Music.
Welcome in to episode 10 of This
Week in Bitcoin. You know, sometimes good things come to those who wait.
As I sit down to record right now, some solo mining legend just mined block
843,726 all on their own.
All on their own. Dare to dream, kids.
Dream's alive. So this week, we're going to start with some big news that caught
me by surprise, honestly. And then we'll get into some mining updates. states.
And then we've got really big Bitcoin ETF legal disclosures.
And I looked at all of them. And I'll share the interesting ones with you.
And then we'll wrap it up with a bit of macro and the clip of the week this week.
You've got to stick around for that. But let's start with the breaking news.
And that is that the Senate, along with the House, has voted to overturn the
SEC's anti-crypto rule, the Staff Accounting Bulletin 121.
This is actually remarkable because despite a massive campaign by Liz and her
anti-crypto crew, both the House and the Senate passed this despite Joe Biden
saying he would veto it regardless.
So it's an interesting pushback against Biden during an election year as well.
And Senator Loomis explains why SAB 121 was really kind of screwing consumers.
Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 puts consumers at risk by requiring a covered
institution to place consumer assets on its balance sheet and.
It gives creditors a way to claim those assets in the event of a bankruptcy.
We have seen how this plays out for consumers.
Their assets are frozen for months or even years while the bankruptcy plays out.
In some cases they lose their assets entirely.
Now they've entrusted these assets to the custodian. It is the custodian that
is in bankruptcy, and yet their assets are the assets that are at risk.
So this does not protect consumers at all.
We've all heard this story. Celsius has an issue, and then the creditors get
all of their stuff first, and then the last person that actually gets anything
back is the consumer that actually put the assets in.
Now, it's not a new problem. I think, and Loomis points out,
that there's a bigger customer now where it is a much bigger problem, like the ETFs.
The safest place for digital assets is in a self-hosted wallet,
but not everyone can custody their own digital assets, including institutional investors.
You know, just props to her, actually, though, for even just starting with that.
That was nice to hear. The safest place for digital assets is in a self-hosted wallet.
But not everyone can custody their own digital assets, including institutional
investors that the SEC requires to use a qualified custodian.
Yeah. Yeah, I bet those ETF customers would like to see some of these rules changed as well.
I actually kind of, I mean, I'm not really sure if Biden will back off on his veto.
Um if he did i think it'd actually be good for him in an election year because
bitcoin's really in the middle of this policy tug of war between the white house
and the american people and,
congress just passed the repeal of sab 121 on a bipartisan basis i think even chuck schumer.
Was in there. So if Biden continues with his plan to veto it,
I don't think that looks well.
He's kind of in a tough spot now. As I record, we don't have clarity.
You may have clarity by the time this episode is coming out.
If you see news, please do boost it in.
Next, Dutch authorities just arrested a tornado cash developer.
The Financial Information and Investigation Service arrested an unnamed 29-year-old
in Amsterdam on Wednesday, claiming he helped launder money through the protocol.
The arrest came less than a week after the U.S. sanctioned Tornado Cash for
its involvement in several crypto hacks.
Now, a year later, we have a major update on this story.
And it's an unfortunate update. The Dutch court found that the Tornado Cash
developer, Alexey Persevev, was guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to 64 months in prison.
He's got 14 days to appeal. appeal the dutch
court convicted the 31 year old of laundering 2.3 billion
in cryptocurrency through the tornado cash mixer prosecutors have
alleged that parts of knew that when he was designing tornado
cash that he was making the ideal money laundering tool
and that the smart contract was perfect for this and of course conversely the
defense tried to argue that the same attributes made such that tornado cash
is was an effective privacy tool that continues to run on its own But the judge
just rejected that argument, saying,
quote, Tornado Cache in its nature and functioning is a tool intended for criminals.
Criminal user is fully facilitated.
Under the pretense of ideology, you did not care about laws and regulations
that apply to everyone, and you felt untouchable.
Now others and i will point out as well that
the position taken by prosecutors is essentially saying that
when you deploy open source code you can be held subsequently liable for how
that code gets used i think that's a pretty dangerous precedent that's being
set there now this again isn't a u.s court it's a dutch court it is a dutch
court but the tornado cash was had two developers and the co-developer is going
to be tried in the states and as lynn alden pointed out,
saying, quote, criminalizing the mere development and publication of code is an ugly precedent.
If published in a book or a blog, it would mean the book or the blog is illegal.
Very different than actually using the code maliciously, which I think is a
great point that Lynn makes.
