McIntosh and Kenshin discuss questions that we received from Nostr. A dozen questions cover a wide range of topics. All Bitcoin related and thought provoking. A little celebration is in order for episode 200 along with news and notes.
Bitcoin Price at Time of Recording
March 5th, 2025: 89,500 USD | 83,300 EUR
Block Height at Time of Recording
886,450
News and Notes
Trump Crypto Summit
Europe Encryption News … Not Good
Software Updates
Ark v0.5.0
BitBanana v0.9.0
Alby Go v1.10.0
Episode Page
https://satoshis-plebs.com/episode-198
Music Credits
My Favorite Band
Tyrannosaurus Rocks
Racer Why
https://wavlake.com/my-favorite-band
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 March, and this is episode, oh, god. 200 of Sentoshis plebs. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:11] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin, and today's episode is questions all around.
[00:00:45] McIntosh:
Alright. Before we get started, first of all, was that not an awesome song? That is, like, one of my favorite songs of all time. So we only played a few seconds. Right? But it's cool in the gang, celebrate. You should look it up. I you know, I've told you guys before. I love bass. I used to play the bass a long, long time ago. And the guy who does that, who was in that group, is one of the best bass players around. I mean, you may not like the music, and that's fine. You may not like their style, but you got to appreciate a good bass line. And I can listen to literally anyone from Charles Mingus, who was an upright jazz bassist, a phenomenal, well known, all the way up to literally, like, thrash metal people who there are some really good bass players there. Right?
And so, anyways, awesome song, and today is a celebration, Kenshin. I know you I know you know that.
[00:01:42] Kenshin:
Congratulations.
[00:01:43] McIntosh:
Thanks. Thanks. Congratulations to you too. You've hung in there with me, which is not an easy feat, mind you. Sometimes I wonder, what's go what your thoughts are. But, yeah, it's it's been a journey, and I I just looked back at the statistics. I recorded episode one in August of what did I say? Twenty twenty one. So three and a half years ago. And this show has changed over time, and we'll actually talk about that with one of our questions that we're gonna discuss today. But it's been a journey, and I have been very transparent in kind of that journey and laying it out here. I try not to hold things back.
If you've listened to this show over the long term, you've learned a lot about Macintosh, and maybe that's not really what you want, but I do. I put a lot of it out there. I think it helps make it a better show.
[00:02:47] Kenshin:
Absolutely. So, let's talk about Bitcoin first, the price. What's happening? It's been a bit up and down.
[00:02:57] McIntosh:
We never talk about Bitcoin on this podcast. I don't know what you're talking about. Alright. Yes. It has. It has been a crazy week. I don't know if you guys watch the charts. I do. I'm sorry. It's one of my flaws. But this week has been nuts. As we record right now, Kenshin, what are the the statistics?
[00:03:20] Kenshin:
Well, right now, Bitcoin is at 89,500 US dollars and €83,300. Mhmm. It's been very volatile this past week. It's been going down $10,000 up, $10,000, everything in between.
[00:03:38] McIntosh:
If I'm not mistaken, that down and up was actually in the course of twenty not twenty four, forty eight hours. So we Right. We had a, we had an up candle first. Right? And then it went down or it it either way, it was like a whipsaw. It was unbelievable. And people were you know, Twitter's exploding. People are, like, it's the end. And Bitcoin's just doing Bitcoin things because that's what Bitcoin does. Right?
[00:04:07] Kenshin:
I will give you a nice anecdote. I talked to my mother today, and she met a friend who used to work in a bank and she was actually managing, directing the bank, local bank. And they were talking and he said, oh, everything is down. The stock market is down. Bitcoin even, went to zero. What? And yeah. Wait. What? Yeah. Exactly. So that's the mainstream one of the mainstream things, I think. And then she so she talked to me a bit, I think, hesitant, like, is it okay? Are you doing fine? I'm like, well, this Bitcoin is actually double from last this time last year. Right. Yes. We're doing fine.
[00:04:46] McIntosh:
It's nothing serious. And as we recorded last week, we were, I think, at 83,000 something, and now we're at 89,000. So by my calculations that we're up. So I'm just gonna you know? Hey. Volatility. Embrace it. Buy the dips. Stack sat. Stay humble. I don't know. What can we say?
[00:05:09] Kenshin:
Right. Yeah. No leverage then. No leverage. No issue.
[00:05:14] McIntosh:
What's our block height, sir?
[00:05:17] Kenshin:
88 or should I say 886,450. And difficulty adjustment, we are at, minus, I'm sorry. It's point 4%. Point four is that yes. And the previous difficulty adjustment was at minus 3.15%. Mhmm. So the hash rate is dropping slightly, but the blocks are coming very close to ten minutes at this point. So everything is working properly. TikTok. So Next block. Problem.
[00:05:53] McIntosh:
Yeah. Alright. And our mempool, setup right now is looking at, like, three three three. So first, low, medium, high, that's been fluctuating. I did some transactions a couple nights ago, and I it was two when I did it. But it and it spiked a little bit, here and there, but we're kind of in that range where right now, we're at 305 megabytes of of transactions that haven't been processed about 11,000. So there's no very little backup on the on the main chain. So looking good there. What's up with you these days?
[00:06:37] Kenshin:
Well, it's been another busy week in the Fiat world. So but I I think this this week is it. Then I start relaxing a bit, getting back to normal, at least with the fiat stuff. And the Bitcoin stuff are starting to get exciting as well. I'm having that secret project Oh. With a couple of friends, so you will know soon enough. So we're doing good progress on that. We've been working hard, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So that's going good, and it's, yeah, keeping busy, I would say. And with the no store stuff also, keeping very busy. Cool. I did
[00:07:18] McIntosh:
the one thing I managed to do this week outside of work, which is fortunately starting to slow up just a tiny bit as well. I've told y'all I was working on a lightning setup. I did go back to that last night actually and started looking at how I'm actually gonna set up core lightning, which is the version that I'm gonna use and made some progress. I essentially kind of went down one path, and then I've I've rejected. I've decided not to do it that way. I'm gonna do it kind of a more traditional way, but it does mean so to be honest, Corelightning, they make a binary package, but they only make it for x 86, for, like, AMD or Intel chips.
And I have an ARM 64 server set up that I was going to do it on, but I'm gonna just blow that server away and rebuild it and then set it up on there. There's no use dying on that hill when this is what I need, what I want, you know, get what I where get me where I want to go. I hope I can have that up and running by the time we talk next week. It will depend on work. We'll see. But, yeah, that would be awesome. And your miners are still up and running? Oh, yes. Quick update on that. They are. And it turns out the hosting company was actually having an issue with Foreman, which is kind of the tool that's used to display the miners. But I could go into Ocean, and I could see my hash rate, which was the correct amount. So they were actually all all online last week when I thought that they were not.
So that was good news. I'm like, one less problem.
[00:08:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. I I actually had to turn off one of mine right now so it it wouldn't make noise while recording. So you never know. That's a big potential loss during the two hundredth episode. Wouldn't that be terrible if you would have?
[00:09:15] McIntosh:
Oh, man. The irony. The irony. Yes. So good good stuff going on there. Once we get the lightning note on, I think that's gonna free us up to do some things, like support our value for value music that we play. This week, I'm gonna go ahead and play the same song one last time. We got a funny, funny comment about that song. We'll get to I think it's in the list. Oh, no. It was a boost. So it'll be in the support. Hilarious. But, yeah, we'll be changing that out this week. I'll make a point to do that. And I would like to get them in the splits, but we can't do that until we set up lightning and have it running through our own setup. Mhmm. Alright.
[00:10:03] Kenshin:
So to celebrate the two hundredth episode, we decided to do another Zapathon. Okay. So so on Friday, when this episode is released, we will have a post on Nostr. And whoever goes to that post from the satoshis plebs account and comments in the poll under the post, then we will zap them 420 sats. So everyone who comes and comments. So the only thing they need to do is just comment. We would appreciate a for loop and a repost, but it's not a prerequisite or we will not check. So just leave a comment so we can zap the actual comment. That's the easiest way also for us to to give you some value back.
[00:10:52] McIntosh:
Can I say this? When we first started doing these Zapathons, which hasn't been very long, I didn't really know what to expect, and I didn't really know how I was gonna feel about it. And to be honest, I really enjoy it. Now I'm giving away money, which I kind of don't like, but I it it is a system that, how can I say this? First of all, I think you and I both are trying to help Nasr move along, grow. I've actually noticed this week, specifically, I went to Twitter and clicked on my profile to look at the tweets I had done during the week as part of my show prep. Because a lot of times, I'll just tweet something and then go back to it. I had only tweeted, like, three times this week, which is probably a record for me for, going a long way back.
And I am working in Nostra more. I enjoy it more. We there's a lot of reasons for that, and I think we've talked about those a fair amount. But this has been I just really that's a long winded way of saying sorry, Kensho. It's a long winded way of saying that, you know, this has actually been very enjoyable. And I hope you guys, are participating and enjoying it yourself.
[00:12:13] Kenshin:
Right. And I I I mirror your thoughts, and I haven't been posting almost anything on Twitter lately for that reason exactly because I spend my time on Oster. Mhmm. And I think it's mostly the engagement. I mean, you get actual engagement with real, like minded people. And as you say, it's very enjoyable. I look forward to go there every every day and and see what other people are doing. And you say something, you get feedback, you you get a question, you start a discussion with with real people.
[00:12:47] McIntosh:
So that that's that's really cool, I think. I think I'm just gonna clip out what I said so they don't listen to that. And then just you just say that, and we'll call it a day because that was much better than what I said. And it's a % true. The engagement on Twitter is just it's just trolls and bots. Yeah. There's so little actual interaction going on with a pleb like me who's, you know, not some well known person that's got a billion followers. It's just it's a joke. Yeah. Alright. What's our topic today? Oh, wait. We're doing q and a.
[00:13:26] Kenshin:
Right. Because we asked on Noister last time, a week ago, we asked our audience what they would like us to talk about, what questions do they have, Bitcoin or otherwise related, And we got some really good questions. We did.
[00:13:42] McIntosh:
A lot of engagement just like you said, and some really great questions. I don't even think I think we got so many we're not even gonna have time to go through them all. I'm not sure about that, but we'll try if we don't cover it on here to answer it on Nostr itself.
[00:13:59] Kenshin:
So Should should actually, I have an idea. Should we start from the last one? Because it relates to
[00:14:07] McIntosh:
to Nostr. You're gonna confuse my list, Kenshin. The very last one?
[00:14:12] Kenshin:
Yeah. Because I I also I also want to say that if you are curious, if you haven't joined NoStar yet, then you're curious. We have an episode, I think it's one ninety seven, one 90 eight. Somewhere there. And there, we discuss more about Nostra and how to actually make an account and join Nostra.
[00:14:35] McIntosh:
It's one ninety five, actually. Oh, it's one ninety five. Okay. A couple of before that.
[00:14:40] Kenshin:
And we got a comment from, Moin or wolf54.
[00:14:45] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:14:46] Kenshin:
And in his comment, he said, congrats. I started listening at episode one ninety two. And shortly after, you gave me the final push I needed to try out Nostra. It had been on my to do list since 02/2023, but I had never gotten around it. Thank you for that. So that that was very gratifying to to hear. Yeah. You wanna go ahead and do his question while we're here? Yeah. Since we're at his comment, we can do his question also. So his question is, suppose someone has been acquiring Bitcoin for years without maintaining accurate documentation. How should they handle potential source of funds and KYC inquiries in the future if they ever decide to use Bitcoin for significant purchases in real life? K.
