Preliminary data from the University of Michigan shows consumer sentiment.
Or how people feel about the economy, declined for a second straight month.
And it all comes as January saw a decline in spending, which has some economists
warning the U.S. could face a possible recession.
Music.
Welcome in to episode 50 of This Week in Bitcoin.
My name is Chris, ChrisLAS.com, JupiterBroadcasting.com.
I think us Bitcoiners know this feeling a little too well.
Sometimes you come to an idea maybe a little too early, And you look around
and you wonder, why is nobody else thinking this way?
Am I missing something or are they all missing something?
But it seems like these days, instead of waiting years for people to catch up,
you only have to wait a few weeks. And then everyone else seems to start catching up.
And I guess the so-called market experts are just a bit slow.
After last week's episode, like a row of dominoes kicking off,
everything Bitcoiners have been talking about, especially I have been talking
about on the show, seems to have caught up with the so-called economists.
On the CBS Money Watch, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson today would not rule out a recession.
He also downplayed stock market turmoil as a sell-off has taken the S&P 500 into correction.
The benchmark index is down more than 10 percent from its February 19th record high.
Still, some Americans are feeling squeezed, defaulting on car loans at a record
level. It is interesting.
Before, I guess, 2025, I was watching
these delinquencies on car loans and delinquencies on credit card bills.
And I thought it was strange that the mainstream media wasn't reporting it.
And now here we are in 2025. Maybe it's post-election. I don't know.
They're opening the CBS Weekend News with this item. And I thought,
well, am I tracking the wrong stats here?
Because what I'm seeing seems rather alarming. But now they're just openly discussing
it. I leave it to you to speculate as to why.
Still, some Americans are feeling squeezed, defaulting on car loans at a record level.
CBS's Andres Gutierrez in Los Angeles reports.
How much are you paying each month? 930. Troubling times on the American road.
Two years ago, Alejandra Graciola bought her EV for $60,000.
Okay, I don't mean to be this guy, but do you think this report's going to bring
up the fact that maybe she shouldn't have bought a brand new $60,000 EV for
$900,000, almost $1,000 a month?
I mean, that should be what your mortgage payment is. I realize it's not that,
but that's what the mortgage payment should be.
And two years later, we're surprised to discover that this gal can't afford $1,000 a month EV.
Like that just seems obvious on its face. That was never going to work.
Not going to be part of the coverage, though. I realize I'm being a little bit
of a tough guy here, but there is some personal responsibility when it comes to taking out loans.
When you get $1,000 a month car, you have to think about not just the payment
for the next few months, but you have to think about the payment for whatever
it might be, eight years, five years, whatever it could be.
And you have to think about making that payment every single month,
even when there's Christmas, even when there's issues, even when prices of eggs go up. 930.
Troubling times on the American road. Two years ago, Alejandra Graziola bought her EV for $60,000.
Is that pretty high for you? I mean, does it break your budget? It is.
Graziola isn't alone. In 2024,
more than 4% of auto loan holders had car payments of $1,000 or more.
That's up from 1% in 2020.
And almost $1,000 for our car is just, you know, it's a little crazy, but.
Driving up prices, a double whammy of rising vehicle costs and higher finance costs to buy them.
If we look at the average price people are paying for a new vehicle, it's north of $47,000.
Unused, it's $25,000.
With the economy showing signs of
stress, Jessica Caldwell of Edmonds says borrowers are feeling the pitch.
So people that are kind of in the middle of their loan, they may be hitting
the point where cost of living has gotten to them and they can no longer make
these payments. That actually kind of would make sense.
You buy the car a couple of years ago, inflation kicks in, now it's feeling really tight.
And how could you possibly forecast that inflation would go up like 22% in a couple of years?
That would just be unusual for most people.
A lot of people that are crazy enough to make decisions like buying a $60,000
car when they can't afford it haven't been around long enough to experience,
say, inflation in the 70s and interest rates in the 80s. So this is their first
go around and it's caught them and it's tough.
Americans are feeling the pinch and it would make sense they should be after
a couple of years of tough inflation.
But now that data and that sentiment data is making its way into the hands of
economists. And that's where some of the panic is coming from.
Renewed fears about an economic slowdown have rattled Wall Street and beyond
in recent weeks, stoked by President Donald Trump and his top economic officials'
refusals to rule out a recession.
This is a report by Forbes, and it kind of underscores the general vibe of the last few days.
Also, the UCLA's Anderson forecast issued their first ever recession watch.
They say it's mostly due to Trump's proposed policies, if fully enacted,
could lead to an economic downturn. In fact, the report is titled,
quote, Trump policies, if fully enacted, promise a recession.
Right. Now, the thing that's interesting is this is the first time they've ever put this indicator out.
And they also highlight labor shortages and reduce federal spending as a factor in the economy as well.
These things are what's sort of leading to these types of reports right now.
The technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative
growth in gross domestic product.
The official quarterly GDP stats haven't turned negative yet, but JPMorgan Chase,
the country's biggest bank, calls for a weak but still positive 1% GDP growth
rate during Q1, though Wall Street recession indicators tilt towards higher odds of recession.
