Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 86.
My name is Chris, ChrisLAS.com and JupiterBroadcasting.com.
It seems the Bitcoiners, they're all at a holiday cheer this year.
I don't think I have ever seen sentiment this bad, maybe not even during FTX, maybe going all the way back to Mt. Gox.
I was surprised, really.
I mean, you always kind of see an uptick in negative sentiment when we're down from all-time highs.
But even notes coming into the show, there's concerns about price suppression or price manipulation.
And you know what?
I started looking into it, and maybe there is some merit to these claims.
Probably not what you're expecting, but something that is at least worth talking about.
Fox Business Alert. Take a look at Bitcoin. Just a second ago, it was down five and a quarter percent.
right now down 4.97% to under $86,000. It's at $85,858. It's kind of been a brutal 24-hour
crypto freefall, dragging nearly all crypto stocks into a bit of a winter abyss here. In particular,
the so-called Bitcoin hoarder company, Strategy. Strategy is at the very bottom of the NASDAQ.
Shares are down 8.5% right now. Bitcoin at the moment is leading the pack for liquidations. In
the past 24 hours, investors who own that particular crypto have sold positions to the
tune of 205 million. But guess who sees... Liquidations is kind of the name of the game.
What's become clear this year is the big wallets. They run the show. Us retailers,
we can stack and, you know, we probably set some sort of base floor price, but
it's institutions, it's even nation states now that are really moving the price.
And here's a lens which you could view this with. Since the iShares Bitcoin ETF, BlackRock's
IBIT ETF began trading, all the net gains have occurred after trading hours here in the States.
Talk about driving the market. So if you just bought the close and you sold the next open
on IBIT and you did that throughout the year, you would be up 222% right now.
If you did the opposite, if you bought the open and sold the close, you would be down 40.5% right
now. So if you buy the close and sell the next open, you're up 222%. If you buy the open and sell
the next close, you're down over 40%. The price action, the positive price action, all happens
outside of regular trading hours for the ETF. And like I mentioned recently, there's also been this
10 a.m. sell-off almost every single day. Some people think it's winter mute, others think maybe
it's China selling off some of their stock. But for example, on December 12th, after the 10 a.m.
sale, Bitcoin dropped $2,000 in price in 35 minutes and wiped out $40 billion in market cap
in 35 minutes. And at that time, it triggered a liquidation of $132 million worth of longs.
Now, we're going to get a theme here. On December 15th, the 10 a.m. sale happened,
And Bitcoin dumped, again, $3,200 this time, a little bit more, and went from $89,000 to $86,000 and liquidated $203 million worth of longs.
Are you sensing a theme here?
And all of that action, $203 million worth of longs, wiped out in 60 minutes.
There was no negative news at that time I was watching.
There was not even any stupid FUD.
And then today, as I was prepping the show, Bitcoin shot up 3% in 20 minutes, chilled there for about a half hour, and then went straight down 3% in 20 minutes.
And you can see it in the price chart, these big buys that shoot the price way up, then it holds there, some longs build, and then they shoot the price way down.
So we do know this.
We brought in Wall Street, and they're playing Wall Street games, but we don't have any Wall Street rules.
You know, eventually they're going to get screwed, right?
It's a finite asset, and it's really the people that are trading with leverage.
They're going to get screwed.
And I suspect the market makers that work for organizations like BlackRock, they are trying to push these leverage traders out of the market.
Punish them out of the market.
At 8 a.m. Pacific today, check this out.
I've been looking into this.
I don't normally follow this, but you guys asked.
At 8 a.m. Pacific today, Wintermute, Binance, BlackRock, and Coinbase all made big buys around the same time, a cluster set of buys.
The price shot up from $87,000 to $90,000 in 20 minutes this morning.
Some longs built.
People started to get a little bit bullish.
Oh, it's a turnaround, everybody thought.
So they started hedging that the price was going to go up.
And then all four, Wintermute, Binance, BlackRock, Coinbase, they all sold.
Again, cluster cells all around the same time, immediately liquidating the longs once again.
And this is twice that can happen in one day when the liquidity is particularly thin like it usually is in mid-December.
So you have these cluster cells from these big players like Wintermute, who's a market maker, or Binance.
Then they'll trigger a big set of cells.
So in this time, in this case, they triggered $132 million long liquidations.
They liquidated $132 million again.
that's forced sales for people that are over leveraged,
people that were making bullish bets
that the price was going to go up.
They had to force sell.
It's above my pay grade here,
but it seems like they're hunting around
for low liquidity moments in the market.
And sometimes there's multiple moments within a day
and they're taking their shots.
Now, is that manipulation?
No, actually, it's not really.
I mean, not, I think, technically,
it's traders doing trader things, right?
They're buying and selling,
but they're buying and selling with large bags.
And the DGENs are getting wiped out.
the people that are buying Bitcoin or making bets either way using leverages, using loans,
they're getting just slammed. And it seems like the pain is going to continue until their behavior
improves. It, to me, reads like they're trying to incentivize the market to stop some of this
degen behavior, dial it back a little bit. And I'll explain why I think that in a minute.
But it doesn't have to be like this. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase,
He's been going to D.C. on the regular, trying to apply pressure to the Congress creditors to pass a market structure bill which would tame some of this.
And this is Brian. He's out on the Hill one month ago.
Hey, Melissa and Brian, thank you so much for being here with us.
You know, before today you had Chairman Tim Scott said, hey, Democrats need to give a date to mark up this market structure bill.
He said the same after your meeting. Democrats, though, are still saying they need a bipartisan draft to move forward.
Did anything change after today?
Yeah, well, we had great meetings with the Democrats in the Senate and on the Republican side today.
And the good news is that there is strong bipartisan support and will to get this market structure legislation done.
All right, we got good bipartisan support, he says, one month ago.
So things going really swimmingly.
And like I said, he really has been going out there.
He got himself a nice set of specs, a great new suit.
And he has been out there almost day after day trying to get this thing passed.
This is Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, just two days ago.
Hey, everyone. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO here.
I'm in the halls of Congress, back again, pushing for market structure legislation.
We've seen a lot of progress since I was last here.
We've now seen draft text shared by the Senate Ag Committee.
Senate banking is also working nights and weekends to get the next iteration of their text out.
Lots of progress working nights and weekends.
What could possibly go wrong?
Now, Bitcoiners, you should care about this for one simple reason.
We're still early.
And that next wave of normies, those non-risk taker normies,
they're people who are interested perhaps in a savings technology outside the dollar,
but they don't really trust anybody outside their institutions.
And sometimes it's because they have huge bags.
Sometimes it's just because they're traditional.
Whatever it is, that's their preference.
And they're waiting for these institutions to take away some of the scary edges and build Bitcoin into financial products that can be easily sold to them.
And we don't get that next wave of customer without some rules of the road that these folks need to follow.
That's just how they operate.
If they don't know what the rules are, they're not going to go all in.
They're not going to take some of the risk.
What we see right now with Bitcoin is the early adopters, which has been incredible.
