Music.
Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 57. My name is Chris,
chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
I'm back from a week of travel, and it seems like everybody's still talking
about what the show was talking about two weeks ago.
That's the great op-return debate.
Now, this has taken a few turns and had some major developments since our last episode.
But what strikes me just as I'm sitting down to record is there is still this
massive disconnect between the fierce debate in the Bitcoin community and Wall
Street, big monies, total ignorance to the entire thing. Ape it in like nothing's going on.
And I've been wondering over the last two weeks, will they figure it out?
Will they see something's happening?
We'll talk some more about that later. But I want to start with Operator.
If you missed episode 55, probably worth catching that and getting the background and context first.
Because since that episode, Bitcoin Core has announced that they will remove
the Opratern limit in their next release.
Now, I'm going to give you a quick TLDR for the against and pro.
The against, or the knack side, if you will, argues that removing limits on
Opratern invites more spam and non-monetary data into Bitcoin blocks,
which would likely crowd out legitimate financial transactions by making the fees higher.
They emphasize also that Bitcoin's primary purpose should be money, not cheap data storage.
And maintaining limits, they say, helps protect its economic integrity and efficiency.
The people against it also argue that user configurable settings,
like, say, the data carrier size, are valuable tools for node sovereignty and should not be removed.
So that's the knack side, the not for the change side, the side that lost.
Now, here's the foresight. They argue that
arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin is inevitable and that trying to suppress
it only leads to more harmful workarounds like a cat and mouse game of trying
to build spam filter after spam filter and that that would just likely lead
to more harm and poor policy decisions that might hurt Bitcoin overall.
They say workarounds like securing data in other ways are doing private deals
with miners already happening and would increase if they don't remove this limit.
But they argue that Operaturn is the least damaging method. If we're going to
allow this data storage, instead of having them slam it in through like a backdoor
slipstream, might as well have it be in the Operaturn where it's small,
provably unspendable, and avoids polluting the UTXO set.
They argue that by relaxing the limits, Core can guide data usage towards the
cheapest and most transparent path while discouraging more disruptive alternatives.
So that's where we're at. And the Core...
This word that everybody seems to be arguing around is spam.
This arbitrary data is spam. You know, what Bitcoin should be used for is financial transactions only.
And I would argue probably most people listening to the show feel that way.
The more you have invested in Bitcoin, the more you just want it to be used for monetary purposes.
But the fundamental issue is, is there are some cracks in that logic.
I'm not saying where I fall on this debate because I don't really have a position.
But I do want to just take a moment to have a little bit of a mental exercise.
Do you believe there is value in the open timestamps project?
Myself and others that I know have used that to document things,
to document discoveries and other things that, you know, they might want to patent later.
It helps them prove when the discovery was made, or I've heard people want to,
you know, lock their marriage in, their marriage certificate in with an open
timestamp, but that's arbitrary data.
So spam is subjective and there was
an event recently called bitcoin plus plus i have
a clip here i got off of weapon x and i don't know if
it came from tftc or if it came from somebody else but
i want to give a shout out to the tftc x account because they were
killing it with the clips from bitcoin plus plus so if
it wasn't from there you know i'm sure i'm sure
they had lots of other clips that i i did watch
so i'm not exactly sure where i sourced this but this
is from the i don't know where exactly but i know it's
at the conference at bitcoin plus plus and it's
a debate with several individuals involved in the discussion around the op return
limit and they get to what i'm talking about which is the core of what do you
consider to be spam is spam is spam subjective is spam subjective yes yes can
we evoke is spam subjective or is it object i say subjective.
There is an objective difference. I'd love to hear this, Luke. Tell us more.
Bitcoin's design allows miners to put up to 95 bytes per block of arbitrary data in the Coinbase.
That is completely different from spam, which is encoding this arbitrary data
to look like something it is not, to deceive nodes into accepting it.
Completely different. It's very different. We've never had a problem with people
writing ant pool in a Coinbase. It's fine.
No one has a problem. You said deceiving someone into them thinking it's what
it's not, but surely then it's just a perception issue.
That's not really a technical judgment, is it?
Jameson's been waiting for a minute. If you submit JPEG as a transaction,
it will be rejected by every single node.
You have to upfuscate it and make it look like something it's not to make it accepted. Sure, sure.
Is there an objective way to tell if someone's lying? Jameson's been waiting
for a minute, Walton. Come on.
Okay. Jameson. This debate is fascinating because we have one side that is being
the autistic technical people and the other side that is being more ideological.
This is Lopp. We'll come back to him more. And each side will refuse to admit
that the technicals will say this is not an ideological debate.
The ideologicals will refuse to admit this is a technical debate.
I think it's fascinating, though, that there is overlap. Can we get a quick
show of hands Who on stage Wants to see JPEGs in the blockchain?
Are the JPEGs actually in the blockchain?
I think like there is consensus that we all agree that there is some absolutely
ridiculous stuff being put in the blockchain.
I couldn't care less to let them pay the fees. I think this is,
I think Shinobi was right earlier.
He said this is about economic incentives. You've got to let them pay the fees.
And you have to, if you want to, if you want to see certain kinds of transactions in the, in the,
you know, in the mempool or in the blockchain, then you need to have economic
incentives that drive those kinds of transactions to outprice other kinds of
transactions. Am I wrong?
I'd say actually kind of yes, because this idea of outpricing things doesn't
actually go work in ways that necessarily we would want. Agreed.
But we just have to accept that this is how Bitcoin works.
And you might not like the fact that people can make a ton of money off ordinals
with a bunch of bullshit hype.
And all you can realistically do is design, for instance, better L2s so that fee spikes no matter.
I mean, I was affected with, you know, speeds going up, because of course I
run open timestamps calendars, which incidentally put data in the chain.
Arbitrary data. Arbitrary data.
And it cost me a lot of money in fees. It meant that my timestamping was slower.
Maybe you should fix it so that it doesn't add data. It doesn't need to add
data. We've got taproot, we've got pay-to-contract stuff.
And I have no reason that... ...choices and open timestamps to go and use additional
data in the chain precisely because
of various technical things that don't make sense in my trade-offs.
Also, the fact I have a transaction that I need to make is adding data to the
chain, even if it may not be obvious. I mean, I need to make these transactions.
It doesn't matter how the hell I encoded it. That is adding quote-unquote spam.
It's non-financial transactions.
So that could be the line right there. Non-financial transactions, but...
Bitcoins always sort of have this debate from the very beginning.
So it seems the maintainers of core have decided to go ahead and remove the op return limit.
And part of the controversy around all of this has been how the core development
team responded to the feedback that showed up in the GitHub thread.
Closing down discussion, locking the thread, things like that.
And this also came up on the Bitcoin++ stream by Jameson Lopp.
And he says, look, guys, this isn't a democracy. Just because you showed up
and commented doesn't mean you get a vote in where Bitcoin Core goes.
I'd like you to listen to this and then boost in with your thoughts on his take.
From time to time, someone will get upset about how a given issue seems to be
going in a discussion on Bitcoin Core or the developer list or whatever.
And if they feel like
it's not going well they may take their grievance
externally to social media and then what happens is a lot of people who are
on social media but are not familiar with bitcoin core governance may feel like
it's wrong you know perhaps people are being censored so on and so forth.
Or they believe that this is a direct democracy and because a GitHub repository
isn't open to the public, essentially,
that anyone who goes and comments on a given issue is essentially recording their vote.
And they don't understand that that's not how Bitcoin core operates.
It's a meritocracy. It's not a democracy.
The volume of opinions is irrelevant.
It's the quality of opinions that get judged.
I think one of the concerns is who is judging the quality of opinions?
Who makes that decision?
Music.
I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the idea that Bitcoin core maintainers don't
want to spend the rest of their lives chasing down different spam filter attacks
and bypasses and playing a cat and mouse game.
And I'm also sympathetic to the idea that it leads to not only policy discussions,
but it starts leading to political and moral and ethical decisions and essentially
editorial of what's allowed on the blockchain.
And I don't think Bitcoin Core wants to get involved with that either.
So I can see several incentives, commercial incentives and natural development
resource time incentives lining up.
But there's a couple of things that are still niggling in the back of my mind.
