Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to another episode of the Mark Moa
Speaker 1: Show where we talk about bitcoin and we talked about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution that's happening, and we talk about everything
Speaker 1: that's going on around it so you can understand what
Speaker 1: is going on. We look at things from the financial aspect,
Speaker 1: the political aspect, the technology aspect, because you really have
Speaker 1: to get about six, seven, maybe eight different disciplines to
Speaker 1: kind of get what's going on now. It's moving fast.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things going on. I try to
Speaker 1: bring you the best education, up to the minute, latest
Speaker 1: breaking news so you can always know what's going on,
Speaker 1: and of course sound like the smartest guy at the
Speaker 1: party this weekend. And of course I try to bring
Speaker 1: you new and interesting people to listen to on a
Speaker 1: regular basis so you can get some different perspectives than
Speaker 1: just from myself. Of course, I have some people that
Speaker 1: I'm bringing on this week that you definitely want to
Speaker 1: hear from. But some of the breaking news, like I said,
Speaker 1: things happen so fast. Um, some big stories I want
Speaker 1: to go through this week are one, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: that the US government seized some bitcoin. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you heard that or not. Now How did that happen? Mark,
Speaker 1: Because I thought bitcoin of censorship resistant. How do the
Speaker 1: government sees it? Well? I want to explain how that happened.
Speaker 1: I want to explain what the learning lesson is for
Speaker 1: us in this UM And there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: pieces in this. I want to talk about UM, the
Speaker 1: largest asset manager in the world in the world is
Speaker 1: now offering cryptocurrency services. I want to talk about something's
Speaker 1: happening inside the government. How UM they are UM changing
Speaker 1: the way they look at people that want to peacefully assemble.
Speaker 1: I want to look at one of the largest commercial
Speaker 1: banks in the world, actually a bank that I bank
Speaker 1: with UM has said that we are about to enter
Speaker 1: a hyper adoption of bitcoin. Who is that bank and
Speaker 1: what are they talking about? And I want to look
Speaker 1: at the price of bitcoin real quick. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: ambitious schedule to cover. So let's see if we can
Speaker 1: get through all of that for you. By the way,
Speaker 1: like I said, you're listening to the markma Show where
Speaker 1: we talk about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution that's happening.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't cover the price a whole lot UM.
Speaker 1: I do typically say that I think the price is
Speaker 1: the least interesting thing that's going on. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I say it's the least interesting thing going on
Speaker 1: is because, um it is. I mean, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a brand new technology that is changing the way the
Speaker 1: world works, and for the better. I mean for the better.
Speaker 1: It is changing the world for the better. Anybody who
Speaker 1: comes into bitcoin, it just it gives them long term perspective.
Speaker 1: They start to see new solutions to old problems. Um everyone,
Speaker 1: I've seen It's completely changed your lives and so and
Speaker 1: and not just from a monetary standpoint. It is such
Speaker 1: a new technology that's going to benefit all of humanity.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm so bullish on it. And so when
Speaker 1: you have something that big, of course, the daily price
Speaker 1: movement is somewhat um boring, I guess I should say.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I say pretty often if
Speaker 1: you tune to my show on a regular basis, is
Speaker 1: that when you're looking at a new technology, you don't
Speaker 1: want to look at the price. The price is volatile.
Speaker 1: So what you really want to look at is two things.
Speaker 1: The one that developed, the development happening on the network,
Speaker 1: and to the growth of the network or more people
Speaker 1: using them. But I call the price a bait and switch.
Speaker 1: Most people come in for the price, they hope to
Speaker 1: make money, they hope to get rich, and then they
Speaker 1: get switched into some of the other properties for bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So anyway, talking about the price today, it is a
Speaker 1: little bit of good news if you're focused on the
Speaker 1: short term price, which I am not. If you're aware
Speaker 1: or you're just kind of tuning in. Bitcoin did recently
Speaker 1: crashed all the way down from its high of about
Speaker 1: sixty nine thousand, and it went all the way to
Speaker 1: about thirty three thousand dollars, a crash of about fifty two.
Speaker 1: It didn't stick there long. That was just a quick
Speaker 1: daily fat flash crash. Um it quickly kind of regained ground,
Speaker 1: and it's sad about forty five down from its high
Speaker 1: at about in the thirty five ish range. And um,
Speaker 1: just over the last couple of days it has gone
Speaker 1: on a tear, going from about thirty five thousand all
Speaker 1: the way up to in the forty five thousand ish range.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand dollar swing, which is no small swing at
Speaker 1: all for a bitcoin. As a matter of fact, a
Speaker 1: single day it moved up about about twelve a few
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in a single day, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why you don't want to try to trade
Speaker 1: bitcoin in and out of bitcoin because it does move
Speaker 1: so volatile like this, and so you know, if you
Speaker 1: were like, I'm gonna sell at the top and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna buy back in at a lower price, how do
Speaker 1: you know when it's a lower price. How do you
Speaker 1: know when to buy back in? You know what happens
Speaker 1: is you only know the top or the bottom when
Speaker 1: you're looking backwards at it, and so when you're living
Speaker 1: through it, you don't know. And what happens is let's
Speaker 1: say you're on the sideline waiting for this move and
Speaker 1: you were gonna buy cheaper, but then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it moves up ten tho dollars in a single day,
Speaker 1: and you missed out. Now I haven't done the math.
