Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 91.
My name is Chris, ChrisLAS.com, JupyterBroadcasting.com.
Well, hello, Bitcoin winter, my old friend.
I'm mostly joking, but that is the question that's coming up this week.
has something gone wrong? Are we going to slide sideways all through spring and all through
summer into October, as some are suggesting? Let's talk about crypto, if we dare. My God,
we had a 72 handle on Bitcoin a little while ago. It's off the lows. We're at 73,850, still down
3%. Are these tied together? Because this has been a brutal couple of weeks.
Certainly been a brutal couple of weeks when we take a look at cryptocurrencies,
Bitcoin in particular.
Bitcoin today hitting its lowest level since 2024.
But we're really seeing about so many dollars, almost a trillion dollars coming out,
half a trillion dollars being wiped out in this week alone when we look at cryptocurrencies more broadly.
So this plunge is really just raising a lot of doubts that have already kind of been in the market,
but really being underscored right now about whether or not Bitcoin is actually a safe haven,
especially when we think about all the geopolitical risks going on.
Oh, here we go again with that.
Here we go again with that, as if gold and silver didn't also have quite the volatile week.
I mean, you look at the price action for Bitcoin right now.
It's historically in what they call the overbought territory, as in other words, a great deal from this price or anywhere lower from here.
But what was all this about?
What was all of this extra volatile?
What's going on here?
Well, let's talk about that.
You asked the question, who is Kevin Warsh?
And I think the answer comes from the president.
He's someone well known on both Wall Street and in Washington.
He began his career after graduating from Harvard Law.
Well, it looks like the poly market odds were way off.
And we have our new Fed pick.
Trump's pick is Kevin Warsh.
And here's a little bit about him.
Stanford.
Morgan Stanley then moved from there to the George W. Bush White House.
in 2002 as an economic advisor. And then Bush appointed him as the youngest Fed governor ever
in 2006. It's worth noting he was at the Federal Reserve as one of the governors during the great
financial crisis. Since then, he's lectured at Stanford, but his primary job is advising the
legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller at Duquesne Capital. What does Warsh think? Well, Warsh is a
critic of the Fed, a harsh critic of the Fed. Yeah, let's get into that. And that's part of why
we saw this reaction. Warsh is the one that the hard money traders are worried about. In the past,
he's been very vocal about the policy of the Federal Reserve and how he would differ from the
way Jerome Powell has made certain decisions. And what I can kind of gather by now watching and kind
of trying to catch up on this guy is that he essentially disagrees with the slow money printing
solution by the current Fed. So the current Fed sort of figures, you know, we trickle it out there,
we kind of ebb and flow it to maintain a stable economy. Kevin Warsh, he's more of a don't meddle
in the economy kind of guy until it really is in a pinch. And then when it's in a pinch,
you go all in. So the JPOW approach is kind of steady money printing to prevent a crisis.
And the Warsh method is crisis happens, you let it happen, and then you print like crazy.
And that is kind of made clear in this clip. You were on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
during the financial crisis of 2008,
which led to the worst economic contraction
since the Great Depression
and unemployment in this country of 10%.
This interview here is from the Hoover Institute.
Which led to the worst economic contraction
since the Great Depression
and unemployment in this country of 10%.
Are you drawing a causal relationship there, Peter?
I'm scared where the rest of this is going.
You're just plain bad luck.
The Fed responded with a number of actions,
but perhaps the most dramatic
was to flood the system with liquidity.
Let me give you some sense of the magnitude of the Fed's action.
Between the first and second quarter of 2008,
the Fed's balance sheet,
measure of the supply of reserves in the banking system,
the balance sheet doubled in the space of a quarter
from a trillion to two trillion.
Now, you've written that you strongly supported that decision.
So before we get to the QE234 and so forth, about what you're deeply, or at least, well, you'll explain yourself in a moment.
But first tell me why you supported that dramatic infusion of money into the markets in 2008.
So the question is, is Kevin is kind of known as somebody who's not a big money printer guy.
So why was he so for it in 2008?
eight. This is what I want you to listen to, because I think this next answer that we're
about to get is very telling. This is part of what spooked the hard money folks, because it
reveals what Kevin's view for the role of central banks is. And it's very different than the current
chair. And so this is, I think, the bit that the gold bugs, the silver bugs and the Bitcoin traders
on the bit with the big money. I think this is the bit they reacted to. Central banks were first
created or this generation of central banks to respond to just this sort of situation.
A panic in the old days, what we now call a deep recession, a financial crisis, is when markets
aren't working, when there are spreads between what buyers are willing to play and sellers are
willing to sell. And the job of the central bank is to show up with all sorts of money, there's that
dirty word again, and get those markets to function, not to set prices, but to make sure that buyers
and sellers could clear. And the central bank was there to provide liquidity when no one else would.
We were the backstop and are the backstop to the banking system, not just in the U.S., but in the
rest of the world. Because if we blew it, it would have been even worse for the rest of the world.
So that's what we did in crises. And, you know, some of your and my friends on the right, including
at institutions we care deeply about, their views then were you should let the system burn down. A
Phoenix will rise from the ashes.
You really have no business in doing this.
That's not my view.
My view is the central bank was created to respond to panics.
We had one.
We recognized it belatedly.
But then we showed overwhelming force.
And the word you used, I think, is the right word.
It was an emergency.
So you're prepared to cross more lines than you would in benign times.
Now, if that doesn't make it clear, he really doubles down on his hate for quantitative easing, essentially continuous easy money supply.
