Something is WRONG with Bitcoin?! | Bitcoin Banter

It's not Bitcoin that's crashing. It's TradFi wrappers that are crashing. There's a very big difference between the two. We're going to see a lot more people lose Bitcoin over loans, over margin calls. It's going to be because of a decision they made, not someone screwing with them. Yeah, this is sort of a nightmare scenario. I can't really think of anything more dangerous than this. This is, you know, absolutely horrific.

And if it happens in France, you know, we know that Coinbase suffered this from some of their call center employees last year. All of these gimmicks that are out there are essentially traps, as far as I'm concerned, to separate those that understand very little from their Bitcoin, thinking, you know, they're going to get a free lunch. There's no such thing. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bitcoin Banter. Greer and Tony are here with me. Guys, let's jump right in.

Jim Cramer is out here talking about Bitcoin. Let's watch this video. Bitcoin is like at 81. You're looking at what I regard as being the single worst moment in this decline was the moment between 3.30 and 4.30. And then Williams comes on, and then suddenly everything's fine? I don't think so. You don't think everything's fine? No, there's a lot of people who have to get out. Let them get out. This is not what suddenly they wave a magic wand. We obviously have real issues.

We have issues with building out the data center unlimited. We have issues with a lot of people, the strategies. All right. So my takeaway is that Jim Cramer sounds like an idiot when he talks about Bitcoin. But he's on to something. The price has been dumping. If you're looking at the dollar denominated exchange rate of Bitcoin, Tony, I would like to hear you talk about Jim's assessment first. Jim Cramer reminds me of watching an episode of Beavis and Butthead.

I don't know if you guys get the same impression. But if you guys want signal and good news, I think he summarized it pretty well. And for the record, it's not Bitcoin that's crashing. It's TradFi wrappers that are crashing. There's a very big difference between the two. And I think it's very clear that most folks in the market are very far away from understanding that distinction. But again, pain is the best teacher.

And, you know, as time progresses, these dips, you know, will become rarer and rarer. Tony, let's go right into that, because our next story is this is a post from Bitbuyer313. He talks, he thinks Bitcoin's price is going lower. I have no opinion on that. But he says people get greedy and take on leveraged loans near the top. And then they get margin call when the price corrects. It's a sad but valuable lesson. Never lose leverage. And then I'm just going to read a couple of these.

He shares some tweets and replies from people. So this one person said yesterday I had six years of Bitcoin stacking, get liquidated. Monthly interest was over $1,000, not worth the cost to maintain. I'm starting over. Someone said I rode three and a half million down to 100K on a combo of Bitcoin, MSTR and long calls on both. Horrible living to fight another day, though. Someone said they sold about 90% of their stock portfolio yesterday. The new Bitcoin loan liquidation price is $61,000.

Yes, I know it's horrible timing, but locking in even more valuable losses is more bearable than nine years of Bitcoin disappearing. So in other words, people are scrambling. They're trying to shore up these loans that they took out because they obviously didn't listen to our channel when we said, just don't do it. Greer, I'll let you take this one first, because I think this is really the big story of the moment. Yeah, I think this is tough. You know, I always attribute this to greed.

People are looking at their stack and trying to find ways to get more. And I think this is degenerate behavior. And as Tony said, pain is a great teacher. You never want to see people lose their Bitcoin, but you're really just asking for it if you're playing with leverage.

The only way forward for everybody is to buy Bitcoin with the money that you have. That's it. And then you have to be patient. I think the opposite of what Jim Cramer said is true. This is a great time to get into Bitcoin. You want to buy on the dips. And this is, you know, one of the largest dips. I think the fourth largest dip in Bitcoin's history. So whether or not you saw it coming, we should be able to look back at the past.

Remember Mt. Gox, and that happened before Celsius and BlockFi and FTX. Bitcoin is going to go through these events because people don't understand it. Hopefully, more people understand today, education is the most important thing when it comes to Bitcoin. It's so different. And if you don't learn from situations like this, you're going to just repeat them.

I would argue that we're going to see a lot more people lose Bitcoin over loans, over margin calls, certainly right now, but in the coming years than any hacks or all the FUD that you see about, well, what if scenarios. I think those are going to be a small minority of why people lose their stack. It's going to be because of a decision they made, not someone screwing with them. I think what people miss when it comes to these Bitcoin backed loans is that it's all well and good until it's not.

The risks aren't just I mean, the obvious risk here is price action. Right. But the risks are also that you're putting this in an escrow. You're giving someone else the keys to your coin. They could run into financial issues. Right. Like it just it runs the it runs the gamut. And so we've been saying for a long time, just don't do it. If you're going to do it, it needs to be like the most conservative financial decision you've ever made.