Why, number one, do we have to do this so soon?
Why couldn't have this been debated for a while and worked out and maybe even tested for a bit?
And number two, there's still a core circular logic to this that doesn't check out.
And Bitcoin Mechanic went on what Bitcoin did, and he was chatting with Danny,
and I think he makes the point well.
The minute you've made the concession that filters are preventing a certain
type of activity, that justifies another approach.
And because this is spam filtration, right? It's not just we do nothing, right?
We didn't do anything for a couple of years. but you either it's a
moving target so either we're going to start filtering what
it is they're trying to do or we're going to try and
roll over to it and say could you at least use
a less harmful method and the problem with the latter approach is you're saying
to scammers and migrants from the land of ethereum we will adapt the bitcoin
ecosystem as fits for you because yeah on the one hand we're saying it's better
for bitcoin because it doesn't bloat the utxo set but on the other hand,
we're saying we will adjust stuff to make it more appropriate for you to be
here because it's also cheaper for them what we're doing.
The fake pub key outs are more expensive for them. And also this again is something
where I'm going to have to call BS because the amount of UTXO bloat that is
caused by Citria's product, it's a failover.
It's a fail case like a forced closure of a lightning channel.
It's not expected to happen very often or a justice transaction even.
In ideal operation, that very, very rarely happens. The amount of UTXO bloat
we're talking from Citrus product is about a kilobyte a year.
We watched the UTXO set as a result of the inaction of people saying filters
don't work for the last two years go from four gigabytes to 12 gigabytes.
Okay, so we added eight gigabytes of UTXO bloat. We went from 70 million UTXOs to 200 million.
And there's been a bit of consolidation since then, so we're like down to 170 million.
Nothing we didn't hear any conversations about it at all
and it's a nightmare we wrote off a whole class of hardware that you
can't sync nodes on anymore because of how bad that was now we're
talking about adding a kilobyte a year and we
need to nuke the operaturn filters for that that tells
me that you're on a technical point they're correct but
they're relying on the fact that no one can put it in the appropriate context
because it's too advanced at that point so I can tell a
bunch of people we can make these spammers use
op return instead of bloat the UTXO set and that's better
you're right but if you don't ask any more questions
they're right I'll give you that right but if
we put it in any kind of context but there's serious problems going on with
the UTXO set are we going to do anything about that no we can't and why can't
we because filters don't work then why are you killing the op return filler
if they don't work I'm sorry the whole thing contradicts itself very, very trivially.
It's easy to see that there is no intellectual honesty here.
It's all in service of saying, let's have some fun.
Let's move over all the scam coiners onto the Bitcoin chain.
And the motives for them, the more you think about them, the darker and darker it gets.
None of this seems to be slowing corporate adoption. People are calling it the
cycle of corporate treasuries.
And that might actually be true.
Bitcoin corporate accumulation has been accelerating, surging 154% in the last year.
I'll have links to the data in the show notes.
Tether and SoftBank just formed 21 Capital, which we launched recently.
And of course, Jack's been going around and doing the tour.
They're in the model of micro strategy or now strategy to accumulate Bitcoin.
Jack, when did this idea come to be? The founding story.
So I co-founded the business with Tether. I would say I've known the Tether Group for over a decade.
There just weren't that many Bitcoiners around over 10 years ago.
So we've done a lot of work together in El Salvador, et cetera.
We've been so inspired by Michael Saylor and all of the public companies acquiring Bitcoin.
But I would say over the last few years, that inspiration turned into what we
thought was an opportunity and a hole in the market that we could deliver on,
which is bringing blue chip credibility and startup upside. We feel like we
can bring enough capital and be big enough to win.
We're small enough to grow. most importantly, a pure Bitcoin business.
A lot of these companies, they're pivoting from a past operating business.
They're rebranding, changing their name. They're maybe selling video games to
buy Bitcoin or selling medical equipment to buy Bitcoin.
And we're a purpose-built Bitcoin company. We're going to build Bitcoin products,
Bitcoin cashflow, and we're going to give Bitcoin per share growth to shareholders
and be hopefully the best way for investors to get Bitcoin exposure in the public markets.
All right. So there's 21 Capital. We've talked about them. And then this which
just recently happened in the last couple of days, they bought another 458.7 million in Bitcoin.
So they're stacking like crazy. Of course, Saylor continues to buy weekly this week alone.
They acquired 13,390 Bitcoin at a price of around 1.34 billion at an average
coin price of 99,865 per coin.
So that means as of the 11th of May, 2025, they have acquired 568,840 Bitcoin
for a total price of around $39.4 billion. So they're almost to $40 billion.
And they've paid at an average overall price per coin of $69,287 per coin.
So you've got 21 Capital.
You've got Michael Saylor. These are famous ones. You've also got MetaPlanet.
They're fascinating because they've been stacking like crazy.
And this is an introduction I'm going to play for you by Natalie Burnell at
Sailor's Strategy 2025 conference.
This is her introduction. I'm going to just play a portion of this to give you
a sense of MetaPlanet and what their CEO is about.
And because they're like they're one of the big companies doing the strategy
strategy. And of course, they're based out of Japan.
Up next, another corporate Bitcoin success story, MetaPlanet.
I'm excited to introduce Simon Garevich. He is the CEO.
He has a very interesting backstory.
His father was a diplomat and he got to live all over the world,
but he actually lost his initial Bitcoin on Mt. Gox.
And if you're familiar with MetaPlanet, it is Japan's first publicly traded
Bitcoin treasury company.
After pivoting away from hotel development and operations, Simon led MetaPlanet's
adoption of Bitcoin as its core treasury reserve asset, making it the top performing
listed equity in the world in 2024.
And they are excited to welcome everyone to the Bitcoin Hotel in early 2026
in Tokyo, Japan. Welcome, Simon.
Yeah. All right. Did I make it sound like Meta for the Facebook company?
I don't even think of them as Meta. I just think of them as Facebook.
So he comes up on stage. I'll link to the full thing. He talks about the story
about, you know, finding Bitcoin and all that kind of stuff. It's interesting.
They've gone from like a nobody to like one of the best performing companies in Japan.
Okay. All right. So this is a known thing that's happening, right?
We're starting to see more and more companies do this. This isn't news to you.
However, somehow it is still completely perplexing, bewildering,
and un-understandable by the Financial Times, by.
That is dedicated to reporting on finance, cannot figure it out.
And in this clip, in a few short moments, not only do they fail to understand
MSTR and MSTR customers, in other words, the stock customers,
but they also manage to fail to understand Bitcoin, even though this particular
reporter has been covering it for a decade.
The virtuous circle can turn into a vicious cycle.
If the Bitcoin price falls and this premium to net asset value of micro strategy
shares disappears, because then any purchases of Bitcoin will be diluted to shareholders.
And this infinite money wheel, this magic money machine is most likely going
to come to a grinding slow, if not a grinding halt, because investors will be
like, well, we gave you all this money to buy Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin has fallen.
So the value of our investment has fallen. Why would we continue to fund this machine?
She's so close to understanding it. They're both so close, so close.
So Saylor's average Bitcoin price is $69,000 right now.
You got to imagine his next buy or two, he's going to push that over to $70,000.
Average cost per coin. So if Bitcoin were to fall to $70,000,
he would, or, you know, $69,000, he'd be in the red, technically.
It's conceivable, you know, and the more he buys, the more money he takes out,
that closer and closer he's going to get to that line.
So it's conceivable that the price of Bitcoin, his average cost could be more
than what the price was that week for a week or two.
Absolutely conceivable. What they fail to understand is then more people would ape into MSTR.
MSTR would be down even harder. And the whole idea, these stockholders love
it when he dilutes them to buy more Bitcoin. That's the whole idea.
And so if MicroStrategy could buy Bitcoin on sale at 65,000,
People are going to be aping into the MSTR stock, assuming that they're going
to do just that. That's exactly what they want Saylor to do.
We saw that last year in October of 2024. The market responded extremely positive when he made that move.
And they're going to assume the price will come back up. And then the MSTR stock
is going to rocket like some sort of crypto degen coin.