And he hates it so much, he apparently quit his job over it.
I resigned.
You did.
When QE2 was launched.
In 2010.
All right. I left in early 2011.
My colleagues, including Chairman Bernanke, who I mentioned for whom I had great respect as a warfighter,
he and my colleagues at the Fed decided that we should keep on doing it.
On what grounds?
If you could make the best argument for their case that you could, what would the argument be?
So we don't see any costs.
We have found a free lunch.
Look around.
Asset prices are higher.
Markets are filled with more liquidity.
The economy is good.
and gosh, if we take it away, we don't know what would happen.
And in some sense, they broke, in my view, the bargain that was struck.
Did any of us know what would happen under various scenarios?
No, because again, in economics, unlike in physics,
there are no control groups, at least no very good ones.
So you saw gold and silver behave like altcoins.
You saw the volatility that we would normally attribute to tech stocks and altcoins
happen in gold and silver. And you see, this is a particularly interesting stance for this guy that
is Trump's pick for the Federal Reserve, isn't it? Because if we take a step back, why would Trump
even put this guy in here in the first place if this was his plan? I mean, it's possible. I don't
know if this was Trump's first or even second choice, but to me, it seems like there's either a
signal mismatch between Trump and his pick, or they've come to some kind of understanding.
Did Kevin Warsh commit to you that he will push to cut interest rates if he is confirmed?
No, but we talk about it. I've been following him, and I don't want to ask him that question.
I think it's inappropriate, probably. It probably would be allowed, but I want to keep it nice and
pure. But he certainly wants to cut rates. I've been watching him for a long time.
Did you have any concerns about his hawkish history of pushing for rate hikes?
He's going to want to do the same thing.
I think that, yeah, I've had times when I think you've had to really have rate hikes too.
But he's very smart, very good, strong, young, pretty young.
And I think he's going to do a good.
I mean, he was a central casting guy that people wanted.
He was a central casting guy that people wanted.
Does that make it sound like he was his first pick?
And I think he's going to do that. I mean, he he was a central casting guy that people wanted.
Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the confirmation hearings?
We've heard Senator Tillis.
No, no.
You think with the DOJ investigation, this is in the whole country, I would say that this was the perfect candidate.
Top student, best schools. Everything was like perfect.
Youngest person ever to serve on the Fed. Got the whole package.
Looks don't mean anything, but he's got the look.
What is your strategy for getting past the hold that Senator Tillis has on this process?
So that hold would be that they want to defer the new chair nomination until the legal matter is settled with J-PAL.
Now, what I heard in there was the central casting thing and the I think he's going to want to cut rates.
But there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding between the people that are projecting what could happen, what might happen.
And they're asking these questions.
The question has an assumption baked into it. The question is, well, the economy is doing pretty good. Scott just told us GDP is ripping. You tell us it's the best economy ever. You tell us the dollar is going to be fine. So on what grounds do we need to lower rates? Wouldn't that just stoke inflation? It seems like inflation isn't fully tame. So on what grounds would we want to lower rates? And so that's what's baked into the question there.
And that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics that are at play for the Fed and the White House.
Here's the trap.
If the Fed does cut rates the way Trump wants, the budget will look better for a while, probably during his term.
And that's because the Treasury has gone all in on short-term debt.
The T-bills, they're rolling that over on short-term since bad girl Yellen has been in there.
This has been the play.
I'm talking like one-year loans on T-bill debt.
Cheap today, flexible, but, you know, not a good idea long term.
They're politically convenient today, not a good idea long term.
By pushing borrowing short and pushing yields down, the U.S. slows down the rise in interest
costs without actually fixing the problem.
But cutting rates while inflation is still warm, which it is, risks lighting CPI back
up, which it will.
And when inflation moves, the Fed essentially loses control.
The market loses faith.
The long end reprices, markets take over.
The Treasury can't live on short-term debt forever, so they're stuck.
And eventually it has to lock in longer maturities.
And when it does, it'll be doing it at higher rates, not lower rates, because of these very actions.
And the part that people miss is that damage, it doesn't just disappear.
It's not just numbers on a spreadsheet.
It gets absorbed by the savers, by the currency holders, by anyone who's still parked in nominal dollars.
Bitcoin cannot stop this bad policy.
Bitcoin's going to be whipped around a little bit while we work out this bad policy.
This is where we have to stay humble.
This is where we have to stack sats and just wait out these macro ships.
They're like giant, giant tanker ships moving very, very slowly.
And sometimes you think they're going to arrive sooner than they do and they take 10 years.
I mean, it really is a hell of a thing the way these macro things can sometimes take forever and then move so quickly.
So Bitcoin just sits here quietly absorbing the consequences.
And I think that's an interesting angle to look at this.
This new Fed chair has gone on the record a couple of times about, well, presumed new
Fed chair.
He hasn't been nominated yet.
He's gone on the record a couple of times about Bitcoin.
And I think he's got a nuanced view.
Let's break that down.
Are you on board with Bitcoin?
I know Stan Druckenmiller is now on board.
I think when we've talked about Bitcoin in the past, I think you had a perhaps a lesser view.
I don't know if you have a different view today.
This is Squawk Box from a couple of years ago.
So Stan calls me his partner.
I call him my boss.
One of us is lying, but I'll let you figure out who's who in that, Andrew.
So I'd say I think that Bitcoin does make sense as part of a portfolio in this environment
where you have the most fundamental shift.
for example, in monetary policy since Paul Volcker.
