, I do think that the SBF and his co-conspirators were just kind of naive kids that, and I've seen many of them along

the way, they're like kids that just became multi-millionaires overnight, not really level. But they kind of just didn't know what to do with the money and how to really be safe with it. And to have, it sounds like they didn't even have FTX didn't even have like a fine enhanced department or something. I'm pretty sure I read something ridiculous like that. So, you know, they're. They

grew really fast and they didn't have the infrastructure in place in terms of, you know, AOL procedures and all of that, which made them fail ultimately because they probably arrogant. He thought to themselves, we can deal with it. So I think it's very much meteoric rise and then an arrogant level of stupidity that led to all these, these blunders and just you know, we'll get away

with it. We've got our hands in, in, in, you know, politicians pockets on both sides. So we're definitely covered. We've got like those the insurance policies. They've paid up so many people. I think you made a good point about the fact that once someone big goes in, other people don't tend to do research. And when I was sucking into ICOs in like 2017, the first thing

you'd ask is like, Oh, is, you know, who's invested in them as you know, is the three-hanging capital in the world or whatever. You know, like you, and as soon as someone hears the name, you'd hear people just like APID and be like, Oh, cool. Well, they must have done the due diligence. So, you know, there's no point in us doing it. And that's how we've

saw, saw a lot of people get very close to SBF, politicians and, and people in the regulation, the regulatory alike, you know, and get genders are himself. Be interested to see what his links are because I'm sure he's linked fire, fire sampling or something like that or MIT by relatives or something that seems like he could be not necessarily in any way involved. But, you know,

maybe his, his, involvement would lead him to kind of be, be end up in the shit about it. But it just sounds like it seems like if, if, if, Wang and Ellison snitching they'll get reduced sentences. So they could end up coming out of this quite likely, which would be sad because they, as you said, they've got pretty much the same charges. But there's going to

be other other dominoes that are going to fall with this, you know, three, just three people falling. This is a big kind of case for the industry, right? It's the biggest crypto scam in history. So there's going to be, you know, they like they made an example of Charlie Shren back in the day. They're going to be going after, going after blood. So be interested to

see what the domino effect of this is and how this cascades out and the ripples. We see any other people kind of going down from regulatory perspective or politicians, you know, especially if it's true about hiding, hiding dirty money. Yeah, this, this could be like a big, big kind of tsunami event rather than just a wave. Well, Gensler is connected to the whole mess. He was

taught by Ellison's father. So Ellison's father was also a professor. He was kind of a mentor to Gensler. But again, that doesn't mean a complete corruption or whatever. And the interesting I thought as well, Dan, is that they also, they didn't just pay off the US politicians on both sides. They also paid off the Bahamas government. And remember, during the initial phases of the collapse, the

people that were allowed to withdraw their money were the people in the Bahamas, which everybody giggled to themselves and laughed. They're like, oh, yeah, that's really smart. You know, you want to make sure those people are happy because they could come and get you in person. So they are at least smart enough to do that. We'll have to see how it goes in the end of

Victoria. I guess exit question to you. What do you think about the future of SBF and the exciting soap opera we've had so far? Well, I reckon there'll be a big case that gets worldwide attention and some bankman feed will go down for several years. And then a few months after that, we'll all be debating on Twitter how some bankman feed didn't kill himself. Oh, come

on, just because it happened once doesn't mean it'll happen again. I think it's more likely thinking about the way things go. There'll be a quick books commercial in San Bakemund, Fried's future. And he'll say, I ran a billion dollar Ponzi, alleged Ponzi on QuickBooks. QuickBooks is good. It's good enough. And they'll talk about all the great features QuickBooks have and we'll say, how could that happen?

How could they just let him back in and Mr. Wonderful invest for a new company for him? But we're running out of time. Josh, the dollar, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? Go ahead. No, I really don't have any stories where well, the stories I've just been actually taking a little bit of a break for the last week, two weeks.

And I'm really looking forward to getting back and hitting the year running around January 5th or 6th or 7th. And just I'm just really enjoying repowering up, powering up, recharging the batteries. You're all the way down under where hamburgers walk on their feet and the water runs the different direction and all that stuff. Yeah. Merry Christmas to all and a happy new year. Yeah, it's absolutely.

But Dan, what do you have a prediction or a story of the week? We're getting to the end of the year. Um, oh, okay. So the end of the my prediction is I'm with Victoria on this. I think that he's got his fingers in a lot of dirty pies and he's going to be found in this cell choked on a vegan sausage or something crazy like

that. Yeah. Or maybe he just manages to pay everyone else off and gets broken out of his cell or something. No, I think morally, morally he might want to do it to himself. I don't think it's a big conspiracy. I think it's more of a moral issue when, when one realize what's happened to oneself. Whereas in the other case, the person didn't really have those kind

of potential morals. This is still a young kid. You know, he just took their money. You didn't do all this. I think that if he gets something crazy sentence like a hundred, a hundred years or something, then, you know, then he, uh, he, he, I don't think he's going to, it depends kind of what sort of what prison he ends up in, right? But he doesn't

seem like the sort of kid that's going to, you know, you, you can't really imagine him like coming out tops in like the Shawshank redemption, you know, amongst the prison folk. You know, who's he going to go and hang out with in his orange jumpsuit? He's got, you know, the hackenords or something like that. There's going to be, you know, the, apart from that, he, I

don't know, he's not going to sit fit in very long fit him very well. And I think, uh, yeah, he might have to eat himself. Nobody knows. John McCaffrey also seemed like a really tough guy, but he didn't want to tough it out in prison. I think it's interesting. Dan thinks it would be because of the hundred years. I think it would be because of the

psychological pressure of losing so many people's fortunes. Other people seem to think it would be because of the conspiracy or so forth. Victoria, a story of the week or a prediction. Go ahead. Um, well, I'll go with this story. So, um, I've been on quite a few podcasts lately. So, um, I was on one with Daniel Prince, who runs the Wantsbitten podcast. And his most recent,

his most recent interviews with Michael Sailor. So I felt in very, uh, esteemed company there. Um, and I've just another one, which was four hours long, but it's not going to be released until March. So, um, yes, so I'm starting to ramp up, you know, some of the podcast interviews, which, um, you know, is very exciting. So, um, yeah, we'll just see where that develops. All

right. And I think we're ready for a new year. This is going to be our last show of the year. We tried to cram as many shows as we could to the end there. Uh, check out our year ends, spectacular last week. We predicted everything and told you about the past year. And then even for more fun, you could go back a year and see the

prediction special where we're all happy. Where we're like, oh, there's advertisements about Bitcoin on TV and it's good. And NFTs are good and everything was great last year. So hopefully we'll turn around next year. And if not, we'll be here saying the same thing. About the happening in about a year. So thanks to everybody for giving us a thumbs up and subscribing down below. Until next

time. Bye. Bye.