Music.
Welcome to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 46. My name is Chris,
chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
Have you ever wondered why it seems like Bitcoin tends to sell off on the news of higher inflation?
I mean, after all, isn't Bitcoin supposed to be the best inflation hedge known to man?
So why? Well, this week I'll get
into the structural and even the psychological reasons why we see this.
And really, a lot, lot more this week. So I thought we should probably start
right here at the top with the world's largest market. That is right here in the U.S. of A.
And we got some fresh news right off the print, as they say.
New inflation numbers in the United States have been released this morning.
Those numbers, of course, always have the potential to move markets.
This morning, investors have learned that U.S. inflation ran hotter in January
than economists had expected.
Let's talk about it with an expert in rates and fixed income.
He's Earl Davis, Head of Fixed Income and Money Markets at BMO Global Asset
Management. Earl, good morning and thanks for joining us. Good morning.
So just let me tell viewers what was reported at 8.30 in Eastern time.
The month-over-month change in the consumer price index basket in January in the U.S.
Came in at growth of 0.5%. That's 20 basis more than economists had expected,
excluding food and energy.
That monthly number rose by 0.4%. That was 10 basis points more than economists had expected.
On a yearly basis, inflation running at an annualized pace of 3.0 percent,
more than the 2.9 percent that economists had expected, excluding food and energy.
Core inflation running at an annual pace of 3.3 percent, 20 basis points greater
than economists had expected.
That's kind of the big one there.
U.S. inflation being at 3 percent for the first time since June.
And analysts expected around 2.9 percent.
So close. But you know how that goes. This does officially mean that the market
is worried about inflation remaining hot.
The CPI headline inflation has been up for four straight months.
And core CPI is officially back on the rise again.
Now, it's not horrendous around the world.
The U.S. is kind of in the middle of the pack.
Like right now, the U.K. is officially reporting 2.5 percent inflation.
I have no idea if those numbers are legitimate.
If anybody out there listening has insights on that, please boost in.
If you look at who's doing a bit worse than the U.S., Mexico and Japan,
3.6 percent, India, 4 percent inflation, Brazil, 4.6.
Russia is at 9.5 percent official numbers right now.
But it's pretty brutal when you zoom in to particular categories in the U.S.
And I like to look at this over a multi-year window because the real evil about
inflation is the compounding effect.
Homes are up, you know, an unbelievable nearly 40 percent.
Food at home is up 23.2%. Used cars are up 21.5%. Apparel, 9.3%.
Medical care, they say only 10%.
Transportation, 43.5%. Gas, 34.9%. Although gas is actually trending down in
the shorter term, down 8%. Soybeans are also down 13%. As nickel is also down
3%. And cotton down 25%. So it's not all bad.
But in individual areas, when you zoom out over the past four years and you
look at the cumulative effect,
it's really hurting the american consumer
and people all over the world even at two percent and right
now as i record fed chair jerome powell
is speaking to the financial services committee and
he was just asked a question about you know where he sees inflation at
and he kind of admits they haven't licked it yet despite the language in their
just most recent meeting the biden administration american families were hit
with a huge stealth tax from as we've spoken about inflation that drove up grocery
prices and led to high rates on things like mortgages and car loans.
Since 2021, the average Missouri household is paying about $1,100 more per month due to inflation.
To put that number into perspective, the median family income in Missouri is $69,000.
These families have had to spend $13,000 more of their annual income on the exact same goods.
What specifically is the Federal Reserve's plan for making life easier for everyday Americans?
So the best thing we can do for Americans is to vigorously pursue both stable
prices and maximum employment.
We're trying to get back to a long expansion where prices are stable around
2%. You seem to be there on labor, as you've pointed out. So tell me what else.
Sorry? You seem to be there on labor.
So what else? You know, I would say we're close, but not there on inflation.
And you did see today's inflation print, which says the same thing.
I mean, we've made great progress toward 2%. Last year, inflation was 2.6%.
So great progress, but we're not quite there yet. So we want to keep policy
restrictive for now so that we can see. We're definitely not there for 30-year
mortgages in upwards of 7%. She's got them.
So, okay, you hear the numbers. Everything priced in fiat is getting more expensive.
So, again, why are people selling Bitcoin when CPI is 0.1% higher than expected?
Well, I think we should get two things out of the way up front.
Bitcoin is a 24-7 worldwide liquid asset you can sell in a minute.
I talk about that all the time.
And Bitcoin is young. It's still in its monetization phase. In other words,
the world's still figuring out its value.
But I think a lot of this comes down to short-term versus long-term and traders,
quote-unquote, that are trying to hedge.
I think it's without question.
If you look at the 15 years of Bitcoin, it is indeed designed to be an inflation
killer. It is absolutely an inflation hedge.
Thick supply, 21 million, right? And the halving events, every four years,
the rate of new Bitcoin issuance is halved, further reducing supply growth.
So if you look at over the past decade, Bitcoin's design pretty much has proven
it's effective in maintaining its value and does serve as a hedge against devaluation
of fiat currencies. The data is there.
But these short-term price movements, and when I say short-term in this context,
you got to keep in mind, I'm talking like a couple of years at a time,
that's short-term in this kind of game.
Those short-term price movements, they're moody. You know, often there's tight
times of correlation with traditional markets, often driven by more macro liquidity
than it is anything else.