We'll see. You know, I have a bad feeling for the way the court cases will go
in the States, too. And this is a bad precedent for open source in general.
And one of the things that frustrates me about this is the open source community
outside of crypto just has total blinders onto this stuff.
Well, it was some sort of crypto mixing thing. Oh, crypto bad.
And they don't even realize that legal precedent could be getting set for open source code in general.
They just are completely ignorant to it. But I guess that's just human nature.
The Blockchain Integrity Act is getting floated by Congressman Sean Kasten.
It introduces this idea to temporarily, quote unquote, prohibit financial institutions,
that's right, like the banks or maybe Coinbase, from transacting with funds
that have gone through asset mixers.
So the idea would be, for the next two years, no one can touch your coins if
you've used a mixer with them.
Uh the temporary two-year ban would
be so that way we could get our heads around the dramatic problem
that is terrorism using crypto mixers so
uh caston foster sherman they and
cleaver have introduced this legislation to temporarily
prohibit crypto mixers i have the text of the bill linked
in the show notes it's a two-year moratorium on
financial institutions accepting or withdrawing funds linked to mixers while
agencies conduct a study they just want
to understand the illicit use of mixers you guys that's all
they just want to understand it i'll keep
an eye on the blockchain integrity act i haven't seen a lot of movement since
it first showed up on my radar but um senator loomis and um another senator
have written a letter ron wyden to the doj arguing that uh you know these crypto
mixers are also So privacy tools, legitimate privacy tools,
and that they are completely,
completely ignoring one particular use case over another.
And then one last bit of kind of mixed news.
In the chilling effect category, IBEX, which was a pretty well-known payment
processor for USD to Bitcoin, is suspending their services in the United States.
They're kind of like the back end to several providers that you might not even
know about. They're a lightning payment processor as well, and they say they're
pulling out of the United States following a period of intensified regulatory
scrutiny and uncertainty in the country.
Users are urged to arrange for their outstanding balances to be transferred by May 31st.
They write, quote, this was not an easy decision to make, but after careful
consideration in light of recent events, we have concluded that this is the
most appropriate choice for the current circumstances.
A big thank you to all our U.S. customers for using Ibex Pay product and to
Swan for being an incredible partner.
We've loved working with you and for you. That was the CEO.
Ibex continues to operate in all other locations outside the U.S.,
so they're operating globally.
But as effective as of May 31st, they are pulling out of the states,
well, due to the regulatory situation, the chilling effect that people talk about.
There it is and ibex seems like one of the good companies too it's really kind of a shame,
U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an order blocking a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency
mining firm from owning land near the Wyoming nuclear missile base.
The China-backed cryptocurrency mining firm is located near the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.
Biden has called the firm's close proximity to the nuclear missile base a national security risk.
That's essentially all you need to know is the Biden administration has
blocked a Chinese-backed bitcoin mining
operation in wyoming and out
of concerns of national security they had some sort of silly statements
in there about how asics might be used for monitoring seemingly not
understanding that asics are literally a single purpose processor but.
Clean spark while the china backed company is having some issues in wyoming
clean spark seems to have been gobbling up bitcoin mining operations and is
adding 75 megawatts of bitcoin mining to wyoming they seem quite excited So
I'll play just a little bit of their promotional video to kind of give you a
flavor of it. Imagine the Tetons.
We're diversifying our portfolio yet again.
Music.
And heading into the American frontier.
A land filled with rugged landscapes.
And opportunity.
The sites provide access to 75 megawatts.
With an option to build out 55 megawatts more.
One of the stories here is that Texas and Wyoming, especially from a policy
standpoint, are leaning in hard trying to attract Bitcoin miners.
And that change around SAB-121 will also impact the Bitcoin mining industry in Wyoming eventually.
There's also, while we're looking at things that are going on in mining,
another video that came out was
touting the Paraguay deployment of Bitcoin mining that is 100% renewable.
Right now, we are in Paraguay in this beautiful facility built by Penguin,
a Penguin infrastructure hosting facility that helps us to mine Bitcoin here
and to support our clients in bringing more Bitcoin into the ecosystem.
Why Paraguay? First of all, it is the largest electricity exporter in the world,
selling more than 40% of its electricity abroad.
And also, all of it is made by Walter as the renewable resource in the third
largest power plant in the world called Itaipu. We at MITH, we are mining Bitcoin
to finance education activities.
We believe that financial literacy is a crucial part of the development of young generation.
