Music.
Welcome in to episode 29 of This Week in Bitcoin. My name is Chris.
Are you enjoying October so far?
How many times did I hear the chart guy saying we were going to pump?
The hype men in social media talking about October always is up.
This is why the show has been focused on Bitcoin through the macro lens recently.
And unfortunately, some quote unquote investors have not been.
In fact, one of the reasons why prices are fluctuating so much is because just
yesterday, as I record, 250 million in future positions got liquidated across
all the different cryptocurrencies. That's according to Coinglass.
It seems like, you know, the vast majority, about 200 million of those liquidations
were people that were putting positions betting that the price would go up for digital assets.
I mean, things were looking good, right? Number was going up.
Network activity was up. J-PAL lower rates.
China was starting to stimulate their economy and their stock market directly.
So what happened? Good evening and welcome. It was Iran who struck tonight in
the ever-spiraling cycle of violence in the Middle East.
Oh, right. The actual possibility of World War III.
The U.S. says around 200 Iranian ballistic missiles launched from Iran rained
down across Israel this evening, sending people running for cover.
Just moments after air raid sirens sounded, the sky filled with streaks of light.
Incoming missiles, many appearing to explode in the air.
Yeah, the market doesn't really like the uncertainty of World War III.
Lots of panic happens there.
And, you know, the only thing that's kind of worse than that would be,
like, a shutdown of the supply chain and the economy on the East Coast.
In the meantime, we turn to the economy tonight and to this crippling strike.
Tens of thousands of union dockworkers up and down the East Coast and the Gulf
walking off the job, threatening the nation's supply chain.
And, of course, then the prices you could potentially pay.
Elizabeth Schulze from New Jersey again tonight. Union power!
Union power! Tonight, crucial ports that fuel the American economy from New
England to the Gulf Coast at a standstill.
And of course, if the U.S. consumers can't receive and buy their goods and those
ships just get parked off the coast, it's not good for the countries that are
sending it over here either.
After tens of thousands of union dock workers walked off the job.
If it's a fight they want, it's a war we're going to get again.
Oh, that sounds inflationary. Now, there's a lot of numbers getting passed around
on social media about what some of the more vocal members of the strike make.
But the individual workers, when you seem to ask them, I mean,
one of their core complaints, besides what seems to be the headline fear,
which is automation, underneath all of that, the reality is the dockers say
their wages just simply have not kept up with inflation.
I've also been talking to the members here on the ground, the individuals here
that are now taking to the picket line. They tell me one of their top concerns,
inflation, that we have all been living under for the past four years.
They say that their wages are not adequately keeping up with the cost of living
increase and that they need these wage increases reflected in their next contract
so they can just keep up. I would believe that for the majority of workers.
I'm sure there's some that are making plenty of money, but I would bet there's
a lot that they're just not keeping up with inflation.
So dock workers are striking on the East Coast, not on the West Coast because
they have a different union.
But on the East Coast, which, as you can imagine, is where a lot of the goods are coming from.
Now, that is combined with another issue that investors have been watching.
And this will all play into Bitcoin here in a moment because this all affects
the macro picture that is impacting Bitcoin.
And I'll explain why in a moment. But there's one other issue that people have noticed.
And it's a signal that things are not as healthy as everyone would have us believe,
especially those running for election.
And that is that manufacturing is actually down.
After we saw some growth, it's now down. And the other thing that's an interesting
metric to track is how much are people quitting?
Are they holding on to those jobs?
Are they quitting less or more these days?
Earlier this morning, we got the latest read on manufacturing,
and it came as quite a surprise.
It was a very low number. Charles Payne's been at it, studying this.
What do you make? I mean, it came in below estimates in that 47.2.
All you have to know is that above 50, expansion, below 50, contraction.
So it came in at 47.2, so contraction.
Now, this is six months in a row that manufacturing has been contracting.
But Biden and Harris have been arguing that they brought manufacturing back.
They brought it back to America. It's absolutely amazing.
These numbers are stunning. You know, the employment part really is worrisome.
It was down two percentage points, down to 43.9. I mean, again,
that's absolutely devastating.
Inventories were down. The only good news I saw in here was prices.
Prices are finally contracting, and maybe because there's a lack of demand.
But they also ask respondents, you know, different questions.
And almost all of them are saying, you know, demand is weakening,
softness continues, that kind of thing. It's really not great going into the rest of the year.
That sounds recessionary to me. Prices are contracting, demand is down.
We have a dock strike while also manufacturing here in the States is down at the same time.
These are all inflationary. This is not good news.
Political implications from that one. By the way, the JOTES number came out also before that.
Now, the headline was better than expected, but the headline doesn't matter
as much as the quits rate.
Right. All right. So this is the number of people that are either keeping their
job or people that are being like, screw you, I'm out of here.
The quits rate now is the lowest level since the 2020.
For the private sector, 2.1 from 2.3, almost every single category.
So essentially when people aren't quitting, you know, remember the pendulum
before people were quitting on the first day at work, they were ghosting.
They said, you know what?
I don't want this job after all. I'll get another one tomorrow.
The pendulum has swung completely when people are holding off their dear life to these jobs.
You know, I remember having a conversation with my mechanic during that time
and they were looking to hire. They've hired now and they're staying.
But he had guys that would quit on day one, just like Charles Payne was saying there.
They would do that. You know, this is stressful. I don't want this.
I'm out of here. And they just walk off on day one.
So we're in a short-term funk, and that short-term funk is way,
way outside of what the Bitcoin network can control.
Bitcoin cannot control the externalities to the network.
And these all come in like as cloud storms, as storm clouds,
I guess, over everybody's uptober that they were all excited about.
