Join me today for Episode 997 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- MSTR's $1.75 Billion in Notes Oversubscribed, Now is $3 Billion
- GENSLER'S GONE
- Polymarket Blocks the Frenchies
- Charles Schwab on Deck
- Ripple, Circle Want Crypto Council Seats
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://primal.net/e/note1zxcw70w8mffy0rrx5q06a2fkdrrx54hg6r663aaxy3cjgg6fj35qa7jvne
https://cointelegraph.com/news/microstrategy-completes-3-billion-raise-to-purchase-more-bitcoin
https://cointelegraph.com/news/mara-holdings-1b-convertible-notes-bitcoin-acquisition
https://cointelegraph.com/news/gary-gensler-resign-sec-crypto-scrutiny
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/11/22/polymarket-blocks-french-users-amid-gambling-inquiry/
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
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https://decrypt.co/292957/charles-schwab-mulls-crypto-trading-incoming-ceo-feels-silly-for-not-buying-in
https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-industry-jockeys-seats-trumps-promised-council-2024-11-21/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/primal-v2-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/coin-centers-post-election-policy-outlook-positive-for-securities-banking-uncertain-on-surveillance-issues/
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[00:00:00]
David Bennett:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems.
[00:00:44] Unknown:
So there's a property? Yep. Physical property. Multifamily. Right? The multifamily 63 units. The multifamily property. The sponsor, the effectively the owner of that property Yep. Needs a loan. That's right. Okay. They come to you. That's right. Okay. You say, we'll provide you the loan in the form of A loan. A a classic loan. That's right. Okay. So you're gonna give them cash. That's right. Term financing. Term financing for and and how long is the loan? Just 10 years. 10 10 year loan. Okay. That's right. At above market rate or below or what's that? Market rate interest rate. I'm just trying to slow the whole thing. Okay. Now let's introduce the Bitcoin piece into it. That's right. So no. No. Explain how the Bitcoin piece And why? So the loan has been provided. The use of proceeds is to pay off the existing
[00:01:28] Unknown:
financing. So Use of the proceeds Of the loan. Of the loan. Is to retire the existing mortgage. Right. So it's an old old mortgage. Go on. They're gonna pay the old mortgage off. Been paid off. Okay. Now they have a little bit extra money to make some improvements in the property. Right. So a little bit extra cash. So your the the amount of money you've lent pays off the old loan. That's right. It's also as you have a little bit of extra to to fix the property, fix that up. Yep. And then with the remainder, which is a little bit fewer a little extra, that's right. Return. And that instead of cash out Uh-huh. Bitcoin in, and we use it to purchase some Bitcoin and add it to the collateral package of the loan. So now our loan is supported by both the traditional asset, the 63 unit apartment building Right. And the Bitcoin. Okay. You the loan was maybe $2,000,000 more, so that's how you get the Exactly. Bitcoin out. Exactly. Right. So it's On the assumption that the Bitcoin's gonna rise faster, and that will become an asset that Over the life of the loan, for sure. So we think on the downside, this provides us with much better protection compared to a traditional lender because a traditional lender, if something goes wrong, they have to recover against that particular building, which is idiosyncratic risk. Something might happen with the maintenance or what have also requires
[00:02:41] Unknown:
conviction on your end that Bitcoin is not a volatile asset asset Over time. Over time. Over time. And that is either going to go up or at least stay where it is. Well, that's by by fusing the Bitcoin with credit
[00:02:56] Unknown:
and by fusing it with traditionally financeable assets, it gives us the luxury of expressing that medium term view on Bitcoin, and that's what's key. It's volatile in the short run. You know, I mean, minute by minute today, who knows? It could cross a 100,000. That would be exciting. Long's the loan? 10 years. 10 years. And the minimum hold period for the Bitcoin is 4 years. So what we say to the borrower is we say, look. You can repay the loan at any time for any reason with no penalty, which is a really valuable feature compared to a traditional loan. Yeah. That's like a a home mortgage then. Like a home mortgage almost. That's very unusual for commercial financing. But what we do say is that to the extent that the loan is repaid at year 4 or earlier, the minimum will release the property. But the minimum length of time that the Bitcoin has to stay in escrow is 4 years. It is 9:35
[00:03:43] David Bennett:
AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 22nd day of November 2024. This is episode 997 of Bitcoin, and only 2 more episodes to go before we hit the big one thousand. Before anything, I need to apologize for not bringing you a show yesterday. I went to go work out and, well, everything got kinda crappy. Not crappy, but everything got, like, weird weird after that. And so I was by the time that I got my ass sat down, I started getting stove up because I hadn't worked out in a while. And I'm like, wow. This is, kind of a slow news day, for obvious you know, obviously, it was kinda slow.
Unless you're looking at world events, I'll touch on at least one thing here in in the world events here in a second. But first, who are we listening to just now? Well, that was Joe Kernan's crew on CNBC talking with a guy, and I don't know his name. Right? So let's be very upfront about this particular piece. I don't know who this guy is. I have no idea what company he is from. Okay? So let's get that shit right out of the gates. However, assuming the fact that he was on CNBC, I can only presume that he has some kind of, you know, credentials and might actually know what he's talking about, is above board, does work for a company that does make loans. And now it appears that whoever this is is, at least in this particular instance, making a cash loan.
Okay? A flat out cash loan to pay off the mortgage of a 63 apartment or 63 unit multiple family dwelling building. And that would be like an apartment building. Okay. So there's a loan on the 63 unit apartment building. The owners want to take out another loan to extinguish the previous loan, do some fix up around the property. Maybe they wanna make it to where when they increase rent on people, which is maybe what's going to happen, that they say, well, we look look at all the improvements we've done. Of course, you're going to pay more rent. And I don't know if that's if that's what's going on here or not. But they are clearly going to be able to pay off the loan, make improvements to the property, and the loan is going to be securitized by bitcoin as well as the property itself, which is, when you think about it, sort of a kind of a classic loan. Whenever you buy a house you basically put up a down payment.