Speaker 1: Maybe at some point I will for bitcoin, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you with stocks that you know, over the
Speaker 1: last day, um over the last fifty years, it's averaged
Speaker 1: about an eight percent return. But if you would have
Speaker 1: missed the best thirty days of trading in the stock market,
Speaker 1: your returns go from eight percent to like two percent approximately.
Speaker 1: I don't know how a date off the top of
Speaker 1: my head if you missed the best um like twenty
Speaker 1: days in trading, then you're basically make no money. And
Speaker 1: you've missed the best like thirty days out of whatever
Speaker 1: fifty years, you made no money in the stock market,
Speaker 1: and so um they say in the stock market, it's
Speaker 1: not timing the market, but time in the market. And
Speaker 1: bitcoin is kind of the same way, because if you
Speaker 1: missed out on a ten thousand dollar swing day, like
Speaker 1: that's really gonna hurt you. And so what I do
Speaker 1: is I just zoom out. I keep a long term
Speaker 1: perspective and I don't try to trade these dips. And
Speaker 1: for perspective, what I do is I look at the
Speaker 1: way that the low the lows have been going higher
Speaker 1: and higher and higher. So for example, if I go back, um,
Speaker 1: you know, two years ago, I can see that the
Speaker 1: price of bitcoin was only twenty thousand, and then it
Speaker 1: did get up to sixty five thousand a consoliday at thirty,
Speaker 1: So from twenty to sixty five, but then to thirty,
Speaker 1: and then from thirty to sixty nine and forty five.
Speaker 1: And so instead of looking at where it came from
Speaker 1: the sixty five, I look at it where it came
Speaker 1: from the twenty and the thirty. So from twenty to thirty,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good progress for me and I like that.
Speaker 1: So that's where the price. It is nice to see
Speaker 1: it coming back up. Now why why is it coming
Speaker 1: back up? Well, a couple of things. UM, you want
Speaker 1: to understand what drives the price. That I said, right,
Speaker 1: it's adoption and development, So a couple of big developments
Speaker 1: and adoptions things that are happening. UM. The first thing
Speaker 1: that I would say is that, UM, I talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit last week. If you're with me, I
Speaker 1: talked about the trucker convoy going on in Canada, and UM,
Speaker 1: I think we talked about last week how um the
Speaker 1: trucker convoy had raised about ten million dollars on go
Speaker 1: fund me, and then go fund me basically stole the
Speaker 1: money and with a massive amount of backlash that had happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think we covered this last week. I hadn't
Speaker 1: happened yet, but the massive amount of backlash, UM go
Speaker 1: fund me said all right, all right, we'll we'll return
Speaker 1: the money if you would fill out this form. You
Speaker 1: have to filt this form by a certain date. And
Speaker 1: then a lot more backlash happened where people were saying, no,
Speaker 1: just charge back your credit cards and hid them with fees.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people probably did that.
Speaker 1: So then and then, and then you had a Governor
Speaker 1: Abbott from Texas and governed to Santis from Florida said
Speaker 1: that they were going to um bring legal charges against
Speaker 1: go fund me for stealing their residents money. And uh,
Speaker 1: a combination of that and the heat that go fund
Speaker 1: me took, they quickly reverse courses that they would just
Speaker 1: go ahead and refund everybody's money. But the key piece
Speaker 1: to this is that the governments of Canada trying to
Speaker 1: seize the money, the state of Autawa try to seize
Speaker 1: the money, and then go fund me. It did an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of marketing for bitcoin. Now all these people
Speaker 1: that are watching what's going on realized just how centrally
Speaker 1: controlled the monetary supply is. You mean my money that
Speaker 1: I have expended my own energy. I've expended my life's
Speaker 1: energy for two and I stored it in this form
Speaker 1: of money that I could use at a later day
Speaker 1: in time. You mean I don't have a right to
Speaker 1: use that money as I see fit. You mean if
Speaker 1: I want to use it to give some money to
Speaker 1: these peaceful pro testers to give them some gas or
Speaker 1: some food or a blanket or whatever. I can't. I
Speaker 1: don't have the right to do that. And the state
Speaker 1: can just seize my money. And I didn't know they
Speaker 1: could do that. I didn't know they would do that.
Speaker 1: Oh and and now there's bitcoin over here. That means
Speaker 1: that they can't do that. Um, maybe I should check
Speaker 1: out bitcoin. And so bitcoin has been on the world stage.