And perhaps the most concerning signal is a breakdown in everyday Americans'
conviction in the economy, as the University of Michigan's closely-watched Consumer
Sentiment Survey tumbled this month to its lowest level since 2022.
Many have pointed to the stock market as a reason to fear a recession.
Stock prices don't completely correlate with economic growth,
but the S&P 500 dove into a 10% correction last week, wiping out some $5 trillion
in market value in less than a month's time.
Trading in two of the world's most precious commodities, signals that investors
are looking for safe assets to invest in, certainly point to the prospect of a global recession.
Gold prices are up more than 10% this year to a record $3,000 per troy ounce,
and an international benchmark for oil prices sunk to its lowest level since 2021.
Yeah, so gold's up, oil's down, that spooks people.
Then you have a combination of tariff policy fears, the stock market,
and some stocks are down, you know, 40, 50%, some are down much less.
That, combined with a softening consumer outlook, has all kind of just spooked everyone.
But have you noticed that the White House hasn't said much about tariffs in
the last few days? There's been a few things.
No tweets from the president, though. And the market's calmed a lot since that,
really since the last mean tweet about tariffs.
And it kind of goes back to what I was saying last episode.
A lot of this policy uncertainty, which is playing a major factor here,
is just driven by the White House jawboning.
So if you ignore the tweets and you listen to the staff around Trump,
I think you'll find that they're laying out a very clear game plan.
And I have to admit, for the second week in a row, the Damn All In podcast has some clips on the show.
Music.
This is actually pretty good. So Freeberg and Chamath made it to D.C.
To sit down with the Treasury Secretary.
And they had a pretty good conversation. It meanders a bit. I'll link to the
full conversation in the show notes.
But they did get him to lay out his three point plan pretty simply.
And I think you can just listen to the words from the Treasury Secretary directly
and figure out what the game plan is. But plan one, we're going to delever the
government via the spending.
We are also going to shed excess labor from the government.
So on that side, and then on the other side, we're going to deregulate the financial system.
The regulated financial system's really been in what I call a regulatory corset
for a long time. And as we deregulate that, then the private sector can re-leverage.
So government de-leveraging, private sector re-leveraging, and the employment
or the folks who lost their government jobs will be picked up by the private sector.
Okay, so part one is shifting productivity to the private sector.
And then part two is? The other side of getting prices down is getting real wages up.
So on getting real wages for working people up, it goes back to the Main Street versus Wall Street.
And the second plan is to reorder the international trading system and bring
manufacturing jobs back to the US and reinvigorate the middle class.
Because again, through tariffs, well, to use tariffs that were needed to bring other countries back.
Into line. And to create an economic incentive to onshore for some industries and some supply chains?
Well, so there's tariffs.
Then I think there's three other things we can do, which are the centerpiece of the administration.
We can have the low and predictable taxes.
We can substantially slash regulations because regulations are the equivalent
of- That'll drive investment dollars, private investment dollars.
And predictability in regulations, and then cheap energy.
Right. And sorry. So, you know, cheap energy, reordering world trade, redoing regulation.
These are ginormous goals.
And I think when a lot of the market forecasting and panicking is being worked
in, they're picturing like that UCLA post I told you about, They're picturing
a world where they accomplish 100% of this.
I don't, I mean, what would it take, 30 years to accomplish 100% of that?
They're going to get, you know, a baseline. They're going to get maybe 20%.
I don't know. I'd like to hear your speculation.
Because you can hear how big the goals are. Now, Scott never really fully gets
to part three of the plan, although I suspect cheap energy was part of it.
But I think they kind of covered part three in this discussion.
So, sorry, does tax cuts get made up with tariffs? or does tax cuts get made
up with cutting government spending?
Well, tax cuts will... So tax cuts and deregulation will...
Change the growth trajectory. Well, grow GDP. If trend line has been 1.8,
if you can move the growth to three or above, then you really change their trajectory.
And if you can keep expenses flat or do the unthinkable and cut expenses,
then you can really... So this is important.
So sorry, government revenue as a percent of GDP can go lower if you have lower
expenses and a faster growing economy.
Yes. I think that's like really important for folks to understand that relationship.
And so in isolation, tax cuts might reduce revenue.
But when done with reduced government spending and deregulation and a reordered
international trade model, you theoretically will accelerate economic growth
in this country, increase government revenue overall, even with a lower tax rate.
That's kind of the theory. And
I'll tell you, shame on me. I was in the investment business for 35 years.
I talked very confidently over that CBO scoring says this.
And it turns out I didn't know you know what about CBO scoring.
Like when you're on this side of the wall, you realize how crazy it is.
Now, the idea of lowering taxes and bringing up revenue at the same time and
cutting costs, all of it seems, again, like quite the target to hit.
But I think what you hear in there is a strategy, at least. And from that,
we can kind of deduce the steps that they're going to have to take.
And ARK Investments' Kathy Wood seems to think there could be some decent results
if given time. assets, Bitcoin or otherwise, how do you know that we're not at the lows?