And if it's enough of a down payment, the rest of the loan is securitized by the property itself. So if you stop making mortgage payments, they take the house, and then they sell it on the open market hoping that they'll be able to cover all their loan costs, make a little bit of money on the side, whatever. Right? But this loan is different. This loan uses Bitcoin as the primary securitization asset and then is cope well, now I don't wanna use the word commingled, but is added to the property also as securitization. And this leads me to think of this scenario as being a little bit of a synthesis of what we've seen in the past and this new frontier that we find ourselves in, this one that includes this asset called Bitcoin.
There's really not been in and I'm not in business finance. Okay. So I don't know what kind of instrumentation that there usually is. But generally speaking, you know, we all a lot of us have experience buying a house, getting, you know, getting a mortgage and all that kind of stuff, or possibly even buying, like, investment condominiums or possibly even, you know, partial partner in an apartment building or something like that. Generally speaking, you don't see synthesized loans like this where the securitization is on multiple fronts.
Right? So this kind of is a a brand in a way, is a brand new thing. It's just that it's only brand new because it's bringing in Bitcoin. So I expect to see a lot more of this. And what's good is that the securitization portion, the Bitcoin portion, has to be held on the books. It it cannot be sold. It cannot be liquefied by either party for any reason for 4 years. This is they've also not only have they introduced Bitcoin into the mix, they've also introduced part of the Bitcoin ethos into the mix, the ethics behind Bitcoin, the the reason it was here in the first place, the reason we think it is the asset that we think it is. And like I said, I expect to see quite a bit more of this. Okay.
That said, let's look at what's going on with my bid acts. Woo hoo. Yes. I got my me and my son set up the bid acts yesterday. It was a little bit more convoluted than I wanted it to be, but still I got it up and running inside of 15 minutes. I had to look at a couple of different videos. The bid acts itself comes with a little card that comes inside and it's got a QR code on it and it that will send you right to the setup video. The problem is the new axe OS which is the operating system that runs this entire package has been tweaked just a little bit from what the video was suggesting because the first thing that you have to do is get your computer over wifi to connect to the bit axe, the bit axe is Wi Fi enabled. You don't have it it doesn't take an what what are those? A cat 5 cable. You don't have to plug it into a LAN. If you've got Wi Fi, then you can just put the bit axe anywhere that it gets signal from your Wi Fi and you are you are good to go.
Now that said I had to connect either I can either connect my phone like my iPhone, I could connect an Android phone to it because you have to do a particular step first. You communicate with the Bittax over Wi Fi so that you can change two parameters of the Wi Fi. You need to point it to your home or business Wi Fi connection because otherwise it's just going to sit there and spin. And I was, like, looking at my you know, looking at it going, oh, you're not even hashing. You have 0 hash rate. What the hell is going on? And this is this step is how you basically say you need to look at the home Wi Fi. And once you give it the SSID or essentially the name of your your home Wi Fi and the password to your Wi Fi, yes, you're going to have to put that in. Otherwise, it it can't access Wi Fi every time it boots up.
It starts hashing. Now mine, right now, is hashing roughly at 1.08 terahashes per second. It is expected to hash at 1.07 terahashes per second. It has an efficiency right now of 17.78 joules per terahash. It has found no blocks. And, yes, I am actually, at this point, connected to let me go over here to settings. I'm connected to stratum. Okay? So the public hyphen pool. Io is the pool that I am helping to mine in, and I need to learn a lot more about what's going on here because I can change things. So it took me 15 minutes to set it up. It was only mildly confusing at first, but, you know, with a modicum of just, like, you know, looking at different videos and whatnot, you'll find out where it is that you need to go change the settings to get it to talk to your Wi Fi and once you do that it just starts hashing and then starts giving you metrics back. So again if you want to have a reason to get into mining but you don't want to buy like old s9s and have a bunch like a jet engine running in your house consider the bit axe and I got mine from solo satoshi so thank you guys over there at Solo Satoshi.
You shipped it quick. It came exactly as expected. I love it. It's sitting right here next to me and it's going to be with me through the rest of the show and the rest of my life. Unless it, you know, catches on fire or something like that. Alright. We've got a rumor. Now, understand this is a rumor. Maduro does not know if he can verify the source of what he's saying here, But that's okay. As long as we all understand that this is just a rumor and may not be true, then I think we're okay. Because Madaroo put out this post that says, this just happened.
Warren Buffett just yoloed into $1,000,000,000 worth of MicroStrategy bonds. Who would have thought the Oracle of Omaha would seek Bitcoin exposure this way? This is just the start. And let's not forget, even the most conservative players like insurance companies are jumping onto this bandwagon. Fear of missing out or FOMO is real from Invest Answers. Okay. So looks like he got this from in something called Invest Answers. I've asked Madaroo directly if he has, like, a link to any kind of press release about this or anything. He even he's saying, I I don't know. I he's like, it may be bullshit, but it is like, at least this Invest Answers is at least saying this. Again, rumor.
Rumor. But if it's true, think about this. I said bonds, not stock. If Warren Buffett put a $1,000,000,000 of, purchasing power of from Berkshire Hathaway into buying MicroStrategy stock, then that's one kind of story. But if this rumor is true, he didn't. He put it into the bond issuance, and I'm going to get to the bond issuance here in a second. He bought the bonds. This would actually be what more along the lines of what I would expect somebody like Warren Buffett to actually do. And if it's true, okay, this the the implication is that one of the most savvy investors over the past 5 decades, something like that because we understand, Warren Buffett did not become a millionaire or well, I think it was I don't I think he did not become a millionaire or at least sizable wealth in the, you know, multiple 1,000,000 of dollars, not 1,000,000,000, 1,000,000 of dollars until he was after he was 50 years old or something like that, maybe 45.
