9 Burst results for "Walter Bloomberg"
Simply Bitcoin
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"Yesterday I suspect this is what a big reason as to why we got this crazy news and then start putting the pieces together Right the week before what really started this run-up was the fake telegraph coin telegraph article of which they deleted So like clearly there's a lot of expectation on this on this BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF Like a lot of people are just waiting on the sidelines You Know either either they're trying to sell the news, right? They're trying to load up before the news or there's a lot of institutional interest that otherwise doesn't have access to Bitcoin is Waiting for for you know, this spot Bitcoin ETF now Not to you know burst anyone's bubble but Looks like and this is breaking news, by the way This broke 20 minutes before we went live according to about watcher guru BlackRock's I shares Bitcoin trust has been removed From the depository trust and clearing corporations website and it's not only Walt It's not only watcher guru that has reported this here is Walter Bloomberg great news aggregator account on Twitter and he says unconfirmed BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF remove From the DT CC website what is going on? I have no idea but this is absolute madness now This is the point that I wanted to get at This is the point that I emphasized yesterday on the swan spaces at this moment in time Michael sailors strategy without a shadow of a doubt has proved itself What public company will follow here's another watcher guru tweet? Michael sailors micro strategy Bitcoin investment is now at a seven hundred and forty five million dollar unrealized profit Remember all the people that were talking crap about Michael sailor. Remember all the people are saying this guy was insane. I remember him sitting front row at Pacific Bitcoin 2022 Big the price of Bitcoin at that time was sitting at 16 K and he was literally just sitting there Watching all the speakers talk and mind you at the time this this this gentleman this guy Chad sailor was down billions of dollars and he was just sitting there like cool like he knew what was up at this point It's no longer a theory. It's no longer him, you know talking talking the talk, you know Making all the arguments as to why Bitcoin is superior money while Bitcoin is is the asset to hold now The facts speak for this Speak for themselves. He's almost up a billion dollars in unrealized profit. Is he gonna sell of course not What is there to sell to right? He said this many times this leads me to my last Last bit. This is Hester Pierce Hester Pierce is Part of the she's a commissioner of the SEC She was confirmed by the US Senate on December 21st 2017 sworn in on January 11 2018 on August 6 2020 the Senate confirmed Pierce by voice vote for another five-year term expiring on June 5th, 2025 She was sworn in on August 17th 2020 Now what's interesting about Hester Pierce is that she went on squawk box yesterday and she had some comments, too She had some comments in regarding to what's going on Let's check it out where you think the state of some of these regulations around crypto really stand right now There's been so much speculation even in the past several weeks about where a Bitcoin ETF might land There was a moment as you I'm sure recall where a report came out erroneously Apparently that one would be approved That would be the BlackRock one but a view that given some of the things that have happened in court recently with the SEC losing That maybe the SEC is now more open to approving one of these types of funds is it Well, good morning Andrew and I can't I can't say whether or not the Commission is is ready to approve a Bitcoin exchange traded product I've been thinking we should approve one for the last five years So that the logic for why we haven't has always mystified me The court case obviously is is an important factor in the landscape But I can't guess as to my colleagues approach to this topic But the reason I ask is there's a a sort of speculative fever taking place throughout Wall Street and other parts of the crypto world That believe that given those court results or those losses if you will or specifically that one loss that it would change the Thinking of the other commissioners at the SEC you spend time with them you talk to them Do you see any shift in terms of that type of thinking just even generally speaking? I? Really can't speak to what we're gonna do on the Bitcoin exchange traded products I can say that generally the agency has not been very good when it comes to anything related to Bitcoin or other crypto assets and Look, I hope that every day every day I hope that they'll wake up and they'll think you know what we need to take a more productive approach that hasn't happened yet but I'm of course hoping that I will but So, I mean look you have an SEC commissioner saying that she's perplexed as to why this thing has not been approved yet if like At this point like, you know, I don't want to say it, but I'm gonna say it Anyways, like this is political like it's political. It's of course. It's political We know we know how the current administration feels about about Bitcoin We know how it feels we know, you know We were cut we've covered diligently all the moves made by the Biden administration To try to isolate the industry from the rest of the financial administration We know the environmental attacks. We know all the last article We read you from the New York Times literally said that a mining facility that was like miles away from like a Military base was a threat to America's nuclear arsenal. I feel like at this point They're just trying to throw things at the wall hoping something sticks Because yeah, like this is this is this is absolutely crazy But look the silver lining is again can't re-emphasize this enough Michael Saylor strategy has proved itself. It is undeniable He made the right move how many public companies are still sitting on? billions of dollars worth of cash that are literally melting like ice cubes and they're looking over and they're saying Holy cow, maybe this is a good idea. And I think that absolutely Terrifies governments, I think it puts the fear of God in them because once it's proven that not only Is Bitcoin superior money, but you can have a money that does not have inflation I think the cat is completely out of the bag and I just don't think that they'll be able to spin it You know in my in my opinion anyways, I want to get Clay's thoughts and then we'll move on to Opti well Obviously, I think everyone should just buy Bitcoin straight up if you're a family endowment or a corporation I can understand there's some logistics but for the Overwhelming majority of people who cares about ETFs. Just go get yourself some Bitcoin and put it in cold storage It's about it Beautiful beautiful short and sweet. Love it. All right Opti. What's your take on all this first curtain agree more with clay First inform us like fuck the ETF guys just buy Custody yeah, we'll take the pump we'll take the the rest of the world waking up to what we probably already know but That we just have to make sure that the message is I shares is for for somebody else not for us Not for the plebs. I would say it's even a trap I would say it's a trap like I I would say that it's more convenient for them to have all these people buy You know this Bitcoin that's gonna be centralized essentially. It's gonna be custody You don't know Caitlin long has been screaming from the rooftops and she tweeted she's like look guys like that you you guys are getting the upside of what a Spot Bitcoin ETF will be but we're not even talking about the rehypothecation. We're not even talking about the paper Bitcoin That's not something that's being discussed. That's not even something that's being talked about right? So I completely agree with you clay, right? You know not your keys not your Bitcoin If it's not in cold storage, you're you're trusting someone else's with with with your custody and that's definitely a bad thing Yeah, I saw a comment just run by about boomers can't self custody then help your parents Be 100% be the Uncle Jim for that older generation and and We'll never give I shares a chance to to rehypothecate That will hold the Bitcoin all of it will be in cold storage off exchanges out of the hands of those So-called institutions a hundred percent and I'm and I'm I'm looking at this breaking news So the DTCC website is down now So it looks like there's Matt there. I'm telling you there's some crazy stuff going on in the background Even even Opti's ex-girlfriend. She's liking the pump. She's liking the Bitcoin pump. Anyways, Opti, what's your take on all this? Yeah, just to kind of like double down on the boomer comment, you know Shouts out to the Bitcoin boomers out there that understand what they're holding But I wouldn't I wouldn't even say that they don't know how to self custody It's more that they don't want to they're just so familiar with the traditional financial world that it's just like, okay You know trust the experts trust the financial experts let them custody my coins let them custody my stocks and all that stuff They're just so used to it. So it is such a paradigm shift for a lot of people But anyways, as I was gonna say the the Hester Pierce video It really sounded like she wanted to say it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when and you know Everyone's been calling her what like the crypto grandma for like a long time because she's been super bullish on Bitcoin or rather crypto But we all know that they can't say Bitcoin specifically. They got to say crypto We saw that Larry Fink video last week saying that very same thing Anyways, I think what we see happened yesterday and what we've been saying for a while is that there is just so much capital that is sitting on the sidelines and Remember all these people for better or worse. They look at their peers and like oh man bitcoins so risky No one that I know is investing in Bitcoin and then once you get one official Authority saying like I want to get into Bitcoin the floodgates are opening up and we're seeing this happen whether this pump is because of investors sitting on the sideline wanting to get their capital in the Bitcoin because they see the ticker being released or It's because like I think I saw something that said BlackRock was acquiring coin ahead of their ETF approval I'd have to verify exactly that news story It seems like someone out there knows something that is about to happen and they are stacking Bitcoin Which is what we've been saying for a long time You know that the bear market has been pretty brutal in in most regards But it's been an opportunity for the average person to get a sizable chunk of Bitcoin And now it's not the time to take your foot off the gas I know most people like to only stack Bitcoin when they see the price going up, which is just human psychology It just it is what it is and Nika. You've you've constantly been touching on the idea of On an institutional level being proved right and that's awesome. Obviously love to see it Obviously, we've been covering it for a while. We did that show back. I don't know a couple months ago about like Apple holding what like Trillion dollar and they have billions of dollars in Fiat just sitting there literally melting ice cube so there is a lot of corporations out there that are starting to see the writing on the wall, but the most important part for me Since I'm just an average guy I'm not a part of a corporation is the fact that we saw that after yesterday's pump all the DCA is out there every one Of you guys that are part of the DCA army are all finally in the green so if you've been following the strategy of just constantly buying Bitcoin every single week or Every single day every single hour, whatever you set up your DCA program your dollar cost averaging Set up you are finally in the green So welcome to a Bitcoin bull run welcome to a Bitcoin pump and it just goes to show that The process works, you know, the blueprint works if you are buying Bitcoin constantly It is the safest the most riskless way to get exposure to Bitcoin But if you're like me and you have a very, you know high risk tolerance, I capitulate my fiat instantly whenever I get it I just go all-in on Bitcoin, but not everyone's like me But to your point of sailor not being worried at 2022 Conference if you know why you hodl then you're not really concerned about this. Yes. We're seeing a lot of FUD come out Yes, we're seeing a lot of hate in regards to Bitcoin. You know, it's gonna be rolled out even more We're seeing politicians and bankers all trying to roll out their own CBDC system They're all doing their best to gaslight the individual out there But if you know why you are hodling Bitcoin then none of this concerns you because you understand that the Bitcoin network works at honey badger doesn't care tick-tock next block and You are just playing a game of accumulation. So Shouts out to every single one of you guys that's been along the journey with us this last year or two and is constantly stacking and shouts out to the new people that are starting to wake up because The game happens every single time if this is your first cycle It's always the same cycle guys as the price starts pumping more and more people start to catch that FOMO bug and they start to learn about Bitcoin and here we are We're at the very beginning of it and we can see from our numbers just on YouTube that once the price starts pumping more people join the show and so it's just gonna this is just going to be a Positive feedback loop as the price goes up more people are gonna wake up to oh wait You know, I would like some money too You know, everyone likes money and price go up whether you agree or not number go up is very important guys so, of course we constantly double down on the fundamentals of Bitcoin 21 million hard cap trends the ship resistant money a Digital money for a digital world something that stores your value through time and space Literally being able to send money across the globe instantly Basically or rather 10-minute settlement if you're if you're not using lightning and so these are the fundamental Catalysts to why Bitcoin is going to continue to dominate But of course I say it all the time The Bitcoin price is a real-time metric of people's understanding of Bitcoin first It happens with the FOMO bug and then once you get into Bitcoin you start to understand why you're holding Questions you start asking questions about what and it's a positive feedback loop So here we are guys this I've been saying it for a while and I know it's early and I've already warned you guys I'm gonna start getting stupidly bullish more and more bullish every single day But it does seem like this bull run is going to be set up to be a very Magnificent bull run and I know we're trying to be conservative We really do our best to avoid speculating on the price, but I'm really convinced that all of us Bitcoin is you know We're trying to be conservative We have PTSD from the last bull run But I really do think it's it's going it's gonna blow people's mind because we have never seen The amount of capital on the sidelines that's going to get unloaded into Bitcoin and with that's gonna come even more people And more attention and that is the feedback loop more capital goes into Bitcoin price goes up more attention and more users adopt Bitcoin And then we get more merchants adopting Bitcoin and it's like I don't want to say super cycle But hey, let's get stupidly bullish I think it's gonna be a great great bull run and and we're gonna we're gonna be seeing for the next year It's gonna be that that slow grind up, you know, it's gonna do the grind wait this way at the grind up It's gonna come back, you know, and we're just gonna start to consolidate. It's just gonna be a grind guys. Yeah, it's gonna be Yeah, wait, wait, wait, no Like a heart can't do it like a heartbeat like a heartbeat. Oh, yeah, it's gonna be a good one You're enjoying the show Make sure to smash that like button we appreciate you all watching us from Twitter and rumble if you guys don't find us on YouTube for whatever reason check us find us on alternative video platforms like x.com Like rumble we appreciate all our rumble viewers. We got 57 of you watching over on rumble Of course, we appreciate YouTube viewers as well If you guys are enjoying the show make sure to smash that like button really helps with the algos But before we get on to the news, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor Bitcoin 2024 it's gonna be the largest Bitcoin conference on the face of the earth. It's gonna be in Nashville, Tennessee this year It's not gonna be in Miami the year of the halving July 25th through the 27th 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, you want to get your tickets quickly before the prices go up for a GA ticket You can get it for only 349 or 1.3 million sats for an industry pass that gives you access to three days of the conference including industry day You can get it for 3.1 million sats or eight hundred and forty nine dollars and you can get yourself a whale pass for 4,749 or 17.6 million sats that gives you access the deep Backstage VIP lounge. So anyways, get your tickets to Bitcoin 2024 It's gonna be the biggest Bitcoin celebration of the year And by the way, you can use the promo code simply to get a discount on the already discounted tickets All right, everybody. Let's get to the news. We got a lot to talk about today. Let's check it out I Want to give a shout out to our sponsor foundation devices, it's self-custody done, right? They built a premium grade hardware wallet called passport right here in the US. It's fully open source and verifiable