Crypto is a scourge. It's not something that you want in your society. It has no utility.
It's just pure speculation. Remember, there's no balance sheet to crypto.
There's no financial statements.
Every single crime you can conceive of is easier to do now because of crypto.
Music.
Welcome to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 39.
My name is Chris. Can you believe we hit 100,000 just like what seemed like
moments after I published the episode?
I guess you'd probably assume I'd be over the moon about it,
that I'd be so thrilled and that that's what we'd be talking about today.
But no, I'm actually feeling quite salty.
It seems that Bitcoin hitting 100,000 has really triggered some folks.
I don't think I can overstate this enough to you. There's really no way I can
express just how stupid this week has been and just so immensely frustrating
it has been going through all of this.
New rounds of attacks from people who speak with such authority designed to
get their way into normies brains
and make all the no-coiners even bigger skeptics than they already are.
Some of whom will be seen at the holidays, no doubt.
I mean, it really is incredible. The 180 pivot in Bitcoin coverage,
it has gone to total crap since 100,000.
Everybody is getting triggered, and the gold bugs seem to be some of the most triggered out there.
Peter Schiff posted on X, quote, Bitcoin has become a national security threat.
It was one thing when private citizens voluntarily waste their own money buying
Bitcoin, but it crosses the line when they bribe government officials to squander
the public's money buying it.
Bitcoin is now public enemy number one.
And of course what really has him upset is that clip
i played last week when the fed chair said that
bitcoin was digital gold that's got
him all worked up he's completely wrong but this is also helping to power bitcoin
having the chairman of the fed basically bless this plus because bitcoin is now being,
you know, part of the U.S., right?
It's part of Trump's plan to make America great again is to make Bitcoin greater again.
And now we're trying to marry the U.S. to Bitcoin.
You know, this is another irony of Bitcoin because, you know,
it's so crazy. I'm going to let him go a little bit more.
But what's so funny is everything Schiff says generally, you could just replace with gold.
So when the U.S. set up a strategic reserve of gold, were they marrying themselves to gold, right?
And also, I think the reason why Peter is triggered by Jerome Powell saying
that Bitcoin is digital gold is because it does matter.
Initially, people said, oh, you know, the dollar is going to go down.
You know, same as me, right? Dollar inflation, budget deficits.
People, people. You mean people like Peter Schiff who've been saying this for
25 years? We're going to keep printing dollars.
Bitcoin is an alternative to the dollar. You need to buy Bitcoin because the
dollar is going to go down. Oh, see, he's got it. He's figured it out.
Now they're saying that Bitcoin is the salvation of the dollar.
You don't have to worry about the dollar anymore because it's going to be backed by Bitcoin.
So we're going to buy all this Bitcoin in a strategic reserve,
and that's going to strengthen the dollar.
He gets so upset, and he's just missing part of the picture.
Really, he should be listening to This Week in Bitcoin, because last week I
explained that it's really about stablecoins and the fact that they are going
to become big old T-bill buyers.
That's really why when Bitcoin pumps, Tether and stablecoins pump crypto pumps, they buy T-bills.
That backs the dollar. Peter's just missing that piece.
He attacks and he attacks, but he never just takes a breath.
He never just thinks about it.
But I think the most disappointing hyperbolic coverage this week was a very
notable pivot from the MSNBC network.
They have gone all in on attacking Bitcoin. It has become their new obsession.
Multiple seg, I'm not going to arrow, I'm not going to play all the clips,
but I've got a couple of choice clips for you.
They're just, they're really going all in on this. And again,
it's super bad. So this is Chris Hayes from MSNBC.
He's trying to frame the strategic Bitcoin reserve proposal as a bailout for
rich crypto bag holders.
So for very understandable reasons, Democrats and Democratic regulators have
worked hard to keep crypto, which has been supremely volatile,
blocked off from the rest of financial systems that if it crashes,
it doesn't bring the entire U.S. economy down with it.
Let's stop here. So first of all, I think one of the things that we're going
to probably see as a theme in this episode is all of us, like dogs,
have been trained every time the door rings, every time somebody says volatility, we get scared.
We all have it ingrained into us that volatility is inherently bad.
Now, Bitcoiners realize that you don't get gains without volatility. Volatility is life.
In fact, if you go to the SEC's website and they have all these different things
on there, what makes a scam, what is a financial scam, what's a Ponzi scheme,
what's a pyramid scheme?
One of the reoccurring factors for Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes is that
the asset continues to appreciate in a stable rate regardless of how the rest
of the market is performing.
You see, if Bitcoin were to go just sort of straight up forever,
regardless of how the market is performing, that would be indicative of manipulation and a scam.
Its volatility is because it's an open market that trades 24-7 around the world
and you can cash it out on your phone in just seconds while you're taking a leak.
Literally i i have been driving up to a taco stand and transferred sats into
a cash card in like 30 seconds and then bought the taco with a debit card so it's very liquid so it's,
that's why it can be volatile and of course it's a worldwide market volatility
is not necessarily bad but then he also makes the claim in just 14 seconds he's
got these made two mistake number two. He's made two mistakes.
Mistake number two is that it's been isolated from the financial industry.
It's been completely walled off until now.
Is he not aware that BlackRock alone has 50 billion assets under management in their Bitcoin ETF?
Hello? Are you not aware of the massive play that all of BlackRock and these
different ETF holders and companies like MicroStrategies and Mara and many others
that are putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet?
He doesn't know about any of this. So this this like wall is just made it up.
It's just something he thinks exists because he thinks he's been following crypto
for a decade and he thinks he's an expert. I'm not exaggerating.
It's he actually says this later in the clip.
He actually thinks he knows this stuff. are in a bailout.
Some rich people holding a lot of crypto disagree with that strategy.
They want a bailout, implicit or explicit, if the House of Cards comes crashing down.
To that end, after Republicans took back the Senate with the help of money from
the crypto industry, they now have a plan to return the favor.
And I want you to listen to this part because no one's really talking about
this, but the elements of the plot are just there in plain sight.
So before we continue on, his claim is that the crypto industry hired all of
these Republicans to execute their secret plans to give them a bailout.
Never mind the fact that it was the Ripple CEO who was behind Fairshake and he gave a lot.
In fact, I think he gave more money to Kamala than any other candidate alone.
And other Democrats as well received money from Fairshake. It wasn't just Republicans.
And that happened because they were under attack. Yeah.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the SEC's approach was the main reason his
company and two others created the biggest industry super PAC called Fairshake.
People are like, why did these companies come together and organize and say, this matters?
And it's a reaction to a war on crypto.
So if there had been a different SEC chair than Gary Gensler?
I'm not sure Fairshake would exist. Really?
Absolutely. So the crypto lobby was a natural reaction to the attack that was
orchestrated by the Biden administration, the SEC, Elizabeth Warren, people at the FCC.
It was a response, not some like plan to get a crypto bag bailout.
But this is how he I don't know why. I don't know what his motivation is,
but that's how he tries to cast this industry.
They now have a plan to return the favor. And I want you to listen to this part
because no one's really talking about this.
But the elements of the plot are just there in plain sight.
He's the only one that's figured it out, though. The elements are all there.
But but just for some reason, nobody but Chris Hayes has figured it out.
Senate Republicans are working on a bill that would transfer billions and billions
of dollars of money from the U.S.
Government, from taxpayers and hand it over to a handful of big crypto holders.
I don't know why he keeps saying this. This is like a key point of his argument
that it's a handful of big crypto holders.
You know, just a few rich people. He'll even do some name drops.
I just referenced the distribution ownership like last episode.
Almost 60% of the Bitcoin supply is held by individual plebs with small balances.
Distributed amongst the people. Because for 14 years or so, we screamed at the
top of our lungs how awesome Bitcoin was. and nobody listened,
and so we just continued to stack.
More Bitcoin has been lost than is in the bags of BlackRock or Michael Saylor, right?
The next biggest bag holder to the people is governments, world governments.
So actually, he's completely backwards. It's actually a bailout,
if you're going to put it in these terms, to the people.
60% goes to the people. The next biggest his bag holder is world governments,
the very institutions this man worships.
Are just there in plain sight.
Senate Republicans are working on a bill that would transfer billions and billions
of dollars of money from the U.S.
Government, from taxpayers, and hand it over to a handful of big crypto holders.
We got a present for President Donald Trump.
Here it is. This is the Bitcoin Reserve bill in the Senate of the United States.
To establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve,
a network of secure storage vaults,
purchase programs, and other programs to ensure the transparent management of
Bitcoin holdings of the federal government. Jeez, that actually sounds pretty good.
Transparent holdings, even. I have no idea if we have transparent holdings on their gold right now.
Yes, the Bitcoin Act from Republican Senator Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming,
it would establish a federal reserve at Bitcoin.
It's truly one of the most audacious schemes I've ever seen in Congress.
Well, that's not true. It doesn't establish a federal reserve. That's why.