And if the traditional market stumbles, Bitcoin really tumbles.
And when the traditional market warms up, Bitcoin cooks.
But Bitcoin's potential as an inflation hedge, really, you have to look at it
with a long-term perspective.
And I think the old saying is true is no one loses money who holds Bitcoin for four years.
So when you're looking at protecting yourself from inflation,
from currency debasement, what are you really trying to accomplish?
What is your real end goal? You really want to protect your future purchasing power, right?
The fiat you work hard for today buys less tomorrow. Or really,
in the case of the lens we're looking at, in the next few years.
Your fiat that you earn is a representation of your output, your time,
which is the most precious asset you own. More precious than Bitcoin, your time.
So debasement of your money is debasement of your time and your energy.
And, you know, depending on what basket of goods you pick from,
on average, inflation stole around 26.1% of your purchasing power since 2020.
So you're up, you know, depending where you're at, somewhere between 20 and
30% of your purchasing power is gone in fiat terms in the last four years.
If you're not making at least 25, 26% more than you were in 2020, you are poor.
If your net worth hasn't risen by 26, 30% since 2020, you're poor. In fiat terms.
But the Bitcoin that you save in today will buy you more than it does today in just a few years.
Saylor has a real classic rant that kind of puts this into real stark terms.
And he kind of he refers to the currency as the lifeblood of civilization.
So when the government is telling you you should use a currency,
the currency is the blood of your corporation or your family or your civilization.
When I'm inflating the currency, I'm bleeding the civilization.
And I loved, he had another time where he kind of took another crack at this.
Remember George Washington, you know how he died? Well, meaning physicians bled him to death.
And this was the most important patient in the country, maybe in the history
of the country. And we bled him to death, trying to help him.
So when you're actually inflating the money supply at 7%, but you're calling
it 2% because you want to help the economy, you're literally bleeding the free market to death.
But the sad fact is George Washington went along with it because he thought
that they were going to do him good.
The majority of the society, most companies, most conventional thinkers,
the working class, they go along with this because they think that someone has
their best interests in mind.
And the people that are bleeding them to death, they believe that prescription
because their mental models are just so defective.
And ironically, the big money, their mental models are defective because they
have existed in this system for their entire lifetime.
They didn't come at it from a Bitcoiners perspective. They grew up inside the system.
So big money, they're day trading Bitcoin. They're making short-term plays.
They move a bit of money from one play to the other play, depending on what the market's doing.
And right now, they're tucking and rolling as fast as they can as things develop.
You know, they used to be able to take much longer-term horizons just going on Fed guidance.
But things are, you know, on shakier ground right now. And here's what I suspect they're thinking.
If inflation is up, then that likely means rates are not coming down anytime
soon. This is Bank of America's CEO talking about their research term making
this exact determination.
So let's talk about a couple different things. One is our research team,
Candace Browning-Platt, and this very strong research team was the reason why we're here.
They had taken all rate cuts off the table in their research.
The market had one still left in. They had zero. And it was because they thought
that the dynamics of the inflationary effect and the potential inflationary
effect would cause the Fed to hold back.
And those rates are restrictive, but there was not enough sort of inflation
progress going to be made.
And inflation will stay in the high twos through 25 and 26.
And ultimately, they would start cutting rates then and bring it to maybe three and a half, four.
So he's saying no rate cuts this year, maybe next year.
And these traders, they're looking for short-term liquidity pumps when they
go to Bitcoin. Easy money. They rush into assets.
And Bitcoin's limited supply is just a great short-term play if they think liquidity
is going to pump. Money's going to be easy.
And something that I've been going on about recently, the uncertainty around
tariffs, is finally also getting coverage in the mainstream media.
And they're realizing, oh, there's going to be just volatility because of all
these tariff reactions.
And some in the market, even really big money, are kind of freaking out about tariffs.
Very interesting, Jack, today, a commentary from Ken Griffin,
chief executive of Citadel, who was at the UBS Financial Services Conference
and said of the proposed tariffs from the president.
From my vantage point, the bombastic rhetoric, the damage has already been done.
And it's a huge mistake to resort to this form of rhetoric when you're trying
to drive a bargain because it's like imprints.
It tears into the minds of CEOs, policymakers.
We can't depend upon America as our trading partner.
Regrettably, the other side of the story is the uncertainty and chaos created
by the pair of dynamics between us and our allies.
Is it an impediment to growth? It makes it difficult for multinationals.
I mean, there's one of the world's greatest investors saying that the rhetoric's
not good, the damage has already been done, and there's chaos as a result.
Is that a problem for markets or no?
Chaos! Chaos as a result. So, okay, I tease, but try to put yourself in their
very expensive shoes for a moment. You don't understand Bitcoin.
You know it's going up, and you know the numbers look good over the last 10
years, but you don't really understand Bitcoin. You don't really understand
even some of the theory behind the fiscal policy of Bitcoin.
You mostly are looking at it as like a tech stock. They think of it as a risk
on bet during easy money time.
And you're having a really hard time right now making sense of things because
you've grown up in a system and you've built an entire thriving rich business
where everybody's told you how smart you are in a system that is shifting.
The Fed was talking like they've nailed inflation. Now they're like,
oh, we've got some work to do.
White House policies seem like a big gamble right now.
All these big money firms, they're rudderless. They don't know how to measure
any of this. They're a giant money ship that needs a safe harbor right now.
