The Mark Moss Show Jan 26, 2022

kind of give you that perspective. And I want to dig into some of the latest breaking news that's going on right now. And there is some hot, hot news that's actually happening right now as we're talking. I've been listening to this uh for a better part of the day. And there's a big fight. There's a fight going on in UH in Congress, in UH in the government in the United States right now. And the fight is, um, in my opinion, is framed up a little bit differently

than they want to frame it up. Um, I think they're framing it up. But we kind of have the Democrats and the Republicans fighting against each other. The Democrats are are ramping up pressure on cryptocurrencies and the Republicans are trying to kind of hold them off. But I don't. I don't see it like that. I see it like they are ramping up. Uh, they're ramping up their ability to tell you what you can and can't do in the land of the free in the United States that

I grew up under. Um. You know, we we sent our troops to war. My grandfather was a decorated World War Two veteran. My father with flu jets in Vietnam. You know, We've been fighting for our freedoms and we live in the land of the free. And really that's what this argument is about. Um. Are we in the land of the free or are we in the land of central planners? That's no different than China or Russia. Let's dig into that for a little bit. Like I said,

this is going on, um. But basically you probably know by now, I've talked about it extensively. In in May of China kicked out all the bitcoin mining out of out of the country in bandkryptocurrencies in China, and I've done I've done a lot of content about that. Specifically, I'm not gonna go super deep into that right now, but just how it relates to what I want to talk about today. Is that. You know, I made a video if you're interested, on my YouTube channel, and it's

called China's Second Fatal Mistake. So if you want the backstory, go watch the video on my My challenge to search Mark Moss on YouTube China Second Fatal Mistake. But um, basically China kicked all the bitcoin mining out. They had the majority of all the bitcoin miners in the world located in China and they kicked it out. And um, they decided that they didn't want to their people in

China to be able to have access to cryptocurrencies. Um, which you know isn't super surprising in China because they decide that they don't want their people to have access to most things, including Google and Facebook and Amazon and et cetera. And so you know, they control every aspect of people's lives, including what they can and can't access, and so you know they to kick they want to say that their people can't access cryptocurrencies, fine, kick it out.

Um in that video I highlighted, or maybe there was another video I highlighted. Uh, I think it was a separate video. Um. There's something known as the Mundo Fleming trilemma. And so try lima is different than a dilemma. Diallemmas you have to choose between two things. The trial limits. You have to choose between one of three things or two of three things. And uh, you have this under

fleming trial. Man. So a country can't optimize or can't can't optimize their monetary policy on one side of the triangle, their interest rate on another side of the triangle, and the free flow of capital in another country on another side of the triangle. And so what happens is when they want to manipulate the monetary supply and the interest rates, then capital will either flow into the country or out of the country. And if it's bad policy, money will leave.

But they don't want money to leave, so they do something what's called capital controls. It's the final stage that every empire in history goes through when they've made such disastrous policies. The money tries to leave as fast as it possibly can, and they close the closed the getaway door, right close, burn the burn the life rafts, and they shut that down. Of course, you see this happening in Venezuela, Argentina,

Turkey today. People trying to get out of that as fast as they can, and so in China, they shut that off. No cryptocurrencies. Um And anyway, like I said, that's China. We also saw just now, I think yesterday Russia is now they're they're central bank in Russia. So it's not totally officially but the but the central bank is also saying. The news headline here and we pulled it up. Russia's Bank of Russia calls for a full ban on crypto. Russia's central bank suggests making crypto trading,

mining and usage illegal. Owning crypto would would owning crypto would be allowed, it says, um, but they don't want you can't trade it, mine or use it. You can own it, but you can't you can't trade it, minor use it. But this is the Bank of Russia, this is the government. Um but and this came out on January Russia's Russia must ban cryptocurrencies, the country's central bank said in a report released Thursday. Um by offering an outlet,

