Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 73.
Wow, that seems impossible.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
Well, I hope this episode doesn't upset some of you.
That's never my goal.
Of course, it's not. But there is an uncomfortable truth in the Bitcoin community.
I'm not the one that says I'm just the messenger.
I didn't I didn't make the rules. OK, so don't get mad at me.
Some folks come to Bitcoin. They want to escape the fiat system.
They don't want to have to pay attention to the phony jobs numbers or the cooked inflation stats.
They just want to focus on Bitcoin. I get that. It feels good to tune it all out.
I can't really blame them. But ignorance isn't a strategy.
It's more of a cope. And you can borrow a little bit of peace of mind in the short term.
But eventually the bill of reality always comes due.
It's a long story, but I learned that one the hard way.
And it's like the sneaky stuff that gets you.
If you're not watching, maybe you're outsourcing your decision making.
It's the stuff that's sort of insidious and just works its way into your decision making.
Like here's a great example.
If, say, you based decisions around employment or compensation or just the job market in general around the data that we've been getting for like the last year.
Well, you've been working from bogus data because breaking news.
This is CNN breaking news.
A new warning sign on the economy.
Just moments ago, the government delivered a major update on the labor market.
It shows jobs growth is weaker, much weaker than previously reported.
There were actually 911,000 fewer jobs created in the 12 month period through March of this year.
Whoa, you might as well just call it a cool mill.
911,000 fewer jobs than reported.
So all the jobs numbers, even the ones that have been revised, have been wrong by a massive margin.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, they've revised it down by nearly a cold million.
Everything dropped except mostly transportation and warehousing utilities.
And I think medical, although I couldn't confirm that.
And we just got a really crappy August jobs report too.
So crappy August jobs report comes out, which everybody was going to freak out about before they got a chance.
We saw this historically large revision.
So that makes it the largest preliminary revision on record.
CNN business and politics correspondent Vanessa Orkabich is in New York.
I mean, Vanessa, as I just pointed out, this is huge.
The largest revision on record. Walk us through what you're learning.
Well, this just signals in that time period from March, excuse me, April of 2024 through March of 2025,
the jobs market was a lot weaker than initially reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So 911,000 fewer jobs added over that time period.
And when you average it out over those 12 months, you get a revision,
a downward revision of an average of 76,000 jobs.
Now, this is a report that comes out every single year.
It is typical. It is a typical report.
What is a little bit atypical about this report,
It is much higher than what we've seen in previous revisions.
So the average number of jobs revised down is a lot greater.
Now, it's important to note that this time period that we're looking at, most of these months were under the Biden administration.
Just three months of this report was under the Trump administration.
But in terms of what it's telling us about the economy, it's pointing to key sectors that are seeing downwards revisions in the number of jobs added.
sectors like trade, transportation, utilities down about 226,000 jobs.
And then you have leisure and hospitality and professional business services,
also with triple-digit losses in terms of jobs that we thought were there but are not there.
This is what happens in these reports.
There's a couple reasons why we might be seeing these downward revisions.
The first is that this is an estimate initially,
And there was weaker than inferred job creation at new companies, so companies thinking they were adding more jobs that they didn't end up adding.
Sampling errors from responses from businesses, you get these initial responses from businesses.
But then this larger one-year report looks at quarterly tax filings, which are a lot more specific.
And also in this preliminary benchmark report, you're not going to see the accounting for undocumented immigrants because they are not included in those quarterly tax filings.
So I was expecting this sooner.
I will admit this came later in the year than I thought it would.
Maybe I didn't understand the scheduling.
I thought we'd seen an earlier revision.
But I will zap 5000 sats to anyone who clips my prediction from before the election saying this would happen.
If you find it in the back catalog and clip it and send me a link, I'll zap you 5,000 sats.
The way they collect the data for this is silly.
You kind of heard it there.
So they survey under 2,000 companies across various industries.
And they take those survey answers on face value.
So, yeah, we're going to hire more.
We're feeling great.
Trump's getting in the White House.
We're hiring.
Hoorah.
Yeah, we feel good.
And they report on there that they're doing more hiring or whatever it is.
But then, of course, when you actually check what happened, they were either hiring illegals or they didn't do the hiring.
And so when it came time to reconcile that balance, we got this revision.
But it's a silly way to collect it.
Just going over about 2,000 companies, taking their answers like that, it's never going to scale like they think it would.
I mean, you could try, right?
But it's just not going to scale.
But if you've been taking their answers at face value, you've been taking bogus data at face value.
The good news for the Fed is this gives them cover to cut the rates now without looking like they're pressured into it.
I suspect the Fed probably was going to cut rates before this job revision came out.
But this really gives them the cover to say, no, we have to do it because look at the job market.
That's our second mandate here.
The reality is we have reached a period of fiscal dominance and the Fed was going to have to cut regardless.
They simply have no better option.
So let's back up. Let's talk about fiscal dominance. You hear the term thrown around a lot.
You could think of it as a period of time or an economic condition where the government's
large and persistent deficits force the central bank to prioritize
financing the government debt over controlling inflation. Essentially, they have to undermine
their own monetary policy and one of their own mandates in order to maintain price stability
because of the government's debt. So here's kind of, think of it like this. A government with high
debt and ongoing deficits, it has to finance the spending. We've been talking about that.
And they're currently doing it at extremely high rates. If the central bank raises rates to fight
inflation, which it has been doing, it makes the government's debt even more expensive to service,
which threatens economic sustainability and the sustainability of the government itself.
It's existential for their world.
So they have to compromise their monetary policy, the central bank.
So they get essentially backed into a corner.
And this is where you see them getting pressured to make interest rates come down.
You see all kinds of stuff.
Because the reality is the government has to continue to finance itself.
So they compromise and we get, as people, inflation.
You can call it inflation taxation, where they monetize the debt away by debasing the currency.
And here's some key characteristics where you can spot this. You note the central bank starts to lose its independence. The public starts to expect inflation. So therefore, inflation tends to rise when people expect inflation. And you see the federal government either force or begin to work with financial institutions to hold more of the government debt, which we are seeing happen right now. It's been a key goal of the Trump administration.
that penalizes savers. That penalizes savers big. We are clearly in this time period right now.
I don't think anyone could deny it, right? We are living in a period of fiscal dominance. In fact,
I think we've been here for a bit, and Lynn Alden thinks so too. She posted this
in August of 2024. She wrote,
if there's a date that marks when the U.S. began entering fiscal dominance,
I would argue that is when the Fed resumed outright treasury purchases in October of 2019.
Despite having little desire to do economic stimulus at the time, they had to do it.
They didn't want to, but they had to.
So today, the U.S. is $37 trillion in debt.
We added a half a trillion dollars of federal debt in the last 30 days.
And now we see the employment market has been falling apart for the last year.
So if you've remained ignorant to what's going on, if you tried to measure the system from within the system using its own numbers, you're going to miss the mark.
Even billionaires at the top of their game, if they're measuring the system with the system, will miss the mark.
Here's Jamie Dimon's response to this large jobs revisions report.
the economy's weakening you know whether that is in the other way to recession or this week and i
don't know and that just confirms what we already thought kind of this might be true but of course
i think jamie's missing a key factor these numbers tell us what's already happened we've already been
through what these numbers are telling us is what we've already gone through we've all been living
it this time period is looking backwards so the question is what happens next and this is one of
the key reasons the Trump administration has been pounding the Fed from every avenue possible.