The truth is, everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve.
And, you know, the families, the individuals, the companies,
and the states that are thinking long-term and not trying to just,
you know, get the biggest money play right now, the ones that are in it for
multiple years, they're going to benefit. Well, and speaking of that...
Music.
I'd have to do a daily podcast to keep track of how fast this story is developing. Now, 19 U.S.
States are racing to establish a Bitcoin reserve.
I'll link to bitcoinlaws.io where you can track this. They have a map and also
a tracker lower below. It's so cool.
So just recently, North Carolina and Montana are the latest states with proposed
legislations to allow a state to invest in Bitcoin and other digital assets.
I'll get to that in a second.
You know, when I hear this, I think, I wouldn't mind moving there.
I'm curious if you feel this way.
Or if you live in one of these states that's proposing a Bitcoin reserve or
digital asset reserve, how do you feel about it?
I'd be really proud and impressed if Washington state figured this out.
They'll probably be one of the last.
Even though if you look at crypto holders distributed in the U.S.,
Washington state supposedly has a very high percentage. State representatives don't care.
This is, to me, it just seems like, man, if I were like looking at a new state
to move to, this might be one of the things I can look at.
So we now have 19 different states that are looking at different,
you could essentially call it competing legislation, right? Because whoever
moves first gets the best price.
North carolina's hb 92 allows up
to 10 of funds via the bitcoin etfs i
thought that was interesting and montana's hb 429 proposes 50 million investment
in quote digital assets now other states including maryland iowa and florida
have introduced similar bills wyoming and north dakota seem to have roadblocks
in their reserve efforts utah is in the lead arizona just behind them.
I believe Utah has the shortest cycle as well.
Now, I think all of these bills pretty much universally refer to digital assets
and not Bitcoin, but they all almost have like the similar language around the
market cap requirement.
The digital asset must be of quote, you know, some of them are,
you know, 500 billion or whatever. They have different market cap sizes.
And pretty much in all cases, Bitcoin is like the only digital asset that meets the requirements.
So I'm not I'm not really sure I've I've been told and I don't know if I believe it.
I've been told that they're using the term digital asset to seem more neutral
and to provoke less of a fight from the digital asset lobby.
Do you buy that line or are they all about to become a bunch of shit coiners?
I don't know which one it is. You might.
Well, I did mention that your buddy, Jerome Powell, was on the hill.
It's actually a two day affair and it's his first appearance before Congress
since his or since the president's inauguration.
And I mean, it really is a slog. Two days of just hours and hours of boring
rants mixed with a few moments that you need to know about.
So let's start with a big one that just came and went real quick.
I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I got to clip that. What was that?
What did he just say? Something that concerns me a lot is the idea that we would
even look like China in any way.
So can I have your commitment that as long as you're the chairman of the Federal
Reserve System, that we will never have a central bank digital currency? Yes.
Thank you for that. I think that's extremely important. That makes me very happy to hear you say that.
Yeah, you seem to have no qualms committing to no CBDC under his watch.
Now, I don't know, you know, the Federal Reserve is not part of the federal government.
They may only have a small part to do with that, but I thought it was interesting.
Nonetheless, I wanted to just point that out.
Now, no Fed chair multi-day hearing would be complete without some Bitcoin and
crypto questions. That's just the era we live in now.
And Senator Lummis said.
Had some really tough questions about recent debanking.
And I think Jerome's answer here is a total change of tone. It's a complete
180 from, I don't know, November.
Do you commit to disciplining or removing any staff that are found to have engaged
in debanking activity, furthering Operation Chokepoint 2.0 or other misconduct?
I can't make an open-ended commitment to remove anybody, but I will tell you
that I am struck, and my colleagues and I are struck,
by the growing number of cases of what appears to be debanking,
and we're determined to take a fresh look at that.
In fact, I took the thing that you showed during the debanking hearing,
when I saw that, we're now taking that out of the manual. So I thank you for that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. when my time's up. He's struck by it.
Struck by the debanking. Completely struck by it.
I think we're going to have a lot more information, so I'll save on the speculation,
and I think we're going to see a lot of information just come out as they look into that further.
Now, for the next question he was asked, I want to give you more context.
Things are brewing behind the scenes that lead to this next question.
The U.S. federal government is aligning and moving forward with pro-crypto policy
in a way that is very significant And I think it's hard for us as outsiders
to really fully appreciate the amount of stakeholders,
quote unquote, that had to come together to actually pull this off.
And crypto and AI czar, David Sachs, laid some of this out in the most recent All In podcast.
And I cut it down to the point where I think it really helps you understand Bitcoin.
Just what all had to come together. And it starts with Sachs describing the
press conference that I played a clip from last week.
Yesterday, I was invited up to Capitol Hill to meet with the chairman of the
important committees that basically govern crypto.
And so we had a press conference there to announce the legislative plan.
You can see there, there's Chairman Tim Scott, who's the chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
To my left and then to To my right is French Hill, who's the chairman of the
House Financial Services Committee.
And then to his right is John Bozeman, who's the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
And then to the left of Tim Scott is G.T. Thompson, who's the chair of the House
Agriculture Committee.
He's out of frame right now. But those are the four committees that govern crypto.
And you may ask, why is the Agriculture Committee involved in crypto?