So one of the things we think is going on right now is, and Treasury Secretary
Besant today said, he does not believe that we're going into a recession.
We think we've been in a rolling recession and that we are actually going to
see some negative quarters here.
And that's because the velocity of money is collapsing as people,
the labor force is worried that, and we're talking about federal, state, and local,
quasi-government categories like education and health care, there's a lot of
fear around job security right now.
So we see the saving rate going up, we see the velocity of money coming down,
and we do think we'll see one or two negative quarters.
What we believe that will do is set this administration up and the Fed up with
more degrees of freedom for tax cuts and perhaps lower interest rates or at
least ending quantitative tightening.
So in the short term, the velocity of money goes down, which probably means
Bitcoin doesn't really pump.
And we can kind of figure out there's just two big questions from that that
the market really should be worried about.
They can stop panicking and they can ask themselves just two things.
Is this strategy going to work?
Will it work? Even if it partially works, is it worth it?
And then I think the next big question, especially if you believe what Kathy
just said there, how long will this take?
Because the sell, the upside, the reason why we're going to eat the veggies
is because on the other side of this, liquidity is going to be loose.
Money is going to be pumping. The velocity of money will be high.
People will be buying Bitcoin. They'll be buying stocks. They'll be buying all kinds of stuff.
We're going to have a strategic asset reserve. We're going to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
It's going to be just boomtown once we get through this, is what the promise is.
If that's true, well, then how long? Is it just a quarter?
Is it a year? Is it 2028? How long does it take? I'd like to know what you think.
So boost it and tell me how long. And do you think this is a strategy that's going to work?
Because Bitcoin tries to teach us to be patient, right?
We should be looking at this as a massive buying opportunity.
If it takes six months, if it takes a quarter, we don't know.
But this window is a massive opportunity.
And the reason why I say that is because I feel like after the election,
a lot of us plebs thought, well, we're kind of priced out of Bitcoin.
You know, I heard a few people say, I'm just shutting off my DCA now.
I'm just pissing into the wind.
But now, all of a sudden, look at this. Well, Bitcoin's on sale.
And the prices, I think, are wildly low. And why do I say wildly low?
Because this Fed seems to be low-key ending quantitative tightening.
They're still jawboning, but in the background, they seem to be low-key ending tightening.
The dollar is tanking. Long-term yields are falling.
Global M2 is pumping to new highs. And the U.S.
Government is telling us that they're going to buy as much Bitcoin as possible
and that you should never sell your Bitcoin.
This is President Trump's executive director on digital assets,
and he was talking about ways that they're trying to acquire more Bitcoin.
Well, you know, we delivered on the president's promises that he made on the campaign trail.
You know, the president was adamant about creating the SBR. We wanted to make
sure that we did it right in a way that respected Bitcoin for being so unique
and also gave credence to innovation and other spaces in the digital asset world.
So, you know, for us here, we look at Bitcoin.
It's not a security, it's a commodity. It has intrinsic stored value that's
traditionally accepted.
It has, as David likes to describe, the immaculate conception. There's no issuer.
And that's why, as you saw in the executive order, we compared this to digital gold.
It's something that's imperative for the United States to have,
retain, continue to build on.
And I think that's worth pointing out that the way that this is constructed,
we talked about ways of acquiring more Bitcoin in budget neutral ways that won't
cost the taxpayer a dime.
And what I like to say about this president, I think it's high time that our
president started accumulating assets for the American people,
which is what President Trump is doing, rather than taking it away.
And I think that's one thing that we really wanted to make clear in this executive order.
And we're looking forward to working with our partners at Treasury and the Secretary
of Commerce in order to find those budget neutral ways in which we can acquire more.
You know, I've been asked all the time, it's like, how much do you want?
I said, well, that's like asking a country, how much gold do you want?
Right? I mean, as much as we can get.
I think Bitcoiners that have been around for more than a couple of years,
They are all probably realizing what an incredible opportunity this low 80s
Bitcoin price is. I know people don't believe it when I say it.
But right now, at this particular point in time, while all of this is happening,
I'd rather take low 80s K Bitcoin than 120 K Bitcoin.
There's just opportunity here like we've never seen before in the Bitcoin community.
And this is BlackRock's Robbie Michnick. He is the global head of digital assets.
And I think he's feeling the same way.
You know, and I'm talking to some of the most sophisticated long-term Bitcoin accumulators.
They're pretty excited about this dip that, you know, they see this as a buying opportunity.
They certainly don't look at economic headwinds and say that's that's bad for Bitcoin.
They say that's probably a catalyst for Bitcoin. Well, to be fair, they are always pretty.
That's true. That's true. But but some of them, you know, we're taking chips
off the table a little bit in the in the hundreds. and now they see this correction
and a lot of them view it as sort of an irrational sell-off based on short-term factors.
I don't know whether that's true or not, but certainly there's a lot yet to
be sort of understood and processed about this asset and how people think about
it from a risk return perspective and in a portfolio and how the correlation
should play out over the long run.
So we're trying to play a role in that. Lots of other financial institutions
that have come into this space are trying to bring some quantitative rigor.
