We're Doing a Space, You Should Join! Ep. 267

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Thank you.

(00:30):
Well, good morning, everybody.
Welcome back.
Welcome in.
We'll get some people some time to join the space,
but I want to always thank everybody for coming in and hanging out with us.

(00:51):
Hopefully you enjoy every bit of this as much as I do
and are excited to hop into it today.
But, yeah, we're back, and you're listening to Bitcoin Veteran Spaces number 267.
And I'm getting pubby up here, so that should be fun.

(01:12):
My name is Bob Van Kirk, fully doxxed.
I'll be your host this morning.
I'm joined by our co-host, Texas Toast.
We won't call him Tardy Toast this morning.
He was right on point.
Thank you, producer Eric, for always playing that opening music now.
That takes a lot of pressure off me running 16 devices, eight screens, and getting stuff going here.

(01:38):
But let's look at the time chain calendar stats for today.
It is Thursday, September 18, 2025, and we are at Bitcoin block height, number 915,258,
and just six blocks away from our next difficulty adjustment.

(01:59):
which timechaincalendar.com and the associated apps make it very easy to see.
Thank you, TC, for that.
The Bitcoin price is hovering right around $117,500,
which means you can still pick up 851 sats for each U.S. dollar.
And we do have a couple of announcements.

(02:23):
If you guys would like to come up on stage, ooh, we got a request.
That's great.
just as I said it.
You can hit that little microphone button in the bottom left.
If you have stage fright but still want to participate,
you can give us the emoticons by hitting that little heart in the bottom middle of your screen
and then giving us thumbs up, a heart, fist bump, clapping, all those things.

(02:49):
And lastly, it's like a tutorial for X Spaces this morning.
Sorry, guys.
But in that bottom right, you might see a purple pill.
If you'd like to leave a question, comment, snide remark, we'll try to incorporate those into the space this morning.
And also, as we've been talking about this every single day, it's getting closer and closer to conference day.

(03:17):
The Bitcoin Veterans Second Annual Summit is coming up November 10th and 11th in beautiful Nashville, Tennessee.
Would love to see you there.
lots of great stuff going on
and also if you check out the nest
we do have all the information
sponsorship opportunities
are available
if you'd like to apply to be a speaker

(03:37):
I think they're still taking applications
sorry I don't get to choose
who gets to do that
but they have a committee
and I'm sure they'll take
your request seriously
but you do need to visit
bitcoinveterans.org
forward slash summit 2025
and get your tickets today.

(03:57):
They are flying off the shelf like hotcakes.
So it should be a good one, guys.
And with that, did want to go around the horn, say good morning to those of us who,
those of you who have joined us.
And first we'll go to my co-host, Texas Toast.
How's it going, sir?

(04:18):
Morning, Bob.
Just got a haircut.
So happy haircut to me.
and it's going to be a good day.
Nice.
I think we have Eric on the BV handle.
Do you want to say a little good morning to those folks out there
so they can try to assess whether you're a bot or not, Eric?

(04:41):
Good morning, Bob.
Life is good.
Excellent.
Thank you, sir.
Neil, thanks for coming up.
How's it going?
That's really good, really good.
Stuck in traffic. It's great.
There you go.
Pubby, good morning. How's it going?
Good morning.
I'm just thinking of all the countless hours, the thousands of hours, the podcast, the research, the books, the arguments, nuts, core, ordinals, inscriptions.

(05:12):
All that is to be here today when Bitcoin's within 5% of its all-time high.
So quit your whining, your bitching, and hodl on, my friend.
Yeah, if you're here for number go up, sounds like you're going to get it.
We'll get into that, I think, with Mr. Powell and his comments, which I think is completely ridiculous.

(05:33):
We touched on that yesterday.
If you didn't join us, go back and listen to that one.
Had some interesting conversation around how messed up our system is.
Petro, thanks for joining.
How's it going today?
Good morning, everybody.
Doing great.
Had a great meetup last night.
Really enjoyed everybody that came out.
And yeah, I'm just enjoying Bitcoin, taking a slow, steady rise, really enjoying the fact that, you know, we are we're reacting normally.

(06:08):
We're not like the market doesn't seem spooked by this news.
It doesn't seem freaked out.
It's just another day in life.
And we turn up and to the right.
So things are good.
It's outstanding. Yeah, I don't know how much I'd look at the price considering, you know, I have to read that every day to you guys.

(06:31):
But anyway, BFP, how's it going?
Good morning, Bob. Yeah, price is an illusion.
And that was my point yesterday.
But every day later in the day, I have to take my daughter to school.
So I have to cut the things short.

(06:54):
But yeah, we built a bridge from gold to fiat back in 1913.
And then all the way up through 1971.
Then we burned the bridge down.
so we had just fiat or the dollar
and now we are building the bridge back

(07:16):
with the tools like time chain calendar
bitcoin and all the other
tools we can find
but that was my short succinct thought
from Neil's to mine
and then we got off topic
Yeah, thanks for circling back around on that.