But this week, the Senate Banking Committee confirmed that Bitcoin and the crypto market structure bill will not advance in 2025.
Sorry, Brian. Womp womp.
Turns out, I guess there just wasn't the juice.
Armstrong couldn't move the needle.
Next, we're learning key crypto legislation just got pushed to next year.
Crypto market structure legislation is expected to be marked up in early 2026.
That's according to the Senate Banking Committee, with a spokesperson saying committee chair Tim Scott and the committee have made strong progress with Democrats on bipartisan digital asset market structure legislation.
The industry, lawmakers and many crypto world guests throughout the year were hopeful a market structure bill would become law in 2025 to go along with the Genius Act Stablecoin Act, which President Trump signed into law over the summer.
I think you get the idea. It seems like Armstrong just couldn't get it over the line.
Now, I don't have all of the details here, but following different Congress critters on social media, the rumor and hubbub is that Senator Warren threw a wrench into things.
I don't know if this is true or not, but it appears that they had a BSA surveillance clause that they wanted to add to the bill, which the Congress critter I was following called unconstitutional.
and they said that it would treat software developers much like financial institutions,
which would be an unbearable burden on them.
And so they essentially were trying to negotiate a non-negotiable position.
And that has stalled things out.
Now, this is notable because 14 days ago, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was on the deal book stage.
And, you know, he goes into his typical Bitcoin pitch, which I have played for you guys before.
So at this point, I don't even bother clipping it for the show.
But I listened back again, and I kept listening a little bit further,
and I realized that Larry said the quiet part out loud.
I think we need to get back to what is the purpose.
What is the purpose of Bitcoin?
Then we get into the stablecoin.
You know, the $13.5 trillion that BlackRock managed on behalf of our clients,
it's basically managing hope.
That's all it is.
I mean, why would anybody invest in a 30-year outcome?
Unless you're hopeful in 30 years, you're going to have the compounding effect.
Bitcoin is an asset of fear.
And when you're less fearful, like we had a trade agreement with China, you saw a shift downward.
There is conversations this week that there may be some type of settlement in Ukraine.
Bitcoin fell.
This is such a stupid premise.
I mean, I don't mean to be just so blunt about it, but it's a sales pitch that he has come up with that he can use on a stage like this in front of financial wonks and maintain his credibility after all of the things he has said for the last decade about Bitcoin.
But the idea that it's hope or fear, it's silly.
A little bit.
So you own Bitcoin because you're frightened of your physical security.
security. You own it because you're frightened of your financial security. The long-term
fundamental reason you own it because the debasement of financial assets because of...
What he's really saying, but he doesn't have the sack to say it, is you might hold Bitcoin because
you're convinced that your government is falling apart. They're debasing the currency. Basic civil
safety is deteriorating and the conditions are getting worse and worse. And so if you're hedging
against your government, you might buy some Bitcoin. And he said this in other contexts
before, because he'll talk about how it's a non-sovereign store of value. It's not attached
to any particular nation state or any particular debasement situation. Anyways, this isn't the main
point of the clip, but if he's going to run a stupid mouth like this, I just, actually,
I shouldn't say it's stupid because he's very much intentionally saying it like this. It's a
calculated thing. So it's not stupid at all. Meanwhile, Brian Armstrong is sitting next to him
with like this look on his face, like, I don't co-sign this. Basement of financial assets because
of deficits. And so to me, even the movement in the last week, and we've had about a 20, 25%
drawdown. And this is the third time since Ibit was created, our ETF. And so this is,
you see these shifts and they're actually pretty non-correlated shifts. And that's,
and so the role. But then some people say, is that really insurance, right? If you had bought
at $125,000, and it's now sitting at 90-some-odd thousand dollars.
Sorkin coming in with his classic mid-take of,
is not a store of value because I bought it at $125,000,
and then a month later it's at $90,000.
And he's saying this to Larry Fink,
Mr Long Investor buy assets and hold them It I don know how Sorkin has this job You see these shifts and they actually pretty non shifts And that and so the role But then some people say is that really insurance
Right. If you had bought it at one hundred twenty five thousand dollars and it's now sitting at 90 some odd thousand dollars, you're saying if you bought it for a trade, you know, it's a very volatile asset.
You're going to have to be really good at market timing, which most people aren't.
If you buy it as a hedge against all your hope, you know, then it has a meaningful impact on a portfolio.
If you buy it as a hedge against your hope, which is so stupid, right?
Because you could easily twist this around.
Well, Bitcoin is hope because I'm hopeful that even though everything's going to get debased and the quality of living is going to go down, I'm hopeful I have a way to store my energy today for the future.
So I'm hopeful that I'm going to live long enough to enjoy those benefits.
So you could make an argument that holding Bitcoin into the future is an inherently hopeful action.
This is dumb. This entire argument is just dumb, but it's a pretense he needs in order to talk like this.
But what is actually important is the part he says in just a moment.
You're going to have to be really good at market timing, which most people aren't.
If you're buying it as a hedge against all your hope, you know, then it has a meaningful impact on a portfolio.
The other big problem of Bitcoin is it's still heavily influenced by leveraged players.
That's what I wanted to talk to you guys.
What?
Larry Fink, with all the things on his plate, all of the little details here and there, he's worried about leveraged traders in Bitcoin.
He says one of its big problems, this is 14 days ago.
14 days ago, he says one of Bitcoin's big problems, and he has a bit of a stake in Bitcoin with Ibit, is the leverage trading.
Heavily influenced by leverage players.
It is.
That's what I want.
So this I don't think should be ignored.
Larry Fink has been talking about this somewhere in the halls of BlackRock around some board table or whatever it is.
They have been talking about leverage traders being an issue in Bitcoin.
That's my read on that.
And that to me should not be ignored. If you want to call it manipulation, I guess. But I think it's people with a stake in the market with large wallets that want to maybe just force some of this degen behavior out.
That's my take. What do you think? Is there some sort of market manipulation happening? Is the price being suppressed? Or is there just simply more sellers than buyers?
Boost into the show, support the show, and let me know.
And this next segment might be a reason, maybe, why people are selling.
This is my last planned episode of the year.
I mean, that could always change if something crazy happens.
But right now, the next episode would be on Christmas Eve, and then the one after that would be New Year's Eve.
So I've decided I'm going to just take those two episodes off.
But then that got me thinking of some of the narratives and stories that have developed over the 2025 year.
And when I think of ones that are going to be playing out through 2026, I unfortunately believe that quantum computing as a threat to Bitcoin is going to be a continued FUD narrative through 2026.
Because it's the perfect Bitcoin FUD.
Unlike the energy or ESG narratives, which you could debunk with some quick napkin math, just boom, boom, boom, look at this, look at that, or go to this website, read this thing, you could actually explain away the energy and ESG concerns with practical reality-based responses.
Quantum computing is a technically real thing.
Shor's algorithm running on a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer would eventually break ECDSA.
that is obvious. It could be maybe at absolute, absolute best five years, but the timeline's a
total fog. It's probably closer to something like 20 years. It may actually never happen.
