Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode Lucky 66.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
You know, 15 years ago, today, as I record, Satoshi Nakamoto posted their famous, well,
what are their more famous quotes? If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to
try to convince you. Sorry. Now, what's also pretty great is at the time Satoshi posted that,
you could buy an entire Bitcoin for six cents, six U.S. pennies. So that mood, or as my kids
would say, that vibe feels about right for this week as Bitcoiners have watched stable coins and
the alt chains that enable them just get more and more attention from the U.S. administration
that was elected in part by Bitcoiners.
And the hits just keep coming today as I record.
Last week, just after I wrapped up the show, rumors started surfacing pretty quickly that
the Trump administration would be releasing a report that details the government's digital
asset holdings.
The Trump administration is expected to release.
its first national crypto stockpile report on Wednesday stateside, detailing the structure
and contents of the government's digital assets. This includes holdings under the strategic
Bitcoin Reserve and the U.S. digital asset stockpile, which consists of cryptocurrencies
seized through legal enforcement actions. Investors are eager to know how much Bitcoin
the U.S. government actually owns. The report could also recommend national security and banking
access reforms for crypto firms. We're back with Jordy Visser. Well, today we got a preview of the
report. It's given out to select media. The full report will probably come out after I finish
recording. And it does make recommendations to banks and the SEC, and it pushes for the passage
of the Clarity Act. It calls for immediately enabling digital assets throughout the federal
level to support them for trading. The report embraces DeFi, you could say. It says DeFi is a
growth engine. And of course, it talks about stable coins are a way to strengthen the US dollar.
Got to have that dollar dominance. And there's even some stuff in there about maybe making small
crypto transactions a non-taxable event. But there's a pretty big omission in the report.
It makes no mention, at least in the preview that we've seen so far, of any of the federal
Bitcoin Reserve, its amount, where it's at, the status of the Bitcoin they supposedly hold.
None of that is in there. Now, all of this comes from an executive order signed by the
president in January, which I'm pretty sure asked for an accounting of the government's Bitcoin.
But it doesn't appear to be in this report. Markets dipped just a little bit on it.
And I think a lot of Bitcoiners are feeling a bit rugged right now.
Well, here's my take.
Don't get too upset just yet.
The White House tends to play a bit of word games with us.
Have you noticed this?
When it comes to stockpiles and reserves, they draw a clear line between Bitcoin and all the other digital assets.
But then when the president or David Sachs or really anyone from the White House speaks publicly about crypto, quote unquote, they interchange these things constantly and consistently.
It's very mixed messaging from all the way from the top down at the White House.
So I think it's pretty natural that the public would assume to expect some sort of Bitcoin
accounting in this report because they're always intermixing these terms.
But it could be that the White House intends to do a separate auditing of the Bitcoin,
a separate reporting of the Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Reserve and their recommendations around
that, which may go to further kind of signal the difference between Bitcoin and all the
other digital assets.
As I record right now, there's only rumors that we may see a separate report.
Perhaps by the time I'm done recording, that'll be more firm.
But the reaction by the Bitcoin community was swift, and people are getting more and more the sensation of feeling rugged.
And I kind of feel it too.
Like, they got elected on promising a Bitcoin reserve and making, you know, Bitcoin great again or whatever you want to say.
And it's been nothing but genius act and clarity act.
And then we get this report and it's like Bitcoin's not even in there.
Could be ultimately a good thing, but where Bitcoiners are sitting right now with the
information they have, it doesn't look great.
And then selectively leaking it to like Coinbase and if, or not Coinbase, a CoinDesk and a
few other outlets.
It's weird.
It feels a bit like the White House is playing crypto reporting favoritism.
Maybe that's their prerogative, but it's just a weird way to disseminate that information
to the public, especially in a decentralized market like this.
So I think a lot of missteps here to get people pretty upset.
But I'll keep my eyes to the ground and my sniffer to see if a separate Bitcoin reporter, if we get at least an ETA on when we might see that, even that would be pretty nice.
something a bit historic happened in bitcoin this week and you might not have even noticed it
a satoshi era bitcoiner as they're often called you know someone that's been around since the
early days when satoshi was likely active sold a large bag 80 000 bitcoin kind of in one go they
sold in like a few chunks, but they took a few days. We initially saw these coins move because
they consolidated from several wallets into one wallet at Galaxy Digital. And then they did a big
market sell netting around $9 billion in profit. Now, this is notable for a couple of reasons. And
I think this is why it's worth talking about. It feeds into this narrative, first of all,
just to be aware of that a lot of the OGs are cashing out as if people aren't taking profits
at all different times of life and life's needs.
But also, I think more importantly,
number two, I would say,
it demonstrates something to the market.
It demonstrates to big money
that the Bitcoin network can clear
a $9 billion transaction in just minutes
and continue ticking on.
The Bitcoin price dipped,
I think at most about 5%,
and then rebound relatively quickly.
Now, this is exceptionally impressive
if you remember your history.
During the Terra Luna crash in May of 2022,
the Luna Foundation Guard, known as LFG, because they're cute and it was crypto.
The nonprofit spent or sold 80,000 Bitcoin from their reserves in an attempt to stabilize the
system, at the time worth about $3 billion. Bitcoin's price, as a result of a process that
started dropped 60% from its peak in November of 2021. And then we grinded a bear market for a long
time. That wasn't just the lunar crash, but it was part of it. It was a big part of it. That 80,000
Bitcoin back then in May of 2022 wiped out the market. Now, in July of 2025, 5% dip. So that's
really notable and a big deal. And it's something people are going to take notice of.
But speaking of Luna, remember that, that algorithmic stablecoin that blew up?
Well, Mr. Luna himself, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, went on CNBC, and I noticed,
and I got the copy, I've got the receipts.
Novogratz, just before Galaxy Digital facilitated the 80,000 Bitcoin sale, he goes on CNBC just
hours, days beforehand, I'm not quite sure.
And in my opinion, it looks like Novogratz is pumping ETH right before a ginormous, in fact, the largest in history, Bitcoin sale happens.
Right now, if you could buy Ether or Bitcoin, which to buy?
I own both. Listen, Ether's caught up a lot. It feels like if ETH takes out $4,000, it goes into price discovery.
And so we feel kind of destined to at least knock on the $4,000 ceiling a few times.
the narrative of ether is really powerful no it's not so this it's not powerful in fact they've
they would admit themselves people you know that run the project it's central planners
would acknowledge they have really struggled they thought they had something with web3 but
after the web3 thing and nfts fell apart ether has really they tried ultrasound money before that
that fell apart so the narrative is it's kind of a tech platform and if it's a tech platform
You know, it's competing with Microsoft and it's competing with Amazon.
And the market was really short.
And now we have not just, you know, one, we have two major ETH treasury companies and another one coming, you know, and they're raising capital every day and buying Ether.
And so there's not a lot of supply of ETH.
Really?
What's the limit?
What's the supply limit of ETH?
And how do you even measure that when you have groups like ConsenSys and others that got huge access of pre-mines or got access to ETH extremely cheap and sit on absolute ginormous bags and sell them off to any of the highest bidder whenever they want to take a little profit?
And so I think ETH probably has a chance to outperform Bitcoin in the next three to six months.
Oh, interesting that he would say that.
so maybe he was thinking when they did their 80,000k sale when Galaxy Digital facilitated that
sale maybe he thought the bitcoin price would tank from for three to six months so he felt pretty
good going on there and making that call but the bitcoin market just ate it up those 80,000 coins
were like business as usual to the point where if I didn't mention it some of you might not even
know when this happened something that crashed the market wiped us out once before is now business
as usual. So that tells us two things. The market in general, the buyer, has a much better
understanding of Bitcoin's value proposition. When it happened in 2022, people just looked at it as a
risk asset. Why buy? Oh, look, it's not a store of value. Ha ha ha ha. Then that digital gold
narrative started to take effect since then. But we also can show this as measurably higher
buying pressure that is sustained with Bitcoin. It seems to be going through a period of sustained
buying pressure, probably in large part due to these corporate buying strategies.
