In order to even entertain Bitcoin, you have to have one thing in your brain.
You have to kind of acknowledge that governments across the world are going
to continue to print money and debase their own currencies to solve problems
because it's politically expedient.
If you don't think that, you'll never come around on Bitcoin, ever.
So that's what I found. Bitcoin is, some people are like, it has no purpose, no sense.
But that's why people are using it. That's how BlackRock is marketing it.
They even show a chart of the purchasing power of the dollar since the Fed came out.
You used to see those charts like in the deep corners of crypto Twitter.
Now BlackRock is out there traveling the world showing people this chart.
This is.
Music.
A production of WGBH.
Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 36. My name is Chris.
That intro was Bloomberg's intelligence
senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, I think is how you say it.
And he was talking to a contentious audience there.
But even some of the old cranks he was talking to are going the extra mile this
week trying to understand, what is this Bitcoin thing? What's going on?
And like we've said before on the show, nothing changes minds like a good price
pump and maybe a red wave financed by the crypto lobby.
And I think something that I didn't expect, but in, I suppose,
hindsight makes a lot of sense is micro strategy is sucking all of the air out of the room.
So one of my goals this week, among others, is to help explain to Bitcoiners
what all the fuss is about, what's going on, why is micro strategy all of a
sudden getting more attention than Bitcoin when Bitcoin is the thing that seems to be pumping?
What's going on out there? And, you know, things really seem to have come to
a peak of fit this week, as my grandparents used to say.
So let's start with what's going on here.
Because Tuesday, MicroStrategy was the third most traded stock in the U.S.,
more than Apple, more than Microsoft, more than Amazon combined.
And then on Wednesday, November 20th, MicroStrategy, MSTR, became the most traded
stock in the United States, up 15% on a day when most of the market is down.
Also today, MicroStrategy crossed the $100 billion market cap threshold to become
the 93rd largest public company in the United States.
And over the last 24 hours alone, MicroStrategy has passed 40 different companies on the top charts.
It is now $15 billion larger than Dell.
I think they need to rename the company to MacroStrategy at this point.
And, of course, now everyone's taking notice. Oh, what's going on?
What? What's happening here?
What's all this fuss about?
You know, and I think part of it is a lot of people like, well,
it's just a company buying Bitcoin.
What's the big deal? And I think if you're looking at Mikey's Bitcoin strategy
and you think that's the play, you're probably missing about half of why this
MSTR stock is so successful.
And this is the bit I want to explain to Bitcoiners because it's actually massive
big news for Bitcoin long term.
You see, traditional, slow, safe money, they're buying all this debt that MicroStrategy issues.
So you've got to think about this as it almost has two halves to it.
And one half is all the ties to the legacy financial system,
all the big money who won't invest in Bitcoin.
It's a conduit for that big, safe, slow money that wants a little bit of upside
action, but wants protection on the downside.
Then on the other side, you have the stock, which, of course,
retail is buying. Of course, investors are buying. That's highly volatile.
And that actually is a feature. People that are trading options and investing,
they want that volatility and they leverage it.
And there's lots of infrastructure to do that. It's also appealing to shops
that just don't want Bitcoin, don't want to hold Bitcoin, have some sort of rule against Bitcoin.
It's actually been pretty clear now for a while. Bill Miller laid out the micro
strategy appeal back on day one, or maybe it was day two of the Bitcoin ETF
launches. So this is way back in Q1.
Miller just lays it all out there for us. The fourth bill, it's great to have
you on and certainly we'll get your take on legacy financial assets in your portfolio.
But as an owner and believer in Bitcoin, what is the advent of the ETFs mean,
if anything, for the fortunes of the asset class?
I think it represents an enormous step forward for institutional capital accessing the asset class.
But I think there's actually something out there that's already exposed to Bitcoin,
which we've owned for quite a while, which is actually better than a Bitcoin
ETF, and that is MicroStrategy.
MicroStrategy is better than, in my assessment at least, is better than a Bitcoin
ETF for a couple reasons. Number one, it's more liquid.
So it's the largest owner of Bitcoin in the world.
Not only that, there's no fees attached to it. And so you think about the optionality
of owning a new technological asset and being the largest owner of that asset,
it provides enormous optionality over the long term.
Not only that, you've got a CEO who owns a billion dollars worth of stock,
who owns 750 million dollars worth of Bitcoin personally.
He's a technologist. He's got 31 patents to his name. So he gets it.
So, you know, we can talk about the ETFs, but there's already something that's
more liquid out there already. And it's really interesting to consider that.
Although it's a micro strategy.
I mean, it's perhaps more liquid at this point for sure.
But its value is also going to deviate from the value of the underlying Bitcoin.
And, of course, there is also a software business in the public company as well.
Absolutely. And that's one of the things that makes its point for sure.
But its value is also going to deviate from the value of the underlying Bitcoin.
Of course, there is also a software business in the public company as well.
Absolutely. And that's one of the things that makes it super interesting to
me in that if the value deviates from the intrinsic value, so if the price goes above intrinsic value,
Michael can sell more shares into the open market and use that cash to buy Bitcoin.
That's an enormously value accretive thing to do.
If you think about the history of fiat currencies, always debasing themselves.
Right. And then you've got something
whose supply, Bitcoin, is completely independent of the demand for it.
That's a very value accretive thing to do is sell something in dollars and buy something in Bitcoin.
I guess that's good if you already own the stock. But maybe don't be one of
those buyers of a new equity offering at a big premium to intrinsic value if
it's just, you know, essentially an arbitrage.
Well, selling shares at a premium to intrinsic value benefits ongoing shareholders.
So we don't mind that at all. No, I figured.
So what they're saying there is they don't mind if Saylor dilutes the shares,
you know, issues more shares to buy more Bitcoin.