[00:15:38] McIntosh:
So we read this earlier and we've kind of talked about it, but something really jumped out at me just now when you reread this, it says without maintaining accurate documentation. Now, I don't know what country you live in, but most likely well, if you're KYC, you're using an exchange like Coinbase, like Kraken. Okay. Those are probably the two biggest well, Binance. If you are using those platforms, first of all, they have a list of your transactions, and you can download that. Back in my, mistake filled days, I was trading. I was day trading. Okay? Trying to make more money, more fiat, really, not Bitcoin, which was a shame.
But either way, it was a mistake. When I had to go to the IRS and when we filed our taxes, I had to pull all those down in, like, a CVS type format and then take that to my accountant so they could feed all that into their system. And I literally had 50 pages of documentation. It was insane for all of the that stuff that had gone on that year. So even though you didn't keep track of every transaction, your exchange did. And if you're going to do the right thing, then you should go gather that list up because I hope that makes sense. Now, that will let you know when you bought it and when you moved it off the exchange or sold it, which may be all you need.
If you moved it somewhere else and then moved, I can't really help you with that. But this is a case where and it's maybe not a good thing, but they do have track of all of that so you can go back to them.
[00:17:43] Kenshin:
Right. And, one other thing, if if this person really doesn't have any documentation or acquired Bitcoin from a friend or whatever Mhmm. Then, of course, you can declare it's like getting it at price zero. So you just pay pay capital gains from the whole amount. So 25% or whatever is in that country.
[00:18:07] McIntosh:
Right. And if you just mysteriously end up with some Bitcoin, then that's exactly at least how the IRS is gonna deal with it. I would assume any tax agency would be exactly the same. Okay. Well, then it's worth zero when you when you got it, and now it's worth 89,000. So there's the difference. So this documentation is actually really important to help you save money. But I and as a final point to this so we can move on, I would say there are a lot of well, there are jurisdictions where if you hold it for a certain amount of time, Bitcoin, that there are no cap gains taxes on it. So if you can prove I've had this Bitcoin since February maybe, and it's now 2025.
And I live in Germany. You mentioned not me, but as this example, you mentioned Kinshen, Germany. If you hold it for a year, there's no cap gains. Yeah. Well, there you go. Countries. So at that point, it doesn't matter what you use it for. You can go out and buy that house or whatever. I will well, there's more news about that. So let me I'm gonna put a bow on that, but that is certainly one way of handling it if you're fortunate enough to live in a country that has that. Thank you, Wolf. That Wolf fifty four Moen. I guess Moen is actually the name. Really appreciate the question, the kind comment.
That was a great way to start this off. Yep. Shall we go back to the start of the list? Let's go back to the start. It's a very good place to be or something. I don't know.
[00:19:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. Then we have, Hodul Harry. So he says, my two questions would be, what was the thing that made you go all in with Bitcoin, and what is going what is going all in for you? Is it just putting all your money and assets into Bitcoin, or is it also worth risking your life for and spending almost all your time learning about Bitcoin and contributing to it?
[00:20:25] McIntosh:
That's a terrific question.
[00:20:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. And, I've been going back and forth in my mind about it because it's it's not it's not very simple question. No. And I think it's different for everybody because and I was thinking about this today over lunch. So I think coin only, at some point for me, was just to focus on Bitcoin and not deviate to any other meme coins. So because I looked in the past to Litecoin in the early days and, yeah, whatever else came later, not to mention any specific ones. But in my head, I was going all in on Bitcoin at some point. Then going all in was, okay, I have some savings. I should put the amount that I can afford to put for long term storage into Bitcoin.
Of course, I still have fiat savings, but I would say, individually, what you consider, all in for you is different for someone else. And I would say, as you say there, to put all your efforts into it, if if you can work within the Bitcoin industry, and that's actually what I would like to do going forward, And, hopefully, I can do it sooner than later. So that's another step in going all in. So I think we all have our all in journey, stations somehow.
[00:21:54] McIntosh:
Yeah. It it is different for different people. And I would say, I think part of this question is kind of a diversity question. Do you go all in on Bitcoin versus, say, investing in real estate? And the answer for that might be different for different people. For Jack Mahler's, he routinely says he's all in. He owns the house he lives in and his car and his clothes and everything else is Bitcoin. That's not a lot of people. Jack's not married. I'll just throw that out there because as soon as you get married and especially after you have kids, that changes your perspective a little bit.
It just makes it different. It doesn't make it better or worse. But I would say if you're looking at diversifying your portfolio, so to speak, Bitcoin versus, say, realistic well, first of all, Bitcoin versus any kind of cryptocurrency. I would resoundingly say, don't do that. And and I've got receipts to prove that. Just look at the last fifth how many years? Fifteen. I always wanna say sixteen. Fifteen. Fifteen years of Bitcoin versus however long any other asset has been around. And if they've been around for more than, I don't know, what would be a good bar?
Three years, four years, five years? I don't know. Are they performing as well against Bitcoin? Where is their future? How are they being like, XRP is just it's funny. We got a question about a Ponzi scheme. I would call XRP a Ponzi scheme, but okay. You know, there's completely different governance models and all this kind of stuff, and we've talked about that. I we can't get down into all that. But Bitcoin versus altcoins, to me is a no brainer. It's Bitcoin only. If you wanna talk about Bitcoin versus real estate or, well, the stock market or, I don't know, any other kind of asset, Don't like, people I think about real estate in particular. People think, well, real estate's a safe investment. Is it?
Because you could be in an area, for example, bless their heart, the people up in Western North Carolina devastated by a hurricane recently and houses destroyed, lands flooded, all kinds of crazy stuff going on up there. Are their investments, safe there? Maybe in the long run, but certainly not right now. Right? Because they're the the market's a mess. Maybe you pick the wrong area to buy your investment in. So every investment has its risk, and I I can't sit here and tell you Bitcoin's going to a million or it's going to zero. I don't think it's going to zero, and I have a number of reasons that I believe that that's true. But that's my decision, and it you have to make that decision yourself as well about your comfort level. Now how much to wrap this up because this is getting long.
How much are you willing to spend investing your time in? If I ask the average person who would invest in Bitcoin, have you spent a hundred hours reading, listening, whatever? Just like what's that? Like, less than three weeks of full time work. If they were honest, most people would say they have not. They've heard snippets here and there. They've got the friend that's promoting the Bitcoin. You do the work. Do the proof of work. Read the Bitcoin standard. Do the do the research.
[00:25:49] Kenshin:
Right. That's that was a good answer.
[00:25:53] McIntosh:
Ken's just like, stop. This is our new signal, by the way. Cut.
[00:25:58] Kenshin:
Alright. Keep going long. Yes.
[00:26:01] McIntosh:
Alright. Buttercup Roberts, as you wish. Sorry. I had to throw that in. I know that that person got that reference. The rest of you go watch the princess bride. Could Bitcoin be considered a Ponzi scheme? If so, in which way or how is it different? So this is a good question. This comes up frequently. First of all, what is a Ponzi scheme? It's just an investment structure where the people who are entering in are essentially paying the people at the kind of upper levels. You build like a pyramid. Okay? And so the people on top get the most money, and as you go along, eventually, you run out of people coming in, and they lose. Those are the people who lose in that scheme.
Does that make sense? It does require continuous recruitment of new participants. Otherwise, it collapses. And that's what ends up happening. The whole thing just falls apart. Right? Mhmm. Why is Bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme? I think there's a number of reasons, including the decentralization of the network. We have no central authority. There's no person at the top. We don't even know who Satoshi is. Like, we have no idea. And if we did, Satoshi might have more influence, but he would have no more control over the network than anyone else, which is incredible Bitcoin node at a very low cost, and you can see everything that's ever been done on the blockchain.
You can't hide things. You can't manipulate things like what happens in a Ponzi scheme. And as I just said earlier, there are no guarantees about returns. I'm not telling you Bitcoin's going to a million dollars. I may think it is. I may think it is, I don't know, in five years, but I can't guarantee that. It does depend on how does the network grow, how many people are using Bitcoin, etcetera.
[00:28:20] Kenshin:
And then if you hold your own keys and you hold your own Bitcoin and not keeping it in an exchange, then it's yours. You buy Bitcoin, it's completely yours. It's no one else's, in the sense that an exchange could fake the Bitcoin reserves and reinvest. And it's a sort of Ponzi scheme there too, like FTX did, and reinvest the funds and use them for their advantage. And then the whole thing collapses eventually. But if you hold your own keys, you don't care. Simple as that. And it's yours. And yeah. Then it it's and as you said, it it's transparent, and you can always verify what you have.
[00:29:05] McIntosh:
Very good.
[00:29:07] Kenshin:
Next one, we have miss Hell Breaker. How can I and we all use Nostra and Bitcoin to unite humanity as one family and make a bigger difference in the world and contribute to pro prosperity for all? Right. That's a very good question.
[00:29:30] McIntosh:
We could use some softballs in here, by the way. Some really easy questions.
[00:29:35] Kenshin:
Right. They're coming. But yes. But, yeah, I would say what we're doing right now, it's helping. We are exchanging, messages on Oster. We exchange value between us, for at least we prove to each other that there is value and we exchange it. And then by word-of-mouth, we keep, we keep this going. We we bring more people in, like Moin, he or she came online on Oser. So that's how at least we contributed. Then in a simpler way, you talk to a family or friend and bring them along, I would say. So so that also helps. And I would and another good way to to help also the Bitcoin adoption is just send someone some Bitcoin. And even if they don't have a wallet, just give them a wallet, incentivize them to make a wallet and send them some SUDs.
A year later, I I promise you, they will come back asking for more. So slowly, they get into it and and they get excited about it.
[00:30:50] McIntosh:
I wanna add one thing to this. I think the biggest thing that Bitcoin can actually do, and I truly believe this, it can break the power of governments to print money. Ultimately. I may not see this in my lifetime. In fact, I probably won't, to be honest. But when governments cannot print fiat to fund garbage, I'll just leave it at that. The world is a better place. People are better off with sound money, solid sound money, which is what Bitcoin is versus any form of fiat that's backed by threats of violence or just nothing.
Mhmm. And that's the world that I want to be a part of, and I do think that will contribute to prosperity for all exactly as your question said. It's just going to be the third, fourth order result of that change when nations are interacting on a Bitcoin standard and when nations are using Bitcoin internally as well for their Yeah. What is it called? Their their basis, their standard.
[00:32:06] Kenshin:
Absolutely. And the more adoption we get, the more we will end up to that decentralized future. So I think the simplest way is to to help that adoption Mhmm. In this phase. And that naturally will bring, as you said, the benefit to humanity. And they tie in very good, both Nasr and Bitcoin, since they're both decentralized technologies. And that, helps, will help everyone eventually.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
The bullish Bitcoiner is next. And, man, I'm can I just give you this question? I'm gonna read it, and then you just answer. I'm just kidding. These questions are hard. What is the most important thing you've learned in Bitcoin or life in general from the 200 episodes?
[00:32:56] Kenshin:
Right. That's to you.