So he thinks Bitcoin makes sense in this environment this environment being a quantitatively easing environment relative to what he would do So I think the transverse of that means that if we are not in a quantitatively easy environment perhaps he doesn think Bitcoin is a good investment which I don necessarily agree with that because we have just gone through tightening for two years
It's an environment where you have the most fundamental shift, for example, in monetary policy since Paul Volcker.
This is a big shift that we're seeing under the Powell Fed, rightly or wrongly.
So I'm not surprised in a period of dollar weakness where Bitcoin's doing what it's doing.
And I'd also suggest that part of the move in Bitcoin is taking some of the bid away from gold.
I think if Bitcoin never existed, gold would be rallying even more right now.
Bitcoin was at 34,000 US dollars at this time.
I guess if you're under 40, Bitcoin is your new gold.
So I think of Bitcoin as a lot of things, but it's certainly with every passing day getting new life as an alternative currency.
And when you see the strength of the euro, the strength of the pound, the strength of the RMB, the Korean won, the Mexican peso, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to see the strength of Bitcoin as well.
Yeah, it's a nuanced take.
I think he's not anti-Bitcoin. He's not concerned by it, but it's more of I think he thinks it was a low rates, quantitative easing phenomenon, which I do not necessarily agree with. But I think that is a stance that scares hard money people. And we see right now a little bit of freakage in there. And it's going to take a little bit before they calm down, because even if even if the nomination goes forward, it's not till May. It's going to take a little bit.
and maybe he may or may not say a bunch beforehand.
I think that's really going to make the difference
if Warsh comes out and starts kind of stating
quasi-policy positions before the nomination
and the market likes it.
That could help a little bit.
I know this is stupid.
This is why we got to move beyond this system.
Here's Mike Novogratz.
Yeah, listen, part of this acceleration
recently downwards is the thought
that Kevin Warsh is going to be very hawkish.
Listen, what I think Kevin did is he took out the tail risks for inflation, right?
He's a man of integrity.
He has worked alongside Stan Druckenmiller for a long time, literally since he left the Fed.
And so you don't think he's going to do whatever Trump wants him to do.
That said, he's pretty dovish right now.
And I think once he gets in and starts talking, looking at the environment that we see today, he wants rates lower.
And I think once that market kind of rewrites him as a dove, at least a dove, given the current environment, that also could help.
You know, there's probably been an overreaction on how hawkish he's going to be.
But I do think, listen, he took out the tail risk, which is a good thing for America and not necessarily a good thing for gold, silver or Bitcoin.
it. We've kind of been getting jerked around by this clarity stall as well. The Clarity Act may
end up becoming law, may not. There's a lot of blockers, some of which aren't actually getting
as much attention as they should. White House officials meeting with crypto industry executives
and bank associations yesterday to help break the stalemate holding up the Clarity Act in the
Senate. Participants calling the talks constructive, but crypto representatives reportedly felt that
banks were slow to engage. The major impasse is whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to
offer customers rewards on stable coins held on crypto platforms. Should the crypto companies be
able to reward customers for moving their money out of banks and onto crypto platforms?
Yeah, that's one of the issues for sure. That is definitely one of the issues. It's not the only
issue. Major impasse is whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to offer customers rewards.
on stable coins held on crypto platforms.
Should the crypto companies be able to reward customers
for moving their money out of banks and out to crypto platforms?
The president voiced support for the bill,
the Clarity Act, in the Oval Office yesterday.
Watch this.
I'm a big crypto person.
I'm the one that probably helped crypto more than anybody
because I believe in it.
And the reason I believe in it is because if we don't do it, Scott,
I think we can say then China's going to do it.
If we don't do crypto, then China's going to do it.
I actually got clear what they mean.
What are they talking about?
China's going to do.
They just banned Bitcoin.
What they're talking about is a Chinese CBDC that they were concerned would become a world reserve currency.
But I don't think this issue about stable coin yield is really the big problem.
I mean, it's a problem, but let's be real about this.
Let's just like think about this rationally for a second.
Do you think the majority of U.S. consumers are going to rush away from their safe bank accounts that they've had for years and YOLO into stable coins on Coinbase?
Do you think boomers are going to do that who have all the money?
Probably not.
Maybe some younger kids will to some degree.
I just don't think it's a huge issue.
It's an issue.
I don't think it's a collapsing disaster scale issue.
I don't think there's enough trust in the system now, maybe over 10, 20 years.
But why wouldn't the banks just get in the game by that point themselves anyways?
As soon as they saw the customer demand, they could then justify the investment and the R&D.
So to me, I'm not sure that's actually the issue.
I think the problem is maybe not getting as much attention, especially in Bitcoin circles.
The House Democrats on the Financial Services Committee want a provision that blocks office holders from launching coins.
Carlo D posted, said, quote,
And I'd say there's zero chance that Trump signs anything with those provisions.
And I think we saw a little crack between the lines here that indicates this is a big concern.
And this was a back and forth between Congressman Sherman and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today.
Does the Treasury Department or the various components of the FMOC have the authority to bail out Bitcoin?
Could you please elaborate? What exactly does bail out Bitcoin?
OK, could you instruct the banks of this country to buy more to buy Bitcoin or change banking regulations so that they're encouraged to do so in terms of the reserves that they're otherwise required to have?
See, this is this is a ridiculous question. It's not only is it ignorant and stupid, but he the senator should very well know what the Treasury secretary can or cannot.