He didn't start do I mean, he started doing this when he was, like, 20, 30 years old, but he really didn't start hitting pay dirt until he was in his fifties. Alright? So just just keep that shit in mind. In either event, no matter what you think about Warren Buffett, he's clearly he clearly knows what he's doing. He's clearly been successful over the past few decades. You can't argue with that. You may hate the fact that he hangs out with Bill Gates and eats ice cream alongside of the likes of Joe Biden and those idiots, but still, you can't deny the fact that the man knows what he's doing.
If it's true that Warren Buffett bought MicroStrategy bonds, the the convertible senior notes, then it is a complete affirmation of what Michael Sailor's been telling people to do. It means that Warren Buffett is like, yep. This this is this is effective. This makes sense. I'm going to do this. Again, please take it with a grain of salt because we do not know at this point if it's actually true or not. But what we do know is that I was right. Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph affirms my suspicion as being correct because MicroStrategy completed the $3,000,000,000 raise to buy more Bitcoin as MicroStrategy stock falls 25%.
We'll get into that. MicroStrategy has completed a $3,000,000,000 offering of convertible senior notes due December 20 29 with plans to use a portion or all of the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin. The business intelligence firm announced the completion of its shares, retraced more than 25% on November 21st. Google Finance data shows the convertible senior notes came at a 55% premium with an implied strike price of MicroStrategy stock at $672 per share. Holy smokes. I'm just saying, man. Just saying. Like, something shiny caught my attention. Okay. 55% premium.
That's a hell of a premium. I mean, I'm not did Grayscale ever hit that kind of premium back in the heyday? I I kinda don't think it did. But what this means, the 0% senior convertible note means that it will not pay regular interest to bondholders. These convertibles are sold at a discount and will instead mature to face value if they are not converted prior to the maturity date. They're also senior to common stock in the sense that holders have priority in the event of any bankruptcies or liquidations. MicroStrategy could buy an additional 30,600 Bitcoin if it were to spend the entire $3,000,000,000 on the cryptocurrency. Microstrad or the $3,000,000,000 offering follows MicroStrategy's November 18th announcement to raise 1,750,000,000 at 0% interest, which was then increased to 2,600,000,000 on November 20th. And I told you, dear listener, that before they even increased to $2,600,000,000 that this was going to go to exactly $3,000,000,000.
Ask me how I know. So I was right. Yes. I'm gonna take my victory lap, drink a little bit of coffee, and then we're gonna go right in here to Mara Holdings. Alright. So Josh O'Sullivan from coin also from Cointelegraph says that Mara Holdings has raised $1,000,000,000 successfully raised $1,000,000,000, past tense. This is done for Bitcoin acquisition as well as debt buyback. Mara Holdings, a cryptocurrency mining and blockchain com technology company, has completed a $1,000,000,000 issuance of 0 coupon convertible senior notes due March 1, 2030.
The company plans to use most of the proceeds to acquire Bitcoin. The notes issued to institutional investors under rule 14 4 a of the Securities Act of 1933 includes a conversion price significantly higher than Mara's recent stock value. The notes can be redeemed under favorable conditions beginning in 2028. So this is the play. You sell that. You you raise the cash. You use it to buy bitcoin. Holding bitcoin on your balance sheet increases your stock price. And then when it's time to convert the notes the holder generally speaking, is going to see be able to get into any of these companies at a much lower price than what they're expecting to see as the stock rises in its own price.
So both in both events, MicroStrategy is looking at a $625 strike price after all this is said and done. Mara isn't saying what they're they're they don't say what they expect to happen to their stock price other than that it's going to go up. So this is sort of boiling the ocean down into what the hell is MicroStrategy done. This is the playbook. You sell that. People loan you money. You use that loaned money from other people that you've interest you've issued a debt instrument against to buy bitcoin and hold it on your balance sheet, it causes your stock price to rise.
The bondholders that lent you the money in the first place are not only made whole, they're made happy. It's not rocket science. Anyway, the development follows a similar approach to MicroStrategy which has recently increased its note sales to 2,600,000,000 and now we know it's now 3,000,000,000 for Bitcoin purchases. So it's everybody's dancing on the bandwagon. Everybody's getting lifted up onto the bandwagon. Everybody taking a trip on the bandwagon except for Gary Gensler, who has announced this morning that he will be leaving the SEC, but his replacement may face scrutiny. We don't know. Christopher O'Rourke from Cointelegraph. Please tell us more. On November 22nd, US SEC commissioner chair or commission chair Gary Gensler announced that he will step down from his position on January 20th.
He is widely regarded as one of the most anti crypto SEC chairs in history, and crypto users are celebrating his departure on Twitter. However, the new pick for sec chair will face scrutiny from the US senate which must confirm any nominee to the sec. The SEC announced Gensler's departure in a press release. During his term in office, the SEC filed lawsuits against several popular web three protocols and exchanges including Coinbase, Uniswap, Metamask developer, consensus, blockchain video streaming platform library, and others. The lawsuits have been criticized by many crypto users and investors.
One of president-elect Donald Trump's promises during the campaign was to fire Gary Gensler on his first day in office. However, attempting to fire him could have led to a court battle since members of regulatory agencies can only be removed for cause. Gensler's resignation means that this battle will not take place. Let's see. They're gonna talk about people bitching about it on Twitter. That's not worth our while. But Trump has not yet announced who he will pick to replace Gensler, but speculation has centered around a few possibilities. A Reuters report suggested CFTC or the Commodities and Futures Exchange Commission sorry. The Commodities and Futures Exchange Commission chair, Summer Mersinger, she has argued that the SEC should make rules for crypto protocols instead of filing lawsuits against them. Yeah. Probably a good idea. Predictions.
Platform Kashi is predicting a 33% chance of former Binance US CEO Brian Brooks being given a job and a 32% chance that it will go to Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner. The 2 candidates are receiving the most bets out of any on the platform. And as we know, maybe we should not scoff at what's going on over there on, Kashi and whatever that other other, degen gambling side is. But former CFTC chair Chris Giancarlo has denied that he will accept the position, stating that he has already cleaned up the mess, that Gensler left the last time Gensler was in office, and he doesn't wanna do it again. Wow, man. Oh, that's not nice. Wow. Who anyway, whoever Trump nominates, they may face intense scrutiny from the United States Senate, which must confirm all commission members.
