Bitcoin Bottom Line

Mike Hobart returns for Episode 30 with C.J. Wilson, co-host of Bitcoin Bottom Line, for a live broadcast from the Bitcoin 22 conference.

The two begin by discussing the conference and meeting Bitcoin celebrities, and the approaching one year anniversary of El Salvadorian adoption. “El Salvador making the move was like the one person willing to go against the flow. Since that country doesn’t have a history of innovation in that way, people didn’t follow them right away”,

Wilson states. Things are changing. The two go on to discuss the role that Bitcoin is playing in the war, and how the currency is helping the Ukrainian government. Wilson continues the conversation, mentioning that “If the government is running out of FUD weapons, and Bitcoin is growing at the same time, you’re going to have more voices that can attack those FUD vectors faster.”

Hobart is releasing an article through Bitcoin Magazine in which he interviewed one of Bitcoin twitters’ favorite female personalities, and she talks about how because she came to bitcoin, it made her value health in a new way. “With health, it’s all proof of work,” he continues, “If we don’t have new kids to grow the economy, in terms of not only consumption but new thoughts and ideas, we don’t solve the problems.”

Listen to the full episode for more!

On this episode of “Bitcoin Bottom Line,” hosts Steven McClurg and C.J. Wilson are joined by congressional candidate Taylor Burks.

#Bitcoin #Crypto #TaylorBurks

Burks grew up on a fifth generation cattle farm in Missouri. After graduating as a first generation college student, he joined the United States Navy over 15 years ago where he is now a Lieutenant Commander in the Reserves.

Burks started hearing about Bitcoin around 5 years ago and has since been a proponent for the innovation of blockchain technology and Bitcoin in particular.

Host Steven McClurg relates his similar experience, explaining how his grandparents never used banks, always kept cash, and therefore he also grew up with a mistrust of banks.

“We don’t need some big institution to take care of our finances for us. We want that independence, because we don’t trust them to have our best interest at heart.” He continues, “Bitcoin is the ability to be independent from these macro factors that don’t have the little guy at heart.”

He goes on to describe how it allows immigrants to keep more of their hard earned wealth for themselves through remittances, and host C.J. Wilson explains how people are using Bitcoin as a savings technology, and not as a get-rich-quick scheme.

“The way people hold Bitcoin today reinforces the idea that it’s about independence. You can make a lot of money, but if you truly believe in bitcoin, you’re holding it.” Burks says.

McClurg explains, “There’s either hard earned money, or it’s found money. When you’ve actually had to work for the money, you understand that value.

In Russia, a lot of people have worked very hard for the money that’s sitting in their banks, and now all of a sudden they can’t access it anymore. Do you trust that money belongs to you, or has any value any more?”

Burks shares, “Bitcoin represents a concept of freedom that people who suffer from decisions far beyond their control really shouldn’t have to, because they can access something like bitcoin now to protect themselves and their families.”

When asked if Missouri has the chance to be a Bitcoin state, Burks explains how they have a few young legislators to create policies in a way where Bitcoin can be a part of their state lifestyle. He goes on to explain what that looks like.

They go on to discuss inflation, technology in the agricultural sector, generational wealth, values, and more.

Listen to the full episode!