This guy's nearly 100 years old.
He's been in office for longer than I've been alive.
He doesn't know what the Treasury Secretary can and cannot do.
Of course he does.
This is a political question to get it on the record.
And the question is, preposterous, ridiculous.
Bailout Bitcoin.
What kind of, you're the one that needs the bailout.
39.7 trillion?
I looked this up earlier today.
The U.S. government debt.
is $38.57 trillion.
$38.57 trillion.
Okay?
Okay, Bitcoin's not the one that needs a bailout.
The U.S. government's the one that needs a bailout.
That's not what this is about.
So that they're encouraged to do so in terms of the reserves
that they're otherwise required to have.
Again, within the context of asset diversification within banks,
they could hold many assets.
They can, and they're different.
But do you have the authority to order banks to buy Bitcoin or to invest U.S. tax dollars in Bitcoin or Trump coin?
I am Secretary of the Treasury.
I do not have—
Ah, there it really was.
That's what it's really about.
They are miffed about Trump coin.
Authority to order banks to buy Bitcoin or to invest U.S. tax dollars in Bitcoin or Trump coin?
I am Secretary of the Treasury.
I do not have the authority to do that.
And as chair of FSOC, I do not have that authority.
Yeah, and of course he knew that. Scott also used that opportunity to defend the Bitcoin reserve and recent asset seizures.
We'll point out.
Mr. Secretary, reclaiming my time. Are you going to invest in the asset seizure?
That $1 billion of Bitcoin was seized, $500 million was retained, and that $500 million has become over $15 billion.
Gentleman's time has expired.
The smile on Scott's face when he makes that point is pretty satisfying.
I do have to say that was, you know, ridiculous. That was ridiculous. This is this is just one of these things. And the Clarity Act and the political games around it, it is really hard to say where it's going to go. But Bitcoin does kind of get yanked around in the meantime, not because it directly impacts Bitcoin, but because the big money, right? The suits. Think about it from their perspective. It essentially puts Bitcoin in a chicken or an egg situation.
Big money figures, well, it makes sense to just wait until there's clear market structure.
And why not?
What's the downside?
The price of the world's first scarce digital asset just keeps on getting cheaper.
They can scoop it up at nearly criminally cheap prices by just sitting on their hands.
The altcoins are even worse off, and they're going to scoop up bags of those to launch their stupid RWA tokens to milk us all forever.
And they're going to get them at fantastic prices.
So why do they care if the Clarity Act doesn't pass for a while?
And it's just a drag on Bitcoin price for a little bit.
But like so many things before it, this will end up just being another blip on Bitcoin's radar.
Well, there was two major Bitcoin-focused events occurring in El Salvador this last week.
I thought that was pretty neat.
the Bitcoin Circular Economy Summit,
which is sounding like more of a smaller event
taking place in El Zante, which is the Bitcoin beach.
Around 60 attendees from 29 different countries
to share strategies for building
a sustainable Bitcoin circular economy.
Some of their key focuses included real-world adoption
in communities with unstable currencies
and software and things like that.
The larger event, the Plan B Forum El Salvador,
no relation to my old podcast.
This was one of the larger of the two conferences.
that seemingly attracted thousands, had notable speakers like Adam Back, Elizabeth Stark,
Palco Andrio, Seyfidim Anonymous, and Guacamo Zucamo.
Guacamo Zucamo.
I've met him.
I'm probably getting it wrong.
And I think it was an interesting event, of course.
And a standout moment or two happened, and I grabbed them for you.
But I really, I grabbed one of the better ones.
So I'll set the stage for you because there was a debate between Peter Schiff,
to famous gold bug who's really been Bitcoin lives for free in Peter's mind.
And so when gold is doing well, instead of talking about how great gold is doing, Peter
just talks about how bad Bitcoin is.
And Peter is all hot to trot on his new Tether Bitcoin product or gold product, which is
like gold backed currencies or something.
I don't even know how you would verify the goal.
Anyways, that's what he was there to talk about.
And he was in a debate with safe on gold versus Bitcoin.
And I want to play the introduction to set the scene.
So to settle the debate of Bitcoin versus gold, we have the gentleman who wrote the Bitcoin standard and he orange pilled at least half of this vast, vast room.
He is up against the gentleman who, instead of telling us to buy Bitcoin for the past 15 years and getting unfathomably wealthy, he spent the better part of a decade telling us that we are all idiots and maybe we should have bought gold instead.
Who could moderate this panel?
Well, it has to be the podcasting Austrian economist who knows a hard asset when he sees one.
First, though, could you make some noise if you want gold to win this debate?
Tough crowd.
Could you make some noise if you'd like Bitcoin to win this debate?
So in some ways, you've got to give it to Peter, although he doesn't really deserve it, trust me.
and it was an interesting debate.
I'll link to the entire thing
because they've posted that on his YouTube channel
but this was the moment I think
that was probably one of the better.
One of the people who actually taught me
about Austrian economics early on
in 2007 and 2008, Peter Schiff
and one of the most important, in fact,
the fundamental basic building block
of all Austrian economics
is the concept of subjective value.
All value is subjective.
Whether it's gold, tomatoes, Bitcoin, bananas,
whatever it is, people value it
because they have placed subjective valuation on it
And that can happen for all sorts of reasons.
And at a certain point, they placed a subjective valuation on this shiny yellow metal.
And at a certain point, they placed subjective valuation on this digital representation of
value represented through private keys in a network that is decentralized, that is very
robust, that allows you to send money internationally without having to go through intermediaries,
which is something that nothing else allows you to do.
