Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode Lucky 77.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
I'm back from my trip, a road trip to Austin with a quick pit stop on the way back in Denver.
It was really great to see some of you come out to the meetup and say, hey, I'm a twib listener and I really love Bitcoin.
A lot of Bitcoiners in Texas. I guess I'm not too surprised by that.
I am kind of surprised by the rest of you, though. I leave for a couple of weeks and everything's just a mess.
It was Liberation Day all over again. Trump talking tough about China, China pushing back.
By Sunday, people walking it back. The whole playbook all over again.
But during this feud, like, yeah, two-day period, let's say a two-day period, Friday to really Sunday, the market just panicked.
And some altcoiners got completely wrecked.
Some altcoins went to zero.
We saw story after story of altcoin trader bros that just got completely wiped out.
But I wanted to explain this from a Bitcoiners perspective because it is interesting.
And there's some big macro wins that are influencing this, and we'll get to that.
But maybe you're wondering what happened or you want a simple explanation that you can explain to somebody else. Why did we go from like $126,000 in all time new high and then wick down $20,000 in like minutes? That was a big one. Bitcoin erased $380 billion in market cap in just eight hours. It was a big one.
So what happened? And how do you explain it to somebody who isn't a Bitcoiner? Well, that's kind of where Anthony Pompliano shines. He was on the PBD podcast, don't love the PBD podcast, but he did a good job kind of explaining to somebody who's not really familiar with the dynamics here.
As the market corrected in after-hour stock, there's just not that many people who have access to the after-market stock.
So what do they do?
They look in their portfolio and they say, well, what market is open?
What market has liquidity right now?
If I want to sell, if I want to change my financial life or my portfolio, I'm going to sell cryptocurrency.
And so Bitcoin specifically sold off.
It sold off $13,000, which is a pretty big move, right?
I mean, an asset went down $13,000 in a single day, but it's only about 10%.
And so if you go back and you look at all these bull markets, historically, there have been multiple 30% drawdowns in these bull markets.
And so this, you know, I joke is like a crypto crash for ants to the crypto crowd.
Now, the stock market, if the stock market goes down 10%, 20%, they're freaking out.
They're talking about the Great Depression.
They're, you know, 1929.
No, more on that 1929 comment in a moment.
He's dead on with that.
And all that kind of stuff.
And the crypto, again, it doesn't feel good to see your assets go down 10%, but it is still pretty small compared to what everyone has lived through.
There's somebody who was chirping at me on Twitter yesterday, and they said, you know, why are you saying that we shouldn't be worried about a market correction?
I said, my brother, we've lived through two 80% drawdowns in four years.
I said, your stock market crashes?
They don't even register for the crypto people.
So I think that plays into a lot of, like, what's going on with the retail folks.
By the way, it's interesting what you say.
the fact that for the regular guys that are trading after hours they're like what do i mess
with now they don't have access to anything they don't have access to anything you see it's clicking
for pat here i don't think he's ever even considered this i don't think most people have ever considered
this and it's an important thing to understand if you're gonna hold bitcoin access to anything
what they do with crypto you can track what bitcoin's doing gold's closed stocks are closed
bonds are closed everything is closed oh wow now here's the thing is trump on sunday night you know
I posted this meme.
It's like abracadabra, make the markets go back up, right?
And what does he do?
He tweets out an hour and a half
before a future's open on Sunday night.
Like the guy knows what he's doing.
And so that's fine, understand that.
But I think the bigger thing about crypto
and Bitcoin in particular is if you sold your Bitcoin
because of geopolitical uncertainty,
you had no clue what you were holding.
The whole point of Bitcoin is that it is a non-sovereign asset.
It is supposed to be the safe haven
that you can go and hold
regardless of what any government in the world does.
And so I think that's part of what people
are trying to figure out now is the hardcore Bitcoiners, they know that. They're looking to
buy on dips, but you still get tons of new people who come in. And obviously, leverage plays a huge
part of this. And so the big story over the weekend was there was $19 billion of leverage
that got wiped out. Now, you can look at that as how prices went down. The way I look at it is we
just reset the entire leverage in the system, and therefore that probably clears us so that we can
go higher. Yeah, and $19 billion sounds like a big number. It's $19 billion of leverage. You put
$100 in, right? And you get $1,000 of leverage, but you're actually only out $100 when you get
wiped out. But there was some interesting sniping that took place during this tumble. And that is,
I think, probably tantalizing to the normies and something that at least should be noted
by those of us in the community. And PBD does ask about these profit takers.
But two accounts made $160 million. I don't know if you saw this article or not. The two
accounts that placed bets against the market minutes before the news broke, scored $160 million
windfall. Bitcoin dropped 12%. Less popular tokens saw declines as steep as 80% coin glass,
a crypto data platform. I mean, he really has no idea, right? I mean, this guy, he's probably two
seconds away from launching his own meme coin or already has a meme coin. The point is trying to
explain it to people that really don't understand why this is behaving differently than, say, the
S&P 500 or their stocks. Ahead of the sell-off, two counts on Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange
that allows investors to make leverage bets on future crypto prices,
place massive bets that Bitcoin and Ether would fall by days and Friday.
The positions were closed for $160 million in profits.
When you see stuff like this, this is the Wall Street Journal story right there.
These guys made $160 million.
How much do you know about this story?
Do you know much about what happened here?
I've been paying attention to it.
So a couple of things.
$19 billion, if you wipe out $19 billion of leverage,
that doesn't mean that people holding cryptocurrencies lost $19 billion.
dollars, right? If you put, you know, $10 in, but you get $100 of leverage, right? You didn't put
$100, you put $10 in. So there's some math that I think is a little bit misleading. The second
thing is, you know, when prices go down, sometimes people make money. When prices go up, people make
money. It's all about what are they positioned, how are they positioned, all that kind of stuff.
There is a trend that is happening in America, but also globally, which is the intertwining of
finance and entertainment. This is something that's been on my mind recently, as I've been
hearing advertisements for a lot of sports betting. I don't know where I'm hearing these ads. Maybe
it's streaming services like when i watch pluto tv maybe i occasionally check the radio or watch
some youtube tv and i see these ads for betting on all kinds of things and they have like all these
incentives for you to bet including like protection against a player getting injured in the first half
of a season and all of these like really intricate things to help you make money based on you know
your sports team stuff and it just really seems like the betting is getting so pervasive and when
you look at what the banks want to do with real world assets and putting them on blockchain
and tokenizing everything, it's all about giving people access to more gambling and more betting
24-7. Like they're trying to capitalize on this trend that the younger generation loves to kind of
dabble in this stuff. Where the boomers, they love to sell the tops and buy the tops on the ETFs.
But, you know, the younger generations, they got their Robinhood apps, right? They got their cash
apps. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm being flipping here, but it's true. And there's a real gambling
culture because everybody needs to get rich quick because the fiat just doesn't work for them.