(07:39):
Keep some continuity in the space.
People probably just left wondering the last 24 hours, what were you going to say?
Wade, good morning.
How's it going?
Good morning, guys.
Actually, I had a question for BitPetro, just energy-related question with the Bitcoin tie-in.
This weekend, there was some stuff going around about energy bottlenecks and whatnot,

(08:00):
And just have some questions about what he sees from commercial nuclear need and the issues with real estate bottlenecks and energy bottlenecks and supply chain bottlenecks when it comes to powering all of this AI and Bitcoin energy needs that we're going to have going forward.

(08:20):
yeah uh look i posted i think it was yesterday um a fun fact about where we are in the state of
having access to the energy that we need and the reality is that we have technologically the
ability to deploy as much uh highly enriched uranium as we need to basically drive prices

(08:46):
of electricity to zero. But we won't do that simply because we don't have the political will
to deploy weapons grade uranium and plutonium, which is what you'd effectively need.
So what do you get if you make this trade off? Well, you would have 100% safety record

(09:13):
under extreme condition generation capacity in every city in the United States
with a service life of about 30 to 40 years.
So, you know, this is something with 400 kilos of enriched plutonium,
probably like that power plant is probably the size of two school buses.

(09:40):
That's it.
like you'd expand it a little bit because you wouldn't need all the ultra high density stuff
that you need inside of a working submarine but two school buses is a really really small footprint
for something that's going to be putting out you know power for 30 plus years um and so in that

(10:01):
sense i would say the political will needs to be there for us to release those electrons
And furthermore, we seem to be stuck in this almost NASA-esque type of requirement in order for us to move forward in the development of new generations of nuclear technology.

(10:29):
What do I mean by that?
When the Apollo space program started happening, we changed the way that government contracting worked.
And because we changed the way that government contracting worked, you basically had this ability for companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and stuff to basically underbid.
And then after the fact of the underbidding to the Department of Defense, they would come and reconciliate whatever they underbid for.

(10:57):
So what that turned out to do was create a bunch of development waste on the on the process of getting technology from one step to the next, which is why we haven't really been very successful at reaching the moon again.
And so this opens up, well, what happens if you just undo that? Well, you get SpaceX, right? You get the ability of somebody to quickly iterate and not worry about all of the bolts that have to be bought from this specific contractor because a specific contract with them had been issued 15 years ago and we have to make good on that one.

(11:35):
None of that matters, right? Like it just matters that we get technological advancement when you're giving that, let's say, red tape a big giant haircut.
So if we can take that approach, we would probably be very close to where South Korea is right now.

(11:56):
I believe they last week announced the release of the first liquid salt reactor on an LNG carrier.
So why is that important?
LNG carriers burn a lot of fuel.

(12:18):
And not only do they burn a lot of fuel,
But the fueling routes that they take actually boil off the product that they're carrying, because if they don't boil it off and let it out into the atmosphere, either through a flare or just straight bend, that ship turns into a giant bomb.
And so we have been trying to figure out how to fuel these ships more efficiently so that they can go faster, so that we have less fuel loss when we go from point A to point B.

(12:46):
And so South Korea has got now this technology that, in theory, could be applied anywhere in the world, right? Like, if you can put it on a ship, you can put it on a city, no doubt. And so I would hope that this administration is going to take, you know, some note of that, and maybe order some of those for us to study.

(13:08):
And maybe that way we start breaking the ice on the technology a little bit because I don't see us doing it any other way.
There's just, again, not the political will to step away from the Westinghouse, you know, light water reactor model.
And that's that's a Gen 3, Gen 4 model where this ship that I'm talking about is like a Gen 6.

(13:30):
So, you know, we have a long way to catch up from how much we need on the grid.
We're at capacity now.
Each of these data centers that are coming up are anywhere between 100 and 500 megawatts.
You put two of those together, that's a gigawatt.
That's a problem.
Not only because of the energy that you need, but because of the cooling, the amount of water that you need.

(13:53):
So it's going to be interesting.
I can definitely see a push to start putting these in power islands.
And a power island would be somewhere where it's just not connected to the grid.
It's just, you know, they'll park these.
And we're starting to see some announcements in West Texas of really like, you know, two gigawatt facilities because that's the only place you can build them.

(14:19):
So I would imagine that we're going to see Bitcoin start to take a role in the in the controllable load for that.
But I'm not hearing anything as of yet.
Can I ask you just two quick follow up questions on that?
The first one is, why is the administration, why is the Department of Energy claiming that they've they've turned on six megawatts of power when there's no evidence they've turned on six megawatts of power across the grid?

(14:48):
And second off, are the SMRs being downplayed because we don't have the fuel stock or fuel stock refining capacity to do it?
It's all in Asia.
No, I think the SMRs are being downplayed because they just don't scale properly.
They don't have, I mean, it's nice to have in a emergency situation.

