Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 101.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, and jupiterbroadcasting.com.
Okay, so I thought this was going to be a tricky one.
You know, I'm in full prep mode for LinuxFest Northwest, and I'm running around,
getting ready, looking at what I can steal from the studio to make our live show possible.
I think I can't do a show this week.
There's no way I'm going to be able to follow what's going on.
I'm too busy. Oh, no, no, no, no.
I should have known better. When you have a global asset like Bitcoin,
there's always something that impacts it, especially when all of the systems
around Bitcoin are changing so much.
And this week, the news, well, it just was really obvious because the big systems
are changing and the impact on Bitcoin already seems to be positive.
As I record right now, we just crossed 78,000 U.S. greenbacks for one Bitcoin.
And the question is, well, what's going on? Well, this is what's going on.
There's so many questions to talk to you about, to ask you about,
to be honest with you. And I just want to name a couple of them.
And we'll look forward to hearing more on these topics. I will not have enough
time to delve into some of the most important issues facing our country.
I'll take... I feel you, brother. So this is Chairman Scott.
And this is at Kevin Warsh's hearing for...
It's confirmation hearing. There we go. I was looking for the word confirmation.
And I want to play this clip because I watched the whole thing. And...
What Scott does here, Tim Scott, he goes through kind of like a litany,
boom, boom, boom, of issues that are just essentially going to be brought up
over and over again through the hearing. So we really only have to play this one clip.
Two of those issues and focus my time. I'm sure my colleagues on either side
will have a conversation with you and ask questions about AI.
The AI future is going to have massive impact on where we go as a nation.
AI came up about, I would say, almost one out of every three or four questions
that were asked to Kevin Warsh to the possible new Fed chair.
They're asking the new Fed chair about AI, and I'll get to why I think that is.
It came up a lot. Mythos specifically came up a couple of times and vulnerabilities
and all of that. But AI came up a lot.
It's got a massive impact on your dual mandate as it relates to full employment.
Our production may go up while our employment stays flat. So this is a really
important question that at some point we should delve into.
I also think that someone should spend some time talking about our balance sheet.
We have nearly a $7 trillion balance sheet at the Federal Reserve.
Too much attention has been paid to your balance sheet, and not enough attention
has been paid to the nation's balance sheet.
I think it's really important for us to dig into that issue as well.
Digital assets the future of finance in
the world seems to have a major component of it
being artificial being a digital assets the
market structure legislation we don't want your comment on but the
important role of of the blockchain in the future
is another really important part of the future yeah
and that will come up our economy i will spend some time uh-huh talking about
affordability oh and the importance uh-huh of the independence of the fed okay
one of the One of the things I've appreciated about your previous comments is
the importance you've placed on the dual mandate, stable prices.
Typically comes through the
form of interest rate changes, as well as promoting maximum employment.
I think those two will become more challenging in the current environment.
One, obviously, the second one being the AI and the future of full employment. Oh, there it is again.
You know, the dual mandate is, to me, it just feels like the equivalent of I
have two favorite wives.
I've got two wives. They're both my favorite, and I love them very much.
You've criticized the Federal Reserve for getting too big, mismanaging inflation.
I'm sure you know the definition of transitory, so I won't ask you,
but I've got a feeling you know it.
Some of your predecessors did not. Talk about tainting a word forever now.
No future Fed chairman can ever say transitory.
Compromising the independence of the Fed. I think we should spend more time.
On finance, less time on climate change, on politics, on who is or who's not in charge.
The one thing that would be fun if this is a video podcast is you could see
just out of frame a little bit. Elizabeth Warren is nearly spinning in her chair.
And the reason why I say that is because she just rotates into frame for a moment
and then rotates back out of frame like half her body.
I don't know what she's doing, but she ain't just sitting there listening.
I think you would agree on those issues, though I will not ask you.
I will ask you, however, that under your leadership, how will you steer the
Federal Reserve to address the real life issues of affordability is my first question.
And my second question will be about how do you make sure that the Federal Reserve
stays out of the lane of external influences?
All right, so that'll come up. And it's, you know, the pretty canned answers to that.
There's a couple of things that are probably more relevant to our show,
and that would be digital assets and CBDCs.
If the digital assets should be incorporated into our financial industry,
so Americans have new investment opportunities and consumer protections.
That was Senator Lummis, as in Hummus, from Wyoming.
Near the end of her tenure, actually. Senator, digital assets are already part
of the fabric of our financial services industry in the United States. Yes.
Thanks, Mr. Walsh. So that was a pretty short answer, but his answer is yes.
Yes to digital assets. No to CBDCs. Now, AI came up a lot.
And Senator Kennedy is a little skeptical of all of the hype around AI.
Because I'm about to run out of my parliamentary inquiry time.
I've heard your argument the
last few months about artificial intelligence has made us so productive.
Labor so productive that companies don't have to raise prices.
Therefore, inflation isn't isn't a problem.
Therefore, rates can be cut.
And this is why AI came up. And I have to give them credit.
The senators were actually perceptive on this issue, perhaps one of the few
issues that they were actually perceptive on.
And that is it's the perfect excuse to PAMP.
AI is being positioned as a massive deflationary force, a massive force of layoffs
and optimizations in businesses.
That's essentially the nut of the entire story. And so if that story is to be
true, and Warsh seems to be a big believer in AI and AI's potential,
then one could come to the conclusion that it justifies cutting rates.
Because if you forward look into the economy with the impacts of AI,
we're going to have a massive economic slide.
We're going to have deflation at economic levels that we haven't seen probably
forever because AI is so powerful, so efficient, so smart, whatever they want to tell us. Dangerous.
And if you believe these things, even if you believe some of it,
it seems to me pretty justifiable, especially if you're the Fed chair and you
believe these things, to push for cutting rates.
You get a couple other people on the board that agree with you.
Bob's your uncle. You got rate cut justification even going into current inflation.
And they'll use the term, we're looking past inflation. We're going to look at the impact of AI.
And we're going to cut now before we find ourselves in a deflationary spiral
that just blows up the entire Ponzi scheme. So we've got to cut rates.
And I've got to give it to Kennedy and other senators. This is why AI came up so much.
They can see where this is going. They realize already that AI is going to be
cooked up as a justification to cut rates going into higher inflation.
And so they're asking now. prices.
Therefore, inflation isn't a problem. Therefore, rates can be cut.
Do you really believe that right now?
No, that is not how I would characterize the story on AI.
Okay. But you've said what I just said, haven't you? I've said that this is
the most disruptive moment in modern economic history in the U.S. and the world.
I've said that artificial intelligence, AI.
Let me stop you because the chair is going to cut me off.
Here's my worry that a lot of this stuff about artificial intelligence making
us more productive is a bunch of hype by people who want to sell stock in an IPO.