Speaker 1: The government of Canada the trucker protests. Go fund me
Speaker 1: are doing marketing for bitcoin, which is important because go
Speaker 1: fund me is a is a company and they have
Speaker 1: a marketing budget. Bitcoin is not a company. There is
Speaker 1: no marketing budget, there is no marketing department. And uh,
Speaker 1: we're lucky to have the country of Canada and go
Speaker 1: fund me doing bitcoins marketing for us. Maybe one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we've seen the price pump. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Markma Show. We're talking about the latest breaking
Speaker 1: news that is going on right now, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the latest breaking news this week because each and
Speaker 1: every week there is a lot going on. It's moving
Speaker 1: super fast and you need to be up to date
Speaker 1: on what's happening. Now. I to talk about why things
Speaker 1: are happening, things like that. One interesting story that I
Speaker 1: saw here today which was pretty amazing, And you maybe
Speaker 1: weren't aware of this, but you know that politicians and uh,
Speaker 1: you know people at the Central Bank that create all
Speaker 1: the money, they probably have an unfair advantage of information
Speaker 1: that they have. And uh, did you know that you,
Speaker 1: as a private citizen, you're not allowed to invest on
Speaker 1: what they call insider trading, So like, if you have
Speaker 1: something like information that most people don't have and you
Speaker 1: act on that and you make money with that, it's
Speaker 1: actually illegal. And actually, Martha Stewart everybody's a favorite grandmother
Speaker 1: working from her house or whatever, she famously went to
Speaker 1: prison for doing what's called insider trading because it's highly
Speaker 1: illegal for me and you to participate in that. But
Speaker 1: did you know that it's not illegal for the politicians
Speaker 1: to do it? Specifically not illegal. So Nancy Pelosi as
Speaker 1: one of the best investors in the world today. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, Nancy Pelosi beat almost every single
Speaker 1: hedge fund, every single fund manager except for like one
Speaker 1: or two last year, and she wasn't even the top one.
Speaker 1: I think she was like ranked fifth or sixth in
Speaker 1: that order. Um. Other politicians did even better. And it's
Speaker 1: not just the politicians, the congressman, the senators, it's the
Speaker 1: central bankers. Now, a while back, there was a story
Speaker 1: and I didn't really cover it much, but we found
Speaker 1: out that FED officials were doing insider trading. They were
Speaker 1: trading on what they call pandemic trade. So at the
Speaker 1: time the pandemic was happening, UM, the entire economy crashed,
Speaker 1: the stock market crashed, and then as the pandemic recovered,
Speaker 1: certain stocks did better than others the pandemic trades, and
Speaker 1: there was some FED insiders that traded that and made
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. And a matter of fact, three
Speaker 1: UM FED officials I believe lost their jobs, the Dallas
Speaker 1: and the Boston FED presidents as well as the vice
Speaker 1: chair Clarita and Um. You know, nobody really cares. Nobody's
Speaker 1: really looking into it, UM, but some people are. Some
Speaker 1: people aren't okay with that. I mean, I'm not personal
Speaker 1: okay with that. I mean I could go to prison
Speaker 1: if I traded like Martha Stewart on information I had.
Speaker 1: But they're the ones that actually make the policies and
Speaker 1: pump the money into the system. But they can it
Speaker 1: seems pretty messed up. I don't think people should be
Speaker 1: okay with that. And so Reuters, the news organization which
Speaker 1: doesn't always seek the truth in my opinion, But they
Speaker 1: went out and they filed a freedom of information Act.
Speaker 1: It's called a FOIA request fo I A, and they
Speaker 1: did a freedom of information Act and they want UM
Speaker 1: and they wanted to get information on what exactly was
Speaker 1: going on here. The FED said that there's about sixty
Speaker 1: pages of correspondence UM in the in these financial transactions
Speaker 1: that were conducted during the pandemic that they don't want
Speaker 1: to release. They don't want to release. It's a sore
Speaker 1: spot for the FED. They obviously know what's in there,
Speaker 1: and members of Congress are demanding full transparency as to
Speaker 1: who knew what was going on, who did what, when
Speaker 1: did they do it, and so forth. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that nobody is allowed to see them, as the
Speaker 1: FED quote unquote denied in full the release of documents.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That doesn't seem right, does it now. I
Speaker 1: might be old fashioned here, but it seems like the
Speaker 1: best way to build trust is with transparency, not lying
Speaker 1: and deliberately hiding stuff. So if my business partner if
Speaker 1: I don't have a business partner, but if I did,
Speaker 1: or if I had, you know, your wife, your girlfriend's
Speaker 1: tegnam for the other somebody important to you. If I
Speaker 1: had a business partner and I said, say, I suspected
Speaker 1: them of embezzling from me, and I said, hey, partner, um,
Speaker 1: you know, could we sit down and just look at
Speaker 1: the books and talk about a couple of transactions. I
Speaker 1: have curious you know, I'm curious him if he said, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we can't. You shouldn't be looking at that and then
Speaker 1: they went deleted a bunch of stuff, like, wouldn't that
Speaker 1: just kind of confirm my suspicion Versus if he said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, let's open up the books. Here you go,
Speaker 1: Oh these transactions, this is what it was like. Full
Speaker 1: transpar arrancy could bring trust back. So when we already
Speaker 1: are unhappy that that Martha Stewart went to prison, I
Speaker 1: can go to I can go to prison. But these
Speaker 1: insiders are legally able to do that. And then the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve who put the money in, are able to
Speaker 1: do this. And then through a Freedom of Information Act request,
Speaker 1: the FED quote unquote denied in full the release of documents.