It's a hot product right now, right? Everywhere around the world, especially in Western governments,
but not just Western governments, people are suffering from the monster that is currency
debasement. Plebs, small businesses. I've been hearing a lot about small doctor's offices that
are stacking Bitcoin. And now we have this new breed that's under the chat, the Bitcoin
corporate treasury business. You know, you're Michael Saylors and you're Jack Maulers from
Strike, who now is running 21. That company isn't even fully launched yet. It's not even fully
formed. It's under review by the SEC right now. But that didn't stop Jack from breaking a bit of
news, even though I think he's under the silence period.
Yo, what is going on, everybody?
I want to share some exciting 21 updates with you all.
In particular, some exciting updates on our Bitcoin treasury.
First, we at 21 expect to add 5,800 Bitcoin before our planned listing on a stock exchange.
Second, we are increasing our Bitcoin holdings from at least 42,000 Bitcoin by the time our
transaction is approved to at least 43,500 Bitcoin by the time our transaction is approved.
These are big numbers. And I'm surprised since it is during the SEC quiet period
that Jack can talk about this. But I wonder, and I'm asking you, listener, do you think Jack has
found a hype loophole here that these Bitcoin treasury companies could take advantage of,
assuming they have a proof of reserve.
If you have a public proof of reserve,
then you have a public Bitcoin wallet.
And it seems like that would be public information.
So Jack and team should be able to publicly comment
on a publicly viewable wallet
without breaking the rules of the SEC quiet period.
Have they found some kind of Bitcoin or company hype loophole?
You tell me.
We show proof of reserves at 21.
That allows anyone in the world to cryptographically guarantee and verify that we do in fact own the Bitcoin we claim we do.
Before this announcement, our proof of reserves showed that we had a little over 37,000 Bitcoin held in escrow for 21.
After this announcement, anyone in the world, you can now go check our proof of reserves.
And there is currently over 43,000 Bitcoin sitting in escrow pending approval of our transaction.
So you see what I'm saying?
He's just telling you what's in a publicly accessible wallet, guys.
You know?
And what's funny to watch is all of these traditional financial wonks, now they're sitting up.
They're wiping the drool off their face.
They're leaning forward in their chairs.
They couldn't wrap their head around a scarce asset, a digital scarce asset.
because, you know, that's ephemeral.
It's a digital thing.
They don't understand it.
You can't hold it in your hand.
Ironically, they seem to simply and easily
wrap their head around the idea of a treasury company.
They like the idea of taking an asset
and wrapping it in a security
and selling it on the stock market
and essentially selling paper versions of that asset.
That's something classic Wall Street likes.
And so they're seeing big numbers.
They don't fully understand it.
They're trying to because they like the money.
and they like being able to get exposure to this money through these public companies.
And I believe that the idea that's forming between Wall Street,
these Bitcoin strategic companies, and the wonks that cover it
is this is the way average folk, the no-coiner Joe, is going to stack in the future.
When they finally have to give in and start buying into this asset,
they're not going to buy spot Bitcoin.
They're not going to go to River.
I mean, they should, but they're not.
They're going to buy it through some kind of third-party exposure and manage it through some sort of account.
This is how the future these people will be getting exposure to Bitcoin not to Bitcoin directly but through these intermediaries It gross to us Bitcoiners but the financial wonks love it And they see the big numbers and they want to wrap their head around it And so Jack was called over to show up at Bloomberg He on set this time And this entire segment is it really good And it really
telling. Let's talk a little bit about this new announcement where you're going to increase your
Bitcoin holdings beyond the initial amount that you had stated back during the April launch.
This would make you the third largest corporate holder of Bitcoin after Strategy and Mara.
Is there a long-term strategy here to take over Strategy's role as the biggest holder or maybe even the second biggest holder and push Mara out of the way?
Of course. I mean, listen, I think the capital markets will get to know me as many things, one of which is a competitor.
I'm never going to sit up here and say I want to be second.
So I think us at 21, we have a lot of confidence that we can do pretty much anything.
The board, if you think about, consists of myself, Tether, and SoftBank.
That's a lot of access to capital, a lot of technological experience, a lot of Bitcoin experience.
So we're confident.
First step is getting approved.
But the notion that we've already been able to accumulate over 43,000 Bitcoin with an average price of just over 87,000.
So we now own over $5 billion of Bitcoin.
We have an unrealized gain of already over $1.3 billion.
So a pretty small team and a pretty young company that's already made over a billion bucks.
So a lot of progress so far, and I think it's just the beginning.
All right.
So let's put this into perspective, OK?
That's not a bad start.
But the amount of Bitcoin that 21 would need to accumulate to catch up and surpass strategy
at this point, which he said he wants to do.
He clearly said he wants to do.
The numbers are pretty nuts.
So with this week's addition, strategy currently holds 43,500 Bitcoin.
No, I'm sorry.
strategy just bought 43,500 Bitcoin this week, which brings their total holdings,
strategy's total holdings, up to 628,791 Bitcoin. So they have almost 630,000 Bitcoin as of this
week. That makes 21 short by about 585,000 Bitcoin. So in other words, in fiat prices today,
21 would need to come up with 69,155,516,327.20 to catch up to Saylor. Now in this current cycle,
in this halving cycle, there are 450 Bitcoins mined daily or issued, let's just say issued daily.
MicroStrategy alone can at times buy thousands of Bitcoin in a single transaction, like the recent
one that I just talked about. I mean, they just bought 43,000 Bitcoin. They'll buy 21,000 Bitcoin.
They'll buy these ginormous amounts of Bitcoin in single purchases. The ETFs collectively accumulate
hundreds to thousands of Bitcoin on average every day. If we look at IBIT just for the month of July,
on average, so far, they've stacked 1,600 Bitcoin a day in flows into just IBIT. 1,600 Bitcoin
on average for July so far, just into IBIT.
These are all rough numbers,
but if you look at the per day accumulation of Bitcoin,
per day the market is buying somewhere
between 1,500 to 5,000 or more Bitcoin per day.
And 450 Bitcoin are getting issued a day.
And you know Jack's well aware of this,
but that means the scarcity is going to really hit the price
as these companies are trying to accumulate
and they're going to be bidding each other up.
And so it's beyond what market prices today are, even though it's $69 billion right now to catch up to strategy, almost $70 billion to catch up to strategy.
That's at July 2025 prices.
But as these companies, and this is the third, this is the top three, right?
There's three others, two others that are bigger and ones that are smaller.
And they're all stacking.
And Madman Maulers knows it.
This is your main business.
You're introducing a performance metric as well.
called BPS, Bitcoin per share.
Can you just briefly explain that?
Yes.
I mean, it's obviously a rip on earnings per share.
But listen, we're a Bitcoin company all the way to our core.
That's even how we measure our performance.
In my opinion, as a Bitcoiner,
measuring your performance in dollars is not that impressive.
My coffee's gone up in dollar terms.
This chair has gone up in dollar terms.
So has the S&P.
So has the Mag7.
So has Bitcoin.
Everything goes up in dollar terms because fiat continues to get debased.
So what we want to measure ourself in is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is the new hurdle rate.
Can you be performance in Bitcoin terms?
And the message I want to give to our existing shareholders and future shareholders is we
want our shareholders to get wealthier in Bitcoin terms.
And so instead of measuring earnings per shares in dollars, we want to measure in Bitcoin.
Can we grow the Bitcoin per share that you're exposed to as a shareholder of the business?
That's why we created the metric.
So in other words, this BPS, this Bitcoin per share, you're going to hear these types
of metrics be used more and more to measure the success of these companies. I don't know if
all of the wonks will adopt these measurements, but these will be the ones that these companies
are putting forward. I think they'll probably come to some consensus across the board and then,
push those metrics pretty hard. What's the end game for you? Is it just to buy as much Bitcoin
as you can and hold it for as long as possible and never sell it? That's one of the goals, yes.
But I think what makes us different than a lot of these other businesses is we plan to build
Bitcoin products as well.
I mean, the founding group is Tether and myself.
I founded in Lead Strike as one of the bigger Bitcoin financial services firms in the world.