It's the most intuitive Bitcoin wallet designed with the UX reminiscent of a simple feature phone So you will know how to navigate it and use it the moment you pick it up Get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your into your own hands in just a few minutes Experience a peace of mind that comes with taking ownership of your own keys after a massive sellout during Bitcoin, Miami 2023 the passport is back in stock at foundation devices comm Bitcoin only open source verifiable completely air gap security model gorgeous design craft Premium grade materials if you're thinking about getting your Bitcoin off exchanges This is the one for you check out the passport link in the show notes below to learn more So a lot of people asking it in the comments guys literally get yourself a passport hardware wallet Not your keys not your Bitcoin. I highly recommend it. It's completely open source beautiful design Attention to detail it's super super easy to use they have an onboarding service if you've never taken self-custody before Definitely recommend the passport by foundation Remember guys not your keys not your Bitcoin get yourself a Bitcoin hard way Niko before before you go on to the news guys right now is a time to secure your cold storage I get the price is running. You're probably feeling you're like, oh man is my cold storage secured If you don't have a hardware wallet, maybe your coins are on a mobile wallet Maybe they're still on an exchange Do that process now because you do not want to be sitting here when Bitcoin hits like a hundred K and not knowing how To access your Bitcoin right now is the time to make sure everything is backed up It is still kind of calm before the craziness now is the time so, you know be prepared guys 100% and you can check the link down in the video description or the podcast description and you'll see a link to The foundation devices website where you can get yourself a passport Bitcoin only hardware wallet. Alright everybody So let's talk about what happened yesterday is a follow-up. This was such a huge story That this is a follow-up to yesterday, right? So yesterday we covered the fact that the Wall Street Journal released an article based on false data That led to Elizabeth Warren and a lot of other politicians writing a letter to the White House, which led FinCEN which is part of the US Treasury to propose crazy insane special measures on False and the thing that they accused Bitcoin of doing which was sending money to Hamas and sending money to other terrorist organizations. It looks like I'm not even gonna get down that route, but let's just say let's I'm just gonna bring it up projection projection projection Anyways guys, so let's talk about the FinCEN and what they're proposing So shout out to Bitcoin magazine for summary and summarizing it And this article is written by Hardcore Bitcoiner shinobi. So anyways, yesterday's FinCEN rule proposal is incredibly overbroad comprehensive and perfectly designed to allow arbitrary information collection at any scope They choose to enforce it truly is a mind-blowing large grab a large grab attempt at private information of Anyone they can get their hands on they want all regulated entities VASPs banks financial institutions or Entities like casinos etc to by default submit reports of any transactions interacts it Interacting with mixing within 30 days of noticing the relevant transaction and its association to mixing activity Currently most exchanges and businesses keep these records anyway But they do not by default send copies of them to regulators unless Deeper inspection actually merits a reason to do so FinCEN wants to chain wants that to change to really get a sense for the scope of things The first thing to look at is the definitions of mixing provided in the proposal obviously the act of mixing is obscuring the source of funds But the specific technical definitions they give for what falls under the definition of mixing are Incredibly broad one looked at together. Let's go through them and before we get to that remember everyone Okay, where you have to remember? What led to FinCEN? Introducing these insane proposals it was a fake article By the Wall Street Journal and a lot of I know a lot of people were saying they just got it wrong They're gonna offer a correction the damage is done Right back in the 2000s when the when the New York Times released that weapons that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that was a huge Motivation to invade Iraq because they supposedly had weapons of mass destruction There were no weapons of mass destruction. The damage was already done now was released after the fact that it was actually intelligence agencies that were Feeding this information to the New York Times reporter that at the time got a Pulitzer Prize But again The damage was already done, right? So forgive me if I Don't believe that the Wall Street Journal conveniently Got it wrong instead of the 80 million dollars that they said was supposedly, you know funded funded terrorism through Through Crip quote-unquote crypto. The real number was around 450,000 and if you compare and contrast that with US dollars, right, which is the currency of choice It's a tiny tiny tiny little sliver. So why is it that they're so hell-bent on Bitcoin well, obviously It's because it's out of their control Obviously, it's a threat to their ability to create money for free that everyone else has to work for Anyways goes on to say so These are a couple of the reasons pooling or aggregating funds for multiple persons wallets addresses or accounts So that isn't necessarily mixing if you have a collaborative custody wallet Right. Let's say you're running a company right and that company is two of three Yeah, you're on a two of three multi-sig wallet, right? Guess what all of a sudden you have to report on that wallet That's that's pooling or aggregating for multiple persons Right, you can see how broad this is shinobi hit the nail on the head. This is completely broad This is nothing to do with mixing Right. They always need a straw man. They always need a justification but pay attention to the words they're using Anyways, this encompasses so many different activities other than a traditional custodial mixing service lightning channels That is that is multiple persons pooling and aggregating funds together Multi-sig wallets held by multiple people in general are doing the same thing Just combining a recent a recent withdraw from coinbase with coins You had from kraken from the point of view of both exchanges is pooling funds from multiple addresses According to the language of this proposal Something that just happened on a regular basis in the normal course of using Bitcoin with no attempt whatsoever to a to obscure or render Private anything about the activity fits into the definition of mixing What is the fourth amendment? No unreasonable search and seizure like this is so insane But of course this is this is what this is the separation of money in state you would expect this You would expect to do this you would expect them to find every justification Possible in order to stop the adoption of Bitcoin goes on to say quote using a Programmatic or algorithmic code to coordinate manage or manipulate the structure of a transaction again that completely covers the lightning network Coin join falls into the definition. In fact, you know what this is so ridiculously and absurdly abroad Broad it doesn't even specify Manipulating the structure of a transaction to obtain obfuscation of the source of funds that this literally encompasses any piece of Bitcoin software that handles making and signing transactions a 100% of the transaction activity on the Bitcoin blockchain out of sheer logical necessity Fits this definition of mixing is that by accident look at the series of events, okay Wall Street Journal article that turned out to be hope to a hoax Politicians including Elizabeth Warren that we know that she's hell-bent on destroying Bitcoin Use that article as a reference to send a letter to the White House We know how the White House feels about Bitcoin and then the White House tapped on FinCEN, which is part of the US Treasury to propose this At what point do you say this is not excuse my language fucking political. This is 100% political they know exactly what they're doing Anyways goes on to say quote splitting funds for transmittal and transmitting the funds through a series of independent Transactions. This is also incredibly broad How are legitimate independent transactions between the same parties to be distinguished from a single transaction split into many Obfuscation purposes. What about situations where that is a perfectly legitimate thing for no reason other than your personal privacy What if I only have three different UTXOs that three separate people know about and I don't want to reveal to all three of them My payment history with the other two in order to make a payment requiring all three UTXOs There's opening multiple independent lighting and lightning channels with the same node constitute this creating and using single-use wallets Addresses or accounts and sending through such wallets addresses or accounts through a series of independent transactions So default behavior of the supermajority of Bitcoin wallets not reusing addresses Constitutes mixing you see what they're doing Creating that's your Bitcoin wallet does that by default you see what they're doing They used a tragedy that was happening in the Middle East To release a fake news article using legacy media Which led to Elizabeth Warren writing a letter? Which led to the White House to? Conveniently tap on the US Treasury even though we know how they feel about Bitcoin based on all the writing that was released in the past year which inevitably led To this proposal Like This is insanity. This has nothing to do with mixing creating and using single-use wallets addresses or accounts Bitcoin does that by default? Every time you use an address your Bitcoin wallet will give you a new address So is that considered a single-use wallet? I'm not even gonna go through the rest of it because I'm sure you guys have gotten the point by now This is insane You have the chance by the way to comment on these proposed regulations, by the way And I and I definitely think you should you should make color within the lines But make your thoughts known This is insane. This is absolutely insane. This ladies and gentlemen is an attack on Bitcoin that's what it is They hate this thing. They want it to go away a Bitcoin and a central bank digital currency are not compatible They will not get along very well people will always flock To Bitcoin if they have a choice between something that is censored controlled has inflation built in if you were to believe that other guy Expiration dates and something that you can completely control you take self-custody of you have said it's censorship resistant It's deflationary meaning it's purchasing power increases over time What do you think people are going to choose? I? Don't know I'll let you guys be the judge. It's incredibly obvious though. Like this is this is insane to me And again, like I know I quote this book so much but again they hit the nail on the head The one of the passages from the book to sovereign individual businesses that offer services that facilitate the realization of autonomy by individuals Will be subject to infiltration sabotage and disruption Governments will violate human rights censor the free flow of information sabotage useful technologies and worse Why because they're they're losing their monopoly on the control of money and they hate that that's how they pay for themselves That's how they pay for the deficit spending. That's how they pay for the money that they can't afford to be spending That's how they do it and what Bitcoin is It's a clear and present danger to that and it and it terrifies them it Absolutely terrifies them. So these types of responses They just keep upping the bar and they're they're trying to see what they can get away with what they can normalize What is okay? Remember when the Bank Secrecy Act was passed back in the 1970s had that $10,000 limit if you adjust for inflation That is actually seventy to eighty thousand dollars today But when they passed that law people are like, oh, it's seventy eighty grand that that makes sense. The numbers stayed the same Remember in one of the bills that the Biden administration Tried to pass when they had control of the house It included basically reporting $600 transactions every $600 transaction was to be reported so it started off with 70 grand if you were just for inflation versus purchasing power and Fast-forward, it's down to 600 and fast-forward. Look at the type of language that they're trying to Introduce under the false guys that they this is needed to be introduced and needed to be passed or Terrorism, even though the original article turned out to be fake. I don't think it was fake. I think they did it on purpose anyways Opti what's your take on this and we'll move on to clay Yeah, so first and foremost privacy is not a crime and I find it very ironic that the FinCEN which is What's what's it stand for again financial crimes enforcement network? It's trying to paint us all as criminals We've been saying this for a while They'll use that low-hanging fruit for as long as it still has some weight to it And of course we know we've done the research. We brought the receipts Most crimes are done with dollars and that's a totally different combo and we've also brought up the The results or the receipts on just how little quote-unquote crimes are being used with bitcoin I believe if I remember it was like point zero two percent of all of the transaction, which is obviously negligible and it really just reminds me of uh the constant fud we get around bitcoin about They're gaslighting people that don't understand what's going on in the network and it's just such an alien technology It's such a new thing That of course the bureaucrats and the politicians and the bankers are going to be absolutely terrified of change especially when we know as bitcoiners that this is the separation of money and state and We are taking away the power of the money printer. We all know that it all boils down to the money And of course if they feel threatened They're going to use whatever power whatever tool they can to try to stop bitcoin but of course honey badger doesn't care tick tock next block all that good stuff, but my point and i've been saying this for a minute is Just how computer illiterate these people are like they don't even understand what they're trying to regulate and yet They're trying to pass more laws Like that is the the first red flag going on and shout out to shinobi for for breaking it down so much like They literally don't know how this works and yet they're trying to pass new laws to protect the citizens out there It's like what what's the saying like, you know, like shoot yourself in the foot to like help help like protect yourself It's just like okay. It really just blows my mind that these geriatric class Is trying to stop technology when they don't even understand what the technology does It's just a knee-jerk reaction because it is scary. Like it is a new thing It's going to change things and they always roll this out. It's like oh we're here to protect you, you know We don't want to change like just just be okay with the with the world we've created for you. It's so good And it's like look bitcoin Is going to fundamentally change everything about not only the laws but the world and you can see in their very writing that they don't Understand how this technology works You can't put this square peg into the round hole that is traditional laws and rules And we always say, you know bitcoin changes you you don't change bitcoin And so they're going to do whatever they can to hamper bitcoin adoption They're going to try to figure out how to morph the old laws to fix and fit onto bitcoin But it's just not going to work like things are going to fundamentally change because bitcoin is just that different in a good way And it's just it really it's kind of hilarious. Just seeing them They don't understand how computers work let alone how bitcoin works and yet they're trying to pass laws to protect citizens It's like first and foremost understand what the hell you're talking about And then maybe even try to pass something and and obviously as a bitcoiner I would be like look It's not going to work but like hey You can try I you know It wouldn't hurt for you to try it actually would make bitcoin better bitcoin is anti-fragile and you know as much as we want to Have a mellow transition as a bitcoiner I think these attacks are good for bitcoin because it just proves how strong bitcoin is It just proves how decentralized bitcoin is It just proves how unstoppable bitcoin is and it just proves that everything will fundamentally have to change because bitcoin is here And it's not going to be stopped like no amount of boomers writing things on paper is going to stop bitcoin adoption And especially bitcoin is a global thing Like you know the us can try to do whatever they can to stop bitcoin entrepreneurs to stop people saving in bitcoin But hey, there's countries in the world that bitcoin is already legal tender like the cat is out of the bag There's no amount of paperwork that is going to stop bitcoin and first and foremost or lastly my last point Bitcoin is just code Like this is a freedom of speech Uh, you know problem here or or uh, i'm blanking on what the right word is But like this is a freedom of speech issue guys bitcoin is simply code. It is letters and numbers It is software. We've seen in the past in the cypherpunk wars of the 90s that they cannot stop you from using software It is just