Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 80.
My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com.
The big 8-0, which means now we're just sniffing at 100.
I don't know. That's where my head goes. Just seems crazy to me. 80 episodes of This Week in Bitcoin.
And last week I asked, are we seeing signs that the government shutdown in the U.S. is impacting Bitcoin?
And this week I got a resounding yes. Wow.
In fact, it seems to be having a very large impact on Bitcoin and a lot of other things, causing a whole cascade of bad news that we're going to get into this week.
So let's start with that government shutdown.
Well, today is the 36th day of the federal government shutdown,
making it the longest closure in U.S. history.
Yeah, but now some senators in both parties appear to be working together
on a possible plan to reopen the government.
It involves some kind of stopgap funding bill
and a promise to vote later on rising Obamacare subsidies.
So how does a U.S. government shutdown affect a worldwide asset like Bitcoin?
Is it just because the markets get scared?
Well, there may actually be a little bit of that.
No, no, no.
It's actually because of something we've talked about before on this show.
The TGA, the Treasury General Account.
Essentially, Scott Besson's checking account.
And we've been fixated on this because they have been refilling the TGA, which sucked a bunch of liquidity, out of the market, right?
It takes it from the banks.
It takes it from those money markets you hear about all the time.
And it goes into Scott's checking account.
And then he pays for the government's bills.
I'm simplifying here, obviously.
And the cash works its way back out into the system, or the liquidity.
Now, when the government shut down, they didn't start spending that money.
In fact, they are just soaking up a little bit more money here, up to, oh, just tiny bits, $700 billion additional dollars.
The TGA has been Bitcoin's biggest enemy for the last few months.
And now the shutdown is having a major impact.
So when the TGA stops hoarding the cash, the liquidity will flow back into the market.
Bitcoin may catch some of that.
But it's hard to say because, you know, at the same time, it's causing stresses in the banking sector as well.
And that causes issues.
So it's it's not good.
But this this part I missed in my analysis last week.
So I wanted to start right here, right now and admit, yeah, that is having an impact on Bitcoin.
There's also been a lot of talk this week about long-term holders, quote-unquote, taking profits,
or like the Wall Street media likes to call it, whale profit-taking, whale selling.
Bitcoin off of some of the lows that we saw trading above $100,000 a coin,
but still significantly off the record highs, down around 20%.
Now, analysts have been pointing to something called whale selling as a catalyst for this slowdown.
What is whale selling and how is that contributing to the pullback that we're seeing in Bitcoin?
Yeah, this is long term holders that hold a large amount of Bitcoin.
And we've seen that there's been whale selling, which has put pressure on the market.
The strategists are pointing to 400,000 Bitcoin that have been sold by long term holders.
Oh, 400,000 Bitcoin, you say, by long-term holders, you say. Yeah, 405,000 in the past 30 days, guys. Okay. I mean, that is huge. That's just no joke.
When I tell you that 405,000 Bitcoins from long-term hodlers, they were bought at like pennies and dollars. I just went on the market. I mean, it's amazing we stayed around 100 that we did.
However, there's something you should know.
In this case, the term, quote, long-term holder means 155 days.
Not exactly what I would consider long-term.
In fact, this is exactly what I would consider short-term.
Perhaps what you might call a speculator.
The exact cohort that you would, I don't know, expect to panic sell.
So long-term holders, little disingenuous.
So let's look at some of the different longer term holding strategies.
So the three year supply change.
If you look at coins that have been held for three years, if we look at the last 30 days, they sold 109,000 coins.
Yeah.
So that I mean, three years, still not super long conviction, but you've held it through some stuff.
May is a real inflection point for when this started happening.
And since May, the three-year supply for holders has dropped from 9.2 million to 8.47 million
Bitcoin.
Now, what's notable, I think, is the differences by the five-year hodlers.
I went and did some digging here.
Over the last 30 days, they've accumulated.
Over the last 30 days, the five-year hodlers have added 13.9 thousand Bitcoin.
However, if we go back to May, that inflection point, they've actually sold.
They've dropped from 6.1 million to 6 million.
So they've sold, well, you know, actually about 100, 150,000.
So there is definitely some profit taking that is happening even by people that have held for longer than five years.
Not a lot, not nearly the amount that they would have you believe when they just use the generic term long term hodler.
So you do need to stay skeptical about that term.
But there is there is some selling.
So what's going on here?
Well, it's been dubbed and this has really spread.
You could call it cope theory.
You could say it's a narrative, whatever you want.
But it has really spread this week.
And it's Bitcoin's IPO moment.
Now, Jordy Visser created this and he stopped by the Pomp podcast when he was sort of flushing this idea out.
And he explained what he was thinking.
Beginning in May and in early July, there were a lot of, I want to say rumors flying around, but they weren't just rumors.
And this is not speculation.
Anyone can go look this up.
But there were stories about China cracking down again on Bitcoin miners and non crypto ownership and blah, blah, blah.
And it got poo pooed and everything went on.
Since those stories came out, there has been an overhead of supply that have gone through.
And I just want to make sure people realize there's two themes as a traditional finance person that has spent a lot of time trying to take the lens that I learned everything through, which was as a trader, as a macro person.
So I think the reason I shake my head at Bitcoin is because every possible thing to everyone
listening that you would want for Bitcoin is happening right now, meaning the government
is supporting things.
The financial guardrails are shifting.
We've got news after news every single day about the financial guardrails becoming more
digital economy.
It's things that are necessary for the network effects to kick in.
All of that has happened.
We still see inflows from retail.
We still see the banks now opening it up for people to go through.
But there's clearly a bunch of whatever it is, OGs, Bitcoin miners out of China, whoever
it is, large amounts.
Mike Novogratz publicly said it.
If you go back to July, there have been billions and billions of dollars of, let's say, original
investors supporting Bitcoin.
Now, he's right to a degree.
I mean, I just went through the numbers with you.
And if you are somebody that's been hodling for five years or even three years, you're probably getting a good sense that there is support in this market like we've never seen before.
Someone can turn around and, well, a group of people, not someone, but a group of people can turn around and sell 405,000 Bitcoin in the last 30 days and the market eats it up.
Now, we have reached the point where there are more sellers than there are buyers.
But it is remarkable that there was that depth of buying when they wanted to sell.
That wasn't available to them two years ago.
That wasn't even available to them a year and a half ago necessarily.
If they wanted to sell, they would have tanked the market.
And now they can sell and there's somebody there to support that buying, or at least there has been.
And that's new.
That aspect, these institutional pockets, it'll snap it up.
Also, they don't say this, but you have to keep in mind that these institutional buyers, your MSTRs, your exchanges, your whatnots, they're reaching out to the long-term hodlers that are known.
And they're trying to cut them deals.
Big fat checks.
Picture yourself.
You've been sitting on Bitcoin for 5, 6, 10 years.
And you recognize what it was early on.
You knew it was a scarce asset, a hard asset.
And so you snapped it up and you bought thousands of it and you've realized billions and tens of billions of dollars of profit.
