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Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 93.

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My name is Chris, ChrisLAS.com, JupiterBroadcasting.com.

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Well, here we go.

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Bitcoin's trading like a tech stock again.

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And the deflation narrative is back.

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We went from inflation and tariffs are going to wreck us to now deflation is back.

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And suddenly everyone from Wall Street wonks to permabowls, they're blaming or, depending on their view, crediting artificial intelligence.

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So if we are entering a grand deflationary phase, I think the real question is not what it does to prices.

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What does it do to Bitcoin?

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This really kicked into high gear with the release of OpenClaw a few weeks ago.

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OpenClaw has shook the market.

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They believe that AI and vibe coding is basically coming for every SaaS business out there.

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And the narrative that AI is a deflationary monster has caught fire.

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And I really mean from the old school, you know, just really kind of geek, push the glasses up kind of analyst, you know, the kind I like, to the permabulls that always think everything's great and they're going to make a ton of money.

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And when you see it kind of go across all forces like that, it becomes a narrative that really gets entrenched.

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Here's an example of the wonks.

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AI was fuel for this bull market.

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So why is it suddenly driving the sell off?

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AI euphoria has turned into AI anxiety

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and billions have been wiped off global equity markets

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in a matter of weeks

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from Silicon Valley to Europe's software champions

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investors are suddenly questioning

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whether artificial intelligence is a goldmine or a wrecking ball

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Harry Eastwood is investment director at Artemis Investment Management

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So Harry, if fears of AI-driven displacement are only just beginning

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how are you positioning right now?

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Leaning in or pulling back?

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Look, I think

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All right. Really, you don't you don't really care to hear what they have to say. Like I said, it's it's pretty wonky. Let's go over to the permable side and kind of get a sense of what's going on over there. So for that, we go to your buddy, Kathy Wood. And, you know, if Kathy Wood's talking about a narrative, it's gone mainstream.

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Truflation is down to 0.8 percent. And so it, too, was stuck in that two to three percent range.

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It is resolving to the downside. And I think it's going to go negative. When I see Pepsi

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cutting the price of potato chips and Doritos by 15 percent, you know, I take note. And when I hear

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Coke saying, yeah, it seems like there's a bit of a backlash against price increases,

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I take note today, the existing home price inflation rate dropped to 0.9% on a year-over-year basis.

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And we think that's going to go negative.

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New home prices are already falling on a year-over-year basis.

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Gasoline prices falling.

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And then the good deflation is associated with technologically enabled innovation.

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And the AI boom is massively deflationary.

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The AI training costs are dropping 75% per year.

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AI inference costs, so what it costs when you query chat GPT or Grok, what it costs to answer that, that's dropping 85 to, if you believe, DeepSeek, 98% per year.

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And I think the productivity gains that we are seeing accrue to enterprises, that is going to turn around in a number of ways.

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One of them could be price declines.

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So many people think, oh, these corporations are going to simply increase their margins.

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Well, you know, China is exporting deflation.

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I know with tariffs, we're countering it.

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But isn't it interesting that our inflation rate did not go accelerate with tariffs?

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It remained stuck.

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I think we're going to see a lot of price declines in the future.

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I mean, it could be.

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I also tend to follow Truflation, and they do show that inflation is better than the official numbers, which is odd.

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But I'm not so sure we can attribute the price reductions and inflation going down to the AI boom or AI productivity like she seems to be doing.

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Now, I will grant she is forecasting future productivity, but the implication is that we're already seeing the AI boom.

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And that's why the stock market's reacting.

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That's why investors are reacting.

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I'm not sure I buy that.

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I think it's just a lot simpler than that.

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Oil is cheap again, my friends.

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Simple as that.

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Oil is cheap again.

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Crude oil is down to around $65 a barrel.

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That's about a 13% drop from a year ago.

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Natural gas, also cheaper.

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Futures falling roughly 11 to 28 percent, depending on when you look over the last 12 months.

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Energy is cheaper.

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And I think that probably explains more why the price of Doritos and Coca-Cola might go down a little bit than it does, than AI does at least.

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Now, I don't know if lower energy prices really set off all the money printing that's coming, but that's a different discussion.

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But let's just go with a moment and assume that the wonks and the bowls are correct and that AI is indeed going to be a very large deflationary force.

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It does seem at least possible if agents get a lot of functionality and have a lot of their own autonomy, they could do a lot of work that would otherwise take a human.

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So perhaps we will see a productivity boom there.

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And if that does happen, you would perhaps see a prolonged productivity boom as people

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begun to learn and integrate these different agent skills and whatever.

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You know, we're just going with the narrative for a moment.

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So if it's a long, prolonged transition, sort of, you know, echoes of a fourth turning kind

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of thing.

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How does that prolonged deflationary cycle impact Bitcoin, which everybody always says

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is an inflation hedge?

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Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation and deflation.

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because the chaotic part of this is,

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and it's ripping through the markets now,

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a lot of traditional industries and companies,

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you know, being brought, the whole SaaS space,

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the disaster as they're calling it.

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We think there is merit to that particular one,

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but I think you're going to see disruption all over the place

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because the five innovation platforms that I mentioned are going to disrupt the existing world order.

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And what does that mean?

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If these technologies are so deflationary,

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it's going to be tough for the traditional world that's gotten used to sort of the 2% to 3% inflation to adjust.

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They'll have to embrace some of these technologies faster than expected.

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So the idea of counterparty risk, I think, is beginning to surface.

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We've seen it with first brands.

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We've seen private equity, private credit especially, is where there have been a lot

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of excesses.

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SaaS, they are too exposed to that.

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Are we going to see counterparty risk manifest more broadly?

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If so, Bitcoin doesn't have that problem.

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And so it is a good hedge against deflation as well as inflation.

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Well, I agree with her.

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I think what she's actually suggesting there, I mean, I agree with her that, you know, about

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the sovereign risk aspect.

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But I think what she's suggesting there is that the AI disruption is going to be so massive,

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it's going to be such a tidal wave of change that the standard investments will start to

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have counterparty risk that people didn't consider.

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And when the market recognizes that on a dime, they're going to start buying up Bitcoin because it doesn't have counterparty risk. It's one of its best properties, you might say. Maybe Kathy's right. I tend to think these investor influencer types get a little excited. They get a little too ahead of themselves a little too soon.

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and we start spiraling into all kinds of fourth turning talk and everyone starts losing their jobs

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and robots are building everything and AI is going to do all the management and all of that, right?

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I just, I think if we use history as our teacher, the reality always is somewhere in the middle.

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And Lynn Alden had a great chat with the Bankless guys actually really recently.

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And Lynn, I think, has a real practical view on all of this.

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And she sets up where she thinks this is going and what she considers what really is a fourth turning and her observations in there.

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But the parts that I find the most interesting are that historically, the kind of the sovereign long-term debt cycles match up with the fourth turnings, which I don't think is an accident because kind of part of going through fourth turning is having a sovereign like debt issue.

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And these things kind of, they have cause and effect.

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It's not like these things randomly pop up every few decades.

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It's that these things kind of build and they can only kind of go on so long.

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So the economic cycle, the debt cycle, is that you have kind of structurally falling interest rates.

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You have rising debt as a percentage of GDP.

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And for a while, that's both private and public debt.

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So every time there's a crisis, they cut interest rates.

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They try to restart the debt engine, the fractured reserve bank lending engine, the sovereign debt engine.

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And you'll get these little periods of deleveraging, but you never deleverage back down to the earlier part of that particular kind of five or 10-year cycle.

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And you start building up from there.

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And when you string enough of those together, you get to very high debt levels and you get

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interest rates all the way to zero.

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And then you have basically maximum fractional reserve in the system.

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And what happened both in the 30s, this last time that happened, as well as the 2008 crises,

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those were kind of the peaks of the private debt cycle bubbles.

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And what happens when you get private debt maxed out as a percentage of GDP, you can't

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really cut interest rates meaningfully lower.

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that's when they generally shift toward printing money

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and then gradually shifting the debt

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from the private sector more toward the public sector.

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So that happened throughout the later 30s

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and into the 40s.

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Obviously, there are other factors going on,

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but they were interlinked.

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And then we've seen that over the course of the 2010s

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and here into the 2020s,

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that more of that shift from where we're not as leveraged

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in the private sector as we were

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in the eve of the global financial crisis

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in kind of the US and many developed countries,

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but that's been put toward the sovereign.

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And when it's on the sovereign level, it can't really go anywhere other than currency devaluation.

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Because most sovereigns, at least the ones that have their own currency, will rarely ever default nominally.

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So they'll default through purchasing power, debasement, sometimes trimming prior guarantees about retirement or things like that.

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They'll make a series of kind of smaller defaults, more invisible defaults to deal with that.

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And that's kind of the stage we're in now.

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Yeah, that's where we're at now.

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And so even if AI is a deflationary force, there are these larger historical macro forces already in play.

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And so it means Bitcoin is going to be in this weird spot.

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And so will the U.S. dollar.

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And ultimately, I think it's good for Bitcoin, but it's bad for the dollar.

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And you have to imagine you have to imagine all this uncertainty only leads to destabilizing the dollar as a reserve currency.

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And we end up in what people call a multipolar world, where instead of having one giant superpower with one giant financial market, you've got a couple of islands, maybe more around the world that concentrate power.

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I do think the more multipolar side wins, which is more of the China side, like the more that they get some degree of kind of dollar independence and neutral reserve assets like gold get elevated.

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But that's not even necessarily bad for the U.S.

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It's good.

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Go back to my prior point around Triffin's dilemma and things like that.

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It depends how the U.S. plays its cards while this is happening.

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So I've read a couple of pieces on this.

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One was back in 2020.

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We talked about the rise of this kind of multipolar world happening.

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And then, of course, I featured it in Broken Money in 2023, this kind of shift toward a multipolar world.

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And, you know, I can't say exactly what's going to happen, but there's kind of a couple options you can lay out.

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So one kind of point there is that there's really no currency in the world, including the dollar.

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They say no fiat currency in the world, including the dollar, that's big enough to serve the whole world anymore.

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So when this dollar system was established, I mean, the U.S. was over 40% of global GDP.

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we were the only thing standing after World War II

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and we had all the gold

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we had all the manufacturing

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we had 40% of global GDP

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we could run the ledger

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over decades

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Trif and Dilemma has poisoned that well to some degree

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in addition

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China, India, Europe

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they've kind of recovered

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from the whole period of colonialism that happened

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the whole period of total war that happened

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we've kind of gotten closer to historical GDP ratios

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where these big population centers are rising back to their kind of normal place as pretty big economic powers And there really just no currency block big enough to solve the whole world without Triffin Dilemma being a really big deal So even China is not big enough The U isn really big

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enough. And so that means you generally need one of two things. Either you need diversification.

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So maybe you have two really big hubs. You have the U.S. and China has two really big hubs. Maybe

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Europe is kind of its own third smaller hub. And so no ledger is trying to serve the whole world.

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The challenge there is that money has network effects. It tries to trend toward one, liquidity begets more liquidity. And so it puts pressure on that diversified model to some degree. And then the other option, the part that alleviates that is neutral reserve assets.

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So you can have a diversifying of the ledgers, but then also these neutral things that bridge them.

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Gold being the incumbent neutral reserve assets, the obvious first choice, is the one that central banks already hold.

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It's the one that almost everybody in the world can understand to some degree.

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It's got this multi-thousand year track record, with the main caveat being that it's really slow and expensive to audit.

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So it's great as savings, it's not great as settlement.

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When Germany wanted to repatriate part of its gold, it took years.

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and they finished ahead of schedule

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and it still took years.

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It just took fewer years than they thought.

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And that's, I mean, you know,

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whereas like, you know,

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a Bitcoin transaction,

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you could get six confirmations

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in an hour on average.

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And so, you know, that's,

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it's just like a different world.

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Now, Bitcoin is, I mean,

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it's a settlement rails

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and it's a store of value.