In fact, the holders like it. And if the value dips well below,
right, the intrinsic value of the software business plus the Bitcoin,
he can always buy back shares.
So Wall Street likes the fact that there's a manager here.
There's a bullish Bitcoin manager. and if things dip, he can always just buy back stock.
Wall Street likes that safety mechanism. So, you know, having somebody at the
helm of what is effectively a closed-end fund...
Allocating that capital is enormously value creative longer term.
Gotcha. So as somebody who, you know, who looks at individual,
you know, equity and bond opportunities out there with a value orientation,
how are you finding the markets right now in terms of whether there's...
We'll stop there because I want to keep moving.
I think if that was a little technical, I think there's probably a more clear
explanation I can give you.
They're they're doing a a conduit
from big safe money into bitcoin where big
safe money gets to do check all of their boxes and everybody
on the other end that wants the volatile trade gets to check all of their boxes
and the end result is he's created a product on both ends of the market that
seems to be really popular and he's just absolutely smashing the market he's
he's made nvidia look boring okay well how does that compare to all the s&p 500 Okay.
NVIDIA is the number one. And you can see that we used to be proud we were slightly
beating them, but now we're crushing them.
Right? This is not even funny anymore.
Here's the thing. If you can copy NVIDIA's business model, I encourage you to do so.
I don't think Apple and Google and Microsoft and Amazon believe they can copy
NVIDIA's business model.
Do you understand how important that is, what he's saying there?
These businesses need growth. These businesses need stability,
and their assets are melting away.
And they can't just go create a giant AI chip business and drive value through
the market that way. They're kind of tapped out.
What can Apple do at this point? What can Amazon really do at this point? It's incremental.
And there's just kind of this end of the road that they're at.
And in order to be the next business, they'd essentially have to completely retool.
And then you're competing in NVIDIA's game.
There's not really an option here.
I don't think Apple and Google and Microsoft and Amazon believe they can copy
NVIDIA's business model.
But I'm inviting all of you to copy my business model.
I'm telling everybody, I'm singing it, I'm yelling it from the treetops,
I'm showing you how, I'm publishing the playbook.
It's the simplest thing possible.
Any company can copy that, right?
And that's what you get if you copy that business model. So there he has NVIDIA
with their 1,228% gains since August 10th of 2020.
And MicroStrategy has 2,785% gains.
So they've really, they truly have just blown NVIDIA out.
I mean, it's amazing. And so, of course,
you're going to see more and more organizations get on board with this.
Because what Saylor's doing is he's creating this kind of playbook for companies to follow.
And he explains it in a way that maybe is a little bit easier to understand
in a X spaces, I guess it was.
It's kind of like, and I use this analogy, Jan, it's like if you look to Standard
Oil and you said, well, the company seems to be trading at a premium to the oil reserves.
Well, no joke. That's because the company has a refinery and it creates kerosene.
You ever try to put crude oil in a rocket or crude oil in a jet or crude oil
in your car or pour crude oil on a highway?
The point is you can't. You need asphalt. You need gasoline.
You need kerosene. You're refining it.
You can't do the refining without the reserves.
So the Bitcoin reserves that we have
have a practical use the use is they're
collateralizing the fixed income instruments and then they're creating volatility
and performance for the equity instrument which feed the option instruments
which create the volatility and all of those things together mean that.
We're just kind of like a, we're like a transformer. You got 480 volt three-phase
power coming in one side of the property.
And on the other side, you want to run your daughter's hairdryer or your,
you know, or your washer and dryer or your electric heater,
or you, you know, and, and I think we're stepping it down, you know,
most, most three-phase electricity will blow out the hairdryer, but I get your point.
I think it's, I'm actually making the point to three-phase power
is what i use to run my 500 ton yacht but there's
a massive transformer that steps it down
you know from the street and what micro
strategy is doing with its capital is it's transforming high
voltage bitcoin into low vol low voltage securities and so it's taking off i
tried to keep a list in just the last week i saw more organizations announce
they were starting some sort of Bitcoin-backed treasury that I could keep track
of. Here's a few that I got.
Seamer Scientific acquired 215 Bitcoin for $17.7 million.
Thumbsub Media Corporation just approved a $1 million Bitcoin strategy plan.
MetaPlanet, we've talked about them. They snapped up an additional 124 Bitcoin.
Cosmos Health has added Bitcoin to its treasury. They're a Chicago-based global
healthcare group. And it would seem that River has done a study that has 62
different public companies that now have a Bitcoin treasury strategy of some kind.
And if you go out to private companies, they estimate it's thousands with 1,000
business clients on River Business alone.
10,000 or 1,000? I may have that number off by a bit.
But they mentioned that recently they have seen more business account signups than ever before.
And they estimate that over 15 billion dollars
in bitcoin or 671 bitcoin has been purchased by private entities obviously sailor's
leading the pack here micro strategies even increased its lead significantly
over tether as the largest corporate buyer and recently sailor released that
he was invited to speak with the microsoft board now you recall.
I talked about a story that Microsoft, that revealed that Microsoft was going
to vote on building a Bitcoin treasury in December.
An activist member put this up for vote. It doesn't really seem like the board overall is for it.
And Saylor, in the same ex-spaces thing, really went into some details that,
A, make it sound like maybe he's involved with this.
And, B, he took a pass at trying to get Saatchi Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, to take a meeting.
And Saatchi declined. And perhaps that was the declining of that meeting that
led to the activists forcing the issue with the board.
So they may, if you listen to this, tell me if it sounds like to you,
they're trying to do an end run around perhaps the executive level of Microsoft,
which may be anti-Bitcoin.
I'm taking a lot out of this. I'm reading tea leaves here. So I'd love it if
you boosted in your take on this clip.
Microsoft is facing a shareholder vote next month that would force the board
to evaluate Bitcoin as a treasury asset, to which the board replied,
we already do evaluate it. This proposal is unnecessary.