Tether, obviously, is one of the most impressive companies in the history of humanity, but
specifically in building massive cash flows within the space.
So Paulo and I, before we were CEOs, we were engineers.
We built a lot of products.
And so we plan to not only acquire as much Bitcoin as possible, raising capital in all
sorts of deep capital pools, but also build products, build technology, build tools.
I think when people eventually think of 21,
it's are they a competitor to Coinbase?
Are they competitor to Strategy?
For us, why not both?
We think we have that potential.
Do you envision a future where Bitcoin treasury companies
such as Strategy, Mara, and you guys
end up buying so much Bitcoin
that there really isn't actually much left out there
on the open market for people to trade?
After all, it is a fixed number of Bitcoin,
so no more will be created once it reaches that number.
It's not an accident that he's asking this question just after Jack says they're going to build Bitcoin products.
So Jack's going to answer, and I think he's going to answer it from the perspective of millionaires and billionaires and strategic treasury companies that are buying Bitcoin with massive amounts of other people's money.
He's not thinking about it from the pleb standpoint.
From the pleb standpoint, I think their hope is they're going to sell products to us.
I don't know what those could be.
What we'll discover, I suspect, over the next decade is Bitcoin gets plugged into various things.
We're seeing it plugged into real estate and other things.
And then these companies will be the backers that provide that Bitcoin to the banks and to these other financial products.
And so as people, we'll get exposure to you.
Go to your bank and you get a loan and there might be a Bitcoin kicker on it.
Maybe you're not even involved with that part.
That's just part of how they make their money.
and the Bitcoin kicker is getting financed by Mahler's 21 or strategy.
So that's who Jack's thinking about.
But his question, I think, is actually the interviewer's question is more about the plebs.
And, you know, there's probably going to be, it's going to be, well, we're going to be stacking sats.
You're not going to be stacking whole coins if these guys get their way.
It's probably what it is.
Right. You know, what's fascinating about the asset, and it's not intuitive because it's so rare,
is that to your point, it is definitively scarce.
So if everyone in the world wanted an iPhone, Apple could make more.
If everyone in the world wanted a McDonald's cheeseburger, McDonald's could make more.
The fact that Bitcoin cannot increase its supply means the new supply comes from the market.
If you want more Bitcoin, you don't go to the Bitcoin factory to get one.
You have to go up in price.
Is there enough Bitcoin for me at $120,000?
No.
Okay, $130,000, $140,000, $150,000.
So I'll tell you what, there's always Bitcoin available.
It just depends on what you're willing to pay for it.
And so what I think will happen is this price will continue to discover higher because Bitcoin is the scarcest thing.
It's inelastic to the amount of demand that searches for it.
So the amount of buying power that we're seeing from the capital markets, from the ETFs, and potentially from nation states like the United States, I think they'll find the supply they're looking for.
They're just going to have to go get it at a higher price.
Would you expand to other digital coins, for instance, become a treasury company for Ether or Solano or something else?
They don't get it.
You know, they don't listen either. They don't listen to his answer. That was a brilliant, concise, articulate answer of the way Bitcoin price dynamics work in the market, delivered in a way that just about any audience can understand.
And it's a fascinating aspect of Bitcoin, the way the scarcity impacts that price discovery. You could definitely double down on that. She's not listening at all. She doesn't get the value proposition at all.
And so this question, you know, not a great question when you're asking Jack, who's definitely a Bitcoiner, if he's going to start stacking Sol or ETH.
They'll find the supply they're looking for.
They're just going to have to go get it at a higher price.
Would you expand to other digital coins, for instance, become a treasury company for Ether or Solano or something else?
Absolutely not.
And I'll tell you guys why.
I made you laugh.
Yeah, because you guys are all maxis.
Like you talk to somebody who has an Ether treasury company and they'd say the same thing about Bitcoin.
That is true.
It's really obnoxious.
It's more obnoxious when the ETH Maxis and the Sol Maxis get on TV because there's no sound money argument for either one of those.
So it's just sort of obnoxious when they get on there and play these Maxi tropes, when they would just swap to whatever the best technology is that makes them the most revenue when it comes along.
Yeah, so you can't mix the two ever?
Well, a little history lesson.
The term Maxi was actually invented by Vitalik Buterin.
It was a diss.
It was slander.
You know, I now take it as a compliment, but to be clear, I don't self-prescribe that.
Little background on my opinion, okay?
Us humans own a little over $900 trillion worth of stuff.
Currencies, sovereign debt, real estate, precious metals, fine art, all of the things that we collectively own as a species.
About half of that, so call it $400 to $500 trillion worth of it, we're using to save money, right?
You own the $10 million art painting not to put on your wall so your toddler can throw spaghetti at it and ruin it.
You own it because you want to sell it for $11 million in the future.
You own the real estate not to consume it because you're living in it, but because you're trying to save and build a real estate portfolio.
So the amount of wealth humans have created that they want to bring with them tomorrow and save into the future is about $400 to $500 trillion.
To me, that's what Bitcoin's going after.
It's that pristine store of value.
It's that pure money, right?
What is Ethereum?
What is Dogecoin?
What is Solana?
To me, I don't know, at best, a technology? Are these things going after Apple, Amazon? If they are, let's go out and give Ethereum credit that I don't think it deserves and say it's going to achieve what Amazon has achieved.
Okay, $2 trillion, $3 trillion worth of value to society.
Reasonable, nice, a new cool tech stock.
And that's if they go on to achieve that.
If Bitcoin goes on to achieve a small fraction of the $400 to $500 trillion
that humans are looking to bring with them tomorrow,
we're talking about tens of trillions of dollars of appreciation.
So it's in orders of magnitude, larger problem Bitcoin's going after.
It's in orders of magnitude, sound or bedrock to build a treasury.
I do not want to build a treasury on potentially the next Amazon.
I want to build a treasury on the new gold, on the new sovereign debt, on the new currency, on the new dollar.
So that for me, our shareholders should know I will never own another asset outside Bitcoin.
That is again, chef's kiss, a masterful explanation of the difference between Bitcoin and the other place.
Just play that back.
It's so good.
Play it back, memorize it.
And you can use that to explain the difference to other people in 30 seconds when they ask you.
Bitcoin Purist or Maxi, as Tim just reminded us.
Jack, you call yourself the first ever Bitcoin native company that expects to be publicly listed.
Any thoughts on what stock exchange?
Would it be NYSC?
Would it be NASDAQ?
Could it even be, let's say, the Texas Stock Exchange, which will begin listings at the end of 2026?
Boring.
Convince them that there is a use case beyond just buying and holding, that this is a useful technology.
Well, I think...
Now, this is where we're going to end.
I like this answer.
I'll back up a little bit so you can hear the question better.
This and say, wait a second.
Is the point of Bitcoin just for the people who have it now to get wealthier and wealthier?
The largest holders of Marathon, of you guys, and of strategy, convince them that there is a use case beyond just buying and holding, that this is a useful technology.
Well, I think the use case for Bitcoin from the highest level possible is I've created value and I want to keep it.
That's it. I got a chuckle out of you. That's true.
I got up out of bed. I sacrificed. I worked. I commuted. I did tasks. I created products. I created value for those around me.
I want to keep that value.
But even though it's called a cryptocurrency, it's not used widespread as a currency.
It's used as something that will accumulate or that people think will accumulate in value.
Yes, I think the definitions of currency and money and how we think of medium of exchange store of value, I think it gets too complicated.
And sometimes Bitcoin is so simple that people don't believe it can be that simple.
The reality is money is what you acquire in exchange for your effort, your time, your energy.
It's our time and energy in an abstracted form.
And I exchange my work hours for it so that I can later get the stuff I need in my life.
I want to go to Whole Foods and get a steak.
I want to go on vacation.
I need to pay rent.
That's what money's for, is to allow me to create value and take it with me tomorrow.
And that's the use case.
And today it's increasingly difficult to achieve that. I can't save it in dollars. We all know that.
OK, you're going to force me to understand Japanese central bank monetary policy.