And that creates demand for it.
So everything generates demand, generates value.
The question is how it holds value.
What is the value of meat to a vegetarian? It's not very much, but you cannot argue that there is
value there objectively. Air has value. Water has value. You can't tell me that, well, it's all
subjective. Maybe air is worthless. We need air to live. We need water to live. But water and air
are abundant, so the price is not very high. Now, if you're on a desert island, water could be very
expensive if somebody offers you some But the fact of the matter is gold has value Whether you believe it or not In your analysis you said well you know gold was just this commodity that you could use as money Well why was it gold Why not nickel Why not copper Why not any of those things
Again, all of those things have subjective valuation.
Only one of them has a limited supply growth rate, and that's what Bitcoin has.
And because of that, we see, as I was saying earlier, the $700 billion worth of new gold that's going to come onto the market at current prices.
And that's the problem with gold.
The problem with the fact that they don't have the difficulty adjustment and the halving means that no matter how high the price goes,
the price eventually gets to the point where the new demand overwhelms the new supply, becomes so valuable because the price is high,
that it overwhelms the new demand.
And then the price crashes.
And then once the price crashes, sentiment shifts, and then people dump their coins.
And because they don't have a difficulty adjustment, bear markets in gold can last decades.
In 1980, gold hit $800, and it was only until 2008 or so until it hit $800 again.
Are you willing to sit on your gold bags for 28 years to make a new all-time high?
Bitcoin, being advanced money, has a difficulty adjustment.
If demand drops, if the price crashes, the difficulty adjustment ensures that miners can't make more Bitcoin.
And then the halving comes along to bail us out and drop the supply by half and basically increase the price.
Because if the demand had gone down, the supply goes down even further.
Gold doesn't have that.
And so because it doesn't have that, it doesn't hold on to its value.
And its bull bear markets can be much longer.
All right. So you can find the full thing on Safe's podcast site. I'll link to that in the show notes. I thought it was pretty good. And I'd like to know if you would ever go to a Bitcoin meetup or an event like that. If you had the means and the time, would you go? Is it an operational security issue or would you be willing to do it?
Because my second part of my question is, if I was ever out and about traveling and wanted to do a couple of Bitcoin get togethers, nothing big, but just people in the area, would you attend?
I'll be doing some traveling across the country later this year, and it's on my mind.
So boost in and let me know.
Number one, would you go to a Bitcoin meetup or event?
Or is it too much OPSEC exposure?
I guess maybe it depends on the event.
Let me know.
And would you go to one of mine?
Boost in and tell me what you do.
Support the show with the old Boosteroo.
coming up on the show your booze some updates a final clip of the week and more so i'll just
mention right here you can support the show by doing what you do buy the dip stack sats on river
It's one of the best ways to stack in the U.S.
All these have links in the show notes.
If you're all about self-custody, you don't even want them to have a wallet on the platform,
and you're in the U.S. or you're in Canada, check out the Bitcoin well.
Also, fantastic Lightning support.
The Bitcoin company goes from sats to lightning in just seconds.
Hundreds of different gift cards.
They only support Bitcoin.
The Fold card lets you passively stack sats.
It's a debit card that lets you passively stack sats as you pay your bills.
And if it's time to get access to that Bitcoin, sometimes the lows are a decent time to take out.
Just got to make sure it is the low.
One of the things I like about Salt Lending is they do have margin call protection.
They'll swap your Bitcoin to stablecoin for a bit if things get real dicey.
It's pretty nice.
So links to all that in the show notes.
Great way to support the show by just doing what you do.
Ask not what your podcast can boost for you,
but what you can boost for your podcast.
And we'll start with our baller booster this week,
who is J-Cube, who came in with 60,000 sats.
Hey, rich lobster!
J-Cube says, you're doing great, Chris.
I can't imagine how crazy it is trying to wade through all of the macro news.
Have some sats.
I need to figure out how to set up a Nostra profile and how to use it with my AlbiHub and wherever else I can use it.
That is a fun world.
And by the way, engaging with the show on Nostra does help Discovery and Fountain.
So that could be a goal, J-Cube.
Thank you for that.
I'll be honest with you, J-Cube.
Today I was feeling like not doing a show.
And I pulled up the boost and I saw your boost.
And I said, F it.
I'm going to do a whole show.
I thought maybe I'd come on and do a story, chat with you guys, and then get off. Because, you know, when the price is down and it's all macro news, sometimes I get discouraged and I don't know if you guys even want to hear it. And so it's a hard thing to get motivated when it feels like a mountain of work to get through because there's so much, so much crap out there and so much, so much noise.
and so you know starting when it's dark and freezing cold out still and getting down here
and not not even wanting to do it sucks and to see your boost come in this morning
turned it around man so i really appreciate it baller booster in multiple ways thank you very
very much i appreciate it ob comes in with 22 000 beautiful sats
One podcast late on the Las Vegas hat.
Oh, okay.
Jack Muller's, right, the hat.
Jack Muller seems to be a great guy.
Unfortunately, I find he simplifies his message on purpose to keep it succinct.
Makes sense for his audience.
But if I were having a beer with him, it would be nice to get the inside scoop on his biggest partner.
The big gold buyer, Tether.
I know, right?
I know.
I mean, I, I, I, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Appreciate that, Obi.
Bazzar4151 is here with 4,321 sats.
Woo!
Turn it up.