And the reason is because the ad committee supervises the CFTC,
the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, because commodities all came out
of agriculture. So it's interesting.
You need four committees across the House and Senate to get legislation done
on crypto. It's not just House and Senate.
It's actually two committees in each of the House and Senate.
And so this is the first time where we've had four chairmen of the four key
committees all come together and say that they're ready to support crypto legislation.
There were a lot of people on X who felt like this wasn't a mind-blowing announcement.
They wanted something that they could trade on right away.
That's not what this was. This was basically a statement of commitment from
the chairs of the four committees that we're going to get legislation done this
year, maybe in the next six months.
I mean, that's really the goal. And we've never had that before.
So that is pretty monumental.
Now, make no mistake about it.
Their first priority is stablecoins.
Stablecoins. You know what? Fine. They don't really need to touch Bitcoin.
They don't really need to do anything around Bitcoin. If they wanted to remove
capital gains tax, you could go ahead and do that.
Please go ahead and do that. I think the other priority, stablecoins and letting
banks hold Bitcoin and maybe other various cryptos for their customers.
And the next day, which was today, in Jay Powell's two-day hearing on the Hill,
he was asked about banks getting infected by crypto.
With that spread and expansion of crypto, and the president is 100% behind it.
He just started his own meme coin.
He's making a lot of money off of that, which is another issue.
My concern is that the spread of an expansion of crypto will infect the traditional banking system.
Because it's a volatile, speculative asset. and we've seen some very sudden disasters with crypto.
I'm just wondering, are there any backstops that we can use,
any firewalls that we can put in place that might insulate the traditional banking
system because they have access to the discount window?
What is he really asking? Is he really asking, is there some sort of paperwork
way that we can slow this down? Is there some sort of bureaucratic minutiae
that we can get this involved in?
It sounds like what he's really asking is, you know, can regulatory oversight
somehow interpret rules in a way that allows them to isolate certain things around crypto?
Doesn't it? It sounds like a very suspicious question. And FDIC insured.
So there may be, you know, second order impacts if we have a collapse of a major crypto issuer.
Are there any any extra things that we can do to protect the traditional banking system?
Yeah, so first I would say there are really two things that are happening.
One is banks are serving crypto customers, and we don't want to get in the way
of banks serving perfectly legal
customers as long as they understand the risks and that sort of thing.
We don't want to single out any particular – Are you speaking to custody?
Well, custody is more – the second thing is undertaking activities on their own, right?
And in that case, I do think it's appropriate to, as usual, as bank supervisors,
make sure that we understand and banks understand the risks that are involved
in the activity that they're taking inside an insured depository.
On the other hand, you don't want to go too far. I think there were a bunch
of disasters, as we all remember, and we were reacting to some extent to those.
You don't want to go so far as to overplay your hand on that.
So I think we need to be mindful that many of these activities can very well be done inside of banks.
And custody may well be one of them. In fact, in Fed-regulated banks,
there are lots of crypto activities happening now.
Lots. They've just happened under a framework where we made sure that the bank
understood and we understood exactly what they're doing. Yeah. Right.
We also have the… That's enough of that. Moving on.
Music.
Are you passively stacking sats at all? I'm not talking about like DCAing or actively buying them.
But as you hear here, the banks are getting more and more interested in getting involved.
So let's say your bank, like your Costco card or something offered sats back as a reward.
Would you use it? And would you switch to a bank that offered you some kind of sats based reward?
Now, here's what I'm thinking is when I look out there, there's a lot of ways
to passively stack Satoshis right now.
And they're, they're, They remind me of things like the Bitcoin well,
where you could answer a CAPTCHA on a web page and you would get rewarded five
Bitcoin just for answering the CAPTCHA.
Or people used to tip each other, you know, nearly a Bitcoin on Reddit for a good post.
Now, these days, we have things like Stacker News and Fountain FM and Foldcard
and Noster that are kind of elements of this.
That perhaps in another decade, we'll look back and go, wow,
wow, look at that. Look what we used to be able to do.
And with the, you know, things like Fold card and the Gemini card,
you get sats back on your purchases.
So I'm curious, are you out there, beyond just buying sats, are you taking advantage
of any passive stacking, is what I'm calling it.
If you do, what are you doing, and do you like it?
And if you're not, why not? Because I'm going to have some news regarding Fold
in a little bit and their new credit card.
And it's interesting, you know, the whole incentive really is sats back.
And when I look at having to make, you know, mandatory purchases,
it seems kind of nice to be able to earn a few sats if I'm going to have to
make the purchase anyways.
And if I hold on to those for a little bit, they end up being a worth a lot more than just points.
I think it could be a big industry, but I'd like to know if you're taking advantage
of it already. And if you are, tell me how it's working.
And if you're not, listen and tell me why not.
Music.
But first, let me take a moment and say you can support the show by doing what you do.
You want to stack sats here in the U.S.? Buy your sats on River.
The best way to stack sats right here in the United States.
Great interface. DCA options all day long. They also offer you cash sats back at like 3.8% interest.
It's great. Love River. We'll have a link. All of these are linked in the show
notes. I think the Bitcoin well is another one you got to consider.
Automatic self-custody is built into their platform. And when you buy and sell
your sats, they're going directly from your Lightning or on-chain wallet.
They never get involved with that. It's so great. It's like all the APIs and
services you need around Bitcoin, but you maintain the custody.