No one knows. I mean, literally no one knows. So there's just all of this room for debate and
argument about the severity of the issue because literally no one has the answer. So it's the
perfect thing for the internet to just go sensationalist with. And then the reality is
there are some mitigations. Bitcoiners have been looking into this for a while. Bitcoin can upgrade
around this. But even the best case scenarios, there may be some consensus heavy events. You
know, there may be a scenario where some coins get abandoned, maybe depending on what the fix is.
So it's like there's not a there's not a super easy fix. There are paths to fixes. But it's just
There is some noteworthy concern there at some point down the road.
I don't think it's a huge concern because everybody involved with Bitcoin is incentivized to solve this problem.
And I think you're going to see a lot of other things get attacked before Bitcoin, like the fiat banking system, SSL and things like that.
You're going to start seeing the signs this is coming.
And so there will be a real urgency when we start to see that stuff.
the reality is this isn't even a fake number.
There's probably a 100 people total,
100 people on earth qualified to assess
the real quantum trajectories that we seem to be facing.
And what we have is a lot of investors
that think the next big play after AI is quantum.
And so, you know, they spent 20 minutes on chat GPT.
They now think they're a quantum expert
and they're going out there and they're buying quantum stocks
and they're scaring investors
about the risks of quantum to pump their bags.
This is a real thing that is happening. So you just have total confusion out there, conflicting predictions, confident voices that are saying totally opposite things.
And there's no clear way for the average person to actually price this risk. So it's really the perfect Bitcoin FUD.
And, you know, Google comes out, they have big quantum progress. And what was the first headlines that started to pop up?
Bitcoin's gonna get broke.
Bitcoin's gonna get cracked.
It's too risky.
That's the first headlines that come up.
And to me, you know, as somebody
who's just grown up with technology,
who's been around forever in Bitcoin,
it's only a threat if Bitcoin weren't to adapt.
That's the entire premise here.
The entire quantum risk premise,
even though we have all these unknowns,
you could just distill it all down to,
It's only a threat if Bitcoin doesn't adapt.
And Bitcoin breaking from quantum isn't the base case.
The worst case scenario is not the Bitcoin goes to zero.
The worst case scenario is that we do absolutely nothing and roughly around 20% of the supply, which is not floating, becomes liquid.
The older addresses.
It would be a one-time supply event.
It's not a protocol failure.
It's not an ongoing attack against Bitcoin.
It would be dormant coins going to active.
And man, I think you and me would be happy to snap those up.
I'd love to buy some Satoshi Air coins for cheap.
So long term, the worst case scenario around quantum barely matters.
The markets absorb the one-off supply shock and you have a fixed asset.
It gets snapped up.
So it's like this quantum FUD is really, really building.
And I'm really disappointed to see macro analyst Luke Groman say that he sold his Bitcoin in large part because of quantum concerns.
I cannot express to you the nuclear bomb this set off in the macro analyst community in the last week.
Bitcoiners have been shook to their core by this announcement because Luke was considered one of the great macro analysts.
And the reasons he sold his Bitcoin are so low, low IQ, it throws into question all his previous analysis.
So I'll go through this with you, because this is going to be one of the biggest threats of 2026.
And Luke says that one of the reasons he just sold off a huge part of his stack is because he has concerns about quantum computing.
Concerns around quantum computing.
So he sold off his hard asset.
Very serious people raising the potential that it could be an issue within two to nine years.
And the quantum stuff is way over my head.
It's way over my pay grade.
I try to read it and I feel like the dumbest person alive.
And I am not in a position to sit here and have any debate with someone.
Is quantum it at a risk?
Is it not?
Make no mistake about it.
This is a really weak reason to sell your Bitcoin.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. Right. What it what I'll get into it.
It's more. What I am in a position to discuss is I've been in markets 30 years and I'm watching the way Bitcoin is not making a new high against gold.
I'm watching what Heather's doing. I'm watching what these people I respect in the space are saying.
And I'm saying markets are telling me that serious. And oh, by the way, the OG whales.
So hold on. Let's back this up. So he's selling. He's he's he's selling because he's watching charts.
And he's reading Twitter.
Bitcoin is not making a new high against gold.
So he's looking at Bitcoin not making a new high against gold.
Well, first of all, selling Bitcoin based on chart astrology is like a total rookie mistake.
This is yikes.
You can read charts in two ways.
In the show notes, I'll link to some chart readers out there who say the Bitcoin price is about to explode upwards.
So basing a trade of a scarce asset on what you see in your settings based on your view in trading view is a really poor time preference move.
But he said something else in there that maybe matters more than just looking at the charts is he said it didn't make a new high against gold.
Well, this is really it.
This is part of the crux of it.
The whole quantum narrative, the reason why Luke has glommed onto this is because gold doesn't have this problem.
And so it's a pro-gold thing to say without even saying gold.
And Luke has always been a gold bug.
I've noticed this for years.
But what I'm surprised that he hasn't put together, you know, being a gold bug, is that when gold has its run, it runs.
And gold is still in the process of running.
It's slowing down, but it's still running.
So why would he expect Bitcoin to run? Because historically, every single time Bitcoin runs after gold is played out and then Bitcoin outperforms gold by a large margin. How would Luke not know this? The people he's respecting that he's watching on social media, they don't know this. They don't know this.
Like that's like, yeah, you wouldn't expect Bitcoin to outperform gold while gold is still having its rally moment.
It's a liquidity play.
And the money, the liquidity is still going to gold.
And then usually we have about a 90 to 180 day lag.
After that happens, Bitcoin goes on a rally.
I'm watching what Heather's doing.
I'm watching what these people I respect in the space are saying.
And I'm saying markets are telling me that serious.
And oh, by the way, the OG whales, most selling in a cycle ever.
Ah, yes.
So one of the other signals is the OG whales, one of the most selling ever.
Well, of course, OG whales are selling.
We just hit $100,000 for the first time ever.
Bitcoin's never been here before.
I'll have more on that in the show later.
But Luke's working from old data.
Glassnode shows that whales accumulated 269,822 Bitcoin, worth around $23.3 billion in US dollars around the time.
In the last 30 days, Wales have made the largest accumulation they've ever made in the last 13 years.
In the last week alone, Wales, that means wallets with already a bunch of Bitcoin, bought 54,000 Bitcoin in the last seven days.
And Luke, the gold bug, he's clearly discounting the ETF effect that is still ramping up, which I also find crazy because gold went through a very similar process.
This is Bitwise's CIO, I believe, or CEO.
We'll come back to Luke, but we'll take a quick divergence because this is clearly missing from Luke's analysis.
So first on the why ETF demand accelerate, there are three real reasons.
First is it always happens.
So if you look at any ETF in history, and I was the CEO of ETF.com before I joined Bitwise, so this is like my old turf.
Year one is typically the smallest year, and then it ramps from there.
If you take the gold ETF, it did $3 billion inflows its first year, and then $5 billion, then $7 billion, then $10 billion, then $18 billion.
It ramped for seven straight years.
So this is just what happens in ETFs.