software guys. Like all this stuff is irrelevant because it is words. It is code. They can't stop bitcoin They're going to figure out whatever way they can to try to stop the adoption of bitcoin but bitcoin is so alien to tradfi and and traditional rules that They just don't know how to contain it. They don't know what to do here They're panicking and it just shows that they have lost control in there and they're trying to figure out ways to claw it back But hey, you know tick tock next block honey badger don't care bitcoin adoption is happening in real time. It's a global phenomenon Can't ban bitcoin. You can only ban ban yourself from bitcoin like you can't stop this train from happening So it's either adopt to the new technology Or get left behind and it seems like a lot of the boomers in power are going to get left behind And I would say this is a feature not a bug Anyways, clay, what's your thoughts? Well, I to the coordinated nature of it the way the the news article and then all of a sudden we've got finsen legislation ready to go these guys That strikes me as just an absolute Tell that they were just looking for a way To dot dot dot put this stuff out there and Frustrating while that's the political realm. I tend to not Spend too much time there But the other idea of the ten thousand dollars or the six hundred dollars and those number those numbers never changing With inflationary currency. I mean your grocery bill is going to be six hundred dollars before long now You have to report that to somebody we we have They are desperate. I feel like they're even desperate now trying to keep this ticker Symbol from whatever website that was that they are fumbling the ball And bitcoiners, you know, we hodl and we hodl strong 100 Bitcoiners we hodl and we hodl strong. I think I think that was I think I think that was the cherry on top Anyways, everybody, uh before we move on to the culture. I want to give a very special shout out to our sponsor Kaboom racks they are the best place that's what you're gonna find The best place the most trusted place to buy sell and host mining equipment. You have to check out their racks Check out their inventory on telegram You can do that by scanning the qr code on your screen and connect with a member of their sales team They make purchasing easy and transparent. You could also sell mining equipment with them They have a vast network of domestic and international customers when you sell mining equipment with them So if you're trying to get into the bitcoin mining realm, I I suggest dipping your toes in it It's absolutely awesome. The best place the most trusted place is kaboom racks So scan the qr code on your screen right now, and it will take you to the kaboom racks marketplace All right, everybody no more delay. Let's hit the culture The daily culture Brought to you by swan bitcoin.com Swan is the best way to build your bitcoin stack with automated bitcoin savings plans and instant purchases Serving clients of any size from ten dollars to ten million dollars We love swan because they incentivize self-custody and dollar cost averaging. What are you waiting for? Visit swan? bitcoin.com today All right, clay. Well the audience out there really enjoys the rabbit hole stories of how you became a bitcoiner But let's pivot that into you becoming a bitcoin content creator as well Well, yeah, I guess I I had learned about bitcoin far enough back where there was a website called btc hyphen e and and I just put a little bit of money in maybe as a As a new asset class a genuine curiosity and kind of forgot about it and then when I remembered I went back and and had seen that the money had 10x'd not enough not enough to make any real difference But I withdrew it and not a week later That website was raided by the feds. It was run out of bulgaria And needless to say that was a wake-up call with what in the world am I participating in? And it was also now that's now 2017 And the block size wars and and trying to find the signal in the noise Was was hard. Well, there weren't as many quality resources like there are today and I guess I just dove in and and we survived the block size wars tried to get my head around all the things that are bitcoin and then I guess I had the confidence at that point to continue Uh dollar cost averaging shout out to all those dcas and Now flash forward to maybe earlier this year late last year When I think I was sufficiently Capable to explore or to understand bitcoin to explain bitcoin. I I was trying to orange pill people and I felt like There was a kind of constant echo among all the podcasts. I was listening to to To do something that we all can do something The orange building is terrific at a dinner table if you want to be that guy But I wanted to make something a little more concrete and because my background is as a photographer I thought Why don't I explore the world of bitcoin art and artists who are inspired by bitcoin and their particular voices? I think are super important because I think art is how the culture is propelled forward If you just look out at the world there's kind of two basic museums the natural history museum with the Art museums and I feel like we if this is the beginning of a renaissance 2.0 I wanted to start to bring together and hear the voices Of the artists who are going to take us there and and you said something you kind of buried the lead there For a little bit and I and I really want to want to double down on that you mentioned the importance of culture And this is something that we brought up on yesterday's show uh Politics is Downstream from culture if you win the culture you win you win by default, right? So culture in itself is extremely important important, right? It's one of the one of the most effective ways of orange pilling people in my experience is not necessarily approaching them head on right Is there a piece of art that they like is there a piece of music that they like? Is there something that resonates with them? That isn't like a direct like let me take an orange pill and metaphorically shove it down your throat type of thing it's something like Oh, wow, you know this beautiful piece of art or this beautiful piece of music or you know This thing led me to discovering the orange pill and me taking it by myself right, so I agree 100 Culture is extremely extremely important Hopefully one day You know when everything is said and done Of course, we do this legally, you know, we do this the right way, but hopefully the federal reserve Will become a museum, you know So hopefully we get there one day we end the fed um and uh, yeah, but anyways I just wanted to kind of hijack the conversation because that thing that you said about culture is just so so important Well, maybe we maybe we swap uh, simply bitcoin's lineup and we start with culture put it first nico what's happening here We do we do it. Sometimes we do it sometimes all the time We we're we we we don't mind switching things around On the fly. So, uh, so anyways opti Yeah, yeah, so, uh clay before I get into your project though. Um I think it's very important and they're touching on a bunch of different themes that we always talk about is You know, we always say that there's not enough bitcoin only content and I remember getting into bitcoin in 2017 as well And the amount of shitcoin content that I had to go through to figure out the real signal it You know, I would have more bitcoin now if I didn't have to go through that and that's just like a testament to everyone Out there that is making the bitcoin content and doubling down on it and I think the other thing that I want to kind of touch on and i'd like to just have you add on this Is the idea that you don't have to be like a developer you don't have to be a bitcoin miner You know, you you don't necessarily even have to do a podcast It's just like do what you're good at do what you're interested in And then connect that with bitcoin and share that with the world and I think you're a perfect example of that Yeah now as a photographer my particular art hasn't matured into the place of making bitcoin photography And knowing that I realized that let me give voice to the artists who are making bitcoin art And i'm not talking about nfts i'm talking about art that is deeply inspired by their understanding of bitcoin. That is maybe propaganda Deeply aesthetic low time preference in the terms of say brekkie making marble sculptures That to me was my wheelhouse to have conversations and to bring those voices forward talking to another artist and I think that's That's a place that's that felt right for me The pic, uh, sorry the podcast is called the bitcoin muse so people can go out there and listen to it. We've got 22 episodes uh in the In the can so to speak it's audio only so you can go off and be painting your paintings or making your sculptures while listening And it's a whole gamut from marcus connor. I feel like we've seen a lot of Uh his gift the roller coaster guy. He's great. He's amazing Yeah, and that's not one of rusty I have I have his lego is uh the bitcoin roller coaster lego There you go And it it's it really is it's an international crowd. There's well-known artists. There's more obscure artists But I think collectively you get a sense that more artists are kind of emerging quicker than I can make podcasts and I hope that this Understand and once you see bitcoin, you don't unsee it. I think musicians Painters filmmakers are all going to start coming on board. I I can't wait for a filmmaker to have uh, For there to be a bitcoin you've got mail moment Whereas somebody somebody nails a script where bitcoin is demystified And made made approachable by by any number of a-lister actors That that would be I think a seminal moment in the culture And and then there would be you know a thousand more artists emerging I think musicians given that the tools for creating beautiful artwork and this includes ai are in our hands I can't wait for for the muses to start speaking through all of those people who Maybe we're looking for a raison d'etre To to do something what would define that please a reason for being right there you say that again in french A raison d'etre No, no, no, it's like a weird raisin. No, no, no, i'm not like i'm not i'm not like making fun of it at all Whatsoever so romance languages right, you know opti and I were spanish. I speak spanish They convey emotion a lot more than uh, anglo-saxon languages, right? So that's why I asked you to say it again, right? Right. It's not just like Imagine saying the equivalent of that in english. It wouldn't have as much oomph as it as it as it has in french So that's why I asked you to repeat it. There you go. It's like hors d'oeuvre Exactly exactly. Um, it just it just has that like that oomph, you know, yeah Yeah, plus if you have the bitcoin art podcast you have to you have to lean into some pretentiousness, right? Yeah I mean, I wouldn't even say it's pretentious man. I just think that you're passionate about what you do and and you know Speaking from optis optis and I perspective we're just talking heads and you know We try to inject as much of how we feel and passion into you know the stuff that we're covering the topics that we're covering because it it resonates with us and I think authenticity Is a superpower on the internet and I think people really really Uh connect with that so this is amazing. Uh, also shout out to brekkie. I was really lucky to Be fortunate enough to go over brekkie's house And he showed me how to sculpt so like I I did my first bitcoin b on a marble It was an absolute fucking disaster Uh, but I still did it. Um, so this is incredible So if you're a bitcoin artist, I think this is the podcast for you Um, and it seems like you're it's i'm noticing a pattern here clay It seems like you're highlighting bitcoin artists on this podcast. I'm just i'm assuming that's on purpose well, yeah, I mean they are my guests for the most part i'm I think That the tip of the spear for cultural change is in the arts. That's my thesis Anyway, and I know that the macro economists might get the audiences because we're all sort of tied to this number go up But with us if you slow down and you look at the history of art much of it was was done and Forgotten but you it re-emerges later to define the period and I think that we're doing that now and so Sure, it can be frustrating that the scarce city auction didn't go off quite as well. But but Settle down. It's it's a slow thing In 20 25 years, I think everything accelerates We will celebrate these folks as pioneers as who who took us from This strange middle, you know dark ages into the renaissance I mean, I I can wait wait, can we go in there? Because clay you just said it and I agree with this statement as well Do you believe that bitcoin will usher in the second renaissance? Yeah, I think we don't for sure I think it's even weirder to think that this is the dark ages that we that we're poisoning our bodies with all kinds of chemicals that we're Right that we just sit in in front of our computer screens. There's there's a million ways to to Present modernity for all of its pleasures and and conveniences as not being Optimized for what we're capable of and I think bitcoin we artists who latch on to bitcoin will help us see that That renaissance 2.0. You don't get to name your art Uh period but renaissance 2.0 is a sufficient operating moniker that we could go with it and I you know, stacy herbert has is I think is who I would credit with coining that This is first of all, this is a fascinating conversation and it really kind of opened my mind To uh, really the importance of art because I completely agree a macro podcast or you know a Entertainment geopolitical podcast, right? Um Yeah, we're what we're really doing is we're observing and we're commenting On what's happening around us, right? but the Whether it's music right what we tip nz had this live performance At um pacific bitcoin 2023 And people were just like this is amazing people. There's something about music. There's something about art That taps into the human soul that nothing else can like I tweeted this out on on sunday because I I started going down like a edm 2010 Like, uh, you know rabbit hole because I grew up on miami beach Uh from it's like the two from 2008 to 2012 and that was the golden era Of electronic music and I happened to be in miami beach when that was doing when that was happening It was like you never forget those memories and I was listening to a playlist And it was bringing back the feelings of how I felt in that exact moment in that moment of my life No video No picture Can bring back those feelings it was music itself, right? So art art, right? I I completely agree art is the culture art really really does move people Uh the way that language cannot there's something that art does it conveys a message that Just just talk is I don't want to say talk is cheap but like talking can't do that. It just can't convey That emotion the way that art does yeah because the artist themselves has to synthesize those ideas and then Contextualize it into an object of some sort something for us to then for us to experience And that gift the gift of the artist is what What we're gravitating towards, you know that if you could read the lyrics to a song But it's super different when tip and z is up there Given it and I think that and then in that case performance Something is transformative in the experience and how it reaches an audience and I'm given now that there's tools like um mid journey You don't even need to be necessarily an accomplished painter to bring your vision Forward I talked to the guy named hacks zero and he observed that people with disabilities can now express themselves visually Had they not been you know before depending on their disability, of course, but This is how a renaissance emerges and it's not just a single Michelangelo or a single da vinci whose gifts are off the charts It's all of us now have the ability to contribute and so it's this well while there may be more chaff there's going to be more signal too and uh Since bitcoiners are pretty good at finding signal and noise. I suspect we'll be equally good at finding that art that resonates and is Succinct and you know, it reaches all those ephemeral things that make art special A hundred percent opti. What's your take on all this bro? I know that you're a music lover yourself I know that you're an art lover yourself. Well, you might Like propaganda you had a music background my friend. Yeah, I mean before before doing bitcoin podcasts I I was dabbling in making music and and literally that's where I got the name optimus fields I I was working on a project and I created that moniker optimus fields and then I kind of went down the bitcoin rabbit hole And I realized wait this optimus fields moniker is actually better for this bitcoin thing that we're doing And yeah, I never finished the project that I wanted to make but it was literally before I found bitcoin It was talking about all this stuff and this is where I also understand the power of music You know people are saying this is an art that's not art But I really understand and this is before even nico gave me that You know the meme of like culture. What do you say culture is downstream from politics or wait politics is downstream from culture um I I just understood the power of music and for better or worse and i'm kind of going to do a hat tip to safety and almost about how like Fian art is so trash and that's by design because we live in such a superficial world. I I really wanted to do My part in in adding to The art and the culture and build something that I loved and that would also have a message and while you were talking I was kind of reminded of of uh, you know, like the art movement of the 60s and 70s and how that formed culture and