Music.
Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 58. My name is Chris,
chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
It was hard being off last week while I was in Boston.
There was major macro news breaking that I really wanted to chat with you about.
But I knew also, just as I was getting back, the Bitcoin 2025 conference in
Las Vegas would be kicking off, and there would be news out of that that we need to talk about.
So what was I to do? Well, I was trying to put it all together in one episode, of course.
We'll see how I did. You let me know. I do want to quickly start with some key
macro news, most of which really comes out of a collection of statements by
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Nothing really in the headlines, but just things the man has said.
But before we get to those, we need to set the scene.
And I'd say the scene is, Doge seems to be coming across as a bit of a letdown.
So, you know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill,
frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it,
and our minds the work that the Doge team is doing.
So this is Elon Musk in an interview with CBS's Sunday Morning.
He's talking about the new big, beautiful bill that is now trying to make its way through the Senate.
Now, that's mandatory spending in there and just extending the Trump tax cuts
adds to the deficit. But clearly, Elon is feeling a little disinfected. Is that the right word?
Disenfranchised? He could probably use some disinfectant, too, after the time in D.C.
And it seems like a lot of that hard work, at great personal cost to him,
isn't really being all that fruitful.
And that reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that
when this big, beautiful bill came along.
I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year.
I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful.
But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion.
I mean, not that long ago, a couple of weeks ago, people were talking about
the big part of the strategy was this three legged stool and cuts,
big cuts were going to be part of what made the U.S. government fiscally viable.
Now it seems we're pivoting from cuts to, well, well, well, what we really need
to do is outgrow the debt.
So this is we're going back to the Biden era, Janet Yellen line of don't worry
about the debt. What we need to do is just increase revenue, get the GDP up.
And then, you know, when you look at everything proportionally, the debt's not so bad.
There are several components there. So if we unpack it, there is the growth,
the potential growth of the debt.
But what's more important is that we grow the economy faster.
So what we've seen under the past four years and what we inherited,
I inherited 6.7 percent deficit to GDP, which was the highest deficit when we
were not at war, not in a recession.
So we've been trying to bring down the spending and we are going to grow the revenue side.
So we are going to grow the GDP faster than the debt grows.
And that will stabilize the debt to GDP, which even Secretary Yellen and I agree
is the most important number.
Yeah, you see there, even him and Yellen agree. We just have to grow the GDP.
Well, if you do the math, and of course, this is just rough off the Internet
math, but to outgrow the debt, GDP would need to be somewhere around 6%.
6% GDP is a pretty rare thing. You should go look it up. See what other times we've had 6% GDP.
It's usually under unusual circumstances, like massive bubbles or huge bailouts.
But that's not really the key thing that he got into. That's just,
I need you to understand the background now of we've gone from we're going to
do it with savings to we're going to just have a huge-ass GDP growth and that's
going to save everything.
So that's the new focus.
Should we be concerned with that? Is there a question here about the long-term
ability to repay the debt?
Look, I think that, again, as growth accelerates, I'm not worried about the U.S. debt dynamics.
Now, whenever the U.S. Treasury Secretary speaks, one of the filters I always
use is this is the world's most important bond salesman.
Everything he says, he's always trying to make sure people have confidence in U.S. debt.
So, you know, with the growth plan, he has no concerns. So all of this presumes,
he has no concerns presuming we have massive growth.
Again, as growth accelerates, I'm not worried about the U.S.
Debt dynamics because a change in the growth trajectory takes care of a lot of that.
Should we be concerned when we see yields going up on U.S. Treasuries and the dollar weakening?
Normally, that's not the way it works as I understand it. Is that something
we should be concerned about?
Well, I'm not concerned about it because I think part of it is we are seeing
other countries step up.
So I wouldn't, on many of them, I wouldn't necessarily categorize it as a weak
dollar. It's for the first time in much of my career, Europe is actually going
through a fiscal expansion.
You know, back to this new German government that they are opening the German
purse for the first time, maybe even since the advent of the euro,
they're taking off the debt break.
So, you know, the fundamentals are driving the euro.
Japan is seeing a large increase in interest rates. that are driven by the Bank of Japan.
So, you know, I think a lot of this is other countries strengthening or other
country currencies strengthening as opposed to the dollar weakening.
I maintain that the White House just doesn't seem that concerned about the yields
for the 10-year, and they don't seem that concerned about the strength of the dollar at the moment.
They view it as other currencies are just doing really well.
The dollar is not doing great, but fundamentals are fine, Scott says.
It's the other dollars, or the other currencies, I should say, that are doing so well.
And, you know, like you mentioned, Europe going through monetary expansion because
money printer is turning on so they can fund their war machine.
Now, a bit later in the interview, Scott is asked about not the failure of Doge,
but the relative falling short of the big promises of the Doge cuts.
Yeah, I think most of us who have dealt with Washington would not disagree with
that at all. The question is, where do you trim and how do you go about it?
There was a $2 trillion number thrown out at a rally here in New York City,
as I recall, by Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick.
Was that a wrong number? Are you going to come close to $2 trillion out of costs?
Well, we'll see over what the scoring window is.
Could we end up with $150 billion a year in savings? You know over the CBO window
that that'd be a trillion and a half.
So Sorry, but you're on track you think and the on the cost-cutting side.
Well again, there's a lot of resistance that the.
Doge and Elon were criticized for the the pace they did But I I tell you just
in my three and a half months in Washington If you don't move fast then the
swamp kind of grabs you you start sinking and the vested interest,
What other tools do you have in your toolbox to apply to the deficit if the
present plan doesn't deliver all that you hope?
Look, I think it's why don't we wait and see how this works out because I think
we can see, as I mentioned, it's a three-legged stool.
So I think it would be the third part, trade, tax and deregulation.
So deregulation is the slowest moving part. Let's come back to deregulation
in a moment, because when Scott says deregulation, I don't think he means what you think he means.
I would expect that to substantially kick in to the economic growth in the third,
fourth quarters and really accelerate next year. Also, I think.
One of the most powerful economic parts of the tax bill is the immediate expensing
of capital goods, 100 percent for capital goods.
