Read_926 - CBDC's Will Be "Free" For Users [FFR 93]

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Digital Dirham Central bank digital currency will be offered free to users and small businesses, framing the rollout as a cost saving upgrade to payments. But free at launch does not mean neutral. As a direct central bank liability, the Digital Dirham gives the state full visibility into transactions and the power to impose future fees, conditions or negative interest rates once adoption is established. The best in Bitcoin made Audible I am Guy Swan and this is Bitcoin Audible. [00:00:52] Speaker B: What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about Bitcoin and welcome than anybody else. You know, we have got a really good read today and I just want to go ahead and apologize. You are probably going to hear Nail guns and working downstairs and I've been trying to record around it but it's, it's honestly, it's too much of a pain. So it's just going to show up in the audio and forgive me for. [00:01:19] Speaker A: The low quality we are getting there. [00:01:21] Speaker B: In fact, I just paid the invoice to get insulation and sheetrock like drywall and everything up downstairs. So that's actually, that's the furthest progress we've ever had. Like that's a huge leap. And honestly just seeing that in the list of things it was, it just a. It's almost hard to believe. For as long and as painful and as obnoxious as this project has been, it's hard to believe that we may actually be there. So fingers crossed this won't be much longer and hopefully the noise in the. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Background isn't so bad. [00:01:56] Speaker B: But we are hitting another of the Financial Freedom Report from the Human Rights Foundation. They are also a supporter of the show and I highly recommend their resource. I've been keeping up with. Honestly, one of the best things about the Financial Freedom Report is, I mean obviously just the news about what's going on in all of these other countries. And I'm really, really waiting to find out what's going on in Iran because I have, I have been talking to. Okay, it's now in the family, right? My, my brother's wife is Iranian and so she has family there that have stuck. They can't get out. And it's just been wild to talk to them about their experience with capital controls. The fact that they literally can't leave the country. They, they cannot go visit their daughter and vice versa. If she goes back, she's stuck. She's done basically forever. We have not been able to get. [00:02:48] Speaker A: Her into this country even though my brother is married to her. [00:02:52] Speaker B: So My brother is now no longer living in the United States because he cannot. His family is not allowed to come in. And then to find out that Somalis are getting literally paid millions of dollars for fraud to vote and being given essentially all the tools they need to live here without any disruption. The immigration system here could not be more backwards and horrifyingly corrupt and stupid. The more I learn about it, like. [00:03:24] Speaker A: Every new piece just makes it dumber. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Just makes it worse, literally. [00:03:30] Speaker A: I have yet to find one piece of information that gives me more insight. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Into how this fucking thing works and thought, oh, yeah, that makes sense, okay, that actually improves or gives context to. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Some other stupid shit. [00:03:43] Speaker B: No, it's just worse every single time. [00:03:46] Speaker A: It literally seems designed to let the. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Worst of the worst in and to keep good, honest people, people that we would actually want in this country out to cause them the greatest amounts of delay and frustration. [00:04:01] Speaker A: And cost. The cost is unbelievable. [00:04:04] Speaker B: But if you wanted to come here. [00:04:05] Speaker A: And commit fraud, if you wanted to come here illegally and you wanted to participate and literally the ability to cheat the system, to just be a parasite on it for the entire time, you actually probably have a much better shot of being here at length and getting paid our tax dollars for the privilege, no less. But anyway, I digress. [00:04:28] Speaker B: The. So I'm waiting for the latest Financial Freedom Report because I really want to see what they have been able to get out of Iran and everything that's going on with the massive protests and the. And the Internet's been shut. For anybody who doesn't know, the Internet has been shut down for Iran for like a week. Like, we haven't been able to. All of our extended family and her nephew, which we talk. My husband's. Excuse me, my brother's wife's nephew, who I talk to all the time. We have, like, ongoing chats and stuff. Managed to get eek. A connection through for like 30 minutes one day. And he was like, oh, my God, it connected. And so, like, we got a brief update. [00:05:11] Speaker A: That's literally it. [00:05:12] Speaker B: There's no. [00:05:12] Speaker A: Their. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Their phones don't even work most of the time. Like, they just shut down. Like, all communication is just not allowed. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Like, imagine the fallout. [00:05:23] Speaker B: Imagine the damage. The, the people who. [00:05:26] Speaker A: You can. You can even call medical emergency services. Like, the, the utter insanity. [00:05:33] Speaker B: It just. [00:05:34] Speaker A: Just unbelievably wild. [00:05:36] Speaker B: And I really hope that HRF has done such a fantastic job of pulling information out of events and things like this. I'm eager. They haven't released one yet since this has happened, so I'm I'm staying tuned and if you are interested, I highly recommend subscribing. I'll have a link down in the show notes and just a note. Thank you guys for supporting the show. The new website is finally up at bitcoinautible. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Com. [00:06:05] Speaker B: There's still a number of things missing that I want to have on the website. They're just kind of like, you know, rough around the edges for the implementation. So I've just got like the main pages and stuff. Oh so, so much happier with it. And I'm going to have a page right now we've got a page with just kind of a sponsor affiliate links, but we are working on a resources page to just pull together literally all the stuff that I use, all the stuff, the people and companies and stuff that I trust and or purchase from or use regularly that make my life on a bitcoin standard very, very easy. And that will be a huge help. They will have affiliate links. Everyone that I have an affiliate link with I will place in that same on that same page. So if you are looking for one, I hope for this to be like kind of the highest quality resources I can offer. And also they will be, like I said, if I have them, they will be affiliate links which will also be a huge help for the show. And thank you for everyone who does. Thank you for everyone who, who posts, who shares it out and who zaps on Nostr and stream, sats on fountain leaves, a review on Apple or their podcast app. You don't know how far, how much those things actually help. So thank you so much for those who do. And a shout out to the audionauts who basically have done all of the above. So thank you guys so much. But with that, let's get into today's. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Read and it's titled Financial Freedom Report 103 from the Human Rights Foundation. Happy holidays readers. We begin this week with a stark case of transnational financial repression. Russian dissident and financial director of Alexei Melviny's anti Corruption foundation, Anna Chekovic reports that her US bank accounts were temporarily shut down after the Kremlin labeled her an extremist. This shows how authoritarian regimes can use political charges to target dissidents beyond their borders with financial repression. In freedom Tech news, Evento launched a new open source self custodial Bitcoin and Lightning Wallet and built directly into its events platform. This new tool will make it easy for human rights defenders and pro democracy organizers to exercise freedom of assembly with permissionless money. We also feature a new essay examining. [00:08:35] Speaker B: Why bitcoin adoption in countries like Afghanistan. [00:08:38] Speaker A: Iraq and Lebanon reflects state monetary failure rather than speculation. It explains why people turn to permissionless money when governments erode human rights, leaving many with no safe way to store value, receive, pay or move money. Let's move into the full update Global News Russia Chase closes bank accounts of Russian dissident Anna Chekovic, a Russian dissident living in exile and the financial director of Alexei Navalny's Anti Corruption foundation, reports that her US bank accounts were temporarily closed by JPMorgan Chase. The closure came after Vladimir Putin's dictatorship labeled Chekavik an extremist and ACF a terrorist organization. [00:09:24] Speaker B: These designations are widely recognized as politically. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Motivated and part of the Kremlin's efforts to silence critics. Although the accounts have since been unfrozen. [00:09:33] Speaker B: The case reflects a pattern of transnational. [00:09:35] Speaker A: Repression where authoritarian regimes extend their reach and control by exploiting international legal and financial systems. In context when institutions in democracies treat a dictator's political labels as legitimate, dissidents living in exile can lose access to basic financial services. Chekavik's case sets a dangerous precedence that could expose more activists, journalists and NGOs to financial exclusion and repression abroad. Cuba Regime devalues currency Cuban officials sharply devalued the peso last week, introducing a new official exchange rate of 410 pesos per dollar. The move is an implicit admission that state financial controls have failed to stabilize the currency, bringing the official rate closer to the informal rate of around 440 pesos per dollar. [00:10:31] Speaker B: The existing two exchange rates, 24 pesos. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Per dollar for state enterprises and 120. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Pesos per dollar for the tourism industry. [00:10:39] Speaker A: Will remain in place. Historically, multi tier exchange systems have fueled corruption and inequality by benefiting regime insiders while eroding ordinary citizens purchasing power. In context, the new rate will likely immediately result in higher prices across the country as inflation accelerates and further erodes the value of people's wages and savings. The move comes amid acute foreign currency shortages, collapsing tourism, fuel scarcity and rolling electrical blackouts. United Arab Emirates CBDC rolls out as Free Amid expanding financial surveillance the United Arab Emirates Central bank announced that the first phase of its digital dirham Central bank digital currency, or cbdc, will be offered free to users and small businesses, framing the rollout as a cost saving upgrade to payments. But free at launch does not mean neutral. As a direct central bank liability, the digital dirham gives the state full visibility into transactions and the power to impose future fees conditions or negative interest rates. Once adoption is established, the News follows the UAE's first state to state CBD transaction conducted via the multi CBDC M Bridge platform, which links the UAE with China and other authoritarian states in a shared programmable settlement system. In context, this launch also comes alongside a recent regulatory decree that expands surveillance over digital assets through strict licensing requirements and places criminal penalties on unapproved financial tools like self custody wallets. Taken together, the free digital dirham appears less like a public good and more like an on ramp to deeper financial. [00:12:32] Speaker B: Control. [00:12:35] Speaker A: Conflict fueled by financial predation and resource capture. Sudan's civil war is increasingly sustained by resource capture and the financial gains of smuggling and trafficking networks. Armed factions fund their operations by smuggling gold, seizing oil infrastructure and diverting humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, civilians face rampant inflation, food shortages, blocked deliveries of life saving aid and a collapsed banking system. With formal finance largely inaccessible, survival now depends on informal markets, checkpoints and predatory fees imposed by armed groups. The war economy illustrates how financial breakdown and resource control can entrench repression and prolong conflict Bitcoin and Freedom Tech News Evento Open Source Wallet Released in Beta Evento, a Bitcoin and NOSTR event platform, launched the public beta of Evento Wallet, a fully open source self custodial Bitcoin and Lightning Wallet built directly into the platform. First tested at BTRUST Developer Day in Mauritius, the wallet enables users to receive and send Lightning and on chain payments and send one another, zaps tips in Bitcoin during a live event. It also supports buying and selling through recommended exchanges, earning satoshis from trusted partners and spending via Bitrefill gift cards. Why this matters Embedding self custodial Bitcoin payments into open community coordination tools like Evento lowers the barrier for activists, pro democracy organizers and grassroots groups to pair freedom of assembly with the ability to earn, share and spend Money without permission. BTCPay Server Subscriptions and Monetization Added BTCPay Server, an open source and self custodial Bitcoin payment processor, introduced native subscriptions and a new monetization feature. The new subscriptions feature enables nonprofits and merchants to accept recurring donations or payments directly in Bitcoin, all natively within BTCPay server. The monetization feature lets users who already host a BTCPay server charge other users a recurring fee for server usage. Together, these drastically reduce barriers for nonprofits to accept Bitcoin as they no longer need to set up a server and can instead opt to use others while still maintaining self custody. Why this matters for nonprofits facing censorship, debanking or funding instability in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes this update enables recurring self custodial donations and reduces reliance on banks or payment processors, making fundraising more resilient, transparent and sustainable. The Lightning Network All Time High Capacity Reached Bitcoin's Lightning Network capacity reached a new all time high, surpassing 5600 BTC held in payment channels. Lightning is Bitcoin's fast, low cost payment layer designed for everyday transactions like remittances, donations and micropayments. Rising capacity signals growing use for people living under financial restrictions and repression. Lightning enables near instant cross border transfers without relying on banks or payment processors. Why this Matters A growing Lightning network means more liquidity, reliability and stronger censorship resistance. It shows Bitcoin evolving from a savings technology into a practical payment system that supports dissidents, nonprofits and everyday users operating outside authoritarian financial rails. Zeus Wallet Nostr Wallet Connect Support released Zeus, a Bitcoin Lightning Wallet has integrated the NOSTR Wallet Connect or NWC protocol. This protocol allows apps to interact with Bitcoin Lightning Wallets, boosting interoperability between Bitcoin and Nostr. Zeus's NWC integration will enable users to link external wallets like Albi Hub or. [00:16:41] Speaker B: Kashuu Me, improving transaction flexibility. [00:16:44] Speaker A: It also enables sending zaps tips via Bitcoin micropayments. Why this Matters for human rights defenders and civil society operating under censorship, zaps enable small permissionless payments and donations without relying on platforms or payment processors that dictators can coerce, to monitor, block or seize funds. Bull Wallet Support for Foundation Hardware Wallet Added Bull Wallet has released a new update adding support for the Foundation Passport, an open source and air gapped Bitcoin hardware wallet. This allows users to buy Bitcoin directly through Bull Wallet and send it straight to a self custodial Passport device, mitigating counterparty risks of leaving funds on an exchange. Why this