Speaker 1: M hmm. That doesn't really breed a lot of trust
Speaker 1: for me and confidence. Now I bring this up on
Speaker 1: a bitcoin show because bitcoin is open borderless trust list.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Trust less? So I have to
Speaker 1: trust the Federal Reserve didn't do something shady, But how
Speaker 1: can I trust them when they're hiding everything from a delivery?
Speaker 1: I don't know how much money they made. I don't
Speaker 1: know where they put that money. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they decided how much money to Pranto were to put
Speaker 1: the money. Nor do I know how they use that
Speaker 1: information to enrich themselves. I don't know anything. I have
Speaker 1: to trust them, but how can I trust them when
Speaker 1: they're breaking me? Bitcoin is ust lists. That means I
Speaker 1: don't have to trust bitcoin because bitcoin is an open
Speaker 1: source network one I know that unlike the FED, nobody
Speaker 1: can create more Bitcoin like the FED creates more dollars too.
Speaker 1: It's completely open and transparent. I can see all the
Speaker 1: bitcoin all the time. I don't have to trust. I
Speaker 1: can verify UM and on top of that UM, because
Speaker 1: I can verify all the transactions, I again, I don't
Speaker 1: have to trust. Now they said uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: they denied in full but why Like traditionally, maybe they
Speaker 1: might have an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 1: the Foyer Request if it involved a matter that matter
Speaker 1: of national security. But how exactly would alleged I'm going
Speaker 1: to say that, alleged insider trading by a bunch of millionaires,
Speaker 1: how would that threaten the US democracy? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: I would certainly like to understand that. I bet you
Speaker 1: would as well. But of course we don't know that.
Speaker 1: We don't know that at all. And um, the reason
Speaker 1: why I bring the story up is because it makes
Speaker 1: me mad. But it's in glaring contradiction to what bitcoin is.
Speaker 1: So we have you know, um of public officials like
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren out there saying, you know, bitcoin is used
Speaker 1: by bad people, Well, they probably shouldn't use bitcoin because
Speaker 1: bitcoin is open, it's transparent, and we can see who
Speaker 1: those bad people are, unlike the Federals are fiat money
Speaker 1: system like we have today, where these people get away
Speaker 1: with murder and literally enriched themselves to the tunes of
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars. Now, when I talk about bad people
Speaker 1: not being able to do that, it kind of brings
Speaker 1: me to the next story which I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: which was the US seized bitcoin. And they didn't just
Speaker 1: seize some bitcoin. They seized a lot of bitcoin. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, Um, it's been making a lot
Speaker 1: of news stories. It was a bit finex hack and
Speaker 1: it was about four point six billion with a B
Speaker 1: and that's right, four point six billion dollars of bitcoin
Speaker 1: that was stolen and the government seized it. But like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, like Mark, what do you mean they
Speaker 1: seized it? Because I thought bitcoin was censorship resistant? How
Speaker 1: could they seize it? Well, let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a second, because it's it's important for you to understand
Speaker 1: how they seized it, because there's a learning lesson in
Speaker 1: here for you. How could you protect your money so
Speaker 1: nobody could steal it? And I'm not trying to say
Speaker 1: keep it from the government, but how could you keep
Speaker 1: it from anybody who wanted to steal it? And so
Speaker 1: the story is about this a couple who um, as
Speaker 1: I said, I took this money. It was from bitfoinix.
Speaker 1: So bitfoinix is a big cryptocurrency exchange and uh, apparently
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, this couple of New York
Speaker 1: couple Eelid Dutch Litzenstein and Heather are Morgan had taken
Speaker 1: this money and they were attempting to launder clean up
Speaker 1: some bitcoin worth a staggering four point six billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Like I said, that was stolen from bit foinex back in.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to this story. I'm gonna unpack. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating story. These are some fascinating characters. Actually, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring back more. I'm gonna come back more
Speaker 1: in a second with that story. You don't want to
Speaker 1: miss this. By the way, you're listening to the markmas Show.
Speaker 1: We're talking about bitcoin, the decentralized revolution. We're talking about
Speaker 1: how the government sees bitcoin and what you need to
Speaker 1: know about this so you can protect your bitcoin from
Speaker 1: being stolen. Um, it's a fascinating story. I'll be back
Speaker 1: with that more. Don't go away, all right, welcome back.
Speaker 1: You were listening to the Mark Moa Show and we're
Speaker 1: talking about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that
Speaker 1: is happening right now. We are witnessing now. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I started talking about, um, this bit the nexs hack
Speaker 1: that happened. As a matter of fact, the US government
Speaker 1: seized bitcoin about four point six billion with a B
Speaker 1: four point six billion dollars worth the bitcoin. I think
Speaker 1: it was about a hundred and ten hundred twenty thousand
Speaker 1: bitcoins something, Yeah, about about a hundred twenty thousand bitcoins,
Speaker 1: something massive like that, which uh shoots the United States
Speaker 1: up there in them the countries and private people that
Speaker 1: own bitcoin. As a matter of fact, they own more
Speaker 1: than uh Elon Musk and Tesla. So Ellen, I'm calling
Speaker 1: out calling you about right now, you should step it up.
