Three game-changing shifts this week will reshape the average Bitcoin holder and reignite centralization concerns. What just changed, what's driving the urgency, and how will it impact the Bitcoin network.
Links
Affiliate LINKS:
Links
- Christine Lagarde - Stabilizing Inflation & Regulating AI for the Global Economy | The Daily Show - YouTube
- SEC Greenlights Options Trading for BlackRock’s IBIT Spot Bitcoin ETF
- Who Owns the Most Bitcoin in 2024? | River
- Jeff Park on X - If there were one thing to read today re the game-changing nature of Bitcoin ETF options, read (and bookmark) this one for 2025
- BlackRock Bitcoin ETF demands 12-hour BTC withdrawals from Coinbase
- JUST IN: 🇺🇸 The largest U.S. custodian bank BNY to launch Bitcoin ETF Custody
- Bhutan Reveals Fourth-Largest Government Bitcoin Holdings Worth $750M
- Bitcoin Core :: Disclosure of memory DoS due to headers spam
- Telegram Changes Policy to Share Phone Numbers & IP Addresses in 'Valid Requests'
- SimpleX Chat: private and secure messenger without any user IDs (not even random)
- US Congressman Tom Emmer grills Gary Gensler over crypto regulation
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I think that you will spend 40,000 hours of your life, maybe 60,000 hours of your life trying to make money. It is worthwhile to spend 100 hours of your life figuring out how to keep it. Thanks for watching. Music. Welcome in to episode 28 of This Week in Bitcoin. My name is Chris, and I know I'm a little early this week. I was a little late last week. I'm all over the place, but don't blame me. You blame the news cycle. It's J-POW last week, and this week, it's major news for Bitcoin. But I want to set the stage first. To help you understand the context around why we saw some of the announcements we saw in just the last few days, I think we need to understand just how bad the situation is that's driving all of this behind the scenes.
And it's so beautifully demonstrated in an interview that was just published by Jon Stewart in The Daily Show with Christine Lagarde. And she's one of these politicians that I don't ever think been voted for by the people, but she's moved in and out of government since, well, basically my entire life. But particularly, she's sort of the chief gaslighter for the European Central Bank. And she sat down to talk with Jon Stewart. And in the very introduction of her, you can kind of get a sense that she's just moved around all the time. She's just one of these government creatures that never leaves government.
We were just talking. Last time that I saw you, you were the French minister of finance. Right. And then you moved on IMF. And I came back. And you came back. and then now you are the head of the ECB which is for context similar to like what the Fed would be I assume for the United States that's right and you lowered interest rates as well yes we started a little earlier okay I didn't know was gonna go there right away I didn't know we were gonna do this right away we we only did 25 he did 50 you only did 25 but then we did it again so So that's 50-50. So they're basically in sync. He asked if they coordinate. Of course, he says, no, we don't. We don't coordinate.
After they get past that and they have a good laugh about how funny it is that they're now lowering rates. And, you know, this is both the most friendly interview and yet substantive interview you're going to hear with Christine Lagarde. It's ironic. So John asked her, how are we doing in general with inflation? Do these rate cuts indicate that perhaps inflation has been, I think he said, defeated? But is it now, is that the signal inflation has been defeated? It's... Not quite. We are getting there. We are we are almost at target. What are you pointing at? My target is two.
Two percent. I want to get to two percent. What is it now? It's two point two. But I want to make sure that we are at two and that we stay at two percent, because that's regarded as sort of stable inflation. And we look at that in the medium term. So we don't want to have one month at two percent and then another month at two point six percent. You know, because 2% is this great target that they've come up with, which is, of course, I'm being facetious. John kind of does get into this. I want it to be steady, solid. At two? At two. And we're getting very close. Who chose two?
Who was the two-chooser? You know, interestingly enough, that was way back, and I think New Zealand was one of those that started it. And we're all following New Zealand now. That's what this is. New Zealand one day went, you know what would be a good number? Two. Oh, they love 2%. Go look it up. It's compounding. So if you go look it up, it's a nice little grift. At 2%, they get a good grift. They can devalue your dollar or your currency and make their debt a little more worthless. It's a great little system. In fact, I would really like to sincerely invite someone to boost in with a great, I don't know, elevator explainer as to how 2% inflation is horrible, because I've tried to put the words together on this show, and I feel like I haven't properly conveyed it. I mean, it's a tricky thing to explain.
Christine herself tries to explain where inflation comes from and kind of accidentally admits, well, in part, it was government printing. So what caused the inflation in the first place? Do we have a handle on that? Yes. Okay. Shall we take the last big, big inflation wave that we had? No. As an example, no, no, but, no, okay. Yes. But as an example, okay, so what caused it? You had three components. One is you had the worst pandemic ever since the 20s. Yes. The last 20s. That's right. Now, she would have just left it at the pandemic, but it's not the pandemic. It was the lockdown and the shutdowns, which, to his credit, John does bring up. Then you had. So a shutdown of.
Shutdown of. Now, that would seem to be deflationary because it would seem like demand would disappear. Well, some demand disappeared and some demand stayed, particularly when people continued to receive, you know, checks in the mail. The mistake was keeping people alive. No, no, no, no, no. I get it now. I get what's happening here. You know, it is funny that the stimulus checks do get so much of the blame. I think it's, you know, it does make sense that we stimulated demand by giving people more money at a time when the supply chain was extremely screwed up. I was publicly saying that's a bad idea at the time. So it definitely had a factor, but it's clearly printing.
It's the overall expenditures by the governments in general during the pandemic that added so much to the money supply. I was going to say M2. So they kind of get into that a little bit, but you never really get a satisfactory answer when it comes to what caused the inflation there. But remember, she said she had three other things. And so they get into energy. So supply chain completely disrupted. Yes. First. Second, we had. At least in Europe, the worst war since the 40s. Still going on in Ukraine. Still going on in Ukraine. So energy, wheat. Energy, wheat, all sorts of commodity prices went down, especially given that dear Mr.
Putin anticipated that and weighed on energy prices. So they weighed on energy supply. So that prices started going up even before the war started. I mean, was it Putin that convinced Germany to buy a bunch of natural gas from Russia? You know, these decisions were made by the leadership in the European Union, and they went for less dense energy that they could generate, and they just did all of the dirty lifting by Russia and got great deals from Russia. And when Russia saw that they were trying to get Ukraine into NATO, they strategically started to prepare for that.
So did they not? Did the European Union not prepare for that? I mean, we knew what was happening since 2014 when they seized Crimea and the government was overthrown. And then when we started talking about adding them to NATO and putting weapons on the border of Ukraine, it seemed like it was very possible that could lead to some kind of conflict. Are you telling me, Christine, that the European Union didn't prepare for that and you were caught flat-footed by all of this? He had planned that all along. So energy prices were a big component in the supply chain disruption. Yeah.
Energy. Now that's in Europe. We did not have that to the same extent, I would assume. So you see, they're not responsible for the supply chain issues caused by the lockdowns. That's just supply chain disruption. They're not responsible for the energy price planning because, well, everything was going great until Putin wanted to have his war. So they're not responsible for any of that policy that led to these kinds of dependencies, they're just victims. A little bit, but not, yeah, you're right. Because you have energy on site in the country. We don't have any energy sources. Oh sure, you know why?
Drill, baby, drill. That's, that's, did you know that's our national anthem? That's what we, we sing it before every ball game. It's something we do. I mean, they laugh, they laugh, but I would rather have energy independence, than to be at the will of Putin and to be crushed, have my economy crushed because we didn't plan for Putin to raise prices or actually, let's be honest, Putin didn't raise prices. They put embargoes in, right? They made it illegal to do business with Russia. Putin didn't make it illegal to do business with Russia. Now, should they have? I'm not trying to make a moral decision.
I'm just making an economic call here. So she talks about it like there's nothing we could have done when they are the ones that are responsible for the lockdowns and shutting down the economy and disrupting the supply chain. They're the ones that knew a war was coming because they were involved in trying to bring Ukraine into NATO, which was stoking the war to begin with. And they're the ones that have invested in lesser dense forms of energy like solar and wind instead of nuclear. Those are all policy decisions that they made. You know it, and I know it, and the investment world knows it.
They can come on here and they can gaslight the general public, but the rest of the world really does know what's going on. Well, not the rest of the world, but those that are watching the markets, those that are trying to make money, they know what's going on, And they can't hide it from, say, Wall Street. And that's the context that I want you to have when we talk about this week's news. Music. Well, the Bitcoin ETF skeptics look pretty foolish this week. Collectively, the Bitcoin ETFs now have over $20 billion under management. BlackRock's ETF, which is iBIT, I-B-I-T, it's the heavyweight champion.
It's twice as big as the next Bitcoin ETF. And there has been some big news in this last week. The SEC has greenlighted option trading for BlackRock's iBIT spot Bitcoin ETF. This is an accelerated approval at that as well. And there are some requirements in here. The options are going to be physically settled, meaning Bitcoin is going to be delivered when the option is exercised. And this approval at a high level allows investors to hedge their Bitcoin positions up or down to manage volatility through this options market. And this options market is estimated to be about a quadrillion in size.