Matters the update strengthens options for long term self custody by combining Bull Wallet's non custodial purchasing flow with Passport's offline to the benefit of dissidents who need convenient and self controlled access to freedom money. [00:17:48] Speaker B: They also have a few pieces of recommended content, one in particular that I think I'm going to read. I have it. It's open somewhere. I'll just open it again. Too many tabs is what Bitcoin reveals. [00:18:00] Speaker A: About state failure in the Middle east. [00:18:03] Speaker B: And it's by Roya Mahboob and Faisal Said Al Matar who we've talked about both before on the show and have been in Alex Gladstein's writing and interviews and stuff. But if you haven't then probably the best thing would be anything by Alex Gladstein. In the database of reads that we have done, there's various ones focused on different stories of different people. And then obviously check your financial privilege, which is his book. [00:18:29] Speaker A: And I believe it's actually available for free. [00:18:31] Speaker B: And I did the audiobook for it. Um, I will actually. I need to make sure that I have a page for that on the new website. I do not think I have a all of the audiobooks I have done page, if I'm not mistaken. But I need to go back. But it is again, that is live for you guys. So it should be much easier to search through. And right now it is still just a pure, like, query, like keyword search. But I have built a deep search tool which I've been testing and using locally, that literally chunks everything out into like 15 to 30 second segments by their transcript so that you can search individual pieces. Now the one thing that's kind of funky about the tool right now is that it literally only searches in 15 to 20, 15 to 30 second segments. So it's a little bit harder for me to. I need to basically then run it through an LLM and have like a hierarchy, right? Is I need like a. Like a hash tree of like. This episode is generally about these three topics. These six sections of the show are generally about these various topics. We talk about this in this part, like, you know, chapters of the episode. [00:19:48] Speaker A: And then break it down into 15. [00:19:50] Speaker B: To 30 seconds so that you can. Rather than needing one particular segment where I talk about COIN Joins that I may have just mentioned entirely offhand in one episode. It needs to be. It needs to prioritize the fact that I talk about COIN joins in half of an episode in the roundtable or something as marking it as higher, a higher recommendation or a bigger, a larger match. Because that's the summary of an entire section of a show as opposed to, you know, 10 seconds of an offhand comment in, you know, some entirely separate conversation. So I haven't worked out the kinks there, but it does work very, like, very interestingly. And I specifically bring up coinjoins because I did a search for just privacy. I just said, you know, I want to find stuff about privacy in my entire transcription list of all my episodes for and for forever. And so I'm like scrolling through these little sections, little clips or whatever, and reading the transcript. And one of them not only did almost none of them mentioned the word privacy, but one of them literally didn't even mention like, like, it wasn't even like I literally just said that in this process, it was something like this process is when you mix all of your UTXOs together in a, in a coin join and it breaks the heuristic. It breaks the connection between where your coins originally came from and the fact that you are the one spending it from a different location. Like it was super like abstract conversation about achieving privacy. But I did not mention anything explicit about it. [00:21:43] Speaker A: And that came up in the search. [00:21:45] Speaker B: And I was like, damn, that is so. That is so great that the context can reach that far into the language of what the conversation is and actually find those pieces of conversation and connect that insanely abstract conversation about breaking the chain of one set of UTXOs to another set of UTXO and recognize that this is connected to the conversation about privacy. And I'm using the Gnomic 1.5B model, 1.5 billion parameter model to create the. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Embeddings and then do the search. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Which anybody who has ever done this, you know, there's the benefit of using a better model, a larger model is that you get better context, you get basically better connections. But the drawback is that you have. [00:22:40] Speaker A: To run that model, the same model. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Because weights do not cross models, right? It's you, if you create embedding for one model, it's not, you're not going to be able to take a different model and then search through it. You have to then bring that model up into RAM like into like active operation so that you can then search through those, you can make the, the connections in those embeddings. Now if it's always just loaded, it's not like that huge of resource cost, but it does mean that your machine has to be much more substantial. And especially if you're dealing with queries from like 100 or 200 people or something at once. You, it just. The resource cost can get pretty big, especially if your model is pretty big and it's something that's always running. So your, your compute cost on your. [00:23:30] Speaker A: Machine that is hosted online will, will. [00:23:34] Speaker B: Change