There is no savings technology built into the system anymore. And these are the things that
are available to them and they're fun and they're gamified. You don't have to think a lot about it.
So I was glad that Pomp brought this point up. There is a trend that is happening in America,
but also globally, which is the intertwining of finance and entertainment. And what you now see
is whether it's the prediction markets, whether you see it's the stock market, whether you see
crypto, people want something to talk about. You know, I joke all the time, like financial markets
have become like soap operas for young people. And so not only is there the gambling or speculation
component to it, but what now in crypto is you have on-chain analytics. You can go and you can
see what are the positions people are taking, what wallets are moving, right? All this information
is almost like kind of new media to them. And so what people do is, oh my God, there's this big
liquidation, they immediately begin scouring all this data, trying to find some storyline,
who caused it, who knew what, right? Who made money here? And so when they find this,
they kind of latch onto it. Now, does this person have information about the tariffs?
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I don't know who the person is, right? And so I tend to think that
good investors, they're not paying attention to this stuff. They're just saying to themselves,
listen, I want to continue to acquire this asset, hold it for a long time.
This is more entertainment factor. Do we know who these two people are?
You can't know who it is. Is it just speculation who they think it is?
So there are strong maybe thesis as to who they are because on the wallets at times people can start to identify whose wallet is who.
Got it.
And so in one particular case, there's a guy who's associated with a wallet that they believe is the person who has it.
But again, you don't have full confirmation.
It's not like they're coming out and tweeting and saying, hey, that was me that made $160 million.
Is this a well-known name or just somebody that's known in the crypto space?
It's not even really known.
Not even known in that space.
Okay.
I will have more of a breakdown on this dump later in the show.
But I'll say, I think part of it was the expectations of October.
Leverage was through the roof.
There hadn't really been a 2% decline in the S&P for six months, something like that.
So when Trump comes out with a big, you know, tough guy post about China, it's a catalyst the market was almost looking for.
So that's an element to it.
But there was probably a little bit of sniping in there.
We'll talk more about that.
But I want to stay focused on the macro for a moment because there's been this talk at Fear since this event on Friday that we are in a 1929-like bubble and that everything's about to pop and that we're going to enter the recession of all recessions.
And maybe.
And the thing that they point to is the AI spending.
But I think there's a missing factor when you look at the AI spending.
The tech industry has been the bubble leader, in my opinion, for at least a decade.
If you look at who makes up the majority of revenue on the S&P 500, it's been in the tech sector for a while now, like five or seven companies.
And every cycle, we had IoT and we've had, I mean, really since the dot-com boom, there has been multiple, it's been even longer than a decade, I think, of these multiple tech-driven cycles where we just get these massive pumps driven by this huge claim about this new technology is going to change our life.
and every cycle, every time we go through this hype cycle,
the tech companies move quicker and faster.
They hire and they fire and they pivot
and refocus faster and faster
and everything gets more feverish.
The money raising gets more feverish.
The claims get more feverish.
And to me, it all seems tied to the fiscal situation
in Western governments.
As it's become more and more obvious
that their situation is unsustainable,
the need to have these pumps to generate money
And honestly, to have a place to put all of this printed fiat needs a place.
It needs a home.
And I think this is perhaps where we find ourselves right now.
And surely the CBS News, with their financial reporters full-time on staff, and the people they interview, like Andrew Sorkin, surely, surely they understand this very important moment, right?
Or do they instead pounce on a market dip and claim that it's the roaring 20s all over again?
Which do you think it might be?
Stocks took a nosedive on Friday after President Trump threatened a big tariff hike on China.
Until then, Wall Street had been at record highs for months,
which is why we decided to check in with Andrew Ross Sorkin,
one of the country's most influential financial reporters.
Listeners to this show know that he's a constant source of frustration.
Somebody who has been at the center of the financial world for a while
and does a daily show on CNBC, seems to miss everything about the current situation.
He's just written a book called 1929 about the market crash a century ago.
We wondered if he'd run out of news to cover,
or is he alerting us that what's been happening in the markets lately
is a replay of what led to the most devastating financial collapse in our history?
I will say, Andrew is also selling a book right now.
And so he is going on tour, spreading this narrative anywhere that will have him.
There's been multiple interviews this week alone with Andrew where he's essentially pitching this.
The story will continue in a moment.
Tuesday, October 29th, 1929.
Imagine the New York Stock Exchange back then.
The crush of frightened traders dumping stocks.
investors losing their shirts, businesses, their homes,
sweeping away the roaring 20s,
walking that same but transformed floor today.
So she asked him, while the voiceover is still going,
she asked Andrew at the start of the interview,
what's the difference between now and 1920?
And Andrew, and his super deep insight, he says,
well, everything's digital now.
Everything's been digital, Andrew, since 1987.
Everything's digital.
Well, yeah, okay.
Andrew Ross Sorkin says we're in our own roaring 20s, the 2020s, with stocks climbing for months just like then.
The crazy part about this is from 1928 to September of 1929, the stock market was up 90 percent.
When you say the stock market was way up, immediately I think of now. Are you scared?
I'm anxious. I'm anxious that we are at prices that may not feel sustainable.
And what I don't know is we are either living through some kind of remarkable boom,
and part of that's artificial intelligence and technology and all of that,
or everything's overpriced.
Or we're reliving...
1929.
There was so much anxiety.
You know, Andrew is an example of what plagues the financial world today.
these people that think they're so smart, but they're unable to learn and adapt.
They continue to measure the system from within the system.
It can't think of anything else.
Like he cannot grasp the idea that we are watching a massive debasement trade play out.
We'll talk more about that in a moment.
But throughout this interview, they frame capitalism as the villain.
And the idea that people want to earn profits is also evil.
And then in one breath, they switch to Larry Fink.
So they frame capitalism as bad, and then they come about to investing.
And while they're talking to old Finky Boy from BlackRock, Bitcoin comes up.
He also believes we should be investing in crypto.
Crypto?
It wasn't that long ago that the big bankers, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink...
That's you.
...were saying that crypto was stupid and a fraud.
I did say Bitcoin, because we were talking about Bitcoin then, was the domain of money
launderers and thieves. But, you know, the markets teach you, you have to always relook
at your assumptions There is a role for crypto in the same way there a role for gold That is it an alternative For those looking to diversify this is not a bad asset
but I don't believe that it should be a large component of your portfolio.
No, no, of course not. No, no, of course not.
So somehow, Andrew, even though he's on TV every single morning,
fart-sniffing every little headline that comes out about finance,
following every little pamp,
he somehow misses that we've entered an era of debasement as policy.
And I actually am genuinely shocked by this,
because while I was away and with gold ripping like it is,
the quote-unquote debasement trade became the meme of the town on Wall Street.
