Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 108.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
You know the old saying, the best time to buy is when everyone else is selling.
Now, I will admit, short term, I'm bracing myself.
Long term, though, I think the signal's never been more clear.
And I really mean that.
Everyone's distracted by a bunch of short term stuff.
But what I see being set up for the long term just makes the case for Bitcoin even stronger.
So I would like to share what I'm seeing with you and try to make that case today.
Breaking news, the Consumer Price Index for May shows the highest inflation reading in more than three years.
Prices rose 4.2% over the past year.
Financial analyst at Bankrate, Stephen Cates, is here with more.
Stephen, what stands out to you when you dig into this report?
Well, it's energy prices, really.
I mean, not that it's a surprise.
We knew that this was going to be high, but we've seen a 40% increase year over year for gasoline.
And obviously that's hitting people right in the wallet.
Oh, yeah.
So the CPI for May came in at 4.2%, like you said, mostly from energy.
If we were to just say zoom out, as they like to say, that's a 97% loss in purchasing power
since 1913, the founding of the Fed, and an 88% loss in purchasing power since 1971,
the closing of the gold window.
Now, that is just going by government numbers.
not using shadow stats or trueflation or any other calculation method.
That's just by going modern CPI measurements,
an 88% loss in purchasing power since 1971.
And here we are now with this two-week war that is over 100 days and 15 weeks long,
and prices are up.
It's impacting inflation and things, you know, they're not great in the States,
but whoa, are they getting a lot more serious in other parts of the West?
Jeff Carey of Carlyle writes in this,
The cost of rebuilding and recovering from the Hormuz shock will be enormous and underscores
the regime change towards physical assets.
Jeff joins us now for more.
Jeff, welcome to the program.
It's always good to catch up with you, sir.
Fluid environment.
So allow me to go through the headline of the last five or 10 minutes or so.
One headline, one report coming from Iran that their energy assets have been struck.
Now, I have limited information beyond that.
But Jeff, from your standpoint, in the week since we last spoke, has this got worse or
better?
Worse.
I like to call it molecular contagion.
You know, last week we were talking about shortages in Singapore.
You know, prices of jet fuel spiked to $230 a barrel.
This week, you know, it's in Rotterdam.
Rotterdam's $220 a barrel.
Thailand, Philippines, New Zealand, Australia.
So this thing's going intercontinental.
And, you know, so you look at Singapore, Rotterdam, the spread, there's no more price spread.
There's no more spare barrels.
There's no policy fix.
And it's just physics at this point.
I want to emphasize these are physical supply chains and that the idea of around financialization and the ability to print money doesn't apply here.
And I think the title of that piece says it all. You can't print molecules.
Jeff, with that in mind, where and how do you think we're underpricing this risk still in financial markets?
That's the peculiar thing about this is that you look at the paper markets, they've entirely disconnected from the physical markets.
Crude oil on an Oman basis, you know, on the other side of the straight, the side that's free, spiked to $173 a barrel yesterday.
Crude delivered in Asia is a blend.
Dubai and Oman, which is trading somewhere around $130 and $170.
Today, this morning, they're one, call it $120 to $150.
So you're delivering crude into Asia at somewhere around $130 a barrel.
Product prices are spiraling above $200 a barrel.
So the disconnect is between the paper market, which is sitting around 100, and the physical market, which is showing a very different environment.
That seems to be maybe the first signs of some instability there.
Now, how all of this plays out will have major external factor impact on Bitcoin.
And if that energy situation isn't enough of a tug on Bitcoin right now in the short term, you know, in times like these, good news also can be bad news, at least short term, for Bitcoin.
The labor market surprised economists in May with employers adding more than jobs than expected.
The unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.3 percent.
But the report also signals growing pressure on wallets as higher prices continue to make it harder to keep up with everyday costs.
Gas prices fueled those hikes, raising questions about where spending is headed.
Consumer buying power is contracting, not improving.
And we know that when we look at surveys of Americans, you've sort of got competition for their biggest economic worries between essentially inflation or affordability.
The combination of accelerating inflation and robust labor market makes it less likely that the Federal Reserve will announce an interest rate cut later this month.
Oh, and thus we have yet another short-term drag.
So we've got the situation with Iran in the strait and energy.
And we've got this problem here in the States.
Now, Canada's bank just today decided to keep rates where they're at.
So there's one major Western bank that's just holding rates.
We're now on the precipice.
There's a June rate decision coming up.
And we have higher energy prices.
We have reported lower unemployment.
And now Polymark is showing a 99% chance that the Fed just doesn't do anything with rates in June.
And next week, we have a new Fed chair that takes the public stage for the first time.
SpaceX is going to obviously occupy this week.
But next week, Warsh's meeting.
Wow, I don't remember one.
I mean, you have to go back years, if not decades, to get something that to me is going to be more interesting and more impactful than what he's going to say.
But no one would really hold it against Joe Warsh if he didn't do what President Trump obviously wants so much, and that's lower rates.
because things have changed and the bond market itself can dictate what's possible for the Fed to do.
And it certainly doesn't look like interest rate cuts are coming anytime soon.
I mean, the 10-year is the ultimate arbiter. You're absolutely right.
But do you notice that even a tone change of President Trump from, you know, a month or two ago,
oh, we definitely have to lower rates almost to saying, hey, just don't raise rates.
I think his last statement was, I don't think we should raise rates.
They sort of maybe we could keep them the way they are.
And clearly, I mean, next week he's not going to raise or lower rates.
But I mean, what is he going to map out?
I mean, he is going to change communications, going to eliminate the dot plots.
I mean, I mean, a new agenda is going to be announced.
He gave us really not a lot of clues coming into him.
No speech before the quiet period, which we're in right now.
So really, it's a big reveal.
And that unfortunately does have an impact on Bitcoin.
Again, these are external factors that affect liquidity in the market that have an impact
on Bitcoin.
And what comes out in that meeting next week is going to impact Bitcoin, at least in the
short term.
Again, this is my short term part.
we're getting to the long-term part.
I'm building the short-term bearish thesis.
I can't even get myself to say it.
I think the reason why I'm trying to prep you
is it's unlikely there's gonna be
a lot of change at the Fed very fast.
It's not an institution that does anything quick.
And I'm not the one saying that
somebody who probably knows how these things work
because he secretly kind of controls the entire cartel
is Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan.
And during a little Q&A on May 9th,
And he laid out why he thinks we should be just prepared to wait for any kind of real change at the Fed.
I think he'll do a good job.
Now, I don't think it's in the market what he can do.
Because remember, he's one person.
He's walking in a room probably right now.
There are 12 people at the table.
They're smart people.
They're mostly economists.
And they're going to say, you know, Kevin, we'd like to hear your ideas.
And let's think about it.
Let's review these things.
So it's going to take study.
They're going to take time.
So there's almost no chance he can actually change anything in six months.
And he needs the time.
So in the meantime, the environment change that he's entering into.
Yeah, it does indeed.
So let's get into that because I think that sets up the long-term case.
last week i talked about just the staggering profits that xai open ai ananthropic all
individually need to reach in just the next few years to justify the valuations we're seeing in
the ipo market and justify the money that they are just soaking out of the market and even if
they're successful, I would suggest to you that it doesn't really matter long term, not for Bitcoin.
Even if they pull it off and each one become about the size of Microsoft in just a few years,
which I laid out the numbers for last week, I still think Bitcoin would be a better long term
bet. It's funny, too, because I've talked to people and said, boy, if I had a time machine,
I'd go back in time and I'd buy Apple stock and Google stock. Well, here we are. These companies
are promising you in five years, they're going to be the size of the iPhone. They're going to be
the size of Microsoft. If that's true, there's almost something that inevitably will happen
that'll still be bullish for Bitcoin. Because we live in a time, my friends, of fiscal dominance.
The lever you have pulled breaks is not in service. And in a period of fiscal dominance,
governments almost always take a active role in the private markets. We're already seeing it
happen. So the chances of the U.S. government getting involved and screwing things up,
they go up the more successful these companies are. And it won't matter which political party
is in charge because populism is on the rise. And this problem, whatever the people identify,
must be solved. And one of those problems right now that the people have identified
is in fact AI and data centers.
Getting some news on SpaceX this morning.
One prominent senator now calling for an IPO delay.
Our Eamon Javers has that for us.
Eamon, a 12-page letter here, heavily footnoted.
Yeah, good morning, Carl.
This is a letter from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren
to the commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission
asking the commission to delay Friday's SpaceX IPO,
citing investor protection concerns.
Elizabeth Warren in this letter
citing a number of factors she says warrant a delay in the IPO, including the company's
valuations. She says market analysts have raised concerns about the math underlying SpaceX's target
valuation. She raises concerns about governance structure, saying publicly traded companies are
meant to be accountable to their shareholders. The SpaceX IPO will flip this model on its head
with shareholders providing billions of dollars in new capital with no accountability measures
for Mr. Musk or company leadership.
And she's expressing concerns here about passive investors,
saying the SpaceX IPO creates a new concern
that major stock market indexes are being rigged
in a way that would force millions of investors
in passive index funds,
a generally lower cost investment option
that can be attractive to retail investors
to invest in SpaceX and face exposure
to SpaceX's significant risk with no choice in the matter.
So tell us how you really feel, Liz.
this is such a savvy and cynical thing that she does. This is peak Elizabeth Warren right here.
We're watching it right here. We're witnessing it right now. And that is she knows nothing's
going to happen. It's going to this thing goes live on Friday of this week. You don't you don't
stop it now. Right. But that's going to look really good to the base. Number one, that's going to look
great to the base. Number two, if this thing does go sideways now, she's on record beforehand saying,
hey, don't do it. And if it doesn't go sideways, it'll be forgotten. And at most, it'll just be her
being precautious, being careful, being concerned. So there's really no downside to it. But it is an
example as they become bigger and bigger money targets, they're going to just face more and more
pressure. And it isn't just going to be from the left. This is going to be a bipartisan problem
these AI companies are going to deal with. This is a clip of Arthur Hayes, and he's pointing out
how political pressure could be a thing from the right, or really any halfwit politician
that tunes into populism and figures out which way the crowd's going.
So it's a great message.
And so my theory is that if Trump wants to pull a rabbit out of a hat, the only issue
that he can really flip-flop on is AI, at least temporarily.
And basically take the Democrat talking point and say, yes, we're going to do more terms
on data centers We going to create a national dividend for AI tax them whatever the fuck right Just you know Trump being Trump he say a bunch of shit whether or not he actually does it after November you know questionable And so I think that this is the only way that
they can, they have a chance of winning is to really just change the narrative on AI and be
the party that's all about protecting Americans from AI. And the Americans will forget that they're
the ones who finance the whole thing anyways, because people are stupid. And so that's,
I think, the main risk. And again, the desire of Trump to go after AI is purely predicated on the
price of oil, which also reflects the relationship between him and the IRTC. So the longer this war
goes on without a resolution and we build up this essentially further down the road, price
spiking commodities, the higher the chance that Trump goes after AI, I think, in a way to win the
election for, at least in the House, for the Republicans. And obviously, if there's one thing
that's, you know, catastrophic for the AI narrative, it's taxation and regulation. We saw that in
Korea and Korean politician came out. So we, there should be some sort of national AI tax.
Cosby was limit down that day, if today. And so I think if this rhetoric starts being espoused by
the leading party, especially by Trump, you're going to see the AI bubble pop, at least
for the next, you know, through the election. And I don't know, I'm not actually saying this
is going to happen. But I think what Arthur is laying out is a conceivable way even a pro-AI
politician could turn. And I think it could even start in small and understandable ways. In fact,
maybe it already has. There was a recent executive order from the White House that says that they get
30 days to review frontier models. It's voluntary. But think about the motivation behind it.
How did they pivot from we don't want to slow down, we're competing with China, to let's give
us 30 days to review these models before they go public. It's to cover their butts. It's in case
some massive thing does develop, some cyber vulnerability gets discovered, some AI-related
event that would be bad. The White House can't be seen as doing nothing, or even worse, perhaps
enabling it. So just out of political cover and caution and sensible, good, common-sense steps,
these things begin to shift.
What's happening right now is that AI has become the new climate change.
It's this imminent catastrophe that is requiring all this government intervention.
But there's very little evidence to support it.
And look, we're open to evidence.
If there's actually a problem, we should do something about it.
But I don't think we should do it in this knee-jerk way.
And you are seeing a lot of that.
The Trump administration is pushing for a more unified approach to artificial intelligence,
reportedly working with lawmakers on a deal that could override some state AI laws.
The proposal would pair a federal standard with some Capitol Hill priorities
like child safety protections and deepfake safeguards.
OK, Liz.
Now, this is a great example of a risk scenario that Bitcoin just doesn't have to worry about.
The scenario of massive success and then the government gets involved
and starts creating new rules and things like that.
And then what eventually happens
is it picks winners and losers in the market,
especially in a fiscal dominant environment.
Just go play around with your favorite chat machine
and explore that topic.
So that is a headwind long-term
that Bitcoin simply won't face.
But even if the political climate
doesn't distort this market,
which almost seems impossible in modern times,
but even if somehow the current political situation
doesn't bleed into the market
and these AI companies are able to really rip
Well, you know, let's say the other thesis is true that thus then they rip like crazy and they just totally go nuts in the market and are massively successful.
Well, for a for that period of time, the Bitcoin is going to look really stupid.
They're going to look really stupid.
But think about the end scenario there, because if these A.I. companies are that successful, they are that successful because they have replaced workers, because they have replaced software companies and entire businesses.
that's also not going to be very good for the market.
This is Jordi Visor on Pomp's podcast.
Give investments and I think of the future.
I have a belief on what I think will happen.
I don't think investing in the S&P 500 is safe past 2030.
I've said that repeatedly
because I think AI will disrupt all companies.
So for me, I don't think Apple's safe.
I don't think Google's safe.
I don't think Amazon's safe.
So when people look at Bitcoin
and they don't think it's safe,
I understand that that's their belief.
The question is, have they fought a lot about the future? Because one of the reasons that I think Bitcoin is safe is because the consumer, human beings will not be consuming more than AI agents in a short amount of time. It came out on Exus Week that there are more AI agents on HTML sites than humans. Like this is where we're headed.
So if you think the world of human beings is going to dominate commerce, it's not. It's AI agents. So if you ask me what is a direct play on that, I believe Bitcoin is a direct play on agents dominating humans going forward.
Now, what he means by that is these companies value, the stock is not going to hold up in value for all these other companies that these agents are replacing the functionality for.
And I think there is something to this theory that if these companies are super successful, it destroys the rest of the market in its wake and then thus probably creates the situation where there needs to be even more government money printing and debasement and creates a very bullish scenario for Bitcoin long term.
So that seems to be, so there's the short-term things that seem to be freaking people out
and getting people to run from Bitcoin, sell it, and try to buy AI stocks.
But not everybody is making that play.
We've probably unfortunately noticed that since October, the average folks, they're out.
They're out. They've been spooked. This has worked for them. They're on the prediction markets. They're trying to buy stock, things like that.
That's pretty common in a bear market. Really, it is pretty common to see that kind of rotation.
And the media always gets really hostile during these times. They just flip. They go from, you know, kind of getting it to or starting to get it to just forgetting everything and just going hostile to all the old talking points.
and it's always the same.
You always have the regular folk, they bail.
They don't stack when the price is low.
They wait for the price to get really high again.
They don't like cheap Bitcoin, I guess.
And then you got the media.
They just are always the same.
So that's, you know, almost like comfort food
during a bear market, I suppose, for me at this point.
But I've noticed something different this time.
Big money is buying the dip.
Big money has more conviction than ever.
while the plebs are panicking and selling, not us plebs, obviously.
People don't listen to this podcast.
So let's start here with Matthew Siegel.
I like him because he really does seem to do his homework,
and he's the head of digital asset research at VanEck.
Not only does he do a good job of pushing back on the hosts
that are just, you know, all anti-crypto, anti-Bitcoin now,
but I think he kind of sneaks in there a good long-term message.
I'm not sure if they hear it, but I like it.
But what if this time is fundamentally different?
And I know it doesn't feel good to sell at 60 when you could have sold at 120.
But do you think we're going back up to those old highs?
This time is fundamentally the same, which is that there's a four-year cycle to this asset.
It's highly cyclical.
There's no buyer of last resort.
And right now you have a narrative and a reality in the market around AI, which is going parabolic.
And it's sucking up investment capital.
And it's literally competing with existing software platforms, including these open source networks.
The buyer of last resort was kind of supposed to be Michael Saylor.
I don't get too concerned with leveraged entities that buy and sell these cryptos.
It'll feel good on the way up.
But when you have a downdraft.
Since when is that true?
The buyer of last resort is supposed to be Michael Saylor.
You know, there are other treasury companies.
There are other whales.
Remember how SpaceX has 18,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet?
Remember how there's other companies that are doing this?
Remember how there's people that just stack Bitcoin?
Like, it's just, they just make these assumptions in so confidently.
entities that buy and sell these crowds, it'll get on the way up. When you have a down draft,
you know, those leverage entities will get washed out. And that's kind of what's happening to
MicroStrategy at the moment. If we look forward six months, 12 years, eventually these paramount
are worth more ease. Capital will rotate back to the software platforms that have real utility
that are selling at a reasonable discount. And, you know, we'll see what Q4 looks to us like a time
when you want to have a full position,
the market will be discounting the election outcome.
We'll be able to focus on some of the money printing
that will continue to be so compelling
as an adoption story.
And when it got so mainstream,
the president was up there racing it in the grid.
It can't be more mainstream than that.
And it's hard to imagine ever reaching
that level of adoption velocity again.
Well, I mean, we think that this will become
a mainstream asset that will compete
with other reserves selling currencies.
There's two central banks that are buying Bitcoin.
There's a number of sovereign wealth funds.
This is the time of the market
when the weekends are kicking Bitcoin
and chasing AI and like, let's talk
and say, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Man, how bad
that a family is in the background.
She's so professional.
What was baked into her
question there was an assumption that
in order for Bitcoin to get adoption, it needs
to have a high level of the president up on the
stage promoting it.
She doesn't fundamentally understand
the value. Again, because they're not really thinking
about currency debasement.
They're not thinking about long-term store value, right?
They're thinking about minute-to-minute trades, really.
But I think Matthew was right.
He said, focus on the money printing,
getting past the election, those kinds of things.
I think there was some signal there.
And over at Charlie Schwab,
they're framing Bitcoin's value around energy.
Now, I don't think this is in a theory
to go 100% in on, but it is worth listening to.
And the other thing to consider is
a Bitcoin value pinned to energy
that's a topic that really clicks right now in this particular moment.
Speculation, mining, whatever.
Let me go back to Raphael Hour 101.
What's the underlying?
Apple's underlying is the expectation of free cash flow.
The underlying of the Knicks is Brunson's going to get it done.
So he's asking, you know, what's the underlying value of Bitcoin?
Like it's this classic, does it generate revenue?
Apple generates revenue.
What about revenue?
What's the underlying of Bitcoin?
Energy.
It costs money to produce Bitcoin.
And every, our entire framework for investing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies comes down to minor metrics.
There are energy costs and infrastructure costs associated with producing Bitcoin.
In any product, theoretically, the price of a product should be at a premium to the cost of producing it.
And so we can see this.
We know for the best miners, those that have the cheapest energy costs and the most advanced fleets of ASICs, they produce Bitcoin at about $60,000 per Bitcoin.
Really?
Yeah.
So historically.
I haven't heard that data point ever in my discussion of crypto.
So what is it?
Blowing this guy's mind right now.
He's blowing this guy's mind, this Bloomberg analyst.
The other thing to consider in this moment is energy is becoming a harder and harder currency.
I mean, we just talked about this earlier.
It's like this matters more maybe than it ever has.
I don't love this theory because it kind of undersells how much pain miners can try to endure.
They seem to do that.
But I do think there's something to it.
So historically—
I haven't heard that data point ever in my discussion of crypto.
So what does that mean within the Chicago price theory?
Well, the Seton Hall price theory of this.
If $60,000 is my manufacturing cost, what does it mean for price?
Are we going to go under $60,000?
The answer is yes.
Well, first, let me point out, as a Seton Hall grad, it's important to think about what this has done historically.
In deep bear markets, for those top producing miners, their cost of production has served as a bottom.
them. The average miner today, it costs them $95,000 to produce Bitcoin. They have higher
energy costs. They have less efficient ASICs. And so they temporarily shut down operations when it
becomes less profitable. I love it that he's blowing those guys' mind. That's great. Now,
our next analyst that we're going to get to is Eric B. from Bloomberg. You know him. He was
early into accurate on the money with the Bitcoin ETF story. And he's looking at this not from
spot Bitcoin, as they would call it, you know, us just buying the corn directly.
He's looking at this from what do we need to see from the market to get the next wave
of ETF buyers?
And it's worth thinking about that just simply because the ETF ins and outs do have a major
impact on a new form of adoption and price.
The only thing I do worry about, and I think this is something where the industry itself
has to kind of figure this out, is the messaging shouldn't only be
hey, the boomers are coming.
That makes it seem more Ponzi-ish,
like we just need more investors.
I think the message is that the fundamental purpose
and value here is that the government is gonna print money like crazy no matter who president And if you want a hedge something that the government cannot debase this is a powerful asset for that similar to gold
Got it right there.
And as they start to understand, that market will develop.
And Coinbase's head of institutional strategy says,
all right, well, the individuals might be struggling to figure it out right now,
but let me tell you what, as somebody who's helping these transactions actually be possible,
he is seeing more buying than ever.
The way he frames it is the really big whales that are in, they're getting into Bitcoin with actual conviction now.
They like Bitcoin at 60,000.
Said what I can tell you is I have the luxury of speaking to institutional investors.
They've put months and years into looking at this asset class.
So when they do that and it's cheaper, they like it.
Some have a price target, some don't.
Some are long-term accumulators.
I just got off a plane from the Middle East, and I can tell you that the family offices in the UAE and the government and sovereign funds that are putting the effort into buying this asset class are not unhappy at being able to buy it at a discount.
I get the luxury of seeing the institutional piping that's building and supporting Bitcoin and other crypto assets in good price markets and bad price markets.
And what's kind of interesting is if I compare where we are now with the last time, one or two times before I was on your show, in a much more bullish price environment, we have shockingly stronger level of infrastructure than we did at that time.
So that's what the institutional investors are looking for.
But I will say even retail, we're still at about $100 billion of Bitcoin ETF exposure.
Just think about that.
This is a very, very new product.
The prices drop almost 50% from the peak, and we've only seen about 15% drawdown in the retail interest.
So I think both retail and institutional are signaling this is a long-term asset you want to hold.
Only a 15% drawdown in the ETF surprised me, especially with guys like Peter Schiff saying,
oh, they're all going to sell and bring it down to zero.
Then later in that interview, CNBC Joe there tried to rattle down a list of five things he thinks are dragging down the Bitcoin price to see what Coinbase's John says.
Joe only got to four and then kind of ran out and it was the things we've talked about. But I did
like I did like John's response to it. Pull back. I can come up with a couple. I mean, you got,
you know, risk off. People want to maybe invest in other things. So you sell what's liquid if you
want to go into some hot IPO. Interest rates are not coming down perhaps anytime soon. And they've
been going up. So the whole debasement trade maybe makes less sense. Is clarity bogged down?
at this point. Michael Saylor finally sold a small amount of Bitcoin, but he said he'd never sell.
And that's four. I'm sure I could come up with a fifth. Am I missing anything?
No, you've hit the big four that I think the consensus rationale is behind. Look, Joe,
volatility is a funny thing, right? If I told you a year ago, we'd be 100 days into a war with Iran,
with the Strait of Hormuz being closed and no clear sight of line to it being opened,
would you think that crude would still be trading under 100 bucks a barrel?
Right. So when I think about these assets like Bitcoin, I think of them as commodities because
of my background. And volatility comes and goes. But these long duration assets that are good to
hold tend to stay popular with institutional investors. So I try not to stay up at night
thinking about reasons why. I do know it was a great asset to hold. It was a fantastic asset to
hold 10 years ago. It was a great asset to hold five years ago. And given the way the plumbing is
progressing, given the way market structure is moving, tax reform, which I know the only thing
less exciting than the words market structure or the words tax reform. But we have seven bills
circulating that will do great things for the institutional piping that supports Bitcoin and
other crypto assets. All right, forgive me. But speaking of taxes, let's just go there really
quick. Stick with me for a minute because I think it's going somewhere interesting. But just before
I recorded today, I think it was today, the U.S. Tax Committee, the U.S. House Tax Committee,
Congress creators that run the tax committee, as I would normally put it if I weren't on the show,
were holding a hearing on, quote, crypto tax reform.
I'll play you just a moment of the kickoff.
The committee will come to order.
Today marks the first legislative hearing in this committee in years,
which highlights the importance and complexity of digital asset taxation.
The digital asset status quo is untenable.
America needs clear tax rules of the road to remain the crypto capital of the world.
All right. And there was different representatives there.
You heard from the Coinbase guy just on CNBC.
They had a rep there pushing to remove taxes on smaller Bitcoin transactions for brokers.
While we strongly support the direction of the legislation,
we believe several targeted improvements would strengthen the final product.
First, Congress should go further by establishing a personal transaction de minimis exemption
for all digital assets, including Bitcoin.
Congressman Yakima's bill removes tax friction
on network fees,
but a consumer who uses Bitcoin to buy a pair of jeans
still has to calculate and report a capital gain.
That's not good tax policy.
Americans shouldn't need an accountant to buy jeans,
and the IRS doesn't benefit from tracking
millions of transactions that generate little or no revenue.
So we had Coinbase there.
We also had CoinCenter,
and CoinCenter's chief of policy was there,
and he brought his spicy pants.
Smith, ranking member Neil and members of the committee,
I thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Jason Samansato,
and I am the director of policy at CoinCenter,
a nonprofit focused on cryptocurrency
and public blockchain policy.
For several years, former Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, sent the IRS a letter
with his tax returns.
The 2014 version read,
as in prior years, I have absolutely no idea
whether our tax returns and tax payments are accurate.
This is amazing because I doubt Secretary Rumsfeld even used Bitcoin.
Taxes are already complex.
Crypto tax compliance is even harder, in part because our tax system assumes that most financial activity runs through intermediaries that can track, summarize, and report transactions for their customers.
That assumption may work tolerably well when the people use banks, brokers, and payment processors.
It breaks down when Americans use open cryptocurrency networks
that were designed to allow users to transact directly with each other.
I mean, I am glad somebody's there representing this.
So I have a question for you.
Wherever you live, in whichever country,
if your local government were to remove taxes on, let's say,
Bitcoin transactions under $1,000,
would you use Bitcoin for more day-to-day things?
Why or why not?
I think most times I would say no.
However, when money is really tight and, you know, it's like revenue for the business is down and, you know, it's been going like that for maybe six, seven months, you start thinking, oh, actually, maybe I will sell a little Bitcoin just to keep living, especially if this is going to be maybe, you know, one of the higher points of the year or not.
I mean, these are always factors you have to consider.
And it would be nice, like, say, I wanted to just cover a couple of bills, not to have to pay a capital gains tax on that.
So I think actually, honestly, I would probably spend more Bitcoin. Not a lot. And maybe not for like jeans, you know, and like coffee, as they like to say. But I think I would spend more Bitcoin. And I would probably spend larger amounts and try to do a lot less of the, you know, quickly in, quickly out kind of stuff.
So I'd like to know what you would do, boost in.
Would you sell a little more Bitcoin or would it not change it?
Doesn't matter where you live.
Would it change or would it not?
Or if somebody out there lives where you can already spend your Bitcoin for free, like in the El Salves or something, you can go ahead and boost in and rub that in as well.
You can also support the show just by doing what you do.
If you want to buy sats on river, one of the best ways to stack sats in the U.S.,
use my link in the show notes.
If you're all about self-custody and you're in the States and you're in Canada,
check out the Bitcoin Well, an amazing automatic self-custody platform.
They don't even have a wallet for you.
You host your own wallet, self-custody all the way.
If it's time to spend some of your sats and you want to go from sats to gift card in seconds
over the Lightning Network.
The Bitcoin company.
Hundreds of gift cards.
They only do Bitcoin.
You can log in with Lightning.
Now, Salt Lending.
I don't think they get enough love.
They got rug protection.
If the price drops,
they've got lower minimum loans
than just about anybody else
and very competitive rates.
I think Salt Lending is pretty good.
And you can get access
to your Bitcoin value
without selling it.
Just be sure you can cover
if the price goes down.
You know, and they'll help you.
They'll email you and stuff like that.
But you need to be careful.
You need to be careful.
But I know you're an adult.
Links to all of that.
Go get, oh, the Fold card too.
Stack sats while you pay your bills.
I got their new Visa card.
Stacking the sats that way too.
There's always multiple ways to stack sats.
Thank you everybody who supports the show
by doing what you do.
Four score and seven boosts ago.
It is time for some boosts
And I want to start by apologizing about last week.
You probably knew I could tell something was up,
but I didn't want to freak any of you out
if some of you thought you lost your sats.
It was my bad.
Your sats were received.
I messed up the report.
I don't know.
I guess I found the next thing
I should probably automate with the agents
because apparently I can't do it right.
So hopefully I snagged on your boost from last week
and I had incorporated it into this week's report.
If you don't hear it,
it just means I messed up again.
It doesn't mean your sats weren't received.
After all, I am mostly just an ugly bag of water.
So I apologize about that.
And let's make good by starting with Bitcoin Lizard, who came in with 50,000 sats.
He says, fellow listeners, we've got to pump these numbers up.
They were rookie numbers.
Ah, thanks, Bitcoin Lizard.
I love hearing from you.
Thank you for being our baller.
Appreciate you, sir.
Derivation Dingus comes in with 44,444 sats.
Great show as usual. Thanks for the value.
Even if Bitcoin is fiat for another quarter or two, tons of great work have been happening.
It just gives us plebs more time to DCA at super low prices.
You know, we like to say it in the Bitcoin community.
The fundamentals of Bitcoin haven't changed, right?
There hasn't been a compromise in the network.
There isn't some sort of issue with unlimited Bitcoin getting printed.
There isn't some sort of miner that has gone totally nuts.
There isn't a bunch of spam on the network.
Things are just steady.
But it's the fiat world around it, right?
Yep.
Thank you, derivation.
Good to hear from you.
Hodler's here with 33,000 sats.
Right on the money.
It's fun to imagine Bitcoin prices some crazy heights, he writes,
and I feel like everyone has at least thought about it at once.
I feel like it could easily happen in the next few decades
with the help of hyperinflation, of course.
You know, I have known a couple of rich people
over the years that like owned businesses
that I worked for as an IT contractor.
And they lived like they were dirt poor.
And then just recently,
I was watching an interview with a billionaire
who has all his assets in non-liquid things.
And he talked about how he's walking around
with like 10 grand in actual liquid cash.
On paper, he's worth like a billion something.
but on you know in the bank account he's got like 10 grand and in a way that's what us bitcoiners
are right now you know like on you know on paper potential future gains we might all be amongst
fellow millionaires here but today the liquid amount we can take out we're like that billionaire
walking around with ten thousand dollars of cash and i think that's actually more of the experience
of being asset rich than people talk about.
Being asset rich often means living thrifty
and trying to allocate to assets as you can.
You know, that's the whole idea of taking your work
and your energy today and storing it for future you to enjoy
and your family and to benefit others.
So this is a funny thing.
It's like none of that's changed.
It's mission is mission is normal.
Like we continue, right?
Keep on stacking.
Thank you, Hodler.
Appropriate name in that one.
I'd say SleazeStackSats.
Okay, SleazeStackSats.
Something like that.
SleazeStackSats.
I think it's something like that, right?
Something like that.
Comes in with 22,222 sats.
This old duck still got it.
First time using this app's wallet and boost features.
Hey!
Boost!
Hope this works.
Twib is my primary Bitcoin news podcast.
Your balance on economy, Bitcoin, and relevant current events is perfs.
Don't change a thing.
But dragging my feet on boosting because lightning is unfamiliar territory for me.
It worked!
Yeah, Fountain's got a nice lightning
wallet in there now. They've got a nice lightning
wallet in there. Thank you, Sleets. Nice
to hear from you. Thanks for getting that
working. User54 comes
in with 15,000
sats. Let's hear it, good buddy. No
message, just value. He's a good guy.
He's a real good guy. Appreciate that. Thank you.
Value's always appreciated.
These are some good ones this week on the names Milestrix comes in I sure I getting that wrong with 15 sats Chris I sending some port your way Love the show and look forward to each episode
Ah, thank you very much.
And the support is very much well-received and appreciated.
And yes, I got it.
I got it.
Oh, B's back with 12,000 sats.
Oh my God, this drawer is filled with fruit lobes.
I did boost.
I don't need the recognition,
but I can clearly see it's in my fountain app.
It must be an error.
It was, it was.
I apologize for about that.
Your booths are here and they're spectacular.
They're real and they're spectacular.
Yes.
So thank you very much.
Paranoid Coder is here with 8,000 sats.
No message, just value.
Thank you very much, Paranoid.
And KiwiBitcoinGuides back with 8,888 sats.
I think you might have had a technical problem.
I think you're right.
So here's a little double for the week.
Stick to the signal and leave the $1 million price for the B-grade podcasters.
$1 million?
Let me tell you something.
I'm actually believe by the time we get to $1 million, we won't need it.
Although perhaps it'll be a second economy that's trading in real assets and it's only
going to get easier to do so.
So I don't think $1 million is quite the goal it should be myself.
But thank you for boosting in.
Kiwi, it's always good.
And I think we're kind of on the same page, although it is fun to speculate about where
it be in 2030s? Because I think that's for some reason just developed as a common goalpost for a
lot of us Bitcoiners. What do you think? Debitcoiners EU comes in with 10,000 sats. The
traders love the vol. Here's some thanks in the form of sats. Would like to contact you sometime
about gamifying the sats streaming experience if interested. Oh, gamifying, huh? Hmm. Hmm. I wonder
what you have in mind. Well, I just, why not just say in the boost? Just, let's just say in the
boost. Let's hear it. Good buddy. You had me right there. You got to say in the boost. That's kind
of strange. You got to set it right there. You know what I mean? You got to set it right there.
You got to just set it right there in the boost. I don't know why I didn't just say right there in
the boost. Consider that. But thank you for the boost. Appreciate it. Brother Mike's here with 4,444
sats. Things are looking up for all the duck. I couldn't tell. I couldn't let you give up after
such a low week. So you get a double row of ducks.
Love the revamp on the artwork.
Hey, somebody said something.
Brother Mike, you're the only person.
I've been having a little fun with the show artwork from time to time, not every week.
But sometimes there's a hint towards the topic in there.
And nobody has said nothing.
Except for you, Brother Mike.
Thank you for the post.
I appreciate you.
It's always nice to hear from you.
Hey, speaking of somebody it's always nice to hear from,
Philip is here with 3,333 sats.
I don't understand what the heck is going on here.
Top show, Chris. Love the way you pull everything together for us.
Well, thank you very much. I like you.
I like you. You're a hot ticket.
It's good to hear from you.
Mutt M8 is here with 2,267 sets.
Twib is my traffic coping mechanism.
Oh, good. The song of the week at the end of the show is picked for those of you in traffic.
Just something to drive to.
It's more for driving to, not so much for traffic.
But it was for people in the car.
So it's nice to hear from you, Mutt.
But I'm headed to the Alt-BitLab Bitcoiners Meetup, and I wanted to bring awareness to the Space Protocol.org.
It's SpacesProtocol.org, a Bitcoin-anchored naming system designed to remove dependency on a central authority, perhaps a way to engage with the TWIB community.
And he, oh, okay, he says my name's Andrew, and I also emailed you.
All right, well, thank you, Mutt, and I will look more into that.
So that's the BitLab, the Alt BitLab Bitcoiners meetup.
Boop-a-da-boop-a-boop-a-boop.
If you want to look it up.
Thank you for the value.
Appreciate it.
Hey, your inner child is here with 2005 sats.
Coming in hot with the boost.
Maybe we broke your fountain account.
No, no, it was me.
As long as people accept sats as payment, it won't die.
Talking about Bitcoin, I tried to share the math on gold to Bitcoin.
The equivalent sats to ever exist equal atoms of gold would be one grain of sand worth of gold,
or 6.86 milligrams.
That's how rare Bitcoin will be.
Well, doesn't that just blow your mind?
Why you got to put numbers and letters together?
Why can't you just go for yourself?
That does blow my mind.
Thanks, inner child.
Go sit there and let that bake the noodle for a minute.
Blitzlink is here with 2,088 sats.
No message, just value.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate you.
You're doing very well.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats.
I don't think Bitcoin will reach a million dollars in six years with the current level of apathy getting pretty tired of watching these price predictors being made fools cycle after cycle.
Yeah, I was just thinking this morning to a like people probably were expecting rate cuts a while ago.
I mean, I honestly think we may have seen rate cuts if it hadn't been for the tariffs last year.
and then it's potentially possible, conceivably, theoretically, hypothetically possible, maybe,
that we would have seen rate cuts earlier this year if it weren't for the spike in energy prices
due to the conflict with Iran. It's hard to say for sure, but it seems possible to me.
And so it's made anybody who's tried to really predict pricing be a fool. Like, I never really
can even, I don't even know how you would predict the price. I think it's people who get,
people that get all caught up in charts. I think what's easier is to predict liquidity.
Maybe not predict liquidity, but monitor liquidity. I feel like that's easier. And if you monitor
liquidity, such will go the direction of Bitcoin. And now if you want to layer in other things like
news for your cycles or supply dynamics, whatever, you know, you can, you can layer these things on
and maybe you get more resolution or maybe you send your off yourself off in the wrong direction.
but I think these are some ways you could try to get to a prediction of price up or down but I don't
know how you'd ever guess a price how could you I mean Bitcoin is an asset that routinely has 50%
levels volatility or more I just don't know how you could you know I wanted to clip today for you
you can look up on YouTube if you want like a feel-good piece I really should have clipped it
it just is long it's called the Bitcoin Farmer it's a documentary on YouTube that just came out
this week called The Bitcoin Farmer. And it's about a farmer who warms his greenhouse and dehydrates
his crops and all these things using mining heat from Bitcoin miners, the excess heat.
And it's a really good piece. And it really kind of connects to, there's this strange
comparison to Bitcoin in farming. And having lived now on a farm for almost a year,
like there's just unpredictability in the yields and the crop in the animals in in the input cost
for the feed there's so many variabilities that some years in farming you have a really good year
and some years you just got to get by on a little bit less and the there's a it's a good documentary
but it's not particularly groundbreaking but it's a feel-good bitcoin or documentary so it's you
want to look up the bitcoin farmer on youtube i think you'll like it and i think there's some
some comparisons there when you think about it.
Sort of like cycles in a different kind of sense.
Thank you, Ace.
Good to hear from you.
Benover comes over with 2,222 cents.
Great show.
First time listener.
Thanks to Podcasting 2.0.
Hey!
B-O-O-S-T.
Shout out to Adam and Dave for sending somebody over.
Thanks, boys.
Let's go podcasting, right?
Boost!
And Gene Bean comes in with a row of ducks.
I've been thinking about what you said
about how the required profit levels of AI companies
based on valuations and such are maybe impossible.
That's actually kind of disturbing
because of how the results might impact
not just our financial lives,
but all the things that transition to being AI-driven
between now and then.
Yeah, I try not to go too down that rabbit hole gene
because the one thing that's hard,
it's like when you try to forecast out,
the one thing that's hard to really account for
is we can course correct.
And the Federal Reserve and the Treasury
have just these unbelievable tools to kick the can
that they can just sometimes create
that we don't even think of.
So there's always possibilities
of a course correction
or something kind of going differently
than we can forecast.
But yeah, it's a wild one.
May we live in interesting times, right?
It's good to hear from you.
I hope you're doing well.
Code 27 comes in with 2,000 sats.
B-O-O-S-T.
No message, just value.
And Moon Knight's back with 2,000 sats.
Coming in hot with the blues.
I do love hearing that Metroid music.
Yeah, you got it.
Ha ha, you got it.
Well done.
You're the only one, Moon Knight.
You're the only one.
You got it.
Oh, that makes me feel good.
And we're going to wrap it up there.
That is our last boost above,
2,000 sats or above.
We do have the 2,000 sat cutoff for time.
I think I got everybody,
so it's a little bit longer,
but I think I picked up
some of the ones we lost.
So this one's a bit of a mix.
This is some current support
and the support I think I missed last week.
So when we bring it all together,
we had 30 of you stream sats
stacking 40,565 sats for this here podcast.
When you conclude or include, I'm losing it boys.
When you include our boosts from this week and last week,
I believe that brings our total to 320,889 satoshis.
Thank you everybody who supports the show with a boost.
It's a value for value podcast.
no advertiser, but also I think it's a fantastic way to not only interact with the show,
but to use a lightning network in a way that I think is really unique and novel.
And for some of you who are new to the podcast, you might not know that for a little while,
Jupyter Broadcasting, we were owned by Linux Academy and then a cloud guru.
And after a couple of years, I bought the company back and brought it independent again
so we could do things like this.
That's just what had not been possible.
We were part of a larger training platform, nothing against them.
It's just they're not interested in this particular market and this particular topic or really in experimenting with Bitcoin.
But being independent meant I could take this risk and the risk pays off when you participate.
So I really, really do appreciate it.
And I have a pretty big announcement.
I am introducing, introducing.
I haven't slept much for about two weeks, so I'm doing pretty good if you knew how little sleep I got, I got to say.
But I am interboosting the WebBoost.
If you go to boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com, we now have the ability to boost from the web.
Ladies and gentlemen, check it out.
You can pick your show and you can boost from the web.
From the web.
With cash or sats, the official web boost is live.
Boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com
So this is pretty exciting.
You can, I think it's, everything's denominated in sats or USD,
but it's really anything Stripe supports on the fiat side.
It's using ZapRite, which is a Bitcoin platform that I really like.
And on the back end, we are using LNBits on a lightning node to split.
one LNURL payment amongst the hosts
or whatever the splits are for the particular show.
Like this show has a set of splits,
LUP has a set of splits,
and Launch has a set of splits.
And LNBits lets us handle that
with some glue that we built together
to make it all happen.
And the big win here is now you can boost
with any Lightning Wallet app
that supports LNURL,
like QR code scanning and sending.
So it doesn't have to be a podcasting 2.0 app,
but it can be.
Like you can still just boost with Fountain,
using the regular old boost,
or you can scan the QR code using Fountain
and use your wallet from Fountain to send a boost.
So it is really flexible in the sense that
you can just use a QR code
and anything that supports sending sats
from a QR code over Lightning will work now.
So Strike, Cash App, Phoenix Wallet, Breeze,
Zeus, Aqua, Albi Hub, Fountain Wallet,
like I said, no longer only podcasting 2.0 apps,
but podcasting 2.0 apps still 100% supported and appreciated.
What we're doing is we're integrating all of this into one system.
And so it'll be one boost report.
If it's a web boost, if it's a podcasting 2.0 boost,
it'll all be in there, one report.
But there is one cool thing.
If you're a Jupyter Party member,
you now get a free boost per episode.
You just have to auth to your memberful account,
which is really easy, and that's it.
Once you've authed to your memberful account,
you can boost once per episode for free.
Now, Fountain members, don't worry, I got you.
As soon as there's an API for this,
totally going all in on that.
And I do have treats for the Fountain members
plan for the future.
But it is a way if you've been wanting
to support the show directly,
but you don't have sats you want to spend
or you don't have a podcasting 2.0 app,
but you do have sats in a lightning wallet,
you can now go to boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com,
choose TWIB, the episode you want,
and boost away from the web,
and it will be included in the future report.
And that report I'm going to get generated
very soon by the agents,
so I don't mess it up anymore.
My bad on that one,
and I do apologize once again,
but I'm very excited about
boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com.
I think there's some really neat technology
that we're doing in there
and then being able to tie into the memberful API
so the members get a free boost
and also still on the backend
supporting LNURL and splits and all of that
and the podcasting 2.0 specs.
It's really great.
In fact, the boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com
is reading the value block from our RSS feeds.
So it's just so cool.
You update the value block in the RSS feed, and the web gets updated too.
Ha!
So, make it easy.
Go to boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com or grab something like Fountain or Albie and support the show.
I really do appreciate it.
well i wasn't sure if i was going to cover this but i think it's an important lesson for bitcoiners
especially the new class and anybody that's watching these etfs come along
our cousins over at zcash had a real rough couple of weeks and i think it really really underscores
why Bitcoin is the one true digital currency.
So, boy, this is a complicated one,
but let me break it down for you, friends.
Between May and June,
there was some serious drama over at Zcash and Zek.
A critical bug was discovered on their orchard shield pool.
It's a shielded pool,
and we'll get more into that in just a moment.
It's been live since 2022.
There was a soundness flaw in the zero-knowledge proof circuit
that could have let anyone mint unlimited counterfeit Zek
inside the shielded pool.
Completely undetectable on-chain due to the privacy design.
It was found on May 29th, 2026
by an independent researcher.
His name's Taylor.
He works for Shielded Labs.
And he was just poking around at things in Claude Opus.
He actually shared the prompt.
It was like a one-sentence prompt.
and he found a bug that allowed for unlimited Zek printing inside this pool
that's been around for four years.
Now, the immediate fallout from that is substantial.
Number one, because Zek is a privacy coin, you cannot audit the supply.
So now they have no idea how much Zek exists in this pool
and if it's being used to purchase things
and if it's being used to essentially inflate the supply.
so the central management which does exist and showed themselves came together on june 2nd and
did a soft fork to temporarily just disable the transactions so if you were any other user in that
pool you just didn't get to spend your money sorry you don't get to spend your money today
then the next day they all organized together and they hard forked and they re-enabled the pool with
a fixed circuit zek the currency for zcash plunged 38 to 50 percent within about 48 hours
just nasty, has a partial rebound.
Arthur Hayes publicly exited his entire ZEC position
after just pumping it two weeks in a row.
And the real problem here is nobody knows
how much ZEC exists in that pool now,
even though the fix is in there,
because the users cannot easily audit the supply,
where every Bitcoin user can get the UTX info set
with one command on their Bitcoin node.
So here's a guy named Tulip King.
and he's going to give us some details and some additional context from what I just filled you in
on. They're being pretty cheeky about the language of the bug saying, oh, like it would have been
able to do like unvalid state transactions, which I mean, it seems like the honest way to read that
is like there was a double spend bug. What they did is first they did like a soft fork to censor
orchard transactions. So essentially what that is, is they just rejected them. So I think it was
about like a 24 hour time window, but for however long, they basically said, Hey, everybody run this
software software miners exchanges wallet operators And it basically means if anybody went to do a transaction within the orchard pool we would just pretend it like just ignore it right Like not include the transaction
The point of that was essentially like, while they're trying to fix the bug,
if somebody else would have discovered the bug, they could exploit it. But by blocking
all transactions, it can't be exploited. So then they fix the bug and then they do a hard fork
that essentially moved the ZK circuit
to this new valid logic
that doesn't have the export anymore.
So there's a lot of different pieces.
The first piece is, let's be clear,
it's just not good.
I don't see how it's good
that Zodl can ping everybody
and be like, just ignore that these privacy pools exist.
And they can instantly get everybody to do that.
And then that can also just like hit the network with a hard fork.
And we're all just like on this new network now.
Like I understand the response where people are like, oh, it was easy to coordinate because
the bug was so serious.
So if there was a hyper serious Bitcoin bug, maybe they'd coordinate too.
But there is a hyper serious Bitcoin bug named quantum.
Right.
So like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But his core point there, what I see having, you have to understand.
I'm not trying to pull the old man card here.
I'm really not, I swear.
But you have to understand,
I still remember when Litecoin and Ethereum launched.
And I was pissed then that there was even altcoins then
because I immediately saw what the problem was going to be.
And often they will go for years and years
before they reveal the true nature of central management.
But then something like this happens
and you realize there are kings and rule makers
that can just reach out over a chat
and change the nature of the network in a day.
And Bitcoin simply does not have that risk.
End of the day, like, you just have to admit
that, like, it's a concerning amount of centralization,
even though they did the right thing.
Like, it would have been worse to leave the bug in there for sure, right?
But like it exposes and reminds us of like, candidly, like the value of Bitcoin not doing
anything.
Like that's problem number one is centralization.
Problem number two is the privacy pools.
They operate on like what's called the turnstile.
So essentially, if I deposit Tenzek and you deposit Tenzek into the pool, the network knows
that there's Tenzek in the private pool.
You and I can swap back and forth all day and it will be hidden, but they know the total amount.
That way, like when I go to withdrawal, I can't withdraw 30 ZEC because I'll put in 10 and you put in 10.
The network knows there's only 20 ZEC.
But imagine I used this exploit and I have like, I really have 10 ZEC, but I sent a bunch of other wallets in there I own 10 ZEC on double spends.
and then I could just drain the pool,
like classic DeFi style.
I could pull out all the way up in turnstile.
So what that essentially means is,
so like Zcash Network,
there's still the same known amount of tokens.
But in the privacy pool,
it could have been the case
where say there's a million deposits in there.
Some guy just went and created 17 million private tokens
that nobody knows about because it's a privacy pool.
Nobody knows it was actually exploited.
Now he could only pull out the 1 million,
But what happens if other people start to integrate like,
oh, I can buy this thing with private tokens.
I don't ever have to leave the pool to buy a Chipotle burrito,
or I don't ever have to leave the pool to do a transaction with near intent.
And you never know Oh that not good is it It not that I don think there a place for privacy
I would love to see a privacy coin we could trust.
I think the solution is to have a trusted base layer
and then use something like Liquid or Lightning or Arc
or some other technology that gives you privacy
on top of something that the entire world can audit and trust.
And we have that in Bitcoin.
But speaking of crypto scammers, let's wrap up.
with one of the best, the king of the scammers, Sam Bankman-Fraud.
He's back and he's rolling the dice and apparently has not changed at all.
Former FTX crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried speaking out from prison
after being found guilty of one of the biggest financial schemes in history.
Fox Business' Susan Lee spoke exclusively to the disgraced crypto king.
She's here now with more. Susan, what did he have to say?
Good morning to you. Well, it's been more than three years since a former crypto billionaire was arrested for fraud and money laundering, currently serving a 25 year sentence.
Sam Bankman reads that he would welcome some help from the White House.
It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me.
Now, have you had any conversations with the White House or anyone connected to the president at all?
I haven't myself.
But have, say, your parents or anyone that you've been in contact with at all?
I can't speak for them.
I assume that you would want a pardon from the White House.
Absolutely.
Now, despite the vagueness in that answer, we did find a pardon application.
Right now, the application is for a pardon after he serves his prison sentence.
Bankman Freed is still appealing his conviction with that decision currently pending in the Second Circuit.
he still maintains that he did not commit fraud.
You know, Sam's whole thing.
Well, look, they made their money back. Well, yeah, they made their money back because you tank the market. And then when the recovery process begun, the market was recovering and Bitcoin and Solana came back up and he happened to invest in a little thing called Anthropic.
But that doesn't change the reality that he still misused customer funds, essentially had a slush fund between his research company and FTX and did, in fact, commit fraud.
So what do you think is going to happen? Do you think he's going to get a pardon?
So my gut says no, but if you want to test that new web boost, boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com, let me know. Now, this last clip, not my favorite clip, but I do think it's an interesting directional one. And it's maybe also notable because it's the former PayPal president. And he's all in on the U.S. investing in gold.
Should the US government buy Bitcoin?
There's been some discussion lately about back at the reserve.
The reserve right now is just seized assets.
Should the US actually spend taxpayer money to buy assets?
No I don think it should spend taxpayer money to buy assets I think rotating off other assets into Bitcoin in a very cautious way and slow slowly I think potentially makes sense But I mean like gold like selling gold
to buy Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin is so much better than gold. Come on. Like it's like there's it's a
no-brainer. All right, let's check in on the state of the network. I am wrapping up at block height
953,137. Our current U.S. price to one Bitcoin is 61,750. That puts our sats per dollar at 1,619
sats to one US dollar. We are down 51.1% from our all-time high 246 days ago, October 6, 2025.
The retarget date's coming up in just three days as I record June 13,
2026, with a downward adjustment now of 10.8%. So that did level out a little bit.
Our reachable Bitcoin notes, 27,388, still looking real strong. We're down 6.4%
from the last episode.
I don't even feel it.
It's fine.
I don't even feel it.
Do you feel it?
It's fine.
Stay the network is strong.
It continues.
TikTok, next block.
Well, if you made it this far,
you got diamond hands, my friend.
Really, this is where conviction
is tested and made.
if you're still investing in learning and monitoring the situation and figuring out where things are going,
you've got what it takes to be in this for the long haul.
Links to what I talked about, including that molecule piece that I thought sounded pretty good.
I forget the whole title, but it was good. It's in the show notes.
They're all in the show notes at thisweekinbitcoin.show and jupiterbroadcasting.com.
My goal, of course, is to give you a show that doesn't get distracted by the emotions or the games that are going around,
but just really focuses on the signal
so that way you can plan for yourself,
your friends, your family, your business,
your future, whatever it might be.
I hope I did that.
You can always let me know by sending in a boost
with a little bit of value.
And as I do, I'm going to wrap it up
with a value for value track.
This is, I say one for those of you out there on a drive,
maybe a nice swoopy drive around corners,
beautiful summer weather.
You can send a boost to a 95% of the stats
during the song will go to our artists.
and it is Tragedy by IRF Cat.
See you next week.
Thanks for being here.
Will be the best of the centuries
But words fall on deaf ears
Nose clog, nothing in the eyes
That are full of pain except tears
Yeah, I'm a mess, dear
If I die, then that will be a blessed year
My soul, searching for a way out
Can't find it, world full of darkness
So many heartless
But I'm open to give them a peace of mind
Regardless
Cause what's better way to die than to give away your pain
Yeah, it's a curse for me, but can't be another's gain
But ain't that a shame