Trump has stated that he will attempt to bypass some confirmations through recess appointments. However, this would require congress to vote to adjourn, which they may not be willing to do except for noncontroversial nominees. A report from Financial Times suggested that several congress members from Trump's own party are deeply skeptical of at least some of his picks, including those of attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz, who withdrew yesterday, and health and human services secretary nominee, Robert f Kennedy Junior. If Trump chooses a nominee for the position that is seen as weak at enforcing securities laws against crypto companies, they may fail to be confirmed by the senate, leading to a tougher candidate being chosen instead.
But onto the lawsuits. Even if a strongly pro crypto nominee gets confirmed, it won't necessarily lead to the lawsuits against Coinbase, Uniswap, consensus, and others being dropped right away. The new chair only represents 1 vote on the commission and commission members may be reluctant may be reluctant to drop lawsuits that are already ongoing as doing so might make the commission look like it's being political. So if anybody's thinking that just because Gary Gensler is going away, that the lawsuits are going away, you might wanna think again, oh, it's Polymarket. That's the other degen gambling site that I could not remember the name of, but I've been reminded by this one written by Danny Nelson out of CoinDesk.
Polymarket has now blocked French traders amid a gambling inquire inquiry. The Polymarket blocked French traders on Friday, weeks after reports that the country's government was investigating the prediction market's juggernaut for gambling law compliance. The ban was not reflected in Polymarket's terms of service at press time, but on Friday a reporter using a vpn attempted to access the website from a French server and ran into a digital blockade and it says you appear to be located in the united states France, or other restricted jurisdiction.
Trading is not available to US persons, persons located in the United States, France, or persons located in restricted jurisdictions. Use of measures to circumvent or attempt to circumvent these restrictions is strictly prohibited. See terms of use. So it looks like Poly Market made good on their plan to block anybody who wanted to do degen gambling out of France. Let's run the numbers. Oil. It makes the world run, and it is up today. West Texas Intermediate is up one point 4% to $71.9. Brent Norsey also up 1.12%. But natural gas doing exactly what I expect, down 6 a half percent.
Wow. Gasoline is up a half point to $2.7 a gallon. This is because of the ICBM or supposed ICBM that Russia launched back in the direction of Ukraine. I saw video of something falling out of the sky at night on a city, and people are saying that this was this medium range, hypersonic, intercontinental ballistic missile, non nuclear tipped. So whatever payload it was carrying was non nuclear. I don't know if this actually occurred. Lots of people are saying it's happened. Some people are saying that it was not in fact an ICBM. I don't care because whatever I saw falling on this city, if it was indeed a city in Ukraine and it was indeed from this Russian, quote, unquote, hypersonic missile, you don't wanna have nothing to do with this thing. But what I found odd was the the footage that I'm looking at was taken at night, and things were falling directly down, not at an not at very much of an angle, but, like, just right through the cloud layer directly on top of buildings in in the middle, you know, in the middle of the city. And this is a long range view, by the way, is what I'm looking at. So I'm seeing a great expansive city, not like we're not at the block level looking at something pound a building. So we're seeing this from kinda far away. We can still see streets and city lights and, you know, buildings and stuff like that, but it's like a lot of the city is in the view.
And I'm seeing these things fall from the sky at clearly I mean, they are clearly going faster than just something, you know, like a like a regular old missile. These things are pounding into the ground, but I'm not seeing that much of an explosion behind these I think it was, like, 5 or 6 sets of stuff falling out of the sky. It would go, that kind of thing. So it wasn't just all one big barrage. It was just, like like, 5 or 6, I guess, warheads fell out of the sky and then 5 or 6 more and then 5 or 6 more. But they were, like, hauling ass, man. I mean, hauling ass.
Now whoever was under this, whether or not there was a much of a explosive payload in these warheads, wouldn't have mattered to them, man, because they got vaporized just by the velocity and the weight of whatever it was that fell on their ass. But I wasn't seeing, like, small little you know, like I don't wanna say mushroom cloud because, again, this was the whatever fell out of the sky was non nuclear. Right? But you I would have expected to see something bigger than just, like, a flash of light on the ground. Because that's what I saw. In either event, it's freaking people out as well it should.
I mean, I don't know what people expected, that I I guess people really thought that Russia's capacity to wage war was completely crushed by Ukraine. I don't know how people came to that conclusion. I mean, you know, I've been around long enough to know that you don't you don't make that assumption about somebody like Russia. You just don't. I mean, you you can you can think whatever it is that you were taught to think by MSNBC and how weak Russia is. Russia ain't weak, guys. They ain't. In in fact, it like, I think I was right again. I think Putin's been in, you know, harbor you know, allowing himself to be restrained, you know, not just go full bore. But this shit, if he's got more of these things and he puts a more of a more of a warhead on these things, you don't wanna be nowhere around Ukraine.
So for all those people that are that that have actually thought that Ukraine was gonna win this thing, you gotta stop thinking that way. This is this is a terrible state of affairs for everybody involved. The whole world should be just like stop this. Stop this right now. Figure it out. Stop it. And and you don't stop it by sending 6 ATACMS into Russian territory. You don't that's that's not stopping it. That's helping to escalate it. And maybe this explains the price of gold, which is up 1 and a quarter percent to $2708.40. Silver is up 1.3. Platinum is up a half. Copper is down 3 quarters of a point, and palladium is down 2 a third.