When Scott talks about deregulation, he's talking about changing the supplementary
leverage ratio, which was introduced as part of the Basel III reforms after
the 2008 financial crisis.
The goal was essentially to make sure large banks maintained a minimum level
of high quality capital relative to their total leverage exposure.
And that means they can only buy so much without having the capital on hand to cover it.
And Scott wants to change that to change the banks into bigger,
larger, more aggressive buyers of U.S. treasuries, i.e. U.S.
Debt. And so when he's talking about deregulation, he's talking about walking
back the supplementary leverage ratio.
Let's talk about the supplemental leverage ratio, which seems like an obscure
thing off to the side, but it has been the subject of much discussion.
And it does, as I understand it, relate to U.S. treasuries and yields on U.S.
Treasuries so that if major banks held more U.S. treasuries,
it would bring yields down.
You've said you're going to take more of an active role, as I understand it,
with respect to some of that banking regulation.
Where are we with that? I think we are very close to moving the Supplementary Leverage Ratio, SLR.
That is moving along very quickly between the three banking regulators,
the Fed, the OCC, and the FDIC.
So I would think we could see something on that over the summer.
Over the summer. And knowing the markets as you do, would you anticipate that
might have a significant material effect on Treasury yields?
Well, I think it could because banks are being penalized for holding treasuries.
There's a large supplementary leverage charge.
So I think for holding the risk-free asset, we can reduce that.
And I've seen estimates that it could bring yields down by tens of basis points,
certainly during the COVID crisis.
So there's a big assumption being made here. I want to back up here.
The big assumption being made is that if they change this risk ratio,
that the banks will just, without question, buy more treasuries.
I don't know. I'm just a humble podcaster. I think that's probably true to a degree.
I don't know if it's going to be the buying bonanza that Scott here hopes it
is because look what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.
Silicon Valley Bank got screwed because they went long on treasuries.
And then the Fed jacked the rates up faster than they ever had in history,
at least recent history.
And they were screwed. So going long on treasuries wiped out Silicon Valley Bank.
Turning the SLR down, reducing the capital requirements, like Scott is talking about, or a.k.a.
Deregulating, doesn't change the risk profile of the treasuries.
Now, they're still considered, you know, risk-free in financial terms,
but Silicon Valley wouldn't say that.
Being penalized for holding treasuries, you know, there's a large supplementary leverage charge.
So I think for holding the risk-free asset, we can reduce that.
And, you know, I've seen estimates that it could bring yields down by tens of basis points.
Yields would be coming down because the banks would be buying,
right? When they buy, the yields come down.
When people are selling, the yields go up. So they're thinking,
we don't really care what happens right now.
They're not too worried about the bond yields.
They're not too worried about the dollar because after summer,
they think they're going to have the banks coming and buying like crazy.
And they probably will to a degree. But this isn't a sign that things are well.
This is throwing their hands up. They've realized they can't fix the system.
They can't do it via cuts. They're not going to be able to do it via revenue alone.
They're going to have to raise debt. What they campaigned on is out the window.
Now it's about preserving the system. Now it's about accessing liquidity, not just from the Fed.
The money printers will be the banks now, because the money printers will be
coming as the banks buy these treasuries.
That'll be creating the currency. That'll be creating liquidity.
This is going to be great for Bitcoin. This is going to be great.
This is going to be fantastic.
Not going to be good for inflation, but it might take a little while for that
to trickle down like it did last time.
But it's going to be great for Bitcoin.
It's not going to be great for mom and pop shops. It's not going to be great
for people that don't hold hard assets, but it's going to be great for keeping
things going for a while and really stoking the system.
But I think it's a sign that...
Things are not good under the hood. This isn't a move you make when things are
about to get turned around and you're not so worried about people buying your debt.
This is the kind of move you make when you've got third world economics going
on and you can't find outside buyers for your debt.
So you have to generate new internal buyers.
So it's going to be dialing back the supplementary leverage ratio, the SLR.
It's going to be launching stablecoins. It's going to be a whole series of things.
Scott gets into some of it. Certainly during the COVID crisis,
it was temporarily taken off and it had a big effect.
Let me ask something different, but I think might be related, which is stablecoin.
If really we went big into stablecoin in this country, what effect could that
have on the strength of the dollar?
Because people might have to hold dollars in order to match against it,
or even for treasuries. Well, we are going big on digital assets.
So Trump administration has made digital assets a priority.
Past administration starred and all has made extinct a lot of these companies
and pushed it offshore. So what we want to do is apply the highest U.S.
Regulatory and AML standards to digital assets. That's right.
Come buy Uncle Sam's completely vetted, fully regulated, high quality stablecoin, boys and girls.
And push that offshore. So what we want to do is apply the highest U.S.
Regulatory and.
AML standards to digital assets, especially stablecoins.
And I've seen estimates that just over the short term, stablecoins could create
$2 trillion of demand for U.S. treasuries and treasury bills.
To put that in context, the number is probably about $300 billion right now.
So they're going to go from $300 billion to $2 trillion relatively quickly.
So you see the money is right there.
They just need that nice deregulation and they just need that stablecoin legislation.
And that we are probably going to get. Cryptozar David Sachs says the stablecoin
legislation will pass and it will pass soon now.
Let's talk stablecoins. There's this bill trying to make its way through the Senate.
What's your take on the concerns, certainly on the Democrat side of the aisle,
that there aren't enough safeguards here to keep maybe the president himself
and his family from benefiting from this kind of legislation?
Well, so first of all, we have significant bipartisan support for this.
I think 15 Democrats voted for the bill to pass this key procedural threshold
of cloture, which means there'll be no filibuster against the bill.
We have every expectation now that it's going to pass.
And I think the reason it's going to pass is because stable coins offer a new,
more efficient, cheaper, smoother payment system, new payment rails for the U.S.
Economy. It also extends the dominance of the dollar online,
and it also creates billions of dollars or trillions of dollars of demand for our treasury.
So I think for all these reasons, the stablecoin bill is going to pass,
and it's going to pass with significant bipartisan support.
How long do you think before stablecoin would start to really have that dollar
support effect you're talking about?
I mean, I think it'll be immediate. So we already have over $200 billion in stablecoins.