[00:32:59] McIntosh:
Yeah. I'm gonna say this. Maybe this isn't the most important. Maybe it is. If you go back and listen to all 200 episodes, you know, I've been on a journey. I've gone through everything. Crypto's great to trying to make money with crypto to, you know, I don't wanna say gambling, but really close to gambling on crypto to Bitcoin to Bitcoin only to, you know, there's just nothing else. The travel through the crypto journey has taught me that the average person is not going to make money by essentially gambling, which is almost which really I think is what these cryptos are about. Oh, if you're one of the first people in, you're gonna you're gonna make money off the pump. It's just it's crazy stuff that's go and it's getting even more magnified really over in the kind of crypto world, and we don't talk about that stuff anymore. There's just no reason to.
But, like, with the meme coin stuff and all this kind of it's insane what's going on over there. It's just a bunch of degenerate gambling, and there are people who make a lot of money at that. But most people, the vast majority of people, they lose out on that, and some of them lose out a lot. Bitcoin, on the other hand, you stay humble, you stack sats, you realize that ten, twenty years from now, this even if it's a little bit it's I mean, you can't buy $5 and expect to be, you know, financially free in ten years. But you don't have to buy a million dollars and then be financially free five years from now. You can do that DCA that we always talk about, and the end result is you will be in a much better place.
I did that make sense, Kenshin? Shin? Yeah. Absolutely. This was a really hard question. Yeah. I would just say, to put it simply, avoid crypto, Bitcoin only, understand it all. That's the most understand Bitcoin. That's the most important thing. Life in general, my views in life probably haven't changed in the last five years, frankly. Although I will say that going through this journey has sharpened my understanding.
[00:35:35] Kenshin:
I would I can give my perspective on at least the life side of it. Sure. I I thought I knew how the financial system worked on, or not so much the financial, but the economics, macro and microeconomics a bit. I was taught in the university about it, so I thought I had the grasp on how things worked around the world and for companies and, you know, for governments and stuff. But I realized after, yeah, starting Bitcoin a lot in the last few years, I realized I had no clue, actually. And that opened my eyes a lot, especially with inflation. I would say that's the biggest part, and how companies print and use the money and how the banking system works.
For me, that was the biggest lesson, during the last few years that I had to admit that I I knew basically what they wanted me to know. And what they wanted me to know was just to be part of the system and get big loans and pay a lot of taxes and accept inflation and and all of the rest of it. So I I think that's the biggest lesson for me, and I appreciate it very much. Awesome. Yes. These I love that. They're hard, but they're good questions. Mhmm.
[00:36:57] McIntosh:
Okay. You wanna do the next one? Yes.
[00:37:02] Kenshin:
So next one is Libertas BR, a Brazilian account, as I understand. Mhmm. And, their question is, what do you think will be the event that will bring a disruption in the adoption of Bitcoin for more people? Right. That's another very good question. I have a very simple answer. One of the big or most of the big seven corporations like Amazon, Google, or especially, let's say Amazon, adopts Bitcoin, I think there we will see a big, big spike in adoption. Some of those big companies to make Bitcoin acceptable, to transfer value around, buy things
[00:37:49] McIntosh:
in everyday life. You know what might be even more disruptive than Amazon? And I agree that Amazon would be, but what about Apple incorporating Bitcoin into Apple Pay? Right. I mean Exactly. Yeah. You're making it available to hundreds of millions of people instantly like that. If they installed a lightning wallet essentially in Apple, I I mean, I think that would be very interesting.
[00:38:17] Kenshin:
It's very far away for Apple, I think. So you don't think well,
[00:38:23] McIntosh:
yes. I I believe you're correct. I do believe that's a correct statement. You don't think that a government adopting Bitcoin is necessarily going to be as disruptive?
[00:38:36] Kenshin:
No. Because it's not a tool that the people can actually use in everyday life in that sense. I mean, it will bring it will bring the eyes towards it and recognition, but I I don't think it will bring the our parents or, some other people to actually install it up and start using it for every day.
[00:38:56] McIntosh:
And, specifically, the question was adoption of Bitcoin. So Right. I think, let's be honest, if The US were to make some big move, it would drive investments maybe on a very big level, and the price of Bitcoin go up, etcetera. But it doesn't drive the actual adoption of Bitcoin by people like you and me using it for buying your groceries. Yeah. Is that fair? Okay. Yes. I think we're at the same place, actually, so we should move on.
[00:39:26] Kenshin:
That's great. Alright.
[00:39:28] McIntosh:
Marcela three two one, is our next one. And a good question. Are you prepared for a historic drop Whether Bitcoin or other meme coins as an alternative. So I'm not gonna discuss other meme coins as you word this because I don't own any. I don't if you're in a meme coin, if you're anywhere near what you paid for it, you probably ought to be out of it because track these things these things do not last. They sometimes they don't last twenty four hours. Bitcoin. So we actually discussed this in the last month or so, Kenshin. And the way that I recall it, and I would still stand by this is it doesn't matter what Bitcoin goes down to. I'm going to buy it. If it were at $10,000, I think is the actual words I used, I would be doing everything I could to buy that Bitcoin because Bitcoin's either going to zero or it's gonna become the world reserve currency. And effectively, at this point, I'm betting on that, and I believe that there are a lot of people who are doing the exact same thing.
So if for some reason we were to go that far down, and I don't think we ever will, But let's just say we did. I bought during the last lowest dip when, the Ukrainian Russian war started. That was kind of where where we at? 16,000, I think, we got down to. And I bought what I could. I did. And if at this point, if we were to get down that low, look, Coinbase could get hacked, and it would be highly disrupted. The price of Bitcoin might drop $25,000. I'm gonna be buying Bitcoin.
[00:41:21] Kenshin:
Yeah. I agree. Completely agree. So many people would do the same. And Bitcoin, was here before all those big corporations and governments talking about it. Mhmm. And it went up to 70,000, basically, without them. So 100%. So I think even if it drops, those people will keep buying. And I would say that if you actually hold your keys and your Bitcoin, and if you consider it a savings mechanism and not an investment mechanism, then you have a more long term view. Right. Then you don't really care. And every drop you consider it a discount, an opportunity to get more, as you said.
So for me, that's when it switched a few years ago. I I thought it's not an investment because it's too volatile. It's not a good investment. It's a savings mechanism. And then everything clicked in place. And if you consider that, then you don't care. You are actually happy if it drops. Yeah. Cheap, sats.
[00:42:24] McIntosh:
Yeah. All right.
[00:42:28] Kenshin:
Next one, we have, Angelos Angeloskzy. If you had to change something from the previous 199
[00:42:42] McIntosh:
episodes, what would it be? Okay. Oh, I guess I should have read this one. I think I'm gonna answer that. Yeah. I'd be Bitcoin only from day one, and I would feel much better. I can only that's my work. It is what it is, and that's where I was at, but I would be Bitcoin only from day one. I would get on there episode one and say, Bitcoin only, stay humble, stack sets, forget everything else.
[00:43:11] Kenshin:
We all had to go through our journey. So that's I know.
[00:43:15] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:43:18] Kenshin:
Should we take next one from x d? Okay. And we were contemplating this question, so let's read it. And what do you miss about the beginnings of those moments when it all begins? So we were trying to consider, is that the beginning of our journey in Bitcoin or something else? But let's say that this is the meaning, our journey with Bitcoin. For me personally, I would say, I mean, that was such a long time ago and it was just yet another interesting, geeky technology Mhmm. That came along. And I gave it my usual attention, not more than that, unfortunately.
[00:44:07] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:44:08] Kenshin:
And quickly went to onto the next geeky, techie thing topic. So I would say I I miss yeah. But but then you I miss the journey of learning about it. It's like, but what is this? How does it work? So many question marks. And now I know most of the answers, how Bitcoin works and everything in between. So I miss that curiosity. But at the same time, there is a even bigger rabbit hole to go, once you raise once you raise this initial level of understanding Bitcoin, then it opens up so many more possibilities. So I would say it's the initial curiosity and, amazement of something completely different that we didn't have before.
[00:44:59] McIntosh:
Okay. That's great. I I don't really have anything to add to that. I think we're just gonna go ahead and move on if that's okay. I think you and I have very similar stories. So a lot of a lot of what you said rang very true with me. Alright. Hina Hina Kamado, said, is there any possibility of doing the episode live like a stream, or have they already done it like that? The answer is yes. We're looking at using zaps zap dot stream. Right? Right. Zap stream. Zap dot stream. Actually, as a way to promote Nostr, I don't know about doing it live on other platforms. I've never done YouTube or anything like that.
I would like to get our message out to those platforms ultimately, but once you start branching out, it's more work. It's it's well, it's more work, and it's something frankly that neither Ken Shen and I can do right now. I would like to experiment with ZapStreams, just as a way to be able to provide another way for people to kind of you can jump in there and chat and, you know, ask questions or whatever as we're recording and get to see how bad Macintosh really stumbled sometimes. I edit out things here and there, by the way, and you'll get to see that in real time. So yeah.
[00:46:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. It it will be really interesting to do that with this up to the stream. So we haven't done it yet, but I think we can easily do it. It's just a matter of trying it for the first time, getting through that first step. But the technology is there. We could do it.
[00:46:42] McIntosh:
And to be honest, I maybe I'm making this more difficult, but I kinda wanna set up our own ZapStream server. Mhmm. Otherwise and this is perfectly legitimate, but we have to pay them to run the stream. And if we don't have people that are utilizing the system, then that makes no sense. I mean, really. But maybe that's the way we start. I don't know. We'll see. Alright. I you wanna wrap this up? We've got one more.
[00:47:14] Kenshin:
We got one more. So we have Fabrizio, probably another Brazilian. I'm sorry if you're not.
[00:47:22] McIntosh:
I'm thinking Italian, but maybe I'm really
[00:47:25] Kenshin:
pretty. I'm just, could be with a zed. Right. You're right.
[00:47:31] McIntosh:
Maybe he heard about your grandmother. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I apologize you. I'm gonna make your grandmother Internet famous.
[00:47:40] Kenshin:
So he's, he's saying, oh, it's more like a statement. Mhmm. How come I didn't know about you guys before? Now I feel like I'm behind, Lord.
[00:47:49] McIntosh:
Sorry, Fabrizio. And the one thing I would say is, I'm glad you're here. And do us a favor and tell your friends about us.
[00:47:58] Kenshin:
Yes. You can, still listen to the old episodes. Don't go too far back. Don't go too far back.
[00:48:08] McIntosh:
Oh, lion's sakes. You know, I should actually comb through the episode list. I am not going to delete. I I feel like I cannot. I do not want to hide things, but maybe I should actually go through the list, and maybe we make a curated list. Does that make sense? Like these because I talked about Bitcoin a lot during those episodes. And like I talked about the three legs of a cryptocurrency. It's decentralization, security, and speed or something like that, and there's trade offs. Right? There's a reason why we have a ten minute block time instead of, like, milliseconds.
Like, what's the one Solana does? I mean, it's only a few seconds on Solana. There's a reason for that. And so a lot of that information is relevant, but I don't frankly just want you going back and listening to these things and then thinking that that is what Macintosh still believes because a lot of that stuff, it it is not. Okay? And I want to save you that pain because I've done it. I bought the t shirt, the hat, all of the other souvenir paraphernalia, and let me tell you, it's all garbage and not worth anything. Oh, actually, I did wanna mention you talk about the meme coins, dropping.
Right? So this idiot right here bought a and I think I even told you all about it when I did it. One of these NFTs back when NFTs were the thing, not meme coins. Everybody remember NFTs. It hasn't been that long. And I bought an NFT of oh, gosh. I don't even remember. You know what it's worth now? On a depreciate because you had to buy it with Ethereum, so I bought it was, like, a third of an Ethereum. Now it's like point zero zero three, and Ethereum is worth not really a whole lot more than it was back then. It's a waste. It's gone. It's just, you know, it's just one of those things.