So here's what they say. By offering an outlet for people to take their money out of the national economy, they risk undermining it and making the regulator's job of maintaining optimal monetary policies harder. End quote. That's their quote. So what I just told you, which you might have been going, yeah, Mark or whatever, right, like, you know

what I'm talking about. That's what they just said. By offering an outlet two people to take their money out of the national economy, they risk undermining it and making the regulator's job of maintaining optimal monetary policies harder. So what they're saying is, if you don't continue to let us steal from you and manipulate the currency and print more of it um, and you leave our system and go somewhere else, then we can't control you anymore. Then

you take away our ability to create optimal, optimal monetary policies. Well, what are optimal monetary policies, Because I'm pretty sure that optimal for you is probably different than optimal for me. It's kind of like this version of utopia. No such thing as utopia. The reason why there's no such thing as utopia is because my version of utopia different than your version of utopia. One man's hell is probably another man's heaven kind of a thing. So what's optimal? Uh?

The central bankers optimal policy is one that continues to get them richer. The one that continues to get their friends richer. But unfortunately, as that the sacrifice of us getting poorer. UM. To me, what would be optimal would be a free market where we can all interact freely without having a central bank and a regulator trying to enrich themselves and make us poor. They said that it, Um, if we did the outlet risks, undermining it, so undermine it.

What does that mean? So, um, if we can use a different system and now there's then we've undermined it. They don't have the ability to twists. That's that's that's their words, that's what they're saying. Um. And so the the central bank says that an existing ban on using crypto for payments should be reinforced and punished should be Oh, and punishment should be introduced for buying or selling good services and labor by Russian individuals and businesses. So they

want to punish you for even providing your labor. So if I said, hey, you know, I'll come over and help you paying offense or dig a hole or pack a box if you'll give me something, Nope, Nope, you can't even provide your labor in exchange for another object. That's what that's what Russia's saying. That's their words here, punishment should be introduced for your even providing your labor

by Russian individuals. Which isn't surprising, right, I mean, you would expect something like that out of China or Russia, at least in the world that I grew up under. Maybe the world is a little bit different these days. And so hearing something like that from China or this is I'm reading from Russia, isn't that surprising? Growing up under the Cold War where they try to kind of control every area of your life. Um, and this again, the quote unquote optimal solution would be to ban crypto

in Russia, says the bank. The optimal solution, But the optimal solution for who? For who? That's that's a central planner saying that that's a central planner saying that, right, it's not a free market. That's not the land of the free. That's Russia. Well, let's talk about what happened in the US US of A today, the land of the free becaus As I said, I was listening to this, Uh this congressmen and lawmakers, regulators um talking about this all day, and uh kind of sounds like, exactly like

what I heard out of China and Russia. Not something that you wuld expect to hear from the Land of Three. So let me hear. Let me tell you what they said here led by a good old Senator Elizabeth Warren. By the way, you're listening to the markma Show. We're

talking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and the decentralized revolution. We're talking about why governments wouldn't want you to have it, and what I want to talk to you about what the USA is actually saying, and why are they kind of sound like Russia and China, and why I think it's wrong. Um, So I'm gonna tell you exactly what they said and where I think you need to focus your perspective. So don't go away. I'll be right back,

all right, Welcome back. You're listening to the Mark Moa Show, and we're talking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and the decentralized

revolution that's happening right now before our very eyes. And before the break, I was talking about, um, China banning cryptocurrencies, and I was talking about Russia now talking about banning cryptocurrencies, and I was planning to you exactly what they said and the reason why I want to tell you that is because I want to put that into contrast in to what the United States is actually saying today and so, um, there's a big, big conversation going on led by Senator

Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, and they're saying that cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, contributes to rising energy costs and global warming because of its use of power generated by fossil fuels. Um. But uh, CEO of bit Freery, Brian Brooks, who actually used to work in the Treasury Department that o c C Comptroller of the Currency. Now he's in the private markets. But he said, quote, it's not up to the government to decide if bitcoin is important to the country's future.