A judge just just in the last few hours temporarily blocked the removal of Lisa Cook,
the Federal Reserve governor that Trump wants out. The White House is standing its ground.
They want her removed. In a statement tonight, they said the ruling isn't the last word.
What is your reaction to this? Well, the ruling is interesting insofar as it says that Jay Powell,
the chairman of the Federal Reserve, nor anyone else on the Fed can take any steps to effectuate
her removal. Okay, can we just pause on that? Because that's super important, because many
have speculated that this whole thing has been a workaround for the White House to insist that
Jay Powell fire her. And when he doesn't, they will use that as their reason, and they need a
reason to out him. Well, I mean, the court stayed this. They put a temporary restraining order on
the removal of Lisa Cook. What's also interesting about this, since she is not being removed and they
can't affect her job, that means she's a voting member of the policy setting committee, which
decides on interest rates next Wednesday. Oh, my potatoes. So it gets complicated here for...
It's complicated for a reason. They're going after everything they can. They're going after
J-PAL. They're going after the credibility. And they're going after the individuals with what is
essentially lawfare so they can get more control over the Federal Reserve. They've already lost
independence. And now the fiscal dominance situation that we find ourselves in means that
the federal government is in the driver's seat and they necessarily need more control. By the way,
I'm not defending this. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm telling you this is the reality.
The Trump administration isn't attacking the Fed like this because Trump woke up one day,
turned on Fox News and decided, oh, somebody doesn't like the Fed on Fox. I'm going to attack
the Fed. These analysts, if you can call them that, completely missed the macro. They're so
busy thinking about the politics and the messaging that they missed the macro. What we are witnessing
is a White House in desperation. We are witnessing a White House scrambling every avenue they can.
The Genius Act, attacking the Fed, going on and on about rates. All of this is to get more control
so they can purchase debt at cheaper levels.
The Treasury is still doing debt buybacks right now.
I've been talking about it for weeks.
It's still ongoing.
They are doing historic buyback of their own debt,
refinancing longer-term debt as short-term debt at higher rates
with some sort of gamble, I assume,
that they can refinance it again later.
They are moving all of the decks around the Titanic,
all the chairs around the deck of the Titanic right now.
And these analysts just only look at it from a politics lens,
and they're missing the macro picture as to what is driving the White House.
So next Wednesday, if she's like, yeah, we'll cut rates, what's Trump going to do?
Or she may say no, depending on what the inflation data looks like.
Well, let's hope nobody makes a political decision and they make a decision based on economic data.
Daniel, what do you think about this?
Yeah, I mean, look, this is all a sham to try to get control of the board of governors so that,
you know, President Trump can lower interest rates.
He's not wrong here. They're not asking why.
I think they just, oh, Trump wants a boom. It's more than that. Like they said, it's complicated.
Manipulate the economy as much as he can. He knows that he can't fire Jay Powell, or at least at this point, he thinks that he can't.
So he's trying to de facto gain control of the board by putting his own people there and coming up with these excuses.
As been discussed on MSNBC many times, three cabinet secretaries, including the labor secretary, the transportation secretary, EPA administrator,
have also done what he claims is so objectionable to Lisa Cook.
But I don't see him going after his cabinet secretary.
So this is all a front for a much larger game for Donald Trump.
And frankly, it's pathetic.
See, he kind of gets it, but not quite.
The BLS numbers tell us the Fed was late.
Trump was probably right.
And they're desperate.
But they all missed that key piece.
We can all feel it.
You can all feel it.
Something else isn't right.
You know, the prices are getting crazy.
Things haven't always been like this.
And I think the Trump administration, with the messaging around too late Jerome Powell and additional steps they're taking, is all an attempt to get ahead of this.
I'm blown away by what I guess you would consider an essay from Treasury Secretary Scott Besant.
He has implemented a full blown plan and is just saying the quiet part out loud to put all of the blame for all of this on the Fed.
so scott besson i don't know how he has the time on september 5th released op-ed in the wall street
journal highlighting a much larger 17 page report that he wrote titled the fed's new gain of function
monetary policy and the sub headline is and again this is from the Treasury
Secretary of the United States the sub headline is overuse of non-standard
policies mission creep and institutional bloat are threatening the central bank monetary independence an incredibly ironic thing for the chief bond salesman to say especially during a period of fiscal dominance He goes on to say as we saw during the COVID pandemic
when lab-created experiments escape their confines,
they can wreak havoc on the real world.
Once released, they cannot easily be put back into the containment zone.
The extraordinary monetary policy tools unleashed after the 2008 financial crisis have similarly transformed the U.S. Federal Reserve's policy regime with unpredictable consequences.
Secretary, you wrote, let's see, it came out last weekend, your latest op-ed piece in the
Wall Street Journal, and you basically called now for a top-to-bottom review of all of Federal
Reserve operations, monetary policy, regulatory policy, staffing, regional reserve banks,
and the like.
Tell us about that, because this sounds like a blueprint for a new Trump-oriented Federal
Reserve Board.
It's not a blueprint for a new Trump-oriented Federal Reserve Board, Larry.
It is a blueprint for a Fed that values its independence and monetary policy.
Because of this gain-of-function monetary policy and mission creep and bloat that the Fed has had, they are risking their monetary policy.
I believe that the Fed should be able to set monetary policy on an independent basis.
But the more creep we see within their mission, then the more it threatens their independence.
And look, they have not covered themselves in glory in this decade.
We had the worst inflation in 40 or 50 years.
We never saw a post-examination of why things went wrong, how we can keep it from happening again.
Regulatory policies.
We saw the Silicon Valley Bank and the other two banks that went under.
We saw that get swept under the rug.
It's remarkable to hear a government official, let alone the Treasury Secretary, air this dirty laundry.
And it's, of course, a little disingenuous.
First of all, it's very cynical to use the gain-of-function terminology here.
He's very much trying to draw a parallel here.
It's also very savvy.
I have to give him that.
But to blame inflation and the economic disparity between the haves and have-nots, the asset owners and the non-asset owners, as all Fed policy, well, it's not true.
It's not the full picture at all, right?
The Fed didn't put everything on the federal government credit card.
The federal government did that, right?
The federal government's the one that's been promising everything to everybody to get reelected over and over again.
But it's such a little cherry of a narrative because you can also just look through that lens and show how their economic policies, the Fed's direct policies, have absolutely created a cantillion effect that has benefited the people closest to the money spigot and the asset owners.
It's provable.
It's absolutely provable.
So it's such a cherry of a narrative because you can spin it, you can go into it and you can show it. So like you can run with it. I mean, it's just it's it's never been done. I've never seen the I've never seen federal government official turn on the Federal Reserve like this and just air all of the dirty laundry and just come out there and say it's their fault.
we have economic disparity. It's their fault we have inflation. It's their fault the banks
collapsed. They raised rates too fast. I mean, they've always been on the same side. They've
always covered for each other, hand in glove. They're independents. And look, they have not,
they covered themselves in glory in this decade. We had the worst inflation in 40 or 50 years.
We never saw a post-examination of why things went wrong, how we can keep it from happening again.
Regulatory policies, we saw the Silicon Valley Bank and the other two banks that went under, we saw that get swept under the rug.
