Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Going to Zero
McIntosh and Kenshin discuss the recent Bitcoin price drop, market volatility, and why Bitcoin is not going to zero. They also share updates on mining, mempool congestion, and upcoming events for the podcast’s 200th episode.
Bitcoin Price at Time of Recording
February 26th, 2025: 83,657 USD | 79,500 EUR
Block Height at Time of Recording
885,450
News and Notes
German Elections
Ukraine/Russia Peace Deal?
Software Updates
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/bisq-v1-9-19-bisq2-v2-1-6/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/alby-hub-v1-14-2/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/robosats-v0-7-4-alpha/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/vls-v0-13-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/blitz-wallet-v0-4-1-beta/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/grain-v0-3-0/
Episode Page
https://satoshis-plebs.com/episode-198
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Website
https://satoshis-plebs.com
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
McIntosh can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. His mastodon handle is @[email protected] and his Nostr. Kenshin can be reached on Twitter at @kenshin_ninja or on Nostr. Kenshin’s email is [email protected]. You can also follow the Satoshi’s Plebs podcast account on Nostr. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
What is up, Pleb nation? Today is February, and this is episode one ninety nine of Satoshi's Plebs. That is amazing. I am Mcintosh.
[00:00:11] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin, and this episode is going to zero.
[00:00:41] McIntosh:
Awesome. Awesome. Alright. A 99. That just boggles my mind. Next episode is our big 200. So, we we'll be talking about that in a few minutes. Actually, I don't have that on notes, Kenshin, but we do need to talk about that, what we're gonna be doing, and we'll get to that shortly. But before we do, let's talk about Bitcoin price, and let's talk about kind of our main topic of today's episode. As I look out the window right now, I see the sky is falling, and the end is near. We are actually right now, I'm gonna adjust this on the fly. We're at $83.06 57, for Yes. For,
[00:01:29] Kenshin:
US dollars. And you've got And I I just saw the European price, $79,500. So below 80,000.
[00:01:39] McIntosh:
70 9. Mhmm. Ayaya. So, let me update this real quick.
[00:01:48] Kenshin:
But, Mcintosh Yes, sir. I checked something else. I saw that 1 Bitcoin is still 1 Bitcoin. What?
[00:01:55] McIntosh:
That's shocking. And one, this one, sir. You heard correct, sir. And we'll get there. We'll get there. Don't let the cat out of the bag. Come on. Now that was the punchline. No. I'm just kidding. Our block high pass we record, eight eighty five, four fifty. So TikTok next block, they're coming. Let's see. Are they coming less than ten minutes or more than ten they must be coming more than ten minutes. No. We're right at zero right now. So ten minutes. If they did the difficulty adjustment right now, it would be point zero eight up. But that's eleven days off. Who knows what'll happen between now and then? So that's March.
So we've got over a week, until that happens. So for right now, we're kind of dead even ten minute blocks. They just keep happening, you know, regardless of what's going on in the world with the price of bit coin, any of that, they just keep going. And to wrap this part up, we'll talk about our fees real quick. Six, six and seven sets per v byte. So low, medium and high priorities. I would say, Kenshin, traffic has picked up. Is that a fair statement?
[00:03:11] Kenshin:
I mean, the mempool is 450 megabytes right now from basically zero a couple of weeks ago. So, yes. And there are 90,000 transactions in the queue. So we are definitely picked up the the traffic.
[00:03:28] McIntosh:
It does seem to be pay even though the price is falling, traffic is picking up. I don't know. I don't make the rules. I just tell you the data. But if you're doing things such as moving things to cold storage and this kind of thing, you probably wanna go ahead and get that done because, it could get more expensive over time, certainly. So, what is going on in Sweden, sir?
[00:03:54] Kenshin:
Well, it's, very, very busy lately. I do remember the last day that I sat down and relaxed. So I but I'm thinking of it like it's proof of work. Sometimes that proof of work is happening in the fiat world, so that's a bit right now, it feels a bit like a waste of energy, but it's still proof of work and doing what's best for for home, for, yeah, for their work and for the future.
[00:04:27] McIntosh:
Okay. Very cool. I was I had a little announcement. I was gonna say all my miners were online, and then I looked at my miners and they're not online. And I don't understand why. I actually have a large number of them down. I hope that that data center is down for some reason. Don't know. I'm a little behind on paying my bills because we were having a disagreement about that in regards to the three miners that were offline for weeks and weeks. I hope they haven't taken some stupid preemptive action without asking me anything. I got no notice of it. I don't think that's the case. It most likely is just the data center or something along those lines.
So all my miners are not online yet again, but we chug on. Ocean, on the other hand, has actually been doing pretty good these days. I I count in. Sorry.
[00:05:30] Kenshin:
Oh, no. I just left Austria, and now it's doing pretty good.
[00:05:34] McIntosh:
I counted 16 blocks since the February 1. So, that's just the way it is.
[00:05:43] Kenshin:
Well, I have an announcement too then. Oh, you're going back to it. I still No. I still have in mind the block. I check every morning.
[00:05:56] McIntosh:
I know you do. It's automatic. It comes up and it says, I still haven't mined a block.
[00:06:02] Kenshin:
Exactly. It's gonna take two thousand years.
[00:06:06] McIntosh:
Look, Kenshin, let's let's be honest. If you mine a block, you're not getting on this podcast and recording. You're gonna be off having a good time.
[00:06:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I don't think I would admit it publicly.
[00:06:18] McIntosh:
That would be a really sweet wait. You literally have a bot posting that you didn't mind a Bitcoin. Come on now. Doesn't it actually say
[00:06:29] Kenshin:
Is it automatic or is that you? It is. Right. No. No. It is automatic. But if it finds a block, the text is not I found a block that takes something like, wait. Maybe
[00:06:41] McIntosh:
something happened. Maybe something like that. Maybe I went out on a boat and lost my keys.
[00:06:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. There is a reasonable doubt there.
[00:06:50] McIntosh:
Oh, boy. Okay. Alright. Well, let's get this show on the road. We've got things to talk about. We did get off a little bit to a late start on our recording. So, Sorry. No. It's not. We're still sort you know, Kenshin and I are pretty early at this. I think you said this week, a hundred and 80. Is that when you actually joined? I did not Eighty two. '80 '2 something like that. I rounded it down. Yeah. It's been a few months, but we're still sorting out technical details even of kind of how we record. It's tricky. I mean, let's be honest. Everybody had when you are recording this far apart, everybody has to have good latency.
Everybody you know, your setup has to be perfect. I've had issues with Tailscale, for example. I had installed Tailscale to do some testing or whatever, and the darn thing was it botched up my whole setup. And until I went in and figured that out, we were stuck. Ideally, we had we would have, you know, dedicated setups. At this point in the game, that is just not possible. So, you're on my MacBook here. I don't know what you're using. I know you run Linux, as as good people do. I, on the other hand, run OSX because I'm just kinda trapped there. Boom. Yeah. I would actually like to try is Asahi. I I can never say their name right. Linux. So they're the ones that are building the Linux for the new m chips, okay, the that Mac is using that Apple is using for their Macintoshes, I I should say.
And they look like they're doing some really good work over there, But there are things I have to run on this laptop. It's unfortunately not just my dedicated laptop. It kind of gets used for some other things. So I can't just do that, even though I would like to. I do run Linux. I'm on Linux twenty four seven at work, but, I have a little server here at home that's mine that I run Linux on. That was running Ubuntu. No, No. Wait. They've no. It is running a bun too. Sorry. I'm running next Linux on a VPS. Next OS. Right.
Which is hey. Hey. This week in Bitcoin or not Bitcoin. This week in Linux called, they want their show back. Hang on. Let's get this back on course. Sorry. What were we talking? Oh, yeah. That that was it for me. I mean, honestly, it's just been working and, yeah, trying to get these miners back online. Nothing nothing special. Where are we going from here, boss?
[00:09:45] Kenshin:
Well, 200 next week. Right. Let's talk about that. I'm thinking we should do something special. I think we should.
[00:09:52] McIntosh:
I'm thinking on Nostra or something. That's a brilliant idea. Maybe a Zapathon?
[00:09:59] Kenshin:
Yes.
[00:10:00] McIntosh:
And let's just go ahead and let everybody behind the curtain because we have not decided how much we're actually gonna boost out. So let's have that discussion. I was thinking 21,000. What do you think?
[00:10:13] Kenshin:
Each. Yeah. Each?
[00:10:15] McIntosh:
Well, people have to show up then. I mean, we tried that. I think they will. You think they will? This is your call to action, ladies and gentlemen, in case you did not know. Okay. We we're going to be doing a Zapathon with the next episode with the release, which will be next Friday, morning, both US time and European time. So I will post it around, I think, 1AM, Friday morning. So it's like eight a. M. Central, European time. And we will start the boosting Kenshin will start boosting because at that point I will be in bed, hopefully. And then when I get up and get rolling about my day, I will start boosting as well. We'll divide up 42,000 sats.
I'm sorry. I'm having trouble saying that. 42,000 sats, between the two of us and we'll we'll boost. I do you wanna do the same rules as last time? Are we gonna change those? I I think we should do 420 for everybody. For everybody. This man is trying to spend our money.
[00:11:30] Kenshin:
So hopefully we get 100
[00:11:33] McIntosh:
people. Who's. So that would be 100 people. The first hundred win. And I would highly encourage you, ladies and gentlemen, if you if you've not used Nostra, it's time to take a look at it. You know, that's your business, but you need to get a Nostra account. You need to set up a wallet so that you can receive a zap. Those two things. We have a page at satoshis-plebs.com/noster, if I'm not mistaken. That's a walk through of a setup for CoinOS. Right? Coin IO CoinOSIO? CoinOS. CoinOS. Dot I 0. Leave it to the American to butcher the English language.
[00:12:19] Kenshin:
An even easier way is to go to primalprimal.net.
[00:12:24] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:12:25] Kenshin:
Okay. Just make an account there. Use their built in. They have a built in. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Don't pay any premium. Just free. And that's it. Cool. That's the easiest way for someone who doesn't know or care about.
[00:12:41] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:12:42] Kenshin:
Doing the details. Otherwise, you can do it on coinos.io. From there, you get your nostril credentials and the Lightning Wallet, and then you go back to something like Primal or any other nostril app to put those credentials in. And those details are in the in the website
[00:13:00] McIntosh:
as you said. Very cool. Thank you. Alright. So that's gonna kick off our two hundredth episode. I hope you will join in. This is, I think this is a way a couple of things to give back to the community. I also think it's a way to get some people on Nostr, which is something that I'm interested in as I know you are Kenshin, and we'll see how it goes. So you could get some sets, and join Nostr and see what decentralized
[00:13:29] Kenshin:
social media is all about. And we will do it even more simple this time. We should just say for people to leave a comment. I think that's enough. Last time we told everybody to repost as well. Maybe there was some, I don't know. Confusion? Some resistance
[00:13:47] McIntosh:
to Yeah. That was weird. Extra steps.
[00:13:50] Kenshin:
So when I did it personally, when I did the Zapathon Mhmm. There were more more than a hundred people that I zapped. I think a 50. So I know it's it's possible, but at that time, I just said to leave a comment below so I can boost you. And that was it. So I think that we can do that. Well,
[00:14:10] McIntosh:
alright. Let's do it. Well, this is all a grand experiment. It's only money. Right? It's only the hardest asset on Earth. Whatever. Alright. That's what we'll do. And, be ready for that, ladies and gentlemen. It is coming. And I have a feeling that it's going to go fast. What are we talking about today? I'm so confused. What's happening, Mike? What is happening? This is called a downturn.