Link in the show notes, bitcoinwill.com slash jupiter.
Now, you want to buy a few things with the sats you have in your Lightning wallet? The Bitcoin company.
The Bitcoin company makes it
so fast and easy to zap your sats into a gift card and go buy something.
Like Amazon or Chevron, whatever it might be. They've got hundreds.
The Bitcoin company. We've got links to that. I mentioned the FoldCard.
I got news about them coming up. You can pay your bills and stack sats,
sats back on your debit card purchases.
The FoldCard, pretty awesome Bitcoin company. And last but not least,
if you need access to your Bitcoin liquidity without selling it,
you should consider Salt Lending. That's who I use.
And I think they're pretty great. And we have a question about them later in
the show, too. So there's a lot to get into.
Thank you, everybody, who uses those links and supports the show. We'll be right back.
Music.
And we do have a bunch of great boosts this week to get into that also support the show directly.
And we start with Block, who got the Baller Booster segment on sale for 25,000 sets. Hey, Rich Luster!
Oh, yes! Thank you, Block7. Coming in as our Baller Booster,
value for value, he writes, never boosting pegs.
Only corn fist bump, I guess only boost corn. Thank you.
Appreciate you being our baller block and nice to hear from you.
IT guy zero zero five comes in with 22,222 sets.
Some McDucks. Things are looking up for old McDuck. Either that or it's an Aflac boost.
Aflac. You tell me. He writes great episode. Appreciate your insights on the current events.
You're making me miss the unfiltered show again more than I normally do.
I truly appreciate your efforts on this here podcast, all the JBS.
Enjoyed the opportunity to buy another chunk of sats when the price tumbled
on the tariff market fares. Yeah, well done.
That's the way to do it. That's the way to do it. I love it.
You know, unfilter would not really be. I don't think I could do unfilter anymore
because I now look at things through the macro economic lens,
which just explains so much more of what's going on than any kind of crazy conspiracy
theory or chasing the mainstream media. Chase the mainstream media. They're downstream.
Of what's going on. The ultimate source of truth, I believe,
is what this show follows now. That's my opinion.
But I really appreciate the boost. It was a shorter crew today,
IT guy, so it really mattered. Thank you very much.
Our next boost is the one, the only, the Mr.
Hybrid Sarcasm. And you know what? He comes in with 20,000 sats and he's a good guy. He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy. No, he's a great guy. He says, it's a great day for Twib.
Have some buy the dip sats yes buddy thank you appreciate that eric pp is here with 3333 sats,
great song i heard it on this week in the bitcoin podcast oh great boosting
our song thank you very much for that eric pp i really appreciate that gene
beans here with 10 901 sats It's over 9,000!
Gene Bean writes, The review and changing things is supposed to be part of the
budget process. Oh, I think he's probably talking about Doge.
And if things are allocated by Congress aren't liked, that is supposed to be
done by the legislative action in the annual budget. Yeah, it sure should be, shouldn't it?
Elon should only be screwing with budget allocated by the executive branch,
much of which is being changed isn't money that is in the executive branch,
or the executive branch is to mess with.
It's allocated by laws passed by Congress.
How has Congress been doing them? Can you explain the linkage between self-hosted
node, a software wallet like Green, and a hardware wallet?
I don't yet understand how they all work together.
Okay, well, they're all doing kind of different jobs.
So Green will use something like a hardware wallet for its key generation and storage.
And it'll use something like a node for its source of truth about the transactions
on the blockchain, the mempool and things like that.
So one is to store your key.
And one is to get the source of truth on the network.
He says, what are your thoughts on the Bitbox wallet mentioned by Alby?
I've never tried that one. I would really like to hear people's thoughts on Bitbox.
He also wanted to let us know that he published a new blog post that he hopes
will be helpful for others that are wanting to self-host their own note.
Proxying Bitcoin Core and L&D with Tailscale and Nginx.
Feedback on Mastodon or Nostra is welcome. I will put a link to that in the
show notes. Thank you, Gene. That's a great tutorial.
That is a cosign on that stack. It's very close to the stack we use here at
the studio. Thank you, Gene.
Pab comes in with 2,100 sats. The traders love the vol.
Love all the JB shows. And I actually got into Bitcoin thanks to this one. Oh, yes.
Oh, man. You know what? You know what? You're doing a good job.
You know how happy that makes me?
Do you know how happy that makes me? I cannot think of a better compliment.
You know, I hope that one of the things I'd leave when I, you know,
pass is that some of the folks in the audience heard about Bitcoin,
and were able to protect their future purchasing power and their family's wealth
because they listen to one of our shows.
So, man, Pat, that's so awesome. I just wanted to say that being against,
he goes on, I just wanted to say that being against war isn't a political bias.
It's basic human decency.
These days it feels like a political bias, I have to say, Pat.
And whether you realize it or not, your views lean heavily toward the liberal right.
Liberal right, okay. I don't I would love to know what that even means of course being in the U.S.
You're used to choosing ah yes now it all makes sense of course being in the U.S.
You're used to choosing between two shades of right-wing politics I strongly
am in the opposite direction but I still appreciate your perspective keep up
the great work that I hear you know is a very common perspective is if you're outside the U.S.
Then both parties seem very right that's probably because of all the war and Woo!
Yeah, let's get to some warring, right? That's woo-woo. Yeah, America.