And the independence of the Fed exists because they have a special relationship with the American public.
They get to be appointed without budget constraints because the American people believe that they are above reproach.
And again and again, drifting away from the central mission has just caused so many problems.
That editorial is part of a much longer 15-page piece in a magazine online called The International Economy.
I'd urge everyone to go and read that because the other thing that this Fed has done through these massive QE interventions and balance sheet growth is they've caused these wide disparities across different groups in the economies.
That if you had assets, you've done great.
If you didn't have assets, you've gotten crushed.
Can you believe he just said that?
I mean, think of five years ago.
Could you ever picture a government official saying that?
It's unbelievable, but it is the truth.
And now they're saying it because they're trying to pin it on him.
I thought it was 17 pages, a 15-page PDF report that Scott wrote.
I'll have it linked in the show notes.
I did go through it earlier in the week, and I found a couple of things I think Bitcoiners would find interesting.
It sort of positions the Fed as a mad scientist.
and they talk about QE and their balance sheet expansion as gain-of-function experiments that
were impossible to contain. And they're right in the sense that the economy is a very complex
organism. It's like a micro-universe, and you can't just push on one thing and expect another
thing to pop out on the other end. So many other things in between get affected. And they attack,
in a sense, central planning at its core. They say the Fed's growth forecasts were overshot by
trillions in reality. Their models have been rough. They're more belief than they are math
these days. And they paint the Fed as an inequality machine, saying directly that
the quantitative easing pumped up assets for the rich and inflation hammered wage earners
and decimated savings. And they call them out for being unaccountable and bloated. Scott does,
not they, Scott, calls him out for being unaccountable and bloated, noting that the balance sheet ballooned from $1 trillion to nearly $9 trillion recently.
And the Fed funds itself has just done it by printing its own money.
So when it needs to increase its balance, it just funds itself.
It's not an act of Congress.
That's not great.
But the reality, too, and they touch on this.
He, it's just, it's inconceivable this would come from this guy.
But I guess he did it.
It's attributed to him.
Scott Besson says that the reality is with all of this, the unintended consequences of the Wall Street and big corporations were able to thrive on cheap debt and smaller business firms and young families have been locked out of ownership.
And we know that's true because the average new home buyer in the last couple of months has been 70 years old.
That's rough.
It's something like that, right?
I think actually it's like 38, but if you look at it, I can't remember the stat, but it's like really, really, really not good in the sense that people are not able to achieve home ownership.
And the stats for it are something – I think the new homeowner average age was 38, but the average amount of homes sold, the average age there was 70.
So it's like the most people buying homes are in their 70s.
And the average age – I think I've remembered it now.
The average age of a new home buyer was 38.
That's pretty crazy.
I mean it's just mind-boggling statistics.
It's hard to really kind of keep it straight, I have to be honest with you.
And I think Scott's right when he points out that their credibility has kind of collapsed. They did it to themselves. I've heard it over and over again when they stepped into environmental policy and equity and inclusion and started including that in the FOMC minutes.
that you like you could put it right on a chart that's the moment people started questioning what
are you doing is a scope creep that that is the beginning of the crack of credibility for them
so the blame game's going on now and the sitting treasury secretary of the freaking united states
just came up with gain of function economics well he says gain of function monetary policy
but it's gain of function economics i think grimes better hits better he just called out
the Fed for creating this massive divide between the asset owners and the non-asset owners right
there. This is the play. They're going to just continue to attack the Fed to get more power.
They'll get what they want to. That's the thing. They're going to get what they want. The Fed's
going to comply more and more so. And they'll pretend to remain independent because that's what
the market depends on. They'll claim to be data-driven, even though everybody knows their
data is old. And clearly, I mean, they've missed inflation up. They've missed inflation down.
They've missed employment up. They've missed employment down. I mean, it's really bad.
But the hard fact is, is the federal debt to GDP ratio is 124 percent. 124 percent debt to GDP.
Wow. That's just a reality that puts the debt in the driver's seat.
That means there's really no right answers the Federal Reserve can make, and they're just forced to help bail out the federal government. Lynn Alden explains it better than I can recently in the Impact Theory podcast.
In fiscal dominance, almost everything the central bank does is wrong.
That's the problem.
Because if they hold interest rates high, so go back to what we said earlier.
The primary purpose of raising interest rates is to slow down bank lending.
The problem is that the whole period of inflation we've had for the past five years was not caused by excessive bank lending.
It was caused by those fiscal deficits.
Originally, it was intentional stimulus.
And now it's just kind of this background higher deficit.
So the Fed, in some ways, has been trying to raise interest rates to slow down bank lending to offset the real problem, which is the federal deficits.
But by doing so, because the debt's over 100% GDP, by keeping interest rates high, they're also actually keeping the deficit high because they're keeping federal rates high.
And yet if they cut interest rates while you have stocks at all-time highs, gold at all-time highs, Bitcoin at all-time highs, property values at all-time highs, then they're adding fuel to the fire too.
And that's why you get to that statistic where 98% of economies, when they reach these debt levels, tend to have some sort of default, which can be through purchasing power, because their own central bank kind of runs out of options.
And so I think that, you know, it's probably due for a mild cut just based on the duration of economic conditions.
But I view that as a much like a smaller lever to pull than the fiscal situation.
Kind of one way of putting it is that when the money's weak, people will monetize other things.
And then by doing so, they make those things less available to those who just want to hold them for their actual utility use, not their monetary use.
And so by monetizing our equity market, by monetizing our real estate market, because our money's weak, it causes all these more structural imbalances.
And therefore, it causes periods of malinvestment.
And it causes that kind of, along with other policy decisions, those high levels of wealth concentration.
September 17th, 2025 is the date.
Will they cut or won't they cut?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this might be one of the most important FOMC meetings in my lifetime.
The world will be watching JPOW as he takes the stage to decide what the reserve currency, the most important economy in the world, what the price of money is going to be.
And the poly market odds right now show an 82% chance that the Fed is going to cut rates by 25 basis points, so 0.25.
15% of the bettors are going for a 50 basis points cut, and only 3% are betting no change at all.
So only 3% think nothing's going to happen, and nobody thinks that it's going to be an increase.
This is also probably even more so.
I'd say it's, I think 82 is low.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I think 82, I think it's like a 95% chance lock.
Personally, that's my number, because today we got new wholesale inflation numbers.
This is like the services price, and that's a key metric for the Fed when they're evaluating their stance on monetary policy in regards to how inflation impacts it.
And we saw a 0.2% drop.
Now, it's not blow away, but this producer price index, this is measuring the input costs, which measures it from a broad array of goods and services.
That also went down 0.1%.
So we have both services and producer price index notching down right before the Fed is supposed to announce cuts.
PPI, wholesale inflation for August, expected to be up three tenths.
No, no, no. Down one tenth of a percent. Down one tenth.
Wow. That would be the first negative number since April of this year when it was minus two tenths.
Strip out food and energy.
We're also expecting up three-tenths.
It's minus one-tenth as well.
Minus one-tenth, the same.
Last time we had a minus number was April, and we're comping to minus two-tenths in April.
And I do want to point out, last month we had up nine-tenths on both those variables.
They were the highest going back to March of 22.
They just were revised slightly lower to 0.7, so seven-tenths of percent for each of those in the rearview mirror for July.