But they don't see it. They don't understand that the buyers of MSTR see the
dip in Bitcoin as a buying opportunity to buy more Bitcoin or buy more MSTR
stock. It's totally over their head.
Even though we've seen it happen since strategy has been doing this,
we've actually seen this play out a couple of times.
Somehow the Financial Times completely misses it.
Bitcoin maxis like Jeff and Michael Saylor believe in the value embedded in
Bitcoin because of its scarcity.
I still don't get this. My teeth are pretty scarce and pretty useful,
but they're not worth billions of bucks. Still.
The scarcity is a component, the utility.
Like they cannot wrap their head around that either. The utility of something that is A, yes, scarce.
So that means, you know, it's hard. It's fungible. It provides its own network
so you can transfer it. It's auditable.
Like these things all really matter. It's divisible, right? Right.
These things make it good money.
Something being good money gives it utility.
Scarcity is a component of that. And the comparison to her teeth is nonsensical.
Her teeth are gross. Nobody would want those used things.
Bitcoin is a pristine digital asset. It doesn't degrade. It doesn't devalue.
It doesn't get rotten. Right. It's not a piece of property in a house.
Or it's not a piece of gold that needs security. Because of its scarcity.
I still don't get this. My teeth are pretty scarce and pretty useful,
but they're not worth billions of bucks.
Still, for the believers, there's just no plausible way for Bitcoin to crash.
Again, it's like they're just a little bit off the mark. It's not that Bitcoin
believers don't think it could crash.
In fact, a lot of them are probably hoping it will crash so they can stack cheap sats.
The plebs could use some cheap sats.
Crash? Sure. Price dip? Yeah, absolutely. Bitcoin fail? That seems very unlikely.
That would be the thing to zoom
in on. But she conflates price crash with software failure, essentially.
Teeth are pretty scarce and pretty useful, but they're not worth billions of bucks.
Still, for the believers, there's just no plausible way for Bitcoin to crash.
Are you comfortable with so much of your personal wealth tied up in this one
thing? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
In order for something to break strategy, I think something with Bitcoin needs to break.
And if something with Bitcoin broke, which it hasn't in the last 15 years,
it's the largest, you know, decentralized computer network on the planet,
then there would be bigger issues.
There's likely bigger issues on the planet. It's global, global EMP or stuff
that is black swan type event.
And if that's the case, you're better off having guns and ammunition at your
house and fresh water and some food.
That's more of a concern to me. This black swan type event is more of a concern to me.
I feel a lot more comfortable with my Bitcoin and microstrategy than my house.
The risk of Bitcoin is the existential threat, which is,
well, if space aliens land and plant a cyber virus and it goes to zero tomorrow,
you know irrevocably with global
consensus then our business fails i
get it but it's you know it's kind of like i built a
hundred story building on an acre of schist in manhattan and it's like well
yeah if the gods open up a sinkhole and i fall to the center of the earth my
building is a non-performer at some point you test the the land or the foundation
and you decide You know, what is the risk?
So far, we've managed to avoid electromagnetic pulses and space aliens.
But something did happen earlier
this year that altered the risk profile for markets the world over.
Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Yeah, and since?
Tariffs. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Waiting for a long time.
When Donald Trump's 2025 tariff regime raised fears of a global trade war,
it sparked a flight to safety from risky assets across the market, including Bitcoin.
The crypto fell below the $100,000 a coin market. Well, you know,
the fact that it didn't fall below 82-ish, I thought it was really actually
an accomplishment for Bitcoin.
So I look at that as during total global uncertainty, Bitcoin held up pretty well.
And I think a lot of financial analysts feel that way too. And I think a lot
of Bitcoiners feel that way. But somehow the Financial Times doesn't.
And it's hard to really wrap your head around it because you can go back and
find very early coverage of that particular financial analyst gal.
Mocking Bitcoin for dropping from $20,000 back to $1,000. and essentially writing it off.
And it's the hubris of it all, that the failure to look at their past analysis
and recognize mistake, the failing to learn, maybe that's the worst part.
Earlier in this video, which I'll have the full nearly 45-minute thing or whatever
it is linked in the show notes, she straight up admits that she is a market
analyst and she did horrible in their corporate stock picking competition.
And the hubris on display here that they she fails to learn from her mistake over and over again,
well unfortunately we've been talking for far too long so we better wrap
up this uh this little podcast no i don't think so i don't think it's time to
wrap up i think it's time to talk about katie's stock picking results i was
number 1360 i was i take it back you're not a medium-sized idiot.
You are a full-sized idiot.
I bombed so badly.
So that was me getting roundly laughed at for coming fifth from bottom out of
over a thousand FT staff and readers in last year's FT stock picking competition.
For the FT's markets columnist, that's not great.
And it happened because I bet the price of shares in MicroStrategy,
once a little known software company, would fall in 2024.
So even though she bet against them and lost, she still bets against them.
It's really something. And I don't know how they missed this,
but it's a trend. This really does seem to be taking off.
Back at Strategy 2025, Fidelity had one of their institutional investor representatives
up on stage, and he's just laying out the hard math. Careholder value.
And then you compare this to Bitcoin. Average annual return last five years, 65%.
So the question to companies out there is, number one, what's your return on
invested capital? Have you calculated it?
How does that compare to your cost of capital?
Are you generating shareholder value? Do you have extra cash?
And if so, what are you doing with that extra cash?
And then the ultimate question is, what's your current opportunity set?
What are the investment ideas and opportunities that are in front of you?
And do you think or do you believe the return on those ideas or opportunities
will exceed the opportunity cost of Bitcoin? There you go. Simple.
It's simple math. It's really simple. And they're starting to wrap their head around it.
The businesses are starting to wrap their head around it. And business advisors
are starting to wrap their head around it in simple terms that they can communicate
to CFOs and CTOs and CEOs.
Bitcoin doesn't care. It's back in the six figures with a lot of room to go.
If you compare its primary functional use case, which is actually checking a
balance on the lack of accountability and fiat unit creation,
we still have a long way to go. So gold is a 20 trillion market cap.
Bitcoin is still 2 trillion, despite functional superiority to gold.
It's much harder to steal, much easier to store, much easier to instantly transport.
And more importantly, you can actually audit it. So I don't know if you saw,
but there's an estimate that said that auditing Fort Knox would take 44,000
hours and approximately 18 months to complete.
I think it'd be a lot nicer for the American people if they could just go to
a handful of auditable Bitcoin addresses on a blockchain explorer and see exactly
where the American people's Bitcoin is.
Can't disagree with that. And Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey has created
a new company called Nakamoto.
And he's also doing the strategy capital 21 thing, but he says he's doing it
turned up to 11. But having a mainstream moment right now, it is truly becoming
a mainstream asset in the capital markets.
And, you know, I want to say thank you to Michael Saylor for pioneering that
effort. But, you know, we are we are wanting to take it to the next level.
So, you know, we flattery is the best form of compliment.
So we are we are micro strategy square. What we are trying to do is build a
portfolio of Bitcoin treasury companies in capital markets globally.
We want to have one vehicle that investors can buy in every major capital market.
So we've already done deals in Japan, Hong Kong, but we're looking at new opportunities
in Brazil, in Saudi Arabia, in UAE, in Turkey.
If investors are excited about bringing Bitcoin to each of these capital markets
and being a gateway for investors, we want to make Nakamoto the mothership where
they can get access to these opportunities by being a shareholder of Nakamoto.
Now, last week, this fund had $300 million in equity and $100 million in convertible
debt. And that was Wednesday. So here we are Monday.
Did the leaked news of this deal give you a bump of $200 million more in equity
and another $100 million in convertible debt?
Oh, did the leaked news of you setting up a Bitcoin company help you raise money?
Oh, and he's laughing. Oh.
You know, I think it really is just a signal about this moment for Bitcoin in the capital markets.
So we got another one of these companies. only he does have a slightly different
strategy than it appears Capital 21 or 21 Capital, whatever it is, and MicroStrategy.
It appears his strategy will be when things are down, he's going to sell his Bitcoin.
I don't know. I can't remember if it's in this clip exactly.
I'll play this. Are you simply holding Bitcoin on the balance sheet or are you
actively leveraging it?