[00:14:39] Kenshin:
I think we're going to zero. That's it. Pack your bags. We'll have to find a new new subject to talk about.
[00:14:48] McIntosh:
Well, we can talk about politics because everybody loves that. If we're going to zero, please sign over all your Bitcoin to me. Let me just give you an address and you just go ahead and send it to me. Alright. Because, I don't think we are.
[00:15:09] Kenshin:
And then I can buy buy it from you for a dollar.
[00:15:13] McIntosh:
In like as soon as we hit $1,000,000 of Bitcoin, you can buy it back. That is correct. Not right now. Yeah. So this comes up. I don't know. It started very early on, and it comes up over and over and over. And frankly, if you've been in the environment for a while, it's tiresome, because and I don't wanna be disrespectful, but you've heard it a hundred times. Bitcoin's going to zero. No. It's not. People are selling. I have no idea why. I suspect it's a combination of various events that are going on in the world. It's really difficult to pin it down and say it's this, it's that, or it's the other. People love to do that on Twitter, especially, to be honest.
And I think that's usually a mistake. There are times when very specific things can cause very specific reactions. If I bring up trading view, which I probably should have, I think we've been in this kind of pullback for a bit. It's not just been the last few days, and it's not even it's probably been more on the order of the last few weeks slowly. Does that make sense? And I'm gonna verify that.
[00:16:38] Kenshin:
Yeah. It's from January 20, I would say.
[00:16:40] McIntosh:
So that's a month. Right. Perfect. Thank you. I don't know, but I do know this. There's a couple of things. There's always people who are buying. Michael Saylor, he's a madman. Okay. He is spending money over there at what do they call it now? Strategy, that they have raised buying Bitcoin as everyone else is selling. He's buying and he's buying a lot of it. I do know that even though the ETFs are selling, we just had the single largest sell date for the ETFs that they since they came online. And that's fine because there are plebs like Kenshin and I who are buying. Does that make sense Kenshin?
[00:17:32] Kenshin:
Absolutely.
[00:17:34] McIntosh:
So Yeah. And
[00:17:38] Kenshin:
it was also a chart with most whale addresses, if we call them, with the most addresses buying Bitcoin.
[00:17:49] McIntosh:
So addresses over one Bitcoin or over 10 Bitcoin or something? I think it's actually even higher than that by quite a bit.
[00:17:57] Kenshin:
So those addresses were actually filling up Mhmm. Or accumulating a lot of Bitcoin these days. So it's probably the Wall Street digests that just dump it for some reason. It's been a year since they started, so maybe that's a good timing. It's been a year, and they have to do something with it. But, yeah, we're buying it back from them anyway.
[00:18:21] McIntosh:
You're you're absolutely correct. The high was on the January 20. We hit 110, one hundred and nine, almost 110. And so I guess it's been five weeks. And right now we're at the lowest that we've been in, gosh, since going back to what date is that? It looks like November mid November when we were going up. November 11. Yeah. According to Luxe algo, not trading advice, not anything. Okay. I'm just it's the tool I happen to have on here. It is on the daily chart. It is actually showing what this should be a bottom. And I will say that actually makes sense. And I'll explain why. I didn't even know that this was gonna show this until I opened it up.
But there is a support band, not a support band. I don't wanna call it that. There is a, moving it's called a moving average, a two hundred week or two hundred day. It's one or the other. I think it's two hundred day moving average, which for the first time just a few days ago got up above $80,000 Okay, so this is like a moving average that goes back 200 days. I don't I'm almost sure it's not two hundred weeks. Okay. This is actually a very important support area when you're in a bull run. We've now got down to it essentially. Most likely, it will hold. If it doesn't, I don't know. I have no idea. We may hit that 58,000 that the 58,000 tribe has been claiming.
I don't know, and I'm not gonna pretend that I do. I do have a suspicion that this is kind of the area that we're gonna start building some support and continue back upwards. If you look at the previous charts during bull runs, there are always drawbacks, 30% drawbacks, and we're somewhere in that range right now. I know we're at least 20%. Okay? And if you calculate, it's a 10, so that's 11. 30 three thousand would be 30. What's a 10 minus 33? 78 or something. So we're not to 30, but we're we're, you know, we're like 25 or whatever. It doesn't matter. This is perfectly normal. It happens every bull run and it shakes the weak people out.
Do not be the weak person. Do not. This is not trading advice. Obviously, we're not a trading show. I think I've stated that over and over. I'm just telling you if, what hit Kenshin? Help me out. What have we preached here week after week, year after year on this show?
[00:21:21] Kenshin:
Yep. Stay humble, stock sucks. Right. I wish I had more fiat money right now. It's like it's on discount. It's simple as that. It's it is. It's a discount. It's a discount.
[00:21:34] McIntosh:
DCA. Right? Dollar cost average. You should not be trying to sell at the top and buy at the bottom or anything crazy like that. Just keep stacking those sats. If you have extra, frankly, this is a really good time to put those in. I will so I don't wanna give the news away, so I'm not gonna tell you. But one of our news items, I think, will actually when it gets formalized, will be the reason it I'm not gonna say that. I just said it's not almost never one thing, but it will be an impetus for this to to go up. Does that make sense? I hope that does. We will see. We'll see. You don't agree, do you?
That's okay. I I I think it's going to be very difficult to to go below this $80,000 level. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and we get cheaper sats, and that's the way you should look at it. Bitcoin's not going to zero. The millions and millions of Bitcoin miners are not shutting down, And there are people like Kenshin and I who will buy it at 100, at 80, at 60, at if Bitcoin got down to $10,000 again, Kenshin, I would do stupid financial things. Okay. I'm just going to be honest. I know what you mean. You know what I mean?
[00:22:58] Kenshin:
I know. I'm looking around. I've been like, how many chairs I have left? Exactly.
[00:23:04] McIntosh:
How much credit do I actually have? I did not say that. I'm just saying. But we're not. We're never going down to those levels again. But but there are people who would buy. There are a lot of people who would buy those levels.
[00:23:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. And another point is a lot of stocks are down now too. So it's it's not, just some Bitcoin. It's a a whole market. A lot of tech companies are down. Tesla is very down. Right. So
[00:23:38] McIntosh:
I wanna point out one thing about the stock market. If you take out, like, the top 10 stocks in The US stock market, the stocks market itself, And I'm talking about companies like Nvidia. I don't know. There's a there's a number. There's a small number of major companies who've done very well over the last few years. If you take that out, the stock market has not done good. Done well, sorry. English hard. You know, it just hasn't. And but you're right. It's not even though we're near all time highs, it's just kind of languished. It's not it's not done as well as maybe people thought it would after Trump came into office because, oh, new president, right, with all of his economic policies.
But to be honest, I think his economic policies, for good or for bad, have created a level of uncertainty. Mhmm. People are worried. What happens with tariffs? What happens you know, he's talking about abolishing the IRS, essentially. Now, I would cheer that. But it that talk creates uncertainty. And and I do believe that's bleeding over into the financial markets. And I heard on another podcast, he he did put this very beautifully. Bitcoin is the most liquid market that there is, and it's available twenty four seven. You could we saw it go down over the weekend. I if I'm not mistaken, can you do that with the stock market? No. It's closed on the weekend.
I mean, Bitcoin is open twenty four seven, so it acts as this indicator to an extent of what's going on in the rest of the market.
[00:25:34] Kenshin:
You know, I saw somewhere, someone did a comparison how many hours the stock market has been up, how many hours Bitcoin has been up trading. Everybody thinks the stock market is so stable and mature compared to Bitcoin. And it's actually Bitcoin has traded more hours than the stock market because Bitcoin is twenty four seven, three sixty five compared to the stock market. Which is,
[00:26:01] McIntosh:
it's either eight hours or even less. It's not it's like 09:30 to 04:30, maybe? Something like that. Six hours?
[00:26:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. But it's actually, Bitcoin has traded longer than the stock market, which is crazy. That is crazy. That is crazy. And one other thing I you were saying there about the tariffs and stuff. Here in Europe, I hear left and right colleagues, family members, oh, those tariffs. Oh, this Trump is gonna penalize us and things like that. So it's a big worry from people who don't understand how tariffs work. So it's a big, mainstream also news items about what's happened. So there is a lot of, as you said, fear and uncertainty about it. And I think that's feeding into all of this, and I don't wanna
[00:26:50] McIntosh:
I don't want to get down into tariffs and pros and cons or whatever. This is not that's not what this show is. But it does bring a level of uncertainty when someone who has such a large megaphone, which he surely does, is talking about these things. So we will see. We will see. I did actually just to maybe wrap this up, I did want to mention, obviously, Bitcoin is very volatile. We've had 25% pullback, at this point, assuming that this is the bottom and we now rebound and move back up. That scares a lot of people. That's that is volatility. And the volatility is other people have done very good talks about this. But volatility is because Bitcoin, we don't know the price level of Bitcoin.
And we're figuring that out. And that makes it volatile. That is that is in large part what drives the volatility of Bitcoin. Is it worth $50,000 Is it worth $100,000 Is it worth $200,000 We're going to find out. Now, based on what I know, what I understand, I think it's worth a lot more. But the volatility is the market trying to figure that out.
[00:28:20] Kenshin:
Yep. Does that Yeah. And yeah. One thing that Jack Mallers says that I really like is if it was if it was not volatile and it was flat, then it would be dead. It's like the heartbeat is right. It's alive. So that's a good thing. It goes up, it goes down.
[00:28:37] McIntosh:
I listened to his episodes. He has a weekly episode. I don't know what it's called. Maybe you could look it up real quick. But Man money matters. Money matters. It's a great it's unscripted as far as I can tell. He just kinda gets on there and wings it. He is the CEO strike. He started that company out of his bedroom a few years ago, and it is one of the leading Bitcoin companies that there is. His dad, I've from what I can tell was heavily involved in Chicago, trade, which I guess wouldn't be commodities and that kind of thing. So he has a very strong, smart financial head on his shoulders, if that makes sense.
And he knows how to speak. It's well worth a listen. Now I will warn you. He has, he says a lot of bad words. Okay? A lot. But if you can get past that, it's some great content. Yep. Mhmm.
[00:29:38] Kenshin:
To to close this segment also, I would like to say that, Bitcoin didn't need, governments in the previous cycles to to do with what it's done. And we're still, let's say, on, on a cycle similar to previous years. And even without the government, we would see those prices, and we could see a lot higher compared to the previous cycles. Even with all the talk about
[00:30:06] McIntosh:
sovereign wealth funds and this kind of thing, that stuff really is in its infancy. One of the news items this week, which I did not actually include, but a number like, I don't know, half a dozen of the state, the United States state governments voter voted on a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the state. They've all failed. They've all not gone through. We're early. I and people they they look at the price and they go, there's no way we're so late. We are 3%. We're not even 3% penetration right now. Not even. There is so much left. So we're like in everybody equates it to the Internet in 1994 when it kind of first became commercialized.
I actually disagree. I think we're back in the eighties. So the Internet was created in the seventies by DARPA. And in the 80s, people like me were hacking around on bulletin board services and Usenet groups kind of in and out of the internet. It was nothing commercial, but you could kind of see somewhat of where it was going. And then in the nineties, we started getting, you know, these early social media and certainly a lot of commercial website type stuff. I mean, Amazon started in the nineties and and so forth. But obviously, it's grown greatly since then, but it's also grown greatly in terms. Think about that. Back in the eighties, the kids like me who were hacking around on those BBS systems, man, they were like freaks.