Now, let's look at X food, energy, and trade.
Finally, as expected, up three-tenths, which follows up six-tenths unrevised at this point.
Up three-tenths would actually be the smallest, going back to zero in June of this year.
Now, the year-over-year, in my opinion, these are the most important.
And boy, I'm surprised.
Real progress here.
2.6 on year-over-year headline.
We are expecting 3.3 in the rearview mirror, 3.3.
Wow. So 2.6 when they were expecting 3.3. I mean, like you said, it's kind of good. And they even revised the previous month's numbers downwards. And isn't it great? It's just in time. We get a historically bad job revision report, a key inflation metric that the Fed watches has been improved.
In fact, the previous numbers have even been revised. And now we see that for all of 2025 and most of 2024, the jobs were negative. We weren't adding jobs at all. Now, this all seems to be set up perfectly for the Fed to have a narrative to cut rates.
Now, you know, maybe maybe earlier in 2025, they would have said, oh, we need more than one month of inflation data.
We can't cut with just one good month of inflation data.
I don think they going to sing that tune this time
A wee bit of housekeeping.
I am going on a road trip next week for the wife.
It's her birthday.
So I've booked her a little trip.
And I won't have a new episode for you,
but I do have a prerecorded episode in the can.
I sat down with Oscar Mary.
He's building the Fountain.fm app, and we chatted about how he got started in Bitcoin, kind of going from a Bitcoin casual to really pushing Bitcoin to be used every day as money.
And we'll also get into some insights behind the Fountain podcast app, podcasting 2.0, Noster, and a lot more.
So that'll be coming out next week, even though I'll be on the road.
I'll probably release it a little early in the week and give some room.
So if on Wednesday the Fed cuts rate and for some reason the market responds very badly, I don't think it's likely.
But outside the U.S., the bond markets have been responding kind of poorly to rate cuts.
And there has been some signaling that could happen here.
So I'll keep an eye on things.
If things go sideways, I'll try to break in with a quick podcast to get you all up to date.
But if not, I'll just watch the stuff that really matters for Bitcoiners, and I'll cover it in the following episode.
But either way, you're going to have a new episode next week.
Definitely check that out with Oscar.
It was a great chat, and he's got a lot of stuff in the works over there, and they're really pushing adoption of Lightning and getting people to use Lightning for all kinds of things.
It's really great to see.
So while I won't have a fresh live episode for you, I got something special.
I wanted to make you aware of an NPM supply chain attack that you may be hearing about in its relation to Bitcoin wallets.
The Ledger CTO put out a warning on X of a large scale supply chain attack that is currently in progress affecting different applications that utilize NPM libraries.
And shout out to BTC Sessions.
He put together an emergency podcast to cover it and he explains what's going on.
But the CTO of Ledger said this earlier today.
There's a large scale supply chain attack in progress.
The NPM, which is short for Node Package Manager, account of a reputable developer has been compromised.
No word on who that developer is.
The affected packages have already been downloaded over 1 billion times.
Billion with a B, indeed.
Meaning the entire JavaScript ecosystem may be at risk.
The malicious payload works by silently swapping crypto addresses on the fly to steal funds.
If you use a hardware wallet, pay attention to every transaction before signing and you're safe.
If you don't use a hardware wallet, refrain from making any on-chain transactions for now.
It's still unclear whether the attacker is also stealing seeds from software wallets directly at this stage.
and there was a report.
I've got the report here as well.
There's a lot of technical details in here,
but one thing that stands out,
the trick here,
again, and maybe I'll go just above it.
So, you know, this pertains to Bitcoin,
but if you're shitcoining,
you're also likely affected here.
When an intercepted network request contains data,
the code searches the data for strings
that look like crypto addresses.
If it finds one, it replaces it
with one of the attacker's addresses.
Now, this is the important bit
because some people will just kind of scan over addresses
willy-nilly and not get granular,
which typically has been okay,
but this is not.
This is very interesting.
The code doesn't just replace the found address
with a random one of the attacker's.
It replaces it with an address from its list
that is visually most similar
to the original, this makes it much harder for the victim to notice the swap. So when you copy
an address to a field, it's replaced in the background before your data is ever sent.
So effectively, you go to paste in a Bitcoin address and send to it. And it not only replaces
that with a different address that belongs to said attacker, but the attacker address,
It selects from a list and it picks one that looks pretty similar to yours.
So if you don't have a keen eye and you're not being conscientious of it, it could be completely wrong.
You know, the irony is this story broke when I was about an hour into moving and consolidating funds.
You know, I was moving Bitcoin around on chain and I saw this news.
Thankfully, we got an update, and it looks like, from what we can tell, there's at least almost no victims in the Bitcoin space.
Charles on X, he's the CTO of Ledger, he writes,
It began with a phishing email from a fake NPM support domain that stole credentials and gave attackers access to publish malicious package updates.
Aside, this is a very common attack factor we see in open source.
He continues,
The injected code targeted web crypto activity, hooking into Ethereum, Solana, and other chains to hijack transactions and replicate wallet addresses directly in network responses.
The attackers caused crashes in CI CD pipelines, which led to early detection and a limited impact.
Still, this is a clear reminder.
If your funds sit in a software wallet or on an exchange, you are one code execution away from losing everything.
Supply chain compromises remain powerful malware delivery vector.
And we're also seeing more targeted attacks emerge.
This feels a little bit like, you know, pumping his bags here.
It's a little bit of fear-mongering.
It's, I think, maybe the broadest and best advice, though,
because the nuance here is, yeah, don't use wallet software
that takes advantage of NPM packages.
But how, as an end user, are you really supposed to know that?
Hardware wallets obviously are better in this regard,
but still the software used to interface with them could be vulnerable.
Ben has a rolling list of wallets not impacted by this on his BTC Sessions X account.
And a couple that I noticed, Trezor, Cold Card, Foundation Passport and Envoy are not impacted.
Bitbox, not impacted.
Electrum, Spectre, Wasabi, Sparrow, Blockstream, including Jade and Green, not impacted.
Nunchuck, not impacted.
Casa, Blue Wallet, Phoenix Wallet, and a bunch of others not impacted.
If you didn't hear yours, you might want to check the list.
Kind of just did the top ones.
So wallet vendors have been pretty good about just coming out right away and saying, not affected, trying to make sure everybody knows.
And one of the things we do have to keep on top of, it is, I think, a good reminder of this potential attack vector.
All right, since I'm going on vacay next week, if you could call it that, I expect support for the show is going to slump a little bit.
So I'm going to ask you not one, but two questions to try to, you know, bump the support a little bit.
Number one, was Trump right? Was J-Pow too late? I kind of think he was. The Fed probably was too
late, but I don't actually blame the Fed or J-Pow. Can you guess why? Can you guess why I don't blame
them for being late? Boost in with what you think the reason is. So that's question number one. You
got it? I'd like to see what you guys come up with. Question number two, did you stack any
sats this summer? And if you did, did you DCA or did you snipe by? And are you happy with that
strategy? Let me know. That's question number two. Boost in with your report. Was Trump right?
And why do I not blame the Fed and J-PAL for being late? And did you stack summer? Or did you
stack summer? I didn't stack enough summer. That's why I'm going on a fall road trip with the wife.