Rich folks who own a lot of crypto have- Again, he does this.
Rich folks who own a lot of crypto.
Some people who are rich, they saw the way the winds were blowing, right?
Like some of these people that are rich are good at sussing out markets.
They're good at sussing out things of value. They're good at figuring out what might be successful.
That's why they're rich. So when something comes along, like take Jack Dorsey,
for example, he bought up a bunch of Bitcoin at like nothing.
Right. He's got God knows how much Bitcoin, because unlike me,
he realized the value early on. See, I, I didn't.
I held hundreds of Bitcoin at one point. Hundreds.
And I blew nearly all of it because I didn't, I was trying to make it the next
PayPal. I thought we had to spend it to make it the next PayPal.
That was silly. But others who are savvy, who are more financially literate
at the time, they recognize what it could be.
And they were either rich then or became rich.
So I just don't understand his logic here, why he has to keep doing this.
Again, 60 percent of the supply is held by the plebs.
Truly one of the most audacious schemes I've ever seen in Congress. Here's why.
Rich folks who own a lot of crypto have a problem, right? Cryptocurrency,
Bitcoin in particular, is a very valuable asset.
Single Bitcoin worth over 100 grand. OK, so note how he acknowledges that a
single Bitcoin is very valuable.
Some very, very wealthy people own hundreds of millions or billions of dollars
worth of Bitcoin. David Sachs, for instance, has a lot of crypto.
You know what else David Sachs has a lot of? Real estate. You know what else he has a lot of?
Staff. That's things rich people buy. They have these things.
That said, it's not a liquid asset like cash that you can easily spend or invest
or use for practical purposes. It's not a liquid asset, the guy says.
I could sell a million dollars worth of Bitcoin while I'm listening to his dumb
ass tell me it's not a liquid asset. You want to sell a house?
Okay, well, that's going to take you months if you're lucky.
Go fix it up. You want to sell an apartment building? That's going to take you a year.
You want to sell a piece of land? And I know this because I have family that
has land that's been for sale for two years. It could sit there for years.
And they're increasing your taxes.
It continues to cost you money. You have to maintain the property.
It's it's ridiculous the it's the most liquid asset we have and it trades 24 7.
That said it's not a liquid asset like cash that you can easily spend or invest
or use for practical purposes it has no practical use really outside of a few
gimmicks and it's very useful for criminal cartels.
So store value I guess is a gimmick
hard money I guess is a gimmick decentralization I guess, is a gimmick.
No third party risk like sovereign nation or corporation, I guess, is a gimmick.
The ability to hold your own coins, I guess, is a gimmick.
And the first truly digitally scarce asset, I guess that's a gimmick, this guy says.
All that's a gimmick. Oh, and then by the way, he throws in the cybercrime thing,
which of course he has no idea, but we'll get to that later.
It has no practical use really outside of a few gimmicks, and it's very useful for criminal cartels.
So if you're an investor, you're sitting on this speculative asset.
You can't actually do anything with it, but it's worth a lot of money.
What's more, if you try to sell it all off, right, to get rid of it.
I love the logical loop here of it's an asset that's worth a lot of money,
but you can't do anything with it and it's not worth anything.
Speculative asset. You can't actually do anything with it, but it's worth a lot of money.
What's more, However, if you try to sell it all off, right, to get rid of it,
the hordes of Bitcoin on the exchanges, that's going to flood the market and tank the price.
Always say this. They always say this. Even though if you watch Bitcoin,
you'll see massive liquidation events.
Since January of 2024, there has been $277 billion of long-term holder sell
side volume, while the price has still increased 100%. Do you hear what I am saying?
People have sold nearly $300 billion worth of long-term coins, just long-term coins.
And the price still went up 100 percent.
This conclusively debunks that claim.
Large sellers have been flooding the market. That's what Bitcoin miners have
been doing to stay afloat after the having.
Nearly 300 billion dollars worth of long term holders have sold just since January. Do you hear this?
This disproves this completely.
The price continued to appreciate 100 percent, even during a Fed tightening cycle.
OK, like this is none of this actually checks out.
Speculative asset. You can't actually do anything with it, but it's worth a lot of money.
What's more, if you try to sell it all off, right, to get rid of it,
the hordes of Bitcoin on the exchanges, that's going to flood the market and
tank the price. God, I wish.
I wish. Please do. I would love some cheap Bitcoin.
So what's the solution? They're going to sell it to the U.S. government.
Over five years, the United States will assemble one million bitcoin,
five percent of the world's supply.
And it will be held for a minimum of 20 years and can be used for one purpose.
Reduce our debt. Now, it's so funny.
Like, this is exact opposite of the reality.
Bitcoin doesn't need the U.S. government. The U.S.
Government needs Bitcoin because the very politicians that he has been champion
for the last decade have just ran up the debt at an unbelievable,
unconceivable, un-understandable rate.
And now we are up against a
wall with a ticking time bomb and a shooting squad
and a nuclear bomb and a laser pointed at our forehead all at
the same time and so we need really creative solutions
and they don't seem to get how serious the
situation is and so the idea that bitcoin
needs a bailout from the u.s government is opposite
thinking the u.s government needs bitcoin they
need the price appreciation of bitcoin reduce our
debt you can't pay the debt down in bitcoin does nobody
understand how assets work that's like
saying well you can't pay the debt down with real estate well no crap but if
i own a bunch of real estate i could sell that at one point and then pay the
debt down with cash couldn't i like if i'm in debt on a credit card i don't
just hand them the real estate i sell the real estate then i make the credit card payment.
How is it not obvious? You see, it's like there's a please do boosting because
you can tell I'm really struggling with this.
Why do they not see this? It's so obvious.
There must be a motivated reason, but I cannot understand it.
I just don't understand why they wouldn't be motivated to solve this problem.
Bitcoin, are you tracking this?
Are you tracking what's being planned and announced in person here? Right.
The U.S. government handing billions of dollars into the pockets of rich crypto
holders. And you see how insidious this is.
This is designed to turn public opinion against the Bitcoin strategic reserve. Why?
Why would they want that? This is designed for normies to be listening to this.
And the program they're getting right now is, oh, man, we're these crypto degens,
just like the Sam Bankman fraud guy. We're going to bail these guys out.
We're just printing more money.
It's going to wreck us even more. That's what he's trying to get you to conclude.
The plan is that the Bitcoin Act would have the government sell off some of
its gold reserves, you know, the stuff from Fort Knox, and use the money to
buy a billion Bitcoin at current market value that would cost $100 billion.
Now, the actual price would likely be much higher because that market value
would almost certainly rise as a result when a new buyer enters the market and
boosts the price of the asset the buyer is now legally obligated to buy.
Sounds like they're going to get a great return.
This is an enormous heist. They're just backing the truck up to the government
in front of all of us. This is so wild.
You know, literally, while we're sending hundreds of billions of dollars to
Ukraine, when that war has no way of wrapping up in anything else than a stalemate
where nobody's happy, right?
We're spending untold amounts on Ukraine.
And this guy claims this is backing up the truck.
This has got to be motivated reasoning. It's the only thing I can conclude because
it's so opposite thinking.
A massive bailout to the crypto world. The opportunity to turn a speculative
asset into real cash on your dime.
And presumably, David Sachs, as the cryptos are, will help usher that plan through.
And there is a real irony here for a long time, as long as I've been covering
crypto, which is over a decade.
Advocates have sold cryptos as libertarian project, right? We don't need government.
We don't need banks. We don't need financial intermediaries.
We don't need regulation.
Here's Sachs himself making that point on a podcast two years ago.
There is a huge risk of currency debasement when the government is in control,
and particularly when you have the world's reserve currency.
There's just such an enormous temptation to print money to finance your budget
and to rack up loans that become unpayable.
What Bitcoin offers is a different kind of currency where it's not backed by a government.
It's backed by math. It's backed by encryption.
And so you don't have to trust the government. All that lofty rhetoric goes
right out the window, though, when Republicans decide they want the government
to initiate a massive upward transfer of wealth.
This is a cruel framing of this. This is very cruel.
And I will note over his shoulder, there's this cartoonish drawing of Trump
holding Bitcoin with 100K over his head. It's purple.
It's sort of like, you know, second gen AI image generation.
Like the folks at MSNBC got like some sort of AI image generator like a while
ago and they haven't upgraded because it's not a very good AI image.
And below it, it says tap into Fort Knox and bail out the crypto industry.
Yeah, we're going to bail out the crypto industry, which is so desperately in need of a bailout.
The crypto industry gets wiped out every time. The banks are the ones that get
bailed out. The crypto industry has died, and what survives has gotten stronger.
It almost feels cynical and intentional, because that wasn't the only wildly inaccurate coverage.
There was also some horrible coverage that came out just yesterday,
but I'm not going to play that entire clip,
because I only need to play a few seconds for you to understand how confused
these news actors are on MSNBC, where she compares Hoctua buyers to Bitcoiners
or calls Hoctua coin buyers Bitcoiners? I'll let you decide.