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It's got 17 years of track record now,

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but it's, you know, we're talking,

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depending on if you're in a bull

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or bear market at the moment,

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it's a $1 to $2 trillion asset.

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So it's still small

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on the network effect scope.

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even though it's got reasonable liquidity,

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it's still pretty small on the liquidity spectrum.

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And then there are people that just don't understand it.

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There are people that are saying,

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well, I mean, is it prone to risk XYZ,

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let's say quantum, for example,

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in a 5, 10, 15, 20-year time horizon,

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which sovereigns are going to think in.

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So I think that's a rising contender,

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but I think this is a very long game.

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And really not until Bitcoin has an extra zero on it

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would it like its market cap, would it be like a contender at the scales of dollars and Chinese

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currency and gold? All right. So that was your macro protein. Now it's time for some Bitcoin

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carbs. I want to talk about BIP 110 for a bit. You guys deserve it. I have been avoiding it on

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the show because I find the topic to be gross. And it's hard for me to cover it without that bias,

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because as a longtime Bitcoiner, BIP-110 is frustrating to me.

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But I'll try to get through this a little bit, and I'll explain my thoughts here.

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But it really is probably the most important philosophical Bitcoin fight since the block size war.

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Supporters say it's going to protect Bitcoin, and critics say it changes fundamentally what Bitcoin is.

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Now, the person behind it, we don't exactly know.

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It's a pseudo-anonymous dev.

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We have some speculation as to who that might be.

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They kind of popped up a little while ago and, you know, are pushing one of the most significant changes to Bitcoin in history.

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Now, early momentum for BIP-110 is really in the Bitcoin Knotts community and those that run Bitcoin Knotts.

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They call themselves, and this is the part I think that really gets to me, is Bitcoin is money advocates.

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Or, you know, they'll label themselves as anti-spam advocates or hard money advocates,

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implying that the people that are against BIP-110 are spammers or don't want Bitcoin to be sound money.

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And critics like CoreDev Adam Back and others worry about a precedent that it sets, as do I.

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And it's a big deal.

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So here's where we're at in February of 2026.

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There's about 2% to 3% of the reachable nodes on the Bitcoin network that are signaling support for BIP-110.

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No major mining pools are on board, but there has been some miners that seem to be trying to figure it out.

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Now, what we are worried about at this point is what BIP-110 is worried about at this point is that Bitcoin is drifting away from being just sound money and that it could be a data chain to store data, arbitrary data.

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Inscriptions, filling up blocks, tokens for weird markets, arbitrary data, you know, for storing JPEGs, things like that.

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They don't want Bitcoin to become permanent data storage for junk over time or maybe even illicit material.

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What people that are against BIP-110 argue is that if you pay the fee, it's not necessarily spam, that there's a monetary system built in and non-monetary uses still end up subsidizing security.

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Bitcoin's always been this way.

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And filtering at the protocol level allows for censorship.

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And once you start allowing for curation of block space, Bitcoin inherently becomes political.

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So what we're talking about with BIP-110 is a temporary consensus change limiting embedded data in transactions.

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It would cap output data at 34 bytes.

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Op return would get capped at 83 bytes.

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And this would go for a year and it could be extendable.

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And that would definitely have a negative impact on ordinals and BRC-20 tokens and anybody that's kind of trying to put large data loads in there.

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And I don't think it would have any significant impact today on the network if it were to be implemented.

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And this is in part why I think people are comfortable with it is because if you were to implement that, it just kind of keeps Bitcoin as used as money for right now.

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And that's not so bad, right?

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But what happens after that year?

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What happens if there does need to be a fork?

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That's where things get really, really bad, really, really quickly, in my opinion, and why I have concern.

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So I grabbed some clips from the Plan B forum that just happened. These clips are about nine days old. They were posted online about nine days ago. This is the BIP-110 debate that was there. And we'll start with Bitcoin Mechanic, an individual that I've generally liked quite a bit, but I just don't agree on this particular issue. And he'll talk about why he's pro BIP-110.

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And I want you to pay attention to the language that's used here, because it's the type of language that if you don't understand the meaning and ramifications behind it, it sounds pretty effing reasonable.

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And I think it's why so many people that are just watching YouTubers talk about this are getting convinced it's a good idea.

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Understood. Yeah, I think it's pretty simple if I can put it in as simple terms as possible.

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I don't think anyone thinks that one megabyte op returns, which is what's always been possible with consensus, do anything for Bitcoin.

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I don't think anyone that's ever used it as money has used that.

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And effectively, it was just a mistake that was never really a thing that manifested

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because of a ubiquitous relay policy that capped it at 83 bytes, moved around a bit.

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You can sort of gloss over the implications of that and talk in theoretical terms as John does,

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but it's obviously misleading because the practical manifestation of having that filter in core for years

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meant that almost all operatons fit within this tiny limit.

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And that's perfectly observable in blockchain's history.

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So they were OK with it if it fit within that tiny limit.

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You know, that wasn't ideal, obviously, he's saying.

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But we could live with that.

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So core pumping up the limit opens us up to a thing that no one really wants in Bitcoin

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that's just there anyway, that was effectively, you know, the implications of it were kept

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away by this filter.

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So core increases the limit.

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We've covered that on the show.

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Now, what's interesting is the mechanic here is shifting into the theoretical after just criticizing somebody for talking in the theoretical.

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But we continue. So now the op return limit size has been increased. This is a problem.

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And the whole ideology, the discussion around filters meant it had to go for posturing purposes.

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But no one is actually stoked, including even Tone in his presentation yesterday, about big op returns now being an easier thing to stick in the chain.

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so BIP110 comes along and says all right well operaturns just aren't a good thing especially

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when they're that big because you know contiguity and I guess we'll get into that later I know

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Giacomo doesn't particularly care about that but the point is massive operaturns are not doing

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anything for Bitcoin as money so limiting them a consensus basically puts us back where we were

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before even though it's a different mechanism because prior to this it was a filter that kept

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them small now it will be consensus but either way there's no hodler in the world that's losing

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some aspect of Bitcoin by virtue of not having one megabyte op returns be possible anymore.

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See, look, it's not a big deal. And it's only for a year, right? What could be so bad? We're just

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tweaking how we enforce it. It used to be enforced a different way. Now we're going to enforce it a

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new way. What's so bad? Well, here's Tony. He takes the other side of it and he cuts really

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to the heart of the matter. Main point of contention is that this soft fork BIP-110

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is incredibly dangerous.

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And one of the main reasons why most technical people,

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including the core developers of 2017 days,

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which we will all agree was higher quality batch of developers,

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were very concerned of using BIP-148

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to get SegWit through a soft fork

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because the ultimate consequences in the future

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will be that a small minority, a vocal minority,

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would be able to now push some kind of controversial change

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as was just stated.

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Let's just do it now and then figure it out later.

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This reminds me of two weeks to flatten the curve.

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Who remembers that, right?

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What he's referring to, and I didn't have this part in the clip,

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is mechanics suggest we should just do this.

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And we got a year and we'll figure it out.

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It'll be fine.

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What could be so bad?

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Just two weeks to flatten the curve and we will figure it out later.

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And what happened for the next two to three years?

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So I think that this push for the user-activated soft fork is incredibly dangerous.

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It needs to be shut down as soon as possible.

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The sooner they turn it into a hard fork and get off the network and they can claim for the rest of eternity,

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like Bcash and BSV, that they are the real Bitcoin because they know what is best.

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That is my main position that the user activated soft fork is the problem.

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And we can talk about what led to the soft fork.

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I didn't have a problem with the Nuts implementation, but look what it's turned into.

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And yes, I am critical of core development.

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That needs to be better.

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But this is not a solution.

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This is insanity.

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And I think one of the things that leaves me unsettled about all of this is there's sort of this smug attitude that they don't need the majority.

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They only need a tiny minority of the network to pull this off, and they know it.

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And so they're not really too worried about reaching mass consensus.

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And Luke Dasher reveals how the BIP-110 folks are thinking about this.

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That in this case, having a minority of users being able to change the protocol,

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even if the majority defined in different ways don't agree, is itself a dangerous precedent.

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Is that a good point?

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That is Giacomo, and he's asking the question to Luke.

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and I'll just back it up just a bit so you can hear the end of the question.

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That in this case, having a minority of users being able to change the protocol,

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even if the majority defined in different ways don't agree,

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is itself a dangerous precedent.

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Is that a good point?

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00:25:18,955 --> 00:25:19,215
No.

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The minority can change the protocol

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as long as the majority is not actively in opposition to that change.

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If the majority opposes that change,

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the minority cannot change the protocol.

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In other words, if they can do this,

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00:25:33,835 --> 00:25:41,015
and most people that are running nodes and most people that are using the Bitcoin network are essentially apathetic to this,

350
00:25:41,075 --> 00:25:44,095
they don't care, then the Nots folks can get away with this.

351
00:25:44,255 --> 00:25:45,335
They can actually pull it off.

352
00:25:45,435 --> 00:25:47,755
I'll let him continue and I won't interrupt, but that's what he's saying.

353
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The minority can change the protocol as long as the majority is not actively in opposition to that change.

354
00:25:56,315 --> 00:26:00,335
If the majority opposes that change, the minority cannot change the protocol.

355
00:26:00,335 --> 00:26:06,915
It's only when the majority is indifferent or doesn't really care that the minority can't successfully change the protocol.

356
00:26:07,495 --> 00:26:14,055
And that's your current model of the community is that even if the minority is going to push for that,

357
00:26:14,235 --> 00:26:21,635
the majority, except for the literal attackers, will not really care and will just basically go with it, along with it, inertially.

358
00:26:21,635 --> 00:26:37,615
Right. If a sizable minority is pushing for a soft fork, the only way to reject that soft fork for the majority is to do a counter fork like Bcash did, where they reject the soft fork changes explicitly in the protocol.

359
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Before moving to mechanics, do you think it's possible that the hash rate connected with this proposal is so low that even without an explicit rejection, you still remain waiting for blocks for a very long time?

360
00:26:49,135 --> 00:26:51,175
Do you think this is an implausible scenario?

361
00:26:51,635 --> 00:26:55,215
So he's essentially saying, well, what if you don't get enough hash rate to participate?

362
00:26:55,835 --> 00:26:57,635
Aren't you just going to be on your own little island?

363
00:26:58,035 --> 00:26:58,895
Luke's thought of that.

364
00:27:00,035 --> 00:27:06,235
There is probably a minimum hash rate, maybe 10% of the network hash rate that would have to support the soft fork.

365
00:27:06,735 --> 00:27:10,635
Without that, then the people that want this would have to do a hard fork.

366
00:27:10,635 --> 00:27:14,815
Good thing Luke and Mechanic both run and operate ocean mining.

367
00:27:15,155 --> 00:27:18,255
But that's not a realistic scenario.

368
00:27:18,255 --> 00:27:24,435
and in this case particularly because Bitcoin is pretty much guaranteed to

369
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fail if we don't do this soft fork it's even if there was a persistent chain

370
00:27:29,355 --> 00:27:33,375
split of some sort induced by the opposition it's only a matter of time

371
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until the opposition spam friendly chain dies and the spam hostile chain survives The opposition spam friendly change In other words the Bitcoin chain you currently using right now

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Jesus.

373
00:27:49,230 --> 00:27:52,130
And he says later, like somebody asked, what about the risk of this?

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You're talking about user activated forks and we could have all kinds of problems.

375
00:27:55,950 --> 00:27:59,950
And and their answer is, well, the crisis is so existential.

376
00:28:00,370 --> 00:28:01,610
The threat is so existential.

377
00:28:01,610 --> 00:28:06,870
The crisis is so immediate that Bitcoin is dead if we don't make these changes.

378
00:28:07,030 --> 00:28:08,490
So we should make these changes.

379
00:28:09,150 --> 00:28:11,390
Well, OK, if that's true, let's look at the logic.

380
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Stay a while and listen.

381
00:28:13,530 --> 00:28:15,110
Because we have some data now.

