In this week's episode, McIntosh and Kenshin answer listener questions from Nostr, covering topics ranging from European Bitcoin adoption to the future of decentralized social media. The hosts discuss where European Bitcoiners might consider relocating as regulations tighten, with Switzerland emerging as a top choice despite its costs. They tackle questions about Bitcoin's role as money versus store of value, Nostr's current challenges with relay infrastructure and growth, and whether CBDCs pose any real threat to Bitcoin. The conversation also touches on Strike's new Bitcoin-backed loans in Europe, the latest Sparrow wallet update with silent payment support, and predictions for Bitcoin adoption over the next decade.
Resources
Kenshin's Nirvati Install
Software Updates
Sparrow 2.3.0
Bitcoin Price at Time of Recording
Oct 8th, 2025: 123,687 USD | 106,300 euro
Block Height at Time of Recording
918,225
Episode Page
https://satoshis-plebs.com/episode-229
Music Credits
Freedom Code Revolution
Send It Mike
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:
Welcome back to Satoshi's Plebs for episode two twenty nine. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:05] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin. And in today's episode, we're answering your questions from Noster.
[00:00:09] McIntosh:
Awesome. Good to see you, Kenshin. We sorry, we've been working on our live setup. It's just it's complicated, but we're not gonna have live this week again. We were trying and things just didn't work out, but hopefully, we'll have that soon. As we begin recording, we're at Block Height 918225 on a pleasant Wednesday afternoon here in The States, and I hear you're cold, Kinsha. Yes.
[00:00:36] Kenshin:
Goodness. It's cold here in Sweden already. It's, winter's coming. This is what happens
[00:00:43] McIntosh:
when you take a guy from Greece and move him up north. Is that right? Yep.
[00:00:49] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I and I got a cold. How how do you say that? A back cold? So a muscle cramp, you know? Okay. When you get a cold on the neck or something.
[00:01:03] McIntosh:
I call that old age, but, you know, to each their own.
[00:01:10] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:01:11] McIntosh:
Hey. Hey. Twenty years from now, you're gonna wake up one morning, and you're gonna, like, sit up on the edge of your bed and various parts of your body are gonna ache, and you're gonna be like, oh, that's what Macintosh was talking about. Oh, man. I was not expecting that to happen as I got older, to be honest. I I thought that was, like, something that happened in your sixties and seventies. And, no, ladies and gentlemen, that is not true. It happens much sooner than you may think. How are things going with you?
[00:01:51] Kenshin:
Good. I've been, stressing every night trying to find a new phone to buy. I don't know. I'm very indecisive. I want a Pixel phone, but I don't find any good deals. And, I'm stuck only wanting to buy Pixel phone because of the GrapheneOS.
[00:02:13] McIntosh:
Right. Right.
[00:02:15] Kenshin:
I don't find any other alternative. There are some other Android ROMs, but development is very, nonexistent nowadays, I think. So I was looking into Lineage OS that I've been trying in the past, and Mhmm. I don't see any modern phone using it. So I I don't know. I'm a bit stuck. And the Pixel hardware is okay, but it's not the best anymore, at least in processor speed and Mhmm. Some SSD speed and stuff. So I'm not sure.
[00:02:48] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there's not a lot of development going on outside of Google and, and Apple. And to be honest, I wonder sometimes about Google. So
[00:03:00] Kenshin:
No. I'm not. A one
[00:03:02] McIntosh:
a one trick pony, a one phone show, that's not not ideal. Not at all. So Yeah. Exactly. I don't know.
[00:03:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I got used to Graphene and the simple Android interface and the customization that I could do to it, the freedom. So I I also have a Samsung phone from my work, and I don't want to deal with that type of, customization. The yeah. Then you get to different interface. They do their own choices, and then other companies do the same. So I don't know. I hate the Samsung interface, to be honest. I'd Yeah. What little I've used, it was just, man, you guys, no. No. No. They they do things their own way. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm stuck. And, I need a new phone because mine got destroyed in my trip to to Dubai. So I'm without personal phone, without my apps.
[00:04:06] McIntosh:
Did you leave it outside on the hood of the, excavator or something? What I mean, it was only, like, 200 degrees there. So what what happened?
[00:04:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. I think it got humidity somehow. So the the screen started having black dots. One black dot in the corner, then that black dot started expanding and growing, and then all all the screen became black eventually
[00:04:30] McIntosh:
After a week. Yeah. That's crazy.
[00:04:33] Kenshin:
Yeah. It's a common issue, it seems, with humidity getting into the screen. Well, maybe I had something to do with it because one day it was very dusty, and I thought when I went to the hotel, I can just wash the phone from the dust. So maybe that's where
[00:04:51] McIntosh:
when it went It was an iPhone, you said. Right? No. No. Pixel Oh, I don't know about Pixel seven. The iPhones are supposed to be good down to, like, 30 meters or something
[00:05:01] Kenshin:
in water. Yeah. They are all supposed to be IP 68. Right. So at least one and a half meter for thirty minutes, they say. Some yeah. So a quick splash, it shouldn't affect it, but I don't know. The heat together with some humidity and water and something wetting anyway. So I need to replace that. I because I cannot even install any apps anymore from GitHub that I I had a lot of a big list of apps from GitHub installed on my phone. So I need those back. Yep. And then I have been experimenting with, Niravati OS.
Pratel? Which is which is, how do you call this? Like a server interface OS where you can install apps and use it as a home server, and it's used a lot as a Bitcoin node. So you can easily install install Bitcoin core and Bitcoin nodes and LND and all the rest of those apps and have it as a node. And yeah. It's, I like the implementation because it's not so looked down as Right. Starts nine and Umbrel. Right. So you can even have root access and yeah. They have done some good choices and very easy to install other apps on there. But it's very early days. I wouldn't recommend it as a as your only node OS for now. So I still have my start nine as my everyday node and then this one to experiment because it it feels a bit unstable still how it, how it works and installs apps and stuff. So I already had to format it once Oh, man.
With the help of the developer. So he he was quite helpful, but still it's it's early days, I would say. Yeah. I at this point so
[00:06:56] McIntosh:
we were talking beforehand. I had tried to use this project about or his or the predecessor to it. I can't remember. About a year ago. The Citadel was a predecessor. Yeah. I think it was actually Citadel. But, anyways, I I have high hopes for this environment. I do. It is early. It is an alternative to the start nine and what's the other one? Umbrel. Umbrel. Yeah. Umbrel, of course, is the very popular one. I didn't realize until I saw some sales figures, which were announced intentionally or not, but they were for start nine. How kinda big that market is, I would not have guessed they were selling that much hardware.
And they were selling, like, 1,700 units in, like, a quarter.
[00:07:46] Kenshin:
Wow. Yeah.
[00:07:49] McIntosh:
And I don't don't quote me on that, but it was enough that it caught my attention. I'm like, well, maybe people actually do want this kind of thing. Now you and I have talked. Of course, I'm often 400 different directions. One of my ideas is I want something like this on a on a VM, on a VPS, a virtual private server up in the cloud. Yeah. Right? Because the reality is for a lot of people, myself included, this does not work well on your home network. There's compromises to that, obviously, in terms of privacy, But the ability to have a environment that's manageable by basically anyone has a lot of upside to it Mhmm. Shall we say. So yeah, I I'm gonna probably try and support this project some more, try and, you know, get it loaded up and and take it for a spin and see if there's anything I can do to help there.
Just, you know, I need another project.
[00:08:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for anyone that wants to try Niravati, I have created a long form, note on long form dot space and, a small guide for installing Okay. Ervadi because there is no installation ISO. So you actually need to to transfer the image straight on a hard drive and boot it up.
[00:09:23] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. It it is definitely early days for that project, but, two main competitors essentially is not enough. Yeah. It's kinda like the Bitcoin core, not what what is Peter Todd's thing that only the spammers use? Libra, whatever, which is kind of funny. But whatever. You know, it's not enough. We need we need we need competition. We need whatever. So, good to see that. Glad to hear you got started on that, and I hope it goes well for you. You said you already had to rebuild it once, but isn't that just part of the learning curve? A few minutes before we started recording kinda marked a milestone for me.
I've been talking for months about this work we've been doing at our, at my Fiat job, and it somewhat culminated right before the show when we did a merge of code into our main branch. And, you know, we officially switched over from Datadog to, Grafana, essentially. It went smoothly as could be expected. There's some things I have to deal with still. I told Kenshin before the show, I said, I'm not I mean, we'll just have to see how it goes because if it had gone ugly, there was just no way. And I'm still having things go on. I apologize if I seem a little distracted, Kenshin, but, it's just stuff. But I was making fun of it. It was I called it the merge, which was a reference to the stupidity that the, Ethereum developers did. It's been, I guess, several years now. Right, Kenshin? Where they merged they moved off proof of stake. No proof of work. Yeah. No proof of work on the proof of stake, and it was this big complicated thing. And frankly, I I remember it. I and and really, to me, it was kinda one of the things that solidified in my mind the idea that, frankly, not, Ethereum was not a serious project. I mean, it's it's just devs who have a lot of money who frankly, they just wanna do dev things. They just wanna write code and break things, you know, because they want shiny new features.
It's like and did they pull it off? Yes. They did. And I guess you can give them credit for that, but, yeah, our merge went as good as well.
[00:12:06] Kenshin:
Yeah. Okay. So
[00:12:08] McIntosh:
you you told me I promise you had to make your promise. You weren't gonna make a fun of that. But yeah. Oh, flat on. Yes. We'll move on.
[00:12:17] Kenshin:
Right? So Yeah. So last time, we asked the people on Oster to give us some questions for this episode.
[00:12:29] McIntosh:
It's And as always, the people responded.
[00:12:32] Kenshin:
Thank you. It started slow, I must say, but, I'm happy with the reaction when when we, yeah, reposted it a couple of times. So that was good. Right.
[00:12:44] McIntosh:
I wanna have a different conversation. I we so we're gonna talk about this, and let's see where we're at, in terms of time. I I do wanna have a conversation about Noster because I feel like it's changing. I think evolving. I don't know. We'll we'll talk about that. If we have There is a question about Noster.
[00:13:04] Kenshin:
So we can't Well, maybe we don't have that. Question. If we can make it short. Yeah. I don't know.
[00:13:10] McIntosh:
Oh, yeah. No. Buttercup Roberts. Yep. Well, yeah. Let's see.
[00:13:19] Kenshin:
Let's see. You wanna start? So we had have first question from Hodel Harry. Which countries should European Bitcoiners consider moving to? Things are moving in a bad direction out here. Yes. Thank you. Hoto Hari. And that's what we were talking a bit last last time, was it, or the time before that. Right?
[00:13:38] McIntosh:
Yeah. I think it was a couple of episodes ago, but certainly recently. Yeah. And it's it's a hard question. I mean, it is. Yeah. And it's going to but I would let me say this. I apologize. I'll let I'll hand the baton back to you in just a second. This is a personal question, and your circumstances may be different. And we've talked about that a fair amount. If you've got a family, you're in a different situation than somebody who's single and so on and so forth. So we can talk about what we might think, but that might not be what's good for you. Yeah.
[00:14:14] Kenshin:
For me as a European and having seriously discussed this topic with with my wife, we were seriously looking towards Switzerland. So Switzerland, as we talked about last time, is not in the EU even though it's in the middle of Europe.
[00:14:36] McIntosh:
Thanks for rubbing that in. Go ahead. Yeah.
[00:14:41] Kenshin:
And it has some very good privacy laws until now, maybe not tomorrow. Metaphorically saying tomorrow. Right? And so that was the the the easiest choice in terms of quality of life, nature, proximity to the our home countries. Mhmm. Yeah. Good jobs probably. So I I did some applications actually for some positions there. I never got any anything there, but I tried at least.
[00:15:19] McIntosh:
So So Yeah. Let let me ask you a question along those lines, actually, because I did look at this a little bit. And if I were to, like, try and go move to Switzerland as a resident or not a citizen, but as a resident, They have, like, a €300,000 a year fee, essentially. Now it it it's like a tax bill, and if you're earning that, you know, it comes off your taxes, I guess. But if you were to work for a Swiss company, that's not the case. Like, if you were employed
[00:15:56] Kenshin:
I don't know that. Actually, I think. No. That's the first time I hear about this. No? Yeah. It's
[00:16:02] McIntosh:
it's very steep. Now I think it's, like, targeted at people who wanna build businesses there and Right. Retirees, I guess. I don't know any retirees, frankly, who would pay that much to move there. But, you know, you did catch my curiosity with that conversation last week. Right. They but they definitely seem to be more on the expensive side if you're just moving there as essentially an expat.
[00:16:32] Kenshin:
You know what? Yeah. I mean, I I I think you only move there if you have a company or or you have a good job. Mhmm.
[00:16:41] McIntosh:
I would assume that if I'm almost sure Nestle is a Swiss company. Is that true? Am I pulling that out?
[00:16:50] Kenshin:
I don't think so. I think that's American. Is it? Or I don't know. Well, let
[00:16:56] McIntosh:
whoever. Goodness. I don't know. Man, we're fixing to find out that Macintosh There are a lot of Swiss
[00:17:03] Kenshin:
chocolate brands for sure. I don't know if Nestle is one of them. Yeah. They're actually a Swiss company. I was right. They're multinational,
[00:17:10] McIntosh:
but they are headquartered in Switzerland. So regardless, let's say you got a job at Nestle. I would assume that that 300,000 or euro a year payment would not you wouldn't have to pay that and neither would Nestle. You're there as an employee and so on. And, obviously, you're drawing Generates taxes. You're paying taxes. So is Nestle. Okay. So there's one approach right there. I mean, honestly, as an American, and I'll say that, Switzerland would be a place I would consider, and it would have to be through the route of working through one of these companies, which that puts pressure on you. I mean, you you're not a resident. I mean, you are, but you're not. Right? You the you could lose your job, and they could make you leave.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Maybe not ideal, but you could certainly do that in terms of privacy, especially if this privacy law does not get passed, which I that we don't know. You know, they are tops for that in Europe. Mhmm. I've heard mention of Madeira as a Bitcoin friendly. I've heard mention of Isle Of Man, Portugal. There's a number of places that are, quote, Bitcoin friendly. Germany doesn't have a cap gains tax, right, on Bitcoin. After the first year of Spain. So hold your hold your Bitcoin, people. But regardless, they all those places are part of the EU.