So what this means for Bitcoin is really big money and institutions that never, ever would have come into Bitcoin without these options to hedge both directions of the volatility are now entering the Bitcoin space or will be entering the Bitcoin space. This also sets the Bitcoin ETF far and above any other cryptocurrency. Because these options, it's like, you know, you see a lot of DeFi degeneracy where people are, you know, they're betting up and down on things and they're earning yield on their DeFi assets. And it just, it's so complicated and degenerate.
It's hard to even wrap your head around it. Wall Street does this for a living every single day through these options, only it's through the regulated processes and exchanges, for better or for worse. And I think you could argue that this big money coming into Bitcoin is going to be a great thing for existing Bitcoin bag holders. I think you see people out there saying it's awful because you're going to have more people buying the ETF, so they're going to have just the ETF price exposure. They're not going to have the protection of Bitcoin. They're not going to have an asset they can take with them. this isn't good for Bitcoin adoption.
I hear them say that it's going to give the Bitcoin ETFs more control over Bitcoin. I disagree on all those points. Institutionally, I don't think there's a lot of investors out there that were going to want to try to put Bitcoin on a cold card. They were always going to want to go through some sort of route like this. Additionally, if Bitcoin was ever going to be successful, Wall Street was going to arrive, and it is here now. But it doesn't make it less useful for us. There's still the peer-to-peer market. Traditional finance on top of Bitcoin doesn't change the code.
It doesn't change the rules. Just because Michael Saylor has a big bag doesn't mean he gets to determine what the Bitcoin node operators do or miners or developers. We're always going to see this because we are the generation that's going to watch this adoption occur. So we are going to be here as we see. The same thing happened in Linux. It was just the nerds, right? It was just the extreme nerds. And And we still see shocks to this day 20 years later, almost 30, like things like IBM coming along and buying Red Hat. And it goes from this idea of this absolutely hippie free software Richard Stallman kind of ideal to something that still massively benefits the market, but isn't quite what all the idealists thought it would be.
But Bitcoin, Bitcoin is it's different because that that layer, it's almost like its own layer two on top of Bitcoin. And some of the folks that will take advantage of these options where they can have puts or calls and hedge against volatility and make some profits is going to be the miners. Right now, the miners really have no option but to sell their Bitcoin when things get tough. But now they're going to be able to take advantage of these options. So it's not going to be just Wall Street. It's going to be the miners as well. And will it impact the price? Yes. Yes.
This is going to be massive for the price. Jeff Park, he's the head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise. He had a hell of a tweet. This guy really knows his stuff. It's above my pay grade, but I read it and I wanted to just TLDR a bit of it for you. And I'll link to the full quote that he has. But here is the bits that I wanted to just relay. It starts with, quote, with today's approval by the SEC to list trade options for the Bitcoin ETF, I shared that we are on the verge of witnessing the most extraordinary upside vol of vol in financial history. Again, he writes, the most extraordinary upside of the volatility.
He goes on to say, in summary, the Bitcoin ETF options market is the first time the financial world will see regulated leverage on a perpetual commodity that is truly supply constrained. Things will likely get wild in such scenarios, regulated markets may shut down. But the The remarkable thing about Bitcoin is that there will always be a parallel decentralized market that can't be shut down. Unlike the game stock, stock GME, which, as you can imagine, was shut down. This is going to add even more fuel to the fire because you can't shut down Bitcoin. And I don't know how it's going to work when some of these price fluctuations are ripping on the weekend and these guys can't sell their options because Wall Street's closed.
I'm not going to be playing that game. But, you know, they have ways of protecting themselves. These guys know what they're doing, N-Gals. But what Jeff Park is saying here from Bitwise. Is that this is going to be a ripper of a price mover for Bitcoin, because these institutions don't even get involved with assets unless they have these options to protect themselves on both the upside and the downside of the asset. So this is, from what I can tell, the traditional finance people are just over the moon excited about this. It's huge, huge news. And everyday bitcoiners plebs don't really seem to care and i think we will see this bifurcation a bit until the plebs are are starting to still the plebs start to see the price rip and when they start to see the price rip they're going to ask what's causing it and then they're going to have to try to get all up to speed on everything i just told you about so it's we're not there yet, you know these things you know this these options just got approved like on friday i think or something like that.
So it takes a little while for this stuff to get moving. But you combine that with rate cuts and maybe after the election, we've had some time. This is going to be one more thing that helps grease that wheel. And then BlackRock also got a little tough and rough with Coinbase when it comes to their ETF holdings. On September 16th, BlackRock asked the SEC to change the Bitcoin withdrawal procedures for its Bitcoin spot ETF due to concerns over Coinbase custody practices. The request now mandates Bitcoin withdrawals be completed within 12 hours of receiving client instructions.
Now, based on reporting from Atlas 21, I kind of get a strong sense that a couple of big customers of BlackRock's ETF got spooked by rumors that maybe Maybe Coinbase didn't have all of the Bitcoin they claim to have. People start to suspect foul play. I don't know about that. I think people get a little antsy when the price goes sideways for a while and they start looking for reasons. ETF expert that I've mentioned before on the show from Bloomberg, Eric B., noted that BlackRock also let it slip that they are running their own Bitcoin node and that they verify the Bitcoin balances of their addresses on Coinbase Prime every night, ensuring that the Bitcoins held in the iBit fund are properly validated.
Now, I'm not sure why they say they need a node for that, but they say they're running a node. And Eric also added that that information, that verification information is available to institutional clients upon request, but they do not publish it to avoid spam. I guess they don't want people screwing around and spamming their addresses. Eric really does seem to know his stuff. So I'm going to take his reporting at face value here. He's been calling this the entire time very well. And he is an expert in this field. And he stresses over and over again that they're very serious about their holdings, that this is a big part of their brand.
And they're very serious about not messing it up. But the reality is, and a lot of us Bitcoiners have been calling it from the start, no matter how you slice this thing, Coinbase is a critical point of failure for most of these ETFs. Not all of them, but that's just going to make some investors uneasy. So you're going to see, I think, more diversification here. We're going to see announcements about big mainstream banks being allowed to custody Bitcoin. And then you'll probably see one or two of these ETFs move over to this mainstream bank. Because these are the types of things that really make investors feel better about the product.
And so I have to imagine Coinbase, in the meantime, has to do everything possible to try to keep the market's confidence up. And things like outages and, well, just all the other kind of crap coinery that they do and whatnot just doesn't instill that confidence in the market. So I think they're going to be looking for another custodian. OK, this is a pretty neat story. story there's a country out there with around not even a million in population I believe and they have just been discovered as the fourth largest nation-state holding Bitcoin. And now moving to Asia Bhutan the Himalayan kingdom known for prioritizing happiness over wealth has quietly emerged as a major player in the cryptocurrency world with 780 million dollars worth of Bitcoin Bitcoin, which is nearly a third of its GDP, Bhutan has become the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin.
Now what's fueling the country's ambitions to become a leader in green crypto mining? Here's our report with answers. I saw some good natured, competitive responses from Max Keiser and El Salvador folks because I believe this puts them ahead of El Salvador just by a bit. Nestled in the Himalayas, Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom with fewer than 900,000 people, has emerged as an unexpected yet powerful player in the world of cryptocurrency. Known for its serene landscapes, happiness-centric philosophy, and commitment to sustainability, Bhutan has quietly amassed a significant treasure. How do I get in on this? This sounds like a great place to do a podcast.
Over 13,000 Bitcoin worth approximately $780 million. For a country with a GDP of just under $3 billion, this is a staggering sum, making Bhutan the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin globally. The Himalayan kingdom is only behind the United States, China and the United Kingdom as it overtook El Salvador, Ukraine and Germany. Unlike the United States and China, which gained their cryptocurrency through seizures and legal battles, Bhutan took a more proactive approach by investing directly in Bitcoin mining. Oh, I had to leave that part in there.
Yeah, so they have hydro and they set up mining and they started hydro mining. And I don't know if they mine all 13,000 Bitcoin, but that's pretty great. So they're number four. So UK, US and China are above them. But like the report pointed out, they had to seize their Bitcoin. So I have to ask, let's have some fun. And, you know, we don't talk price a lot on the show, but after all, I think people could use a little relief. The price action has been sideways, which I'm always fine with, actually kind of sets a floor, reduces volatility for a bit. But you've probably been feeling that it's coiling up, that a lot of these things like the rate cuts and institutional adoption, nation state adoption, they're all kind of building.
So what is your price prediction for Bitcoin on Christmas Day? Boost in your price prediction with all of this coming up. it could go down. We could have a major recession. So if you want to put an argument as to why you think the price will be what it is, I'd love to see that too. So boost it and let me know, what is your price prediction for Bitcoin on Christmas day? But it's time to move on. Music. If you want to stack Zats, I suggest you use River if you're in the U.S. I have a link in the show notes, and I've really put it over the top because now they have their reserves public.
Anyone can verify that they hold the Bitcoin they say they hold. Additionally, their DCA options just for automatic purchase at whatever dollar amount you want is really clean and easy to use. And then when it's time to withdraw, you can withdraw over Lightning, which is not only going to reduce your fees and means you get to keep more of your stack, but it also increases your privacy. I have a link in the show notes. If you want to use my affiliate link, it just helps me out. I have no official relationship with them. I just think River is a great company. Also a plug to the Bitcoin well, if you're in Canada and you want to stack sats, no affiliation link there, but I think that's a great company as well.