And knowing about how money works and what is money is very important for our future lives.
So here we are right now. If I can find an online version of this video that
I can link, I will put it in the show notes.
Because they go inside one of their crates. So they have a bunch of these crates
that they bring on site and they set up the services in between them and the
cooling and all of that. But they go inside one of these crates.
It is so cool the way they're water cooling all of these different Bitcoin miners.
They go in there and it's actually pretty quiet because they don't have those big fans on there.
And they have these big tubes coming off the back of them.
All inside one of these crates has been custom built for this job with all of
the networking infrastructure and the power infrastructure all in there as well.
And they can bring them on site and deploy them and start mining off of renewable energy.
But the real story here, too, is that it's long-term good jobs for people in
the area. And it's good, clean labor.
That, to me, is one of the more exciting aspects of it. So we have 100% renewable,
hydro-powered Bitcoin mining in Paraguay.
And we have Kenya, who just brought on 10 gigawatts of germo,
germo, of gerbil energy, of geothermal energy.
Nine gigawatts of completely untapped Bitcoin mining can unlock Kenya's energy abundance, they write.
I just think it's so cool to see these projects kicking off.
And Argentina announced this week that they were going to start mining Bitcoin with stranded gas.
And they have 1,200 Bitcoin mining rigs that they're going to throw on stranded
gas in Argentina to start mining.
That's just this week. Just this week.
Music.
Okay, let's do some macro now.
This is really the date or the week we've been waiting for since the ETFs went public.
All of the big companies that bought some of the Bitcoin ETF have to file their
13Fs with the SEC by May 15th.
So what I have for you here is some takeaways that we have as of May 15th,
2024, months after these things have been on the market, but they're still just
babies, especially in ETF land.
But I think it's a good time to check in, get a little snapshot of where things are at.
And Bitwise did a great job in their weekly memo to investors to share some of these insights.
And I have tried to pull out what I think are the three takeaways for you. Number one takeaway.
Lots of professional firms are on board and buying these ETFs.
563 professional investment firms have reported owning $3.5 billion worth of the Bitcoin ETF.
That's huge. That means we may see somewhere north of 700 firms and a total
AUM nearing $5 billion by the end of the year, maybe.
Either way, takeaway two, it's a historic scale of professional ownership of
a new ETF. It's off the charts.
Most ETFs attract very few 13F filers because they're the big dogs.
And very few big dogs get in like this when it's new on the market.
Now, the other takeaway, number three, is retail still owns the most of the ETF.
As a percentage of total investment, professional investors own somewhere between
7% and 10% of all of the ETF assets.
And then retail owns the rest. However, Bitwise, the CEO, expects that that
7% to 10% that professionals own right now, they suspect that's just a down payment.
That they're probably just getting started. Now, there are some firms that stood out to me.
Millennium is one of them. They're the king of the Bitcoin ETF holder.
They own $2 billion across four different Bitcoin ETFs. Millennium does. They own $2 billion.
The other one that jumped out at me is a big deal.
The state of Wisconsin, their investment board disclosed $162 million in Bitcoin ETFs.
They're like in the top nine investment savings boards for states. They're up there.
That's a surprisingly well-respected one at that.
And they have 162 million of Bitcoin ETFs. The state of Wisconsin, 12 of the largest 25 U.S.
Hedge funds collectively have 2.6 billion ETF exposure.
And 11 of the largest 25 registered investment advisors, probably heard of them
as RIAs before, they have exposure.
11 of the largest 25.
The Bitcoin ETFs have been a historical success beyond any ETF in history.
And there's charts that show you just how astronomically successful they are.
I think Wall Street's convinced. But here's my question to you.
Boost in and tell me, what is it going to take to shift Joe Public's point of view around Bitcoin?
The investor class gets it, and they're front-running the average person right now.
Yeah, this is the moment where people are going to say, you know,
you always hear, like, the banks front-run the public. This is that moment.
It's happening right now. People say this about every asset that ever came along.
We're watching it in front of us with Bitcoin. coin.
And I guess, you know, this is the average Joe's lot in life.
They just miss this kind of stuff.
But what's the next shoe that's going to drop, in your opinion,
that changes the minds of the NPCs out there where they perceive Bitcoin as
a hedge against inflation or as a store of value?
I'm not seeing it. Because if this ETF doesn't do it, I really don't know what
will. All right, I want to talk about Tether for just a moment.
Because Bitcoiners are going to have to get comfortable with a little arrangement
that's going to get really, really convenient for the U.S. government.