I got lumber. It's down a 3rd, but the biggest loser today is wheat. Point 79% to the downside. Chocolate is up almost 4 full points. Live cattle is up a quarter. Lean hogs are up almost a point. Feeder cattle up over a third. The Dow is up 3 quarters of a point. S and P is up a 3rd. NASDAQ is up point 13%, and the S and P Mini is up 1.4. What's Bitcoin doing? Well, it had a massive dip, and then it came right back up, and then it started drifting back down. We were over $99,000. And according to Clark Moody Bitcoin, we're at 99,150. So it looks like my little, m 5 stack that has the Bitcoin price on it hasn't updated yet. But we're at a $1,960,000,000,000 market cap.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're just shy of $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap, which not terribly long ago was the entire was the market cap of the entirety of all crypto. And it looks like we're taking the whole the whole thing. And we can get 36.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,785,783.61 of. And average fees per block are manageable. Point 11 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are a 113 blocks carrying 305,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of right now, they're bad. 36 Satoshis per vbyte. Low priority, gonna get you in at 29. I expect that that will probably dive down after a while.
787.5 xahashes per second is the strength of the security model of Bitcoin at this time. Value inversion. As we do get into our value for value part of the show, the definition of value inversion. Information isn't scarce. It can be copied at 0 marginal cost and, consequently, selling digital things on a per item basis is unnatural and counterproductive. V for v flips the value proposition on its head. You are free to consume the content, but you're also free to give value back after the fact if you so choose. And I do hope you so choose to give value back to the Bitcoin and podcast and from Microsoft strategy.
Oh, wait. Hold on. Pardon the interruption there. That was my wife calling me. And as you know, if my wife calls, you gotta wait. Okay. So from Microsoft strategy, yesterday's oh, actually, the day before yesterday's Bitcoin and episode, I got Graham with a 1,000 sats says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies to play with 420 says, thank you, sir. No, thank you. And Bitcoin Sandy breaks it with 500 sets, says, great chat as always. Bag of sets 21 with 420 says, thanks. You're welcome, bro. Wartime with 333 says, fountain has been doubling up some of the comments for some reason, LOL. Yes.
Yeah. I'm I'm starting to see that too. We we have we're in a new world. Let's give the developers of this new world some latitude. We've all been used to shit coming out of the box working damn near perfectly. Right? I think that that's doing ourselves and the developers in this new frontier that we find ourselves in a disservice. Let's give them all a break and just deal with it for right now. And wartime, I know you're not bitching about it, but other people are. Anyway, Pies to play with another 100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. At b 48, and I mean this a lot of numbers here. He gives me a 100 sat, says great show. I appreciate that, brother.
He also comes back and says great show, but this time, he just did it on Noster, so there was no associated Satoshis with that. Again, time, talent, and treasure, ladies and gentlemen. If you think that what I do here gives you some value, lets you know what the hell's going on with Bitcoin and the landscape on a daily basis, well, excluding yesterday, then if you find it value valuable, then give me some value back. You don't have to. It's all up to you. That's the model of value for value, and that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. A Shanghai court has ruled that crypto ownership is legal under Chinese law amid the Bitcoin price surge.
This is out of it looks like it's out of my news. I'm actually reading it from a link from archive.ph because they were stupid enough not to allow me to pay them 25¢ to read it with a fucking lightning invoice. Come on, guys. Dude, really? Whatever. As long as you're gonna be dumb, then I'm taking your shit. I'm sorry. If you're not going to give me the ability to pay in the currency that I wanna pay in, in the method that I wanna pay, then I'm going to take the article and I'm gonna go over to archive.ph and I'm gonna put it there.
I still have yet to see a single mainstream outlet say, you know, we should at least experiment with this lightning address as as a paywall. I I I find it offensive that these people aren't even trying, and they are all dying. All of these news outlets are dying. And television, man, they are flat ass on fire. But a Shanghai court has released an opinion stating that personal ownership of cryptocurrency is not against Chinese law, offering explicit legal clarity for crypto hodlers on the mainland amid a record setting Bitcoin price surge. Sun Xi, a judge at the Shanghai Songjiang People's Court, wrote in an article published on Shanghai High People's Court official WeChat account this week that it is not illegal for individuals to hold cryptocurrency even though Chinese business entities are not allowed to take part in cryptocurrency investments or token issuance at will, and at will is in quotes.
The comments were part of a case review for a recent lawsuit involving disputes between 2 companies about an initial coin offering, which is considered illicit financing in China. Beijing sees cryptocurrencies as a threat to financial stability, and commercial activity related to these assets remains banned on the mainland, which has put their legal standing in doubt. As a virtual commodity with the attributes of property, cryptocurrency ownership is not prohibited by Chinese law, Sun wrote. This does not extend to business activity, however, as it can disrupt economic and financial order or act as payment for illegal activity, according to the judge.
Quote, that is why laws and regulations always maintain high pressure crackdown on speculative activities in the cryptocurrency trading, Sun said in the opinion. Beijing first banned initial coin offerings and ordered the closure of crypto exchanges in 2017. Then, as if not to outdo themselves, they ramped up its crackdown in 2021 when it banned bitcoin mining and declared crypto related businesses illegal. So it looks like they've got at least one judge who's saying, well, you can have it. If you're a business, that's a problem. But if you're, like, just a regular old mainland and that's important to note.
Not a territory of China. A mainland Chinese citizen can legally own Bitcoin. So we'll have to see if that changes any of the direction of where China's been going over the past 5 years. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe they'll join us in this new frontier that we find ourselves in. Charles Schwab certainly is because they have mulled crypto trading. Incoming CEO now feels silly for not buying Bitcoin. Decrypt Sebastian Sinclair. Charles Schwab plans to enter the spot crypto market once US regulations provide clear pathways. Incoming CEO Rick Wurster said on Thursday.
Wurster emphasized the firm's readiness to expand its offerings to clients once regulatory conditions improve, he said during an interview, Quote, we will get into spot crypto with when the regulatory environment changes, Wurster said, who is set to take over as CEO in January. He added that the firm anticipates favorable changes under the incoming Donald Trump administration. Schwab, who is already active okay. That that's why I'm emphasizing they're that they're going to do spot trading because they've already been active in the crypto space via exchange traded funds and futures. They aim to bolster its offerings amid a renewed craze this year for digital assets.