Don't mess around with this garbage. Sorry. I think that covers everything. Is that right? Alright. So let's move on to our support this week. And, of course, we did get support on Nostr. Love the comments. Love the boost. Love the well, excuse me, zaps, and I apologize. I grew up in the podcast world, but love it, and we do appreciate that. We don't really have a way to track that, and I'm not sure we ever will. But, as you've heard, we've gotten some great questions. But using our podcast two point o apps like Fountain, Podcast Guru, and this kind of thing, you can support us as well.
Send It Mike here is one of our regular, listeners and supporters, and appreciate that Send It Mike as always. And he boosted 3,000 sats this week. And I I got to read this is I love this. Love the new song to play us out. Listen to it on 1.7 x. So he's talking about the speed that you play back the audio. The first time in my brain melted a little bit. It sounds much better or it sounds better on one x. Gotta get those splits going. Keep it up. Thanks, Mike. You're you're right. We do have to get the splits going. That's why I gotta get the lightning note up, and we are getting there. So, I'm going to play that song one last time today, and, man, I cannot imagine.
1.7. Oh, man. But between Mike and some streaming, we got a total of about 3,600. I really 3,700 sats, about 3,700 total. So we do appreciate that. As always, the people who are out there streaming and boosting, you could grab a podcasting two point o app. There's a list at podcastapps.com, and then you can hook that up with a, like, a lightning wallet. And then you can interact with the podcast that you listen to just like this.
[00:52:20] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Right. Thank you, Mike. And he's been a big part of the last, how many episodes? So
[00:52:28] McIntosh:
It's been a bit. Been a bit.
[00:52:31] Kenshin:
And I should it's I should say for the new listeners that I haven't been for that long in the podcast. So I've been here since episode one eighty two. So yes. So if some people are wondering why Yeah. We also skipped some questions
[00:52:52] McIntosh:
front. I didn't even think
[00:52:54] Kenshin:
about it. Yeah. No. That's true.
[00:52:56] McIntosh:
And Kenshin has been a great addition to the show. You know, actually, this goes back to one of those questions. What do I regret? I started this podcast 2021, like I said. I really wished I would have brought on somebody sooner now. Back then, I don't know where you were at, Kenshin, in terms of Bitcoin versus everything else. It wouldn't have been the same, but I love the interaction personally. I know sometimes it's difficult when we step over each other. That's part of this process that we're getting through. But Kenshin brings a perspective that I don't have, and I certainly think hope whatever that I do the same.
Kenshin's grown up in Europe. I've grown up here in America, and we do have two different outlooks. And it is very helpful, I think, when looking at these world issues, which we do from time to time as we are about to in just a minute. So I'm gonna grab this first news item, that's happening here in The United States, and I did wanna talk about this for just a second. And then, Kenshin, if you can get the second one Yep. I'd appreciate it. Alright. So first thing, this Friday, which will be the same day that this podcast comes out, we are going to have a crypto summit here, with our politicians, with our government.
Trump is heading up this council, president Trump. And to be honest, rumor, hearsay, although I will say this, the commerce secretary, so Howard Lutnick, and I do think I said that correctly, did say last night after Trump's, it's not state of union, but his address to congress that Bitcoin is going to have kind of a a higher priority in this, crypto summit. Does that make sense? Like, yes. They're gonna be discussing probably Ethereum and Solana. Who knows what else? But Bitcoin is really kind of gonna take center center stage. So we will see what comes out of this. This is supposed to kinda settle some of these regulatory issues and guidelines, frameworks, whatever you wanna call it. I also believe that Trump will be making an announcement. This has been hinted at, as well that we will have a a strategic Bitcoin reserve. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this because initially, there was this working group that was set up. It was digital assets working group or something like that. Apparently, that has fallen apart. The article that I linked to actually makes note of that, I think.
But that whole little deal has kind of fallen apart. They were supposed to deliver some framework within these, like, I wanna say a hundred and twenty or ninety days, something like that. And, the reality is I think this is actually gonna happen faster than that. So we will see. I believe that this is going to be a pivotal moment, and I'm gonna go ahead and say this, in determining where this cycle goes. Now, Macintosh just, like, recently said, gosh. Events don't determine things like the market price or whatever. That's just in the short term, maybe, but not in the long term. This event might, and I'll tell you why.
If the United States government says we're establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and over the next five years say we're working towards buying a million Bitcoin, which is basically what they have said in the past. 1,000,000 Bitcoin, 5 percent of the total Bitcoin supply, and that gets implemented. And at the same time, one of the other rumors I know this is all rumor, but these are pretty strong rumors. Okay? So take it with a grain of salt. By the time you listen to this, most likely, you will be able to find out if Macintosh was right. But he's all they're also saying that he will announce in The United States, if you hold your Bitcoin for more than a year, there will not be cap gains just like what you were talking about, Kinshen, in Germany.
And if that is done, that is huge news for The United States. I do believe that those two things could push this cycle higher than I have talked in the past quite openly on here. Cycle top fourth quarter this year around what? What? Like, one fifty? Somewhere around that neighborhood, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, although I think I could stick pretty confidently with $1.50. If these things happen, I do not know what the top will be. And I'm not gonna predict, but it will be higher than that, and I think it will be significantly higher than that. Now that's not financial advice. I'm not telling you to sell your house and buy Bitcoin. I'm just telling you what I think.
And I god. Don't sell your house and buy Bitcoin, please. Unless it's an investment house. Okay? Don't do that. Please don't put that on me. Okay?
[00:58:15] Kenshin:
I I already did
[00:58:17] McIntosh:
based on your advice. Okay. Thanks, Kent. You're so helpful. Alright. And so that kind of is that's that. I think that's gonna prove to be very important. It could be a nothing burger as they would say, and I'm completely wrong. Tell me about some encryption.
[00:58:42] Kenshin:
UK, they forced Apple to put it or to stop an encryption service they had. So they had their cloud storage encrypted. That was Apple. And UK forced them to have it unencrypted so they could go in and get the files from bad actors or criminals or whatever. And Apple complied, and they stopped, offering their encrypted cloud service in UK. And now other countries are trying similar things like France and Sweden. They try to put backdoors to chat, applications. Mhmm.
[00:59:29] McIntosh:
Signal specifically, if I remember correctly, they're they're trying to force Signal to give them essentially a key so they can get in and look at the messages that are supposed to be encrypted.
[00:59:40] Kenshin:
Yes. And if, yes. And signal actually told, openly to towards the Swedish government. They said, we will not do that, and we are prepared to take away signal from from Sweden. Kinshen, I thought the translation was, hey, Sweden. Go pound sand. Sorry. Yeah. Essentially. Yes. So, France is also they they have passed it through. So the amendment has already passed the senate, they say, and it's moved into the National Assembly. So there are some, some groups who try to to stop this, and they collect, how do we say they collect the opinions from all all governments and countries. So there are plenty of countries in Europe that have no objections to to get control over chat applications, and there are fewer, countries that oppose to it. Right. And there is an interesting graphic on it. But, yeah, Sweden I mean, Sweden is always first on those, ridiculous things. But I I actually saw in some articles that the Swedish police officers were saying that this is a really bad idea. Right.
So that's good, because they understand the risk of having no encryption. Encrypted messages is a bigger risk than not being able to read someone's encrypted messages. So in that sense, it's I don't think it will pass in Sweden. And in the end, I just I hope it will not pass in other countries. But if if UK is is
[01:01:29] McIntosh:
giving that example now, I don't know. I really don't know. I think the EU itself has tried to pass some legislation like this in the past and it's failed. Is that am I correct in that?
[01:01:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. It rings a bell. No. I don't remember exactly the names. Right. But the EU is doing a lot recently with this mic, with a cryptocurrency control.
[01:01:52] McIntosh:
Well, we'll just have to see how it goes, but, that is not good news. It's something, especially if you live in Europe, that you need to keep an eye on.
[01:02:01] Kenshin:
Absolutely. I mean, I I wouldn't use any chat application if if that was the case, if it was not end to end encrypted. And there are other ways, of course. There is simple ways. There is I have my own Nextcloud, server, so I have my own chat there. I mean, there are ways, but I wouldn't like to be in a country where they implement this type of Yeah. Rules. It just makes it far more difficult and problematic, and the average person won't do it. And Yeah. That's not okay. Not in my book. And family members wouldn't want to switch away from No. Signal and other similar ups.
[01:02:41] McIntosh:
Alright. We're gonna wrap this up. That covers everything that we wanted to cover. We got it done in a good time. I do appreciate, your time, Kenshin, actually. I I really appreciate all of these comments, questions. You know how to make a guy feel good. It's been 200 episodes. I don't know if we'll make it 200 more. I hope we will. I would like to think we will, but, that's another four years into the future unless we start doing this more more than once a week. So we will see. Do you think you'll be around in 200 episodes, Kenshin?
[01:03:20] Kenshin:
It would be nice. It would be nice. I mean, my future is my future is Bitcoin
[01:03:26] McIntosh:
only focus. So yeah. So you're saying if I start talking about Solana, you're leaving? Yeah. Alright. Well, I won't start talking about Solana. I just laugh at it when it breaks. That's all I do with Solana. I've never owned a Solana, by the way. Not one. That that's a true statement because I was I was out of that mess before they came along. Alright. Let's wrap this up. If you clip an episode, if you go to something, if you go to fountain and you clip a couple of minutes, maybe one of these questions, I don't know, from the episode, and it's a current episode, we'll boost you 500 sats for that. If it's an older one, we typically don't do as much. I'll be honest. I could be swayed. If it was a really good clip and boost more, typically, we boost 300. It's a way for you to make some treasure. It's a way for us to get some more exposure, which I would like to see on fountain, to be honest.
And you're welcome to do that. And, of course, just like the person that we Fabrizio, I hope I said that right. Hey. He they just heard about this show. Now turn around, tell somebody about it. That is worth its weight in gold for us. It is a excellent way to promote this podcast. And, of course, as I mentioned earlier, you can grab a podcasting two point o app, and you can stream and boost just like Send It Mike did earlier and with his boost and the streaming that was occurring during the while people were listening to the episode. We do have some great ways to get a hold of us. We have so many at this point actually that we just list them at the bottom of the episode page, and we make one for each episode. So if you go to satoshis-plebs.com/episodes, that has a table listing kind of in chronological order. Just click on the episode page there, and then scroll down to the bottom.
And there's email and Nostra Pub and Twitter handle and whatever. I don't even know what else is on there. Right? There's all these different ways to get ahold of us. We do love hearing from you guys. It's, it helps create feedback that's it creates it creates feedback for us that's very helpful. So thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and we sure would love to hear from you.
[01:05:55] Kenshin:
Yeah. And thank you very much again from my side, and I'm honored to be on this 200 episode. You're welcome. Congratulations.
[01:06:05] McIntosh:
Thank you. Thank you. I couldn't have gotten this far without you, Kenshin, to be honest. If you had not come on board, if nobody had come on, I probably would have stopped. I I was I don't know that I've ever said this on here. I don't think so, but I was pretty burned out at that point. I was frustrated and bringing you on and bringing your insight and just the ability to kind of bounce back and forth has been super helpful. So I appreciate that. I know sometimes that can be difficult. Let's be honest. But, I do appreciate that.
[01:06:40] Kenshin:
Alright? And I I also appreciate all the comments and the questions, and I look forward to more interactions on Nostr. And we will see you there on Nostr, for the upcoming week. And until the next episode.
