What's up, how are you guys this week? It's actually President's Day Monday here at Frankie's Fru Hange Meet, and I guess it would've been a little ironic and suitable to do the Chinese introduction enlisting the help of the CCP, but maybe we'll save that for next week because I'm not in the mood. So a decent amount of stuff going on this week. I won't walk around and I'll see how good my memory is because I don't have anything right now. I am fried, guys. I'm completely fried. I need to sleep for like 40 hours straight and then wake up in Medellin, Columbia. That's what I do. So it's something, it's always something. So it's Monday, my guys just left. I have to work in while we work about nine hour days. Forgot to show you guys in the vlog last week. The deodorant is back on Frankie's Naturals with a funny new logo, and we also have another new product which is like a moisturizing cream, marrow cream in his bone marrow, the silly logo. And then on organ supplements we have Frankie's Detox Movie. I'll probably do a full video on this this week for you guys, trying and explaining it more. Yeah, I just wanted to show you guys that stuff real quick because I forgot to show it last week, but we do have a decent amount of restocks, maybe some new stuff on Frankie's Syringe Movie, but really just a lot of restock, so let's hop in the fridge and show you guys. So over here, the sheet milk is finally back. Pretty limited amount, but I'm telling the farmer that you guys want it, so we'll try to get more sheet milk, maybe even goat milk, as well as other dairy products like yogurt and kefir. We did a few shorts on it, we got our cheese delivery in, you guys can see half the wheel of Parmigiano there. But that means all of the cheeses are restocked. You guys can check on the website, I think we have about 12 different types of raw milk cheese, here's some reclets, that's the Parmigiano, down there is some Vanchego, Gruyere, all high quality raw milk cheeses, and then we have more affordable local A2 cheeses from the Amish Farm. Key for grains, finally back in stock. You guys might have bought all these already, but we were sold out for a month or two. We've had the Jardinier for a few weeks now, but what's finally back is the garlic dill pickles. These are delicious, we were just fermenting them for too long, so these are perfect, about a two week lacto fermentation. Plenty of these available on the website for $10 a jar. You can't get lacto fermented pickles anywhere really. They don't sell them online, you'd have to make them yourself, which is, it's probably more expensive to make these yourself, because you can't buy organic cucumbers in bulk, you can't get all the organic stuff in bulk, and then we use the glass bottle mineral water. Speaking of which, the new water kefir is here in the Farrellale bottles. I've been drinking this every day, it's kind of getting my gut back in shape, and then we still have a little bit of the Mountain Valley ones left over, but these are much larger for the same price, so we lowered the price of all the water kefir to $750, but those are larger than these bottles, so if you guys are getting the orange or the pineapple, you're getting a deal. I'm gonna take some of these home with me for lunch and dinner. We got all the fresh roast beef and turkey breast. Looks delicious, cooked nice and rare. This is what's left of the fresh lamb share and fresh beef share, probably be gone by tomorrow. All right, let's hop in the freezer. So the beef testicles are finally back in stock, individual beef testicles. These are between 0.7 and 1.1 pounds, so some of these are pretty big, some of them are a little on the smaller side, but the price evens out so that if you buy a couple of them, you'll get the same amount.  How funny of a news headline would that be? Meat, YouTuber throws frozen beef testicles with customers with them. Oh God, help me. We also got the thymus in stock, beef sweetbreads. Over here, we restocked a fresh batch of the beef and barley stew. Yeah, and the last glandular that's back in stock is the beef ovaries. We put these in a slightly smaller package this time. These are four ounces, one quarter pound beef ovaries. Plenty of adrenal over here still. There has been a price reduction on the beef liverwurst. It's only $10 now. We'll read or review about it later. Over here, we have all of our pork share items. So you're gonna get one of each, 10 different items in the pork share. So here is just the plain ground pork, nice, fresh, coarse grind, very delicious. This is the plain smoked pork sausage. Here is a pork roast. You're gonna get one roast in the order. Pork ribs, same thing, one of everything guys. Here we have some pulled pork. So this is the pork butt, just smoked with salt added nice throw right on the sandwich. It's cooked.  Plenty of pork chops here. Over here, this is the head cheese, very unique product. I don't think anyone else is making that. Over here we got some liverwurst, pork liverwurst. And then down here, there's some bacon and down there is some pork ham. So very artisanal products, corn and soy-free, local pork, we got from our Amish buddies. You guys can get that pork share very affordably on the website. And we still have all of our regular Iberico pork stuff. And we should be getting Iberico ham sometime this week, which I'm excited about. I mean, we should have been offering that for a while, but finally getting it. Here's the other beef share stuff. We got the collagen sausages and the hot dogs. These are delicious. I might do a recipe with these on the weekend. Running pretty low on chicken. I mean, we have whole chickens, but like we're out of chicken breast and chicken thighs right now. We restocked on the boning quail, but the chicken drumsticks, kind of the only thing we have left right now, as I said, besides the whole chicken. Plenty of bone-in, quarter-house steaks, running kind of low on the bone and ribeye. We have all of the soups for the most part. We got the vichy sois, beef and bone broth, running a little low on, but we'll make more this week. We just restocked the chicken and chicken broth. So the plain chicken stew is restocked. That's the collagen broth. This is the beef and bone broth, little darker color. And this is the regular just chicken stock. So we have a lot of high quality prepared meats for you guys, so you don't have to cook yourself. Over here, a bunch of restocks this week. We got plenty of grass-fed ribeye steaks, plenty of Ibarricle pork bacon, and we also restocked some sirloin steaks. Here's more of those bone-in, quarter-house, those look really good. Down here is even more of the liverwurst that we have back in stock. Plenty of beef pet food guys, it's only 550 a pound. Beef pet food, raw organs. Been a fresh shipment of strawberry and chocolate ice cream this week, because we ran out, so there's our strawberry, there's our chocolate. Run a little low on vanilla, but they'll restock the vanilla this week as well. Over here we have all of the different types of rib restocks. So these are just bone-in, long bone short ribs. Here we have bone-in cross cut short ribs, so just cut a little differently. And then here we have boneless short ribs. So all of these ribs are in the whole cuts section on