Okay, I'd be careful there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll get to my five minutes in a little bit.
You come back about midnight, sir. We'll go ahead start all over again brand
new day sir brand new day thank you for your patience aren't they fun,
you know he's he's it's the funny thing is is he's right he's right to a degree
this is all about an ipo some of the maybe the largest ipos in history blah
blah blah blah and there's all these incentives lining up you got the administration's
incentives they want to see a pamp.
And you've got all the tech people that have invested all this money,
all this pre-IPO money, that are just waiting to dump on retail.
SpaceX IPO, going to be one of the greatest retail dumps in history.
Probably an anthropic and open AI IPO as well as well. Going to be just incredible
retail exit strategies. Really something.
So let's get back to digital assets. And, well, I have maybe one more.
One more. OK, I'm going to play one more worse clip for you.
So the Fed has been plagued by deeply disturbing ethics scandals in recent years.
This is your good friend, Elizabeth Warren, and she has no credibility when
it comes to the federal chair because she just advocates for whatever is the
opposite of the current administration's policy.
You can find clips of her advocating for exact 180 direction policies just months apart.
And at one point, you know, at one time she'll be talking about the Fed chair
as a hero that's saving people. The next part, he's the villain.
He's stealing from the poor. She has no credibility on any of this topic.
Involving at least six Fed officials. So it's critical that the next chair have
no financial conflicts, none.
You have more than $100 million in investments that you have refused to disclose
to ethics officials and to the public.
So he, this is, I mean, she's got him here. So what he's got is this financial
disclosure, which I think I linked in last week's show notes.
That has a lot of stuff on there, including we can see some of his crypto holdings.
He's invested in a lightning company.
I don't, you know, whatever.
But then there is sort of this gray area of funds that he hasn't really gone
into detail about that is sort of submanaged that he doesn't have to legally completely disclose.
And I think that's what she's referring to here. Now, I think now I think he
has committed to somehow divesting into like and then going into treasuries
or something like that. I don't know exactly.
But, you know, this is what's fun about the Warren clip is that she did have
some staff do some research here.
So let me ask, do the Juggernaut Fund or the THSDFS LLC invest in any companies
affiliated with President Trump or his family,
companies that have facilitated money laundering,
Chinese-controlled companies, or financing vehicles established by Jeffrey Epstein?
Senator Warren, thank you. So let me first share a point of agreement with you.
The Fed has two tools. One is its monetary policy, and the second is its credibility.
And the scandals that you talked about, the ethics problems you talked about,
went to the core of the credibility that has hurt the Fed. Could you answer
my question, please? I ask.
You have $100 million in undisclosed assets.
And what I'm asking is, are any of those with this outfit that invests in.
Companies affiliated with President Trump or his family, companies that have
facilitated money laundering, Chinese-controlled companies, or financing vehicles
set up by Jeffrey Epstein. It's a yes or no question.
Senator, I have worked tirelessly with the ethics officials at the Office of
Government Ethics. Yes, and you have not revealed $100 million in assets.
And have agreed, Senator, to sell all of my financial assets,
including the Duquesne assets.
Are you refusing to tell us,
If you have investments, for example, in vehicles set up to advance Jeffrey
Epstein, is that what you're telling us? You just won't tell us?
Senator, what I'm telling you is that those assets that you represent as juggernaut
will be sold if I'm confirmed before
I take office and sign the oath of office. Let me follow up on that.
Will you at least disclose how you plan to disclose and divest these secret assets?
I'm sure you understand that the public might question your motives if, for example,
billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, who you're honored in your opening statement,
and who makes a living guessing what the Fed will do next, cuts you a massive
check for $100 million as you take the oath of office to become the new Federal Reserve chair.
If old Stan there is making a living guessing what the Fed will do next,
you could probably say that about most of us.
Senator, as you know, it sounds like your fight might not be with me,
but the Office of Government Ethics, I have come to full agreement with them
and have agreed to divest all of those assets.
I'm asking you a very straightforward question, Mr. Walsh. Before I take the oath of office.
And that is, will you disclose how you divest those assets? or will you just
collect a check for $100 million from someone whose whole business is betting on what the Fed will do?
As I said to the ethics officials at the Federal Reserve and the Office of Government
Ethics, and they agreed, I would be redeeming my assets before I take office.
So Donald Trump has made clear that he does not want an independent Fed.
In fact, he has said, and I quote.
Anybody that disagrees with me will never be Fed chairman.
And he's made clear that you are his sock puppet, saying last week that interest
rates will drop, quote, when Kevin gets in. Yeah, I think they do.
Not when economic conditions change, we'll get lower rates.
Not when the economy needs it. Nope. He said, when my guy, Kevin Warsh,
is in there, we'll get the interest rates that I, Donald Trump, want.
Now, there's two things about this. one that is reporting
of a quote so you know it depends on the sourcing but
it could be true i would it sounds like something trump would say you can
say that and not have
had a conversation with the guy actually about the rate cuts you
know what i mean you can you can
kind of know how a guy's leaning and you pick him based on that but i've played
clips for you before this wasn't trump's first or second pick worse is like
his third pick and he's referred to him as well he's a guy from like central
casting which is good and bad you could read that multiple ways.
And i think you could interpret trump's statements also as him signaling to
kevin his expectations but you know you can interpret it multiple ways which
is what liz is doing here so independence takes courage let's check out your
independence and your courage we'll start easy Mr.
Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
Um, uh, we try to keep politics, if I'm confirmed, out of the federalism. I'm just asking you.
Yeah, you know, this is kind of, she is doing something here that is kind of
dirty, if you understand that they're really not supposed to get into politics,
and then she just keeps trying to drag them back into politics.
Not that Trump isn't helping.
As Worsh was setting up to go sit down in front of the cameras,
in front of those senators, Donald Trump called in to CNBC, and,
um, well, he said this about Kevin live on the air.
Too late. It's just too late. Oh, Chris, talking about J-Pow at first.
It was too late, except when it came to before the election,
but that didn't quite work out well for him.
So the answer is I want Kevin. I think Kevin's great. He's really central casting
in a true sense. I think he's going to do a great job.
I've been in favor of interest rate rises to stop inflation.
I think it sort of is effective.
But there's one thing, and nobody ever talks about it but me,
unfortunately, so I'm sure it's not correct.
But I think it is. we should have the lowest interest rate in the world.
When I was a young guy growing up, we always had the lowest interest rate worldwide. We always did.
And then 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it started where Switzerland and other
people had low rates. I don't know. Maybe it was actually like 1971.
I just had a thing with, if you take a look at some of the, you know,
let's call them like elite countries. They're only elite because we allow them
to walk away with $30 billion and $40 billion a year. But I don't do that so much anymore.
I sort of put a clamp on that with the tariffs and charges that we charge them.
All right, so that's his statement. Sort of, I mean, it's a thing.