[01:06:54] McIntosh:
Alright. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. We'll talk to you soon.
[01:06:58] Kenshin:
Bye bye.
What is up, Pleb Nation? Today is March, and this is episode, oh, god. 200 of Sentoshis plebs. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:11] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin, and today's episode is questions all around.
[00:00:45] McIntosh:
Alright. Before we get started, first of all, was that not an awesome song? That is, like, one of my favorite songs of all time. So we only played a few seconds. Right? But it's cool in the gang, celebrate. You should look it up. I you know, I've told you guys before. I love bass. I used to play the bass a long, long time ago. And the guy who does that, who was in that group, is one of the best bass players around. I mean, you may not like the music, and that's fine. You may not like their style, but you got to appreciate a good bass line. And I can listen to literally anyone from Charles Mingus, who was an upright jazz bassist, a phenomenal, well known, all the way up to literally, like, thrash metal people who there are some really good bass players there. Right?
And so, anyways, awesome song, and today is a celebration, Kenshin. I know you I know you know that.
[00:01:42] Kenshin:
Congratulations.
[00:01:43] McIntosh:
Thanks. Thanks. Congratulations to you too. You've hung in there with me, which is not an easy feat, mind you. Sometimes I wonder, what's go what your thoughts are. But, yeah, it's it's been a journey, and I I just looked back at the statistics. I recorded episode one in August of what did I say? Twenty twenty one. So three and a half years ago. And this show has changed over time, and we'll actually talk about that with one of our questions that we're gonna discuss today. But it's been a journey, and I have been very transparent in kind of that journey and laying it out here. I try not to hold things back.
If you've listened to this show over the long term, you've learned a lot about Macintosh, and maybe that's not really what you want, but I do. I put a lot of it out there. I think it helps make it a better show.
[00:02:47] Kenshin:
Absolutely. So, let's talk about Bitcoin first, the price. What's happening? It's been a bit up and down.
[00:02:57] McIntosh:
We never talk about Bitcoin on this podcast. I don't know what you're talking about. Alright. Yes. It has. It has been a crazy week. I don't know if you guys watch the charts. I do. I'm sorry. It's one of my flaws. But this week has been nuts. As we record right now, Kenshin, what are the the statistics?
[00:03:20] Kenshin:
Well, right now, Bitcoin is at 89,500 US dollars and €83,300. Mhmm. It's been very volatile this past week. It's been going down $10,000 up, $10,000, everything in between.
[00:03:38] McIntosh:
If I'm not mistaken, that down and up was actually in the course of twenty not twenty four, forty eight hours. So we Right. We had a, we had an up candle first. Right? And then it went down or it it either way, it was like a whipsaw. It was unbelievable. And people were you know, Twitter's exploding. People are, like, it's the end. And Bitcoin's just doing Bitcoin things because that's what Bitcoin does. Right?
[00:04:07] Kenshin:
I will give you a nice anecdote. I talked to my mother today, and she met a friend who used to work in a bank and she was actually managing, directing the bank, local bank. And they were talking and he said, oh, everything is down. The stock market is down. Bitcoin even, went to zero. What? And yeah. Wait. What? Yeah. Exactly. So that's the mainstream one of the mainstream things, I think. And then she so she talked to me a bit, I think, hesitant, like, is it okay? Are you doing fine? I'm like, well, this Bitcoin is actually double from last this time last year. Right. Yes. We're doing fine.
[00:04:46] McIntosh:
It's nothing serious. And as we recorded last week, we were, I think, at 83,000 something, and now we're at 89,000. So by my calculations that we're up. So I'm just gonna you know? Hey. Volatility. Embrace it. Buy the dips. Stack sat. Stay humble. I don't know. What can we say?
[00:05:09] Kenshin:
Right. Yeah. No leverage then. No leverage. No issue.
[00:05:14] McIntosh:
What's our block height, sir?
[00:05:17] Kenshin:
88 or should I say 886,450. And difficulty adjustment, we are at, minus, I'm sorry. It's point 4%. Point four is that yes. And the previous difficulty adjustment was at minus 3.15%. Mhmm. So the hash rate is dropping slightly, but the blocks are coming very close to ten minutes at this point. So everything is working properly. TikTok. So Next block. Problem.
[00:05:53] McIntosh:
Yeah. Alright. And our mempool, setup right now is looking at, like, three three three. So first, low, medium, high, that's been fluctuating. I did some transactions a couple nights ago, and I it was two when I did it. But it and it spiked a little bit, here and there, but we're kind of in that range where right now, we're at 305 megabytes of of transactions that haven't been processed about 11,000. So there's no very little backup on the on the main chain. So looking good there. What's up with you these days?
[00:06:37] Kenshin:
Well, it's been another busy week in the Fiat world. So but I I think this this week is it. Then I start relaxing a bit, getting back to normal, at least with the fiat stuff. And the Bitcoin stuff are starting to get exciting as well. I'm having that secret project Oh. With a couple of friends, so you will know soon enough. So we're doing good progress on that. We've been working hard, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So that's going good, and it's, yeah, keeping busy, I would say. And with the no store stuff also, keeping very busy. Cool. I did
[00:07:18] McIntosh:
the one thing I managed to do this week outside of work, which is fortunately starting to slow up just a tiny bit as well. I've told y'all I was working on a lightning setup. I did go back to that last night actually and started looking at how I'm actually gonna set up core lightning, which is the version that I'm gonna use and made some progress. I essentially kind of went down one path, and then I've I've rejected. I've decided not to do it that way. I'm gonna do it kind of a more traditional way, but it does mean so to be honest, Corelightning, they make a binary package, but they only make it for x 86, for, like, AMD or Intel chips.
And I have an ARM 64 server set up that I was going to do it on, but I'm gonna just blow that server away and rebuild it and then set it up on there. There's no use dying on that hill when this is what I need, what I want, you know, get what I where get me where I want to go. I hope I can have that up and running by the time we talk next week. It will depend on work. We'll see. But, yeah, that would be awesome. And your miners are still up and running? Oh, yes. Quick update on that. They are. And it turns out the hosting company was actually having an issue with Foreman, which is kind of the tool that's used to display the miners. But I could go into Ocean, and I could see my hash rate, which was the correct amount. So they were actually all all online last week when I thought that they were not.
So that was good news. I'm like, one less problem.
[00:08:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. I I actually had to turn off one of mine right now so it it wouldn't make noise while recording. So you never know. That's a big potential loss during the two hundredth episode. Wouldn't that be terrible if you would have?
[00:09:15] McIntosh:
Oh, man. The irony. The irony. Yes. So good good stuff going on there. Once we get the lightning note on, I think that's gonna free us up to do some things, like support our value for value music that we play. This week, I'm gonna go ahead and play the same song one last time. We got a funny, funny comment about that song. We'll get to I think it's in the list. Oh, no. It was a boost. So it'll be in the support. Hilarious. But, yeah, we'll be changing that out this week. I'll make a point to do that. And I would like to get them in the splits, but we can't do that until we set up lightning and have it running through our own setup. Mhmm. Alright.
[00:10:03] Kenshin:
So to celebrate the two hundredth episode, we decided to do another Zapathon. Okay. So so on Friday, when this episode is released, we will have a post on Nostr. And whoever goes to that post from the satoshis plebs account and comments in the poll under the post, then we will zap them 420 sats. So everyone who comes and comments. So the only thing they need to do is just comment. We would appreciate a for loop and a repost, but it's not a prerequisite or we will not check. So just leave a comment so we can zap the actual comment. That's the easiest way also for us to to give you some value back.
[00:10:52] McIntosh:
Can I say this? When we first started doing these Zapathons, which hasn't been very long, I didn't really know what to expect, and I didn't really know how I was gonna feel about it. And to be honest, I really enjoy it. Now I'm giving away money, which I kind of don't like, but I it it is a system that, how can I say this? First of all, I think you and I both are trying to help Nasr move along, grow. I've actually noticed this week, specifically, I went to Twitter and clicked on my profile to look at the tweets I had done during the week as part of my show prep. Because a lot of times, I'll just tweet something and then go back to it. I had only tweeted, like, three times this week, which is probably a record for me for, going a long way back.
And I am working in Nostra more. I enjoy it more. We there's a lot of reasons for that, and I think we've talked about those a fair amount. But this has been I just really that's a long winded way of saying sorry, Kensho. It's a long winded way of saying that, you know, this has actually been very enjoyable. And I hope you guys, are participating and enjoying it yourself.
[00:12:13] Kenshin:
Right. And I I I mirror your thoughts, and I haven't been posting almost anything on Twitter lately for that reason exactly because I spend my time on Oster. Mhmm. And I think it's mostly the engagement. I mean, you get actual engagement with real, like minded people. And as you say, it's very enjoyable. I look forward to go there every every day and and see what other people are doing. And you say something, you get feedback, you you get a question, you start a discussion with with real people.
[00:12:47] McIntosh:
So that that's that's really cool, I think. I think I'm just gonna clip out what I said so they don't listen to that. And then just you just say that, and we'll call it a day because that was much better than what I said. And it's a % true. The engagement on Twitter is just it's just trolls and bots. Yeah. There's so little actual interaction going on with a pleb like me who's, you know, not some well known person that's got a billion followers. It's just it's a joke. Yeah. Alright. What's our topic today? Oh, wait. We're doing q and a.
[00:13:26] Kenshin:
Right. Because we asked on Noister last time, a week ago, we asked our audience what they would like us to talk about, what questions do they have, Bitcoin or otherwise related, And we got some really good questions. We did.
[00:13:42] McIntosh:
A lot of engagement just like you said, and some really great questions. I don't even think I think we got so many we're not even gonna have time to go through them all. I'm not sure about that, but we'll try if we don't cover it on here to answer it on Nostr itself.
[00:13:59] Kenshin:
So Should should actually, I have an idea. Should we start from the last one? Because it relates to
[00:14:07] McIntosh:
to Nostr. You're gonna confuse my list, Kenshin. The very last one?
[00:14:12] Kenshin:
Yeah. Because I I also I also want to say that if you are curious, if you haven't joined NoStar yet, then you're curious. We have an episode, I think it's one ninety seven, one 90 eight. Somewhere there. And there, we discuss more about Nostra and how to actually make an account and join Nostra.
[00:14:35] McIntosh:
It's one ninety five, actually. Oh, it's one ninety five. Okay. A couple of before that.
[00:14:40] Kenshin:
And we got a comment from, Moin or wolf54.
[00:14:45] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:14:46] Kenshin:
And in his comment, he said, congrats. I started listening at episode one ninety two. And shortly after, you gave me the final push I needed to try out Nostra. It had been on my to do list since 02/2023, but I had never gotten around it. Thank you for that. So that that was very gratifying to to hear. Yeah. You wanna go ahead and do his question while we're here? Yeah. Since we're at his comment, we can do his question also. So his question is, suppose someone has been acquiring Bitcoin for years without maintaining accurate documentation. How should they handle potential source of funds and KYC inquiries in the future if they ever decide to use Bitcoin for significant purchases in real life? K.
[00:15:38] McIntosh:
So we read this earlier and we've kind of talked about it, but something really jumped out at me just now when you reread this, it says without maintaining accurate documentation. Now, I don't know what country you live in, but most likely well, if you're KYC, you're using an exchange like Coinbase, like Kraken. Okay. Those are probably the two biggest well, Binance. If you are using those platforms, first of all, they have a list of your transactions, and you can download that. Back in my, mistake filled days, I was trading. I was day trading. Okay? Trying to make more money, more fiat, really, not Bitcoin, which was a shame.