Really?
I mean, think about it for a moment.
You've realized $9 billion.
One of these individuals, the one he was just referencing, was a $9 billion transaction.
You've got $9 billion in potential profits, but you haven't been able to actually realize it yet.
And are you going to go take a $9 billion loan on strike or lava?
No, you can't do that.
They can't do that.
And does it make sense to diversify when you're at $9 billion?
When you have $9 billion, you could just afford to let it be debased.
You know, I'm not saying I would necessarily trade for dollars, and we don't know what they traded it for.
Maybe they went out and bought real estate.
But if you actually had the opportunity to realize a $9 billion profit, that would change your life and everyone you know.
How would you say no to that?
And now there's depth of market to support it.
So I can understand why some of these people are selling.
And this is a natural function that redistributes coins from the original hodlers back into the market.
Some of it to the plebs, some of it to the institutions.
This is how we redistribute those early coins.
Regardless of how you want to term it.
So I'm writing a substack.
I think what people should think about is we don't have an IPO for Bitcoin.
But this last four months to me feels like sourcing the pricing of the IPO.
Interesting.
Where the original investors are getting out of large chunks.
Now, why is there ever an IPO for monetization? If someone has $9 billion in Bitcoin, I mean,
I think they should diversify a little bit. If it was related to China, guess what China has now
that they haven't had since 2014-15? A bull market in stocks. Guess what else people have?
Well, they have the chance to invest in AI. AI is a 10-bagger in many cases. You've been able to do
it in the public markets. So I think at some point, Bitcoin becomes a boring asset to people
who are looking for three baggers, four baggers, five baggers. It becomes a diversification.
So I think this is just a distribution of a few massive holders. And the weaknesses I have heard
about Bitcoin as I've gotten into it from institutions, it's too volatile. Not too
volatile anymore. We've taken the implied volatility and the actual realized volatility
down to 30 and below in some cases. So the vols come down. Okay, what's the next thing? Well,
it's too concentrated in ownership. I mean, I've gone through the numbers. When you add Satoshi's
wallet, you add the other whales, you're talking about about a third of it has been owned by
not many people. I think like 10,000 is the number I heard, regardless of what the right answer is.
Every month, the Bitcoin Ibit outstanding shares goes up. It's up again this month,
even though the price is down. So I think everyone that's depressed has actually become entitled.
I think they think it's a risk asset.
Oh, there's another one.
This is just a risk asset.
Okay, well, it's not going up with the NASDAQ,
so that's good, lower correlation.
Well, it's just digital gold.
Well, it's not going up with gold, so guess what?
In portfolio theory, for everyone who hasn't bought any yet,
I think with your stocks, with your gold, with your bonds,
now there's every argument to make.
It's lower volatility now,
lower correlation with the other traditional asset class,
diversification from gold.
I think this thing is going to move higher.
I was wrong about where I thought we'd be at this point. It's still up for the year. I think once
this consolidation is done and we're through the IPO process and the fundamentals take over,
next year, once we get through clarity and the beginning of tokenization and the stories of
Zelle and everything along those lines, I think we're going to have an acceleration in this.
This IPO process, it's an interesting theory. And one of the things that I think it should remind us
of is A, we don't know if it's true or not, but B, no one couldn't predict where this is going.
Everybody was saying 150 Bitcoin by the end of the year.
250 Bitcoin, you know, 250,000.
We don't know where any of this is going because of human behavior.
In this weird twist of irony, now this is speculation on my part.
We're going into Chris speculation mode.
But in this weird twist of irony, I think all these Bitcoin treasury companies are what the market has taken to calling DATS, digital asset treasury companies, because, you know, there's other digital assets.
these bitcoin treasury companies gave permission for these ogs to sell stick with me here for a
second right if you're an og and you see all these hungry bitcoin companies the maulers companies and
the sailors and and the sequoians and all the sequins or whatever they're like all these like
what was there 20 of them that came online they're all hungry for bitcoin but they've all got ahead
of their skis even sailors a little ahead of his skis at the moment although he's definitely at the
top of the pack doing the best.
I don't have a lot of information, but by going by just what we can see on chain and
things moving around, it seems at least two Bitcoin treasury companies have begun selling
their stack.
Now, we know Sequoia and Bitcoin treasury has sold because Corey from Swan said so on
X.
He said that they were too leveraged at nearly 50 percent of the initial raise and that there was supposed to be significantly more in the pipe by now, whatever that means.
I think that means more money coming in.
But they didn't get it.
They have 195 million in equity and 189 of debt.
So they had to de-leverage, i.e. they sold 1,000 Bitcoin at a loss.
And there seems to be another Bitcoin treasury company that is also selling.
They cannot sustain these lower prices.
And in this weird, this is, again, my speculation bit, in this weird twist, them coming online and telling everybody about how insatiable they were going to be and how they were never going to sell, gave all these OGs permission to sell, tank the price, and making these DATs unsustainable.
Well, some of them.
I think this is where we will see some of the weak ones get washed away.
And if that happens, there's going to be a lot more selling pressure on the market.
Questions are being raised about the rapid growth of the AI sector Some see a strong demand in artificial intelligence and technology
Others are concerned that we are in a bubble that will eventually burst.
Here to talk more about those concerns is Gary Marcus,
an author and professor emeritus at New York University.
Gary, thank you very much for joining us today.
Glad to be here.
We've heard the term frothy a lot for this.
Is it coalescing into a bubble?
or is it a bubble already to you?
It is a bubble.
The question is, when will the bubble pop?
You know, I find this really something.
It is funny how these shift, right?
Just even a few weeks ago,
when we were talking about this on the show,
it was, is it a bubble?
That's whatever.
Is this a bubble?
Now it's definitely, obviously, certainly a bubble.
It's only a matter of time until it pops.
There's a big shift happening here.
And the question is, all right, well, if it's a bubble and everyone knows it's a bubble, why are investors still YOLOing into AI?
The weirdest thing of all is people like Sam Altman saying this could actually be a bubble.
If everyone is talking about it like it's a bubble and everyone thinks it's a bubble, why is everyone continuing to act like it isn't?
This is The Economist, and I guess they have a podcast.
And why is the pace of investment not slowing?
The big thing here is this might not be a normal market, and this might not be a normal victory. This might be a bubble, but also a race. If, as the people at the top of these labs keep saying they believe, the first company to build powerful AI, in the words of Anthropics founder, AGI, in the words of most of the rest of the industry, artificial general intelligence, human level intelligence, if the first lab to build that owns the future, perhaps in a science fictionally
literal sense, then it's quite hard to value that. And potentially, you know, I've seen one figure,
just one, on the valuation of building AGI or superintelligence of $1.46 quadrillion.
That's so bonkers. I mean, that's just so bonkers. And the thing that they always miss
in their analysis is part of the AI bubble has been driven by the Cantillion effect.
Big tech has become an absolute expert over the last 20 years at positioning themselves
close to the money printer.
The investors, the big bankers, they get the money
and they got to put it somewhere and they put it into tech.