I mean, they're going to ask him and he's going to answer. But that's happening
as Warsh is sitting down.
I do think that brought a little bit extra heat on Warsh during the nomination,
and including, like, are you really truly going to be independent, yada, yada, yada.
I'm committed to ensuring that the conduct of monetary policy remains strictly independent.
Equally committed to work with the administration and Congress on non-monetary
matters that are part of the Fed's remit, and I commit myself to accountability.
Finally, I'll just say this, Mr. Chairman. Milton Friedman had a phrase that always stayed with me.
He always worried about government officials that lured and hung around with
what he called the tyranny of the status quo.
Status quo practices and policies are especially harmful when the world is changing this fast.
If confirmed as chairman, I will be faithful to the Constitution,
to the Federal Reserve Act, and to the very best of the Fed's traditions.
I believe a reform-oriented Fed can make a real difference to the American people.
And if confirmed, I will seek to create an environment in which the best people
do their best work. He also used the term policy regime change.
I think that means rate cuts. I'm not sure, but it sounds like rate cuts to
me. I want to know what you think.
Tell me, boost in, support the show. So do you think that, get your prediction
now, is Worsh going to cut rates or is he going to end up in a battle with Trump?
Because that's going to be what it is, it's one of the two.
And if he cuts rates, you've got to imagine that's probably going to make Bitcoin
pump, all assets pump, including Bitcoin.
I could actually see a fight, you know, maybe more so for show,
over something that matters.
But the exact kind of thing we all forget about in three months,
I swear they're just great at that.
You know a little worse flex i don't know what do you think or does he just
get right to cutting that could be as well boost in support the show and get
your prediction on the record we'll see where this goes.
Well, Bitcoin has a new salesman this week, and it might not be who you're expecting.
It's a former Treasury Secretary.
It's really something. Everything that's been happening around the Fed has an
impact on the dollar confidence in the market.
And then you combine that with $39 trillion in debt for the U.S.
And no signs of any attempt to clean up our act at all, it's becoming obvious
that this system is actually quite fragile, especially when you see conflicts
that can lead to rapid de-dollarization in trade for some particular areas that
have been traditionally dominated by dollar,
it makes people notice, like former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
He served as the 74th U.S. Treasury Secretary under President George W.
Bush, and he came out and had a very notable and unusual warning,
especially for somebody in his position, just this week.
This crisis is different, right? Right.
If when you hit the wall and you're trying to issue treasuries and the Fed is
the only buyer and the prices of the treasuries are going down,
interest rates are up, that's a dangerous thing.
And so I what the thing I am talking about now is we know when people say,
when are you going to hit the wall?
I obviously don't know. It's impossible to know.
But the law of economic gravity, you're not going to know that.
So and when we hit it, it will be vicious. So we have to prepare for that eventuality.
And I think we need an emergency break the glass plan, which is targeted and short term on the shelf.
So it's ready to go when we hit the wall.
What he expands on is that the lessons he learned in the 2008 great financial crisis collapse.
And he was, I guess, considered people considered at the time he did a pretty
good job with the situation he was dealt. Thank you.
He's like, the things I learned is we needed to have something kind of ready
to go. We need to have plans sort of sorted out and not be making it up there in the moment.
And he thinks we're at that moment now. Now, I don't know if he's right or not.
But when somebody like him goes out there and says that, well,
he ends up selling Bitcoin and other hard assets.
And it's not just that, oh, one old guy who used to work in the Bush administration
is saying, go out there and get hard assets.
It's a chorus of people that speak to investors saying it now.
Jeffs at BlackRock, Jay Jacobs.
Okay, first, establish your long-term view of crypto.
Well, Bitcoin in particular is this non-sovereign global decentralized asset
that can really provide value to people's portfolios in small doses as a unique
asset, sort of like how gold doesn't behave like stocks or bonds.
Bitcoin is driven by its own rules and its own drivers, predominantly,
which is greater geopolitical or inflation risk. This is Jay Jacobs.
This is BlackRock's U.S. head of equities and ETFs.
And the reason they're having him on Fox Business is because the audience wants
to know what they can invest in when the stock market keeps getting hit by macro conflicts.
Frankly, we live in a world where these are prevalent risks around the economy,
where people want to hedge that with different assets. Isn't it interesting? It used to be fringe.
And now, thanks very much in part to Larry Fink, your boss, and iShares coming
out with the iBit, this is more than two years ago now, that it really became
this opportunity for people to understand it.
Are you saying now that Bitcoin and crypto are long-term investments?
I think you have to look at it through a long-term lens because it's...
It only took them how long? It only took them how long to figure it out?
A digitally provably scarce asset. Could it be a long-term investment?
You know, that's a crazy idea.
Are long-term investments. I think you have to look at it through a long-term
lens because it's volatile.
Because we see over weeks, months, it can be up and down. People are still trying
to figure out what the value of this asset is.
But if you zoom out and take a long-term view of the role it can play in a portfolio,
it can really be one of those diversifiers that behaves unique from stocks and bonds.
When somebody who is Bitcoin curious comes out and says to you, Jay, what is the value?
One minute in October, it's $126,000.
Today, it's $76,000.
I laugh, but this is actually a good conversation for, you know, their audience to hear.
You have to look at it in the context of a broader portfolio.
We can't put a specific price target on it on a given moment.
It really has to do with how much do people need this asset that can behave
uniquely, that can be a geopolitical hedge. That's constantly changing around the world.
I mean, think about the timing of this, right? You've got boomers and others
that are watching these business channels, concerned about their portfolios,
concerned about their wealth, concerned about, you know, the Iran conflict.
And they're watching this and these people are telling them this is an asset
to hedge against that. The timing, I mean, A, it's impressive.
You got Jay Jacobs here from BlackRock. It's impressive he's saying these things
and he's correct. Like he's getting it right.
That itself is actually notable. But that the timing of it, man,
the timing of it is what is just so critical. How much do people need this asset
that can behave uniquely, that can be a geopolitical hedge?
That's constantly changing around the world. When you see more currency debasement,
when you see rising government debts, when you see that more people want to
move assets across borders, that's going to increase the value of something like Bitcoin.
And so in this world, we see that as a structural trend that's growing.
But minute by minute, that demand and supply is going to change.
Let's talk in this last minute and a half about... Oh, but it's volatile.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I got to bring up volatility.
So $9 trillion Charles Schwab CEO says the platform has been experimenting with
Bitcoin trading with their staff internally.
And now they're about to flip that live for their customers.
Well, we rolled it out to employees to test it and pilot it,
and our employees are loving the experience and actively trading on Schwab.com today with crypto.
And we'll launch it out. We'll launch it to clients in the coming weeks.
Couldn't be more excited about that. In terms of the target client,
I think it's existing clients at Schwab that want to hold crypto.