Is that correct? I mean, even Madeira, it's still part of the EU. So you have to factor that in, in my opinion, into this discussion. Yeah. So I I just don't think it's cut and dried, frankly, especially I don't think it's cut and dried for anyone. I what No. It's not. Like, we were discussing here in America what what I would do. And the reality is until it gets really bad, I'm not gonna do anything. And and maybe at that point, it's, quote, too late for me, but I have family obligations that I can't just walk away from. Does that make sense?
[00:19:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. So
[00:19:27] McIntosh:
Yeah. It it gets harder and harder. So it's a more Well, exactly. I think for somebody who's 25 no. Let me just got I wished I was 25. Let's just say I was 25 and I wasn't married. I was married when I was 25. But regardless, let's just say I wasn't. What would I do? To be honest, probably about four years prior, if I had the knowledge that I have now, I would have left The United States and gone to Costa Rica or maybe Argentina. Although, as we have discussed recently, I would say Costa Rica is more more stable, certainly.
I'm not sure what's going on in Argentina. I still believe that Malay is nothing but a politician in disguise or maybe he's turning into one or whatever, but the moves that I see of late seem to be designed to keep him in power. And I'm not comfortable with that. They're a long way from being where they need to be in terms of regulations and this kind of thing, it is still difficult to do things there. So I don't there's always El Salvador. I don't know. I mean, there's always compromises. Unfortunately, there is no ideal country.
[00:20:51] Kenshin:
No. No. And that's where the world starts to feel very small. That that's what I felt when I was really thinking about it. And there was also the a thought at some point for New Zealand to really go as far away as possible. But but then you hear some stuff that the New Zealand government is doing. It's very Canadian style or American or European style. You know, it's it's the same stuff in
[00:21:21] McIntosh:
a but in a nicer place. It will be a nicer place until you have an earthquake. But I do love mutton. I just I do. I'm just saying. There's some Chinese, it's really western Chinese lamb cuisine. Oh, man. Just sorry. Next question.
[00:21:42] Kenshin:
Let's move on. We yeah. We took Yeah. We got minutes on the first bullish Bitcoiner, what are you bullish on in Bitcoin or Nasr,
[00:21:51] McIntosh:
at the moment? What about you, sir?
[00:21:58] Kenshin:
I don't know. I'm I'm not so bullish these days. I mean, let's see what happens with Bitcoin Core and and Nostra is, is what it is for the last few months. Nothing has changed really, so I'm not sure.
[00:22:15] McIntosh:
I I don't know what's gonna happen between core and knots. And frankly, I don't think it's gonna end Bitcoin either way. I think it could be better. I think there are better scenarios, but I personally Bitcoin, whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger, and this is going to be another case of that. Does that make sense? And if it comes down to it and there's a fork and I I don't think that will happen, but let's just say that there was, for example, the strongest one will win, and that's the one that's supposed to be Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, actually Does that make sense?
It it's hard not to be down about it, though, because it is it's become like a full time job of these people on Twitter and even on Nostra to, you know, to be talking about.
[00:23:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. But to be more a little bit more positive, I think we see some good advancement with the beeps. Right? We saw one We talked about it, the silent payments. We'll talk about it later. There are some advancements also, some NIPS on Noster, some video streaming, some other stuff. So so there are advancements. So, yeah, what I'm looking forward is to see more adoption actually in both.
[00:23:45] McIntosh:
And and the you just touched on the two things that I would highlight as the positive things right now. In Bitcoin, silent payments, some attention on privacy. I would love for there to be a lot more. I would love for it to be built in, essentially, but these are step forwards. And then on Noster, the the the video streaming stuff to me has potential. Noster, let's just hold that for number four, but I I love what's going on there with zap. Stream, for example. I mean, that's just a beautiful piece of, it's a great idea. I'm not gonna say it's a beautiful piece of software, but they they are having a lot of problems with, with spam attacks supposedly, like, DDoS.
So, anyways, alright. Number three, sir. Dion messias
[00:24:48] Kenshin:
or messias? So what's the verdict on mica, m I c a, bullish for adoption or just another KYC trap? So this is a European, yeah, control mechanism that they have now for companies that, get involved with cryptocurrencies. And, this is not good. No. No. That's not good for adoption. It it puts a lot of controls. We know some Bitcoin companies had to close down because of this because they couldn't, comply with those regulations. So it's definitely not good for adoption. It is only about KYC and more control over over cryptocurrency related companies. And there was one a Dutch Bitcoin only company I remember that had closed down.
So no. Not good.
[00:25:43] McIntosh:
Not good. Not good. Number four, Buttercup Roberts. Do you feel that Nostrum is in a plateau phase? What do you think needs to happen for it to keep growing? I think we could do an entire episode on that. Yeah. Let's try and keep it tight. I do feel like one of the core issues of Nostril that no one seems to be willing to tackle. We have relays for decentralization. Anyone can spin one up. But the reality is to have growth, the average person has to be accounted for. They're not going to spin up a relay, and the relays have become a limiting factor. I mean, we were talking before the show. You just realized there were different questions
[00:26:41] Kenshin:
on primal versus the other. And Iris. Right. Yeah. Three different
[00:26:47] McIntosh:
not good. So we had 14. Is it right? 14? No.
[00:26:54] Kenshin:
No. Now 18. 18
[00:26:56] McIntosh:
people respond Yeah. To questions with questions, with good questions, And and yet they were split across two different platforms somehow because, apparently, those two platforms are not talking to each other. And I don't know if that's because they think there's a competitive advantage in that or what. I okay. We're not even gonna get into is Macintosh technical enough. Macintosh is not taking the time to look into, why relays don't talk to each other. But it is a problem very clearly.
[00:27:34] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:27:35] McIntosh:
These things have to be solved because the reality is we go to a centralized platform. Oh, my, and, Tasha, I can't believe you're saying this. But you go to Facebook, you go to Twitter, you post, it shows up, somebody replies to your post, and it shows up. And that is the expectation of 99% of your users. And if you can't solve that, then this is never going to get anywhere as a social platform. Now interestingly, Nostra, you can do lots of interesting things with it, like video streaming, which I thought was very cool. Like, they're building it into the fountain app as a protocol essentially to transport the, comments.
Right? So we could see it in different places even if the social media aspect never takes off.
[00:28:34] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:28:34] McIntosh:
Does that make sense?
[00:28:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. And the follow-up question was that what do you think needs to happen for it to keep growing? I would say more adoption, more high profile people from, yeah, Facebook, Twitter, or wherever coming in muster and bringing people over, but using them in a good way.
[00:28:57] McIntosh:
But you have to make that experience reasonable or people will not do it. I will one last note about this, and then I I maybe we really should talk about this for an entire episode. I don't know. That may be too much. But I wanna say it was I'm not for certain about this, but somebody who had deep technical knowledge, I wanna say it was the Bitcoin the old Bitcoin, one of the kind of the very important technical people in Bitcoin who's been away for a while and just showed up. Nick is his name, and I can't remember his last name right now. Anyways, apparently, he's getting onboarded to Noster or whatever, and he looks at it and says, oh, your relays, you need to have people be paying for those.
Otherwise, there's no incentive to run a good relay, and that's that's a 100% true.
[00:29:55] Kenshin:
But there are relays that you can pay for. There are. But there is no incentive to pay for them. From the user side, you you don't have any incentive to pay for them. Incentive would be a better experience. It
[00:30:08] McIntosh:
it yeah. But you But the problem is get that instantly. You don't you don't realize that as a user. I don't know. Do we get I've not used one. So first of all, let me just say that. But do you get a better experience? Does it really does does it solve this problem that we just had? I think running our own node would actually solve that problem, but we'll see. But we there's some fundamental things in terms of relays, and I don't wanna just sit up here and hand wave and say, fix the problems, devs. But I do think there are some fundamental things that have to be solved. What was the there was one that was at least somewhat similar. What was the number?
[00:30:52] Kenshin:
Yeah. Question nine from Mario.
[00:30:55] McIntosh:
Go ahead and throw that in there.
[00:30:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. In the future, there will be Nostr, or will there be another Bitcoin social network that replaces it? So a bit yeah. Weirdly put, but Well, no. I
[00:31:15] McIntosh:
But I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're just speculating. I would love to say Noster is gonna be the network of the future. It does have a lot of good things going for it. I think we're at a growth phase. I think we're at a point where I think some choices have to be made, though. You know?
[00:31:35] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And, again, Nostra is a is a protocol. Mhmm. Right? So, sure, Nostra as a protocol can continue, but the apps built on top of Nostra need to improve a lot. So and they don't need to look like, Facebook or Twitter clones either to optimize that experience. Right? So I I think it's gonna look very different, but it can still be based on Monster to be to have that Bitcoin Ethos. Yes.
[00:32:09] McIntosh:
I love the fact. I do. I love the fact that it's not centralized, that we don't depend on any one entity to run it. But I believe we're gonna have to have some larger entities, for lack of a better word, to make those good experiences. And I don't know how those entities are supported except through charging for things like relays. I don't know. I think the reality is most people are not willing to pay for that better experience. They don't realize or they don't care that over on Facebook and Twitter, they're paying through ads.
Correct. I Facebook has turned into a cesspool of ad. It's literally like, your feed is just it's just promoted material, and it's crazy.
[00:33:03] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I I I must say again, there are private relays from the start of Nostra. So we have had them for two years at least. Right. And they have not solved the issues. They have not have adoption enough to solve the issues. So there needs to be something more than that. It's not as simple as that. No.
[00:33:26] McIntosh:
I think there's a number of factors, but we gotta move on. Alright. I think I did the last one. It was buttercups. Well, that yeah. And we combined two. Yeah. So if you wanna take the next one.
[00:33:40] Kenshin:
Yeah. So the next one is how do you pronounce this one? I have no idea.
[00:33:49] McIntosh:
I believe it's supposed to be black in Spanish. Yeah. It is black in Spanish.
[00:33:54] Kenshin:
Negra 0 is spelled. Mhmm. So it's in Spanish, but translated it is, will Bitcoin fall fail, sorry, if it doesn't end up being used as money for people's everyday lives? And then he falls it up. I would not like it to end up being a store value, but rather to be adopted by everyone as money. I think we have touched that up We have. Few times on this podcast. Right? And I think well, I think it should be a bit of everything. If it's not a store value, it cannot really function as money. Correct. I don't know. If if it is money, it also needs to be store value. So I I think they're interconnected. So They are. They they are interconnected.
[00:34:42] McIntosh:
Technically, I believe you could have a store value without it being money. But to be money, it has to be a store of value. I believe that it was Satoshi's vision, and I think it's laid out right there in the white paper, right in the first paragraph. It's a peer to peer digital monetary system. In other words, hey. You got a coffee? I've got Bitcoin. I wanna pay for the coffee in Bitcoin. Here's the Bitcoin. There's the coffee. Boom. Done. Right? Yeah. We do not have that right now in the vast majority of places. We do in a few places. You can go down to Costa Rica to Bitcoin jungle, for example, and that's exactly what they are doing. In The United States where there's more Bitcoin adoption, people owning Bitcoin, I should say, than anywhere else, that is not the case.
It's that simple. So we are definitely not there yet. I do I don't think Bitcoin would fail. I think it would fail in Satoshi's mission, what he wanted or she wanted, and it would if it would fail for me, I mean, I want it to be a global it's part of this is a global reserve currency to get off the US dollar, which is not helping The US even though they think it does in the short term. And it's only hurting us, and it's causing division and strife. And and, you know, I don't I don't wanna say war, but probably close to it. Right?
And instead, we've got this neutral reserve asset that that everyone can use. I don't know. Just a thought. Enough about that.
[00:36:35] Kenshin:
Yep.
[00:36:38] McIntosh:
Oh, gosh. You gave me the hard one. I'll I'll man, you guys are gonna start sending in pronunciations. I'm sorry. I I don't know. Aldark Aldarkster? Aldarkster. End of I wonder if they are a doctor based on the question. End of life or when Bitcoin or any other asset has to be liquidated as there may be terminal illness or hospice. The end game where keys, inheritance, donations, and the most efficient ways, way about doing this. That's actually maybe a topic for an episode, really. It is something you need to start thinking about before it's needed. You may need to be looking at multisignature storage.
You may need to be I'm not gonna be a purist and say, you know, you don't ever wanna have your Bitcoin on something like River. I there's compromises to that, but you may want to have a third party store that asset. Is that fair, Kenshin? Are you just gonna say no? Yeah. No. It's fine. I mean, you're welcome to say no. I just I don't know. It's hard. I mean, especially if I mean, yeah. It's hard. And there's going to be a whole group of people. Most of the, the boomers, and I do mean the actual boomers, not people using that as a pejorative term. But most of the boomers are not capable of managing the Bitcoin for themselves.
And if they own Bitcoin, if they were wise enough to get involved in that, then they probably should be. Either in custody of somebody who's younger and can, in their family, that type sit an uncle Jim situation, or it needs to be in something like river. And you need to have clear documentation about how that's to be handled. And I'm gonna tell you it needs to be part of your inheritance plan itself. It needs to be in your will and taken care of. Ladies and gentlemen, one of the I I see it over and over again. I hate it. Families, somebody dies, and money does crazy things to people, and and just people go crazy.