Yeah, thank you. I do appreciate that perspective.
VCP comes in with 4,000 foursats. This is the way.
I've been orange-pilling farmers and ranchers. Oh, I saw this boost come in
live and I shared it with friends and family.
He says, your podcast takes people from being Bitcoin curious to deep diving.
It's crazy, but it's the 60-year-old landowners that take the pill and wake
up. Your show gives them a way to funnel their nerves now that they see the
fiat system for what it is. Keep up the important work.
Wow. Because I'm the winner. Thank you, VCP.
I really love hearing that, too, because I could imagine going through the world
right now, especially in an area as tough as farming.
Not having the hope of Bitcoin. How dreadful would that be?
Dreadful. So, you know, and it really makes so much sense for small business
owners. It makes total sense that farmers would figure it out, too.
Thank you, VCP. That really made my week. Appreciate it. A couple of great boosts
there. Ace Ackerman's here with an adorable row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
And he just says, boost. Thank you, Ace. Always nice to hear from you.
Bafo's back, and he's got himself a Spaceballs boost with 12,345 sats.
So the culmination is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
And Bafo says, Bafo says, accumulation yet price suppressed for months now. How long can this go on?
Even if no BSR, this makes zero sense. Exchange is up to no good. Smoke if you got them.
Okay, Bafo, I'm glad you boosted this in.
Because low-key, one of my conspiracy theories right now is that the exchanges like Bitfinex,
I don't know about Coinbase, probably through some sort of intermediary third
party because there are these companies that literally just exist for the exchanges
to contract with for them to pump and dump the market.
Like they allocate assets to pump something up or they'll sell a bunch of stuff
to dump a market so then the exchange can buy up.
And if I were an exchange and I were expecting a Solana ETF and another Trump
Bitcoin ETF and these things, I'll talk more about that later,
I would be trying to buy up a bunch of cheap sats under 100K,
keep it under 100K as long as possible,
buy up as much as possible, and then when the plebs come along and want to buy
it up at 108, 110, 120 as it goes up, well, you bought at 99 or 98 or 95.
So you're making a great profit margin. You can even afford to pay the intermediary.
I do think there's some sort of that bit going on. I don't know how much of
it's moving the market. I do think that's happening, especially with Bitfinex.
Great to hear from you, Baffo. Thank you.
Mug Daddy's here with 10,000 sats. Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit
lobes. Great show as usual. Thank you, Mug Daddy.
Appreciate the value. It's always nice to hear from everybody,
even if you just want to say thanks.
Silver Chick is here with 4,444 sats. There's coffee in that nebula.
Which was really two rows of ducks.
Thanks for a great show. I sent
you a message on the site with another perspective on the Doge efforts.
Oh, yeah. Thank you for that. I do think that put a good human story behind it. I did read that.
And it's definitely going to be, you know, the federal government is a massive
employer. So that's going to be a story at a huge scale. I really appreciate that.
He says, also, I'm boosting from Breeze and I'm having trouble getting the full
boost amount to go through. Here's another attempt.
I have also had a, or they, it might be a silver chick.
But I got the impression from the email it was the other way around.
But I don't know. Maybe I don't remember correctly, but I appreciate the boost.
And I've also been experimenting some problems.
I'm experimenting and experiencing some problems with breeze.
It's like definitely the larger boost. I'm not quite sure.
Sometimes they go through, I'm having a really hard time figuring out what my
node needs to be paired to in order to get solid boost from breeze.
It's been a struggle fest. And if anybody has any suggestions to make liquidity
and a boost come through with from breeze, you know, please pass through.
I don't know. It's been really frustrating.
I've been trying. So far, it's been minimal success. But thank you.
Appreciate the message and the boost.
Galactic Starfish comes in with 5,000 sats. You're so boost.
Hey, Chris, what's a solid resource I could use to help illustrate why XRP isn't
the answer, but Bitcoin is?
I have people in my life close to me who I'd like to help steer clear of the shitcoin pitfalls.
Anyhow, thanks for the great show. Well, starfish, the fundamental problem is
we have a society that is completely ignorant of what makes good money.
And so what you could do is you could start at the basic five or six things
that make a currency good, and then compare them to Bitcoin and compare them to XRP.
The reality is without understanding what makes something hard money,
you don't understand why something isn't hard money.
And so they're able to sell you and all this other crap. I mean,
XRP lives and dies on the idea that banks are going to want to use that network
to move money between them.
And it also kind of has positioned itself as, you know, the perfect communications
layer when the banks want to roll out a CBDC.
And that just never made sense to me. Why would the banks not just develop their own protocol?
And if you look at all of the CBDC experiments, I don't think any of them are
based on XRP. Could be wrong there, but I don't think so.
Thank you, Galactic Starfish. Good luck with that one. Like I said,
people get Bitcoin at the price they deserve. BitChinares here with Rodux.
Love the show. First time booster. Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Thank you. I was wondering if you ever have any, if you have any insight on
what salt lending does with the Bitcoin they custody when taking out a loan.
Do they rehypothecate the Bitcoin?
I'm considering borrowing a small amount as a trial run to invest in MSTY and
pay interest on the loan with a portion of the dividend. Thoughts?
Okay. Well, they do not rehypothecate on their website. When you go to saltlending.com
slash personal, they say, no rehypothecation.