the website. Just a whole lot of beef tongue, lot of beef bacon restocked. We also restocked our lamb loin chops, the rack of lamb, and then we got a bunch of fresh ground lamb. Yeah, I'm not quite sure any of those products are brand, brand new, but we have come out with a lot of new stuff over these past few weeks, and the Iberico ham that's coming this week is also gonna be new. I mean, we're gonna have to sell like four ounces for like $15. I mean, guys, it's literally the most expensive ham in the world. It costs like over $100 a pound to buy, even my cost. So we're gonna try to buy purchasing the shoulder muscle instead of the leg muscle. It's a little more affordable, and then if we shop around different producers, we can make it reasonable, because I think in a restaurant, if you bought that ham, it'd probably be like, I don't even know, because I actually try to look up restaurants that serve it, and it's pretty rare to find, and even if I'm guessing it's, you probably pay like $50 for like a plate of just a few ounces in a restaurant. Super expensive stuff, but we'll see how that shows up this week, and hopefully it turns out pretty good. So before we read some reviews, I'm sure most of you saw the vlog last week where I was kind of calling out the scammers. They seem to take it as a little bit of a challenge, because I think I got like five new charge backs just in the past few days on the business, but thankfully you guys are supporting us, and the extra orders are offsetting the charge backs to some degree. But I mean, I'll try to paint a picture for you guys.  All I do is work, guys. And I'm in, I wake up, I do an hour to work on the computer. I barely have time to take a shower, eat, do normal things, come down to work in the freezer a few hours, do another stuff a few hours, go back home, straight back to work on the computer. And that doesn't include me filming YouTube every day and doing the social media stuff and all that. So I'm basically working myself to death, and I'm putting so much effort into these products.  I'm really putting a lot of knowledge and time and creativity and ingenuity and care into everything. No one is, like, that beef barley soup we just made, I guarantee you, no one's ever sold anything that high quality online.  So for me to put that much effort and do everything and then have these people file charge backs, it's like, it's just pure scum of the earth. It's one thing if I was like, like if you're not running a legitimate business or you're selling like vapes or like cigarettes or something weird, yeah, okay, that's one thing. But it's literally these evil people picking on one of the most legitimate and helpful businesses. And what really kills me is I'm not doing this for money. You guys know, I gave away over $30,000 to blind and disabled people. I'm not the type of person that would ever want to live beyond my means. Any money I make extra is either gonna go back into the business or be given away. That's just the type of person I am. So that makes me question like, okay, if I don't really want anything, you know, why am I working so hard and killing myself to help people in basically an evil world on an evil planet? I won't complain too much more about that. It's just a little discouraging to say the least. But again, thankfully you guys are continuing to support us and hopefully in a year or two I don't completely lose my mind and we get into an even better place. We got some reviews here. So five-star review for the beef liverwurst. Underrated gem. This might be my favorite product from the whole website and I've been placing regular order since the business launched. It's hard to describe this as anything other than a meat cake. Kind of like a softer version of meatloaf. I don't always like to eat super fatty meat. So including this in my diet ensures I'm getting all the healthy animal fats along with liver, which you can't even taste. Well, no, there is no liver in this, in the liverwurst. Being able to eat it straight out of the fringe as it's already cooked is convenient as well. It's very satiating and I just super easy and taste amazing. I seriously look forward to this every day. I'm always impressed with Frankie's innovation and the evolution of the business. It's great for the world that you do, so yeah. So the beef liverwurst is a special product that we're getting because it's made from the bones in the local beef shares. So you guys are supporting the local Amish farmers a lot and helping us get other products to you at very affordable prices. And guys, guys, $10 a pound for that beef liverwurst is, that's criminally low. Like, it's a fully cooked, prepared product ready to eat. Five star review for the grass-fed roast beef. The best, sometimes eat it by itself.  This is the best no competition that I have ever had, yeah. Now, I'm glad we're able to get the temperature on that roast beef right every time. It's really a world of a difference, guys. Just like five degrees in temperature on the cooking of the roast beef turns it from something like mediocre to like the best thing you've ever had. So I'm happy we're able to offer that to you guys. Five star review for the organ grind. Well worth the money. They obviously care about their products because they listen to the reviews. The new vacuum seal keeps the meat from aging quickly in the fridge while you defrost it. It also seems that they added a little more fat content. In my opinion, the meat wasn't dry after cooking it. We'll continue to order from Frankies, yeah. We should have more of the organ grind in stock this week. Five star review for the pasture-raced chicken eggs. The best eggs cannot go back to eating store-bought eggs. The way nature intended, yeah. We're shipping the eggs literally a few days after they're laid so you guys are getting eggs that are way fresher than the supermarket. Deliver it straight to your door. Add better prices than pretty much any local farm is selling them anyway. Four stars for the grass-fed beef jerky. Really good. Frank, you have to do this next time with some coconut minos and it would be perfect, but it was probably the best beef jerky I've ever eaten when it went and dipped it in some barbecue sauce because it's literally just jerked beef, no salt, pepper, some interesting wording in your review, buddy, but yeah, now we have very tasty beef jerky, good price on frankiesherryandfoods.com. Five star review for the natural collagen. Just a really good product. Has all the same qualities of typical powder collagen while removing all the negatives of conventional feed and chemical processing. I use an entire container once a month.  