So we're doing both. I think when we talk Bitcoin yield, what we're saying is
increasing the amount of Bitcoin per share. And there's two ways to do that
at the end of the day, outside of leverage.
It's selling shares to buy Bitcoin if you're trading at a premium to the Bitcoin
on your balance sheet, or it's selling Bitcoin to buy shares if you're trading
at a discount to the Bitcoin on the balance sheet. So we'll do either.
All we care about is that our shareholders are getting more Bitcoin per share as they hold our shares.
And that's what they're going to measure performance by. So what he's saying
is that when the price is down and the share price is either suffering or is
above the price of Bitcoin, the market price, they're going to sell some of
their Bitcoin and then apparently,
I don't know, buy the dip and try to buy it back cheaper.
So in the example he gives, well, I think our shareholders would be fine if
we're selling Bitcoin at one Bitcoin and we're buying back at 1.1 Bitcoin.
So I guess that's the strategy there. So that's where they'll differ from 21
Capital and MicroStrategy is they're actually going to sell their Bitcoin when
things are dumping in an effort to buy back and hodl more Bitcoin.
And as you can imagine, some Bitcoiners think that's a little bizarre,
but others think it could be a strategy to faster accumulation.
I think one of these companies is likely to just blow up if we have ourselves
a big old dip, you know, a prolonged bear market, you know, that bull gets taken
out and that bear comes and hangs out for a while.
Like we're not doing another 19 month or whatever the hell the last one was
bear market kind to just really kill your soul, drag it out,
crush your company kind of bear market.
And I'm wondering if we're not going to see one of these companies pop off and
make FTX look like the good old days.
Music.
No matter how you slice it, there's a definite shifting of tunes.
And I got a couple of good examples of you for you. And I want to start with
the most boring one. It is a U.S. federal regulator.
And he's coming out and he's making it clear that, yes, banks,
you, even though we have been warning you and we've been slowing you down and
we've been telling you that it's a little risky and we really just don't think
you should get into crypto.
We're now changing all of that. Our guidance has been removed. Have at it, Haas.
More than 50 million Americans hold some form of cryptocurrency.
This digitalization of financial services is not a trend.
This is Rodney Hood. He is the acting comptroller of the currency. It is a transformation.
Here at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we have confirmed that
national banks and federal savings associations may engage in certain cryptocurrency
activities responsibly in order to serve their customers.
OCC regulated banks may provide custody services, including the safekeeping
and secure storage of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Woo!
Land of the free, everybody. Okay, you now have permission to use your crypto safely.
All right, but the one that's a little more entertaining, the one that's always
really stuck in my craw, in 2014 and, you know, for 11 years on,
Dave Ramsey has said, you are a dummy if you're spending your money on Bitcoin.
Go ahead and, you know, I got all you Iraqi Dynar people and all you gold people
all pissed off at me. So let's just go ahead and add you Bitcoin people to the mix.
You're stupid. You're going to lose your money. Be pissed at me.
You shouldn't have put money in something wacko like that.
People, money and handling your personal investments is not difficult.
This has always really bothered me because, you know, Ramsey has basically prescribed
an approach to finances that's only attainable by a very few.
I've always felt that if he truly understood Bitcoin, he could be one of its
biggest advocates because it gives access to the middle class,
to DCA, into real estate essentially,
into property, digital property that doesn't have property tax,
that doesn't have HOA fees, that doesn't have a tenant,
that doesn't have construction and repairs needed.
It's just something you own, in cyberspace.
And you can buy $2 of it at a time if you want, or $1 at a time.
And anybody that can spend $1 or $2, you maybe get an extra $100 come in one day.
You throw 80 of it into Bitcoin or whatever you do.
You can do it in bits and pieces as you possibly can.
You can't do that with a house. You can't do that with a building.
You can't do that with art.
Well, there are actually crazy schemes online that try to help you do this.
But Bitcoin is the true pure play. And if Ramsey understood that,
he'd understood how it could be such a tool for the middle class.
Instead, they'll often tell you, oh, invest in some arbitrary index fund that's
going to get you 5% a year.
Well, that doesn't even beat inflation. But they don't care because their wealth
comes from real estate, right?
So, yeah, pleb, go put your money in an index fund.
Maybe some of them will beat inflation. You'll get lucky. So I've always really
kind of had a, you know, I guess a burr in my craw about Ramsey's advice towards
Bitcoin because also he's been proven wrong about gold as well.
But the show has flipped its stance recently.
And the show as a whole and all of his co-hosts and everybody that works for
him has always followed his position on Bitcoin.
And this week, the show flipped.
It's not a complete flip, but there's a flip. Today's question comes from Felix in North Dakota.
Bitcoin has been going through the roof recently, and it looks like it's becoming
more and more of a stable investment.
Do you now recommend it as an investment, or do you still believe it's too dangerous
of an investment and that people should steer clear of it? Oh.
Good question. I'm actually interested to see what you say about it.
Excited to clear the air on Bitcoin because people really want to know my opinion. Said no one.
Here's the deal. I've never been anti-Bitcoin. We took a call yesterday, Ken.
Young man had every single one of his
dollars in bitcoin my man nothing in
savings everything in bitcoin there you're right there you
know he doesn't get it bitcoin is a savings technology
bitcoin when you put your cash into your bank account you're losing your purchasing
power because of inflation and debasement when you put your cash or whatever
it is you know your euro your donk i don't care your loon when you put that into sats.
For the last five years, on average, you've gotten a 60% return,
which way, way beats pretty much everything else out there, but definitely beats inflation.
He doesn't know that. So he doesn't realize, he thinks it's a tech stock.
So when you're listening to this, understand, he views it as like you're buying unproven Amazon.
Had nothing in savings, everything in Bitcoin, and he'd been doing really well.
And he asked us, well, what's wrong with this?
And I'm going, you've been alive for four days. So yeah, if you just think this
is how it's always going to be, then sure. But, you know, we've what's so crazy
there is he criticizes the guy for looking at a short time frame.
Oh, you've been alive for four days. Zoom out, buddy.
Felix is right here. Zoom out, buddy.
Zoom out. Go to the 200 day moving average and just chart that price. Zoom out, pal.
You're the one that's looking at four day time charts. Seen things.
We've seen Bitcoin drop 50 percent in value in 2022.
It's 24-7. It's there's a lot of fraud and scams around the crypto. Oh.
Oh, now you notice, too, when we get to fraud and scams, we pivot from Bitcoin
to crypto because now we can include all the tether scams and anything that
happens with fart coin and Doge and Trump coin.
We get to just bring it all with one big brush.
So easily we transition from Bitcoin to just lumping all of crypto and the scary,
nefarious uses that are many, but we don't know what they are,
even though it's a popular open blockchain.
It's 24-7.
There's a lot of fraud and scams around the crypto world right now.
It's been on a wild trend up lately. And so you're going, well,
why invest in the stock market to get a measly 10% when I could get 1,000%?
And so what it really comes down to is. See, now he's exaggerating,
right? He's exaggerating to try to add some sort of weight to what is otherwise a weak argument.
What I call the three stooges of wealth, which trips people up,
especially young people.
Oh, good. He's going to tell us what the three stooges of wealth are.
It's fear, greed, and pride So it's Oh my god.
Oh, my God. He doesn't realize that it's his fear of Bitcoin that prevents him from learning more.
It's the greed and the position in which he gets paid for and his paycheck,
which has had given him a certain perspective that he has to reinforce.
Like, does he not? Oh, my God.
Physician, heal thyself. Duges of wealth, which trips people up,
especially young people. It's fear, greed and pride. Pride. Oh, pride.
Yeah, I don't hear any pride in this guy's voice. I don't hear any ego at all.
And especially not Ramsey. especially not dave
ramsey i never hear dripping pride
and content contentment i
mean the guy when he speaks about bitcoin and people
who buy bitcoin it he's seething he's seething
into the microphone it's like my ears get wet from saliva.
He's so angry and that doesn't come from pride and ego
i oh oh okay all
right okay i'm gonna try to just let it go
i'm gonna let it go doges of wealth which trips people up especially young
people it's fear greed and pride so
it's the i'm i'm so scared there's the fomo of i gotta get in this now or else
i'm gonna be broke forever there's the pride of well i know better there's a
little bit of arrogance there and again here is some real nice tasty hubo roos
i tell you the hubo roos from these people that he.