And I want to play Funstrat's Tom Lee here because this guy,
he was one of the first to call Bitcoin on mainstream media.
One of the first mainstream investors to get Bitcoin right.
And he kind of covers the short-term funk that we're in.
Near term, you acknowledge that there could be some bumpiness,
choppiness, but by the end of the year, you think 6,000 on the S&P.
That's right. I think we're still in the midst of a very tricky period because
we've got the election in less than 35 days. and now we've got two things that
investors don't know how to discount.
One is mounting tensions in the Middle East and then a port strike that is potentially
going to cripple the economy.
And so I think that as investors worry about this, if we get a dip,
and a big dip, I think you still want to buy that dip because the setup into
your end has a lot of tailwinds.
I think this is true for Bitcoin as well. Well, you know, these dips that he's
talking about are going to be company values because they can't get product.
They can't sell. Their costs are going to go up.
Bitcoin is not impacted by this. Bitcoin doesn't have corporate sales.
Bitcoin doesn't have impacts in shipping chains.
Bitcoin doesn't have a problem if its business has been flooded.
Bitcoin doesn't get impacted by any of this stuff.
And so while its price goes down, none of the fundamental aspects of Bitcoin
or the network or how it functions have altered.
Externalities have changed. And so the market sells off.
People that are speculating that weren't really
in it for the long haul sell-off people that panic and need liquidity right
now and bitcoins very quick to get liquid you know they start selling off right
now in the short term but none of the fundamentals have changed here so it's
it's if you think about it's actually the worst time to sell the worst case scenario for the port.
Situation is something that we've seen and we shut down an economy already and
And that was probably a time to buy.
We know that. So we've seen that movie before. Could it be? I can't imagine
it could be as bad as the pandemic, but we have shut down an economy before.
Yeah, that's right. So I think it creates headline risk because,
you know, the longer this strike lasts, there'll be companies that miss.
And so S&P earnings might get downgraded or some stocks might miss results.
But that's all just temporary. I mean, those are just short term headwinds because
it doesn't change the long term outlook. look.
It's very strange that I don't remember any war that were the effects.
And we've been through quite a few back in the 90s and in the 2000s.
It never seemed to have as negative an effect on the overall markets as we thought
at the beginning of each.
That's right. In fact, if we look at the last six sort of global wars or tensions,
you almost always buy the invasion.
That's a thing, isn't it? That's a term they say, isn't it? Buy the invasion.
Sort of global wars or tensions, you almost always buy the invasion.
The exception was 2022 with the Russia-Ukraine war because we were also in the
midst of a Fed tightening cycle.
So that was not a buy the invasion event. But the other times you did want to buy.
Now, I want to talk about why this still impacts Bitcoin, just to make it clear,
Because Bitcoin, what's happening as it becomes a more serious asset,
it gets tied to speculators.
So there's a portion of the market, and look, we're still hanging pretty tight
right now, but there's a portion of the market that sells off.
So we see those kinds of impacts.
But also, it's tied to global liquidity and the direction of money.
Lin Alden commissioned a study recently that put really good data around this.
I'll preview a little bit of what we're talking about here.
And when I say global liquidity, I want you to understand what we're talking
about when I say global liquidity.
There are many ways to measure global liquidity, but for this analysis,
we'll use Global M2, a broad measure of money supply that includes physical
currency, checking accounts, savings deposits,
money market securities, and other forms of easily accessible cash.
Bitcoin Magazine Pro provides a measure of Global M2 that aggregates data from
the eight largest economies, the United States, China, the Eurozone,
the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Russia, and Australia.
It's a good proxy for global liquidity because it captures the total amount
of money readily available for spending, investing, and lending on a global scale.
Another way to think about it is as a measurement of the total amount of credit
creation and central bank money printing occurring in the global economy.
And Pomp was on CNBC, and he put all this into words that investors like to
hear and might be easy to understand.
If we look at that Fed interest rate cut, Bitcoin is the best performing asset
so far. Gold and oil futures are kind of second.
There's a new study that just came out from Lynn Alden and Sam Galligan that
said Bitcoin is the most sensitive asset when it comes to global liquidity.
And so 83% of the time, Bitcoin moves with global liquidity.
It's more than S&P or any other asset.
And so if you look at not just the interest rate cuts, now M2 money supply is
expanding. And also we have cuts going on in China and elsewhere.
And so I think that Bitcoin ends up being a big winner whenever we get kind
of cheap money flooding into the system.
And it feels like we just went through this big regime change. We were tightening.
Everyone was trying to kind of drain liquidity from the system.
Now we're going to go the other way. And so Bitcoin should be a big winner here
for the next couple of months.
And really what I've been kind of projecting for the last couple of weeks is
things are really going to not be completely clear until after the election. I would imagine.
I think that was our fate when Bitcoin got tied to the presidential campaigns out there.
I think our fate was is that now also it lives and dies for a while on the results of the election.
Ultimately, though, these things at the macro level will add up.
The M2 money supply, the lowering of the rates and Bitcoin inevitably will pump.
At least it does 82 percent of the time. If you go by what Lynn has documented,
I'll put links to that in the show notes.
Not only does Lynn show that Bitcoin tends to pump when global liquidity goes
up, easy for me to say, but it outperforms inflation and money creation more
so than the S&P or anything else.
So it's a really good read it's really long all good lin reads are so for now
we've got some funk to sort out and it just got a lot funkier and a lot more
complex this isn't small stuff,
this is an entire east coast port shutdown this is the verge of world war three
where the u.s and iran are getting involved so those are things that are going
to take some bits just going to take a little bit to sort out but nothing changes
on the bitcoin side it may actually be for bitcoin coiners,
it may actually end up being a buying opportunity.