I really do think that There should be more bitcoin artists out there or as I like to say jokingly but kind of seriously bitcoin propagandists Because it's all propaganda, you know It's memes all the way down And it's about spreading the message in ways that more and more people understand what's going on here And the medium is the message and so look We know there's a lot of bitcoin podcasts. We know there's a lot of bitcoin writers and and um, you know people adding to the memes but I would really love to see more and more Bitcoin artists out there that are very popular and and maybe doing it in a way where we don't necessarily say the b-word so much because we know that that instantly turns people off but just being a bitcoiner and creating good art and and accepting bitcoin for your your contributions I think that would be a way to subtly add to the culture and and just keep spreading and propagating and creating art that does have a solid message in there that spreads goodwill and that You know makes the world a better place a more beautiful place again hat tip to safety and amos about like It's no coincidence that fiat art is so ugly like we're living in an ugly world We need more beauty in the world and I think bitcoin artists can do that Yeah, I think that that's that's what this podcast is a lot of what you've been talking about the propaganda aspects We get into those conversations. We get into safe adin's Chapter and I and I talked with jimmy song About his he's got a chapter in his new book fiat ruins everything about modern art in particular I think that's where our conversations are focused and I think it's a nice compliment and it's one that You know would come up periodically here and there in various podcasts I would listen to and I said that's what i'm going to zero in on because that's As i've as i've already said is how we move culture you do it with subtlety you do it with beauty The persuasiveness sits quietly for a long time like a song That lingers in your mind with a memory in it But if a little hook of lyrics can sit there and give you strength and power to face some fiat nightmare Then we win and we will Amen to that. Amen to that beautiful, you know art throughout history has played different roles and even the bitcoin b on On an art it was um, chris from scare city pointed out that it's a little like a the crucifix that dominated christian art for so long and still might that this We're going to mature and figure out our artistic voices in we're gonna we're going to I don't know ideally we're going to Just let this art mature and that generally happens With time we just have to be patient and and again bitcoiners We're the mantra of low time preference is is in our heads But I think it's even more so with art let this stuff sit and resonate let the artists Develop their their processes, you know that you don't look at a single work of art from an artist You look at a body of work and most of the folks i've been talking to are just getting going bitcoins is a teenager So i'm excited for what comes of these folks a hundred percent a hundred percent I I agree. Oh, I was gonna say nika speaking of art. I think it's time for some uh, some low-tier bitcoin art aka memes Well this week's episode is world of rusty the meme artist and part of the non-existent meme factory tm Yeah, shouts out to world of rusty All right, nigga jump in. All right. No, this is first of all clay I'm, so happy you came on you you you you connected so many dots for me in terms because we brought this up yesterday I was so disappointed with javier malie Uh, I know everyone's like no he didn't lose after runoff. Okay guys, if you look at the data There's there's a small chance. He wins that runoff, right? So I was disappointed I was like this sucks and then It really came to me like bitcoin twitter is not reality If we don't win the culture war right if we don't win the culture we have no chance right so Everything counts right whether that's you know physical art Whether that and I and I by the way, I love physical art. I had I need to yeah I can't confirm nico has a big art collection I get the number sevens of like every single bitcoin artist I get their pieces. I I i'm a big fan of bitcoin art Um, so yeah, but you connected the dots the way that you described it you yourself being an artist So yeah, wow, man, uh, i'm super super grateful you came on to on today's show You really opened my eyes to a lot and that people are in the comments is a powerful live stream completely agree By the way, guys, if you're enjoying the show, make sure to smash that like button helps us Tell us the youtube algorithms to push the content even harder. All right, everybody. Let's get to the meme review The daily meme review Well guys this is the meme review Where you guys send us memes on twitter at simply bitcoin tv or drop them in our telegram group t.me simply bitcoin tv best to drop them in our telegram group Our notifications on our twitter is starting to blow up so I might not get them all Anyways tweet to the bullets memes of the artillery we are frontline soldiers in this information war So continue to get the calls of actions out there continue to ridicule the corporate press continue to make the funnies To keep your friends heads in the game And as clay is saying continue to make the art out there Yeah, you know maybe memes are part of the fiat culture and it's low tier art, but it's still art nonetheless guys. Oh So it's I I think memes are a new form of art and let's go if you listen to this week's episode with world of rusty We we get into it. I think you'll look at them anew Okay. Well i'm a big meme, uh advocate. I think memes are powerful considering That we saw what was it last week the central bankers and all them are putting their hat in the ring and creating memes themselves So we are living in the digital world and for better or worse memes are the battleground guys So continue to make the memes continue to make the art continue to make the content because the world still does not know Why they need to hold some bitcoin Anyways, first meme is by our boy the btc therapist and he goes if you've been hodling all bear market You deserve everything that's coming hashtag btc and it goes every bitcoin on earth right now And we have the big lebowski here with the crazy eyes looking up and the bitcoin price starting to pump It's still a pump for ants guys. This is it hasn't even started It's going to be a marvelous next 18 months in my opinion in my humble opinion Okay Next one is by vandelay btc on twitter and he goes every single time hashtag bitcoin And we got futurama here. I forget what the guy's name is, but the bitcoin price is dumping. It's at 15 Thousand and eight hundred dollars and everyone's looking at the bitcoin price skeptical And then it starts pumping and goes to 34k and everyone's instantly wanting to buy bitcoin human psychology is so So interesting and it even gets more and more interesting when it's revolved around bitcoin Because markets it's just humans reacting and for some reason bitcoin can go up And and if you like bitcoin at 69k You should love it at 15 000 and yet they don't buy bitcoin and then once it pumps again, and it goes 100x They're like, okay. Wait, maybe now I need to buy some bitcoin. The fomo is real Anyways, next meme is by alan b. Watts aka alan bwt on twitter and he goes good afternoon hashtag bitcoin And we got the lord of the rings meme here. I forget what this guy's name is. It's like nico might know. Uh al strider There we go There we go All right, and uh the wizard comes out gandalf the great comes out and it blinds everyone But instead of being just grand off the grid It's got the bitcoin logo And this is what we were all feeling yesterday when the bitcoin price started pumping and everyone was getting excited and we were Donning our laser eyes again. I see you guys out there We're back. We're so back guys. It's so it feels so good. We're so back. Okay Anyways, next one is by lena c shea another bitcoin artist She does the bitcoin comic the little hodler and she goes hold on And we got it, you know bitcoiner here the little hodler and he goes, please go up The bitcoin price is going sideways. It's a crab market. It's taking a bath and it's still crabbing and it goes Please go up and then it's at night and you see the bitcoin price in the stars and it's going sideways and down And then the price starts to pump and you get excited and you go. Yeah, and then you look and you remember Oh my god, I do not have enough bitcoin Hold on bitcoin price. I need to stack more sets first guys I hope you didn't take your foot off the gas because when the bull begins its run It's going to run hard and heavy as the bit steam meme goes guys I hope you're prepared buckle up. Anyways, next meme is marty's owl and it's the classic Whoa, jack really bad drawing where it's the bitcoiner the autistic. Whoa, jack bitcoiner in the corner You know at a party with his friends And no one's talking to him and he's just sitting there wondering they don't they don't know bitcoin is pumping and everyone's having fun You know, I I literally after I saw this meme I I kind of uh was sitting there with my family And even though I was kind of telling them It would pump to like 31k in the morning. I was just seeing them interact I'm, like they don't even know it's pumped to like 35k yet And then my brother hit me up later. He's like dude to pump to 35k All right, at least someone but this is all of us in the real world when you go out and you know You leave your house for the first time in months You look around and you're like they don't even know the bitcoin price is pumping It's going to be us for a long long time to come this next couple of months Anyways, the next one is by maxi's club and shouts out to maxi's club I really felt this one because uh, i've been telling you guys i've been low-key blackpilled a little bit not too much Just a little bit and uh, this one hit me in the field So we got a bitcoiner here and it's at the barbecue and it's just kind of a play on like have you watched the game? Oh, that's crazy bro. Oh bitcoin price is pumping. Did you catch the game this weekend? Anyways, it goes here. It goes you can't orange pill humanity and call them idiots at the same time And we got the mad little bitcorner here I am guilty of this. Okay, i'm team human But at times you just wonder how do you not understand bitcoin is the best money in the world? And and it's a knee-jerk reaction to just be like they're all idiots. No, we cannot just call them idiots We need to orange pill humanity. We need to orange pill the world So give them a little benefit benefit of the doubt. Remember you didn't know anything When you got the bitcoin as well. Well Have some compassion lower your time preference have some patience Anyways, last one is by hado x hado on twitter It goes stay humble stack sets or you're going to pay the price And this is the psa at the end and this is uh, dang. Well, how am I blanking on this? It's rapa newy That's uh, easter island easter island exactly with laser eyes looking up at the star and it's the bitcoin logo and I wanted to end this one today because On this meme because the price is pumping right now. It is going up. I know we're all feeling ecstatic We're all excited even though this is still a pump for amps And I am convinced it's going to continue to go up forever laura in the next couple of months after the halving going into 2025 I think the price is going to go absolutely nuclear, but you have to remember The advice we've been telling you all bear market Stay humble stack sats and stay solvent. So stay humble guys. Do not get crazy when the bitcoin price starts going crazy You're going to start feeling probably a little more euphoric than ever and you're going to make some mistakes. So The only saving advice is always stay humble stack sats and stay solvent This is the way guys do not get over leverage. Do not go d gen shit coin trading. Don't hit the casinos You know make sure you are saving bitcoin because You may put yourself in a position where you get wrecked and and you don't you do not want to do that Anyways, drop your meme review scores on the other side of nico and we will cover them live. All right, my meme review score Is uh this abalone shell on my dad's desk. It's got some remotes in there Huge fan of abalone Okay, beautiful Beautiful do I have my meme review score? Yes, i'm giving i'm going with some some this is in honor of this is for you uh opti satoshi coffee company It was actually a complimentary gift from the folks at crowd join crowd health.com. So let's go those guys are awesome Um, I don't know if this is considered a piece of art, but buy the f and dip. Wait, wait Let me add to it buy every dip from here on out This is the way this is financial advice All right Go ahead. Yeah, I think like memes memes are an art form because as things get out of control right there We're whether it's the price pumping or the or the doldrums of of the bear market They give you that little smile that little Bit that you're not alone. There's that validation in the art that that maybe to some is propaganda But somebody had to synthesize it into this bizarre little rectangle to give you confidence or make you smile and I I think that's really important to stay grounded as we as this bull market gets going It's in the stay humble but stay grounded and stay thoughtful and stay huge. Keep your sense of humor Yeah, what's uh, you know the the meme, uh Remember we are winning everybody. We are winning and you are not alone. We are winning Anyways, guys, I want to give a shout out to wine really, uh, buyer merch or else wine will get really upset with us Uh, it also helps support the channel a lot. It helps us stay independent, uh So, uh, definitely check is it that way? Yeah, so check the qr code on your screen You could scan it or you could check the link in the video get an orange hoodie Get an orange hoodie and guys everyone out there simply bitcoin shirt and hats are coming soon Yeah, I was gonna say that hats are coming. We were talking about it last night I I had to deal I have to you know wrangle wine. He's only trying to make you guys dad hats I know you guys want the snapbacks as well. I just forgive me I I have to deal with internal politics to get you guys the merch here All right, everybody it's time to uh read some memes opti q the epic music oh, oh Sorry, I was looking for memes. But yes, I got it. I got it Wait what you were looking for didn't we already go through the memes i've meme review scores just just read it All right, uh torah pottle. I was like, what is my memory messing up? Did did we not just go through the memes? All right meme score a bull market winter season. I like that. I like that Uh, john pleb meme score build a seed signer escape the databases. I like that too. Uh, justin boyven Uh, whoa jack orange build infinity divided by 21. I love it Um utxo, I give the memes a raisin Very nice, uh elaine bitcoin brings beauty back to the world stacy's renaissance 2.0 begins art music poetry writing and more blossoms Okay. Okay. Next one hottlecoin. I give the memes a dca buy you just win. Okay, okay Uh skip down the road 21 million hats thrown into the ring. Oh, we just got a purchase. Thank you so much Whoever bought the hoodie on the live stream All right bitcoin for canadians, uh, I give the memes a white russian for all the big lewedowski plebs with without uh, plebs watching btc pump Uh, nigel lori says I give the memes a colony of ants loving this pump. Okay, very nice. Very nice Uh narwhal tacos satos satoshi chose anonymity because last time he he brought truth to us He got crucified Okay, wait, she's jesus Oh Okay, moving on sicko. Oh five one beautiful artistic world ran by bitcoiners absolutely love that All right. All right. Um We didn't run out of meme scores there was just a buzzer All right, guys, if you enjoyed the show, you know what to do Smash that like button consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value But I also want to give a shout out to our special guest clay. Thank you so much for joining us today guys, uh could check out his social media, uh, Well, you can find him on social media at clay enos and check out the bitcoin muse.com definitely subscribe to his pod clay It's been an honor to have you on simply bitcoin today. It really blew my mind today. Appreciate you coming on the show Oh, man, you guys You're a big part of my orange peeling and your your sincerity And your your unbelievable ability to riff spontaneously Is an inspiration it's performance art. Thank you so much clay. We really appreciate it We we try to contribute where we can appreciate it, man Hope to have you on the show in the future sometime soon. All right, guys, that was our show Like I said smash the like button consider subscribing if you feel like we provided you value But the number one thing you could do to push the peaceful bitcoin revolution I share I say share bitcoin content, but i'm gonna add to that after today's episode Share bitcoin content and share bitcoin art share bitcoin everything. That's how we get the message out there That's how we really break the bitcoin echo chamber share your bitcoin favorite bitcoin artist fair You share your bitcoin your favorite, uh bitcoin podcast If if you have a singer like tip and z is killing it Uh, sophie told me she might be dropping some bitcoin music soon So, uh, so yeah, but today was a very special episode. I really enjoyed it. I hope you guys did too We'll be back tomorrow 12 15 pm. Eastern standard time opti is going to be holding it down for another episode of simply bitcoin live Until then guys have an amazing day. No spaces this week Opti needs some time off, but we back on spaces next week. Peace out everybody.