And one of the best ways to keep that from happening is to have, you know, clear legal documents. This is how I want this done when I pass on. But we really could Right. And there are a couple of Yes. Companies, Bitcoin companies that do inheritance plans. That is true. I really think we could probably just do a whole episode on this if we want. I don't know. Yep. Number seven.
[00:39:30] Kenshin:
Fabrizio, do you feel that Europe is behind America in terms of Bitcoin adoption? Yes. It's my I think that was a simple answer.
[00:39:42] McIntosh:
Look. We're The US tries very, very hard to fumble this. I mean, seriously. But the reality is and maybe this offends people, but I can't think of a single place in the world. There's places with better Bitcoin adoption in small areas, and you could argue El Salvador, I guess, has better overall. Like, Bitcoin is not a legal currency, but you can use it as a legal you can use it to pay for things. No problem. Yeah. But in general, the The United States is just ahead on this stuff. I really I'm not gonna be offended if someone comes and takes that title. We don't deserve it with the way that our politicians keep acting frankly, but there's a lot of that going on all over the world too. So
[00:40:37] Kenshin:
Well, there there is one country in Europe that has a lot of Bitcoin companies.
[00:40:45] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:40:47] Kenshin:
A country that is not in the EU, but is in Europe. So Switzerland has a lot of Bitcoin companies right now.
[00:40:55] McIntosh:
So that's a fair point. So you could make the argument probably that Bitcoin is maybe even doing better in Switzerland than anywhere else.
[00:41:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. There is not Is it is it's not considered
[00:41:12] McIntosh:
legal tender there, though. Right? Is it cap gains issues? And
[00:41:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. But, yeah, but for com Bitcoin companies, it's very friendly and privacy
[00:41:23] McIntosh:
related. To me, the capital gains issue is one of my most important issues. Until a country doesn't have cap gains on Bitcoin, you you can't use it as as I wanna buy that coffee. I mean, it's it's just too difficult. Unless they have something, I would argue, maybe a de minimis tax thing where it's less than $600 or less than a thousand dollars. Oh, we're not gonna worry about that. I'm not aware offhand that that's anywhere, but maybe it is. Actually, in Switzerland,
[00:42:00] Kenshin:
they don't have capital gains for Bitcoin for private investors.
[00:42:05] McIntosh:
Okay. There you go. So at least that's a step in the right direction. Right? We don't have cap well, alright. Anyways, does that answer that question? Yeah. That's a terrific question. I love all these European questions. I learned so much.
[00:42:21] Kenshin:
Especially about Switzerland. Old stuff.
[00:42:28] McIntosh:
Never mind. Alright. Number eight. Oh, I could almost read this in Spanish. Yeah. Maycats. Poor k. Satoshi Nakamoto no say Revela Al Mundo. How did I do?
[00:42:46] Kenshin:
Medium.
[00:42:48] McIntosh:
Okay. I sound like I'm a redneck. It's okay. Why does that you know, why doesn't Satoshi Nakamoto reveal himself to the world? I I actually could read that. I'm I'm so proud of myself. I'm sorry. Let me let me alright. Anyways, yes. That's a great question. The answer, I believe, is kind of multiples, and I'm glad that he he or she has not. I believe, for one thing, at this point, if they revealed themselves, it would make them a target for governments, for I don't know. Maybe even individuals, corporations. I have no idea.
[00:43:36] Kenshin:
Even risk Bitcoin itself as a protocol?
[00:43:40] McIntosh:
It would put an amount of I think the price would dump. I think it'd be a great buying opportunity. I think the same thing would happen if he or she ever moved any of that million Bitcoin that they have in their wallet. But I think there's a number of factors. I think part of it, frankly, is they don't I think there's a pride factor. And what I mean is not pride that they're hiding, but somebody who would be in the spotlight that much, it would build up it would it's it's it's it's not good for your ego. Does that make sense?
Like, everybody hey. You're the man. You're the woman. Again, I'd we don't know, but, you know, good job. Congratulations. Yeehaw. Whatever. Hey. Let me buy you a drink 14,000 times. You know, all of that stuff. It is not good for your head. I don't believe.
[00:44:41] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:44:43] McIntosh:
I think maybe that's part of it. I believe that they felt like if they stayed on, that they would become too much focus of the project. It would not be healthy for the project. And I believe they're 100% correct in that. Mhmm. If you have a CEO, you're always going to have someone that you can target again, going back to that.
[00:45:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I think maybe it was the realization that Bitcoin to become what Bitcoin can become.
[00:45:20] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:45:21] Kenshin:
It shouldn't have Satoshi
[00:45:24] McIntosh:
on the way I agree. Or anyone to be, as you said, as a CEO figure or founder figure. Right. And so the people that are left fight over it continually. I think that's partially what's going on with the whole Nostra Core thing. But people will come and people will go. We had Roger Ver. We had, Antonopoulos, you know, just faded into the background. There will be people who come along, move Bitcoin a little bit, and and then they go on their way. And that's okay.
[00:45:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's okay. Sometimes I wish he or she would come back and say, you know what? We did the OP return for a reason. Don't be stupid. I do wish they would say that. Yeah.
[00:46:12] McIntosh:
Yeah. It would be nice to hear the voice of Satoshi speak. If only there was a way. They should get a Nostra account. Here's what they should do. Here's what they should do. Get a Nostra account. Say, I'm Satoshi. I'm gonna prove it by moving 1 Bitcoin out of my wallet at, you know, 1PM, whatever time. Right? Tomorrow. And then do it and then say, now that I've proven I'm Satoshi, I'm going to speak on this platform. Yeah. Platform. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe not. The whole world would go crazy. Would that be a that would be crazy, though. There would be so many questions. Alright. Number 10, we gotta move on. Ray, can I Yeah? I wonder if this is a joke. Yeah. Ray, number 10. Can the digital euro overcome Bitcoin in the near future? If I'm reading this correctly, you think the digital euro is gonna become more important than Bitcoin?
No. No. Number 11. Yeah. I I mean, I've already made the prediction. What did I say? 20 20, seven. I think that it'll even be before they they get it over the finish line and out.
[00:47:37] Kenshin:
I I don't know. It's not gonna work out.
[00:47:41] McIntosh:
Yeah. I no. I think it's gonna
[00:47:44] Kenshin:
be it's gonna be an expensive experiment.
[00:47:48] McIntosh:
There's a lot of issues with it a lot. So yeah. I don't think that's a good thing. Alright. Number 11. Bonus points if you read it in Spanish. Are all you people, like, trying to help my Spanish along? This is terrific.
[00:48:05] Kenshin:
Yeah. I don't know. V e z l a. So the question is Bitcoin n l 02/1927. K. So we got How much will Bitcoin be worth in 2027?
[00:48:24] McIntosh:
Oh, I didn't even I literally just read it in in English when you said that. They're trying to trap us, man.
[00:48:34] Kenshin:
2027.
[00:48:36] McIntosh:
That is two years from now. Be in a bear market. If the cycle holds, we would be dead in the middle of the bear market and would actually be at the low. And I would personally say we're somewhere between a 100 and a $120,000. Now Yeah. We hope that's not the case. But until history repeats, or doesn't repeat, we we have to stand by that. I mean, that's that historically is what has happened. We're going to go higher from here. And then 2026 on into 2027, it'll start going lower. And we'll reach the bottom around 2027 and start back up.
[00:49:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I agree. We'll be around where we are now. 2026.
[00:49:20] McIntosh:
The 100,000 level is going to prove to be a very difficult wonder break. I don't think we're ever even gonna get close to this $58,000 level that these people yeah. Whatever. K. Alright. Number 12. Dollar dollar chain dollar chain. Which countries could adopt Bitcoin as an official currency in the next ten years? Man, what is up with these questions, people? Switzerland. No. Actually, maybe not. Yeah. It's name three. Let's we'll go ahead. We'll play along.
[00:50:02] Kenshin:
Okay. Well, it has to be non European. I I will say that much. So none of the European ones. So it has to be, yeah, Central, South American, Argentina. Maybe
[00:50:21] McIntosh:
It's that's a good guess. El Salvador
[00:50:24] Kenshin:
can officially move completely to Bitcoin by then. And I would say an Asian country, let's say,
[00:50:33] McIntosh:
I don't know, The Philippines. Wow. Random shot in the dark. I think that South America and Africa have the most potential for this. Now we've already seen it happen in Africa and then get pulled back. There was a country in the center of Africa. It starts with a c, and I'm I apologize. I do not remember. It wasn't The Congo. But they did actually declare it as official, like, a legal tender. And then, like, two weeks later, they backed off of that. I don't know. But I could see places in Africa that actually happening. I certainly can see it in South America and Central America in different places. We've already seen it in El Salvador, maybe Panama right next to it, Costa Rica, maybe.
They seem to be kind of Bitcoin neutral, but I could see them swinging more positive that way. I don't know about Argentina. I mean, I don't. My guess is Argentina is not gonna be much better in ten years than it is right now. That's I know I'm being a bear, but we'll see. I really wanna live there, people. You guys don't you don't understand. I want a ranch in Argentina, and they're making me not have it. And that's just very disappointing. Up against the Andes, can't you just see it? Like, a thousand acres with the Andes on the background and my buffalo out on the pasture.
Of course, getting buffalo there would be very expensive. I've looked into that. Anyways, squirrels stop. Let's see. You did you did 12. Yeah. 13. Did I? No. You did. Oh, man. You get the easy one. To 12. Number 13.
[00:52:34] Kenshin:
Raimundo BTC. Could Bitcoin replace the dollar as an international store of value? Yes. Definitely. But it might take fifty years from now. I really hope it's sooner than that. Yes. It could. I
[00:52:50] McIntosh:
believe it is possible in my lifetime, and I will not live fifty years. I'll just be honest. It would be a miracle if I lived fifty more years. I think twenty to thirty years potentially. I I it's the whole gradually then suddenly. If you get a few countries who are really important, like America, Russia, China, some of the European powerhouses like Germany and France. Right? I'm not sure we can throw The UK in there anymore. I don't know. But, Switzerland. No. The other countries will follow. Yeah. And if the division and divisiveness continues that we have seen, especially of late, you've got the BRICS nations, for example, that they are desperately trying to get off the US dollar, which is the current international store of value, by the way. Just to be clear, unless maybe gold, which you see a you keep trying. I'm sorry. I'll you do actually see a shift away from US bonds, the US dollar, The US debt really, to gold in foreign countries and foreign to The US. Sorry.
That, boy, that was you know what I mean? Okay? It is happening. There is a shift happening right now, Kenshin. That's what Jack Mallers talks about all the time. Incessantly, it's like the same. He just repeats the same thing. Yeah. Love the guy. And he's he's really happy right now. But, you know, that is the message. We are moving away from the dollar. I'll stop. Sorry. I absolutely
[00:54:42] Kenshin:
agree. I mean, that that's I'm also getting very excited about it because you're right. It's, gradually then suddenly, and we see that with gold right now. Yeah. And as you said, the BRICS countries are freaking out. And we we push them towards India. Gold. Brazil.
[00:55:03] McIntosh:
Who else is it? Is it Russia and BRICS? Yeah. Russia. China. Those four countries right there are major population centers, like numbers of people. And if they switched alone, that's a huge amount of leverage.
[00:55:21] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:55:21] McIntosh:
So it may only be ten years. I'm gonna say twenty to thirty. But when you and you may be look. I do believe it will happen eventually. It is a matter of when. Does that help? I know you're right.
[00:55:39] Kenshin:
And they already switched within two years, they switched to gold already. Mhmm. So it's not so slow.
[00:55:49] McIntosh:
China has been making that switch for ten years. It's just nobody talks about it. But you can look at the charts. They've been selling their debt, their, bonds, and, buying gold. Number 14, Marcela three two one. Why are fees gradually being implemented on simple, low cost BTC transfers. For example, here in Argentina, we were charged a 6% fee for each Bitcoin transact a purchase. Marcela, I that's curious. That is I would assume that you're going through some centralized point that is charging you that. That's frankly, like, 3% more than even credit cards charge. It's kind of outrageous.
And I, like, I I I assume by Bitcoin transfers, I I'm not sure the translation's perfect here. If you mean just sending money from one person to another, if you're on lightning, there's essentially no fees. So there are certainly solutions out there that don't require a middleman. If you mean buying Bitcoin, which is certainly a possibility, they're always gonna charge a fee. That does seem high. It sounds like you don't have enough competition down there for your exchanges. I I would actually like to know more about this. Marcela, if you could boost in maybe, if you listen to this, if you could boost in and let us know or post to the Nasr
[00:57:41] Kenshin:
and let us know that way. Reply on Nasr. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to know too. That that sounds, as you said, an exchange fee, which is that specific website or wallet you use. But you definitely don't have to pay 6%.
[00:57:59] McIntosh:
If you're just sending Bitcoin, either main net or lightning, that that fee doesn't make any sense. I'd they have to be talking about an exchange, and that does seem high. If you have a VPN, well, they're all KYC anymore. You just need more competition down there. And I don't know what's available to you in Argentina, unfortunately.
[00:58:29] Kenshin:
Okay. 15, we have Magnetor. I really want to understand how central banks plan to continue with fractional reserve banking if their system is based on a single entities in issuance in a CBDC system. I don't know. I mean, they always will find ways to, yeah, to take advantage of of the system and over leverage themselves. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know how how it will work with the c b I don't think a CBDC helps
[00:59:11] McIntosh:
the fractional reserve banking system in any way. I don't think it helps or hinders it, to be honest with you. Because in any fractional reserve system, the dollars on that balance, they're just digits. I mean, literally, they just can just Yeah. Change it. Having the central bank Yeah. It might make it easier. It actually might. Yes. Absolutely. It could make it, easier. Sorry. I I don't think that that really kinda changes that old system at all. I mean, you're just replacing one form of Fiat with another. So number 16, Henna Komoda.