Speaker 1: They're trying to arrival Michael Sailor and UH micro Strategy
Speaker 1: with how much bitcoin they have, So you guys need
Speaker 1: to step it up as well. But the US, the
Speaker 1: US owns is now a lot of bitcoin. But it's
Speaker 1: a it's a super interesting story. And this couple UH,
Speaker 1: like I said, Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, I mean, there
Speaker 1: are some interesting characters. Heather Morgan has uh has quite
Speaker 1: a long history as a matter of fact. Um, they
Speaker 1: actually I think we're working with bitfin x to help
Speaker 1: them with some of their security. UM. I found this
Speaker 1: article of Heather Morgan from two thousand nineteen, and um,
Speaker 1: it's how to social engineer your way into anything. And
Speaker 1: so she talks about her she was going to doing
Speaker 1: these talks about social engineering and how it's the active
Speaker 1: manipulated into someone to giving you information to take an action. Um,
Speaker 1: she did it specific tritically in cybersecurity. Um she she
Speaker 1: said she used it here firsthand out Heathery Morgan social
Speaker 1: engineering into exclusive parties and expensive political fundraisers, infiltrated black
Speaker 1: markets around the world, and build relationships with celebrities and
Speaker 1: billionaire CEOs. You'll learn actionable tactics for event crashing, how
Speaker 1: to cold email even the most reclusive and high level
Speaker 1: people and get a response on what to do to
Speaker 1: get yourself out of a jam. So she was specifically
Speaker 1: good at cold email. But about the speaker, So this
Speaker 1: is in her own bio. She's a seal entrepreneur, a writer,
Speaker 1: and a rapper and a former economist who worked in
Speaker 1: emerging markets. She specially she's an economist specialized in game
Speaker 1: theory and in perfect information. Man, what a what A
Speaker 1: What an interesting resume. But she was a rapper and
Speaker 1: actually we have a clip of that. Let's check out
Speaker 1: this clip of her. I think it's pretty cool. There
Speaker 1: we go Turkish Martha start keep going up her spin
Speaker 1: dropping with her poppy from a rebellious showing turk conveyed
Speaker 1: with the burke showing off her inverse work. Don't she
Speaker 1: come a lord? So uh, I guess her rap career
Speaker 1: wasn't working out too well, so she had to go
Speaker 1: to stealing bitcoin instead. Um. And now that you've heard that,
Speaker 1: you can understand why she's got a pretty pretty crazy
Speaker 1: profile if you go look at some of the pictures
Speaker 1: of her and what she's done. But I think I
Speaker 1: think there's a couple of things to understand about this.
Speaker 1: So um Again, like they said, this, this hack actually
Speaker 1: happened back in twenty sixteen, and bitcoin security has come
Speaker 1: a long way now since this. Now I've talked about myself,
Speaker 1: I've lost, um what equate to millions of dollars of
Speaker 1: bitcoin today. At the time, it wasn't millions of dollars
Speaker 1: a bitcoin, but um, that's that's kind of where it
Speaker 1: ended in. Just like these guys, they didn't store steal
Speaker 1: four point six billion dollars, but that's what it's worth
Speaker 1: today now. Um. What's interesting a couple of things. So One,
Speaker 1: they stole it from bitfin x, hacked it back in sixteen,
Speaker 1: but they weren't using a typical hot and cold or
Speaker 1: set up like most exchanges used. UM. Rather, what they
Speaker 1: were doing is they were they were trying to get
Speaker 1: around US sanctions and so what they did is they
Speaker 1: set up this kind of regulatory arbitrage. So what they
Speaker 1: said is that we don't really hold the keys, we
Speaker 1: don't really hold your bitcoin. What we do is we
Speaker 1: set up like this, this weird kind of configuration where
Speaker 1: you keep a key and we keep a key. Um.
Speaker 1: And since we don't really hold the customer funds, we
Speaker 1: don't have to comply. And it was because they had
Speaker 1: this insecure set up, um, is what really allowed these
Speaker 1: people to steal the money. Now, she was good at
Speaker 1: social engineering, so she was able to compromise a lot
Speaker 1: of these people's information and then get their bitcoin released
Speaker 1: to them using this method. So there's a UM. So
Speaker 1: that that's an important thing to understand. Um. And then
Speaker 1: more importantly, how did the government get it back? And
Speaker 1: so UM Basically the government was able to go get
Speaker 1: this four point six billion dollars worth of bitcoin him back. UM,
Speaker 1: not because they could seize it. As I said, right,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is censorship resistant. Nobody can steal the bitcoin. The
Speaker 1: only way they can steal the bitcoin is if they
Speaker 1: could get your private key. So if I had some
Speaker 1: gold and I went and buried it somewhere in a
Speaker 1: in a in a dirt field, and I would make
Speaker 1: a map, nobody could get my gold unless they got
Speaker 1: my map, right, that would be like the key. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the government cannot nobody, the government or anybody
Speaker 1: cannot steal your bitcoin unless they can get your private key.
Speaker 1: So that's what you have to secure with your life.