Five star review for the macronutrient digestive enzymes. I have to say oftentimes you take something and you're not entirely sure if it's active or not, but I have tested taking these and not doing so, and the results are very different. My whole digestive machine feels different when I take these, thank you, yeah. Those macronutrient enzymes that we have guys on organ supplements literally will dissolve food in your stomach. I prefer water kefir and water kefir grains, but if you're in like a really bad state of liver function and digestive health, that'll digest the food for you. Five star review for the wild caught salmon caviar. Delicious best salmon reavailable. Can't find a better price online. I eat it straight from the jar. Yeah, our supplier for that is very high quality stuff. Five star review for the milk-fed veal brains. Love them very tasty. Ophel is hard to find anymore, so I'm glad these are available through Frankie's Strange Meat. Fresh quality, I'll be ordering more, you can bet. Five star review for the best burger blend ground beef. Best burger. I eat a lot of local grassland meats from farms all around me, but I have to say this is truly the best burger blend I've come across. Frank, I'm loving every one of your products and foods. I bought over the past year and a half. Keep doing your thing and I'll be a forever customer. Much love. This is for the Naturals website, Frankie's Naturals. Five star review for the remineralizing tooth powder with K2. Amazing tooth powder. This stuff is magical. I used to use clay, but I turned to this to try it out. I did not regret it. The craftsmanship is apparent. It was a fine and easily dissolved powder. Frank is a genius, yeah. This is a pretty special product. No one else is making tooth powder with K2 and most of the tooth powder is on the market. A lot of these people, especially the corporate shills that are ashoturfing and small businesses, they don't actually know what they're doing. The reason I make these products, guys, is because my main gig is nutrition and health and my understanding of that allows me to know what should go into the tooth powder and what actually works. So a lot of snake oil out there for sure. Another review for the chicken eggs. Amazing eggs. Best eggs I've been able to find at a reasonable price. The eggs have a rich dark orange yolk. Very well packaged and all 12 doesn't arrive undamaged. We'll be ordering again. This is a Firestar review for the Arbarico Pork Sausage. Highest quality. You're the man, Frankie. You've changed my life on everything from food you sell to the valuable info you give on gut health. You're the most informative and best CEO a company could have. Very bold of you to call me a CEO. I'm glad to be able to have the highest quality foods to my door every week as a 22 year old. Firestar review for the A2A2 Royal Ice Cream. Ice cream ingredients are just what I've been looking for. Great taste and texture. I haven't found anything that compares to Frankie's clean, high quality ingredients. It's the best I've found and I've looked everywhere for a very long time. I'm so happy Frankie has produced this high quality product so I can now treat myself and family to ice cream again. Thanks, Frankie. I almost had a stroke trying to teach my homage buddies how to make that ice cream but I'm glad it's worked out. Yeah, half of a stroke and $15,000 of mistakes later and the ice cream tastes pretty good. Firestar review for the organic pancake and waffle mix. Best way to start your morning, I've been eating five to six pancakes with some raw milk and Frankie's way of protein every morning and let me tell you, these are the highest quality sources of protein and carbs you can consume with the big brains powder I'm fueled with energy for hours. No other company does it like Frankie. Thanks guys for the very kind reviews. We got a four star review for the Iberico Pork Sausage. Love it, great mild flavor, not overpowering with spices like most. Yeah, because we didn't, there's nothing in it, dude. It's all, it's plain meat. You know, when you have super high quality Iberico Pork like that, you don't want to add anything to it. Five star review for the grass root roast beef. Incredible, wow. The roast beef was amazing, juicy, rare. We'll be ordering again soon. Thank you, Frankie. Yeah, I'm glad you guys liked the roast beef. Five star review for the grass root beef and bone broth. Frankie, please never stop making these. I work 52 hours a week and don't have much time for cooking. This stew is so delicious. I eat it for lunch and dinner with Jasmine Rice. It's very easy on the budget for me. Frankie, please never stop making these. Five star review for the grass root ground beef. Delicious, nice and fresh ground beef. It is not too tightly packed and is very nice and tender. Arrive frozen solid with no tears in packaging. 10 out of 10. Yeah, we have the local ground beef now. Affordably. Got another review for the 8282 raw ice cream. Best ice cream ever. Had no idea vanilla ice cream could taste this amazing. Can't argue with the ingredients profile. As a comparison, I used to buy Van Luen. I mean, hey, we're two different, two different ballparks, buddy. Two different ballparks. Another review for the beef and bone broth. Tasty, healthy and convenient. Using these as quick meals on a very low carb diet. Tasty on their own. Filling easy to use as a base for all sorts of soups or stews. Now we're on to Oregon supplements. Five star review for the male virility, male hormone optimization. Outstanding product. My longest sun turned me onto this product. I noticed a difference right away. Yeah, I like taking that every day too. It really helps energy. Then we got a five star review for the Mastic Gum Kios Mastiha magical product. I feel some sort of high, a few minutes of chewing the gum. It was otherworldly, improved my digestion after I tested it with foods that give me indigestion. Phenomenal, thanks Frank for offering up such a gift. Yeah. I've definitely made the Kios Mastic Growers Association quite a bit of money. I still have not received a check in the mail. But whatever. All right guys, that's enough for me today.  Let me get out of here. Yeah, I showed you guys pretty much everything new. We got all the restocks in the freezer. Porkshare still available. The fresh beef and fresh lamb are probably gonna be gone after this week. We restocked the dill pickles. We got the grapewater kefir available. All the new stuff on Oregon supplements and Frankie's naturals. And yeah, I'm looking forward. Hopefully we get maybe some new stuff in this week. I don't know what's gonna happen. My lower back is still fried. And I threw up my shoulder yesterday. My front delt, I don't know if I tore it or something. All day finding the freezer and literally the last crate I moved, it was like a 40 pound crate. I like threw it and just the motion of me raising my shoulders is just not good. But hopefully I can take a little rest and start feeling better. But we'll see. You guys can go to frank-dash-found.com to see all of my interesting businesses. Frankie's syringe meat, Frankie's syringe foods, Oregon supplements, Wi-Fi shielding, Frankie's naturals. Almost forgot the Wagyu beef potato chips are back in stock. So we just restocked the potato chips. This week, they came on Friday. If some of you guys want the coconut oil, we can get those back too, but the demand was kind of low. Personally, I like the coconut oil more, but you guys want the Wagyu beef at potato chips. So that's what we restocked. But yeah, that should be it. I'll see you guys for next week. If I don't get a one-way ticket to, I don't know, what city did I joke about earlier? Columbia, Maine? If I could have cut me up over there. I'll see you guys soon. I'll see you guys soon.