He is saying exactly the thing that is true about him, about somebody else.
He's doing that thing right now where he's speaking about himself,
but he thinks he's talking about somebody else.
Like it's really I know I said I would get over this, but this is who of I got
to get in this now or else I'm going to be broke forever.
There's the pride of, well, I know better. There's a little bit of arrogance there.
This guy is arrogant and thinks he knows better than everybody who's researched
Bitcoin and everybody who's been following Bitcoin. And also,
you know what backs a lot of Bitcoiners philosophy?
The same thing that backed Goldbug's philosophy. So you're also writing off Goldbugs.
You're writing off all the Bitcoiners and all the Goldbugs, even though every
single year history seems to be proving them right.
And then there's the greed of just like, I'm not going to settle for 12% and
a slow way to wealth when I can make it a lot faster.
And so with Bitcoin, it's like investing in any single stock that's been on
a wild ride. See, I told you, I told you, he thinks of this stuff as like Amazon in the dot com boom.
You know, you see NVIDIA going up and then DeepSeek from China came out and NVIDIA takes it.
Yeah, but Bitcoin hasn't. And what these lessons should have showed him is that
corporate tech stocks have all of this third party risk from stupid thing a
CEO says to stupid thing a nation state does to stupid thing a competitor does.
Bitcoin doesn't have those risks, but he doesn't get it because he's thinking
of it as a tech stock. Wild ride.
You know, you see NVIDIA going up and then DeepSeek from China came out and NVIDIA takes it.
And there's all this just gyration and fear in the market of what anything is
going to do. And it's why I recommend diversifying.
So it really comes down to diversifying versus Bitcoin equals bad.
And it's more that you got all your eggs in one basket.
That's too much risk for one person to handle.
And so if you want to invest in Bitcoin, I can't say invest.
If you want to speculate in Bitcoin, put... Oh, no, can't say invest,
even though it's produced incredible returns for its lifetime.
And anybody that's been in it for, what, two years? Definitely four years?
Literally everyone right now?
Oh my God, I just realized that. This guy is giving this speech when nearly
100% of Bitcoin holders are in profit right now. Do you understand that?
Do you understand how stupid that is?
Nearly everyone who holds Bitcoin that would be listening to this radio broadcast
is in profit. Because we're over $100,000.
We're over $101,000. We're over $102,000, et cetera.
Once you start getting to those thresholds, people are in profit.
Now, that usually means there's going to be some sell-off.
So this guy is literally saying this when everybody listening who holds Bitcoin has made money.
We're not at a time when it's down at $60,000. It's not at $80,000.
Everyone is in profit right now. It's too much risk for one person to handle.
And so if you want to invest in Bitcoin, I can't say invest.
If you want to speculate in Bitcoin, put some money in that after you've already
invested 15% of your income into retirement, into tax-advantaged retirement
plans, proven mutual funds and index funds, be my guest and use your fun money to do that.
Yeah, your fun money. Your fun money. You know, the stuff you go blow on a boat,
you know, a money sink like a boat.
Knowing this is money you could burn on the table.
You know, if these guys had put $100 into Bitcoin when they were first asked
about it, they'd have a million bucks. But putting all the chips in on Bitcoin,
I'm telling you, I think history is going to show that was a very risky move.
Now, there's Bitcoin billionaires out there who are going, ha-ha,
and they're laughing from their private islands right now.
That could be the case. Well, I think it's here. I think there's no question
that cryptocurrency is here to stay.
So as a technology, the blockchain, it's here. Yeah. And I would say Bitcoin is here.
I'm not saying Bitcoin can't fall. I'm not saying I disagree with anything you said.
In fact, I agree with everything. I would say to somebody, yeah,
if you want to invest in Bitcoin, I would treat it just like we tell people
to go sit down with a smart investor pro and learn about the strategies so that
you understand what you're doing.
But I agree with you that it should be a part of a diversified strategy,
not all eggs in that basket.
I agree with that. It's definitely a tone improvement from the Dave Ramsey show,
but their advice would be to go talk to another traditional investment advisor
who doesn't understand Bitcoin, who could tell you not to invest in Bitcoin.
And they miss it, right? Corporate Bitcoin purchases in 2025 are running 3.3
times faster than new supplies being created by the miners.
Businesses are the largest net buyer of Bitcoin so far this year.
Obviously, strategy is the leader.
77% of the growth comes from businesses.
Yet Dave Ramsey's crew, the Financial Times, they still seem to fail to understand this. It's crazy.
It really is this amazing blind spot. But the tune overall, you know,
I have to realize is better.
We have the Federal Reserve retracting guidance, discouraging banks.
You know, this essentially was, hey, don't touch this.
We don't think it's safe. They've now they've withdrawn that and then put a
video out saying, go for it. Just be safe, kids. Have fun.
This guidance has been in place since 2022.
So it's a pretty big walk back. You got the Dave Ramsey show saying,
oh, well, you know, I don't know. At least it's here to stay.
I think it's probably a good idea. maybe only 5%.
You know, once you've got your index funds and you got your fund money,
if you're not going to buy a boat, you might as well go buy some Bitcoin.
Hey, that's better than calling you stupid, I guess.
All right, well, I want to ask you, do you have any examples of individuals,
outfits, broadcasts that have changed their tune on Bitcoin,
or some that really should.
Would love to hear some reports via Boost. Also, I've done a bit less macro
news this episode and last. Do you miss it?
Are you glad it's gone? Let me know via Boost what you think of that,
because with the Opperturn stuff, I wanted to focus on all that,
but there has been a lot going on too, and you see Bitcoin ripping as a result.
So I'm always curious to know your thoughts on the macro coverage.
Music.
Well, coming up on this show, your boosts, of course, a few updates,
some really great ones, actually, a final clip of the week and a way to support
the show by doing what you do.
If you want to stack sats on river, one of the best ways to stack in the U.S.
Or take advantage of the 3.8% sats savings account.
Well, you can use the link in the show notes and support the show just by doing
what you do when you stack them sats and smash buy.
If self-custody is your thing, in Canada and the U.S., the Bitcoin well is the way to go.
An amazing, automatic, self-custody Bitcoin platform.
Link for that in the show notes to support the show. If you want to spend some
of your sats via Lightning, pick up a gift card for Amazon, something like that.
They got hundreds of companies.
The Bitcoin company is the way to go. They only do Bitcoin. They make it possible
to get from Lightning to a gift
card in seconds. You can even log in via Lightning. No account required.
Link to that. You want to pay your bills, use your debit card,
stack sats as you do your day-to-day. Fold cards, what everybody uses.
Big one in the audience. I love it. Use it myself. Link to that.
And last but not least, get access to your Bitcoin's liquidity without selling
your Bitcoin. That's what you use salt lending for.
Links to that in the show nizzles.
Music.
Oh, we do have some boosts to get to. Thank you, everybody. Boosty Graham.
And our first boost comes from SatSquatch. He's our baller booster this week
with 52,888 sats. Hey, rich lobster!
Keep on rocking the high-level analysis, Chris. Stack sats humbly, people.
Hey, very, very good. Coming in hot with the boost. It's a good hot boost.
Thank you, sir. Appreciate that.
Nice to hear from you, SatSquatch. Thank you for being our baller this week.
OLB 918 comes in with a row of McDucks. That's 22,222 sats.
This old duck still got it. Things are looking up for old duck.
He writes, the question is, do the Bitcoin core developers now control Bitcoin?
They sure think so. They've locked discussion and are saying that if you haven't
contributed code to core, then your opinion isn't even going to be considered.
But Bitcoin is not an oligarchy.
Node operators ultimately decide what is appropriate for Bitcoin, not core developers.
I've switched to Knott's. Anyone who is monetarily supporting core devs should
seriously consider or reconsider their support.
He also sent a row of ducks to support the show in the off week.
Thank you for thinking of me. Yeah, I've been debating the Bitcoin core to Bitcoin not switch.
Still kind of watching all that go down. I know there's been a lot of criticism
that Bitcoin not only has a single contributor, but if it's a minor patch set
and Bitcoin core is doing the bulk of the lift, that's not an unusual situation in free software.