It's up to the market end quote. And I love that quote because that's exactly right in the Land of the Free, in a free market, is up to the market to decide what technology is to be used. It's

not up to it. Now again, what I read to you from Russia, I mean that sounds like something that would come from Russia or China because they are a communist country that is a centrally planned economy meaning essentially planned, meaning a few people decide for millions or hundreds of millions of in China's case, billions of people what they should all be doing in their lives. That's not how the Nice States is supposed to work. And I suppose to THEAY is supposed to be a free market, so

it's not to the government to decide. It's up to the market, as Brian brook says, and I agree with that. But let's let's dig in and see what they're really saying here. So here's a quote from a Senator Elizabeth Warren, and she says, quote the extraordinarily high energy usage and carbon emissions associated with bitcoin mining could undo much of our work to tackle the climate crisis, not to mention the harmful impacts of crypto mining has on local environments

and electricity prices end quote. Um. And then she went on to say, quote, it is time for Congress and federal regulators to step up and address the serious risks that crypto poses to wait for it, wait for it, our economy and our environment end quote. So what Elizabeth Warren is saying here is the same thing that China and Russia are saying. Cryptocurrencies pose a risk to our economy. That's what she said, the economy and environment. But let's

just focus on the economy. Then we'll go to the environment. So the economy piece. Um so is she saying that having an escape route basically what Russia said? That what China said, by having an escape route takes away their ability to manipulate the economy. Kind of sounds like that's what she's saying. If we if we had a party, and if I had a giant party, and I had everybody over there, and um, I was trying to control the party, I don't know, you're you're too loud, everybody

do this or whatever, and everybody left. Eventually I'm the only one wh left at the party, and I have no control any over those people because they've all left there. They're all started their own party somewhere else. And that's

kind of what happens with the money supply. Uh. The more of that China or Russia or in the United States wants to manipulate the money supply, people just want to leave, they want to opt out, they want to go to something else, and it undermines their ability to manage the economy because we're not using their economy anymore, which is exactly what she's saying. Um, she's been saying a lot of this, and then she said, also the environment. So that's the piece that I really want to dig

into right now. Um. And so uh companies say they have powered mining farms with energy that would have otherwise gone to waste arrangements with some utility companies looking to unload trapped or stranded energy and power, uh, for example, hooking up mining units to oil welles relying on natural gas that's typically burned off as a drilling by product.

So that's what is really happening. But she says, quote crypto mining facilities energy consumption is also causing a significant increase in energy costs for local and small businesses and residents. She said, all right, so that's the part that I want to talk about. So, um, this is the debate that's going on in uh behind closed walls in your government in the United States today. UM. It's uh, it's bad for the economy, and it's bad for the environment,

and it's jacking up rates. And so because of that, we have to go and protect everybody, and we have to take away people's rights and control the free market. But let's take a look at what they're saying, and see if there is any truth to that at all,

because I say there's not. And so, um, the first part there is that it's a it's a waste of energy or it's bad for the for the environment, because it's wasting energy, it's burning fossil fuels, as they say, right, So, I think there's a giant misconception with that right off the bat, and that is that as they kind of hinted to, that it is using electricity that most people

aren't using. And so what we can see is that, Um, there was an article written by Newsweek back in December of seventeen and the World Economic Forum, good old Cloud Schwab picked it up and they said back in seventeen that by so that was two years ago now, they said that all bitcoin mining would consume all of the world's energy, all of it, all of the amount of energy that produced in the world would be consumed by bitcoin.

Was but that was two years ago, did it? Well? No, As a matter of fact, the world uses over one hundred and seventy thousand, hundred seventy thousand terawa hours of energy per year and the bitcoin network uses less than zero point one of the world's energy consumption for a network of a hundred million estimated users. So that means that Bitcoin's energy uses is a rounding error. It's a

rounding error as far as global energy usages. Uh. And and a bigger piece of this is that all the energy that Bitcoin is using, the rounding error, the zero point one percent, all that energy is from otherwise wasted energy sources. So let me explain to you about that.

So first off, um, if you say that Bitcoin network uses too much energy, okay, but it uses less energy than Google us less energy than YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, the cruise industry, Christmas lights, household drying machines, private jets, the zinc industry, and on and on and on. So it uses less energy than household drying. Is has household drying a waste of energy? I mean, come on, go hang up your clothes. Do you need to be on YouTube?