Not to be cynical about it, but that may be the reality.
Music.
So there's been interesting developments in the mining community recently.
And our miners taking a beating this week with the price dropping back down.
They're having a tough time. I mean, we're definitely going to see more capitulation
coming up. And so are the folks at Swan. It seems their mining dreams have been crushed.
Now, if you're not familiar, Swan is a Bitcoin-only financial services company.
They had a lawsuit against former employees made public this week.
And Swan claims that a staff member teamed up with Tether to sabotage their mining efforts.
All right, let's talk about the top stories. Crypto financial services company
Swan Bitcoin is suing former employees, alleging they stole the company's Bitcoin mining plants.
The filing claims the ex-employees resigned near simultaneously and joined a
company under the name Proton, an entity it says was created to use Swan's mining tech and secrets.
The lawsuit also alleges that Tether, which is not a defendant in this case,
help the defendants with legal cover.
A Tether spokesperson told CNBC that it's aware of the allegations in the lawsuit,
but denies any implications of wrongdoing.
A day after the court filing, Swan Bitcoin CEO Corey Clipston posted on X,
boasting the company's revenue and recent launches, and said that mining is
segregated and that recent news does not affect Swan's core business.
It's just still not good news for Swan. It just seems like one thing after another.
And, you know, I like the folks over there. And I've been a customer.
I still have an active account over there, but I don't stack over there anymore
just because I just I just want all this stuff to sort out.
And just when I think things have kind of sorted out, something else comes along.
Swan. Now, this is their side of the story. They claim that key employees just
jump ship altogether at once, took the info and Tether, I guess,
facilitated the entire thing.
Folks from Tether, how Swan got wrapped up with Tether in the first place.
I think it came down to like money bags and investing in their mining initiatives.
But Corey says all that's gone now and they're just focused back on their core
Bitcoin business. But the entire thing to me is just entirely strange.
Music.
To shift gears here for a bit, and I want to get more long-term bull case.
I have thought for a long time that the tech companies really just seem to lurch
from one big hype after another.
We've seen it really since the dot-com boom. It's just been one hype after another.
It's really driven the economy, and it's become really apparent in the last
few years with their big transition to blockchain, and then now their big shift to AI.
And of course, they had a small year of efficiency in there.
They're just, they're so sensitive to the market and they want to chase any
boom, but they need something sustainable.
And I suspect one day Bitcoin could be that thing that they all get on board
with, everybody gets excited about, and it creates a new bull market based around Bitcoin.
And I hope I don't get in trouble with you for playing too many Mikey Saylor
clips, but he was recently interviewed by the Roundtable Group,
I think it's called, on YouTube.
And he's talking in there to, I think, a group that doesn't know a lot about Bitcoin.
But he gives kind of a long-term bull scenario that I want to kind of,
I guess, bounce off of or kick around with you.
There's an emergent appreciation that Bitcoin is digital gold or it's digital
capital and it's a new asset class.
And BlackRock has been driving the education effort there.
I mean, Larry Fink going on CNBC and saying, this is a different asset class.
It's a hedge against monetary debasement. It's a hedge against global chaos.
And so it's the idea of gold from thousands of years, but it's coming back with a big tech twist.
It's gold on a big tech network with all the things we love about technology,
technology, mobile phones, the internet, computers, AI, smarter,
faster, stronger, and everybody wants to get on the next big tech trend.
And so, first of all, that's driving at higher and that's the fundamental idea
is, what if I could transform digitally?
What if I could digitally transform capital? There's $450 trillion of wealth
in the world that we could just call long term capital. Rich people just want to stay rich.
Other people just want to keep their money.
And so that capital sits in the buildings behind you, Mario.
It sits in land. It sits in the S&P index. It sits in art. It sits in bonds.
It sits in sports teams because those were the best ideas for the past hundred
years. And now Bitcoin's a new idea.
It's a digital building. That right there, right there.
It's a new idea. And once people start to understand it, I think you're going
to see even big players get into it and it could create a boom cycle for the tech industry.
Now, you probably wondered like,
well, Chris, I don't even think Apple or Microsoft are aware of Bitcoin.
I'm not so sure about that. And things change pretty quick. But as you've probably
heard, the U.S. Justice Department is accusing Visa of monopolizing debit cards with fees and whatnot.
And in this process with the U.S. Justice Department, the court records for
the initial claims have come out.
I have the full court document that we have so far linked in the show notes.
And what it reveals is that Visa has been paying Apple hundreds of millions of dollars.
The court document states, this is a quote, for example, Visa has deals with
Apple in which Apple agrees that it may not develop or deploy payment functionality
with the aim of competing with Visa,
such as creating payment functionality that relies primarily on non-Visa payment
processes or payment products.
Apple's also barred from providing incentives with the intent of disintermediating Visa.
And Apple's, this is sort of, it reminds me of their deal with Google,
to have Google as a default search on iOS.
They're taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from Visa.
And as part of that, they agree not to develop competing technologies.
But it's very likely through this process, agreements like this are going to get disrupted.
And if this goes away in a couple of years, Apple is open to integrating things
like Bitcoin payments into Apple Pay.
And it can happen quicker than you might think, especially if the rest of the
industry gets on board with this. I mean, just look the way that they've tried
to follow the trend of AI.
So I actually think this is a fascinating little bit of revelation we've gotten
through this Justice Department court document getting released.
I'll link to it in the show notes. The whole thing's pretty wild.
And maybe things could change if things like that go away, like locking them
in like that. Maybe things could change.
And maybe we could see a tech boom around Bitcoin one day, building products
on top of it and applications and filling in services like that.
I would hope that if something like that happened, though, that the community
nature would still exist.
And I imagine it would be somewhat like Linux, where you still have very much a DIY community.
