Music.
Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 55.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
This entire last month of shows has been a ride.
If I had recorded this episode yesterday, it would have been a very different show.
Well, except for a couple of very important parts, and you're going to want to hear that.
But if you're new here, this week in Bitcoin, each week I try to curate the
signal in the Bitcoin space, Cut out the noise and the emotion and pack it into
one high-impact episode for you to listen to each week.
Because Bitcoin moves fast, and these days, everything around Bitcoin seems
like it's moving even faster.
So, boost it if you dig it. This is a value-for-value show. It works both ways.
You bring your time and attention, and if this podcast brings you some value,
consider boosting a few sats my way.
Bitcoin has been holding strong as the market has been puking,
then ripping, and then puking, even sometimes all of those within a single day.
And I've been remarking on the show how well Bitcoin has been holding up.
You know, I mean, we're talking trillions here getting lost.
And since the last episode, since last week, Bitcoin's USD price is up about 9%.
And it seems clear that the financial wonks have noticed.
Bitcoin is firmly back above 93K right now, up double digits over the past week of trading.
Dom Chu here with more. Morning, Dom. Hey, Sarah. So it's even more so.
It's up about 25% since the lows that we saw back earlier this month,
just that first week of April.
So if you take a look at the price chart here, that move that we've seen has
been roughly 26% to the upside.
And we are now just about 15% away from the all-time highs in Bitcoin.
Now, that move higher has not resonated so much in terms of the all-time highs
against some of the stocks that are part of the ecosystem.
If you look at strategy, for instance, or Mara Holdings or Coin,
each of these stocks has done very well over the course of the last week and
a half or so, recovering from the lows, but are still way off where they were
earlier on for the highs this past year.
So keep an eye on whether or not that trade has a catch-up more so than at one
point Bitcoin is still outperforming these guys. these.
That's the key thing there, is that Bitcoin's outperforming those stocks.
Stocks, in terms of the way that they are from their record highs.
And then take a look at the real catch-up trade that some traders are watching right now.
Womp, womp, womp. Up on the screen, he has a price chart of Ethereum priced in USD.
And it's down 44.12% over the last year. And that's in Ethereum.
Ethereum has also gone up by a similar percentage amount short term,
But it's way off where it was at the highs over the past year.
So as Bitcoin has held up very well over the course of the last year,
even in terms of the price volatility, Carl, Ethereum has not played catch up yet.
It could be something to watch if this has any steam left in the cryptocurrency
trade, Carl. I'll send this back over to you. That sounds like some ETH skepticism.
Anyways, I think that that OK, what he's what he's quantifying there is is a
bigger deal than it seems even on the surface because it's outperforming while
the rest of the market is tanking.
And it's not just CNBC that noticed.
Bloomberg said up on the screen that Bitcoin is becoming a safe haven.
But they also make an interesting reverse comparison.
I say reverse comparison because it's the opposite of the type of analogy we typically hear.
Lee breaking away from tech stocks at a pretty good time trading more like gold
just in time for gold to rocket higher you can see that physical bitcoin gold
is up about nine percent over the past month and did you catch it did you catch it.
Physical Bitcoin, gold. I love it. I love that.
That is, you know, physical Bitcoin, a.k.a. gold.
And then behind her on the Bloomberg terminal screen that they have, big, bold text.
Bitcoin acts like a safe haven. To rocket higher, you can see that physical
Bitcoin, gold, is up about 9% over the past month in April alone.
That has dragged Bitcoin higher, especially in the last couple of days.
The crypto is up about 6% or so. And take a look at what has happened to tech stocks.
In blue, you have the Nasdaq 100 actually lower by 6.5% or so.
So Bitcoin may be taking on some safe haven characteristics,
at least when it comes to its relationship with gold, Tim.
I just, that's really something. I mean, did somebody put that in the teleprompter?
Did she come up with that? And, of course, this kind of price action,
it leads to talking about the big D, decoupling.
Welcome back. Not a lot of green on the screen today, as you know.
However, you probably didn't look at Bitcoin.
Tanae McKeel did, and she's here. It's up 3%. What do you make of the way that
this has been trading? It's decoupled, obviously, from the Nasdaq.
Oh, there's the word, decoupled. Now, of course, this is from a couple of days ago.
Which was a trend for a while. How do you see it? Something that people were
looking for all month, because if you go back to earlier this month,
it really was trading in line with stocks.
It just was not seeing the big, you know, pops and drops that one we're used
to seeing out of Bitcoin.
And two, it is outperforming the S&P. You know, it's funny just to just to stop
here for a second. They're never happy.
Right. So the market loses 10 trillion dollars and Bitcoin holds steady around
84 to 82,000. Not good enough.
But if Bitcoin had been dumping, then there's the where's the store of value question.
How come Bitcoin's dumping? How come Bitcoin isn't storing value?
What's going on here? I'm looking at the last 10 days, and I don't understand.
You call it a store of value, but the price is down.