They need stablecoins.
Especially once that printing press gets going again. They need stablecoins,
and I think they are going to end up probably preferring Circle,
but begrudgingly having to work with Tether.
I'm gonna play audio for you from former
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and you
might remember him he was in politics and getting
kind of got out during the Trump era has gone into the industry and immediately
brings a conversation to stablecoins which he is now essentially a lobbyist
for I guess the question is what could you do now knowing we have debt problems
in the future I think there's a couple of things Congress could do they're not
but maybe they'll get something done.
I think stable coin legislation would be a good step in the right direction.
Now, to be clear here, because the clip starts a little into the conversation.
Ryan was asked about his thoughts on what could be done about the debt situation.
He's on Bloomberg's Wall Street program, Wall Street Weekly.
And they ask him what could be done about debt. And his answer is stable coin legislation.
They didn't ask him about stable coins. They didn't ask him about crypto.
They asked him what can be done about the U.S. debt debt problem.
And his response was stable coins. And then he begins to bring the conversation
further that direction.
That could be helpful. That could be done this year. But I don't see anything
other than that on the horizon.
Let's talk about stable coin, because I've heard you say that actually getting
legislation on that could help treasury auctions.
And when you said it, I said, what's the connection there? Take us through,
take our audience through that connection.
Yeah. So stable coins, which are digital, digital private sector dollar backed
currencies, It's not crypto because it's tethered to the U.S. dollar.
Yeah, it's not crypto. I mean, it's on a blockchain and the largest one are
all shitcoin blockchains.
But it's it's it's it's not crypto. A dollar backed currencies.
It's not crypto because it's tethered to the U.S. dollar.
They have to have dollar backed assets. They have to have treasuries or cash
to back those stable coins.
There's not a law that governs these right now. So there aren't really deployed.
But if you actually have a law, which Ashton McHenry and Cher Waters,
Maxine Waters and Ashton McHenry are putting a deal together.
Schumer is in talks with them. I think there's a there's a reasonable chance
they could get a deal on stablecoin legislation.
That means you have a legal framework to which you have stablecoins deployed.
You'd go from a couple of hundred billion dollars of stablecoins to,
you know, maybe trillions. Right now, stablecoins are like the 16th largest
buyer of bonds, bills, and notes among all sovereigns.
If you actually regulate stablecoins and have them deployed, that does two things.
That gets the U.S. dollar more deeply ingrained in the oncoming digitization
of currencies. That's a good thing.
And you create new consumers' demand for our bonds because they have to have
those to back up the stablecoins. So more demand for treasuries,
more use of a digital dollar throughout the system to help better entrench the dollar.
It's a win win situation for America. I think it's a Paul Ryan's all about it.
He's all about digital dollar dominance.
I think the U.S. government needs stable coins. It's been my thesis now for over a year.
And as the money printer warms up, they need people to use these dollars.
And if they can get those dollars over some sort of crappy blockchain and get
people essentially pricing and spending in dollars, it's great.
It's a great marketing tool for the dollar.
It's just, it's so fantastic for them. You can see just why they just love it.
It's coming. I'll keep my eye
on it. I don't know how much it impacts Bitcoin, but that'll be my angle.
We'll see. All right, coming up, your boost, a great clip of the week,
and a new project you need to know about.
So first, I want to thank Podhome.fm. my podcasting 2.0 platform of choice that
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And a big thank you to Pothome for sponsoring this week in Bitcoin. T-W-I-B.
All right, we got some great boosts this week. We have a baller boost from our podcast.
And Eric sent us 86,753 sats. Hey, rich lobster!
Our podcast, thank you so much
for that. That definitely put a smile on my face. He says, hello, Chris.
I just wanted to thank you again for the honest and no BS takes on the many
intertwined events relevant to Bitcoin's current fiat price.
After having a unique opportunity a few weeks ago to add more Bitcoin to my
wallet, your advice on playing the long game keeps me optimistic instead of
panicking like the sky is falling.
Well, I'm really glad to hear that. Keep on stacking, Eric. I think so.
That is also really great to hear.
I've really felt like at some point during this last bear market,
I crossed this threshold,
where I'm feeling good when the price goes up and I'm feeling great when the
price goes down because the fundamental thesis of Bitcoin remains the same.
And when the price goes down, that just simply is a buying opportunity.
And when the price goes up, that means the rest of the market's identifying the value.