I think we should do our next, boost call in thing, whatever whatever we call this. Like, explain your name. I I just wanna know what all these people where their names come from. I I have no guess. I don't I don't know. Anyways, Hanukkomoto, could what happened in Switzerland happened in Europe, or is it isolated? So as we discussed last week, week before, Switzerland is not part of the EU. So, you know, they can certainly pass their own laws. If a law gets passed through the EU, it does cover the majority of Europe. So this certainly could happen in the rest of Europe. And in fact, there is a separate law that they are arguing about in the EU right now that is very similar, at least as similar aspects to the one that we're talking about in Switzerland.
So
[01:00:58] Kenshin:
Yeah. And and I would say Switzerland will become more like Europe already is already. So Europe already most of countries in Europe don't have very good privacy laws anymore. And as you said, they are trying to pass even worst privacy laws with taking away Right. End to end encryption and stuff like that. So could that happen? It has already happened. Yes. Europe is is already
[01:01:32] McIntosh:
long gone. Yeah. It worries me a lot, actually. What's going on in there?
[01:01:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. I I mean, as an example, there is plenty of stories that the French police, for example, goes to Proton and ask for, logs, email logs, VPN logs, stuff like that. Right? So because they they have that right in France, they can do that if a company is based in France. But Proton is they they are not forced to do that because they're based in Switzerland. So in that sense yeah. The in Europe, they're already used to, yeah, circumvent those, Yeah. The privacy laws. Hey.
[01:02:22] McIntosh:
I wanna give a shout out right now though to the French farmers because those dudes, they are cool. They take loads of manure and throw it all over to people who are in there, like, protesting or whatever Uh-huh. Which is just awesome. I don't suppose you've seen that. Uh-huh. Oh, man. Anyways, they have these machines that they use it to spread manure on the field to to for, like, fertilization. And it basically, you load up this dump trailer with, like, a load of manure, and then it's like flinging it out on the sides. Like, probably a 100 feet or more. You know? It it goes a ways, and they just kinda drive along in their big tractors, and this stuff's flying out. And it's, like, getting anyways,
[01:03:12] Kenshin:
don't mess with the farmers, man. The funny thing is, I I thought you said Monero in the beginning.
[01:03:17] McIntosh:
So No. I don't ever talk about that junk. Alright.
[01:03:22] Kenshin:
Okay. Second to last, What are Bitcoin's good practices? Okay. That's a vague question, but the basic one is There's a there's a lot of good practices. So I don't know. Okay. But two two main things. Your keys, your coins. So take your your Bitcoin out of exchanges, have your own keys for your own Bitcoin, and never reuse a Bitcoin address. Yes. Oh, and and HODL. And yeah. HODL. Yes. This year. Don't sell your Bitcoin ever. No. I'm not gonna say that. No. But this year and yeah. Try to keep it. So three.
[01:04:08] McIntosh:
Great. A bit more. You're gonna get a bit more. That one at least makes sense. You also talk Noster. Yes. We do. Could Noster ever come under EU regulation like social media platforms, or is it unstoppable by design? If Nostra doesn't grow, it will never come under EU regulation because they won't know about it. I'm just gonna say that. I said the quiet part out loud. Having said that, I will say by design, Nostra is fairly difficult to regulate. Yeah. For good or for bad, it is decentralized. Run your own relay, you know, I don't know. It would definitely be more difficult. Look.
Any country, n t governmental entity can, you know, construct a a firewall like what we see in China. And it does work to an extent. I have personal experience with that one. And, but it's not perfect either. So it's a battle that the governments, if they choose to fight this stuff, that they, wage. And I don't know. I do think it'd be far more difficult to stop Nostra than, say, Facebook or Twitter, though. Mhmm. Alright. That was a great group of questions. I really think people are gonna have to start explaining what their names are, though. I mean, seriously. Yeah. I feel like half of them we probably butcher. You know what I'm curious about? I hope people are listening to this. Like, a quarter of these were either in Spanish or, like, the person from Argentina.
Is there a reason for that? Is this I mean, is Noster that much Spanish? I I are these reg are you first of all, are you regular listeners to the show, or did you just do this to make the sats, which is fine? But, I mean, I'm trying to learn Spanish, but let's be honest. I'm a long way off of being able to talk in Spanish here. Just saying. Yes. I am curious. I'm serious, though. I'm I'm very curious about all the Spanish activity. I don't know. Any thoughts on that?
[01:06:38] Kenshin:
I I think it's, it's a combination. Yeah. Zapathon, of course. Yeah. I I don't know. Nope. I I've seen those those accounts
[01:06:49] McIntosh:
before. So Mhmm. I'm not surprised. So so they are on us. Well, there was a couple of our regular listeners I know in here, Buttercup Roberts and Huddle Huddle Harry and the bullish Bitcoiner. Harry. Appreciate that, of course, always. We did have some support this week. God's death sent us 237 sats and said simply, thank you, gentlemen. So you're welcome. Thank you. Do you like the show? No question for the week. Programming note. Let me insert this in here. We should have done this earlier. I we've mentioned this before. I have. I will be on vacation next week. I guess a programming question right here on the air.
Are you going to record by yourself or are we not recording?
[01:07:43] Kenshin:
No. We can't take it all. So we will not be,
[01:07:46] McIntosh:
there will not be an episode next week, which I'm I'm sorry, but, I would not be married if I took along my recording equipment and set up in the middle of our vacation. I will tell you this. We're going up to Maine Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We're flying into Boston, which is a big city in Massachusetts. And so this is, the what's called New England area of The United States up in the Northeast. It should be beautiful. We should see some fall colors even if it's not, like, at its height, but and lots of good seafood, which I love, and I'm sure we're gonna have a good time. I'll maybe post some piss pictures on Noster when I get back for those who are curious, that will not include me nor my wife. Sorry. But lots of good scenery.
Right. Okay. News and oates.
[01:08:51] Kenshin:
Right. I have one news. Strike is offering Bitcoin back loans in Europe. They rolled it out this week.
[01:08:59] McIntosh:
That was something that Jack was talking about on his podcast, of course. Like, he I will give him credit. He used to, like, shill his stuff continually during the show, and he's very cleanly got it delineated. He's like, okay. Here's my macro assessment, and then he talks about strike and, whatever his capital group is. I can't remember their name. Twenty one? Twenty one. Of course. How was that still available? I don't understand. Anyways, so that was the big thing this week. They are offering Bitcoin back loans in Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, please be careful doing something like that. I love the Stripe platform. We talk about it a lot. I'm not a big fan of taking a loan on your Bitcoin because if Bitcoin drops, you could be margin called on that. That is how it works. Read the fine print, understand what you're getting into.
He believes, and he's probably right, there are tax benefits to doing it, basically loaning against your Bitcoin stack if you have enough of a stack. You know, if I had a million dollars in Bitcoin and I wanted to take a loan of a $100,000 against it rather than, like, make that money through salary, I mean, there is a difference in terms of taxes. I get that. But, man, it's just getting wild.
[01:10:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. Or it's rather than selling the Bitcoin itself.
[01:10:30] McIntosh:
Right. And I that is the one case. But, man, you gotta be careful. Be careful. Yeah. That was that I will say that that was a good scenario. Like, maybe you're struggling. You've got a bit of Bitcoin built up, and I don't know, your transmission blows out in your car, which is maybe $5,000 or whatever, and you don't have the money in the bank. You could technically you could take a loan against your Bitcoin and then pay it back over, you know, the next six months or whatever. Just be careful doing that kind of stuff.
[01:11:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. I I must say I'm excited about this. Not for personal reason. Right. Not yet. I will I will not use it now. And it's the interest rate is really high still. It's 13%. Right. But I'm excited that we are at this phase of starting up to see this journey. Yep. And when it's time, it will be
[01:11:30] McIntosh:
good terms and A 100%. System around it, good interest rates. So it might make sense one point. Alright. Moving on software updates. I wanted to take this on because I have actually already installed this. Sparrow, my favorite wallet. I'm not gonna speak for you, but it is my favorite wallet. New version two point three dot o. I tested it out last night when I sent off, some Bitcoin to my host, my mining host. Supports, the big features are support sending to silent payment addresses, which solves the very issue that you, sir, were talking about earlier. Don't ever use the same address. You present an address that stays the same, but it does work on the back end essentially that automatically rotates your address as you receive your Bitcoin. Is that a fair summary, Kenshin? Yeah. K. And then it says support sending to and displaying BIP three fifty three human readable names and include DNSSEC proof and associated, PSBTs.
PS BTs would be partially signed Bitcoin transactions. I'm not a 100% clear on this, and I haven't had time to look it up yet. But I believe what it means is you can actually send to, like, a something that looks like an email address or something like that instead of a Bitcoin address, which is a long hexadecimal string. If it's hexadecimal. Right? I'm not Yeah. No. It's not I'm not sure about that. The Yeah. Yeah. The BC one, etcetera. Okay. Well, it's a unreadable address. Let me put it that way. How about that? If you're gonna boost in and complain about that, please make it a big boost. Alright. You wanna go ahead and do the price?
[01:13:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. So today, as we record October 8, we have a price of a 123,680 USD and a €106,300. So we're
[01:13:42] McIntosh:
all time high. We did hit an all time high. We're not right now, but we did a 126,000 roughly. So nice number, a little above $1.25. And then last October 8, our price was $62,131. So we are up a nice 99.07%. So close to a 100. Maybe next week. Market cap.
[01:14:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. We have a market cap of 2,500,000,000,000.0, quite high, and, gold market cap on the other side of 28,200,000,000,000.0. So gold is keep going up. And the gap between Bitcoin and gold is at 8.8%. Bitcoin versus gold market cap. So still below 10.
[01:14:39] McIntosh:
Alright. Yep. Still below 10. What gold's I mean, gold's I think we need to start putting the gold price into. I don't wanna, like, make this difficult, but look, I track I can I can put it on brand? Bit Farm is up to $4 all of a sudden. It's up 15% today. Sorry. We'll leave that in for posterity. Bit Farm, I've told you all this is the one stock that I own at this point. They're a mining company, and all of a sudden they're up to $4.
[01:15:13] Kenshin:
But gold is for that's where I was going. 4,060
[01:15:21] McIntosh:
Thank you very much. I wished I owned a stack, and then I could think about selling it and buying Bitcoin. But at least it would be in an asset that does not depreciate. Thank you very much. Alright. Wow. I'm still Thank you very much. Alright. Wow. I'm still trying to get over the Bitfarms stock. What? That is nuts. Something must have happened. Yeah. It jumped, like, 30¢ in the last couple of hours. I'm serious.
[01:15:46] Kenshin:
Is that related to gold or
[01:15:49] McIntosh:
what's that? It is a Bitcoin mining company. Oh, okay. Yep. They're up in, Canada, but they have operations here in The United States, down in South America as well. Excuse me. Goodness. Alright. Let's move on. Nobody wants to hear about Bitfarm except me. Fees and MIMPL. One SAP per vByte, 230 megabytes of unprocessed transactions and only 65,000 unprocessed transactions. So we are down a little bit this week. We were above 300 last week. Uh-huh. Don't know what that's about. Hey, people. Send some money. I did my part last night. I don't know.
I got nothing. Are we ready to wrap this up? Well, yeah. One hour. I gotta go save the world. Yeah. Yeah. We do need to stop. Alright. Thanks for hanging in there with us, guys. I love to I know you don't like them as much, but I we almost didn't do it this time. I'll be honest. That's just a little background note there. I love doing these, though. These are my favorite episodes. Seriously. I love hearing from you. I do. Yeah. Alright. Satoshi's Plebs, that's us, is a value for value podcast, supporting podcasting two point o. No ads, no sponsorships, just honest Bitcoin content. I deliberately avoid sponsors because even if I love a company, taking their their money would influence my opinion.
What if something goes wrong with that company? I would hesitate to warn you. Instead, I simply ask, are you getting value from our show? Support it through time, talent, or treasure. Help with future projects, stream sets, boost with messages saying, you know, great show or that's terrible or I can't believe you mispronounced my name, Macintosh. Good lord. Where are you from? Whatever. We'll read it on the show. And if you boost, if you boost what do they call it? If you zap a note or whatever on Doster and we see it, which that's difficult sometimes, we'll do it too.
If you like the, content, I would love it. If you would tell your friends about the podcast, that is the best way for us to grow. I have not had time to find new music. I apologize. This week's music is still Freedom Code Revolution by our one of our listeners, Send It Mike. Thanks a lot, Mike, for letting us borrow this for a couple weeks. I promise this will be the last week.
[01:18:23] Kenshin:
It really is a great song. I hope you're enjoying it. So thank you for being here. We hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you on Nostr. Find all our contact info at satoshis dot clebs dot com. Stay humble. Do see those search, and have a great weekend.
[01:18:40] McIntosh:
We'll talk to you all soon. Bye bye.
[01:19:36] Unknown:
Behind the screen, we forge the key. Unlock the chains and set minds free. The printer's role will fade to dust. In coding truth, we place our trust. No more kings, no paper lies. We'll bend the phones beneath the sky. The chains and set minds free. The printer's roar will fade to dust. In code and truth we place our trust. No more kings, no paper lies. More by the thrones Zero's, one's, our battle cry. Decentralized will never die. The castles crumble as we rise. The future's ours, we claim the prize. No more kings, no paper lies.
Welcome back to Satoshi's Plebs for episode two twenty nine. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:05] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin. And in today's episode, we're answering your questions from Noster.
[00:00:09] McIntosh:
Awesome. Good to see you, Kenshin. We sorry, we've been working on our live setup. It's just it's complicated, but we're not gonna have live this week again. We were trying and things just didn't work out, but hopefully, we'll have that soon. As we begin recording, we're at Block Height 918225 on a pleasant Wednesday afternoon here in The States, and I hear you're cold, Kinsha. Yes.