One of the reasons this happens is a second point, which is big advisory platforms like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch take a long time to turn on exposure to these ETFs. In fact, it's only been within the last six months that advisors at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Wells Fargo, which control north of $10 trillion, could even invest in Bitcoin or Ethereum ETFs. Now, those doors are blown wide open. So we're dealing with another audience.
And then the final reason is TradFi is just slow The average Bitwise investor on the TradFi side allocates after eight meetings with us If they started those meetings You have to suffer through eight meetings with the same person before they give you money
It's not suffering. I'm sure it's a pleasure.
Welcome to CryptoLand. But here's the thing, if you started those meetings when the Bitcoin ETF
launched January 2024 and you did them quarterly, guess what? Your eighth meeting was this quarter,
right like we're just in the sweet spot of adoption i know that's hard for people to but
we've been doing this a bit wise for eight years so that's like i'm so glad you guys have been doing
that eight years feels like a hundred but but that is true so look i think etf growth will go up
the the comparison to the net new supply is because i'm a very simple person like crypto
prices are set by supply and demand you have one source of new supply which is blockchain rewards
or staking, et cetera.
And then you have this novel source
of incredible demand on ETFs.
And if we look into 2026, you can be very precise.
At current prices, the Bitcoin network
will produce $15.1 billion worth of new Bitcoin.
ETFs did, they'll end up doing about $23 or $24 billion
this year in 2025.
And we think that will go up in 2026.
So they'll far surpass it.
Ethereum is an even stronger story.
So they say that both Ethereum and Bitcoin will have more supply bought by the ETFs than will be mined by a large margin.
And that the ETF buying may ramp up for seven years, or I guess it would be another five and a half, six years.
And a lot of OG whales, I know this is hard for people to believe, but it is true, they're rotating to the ETFs.
You know, if you think about somebody who's been in Bitcoin, and I can kind of speak to this, if you've been in Bitcoin a long time, it can wear you down.
Because, you know, you have seen the light a long time ago, and it just takes, it's just such a grind.
Now, when you zoom out, it's amazing how fast things develop.
But in the day-to-day, it can be such a grind.
And so if there's a path where you can take a lot of wealth that you've accumulated, convert it to an ETF, and then start selling covered calls or take a collateral-based loan with a really great competitive rate, there's going to be a lot of OGs that are tired, man, and they just want things to be a little easier.
So they're rotating into ETFs too, and that's going to be a trend that continues.
That looks like selling on chain.
So Luke has misread this situation entirely.
Of course there's additional selling. Of course. We hit $100,000 for the first time. That's amazing. People are rotating ETFs as well, but they are on track at just the ETFs alone. None of the digital asset companies like Saylor, just the ETFs alone are on track to buy more than the supply. That's incredible. That's incredible, and it's going to make a price difference because of the scarcity factor.
So I don't know how Luke misses this because, again, he's a gold bug.
And this happened to the gold ETF when it launched.
But we resume.
Intuitively, if I was worth $50, $100, $200, $300 million, billion dollars in Bitcoin, it's probably mostly in Bitcoin.
I've held it for 15 years, 10 years.
Which one?
I would probably be very tight end in that world.
And I wouldn't sell unless there was some sort of real.
real, I would start to take some off the table if I thought quantum was a risk I wanted to at least
hedge somewhat. This is his logic as to why the OG whales have been selling. Not because we had
$100,000 and they've been hodling for a decade when everybody tells them it's a waste of time,
that they're destroying the environment, that it's only used by criminals, that it's never going to
go anywhere, when their family laughs at them and doesn't listen to them, when they try to convince
It's people day after day and nobody listens and they have to watch all of this and they
see the debasement trade and they still hodl even though they weren't sure.
And then all of this good news comes along and we go from $60,000 to over $100,000 and
he can't wrap his big bald noodle around that?
And so when I see this whale selling, I can't help but think, you know, maybe there's something
there.
Given the price action I'm seeing when you're looking at gold versus Bitcoin, not breaking,
setting a massive, a new high against gold for the first time in its life. When I see it breaking
down on a momentum base, various momentum bases relative to the dollar on long-term charts,
I don't really look at the chart. Like for me, I just want to see the long-term technicals and
the long-term technicals were really breaking down about three, four weeks ago, six weeks ago.
Yeah. Like when there was the massive market issue on, was that October 10th? Was that what it was?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so that's really where I just say, you know what, I fully concede I might be
being too cute by half. And these technicals, when they broke each of the last three times,
as emphatically as they just broke about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, the median decline in
Bitcoin was 65, 70% each time. And there have only been three triggers in 14 years, and there have
been no false triggers. It's just funny because he says he's not a chart guy. And then half of
This is him looking at charts.
So for me, it's, you know what, especially given the size that it had grown to in my
portfolio, you know, it was a champagne problem, knock on wood.
And it was, I got something right for change, but.
Yeah.
And then you went and sold it because, you know, he was never really all in.
And I bet this isn't the first time he sold either.
The, it just, to me, it's, it spoke to a need to right size it and substantially reduce
positions.
Cause I just think it's going a lot lower.
And I guess lastly, a tie back wise up functioning.
I've called it the last functioning smoke alarm for five, six, seven years.
Look, it's telling us the first half of next year is going to be ugly.
Let's make no mistakes.
Bitcoin, if this Bitcoin sell-off is not just 100% tech and quantum computing related,
and forget about tech because tech's liquidity too.
If this isn't just a Bitcoin-specific quantum computing sell-off, and I don't think it is,
then what Bitcoin's telling us is, you know, sir, we go back to that BC and AD.
So he's selling because of quantum, but he doesn't think he's selling just because of quantum.
He also thinks next year is going to be a disaster.
Specific quantum computing sell off, and I don't think it is.
Then what Bitcoin's telling us is, you know, sir, we go back to that BC and AD of 2026.
Yikes.
There's a lot of basically everything but gold and the dollar are likely to get waylaid until we get to year zero is what Bitcoin's saying.
And on what time horizon are you bearish Bitcoin? One month, three months, or is this a multi-year
negative view you have? Probably a function of more price than time, but there's probably price
and time. In other words, look, if I woke up and Bitcoin is 40,000 and a little bit of time has
passed and there's revulsion and any number of technical indices. One of the nice things about
having the size following I do on X is it's a very useful indicator of sentiment. I can just,
you know, chum, you know, throw some chum in the water.
Wow. If he's following X sentiment, no wonder he sold. I mean, it's like I said,
at the top of the show, the worst I've ever seen on X and some other places,
literally the worst. And I'm not the only one saying that. I just cannot believe that he would
think that's a valid source for a long-term macro investing. Sure. You can go there and get some
signal, but my goodness. I have in the size following I do on X is it's a very useful
indicator of sentiment. I can just throw some chum in the water and the response I get is pretty
informative. And then it's also going to be a revaluation of the fundamentals, right? Of,
okay, where's price? Probably some time. And then, okay, is quantum getting closer, better,
what have you amongst, and again, I'm not smart enough to figure out whether it is or not.