You're going to force me to understand what tech stocks to pick.
No, how about something that's definitively scarce? No one can inflate.
I can store for free. I can move cheaply. And that I can put it in my brain.
And that's the use case. And we all have that use case. Nation, state, corporations, families, individuals.
Simply put, I think everyone can find value in a technology that is open source and solve that for everybody.
We'll come back to the topic of money.
But I want to just tap the brakes a little bit on all the hype.
Because you look at the numbers, you listen to Jack.
It's pretty easy to get excited about, oh, the price is going to rip.
It's going to go crazy.
But Bitcoin lives in a wider system.
And there is, historically at least, has been, a massive price headwind approaching Bitcoin.
And you're welcome, the rest of the world, because this is going to impact you even though it's just simply a result of the fiscal mess of the United States.
Now, we'll see.
Maybe some of this corporate buying pressure can help.
It definitely helped with that 80 Bitcoin sale But very soon the US Treasury expects to borrow trillion just in Q3 I just do want to get some news though first out of the Treasury Department Megan Kinsella
has those details. Hi, Megan.
Hey, Mike. So Treasury's latest borrowing estimates are out, and it's a big number
this time. Treasury expecting to borrow just over a trillion dollars in the July through
September quarter. That's $453 billion more than what they announced.
$453 billion more than they projected.
Back in April.
Now, Wall Street had been expecting borrowing to increase,
but this is a bigger jump than estimates that I had seen.
But Treasury officials do say this is almost entirely due
to the now-resolved fight over the debt limits.
So what happens is when the debt limits go on,
the Treasury General account, like their checking account, gets drained.
It's called the TGA.
In the past, before 2008's financial crisis,
this money was distributed in banks around the country, and it actually kind of acted as a buffer
for the economy. But it became centralized after the 2008 crisis and then gets run down during these
debt debates. Then it needs to be refilled so the federal government can write checks and pay bills.
To do that, they issue new debt, which drains cash availability from the private sector who
to buy this up. It's like a reverse quantitative easing event that historically leads to market
declines for Bitcoin's at least short-term price. So this is going to be another test
to watch how the market eats this up. If it'll shrug it off like it did that big sale,
or if the lack of Fed rate cuts, the focus on stablecoin chains, the plebs being tapped out,
combined with a treasury liquidity drain to fill that TGA, it could finally catch up to Bitcoin,
at least for the short term.
So what do you think?
Put your bet on the line.
Are we in a new era
where demand is just going to constantly push Bitcoin
even through these events
and at least hold it steady?
Or do you think we'll finally see
all of these things catch up
and we're going to see a walk back
to the lower 100s?
Boost in with your prediction.
Put it on the record,
even a price point,
if you would,
because I'm curious to know
how far you think this could go
with all of these different dynamics.
And while we don't know, never can know,
it's fun to try to get you on the record in a boost.
I feel like there's something we could do
like a contest of some kind in the future.
So boost in and let me know.
And then also a brief PSA for the show,
a little bit of housekeeping here.
A couple of weeks ago,
I announced that I was launching
a monthly Fountain subscriber program.
This is a new thing that Fountain is trying out.
It's a way to sort of auto support the show
with either Sats or Fiat,
which is a neat option.
And I can issue bonus content to those subscribers
as a thank you.
So last week, I released my first bonus episode.
A little bit of a test of the system,
to be honest with you.
And we did hit a bug.
We'll talk about that.
But I'll just say thank you, everybody,
who gave me all the nice comments
about the bonus episode.
It was well-received, much better than I expected.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
And we got a couple of, I picked up,
I think, almost 15 new subscribers.
I do really, really appreciate that.
And I'm going to continue to explore that avenue.
Now, about that snake.
If this hit you, hopefully, if you contact Oscar Mary, you can get, or somebody at Fountain Support, you can get a refund if it didn't go through.
But it looks like what they discovered is there was a bit of a race condition.
If you had the preview trailer playing, which you likely did, and then tried to buy that bonus episode, you'd hit this race condition.
You could dismiss that mini player.
You know, like when it's just like minimized down there, you could swipe it away and then do the purchase and it would work fine.
Now they've fixed this up and I believe it's pending in the app stores right now.
So hopefully very soon that's just taken care of.
But in the like zoom out 50 level foot, 50,000 foot view thing here, whatever you want to call it, whatever cliche, you know.
I am really excited about testing this system.
It's an open system.
So unlike Patreon or some of the white label member full type bud systems out there, this is something that any podcast app could implement.
It's using RSS and alternative enclosures.
It's using Noster for identity, and it supports SATs or Fiat.
And Fountain is currently working on web support, so you're not required to use the Fountain app.
I think you are at the moment.
I think you should try it again because it's gotten really good.
And so it's something that could possibly be available to any podcaster that wants to take advantage of this
and any podcast app that's willing to write support for all of this.
And it's a really neat combination of the Lightning Network and using Noster for identity
and then getting access to content on demand.
It's, I mean, I could geek out
about the technology behind it all for a while.
And so I'm really excited to try this.
If you'd like to try the bonus episode,
I'll have a link to it in the show notes.
I think you will need Fountain for right now
for the moment to try it out,
but I think you should give it a go.
And then I'd love your feedback on that type of format.
And thank you everybody who did give it a go.
It's been pretty exciting.
All right, well, coming up, I got your boosts, some updates you definitely want to catch,
final clip of the week that's going to get into money a bit more.
So I'll just mention there's some ways to support the show just by doing what you do.
If you want to buy your sats on River, I think it's one of the best ways to stack in the United States.
Use our link in the show notes.
If you're all about that self-custody and you're in Canada or the U.S.,
the Bitcoin well gets so many good reviews from our audience.
Self-custody first, directly to and from your wallet.
You're ready to spend those sats and you have them on lightning.
The Bitcoin company, they're Bitcoin only.
Hundreds of gift cards go from lightning to gift card in just seconds.
The Fold card has to be one of the sleeper hits in the Bitcoin community.
Beloved in our audience, I use it every day to pay bills and other day expenses.
Stack sats while you're doing that stuff.
The Fold card will have a link in the show notes.
You can support the show that way.
And then if you need to get access to your Bitcoin value without selling it,
Salt Lending has been great.
check out salt lending link to all of that in the show notes thank you everybody who supports
the show by doing what you do or by sending a boost or becoming a subscriber
and we do have some folks coming in with some boost to support the show
And SatSquatch is back, and he's our baller with 75,000 sats.
Hey, Rich Lobster!
Shout out to the secret Thousand Oaks meetup.
Stay humble, stack, and self-custody your sats.
Thank you for your service, Chris, and putting out this exceptional resource for all of us.
A segment on legacy and estate planning to pass on sats,
along with the Bitcoin ethos of self-sovereignty responsibility for future generations,
would be highly appreciated.
All right.
I am saving that right now.
Boom.
I'm grabbing that.
I apologize, but I don't want to forget that.
That does sound like a really great segment suggestion.
All right.
I have noted that.
Thank you, Satsquatch,
and shout out to the Secret Thousand Oaks Meetup.
Hope you all are doing well out there
and staying hydrated, as they say.
Appreciate that boost.
And thank you for being our baller.
Here he is.
Adversaries 17 comes in with 32,768 sats.
Oh, and it looks like it's a couple of boosts here.
Using the podcast index.
So he's also then using his self-hosted AlbiHub.
He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy.
No, he's a great guy.
Adversaries writes,
when you mentioned not wanting a battery for your old cold storage,
have you considered how you'd get to your Bitcoin
after an EMP hits the US?
What's your backup plan to be able to get to your Bitcoin out of that wallet should you need it?
For the hams, it's pretty common to suggest putting at least a single radio in a Faraday cage of some sort.
Maybe the same practice of putting a cold wallet device also applies.
Though if an EMP does hit the US, I think basic survival will matter more than trying to salvage Bitcoin from cold stash.
So maybe it doesn't even matter.
Oh, it's order of operations adversaries.
You see, after the EMP hits, or more likely here in the Pacific Northwest, the devastating earthquake, God forbid, knock on wood, you're going to have to get your food, your waters, and your survivals.