It's not quite fall, but it's like the, you know, I call it the elbow season.
It's not quite the shoulder season.
It's the elbow season.
And that's the perfect time for a road trip.
So let me know.
Did you DCA while you were stacking summer?
Did you also stack some sats or did you snipe by?
We still got a lot more to get into.
So I just want to mention you can support the show by doing what you do.
If you want to buy sats on river, do it.
It's one of the best ways to stack sats in the U.S.
And you use my link in the show notes.
You support the show.
If you're all about self-custody and you're in Canadians or Americas,
the Bitcoin Well is an amazing automatic self-custody platform to and from direct to your wallet.
If you've got some sats online and you're ready to spend them,
the Bitcoin company will go from Lightning to a gift card in about 30 seconds.
You can log in with your Lightning, no new account required,
and the only thing they do is Bitcoin.
Now, if you want to stack sats while you're paying your bills,
doing what you do day to day, the FoldCard.
It's a legend in the community, and I use it every single day.
And then when it comes time to get access to some of your Bitcoin's value
without selling your Bitcoin,
Salt Lending will hook you up with a loan of just about any amount,
and they make it really straightforward.
Links to all of those in the show notes.
Support the show just by doing what you do.
Ask not what your podcast can boost for you,
but what you can boost for your podcast.
Dang right.
And we got some direct support from Bitcoin Lizard,
who is our baller booster this week with 50,000 sats.
Hey, rich lobster!
Yeah!
Good to hear from you, Bitcoin Lizard.
Thank you very much.
He says, I don't like spam.
But there's a way things ought to be and the way things are.
Transactions with op return larger than 83 bytes
can be relayed in mind today without Bitcoin Core 30.
Short of a consensus change and the solution to stop spam transactions,
though short of a consensus change,
the solution to stop spam transactions
is for them to be priced out of the block space
by market and financial transactions.
Filtering at the relay to stop spam is futile.
Okay, I agree 95% Bitcoin lizard, but what if,
what if you slightly increased operaturn size and kept filters for other things?
And then so you had kind of like a channeling of way people should use it.
And then you're right.
You let economic activity price them out.
I do think ultimately that's what's going to end up happening anyways.
And we'll look back at this as maybe more about how no diversity was started
and less about spam and choking up the blockchain.
And we'll just look at, of course, they eventually got priced out.
I could be wrong, but thank you for that boost, and it's great to hear from you.
Marius February comes in with 21,000 sats.
Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days.
We need a 21,000 sat boost.
I need like a Bitcoin.
I need something that's really uniquely Bitcoin for 21,000 sats.
The traders love the vol.
No message, just value.
Thank you, Marius.
Nice to hear from you.
Slacker came in with 7,777 sats.
That's not possible.
Nothing can do that.
Everything's under control.
Hey, Chris, big fan of the show.
After looking at BTC map in my area and becoming aware of the sad reality of vendor adoption,
I've been thinking about starting a business, maybe like a B2B, to help change that.
I envision a product that I can allow a business to self-sovereign and doesn't take away from the customer experience at checkout.
Integration with existing point-of-sale systems would be a plus.
What potential challenges or opportunities might you see with this type of business?
Well, I think it should be more about hands-on services and support and less about building things.
and maybe you should be packaging things that already exist
that also come with support.
And you're adding the value of integration.
You're adding the value of helping them get it working
and being there with hands-on to help customers.
You could even be there right on opening day.
There's a lot of things out there you could look at.
If you're looking for just pure point of sales that's just Bitcoin,
you could do that with Zeus.
Also, I think ZapRite could be worth looking at.
ZapRite lets you generate point of sales pages
that would work great on a terminal.
ZapRite lets you have links.
and ZapRite also lets you do all kinds of other types of things
when it comes to payments and businesses like.
But the thing that really matters,
shouldn't bury the lead,
is ZapRite supports connecting to Stripe
and to Strike and to your node, your own node.
It supports connecting to AlbiHub.
It supports XPUBs.
I mean, it's like the backend is really nice
to connect to all different kinds of services.
And so the consumer ends up with a payment page
where they're asked,
would you like to pay with Venmo or PayPal?
Would you like to use ACH or debit card?
Would you like to pay with Lightning or Bitcoin?
You have all these options in one point of sales, and that's ZapRite.
That's pretty powerful.
Of course, we also know Stripe has been working on some of these things, but I don't think it's actually available right now.
Jack's company is working on these types of things.
I think ZapRite is one option, and Zeus is another great option for point of sales devices right now.
And I'd be up for hearing others.
If I missed one out there, let me know, because I want to give a shout out if it's any good.
Thank you for the boost.
Let me know how it goes, Slacker.
Sounds like Slacker might be the wrong name.
You know what I mean?
You're getting it done.
Paranoid Coder comes in with 2,000 sats.
Coming in hot with the boost.
No message, though.
Just the value.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Always happy.
And then we got OneDullGeek coming in with 2,999 sats.
I like you.
You're a hot ticket.
I don't think keeping transactions with Operaturn at 80 bytes is censorship.
It's exactly the same way I don't think letting miners create more than 21 million Bitcoin is censorship.
Calling both of these censorship is demagoguery.
Meant to say filtering.
Yeah, okay, I follow you.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say censorship is sort of a dramatic way to put it.
Right? It is.
I think it's an emotionally charged word.
I think I agree with you.
Thank you, Wundell Geek.
Tortoises comes in with 5,000 sats.
Hey, yeah.
This is the way.
It is the way.
Thank you very much.
Tough little shit.
Little.
Is there any monetary uses for op returns?
I know everyone brings up JPEGs,
but could not be filtering out non-spammy transactions.
You know, I think there is a use case
for people that want to inscribe things into a time chain.
Marriages, licenses for like a house.
I don't know, licenses isn't the right term,
but you know what I'm saying?
Moments in life, perhaps,
that you want to inscribe and leave your mark
because it's, at some point,
humans are going to realize
the permanence of the blockchain.
It's more permanent than anything they have.
It lasts longer than your hard drive.
So if you could transcribe, say, your child's birth certificate or, I don't know, something to celebrate their birth or a news article about you or your marriage.
Like if you could, it's almost like buying a piece of moon real estate, right?
It theoretical in a sense but it also a precious thing I think there something there that people will pay for because it is a limited thing just like the Bitcoin itself is limited So is the block space And so that makes it precious And I think there is an element I wondered
like if we did fill it up with JPEGs of monkey butts and whatnot, I think it makes the chain
less valuable in a way because it's filled up with junk. I don't think we'll get there. I think
they'll get priced out before that happens though good question thank you tortoises i think i'm
saying that right i appreciate the boost it's always nice to hear from you boosting again
her night her an 88 came in with 7777 sets put some macaroni and cheese on there too the core
knots thing is about core removing user options in my opinion free and open source software is
about empowering users knots enables more options for the users the current b core team needs to
reflect on the broader intentions of the users and the Bitcoin network itself.
I agree.
You can still, of course, adjust these things, but they're talking about removing these options
in the future.
And that does seem ridiculous.
And it does seem like the antithesis of open source.
Get me going there.
Thank you, Hearn.
Appreciate it very much.
All right.
Next boost comes in from Atone.
Atone's here with 4,444 sats.
That's a big old duck.
I'm fine with non-monetary transactions if they want to pay for the block space.