And so the question really isn't, is there a bubble?
Isn't there a bubble?
Is how long can that sustain?
And when you have these numbers, it's just bonkers stupid.
Even the most insane YOLO investor
is going to start questioning these numbers.
And if that money flow starts to slow,
well, AI has been the largest driver of money in the system.
So Bitcoiners should probably brace themselves.
Even if you hate AI, you hate or don't hate AI.
Like if the money train slows down, you don't get an AI bubble pop without a hit to liquidity.
And then if you have a hit to liquidity, you're going to have a Bitcoin price slide.
Let me ask you about crypto, which also might be relevant to this conversation.
Really interesting trading through October, dropping for one reason, and then the early part of November dropping for what seems to be a different reason, even if actually this morning it's a little bit stronger.
What's happening with crypto?
Yeah, it's really interesting to note that Bitcoin today is trading below its one-year average.
It's 365-day moving average.
So, you know, the average purchase of Bitcoin over the past year is offside,
given there were one year from Trump's election victory.
That's quite interesting.
So, therefore, Bitcoin has been actually one of the worst trades of the Trump presidency.
And given that he was meant to be the big crypto backer, I think that might change the narrative there.
The aspect of why that's going to be fueled on the downside is digital asset treasury companies are having real problems.
And I think there's a lot more outflows to come there.
So I think we are in a sustained crypto downwave.
Bitcoin's constructed to have repeated boom-bust cycles.
That's how it works.
It can't work when it's stable at high prices.
It's constructed, this guy.
This is Mark Cudmore from Bloomberg.
So it's had, you know, I think a six 70% plus corrections over at 17 and horizon.
We're overdue another one.
I think we're probably in the next, the start of the next 70% plus.
I think Mark takes a little bit of nose candy before he does a hit.
Action in Bitcoin and that'll drag the whole crypto sector lower.
That'll weigh on retail sentiment.
So what he's saying, because the guy's just rambling on at a thousand miles per hour,
is retail's washed out.
They're washed out already.
And if the AI play washes out, then the liquidity is going to hit crypto hard.
Bitcoin and that'll drag the whole crypto sector lower.
That'll weigh on retail sentiment.
It will be kind of, but it's not, it doesn't have a direct kind of feed through to the
broader market.
Sure, it's going to hurt some of these meme stocks.
It's going to hurt some of these marginal momentum names.
It's going to be slightly bad for the tech sector.
But ultimately, there are real solid names at the core of the tech business.
And that's really kind of marginal froth.
It hurts the retail index.
And that will eventually field into a wealth effect on the economy.
All these problems are growing.
And that's why I think the AI bubble will burst next year.
But crypto won't be kind of coincide with the collapse of the AI bubble.
Crypto will probably collapse first AI a few months later.
now where i agree with uh nose candy mark here is if we're going to see a pop in the ai bubble
you're going to see it in bitcoin first it'll be the canary in the coal mine as it always is
so to bear that in mind something you know we need to watch out for as you're making plans you know
if you're trying to think of like lines of credit and margin loans and all those types of things
this is the type of stuff you need to be considering there's also the larger picture
When I say AI has been driving the money, I'm not kidding. I'm not even exaggerating. That's been driving the entire economy here in the States.
A couple of recent stats that just came out. The top 10% of U.S. households, so the top 10%, the richest people, now hold 87% of all U.S. stocks. The top 1% alone owns over 50%. And the top 10% of households reflect 67.3% of the nation's entire wealth. 67.3%.
So they're driving everything right now. Whatever they're spending money on is what's doing well. And whatever they don't spend money on isn't doing well. That's the situation. Like the regular consumer hasn't mattered for a while. It may be that that cumulative effect does start to drag things down.
I, however, think if we were to look at the macro picture longer term, the conditions are setting up for a lot of the Western banks to start easing and all of that easing to start happening around the same time.
And so the overall liquidity picture only actually gets better for Bitcoin if there is a market slowdown.
Of course, Bitcoin takes a hit initially and it takes the hardest hit potentially.
But if that puts pressure on the Fed and the other central banks around the world to ease even more, that ultimately is going to be fantastic for Bitcoin because it's going to suck up so much of that liquidity.
And it seems we're already positioning for that very thing to happen.
This is Arthur Hayes.
Japan, the new prime minister, I can't pronounce her name correctly, so I'm not even going to try.
She is talking about printing money to help households pay for goods and services because
of the high inflation that was caused by the printed money of the previous administration,
who she loves, Abenomics. So they're printing money in Japan. And then the ECB is going to have
to print more money to save the euro. So again, all around the world, the politicians are going
to print more money. And so I see it as a completely different scenario than, let's even
talk about 2021 when Jerome Paul was talking about tightening credit, when every central bank was
tightening credit because of inflation. We're in a scenario where the politicians around the world,
regardless of where you live, are talking about spending more money without raising taxes. And so
that's why I believe that this particular cycle will extend. I think it's going to extend in the
2027, 2028 time period. But again, who knows how long it will go for. But as long as the politicians
are going to print money to hand out goodies to people to support them, we're going to keep going
higher as a crypto ecosystem. And it seems like we're going in that direction. Even with this
pullback, though, if you just look at Bitcoin since the BlackRock ETF was filed 30 months ago,
it was now 30 months ago. Can you believe it? Bitcoin's up 300 percent. So that's 80 percent
annualized return for I mean, that's not bad, right? So, yeah, it hurts right now. But if you
look at 80% annualized returns over 30 months, that's pretty darn good. So if you have a margin
loan, it's time to keep an eye on it right now. Tend to it. But we're not in a disaster situation.
We are in that warning sign situation. But everything should be okay as long as we don't
screw it up. And man, do we have the ability to screw things up.
All right. It's time to talk about Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 444.
BIP 444.
And I recorded a clip for Noster.
If you're not following me, go to chrislas.com.
And while the analysis was fresh, and I thought I would have a big updated take for you on my analysis from this was Friday when I recorded this, but it still seems to be pretty relevant.
The questions I raise in this clip from last Friday are still relevant today.
So we go back in time to just a few days ago when Chris posted a clip on his Noster.
Bitcoin improvement proposal 444 is a spicy one.
I'm kind of shocked I had to make a video on this.
So this is coming from a developer that goes by Dathom, something to that effect.
They've had an account relatively recently created both on X and GitHub, and they're working on BIP444.
It hasn't been officially submitted to the main project, but it is available online for review right now.
And this is coming after concerns around Core 30 and the increased op return.
I guess this is their solution.
The proposal says, quote, if the blockchain contains content that is illegal to possess or distribute,
node operators are forced to choose between violating the law or their conscious or shutting down their node.
And the document then goes on to say, quote,
this is unacceptable dilemma directly undermines the incentive to validate,
leading to the inevitable centralization and proposing an existential threat to Bitcoin security model.
And they also mentioned on line 261, I think they're going to massage the wording on this in the future.
They say rejecting this soft fork may subject you to legal or moral consequences or could at least result in you splitting off to a new altcoin like Bcash.