[00:00:36] Kenshin:
Goodness. It's cold here in Sweden already. It's, winter's coming. This is what happens
[00:00:43] McIntosh:
when you take a guy from Greece and move him up north. Is that right? Yep.
[00:00:49] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I and I got a cold. How how do you say that? A back cold? So a muscle cramp, you know? Okay. When you get a cold on the neck or something.
[00:01:03] McIntosh:
I call that old age, but, you know, to each their own.
[00:01:10] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:01:11] McIntosh:
Hey. Hey. Twenty years from now, you're gonna wake up one morning, and you're gonna, like, sit up on the edge of your bed and various parts of your body are gonna ache, and you're gonna be like, oh, that's what Macintosh was talking about. Oh, man. I was not expecting that to happen as I got older, to be honest. I I thought that was, like, something that happened in your sixties and seventies. And, no, ladies and gentlemen, that is not true. It happens much sooner than you may think. How are things going with you?
[00:01:51] Kenshin:
Good. I've been, stressing every night trying to find a new phone to buy. I don't know. I'm very indecisive. I want a Pixel phone, but I don't find any good deals. And, I'm stuck only wanting to buy Pixel phone because of the GrapheneOS.
[00:02:13] McIntosh:
Right. Right.
[00:02:15] Kenshin:
I don't find any other alternative. There are some other Android ROMs, but development is very, nonexistent nowadays, I think. So I was looking into Lineage OS that I've been trying in the past, and Mhmm. I don't see any modern phone using it. So I I don't know. I'm a bit stuck. And the Pixel hardware is okay, but it's not the best anymore, at least in processor speed and Mhmm. Some SSD speed and stuff. So I'm not sure.
[00:02:48] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there's not a lot of development going on outside of Google and, and Apple. And to be honest, I wonder sometimes about Google. So
[00:03:00] Kenshin:
No. I'm not. A one
[00:03:02] McIntosh:
a one trick pony, a one phone show, that's not not ideal. Not at all. So Yeah. Exactly. I don't know.
[00:03:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I got used to Graphene and the simple Android interface and the customization that I could do to it, the freedom. So I I also have a Samsung phone from my work, and I don't want to deal with that type of, customization. The yeah. Then you get to different interface. They do their own choices, and then other companies do the same. So I don't know. I hate the Samsung interface, to be honest. I'd Yeah. What little I've used, it was just, man, you guys, no. No. No. They they do things their own way. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm stuck. And, I need a new phone because mine got destroyed in my trip to to Dubai. So I'm without personal phone, without my apps.
[00:04:06] McIntosh:
Did you leave it outside on the hood of the, excavator or something? What I mean, it was only, like, 200 degrees there. So what what happened?
[00:04:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. I think it got humidity somehow. So the the screen started having black dots. One black dot in the corner, then that black dot started expanding and growing, and then all all the screen became black eventually
[00:04:30] McIntosh:
After a week. Yeah. That's crazy.
[00:04:33] Kenshin:
Yeah. It's a common issue, it seems, with humidity getting into the screen. Well, maybe I had something to do with it because one day it was very dusty, and I thought when I went to the hotel, I can just wash the phone from the dust. So maybe that's where
[00:04:51] McIntosh:
when it went It was an iPhone, you said. Right? No. No. Pixel Oh, I don't know about Pixel seven. The iPhones are supposed to be good down to, like, 30 meters or something
[00:05:01] Kenshin:
in water. Yeah. They are all supposed to be IP 68. Right. So at least one and a half meter for thirty minutes, they say. Some yeah. So a quick splash, it shouldn't affect it, but I don't know. The heat together with some humidity and water and something wetting anyway. So I need to replace that. I because I cannot even install any apps anymore from GitHub that I I had a lot of a big list of apps from GitHub installed on my phone. So I need those back. Yep. And then I have been experimenting with, Niravati OS.
Pratel? Which is which is, how do you call this? Like a server interface OS where you can install apps and use it as a home server, and it's used a lot as a Bitcoin node. So you can easily install install Bitcoin core and Bitcoin nodes and LND and all the rest of those apps and have it as a node. And yeah. It's, I like the implementation because it's not so looked down as Right. Starts nine and Umbrel. Right. So you can even have root access and yeah. They have done some good choices and very easy to install other apps on there. But it's very early days. I wouldn't recommend it as a as your only node OS for now. So I still have my start nine as my everyday node and then this one to experiment because it it feels a bit unstable still how it, how it works and installs apps and stuff. So I already had to format it once Oh, man.
With the help of the developer. So he he was quite helpful, but still it's it's early days, I would say. Yeah. I at this point so
[00:06:56] McIntosh:
we were talking beforehand. I had tried to use this project about or his or the predecessor to it. I can't remember. About a year ago. The Citadel was a predecessor. Yeah. I think it was actually Citadel. But, anyways, I I have high hopes for this environment. I do. It is early. It is an alternative to the start nine and what's the other one? Umbrel. Umbrel. Yeah. Umbrel, of course, is the very popular one. I didn't realize until I saw some sales figures, which were announced intentionally or not, but they were for start nine. How kinda big that market is, I would not have guessed they were selling that much hardware.
And they were selling, like, 1,700 units in, like, a quarter.
[00:07:46] Kenshin:
Wow. Yeah.
[00:07:49] McIntosh:
And I don't don't quote me on that, but it was enough that it caught my attention. I'm like, well, maybe people actually do want this kind of thing. Now you and I have talked. Of course, I'm often 400 different directions. One of my ideas is I want something like this on a on a VM, on a VPS, a virtual private server up in the cloud. Yeah. Right? Because the reality is for a lot of people, myself included, this does not work well on your home network. There's compromises to that, obviously, in terms of privacy, But the ability to have a environment that's manageable by basically anyone has a lot of upside to it Mhmm. Shall we say. So yeah, I I'm gonna probably try and support this project some more, try and, you know, get it loaded up and and take it for a spin and see if there's anything I can do to help there.
Just, you know, I need another project.
[00:08:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for anyone that wants to try Niravati, I have created a long form, note on long form dot space and, a small guide for installing Okay. Ervadi because there is no installation ISO. So you actually need to to transfer the image straight on a hard drive and boot it up.
[00:09:23] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. It it is definitely early days for that project, but, two main competitors essentially is not enough. Yeah. It's kinda like the Bitcoin core, not what what is Peter Todd's thing that only the spammers use? Libra, whatever, which is kind of funny. But whatever. You know, it's not enough. We need we need we need competition. We need whatever. So, good to see that. Glad to hear you got started on that, and I hope it goes well for you. You said you already had to rebuild it once, but isn't that just part of the learning curve? A few minutes before we started recording kinda marked a milestone for me.
I've been talking for months about this work we've been doing at our, at my Fiat job, and it somewhat culminated right before the show when we did a merge of code into our main branch. And, you know, we officially switched over from Datadog to, Grafana, essentially. It went smoothly as could be expected. There's some things I have to deal with still. I told Kenshin before the show, I said, I'm not I mean, we'll just have to see how it goes because if it had gone ugly, there was just no way. And I'm still having things go on. I apologize if I seem a little distracted, Kenshin, but, it's just stuff. But I was making fun of it. It was I called it the merge, which was a reference to the stupidity that the, Ethereum developers did. It's been, I guess, several years now. Right, Kenshin? Where they merged they moved off proof of stake. No proof of work. Yeah. No proof of work on the proof of stake, and it was this big complicated thing. And frankly, I I remember it. I and and really, to me, it was kinda one of the things that solidified in my mind the idea that, frankly, not, Ethereum was not a serious project. I mean, it's it's just devs who have a lot of money who frankly, they just wanna do dev things. They just wanna write code and break things, you know, because they want shiny new features.
It's like and did they pull it off? Yes. They did. And I guess you can give them credit for that, but, yeah, our merge went as good as well.
[00:12:06] Kenshin:
Yeah. Okay. So
[00:12:08] McIntosh:
you you told me I promise you had to make your promise. You weren't gonna make a fun of that. But yeah. Oh, flat on. Yes. We'll move on.
[00:12:17] Kenshin:
Right? So Yeah. So last time, we asked the people on Oster to give us some questions for this episode.
[00:12:29] McIntosh:
It's And as always, the people responded.
[00:12:32] Kenshin:
Thank you. It started slow, I must say, but, I'm happy with the reaction when when we, yeah, reposted it a couple of times. So that was good. Right.
[00:12:44] McIntosh:
I wanna have a different conversation. I we so we're gonna talk about this, and let's see where we're at, in terms of time. I I do wanna have a conversation about Noster because I feel like it's changing. I think evolving. I don't know. We'll we'll talk about that. If we have There is a question about Noster.
[00:13:04] Kenshin:
So we can't Well, maybe we don't have that. Question. If we can make it short. Yeah. I don't know.
[00:13:10] McIntosh:
Oh, yeah. No. Buttercup Roberts. Yep. Well, yeah. Let's see.
[00:13:19] Kenshin:
Let's see. You wanna start? So we had have first question from Hodel Harry. Which countries should European Bitcoiners consider moving to? Things are moving in a bad direction out here. Yes. Thank you. Hoto Hari. And that's what we were talking a bit last last time, was it, or the time before that. Right?
[00:13:38] McIntosh:
Yeah. I think it was a couple of episodes ago, but certainly recently. Yeah. And it's it's a hard question. I mean, it is. Yeah. And it's going to but I would let me say this. I apologize. I'll let I'll hand the baton back to you in just a second. This is a personal question, and your circumstances may be different. And we've talked about that a fair amount. If you've got a family, you're in a different situation than somebody who's single and so on and so forth. So we can talk about what we might think, but that might not be what's good for you. Yeah.
[00:14:14] Kenshin:
For me as a European and having seriously discussed this topic with with my wife, we were seriously looking towards Switzerland. So Switzerland, as we talked about last time, is not in the EU even though it's in the middle of Europe.
[00:14:36] McIntosh:
Thanks for rubbing that in. Go ahead. Yeah.
[00:14:41] Kenshin:
And it has some very good privacy laws until now, maybe not tomorrow. Metaphorically saying tomorrow. Right? And so that was the the the easiest choice in terms of quality of life, nature, proximity to the our home countries. Mhmm. Yeah. Good jobs probably. So I I did some applications actually for some positions there. I never got any anything there, but I tried at least.
[00:15:19] McIntosh:
So So Yeah. Let let me ask you a question along those lines, actually, because I did look at this a little bit. And if I were to, like, try and go move to Switzerland as a resident or not a citizen, but as a resident, They have, like, a €300,000 a year fee, essentially. Now it it it's like a tax bill, and if you're earning that, you know, it comes off your taxes, I guess. But if you were to work for a Swiss company, that's not the case. Like, if you were employed
[00:15:56] Kenshin:
I don't know that. Actually, I think. No. That's the first time I hear about this. No? Yeah. It's
[00:16:02] McIntosh:
it's very steep. Now I think it's, like, targeted at people who wanna build businesses there and Right. Retirees, I guess. I don't know any retirees, frankly, who would pay that much to move there. But, you know, you did catch my curiosity with that conversation last week. Right. They but they definitely seem to be more on the expensive side if you're just moving there as essentially an expat.
[00:16:32] Kenshin:
You know what? Yeah. I mean, I I I think you only move there if you have a company or or you have a good job. Mhmm.
[00:16:41] McIntosh:
I would assume that if I'm almost sure Nestle is a Swiss company. Is that true? Am I pulling that out?
[00:16:50] Kenshin:
I don't think so. I think that's American. Is it? Or I don't know. Well, let
[00:16:56] McIntosh:
whoever. Goodness. I don't know. Man, we're fixing to find out that Macintosh There are a lot of Swiss
[00:17:03] Kenshin:
chocolate brands for sure. I don't know if Nestle is one of them. Yeah. They're actually a Swiss company. I was right. They're multinational,
[00:17:10] McIntosh:
but they are headquartered in Switzerland. So regardless, let's say you got a job at Nestle. I would assume that that 300,000 or euro a year payment would not you wouldn't have to pay that and neither would Nestle. You're there as an employee and so on. And, obviously, you're drawing Generates taxes. You're paying taxes. So is Nestle. Okay. So there's one approach right there. I mean, honestly, as an American, and I'll say that, Switzerland would be a place I would consider, and it would have to be through the route of working through one of these companies, which that puts pressure on you. I mean, you you're not a resident. I mean, you are, but you're not. Right? You the you could lose your job, and they could make you leave.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Maybe not ideal, but you could certainly do that in terms of privacy, especially if this privacy law does not get passed, which I that we don't know. You know, they are tops for that in Europe. Mhmm. I've heard mention of Madeira as a Bitcoin friendly. I've heard mention of Isle Of Man, Portugal. There's a number of places that are, quote, Bitcoin friendly. Germany doesn't have a cap gains tax, right, on Bitcoin. After the first year of Spain. So hold your hold your Bitcoin, people. But regardless, they all those places are part of the EU.
Is that correct? I mean, even Madeira, it's still part of the EU. So you have to factor that in, in my opinion, into this discussion. Yeah. So I I just don't think it's cut and dried, frankly, especially I don't think it's cut and dried for anyone. I what No. It's not. Like, we were discussing here in America what what I would do. And the reality is until it gets really bad, I'm not gonna do anything. And and maybe at that point, it's, quote, too late for me, but I have family obligations that I can't just walk away from. Does that make sense?
[00:19:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. So
[00:19:27] McIntosh:
Yeah. It it gets harder and harder. So it's a more Well, exactly. I think for somebody who's 25 no. Let me just got I wished I was 25. Let's just say I was 25 and I wasn't married. I was married when I was 25. But regardless, let's just say I wasn't. What would I do? To be honest, probably about four years prior, if I had the knowledge that I have now, I would have left The United States and gone to Costa Rica or maybe Argentina. Although, as we have discussed recently, I would say Costa Rica is more more stable, certainly.