I mean, let's be serious, Right? And I was one of them. But now everybody is you've got Internet on your phone. Who doesn't have a smartphone? If you don't have a smartphone, respectfully, let's just go ahead and call you a boomer. And I I don't mean that in a denigrating way because you must be because everyone else does. Even in Africa, it's crazy. You go to the Middle Of Africa and they'll have a smartphone. I don't know. We're early. We're early. Keep stacking those sets. Alright. Have we beat that to death? I think we have. I don't think we need I have a Go ahead.
[00:32:34] Kenshin:
I have a question for the audience.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
Terrific. Or
[00:32:39] Kenshin:
is anybody out there really worried if that Bitcoin is going to zero or something like that?
[00:32:45] McIntosh:
That's a good question, and I would love to hear it. And you don't even have to post your name. You can do it anonymous anonymously if you would like to. Again, English hard. I have worked I've struggles with words. I don't know if y'all figured that out or not. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Very cool. Mhmm. Alright. Where are we going from here? Let's talk about our supporters. Right?
[00:33:11] Kenshin:
Right. Terrific. We got some good support on Fountain. We got, Geek. I don't remember his, alternative name, display name. I just, see the username there. At Geek. He left 2,222 sets, a row of tags. He says, love the new music, gents, and great intro to mining discussion. Boosting a row of tags to help you guys on your next Zapathon. Well Thank you. Thank you very much. If there's any leftover, get Kenshin's grandma something nice. That's very very sweet. Thank you very much.
[00:33:53] McIntosh:
Oh, Kenshin's grandma will go down in history. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We also had some, some streaming, which was actually even as I gathered up these statistics still coming in. We certainly appreciate that. And we're at 2,630 sets total for the week. So thank you. That's what helps this show continue on. And we that money will get used for things like this Zapathon. I'll just be honest. It's not going in my pocket. Is it going in yours?
[00:34:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. No. No. Okay. I I just give it away on those three.
[00:34:30] McIntosh:
Alright. I got two news items for the week that I wanted to put in here, and I want this first one especially I'm going to I'm going to throw this out and I'm going to give you kind of what I see from the American media. And I'm going to put it that way very specifically because it's what it is. We get a just like the European media gets a tilted view of what's going on in Europe. We have a tilted view of I'm sorry. I think I said that all wrong. When I go to CNN or whoever, I get a view of Europe, okay, when they're talking about Europe. When when somebody in Europe like Kenshin goes to the European media, like you've shown me some of the stuff from Sweden, for example, you get a view of America.
Neither one of those views are actually accurate, to be honest. They're both, I think, distorted. Some of that prop maybe by choice. Now you can call that a conspiracy theory. Maybe it is. Some of it just because it's difficult when other countries speak other languages, they have other cultures, there's there's nuance, and it's difficult to understand that. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. So this first article is about Germany. You know, I have been on Germany here for years talking about their energy policy since back before the Ukraine war, when they were shutting down nuclear nuclear reactors and trusting on wind, solar and whatever.
But they shut down all the coal plants as well. Not a good choice, in my opinion. And I think the reality of what happened after that bore that out, their energy prices surged. They had trouble with getting enough energy and so on and so forth. They had an election and the results are in. And here's what the AP says. The Conservatives won. That's what it says. Now that's basically the depth. Let me actually bring this up. It's a little more nuanced than that, but it's not much. So what I would say is that prior to this, the left wing, was in charge of Germany.
Okay? And now my link doesn't work. Why is that? But kind of the more right of center gained a bunch of seats. The what they call the far right gained seats. But in general, the left lost, the right gained, and it looks like the right is going to gain control of their parliament. I think that's what they call it. Although, they have a German word, it starts with a b, Bundestag or something, I think. And I apologize. I'm sure I just butchered that. I don't know the word. I heard about Now Bundestag. Yes. But I don't know how to pronounce it either. Before we begin, you and I were briefly talking about this and you gave me some interesting insight. Please elaborate.
[00:37:53] Kenshin:
Right. Well, in general, Europe doesn't want the war, with between Ukraine and Russia to end, for some reason. So Sweden, especially, I see it even in my normal colleagues. No one wants the war to end. Everybody's terrified that, if there is any peace talks, and I got this directly from colleagues. If, let's say, they say, okay. Now we do a peace treaty or whatever, and then Russia will ignore it and come and kill us all, basically. That's that's exactly what they think. So it's like, no. We need to beat them. We cannot have any peace. And I I see the same from Germany that they want to spend another hour on O'Hara.
I don't know the numbers, but the huge amounts of billions of euros to to send to Ukraine to keep this coin. So that's that's what I see especially from those countries like Sweden and Norway. So I think it's very similar and those Nordic countries in Germany. Because they're so close
[00:39:03] McIntosh:
to Russia.
[00:39:04] Kenshin:
Yes. Yes. It's been like that. Yes. And in in Sweden also, they were saying, oh, we don't want to get to NATO, so we don't, yeah, make Russia upset or something like that.
[00:39:18] McIntosh:
So they've been saying that for a while. Can we talk about that for just a second? Because I actually think that is very important. We can't join NATO because that will make Russia upset. If you look at a map, Sweden, Finland, very close to Russia. Finland is on the border, right? Yeah. Hey, I got my job. See? Yeah. All right. Understand NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed after World War two during the Cold War because of Russian aggression. I think that's a fair statement. Russia, they created the Soviet Union. It's it's a thing. It was a thing. And when it broke apart in the nineties, late eighties, early nineties, I know in the early nineties, maybe '93, '90 '4 up to the mid nineties, there was an agreement that was made that the border countries, Ukraine included, would not join NATO. And the reason why is just because of what you said.
Put yourself in Russia's place. Try and do that, please. If you were them, your world has exploded. You've got all these border countries and this defensive organization, which you view as the opposing side. Would you want them right on your border in these former countries that you controlled Latvia, Ukraine, etcetera? No. And the agreement was they would not be allowed to do that. Now, Finland was not part of that. I'm almost sure. Well, Finland was not part of the Soviet Union. I know that. I don't think that agreement was ever made for Finland, but it would be the same idea. It is right there on the border. They probably would be very that would make them very tense. Okay. If that was a NATO country.
And yet, what have we heard for multiple years during this Russia Ukraine war? Ukraine Zelenskyy over here, let's be honest, begging to join NATO. And if that would have happened, I think it would have escalated the whole thing. That's my political opinion, and you can agree with it, not agree with it. But I do think that's where some of this thinking comes from, and I think that's important to kind of keep in mind as we're talking. I do think it's very interesting though that the end result of all this is we don't want the war to stop. Does that Yeah. That doesn't sit with me. It doesn't make sense.
[00:42:13] Kenshin:
No. It doesn't. And I I I don't like to talk politics with with people and in general Right. To be honest. But I I had this argument with a colleague, and we were out for dinner, so we started talking a bit more about it. And and I was a bit shocked because I said, I I don't care about this war. I I just want it to end. Right. And he didn't. He said, no. We need to beat him beat them. And I heard this from multiple people afterwards. And that's the the and that's the mainstream also. And I also see it from, like, for example, you know, Saab, the company.
Saab, that seems to make cars. Yes. And they make, what do they make? Weapons. They do. Whatever. Airplanes, fighter jets. Their stock was crushing down when, Trump was was about to be elected, things like that, because there would be the promise was to be peace. Mhmm. So they would lose their contracts or whatever. So their stock started going down, and they said publicly, they said, oh, no. How bad the war is gonna end. But now recently, like, how many days ago, like a week ago, their stock price skyrocketed again.
Right. Like a huge, huge amount from 200 up to 300, whatever that is, these, units. So a big increase. So things are shifting, unfortunately, again, And they're putting a lot of money, the European countries, and now we see that with Germany too. So they're putting a lot of money to to keep going with this score. And I hope
[00:44:04] McIntosh:
US I've got bad news for your colleagues. So our next bit of news and before we jump into that, so I do wanna mention this just as a little bit of a clarification or color. Personally, I abhor war. There is a war going on. People are dying. The only thing that's worse than what's going on right now is if it gets escalated. And instead of shooting guns and drones and small missiles at each other, now we start with cruise missiles who have, you know, nuclear small nuclear warheads on them. Okay? Because we can turn not we.
The Ukraine and Russia can turn each other into, you know, radioactive graveyards really quick. And you're not let's just to be clear, in case people forget their history, you're not just gonna march into Russia and conquer them, which as far as I can tell, would be the only way to stop what's going on without the use of nuclear warheads, without giving up or giving up land. Okay? Because there's they believe a lot of them believe that part of that Ukrainian region should belong to them. I'm not getting into that. I don't. But that's and they're willing to fight over it. Okay? If you remember World War two, Germany invaded Russia and marched a long way into Russia, and the Russians fought every inch of it.
That it's a huge country. You're not just going to conquer them like that. And rather than I see two results to this. And, man, I you could do that at the cost of millions and millions of lives, or we can stop and figure out how to settle this. Does that make sense?
[00:46:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, it's up to them.
[00:46:18] McIntosh:
It's up to both sides. I mean, it's it's It is. It's up to both sides. They both have to kind of come to the table on this. Well, they have. That's our next bit of the news. So I don't know what you're hearing. I'm actually very curious over in Europe. But yesterday, I the stuff started coming across the news on our major news sites that Trump, it looks like he's brokering a deal between the Ukraine and between Russia and that there is an agreement in place for, there's three things that are gonna happen. Okay? And you don't have to like them, and that's fine. Russia is gonna end up with some of these disputed territories.
The Ukraine, they're making a deal. And this sounds well, it is bad. I don't know. I don't know how to slice this. They're making a deal for mineral with The United States. Just to be clear, The United States has dumped somewhere between 303 hundred and $50,000,000,000 into the Ukraine in the last two years. It's an immense amount of money, and this is basically being viewed as a way to pay that back. So we're going to have U. S. Companies in there extracting the minerals and utilizing them. It's like a half billion dollar or half trillion dollar deal, dollars 500,000,000,000 to do this. Okay.
And that's basically payback. I mean, it is, for the money that we sent, which frankly, many times did not actually get to the people who needed it. There's a lot of corruption. And there's, and some of it's on The United States side. I just, and some of it's on the Ukrainian side. Okay. But a lot of this money did not get where it should have gone. But this is basically the way to pay it back. So Putin, Putin, Trump and Zelensky are coming together to make this deal. Nobody's going to like it. And maybe that's the way it should be. Okay.
[00:48:24] Kenshin:
That's fair.
[00:48:26] McIntosh:
I don't know. And I don't I try very hard as a bystander who who doesn't have skin in the game, as they say, to, you know, not be too judgmental. But I am extremely glad that this is over, and I do not understand why they would not other than for financial gain because we need peace. People need to stop dying, dying. When you're dead, you're dead. That's just the way it is. And there's been too many lives that have already been lost on both sides. So I am glad to hear that. And I do think actually, and I think maybe you disagree because you kind of laughed when I said this, what I alluded to this. I do think that when this officially gets signed, I know Zelensky is coming to Washington on Friday to put pencil to paper, essentially.
When this gets signed, I do think this will mark the bottom of this deal and will start going up. Why do you not think or do you think that's true or does that make sense?
[00:49:37] Kenshin:
I don't know. You don't. I I want to see it first to believe it. Mhmm. Because from what I see here, no one is taking this seriously, and everybody hopes that peace doesn't happen. So Yeah. I I don't understand. Until I until I see it's happened, I will believe it. And and from what I hear, again, I heard it's two days ago from another colleague. And, it's like, oh, don't you believe this Trump guy is gonna create peace? It's ridiculous. Something like that. I'm like, oh, it's not good. Oh, it's not good. We need to win. Something like that. So
[00:50:18] McIntosh:
I don't know. I hate politics. It's a dirty, stinky mess. Yeah. And but there's nobody else in this current environment who could broker this deal.