They'll get priced out of the base chain eventually anyways.
But I do worry about what Crater and the mechanic are currently arguing.
This means we'll have to store and relay arbitrary 100 kilobyte files, including illicit or evil stuff.
I fear this could be putting node runners at risk for very little benefit.
I'm not so worried about the risk, but I don't like the...
Nobody wants the association of illegal, illicit material getting stored in the blockchain.
And we have seen that happen with BSV.
It did happen. We actually have seen this scenario play out with BSV. However, it is not an A to B comparison. BSV is worth nothing. The fees are nothing, right? Things would change very fastly in the Bitcoin space. So there is that mitigating factor. Good boost, though. And, you know, I'm glad to see NOTs is around for people to make that decision.
BobbyPink comes in with 2,000 sats.
B-O-O-S-T.
I would be interested in hearing a guide on setting up Notts on Start 9.
I use Notts, and I have it set up on Umbral.
I did it this weekend, and it was incredibly easy.
I hear people, and I respect that you use Start 9, but I don't see the appeal to it.
Seems like it has less applications and still the same hardware limitations.
Disclaimer.
I've only quickly looked at Start 9, and I run a couple of Umbral instances.
So that said, I have a lot more experience with Umbral than I do Start9.
However, I think if I were to deploy again, I'd probably try Start9 because I've heard it's very well built and very well maintained.
It's not that Umbral isn't.
It's just that I've been using Umbral from the beginning and I've gone through a couple of hard upgrades and one of my nodes is stuck in like at an older version and I can't get to Umbral 1.0 or whatever it is.
I find that very frustrating, which is why I went to NixBitcoin, to be honest with you.
but having reflected on this since we last chatted,
I've realized that I do need to get familiar with Start9
because I can't expect everybody out there
to deploy Umbral or NixBitcoin.
And I think Start9 is something I'm going to spend some time on
post-wife trip and when I get back and get my feet under me again.
So I may have more thoughts on Start9,
but I, like you, have heard a lot of good things,
and I know they're working on a new and improved architecture as well
that will probably be out before Christmas,
but I don't know.
I don't have any insider information on that.
Good question, Bobby Penn.
Let me know where you land
and I'll try to update you as well.
Hello, there's here with a row of ducks,
2,222 sats.
No value.
I mean, no value.
No message, but all the value.
Thank you, hello there.
I appreciate it.
Southside's here with 2,021 sats.
No one can alter your node except you.
No one can make you download
a version of Bitcoin Core
that changes something
except you. Users can change the default settings or run other clients. Boom! It's very true. Yes,
it's very true. You can stick with core for now and just change the runtime settings. Not forever,
but soon. And he links us to an article on Bitcoin Magazine that I have seen,
and it's titled, You Aren't Mad at Bitcoin, You're Mad at Me, if you want to look it up.
You make me want to be a better man. Oh, here we go. Mafferio comes in with 15,000 sats.
Says, thanks for the breakdown of the spam debate.
I think I'm leaning towards the not side, but I can kind of understand both sides.
Yeah, I agree, man.
Thank you for the boost.
Appreciate it.
Gene Bean's back with a row of ducks.
Regarding a guide for knots, target, he says, umbral, in my opinion.
I know, Gene, I was actually thinking start nine, though.
I might do, man.
This is the thing.
This is where I have been hung up.
This is where I've been hung up.
Thank you, Gene. I do appreciate the signal, and it's good to hear from you. Hope you're doing well.
Adversaries 17 is here with 6,100 and 14 sats.
I like you. You're a hot ticket.
Adversaries writes, random thought.
How cool would it be to have a mining pool of Jupyter Broadcasting listeners and members?
Just a fun experiment of distributed mining, perhaps?
I would love that.
let's do it i i should get a bit axe i just don't have the funds to just spend on that kind of thing
right now but i'd love a little minor you know six terror hash a little humble maybe one day up to
10 you know humble terror hash here and we all pool together oh my god we could do updates on
the show adversaries that's a great idea i i really like that thank you for boosting in thank
you for being a friend adversaries hope to hear from you again mds is here with 10 000 sats
It's over 9,000!
Your show's become a regular listen, so here's a little bit of value for value.
Purple monkey dishwasher.
Yes, purple monkey dishwasher indeed.
Good, good.
Kiwi Bitcoin guides here with 4,321 sats.
They're real and they're spectacular.
Regarding your question on which platform to run knots on, I'd say Linux.
Yeah, man. Yeah, I agree.
You're the Linux guy, so asking to do another platform would be blasphemy.
I wasn't asking to.
I assume Linux, dude.
I assume I'm doing it on Linux.
Kiwi, come on.
We're going to run knots on Mac OS? On Windows?
I was a Bitcoiner before getting to Linux and the other open protocols.
I really think Bitcoiners should embrace the full open stack.
Yes, yes.
B-O-O-S-T.
I agree. It's part of the tradeoff for having open source. You know, I think it's so wild what a blind spot the open source community has to open source money. And to be fair, a lot of the people in Bitcoin are fairly blind to the free software and Linux community as well. But I'd say it's more pronounced and it's more embarrassing on the Linux side.
Imagine being a free software advocate and all about software sovereignty and having domain over your own software and all the patches you make to it.
And, you know, just the heady concepts that Richard Stallman wrapped his head around and then communicated to a community that embodied those ideals and went off and built the most successful projects in software history.
And they do not recognize it when it's happening on the money side.
It's truly revealing about the nature of human beings.
It's really something.
Great boost.
Thank you, Kiwi.
It's good to hear from you.
Ace Ackerman rounds us out with a row of ducks.
I'd rather have JPEGs than censorship over time.
I think Bitcoin's use case is money wins out big time.
And we shouldn't underestimate the value of storing other information in a censorship resistant way.
That's some nice long-term thinking.
I like that.
Thank you, Ace.
I also got a bunch of great boosts under the 2,000 sat cutoff.
Thank you, everybody who boosts in.
I'm reading those, and I store those in every single show note.
I just stick to 2,000 sats and above for time on the show.
Really do appreciate all the boosts,
and all of you who stream them sats coming at us right now.
We had 40 of you stream sats,
and collectively you stacked 34,440 sats.
When you combine that with our boosters,
It's not our craziest week, but it's a humbly adequate week at 186,454 sats.
You know what?
I'm actually going to take that.
I think we would have broken 200,000 sats had last week's episode, episode 72, had been better.
Just don't think it was a great episode.
It's just a mix of the news.
You know, it just sometimes happens.
Maybe it was my headspace.
I don't think it was a banger.
So I really put it all in on this episode.
Like this is, I mean, this is a big one.
And I really did a lot of work.
So hopefully you got some value.
If you did, boost in to support the show.
Fountain.fm makes it real easy because they host the Lightning Wallet.
But you can go the self-hosted route with something like Umbral or Start9.
And then you set up AlbiHub.
Then you can boost with a bunch of different apps and the podcast index.
Thank you everybody who supports the show with a boost or a Jupiter party or Fountain membership.
You can become a member on Fountain.
There's a new membership program over there where you get access to early releases and special features as well as a membership badge.
That's built right into the app.
And the cool thing is you can pay with sats or you can pay with fiat.
Just a reminder, though, if you become a Fountain member and you pay with sats, you do need to top up your wallet from time to time.