My good friend George Mandrick, who sold bacon weaves and baklava and basically baked himself into retirement and sold that for Bitcoin in 2013 and 2014 and just held on to it. That's the way to do it. Life on Bitcoin, eight years later. In the early days of the show, we saw a few wild individuals who attempted to live on Bitcoin. The first I'm aware of was a pseudonymous cyberpunk who went by the name Plato. I think that was 2012, even before we started. Then there was the life on Bitcoin documentary where a newly married couple, plus a film crew, tried to pull it off. But mostly spent their time trying to explain to gas station attendants why they were trying to pay with something other than the money you'd expect. Forbes writer, and I think CNBC host, would eventually try the same things in San Francisco and New York respectively. Mostly they were hungry. But a lot has changed. From crypto credit cards to universal acceptance by PayPal compatible merchants, and seemingly more on the horizon as the Lightning network becomes a bigger and bigger part of Bitcoin, have we crossed the threshold? Can you now really live on Bitcoin without sacrificing so much of the convenience we're used to? On today's show, we'll talk about it. My name is Andreas and I'm Antonopoulos and this is Speaking of Bitcoin. I'm joined as always by the other hosts of Speaking of Bitcoin, Stephanie Murphy. Hello, this is Stephanie on Bitcoin. Jonathan Mohan. Hey, hey. Adam is out this week. Hearing the intro to this segment really brought back a lot of memories for me. And specifically this documentary, did you guys watch that documentary? It was called Life on Bitcoin. It's probably still available. And yeah, there was a couple. I think it was in 2013 or 14, really back in the early days. And we started the show in 2013, by the way. We've been doing this quite a while. So we saw some of the stuff happened at the time. But yeah, they were trying to go around and trying to buy gas was like particularly a problem. I also remember there was someone who was kind of developing a technology where you could kind of meter liquids like gasoline and pay with Bitcoin. And then there was maybe even a feature where you could sell extra gas back to it or something like that. But as far as I know, I haven't really seen that come to fruition yet. Certainly not if you go to any gas station, you can pretty much expect to pay with good old US dollars. And the Forbes journalist that Adam was referring to in this intro that he wrote was Kashmir Hill. And she was actually trying this, not just living on Bitcoin, but she was also trying another experiment, I think a few years later, where she tried to live without Google. And this was also surprisingly difficult. She was like, you know, not able to do email or calendar or it was just an experiment to see how much you depend on these things. And just like that, trying to live on Bitcoin is an experiment in seeing how much you depend on the odd currency or the, quote, normal forms of payment that everyone just kind of takes for granted. And I think it's pretty safe to say a lot has changed, but a lot has also stayed the same. We still have a lot of dependence on those forms of payment. And it would probably be pretty difficult if you were going to try to go around and live on Bitcoin. I haven't seen anyone doing that lately because now it's like not a novelty anymore, I guess. Bitcoin's been around for, you know, well over 10 years. So it's not a new thing. I don't think that there's been that much progress on this front. If you really wanted to pay for everything with Bitcoin and totally live on Bitcoin, maybe because there's not that much demand for it. What do you guys think? Well, I think there's also a distinction to be had here. And maybe we can, you know, do another topic on this. But in the payment realm, there's a distinction between delivery and payment and actual settlement systems. It's called DVP delivery versus payment. And that's the difference between when you receive goods for something versus when you actually settle out the delivery of the payment to the person for that good. And so when money was gold ours, delivery and payment were atomic. You want some chicken, you gave them some ounces of silver or a lot of chicken, you gave them some gold. And then when we transitioned into what we consider currency, they were promissory notes for the bearer instrument, which was the gold in a vault. And so you weren't actually getting the payment. You were getting a promissory note for the payment, right? And so while a lot of people found it insurmountable to directly pay for Bitcoin, Bitcoin's a lot like gold in that it is a commodity. It is a deliverable instrument. It's not a promissory note for an instrument. And I know a number of people who live on Bitcoin, but they don't directly pay for it. They pay for promissory notes that they got with Bitcoin. So for instance, gift cards. I know a ton of people that lived off of Bitcoin in 15 and 16 and 17 by buying Marriott gift cards, by buying Amazon gift cards. And so in the same way that when you use a dollar, you're not giving someone an actual bearer instrument. You're not giving them an ounce of gold. You're giving them a piece of paper that's deliverable to a real instrument. It sort of comes down to how much do we think the person needs to receive Bitcoin for that payment to have been a Bitcoin payment. I think when I started this, I neither understood Bitcoin nor money. And at that time, I wanted to try this almost ideological experiment of living on Bitcoin. And I failed as everyone else has. And then I realized over time, once I understood both Bitcoin and money after, then actually that wasn't a desirable goal.  You just didn't really want that. But unfortunately, that's the truth. Here's the thing. We've had Bitcoin since 2012. And in the beginning, I'd spend it. And then I'd regret spending it every single time. And as I kind of grew more comfortable with the idea of Bitcoin, and as I absorbed the meaning of a currency that is disinflationary in nature, that for me became almost like an endowment fund. Like my Bitcoin allowed me to maintain the same purchasing power with less and less actual Bitcoin being spent, if at all. And then that made me realize that I really didn't want to spend it. In fact, what I wanted to do was get rid of dollars. And the only times I spent Bitcoin was when I ran out of dollars, which made me realize that the best way to huddle is to have enough dollars to allow you to huddle. So that you don't have to spend Bitcoin? Yeah, exactly. The times when I really regretted spending Bitcoin was when I ran out of dollars and I had to liquidate Bitcoin in order to pay rent. And then it wasn't my choice of timing. It was whatever time I had to make that difficult sale. And usually the market timing wasn't good at that moment. And so I realized that actually holding some dollars allowed me to hold more Bitcoin. The ultimate answer to huddle was to huddle a bit less so I could huddle more strongly if that makes any sense. Yeah, no, it's kind of like you can't get a loan unless you don't need one. It's like if you have economic pressures that are forcing you to make decisions that are not always to your best advantage, then the deck is pretty much stacked against you, I guess. But