And I like seeing that too. So depending on what's going on,
you really won't hear me covering price much on this show.
Um, you know, like I think most of us that are probably in this are in this for the long term.
So short-term price doesn't matter much. However, every now and then I think
there might be an interesting angle to it.
So like I reserve like a little price escape hatch.
If something interesting is going on, just, you know, as somebody who's followed
this forever, that does happen from time to time.
But our podcast, I really appreciate that baller boost feeling that value return.
Thank you very, very much, sir.
SatSquatch comes in with 64,666 sats.
Powerful. Hey, Chris, I shared your show with my Bitcoin meetup group in Thousand Oaks.
And Jeff, one of our members, asked me to give you this to help support your
work. By the way, all the JP content is dynamite.
You're doing a good job. Thank you, SatSquatch. I really appreciate that.
And also, shout out to Jeff for encouraging that boost.
This is one of those shows where I really take the signal from the boost because
you guys are a Bitcoin native crowd.
So I put a lot of value in what you guys say in the boosts and how the boosts
are doing and kind of use that as probably the number one signal that drives the show.
Jeremy Ross comes in with a beautiful 21,000 sats. This is the way. No message, though.
Just, thank you, Jeremy. Just a nice, I'll say Jeremy R. I don't know if you
want me giving out your last name.
Just a nice 21,000 sats. This is the way.
Jordan Bravo comes in with 5,555 sats. Coming in hot with the boost.
Yep, Zeus has replaced Phoenix. Good. Good to hear Jordan Bravo.
Also, a new workflow involving DCA to Lightning to Liquid Bitcoin.
When Liquid Stack is large enough, I peg out to Bitcoin. Not necessarily the
best long-term solution, nor would it scale for everyone, but at the moment,
it seems like it provides three benefits. Saves on-chain fees.
Consolidates my Bitcoin into a nice big UTXO and provides some privacy thanks
to Liquid's confidential transactions.
You know what? I'm going to give a plus one to that right there.
That's my current thinking, Jordan.
And I would love anybody out there that thinks otherwise or recommends a different
workflow, maybe Federman, please boost in and share your perspective.
I think this is the solid setup right here. Zeus to replace Phoenix,
DCA using anything that supports Lightning, From Lightning, use Bolts Exchange
to go into Liquid, if they don't do it directly.
Stack in Liquid until you have a large enough UTXO. For me, that's like 5 million
sats or more, probably. I don't know. I'm just kind of throwing a number out there.
Then peg into a Bitcoin wallet.
I, it sounds complicated, but I think I just explained it in like four steps
and I have a resource that's going to make it a little bit easier to coming up later in the show.
So, uh, Jordan, thank you for that boost. And if anybody wants to kind of sanity
check that or steel man, that, that workflow, please boost in and, uh, let's do that.
Let's, uh, you know, let's bang these things around until we get it really solid.
Oppie 1984 comes in with 4,000 sats.
It says it's a really good perspective that I hadn't thought of.
I'll look into alternative methods of cold storage and try to find something
I feel comfortable with. There you go, sir.
There you go. Get started with something you feel comfortable with.
I do think the cold cards are fantastic and worth the hike, but they're not
the only solution anymore.
You know, I know Jack Dorsey has that block looking thing, that rock.
I don't love it, but maybe there's a nice middle ground right there as long
as you're married to your mobile device.
JC Denton comes in with 3,125 assets. Thanks for the roundup.
Onwards and upwards. Money badger don't care.
That's right. Fun's going to commence. Fun will now commence.
You are absolutely right.
That little dip was great. Little consolidation dip, if you will.
Faraday Fedora comes in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
Can we give Stephanie Kilton the Bitcoin Promoter of the Year award?
That's the clip I played of the gal last week on The Daily Show. So, yeah, I know.
And on the back special quarter discussion, I think right now things are a bit
crazy with DGENs trying to make a buck long term.
Oh, we're talking about ordinals, which, by the way, pretty much has completely
gone dead quiet, hasn't it? Hasn't it? Isn't that interesting?
I don't know if you've noticed, but the value of all the ordinal stuff has plummeted as well.
Are Bitcoiners just not having it? Is it that maybe the Bitcoiner group is a classier group?
I don't know what happened, but I'm kind of pleased to see it.
It seems like they're not, ordinals aren't dead.
That would be a fallacy. That would be an exaggeration. That would be an extreme thing to say.
But it sure seems like the momentum slowed way down.
Curious to know what your thoughts are on ordinals. Hmm.