Disappointed I am, I think, because I just didn't see the need to have this
rushed. Thank you, OBL, I should say. It's nice to hear from you.
Thank you for that boost. Wine Eagles here with 20,000 delicious Satoshis.
Oh, my God. This drawer is filled with fruit lobes.
Thank you for hosting the best Bitcoin news show. Oh, my goodness.
Well, thank you very much. Well, I'll be dipped. That's awful nice of you.
He's a good guy. He's a real good guy. No, he's a great guy.
The Tone Wrecker comes in with 3,333 sets. Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days.
This is a great afternoon update today. Thank you, Tone Wrecker.
I appreciate that value and that signal.
Letting me know you're out there. Gene Bean's here with 6,492 sats.
Well, that's Eric, good buddy.
Unless I'm missing something, here's my reasoning for being against arbitrary data on the chain.
Number one, someone could have trivially encoded algorithm images that could
be child or revenge porn.
Number two, add text that by one or more national laws, social media systems have to take down.
In both cases, takedown or possession laws could impact the ability to continue
to operate a node unless the block that contains the data doesn't get verified
before it's permitted to be part of the chain.
And number three, we'd have to screen for such data in addition to the mathematical
verification already being done to safeguard ourselves.
This would make many people unwilling or unable to decentralize the network
and would be extremely risky for businesses from liability and legal point of
view, or so I would imagine. Honestly, just opens the door for all kinds of misuse.
I do worry about that, about the misuse, you know, about the,
you know, different types of content that could be illegal.
That has been tried before. And I think, I think there was some sort of conclusion
there. But it is not, this is not the first time somebody has thought of that,
unfortunately. Gene Bean, you know what I mean.
But I do appreciate your support. It's nice to hear from you,
buddy. Hope you're doing well.
Orange Pill Lawyers here with 8,000 sats.
Let's take a look, see. He says, sorry, I haven't boosted in a while.
Haven't missed an episode, but I just didn't top off my wallet for a bit.
I linked my many bits e-cash wallet to a Noster account on Amethyst and then
zapped you there last week. I'm a little nervous about Trump embracement of
Bitcoin and what that might do to the brand.
The SBR, though, is a nice validation and should pump the bags,
but I'm fearful it turns into a partisan issue.
I would much prefer a more organic approach, maybe with the state bills gaining more traction.
Anyways, great episode. Well, it's nice to hear from you, Orange Pill lawyer,
and I hope you are out there orange pill and people.
Nice to know that you're on Noster as well. Thank you for the zap over there.
I do think, you know, it is rather unfortunate that it is becoming political.
I was just thinking this morning, man, I've been following Bitcoin well before
I was ever involved with politics. And now if I told somebody a Bitcoin,
they might just assume my politics.
But I think in the era that we find ourselves in, in the era of populism and
whatnot, this was probably unavoidable.
And a lot of this era that we're in is because of the fiat money printer.
So the two perhaps are intrinsically linked.
Perhaps it was unavoidable. Orange pill lawyer, what do you think?
Nice to hear from you, though.
The Musos here with 3,000 sats. Because I'm the wind.
Arbitrary data on the Bitcoin blockchain? No thanks.
Nick's Bitcoin users, Bitcoin D. Knots, is Nick's packaged. No idea how much
testing has been done, though.
I am, however, considering switching
to show my disagreement with the previously mentioned discussion.
Yeah, I'm going to get to the not node stats in the state of the network.
So stay tuned for that. And thank you, Muso. Nice to hear from you.
VCP is here with 5,000 stats. You're supposed.
I'm a libertarian to my core, but credit where credit is due.
No way. Trump got a C plus. That was a solid B plus.
Talking about his scorecard for crypto policy.
Also, I say we keep Bitcoin financial and don't entertain a hard fork over wanting
to add additional data that will just clog nodes.
My sense is a lot of people listening to VCP just want it to be used for monetary
purposes, and they want to have the most flexibility possible for running their node.
And we've kind of lost the Raspberry Pi recently. It's not really viable anymore.
And so we're already kind of moving to a place where we have less and less viable hardware options.
It's not horrible yet, but I think a lot of people listening would probably
agree with that sentiment. and it seems like this change to op return.
Probably changing that direction. I'm probably going to make the requirements
long-term in another year or so, you know, a little more intense,
a little bit more CPU, a little bit more disk, a little bit more RAM, that kind of thing.
We'll see, though. I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks, VCP. Appreciate the boost.
Axelrod00 is here with 2004 to 2SATs. This is the way. Love the old-school Metroid
video game music samples. Tastes like childhood.
Heck yeah. He also boosted our music artist. Thank you for that.
Hello there comes in with a row of ducks. Well, hello.
Row of canards, he says.
All right, here you go. Paranoid Coder also.
Santa Row of Ducks. Haven't boosted in a while, so here's something to help
with the lack of an episode next week. Thank you so much. It really means a lot.
It is a scary thing for a Value for Value show sometimes to take a week off.
So thank you for thinking of the show.
And, yeah, you know, when you take a week off from recording,
it doesn't mean you take a week off from doing research, staying current,
watching as much as you can news-wise and content-wise to try to take it all
in and come up with stuff.
So I really appreciate that. You're the gosh darn best.
Torso19's here with 2,000 sats.
Hey, Chris, appreciate your take on the Bitcoin core situation.
I think Bitcoin Mechanic lays out a pretty strong argument against the offer turn change.
Just because some spam gets into my email inbox doesn't mean we should remove
spam filters. The vast majority of node operators are in Bitcoin for its use as money.
Bitcoin Core shouldn't bend over backwards to enable Ethereum-like uses for Bitcoin.
It would just incentivize fewer people to run nodes and lead to more centralization.
At the very least, it should be a user-configurable setting.
I agree. I agree, Torso. Thank you. Appreciate that boost, too.
PC NullRef's here with 5,000 sats. Hey, guess what? This is the way.
Just a small message. Keep up the good work. We need to reach more people.
Well, I appreciate that.
This Week in Bitcoin show often gets up into the top charts for Fountain.
And I think other, I hope, other podcast players will also start surfacing some
of that because it's good signal. So your boost also helping that way.
Appreciate it, PC NullRef. Hey, Clarkian's here. Look at that.
I didn't know that. That's not possible. Nothing can do that. Well, it is.
It's right there. 6,000 sats. Bitcoin adjacent products are mainly there for
institutions that can't hold Bitcoin directly for tax quote advantaged 401ks
and IRAs held by us wage slaves.
When I'm getting 6% match from my employer, you better believe I'm putting all
that towards a Bitcoin ETF or MSTR.
So long as the fiat gains track with Bitcoin and the system doesn't blow up,
there's a good path to one day cash out and convert into Bitcoin,
then live off my Bitcoin-backed loan products.
Well, living off of Bitcoin-backed loan products, inflating away the fiat debt
so long as the Bitcoin kegger outpaces the interest.
I love this guy, Clarkian.
Of course, all of the take-home pay goes directly into Bitcoin.
These products have their niche, and I think that's what Saylor and Maulers are tapping into.
Freaking nailed it. Freaking nailed it.
Solid boost. Thank you. That's, I think, my view, too. I mean,
there is some dice rolling there, but everything fun in life requires a little bit of risk.
You know what I mean? And I look at this, and I mean this with love,
respect, admiration, and jealousy.
Boomers 30 years ago in my neck of the woods in the Pacific Northwest,
especially north of Seattle, had such an opportunity to scoop up land at unbelievable
prices that they have now been able to hodl for 40 years.
And they have leveraged for loans. They can sell off and make a quick mill here,
a quick mill there when they need.
Mad respect. They acted when the opportunity in the market was right.
I believe we are in that moment. The boomers moment for land is now our moment for Bitcoin.
And they're obviously our boomers that participate. Again, no disrespect.
I'm just saying I wasn't alive then.
So I couldn't have been in a position to take out loans at great rates.
Or there were times during the 80s when the rates weren't so great and they
still held, you know, so respect to them.
But this is our moment with Bitcoin and those who also want to participate.