Well, I mean, there's no different than people investing in stocks or other
illiquid assets. There really isn't. I mean, if people believe... Hold on a minute.
Beneath that stock are companies that sell products.
Okay, ready? Let's give you the Hoctua girl example. Let's start with the...
Hold on, before she goes further. The stock thing.
The stock thing. stocks to me
are way riskier than Bitcoin because there's
a company underneath them a company that makes mistakes there's a lot of third-party
risk I think MSTR is very interesting but if sailor dies MSTR tanks if tip if
something happens to Tim Cook Apple stock tanks if Apple keeps releasing crappy
products and doesn't figure out the AI stuff their stock does poorly and,
There is a lot of third-party risk with stocks, but they don't even see that.
Companies that sell products that you can tell. Okay, ready?
Let's give you the hawk to a girl example, okay?
A drunk girl outside a bar who becomes famous for a lewd comment, more power to her. Okay.
Okay. She then launches a coin, is dishonest publicly about action around that coin.
The value sinks, and now all these Bitcoin investors want this money.
If that isn't like peak subprime. Now all these Bitcoin investors are out.
If that isn't peak subprime.
And he says, well, the problem is it needs to be regulated harder.
It makes me think I'm watching.
It's unregulated. So that's the point. She called the Hawk to a coin purchasers
Bitcoiners. They don't know what they're talking about. It's embarrassing.
Now, let's get back to the cybercrime thing, because this has all been landing
within the last few days since the last episode.
60 Minutes held a piece on Bitcoin. And they brought on former SEC official John Reed Stark.
And he tells 60 Minutes that Bitcoin makes the most horrific crimes in the world easier.
And it's just, I played a little bit in the intro. Here's the expanded version of the clip.
Crypto is a scourge. It's not something that you want in your society. It has no utility.
It's just pure speculation. Remember, there's no balance sheet to crypto.
There's no financial statements. You're talking about SEC filings.
There's no balance sheet to crypto. Isn't that funny?
Isn't that funny? Because the core of what a blockchain is, is a distributed
balance sheet and a ledger. There's no public disclosure mandate.
Exactly. Yeah. Like all open source projects. You know what else has no public
disclosure mandate? Linux.
Nothing. But also there's no audit, inspection, examination,
net capital requirements.
It's open. It's audited constantly every 10 minutes. No licensure of the individuals
involved. Oh, no, they don't get licensed?
You mean they have access to money and finance and banking without somebody's permission? Oh, God.
And there's no transparency into it. The entire thing is transparent.
That creates real systemic risks, not just risk for investors.
But the other part that people don't really talk about enough are the dire externalities
that are enabled by crypto.
What do you mean? Well, like the middle class, they're like pulling themselves
out of poverty and they're protecting themselves against inflation and they're
building generational wealth after we destroyed their small businesses during COVID.
What's that? That's not what he means? Every single crime you can conceive of
is easier to do now because of crypto, especially ransomware,
human sex trafficking, sanctions evasion, money laundering.
North Korea is financing their nuclear weapons program using crypto.
All right, here we go again with this and they always drop in,
you know, somebody's financing a weapons program.
I've linked to data before. According to data that we have this most recent
from 2023, the volume of illicit crypto transactions in 2023 showed a significant
decrease compared to the previous year.
This is according to Chainalysis, who's paid by the federal government to report
things that generally make crypto look bad.
So this is coming from somebody who is typically financially incentivized to
make this look as bad as possible.
They're saying their blockchain analytics reported that the global activity
in 2023 declined $15 billion lower than in 2022. Here's the key findings.
Illicit transactions made up only 0.34% of the total on-chain transaction volume for 2023.
0.34%. It's estimated the total value received by illicit cryptocurrency addresses
was $24.2 billion, which is down from, it used to be $39 the year before.
Transactions involving sanctioned entities accounted for $14.9 billion,
representing 61.5 of all the illicit transactions.
So sanctioned entities, 61.5% of that $24 billion.
Crypto scams and ransomware was 29.2% and 54.3%. So ransomware was the largest portion of that.
Stablecoins accounted for the majority of criminal transactions for the second
consecutive year, aligning with recent increase in stablecoin share of all crypto activity.
So the illicit activity for blockchain-based on-chain transactions,
0.34%. The majority of that is stablecoins, not Bitcoin.
And according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the estimated amount of money
laundered globally in recent years is two to five percent of the entire global GDP.
So two trillion dollars in current U.S. dollars.
The U.S. Treasury estimates about 300 billion is laundered annually in the United States alone.
And guess what? That's using cash. So we have 300 billion illicit transactions
just in the United States, 300 billion in illicit transactions just in the United States alone,
using cash,
all of crypto worldwide is $24 billion.
The two are not comparable. It is, they are not comparable.
The open nature of the blockchain, especially Bitcoin, makes it a horrible place
to do illegal activity. It's just the reality of it.
Music.
Well, the 100K attack continues by more FUD.
I've played a clip of Tucker Carlson being a complete moron about Bitcoin before,
and he continues to try to find everybody he can to say negative things about
Bitcoin and doesn't talk to anybody these days that has anything actually intellectually
positive or accurate to say about Bitcoin.
Tucker Carlson this week released a chat with Roger Ver. I talked about Roger
Ver in episode six of This Week in Bitcoin.
The episode was titled Debunking Big Blocker Alternative History.
Roger Ver has a series of conspiracy theories.
He believes the CIA intervened to sabotage the block wars to make Bitcoin stay
with small blocks so that way you couldn't use it to buy your coffee.
He claims exposing this put him into jail.
And he's facing 20 years in federal prison. But not because he exposed the CIA's
plans to sabotage Bitcoin.
It's because he underreported the value of his personal Bitcoin holdings and
those of his companies when he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014.
He left the country. He exited. He likely underreported the value of his Bitcoin
holdings, at least according to the IRS.
They have multiple counts. Each one of them put together adds up to 20 years
he's facing in federal prison. charges of mail fraud, tax evasion,
and of course, filing false tax returns.
Now, I look at some of these laws and some of this stuff, it really feels pretty
shitty. Like the exit tax stuff, I.
Don't really have any kind of judgment on that. But I do think Roger is a very,
very bad source on Bitcoin history. And it's an incredible disservice to put
his wacko conspiracy theories out on blast.
I'll give you an example of kind of like associative reasoning that Roger employs
all the time to make a point.
And I remember it was in June of 2011.
And in the course of two, maybe three weeks, the price of Bitcoin went from
around $3 a Bitcoin to $30 a Bitcoin.
And that was the first time in the history of Bitcoin up to that point in which
it started to get some worldwide media attention.
Yeah, what do we all know? When the price goes up, it's the best marketing in
the world for Bitcoin. It gets attention.
And what an interesting thing happened. So the main discussion forum where everybody
up to that point was talking about Bitcoin was a website called bitcointalk.org.
And suddenly when it was getting some media attention around the world and international newspapers,
this forum that had worked wonderfully up to that point where people
could discuss things became flooded with bots just posting
comments that were just you know fluff and made literally they they
ddos the forum to the point that it was unusable and anybody
that came there because they heard about bitcoin in the media that week
they they weren't able to learn about it because there's just so many posts
saying you know buy sell oh no and just just saying nothing of any substance
whatsoever you know he he makes two two different points here that would seem
to argue against themselves but yet he makes peace with it number one price
went up it brought a bunch of attention in.
A bunch of newbies came into the forum and started posting a bunch of dumb questions.
I was a member of the Bitcoin talk forum. If I recall, it was based on PHP BB.
I ran PHP BB instances too. It would only take 5,000, 6,000,
7,000 people visiting the forum to overwhelm a PHP BB instance.
It doesn't need to be a bunch of bots. There's no evidence that it was a bunch
of bots. That's Roger's supposition, but he talks about it like it's fact.
Could have just been that people were discovering Bitcoin. That was one of the
most popular places until Reddit came along to talk about Bitcoin in the early days.
And people started going in there and wanting to figure it out or trolling or
whatever it was. It doesn't necessarily have to be bots.
But you find a lot of times when people are on the losing side of an argument,
they'll claim that the reason that they lost the argument is because they were
going to win, but they were overwhelmed by all of the bots.
It was all of the bots. And if you believe that somebody
orchestrated a bunch of bots to attack a phpbb form
and you believe that to be a true fact well then
that could lead to all that could lead to all other kinds of conclusions so somebody
out there literally made the form unusable as early as 2011 and around that
same time we already know that the cia was interested in bitcoin because they're
asking different bitcoin developers to hey can you explain bitcoin to us so
again associations right so because the cia had reached out and said, hey,
can you come in and explain this Bitcoin thing to us? And that kind of freaks Satoshi out.
That's all the piece of history we've talked about before.
That doesn't mean the CIA also created bots to DDoS Bitcoin talk.
He's just associating those two things freely.
And speaking of, and of course, Tucker just nods along. What does Tucker know?