So just curious, do you think that these types of shareholder proposals are
a good way or the best way to push Bitcoin as a reserve?
Or do you think there's other ways that folks on the call here could help catalyze greater adoption?
Well, first of all, I think it's a perfectly fine way to do it.
And the activists to put that proposal together contacted me to present to the board.
And I agreed to provide a three-minute presentation. That's all you're allowed.
And I'm going to actually post that online and I'm going to present it to the board of directors.
I also offered, we also offered to withdraw that proposal of Satya Nadella would meet me.
And I said, I would fly to wherever he is and meet him in confidence in his
office for an hour to discuss.
But that offer was not accepted. So you will see me putting together the three
minute proposal for Microsoft and it'll get posted and we'll send it to the board.
And I think it's a good and not a bad idea to put it on the agenda of every company.
That ought to be put on the agenda at Berkshire Hathaway and Apple and Google
and Meta because they all have huge hordes of cash. They're all burning shareholder value.
And the approach of an Apple is 98.5% of the enterprise.
Sorry, the approach of Microsoft is 98.5% of the enterprise value is levered to quarterly earnings.
And 1.5% of the value of the stock is tangible assets.
And it would be a lot more stable stock and a much less risky stock if half
the enterprise value of the stock was based upon tangible assets or property like Bitcoin.
So I think there's a great argument to be made. I think shareholders should make it.
We're preparing materials and we're enthusiastic advocates. And if anybody's
got an entree to the board of a company with massive amounts of capital, I'm happy to help.
Music.
Another reason Bitcoin is doing really great this week and getting a lot of
attention is the ETFs are absolutely on fire.
And yesterday, as I record, options around those ETFs were approved.
So BlackRock alone has purchased 88,000 Bitcoin in the last 30 days.
Their ETF, which is IBIT, has become the fastest ETF in history to hit $40 billion
in assets under management.
So by comparison, the second fastest ETF to ever get to $40 billion took 1,253
days, so like six times longer.
But the bigger story is these ETF options.
This is huge because, first of all, we're getting a whole new data signal,
which is fascinating because you're seeing how people are placing their bets
on the price for the future.
And it seems like a lot of people are betting that Bitcoin is going to easily
break $100,000 in the next month. So it's fascinating to watch that data signal,
which I didn't really expect.
Outside of that, I want to try to explain options and why they should,
at least to some degree, help miners and maybe, maybe reduce volatility.
What do you think the effect of options being available on IBIT has, if any, on the market?
I think it's a big effect. All other markets, commodities, equities,
the derivatives and options markets are orders of magnitude larger than the
spot markets. I think it gives institutions really good abilities to hedge,
I mean, better than anything.
But the onshore options market in the U.S. is very thin, right?
You have some CME options.
You used to have smaller shops. Some of those went away. So outside of the OTC
space, there's not been a good place for institutions to do options.
And by the way, I should mention retail.
44% of U.S. equity options are traded by retail, and they really can't access any options at all.
So you can imagine if we get into a bull market where retail is trading on Robinhood
and other fintech apps, that those options could be really impactful.
That's Alex from Galaxy Digital. And he's saying, essentially,
not only are institutions going to use this, but these are instruments now that
retail, you and I, you know, the plebs, never had access to.
And so that's also going to be a really big deal. And it is causing the price to pump.
So the price of Bitcoin near an all-time high, getting closer now to the $94,000 level.
And this happening as ETF options going live, giving investors a new way to hedge their exposure.
Kenzie Segalis is here, joins us with more this morning. Good morning.
Hey, good morning, Andrew. This is what U.S. crypto investors have been waiting for.
On Tuesday, the Nasdaq listed options on BlackRock's $44 billion spot Bitcoin ETF.
Day one of trading showed that more than 80% of options volume were call orders
to buy Bitcoin, meaning that investors are betting that the token is poised for even more gains.
Can you just soak that in? So over a billion dollars in action, almost two bill, right?
And 88% of it, is that what she said? 80%, let's go with that,
is a bet that the price is going to go up.
I think the market likes the coin. And this is just the first of the U.S.-based
asset issuers to offer options.
The other 10 providers will soon follow suit with several more slated to list
on the New York Stock Exchange later today.
Now, this is really a significant moment for Bitcoin adoption because rather
than just buying and holding the asset, this next stage is all about creating
a new margin framework for Bitcoin so that you can amplify your returns.
Being able to hedge positions and make leveraged bets is a big draw both to
retail and to institutions.
And even though we've seen a lot of trading volume on the CME derivatives exchange,
getting options tied to these spot crypto products on the NASDAQ and NYSE is
a big unlock for traders.
Because ultimately, Andrew, a more robust onshore derivatives market is how
you attract fresh investment, which is a tailwind for the price of Bitcoin.
And I could not have seen a more perfect timing for these ETFs all around.
They launch in January just before the halving, just as the market is really
starting to wrap their head around the impacts of long-term inflation.
And then these options come online just as a very pro-crypto administration is forming.
A new SEC head is on his way in.
The obvious problem of inflation continuing to be persistent has obviously,
I mean, I just, like, it's not going away.
It's just, I mean, it's just become clear, right? Like a year ago,
it was like, oh, yeah, no, they're going to beat inflation. Look how fast it's coming down.
Today, it's not looking like it's coming down. It's very sticky.
It's in the obvious category now. That's why I use the word.
And so investors are very much retuning for scarcity.
And the ETFs, while I think it's still better for all of us to hold the actual
asset, the ETFs offer this sort of easy exposure, right?
This kind of simple way to hedge against the ravages of inflation using the
existing tools and system that are in place.
So it's like they're the perfect product for the reality of the market right
now. You could not have timed this any better.