I mean, that's what Linux Unplugged addresses all the time.
And self-hosted podcast. But there's also the very much a corporate angle of Bitcoin.
And boy, have I seen both sides of it. I've seen both sides for years.
It manages to work, though. They coexist.
In fact, I'd say one needs the other in some cases in both ways.
So I have some production questions for you before we move on.
I would like you to boost in your thoughts on me including some Bitcoin stats each episode.
Like, for example, as I record, Bitcoin price is $61,590 USD.
It's at block height $863,836.
And sats per dollar right now is at $1,624 to $1.
The Bitcoin market cap is at $1.22 trillion.
Why do I ask this question? Well, so I was looking back at Plan B,
came up on my YouTube feed, my original Bitcoin podcast from like over 11 years ago.
And when I was playing it and it was about mining, surprise, surprise.
And I'm watching on the sidebar, we have the Bitcoin price and it was $109.50 USD per Bitcoin.
To buy a whole Bitcoin, $109, less than $110. $10.
And it just felt like nothing at the time. Just, you know, a number to have
up there. No big deal. These numbers, we sort of hear them all the time.
But then when I revisit that show, it was actually really something to see.
And it got me thinking, should I have like an audio version of that in this podcast?
You know, and I'd like to know if I should, what weekly vitals would you like to hear included?
Or is it just not needed? You know, you know, the date the episode's published,
you could probably maybe go back in time and look at some of that stuff.
So I'm actually kind of torn on this one.
Boosted and tell me, should I include Bitcoin vitals in each episode primarily
for historical purposes?
Because you're interested or don't bother? Just don't bother.
Let me know what you think. And then I have one other question,
something that I'd like to maybe make a segment out of, depending on how it goes.
Are you stacking for retirement? I've heard various approaches,
you know, from Bitcoin backed loans where you take a percentage out and back it with Bitcoin. coin.
I've heard strategies for selling a certain percentage of your stack per year,
you know, and maybe once Bitcoin reaches a certain price, that makes sense for you.
Maybe you got it going into an IRA. I don't know. Is a Bitcoin a factor or is
it your retirement plan?
I feel like this is something the Bitcoin community kind of dodges.
We don't talk about it a lot, in part because it's money, but also because it's so risky.
But I suspect it's a real thing. So boost in as a community,
let's have this conversation.
Are you planning Bitcoin as part of your retirement fund?
And of course I'll share my thoughts too. Alright coming up,
your boost, some FUD busting, project updates I'm excited about, and a final clip of.
Music.
Shout out to those that have used my affiliate link to stack sats on River.
I think that's the best place in the States to stack sats or buy your Bitcoin.
And of course, you can get it out of there on Lightning, which improves your privacy.
And now they also have the ability for you to verify that they have all the
Bitcoin they say they have.
River is a great company. No official affiliation. I just think they're great.
I have an affiliate link in the show notes. Hooks us both up. Supports the show.
Now, if you're going to spend your sats, do that over Lightning as well.
It's cheaper. It's more private. The bitcoincompany.com promo code Jupiter.
Again, you get some sats, I get some sats. Put that towards the show budget.
Something I'll use for, like, for example, listener Jeff's going to be coming
up for an episode of Linux Unplugged. We convert sats into gas cards.
It's pretty slick. Of course, we'll see if he wants to do it.
But, you know, you can. It's really a cool company.
Bitcoin only, and you can go from sats to gift card in just seconds over lightning.
So that's the bitcoincompany.com to spend your sats and river.com to stack your
sats. And, of course, shout out to Bitcoin Well.
The Canadians out there just loving the Bitcoin Well.
Music.
Okay, we do have some great boosts
to get into. Our first one comes from Satsquanch, which is a great name.
And he boosted in 65,500 sats.
He is our baller. Hey, Chris, I'm hoping this gets to you. I'm using Breeze,
but the last boost I sent didn't make it.
Dun, dun, dun. I know, I'm so sorry about that.
I had a channel capacity issue with the podcast index, which I think Breeze
was using to try to get to me.
But the podfather opened up a nice big boy channel to me, so that should all be resolved now.
And I did, in fact, get your boost. He says, I'm guessing, I asked a Bitcoin
price by Christmas, I'm guessing Bitcoin gets to $91,000 by December 25th.
Ho, ho, ho. Wow.
$91,000, huh? You know, I wonder, too, if it got to $91,000,
does that mean it touched $99,000 and then fell back down?
You know, like I wonder how Christmas, the show recording day falls on Christmas.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year.
Boy, if it was reaching 100,000, I think I'd just do a live stream.
Come on, family. Gather around the Christmas tree. Dad's live streaming.
Thank you, Satsquanch. Appreciate that.
User 1991 comes in with 30,000 sats. I'm a duck. D-U-K duck.
Loaded with talent. Listening since July. Very high quality analysis.
Your theme music for this pod now makes me think Pacific Northwest plus Bitcoin.
Coin you are in the pacific northwest right i am i am
you know about about an hour north of seattle is
where you could find me i tromp around i'm right now i'm like two hours north
of seattle because i'm parked out in the woods and i i commute into the studio.
Which is a little bit closer he says please do share the theme music it's uh
ronald jenkins and it's seven times is the name of the song by the way i had
no idea about podcast two protocol or fountain until hearing you.
All the Bitcoin podcasts are already here.
So typical of the Bitcoin community to latch onto this. This is my first time
using the protocol fountain and my first boost. Keep it up. Oh,
your first boost. Congratulations.
And don't forget to go set your username. User 19918518.
Thank you so much for trying it out. It is such a cool system because all of it's open source.
I was just on a webinar with one of Fountain FM's co-founders and just trying
to explain to podcasters that aren't quite as technical all the value that's here.