But either way, it was a mistake. When I had to go to the IRS and when we filed our taxes, I had to pull all those down in, like, a CVS type format and then take that to my accountant so they could feed all that into their system. And I literally had 50 pages of documentation. It was insane for all of the that stuff that had gone on that year. So even though you didn't keep track of every transaction, your exchange did. And if you're going to do the right thing, then you should go gather that list up because I hope that makes sense. Now, that will let you know when you bought it and when you moved it off the exchange or sold it, which may be all you need.
If you moved it somewhere else and then moved, I can't really help you with that. But this is a case where and it's maybe not a good thing, but they do have track of all of that so you can go back to them.
[00:17:43] Kenshin:
Right. And, one other thing, if if this person really doesn't have any documentation or acquired Bitcoin from a friend or whatever Mhmm. Then, of course, you can declare it's like getting it at price zero. So you just pay pay capital gains from the whole amount. So 25% or whatever is in that country.
[00:18:07] McIntosh:
Right. And if you just mysteriously end up with some Bitcoin, then that's exactly at least how the IRS is gonna deal with it. I would assume any tax agency would be exactly the same. Okay. Well, then it's worth zero when you when you got it, and now it's worth 89,000. So there's the difference. So this documentation is actually really important to help you save money. But I and as a final point to this so we can move on, I would say there are a lot of well, there are jurisdictions where if you hold it for a certain amount of time, Bitcoin, that there are no cap gains taxes on it. So if you can prove I've had this Bitcoin since February maybe, and it's now 2025.
And I live in Germany. You mentioned not me, but as this example, you mentioned Kinshen, Germany. If you hold it for a year, there's no cap gains. Yeah. Well, there you go. Countries. So at that point, it doesn't matter what you use it for. You can go out and buy that house or whatever. I will well, there's more news about that. So let me I'm gonna put a bow on that, but that is certainly one way of handling it if you're fortunate enough to live in a country that has that. Thank you, Wolf. That Wolf fifty four Moen. I guess Moen is actually the name. Really appreciate the question, the kind comment.
That was a great way to start this off. Yep. Shall we go back to the start of the list? Let's go back to the start. It's a very good place to be or something. I don't know.
[00:19:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. Then we have, Hodul Harry. So he says, my two questions would be, what was the thing that made you go all in with Bitcoin, and what is going what is going all in for you? Is it just putting all your money and assets into Bitcoin, or is it also worth risking your life for and spending almost all your time learning about Bitcoin and contributing to it?
[00:20:25] McIntosh:
That's a terrific question.
[00:20:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. And, I've been going back and forth in my mind about it because it's it's not it's not very simple question. No. And I think it's different for everybody because and I was thinking about this today over lunch. So I think coin only, at some point for me, was just to focus on Bitcoin and not deviate to any other meme coins. So because I looked in the past to Litecoin in the early days and, yeah, whatever else came later, not to mention any specific ones. But in my head, I was going all in on Bitcoin at some point. Then going all in was, okay, I have some savings. I should put the amount that I can afford to put for long term storage into Bitcoin.
Of course, I still have fiat savings, but I would say, individually, what you consider, all in for you is different for someone else. And I would say, as you say there, to put all your efforts into it, if if you can work within the Bitcoin industry, and that's actually what I would like to do going forward, And, hopefully, I can do it sooner than later. So that's another step in going all in. So I think we all have our all in journey, stations somehow.
[00:21:54] McIntosh:
Yeah. It it is different for different people. And I would say, I think part of this question is kind of a diversity question. Do you go all in on Bitcoin versus, say, investing in real estate? And the answer for that might be different for different people. For Jack Mahler's, he routinely says he's all in. He owns the house he lives in and his car and his clothes and everything else is Bitcoin. That's not a lot of people. Jack's not married. I'll just throw that out there because as soon as you get married and especially after you have kids, that changes your perspective a little bit.
It just makes it different. It doesn't make it better or worse. But I would say if you're looking at diversifying your portfolio, so to speak, Bitcoin versus, say, realistic well, first of all, Bitcoin versus any kind of cryptocurrency. I would resoundingly say, don't do that. And and I've got receipts to prove that. Just look at the last fifth how many years? Fifteen. I always wanna say sixteen. Fifteen. Fifteen years of Bitcoin versus however long any other asset has been around. And if they've been around for more than, I don't know, what would be a good bar?
Three years, four years, five years? I don't know. Are they performing as well against Bitcoin? Where is their future? How are they being like, XRP is just it's funny. We got a question about a Ponzi scheme. I would call XRP a Ponzi scheme, but okay. You know, there's completely different governance models and all this kind of stuff, and we've talked about that. I we can't get down into all that. But Bitcoin versus altcoins, to me is a no brainer. It's Bitcoin only. If you wanna talk about Bitcoin versus real estate or, well, the stock market or, I don't know, any other kind of asset, Don't like, people I think about real estate in particular. People think, well, real estate's a safe investment. Is it?
Because you could be in an area, for example, bless their heart, the people up in Western North Carolina devastated by a hurricane recently and houses destroyed, lands flooded, all kinds of crazy stuff going on up there. Are their investments, safe there? Maybe in the long run, but certainly not right now. Right? Because they're the the market's a mess. Maybe you pick the wrong area to buy your investment in. So every investment has its risk, and I I can't sit here and tell you Bitcoin's going to a million or it's going to zero. I don't think it's going to zero, and I have a number of reasons that I believe that that's true. But that's my decision, and it you have to make that decision yourself as well about your comfort level. Now how much to wrap this up because this is getting long.
How much are you willing to spend investing your time in? If I ask the average person who would invest in Bitcoin, have you spent a hundred hours reading, listening, whatever? Just like what's that? Like, less than three weeks of full time work. If they were honest, most people would say they have not. They've heard snippets here and there. They've got the friend that's promoting the Bitcoin. You do the work. Do the proof of work. Read the Bitcoin standard. Do the do the research.
[00:25:49] Kenshin:
Right. That's that was a good answer.
[00:25:53] McIntosh:
Ken's just like, stop. This is our new signal, by the way. Cut.
[00:25:58] Kenshin:
Alright. Keep going long. Yes.
[00:26:01] McIntosh:
Alright. Buttercup Roberts, as you wish. Sorry. I had to throw that in. I know that that person got that reference. The rest of you go watch the princess bride. Could Bitcoin be considered a Ponzi scheme? If so, in which way or how is it different? So this is a good question. This comes up frequently. First of all, what is a Ponzi scheme? It's just an investment structure where the people who are entering in are essentially paying the people at the kind of upper levels. You build like a pyramid. Okay? And so the people on top get the most money, and as you go along, eventually, you run out of people coming in, and they lose. Those are the people who lose in that scheme.
Does that make sense? It does require continuous recruitment of new participants. Otherwise, it collapses. And that's what ends up happening. The whole thing just falls apart. Right? Mhmm. Why is Bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme? I think there's a number of reasons, including the decentralization of the network. We have no central authority. There's no person at the top. We don't even know who Satoshi is. Like, we have no idea. And if we did, Satoshi might have more influence, but he would have no more control over the network than anyone else, which is incredible Bitcoin node at a very low cost, and you can see everything that's ever been done on the blockchain.
You can't hide things. You can't manipulate things like what happens in a Ponzi scheme. And as I just said earlier, there are no guarantees about returns. I'm not telling you Bitcoin's going to a million dollars. I may think it is. I may think it is, I don't know, in five years, but I can't guarantee that. It does depend on how does the network grow, how many people are using Bitcoin, etcetera.
[00:28:20] Kenshin:
And then if you hold your own keys and you hold your own Bitcoin and not keeping it in an exchange, then it's yours. You buy Bitcoin, it's completely yours. It's no one else's, in the sense that an exchange could fake the Bitcoin reserves and reinvest. And it's a sort of Ponzi scheme there too, like FTX did, and reinvest the funds and use them for their advantage. And then the whole thing collapses eventually. But if you hold your own keys, you don't care. Simple as that. And it's yours. And yeah. Then it it's and as you said, it it's transparent, and you can always verify what you have.
[00:29:05] McIntosh:
Very good.
[00:29:07] Kenshin:
Next one, we have miss Hell Breaker. How can I and we all use Nostra and Bitcoin to unite humanity as one family and make a bigger difference in the world and contribute to pro prosperity for all? Right. That's a very good question.
[00:29:30] McIntosh:
We could use some softballs in here, by the way. Some really easy questions.
[00:29:35] Kenshin:
Right. They're coming. But yes. But, yeah, I would say what we're doing right now, it's helping. We are exchanging, messages on Oster. We exchange value between us, for at least we prove to each other that there is value and we exchange it. And then by word-of-mouth, we keep, we keep this going. We we bring more people in, like Moin, he or she came online on Oser. So that's how at least we contributed. Then in a simpler way, you talk to a family or friend and bring them along, I would say. So so that also helps. And I would and another good way to to help also the Bitcoin adoption is just send someone some Bitcoin. And even if they don't have a wallet, just give them a wallet, incentivize them to make a wallet and send them some SUDs.
A year later, I I promise you, they will come back asking for more. So slowly, they get into it and and they get excited about it.
[00:30:50] McIntosh:
I wanna add one thing to this. I think the biggest thing that Bitcoin can actually do, and I truly believe this, it can break the power of governments to print money. Ultimately. I may not see this in my lifetime. In fact, I probably won't, to be honest. But when governments cannot print fiat to fund garbage, I'll just leave it at that. The world is a better place. People are better off with sound money, solid sound money, which is what Bitcoin is versus any form of fiat that's backed by threats of violence or just nothing.
Mhmm. And that's the world that I want to be a part of, and I do think that will contribute to prosperity for all exactly as your question said. It's just going to be the third, fourth order result of that change when nations are interacting on a Bitcoin standard and when nations are using Bitcoin internally as well for their Yeah. What is it called? Their their basis, their standard.
[00:32:06] Kenshin:
Absolutely. And the more adoption we get, the more we will end up to that decentralized future. So I think the simplest way is to to help that adoption Mhmm. In this phase. And that naturally will bring, as you said, the benefit to humanity. And they tie in very good, both Nasr and Bitcoin, since they're both decentralized technologies. And that, helps, will help everyone eventually.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
The bullish Bitcoiner is next. And, man, I'm can I just give you this question? I'm gonna read it, and then you just answer. I'm just kidding. These questions are hard. What is the most important thing you've learned in Bitcoin or life in general from the 200 episodes?
[00:32:56] Kenshin:
Right. That's to you.
[00:32:59] McIntosh:
Yeah. I'm gonna say this. Maybe this isn't the most important. Maybe it is. If you go back and listen to all 200 episodes, you know, I've been on a journey. I've gone through everything. Crypto's great to trying to make money with crypto to, you know, I don't wanna say gambling, but really close to gambling on crypto to Bitcoin to Bitcoin only to, you know, there's just nothing else. The travel through the crypto journey has taught me that the average person is not going to make money by essentially gambling, which is almost which really I think is what these cryptos are about. Oh, if you're one of the first people in, you're gonna you're gonna make money off the pump. It's just it's crazy stuff that's go and it's getting even more magnified really over in the kind of crypto world, and we don't talk about that stuff anymore. There's just no reason to.