Yeah, we can't. He says, I'll see how he finishes. will view their collectibles.
But it seems less and less people are interested in the ordinal thing,
doesn't it? Doesn't it? Let me know what you think, Faraday.
Magnolia Mayhem comes in with 9,876 sats.
I hoard that which your kind... Oh, look, people are saying Bitcoin's collapsing
again. Never heard that.
With that doomer's perspective, they'd say people are suffocating between breathing out and breathing in.
I almost am. I got a chest cold, so I have been feeling that way, actually.
Yeah, you're right, Magnolia. You know, I'm going to save it because the short-termer
thing, when the price is dipping, the way the vultures prey on that,
it's such a, well, it's predictable, but it's obnoxious.
I have a clip coming up in a little bit that gets into that.
Thank you, Mayhem, for that boost.
Lazy Locks comes in with 10,000 sets. It's over 9,000! Oh, thank you,
Lazy. He says, I'm supporting the best Bitcoin-related podcast. cast.
Music.
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Wise Hoddle comes in with 8,000 sats. Money laundering, terrorism,
child porn, unlicensed this or that.
These are all code words for, quote, what we are attacking is not necessarily
unlawful, but it's rather a danger to our status quo, Whoa. So they must become unlawful. End quote.
The people who make the rules in fiat society are not bound to those rules.
Arguing within their domain and seriously addressing the points they make is
a losing battle because they will always move the goalposts and use the corrupt
justice system, injustice system to get the results they want.
On why is hodl cynical but
i i mostly agree because i
think i mean i where i agree with you is that
since at least 71
but probably since before that fiat has been slowly corrupting every major institution
and we don't have our best in there anymore and so you they are constantly moving
the goalposts and you're right it is sort of fiat labeling something as used
by terrorists or CSAM or it's not licensed.
Can more and more now be sort of the fiat system's way of just trying to eliminate the competition?
Because they don't have to compete on the merits. They get to compete by abusing the rules.
Mix comes in with 2,000. Thank you for the boost. Mix comes in with 2,121 sats.
Thanks for the show. Well, thank you for the boost. Really appreciate it.
T Hamato comes in with 2,222 sats. A row of ducks.
Thanks so much for the answer to my large question and the follow-up guide.
One thing in particular I wouldn't have figured out alone is the logic behind
grouping on-chain sats into larger blocks.
Sparrow does have fantastic docks, by the way. River looks good for US users,
but seems unavailable in Europe.
I'm trying Kraken at the moment, which is supposed to support Lightning. I'll report back.
Thank you very much for reporting back. You're right, I do often forget that
River is not outside the States.
I will try to remember that they're not available in Europe.
I know Strike is going to launch soon in Europe, to Hamato.
So you might consider, if you can't find something on Lightning or if Kraken
doesn't do it for you, I can't imagine it's more than a couple of weeks.
I mean, I know that I'm sure Strike would have launched already if they could,
but I think that'd be a pretty good platform.
Let me know how it goes, though. If you find something else,
I am trying to collect a list of services that the audience recommends for the
EU because that's an area that I just can't test directly.
How it comes in with With 10,000 sass.
Amazing MMT clip. That was, again, the gal from The Daily Show talking about
how modern monetary theory works.
I watched the longer interview and the vibe stays about the same.
It reminds me of Krugman in 2010s talking down to everyone and pleading for deficit spending.
I agree. Isn't it weird, too, how they're coming out right now?
Their documentary just came out, too. It's all very strange. It's all very strange.
Reoccurring booster Bob B comes in with 5,000 sats.
Hey, Chris, in lieu of having an automated way to send sats weekly,
here's a boost that I managed to remember to do while I was at the computer.
Do you know if Boost CLI can use Albi as a source? Maybe I could cron something.
I don't think so, but if Boost CLI added Nostra Wallet Connect or something like that, then yes.
So that's probably what you'd want to watch for, Bob. Thanks for thinking of
me and the show. I do really appreciate that support.
And Eric Nord's the last one making it on the air this week.
It's a hot boost. Coming in hot with the boost.
8,086 sats, just to say support boost. I really appreciate that.
I got a bunch of other boosts too, including one from Trip about someone boosting
in a recovery method to get their funds out of Samurai. I wanted to pass the thanks on to that.
I do a 2,000 sat cutoff just to kind of keep it tight.
So we had 20 boosters. 20. We had 20 fried boosters.
20 boosters this week. Thank you, everybody. I really appreciate that.