It's so much for both the podcaster and the listener. The whole podcasting 2.0
standard is something podcasting's needed for years.
YouTube's been lapping us with live streams and super chats and all their different
functionality they have like premieres and, of course, push notifications.
Notifications and all these things that you could do on YouTube or Twitch or
something that you should be able to do in a podcast app.
You shouldn't have to leave the podcast app to enjoy that stuff with a podcast.
And they're cooking. They're cooking over there. Thanks for the boost and thanks
for taking the time to set it all up.
Hybrid sarcasm comes in with 20,000 sats. The traders love the vol.
Says, I just got my hardware wallet. Is there any way to purchase Bitcoin sats directly to the device?
If I purchase with strike cash, et cetera, then transfer to the
hardware wallet won't they pay won't i have to pay some fees
is there a way to avoid one of those fees i'd love to
know you know i
do think a couple of services offer this where you essentially
connect the wallet to them like unchained capital i think provides this and
a couple of others so what i do in this scenario hybrid is i would stack and
strike or cash app then using lightning i would swap with bolts over into liquid
i would probably accumulate my stack there and then once you have a pretty good amount,
you know, over a million sats, move that to your cold storage.
That's what I would do. And then you're cutting, you're only having to pay those
fees when you do that one move from liquid to on-chain because it's super cheap with lightning.
But there are options out there. It sounds like you did have some other,
you did find some other options. So let us know how it goes.
Oppie1984 comes in with 4,000 sats. This is the way.
Hello, Oppie. I would definitely be interested in a more detailed breakdown
of liquid. I get the basics, but I bet you could shed some light on some things I have yet to grasp.
Here's a question for Newbie Corner. How to explain the blockchain to non-technical
parents who want to understand?
My mom is interested in Bitcoin, but no simplified explanation I give her is making sense.
Hopefully you or the community has an explanation that could help her finally
understand blockchain and Bitcoin.
Okay, so what I need to do is probably find you a really good video.
If anybody has a recommendation, I remember that talk and I played clips from
it where Jack Mallers goes into explaining it as a time chain.
That might be useful. I'm not sure. I would love some input on that.
I've never really had, you know, I've never really had explaining.
I've never had to explain blockchain really to newbies.
I focus entirely on Bitcoin and the monetary aspects of Bitcoin.
And I very rarely get into blockchain or nodes to the beginners.
I don't really mention any of that because I don't think they think about it much.
So I don't know. I don't know if I have an immediate go to explanation other
than I love the time chain breakdown that we did.
And there are so many explanations in text, but I'd love it if anybody has a
great video that I could pass along.
I put that in next week's show notes. Gene Bean comes in with a row of ducks.
I'm doing pseudo savings and checking accounts with my sats.
Hey, all right, here we go. He says, I save at river, and I keep that completely
separate from my boost and sats.
I haven't saved enough to warrant a cold card yet, but I'm thinking about how
to handle that each week that I listen here.
My boost and sats stay in Albie mostly, and I use it with Castomatic,
but I also have some at Fountain and True Fans. That sounds a lot like me being,
I have sats in fountain, I have sats in alveoli, but I don't have tons, right?
And I'm okay with that. It's small amounts, and I just already have spent those
in my mind, and it works really well for me. And I enjoy boosting myself.
I, as somebody who's been making podcasts for darn near 19 years,
never ever once in my life, even though I'm a podcast listener for the whole
time, never once in my life wrote into a podcast until boosting was available.
And now I boost pretty regularly, even though I make podcasts and I'm asking
people to write in all the time.
It's just, it's just the way I am. And I think a lot of people are like that,
but when the buttons right there in the podcast player and you're listening
and you know, you can send a little value to it just makes all the difference.
Digital Farmer comes in with 9,001 sats. It's over 9,000!
Love the show. Especially love the first segment with Jon Stewart. Ah, thank you.
Price predictions for Bitcoin for Christmas. I have no rationale besides the
end of the year. I think it's going to be 91,000.
Another 91,000. Two predictions have come in, both at 91,000.
What do you suppose the chances of that are? Isn't that a little strange?
Uh-oh. You know, if enough of us believe, maybe we make it happen.
Thanks, Digital Farmer. Bob comes in with 4,444 sats. No message, just some sats.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that, Bob. Halleck comes in with 10,000 sats.
I'm a hodler, and I recommend everyone do the same. However,
I will put my Christmas prediction at $129,000.
I think we're due for a roller coaster up.
$129,000. Wow, you are bullish. I love it, Halleck.
Now, set your expectations for $60,000 at the low, and you'll be happy.
It's a great range. But man, $129,000. Could you imagine?
It could happen. I mean, a lot of the price action in Bitcoin happens in about
an 11-day period of time. So maybe it will happen.
I hope you're right. Right. I like your price prediction. That's a good one.
Go, Halleck. Orange Pill Lawyer 25 comes in with 4,321 sets.
That's 4, 3, 2, 1. Analysis mode. Password 80085.
Wow. Bitcoin price hits $400,000 on the rip up, but then settles around $220,000.
Once miners get two profitable Bitcoin flows from the network to increasing
hash rate, mining rigs will get super expensive.
Newcomers will get wrecked. The dollar denomination hash price will fall back
down. The earth price finds a new floor.
I'm not sure this happens by Christmas, but very bullish by June 2025 time frame.
Increasing hash rate into the halving has been the single most bullish signal for me.
I agree. It's not something I've mentioned on the show, but I have been watching
that too and been very surprised by that.
P.S. Not a lawyer yet in law school, but hope to find some way to incorporate Bitcoin into my career.
Be fascinated to hear your thoughts on that. I like it, Orange Pill. Thank you.