382
00:28:15,530 --> 00:28:19,430
Op return increased the size limit with Core 30.

383
00:28:20,010 --> 00:28:21,510
Core 30 has been up for a little bit.

384
00:28:22,190 --> 00:28:23,190
And so here's what we know now.

385
00:28:23,770 --> 00:28:28,130
Multi-op return span, which is the one they're really worried about, nearly non-existent.

386
00:28:28,130 --> 00:28:34,310
large operaturn payloads in the Bitcoin blockchain since this went live,

387
00:28:35,110 --> 00:28:36,670
statistical rounding error.

388
00:28:37,670 --> 00:28:42,610
In fact, the usage that does exist is still the old smaller way,

389
00:28:42,710 --> 00:28:45,970
the one that mechanics start saying he was, you know, not happy with,

390
00:28:46,030 --> 00:28:47,030
but could live with.

391
00:28:47,350 --> 00:28:52,770
That's actually the most widely used way to jam data into a Bitcoin transaction right now.

392
00:28:53,070 --> 00:28:56,290
And we all know that the fees have been low for a long time.

393
00:28:56,290 --> 00:29:19,730
Now, the real action is inscriptions. They use witness data, not op return. So you can have both things be true at the same time. Op return abuse is a statistical rounding error. It's negligible. It's hard to even measure. And there can be at times blocks based pressure from inscriptions. Two different things, both real. Okay. It's not that bad.

394
00:29:19,730 --> 00:29:25,690
Only 61 multiple op return outputs were used since September of 2025.

395
00:29:26,710 --> 00:29:27,350
61.

396
00:29:28,670 --> 00:29:30,190
Do you hear me?

397
00:29:31,270 --> 00:29:40,310
For large payloads and other concern, 0.001%, sorry, 0.0016% of transactions.

398
00:29:40,310 --> 00:29:48,710
The total since September of 2025 for all data on the blockchain is 474 megabytes.

399
00:29:49,730 --> 00:30:03,810
OK, so this entire scary scenario that they are freaking everyone out about, that Matthew Cratter is scaring everybody on his YouTube channel, the mechanic and Luke are going around saying Bitcoin is dead if they don't make these changes.

400
00:30:04,290 --> 00:30:18,890
Well, there you have it. 474 megabytes of data. That's it. 61 large operatons where they use multiple. There you have it. That's it. That's the spam scenario that we're willing to risk a soft fork over.

401
00:30:18,890 --> 00:30:27,470
you can see why i consider it just stupid and if the people the people spoke to core 30 was adopted

402
00:30:27,470 --> 00:30:32,610
very quickly they didn't seem particularly concerned about this so i'm not really sure

403
00:30:32,610 --> 00:30:41,210
outside of crater stands mechanic and luke and a few others who's actually truly concerned about

404
00:30:41,210 --> 00:30:46,430
this and when you put it all together it looks like people appealing to emotion to get political

405
00:30:46,430 --> 00:30:48,250
control over Bitcoin.

406
00:30:48,510 --> 00:30:54,370
And also at the same time, they have Ocean as a pool play to help centralize mining.

407
00:30:54,610 --> 00:30:58,010
Even though they say it's not about centralization, you can't help but start to wonder when you

408
00:30:58,010 --> 00:31:02,650
put the entire picture together and you add knots into it, it actually starts to look

409
00:31:02,650 --> 00:31:06,350
like a hostile takeover of Bitcoin, which is what they're accusing the core devs of.

410
00:31:07,130 --> 00:31:09,870
But we have to remember, this is the current chain.

411
00:31:09,970 --> 00:31:13,730
Like what they're talking about is they're talking about messing with your sats.

412
00:31:14,050 --> 00:31:15,690
They're talking about messing with your blockchain.

413
00:31:16,430 --> 00:31:19,230
to fix a problem that doesn't even really exist.

414
00:31:19,830 --> 00:31:22,530
So I think the entire thing is absolutely ridiculous.

415
00:31:22,990 --> 00:31:24,690
I have more links, including from them,

416
00:31:24,790 --> 00:31:26,910
so, you know, both sides, in the show notes

417
00:31:26,910 --> 00:31:29,030
if you'd like to read more on your own.

418
00:31:29,170 --> 00:31:30,050
But I have a question.

419
00:31:31,170 --> 00:31:33,090
Where do you stand on this BIP 110 stuff?

420
00:31:33,770 --> 00:31:34,830
Do you disagree with me?

421
00:31:35,050 --> 00:31:36,070
I'd like to hear your opinion.

422
00:31:36,150 --> 00:31:36,650
I really would.

423
00:31:36,650 --> 00:31:39,790
And if you do agree, has it changed your not's view?

424
00:31:40,250 --> 00:31:42,250
You not look at Bitcoin not the same way anymore.

425
00:31:42,810 --> 00:31:43,850
I'd like to know if those things,

426
00:31:43,970 --> 00:31:45,030
either one of those things are true for you.

427
00:31:45,150 --> 00:31:46,250
Boost in, support the show,

428
00:31:46,430 --> 00:31:50,010
And let me know, because I'd love to read those in episode 94.

429
00:32:09,010 --> 00:32:10,690
Well, a lot more show coming up.

430
00:32:10,750 --> 00:32:12,590
So support the show just by doing what you do.

431
00:32:12,690 --> 00:32:13,530
Stack them sats.

432
00:32:13,590 --> 00:32:15,970
And if you're going to do it on River, use the link in the show notes.

433
00:32:15,970 --> 00:32:18,110
In fact, I have links for all these in the show notes.

434
00:32:18,610 --> 00:32:20,830
River is one of the best ways in the States to stack sats.

435
00:32:21,150 --> 00:32:24,090
Now, if you're all about self-custody and you're in Canada or the U.S.,

436
00:32:24,090 --> 00:32:27,470
the Bitcoin, well, automatic self-custody platform.

437
00:32:27,810 --> 00:32:28,850
You ready to spend some sats?

438
00:32:28,930 --> 00:32:29,550
You got them on Lightning?

439
00:32:29,650 --> 00:32:32,090
Go from sats to gift card in just seconds on the Bitcoin company.

440
00:32:32,490 --> 00:32:36,390
All they do is Bitcoin, and you can log in with your Lightning Network stuff.

441
00:32:36,470 --> 00:32:38,810
No, like, extra credentials, none of that stuff.

442
00:32:39,350 --> 00:32:39,790
Fold card.

443
00:32:39,930 --> 00:32:42,470
Stack sats as you pay your bills, as you go about your day.

444
00:32:42,970 --> 00:32:44,530
Passively stack sats.

445
00:32:44,770 --> 00:32:45,710
Fold card's a winner.

446
00:32:45,710 --> 00:32:49,950
go check it out. Last but not least, if you're ready to get access to your Bitcoin liquidity,

447
00:32:50,150 --> 00:32:54,630
wouldn't it be great if you could time the bottom and take out a Bitcoin loan? Well, SALT Lending

448
00:32:54,630 --> 00:32:59,850
has great services and offers a couple of extra protection services against margin calls,

449
00:33:00,110 --> 00:33:04,710
which is always really nice. So those are some great ways besides boosting and memberships

450
00:33:04,710 --> 00:33:07,350
to support the show by doing what you do.

451
00:33:07,350 --> 00:33:16,950
All right, it is time for some boosts.

452
00:33:16,950 --> 00:33:19,210
Four score and seven boosts to go.

453
00:33:19,410 --> 00:33:25,410
And Murray Fio comes in with 33,333 sats.

454
00:33:31,030 --> 00:33:33,150
Moises, maybe your best episode yet.

455
00:33:33,250 --> 00:33:34,470
I bet you that's not how you say your name, though.

456
00:33:34,470 --> 00:33:40,290
If this is your first best bear market, the key thing to distract yourself is listening to Bitcoin podcasts.

457
00:33:40,410 --> 00:33:44,170
It will reinforce why you're in this and will help pass the time until it turns up.

458
00:33:44,590 --> 00:33:47,630
Also, make sure to put on another drop in the bucket every time it dumps.

459
00:33:47,870 --> 00:33:50,390
Yeah, buy another stash right there.

460
00:33:50,870 --> 00:33:54,290
You know, that's very true, is reminding yourself.

461
00:33:54,410 --> 00:33:58,090
It's like, yeah, you could say it's like immersing yourself in Cope.

462
00:33:58,410 --> 00:34:01,850
I actually think it's about reminding yourself of the fundamentals, right?

463
00:34:01,850 --> 00:34:05,470
Because so many times, well, always, the issue isn't within Bitcoin.

464
00:34:05,690 --> 00:34:06,630
It's externalized.

465
00:34:06,670 --> 00:34:12,910
So helping remember the fundamentals, why you're there, the thesis, it actually is useful in these times.

466
00:34:13,070 --> 00:34:13,910
That's a great boost.

467
00:34:14,310 --> 00:34:15,170
Thanks for being our baller.

468
00:34:15,290 --> 00:34:15,930
Appreciate you.

469
00:34:16,730 --> 00:34:18,890
PJ's here with a row of McDucks.

470
00:34:19,110 --> 00:34:19,470
Hey!

471
00:34:19,630 --> 00:34:21,290
This old duck still got it.

472
00:34:21,390 --> 00:34:22,030
Yeah, here it goes.

473
00:34:22,050 --> 00:34:24,130
He's not looking up for old McDuck.

474
00:34:24,290 --> 00:34:26,730
This low price is what we wanted during the last peak.

475
00:34:26,910 --> 00:34:28,470
Funny how everyone's memory is so short.

476
00:34:29,090 --> 00:34:30,250
Not that this community, though.

477
00:34:30,250 --> 00:34:30,870
We know better.

478
00:34:30,870 --> 00:34:32,930
this is our opportunity to stack and build for our future.

479
00:34:33,410 --> 00:34:35,350
Most of us don't have a fiat retirement plan

480
00:34:35,350 --> 00:34:37,790
and are too old or make too little to build one,

481
00:34:38,110 --> 00:34:39,870
but young enough to build a slow stack.

482
00:34:40,190 --> 00:34:41,570
So just stack sats.

483
00:34:42,150 --> 00:34:43,230
Amen to that, PJ.

484
00:34:43,550 --> 00:34:45,770
You know, it's funny.

485
00:34:46,590 --> 00:34:47,970
I guess like I had these grand,

486
00:34:48,070 --> 00:34:49,750
I guess because we had expectations, right?

487
00:34:49,870 --> 00:34:51,470
We had all these expectations, but you're right.

488
00:34:51,550 --> 00:34:54,050
These, it's like if this took, you know,

489
00:34:54,370 --> 00:34:57,330
another three years, if this isn't gonna, what happens.

490
00:34:57,490 --> 00:34:59,530
But let's just say cumulatively over the next five years,

491
00:34:59,530 --> 00:35:01,310
we have three years of bad price action.

492
00:35:01,970 --> 00:35:03,930
Well, in 10 years, you're going to look back and be grateful.

493
00:35:04,490 --> 00:35:05,950
But right now, it doesn't feel as good.

494
00:35:06,150 --> 00:35:07,170
That's a really insightful one.

495
00:35:07,230 --> 00:35:07,790
Thank you, PJ!

496
00:35:08,590 --> 00:35:12,310
User 56, and if you want to boost in again with your full name, let me know.

497
00:35:12,410 --> 00:35:15,710
User 56 is here with 21,112 cents.

498
00:35:20,710 --> 00:35:23,430
Chris, I've looked forward to your show every week for the past year.

499
00:35:23,550 --> 00:35:24,870
I respect the hard work you put into it.

500
00:35:24,950 --> 00:35:25,610
Well, thank you, sir.

501
00:35:26,110 --> 00:35:27,590
Keeping the signal high and emotion low.

502
00:35:27,590 --> 00:35:32,150
I hope your content continues to turn new people to Bitcoin fountain and the value for value structure.