(15:10):
But when you scale that up to a city, it doesn't work.
It too expensive So I mean until that changes and again that can change It a matter of do you invest in that and do you create a South Korea style production line for it

(15:33):
instead of the bespoke one-off things that we're doing? And even the SMRs, if you really go in to
study them. The part that carries the nuclear component is still small. All the other stuff to
safeguard that location is still not small. So, I mean, the problem is that nuclear is still a

(15:54):
boogeyman and we need to get over that. Wade, did you have one more? Otherwise,
we have BFP with a hand. Move it along, guys.
Yeah, first I wanted to
ask you
if you've heard of OKLO, which is

(16:16):
OCLO. It's a nuclear reactor type stock.
And the other thing is, I don't believe we landed
on the moon. I guess I don't trust government people
very much and that was before I was even born but I've seen the footage that they purport and
it doesn't look real credible I think it's a boondoggle for taxpayers money to go into government

(16:41):
but that's just me so I don't I don't know if I'm uh I don't really get too much into debating
whether we landed on the moon because nobody has real good evidence to show and we haven't been back
since 1960s.
And we have a lot of technology since then.

(17:03):
So I don't know if it's possible to go to the moon.
Petro?
I know.
Yeah, Bitcoin spaces are always fun.
You know, I will say I have my doubts.
And it's a fun topic.

(17:23):
but let's keep it on the, I would say, more energy focus just because it's, well, we do have BitPatro here.
And I want to see if anybody else had any other questions.
BFP, we should have a whole other space for that.
I think it'd be fun.

(17:43):
Yeah, we're going to fit the flat earth in the ice wall.
Yeah, the ice wall.
Love it.
But, yeah, the Earth is flat, if you didn't know.
Just kidding.
So, yeah, BitPatro, what else is on your mind with AI?
And maybe this is a good opportunity, if we have you for a little while, to talk about your project.

(18:07):
Any updates you can give us on that?
I know a lot of the energy that is, you know, infrastructure that needs to be built out is for not only growing populations, but AI.
And, you know, us as Bitcoiners do want to have energy that can be used for mining.
So, yeah, just curious.

(18:30):
Yeah, I'd say, look, we are in a rush to deploy as many electrons in the United States as we can and globally.
um that's just that was going to happen before uh ai because people like air conditioning
right so and cities are growing that's another thing like cities are growing really fast

(18:55):
so that all takes more power um the grid is being loaded with more electric cars that takes more
power. You know, all these things drive to more power. And so on the AI front, I think
it's just going to accelerate because it seems like an arms race. And even if you break it up,

(19:18):
you can see. Okay. Might be my connection. Might be my connection. No, you're good.
Wade, it's your problem. Go ahead. Okay. So if we look at it from the perspective of,
it's going to take a certain amount of investment to get these systems up and going,
then hopefully what we see is that the AI companies start to shift into being power producers.

(19:42):
That's not happened yet. When that does happen, I think what we'll see is they'll start building
their own power plants for their facilities. And at that point, I can see some of them starting to
break off into nuclear simply as a hedge because diesel is expensive. And yeah, I said diesel

(20:04):
because the thing that nuclear is going to be used for is the backup batteries. It's not going to be
used for the primary source on the SMR side. A lot of that has to do with the fact that you need
a retarded amount of diesel engines to back up whatever it is that you're running. And so if
your building is 300 megawatts of juice that it's sucking, you need 300 megawatts of diesel engines

(20:30):
as just backups. And that's about as dumb as I can ever think of the use of capital because
those things basically have to be turned on and off every week so that they don't break.
And none of that power is going to be used. So I think that type of redundancy can be fixed

(20:50):
like a lot by these players if they intelligently designed their systems.
But the way it's being built right now,
it's just the way that we've always built data centers.
We just backed them up with diesel.
So that's concerning more so than anything else,
because guys, we just don't have the finished products.
We just don't have the diesel.

(21:12):
Even if we wanted to, like diesel is one of those things that like,
we got to be really careful about using up our stock because it takes time to
make it. And so we're in interesting times. Look, the oil industry is shrinking. There's been a lot
of reports on how we're losing talent left and right. And at the same time, you are seeing this

(21:38):
giant looming demand for energy. So I think we're in for some interesting times in the world of
energy. And I think Bitcoin will have a role to play in that, in that it will be the one that goes
out and seeks those sources of power first, especially lays them down a la cipher and
iron and stuff.

(21:59):
And then they eventually, you know, pivot into being AI companies.
But all of this is really scary for me because of the work that I'm doing with the AI stuff.
And I see more and more and more people are using this thing like a freaking therapist.
And it's anything but that.
it can help, but I think it can help in a sovereign setup. I don't think it helps you per se

(22:25):
using the latest and greatest models from ChatGPT and Claude and everybody else,
if this thing's going to school on your brain. And if they don't have the operational security
that you want, well, guess what? Anybody's going to have access to your psyche, not your files,
not your social security number the way your brain works that's freaking scary guys really

(22:51):
really scary so from a social engineering standpoint i would like to see people take a
little bit more self-sovereignty in their ai stacks and learn how to run these things locally
because you can't uh and to that end you know we're uh i've joined up with two um researchers

(23:11):
One's actually a clinician and the other one is a straight researcher.
The clinician practices TMS or transmagnetic stimulation.
So it's already an edgy kind of therapy for helping people.
It's basically where you zap people in the brain.
And so, you know, that's definitely on the edge of treatment.

(23:34):
And so that guy is working with a psychology ethicist.
And so with those two, with the help of those two guys, we are going to be designing a system we call Victor.
Victor is an AI that is a conductor of agents, and it will call agents based on your conversation with it that are specifically trained to deal with whatever it is that you're dealing with.