Music.
Now, I want to take a moment and zoom out. We got to look at the bigger picture.
You know, I often set the stage for each episode's discussion by looking at
the macro picture in the United States.
I've talked about why I do that. I think I have some pretty good reasons.
But we need to remember there's a lot more than just the United States when it comes to Bitcoin.
And there are some really big things playing out on the world stage that will
absolutely be factors in Bitcoin's adoption.
This came from the Digital Asset Summit that was held in New York this week.
This is a traditional economist who I've in the past not been particularly impressed by.
It's Egyptian-American economist Mohammed, probably getting this wrong.
It's Al-Rarian, probably wrong.
And he was asked about Bitcoin's role in a macro environment where nations are
increasingly worried about the weaponization of the dollar and SWIFT system.
Does that lead down a path where we could see Bitcoin become this neutral asset
that's used for global trade flows?
So when I travel around the world, the question I get asked the most is, how did Russia do it?
Do what? Not invade Ukraine. How did Russia continue to trade while not being
part of SWIFT, while not being allowed to use the dollar?
How does it do it? And if you analyze it, it does it by using four different
currencies. it's a really inefficient system, very inefficient.
But it allows them to both export and import without going anywhere near the dollar.
And the reason why I get asked that question is because countries are worried
about the weaponization of the payment system.
They're worried about the weaponization of investments, not just trade.
They're worried about assets being frozen for political reasons.
And they're trying to look at substitutes. That's why gold is doing what it's doing.
Gold has broken every single historical correlation it's had. Why?
Because central banks are buying on a consistent basis as they seek to diversify
at the margin away from the dollar.
So if you were to let this system run, suddenly Bitcoins has a role to play internationally.
You think? You think it might? In fact, there's been rumors that they have been using it for trade.
I can't really get much confirmation on that because I've seen those before
and then they kind of get dismissed.
But it just makes sense to me. It just, it absolutely makes sense.
Because right now, when they're not using cash and they're not using currencies,
there's also reports that sometimes they're just straight up trading barrels of oil,
which could you imagine just the logistics of like buying a couple million dollars
worth of goods and then trying to orchestrate the payoff with barrels of oil
compared to just doing a lightning transaction or something,
or maybe even just on chain.
It'd just be crazy. I want to turn to the EU for a moment while we're talking
about the worldwide stage, because it's been interesting to see that Bitcoin
and other digital asset adoptions actually been growing pretty quickly in the EU.
Now, if you just look at their ETF equivalent assets under management,
it's actually been increasing by 46% in the first half of 2024,
which is all the data I have for right now, but it's 11.7 billion euros.
It seems European investors, particularly the younger generation,
have showed increased interest in digital assets.
For example, in France, 9% of the population owns cryptocurrencies,
which surpasses stock ownership.
And it's likely even higher than that because the state is a couple of years old.
So that might be why the European Central Bank is moving really fast.
And I mean, really fast for a central bank to roll out their own CBDC later this year.
Here's the president of the European Central Bank, your buddy, Christine Lagarde.
Fabio Panetta on the board and then Piero Cipollone, who has replaced Fabio,
have, taken the lead together with a very, very good team which is focused on accelerating the pace.
And hopefully campaigning enough with all the stakeholders, meaning European Parliament,
meaning European Council, meaning European Commission, so that we can eventually,
you know, not put to bed, but put to reality this digital euro.
The deadline for us is going to be October.
Of 25 and we are getting
ready for that deadline but we will
not be able to move unless the other
parties the stakeholders as i call them commission council
and parliament actually complete the legislative process without which we will
not be able to move and i think it is critically important and it seems to the
agnostic or the skeptics it
seems to be more relevant and more of an imperative now than ever before.
Ooh, October. Happy Halloween.
Why do you suppose they're rushing right now?
And does it spook you like it spooks me? Even though I'm in the States,
it still spooks me that Western nations are going to start implementing a CBDC.
And what she's saying in that clip is essentially the bank's putting pressure
on the lawmakers to enshrine it in law.
Why? Why by October?
And does it spook you like it spooks me? And I also have another question for
you. So guess what? I want you to boost in.
You heard the Treasury Secretary's three-point plan there. Do you think something
like that is actually going to play out?
How many quarters does it take? One, two, a year?
And then the big thing I want to know, sometimes it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Do you think we are going to slide into a recession?
Seems to be the sentiment that is slowly sweeping across the quote-unquote market.
I'd like to know what you think. Boosting on all of those things,
why now is CBDC, why by October is the three-point plan going to work?
How long will it take? And are we about to slide into a response?
Music.
Well, don't go anywhere because coming up in the show, I've got your boost,
some important updates, and a stone cold killer clip of the week.
We have to play that. But first, I want to let you know you can support the
show by doing what you do.
Go buy your sats. Go DCA. Go smash buy.
Go use River. If you're in the States, I think it's the best way to stack sats.
They've got that 3.8% interest in sats.
Then you can sit there in a cash and then smash buy when the price dips.
And they support Lightning and proof of reserve, which is awesome. Great, great company.
