Greetings and salutations my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is The
Bitcoin Podcast. It's Wednesday August 23rd 2023. At the time of recording the
Bitcoin block height is 804-557 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one
Bitcoin. Today's episode is the Bitcoin Weekly News Roundup. I'm gonna cover the
big stories the week, run through some rapid-fire news, then zoom out and give
you some perspective. You can find all the links and accounts mentioned in this
episode via the article version of this show, linked in the show notes, or by going
to BitcoinPodcast.net slash words. Before I get started on the news roundup I
wanted to let you know I've started recording Bitcoin Talk episodes of the
Bitcoin Podcast. You can watch these interviews at BitcoinPodcast.net,
youtube.com slash at Walker America or Walker America on Rumble. And of course
you can always listen to these episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
Yesterday I released the first episode of Bitcoin Talk with Jordan Shaqtel and
today I'm speaking with Jeff Booth. Next week I'll be speaking with Preston
Pish. Thank you to all these guys for sharing their scarce time with me.
Without further ado, let's get into the Bitcoin News Roundup.
Get your Bitcoin off by NITs. In general, it's a good practice to remove any
Bitcoin you have on an exchange into self-custody at regular intervals,
because until you hold that Bitcoin in self-custody, you don't really have any
Bitcoin. You just have an IOU for Bitcoin. And you hope that whatever
exchange you use to purchase that Bitcoin actually has it when you go to
withdraw. People who had Bitcoin on FTX found this out the hard way when it
turned out that FTX did not in fact have their customers Bitcoin that they
claimed to have. They just had paper Bitcoin IOUs. Something similar may be
about to happen with Binance. To be clear, I am not saying anything definitively,
and I truly hope this is not the case. I hope that Binance has all their
customers Bitcoin that they claim to have. I hope Binance is 100% solvent and
the rumors of Binance selling customer Bitcoin and buying their own BNB token
to prop up its price are just that. Rumors. There's some weird stuff happening
with their Euro on and off ramps as well, and if Binance decides to freeze Bitcoin
withdrawals, heaven forbid, this could get very dicey. Bottom line, you don't want
to be stuck with paper Bitcoin on any exchange. As a sidebar, I noticed that for
some reason, CZ Binance follows little old me on Twitter, so CZ, if you're
listening to this, which you almost certainly are not, please do not sue me
because I am simply speculating on the rumors of the alleged use of customer
Bitcoin to prop up the price of BNB. Great, I should be covered now, right?
Anyway, I'm not saying you should only get your Bitcoin off Binance. You should
get your Bitcoin off of any exchange you are using. This is just a good habit to
get into, and a habit which solvent exchange operators should encourage. I
don't know what the truth is or how events will unfold. A shitload of people
around the world use Binance, and Binance also just integrated the Bitcoin
Lightning Network, which is pretty neat. That being said, it's always a good idea
to take your Bitcoin off of exchanges and into your own custody, regardless of
who is operating that exchange.
The Bitcoin Crash
Last week, Bitcoin took a big old dump from the mid-29,000s and got as low as
the 25,000s. At the time of recording, it's bounced back up a bit and is
currently sitting around 26,500. It's tempting to look back retrospectively
and try to attribute a rapid change in Bitcoin's fiat price to any number of
factors or individual events. But the reality is that Bitcoin is, and has
always been, a volatile asset in the short term when priced in fiat. That's why
at the beginning of every show, I say, the value of one Bitcoin is still one
Bitcoin. Do I care about the fiat price of Bitcoin? Of course, because that fiat
exchange rate determines how many satoshis I get per US dollar, the fiat
currency I am paid in. But the big picture is this. Every fiat currency, every alt coin,
every asset will trend to zero relative to Bitcoin in the long term. The Bitcoin
fear and greed index is currently at 37, meaning fear. And I like it when the
market is fearful, because that means I'll be able to stack more SATs per
dollar this week than I did last week. So don't sweat the small stuff. We have a
Bitcoin having next year. If you can't handle Bitcoin at 25k, maybe you don't
deserve it at 100k. And that's okay, because you'll be back.