It's just unregulated. And I think that if we provide the legal clarity and
legal framework for this, I think we could create trillions of dollars of demand
for our treasuries practically overnight, very quickly.
Well, here we are. Early in this show, deep in the Biden administration,
I told you stablecoins were not going to go away.
And I'm of a mixed opinion of it. It is definitely going to extend U.S. dollar dominance.
And I think the U.S. is smart for being one of the large Western nations to
first really embrace this.
And the dollar is a very much in-demand currency in lots of the world.
If they could easily swap their local currency and save in the dollar,
do their transactions in the dollar, and then from there swap into Bitcoin,
that's even a better thing.
So there's that. But a stablecoin is just about three inches away from being a CBDC.
It's a private CBDC, and I don't like that.
However, I do think that if the U.S.
Embraces stablecoins, private stablecoins, it is the nail in the coffin for
an actual U.S. government CBDC.
And I would rather have private stablecoins by multiple issuers than a giant
octopus by the U.S. government called a CBDC.
So if it takes this wild west of stablecoins we're about to get into,
and you know there's going to be all kinds of staking programs and saving programs,
I mean, it's going to get wild, kids.
We're going to have to go through this the hard way.
But at least you're not getting a CBDC, right? How do you feel about that?
Is that a trade you're willing to make?
It is. I am. It's a trade I'm willing to make. Boost it and let me know.
And if these things are fully regulated, would you consider using a stable coin
that generates some kind of weird yield? I don't know how they're doing it.
I'm sure they'll tell you on their fancy website with lots of motion graphics
as you scroll down and down and down.
But say they had a 6% to 7% interest savings account in quote-unquote stablecoins,
like we've seen the scammers like Celsius do.
But this one would be by a bank. I don't know. It's regulated,
so somehow you feel better about it. Maybe it's got FDIC insurance.
Would you consider, if it's a fully vetted bank and all of that,
would you consider storing your cash savings in stablecoins?
I mean, some people are going to do it, and they're going to be posting on social
media about all the yields and the money they're making by just keeping their money in this account.
I think it's going to be a real thing. And stable coins were a big topic at
the Bitcoin conference.
So let's transition to Bitcoin 2025 happening in Las Vegas right now.
Day one was decent, not quite as rowdy as day two has been so far.
Trump media announced a $2.5 billion deal to create a Bitcoin treasury.
White House executive director Bo Hines declared the U.S. future global power
and crypto superpowers in the United States. They're going to buy more Bitcoin.
Oh, it was very exciting.
It's very exciting. Steak and Shake revealed Bitcoin payment success at the
conference. Very exciting.
It's been a mixed bag. I'm going to be honest with you, but I've watched it
so you don't have to because you really shouldn't.
And I feel bad for those that spent $2,000 to go there and basically see keynotes
from stablecoin and ordinals people.
But it is what it is. And I found the signal in the noise.
And on day one, Senator Lummis gives us a rough timeline for when we're going
to see the creation of the Bitcoin strategic reserve.
There's a couple of other things in the pipeline. I kind of warned you about
this earlier because I had a sense this was the case. But now we're actually hearing it.
From the senator's mouth. President Trump supports the bill,
and he has a team in the White House working on digital asset issues,
everything from stablecoin to market structure to the Bitcoin strategic reserve.
And they will probably roll out in that order.
The Senate Banking Committee has passed the stablecoin bill out of committee.
We're getting close to being ready to have it on the floor.
We've worked for untold hours with the minority party to satisfy them,
and we should be voting on it the week we get back from this break.
Then we'll do market structure, and then we'll do the Bitcoin strategic reserve.
And at that time, we'll be calling on you to help members of Congress in your
states understand the importance.
It's so important strategically to our country.
Other countries are moving in the direction of establishing strategic Bitcoin reserves.
The United States needs to lead.
So market structure bill, they're aiming for August, which means I would expect
Bitcoin reserve bill to be fall end of the year.
Maybe some of it, the campaigning begins to ramp up in the summer.
That is just for our general edification.
They're doing stable coins because, as well.
Uncle Sam's got some debt to sell. And then they're going to do market structure
because, well, all their banker buddies got money to make. And then they're
going to do the Bitcoin Reserve.
And I kind of look at that as our opportunity to stack. You still have time
to front run the federal government.
They're putting it out there. They're going to be buying and they're going to
be doing, they're going to be formalizing this after the market structure stuff is done.
So you have a nine-month, 10-month window to front run the federal government I suppose.
But day two is really what's getting all of the attention.
You might even say it has some historic vibes.
Crypto enthusiasts are gathering in Vegas for Bitcoin 2025. Our Mackenzie Sagalos is there.
In fact, it's kind of unusual for CNBC to even be covering it.
But I suppose when you have the vice president taking the stage, they take notice.
And today we're going to make a little bit of history this morning by having
the first ever sitting vice president of the United States of America address
the global Bitcoin community.
Are you ready?
With that, join me in welcoming the vice president of the United States of America, J.D. Vance.
Now jd comes out on stage his presentation wasn't horrible it wasn't great i'll
play just the introduction and i'll tell you some of the highlights here in a moment.
Thank you thank you all well first of all i want to thank please please please
thank you guys take take your seats and you know the secret service is a little
bit nervous because i told them these Bitcoin guys really like guns,
but they really like the president,
vice president of the United States, too. So I think we're doing OK.
I would agree with that. The crowd did seem to really like them.
J.D. didn't have any news to make.
He did point out a couple of things. He said that crypto now has an advocate
in the White House. He reminded the crowd that he owns a fair amount of Bitcoin.
And he said that he expects in the short future, short term,
I'm not quite sure the terminology he used, but that he expects in the not too
distant future, 100 million Americans will own crypto.
He quoted a number of around 50 million right now.
Overall, a lot of this felt like political speeches.
Mayor Adams came up on stage today, and it seemed like he was giving a political
speech where he just tweaked a few words of the speech.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for governor of Ohio, did the same thing.
In fact, sometimes he even accidentally referred to Ohio when he meant to refer
to Las Vegas or something like that.