And the last but not least, if you want to get yourself something with your sats, I recommend the Bitcoin Company. Keep it all on Lightning, maintain your privacy and convert it into a gift card for hundreds and hundreds of brands instantly. You can even log in with the Lightning Network so you don't have to create like a user ID or anything like that. It's a great, great system. The Bitcoin Company dot com. Use my promo code Jupiter. You get some extra sats and I get some extra sats. Helps me out to appreciate that when you support the show. And of course, I appreciate it when you boost in.
Because this is a Value for Value podcast. Let's get to those boosts. It's a shorter boost segment this week because I was out late last week, the episode was, and then I'm recording two days early this week. So we're going to have reduced boosts, but there's still some great ones to get to, like the Podfather, who's our baller booster this week. Adam Curry comes in with 25,000 sats. Boosting is loving. Alvin, you are right about that, Podfather. Loving the work over there at the Podcasting 2.0 show. If you're a listener and wondering what the heck is Podcasting 2.0 and what's going on and what are the new developments, go over to the Podcast Index and search for the Podcasting 2.0 show.
Adam and Dave get into it every week, and you get to attend the meetings as they discuss it all out in the open. Thank you, Podfather. Podhome comes in with 15,000 sats. I hoard that which you're kind covet. Podhome is our hosting platform, a great podcasting 2.0 hosting platform. They write, another great episode, Chris. I love the high signal and high production value. So I'm sending your show to normies to learn about Bitcoin. Keep it going, please. Oh, that's great. I know we can go a little deep for normies, but I am going to try to keep the newbie section going if people boost in newbie questions.
And I'm happy to always help people on board. I hope we do it through the value for value system, too. I dream that some of you are stacking sats because you got into boosting. And maybe you'll have a little generational wealth just by saving some of those sats over time. I don't know if that's true. Every now and then I hear from folks, but I don't hear a lot from the boosters. But I hope some of you, I hope you do what I do, is I have my saving sats and I have my spending sats. And I just charge up my Lightning Wallet with a couple of hundred thousand sats. Yeah, I guess I'm a big baller.
But I spend that over months, you know. I spend it over months. And meanwhile, I'm still DCA and I'm still stacking. I'm still trying to do what I can to maintain my actual savings account. So I have like a savings and a checking account, only in this case, it's a lightning account and a cold wallet. And I hope some of you are doing that too. If you are, let me know. I want to know your strategy. Marcel comes in with 9,000 sats. Hey, I was going to say it's over 9,000, but instead I'll put some mac and cheese on it. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too. Marcel writes, long time no boost. Is liquid really as good as coin join?
Is coin join still really a thing? It seems like it was taken out of Sparrow. Always interested to hear more about the privacy side. Great show. Keep it up. I bet you I could do a segment on this. You know, do the topic some proper loving and really kind of dig into this a bit. And I would say if you're looking for a replacement to Coinjoins, you could look into Coinjam. But what I do with Liquid, I don't know if I would consider it an equivalent. What Liquid is doing is you're pegging into another chain. And when you peg in, you peg in with your Bitcoin.
That UTXO, those Bitcoin, when you peg out, they're totally different. So you break the tracking. And everything you do inside Liquid, inside the Liquid network, is totally private. So if you're spending between liquid wallets and, you know, doing like moving into bolts, all of that's completely private inside the liquid network. And then when you peg out, it's a new address. So there's no link there. I mean, you could peg out with different amounts, right? So you could peg in, say, 500,000 sats into liquid, and maybe you spend 200,000 sats inside liquid, and then you peg the rest out. So it's a different amount, too. So it makes the tracking very hard.
That's a high level answer to liquid versus coin join. But if there's interest, let me know, and I'll actually sit down, put my words on the screen, and think it through and give you a description. I have played around a bit with, I think it's called Jam Market. Oh, I'm blanking on the name, but you'll see it on the Start9 nodes and on Umbral that will let you host your own coin jam session. That's some good software. Very much recommended. So if you would like, I will do a follow-up on that in the future. Oppie1984 comes in with 4,000 sats. That matrix is worth a thousand dilithium crystals.
World Liberty coin makes me think of Liberty dollar from the early 2000s. Totally not a scam. No, sir. Yeah. Oh, God. I mean, the Liberty world, World Liberty, whatever it is, stuff is really cringe. And it feels like a weird play. Like, why do it right before the election? That's the bet I just can't wrap my head around. Are you expecting not to win? And so this is like a plan B? or because like if you get an office and then your family's making all this money off this defi token that doesn't seem good either like it's just not really like a win scenario here, i i have to believe it's the youngins like baron and and and the trump kids that you know they've dad's now been convinced that crypto is the is like a new industry that should be embraced and so hey we're going to be part of that new industry i i couldn't i don't know i'd love to to hear your theories.
Gene Bean comes in with 2,400. Four to four, so... The traders love the Vol. Thought I'd give playback and boosting with True Fans a try, since its activity pub features are coming along nicely. Yeah, I would love to hear some feedback on True Fans and the ActivityPub stuff. I also hear they're working on apps for mobile. I like that it's a progressive web app, but I understand that some people want a native app. Keep us posted, Gene Bean. You could be our True Fans, you know, what do they say, correspondent. You know, tell us what you're learning on the scene, Gene Bean. Thanks for the boost.
Ace Ackerman comes in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats. I have the same concerns as Arthur Hayes on the possible roles of ETF hoarding and devaluation of the network. Last week, just a side note, this is me, not the boost. I played a clip of Arthur Hayes saying that he thinks one of the reasons why BlackRock is getting all the love is because if they can suck up a good portion of the value, essentially the network of Bitcoin, then, well, the government doesn't need to seize everyone's Bitcoin. They just need to seize or tax the ETFs. They can, you know, who knows, right? But that's the theory.
So that's what Ace Ackerman is responding to. He goes on to say it's likely that there will be a cycle sell-off releasing many of the coins back into the market. Bitcoin is only valuable as a use case. We must continue to promote self-custody, financial sovereignty only possible through Bitcoin. I also – I long-term subscribe to the maximum pain Bitcoin theory and that is eventually it wrecks you at some point. I've definitely gone through a couple of those and you know I have to imagine these ETF holders are as well, But then again, you know, if this thing pumps to, like, say, 100,000 and then it dumps to 75,000, oh, it's so hard.
You know, we'll see. We'll see if they panic. It's going to be interesting. Joe Ronan comes in with a row of ducks. New listener to your content, Chris, can you plug your other shows you've created? Yeah, I don't do very good job of plugging, do I? I've listened to the past four episodes. This is high signal content. Thanks for your time and keep it coming. examining no one is bullish enough let's effing go yeah you might be right about that so i have a whole bunch of shows over jupiterbroadcasting.com which includes linux unplugged the self-hosted podcast and coda radio as well as this show i'm just the worst self-plugger and you know i already feel like i asked for so much so i uh you know i don't want to plug too much but i really do appreciate the support this is you know this is a podcast that i don't i don't have an immediate plan to get any sponsorships.
I'm supposed I'm not opposed to like a company like River or somebody I really like working with, but it's really been a fascinating experiment too. And just seeing how far we can get with the boost support. Now this isn't our biggest week. You know, I, I'm a little early. We only had 10 boosters have a chance to get in, but we did get kind of a nice little bump from the sat streamers. We had 26 folks out there that just turned on the sat streaming and their their podcasting 2.0 app, and streamed in 28,719 sats. So when you combine that with the boosters, we almost cracked 100,000, but not quite.
We stacked 90,317 sats. 90,000 is not a, I probably would hate to break that down into an hourly wage for the show. I have to be honest with you, but I'm going to take the blame on being late and early for that one. And maybe just gives us a chance to have a banger in episode 29. If you'd like to boost, there's a couple of ways you can do it now. I really think that if you're listening to this show, you ought to consider going all the way. Setting up a node, using something like Albie Hub. But you don't have to start there. You can start with something like a podcasting 2.0 app like Fountain and just get a sense of what it's like.
Or if you're not ready to leave your precious podcast app yet, go grab Breeze, the Breeze app. If you just Google search like Breeze Wallet or go to podcastapps.com, that's a little handy lightning wallet that works for the Lightning Network for all kinds of things, including lots of apps in the ecosystem, system, as well as you can pull in podcasts and you can boost podcasts from Breeze. And you can keep your dang podcast app if you want. But I really encourage you to give Fountain or Podverse or Castomatic a try or TrueFans. They're really doing something special. Podcasting apps have been stagnant for about a decade.
And all of these apps are really trying to bring something new and innovative to the marketplace. And if high signal users like ourselves aren't willing to do it, then who would, right? Somebody has to be willing to adopt it. Thank you, everybody who boosted in. I really appreciate it. Let's-a-go! And I would love to hear from you next episode. And don't forget, I'm also asking for your price predictions for Christmas time. Christmas Day. You know, sometimes they call it the Santa Rally, but, you know, it doesn't really matter if the whole economy's in the tank.
We're not going to have it. So I'd love to hear your price predictions, and if you're willing, your rationale as well. Send it in! Music. Okay, how about a little newbie corner? corner. So one of my last questions I have in my batch. And the question is, can you explain the different types of Bitcoin? What's the difference between Lightning, regular Bitcoin and Liquid? Okay, so this is a pretty common question. In fact, I would say one of the most common questions I get is, what's the difference between sats on Bitcoin and sats on Lightning? And the answer is, you're thinking about it wrong. You're Bitcoin-ing wrong.