So I really feel strongly that there is a place for these products that are
helping you take advantage of this unique point in time for Bitcoin's price
discovery. I don't know if I will ever use them.
But I appreciate that they're there. Clarkian also boosted our artist last week. Appreciate that.
Mr. Pip said, thank you, Chris. And I appreciate that.
Thank you, Mr. Prib. Prib, Prib. It's two Bs. Why do you put two Bs in there?
It just throws me off, man. Woo!
You're so boosted. Thank you. User 5798313 also came in with 5,000 sats. Danger zone.
He says, thank you, Chris. Awesome show. Well, thank you. Danger zone.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks. Hey, look at that, another cute row of ducks.
He says, I just don't want any spam with my digital gold.
Hold the mustard too, Jameson Lopp. And just put the fry in the bag,
right? Put the fries in the bag, right, Ace Ackerman?
Gosh, darn it. Don't need no skibbity spam.
Appreciate you. I love those row of ducks. Shy Fox is here with a handsome 10,000 sets.
It's over 9,000! Good, good.
I think Bitcoin still has a perception issue. I agree.
I brought this up last week. I'm glad to hear you follow up on this.
He says, most folks I talk to think of it as a scam or not real.
Yeah, man. Tell me. Most people I talk to in real life think that.
Those I hear talk about it tend to be fairly libertarian or they're distrustful
of the current financial system, brokenness or inequalities.
Most people will follow the financial advice of some societal norms,
you know, savings, index funds, stocks.
And by the time that norm changes, the majority of Bitcoin will be owned by
the banks and companies.
That's it. That's the tragedy of it all right there, ShyFox.
You got it. And this is what I was speculating before. I wonder how many times
in history this has happened where the normies just completely miss it.
They buy into everything they're told while the banks and the companies snap
it all up and then sell it back to them as product.
He finishes by saying, as they can afford the risk of non-traditional financial
systems and regulatory folks who can take that risk also, like financial perpetual,
they will too be late to reap the goals and currently touted.
I don't follow you there so much, but I follow your first part 100% Shy Fox.
It's really, it's really too bad that more people don't take information in
on their own and that they believe what the BBC says to them or they believe,
you know, what Dave Ramsey says to them. And, you know, oh, Dave Ramsey.
And they miss out on this. And then by the time a guy like Dave Ramsey is telling
them it's okay, they're going to be buying it from a guy like Sailor.
Or Maulers. It's a great boost. Thanks, Shai Fox. Appreciate it.
Deck Swords here with 6,789 sats.
Oh, my God. This drawer is filled with fruit lobes. Boy, they are doing a lot
with mayo these days. I got answers and I want some questions.
That's quite the series.
Boosting because it's been a while and this show is straight fire.
Oh, well, thank you, sir.
Thank you for doing that. Coming in hot with the boost. Really appreciate that.
Really, seriously appreciate that. There are weeks, especially after travel,
where it's like, oh, I just, man, I don't want to do the show. I just, oh, I'm so tired.
And I see the boost coming, and I'm like, yeah, I want to do the show.
Hell yeah. Yeah, I want to do the show.
It really is a motivator. It really is great. So boosts like that help a lot,
Dex. Appreciate it. Mix is here with 2,100 sats.
No message, though. No worries.
Tomato's here with 5,000 sats, and he writes, Thanks for the good coverage of
what's going on in the Bitcoin core.
This is the sort of episode I appreciate about the show.
Thank you. Nice to hear from you, Tomato. Appreciate that. BitCryptic is here with 2,048 sats.
Keep up the good work. I always get something from each This Week in Bitcoin
episode. I just want to top up a little above my streaming sats as a default.
Oh, I always appreciate that too. Damn, you guys. Thank you very much. are, you're the best.
Really, really great messages. Really appreciate everybody being thoughtful
about the dynamics of the show.
And thank you to everybody who boosts below the 2,000 SAT cutoff.
I saw like a couple of first-time boosters there. It's always nice to hear from you.
And of course, some of you sending in your opinion about the spam.
Yeah, I got all of that too. Thank you. And also you SAT streamers.
54 of you stacked a pretty good 70,651 SATs. Not bad at all.
So when you combine that with our boosters, the show did a pretty good.
This is for two weeks, and of course one week was off, so thank you, everybody.
It stacked a grand total of 253,063 sats.
This show is a value-for-value show. It's advertiser-free. I just have the affiliates and the boosts.
That's how you can keep the show going and keep it high signal.
So send me a message. Let me know how I did. You can use Fountain FM to make
it easy, or you can self-host the entire infrastructure. It really depends on
which route you want to take.
Lots of apps. Listen to podcastapps.com or get Fountain FM and get to boosting
and supporting not only this show, but an ecosystem of content creators,
the podcast index, and of course the app creators as well.
Links at thisweekendbitcoin.show in the show notes. And thank you everybody who supports the show.
Music.
For you. And this first one is a roundup of meta coverage.
David Batten did a great job over on Weapon X rounding up 14 recent mainstream
news outlets that are now covering Bitcoin's environmental impacts in a beneficial pro light.
I mean, I'll have the entire link collection in the show notes,
but I picked my top three favorites because like I said, there's a lot of them.
But number one, two, three in the list, and I'm going to do them in order of
least important, I think, to most important.
So I guess we'll start with number three. And that would be Mara has been working
to create independent on-location miners that run right where the off-gassing would happen.
Now, you know I'm a big fan of Bitcoin off-gas capture to mine from what would
otherwise just be methane pumped into the air.
They released a promo video, and I have a little bit of it for you that explains everything.
Mara, in partnership with NGON, has fully energized 25 megawatts of modular
data centers on oil fields across Texas and North Dakota.
This collaboration provides dual benefits, low cost, self-generated power for
Mara, and emission reducing excess energy monetization for oil and gas producers.
Energy is all around us. And the largest machine of all time is the energy grid.
And it's so ubiquitous that we don't see it. But with all of the demands coming
to our grid, we're going to have to make sure that we grow our energy production
and our energy distribution.
Bitcoin's a tool. It's a really awesome tool. Bitcoin, with its incentives,
forces miners to be creative.
There's a lot of stranded energy, but when we pursue that stranded energy,
We can actually bring energy solutions not only to the grid,
but also help the environment with things like greenhouse gases.
Recently introduced legislation could further incentivize the monetization of
stranded associated gas, underlying the urgency and importance of on-site energy development.
We have 25 megawatts that have been completely energized. So basically,
we're taking gas, using it to run up generators to create power and to mine Bitcoin.
Our project expands Mara's gas-to-power expertise with Compute at the Wellhead,
benefiting energy providers from future carbon credit markets.
We enable the oil and gas producer to focus on their main business,
and that's producing oil and gas.
More importantly, they are driving adoption of methane mitigation and reducing
methane emissions. If the whole industry reduces its methane,
we reduce greenhouse gases, and now oil and gas is a more efficient, cleaner product.
In its first five months, the project has already reduced the equivalent of
removing 6,800 gasoline-powered vehicles from the road for a year.
We all hear a lot about CO2, and that's important.
But methane is at least 80 times more heat capturing than CO2.
And so anytime we can take any methane and prevent it from being released into
the atmosphere, we're reducing greenhouse gases.
We are bringing the market to the energy sector.
So the energy sector doesn't have to build transmission and distribution to the customer.
We're able to bring the market to the energy industry. All right.
So out of the 14, that was my number three favorite story.
And now it is time for my number two favorite story.
This is about Bhutan. We've talked about them once before, and their Bitcoin
experiment is going very, very, very well.
In fact, they're now saying it has saved their economy by using their spare
hydropower to mine Bitcoin.
So this is my number two favorite story from the batch. In Bhutan,
gold is everywhere, a Buddhist symbol of the everlasting nature of enlightenment.
Now this small Himalayan kingdom is investing in a future it hopes will be blessed
with what Bakker's called digital gold, Bitcoin.
It's also finite and supposedly everlasting. There are hundreds of people who
have made billions of dollars on the back of Bitcoin.
Why aren't governments doing more?
Prime Minister's chairing Topgay says Bitcoin is a strategic reserve,
one currently worth more than a billion dollars.
We have used Bitcoin for health, to provide free health care for our environment, but these are minor.