It literally just seemed like a campaign speech repurposed a bit for the Bitcoin conference.
And there's a lot of mixed things up on stage. I will say it's not just a pure
Bitcoin conference at all.
There's a lot of different viewpoints from some folks that don't necessarily
represent would be the majority of opinions.
You know, a thing in the past for Bitcoin used to be not your keys, not your coin.
And you've got a platform that I think really addresses that.
And it's kind of squashed that notion that if it's, you know,
not your keys, not your coin, you know, there's safe and secure ways to actually
create product to hold Bitcoin.
So can you can you talk about how we've transitioned from this not your keys,
not your coin to actually the democratization of access?
That's pretty silver tongue language.
Transitioning from not your keys, not your coins to the democratization of access.
So there's these extreme views in both directions. Now, this next clip,
I'm going to warn you, has some F-bombs for the next minute or two,
pretty much right towards the beginning of the clip.
But it's a great example of the diversification of views.
So you go from very much a statist view.
There's a lot of people there talking about the state buying Bitcoin to,
well, the opposite of a state view.
Over to you. You wrote an amazing book about how Bitcoin empowers the individual.
What does it make you feel like to hear all this talk of governments adopting
Bitcoin, corporate treasuries, all this kind of stuff.
Yeah. I just want to start with saying, fuck the state, the hateful apparatus
that wants to kill you and steal your money.
And the fact that both the red party and the blue party, they both want to steal
a certain amount of your wealth and redistribute to other people.
And inviting them into Bitcoin, I think is actually kind of a dangerous idea
considering how reckless and idiotic that they've been with the current financial system.
So tell you what, if they can balance the budget and pay off the debt,
I'd be open to having them trying to manage a Bitcoin treasury.
But I feel like they should be mature enough with their own finances to actually
sort of pay off all of the debt that they've accrued before they start fucking
around with the Bitcoin treasury.
But you know what I think would be incredible is everybody should be on their
own Bitcoin treasury and their own Bitcoin standard.
You like don't need the nation state to tell you to do it. You can just own
Bitcoin on your own self-sovereignly and they can't steal it from you.
Incredible perspective from Eric. Very, very important. Marty,
you touched on this earlier.
Music.
30,000 to 35,000 attendees, and there is definitely news breaking.
GameStop announced the purchase of Bitcoin. They've purchased 44,710 Bitcoin,
worth nearly $513 million.
GameStop revealed its plans recently to pursue a Bitcoin treasury.
They're offering $1.3 billion in debt, and they're going to use that to buy
Bitcoin. They haven't spent at all.
They waited to buy a little bit, though, I think, so they didn't quite get it
at a great price. Another big story coming out of the Bitcoin conference is
Square enabling merchants to use Bitcoin by default at point-of-sales devices.
Now, this is pretty interesting. Block expects to begin offering Bitcoin payments
to eligible Square sellers later this year, and then there's going to be full
availability in 2026, pending regulatory approval in some areas. So we'll see.
Now, by default, when you use the Bitcoin mode, it's going to auto-convert to
fiat for the merchant. And then the merchant can switch to holding the Bitcoin if they like instead.
Probably a decent default for new users. The thing that just tweaks me a little
bit about this is Jack's on this mission to get rid of the word sats and call them bits or bitcoins.
And so in the UI, they have the Bitcoin symbol representing sats.
It's just adding confusion to the situation. and it just kind of really rubs
me the wrong way to try to get rid of the term sats. I don't think it's that
hard for people to understand.
There's a lot more complicated things to wrap your head around.
Like, I just, I don't know. How many years are we going to have to sort this stuff out?
Now this is going to be a popular, we finally get something like the Square
Terminal with Bitcoin and Lightning support and the creator has to have this
mission to try to change the language around Bitcoin and that comes through in the UI.
Just a little disappointed in that, But overall, I think it's a pretty exciting announcement.
One clip that came out, I don't know if it was at the Bitcoin conference itself
or maybe an event around the Bitcoin 2025 conference.
It was a screed by Saylor on why he's not ever going to publish proof of reserves
and doesn't think anybody should be publishing proof of reserves.
Before I play this clip, I want to make it clear. I want you to listen to this,
and I want you to give me your opinion, because he does make a couple of maybe—.
Maybe notable points, but this is a statement to me that raises red flags.
To me, it makes me question the micro strategy play. It makes me question the
MSTR stock. It makes me question Saylor's commitment to Bitcoin.
It, to me, is fundamental red flags, and I want to know if it raises the same
for you. Let me make the following point.
A lot of people learn stuff from FTX and mouth gawks, but I'm not sure they
learned the things that the institutional community needs to learn going forward.
The current conventional way to publish proof of reserves is an insecure proof of reserves.
It actually dilutes the security of the issuer, the custodians,
the exchanges, and the investors.
It's not a good idea. It's a bad idea. It's like publishing the address and
the bank accounts of all your kids and your phone numbers of all your kids and
then thinking somehow that makes your family better. It doesn't make your family better.
So no institutional grade or enterprise security analyst would think it's a
good idea to publish all of the wallet addresses such that you can be traced
back and forth and every future transaction you'll be traced.
I was like, go to AI, put it in deep think mode, and then ask it,
what are the security problems of publishing your wallet addresses,
and how might they undermine the security of the company over time? It'll write you a book.
It'll be 50 pages of security problems.
So the problem with proof of reserves, the way that people do it right now, is it's,
first of all, it's a proof of assets that is insecure and it is not a proof
of liabilities and so if you really want crypto security.
And you're maxi about this, my suggestion is buy Bitcoin, self-custody your Bitcoin.
It's pretty freaking obvious, right? You should own the Bitcoin yourself, if that's what you want.
If you're going to be a securities investor, okay, if you invest in securities,
what you want is an institutional grade proof of assets and proof of liabilities with them netted out,
okay and the best practice of that
is not to publish the wallet the best practice of
that would be have a big four auditor that does an audit that checks to make.
Sure that you actually have the bitcoin and then you also have to check to make
sure the company hasn't re-hypothecated or pledged the bitcoin or entered into
any debt or credit obligations,
where the Bitcoin is pledged.
And you have to net those out and you have to publish those and you have to
sign them as the big four firm.