[00:50:33] Kenshin:
But one thing I just don't understand, where is Germany want to send those billions of euros that they they just talked about a few days ago, and where is Swedish defense are spending so much money in Saab all of a sudden? I mean, I don't that's what I don't understand. Everybody just keeps
[00:50:53] McIntosh:
wants to throw money around like that on on this war. Maybe that is actually why. Maybe they want to keep throwing money around that they don't earn, that they take from taxpayers. And if there's no war, there's no people ordering hundreds of Saab jet fighters to prop up the stock price. Right?
[00:51:16] Kenshin:
Did you hear the Germany Central Bank? They had the loss of was it €19,200,000,000 last year? It's one of the first time since the seventies, some something like that that they had such a big loss.
[00:51:31] McIntosh:
You mean like an operating profit loss? Is that what Yeah. Okay. No. I didn't know that.
[00:51:37] Kenshin:
€19,200,000,000, Central Bank of Germany.
[00:51:42] McIntosh:
It's a crazy world. It it's not changing fast enough for me. I would love to see better things faster, and I don't know if this is a better thing. I think it is. I think any time people stop pointing guns at each other, it's a better thing. We tend to talk better when we're not shooting at each other. Just saying, we will see. But yeah, we got to move on. I. Yeah. I probably need to cut some of that out. I don't know. It'd be hard to. Right. Should we do some software updates? I do want to do one more thing. Sorry. Before we go on. I've told y'all for years, I want your feedback, and I've told you that good, bad, or ugly, I want your feedback.
And we got some feedback this week. There wasn't a boost tied to it, so we didn't read it, during the supporter segment. But I do wanna read it or I do wanna talk about it, and I appreciate Kenshin, first of all, your, lovely answer. You did very well, and I do appreciate that. I wanna go ahead and read this, and we're gonna talk about it for just a minute. So, this came from somebody named Satoshi on, Nostr. Said enjoyed listening to a few episodes and like the format, which may be easier to digest for Bitcoin and Nostril beginners compared to other podcast. I do immensely appreciate that. That's kind of, I think, what we're evolving into our target market, maybe.
So I appreciate that. However, Macintosh is constantly interrupting you. He was directing this at Kenshin, which is not only improper behavior from a host, but highly annoying. It's fun to listen to Macintosh, but I would like to hear you finish your thoughts. Wish you guys all the best. So and then you responded to that. I'm not I think it's a well, no. It's not too long. Let me go ahead and read it. Thanks for listening. Yes. He does that, and he admits it himself all the time, which I do. He got used to recording on his own for the first hundred and eighty episodes, but he will come around slowly. Yeah. There's a lot of truth there. I appreciate that. I appreciate the honesty of the comment. Seriously, my first reaction was maybe human.
I was not happy about it because deep down I don't like being criticized. But there's there is a lot of truth to it, and I do appreciate the honesty that was put into the comment. It is something we actually do talk about from time to time, and I I wanna lay out a couple of things. It's very difficult in a podcast with host to kind of get this down. Kenshin and I had never talked, never met before we started doing this podcast. We're thousands of miles apart, which adds an issue of latency. And sometimes there are days when the latency is worse than others, and that actually complicates this. We actually maybe made an improvement today, which might help in the long term with our latency. We'll just have to see.
But I have thought I thought today in general, just the raw recording, it was actually better than normal. We're also doing some other things to help out with that so we don't step on each other's toes. But the reality is when it comes down to it and I'm editing the podcast and I do that, it's my responsibility. I cannot spend six hours editing this podcast I go through. I don't even take out all the umms anymore. I don't. And it's some people may agree with that. Maybe they disagree with that. I don't know. There are times when I do adjust kind of the audio overlap because it does just it happens.
But there's other times, when I I miss it or I just I don't have time to do it every as as well as I would like, if that makes sense. So I I do apologize. We are continuing to work on improving this podcast, and that includes the audio of it. That is actually very important to me. I I am an I'm an amateur when it comes to audio editing, but I am an audio person. Sounds the way things sound, the way way you hear it as a listener is actually very important to me. So I am always trying to improve that. So if you would give us some grace, bear with us, and I know you will, but I do think we will continue to improve on this area, if that makes sense. Do you have please add add to that.
[00:56:51] Kenshin:
No. I agree. And, yes, I agree that we are trying. And we have talked about it before that came on a few from the start, I think, from the first or second episode. So and we try to improve it with a few techniques here and there. And I agree. I think the latency is really bad. And even my wife told me one time, oh, but you take a long time to answer him sometimes. And I said, but it's not like that in reality. I said, it must be the latency.
[00:57:16] McIntosh:
Right. And that's actually actually the hard part because it's not necessarily you or I being so slow. It's just the latency that kinda gets built in, and it doesn't take very much. But I don't have time, and we don't have a tool right now that could just go in there and automatically clip that out. I've had people complain about how slow I talk because I'm from the South Of The United States, and that's just the way that we talk in general here. We're not it's funny, I go up north and people talk really fast and I'm like, man, can you, like, slow that down a little bit? You know, it's just the way it is. But maybe at some point we can get a tool that would actually help with that part of it. The overlap, that's just a manual process, and I don't think that's going to change.
So we have to work harder so that it doesn't happen in the first place. So we'll continue to do that.
[00:58:16] Kenshin:
Mhmm. But I I take it as constructive
[00:58:19] McIntosh:
criticism. And and and that is literally where I landed, you know, after I kinda went, you know, because it look. I'm human. That's just the reaction. It it it was just my first reaction. But I really do. I appreciate it. I thank you for that feedback. And we do want to hear your feedback, good or bad. Okay. So, yeah. Awesome. All right. Yep. Let's move on. We do want to do software this week, and we are an hour, although some will get cut out. But yeah, we do need to move it right along. So what do we have this week? Do you wanna kick things off?
[00:59:00] Kenshin:
Yeah. Let's move it a bit fast then. We have BISC. That's, a p to p exchange network. So they are up to version one point nine point nineteen and BISC two version two point one point six. And they just did some, security updates and improvements. Is this something that you liked on BISC?
[00:59:26] McIntosh:
Well, I did wanna mention there are two distinct products. So they've got a basically a version one and a version two. And so they're maintaining both of them. The version two, if you're new to BISQ, is probably where you wanna land.
[00:59:41] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Mhmm. Right. Yes. And is there any any of those features that caught your attention? No. Not in general. Not specifically. No. No. Just just keeps getting better and better. It seems and I can also take the next one. Okay. We have AlbiHub, version one point fourteen point two. And now they introduced the basic, swap functionality and some home widgets and more. And what caught my attention is this swap, functionality that, I was missing in AlbiHub. Meaning I don't know how I don't know how it works yet, but I will try it. So Do you know? Are you do you mean you're swapping from main chain to lightning? They added bolts exchange swap out option and bolts swap in dialogue.
So I'm not a % sure how it works, but I know it's a good feature from other apps. Very cool. I would just have to try it and I can give you a update next week on it. Okay.
[01:00:56] McIntosh:
Alright. So RoboSats is next on the list. Now they are still in alpha. I wanna mention that. But zero dot 74 is the version, and it's an Android app. I don't think it's on well, Android desktop. So right. No iOS. And this is another peer to peer app using the Lightning Network, for buying Bitcoin anonymously.
[01:01:22] Kenshin:
Mhmm. You can access it from the web, actually. So you can actually use it if you want. And they also have a Tor address. You can use the Tor browser. Nifty.
[01:01:35] McIntosh:
Alright. And then I do wanna talk about this one for just a minute. Did you have a chance to kinda read through this, Kenshin, this validating lightning signer?
[01:01:44] Kenshin:
No. Not yet. Okay. So
[01:01:47] McIntosh:
I've actually covered this in the past. I had forgotten when this first came out and literally just like two weeks ago or so, we mentioned that this would be a really good feature in lightning. And the problem with running a lightning node, you keep your keys on. It's like a hot wallet. They're on the server. It's unavoidable with the current setups. That's a bad security practice. That's not ideal at all. And it's one of the things it's actually the main thing that makes me very nervous about building a lightning node and putting some actual assets online. This is a way to, if I'm reading this correctly, to kind of solve that. It's a signer module so that your keys do not have to be on that server.
And the interesting thing is, drum roll, please, they're making a plug in for Core Lightning, which is the one that I'm interested in. So this is even though this is very much in beta, they tell you don't use it on main chain. And if you use it on main chain, don't put serious money on it. But this is something that as it moves into real production usage, I'm very much gonna be interested in and will probably implement on my lightning node. So I am super excited about that.
[01:03:15] Kenshin:
Nice. Then we have the Blitz Wallet, version zero point four point one beta.
[01:03:23] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[01:03:25] Kenshin:
And this is mainly performance updates, but it's a really interesting wallet. It combines lightning, liquid, and e cash.
[01:03:35] McIntosh:
So it brings everything together, it seems. So all those layer two. I I missed the e cash. I didn't I knew it was liquid, and I knew it was lightning. That's interesting. It is beta, so use caution. But then this is a wallet that you're running on your phone, essentially. So you really probably shouldn't have that much on it anyways. But yeah, very, very cool. I may have to try that one out. I've been looking kind of for an e cash wallet, and that may fit the bill. Very interesting. And then the last one I do briefly want to mention, there's a new ish, I would say, Nostra routing node setup. It's written and go. It's called well, I lost it. Where is it? Grain?
It was Grain, right? Yeah. Version zero dot three dot zero. If you are into Nostra things and you want to run your own router, this might be something you want to look at. It's a relay. They call it a relay, not a router. Sorry. Same thing, but whatever. I'm not a go person. This is probably not something I would look at. I don't understand Go. It looks like gobbledygook to me. But, yeah, try and keep up with those nostrils things. Alright. So as we are wrapping up, I did wanna mention real quick, this kind of been a hard topic. It's been a hard and not our actual topic itself, but all of this discussion about, you know, the Ukrainian war and just different things today. So I appreciate everybody taking the time to listen.
I you know, I'm sure everybody doesn't agree a % to what we the things that we're saying, and that's I hope that's okay. But that's just kind of I'd like to give these perspectives, you know, and and it's interesting to me at least how dramatically different things can be between The United States and Europe and trying to understand each other and trying to kind of figure this out, I think is actually very important. So I think it's part of maybe the service that we're providing here. I don't know. Anyways, why don't you go ahead and bring us on home, Kenshin?
[01:06:01] Kenshin:
Right. Great. Thank you for today, Markitos. Yes, sir. So if you have been listening so far and you like what you listen, we would love a comment, or a boost on Fountain or another podcast two point o app. There are plenty of podcasting two point o apps, and you can find one in podcastapps.com, in one word. There are plenty in for iOS, for Android, even web. And we actually started posting now on Nostra a few links. So I post a fountain link and the podcast index link so you can listen directly from the web and boost from there. So we do this as a value for value podcast, and that means that we try to offer value to you. And in exchange, we would love to get some value back in terms of, feedback, in terms of, sats, and overall discussions and and and contact with us.