Speaker 1: And that's what they got from them. So um, they
Speaker 1: put their private key, I believe into a Google doc
Speaker 1: like a Google drive. You never want to put your
Speaker 1: private key onto the internet. Um. There was another famous
Speaker 1: massive hack by Ian Billina. He's a crypto analyst, and
Speaker 1: he had put his private key into every note, which
Speaker 1: I use every note. I'm actually looking at every note
Speaker 1: right now. I use it all the time. But I'm
Speaker 1: not putting my private key there. I'm not putting into
Speaker 1: Google document, Google drive because if it's in the Internet somewhere,
Speaker 1: then it can get hacked. And so while the government
Speaker 1: cannot hack your bitcoin, if they get your key, they can,
Speaker 1: and they can hack your computer, so they can hack
Speaker 1: your Google drive and they could find your key there,
Speaker 1: So that is the big piece here. Bitcoin wasn't hacked.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin wasn't compromised. What happened is they compromise the person,
Speaker 1: these people's Google Drive and found their private key. So
Speaker 1: what do you do with your private key? It's a
Speaker 1: good learning lesson. Now. One of the show sponsors that
Speaker 1: we have here, Unchained Capital, They help users with managing
Speaker 1: their private key. It's someone that I actually personally used.
Speaker 1: As I said earlier, off Loss which which which he quotes,
Speaker 1: equates in today's dollars to about two billion dollars. Now
Speaker 1: that's because the price of bitcoin goes up really fast.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the government was actually bragging
Speaker 1: about the price of bitcoin accumulating. I think I have
Speaker 1: that clip up right here. Um, let's hear this quick
Speaker 1: little clip from the government bragging about the price of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Here almost one hundred twenty thousand bitcoin, which at the
Speaker 1: time was worth approximately seventy one million dollars. Today the
Speaker 1: value of that bitcoin has grown to over four point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars, so they seem pretty happy about that. Um. So,
Speaker 1: at the time of the hack, they stole about seventy
Speaker 1: one million worth of bitcoin and today it's worth four
Speaker 1: point six billion in bitcoin. And so that's kind of
Speaker 1: like how it was for me. I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: lose a couple of million dollars worth a bitcoin at
Speaker 1: the time, but in today's dollars, if I still would
Speaker 1: have had it, which I would because I don't sell
Speaker 1: my bitcoin, I would have millions of dollars a bitcoin
Speaker 1: that I don't have any more. And so, UM, what
Speaker 1: I've done is I've used a company like Unchanged Capital
Speaker 1: helped me secure that key. And that's the piece that
Speaker 1: you have to secure. So a couple of things that
Speaker 1: I need to tell you about that. So one, if
Speaker 1: you use like a hardware wallet, so for example, UM,
Speaker 1: you download an app on your phone and you store
Speaker 1: you know, and you put your bitcoin there. That app
Speaker 1: is holding your private key. If you keep your bitcoin
Speaker 1: on coin base, then coin Base is holding your private key. UM.
Speaker 1: What I would recommend as a level up from that
Speaker 1: is to use a hardware wallet and then a hardware wall.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a little USB drive that you
Speaker 1: plug in your computer and then that stores your your
Speaker 1: private key. So you plug the hardware wallet in, UM
Speaker 1: it signs the transaction. You unplug the hardware wallet and
Speaker 1: then your private key stays on there, it never goes
Speaker 1: onto the computer. And then you need to put a
Speaker 1: passphrase and a pass code on that hardware wallet. So
Speaker 1: even if the government or any intruder, robber, whatever were
Speaker 1: to get my hardware wallet, they still wouldn't have my key.
Speaker 1: They would need me to give them that passphrase. Right.
Speaker 1: So that way, if someone broke into my house and
Speaker 1: broke into my safe, um or wherever you know, found
Speaker 1: a found something in the backyard where I had my
Speaker 1: hardware wallet buried, they still wouldn't be able to use it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the big key. Now you do need to
Speaker 1: back your key up. And this is the part that's tricky.
Speaker 1: Back that key up. And you do that by writing
Speaker 1: down twelve or twenty four random words, and you want
Speaker 1: to put that onto paper again, not in the computer,
Speaker 1: not in every node, not in Google Drive, and it
Speaker 1: needs to be on a piece of paper. That way,
Speaker 1: if something happens to that hardware wallet, I lose it,
Speaker 1: it gets destroyed. Whatever happens, I can restore it. I
Speaker 1: can back it up. Now that's where you have to
Speaker 1: hide it. Um. I can give you a couple of ideas.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that. In a second, I'll give you
Speaker 1: give you a couple of good ideas of how to
Speaker 1: hide that in plain sight so people could see it
Speaker 1: and not know what it is. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Mark Moa Show. We're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution. We're talking about the bit for nicks hack,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, how to protect your bitcoin so it
Speaker 1: doesn't get stolen real quick. As a reminder, if you
Speaker 1: haven't already, make sure to bookmark this show, this time,
Speaker 1: this channel and join me each and every week where
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it the most important, the most educational,
Speaker 1: maybe the most profitable, maybe the most entertainment. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but uh, a very important part of your week. Don't
Speaker 1: miss it. Put a date on your calendar and check
Speaker 1: me out each and every week on this channel. At
Speaker 1: this time now, before the break, I was talking about
Speaker 1: this bit fanex hack and how um it was per
Speaker 1: the government bragging it was about seventy one million dollars
Speaker 1: worth a bitcoin at the time they stole it, and
Speaker 1: then it was four point five billion. Now today I
Speaker 1: was talking about the private key and how you need
Speaker 1: to protect your private key. The government the government was
Speaker 1: able to get their bitcoin because they got their private key.