that brings up a great point, Andreas, that I wanted to follow up on. I think at the beginning, I remember a lot of people trying to live on Bitcoin and it wasn't just the people who were documenting it and writing about it. I also knew a bunch of people who were doing this and just doing it in their private lives. And the reason they were doing it was because at that time, it was definitely ideological, like they were excited about Bitcoin, they wanted to spread the word, they wanted wider adoption. And they thought that if they offer it to people who sell stuff, then merchant adoption would drive all kinds of adoption in the economy. And I guess that is a little bit at odds with the idea of huddling, right? Because huddling also drives value of Bitcoin because if you huddle, there's less available for people to buy and it drives up the price, you know? And also it's a statement, right? If you invest in something and you keep it, you're saying, this is the good money. I wanna spend the bad money and keep the good money, right? It's like Gresham's law. I don't know if those two things are necessarily at odds with each other.  Huddling and also spending. But then I think the idea became more, well, we may not actually get to our goals by just encouraging merchant adoption. There was a period of time where there was, it seemed like a lot of merchant adoption going on where there were a lot of, you know, fairly big names that announced that they were kind of accepting Bitcoin for payments and stuff. But a lot of them dropped it and I don't really know like how clear it is that that drove broader adoption in general. Maybe it did a little bit, but there were some problems with it. At the time there was no lightning network and not even Segwit. So, you know, the fees were becoming an issue, the confirmation times and the issue of, like Jonathan was saying, you're delivering the goods right then and there, but you need to wait 10 to 60 minutes for a confirmation, depending on how big or high value the thing is to make sure that the transaction is settled. I think that's the narrative that kind of got added later. I remember this era of rapid retail adoption. Maybe it's a bit sarcastic, I'll call it the bit pay era. Yeah, a lot of them were using these payment processors. Right, and that payment processor specifically was really, really driving retail adoption. But it was a strange kind of retail adoption because they were instantly converting it to dollars to avoid any volatility, but also to avoid getting any of the benefits of a disinflationary asset. So it was kind of a soft adoption, a very soft adoption with almost no strings attached. But what ended the bit pay era, despite BitPay's preferred narrative, wasn't actually the fees. I think the real Kudugra came a bit earlier. At the end of 2013, the IRS memorandum that clarified the capital gain situation and required very, very cumbersome accounting, that made it so difficult for the customer to do small payments in Bitcoin. Because if they had to account for capital gains, essentially what the IRS did was they clarified that they were not going to give the de minimis exception that exists for every other foreign currency. They were not going to treat it as a foreign currency. They were going to treat it as a commodity, which means if you buy a $2 cup of coffee and that $2 cup of coffee appreciated from $1.98 cents, you had to account for the two cents in capital gains, even if the tax was below the threshold for every single purchase. Now for merchants who are transmitting directly into dollars, doesn't really matter. The difference in price is zero and BitPay was doing the accounting. But for all of the customers, that became such a huge burden. I immediately dropped my Bitcoin denominated credit cards or debit and I stopped buying things, especially small things with Bitcoin because it would cost me, I estimated on average, about a buck 50 in accounting costs or transaction. So it really wasn't worth it. Yeah, or you have to give up your privacy and use one of these creepy crypto tax tracking software, which I don't think a lot of people are excited about. So maybe they help some people, but it's like you can automate it and give up privacy and also pay for the privilege too, or you can do it yourself, costing you time and money if you have an accountant, even if you do it yourself. So yeah, you're right. That was kind of a party pooper for the people who wanted to use Bitcoin for everyday transactions. That was the end for me. And I can see the caught off very clearly. My 2013 taxes were a fricking mess. I had to go back into them at great expense, had several hundred transactions with Bitcoin. And then for 2014 onwards, we're down to dozens and then tens of transactions per year because it wasn't worth the accounting costs. And from that point on, between the tax treatment and Gresham's law, I really stopped even trying to live my life on Bitcoin. But interestingly enough, the rumor persisted. Even to this day, people will reach out to me on Twitter, reach out to me from media organizations and be like, aren't you the guy who lived exclusively on Bitcoin since 2012? And I'm like, no. Oh really? There's only one guy too. I don't know. I accept it as payment, but I also accept a bunch of other currencies. And trust me, I spend my dollars first. Not only that, I mean, I'll go as far and say that I am one of those craven people who uses credit cards from the enemy in order to get reward points and loyalty points for hotels and airlines, because I can and it makes sense and it would be stupid not to.  But I get the loyalty points and that way I can get the odd free hotel stay. So I'm not the poster child for ideological commitment to Bitcoin. I'm the pragmatist. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who was. I mean, I think it was more of a PR thing. Like anyone who was doing this was doing it to document it, to create interesting content. It's like, I did a hunter-gatherer challenge and I only ate what I could hunt for three weeks or something like that. It's like, ooh, that sounds interesting. I think I'm going to click on it, but I don't think it was ever really meant for much more than entertainment and to make a point, I guess, to like say, okay, if you try to do this, I tried it for you, so you don't have to. Here's what happens. It works like the hunter-gatherer example, exactly as you said, Stephanie. After 12 consecutive meals of only squirrel and rat, you get really sick of that plan. I also think there's like a realistic approach to it, which is it's not to say, I'm a raw food vegan. I don't eat anything beyond a seed.  