Simply Bitcoin
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The Bitcoin numbers, is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped seeds do it yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates instead of just writing them on paper. Don't store your generational wealth on paper papers prone to water damage, fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet Earth, titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps. And once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire. They're also crush proof, waterproof, non-corrosive and time proof. All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul. Stamp your seed on stamp seed. All right, guys, let's check out the numbers. Here we go. At the time of recording the Bitcoin price is twenty eight thousand one hundred forty five stats per dollar three thousand five hundred fifty three block height eight hundred twelve thousand four hundred seventy eight blocks to happening twenty seven thousand five hundred twenty two having estimate April twenty first twenty twenty four total lightning network capacity five thousand three hundred Bitcoin capacity value one hundred forty nine million U.S. dollars. Realized monetary inflation one point seven four four one point seven four percent. The market capitalization of Bitcoin five hundred forty nine billion dollars with a B and the Bitcoin versus gold market cap four point two five percent. My favorite number is the realized monetary inflation because it's going to continue to take fiat currencies to absolute school. Also, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor. Don't put yourself in a position where you have to explain to your grandchildren why you lost your generational wealth because you stored your Bitcoin wallet back up seed words on paper, stored on one of the strongest metals on planet Earth, stored on titanium. That's where you get to get yourself a stamp seed. Use promo code simply to get 15 percent off. All right. So let's cover what happened this morning because it was a bit of a shit show. So this was initially what happened. Coin Telegraph reports BlackRock I share spot Bitcoin ETF has been approved. Currently, Cointelegraph reported waiting for more. Everyone was asking for the source, Walter Bloomberg, which is a very great kind of news aggregator account. He even said SEC approve I shares Bitcoin spot ETF. And then the story started to develop spot Bitcoin ETF news has a second source, ladies and gentlemen. And apparently this was coming from Benzinga news writers, but it was reported by Reuters. Right. So a more reputable source. And then things started to fall apart. Fox Business, Eleanor Terrell says, hold the phone. Stay tuned for more because she said BlackRock has just confirmed to me that this is false. Their application is still under review. And keep in mind that this that this person, Eleanor has an interview with Larry Fink later on in the day. Gray scale, gray scale issued a statement says the federal rules of Appellate procedures, 45 day period to seek rehearing has now passed. The court will now issue its final mandate within seven calendar days. This the gray scale team remains operationally ready to convert GBTC to an ETF upon the SEC's approval. And we look forward to sharing more information as soon as practical. So, I mean, it was a bit of a fucking shit show. Excuse my language. Like the price pumped the 30K right for for a short period of time. Everyone thought the spot Bitcoin ETF was going to be approved. But a lot of people were asking a lot of difficult questions like, where's the source? What's going on here? Cointelegraph went on to delete the tweet. And then even worse, not only did they delete the tweet, they released this, which was kind of funny. We apologize for a tweet that led the to the dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. How many people got wrecked buying Bitcoin at 30K? Because they knew that the this this ETF was approved. An internal investigation is currently underway. We are committed to transparency and will share the findings of the investigation within with the public once it is concluded within three hours. And then a lot of Bitcoiners made some really interesting point. We have Cripta Bostardo. Instead of immediately deleting it, then you posted reportedly. And now you're trying the Mikulpa, no bueno, sirs. You could have just deleted it and claimed to have been hacked, which begs the question, what was the price tag for such a tweet? A billion got wiped out of Bitcoin open interest alone. Such a headline was extremely profitable for anyone who knew it was who knew in advance it was fake, both on the upside and the retrace. Mitchell says, where can I send the invoice for the new pair of pants? You owe me. Right. So again, what Dylan LeClair said is very accurate. Someone could have made a lot of money doing this if it was on purpose. And if you've been in the market for a pretty long, long time now, these types of things don't happen unless they're on purpose. I don't know that for sure, but maybe I'm this fucking jaded Bitcoiner that's been here for more than half a decade and has seen some crazy shit in this industry in his time. So I don't know. Maybe I'm seeing things. I want to get our guest takes. Terrence, you saw this madness happening in the morning. What's your take? My take is that the the GBTC, the fact that the SEC is not going to challenge it, I feel like that's actually the first big part of this, because if you look at GBTC, it's actually been pumping all morning, aside from the information about the ETF. I think Preston Pish and even Will Clemente, they all thought it was real news as well. So they were pushing that out. But think about this, like Bitcoin Twitter is so small and I don't know that this hit traditional Wall Street with that tiny little notice that if this is what's happening with an eight percent jump and I think it was like in 20 seconds, almost imagine what's going to happen. I mean, to me, it proves that the Bitcoin ETFs are not priced in at all. So as we always say, stack sats and get in front of this. 100 percent. And again, if you just if you've been, you know, dollar cost averaging, staying humble, you know, this shouldn't have affected you. Anyways, Opti, what's your take on this? Yeah, well, as I said in the beginning, a shout out to the intern. Well, really, I like Cointelegraph doing the like, it was our intern that messed up. That's like such a good, good cover. But yeah, man, I said in the beginning, you know, and I actually I dropped it in the in the chat as well. Like, is this indications that we are finally on the precipice of getting out of this bull run? Because if you haven't been here for a while, if you are newer to the markets, usually in a bear market, no amount of good news pumps the price. And usually during a bear market or a bull market, any amount of noise or any amount of good signal makes the price go absolutely nuclear. So as Steven Lubka said, guys, if this is your first cycle, well, welcome to how crazy it's going to get. And this is why I keep telling you guys to get prepared now, because look, look at all the hysteria we saw this morning. And this was what for like an hour or two or something like that. And just wait until we actually see these green candles. And it's not pumping because of hot air. And yes, I think Terence said something that that really hits the nail on the head. And I've been saying this for a while as well on the show. Remember how small Bitcoin Twitter really is, guys. There's not that many people on Bitcoin, Twitter. And then to that extent, there's a lot more Bitcoiners that aren't on Bitcoin, Twitter. They don't know what the hell is going on on Bitcoin, Twitter. So once some actual news comes in, once some really bullish indicators start to come in, like the price is going to go nuclear. So, you know, welcome to the party. Buckle up. Things are going to get crazy. And, you know, to to the like fake news story, I just, you know, it's just Bitcoin stuff. And kind of, you know, maybe getting cynical this morning, Nico, maybe this is a kudos to what Gary Gensler and all the institutions are saying. All the ABC men are saying out there, just this space is ripe with so many frauds and scams. And like, this doesn't make us look that much better. You know, like some fake news comes out. The price starts pumping. The market gets liquidated. This is why we're Bitcoin only. If a shit coin publication, OK, and again, I'm not trying. So first of all, content creation is very difficult. OK, so I hate talking crap and bashing content creators and Cointelegraph makes some great content. There's some people there that I like that I'm friends with. So I don't want to go down that route. But in this particular in this particular move by Cointelegraph, which is a publication that covers Bitcoin and crypto, they really dropped the ball. And like what Dylan said, this got a lot of people wrecked. And if there was insider trading, they made a lot of money off other people's dimes. Right. And it's exactly what you said, Opti. It makes the entire industry look really bad. It reinforces the narratives. It gives the SEC ammunition to say, hey, we can't have a spot Bitcoin ETF. Look at the manipulation of just one publication. Right. So, yeah, it's it's it's interesting. But this is what happens in the days of social media. You have this massive account and with these massive with these massive accounts, there's a tremendous amount of responsibility. I really do think, you know, and like I said, I like the content that comes out of Cointelegraph. They make some good stuff. I might not agree with a lot of their views, especially on altcoins and all that stuff, you know, but to each their own. But on this specific case, you know, I think they really dropped the ball. That's my that's my take on that. So anyways, it is a developing story. Let's see what they come out with in three. I'm so curious. Are they just going to blame it on one, you know, one poor 20 year old intern? They're going to make up an A.I. intern and then throw them under the bus like, God damn it. Like this guy, get out of the building. You fucked it up. Like, you know, it's it's crazy that apparently there are some rumblings that there's apparently a connection to CZ. I don't know how much I believe that. But yeah, it's it's definitely sketchy, to say the least. First thing Monday morning news pumped the price to 30K. It's back down now. Holy cow. And again, if you've been staying humble, stacking sats, none of this would have affected you. All right, everybody, let's get on to the news. We got a lot to talk about. Let's check it out. The daily news. I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Foundation Devices. It's self custody done right. They built a premium grade hardware wallet called Passport right here in the U.S. It's fully open source and verifiable. It's the most intuitive Bitcoin wallet designed with the UX reminiscent of a simple feature phone. So you will know how to navigate it and use it the moment you pick it up. Get your Bitcoin off exchanges and into your into your own hands in just a few minutes. Experience a peace of mind that comes with taking ownership of your own keys. After a massive sellout during Bitcoin Miami 2023, the passport is back in stock at foundation devices dot com Bitcoin only open source verifiable completely air gap security model. Gorgeous design craft, premium grade materials. If you're thinking about getting your Bitcoin off exchanges, this is the one for you. Check out the passport link in the show notes below to learn more. All right, everybody, I also want to give a shout out to our other sponsor, Bitcoin 2024. It's going to be the largest Bitcoin conference on planet Earth. It's going to be in Nashville, Tennessee this year, July 25th through the 27th. You can get your tickets for a ticket for three forty nine, an industry pass for eight forty nine and a whale pass for four thousand seven hundred forty nine. Opti and I are going to be there and you could use the promo code simply to get a discount on the already very, very much discounted tickets. All right, everybody. So let's move on to the news for today, which is the absolute sabotage of Argentina's looks like future president. He's leading the polls. And what makes Javier Malie so interesting other than, you know, what you could say, his rhetoric is pretty crazy, basically saying that he wants to end the central bank of Argentina. He wants to dollarize the country. And I'll get to why that's so significant, right? Because essentially when a country dollarizes, whether that's Ecuador or El Salvador, what they're really doing is they're outsourcing their monetary policy to the United States. And look, the reality is, as much as people don't want to hear this, all this adoption that you hear, this crypto adoption that you're hearing in other countries, specifically countries that have high inflation rates, that adoption, of course, a percentage of it is happening in Bitcoin, but the majority is happening in stable coins, specifically dollar stable coins. So the dollar, what it provides is, you know, if there is. Piles of shit, right, piles of crap, right? The dollar is the smallest pile of crap, right? It's still inflationary, you know, it's still designed to lose purchasing power over time, but compared to the crap that they have in their hands, right? A hundred percent inflation, 20% inflation, 30% inflation, 10% inflation. It's much, it's a much better choice. And over time, what I believe is going to happen, and I've said this many, many times in other issues is that all roads lead to Bitcoin. So heading towards the dollar, I think is, is a first step inevitably it will lead. You'll lead to the inevitable conclusion that, Hey, maybe I don't want another foreign country deciding my monetary policy. Maybe I need an alternative. And that's why I believe El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender alongside the dollar. And if, if you make Bitcoin legal tender alongside the dollar, then it's a fair competition. And then may the best money win. And we already know what the best money is. So in terms of this guy, he's a radical in terms of the IMF, in terms of the legacy corporate media, they do not like this guy. They call him an extremist. Um, you know, every word in the book that you can think of, they've called this guy. They do not like him. And in Argentina specifically, just to let you know how much, how, how, uh, how much this guy's over the target, they're already trying two things. They're trying lawfare and they are changing laws right before the election, of course, to buy votes essentially. So let's start off with the first one. Check out this wall street journal article. It's titled read my lips, no taxes at all. In Argentina, economy minister and presidential candidate Sergio Masa, courts voters by eliminating income taxes and out of control. Santa Claus goes on to say, and as, as election pledges, no new taxes has been done to death in topsy-turvy, Argentina, the ruling party's presidential candidate has upped the ante calling simply for no taxes, runaway inflation and economic catastrophe has stacked the odds against the pertinent candidate currency economy minister, said your Masa in the first round of voting this coming Sunday. So last month he threw up a hail Mary pass to the electorate, eliminated the income tax altogether for nearly everyone got rid of a 21% sales tax on groceries for more than 16 million people and threw in cash bonuses for various groups, including retirees, the unemployed for good measure. He waived import taxes for agricultural products, such as peanuts, tobacco, and milk, a benefit to small farmers. He's an out of control Santa Claus. Jamie Duran Barba, a former advisor to a conservative ex-president, uh, Mauricio Marchi told local radio station Masa is helping to give people little pleasures, right? So essentially he's trying to buy votes. Now Bitcoin has had some really good takes on this. So let's start off with Jimmy song. So Argentina has abolished the income tax ahead of its presidential election in a last ditch attempt to defeat the libertarian candidate who's leading in the polls. This proves one, they're printing money. They really don't need to tax you explicitly. And again, that, that, that first point I want to emphasize, it is not a coincidence that the federal reserve in the United States was established the same year that the federal income tax was introduced. Why was the federal income tax introduced 1913 the same year as the federal, as the federal reserve, the central bank in the United States? That's a very, very big coincidence. Anyways, number two that inflation itself is a stealth tax that can be imposed without any legislation or transparency. The mechanics of money are going to become way more obvious to people going forward. Jimmy makes some really good points. Here's Samson Mao. Samson Mao is dedicating his time to the global adoption of Bitcoin. He says the current Argentinian government's ploy to abolish income tax and prevent Malay from being elected president just accelerates the failure of the legacy system. If they can abolish it in an instant, they can reinstate it in an instant. I hope the people of Argentina can see through it. Move on to the next one. Here's Brandon. He goes on to say, Argentina's president just eliminated the income tax right before the presidential election. It's a way to keep the peso around if Malay wins the election. Got to have a local currency to the pace it if you don't have taxes, complete poison pill. And then not to mention to, a libertarian candidate saying that he wants to end the central bank of Argentina. And again, you have to see it from their perspective. What is their perspective? When you take away the money printer, when you take away Argentina's government's ability to print money that the rest of Argentina has to work for, right? Guess what happens? The government can no longer spend money they don't have. So a lot of these people that depend their livelihoods, a lot of these politicians that depend on being able to print money, it goes away. So they're literally fighting for their lives. This is why this is where the desperation comes from. But again, they're printing money at the expense of the public, specifically the lower and middle classes that don't have the means to save in assets. Therefore they save in Fiat money. They for, therefore they get poorer every time they print money anyways. So they're changing the rules, literally saying, if you vote for me, I'm eliminating all income tax. Do you imagine if that happened in the United States? I bet you were not that far off to be honest with you. Check this out. Prosecutor files case against Argentina's front runner, Javier Mele, days before presidential election. It goes on to say, a prosecutor launched a criminal case Friday against Argentina's front runner in this month's presidential elections, accusing Javier Mele of deliberately causing a drop in the Argentine currency when he encouraged citizens not to save in pesos. Like, so like, but like think about how fucking crazy that is, right? Think about how crazy that is. If you're just an average everyday Argentine, and you're trying to put food on the table for your family, what they want you to do is keep your money in pesos, even though it's currently going through a hundred percent inflation. And this person who's running for office is literally saying, maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe you should protect your savings and they're charging him with the crime for doing that. Ladies and gentlemen, if that is fiat money for you, that is it. It's a great example of what, what this is. And it also tells you that this person is right under over the target. And remember, I wonder what forces are supporting the opposition. Remember what happened when the IMF bailed out Argentina. Once again, one of the conditions that they gave Argentina, the Argentinian government, is that they had to de-incentivize the adoption of Bitcoin. They don't want using, to use Christine Lagarde's own words, they don't want people using the escape valve. Here is a headline article, which we've read you guys, this article when it came out, it was about, it's about a year old. Argentine Congress approves IMF debt deal that would discourage crypto use. So they're charging, like think about how crazy this is, right? The IMF gives a deal to Argentina and saying, no, no, no, no, no, people have to use the local currency, even though it's going through a hundred percent inflation. And the Argentine prosecutor is literally charging a political opponent who's currently leading to win the presidential election with the crime because he's telling people not to save in a currency that is currently dealing with, is currently enduring a hundred percent inflation.