Now, the idea is these changes would result in a soft fork where transactions that were previously considered valid by the network would actually become invalid.
And then they would be in limbo land for like a year.
Now, how they get determined is illegal or immoral.
I'm not sure.
However, this is one of the things that people are pointing out is that Bitcoin is a global ledger and in jurisdictions all over the world with different legalities and moral standards.
So it would be pretty hard to really say which legal and moral standards you're following.
Also, the folks over at BitMEX Research, of course, not big fans of nots in general, but they make a great proposal or suggestion or realization that I think should be definitely considered.
BIP444, as it is written now, would be incredibly bad, they say.
A bad actor who wants to conduct a double spend attack could put CSAM, that's child porn, on the chain to cause a reorg intentionally and then attack the network.
So you're actually giving someone an economic incentive and a path to attack the network.
Now, to make it clear what I'm talking about here, BIP444, because this is all so crazy, it probably doesn't even make sense what I'm saying.
Well, Bitcoin University, Matthew Cratter, went to his channel to promote this idea.
I almost have a sense he's talking to Luke Dasher directly.
And I'll let him explain the idea behind it.
Because what I'm saying sounds so crazy, perhaps if they explain it themselves, it'll make sense.
And what we're going to be talking about today, though, is number two, which is emergency activation.
And this will almost certainly be contentious.
So if we take a look at Bit444, there are two ways in which it gets activated.
There's the proactive way and the reactive way.
This section called activation goes into it a little bit more, and it says, due to the
unpredictable nature of the crisis this BIP addresses, we should move to limit on-chain
data as quickly and orderly as possible while being ready to react immediately in case illegal
data appears in the chain before the new rules activate.
What is the nature of the crisis?
Are they talking about C-SPAM or are they talking about Core30?
I think they might be talking about Core 30 because they say, does this proposal activate too soon?
In short, yes, it does.
Unfortunately, due to the release of Core 30 endorsing large data storage and actual legal content, they have an emergency situation.
So Core 30, the release of Core 30 makes this a crisis, according to this document.
But you can still change the settings with Core 30.
And you can still run Core 29.
Now, as I record this, Bitcoin Core 30 has about an 8% market share on the Bitcoin network.
Maybe that's freaking out the knots guys. I don't know. But to me, it doesn't seem like a crisis. Again, you can change the defaults or you just don't upgrade. You just run 29 or hell run 28. It's fine. So you can still run 28, whatever. I know people that are still on 19. You can do that. You probably shouldn't, but you can do that. I've fired up even older nodes than that when I rescued old systems.
So it's not like it's an imminent crisis.
I realize there's more core 30 nodes
that just have the tyranny of the defaults
become on the network.
They feel like this problem gets worse,
but you're not convincing me it's an imminent crisis.
Thus, this BIP presents two parallel methods of activation.
The first proactive, the other reactive,
which would be the contentious version.
The proactive method involves a flag day activation
of the rules sometime in early 2026.
If no troublesome content appears in the chain,
this BIP will activate smoothly via this proactive method.
If, however, some content appears in the chain that causes significant risks,
we can fall back to the reactive method,
which is a retroactive chain reorganization or reorg
to invalidate the offending block in an attempt to orphan it
and any subsequent blocks while immediately activating the new rules about spam.
So it literally says in here that if troublesome content appears in the chain,
this BIP will activate smoothly.
If troublesome content, well, who defines what is troublesome?
Who says this is troublesome?
Is it a council of elders?
Is it Luke?
Is it a consensus of node operators?
Who determines that?
The mere existence of this BIP likely reduces the threat,
since it demonstrates that although Bitcoin Core 30 appears to sanction data storage as an official feature of the Bitcoin network the network has not yet arrived at a consensus regarding this stance since And that completely backwards They say the very existence of this soft fork bomb that could be a hard fork
that very existence will prevent people from putting CSAM on the blockchain.
No, it won't.
Like BitMEX Research says, it's actually creating an incentive to put CSAM on the blockchain.
You're creating incentive for the very thing that you're all worked up about.
You're all worked up about this, and you're creating an incentive to do it.
It seems so obvious, and I feel like I'm truly trying to understand what I'm missing here.
There is an active opposition.
So this goes into the activation, the non-contentious one, and then the reactive one, which is contentious.
As Luke points out in this tweet, he writes that,
If someone mines CSAM, BIP444 will activate to reject that block.
The only way technically to then reject BIP444 is at a checkpoint pinning the CSAM in the chain, which is quite un-
How does BIP444 activate?
Does somebody trigger it? Is that a manual process?
Is there some sort of bot that is hashtag matching?
Like, are they like, you know, matching hashes? Hashtag matching?
I don't know.
likely someone would want to do that, but anything could happen in Bitcoin, certainly.
So here's the plan that Luke's talking about and that BIP444 is talking about.
If a large CSAM operaturn gets mined in a block, Bitcoin mining pools will then need to immediately
reject that block and instead start mining on the previous block in the blockchain in an effort to
reorg out the offending block. Right, but what about all of the other transactions in that block?
Right. You're you're taking your you could be you could potentially destroying all those transactions or quarantining them or whatever it is. And that's violating people's property.
all right now back to current chris so i'm still trying to figure out exactly how this would work
the rest of the video will be linked in the show notes if you'd like to watch the rest of the clip
i think the way it would work is that luke dasher would activate some sort of block and fork or
whatever in knots and then people would vote by installing the latest version of knots but i'm not
I'm still not clear on who's scanning the blockchain.
I'm still not clear on who makes the determination.
Are we following U.S. laws?
Are we following some sort of list provided by the federal government?
Well, then why can't we follow other lists provided by the federal government?
If we can do this, why can't we also figure out a way to go after OFAC-sanctioned transactions?
Why can't we follow that list?
Who handles that?
Who manages that?
Who makes sure we're following the rules?
who double checks that the transaction does have c sam in it does somebody have to view the c sam
in the bitcoin community and then flag it and then what happens all the other transactions
in that block and what gives you the fuck to what gives you the right to fuck with property like i
mean it's just it's just crazy it's just like you're touching people's property i don't understand
like justify that to me just change the settings on your node and what i can't really figure out is
if this is a serious proposal,
if this is some kind of 4D chess troll,
or am I missing something technically critical
to my understanding of this?
Which I'm open to that possibility.
Because to me, it seems like the craziest BIP I've ever seen.
And the unanswered questions seem like massive problems.
And the fact that there are answers for them
make me think either they're not serious,
or it's been explained technically in some way that I've missed.
Because I read the early versions and I'm still trying to wrap my head around this BIP444.
It's pretty wild to me.
The idea, too, that so many people are for it, I think is what's really struck me.
As I've read through the comments on the YouTube videos and on social media,
there's thousands of people that are for this.
for some sort of monitoring and surveillance and sanctioning of Bitcoin transactions
that are decided by some elder counsel, I guess.
And I think part of what's happened is the folks that were against Operaturn and Core30
have lost the plot.