And I would still argue philosophically, I just can't get behind it because I feel like we're feeding the beast. And the whole point is to remove ourselves from the system. But, Tony, I know you've seen a lot of these. I think you've probably had people privately reach out to you concerned about being liquidated. What's your thought on all this?

Man, it's really painful in the last 24 hours to read all the messages and emails that have come my way because of people desperation and panic I don like seeing this man I mean this brings back very bad memories of struggling with no money And I blame a lot of the narratives that are out there for causing all of this

Fundamentally, there's a very, very big, big lack of understanding as to what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is not a trade. It's money. It's a savings technology. However, the narratives out there are continuously trying to frame Bitcoin into just another TradFi asset, something like a stock or a gamble that you can play with in order to get more worthless paper. Bitcoin was created to replace a legacy system.

All of these gimmicks that are out there are essentially traps, as far as I'm concerned, to separate those that understand very little from their Bitcoin, thinking they're going to get a free lunch. There's no such thing. Anytime you give up sound money, you are introducing risk. And you're playing by rules that you don't control. And more importantly, the platform that you're doing all of this activity is also playing by rules that they don't control.

But the difference is they make money either way. If you win, they make money. If you lose, they keep your Bitcoin. So the only one here that's really at a disadvantage is the user. So my message is, if you can't afford something, just don't buy it. Wait until you can afford it. Find ways to earn more Bitcoin. I understand it's not as easy as a light switch. But again, you know, the right decisions always take some effort. But down the line, these efforts are definitely worthwhile.

My heart goes out to all of these guys that are going through a rough time. I absolutely can relate to the pain that you're going through. But I genuinely hope that this serves as a lesson to focus on the real signal, the real education that Bitcoin is designed to replace all of these, you know, risk assets, risk services. We are not gambling anymore. You know, the investment is not to get more yield. The investment in Bitcoin is your freedom.

so tony you put out a a great video on this yesterday and i thought daniel white's uh he quote tweeted you and he said bitcoin is the only asset on the planet that cannot be seized by force and it has a hard-coded quantity limit don't give that up lightly and i think that's the real kicker is if you're doing this for convenience if you're doing this out of greed really bad reasons to be doing it because right now and and i i think i quote tweeted him right now what you're experiencing

is sad and disappointing, in 10 years, it's going to be gut-wrenching because you're going to have looked at, you know, the six years of stacking and what that is worth in 10 years and your purchasing power and the flexibility and the opportunity it would provide you. And you're going to say, I don't have that anymore because of this myopic short-sighted decision that you made today. So I think people need to be very wary of that. Any other, any final comments on the whole lending thing?

Because I know we've seen a lot of this. No, man, I just hope those that are in a position to save themselves, I hope they manage to do that. And those that unfortunately can't, again, you know, my heart goes out to you. If you guys want to talk, you want more guidance on how to avoid these things going forward, please reach out. You know, DMs are always open. And, you know, like I always say, the team at the Bitcoin Way is available 24-7.

So one of the things we've seen here is that there's a lot of sell pressure on Coinbase specifically.

So it said over the, this is Bitcoin news, over the past six hours, more than 19,000 Bitcoin has traded on Coinbase alone, unprecedented volume and larger than the October 10th sell-off. Tony, why don't you comment on this? Because we're seeing a very different story from our clients. Yeah, I guess the selling pressure is on platforms where the users aren't really that well-informed.

The platforms that we recommend our clients to go buy Bitcoin safely and securely from are reporting something completely inverse to this. In fact, 95% of our client base is engaged in strong buying at this very moment. And the reason for that is because they understand what Bitcoin is, which is money, right? And so one man's loss is another man's gain. And this conviction comes through education.

So for all of those scrambling to sell Bitcoin for worthless paper, you're doing yourself a very bad disservice, in my opinion. So I strongly suggest taking some time off, understanding why some people are not struggling during this insanity and why you are. Let's jump into this next one, because I think all of these topics are related here.

So it's according to Finance a Lot, Binance and Bybit have now reportedly begun halting withdrawals as the crypto sell-off accelerates. To me, this screams one thing, and we don't actually have what we've been selling you. It feels like FTX all over again. Again, this is just another kind of counterparty risk. I think maybe that's the theme of the show, is just counterparty risk. Greer, do you want to take this one first? Yeah, absolutely.

Seeing these headlines is really terrifying if you have your coins on these exchanges.

I think that the key is when you buy Bitcoin, move it into self-custody as quickly as possible. You cannot trust an exchange. You don't know how much Bitcoin they have. There are lots of reports of paper Bitcoin selling you Bitcoin that doesn't exist. And whether that's true or not, the risks are still there. We should act like the exchange doesn't have your coins. You need to be first in line the second you buy.