It became the talk that everybody was obsessed with, the debasement trade.
Why is gold ripping?
And somehow Andrew misses all of this?
Explain that to me.
I don't know. It gets to me. It gets to me.
So I think that some of what's happening is basically things that those of us in either
the Bitcoin space or the gold space have been talking about for years are kind of hitting
the mainstream.
This is Lynn Alden, of course, and she's going to give her definition of what this
quote unquote debasement trade is.
In a way, which is basically that there's an increasing recognition that major developed
countries, whether it's the United States, whether it's Europe, like large parts of Europe,
whether it's Japan, that they're not going to get their public finances in control.
anytime soon, that their money supplies are going to continue growing pretty substantially,
and less so from bank lending and more so from fiscal transfers. And that because of that,
that there's an increased interest in harder assets. Now, when things do hit the mainstream,
you have to be a little bit careful because you start to get consensus. And so, for example,
after a disastrous five or six years in global bond markets, basically the worst bond market
performance, especially in real terms, but even nominal terms, in modern history. It's natural
that people are now extremely anti those things in favor of the things that have done well.
Now, I still think structurally those things are going to do well, but there is some kind of
caution at certain points. But basically, the debasement trade is the increasing recognition
that nothing stops this train, that fiscal deficits are going to keep barreling different
countries at different speeds. They all have their own unique dynamics, or I actually should say
currency blocks because it's countries, but then in Europe's case, it's also the shared
currency and that these things are long-term.
They've already kind of received a kill shot in a way. They've already kind of become
unsustainable. And now it's just that gradual realization and that
gradual playing of those cards that have kind of already been dealt.
This is really important to understand.
everything's going to look like over a long time horizon like it's ripping stocks are going to look
like they're ripping gold is going to look like it's ripping bitcoin is going to look like it's
ripping in the short term maybe not but in the long term it will because the fiat that it's being
compared to will always be devaluing we're in a period of debasement via policy we have to in
order to win this quote-unquote ai war with china and i know of course all the other all the other
things like all of the services that the U.S. government promises that it can't afford or the
military engagements that it gets into that it can't afford. Like those can those will continue
as a matter of policy. And so what Andrew seems to be missing is it's going to be ripping for a
while. Now, will there be moments of corrections? Of course, of course. But we're probably in a
prolonged period of things just looking like they're ripping because what they're being
compared to is getting debased and he can't wrap his head around it. It's really something.
moving on. But it's important that you wrap your head around it. You see,
you need to understand that it's Bitcoin. That's going to be the strongest, fastest performing asset
in this race. And gold, if you're closer to retirement and you need that stability,
these are going to be your main assets. And of course, things like real estate are going to rip
as well. But compared to Bitcoin and gold, it's just not quite the same investment.
So what did happen to October? Well, you can think a lot of world dynamics at play, I'd say. We were promised an October PAMP, and I think that very expectation actually plays a role. It might have contributed to people over-leveraging themselves, where we just then saw them get wiped out.
But I do agree with the spirit. Things have been good. Lots of tailwinds for Bitcoin legally, politically, policy, public opinion. Things are good. Access to buying Bitcoin is getting better. Gold's been running away. And typically, Bitcoin follows gold after a bit of a lag. So why isn't Bitcoin following?
Well, it's two things.
It's liquidity and it's sellers.
It's always a matter of more sellers than buyers.
And it's a matter if there is money looking for a place to get stashed and earn returns.
And when people are loose with the money and they're looking for places to put it, things like assets get bought up.
And this is why I often start the show with macro news.
When things start to break down at the global level, it does directly impact Bitcoin in the short term, often negatively.
and then ultimately positively.
And I think we're in a period of that right now
and how people ultimately react to it,
like it really makes all the difference.
So it's hard to really predict.
But right now, big money has a big problem.
And I don't think things necessarily smooth out
until big money's problems are solved.
And at the moment,
China is really screwing up the AI pump.
All right, Treasury Secretary
and the U.S. Trade Representative
met with reporters just about an hour ago.
they warned about the potential impact of new trade rules from China, a plan they say could
give Beijing complete control over the global economy. Now, all this as President Trump has
threatened new tariffs and plans to meet with Xi Jinping later this month. Listen.
China's new measures include a rule saying that any product of which more than 0.1% of minerals
consist of minerals mined or processed in China, one must seek approval from the Chinese government
before trading it.
Since many important...
Let's hold on a second,
because that really matters.
It sounds like what they're saying
is that if your product,
your overall entire product
has at least 1% of Chinese
rare earth minerals in it,
then you have to get their approval to trade.
1% of minerals
consist of minerals mined or processed in China.
One must seek approval
from the Chinese government
before trading it.
You can imagine how that's not going to work
for a lot of people.
That's a big deal.
One percent of minerals consist of minerals mined or processed in China.
One must seek approval from the Chinese government before trading it.
Since many important semiconductors, for example, have these critical minerals,
and semiconductors are in nearly everything,
this rule gives China control over basically the entire global economy and the technology supply chain.
This will impact artificial intelligence systems and high-tech products,
but even regular consumer items like cars, smartphones,
and potentially even household appliances could be affected.
You could see how this might have global liquidity a little upset.
And as the U.S. escalates now back, because this is China's biggest leverage here,
this rare earth issue is massive.
This is something that this is one of the bigger cards China could play.
And while the U.S. is invested in treasuries and the dollar and financialization,
China has been stacking gold and rare earths.
and now the U.S. realizes they've made a key mistake,
and they've let themselves get played to a degree.
Their hubris in their own building of some glorified financialization system
let them get snowed by the Chinese,
who've been stacking gold, preparing rare earths,
building out factories, power building.
The West just can't live with such tight controls on rare earths.
It's going to be a no-go,
and there's not really anything lined up to replace China's supply.
While, yes, there's some in the ground and Greenland is known to have some and all of that, it doesn't change the fact refining them is difficult.
And the machinery involved comes from like one company in some instances.
That one company is in Germany and that one company in Germany sources parts from one company in Switzerland.
And that company in Switzerland sources parts from some place in China.
I mean, I'm not even kidding. It is like very precarious to refine these things right now.
It's the most fragile aspect of the ecosystem, and it's a huge, huge topic.
So I don't think the U.S. is going to take it very easily, and they're going to use every bit of leverage they have, anything they can scrape up.
They're going to talk tough, and they're going to try to apply it.
This was Treasury Secretary Scott Besson today.
Make no mistake.
This is China versus the world.
They have put these unacceptable export controls on the entire world.
China is a command and control economy, and we and our allies will neither be commanded nor controlled.
They are a state economy, and we are not going to let a group of bureaucrats in Beijing try to manage the global supply chain.
So this, I guess, you could consider as the opening dialogue by the U.S.
This is their opening position, and they will use everything in their power to try to put pressure on China, even ridiculous proposals.