Welcome back to Morning Trade Live. 95,000 Bitcoin continues to hit all time highs.
How high can it go? How do people feel trading this, buying this?
David Jankansky is with us, CEO, CIO at Quantify Funds.
All right. So he's really there. I'll warn you now because I have no reason
not to. He's there to shill a new ETF product that they have that's clearly
aimed at investors that are looking for scarce assets.
But I think he makes a good point as to why the market's ready for this right now.
I know we have the halving every four years. There seems to be a little uncertainty.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of equity rally is somewhat engineered as well through buybacks.
We're in a world of some assets have less supply and some have more.
Stocks, there have been less shares, more buybacks. There's lower supply.
Currencies around the world are printing at enormous rates and
assets such as bitcoin and gold actually hold some scarcity bitcoin
as you noted post having mines at
about 86 basis points a year so less than one percent new supply a year gold
supply increases about 1.75 percent a year so you have to ask yourself what
is what is the pace of printing that paper currencies are going to experience
over the next couple years we've
seen about 40 percent of all dollars in circulation printed since COVID.
And I think, as we discussed earlier, that's front of mind for everyone trying
to figure out, especially with this big rally we've seen in pretty much all
assets, how do you protect this now? What if inflation comes back?
And that's why we launched the STKD Bitcoin and Gold ETF to combine two assets
that can both independently protect against debasement of the price.
There's also the reality of
the perhaps more and more realistic-looking Bitcoin reserve of some kind.
Cynthia Lummis, or Lummis, like Hummus, has introduced a bill,
and it is now the fourth most viewed bill in the entire country.
That's her strategic Bitcoin reserve bill.
And also this week, BlackRock and VanEck publicly came out backing the Bitcoin reserve idea. Yeah.
Van Eck went all in on the actual like full proposal where BlackRock was a little more vague.
BlackRock kind of backed the general idea of some kind of reserve,
but didn't point to any particular initiative like Lummis's bill.
And it just really seems to be overall creating a shift around the public perception
of Bitcoin at a level I've never seen in 13, 14 years of following Bitcoin.
It's really kind of wild. Even Good Morning America had positive coverage of Bitcoin.
Yeah, Bitcoin has been on this defying gravity kind of runner.
So up 34% just since the election.
And in large part, the election is what's been fueling this meteoric rise.
Bitcoin could break through $100,000 by January.
This is slowly becoming more mainstream. 17% of Americans, so about one in five,
now have had some sort of exposure to cryptocurrencies. One in five? Five.
One in five. How about that? Isn't that something?
And I've definitely noticed conservative family members of mine and conservative
influencers online are looking at Bitcoin more seriously now as well.
I think so there's it's we've definitely opened up the between micro strategy
and the Bitcoin reserve talk.
We seem to have really opened up or shifted the Overton window on it again,
more so than I just it's amazing how it happens.
Really, It seems to escalate with the price. It really does.
It just seems to always escalate with the price.
Okay, I got a question for you. I want you to lock your prediction on the show with a boost.
Will we see a Bitcoin reserve of some form in the U.S.?
And I'm going to say in 2025. If yes, tell me why. And if no, also tell me why.
I would like to know what you think. Are you, I guess, aka bullish on a reserve
or are you bearish on a Bitcoin reserve?
You know, it is the number four viewed bill in the country right now.
But the Republicans don't have a massive majority and the Senate is known for
kind of being a buzzkill.
So you can have the executive branch get excited about things.
The House can get excited. Social media can get excited.
The Senate usually takes things slow and tries to calm things down.
We'll see. I'd like to know your prediction. Boost in and let me know.
Music.
Alright, coming up, your boosts. My take on why altcoins are about to go nuts.
Yes, brace yourself, Bitcoiners.
Project update you need to know about. And not one, but two final clips of the
week. They're both so great, I had to play them.
But before we go any further, if you'd like to support the show by stacking
sats, I've got a link to River in the show notes.
They're a great place in the U.S. to buy stats, stack sats. You can transfer
over the Lightning Network. They've got their Bitcoin reserves that are verifiable by you.
They're an all-Bitcoin company with a beautiful interface and some great leadership. That's River.
I have a link in the show notes. You use that link. We both get some sats.
Now, maybe you want to spend your sats. Christmas is coming up or the holidays.
Thebitcoincompany.com, promo code Jupiter, or use the link in the show notes.
You get some sats, the show gets some sats. It's a great way to go from lightning
to a gift card instantaneously.
And you can log in with your lightning ID too. So you don't even have to create an account.
I love it. That's the Bitcoin company. A link to that. I'm also using Fold to pay my bills.
And I stack sats that way. If you've been thinking about the Fold card,
I have a link to that in the show notes now as well.
Music.
And we also have some boosts. Boosty Gray.
And our baller boost this week is user 204 coming in with 49,609 sats. Hey, rich lobster!
He says, hopefully my name is fixed on Fountain now.
No, I don't know what's going on there, man. Last few boosts were anonymized.
I always enjoy the show, and your efforts and determination make it great.
I subscribe to the JB Monthly membership as well. Hey, Jupiter Party member, thank you.
And try to catch your other shows each week and share them with friends.
Dang, dude, thank you very much.
After hearing Cantor Fitzgerald's talk and Sailor, I realized I'm not nearly bullish enough.
Price talk, newbie corner, second layer, mints, nostril talk,
begging on fake Toshi, it's all good with me.
You, sir, deserve a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you for all that support.
Thank you very much. I don't know if I'm fighting a cold today or if I just messed up my sinuses.
Probably did both, to tell you the truth. You know, you get sick one way and
then you're kind of vulnerable and you get sick another way.
But even when I'm a little under the weather, I still want to do the show.
And these boosts, they really are a motivating factor because I love this segment.
I love hearing from you guys. And I really appreciate that.