The Bitcoin Well is an amazing automatic self-custody platform great in the U.S. and Canada.
You buy and sell directly from your wallet. They never hold your Bitcoin.
Now, if you're ready to spend your Bitcoin, that's the Bitcoin company.
You can spend your sats via Lightning into a gift card for hundreds of companies
in just a second. Log in via Lightning, no account needed.
The Bitcoin company, link in the show notes. You want to stack sats when you
use your debit card or pay bills? That's the fold card.
I've stacked over 200,000 sats now in rewards just by paying my bills.
Link to that in the show notes. And if you want to get access to your Bitcoin
without selling it, i.e. access to that sweet, sweet liquidity, check out Salt Lending.
That's how I use when I need to take a little loan out of Bitcoin.
And I got links to all of that in the show notes. You can support the show by doing what you do.
Music.
And we do have some boosts to get into. Four score and seven boosts to go.
Thank you, everybody who supports the show directly.
A-Train is our first booster this week with 20,000 sats. Things are looking up for old MacDuck.
He says, thanks for the content. And I think I agree with your assessment that
this admin is using their ability to inject volatility, i.e.
Through tariffs, to try to get some cheap financing.
Trump isn't perfect, but he has a pretty good record of forecasting and making
strategic moves for the long run. We shall see.
And like you said, if we don't get the Strategic Reserve past Congress,
it will remain on the shaky grounds.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying the cheap sats. You got it, dude.
Yeah, nailed it. Thank you for the boost. I appreciate it. Ace Ackerman comes in with a row of ducks.
Ooh, Trump is playing digital 3D chess. Go to the moon, orange man. I hope so, Ace.
I hope so. I might be a little more comfortable if it was 4D,
but that's probably asking for too much. Nice to hear from you,
Ace. Thanks for the boost.
Spectrus is here with a Jar Jar boost. That's 5,000 sats. You suppose?
So I was storing my on-chain in the blue wallet on iOS, but now you've made
me go get a cold card Mark IV and link that up with Sparrow.
Next up is spinning up my own Bitcoin node.
I guess this is where you say, sorry, not sorry. Yeah, I think I might.
That's such a great setup. The Sparrow cold card with your own node.
You are your own bank. You are your own settlement network. You are your own truth of source.
Source of truth? That's so awesome, Spectrus, right? I mean,
it feels good, right? Admit it, Spectrus. And thanks for the boost.
Mix is here, and it's with 10,000 gorgeous-looking sats. It's over 9,000!
It says, thanks for the best explanation I heard of the Bitcoin reserve and the crypto stockpile.
I was glad to hear Sax's interview. I hadn't heard that one.
Really great to hear that this is being done with transparency and accountability.
Thanks for bringing the best coverage. Well, thank you, Mix,
and thanks for returning the value.
That's really how it should work. I appreciate that. I was relieved to hear
some of Saks' statements. I have to be honest with you.
Not initially super pleased with the Saks appointment just because I knew of his Solana history.
And, you know, he was on his podcast kind of joking about how he was dumping on retail.
Didn't really like that. I do respect that the fact the man had to sell off
like over 200 mil worth of investments and cryptocurrency.
And I did see that later in the week it was reported by I can't remember,
but it was reported that Saks had, quote, dumped his digital assets.
So, you know, there's no winning. There's no winning. Right.
But at least we know what the reality is. Right, Mix. Thank you for the boost.
Gene Beans here with 7,222 sats.
Well, I'll be dipped. That's right. He says the thought experiment of there
being a plan for cheap debt is a good one. It'd be nice if that happens and ends up being true.
No idea, though. Just pump the brakes right there. I know. We just have to wait and see.
He says, on a different note, I've been impressed with Aqua Wallet,
especially after learning it's built on the green SDK by former Blockstream employees.
It makes pegging into liquid really easy. It can do easy peg out to Bitcoin.
But sideswaps fees are higher than Boltz.exchange.
Lastly, Aqua does support USDT Tether on Liquid and I hear that Tether has become
a really common way to move money around Latin America. I don't want USD Tether
but I thought the data point was interesting.
Yeah, you got it. That's it. Well, that's very good, buddy. It is very popular
outside the United States in general.
Access to dollars in Tether is just super popular. I think Aqua's pretty good.
I sometimes worry about like some of the automated swapping failing But so far,
the little bit that I've used it, it's never been a problem.
I have encountered a few bugs, but I think the team behind it is very dedicated.
And I think it's a good temporary wallet. I don't know if I'd make it my long-term
wallet. He says, okay, so which would you prefer for Lightning Wallet for a kid?
Using the friends and family feature of AlbiHub or BlueWallet's LND?
Hub. Well...
You know, Gene, I'll just tell you what I do, because I'm not sure if it's the right way.
But I started with essentially the Blue Wallet setup, and I've migrated to friends and family.
I just think friends and family paired with the Albi Go app is a real winner
for spouses, family, things like that.
The Go app, simple, works, and it just connects in so easily with the Albi Hub.