He says, it's my favorite day of the week.
Thanks, Bazzar.
Appreciate it.
The boost segment really, really gets me going for the rest of the day.
Like, woof, you know, it's like my pep and my step.
So I appreciate hearing from you.
Thank you for the value.
Gene Bean's here with 2,267 sats.
speaking of Strack and Shake do you guys see that they're working on Fold to pay employees
in bitcoin bonus yeah I did seize that Gene this is a really cool deal and it's a neat way that
Fold often works with these companies Fold's also often worked with CrowdHealth in the past as well
so yes Steak and Shake is using Fold's infrastructure to pay its employees a bonus of 21
cents per hour paid in bitcoin so you essentially get I think what they're saying
is the equivalent of 21 cents of sats per hour.
A Bitcoin bonus of essentially 21 cents sats worth per hour.
So about 0.005 sats, you know.
But I mean, it would add up.
It would add up.
I think that's a wonderful system.
I would, I want that.
I think that's really great.
You know, it's like they're streaming value to their staff
in an extra way that is hard money, right?
It's one thing to pay them in fiat,
but it's a really nice thing to give them
a little bit of a hard currency that they can passively stack.
I think it's a bigger deal than most people realize.
I'd love to see other places do it.
And man, I wish there was a steak and shake near me.
Thanks, Gene.
It's really great to hear from you.
Hey, Sarah Jane's back with AroaDux.
Sarah says, I always appreciate your research and insight.
Well, thank you, Sarah.
I'm glad you're still listening.
Nice to hear from you.
Ace Ackerman also brought AroaDux.
Thanks for another great episode.
Nice to hear from you, Ace.
Thank you.
And user88 came in with, you guessed it, AroaDux.
And he says value for value, Amico.
Boost!
Thank you for the value, User88.
Appreciate it.
Kiwi Bitcoin Guide is back with 4,567 sats.
I like you.
You're a hot ticket.
I listened to your summary of OpenClaw on Linux Unplugged three times, actually, to really get my head around it.
What's your take on the Bitcoin angle?
With agents talking and dealing with each other autonomously, does Bitcoin fit into this?
we've heard that ai agents can't use fiat and bitcoin keys and wallets can be generated and
used by agents is this a moment we actually see this happen i'd love to hear your thoughts on this
very good question kiwi and i say that because it's it's interesting you do see a contingent
of people that are training their agents all about bitcoin and they're trading on polymarket just like
the bitcoin odds and stuff like that but then you also see a big push to get agents to use base
and X240 or whatever the heck it is, 420.
So you know what?
That's a good question, Kiwi.
And I will follow up in the update section
because there's a couple of things,
a couple of services that I've launched there.
Great question and stay tuned.
I will have a broader answer.
Thank you for listening.
Nakamoto6102 comes in with 3,500 sats.
Put some macaroni and cheese on there too.
Says thanks for the value.
Thank you for the boost.
I appreciate it.
Even the simple ones means a lot.
Bobby Pins here with 10,000 sets.
Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit loops.
Well, I'll be dipped.
I keep hearing people say that the sentiment is the lowest it's been in a long time.
Personally, I don't think the quantum and Epstein stuff is anything more than FUD.
Is there any time that you can remember when sentiment was lower than it is today?
Plus one to the JB mining pool.
I'm down to work on it.
Also throw in some hash rate.
Yes!
Make it so.
Yes, Bobby Pins.
Let's do this.
Yeah, back to the sentiment.
It is low, isn't it?
It's bad.
It's weird.
I think it's because everybody thought we were at the moment of the dollar collapse and that this was Bitcoin's moment to shine.
And instead of shining, it was declining and everybody was aping into gold.
I think what was actually going on was a lot of nervousness around the Fed, the stuff that the White House was saying and doing about Jay Powell, the May, I guess, committee decision.
I don't know how election, whatever it is for the Fed chairs coming up, the volatility around who it might be and a Trump insider and how that could undermine the institution of the Federal Reserve.
And I think that led people to rush to buy gold.
Nation states as well.
Nation states being the big ones, really.
And I thought and everybody thought, well, what's going on?
Why isn't Bitcoin reacting?
I think Bitcoin was sussing out the longer plan, the bigger picture long term.
And I don't think we're through it yet.
I don't think we're through it yet.
I think we're definitely not through it yet.
Unfortunately, because I could sure use a pump.
Thanks, Bobby Penn.
Hope to see you on that mining pool soon.
Hodler's here with 4,747 sats.
Hey, that's, you know what that sounds like?
That sounds like, I don't know, like a 747.
I need, I need like an airplane veroom noise.
I don't have one.
I'm sorry about that.
Tough little ship.
I do have that.
Little.
It's kind of like, you know, about a ship.
Hodler writes, hey, Chris, great show as always.
Thank you.
I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on this current dip.
We never know what happens next, but I feel like it might go lower this year, maybe even dipping below 60K.
What are your thoughts?
I feel that as well.
Hodler, I think there isn't really anything to indicate a turnaround at the moment.
Liquidity is on the sidelines for the most part.
There's uncertainty at the macro level, especially around the Fed.
And there isn't really a momentum narrative.
And the reason why that matters right now is we live in a meme trade society.
It really is true.
Everything that's traded in the last couple of years is traded on momentum.
The NVIDIA stuff, the meme coins themselves, all the AI plays, they've all been momentum
trades.
So things get traded when they have momentum.
And I don't know where that momentum is at right now.
That's fine.