Thank you very much. Adversaries 17 is back.
Hello, Mr. Adversaries. And he comes in with 24,576 sats. All systems are functional.
Responding to the Bitcoin chain size, as of this boost, my node takes up 595 gigabytes.
It's really just a drop in the bucket, though, for my 50 terabyte server.
Nice. Oh, I'd love to have 50 terabytes.
Feeling tight on storage these days. He says, regarding if people are asking about Bitcoin.
Yeah, they're asking me. I've had quite a lengthy conversation with some co-workers
about it over the last few days.
Neither of them have any at the moment, but I think they might soon.
Wow. Chris, how do you feel about this workflow? You DCA onriver,
withdraw over Lightning to an AlbiHub, send from AlbiHub to Boldstart Exchange
to my cold storage, and exchange it from layer 2 to layer 1.
It says, I understand I would need enough channel liquidity to make that happen,
but is that a workflow that is sound?
What sat amount would you recommend for the trigger to step two?
I think that is pretty sound. I think you could take out the need for an Albi
hub for that intermediary step and just go to liquid.
If that was something you wanted to consider since you're using Boltz.exchange
anyways. So you could go from lightning over river to liquid.
But absolutely, if you already have an Albi hub and you have the channel capacity,
which it sounds like you do, then that is really a fantastic option.
As for the amount, this is like a really impossible question.
It really depends. I think you should wait to at least over a million sats.
And I think you should consider five million sats. It's like,
what's your bet on how much Bitcoin is going to be worth and how much you might
transfer and UTXO transfer sizes in the future?
It's really, really tricky that way.
I wish there was a way we could...
You know, I wish the liquid network, I wish I could advocate that you could
just cold storage with liquid, but I just can't.
I can't do that. Liquid's not a long-term storage. It's an intermediary.
And I also can't recommend you leave it long-term on a hot lightning node.
You know, I just feel like that's also not a great long-term storage for your
SATs. You really do want to get it into cold storage.
So I'm glad you're thinking about that, 17, and keep us posted on the workflow.
And you might consider a liquid workflow, but if you already have the AlbiHub,
you don't really need it.
It's something I'd like to feedback on, though. You can tell I would like some feedback on that one.
ChewToy comes in with 22,222 sats.
This old duck still got it. I heard Jack Mahler's on the Bitcoin Standard Pod
say that bill pay on strike is coming soon. Oh, okay.
Thanks for that tip. I've also used the fold card, but the value of sats back
reward was less than what I could get from my normal credit card.
Now I just use the credit card and buy more sats on strike. Like,
yeah, I look at the fold card as I was going to spend that money anyways,
and I wasn't going to use a credit card.
I wanted to just use a checking account or a debit card.
And so those are the transactions that I'm doing monthly.
I could see if I had a credit card that I liked that did sats back,
I could see just using that.
It really is kind of hit and miss. And the way the fold stuff works is the more
you use it, the more sats you get back.
And so I put a lot of my big bill payments on there, like, you know,
car payments and insurance and stuff like that.
We'll see if that's the best way long term. There could be other solutions.
I'm going to continue to explore. But I appreciate that boost.
Gene Bean comes in with 4,400 and 44 sats.
Affleck! Yeah, that's an Affleck. It's two boosts. Really, he says,
thanks for the well wishes, Chris, and the rest of JB.
I inadvertently listened to some of the podcasts out of order.
And I heard from white paper to win to winter and I can't wait to dive into latest episodes,
I also look forward to getting back into a few other shows I saw Wes has a Knicks
flake for Albie hub are you using it and do you recommend it for us Knicks officiados
I got to do something custodial now that Albie has an end date yeah we'll get
to that I don't think that flake is quite there yet I'll talk to him about that
because we do want to get that set up,
So when we do have a working flake for Albie Hub on Nix, I will link it in the
show notes and put it on blast. Good to hear from you, Gene. Thank you.
Nix comes in with 3,333 sats. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too.
Just says thanks for the show. Well, thank you for the boost,
Nix. Appreciate the value.
Cypher Citizen is here with 8,000 sats. This is the way. It's crossed a bunch
of boosts, which are fire emojis.
That's awesome. You know what? I like that.
Thank you, Cypher Citizen. Good to get some emojis from you.
The immunologist is here with 8,888 sats.
That's not possible. Nothing can do that. Well, I see it right here.
Let's hear it good, buddy.
He says, take 4x breakfast for a great podcast. Take four times.
Yeah. You know, you should have it.
Twib is part of a healthy, balanced breakfast. That is very true.
Thank you, the immunologist, for pointing that out. Coach Rick is here with
2024 Sats. Analysis mode, password 80085.
He says, thanks for the early episode. I had to get on it, man.
You know, it's fun sometimes. It's just fun to ride that wave.
And you got to figure that's when interest was probably at its height.
What's going on? Those kinds of things.
When I can, I'm happy to do that with the show. Because, you know,
it's here to keep everybody informed and kind of try to put some sense to what
seems like sometimes a little bit of madness. Thank you for the boost.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
Thumbs up on the State of the Network segment. The BTC price discussion on occasion is sufficient.
I started talking to friends and family about Bitcoin in the summer of 2018
and the wide variety of sponsors and no chatter about it yet from them.
But I'm expecting some during the holidays.
I'm a Gen X, by the way, which makes a difference, I think.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's definitely an age thing there to a degree.
My mom asked me about it recently.
And so she bought a little bit because she asked me about it a few weeks ago.
So she bought a little bit before the biggest rally.
So I think she's already in profit, which is amazing. That generally...
You know, that's not always your experience with Bitcoin. May not always be.
So that's kind of fun. But otherwise, I really haven't heard from anybody.
I haven't really heard from anybody. And people know because,
you know, I mean, I was mining, you know, a decade ago and talking about Bitcoin.