Fiat monetary logic. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by
Jason Furman a few days ago titled, The Fed Should Carefully Aim for a High
Inflation Target. Quote, if it can stick to stabilizing the economy now, then it
could start thinking long term in 2025. This is ironic because the essence of
fiat monetary policy is to never think long term. Here's the opening paragraph
from the article. The Federal Reserve has appropriately focused on a single
objective for a year and a half, getting inflation down. While the war isn't won,
and I fear the hardest battles may be ahead, it is necessary to think about
what victory would entail. In the short run, the Fed should be aiming to
stabilize inflation below 3%. If it can achieve this goal, then it should shift
to a higher target range for inflation when it updates its overall strategy
around 2025. On Twitter, Nobel laureate fiat economist Paul Fax Machine Krugman
had this to say, I agree with Jason Furman's call for a 3% inflation target.
The rationale for 2% has been overtaken by a couple decades experience, and many
of us have been saying this for a while. To the esteemed Mr. Krugman, yours truly
responded, personally, I think we should make the inflation target 4.20%. I
challenge anyone to provide a good reason why 3% is better than 4.20%.
Now, my response was a joke, but also not a joke. The real joke is that arbitrary
inflation rates are somehow arrived upon as a consensus for what is the ideal
inflation. I mean hell, why not 5% or 10% inflation target? The reality is that
the 2% inflation target is just small enough where over the short term, the
average person doesn't realize that the government and central bank are stealing
from them. It's a slow, gradual loss of purchasing power that is only noticeable
in retrospect. A 2% or 3% inflation target might not sound like a lot, and
that's the point, but here's the reality. At the current 2% inflation
target over 20 years, you'll have lost around 33% of your purchasing power. At
the proposed 3% inflation rate over 20 years, you'll have lost around 45% of
your purchasing power. This means that the stated goal of fiat economists
proposing a 3% inflation target is to steal at least 45% of your purchasing
power over the next 20 years. But any normal non-fiat economist person who
buys food, fuel, or heaven forbid is trying to buy a house knows that the
real rate of inflation, not the target rate, is much, much higher than 2% or 3%.
If we have 5% inflation over 20 years, you'll have lost around 62% of your
purchasing power. 10% over 20 years, you'll have lost around 85% of your
purchasing power. 15% over 20 years, you'll lose around 94% of your
purchasing power. If you want to learn more about the nature of monetary
inflation and price changes, listen to the Bitcoin Out Loud episode where I read
Mises' take on inflation. The last thing I'll say on the subject for today is
this. Bitcoin also has an inflation rate, but unlike an arbitrary target rate
imposed by PhD fiat economists and a real inflation rate that fluctuates widely
at the whims of central bankers, Bitcoin's inflation rate is predictable,
it's fixed, and the inflation rate of Bitcoin doesn't increase. Instead, it
exponentially decreases every four years when the amount of new Bitcoin issued
per block is cut in half. The next halving is in April 2024 when the amount of
new Bitcoin issued per block is cut in half from 6.25 to 3.125.
Tick tock, next block.
Now for some rapid fire news. Via Bitcoin Archive, Bitcoin daily RSI is now the most
oversold since the COVID crash in March 2020. Via BTC Times, nodal power raises
13 million in seed round to boost renewable energy initiatives. Via
Glassnode, Bitcoin balance on exchanges just reached a five-year low of 2,269,235.253 BTC.
Via Bitcoin Magazine, a solo Bitcoin miner with one paid a hash of hash rate
won a block reward worth 6.25 Bitcoin. A miner this small would only solve a solo
block once every seven years on average at this difficulty.
Via Francis at BoldBitcoin, thanks to Bitcoin Jungle CR and BoldBitcoin
off-ramp integration for merchants which lets them easily convert their Bitcoin
no KYC, you can now buy pretty much anything with Bitcoin in Costa Rica via
Market & More, an online shopping service. Via the Bitcoin Therapist,
MicroStrategy struggled for 20 years to grow their market cap above 2 billion.