There is no difference. It is the same asset. The way it works is Lightning is a series of channels between nodes, and you pre-allocate Bitcoin into those channels. So maybe you have a million sats, and that means you can send a million sats instantaneously from one wallet to another using the sats in those channels. So it's just Bitcoin, but it's essentially locked up into these channels, which you can close the channels when you like. Liquid is a fork of Bitcoin. It is not Bitcoin. It is a modified version of Bitcoin that has block times of two minutes, I believe, and is primarily managed by a group of exchanges, businesses, high net worth individuals that have all kind of worked together to manage this network.
And I think there's something like 17 or something like that key holders to the liquid network. So technically it's a permissioned network. When you move your Bitcoin into liquid or out. Somebody or a system has to allow that to happen. And there has to be liquidity to make that possible. So it's not risk-free. However, it's been running for many, many years. And there are dashboards like Mempool-type dashboards that show you the liquidity and how everything's moving. So it's not an opaque system at all. It has a lot of the same features you come to expect with Bitcoin, like the addresses look very similar.
You know, it has a block time that you're used to. It's just a faster block time. So it has some advantages in that the UI and using it is almost identical to using Bitcoin, where Lightning, you know, it requires its own node. It requires channels. It requires that the software like your wallet supports Lightning. It's a whole other layer on top of Bitcoin. That's what Lightning is. It's a layer on top of Bitcoin. Liquid, some people call it a sidechain because it's semi-compatible, but it runs to the side of Bitcoin. Does that make sense? I hope that does make sense. And then there's everything else.
You'll see everything else that might have the name Bitcoin, like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision. Those are all forks. They're phonies. Now, the next obvious question might be, why would somebody use Lightning over, say, the traditional Bitcoin network? Speed and it's cheap. Because those sats are already in those channels, that channel has been negotiated and it's finalized on-chain. Anything that goes through the channels happens immediately. And it's very cheap. Really kind of similar reasons why you might use Liquid. And you could see it as small transactions, day-to-day transactions.
They go over these different layers or these side chains. And then, you know, you're moving funds to buy a house, you know, or something big. You do that on-chain and you're happy to pay the on-chain fee for that. And this just gives people optionality. It makes things like boosting podcasts possible. So, you know, when you send in a boost, you don't really have to worry about the fees on the blockchain. You can just send that boost over Lightning and it's so ridiculously cheap. You don't even really think about the fact that there typically would be a transaction fee. Music.
I just wanted to make you aware of a DDoS vulnerability in Bitcoin Core 24.0.0 and older. Attackers could spam the nodes with low-difficulty headers and essentially use up the resources of your node and knock it offline. It's considered high severity because of how fairly straightforward it is to execute. And so if you're on version 24.0.0, you want to upgrade to at least 24.0.1, depending on when you're listening to this. Also, since I know Telegram is really popular with Bitcoiners, you probably are aware of this, but I have links in the show notes, details about policy changes for Telegram.
They are collecting more information and will make it available upon valid lawful request. They used to only make it available when it was a terrorism charge. But now if the authorities confirm you're a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate Telegram's terms of service, they will perform the legal analysis of the request and disclose your IP address, phone number and other relevant information to the authorities. So there has been an upgrade. I mean, an upgrade. So there has been a downgrade to their privacy policy there. And I would imagine criminal activities that violate Telegram's terms of service could be pretty broad, including financial activity, so Bitcoin stuff.
You know, you just want to be thoughtful about that. The show seems to have a monthly recommendation for Simplex, simplex.chat. And I just seem to have more and more opportunities to plug it, and they just keep getting better. I do recommend them. Simplex for private conversations, and they don't require a phone number, so it's great for with the family too and kids. They'd all have to have a phone number to have a group chat. Okay, I've got a final clip of the week. Let's round things out with a chewing out that Gary Gensler got this week.
U.S. Congressman Tom Emmer just grilled him over different crypto regulations. I don't know if it's fair, but it was brutal. The SEC broke the law. Your attorneys lied to the court and no one in your leadership here in D.C. Has been held accountable. That tracks. Seems like business as usual here in Washington. Switching gears very quickly, it's been recently reported that Vice President Harris has finally said she'd craft clear rules of the road for the digital asset space if she becomes president. Is this your approach too, sir? Or do you think she's rebuking you because she doesn't think you've done a good enough job establishing these clear rules over the last three years of her administration?
This is actually kind of a fascinating question because Gary Gensler very much seems to be going against what both presidential candidates have as part of their platform, which is at least some increased level of friendliness to digital assets or crypto or whatever, where Gensler has been going pretty hard against the crypto industry on a whole. I think that there's laws in place. If Congress wishes to change them, they'll change them. But we are enforcing the laws, and there are many people in this field that are not following the laws.
Reclaiming my time. Well, it's very interesting. See, Gary's position there is, look, the security laws are pretty clear. They've been on the books for a long time. I'm just following the securities law. That you view your performance that way because we have a litany of court cases, extraordinary confusion in the marketplace, and millions of Americans pining for clarity from you. You've abused the agency's enforcement tools, and you've even baited companies eager to comply with you, only to hit them with enforcement actions. You've retaliated against businesses and people who have come before this committee to talk about the next generation of American finance.
And perhaps somehow, worst of all, you've made up the term cryptoasset security. This term is nowhere to be found in statute. You made it up. You never provided any interpretive guidance on how crypto asset security might be defined within the walls of your SEC. The irony here, I think, is that Gary Gensler probably knows more about what makes something a security than this guy does. And Gary's right. I mean, go look at the Howey test and tell me that basically all of these projects, Ethereum, Cordana, Solana, all of the meme coins, they all seem to be, at least according to the Howey test, securities.
They're managed by a team. You expect that team to manage it in a way that will increase your return over time. Part of the reason you're probably buying into it is because, you know, you know, the Cordana Foundation has plans to make Cordana do X, Y, Z and have a stable coin and all these fancy features. So you're buying today, hoping there'll be a price increase tomorrow from the results of this team's actions. And there's there are CEOs and there are marketing people like seems like a lot of these are actually securities. And just because there's been a lot of lobbying money come in doesn't change the fundamental fact that these things, as the law stands today, are technically securities.
And I realize that we don't want to admit that anymore. All of a sudden it's changed since the ETFs. It's like all of a sudden anything could be an ETF. On how crypto asset security might be defined within the walls of your SEC. Yet you made the broad proclamation that you believe a majority of tokens are crypto asset securities. You did this and you would deliberately use this made up term as the basis for your entire enforcement crusade over the past three years, only for your lawyers to retract it in a footnote to a court just last week. Your inconsistencies on this issue, sir, have set this country back.
We could not have had a more historically destructive or lawless chairman of the SEC. And I yield back. Wow. I mean, that is a pretty, pretty major chewing out as far as Congress goes. That's about as hostile as it gets. And I don't know. I feel like Gary's kind of gotten a bad rap. He was pretty clear all along. Most of these things are securities, especially after Ethereum went to proof of stake. He's clear that they weren't so sure before that, but after proof of stake, he thought it was. He's pretty clear that he didn't think Bitcoin was a security, agreed it was a commodity.
He was one of the deciding votes in approving the Bitcoin ETF. I think he's had a pretty sober take and a pretty consistent take. They have had to weasel back from their language as of the last few weeks because both presidential candidates are campaigning towards trying to get crypto voters. So he's got to tone it down a little bit. But I think he's been right. And I mean, I don't necessarily like the guy. And the areas where I think he's been wrong is the shenanigans around not responding to people that were trying to get it right. You know, some of these projects do sound like they legitimately tried to approach the SEC, tried to get it right, Coinbase being the loudest, most vocal of that group.
And they were rebuked. They were turned away and then they were sued. They never had the chance to get in, quote unquote, compliance. Of course, the reality is the product is probably fundamentally security. So none of that really mattered. But their argument is that they tried and that Gary didn't actually speak to them, didn't actually work with them, didn't actually do all the things he said. When in every single hearing, he'd always say, my door is open. You know, come meet with us. He'd say that in every single hearing setting. But then he didn't actually ever follow through.
That I criticize him for. But I think he's been very sober in his analysis of what is a security and what is not in the crypto market. And, you know, he's also not said all of the other cryptos are securities. He said likely most of them. But there may be others that are not. But now that the money has changed and that both presidential candidates have changed their tune, I mean, Kamala is still kind of very tepidly endorsing it. She lumped it in with AI and just quote unquote digital assets. And she's really speaking about the industry and that she still said having guardrails and regulations. So it was a pretty tepid endorsement.
But technically, both presidential candidates seem to be pro Bitcoin and crypto on a technical level. And that just can't be good for Gary. So he's in a hard spot because the lands have shifted from underneath him. The Biden administration and Elizabeth Warren were all in an Operation Chokepoint 2.0. He was part of that spear. They were going hard. They were cracking heads. And then the land just shifted out from underneath them. And I think in part, it's because these ETFs came, the banks got serious about Bitcoin because they saw the direction monetary policy was going. They saw the debt.