The main use of Bitcoin has been to finance the salaries of public servants.
Yeah, so one of the things they're doing differently is they're selling their
Bitcoin. And they're selling it to finance aspects of the government that they
cannot raise either through taxes or because companies, what they call a brain
drain, have left the area. And so tax revenues have gone down.
People can't really afford to have their taxes gone up the people.
So they have mined and sold some of their Bitcoin to keep government services
and even improve some of them and offer health services.
Bhutan has built Bitcoin mines at locations across the country where thousands
of energy-hungry computers solve complex mathematical puzzles to claim Bitcoins.
And here's what's powering this modern-day gold rush, hydro-generated electricity.
The government says its Bitcoin operation is carbon-neutral.
It relies only on water from the Himalayas.
It's also very profitable, with Bhutan's computers being rewarded with Bitcoins
that at current prices add up to millions of dollars a week.
Okay, so that was my number two favorite story from the batch of 14.
And now it is time for my number one favorite story.
And this is my number one favorite for a couple of reasons.
Number one, it forced the BBC to talk positively about Bitcoin in an environmental sense.
And number two, it's truly bringing something life-changing to small towns in
Africa that could never have had large-scale power plants, would never have
been able to have power in their little villages.
And they start by showing this little village. It is quite literally just a little village.
And I didn't include the clip because it's mostly visual, but it's all these
shops that have opened up, like a barber and a restaurant that use an electric
skillet or a razor that just didn't exist a year or two ago.
And this alone is changing so many lives over there. And the fact that the way
they've designed this means that they can set these up in multiple locations.
And in fact, they already have.
Getting electricity to towns as remote as this is an expensive engineering challenge.
Follow the pylons and it brings you here, Zengamina Hydro Power Plant.
This is a so-called mini-grid, an island of power generation.
And it has a not-so-secret weapon, Bitcoin.
Since 2013, this container full of powerful computers has been whirring away
in the Zambian bush 24-7, earning Bitcoin, the most valuable virtual currency.
These are the actual miners. They're not very sexy, but they do their job.
All the miner needs is the power cord and the internet connects it.
It starts mining. How many are you here right now?
There's about 120 in here right now.
It's an odd place for a high-tech crypto operation, but it makes sense for the
company that installed it and runs it in partnership with the energy firm because
of the electricity being so cheap.
Music.
It's very noisy, but it's a beautiful noise.
Because the truth is, this noise means we're making money. So it's 120 miners in one shipping crate.
And what this enables is the monetization of a hydro plant that otherwise was not sustainable.
There's no large industry, right? There's nobody manufacturing goods that actually
pays for the bills of the power plant.
And the population's not very dense. So it's not like you're sending power to
a city and making money off of tens of thousands of people. So it was a real problem.
These people need power, but they're just not a big enough customer.
Kevin's Kenya-based company Gridless has six sites like this in three different
countries across Africa.
It's a lot of travel to remote areas, but it's worth it for cheap renewable energy.
And for energy makers like Zengamina Hydro, which opened in 2007,
it's also been hugely beneficial because of a problem known as stranded power.
We really struggled to make ends meet, and every day we were wasting.
Over 50% of the energy that we could generate, which also meant we're not earning from that.
What we lacked was an institutional, a major user of power in the area.
And that's where the game-changing partnership with Gridless came in,
because their unique model where they can take excess power flexibly to create
value through the computing power has transformed our operations.
And the extra revenue, important to say, has also helped us keep the prices
down for what we charge the local people, which is also very important.
Don't miss the links in the show notes. Now, I thought this is also a fun update.
If you can believe it, Bitcoin has been declared dead more times in 2025 already than all of 2024.
Yes, people are keeping track of this. Despite hitting new highs and all of
the bullish news and the corporate adoption, Bitcoin has already been declared dead 11 times.
Of course, in total by this tracker, Bitcoin has been declared dead 430 times since its inception.
And of course, your high-profile figures like Peter Schiff, Eugene Fama,
and others continue to try to attack Bitcoin, declaring it dead,
which is hilarious to me that in 2025, when the use case and also the opportunity
seems more clear than ever, it's already been declared.
You know, actually, no, it makes sense. They're threatened.
That's why. It's just crazy I'll put a link you can read the whole story it's pretty good music.
Music.
All right, it's time for our final clip of the week. And this week,
it's Coinbase's institutional head of strategy.
And he was on CNBC recently, and the whole interview is mid.
But there is one section where I really feel like he's locked into something
that people have missed.
Just about everyone is missing a key aspect of the Bitcoin ETFs.
And one of the things we're looking at right now is a whole bunch of ETFs.
How should we think about, I mean, I know what your business is.
But by the way, you actually now interact with a lot of the guys who are holding
some of these ETFs. So that matters to you, too.
Sure. We are the custodian for the majority of these ETFs. So when you buy an
ETF and it's a coin, it's all the hell with us. You're holding it.
So the question, though, is do you see most of the inflows coming in now direct,
meaning people are buying the coins themselves or they're buying the ETFs?
It's both. I know you don't care which it is, but I just wonder sort of just
transactionally how it's happening.
It's both. I'm sure, but on a percentage basis. So based on this onslaught of
inflows, I don't have the percentage number for you right now.
It's probably going to be the overwhelming majority is going to be ETFs,
but I don't have exact data.
The one important thing to remember about these ETF inflows,
not just the surge we've seen recently, but since the beginning,
because it's been an absolutely phenomenally performing ETF.
And this is a very important point that's overlooked. This is being done with
the asset managers not allowing their salespeople, their financial advisors, to recommend it.
So that's extraordinary. network. That's like a shoe salesman not being able
to recommend Nike, right?
So that's going to change at some point. And then I'll sort of leave it to your
viewers to determine what happens when that thundering herd of brokers can actually
pick up the phone and recommend the CTF.
Music.
Let's check in on the state of the network before I get out of here.
This episode is wrapping up at block height $896,707.
The current price to the U.S. dollar is $103,260.
That makes our sats per dollar under $1,000.
Sats per dollar now, $968.
That is a seven-day change positive direction of 6.8%. We are still down 5.4%
from our all-time high, which was 114 days ago on January 19th,
2025, which was 109,160.
Fee rates still quite low, two sats for a V-byte.
Not bad at all. I guess they haven't destroyed the rates yet.
And here's a new interesting stat.
Let's start tracking this. Top node versions.
Nots, version 2025.0305. Nots, the most recent version, has gone from 2% to 7.9% of the network.
That's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. Now, Core, of course,
remains by far the top node out there.
But Bitcoin Noughts has gone from around 2% to almost 8%, 7.9% of the nodes
out there. People are voting with their node software.
Total nodes on the network reachable right now, 21,733.
Let's see if we can't pop that up a little bit. See if we can't contribute a little bit.
I'd be curious to know if you're switching to Bitcoin Noughts,
if you have any concerns around Bitcoin Noughts, and if you are just not interested
in deploying a node anymore.
I'd like to hear all of that. Boost in and let me know. That is our state of
the network, and it is strong.
Now, I want to let you know that there will not be an episode again next week.
I hate that. I hate that. I hate that. I apologize.
Apologize. Apologize. I'm traveling to Boston. I'll be covering Red Hat Summit,
and I will be in sessions. I will be doing interviews Wednesday during the time of the show.
So unless something really major breaks, I will bring my gear just in case you
won't have an episode from you again.
And hopefully that'll be the last of the interruptions for a while. It's not my intention.
It's called this week in Bitcoin, not this week and every other week sometimes.
So I really hope that you will excuse my absence next week.
I apologize. I feel bad for it. There's so much going on. I will keep track.
Please consider it when you support the show. and also consider going and getting some of the links.
Lots of good stuff this week at thisweekinbitcoin.show. This was episode 57.
I'm going to leave you with a value-for-value track. This is one that I'm kind
of doing a make-up. I can't believe I've never played this before.
I know the artist. I know the track. I should have been on the show.
So I'm going to leave you with a value-for-value track. If you boost during
the music, 95% of the sats will go to the artist.
You boost any other time to the show, it goes to me and everyone in the splits.
And I appreciate all of the support out there.
All right, let's leave it with Blood Perfume by...
Music.