And we stacked 246,502 sats. Heck yeah.
Winner. Winner. It really whips the llama's ass.
Thank you very much. And here's something for your trouble. Thank you very much.
I hope if you find value from the show, you'll consider boosting in.
And it's a show that I'm trying to produce for the podcasting 2.0 community,
for the Jupiter Broadcasting Community.
And the goal is to help people wrap their head around what's going on.
Just one show you have to listen to, really high signal, as tight as possible
to get you in, get you out.
So I wanted to ask you, speaking of boosts,
If you would like me to do a breakdown of that finding money documentary,
those modern monetary clips we've been talking about with the gal from The Daily
Show, you no doubt probably saw the Biden advisor going around where he fumbles
and bumbles trying to explain how money printing and borrowing works.
And it's embarrassing for him. Well, all of that's coming from this documentary
called Finding the Money.
And I'm curious if you would like that kind of thing broken down in a new show. show?
I don't know. I really genuinely don't know. It seems like if this was a general
Bitcoin talk show, it'd be worth breaking down. But I don't know about in a Bitcoin news show.
I'd like to know what you think. So it's finding the money. I'll play a little
bit of the trailer for you.
So much of the public discourse, it's like we're going through life with one
eye shut and one eye open, and we're only getting half the picture.
And then somebody like me comes in and says, well, let's make sure we see the full picture.
People naturally think, wait, government deficit, that. This is a negative thing.
Let's stop this right now. And I say, hang on, let's open the other eye.
The government debt is not a burden on anyone.
The national debt is exactly the opposite of what the orthodox story tells us.
This modern monetary theory. Modern monetary theory.
What is MMT about and why has it suddenly exploded? The last thing we need is
on the harebrained fury. We're broke.
America's broke. Congress has spent all the money. Does the government have to borrow dollars?
Of course not. They don't find the money they created. Is that what they do?
So let me know what you think. If you'd like a breakdown of that or not,
it's something I could do.
But I, again, don't know if this is the right avenue for it. You'd have to tell me.
So boost in with a new podcast app, newpodcastapps.com. You can send a message,
help influence the show, and tell me what you think about that kind of stuff. Really appreciate it.
All right. Right. I want to tell you about Helm. This is a resource that I'm
keeping my eye on for you, but you can start watching it yourself.
Helm is an open source lightning and liquid wallet similar to Aqua.
They just announced it a couple of weeks ago. And the idea is to have,
I guess you could say, a community built alternative to Aqua.
They don't actually go directly out and talk about Aqua much,
but it's a self-custodial wallet where you can send and receive Lightning payments,
without having to worry about liquidity channels because they're using Bolts
to swap between Liquid and Lightning on the back end.
So it's, I believe, a progressive web app.
It's a little bit different than Aqua in a lot of the actual implementation
details, but the overall goals are sort of the similar thing where you could
have, in theory, Lightning and Liquid and even on-chain in one wallet and move
between them fairly easily using the Bolts API on the back end.
So it's Helm, H-E-L-M, Wallet. I'll link to that in the show notes with Phoenix
going away and some of these other solutions that have kind of been fading.
You know, kind of looking at things like Helm Wallet and Mutiny and Aqua Wallet,
probably a better idea than ever.
Music.
You know, I really hate it when a politician attacks people's high time preference like a vulture.
And when they use Bitcoin during a market dump to scare people.
Justin Trudeau, in around January of 2023, used Bitcoin over and over again
to scare the public and mock them for trying to avoid inflation.
So, beyond having a plan to make people mad and amplify and reflect back that
anger, we haven't really seen a lot of concrete proposals from Mr. Polyev.
I mean, he did make one. That's not fair. You're right. He had one great opportunity
for people to opt out of inflation.
He recommended this last spring. You can opt out of inflation if you invest your money in Bitcoin.
Yeah. No, no, no. No, no. No, he stayed up late, watched all sorts of YouTube
videos, and came to that conclusion. He said that himself.
Buy Bitcoin, opt out of inflation. Well, any Canadian who actually listened
to... Maybe that's why those guys with the flags are so mad at me.
Any Canadian who listened to him would have lost more than half their life savings.
This is one of my favorite little things he does, too. That would have lost
more than half their life savings.
And it's not the only time he does this. He did it over and over.
Even during Parliament, he would do it. I know Canadians won't be taking any
condescending economics lessons from the leader of the opposition.
After he proposed to Canadians that a good way of avoiding inflation was to
buy crypto, Mr. Speaker.