But maybe somebody else has another idea for doing hosted lightning wallets
for family. It's a good question, Gene. Nice to hear from you.
StackSats123 is here with the Row of Ducks.
My general rule that I use when it comes to orange-pilling friends,
oh, good, is that they need to show interest in savings and investment first.
Oh, that's a great data point. He says, saving for your future isn't fun for most people.
They'd rather drive around in a vehicle they can't afford while sipping on a fancy coffee.
Glad to have you back this week. Well, StackSats, if the first clip didn't prove
you right, the first clip of the show, man, it proved you right.
That gal with her $1,000 EV payment, right?
That's such a good, like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of like benchmark
or waterline or whatever it is, is if they show interest in investment,
that means they're thinking in the right mindset.
And if they don't think in that mindset, they're not going to get hard money.
They're not going to get store value.
That's a great boost. Thank you, StackSats. Nice to hear from you.
VFX Up is here with a row of ducks. That's 2,222 sats.
Hey, first time booster. Shoot, look at that.
Love all the shows and the JB podcast, though I thought I'd say hello just getting
to Bitcoin over the last few months.
Well, VFX, it is great to hear from you and welcome aboard.
And if you have any questions, I'm always happy to answer new to Bitcoin questions
in the booths. So please send them in. It's nice to hear from you too.
That's exciting. Oh man. I guess I haven't heard from a brand newbie in a while, so it's great.
BHAM 182 is here with three, four, five, six sets. Why you got to put numbers and letters together?
Why can't you just go f*** yourself? So I took a look at the Bitcoin Wells,
per the show's recommendation, and it allows direct deposit into a self-custody wallet.
But I've noticed that it seems to list the price higher than anywhere else.
Is there a legitimate reason for this? I don't want to point any fingers,
but it does come off as a little sus.
And then he continues. So I did some digging and I found out what's going on.
They are pretty transparent about
it. They're just not it's just not said directly on the purchase page.
Verified users buy Bitcoin at one one point two percent higher than cost and
sell at one point two percent lower than cost.
Now, light users are at three percent. So you can expect to pay twelve dollars
in fees for every one thousand in Bitcoin bought, which not horrible,
really, than other exchanges, especially when you consider it is directly deposited into your wallet.
But over time, the fee could add up.
That's a great, great bit of information. Thank you, Bam. It's good to know
that they have a 1.2% lower on the sell side too.
$12 in fees for every 1,000 in Bitcoin doesn't seem too unreasonable if you
also consider you're never going to have to move it again.
Now, it depends on the exchange, but a lot of exchanges you buy and you stack
and you stack, and then you have to move it on-chain at some point.
Sometimes you pay an on-chain fee, sometimes you don't.
At least with Bitcoin, well, you're going directly to your wallet.
That is really great digging. Thank you for the information and the boost.
So Achilles is here with 4,000 sats.
Now bear with me here, but I think the SEC is right.
The poop coins aren't securities. They're actually a new form of gambling.
At least that's how I see it.
Okay, Zach, so do you think that gambling fits with their new trading card collectible,
analogy that they're trying to go with?
Oh, well, you see, meme coins are collectibles and certain brands will be valuable
and other brands won't be, sort of like trading cards.
Do you buy that? That sort of sounds like what they tried to say about NFTs.
But I do think there are certain brands, you know, maybe Trump's one of them,
that do have enough clout that people want to own some sort of theoretical stock
in the brand or something.
And if that's represented with a meme coin, maybe.
We'll have more on that in a bit. Thanks, Zach, for the boost.
Clarkian's here with 5,000 sats. Use a boost. Trust the plan.
Indeed. Indeed, trust the plan.
Thanks for the boost. Turn the punch bowls here with 4,000 sats. Oh, man.
Never tell me the odds. There's, I don't know, Fruit Loops in that drawer?
Oh, my God. This drawer is filled with Fruit Loops. Okay, so he had some problems
boosting, but he says, I work in an industry that has many components imported
from China, Mexico, and Canada.
I have seen many announcements of the future price increases,
but not many actual files containing the details of said price increases.
My theory is manufacturers and suppliers are waiting out the Trump tariffs that
are on and off constantly, simply announcing the possibility of a future increase
so it's not a surprise to their customers or partners.
They can't actually operate in this environment where tomorrow could be 25,
zero the next day, or 100% the day after.
Yeah. So with that in mind, I wonder if the dip in inflation could simply represent
a pause while people try to make sense of the admin's economic and foreign trade policy.
Then they cut, so they only do a cut once versus a change the prices every other day type thing.
Maybe more relevant to my industry with publicly known and followed MSRPs. Curious your thoughts.
I definitely think it's part of it. I also think a big part of the inflation
dip is so it's people pausing.
It's a reduction in federal spending.
Right. That's going to be a big part of it.
And I also think that just a lot of things that have been put in place over
the last couple of years, including rising interest rates and other policies
are beginning to have an effect.
And I think consumer demand in general is slowing simply because people,
as time goes on and prices aren't coming down and wages aren't really going up anymore.
So they're getting tapped out and they're getting more and more tapped out as time goes on.