And so whenever you know you need money, you spend the amount of dollars you would need that week of your Bitcoin to get the foreign currency to live in the foreign land that week. I would consider that person living on Bitcoin. Someone who is 99.9% in Bitcoin earns in Bitcoin and then only sells in order to portion out what they need that week in their foreign land. I wouldn't do even that. Honestly, what I did in practice was I earned some Bitcoin, and when I did earn Bitcoin, I prefer to hold it and not spend it at all, just vault it and forget about it. And then I also earned dollars and I use that to cover my expenses. And I was fortunate enough that I was earning enough to cover my expenses and living within my means. And that meant that I could get rid of my dollars. As fast as they would come in, they would go out and I would use the Bitcoin earnings as my savings. So I wouldn't do the conversion. And that also meant that for a very long time I didn't have any exposure to exchanges or having to deal with any of that or capital gains accounting very, very rarely. And I felt much more comfortable. The odd occasion where I did and I still do transactions is doing payroll directly in Bitcoin. And that's because other people wanted to be paid in Bitcoin directly, but I was quite happy to take dollars or Euro or yen or whatever, really. Yeah, I mean, I've dabbled in this too. I think like I've done all of the above, right? Like one time I was going to a festival and a lot of the merchants there were accepting Bitcoin for food and stuff like that, whatever you wanted to buy. And so I tried it. I was like, okay, I'll pay for stuff with Bitcoin. I had all the usual problems, bad internet, transactions not confirming, but everybody kind of knew each other. So it worked out. I've also done the thing where you kind of sell just enough for like a monthly budget if you're running short on cash or whatever. And I've been paid for my services in Bitcoin and paid other people for their services or goods in Bitcoin. So yeah, I guess I'm a part of the Bitcoin economy in that sense, but trying to have your whole life on it, I still think it's more of a thought experiment or like a promotional thing or like a documentary kind of thing. I really admire the people who did it the other way. Who didn't focus on spending Bitcoin and living their life by spending Bitcoin, but focused on earning Bitcoin and only Bitcoin exclusively. All of those people I know have retired. The perfect example of that is my good friend, George Mandrick, who sold bacon weaves and baklava and basically baked himself into retirement and sold that for Bitcoin in 2013 and 2014 and just held onto it. That's the way to do it. What you spend and how you spend it isn't as important it was what you earned and how you earned it. Do we think any of this is gonna change in the future? Tie in El Salvador, a lightning network, places where currency is not really usable? You know, on the topic of lightning, I was thinking about what we're saying, Andre, is about how transaction volume for Bitcoin as a merchant adoption transaction basis went down after that overly onerous accounting ruling occurred. And I look at this omnibus poison pill, you know, $2 trillion plan that's getting passed. $2 trillion? I thought it was like $5 trillion. My mouth can't say these words anymore, but you know, that's exactly what they're proposing is just a change on how overly onerous the reporting requirements will be. And so like I am becoming, you know, very cautious with this broad rule set as to what constitutes a broker and how it may be the death nail of lightning in a commercial context if it ends up being applied in the very similar way that, you know, it kills bit pay with the cap gains reporting rules. That's a very good point. Of course, it would only apply in the United States. What it would basically do is drive the use of lightning network for merchants, at least outside of the U.S. And it would force more of them to use custodial services instead of run their own notes which would serve the purposes of the surveillance schools of this type of legislation, but would ultimately cripple economic activity. But I don't think it's as big and as broad as really the lack of a de minimis exception on the capital gains. I think that affected so many aspects of the use of Bitcoin. It was a brilliant move to attack Bitcoin in an indirect way. But you might be right. We'll have to see how it goes. But you know, these rules are becoming so broad, right? That once you make something a low probability risk, as a commercial enterprise, you have to start accounting for how you would react if that were to occur. And you know, I've heard people that are in mining say, you know, well, if mining gets determined to be as regulated as payment processing, we'll just buy a bank. But at that point, you know, what problem are we solving? Are we just like reinventing the same situation we tried to avoid? That would be the ultimate irony and unintended consequence. If these rulemaking proposals didn't encourage any of the old players, give them some comfort and allow them to enter the new realm, but encourage the players in the new realm, the realm of cryptocurrency, to go and buy themselves some compliance offices on bulk by buying the banking license and the infrastructure that comes with it, which they can probably afford. I think the flippening that's going to occur for Bitcoin adoption, funnily enough, is going to be Jeb McKaleb. And I say that, you know, eating the crow from all the bad things I've said about him over the years jokingly. But, you know, Stellar right now has a market cap equal to the market cap of Western Union. And so if we have another 10x increase in this economy, in the crypto economy, if we go another 2x, Stellar could just take a 30% of their market cap and buy Western Union. And then they are Western Union. I think people don't realize like how incredibly close we are to the size of this economy when it goes from 1 trillion to 5 trillion to 8 trillion and what that will enable for miners and protocols and actors not to, you know, replace the old guard, but to literally own them. Perhaps the real AOL moment in crypto isn't the moment on Black Monday when AOL dumped 2 million newbies onto the internet, but the second AOL moment when AOL bought Time Warner and killed the media landscape that existed before. What do you guys think about some place like El Salvador, which we've been talking about a lot on the show lately, is it possible to live on Bitcoin there now because they have this seamless or, well, nearly seamless, it's supposed to be seamless, exchange between Bitcoin and dollars and it looks like there's going to be a local economy that's really supported to exist in Bitcoin. Well, there's this area called the Bitcoin beach or something like that that was doing this on a small level within El Salvador. I don't know how much broader that could get, but yeah, that's a perfect example. Well, they were also seated with a donor who gave each merchant there or each family or something some amount of Bitcoin to begin with. And I've heard something else too, like there was some mayor in a town in, oh boy, I don't know where, but somewhere in the southeastern US where this mayor wanted to give everybody in the town $1,000 worth of Bitcoin, give them. I mean, they would probably pay for it in their local taxes. I don't know how he was planning on funding it, but he wanted to give every resident $1,000 in Bitcoin, but the catch was they couldn't sell it for some amount of years, four or five years or something. Now, I don't know how you would enforce that unless you have the government holding the Bitcoin, the devils and the details, but... If only there were a way to lock over time Bitcoin sent to a particular address. Oh yes, well, there is, yeah. But would