I was doing podcasts about Bitcoin. So I really put it. I'm really, I'm pretty well known.
I'm pretty well known for saying this is something you might want to get a little
bit of in case the price goes up.
I really don't know how many people out there actually ever listen, though. but
at least mom did thanks ace it's nice to hear
from you no hmm noro flomo
n-r-o-f-l-m-a-o oh
okay noro probably laughing your no
that's not it either no that's not it i gave it a shot i'm gonna say noro flomo
i'm sorry i'm a little distracted i got fruit loops in this drawer oh my god
this drawer is filled with fruit loops uh boosting in from uh the three three
three one jeez i'm all over the place today a little bit of a head cold i guess
i don't know boosting in from 313 Detroit. Ayo! Hey, nice.
Recently discovered the show on Fountain, the podcast rakes.
Yeah, that's great. It's become my favorite. I look forward to you every week.
Well, that's great. This is not my best week.
B-O-O-S-E. Not my best week, so stick with me. Stick with me.
I promise I'll be better next week.
Thought Loki 1 comes in. And thank you for the boost. It's great that you found.
Us on Fountain. I really appreciate hearing from you.
Thought Loki 1 comes in with 19,000 sats.
I wanted to say thank you for all the info that you share. I'm a former altcoin
miner, but now I'm fully into Bitcoin.
Thanks again for the patience you had with me and helping me set up my wallet
workflow. I feel good with my Bitcoin on cold card now.
Thanks to you and the Bitcoin dad retro shout out for making me a maximalist.
Hey, that's great. You know?
I mean, all coins will rip. I'll get into that. But you should not let it distract
you from the path that is Bitcoin. We'll be talking about that.
Appreciate that. Chimp came in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
Heard it on Twib. He's boosting the song. And I'd like also three eggs and some steak. Rare, please.
You got it. Coming right up. Noongi comes in also with a row of ducks.
Good song. Great podcast. Thank you for supporting the artist,
Noongi. Appreciate that. Baffo is back.
Holy smokes. Folks, I never saw this one coming.
Did you hold on? Pump the brakes right there. No way. Are you here? Is this real?
Let's hear it. Good buddy. 15,000 sats. Baffo is back. Thanks for bringing back the Bitcoin pod.
It is well needed and coverage is nothing less than amazing.
You saved me a ton of time saving from going through all of the Bitcoin news
garbage just to get to the straight stuff. To get to the point.
Well, there you have it. Oh boy. Day one was our guarantee. Nice to hear from
you, Bafo. Welcome back. Glad you're on board.
Galactic Starfish comes in with 14,567 sats.
Yes, zip code is a better deal. I don't think that's a zip code.
He says, I'm just super behind and thus uncertain if this resource has been shared or not.
That's it. Here it is. Oh, it's the River Bitcoin in 21 Minutes link.
I will put that in the show notes.
That could be a good one to share with folks that are asking about Bitcoin and you want a resource.
This could be it. I will link to that. Thank you very much, Galactic. Nice to hear from you.
Chatty Mike comes in with 7,222 sats.
He says, what's the rationale for having the Bitcoin reserve?
It's not like during the gold standard, there was a practical use.
So the Lummis bill gets into this, probably worth taking a quick look at.
I have a direct link to it in the show notes.
The idea is that we buy, if you go with the Bitcoin reserve bill,
over a period of five years, the US government, with using funds that exist already,
either through selling gold or reserve excesses, we purchase Bitcoin up to a million Bitcoin,
about 5% of the supply.
And we hold it for 20 years. The idea being is that that Bitcoin,
honestly, just by the US government taking that action would significantly increase the value of Bitcoin.
But then over that 20-year period, you would see other nation states,
other companies, rich individuals, all pile in.
So over that 20-year period, in theory, the price would continue to go up quite
a bit because so much of the supply is now locked up.
And then you have another halving in there, right, in a few more years.
The idea is that maybe that supply starts to offset the $36 trillion in debt
that we are, maybe not over, you know, maybe it doesn't, maybe,
you know, like 50 trillion or something, but maybe, maybe we get 10 trillion
in Bitcoin in that reserve.
And we start to have something that begins to offset that debt.
I think that's part of the idea.
And then also you have to figure if other nations do it, there's sort of like a race to the end there.
It's sort of like an arms race, but for an asset, I suppose.
Tell me what you think about that. Does that make sense? And Blue Moose came
in and ran us out with 2,450 sats.
That's a spicy meatball.
No message, just the support, which I appreciate. Thank you very much.
Now we do have the 2,000-sat cutoff, so that way we don't, you know,
spend the whole show reading Boost.
But I do read all of them, including the one that came in from Bitcoin Pup at
100 sats and Grounded Grid and Wartime and Josh and Paranoid and so many others
in there. I'm scrolling right now. There's a lot in there. Thank you, everybody.
I really appreciate it. In fact, we had 26 folks Boost in.
52 of you also just set your app to stream those sats.
So collectively, you sat streamers helped the show stack 63,837 sats.
When you combine that with our boosters, well, we have a 265,494 Bitcoin stack for the show today.
Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate that. That's a pretty good showing for the weekly show here.
And, you know, obviously you break that down hourly. It's still not a great, great pay.
But I'm in this for the long haul, and I feel like there's a strategy for a
podcast network to have a Bitcoin reserve that is made possible by the people
that are consuming the content.
The people that are consuming the content, it's not really fair to call them
investors, but it's a de facto investment in the ongoing content.
And then those Bitcoin, as they increase in value, continue to go to work for the podcast network.
I don't know if we're going to have some sort of micro strategy, macro strategy.
But I think as we go into yet another year where ad sales are declining even
further, there's a strategy here that may keep the network alive that otherwise
would not even be possible or exist.
And it's done directly over an open source peer-to-peer network by the people
that are consuming the content.