Like they can't accept the fact that they lost that fight.
And so they've redirected that energy.
And maybe this is my opinion as a content creator.
I could be wrong.
I think Matthew Cratter has audience capture.
So I'm not, I'm not, but I'm really not, I'm not 100% sure.
I'm really, I am shaken by this BIP.
I'm shaken by it.
As somebody who's been in Bitcoin since 2011, I am shaken by this.
I've never seen anything crazier than this.
BIP 444, go look it up.
I'll have, I'll have links in the show notes.
And Boostin, tell me your thoughts on this.
Am I missing something?
Do you like it?
Do you not like it?
explain yourself and chime in
well you can buy the dip and support the show we have a link to river you use that link in the
show notes when you stack sats it supports the show you're all about self-custody i like that
and so does the bitcoin well it's an amazing automatic self-custody platform for canada and
the u.s now if you've got some sats burning a hole in your pocket you want to buy something
the bitcoin company spend your sats via lightning instantly hundreds of gift cards go from sats to
gift card in literally minute fold card this is how you passively stack sats you want to get some
sats for paying bills, buying some stuff here and there, fold card. Check out the link in the show
notes. If it's time to get access to your Bitcoin, Salt Lending is who I've been using. There's a lot
of options these days, but you really want to make sure somebody's been around for a minute. Salt
Lending has. They've even survived a few crashes. I'll have a link to them in the show notes. If you
use any of those, you can support the show just by doing what you do.
And we did get some boosts into the show.
And now it is time for the boost.
I always appreciate everybody who likes to directly support the show with a boost.
It's a great demonstration of how the value for value system not only works, but how the Lightning Network can work, too.
And our baller booster this week is Adversaries 17.
And it is a baller boost.
Get ready for this one.
Are you ready?
409,600
sats.
Hey, rich
lifestyle.
You're the best
around.
Nothing's gonna ever
keep you down.
You're the best.
Yahoo!
Thank you, adversaries.
He writes, a minimum of 12 hours work.
Well, let's see. That comes out to
be well there that should do it thanks for the great episode again chris the value is there
that's whoo whoo that just made the show right there you know i'll i'll tell you something i
don't know this week because the boosts have been low for lup i thought oh it's gonna be a low week
for twib and man you know like everybody's down i don't think the show's gonna have any support
you know it's not like the workload stops when when when the bitcoin news is bad in fact it goes
up. And then I pulled the boost this morning, took the lens off of LUP, and I looked at Twib and I
went, holy crap, let's go. Let's go. Thank you, adversaries. I really do appreciate that. And
adversaries is our baller booster this week. That's a good one. Thank you very much, sir.
J-Cube comes in with a very generous 64,000 sats as well.
a bitcoin backed credit line interests me especially one that i could access via a visa
mastercard or something like that i use my credit card and i pay the full balance every two weeks
currently this way i could just skip the fiat bank account and just take my paycheck directly
in sats there has to be a hole in that somewhere you know not only not only that but it just to me
it's like whenever you have extra money just makes sense to put it into sats because if you know
on a moment's notice, you can draw a line of credit on it just to the amount you need.
That's huge. I have a follow-up on Lava. So you're right, there could be a hole in there somewhere.
I have a follow-up on Lava in the updates section. So stay tuned on that, because I've been testing
it out. Thanks, J-Cube. Appreciate that. Boost. OB's here. He's
sending us 23,420 sats.
Hey, Chris, if you think the CleanSpark story is something, so, side note,
last week I covered a story about CleanSpark pivoting to AI.
He says, well, you should check out Iron and Sifra.
I don't think we've seen anything yet.
There just isn't enough power to go around short term.
OB, you're right about that.
I was just reading another piece about,
oh yeah, it was Saatchi in an interview.
Saatchi Nadella from Microsoft said that they have
NVIDIA chips sitting on the shelf,
which spooked the market because the idea they thought was,
well, they can't get enough chips.
No, no, they have chips now.
NVIDIA is delivering and they're getting the chips they need, but they don't have the machines and the power so they can't use them, which just spooks the crap out of the AI investors.
So they need power real bad to keep this thing going.
And I think that's going to put them right on the front door of the Bitcoin miners.
I think you're right, Obi.
Thank you for the boost.
Nat Simerson comes in with 22,222 sats.
That's a big old duck.
Quack-a-wack-a.
It's a treasure.
Yeah. Nat writes, Chris, on one of your recent podcasts, you asked for a listener info on Noster. Well, check out this Noster in 10 minutes presentation by Odell he put together for the Global Bitcoin Summit in 2024.
Yeah, you know, I've been messing around with Noster a bit more.
And I like the idea of being able to post some content that's supplemental to the show that people could catch throughout the week that would give you additional context or maybe something breaks right after I post a show.
I'm not sure.
It's like a fine line because sometimes it justifies an emergency pod.
And sometimes it's just like I'll throw something up on Noster.
And then I'm also I have created a This Week in Bitcoin.
I think you could find it at primal.net slash this week.
But I haven't done anything with it yet.
So keep the expectations low.
But I am slow cooking.
I am slow cooking.
He says, you can check out Odell Citadel podcast.
Yep, dispatch.
Let's see.
I'm trying to read through this.
Particularly considering you're both value for value.
Oh, geez.
I stumbled across Bitcoin long before Linux.
Ah, so thanks for Linux Unplugged too.
Okay.
This is the thing I wanted.
Right.
Nat.
Man, I love hearing that, man.
because I feel like Linux and Bitcoin go together so well.
Similar ethos, similar licensing, similar goals,
Linux for technology and computers and Bitcoin for money,
both about digital and tech sovereignty.
And I just feel like there's so much crossover there.
How do we spread that word?
If you have any ideas, let me know, Nat.
It's good to hear from you.
Thank you for boosting in.
Appreciate it.
Paranoid Coder is here with 2,000 Sats.
Danger zone.
And he's talking about ARK.
Danger Zone.
ARK's pretty cool.
He says, ARK's first implementation has launched with Arcade.
And I would love to see you cover this kind of thing.
Bitcoin scaling seems to be entering a new era.
Your unbiased opinion would be highly valued.
Well, Paranoid Coder, I don't have anything for you this week.
But I actively have multiple tabs open on my browser, reading about ARK, catching different interviews.
I am very much in the learning phase.
I want to just sort of ingest, understand.
I might try to play with it too.
very much also interested in other people's experiences, thoughts, impressions with ARK.
If you've got them, send them in.
Yeah, so we've talked about lightning a lot on the show, which is a layer too.
We've talked about liquid, which is a side chain.
And now we're going to be talking more about ARK, I think.
So I'm entering my ARK.
ARK.
Doesn't work.
Thanks, Paranoid.
Nice to hear from you.
Chew Toys here with 10,000 sats.
It's over 9,000!
Spell check got me.
That was supposed to be not on my true.
No, I thought so too.
I thought so.
Nice job though.
I think you're the first report I have had of not on a true NAS server.