It uses less energy than YouTube? Is YouTube a waste of energy? What about air conditioners? Is it? Uh? Do we do we need to have air conditioners? Where I live here by the beach, I don't have an air condition around my house. None of the houses have air conditioners,

So why should you have one? It's a waste, right, it's pretty interesting they say that, But bitcoins energy uces is the closest to about the cruise industries energuces and maybe cruise industries are a waste of energy too, but bitcoins are used by more people and the network scales way better. So um. But the thing is is one, it's not using if the world's energy, it's zero point one.

But let's talk about that zero point one for a second, because not only is it using wasted energy, it's actually helping. It's actually helping pioneer new energy technologies. It's actually helping pioneer new countries to come online. And so I would say that's a net positive, not uh not a not a not a net drag. So um, how bitcoin uses otherwise waste energy? How does it use wasted energy? Well, it's pretty simple. It's about supply and demand, right, It's

supplying the man. If there's more people using something than there is, if there's more demand, then there is supply, the price goes down, and vice diversia operates the other way. You're by the way, you're listening to the Mark ma Show. We're talking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, the decentral revolution, we're talking specifically about China and Russia cracking down on it. Why and what the United States is saying that sounds exactly like what Russia and China is saying, and I'm

proving why it's completely wrong. I'm gonna be back with more. Don't go away, all right, welcome back. You're listening to the Mark Moa Show, and we're talking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and the decentralized revolution, and um, I'm talking about what came out of Russia today and also has happening in the United States. And they're both saying that we need to shut down cryptocurrencies because we can't allow people to move into them because it will undermine our financial

system be bad for the economy. The United States has taken a little bit of a different tact and they're saying that that, but they're also saying that it's it's bad for the environment, and so bitcoins mining specifically is bad for the environment, and so we need to be able to shut it down. And uh, I'm drawing the I I drew. I'm past that, but I drew the

comparison that. Okay, it's one thing for China or Russia to say that, you know, coming from a communist country that's centrally planned and controlled, but not from a free country, not from a free market. It's pretty pretty crazy in my opinion. But even more than that, even even even arguing that supposedly we're in the land of the free and they shouldn't be controlling that. Even worse than that, their entire argument is wrong. It's all built off of

a false premise. And so the premise that bitcoin waste energy. So um I was explaining how they said in in which was two years ago, bitcoin would consume more energy than the entire world, but that that didn't come to that didn't come to pass. Like every other model the government puts out, it's wrong and it actually uses less than zero point one percent, uses less than a quarter percent of one a quarter of one percent um. It's

a rounding era. But even more than that, all the energy being used is actually energy that would otherwise not have been used. So an example in California in the summer, in in California, we have like a tiered electricity rate, so the more you use, the more you pay, And in the summer, at the top tier you're gonna pay about forty cents per kilo one hour. But bitcoin miners can't afford to pay forty cents per kilo one hour. Um, they need less than five cents. Really, they need less

than three cents. So they can't compete here. So they're not going to come set up in California and compete for our energy and which is going to drive prices up on me. They can't do it. So if it's forty cents in California, how could they find three cent power, Well, they'd have to go somewhere where it's being wasted, and so um, they would move somewhere where they have extra

energies not being used. One of the areas that's being done is all throughout um Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota in the in the Midwest, and they go where there's oil coming out of the ground, and where there's oil coming out of the ground, there's also natural gas. The problem is that most of this oil is so far so remote out in the middle of nowhere. The natural gas, it's not economical to capture it, and so it's being either vented or flared. Vented means they just

let it just escape in the system. Flare it means they actually light it on fire and it kind of burns into the system. Either one arguably isn't too good for the environment to just be releasing that into the atmosphere. UM, and a's and as a waste. Right, all that energy is just being released and when it could be captured. Per the U S Energy Information Administration, they said in that Natural Gas Annual reports that one point for eight billion cubic feet of natural gas was vented or flared

per day on average in the US. That's about a hundred and fifty terawatt hours of energy for the year, which is higher than the estimated total peak level of Bitcoin's annual energy usage. As a matter of fact, the global flare gas recovery potential is eight times larger than the Bitcoin networks energy usage. So we need oil that's not going away. Um, if you want your food delivered to the store, and you want your Amazon packages delivered, and you want to drive to work, we need oil.