They knew that debasement was inevitable. And they want to have these products with options and all of that in place so they can make money as the empire continues to debase its currency. And so the regime had to change its mind on its approach to Bitcoin and Gary is caught in the middle right there and now he has to go take his lickings from Tom Emmer and others there's other I'm sure you'll probably see other clips float around it was multiple hours and I managed to only capture a little bit before the show it was still going and they were still chewing them out when I sat down to record so should be interesting to see if any more clips surface, okay that's it for me I'm off to the woods links to what we talked about this week at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
Please do boost in, support the show, and let me know what you'd like to hear. Maybe share it with a friend. And I leave you with one of the value for value music verse champions. It's the Dorfels, and it's their new song, Disco Swag. Music. Show me what you got, Show me what you got, girl, Show me what you got, Show me what you got, girl. Music.
I think that you will spend 40,000 hours of your life, maybe 60,000 hours of your life trying to make money. It is worthwhile to spend 100 hours of your life figuring out how to keep it. Thanks for watching. Music. Welcome in to episode 28 of This Week in Bitcoin. My name is Chris, and I know I'm a little early this week. I was a little late last week. I'm all over the place, but don't blame me. You blame the news cycle. It's J-POW last week, and this week, it's major news for Bitcoin. But I want to set the stage first. To help you understand the context around why we saw some of the announcements we saw in just the last few days, I think we need to understand just how bad the situation is that's driving all of this behind the scenes.
And it's so beautifully demonstrated in an interview that was just published by Jon Stewart in The Daily Show with Christine Lagarde. And she's one of these politicians that I don't ever think been voted for by the people, but she's moved in and out of government since, well, basically my entire life. But particularly, she's sort of the chief gaslighter for the European Central Bank. And she sat down to talk with Jon Stewart. And in the very introduction of her, you can kind of get a sense that she's just moved around all the time. She's just one of these government creatures that never leaves government.
We were just talking. Last time that I saw you, you were the French minister of finance. Right. And then you moved on IMF. And I came back. And you came back. and then now you are the head of the ECB which is for context similar to like what the Fed would be I assume for the United States that's right and you lowered interest rates as well yes we started a little earlier okay I didn't know was gonna go there right away I didn't know we were gonna do this right away we we only did 25 he did 50 you only did 25 but then we did it again so So that's 50-50. So they're basically in sync. He asked if they coordinate. Of course, he says, no, we don't. We don't coordinate.
After they get past that and they have a good laugh about how funny it is that they're now lowering rates. And, you know, this is both the most friendly interview and yet substantive interview you're going to hear with Christine Lagarde. It's ironic. So John asked her, how are we doing in general with inflation? Do these rate cuts indicate that perhaps inflation has been, I think he said, defeated? But is it now, is that the signal inflation has been defeated? It's... Not quite. We are getting there. We are we are almost at target. What are you pointing at? My target is two.
Two percent. I want to get to two percent. What is it now? It's two point two. But I want to make sure that we are at two and that we stay at two percent, because that's regarded as sort of stable inflation. And we look at that in the medium term. So we don't want to have one month at two percent and then another month at two point six percent. You know, because 2% is this great target that they've come up with, which is, of course, I'm being facetious. John kind of does get into this. I want it to be steady, solid. At two? At two. And we're getting very close. Who chose two?
Who was the two-chooser? You know, interestingly enough, that was way back, and I think New Zealand was one of those that started it. And we're all following New Zealand now. That's what this is. New Zealand one day went, you know what would be a good number? Two. Oh, they love 2%. Go look it up. It's compounding. So if you go look it up, it's a nice little grift. At 2%, they get a good grift. They can devalue your dollar or your currency and make their debt a little more worthless. It's a great little system. In fact, I would really like to sincerely invite someone to boost in with a great, I don't know, elevator explainer as to how 2% inflation is horrible, because I've tried to put the words together on this show, and I feel like I haven't properly conveyed it. I mean, it's a tricky thing to explain.
Christine herself tries to explain where inflation comes from and kind of accidentally admits, well, in part, it was government printing. So what caused the inflation in the first place? Do we have a handle on that? Yes. Okay. Shall we take the last big, big inflation wave that we had? No. As an example, no, no, but, no, okay. Yes. But as an example, okay, so what caused it? You had three components. One is you had the worst pandemic ever since the 20s. Yes. The last 20s. That's right. Now, she would have just left it at the pandemic, but it's not the pandemic. It was the lockdown and the shutdowns, which, to his credit, John does bring up. Then you had. So a shutdown of.
Shutdown of. Now, that would seem to be deflationary because it would seem like demand would disappear. Well, some demand disappeared and some demand stayed, particularly when people continued to receive, you know, checks in the mail. The mistake was keeping people alive. No, no, no, no, no. I get it now. I get what's happening here. You know, it is funny that the stimulus checks do get so much of the blame. I think it's, you know, it does make sense that we stimulated demand by giving people more money at a time when the supply chain was extremely screwed up. I was publicly saying that's a bad idea at the time. So it definitely had a factor, but it's clearly printing.
It's the overall expenditures by the governments in general during the pandemic that added so much to the money supply. I was going to say M2. So they kind of get into that a little bit, but you never really get a satisfactory answer when it comes to what caused the inflation there. But remember, she said she had three other things. And so they get into energy. So supply chain completely disrupted. Yes. First. Second, we had. At least in Europe, the worst war since the 40s. Still going on in Ukraine. Still going on in Ukraine. So energy, wheat. Energy, wheat, all sorts of commodity prices went down, especially given that dear Mr.
Putin anticipated that and weighed on energy prices. So they weighed on energy supply. So that prices started going up even before the war started. I mean, was it Putin that convinced Germany to buy a bunch of natural gas from Russia? You know, these decisions were made by the leadership in the European Union, and they went for less dense energy that they could generate, and they just did all of the dirty lifting by Russia and got great deals from Russia. And when Russia saw that they were trying to get Ukraine into NATO, they strategically started to prepare for that.
So did they not? Did the European Union not prepare for that? I mean, we knew what was happening since 2014 when they seized Crimea and the government was overthrown. And then when we started talking about adding them to NATO and putting weapons on the border of Ukraine, it seemed like it was very possible that could lead to some kind of conflict. Are you telling me, Christine, that the European Union didn't prepare for that and you were caught flat-footed by all of this? He had planned that all along. So energy prices were a big component in the supply chain disruption. Yeah.
Energy. Now that's in Europe. We did not have that to the same extent, I would assume. So you see, they're not responsible for the supply chain issues caused by the lockdowns. That's just supply chain disruption. They're not responsible for the energy price planning because, well, everything was going great until Putin wanted to have his war. So they're not responsible for any of that policy that led to these kinds of dependencies, they're just victims. A little bit, but not, yeah, you're right. Because you have energy on site in the country. We don't have any energy sources. Oh sure, you know why?
Drill, baby, drill. That's, that's, did you know that's our national anthem? That's what we, we sing it before every ball game. It's something we do. I mean, they laugh, they laugh, but I would rather have energy independence, than to be at the will of Putin and to be crushed, have my economy crushed because we didn't plan for Putin to raise prices or actually, let's be honest, Putin didn't raise prices. They put embargoes in, right? They made it illegal to do business with Russia. Putin didn't make it illegal to do business with Russia. Now, should they have? I'm not trying to make a moral decision.
I'm just making an economic call here. So she talks about it like there's nothing we could have done when they are the ones that are responsible for the lockdowns and shutting down the economy and disrupting the supply chain. They're the ones that knew a war was coming because they were involved in trying to bring Ukraine into NATO, which was stoking the war to begin with. And they're the ones that have invested in lesser dense forms of energy like solar and wind instead of nuclear. Those are all policy decisions that they made. You know it, and I know it, and the investment world knows it.
They can come on here and they can gaslight the general public, but the rest of the world really does know what's going on. Well, not the rest of the world, but those that are watching the markets, those that are trying to make money, they know what's going on, And they can't hide it from, say, Wall Street. And that's the context that I want you to have when we talk about this week's news. Music. Well, the Bitcoin ETF skeptics look pretty foolish this week. Collectively, the Bitcoin ETFs now have over $20 billion under management. BlackRock's ETF, which is iBIT, I-B-I-T, it's the heavyweight champion.
It's twice as big as the next Bitcoin ETF. And there has been some big news in this last week. The SEC has greenlighted option trading for BlackRock's iBIT spot Bitcoin ETF. This is an accelerated approval at that as well. And there are some requirements in here. The options are going to be physically settled, meaning Bitcoin is going to be delivered when the option is exercised. And this approval at a high level allows investors to hedge their Bitcoin positions up or down to manage volatility through this options market. And this options market is estimated to be about a quadrillion in size.
So what this means for Bitcoin is really big money and institutions that never, ever would have come into Bitcoin without these options to hedge both directions of the volatility are now entering the Bitcoin space or will be entering the Bitcoin space. This also sets the Bitcoin ETF far and above any other cryptocurrency. Because these options, it's like, you know, you see a lot of DeFi degeneracy where people are, you know, they're betting up and down on things and they're earning yield on their DeFi assets. And it just, it's so complicated and degenerate.
It's hard to even wrap your head around it. Wall Street does this for a living every single day through these options, only it's through the regulated processes and exchanges, for better or for worse. And I think you could argue that this big money coming into Bitcoin is going to be a great thing for existing Bitcoin bag holders. I think you see people out there saying it's awful because you're going to have more people buying the ETF, so they're going to have just the ETF price exposure. They're not going to have the protection of Bitcoin. They're not going to have an asset they can take with them. this isn't good for Bitcoin adoption.