But, like, with the meme coin stuff and all this kind of it's insane what's going on over there. It's just a bunch of degenerate gambling, and there are people who make a lot of money at that. But most people, the vast majority of people, they lose out on that, and some of them lose out a lot. Bitcoin, on the other hand, you stay humble, you stack sats, you realize that ten, twenty years from now, this even if it's a little bit it's I mean, you can't buy $5 and expect to be, you know, financially free in ten years. But you don't have to buy a million dollars and then be financially free five years from now. You can do that DCA that we always talk about, and the end result is you will be in a much better place.
I did that make sense, Kenshin? Shin? Yeah. Absolutely. This was a really hard question. Yeah. I would just say, to put it simply, avoid crypto, Bitcoin only, understand it all. That's the most understand Bitcoin. That's the most important thing. Life in general, my views in life probably haven't changed in the last five years, frankly. Although I will say that going through this journey has sharpened my understanding.
[00:35:35] Kenshin:
I would I can give my perspective on at least the life side of it. Sure. I I thought I knew how the financial system worked on, or not so much the financial, but the economics, macro and microeconomics a bit. I was taught in the university about it, so I thought I had the grasp on how things worked around the world and for companies and, you know, for governments and stuff. But I realized after, yeah, starting Bitcoin a lot in the last few years, I realized I had no clue, actually. And that opened my eyes a lot, especially with inflation. I would say that's the biggest part, and how companies print and use the money and how the banking system works.
For me, that was the biggest lesson, during the last few years that I had to admit that I I knew basically what they wanted me to know. And what they wanted me to know was just to be part of the system and get big loans and pay a lot of taxes and accept inflation and and all of the rest of it. So I I think that's the biggest lesson for me, and I appreciate it very much. Awesome. Yes. These I love that. They're hard, but they're good questions. Mhmm.
[00:36:57] McIntosh:
Okay. You wanna do the next one? Yes.
[00:37:02] Kenshin:
So next one is Libertas BR, a Brazilian account, as I understand. Mhmm. And, their question is, what do you think will be the event that will bring a disruption in the adoption of Bitcoin for more people? Right. That's another very good question. I have a very simple answer. One of the big or most of the big seven corporations like Amazon, Google, or especially, let's say Amazon, adopts Bitcoin, I think there we will see a big, big spike in adoption. Some of those big companies to make Bitcoin acceptable, to transfer value around, buy things
[00:37:49] McIntosh:
in everyday life. You know what might be even more disruptive than Amazon? And I agree that Amazon would be, but what about Apple incorporating Bitcoin into Apple Pay? Right. I mean Exactly. Yeah. You're making it available to hundreds of millions of people instantly like that. If they installed a lightning wallet essentially in Apple, I I mean, I think that would be very interesting.
[00:38:17] Kenshin:
It's very far away for Apple, I think. So you don't think well,
[00:38:23] McIntosh:
yes. I I believe you're correct. I do believe that's a correct statement. You don't think that a government adopting Bitcoin is necessarily going to be as disruptive?
[00:38:36] Kenshin:
No. Because it's not a tool that the people can actually use in everyday life in that sense. I mean, it will bring it will bring the eyes towards it and recognition, but I I don't think it will bring the our parents or, some other people to actually install it up and start using it for every day.
[00:38:56] McIntosh:
And, specifically, the question was adoption of Bitcoin. So Right. I think, let's be honest, if The US were to make some big move, it would drive investments maybe on a very big level, and the price of Bitcoin go up, etcetera. But it doesn't drive the actual adoption of Bitcoin by people like you and me using it for buying your groceries. Yeah. Is that fair? Okay. Yes. I think we're at the same place, actually, so we should move on.
[00:39:26] Kenshin:
That's great. Alright.
[00:39:28] McIntosh:
Marcela three two one, is our next one. And a good question. Are you prepared for a historic drop Whether Bitcoin or other meme coins as an alternative. So I'm not gonna discuss other meme coins as you word this because I don't own any. I don't if you're in a meme coin, if you're anywhere near what you paid for it, you probably ought to be out of it because track these things these things do not last. They sometimes they don't last twenty four hours. Bitcoin. So we actually discussed this in the last month or so, Kenshin. And the way that I recall it, and I would still stand by this is it doesn't matter what Bitcoin goes down to. I'm going to buy it. If it were at $10,000, I think is the actual words I used, I would be doing everything I could to buy that Bitcoin because Bitcoin's either going to zero or it's gonna become the world reserve currency. And effectively, at this point, I'm betting on that, and I believe that there are a lot of people who are doing the exact same thing.
So if for some reason we were to go that far down, and I don't think we ever will, But let's just say we did. I bought during the last lowest dip when, the Ukrainian Russian war started. That was kind of where where we at? 16,000, I think, we got down to. And I bought what I could. I did. And if at this point, if we were to get down that low, look, Coinbase could get hacked, and it would be highly disrupted. The price of Bitcoin might drop $25,000. I'm gonna be buying Bitcoin.
[00:41:21] Kenshin:
Yeah. I agree. Completely agree. So many people would do the same. And Bitcoin, was here before all those big corporations and governments talking about it. Mhmm. And it went up to 70,000, basically, without them. So 100%. So I think even if it drops, those people will keep buying. And I would say that if you actually hold your keys and your Bitcoin, and if you consider it a savings mechanism and not an investment mechanism, then you have a more long term view. Right. Then you don't really care. And every drop you consider it a discount, an opportunity to get more, as you said.
So for me, that's when it switched a few years ago. I I thought it's not an investment because it's too volatile. It's not a good investment. It's a savings mechanism. And then everything clicked in place. And if you consider that, then you don't care. You are actually happy if it drops. Yeah. Cheap, sats.
[00:42:24] McIntosh:
Yeah. All right.
[00:42:28] Kenshin:
Next one, we have, Angelos Angeloskzy. If you had to change something from the previous 199
[00:42:42] McIntosh:
episodes, what would it be? Okay. Oh, I guess I should have read this one. I think I'm gonna answer that. Yeah. I'd be Bitcoin only from day one, and I would feel much better. I can only that's my work. It is what it is, and that's where I was at, but I would be Bitcoin only from day one. I would get on there episode one and say, Bitcoin only, stay humble, stack sets, forget everything else.
[00:43:11] Kenshin:
We all had to go through our journey. So that's I know.
[00:43:15] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:43:18] Kenshin:
Should we take next one from x d? Okay. And we were contemplating this question, so let's read it. And what do you miss about the beginnings of those moments when it all begins? So we were trying to consider, is that the beginning of our journey in Bitcoin or something else? But let's say that this is the meaning, our journey with Bitcoin. For me personally, I would say, I mean, that was such a long time ago and it was just yet another interesting, geeky technology Mhmm. That came along. And I gave it my usual attention, not more than that, unfortunately.
[00:44:07] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:44:08] Kenshin:
And quickly went to onto the next geeky, techie thing topic. So I would say I I miss yeah. But but then you I miss the journey of learning about it. It's like, but what is this? How does it work? So many question marks. And now I know most of the answers, how Bitcoin works and everything in between. So I miss that curiosity. But at the same time, there is a even bigger rabbit hole to go, once you raise once you raise this initial level of understanding Bitcoin, then it opens up so many more possibilities. So I would say it's the initial curiosity and, amazement of something completely different that we didn't have before.
[00:44:59] McIntosh:
Okay. That's great. I I don't really have anything to add to that. I think we're just gonna go ahead and move on if that's okay. I think you and I have very similar stories. So a lot of a lot of what you said rang very true with me. Alright. Hina Hina Kamado, said, is there any possibility of doing the episode live like a stream, or have they already done it like that? The answer is yes. We're looking at using zaps zap dot stream. Right? Right. Zap stream. Zap dot stream. Actually, as a way to promote Nostr, I don't know about doing it live on other platforms. I've never done YouTube or anything like that.
I would like to get our message out to those platforms ultimately, but once you start branching out, it's more work. It's it's well, it's more work, and it's something frankly that neither Ken Shen and I can do right now. I would like to experiment with ZapStreams, just as a way to be able to provide another way for people to kind of you can jump in there and chat and, you know, ask questions or whatever as we're recording and get to see how bad Macintosh really stumbled sometimes. I edit out things here and there, by the way, and you'll get to see that in real time. So yeah.
[00:46:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. It it will be really interesting to do that with this up to the stream. So we haven't done it yet, but I think we can easily do it. It's just a matter of trying it for the first time, getting through that first step. But the technology is there. We could do it.
[00:46:42] McIntosh:
And to be honest, I maybe I'm making this more difficult, but I kinda wanna set up our own ZapStream server. Mhmm. Otherwise and this is perfectly legitimate, but we have to pay them to run the stream. And if we don't have people that are utilizing the system, then that makes no sense. I mean, really. But maybe that's the way we start. I don't know. We'll see. Alright. I you wanna wrap this up? We've got one more.
[00:47:14] Kenshin:
We got one more. So we have Fabrizio, probably another Brazilian. I'm sorry if you're not.
[00:47:22] McIntosh:
I'm thinking Italian, but maybe I'm really
[00:47:25] Kenshin:
pretty. I'm just, could be with a zed. Right. You're right.
[00:47:31] McIntosh:
Maybe he heard about your grandmother. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I apologize you. I'm gonna make your grandmother Internet famous.
[00:47:40] Kenshin:
So he's, he's saying, oh, it's more like a statement. Mhmm. How come I didn't know about you guys before? Now I feel like I'm behind, Lord.
[00:47:49] McIntosh:
Sorry, Fabrizio. And the one thing I would say is, I'm glad you're here. And do us a favor and tell your friends about us.
[00:47:58] Kenshin:
Yes. You can, still listen to the old episodes. Don't go too far back. Don't go too far back.
[00:48:08] McIntosh:
Oh, lion's sakes. You know, I should actually comb through the episode list. I am not going to delete. I I feel like I cannot. I do not want to hide things, but maybe I should actually go through the list, and maybe we make a curated list. Does that make sense? Like these because I talked about Bitcoin a lot during those episodes. And like I talked about the three legs of a cryptocurrency. It's decentralization, security, and speed or something like that, and there's trade offs. Right? There's a reason why we have a ten minute block time instead of, like, milliseconds.
Like, what's the one Solana does? I mean, it's only a few seconds on Solana. There's a reason for that. And so a lot of that information is relevant, but I don't frankly just want you going back and listening to these things and then thinking that that is what Macintosh still believes because a lot of that stuff, it it is not. Okay? And I want to save you that pain because I've done it. I bought the t shirt, the hat, all of the other souvenir paraphernalia, and let me tell you, it's all garbage and not worth anything. Oh, actually, I did wanna mention you talk about the meme coins, dropping.
Right? So this idiot right here bought a and I think I even told you all about it when I did it. One of these NFTs back when NFTs were the thing, not meme coins. Everybody remember NFTs. It hasn't been that long. And I bought an NFT of oh, gosh. I don't even remember. You know what it's worth now? On a depreciate because you had to buy it with Ethereum, so I bought it was, like, a third of an Ethereum. Now it's like point zero zero three, and Ethereum is worth not really a whole lot more than it was back then. It's a waste. It's gone. It's just, you know, it's just one of those things.
Don't mess around with this garbage. Sorry. I think that covers everything. Is that right? Alright. So let's move on to our support this week. And, of course, we did get support on Nostr. Love the comments. Love the boost. Love the well, excuse me, zaps, and I apologize. I grew up in the podcast world, but love it, and we do appreciate that. We don't really have a way to track that, and I'm not sure we ever will. But, as you've heard, we've gotten some great questions. But using our podcast two point o apps like Fountain, Podcast Guru, and this kind of thing, you can support us as well.