503
00:35:32,290 --> 00:35:35,570
With that said, please accept my humble investment of 21,000 sats.

504
00:35:35,710 --> 00:35:38,190
Also, I know you talk about the fold card and Bitcoin rewards.

505
00:35:38,730 --> 00:35:40,490
What are your thoughts on the Gemini card?

506
00:35:41,070 --> 00:35:42,330
Boost! Boost!

507
00:35:42,770 --> 00:35:43,990
I have the Gemini card.

508
00:35:44,970 --> 00:35:48,510
I have the older one, not their newer one, but it's essentially the same.

509
00:35:49,030 --> 00:35:53,490
I thought they were supposed to upgrade me in October, by the way, Winklevoss boys.

510
00:35:53,490 --> 00:35:56,010
but I got it a long time ago when it came out

511
00:35:56,010 --> 00:35:57,870
and they would let you do any crypto.

512
00:35:58,410 --> 00:35:59,510
And I think for 10 minutes,

513
00:35:59,610 --> 00:36:00,670
I accidentally did have it on ETH.

514
00:36:00,890 --> 00:36:01,950
I think maybe that was the default.

515
00:36:02,270 --> 00:36:03,030
I don't remember.

516
00:36:03,330 --> 00:36:04,470
That lasted for 10 minutes.

517
00:36:04,830 --> 00:36:06,150
I'll tell you what I've used it for.

518
00:36:07,030 --> 00:36:07,890
Large repairs.

519
00:36:09,190 --> 00:36:10,690
You know, like I'm going to maybe pay off

520
00:36:10,690 --> 00:36:11,590
over like two, three months

521
00:36:11,590 --> 00:36:13,950
or sometimes longer, unfortunately.

522
00:36:14,170 --> 00:36:15,230
It's like, might as well stack some sats.

523
00:36:15,330 --> 00:36:18,410
If I've got to fix the slide for $5,000 on my RV,

524
00:36:19,090 --> 00:36:20,450
I might as well get some sats for that.

525
00:36:20,790 --> 00:36:22,070
And several hundred dollars at least,

526
00:36:22,070 --> 00:36:23,470
maybe over a grand of rewards.

527
00:36:24,150 --> 00:36:25,010
Probably at this point.

528
00:36:25,570 --> 00:36:26,310
So I've liked it.

529
00:36:26,730 --> 00:36:29,190
You know, if you don't pay it off, though, the interest rates can kill you these days.

530
00:36:29,330 --> 00:36:30,210
So you just got to watch for that.

531
00:36:30,290 --> 00:36:31,510
But you probably already know that, eh?

532
00:36:31,770 --> 00:36:32,490
Thank you for the boost.

533
00:36:33,410 --> 00:36:35,670
Boba's here with 21,000 sats.

534
00:36:39,410 --> 00:36:43,910
What do you think Jack means by the term home?

535
00:36:43,910 --> 00:36:46,170
What exactly is home in this case?

536
00:36:47,250 --> 00:36:49,130
Yeah, Bitcoin's coming home.

537
00:36:49,770 --> 00:36:52,930
I believe I saw the floor in real time at 60K during this last leg down.

538
00:36:52,930 --> 00:36:55,230
The bounce back looked almost like it was programmed.

539
00:36:55,750 --> 00:36:58,750
Everyone set their auto buyback at 60K.

540
00:36:59,390 --> 00:37:04,090
Miners may need to brace themselves as the chart readers are touting a capital rotation event.

541
00:37:04,490 --> 00:37:08,110
And they think it's still going to go lower through Q3 and Q4.

542
00:37:08,530 --> 00:37:16,170
Interesting how people in the space were calling the four-year cycle dead and never existed and expected things to go up against the four-year cycle prediction.

543
00:37:16,530 --> 00:37:19,210
Well, I'm sitting here seeing things go down and down.

544
00:37:19,530 --> 00:37:23,850
Is it possible that 2025 was the up year, but the whales taking profits just masked the top?

545
00:37:24,010 --> 00:37:27,930
And how about 2026 and why we're down relative to 2025?

546
00:37:28,550 --> 00:37:28,910
Okay.

547
00:37:29,010 --> 00:37:32,470
I want to answer this now, but I want to see, do I, I don't know if I saved this clip.

548
00:37:33,470 --> 00:37:34,190
I didn't.

549
00:37:34,730 --> 00:37:35,090
Okay.

550
00:37:35,650 --> 00:37:38,710
Well, I had a clip and I decided not to play because I already played too much Lynn.

551
00:37:38,990 --> 00:37:43,130
But Lynn was in another interview this week where she kind of brought up a good point,

552
00:37:43,210 --> 00:37:45,990
something that I probably should have brought up on the show sooner because it's crossed my mind.

553
00:37:45,990 --> 00:37:51,710
the treasury companies really took some of the spotlight in the energy for retail.

554
00:37:51,710 --> 00:38:04,110
So I think when you combine treasury companies and whale selling, you create a sort of a self-fulfilling four-year cycle in a way.

555
00:38:04,570 --> 00:38:12,590
And I do think that maybe some of Bitcoin's gains that we expected in 2025 went to digital asset companies that are essentially underwater now.

556
00:38:13,310 --> 00:38:14,910
It's like the new version of altcoins.

557
00:38:15,710 --> 00:38:18,090
I had, now I wish I would have brought that clip.

558
00:38:18,310 --> 00:38:22,470
But I do have one that will kind of answer a couple other more pieces towards the end of the show.

559
00:38:22,850 --> 00:38:25,450
So do stay tuned for that, Boba, and thank you for the boost.

560
00:38:26,090 --> 00:38:29,830
Kongaroo Paradox is back with 21,000 sats.

561
00:38:33,110 --> 00:38:35,710
Great episode and a great boost episode.

562
00:38:36,590 --> 00:38:38,450
What's all this noise around BIP-110?

563
00:38:38,450 --> 00:38:40,170
Well, I hope I gave you some idea.

564
00:38:40,690 --> 00:38:41,730
I hope I did at least.

565
00:38:41,730 --> 00:38:49,890
I know I could do it better, but I find it's a very frustrating thing for me to research because, I don't know, be where I stand on it, I suppose.

566
00:38:49,950 --> 00:38:53,190
It's the one issue on the show I have a hard time not getting very worked up about.

567
00:38:53,810 --> 00:39:03,530
Everything else is pretty straightforward, but when you start talking about user soft forks for something that's just a non-issue by people that don't know what the hell they're talking about, I just, I don't know, man.

568
00:39:04,330 --> 00:39:04,950
I don't know.

569
00:39:05,430 --> 00:39:06,230
I have a hard time, Obi.

570
00:39:06,370 --> 00:39:07,050
Thank you for the boost.

571
00:39:07,410 --> 00:39:10,330
Derivision Dingus is here with 21,000 stats.

572
00:39:11,730 --> 00:39:16,390
I don't love it, but I'm still sticking with it.

573
00:39:16,810 --> 00:39:20,810
I might be biased, considering I've Nixified nearly every device in the house.

574
00:39:21,170 --> 00:39:23,950
But I'll add a big old plus one to NixBitcoin.

575
00:39:24,270 --> 00:39:25,510
It's been rock solid for me.

576
00:39:25,510 --> 00:39:28,210
I deployed it on a NixOS container a couple of years ago,

577
00:39:28,350 --> 00:39:32,070
and I just did another major version update on it just a couple of nights ago.

578
00:39:32,350 --> 00:39:33,910
The update went super smooth, no issues.

579
00:39:34,310 --> 00:39:38,550
After a quick reboot, everything was back up, including the lightning channel with your node.

580
00:39:38,810 --> 00:39:40,370
NixBitcoin is awesome.

581
00:39:40,810 --> 00:39:41,550
I think so, too.

582
00:39:41,730 --> 00:39:48,910
And the only reason I don't just say that's the only way to go is because there is a technical overhead to Nix.

583
00:39:49,590 --> 00:39:59,550
But I think if you are in a business, if you're going to run a merchant shop, perhaps if you're a podcaster with high volume or humble high volume, nothing serious.

584
00:40:00,530 --> 00:40:05,770
I think you really should consider it because it's much more robust than any of the other systems.

585
00:40:05,990 --> 00:40:07,150
And I'll just leave it at that.

586
00:40:07,350 --> 00:40:08,730
I talk about Nix enough other places.

587
00:40:09,150 --> 00:40:09,990
Thanks, Derivation.

588
00:40:09,990 --> 00:40:11,950
I do appreciate the plus one.

589
00:40:12,230 --> 00:40:14,710
It gave me a little bit of an excuse to talk about it again.

590
00:40:14,810 --> 00:40:15,890
I'm going to be honest with you.

591
00:40:16,710 --> 00:40:20,550
Hey, there's Gene Bean, 4,534 sats.

592
00:40:20,770 --> 00:40:21,510
This is the way.

593
00:40:21,890 --> 00:40:31,750
From what I've learned thus far, it feels to me like there are other things at play that generally line up on the four-year intervals rather than Bitcoin itself having a four-year cycle.

594
00:40:32,230 --> 00:40:36,530
Primarily, I think what you've laid out previously about liquidity market being the driver is really the key.

595
00:40:37,330 --> 00:40:39,930
Yeah, and I think too, like you have election cycles in there,

596
00:40:39,990 --> 00:40:45,010
which often bring with it Fed cutting cycles and all those kinds of things.

597
00:40:45,590 --> 00:40:50,750
I'm of the camp that you're going to have a declining influence of the four-year cycle,

598
00:40:51,010 --> 00:40:53,490
that the four-year cycle mattered a lot more earlier on,

599
00:40:53,870 --> 00:40:55,330
especially when it was just Bitcoiners.

600
00:40:55,790 --> 00:41:00,410
But as you have all these other entities that are soaking up inventory

601
00:41:00,410 --> 00:41:05,930
and the miners are making already less than the daily supply being bought often,

602
00:41:05,930 --> 00:41:08,430
I do think there could be some diminishing returns

603
00:41:08,430 --> 00:41:09,390
around the four-year cycle,

604
00:41:09,390 --> 00:41:12,790
but you know, if everybody wants to F around and find out-

605
00:41:12,790 --> 00:41:14,750
I am programmed in multiple techniques.

606
00:41:14,750 --> 00:41:16,470
Yeah, then we're gonna find out.

607
00:41:16,470 --> 00:41:17,910
The traders love the vol.

608
00:41:17,910 --> 00:41:19,350
Gene says, I wonder if you and Wes could update us

609
00:41:19,350 --> 00:41:21,350
on the Boost tooling to resolve NOSTER addresses.

610
00:41:21,350 --> 00:41:22,970
I tend to boost the show from Fountain simply

611
00:41:22,970 --> 00:41:33,905
because it also posted NOSTER Yeah which also helps the show on the Fountain trending pages I wonder if the tooling could also use Fountain includes boost to make that easier That would be a truncated boost from here

612
00:41:34,045 --> 00:41:34,606
Yeah, okay.

613
00:41:34,845 --> 00:41:41,685
So yes and no, Gene, because there's a lot in transition right now with the boosts and

614
00:41:41,685 --> 00:41:43,985
LNURL and metadata in particular.

615
00:41:44,465 --> 00:41:48,606
And I think a real telling thing will be which direction Podverse goes, which they're

616
00:41:48,606 --> 00:41:49,765
investigating it right now.

617
00:41:49,965 --> 00:41:53,285
I would have been happy if a year ago we all just would have gone all in on Noster.

618
00:41:54,025 --> 00:41:55,885
for the backend and then we'd have it decentralized.

619
00:41:56,165 --> 00:41:58,345
Instead, we're going to go some sort of HTTP metadata server

620
00:41:58,345 --> 00:42:02,085
where you have to have a metadata server

621
00:42:02,085 --> 00:42:03,285
running on somebody's box,

622
00:42:03,425 --> 00:42:04,865
which is going to lead to centralization.