Borrower collateral is only used to manage their loans.
So if you're not familiar when they rehypothecate, that basically means like
the folks that are lending you fiat, the Bitcoin you use as collateral,
they can use for other stuff. And sometimes they lose it.
Salt says they're not doing that. But, you know, I'd always love some on-chain
proof, but we have to go with what we have. And I'll put a link to their statement.
Now, I'm going to try to discourage you from MSTY.
I won't try to discourage you from MSTR if you want to kind of,
you know, F around and maybe get, you know, some great gains that you could put into Bitcoin.
MSTY, though, you need to really appreciate that, first of all,
it resets every 24 hours.
And so you can easily get wrecked in any kind of sideways chop.
Even if the price isn't like the MSTR price isn't necessarily going down,
if it's just kind of chopping up and down a little bit, MSTY will get wrecked.
Msty is only going to make you money when mstr
is ripping so you got to understand how msty
and this also applies to mstx and these other ones
they have a tricky way that the compounding actually
works and doesn't work for you works against you
and it's really easy to get wrecked and even just a sideways market where with
that if you had say say it just goes sideways for a week you would have made
more money with mstr and you absolutely would have made more money with bitcoin
and what I would just advise you to do is just look at the last couple of years and see,
well, what would I have made if I put that money in Bitcoin?
What would I have made if I put an MSTR?
The reality is, is that Bitcoin is actually less volatile than MSTR.
So you get a lot of the gains because MSTR only goes up really when Bitcoin's going up.
And when Bitcoin's going down, MSTR goes down harder.
And MSTY goes down even harder because it's 2X.
I've looked into this. You need to be really careful. And maybe you have two, and so have fun.
I mean, go for it, man. But just make sure that you understand those things
about it, because it is Rectown if you're not careful.
Nakamoto 6102, thank you for the boost. Nakamoto 6102 comes in with 5,000 sats.
That's not possible. Nothing can do that. Nakamoto did.
USDT on Lightning wouldn't make me a stablecoin user, at least intentionally.
I don't use USDT since I have easy access to dollars.
I don't see the harm in having another network for USDT transactions.
Talking about Tether here, if you don't know.
Sure, Tether is centralized. It's good for users that want Tether to have additional
networks to transact on.
And maybe it'll bring additional funding to build out the Lightning Network.
One thing I'd like to caution, though, is although any stablecoin has regulations
that could impact the Lightning Network. Hmm. Hmm.
Interesting, yeah. Sats will
continue to be the only stablecoin I care about. Thanks for the value.
Well said. Yeah. You know, I think I agree with you. I don't really have a use
for stable coins because I live in the U S outside the U S I could see it.
I could see it a bit more absolutely. Or when traveling or maybe one day,
you know, you instead of having to have points on all these different services
where you buy 10,000 points on X-Box or whatever, maybe you could just use stable coins. Who knows?
Maybe that would be worth something there, but I know I'm not particularly turned
on by the idea of stable coins over lightning.
I do like the idea that people could participate in stable coins without out
requiring Ethereum or Solana or something like that.
So there is there is that.
Thank you, everybody who boosted in. We have the 2,000 sat cutoff to read on
air for time. I got a bunch of other boosts below the 2,000 sat cutoff.
And I really appreciate that. See some of you testing your node.
Others saying it's your favorite pod.
Others of you upset about XRP. All in around, appreciate it.
Not a banger week this week, but our streamers that are out there just streaming
sats really did a heavy lift for us.
44 of you. That's it. Out of, you know, about 10,000 people or plus that'll
listen, 44 of you stream sats.
And I really appreciate it because collectively you stacked 78,031 sats for the show.
When you combine that with the boosters, we got a pretty reasonable,
I mean, it's not cray-cray, but we got a pretty good reasonable 209,144 sats. Good news, everyone.
I'm going to say good news. I mean, it feels a little low for the amount of effort into the show.
But at the same time, you know, every week in and week out, it does start to
get a little hard to continue to support the show. I think that's one of the
things I worry about when it comes to sustainability of a show like this.
But ultimately, now is our time to build what will hopefully be a very bright
future for Jupyter Broadcasting.
You know, we're not talking micro strategy here, but if we could build a Bitcoin
reserve for a podcast network,
that means that we could continue to produce media for years to come potentially
and really have flexibility in how we finance that, what projects we take on, who we get to work with.
And number one, makes our audience the largest, most important customer to the entire thing.
And I just think that model right there, what I just described, could save media.
I think it could fundamentally save media.
It's not going to save all media, but I think there's a lot of independent media
and people that are forward-looking and thinking that it could.
And I just, I'm very excited about the potential. So thank you everybody who participates.
You can boost the show using something like Fountain FM and grab sats with Strike
or Cash App or River or Bitcoin Well or whatever you please.
And then you can boost them in with a podcasting 2.0 app. Those are listed at podcastapps.com.
Lots of nice reasons to get a new podcast app too. Transcripts,
chapters, all kinds of stuff in there. Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate it.
Okay, some important updates. Let's start with the Tornado Cash developer situation.
Good news is the Tornado Cash developer, Roman Storm, is petitioning the U.S.
Supreme Court to block an order requiring him to reveal his defense strategy to the government.
And that has a real shot, at least according to The Rage.
I'll link to the show notes. Meanwhile, Alex Pervetsev, I'm definitely getting
that wrong, was released from detention on Friday in the Netherlands under the
condition that he submit to electronic monitoring.