The firm faces increasing competition from newer platforms like Robinhood Markets, which is basically gaining traction among retail investors. And crypto has become a focal point in the race to capture retail investor interest in general, driven by its volatility and growth potential. An October survey by the multinational financial services firm found nearly half half half of the respondents plan to invest in crypto via ETFs, oh god, over the coming year. God, for sakes. The ability to offer trading directly through its platform would seek to build on its cryptothematic ETF, which provides global exposure to companies that may benefit from the development or utilization of crypto and other digital asset products.
While the STCE, that's the cryptothematic ETF, does not invest directly in crypto, it does focus on businesses within the industry, including those engaged in mining, trading, and, blockchain technology applications. Yay. Yay. Do do do do do do do do. Pressure has been mounting on Wall Street to begin opening up the asset class from clients eager to capture upside amid shifting regulatory winds. Despite these tailwinds, however, Wurster has noted that he has not personally invested into crypto but acknowledged its appeal among investors. And here's the quote. Here's the takeaway. Quote, crypto has certainly caught many's attention, and they've made a lot of money doing it, he reportedly said, quote, I have not bought crypto, and now I feel silly.
Yeah. I'll bet you feel silly. Oh, well, you know, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve. So on to Reuters and Hannah Lang who's writing this one. Crypto industry jockeys for seats at Trump's promised crypto council. You're not gonna like these names guys. I certainly do not like these names but it's going to happen so we got to be prepared for it. A slew of crypto companies including Ripple, Kraken, and Circle are jostling for a seat on president-elect Donald Trump's promised crypto advisory council, seeking a say in his planned overhaul of US policy according to several digital asset industry executives. Oh, joy.
Coffee. Campaigning at a July Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Trump promised a new council as part of a crypto friendly administration. His transition team is discussing how the structure or how to structure and how to staff it and which company should be included. Several top US crypto companies are clamoring for seats at the table. Among them, venture firm Paradigm, said one source. While venture capital giant, Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm, a 16 z, is also expected to grab a spot. Oh, joy. Quote, it's being fleshed out. Yeah. Like, ghoulish flesh. But I anticipate the leading executives from America's Bitcoin and crypto firms to be represented, said David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, who arranged for Trump to speak at the July conference and has spoken with the president-elect about Bitcoin policy, quote, people are eager to advise and give input, yeah, probably to their shit coin. Anyway, a Kraken, spokesperson and a spokesperson for a 16 z declined to comment.
Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong recently met with Trump, said a source familiar with the matter confirming a Monday Wall Street Journal report, and it was unclear what they discussed. The source added that Coinbase was also interested in being on the council. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told The New York Times this month he wants to be on the council. The crypto council would likely be housed under the White House's National Economic Council, which coordinates and implements the president's economic policies or a separate White House apparatus.
2 of the people said it is expected to advise on digital asset policy, work with Congress on crypto legislation, establish Trump's promised Bitcoin reserve, and coordinate between agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodities Future Trading Commission, and the Treasury, they and other executives said. The council may also include enforcement representatives and former policymakers, one of the sources also said. Trump's transition team, which did not respond for a request for comment, is also discussing creating a crypto czar, t s a r.
The first czar we had in the United States, I can't remember. I think it was something Bennett. He was the drug czar. And when that term started be started to become bandied about at the level of presidential and, you know, of congressional circles, I started getting really sick to my stomach. Because I'm like, I don't know. Are we Russia now? I mean, because that's where the term came from. Are we Russia? Are are we the United States? I I I don't know, but we're apparently going to get a crypto czar. One added that the czar would likely lead the council. Trump's team is vetting candidates for that role.
Former CFTC chair Heath Tarbot, chief legal officer at Circle, and former Republican CFTC commissioner Brian Kendetz, head of policy for a 16 z, z crypto, have been advising the Trump transition team on crypto policy. As of now, excitement over a crypto friendly Trump administration has helped push Bitcoin to record highs. Yeah. No. Well, whatever. The industry is pushing for executive orders guaranteeing crypto companies access to banking services, an end to enforcement actions, and other changes. You don't necessarily need an executive order for that. Anyway, some consumer groups have warned that the crypto industry should not be able to write its own rules, and some of the sources said ethics considerations could slow personnel appointments. But others said it makes sense for industry experts to have a say in critical policy issues. Quote, it's absolutely the wise choice to put together a council of people who understand how both the industry ought to be regulated and how to situate the industry to be a strategic asset, said Nathan Macauley, CEO of crypto platform Anchorage Digital, who has urged the Trump team to reverse Biden's stance on crypto.
While presidential advisory councils are not new, there has never been one dedicated to cryptocurrencies, which did not exist until Bitcoin's launch in 2,009. Biden has multiple councils, including on science and technology, which was established via executive order in in the 1st month that he took office. I did not know that. Interesting. Kristen Smith, chief executive of crypto trade group, the Blockchain Association, said setting up the crypto council is something Trump could do very quickly. Yeah. Well, of course, he's probably going to do that very quickly, but these names these names are making me ill.
Ripple. Ripple. Just by itself. And I'm not happy about cracking at all, but Circle and especially the name Ripple being set for this is disturbing. It's very disturbing. I am not looking forward to it. So that's why we continue to have to build out not only Bitcoin infrastructure supporting of Bitcoin developers education, the whole ball of wax, man, we cannot stop. We absolutely cannot stop. And we also cannot stop making sure that we put pressure on all of these people. I mean, by flat out I don't know. Even just by replying to tweets, if you're on over on Twitter, making sure that anybody connected with this decision or these decision making excursions know that Ripple is all those people should absolutely not be considered at all for the position because they are an unregistered security.
They have engaged in the sale at the retail and institutional level of unregistered securities, I'm sorry. If you're a Ripple holder, you got hosed. They they you hold an unregistered security. It's ridiculous that they're even being considered. It's sad. But, thankfully, we do have developers in this space. This time, we're turning our attention to Noster. Primal version 2 has been released. There's a reads and explore tab. There's feed mark feed marketplace and advanced search. And if you didn't know, Primal is a free and open source Nostr client focused on seamless user experience. You can get it on Android, iOS, and the web. Quote, at long last, Primal 2 is here.