I hear them say that it's going to give the Bitcoin ETFs more control over Bitcoin. I disagree on all those points. Institutionally, I don't think there's a lot of investors out there that were going to want to try to put Bitcoin on a cold card. They were always going to want to go through some sort of route like this. Additionally, if Bitcoin was ever going to be successful, Wall Street was going to arrive, and it is here now. But it doesn't make it less useful for us. There's still the peer-to-peer market. Traditional finance on top of Bitcoin doesn't change the code.
It doesn't change the rules. Just because Michael Saylor has a big bag doesn't mean he gets to determine what the Bitcoin node operators do or miners or developers. We're always going to see this because we are the generation that's going to watch this adoption occur. So we are going to be here as we see. The same thing happened in Linux. It was just the nerds, right? It was just the extreme nerds. And And we still see shocks to this day 20 years later, almost 30, like things like IBM coming along and buying Red Hat. And it goes from this idea of this absolutely hippie free software Richard Stallman kind of ideal to something that still massively benefits the market, but isn't quite what all the idealists thought it would be.
But Bitcoin, Bitcoin is it's different because that that layer, it's almost like its own layer two on top of Bitcoin. And some of the folks that will take advantage of these options where they can have puts or calls and hedge against volatility and make some profits is going to be the miners. Right now, the miners really have no option but to sell their Bitcoin when things get tough. But now they're going to be able to take advantage of these options. So it's not going to be just Wall Street. It's going to be the miners as well. And will it impact the price? Yes. Yes.
This is going to be massive for the price. Jeff Park, he's the head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise. He had a hell of a tweet. This guy really knows his stuff. It's above my pay grade, but I read it and I wanted to just TLDR a bit of it for you. And I'll link to the full quote that he has. But here is the bits that I wanted to just relay. It starts with, quote, with today's approval by the SEC to list trade options for the Bitcoin ETF, I shared that we are on the verge of witnessing the most extraordinary upside vol of vol in financial history. Again, he writes, the most extraordinary upside of the volatility.
He goes on to say, in summary, the Bitcoin ETF options market is the first time the financial world will see regulated leverage on a perpetual commodity that is truly supply constrained. Things will likely get wild in such scenarios, regulated markets may shut down. But the The remarkable thing about Bitcoin is that there will always be a parallel decentralized market that can't be shut down. Unlike the game stock, stock GME, which, as you can imagine, was shut down. This is going to add even more fuel to the fire because you can't shut down Bitcoin. And I don't know how it's going to work when some of these price fluctuations are ripping on the weekend and these guys can't sell their options because Wall Street's closed.
I'm not going to be playing that game. But, you know, they have ways of protecting themselves. These guys know what they're doing, N-Gals. But what Jeff Park is saying here from Bitwise. Is that this is going to be a ripper of a price mover for Bitcoin, because these institutions don't even get involved with assets unless they have these options to protect themselves on both the upside and the downside of the asset. So this is, from what I can tell, the traditional finance people are just over the moon excited about this. It's huge, huge news. And everyday bitcoiners plebs don't really seem to care and i think we will see this bifurcation a bit until the plebs are are starting to still the plebs start to see the price rip and when they start to see the price rip they're going to ask what's causing it and then they're going to have to try to get all up to speed on everything i just told you about so it's we're not there yet, you know these things you know this these options just got approved like on friday i think or something like that.
So it takes a little while for this stuff to get moving. But you combine that with rate cuts and maybe after the election, we've had some time. This is going to be one more thing that helps grease that wheel. And then BlackRock also got a little tough and rough with Coinbase when it comes to their ETF holdings. On September 16th, BlackRock asked the SEC to change the Bitcoin withdrawal procedures for its Bitcoin spot ETF due to concerns over Coinbase custody practices. The request now mandates Bitcoin withdrawals be completed within 12 hours of receiving client instructions.
Now, based on reporting from Atlas 21, I kind of get a strong sense that a couple of big customers of BlackRock's ETF got spooked by rumors that maybe Maybe Coinbase didn't have all of the Bitcoin they claim to have. People start to suspect foul play. I don't know about that. I think people get a little antsy when the price goes sideways for a while and they start looking for reasons. ETF expert that I've mentioned before on the show from Bloomberg, Eric B., noted that BlackRock also let it slip that they are running their own Bitcoin node and that they verify the Bitcoin balances of their addresses on Coinbase Prime every night, ensuring that the Bitcoins held in the iBit fund are properly validated.
Now, I'm not sure why they say they need a node for that, but they say they're running a node. And Eric also added that that information, that verification information is available to institutional clients upon request, but they do not publish it to avoid spam. I guess they don't want people screwing around and spamming their addresses. Eric really does seem to know his stuff. So I'm going to take his reporting at face value here. He's been calling this the entire time very well. And he is an expert in this field. And he stresses over and over again that they're very serious about their holdings, that this is a big part of their brand.
And they're very serious about not messing it up. But the reality is, and a lot of us Bitcoiners have been calling it from the start, no matter how you slice this thing, Coinbase is a critical point of failure for most of these ETFs. Not all of them, but that's just going to make some investors uneasy. So you're going to see, I think, more diversification here. We're going to see announcements about big mainstream banks being allowed to custody Bitcoin. And then you'll probably see one or two of these ETFs move over to this mainstream bank. Because these are the types of things that really make investors feel better about the product.
And so I have to imagine Coinbase, in the meantime, has to do everything possible to try to keep the market's confidence up. And things like outages and, well, just all the other kind of crap coinery that they do and whatnot just doesn't instill that confidence in the market. So I think they're going to be looking for another custodian. OK, this is a pretty neat story. story there's a country out there with around not even a million in population I believe and they have just been discovered as the fourth largest nation-state holding Bitcoin. And now moving to Asia Bhutan the Himalayan kingdom known for prioritizing happiness over wealth has quietly emerged as a major player in the cryptocurrency world with 780 million dollars worth of Bitcoin Bitcoin, which is nearly a third of its GDP, Bhutan has become the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin.
Now what's fueling the country's ambitions to become a leader in green crypto mining? Here's our report with answers. I saw some good natured, competitive responses from Max Keiser and El Salvador folks because I believe this puts them ahead of El Salvador just by a bit. Nestled in the Himalayas, Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom with fewer than 900,000 people, has emerged as an unexpected yet powerful player in the world of cryptocurrency. Known for its serene landscapes, happiness-centric philosophy, and commitment to sustainability, Bhutan has quietly amassed a significant treasure. How do I get in on this? This sounds like a great place to do a podcast.
Over 13,000 Bitcoin worth approximately $780 million. For a country with a GDP of just under $3 billion, this is a staggering sum, making Bhutan the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin globally. The Himalayan kingdom is only behind the United States, China and the United Kingdom as it overtook El Salvador, Ukraine and Germany. Unlike the United States and China, which gained their cryptocurrency through seizures and legal battles, Bhutan took a more proactive approach by investing directly in Bitcoin mining. Oh, I had to leave that part in there.
Yeah, so they have hydro and they set up mining and they started hydro mining. And I don't know if they mine all 13,000 Bitcoin, but that's pretty great. So they're number four. So UK, US and China are above them. But like the report pointed out, they had to seize their Bitcoin. So I have to ask, let's have some fun. And, you know, we don't talk price a lot on the show, but after all, I think people could use a little relief. The price action has been sideways, which I'm always fine with, actually kind of sets a floor, reduces volatility for a bit. But you've probably been feeling that it's coiling up, that a lot of these things like the rate cuts and institutional adoption, nation state adoption, they're all kind of building.
So what is your price prediction for Bitcoin on Christmas Day? Boost in your price prediction with all of this coming up. it could go down. We could have a major recession. So if you want to put an argument as to why you think the price will be what it is, I'd love to see that too. So boost it and let me know, what is your price prediction for Bitcoin on Christmas day? But it's time to move on. Music. If you want to stack Zats, I suggest you use River if you're in the U.S. I have a link in the show notes, and I've really put it over the top because now they have their reserves public.
Anyone can verify that they hold the Bitcoin they say they hold. Additionally, their DCA options just for automatic purchase at whatever dollar amount you want is really clean and easy to use. And then when it's time to withdraw, you can withdraw over Lightning, which is not only going to reduce your fees and means you get to keep more of your stack, but it also increases your privacy. I have a link in the show notes. If you want to use my affiliate link, it just helps me out. I have no official relationship with them. I just think River is a great company. Also a plug to the Bitcoin well, if you're in Canada and you want to stack sats, no affiliation link there, but I think that's a great company as well.
And the last but not least, if you want to get yourself something with your sats, I recommend the Bitcoin Company. Keep it all on Lightning, maintain your privacy and convert it into a gift card for hundreds and hundreds of brands instantly. You can even log in with the Lightning Network so you don't have to create like a user ID or anything like that. It's a great, great system. The Bitcoin Company dot com. Use my promo code Jupiter. You get some extra sats and I get some extra sats. Helps me out to appreciate that when you support the show. And of course, I appreciate it when you boost in.