But then pretty quickly, you know, if society continues at all in any form, you're going to need a medium of exchange.
And we have seen so many different takes at Mesh Networks, MeshTastic being a very popular one, BitChat gaining popularity.
I don't think anything younger than the boomers is going to go back to like using cash, like especially if the government were to fall.
Who wants that crap? Use it as fire starter.
I'm sure precious metals would be useful.
I also think cannabis, probably beer, booze would also be useful, at least initially after some sort of collapse.
But then, you know, it progresses and pretty soon you're going to want that infrastructure back.
He says regarding political views versus financial news.
This is a debate we've been having on the show.
Since we're primarily using this asset called the United States dollar, which is inherently managed by the government and largely controlled by policy of politicians, I think maybe all financial news is political.
There's just no way around it.
If you're doing news on macroeconomics, you're going to be touching the political realm.
They're inseparable, in my opinion.
If only there was an asset that wasn't controlled by the government.
Hmm.
Good point.
But yeah, I think, too, there is a way to try to talk about it without getting the emotions wrapped up into it, at least.
Like if we're going to go near politics, let's stick to the data and the facts if we can.
And it probably creeps in from time to time just because everybody's human.
But appreciate that insight.
Thank you, adversaries.
Nice to hear from you.
J-Cube is here with 25,000 sats.
Oh, my God, this drawer is filled with fruit loaves.
Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days.
Great episode.
Trump isn't the ally to Bitcoin that he said he would be, but still better than the alternative.
Keep up the coverage that you do.
Feels relevant and interesting.
Fair.
It's a night and day difference between administrations and their approach to the crypto industry.
And I think, you know, with Trump, it's with the bad, you get the good.
With the good, you get the validation of the space.
You get the validation of Bitcoin as a financial asset.
You get the government talking about it very positively, changing their stance from something
they're trying to dump as soon as they can to something they want to strategically hold.
even if they don't do it you're still signaling to investors that's still something there versus
trying to squash this this industry as fast as possible wow that's a good point i suppose all
things are you know in perspective it's it's easy to lose sight of that once you're six seven months
in and you don't have your damn bitcoin reserve right i've actually maintained for a while too i
think if a bitcoin reserve did come it would come towards the end of the year thank you jq appreciate
that support chew toys here with 20 000 sets well let's hear it good buddy i've been stacking since
the bitcoin dad pod was around i did some math and i have come to the unfortunate realization
that i will never own a whole bitcoin it does make me feel better that i already have more than
most people in the world but i still wish i had more oh well thanks for making the highest value
pod in the realm well thanks chew toy i first of all i would i would remind you we do sometimes
have incredible bear markets.
Like there is some logic
to having a little bit of cash,
say like in River in the 3.8%
sats interest account
and then doing a smash buy
if the market starts looking
a little sideways.
So don't completely count that out.
That said,
I think one of the things that we have
that we'll be grateful for
that we should try to take advantage of
is all the ways to passively stack sats.
You know, you can passively stack sats
using the fold card.
You can passively stack sats
if you're comfortable with it with like the Gemini 4% backcard.
You can passively stack sats by using Fountain to listen to podcasts.
You'll hear from time to time people that boost in
just using the sats they earned on Fountain.
I suspect in 10 to 15 years,
we'll look back as these are equivalent to the Bitcoin well.
The fact that you used to be able to go to a website
and get five Bitcoin or even one Bitcoin for a time
just by visiting a freaking website.
I cannot tell you.
like why didn't why didn't why didn't everybody do that it was crazy right well that's what i think
we're going to look at these bitcoin rewards in 15 years you mean i i just i could get sats
i have the gemini credit card i've had a different version of it for a long time
just because from time to time there's life purchases that come up and it's like why not
get some sats for like when i take the family on a road trip up to 300 is like three or four percent
sats back in gas. Well, I got to buy the gas anyways. So why not get three to 4% sats back?
Well, you know, I've been using the card for three, four years. So I have like $800 worth of sats
that I've stacked just getting in rewards because, and they've also accumulated in value.
That's just $800 in Bitcoin that's continuing to increase in value that I just passively stacked.
And I don't think you have to get to one Bitcoin. I think it's about using it as savings technology
to save your time and energy today for the future.
And so it's about putting what you can today
and taking out more in the future,
archiving that for the future.
I think it's probably going to be harder
for the entire world to get to one Bitcoin.
There's just so little Bitcoin.
And if every billionaire in the world
or every millionaire in the world
decided they wanted a Bitcoin,
there's just not enough.
So don't feel bad.
You're not the only one.
But it's not about getting to one Bitcoin, right?
It's about saving for the future,
whatever you can.
$20, $30, whatever it is that you don't want to base or taken from you.
And that's what it's a tool for right now.
And of course, peer-to-peer transactions,
things like the Lightning Network that allows to do this cool thing like Boost,
learning and taking advantage as more of those develop.
And that Bitcoin will continue to grow in value.
And even if you only get to half a coin or 0.3 of a coin or whatever it is,
it's going to continue to grow in value.
And you still will be in such a rare group of people.
such a small percentage of people in the world will even have the stash that you have.
So I don't think you should feel bad about it at all. I think you should be very proud
because you're saving for the future in something that's growing in value. And you're doing it,
if you've been doing it since the Bitcoin dad pod, then you frant ran everybody. You frant ran
BlackRock. You frant ran all of these Bitcoin treasury strategy companies. You frant ran Donald
Trump. You frant ran the president of the United States. It's not too bad, Shoe Toy. Thank you for
the boost. Appreciate it. And thanks for listening for so long. Mr. Pibb with two Bs. Well, I'll be
dipped. Comes in with 3,222 sats, says thanks for the show and thank you for the bonus episode.
Thank you for the value. Thank you, Mr. Pibb. Valcalo is here with a row of ducks. That's 2,222
sats so it's an answer to my nostril question they say the reason i stick with nostril is the
same reason i stick with all open protocols no permission no coercion yes to voluntary cooperation
exit opt opt reorganize voluntarily you know it true vc when i see people on x complaining oh i wish I could just have social media without an algorithm Yeah go over to Noster And if you want an algorithm people are going to build them You could opt into them if you want
maybe have your own. And Noster is so awesome as an identity service. I've been thinking about,
and this is a question to you guys, I want to set up an NPUB for this week in Bitcoin for the
podcast, but I don't know how to manage multiple NPUBs because I use Albi extension. I don't really
want to be swapping accounts in my Albie extension. And I don't know how to manage two
endpubs effectively. I kind of would like some sort of web-based app where I can have multiple
endpubs in there and I can switch between them. Because then maybe I could have other ones for
the other shows too. But I'd like to start with This Week in Bitcoin. And then there would be an
endpub you could follow for show news or when we're going live or for messages to respond to
the show episodes, things like that. So I'm thinking about it. And I'd love your feedback
on how to do multiple endpubs. Thank you, VC. Great to hear from you.
Moon Knight's here with 2,100 sats.
The coolest part about last week's solar mining report boost
is that he got money for his excess electricity,
whereas the electric company would have otherwise given him credit.
Yeah, he got a hard asset.
He converted the sun into a hard asset.
Can we just appreciate that for a second, Moon?
Can we just, you know, he took in the sun and he produced sats.
It's incredible, actually.
He also says, I purchased the bonus episode,
but I don't see any way to listen to it in Fountain.
The UI bugged out.
Oh.
Okay, if you hit up at Oscar Mary,
Moon and I, he will help you out with the refund there,
and it should be working now.
I want to know, too, were you using the single purchase?
Were you buying it, or are you trying to subscribe?
I think you were trying to subscribe,
but I'd like to know.
Yeah, yeah, that was a bug.
You hit the race condition.
I apologize.
That's why I was kind of testing it out.
It's a very new system.
It has a lot of potential.
And so far, that was like the thing that we had up against.
Thank you, though, for trying.
And hopefully you can try again.
Get a refund and try again.
Appreciate it.
Domas comes in with 2,000 sats.
No S, but it sounds like it has an S.