Shut down when we can't get seven more Democratic senators across the line.
But 85, 85 U.S. senators are willing to give President Trump the authority to put up to 500 percent tariffs on China for the purchase of Russian oil.
Trust me, when the Treasury secretary in a press conference says that they're willing to put 500% tariffs on China, the Chinese authorities notice that kind of stuff.
So that's the opening line of dialogue, okay?
And then Trump's going to meet with Xi later this month.
Where that goes, how productive that is, it's pretty hard to say.
But this could be turbulent.
Really, though, it comes down to how people decide to view Bitcoin in these conditions.
Perhaps they view it as a safe harbor once again, since it's detached from government policy.
they can only be so wise.
Bitcoin Core 30 was released this week.
This major update introduces optional encrypted node-to-node connections for enhanced privacy
and also includes a massive increase in the op return data limit from 80 to 100,000 bytes,
allowing much more than just financial data to be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The update also officially ends support for version 27 and earlier.
While it includes performance upgrades, bug fixes, and a fee rate change, the most controversial change in here, as you are probably already aware, centers around the op return expansion.
And as of this episode, when I was putting it together, my dashboard shows Core 30 at 1.8% of the network.
So just shy of 2% of the network.
Nots, combining the various versions, is around 21% of the network, almost to 22.
21, pretty great number.
And then the remainder of the other versions are different versions of Core.
So this is awkward.
Bitcoin Core 30 has landed without any real resolution to some of the complaints that people clearly feel very strongly about.
And I have noticed, I'm not thrilled to say it, but I have noticed there has been an uptick in the discussion around softworking.
And this very situation is something that Start9's CEO warned us about back in March.
And I thought we'd play that now.
There is some controversy in Bitcoin right now, for those of you who are not aware, where that power, the ability to define standard and non-standard according to a variety of different criteria, is being dwindled away to a degree.
The nodes only have two powers.
They have relay policy and they have war.
They have user-activated soft fork and user-resisted soft fork powers,
which cannot be taken away from the nodes.
So let's say you are a constituency of Bitcoin that had to deal with the nodes
because you do, because they have a rightful place,
an undeniable place in Bitcoin's political ecosystem.
The nodes only have two powers.
They have the friendly way of enforcing certain types of transactions, and then they have the
nuclear option. And so if the nodes are denied their ability to cooperate in a diplomatic,
friendly way, and 90% of them want a certain type of transaction to be defined as non-standard,
the only way that they now have to define that transaction as non-standard is to also define
it as non-consensus, which means the transaction, if that were to happen, if 90% of nodes wanted a
certain type of transaction out of the Bitcoin network and they couldn't do it through policy,
they absolutely, with 90% consensus, could enforce a consensus rule that banned that transaction for
all of the future. So forget about being able to sideload it to a miner or circumvent the P2P
network in one way or another, the nodes have the ability to nuke the transaction from existence.
So in a way, and where I wanted to get to with a little bit more time, is this is sort of a call
for people to node up, right, in the first place. Get yourself a node. You don't have to buy anything
from us. I don't care about that. Get yourself a node so that you can be heard on the network,
so that you have a voice on the network. And it's also a little bit of a warning shot to the other
constituencies of the nodes only have two political powers. And if you take away the friendly one,
they will be left with one power, which nobody wants. Nobody wants a nuclear war in Bitcoin.
We don't want a contentious soft fork. But in the absence of the ability to create policy
that divides transactions into standard and non-standard, all we can do is divide them into
consensus and non-consensus. And if 90% of the nodes want something, it's going to happen.
There's no force in Bitcoin that can offset 90% of nodes wanting something to happen. They are the
ultimate power in Bitcoin. So anyway, if you want a little bit of political power and any of this
is interesting to you, get a node, read up on this stuff, because unfortunately, there probably
is a software coming in the next couple of years. We hope that it is non-contentious and simply
He implements some really cool new features that everybody wants.
But there's a bit of arguing taking place in Bitcoin right now.
And if you have a stance on that argument, the only way to be heard and to make a difference is to note up and choose the policies and consensus rules that you yourself believe in.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I would plus one his call to note up.
Have a voice in the network.
If something like a soft fork does present itself, then you have a vote.
You have a voice.
I'm not convinced we're headed for some sort of Bitcoin civil war just yet for one you could just
not upgrade you could stay on core 29 it's still gonna get fixes for a while they just deprecated
27 so you can stay on 29 it getting bug fixes you could run knots and then if knots pisses you off you could switch back to core you could probably switch back to core 28 or core 29 for a while So I don know That where I at with this
What do you think?
Am I just oversimplifying this?
Is this going to lead to a soft fork in a civil war?
I don't know about that.
To me, it just seems like once the dust settles, we're probably going to look back at this and think it was a bit of an overreaction.
The stuff that's going to be really dramatic is if you do get CSAM and stuff like that in the blockchain, and then people make a big deal about it or something like that.
But I don't know.
I'd like to get your read.
What's your temperature?
Am I oversimplifying the situation?
Boost in and tell me if you're satisfied where things are at this moment.
There's a lot more show coming up.
But first, I just want to say you can support the show by doing what you might already be doing.
If you're buying sats on River, one of the best places to stack sats in the U.S.,
I have a link in the show notes that supports the show.
Click that first. You start stacking. Supports the show.
Now, if you're all about self-custody and you're in the U.S. or Canada, the Bitcoin well.
It's an amazing automatic self-custody platform.
You go directly to and from your own wallets.
They don't even host the wallet. I love that. If you're ready to spend some sats and you have them on Lightning, the Bitcoin company, the Bitcoin company link in our show notes, gives you access to hundreds of gift cards in just seconds.
You don't even have to log in. You just use your lightning. Boom, you're in there and you get a gift card. Boom, you're spending it.
Now, I think one of the best ways to stack sats is just why you're grinding out your daily life. And the fold card helps you do that.
You stack sats while you pay your bills, things like that. Fold card's great. Big favorite in the audience.
Then last but not least, if you need to get access to your Bitcoin value without selling it, consider Salt Lending.
They allow values lower than, say, Strike, and they have things that let you take advantage of wipeout protection.
It's a crazy system where they'll convert your Bitcoin to stablecoins for a bit and then back when the market crashes.
Not a big stablecoin guy, but I like that more than I get than getting margin called.
So that seems like a pretty great feature.
Salt Lending's been rolling that out.
They have that protection now.
None of them pay me to say any of that crap.
I just use it.
I think you'd like it too.
It's a great way to support the show.
Links in the show notes.
And we did get some boosts.
And Adversary 17 is our baller booster this week with 90,000 sats.
Hey, Rich Lobster!
First ever fully custom Docker image.
I decided it'd be fun to build knots from source.
Now I'm running both core and knots.