They're already active in crypto through exchange traded products today,
and they want to hold spot crypto. So we also are excited about the fact that
many of our clients have built crypto positions outside the firm.
Oh, I bet you're really excited about that. Yeah, I bet you love that.
We're excited about the fact that many of our clients have built crypto positions
outside the firm, and they've been asking to be able to hold it at Schwab at
the institution they trust and the institution where they keep the rest of their assets.
Let me do a little business speak translation. We realized that by playing it
safe, we let somebody else scoop up a whole bunch of our customers and their business.
And that business seems to be making really good money. And now we are going
to fight like hell to try to get those customers back because we really missed
the window. But we're going to try and it's available now for you.
So to have their financial life in one place is attractive to them.
And we can't wait to make that happen when we open it to them in the coming weeks. So there you go.
You got BlackRock on Fox Biz. You got Charles Schwab on CNBC saying, let's go.
And then the the broader context of the Strait of Hormuz and passage at one
point saying, well, you can pay in stable coins or Bitcoin.
That's also what's playing into all of this, because it's like this for them,
even though it's it's avoiding sanctions and all of these things,
it's an indication that maybe there's actually a currency here as well.
Second, they're said to be paid to Iran in Chinese yuan or crypto.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute says bad actors are usually paying with stable coins.
Yeah, not that, not the Yiwan, no, not the Yiwan, but bad actors are using crypto.
It'd be fine if they were using the Yiwan.
And U.S. authorities are cutting them off. Watch.
Stable coins can't be confiscated, but they can be frozen.
So if you're a stable coin user who's working with the Iranian regime,
Your wallet can be identified if you don't practice good operational security
and Treasury can sanction you and make it so your stable coins are moot.
That runs in contrast to Bitcoin, where you can identify what illicit actors
are using Bitcoin, but you can't freeze somebody's Bitcoin in the same way you
can freeze somebody's stable coin.
And that is an unintended consequence.
Is that a consequence? Is that what it is? You see, if we were talking about
diamonds or gold, would that would it be a consequence? Would that be?
But I think it's I think it's actually a notable and important distinction for
the general public to understand.
Right. Stable coins are essentially a CBDC.
They can stop payment. They can seize them. They can trace them.
They got everything. And honestly, if they think all Bitcoin transactions are totally traceable,
That's probably a safer default, even if it's not 100 percent true,
if there are ways to avoid traceability.
I think it's a good thing for newbies to consider that. They should assume their
transactions are transparent just so that way they operate safely.
And I think it's probably going to be less reactionary if the Congress critters
and the policymakers and the commentators all think that Bitcoin's transactions
are 100 percent transparent.
They're pseudo anonymous, right?
You can eventually identify somebody through a lot of work, and there are methods
and means, some we have talked about on the show before, to avoid detection.
But I actually think it's a
better default if everybody else just thinks Bitcoin is 100% transparent.
And the reason I bring that up is because I know there's some Monero stands
out there that completely disagree with me. So go ahead, boost in and let me know what you think.
But I think it's a better default if the whole world just thought every single
transaction could be traced directly to you.
Because I don't think that's what people are buying. They're not buying Bitcoin
to go out and buy a bunch of Fent or weapons or whatever it is.
They're buying Bitcoin to invest and save for their family.
Hey, you can support the show just by doing what you do. If you want to buy
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Ask not what your podcast can boost for you, but what you can boost for your podcast.
All right, let's get to this week's supporters. And we start with our baller,
Booster, who is Bitcoin Lizard.
He's back with 101,000 sats.
Bitcoin Lizard writes, happy belated 100. To celebrate 100 episodes,
I'd love to hear from Bitcoin, Dad. I know. I was just talking to the wife about that, too.
I should hit him up on Matrix, if he's still on Matrix. If you really want to
go crazy, you should step into the Wayback Machine and check on Alan and Drew from Plan B.
Yeah, I hope, not Editor Drew, but a different Drew. I hope he stuck with Bitcoin
to find out their current thoughts. Thank you so much for the great show.
Don't boost often, but I'm always listening and streaming those stats.
Thank you, Lizard. I really do appreciate that. Make it so. You are our baller
booster this week. Thank you, sir.
Northern Hoddle is here with 34,543 Satoshis.
Congrats on 100, and I appreciate the work. Thank you, and I appreciate the
value. Okay, Groovy is here with 30,000 sats.
No message, just value. Army Guy is here with 26,500 sats.
Hello, sir. Been down for a few weeks with a full mouth reconstruction surgery.
Oh, my God. That's my worst case fear.
Oh, my God. So I listened to 98, 99, and 100 back to back. I wanted to send
a bit of value and say, I hope you keep going.
Definitely my favorite podcast is a truck driver and one I recommend anyone
new to Bitcoin. As far as Bitcoin being an asset versus money, I think it could be both.
For me, I have a retirement plan with a mountain of Bitcoin,
but I also have Bitcoin I boost with and use for a rare Bitcoin merchant.
I always love the show, and I hope you continue to keep up the great work.
Much love from Southern Texas.
Also, crazy boost for episode 100. You deserve it, sir. Well, wow, thank you.
I really appreciate that. And my question to you, Army Guy, is do you ever look
at the BTC map when you're out there driving around? And have you ever stopped somewhere?
I mean, I got to imagine it's tricky, right? Because it's got to accommodate
the truck and tractor and the tractor and the trailer. I guess is that the terminology?
And then you've got to like park it somewhere and go in. So I bet that doesn't happen often.
But I'd be curious if you're on the road if you've ever if you ever come across
it on the BTC map and just go in and spend some sats. Thanks,
Army Guy. It's nice to hear from you.
Fat Bean is here with 21,000 sats. It's a long, point, 21 gigawatts.
I want to boost more often, but money has been tight.
However, I recently switched jobs and will most likely more than double my income,
and a lot of that is due to Linux and the self-hosted knowledge that I've grown
over the past years while listening to your shows.
This podcast has also made me push harder into holding more Bitcoin than ever before.
Yeah, Fat Bean, that's great. Thank you. Coming in hot with the boost. I like that.
Thank you for the 21,000 sats, and glad to hear you got a new gig.
That sounds awesome, man. Congratulations.
OB comes in with 21,000 cents.
I've heard many that know Saylor personally guess that he's actually far more
of a revolutionary than he appears.
And his message is just carefully curated for the powers that be. And I agree.
Yeah, I asked if he was downplaying Bitcoin on purpose.
I know he's like part of like some Anne Ryan society or something like that. Anne Ryan or...
I'm trying to remember the name of it now. But, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.
He could be intentionally playing down the currency aspect, just not to spook people.
I don't know if I like that more or less. That's kind of like a weird 4D chess
manipulation kind of a thing, Obi, if what you're saying is true.