Then you have to wash it through a public company where the CFO signs,
then the CEO signs, then the chairman and all the outside directors are civilly
and criminally liable for it.
And so if you really want the best practice for securities attestation,
it would be a public company with a big four auditor with an audit subject to
Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States,
that's what my company is.
It's much better than simply a proof of reserves wallet.
I don't know. I thought Saylor was always the one saying one of the great things
about Bitcoin is it made it simple to audit.
Jack and Saylor, both red flagging me this week. Boost in and tell me what you think.
Music.
Coming up on the show, it's your boost. Some big updates, really exciting updates.
Not one, but two final clips of the week and more. But first,
I just want to take a moment and thank everybody who supports the show by doing what you do.
If you want to stack sats on River, one of the best places to stack sats in
the U.S., you can use our link in the show notes.
You just support the show while you're stacking sats.
If you are all about that self-custody, or you're a proud Canadian,
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And Canada and right to your self-custody wallet.
If you want to spend some sats on the Lightning Network, go from sats to gift
card in just moments with no login required, the Bitcoin company,
I sign with my Lightning address, and I just go right to a gift card.
The Fold Card's how I stack sats, where I pay bills, get gas,
grocery shop, do the kind of debit card stuff.
Super popular in our community, the Fold Card. Link to that and salt lending in the show notes.
Get access to your Bitcoin value without having to sell it. That's right. It is possible.
You can support the show by just doing those things with the links in the show
notes. Thank you, everybody who does it.
And we have some boosts, which is a great way to support the show.
And our first boost comes from Drekkar.
And now it is time for the boost.
And he writes with 25,000 sats. I hoard that which your kind covet.
If I could only keep one Bitcoin podcast.
Dot, dot, dot. Oh, and have a nice week at Red Hat. Well, thank you.
That's a sign of high signal right there. I really appreciate it.
And you're a top booster this week. Thank you, sir.
Really appreciate that. You get it at a nice 25,000 sat discount. Boom.
Not a bad price for the big boss. Make it so.
J-Cube 3 comes in with 20,000 sats. Yep.
Yep. Mm. j-cube says plus one for
the macro coverage honestly i haven't heard an episode that wasn't valuable
keep it up yep that stands up to scrutiny thanks j-cube appreciate it a train's
here with 20 000 sats put some macaroni and cheese on there too thanks for the
value cheers well thank you a train appreciate the value coming right back to
the show the heck ah producer jeff is here with 20,000 sats.
I don't understand what the heck is going on here.
Finally, I get to do a sun-powered boost.
Oh, here it is! These sats come from my old inefficient miner that is automated
to only run when I have solar generation.
It's not efficient, but it works. It took about 20 days and 440 kilowatt hours to get 20,000 sats.
Per day, that's about 22 kilowatt hours, earning me around 1,000 sats a day.
For testing, I've been running at a lower power rate constantly for a few weeks,
and I can earn a little over 3,000 sats per day.
But this will not be worth the cost of energy when my utility changes to summer
rates next month. Dun, dun, dun!
So you got 20,000 sats before the summer rates. That's not too bad,
Jeff. That's not too bad, I suppose.
Still fun, and I still get to mine. I still may mine during the solar hours. We will see.
I need more energy than my solar can provide to keep the house cool in the summer.
Thanks for everything you do, and for this community, I would not be mining
otherwise. Oh, God, that's cool.
Sun-powered sat supporting the show. How awesome is that? Thank you,
Jeff. You're doing it the right way.
And as Picard would say, you're also doing a good job. Make it so.
So, the Muso comes in with 6,000 sats. Hello, Muso. I like you.
You're a hot ticket. Here's an update. I'm running Bitcoin Nots.
There is a pinned issue with the next Bitcoin GitHub repo with instructions
on how one can switch to using it. And he sends me a link to that.
As for node hardware, I'm using the Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 gigs of RAM and a 2 terabyte NVMe SSD.
I even use ZFS on there, which uses a bit of RAM on its own.
I did reduce the arc size and with Bitcoin Nots configured to disallow undesired
data from the mempool, I have never seen less than 4 gig of RAM free. Oh, that's pretty good.
Actually, even when running Bitcoin Core, I still saw similar RAM figures.
I do have swap setup, of course, just in case. I think the Bitcoin node hardware
requirements is not so much about CPU power as it is RAM and storage.
Yeah, I agree there. I think that's a big part of it. And storage speed too, right?
He says, I'm syncing a secondary node on an old Sandy Bridge era i3 PC to see
how the old hardware and how it will do.
This initial blockchain sync and verify is taking longer, even with 16 gigs
of RAM. I don't intend to try running mempool or lighting on it just yet,
but I'll keep you posted on how it performs. Yes.
Yes. Fun will now commence. Thank you.
I like that. I like this a lot. I appreciate that. Looking forward to hearing
your follow-up, Muso. Thanks for the boost.
Gene Bean's here with a row of ducks.
Nice to hear from you, Gene. He says, you mentioned something about not being
able to run a node on a pie, and I'm curious what you mean, because I'm currently doing exactly that.
I have Umbral with Albihub, Bitcoin Core, Electrus, Helipad,
LND, LNDG, and Tailscale on a Pi 4 with 2 gigs of RAM.
And there's plenty of CPU headroom and 25% free memory. Gene.
Gene. 2 gigs of RAM? No way. Really?
Man. Man. My old node, which is probably just around that spec, but x86-wise, drugs.
Wow. I mean, to the point where when I reboot LND...
It takes almost 35 minutes for the database to get online. I just sit there
with my Lightning node down.
I did an update, and it's like, wait a minute. And I thought something broke.
I thought something broke. You don't have this? Now, I've been running this
system for just over two years now, two and a half years.
So I think it's my longest-running node at this point, my longest-running Lightning node.
So it's seen some things, Gene. So I don't know if that's why.
But if anybody has any tips for an older L&D node to help clean up that database
or something, Please do boost in.
And I would love more information on what people are using for hardware.
The concerns I've seen is slow disk and low RAM make you overall a slower node
and not really that useful.
At least, you know, I mean, that's not the right way to put it.