623
00:42:05,525 --> 00:42:08,785
And the best answer that the Podfather and Podsage

624
00:42:08,785 --> 00:42:11,265
have right now is to have everybody centralize on Strike

625
00:42:11,265 --> 00:42:14,065
and use some hacked together third-party tool

626
00:42:14,065 --> 00:42:15,985
to go read the metadata off Strike.

627
00:42:16,626 --> 00:42:20,146
Like that's the opposite direction we need to go.

628
00:42:20,585 --> 00:42:21,126
Right, yeah, let's go.

629
00:42:21,325 --> 00:42:22,845
I like Strike and I like Jack,

630
00:42:23,425 --> 00:42:24,425
But that's ridiculous.

631
00:42:24,505 --> 00:42:25,805
We can't all centralize around Strike.

632
00:42:25,845 --> 00:42:26,885
It's not even available everywhere.

633
00:42:27,185 --> 00:42:29,685
I can't even use Strike for some of those purposes in Washington State.

634
00:42:30,825 --> 00:42:33,765
We need something that is workable.

635
00:42:34,565 --> 00:42:35,985
And Mitch is looking into it.

636
00:42:36,126 --> 00:42:39,565
He's trying to figure it out right now because he's at that stage for the new Podverse development.

637
00:42:39,745 --> 00:42:41,585
And I had a phone call with him recently about it.

638
00:42:42,126 --> 00:42:44,945
And we haven't solved the LNURL metadata issue.

639
00:42:45,445 --> 00:42:47,606
And hopefully we will.

640
00:42:48,445 --> 00:42:49,065
Hopefully we will.

641
00:42:49,825 --> 00:42:50,465
Hodler comes in.

642
00:42:50,505 --> 00:42:51,146
Thank you, Gene, by the way.

643
00:42:51,146 --> 00:42:54,705
Hodler comes in with 4,747 sats.

644
00:42:58,606 --> 00:42:59,725
Greetings from Iceland.

645
00:43:00,485 --> 00:43:01,285
I completely agree.

646
00:43:01,365 --> 00:43:03,485
This is a great time to work hard and stack more sats.

647
00:43:03,585 --> 00:43:06,705
I think we just have to stay at these lower levels for a big chunk of the year.

648
00:43:07,045 --> 00:43:08,106
Just have that feeling.

649
00:43:08,325 --> 00:43:09,725
Oh, do you now?

650
00:43:10,146 --> 00:43:10,805
All right, Hodler.

651
00:43:11,285 --> 00:43:13,385
I know I'm starting to feel that way more and more, too.

652
00:43:15,725 --> 00:43:17,305
Moon Knight's here with 2,000 sats.

653
00:43:17,425 --> 00:43:18,425
Let's hear it, good buddy.

654
00:43:18,425 --> 00:43:21,146
Plus one to PPQ.ai.

655
00:43:21,665 --> 00:43:24,565
That is basically payperquery.ai.

656
00:43:24,805 --> 00:43:26,505
PPQ.ai, and you can pay with lightning.

657
00:43:27,085 --> 00:43:28,225
I use it a couple times a week.

658
00:43:28,305 --> 00:43:31,925
I love having access to the latest model without needing to spin up a single account.

659
00:43:32,325 --> 00:43:35,765
These creepy AI tech bros don't need to be keeping a profile of me.

660
00:43:38,106 --> 00:43:38,705
That's true.

661
00:43:38,945 --> 00:43:39,465
That is true.

662
00:43:39,525 --> 00:43:40,646
That is a nice advantage of it.

663
00:43:40,905 --> 00:43:42,106
I think you're on to something there.

664
00:43:42,185 --> 00:43:42,725
Thank you, Moon Knight.

665
00:43:43,085 --> 00:43:43,626
Make it so.

666
00:43:43,965 --> 00:43:45,805
Ace Ackerman's back with a row of ducks.

667
00:43:45,845 --> 00:43:47,665
That's 2,222 sats.

668
00:43:48,425 --> 00:43:52,185
Well, 58K does seem like the bottom to me.

669
00:43:52,305 --> 00:43:55,425
I'm starting to agree with the idea that not only is the four-year cycle dead,

670
00:43:55,945 --> 00:43:57,925
but it never really existed in the first place.

671
00:43:58,646 --> 00:44:01,126
Oh, now, Ace, I feel like that is a hot take,

672
00:44:01,305 --> 00:44:04,045
since we are currently, what some would argue,

673
00:44:04,345 --> 00:44:07,345
in a price decline that the four-year cycle would have forecasted.

674
00:44:07,585 --> 00:44:10,005
So I think it's bold for you to come in and say,

675
00:44:10,405 --> 00:44:13,085
58K is the bottom when we're not even at 58K yet,

676
00:44:13,185 --> 00:44:15,305
and that the four-year cycle is dead at the same time.

677
00:44:15,305 --> 00:44:18,365
and I like it because I'm feeling that vibe,

678
00:44:18,445 --> 00:44:19,525
but I want to know your logic.

679
00:44:19,646 --> 00:44:22,225
So Ace, if you want to follow up, I would love to hear it.

680
00:44:22,705 --> 00:44:23,985
Tomatoes here with a row of ducks.

681
00:44:25,045 --> 00:44:28,126
I don't see any reason why Bitcoin couldn't stay under the cost of mining

682
00:44:28,126 --> 00:44:29,345
for quite a while.

683
00:44:29,725 --> 00:44:32,265
The miners with reserves would just keep going,

684
00:44:32,405 --> 00:44:34,785
and the small ones, well, they wouldn't make it.

685
00:44:35,065 --> 00:44:38,146
But my prediction is that it doesn't stay below 60 for too long,

686
00:44:38,146 --> 00:44:40,005
exactly because this idea is widespread,

687
00:44:40,485 --> 00:44:42,085
and people will start buying again if it does.

688
00:44:42,085 --> 00:44:48,565
you know tomato that is some next level market reasoning right there you know once it becomes a

689
00:44:48,565 --> 00:44:54,606
narrative you can trade it either way and also i think you are absolutely right one of the things

690
00:44:54,606 --> 00:45:01,045
that makes mining so brutal is you do have to sometimes you have to just grin and bear it during

691
00:45:01,045 --> 00:45:05,745
a bear market and the ones that can do that better and extend credit etc etc maybe you know make a

692
00:45:05,745 --> 00:45:10,365
little more money off of ai they're the ones that are going to survive so how long do you think it

693
00:45:10,365 --> 00:45:14,745
goes tomorrow. You say you don't think it'll stay below 60 for long. What does that mean?

694
00:45:15,626 --> 00:45:21,845
Thank you for the boost. Kiwi Bitcoin. He's back. 6,789 sats.

695
00:45:22,905 --> 00:45:29,885
One plus, plus one, one plus, that's the phone. Plus one for the ppq.ai site. This has been my

696
00:45:29,885 --> 00:45:35,285
go-to AI for about a year now. Oh, it's built by a Bitcoiner. You get a discount when you pay in

697
00:45:35,285 --> 00:45:41,365
sats and you can pay over lightning there's zero kyc and the built-in privacy of lightning i use it

698
00:45:41,365 --> 00:45:46,745
with a vpn like molvad which i also pay for with sats and offers pretty good privacy for general

699
00:45:46,745 --> 00:45:51,825
use you can connect via a browser or with api keys i use it for general topics or learning

700
00:45:51,825 --> 00:45:57,965
not for anything private or sensitive you can connect to all the latest models and it's really

701
00:45:57,965 --> 00:46:04,965
great okay what are you using it for exactly you say learning and topics i'm now discovering that

702
00:46:04,965 --> 00:46:08,785
You guys are using these high-end models for a while, and I'm wondering what you're doing.

703
00:46:09,225 --> 00:46:13,525
Part two, I'd love to hear more about your node config on Bitcoin Core and what version you're using.

704
00:46:13,885 --> 00:46:19,525
I've been holding off on upgrading, and I'm still running 28, but 31 is coming out soon, so I think I need to upgrade to keep with the maintenance window.

705
00:46:20,045 --> 00:46:22,245
What configuration changes have you made to the defaults?

706
00:46:22,245 --> 00:46:25,325
Ah, well, so I'm on 28 and 29.

707
00:46:25,845 --> 00:46:31,205
I know that's a cop-out, but I, like you, have been expecting and planning to just skip 30 and go to 31.

708
00:46:31,765 --> 00:46:34,785
And when I do that, I will try to document what I change.

709
00:46:34,785 --> 00:46:39,545
I'll probably do it at the Nix config level, but I think you could probably use that even without Nix because they're just config settings.

710
00:46:40,166 --> 00:46:41,425
And I will try to share that.

711
00:46:41,525 --> 00:46:43,045
I will share it publicly when I do that.

712
00:46:43,285 --> 00:46:45,405
And I think it'll be around the 31 release.

713
00:46:45,485 --> 00:46:46,666
I'll probably give it a beat.

714
00:46:46,785 --> 00:46:51,626
I generally wait, you know, a week or so just to see if anything absolutely blows up.

715
00:46:51,646 --> 00:46:52,785
And then I start updating my nodes.

716
00:46:53,185 --> 00:46:54,865
So I will keep you posted on that, Kiwi.

717
00:46:55,325 --> 00:46:58,965
And this, by the way, is I don't know if it's my recommendation, but it's my approach.

718
00:46:58,965 --> 00:47:00,825
when there's ever a controversial release

719
00:47:00,825 --> 00:47:03,666
or a big point release with some new features,

720
00:47:03,985 --> 00:47:04,525
I wait.

721
00:47:04,985 --> 00:47:05,626
I wait.

722
00:47:06,305 --> 00:47:08,005
And with Bitcoin, you can do that.

723
00:47:08,185 --> 00:47:09,885
So why not take advantage of it?

724
00:47:09,945 --> 00:47:10,985
Unless there's something you really need.

725
00:47:11,425 --> 00:47:12,005
That's a great boost.

726
00:47:12,065 --> 00:47:12,365
Thank you, sir.

727
00:47:13,005 --> 00:47:16,126
Nakamoto 6102 is here with 3,500 sats.

728
00:47:17,225 --> 00:47:18,205
Appreciate the value.

729
00:47:18,365 --> 00:47:19,626
Well, I appreciate you, Nakamoto.

730
00:47:19,725 --> 00:47:20,565
Thank you for the boost.

731
00:47:21,245 --> 00:47:24,106
Bobbypin is here with 10,000 sats.

732
00:47:24,285 --> 00:47:26,205
You make me want to be a better man.

733
00:47:26,565 --> 00:47:28,365
I'd be willing to go to a Bitcoin meetup

734
00:47:28,365 --> 00:47:33,565
If it's relatively close, I'm going to a mining disrupt in Dallas, Fort Worth, later this year.

735
00:47:34,085 --> 00:47:35,606
I would love to do that.

736
00:47:36,385 --> 00:47:37,225
I miss Fort Worth.

737
00:47:37,325 --> 00:47:40,945
I was down there quite a bit a few years ago and haven't been back since.

738
00:47:41,425 --> 00:47:44,166
But when I was working at Linux Academy, I was there quite a bit.

739
00:47:44,185 --> 00:47:44,685
Oh, I'm in.

740
00:47:44,805 --> 00:47:45,745
Yeah, it was great.

741
00:47:46,385 --> 00:47:47,405
I'd love to know how it goes.

742
00:47:48,285 --> 00:47:48,905
That'd be really neat.

743
00:47:49,045 --> 00:47:49,565
Thanks, BobbyPin.

744
00:47:49,585 --> 00:47:50,945
If you remember, send us a report.

745
00:47:50,945 --> 00:47:52,305
Thank you, everybody who boosted the show.

746
00:47:52,385 --> 00:47:56,225
Even of those that came in below the 2000s at cutoff, I still got your boost.

747
00:47:56,285 --> 00:47:58,305
I still got them in the show notes, and I still really appreciate it.

748
00:47:58,365 --> 00:48:00,606
Also, I want to thank everybody who streamed sats.

749
00:48:01,166 --> 00:48:01,485
Wow.

750
00:48:01,925 --> 00:48:04,485
The sats streamers were really our baller booster this week.

751
00:48:08,325 --> 00:48:12,025
90,421 sats from our sats streamers.

752
00:48:12,106 --> 00:48:14,646
Thank you, everybody who just streams those sats as you listen.

753
00:48:14,745 --> 00:48:16,985
When we combine it with our boosters, it's a pretty good episode.

754
00:48:16,985 --> 00:48:22,925
We stacked a grand total of 345,654 sats.

755
00:48:28,365 --> 00:48:32,725
There's no advertiser on this show.

756
00:48:32,805 --> 00:48:37,305
In fact, I was just approached by one this last week who had a pitch.

757
00:48:37,925 --> 00:48:41,545
And I said no, because we've been getting great boosts these last few weeks.

758
00:48:41,606 --> 00:48:42,505
It's a value for value show.

759
00:48:42,565 --> 00:48:45,385
There's a membership through Fountain and Jupiter.party.

760
00:48:45,585 --> 00:48:47,925
You can put your support on autopilot as well.

761
00:48:48,305 --> 00:48:49,005
Really appreciate it.

762
00:48:49,106 --> 00:48:49,765
Fountain makes it easy.

763
00:48:49,765 --> 00:48:52,085
AlbiHub makes it totally self-sovereign.

764
00:48:52,585 --> 00:48:55,585
And that's all over at Fountain.fm or go search for AlbiHub.

765
00:48:55,745 --> 00:48:57,785
And then get yourself a podcasting 2.0 app.

766
00:48:57,785 --> 00:49:00,666
You get more features, the boost capabilities, all of that.

767
00:49:01,045 --> 00:49:03,805
Those are at newpodcastapps.com.

768
00:49:14,405 --> 00:49:17,225
All right, let's talk a little price action.

769
00:49:17,525 --> 00:49:17,865
Why?

770
00:49:18,045 --> 00:49:19,865
Why should we talk a little price action?

771
00:49:20,465 --> 00:49:24,805
Because the speculation as to why the price is down is quite funny.

772
00:49:24,805 --> 00:49:29,045
So we start with Fox Business, who's trying to wrap their head around it all.

773
00:49:29,425 --> 00:49:35,705
Crypto this morning, which is once again lower, as you can see, Bitcoin down again now below 68,000.

774
00:49:35,805 --> 00:49:43,146
That is down better than 25% over the last month, roughly 50% from the all-time highs, which was about 127,000.

775
00:49:43,385 --> 00:49:45,085
Bitcoin has had a rough going.

776
00:49:45,285 --> 00:49:51,845
Ethereum as well, down nearly 40%, way down by ETF outflows, softer institutional demand.

777
00:49:51,845 --> 00:49:58,505
analysts say bitcoin could fall to 50 000 warning a sharp v-shaped rebound is looking more unlikely

778
00:49:58,505 --> 00:50:05,445
while others are arguing that digital assets close to hitting a price bottom what's going on here

779
00:50:05,445 --> 00:50:11,345
what's going on so they want to figure it out so they bring on the world's premier i guess um expert

780
00:50:11,345 --> 00:50:18,126
mr wonderful clearly right because he was buddies with sam bankman fraud so clearly kevin o'leary

781
00:50:18,126 --> 00:50:24,166
is the one to go. Clearly, it's O'Leary. He comes on and actually, at first, he's doing all right.

782
00:50:24,606 --> 00:50:27,825
But then just as he's wrapping it up, he tosses a turd in the punch bowl.

783
00:50:28,166 --> 00:50:33,565
How do you think about Bitcoin fundamentally, technically, especially after a little bit of

784
00:50:33,565 --> 00:50:40,085
this washout we've seen? Well, Bitcoin has had a major correction yet again, down 50 percent. This

785
00:50:40,085 --> 00:50:44,505
is not the first time this has occurred. Something else has occurred, though, underneath it that is

786
00:50:44,505 --> 00:50:50,425
quite a problem for the crypto market to resolve. Last October, October 20th was the day when this

787
00:50:50,425 --> 00:50:55,646
stuff really melted. But no, no, it was not October 20th. Not just Bitcoin, everything. Some of them

788
00:50:55,646 --> 00:51:00,925
down 80, 90 percent. The reason that occurred, in my opinion, is everybody in the institutional

789
00:51:00,925 --> 00:51:07,745
sovereign wealth at that time saw that the Clarity Act, the Stability Act that made the first act,

790
00:51:07,745 --> 00:51:13,365
which was the Genius Act, the second part was going to come and make Bitcoin legal for them to

791
00:51:13,365 --> 00:51:19,385
own an index. It didn't happen. This is so dumb. This is so dumb. This is worse than I remember,

792
00:51:19,465 --> 00:51:22,225
actually, when I first heard when I when I grabbed this clip. So first of all,

793
00:51:22,705 --> 00:51:30,305
it was October 10th and it was because Binance's stable coin de-pegged and a bunch of market makers

794
00:51:30,305 --> 00:51:36,805
got washed out and completely drained liquidity from the crypto market and destroyed the plebs.

795
00:51:36,945 --> 00:51:41,985
And some of the crap coins are down like 80 percent as a result. It really had nothing to

796
00:51:41,985 --> 00:51:46,985
do with clarity clarity has been an ongoing price suppressant but made bitcoin legal for them to own

797
00:51:46,985 --> 00:51:52,505
what the hell is he talking about like what what what does he think blackrock and and sailor and

798
00:51:52,505 --> 00:51:59,965
everybody's been doing what are they talking about like he's just saying stuff the second part was

799
00:51:59,965 --> 00:52:06,325
going to come and make bitcoin legal for them to own in an index it didn't happen so they were doing

800
00:52:06,325 --> 00:52:11,885
a lot of analysis this is quite shocking it turns out oh it's shocking so they were getting all

801
00:52:11,885 --> 00:52:28,646
And you see these dumb, stupid institutions spent five years researching Bitcoin and buying just its perfectly timed moments when the market was crashing, only to just on October 20th, reevaluate the entire premise and realize they'd made a mistake.

802
00:52:29,185 --> 00:52:31,405
So they were doing a lot of analysis.

803
00:52:31,585 --> 00:52:32,385
This is quite shocking.

804
00:52:32,905 --> 00:52:40,965
It turns out if you actually do the analysis, and they did, these institutions did, they basically went in, eyes open, saying, let's run the numbers.

805
00:52:40,965 --> 00:52:44,505
What do I need to own in crypto to capture 90% of the alpha?

806
00:52:44,925 --> 00:52:45,685
The volatility.

807
00:52:46,305 --> 00:52:50,385
Turns out all you need is Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the rest of the Pupu coins are worthless.

808
00:52:51,065 --> 00:52:53,485
They had to do analysis on that?

809
00:52:53,805 --> 00:52:55,385
They had to, like, reevaluate?

810
00:52:55,785 --> 00:52:56,225
Really?

811
00:52:57,185 --> 00:52:57,626
Really?

812
00:52:58,385 --> 00:52:59,425
Just look at a price chart.

813
00:52:59,626 --> 00:53:00,325
Go on Twitter.

814
00:53:00,646 --> 00:53:02,505
Like, this is so stupid.

815
00:53:03,065 --> 00:53:03,285
Okay.

816
00:53:03,585 --> 00:53:05,285
But so the Pupu coins have been no good.

817
00:53:05,525 --> 00:53:07,166
They've realized it's only Bitcoin and Ethereum.

818
00:53:07,425 --> 00:53:09,985
But you see, the turd is still coming.

819
00:53:09,985 --> 00:53:11,805
the punch bowl is not safe.

820
00:53:11,885 --> 00:53:13,845
The alpha, the volatility.

821
00:53:14,445 --> 00:53:16,545
Turns out all you need is Bitcoin and Ethereum

822
00:53:16,545 --> 00:53:18,425
and the rest of the poo-poo coins are worthless.

823
00:53:18,765 --> 00:53:20,365
So they dropped 80, 90%.

824
00:53:20,365 --> 00:53:21,146
They never came back.

825
00:53:21,305 --> 00:53:23,785
Bitcoin got slaughtered because of a lot of deleveraging.

826
00:53:24,166 --> 00:53:26,985
Remember, we had all these treasury products that came out.

827
00:53:27,045 --> 00:53:27,905
They had leverage on them.

828
00:53:28,646 --> 00:53:30,845
I'm still long this, but there's a new concern

829
00:53:30,845 --> 00:53:34,106
that is kind of floating around for 10% of the people out there.

830
00:53:34,245 --> 00:53:37,765
Okay, a new concern and it's floating around for 10% of the people.

831
00:53:37,765 --> 00:53:40,225
And Mr. Wonderful, he's pretty tapped in.

832
00:53:40,565 --> 00:53:44,285
Remember, he was friends with Sam, so he knows what's going on in the crypto world.

833
00:53:44,365 --> 00:53:45,106
He's tapped in.

834
00:53:45,626 --> 00:53:46,725
There's a brand new concern.

835
00:53:46,825 --> 00:53:47,685
You just heard about it.

836
00:53:47,725 --> 00:53:50,905
It landed in October, and this is really the issue.

837
00:53:51,065 --> 00:53:53,865
And until this is solved, Bitcoin is screwed.

838
00:53:54,285 --> 00:53:55,225
Out they had leverage on them.

839
00:53:55,705 --> 00:54:01,405
I'm still long this, but there's a new concern that is kind of floating around for 10% of the people out there.

840
00:54:01,925 --> 00:54:02,365
Quantum.

841
00:54:03,005 --> 00:54:05,885
The idea that a quantum computer can break the chain.

842
00:54:06,745 --> 00:54:07,745
And so until that time,

843
00:54:07,745 --> 00:54:12,925
gets resolved, there'll be some resistance at the institutional level to go past 3%.

844
00:54:12,925 --> 00:54:16,545
I just wish they'd shut up because they don't even know what they're talking about.

845
00:54:17,166 --> 00:54:22,606
Break the chain. Break the chain. They don't even know what they're talking about, but they just

846
00:54:22,606 --> 00:54:30,646
spread stupid FUD all the time. It's so frustrating. So now compare and contrast. This is Bitwise's

847
00:54:30,646 --> 00:54:36,345
CIO, Matt Hogan, and he's going to talk about quantum and he's going to talk about what some

848
00:54:36,345 --> 00:54:41,166
of you were saying in the booths that we might be in this one for a while. And unfortunately,

849
00:54:41,626 --> 00:54:49,166
it is something I'm starting to come around to as well. And you can't really argue with what Matt

850
00:54:49,166 --> 00:54:57,065
lays out. So we started with our macro protein. We got our Bitcoin carbs with BIP 110. And now,

851
00:54:57,285 --> 00:55:02,785
I hate to tell you this, you're going to get your Bitcoin veggies here with Matt Hogan.

852
00:55:02,785 --> 00:55:04,626
So just chew up and swallow.

853
00:55:05,126 --> 00:55:09,245
When we have talked more recently, I don't know if we've talked since the price plunge.

854
00:55:09,365 --> 00:55:17,365
So I'm just curious, first of all, to get your take on what's been happening and what's happening with flows in your business, in your ETFs.

855
00:55:17,785 --> 00:55:18,646
Have we seen flows?