Bankless
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Bankless
"All right. What do we got coming up next? Coming up next. Did you know there's like six forks of friend tech and it's all on different chains. We'll talk about all of them, but not really. We're just going to burn through those. Vitalik deep fakes and how we can stop them. And also Chase Bank has banning crypto payments in the UK. Oof, not great. That is why we go bankless of course. So we're going to get to all of that and more, but first I'm going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially MetaMask portfolio. If you have not opened up your MetaMask portfolio, it is a new and improved way of looking at all your crypto assets and all the various chains. There's a link in the show notes. Go find out. Let's go hear from them right now. Are you a MetaMask user? Well, you're listening to Bankless. So of course you are the wallet, you know, and love just got a whole lot better. MetaMask portfolio is the ultimate one-stop shop for all of your crypto needs. It gives you a holistic view of your crypto portfolio across multiple chains and multiple addresses all at once you can easily view and manage all your coins, tokens, and NFTs in one convenient place, just by connecting your wallet. MetaMask portfolio goes beyond just viewing your portfolio though. Inside the portfolio, you can do all the incredible money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge, and stake your crypto assets with ease. It's like having a powerful battle station for all your DeFi moves right at your fingertips. So if you're looking to do more in web3 your way, MetaMask portfolio is the answer. I already know that you have MetaMask wallet, so go check out your MetaMask portfolio. Learn more at metamask.io slash portfolio. You know Uniswap, it's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over $1.4 trillion in trading volume. You know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bankless. It's Uniswap, but Uniswap is becoming so much more. Uniswap labs just released the Uniswap mobile wallet for iOS, the newest easiest way to trade tokens on the go. With the Uniswap wallet, you can easily create or import a new wallet, buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card with extremely low fiat on-ramp fees, and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet, polygon, arbitrum, and optimism. On the Uniswap mobile wallet, you can store and display your beautiful NFTs, and you can also explore web3 with the in-app search features, market leaderboards, and price charts, or use wallet connect to connect to any web3 application. So you can now go directly to DeFi with the Uniswap mobile wallet. Safe, simple custody from the most trusted team in DeFi. Download the Uniswap wallet today on iOS. There is a link in the show notes. Ryan, this clip of Vitalik has shown me which token I want to buy next. Let's play it. All right. Everyone remembers when I sold billions of Shiba Inu tokens back in the day. Do I regret it? Well, I didn't. That is not until I heard about Shib exchange. Shib exchange is pretty revolutionary in the crypto space. Making Shiba Inu the quote token is just genius. If I still had all those Shiba Inu tokens, I know exactly where I would take them. Let's fucking go. Well, that is classic. Let's fucking go. That's classic. Oh my God. The let's fucking go is just the funniest way to end this thing. Like when I was watching it, it's like, yeah, yeah, I can. I know Vitalik's mannerisms. I know that that was like manipulated a little bit. But man, if you're not paying attention or if you don't know Vitalik, then like, yeah, this guy just filled Shib exchange. What do you think that is out of 10? Like the quality of this? This is one of the best quality defakes I've seen in a while because he's got like relatively natural body movements, even though they're a little bit repetitive, like the body movements are natural. And the voice was close-ish. The voice is pretty good. It's not quite there, but it's close-ish. Vitalik will never, ever say let's fucking go. I mean, with a different script, I think I would give it like a seven or eight out of 10, right? Whereas like a 10 for me would be like indiscernible from somebody who's spent some time virtually with Vitalik. It would be indiscernible from that experience. And this is maybe a seven or eight, which like these are going to be everywhere. These are pretty good clips. Yeah. I mean, so many bots on Twitter all over the place of just like Vitalik, you know, is giving away free ETH. It's always been this way since like 2016 onwards. Vitalik's given free ETH. His image is going to be used in deep fakes in all sorts of ways. So what is the prevention for this? How do we fix this problem? Well, of course, there's the Ethereum attestation service, but that's not a quick fix. That is going to be years of infrastructure and building and progress. We have the tools. We just need maturation and development. The fix is that everyone just needs to know that the Internet is not a safe place. And especially with the emergence of private keys and owning your own assets, like the Internet is very unsecure at this very moment. Yeah, it's a lot of phishing. Like a lot of people want to steal your money. This is actually useful, too, on Twitter is the community notes. I've been looking at this more and more on Twitter. Readers added context they thought people would want to know. The video is a deep fake. So that, yeah, that's good context to know. So be on your guard and we'll get back to that. But hopefully something like Ethereum attestation service will allow Vitalik to release a Vitalik content signed with his private keys. That is much that that is unforgeable as not fakable. Whoever has his private keys can actually sign it. The bull case for this is that actually every single bit of content will have some sort of attestation. And so weird content will be missing the attestation. And so it's the idea is like eventually everything will have some sort of tag of inception. Like where did this come from? And content without that tag will be extremely sus. Exactly. David, this is a pretty cool experiment in Buenos Aires. Government ID coming to Ethereum again via ZK sync. What's this? Yeah. So there's actually an interesting corollary. I mean, maybe I'm just making this up in my head, but like pudgy penguins, when you buy this stuffed animal, you have this like NFT that has this digital identity on ZK sync. This is I mean, it's not anything to do with pudgy penguins or stuffed animals, but Buenos Aires, the government of Buenos Aires, which is, of course, part of the country of Argentina, but is also its own kind of like city state, Buenos Aires citizens will be able to download this wallet and claim essential personal documents such as birth and marriage certificates, which are very important documents in Argentina for accessing the social benefits using a digital wallet. So like self custody of your digital documents using a private key, using a wallet. And so this is being also being used on ZK sync era. And so it's just a way for like infrastructure of the nation state, city state sector of things using public infrastructure to do things that they already need to do better. Pretty cool. You could put anything in your wallet. Penguins or passports, right? This is cool. You know, Kraken, our number one recommended exchange for 2023, David, you know what they're up to. Tell me they are getting ready to push into stock trading. This is a rumor. So I took this tweet from Walter Bloomberg crypto exchange plans to push into stock trading. This came from the Bloomberg article that says this still remember that I asked to Kraken's like, yo, what's going on with this? And their response is, Kraken is always exploring how it can power the global adoption of crypto currencies. We can't comment on rumors or speculation. We're looking to broaden and enhance our offering. So clients continue to have secure and seamless access to Kraken's full product suite. Pretty generic, neither confirm nor deny. Didn't say no. They did not say no. They did not say no. We have no special knowledge about this. No we don't. All we know is basically that statement, but this would be cool if true. I would say as someone who has not bought an equity and a stock since 2018 up until this week, actually, we'll talk about that later in a different show, Robinhood ever said that we always thought Robinhood was like the app for the people, right? Like democratizing access to finance and then the whole like Citadel GME thing just totally popped that bubble. One of the big reasons why I haven't bought an equity is because I don't want to use Robinhood. That's tradfi. There is demand, believe it or not, for crypto people to buy. No, I believe it. But we just need a crypto native platform to go back to the old world. And Robinhood has good UX. Have you ever used something like E-Trade or ever used something like Fidelity or something like this? Charles Schwab? No way. Like you couldn't. Like you would not be able to navigate this. I wouldn't know how to do it. It's so stupid. It's so like 2000s era and crypto exchanges have gotten the UX right. Like it's easy to navigate. And so why not start listing other assets? Take Kraken Pro UX and put it into equities and we can talk. Maybe Kraken's doing that. Maybe they're not. We have nothing. Maybe it's a rumor. Yeah. Could just be a rumor. A friend tech fork for every chain. Okay. There are all of these friend tech clones. We should have. We expected this would happen, right? Of course, a successful app is going to have like thousands of clones. What specifically is happening? How many clones do we have at this point? Okay. So on base, there's friends tech. There's post tech on Arbitrum. There's frenzy on Solana. There's fan.tech on Mantle. There's alpha on Bitcoin. What the shit? Bitcoin. What's Bitcoin L3? That's what this says. I don't know. People have been trying to tweet at me saying, hey, David, you're really popular on alpha on Bitcoin. You should sign up. And I'm like, I don't believe you. No one is in the Bitcoin world. They're trying to steal your private keys, David. Of course, these are clones, so there's not a lot of difference. But there's some like minor innovation. So one version of this clone is introducing a bidding action for new accounts in order to prevent bots. Another is including features like public and private posts, so you could see accounts you could follow on Twitter, dark mode, stats mode, that sort of thing. Referral systems, so some are even working through the economics of these platforms and like juicing them, making them maybe even more Ponzi-like in the games. So there's like these micro innovations that are happening across all of these clones. And I think that this will push things forward is the optimistic view is some of these features will work. Others won't. The ones that don't fall by the wayside and die. The ones that do will improve the product. Friend Tech will continue to have to level up. Fortunes will be made. Fortunes will be lost. You know, that's what always happens in this space. But I do think a lot of experience experiments will kind of level us up. I guess maybe the bear case for all of this is like too much fragmentation and we're just chasing a bunch of kind of, I don't know, nothing products. And this is instead of innovating, everyone's copying the other apps. I guess you could take a bear case on it, too. But yeah, overall, I think it's cool. And of course it would happen. This is crypto. It's completely permissionless. Well, as soon as you do get the forking phenomenon, it is just a big plus one to the legitimacy of the actual inception. Yeah, right. Like Bitcoin had the fork and fair launch era. There was the ICO mania after Ethereum, DeFi food farms, like anytime something gets forked a bajillion times, whatever is getting forked, it's very successful. In some measure. And I will say, even though I don't really understand the long term economics, the long term sustainability of Friend Tech, like it doesn't care what I think, it is still alive. And so I'll give a plus one to that. I am too exhausted to create accounts in all of these apps and try them all out. I've got my Friend Tech, that's it. Coming out of the OP stack super chain base world, base has introduced pessimism, which is an open source monitoring system designed to enhance security of base. Hilariously named as well, of course, not optimism. It's the right way to view this. It's a monitoring system for like, think of it as like a second line of defense. So post someone attempting to exploit you, whatever that means, smart contracts, the actual protocol, et cetera. This is an alert system after that fact. So there's like three different subsystems here. There's like a risk engine, alerting system, and then just another system that's responsible for parsing and transforming real time data. Basically trying to give you a live alerts of like, hey, some shenanigans is going on. And it's just a monitoring system. And all OP stack chains can benefit from this, right? That's a really cool thing. This is kind of like, it has previously been deployed in other contexts. We've seen other projects like this. But the cool thing about this is base is building this to protect the base chain for their base users. It's just like extra protection for all base users. And it's really important because that's Coinbase. But since it's on the OP stack, all OP stack chains can also leverage this open source system. So this is about everything growing in security all at once. We like it. We like it. Binance is interesting. Speaking of base, Binance is now supporting base as well. So you can withdraw a deposit from Binance to base. I wonder if that has any implications for the future of BNB chain, David. Right. That's the big question is like now with base, the BNB chain of the West, if you will. What is the future of BNB chain? That's always in a boat. Do you think BNB chain just becomes a roll up at some point? I would, I can only hope. Like, you know, why be a side chain? And in this, in this economy, why be a silo when you could join in the crowd? This is a Fred Wilson post. Fred Wilson is a notable venture capitalist, Union Square Ventures. I followed his blog post for a while. I just noticed this week. On September 9th, he's writing on the 27th, but on September 9th, apparently he was the victim of a phishing attack. So he got over 40 of his NFTs stolen, some of his most valuable NFTs, 46 to be exact. And it was because I believe he was in a crypto wallet. He doesn't mention the wallet, but I'm guessing it was probably like a Coinbase wallet. He received a message, maybe a message from XMTP telling him to click this link. He says this, while waiting for our luggage, I got a push notification. I guess he was at the airport. So distracted, you know, waiting for your luggage, just got a few minutes on your phone in my wallet about an NFT drop that I could participate in. So I click the link, sign the transaction and nothing happened. So I tried again. Again, nothing happened. Frustrated. I turned my attention to the luggage, retrieved it and got in the car. On the way home, I tried again a few more times. Turns out that each of my failed attempts to make an NFT was a scam that allowed a thief to eventually take 46 of my most valuable NFTs. Dave, we were just talking about this last week with Mark Cuban getting drained from similar kind of phishing scam. It's unfortunate. Yeah. Do you have a take on this? There is some good news at the end, but do you have a take on this first? I have two takes. One is that you should not be having your wallet with 46 of your most valuable NFTs be your mobile wallet that you have on your phone. So if you do that right now, stop doing that immediately. Don't sign things that also ought to be your cold storage. Yes. Have your cold storage a separate wallet completely from your active wallet that you do this kind of activity on. My other take is that we should be able to sign messages with our cold storage and not get rugged. We should do both. Well, how do we do the second there? I don't know. That call for startups. Actually, delegate.cash, Fubar's project is working on this, but still. There are a number of attempts. It's something we definitely have to solve because this is not good user experience to get drained of all of your funds because you clicked the wrong link. And by the way, just the PSA is even the pros can get rugged like this. Even the pros. Actually, Anthony Cissano had a similar event that he talked about in the Daily Guay earlier this week. If it can happen to someone like Fred or Anthony, it can happen to anybody. David, what did Michael Saylor do last week? What does Michael Saylor do every week, Ryan? He purchases Bitcoin. Also, all that Bitcoin ether strength ratio, that was because Michael Saylor was buying a bunch of Bitcoin. Oh, really? Good for him. This has happened like three times now. Like, Bitcoin ether shows strength and then it was Saylor. Purchased 5,445 Bitcoin for almost $150 million. Where does he get all this money? Wait, he just spent another $150 million on Bitcoin? Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly right. He's borrowing it from bondholders. Yeah, but everyone runs out of margin. If you run out of capital, sure, you take leverage and then sometimes you run out of margin. Anyways, he's at 0.75% of the $21 million. He almost owns one full percent of all Bitcoin in existence. Over three quarters of one percent, yeah. He is down 8% in dollar terms on his Bitcoin buy. He is so tenacious about this. It's impressive. And I've always said, I think he'll do well on it eventually. Yeah, eventually. I think he'll do very well. He has bought a total of $4.7 billion of Bitcoin and that is currently worth $4.3 billion of Bitcoin. David, Chase Bank is banning crypto payments. Why? What's going on? Why? I don't know. They just say that our policy around crypto is changing. Here's what it means for you. If we think you're making a payment related to crypto assets, we'll decline it. But customers are free to use a different bank or provider to invest in crypto. That's called being unbanked. You're just... I got one of these letters from Bank of America one time with one of my accounts that just saw me transferring into Coinbase and they sent me a letter and they said, you're too risky. Bye. Right. They say, here's why they do it, fraudsters are increasingly using crypto assets to steal large sums of money from people who are committed to helping keep our customers' money safe and secure. So they're saying that because people are losing money in crypto, that they're not going to let you buy crypto, which the evidence is that, yes, people are sadly being phished all the time. We have been talking about this. Does that mean that you just closed down the gates to buying crypto? That's a reach. I also think that this is maybe Operation Choke Point hitting the UK. The same kind of effect here of big banks saying, no, we will, if you're dealing crypto, we will unbank you. Back to the Novogratz tweet earlier in this episode, right? Of, you know, of companies getting unbanked as a result of this. David, another Ethereum address was just added to the OFACT sanction list. This time, the Sinaloa cartel. This is a fentanyl trafficking operation in a Colombian cartel leader, apparently. So added to the OFACT sanction list. I don't think that this is going to stop, by the way. Of course, Bankless is no friend of drug cartels. You'll know that. But it does set a bad precedent, I think, if this is not handled correctly. This is actually a GitHub maintained by ultrasound money of all addresses, Ethereum addresses that are on the OFACT sanction list. You see this? Twenty-one of them. Yeah, twenty-one of them. Twenty-one. Oh, there's Roman Semenov. Roman Semenov's on here. With eight addresses. Wow. Twenty-one entities have been added to the OFACT sanction list right now. And I don't know, I'm like not a friend of drug cartels, but am worried about this black list type of capability that the US is growing in scope. And I guess I have a few takes on this. One, I don't think we're going to get out of this. I think they're going to continue to add bad guys to this list. So that's going to be with us always. But I feel like we need to hold the line in some specific places. One is they can't be sanctioning privacy smart contracts as they have with tornado cash. It's a general purpose privacy tool. You can't add that to the OFACT sanction list. And I know we're battling that in the court system right now. I'm also worried about increased demands to AML, KYC, all of DeFi, all front ends. And to have them essentially have to check the OFACT sanction list before they can serve up the DeFi in the user interface and application. So I'm worried about this, I guess I would say. I don't really have a solution other than there's got to be some places we hold the line here. And yeah, I don't know if you have any wisdom for this, David. Do you ever think we'll see bankless.eth on there? Better not. Well, what are you doing? What are you doing with our private keys, man? Nothing, bro. They're coming for me. Well, it's fine when it's all bad guys on the list, I guess. That's the point I'm making. That's the point. When does bankless narrative become enemy of the state? Well, there's already some people who, I mean, we certainly argue are not bad guys. Like a tornado cache is on this list, Roman Semenov is on this list, open source privacy developer. Eight addresses he has on this list. So that is not comforting. David, we've got a new wallet, though. On to brighter news. What's this? New browser extension out of the Rainbow wallet. Rainbow is definitely a beloved wallet in the space, I would say. It's been a mobile wallet. They've been pioneering mobile, but now they are entering the world of being a wallet extension. I'm actually doing a show with Mike from Rainbow on Friday. He's a local Williamsburg resident. We will still be doing it over. Oh, you're not doing it in person? Yeah, we have to do share screen. It's a virtual product. He's got to show you some stuff, I get it. How about raises of the week, David? What do we got? One raise from Bankless Ventures out of this week. Again, this is the way that we do this. Whenever Bankless Ventures makes an investment, we talk about it here in the weekly roll up as the inception of a conflict of interest so y'all can know about it. And it also gives us a moment to explain why we invested in the raise. The raise this week is Phoenix, Phoenix spelled with an F-F-H-E-N-I-X. This is privacy. This is encryption and privacy on the blockchain and we're just leading the charge of investing in more of these things because there needs to be more privacy in the world of crypto. So there's a $7.5 million seed round dedicated to bring fully amorphic encryption to a layer two on Ethereum and overall just pushing the frontier of F-H-E fully homomorphic encryption into the world of crypto. So this is, I think stands in contrast to Z-K cryptography, which is the more commonly known form of privacy. Interestingly, privacy and scalability are actually two sides of the same coin. So you get Z-K roll ups, which are hyperscalable, but you also get Z-K, Z-K roll ups like ASEC, which are private. This is a different strategy for producing privacy. Fully homomorphic encryption existed before crypto. It's just general cryptography, not cryptocurrency. But now we are imbuing it into a layer two for it to have fully encrypted data. So the way that Z-K roll ups work or Z-K in general is that you generate a proof off chain and then you put the proof on chain and then everyone's like, yeah, that's the correct proof it checks out. Fully homomorphic encryption operates differently. It's more just like all the data, all the state is parsable because all the state is present on chain. So it's a more rich state of data that's just encrypted. So you can run compute on it when it's in its encrypted form. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So it's more composable because the state of things is all hosted locally on chain. It's all present and accounted for. It's just encrypted. And so more composability, more utility out of this kind of say a new approach, an alternative approach to the Z-K space, potentially more scalable. Well, we need more privacy solutions specifically on layer two. And last fun fact, this was founded by two guys. And I mean that literally. Damn it. I was going to give this joke. I front ran you, David. All of that stuff was interesting. But the real reason why we invested in this deal is because the two co-founders are Guy and Guy. It's just too good. If that's not bullish, I don't know what is. David, what do we have coming up next? Coming up next, will ETFs push crypto values away? Are they coming to infiltrate and corrupt crypto? We'll talk about that. Also, another take, are we at the peak ignorance of crypto? Are we in the peak ignorance phase of the market, I think possible. And then also, is Ethereum a technology absorbing black hole? There is, I think, seven takes this week. I think it's a whole entire section of this week. So good. They're all so good. So big, big takes. Big take section this week as we're going to get to all that and more. But first, I want to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Mantle, formerly known as Bitdao, is the first Dow led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle network, a brand new high performance Ethereum layer two built using the OP stack, but uses Eigen layers data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum layer one. Not only does this reduce Mantle network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub communities from around Web3 onboarded, like Game7 for Web3 gaming and Bybit for TVL and liquidity and on-ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first Dow led layer two ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle.xyz and follow them on Twitter at 0xmantle. Arbitrum is accelerating the Web3 landscape with a suite of secure Ethereum scaling solutions. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum one with flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. Arbitrum Nova is quickly becoming a Web3 gaming hub and social dapps like Reddit are also calling Arbitrum home. And now Arbitrum Orbit allows you to use Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own layer three, giving you access to interoperable customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you are a developer, enterprise or user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar and fully EVM compatible, faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas fees. So visit arbitrum.io where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets and start building your first app with Arbitrum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be secure, fast, cheap and friction free. Here's a question of the week from a bankless citizen Kiwi dog. When the Bitcoin and ETH ETFs are finally approved, are you worried that the wacky but value oriented crypto culture, which I love so much, is going to be overrun by a rush of new people who have large amounts of power in the existing system? David, are all these TradFi people going to erode the crypto values that make us special, make this whole thing decentralized, make this whole thing corruption resistant? Should we be worried about the ETFs from that perspective? Yeah, I actually wrote a blurb about this in one of my David's takes articles, The Last Crypto Cycle is here, where I talked about Bitcoin ETFs and also Bitcoin Ethereum ETFs and also running through getting regulatory clarity like we are currently battling with regulators. We will get clarity one way or another, eventually Bitcoin and ETFs will be approved. So there's this growing east of crypto, if you will, like the civilized law abiding regulated civilization of the east of crypto that is growing, we are watching that grow. Will we be able to retain the freedom of the West? I think by default, absolutely, because private keys are permissionless, everything is a bare asset. The West is the default in the world of crypto. The East has to be built. So that is actually an inverse in the historical corollary where people show up in the East, they're moving West to go away from Britain and the monarchy and then they've established their own civilization. But then people keep on going West because they're inherently looking for freedom always. So as civilization is born, they keep going West. Crypto is the Wild West and it always has been and always will be because we have freedom and private keys and power and responsibility and opportunity imbued into us by default. That is like the substrate that crypto exists upon. Will it be encroached? Well, with ETFs, people are buying Ether, Bitcoin through their ETFs, but they're staying in the trad world. That capital is staying trad, that's staying in Fidelity. They're also buying a worse product. Yes, and they're free to do that. And so actually the line between trad-fi and defi will definitely be retained. Defi will just be the permissionless version of finance. And all that ETFs do is actually wraps Ether, kind of like wrapped Ether, and then makes it composable inside of trad-fi. But it actually is us – we're corrupting Wall Street. They should be worried about us. We're decentralizing them. Yeah, I know. I totally agree. I think this whole thing is one big Trojan horse and we got them. And I think that we've said this before, too. You can't build something decentralized on something centralized, right? But it's fine if you put something centralized on something decentralized, so long as the base layer is preserved, right? And that's why we are so passionate about the layer one and the layer zero, which is kind of the social community, keeping those layers decentralized, all right? Our validator set matters so much, right? Making sure that the entire block building, you know, searching, building, validating, like chain, is corruption-free and censorship-resistant, right? That's the stuff that matters. So who cares what they build that's centralized on top of those layers, so long as those layers remain decentralized and corruption-resistant and quote, unquote, pure. That's what we care the most about. With the Ether ETFs, Ether gets sucked up into TradFi, ETH price goes up, and they add jet fuel to the values that power up crypto. They adopt crypto protocols. They adopt crypto values. Shouldn't I do a song? Chris Berninsky, Eclipse is like a Solana embassy in Ethereum nation. Just take from Chris Berninsky. Give us some background on Eclipse first. So Eclipse is the predicted outcome, I think, of the rollup-centric roadmap thesis, which is that new and alternative non-EVM execution environments can turn themselves into a layer 2 and settle on Ethereum and benefit from Ethereum's network effects and composability and liquidity and assets. Eclipse we did the show not too long ago. Eclipse is Solana's Solana virtual machine as a layer 2, and so Chris is putting this into nation-state metaphors, which I so wholly appreciate, and he's saying Eclipse is like a Solana embassy on the Ethereum nation. So like a little domicile for Solana on Ethereum, and he follows up and says, Eclipse will further trade relations between two of crypto's major economies, cementing the importance of ETH and Sol as a means of trade production and consumption. That is his take. That is his take. That is Chris's take. I do agree with you. That is Chris's take. Yeah. You can see my take, my response to Chris's take. Oh, did you say something? Yeah. Well, kind of. Om nom nom. I said, om nom nom nom nom nom, which is my version of saying Ethereum is just gobbling up Solana. So it's not the Solana embassy coming to Ethereum, it's just Ethereum just absorbing it and digesting it. Well, that brings us to the next take, which is this one from not you, but swagtamous.eth. The beauty of Ethereum is that it's a technology-absorbing black hole. EVMs, layer 2s, optimistic rollups, CK rollups, SNARKs, Starks, SVM, that's the Solana virtual machine. It doesn't matter. Everything ends up in Ethereum eventually. Ethereum's culture and draw is just too strong, and once you're caught up in it, there's no going back. So embassy versus black hole, two different analogies here for something similar. Yeah. Do you have anything to add to this? So this one is swag's take, but it's also my take as well, because I 100% agree with this. I have my own version of this tweet all the way back in 2019. You can understand this from first principles. Open source code aggregates. Better open source code depends on to better open source code, and Ethereum is a platform for open source code. So we've seen this play out before. Do you remember EOS turned into Loom Network? Well, neither of those ideas worked, so they both just died. But Zcash, that's Aztec on Ethereum as a layer 2, like we have that technology. Like all of these things, useful open source cryptocurrency related code can just append on to Ethereum, and then Ethereum grows. So sure, it's an embassy for now, but then it's just going to get gobbled. Yeah, I think that the black hole analogy is good. I would also just use the gravity, the gravitational pull analogy is good. And I would use like a star or a sun type of metaphor. If you are a layer 1 with a monetary unit and massive liquidity and massive economic bandwidth and a culture of innovation, then you're just going to suck in all of the other stellar objects towards you, and they're going to start orbiting you. And so the goal, I mean, this is the Bankless thesis, is to become the most massive star in your ecosystem. Maybe there'll be a binary star system, though, David, that's what some others would say. Binary star systems work when two equivalently sized stars about within some range start like having a dance with each other. But if there's an imbalance between these two stars, one just gobbles up the other. Bitcoin and Ethereum, is that a binary star system? I would currently call that a binary star system. Maybe we are stretching the metaphor too far. But this is another take from Brenner. We told you we got a lot this week. Given the concept of soulmate, there's probably a similar buildmate. Someone where the two of you enjoy building or creating stuff together, the creations will be stellar and the two of you will have so much fun doing it. Oh, this is a sweet one. Who put this in the agenda? A buildmate. Find your buildmate. You got your soulmate. Yeah. It reminds me of the bear market buddy take. Everything is just easier in crypto when you have a buddy. Find your buildmate. This is very heartwarming. It's a good time to find your buildmate too. Fun fact, I went to college with Brenner. Oh, really? Yeah. I feel like you always say that. Like every show, it's just like some random person. You went to college? This is what happens when you go outside, Ryan.