But you're not helping the network as much as maybe a more powerful system.
Is the argument I've heard raised? I would love to be dissuaded of that argument.
I don't hold that with conviction.
I think it'd be great to have somebody tell me otherwise. Vitar's back. What?
What? Good news, everyone. 6,666 sats. How about that? Make it show. That's so great.
He says survival guide rules. All right.
Boost. Nice to hear from you. Thanks for boosting in. Oppie 1984 is here with 4,000 sats.
Wicked good show. Have a good trip. No spam on the chain. I did have a good
trip. I'm still a little wiped out.
I'm a little wiped out. I'm still very wiped out, but I enjoyed it a lot.
We were able to take my 14-year-old daughter with me, too.
So that was a great trip for her and really got a lot out of it. But really tired.
Appreciate that boost. Pab's here with 2,100 sats.
Quick question. I'm currently stacking on Strike, but I also have access to
self-custodial Proton wallet.
Should I move my sats over? What would the pros and cons be?
Love the show. Keep it up.
Oh pav this is a big question this is this is more than a 2100 sats question i'll tell you that.
It really depends on how good your setup is and if you feel like you could custody
those bitcoin better than strike can and a lot of people listening can but not
everybody listening can,
and so you need to take you need to just sort of look at your overall capabilities
and situation and see what you need to learn.
And probably the best thing to do would be to start with a handful of sats.
You know, if you've got a little stash going on strike, you know,
maybe you play around with, you know, 2,000 sats or something.
You know, you don't use a lot.
And just learn and experiment. I don't know if I would recommend the ProtonWallet for long-term custody.
So the fact that you're asking about that makes me think maybe you're not ready.
Though I've not used the ProtonWallet, I like what they're doing over there.
And if you are really deep into the Proton ecosystem, perhaps it's worth it.
Good question. I'd like to know where your progress goes on this.
But the key thing is you are stacking sats.
And I think Strike is a reputable place to stack those sats.
So you're doing those two things right.
And if you were going to hold sats somewhere, there's worse places to hold them than Strike.
I don't think anybody should keep their life savings on Strike, though.
So once you get to that point, or you start getting into the range of money
that would make you sick to lose, That's when you need to start looking at more
sophisticated options.
And I think if you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Do keep us posted, though.
I think it's a good journey you're on. And thank you for the boost.
It's good to hear from you, Pab.
Marist February comes in with 10,000 sats. Oh, yeah. It's over 9,000.
Brilliant. And a big time saver. Awesome. I love hearing that.
That's what I'm going for. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Atone comes in with 5,000 sats. Everything's under control.
The back-to-back What Bitcoin Did episodes with Shinobi and The Mechanic were
interesting because both sides sound completely reasonable while making the
other side sound unreasonable.
I don't know where I stand on Operaturn, but I guess more people on Knott's
is good for decentralization. Thanks for the balanced coverage, Chris.
Thank you for the value, A-Tone. Nice to hear from you, and I think I completely agree with your take.
They both do a great job of making the other one seem nutty,
don't they? Like, it's really something.
Hey, Clarkian's here with 10,000 sats. Thank you for helping us help you help us all.
I was already running Knott's, and Adam, I know I'm saying that wrong,
but I'm tired. for my miners for true solo lottery mining.
After the last two weeks following the debate on Twitter and podcasts,
I just can't see any good consistent reason for maxing the hop turn resize and
nuking configuration options.
It's clear they want to homogenize all
the mempools, which makes mining centralization even more of a problem.
I need to get back to the original version of nodes being in control,
node miners being more like... I'm not sure what that last word is.
I'm not sure what he means there, but he goes on to say, Here's also a boost
to the song props to the value for value artists for being better than most
fiat slop on the radio these days, even if I don't particularly like the genre.
Thank you, Clarkian, the all around solid boost. And thank you for supporting the artist.
And yeah, I think if nothing else, why do we have to rush the whole decision?
Couldn't we have just been debating it for a while? Nice to hear from you.
Hell to there is here with a row of ducks. Great job with the show.
You always have a great analysis and positive energy.
Love it. Well, I really appreciate this audience.
Really smart audience. Solid value coming into the show. It makes a big difference.
Keeps me going. Even when I'm like exhausted, I'm like, no, I'm going to show up for the people.
I'm going to show up for the people. We're going to do, there's big things going on.
It's going to, you know, like the liquidity stuff I talked about at the top
of the show is, you know, it's, it's beyond, it's beyond 150.
150K type stuff eventually.
I don't know about this year, but it's definitely the kind of thing that gets
us beyond 150K, especially in 2026.
But maybe sooner. It just depends on when they get it going.
I mean, it's big for Bitcoin. So it's like, well, we better,
you know, and not only that, but then you've got essentially a timeline for
the federal government to start their Bitcoin reserve program in the latter half of the year.
That's, think about, that's pretty valuable information if you just boil down
what I'm telling you right there.
Like, you're going look back and go, wow, look what he was telling us.
He was telling us the last window. It's amazing. Like, I don't know.
So I do it because, you know, the value keeps coming back. Appreciate it.
Really, I do. Nice to hear from you.
Mr. Plibs here with 5,000 sats. I don't think I'm saying that right. You're supposed to.
Thanks for another great twib.
Here's for a vote to continue the macro coverage. All right. You got it.
I am really appreciating that feedback. Appreciate the boost,
too. Amorph Sausage is here with 5,000 sats.
Everything's under control. Here's a bit of feedback. I like the summary of
what happened around the world, and I really appreciated the debate coverage of Operaturn.
I would, however, also appreciate a bit more technical topics from time to time,
like tips or stories on why or how people decided to run a node.
Or, due to the current events, a deep dive into the difference between Bitcoin
Core and Knott's keep up the good work.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I almost feel like those should be specials.
Because it doesn't really go with the news flow. But I could see doing one-offs from time to time.
If time and interest was there. And support, I think. I would love to hear more on that idea.
Something I've toyed with before. Thanks, Morf. It's nice to hear from you.
It's Among Us is here with 5,210 sats. You're doing very well.
I'm abivalent on how I feel about the Dave Ramsey guru gang.