(24:04):
So if you have, you know, PTSD, it's going to call a therapist and it might call a behavioral therapist or might call, you know, maybe even a life coach or a breathing instructor or things like that that are going to be able to guide you through exercises that will give you some help.

(24:27):
And so some of you guys have played with this system a little bit.
I've demoed it.
But now where we are is, first of all, actually building out a stack that will live on a either Mac Mini or a Mac Studio, because that's the optimal system for deploying this.

(24:49):
And then that system will have two LLMs.
One LLM will be the gatekeeper and the other one will be the actual therapist.
and the gay pea keeper we need, you know, there are things that we have to control for that,
that we don't want the LLM that's giving care to do. And some of those things are like suicide
prevention. Like when somebody starts saying a certain level of words or questions that are

(25:14):
brought up on the DSM-5. DSM-5 is the diagnostic manual for psychology. And if we're going through
the line of questioning that, you know, identify somebody as having potential suicidal thoughts,
there's a point where we have to, from a treatment perspective, take a step back and say,

(25:34):
you need a person. This no longer can be an interaction between you and a machine
because you need a human. And so we're trying to build in those safeguards that give the human
the ability to seek the care that they need and not just rely on the machine. And so the ethics

(25:55):
behind that are pretty difficult, to be honest. I mean, you have to understand where to draw a line.
You have to understand when is it and how that you're going to pass off to another human.
And so it's really cool to have partnered with these guys because we're going to be able to take

(26:15):
a lot of the material that has been published on therapy and these types of approaches and actually
feed the AI that information, train the LOM on that data so that it's not just grabbing the 70
billion parameters that are currently available. It's actually grabbing 70 billion plus all of the

(26:37):
written knowledge about the topic. And that, we believe, is going to give it a level of care
that that'll probably surpass what a regular therapist could do because you're getting both
depth and breadth in one therapy session. Apart from that, I think some of you guys have had,

(26:59):
and I think the reason this is such an alarming topic is because people really can understand and
see that it's easier to talk to a bot than a human. You know, the thing is not the thing
happens much faster there. You just get to the root cause of the thing because you don't have
trust to worry about. Nobody's going to violate that. They're going to turn around and say

(27:21):
something they're not supposed to, especially if this is in a standalone system that is air
gap from the internet. And that's the goal is to have something that is completely self-sovereign.
At some point, we think that that applies to businesses as well. So the model will be to sell
to a business and the business basically buys one for the business, one for the veteran,
and we'll be funding the donation of these mental health AIs to veterans that way.

(27:52):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Talk a little bit about your – and BFP, if your hand's up, you can jump in,
but maybe it's coming down.
My screen's always funky.
But tell us a little bit about you had some connection with someone in North Carolina.
Was it a institution?
Yeah, that's the answer.

(28:13):
So I'm going to be going over there to visit with them and go look at their labs and then talk to the university about having formal access to the published materials, to their library.
And then I'll be doing the same thing with TCU.
As a matter of fact, with TCU, I'm getting way further.

(28:35):
We've now submitted a formal proposal to the university that is being worked on by the students.
The 22nd, I have a follow-up meeting, and we are going to be pitching the university to do an investment into Bitcoin through the endowment,
but also an investment into Bitcoin through a lab that will be placed at the natatorium.

(28:58):
So the student rec center has two diving pools and we're going to be setting up inside of the mechanical room for the for the pools, a lab, a Bitcoin lab.
We're going to be feeding the heat from the miners into the pool to offset the cost of the boilers.
So that way we can promote the university getting not only Bitcoin for less than what they would normally pay for, because it's some costs already, but also a lab where the students can have access to Bitcoin miners directly in the university.

(29:31):
So all of those things that like that setting that up and really having that that that set up with the university there is going to help me because I'm going to be able to tap my alma mater for what I actually went to school there for, which is their their psychology library, which I know is pretty extensive as well.
So with North Carolina and TCU, I'll have a significant amount of data to input into the RAG, and then that hopefully will increase the level of care that we're going to be able to provide.

(30:06):
Yeah, that's awesome, man.
And thanks for the update.
We'll have to have you come back.
I'm always interested in the AI stuff.
I do think there's a lot of good that can come from it.
I think there's people on far ends of basically every topic,
and some people say, it's going to take all my jobs,
and people are going to fall in love with robots,

(30:29):
and we're not going to procreate, but we're already not doing that.
And then there people who say hey lots of benefits to society so we have to see BFP good Yeah I just want to say I think a great target market for you BetPetro
with that thing you're building would be the psychologists,

(30:51):
especially ones, you know, that work with the military vets,
because they could have, like, a room where, hey, you go talk to them first as you come in.
And then, you know, if you want to share some of that information, you know, you could you could just hit every psychologist in America.

(31:12):
And that's a that's a great target market for getting that product out there.
But on the on the other thing, the first question I had was that Ocklo a I mean, OK, L.O. is the ticker.
My brother-in-law is a financial advisor. He told me about this stock and it was trading in between 25 and 50.