Send It Mike here is one of our regular, listeners and supporters, and appreciate that Send It Mike as always. And he boosted 3,000 sats this week. And I I got to read this is I love this. Love the new song to play us out. Listen to it on 1.7 x. So he's talking about the speed that you play back the audio. The first time in my brain melted a little bit. It sounds much better or it sounds better on one x. Gotta get those splits going. Keep it up. Thanks, Mike. You're you're right. We do have to get the splits going. That's why I gotta get the lightning note up, and we are getting there. So, I'm going to play that song one last time today, and, man, I cannot imagine.
1.7. Oh, man. But between Mike and some streaming, we got a total of about 3,600. I really 3,700 sats, about 3,700 total. So we do appreciate that. As always, the people who are out there streaming and boosting, you could grab a podcasting two point o app. There's a list at podcastapps.com, and then you can hook that up with a, like, a lightning wallet. And then you can interact with the podcast that you listen to just like this.
[00:52:20] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Right. Thank you, Mike. And he's been a big part of the last, how many episodes? So
[00:52:28] McIntosh:
It's been a bit. Been a bit.
[00:52:31] Kenshin:
And I should it's I should say for the new listeners that I haven't been for that long in the podcast. So I've been here since episode one eighty two. So yes. So if some people are wondering why Yeah. We also skipped some questions
[00:52:52] McIntosh:
front. I didn't even think
[00:52:54] Kenshin:
about it. Yeah. No. That's true.
[00:52:56] McIntosh:
And Kenshin has been a great addition to the show. You know, actually, this goes back to one of those questions. What do I regret? I started this podcast 2021, like I said. I really wished I would have brought on somebody sooner now. Back then, I don't know where you were at, Kenshin, in terms of Bitcoin versus everything else. It wouldn't have been the same, but I love the interaction personally. I know sometimes it's difficult when we step over each other. That's part of this process that we're getting through. But Kenshin brings a perspective that I don't have, and I certainly think hope whatever that I do the same.
Kenshin's grown up in Europe. I've grown up here in America, and we do have two different outlooks. And it is very helpful, I think, when looking at these world issues, which we do from time to time as we are about to in just a minute. So I'm gonna grab this first news item, that's happening here in The United States, and I did wanna talk about this for just a second. And then, Kenshin, if you can get the second one Yep. I'd appreciate it. Alright. So first thing, this Friday, which will be the same day that this podcast comes out, we are going to have a crypto summit here, with our politicians, with our government.
Trump is heading up this council, president Trump. And to be honest, rumor, hearsay, although I will say this, the commerce secretary, so Howard Lutnick, and I do think I said that correctly, did say last night after Trump's, it's not state of union, but his address to congress that Bitcoin is going to have kind of a a higher priority in this, crypto summit. Does that make sense? Like, yes. They're gonna be discussing probably Ethereum and Solana. Who knows what else? But Bitcoin is really kind of gonna take center center stage. So we will see what comes out of this. This is supposed to kinda settle some of these regulatory issues and guidelines, frameworks, whatever you wanna call it. I also believe that Trump will be making an announcement. This has been hinted at, as well that we will have a a strategic Bitcoin reserve. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this because initially, there was this working group that was set up. It was digital assets working group or something like that. Apparently, that has fallen apart. The article that I linked to actually makes note of that, I think.
But that whole little deal has kind of fallen apart. They were supposed to deliver some framework within these, like, I wanna say a hundred and twenty or ninety days, something like that. And, the reality is I think this is actually gonna happen faster than that. So we will see. I believe that this is going to be a pivotal moment, and I'm gonna go ahead and say this, in determining where this cycle goes. Now, Macintosh just, like, recently said, gosh. Events don't determine things like the market price or whatever. That's just in the short term, maybe, but not in the long term. This event might, and I'll tell you why.
If the United States government says we're establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and over the next five years say we're working towards buying a million Bitcoin, which is basically what they have said in the past. 1,000,000 Bitcoin, 5 percent of the total Bitcoin supply, and that gets implemented. And at the same time, one of the other rumors I know this is all rumor, but these are pretty strong rumors. Okay? So take it with a grain of salt. By the time you listen to this, most likely, you will be able to find out if Macintosh was right. But he's all they're also saying that he will announce in The United States, if you hold your Bitcoin for more than a year, there will not be cap gains just like what you were talking about, Kinshen, in Germany.
And if that is done, that is huge news for The United States. I do believe that those two things could push this cycle higher than I have talked in the past quite openly on here. Cycle top fourth quarter this year around what? What? Like, one fifty? Somewhere around that neighborhood, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, although I think I could stick pretty confidently with $1.50. If these things happen, I do not know what the top will be. And I'm not gonna predict, but it will be higher than that, and I think it will be significantly higher than that. Now that's not financial advice. I'm not telling you to sell your house and buy Bitcoin. I'm just telling you what I think.
And I god. Don't sell your house and buy Bitcoin, please. Unless it's an investment house. Okay? Don't do that. Please don't put that on me. Okay?
[00:58:15] Kenshin:
I I already did
[00:58:17] McIntosh:
based on your advice. Okay. Thanks, Kent. You're so helpful. Alright. And so that kind of is that's that. I think that's gonna prove to be very important. It could be a nothing burger as they would say, and I'm completely wrong. Tell me about some encryption.
[00:58:42] Kenshin:
UK, they forced Apple to put it or to stop an encryption service they had. So they had their cloud storage encrypted. That was Apple. And UK forced them to have it unencrypted so they could go in and get the files from bad actors or criminals or whatever. And Apple complied, and they stopped, offering their encrypted cloud service in UK. And now other countries are trying similar things like France and Sweden. They try to put backdoors to chat, applications. Mhmm.
[00:59:29] McIntosh:
Signal specifically, if I remember correctly, they're they're trying to force Signal to give them essentially a key so they can get in and look at the messages that are supposed to be encrypted.
[00:59:40] Kenshin:
Yes. And if, yes. And signal actually told, openly to towards the Swedish government. They said, we will not do that, and we are prepared to take away signal from from Sweden. Kinshen, I thought the translation was, hey, Sweden. Go pound sand. Sorry. Yeah. Essentially. Yes. So, France is also they they have passed it through. So the amendment has already passed the senate, they say, and it's moved into the National Assembly. So there are some, some groups who try to to stop this, and they collect, how do we say they collect the opinions from all all governments and countries. So there are plenty of countries in Europe that have no objections to to get control over chat applications, and there are fewer, countries that oppose to it. Right. And there is an interesting graphic on it. But, yeah, Sweden I mean, Sweden is always first on those, ridiculous things. But I I actually saw in some articles that the Swedish police officers were saying that this is a really bad idea. Right.
So that's good, because they understand the risk of having no encryption. Encrypted messages is a bigger risk than not being able to read someone's encrypted messages. So in that sense, it's I don't think it will pass in Sweden. And in the end, I just I hope it will not pass in other countries. But if if UK is is
[01:01:29] McIntosh:
giving that example now, I don't know. I really don't know. I think the EU itself has tried to pass some legislation like this in the past and it's failed. Is that am I correct in that?
[01:01:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. It rings a bell. No. I don't remember exactly the names. Right. But the EU is doing a lot recently with this mic, with a cryptocurrency control.
[01:01:52] McIntosh:
Well, we'll just have to see how it goes, but, that is not good news. It's something, especially if you live in Europe, that you need to keep an eye on.
[01:02:01] Kenshin:
Absolutely. I mean, I I wouldn't use any chat application if if that was the case, if it was not end to end encrypted. And there are other ways, of course. There is simple ways. There is I have my own Nextcloud, server, so I have my own chat there. I mean, there are ways, but I wouldn't like to be in a country where they implement this type of Yeah. Rules. It just makes it far more difficult and problematic, and the average person won't do it. And Yeah. That's not okay. Not in my book. And family members wouldn't want to switch away from No. Signal and other similar ups.
[01:02:41] McIntosh:
Alright. We're gonna wrap this up. That covers everything that we wanted to cover. We got it done in a good time. I do appreciate, your time, Kenshin, actually. I I really appreciate all of these comments, questions. You know how to make a guy feel good. It's been 200 episodes. I don't know if we'll make it 200 more. I hope we will. I would like to think we will, but, that's another four years into the future unless we start doing this more more than once a week. So we will see. Do you think you'll be around in 200 episodes, Kenshin?
[01:03:20] Kenshin:
It would be nice. It would be nice. I mean, my future is my future is Bitcoin
[01:03:26] McIntosh:
only focus. So yeah. So you're saying if I start talking about Solana, you're leaving? Yeah. Alright. Well, I won't start talking about Solana. I just laugh at it when it breaks. That's all I do with Solana. I've never owned a Solana, by the way. Not one. That that's a true statement because I was I was out of that mess before they came along. Alright. Let's wrap this up. If you clip an episode, if you go to something, if you go to fountain and you clip a couple of minutes, maybe one of these questions, I don't know, from the episode, and it's a current episode, we'll boost you 500 sats for that. If it's an older one, we typically don't do as much. I'll be honest. I could be swayed. If it was a really good clip and boost more, typically, we boost 300. It's a way for you to make some treasure. It's a way for us to get some more exposure, which I would like to see on fountain, to be honest.
And you're welcome to do that. And, of course, just like the person that we Fabrizio, I hope I said that right. Hey. He they just heard about this show. Now turn around, tell somebody about it. That is worth its weight in gold for us. It is a excellent way to promote this podcast. And, of course, as I mentioned earlier, you can grab a podcasting two point o app, and you can stream and boost just like Send It Mike did earlier and with his boost and the streaming that was occurring during the while people were listening to the episode. We do have some great ways to get a hold of us. We have so many at this point actually that we just list them at the bottom of the episode page, and we make one for each episode. So if you go to satoshis-plebs.com/episodes, that has a table listing kind of in chronological order. Just click on the episode page there, and then scroll down to the bottom.
And there's email and Nostra Pub and Twitter handle and whatever. I don't even know what else is on there. Right? There's all these different ways to get ahold of us. We do love hearing from you guys. It's, it helps create feedback that's it creates it creates feedback for us that's very helpful. So thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and we sure would love to hear from you.
[01:05:55] Kenshin:
Yeah. And thank you very much again from my side, and I'm honored to be on this 200 episode. You're welcome. Congratulations.
[01:06:05] McIntosh:
Thank you. Thank you. I couldn't have gotten this far without you, Kenshin, to be honest. If you had not come on board, if nobody had come on, I probably would have stopped. I I was I don't know that I've ever said this on here. I don't think so, but I was pretty burned out at that point. I was frustrated and bringing you on and bringing your insight and just the ability to kind of bounce back and forth has been super helpful. So I appreciate that. I know sometimes that can be difficult. Let's be honest. But, I do appreciate that.
[01:06:40] Kenshin:
Alright? And I I also appreciate all the comments and the questions, and I look forward to more interactions on Nostr. And we will see you there on Nostr, for the upcoming week. And until the next episode.
[01:06:54] McIntosh:
Alright. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. We'll talk to you soon.
[01:06:58] Kenshin:
Bye bye.
Introduction
Bitcoin Price and Market Volatility
Personal Updates and Projects
Zapathon Announcement
Listener Q&A Session
Crypto Summit and Bitcoin Regulation
Encryption and Privacy Concerns in Europe
Conclusion and Reflections on 200 Episodes