That's what they would have done. But in this case, when it held its price, not that impressive.
Not that impressive. Looking for all that, because if you go back to earlier
this month, it really was trading in line with stocks. It just was not seeing
the big, you know, pops and drops that, one, we're used to seeing out of Bitcoin.
And two, it is outperforming the S&P. It has not really caught up with gold, the leading safe haven.
But I think you are seeing evidence, not just I think that the obvious and easy
narrative would be that we're talking about Fed independence today.
So Bitcoin is kind of acting as that hedge against, you know,
political uncertainty. That was the narrative they tried, of course.
Then Bitcoin continued to rip even after Trump started backing off of his remarks
about firing Jay Powell.
Now, you'll remember Trump said that that he was Mr.
Too Late, that he was a loser, that he needed to cut rates or the recession
or we could have a recession. He said all of these things.
Here's a little audio just from two days ago. On Jerome Powell,
you said that the termination of Jerome Powell cannot come fast enough.
He says he won't leave even if you ask him to. Oh, he'll leave.
If I ask him to, he'll be out of there. But I don't think he's doing the job.
He's too late, always too late, a little slow, and I'm not happy with him.
I let him know it. And if I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me.
You know, the irony is that the trade war stuff and the tariffs have made J-PAL's
decision-making process harder.
And when they don't know what to do, they wait. That's what the Fed does. They wait.
Because none of them want to take a risk. They're all risk-adverse.
So they wait. So ironically, by creating the market uncertainty with the tariffs,
he sort of forced J-Pow and the other governors, the governors that also vote,
to wait and not cut rates.
But I am a bit sympathetic to Trump's argument. I am.
In the context of the fact that all the other, well, not all,
but other major world banks have been cutting rates, are cutting rates,
and are doing so to support their government in these trade wars.
So that is working together to help the economy absorb tariffs and things like that.
Should it be? I don't know. But it is happening, and it has typically worked that way.
The other thing that I am sympathetic to, and I don't necessarily agree with
the theory, but I am sympathetic to the fact that when you put the rate cuts
on a timetable, they look political.
I'm not saying they were, but I'm saying they look that way.
If you go all the way back to inflation is transitory, and when they were too
late to raise rates, then we had the 50 basis point cut a little bit before
the election when the inflation data didn't really look that good.
And after the election, we paused again. And now we're waiting for better inflation
data when the inflation data is actually, at least if you go by Truflation and
other sources, pretty good.
Employment remains pretty steady. So the conditions for a rate cut,
especially when you're trying to support a trade war, could be there,
if not for the uncertainty caused by the tariffs.
So Trump has been pretty clear that he wants to fire J-POW. And,
of course, that rocks the market because traditional market traders live and die on every word.
You know, J-Piles and upset stomach the markets down that day.
So for them, it was just, oh, my gosh, how could this be?
And then the French came out and said that it would undermine the respectability
and value of the reserve currency.
So you had quite a bit of pushback. And then today, it seems Trump's backing off this talk.
President Trump saying he has no intention of firing Fed Chair Jay Powell before
his term for leading the central bank before it ends next year.
None whatsoever. Never did. The press runs away with things.
Now, I have no intention of firing him. I would like to see him be a little
more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates. It's just a perfect
time to lower interest rates.
If he doesn't, is it the end? No, it's not. But it would be good timing.
She could have taken place earlier. But no, I have no intention to fire him.
The president has increased his criticism of Chair Powell lately on Monday,
calling him Mr. Too Late and a major loser.
But he spelled it correctly, L-O-S-E-R, versus most of our viewers that spelled it with two O's.
When you're talking about who. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It could be you,
it could be me, it could be Andrew, it could be Trump, it could be.
The Wall Street Journal says some of the president's advisors told him that
an attempt to fire the Fed chair would result, thanks, no flies on them,
It could result in some pain for the financial markets like yesterday and a legal battle.
Treasury secretary or the day before yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson
was said to be one of the people who spoke with Trump.
But, you know, it was Hassett last week who supposedly has a line to the president
and doesn't just speak, you know, out of turn, who said that they were investigating ways of doing it.
So whatever happened, you know, I think someone maybe the lead editorial in
the journal said they're not sure what happened. But we'll take it.
Yeah, I bet they will. It would have been interesting to watch go down,
I think. And so now we're backing off firing J-Pow.
We're talking a little more dovish about negotiating with China.
Really feels like perhaps this strategy has backfired.
Initially, Besson was out there and Trump was out there bragging that the bond
yields were coming down and that things were looking good for interest payments in the future.
If I look at the situation in totality so far, we're about a month in,
and it seems that things really changed when Trump blinked and paused tariffs
for 90 days, which may have been a good decision.
But I think that's when things turned.
You know, that was a sign that the bond market was in control,
that it spooked the Trump administration. And so despite aiming to lower interest
rates and stabilize the U.S.
Debt, the administration's tariff play here seems to have backfired.