On one hand, I think they help a lot of people stop making completely stupid financial decisions.
But on the other hand, it's at the cost of having them stop thinking for themselves
and just follow a formula.
Bitcoiners should take this lesson as well, and no matter what podcast or Bitcoin
guru they listen to, they should stay humble and decide for themselves on how to best stack sets.
I'm going to give that a ding. I'm going to give that a ding and an eagle.
I like that. Yeah, take in various different information sources,
you know, sift through it, and use your noodle to sort it out.
That's the best way to go. Thank you for the boost. Appreciate it. It's among us.
And we have a boost from OBL918, 16,666 sats. Heck yeah!
Linux or something. Right then. Let's get ourselves settled in for a wee deep dive.
You asked if we missed the economics coverage. I always love me some economics
coverage in Twib, but you can only fit so much into one show. That's true.
He says, I bought lunch with sats over lightning at status. Yeah,
cool. We got a Steak and Shake report. It was faster than credit card.
Stack and replace. Boosty McBoosterson. Yeah.
That's a good boost report. I like that. Yes, go to Steak and Shake and tell
me how it went. I like you.
You're a hot ticket. Thanks, OBL918. That's great to hear. I would do the same thing.
I'll spend it. I'll spend and replace, especially on Lightning.
I consider a lot of my Lightning sats to sort of be my checking account.
So, yeah, good report. Thank you. Good, good.
User 95 comes in with 3,000 sats. Hi, I'm a UK Bitcoiner and I love the show.
I wanted to mention the Bhutan Bitcoin accumulation.
I personally don't see this as a success story. I don't think the government
having a lot of power is good and therefore I particularly like the strategic
reserves in governments.
I don't because it just empowers them to keep them big.
Obviously, Bitcoin is for enemies, so don't keep me up at night.
So it doesn't keep me up at night.
But I am happy that the UK is avoiding Bitcoin's strategic reserve.
I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, so I'm interested in what you think.
Well, it's a pretty dark view, user95. I don't know if you're wrong.
A lot of times, you know, current governments don't always take actions,
often don't take actions in the best interest of their people.
But governments are supposed to be made of the people by the people.
So if a government holds Bitcoin, then technically the people hold the Bitcoin.
And government often takes collective actions on behalf of the people,
sort of the point of government.
And it's up to the people to vote the right people in place, people they trust.
And if they don't trust the people, they need to be voting better and harder, I guess.
But I do think there is a point of view out there that they really should just stay out of it.
But if that was the case, then you could make the same argument they should
stay out of gold and oil, right?
Uranium, helium, et cetera.
So I don't know if that actually holds up, but tell me what you think of that.
And I'd also like anybody else's insights on 95's booster. It's a good boost.
It's thoughtful. Appreciate that.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks.
2,222 sets. He says, boost coming in hot. Coming in hot with the boost.
Yeah, it is. Nice to hear from you, Ace.
All right, here we go. Sick and Toshi's here. I think I'm saying that, but I'm probably not.
With 4,200 sets. All systems are functional.
Great show as always. Appreciate your effort. Keep it up. I'm sorry if I missed
it. Snick Toshi? Not Sick Toshi. It's Snick, isn't it?
Oh, for God's sakes. I just can't be helped. Just pump the brakes right there.
But I appreciate the boost. Thank you very much.
Adversary 17 is here with 16,384 sats.
Quite a banger of an episode. Let's hear it good, buddy. Thanks,
adversaries. Always nice to hear from you. He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy. No, he's a great guy. And our last boost of the week from
Nakamoto 6102 is 3,000 sats.
Well, I'll be dipped. He says thanks for the value. Thank you,
everyone. Thank you, everybody who boosted below the 2000 set cutoff to what a banger.
Really appreciated that, especially after taking a couple of weeks off this last month.
I was really kind of concerned about a drop off and was so looking forward to
getting back and doing the show for you.
And as a content creator, if I can use that term, I can't tell you what a great
position that is to be in, to be excited and ready to go, even when you're worn
out, even when you're tired, you know, to still have the drive to want to get
out there and do the show for this community.
And I really appreciate the support. I'm going to be taking in all of the news that will be flowing.
And, you know, I'll either be busting an episode early if I need to,
or I'll have a banger for you next week because that's my job.
And I appreciate you supporting the show.
It really makes the difference. And when we put it all together this week,
we had 47 of you stream those sats into the show. Huh? Huh? Not too bad.
47 of you. That's we're almost at 50 people streaming sats as they listen.
I think that's really neat. And collectively, you stacked 97,330 sats.
We could almost get those sats streamers to 100,000.
I think that would be a first for the show. Then when we combine it with our
boosters, the show stacked a healthy 294,142 sets.
If you would like to support the show, you can do it with Fountain.fm.
That's probably the easiest way.
Fountain.fm makes it really easy to get sats. It also integrates with Strike.
And then they handle all the lightning stuff for you. So you don't have to worry
about a node or anything like that. You just use the app and boost the show.
However, if you want to play around and build a node, use something like AlbiHub,
you can go to podcastapps.com. There's lots of apps you can use.
You can send a boost with the show. You just need the sats, and you get to send
a message. You can find it in the feed. Boom.
And the great thing about these new podcast apps, if I do say so myself,
is you get a bunch of other nice features. Every episode of Twib has a transcript.
You can search. You can throw an LLM. You can do what you want.
And also, every episode has chapters.
And if we ever do a live show, it'll be there right there in your podcasting
2.0 app. And I think I will do a live show one day.
But how will you know? Unless you have a podcasting 2.0 app,
you won't know. There'll be no way.
If you have the app, boom, you'll see it right there in the stream.
And then last but not least, you get dang near instant releases.
So when I do publish, generally on a Wednesday afternoon, it's in there about 90 seconds later.
It's one of the great features as well. So you're not waiting around for your
app to finally figure it out and all that kind of stuff.
It's one of the great features of podcasting, 2.0 apps. Thank you,
everybody who supports the show.
Really appreciate it. This is a value for value production. It's your support
that keeps it going. There is no sponsor.
It is made for the audience. Transcription by CastingWords.
We have some updates. This one's a doozy.