Atone comes in with, is that right? Did I say that right? Atone?
With 6,000 sats, it's a zesty drink. It's a zesty drink.
Hey, Chris, two-year listener, first-time booster. Ha, ha, ha!
That's great. Thank you. Here's the sats I've earned from Fountain.
Thanks for all the value. I think the elevator pitch against 2% inflation is twofold.
One, at 2% compounded, prices double every 35 years, making long-term savings
pointless and forcing you to take risk and chase yield to keep up.
Number two, the 2% number is bogus because inflation metrics like CPI are so massaged.
Broad money supply in the U.S. increases over 6% a year on average,
and truly scarce assets move more in line with that.
Lynn does a great job laying this all out in broken money. Yes,
oh, that's a great explainer. It's the compounding part of it.
So prices double every 35 years. Well, guess what? By the time you retire,
the price of everything's doubled.
Ooh, thank you, O'Tone. That's a great explanation. nation.
VaultBite comes in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
Honestly, I'm crossing my fingers for Bitcoin to hit 10K by year end.
That would be like the ultimate Christmas gift.
A perfect opportunity to stack up at a great price.
Oh, Vault, a true Bitcoiner.
You true Bitcoiner. Hoping for 10K. I'm there with you, buddy.
Man, when I saw $109 for one Bitcoin, I just about cried.
All those searching for the right podcasting apps on iOS, give Cast-O-Matic
a try. It integrates smoothly with Albi.
It's lightweight, a solid alternative to the somewhat crash-prone Fountain.
Yeah, I think Cast-O-Matic is really great on iOS.
I love the Nostra integration with Fountain because that has such possibilities
for exposing audio content on Nostra in Fountain.
But, you know, I think at the end of the day, you want something that doesn't
frustrate you, and I hear good things about Cast-O-Matic.
Oh, look at that! It's another row of ducks!
Ace Ackerman comes in with 2,222 sats.
This is a Christmas Bitcoin price prediction, $123,456.
Go podcasting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
You know, that would be the funniest outcome, and I would love that price point.
I can't imagine for people who have been hodling for this long or people that
bought at the market peak, you know, a little while ago. Thank you.
Can't imagine people would, just how that would feel.
I would think the moment, though, it hits 100,000, people are going to start
taking profits like crazy. There's a lot of people that have just been holding on, right?
So we'll see. Dexor comes in with 5,555 sats. Live long and prosper.
Okay, let's bump this next week up. As a Jupiter Party subscriber,
I'd like to add on to the show for $3 more, but boosting is important.
I'm going to show some support because I would regret it more if the show stopped
than a few bucks in sats to keep you going.
Thank you, Dex. I really appreciate that. And that is a big part of Value for
Value, is keep the show going.
I have not mixed it much with jupiterbroadcasting.com. I put it on the website,
but I don't put it in the all-shows feed.
And I haven't put it in the Jupiter Party membership package yet just because
Jupiter Broadcasting has become so focused on a specific niche.
You know, Coda Radio, self-hosted, Linux unplugged. It's a very particular niche.
And that community, I don't know if they're ready for me to start injecting Bitcoin into that mix.
And I think the show is just discoverable enough that those of you that listen
that are interested can still get to it.
So right now, this is the main support mechanism. I'm always kind of reevaluating
those things as time goes on.
People's perspectives change too. Odyssey Western comes in with a row of ducks.
Great show like always. I'm slowly understanding the landscape and how to plan
for my Bitcoin future. Great, Odyssey.
I hope that's something I can keep doing for you. Thanks for boosting in.
It's always nice to hear from you. Hope to get out there someday again.
Way out there in the Spokane.
Adversary 17 comes in with 15,000 sats. This is the way. Yeah.
Everything's under control.
What a jam. Sending some sats to our artist, 5,000 sats.
And here's some sats from his brand new Albie Hub.
Very nice. Some Albie Hub love this week.
Congratulations, adversaries. Nice to see it. Ypout comes in with a row of ducks. Ya poot?
Hi, Chris. Here's an interview with Don Brash, the NZ Minister of Finance,
who introduced the 2% inflation target.
Note his target was 0% to 2%. 2% was supposed to be the maximum, not the actual target.
He mentions in the interview that 2% isn't even good.
You have got to be kidding me. That is great. He sends me a link to Fountain.
Again, it's Don Brash, B-R-A-S-H, the Minister of Finance.
So 2% was supposed to be the maximum, And now it's the target by all these,
you know, central management bankers.
And, and he didn't even think it was that good. Incredible.
Very nice to hear from you. Why? Thank you for boosting in. That's a,
that's a fascinating thing to learn.
I don't know. I don't know how to process that, to be honest with you.
And that's what these central bankers are basing it on. Oh my God.
I hope, I hope that my kids or my kids' grandkids look back and think it was
weird that these central planners made all these rules.
They were just arbitrary and obviously reactionary and didn't really know,
you know, they didn't know what they were doing.
So rules, not rulers. I hope Bitcoin fixes that. Thank you everybody for boosting.
This is a value for value podcast.
Very shortly, if you got something valuable out of this, if it helps you put
what's going on into context, plan for your future, plan for your Bitcoin stacking,
or just sort things that are going on and how it impacts Bitcoin.
If that's valuable to you, I'd love to have your help to continue to produce
the show. You can boost in with something like Fountain or Cast-O-Matic or any
of the great podcast apps that are listed at podcastapps.com.
And your message also gets read on the show when it's above 2,000 sats.
Below that, I read all of them and I put them in the show notes.
I just don't have the airtime for it all.
But I do really appreciate anything you can, including just streaming those sats.
In fact, we had 50 listeners that just hit the old stream button.
And we got 51,952 sats just from folks streaming as they listen.
When you combine that with our total boosters, we stacked 239,593 sats this week.
Thank you, everyone. That's a nice little take for the show.
I appreciate that. And I'd love to keep that rolling into next week.
Love to hear your thoughts on including those vitals for Bitcoin in the show,
as well as if you're planning to use Bitcoin as all of or part of your retirement
plan. Those are things I'd love to hear from you and a great way to contribute
to the show and get your take also in here.
I feel like it's something that we haven't talked about a lot.
And I don't think it gets talked about very much in public by Bitcoiners in
general. So let's break that trend.
Music.
All right, now a little fud busting. And I'm going to be honest with you.
I have not watched this clip.
I just have a hard time listening to self-righteous idiots who go on and,
you know, rant and berate about something that they are so misinformed about.
And it's like antithesis to what I try to do. You know, I try to make sure I
understand the topics that I cover.
When I go on air, I don't talk about things out of school that I don't understand.
I have very few shows. I have a very tight niche of shows.
In which I am already passionately and enthusiastically following those topics.
And so I can speak to it just natively, right?
And guys like Bill Maher, they just go on their show and they just talk their asses off.
And I've seen this clip getting spread around, but I wanted to react to it live
on the show here. This is Bill Maher spreading Bitcoin energy FUD.
Let's watch this for the first time. Well, maybe it's not your first time,
but let's watch this for my first time. There's the other big secret about crypto
that nobody talks about. This bugs me so much.
Oh, I am already the big secret. Nobody talks about the energy use. Nobody.
We just had Bjorn talking about the environment.
All the progress that we're making with green energy is being sucked away by crypto.
Crypto uses 8% of total electricity. Oh my goodness.
Crypto does not use crypto. First of all, most cryptocurrencies are proof of
work or proof of a stake. Only a few are proof of work like Bitcoin.
The 8% of total electricity is just simply factually incorrect.
These things are hard to track, but Bitcoin uses somewhere around 145 terawatt hours of power per year.
If you include renewables in that mix, that puts Bitcoin at best estimates to
using somewhere around 0.49% of total electricity.
I'll get more, I'll come more into that. We'll talk more about that because
he's actually conflating two things here.
He's conflating electricity use with emissions, which, well,
that's also not how it works, but we'll talk more about that.
By crypto, crypto uses 8% of total electricity.
They're data centers, they're mining. There's nonsense of finding a number.
I can't even go through the whole thing. It's so ridiculous.
It's so ridiculous. No, you can't go through the whole thing because you don't
even begin to understand the edges of it. Data centers, they're mining this
nonsense of finding a number.
I can't even go through the whole thing. It's so ridiculous what crypto really is.
That's why it's, of course, this is like Trump's final business just before
the election. Of course he'd end up in crypto. It's a grifter's paradise.
It's comparable to putting 15.7 million additional gas-powered cars on the road.
Again, conflating electricity use with emissions.
That just doesn't make sense. You can't really do that because if you generate
it all with green energy, there's no emissions there.
Bitcoin mining itself does not directly produce emissions.
All electricity use in the world is estimated to be 27% of total emissions.
So if you look at 100% of emissions caused by electricity use,
it's estimated to be 27% of emissions in the world.
So these numbers already, he's ridiculous. Also, Bitcoin uses greener electricity
than three times the average grid participant.
In other words, Bitcoin uses three times more green energy than the average
high load participant in the grid.
The majority of electricity Bitcoin uses, somewhere in the mid 50 range,
I don't really know, I've seen as low as 54, I've seen as high as 60,
is what's considered green energy.
Either solar, but in most cases, it's energy that would have been flared or
energy that is overflow.
They're generally buying the cheapest energy possible, like capping emissions
or buying from an energy producer who has spare capacity and needs a buyer to
make it all actually produce profit.
So you can't equate how much electricity Bitcoin's using to the emissions of Bitcoin. coin.
So when he has these numbers where he's trying to compare it to 15.7 additional
gas cars, that's just these are these are absolutely made up numbers.
You don't see it end up in crypto. It's a grifter's paradise.
It's a it's a it's a comparable to putting 15.7 million additional gas powered cars on the road.
So as we take them off to go to electric, crypto eats it all up and goes the other way.
That's I guess there's the take. There's the whole video. That's just a basically
bad take. Like, you know, I would I would I would actually say this isn't Bill's fault, right?
He's the type that gets easily worked up by these kinds of things.
People are very passionate about the environment. I love the environment.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. It's beautiful here.
And Bill also is likely the target audience for some of the higher level FUD.
And I put people like Senator Warren at the top of this higher level FUD distribution list.
And she's the exact type of person that could get Bill Maher all spun up.
Warren is the mother of the swamp that births FUD creatures that reach guys
like Bill and pull him down.
And as time goes on, it's been revealed just how much Warren is behind the scenes
manipulating things like the Silvergate bait situation or working hand in hand
with SEC chair Gary Gensler.
In fact, there's a great report I'm going to play for you that covers how they
coordinate before hearings.
So that way they're on the same page. So that way they can spread the same fud.
That way they can get everybody worked up.
They're getting things fine tuned for their audience. Senator Elizabeth Warren
and her office coordinated testimony with the Security and Exchange Commission
ahead of a Senate hearing.
The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, of which I'm associated,
through a FOIA request, obtained emails from Warren's office to the office of
Chairman Gary Gensler two days before his Senate testimony back in September of 2021.
The email from Warren's economic policy advisor includes a list of questions.
Get this, a list of questions that Senator Warren planned to ask,
along with suggested answers for the chairman of the SEC.
The advisor also wrote, quote, let me know if you're OK with the questions as currently written.