You want to fly to go see your family, you need oil that's not going away. And as natural gas is just being vented or flared, it's being wasted, it's not being captured, and it's maybe even harmful So what bitcoin mining has done is gone and captured that collected it so it's not being vented or flare anymore, and then turning it into energy. So not only is it using energy that would be wasted anyway, it's actually a net gain because instead of being vented or flared into

the ecosystem, it's being captured and used. See it's not bad. It's being used and they're not competing in New York with houses and businesses or in California for energy. They're going places where it would already be wasted. And not only are they using wasted energy, they're actually helping the ecosystem. But what else, So bitcoin mining is a grid battery.

So um, what, especially in California, what they want to do is they want to move us to what they call renewable energy, which is kind of a big joke. There's no such thing as renewable energy. Um, if I need a windmill, a windmill lasts for twenty years and I have to buy I have to build another windmill, I wouldn't call that renewable. That just means it just lasts a little bit longer. Same with solar panels. They last about the same time. And they have to be replaced.

How renewable is that anyway? Um, But they really want us to move to wind and solar. The problem with wind and solar is their intermittent power sources, or I like to call them unreliable, because it doesn't blow all the time, and it doesn't the sun, it doesn't shine all the time, and so what happens is um. Like in Europe they're having these energy crisis is partly because they had a very low wind year, which who would

have thought. Sometimes the wind changes, and so in order for window solders to ever work at all, what they have to do is they'd have to overproduce. So they'd say, um, sometimes it doesn't it's not as windy or sunny, so um, if it's less windy or less sunny, we'll only get less power. So we need to overproduce. We have to build way more windmills or way more solar than we

would need. The problem is when it is windy and when it is sunny, then it's producing more power than is being used, right, so they have to over buy. So what what bitcoin mining would could do is work with those energy grids and so on days when it's super sunny or days when it's really windy and they're overproducing power in the homes in the area can't use it all. The bitcoin miners can turn on and they

could use that energy. And when the when the wind drops or the sun drops and they need more energy, they just shut the bitcoin miners off. And so in that way they can make wind and solar actually more economical and could actually help us scale to more wind and solar than without it. It can help that future come without Without bitcoin mining, the other option would be to build batteries to store all that. The problem with that is the biggest battery factory in the world is

the gigawat factory by Tesla. It would take them five thousand years to make enough batteries to store the energy for the United States for one one single day. Five thousand years to make enough batteries to store energy for one single day. We probably need to store energy for weeks in case we have bad weather for a few weeks, and so you can understand it's theoretically impossible to make enough storage for what we need. And so bitcoin is a way that we could easily scale into wind and

solar if we still wanted to do that. We can also see other things like, for example, UM new energy sources. So for example, UM, there's a company that's oak Low that's starting to make these little mini nuclear reactors and they they want to launch these new little mini reactors. But the problem is is that, UM, how do they how do they launch that? How do they scale that?

And so they're going to have to go build a a new little nuclear reactor, but in a in a new area, but there may not be enough people to use that energy that's being used at that time. And so what they can do is they can hook up bitcoin mining to use that power until there's enough homes and businesses that come in to start using a lot utilizing the power that's being made by that reactor, and then the bitcoin miners can just pack up and move.

Same thing in other countries. So you have other countries that are bootstrapping and so UM. Part of the reason why in the Congo or and uh, you know South America they don't have big economy there is because there's no good electric sources or power and so they could tap into like a hydroelectric dam for example, but there's no businesses or homes to use all that power, and so there's no way for them to raise the money to justify the costs. It's like a chicken or the

egg scenario. And so what they could do is they could build that um that you know, that that power plant power generation plant, hook up bitcoin mining, and automatically start making money, which justifies the cost. Then as businesses and cities are built around that new energy source and it becomes competitive, the bitcoin mining can just pack up

and move somewhere else. And you see in that way, one it's it's only using like zero point one percent of the world's energy anyway, but it's only using energy that's already being wasted or not being used. When I say wasted, I mean wasted as not being used. Um, not that it's a waste of somebody's time. Like um, if I don't eat my leftovers and they go in the trash, it was wasted food, right, it wasn't used.