There's a quorum of people I'm watching that are, this is their lives. I'm going to trust what
they're having to say, but that's for me really more it. Like I, for me, it's a, for at least the
next several months, it's negative. Again, if it crashed tomorrow to a level where it's okay,
and revulsion, I could revisit that, but it's, I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't think it's going to happen that fast. Certainly not the way the last three cycles have
gone. And I, you know, I've lived through each of those, you know, 13, I own Bitcoin, 17, I own
Bitcoin, 21, I own Bitcoin. And it was like, same kind of thing. It felt very similar. The reaction
is very similar. I had a tickler on my calendar literally in September, like, hey, check Bitcoin,
it's the fourth year. And I looked at it, it was like 120. I'm like, man, we're fine. And so I
finally only went negative at like 95,000. Okay. So I think I'm hearing three reasons,
really, when I boil it down, that's driving Luke's reason for selling. And again, I have to tell you,
this really was a bomb in the Bitcoin community. I think one reason is he thinks he can buy back
lower potentially. So he's selling into the four-year cycle. I think his real conviction is
with gold. So he's comfortable selling a large portion of his Bitcoin stack because, well,
he's going to just big brain buy back at the right magical block time after it crashes down to 40,000
or whatever he thinks. And then he'll just buy back in, I guess. But he seems to be selling
because of the four-year cycle theory, but he doesn't seem to be fully informed on the four-year
cycle theory because the way the four-year cycle works is there has to be a blow off top.
we had no blow off top going from 100,000 to 126,000 ain't it chief.
So if you're going to call for your cycle,
then how could you account for the fact that we hit an all time high before the
four year cycle kicked off with the ETFs launched?
And then we never had a blow off top.
So this last cycle was completely dysfunctional and wobbly,
but yeah,
you're going to sell your Bitcoin stack.
Okay.
So kind of,
it seems like that's reason number one,
Reason number two, he's clearly bearish on 2026.
Well, the reality is Luke has been bearish since late 2024.
I don't think the markets computed for Luke since Trump came into office.
Here's a clip of him in early December last year, late 2024.
Tactically, pretty much all these tariffs are going to do a couple of things.
First, they're going to probably strengthen the dollar relative to foreign trading partners.
That's fine.
But then, you know, go back to, you know, point A, which we were just talking about, right, which is if the dollar gets too strong, you're going to blow up the stock market, the bond market, the banks, the government.
So that's sort of problem number one tactically is sort of when do we hit that tripping point?
And I think the market is, you know, in terms of where we're seeing the dollar trade is already starting to discount.
Oh, some tariffs are coming on. It's going to be good for the dollar tactically.
And I think some of the volatility we've seen in equities over the last two weeks is also a reflection of that.
But strategically, I think the market is paying basically no attention to what they're trying to do here,
which is the dollar centric system of the past 50 years requires us not to put tariffs on.
And so everyone's focused on this tactical, oh, what's the dollar going to do?
And are we going to wail on China?
Important.
But don't miss the forest for the trees.
Don't miss the forest for the trees.
They're ending the dollar-centric system in the last 50 years if they put tariffs on.
Full stop.
The flows that have always worked, right?
We send our factories and jobs.
They send us the stuff.
We send them the dollars.
They send the dollars here.
invest in our capital markets to lower our rates, which finances more stuff buying from there.
What they're really saying is the deal, the economic system in the last 50 years is over.
This is why you have to separate the emotion from the signal, because even the most brilliant
macro analysts can let it affect their thinking. Luke got all of that wrong. The dollar is down
relative to trading partners since January of 2025.
Look it up yourself.
In fact, it accelerated its downward trend since March of 2025,
which is right around when the tariffs went into effect.
Now, that clip is over a year old,
and Luke said that the tariffs would tear down the dollar system.
Well, I don't see any signs of that.
I think he was way, way off.
Double fail.
So, yeah, of course he's bearish.
He's been bearish since Trump got elected.
OK, fine.
All right.
But, you know, own your mistakes there.
And then I think third, the biggest reason Luke sold is because he believes OGs are selling because of quantum.
I don't know where he got this from.
It's ridiculous.
And it's obviously people are taking profits at 100,000 or rotating ETFs.
But fine.
Fine.
Let's talk about this because this is the big FUD narrative of 2026.
And I'm going to play a clip from a family wealth manager who's been involved in selling Bitcoin for these OGs later in the show.
I don't want to focus on that right now, and I don't want to spoil the clip.
But suffice to say, that individual does not agree with Luke's take.
And he's the one helping these OG whales sell.
But so for now, let's stay focused on the quantum fight.
I think this is important.
And while I'm not technically worried about it, I do think we should address this.
And like I said, I have a lot of disappointment in Luke here because in his low effort, low IQ take on quantum, he's contributing a very loud and authoritative voice to a FUD narrative that may be Bitcoin's largest adoption blocker.
And I'm sure the gold bugs are very happy about this.
So let address some of this I going to play a clip from Mitchell Askew This is I think from his X page or from his YouTube channel He from Blockwave and he wasn feeling great but there been so much quantum flood While he was sick he wanted to come out and address
some basic points, and I think he nailed it.
So the first point to make here is that nobody actually knows what they're talking about.
99.9% of people, dare I say nearly 100, have no idea about quantum computing from a purely
technical level. There are maybe a couple dozen people on the entire planet who are actually
educated enough on computer science and have an in-depth enough understanding of the real
technical details of quantum cryptography to have an informed opinion about its long-term impact
as it pertains to Bitcoin and cybersecurity in general. So keep that in mind as you hear even
myself talk about it, which I'm going to break down things from a less technical perspective and
more from an incentive standpoint. But when you see anybody talking about quantum, understand that
they are at best getting secondhand information. Rarely is anybody actually citing a primary source,
let alone can they understand the primary source in depth.
So nobody really, really knows what they're talking about.
We're entering very abstract territory.
The second point, and this is a little more pertinent,
and we have some action items here,
is not every Bitcoin address will be affected in the same way or at the same time.
So if quantum really is this boogeyman that is effective at hijacking certain Bitcoin
and breaking certain cryptographic keys of Bitcoin held in public keys and private keys,
then older addresses with less developed tech are going to be vulnerable first.
And so if you have your Bitcoin in BC1 addresses with a multi-sig, you're going to be fine.
It's going to be older coins that are hijacked first.
And so this isn't some overnight threat.
you wake up and Bitcoin went to zero because all the addresses got hacked and every Bitcoin got
stolen and it's a rogue free-for-all out there. That's not going to happen. Even if quantum is
the threat that people make it out to be, it's going to be a gradual waterfall-like effect and
you're going to have plenty of time to react and to upgrade to quantum-resistant addresses.
Second, third rather, is Bitcoin mining still requires brute force at the end of the day.
It's a proof of work system and the incentives aren't changed by an upgrade in computing power
or computational technology. The bottleneck for Bitcoin miners is still physical energy production,
data center infrastructure, power generation assets, land. This is the bottleneck if you
want to attack Bitcoin, if you want to reorder blocks, if you want to double spend coins.