Because they're asking different Bitcoin developers to, hey,
can you explain Bitcoin to us?
So way back when the vast majority of the world hadn't even heard of Bitcoin yet,
the CIA was looking into it and somebody was actively preventing it from spreading
as quickly as it otherwise could of by shutting down the form effectively when
so many new people were coming to Bitcoin to learn about it for the first time.
This is a reoccurring theme.
Blocks and roger would have won and would have been right if
just the right information could have been shared and
this is roger's core attack against bitcoin essentially
in a single clip i'm going to save you from watching the like
hour long or whatever it is thing but then later in
i believe 2012 a person using the name john dylan who claimed to work for intelligence
spent more than ten thousand dollars i forget the exact amount but a significant
sum of money to start producing propaganda to trick people into thinking that
by keeping the blocks on Bitcoin small, it would make it more decentralized.
I appreciate that Roger is trying to keep this simple for his audience.
And so he's leaving out an incredible amount of detail.
We go into that detail in episode six, specifically around what he's talking about.
He's framing that somebody came along, maybe they were associated with the government,
maybe not, and had a feature proposal they were willing to fund.
And then people agreed with that developer or that person requesting the feature
and defended it in the form.
Roger is categorizing that as propaganda, and he never clarifies otherwise.
He just completely comes out and says it's propaganda as if Putin had directed it or something.
And to thinking that by keeping the blocks on Bitcoin small,
it would make it more decentralized.
And literally the exact opposite of the truth, the exact opposite of the way Satoshi Nakamoto,
the creator of Bitcoin, designed it and promoted it, and the exact opposite
of the way that people were using it and not in his opinion in his opinion right
the exact opposite of the way people are using i just told you i was using it
because i thought it should be another paypal.
I i i i thought it should be a means of of buying coffee every day i don't necessarily
think that anymore at least not yet.
Think first we have price discovery and we have store of value to get through.
It's a natural evolution of an asset. We have normal phases we have to get through
before we can buy coffee with it. The logic is simple.
I can't buy a cup of coffee unless we all agree kind of universally for a fairly
solid period of time how much each sat is worth.
Because I can't buy coffee in one shop for 1,000 sats and buy it in another
shop for 2,000 sats and buy another shop for 10,000 sats and another shop for
800. It just doesn't make sense.
We don't know how to price the cup of coffee right now.
We're in the price discovery phase, probably, maybe, for the rest of our lives, at least mine.
Roger just ignores all of that and claims that Bitcoin was ready from day one
to be used as a daily purchase mechanism, which is kind of silly for something
that's limited to 21 million coins, in my opinion.
And everybody knew that, according to Roger. Everybody knew that.
That was just common knowledge, according to Roger. The exact opposite of the
way Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, designed it and promoted it in
the exact opposite of the way that people were using it. And nobody believed
the propaganda initially.
What's so funny is as time goes on, Roger's kind of naturally been proven wrong,
but still refuses to admit it.
Right. Because layer two solutions
have come along like lightning that make act like when you boost.
I've bought my breakfast and my lunch in El Salvador using the lightning network.
Right. And it's an immediate settlement. It's fantastic. It doesn't matter what the block size is.
So there's that whole element that Roger just ignores. But the other thing that's
kind of proving Roger wrong over time, and I hear it from you,
is as the blockchain size grows, it gets harder and harder for us to store it
on reasonably priced machines.
And we're already kind of outgrowing the Raspberry Pis of the world.
And that's with small blocks, quote unquote.
And it's already pricing people out. It's kind of hard to build a good node
without, I'd say, at least two terabytes of storage these days.
You probably want a few cores.
I'd probably put 32 gigs of RAM in there.
And that's with the small blocks winning.
And it's showing you that as it grows, it is pricing people out.
And when you price people out, there will be fewer nodes on the network.
The network becomes naturally less decentralized.
There is an obvious tradeoff there. Thankfully, we're not there.
You know, hard drive prices are pretty reasonable in comparison.
Two terabytes isn't horribly expensive.
A few cores and some RAM, you know, you can put a machine that's a few years
old still. So we're still in a pretty good spot.
But that's because of decisions that were made a decade ago.
And if we had gone the direction Roger wanted to go, you'd need to be like a
Ethereum node these days to run Bitcoin.
But then later, this giant wave of censorship took place.
Anonymous people that nobody knows their real names managed to get control of
all the main discussion platforms.
So this again goes back to Roger's thesis that his extremely good idea that
was also Satoshi's extremely good idea that is truly the winning idea would
have won if not for information suppression,
which of course is a narrative that Tucker loves because censorship is a big
topic politically right now.
However, you could also argue that perhaps their case just wasn't well articulated.
Other people articulated a better case and substantially, I mean,
And I have to say, I substantially remember big companies like like the biggest
companies in Bitcoin were behind Roger.
I remember most of the quote unquote propaganda being a being pro big block.
That's my recollection. Right. So this just doesn't jive with the history that I remember.
But I don't go around like claiming it's absolute fact.
And I certainly don't do it on a platform like Tucker's. But then later,
this giant wave of censorship took place.
Anonymous people that nobody knows their real names managed to get control of
all the main discussion platforms for Bitcoin.
And then suddenly, one day overnight, nobody was even allowed to advocate for
Bitcoin being used as money. And they censored anybody that tried to do that.
And initially, everybody saw through it. But then everybody that came to Bitcoin
after the censorship began, they just started believing it.
All these folks who do hundreds of hours of research,
who have to fundamentally learn what makes hard money and then have to begin
to understand what is so broken about a system as complex as the Federal Reserve
and just let alone our country and other countries where, you know,
I can only speak to what I had to figure out.
These people are capable of understanding this asset before BlackRock.
Or Wall Street. But they just weren't smart enough to find the data that Roger's
referring to because censorship on bitcointalk.org.
...to anybody that tried to do that.
And initially, everybody saw through it. But then everybody that came to Bitcoin
after the censorship began, they just started believing it.
And today, the main people that are out there promoting Bitcoin,
they literally say, oh, Bitcoin shouldn't compete with the U.S. dollar.
Bitcoin, you shouldn't use it as money. You shouldn't use it to pay for things.
Like, Bitcoin is just a digital asset. you should just hold it is he
like is he basically taking what sailor sometimes says
and then just painting us all with that brush and it's
the exact opposite they've they've through the censorship and the propaganda they've
literally hijacked bitcoin and i literally wrote an entire book about it you
can find more at hijackingbitcoin.com it's available on amazon and everywhere
else and lo and behold just a couple of weeks after the the book is published
i get arrested and now i'm facing 109 years in federal prison for having exposed
the way in which bitcoin was hijacked.
And you can think all day long that the new version of Bitcoin that people are promoting is better.
Okay. But you can't admit that it wasn't hijacked. The new version.
Oh, I forgot about that part of the clip. Oh, he's really in his own world.
And he says 190 years. The research I found said he's facing 20 years.
I don't know which one is true.
Oh, man. So there's that. And unfortunately, I just I just have nothing but negative things to say.
I guess if you're new to the show, go check out episode six.
Oh, man, this is going to be a long one, you guys. I got so much more. OK,
so the other thing that everybody is freaking out about right as we hit 100,000
is that Google is going to crack Bitcoin with their new quantum chip and Fox Business, CNBC,
Bloomberg, they're all saying Bitcoin is doomed.
Now you've got specific applications, scale, error rates and time frame,
but they also say make no mistake that they're on the path to actually being a threat to Bitcoin.
How would this be a threat? Would it be a threat to the encryption? What happens here?
Exactly. It's the encryption. We used to think that, you know,
a few days ago, you know, we thought Satoshi had kind of locked,
you know, all the crypto wallets of the world, made them so secure.
Nobody could ever crack into these things.
Just a few days ago, everything has changed now.
But just a few days ago, we had this false sense of security that Satoshi had
locked everything away, that everything was safe and secure.
But then we woke up today and discovered Google has a quantum computing breakthrough. through.
We used to think that, you know, a few days ago, you know, we thought Satoshi
had kind of locked, you know, all the crypto wallets of the world, made them so secure.
Nobody could ever crack into these things. I thought you guys are always telling
me that people are cracking into these things and stealing people's money.
And that's part of what powered Bitcoin to 100k. But oh, I love this too.
You guys, I could tell I'm a little on edge. I've consumed a lot of media for the show this week.
And one of the memes is, and that's kind of what got Bitcoin up to 100k.
And it could be anything, you know, like anything.
They'll say anything. And that's what brought Bitcoin up to 100K.
And they just throw it in there now. The world made them so secure.
Nobody could ever crack into these things. And that's part of what powered Bitcoin to 100K.
But the power of quantum computing is that, yes, it is actually theoretically.
Possible that in the future, these quantum computers will be able to hack into
all the crypto wallets. Not just that.
And, you know, if that wasn't bad enough. I mean, think about all the governments
with sensitive data, all the companies, all the banks with sensitive data.