quite significantly if you have something like that running at all times. So there is absolutely a trade off between the quality of the search and then the, the cost of conducting the search, allowing people to conduct the search. So I'm going to test it out and compare it to. There's like a really small model, it's like a 0.4 or something or 0.3 billion parameter model that is far more lightweight. Like almost, almost you could run it on a phone lightweight even though you Know, it would still be a rough, rough thing to have booted in running on your phone all the time, but that you could run it on that. And if the quality of the, like, I think it's more important to make. [00:24:18] Speaker A: It very easy and quick to do. [00:24:20] Speaker B: These embeddings and the results, because I don't think none of it's going to be like perfectly accurate anyway. And so much more will be in the. The process of creating the embeddings and organizing the data in like kind of. [00:24:34] Speaker A: A hash tree style structure. [00:24:37] Speaker B: I think that's way more important than specifically having like a better model for it because you're already getting a context search. You know, you're already getting something where if I mention, if I search for privacy and I'm talking about like, oh, well, this is a pretty good anonymity set, it will come up because it's contextually related. And I think just. Just one that catches like 90% of that or 80% of that is. Is good enough to do most of what people are looking for. And the library of this is so freaking huge now, like episodes we have is in astronomical. It took me like a day, a day and a half or something like. [00:25:14] Speaker A: That just to produce the transcripts. [00:25:16] Speaker B: This room was just hot. It was just. It was just hot in here. I had to open the window because that stupid. This computer's just chugging away doing. Doing transcripts for, you know, 1400 episodes. But I think, I mean, I know I get value out of it. In fact, I finally completed this, the first version of this project because somebody, Scott from HODL up actually asked me what episode it was that I talked about HODL up, about the game. And I just did like a simple keyword search through the transcripts that I had created and I couldn't find it. I got nothing. And I was like, son of a. Like this I so annoying. And I was like, you know what? Screw it. [00:25:56] Speaker A: I'm gonna spend two hours. [00:25:57] Speaker B: I'm gonna vibe code this thing and make a deep search. [00:25:59] Speaker A: Didn't even take that long. [00:26:00] Speaker B: I think it took like 45 minutes and parsed it all out into. Into chunks and made the deep search model and created embeddings. I guess the embeddings to take take while I had to come back to it. But. [00:26:17] Speaker A: Then search. [00:26:17] Speaker B: I just said bitcoin board game. I just searched that and boom, there it was. It was in the first Pear Report episode, actually. But I literally built it to. Because I have people ask me, you know, like, do you have any Episodes about, you know, talking about inflation or this, that or the other. And there are some times where I have conversations like this is a great example is that if anybody ever asked me about the conversation about like where I talked about the website and the deep search tool it I'm not. [00:26:46] Speaker A: In no way will my brain go. [00:26:48] Speaker B: To oh yes, the Financial Freedom report where on CBDCs like this is so off topic with what we're. What the actual show is about that and I do this all the freaking time for anybody who listens to this. You know that. And so you know like being able to, to search through that or find a clip or something. It's just. I just feel like it's incredibly useful. And the fact that I can build all this, I can Vibe code this myself is so cool. And I think this is also a very in the context of our Financial Freedom Report here, I think this is a super undersung freedom tool is Vibe coding. And I talked about this with Roy Scheinfeld and because we, and we jabbered about this before the show quite a bit as well because we're both in that Hill, Matt Hill, Francis Puyo when we had the chat with him with BTC sessions and the Christmas special or end of year special. However, whatever it was, it's so funny. Everybody has the same level of excitement. Matt Hill and I ended up we were talking about intending to talk about. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Something entirely different but for like 20. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Minutes we just ended up talking about Vibe coding. Just like all the stuff that we can produce, the stuff that we're just like side project build in 30 minutes to. To do something or figure something out. It's just so, so wild. And if you can build your own. [00:28:07] Speaker A: Tools like, like personalized tools for your environment, for your setup tool, like the code is just ephemeral. [00:28:15] Speaker B: It's just this thing that molds and. [00:28:18] Speaker A: Moves with whatever you need it to be. Like that's huge. [00:28:23] Speaker B: Like for instance, Rust Desk is you know, my, my remote desktop application and I kind of think I'm going to dig into it and try to Vibe. [00:28:36] Speaker A: Code a version of Rust Desk. It's open source. A version of Rust Desk that use. [00:28:42] Speaker B: Uses wholesale in the background and just kind of rips away all of the other networking stack and that'll probably be. [00:28:49] Speaker A: Like a real pain. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Like that will be a project but if I could do that and then also release that for mobile that would just be phenomenal for my own purposes to just be able to get rid. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Of the connected to the Rust network. [00:29:08] Speaker B: And having their server in the middle. That's just so wild. It's so wild where we are right now. In addition though, there was, there was one thing that I specifically wanted to bring up about this piece because the UAE is a really interesting one and my brother actually considered the UAE because it's one of the few places that his wife could go. But it's also pretty expensive. Despite the fact there, there are no taxes or at least the tax, the whole tax thing is extremely untraditional. You know, I just watched someone from like one of the leaders or prominent, like kind of a founder type thing in the UAE talking about how absurd he thought the concept of taxes really were. And so, you know, the, the idea was to try this and have an explicit context of cost and how things work, like setting it up, almost like setting the place up as almost like a business. But the interesting thing is that you don't have, there's a bunch of like quote unquote basic human rights that you don't have. Like there's no freedom of speech. Like you can, you can just be kicked out if you talk bad about the regime that is in charge. Now I will say I don't know the degree to which that is actually enforced and how restrictive that sort of stuff is. I just know that there are elements like that where it's not what you would expect in a western country. But the idea of launching the digital dirham and having a quote unquote free. [00:30:49] Speaker A: Cbdc, this is how, this is exactly. [00:30:52] Speaker B: The proposition of inflation is how do. [00:30:57] Speaker A: You hide the cost and make it. [00:30:59] Speaker B: Appear as if you're getting something for free? How do you, how do you hide the cost and make it appear as if there is a benefit you have. [00:31:04] Speaker A: A short term benefit of? [00:31:05] Speaker B: The government's going to spend a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of people are going to seem to get richer and then it costs twice. [00:31:11] Speaker A: As much on the back end and people don't know it and they feel it so late that they don't know. [00:31:15] Speaker B: Where the cost came from. That is the scam. [00:31:19] Speaker A: How do you hide the cost and. [00:31:22] Speaker B: Have a direct and immediate upfront benefit. [00:31:25] Speaker A: If everybody's paying 2% merchant fees and. [00:31:28] Speaker B: Then you can use a CBDC and get rid of that 2% fee, that's going to look like a great sell. Like they're going to do that for small businesses, for basic users and some. [00:31:36] Speaker A: Of them will even know in the. [00:31:38] Speaker B: Back of their minds that like this is going to cost me more later. But they're not going to have an they're going to feel like they don't have an option because everything just is so damn expensive because they're struggling. And then they adopt this and on the back end this immediately become they're plugged into the central bank entity directly. They have full control and surveillance over. [00:32:01] Speaker A: All of the funds and it doesn't. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Even matter if it's two years down the line, five years, 10 years or 20 years. Eventually the more complete the adoption is, the more obvious the abuse is going to be. You get negative interest rates on money that you don't spend. Suddenly there are future fees, there are. [00:32:20] Speaker A: Conditions that if you say the wrong. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Thing, perfect example is you don't have the right to criticize the regime. Well what if you criticize the regime. [00:32:28] Speaker A: And you just lose all of your. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Money, just all of it immediately. [00:32:33] Speaker A: How easy would it be to increase. [00:32:35] Speaker B: The cost of that dissidence of exercising rights outside of what the regime wishes to be possible? Like capital controls become direct and immediate and to also then white list who you can even send it to that oh well, you can't even, you can't even buy bitcoin. Like you get to a point where you have. Actually a great example is that has occurred in like my personal life. My dad has some bitcoin. I mean a bunch of different family members and stuff have bitcoin because I've. [00:33:16] Speaker A: Convince them to all at least invest a little bit. [00:33:19] Speaker B: And he had some, he moved a couple thousand to Cash App. It's a couple thousand dollars and or maybe it was like, maybe it was like seven or eight. It was something to pay off like a house or a loan or something like that. And he didn't know how else I was like well you can you know, sell it through Cash App if you really want to and then move it to your bank account. And the limits to like sell and move within Cash App are they're decent. It's like 20,000 or something like that. I can't remember exactly but he wasn't hitting those limits and then he ended up changing his mind or something happened and the fund sat there and he didn't do anything with it. But this was basically during like one of the early run ups in 20 in like 2020 or something like that. I had again wrong. The time frame is off a little bit. But though while the limits are slightly larger with moving to your bank account or moving into and out, the limits. [00:34:20] Speaker A: On moving bitcoin back out of the. [00:34:21] Speaker B: Platform like sending to self custody are way smaller. It's like $2,000 a day, but 2,500 total per week. And I, like, sort of knew it at the time. I knew, like, the limits were larger. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Because I ran into it once and. [00:34:39] Speaker B: I was like, oh, this is ridiculous. And I just kind of like stopped. [00:34:41] Speaker A: I just didn't use as much because of that. [00:34:44] Speaker B: But it didn't register that, you know, my dad still had some up there. And then he's, you know, too afraid to touch. He doesn't really mess with it. And then literally the price, 10x, it was like back when it was like $6,000 and it went to 60. And then he was, he was like, I want to get this off. Like, I still have a bundle cash up. I was like, oh, my God, you still have that stuff up there. We do need to do that. [00:35:11] Speaker A: And then we started looking at it and. [00:35:15] Speaker B: Calculating the time it would take because, like, we have the $2,500 a. [00:35:20] Speaker A: Week limit was still in place. [00:35:23] Speaker B: Well, it was suddenly going to take. [00:35:24] Speaker A: Like two years to get all the. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Funds off because it was already like three weeks when it originally did it. Now it was 30. It was half a year, one year or something. Like just an insane thing though, to like, go every single. [00:35:39] Speaker A: Oh, wait. And there was a monthly. There was a monthly lim. [00:35:42] Speaker B: So it was like, even though you had a 2500 monthly limit, it was like the weekly. Excuse me, 2500 weekly limit is like the monthly was 5. That's what it was. That kept messing up our calculation because it was like, okay, the weekly limit is 2500. It's like, oh, but you can only. [00:35:56] Speaker A: Do that for two weeks out of the month. And then you hit the monthly limit. [00:35:59] Speaker B: And so it stretched. I remember there was something that we were like, oh, it'll only take this long. But dear God, we have to do. [00:36:05] Speaker A: This every single week and keep up with it. And if it keeps going higher, we keep getting further and further behind. [00:36:12] Speaker B: And it was like, no, then you'll. [00:36:13] Speaker A: Hit your monthly limit. [00:36:14] Speaker B: So you have to double the amount of time it's going to take. And you have to remember to do it after you have two weeks where. [00:36:19] Speaker A: You'Ve gotten out of the habit. [00:36:20] Speaker B: You have to remember to go back and do it again. Because if you miss your month, you still have your monthly limit. [00:36:24] Speaker A: Like, you don't get to make. [00:36:25] Speaker B: You don't get, like, build. You don't get to store up your. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Your limits of like, oh, well, you. [00:36:30] Speaker B: Didn'T use your limits this week. So you can, you can tack it. [00:36:32] Speaker A: On the next week. [00:36:34] Speaker B: This Is a, this is a company and that's pro Bitcoin that's trying to. [00:36:39] Speaker A: Make this user friendly. And this is the difficulty and the pain of dealing with this. And this is just limits. It's just basic limits. Imagine this with a CBDC that doesn't. [00:36:50] Speaker B: Want you using Bitcoin. [00:36:52] Speaker A: This will be the exact same story of inflation. It looks like we're saving on the front end and on the back end. [00:37:00] Speaker B: Everything is orders of magnitude more expensive. It looks like we have lower taxes and yet nobody can afford a house. [00:37:09] Speaker A: The average home buyer went from like 24 years old to 40 years old. Society keeps getting poorer. We are drowned in fraud and corruption and government spending just goes through the. [00:37:21] Speaker B: Roof and it gets exponentially worse every. [00:37:24] Speaker A: Single year, over and over and over. [00:37:26] Speaker B: Again, until literally everything is unaffordable and. [00:37:29] Speaker A: The middle class has been rotted from the inside out. They are trying to go down the ladder. [00:37:35] Speaker B: They're trying to go down from the. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Monetary base itself into the payment systems. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Into the networks that we use, into. [00:37:44] Speaker A: Our literal social lives. The consequences will be the same in those new domains. [00:37:50] Speaker B: And we have to realize, we have. [00:37:52] Speaker A: To learn that that is the case. If you are not paying for it, you are the product. [00:37:58] Speaker B: And if it is a political system. [00:38:00] Speaker A: The product that they are buying is control over you. [00:38:05] Speaker B: They don't give a shit. [00:38:06] Speaker A: What the hell does a central bank need to care about paying, charging you a 2% merchant fee? They are always going to be able to appear to offer a better deal, but it will not be a better deal. And you might not feel the cost up front, you might not feel it for a few years, but when that debt crisis comes, when the, when the debt collapse comes, when the pandemic comes, when the protest comes, you will feel it tenfold or you will be a good little citizen and you will shut your mouth and you will do what you were told. [00:38:40] Speaker B: And that's not the world I want to live in. [00:38:43] Speaker A: So it's just a reminder that we. [00:38:46] Speaker B: Have to fight back against this. We