So thank you for sending that in.
Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks.
2,222 sets.
Pivot to high energy use cases.
Long-term climate change scam is getting pushed aside to make room for AI scam.
You know, I took, I took Gates to say, let's have a more balanced approach.
I didn't take him for saying he was walking back all his climate stuff.
However, since that interview came out, I have seen, you know, super cuts that people put together of like some pretty wild stuff Gates did say about like everything being destroyed.
No food, no food supplies, like real ends of day kind of clips.
So, yeah, there's been a bit of a walk back there.
Thanks, Ace.
Wise Hoddle's here with 3,000 sats.
No message, just value.
Mug Daddy's here with 10,000 sats.
Pet rock boost.
Yeah.
Let's see a boost with your gold rocks.
Huh?
Oh, man.
Pet rock.
Can you believe they even said that?
Thanks, Mug Daddy.
Appreciate that.
All right.
Here we go.
We got Kiwi Bitcoin guy.
There he is.
Because I'm the win.
I like you, Kiwi.
The heck?
No, I do.
I do.
He says,
Calling out the piss-poor hiring practices as a cause for layoffs, as the Fed's strategy for curbing inflation, trying really hard.
This is the way.
Also, I appreciate your video on BIP444.
How does everyone feel about Noughts now, I wonder?
Yeah, I'm shaking.
Yeah, and the way they implement this is through Noughts, isn't it?
And I think the reason why they're escalating is because the Noughts growth is sort of stalled out.
What do you think, Kiwi?
Thanks for boosting in.
Philip is here with a row of ducks.
Thanks, Chris, for constantly interested in an entertaining show.
If some of your content was video, I'd definitely give it a watch.
Sometimes I feel a bit strained in the Western islands of Europe when it comes to developments in Bitcoin.
But the meetups are building.
Yeah, that's good.
I think it'll build.
It does everywhere.
You know, and perhaps more interest will accelerate as the digital euro rolls out.
What do you think of that?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
nakamoto6102 is here with 3,500 satsaroonies
coming in hot with the boost
thank you for the value
we'll thank you for the boost nakamoto
tomato's here with 5,000 sats
everything's under control
love the track
oh we were sending that to our artist last week
thank you
bobby pin is here with 10,000 sats
boost
oh yeah
b-o-o-s-t
bitcoin just dropped below 100 blocks are full and there six full blocks in the queue and fees are four to seven sats of vbyte sounds like a good time to buy more sats make it so i agree i like the way you think
thank you everybody who boosted it including dave jones who was testing his new albi hub shout out
to you sir i do get all the below 2 000 sat boosts but i just do 2 000 sats and above for time and
Thanks to adversaries, we just had a crazy week.
And also, shout out to you sat streamers.
43 of you streaming those sats as you listened, and you stacked a nice 53,049 sats.
Stop it.
Get some help.
No, I disagree.
Keep it up.
I like it a lot.
Thank you very much for streaming those sats as you listen.
When you combine that with all of our boosts, yeah, you know it's going to be a big one this week.
In fact, this one should put us up on the charts.
Our grand total for this episode of This Week in Bitcoin is 627,723 sats.
I might not be a Bitcoin treasury company, but I am building a little bit of a stash to make sure that this network has a runway, even if things take a downturn.
And I think as you Bitcoiners out there know, it's going to be the right play long term.
And I appreciate you helping keeping this totally independent media.
Can you believe this?
80 episodes, no sponsor, just your support between our members at Jupiter.party and our boosters and our fountain members, which is still out there.
It's a small group, but it's out there.
Can you believe it?
80 episodes.
And you can't claim any advertiser has brought any bias or anything like that.
the total focus is on delivering the best product possible because you are the customer.
You're the ones I have to make happy.
It's just the brilliance of the value for value model.
You can boost with Fountain.
It makes it really easy.
It's going to get even easier soon.
More details on that.
And of course, you can go the self-hosted route with AlbiHub and then connect to a bunch
of great podcast apps.
Thank you everybody who supported this episode.
Well, you have to wonder if Trump created a bit of a long-term problem for himself.
This week with crypto?
President Trump was interviewed by CBS News,
and Norah O'Donnell asked him about his recent pardon of CZ, the CEO of Binance.
And this was the moment.
So far this year, the president has pardoned or shortened the sentences of more than 1,600 people.
The latest pardon was for a cryptocurrency tycoon who is known as CZ.
The company CZ founded, Binance, helped boost the profile of the Trump family's crypto firm, World Liberty Financial.
He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.
The government at the time said that CZ had caused significant harm to U.S. national security,
essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around.
Why did you pardon him?
Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is.
I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that.
Let's just start right here.
I can't believe Trump is going with the I-don't-know-who-he-is defense.
Are you ready for this? I don't know who he is.
No, actually, to be frank, Mr. President, I wasn't ready for that answer.
... of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is.
I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that.
And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.
In 2025, his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin.
And then you pardoned CZ.
How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
Well, here's the thing.
I know nothing about it because I'm too busy doing the other.
But he got a part?
I can only tell you this.
so if this is true
then how is that any better than the auto pen
seems like and I just
this is such a wild bonkers defense to me
you're doing the other
I can only tell you this
my sons are into it
I'm glad they are because it's probably
a great industry crypto
I think it's good you know they're running a business
they're not in government
what?
now I
this is not a political statement
I just believe this is going to chase him
This is going to follow him for a while and perhaps through the midterms.
Then if the Democrats take over in the midterms, the lower houses of government, they're going to go after him on this.
So this seems like a really clumsy thing to do, sort of a critical time for him to answer that.
And it's going to be a problem for the general crypto industry.
This is going to hang over that aspect.
Binance, by the way, my opinion seems to be at the center of a lot of the dumps and liquidations and market manipulation we've been seeing.
for about 30, 40 days.
It's always Binance, and Binance is partners.
So Trump actually had an extended version of that interview,
and we do get a bit more insight and a new narrative from Trump in the more extended cut.
Now China's getting into it very big right now.
If you want to go after people, you're going to kill that industry.
The industry he's talking about is crypto, and he's saying China is going big in crypto right now.
And it'll be very bad. Tremendous number of jobs. I campaigned positively on crypto. Very openly,
I campaigned. Biden campaigned against it. When Biden found out that I was getting like 100% of
the crypto vote, which was a lot, he switched totally and he went in favor of crypto. They
went totally in favor. They had many people under indictment. They let them all go. They let them
all go you know that many people were under indictment biden was a corrupt president biden
went all in on crypto at the very end because he thought he could get some votes it didn't work
they voted for me i want to make crypto great for america that's the only thing i don't want to have
somebody else have crypto and have china be number one in the world in crypto because in crypto it's
a kind of an industry where basically you're going to have number one and you're not going to have a
number two. And right now we're number one by a long shot. I want to keep it that way. The same
way we're number one with AI, we're number one with crypto. And I want to keep it that way.