The stock markets crashed, maybe as intended or as expected at least.
They'd made comments that, well, this isn't really a mega problem.
It's a Meg 7 problem because DeepSeek.
The stocks have been going down since DeepSeek day. So perhaps they had factored
in some stomach for a market crash or correction.
But the problem is the bond market got really cranky, undermining the core strategy,
raising bond yields, which showed declining confidence in the U.S.
Fiscal health. It started to make the U.S.
Start to look like a third world country, a developing nation.
Stock market going down, bond yields getting screwy, moving quick, almost like a crypto.
So I think we're now in a position where in a couple of years,
we may be able to look back at this and go X, Y, Z and A, B and C were improved
because of these trade negotiations.
But they'll always, always quantify it with, but look at the cost.
That's always what they'll say.
Look at the cost. But the question I have for you and for myself is,
are we ironically with Bitcoin in a better position?
I mean, sure, we don't have 120,000 Bitcoin like the market was predicting in
December or November for the end of January.
But we saw something even more remarkable. We saw Bitcoin cling to its 200 moving day price.
We saw the market recognize that perhaps this was a better investment,
at least for the time being, than stocks because it has less counterparty risk.
And we saw when people were selling like crazy, not everyone was selling their
Bitcoin. And these are ginormous shifts.
So the question is, what has been going on with Bitcoin?
Music.
I'll admit it, it is exciting to see Bitcoin do well, especially during times
that seemed like it was built for.
But why did we chop sideways for so long and then start ripping?
Is it some great decoupling that's finally come to Bitcoin?
Have the Wall Street investors all of a sudden seen the light?
I don't think so. I think maybe people are a little too excited about the decoupling.
I think it's actually a much simpler, simpler explanation.
On the whole, my theory breaks down to this. There have just been slightly more
sellers than buyers for the last few weeks.
Sometimes it would flip and we'd have slightly more buyers and the price would go up to 84 or 85.
Then it would flip again and we'd have slightly more sellers and the price would go down to 82.
But there was enough market activity of buyer and sellers to kind of hold that
200-day moving average price, which is a big deal.
And we did that until we essentially exhausted the sellers. The market also
started to stabilize a bit, especially as Besant became the messenger of the
White House more and more.
So he exhausted sellers, started to stabilize the market a bit.
So the market now is just starting to go risk on again, but a little more motivated
to find something outside the Meg 7 tech stocks,
perhaps looking for something that's still a bit of a hedge against possible
trade negotiations and trade wars.
And so that all came together in the last week or so, in the last seven days
or so. Sellers were exhausted.
The market is slightly more risk
on, looking for a place to put money that might be outside tech stocks.
And then, of course, M2 global money supply has been ripping.
And it's been ripping for a while now. And it takes, it's hard to say.
Some people say, you know, 90 days. Some people say 100 days. Some people say a year.
It takes a little while after m2
money supply goes up for that money to actually make
its way into the hands of quote-unquote investors right
i don't know what kind of investor you are if you're basically getting free
money and then just buying stuff but lucky one i guess so it does take a little
while for the once m2 has been ripping and it has been you can go look this
up go look go google m2 money supply chart m2 global money supply chart you'll
see there are also charts where you offset Bitcoin by 100 days and it almost
matches M2 money supply exactly.
And so we're just about at that point right now, along with gold and all of
that. So all of these things are coming together to create an environment where there is some interest.
How long it sustains, not sure. Could sustain for a while, could be temporary.
But we're at a point where there's enough contention in the supply that the price is ripping.
And that supply might be about to get a lot tighter.
Today, 21 Capital was announced. Cantor Fitzgerald is teaming with SoftBank, Tether, Bitfinex,
on a $3 billion Bitcoin deal. So Jack Mahlers, the CEO of Strike,
will be leading this group of Tether SoftBank and Cantor Fitzgerald to create
a Bitcoin treasury company, sort of in the model of Michael Saylor's strategy.
And 21 Capital will launch with 42,000 Bitcoin already in their treasury.
And 21 will become the first Bitcoin native public company. The only thing they do is Bitcoin.
Their entire focus is to maximize Bitcoin ownership per share.
They say they will pursue a range of Bitcoin-related financial and advisory services as well.
They state in their announcement that, quote, they are a potentially superior
vehicle to MSTR for investors seeking capital-efficient Bitcoin exposure.
Okay. Interesting. They're going right after MicroStrategy. And they're funding
this with $200 million just to do all the paperwork.
Cantor Equity Partners raised that in January.
That's what's being used to do the formulation, hire the lawyers.
The Financial Times reports that they're also going to then receive $3 billion
in Bitcoin from other investors and trading firms.
So we know Tether alone, Tether is going to contribute $1.5 billion Bitcoin.
SoftBank and Bitfinex will also contribute $900 million and $600 million, respectively.
Tether and Bitfinex are owned, by the way, by the same parent company and share
a lot of the same key leadership.