have to, we have to refuse to adopt it. Everyone that we have, we've actually seen this, that multiple CBDCs in multiple countries have basically flopped. I want to keep seeing that. I want to think that everybody in the west isn't that stupid and that as it creeps this direction, not only do we refuse to use their totalitarian system, but we are too quick to. [00:39:14] Speaker A: Build alternatives that solve the problem our own way, with our own money in. [00:39:19] Speaker B: An open source Bitcoin world. And you are all vibe Coders now. So go out and do something with it. Anyway, that's just my two SATs. All right, guys, shout out to the Human Rights Foundation. Love that. Don't. Don't forget to subscribe to the Financial Freedom Report. Seriously love catching up on this is a super, super valuable resource. [00:39:43] Speaker A: Just scan if I had a recommendation. [00:39:46] Speaker B: Like if you don't. If you're not a big newsletter reader. I actually used to. I probably read like 5% or 10% of the stuff that I subscribe to and I will keep it actually as a database. And I'm gonna get to the point where I'm building a deep search for. [00:40:03] Speaker A: All of my newsletter stuff actually, because. [00:40:05] Speaker B: I want to keep it as kind of like a historical record and a database of information and news to search through. [00:40:11] Speaker A: But if there is something to scan. [00:40:13] Speaker B: If you want to get, you sign up for the Financial Freedom Report. Always scan the Bitcoin and Freedom tech news because there's. Evento is like a great example actually. And I'm pretty sure if I'm not mistaken. Let me, let me just search BR E. Oh, nope, I cannot. Introducing the Invento wallet. Come on, man. [00:40:43] Speaker A: Search. Where's my command? F is not working. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Oh, wait, okay. So it does in reader mode. [00:40:49] Speaker A: Perfect. [00:40:50] Speaker B: And there it is. There it is. I was like 90% sure, but I didn't want to say it if I was wrong. [00:40:55] Speaker A: They are using Breeze. [00:40:56] Speaker B: They are using Breeze. So this was one of the their. [00:40:59] Speaker A: Public beta or this tool. [00:41:01] Speaker B: Evento was part of their submission to. [00:41:04] Speaker A: The Time to build Challenge by Breeze and Spark. So this is their new SDK. The reason they are able to enable. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Zaps, enable Bitcoin and Lightning in a. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Self custodial wallet with no upfront cost, with no channel balancing and all of that stuff is because they are using Spark, which integrates with lightning so that you can talk across Lightning. But the native wallet on your side is in a state chain. [00:41:27] Speaker B: So you have self custody. [00:41:28] Speaker A: You have the ability to leave at any time with your keys to pay. [00:41:32] Speaker B: For your exit transaction. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Just like a Lightning channel, but it. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Is in a, it's in a huge like large group and it is, it's a state chain system that's integrated. If I had any other system that I was as interested or excited about as Ark, it is state chains. And this is why I had the conversation with Roy, because I was like. [00:41:51] Speaker A: Holy crap, I did not realize that. [00:41:53] Speaker B: This, that's what this was. And they built this very, very quickly. And actually you know what, I'm not. [00:42:00] Speaker A: Going to lead too much. [00:42:01] Speaker B: Listen to the conversation with Roy. Listen to it with Roy. You have to. This is a huge deal. [00:42:06] Speaker A: And for anybody who wants to build. [00:42:07] Speaker B: A bitcoin or Lightning wallet or integrate bitcoin and lightning into a service, this is it. This is literally it. I think this is the sweet spot and the. And also I haven't built anything myself with it. [00:42:20] Speaker A: I'm about to. [00:42:21] Speaker B: I'm. We're getting towards that step very, very soon. So I will have probably just a guy's take or something on personal experience on how it worked and how. [00:42:32] Speaker A: How the experience of building with it was and the. [00:42:36] Speaker B: What I was able to do with the ux. But I genuinely think now is the time for this sort of stuff and to build and create these tools and dude, we, we can outbuild them, we. [00:42:47] Speaker A: Can out adopt them. We can prove that bitcoin is the digital cash for the entire world and it scales to everyone. So do it. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Get out there and do it. [00:42:57] Speaker A: I'm jazzed. Let's go. [00:42:59] Speaker B: Shout out to the Human Rights foundation and their amazing work. [00:43:03] Speaker A: Links and details to all of that. [00:43:05] Speaker B: As well as our other great services that we've used that I like to use. Leaden, Unchained river, where I buy Bitcoin, Synonym, get Chroma, you name it. Just tons of great services with affiliate links right down in the show notes. And until next time, everybody take it ease. Guys. You can't change how other people think. [00:43:41] Speaker A: And act, but you're in full control of you when it comes down to it. [00:43:46] Speaker B: The only question that matters is if. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Nothing in the world ever changes, what. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Type of man are you going to be? [00:43:54] Speaker A: Nick Stone.