Two days later, she sent a follow up, quote, Let me know if it's looking like
the chair has any issue with the framing of the questions.
Definitely don't want to put him in a tough spot.
End quote. You know, you have to understand in these hearings,
he's supposed to be impartial, answering both sides of the questions,
but they're coordinating ahead of time.
She's showing him the actual questions, and then she'll read them verbatim,
which he sent him ahead of time.
And it appears the chairman didn't have any issue with these questions because
Senator Warren asked almost verbatim from the email. Check this out.
Chair, Counselor, advocates say crypto markets are all about financial inclusion.
But the people who are most economically vulnerable are the ones who are most
likely to have to withdraw their money the fastest when the market drops.
Does this sound like the path to financial inclusion to you?
Okay, I got a project update for you this week. It's just a quick one because
I guess I'm pretty excited about Albie Hub in general.
They really make it easy for node runners to participate in the Lightning ecosystem. system.
And now, AlbieHub, as of this week, is available on StartOS and Umbral systems.
So you can install AlbieHub on top of the existing node, whichever you run,
Umbral or Start9, and you'll have an easier node management system.
You can use the AlbieGo app, which is getting pretty good.
You get a Lightning address to receive payments. They have integrated Lightning
service providers, so you can easily and quickly get receiving capacity,
which is generally a major pain in the butt on a lightning node.
It's often in like our matrix chat, I see people getting sidetracked by just
how do I get liquidity? What is liquidity? Why can't I send it and receive?
It's nice. They just have a selection of vetted partners to make it easier.
Then they have a marketplace of apps, some of their own apps,
but lots of other third-party apps as well.
You get email notifications for specific events. It gives you a nice interface to all of this.
And Albi has a comprehensive API that is really nice to write against.
So if you're a podcaster who wants to pull data for your boost or things like
that, or maybe there's other uses, but that's what we can use it.
That's what we use it for. It's really, really fantastic.
So AlbiHub is great and they've just made it easier for existing node runners to get it up and going.
I think we've been doing some work to make it pretty easy to get going on NixBitcoin,
but if anybody has information out there about running AlbieHub on Nick's Bitcoin
or they have got it running on Nick's Bitcoin,
do let me know because I'm very interested in getting a similar setup.
Okay. Wow. All right. Our final clip of the week.
We've never heard from this individual before on the show. We've heard from
Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock.
But this is the head of digital assets. His name is, I think it's Robbie Michiknik.
And he explains how he talks about Bitcoin to total newbies.
I thought, OK, let's see how this BlackRock head of a department, let's see how he does.
How hard is the sell when you think about the retail investor base that can
get into this? If you're trying to tell them it's a digital gold,
that the volatility is still so high and many people don't understand exactly
what it is at the end of the day.
Is it something that will eventually be used as more payment methods moving
forward across different parts of the world? Is it something that you hold and never sell? Right.
How do you then make that case to a generation of people who have not gotten into this asset?
Sure. Well, when you think about Bitcoin, we think of it primarily as an emerging
global monetary alternative.
It is a scarce, global, decentralized, non-sovereign asset, and it is an asset
which has no country-specific risk, has no traditional counterparty risk.
So these are interesting properties when you think of it from an investment
perspective, particularly in a world where there's growing concerns over money
printing, currency debasement risks, political, fiscal, sustainability challenges.
These cynical bastards of BlackRock have literally created a product for boomers
that are afraid of debasement and money printing.
And they is somebody that wants to be the performs better than anything else.
And I say boomers primarily because I think that's who they're selling to specifically.
I think that's who BlackRock is selling to. I don't think they're selling to
millennials and zoomers and Gen X much maybe. But I think they're really focused
on people that are concerned about the U.S.
Government's fiscal situation and their ongoing spending, like their clear plans to just spend more.
I mean, we're somewhere around a trillion dollars gets added to the deficit,
to the debt every 100 days, and they only take in like two trillion from taxes.
So, you know, it is something to be, I mean, it's legitimately something I'm concerned about.
But to hear BlackRock just openly talk like this, I feel like this is an escalation
of the language that they wouldn't have been brave enough to do until they had
a product to sell just for this.
Like they weren't talking about this problem, really. In fact,
they were kind of gaslighting people that it wasn't such a big problem just
as of a couple of years ago.
And now it's a 180 in their language.
In the U.S. or elsewhere. And so that resonates, frankly, with a lot of investors.
It goes back to what we talked about earlier with the risk-on piece.
It confuses investors when people talk about it as risk-on, because based on
the properties that I just described, you would think of it as risk-off.
And that's where I think... It has a marketing problem.
You could say that. And so... Imagine when investors figure out that it doesn't
suffer from a port strike.
Imagine when they figure out that it doesn't suffer from all of the things that
can suppress a company stock.
And that it has a truly scarce supply. Like when they really start clicking
with all of that, they may see it as a route to safety.
You know, the reality is there's probably two or three things a year that happen
typically that actually impact the fundamental value of Bitcoin.
This year, I would argue there's been four.
But that makes it hard to write daily stories, right?
And so you see this instinct to kind of point to whatever's happening in equities
or unemployment or jobs numbers or manufacturing, which really has no connection to Bitcoin.
Focus on the macro, the fundamentals, and DCA. That's what I take away from that, right?
Is if you want to know what's going on, you got to be aware of the macro situation.
When things change, you got to keep an eye on the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
And when you want to just avoid the volatility ride, you DCA.
So in that spirit, we're going to wrap it up right there. Thank you for listening
this week. Please do consider sharing this with a friend.
And in the spirit of DCA-ing, our Value for Value track, which if you boost
during the music, 90% of your boost goes to the artist.
It is DCA to BTC.
Music.