You know, the state of the art right now is RSA technology.
These mathematical formulas could be, you know, solved instantaneously and all of that data access.
So it's a big threat. And the fact that Google just dropped this chip out of
the blue yesterday, it sort of signals that this world is moving much faster than we expected.
And therefore, we're going to have to have security in place to protect all
this data and all these billions of Bitcoin around the world.
It's taken 20 years of research to get to around 100 qubits.
I think you start to get concerned about some of the encryption around Bitcoin
around a few million qubits.
And then you get really worried around like 100 million qubits.
So if it took them 20 years to get to 100 and you want over a million to 100
million qubits to crack Bitcoin, how long is that going to take?
And how does this actually work? They probably first get to 30 qubits,
then maybe they get to 50.
Maybe they then get to, you know, 100. Oh, OK. So that's where they're at now.
Big breakthrough, right? Oh, it's a big deal. It just happened overnight,
this guy says. It just happened overnight.
Well, what's next? Do we get to 200 qubits? Do we get to 150?
We don't really know how this grows, but it probably doesn't get to a million
for a very, very long time. It probably doesn't get to 10 million for much longer, if ever.
And there will be signs because things that are easier to crack than Bitcoin will get cracked.
They'll start, you know, banks, people's bank accounts, other forms of weaker
encryption that are employed by governments.
Those types of things will start getting cracked long before Bitcoin gets cracked.
But the reality is you don't need to worry about this at all.
First of all, this has come up many times before.
And the Bitcoin Core team has already worked through prototypes to solve for this.
So we have rough versions of quantum-proof encryption today.
We likely have a long time to figure out how to make it work great.
And it's not just me saying that.
Bitcoin Core Dev, who we played on the show before, Gloria Zhao,
was on Natalie Patel's podcast, Coin Stories.
And Natalie asked her about the quantum computing risk. This was quite a while ago.
Natalie, to her credit, was early on this. Can you talk about any threats that exist with AI?
Some people are worried that these ultra powerful machine learning computers
can kind of crack Bitcoin. Is that possible?
I'm not too worried about the AI kind of angle to this.
I don't think AI is very well suited for these kinds of problems.
If you're trying to break SHA-256, I think people sometimes worry about quantum computers.
And I think that concern is maybe a little bit more interesting on this timescale
of like 30 to 50 years, not like tomorrow. But there are people thinking about this.
If people were more concerned, you would see more about it.
My understanding is like quantum wise, because you're thinking of the threat
as like 30 to 30 to 50 year kind of scale.
And there's a lot of free active research being done, like every year it gets
extreme, like a lot better.
And so I've heard of kind of quantum secure signature schemes being like kind
of POC for Bitcoin, where they're like, yeah, we can do it.
But the signature size is going to be like 1000 something bytes.
Like we were talking about block space, right? Like that kind of sucks.
And if this is only going to be applicable 20 to 30 years or 30 to 50 years
from now, we can benefit from another 20 years worth of research to make this
a lot more optimized and a lot more usable and suitable for our use case.
All I'm trying to say is like the concerns that you've voiced and that,
you know, are probably coming from somewhere.
People think about them, but they have a very like practical and like thoughtful
approach to how to deal with those kinds of concerns.
Music.
So you don't need to worry about it. Do not worry about it. I'll keep an eye on it for you.
Also going down is the vote to hold Bitcoin.
Microsoft shareholders voted against holding Bitcoin in their treasury for now.
That's not a forever no, but Microsoft's board, as expected,
opposed the proposal and they cited the volatility as a key concern.
The volatility, once again, noting that management, quote, already carefully considers this topic.
The company reportedly holds $78.4 billion in cash right now.
I don't think anybody was too surprised.
I think Saylor's insight that it's going to be smaller tech companies that are
already more volatile that are going to be the ones that adopt this stuff first.
Been around to watch Microsoft miss a lot of things that they then had to catch
up in a very expensive way. And I think Bitcoin is going to be very similar.
I watched Microsoft laugh at Netscape and then scramble to build Internet Explorer.
And then I watched them scramble to try to build an ISP as AOL and CompuServe became big.
Then I watched them completely miss the boat on smartphones.
What was your first reaction when you saw that? I said, $500?
Fully subsidized with a plan? I said, that is the most expensive phone in the world.
That's Steve Ballmer's reaction to the iPhone. And I got to tell you,
a $500 iPhone sounds real cheap right now.
And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard,
which makes it not a very good email machine. Now, it may sell very well or not.
We have our strategy. We've got great Windows mobile devices.
Right now, we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year.
Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they'll have the most expensive
phone by far ever in the marketplace. And let's see.
What's the expression? Let's see how the competition goes. Yeah, let's see.
Let's see how it goes for Microsoft. I have a sense that other companies will do it ahead of them.
And they'll start kicking Microsoft's ass in terms of performance.
And then maybe later on, companies like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon may buy
Bitcoin because Amazon shareholders have submitted a request for the two point
three trillion dollar company to explore adding Bitcoin to Amazon's treasury.
And here's what the shareholders know. And I've tracked down the group behind
this and I'm doing some investigation. It is the same group that proposed the Microsoft treasury.
Bitcoin proposal to the board. It is the same folks that now have done one for Amazon.
And I have been kind of doing some reading into them so far.
No red flags yet, but I'll share more later on.
In their proposal, this is a quote, they note, though Bitcoin is currently a volatile asset.
As Amazon stock has been at times throughout its history, oh,
zing, corporations have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value over
the long term as well as the short term.
Diversifying the balance sheet by including some Bitcoin solves this problem
without taking on too much volatility. Again, volatility.
They go on to say, at a minimum, Amazon should evaluate the benefits of holding
some, even just 5% of its assets in Bitcoin.
I don't know if I have a date. I think I read somewhere that's mid-April that
this would be going to a vote, But don't hold me to that because I couldn't confirm that.
I will see. You know, I think they're going to keep trying. It feels like they're
shooting too high, in my opinion.
I think there's a lot of other companies out there, especially companies that
are similar to MicroStrategy that were just stagnant for a long time.
These companies like Microsoft and Amazon, they don't think they need Bitcoin
right now. They've got AI.
They're going to ride the AI wave. So I just don't think it's going to happen.
But I would like you to boost it and tell me what company they should pitch
it at, because I think there are companies out there that would be a good fit.
Music.
Well, full disclosure, we're going into overtime. We got a lot more show.
And I want you to boost in. Tell me, are you gifting Bitcoin for the holidays at all?
You know, I was thinking after especially MSNBC has just really freaked out about Bitcoin.
What can we do as individuals to try to keep Bitcoin apolitical?
Because I just think that's a disservice. Bitcoin can benefit everyone.
And I think maybe it is to gift Bitcoin to folks who weren't going to go buy it.
Maybe gift a little bit. Maybe gift just enough, as much as you can afford to
make it worth their holding it.
Because it's amazing once you hold a little Bitcoin how your opinion starts
to change. And we can give it to all types.
So are you gifting Bitcoin or like a wallet or any Bitcoin related hardware?
I mentioned last week that I'll be doing that.
I'd like to hear what your plans are around that. Boost in and tell me.
It's a good way to support the show and share with the.
Music.
All right, well, coming up, your boost, a quick macro update,
huge, huge updates you need to hear about in general in the community,
the state of the network at a Chad-level final clip. This is a huge, oversized show.
So why not support the show? If you want to buy some sats, buy them on river
from the U.S. It's the best way to stack sats in the U.S.
If you use my referral code, when you buy Bitcoin, the show gets a little bit of a kickback.
I think the Bitcoin well is a great contender as well, especially if you're
in Canada. They're a Canadian-based company.
And they support a really slick automatic self-custody platform.
So you can buy it. It goes right to your wallet.
That's the Bitcoin well. I have links to all of this at the top of the show notes.
If you're ready to spend your Bitcoin, like maybe you want to get an Amazon
gift card to buy something for the holidays. Lots of companies,
hundreds of companies, they have gift cards.
The BitcoinCompany.com, promo code Jupiter, or use my link. You get some sats,
the show gets some extra sats.
If you want to stack sats by paying your bills, that's the Fold card. I got a link to that.
And if you want to get access to some of your Bitcoin value without selling
it, my recommendation right now is Salt Lending. And I have a link to that in the show notes as well.
And we do have some boosts to get into. Thank you, everybody who supports the
show by sending a boost in it. Matters a heck of a lot.
And now it is time for the boost.
Four score and seven boosts to go. And our first boost comes in from Treycar with 100,000 sats.
Music.
Thank you very much, sir. It says, always happy to see the latest twib drop.
Cheers from an expat in Tokyo.
Wow, that's amazing. Hello, Tokyo out there. Okay, so, oh, by the way,
it's pronounced Drekar like Trey.
So I think maybe I got it. Oh, Treycar. So it's Treycar?
I think I got close. You let me know. But I really appreciate that boost.
That means a lot. This episode was an emotionally taxing episode.