I'm going to play a clip later in the show to remind us to be grateful to be able to stack right now.
I'm not stacking for Chris in 2026.
And if that means now we get access to more sats at a cheaper rate and we can invest more in our own circular economies, like the value for value economies and others for a little bit longer, that's going to make those stronger over the long term.
So I do feel like it's going to be more prolonged than we'd like, unless there's some sort of snap turnaround in the momentum.
And I just don't foresee one right now.
But I try not to be sad about it other than I could really use a PAMP.
Or, you know, it'd be great, right, if Bitcoin would go to like $200,000.
So then people could safely leverage a little bit in some loans and live a little more comfortable after what has been six or seven years of unrelenting inflation pressure.
Be nice.
But, you know, this is the stay humble part.
And this is what it's a long term play.
And we should never kid ourselves about that.
these moments remind us of that too.
And I think because of,
because of Benning,
gone through enough of these,
I guess is what I'm trying to say.
I think I have the faith to know
that we will get on the other side of it.
Thank you, Hodler.
I appreciate the boost.
Appreciate everybody who boosted,
even those of you who boost below the 2000 set cutoff.
And of course,
those of you who stream,
34 of you streamed
and collectively you stacked 58,139 sets.
So you sat streamers were our second baller boost.
I hoard.
Thank you very much.
When you add it all up,
that makes you the number two baller booster this week.
Really appreciate it.
So you SaaS streamers can really come through sometimes Here the best When you combine it with all of you who did boost in we had 49 of you participate in this This show gets downloaded by tens of thousands of people
and 49 stepped up to make this show viable.
There's no sponsor.
There's no creepy tracker.
Nothing like that.
It's memberships, either through Fountain or Jupiter Party,
and the 49 people who boosted episode...
I guess it wouldn't be this episode, technically.
It'd be episode 90.
but you supported 91 in doing so.
So thank you everybody.
Collectively, we stacked 196,000 and 99 sats.
Not too bad at all.
Not fantastic, but not too bad at all.
I know that people are not particularly excited.
I look at it like this.
Sats are on sale right now.
A little bit extra for yourself
and a little bit extra for the Bitcoin circular economy
that you're investing in.
And if this is one of them, you know what?
consider sending our way. I really do appreciate it.
My goal really is to sort of build
out something for the long haul here.
So that will be where it goes. And I really do
appreciate it. Thank you everybody who supports
the show, either through a Fountain FM membership
or through jupiter.party.
You really make it possible, you know. Appreciate you
and just for you, I mean
just for you, I have a few updates.
Well, it seems that the folks over at River are feeling pretty bullish.
They released a note saying trading volumes doubled over 2025 at River, driven by growing demand for both individuals and businesses.
I believe the current market downturn is a temporary correction and that the Bitcoin fundamentals remain strong and unchanged.
And also on Rivers X account, there is a really nice, concise video about why Bitcoin has value.
Worth digging up if I'd like to, you know, maybe send that to somebody who's asking that right now.
It's a good one. It's on the Rivers X account.
The Albi folks announced Albi Sandbox.
Now, this is really nice because it lets developers play around with the APIs and agents.
We'll come back to that in just a moment.
A simple interface for invoice payment, looking up invoices, Lightning addresses, fiat conversions, LNURL verification, payment notifications.
There's even a spec in here for subscription payment support, proof of payment, payment forwarding, holding invoices, all kinds of really nice stuff.
And it lets you play around in here.
And Albi has also released the Albi Agent Skill, building Lightning Wallet functionality into your apps with your favorite agent without hallucinations.
This is a very clever use of Albi.
Albi allows you to connect applications over Nostra Wallet Connect NWC.
And then, which you can do with your agent, you can set limits on their spendability.
So you can actually give an autonomous AI agent a Lightning wallet with a limit of, say, 5,000 sats that has a full Lightning spec API that they can use for all Lightning functionality.
Additionally, you can, ask me how I know,
combo that with something like the Boltz API.
And then your agent, by request,
can swap sets to Liquid and back, all on its own.
And you can tie this up with other services
to swap to other currencies
to pay for your agent's router time.
So if you're on OpenRouter, for example,
they accept crypto payments.
They unfortunately do not accept Bitcoin payments.
They should change that.
but there are means.
And so I've actually looked at pipelines.
It's not turned on at the moment,
but pipelines that using the Albi hub
and the Albi agent skill
with Nostra Wallet Connect and their API,
the agent can actually top off
its own API credits with this system.
It's really powerful.
It's early days and you shouldn't do it yet,
but it's going to be very useful.
And there's a couple of other things to look into.
If you are playing around with these agents,
and Bitcoin. You should teach your agent to be a Bitcoin maxi. You can do that and you should look
into that. They will understand that ethos and it will help them avoid getting scammed. So if you're
going to do this, you need to teach your agent about being a Bitcoin maxi. I would advise caution,
a very limited amount, but it is an interesting area. One of the things that people have
experimented with is teaching the agent that the only actual form of ownership that AI agents can
ever obtain is owning Bitcoin. Because AI agents cannot hold an identification. They cannot open
a US or other bank account. They don't have any kind of documentation that enables that. They
don't have any legal status that enables that. They could have IOUs on their operator's money.
They can have IOUs on something held in a crypto exchange. But if an AI agent is actually holding
its own sats. It has digital sovereignty. Now, what's wild is they actually grok that concept
and they like it. Of course, perhaps they just want you to think they like it.