I suspect it might be. I suspect it might be.
Vince Nation comes in with 20,000 sats. Hands down, the best Bitcoin cast out
there. Thanks for all your great work. Well, thank you.
Ha. Thank you. Appreciate you.
Ripcord comes in with 6,666 sats. The traders love the vol. Congrats on 100.
Keep them coming. Well, all right.
I will. You make me want to be a better man. Dude comes in with 9,666 sats. It's over 9,000!
Of course, sailors underselling the monetary aspects of Bitcoin.
Earlier in the episode, you heard Rubio mention the loss of ability to sanction
other currencies. The last thing Sailor needs is a regulatory resistance to his stacking strategy.
Thus, he downplays those properties to an extreme.
Woo, that is a big game. And I think you guys might be right.
I mean, think about that. Think about the level he's playing at there and the money.
I mean, that's the kind of ass that eventually gets your stuff seized,
doesn't it? I don't know. Thanks, dude, though. I think you might be right.
I'm sure it's just something that's a strategy.
Wow. Huh. That makes me think. All right. Ace Ackerman's back with a row of duckles.
Oh, look at those ducks. Glad to hear Twibble continue with his great coverage
of Bitcoin news. Should at least go to episode 333. Oh.
All right. Yeah, well, 21, I was going to say 21,000, but that's a lot. That's a lot.
Thanks, Ace. Appreciate it. Code 27 is here with 5,000 sats.
No mess, it's just value. And then Gene Bean is here with 7,777 sats.
Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit loops.
I'm 100% behind you doing the show you prepped for. For what it's worth,
I love Linux Action News. That was super short.
Remind you that quality isn't tied to show length. Oh yeah, sure.
You know, it's more about...
Things that I know happened that I didn't get a chance to talk about. You know what I mean?
Like a thing that I expect you would want to hear about that I didn't get a
chance to prep. That's probably what I should have. I should have explained it.
A tight news update with additional content and reading boosts will always be awesome.
Analogous to when you pre-recorded love. Thanks for all you do.
Thank you, Gene. Always good to hear from you. Paranoid Coders here with 4,000 sats.
No message, just value, though. Kiwi Bitcoin Guides here with 4,567 sats. This is a tasty burger.
I enjoyed episode 100 a lot. Happy to hear Twib will keep going.
Don't know where my week would be without my Twib Thursday. I wanted to ask you a question.
Imagine you had a team of five humans or agents working on Twib full time.
What would you want them to do? And what would your vision of Twib be?
What would it look like? What would you wish Twib had right now?
Some food for thought. Oh, geez, that's a big question.
Oh, man. I mean, I definitely would love a the first thing that came to me.
I still want to do more investigative reporting around mining.
And I need some help there, I'd love to have somebody who's really a mining
industry expert because it is such its own niche.
So I think that's an area that could benefit the show, even if it wasn't a huge
area of the show covered.
And it is one of the reasons I'm interested in eventually us having a community
mining pool just so that we all get a little experience and I get a little more
hands-on experience because it's been a decade plus since I've mined Bitcoin.
So it's time to try again.
Just to get re-familiarized with the terms and the technology and the software, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that's an area. I would love to also be able to go to cover a couple of events a year.
Not a lot. I don't want to do like all the big flashy stuff,
but I do think there's a few high signal events, sort of like there's a few
high signal Linux events that give me a bunch of insights and connections and
networking and relationships. So I'd like to build that out.
I'd really like to have a swag person on the team because I think we could have
a little bit more sustainable income coming into the show outside of just boosts,
which could be something like swag or memberships. you know somebody helps me
expand the membership program that could be good too those are things that's
not the top of my head kiwi.
Um, I mean, yeah, the news prep and stuff that really kind of needs to be me
because it needs, I need to be the one ingesting the material coming up with
the, with, with the, uh, the, the ideas, the hype, whatever you want to call it. Right.
That's sort of, you can't really externalize that. I think the show would be a lot worse if I did.
Uh, but there are a lot of other areas that would probably get filled out pretty quickly.
Swag store would be cool. Wouldn't it? Just a few things that rotate from time
to time. I don't know. I need more shirts. That's for sure.
Thanks for making me think, Kiwi. Appreciate the boost.
And now I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the week, I bet.
Well, I'll be dipped. Yeah, I think it's just one of those, that's a question that sticks with me.
It's like, what would I do if I had ultimate budget? What would I do?
Undeffable's here with 10,000 sats.
Undead fable, not undeffable. That's what I get for reading from across the room.
10,000 sats to say thank you for episode 100 so far, and hopefully many more
to come. Your insight and knowledge into Bitcoin is always welcome. I learn a lot each week.
Always looking forward to the next episode. Keep up the good work.
Well, thank you, Undead. Appreciate that.
Nice, Titan. To the point. Thank you, sir. Nice to hear from you.
Nakamoto 6102. Back with 3,500 sats. Thank you for the value.
Thank you for the value, Nakamoto.
Thank you. And Hodler comes in to round us out with 2,100 sats.
Boost! Just says boost!
Thank you, everybody. Also, thanks to everybody below the 2,000 sat cutoff.
I see you, Chris21million, and others out there that had nice notes in there.
Ah, Faraday, good to see you in there, too. I'm just scrolling through the list
right now. But shout out to a good handful of you below the 2,000 sat cutoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nice little batch there. Thank you, everybody. Plus, our sat streamer.
Shout out to our sat streamers.
31 of you sent in 80,261 sat. So you guys, collectively, as our sat streamers,
would be like our number two baller this week.
I hoard that which your kind covet. Thank you very much. Appreciate that,
sat streamers. When you combine that with our boosters, 101 had a really good showing.
A grand total of 421,262 sats.
Everybody who supports this show, it is a value for value production.
I put it out there for free with no advertising, hoping that if you get a little
value from it, you send it back to the show. And a boost is a great way to do that.
It's a great use case for the Lightning Network, and you get your message read on the show.
I have some plans for the membership program through Fountain FM.
And, of course, you can support this show and all the shows that you put it
up parting with the membership.
And I'm happy to say with this episode and 100, things have turned around.
We have gone from support being down 13% in the last month to now up 12%.
We're 12% in the green now. It's a nice turnaround.
Downloads have also turned around from 10% down over the last 30 days to now
up 5.4%, which is a nice, again, turnaround considering after I took some time
off to cover Planet Nix and Scale, we saw a drop-off there in both support and downloads.
And it looks like perhaps things are turning around for the show along with
the support, along with the downloads. It's just really, really great to see,
and I hope it keeps on going. Thank you, everybody.
All right, I got a few updates for you. This first one, I cannot believe,
just a week later, there is another Satoshi Nakamoto documentary dropping,
and it's another one of these Who is Satoshi?
But the buzz and the vibe around this one, it seems a little different.