Now, Alex, or Alexei, he was sentenced to 64 months in the Netherlands for writing
the Tornado Cash mixing service that runs on Ethereum, the smart contract code.
And his defense is filing an appeal. I mean, it's nice to see him out.
He doesn't need to rot in there, right? I feel like the tone is slightly shifting
in the Trinocash developer case, but not really where we need it yet.
So I'm keeping an eye on it.
I don't have great news to report there, but those seem like semi-positive developments.
So guys, take the win when you can get one.
How about this one? Trump Media to launch a Bitcoin ETF this year.
Donald Trump's media company, Trump Media and Technology Group,
TMTG. No, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Announced plans to launch three ETFs under the Truth.Fi brand,
including the Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus ETF and the Truth.Fi Made in America ETF
and Truth.Fi Energy Independence ETF.
So the president of the United States, his company, not him personally,
but his company plans to launch Bitcoin ETF this year. And you're not bullish?
Albi has released albi go and they continue
to just produce amazing bits of software over
there the hub is in a really good spot and albi
go is a fantastic companion and now they've
introduced push notifications when you receive or
send sats they also support pay zero amount
invoices updated ln addresses to just
help the flow around that to help avoid confusion and
they fixed alert titles being truncated and updated in transaction icon color
stuff too so just small things in there but i think the big one would be the
push notifications if i could pass on a feature request i've already heard people
on our team here at jb ask to set a threshold on the notifications so you know
three sats maybe you don't need a notification on that,
Maybe a bit more. You could set a threshold. That'd be pretty nice.
That's one feature request.
I'm just going to make publicly right now because that's what I get to do with a podcast.
Fold is launching a Bitcoin rewards credit card. I teased about this a little bit earlier.
Waiting list only right now. I will put a link to that waiting list in the show
notes. And here's how it kind of breaks down.
If you're a Fold Plus member, which
I am, you receive 2% back in Bitcoin transactions and 250 in bonuses.
2% back in every transaction. You go buy something, you get 2% back.
If you don't have Fold Plus, which does have like a $9 a month or something
member fee, if you're not a Fold Plus member, if you're just a standard Fold
user, then you're going to get 1.5% back in sats and 100 in bonuses on this credit card.
Fold aims to compete with traditional mileage reward type credit card programs.
And the company is also preparing to list on NASDAQ, reporting that they hold over 1,000 Bitcoin.
Fold currently has around 600,000 active users who have earned approximately 75 million U.S.
Dollars in Bitcoin rewards.
Holy crap. Well, good for Fold. The more I use it, the more I am a fan.
You know, they are limited by the traditional banking system in some ways, but it's refreshing.
And I like the idea that they've got 1,000 Bitcoin on the balance sheet,
too. That makes me feel pretty good about them.
Music.
Now, I'm generally pretty critical of most of the mainstream financial analysts
out there, but I have been very impressed by Tom Lee.
He's got a track record and receipts. He seems to call it time after time.
And he pointed out something to me that just seems like a no-brainer and the
argument about Bitcoin. Is it tulips?
Is it a bubble? Or is it sticking around forever?
This clip, I think, is a banger from Tom Lee because it essentially just ends that debate. Totally.
I think that it's probably better to just observe a few things.
One is Bitcoin has now been around for 15 years and there has not been a Bitcoin 2.0.
So there's no crypto 2.0. Bitcoin is the surviving chain and bitcoin has become
a two trillion dollar asset which never in history financial history has anything
reached two trillion dollars and then disappeared so we're not,
it's a different argument if it was a hundred billion dollars okay the third
is the u.s government is reiterated its commitment to make bitcoin a strategic reserve asset,
that's not bad for the price of bitcoin so if someone has is watching this and
said well they They don't understand Bitcoin, so they decide not to own it.
It's a catastrophic way to look at market.
Music.
Look at the state of the network before I scoot. This episode is wrapping up
at block height 883,463.
Looking good.
The price right now is hovering around 96,780 U.S.
Greenbacks, which means our sats per dollar is hovering at 1,033 sats to one U.S. greenback.
We're down 11.3% from our all-time high, which was on January 19th, 23 days ago, at 109,160.
But you know, looking at the network, I'm seeing 21,851 nodes.
I think we could get that to 22.
I think we could get that to 22 in the next couple of weeks. Go deploy your node.
When I look out there, what I see is 70% of Bitcoin is in the hands of individuals.
And if the governments and the states, if they're going to start stacking reserves,
they're going to have to buy that coin from those individuals.
State of the Bitcoin network is very strong. Thank you for listening this week.
Links are over at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
Boost in with what you'd like to see or hear from the show if you thought I
missed something or have a different take.
And of course, all of the questions. I always love hearing your feedback on that.
And don't worry if you're a couple of episodes behind. You can always boost
in and I don't mind bringing up an old topic. If I ask, I'm interested.
And you're more than welcome to chime in.
Now, last week, we did it again.
Neon Neverminds was pushed to the number one spot on the index value-for-value
chart thanks to you boosting in while the song was playing.
So, as you know, these value-for-value tracks, they're made possible by direct
support by the listener, and 95% of your boost goes directly to the artist.
This week, let's see if we can do it for Henry Invisible. This is Get It Right. Thank you.
Music.