Now, Besant there says the solution to that is to start raising real world wages.
We'll see about that. That takes time.
But you would have to think if all of what I just said holds to be true,
then if the economy were to turn around, you would start to see things like
the cost of oil rip, which would add inflationary pressures.
And you would see the supply chain constraints start to constrain,
I guess. What am I trying to like?
You know, the supply chain that was pretty disrupted during the covid lockdowns
hasn't been fully repaired.
Trump is engaging in some warfare with the Houthis to try to open up certain
shipping lanes again, which could help.
But that also takes time. I mean, the more I think about it,
the more I'm starting to think it's 2028. You know what I mean?
Anyways, all I have to say is if you're not listening to 40 hours of podcasts
a week, what are you doing?
Thank you, everybody who boosts in above the 2000 sat cutoff. I appreciate it.
We had one here that I wanted to pull forward. It was Axelrod00 who came in
with a thousand sats. Coming in hot with the boost.
A thousand twenty one, I should say. Is owning real estate an investment and
the American dream or should we rent as cheaply and possible and invest all
disposable income into Bitcoin?
Maybe we could be happy and only own Bitcoin.
Thanks for sharing your personal living experiences. Makes the show all the more amazing.
Thank you, Axelrod. The reason why I wanted to pull that forward is this is
me being, you know, a crazy Bitcoiner, but I do kind of follow this philosophy, at least for now.
Housing prices are ridiculous. Rates are too high. Now, remember,
I live in the Pacific Northwest, too, so it's really bad here pricing-wise.
And I would rather buy something that I can own fractions of at a time.
I can put just a few dollars into it at a time over a 5, 10-year period and
doesn't decay, doesn't suffer the universe's entropy, you know?
And so I can live cheaply in an RV.
It's a nice RV, but it's, you know, saved me so much money. It's ridiculous.
And instead direct that money into Bitcoin. And I suspect long-term that will be the better play.
Even if I had put that same money into a real estate payment,
I think I'll still come out on the top.
So thank you for the boost. Thank you, everybody who boosted in.
We had 50 of your stream sats as you listened.
So we stacked 98,760 sats via the streamers.
And you sat streamers, you did the heavy, heavy lift this week because we had,
when you bring in the boost, we stacked a total of 165,925 sats.
Not too bad, not too bad. But this show is a lot of work. So if you get value
out of it, I'd really appreciate it.
You know, it's about an hour or two, seven days a week.
Maybe not Sunday. Maybe only about a half hour on Sunday.
And then Wednesday morning, I'm up at 5 a.m. working on the show to get this
thing out in the afternoon so you have something for your afternoon and evening commutes.
So if you've got some value for this show and want to return it back to me,
I sure would appreciate it. You can do it with a boost.
And I'd also like your opinion on advertisers. We've had advertisers approach
the show. Bitcoin advertisers.
I'd say decent Bitcoin companies. But I've always been a little hesitant because
if you've been in Bitcoin a long time, you'll see companies come and go, I should say.
So it's a bit of a roll of the dice. But I do sometimes wonder if we can make
the show sustainable with boosts alone.
And, of course, the use of the affiliate links in the show notes.
Just because it is an expensive show to produce, right now I'm keeping it locked
in on the 100% direct audience support.
But I would be interested in your opinion, especially if you've boosted on the
regular, if you're feeling exhausted and can't keep it up.
How do you feel about sponsors coming in to pick up the slack as we hit episode
50 and I start thinking about the next 50 episodes?
It does cross my mind. And I think the first place to go is to get your advice.
So boost in and let me know your thoughts on that as well.
Music.
I haven't talked about the Samurai Wallet hearing in a minute.
There's actually a few things going on here.
And I think it's important we touch on this. So the criminal trial of the Samurai
Wallet co-founders, Rodriguez and Hill, is gaining momentum with key pre-trial dates now set.
And The Rage has been doing a fantastic job of covering this.
I'll put a link to them in their show notes.
The pair face a charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and operate
an unlicensed money transmitting business, largely stemming from their creation
of the privacy focused Bitcoin wallet that used, quote, mixing to obscure transaction histories.
Importantly, they are not charged directly with laundering money or even running
a money laundering business.
So it's kind of a weak case because some of the things don't really seem to
click, but it is proceeding.
And it will have, I believe, rather large ramifications for open source software
development in general, if open source software is used to facilitate a crime.
And you could think of all kinds of scenarios where things like Firefox or Linux
or just a basic command line application could get you like Nmap could get used in a crime.
So the direction this goes could have large ramifications even outside of just
Bitcoin. So here are the key dates we need to know about.
May 7th, we're going to get the pretrial motion filings. We might get some information
out of that. I'll keep my eye out.
July 15th and August 8th, the government and the defense expert do their witness disclosures.
I don't know if we will get that publicly, but we may get a witness list.
On July 16th, oral arguments on the motions begin.
And then later this year, November 3rd, the trial actually starts.
So you're getting a sense here of just the timetable and how long this is going to take.
Now, Hill has been excused from pretrial appearances due to travel costs,
while Rodriguez remains under home restrictions.
