Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 503.
https://www.youtube.com/live/fofM1rmyE2M?si=R_Xfl7Qf1lNFvh3_
I was a guest recently (Oct. 2, 2026) on The Bitcoin Group #505, on the World Crypto Network (Youtube channel), hosted by Thomas Hunt. (Apple podcasts; Madbitcoins). Panelists: Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella), Vlad Costea, Ben Arc, and Thomas Hunt. We discussed a variety of topics. See transcript below.
Shownotes
The political bitcoiners thought they had found true love, but ended up broken hearted. Just like anyone who bought trumpcoin
THIS WEEK:
Citi raises bitcoin, ether forecasts on strong crypto activity (Reuters)
Adam ‘Not Satoshi’ Back’s Crypto Empire Hit by Hack, Lawsuits
El Salvador Shifts to Stablecoins as Bitcoin Payments Wane
Trump loses favor with crypto fans who call him out for cashing in (Washington Post)
White House Blames Democrats After CLARITY Act Fails in Senate
(Blockonomi)
Summary (Grok)
Stephan Kinsella joined The Bitcoin Group #505 to discuss Bitcoin’s price, industry news, and politics. On the price outlook, he said he was happy with current levels but noted that hitting $100,000 felt like a long time ago; a group of them had celebrated that milestone at the French Laundry in California. Asked whether Bitcoin would be higher or lower the following week, he predicted higher while cautioning that he is almost always wrong in the short term, likening the unpredictability to Burton Malkiel’s random-walk thesis.
On Adam Back’s recent difficulties, including the Liquid Network hack and failed treasury-company efforts, Kinsella wished him well and mentioned having met him for the first time at a Bitcoin conference in Helsinki. He said he was more honored to meet early Bitcoin developer Martti Malmi (Sirius). When asked whether Back would recover, he predicted yes, again noting that he is usually wrong about such things.
Kinsella was more pointed about El Salvador’s shift toward stablecoins. He gave it a thumbs-down but said he was never surprised by what governments do, adding “never trust politicians” and drawing a parallel to enthusiasm for Argentina’s Javier Milei. On Donald Trump, he observed that while Trump is “bad” and “all over the map,” he is at least not hostile to Bitcoin in the way Harris or the Democrats would have been. He dismissed fanfare around the Clarity Act and similar legislation as window-dressing that distracts from substantive steps such as lowering or eliminating capital-gains taxes or making Bitcoin legal tender. He added that people who are “taken in” by such politicians “probably deserve to be,” framing it as social Darwinism, and noted that he has seen arguments that Jesus was an anarcho-capitalist who would have been a Bitcoiner.
In closing remarks he predicted that Austrian economists would continue to become more pro-Bitcoin. Early skepticism, he said, often rested on the claim that Bitcoin violated the regression theorem because it was neither gold nor physical; those views have largely faded except for his friend Guido Hülsmann, who recently argued in Turkey that Bitcoin can never become money. Near the end of the episode, after the host mentioned copyright-related obstacles (paywalled articles and YouTube content-ID risks), Kinsella observed that intellectual property now permeates everyday life—“like the Sixth Sense, I see IP everywhere.”
Transcript (Grok assist)
The Bitcoin Group #505 – Cleaned Transcript
(for Kinsella on Liberty Podcast Episode 503)
Introductions and Welcome
0:31
Thomas Hunt: The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 years, the sharpest Satoshis, the best Bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Ben Arc from LNBits.
Ben Arc: Hello. Good evening all.
Thomas Hunt: Stephan Kinsella from the Property and Freedom Society. Hello.
Stephan Kinsella: Hello.
Thomas Hunt: Vlad Costea from Bitcoin Takeover magazine. Buy my Coldcard.
And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one.
Issue one. Citi raises Bitcoin Ether forecasts on strong crypto activity.
Bitcoin Price Outlook
1:16
Thomas Hunt: Citigroup has raised its 12-month forecast for Bitcoin and Ether, citing stronger crypto activity, a supportive macroeconomic backdrop, and a resumption of ETF inflows. The brokerage increased its target for Bitcoin to $113,000 a coin, up from $82,000, and Ether to $3,028, up from $2,240.
Ben Arc, it's always the price, the price, the price, the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum and other things. Ben, what do you think about the price of Bitcoin?