Then they adopted a Bitcoin standard. Within six months, their market cap was
nearly 10 billion and after three years it rests at 4.6 billion. Imagine when
other companies figure out that Bitcoin is a cheat code. Via BTC Times, Bitcoin
secures 100 million in series C funding now at 1.75 billion valuation. Via Pete
Rizzo, exactly 15 years ago yesterday, Adam Back reviewed the first draft of the
Bitcoin White Paper in an email sent to him by Satoshi Nakamoto. He's still
working on BTC today. Via Glassnode, the Bitcoin percent supply last active five
plus years ago just reached an all-time high of 29.349 percent. Via BTC
Times, Unchained, a leading financial services company focused on Bitcoin,
witnessed a 170% rise in Bitcoin-backed loans between the first and second
quarters of 2023. Via Wicked Smart Bitcoin, it's been 651 days since the
all-time high. How long are you willing to hodl your Bitcoin? As a side note, this
was published on Monday so it's now been 653 days. Good job. And to finish up the
rapid-fire news, another one via Wicked Smart Bitcoin. Those who started daily
dollar-cost averaging Bitcoin at the all-time high are once again in profit.
Fiat Maxis in disbelief.
To wrap up today's show, let's zoom out and give a little perspective. I know it's
hard to see the fiat price of Bitcoin go down, especially if you're new to
Bitcoin. And if you don't own any Bitcoin, maybe the price fluctuations are
enough to scare you away. I'm not here to tell you what to do with your money
because frankly, I don't care what you do with it. It's your money. Use it when
you need it. But I do believe in educating others about Bitcoin and sharing
my own experience so they can make their own decisions, but hopefully with better
information. So I'll say this, regardless of fiat price, it is always a good time to
buy Bitcoin. Personally, I didn't start buying Bitcoin until I nibbled a few
sats in December 2019, and then more aggressively in 2020 as lockdown started,
stimulus checks rolled out, and I realized our monetary system was seriously
fucked up. That's when I finally went headfirst into the Bitcoin rabbit hole. I
didn't have a pile of cash sitting around, so I bought a few sats whenever I
could. I bought Bitcoin all the way to the top at 69,000 or so, and all the way
down to the most recent bottom around 16,000. I bought Bitcoin yesterday, and
I'll buy Bitcoin today and tomorrow too. I tell you this so you can understand
that I'm not some Bitcoin OG who's sitting on a massive stack of Bitcoin
from years ago trying to preach to you about Bitcoin while already being set
for life. I work a fiat job, and I use Bitcoin as my savings account. I use
Bitcoin to save the value of my time and energy, to save the value of my hard
work. The best way I know how to do this is to buy a little bit of Bitcoin
frequently and consistently, to dollar cost average and stack sats. I dollar
cost average into Bitcoin because I don't know what the fiat price of Bitcoin
is going to be later today or tomorrow or next week or next month, so I convert
dollars to sats a few times a week. If the fiat price takes a dip like it is now,
I take the opportunity to get some extra sats for my dollars. I'm a simple man,
I'm not a trader, and I'm not some gigabrain investor. I'm just a pleb who
works hard and saves in Bitcoin. Why do I save in Bitcoin? Because I know with
certainty that over the long term, Bitcoin is the best option to store the
value of my time and energy. It's absolutely scarce. The monetary policy is
predictable, and the inflation rate of new Bitcoin will exponentially decrease
with every four-year halving until the year 2140, where no new Bitcoin will ever
be created again. I save in Bitcoin because the world is fucking uncertain,
and I like having the knowledge that no matter what happens in the fiat world,
the value of the Bitcoin I save can be measured as a fraction of the absolutely
finite 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. My name is Walker, and I'm a
Bitcoiner. And that's a wrap on this week's Bitcoin News Roundup. If you are a
Bitcoin-only company interested in sponsoring the Bitcoin podcast, head to
BitcoinPodcast.net. You can find me on Noster by going to primal.net slash
Walker. If you want to follow the Bitcoin podcast on Twitter, go to at
Titcoin Podcast and at Walker America. You can also find the video version of
this podcast at youtube.com slash at Walker America and at Walker America on
Rumble. Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin
podcasts are abundant, so thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to
another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.