(31:34):
And it's at like almost 100 right now. And this has been, you know, a huge move.
And they do small nuclear reactors for energy.
But I listened to the conference call last quarter and I couldn't get my head around what kind of revenue.
like everything's a secret they don't even have revenue and the stock just keeps going up

(31:58):
so i don't know how to value the company i haven't touched it as far as um
buying right now i think it's interesting everybody's chasing uranium uh because uh
well there's the story that there's a story that we don't have enough uranium but like that's a
weird story because you have to understand the the fuel cycle for uranium and you have to

(32:22):
understand that raw product does not equal like processed fuel. And so when the spot ETF for it,
I believe it's UNAM, is trading because people are getting excited about the narrative that
there is a lack of product because there's a lack of production. That doesn't necessarily

(32:48):
translate. And the thing is that spot, the spot market is not the contract market for uranium.
The contract market is a lot more opaque. That's really where the price is set. And so
these are things that, you know, there's, there's news cycles, there's hype cycles. And I think that
there is liquidity cycles that are affecting this. And so primarily what I would think is

(33:12):
going on is that these are much like the Bitcoin miners and everybody's trying to buy, you know,
Bitcoin, but they're like, well, how do I get more alpha? Can I go search for beta somewhere?
And so I think that's the beta they're searching is the down the line, you know, who's working with

(33:34):
the technology down the line that could be a winner in the future. That said, there is next
to nothing that I know from the small SMR guys that is revenue side as a business. I just don't
see that. You can definitely see it on the miners. And I would say that the miners is an interesting
play right now. But that's the same thing as the gold miners. And that's more of a, again,

(33:58):
liquidity cycle issue and a issue of people are chasing precious metals. When you get the chase
of the precious metals, then you get for the lesser metals. And after you get to the lesser
metals, you get to the productive metals. And after you get to the productive metals, you get
to the non-ferrous metals. So there's a trickle down effect into the price of gold being at all
high. I think that's what we're seeing. Hey, just a word of warning to folks who are interested in

(34:24):
the uranium space. If we see a 1990s peace dividend or arms control treaty come into effect in this
administration or the next administration, and you see some of these warheads starting to get
dismantled, the uranium market could absolutely be flooded with a ton of military grade supply,
especially if they down blend it so the guys can get wiped out if you go levered long on a uranium

(34:47):
play a hundred percent and that's why i'm talking so much about the highly enriched uranium topic
because guys it's staring us in the face like literally we could just pull ships directly off
the water and park them in the middle of a city and power the city at what point when do when do

(35:10):
we wake up to that? I really
think it's only if we get a new arms control or strategic
nuclear treaty. It's a coin flip, but
it could happen. It couldn't. Who knows?
I have a sneaky suspicion it's the oil lobby

(35:30):
that has kept that in the wraps. I don't think that that's anybody else.
Nobody else has a political clout to say, shut that shit down.
well i mean you look at what look at what our adversaries and look at what the koreans are
doing they're not all bound up by petroleum lobby like they don't care they're building reactors
and that's it and they can only build the reactors that they can build which is why they can only

(35:55):
build the low uh the low enriched products right like that's the the key is that they have gone to
the extremes in technology because of the regulatory limitations set upon them.
Guess what?
We don't, A, have the regulatory limitations because we set them.
B, guess who has the facilities that produces those generators?

(36:20):
It's us and Russia.
That's it.
That's the only people that build highly enriched power plants.
Wild stuff.
Let's reset the room.
If someone would like to come up, please do hit that microphone button.
If you do have comments or questions, throw them in the comments section down in the bottom right.

(36:45):
But, yeah, if you guys don't mind, let's move on to some of the things that are going on.
We've been kind of, I don't know, I think skirting a lot of the news lately on this space.
And so maybe it would be fun just for the last 20-plus minutes here to kick around some of these things.
And some of them are kind of fun.
I didn't get to look into this too much, but does anybody know anything about this Trump Bitcoin statue?

(37:10):
Like, is this real?
What's this all about?
Who's behind it?
Is it complete?
Is it a deep fake?
Am I hallucinating?
What's this all about?
Anybody know anything about this?

(37:30):
I thought I thought we'd have it.
Yeah.
You know, Bob, I heard it's a new god that just dropped.
And so we'll be worshiping shortly.
It's the golden calf.
And we're all doomed.

(37:52):
It's so funny.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
Well, we don't have to talk about that one.
That's all good.
But the other one I was going to talk about is actually just a little bit of a story.
People might find this interesting, but it's just yet another example.
Many of you know I have a variety of businesses, and a couple of them are more Bitcoin-focused.

(38:18):
And so we do some consulting.
And yes, let's see, what's today?
Today is Thursday.
So Tuesday, a couple days ago, had a gentleman reach out to me and tell me that he called Coinbase because he got something on his phone or his computer.

(38:39):
I can't remember which one.
And they provided him with a number saying there was something wrong with his account and he needed to call them up.
And so he unfortunately did call this number.
He was on the phone with them for close to two hours, and they had gotten him all worked up that he needed to move his Coinbase Bitcoin to an offline wallet, and they had him download a wallet.