One of the things I'm seeing is a couple of you out there are dropping off because you haven't topped off your sats in your Fountain wallet.
It's one of the things we have to work out with a Lightning membership system.
It's one of the things we as a community are experimenting and pushing forward right now with Fountain is how to do membership exclusive content and creator support with a membership program using Lightning.
Nobody's ever really done this before.
So one of the things we're finding is you do have to keep your wallet topped off if you go that route.
You can also use Fiat if you prefer.
And that's one of the ways you can support the show.
Or you can go over to jupiter.party.
That's our membership program over there for the whole Jupyter Broadcasting Network.
Still working out how Twib fits in over there.
I'll be fully frank with you about that.
I haven't really figured it out yet.
But it does support the show and the whole network.
That's jupiter.party.
Well, I've been watching something play out that I'm cautiously looking through the lens of Bitcoin mining sustainability.
Easy for me to say.
The story that I think is potentially concerning for Bitcoin miners down the road is the growing cost of electricity today.
today. Now, this is a story that I think isn't getting much attention so far, but you're going
to see it explode over just the next couple of months because some new data has come out.
And that is that the growth in electricity costs has outpaced the growth of inflation. In other
words, it's almost parabolic on the price charts. Electricity has become in 2025, and they're
starting to put a real pinch on family budgets. And it turns out that the investment firm VanEck
has a podcast. And one of their guys has been cooking up numbers looking at this,
has a report. So they brought him onto the podcast to talk a little bit about it.
And it shows with no doubt, energy prices are certainly outpacing inflation by a margin.
Are you worried about what this does to electricity? Talking about how quickly
the cost of electricity has gone up. And I think this is a very underreported story.
We have a chart from you showing the cost of electricity versus CPI. And all of this AI stuff,
is this going to push us up even further? I think there are a couple of implications.
So number one, we talk about, well, there's the macro implications, right? I don't know if you
guys think that inflation is going to 2%. I just don't think that's likely to happen, right? And
here's another example of something that's running way ahead of this. And if electrification is another
decade-long trend. There's no way electricity prices are staying flat because if you look at
these trends, that's why we're rushing to build nuclear reactors and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. I mean, we need more electricity in the US. That's not a secret, right? We've been talking
about the winners from this sort of second phase of investing in AI and what we've pointed to is
nuclear and natural gas. Nuclear because we just need it and people want environmentally clean
electricity and natural gas because it's quick. Now, the real story here is a little more complicated
as typical, right? Because they're measuring this against the CPI number. Well, we know the CPI
number is bogus. Energy prices are in part reflecting the true inflation in that sector,
but you can't rule out the increase in demand. It's real. And today it's AI. As the bubble is
really kind of at its key moment right now, that build out is really happening. Eventually that
hype will settle down. We'll end up with practical applications. They remain. But this hype, this
driver will fade and then everyone will pretend like the mania never happened. But it leaves one
to wonder, what if the next boom, what if there's demand for something more concrete? What if there's
demand for something that's the opposite of fiat? What if there's demand for more Bitcoin build out?
Call it a post-AI fiat rejection. And we see a rush of bigger money into Bitcoin mining.
Even if this never happened and we just see Bitcoin mining continue to grow, how might a boom in that sector or the growth of the Bitcoin mining sector be viewed and discussed by the public?
And I think we can use what's happening with AI and the discussion around its power usage as a way to prepare ourselves.
Electricity prices are surging more than twice as fast as the inflation rate.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices have gone up 5.5% this year.
One reason for the increase? The power needed for massive data centers are fueling the artificial intelligence boom.
Texas alone is home to 463 AI data centers.
Research shows that one in six households are behind on paying their energy bills.
That's about $24 billion in utility debt.
Yikes, $24 billion in outstanding utility debt. That's, oof, that ain't good, right?
I think Bitcoiner should be thankful that AI is taking these arrows right now because this is a narrative that could be easily turned on Bitcoin.
And the reality is a lot more complex than this narrative makes it sound.
Of course, increased demand is there.
I'm not ignoring that.
But this framing, this narrative also ignores the reality, the real numbers of inflation.
It ignores 40 years of chronic lack of investment in infrastructure.
right all of that isn't factored and it's just AI AI is using a lot of power
therefore it's bad and they could easily turn that around on Bitcoin it's
something to really watch out for and I think we're gonna see more and more public
backlash to AI technologies, which is probably going to create the headwinds that slows the hype
roll down, potentially. Now, your buddy Tom Lee is trying to make it up to you. He knows that
you're upset with him for talking about Ethereum so dang much. So he went on CNBC to try to get
your love back. Tell us what you think. We're at about $111,000. The upside, the downside from here.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies like Ethereum are super sensitive to monetary policy.
So I think that September 17th is an important catalyst.
Crypto typically does really well in the fourth quarter.
So I think Bitcoin can easily get to 200,000 before year end.
I know it's a big move.
It's almost a double.
But that's also going to be a double from here.
Let's just hold on.
Let's just take a quick pause.
A double from here.
So everybody's listening to this.
We're at $111,000.
And you think by Christmas time, effectively, we could be at 200,000?
That's right.
One of the reasons Bitcoin stalled this year is the Fed's been on pause for nine months.
That pause all year, if you look at an easing cycle, that's only happened two other times.
In 1998 and 2024, where the Fed began to resume cuts in the fourth quarter in September.
Equities do really well.
I mean, I like that he's saying Bitcoin could be at $200,000 by Christmas.
That's just fun.
But I hate this narrative that Bitcoin only pumps when rates are low.
because we've just spent two years proving that wrong.
And then Tom goes, before the rates have even been cut,
Tom goes and starts using that narrative again,
which you know guys like Andrew just run with.
And then he says Bitcoin stalled out this year?
Stalled out?
Bitcoin's up around 50% in 2025.
And he calls that stalling out.
By the way, Tom, Ethereum is up, if I'm generous,
about 30.7% in 2025.
Bitcoin's up over 50%.
50%. Ethereum's around 30%. Okay. And let's look at Tom's ETF, Granny Shots. He has an ETF that he
manages and sells called Granny Shots. That's up around 19% in 2025. Not bad for Wall Street,
but not close to Bitcoin. Tom, stalling out. Whatever. Although I'd be happy to take 200k
by Christmas. That'd be great. An appropriations bill in Congress is requiring the Treasury to
report on the strategic Bitcoin reserve. How about this? They are seeking information on how Bitcoin
will, quote, appear on the federal government's balance sheet. And of course, a key focus of this
report is understanding how these reserves would interact with the existing forfeiture fund,
something I would like to know very much, which currently manages these assets that have been
seized by the federal agencies. How is that going to work? Also, they want to know the plans for
custody and the security plans around there. This is interesting because some are speculating,
why would they be asking for this unless they are going to proceed with establishing the Bitcoin
strategic reserve? And I still think they are, even if it's just moving the menial amount of
coins that they have, menial in the government adoption sense. I think they'll have that.
In Central Asia, the president of the Republic of Kazakhstan has laid out plans just on Monday for
the country's crypto endeavors, including a strategic reserve that will include Bitcoin
and other assets.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the Congress there in August was considering a proposal
to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve of up to 10,000 Bitcoin, which would make it
the first country in Southeast Asia to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic asset.