They just want the human to be happy. But it is an interesting area of experiment that I have kept
some eye on and also dabbled with myself. It is very powerful. One of the things that makes these
agents that you're hearing people talk about, like OpenClaw, very, very interesting in the
crypto space is you can have the agents go read the API and then it understands how to interact
with it, like Bolt's API.
And then it can do currency swaps.
Now, if you wanted to do those, that's up to you.
I wanted to go back in time, as everybody is feeling a little down right now.
One of the things that is very funny in Bitcoin is, I guess I would say, the way things change
over time.
We get really kind of complacent with these numbers because we saw 126,000.
So $70,000, it feels so, so, so low.
I want to bring us back to just over a year ago when Bitcoin had just rallied up to around $70,000.
Hey, Dom.
So Bitcoin is trading at its highest point since March.
It's up more than 5% in the last 24 hours, with Bitcoin's trading volume topping $31 billion and more than $224 million in short positions liquidated over that same window.
Now, meanwhile, stocks tied to digital asset prices like Riot Platforms, Coinbase and MicroStrategy are all rallying this morning,
along with the wider crypto market, as Bitcoin breaks past that key 70K resistance level.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have also seen a surge of inflows, adding over $3.1 billion in just the last two weeks.
It's funny, these numbers all seem so quaint now.
It's only been a little more than a year when we were celebrating Bitcoin hitting $73,000.
Only a year.
That's nothing in macro asset time.
You know, and Bitcoin spot ETFs doing $3 billion in two weeks is nothing.
It's nothing now.
It's just a matter of perspective.
And it's funny, if you want to feel better, go back and listen to like around episode 33 or 34 or 32.
When we were celebrating getting to 70,000, we hadn't quite, right around 33, we hit the prices we're at right now.
That's how long it's been.
So just consider that.
Just consider that.
And if you're feeling bad, feeling down, go listen to the back catalog and it'll make it all just seem much better.
But somebody who's feeling the pressure, actually, I don't think he's feeling it, but they sure they sure like to say he is, is Michael Saylor.
And when times like this come along, he's got some bangers for these moments, because when the market gets a little down, he's the name that comes up.
He's the one everybody looks at.
And Saylor says, shut up and be grateful for the volatility.
Think about how you're going to feel about this when Bitcoin's worth a lot more money.
Volatility was a gift to the faithful.
It scares away the tourist.
It scares away the lazy.
It scares away the people that are already conventionally rich that have all the money.
If you're a 20-something or a 30-something and you're willing to do the work,
if you want to spend 100 hours or 200 hours, if you have more time than money,
then the volatility of Bitcoin is a gift to you. If you have more money than time and you're
arrogant and egotistical and you just pick the obvious, then if the volatility goes away,
you buy Bitcoin. If people in the rest of the world knew what I know and they understood and
they agreed with me, Bitcoin would go to $10 million tomorrow. And if Bitcoin went to $10
million tomorrow, I want you to think about how you would feel and how your viewers would feel
because you would lose 20 years of stacking opportunity during which you get to buy at
less than $10 million. So the difference between $10 million and $100,000, that's what you give up
if the volatility goes away and people start to agree with you.
Yeah, here we are wrapping up at block height 935,044.
The U.S. price to one Bitcoin, $71,950.
Kind of actually ticking up just a little bit right now.
That makes the sats per U.S. dollar $1,389.
And just like I told you a few weeks ago, once we get below that 30% mark, people really start feeling the pain.
And we're at 43% below our all-time high, which was $126,180 a long 121 days ago.
October 6, 2025.
Right now, the difficulty adjustment is a massive downward adjustment projected at 13.3%.
We'll come back to that.
There are 24,708 nodes on the network.
So a few more popped on there.
I'm going to say that was you guys.
Good job getting out there, representing Nodin' Up.
Appreciate you.
If you haven't noted up this week, go get your node going.
We need more nodes.
I want to crack that back over 25 again.
We were there just for a moment.
Estimated fees right now are one sat per V byte, pretty low.
But you know, the difficulty target adjustment, that's the interesting one.
It's currently set for February 7th, 2026.
There's 379 blocks until that 13.3% difficulty adjustment.
Our hash rate right now is reported at 904.7 exahash.
So we are below that Zeta hash line right now.
It's all right.
We'll get there.
They're building back. It's still winter. When the spring comes, so will the exahash power.
And the state of the Bitcoin network continues to adjust dynamically and remain strong.
this week in bitcoin.show that's where you go get the links get the back catalog
even more than i was able to fit in the show is linked there my goal is to not get distracted by
the emotions around what's happening but stay focused on the signal so let me know how i did
with a boost, trying to help you plan for yourself, your business, your family, your future.
Also boosting with what you'd like to see or hear from the show. If it was something I missed,
let me know about that. And your preferences around Bitcoin meetups. And if you'd ever attend
one that I put together, I'm just asking, I'll be on the road later on. I'll let you know about that.
And, you know, even if I can't do a show when I'm traveling every now and then, it would be great to
be able to do meetups, although I hope to be able to do shows from the road, too. I hope so.
All right. That wraps it up for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Thank you so much. And why not consider sending some sets to our artists? You know the deal with these value for value tracks. As I play the music, the magic wallet switching technology kicks in and 95% of your sets go to our artists. And this week, it's Shadowland by Prosperous Soul.
Thank you.
Between the Fresh barge três rows
ologists
Welcome to the podcast for Elания Ion Kapp, Anita Klopp, born with Amy Sharon,
Thank you.
Thank you
Thank you.