Because this is a Value for Value podcast. Let's get to those boosts. It's a shorter boost segment this week because I was out late last week, the episode was, and then I'm recording two days early this week. So we're going to have reduced boosts, but there's still some great ones to get to, like the Podfather, who's our baller booster this week. Adam Curry comes in with 25,000 sats. Boosting is loving. Alvin, you are right about that, Podfather. Loving the work over there at the Podcasting 2.0 show. If you're a listener and wondering what the heck is Podcasting 2.0 and what's going on and what are the new developments, go over to the Podcast Index and search for the Podcasting 2.0 show.
Adam and Dave get into it every week, and you get to attend the meetings as they discuss it all out in the open. Thank you, Podfather. Podhome comes in with 15,000 sats. I hoard that which you're kind covet. Podhome is our hosting platform, a great podcasting 2.0 hosting platform. They write, another great episode, Chris. I love the high signal and high production value. So I'm sending your show to normies to learn about Bitcoin. Keep it going, please. Oh, that's great. I know we can go a little deep for normies, but I am going to try to keep the newbie section going if people boost in newbie questions.
And I'm happy to always help people on board. I hope we do it through the value for value system, too. I dream that some of you are stacking sats because you got into boosting. And maybe you'll have a little generational wealth just by saving some of those sats over time. I don't know if that's true. Every now and then I hear from folks, but I don't hear a lot from the boosters. But I hope some of you, I hope you do what I do, is I have my saving sats and I have my spending sats. And I just charge up my Lightning Wallet with a couple of hundred thousand sats. Yeah, I guess I'm a big baller.
But I spend that over months, you know. I spend it over months. And meanwhile, I'm still DCA and I'm still stacking. I'm still trying to do what I can to maintain my actual savings account. So I have like a savings and a checking account, only in this case, it's a lightning account and a cold wallet. And I hope some of you are doing that too. If you are, let me know. I want to know your strategy. Marcel comes in with 9,000 sats. Hey, I was going to say it's over 9,000, but instead I'll put some mac and cheese on it. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too. Marcel writes, long time no boost. Is liquid really as good as coin join?
Is coin join still really a thing? It seems like it was taken out of Sparrow. Always interested to hear more about the privacy side. Great show. Keep it up. I bet you I could do a segment on this. You know, do the topic some proper loving and really kind of dig into this a bit. And I would say if you're looking for a replacement to Coinjoins, you could look into Coinjam. But what I do with Liquid, I don't know if I would consider it an equivalent. What Liquid is doing is you're pegging into another chain. And when you peg in, you peg in with your Bitcoin.
That UTXO, those Bitcoin, when you peg out, they're totally different. So you break the tracking. And everything you do inside Liquid, inside the Liquid network, is totally private. So if you're spending between liquid wallets and, you know, doing like moving into bolts, all of that's completely private inside the liquid network. And then when you peg out, it's a new address. So there's no link there. I mean, you could peg out with different amounts, right? So you could peg in, say, 500,000 sats into liquid, and maybe you spend 200,000 sats inside liquid, and then you peg the rest out. So it's a different amount, too. So it makes the tracking very hard.
That's a high level answer to liquid versus coin join. But if there's interest, let me know, and I'll actually sit down, put my words on the screen, and think it through and give you a description. I have played around a bit with, I think it's called Jam Market. Oh, I'm blanking on the name, but you'll see it on the Start9 nodes and on Umbral that will let you host your own coin jam session. That's some good software. Very much recommended. So if you would like, I will do a follow-up on that in the future. Oppie1984 comes in with 4,000 sats. That matrix is worth a thousand dilithium crystals.
World Liberty coin makes me think of Liberty dollar from the early 2000s. Totally not a scam. No, sir. Yeah. Oh, God. I mean, the Liberty world, World Liberty, whatever it is, stuff is really cringe. And it feels like a weird play. Like, why do it right before the election? That's the bet I just can't wrap my head around. Are you expecting not to win? And so this is like a plan B? or because like if you get an office and then your family's making all this money off this defi token that doesn't seem good either like it's just not really like a win scenario here, i i have to believe it's the youngins like baron and and and the trump kids that you know they've dad's now been convinced that crypto is the is like a new industry that should be embraced and so hey we're going to be part of that new industry i i couldn't i don't know i'd love to to hear your theories.
Gene Bean comes in with 2,400. Four to four, so... The traders love the Vol. Thought I'd give playback and boosting with True Fans a try, since its activity pub features are coming along nicely. Yeah, I would love to hear some feedback on True Fans and the ActivityPub stuff. I also hear they're working on apps for mobile. I like that it's a progressive web app, but I understand that some people want a native app. Keep us posted, Gene Bean. You could be our True Fans, you know, what do they say, correspondent. You know, tell us what you're learning on the scene, Gene Bean. Thanks for the boost.
Ace Ackerman comes in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats. I have the same concerns as Arthur Hayes on the possible roles of ETF hoarding and devaluation of the network. Last week, just a side note, this is me, not the boost. I played a clip of Arthur Hayes saying that he thinks one of the reasons why BlackRock is getting all the love is because if they can suck up a good portion of the value, essentially the network of Bitcoin, then, well, the government doesn't need to seize everyone's Bitcoin. They just need to seize or tax the ETFs. They can, you know, who knows, right? But that's the theory.
So that's what Ace Ackerman is responding to. He goes on to say it's likely that there will be a cycle sell-off releasing many of the coins back into the market. Bitcoin is only valuable as a use case. We must continue to promote self-custody, financial sovereignty only possible through Bitcoin. I also – I long-term subscribe to the maximum pain Bitcoin theory and that is eventually it wrecks you at some point. I've definitely gone through a couple of those and you know I have to imagine these ETF holders are as well, But then again, you know, if this thing pumps to, like, say, 100,000 and then it dumps to 75,000, oh, it's so hard.
You know, we'll see. We'll see if they panic. It's going to be interesting. Joe Ronan comes in with a row of ducks. New listener to your content, Chris, can you plug your other shows you've created? Yeah, I don't do very good job of plugging, do I? I've listened to the past four episodes. This is high signal content. Thanks for your time and keep it coming. examining no one is bullish enough let's effing go yeah you might be right about that so i have a whole bunch of shows over jupiterbroadcasting.com which includes linux unplugged the self-hosted podcast and coda radio as well as this show i'm just the worst self-plugger and you know i already feel like i asked for so much so i uh you know i don't want to plug too much but i really do appreciate the support this is you know this is a podcast that i don't i don't have an immediate plan to get any sponsorships.
I'm supposed I'm not opposed to like a company like River or somebody I really like working with, but it's really been a fascinating experiment too. And just seeing how far we can get with the boost support. Now this isn't our biggest week. You know, I, I'm a little early. We only had 10 boosters have a chance to get in, but we did get kind of a nice little bump from the sat streamers. We had 26 folks out there that just turned on the sat streaming and their their podcasting 2.0 app, and streamed in 28,719 sats. So when you combine that with the boosters, we almost cracked 100,000, but not quite.
We stacked 90,317 sats. 90,000 is not a, I probably would hate to break that down into an hourly wage for the show. I have to be honest with you, but I'm going to take the blame on being late and early for that one. And maybe just gives us a chance to have a banger in episode 29. If you'd like to boost, there's a couple of ways you can do it now. I really think that if you're listening to this show, you ought to consider going all the way. Setting up a node, using something like Albie Hub. But you don't have to start there. You can start with something like a podcasting 2.0 app like Fountain and just get a sense of what it's like.
Or if you're not ready to leave your precious podcast app yet, go grab Breeze, the Breeze app. If you just Google search like Breeze Wallet or go to podcastapps.com, that's a little handy lightning wallet that works for the Lightning Network for all kinds of things, including lots of apps in the ecosystem, system, as well as you can pull in podcasts and you can boost podcasts from Breeze. And you can keep your dang podcast app if you want. But I really encourage you to give Fountain or Podverse or Castomatic a try or TrueFans. They're really doing something special. Podcasting apps have been stagnant for about a decade.
And all of these apps are really trying to bring something new and innovative to the marketplace. And if high signal users like ourselves aren't willing to do it, then who would, right? Somebody has to be willing to adopt it. Thank you, everybody who boosted in. I really appreciate it. Let's-a-go! And I would love to hear from you next episode. And don't forget, I'm also asking for your price predictions for Christmas time. Christmas Day. You know, sometimes they call it the Santa Rally, but, you know, it doesn't really matter if the whole economy's in the tank.
We're not going to have it. So I'd love to hear your price predictions, and if you're willing, your rationale as well. Send it in! Music. Okay, how about a little newbie corner? corner. So one of my last questions I have in my batch. And the question is, can you explain the different types of Bitcoin? What's the difference between Lightning, regular Bitcoin and Liquid? Okay, so this is a pretty common question. In fact, I would say one of the most common questions I get is, what's the difference between sats on Bitcoin and sats on Lightning? And the answer is, you're thinking about it wrong. You're Bitcoin-ing wrong.
There is no difference. It is the same asset. The way it works is Lightning is a series of channels between nodes, and you pre-allocate Bitcoin into those channels. So maybe you have a million sats, and that means you can send a million sats instantaneously from one wallet to another using the sats in those channels. So it's just Bitcoin, but it's essentially locked up into these channels, which you can close the channels when you like. Liquid is a fork of Bitcoin. It is not Bitcoin. It is a modified version of Bitcoin that has block times of two minutes, I believe, and is primarily managed by a group of exchanges, businesses, high net worth individuals that have all kind of worked together to manage this network.