Stay tuned for an update.
Wow.
Talk about doing the proof of work on that one.
Well done adversaries.
I'd love to hear an update on that.
And if you notice anything between them in particular, I would be surprised if you did.
But would love to hear if you do.
Thanks for boosting in.
Appreciate it.
Jcube's here with 61,000 sats.
I hoard that which your kind covered.
Jcube writes, I'm currently running knots on Umbral.
I was running on NixBitcoin, but couldn't get the swap to Notts from Core to work.
I'd love to see an example of that config.
I'm going to choose to run Notts for a while, at least because the Core devs are going full big government on us.
If they undeprecate an option, I may swap back.
I will take my dip as an opportunity to get more sats.
Yes, right? Take the dip. I agree.
And enjoy Texas Linux Fest, JQB writes.
Thank you, JQB. I don't really have a config to share at the moment.
I'll talk to Wes about that and see if we can't cook something up in the near future, though.
And thank you for the boost.
OBL9118 comes in with 50,000 sats.
I just says Boost McBoosterson and also Run Knots.
B-O-O-S-T.
Boost!
Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Appreciate the value, too.
FortyDeuce comes in with 42,000 sats.
The answer to the ultimate question.
Chris, thanks for the value you provide on the show,
and I hope you all have a great road trip down to Texas.
The way you tend to structure the show with macroeconomics overview near the beginning and then getting deeper into the Bitcoin weeds later on in the show makes it much more shareable with friends who are interested in investment and economics but haven't been fully bitten by the Bitcoin bug yet.
I find that alone useful and valuable.
Keep up the work you do.
It's deeply appreciated.
Well, thank you, Forty Deuce.
I think that's a happy second-order effect of trying to set the context and the framework of which you find Bitcoin in today.
Right?
So I start with the macro because it then leads into what's going on with Bitcoin.
And I think it's a bit that a lot of us can easily overlook.
And it's also, I could spend a lot more time.
Every episode, I'm cutting macro.
I really am.
I cut stuff out every episode.
Because I can make the whole episode about it, and I don't want to do that either.
I'm here to talk about Bitcoin.
But trying to find the balance, kind of where it all clicks together, that's sort of, I think, when I get the episode just right.
Thank you, 40.
Appreciate that.
VCP comes in with 20,000 sats.
I am minutes away from addressing a 250 AG policy people.
Oh, cool.
In Manhattan.
Oh, in Kansas.
Manhattan, Kansas, huh?
Is that a cool place?
I want to look that up.
I'm going to tell them something they're going to resist.
Those that engage in Bitcoin today will be the farmland owners of tomorrow.
Ooh.
It says, I owe a large portion of my ability to explain Bitcoin to your work on Twib,
and I'm boosting to say thank you.
Your work is echoing into the world.
Oh, VCP, that's super cool.
And I love where your head's at.
I think about this a lot.
I have family members that moved north of Seattle, like an hour north of Seattle, 40 years ago, when it was nothing out here.
Nothing but empty land.
And they bought up so much choice land, and they took some risk to do it.
They were not rich.
They had to work very hard, and they had to leverage up to their eyeballs for a while to pull it off.
but now they own these massive chunks of land.
I would just, oh, I would love to talk to them about it.
Never really got the opportunity.
I would love to just pick their brain.
And I view a similar opportunity happening right now in Bitcoin.
It's a land grab in Bitcoin right now.
It's the same exact thing happening, but just in a different asset class.
It was real estate for the boomers and the boomers' parents,
and it's Bitcoin for the generations that are, well, looking for it now.
It's multiple generations.
It could even be for boomers, although they tend to sell at the bottom and buy at the top if you go by the ETF stats.
But that's probably just the ones that play with ETFs.
And I think it's really important because I don't have access to that real estate now because it's all gone.
If you look in Washington State, try to just find a piece of property for a decent amount of, you know, like an acre.
Try to find an acre.
Just in western Washington, try to find an acre.
as a little experiment.
If you live somewhere that's not very populated,
not very dense,
go have a little fun at Chris's expense.
Go look at just property and house prices
in the Pacific Northwest, right?
That opportunity is pretty much closed.
And I can't believe that.
As somebody who has bought two homes,
bought and owned two homes,
I thought I would have two more homes by now.
It's just crazy how that real estate
has gotten so far out of the reach of most people.
But Bitcoin is our opportunity today.
And I'm really glad you're out there
talking about it, VCP.
Good on you. Appreciate that. And thanks for sharing.
Gene Bean's back with 2,896 sats.
Says, I quite enjoyed the chat with Oscar,
and I loved the music in the background after the boost.
Keep that up. Oh, yeah, the cha-cha music?
Yeah, okay, I'll play that for you this week, Gene.
And says, by the way, don't take my minimal boosting
and possibly reduce streaming for me as signal.
All right, I won't, Gene, I won't.
Some of us get tight, I understand.
Although I have been wondering how you're doing,
So thanks for the check-in.
It is really nice to hear from you.
Paranoid Coders here with 4,000 sats.
One of the things that keeps me, he says, from switching to Fountain
is the lack of a desktop or web support.
I'm not going to pretend that adding a new platform support would be easy,
but so many other podcast apps have a desktop equivalent,
and a lack of one is a core miss with my existing flow.
I still want to support the app, though, and I continue to boost through it.
I used to be that way, too.
It was one of the big reasons I went with Pocket Cast for so long.
But as time has gone on, the speakers on my phone have gotten so good that I don't find myself switching to my desktop to finish a podcast when I arrive.
And if anything, I'm putting headphones on now.
So it just hasn't really been a big work.
I think it's a workflow thing.
And you can adjust.
You can get used to them.
But I hear you.
It would be nice to have like a web player sync.
Maybe one day.
You never know.
Technology's out there, Paranoid.
Thanks for the boost.
Hearn 88 is here with 4,500 sats.
Fun will now commence.
He says, sailor was right about ossification.
Thank you.
Thanks, Hearn.
Perhaps he was.
Northern hodl's here with 5,555 zats.
This is the way.
He says, thanks for your continued efforts.
You're doing a bang-up job.
Win pamp.
I know, buddy.
I know.
The traders love the vol.
Hey, you love the vol, right?
Buy the dip, right?
Yeah.
I know.
The issue is, of course, what I outlined earlier.
the things I outlined in the macro section.
Whew.
Just take a deep breath.
Go outside.
Enjoy the nature.
And before you know it,
the Bitcoin will pamp again.
Thanks, Northern Auto.
Appreciate it.
Hello there is there with a row of ducks.
2,222 sats.
No message, just value, which I appreciate.
Ace Ackerman's here with 3,333 sats.
That's probably a McDuck.
Quack-a-wack-a, it's a treasure.
Christine Lagarde is a kook!
Oh, and have fun on your road trip.
Thanks, Ace. Appreciate it.