All the fun I had to go through. What I've shared with you is just like,
you know, some of the cream of the crop, let me tell you. So I really appreciate that baller boost.
It sort of rejuvenated me when I saw that come in. I was like,
OK, it has been worth the effort. Thank you very much. And it's so awesome to hear from Tokyo, too.
I'd love to hear more about the Bitcoin scene out there if you ever want to
boost in again. Appreciate it.
SatSquatch comes in with 66,000 sats. The traders love the ball.
I hoard that which your kind covets.
Using Breeze. The thing I've always loved about Bitcoin is how the incentives
of self-interest align to keep it running.
I can't think of a scenario that permanently curtails Bitcoin's adoption that
isn't eventually defeated by those same incentives.
The way the incentive structure around Bitcoin works for Bitcoin holders,
the miners, node operators, and now even folks like BlackRock,
eventually the federal governments.
It's it's a stunning
stunning insightful it's like
it's i guess what i'm trying to say is it's so
stunningly insightful it's the thing that does make me
wonder if satoshi was multiple people because how could one person how could
one person think not only you know like figure out bringing proof of work together
with the time-based release and the increased difficulty so you have the secured
issuance schedule with all of these incentive structures.
It's mind-boggling that one person was so insightful.
And the way the incentive structures all align throughout Bitcoin is either
it's like somehow order came out of complexity in a way that's unforeseen and
unpredictable, or it was intentional.
And either way, it's incredible. And SatSquatch, I'm glad you gave me an opportunity
to kind of wax on about that.
And thank you for that generous boost, too. I really appreciate it.
Chutoy is in with a big old 22,222 sats.
This old duck still got it. Things are looking up for old duck.
Chutoy says, thanks for all of the content. I'm a small business owner who offers
a 3% match for a 401k plan for my employees.
I've talked about Bitcoin with them, but they don't get it. And I'm not pushy.
Is there a product or PR service that could help me set up a Bitcoin savings
plan for my employees that I could then add match to, similar to the way I match our 401k plan.
Ooh, what a cool idea. I've heard of this before, other people kind of thinking about this.
I, in the past, have thought about recommending Swans products,
but I think I'm pausing on that for a moment until I hear otherwise.
I guess I would be interested in what River offers.
I know they have IRA accounts and other types of offerings, and they do offer
support for businesses.
So I would probably start with River, and then if River doesn't have it,
they could probably tell you who does.
That's a great idea for a company. There's a lot of products out there for individuals
to contribute to like an IRA or something like that, but an employee match would be such a great perk.
So please, Chutoy, if you figure that out, let me know.
I would love to pass that on and maybe even consider it one day here at the
Humble Jupiter Broadcasting.
Hey, Gene Bean's back. Oh, and thank you for the Boost Chew toy.
Gene Bean's back with 3,559 sats.
That's not possible. Nothing can do that. Well, Gene can.
First, he sent in a row of ducks to us.
Have you read or listened to Broken Money by Lynn Alden? If so,
thoughts? I'm listening now and it's fascinating. Yeah, Gene Bean,
that's one of the first books.
That's one of the first books that I recommended on the show.
I think if you have a little time over the holiday and you haven't read Broken
Money yet, I'm going to plus one Gene here.
He says, I started listening last night and I heard you talk about how we're
going to be bumping up $100,000 and get past it soon.
And then I woke up and it was at $102,000. Woo-hoo-hoo! Yeah, Gene.
Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it?
Know how I found out I looked down the stupid widget on my phone
and I'm like 102 what and
that like this stupid widget that I've had for years that's
always been like yeah I know I was like it's never
been how I discovered what the price was for some reason and except for this
one moment it's always kind of fun and then of course like you know the wife
and the kids start text message oh yeah all right brace probably won't stay
forever you know that's always like okay just to prepare for pain,
too. That is how it goes sometimes.
This is the way. Isn't it? All right. Thank you, Gene. Nice to hear from you.
Northern HODL comes in with 2,121 sats. Everything's under control. Noscout time, 976.
Booyah boost. Did I get the booyah boost?
No, but I do have... Because I'm the wind.
So there you go. What happened to the booyah boost? You have to boost in and tell me.
Banks are Ponzi schemes run by morons. Thank you for the boost.
Chewy Mike comes in with a row of ducks.
2,222 sats and just says, Boost! Thank you, Chatty Mike. Not so chatty,
but always nice to hear from you.
Tomato comes in with 9,001 sats.
It's over 9,000! Oh, yes! Smack it! Trying again with the value message in the email. Oh, okay.
What email? The contact form? I didn't get a message. I don't think.
I'll have to make sure that's working. But thank you, Tomato.
It's always great to hear from you. Stay safe, Tomato. him.
Deck Sword comes in with 4,444 sats.
Yeah, that's two rows of ducks. It's a big deck. Boosting because the last show
hit a good sat mark and I wanted to keep the momentum going.
Oh, thank you. That is, as a creator, I think sometimes you worry with a value-for-value
format that you exhaust the audience, but of course, like, you have to keep working.
You want to keep working just as hard. So thank you very much for recognizing that. It's incredible.
I think that's part of why I want to just be as transparent as possible with you guys.
And I tell you the amounts and all of that because I trust that you're smart
and you figured it out, Dex. It's just great.
It says, you're a prominent figure in both Linux and the Bitcoin space.
We need more episodes so Notebook LM uses your voice for Bitcoin topics.
Yeah, it sure does for the Linux topics.
You can try it. If you go to Notebook LM, go create a new topic and for sources, give it nothing.
You can go paste for sources and just tell it no and then ask it to talk about,
tell it a single host talking about open source and Linux and ButterFS and you
can say arguing with itself or something like that and generate it a couple
of times and you'll get me.
You'll get a really good version of me. You'll know if it's a couple,
if it generates you like a 13 minute long podcast, it probably,
it's just going to be the regular host.
But if it generates you a couple of minute podcast, it's probably got my voice
in it. It might start with their voice and then transition to my voice at some point in there.
Simple as that. And then if you really know what you're doing,
like Wes does, you can get it to say anything.
It's really, it's quite disturbing. Dex has another question.
Since you're talking about solar farms mining Bitcoin, as a single node,
does it make sense to join a pool?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'd love to hear others' opinion on this,
but I think then you get a little more consistent payout. You're not going to
get a lot because it's going to be based on your contribution.
So, you know, you could argue that you're running it to help,
you know, secure the network.
And if you win the lottery and get, you know, a block, that's great, right?
You get every now and then you hear about these, you know, single,
single miners out there, these pleb miners that got like, you know,
one, one miner going and, and, and they make it somehow.
It seems like it'd be nearly impossible because all the hash power in these
pools, but I'd, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it. I'd say,
yes, you probably want to join.
If you're a single mining node, you probably want to join a pool,
but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on it.
Nakamoto 6102 comes in with 4,000 sats.
Incoming transmission. Thank you for the podcast. For 2025, ah,
answering my question, I'm bullish on Bitcoin, Nostr, and other open source freedom technologies.
I'll tell you where I'm bullish on Nostr. I'm bullish on Nostr getting adopted
as kind of a comms layer, a distributed transmissions layer,
a lot of the technology, like Nostr Wallet Connect.
I think it solves a lot of problems in a lot of different spaces.
And then when you zoom out, I think the public-private key has always been a
fantastic way to prove identity in different systems.
But we've never had a solid web
of trust exchange. But the social layer on top of NOSTER gives us that.
It gives us a way to naturally form a web of trust.
And I love the idea and I hope and pray that one day I'll be able to have a
NOSTER identity that I take across a lot of the applications I use.
I'm sick and tired of having an account with every app and every vendor, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's such a pleasure when I jump into the Nostra ecosystem and I can just
log in with my Nostra credentials to all this stuff. And it knows who I am,
but has my profile picture.
It's just such a nice user experience. And we need to see that adopted in other places.
And I think people need to get over the whole social network aspect of it and
look at it as a useful component of Nostra, but not as Nostra.
And look at it as a source of open source protocols, means of communication,
and a bunch of code that has a bunch of really talented people,
some of whom now are getting financed by OpenSats and others.
And are going to continue to produce code and continue to produce stuff that is useful.
And it's open source and it should be looked at to solve other problems as well.
My rant. Thank you, Nakamoto, for coming in with that. I agree.
I'm bullish on those things, too. Ace Ackerman's here with a row of tugs.
Oh, man, that's getting worked up again. I don't think Bitcoin is in competition with the U.S.
Dollar because its use case is more of a store of value and less of a means of exchange.
A black swan event could be a reveal that exchange does not hold the Bitcoin they claim to have.
And I could see something like that happening.
You're saying know like with coinbase yeah that would be a major major scandile
i am not as worried about that,
as others you know the incentives kind of line up for maybe a little bit of
games there but inevitably all these players you know the scarcity is a good
thing for them and i think when you look at like coinbase and the banks that
are using coinbase that's a that's a very serious relationship,
that's how you know people end up dead when they mess around with that kind
of stuff thank you for the boost. The immunologist comes in with Rodex.