And if you have all of the resources to do that, to perform a high level attack on Bitcoin
with mining, your incentive is to just profitably and honestly mine Bitcoin.
Think about it.
If you have billions and billions of dollars of data center assets and Bitcoin miners,
you're not going to reorganize the blockchain.
You're just going to mine Bitcoin honestly.
Satoshi himself basically said the same thing in the white paper.
I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, if someone has enough computing power to attack Bitcoin,
they'd be better off mining, honestly.
And the incentives for that will not change, even if quantum computing really takes off.
All right, well, coming up, I've got your boost, a production note you need to hear,
some great updates, and a final clip of the week.
But you can support the show just by doing what you do.
If you're ready to stack sats on River, well, I've got a link in the show notes.
It's one of the best ways to stack sats in the U.S.
Click that link, support the show.
If you're all about self-custody and you want to go to and from your own wallets,
the Bitcoin Well, they're available in the U.S. and Canada.
They don't host a wallet.
Now, if it's time to spend some sats and you've got some on Lightning,
you can go from Lightning sats to a Bitcoin gift card in just seconds.
They have hundreds of different gift cards out there for like Amazon and Home Depot
and all the different stores.
sats to gift card in just seconds you can even sign in with your lightning credentials
now passively stacking sats is one of the best options available to us and fold makes that easy
just while paying bills and whatnot the fold card got a link to that and if it's time to get access
to your bitcoin value without selling it oh that's where salt lending comes in you can support the
just by doing what you do click those links in the show notes
Oh, and we do have some boost to get into this week.
Thank you, everybody.
But we don't have a baller booster this week.
Oh, that's okay.
It's okay. We move on, though. We move on.
Paranoid Coder comes in with 2,000 sats.
Betting the four-year cycle will never die.
Oh, betting on it never did me any good, he says.
Oh, okay.
I read that the other way.
DCA and put it away.
Now that I agreed with, Paranoid.
Thank you for the boost.
Nakamoto 6102 is here with 3,500 sats.
I like you. You're a hot ticket.
I don't think it is one or the other.
Bitcoin, having, or the four-year cycle will impact supply,
and therefore it impacts price.
Liquidity is the dominant driver of price right now, in my opinion.
If people or businesses don't have cash to invest, the price remains low.
Thanks for the value.
Nakamoto, that's it.
Retail's tapped out.
And businesses, small businesses who have been big buyers, they're tight right now.
And so it's just big institutions or ETFs that are buying on behalf of their customers.
It is about the liquidity, isn't it?
And yeah.
Yeah, when you're buying more than supply anyways, I don't know if...
I mean, definitely less supply makes a difference.
So I do think having makes a difference.
It's a good boost, Nakamoto.
Thank you.
Pabbs here with 2,000 sats.
Economics is a political issue, arguably the main political issue.
Treating it as a technical problem separated from politics is an ideological strategy deployed with particular strength since the 1980s.
You can find a great academic account of this fact in Thinking Like an Economist by Elizabeth Pop Berman.
Granted, it's bigger than a partisan issue, especially when the only two alternatives are capitalism is more important than democracy versus there are equally important things like in the U.S.
Honestly, he says it's the whole West, honestly.
So no need to apologize when you bring up a broader political context to discuss economic news.
Keep it up.
That is a very enlightened way of looking at it, Pap.
Thank you.
Hybrid Sarcasms here with 10,000 sats.
It's over 9,000.
I just bought the dip at $89,000.
Love all the Twib content.
Now, take the rest of the holidays off.
Yes, sir.
Fun will now commence.
That's my plan, unless something crazy happens.
That is my plan.
Thank you for the boost.
Nice to hear from you, hybrid.
Hey, Adversary 17 is here with 8,192 sats.
This is the way.
Plus one for the Bitcoin dad if he's interested.
I agree.
Thank you.
You're so boost.
Nice to hear from you, adversaries.
VC Avalo is here with 4,447 sats.
Vinny.
Oh, okay.
I have a fully self-hosted Lightning address now at my own domain.
I achieved this with LN bits on a public VPS,
and then I tunneled to my umbral node on my LAN.
It is a pain in the ass, but it does work, and it makes me happy.
The externally reachable IP is the key.
You can DM me on Noster if you want.
Sats for the holidays.
Back in the paper wallet days.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I did some paper wallets.
I printed out some for my niece and nephews as Bitcoin stocking stuffers.
Since then, I've swept them to hardware cold wallets, but I kept sliding more sats in every year.
Every year, I helped their parents get a little closer to legit self-custody without my involvement.
Started with me as a custodian, and my end goal is being self-sovereign with my extended family.
That's a great idea. Give them a little hardware starter pack, huh?
The Bitcoin Uncle Club.
Yes.
Thank you, VC.
I like that story a lot.
Thank you for sharing.
Retro Gear is here with 5,542 sats.
Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit loops.
I am boosting from Fountain with my AlbiHub connected via Noster Wallet Connect.
Yeah, isn't that great?
It's great to see Fountain add that.
Retax implications for spending in CoinJar MasterCard set up in Australia.
They report the tax to the tax office directly,
or you can easily download transaction reports to your accountant.
I also got my node set up and dialed in now with ClearNet and Tor working smooth.
with Bitcoin Explorer to monitor it.
Ha ha!
Well done, sir.
I'm going to get my act together
and put the compose file on GitHub and report back.
It gets easier every day.
Stack sats.
Make it so.
That is solid.
Thank you very much for that boost.
I love to hear it.
Good work on the node too, Retro.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks.
2,222 sats.
The four-year cycle is no longer relevant
and I think it's a positive for Bitcoin.
The excessive selling by the whales
is starting to make me think
there is something incoming that we don't know about.
regulatory or otherwise, maybe regarding custody or something.
Ooh, but how would they know that we don't know?
By that many of them, you'd think by now we'd hear something, right?
You know, I could be persuaded to believe that these OGs have been around long enough
that they just instinctively lean into the four-year cycle and almost create it by will.
You know what I mean?
Ace, it's possible.
Thank you for the boost.
Kiwi Bitcoin guides here with a row of ducks.
And I think we should throw a little McDuck in there.
Quacka, wacka, it's a treasure.
Yippee!
That's fine.
Yes, my nephew did complete his Sats quest.
I made it easy for him by loading up a lightning wall
and telling him about a bar where he lives that is accepting Sats.
I told him he should take some friends and shout them a drink with the Sats
and offered some additional cold-stored Sats as a reward once his quest was completed.
Yes, the incentives work.
Ha, ha, ha!
That is very clever.
I like that Kiwi
thank you
Gene Beans here with a row of ducks
three things
number one
the cat mess
boy that is really something else
and I agree that it's just illogical
number two
I did move back to Koron Umbral
without issue
oh good
okay
he says goodbye nuts
number three
it's interesting testing
Nostra Wallach Connect stuff with Fountain
I'm in Cast-O-Matic now
but curious if you
if you see proper metadata
from my Fountain Boost
Fountain having to bridge
Nostra Wallet Connect to KeySend
makes stuff appear different in my wallet than I'm used to.