For the people that the content is made for, not some advertiser or some pharmaceutical
company or even in this baby industry, some particular crypto exchange,
but by the people themselves.
It's so awesome and I really appreciate it. If you'd like to participate,
you just need a new podcast app, podcastapps.com.
I think Fountain's the easiest way to get started, but there's a bunch of options in there.
Like if you want to set up an AlbiHub, which is really nice,
you can connect that to things like Podverse or Castomatic or Podcast Guru.
It gives you the ability to move
between apps, which is a pretty powerful concept if you think about it.
So try it out, get a new podcast app, whichever one suits you,
then send a message into the show and support each production.
Music.
I think there's going to be a little bit of a sour pill that Bitcoiners are
going to have to swallow with the Trump administration.
Along with your Bitcoin pump, you're also going to get the shitcoin pump because
the Trump administration isn't a pro Bitcoin administration.
They're a pro crypto administration.
And even just going through his cabinet picks, quite a few folks in his cabinet
picks are Bitcoiners are definitely pro crypto industry. And I think you're
going to see under the Trump administration, all these kinds of cryptos pump.
Your salooners and all your meme coins are just going to continue to get even
more legitimacy. And I think that's actually a bad thing because I think it
steals a lot of newbies away from Bitcoin. I'll give you an example.
I won't use the names, but my wife has a practice in Skagit County.
She has clients that come in. And one of these clients knows that my wife is
a fan of Bitcoin. It's come up in a conversation before as she was considering it.
Well, now that Trump is in office, this gal, she wants to buy Bitcoin.
And did you know Donald Trump launched his own Bitcoin? The gal tells my wife.
What's this now? My wife says to her, yeah, Donald Trump, he has his own Bitcoin.
Yeah, it's a Donald Trump Bitcoin coin. They don't understand.
Especially, especially, and I don't mean this disparagingly,
the boomers who are just now paying attention because Trump won.
They don't understand that like the Donald Trump coin isn't Bitcoin or Solana or XRP.
They think they're like Bitcoin, part of Bitcoin somehow.
And this is going to be a huge problem that we're going to have to sort through
because it steals people away from the real actual scarce asset and instead
directs them towards these assets that are managed by a team of people that
are making money off them and dumping on top of everybody on every top. It's a bad deal.
So with the good, and the good being Bitcoin gets legitimacy,
maybe we get a Bitcoin reserve bill, we get a bunch of pro-Bitcoin people in
the government, a lot of the Senate and the House are going to be pro-crypto or Bitcoin.
It is good, but it also has some bad. And I think the Trump family has incentive
to see all of crypto pump, not just Bitcoin.
Crypto news that's just breaking. Kate Rooney has that for us. Hi, Kate.
Hey, Mike. So we've got a couple of crypto headlines here. I'm going to start
first with report here from the Financial Times that Donald Trump's social media
company is in advanced talks to buy back.
That is a crypto trading venue owned by the Intercontinental Exchange.
That's the New York Stock Exchange parent company.
As True Social does look to expand beyond online conversations.
Again, this is according to the FT.
The media group here is owned by President-elect Donald Trump.
And according to this report, is closing in on an all share purchase of that
crypto exchange. They're citing two people familiar with those talks.
We've reached out to both companies, but you can see shares of Trump media up more than 8 percent.
And then backed was up as much as 40 percent, but is now halted for volatility.
And then separately, Wall Street Journal now reporting that President-elect
Trump is meeting with the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase.
That is Brian Armstrong of the Journal here, citing people familiar with the matter.
They are expected, according to this report, to discuss personal appointments
to his second administration. I find that to be wild and also last week I played
a clip of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO talking Howard Lutnick talking about his Bitcoin stash.
Yesterday, Trump nominated him for commerce secretary. And the crypto industry
plowed tens of millions of dollars into the election. It's looking for a return on that investment.
So the entire crypto industry is going to thrive for better or worse.
Maybe some of these will find a use case. I think it's going to be a few years
of trying to force a use case into some of these, in my opinion,
you know, because they don't have the scarcity factor.
They don't have the decentralization factor. They don't have the network effect.
And they almost, as far as I know, all, especially the ones we're talking about
on a day-to-day basis, have a team or a foundation or a group of people managing
and running them. They're really truly more like securities.
They're not a scarce asset like Bitcoin.
Music.
Now i have uh some great final clips of the week i don't i try to only do one
final clip because that seems like to be the point but this week i found a supercut
of something i don't play super cuts on the show don't know if i ever have but
this week i found a supercut i want to play for you.
But first, I need to make you aware of some big changes happening at Albi.
This is the only update I have for you this week because it is that important.
I'm hoping most of you have seen this, but on January 4th, 2025,
one day after Proof of Keys Day,
Albi is going to stop providing their shared wallet service,
and they're going to focus exclusively on Albi Hub, the Albi Extension,
and the Albi Go app, which all work together.
If you fail to withdraw your funds from the Albi custodial service by January
4th, 2025, your remaining balance will be converted into fee credits.
These credits will be used to spin up and cover a month of Albi Cloud subscription
and open up a payment channel so that way you can get your stuff out of there
or set up your own self-custodial hub.
I am an Albi Hub user. It's good.
I'm using AlbiHub Cloud, but I also have seen a lot of setups that are pretty straightforward.
I think this is getting sort of spun as, oh, it's so hard to set up a node.
You got to go get Start9 or Umbra. You don't have to go that far.
There are easier ways to use AlbiHub. You just need to look into it a little
bit. It's really not that big of a deal.
And they've made the migration process really smooth.
Is it as easy as something like a fountain app, wallet? No.
But there is a self-sovereignty aspect to this. And you have to ask yourself
if that's worth a little bit of extra work.
It really does not take much to get set up, depending on how you do it.