Morph Sausage is here with 4,444 sats.
That's right!
About the digital year, I have to admit,
the responses from Ms. Lagarde were very poor and uninformed.
However, some privacy is indeed there,
because the idea is you could transfer payments directly from device to device offline
without a server connection required, just like handing over cash.
In my mind, that's actually a competitor to Visa or MasterCard.
Currently, there is no EU payment provider in EU like MasterCard.
And I don't mean to be offensive, but with the current political situation in the U.S.,
I think a lot of EU citizens are happy with such an arrangement and no dependency on a U.S. company.
I think the government is looking for a solution.
He says, but I do not see it as a response to stablecoins.
Ah, interesting. I heard otherwise.
I very appreciate that perspective.
Thank you, Morph.
That's really interesting.
Army guy 6902, I think, is along the same lines there.
Let's bring in army guy.
Coming in hot with the boom.
3,000 sats. With regards to the digital euro discussion, whether or not privacy is intended to be upheld or not is irrelevant.
If you wanted privacy, we could just use Monero.
If you wanted speed, you could just use a partner or use Lightning with a provider.
The truth is the digital euro infrastructure allows privacy to be stripped away whenever they decide.
It has been a while since I sent in the last boost, but I want to say keep up the good work and I love the show.
Thank you, Armageddon. Appreciate it.
fun will now commence.
We're having fun over here.
Appreciate that.
Two good perspectives.
Chance of Dizzy Spells
comes in with 2,000 sats.
Tough little ship.
Little.
Sounds dangerous.
Danger zone.
I enjoyed the bonus episode.
Informative and clearly presented.
Here's a small value for value note.
Wish I could send more.
Appreciation for all your hard work.
Well, thanks, spells.
Appreciate it.
Danger zone.
Bobby Pins here with 12,000 sats.
Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too.
And Bobby Penn says, thanks for giving me the advice.
I think it was in response to trying to get to one Bitcoin.
I think I'm on the right path.
I'm keeping my DCA at what it is.
Interesting that you suggested keeping a stash in River.
I was already doing that since they gave a little better on rewards.
But I used that stash to pick up more at 109.
Hey, time to fill up the reserve again.
Staying humble and stacking sands.
You did it.
Man, within like two weeks, you executed on the idea.
Bobby Penn.
Yeah.
For now, I'm pretty happy learning all the interesting technical aspects of Bitcoin and various apps to run on my node and how to integrate that with my home lab.
Oh, I love this.
This is the zone you want to be in, dude.
Is there an OSI model-like tool to understand how the consensus layer interacts with mempool and how layer twos like Lightning and Liquid can transfer sats without using block space?
Boy, well, okay, so Liquid isn't technically a layer two.
People say it's a layer two for simplicity.
Lightning is a layer two because it is settled on Bitcoin.
All right, so where to start?
Okay.
I think there's some talks you need to watch on YouTube.
And I would look up, you know what?
Start with mempool policy.
I think that actually will get you going in the right direction.
So go on the YouTubes and look up how Bitcoin mempool policy works and gets set.
And then later on, worry about Lightning and Liquid.
Not nearly as important.
Not nearly as important as kind of understanding the consensus stuff.
and then like liquid sure lightning i would get to first it's a it's probably more applicable
liquid is great for if you're trying to in my opinion there's lots of uses for it but in my
opinion liquid is great for if you have a lot of small utxos and you want to stack them all up in
one place and then just do one transaction out of liquid to your bitcoin cold storage so then what
you end up is like a reasonably sorry chart reasonably sized sorry utxo instead of having
lots of little ones that you're going to spend lots of fees on in the future. That's where I
think Liquid comes in clutch. There's some privacy involved too. I also really like Liquid for moving
sats between my kids. Like if they do something and they earn 15 sats as a chore or 20 sats as a
chore, I just move that over Liquid. They have Liquid wallets on their phone and I send them a
little bit. They get a notification. They love it. You know, they can look at it and then we can move
things around real quick for basically no cost. And there are hardware wallets available for Liquid
as well. You are on a great journey, Bobby Penn. Keep us posted. I'm really enjoying living
vicariously through your process. Keep it up. And thank you very much for the boost. Appreciate it.
The immunologist is back with 3,333 stats. I like you. You're a hot ticket. With the digital euro,
independently on how it is presented, the goal is likely to have alternatives to PayPal,
MasterCard, and Visa in the EU. Currently, almost all digital transactions depend on those American
companies and could easily exert could easily have political control exerted on them. In an
ideal world, the digital euro would be a form of citizens for citizens payment, but it is at least
another payment option. If private companies or the EU are better as a payment provider, well,
then it just a matter of debate Okay so the big context that you guys are giving me here is I didn realize that you use Visa and MasterCard so much You didn have your own equivalents over there I never really thought about it to be honest with you
I suppose there's the convenience of it makes global travel awfully nice.
But I had not really given it much thought, I suppose, because I've never been to the EU.
And so this is one of the things I would probably think about when I was there and noticing it.
But it's one of the things you don't think about from afar.
So I really appreciate just even that education you give me today and the context.
And it doesn't sound like it's nearly as controversial as something like this would be in the United States.
I'm hearing kind of a mixed but not overly negative take on the digital euro.
And so I hope you guys will keep me posted on how it actually plays out and any evolving thoughts you have.
Also, thank you everybody who boosts below the 2000sat cutoff.
I do read all of them and I keep them all in my show notes too for posterity.
Appreciate that.
I do the 2000s that cut off just for, you know, time on the air. And also big shout out to all of
you who stream sats as you listen. 49 of you just streamed those sats and collectively you stacked
61,818 sats for the show. Thank you. I love the sats stream. I love seeing them come in. They come
in 24 seven. I'm working on my node. I'll see five sats come in. Five sats come in. Somebody's
listening to the show while I'm working on my node. Somebody's listening to the show. It's so cool.
All right, when you combine those SAT streamers with our boosters, the show stacked a pretty reasonable 376,645 SATs.
Thank you, everybody who participates in the Value for Value system.
I put the show out there for free.
I hope it's useful to you.
And then you return the value you find in it.
Fountain.fm makes that real easy.
Of course, there's AlbiHub, and then you can plug that into your app of choice.
There's also some set-it and forget-it options with the show.
To support us, we have the Jupiter Party membership,
which is the Jupiter Broadcasting Whole Network membership
where you get everything.
That's Jupiter.party.
And then in Fountain, I'm working with their new membership system.
It's a membership program just for the show,
an individual program for the show,
where you do get access to the bonus features,
the early stuff when I put it out there,
and you get a badge in your profile.
but also we're kind of kicking the tires on a lightning-based subscription system,
which does mean you need to keep your Fountain wallet topped off for this to work.
You could also plug it into your Fiat bank card if you want,
but nobody else does this right now.