But not only is it using such a small percentage to rounding aerror, not only is it using such a small percents rounding airror and it's not being used by any other source, it's actually doing a net good because it's helping clean up the environment. It's helping to scale wind and solar, and it can help other countries scale their own energy. So when you hear these regulators in Congress talking about trying to take away the market's ability to work on a free market, just know their entire

premise is faulty. Anyway, you're listening to the Mark Moa Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about cryptocurrencies and the decentralized revolution. We're talking about the land of the Free. Um, I'll be right back with more. All right, welcome back. You're listening to the markma Show, and we're talking about

bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and the decentralized revolution. And I've been talking about um, China banning cryptocurrencies and Russia bannon cryptocurrencies, and today the United States talking about the same thing, starting to sound like Russia. UM, I have confidence that it's not going to happen. And uh, I think the United States will continue to take the lead in this.

I think they'll continue to flourish. That's my hope. I think you know right now we see um that you know, President Biden was on the news this week talking about dealing with Russia and the potential war going on. In the Ukraine. Obviously tensions are high with China. Maybe, just maybe, UM, the US might want to take the opposite position of Russia and China and not the same. And uh, I

think it's in our economics interest. We've seen that when China kicked out all the bitcoin mining, the United States became the big beneficiary of that. Hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity have been brought to the United States. I'm not sure how many. I'm sure tens of thousands,

of not hundreds thousands of jobs have been created. And some other big news happened this week UM, and that is that UM, in order to scale these bitcoin miners, they take special computers and they use these chips inside of them, these ASIC chips. And these chips have been UM they're kind of specialty chips, and they've been manufactured by who would who would you guess China. China has

been making these these chips. And so we have all these UM American companies and Canadian companies and they're buying all these Chinese chips. And we saw this week announcement

from Intel. Intel, which is is you know, makes most of the chips for the PCs announced that they are going to start building bitcoin mining chips, which is pretty cool again, American, American free markets, American quality coming into the space to continue to build this out UM, it says, a market leader in computer computer chip manufacturing, Intel has already secured at least one buyer for its upcoming bitcoin mining chips, according to a statement filed with the U

S Securities and Exchange Commission, and it says that they have orders placed for UM before May, as the world's biggest chip maker tiptoes into the industry. Now, remember when we talk about um new technologies, we don't want to focus on the short term price. As a matter of fact, I haven't even talked about the price today, amazingly. We want to focus on the growth of the network, and

we want to focus on the development on the network. Right, So is the network growing, the amount of users, etcetera. And is the development happening on the network growing as well? And when you see a US company, the largest, the world's biggest chip maker, decide to jump into the bitcoin mining industry, it's a pretty big sign, right, instead of just small little uh specialty people the no no, no, no no. The world's biggest chip maker is now jumping

into the industry. If that doesn't legitimize what is going on, then I don't know what does um. And though while I know I was talking about, you know, some of this um bitcoin mining coming under fire from the regulators, I think most of the market is probably agreeing that that's not really happening. Otherwise you wouldn't see companies like Intel jumping in and spending so much money to do that. But yeah, I think a couple of things that I

think about in regards to this one. Obviously, we need to bring jobs back, we need to bring money back, We need to bring the economics back from China and the rest of the world back into the United States. So I love to see American companies jumping into that. Another thing that's kind of interesting. This article doesn't say but this is just my own, my own thinking out louds just that's all it is. Is not official. I'm

just thinking it's out loud. But in the bitcoin community, we've seen the we've seen the entrance of of the military. We've seen the entrance of specifically the Space Force, and uh, the U. S. Space Force has gotten involved. And there's one person UM that is is been making a lot of noise in the space and um, he says he's been specifically put there in M I T and in the bitcoin space to figure out what is in the

nation's best security interest in regard to bitcoin. And he's been suggesting that it's in the US is security interest if they were to start mining bitcoin. And he's been angling something called the hash wars, and the hash wars are a computer, so a bitcoin mining computer, if you hook it to the network, you secure the network by one by an electricity and two running the computer and it generates hashes, and those hashes is what secures the network.