We have, contact details in the description of the podcast. We have the website satoshis-plebs.com, and our contact information there as well. On Noister, we are, the Satoshis Plebs podcast, but we also have, let me find it. We have the Coinos address that is satoshis plebs, that's one word, at coinos dot io. If you search that on any NoStar app, you will find our profile. Right. You can follow us there, and you can participate in the upcoming Zapathons. And and actually, it's a really good place to have the discussions and comments. Right. Yeah. So thank you again, for this week. Have a lovely weekend ahead and a great week.
[01:08:04] McIntosh:
Alright. Thanks a lot. Talk to y'all later.
What is up, Pleb nation? Today is February, and this is episode one ninety nine of Satoshi's Plebs. That is amazing. I am Mcintosh.
[00:00:11] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin, and this episode is going to zero.
[00:00:41] McIntosh:
Awesome. Awesome. Alright. A 99. That just boggles my mind. Next episode is our big 200. So, we we'll be talking about that in a few minutes. Actually, I don't have that on notes, Kenshin, but we do need to talk about that, what we're gonna be doing, and we'll get to that shortly. But before we do, let's talk about Bitcoin price, and let's talk about kind of our main topic of today's episode. As I look out the window right now, I see the sky is falling, and the end is near. We are actually right now, I'm gonna adjust this on the fly. We're at $83.06 57, for Yes. For,
[00:01:29] Kenshin:
US dollars. And you've got And I I just saw the European price, $79,500. So below 80,000.
[00:01:39] McIntosh:
70 9. Mhmm. Ayaya. So, let me update this real quick.
[00:01:48] Kenshin:
But, Mcintosh Yes, sir. I checked something else. I saw that 1 Bitcoin is still 1 Bitcoin. What?
[00:01:55] McIntosh:
That's shocking. And one, this one, sir. You heard correct, sir. And we'll get there. We'll get there. Don't let the cat out of the bag. Come on. Now that was the punchline. No. I'm just kidding. Our block high pass we record, eight eighty five, four fifty. So TikTok next block, they're coming. Let's see. Are they coming less than ten minutes or more than ten they must be coming more than ten minutes. No. We're right at zero right now. So ten minutes. If they did the difficulty adjustment right now, it would be point zero eight up. But that's eleven days off. Who knows what'll happen between now and then? So that's March.
So we've got over a week, until that happens. So for right now, we're kind of dead even ten minute blocks. They just keep happening, you know, regardless of what's going on in the world with the price of bit coin, any of that, they just keep going. And to wrap this part up, we'll talk about our fees real quick. Six, six and seven sets per v byte. So low, medium and high priorities. I would say, Kenshin, traffic has picked up. Is that a fair statement?
[00:03:11] Kenshin:
I mean, the mempool is 450 megabytes right now from basically zero a couple of weeks ago. So, yes. And there are 90,000 transactions in the queue. So we are definitely picked up the the traffic.
[00:03:28] McIntosh:
It does seem to be pay even though the price is falling, traffic is picking up. I don't know. I don't make the rules. I just tell you the data. But if you're doing things such as moving things to cold storage and this kind of thing, you probably wanna go ahead and get that done because, it could get more expensive over time, certainly. So, what is going on in Sweden, sir?
[00:03:54] Kenshin:
Well, it's, very, very busy lately. I do remember the last day that I sat down and relaxed. So I but I'm thinking of it like it's proof of work. Sometimes that proof of work is happening in the fiat world, so that's a bit right now, it feels a bit like a waste of energy, but it's still proof of work and doing what's best for for home, for, yeah, for their work and for the future.
[00:04:27] McIntosh:
Okay. Very cool. I was I had a little announcement. I was gonna say all my miners were online, and then I looked at my miners and they're not online. And I don't understand why. I actually have a large number of them down. I hope that that data center is down for some reason. Don't know. I'm a little behind on paying my bills because we were having a disagreement about that in regards to the three miners that were offline for weeks and weeks. I hope they haven't taken some stupid preemptive action without asking me anything. I got no notice of it. I don't think that's the case. It most likely is just the data center or something along those lines.
So all my miners are not online yet again, but we chug on. Ocean, on the other hand, has actually been doing pretty good these days. I I count in. Sorry.
[00:05:30] Kenshin:
Oh, no. I just left Austria, and now it's doing pretty good.
[00:05:34] McIntosh:
I counted 16 blocks since the February 1. So, that's just the way it is.
[00:05:43] Kenshin:
Well, I have an announcement too then. Oh, you're going back to it. I still No. I still have in mind the block. I check every morning.
[00:05:56] McIntosh:
I know you do. It's automatic. It comes up and it says, I still haven't mined a block.
[00:06:02] Kenshin:
Exactly. It's gonna take two thousand years.
[00:06:06] McIntosh:
Look, Kenshin, let's let's be honest. If you mine a block, you're not getting on this podcast and recording. You're gonna be off having a good time.
[00:06:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I don't think I would admit it publicly.
[00:06:18] McIntosh:
That would be a really sweet wait. You literally have a bot posting that you didn't mind a Bitcoin. Come on now. Doesn't it actually say
[00:06:29] Kenshin:
Is it automatic or is that you? It is. Right. No. No. It is automatic. But if it finds a block, the text is not I found a block that takes something like, wait. Maybe
[00:06:41] McIntosh:
something happened. Maybe something like that. Maybe I went out on a boat and lost my keys.
[00:06:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. There is a reasonable doubt there.
[00:06:50] McIntosh:
Oh, boy. Okay. Alright. Well, let's get this show on the road. We've got things to talk about. We did get off a little bit to a late start on our recording. So, Sorry. No. It's not. We're still sort you know, Kenshin and I are pretty early at this. I think you said this week, a hundred and 80. Is that when you actually joined? I did not Eighty two. '80 '2 something like that. I rounded it down. Yeah. It's been a few months, but we're still sorting out technical details even of kind of how we record. It's tricky. I mean, let's be honest. Everybody had when you are recording this far apart, everybody has to have good latency.
Everybody you know, your setup has to be perfect. I've had issues with Tailscale, for example. I had installed Tailscale to do some testing or whatever, and the darn thing was it botched up my whole setup. And until I went in and figured that out, we were stuck. Ideally, we had we would have, you know, dedicated setups. At this point in the game, that is just not possible. So, you're on my MacBook here. I don't know what you're using. I know you run Linux, as as good people do. I, on the other hand, run OSX because I'm just kinda trapped there. Boom. Yeah. I would actually like to try is Asahi. I I can never say their name right. Linux. So they're the ones that are building the Linux for the new m chips, okay, the that Mac is using that Apple is using for their Macintoshes, I I should say.
And they look like they're doing some really good work over there, But there are things I have to run on this laptop. It's unfortunately not just my dedicated laptop. It kind of gets used for some other things. So I can't just do that, even though I would like to. I do run Linux. I'm on Linux twenty four seven at work, but, I have a little server here at home that's mine that I run Linux on. That was running Ubuntu. No, No. Wait. They've no. It is running a bun too. Sorry. I'm running next Linux on a VPS. Next OS. Right.
Which is hey. Hey. This week in Bitcoin or not Bitcoin. This week in Linux called, they want their show back. Hang on. Let's get this back on course. Sorry. What were we talking? Oh, yeah. That that was it for me. I mean, honestly, it's just been working and, yeah, trying to get these miners back online. Nothing nothing special. Where are we going from here, boss?
[00:09:45] Kenshin:
Well, 200 next week. Right. Let's talk about that. I'm thinking we should do something special. I think we should.
[00:09:52] McIntosh:
I'm thinking on Nostra or something. That's a brilliant idea. Maybe a Zapathon?
[00:09:59] Kenshin:
Yes.
[00:10:00] McIntosh:
And let's just go ahead and let everybody behind the curtain because we have not decided how much we're actually gonna boost out. So let's have that discussion. I was thinking 21,000. What do you think?
[00:10:13] Kenshin:
Each. Yeah. Each?
[00:10:15] McIntosh:
Well, people have to show up then. I mean, we tried that. I think they will. You think they will? This is your call to action, ladies and gentlemen, in case you did not know. Okay. We we're going to be doing a Zapathon with the next episode with the release, which will be next Friday, morning, both US time and European time. So I will post it around, I think, 1AM, Friday morning. So it's like eight a. M. Central, European time. And we will start the boosting Kenshin will start boosting because at that point I will be in bed, hopefully. And then when I get up and get rolling about my day, I will start boosting as well. We'll divide up 42,000 sats.
I'm sorry. I'm having trouble saying that. 42,000 sats, between the two of us and we'll we'll boost. I do you wanna do the same rules as last time? Are we gonna change those? I I think we should do 420 for everybody. For everybody. This man is trying to spend our money.
[00:11:30] Kenshin:
So hopefully we get 100
[00:11:33] McIntosh:
people. Who's. So that would be 100 people. The first hundred win. And I would highly encourage you, ladies and gentlemen, if you if you've not used Nostra, it's time to take a look at it. You know, that's your business, but you need to get a Nostra account. You need to set up a wallet so that you can receive a zap. Those two things. We have a page at satoshis-plebs.com/noster, if I'm not mistaken. That's a walk through of a setup for CoinOS. Right? Coin IO CoinOSIO? CoinOS. CoinOS. Dot I 0. Leave it to the American to butcher the English language.
[00:12:19] Kenshin:
An even easier way is to go to primalprimal.net.
[00:12:24] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:12:25] Kenshin:
Okay. Just make an account there. Use their built in. They have a built in. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Don't pay any premium. Just free. And that's it. Cool. That's the easiest way for someone who doesn't know or care about.
[00:12:41] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:12:42] Kenshin:
Doing the details. Otherwise, you can do it on coinos.io. From there, you get your nostril credentials and the Lightning Wallet, and then you go back to something like Primal or any other nostril app to put those credentials in. And those details are in the in the website
[00:13:00] McIntosh:
as you said. Very cool. Thank you. Alright. So that's gonna kick off our two hundredth episode. I hope you will join in. This is, I think this is a way a couple of things to give back to the community. I also think it's a way to get some people on Nostr, which is something that I'm interested in as I know you are Kenshin, and we'll see how it goes. So you could get some sets, and join Nostr and see what decentralized
[00:13:29] Kenshin:
social media is all about. And we will do it even more simple this time. We should just say for people to leave a comment. I think that's enough. Last time we told everybody to repost as well. Maybe there was some, I don't know. Confusion? Some resistance
[00:13:47] McIntosh:
to Yeah. That was weird. Extra steps.
[00:13:50] Kenshin:
So when I did it personally, when I did the Zapathon Mhmm. There were more more than a hundred people that I zapped. I think a 50. So I know it's it's possible, but at that time, I just said to leave a comment below so I can boost you. And that was it. So I think that we can do that. Well,
[00:14:10] McIntosh:
alright. Let's do it. Well, this is all a grand experiment. It's only money. Right? It's only the hardest asset on Earth. Whatever. Alright. That's what we'll do. And, be ready for that, ladies and gentlemen. It is coming. And I have a feeling that it's going to go fast. What are we talking about today? I'm so confused. What's happening, Mike? What is happening? This is called a downturn.
[00:14:39] Kenshin:
I think we're going to zero. That's it. Pack your bags. We'll have to find a new new subject to talk about.
[00:14:48] McIntosh:
Well, we can talk about politics because everybody loves that. If we're going to zero, please sign over all your Bitcoin to me. Let me just give you an address and you just go ahead and send it to me. Alright. Because, I don't think we are.
[00:15:09] Kenshin:
And then I can buy buy it from you for a dollar.
[00:15:13] McIntosh:
In like as soon as we hit $1,000,000 of Bitcoin, you can buy it back. That is correct. Not right now. Yeah. So this comes up. I don't know. It started very early on, and it comes up over and over and over. And frankly, if you've been in the environment for a while, it's tiresome, because and I don't wanna be disrespectful, but you've heard it a hundred times. Bitcoin's going to zero. No. It's not. People are selling. I have no idea why. I suspect it's a combination of various events that are going on in the world. It's really difficult to pin it down and say it's this, it's that, or it's the other. People love to do that on Twitter, especially, to be honest.
And I think that's usually a mistake. There are times when very specific things can cause very specific reactions. If I bring up trading view, which I probably should have, I think we've been in this kind of pullback for a bit. It's not just been the last few days, and it's not even it's probably been more on the order of the last few weeks slowly. Does that make sense? And I'm gonna verify that.
[00:16:38] Kenshin:
Yeah. It's from January 20, I would say.
[00:16:40] McIntosh:
So that's a month. Right. Perfect. Thank you. I don't know, but I do know this. There's a couple of things. There's always people who are buying. Michael Saylor, he's a madman. Okay. He is spending money over there at what do they call it now? Strategy, that they have raised buying Bitcoin as everyone else is selling. He's buying and he's buying a lot of it. I do know that even though the ETFs are selling, we just had the single largest sell date for the ETFs that they since they came online. And that's fine because there are plebs like Kenshin and I who are buying. Does that make sense Kenshin?
[00:17:32] Kenshin:
Absolutely.
[00:17:34] McIntosh:
So Yeah. And
[00:17:38] Kenshin:
it was also a chart with most whale addresses, if we call them, with the most addresses buying Bitcoin.
[00:17:49] McIntosh:
So addresses over one Bitcoin or over 10 Bitcoin or something? I think it's actually even higher than that by quite a bit.
[00:17:57] Kenshin:
So those addresses were actually filling up Mhmm. Or accumulating a lot of Bitcoin these days. So it's probably the Wall Street digests that just dump it for some reason. It's been a year since they started, so maybe that's a good timing. It's been a year, and they have to do something with it. But, yeah, we're buying it back from them anyway.
[00:18:21] McIntosh:
You're you're absolutely correct. The high was on the January 20. We hit 110, one hundred and nine, almost 110. And so I guess it's been five weeks. And right now we're at the lowest that we've been in, gosh, since going back to what date is that? It looks like November mid November when we were going up. November 11. Yeah. According to Luxe algo, not trading advice, not anything. Okay. I'm just it's the tool I happen to have on here. It is on the daily chart. It is actually showing what this should be a bottom. And I will say that actually makes sense. And I'll explain why. I didn't even know that this was gonna show this until I opened it up.
But there is a support band, not a support band. I don't wanna call it that. There is a, moving it's called a moving average, a two hundred week or two hundred day. It's one or the other. I think it's two hundred day moving average, which for the first time just a few days ago got up above $80,000 Okay, so this is like a moving average that goes back 200 days. I don't I'm almost sure it's not two hundred weeks. Okay. This is actually a very important support area when you're in a bull run. We've now got down to it essentially. Most likely, it will hold. If it doesn't, I don't know. I have no idea. We may hit that 58,000 that the 58,000 tribe has been claiming.
I don't know, and I'm not gonna pretend that I do. I do have a suspicion that this is kind of the area that we're gonna start building some support and continue back upwards. If you look at the previous charts during bull runs, there are always drawbacks, 30% drawbacks, and we're somewhere in that range right now. I know we're at least 20%. Okay? And if you calculate, it's a 10, so that's 11. 30 three thousand would be 30. What's a 10 minus 33? 78 or something. So we're not to 30, but we're we're, you know, we're like 25 or whatever. It doesn't matter. This is perfectly normal. It happens every bull run and it shakes the weak people out.
Do not be the weak person. Do not. This is not trading advice. Obviously, we're not a trading show. I think I've stated that over and over. I'm just telling you if, what hit Kenshin? Help me out. What have we preached here week after week, year after year on this show?
[00:21:21] Kenshin:
Yep. Stay humble, stock sucks. Right. I wish I had more fiat money right now. It's like it's on discount. It's simple as that. It's it is. It's a discount. It's a discount.
[00:21:34] McIntosh:
DCA. Right? Dollar cost average. You should not be trying to sell at the top and buy at the bottom or anything crazy like that. Just keep stacking those sats. If you have extra, frankly, this is a really good time to put those in. I will so I don't wanna give the news away, so I'm not gonna tell you. But one of our news items, I think, will actually when it gets formalized, will be the reason it I'm not gonna say that. I just said it's not almost never one thing, but it will be an impetus for this to to go up. Does that make sense? I hope that does. We will see. We'll see. You don't agree, do you?
That's okay. I I I think it's going to be very difficult to to go below this $80,000 level. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and we get cheaper sats, and that's the way you should look at it. Bitcoin's not going to zero. The millions and millions of Bitcoin miners are not shutting down, And there are people like Kenshin and I who will buy it at 100, at 80, at 60, at if Bitcoin got down to $10,000 again, Kenshin, I would do stupid financial things. Okay. I'm just going to be honest. I know what you mean. You know what I mean?
[00:22:58] Kenshin:
I know. I'm looking around. I've been like, how many chairs I have left? Exactly.
[00:23:04] McIntosh:
How much credit do I actually have? I did not say that. I'm just saying. But we're not. We're never going down to those levels again. But but there are people who would buy. There are a lot of people who would buy those levels.
[00:23:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. And another point is a lot of stocks are down now too. So it's it's not, just some Bitcoin. It's a a whole market. A lot of tech companies are down. Tesla is very down. Right. So
[00:23:38] McIntosh:
I wanna point out one thing about the stock market. If you take out, like, the top 10 stocks in The US stock market, the stocks market itself, And I'm talking about companies like Nvidia. I don't know. There's a there's a number. There's a small number of major companies who've done very well over the last few years. If you take that out, the stock market has not done good. Done well, sorry. English hard. You know, it just hasn't. And but you're right. It's not even though we're near all time highs, it's just kind of languished. It's not it's not done as well as maybe people thought it would after Trump came into office because, oh, new president, right, with all of his economic policies.
But to be honest, I think his economic policies, for good or for bad, have created a level of uncertainty. Mhmm. People are worried. What happens with tariffs? What happens you know, he's talking about abolishing the IRS, essentially. Now, I would cheer that. But it that talk creates uncertainty. And and I do believe that's bleeding over into the financial markets. And I heard on another podcast, he he did put this very beautifully. Bitcoin is the most liquid market that there is, and it's available twenty four seven. You could we saw it go down over the weekend. I if I'm not mistaken, can you do that with the stock market? No. It's closed on the weekend.
I mean, Bitcoin is open twenty four seven, so it acts as this indicator to an extent of what's going on in the rest of the market.
[00:25:34] Kenshin:
You know, I saw somewhere, someone did a comparison how many hours the stock market has been up, how many hours Bitcoin has been up trading. Everybody thinks the stock market is so stable and mature compared to Bitcoin. And it's actually Bitcoin has traded more hours than the stock market because Bitcoin is twenty four seven, three sixty five compared to the stock market. Which is,
[00:26:01] McIntosh:
it's either eight hours or even less. It's not it's like 09:30 to 04:30, maybe? Something like that. Six hours?
[00:26:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. But it's actually, Bitcoin has traded longer than the stock market, which is crazy. That is crazy. That is crazy. And one other thing I you were saying there about the tariffs and stuff. Here in Europe, I hear left and right colleagues, family members, oh, those tariffs. Oh, this Trump is gonna penalize us and things like that. So it's a big worry from people who don't understand how tariffs work. So it's a big, mainstream also news items about what's happened. So there is a lot of, as you said, fear and uncertainty about it. And I think that's feeding into all of this, and I don't wanna
[00:26:50] McIntosh:
I don't want to get down into tariffs and pros and cons or whatever. This is not that's not what this show is. But it does bring a level of uncertainty when someone who has such a large megaphone, which he surely does, is talking about these things. So we will see. We will see. I did actually just to maybe wrap this up, I did want to mention, obviously, Bitcoin is very volatile. We've had 25% pullback, at this point, assuming that this is the bottom and we now rebound and move back up. That scares a lot of people. That's that is volatility. And the volatility is other people have done very good talks about this. But volatility is because Bitcoin, we don't know the price level of Bitcoin.
And we're figuring that out. And that makes it volatile. That is that is in large part what drives the volatility of Bitcoin. Is it worth $50,000 Is it worth $100,000 Is it worth $200,000 We're going to find out. Now, based on what I know, what I understand, I think it's worth a lot more. But the volatility is the market trying to figure that out.
[00:28:20] Kenshin:
Yep. Does that Yeah. And yeah. One thing that Jack Mallers says that I really like is if it was if it was not volatile and it was flat, then it would be dead. It's like the heartbeat is right. It's alive. So that's a good thing. It goes up, it goes down.
[00:28:37] McIntosh:
I listened to his episodes. He has a weekly episode. I don't know what it's called. Maybe you could look it up real quick. But Man money matters. Money matters. It's a great it's unscripted as far as I can tell. He just kinda gets on there and wings it. He is the CEO strike. He started that company out of his bedroom a few years ago, and it is one of the leading Bitcoin companies that there is. His dad, I've from what I can tell was heavily involved in Chicago, trade, which I guess wouldn't be commodities and that kind of thing. So he has a very strong, smart financial head on his shoulders, if that makes sense.
And he knows how to speak. It's well worth a listen. Now I will warn you. He has, he says a lot of bad words. Okay? A lot. But if you can get past that, it's some great content. Yep. Mhmm.
[00:29:38] Kenshin:
To to close this segment also, I would like to say that, Bitcoin didn't need, governments in the previous cycles to to do with what it's done. And we're still, let's say, on, on a cycle similar to previous years. And even without the government, we would see those prices, and we could see a lot higher compared to the previous cycles. Even with all the talk about
[00:30:06] McIntosh:
sovereign wealth funds and this kind of thing, that stuff really is in its infancy. One of the news items this week, which I did not actually include, but a number like, I don't know, half a dozen of the state, the United States state governments voter voted on a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the state. They've all failed. They've all not gone through. We're early. I and people they they look at the price and they go, there's no way we're so late. We are 3%. We're not even 3% penetration right now. Not even. There is so much left. So we're like in everybody equates it to the Internet in 1994 when it kind of first became commercialized.
I actually disagree. I think we're back in the eighties. So the Internet was created in the seventies by DARPA. And in the 80s, people like me were hacking around on bulletin board services and Usenet groups kind of in and out of the internet. It was nothing commercial, but you could kind of see somewhat of where it was going. And then in the nineties, we started getting, you know, these early social media and certainly a lot of commercial website type stuff. I mean, Amazon started in the nineties and and so forth. But obviously, it's grown greatly since then, but it's also grown greatly in terms. Think about that. Back in the eighties, the kids like me who were hacking around on those BBS systems, man, they were like freaks.
I mean, let's be serious, Right? And I was one of them. But now everybody is you've got Internet on your phone. Who doesn't have a smartphone? If you don't have a smartphone, respectfully, let's just go ahead and call you a boomer. And I I don't mean that in a denigrating way because you must be because everyone else does. Even in Africa, it's crazy. You go to the Middle Of Africa and they'll have a smartphone. I don't know. We're early. We're early. Keep stacking those sets. Alright. Have we beat that to death? I think we have. I don't think we need I have a Go ahead.
[00:32:34] Kenshin:
I have a question for the audience.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
Terrific. Or
[00:32:39] Kenshin:
is anybody out there really worried if that Bitcoin is going to zero or something like that?