So it's essentially one big company, Tether and Bitfinex, but legally they're separate.
Eventually, SoftBank, Tether, and Bitfinex will see their Bitcoin investments
converted into shares of 21 Capital at $10 per share.
So if you do the math, that means at the time of the contribution of Bitcoin,
they pegged the value at somewhere around $85,000 per coin.
And your buddy, Jack Mahlers from Strike, joined Bloomberg today to talk about
the launch of 21 Capital.
BPS stands for Bitcoin per share as opposed to earnings per share and the other
is BRR which stands for Bitcoin return rate and my job and what I'm dedicated
to do for our shareholders in which we view similar to our customers is grow our Bitcoin per share.
So we're an operating company and when you buy a share of 21 in a hypothetical
sense what we intend to do is let's say our Bitcoin per share is 0.05.
Our intent is to be able to grow that to 0.06 Bitcoin per share, 0.07 Bitcoin per share.
Where a vehicle like an ETF, your exposure is static.
So 21 is an operating business and we will be building Bitcoin products,
Bitcoin operative cash flow, and then using the capital markets to accretively
grow the Bitcoin on our balance sheet.
So we want our shareholders to get wealthier, get richer in Bitcoin terms.
And our metrics encourage the market to view us not in fiat terms,
in Bitcoin terms, because we're not here to necessarily beat the market.
We're here to build a new one and encourage the world to adopt Bitcoin in a
sense that we believe it hasn't yet.
But Jack, you already have a Bitcoin product and it's Strike.
Yes. And it's where people can buy, sell, store their crypto.
What happens to that? Are you still going to be leading that business?
Yeah. I'm the CEO of both companies. We're actually disclosing today at Strike some of our financials.
So Strike, immensely profitable. We have over 20% EBITDA margin,
85% gross profit margin. We have only 75 employees.
So on a gross or net profit, per employee basis, we got to be one of,
if not, you know, the biggest in the Bitcoin space in that regard.
And so it's an incredibly strong business. It's doing well. I'm so proud of
the employees and our investors and thankful for our customers.
And, you know, Caroline, you can just do things. And I'm going to lead both businesses.
I truly believe my purpose on this planet is to try and help Bitcoin have a
chance to change the world in what I believe is the right direction.
And I think Strike and 21 both independently work towards that.
I have to say, picking Jack.
As the CEO to lead this is probably a pretty good move.
He has a good reputation in the space, and he can also speak the language of the market.
He also seems to be very passionate about the topic.
And I mean, well, look, they're actually, they're going to get into some of
the details of how the shares work. So I'll play that bit.
I have to say this next host really comes in strong with the Karen energy.
You'll see what I'm talking about here. Just prepare yourself.
One, both independently work towards that.
Jack, you have plans to raise capital, and I guess not just like as a one-off,
over time raise capital, right?
How will that work in practice? What mechanisms will you use?
And a lot of people that watch the show ask if they're not registered institutional
investors, how can they participate in that?
Yes. I thought for a second you were going to offer me some money to buy some Bitcoin.
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I'm kidding, man. Go with my actual question. No, totally.
So listen, we, I just find that intensely rude.
You know, I've done hundreds of interviews and I would never,
ever talk to my guests like that.
I might, what I would do is I'd have a little bit of fun back and then I'd try
to get them politely back on track to show some respect.
You know, they're taking their time. They're providing you content.
They're answering your stupid question.
And he has, no, absolutely not.
Try go with my original question. It's...
If you put yourself in the position of an interviewer, it's kind of an inappropriate thing to do.
And I don't know if this guy is like, maybe he's an XRP guy.
That's probably, you know what? That explains it.
He's a ripple XRP guy. With my actual question. No, totally.
So listen, we are hopeful to have our shares listed on a stock exchange under the ticker XXI.
Today, we are trading under CEP, which Caroline mentioned is our Cantor Equity
Partners. And that stock is trading in live today.
If it's successfully merged upon closing, it will be XXI.
We do intend to raise as much capital as we possibly can to acquire Bitcoin.
Again, my one rule to my shareholders is it will be accretive.
Our Bitcoin per share will grow. We will never have Bitcoin per share negative.
At least that's our intent.
Our intent is to make sure that when you're a shareholder of 21,
that you're getting wealthier in Bitcoin terms.
And that's my job as a CEO to deliver that. So we plan on raising capital in
all different type of sectors and markets and really blending Bitcoin and incorporating
it in the traditional financial system to deliver a powerful equity to the public
markets for Bitcoiners.
All right. He's on point there, isn't he?
So we have a Bitcoin treasury company with Cantor Fitzgerald's institutional
capital markets expertise and their network.
You have Tether's money bags, just constant money bags, and SoftBank's huge
money bags and portfolio of companies. And then you have Jack Mauler's in the leadership.
And starting, they're going to hold more than 42,000 Bitcoin,
which priced right now is around $4 billion USD.
They have that on the balance sheet. And then they're going to work to raise.