A bonus twib?
Shut the front door.
Yeah, you got it.
You got it.
Thank you.
BobbyPing came in with 10,000 sats.
It's over 9,000!
I did get my Noster account before Fountain Integrated Noster.
Then when Fountain integrated Nostre, I couldn't figure out how to get back into my Nostre to link it.
Maybe if I had access to my Nostre, I would then get more into that world.
But for now, I don't see the use of it other than having different username when I boost.
Okay.
Actually, if you think about it, if you could have, and I was able, I did the same thing, and I was able to tie my Nostre identity.
You have one identity now.
You can have one identity across multiple apps.
So you don't have to have separate accounts for all these apps.
It's really cool.
He says, just after I told you I don't use Noster,
you go and release a bonus episode that requires me to sign in with Noster.
Turns out, though, Noster was Matrix.
So, well, if I'm already getting Noster,
I might as well also get my own AlbiHub, too.
Oh, he's in the Matrix now.
Yes.
Oh, awesome.
All because you released a bonus episode.
Your words are powerful.
Keep it up.
Use them for the good.
Oh, man.
Well, I'm super glad you're setting up an AlbiHub.
Yeah, okay, and then here we go.
Here's Mary Oscar right here.
He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy.
No, he's a great guy.
He says, we did discover a small race condition
with the bonus episode purchasing
that could occasionally happen
if the bonus preview audio was playing.
For anyone who experiences this,
dismissing the small player
and then playing the episode again
should resolve the issue.
A fix has been added
and the new app version awaiting
an Apple Google review,
hopefully live in the next 24 hours.
If you experienced an issue,
please email me, Oscar, O-S-C-A-R,
at fountain.fm and I'll refund your purchase.
Aw, well there you go.
Thank you, Oscar.
He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy.
No, he's a great guy.
Appreciate that.
Everything's under control.
BCP boosted him with 4,004 sets.
Hmm.
I feel like that's a message.
I don't know.
Why you gotta put numbers and letters together?
Why can't you just go f*** yourself?
I'm just kidding.
I love it.
He says, I love the bonus episode.
I've come from Monte Santo,
where these documentaries were used to terrify people
about how their food is being grown.
Just mentioning Montessanto is enough to prove my point.
This type of narrative creation is extremely potent.
I have much to say about this, but I'll leave it at this.
There is always a funder of these documentaries,
some group that stands to win if their target loses.
Yeah, I was trying to figure out who would be.
So in the bonus episode,
I did a pretty comprehensive breakdown
of More Perfect Union's total attack on Bitcoin mining.
And there is a real sad problem that they're also addressing.
So it's a tricky one.
But I was trying to figure out what their angle was
because they could have also done an episode
about how Bitcoin mining is saving towns
after plants closed because, you know, big fat cats.
Or it could have done a piece about how Bitcoin
is saving the middle class from historic debasement.
But instead, they decided to attack mining.
Why?
So that's one of the things we break down in that bonus episode.
He says, as a funny side note,
But when Monsanto wanted to hire me in 2014, HR put a red flag on me because I had written articles in favor of Bitcoin.
The currency of criminals, they called it.
Isn't there some irony in that VCP?
Monsanto, the people that have some of the worst reputations in the world, red flagging other people because they were writing about something that gets an unfair bad reputation.
Oh, it's delicious.
It's delicious.
Eric PP sent in 3,333 sats.
No message, just the support.
But he used Boost CLI.
That's awesome.
Nice job, Eric PP.
Thank you.
Atone came in with 4,444 sats.
The traders love the vol.
I don't understand what Jack is on about with the debasing the dollar against Bitcoin and not against housing and the egg.
Surely, you don't get to choose.
Stablecoin liquidity into Bitcoin doesn't get locked into a box.
The person you just thought you bought Bitcoin from now has dollars.
which to bid up housing and eggs debasement is debasement what am i missing i guess jack was
thinking they wouldn't sell it for dollars they would go buy bitcoin i'm following your logic
atone and i like it you're right it's still going to lead to debasement i agree by the way
i agree i think it is an interesting theory that bitcoin becomes a sink for stable coin liquidity
in other words a lot of these operations that are that are buying treasuries as they're backing for
their stablecoin are also buying Bitcoin. So you're going to have more Bitcoin purchasing.
It'll soak up some of that. But yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
You still get dollars or somebody still, there's still a buyer and a seller on each end of that
trade. And the seller ends up with a profit. The seller is probably going to buy stuff.
That's going to drive a price. Now that has to happen at a massive scale. And so it could be
just the process of, you know, from the money spigot all the way down to that individual trader
that makes a trade and a profit,
it could be that that takes a very long time
to stoke inflation in the broader market, right?
Because what's he likely going to go do?
He's going to, like you say, he's going to buy a house.
He will buy eggs, but he's not going to buy more eggs
than he normally would have.
He can only eat so many eggs.
But he will buy boats.
He'll buy cars.
She, right?
She'll get into these other investment products.
So you'll see the inflation,
like I think we did when the interest rates
were at 0% or near it.
that's where I think you'll see the inflation.
And then a politician goes and issues things like stimulus checks
and the supply chain chokes,
and then you've got massive purchasing at the high end and the low end
and the medium all at the same time.
That's sort of the worst-case scenario.
Thank you for the boost.
Great observation.
Appreciate you sharing it with me.
Gene Bean came in with 4,444 sats.
That's a big old duck, I'd say.
Quack-a-wack-a, it's a treasure.
Yippee!
He was responding to the bonus episodes. I can see why this video got under your skin. The in-depth breakdown was good. I'm looking forward to additional bonus content. Also, have you checked out the Dolphin card? It sounds really nice. Bitcoin, Liquid Network, Fiat. I am curious to watch how this Dolphin card goes.
So Aqua Wallet, made by the Jan3 company, is an interesting wallet to begin with because it has on-chain Bitcoin, Liquid support, Tether support, and it swaps between Lightning and Liquid sort of automatically.
And the latest update, they brought in the Dolphin card.
It's a virtual Visa card that allows you to spend Bitcoin.
So you, I guess, in fact, I believe you could store it in Liquid.
I haven't tried this, but you could have Bitcoin in Liquid or on-chain, and then they will do a sale or a conversion.
to tether I don't know what for the transaction.
Now, that's pretty neat, right?
Now, my only concern is,
because the idea is you have Bitcoin sitting in there,
you can spend it on fiat rails.
That could be really neat,
say in a situation where you need to go get your car repair.
Like my wife's power steering rack needs to be replaced.
And I looked it up and it's like an $1,800 part plus time.
It's going to be over, easily over $2,000
to repair this damn thing.
And they're known to fail.
Anyways, it'd be nice to have a scenario where like, all right, say you were willing to sell off a little of your Bitcoin for that.
I don't think you should for that kind of thing.
But let's say in this example you were willing to sell off a little bit of your Bitcoin.
It'd be nice to just put that on the Aqua Wallet, walk in with a Visa card, swipe the card at the auto repair shop, and just do the transaction.
And now you're done.
I don't know if that's going to – I mean, I know that's how it's supposed to work.
I've just had bad experience with these virtual Visa cards.
They seem to only certain locations accept them.
They have a lot more security scrutiny around them.
So I'm going to wait and see what some of the reports are, Gene.
I'll tell you, man, I like this kind of stuff.
I would almost prefer something that is doing a collateral loan on the fly.
Like I said, minimums and maximums.
And then, you know, when I swipe that card, it's actually using like a Bitcoin-backed loan or something instead of selling them.
You know, because it's a taxable event in theory when you're doing a transaction like that.
I haven't actually looked into how the mechanics work, but I would assume it's a capital gains when you use that debit card, Visa card thing.
I'd love to just maybe then instead do some sort of loan-based thing.
Or, you know, not have things so damn expensive that people are talking about selling their Bitcoin to fix their car.
You know what I mean, Gene?
Thank you for the boost.
Appreciate it.
Hello there comes in with 4,444 sats.
This old duck still got it.
I'm fine.
No message, just some value. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. HGW39 is here with 4,567 sats. Hmm.