And I think what was good yesterday is that the fees in the mempool were higher than usual. And to me, that says that there's more block space being used where people are trying to get their coins into self-custody. I think that was probably the reason. We'll know more soon. But I think that self-custody is the only way that you're going to protect yourself. You know, these exchanges could go up in a minute. They could go up in smoke.

And I can speak directly to these two but there were reports that one of these exchanges was sending legal notices to different X accounts to tell them essentially to cease and desist And of course we can't verify whether that's true, but the fundamentals are you don't want your coins on someone else's computer. So what I understand is that if you're dollar cost averaging 10 bucks a day, you know, buying Bitcoin that you're not going to, you know, purchase $10 worth of Bitcoin

and move it straight to cold storage. You'd have a UTXO management nightmare. But that's why it's so important not to opt for an opaque crypto casino as the exchange that you use. If you're going to buy it through an exchange, find a Bitcoin only exchange, someone who shows proof of reserves, because then you have some level of certainty that in the interim, while you're waiting for your stack to grow enough to move it to cold storage, you know, the Bitcoin exists. Like it's

actually there. You can go verify it for yourself. Tony, what's your comment on this? Too much lack of education and awareness, man. This brain dead, you know, mindless trusting of third party custodians with money is like a very bad, you know, drug addiction that must be, that must be, you know, like stopped. Otherwise, people are just going to keep losing their funds. Putting Bitcoin on an exchange is no different than leaving your money in your bank. It ceases

to be yours. And, you know, the exchange can halt your access at any second for any reason. And the worst part is they don't even have to tell you. So if you're using these platforms, use them, you know, just for the purpose that you need them for. Treat them as like temporary cash.

Like if you're foolishly trading Bitcoin on these platforms, which I don't recommend because less than 1% of folks actually make money with, you know, these silly moves, then just keep the money that you're willing to lose. You know, never keep your life savings on a platform that somebody else controls because then you're always at their mercy. And again, Bitcoin is money. You don't need the third party to manage it for you. Learn seven, eight steps. You're smart enough to do it.

Believe me, everybody that we've worked with is fully sovereign today. 50s, 60s, 70s, well into their 80s. No tech background, fully sovereign today. So these stories, man, they infuriate me because they are so simple to avoid, right? These horror stories. But the people who need to hear these messages aren't on YouTube. They aren't on Twitter. They're not receiving the right signals.

They're listening to what, you know, their other retarded neighbor is telling them who's getting his information from this other retarded friend. And, you know, that vicious circle carries on. This is the cycle that we need to break. Otherwise, you know, like these mistakes are going to happen for the foreseeable future.

What I would argue is that if your coins are on an exchange, either there's a lack of education, which I hope you're listening to this, you hear us talking about why it's so important to take self-custody, or you're effectively admitting that it's all about number go up. You're completely disinterested in freedom because that's why I'm in Bitcoin. I came for the number go up. I stayed for the peaceful revolution. And I've seen my life get better because I have autonomy that I didn't

have operating in the fiat system. You're just back to square one. It's crypto fiat is what it becomes if you're trusting an exchange. So don't do it, anyone. All righty. This was a crazy story.

So Julian Figueroa shared, he said, apparently the number one way to have your house broken into and your Bitcoin stolen, pay taxes on it. So he shares this crazy story. This French tax office, this gal was selling lists containing names, home addresses, and capital gains of Bitcoin and crypto investors in France. And so people were getting their houses broken into. Now, of course, you can take self-custody and have a way of ensuring that you're not a victim of this.

They're unable to access your Bitcoin. But I think the big takeaway for me is KYC. It's having to share your information, over-reporting information about your stack or the fact that you're a holder of Bitcoin or I guess any crypto. Not sure why anyone would go through the hassle of robbing you for Ethereum. But Greer, why don't you take this one and give your thoughts? Yeah, this is sort of a nightmare scenario. Somebody who's put in a position to safeguard

your information is getting paid to deliver it. I can't really think of anything more dangerous than this. This is, you know, absolutely horrific. And if it happens in France, you know, we know that Coinbase suffered this from some of their call center employees last year. And I think you're right. KYC is the illicit activity. We should be able to transact and keep our private information private. But I think you also have to look at the reality of the situation. If you're in Bitcoin and