Some humble support for a great show. If I would have listened earlier and got
more Bitcoin than my strike sats I use for boosting, I'd be very happy now.
Boost more, he'd say too. Yeah, he said I would too. You know, I have two approaches.
I think strike is fantastic for boosting sats. And then I have,
you know, I think there's other ways to strategically save Bitcoin.
Like I mentioned river and Bitcoin well. I'm.
Things I like about River, and this is, again, I have no relationship with them. They don't pay me.
Unless you go buy some Bitcoin, I don't, the show just, you know, the show gets some sets.
They have a pretty decent interest savings account.
And so if you end up with a little bit of cash, you get it a pretty,
and it's interest paid out like a 3.7 or 3.8% in Bitcoin.
So you put your cash in the River savings account and you get interest in Bitcoin.
But I like it because then you have cash that is earning some interest,
probably barely staying above inflation. We'll get to that.
But it's available if you want to buy a dip.
And I think that's a nice combination of strategically buying Bitcoin,
holding it there for a while, and then moving it out over lightning.
I go through liquid before I go to my hardware wallet. But for sats that I am
boosting or zapping on Noster, sending to value-for-value music artists,
I use transcribe.fm for transcriptions.
All of that, I'm paying sats from what I generally top off with Strike about
once every couple of months, and I just then shoot it over to my spending lightning
wallet, which for me is my AlbiHub.
And that works really well. So that's like the Albi Hub is for spending,
and then I have my cold storage for savings, and I hope the accounting works
out because the ones I buy on strike, I essentially end up spending nearly immediately.
So there's not really any loss or gains typically in there. We'll see.
I'm sure if something crazy like I discover otherwise, I'll share it on the
show. But I love your thoughts, immunologist. Thanks for sharing those.
Silver Chicks here with a row of ducks, 2,222 sets.
Heck, yeah. Look at all these ducks. Silverchick says, thanks for the Breeze
recommendation, sent with Breeze. I love how simple it is to boost.
In a future episode, a deep dive on hardware wallet options would be helpful.
I have a family member that's receiving the BitKey, and I'm going to help them set that up.
That's the wallet from Block, and I own multiple cold cards.
I'm looking for something in between there too. I think the cold card is still
the gold standard, but the feedback I've heard is that it's just a little intimidating to use.
So I think I'm looking at BitKey, and I'm going to be looking at others. So stay tuned.
Thank you for the value. Appreciate that boost, and I'll try to return that
value in a future episode.
Adversary 17 comes in with 4,096 sats. Just pump the brakes right there.
That's right. It's adversaries. Let's hear it good, buddy.
Newbie corner question, if you're still doing that, what is the difference between
Bitcoin Core and Ethereum?
Why would I run one over the other? If I run Bitcoin Core myself,
should I also run the Electrum server?
Okay. I wonder if I should save that because this episode's really long.
Well, Bitcoin Core is the Bitcoin core software from the Bitcoin core team.
And Ethereum is, oh, Electrum. I misread that. Electrum. That makes a lot more sense.
Okay. Okay. I thought you were asking the difference between Bitcoin core and Ethereum.
And I was like, oh boy, how am I going to? Okay. Well, Electrum is a very popular Bitcoin wallet.
And there are public nodes that you can run your own private node.
You can go to electrum.org and it's also like available on Start9 and it's available on Umbral.
And this can be like a backend Electrum server that you can run on a server
and then a lot of clients talk or speak the Electrum protocols.
I will try to do more on this in the future. But, you know...
The quick answer is you can run both. The long answer is they do different things.
They serve kind of different purposes.
You don't need, unless you know you need Electrum, don't run it.
And then when you do need it, install it and start with Bitcoin Core.
That's the short answer slash longest answer. I hope that helps.
Sorry I misunderstood at first, adversaries. It's always nice to hear from you.
Chaka-ka is in with a row of ducks.
That's probably saying that wrong. Now, what could be a risk?
Because I was asking you guys this. What could be a risk? And this is our last boost for the episode.
You've been talking about how there is 14 million Bitcoin within the regular
folks. I think it's 16 million. I know it's somewhere in that range.
I goes on to say, and there is the recent ECB report of redistribution of wealth.
We do not know when the 14 million will be sold at.
And as we see now, one year and Wall Street has bought up a million Bitcoin.
What will happen in a few years? Will we still have 14 million hodlers out there?
How will the distribution look like? Like, what in my mind is the biggest threat
to Bitcoin is that the maxis do not teach enough so that people now know why it's important to hold.
Now we just have people that want the number to go up. Any redistribution of
Bitcoin where the richest are going to buy is probably the best and only option.
So the question you're essentially trying to pose, if I understand,
is you're worried that the plebs that have been hodling for a while will start
dumping as the price goes up and then the banks will snatch all that up.
Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably going to happen to a degree.
But I don't think it happens at any one particular price point.
You know, everybody has their price where they've made enough money and now
they want to buy a house or they
need a new leg or they want to buy an airplane or, you know, whatever.
To me, I think there's a good cohort of Bitcoiners that may never sell,
especially if you subscribe to my lend before you sell theory.
And also, what are you selling for?
You know, what are you buying? You're going to get cash.
You're going to sell your precious, scarce asset that only goes up in value
for something they can make an unlimited amount of that only goes down in value.
There's just some people that are not going to make that trade.
Ever. I don't want to sell my Bitcoin ever.
Not, you know, I mean, I should, I mean, maybe there'd be some sort of emergency.
Or, you know, maybe I get a margin called.
And I'll tell you, if there's a big dip, I'm buying. You know,
maybe I can't buy a lot anymore, but I'm never not buying.
Because it's the form of savings. It's always going to be a form of savings.
And fiat is always going to be debased.
It is just a mathematical certainty.
Inflation's still sticking around the debt's horrible,
It's just, it's math. But thank you for the boost, Chaka.
Nice to hear from you. And thanks for those road ducks. Thank you,
everybody who boosted in. That's all the boosts above the 2,000 sat cutoff, which we do for time.
But we had 46 of you also stream sats as you listen.
Collectively, you helped the show stack 82,790 sats. 82,790 sats from the streamers.
When you combine that with the boosters, we had 63 unique participants in the
value for value system. Thank you very much.
Thousands of people will listen, but 63 of you made this episode possible.
And together, we stacked 310,527 sats.
Not too bad at all, especially after last week.
And hopefully, hopefully this episode will get some great support.
If you'd like to boost the show, Fountain FM probably makes it super easy.
But if you're even up for a modest challenge, investigate setting up AlbiHub. It's a real treat.
And pretty soon, I have reason to believe it might just be possible to connect
it to Fountain one day. Who knows?
You know, Grapevine, things like that. But it could be worth,
even if you're a Fountain user, playing around with a little Albi Hub.
Then you can connect on all kinds of great apps. You can find those at podcastapps.com.
Or if you don't want to switch apps and you still want to boost,
just get Breeze. B-R-E-E-Z.
Top it off with some sats. It gets you going on the Lightning Network super
easy, super fast. and it makes it, the only downside is it's tiny,
tiny, tiny boost window.
It's like a hundred and something characters, but it makes it,
it's like 150 or something, but it makes it really easy to boost.
You don't have to switch podcast apps and it's a good little solid app as well.
And it also ends up being a great lightning bolt for other things too,
besides just boosting the show. So that's B-R-E-E-Z.
Thank you everybody who boosts the pot. Really appreciate the support.
Music.
Coming in just as expected. The core reading up 3.3% on a year-over-year basis.
Joining us right now is former Fed Governor Rick Mishkin. He's now a professor
at Columbia University.
Rick, it's great to see you. I'll ask you, first of all, just the basic question.
You look at this number, you put yourself in Jay Powell's brain slash the rest
of the Fed, and you think to yourself what?
So I think there's going to be really interesting discussion at the
upcoming FOMC meeting that that these
numbers are coming in as people expected but they're not great
numbers and you see a stalling
in this path down to two percent and it
is true that that from point of view of the real interest rate which is the
interest rates adjusted for inflation which is what really does affect the economy
this is slight there's some restriction restrictive policy here however we're
in a situation where there's other elements of the financial markets that are
very buoyant, particularly the stock market.
So there's really a situation here where the Fed may not really be restrictive
enough, given the numbers.
So they sort of don't want to
surprise people so that it's likely they're going to cut at this meeting.
But on the other hand, I think there's going to be a lot of discussion going
on about whether, in fact, that the numbers are not coming in as good as they'd like them to.
They don't want to get stalled at 3% and not be on a path to the 2% target.
And so the likelihood of them actually having to pause in terms of cutting rate
is now getting a lot, lot higher.
Yeah, so probably not this next one, but perhaps after that.
So we're at 2.7%, increasing 0.3% on the month.
And the CPI, which excludes food and energy costs, was at 3.3%, up 0.3% itself monthly.