The P2P Rights Fund is trying to support their legal defense,
if you want to look into somebody to support.
And this sort of has, you know, the echoes of the Tornado Cash case recently.
Now, it is believed that Samurai folks earned $4.5 million in fees and did operate
their own mixing servers.
So that's where prosecutors may try to claim that they had active control.
But civil liberties groups, easy for me to say, warn that applying FinCEN's
outdated definitions to newer, modernized, decentralized tools is a distortion
of the law and obviously could have a future impact on financial privacy tools.
And I said, like I mentioned, the wider open source use in criminal cases.
So that one I'm watching closely, and it's going to be a while before we really
start to get any resolution.
How about some good news, though? Zeus version 0.10.0 is out.
The Zeus wallet is one of the best.
And it works great with your AlbiHub if you have one too. A couple of new features
in here that I'm going to highlight, but there's a whole bunch linked in the show notes.
Number one, renewable channels. Users can now renew and extend channel leases
from Zeus's liquidity provider.
They can upgrade channels and they can get like discounts and reduced fees and all kinds of stuff.
You can also receive push notifications via Nostra DMs or on the phone.
When channels are close to expiring, and that's really nice,
they also added Nostra Wallet Connect.
So Zeus now supports Nostra Wallet Connect as a connection method,
which means it's even easier to connect to your AlbiHub or LNBits or Coinus
or Cashew or whatever it might be.
And also, this is where Zeus just continues to blow my mind.
You can now run multiple embedded LND nodes in the phone wallet.
So you can have multiple different lightning nodes
in your pocket so maybe
you want to separate out funds between work and personal or maybe wife and kids
or whatever and you don't want to run a full on server like a linux box you
could actually do that you could have individual lightning nodes in the zoos
app in your pocket or maybe it's like an android device just on the wi-fi or something,
I mean, incredible.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Zeus app is absolutely amazing.
And it's one of my favorite Bitcoin apps out there. And version 0.10.0 just
adds a bunch of great stuff.
Music.
I want to come back to MemeCoins for a moment. This will be our final clip of the week.
And I played ARK's Cathie Wood earlier in the show, but later in her interview,
I didn't play this part for you, but I want to now.
They asked Cathie about MemeCoins, about Trump's coin, and all of that stuff.
And she just has like a stone-cold killer's take on MemeCoins.
Cryptocurrency. You just spoke about the easing regulatory environment around
crypto. I'm curious, though, what you think about President Trump's relationship with crypto.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family has held deal talks with
finance following that guilty exchange plea.
And then also you have the president getting into meme coins.
You have World Liberty Financial.
Are you at all concerned that the Trump family is too close to crypto?
Well, I think the Trump family is very supportive of crypto,
which is great. It's completely different from the environment we had been in.
Our view on meme coins, we're not as focused on them.
We would not be putting them into our various private funds.
And I think the combination of AI and blockchain technology is creating millions,
millions of these meme coins.
We think most of them are not going to be worth very much. We think there are
just going to be a few crypto assets that will gain most of the spoils in the entire ecosystem.
Kathy, even some of the people who believe most firmly in the crypto story here,
they are still worried about those meme coins and a lot of retail investors
being stuck holding the bag.
And another thing that's happening at the same time is you have a lot of exchanges
looking to loosen their listing standards.
Do you worry that this could go too far, that too many coins that are going
to hurt retail investors ultimately will be listed on too many exchanges?
Well, I think that the SEC did a very important thing in declaring these meme coins not securities.
What they essentially were saying is we are not going to regulate them and it's
buyer beware. And so if I have one message for those listening who are buying
meme coins, buyer beware.
And I think the message is loud and clear from the regulators.
What we think will happen is there will be some fearsome declines in the prices
of some of these meme assets.
And, you know, there's nothing like losing money for people to learn.
And they'll learn that the SEC and regulators are not taking responsibility for these meme assets.
Music.
Check in on the state of the network before I scoot. This episode is wrapping
up at block height 888,514.
The current price is $84,380 to one Bitcoin.
That means our sats per dollar, 1,185 sats to one U.S. greenback.
We are down 22.7% from our all-time high, which was 58 days ago on January 19th, 2025, $109,160.
I don't care, though. I'm enjoying the cheap sats. It's not like I was planning
to spend my Bitcoin right now.
Anyways, I look at it as a great sale.
And I'm impressed how well Bitcoin's
holding up around and even above the 200-day moving average price.
In that way, it's really kicking butt, and the state of the network is strong.
Music.
Links to what I talked about today at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
I hope you enjoyed the show and got some value out of it.
I would love it if you shared it with somebody else. Maybe somebody who's a
little Bitcoin curious, is looking for a little signal above the noise.
And also let me know how I did with a boost and boost in what you would like
to hear or see from the show or what you thought I missed.
Now, as I wrap up episode 50, I want to leave you with a Bitcoin-specific value-for-value track.
I'll give a little bit of love and exposure to an artist who is making music
about our beloved Bitcoin.
And this week, our track is Satoshi Statue.
Music.