they do it that way? I'm not sure. But I mean, it seems like there are people who are interested in this idea, at least on a local level of economies that are supported to exist in Bitcoin. And will people transact directly in Bitcoin, maybe using Lightning or other ways, like maybe even paper notes or promissory notes or something like that, or will they exchange the currency to something else before they do it? I think the Lightning network is showing its true potential, especially in environments like El Salvador, where it's not really a choice of, do we do this with Lightning or not? It's, if we do this, it can only do it with the Lightning network. That's the only way to really use this on a retail basis for the purchasing power that you have in less developed economies. Now, what's interesting is that the strategic drive to have a neutral currency with a neutral monetary policy, the same drive that perhaps led El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender is felt by many other countries. So one of the rumors that is circulating right now is that Ukraine is seriously considering doing the exact same thing that El Salvador did, almost like a second act of that and adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. And there the motivation is clearly not to remove themselves from the sphere of influence of the United States as El Salvador did, but to remove themselves from the sphere of influence of Russia, you know, the ones who invaded part of Ukraine. And so this creates an interesting effect. And in all of these places, as Bitcoin is adopted as legal tender, that creates a circumstance where we can really see this idea of living life in a closed loop Bitcoin economy using the Lightning Network to do micropayments really flourish. It's becoming a real possibility. And I think in the future, it's going to be very different than it was in the past when we were trying it as an ideological experiment. This is now becoming not only a pragmatic option, a practical option, but perhaps even the most reasonable pragmatic option. What would you say is the over and under on the next 10 years, Bitcoin becoming used transactionally? Do you think that that's missing the point or that there really will be a point in the future in which people can use it every day as a currency? I think it's the same thing as the slogan. The future is already here, is just unevenly distributed. Bitcoin as a retail instrument as an everyday currency is already here, is just in these tiny pockets and islands. I think what's going to happen in the future is these pockets and islands are going to get bigger. They might get as big as entire countries or even bigger than that. But I think this trend isn't going away because all of the barriers to that level of adoption have disappeared over time, especially with the Lightning Network and all of the motivations for that kind of behavior, the disinflationary effects, the currency wars, the embargoes, the sanctions, all of these kind of geopolitical pressures are making it ever more necessary to detach from traditional financial systems. So what is that in over-under odds? I think that's a yes. And that's all the time we have for this episode of Speaking of Bitcoin. Thank you very much for listening. Today's show featured Dr. Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and myself, Andreas and Antonopoulos. Adam B. Levine was out for this episode. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and Gertie Beetz with editing by Jonas. You can send us an email at adam at speakingofbitcoin.show or leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. Until next time, thanks for listening.


Everybody forced here ripping its one two twenty two tops museum collection baseball hobby six box half case Number two, this is a random team style break. You can find these results of late in sports cards calm I dropped the results link recently. Thanks everyone for joining. Good luck Let's go ahead and get started All right guys, who do we think that the frame dot is gonna be of we got a frame dot will come in this We should in this six boxes here. It's the second half of the case I'm gonna say Not knowing the entire not knowing everything over the checklist. I'm gonna say So Sean says Bobby would you know, I don't know if he has frames I'm gonna say it's gonna be a retired player it's gonna be like a Like a brain Thomas or something like that or a pudge Rodriguez or something Dodgers auto Austin Barnes 11 to 50 to start us off Think it's gonna be a Tony no fear. That'd be sick purple Cal ripkins junior 48 of 99 Orioles Do you have a frame dot'll come in Okay, Shane or Anderson that's good call Yeah, the frame. I don't even know the I looked at the checklist. I just didn't check out who had what and what basically Yeah, dude Shane would probably be a little upset. Oh, there's a big checklist for him Whoever I said was on there. What did I say if on Rodriguez? Rodriguez is not on there this Frank Thomas Yeah, he is. Okay, so I'll roll Frank Thomas then that was the one that I said he's on that list So Bellinger Bregman Bobby Whit rookie base Dual relic auto Astros you'll eager to yell Yuli number 86 of 99 And a copper rookie Is that okay? Yeah, a little lighter than the other coppers Alec Thomas d-backs Cal is on there Cal Cal has the the framed auto. I don't think Bobby Whit has frames. No, I think it's just vets on the frames I don't know if any rookies have framed autos Haven't seen any yet Yeah, Wander doesn't either amazing Bieber Reggie ooh nice three color reds patch here Jonathan India 15 of 25 Nice card for the reds in a copper Vladdy He's on the box you guys is on the box. All right. Looks like she doesn't have to drive down here It can't be nice a J rod rookie base Chipper a canvas rookie. That's Wander Franco nice canvas there Look at this one quad relic That's Yankees angels Dodgers Phillies Aaron judge Mike trout mookie bets and Bryce Harper number eight of 99 Very nice card there probably a random you would need three of the four for majority here Over 50% let me check now. So I don't have to do it. We get to it Yankees is Jake W Dodgers is Adam L. I don't think anyone has more than two spots in this anyway. So yeah, probably random here Phillies is Michael S. Yeah, so that's three already random at the end on that one to 99 quad relic Judge trout bets Harper blue Chris Bryant Rockies 98 of 150 You can do some decent stuff. Maybe you get like a low-numbered Alec Thomas or something Just now Hoosiers. That's pretty cool. I'll do go check that out later on. We got to pull something big Come on wood frame one of one auto. Let's see. All right. There's a Caloralee rookie base to vey and a Brett braves Otto John Smoltz 60 of 125 and It's splendid splinter copper there triple or triple base cards here Bichette J. Ram Royce Lewis rookie Quad relic Astros Jose Al 2 base 77 of 99 and copper Strasburg So Hunter Green rookie base Reds Tony Gwynne canvas is that bone? Yeah, Alec bone canvas for the Phillies Pull the one-on-one. Oh, no, no, this Christian Yelich, but we have all one-on-one Brewers patch last break Christian Yelich patch card 23 of 35 Brewers Hit duty hit one 499 last night copper honest Wagner Main hit a 500-foot home run last night We