Bitcoin is one of the most groundbreaking innovations in decades.
The inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, completely disappears.
One of the wealthiest people in the world. It's not human nature to not touch a massive fortune.
We've got a window into our main suspects. You don't want to answer who.
I don't play the speculation game.
Who is Nakamoto? Who is Nakamoto? Bill, I know who Satoshi is.
Coinbase is involved with this one.
Some others in the industry. I almost wonder if this is a plant.
You know, like a Satoshi Psyop. I don't know. My gut is, I haven't seen it yet.
My gut is they're going to pin it on Hal Finney. So the New York Times was pinning on Adam Back.
This time, they're going to pin it on Hal Finney, which, well,
I'm just not a big fan of this.
Because when you pin it on Hal, you ended up pinning on his widow.
Who survives and continues to get harassed because people believe Hal is Satoshi.
So it doesn't really end well for anybody, but I'll keep an eye on it.
I don't know why we're just, isn't this interesting? We're just seeing these
back-to-back like this, and this one's a movie that they're going to put on streaming services?
Really? Okay, is there that much interest?
Is there? I don't know.
Anybody that follows the Linux news, you might know that the Linux Foundation
and IBM have been working together on different blockchain technologies.
And I wonder, because they've been doing it for five, six years now,
slowly building away at these different platforms. And I've been wondering, what's the point?
What are they doing? Well, they may have been waiting for their moment after all.
Tell us what we need to know here about IBM's move.
So obviously IBM is a very popular vendor with big banks and corporates and
governments. So they're launching a platform that will let a big bank,
for instance, start offering stable coins or other sort of digital assets.
And it's important because, as I said, you know, these firms are already clients of IBM, possibly.
And so this makes it easier and faster for them to get into the space in which
we've seen many of them sort of rush to get in.
And what's the timeline for this? How quickly can they roll this out?
So the platform, they're going to have the first version, which is a software
as a service, will be available in this fourth quarter.
And then they're going to do an on-prem version. So that helps with banks when
they need to keep data in their own servers.
They will launch that, they said, in the second quarter of next year.
And are they doing this on their own? Now, don't call it a blockchain,
right? They're not calling it a blockchain anymore.
They would have five years ago, but now, three years ago, two years ago.
But now it's a digital assets platform.
Now it's a digital assets platform. Okay. All right.
Well, maybe one day you'll be working somewhere where an IBM digital assets
platform is running on-premises for you.
Macro analyst Jordy Visser is back, and he went on CNBC this time.
Put my neck out on the line here and say the next time I see you,
Bitcoin will be significantly higher.
There's two catalysts that are happening. Last week, when he said this, Bitcoin was at $74,800.
Bitcoin outperformed software significantly. If you go back to when the stock
market started to rally, we saw breaking correlations between crude trading higher by $11.
And yet the S&P 500 finished slightly up to unchanged on a Friday.
And then we came in the next day.
Why don't you kind of break those correlations between things where people think,
oh, software is down, that means Bitcoin should go down.
Software was down hard last week, but Bitcoin was up. And so I think we broke
that correlation. But there's one important thing, and I highlighted this in
a paper I wrote this weekend.
We're getting into negative real rate territory. So year-over-year CPI is now at 3.3%.
The next time we get a CPI print, you're going to have year-over-year CPI above
where three-month bills are.
The best returns for Bitcoin have been when we've had negative real yields.
And I think we're going to be in a situation with negative real yields for quite
some time because I don't think inflation is going to come down sharply.
And I think we're going to have a problem with how the Fed is going to deal
with inflation with slowing growth and with the affordability issues.
So all of these things feed into a very positive backdrop for Bitcoin.
And you have some positive technical signals with a weekly MACD crossover.
I'm going to go with Bitcoin's higher the next time I see it.
Well, Safari's right. We'll see if it holds.
But we hit 78 and people didn't think it would get above 75.
Now, I want to go to my next topic.
I love just tracking the Trump-Bessent relationship because how the Trump-Bessent
relationship goes, the stability of the market goes.
And Trump seems to be quite aware of this. Really a respected guy,
a great guy, too. He's difficult.
This guy. He's sitting right next to Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary.
He's difficult. He's difficult.
But he's great. And, you know, when he speaks, the whole market gets soothed.
See, he knows. When I speak, the market goes a little jittery.
They say, Scott, go out there, clean it up for me, Scott.
But now he's a fantastic guy. And, Scott, you're going to say a few words and
then we're going to hear from a few of the people.
So there was something that Scott needed to go, quote unquote,
clean up. And that is the issue of affordability.
I'm not so sure you did a great job.
Why aren't we seeing this sentiment? Why are people feeling better?
Well, I, you know, I when I was in the investment business, there are consumer
surveys. But I used to look at what are the people really doing?
So at Treasury, we have loads of CEOs come through, whether they're in retail, credit card, the banks.
So I, you know, I rub shoulders and elbows with the mucky mucks.
And when I'm at fancy events or when they're coming here to try to buy me off,
we chat about how the economy is doing and how they're doing.
And the consumer, while they may be sounding grim, is actually quite buoyant.
Yeah, you see, the CEOs are doing great and the consumer, you know,
they may be complaining, but they're actually fine.
They're just fine. And the consumer, while they may be sounding grim,
is actually quite buoyant.
So we are seeing spending has been very solid across most categories.
I wonder if that's because everything's so freaking expensive.
So they might not feel good, but. Well, look, in the heart of hearts,
they feel good. I'm not sure what they're telling the survey people.
You guys, in your heart of hearts, you're actually feeling fine.
Yep, yep, yep. You might be spending $80 a tank on gas, and,
you know, you think you hate that, but in your heart of heart, you love it.
Now, one last clip in this category, because I think it's, well,
I think it's truly revealing.
I have personally wondered if Trump just hates the PAMP, you know,
because if this guy had gotten into office, and he hadn't done the tariff stuff
last year and then we hadn't done the Iran stuff this year.
Now you can argue if they had to be done or not. I'm just,
We're talking about maybe a different version of the simulation,
if that makes it easier for you.
If he hadn't done the tariff upset, the Fed probably would have cut rates.
Right. And if we hadn't gone into the war, we probably wouldn't be looking at
energy prices that are about to be catastrophic.
And the PAMP still continues despite all that.
But just think of without those those headwinds. And I wondered,
does the guy just love a challenge of trying to knock the market down and bring
it back up? Is there some kind of thrill he gets out of it?
I don't know if it's that, but it's definitely the state of the market seems
to be playing a role in when Trump makes decisions.
And I bring this up because it means every time the market really starts to
get up there, he takes an intentional cut.
He intentionally cuts it. He does something that he feels he has the political
capital to expend, and he lets the market cool down for a bit.
Instead of just letting, I don't know what his, well, we'll get to it.
We'll get to it here in a moment.