Yes, so Gene is tipped
in on the latest and greatest.
So Fountain has added
Nostra Wallet Connect, so you don't have to use
Fountain's hosted wallet. You could use your
AlbiHub. However,
Nostra Wallet Connect wallets
only support LN address, and LN
address does not support all of the metadata
necessary for boosts yet.
So Fountain has created essentially
a bridge that
bridges LNBoost to KeysendBoost.
And they banged it together really quick.
It's really awesome.
It's not a forever solution,
but really the forever solution
is getting all of the metadata stuff
we needed around LN address
because that's really the direction we've got to go.
But we do need to know your name,
the amount you sent,
the episode you boosted,
your message.
If you're listening out there
and podcasting 2.0
and you think you could get boosts
and do a boost segment
without people's names,
the total amounts they sent in the message,
I don't know what the hell you're smoking.
your boosts are going to drop off a cliff
the moment you stop giving out total amounts,
names, and messages.
I don't know if you don't understand how this works.
Figure it out.
So yes, we need to do LN address,
but yes, we've got to have working metadata.
And so what Oscar has done over at Fountain
is come up with a decent little bridge for the moment,
but it's kind of a Fountain exclusive thing.
Thanks, Gene.
Good conversation.
Scuft came in with 11,245 sats.
Hey!
Nuclear launch detected.
That's darn near baller, unfortunately, but I appreciate it, Scuffed.
Boosting from Fountain via my Alleyhub.
Hey, I love it, love it, love it.
This was my number one issue I had with Fountain.
All right.
As far as the JV mining pool, tell me more.
I'm all in.
My single bid axe awaits.
And for gifting Bitcoin this year, I'm using Riverlinks.
They give you a QR code to send.
Or you could print out a physical piece of paper and put it in a card.
That's a great point.
The QR code, you could print it out, make it physical, put it in a card.
Scuffed!
Oh!
I think you just tipped the scale for me.
I hadn't even thought about that.
I was totally visualizing just sending a link to their phone,
which is just not as cool as being able to give them something on Christmas.
Thank you, Scuffed.
Great boost, too.
I really appreciate that.
Hodler's here with Oroa Ducks.
This old duck still got it.
Hey, Chris, regarding the four-year cycle,
to me, it would be great to have a couple more years to stack cheap recats.
I was thinking that before the show.
I was.
I was thinking, you know, I mean, it would be nice.
Bitcoin pumping is fun, but it also means fewer sats for the stackers.
Yeah, he says thanks for the value.
Thank you for the boost.
Thank you everybody who boosts in, even those of you who boosts.
Oh, the 2000 sat cutoff for time.
Appreciate you.
And I read them and save them forever.
And I hold them preciously because I love them for so much.
And I also really appreciate everybody who stream sets as you listen.
21 of you.
Nope, nope.
42 of you.
42 of you collectively stacked 48.
Jeez, my brain is just totally broken.
42 of you collectively stacked 58,000.
36 sats.
I don't know where my head's at.
I think it's, I don't know.
I think I need to lay down.
When you combine that with our boosters, we stacked 119,352 sets for our final episode of the year.
Now, if you'd like to send some value my way as a nice send off for 2025, please send in a boost.
You'll be kicking off my first episode in 2026.
It'd be great to come into the new year with a banger boost segment.
So please do boost in, share your thoughts on the biggest story in Bitcoin this year.
What are your thoughts on quantum and any holiday Bitcoin stories?
I would love to hear those.
So let's make it a banger for the new year.
And thank you, everybody who supports this, either with a boost or the membership through the Fountain app or, of course, Jupiter Party.
Now, I want to get into a couple of things that didn't quite fit in the top of the show, but we should really be keeping an eye on.
And one of these is a hanging chad over the entire market, including Bitcoin, besides the yen carry trade.
And it's the concern of the private credit bubble, a term that gets used a lot, but probably has never really been fully explained.
And it is indeed something to at least keep an eye on because it's one of these problems.
It's getting so big, it could really blow up in all of our faces.
The investors and economists are warning about a piece of the financial system that could pose a risk, potentially similar in ways to the housing crash that preceded the financial crisis in 2008.
It's part of what's been called the shadow banking system, the private credit market, an alternative type of lending to companies that doesn't involve traditional banks.
We asked economics correspondent Paul Solman to explain how it works, what's at stake and why alarm bells are sounding in some quarters.
Bought an aftermarket car part in recent years.
Good chance it came from First Brands.
First Brands was a large supplier of auto parts, so things like wiper blades, spark plugs.
Over a decade, the company borrowed heavily to grow, gobbling up 20 companies, employing 25,000 people.
Until this fall, that is.
The lenders had become a bit concerned about some of the financial goings-on at the company
and requested some extra information, which First Brands couldn't provide.
What happened went bust.
And who were its lenders?
Many came from the world of private credit,
a part of the global financial system that's exploded in recent years
and has some key players in finance rattled.
I probably shouldn't say this, but when you see one cockroach,
there'll probably be more.
And so everyone should be forewarned on this one.
One such roach, first brands.
I've been saying this for probably two years now,
that the next big crisis in the financial markets is going to be private credit.
Okay, but what exactly is private credit?
Private credit is just lending by non-banks, financial institutions like pension funds,
insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, but not going through the banking system,
thus the word private.
It's grown very rapidly.
It's now a sizable player in the financial system.
Growing from a $40 billion market in the year 2000 to nearly $2 trillion today.
What?
The reason for that growth is that after the Great Recession, regulators realized that large financial institutions had been really exposed to making relatively risky bets without having enough of a backstop internally in the form of capital that they held that was available for the bank to draw down on in case some of those bets went sour.
You know, collateral.
They needed to have more collateral.
But the problem is,
is a lot of times
what happens with regulation,
they try to address one problem
and they create another problem.
And now we have
this private credit issue.
Well, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson,
he has a fix.
It's really simple.
If you just loosen the rules for the big banks again well that business will float from private credit back to the too institutions What could go wrong These 2008 2009 2010 financial rules were too tight They have hamstrung the American financial
system. It was time for a change. We are going to be safe, smart, and sound in terms of our
deregulation, but we have to take the financial system out of the straitjacket. This substantial
increase in private credit, which is outside of the regulated banking system, that tells me that
the regulated system is too constrained and has not been able to compete with those who aren't
regulated. So we're leveling the playing field. And I believe that we can do that in a way that
creates trillions of dollars in credit for this very strong economy we're going to see,
and it will be non-inflationary.
Secretary, let me move on.
Let's move on ourselves because the support for the AI pump is building.
Here it comes.