That was his economic counsel to Canadians.
And if they had followed it, they would have lost almost half of their life
savings. Yeah, half their life. Again, as if people are putting half their life savings in.
And what he's doing is he's attacking during the absolute bottom of the market,
when Bitcoin was at $16,000, during an obvious crash as a result of the Fed
tightening and a complete readjustment of the market.
And since he's made those condescending comments, Bitcoin is up 300% and the
Canadian economy is in the toilet.
A new report out this week takes a snapshot of Canada's economy and the picture
is bleak. Among the findings, the economy not only stalled in 2023,
it contracted on a per capita basis.
And the GDP per capita fell faster than any time in at least six decades.
The authors found the growth in Canada's clean technology a disturbing development.
And Canada's business R&D hovered at about 0.6% of GDP last year,
which they say is little change from 2022. So those stats look bad,
and Canada seems to be just swirling the drain into a recession.
Assessment of what's happening with the Canadian economy right now,
the fact that we have seen an erosion in the value of the loonie against the
greenback as this conversation around what happens with interest rates has been taking hold.
Let's get some more perspective on the divergence.
They're desperate. They need their central bank to start easing rates right now.
And their most notable economists are coming forward saying it's too late.
They already I needed to do it.
And the only good spot, which if you go to the man on the street interviews,
people on the man on the street interviews say, oh yeah, the economy is horrible,
but I hear jobs are doing good.
Well, the jobs numbers, just like here in the States, are also cooked.
Canada's economy created 90,000 jobs last month, but it's not actually good news.
Hi, I'm Brian Lilley, political columnist for the Toronto Sun.
When you look deeper behind the latest job numbers from Stats Canada,
there are definitely some worrying signs.
Yes, Yes, 90,000 jobs created in the month of April.
That's fantastic, except, well, 50,000 of them were part-time, 40,000 were full-time.
But it's when you look deeper beyond that that things get really worrisome.
Almost a third of the jobs created in April were government jobs.
Over the last year, though, that number is even higher.
398,000 jobs were created across Canada between April 2023 and April 2024.
208,000 of them, or 52%, were government workers.
You can't have a successful economy when 52% of the jobs are with government workers.
So they're really, really, really in a bad spot since Justin Trudeau mocked
people for trying to avoid inflation.
And inflation continues to run hot.
And Bitcoin manages to break new records when paired to the Canadian dollar.
It's embarrassing. And he did it because he's able to leverage people's ignorance.
And he knows they're ignorant about the topic.
It's cynical when he does it.
And I think what gave me a little perspective on all of this was when Strikes,
Jack Maulers explained why folks like Justin and those that are following him are so screwed.
And why it's just so broken? I'll answer that in two parts.
I'm a long-term holder of Bitcoin, and I have the opinion that Bitcoin's been
in a bull market for 15 years.
The highs have always been higher and the lows have always been higher.
And I think more of the world is waking up to the idea that if you've got one
currency that's fixed in supply, and then you've got another currency that's
being rapidly inflated in supply,
then the one that's fixed in supply is going to appreciate in price against
the one that's being inflated.
And so I think Bitcoin is going to go up against the dollar and more and more
people are subscribing to that thesis.
So it doesn't shock me that Bitcoin is the best performing asset again this year.
I think the narrative that we're
living through right now is my favorite metric is global debt to GDP.
The way I like to think about that is the amount of borrowing our governments
have done from our future versus the growth they're producing to pay that back.
And so we've borrowed a tremendous amount of time and energy from our future
in the form of money with no way of paying it back. And that loss has to be realized somewhere.
And I think the market is waking up to the idea that the government and central
banks around the world are planning to realize that loss through debasing the currency.
And you're seeing that in inflation metrics all the way down in New York City.
And so if that's the case, it's a race to own hard assets and Bitcoin's the
hardest, most advanced money we've come across in human history.
And so I think the recent rally, the adoption of an ETF on Wall Street,
a lot of the narrative is they're going to socialize the loss of global debts,
GDP, and all the deficits through inflating the currency.
And you better not own dollars. And if you're going to own something, why not Bitcoin?
Couldn't have said it better myself, Jack. Thank you very much.
And thank you for listening to This Week in Bitcoin.
I would love for you to share this with a friend if you could.
And I'm going to play a podcasting 2.0 supported track, which means you can
boost and your sats go directly to the artist that's playing.
I'm going to wrap it up with I Need a Little by The Retro Grain.
Music.