(39:14):
And obviously, as soon as I heard this, I knew what was going on there,
providing him with a watch-only wallet where he didn't have keys.
And fortunately, so they had gone through the entire process,
stayed with him on the phone while he did his verification to do a withdrawal
because he had listened to me maybe eight years ago or, yeah, seven, eight years ago

(39:40):
and bought a small amount of Bitcoin, which is worth quite a bit more now today.
And so I was like, oh, man, did you successfully withdraw to this wallet that's sitting on your phone?
And he had said, no, I got frustrated.
I went through the process.
I got to the end, and it did say that my account was under review and that the process wasn't going to go through.

(40:09):
And so he was very exasperated and exhausted, and I told him, yeah, these guys are working on a scam.
And if you attempt to go through that process again, it will likely actually work.
And so don't do that.
And he was very thankful, but it just got me thinking, this is just another reason why you want to learn self-custody,

(40:34):
because you're not susceptible to these types of things.
if you know how to control your own keys.
And it's also another reason to work with Bitcoin-only companies,
whether that's exchanges or wallets.
And maybe somebody, I don't want to transition off this story too quick,
but maybe somebody knows a little bit about the Tangem wallet,

(40:59):
which is a Bitcoin wallet but also a shitcoin wallet,
and the problems that have come about from that.
I saw, again, a headline.
I've been very busy lately, guys, so I apologize.
I don't have deep knowledge.
I've almost been only doing headline reading and joining spaces from time to time when I can just listen in.

(41:20):
But I don't know if anybody heard anything about Tangium,
And I think it was a white hat group was able to exploit something related to Tangium.
But anyway, the whole point here is to remind everyone that you should be using Bitcoin only companies and to buy Bitcoin if you're doing that still.

(41:47):
And you should be learning how to self custody.
I wondered if anybody had any comments or thoughts on this.
By the way, I did actually have this guy.
I sent him a team viewer, and I was able to basically go in on his account

(42:07):
and lock down his Coinbase account so that he couldn't do something stupid again.
And now he has to go through a harder verification process.
He hasn't spent it in seven or eight years anyway,
So I'm not thinking he needs to take the time to learn self-custody.
But he was exhausted.
It wasn't the time to pounce.

(42:28):
And, you know, sometime in the future, maybe I'll help him get his account unlocked
and then teach him how to self-custody.
But, yeah, just wanted to go around the horn, see if anybody had any thoughts on this story,
any similar experiences.
These guys that do these fishing attempts, whether it's, you know, phone calls
or emails or text messages, they're getting much, much better.

(42:54):
And so, yeah, just curious.
I see we have AC up here.
He's always got some good things to say.
AC, not to put you on the spot, but one, is your mic working today?
And two, any thoughts on this topic?
Hey, what's going on, Bob?
I just wanted to jump up real quick when you pivoted over to the Tangium Wallet.

(43:15):
Yeah, I think that was posted by the CTO or something of Ledger. It's kind of interesting two weeks in a row that they highlight a vulnerability with someone else's product. While it's good that they are, you know, being very transparent with their discoveries.
Personally, I've also got a question why they're airing out the dirty laundry, but I do think that they released the information ahead of time to Tangem.

(43:41):
But really, it boils down to those basics like you were talking about of self-custody and Bitcoin 101.
One of the things that we always talk about is an air-gapped hardware wallet with a screen.
And I emphasize those words for a particular reason, because with Tangem, obviously, since it's a card that leverages, you know, a secure element with NFC, there is no screen and you're relying on, you know, their application or their app to verify the information before you're actually tapping and signing.

(44:13):
So one thing to be wary about, at least from my perspective, maybe I'm a little bit of a purist,
but I want a hardware device that has a screen that is air-gapped so I can verify the details of that transaction prior to signing it,
as well as prior to broadcasting it, which is one of those things you can't necessarily do with a Tangem.
I'll end it there. Thanks.

(44:33):
yeah good stuff and it is curious that these guys are seizing the opportunity to kind of beat down
some other uh competitors that are probably taking market share uh unfortunately um but yeah guys
this is again you know we just the thing is is like you're trading your limited time and energy

(44:54):
for something hopefully it's not dollars or any other of these fiat currencies um and if you're
if you're trading that time and energy for Bitcoin, uh, you know,
none of us, I think in the space want to see anybody else lose their Bitcoin.
And so, um, you know, even though it's not my funds, when I get a call like this,

(45:16):
I'm, I'm like, Oh man, how can we, how can we stop this? Can,
can we stop it? Can we prevent it?
And so hopefully this just helps you understand like Coinbase is not going to
reach out to you about your account. At least a live human isn't. Like if somebody tries to

(45:36):
get into your account, you'll probably get some automated message, but you're not going to get
a person reaching out to you. So keep that in mind. You know, phone a friend.
It kind of like that Who wants to be a millionaire It actually kind of ironic if you think about that show with what we think

(46:02):
Bitcoin is going to do,
but yeah,
take a pause.
Think about it.
Phone a friend.
Just seems like people are way too trusting.
BFP.
Did you have thoughts on this one?
You had raised your hand.
It's just kind of like the IRS calling you.
They're not going to call you unless you called them and you're waiting for them to call you back.

(46:28):
The IRS, Coinbase, they have so many people reaching to them.
They're never going to take the other side of that.
They have not enough live humans working the customer service.
I steered a friend of mine into Coinbase a long, long time ago.