Now, nobody's really panicking. The market isn't reacting.
You heard Andy there on the beginning of that. It's what we expected.
We expected things to tick up to 2.7%. Their target is 2%.
And if that hits three, I think that's going to be a pretty big mental shift
for the Fed and the market.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the tightening has to pause for a while.
I don't know. I could be wrong on that, but it just feels like the right move.
I know I've kind of hinted this before by the Fed, would be to actually pause
and hold here for a bit. Inflation is definitely not whipped.
So we hit 100,000, huh? That's pretty, pretty good. Felt good for a bit there.
But we haven't seemed to stay there very long. Right now, as I record,
we're back above 100 again.
But the thing that is hard to wrap your head around is the way markets tend to work.
They're a bit paradoxical. The most bullish assets are often the most longed,
making them the most flushed.
That makes them hard to push higher. Meanwhile, less bullish assets like long
interest can pump easily.
So that's why you'll see meme coins pump real easy. And they're often the most shorted.
So short squeezes create sudden but temporary spikes and you'll see them pump and then crash.
And the thing is, is there's over a thousand global exchanges.
They're all offering perpetual contracts on these assets.
They run 24-7. They're essentially unregulated casinos. And they offer stupid,
attractive, cheap leverage.
So then that lures the DGENs in to bet on price direction.
Then the exchanges, they can manipulate the price because they have big books
by buying or selling to flush those people out.
Suppresses the price. The wealth moves from the gamblers to the house.
And they just rinse and repeat until they can't do it anymore.
Remember that little bomb last week that Tom Lee dropped? Logical level, I would imagine.
Yeah, I think some of this could be, there's a lot of folks who don't want Bitcoin over $100,000,
and some of it may be the exchanges themselves are concerned because there is
a pretty low supply of Bitcoin available over the counter.
So you have a supply shortage, and some of it may be... So you have a supply shortage.
The exchanges, you know, they're doing their moves.
The banks, they're doing their moves to just try to flush people out,
Keep the Bitcoin cheap as long as possible.
But what you're probably noticing if you do follow the price,
and you really shouldn't, is that the lows are getting higher.
In other words, the price is not falling as far and it's recovering faster.
And that's getting shallower and shallower each time.
And I think that seems to be where we're at right now.
So it may be very soon that 100 does become the new floor. It's always hard
to predict these kinds of things. Then again, you know, anything could happen.
We have a lot of updates to get to and I need to keep moving.
But this is just, these are too big to skip this week.
Russia's MP has proposed a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Yes.
Strategic Bitcoin reserve discussions have started in Russia a new proposal
to add Bitcoin to the country's national reserves has reportedly been made from
a member of the New People Party. Not familiar with Russian politics.
The initiative aims to find alternatives, traditional financial systems and
increasing international pressures.
And I wonder what you think this does to the likelihood that the U.S.
Gets a Bitcoin strategic reserve. If Russia starts to set one up or even seems
to be making motions to do so, does that increase or decrease the likelihood
that the U.S. will do it? I'd like to know what you think. Boost that in.
Also, I'll link to a Wasabi wallet vulnerability that allows malicious coordinators
to de-anonymize coin join users.
It's a vulnerability in the Wasabi protocol that allows a malicious coordinator
to de-anonymize coins. and it can link them so they know the inputs and the
outputs, which compromises the privacy of CoinJoin.
Users are urged to update their instances immediately.
Wasabi Wallet 2.2.1.0 or earlier are affected, as well as Ginger Wallet 2.0.13
or earlier, and the BTC Pay CoinJoin plugin version 1.0.1.0.1.0 or earlier.
In other words, time to pat your ass.
And one little update for MicroStrategy. It seems very likely that MicroStrategy
is going to join the NASDAQ 100 index, or the Qs, as people call it.
Now, this is sort of interesting for Bitcoiners because it would mean the inclusion
of Bitcoin, a Bitcoin strategy in the NASDAQ 100,
which that's an exchange-traded fund that just has requirements that a lot of
different people have to buy into.
It's an estimated 2.1 billion of MST shares would align with the indexes weighing.
This is coming from Eric Bauhaus, or however you say his name.
He says, MSTR is likely to be added to the queues on 12-23, with an announcement coming on 12-13.
Moderna is likely to get the boot, and below is the best guess of the chances.
And essentially, it's like 75%, 80%.
Of course, I'm reading, I'm trying to read this Bloomberg terminal live,
but it's the chances that MSTR gets added to the index to the 100 NASDAQ index
is high and remarkable and a huge win for MicroStrategy.
You know, who knows what it means for MSTR stock, but it essentially means that
the Bitcoin strategy is in the NASDAQ 100 now, which is really remarkable.
So let's celebrate by playing a clip of Sailor.
This is a big one, but this might be why the gold bugs are getting so triggered.
And it is our final clip of the week from Mikey Saylor.
What's really going to happen here, my strategy would be.
I think it's evil genius strategy, right? It's like, it's so good, right?
That our ally, our enemies would hate us, but our allies would complain too.
And the US would make a hundred trillion dollars in a heartbeat, right?
Here's the strategy. You dump gold, demonetize the entire gold network.
You buy Bitcoin, you buy 5 million or 6 million Bitcoin. You monetize the Bitcoin network.
All the capital in the world sitting in Siberian real estate or Chinese natural
gas or every other currency derivative that's held as a long-term store of value.
Europeans, Africans, South Americans, Asians, they all just dump their crappy
property and their crappy capital assets and they buy Bitcoin.
The price of Bitcoin goes to the moon. The US is the big beneficiary.
US companies are the big beneficiary.
And while you're doing that, you normalize and support digital currency.
And you just define digital currency as the U.S. dollar backed by U.S.
Dollar equivalents in a regulated U.S. custodian that's audited. What happens next?
$150 billion of stablecoin goes to a trillion, two, four, eight,
and probably somewhere between eight and $16 trillion.
And you create $10, $20 trillion of demand for U.S.
Sovereign debt. And so you're like, while you're taking away a little bit of
the demand because the capital asset of Bitcoin grows, you're adding back the
demand to back the stable coin.
Where does the digital currency go?
It replaces the CNY, the rubble. It replaces every African currency.
It replaces every South American currency. It replaces the euro.
I mean, if you really believe in U.S.
World Reserve currency and U.S. values, every single currency in the world will
actually just merge into the U.S. dollar if it was freely available.
There isn't a stronger currency. No, there isn't. There's only currencies pegged
to the dollar explicitly, like a DROM or the CNY, literally plagued to the dollar explicitly.
Then there's implicitly pegged to the dollar, like the euro.
And then there's currencies collapsing against the dollar. And like,
you know, so what were we on, you know, after World War II, during World War
I? We're on the dollar standard.
After World War I, the dollar standard. Treaty of Genoa, the dollar standard.
Bretton Woods, the dollar standard.
And it's like, we're like, oh, we just discovered the dollar standard in 1971.
We've been on the dollar standard since we financed World War I for the Brits, right?
And we took over the world financial system since then.
You wanna stay on the dollar standard? You really need to release $10 trillion
of digital currency, and then you'll be on the dollar standard.
But what I just described basically replaces every currency in the world with
the dollar, which the U.S.
Controls, and it siphons off hundreds of trillions of dollars of 20th century
capital assets and half of the capital in the rest of the world.
And most, 75% of the capital of our enemies gets siphoned into Bitcoin.
And the big beneficiary is the U.S. government. And after that, every U.S.
Company, because we're the ones that own and run it. And so what I'm describing
there, you can do for free.
Your fingers. All you got to do is make the observation, the gold failed as
a money and a monetary network in the 16th century for the Spanish.
Like you're not going to save it. Yeah.
And given the fact it's failed, let's just eliminate the fiction,
demonetize it, go to digital gold, sell the past, own the future. Easy.
Music.
I know that was long, but I wanted to let him cook. I think that might be interesting
to revisit in a couple of years. So will the state of the network?
As I record, the Bitcoin price is at 100,660 U.S. dollars.
Sats per dollar is now under 1,000.
993 sats to one U.S. dollar. We're up 4.6% since last episode.
We're still down 3% from the all-time high, but I'm not complaining at all.
There are 20,348 reachable nodes on the network right now.
And this episode wrapped up at block height, 874,287.
My friends, the state of the Bitcoin network is very strong.
Thank you so much for joining me on this long episode. If you liked it,
let me know. Shoot a boost in and tell me what you thought. If it was too long,
I'd like to hear that, too.
Links to what I talked about are at thisweekinbitcoin.show. Go check it out.
There's lots of stuff over there, some stuff that doesn't even make it into the show.
And please consider sharing the show with somebody who might be Bitcoin curious.
There's a lot going on, especially a lot of FUD.
And the first half of this episode could be really helpful for them.
Now, of course, I want to leave you with a value for value track.
This one is from Theo Katzman. It's 5 Watt Rock. The 5 Watt Rock game.
Music.