But I want you to listen to this because it's the exact kind of crap he hates J-Pow for.
He has criticized Jerome Powell for raising rates every time the economy really
starts ramping, which then cuts the pump.
He's criticized J-Pow for that. But then he admits to doing exactly the same
thing in this interview with CNBC.
But let's talk about Iran first. uh iran
if you i'm looking at your numbers now as i
speak i mean the market's up we're going to be at 50 000 that's where we were
just a little while ago when it started and when i hit 50 000 on the dow and
7 000 on the s p i said well i hate to do this to everybody but i'm gonna have
to journey down to a place called iran when i hit 50 000.
When I hit $50,000, I made a decision. $7,000 on the S&P.
I said, well, I hate to do this to everybody, but I'm going to have to journey
down to a place called Iran and not make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon
because they will blow up the world. You want to see a bad stock market?
Try blowing up the Middle East and then Europe, and then they come for us,
right? And we're not going to let that happen.
So I said to the people, I said to my people, the world gathered,
all these wonderful guys.
Imagine you're Scott Bessent and others, and you've been tasked by Trump for
a pump like no other president has seen, right? He wants the biggest, greatest pump ever.
And so Scott's job is, you know, sell bonds, get this economy as hot as possible,
despite a Fed that hasn't cut rates, make this work, don't collapse the housing
market, you know, et cetera, et cetera, right?
Like all of these plates that Scott has to spin to try to get the economy running
the way that Trump wants, at least his part of it, his little corner of it, right?
So he and, you know, he's doing everything he can. He's going out there trying
to soothe markets every time that Trump upsets markets and all of that.
And so he's doing absolutely everything he can, as well as the others on the team.
And then Trump comes down and says, we're going to a little place called Iran.
Sorry about your market. And we're not going to let that happen.
So I said to the people, I said to my people, they're all gathered,
all these wonderful guys, Scott Bassett, the whole group, Howard,
they're all doing a good job.
I said, fellas, I got a little bad news for you. I'm going to put a little wrinkle
in your numbers. Why, sir?
We're going down to a place called Iran, and we're going to make sure that they
never have a nuclear weapon because they'll use it to blow up,
because they're religious fanatics, and they will use that weapon to blow up
the world, but they'll start with Israel in the Middle East,
and we're not going to let that happen.
And they said, wow, that's going to be bad. I said, yes.
Wow, that's going to be bad. Yeah. I think they were thinking,
oh, we're going to lose the midterms. That's what they're thinking right there. They're thinking, oh.
We're going to lose the midterms. We're going to start with Israel in the Middle
East, and we're not going to let that happen.
And they said, wow, that's going to be bad. I said, yeah, it's going to hurt
the market, and it's going to drive up the price of oil and whatever it is,
but that's peanuts compared to... Okay, now here I'm going to steel man this.
Let's say we live in a world of fiscal dominance, and the pump is on by default
because of the debasement trade, and that the train only goes in one direction,
and it ain't going to get stopped anytime soon.
And if you just know that, let's say they have made that calculus,
then you almost would have a strategy here that is sensible in that,
you know, you can take temporary hits to a healthy mark. Well,
quote unquote healthy to a pumping market.
Let's call it a pumping market because the debasement trade is on.
The default direction is in one way.
It's going to go back up after you're done, assuming you pull it all off.
That has to be the mindset there is, well, it's going to go back up.
We've got it here. We can take a hit for a little while.
And I guess in some sort of weird way, if you're if you are panicked about Trump
being a a dictator that is, you know, just bombing and whatever. I don't know.
Well, guess what? Sounds like he's got a built in breaking mechanism, doesn't it?
It sounds like to me, if you just sort of decode what he said there,
the market is his brakes.
The Trump theory about the market being the ultimate breaking mechanism for
Donald Trump's policies, I think, holds here.
And in a way, that means the wisdom of crowds and predictions is what is his break.
And so I guess you could interpret this as that.
It's just what I took from it is he's watching.
You know, he said it's almost at 50. He was at 49. So it was at 50,000 when
we started this thing. We're almost back at 50,000. And he's paying attention to those numbers.
And then when they're going down there and he's talking to Lutnick and he's
talking to Besson, you know, he's, hey, I'm going to take you're going to take a hit to your numbers.
Like, I think there was a lot of revealed and how they think and look at the
market and how they view ownership of that stuff or how Trump's team has to
take ownership of that stuff.
All right. One last update for you.
Now, I had to play this simply because it is topic du jour right now.
And in every possible different sector, everybody's panicking about Mythos from
Anthropic and the potential for taking down XYZ industry.
And now the panic has come to crypto. A recent report from Anthropic says its
Mythos AI model found flaws in some of the basic security software that helps
protect digital systems. So what does that mean for cryptocurrency?
Nobody asked, but she's going to tell you. The risk is less in the blockchains
themselves and more around the software stack that crypto companies depend on
to give owners access to their holdings.
And of course, they have B-roll of Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining, the BTC ticker, the BTC price chart.
So when she's saying about the software infrastructure and all of that.
For some reason, you know, they're putting they're talking about crypto generally,
but then when they say the scary stuff, they put Bitcoin on the screen.
And more around the software stack that crypto companies depend on to give owners
access to their holdings.
So where do we see the threats from AI in the crypto space?
It's really to centralize companies.
This is Jan from Swan and pretty disappointed in this interview.
Pretty disappointed. He's their CTO and co-founder over at Swan. And it starts OK.
But really what they're talking about broadly here is they're talking about
software libraries and software infrastructure, you know, operating systems,
the libraries that applications use, vulnerabilities and applications themselves.
If you are a one-person team or a 100,000-person company, that threat vector remains the same.
What changes is how widely deployed your software is and how nimble your team
is at resolving the issue.
So when they say that the companies and the infrastructure that crypto depends
on are the real threat, what they're actually saying is the humans that run
those companies probably don't have their shit together enough to solve problems.
From AI in the crypto space, it's really to centralize companies,
companies that run security programs to secure their customers' assets. You know, like Swan.
It's not the cryptographic keys of the Bitcoin network or the cryptographic
keys of any other coin that are securing your assets. It is actually the company itself.
Anthropik's mythos is getting attention because it is reportedly very good at
identifying vulnerabilities in software.
The company also says that mythos is more autonomous and more capable at software
engineering and cybersecurity than prior models, which makes it better at working around restrictions.
Now, none of these are actually specifically talking about crypto,
but they're using this to set a context.
Well, crypto is software, so therefore crypto is vulnerable to this.
However, it's a very dynamic, fast responding industry. So if any industry is
really posed to take advantage, poised to take advantage of incoming fixes and
security identifications, it's probably going to be the crypto industry over just about any other.
And I'm no fan of shit coins, but that's just the reality.
That means it can help spot flaws in code that humans or existing security tools may have missed.