Money and acquire as much more Bitcoin as possible in the coming years. I mean, whoo!
Okay, that's going to be interesting to watch. Speaking of MicroStrategy,
they bought again this week.
They increased their Bitcoin holdings to 538,200 Bitcoin.
In the latest purchase, the company has spent more than $555 million to buy 6,556 coins.
So here's my question. Are you tempted or are you already buying shares in things
like MSTR, MSTY? And would you consider buying stock in 21 Capital?
I think to some of you, it sounds crazy. Why would you just stack sets?
Stack sets. Keep it easy. Keep it simple.
But one thing I'm noticing is a trend in the Bitcoin community to try to ride
the Bitcoin adjacent stocks like MicroStrategy and now probably 21 Capital to
increase their cash pile temporarily and then smash buy Bitcoin at the right time.
So they claim, and I'm curious if this is you, that their long-term goal is
still to buy Bitcoin, but to use these more volatile, sometimes more performant
vehicles to accumulate the cash pile.
So are you tempted by this quote-unquote strategy?
Is it something you've thought about or is it something you're going to avoid?
Boost in and tell me what your thoughts are on this. I'm curious to know where
the This Week in Bitcoin audience stands on this kind of thing.
Music.
Well, coming up on the show, it's your boosts, a lot of lightning updates,
a final clip of the week, state of the network, and more.
First, I want to mention you can support the show just by doing what you do.
You stacking sats? I hope.
Well, you should check out River. I think it's the best way to stack sats in the U.S.
They have a lot of great options, some of the best features,
that 3.8% sats on your cash savings account that is FDIC insured.
I have a link to River. If you click through it, it supports the show.
Now, if you're all about the self-custody, you want to go straight to your own
wallet, or if you're in Canada and you're looking for a great source,
the Bitcoin wealth is available in the U.S. or Canada.
It's an amazing automatic self-custody platform. Link in the notes.
The Bitcoin company, if you got some sats on a Lightning wallet and you want
to convert them real quick into a gift card, hundreds of companies,
only Bitcoin, you get rewards. I get rewards when you use the link in the show notes.
If you're ready to stack sats with your debit card purchases,
when you pay the bills, those types of things, Check out the Fold Card.
Very popular in our community. I'm a customer.
And last but not least, if you're trying to get access to your Bitcoin value
without selling it, Salt Lending has a bunch of great features.
All these companies I use and a lot of people in our community use them too.
And you can support the show by doing what you do when you click those links.
Thank you, everybody who does that. I really appreciate it.
Oh, we got some boost. Look at that right there to get into.
And our baller booster this week is Satsquanch. was 72,888 sats. Hey, rich lobster!
Well, I'll be dipped. Ah, Sasquatch writes, Hey, Chris, I'm sending this from my AlbiHub. Ha ha ha!
Love that. Using Podverse.
I tried and failed to boost from Fountain, and then I tried to boost again on
Monday from my Breeze wallet, and it worked, but ultimately also failed and then closed my channel.
So hopefully my new channels on the AlbiHub connected through my Start 9 node.
This one will hopefully work,
My buds at the Secret Thousand Oaks Meetup are responsible for the funding.
Shout out to the Secret Thousand Oaks Meetup folks.
Always nice to hear a check-in from you guys. Now, as far as boost failing from
Fountain, that's pretty rare. But if it happens to you, please do let me know.
When you boost from Breeze, the tricky thing can be is you need to let Breeze
set up, you know, get going for a little bit every now and then.
I have occasionally had problems with Breeze, but it's been pretty solid.
But it's awesome you got it working for you. I'll be hub. Well done.
You know what I would like is if people wanted to boost in the large channel
providers or whoever, whatever it is that you've connected your AlbiHub to that
are working for you for boosting.
Because one of the things that I think would make the Breeze stuff a little
smoother, especially when boosting our shows, because I have self-hosted nodes,
is like what channels do my Lightning nodes need to be connected to for Breeze
Boost to work well and for AlbiHub Boost to work well?
You know, there's nodes out there like ACQIN and others, and I'm connected to
those, but are there specific Breeze nodes or there's other ones that people are connecting to?
Because as a community, if we were sort of, you know, for the most part,
connected to some of the same nodes and some of the same channels,
we would essentially build our own hub and spoke community.
So boost in what channels, or I'm sorry, who you've opened channels to that
have helped solve your boosting issues and things like that and just other channel
providers in general. that I could put out there.
I don't know if I have the best. I'm always looking for better ones.
Thank you for the boost, SatSquatch. I really appreciate the baller support.
J-Cube comes in with 20,000 sats. Oh, this is Cajun spicy.
I agree with you on your miner analysis in the last episode.
Please keep up the coverage and analysis that you've been providing.
I find the insights very valuable. Stay frosty, my friend.
Oh, boy, day one was our guarantee. Yep, yep. Thank you very much.
I will keep an eye on the mining situation.