On this episode of Bitcoin Bottom Line, host Steven McClurg is joined by Greg Foss and Josh Olszewics to discuss bonds. Steven and Greg met while being co-investors in the same company that is responsible for bringing ETFs into Canada. This company gave people in Canada comfort that a spot Bitcoin ETF will work and cannot be manipulated. #Bitcoin #Bonds #Investing #Crypto McClurg mentions that the last time he was with Greg they discussed gas flaring. Greg mentioned what had been happening in Alberta and shortly after, China decided to shut down all of its miners. McClurg asks how Foss has seen this progress in Canada. Foss states, “We do not have much flare gas in Canada. The US has more flare. We have 400 megawatts of power that are former peaking plants. They're located right along the TransCanada natural gas pipeline and we will be mining Bitcoin at those plants.” McClurg and Foss go on to discuss the two different Bitcoin audiences. The first is the intermediary audience, which consists of financial advisors and wirehouse platforms. The second being institutions. McClurg says, “Oddly enough, nobody wants to own Bitcoin directly.” Which is how both McClurg and Foss recommend owning Bitcoin. While Valkyrie was looking to productize Bitcoin rather than holding it directly in a product, they found that there were two ways to do it. “Number one was miners, but even that is relatively niche for a lot of the wirehouses. The ETF we launched in December is actually way more suitable for those people and those companies that hold Bitcoin in their balance sheet. They want the correlation to Bitcoin, but they don’t want the miners, nor t to hold Bitcoin. I think a lot of these shops are a little too far off to still get there” says McClurg. McClurg states, “Life insurance is another area that you look at and are like ‘okay, well they are not going to hold Bitcoin directly.’ They can’t, but when it comes to junk bonds, life insurance agencies are governed by the rating agencies. These agencies determine how much capital they have to reserve against each one of their investments, which is why they are so filled up with investment rate bonds and treasuries even though it is technically a negative yield at the moment.” McClurg questions what the FED is going to do and what they are thinking. “They have never traded risk and they are always very backward looking. They are waiting for data from months ago to make decisions on what they can do a month from now that can affect the economy in two to three years.” Foss believes, “it is a true lack of understanding about how the markets work. You can job-own all you want, but at the end of the day when volatility exceeds thirty percent annualized in the equity market, that implies moves of plus or minus two percent average daily volatility. New issue markets and everything close when volatility is above thirty percent. Volume is creeping up and if new issue markets close, access to capital closes and growth stops.” He continues, “There are no returns left in bonds so everybody’s pentiant is relying almost entirely on equities as a performance generator. If pentiant funds go into the underfunded status, there are going to be a lot of upset pensioners and an upset president.” Olszewics brings up that Bitcoin’s decline is smaller than Nasdaq. Foss believes, “Bitcoin will be a long volatility asset...Bitcoin’s insurance is essentially being short credit. When you have short credit, you have long volatility.” He continues that Bitcoin is the best asymmetric return opportunity that he has seen in his thirty years of managing risk. As the episode wraps up, McClurg and Foss return to discussing the FED. McClurg believes that there will be one rate hike. He predicts that the FED will do something in March and there will be two, maybe three rate hikes that the market will not be able to take. Foss says that high yield bonds are the worst investment he has seen throughout his years of managing risk and

Host and Valkyrie CIO, Steven McClurg, met via livestream with five special guests, all experts in the Bitcoin space.

Bitcoiner C.J. Wilson begins the round table discussion about the hopes and expectations of the new year. Wilson gives a short recap of the terrible flood attacks, adoption of Bitcoin from El Salvador, creation of the Bitcoin Football Club, as well as the action of mining reaching all-time highs during 2021.

Justine Harper of Unchained Capital speculates that adoption will be a significant focus of 2022 after seeing notable institutions adopting Bitcoin, while Kristy-Leigh Minehan of OhGodAGirl discusses hash rates and mining. Minehan believes that this will be the year that some mainstream guys join the ASIC development business due to all of the mining moving into the United States after China’s ban and the increased market saturation.

Charlie Lee, Founder of Litecoin agrees with Harper and Minehan that the adoption of Bitcoin will be prominent this year. He discusses Tonga’s interest in following El Salvador’s plan of making Bitcoin legal tender and the potential of a Spot ETF.

Peter McCormack of What Bitcoin Did discusses the benchmarks of the Bedford Bitcoin Football Club for 2022 and the focus on next season. One of the benchmarks will be commercial revenue proving that having an international base of Bitcoiners who support the team will allow a revenue model that matches lead clubs in the UK. Another benchmark will be strengthening the club's infrastructure, processes, and protocols to take a tenth division team through the leagues. McClurg speaks about the adoption of Bitcoin as payment by sports teams worldwide.

Author, Jimmy Song, discusses releasing his third book and seeing a trend of Bitcoin as a political issue in current and future elections. Two democrats and three republicans in the Ohio senate race have all expressed positive thoughts on Bitcoin. Song speculates that 2022 will have positive effects on Bitcoin despite potential adversity.

McClurg brings up the recent news that Rio De Janeiro is adding one percent of Bitcoin to its city treasury, similar to Miami. These two cities are now competing for forces with El Salvador. Wilson speculated that El Salvador would win due to its current Bitcoin infrastructure and commitment.

McCormack asks the other's opinions on the pegasus software in El Salvador. He describes the issue of thirty activists and journalists having information compromised on their phones due to this state tracking software. A variety of authoritarian problems have occurred in El Salvador over the past eighteen months. He challenged whether we are being objective enough regarding this issue.

Minehan states that the NSO group that created the Pegasus software was running a subsidiary of an American venture capital firm to create it. She has seen a trend of giving people a pause because they are in the Bitcoin community, which is happening in El Salvador. With the

excitement surrounding them adopting Bitcoin, people are not paying attention to what is happening with the pegasus software. Over thirty percent of the IOS population had the pegasus software installed until the IOS 14.2 update.

Song agrees and discusses the issue of tech companies having more information than they should.

McClurg suggests looking at the issue from a macro perspective. He acknowledges what they are doing is bad, but they have been an authoritarian regime for a very long time. It takes time to become a democracy, and he believes that aspects of democracy and freedom will emerge into the government.

Harper agrees that it is vital to be objective and that the people of El Salvador are benefit