Currently, countries holding Bitcoin in their respective reserves exceeds 517,000 Bitcoin,
amounting to 2 if that number is correct 2 of Bitcoin total supply That was numbers that was put together by Bitbo So that would be if their numbers are correct And it looks mostly accurate to me
Link to that in the show notes.
Albi has released a lightning report for us for the first half of 2025.
They say there were 7,626 lightning channels opened.
There was 197 Bitcoin in liquidity deployed.
Their largest channel is 5 Bitcoin.
and there are currently four LSPs available to AlbiHub users.
I'll link to that. It's great to see.
Well, it seems Paper Bitcoin Summer has come to an end this week
when MicroStrategy holders got the news
that Strategy would not be included in the S&P 500.
And well, kidding aside,
I think that would have been a major moment for Bitcoin.
Block is already in the S&P 500,
but Strategy, well, they're a genre-defining company
and that would have really been a massive statement.
So Saylor was asked about not getting included this week, and this was his response.
You mentioned that you bought $250 million this morning, or $217 million this morning as you walked in.
What's your dollar cost average for what you've paid for Bitcoin?
About $73,000 a coin.
And I guess I wonder if you think Standard & Poor's or others or, you know, if anybody has any sort of bias towards crypto still at this point, because the S&P 500 just came out with their decisions and they chose to go with Robinhood and Apple Oven over strategy.
A lot of people were kind of surprised by that. The stock actually was down a little bit. Do you think that there is a bias at any of the indexes or any places that come through this against a company with a lot of Bitcoin and holdings?
I don't think there's a bias. I don't think we expect it to be selected on our first quarter of eligibility. We figure it'll happen at some time. There's a digital transformation in the markets. This is a brand new novel concept. Every quarter, we make new believers. We get more support from banks, from politicians, from credit rating agencies, etc. I think that will continue for the foreseeable future.
And that brings us to our final clip of the week.
This is one of those clips that's looking many years down the road after everything we've talked about today reaches its near final state.
And it's Mel Madison, and he's a writer and financial services veteran.
He's been around for a while, and he went on Pomp's podcast.
I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
I think it was actually a pretty good chat.
And I want to play for you one of my favorite moments.
I think over time, we're going to see central banks put Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
I don't know when that happens.
I don't know if it happens next year.
But the amount of money we're talking about with central banks, right?
Trillions upon trillions of dollars, like 10, 20, 30, 40x the current Bitcoin market cap.
like just a little bit of that is going to be i think a fundamental driver just like a major
fundamental driver of the gold move in the last few years has been central banks issuing treasuries
and going to gold eventually they're doing it we're seeing corporations begin to put bitcoin
on their balance sheet and i think there will there will come a point in time because i don't
think there really is an alternative to bitcoin i i mean i mean people can talk about ethereum and
the flippening. Ethereum can have a period where it outperforms, just like gold can outperform.
I mean, shoot, Carvana stock can outperform Bitcoin for a period of time. Anything can
outperform anything for a period of time But Bitcoin is unique Bitcoin is the first Bitcoin is the biggest Bitcoin has that hard cap Bitcoin is decentralized Bitcoin has a moat Bitcoin has the network It has the thousands if not millions of nodes around that make it functional
It has the history.
It has the cost to produce it.
You know, it can't just be willed into existence by an Ethereum foundation.
All of these things are just very unique.
It will not be replaced in our lifetimes, I believe.
Time to check in on the state of the network.
I'm wrapping up at block height 914,117.
The current Bitcoin price to U.S. dollar, $113,800.
That puts the sats per dollar at 879 sats to one U.S. dollar.
We are currently down 8.6% from our all-time high.
We're climbing back up to 124,460, which was 27 days ago.
That was August 13, 2025.
We're on schedule for a difficulty retarget of September 18,
with an estimated difficulty change of an upward adjustment of 7.6%.
And now the number I always look forward to.
We're almost to my goal. Reachable Bitcoin notes, 23,464.
When I come back with a new episode, I'd love to see that be at a solid 24,000.
Bitcoin Noughts 2025, 305, currently operating at 15.4% of the network.
Now, Bitcoin Noughts' number is getting spread across because we have a new Noughts release.
Bitcoin knots 2025 903, which came out on the third, is now at 3.2% of the network already.
Of course, Core 30 is due anytime soon.
It'll be interesting to watch.
I think, you know, first week or two of October, we should see Core 30.
It'll be interesting to watch how its numbers do.
I would imagine they're going to, I'm thinking they're not going to let them do badly.
That's my thinking.
There's going to be an effort to make sure they don't do badly.
Either way, the network is chugging right along, transactions are happening,
block space is becoming precious, and the Bitcoin network is strong.
if you made it this far just a reminder i'm traveling next week but i have an episode for
you in the can my chat with oscar will be coming out so don't miss episode 74 if something big
happens with the rate cuts, I'll break in with a quick episode if anything major goes down.
And don't forget, I'm hoping you'll boost so we don't have a lull in support. I have two questions
for you. Was Trump right? I think he might have been. J-Pow was probably too late. But I also,
I don't blame the Fed or J-Pow. Can you guess why? Boost in with your answer. And question number two,
did you stack sats this summer while you were stacking summer? Did you DCA? Did you snipe by?
or did you have to pass?
Did you have to pass on stacking sats?
That's a valid answer too, and I'd like to hear it.
Links to what I talked about are at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
That'll take you to Jupiter Broadcasting
where you can find our other shows.
My goal here is to try to create something
that doesn't get us distracted by the emotions
or the politics around what's happening,
but really focuses on the signal
and how it applies to Bitcoiners.
So let me know how I did with a boost, good or bad.
And of course, I'd love to know if I missed something,
if you'd like to see something included in the show,
or if you have additional thoughts on anything I talked about.
It always a great reason to send me a boost This week our Value for Value track was performed live in Amsterdam by Theo Katzmann If you boost in 95 of the sats go to the artist and this is from his
2024 album Live from the Other Side. Here is Hard Work by Theo Katzmann.
I caught your tear jobs with my shoulder when you got it
I called in sick so I could comfort you all night
Now you got cold heat, well just let me breathe the ice, yeah
I did your laundry and I folded it real nice
So just be one
I put tears in my heart, whoa
Now I'm defeated face down in the dirt
I'm moved in the heartburn
And I can't seem to get out of this earth
I'm moved in the heartburn
If it's too dirty, you get what you deserve
I'm moved in the heartburn
Then baby, why don't I'm moved in the heartburn
I held your hair back when you had too much to do
I use my bare hands to uncloud that best girl saying
When you got thinkers and your mind was all the great
I feel you by the floor and show you to be a shrink
Come on baby, I'm 13, Oklahoma
Now I'm defeated, it's down in the dirt
I'm 13, Oklahoma
And I can't seem to have a vision
I put in the hardwood
If it's too much to give up
Baby, I put in the hardwood
Baby, why?
I put in the hardwood
I know it's painful to become a butterfly
You have to break yourself before your wings can die
But still I wonder when I look up at the sky
Are you wrong with the same hair?
Now when it's low, you're going to die
I put in the hard work
I put in the hard work, yeah
I put in the hard work
No, I can't see the point out of this now
I put in the hard work
If it's too much I can't find you
I put in the hard work
If you have what I could do to deserve this
Just I put in the hard work
guitar solo
We'll see you next time.