I'm going to try to double down on getting good sources for that.
And if you're out there, if you're a miner, you've got some experience,
please do share with me, boost in, jump in the matrix, whatever works for you
to try to get me your insights.
I very much appreciate it. I appreciate that boost.
Thank you, JQ. User 54 comes in with 2,121 sets.
Keep up the good work. Well, thank you. I will. Thank you for the boost.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks.
I think there's a very low probability of the miners mounting attack on the
network. Just not sure who would benefit long term.
Yeah, it's the incentives, right? The incentives just don't really line up.
You would crash the value of the network. Who wants that? Thank you for the
boost. Nice to hear from you, Ace.
Master Reboot is here with 5,000 Sets. Yeah, I got answers and I want some questions.
Loving the show, this and the Bitcoin dad is the reason I'm into Bitcoin, but I need your input.
I have a Bitcoin node and a Lightning node installed on Umbral,
but I have no clue what to use for a wallet, neither for Lightning or for Bitcoin.
What would you recommend that I should connect to my nodes?
I'm torn between something on my Android or on my desktop wallet.
I'm currently buying and storing using the Cash app, but I hate the KYC. Thanks in advance.
Oh, well, congratulations first on having the node and getting both your Bitcoin
node going, but also Lightning.
Take a moment to recognize that's awesome. And you're contributing to the network just right there.
Number two, you got a lot of options and I know that's part of your problems.
So what I would do is focus on just a couple.
First and foremost, I have to
mention the Zeus wallet. It's pretty straightforward to connect to Umbral.
And what's so fantastic about Zeus is it could be a Lightning node in your pocket
or it can just be a front end. to your already existing node.
And it does such a great job. So I'm going to put a link to the Zeus wallet in the show notes.
I've also, I've been recently testing the BitBox 2 hardware wallet and the BitBox
wallet app. And I'm really impressed.
I had not really heard of or was familiar with Bitbox. I have to be honest with you.
I'm familiar with other hardware wallets out there. But they're a Swiss company,
and they have a really great product.
And I've been testing it for a couple of weeks now, about three weeks.
And one of the things I love is it's working fantastic with my Graphene OS Pixel 7.
And so I've got the Bitbox app on there over USB-C.
I plug on the Bitbox O2 hardware wallet. and their app implements the Breeze
SDK and their app supports Lightning and OnChain, the BitBox app.
So it's a really nice combination and it works with other wallets on the phone
as well. So you don't just have to use their app.
I'll have more when I've used it further, done a few more transactions and things
like that, but so far it's been going really well.
And so that is something else you could look into is the BitBox and the BitBox
app, but you might just start with Zeus and see how that works for you.
And take it from there. And then
report back. Let me know because I think you're not alone in that quest.
And thank you for the boost. Alder comes in with a row of decks.
This is boost with a flag and a heart.
My emojis don't render in Firefox right now. Does anybody else have this problem,
where emojis are not rendering?
It's in Firefox. It's the worst. It just happened recently.
But thank you for that boost. Thank you everybody who boosts in the show.
I got a bunch below the 2000 cutoff for reading on air. And I really appreciate
that. I saved those in the doc.
We had 35 of you stream sats as you listened, and you stacked a nice 73,025
sats for the show, which I really appreciate.
When you combine that with our boosters, we didn't have a blowaway week this week.
But, you know, I recognize not every freaking week can be a blowaway week.
I think for me a blowaway would be like 400,000.
And, you know, like a getting by week is like above 250,000.
This week we stacked 181,299. Not the worst week ever.
They're not a great week. And I'm actually okay taking that one on.
Maybe, you know, last week's show maybe wasn't very good. It sometimes happens.
I hope you get some value from the show. If you do, please consider boosting.
One of the easiest ways to do it is Fountain FM when it works,
but it generally does because they have an entire infrastructure to host all of that for you.
However, like others, you can go the full self-hosted route with your own Lightning
Node, maybe using AlbiHub and a podcasting app of your choice.
From totally taken care of for you to total sovereignty, there's a whole world
out there of podcast and Lightning options.
You can use something as simple as breeze b-r-e-e-z and
it'll set up a lightning node in your pocket and you can find the
show in there in boost it's a great way to support the show use
the lightning network learn more about the lightning network and send a little
value back and thank you everybody who does that we'll have links in the show
notes to help you get started I don't know.
Now, I have a lot of Lightning updates for you.
First is I'm going to link to a longer blog post by the OpenSats folks,
and it covers advancements in Lightning infrastructure.
It really explores how projects are starting to develop next level solutions
for the Bitcoin and Lightning layer.
Just new kind of ideas, new ways, and new innovation of solving things.
And the article itself tries to really tackle scaling Bitcoin for everyday payments
and how they believe Lightning can help it accomplish that, at least directly.
And some of the technologies that they're helping invest in to enable that,
like splicing, which enables dynamic channel resizing without downtime,
validating Lightning signers, which secures private keys by using an external
signer, which reduces the risk of compromised nodes. I love this.