Our team has been working around the clock for many months to reach the milestone, announced Miljian, founder of CEO founder and CEO of Primal. I don't know if I pronounced his name right. I'm pretty sure I didn't. Primal now offers a much more comprehensive view of Nostra on its web and mobile apps with the following additions. A reads tab, an explorer tab, a feed marketplace, comprehensive advanced search functions, and multiple performance improvements. Quote, we've also launched Primal Premium. For the low, low price of $7 a month, you can get a Primal name and Nasser Tools for power users. We'll cover all this in much more detail in the coming days. In the meantime, we invite you to download Primal 2.0. Try it out and let us know how you like it, said the developer.
Alright. So I've been given 7 free months of being a, this whole primal premium so I don't have to pay $7 a month for 7 months so that I guess I can figure out if I like it or not. So I do have all these things on my browser. And I was checking out feeds. I'm gonna check it out even more, this whole this whole new setup. I'm not seeing a lot of okay. Lead back up. I didn't even know that this had occurred to my web browsing experience until I saw that they said, hey, we've released this stuff, blah blah blah. And all of a sudden, I look over my left hand bar, and I'm like, what the hell are feeds? Like, holy shit. I guess I got the update. I went over to feeds, and it it looks nice.
I can't say anything bad about it. It looks great. Primal's still functioning pretty much like it always has. I haven't explored all the rest of it, but I did explore feeds. And I gotta say, they've done a bang up job on releasing at least that part of primal 2 point o. So what are reads? Alright. So explore the latest native long form content via multiple feeds including noster reads, bitcoin reads, philosophy reads, news reads, and a variety of other custom feeds available on the feed marketplace. Explore is a new tab and you can explore custom feeds profiles and people, zap events, media posts, and hashtag related topics. There's the feed marketplace where you can explore a variety of custom and paid data vending machines or dvms that deliver focused notes on demand.
Advanced search is a new highly customizable search option including specific words, event type, time, scope, and much more. Dude, the time the time thing, like, hey, I need you to look for yes you know, something that occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday that I know I saw. This is, like, reminds me of Twitter advanced search which I used to rely on heavily to be able to find something that I know, like, I don't know, like, Peter Schiff said, like, 3 days ago. So I have not really messed around with the advanced search feature. But I guarantee you I'm going to be doing that because searching Nostr right now really sucks. So I'm just gonna put that out there. Primal premium is a $7 a month paid service for supporters, allowing them to obtain premium services such as a custom primal name and other nostril nostril tools for power users.
I'm sure that you can pay that in satoshis. I under like, I had a allergic reaction to the fact that they're saying $7 a month. Why can't they just put up satoshis, per month? Well, because wow. You're like, at what you know, what are you purchasing over what month at what time given the Bitcoin price in USD? I don't blame them for actually using fiat currency to denominate the actual monthly cost. But I'm pretty sure you can pay for it in Satoshis. If not, then shame on them, but I I doubt that very seriously. There are, performance improvements that make the whole thing better, faster, harder, and stronger. And that's about all they say about that. So, if you want to go check out primal 2.0, go to, you know, go to, well, was it primal, let's see, primal.net, and make sure you you you look to see if it says update.
Chances are good if if you don't have the reads, like, over here on the left hand side, it's I've got home and then right under it used to be Explorer, but now it's reads. So r e a d s. If you don't see reads, then refresh your browser and see if it doesn't ingest the the update. And then there's a couple of other things here. Let's see where this I'm not seeing any difference in the search function. I'm not seeing something like no. I don't know what how to get to this, quote unquote, search function. Maybe it's under explore. Nope.
No. Oh. Oh, advanced search. Okay. Under explore, there it is. Okay. Under explore, which is right under reeds in the left hand side of the of the primal bar, there is explore. And under explore, you will see at the right hand side up at the top something that says blue sir or, blue search. My god. Advanced search. It's a link. And you click that, and it goes to advanced search. And you have the ability to include certain words. At the same time, you can also exclude other words. You can search kinds, and there's notes, reads, note replies, reads comments, images, video, and audio. So that will help if you're trying to search. Hey, I knew I know this was a reply to somebody. I can't remember who, but it definitely included this one word, blah blah blah.
And you can also have the search by who posted it. You can search you can also search replying to, and you can also search who zapped something. So if you know a note was zapped by, like, let's say, Odell, and you know a couple of the words so you can include the those couple of words. You know it was a, you know it was a kind of note or rather, you know it was a kind of note reply, and you know it was posted by, like, Cordelorian, and you know it was posted or it was zapped by Odell, then you'll probably get to the exact thing that you want. Because you can also use time posted. And you could the selections are today, this week, this month, this year, and custom. If I go to custom, I can select the date range, which is very nice, although that didn't really work.
Let's see. Custom. Select a date range. And if I go to that, all I get is search results of something, and I've got pornography right in my face. Oh, my god. Holy shit. So, guys, I think you're gonna have to select work on the select the date range function here in primal version 2. But there's a global scope. There's, you can, narrow the scope to my follows or my network or my follows interactions or my network interactions or my notifications or somebody who doesn't follow you at all or somebody that you don't follow, rather. And then there's an order, content score, number of replies, sat zaps, number of interactions.
And that's ordering, like, how many results you get. You can order them by the time that they occurred. I don't know what content scope actually means. Anyway, there's and there's filters. So you can, put filters on this whole thing. Looks pretty good to me, except, again, the time frame, Miljan, you might you might just consider fixing that select date range because it doesn't actually go to a place where I can put in a date range. I just I just get some chick who's completely naked. Anyway, Coin Center's post election policy outlook, positive for securities and banking. Uncertain, however, on surveillance issues. This is going to finish us off for today.