There's coffee in that nebula.
So responding to the bonus episode, he says, thanks for covering this. I saw it on YouTube, and then I'm glad you covered it. I'd love to see more bonus episodes. My biggest question, how the hell do you cover all this as well as Linux Unplugged?
by never stopping and working on both shows every single day from morning to late at the night
living and breathing it i think the only way is because i do this full-time barely
and i don't know if i could do both shows if i wasn't full-time podcasting it's a lot of work i
also do the launch and i probably should be doing another show just because that's the way if you
the shows that are sponsored by companies,
you have to have two or three sponsors in a show
to kind of break even or make money.
Well, I can't load Linux unplugged up
with six ads or something like that.
So it's an interesting market.
It's challenging.
It's why I really try to focus on value for value
for this week in Bitcoin.
It just lets me just focus on the show
and not do like 60% management overhead
that comes with advertising.
But from a time-wise, it's a significant challenge.
It helps that I'm intensely passionate about Linux.
open source and bitcoin so i would be maniacally following all of this even if i didn't do podcasts
and for me doing the podcast is my therapy session talking about this stuff getting it out there
it it's like it otherwise it just bottles up inside me and then i have to like you know talk
to the wife about it all the time and she'll she'll be interested for a bit but she can't listen
for hours thank you hdw i appreciate that boost didn't expect to ramble on like that but there's
answer. Hey, Ace is back with a row of ducks. As Ackerman writes, I tried Noster. It didn't stick
for me. I'm not an enjoyer of social media in general. I agree, Ace. I agree. And what really
has made it stick long term for me is it feels like a platform that I own, right? I use chrislas.com.
I verified my identity using my DNS, using my infrastructure.
And right now, when you go to chrislas.com, it takes you to a primal page, but it could
take you to anywhere.
It could take you to my own self-hosted Nostra page.
So I like that it's like my online presence.
I don't even want to use the word social media.
It's my online identity and presence.
And one of the outputs of that is a social media feed.
But the other output of that is my Fountain FM account.
and there's a couple of other like Nostra adjacent apps
that I connect to just using my Nostra identity.
So the idea of a public private key backed identity
that you can use between applications,
one of them is a social media application.
That's a powerful idea and that's why I've stuck with Nostra.
But if I were just using it as an X or Twitter
slash MasterDawn replacement,
I would still use it occasionally and I do,
but I would not use it as much.
just because like you, I'm not really, as you say, an enjoyer of those things.
Thank you, Ace.
Nice to hear from you.
Hey, look who it is.
It's Mr. Hybrid Sarcasm.
Danger zone.
Coming in with 6,000 stats.
Danger zone.
Some streaming stats didn't make it last week because of a Megalith LSP outage for Albie.
Oh, I heard about that.
So here's some extra stats to make up for it.
Oh, thank you, sir.
Appreciate that.
B-O-O-S-T.
Oh, and more bonus content, please.
Last week's bonus episode gave me little hints of unfiltered Chris.
We love that, Chris.
Hybrid, that's a deep ref.
Good, good.
Appreciate the boost.
Nice to hear from you.
White Eagle's back with 3,433 sats.
Live long and prosper.
Number one, you should clarify that Vanguard is not making the decision to purchase MicroStrategy stock MSTR.
It's that it's, they're doing it, the ME, the, that is ME.
I don't know what you mean by ME because I don't really understand these terms very well, I guess.
That is ME, the Vanguard member, doing that.
Oh, I get what you're – well, actually, it's because it's part of some index funds that they're required to buy too, right?
That's the other reason.
So they're kind of compelled to buy the MSTR stock is essentially what you're saying.
I know.
I think I said that.
It's still hilarious, though, that they're one of the largest shareholders.
I mean, come on.
That is still hilarious.
Wayne Eagle says he also votes to keep the macro and related news.
And he wants to know, when is the podfather going to guest host LUP?
Guest host.
That is a lot of work.
How about he just would pop by and talk about some Linux setups that he's currently using,
and then he could take off.
It's 10 minutes then.
Hosting a whole show?
That's like a four-hour commitment.
He does not need that.
He's already got plenty of other podcasts to record.
That's crazy why
Eagle. You got to do it. Get him in, get him out. 10, 15 minutes max. Man's got things to do.
But otherwise, I like where your head's at. And thank you, Wine Eagle. Appreciate the support.
It's nice to hear from you. I think it's been a bit. Overall, I think we're just slightly down
4% or so, which isn't too bad, but the Fountain FM stats show about 4% less supporting this month
than last month. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate everybody who does support,
especially everybody who tried out the bonus episode. Thank you for doing that or became a
subscriber. We had 43 of you stream sats as you listen to the podcast. So collectively,
you sat streamers stacked 54,253 sats. Not too bad. Thank you, everybody. When you combine that
with the total boosters, even though not as many people are participating,
I'm pretty happy with the result we got this week. The show stacked 272,076 sats.
these days fountain.fm probably makes it the easiest to boost because they offer a completely
hosted lightning infrastructure and are making the fiat integration easier but you hear a lot
of people are trying to albi hub and different apps check out all the apps at podcast apps.com
then support this show with a boost it is a value for value production if you got some value from
the show send it back and thank you everybody who did we appreciate you and shout out to those
subscribers out there. There's something that you need to avoid, and it's been catching even some
more seasoned Bitcoiners by surprise. So stay a while and listen. There is a fake Sparrow app in
the Apple App Store. And maybe Apple will pull this soon. As of right now, they haven't. There
is no mobile app for the real Sparrow wallet. Not on iOS, not on Android. And on July 25th,
Bitcoin for Jimmy reported that his entire life savings was stolen from him. 7.4 Bitcoin.
He just had a one-week-old child, too. They just had a kid. They're in pretty bad straits right now.
And to lose 7.4 million Bitcoin to a scam Sparrow wallet in the app store is absolutely devastating.
You really have to be careful.
I don't need to lecture you.
I know you all are smart out there.
Like, if you don't hear other people talking about it, be very skeptical.
Watch out for this stuff.
Watch out.
There's only a few apps people should be using on mobile.
And we've talked about them before on the show.
There is no Sparrow mobile app.
And I just feel so bad for Bitcoin for Jimmy.
He does have a GoFundMe going.
but you know
these things do happen
and it's
it's
there is a
immense responsibility
that you take
when you get behind
the wheel of a car
when you raise a child
when you cook
with a barbecue
or when you hold
your bitcoin
and you know
it used the Sparrow
logo and icon too
I saw some screenshots
like if you just
looked at the app store
listing
it looks kind of legit
so you have to
kind of feel for the guy
watch out
no Sparrow on mobile
PayPal
announced that you can use Bitcoin as a source of payment if you're holding Bitcoin on PayPal.
Speaking of wallets, you probably shouldn't be using. PayPal has rolled out a new feature
allowing US businesses to accept payments in 100 different assets, Bitcoin being one of them.
So now when you're purchasing something via PayPal, you could do it from a credit card,
from your bank account, whatever you have connected to PayPal, plus your crypto holdings.
Not a bad, not a bad thing.
I'm just not a big fan of the PayPal wallet itself,
but I thought you should be aware of it.
We talked about a strike.
No, Stripe.
I don't know.
We talked about the point of sales device recently
that is adding lightning support.
So it's nice to see also PayPal.
I think it's, you know, not lightning
because it's just in their on-chain wallet,
but they're facilitating the transaction nonetheless.
I came across an interesting interview.
I'll link to the whole thing with Brian Armstrong,
the CEO of Coinbase and he been hit and miss on his Bitcoin takes over the year And his company absolutely shit coins There no question about that
So it's always worthwhile checking in
on Brian Armstrong's point of view on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is probably the best form of money
that's ever created.
What is money to you?
Yeah.
Well, to me, money is really like a medium of exchange.
And it came out of this need from the barter system
not fully working, right?
Like if I grow apples and you raise beef and I kind of want some beef, but you don't need my apples right now, you got enough apples.
It's like that's a barrier to a trade happening, right?