Ben Arc: Everything's fine now. It's a few months. October. It's October. Usually happens this time of year. I think a lot of it is there's a lot of people are getting a bit twitchy around the AI bubble. Some of that junky capital's looking somewhere to go. People are seeing moves with Tether and Bitcoin and yeah, the ETF. I think it was the biggest inflows they'd had for a year. So you've also got, you know, inflation was a little bit cooler than people expected, the US inflation. You got weaker job market as well in the US. So it all points towards the price going up. But yeah, it's not like an extreme rally but as we all know once you can have that feedback loop where it just goes up and up and up particularly I think if there's some drop in the AI markets. I'm seeing a lot more FUD around AI and around the AI industry as well. And I think that inevitably the thing which people shift their capital into from AI is going to be Bitcoin.
Thomas Hunt: Yeah, it's going up.
It's funny, Ben. It's not just the intellectual capital of people like me and you and others spending all their time playing with AI. Soon it's the actual capital as people exit their stock investments for the chance to buy Anthropic, the chance to buy OpenAI, if it opens up or not. We'll have to see how it goes. Stephan Kinsella, what do you think about the price of Bitcoin? Everyone wants to know.
Stephan Kinsella: I am happy with it. But when it hit $100,000 seems like a long time ago. What two years ago I think a group of us went to the French Laundry in California to celebrate. So I guess I'm looking forward to the chance to do that again. So we're not quite there.
Thomas Hunt: Yeah. The main thing we're always looking for is like our friend Cryptographiti used to say, if you can get guacamole at Chipotle. If it's guacamole on time or guacamole off. I think we're about halfway to guacamole.
Vlad Costea, what do you think about the price of Bitcoin this week?
Vlad Costea: You know, two years ago when the first ETF was approved, we were promised that we're going to be in the hundreds of thousands and we're going to get bankers at our doors asking or begging us on their knees to sell our Bitcoin to them. And there's going to be this massive demand and the scarcity is going to kick in. We're going to be super rich. We're going to buy basically private jets with the dust that we had from transactions 10 years ago or something.
None of that happened. I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of paper Bitcoin circulating that nobody wants to talk about and we just ignore this phenomenon. I also don't know what half the words in that article mean and that's part of the reason why I got into Bitcoin so I don't have to learn bankers' lingo and jargon. So, sorry for my ignorance, but I had greater expectations. Whoever is happy with what we're having is just being delusional. We should have had prices way up. Like, we were promised by Donald Trump. I know that this is part of the topics list, but he was going to be the best crypto president. What's going on?
It seems like only the memecoin creators are enjoying anything because there's no SEC investigation into anything. So that's the extent he freed Ross, but now what? Like we have to just watch how a bunch of guys are getting rich and we're just stuck with Biden era prices. Come on, man. I thought you were making Bitcoin great again or whatever. Just tweet something. Pump our bags.
Thomas Hunt: It does seem like a return to the prices and the values of old. No one really profited except maybe the insiders. But we got more on that coming up. But first, predicting against the magic eightball the truth of all power and prediction in this or any universe. Ben Arc, will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower this time next week?
Ben Arc: I mean, I think higher. This current epoch of price kind of reminds me of, you know, when we breached 10K and everyone was like, "Oh, it's never going to go into 10K again." and then it went into 10K and then it went over 10K and then we breached 20K and it's like ever going to go under 20K again and then it goes into 20K again then it goes over 20K again you can't imagine never going back to it but that's kind of what happened with 100K. Everyone says it's never going to go under 100K and then it goes under 100K and then slowly crawls its way back up so for now we're going up higher.
Thomas Hunt: It does seem Ben like last time we had the big drawdown and you're looking at it and your terrible investment and everyone thinks you're stupid and your family's against you and you're like, why did I hold on to this stupid thing and then somehow it goes up and I look at it this time and I see it drop to what 65 or something awful and everyone's freaking out and your family thinks you're stupid and now we're holding it and it looks like it might be coming back at 80 again. It's the craziest thing. Stephan Kinsella, higher or lower this time next week?
Stephan Kinsella: Well, you want the good news or the bad news first?
Thomas Hunt: Always the good news.
Stephan Kinsella: The good news is it's going to be higher. The bad news is I'm almost always wrong in the short term anyway. It's almost like Malkiel had a point about the random walk down Wall Street. Seems to be unpredictable at least in the short term. So I feel like it's going up,...