Crypto Banter
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"It's the first time that he's tweeted in a long time. Walter Bloomberg, Grayscale wins lawsuit against the SEC. You've got, I want to just read a couple of statements. It says, statement from Grayscale today, the DC court ruled in favor of Grayscale in our lawsuit challenging the SEC's decision, denying GBTS conversion to an ETF. This is a monumental step forward for American investors, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and all those who've been advocating for Bitcoin exposure through adding protections of ETF wrapper. The Grayscale team and our legal advisors are actively reviewing the details outlined in the court's opinion, and we'll be pursuing next steps with the SEC. We will share information as it becomes practical. Let's look at what's going on in the market. So you've obviously had a $1,500 candle up in Bitcoin. You know, this makes me laugh because this is exactly what we're talking about today on my show. Talking about this, I want to see if I can get you the GIF. The GIF is so funny. Just when I thought I lost interest, you pull me back in, you bring me back in, you bring me back into the market. I mean, I don't know how many people actually feel like this. But it's true. It's so true. And you know what's nice? You must actually go to your Twitter there and go to Ivan. Bitcoin will go pump, pump. I was listening to that song as soon as it happened. It's so good, bro. So I think the next thing now. Let's finish just going through the charts. The first thing is Bitcoin up $1,500. GBTC up from $1771 to now $19, 13.14%. More importantly, the GBTC discount is now, it was at 16.48%. It's now 20%. That means that if you would have bought when we told you to bought, you would have made, let's quickly look. If you would have bought, we've been telling you to buy GBTC since January. So let's go back to January. And I just want to show you that this is one of our trades that has really, really, really come to fruition. So if you look at that, the GBTC, oh wait, sorry, I'm looking at the discount. Let's look at the GBTC share. And I want to just show you, this is the effect of the closing discount and the increase in the price of Bitcoin all at once. So if you would have bought GBTC, you would have been 159% up on your trade. This is when we bought. And if you would have bought Bitcoin for the same trade, you would have only been up, let's say from here, you would have been about 76%. So you doubled your gains if you bought GBTC instead of Bitcoin, which is a trade that we were advocating on the channel. The next chart, which is obviously raging, is Coinbase. Coinbase's chart is raging. Why? Because they're also in litigation with the SEC. And I think very, very, very important. What the SEC are realizing here is that if they take the big guys on, if they take on Ripple, if they take on Grayscale, if they take on anyone who's willing to take them to court and fight them and not settle against them, they actually lose. So they've lost, well, they kind of lost in the Ripple case. They lost the important part. They now have lost here against Grayscale. They've got the case against Coinbase and they've got the case against Binance. I don't know how it's going to pan out, but what we are seeing is that if you go and fight against the SEC, you could actually win. Don't forget, there's also the case against Richard Hart, which also goes to court in November. Now, Richard Hart has a lot of money. I mean, he's got billions and billions and billions of dollars. You could also fight the SEC and beat the SEC. Imagine Richard Hart goes and beats the SEC. Imagine what egg that would be on Gary Gensler's face. But the message is clear to Gary Gensler. You can come and you can hit the small guys, but you can't really hit the big guys. Yeah, I mean, that's where we're at. Listen, before we talk charts, just guys, this is an unscheduled stream. What we need from you is we need you to smash the like button because that is how we tell people that we're actually live. Also, if you're not a subscriber to the channel, I mean, join the best channel. This is, I think, the best channel in the world. I just finished the stream. Here we are, Sheldono and I are bringing you another stream. I mean, funny enough, in the last stream, spoke about how it was getting depressing and how it was getting tough and suddenly needed to happen and bang, there we go. When you least expect it, that's what happens, right? It just comes out of nowhere, bro. It just literally just comes out and it's actually fun to do emergency streams. I can't wait for us to get back to it. So obviously, my side over here, Bitcoin, we obviously started the short term little squeeze. We actually spoke about it on the show where it was this top range of the 26.5. And now it's definitely a squeeze. And I never says the nemesis is the $29,000. Like I actually need this pump, if I must be honest, to be real and to be one that's really, let's say this is the reverse. So when we go attempt the highs, like we got to go to 30K, like we got to go to 30K from here and just remove the damage because we still had this huge red volume spike that happened right now. You're getting a little bit of an upside down Bart Simpson. So you probably got two plays on how this would probably go to the 28K. Either there is a small little push back to just retest the breakout, which I think is a great time to add to some of the positions. But obviously, the push to the 28K, 29K is the big area. It's the main support that we lost. It's the major trend line. And only if we get through that, for me, this pump is a real run. I don't know what it is. Like obviously, the news is great. But for me, I need this to get back above 29.30 so that we know that we can actually start playing the top of the range again. And if you actually look on the timeframes, I think I have this chart over here.
The Breakdown
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on The Breakdown
"Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on guys? It is Tuesday, May 23rd, and today we are catching up on a report that Binance was co -mingling customer funds. Before we get into that, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breaker's Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends. Well, this morning as I was prepping the show, news broke from Reuters. Walter Bloomberg on Twitter said, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance co -mingled customer funds with company revenue in 2020 and 2021. In breach of U .S.
The Breakdown
Binance Accused of Co-Mingling Customer Funds With Company Revenue
"Hello friends. Well, this morning as I was prepping the show, news broke from Reuters. Walter Bloomberg on Twitter said, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance co -mingled customer funds with company revenue in 2020 and 2021. In breach of U .S. financial rules that require customer money to be keep separate, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. So let's go through this, let's try to get a sense of how serious this is, let's see if there is another Sam -type situation on our hands. First, let's talk the accusation. Well, it's pretty much right there in the headline, Binance co -mingling customer funds with company revenue in 2020 and 2021, the sourcing, three sources familiar with the matter and Reuters, but let's try to get a few more details. From the Reuters piece, quote, one of the sources, a person with direct knowledge of Binance Group's finances, said the sums ran into billions of dollars and co -mingling happened almost daily in accounts the exchange held at U .S. lender Silvergate Bank. Reuters couldn't independently verify the figures or the frequency, but the news agency reviewed a bank record showing that on February 10th, 2021, Binance mixed $20 million from a corporate account with $15 million from an account that received customer money. Reuters found no evidence that Binance client monies were lost or taken. So there's a bunch that's important here. One is that Reuters couldn't verify the figures in total and that they really only had this one particular bank record showing a mixing. Now, what did Binance say? Well, in a statement to Reuters, they obviously denied this. Spokesperson Brad Jaff said, these accounts were not used to accept user deposits. They were used to facilitate user purchases. There was no co -mingling at any time because these are 100 % corporate accounts. Reuters goes on.
The Breakdown
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on The Breakdown
"For the purposes of our conversation today, the key dynamic in silvergate that we want to think about is this idea of a duration mismatch between short term deposits and long-term loans. It is also worth noting at this point that banks having that sort of duration mismatch isn't necessarily them acting badly. It is fundamentally what fractional reserve banking does. Joe wiesenthal from Bloomberg tweeted, every time a bank gets into trouble, people are like, they took short term deposits and made long-term loans. What were they thinking? As if that's not the business model of every bank ever. All of which gets us to Silicon Valley bank. For the TLDR in this situation, I'm going to turn to a great little explainer from investor Jamie quint. Jamie writes, in 2021, SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from 62 billion or so at the end of 2019 to around a 190 billion at the end of 2021. As deposits grew SVB could not grow their loan book fast enough to generate the yield they wanted to see on this capital. As a result, they purchased a large amount over 80 billion in mortgage backed securities with these deposits for their hold to maturity portfolio. 97% of these mortgage backed securities were ten plus year duration, with a weighted average yield of 1.56%. The issue is that as the fed raised interest rates in 2022 and continued to do so through 2023, the value of SVB mortgage backed securities plummeted. This is because investors can now purchase long duration, quote unquote, risk free bonds from the fed at a 2.5 X higher yield. This is not a liquidity issue as long as SVB maintains their deposits. Since the securities will pay out more than they cost eventually. However, yesterday afternoon, SVB announced that they had sold 21 billion of their available for sales securities at a $1.8 billion loss, and were raising another 2.25 billion in equity in debt. This came as a surprise to investors who were under the impression that SVB had enough liquidity to avoid selling their AFS portfolio. So as you can see, here we again have the same structural problem faced by the assets in silver Gates portfolio. Those assets had unrealized losses because interest rate increases in the wider environment had made them less valuable relative to government bonds, which wouldn't have been an issue unless they were forced to sell, but boom, all of a sudden they were forced to sell.
Tech Path Crypto
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Tech Path Crypto
"All right, so walk them into the live stream today. We're gonna jump into Bitcoin, take a look at Ethereum. And also the volatility that could be setting up in the month of March. This could be one of the more important months of the year, we'll break all that down for you guys today. My name is Paul Barrett welcome back in the tech path. This is going to be a fun one 'cause we've got, of course, one of our favorite analysts on stock traders, extraordinaire, mister Gareth soloway coming in from in the money, nice to have you back. Hey, it's great to be back Paul. Thanks. Hey Gary, let's get into a couple of things. I want to look at a couple of tweets here just to kind of set the stage. You had retail companies this month, Home Depot, coming in with assuming that there's going to be no consumer spending yet target in a very challenging environment. Walnut, Walmart, prices are high. Pressure is on consumers. And also credit card debt starting to hit. So it's likely that we're going to feel a recession, possibly rolling in. Within that, you guys also had a tweet in here's some food for thought on the S&P, what's likely a major downside over the next 12. And then you gave kind of a potential chart analysis of that channel that could be dropping into it. When you look at the S&P and a lot of what's happening with consumer spending right now, what do you feel like the S&P is real case scenario could play out through this early summer months right now? Yeah, I think through the early summer months, my guess is we will retest those October lows. But I think again, you know, the recession that everyone's talking about will eventually hit by my guess is likely in the second half. So kind of late summer fall, maybe into the kind of November December period. And so I think that the markets are going to be kind of on the cusp of wondering what's the fed going to do, right? Because the positive of a recession is the fed stops hiking and maybe cuts, but the negative of a recession is lower earnings for stocks and maybe a troublesome recession that we can't get out of very easily unless the fed comes to the rescue. So it's going to be one of those guessing games, I think, over the next three to four months. And then I do think that ultimately it becomes a very bearish scenario for the overall equity markets. And really, to be honest, all risk assets. Yeah, I was looking at this tweet from the Walter Bloomberg. Funny how he put that in there. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says anyone running a business has to be prepared for a bumpy 12 to 18. This came from CNBC.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"walter bloomberg" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"The Emirates I met a screening in Dubai United we stand our message is clear prepare for three rate hikes There's a risk of 5 layer brain art Here my words We will get control of inflation It's my Shakespearean phrase I love it The clock Those people in the fed Parker Evans brain art Waller all 19 a verbal assault on our senses of what is the next rate hiking cycle and technology really didn't like a diner went by two and a half percent Yes You're talking about a trashing of tech Underperforming the S&P 500 How will the earnings season be delivered in a hiking cycle Do you want to pay up and look large for less earnings and tech than you do perhaps in value Bernstein warned they're not going to be awful They're just going to be less exceptional And this is where you test the 100 day moving average So it's going to be a battle royal between value and growth How much of this narrative in terms of three hikes four heights 5 X is already in the dollar The proposition is this By the way bank of Korea hikes rates There's a story that the bank of Japan could go quicker on rates than origin anticipated before they hit the 2% double That's adjusting the value of yen That's of justing the value of the Korean War But we're done for four days in a row $5 doesn't even see if private dollar 5 hikes on the table doesn't save private dollar What is that about The dollar has peaked according to Brandi wire K two asset management George barris was with me just a while ago Buy everything The burs are finding their voice But it comes down to whether you think is the intellectual long end of the bond market rather than the fast and for your short end of the bond market that matters It's burr flatteners They're pervasive everywhere Jewels will take you through the rest of the book to the ten year end to the curve here Yesterday I was banging on short position Haven't seen so short since 2017 But is it that the long end believes Leo brainer We will control inflation And therefore the propensity to explode to two and a half percent is perhaps more nuanced An auction of $22 billion worth of paper at the longer end came in last night was no discount And the foreign buyers if you hedge yourself you can get 1% 1% that's a heck of a return Juliet Sally puts context in Singapore Cheers Hey Matt Yeah let's look at the 5 year yield in Japan because you mentioned there that Reuters report that perhaps the BOJ would move to hike rates before we get inflation at its key 2% rate I should say target rate You've actually got the yield there at its highest since the BOJ introduced its negative interest rate policy in 2016 We've also got that stronger yen And of course the flow on effect of the sell off in tech players weighing through into Asia and as you can see a lot of the heavy selling coming through in Japanese equities not helped either by the fact that Tokyo has raised its COVID alert to the highest or the second highest of four levels as we continue to see virus cases surge So the virus story not going away either Let's flip the board though because when it comes to the B okay they decided that inflation was more cave rather than the risks of a Macron remember we're talking yesterday that Bloomberg economics had thought perhaps this rate hike that was widely anticipated would be pushed out to February until we saw more of the impact on the overall economy but the bank of Korea really just moving ahead again to really try and reign in inflation We've heard from be okay governor Lee to saying that the latest policy rate of 1.25% back to where we were before the pandemic is accommodative and that even though you've got the fed moving quicker towards mobilization careers case could be different so it may not be as adversely impacted as some of the other a.m.'s menace Yes Jews will debate what a goalie locks taper looks like for the next 6 months Juliet sadly they're in Singapore with the language from the bank of Korea And back to the fed the fed governor their brain on says she's open to raising rates as early as March to ensure that they generation high price pressures that brought under control we're hearing from working families around the country about inflation Working people around the country are concerned about how far their paychecks will go But inflation is too high Inflation is a monetary phenomenon and we have tools But we do have a powerful tool a set of tools They're very effective We will use them to bring inflation back down to bring inflation down Getting inflation back down to 2% while sustaining a recovery that includes everyone This is our most important task Let's bring our chief Asia economics correspondent and the car in the fed really added force isn't it On the rate hiking message it's come to the church of la brainard and Powell isn't it And we're all on the one hymn sheet It's an interesting as well Miss brainard explicitly highlighted march as a possible window to hike because she said as soon as I finished her asset purchases which is the middle of March they will be clear for liftoff and the other interesting thing listening to her comments was her focus on how working families are suffering from foster inflation So it's really through now a fed level in terms of what's happening on the ground and I think to your point given the columns by Christopher Walter Bloomberg television earlier miss Brenner and her testimony German pilot earlier in the week along with the others I mean there's no ambiguity at all when it comes to the fed They are going to live interest rates It's just a question of when and by how much and feds water even made the point that they could go as far as 5 If needed though he tempered it obviously that it all depends on the inflation story too I think it's interesting that we just have all forgotten.