856
00:55:18,700 --> 00:55:21,960
follow price. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. There's sort of a tale of two

857
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:26,360
markets. There's the original crypto investors who have been selling. I think that's one of the

858
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:30,740
primary drivers of what's driving the market down. The institutional or at least financial

859
00:55:30,740 --> 00:55:36,300
advisor market that Bitwise services has been buying. We had inflows last week. Even if you

860
00:55:36,300 --> 00:55:40,600
look at just the inflows of Bitcoin ETFs, yes, there've been some outflows since October,

861
00:55:41,020 --> 00:55:46,180
but very small. I actually think the ETF holders are the diamond hands and it's been others who

862
00:55:46,180 --> 00:55:49,140
have been leading the downturn. So that's really interesting because I think one of the biggest

863
00:55:49,140 --> 00:55:54,340
questions I have during all of this is who is the natural buyer, so to speak, right? That the

864
00:55:54,340 --> 00:55:59,780
institutions who got into Bitcoin haven't necessarily wanted to step in there. What's

865
00:55:59,780 --> 00:56:03,460
your take on this? Well, yeah, I think that's the point. I think they're the eventual natural

866
00:56:03,460 --> 00:56:08,220
buyer, right? Institutions have most of the money, but most of crypto today is held by retail

867
00:56:08,220 --> 00:56:13,360
investors. So there's this transition from retail primary ownership to institutional primary

868
00:56:13,360 --> 00:56:18,300
ownership. The reason you're not seeing the institution sell is it's been risky professionally

869
00:56:18,300 --> 00:56:23,960
to buy Bitcoin. So you had to have very high conviction to buy those ETFs in the first two

870
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:28,560
years. It's still outside of the norm. And for that reason, I think the existing holders will

871
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:33,480
continue to hold in ETF land. I think institutions will help lead us out of this bear market,

872
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:38,100
but it could take a while, right? It could be months, quarters, longer than that.

873
00:56:38,580 --> 00:56:42,300
Let's take a step back because you wrote an interesting piece recently where you kind of

874
00:56:42,300 --> 00:56:46,560
trying to grapple with the reason behind the pullback that we have seen. And you said it's

875
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:52,800
not just one thing. It's a lot of things. So just succinctly highlight a couple of those reasons for

876
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:57,100
us. Yeah. Crypto winners are never monocausal. They're always multiple factors. You had people

877
00:56:57,100 --> 00:57:01,440
selling ahead of the four year cycle. That's sort of a reflexive. They're selling because they think

878
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:08,200
it will go down. They're never monocausal. Never a word I would have used myself, but it exactly

879
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:13,140
describes how I think about this. It's never one thing. It's never one thing that brings it all down,

880
00:57:13,240 --> 00:57:16,260
which means it's never one thing that brings it all up.

881
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:21,180
Factors. You had people selling ahead of the four year cycle. That's sort of a reflexive.

882
00:57:21,260 --> 00:57:23,860
They're selling because they think it will go down. Therefore, it goes down.

883
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:28,080
Self-fulfilling. That's right. But it's true. You had people worried that Kevin Warsh will

884
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:31,960
shrink the balance sheet. You had people worried about quantum risk in the market.

885
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:37,840
You had a macro sell off in software names. You add all those together and it's too much weight.

886
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:40,620
The market just falls over the course of time.

887
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:42,460
Those are now well-known in the market.

888
00:57:42,660 --> 00:57:44,780
We're starting to see some positive news come in.

889
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:46,700
But the same thing is true on the reverse.

890
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:51,860
Now, before he gets there, what I like about this is this is really everything we've been talking about for the last few weeks.

891
00:57:51,860 --> 00:57:54,860
I should have just taken the last few weeks off and played this clip.

892
00:57:55,020 --> 00:57:58,740
But now what Matt does is he brings it to how we go back up in price.

893
00:57:58,860 --> 00:58:00,400
And this is where I say we're eating our veggies.

894
00:58:00,820 --> 00:58:02,360
Those are now well-known in the market.

895
00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:04,680
We're starting to see some positive news come in.

896
00:58:04,940 --> 00:58:06,440
But the same thing is true on the reverse.

897
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,560
It's not going to be one thing that turns this market around.

898
00:58:09,900 --> 00:58:13,540
It's going to be a slow accumulation of multiple pieces of good news.

899
00:58:13,660 --> 00:58:17,940
When that eventually overwhelms that bad news, we'll return up to all-time highs.

900
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:19,780
So you don't think there's going to be like a catalyst?

901
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:21,300
This is not a V-shaped bottom.

902
00:58:21,420 --> 00:58:23,540
No, there were multiple factors that drove us down.

903
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:26,080
There will be multiple factors that drive us back up.

904
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:27,580
Progress on quantum.

905
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:30,980
Maybe Kevin Warsh cutting rates more than people expect.

906
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:33,920
Maybe these institutional flows coming back.

907
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:35,600
The rise of agentic finance.

908
00:58:35,600 --> 00:58:37,460
It was multiple things coming down.

909
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,660
It will take multiple things to come back up, but we will see those things over time.

910
00:58:42,020 --> 00:58:43,620
The rise of agentic finance.

911
00:58:44,900 --> 00:58:45,840
Yeah, maybe.

912
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:47,160
Maybe.

913
00:58:48,720 --> 00:58:49,620
I don't know.

914
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:57,400
What I see happening seems like, God, I have an agent set up with an Albi Hub sub wallet.

915
00:58:58,020 --> 00:58:58,720
Little budget.

916
00:58:58,960 --> 00:58:59,840
It works great.

917
00:58:59,940 --> 00:59:00,500
It's amazing.

918
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:05,020
Cali has put out an eCashew scale for open claw agents.

919
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:07,320
So it absolutely can be done.

920
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:12,700
But I'll tell you what I'm seeing more of a trend is the poopoo coins, as Mr. Wonderful put it.

921
00:59:13,300 --> 00:59:13,980
A lot of base.

922
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:16,740
Today I saw some stuff around Tether.

923
00:59:17,740 --> 00:59:23,320
So the, you know, and they're integrating base and these payments in at like service levels.

924
00:59:23,320 --> 00:59:31,120
So people have created LLM proxy routers to route your agent's request to the most price efficient LLM.

925
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:59,640
And the agent auto pays on the base chain, on Coinbase's thing. So I don't know if Bitcoin will be the go-to payment system for all agents. I think for some, obviously, especially ones that are doing really important transactions. But there isn't a Bitcoin marketing department that's going to go put out SDKs and MCP servers, right? There are individuals like Kali and others that are doing it, but there's no Coinbase marketing department behind it.

926
00:59:59,980 --> 01:00:01,100
So I do wonder about that.

927
01:00:01,140 --> 01:00:04,560
I'd be curious to know what you think about agents and, you know, using Bitcoin.

928
01:00:04,820 --> 01:00:06,980
I would love to hear your feedback if this is something you thought about.

929
01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:08,340
Multiple things coming down.

930
01:00:08,580 --> 01:00:12,500
It'll take multiple things to come back up, but we will see those things over time.

931
01:00:12,820 --> 01:00:27,560
Now one of the other themes I been talking to a lot of people about today is TradFi meets DeFi right That institutions coming into the market I mean Bitwise is kind of an example of that right The ETFs which is a more institutional product applied on top of something that is very nontraditional

932
01:00:28,300 --> 01:00:31,100
With that has come all kinds of new products, right?

933
01:00:31,220 --> 01:00:34,640
You've had options which are newish still to the market.

934
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:36,460
You've got leverage of all kinds.

935
01:00:37,180 --> 01:00:38,920
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

936
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:41,100
What are the risks of layering that on top?

937
01:00:41,300 --> 01:00:42,880
Yeah, look, mostly it's strictly good.

938
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:48,180
Bitcoin is more valuable the more liquid it is. It's more useful in a macro perspective. It is

939
01:00:48,180 --> 01:00:53,580
more useful in a global perspective. You need all those derivatives to pile up to add liquidity.

940
01:00:54,140 --> 01:00:58,720
It does introduce a new risk, which is now Bitcoin is more integrated into other macro

941
01:00:58,720 --> 01:01:03,100
hedge funds. It's more integrated into the macro economy. There's certain thoughts that part of the

942
01:01:03,100 --> 01:01:09,220
sharp sell-off last week was due to non-crypto hedge funds unwinding crypto as part of a more

943
01:01:09,220 --> 01:01:14,920
complex trade. So we're now in the game. The game is complex. We're not our own corner of the market.

944
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:19,700
That introduces some negatives, but mostly it's positive. There's no. Yeah, it does. And one of

945
01:01:19,700 --> 01:01:25,340
those negatives, as I've been saying on the show, is we are a bit in a holding pattern until the

946
01:01:25,340 --> 01:01:32,1000
damn Clarity Act passes, which I hate, as you know. And here we are. Another week goes by where

947
01:01:32,1000 --> 01:01:40,100
we have to do a little bit of a clarity update. It is moving. Brian Armstrong is in D.C. right now,

948
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:45,580
and he's buddied up with a senator, Senator Bernie Marino from Ohio. And they've sat down,

949
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:49,220
and they kind of let it slip when we might actually see clarity pass.

950
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:50,180
Part of this equation.

951
01:01:50,700 --> 01:01:54,360
Wait, can we just explain this? Like, why people should care about this? What the whole

952
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:56,500
yield rewards on stablecoins thing is about?

953
01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:59,680
Oh, yeah. I included this, too, because I want to hear your thoughts on this.

954
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:02,080
Well, unless you own a bank, you probably shouldn't care.

955
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:08,540
But if you're an American consumer, what it means is that the cash that you hold, you're going to have competition to pay you more interest.

956
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:14,720
So you're going to be able to get more money for the money that you have in your wallet or the money that you have in some sort of account.

957
01:02:14,860 --> 01:02:26,940
So this is very, very good for working Americans because ultimately this is about giving Americans more rewards for being able to have cash on reserve, be able to get paid quicker, be able to transact faster.

958
01:02:26,940 --> 01:02:53,880
All right. Do you think you guys haven't answered this? And I asked last week, too. Do you think people will leave their bank account for 3% rewards in stable coins? I mean, that doesn't even beat actual inflation for the goods you actually buy in your day to day life. I guess it's better than nothing. But is this really a thing? Are people going to go to these quasi casinos to put their savings account on there to get 3% back?

959
01:02:53,880 --> 01:03:00,660
there's other products in the market that are better and produce better yields with established

960
01:03:00,660 --> 01:03:08,720
financial institutions i'm genuinely not clear i mean maybe kids maybe kids democratize the

961
01:03:08,720 --> 01:03:12,760
financial systems uh but we're going to get this bill across the finish line but i would say

962
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:17,640
when hopefully by april hopefully by april i was going to say because if you you don't

963
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:22,940
buy the midterms and then the house goes democrat then what happens to it uh well the house isn't

964
01:03:22,940 --> 01:03:27,420
going to go Democrat in the Senate. People say, well, the election is not today. We're going to

965
01:03:27,420 --> 01:03:31,780
win because look at the end of the day. All right. He goes into campaign robot mode. But your buddy,

966
01:03:31,900 --> 01:03:37,840
Scotty B, the Treasury Secretary, he said something that caught my attention. He said that passing

967
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:45,280
the Clarity Act would bring comfort to the market. The overall crypto community. So in a time when we

968
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:52,720
are having one of these historically volatile sell-offs, I think some clarity on the clarity

969
01:03:52,720 --> 01:03:59,360
bill would give great comfort to the market and we could move forward from there. So it's very

970
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:06,240
important to get this done. And I think if the Democrats were to take the House, which is

971
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:13,380
far from my best case, then the prospects of getting a deal done will just fall apart. I mean,

972
01:04:13,380 --> 01:04:16,600
Look what the Democrats did to crypto under the Biden administration.

973
01:04:16,980 --> 01:04:18,820
It was almost an extinction event.

974
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:23,960
And President Trump has worked to make the U.S. the digital asset capital of the world.

975
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:30,240
There's a lot of innovation that goes on adjacent to crypto in the blockchain, in DeFi.

976
01:04:30,620 --> 01:04:37,180
So I think it's important to get this clarity bill done as soon as possible and on the president's desk this spring.

977
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:38,860
It's funny how, oh, this spring.

978
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:42,100
It's funny how they drop in DeFi there, like they have any idea, right?

979
01:04:42,100 --> 01:04:45,840
And honestly, guys, we want the market to be comfortable, right?

980
01:04:46,180 --> 01:04:47,040
Heaven forbid.

981
01:04:47,700 --> 01:04:50,520
Heaven forbid the market was uncomfortable.