So it helps if we have this common medium of exchange that can be used to price things and just allow a transaction to happen even if you don't need the exact good that I produce, right?
And, you know, over time, lots of things have been used as money, right?
Like people use salt as money at one point.
In prisons, people use like cigarettes or different food items as money, seashells, you know, famously all these like kind of things.
And there's certain properties of money that make it good money or bad money, right?
Like, like scarcity is one of those.
Can people just, if you can use, find a bunch more seashells on the beach, then that's like a bad form of money, right?
Or durability, like, you know, will the thing deteriorate over time?
like bread or something like that is probably like a bad form of currency because it just,
it goes bad. It rots, right? How portable is it? Like, you know, a bar of gold is great as like a
store of value, which by the way is another good property of money, but it's hard to move gold.
Like if I need to pay somebody in Japan, like I need to fly that bar of gold, right? Or how
subdivisible is it, right? Can I like chip off a little flake of gold to pay for my coffee or,
you know? So people look at these different properties of money and you can kind of score
score different monies. And like, this is partly why I think Bitcoin is probably the best form of
money that's ever created because it is scarce, provably scarce, just like gold or something like
that. But it's more portable than gold. You can send a Bitcoin transaction kind of anywhere in
the world pretty quickly. It's subdivisible down to like eight decimal places. You know,
it's very durable. It's not going to go bad or, and it's, it's like, it's fungible too. Like,
you know that if I have one Bitcoin, it's just as good as another Bitcoin, right? Like some,
you know, imagine if you had like different purities of metals and like, oh, is this one
diluted a little bit? Or like, are they hiding some lead in there? You know? So yeah, I think
you could think of Bitcoin as like a digital gold and it's, it has some of the best properties of
gold, but some of the ones that gold doesn't have to like the portability and subdivisibility,
the programmability to a little, I would say you can use it in different, set up different
contracts with it and things like that. So that's kind of what money is to me. It's intended to be
a medium of exchange. And I think crypto is really providing a better alternative on that dimension.
Huh. So he does get it. So he does understand. I mean, that's a pretty damn good explanation of
money. I told you we'd get to what money is. That's a pretty damn good explanation.
So why mess around with all the other stuff?
Why slow down the adoption of the world's best money?
I don't get that.
He says, quote, Bitcoin is probably the best form of money ever created.
So why are we messing around with all the other stuff again?
Brian?
I mean, I realize there's other uses potentially for blockchain,
but so far it just seems to be pretty much gambling over at their Coinbase.
So there is that and the entire interview.
I don't know if I can really recommend it.
Bits of it are interesting.
other bits are a little boring, but I'll link to it in the show notes. And then I wanted to let you
know about an app that I'm probably deploying over the next week or two, and maybe we could do it
together. It's called sat.watch, and you can actually find it at sat.watch, and it gives you
instant alerts for any Bitcoin address you want to monitor. So think you have cold storage,
you not actively opening up your wallet app and checking the balance all the time But you would like to know if the amounts have changed perhaps get alerts for any kinds of incoming or outgoing transactions and things like that And it pretty neat pretty simple pretty straightforward web app
Again, it's called sat.watch. And the developer talked about who he made the tool for.
And for me, I built this as a tool to monitor my self-custody Bitcoin. I take extra care to secure
and store my keys.
But observability is one thing I was desperately lacking.
I didn't have a wallet software running
to monitor my stack.
And I just wanted to have that peace of mind.
So I built this tool as a way of getting notified instantly
if there's something going on
with any of the addresses in my wallet.
But you might have a different use case.
Perhaps you have a multi-sig account
and there's lots of companies that offer services
like vaults or loan products that have a two of three multi-sig.
And this is a great tool that you could use to just have extra eyes on that account to
make sure if anything moves that you get notified.
Sounds pretty handy.
And it's something I think I'd like to try because I'm always curious.
I don't even like really launching any of my wallet apps.
I just try not to even think about it much.
But a notification that comes in either via email or webhook could be pretty useful.
so that way you can set it and forget it, but then be alerted if anything were to change.
I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
Now, sticking with the topic of money, Saifedean, the author of The Bitcoin Standard, went on CNBC
and gave them a bit of a masterclass on the topic. You'd think these folks would understand the
subject, but they called on safe and he helped him out. There's characteristics of why gold for
4,000 years has been used to represent value, but it has nothing to do with what it's used for.
I also think it's worth revisiting these topics because this is the signal in the noise. You
understand, right? You understand that if we stay focused on what is good money, what is hard money,
it naturally leads to Bitcoin. And there'll be a lot of noise over the next couple of years,
likely, but it's these properties, especially as inflation just continues to eat away, even if it's
a 2% or 3%, but if it goes up at all, and it's really, it's money printing. It's not even
inflation. It's money printing. M2 supply is just up like a rocket. So it's not a United States
thing. It's an everywhere thing. So these basic fundamentals are absolutely critical for us to
stay focused on lock on or as my kids would say lock in no it stores value well because it's very
difficult to increase the supply of gold it's very difficult to increase the supply of gold
substantially every year the supply of gold goes up at only around one and a half to two percent
and so that means that people who hold it as money end up doing very well for themselves
and people hold other things don't do well and that is true for gold and that's what made gold
money for the whole world practically at the beginning of the 20th century then governments
come about and they use their debt as money. And since then, the average over the last 60 years or
so, between 1960 and 2020, for 60 years, the average fiat currency grew in supply at around
14% per year, or overall fiat currencies grew in supply at around 14% per year. So we went from
one and a half percent to 14%, about 10-fold increase in the supply growth rate. And 14%
per year means that on average, you lose half of the value that's stored in money over five years.
So you lose half of the value of your money over five years. That's the average fiat experience.
Of course, some currencies are better than the average, like the US dollar and euro. They only
increase at around 7, 8% per year. Some currencies are a lot worse. They increase at 20, 50,
maybe 100 sometimes percent per year. But on average, it's just continuously increasing in
supply. So its value declines. And because its value declines, that incentivizes everybody to,
A not save and B take on a lot of debt And that why everybody is in debt And that what Bitcoin fixes If we go back to having a hard money where money is no longer debt we no longer need to be
monetizing debt. We no longer need to get everybody to become a debt slave in order for us to have a
form of money. We have a form of money that is just a commodity that doesn't require anybody to
get into debt for it.
Let's check in on the state of the network before I get out of here.
Wrapping up at block height 907,852.
Current Bitcoin USD price is $116,240 in USD.
Sats per dollar is coming in at 861 sats per dollar.
We're down 5.7% from our all-time high of $123,180 16 days ago.
That was on July 14th, 2025.
Our difficulty retarget date is set for August 9th, with an estimated difficulty change downward of 4.6%.
Keep an eye on that.
And there are currently 22,973 reachable nodes on the network, so close to 23,000.
Checking in on Bitcoin Noughts, now the third most popular Bitcoin node version, just after Bitcoin Core 2829, then Noughts.
clocking in exactly this evening at 15.0% of the market share.
Incredible.
It was actually just a touch higher earlier today.
It was at 15.1.
Oh, and it just, as I'm watching it,
literally ticked back to 15.1% of the network.
Look at Knott's go.
Let's see if we can't get that.
The reachable nodes just hit 23,000 right now.
Oh, that's so cool.
Oh, the state of the Bitcoin network.
is strong.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Links are at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
My goal is to create a show that doesn't get distracted by the emotions around what's
happening, but focuses on the signal.
Let me know how I did with a boost.
Always appreciate corrections.
Of course, I also like to know what you think I missed or what you would like to hear
from the show in the future.
And of course,
your feedback and answer
to my challenge above
are also appreciated.
Now, I will leave you
with no value for value track
again this week.
We're still working on it
on the back end.
So I'm a little sad
because I think it's such
a great tech demo
and the artists love it.
But I also want to wait
for the right solution.
And I trust that the Fountain team
is going to nail it
when they do have it.
So I'll just say this.
Thank you so much
for joining me
on this week's episode
of This Week in Bitcoin,
episode 66.
And I hope you will join me
right back here next week for a whole new episode.
Thank you.