have a 395 free shipping 394 99 link is in the bio for personal boxes And we will be ripping those late tonight The aza Alonso Torvalson rookie God triple relic auto eight bogs rays Hold this card last break 16 to 275. I've pulled two of the 275 only 273 to go you guys and Poo holes Cardinals 23 of 150 This is six blocks number two six blocks number two random teams Should be right on schedule full case number one is next. Oh, is this the frames? I Think it is I'm gonna go. I gotta see it. I can't wait. I was gonna set to decide away. All right. It's not wood It is silver black Think that's gonna be silver Chapman Ricky Jeter and the silver framed auto silver, Inc. Andre Dawson Cubs number 13 of 15 nice hit cubbies The hawk silver hawk right there Zm framed auto so again that is a case hit one per case on the framed autos So gold would be to like 25. I think silver to 15 black to five and wood is one of one Nice hit there Cubs Beautiful penmanship there got copper seager as a ranger the frames 393 95 we only sell them by the by the hobby box Robert trout and Vlad we got dual relic auto blue jays Jose Jose Barrios Barrios Barrios Barrios 12 of 50 blue jays Definitely one of his first blue jays autos and copper rookie hell the old Ramos Giants So beauty I am Johnson Bryson stock rookie. We've got a raised Jersey Austin Meadows 36 of 50 Still a ray and blue chipper Jones Braves 42 of 150 Who who who I did a video yesterday? Blizzard I didn't get to see I know cost us hit his first home run yesterday. So it's Red Sox man. That's pretty cool Ruhon Cole got canvas piazza for the Mets Quad relic Yankees DJ LaMaheuse 61 of 99 and copper Rivera Yankees Mariano Rivera Thomas. Yeah, there's a wonder base Got a Christian yellow shot on numbered 48 of 125. Do you think I throw this card 500 feet easy? Blue jays blue 11 of 150 bobe shits nice blue jays color match We are in central, Florida. We're near Orlando Hank Aaron Griffey canvas Mattingly for the Yankees should have known by the stash quad relic Dodgers Cody Bellinger's 18 of 99 Got purple killabrew 59 of 99 twins. Yes GP. Yes Group breaks blinding the group breaks or any points that you can use for more group breaks essentially Yeah, personals don't count for any of that, but it breaks all the way rookie Joe Ryan Brewers Jersey card Corbin burns 44 50 Burnzy and copper Griffey Marry's end of box number four of the break Full case one is up next guys. We got to get full case number two filled up I'm gonna get you a link right after these few cards And don't Hoskins Stanton nice Royce Lewis dual Jersey rookie auto twins Nice hits wins 37 of 50 good stuff there. Thank you. Yeah, man. I believe to my knowledge his first rookie card, right? At least his first and like a non base product Hank Aaron copper go tweet number two out case number two guys Is that seven to go? It's over halfway folds cheered random team style two teams respond. Yeah case number one starting right after this So we've just got the Full cases left daytime here Matt on the baseball channel is ripping three box PYC's He's ripping three box random divisions in a bit. I think he's doing three box random teams as well That's what I was saying Ram. It's pretty cool. He's got so much talent. I'd the twins are just cursed with injuries kind of stinks Bucks and a Lewis both Garreg Clemens and judge we got quad relic Phillies Bryce Harper 18 of 75 nice brace And a copper ishiro Mariners ishiro need a monster hit here Open for a book Della cruise verlander Ripken. We got nice patch card here. Number to ten is Clouber as a Yankee eight of ten Corey Clouber Yankees on the three color patch card Clouber as a Yankee Copper Soto Nationals Eloy Puckett Shohei very nice one-of-one auto Yankees Gio Arcella archival auto Great box for the Yankees Signs Giovanni Jake W. Congrats on the Gio one-of-one Yankees fans miss this miss this player for sure They made some weird trades Over the course of the past year Sick Gio. We'll get that maggot for you. We got copper yellets for the Brewers gold one-of-one beauty Very nice card All right. We got contrarus O'Neil Cruz Ricky base canvas is kelnick, right? Yeah, kelnick mariners White Sox dual jersey auto yes money Grandal numbered 114 of 357 strange numbering on that one and a purple buchette 37 of 99 blue jays last box I see the heat right here. Come on Show us a book. We saw the framed auto. Let's see if we can find a book now Best teams here from top tier Mariners Angels Braves Red Sox Yankees The rays have you know wander rookies and stuff have autos Hell yeah Ramos got a red Zotto Jesse winker 173 of 250 Canvas one only sick to copper Machado Always Mariners Angels Yankees Red Sox Braves Who else is always top tier feel these are usually top tier white Sox always have a lot of bad hits to say a Suzuki rookie Got canvas Perez stop it or Perez Royals Twins dual Jersey Auto Max Kepler Twins again 143 of 399 Shane Bosk copper rookie rays It just takes a while me to progress Ryan. I'm guessing that's the reason I know Freeman finally has a Dodgers card He has like a Dodgers quad relic. I think got Abrams rookie there Snow Jersey card Braves John Smoltz 49 of 50 blue rookie Mariners Cal Raleigh 34 of 150 Okay, Raleigh a.k.a big dumper and laugh back of the break. That's a big name Yeah, it's got a big rear end This is Nick his actual nickname Posey Jackie Xander the quad relic reds Joey Votto 51 of 75 That's a saffron and Copper Frank Robinson. Give me one sec. We'll recap the break Let me do the random first actually the random first for that quad relic and then we'll recap And if you're watching on tiktok, we'll be able to see the randoms Link is in the bio streaming information is there. We're always live on YouTube and Twitch seven days a week group breaks and personals so Yankees angels Dodgers Yankees angels Dodgers Phillies quad relic judge trout bets Harper to 99 8 of 99 Good luck on that one nine times on our random nine times whoever's up top gets the card one two three four five six seven eight and Nine this one's going out to the angels angels at the top So again, this just went to the angels to 99 judge trout bets Harper Quad relic reds Joey Votto to 75 Jersey card Braves John Smoltz to 50 patch card to 10 Kluber as a Yankee At Phillies quad rally Bryce Harper to 75 nice brace Brewers Corbin Burns Jersey 44 50 Dodgers quad relic Cody Bellinger 18 of 99 Got La Mayhew Yankees quad relic to 99 Rays Austin Meadows to 50 still a Ray there Yelich pot Brewers to 35 Quad relic out to vey Astros to 99 patch card Reds Jonathan India to 25 and then the rest all got ink Twins Max Kepler dual Jersey Otto to 399 Reds Otto Jesse Winkert at 250 Yes, money grandile dual Jersey Otto White Sox numbered to 357 Royce Lewis rookie dual Jersey Otto twins nice hit twins 37 of 50 Dual Jersey Otto blue J's Jose Barrios numbered to 50 Wade Boggs triple Jersey Otto Tampa Bay to 275 dual Jersey Otto You'll be girly L Astros to 99 Dodgers Otto Austin Barnes 11 to 50 Braves Otto John Smoltz to 125 crewers Christian Yellows to 125 Silver frame silver ink Otto 13 to 15 Cubs Andre Dawson very nice hit Cubs It's a one per case on the frames and one of one Yankees Otto Gio or Shella The Emerald one of one and that'll do it. Thanks again everybody full case number one coming up next