And then they're working on a simulation tool called Blast, which tests interoperability
between CLN Lightning Demon and LND and LDK.
CLN is getting pretty popular. LND still is the most widely deployed,
LDK obviously being the development kit.
It models real-world lightning conditions by running nodes in a single process,
optimizing routing and liquidity strategies, and helps diagnose inconsistencies
and prepare also for a broader lightning ecosystem where you have all these
different types of lightning nodes. I think that's just great.
And there's also now a new Python-based modular testing library to help validate
cross-implementation protocols.
It's called LNPrototest. It's an out-of-tree testing.
It lets you test things out of tree that aren't implemented yet as well as things
that are in tree. And these projects...
And a bunch of other ones add up to something like 250 OpenSats grants to back all of these.
I mean, OpenSats has really been helping the Lightning Network build out a large,
robust set of infrastructure tools.
And they highlight a lot of that. So it's a really long read,
but it's a really good read if you're a Lightning fan.
That is linked in the show notes. It's pretty nice.
More Lightning news. Albie held a hackaday. And I'll link to it,
but there's some good stuff in here.
During a two-day internal hackathon, Albi developed and prototyped three different
types of Bitcoin payment tools aimed at improving the user experience and utility
of the Lightning Network ecosystem.
They talked about SparkyHub, which is a new NostraWallet Connect-enabled wallet
with a React front-end, Node.js back-end, SQLite in there, too.
It leverages Spark, which is a scalable Lightning-compatible Bitcoin Layer 2
solution, and it allows them to coordinate multiple users under a few large
channels without compromising key custody.
SparkyHub integrates seamlessly into other apps via the Nostra Connect protocol,
so it doesn't require its own UI to do that.
It connects with wallets like AlbiGo and the Albi Browser extension.
They also worked on auto-swaps inside AlbiHub, designed to automate swap-outs
from Lightning to on-chain, ensuring that users always will have receiving capacity.
This feature uses the Bolts API and it runs in the background as a job triggering
a swap once a user-defined balance threshold has been exceeded.
And then in the hackathon, they focused on the swap outside and they have plans
to enable manual swaps and swapping and automation as well.
And then last but not least, something else that grabbed my attention.
They developed an idea or prototype for a value-for-value RSS feed reader.
It's an HTML app supporting direct Lightning payments to content creators via
the RSS value tags that we use in podcasting.
You could use, say, the Albi WordPress plugin. Creators could add a Lightning address to their feeds.
But, you know, any way to add the value block to your feed, the reader fetches,
displays the RSS content, and it includes a little pay in Bitcoin button.
And I guess it's worth mentioning, I think they vibe coded this thing.
So just so you know, the tool promotes supporting writers the same way that
you can boost a podcast using the same underlying technology,
which is really neat to see. So look at Albie Go.
And then speaking of really innovative lightning developers,
the Breeze folks put out a newsletter, their seventh newsletter,
and they highlighted major strides in their lightning and Bitcoin adoption through
new offerings that they have.
One of them is Misty Breeze, a new open-source reference app built with Flutter
on top of the Breeze SDK, which is nodeless, and it's designed to simplify Lightning payments.
It's white-label ready, allowing developers to just quickly deploy apps with
features like multi-format send and receive support, offline payment reception.
Custom Lightning addresses, and key ownership, all without having to manage a node.
And this is just ready for app developers to just plop right into the app they're
building. It's awesome.
There's a bunch of other really great apps from Breeze as well,
including they're working on Wasm support for the Breeze SDK.
They have an update to their SDK in general. And they're also talking about
doing demos at PubKeyBar and other events as well.
So you'll have to check out the
show notes for the links to these because they're all pretty long posts.
But I walked away from this feeling like we are really seeing some incredible
developments in the Lightning space.
And it's one of these things where I swear half the people in the Bitcoin space
are saying lightning has failed, it's never going to work, it won't scale to the world.
And then we have people that are actually developing things and building things,
or in the case of OpenSats, funding things, and they clearly believe the opposite.
And they're building to that future.
And I'm just here for it. Either way, I think I have really become a fan of
the idea that Bitcoin is a rock solid fundamental layer one. It's like TCP IP.
And then you can build stacks on top of that, like HTTPS or whatever else it might be.
And that is going to be extremely valuable because the bulk of the noise and
the action and the day-to-day stuff can happen in those second or third layers.
And then they have the security and the finality of that first layer when they
need it. but it doesn't need to be every single little transaction.
It really is silly if you think about it. If you think of block space as precious and rare.
It's ridiculous to want to have your payment for coffee to be on the blockchain.
That's silly. It's stupid. It's selfish.
Layer two solved this problem. And we have a lot of options here.
You know, ARK is something else that I'm looking into. You guys know that I
also use Liquid. You can technically consider that a layer two,
although it's really a side chain.