[00:32:45] McIntosh:
That's a good question, and I would love to hear it. And you don't even have to post your name. You can do it anonymous anonymously if you would like to. Again, English hard. I have worked I've struggles with words. I don't know if y'all figured that out or not. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Very cool. Mhmm. Alright. Where are we going from here? Let's talk about our supporters. Right?
[00:33:11] Kenshin:
Right. Terrific. We got some good support on Fountain. We got, Geek. I don't remember his, alternative name, display name. I just, see the username there. At Geek. He left 2,222 sets, a row of tags. He says, love the new music, gents, and great intro to mining discussion. Boosting a row of tags to help you guys on your next Zapathon. Well Thank you. Thank you very much. If there's any leftover, get Kenshin's grandma something nice. That's very very sweet. Thank you very much.
[00:33:53] McIntosh:
Oh, Kenshin's grandma will go down in history. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We also had some, some streaming, which was actually even as I gathered up these statistics still coming in. We certainly appreciate that. And we're at 2,630 sets total for the week. So thank you. That's what helps this show continue on. And we that money will get used for things like this Zapathon. I'll just be honest. It's not going in my pocket. Is it going in yours?
[00:34:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. No. No. Okay. I I just give it away on those three.
[00:34:30] McIntosh:
Alright. I got two news items for the week that I wanted to put in here, and I want this first one especially I'm going to I'm going to throw this out and I'm going to give you kind of what I see from the American media. And I'm going to put it that way very specifically because it's what it is. We get a just like the European media gets a tilted view of what's going on in Europe. We have a tilted view of I'm sorry. I think I said that all wrong. When I go to CNN or whoever, I get a view of Europe, okay, when they're talking about Europe. When when somebody in Europe like Kenshin goes to the European media, like you've shown me some of the stuff from Sweden, for example, you get a view of America.
Neither one of those views are actually accurate, to be honest. They're both, I think, distorted. Some of that prop maybe by choice. Now you can call that a conspiracy theory. Maybe it is. Some of it just because it's difficult when other countries speak other languages, they have other cultures, there's there's nuance, and it's difficult to understand that. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. So this first article is about Germany. You know, I have been on Germany here for years talking about their energy policy since back before the Ukraine war, when they were shutting down nuclear nuclear reactors and trusting on wind, solar and whatever.
But they shut down all the coal plants as well. Not a good choice, in my opinion. And I think the reality of what happened after that bore that out, their energy prices surged. They had trouble with getting enough energy and so on and so forth. They had an election and the results are in. And here's what the AP says. The Conservatives won. That's what it says. Now that's basically the depth. Let me actually bring this up. It's a little more nuanced than that, but it's not much. So what I would say is that prior to this, the left wing, was in charge of Germany.
Okay? And now my link doesn't work. Why is that? But kind of the more right of center gained a bunch of seats. The what they call the far right gained seats. But in general, the left lost, the right gained, and it looks like the right is going to gain control of their parliament. I think that's what they call it. Although, they have a German word, it starts with a b, Bundestag or something, I think. And I apologize. I'm sure I just butchered that. I don't know the word. I heard about Now Bundestag. Yes. But I don't know how to pronounce it either. Before we begin, you and I were briefly talking about this and you gave me some interesting insight. Please elaborate.
[00:37:53] Kenshin:
Right. Well, in general, Europe doesn't want the war, with between Ukraine and Russia to end, for some reason. So Sweden, especially, I see it even in my normal colleagues. No one wants the war to end. Everybody's terrified that, if there is any peace talks, and I got this directly from colleagues. If, let's say, they say, okay. Now we do a peace treaty or whatever, and then Russia will ignore it and come and kill us all, basically. That's that's exactly what they think. So it's like, no. We need to beat them. We cannot have any peace. And I I see the same from Germany that they want to spend another hour on O'Hara.
I don't know the numbers, but the huge amounts of billions of euros to to send to Ukraine to keep this coin. So that's that's what I see especially from those countries like Sweden and Norway. So I think it's very similar and those Nordic countries in Germany. Because they're so close
[00:39:03] McIntosh:
to Russia.
[00:39:04] Kenshin:
Yes. Yes. It's been like that. Yes. And in in Sweden also, they were saying, oh, we don't want to get to NATO, so we don't, yeah, make Russia upset or something like that.
[00:39:18] McIntosh:
So they've been saying that for a while. Can we talk about that for just a second? Because I actually think that is very important. We can't join NATO because that will make Russia upset. If you look at a map, Sweden, Finland, very close to Russia. Finland is on the border, right? Yeah. Hey, I got my job. See? Yeah. All right. Understand NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed after World War two during the Cold War because of Russian aggression. I think that's a fair statement. Russia, they created the Soviet Union. It's it's a thing. It was a thing. And when it broke apart in the nineties, late eighties, early nineties, I know in the early nineties, maybe '93, '90 '4 up to the mid nineties, there was an agreement that was made that the border countries, Ukraine included, would not join NATO. And the reason why is just because of what you said.
Put yourself in Russia's place. Try and do that, please. If you were them, your world has exploded. You've got all these border countries and this defensive organization, which you view as the opposing side. Would you want them right on your border in these former countries that you controlled Latvia, Ukraine, etcetera? No. And the agreement was they would not be allowed to do that. Now, Finland was not part of that. I'm almost sure. Well, Finland was not part of the Soviet Union. I know that. I don't think that agreement was ever made for Finland, but it would be the same idea. It is right there on the border. They probably would be very that would make them very tense. Okay. If that was a NATO country.
And yet, what have we heard for multiple years during this Russia Ukraine war? Ukraine Zelenskyy over here, let's be honest, begging to join NATO. And if that would have happened, I think it would have escalated the whole thing. That's my political opinion, and you can agree with it, not agree with it. But I do think that's where some of this thinking comes from, and I think that's important to kind of keep in mind as we're talking. I do think it's very interesting though that the end result of all this is we don't want the war to stop. Does that Yeah. That doesn't sit with me. It doesn't make sense.
[00:42:13] Kenshin:
No. It doesn't. And I I I don't like to talk politics with with people and in general Right. To be honest. But I I had this argument with a colleague, and we were out for dinner, so we started talking a bit more about it. And and I was a bit shocked because I said, I I don't care about this war. I I just want it to end. Right. And he didn't. He said, no. We need to beat him beat them. And I heard this from multiple people afterwards. And that's the the and that's the mainstream also. And I also see it from, like, for example, you know, Saab, the company.
Saab, that seems to make cars. Yes. And they make, what do they make? Weapons. They do. Whatever. Airplanes, fighter jets. Their stock was crushing down when, Trump was was about to be elected, things like that, because there would be the promise was to be peace. Mhmm. So they would lose their contracts or whatever. So their stock started going down, and they said publicly, they said, oh, no. How bad the war is gonna end. But now recently, like, how many days ago, like a week ago, their stock price skyrocketed again.
Right. Like a huge, huge amount from 200 up to 300, whatever that is, these, units. So a big increase. So things are shifting, unfortunately, again, And they're putting a lot of money, the European countries, and now we see that with Germany too. So they're putting a lot of money to to keep going with this score. And I hope
[00:44:04] McIntosh:
US I've got bad news for your colleagues. So our next bit of news and before we jump into that, so I do wanna mention this just as a little bit of a clarification or color. Personally, I abhor war. There is a war going on. People are dying. The only thing that's worse than what's going on right now is if it gets escalated. And instead of shooting guns and drones and small missiles at each other, now we start with cruise missiles who have, you know, nuclear small nuclear warheads on them. Okay? Because we can turn not we.
The Ukraine and Russia can turn each other into, you know, radioactive graveyards really quick. And you're not let's just to be clear, in case people forget their history, you're not just gonna march into Russia and conquer them, which as far as I can tell, would be the only way to stop what's going on without the use of nuclear warheads, without giving up or giving up land. Okay? Because there's they believe a lot of them believe that part of that Ukrainian region should belong to them. I'm not getting into that. I don't. But that's and they're willing to fight over it. Okay? If you remember World War two, Germany invaded Russia and marched a long way into Russia, and the Russians fought every inch of it.
That it's a huge country. You're not just going to conquer them like that. And rather than I see two results to this. And, man, I you could do that at the cost of millions and millions of lives, or we can stop and figure out how to settle this. Does that make sense?
[00:46:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, it's up to them.
[00:46:18] McIntosh:
It's up to both sides. I mean, it's it's It is. It's up to both sides. They both have to kind of come to the table on this. Well, they have. That's our next bit of the news. So I don't know what you're hearing. I'm actually very curious over in Europe. But yesterday, I the stuff started coming across the news on our major news sites that Trump, it looks like he's brokering a deal between the Ukraine and between Russia and that there is an agreement in place for, there's three things that are gonna happen. Okay? And you don't have to like them, and that's fine. Russia is gonna end up with some of these disputed territories.
The Ukraine, they're making a deal. And this sounds well, it is bad. I don't know. I don't know how to slice this. They're making a deal for mineral with The United States. Just to be clear, The United States has dumped somewhere between 303 hundred and $50,000,000,000 into the Ukraine in the last two years. It's an immense amount of money, and this is basically being viewed as a way to pay that back. So we're going to have U. S. Companies in there extracting the minerals and utilizing them. It's like a half billion dollar or half trillion dollar deal, dollars 500,000,000,000 to do this. Okay.
And that's basically payback. I mean, it is, for the money that we sent, which frankly, many times did not actually get to the people who needed it. There's a lot of corruption. And there's, and some of it's on The United States side. I just, and some of it's on the Ukrainian side. Okay. But a lot of this money did not get where it should have gone. But this is basically the way to pay it back. So Putin, Putin, Trump and Zelensky are coming together to make this deal. Nobody's going to like it. And maybe that's the way it should be. Okay.
[00:48:24] Kenshin:
That's fair.
[00:48:26] McIntosh:
I don't know. And I don't I try very hard as a bystander who who doesn't have skin in the game, as they say, to, you know, not be too judgmental. But I am extremely glad that this is over, and I do not understand why they would not other than for financial gain because we need peace. People need to stop dying, dying. When you're dead, you're dead. That's just the way it is. And there's been too many lives that have already been lost on both sides. So I am glad to hear that. And I do think actually, and I think maybe you disagree because you kind of laughed when I said this, what I alluded to this. I do think that when this officially gets signed, I know Zelensky is coming to Washington on Friday to put pencil to paper, essentially.
When this gets signed, I do think this will mark the bottom of this deal and will start going up. Why do you not think or do you think that's true or does that make sense?
[00:49:37] Kenshin:
I don't know. You don't. I I want to see it first to believe it. Mhmm. Because from what I see here, no one is taking this seriously, and everybody hopes that peace doesn't happen. So Yeah. I I don't understand. Until I until I see it's happened, I will believe it. And and from what I hear, again, I heard it's two days ago from another colleague. And, it's like, oh, don't you believe this Trump guy is gonna create peace? It's ridiculous. Something like that. I'm like, oh, it's not good. Oh, it's not good. We need to win. Something like that. So
[00:50:18] McIntosh:
I don't know. I hate politics. It's a dirty, stinky mess. Yeah. And but there's nobody else in this current environment who could broker this deal.
[00:50:33] Kenshin:
But one thing I just don't understand, where is Germany want to send those billions of euros that they they just talked about a few days ago, and where is Swedish defense are spending so much money in Saab all of a sudden? I mean, I don't that's what I don't understand. Everybody just keeps
[00:50:53] McIntosh:
wants to throw money around like that on on this war. Maybe that is actually why. Maybe they want to keep throwing money around that they don't earn, that they take from taxpayers. And if there's no war, there's no people ordering hundreds of Saab jet fighters to prop up the stock price. Right?