And he says that he thinks it's in the nations the U S nation's best security if they were to get a lead, get a headstart on on the bitcoin mining. And that's what he's kind of been encouraging and pushing. But how can the US military jump in and start mining starting into the hash war, Um, if they if we don't have US equipment right, they can't do that.

And so it's interesting and again this is just my thinking out loud, but I've been watching this develop over the last six months or a year, and uh, you know, he's been pushing for this, and and he's a low level ranking person. I mean, um, so he's not obviously we don't we don't see uh general is talking about this or whatnot. But just kind of like I said, thinking out loud, Um, he's thinking about it, which means

people above him are thinking about it. And Um, the US can't really do that, but now maybe they can if we have a US company making the bitcoin mining chips. Obviously the military can make them on their own, but they typically you know, form those contracts out. And so now if we have a US company making those chips, maybe that changes something. So I don't know, something to watch, um,

something cool to think about. Um. And then I guess another big thing that I saw this week that was kind of making sense is that again thinking about things in terms of both UM user adoption as well as growth on the network. One thing that's been really I've been watching is what's happening down in l Salvador. If you don't know, El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender, meaning it's as good as any other money, or it's their legal money and government money. As a matter of fact,

I've been working with the people down El Salvadoor. Have been down there a few times, and you can basically go buy anything anywhere in El Salvador, Starbucks or McDonald's with bitcoin. And so that's done a lot for user adoption. Millions of people have come online and it's amazing and and uh, if you're an American and you haven't really traveled down there, you maybe don't grasp this. But most people in El Salvadoor don't have bank accounts. And they

don't have bank accounts because they can't afford them. They don't really have access to them. And if you don't have a bank account, with a mobile phone, with a smartphone, you're you're pretty much equal. You could learn anyone anything, meet anyone, do anything on a phone, right, So the phone is kind of the great equalizer if you have Internet, but not if you can't join the global financial system.

So you know, a kid could start a Instagram account, make a Hunter grand no problem today, but not if you can't join the global financial system. You have to have access to finance system, and most El Salvadoor and people don't have that um and most merchants don't either, And so bitcoin has fixed a massive, massive problem for them, and I know a lot of people the US don't understand why there's any value to bitcoin, but the people in El salvadore A certainly do. And what we've seen

continuing to develop down there. Big news this week I thought was pretty cool was El Salvadore now is is looking to back low interest rate loans that are backed by bitcoin for micro and small businesses across the country. So the way that a country grows is through their gross domestic product, and the way they do that is by businesses starting up. You need businesses, you need people working, you need to produce goods and services. The US doesn't

understand that they've shipped all their jobs offshore. But El Savadore wants to start a program to give micro loans to businesses. Increased businesses, increase employment, generating new goods and services and so right now, because the banking system doesn't really work down there, um, they don't have this. Also, Al Salvador has roughly one point two million businesses in the country, roughly sixty or micro businesses or subsistence businesses.

Over micro businesses are self funded via informal loans or loan sharks. Okay, so that's what they have to do for money. Um, they may pay as much as fifteen dollars a day for a hundred dollar loan, which make annual interest rates over ten thousand per cent. So how can a business grow if it doesn't have any capital, has no access to money, and any money it gets, it's gonna have to pay ten tho percent interest. Businesses can't make that. They can't and so they want to

be able to give bitcoin backed loans. Again, they don't have access to banking, they don't have access to the the capital credit, and now they do with bitcoin. And now they're going to scale out bitcoin loans, which will then scale out the businesses and really increase the economic activity of what else Salvador is doing. It's amazing. I love to see it. I'm super encouraged by it. You're listening to the Mark My show. We're talking about bitcoin and

cryptocurrencies and the decentralized revolution. Covered a lot of the hottest news stories of the week. Hopefully you didn't miss out. If you did, you can check me out on the I Heart podcast network and catch up on that. Uh so much going on every every week. I love being with you. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening,