Australian Bitcoin Podcast

Discount link: https://www.hardblock.com.au/join/ozbitcoinpod

St Louis Fed (a US Central Bank) starts pricing eggs in bitcoin

New York passes proof-of-work mining ban

Biden admin considering bitcoin mining regulation

Kenya’s largest producer of electricity intends to deliver excess geothermal energy to bitcoin miners

Yellen says she was ‘wrong’ about ‘path that inflation would take’

Eurozone inflation hits 8.1%, highest level ever, well above targets; Christine Lagarde not phased (expects it to come down “in due course”)

Turkey's annual inflation soars to 73.5% in May, highest since 1998

Russia’s Ministry of Finance is ‘actively considering’ the use of digital currencies for international payments, a government official reportedly said

Russia blames US inflation on 38% currency creation in past two years, and EU inflation and energy crisis on their unreliable energy policies

$4.5 trillion Fidelity to double headcount for bitcoin and digital assets division

Goldman Sachs is reportedly looking to integrate services with Bitcoin and crypto exchange FTX

Top 30 bank in Panama, Towerbank, has declared it is bitcoin friendly

Bitcoin Knowledge and Perceptions, Block, 2022

Australians 'panicking' as power prices skyrocket, consumer advocates say

https://www.hardblock.com.au/join/ozbitcoinpod

Thanks to our guest: https://twitter.com/btcbrisket

- Bitcoin Bush Bash reflections - appreciating the thriving genuine Aussie bitcoin tribe

- Setting up a pfSense router for better home network privacy and security

- Running CalyxOS on a Pixel and learning about Samourai Wallet and BIP47 PayNyms

- Learning better coin control (UXTO management) and taking care of bitcoin privacy

- Brisket's bitcoin journey

- Learning about bitcoin through the carnivore diet (eg, carnivore is the answer to fiat food, and bitcoin is the answer to fiat money)

- Understanding (the hard way) about why we don't trade or use leverage

- Technical Analysis is horoscopes for men

- Finding quality signal on Bitcoin Twitter

- Learning about permaculture and taking forward those philosophies into other aspects of life

- Bitcoiners operate on first principles, with firm beliefs, held lightly

- Experiences with and science behind carnivore diet and removing seed oils (polyunsaturated fatty acids)

- John K Vallis iconically not wearing a shirt in podcasts

- Discovering bitcoin is a framework to live your life better, like an immune system

- The benefits of generalising and localisation over specialising and globalisation

- Harnessing the bitcoin community to learn skills to be more self-sufficient and be apart of something greater

- Bitcoin is based on solid underpinning principles and is about freedom, autonomy, and personal responsibility

- Fiat systems are full of complexity which become impossible for most people to fully understand

- Bitcoin is a cheat code that helps you think better

- We're all working for bitcoin, only some of us get paid for it

- The fiat world becomes increasingly unrelatable the further down the bitcoin rabbit hole you go

- Shill lightly, if at all (as per Gigi)

- You'd be amazed at the things you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit - an open source ethos

- Complacency and indifference is a long-term threat to bitcoin

- Appreciating the blocksize wars and how resilient the bitcoin code and network is

- Toxic maximalism is part of bitcoin's immune system

- Things to be bullish about: Jack Mallers' announcement, global deterioration, bitcoin being normalised, bitcoiners

- Bitcoin is a one way street

- Keeping extra meat in the freezer for if someone, anyone, needs to be fed

- Having kids, home schooling, and citadel (bitcoin community) building

- Using Obsidian to document ideas and knowledge

- Bitcoin is hope!

https://www.hardblock.com.au/join/ozbitcoinpod

- Why dollar cost average (i.e., save in) bitcoin, rather than trade or invest?

- How has HardBlock set up its buy and withdrawal features to best facilitate DCA'ing?

- What is a UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) and what is UTXO management?

- How to choose the right size UTXO depending if you're saving or spending (keeping in mind things like convenience, fees, and privacy implications?)

https://www.hardblock.com.au/join/ozbitcoinpod

- Bitcoin Bush Bash

- United Kingdom annual CPI is 9.0% as of April, a 40-year high

- New Zealand hands out extra cash to fight ‘inflation storm’ (a NZ$1 billion spending package)

- President of El Salvador announces 32 central banks and 12 financial authorities (44 countries) will meet in El Salvador to discuss financial inclusion, digital economy, banking the unbanked, and the El Salvador bitcoin rollout|

- Warren Buffet-backed NuBank (Latin America's largest digital bank) to convert 1% of its cash reserves into bitcoin and to enable bitcoin trading for their customers  

- Texas Pacific Land Corporation (one of the largest landowners in Texas) has partnered with with a digital infrastructure provider and bitcoin miner (Mawson Infrastructure and JAI Energy) to establish a 60 megawatt mining facility in West Texas  

- Nomura (Japan's largest investment banking broker) to launch a subsidiary focused on institutional bitcoin and digital asset products

AUSTRALIA

- Australian Tax Office “prioritizes” bitcoin and cryptocurrency capital gains tax reporting

TECHNICAL

- Unsure how BIPs are implemented? Confused by terms like "Miner Activated Soft Fork (MASF)", "User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)", "User Resisted Soft Fork (URSF)", and "Speedy Trial"? Check out this recent explainer article

Thanks to our guest: https://twitter.com/btc_shepherd of https://thebitcoinshepherd.com

- Dale's personal journey into bitcoin after dabbling in law, real estate, and financial planning

- Learning about money printing, inflation, "intrinsic value", and macroeconomics from the likes of Lyn Alden, Paul Tudor Jones, Raoul Pal, and Simon Dixon

- Understanding the philosophies behind bitcoin (e.g., separating state and money)

- Starting The Bitcoin Shepherd (www.thebitcoinshepherd.com) to help orange pill no-coiners and help them with self-custody

- The importance of understanding the economic, technological, and philosophical reasons for bitcoin

- Needing nuanced and adversarial thinking to check your biases

- Bitcoin's value comes from its utility and monetary properties

- Bitcoin provides full risk with full reward, whereas bonds provide a negative real yield with the full risk of default (i.e., no returns, all risk!)

- Finding a niche in bitcoin education and prioritising quality of life (rather than just mining fiat)

- Writing about bitcoin and badmouthing shitcoins as a journalist for www.cryptonews.com.au

- Working with South Africans to establish geographically distributed multi-signature custody options

- Wrestling with the desire to wear bitcoin merch and talk to everyone about bitcoin while keeping good opsec

- Differences in privacy and security risks between South Africa and Australia

- Using multi-sig, ColdCard decoy pins, and decoy passphrases to improve bitcoin security

- Buying property, bitcoin, and/or bitcoin miners and then using the assets as collateral to buy more bitcoin

- Choosing a vocation/career based on what problems do you want to solve

- Non-fungible tokens (NFTs): benefits for artists, hype cycles, wash trading, scams, and money laundering

- How family and friends have responded to transitioning to a bitcoin evangelical vocation

- Mainstream / corporate media: Bitcoin holders are psychopaths, and if you want to buy a house you should save more fiat, invest in stocks, and leverage more debt

- Lightning Network will cut the lunch of expensive, inefficient, and corruptible intermediaries

- Using demonstrations to orange pill, rather than just explanations (although 'what is money?' and 'fractional reserve banking' are always important topics to discuss)

- 4-year political cycles incentivize manipulation of the money supply

- Legacy media is driven by broken incentives (e.g., being first, being sensational to get clicks, and lazy writing that is derivative of other articles)

- There's a fine line between dispelling FUD and giving it credibility by responding in the first place

- Using memes and calling out absurdity

- Benefits of bitcoin mining (bootstrapping renewable infrastructure, stabilising grid demand, rescuing stranded and otherwise wasted energy)

- Most normies will own or use bitcoin without even realising it (e.g., due to superannuation allocations)

- Things to be bullish about: Lightning adoption; hash rate ATH; nation-state adoption; bitcoin development and mining thriving; bitcoiners are honest, motivated, and innovative; and Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen's recent comments about the US dollar and bitcoin

- Threats to bitcoin: cryptocurrency as a distraction, government over-regulation, and privacy concerns

- Topics that tangent out from bitcoin: low time preference.

Discount link (get six months of free weekly batched Auto-Send withdrawals from HardBlock): https://www.hardblock.com.au/join/ozbitcoinpod

Hosts:

The Australian Bitcoin Podcast is focused on Australian bitcoin and privacy content, including educational episodes, recent news, and guest interviews.

Guest: https://twitter.com/btc_shepherd of https://thebitcoinshepherd.com

Host: https://twitter.com/mission_bitcoin

Sponsor: HardBlock https://www.hardblock.com.au

Elon Musk's take-over of Twitter

Sri Lanka defaults on $51 billion external debt

IMF offers Argentina a loan with stipulations restricting cryptocurrency adoption

US CPI hits 8.5% in March 2022, the highest in 40 years

Janet Yellen (US Treasury Secretary) gives 30 minute speech about bitcoin and CBDCs

American push-back on the Federal Reserve and CBDCs

Senator Bragg's comments on an Australian Sovereign Digital Currency

US bank Morgan Stanley report the bitcoin Lightning Network is superior in terms of transaction speed and cost when compared to payment giants like Visa

UniSwap class action lawsuit for promoting scamcoins and not making proper disclosures

New scientific analysis of Roman coins uncovers evidence financial crisis was worse than expected

AUSTRAC releases 2 new guides to help spot illicit cryptocurrency use

Government overreach, including Ukraine banning purchases of bitcoin in their local currency

Australia's #Bitcoin spot ETF gets the green light

Life is getting more expensive, but you can still save for a home deposit with traditional methods

‘Impulsive psychopaths like crypto’: Why some take risks on bitcoin

Alex Saunders from Nugget's News returns with an NFT collection

Lighting Network grew by 750% in one year

Lightning channels all time high capacity

Taro protocol for tokens on Lightning Network

TSMC raises $3.5 bln for new chip foundry in Arizona

The Australian Bitcoin Podcast is focused on Australian bitcoin and privacy content, including educational episodes, recent news, and guest interviews.  

- Beach swims and bouldering

- Pete's history before discovering bitcoin

- Sound versus unsound ladders

- Corrupt intermediaries eroding aid money for humanitarian causes

- Sound money is anti-corruption money

- Community is an important part of the solution

- Scale of organisations is a significant part of the problem

- What would a bitcoin bank be like?

- Who'll build the roads with no or less government?

- Morals and acceptable behaviour conforms to the rules of the game being played

- It's not about the left or right - there's a vertical liberty line too

- Starting and working on bitcoin education (https://bitcoinforhumans.com)

- Local institutions are key to a bitcoin solution (e.g., community-level banks or currency exchanges)

- Investing back into the community (in cash flow businesses), while storing long-term wealth in bitcoin

- Good money allows specialisation and division of labour

- Focusing career/vocation on education, exploring ways to generate dividends from bitcoin, helping people start with bitcoin and custody their keys

- Educating people early is important, because the shitcoin allure can be very distracting

- Shitcoins are a metaphoric eclipse attack on pre-coiners

- Orange pill strategies: understanding their position and identifying the problem

- What's the thing you're most disappointed about in life? 

- Being a fiat debt slave

- Nobody really knows what they're doing

- Living in a super capitalist cult with a clubhouse in the middle

- Figuring out where to stand in an earthquake and teaching others to think the same way

- Currency and debt catastrophes are escalating

- Deflation is a good thing, except for in a debt-based economy

- It's impossible to measure and organise a complex system using a linear or flawed unit of account (e.g., GDP, CPI)

- Decentralizing power and building local small businesses and institutions will be the key to a hyperbitcoinized world

- It's still early to change to a bitcoin vocation

- Using CFDs with DLCs to smooth out bitcoin price volatility

- Being unbanked blocks people from society

- Censorship-resistance and permissionless are two of bitcoin's most important qualities

- Bitcoin is a mirror that encourages you to figure out a better moral framework

- Becoming an anarchist in a polo shirt

- Bitcoiners are generally a valid and reliable sounding board

- Preparing for the citadel building stage

- Statism is based on a logical fallacy

- Central planning cannot work in an emergent system

- Voluntaryism and anarchism are a more dynamic and responsive way to organise society

- Get involved in bitcoin - just dip your toe in!