I'm not sure what's going on in Argentina. I still believe that Malay is nothing but a politician in disguise or maybe he's turning into one or whatever, but the moves that I see of late seem to be designed to keep him in power. And I'm not comfortable with that. They're a long way from being where they need to be in terms of regulations and this kind of thing, it is still difficult to do things there. So I don't there's always El Salvador. I don't know. I mean, there's always compromises. Unfortunately, there is no ideal country.
[00:20:51] Kenshin:
No. No. And that's where the world starts to feel very small. That that's what I felt when I was really thinking about it. And there was also the a thought at some point for New Zealand to really go as far away as possible. But but then you hear some stuff that the New Zealand government is doing. It's very Canadian style or American or European style. You know, it's it's the same stuff in
[00:21:21] McIntosh:
a but in a nicer place. It will be a nicer place until you have an earthquake. But I do love mutton. I just I do. I'm just saying. There's some Chinese, it's really western Chinese lamb cuisine. Oh, man. Just sorry. Next question.
[00:21:42] Kenshin:
Let's move on. We yeah. We took Yeah. We got minutes on the first bullish Bitcoiner, what are you bullish on in Bitcoin or Nasr,
[00:21:51] McIntosh:
at the moment? What about you, sir?
[00:21:58] Kenshin:
I don't know. I'm I'm not so bullish these days. I mean, let's see what happens with Bitcoin Core and and Nostra is, is what it is for the last few months. Nothing has changed really, so I'm not sure.
[00:22:15] McIntosh:
I I don't know what's gonna happen between core and knots. And frankly, I don't think it's gonna end Bitcoin either way. I think it could be better. I think there are better scenarios, but I personally Bitcoin, whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger, and this is going to be another case of that. Does that make sense? And if it comes down to it and there's a fork and I I don't think that will happen, but let's just say that there was, for example, the strongest one will win, and that's the one that's supposed to be Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, actually Does that make sense?
It it's hard not to be down about it, though, because it is it's become like a full time job of these people on Twitter and even on Nostra to, you know, to be talking about.
[00:23:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. But to be more a little bit more positive, I think we see some good advancement with the beeps. Right? We saw one We talked about it, the silent payments. We'll talk about it later. There are some advancements also, some NIPS on Noster, some video streaming, some other stuff. So so there are advancements. So, yeah, what I'm looking forward is to see more adoption actually in both.
[00:23:45] McIntosh:
And and the you just touched on the two things that I would highlight as the positive things right now. In Bitcoin, silent payments, some attention on privacy. I would love for there to be a lot more. I would love for it to be built in, essentially, but these are step forwards. And then on Noster, the the the video streaming stuff to me has potential. Noster, let's just hold that for number four, but I I love what's going on there with zap. Stream, for example. I mean, that's just a beautiful piece of, it's a great idea. I'm not gonna say it's a beautiful piece of software, but they they are having a lot of problems with, with spam attacks supposedly, like, DDoS.
So, anyways, alright. Number three, sir. Dion messias
[00:24:48] Kenshin:
or messias? So what's the verdict on mica, m I c a, bullish for adoption or just another KYC trap? So this is a European, yeah, control mechanism that they have now for companies that, get involved with cryptocurrencies. And, this is not good. No. No. That's not good for adoption. It it puts a lot of controls. We know some Bitcoin companies had to close down because of this because they couldn't, comply with those regulations. So it's definitely not good for adoption. It is only about KYC and more control over over cryptocurrency related companies. And there was one a Dutch Bitcoin only company I remember that had closed down.
So no. Not good.
[00:25:43] McIntosh:
Not good. Not good. Number four, Buttercup Roberts. Do you feel that Nostrum is in a plateau phase? What do you think needs to happen for it to keep growing? I think we could do an entire episode on that. Yeah. Let's try and keep it tight. I do feel like one of the core issues of Nostril that no one seems to be willing to tackle. We have relays for decentralization. Anyone can spin one up. But the reality is to have growth, the average person has to be accounted for. They're not going to spin up a relay, and the relays have become a limiting factor. I mean, we were talking before the show. You just realized there were different questions
[00:26:41] Kenshin:
on primal versus the other. And Iris. Right. Yeah. Three different
[00:26:47] McIntosh:
not good. So we had 14. Is it right? 14? No.
[00:26:54] Kenshin:
No. Now 18. 18
[00:26:56] McIntosh:
people respond Yeah. To questions with questions, with good questions, And and yet they were split across two different platforms somehow because, apparently, those two platforms are not talking to each other. And I don't know if that's because they think there's a competitive advantage in that or what. I okay. We're not even gonna get into is Macintosh technical enough. Macintosh is not taking the time to look into, why relays don't talk to each other. But it is a problem very clearly.
[00:27:34] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:27:35] McIntosh:
These things have to be solved because the reality is we go to a centralized platform. Oh, my, and, Tasha, I can't believe you're saying this. But you go to Facebook, you go to Twitter, you post, it shows up, somebody replies to your post, and it shows up. And that is the expectation of 99% of your users. And if you can't solve that, then this is never going to get anywhere as a social platform. Now interestingly, Nostra, you can do lots of interesting things with it, like video streaming, which I thought was very cool. Like, they're building it into the fountain app as a protocol essentially to transport the, comments.
Right? So we could see it in different places even if the social media aspect never takes off.
[00:28:34] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:28:34] McIntosh:
Does that make sense?
[00:28:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. And the follow-up question was that what do you think needs to happen for it to keep growing? I would say more adoption, more high profile people from, yeah, Facebook, Twitter, or wherever coming in muster and bringing people over, but using them in a good way.
[00:28:57] McIntosh:
But you have to make that experience reasonable or people will not do it. I will one last note about this, and then I I maybe we really should talk about this for an entire episode. I don't know. That may be too much. But I wanna say it was I'm not for certain about this, but somebody who had deep technical knowledge, I wanna say it was the Bitcoin the old Bitcoin, one of the kind of the very important technical people in Bitcoin who's been away for a while and just showed up. Nick is his name, and I can't remember his last name right now. Anyways, apparently, he's getting onboarded to Noster or whatever, and he looks at it and says, oh, your relays, you need to have people be paying for those.
Otherwise, there's no incentive to run a good relay, and that's that's a 100% true.
[00:29:55] Kenshin:
But there are relays that you can pay for. There are. But there is no incentive to pay for them. From the user side, you you don't have any incentive to pay for them. Incentive would be a better experience. It
[00:30:08] McIntosh:
it yeah. But you But the problem is get that instantly. You don't you don't realize that as a user. I don't know. Do we get I've not used one. So first of all, let me just say that. But do you get a better experience? Does it really does does it solve this problem that we just had? I think running our own node would actually solve that problem, but we'll see. But we there's some fundamental things in terms of relays, and I don't wanna just sit up here and hand wave and say, fix the problems, devs. But I do think there are some fundamental things that have to be solved. What was the there was one that was at least somewhat similar. What was the number?
[00:30:52] Kenshin:
Yeah. Question nine from Mario.
[00:30:55] McIntosh:
Go ahead and throw that in there.
[00:30:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. In the future, there will be Nostr, or will there be another Bitcoin social network that replaces it? So a bit yeah. Weirdly put, but Well, no. I
[00:31:15] McIntosh:
But I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're just speculating. I would love to say Noster is gonna be the network of the future. It does have a lot of good things going for it. I think we're at a growth phase. I think we're at a point where I think some choices have to be made, though. You know?
[00:31:35] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And, again, Nostra is a is a protocol. Mhmm. Right? So, sure, Nostra as a protocol can continue, but the apps built on top of Nostra need to improve a lot. So and they don't need to look like, Facebook or Twitter clones either to optimize that experience. Right? So I I think it's gonna look very different, but it can still be based on Monster to be to have that Bitcoin Ethos. Yes.
[00:32:09] McIntosh:
I love the fact. I do. I love the fact that it's not centralized, that we don't depend on any one entity to run it. But I believe we're gonna have to have some larger entities, for lack of a better word, to make those good experiences. And I don't know how those entities are supported except through charging for things like relays. I don't know. I think the reality is most people are not willing to pay for that better experience. They don't realize or they don't care that over on Facebook and Twitter, they're paying through ads.
Correct. I Facebook has turned into a cesspool of ad. It's literally like, your feed is just it's just promoted material, and it's crazy.
[00:33:03] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I I I must say again, there are private relays from the start of Nostra. So we have had them for two years at least. Right. And they have not solved the issues. They have not have adoption enough to solve the issues. So there needs to be something more than that. It's not as simple as that. No.
[00:33:26] McIntosh:
I think there's a number of factors, but we gotta move on. Alright. I think I did the last one. It was buttercups. Well, that yeah. And we combined two. Yeah. So if you wanna take the next one.
[00:33:40] Kenshin:
Yeah. So the next one is how do you pronounce this one? I have no idea.
[00:33:49] McIntosh:
I believe it's supposed to be black in Spanish. Yeah. It is black in Spanish.
[00:33:54] Kenshin:
Negra 0 is spelled. Mhmm. So it's in Spanish, but translated it is, will Bitcoin fall fail, sorry, if it doesn't end up being used as money for people's everyday lives? And then he falls it up. I would not like it to end up being a store value, but rather to be adopted by everyone as money. I think we have touched that up We have. Few times on this podcast. Right? And I think well, I think it should be a bit of everything. If it's not a store value, it cannot really function as money. Correct. I don't know. If if it is money, it also needs to be store value. So I I think they're interconnected. So They are. They they are interconnected.
[00:34:42] McIntosh:
Technically, I believe you could have a store value without it being money. But to be money, it has to be a store of value. I believe that it was Satoshi's vision, and I think it's laid out right there in the white paper, right in the first paragraph. It's a peer to peer digital monetary system. In other words, hey. You got a coffee? I've got Bitcoin. I wanna pay for the coffee in Bitcoin. Here's the Bitcoin. There's the coffee. Boom. Done. Right? Yeah. We do not have that right now in the vast majority of places. We do in a few places. You can go down to Costa Rica to Bitcoin jungle, for example, and that's exactly what they are doing. In The United States where there's more Bitcoin adoption, people owning Bitcoin, I should say, than anywhere else, that is not the case.
It's that simple. So we are definitely not there yet. I do I don't think Bitcoin would fail. I think it would fail in Satoshi's mission, what he wanted or she wanted, and it would if it would fail for me, I mean, I want it to be a global it's part of this is a global reserve currency to get off the US dollar, which is not helping The US even though they think it does in the short term. And it's only hurting us, and it's causing division and strife. And and, you know, I don't I don't wanna say war, but probably close to it. Right?
And instead, we've got this neutral reserve asset that that everyone can use. I don't know. Just a thought. Enough about that.
[00:36:35] Kenshin:
Yep.
[00:36:38] McIntosh:
Oh, gosh. You gave me the hard one. I'll I'll man, you guys are gonna start sending in pronunciations. I'm sorry. I I don't know. Aldark Aldarkster? Aldarkster. End of I wonder if they are a doctor based on the question. End of life or when Bitcoin or any other asset has to be liquidated as there may be terminal illness or hospice. The end game where keys, inheritance, donations, and the most efficient ways, way about doing this. That's actually maybe a topic for an episode, really. It is something you need to start thinking about before it's needed. You may need to be looking at multisignature storage.
You may need to be I'm not gonna be a purist and say, you know, you don't ever wanna have your Bitcoin on something like River. I there's compromises to that, but you may want to have a third party store that asset. Is that fair, Kenshin? Are you just gonna say no? Yeah. No. It's fine. I mean, you're welcome to say no. I just I don't know. It's hard. I mean, especially if I mean, yeah. It's hard. And there's going to be a whole group of people. Most of the, the boomers, and I do mean the actual boomers, not people using that as a pejorative term. But most of the boomers are not capable of managing the Bitcoin for themselves.
And if they own Bitcoin, if they were wise enough to get involved in that, then they probably should be. Either in custody of somebody who's younger and can, in their family, that type sit an uncle Jim situation, or it needs to be in something like river. And you need to have clear documentation about how that's to be handled. And I'm gonna tell you it needs to be part of your inheritance plan itself. It needs to be in your will and taken care of. Ladies and gentlemen, one of the I I see it over and over again. I hate it. Families, somebody dies, and money does crazy things to people, and and just people go crazy.
And one of the best ways to keep that from happening is to have, you know, clear legal documents. This is how I want this done when I pass on. But we really could Right. And there are a couple of Yes. Companies, Bitcoin companies that do inheritance plans. That is true. I really think we could probably just do a whole episode on this if we want. I don't know. Yep. Number seven.
[00:39:30] Kenshin:
Fabrizio, do you feel that Europe is behind America in terms of Bitcoin adoption? Yes. It's my I think that was a simple answer.
[00:39:42] McIntosh:
Look. We're The US tries very, very hard to fumble this. I mean, seriously. But the reality is and maybe this offends people, but I can't think of a single place in the world. There's places with better Bitcoin adoption in small areas, and you could argue El Salvador, I guess, has better overall. Like, Bitcoin is not a legal currency, but you can use it as a legal you can use it to pay for things. No problem. Yeah. But in general, the The United States is just ahead on this stuff. I really I'm not gonna be offended if someone comes and takes that title. We don't deserve it with the way that our politicians keep acting frankly, but there's a lot of that going on all over the world too. So
[00:40:37] Kenshin:
Well, there there is one country in Europe that has a lot of Bitcoin companies.
[00:40:45] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:40:47] Kenshin:
A country that is not in the EU, but is in Europe. So Switzerland has a lot of Bitcoin companies right now.