Bringing in the China competitive narrative is always interesting. It's a hard one to argue
against. How do you know if it's true or not? And then the statement that it's an industry where
there's only going to be one winner. And then the comparison to the AI industry, I find all of that
really interesting and where Trump's headspace is on it. The White House did try to clean up
some of these statements later, like a day or two later.
And so the president is correcting that wrong,
and he has officially ended the Biden administration's war
on the cryptocurrency industry,
and I think that's the message he sent with this pardon.
Karen, yes.
So that's their cover for it.
To me, I think somebody, maybe one of his kids,
got to Trump and said, you should pardon this guy.
If I were just going to make a bet on Polymarket,
my bet would be that Trump didn't know anything about CZ,
but his boys or somebody he trusts told him to do it
and told him it's for the crypto industry.
And then today, as I'm recording,
actually just like an hour before I started recording,
Trump made some current today comments about Bitcoin.
We're making the United States the Bitcoin superpower,
the crypto capital of the world,
and the undisputed leader in artificial intelligence.
We're leading China by a lot.
Look at that, all of it right there again.
AI, crypto, same sentence, and China.
It's an interesting political messaging there.
And if we're going to be the Bitcoin capital, are we going to have that SBR?
I'm just curious about that.
I'm just curious.
I mean, I'm, you know, just wondering what's happening there.
Now, I've been noticing that the Treasury Secretary has been going on the Sunday morning programs just about every week trying to set the narrative for the market successfully or not.
That's all fine.
And I always am keeping an eye on to see if there's anything relevant for you to know about.
Generally, not much. But I do I do want to play a couple of these because we have entered an era where the Treasury secretary is just straight out hostile against the Federal Reserve and everything about the Federal Reserve.
And so Scott was on with Maria and he blasted for their hawkish talk around a possible December rate pause instead of a rate cut.
That the decision by the Federal Reserve yesterday, the decision to cut rates by 25 basis points, I applaud.
But the language that went with it tells me that this Fed is stuck in the past.
Their inflation estimates have been terrible so far this year.
They keep coming down. Inflation keeps coming down.
And their models are broken.
And I'm just not sure what they're thinking here in terms of signaling that they may not want to cut rates at the December meeting.
They've got a lot to answer for, not only for this year, but for many years past, both in their GDP estimates and their inflation estimates, which are consistently wrong.
And we're going to find a leader who is going to revamp the entire institution in terms of process and inner workings.
Oh, that won't cause any volatility.
And then he was he was I think he was on Bloomberg and no, no, he was on Fox.
And he just straight out said that the Fed wants a nation of renters.
This is what Bitcoiners have been saying and probably gold bugs, too.
But to have the Treasury Secretary of the United States government say this is a remarkable turn.
Last year, they voted for the massive 50-point or 50-basis-point rate cut in September before the election in November.
Clearly very political.
Then two rate cuts after that.
You know, the irony here, of course, is that Scott often makes it political by hitting on that point.
It does, I think, broadly support his overall point that they did a 50 basis point cut back in September when the employment market was stronger and inflation was about the same.
The only difference was it was before an election.
It does kind of support his point, but it makes him political while he's accusing the Fed of being political.
And I think in a way his position would be stronger if he didn't get in the politics of it.
The massive 50 point or 50 basis point rate cut in September before the election in November,
clearly very political, then two rate cuts after that. And the labor market was in better shape then.
The inflation levels were the same. So, you know, I'm afraid that the board may be playing politics
here. And what's really discouraging is we were starting to see signs of a nascent recovery in the
housing market. Housing market is obviously the most interest rate sensitive sector of the economy.
Americans have been pushed out of affordability in the housing market. And this isn't helpful
what the Fed's doing here. And when I look, rents are down. And that's one of the biggest
components of inflation. So it's like they want to have a nation of renters and not owners.
Wow. Wow. All right. Now I want to give you an update on Lava. Now, you might remember we talked
a little bit last week about Lava. This is an application and a Bitcoin financial services
that allows you to store Bitcoin cash and stable coins in their app and then traditionally pull out
a Bitcoin collateralized loan, but now recently they've introduced a line of credit. And it is an
interesting product because you only have to pull out as much as you need. It's Bitcoin backed. So
if you have, say, $10,000 worth of Bitcoin on Lava, then you could pull up to $5,000 as you
needed it. And you would pay fees on the most expensive thing that you charged. It's a 5%
interest rate right now, which is an unbelievably low interest rate. It'll eventually be up to 5%
It appears their cost of money is somewhere around 4% to 5%.
And they've recently just taken on around 200, maybe a little bit more in VC money.
So that's the recap of Lava.
And since last week, I decided to test it a little bit because I saw a lot of interest by you guys.
In fact, a ton of interest in general around this product, especially as whales are selling their Bitcoin right now.
You think, you know, if you're a whale and you've got, say, just a round number, 10,000 Bitcoin,
you could put two of them in the Lava app
and you could easily pull up to $200,000 as you need it
and then they have a very competitive payback structure
where you could actually not make payments at all
until the very end if you want or et cetera, et cetera.
Very interesting.
The process is very easy too.
There's very little KYC
until you want to connect to a fiat on-ramp.
But if you were just to work with stable coins,
you would never actually have to KYC as far as I can tell.
You put the Bitcoin in and it's available for a loan.
And then you decide if you want to ACH it to an account or if you want unstable coins.
I've not done a line of credit, but I have decided to put just over a million sats in it,
just in the Bitcoin portion, just so I can start testing it.
I'm a little hesitant because, you know, even that's a lot of money,
but I do want to properly test this for you.
And you have to have a certain balance on there to get into the wait list for the card that will sit in front of this, like a Visa card is what they're talking about.
So then you would be at a merchant.
In my case, I need to buy $700 worth of tires for my car right now.
This is something that's happening right now.
And the way I would have to use LAV at the moment is I would grab a line of credit and I would send that cash, I guess, to my checking account.
But ideally, you would just have that Visa card, and I would be at the discount tire store, and I would just swipe the card at their point of sale, and it would just be charged to my line of credit on Lava.
And the interest rate is 5%, so it's about 20% lower than a credit card these days.
That's a huge difference.
And it's very compelling.
So I want to test this for you, but I am concerned about a couple of things, and I just want to make you aware of them.
Number one, a lot of us were under the impression
they were doing this with DLCs on Bitcoin
and using something called the Lava Protocol,
which they released a white paper on some time ago.
It has now come to my attention
that that is not how they're doing this,
that they tried that, found issues with it,
and now are doing a more traditional custody model.
Some people have reported that their Bitcoin
has been moved around since they've moved it on there.
I don't know.
I don't have any instances
or I don't know how they're checking that at the moment.
And I'm not exactly sure under what legal...
framework, they're able to operate in every U.S. state and in Canada and I believe around the world.
I've seen some reports on X that they are using a commercial lending license. In other words,
these are supposed to be loans to small businesses, which is a lot more flexible. Like here in
Washington state, you cannot take a personal Bitcoin backed loan out, but you can as a business.
And so there's been some talk of maybe that's the case. I don't know if that's true or not.