And of course, it may be that this is the opportunity for you to consider spinning up a node.
Why not help the network a little bit? It's fun to run a node,
and you can set up AlbiHub and self-sovereign your Lightning.
I really, I know it seems like a lot, but I really think for most people listening
to this show, it is actually a very achievable goal.
Now, I'm going to play the supercut. And you'll probably recognize some of the
voices in here, because some of them are pretty famous, but they're all from
quite a while ago, because, well, quite frankly, they're going to say things
that are just not said out loud in the media anymore.
But it is a supercut of how the U.S. monetary system functions.
This is a really important baseline understanding to have, so when we talk about
the money printer, you know what's actually happening.
The Federal Reserve System is a scam. Any questions?
If you have the courage to read
the Federal Reserve Act, you talk about boring, but it's all in there.
The United States Congress passed a law, which in essence was a cartel agreement,
for all the major banks to come together and share the market and control the
market to their advantage.
The constitutional dollar is defined as a weight of gold or silver.
The genius of the Federal Reserve plan was it inserted a man in the middle in
1913 between the Constitution and the people in the form of the Federal Reserve.
And that was the introduction of the Fed dollar.
It's not the dollar that is defined by the Constitution. It's a note that's
issued by the Federal Reserve.
The power to actually print the money is the basis for the whole inflationary
system doesn't mean they actually put the money and spend it that's what the
treasury used to do in the civil war it's a more sophisticated way of doing
it they write out checks out of thin air,
buy bonds with it and then the checks or deposits on the fed then go out into the system,
now that we have the federal reserve system now that we have a means of creating money ourselves,
creating money.
The purpose of tax has become very narrow.
We can fund everything we want to do simply by creating the money.
We still need the tax primarily as a social mechanism, as a means of engineering
society, as a means of control.
That's what they have the taxes for.
Before every election, our representatives would like to make us think we're getting a tax break.
And they're able to do it while at the same time actually raising our taxes
because of a bit of magic they have in their kit bag.
That magic is inflation. They reduce the tax rates, but the taxes we have to
pay go up because we are automatically shoved into higher brackets by the effect
of inflation. A neat trick.
Taxation without representation. Yeah, sure, we'll keep your taxes low.
We'll just inflate the money supply as you go into a higher tax bracket.
Now, I want to combine that with a recent interview with Samson Mao.
Samson Mao has one hell of a resume, but he's presently the leader of Jan3,
which are the folks behind the Aqua Wallet, which we talked about on the show before.
And what Samson lays out here is the business of the IMF and the World Bank.
So when you combine these two things, so that's how the U.S.
Financial system works.
And then here's how their partners on the world stage function.
There are definitely forces out there that don't want Bitcoin to be adopted.
Some of it is not so covert. So you see the IMF actively at work trying to convince
El Salvador to roll back or dial back their Bitcoin law or minimize it in some way.
You've also seen the IMF exert pressure on Argentina.
If you go back a couple of years, you'll see Argentina had a sort of a letter
of intent saying they're not going to do anything with Bitcoin.
But in other places too, countries we've engaged in, such as Suriname,
we met with their central bank, we presented a plan there, and then a few weeks
later, the World Bank visited and suddenly things go quiet.
So we know for a fact that there are definitely interested parties that don't
want Bitcoin to be adopted worldwide as money.
Well, why is that? Because they're rolling out CBDCs? That's probably part of
it, but also the business of these supranational organizations like the IMF
and World Bank is effectively to loan money and to keep countries impoverished, right?
There is no country taking money from the IMF that...
That has grown out of that debt or grown into prosperity out of borrowing money in and of itself.
El Salvador is doing quite well now, but that's more to do with the policies
and the adoption of Bitcoin than being able to borrow more money from the IMF.
So I think it's their goal that they keep people borrowing because then they
keep their jobs and they keep their mandate.
But that's not necessarily in the best interest of sovereign nations,
that you're beholden to a foreign power to dictate what happens in your own
country and with your own economy.
Music.
Checking in with the state of the network. Before we get out of here,
Bitcoin is currently sitting at $94,050.
Sats per dollar, 1,063 sats to $1.
Bitcoin is up 3.7% since our last episode, just down 1% from the all-time high.
I mean, you really can't complain there. You really can't. And look at this.
A nice, healthy 19,747 nodes are active and reachable on the network.
I'd love to see that number get up.
Some of you out there could get that. Let's get that over 800.
19,747, that's rookie numbers. We can do better than that.
It's looking pretty incredible. The market cap right now for Bitcoin is kissing
$2 trillion. It is at $1.86 trillion.
We may be about to watch Bitcoin crack $2 trillion in market cap. Isn't that incredible?
The state of the Bitcoin network. It's unbelievable. It really is.
It's just incredible to watch it go.
Thank you very much for tuning in this week's episode of This Week in Bitcoin.
And boy, am I just, I'm just amazed at the last few weeks we've had.
We knew it was coming, right? We knew it was coming after the election. And here we are.
We are really cooking. And now the market is betting that we're going to crack
100,000 in probably about a month or less.
Links to what we talked about this week at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
Please boost in. Tell me what you'd like to hear from the show.
More of, less of, what I didn't talk about that I should have.
And also, I want to hear your predictions on the Bitcoin reserve in the U.S. Is it going to happen?
Why or why not? and then please consider sharing this show with a friend.
Hey, also, thank you, everybody.
Your boosts put Tiptoe, our song of the week, number three on the charts.
Nicely done, everyone. So I'm going to leave you with another value for value track.
This one really rocks. It's Slight Curiosity by Circle the Earth.
I heard a thing or two about you. Whole lot of talking in those big, big shoes.
Probably just to Paris. Carbon footprint, you should be embarrassed.
I heard a rumor's all about you. A whole lot of trouble in your birthday.
Music.