And Fountain is doing it all with open freaking standards.
Now, they're the only ones doing this stuff, but if we can prove the way,
others may very well follow along, and they will be able to implement this stuff
because it's just standards, RSS feeds, and Oster identities, things like that.
So there is a subscription membership system available through the Fountain app for this show as well.
And we're kind of trying out something that could be a revolutionary way for content creators to run memberships.
all right in the updates section we're going to do a little bit of a banker blowout they've been
going out and saying a lot of things about bitcoin and crypto etc etc so i'm just going to do a hot
run down a few of them, and then we'll get into some serious news about the DOJ and the
Bitcoin Reserve. So let's start with Bitwise. They say a new country is stacking Bitcoin
very soon. They're preparing, laying the groundwork, and they will be announcing something within
a matter of months. So what do I mean by that? We're chatting with a sovereign wealth fund
who's interested in buying Bitcoin, but it's going to take them about six months to get
through the process.
So they own shares of MicroStrategy now.
We were just approved at a trillion dollar bank in the US,
their wealth management division.
It's the first time they have access to a Bitcoin ETF.
A lot of them have used DATS, MicroStrategy and others,
to get exposure.
There is an article in the Wall Street Journal
about Mark Casey, the portfolio manager at Capital Group,
who's the largest owner of MicroStrategy.
Mark is absolutely fantastic.
If you ask him, his mutual fund is only
allowed to invest in equities.
So he has a lot of conviction on Bitcoin, but he can't buy Bitcoin.
So this allows him to express that view.
All right.
Continuing our banker blowout, JPMorgan staffer confirms they are soon going to allow clients to trade Bitcoin.
Just in terms of another big topic that the banks focus on, custody of crypto assets.
I was speaking to Citi last week, suggesting they're going to launch their own crypto custody service.
This is actually holding Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tokens as well.
when it comes to how you're approaching digital assets how big a topic is custody right now is
it something that you're looking to launch as well from jp morgan side i i don't think that's
in the near term horizon for us i think jamie was pretty clear at invest today that you know we're
going to be involved in the trading of that but custody isn't on the table at the moment
there's a lot of questions our own around our own risk appetite of how far we want to go down that
path from trading and other sides of it and then custody i guess would follow but naturally we need
custodian so we're exploring what the right custodians for us for the business footprint
man there's going to be a big business boom for crypto custodians but what they're saying there
is they're going to allow clients to trade bitcoin now why does this matter because
you and i you know listeners to this show you're probably not going to be buying and selling
bitcoin on the jp morgan platform but my dad is you know one of the things that happens is
bitcoin gets isolated off into its own area and so when you're buying and selling your etfs and
your stocks and your funds. You're doing this in your brokerage account. And that's where all the
money is. And to get the cash, when you say you bought an ETF, you sell it off, and now you've
got some cash, or you bought a stock, you sell it off, you got some cash, and you want to buy
Bitcoin with that cash. You have to do the slow process here in the States of moving that money
through different financial systems, sometimes setting it up, going through the verification
process, it can take days. And by that time, the trading opportunity has completely passed.
So if everything is in the same system, it's in the same brokerage account,
if you can sell your stocks and buy your Bitcoin and vice versa, then that money is able to move
between in and out of Bitcoin a lot easier. So it actually, it does matter. And it's a product
people do want. It's just probably not a product you or I are likely going to use.
Now we continue the banker blowout. One more clip after this, I believe. And this one is your buddy.
The Finkster, Larry Fink, not only was on CBS News, but he went on CNBC and just went on there to brag about how Ibit is completely crushing it.
You know, our Bitcoin Ibit is now over $100 billion.
$100 billion, I know, from nothing not that long ago.
And two years ago, zero.
Yeah, I know.
Well, you weren't always a huge proponent of crypto, as we know.
I love it now.
But I grow and learn.
I heard you say that on 60 Minutes.
I did.
Yeah.
Ha ha ha ha. You know, who could have seen that coming? That the Bitcoin ETF would be the most successful ETF in history. Who could have seen that coming? All right. And our last banker blowout clip. Your buddy Tom Lee has a theory on at least partially why gold is ripping. And I'll be honest. This is my bias showing here. I love this theory.
And the reason gold's up and it's because of crypto, not directly because of crypto, but you think the incremental buyer in gold are there's gold based stable coins and people need to buy gold to to back the stable coins.
And that you think that's enough to be up ninety two dollars all the way up to a new high?
Well, there is an interesting correlation we found, which is when I look at Tether's supply of dollars outstanding, it really started to rise about three months ago.
And that corresponded with gold essentially going up every day.
I'm not positive of this, but I think stable coins, including Tether, may be one of the largest buyers of gold today.
That's perfect.
so the the people that have been bullish on gold for so long and bearish on crypto
and and bitcoin they're finally getting their their big rally in gold and it's because of the
thing they hate so much crypto and bitcoin yeah that's right that's so funny other is proving to
be a good meeting ground between bitcoiners and gold people i don't know if it's true i love that
theory i love the idea that gold's getting pumped because of crypto all right now on a more serious
matter, the DOJ has seized $15 billion in Bitcoin in the pig butchering fraud case that you may be
hearing about. And I wanted to highlight this because I think this indicates perhaps the worst
case scenario for how the U.S. government is going to build out the Bitcoin reserve.
They're not going to look for revenue neutral ways to purchase Bitcoin. They're going to look
for revenue neutral ways to seize Bitcoin. So this week, the Department of Justice seized around
$15 billion worth of Bitcoin held by a man who oversaw the massive pig butchering fraud operation
based in Cambodia.
The seizure is the largest forfeiture action
by the DOJ in history.
The largest in history.
The indictment charging alleged scammer Chen Xi
was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
The U.S. government's Bitcoin wallet
has also been updated now
with 127,000 new seized Bitcoin.
According to the people that monitored their wallets,
the U.S. government's wallet now holds
a rough 324,780 Bitcoin.
And perhaps this is how they build out
their big old Bitcoin reserve,
is they seize Bitcoin.
And you suppose as it gets more valuable,
they get more aggressive.
Perhaps a different government comes in
with different policies towards Bitcoin,
they get more aggressive.
And if the social situation continues to deteriorate
and they're looking for people to blame
and they need something to do
to alleviate the debt situation
or they become more aggressive with the seizures?
See, I think this is worst case.
I almost would have rather they spent tax dollars to buy Bitcoin.
I'm not a big fan of that.
So let's shift gears.
I wanted to go into more on this large liquidation event that happened on Friday.
Just a bit more context because the Hurl Rate podcast boys
were watching the markets live and doing trading when this crash happened.
So they talk about their experience in real time.
And they also get into the linchpin sort of at the center of this massive market drop and why things started to seemingly fail and crash so hard.
It's been wild this weekend.
The crash was pretty impressive.