So these are risk flags when you're dealing with money that I think people should be aware of. Now, their CEO has been very active on X responding to people's questions and seemingly as transparent as one can be in these types of things.
So I'm continuing to monitor it. I will test it. If they issue a card, I will try it. I may try the line of credit. If more of you express interest, I am putting some I put some Bitcoin in there basically to have some skin in the game and to report to you what happens.
because if this is a success,
this could be the biggest game changer
for Bitcoin holders
in the 15 years that I've been in Bitcoin
because in my opinion,
this unlocks the access to liquidity
on demand as you need it
and that was the last piece.
These Bitcoin-backed loans have been neat
but I don't want to take out,
a lot of them have a minimum of $10,000
like at Strike or $7,000 or $5,000.
I think Salt's $5,000 or $7,000.
They have minimums.
Well, I don't even necessarily want to take that much out to buy $700 worth of tires.
But also, I don't, is that enough?
If I can only take one loan out a year, or if I'm only, you know, I suppose you could take another one out, but if I'm only going to take out one loan a year, how am I supposed to guess how much money I need for the entire year?
I must really have my crap together, huh?
Where with a line of credit, you use it as you need it.
You're not paying a bunch of fees or interest on something that you're not using, et cetera, et cetera.
So I'm very excited as a product because I think it's going to be a game changer for Bitcoiners. The things that are red flags, I'm going to continue to monitor, of course. It should be said, with all of these types of products at the moment, they are also custodial. In other words, you're giving them your keys. It's a huge risk factor. It seems to be something that traditional finance is fine with and perhaps weighed against selling your Bitcoin. It's an acceptable risk, but it's a big ask.
And so it's another thing I'm watching with lava with some skin in the game to see where it goes.
So far, they've delivered on what they've said.
I'm not exactly sure how they're doing it when it comes to all of the legalities,
but they're doing it.
And they continue to be fairly transparent.
They said they would have the line of credit within a week, and they did it.
So if they deliver on this card within a relatively short period of time I going to be pretty impressed because I have to imagine that a very hard thing to do And if they manage to deliver a Visa card that sits in front of a Bitcoin line of credit
not only is that going to be a historic product innovation,
but it would indicate that it's something they have been working on for a long time
because that's just not the kind of thing you just whip out in a couple of weeks.
And that, I think, would be a positive signal
because that would mean they've been working on this,
they've been working with institutions.
to me that would indicate that it's not just this quick reactionary thing to like strike or something
like that and they're moving quick but this has been something that's been coming together for
quite a long time if that card ships relatively soon so i'll keep an eye on it keep you updated
keep your questions coming in and also i'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions on lava if
you're looking for an excuse to boost let's talk about this
well the folks at van ek have been really interesting they have some etfs and they're
deep into the bitcoin and nuclear energy areas and things like that and they're i think i don't
know if he's the ceo i think he i think i think he is van ek i think this is the guy he was
interviewed recently, and he was looking at some recent trends that are just super early days,
but could indicate where Bitcoin eventually ends up at 5% of global trade.
We think there's a good chance that central banks and sovereign wealth funds will start to get more
aggressive in adopting Bitcoin, not only as a store of value, but also as a medium exchange.
So this year, the Czech Republic, the governor of the central bank there, has initiated a study
to analyze Bitcoin for inclusion in their central bank reserves.
And then just this week, Russia did a trade with China, partially denominated in Bitcoin,
beginning to really use Bitcoin for the first time as a medium of exchange.
And that's not for individuals buying coffee.
That's for large scale transactions where countries are using Bitcoin as an intermediary currency
to do, say, an oil trade.
And in that scenario where Bitcoin denominated trade could be, say, 5% of global trade, we get to a $3 million price per Bitcoin.
That's a long-term prediction, like 2050.
But that's going to be necessary, we think, to elevate Bitcoin into the millions per coin.
Let check in on the state of the network before I get out of here Show wrapping up at block height 922 378 the bitcoin price to usd is 103 700 up a little bit that makes our sats per dollar around 965 satoshis to one u dollar we are down a solid
17.8 percent from the all-time high some real stuff there which was 126 180 dollars 30 days ago
on the nose. October 6th.
Okay. Interesting. Interesting. The estimated difficulty change
has made a huge adjustment. Now just down 0.9%.
Wow. Current retarget date November 11th.
Let's check in on the nodes though. This is interesting.
Core 30 now clocking in at 9.4% of the Bitcoin network.
One of the fastest ascends we've ever seen of any
core version ever, 9.4%.
You almost have to wonder
if all of the hoopla was
actually somewhat of marketing for Core
30, like people knew about the release
and wanted to update or something.
Maybe more people are paying attention to the release.
I don't know. But it could
be well at 10%, which
would beat Core 28, the current top
contender. It is now the number
two most popular node software
on the network. And that is
the Bitcoin Network.
Well, if you made it this far, you ought to check out the links in the show notes,
either in your podcast app or over at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
We're also going to find a bunch of great shows like Linux Unplugged and The Launch,
which is fun and unexplainable, but I think you'll enjoy it.
But I hope you enjoyed this here podcast.
I try to focus on The Signal.
Even when we get talking about politicians and politics,
I try to focus on what the actual signal is in there, not get distracted by the emotions around the issue.
If you value that or if you have any feedback, consider a boost.
And of course, you can always boost in with what else you'd like to see from the show in the future or in terms of guides, tutorials or what I missed.
I always like that.
Now, I'm going to leave you with a value for value track, as I do.
If you boost in once the music starts playing, 95 percent of your sats go to the artist.
This week, it's Caroline Hale.
It's one of my favorite Value for Value tracks.
She's an Austin-based singer and songwriter, and it's her track, Kick It.
you Now I just wanna be alone Met you on the west side of 35 the other night
Music's kinda weird, but I'm here
And I wanna have a good time
I'm on a late July high
Summer nights are getting blurry
But I remember you, 402, almost like it was a movie
The noise is getting loud
So when you took me by the hand, it all stopped
And you asked me where I'm going
I said I'll see you out of nowhere
Oh, I just wish you'd play it cool
I wish you'd play it cool
I wish you'd find it cool.
Learn how to kick it on and roll.
Kick it on and roll, kick it on and roll.
Kick it on and roll.
If you just wanted someone to go home,
I wish you'd play it cool.
How would you play it cool?
Now I just want to be alone.
Kick it on and roll.
Kick it off.
Kings of the flea out on the beat.
Starts on fire in the basement.
Wish that I could dance and dance and say we ran around the road.
He said that I can't dance too
Now he's supping on the gas
Moving way too fast, getting mad
Honey, unlock all the doors
Cause I don't want this anymore
Oh, I just wish you'd play a cool game
I wish you'd play a cool game
Learn how to kick it on the road
Just wanted someone to go home with
I wish you'd play it cool
Now I just wanna be alone
Oh, I just wish you'd play it cool
Learn how to kick it on your own
Just wanted someone to go home with
Now I just wanna be alone
Oh, I just wish you played