[00:51:16] Kenshin:
Did you hear the Germany Central Bank? They had the loss of was it €19,200,000,000 last year? It's one of the first time since the seventies, some something like that that they had such a big loss.
[00:51:31] McIntosh:
You mean like an operating profit loss? Is that what Yeah. Okay. No. I didn't know that.
[00:51:37] Kenshin:
€19,200,000,000, Central Bank of Germany.
[00:51:42] McIntosh:
It's a crazy world. It it's not changing fast enough for me. I would love to see better things faster, and I don't know if this is a better thing. I think it is. I think any time people stop pointing guns at each other, it's a better thing. We tend to talk better when we're not shooting at each other. Just saying, we will see. But yeah, we got to move on. I. Yeah. I probably need to cut some of that out. I don't know. It'd be hard to. Right. Should we do some software updates? I do want to do one more thing. Sorry. Before we go on. I've told y'all for years, I want your feedback, and I've told you that good, bad, or ugly, I want your feedback.
And we got some feedback this week. There wasn't a boost tied to it, so we didn't read it, during the supporter segment. But I do wanna read it or I do wanna talk about it, and I appreciate Kenshin, first of all, your, lovely answer. You did very well, and I do appreciate that. I wanna go ahead and read this, and we're gonna talk about it for just a minute. So, this came from somebody named Satoshi on, Nostr. Said enjoyed listening to a few episodes and like the format, which may be easier to digest for Bitcoin and Nostril beginners compared to other podcast. I do immensely appreciate that. That's kind of, I think, what we're evolving into our target market, maybe.
So I appreciate that. However, Macintosh is constantly interrupting you. He was directing this at Kenshin, which is not only improper behavior from a host, but highly annoying. It's fun to listen to Macintosh, but I would like to hear you finish your thoughts. Wish you guys all the best. So and then you responded to that. I'm not I think it's a well, no. It's not too long. Let me go ahead and read it. Thanks for listening. Yes. He does that, and he admits it himself all the time, which I do. He got used to recording on his own for the first hundred and eighty episodes, but he will come around slowly. Yeah. There's a lot of truth there. I appreciate that. I appreciate the honesty of the comment. Seriously, my first reaction was maybe human.
I was not happy about it because deep down I don't like being criticized. But there's there is a lot of truth to it, and I do appreciate the honesty that was put into the comment. It is something we actually do talk about from time to time, and I I wanna lay out a couple of things. It's very difficult in a podcast with host to kind of get this down. Kenshin and I had never talked, never met before we started doing this podcast. We're thousands of miles apart, which adds an issue of latency. And sometimes there are days when the latency is worse than others, and that actually complicates this. We actually maybe made an improvement today, which might help in the long term with our latency. We'll just have to see.
But I have thought I thought today in general, just the raw recording, it was actually better than normal. We're also doing some other things to help out with that so we don't step on each other's toes. But the reality is when it comes down to it and I'm editing the podcast and I do that, it's my responsibility. I cannot spend six hours editing this podcast I go through. I don't even take out all the umms anymore. I don't. And it's some people may agree with that. Maybe they disagree with that. I don't know. There are times when I do adjust kind of the audio overlap because it does just it happens.
But there's other times, when I I miss it or I just I don't have time to do it every as as well as I would like, if that makes sense. So I I do apologize. We are continuing to work on improving this podcast, and that includes the audio of it. That is actually very important to me. I I am an I'm an amateur when it comes to audio editing, but I am an audio person. Sounds the way things sound, the way way you hear it as a listener is actually very important to me. So I am always trying to improve that. So if you would give us some grace, bear with us, and I know you will, but I do think we will continue to improve on this area, if that makes sense. Do you have please add add to that.
[00:56:51] Kenshin:
No. I agree. And, yes, I agree that we are trying. And we have talked about it before that came on a few from the start, I think, from the first or second episode. So and we try to improve it with a few techniques here and there. And I agree. I think the latency is really bad. And even my wife told me one time, oh, but you take a long time to answer him sometimes. And I said, but it's not like that in reality. I said, it must be the latency.
[00:57:16] McIntosh:
Right. And that's actually actually the hard part because it's not necessarily you or I being so slow. It's just the latency that kinda gets built in, and it doesn't take very much. But I don't have time, and we don't have a tool right now that could just go in there and automatically clip that out. I've had people complain about how slow I talk because I'm from the South Of The United States, and that's just the way that we talk in general here. We're not it's funny, I go up north and people talk really fast and I'm like, man, can you, like, slow that down a little bit? You know, it's just the way it is. But maybe at some point we can get a tool that would actually help with that part of it. The overlap, that's just a manual process, and I don't think that's going to change.
So we have to work harder so that it doesn't happen in the first place. So we'll continue to do that.
[00:58:16] Kenshin:
Mhmm. But I I take it as constructive
[00:58:19] McIntosh:
criticism. And and and that is literally where I landed, you know, after I kinda went, you know, because it look. I'm human. That's just the reaction. It it it was just my first reaction. But I really do. I appreciate it. I thank you for that feedback. And we do want to hear your feedback, good or bad. Okay. So, yeah. Awesome. All right. Yep. Let's move on. We do want to do software this week, and we are an hour, although some will get cut out. But yeah, we do need to move it right along. So what do we have this week? Do you wanna kick things off?
[00:59:00] Kenshin:
Yeah. Let's move it a bit fast then. We have BISC. That's, a p to p exchange network. So they are up to version one point nine point nineteen and BISC two version two point one point six. And they just did some, security updates and improvements. Is this something that you liked on BISC?
[00:59:26] McIntosh:
Well, I did wanna mention there are two distinct products. So they've got a basically a version one and a version two. And so they're maintaining both of them. The version two, if you're new to BISQ, is probably where you wanna land.
[00:59:41] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Mhmm. Right. Yes. And is there any any of those features that caught your attention? No. Not in general. Not specifically. No. No. Just just keeps getting better and better. It seems and I can also take the next one. Okay. We have AlbiHub, version one point fourteen point two. And now they introduced the basic, swap functionality and some home widgets and more. And what caught my attention is this swap, functionality that, I was missing in AlbiHub. Meaning I don't know how I don't know how it works yet, but I will try it. So Do you know? Are you do you mean you're swapping from main chain to lightning? They added bolts exchange swap out option and bolts swap in dialogue.
So I'm not a % sure how it works, but I know it's a good feature from other apps. Very cool. I would just have to try it and I can give you a update next week on it. Okay.
[01:00:56] McIntosh:
Alright. So RoboSats is next on the list. Now they are still in alpha. I wanna mention that. But zero dot 74 is the version, and it's an Android app. I don't think it's on well, Android desktop. So right. No iOS. And this is another peer to peer app using the Lightning Network, for buying Bitcoin anonymously.
[01:01:22] Kenshin:
Mhmm. You can access it from the web, actually. So you can actually use it if you want. And they also have a Tor address. You can use the Tor browser. Nifty.
[01:01:35] McIntosh:
Alright. And then I do wanna talk about this one for just a minute. Did you have a chance to kinda read through this, Kenshin, this validating lightning signer?
[01:01:44] Kenshin:
No. Not yet. Okay. So
[01:01:47] McIntosh:
I've actually covered this in the past. I had forgotten when this first came out and literally just like two weeks ago or so, we mentioned that this would be a really good feature in lightning. And the problem with running a lightning node, you keep your keys on. It's like a hot wallet. They're on the server. It's unavoidable with the current setups. That's a bad security practice. That's not ideal at all. And it's one of the things it's actually the main thing that makes me very nervous about building a lightning node and putting some actual assets online. This is a way to, if I'm reading this correctly, to kind of solve that. It's a signer module so that your keys do not have to be on that server.
And the interesting thing is, drum roll, please, they're making a plug in for Core Lightning, which is the one that I'm interested in. So this is even though this is very much in beta, they tell you don't use it on main chain. And if you use it on main chain, don't put serious money on it. But this is something that as it moves into real production usage, I'm very much gonna be interested in and will probably implement on my lightning node. So I am super excited about that.
[01:03:15] Kenshin:
Nice. Then we have the Blitz Wallet, version zero point four point one beta.
[01:03:23] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[01:03:25] Kenshin:
And this is mainly performance updates, but it's a really interesting wallet. It combines lightning, liquid, and e cash.
[01:03:35] McIntosh:
So it brings everything together, it seems. So all those layer two. I I missed the e cash. I didn't I knew it was liquid, and I knew it was lightning. That's interesting. It is beta, so use caution. But then this is a wallet that you're running on your phone, essentially. So you really probably shouldn't have that much on it anyways. But yeah, very, very cool. I may have to try that one out. I've been looking kind of for an e cash wallet, and that may fit the bill. Very interesting. And then the last one I do briefly want to mention, there's a new ish, I would say, Nostra routing node setup. It's written and go. It's called well, I lost it. Where is it? Grain?
It was Grain, right? Yeah. Version zero dot three dot zero. If you are into Nostra things and you want to run your own router, this might be something you want to look at. It's a relay. They call it a relay, not a router. Sorry. Same thing, but whatever. I'm not a go person. This is probably not something I would look at. I don't understand Go. It looks like gobbledygook to me. But, yeah, try and keep up with those nostrils things. Alright. So as we are wrapping up, I did wanna mention real quick, this kind of been a hard topic. It's been a hard and not our actual topic itself, but all of this discussion about, you know, the Ukrainian war and just different things today. So I appreciate everybody taking the time to listen.
I you know, I'm sure everybody doesn't agree a % to what we the things that we're saying, and that's I hope that's okay. But that's just kind of I'd like to give these perspectives, you know, and and it's interesting to me at least how dramatically different things can be between The United States and Europe and trying to understand each other and trying to kind of figure this out, I think is actually very important. So I think it's part of maybe the service that we're providing here. I don't know. Anyways, why don't you go ahead and bring us on home, Kenshin?
[01:06:01] Kenshin:
Right. Great. Thank you for today, Markitos. Yes, sir. So if you have been listening so far and you like what you listen, we would love a comment, or a boost on Fountain or another podcast two point o app. There are plenty of podcasting two point o apps, and you can find one in podcastapps.com, in one word. There are plenty in for iOS, for Android, even web. And we actually started posting now on Nostra a few links. So I post a fountain link and the podcast index link so you can listen directly from the web and boost from there. So we do this as a value for value podcast, and that means that we try to offer value to you. And in exchange, we would love to get some value back in terms of, feedback, in terms of, sats, and overall discussions and and and contact with us.
We have, contact details in the description of the podcast. We have the website satoshis-plebs.com, and our contact information there as well. On Noister, we are, the Satoshis Plebs podcast, but we also have, let me find it. We have the Coinos address that is satoshis plebs, that's one word, at coinos dot io. If you search that on any NoStar app, you will find our profile. Right. You can follow us there, and you can participate in the upcoming Zapathons. And and actually, it's a really good place to have the discussions and comments. Right. Yeah. So thank you again, for this week. Have a lovely weekend ahead and a great week.
[01:08:04] McIntosh:
Alright. Thanks a lot. Talk to y'all later.
Introduction
Bitcoin Price Discussion
Personal Updates
Technical Challenges in Podcasting
Bitcoin's Price Volatility
Market Volatility and Economic Policies
European Perspectives on the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Potential Peace Deal in Ukraine
Listener Feedback and Podcast Improvements
Software Updates
Closing Remarks and Call to Action