(46:49):
And he only put $20 in, but I haven't, uh, I haven't, uh, talked to him about it since.
So we'll see where he's at.
I'm going to, I'm going to have to talk to him and tell him to get it out of there.
I don't like Coinbase.
Hello, my name is Jonathan.
I would like to talk to you about your hardware security today.

(47:10):
This is Coinbase.
How may I help you, sir?
He must be from South India.
I noticed a little twang.
AC. Yeah, I just wanted to foot stomp this, too. And we've talked about this in the past, but it's always worth repeating.
I posted a link in the comments as well as in the nest.

(47:31):
If you guys are curious or anyone listening is curious about the playbook that these scammers are using, you know,
June Seth laid it out pretty, pretty well in his three episodes where he basically got a similar or same phone call,
told them, hey, I know what you're doing. You're a scammer. And surprisingly, they didn't hang up.
They actually sat down and had a conversation with him and kind of laid out their, you know,

(47:54):
their TTPs or their tactics, techniques and procedures. So worth listening to, reviewing,
sharing with people who may not be as dialed into Bitcoin Twitter as a lot of us are on,
you know, the attack vectors that people are using, just situational awareness. And, you know,
It's like Coleman, who I don't see in the crowd, but maybe he's listening in or listens later.

(48:17):
Treat your stack like it's 10 times or 100 times worth what it is today in dollar terms and protect it as such.
So definitely check that out if you haven't already.
Yeah, guys. And there's a reason we repeat this crap over and over and over and over and over again, because we see it.
We see it all the time. And so it's like it can't say it enough.

(48:40):
And so for like the seasoned people, I'm sorry, but I'm not.
Because if you're helping people with this stuff,
you need to make sure you're giving people best practices.
You've thought this stuff through and did want to welcome Gareth to the stage.
Thanks for coming up.
And what say you, sir?

(49:01):
Hey, Bob.
Yeah, thanks for that.
Yeah, I think I just want to highlight what you said there.
It's that point of making sure that you know what you're doing.
because over the years, we've done a lot of research in this, and we've come across a lot of
these problems. And 99% of the time, it's somebody who tried to do a good thing to say to a neighbor,
a friend, a brother, a sister, uncle, listen, you've got to get into Bitcoin. And then the

(49:25):
first question they get is, okay, how do I get Bitcoin? And instead of them taking a pause there
and saying, look, don't worry about how you get into Bitcoin, learn how to store Bitcoin. That's
the first question that's the important question and not only just saying oh yeah get a get a
hardware wallet or get a self-custody wallet actually taking the time to to i know it's a

(49:47):
difficult one but taking the time to get people to understand the storage before they buy that has
saved a lot of people and i think this is where where the mistake is made a lot of the time where
people end up they're so anxious or so you know they're so excited to get somebody onto bitcoin
that they skip all of those steps and they just straightaway go, you know, get Coinbase.
They get a Coinbase wallet and the conversation never happens again

(50:10):
until that person comes and says, my Coinbase wallet is empty now.
Yeah, great points.
And it does, you know, I don't mean to do advertisements,
but I do like the feature that River has with the force field,
especially for people who just are not ready or are not going to take the steps to self-custody

(50:34):
or maybe are too old. Who knows? And, you know, I think I'm saying that so I can get TC to come up
and fight me about you're never too old to hold on to a secret. If you can drive a car, this is TC
talking, by the way. If you can drive a car, you can hold your own keys. I agree with that, but
sometimes it's just not worth the time and energy, the limited time and energy that I have

(50:57):
to convince some people of that. So go ahead, BFP.
I've never used Bitcoin well, but from the concept and people that recommend it,
it sounds awesome because when you buy Bitcoin, it just goes straight to your self-custodied wallet.
That's the only way to interact with Bitcoin well, which is a Canadian company,

(51:21):
but works in the U.S. and in Canada.
Yeah, good stuff.
There's, you know, trade-offs for everything.
And some people are going to use these exchanges as custodians.
I don't agree with it, but that would be an option for you, Bitcoin Wealth,

(51:45):
where, yeah, it sounds like they just basically force you into your privacy.
and giving your ZPUB, and then they will take care of that for you.
Again, there's just trade-offs, so I'm kind of saying that tongue-in-cheek.
But for those of you who don't know, if you do provide more than just the single wallet address,

(52:09):
you're providing your extended public key, they can calculate every single address in that wallet,
which means they can see all of your transactions incoming and outgoing.
And so
Buyer beware
Again not saying it's bad
Just maybe if you're privacy focused
Not for you
Alright

(52:29):
Three simple rules
Yes
Control yourself Bob
Three simple rules
Don't answer the phone
Don't click on an email
Don't click on any links
Or respond to any text messages
If people would just do this, they would stay out of 99% of the trouble.

(52:52):
I mean, I could add a fourth one and just fucking throw everything that comes in your physical mailbox in the garbage can.
Like, literally.
Like, there is no purpose in engaging with the inundation of garbage, let alone all the scams in our communication channels.
And the traditional communication channels are decades now inundated with all kinds of nasty things.