[00:40:55] McIntosh:
So that's a fair point. So you could make the argument probably that Bitcoin is maybe even doing better in Switzerland than anywhere else.
[00:41:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. There is not Is it is it's not considered
[00:41:12] McIntosh:
legal tender there, though. Right? Is it cap gains issues? And
[00:41:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. But, yeah, but for com Bitcoin companies, it's very friendly and privacy
[00:41:23] McIntosh:
related. To me, the capital gains issue is one of my most important issues. Until a country doesn't have cap gains on Bitcoin, you you can't use it as as I wanna buy that coffee. I mean, it's it's just too difficult. Unless they have something, I would argue, maybe a de minimis tax thing where it's less than $600 or less than a thousand dollars. Oh, we're not gonna worry about that. I'm not aware offhand that that's anywhere, but maybe it is. Actually, in Switzerland,
[00:42:00] Kenshin:
they don't have capital gains for Bitcoin for private investors.
[00:42:05] McIntosh:
Okay. There you go. So at least that's a step in the right direction. Right? We don't have cap well, alright. Anyways, does that answer that question? Yeah. That's a terrific question. I love all these European questions. I learned so much.
[00:42:21] Kenshin:
Especially about Switzerland. Old stuff.
[00:42:28] McIntosh:
Never mind. Alright. Number eight. Oh, I could almost read this in Spanish. Yeah. Maycats. Poor k. Satoshi Nakamoto no say Revela Al Mundo. How did I do?
[00:42:46] Kenshin:
Medium.
[00:42:48] McIntosh:
Okay. I sound like I'm a redneck. It's okay. Why does that you know, why doesn't Satoshi Nakamoto reveal himself to the world? I I actually could read that. I'm I'm so proud of myself. I'm sorry. Let me let me alright. Anyways, yes. That's a great question. The answer, I believe, is kind of multiples, and I'm glad that he he or she has not. I believe, for one thing, at this point, if they revealed themselves, it would make them a target for governments, for I don't know. Maybe even individuals, corporations. I have no idea.
[00:43:36] Kenshin:
Even risk Bitcoin itself as a protocol?
[00:43:40] McIntosh:
It would put an amount of I think the price would dump. I think it'd be a great buying opportunity. I think the same thing would happen if he or she ever moved any of that million Bitcoin that they have in their wallet. But I think there's a number of factors. I think part of it, frankly, is they don't I think there's a pride factor. And what I mean is not pride that they're hiding, but somebody who would be in the spotlight that much, it would build up it would it's it's it's it's not good for your ego. Does that make sense?
Like, everybody hey. You're the man. You're the woman. Again, I'd we don't know, but, you know, good job. Congratulations. Yeehaw. Whatever. Hey. Let me buy you a drink 14,000 times. You know, all of that stuff. It is not good for your head. I don't believe.
[00:44:41] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:44:43] McIntosh:
I think maybe that's part of it. I believe that they felt like if they stayed on, that they would become too much focus of the project. It would not be healthy for the project. And I believe they're 100% correct in that. Mhmm. If you have a CEO, you're always going to have someone that you can target again, going back to that.
[00:45:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I think maybe it was the realization that Bitcoin to become what Bitcoin can become.
[00:45:20] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:45:21] Kenshin:
It shouldn't have Satoshi
[00:45:24] McIntosh:
on the way I agree. Or anyone to be, as you said, as a CEO figure or founder figure. Right. And so the people that are left fight over it continually. I think that's partially what's going on with the whole Nostra Core thing. But people will come and people will go. We had Roger Ver. We had, Antonopoulos, you know, just faded into the background. There will be people who come along, move Bitcoin a little bit, and and then they go on their way. And that's okay.
[00:45:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's okay. Sometimes I wish he or she would come back and say, you know what? We did the OP return for a reason. Don't be stupid. I do wish they would say that. Yeah.
[00:46:12] McIntosh:
Yeah. It would be nice to hear the voice of Satoshi speak. If only there was a way. They should get a Nostra account. Here's what they should do. Here's what they should do. Get a Nostra account. Say, I'm Satoshi. I'm gonna prove it by moving 1 Bitcoin out of my wallet at, you know, 1PM, whatever time. Right? Tomorrow. And then do it and then say, now that I've proven I'm Satoshi, I'm going to speak on this platform. Yeah. Platform. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe not. The whole world would go crazy. Would that be a that would be crazy, though. There would be so many questions. Alright. Number 10, we gotta move on. Ray, can I Yeah? I wonder if this is a joke. Yeah. Ray, number 10. Can the digital euro overcome Bitcoin in the near future? If I'm reading this correctly, you think the digital euro is gonna become more important than Bitcoin?
No. No. Number 11. Yeah. I I mean, I've already made the prediction. What did I say? 20 20, seven. I think that it'll even be before they they get it over the finish line and out.
[00:47:37] Kenshin:
I I don't know. It's not gonna work out.
[00:47:41] McIntosh:
Yeah. I no. I think it's gonna
[00:47:44] Kenshin:
be it's gonna be an expensive experiment.
[00:47:48] McIntosh:
There's a lot of issues with it a lot. So yeah. I don't think that's a good thing. Alright. Number 11. Bonus points if you read it in Spanish. Are all you people, like, trying to help my Spanish along? This is terrific.
[00:48:05] Kenshin:
Yeah. I don't know. V e z l a. So the question is Bitcoin n l 02/1927. K. So we got How much will Bitcoin be worth in 2027?
[00:48:24] McIntosh:
Oh, I didn't even I literally just read it in in English when you said that. They're trying to trap us, man.
[00:48:34] Kenshin:
2027.
[00:48:36] McIntosh:
That is two years from now. Be in a bear market. If the cycle holds, we would be dead in the middle of the bear market and would actually be at the low. And I would personally say we're somewhere between a 100 and a $120,000. Now Yeah. We hope that's not the case. But until history repeats, or doesn't repeat, we we have to stand by that. I mean, that's that historically is what has happened. We're going to go higher from here. And then 2026 on into 2027, it'll start going lower. And we'll reach the bottom around 2027 and start back up.
[00:49:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. I agree. We'll be around where we are now. 2026.
[00:49:20] McIntosh:
The 100,000 level is going to prove to be a very difficult wonder break. I don't think we're ever even gonna get close to this $58,000 level that these people yeah. Whatever. K. Alright. Number 12. Dollar dollar chain dollar chain. Which countries could adopt Bitcoin as an official currency in the next ten years? Man, what is up with these questions, people? Switzerland. No. Actually, maybe not. Yeah. It's name three. Let's we'll go ahead. We'll play along.
[00:50:02] Kenshin:
Okay. Well, it has to be non European. I I will say that much. So none of the European ones. So it has to be, yeah, Central, South American, Argentina. Maybe
[00:50:21] McIntosh:
It's that's a good guess. El Salvador
[00:50:24] Kenshin:
can officially move completely to Bitcoin by then. And I would say an Asian country, let's say,
[00:50:33] McIntosh:
I don't know, The Philippines. Wow. Random shot in the dark. I think that South America and Africa have the most potential for this. Now we've already seen it happen in Africa and then get pulled back. There was a country in the center of Africa. It starts with a c, and I'm I apologize. I do not remember. It wasn't The Congo. But they did actually declare it as official, like, a legal tender. And then, like, two weeks later, they backed off of that. I don't know. But I could see places in Africa that actually happening. I certainly can see it in South America and Central America in different places. We've already seen it in El Salvador, maybe Panama right next to it, Costa Rica, maybe.
They seem to be kind of Bitcoin neutral, but I could see them swinging more positive that way. I don't know about Argentina. I mean, I don't. My guess is Argentina is not gonna be much better in ten years than it is right now. That's I know I'm being a bear, but we'll see. I really wanna live there, people. You guys don't you don't understand. I want a ranch in Argentina, and they're making me not have it. And that's just very disappointing. Up against the Andes, can't you just see it? Like, a thousand acres with the Andes on the background and my buffalo out on the pasture.
Of course, getting buffalo there would be very expensive. I've looked into that. Anyways, squirrels stop. Let's see. You did you did 12. Yeah. 13. Did I? No. You did. Oh, man. You get the easy one. To 12. Number 13.
[00:52:34] Kenshin:
Raimundo BTC. Could Bitcoin replace the dollar as an international store of value? Yes. Definitely. But it might take fifty years from now. I really hope it's sooner than that. Yes. It could. I
[00:52:50] McIntosh:
believe it is possible in my lifetime, and I will not live fifty years. I'll just be honest. It would be a miracle if I lived fifty more years. I think twenty to thirty years potentially. I I it's the whole gradually then suddenly. If you get a few countries who are really important, like America, Russia, China, some of the European powerhouses like Germany and France. Right? I'm not sure we can throw The UK in there anymore. I don't know. But, Switzerland. No. The other countries will follow. Yeah. And if the division and divisiveness continues that we have seen, especially of late, you've got the BRICS nations, for example, that they are desperately trying to get off the US dollar, which is the current international store of value, by the way. Just to be clear, unless maybe gold, which you see a you keep trying. I'm sorry. I'll you do actually see a shift away from US bonds, the US dollar, The US debt really, to gold in foreign countries and foreign to The US. Sorry.
That, boy, that was you know what I mean? Okay? It is happening. There is a shift happening right now, Kenshin. That's what Jack Mallers talks about all the time. Incessantly, it's like the same. He just repeats the same thing. Yeah. Love the guy. And he's he's really happy right now. But, you know, that is the message. We are moving away from the dollar. I'll stop. Sorry. I absolutely
[00:54:42] Kenshin:
agree. I mean, that that's I'm also getting very excited about it because you're right. It's, gradually then suddenly, and we see that with gold right now. Yeah. And as you said, the BRICS countries are freaking out. And we we push them towards India. Gold. Brazil.
[00:55:03] McIntosh:
Who else is it? Is it Russia and BRICS? Yeah. Russia. China. Those four countries right there are major population centers, like numbers of people. And if they switched alone, that's a huge amount of leverage.
[00:55:21] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:55:21] McIntosh:
So it may only be ten years. I'm gonna say twenty to thirty. But when you and you may be look. I do believe it will happen eventually. It is a matter of when. Does that help? I know you're right.
[00:55:39] Kenshin:
And they already switched within two years, they switched to gold already. Mhmm. So it's not so slow.
[00:55:49] McIntosh:
China has been making that switch for ten years. It's just nobody talks about it. But you can look at the charts. They've been selling their debt, their, bonds, and, buying gold. Number 14, Marcela three two one. Why are fees gradually being implemented on simple, low cost BTC transfers. For example, here in Argentina, we were charged a 6% fee for each Bitcoin transact a purchase. Marcela, I that's curious. That is I would assume that you're going through some centralized point that is charging you that. That's frankly, like, 3% more than even credit cards charge. It's kind of outrageous.
And I, like, I I I assume by Bitcoin transfers, I I'm not sure the translation's perfect here. If you mean just sending money from one person to another, if you're on lightning, there's essentially no fees. So there are certainly solutions out there that don't require a middleman. If you mean buying Bitcoin, which is certainly a possibility, they're always gonna charge a fee. That does seem high. It sounds like you don't have enough competition down there for your exchanges. I I would actually like to know more about this. Marcela, if you could boost in maybe, if you listen to this, if you could boost in and let us know or post to the Nasr
[00:57:41] Kenshin:
and let us know that way. Reply on Nasr. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to know too. That that sounds, as you said, an exchange fee, which is that specific website or wallet you use. But you definitely don't have to pay 6%.
[00:57:59] McIntosh:
If you're just sending Bitcoin, either main net or lightning, that that fee doesn't make any sense. I'd they have to be talking about an exchange, and that does seem high. If you have a VPN, well, they're all KYC anymore. You just need more competition down there. And I don't know what's available to you in Argentina, unfortunately.
[00:58:29] Kenshin:
Okay. 15, we have Magnetor. I really want to understand how central banks plan to continue with fractional reserve banking if their system is based on a single entities in issuance in a CBDC system. I don't know. I mean, they always will find ways to, yeah, to take advantage of of the system and over leverage themselves. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know how how it will work with the c b I don't think a CBDC helps
[00:59:11] McIntosh:
the fractional reserve banking system in any way. I don't think it helps or hinders it, to be honest with you. Because in any fractional reserve system, the dollars on that balance, they're just digits. I mean, literally, they just can just Yeah. Change it. Having the central bank Yeah. It might make it easier. It actually might. Yes. Absolutely. It could make it, easier. Sorry. I I don't think that that really kinda changes that old system at all. I mean, you're just replacing one form of Fiat with another. So number 16, Henna Komoda.
I think we should do our next, boost call in thing, whatever whatever we call this. Like, explain your name. I I just wanna know what all these people where their names come from. I I have no guess. I don't I don't know. Anyways, Hanukkomoto, could what happened in Switzerland happened in Europe, or is it isolated? So as we discussed last week, week before, Switzerland is not part of the EU. So, you know, they can certainly pass their own laws. If a law gets passed through the EU, it does cover the majority of Europe. So this certainly could happen in the rest of Europe. And in fact, there is a separate law that they are arguing about in the EU right now that is very similar, at least as similar aspects to the one that we're talking about in Switzerland.
So
[01:00:58] Kenshin:
Yeah. And and I would say Switzerland will become more like Europe already is already. So Europe already most of countries in Europe don't have very good privacy laws anymore. And as you said, they are trying to pass even worst privacy laws with taking away Right. End to end encryption and stuff like that. So could that happen? It has already happened. Yes. Europe is is already
[01:01:32] McIntosh:
long gone. Yeah. It worries me a lot, actually. What's going on in there?
[01:01:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. I I mean, as an example, there is plenty of stories that the French police, for example, goes to Proton and ask for, logs, email logs, VPN logs, stuff like that. Right? So because they they have that right in France, they can do that if a company is based in France. But Proton is they they are not forced to do that because they're based in Switzerland. So in that sense yeah. The in Europe, they're already used to, yeah, circumvent those, Yeah. The privacy laws. Hey.