Today, as I record, the U.S. Labor Department has rescinded 2022 guidance that
warned fiduciaries against including crypto in 401k plans.
This is huge. So now they can have, you can have crypto in your 401k plan.
I mean, assuming the banks actually go forward with it. But the government was
essentially discouraging the inclusion of Bitcoin in 401ks.
It stated that digital assets remain, quote, highly speculative while also warning
about price volatility.
And they were concerned regarding custody issues and all of that,
and it was just too risky.
But now that guidance has been scrapped and fiduciaries can now consider cryptocurrency
investments without facing additional scrutiny by the DOL.
So they're not really taking an exact position. They're not directly encouraging,
but they're no longer discouraging the inclusion of crypto in retirement plans.
It's worth noting that there's more than $7 trillion in American retirement plans.
This recent policy reversal doesn't mean that you're going to see Bitcoin become
part of retirement plans tomorrow, but it's a pretty significant shift.
This industry is just gaining more and more credibility and resiliency,
and this is just another one of those things.
So in that regard, pretty good to see.
AlbiHub 1.17 is out, and this one's a doozy. I don't cover every AlbiHub release,
but when I do, you know it's a banger.
First and foremost, improve subwallets. This is a feature I love because we
have hosts on the network that don't have the time or capacity to host their
own Lightning nodes and wallets.
So we have an AlbiHub setup that uses subwallets. Fantastic feature,
also great for families and friends, and they have essentially their own independent
wallet that uses your node's liquidity.
Fantastic feature. It is now just overall smoother.
The connection flow is better. It's more accessible in the main menu,
and it gives you an overview now of your total assets under management.
But the big feature that I am quite excited to see that I'll be honest with
you, I asked for early in the beta phase when I was helping them test AlbiHub
before it was released to the public. I told them, you need this feature.
They now have auto swaps. You can set a threshold and AlbiHub will automatically
swap from your lightning spending balance to your on-chain balance.
Huge. You just set it and forget it and then you don't have to interact with
it again, which is exactly what I asked for. We're really happy to see the team add this.
Also, some improved on-chain transparency now. All your on-chain transactions
are now visible directly in the node page.
And they've upgraded the bundled Lightning node that comes with AlbiHub as well.
So really solid release, version 1.17.
Looks like it's definitely worth upgrading. And I'm going to be playing around
with those auto swaps after the show. I love to see that.
Well, Bitcoin node operators seem to be adopting Bitcoin knots at a pretty good
clip. Yet, between September 2024 and April 2025, Nott's nodes grew from 210 to 840.
Not a huge number, but a 280% increase overall, while Bitcoin Core nodes rose
more modestly from 18,900 to 20,720.
Notably, Core lost about 250 nodes during February to April 2025, as Nott's gained 340.
Does seem like some people are voting with their feet and transitioning to Nott's.
If you're one of them, boost in and tell me why.
Music.
Not one, but two final clips of the week that kind of go together.
One of the things that was just killing me that I couldn't talk about,
and I didn't really have time to fit into this week's episode,
but I still wanted to cram it in here a little bit.
And that is a number of Bitcoin haters capitulated in the last week.
Historical, stick-in-the-mud Bitcoin haters capitulated.
And one of my favorite capitulations was A.
GigaBear. And he finally gave in this week and opened the floodgates to Bitcoin.
How times have changed. Four years after calling Bitcoin worthless,
J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon says that clients can now buy the cryptocurrency,
but it doesn't mean he's buying it himself.
I am not a fan of it. We are going to allow you to buy it and we're going to
we're not going to custody it.
We're going to put in statements for clients.
So, you know, I don't think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke.
I defend your right to buy Bitcoin. Go at it.
Go at it, right? Jamie Dimon, who also called Bitcoin a pet rock,
understands that personal feelings can't get in the way of business,
especially not while business is booming.
Bitcoin topping records today, you have it above 111,000 per Bitcoin.
This is as major crypto regulation bill advances now into the Senate.
Well, you know what I always say.
Smoke if you got them. Smoke if you got them, Jamie. Smoke if you got them.
Now, why did Jamie me capitulate?
Well, the old stubborn sob waited till the absolute last minute because rumors
started circulating on the street that Bank of America could be about to open
the floodgates and allow their customers to start buying Bitcoin.
Trillions of dollars in assets under management and registered reps all over the country.
Financial advisors can now put people in Bitcoin. We knew it going to make it
go up. We knew the Trump administration was basically friendly to crypto.
This was such an inevitable move. That's why it's gone higher now.
That's probably why it's going to continue to go higher, because Bank of America,
for example, the biggest bank, has not yet made that decision, and they are bound to.
Music.
Let's check in on the state of the network. As I wrap up episode 58,
we are at block height 898,790.
The current price to U.S. dollars is 107,220.
That makes the sats per dollar around 932 sats to one U.S. dollar.
I love it when we're under a thousand or right around there even.
It makes it so easy to do the math.
We are down just 4% from the all-time high, which we recently hit on May 22nd,
which was $111,980, a new all-time high for the Bitcoin network.
There are currently, there should be more, but there are currently 22,430 nodes online. Not too bad.
Looking at just the knots nodes now. The knots nodes are around 9% of the Bitcoin
nodes, just under the 10% mark, 9.1%.
Not too bad. That's a pretty, pretty big change from 4% when we started talking about it.
Not saying we talked about it and it went up, just saying the news definitely drove adoption.
Things are looking really good. The Bitcoin conference is going on.
I'll continue to follow the news.
And the Bitcoin network remains strong. There's lots still to come.
We'll be right back.
Music.
Well, if you made it this far, I think you should check out the links for this
week. There's lots of good stuff.
Some things that didn't even make it on the show. That's over at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
This was episode 58.
My goal is to create a good high signal show that doesn't get distracted by
the emotions or some of the politics around this, but just gets you the news,
lets you focus on what you need to know, and then gets you out of here.
So let me know how I did with the boost.
And if you think I missed anything, I always like hearing that too.
Now, I'm going to wrap up with a value for value track. Now,
right now, this is number six on the value charts.
Maybe we could bump it up a little bit. It's pretty good. It's test of verdict.
Music.