But Lightning, I think, offers the possibility of being the SMTP to Bitcoin.
Now, Bitcoin has a network built into it. But again, that's the layer one.
It really needs something that is node to node level.
And I do expect, you know, down the road, it's going to be the majority of banks
and corporations and businesses that are providing Bitcoin services via Lightning.
Maybe they're even transferring to each other via Lightning.
And it won't be the majority of us plebs that are running the nodes.
But we'll still be able to. Like, we have sustained this far.
We have made it this long with the culture of self-hosted nodes and peer-to-peer
lightning network that it will never go away at this point.
But I do think they will have a majority of big players that will probably run
the lightning infrastructure because they need it to be as reliable as they
needed SMTP to be reliable.
And if you don't know, that's the Simple Mail Transport Protocol,
which is essential for moving email between different servers.
You know, when you send an email between Gmail and somebody at Outlook.com,
they're using SMTP still to this day, which if you had the initiative,
time, and desire for paying, you could set up a Linux box and you could install
SMTP and you could install everything you need, spam filter,
all that kind of crap, set up the DNS, and you could run your own email server today.
I think Lightning will always be easier than that for us self-hosters.
And the Bitcoin nodes, that's baked in. That's always going to be a thing we can do.
I love seeing all of these groups just crank out useful thing after useful thing,
bringing the usability and accessibility of Lightning down to more and more users.
Music.
To our final clip of the week. You're probably familiar with Samson Mao,
or maybe you've heard the name before. He's an OG.
He's a gigabull. There you have it.
Permagigabull. That's what Samson Mao is. A permagigabull. He now works at Jan3.
They make the AquaWallet, amongst other things.
And he points out that we ain't seen nothing yet.
If we start to see FOMO level at the government level buying Bitcoin,
things are going to get real volatile real quick.
As more countries look towards Bitcoin as the solution to their problems, which it is.
And the kind of normalization of Bitcoin strategies, especially from the US,
like even before the SBR, you can look to the ETFs and say the largest asset
manager on the planet has launched a Bitcoin ETF.
Why wouldn't a poor country allocate
some of their capital, some of their reserves to Bitcoin in some way?
Just as a prudent asset management strategy, which in theory,
every central bank of every country should be doing if that is their mandate
to stabilize prices and ensure economic stability.
But that is not enough, actually. But the SBR, I think, is very different because
it is direct government acquisition.
And I think once that really kicks into high gear, the executive order now just
says don't sell and acquire and budget neutral strategies.
But when they do actually have legislation that says go and buy,
or if Howard Ludnick puts together one of those budget neutral strategies and
starts executing acquisition,
then I think we'll start to see a rush.
And that rush is likely going to be something that we haven't ever seen before.
It is going to trigger that rampage of capital into Bitcoin.
And that's when you see Omega Candles. And that's when you see even more volatility.
We could go up 300,000 and then down $200,000 in a couple days.
Music.
Network, this episode is wrapping up at block height 893,667.
The current USD price of Bitcoin is 93,840, which puts the sats per dollar at 1,066.
We're up now 12% in the last seven days, still down 14% from our all-time high
93 days ago of 109,160 on January 19th, 2025.
As of right now, Now, the reachable Bitcoin nodes on the network are 21,547.
Kind of a fun number, but let's see if we couldn't get that to 550.
You have some work to do out there, audience. Go deploy your nodes. Go deploy your nodes.
V-rate right now, still just two sats per V-byte.
Still a great time to open up channels, too. Really is a good time to set up
a node, move some sats around, things like that. Big recommendation.
Bitcoin is cranking right along. Things are looking great. The Bitcoin Network is strong.
Music.
Now i want to let you know a programming note here in two weeks on may 7th i
don't plan to have an episode of this week in bitcoin i'll be on the road doing
a van rescue with my buddy brent,
and i expect we're going to be pretty busy however if i Everything goes really
smooth and there is some big breaking news.
I'll do an episode from the road. But right now, May 7th, I don't plan to have an episode.
So prepare yourself. Could be a time to jump back into the back catalog and
see what I got right, see what I got wrong, and then boost it and tell me about it.
Speaking of boosting in, do you agree with my take that the White House tariff
strategy seems to have backfired and that the bond market ended up being the ultimate boss?
We thought it would be Wall Street with the Trump administration.
That turns out to be the bond market.
I'm curious if you agree with my take or if you have a different one.
Also, I want to know your thoughts on buying the 21 Capital and MSTR stock to
cash accumulate and then smash buy Bitcoin, at least so they claim.
I want to hear your thoughts if you're trying that strategy and how it's been working for you.
My goal here is, of course, not get distracted by the emotions,
but focus on the signal and what's happening. So you can always boost and let
me know how I did there as well.
Now, links to what I talked about, That's at thisweekinbitcoin.show where you
will also find the back catalog, feed, contact information, and more.
Now I'm going to leave you with a value-for-value track like I always do.
So if you boost in while the music plays.
Music.