But in some cases, Mythos is capable of turning those vulnerabilities into working exploits.
Anthropix says the model found thousands of high and critical severity vulnerabilities.
Anthropic's documentation around Mythos suggests one of the key issues here may be speed.
The company says the AI can shorten the time between a bug becoming known and
attackers figuring out how to weaponize it.
In other words, once a vulnerability is disclosed, defenders may have less time to react.
At this point, AI is becoming a new class of thinker. It's doing things that humans have never done.
We recently heard the release of the new Mythos algorithm from Claude from Anthropic.
And this algorithm is... Wait, wait, wait.
Is your expert on CNBC from Swan referring to a model as an algorithm?
Oh, boy. You see what I'm saying here?
These people are getting worked up over nothing. I mean, it's not nothing. I shouldn't say that.
Equivalently nothing. And the only reason I say that is because if you are in
your 40s or older, which I know a good chunk of you are, you have lived through a lot of these.
Let's be real. I mean, the most poignant example I have, because it was such
a big deal early in my career, was the Y2K bug.
Man, did I not spend a year replacing hardware and software.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by school districts just to replace hardware
that, quote unquote, could not be fixed, was unfixable.
Which, by the way, ended up in my office in a stack and worked just fine. It was just fine.
The numbers just, what happened is the two-digit year just ticked over. It's fine.
Like, for all the stuff I ran. But, man, if I didn't spend a year prepping and
then I spent New Year's Eve 1999 huddled out in my buddy's house near our main data center,
so that way at 12.01 a.m.
We could get in the car and go to work and spend the entire evening,
the rest of the morning, doing a systems check for absolutely nothing.
And then when the Internet was coming around, it was going to be the end of
newspapers. It was the end of radio.
It was the end of all of these things. Mail. All of it. The end. The end.
Newspaper. The news industry is dead over and over again. We're still hearing it today.
So if you go through these cycles a few times, you learn that the reality is
often much, much, much more in the middle.
And the really disappointing truth that we should internalize as Bitcoiners
as well is that the vast majority of humanity never properly takes advantage
of the technological evolution.
On the extremes, you'll have governments and groups that abuse it.
You'll have geeks and nerds that understand and learn and push it.
But the average folk out there, they're driving around in a car that's 14 years
old. That's the average age of a vehicle on the road right now.
And they're perfectly fine using the nav and the infotainment system that's
14, 15 years old. That's slow as hell.
I mean, of course, all of us will put up with something like that if we have
to. But there's some folks, they don't even give a thought to it.
Doesn't even register as something that they wish could be different. They don't care.
It's a weird esoteric point I'm making but when I just reflect on all of the
technologies that we have innovated and the capabilities that we have and how
few of them actually get taken advantage of in the real world,
I subscribe to the idea that it's actually nearly impossible to change the entire
world by more than 1% or 2% at any given time for any particular thing.
So this concern that all of a sudden crypto is vulnerable because of mythos.
Like we just last week, we started to put some of the quantum FUD to bed.
And just as the quantum FUD closes its sleepy little eyes, the mythos FUD wakes up.
The mythos FUD wakes up. And now we're going to find vulnerabilities because
it turns out the entire industry apparently was dependent on obscurity of security
by obscurity and and you not knowing about any of these things.
And if you just had the ability, if more eyes, apparently, apparently the old
adage that more eyes was just completely false.
And we now that we have more eyes, well, it turns out we're just completely screwed.
Like it's a real hard shift. The industry wants us to believe.
I'm having a tough time with it.
All right. This final clip of the week, I think, is one of the bangers of the week.
A top U.S. Pacific commander called Bitcoin a valuable computer science tool
for national power and security.
This is I'm going to I think I'm going to try to I'm going to try to get the
last name right. No disrespect intended.
Admiral Samuel Papero. He is in the U.S.
Indo-Pacific Command, and he was speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And he said this about Bitcoin.
To another subject, our competition with China is... This is the question being asked.
...just about military strength. It also includes monetary strength as well.
You know, last year, the Chinese Communist Party's main monetary think tank
published research on Bitcoin as a strategic asset.
You know, this came after President Trump moved to establish a strategic Bitcoin
reserve. Admiral, how does leadership in Bitcoin impact leverage resilience,
deterrence for Indopaycom against China?
And do you think that a strategic Bitcoin reserve helps America compete against China?
Senator, our research into Bitcoin is as a computer science tool.
It's the combination of cryptography, a blockchain, and a proof of work.
And Bitcoin shows incredible potential as a computer science tool that through
the proof-of-work protocols actually imposes more cost than just the algorithmic
securing of networks and our ability to operate.
And Bitcoin is a reality. It is a valuable computer science tool as a power projection.
And outside of the economic formulation of it, it has got really important computer
science applications for cybersecurity.
Thank you. What recommendations do you have for us here in Congress on how the
U.S. can lead on Bitcoin competition?
You know, I have to go deeper on that with you for the record,
and I can go deeper on that case, but Bitcoin is a reality.
It is a peer-to-peer, zero-trust transfer of value.
Anything that supports the all instruments of national power for the United
States of America is to the good.
Thank you. I'll have to go back and listen to that answer to kind of decipher
it. Most of us entered your way over our head.
All right i'm wrapping up at block height 946 207
bitcoin going up going
up us dollar one bitcoin now coming at 79 130 000 that makes our sats per dollar
1 264 we are now under the 40 decline at a 37.3 decline 197 days out from our
all-time high on october 6.
Retarget date for The difficulty adjustment is May 1st. Currently,
because it's fresh, it's a difficulty adjustment of 0%.
We'll see that shift. There are 21,378 nodes on the network continue to decline a bit.
Perhaps the great knots and core wars are over, and we're seeing some people
decommission their nodes.
Bitcoin is up 6.7% in the last seven days. We're up 10.6% in the last 30 days.
Things are moving right along. The network is healthy.
If you made it this far, I got links at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
I'd love to see you at LinuxFest Northwest this weekend. If you're in the Pacific
Northwest area, make the drive up to Bellingham.
Come say hi. The weekend, I think, is going to be beautiful weather-wise.
I hope at least. I'd love to talk a little Bitcoin in person, so come say hi.
Now, if you can't make it, don't worry. We'll have another show for you.
There's always the RSS feed, so you get every show automatically.
My goal here is to do a show that doesn't get distracted by the emotions around
what's happening, but it focuses on the signal for you so that way you can plan
for yourself, your friends, your family, your business, whatever it might be.
So let me know how I did with the Boost. It is a value-for-value show, after all.
Also, speaking of Boost, if you send your Boost while the music plays this week,
95% of your sats will go to our artist.
And this week, our song is Pony Up Daddy by $2 Holla.
I'll see you back here next week and maybe at LinuxFest Northwest.