When you see those cascading liquidations, a lot of us were on a call while it was happening
live and you're starting to see the weakness hit the market and Bitcoin draw down and it
doesn't really hit you as any big deal because that happens a lot in Bitcoin, right?
We've seen lots of these liquidation events, but then all of a sudden you start to see
the book get really thin and all of a sudden Bitcoin's jumping around by the thousands of
dollars within seconds and it was pretty clear that something along the chain had broke and
almost always when you see this type of price action it means the leverage is getting hit
there's a reason why most people should never touch leverage when they're trading cryptocurrencies
and this is the reason it's because you've got these automated liquidation engines
that are driving all of these trades. And as soon as one cascades into the other,
you start this chain of events. And what was really interesting with that post that came out,
and it was by a guy named Elon Trades, was it showed effectively the trail of what happened
and how all of this was effectively triggered by a coin called USDE with 60 to $90 million being
dumped on Binance and causing the initial liquidation on Binance. But what people were
really focusing on was the tie to the larger macro event, which was the tariff announcement from
Trump. And it just was when you see things that seem too orchestrated, there's the old saying,
somebody always knows something. What a way to mask this type of an exploit. And it was interesting
because Binance had already identified this exploit and they had communicated that there
was a patch on the way for it. And so there was only an eight day window where this all would
have been possible. And they managed to do that Friday afternoon, right after the markets had
closed, you immediately get the news of the tariffs hitting. You start getting initial weakness in the
market. You start this liquidation cascade and everyone ties it to the news out of the White
House, even though that was, that would have been surprising, right? Because this is not our first
tariff rodeo. I actually think one of our very first episodes, we were talking about tariffs then,
and the markets were getting hit by the tariffs at that time, and then bouncing back and recovering
much like we saw today. But it was one of these perfectly timed executions to exploit the
collateral engine on Binance using that USDE token and causing the forced liquidations,
which ultimately, I believe, amounted to over $19 billion, which is larger than the FTX collapse.
It was larger than anything that happened with COVID.
It was the largest drawdown or liquidation that you saw within the crypto complex.
So it was a really major event.
And I think what was ultimately interesting was when you watched it play out, maybe we've just been around this too long, but it didn't really feel like that much.
You watched it.
It didn't pull Bitcoin under 100, although on some exchanges where it got really thin, I did see that there were some trades that were some orders that were filling right around 100.
So it drew it pretty low.
but Bitcoin overall, people stepped in on the bid. There were buyers on Bitcoin,
and you didn't see that with all the other tokens. A lot of the other altcoins that were
out there drew down 70%, 90%. You saw some really major wipeouts happen in that side of the house.
Bitcoin overall showed pretty good resiliency, bouncing back from that very quickly. It did not
hold down there very long before it had recovered back to the $112, $113 range, ultimately getting
above 115 here. And it was a good battle test, I will say, for Bitcoin. It shows when everything
really starts falling apart around the crypto industry. I think what you saw over the weekend
was where that capital rotates to. There's a fleet of safety within that overall industry,
and Bitcoin is the most established and the most liquid of all the digital assets that are out
there. And when panic and chaos hits and all these other ones, I think what you saw was that capital
goes to where it believes it to be safe, which is in Bitcoin. So I thought that was actually a
really good highlight for how Bitcoin can withstand what most others cannot.
And I think that might have been the signal that got lost in all of the excitement about a big
crash is Bitcoin's dominance shot way up. The crypto industry bailed into Bitcoin. They know
deep down that Bitcoin's the only true crypto asset. And they know it. And they bail. And I
think that's the real signal when you look at that crash.
Well, if you couldn't believe it, we're already at our final clip of the week.
I feel like we just got together, back together again, and I gotta go.
I gotta go.
But there is more to do, I suppose.
I like this clip, though.
I think it's a good final clip of the week because in one clip, it really shows you how
stupid the tulips argument is.
Every now and then, people still call Bitcoin tulips, which was a bubble that lasted for
a very short period of time.
But it's a dumb, dumb thing to call Bitcoin.
And this clip not only knocks that one out, but also kind of makes it clear why it's more risky to not own Bitcoin than it is to own it.
Like everyone goes, Bitcoin is a bubble.
It's tulips.
OK, tulips was was the bubble in tulips in Amsterdam in 1630.
That bubble in Amsterdam, where is the center of the global flower industry today?
It is in Holland.
the netherlands has been the central the center of the global flower industry for 400 years that
tulip bubble bought 400 years of prosperity to amsterdam so to call it tulips is actually a
compliment and then you go what is a bubble well i'll tell you what a bubble is a bubble
is a bull market in which you don't have a position it is a psychological way of justifying
that you didn't invest in something to call it a bubble.
So you can call it a bubble and you can dismiss it.
But the potential of Bitcoin to be the default cash system of the Internet
and the default savings vehicle of the Internet is so extraordinary,
I would argue that the risk is not owning Bitcoin.
The risk is not owning Bitcoin, if that makes sense.
Everyone should have an allocation in their portfolio.
and don't try and use the fact that I don't understand it as an excuse
because most people don understand how the combustion engine works and they still own a car Most people don understand hypertext transfer protocol and they still use the internet
All right, let's check in on the state of the network as I'm wrapping up at block height 919,233.
Bitcoin's price to US dollar. One Bitcoin is 111,280. That puts our sats per dollar right at 899 sats to one US dollar, which makes us down 11.8% from our all time high.
That was 126,180 US dollars nine days ago on October 6th, 2025.
We have a difficulty retarget date coming up October 15th. 3% downward adjustment.
I may have already gone in by the time you hear this episode.
So that's probably a pretty accurate prediction.
Reachable nodes on the network right now, 24,565 nodes.
Core 29.1 at 15.2% of the network and knots at 21% of the network.
Let's see.
And just checking live, Core 30 clocking in still at 1.8% of the network, 443 nodes.
I say go stand yourself up a note.
That's your homework.
If you haven't done that yet, or get AlbiHub going,
get yourself a voice in the network.
The network could use your voice to make it even stronger.
If you made it this far, links to what I talked about are at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
That also takes you to Jupyter Broadcasting, where I have my other great shows.
My goal is to try to create something that doesn get distracted by the emotions about what going on but just focuses on the signal for you so you can be as informed as possible and make the best decisions around Bitcoin and all the things that Bitcoin impacts in your life So let me know how I did with a boost You can also tell me what I missed what I should have included or anything like that And I always would love to hear more segment ideas or future segment ideas
Love those in a boost as well.
Now I'm going to leave you with a value for value track,
as I like to do.
So if you boost in while this music plays,
95% of your sats will go to the artist and their team.
Now this is off the album In Another Life
by artist B. Glass,
and it's their track, Spook.
Thank you.
guitar solo
Thank you
Thank you.
The Time Legion