Speaker 1: They put their private key in Google Drive. So don't
Speaker 1: do that, um I was talking about. You put in
Speaker 1: a hardware wallet, and even somebody gets your hardware wallet,
Speaker 1: they can't um get your bitcoin because they don't have
Speaker 1: your passphrase. But you need to back that wallet up
Speaker 1: with twelve or twenty four words, and it needs to
Speaker 1: be on paper, not in the computer. But what do
Speaker 1: you do with the paper because if someone gets your paper,
Speaker 1: they can get your wallet. So there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things that you could do with it. So for example,
Speaker 1: what I've what the Winkelvoss Twins, the Wink of Boss
Speaker 1: Twins are the the famous partners of Mark Zuckerberg early
Speaker 1: on who went on his form Jim and I, which
Speaker 1: is a cryptocurrency exchange, and their bitcoin billionaires. And supposedly
Speaker 1: what they've done is they've taken that private key, that
Speaker 1: that pass phrase of those those sorry, the seed phrase,
Speaker 1: those twelve words on piece of paper, and then they
Speaker 1: broke them up and I don't know if they broke
Speaker 1: it into four groups of three words or twelve words independently,
Speaker 1: and they put them at at like safety deposit boxes
Speaker 1: or different locations around the country, So it would be
Speaker 1: almost impossible for anyone to get all twelve words, and
Speaker 1: even if they got all twelve words, they wouldn't know
Speaker 1: the order they went in, right. That's one way. It's
Speaker 1: kind of extreme. Could could work in other way, as
Speaker 1: you could do like old school cipher kind of thing,
Speaker 1: where like let's say that you wrote a poem. You
Speaker 1: could write a poem and you have twelve words, and
Speaker 1: let's say each line has one of those twelve words
Speaker 1: somewhere in it, and you just have to know, like
Speaker 1: a de cipher, you'd have to kind of know which
Speaker 1: of those words it was. I've heard of people I'm
Speaker 1: doing like a photo collage on their wall, and like
Speaker 1: every third photo, for example, could be a depiction of
Speaker 1: what that word is because the words are random. It's
Speaker 1: like ocean, monkey, wrench, banana, whatever, something like that. And
Speaker 1: so like every like every third or fourth picture in
Speaker 1: the collage could be like a representative. So there's a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting ways where even if somebody saw that
Speaker 1: photo collage, they wouldn't know it represented your your bitcoin key,
Speaker 1: and even if they did, they wouldn't know which of
Speaker 1: the photos it was etcetera. Like I said, you could
Speaker 1: chop them up put them in different safety deposit boxes.
Speaker 1: But that's your challenge. How do you protect that and
Speaker 1: make it where nobody, no robber, no home robber, no
Speaker 1: government could get ahold of that. Um. So that's it. Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's the learning lesson that we can learn from that.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty interesting story. UM go read up on
Speaker 1: that on some on your own if you want. But
Speaker 1: we got some more big news to talk about, and
Speaker 1: uh so I don't want to spend too much time
Speaker 1: on that. If you're interesting to go read more on that.
Speaker 1: Some other really big news that I alluded to in
Speaker 1: the beginning is that real big news is that black Rock.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that name before? Black Rock? You
Speaker 1: probably heard they're the world's largest asset manager. I mean
Speaker 1: they are to kind of control of the world. I
Speaker 1: mean they're literally that big. Black Rock, the world's largest
Speaker 1: asset manager, is preparing to offer a cryptocurrency trading service
Speaker 1: to its investor clients. That's big news. Why is that
Speaker 1: big news? Well, it's big news for a number of reasons. Um.
Speaker 1: I talked about I've talked about many times, and probably
Speaker 1: one of the biggest questions or objections I hear about
Speaker 1: bitcoin is the government's just gonna make it illegal. And
Speaker 1: I say, well, I don't. I mean, anything is possible,
Speaker 1: and so I don't deal in a world of absolutes.
Speaker 1: But I would say, what is the probability of that happening?
Speaker 1: And if you understand the situation, you may think it's
Speaker 1: a lower probability or higher probably, but nothing certain. I
Speaker 1: mean better than a zero percent chance that will happen,
Speaker 1: but it's very low. And so what I would say
Speaker 1: to that is that a couple of things. One, the
Speaker 1: Federal reserved the government. Between the Federal Reserving the government,
Speaker 1: they printed about eight trillion dollars from thin air in
Speaker 1: the last twenty four months to keep the markets from acting.
Speaker 1: If they shut down bitcoin, they would crash the markets.
Speaker 1: But they don't want to crash the markets. They've just
Speaker 1: shown us eight trillion reasons why they don't want to.