Get the money printer going.
the white house ai and cryptozar david sacks went on fox business to get the word out to everybody
the money is coming to support the ai pump in the form of quote hundreds of billions of dollars
no like i mean no doubt not taken from revenue but taken from debt and printed there's a big
build-out going on right now. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going into infrastructure, and it's
projected to grow to even potentially a trillion dollars a year of CapEx. A trillion dollars in
infrastructure. And I think the key point here is that this is benefiting the entire economy. I think
there's a little bit of a misperception that this AI boom only benefits software developers or
software companies in Silicon Valley or so-called tech bros. What we're actually seeing is a huge
boom that's benefiting construction workers. The Wall Street Journal had a good story on this just
last week, that the wages of construction workers are up 30 percent because this infrastructure
build out is data centers, but it's also energy production. It's gas, it's fracking, it's nuclear,
all the above. Thanks to President Trump's policy, pro-energy policies of drill, baby,
drill. So we're seeing this huge infrastructure build. So in other words, the government's all
behind this infrastructure build out and go spend your money in 2026. The pump support is deploying.
Now, I don't play many of these these days, but well, this was a fun moment. Michael Saylor,
he was on Sky News and they were in the Middle East.
And there's a lot of talk about some big investments over there.
And the reporter seems to be assigned to the event and wants to know what's going on.
Where is the fire for this smoke?
And I just enjoyed this clip.
That's why really why I wanted to play it, because the thing about Michael Saylor in
this interview is he says everything with the confidence of someone who's already seen
the ending.
Let's do this first.
please first answer that comes to mind. All right. Bitcoin at one million dollar inevitable or
impossible? Inevitable. When? Probably within a decade. So in 10 years, gold in 20 years,
relic or still relevant? I think it will be it'll be relevant, but marginalized. It won't grow as
fast as Bitcoin will grow. Bitcoin will grow faster. Who's going to be the next safe haven?
Bitcoin or gold?
Because Bitcoin was once seen as safe haven.
I expect Bitcoin to emerge as the dominant digital monetary network in the world.
And it is the world's reserve capital.
So I think it'll grow from the $2 trillion to $20 trillion to $200 trillion over the next 20 to 30 years.
I don't think gold will do that.
I think that Bitcoin will be 10x bigger than gold.
All right, it is that time of the show.
It's time for our final clip of the week.
And this is an interesting one.
I thought we should hear from somebody who's been involved with some of these OG whales selling.
And I think Natalie Burnell had the same idea. She sat down with Matthew McClick, I think
is how you might say his name. He's the head of the Bespoke Group, which is a multifamily
office that advises entrepreneurs and affluent families, aka Bitcoiners, on how to manage
their wealth And some of whom are these very whales that we been talking about that are selling recently And he shares some insights as to why they have been selling But also for those humble stackers of us out there
I think he also tells a bit of a tale of caution.
You know, some of us feel like we missed out on our moment
to stack a bunch of coins for super, super cheap,
and it would have totally changed our lives
if we just hadn't sold our big stack, in my case, right?
We would be to the moon rich these days.
But actually, it may turn out that just patiently and humbly stacking sats is the best thing for you and your family.
And again, they've already won.
They realize that they've won.
And they see now a very deep demand market for it.
And so now the market can absorb a lot more coins than it's ever been able to absorb before.
And barely move the price.
I mean, it might move it inside of a day, but the selling pressure is just not that great.
So when we, you know, our clients are some of the clients that are selling, but it's because they are selling for strategic purposes and they're selling in strategic ways.
Because again, these are people who have accumulated a lot of Bitcoin.
What's a lot? Like a thousand?
Yeah. Yeah. I would say to mid hundreds to mid thousands.
Wow.
But.
That would be so nice.
Well, I mean, yes, but also be careful what you wish for because money doesn't solve problems, it changes them. And it makes people like me more relevant when you've got those kinds of problems because the problems manifest not just in tax ways, but especially in the Bitcoin space, it's not unlike the startup space.
If you've had a successful startup and you go from zero to 100 million inside of a decade,
that is a shocking trajectory.
And everything in your life changes.
Your relationships change.
Sometimes your relationship with your faith or spiritual perspective, that changes.
Your relationship with your community changes.
Your politics often change.
and your kids have seen you go from scrappy startup person or early like hardcore bitcoiner,
you know, geeking out mining, whatever, to now they realize, wait, I get to go to the most
exclusive private school in town. And we take these crazy vacations. We live in this beautiful
house. Like it wasn't always like this. And so now these families, it is like having a successful
exit after you've worked really, really hard for a decade. And it's like, that is a disorienting
experience. Let's check in on the state of the network. I'm wrapping up at block height 928,322.
The current U.S. price to one Bitcoin is 86,230.
That puts our sats per dollar at 1,160 sats to one U.S. dollar.
We're currently down 31.7 percent from our all-time high,
$126,180 72 days ago on October 6th, 2025.
But you knew that already.
China cracking down on miners means our difficulty adjustment is going downwards by 1.4 percent.
But we have 24,548 nodes on the network.
Not bad. Could use a few more over there.
And Bitcoin's hash rate's still well above a Zeta hash,
which is maybe one of the biggest stories of 2025 that no one's talking about.
There's probably a few other ones out there, so boost it and tell me which ones are on your mind.
But the state of the Bitcoin network, regardless of China's shenanigans or anything like that,
still very, very strong.
The 90-day hash rate is at 1.07 zeta hash.
Just absolutely bonkers.
2025 has been an incredible year for the Bitcoin network.
Well, if you made it this far, go check out the links.
This week in Bitcoin.show, I got more there.
Things for you to follow up on.
Like I said, there's a chart for every scenario.
My goal is to really try to get you something that doesn't get extracted.
Extracted? Doesn't get distracted by emotions or the politics,
but really tries to focus on the signal so you can make the best decision for your stack,
for you, for your future, and your family.
This will be the last episode of 2025,
unless something crazy happens,
but it the last planned episode of 2025 I hope you join me again for episode 87 in January I sure I have a lot to talk about I don know if I be able to make it that long That just feels
impossible. If I had a predictions market for this show, the odds would be against me, but
we'll see. Hopefully we get a little downtime. All right, that's it for me. Thank you so much
for supporting this episode of This Week in Bitcoin. I'm going to leave you with a value
for Value Track. And this week it is Kentucky Storm by Justin Landtrip. Have a great holiday.
You were right, you were right, you
If you got some love to give, come on, let me in
If you got some love these days, send a little of my way
If I have my way
Love you all my days
If I have my way
Through all my days
If I have my way
Love you all my way
Alright
I woke up Kentucky so
With a scalpel in my hand and my heart on the floor
One firefly and a thousand tries
I don't think I wanna try anymore
But I can't stop seeing that look in your eye
With your hands in my hair what you said was right
You don't start somewhere
Gonna go nowhere
You were right
You arrive, you arrive, you arrive, you arrive
Hey I got some love to give, come on let me in
If you got some love these days, send us home my way
Send it my way
Only one way to be sure
You got love, it's to wake it up, make it up
And I know the change is tough
I feel it in my bones, closed to giving up
But I watch the tide roll in
So silly, the world's so rich
I can't help but cry
You arrived
You
Hey, I got some love to give
Come on, let me in
Hey, I got some love these days
Come, send me your way
If I have my way, love through all my days
If I have my way
If I have my way through all my days
If I have my way
You're right, you are