[01:02:22] McIntosh:
I wanna give a shout out right now though to the French farmers because those dudes, they are cool. They take loads of manure and throw it all over to people who are in there, like, protesting or whatever Uh-huh. Which is just awesome. I don't suppose you've seen that. Uh-huh. Oh, man. Anyways, they have these machines that they use it to spread manure on the field to to for, like, fertilization. And it basically, you load up this dump trailer with, like, a load of manure, and then it's like flinging it out on the sides. Like, probably a 100 feet or more. You know? It it goes a ways, and they just kinda drive along in their big tractors, and this stuff's flying out. And it's, like, getting anyways,
[01:03:12] Kenshin:
don't mess with the farmers, man. The funny thing is, I I thought you said Monero in the beginning.
[01:03:17] McIntosh:
So No. I don't ever talk about that junk. Alright.
[01:03:22] Kenshin:
Okay. Second to last, What are Bitcoin's good practices? Okay. That's a vague question, but the basic one is There's a there's a lot of good practices. So I don't know. Okay. But two two main things. Your keys, your coins. So take your your Bitcoin out of exchanges, have your own keys for your own Bitcoin, and never reuse a Bitcoin address. Yes. Oh, and and HODL. And yeah. HODL. Yes. This year. Don't sell your Bitcoin ever. No. I'm not gonna say that. No. But this year and yeah. Try to keep it. So three.
[01:04:08] McIntosh:
Great. A bit more. You're gonna get a bit more. That one at least makes sense. You also talk Noster. Yes. We do. Could Noster ever come under EU regulation like social media platforms, or is it unstoppable by design? If Nostra doesn't grow, it will never come under EU regulation because they won't know about it. I'm just gonna say that. I said the quiet part out loud. Having said that, I will say by design, Nostra is fairly difficult to regulate. Yeah. For good or for bad, it is decentralized. Run your own relay, you know, I don't know. It would definitely be more difficult. Look.
Any country, n t governmental entity can, you know, construct a a firewall like what we see in China. And it does work to an extent. I have personal experience with that one. And, but it's not perfect either. So it's a battle that the governments, if they choose to fight this stuff, that they, wage. And I don't know. I do think it'd be far more difficult to stop Nostra than, say, Facebook or Twitter, though. Mhmm. Alright. That was a great group of questions. I really think people are gonna have to start explaining what their names are, though. I mean, seriously. Yeah. I feel like half of them we probably butcher. You know what I'm curious about? I hope people are listening to this. Like, a quarter of these were either in Spanish or, like, the person from Argentina.
Is there a reason for that? Is this I mean, is Noster that much Spanish? I I are these reg are you first of all, are you regular listeners to the show, or did you just do this to make the sats, which is fine? But, I mean, I'm trying to learn Spanish, but let's be honest. I'm a long way off of being able to talk in Spanish here. Just saying. Yes. I am curious. I'm serious, though. I'm I'm very curious about all the Spanish activity. I don't know. Any thoughts on that?
[01:06:38] Kenshin:
I I think it's, it's a combination. Yeah. Zapathon, of course. Yeah. I I don't know. Nope. I I've seen those those accounts
[01:06:49] McIntosh:
before. So Mhmm. I'm not surprised. So so they are on us. Well, there was a couple of our regular listeners I know in here, Buttercup Roberts and Huddle Huddle Harry and the bullish Bitcoiner. Harry. Appreciate that, of course, always. We did have some support this week. God's death sent us 237 sats and said simply, thank you, gentlemen. So you're welcome. Thank you. Do you like the show? No question for the week. Programming note. Let me insert this in here. We should have done this earlier. I we've mentioned this before. I have. I will be on vacation next week. I guess a programming question right here on the air.
Are you going to record by yourself or are we not recording?
[01:07:43] Kenshin:
No. We can't take it all. So we will not be,
[01:07:46] McIntosh:
there will not be an episode next week, which I'm I'm sorry, but, I would not be married if I took along my recording equipment and set up in the middle of our vacation. I will tell you this. We're going up to Maine Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We're flying into Boston, which is a big city in Massachusetts. And so this is, the what's called New England area of The United States up in the Northeast. It should be beautiful. We should see some fall colors even if it's not, like, at its height, but and lots of good seafood, which I love, and I'm sure we're gonna have a good time. I'll maybe post some piss pictures on Noster when I get back for those who are curious, that will not include me nor my wife. Sorry. But lots of good scenery.
Right. Okay. News and oates.
[01:08:51] Kenshin:
Right. I have one news. Strike is offering Bitcoin back loans in Europe. They rolled it out this week.
[01:08:59] McIntosh:
That was something that Jack was talking about on his podcast, of course. Like, he I will give him credit. He used to, like, shill his stuff continually during the show, and he's very cleanly got it delineated. He's like, okay. Here's my macro assessment, and then he talks about strike and, whatever his capital group is. I can't remember their name. Twenty one? Twenty one. Of course. How was that still available? I don't understand. Anyways, so that was the big thing this week. They are offering Bitcoin back loans in Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, please be careful doing something like that. I love the Stripe platform. We talk about it a lot. I'm not a big fan of taking a loan on your Bitcoin because if Bitcoin drops, you could be margin called on that. That is how it works. Read the fine print, understand what you're getting into.
He believes, and he's probably right, there are tax benefits to doing it, basically loaning against your Bitcoin stack if you have enough of a stack. You know, if I had a million dollars in Bitcoin and I wanted to take a loan of a $100,000 against it rather than, like, make that money through salary, I mean, there is a difference in terms of taxes. I get that. But, man, it's just getting wild.
[01:10:26] Kenshin:
Yeah. Or it's rather than selling the Bitcoin itself.
[01:10:30] McIntosh:
Right. And I that is the one case. But, man, you gotta be careful. Be careful. Yeah. That was that I will say that that was a good scenario. Like, maybe you're struggling. You've got a bit of Bitcoin built up, and I don't know, your transmission blows out in your car, which is maybe $5,000 or whatever, and you don't have the money in the bank. You could technically you could take a loan against your Bitcoin and then pay it back over, you know, the next six months or whatever. Just be careful doing that kind of stuff.
[01:11:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. I I must say I'm excited about this. Not for personal reason. Right. Not yet. I will I will not use it now. And it's the interest rate is really high still. It's 13%. Right. But I'm excited that we are at this phase of starting up to see this journey. Yep. And when it's time, it will be
[01:11:30] McIntosh:
good terms and A 100%. System around it, good interest rates. So it might make sense one point. Alright. Moving on software updates. I wanted to take this on because I have actually already installed this. Sparrow, my favorite wallet. I'm not gonna speak for you, but it is my favorite wallet. New version two point three dot o. I tested it out last night when I sent off, some Bitcoin to my host, my mining host. Supports, the big features are support sending to silent payment addresses, which solves the very issue that you, sir, were talking about earlier. Don't ever use the same address. You present an address that stays the same, but it does work on the back end essentially that automatically rotates your address as you receive your Bitcoin. Is that a fair summary, Kenshin? Yeah. K. And then it says support sending to and displaying BIP three fifty three human readable names and include DNSSEC proof and associated, PSBTs.
PS BTs would be partially signed Bitcoin transactions. I'm not a 100% clear on this, and I haven't had time to look it up yet. But I believe what it means is you can actually send to, like, a something that looks like an email address or something like that instead of a Bitcoin address, which is a long hexadecimal string. If it's hexadecimal. Right? I'm not Yeah. No. It's not I'm not sure about that. The Yeah. Yeah. The BC one, etcetera. Okay. Well, it's a unreadable address. Let me put it that way. How about that? If you're gonna boost in and complain about that, please make it a big boost. Alright. You wanna go ahead and do the price?
[01:13:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. So today, as we record October 8, we have a price of a 123,680 USD and a €106,300. So we're
[01:13:42] McIntosh:
all time high. We did hit an all time high. We're not right now, but we did a 126,000 roughly. So nice number, a little above $1.25. And then last October 8, our price was $62,131. So we are up a nice 99.07%. So close to a 100. Maybe next week. Market cap.
[01:14:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. We have a market cap of 2,500,000,000,000.0, quite high, and, gold market cap on the other side of 28,200,000,000,000.0. So gold is keep going up. And the gap between Bitcoin and gold is at 8.8%. Bitcoin versus gold market cap. So still below 10.
[01:14:39] McIntosh:
Alright. Yep. Still below 10. What gold's I mean, gold's I think we need to start putting the gold price into. I don't wanna, like, make this difficult, but look, I track I can I can put it on brand? Bit Farm is up to $4 all of a sudden. It's up 15% today. Sorry. We'll leave that in for posterity. Bit Farm, I've told you all this is the one stock that I own at this point. They're a mining company, and all of a sudden they're up to $4.
[01:15:13] Kenshin:
But gold is for that's where I was going. 4,060
[01:15:21] McIntosh:
Thank you very much. I wished I owned a stack, and then I could think about selling it and buying Bitcoin. But at least it would be in an asset that does not depreciate. Thank you very much. Alright. Wow. I'm still Thank you very much. Alright. Wow. I'm still trying to get over the Bitfarms stock. What? That is nuts. Something must have happened. Yeah. It jumped, like, 30¢ in the last couple of hours. I'm serious.
[01:15:46] Kenshin:
Is that related to gold or
[01:15:49] McIntosh:
what's that? It is a Bitcoin mining company. Oh, okay. Yep. They're up in, Canada, but they have operations here in The United States, down in South America as well. Excuse me. Goodness. Alright. Let's move on. Nobody wants to hear about Bitfarm except me. Fees and MIMPL. One SAP per vByte, 230 megabytes of unprocessed transactions and only 65,000 unprocessed transactions. So we are down a little bit this week. We were above 300 last week. Uh-huh. Don't know what that's about. Hey, people. Send some money. I did my part last night. I don't know.
I got nothing. Are we ready to wrap this up? Well, yeah. One hour. I gotta go save the world. Yeah. Yeah. We do need to stop. Alright. Thanks for hanging in there with us, guys. I love to I know you don't like them as much, but I we almost didn't do it this time. I'll be honest. That's just a little background note there. I love doing these, though. These are my favorite episodes. Seriously. I love hearing from you. I do. Yeah. Alright. Satoshi's Plebs, that's us, is a value for value podcast, supporting podcasting two point o. No ads, no sponsorships, just honest Bitcoin content. I deliberately avoid sponsors because even if I love a company, taking their their money would influence my opinion.
What if something goes wrong with that company? I would hesitate to warn you. Instead, I simply ask, are you getting value from our show? Support it through time, talent, or treasure. Help with future projects, stream sets, boost with messages saying, you know, great show or that's terrible or I can't believe you mispronounced my name, Macintosh. Good lord. Where are you from? Whatever. We'll read it on the show. And if you boost, if you boost what do they call it? If you zap a note or whatever on Doster and we see it, which that's difficult sometimes, we'll do it too.
If you like the, content, I would love it. If you would tell your friends about the podcast, that is the best way for us to grow. I have not had time to find new music. I apologize. This week's music is still Freedom Code Revolution by our one of our listeners, Send It Mike. Thanks a lot, Mike, for letting us borrow this for a couple weeks. I promise this will be the last week.
[01:18:23] Kenshin:
It really is a great song. I hope you're enjoying it. So thank you for being here. We hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you on Nostr. Find all our contact info at satoshis dot clebs dot com. Stay humble. Do see those search, and have a great weekend.
[01:18:40] McIntosh:
We'll talk to you all soon. Bye bye.
[01:19:36] Unknown:
Behind the screen, we forge the key. Unlock the chains and set minds free. The printer's role will fade to dust. In coding truth, we place our trust. No more kings, no paper lies. We'll bend the phones beneath the sky. The chains and set minds free. The printer's roar will fade to dust. In code and truth we place our trust. No more kings, no paper lies. More by the thrones Zero's, one's, our battle cry. Decentralized will never die. The castles crumble as we rise. The future's ours, we claim the prize. No more kings, no paper lies.
Welcome, live-setup woes, block height, and banter
Listener Q&A intro and plans to discuss Nostr’s evolution
Q1: Moving countries as European Bitcoiners—Switzerland, EU, and tradeoffs
Q2: What are you bullish on? Bitcoin privacy BIPs and Nostr streaming
Q3: MiCA—adoption boost or KYC trap? Impacts on EU companies
Q4: Is Nostr plateauing? Relay fragmentation, incentives, and growth
Q5: Must Bitcoin be used daily to succeed, or only store of value?
Q6: End-of-life planning—keys, multisig, custody, and wills
Q7: Is Europe behind the US in Bitcoin adoption? Switzerland’s role
Q8: Why Satoshi remains anonymous—protocol health and personal safety
Q9: Could a digital euro surpass Bitcoin? Skepticism and timelines
Q10: Price in 2027—cycle expectations and bear-market targets
Q11: Who adopts Bitcoin next? Regions to watch in 10 years
Q12: Could Bitcoin replace the dollar as global store of value?
Q13: Why 6% fees in Argentina? Exchanges vs on-chain vs Lightning
Q14: CBDCs and fractional-reserve banking—what really changes?
Q15: Could Swiss-style privacy outcomes spread across Europe?
Q16: Good Bitcoin practices—self-custody, no address reuse, HODL wisely
Q17: Could Nostr face EU-style regulation, or is it unstoppable?
Boosts, Spanish-speaking community, and listener shout-outs
Programming note: No episode next week; New England trip
News: Strike’s Bitcoin-backed loans in Europe—benefits and risks
Software: Sparrow 2.3.0—silent payments and BIP-353 names
Market watch: ATHs, market cap vs gold, miners, and mempool
Wrap-up: Value-for-value reminder and closing