(53:17):
Everything from outright scams to straight up malware and all kinds of horrible things.
Just stop using this stuff naively.
It's that simple.
Yeah, it is good.
I think really good advice because when you really back up, like what did you just describe?

(53:38):
Like what you begin to realize is just like with our digital lives, like you're the product.
and when people are reaching out to you,
they're trying to get something out of you,
whether that's you buying something
or you giving away something in the case of Bitcoin.
Go ahead.
Just think of yourself in an old-timey film

(54:00):
from the 20th century.
Oh, look, mother, the phone is ringing.
Let's see who it is.
It's like we just don't operate like this anymore.
You're in the 21st century.
Like, there's no reason ever to pick up the phone if someone who's not in your contacts is calling you.
Like, period.
There is just no justification for it.

(54:23):
Like, you have voicemail for a reason.
Let them leave a message.
If it's important, they'll leave a message.
And you can then decide, okay, I'm going to go independently, like, see if this is real or not.
And that's the way you have to approach it.
There's so much spoofing going on.
oh your amazon account has a problem click here to resolve it oh thanks for your purchase of this

(54:45):
375 dollar video game oh wasn't you click here to fix it but i mean it just goes on and on and on
and on and on and at a certain point you just realize you know the world is full of normies
who do not use critical thinking and are literally treating all of this technology and all of these

(55:08):
communication channels just so naively. It's like basically an extension of social media
for older people. They're like, oh, let's see what's in my email inbox today. Maybe somebody
wrote me a letter. It's just, you have to like literally like grab certain people and smack them

(55:29):
around and say, wake up, stop being a child with these tools.
That'll get you out of most of the trouble.
Yeah, I really like that.
And I also do enjoy when I call someone and it says, this user does not have a voicemail
box set up.

(55:50):
And then you have to text them.
I think that those people are smart.
Unfortunately, I need voicemail because some people still leave voicemail messages.
But, yeah, I think your points are well taken.
Yeah, you should not be using these channels to communicate whatsoever almost.

(56:13):
It's kind of wild.
Well, we're coming to the end of the show here for this Thursday.
Any other final thoughts on this topic or anything else people want to chime in on here this morning?
I did find it interesting that the FHFA announced that they did come around and are now allowing Bitcoin for mortgage eligibility for reserves for mortgage applications.

(56:40):
So up until now, you had to basically sell your Bitcoin, put it in a bank account, have it sit there seasoning, as they call it.
It needs to be seasoned money on a bank statement for 60 days before it can be used as reserves for a mortgage application.
Uh, now, uh, not quite as, as good as it should be, but you have to, um, you actually have to send your Bitcoin to an exchange or to a, I shouldn't say an exchange to a authorized custodian.

(57:20):
And then they can verify that you have the Bitcoin and you can use it as reserve.
So if you don't mind KYC-ing your Bitcoin, for some people that's a no-no, for others, you know, you don't care because it's KYC-ed anyway.
You could use that now for mortgage eligibility.

(57:44):
So kind of interesting news.
Anybody have any thoughts on this before we wrap up for this Thursday?
You know, I've been waiting to use the crickets all day.
So here you go.
But I do think like, you know, if you really zoom out, the big thing is that like this, these are the things that normalize Bitcoin.

(58:08):
And there's so much, as I was talking about yesterday a little bit, there's so much good news or positive news to some people.
Like this is really benign.
They don't care.
They're not applying for a mortgage anytime.
soon. But these are just the things that like, it's this slow bleed or this slow creep, I would
say that all leads to Bitcoin taking over. And so I like news like this because it does make me,

(58:39):
I don't know, excited to see that these things are permeating every area. And, you know, some
people would say this in particular is necessary because mortgages haven't been, you know,
easy to come by lately and housing is expensive and they just need more borrowers, more volume.

(59:06):
And this is a way to bring that on board.
So you could look at it a lot of different ways.
But I think that's it.
Anybody else have any, like, final thoughts?
And, Gareth, thanks for coming up.
I think first time.
So thanks for,
for showing up.
But anybody else who's left on stage,

(59:26):
any final thoughts,
Texas toast,
you got anything this morning?
No,
have a wonderful,
have a wonderful day.
Yeah.
You all have a wonderful day.
This has been fun.
We covered a lot of ground.
I did like the,
the,
the mining and AI stuff,
the power generation.
And I do think,

(59:46):
go ahead,
Captain Trips.
oh thanks bob just saying hi and i'll see you go yeah i like that um well that's a wrap guys
we'll uh a little clunky here at the end but who cares uh we're all friends here and uh
very uh very thankful for you all i want to say thanks to everybody who joined us today

(01:00:11):
everybody who had us on in the background all the speakers thanks for chiming in and please
follow everybody who is up here. Good people. Good people to know.
Good people to hang out with. And we do these spaces every weekday, 10 a.m.
Eastern. We'll do it again tomorrow for Freedom Tech Friday. See if we can
come up with some little nuggets for you to take away and

(01:00:32):
have on your weekend. But that's all we have for today.
I want to wish everybody a happy Thursday.
Make it count, guys. We're more than halfway through the week.
So, but yeah, thank you so much.
And remember, don't shit coin.

(01:00:53):
It'll make your mom cry.
Thank you.