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's number one. Number Two, what I
Speaker 1: would say is that there's this level of entrenchment that
Speaker 1: has been reached um in the government that would almost
Speaker 1: prevent them from doing that. So for example, um black rock,
Speaker 1: so UM. If you understand how the government works. Most
Speaker 1: laws and regulations they get placed that they are written
Speaker 1: not by politicians, they're written by lobby groups. Then those
Speaker 1: lobby groups give those to the politicians to sign and sponsor.
Speaker 1: And who are these big lobby groups. Well, the pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: industry is a big one, obviously, food industry, and guess
Speaker 1: guess that the financial industry, the financial street is a
Speaker 1: major lobbying group. They have massive amounts of power, Wall Street, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Has massive amounts of power in Washington. And when you
Speaker 1: see all these banks, you know, Fidelity, E Trade, charl
Speaker 1: Schwab and then smaller ones robin Hood, you know, etcetera,
Speaker 1: PayPal gear in into bitcoin. They've probably spent billions, maybe
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions collectively to bring on bitcoin services right
Speaker 1: for the regulations and to set them up in their
Speaker 1: office and whatever. And they don't just go spend hundreds
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars to set up bitcoin services to
Speaker 1: let some pesky politicians go make it illegal. That's probably
Speaker 1: not going to happen. And uh, when you see the
Speaker 1: largest not just some small little robin Hood player, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the largest financial asset manager in the world, um,
Speaker 1: black Rock. When you see them start offering it, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much game over. If you think they are going
Speaker 1: to allow any politician to make it illegal. At this point,
Speaker 1: you don't understand how you don't You don't understand much
Speaker 1: about the financial and the political system at all. UM,
Speaker 1: the New York based company which manages over ten trilling
Speaker 1: and assets for institutions, plans to enter the cryptocurrency space
Speaker 1: with a client support trading and then with their own
Speaker 1: credit facility. So not only are they going to offer
Speaker 1: their clients trading, but also a credit facility. So I've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about UM getting your bitcoin and never
Speaker 1: selling it. I'll never sell my bitcoin. What I will
Speaker 1: do is I'll borrow against it. As a matter of
Speaker 1: fact that I recently did borrow against them a bitcoin
Speaker 1: for the first time. And UM they want to get
Speaker 1: in on that game. They realize that people are going
Speaker 1: to hold that bitcoin and they're going to want to
Speaker 1: want to leverage that. Now, this is nothing new. I
Speaker 1: can leverage I can. I can take loans against my stocks.
Speaker 1: I can do that with Wells Fargo. I can get
Speaker 1: loans against my house, I can get loans against my car. Right,
Speaker 1: so it's nothing new, but they want to jump in
Speaker 1: both in the trading and also credit on for bitcoin
Speaker 1: as well. It says clients would be able to borrow
Speaker 1: from black Rock by pledging crypto assets as collateral. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the people said that black Rock will allow
Speaker 1: its clients, which include public pension schemes, endowments, and sovereign
Speaker 1: wealth funds, to trade cryptocurrency through one of their networks.
Speaker 1: So again, if you think that the government is going
Speaker 1: to make it illegal at this point, or I should say,
Speaker 1: if you think they would be able to make get
Speaker 1: illegal at this point, you don't understand how the system works.
Speaker 1: I think it's game over. Now. Again, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that there's a zero percent chance of that happening, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but it's definitely greater than zero,
Speaker 1: but it's very low a probability. It's very low probability
Speaker 1: that would happen. UM. So, anyway, that's pretty interesting. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, back to banks again, Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: put out a report this week. UM Wells Fargo said,
Speaker 1: quote crypto, like the Internet in the late nineties, nearing
Speaker 1: a what they say, quote unquote hyper adoption phase. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? A hyper adoption phase. That sounds uh,
Speaker 1: sounds pretty fantastic. Well, the banking giant Wells Fargo, which
Speaker 1: I have accounts at Wells Fargo, probably a lot of
Speaker 1: you listening to they handle around one point nine trillion
Speaker 1: in assets, said that crypto should be approached, should be approached,
Speaker 1: people should be buying it. There's that's what they're saying.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving you financial advice. That's what they say.
Speaker 1: That's what they're saying. Um. In a report from the
Speaker 1: bank's Global Investment Strategy team, Wells Fargo said crypto users
Speaker 1: are growing rapidly around the world. Crypto appears to be
Speaker 1: near a quote hyper adoption phase end quote similar to
Speaker 1: that of the Internet during the mid to late nineties.
Speaker 1: And if you remember the mid to late nineties from
Speaker 1: two thousand, if you were alive back then, if not,
Speaker 1: go back and study it. But it was a straight
Speaker 1: parabolic run and it created a lot of wealth. They
Speaker 1: went on to say, quote, we believe that cryptocurrencies are
Speaker 1: viable investments today, even though they remain in the early
Speaker 1: stages of their investment evolution. And so, like I said,
Speaker 1: the Bank is making a recommendation to investors to approach
Speaker 1: crypto investments. Tell him them to be patient. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Mark Moss Show talking about bitcoin. Thanks for listening.