Bitcoin becomes extremely valuable, that absolutely does put a target on you. I think if you are, if you're protecting your family, your house, you know, living in America, we have sort of a unique ability to home defense. And that might that might be a good a good solution, really just the threat of force instead of actually using it. But I think this is this is something we should all be aware of. You know, you know, anytime you have something that's extremely valuable, it'll put a target on

you. And I think it calls for for more caution. And to be honest, I don't think the KYC is ever going to go away. In fact, it's probably only going to get worse as we head into a digital surveillance state. But that essentially leaves you with what am I going to do in this situation? So to me, that's up to the individual to determine how would they respond if they were approached

in this kind of circumstance. Yeah, I think the only ways you can avoid this sort of scenario are make sure you've got your self-custody set up done properly or hold XRP because no one's going to come rob you of your XRP. Tony? No, man, this really highlights the dangers of these centralized data centers, right? Like when you're giving up your information under the illusion that it's for

your protection and safety. Well, now we're starting to see the realities and the repercussions of that lie because that not the case Nothing really major maybe happened in the past but because there was no real incentive for it I always said that as the value of Bitcoin continues to appreciate so will the attempts to steal it.

And in times of desperation and greed, you're going to get these uncontrollable factors, these scumbags that are easily bribed into doing these activities and putting people at risk because they don't care. They're only looking out for themselves. In the short to midterm, you know, a lot of people are getting their Bitcoin from, you know, centralized exchanges and platforms where KYC is unfortunately required. And that's fine.

But, you know, like going forward, you know, I would advise people start to find, you know, better ways to increase their Bitcoin. And that's through potentially earning it. You know, if you're a merchant, incentivizing your clients to pay you in Bitcoin is definitely a better way than always KYC-ing yourself to stack more sats. And, you know, peer-to-peer transactions. I mean, Bitcoin is peer-to-peer electronic cash.

Most people, you know, their quickest way to access it is just to go out and buy it. And that's fine. But, you know, I think we're getting to a stage now where Bitcoin is sufficiently decentralized, where earning it is a lot more accessible. The tools are a lot simpler. The apps are a lot more prevalent and easier to use. And I think a lot more folks should start focusing on that. I completely agree. All right, let's just jump to the last one here.

So, Tony, you had a comment offline I thought was interesting. So the first ever million-dollar transaction was settled over the Lightning Network, I think just yesterday. Okay. And first of all, I think we all share enthusiasm for this, that it's become robust to be able to support this sort of transaction. When just, you know, a few years ago, it was, you know, a little glitchy or, you know, most transactions would go through, but some wouldn't.

You made an interesting point, though, about base layer versus lightning. What's your takeaway from this? This is definitely great news. I mean, to see headlines like this and watching, you know, layer two progress in such a way is definitely high, high signal as far as I'm concerned. My comment was more about the like the security, you know, around these amounts. This transaction was possible on Lightning because of, you know, very heavy duty infrastructure and back end support.

like regular folks, you, me, you know, are never going to be able to pull something like this off because of the prerequisites and the backend that are required. However, you know, when you're dealing with such amounts, like a million or up or anything that's really significant, the base layer as of this conversation still remains the safer approach. Sure, it might take you, you know, anywhere between five to 10 minutes to get a confirmation, but that's fine. The news around

Lightning is very optimistic. That means, you know, that this is what's eventually going to scale and, you know, get 8.3 billion people involved on this. So this is definitely good news. And I encourage all of those that are continuously trying to, you know, raise the bar when it comes to these things to continuously do so. This is very, very good news. Yeah. If you can send a million dollar Lightning transaction, you can certainly go buy a hamburger at Steak and Shake 100%.

Yeah. But besides the infrastructure, the unfortunate thing for me is you need a million dollars worth of Bitcoin, of course. So think about Visa and MasterCard. They've essentially been put on notice that Lightning is going to take over their business. Yes, Lightning might not be something that the plebs want to operate. It's really difficult to manage your channels.

But if you have liquidity, if you have money and you can lock it up in the Lightning Network, you will be not only routing payments, but you'll be sending millions of dollars in seconds at almost no fees. I think this one cost like four cents, was confirmed within a few seconds.

And that, you know, if you're a big provider, that's much better than waiting for a 10 minute block time to get confirmed, especially when you have that much money to just kind of sit on your hands and hope it goes through or wait for it to go through. So I think this is really a tech signal for the big credit card payment companies. Lightning is going to replace you. I completely agree. And that will be a beautiful day, by the way. All righty, guys. Thanks for being here.

And for everyone who tuned in, stick around for another minute. You can hear a bit about the Bitcoin way, how we can help you with self-custody, some of the things we talked about. And again, be very cautious as you look at the marketing around these lending products, all of these things. You're not going to want to lose your Bitcoin over something silly like that. Gents, good chat and we'll catch up again soon. Sounds great, guys. Thank you. Cheers. Hey there.

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