982
01:05:06,420 --> 01:05:07,320
All right.

983
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:09,120
Final clip of the week time.

984
01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:13,220
And I'm playing a classic because it's so relevant today.

985
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:29,199
This clip shows us no matter how educated somebody is no matter how deep they are in the financial system it can be extremely difficult for them to understand Bitcoin In fact it can be an impairment to understanding Bitcoin

986
01:05:29,559 --> 01:05:32,719
And it takes these folks a really long time to wrap their heads around it.

987
01:05:33,059 --> 01:05:37,799
And that's why some people that seem like they're the smartest financial people still don't get it.

988
01:05:38,099 --> 01:05:42,259
And I love this clip because this is Professor Tad Smith, and he talks about his journey.

989
01:05:42,619 --> 01:05:44,899
And I think he's qualified to talk about this.

990
01:05:46,019 --> 01:05:54,719
I didn't realize that if the average year the money printer goes, call it 8% to 10%,

991
01:05:54,719 --> 01:06:01,719
even in the Western countries, even in the OECD nations, and the average return on the S&P 500

992
01:06:01,719 --> 01:06:09,939
is, call it 9-ish percent, including dividends, maybe 9.7, maybe a little less, that it means

993
01:06:09,939 --> 01:06:16,979
that all of the work of the S&P 500, all of the value created there is actually the money printer.

994
01:06:18,179 --> 01:06:26,599
That to me was startling. I mean, to think about that, the fundamental notion that in a closed

995
01:06:26,599 --> 01:06:30,219
system or even an open system, when you're printing money at the rate of 8% to 10% a year,

996
01:06:30,839 --> 01:06:36,979
everything is losing value. And the things that appear to be gaining value are not gaining value.

997
01:06:37,759 --> 01:06:39,419
They're just keeping you even.

998
01:06:39,679 --> 01:06:43,879
So you can put all your money in the S&P 500 and you're not gaining any relative wealth

999
01:06:43,879 --> 01:06:44,239
at all.

1000
01:06:44,899 --> 01:06:46,279
That's a startling insight.

1001
01:06:46,499 --> 01:06:51,339
I mean, when you really think about the entire value of the S&P 500 on average over a long

1002
01:06:51,339 --> 01:06:54,839
period of time, not even a long period of time, is equivalent to the money printer.

1003
01:06:55,599 --> 01:06:57,419
That's to me a shock.

1004
01:06:57,419 --> 01:07:06,239
And it was a shock that said, oh my goodness, how do you think about creating wealth that

1005
01:07:06,239 --> 01:07:12,719
is relatively greater in this economy and you have to look hard. The other thing you can imagine is I

1006
01:07:12,719 --> 01:07:16,779
could tell you about sharp ratios and diversification. I could tell you all these different things.

1007
01:07:18,239 --> 01:07:25,099
And, you know, it's interesting. You can take a concept like diversification of risk and at a top

1008
01:07:25,099 --> 01:07:31,399
level, it can be a very powerful and useful tool. But if you are so focused on the mechanistic

1009
01:07:31,399 --> 01:07:38,599
aspect of that, you can step back and miss the forest, which is in a highly diversified portfolio,

1010
01:07:39,439 --> 01:07:47,099
it's unbelievably hard to pick up relative amounts of wealth. It is. Diversifying your portfolio,

1011
01:07:47,339 --> 01:07:53,459
however you do it, is by and large going to reduce your incremental gain in wealth,

1012
01:07:53,759 --> 01:07:58,919
irrespective of the Sharpe ratio. It's concentration of capital in specific bets

1013
01:07:58,919 --> 01:08:03,739
that outperform the money printer where you actually create wealth. That was a shock to me.

1014
01:08:04,179 --> 01:08:10,479
I just didn't get it. I didn't understand it. Even though I taught finance for 20 plus years,

1015
01:08:10,519 --> 01:08:14,599
I'm still a professor at NYU Stern at Stern Business School. I've taught strategy and finance

1016
01:08:14,599 --> 01:08:18,939
for technology and media entertainment companies. I'm on a two-year hire atus, but I'll be presumably

1017
01:08:18,939 --> 01:08:25,959
going back in the spring. For 25 years, I have almost actually more than 1,000 former students.

1018
01:08:25,959 --> 01:08:28,779
and I still didn't get it until I'm age 58.

1019
01:08:29,279 --> 01:08:30,259
That's the Bitcoin journey.

1020
01:08:41,199 --> 01:08:46,079
All right, I am wrapping up at block height 937,286.

1021
01:08:46,739 --> 01:08:52,079
Bitcoin's priced to US dollars right now, 66,321 Bitcoin.

1022
01:08:53,019 --> 01:08:53,599
All right.

1023
01:08:53,599 --> 01:08:56,639
That makes our sats per dollar 1,508.

1024
01:08:56,879 --> 01:08:58,319
1,500 sats to $1.

1025
01:08:59,139 --> 01:09:02,499
We are down 47.4% from our all-time high,

1026
01:09:02,999 --> 01:09:09,379
which was $126,180 135 days ago, October 6th, 2025.

1027
01:09:10,179 --> 01:09:13,119
Our difficulty retarget date, February 19th.

1028
01:09:13,519 --> 01:09:16,879
An estimated upward adjustment of 14.4%.

1029
01:09:16,879 --> 01:09:19,239
Oh, we should have got our mining pool going, boys.

1030
01:09:19,459 --> 01:09:20,459
It's getting up there.

1031
01:09:21,139 --> 01:09:21,939
That's a big jump.

1032
01:09:21,939 --> 01:09:25,119
That might change a little bit.

1033
01:09:25,279 --> 01:09:26,239
That might change a little bit.

1034
01:09:26,279 --> 01:09:26,599
I don't know.

1035
01:09:27,039 --> 01:09:27,639
That's a big one.

1036
01:09:29,559 --> 01:09:30,919
Well, I'm looking at the total nodes.

1037
01:09:31,159 --> 01:09:31,939
Everything's looking really good.

1038
01:09:31,979 --> 01:09:34,039
I'd love to see more nodes, but we've gone up a tick.

1039
01:09:34,039 --> 01:09:37,939
25,207 Bitcoin nodes out there.

1040
01:09:38,799 --> 01:09:40,779
The transaction fees are crazy right now.

1041
01:09:40,859 --> 01:09:45,659
Just a big, huge, expensive one sat for a VBite.

1042
01:09:45,939 --> 01:09:46,539
What's that?

1043
01:09:46,839 --> 01:09:47,819
All across the board.

1044
01:09:48,359 --> 01:09:50,879
For quick, low, fast, high.

1045
01:09:50,879 --> 01:09:51,139
Hi.

1046
01:09:51,739 --> 01:09:52,559
Cheese is bad.

1047
01:09:53,119 --> 01:09:55,499
I mean, gosh, clearly the spam's a real issue.

1048
01:09:56,259 --> 01:09:58,719
I think the blockchain is doing just fine.

1049
01:09:58,719 --> 01:10:28,218
well if you made it this far links at this week in bitcoin this was episode 93 The whole back catalog is there Maybe you could go find the last time I played that clip of the week

1050
01:10:28,618 --> 01:10:30,658
I hope you got what you needed from today's episode.

1051
01:10:30,918 --> 01:10:33,138
I try to focus on the signal as much as possible,

1052
01:10:33,358 --> 01:10:36,798
even though it gets a little tough when things are a little existential.

1053
01:10:37,058 --> 01:10:39,118
That is my job, and I try to get you the information,

1054
01:10:39,318 --> 01:10:41,478
and I will have great links for you in the show notes too.

1055
01:10:41,818 --> 01:10:43,818
Let me know how you think I did on that with a boost as well.

1056
01:10:43,818 --> 01:10:48,838
And I'd love to see you in Pasadena around March 5th to the 9th-ish.

1057
01:10:48,998 --> 01:10:53,038
We'll be at Planet Nix and at Scale, the Southern California Linux Expo.

1058
01:10:53,278 --> 01:10:56,838
Biggest Linux event in the North America area.

1059
01:10:56,938 --> 01:10:57,838
So we'd love to see you there.

1060
01:10:58,238 --> 01:11:00,638
Meetup.com slash Jupyter Broadcasting is where I have the details.

1061
01:11:00,738 --> 01:11:03,298
Even if you can't be at the event, I'd love to see you at the meetup if you're in the area.

1062
01:11:03,738 --> 01:11:05,278
Because I just love talking Bitcoin.

1063
01:11:05,958 --> 01:11:07,838
All right, I'm going to leave you with a track.

1064
01:11:07,838 --> 01:11:13,738
Of course, if you boost during this track, then 95% of the sats will go to the artist.

1065
01:11:13,818 --> 01:11:18,418
And this week, it's Radio Brigade by Mellow Cassette.

1066
01:11:43,818 --> 01:11:47,698
I'm not saying that it's fair

1067
01:11:47,698 --> 01:11:49,778
Just saying where the smoke

1068
01:11:49,778 --> 01:11:52,098
There's probably ashes too

1069
01:11:52,098 --> 01:11:55,038
My mind was on the fight

1070
01:11:55,038 --> 01:11:57,098
I followed you all night

1071
01:11:57,098 --> 01:11:59,258
God let me make this right

1072
01:11:59,258 --> 01:12:02,138
God let me make this better

1073
01:12:02,138 --> 01:12:03,658
Off its head

1074
01:12:03,658 --> 01:12:05,778
The light is thought you'd tread

1075
01:12:05,778 --> 01:12:07,938
Yeah, it's my fault I fed

1076
01:12:07,938 --> 01:12:10,738
Into a heart worth breaking

1077
01:12:10,738 --> 01:12:12,478
Oh yeah

1078
01:12:12,478 --> 01:12:15,498
The only trick in the book

1079
01:12:15,498 --> 01:12:17,898
Yeah, I am a begging for more

1080
01:12:17,898 --> 01:12:23,818
Alright, I'll give the old pain back a try

1081
01:12:23,818 --> 01:12:26,438
But no one here listens to this for

1082
01:12:42,478 --> 01:12:50,378
Let's call this what it is

1083
01:12:50,378 --> 01:12:54,298
An imitation powder keg with fierce despair

1084
01:12:54,298 --> 01:12:59,178
You can light it all you want

1085
01:12:59,178 --> 01:13:03,598
But the radio brigade reclaims her rightful air

1086
01:13:03,598 --> 01:13:06,358
Say what you want this time

1087
01:13:06,358 --> 01:13:08,518
Can't reach your goddamn mind

1088
01:13:08,518 --> 01:13:10,658
It's not my job to fight

1089
01:13:10,658 --> 01:13:14,998
It's not my job to tell you who to trust

1090
01:13:14,998 --> 01:13:17,158
So how to wheel back crutch

1091
01:13:17,158 --> 01:13:19,298
Just breathe out thought for once

1092
01:13:19,298 --> 01:13:24,398
And let the full church circle open in

1093
01:13:24,398 --> 01:13:26,838
The oldest trick in the book

1094
01:13:26,838 --> 01:13:29,218
Here I am, I'm begging for more

1095
01:13:29,218 --> 01:13:35,178
Alright, I'll give the old group a try

1096
01:13:35,178 --> 01:13:37,798
But no one here is going to the score

1097
01:13:40,658 --> 01:14:10,638
We'll be right back.

1098
01:14:10,658 --> 01:14:40,638
Thank you.

1099
01:14:40,658 --> 01:14:42,518
The oldest trick in the book.

1100
01:14:42,598 --> 01:14:43,358
Here I am.

1101
01:14:43,438 --> 01:14:44,858
I'm begging for more.

1102
01:14:47,378 --> 01:14:50,058
Lord, I'll give the old pain.

1103
01:14:50,138 --> 01:14:50,858
Make me try.

1104
01:14:50,958 --> 01:14:53,478
But no one really screams you the score.

1105
01:15:10,658 --> 01:15:22,978
S20