And I think there's something like 17 or something like that key holders to the liquid network. So technically it's a permissioned network. When you move your Bitcoin into liquid or out. Somebody or a system has to allow that to happen. And there has to be liquidity to make that possible. So it's not risk-free. However, it's been running for many, many years. And there are dashboards like Mempool-type dashboards that show you the liquidity and how everything's moving. So it's not an opaque system at all. It has a lot of the same features you come to expect with Bitcoin, like the addresses look very similar.
You know, it has a block time that you're used to. It's just a faster block time. So it has some advantages in that the UI and using it is almost identical to using Bitcoin, where Lightning, you know, it requires its own node. It requires channels. It requires that the software like your wallet supports Lightning. It's a whole other layer on top of Bitcoin. That's what Lightning is. It's a layer on top of Bitcoin. Liquid, some people call it a sidechain because it's semi-compatible, but it runs to the side of Bitcoin. Does that make sense? I hope that does make sense. And then there's everything else.
You'll see everything else that might have the name Bitcoin, like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision. Those are all forks. They're phonies. Now, the next obvious question might be, why would somebody use Lightning over, say, the traditional Bitcoin network? Speed and it's cheap. Because those sats are already in those channels, that channel has been negotiated and it's finalized on-chain. Anything that goes through the channels happens immediately. And it's very cheap. Really kind of similar reasons why you might use Liquid. And you could see it as small transactions, day-to-day transactions.
They go over these different layers or these side chains. And then, you know, you're moving funds to buy a house, you know, or something big. You do that on-chain and you're happy to pay the on-chain fee for that. And this just gives people optionality. It makes things like boosting podcasts possible. So, you know, when you send in a boost, you don't really have to worry about the fees on the blockchain. You can just send that boost over Lightning and it's so ridiculously cheap. You don't even really think about the fact that there typically would be a transaction fee. Music.
I just wanted to make you aware of a DDoS vulnerability in Bitcoin Core 24.0.0 and older. Attackers could spam the nodes with low-difficulty headers and essentially use up the resources of your node and knock it offline. It's considered high severity because of how fairly straightforward it is to execute. And so if you're on version 24.0.0, you want to upgrade to at least 24.0.1, depending on when you're listening to this. Also, since I know Telegram is really popular with Bitcoiners, you probably are aware of this, but I have links in the show notes, details about policy changes for Telegram.
They are collecting more information and will make it available upon valid lawful request. They used to only make it available when it was a terrorism charge. But now if the authorities confirm you're a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate Telegram's terms of service, they will perform the legal analysis of the request and disclose your IP address, phone number and other relevant information to the authorities. So there has been an upgrade. I mean, an upgrade. So there has been a downgrade to their privacy policy there. And I would imagine criminal activities that violate Telegram's terms of service could be pretty broad, including financial activity, so Bitcoin stuff.
You know, you just want to be thoughtful about that. The show seems to have a monthly recommendation for Simplex, simplex.chat. And I just seem to have more and more opportunities to plug it, and they just keep getting better. I do recommend them. Simplex for private conversations, and they don't require a phone number, so it's great for with the family too and kids. They'd all have to have a phone number to have a group chat. Okay, I've got a final clip of the week. Let's round things out with a chewing out that Gary Gensler got this week.
U.S. Congressman Tom Emmer just grilled him over different crypto regulations. I don't know if it's fair, but it was brutal. The SEC broke the law. Your attorneys lied to the court and no one in your leadership here in D.C. Has been held accountable. That tracks. Seems like business as usual here in Washington. Switching gears very quickly, it's been recently reported that Vice President Harris has finally said she'd craft clear rules of the road for the digital asset space if she becomes president. Is this your approach too, sir? Or do you think she's rebuking you because she doesn't think you've done a good enough job establishing these clear rules over the last three years of her administration?
This is actually kind of a fascinating question because Gary Gensler very much seems to be going against what both presidential candidates have as part of their platform, which is at least some increased level of friendliness to digital assets or crypto or whatever, where Gensler has been going pretty hard against the crypto industry on a whole. I think that there's laws in place. If Congress wishes to change them, they'll change them. But we are enforcing the laws, and there are many people in this field that are not following the laws.
Reclaiming my time. Well, it's very interesting. See, Gary's position there is, look, the security laws are pretty clear. They've been on the books for a long time. I'm just following the securities law. That you view your performance that way because we have a litany of court cases, extraordinary confusion in the marketplace, and millions of Americans pining for clarity from you. You've abused the agency's enforcement tools, and you've even baited companies eager to comply with you, only to hit them with enforcement actions. You've retaliated against businesses and people who have come before this committee to talk about the next generation of American finance.
And perhaps somehow, worst of all, you've made up the term cryptoasset security. This term is nowhere to be found in statute. You made it up. You never provided any interpretive guidance on how crypto asset security might be defined within the walls of your SEC. The irony here, I think, is that Gary Gensler probably knows more about what makes something a security than this guy does. And Gary's right. I mean, go look at the Howey test and tell me that basically all of these projects, Ethereum, Cordana, Solana, all of the meme coins, they all seem to be, at least according to the Howey test, securities.
They're managed by a team. You expect that team to manage it in a way that will increase your return over time. Part of the reason you're probably buying into it is because, you know, you know, the Cordana Foundation has plans to make Cordana do X, Y, Z and have a stable coin and all these fancy features. So you're buying today, hoping there'll be a price increase tomorrow from the results of this team's actions. And there's there are CEOs and there are marketing people like seems like a lot of these are actually securities. And just because there's been a lot of lobbying money come in doesn't change the fundamental fact that these things, as the law stands today, are technically securities.
And I realize that we don't want to admit that anymore. All of a sudden it's changed since the ETFs. It's like all of a sudden anything could be an ETF. On how crypto asset security might be defined within the walls of your SEC. Yet you made the broad proclamation that you believe a majority of tokens are crypto asset securities. You did this and you would deliberately use this made up term as the basis for your entire enforcement crusade over the past three years, only for your lawyers to retract it in a footnote to a court just last week. Your inconsistencies on this issue, sir, have set this country back.
We could not have had a more historically destructive or lawless chairman of the SEC. And I yield back. Wow. I mean, that is a pretty, pretty major chewing out as far as Congress goes. That's about as hostile as it gets. And I don't know. I feel like Gary's kind of gotten a bad rap. He was pretty clear all along. Most of these things are securities, especially after Ethereum went to proof of stake. He's clear that they weren't so sure before that, but after proof of stake, he thought it was. He's pretty clear that he didn't think Bitcoin was a security, agreed it was a commodity.
He was one of the deciding votes in approving the Bitcoin ETF. I think he's had a pretty sober take and a pretty consistent take. They have had to weasel back from their language as of the last few weeks because both presidential candidates are campaigning towards trying to get crypto voters. So he's got to tone it down a little bit. But I think he's been right. And I mean, I don't necessarily like the guy. And the areas where I think he's been wrong is the shenanigans around not responding to people that were trying to get it right. You know, some of these projects do sound like they legitimately tried to approach the SEC, tried to get it right, Coinbase being the loudest, most vocal of that group.
And they were rebuked. They were turned away and then they were sued. They never had the chance to get in, quote unquote, compliance. Of course, the reality is the product is probably fundamentally security. So none of that really mattered. But their argument is that they tried and that Gary didn't actually speak to them, didn't actually work with them, didn't actually do all the things he said. When in every single hearing, he'd always say, my door is open. You know, come meet with us. He'd say that in every single hearing setting. But then he didn't actually ever follow through.
That I criticize him for. But I think he's been very sober in his analysis of what is a security and what is not in the crypto market. And, you know, he's also not said all of the other cryptos are securities. He said likely most of them. But there may be others that are not. But now that the money has changed and that both presidential candidates have changed their tune, I mean, Kamala is still kind of very tepidly endorsing it. She lumped it in with AI and just quote unquote digital assets. And she's really speaking about the industry and that she still said having guardrails and regulations. So it was a pretty tepid endorsement.
But technically, both presidential candidates seem to be pro Bitcoin and crypto on a technical level. And that just can't be good for Gary. So he's in a hard spot because the lands have shifted from underneath him. The Biden administration and Elizabeth Warren were all in an Operation Chokepoint 2.0. He was part of that spear. They were going hard. They were cracking heads. And then the land just shifted out from underneath them. And I think in part, it's because these ETFs came, the banks got serious about Bitcoin because they saw the direction monetary policy was going. They saw the debt.
They knew that debasement was inevitable. And they want to have these products with options and all of that in place so they can make money as the empire continues to debase its currency. And so the regime had to change its mind on its approach to Bitcoin and Gary is caught in the middle right there and now he has to go take his lickings from Tom Emmer and others there's other I'm sure you'll probably see other clips float around it was multiple hours and I managed to only capture a little bit before the show it was still going and they were still chewing them out when I sat down to record so should be interesting to see if any more clips surface, okay that's it for me I'm off to the woods links to what we talked about this week at thisweekinbitcoin.show.
Please do boost in, support the show, and let me know what you'd like to hear. Maybe share it with a friend. And I leave you with one of the value for value music verse champions. It's the Dorfels, and it's their new song, Disco Swag. Music. Show me what you got, Show me what you got, girl, Show me what you got, Show me what you got, girl. Music.