No bsbitcoin.com has it. Coin Center anticipates good policy in areas of securities and banking regulation, but the outlook is way less certain in the anti money laundering, tax reporting, and sanctions areas. Let's see what they've got to say about it. In its latest analysis of the changing cryptocurrency policy landscape, Coin Center, a nonprofit focused on Bitcoin and digital asset policy issues, said it expects positive developments in policies concerning investor protection. However, areas concerning surveillance issues might remain more challenging. Quote, coin center will remain focused on protecting the rights of developers who are working on software for self custody and privacy as well as the rights of ordinary Americans who want to use those tools.
The research and advocacy group stressed that it aims for good policy on all dimensions, but its core mission remains protecting the rights of developers and users of decentralized peer to peer protocols. Coin Center's mission is focused on decentralized infrastructure developers' rights to publish code, which is a First Amendment issue, and on stopping unwarranted surveillance obligations, which is a 4th Amendment issue. And that 4th quadrant box is the overlapping battleground for both topics. And, of course, they're talking about this this little table here. That basically is sort of like they're a small outline of what it is that they wanna do.
Like, for instance, centralized businesses under the auspices of investor protection, you've got 2 things. You've got agencies and congress. And under agencies, it it says SEC enforcement actions against custodial exchanges and CFTC actions. And then under congress, it says market structure bills, like the fit 21 and payment stablecoin legislation, like the payment stablecoins act. Essentially, basically, they're they're still they're just kinda breaking it down saying, look, man, we're really concerned with these first amendment issues, these 4th amendment issues, and here's the here's where these scenarios actually occur.
And that's pretty much it for the day, guys. So Coin Center is not going to give up. They're they're going to, still engage with this new administration because nobody can let their guard down. None of us can let our guard down, especially when you've got Trump considering ripple as part I mean, these guys are criminals. They're just fraudsters. They're scammers of the first order. They are scammers of the corporate order, and they need to not be considered. I do hope that somebody like coin Coin Center won't probably may not say anything about it, but I'm hoping Bitcoin Policy Institute will, attack the notion that anybody from Ripple has any place whatsoever on this board. And all honestly, Jeremy Allaire, he doesn't need to be there either.
But I don't expect anything, any fights on that to fall on anything but deaf ears. So we're probably going to have, god forbid, Brad Garlinghouse from Ripple or his coconspirator, whatever his name is, on this crypto council. And expect chicanery, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have
[01:03:21] Unknown:
a
[01:03:23] Unknown:
great
[01:03:26] Unknown:
day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems.
[00:00:44] Unknown:
So there's a property? Yep. Physical property. Multifamily. Right? The multifamily 63 units. The multifamily property. The sponsor, the effectively the owner of that property Yep. Needs a loan. That's right. Okay. They come to you. That's right. Okay. You say, we'll provide you the loan in the form of A loan. A a classic loan. That's right. Okay. So you're gonna give them cash. That's right. Term financing. Term financing for and and how long is the loan? Just 10 years. 10 10 year loan. Okay. That's right. At above market rate or below or what's that? Market rate interest rate. I'm just trying to slow the whole thing. Okay. Now let's introduce the Bitcoin piece into it. That's right. So no. No. Explain how the Bitcoin piece And why? So the loan has been provided. The use of proceeds is to pay off the existing
[00:01:28] Unknown:
financing. So Use of the proceeds Of the loan. Of the loan. Is to retire the existing mortgage. Right. So it's an old old mortgage. Go on. They're gonna pay the old mortgage off. Been paid off. Okay. Now they have a little bit extra money to make some improvements in the property. Right. So a little bit extra cash. So your the the amount of money you've lent pays off the old loan. That's right. It's also as you have a little bit of extra to to fix the property, fix that up. Yep. And then with the remainder, which is a little bit fewer a little extra, that's right. Return. And that instead of cash out Uh-huh. Bitcoin in, and we use it to purchase some Bitcoin and add it to the collateral package of the loan. So now our loan is supported by both the traditional asset, the 63 unit apartment building Right. And the Bitcoin. Okay. You the loan was maybe $2,000,000 more, so that's how you get the Exactly. Bitcoin out. Exactly. Right. So it's On the assumption that the Bitcoin's gonna rise faster, and that will become an asset that Over the life of the loan, for sure. So we think on the downside, this provides us with much better protection compared to a traditional lender because a traditional lender, if something goes wrong, they have to recover against that particular building, which is idiosyncratic risk. Something might happen with the maintenance or what have also requires
[00:02:41] Unknown:
conviction on your end that Bitcoin is not a volatile asset asset Over time. Over time. Over time. And that is either going to go up or at least stay where it is. Well, that's by by fusing the Bitcoin with credit
[00:02:56] Unknown:
and by fusing it with traditionally financeable assets, it gives us the luxury of expressing that medium term view on Bitcoin, and that's what's key. It's volatile in the short run. You know, I mean, minute by minute today, who knows? It could cross a 100,000. That would be exciting. Long's the loan? 10 years. 10 years. And the minimum hold period for the Bitcoin is 4 years. So what we say to the borrower is we say, look. You can repay the loan at any time for any reason with no penalty, which is a really valuable feature compared to a traditional loan. Yeah. That's like a a home mortgage then. Like a home mortgage almost. That's very unusual for commercial financing. But what we do say is that to the extent that the loan is repaid at year 4 or earlier, the minimum will release the property. But the minimum length of time that the Bitcoin has to stay in escrow is 4 years. It is 9:35
[00:03:43] David Bennett:
AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 22nd day of November 2024. This is episode 997 of Bitcoin, and only 2 more episodes to go before we hit the big one thousand. Before anything, I need to apologize for not bringing you a show yesterday. I went to go work out and, well, everything got kinda crappy. Not crappy, but everything got, like, weird weird after that. And so I was by the time that I got my ass sat down, I started getting stove up because I hadn't worked out in a while. And I'm like, wow. This is, kind of a slow news day, for obvious you know, obviously, it was kinda slow.
Unless you're looking at world events, I'll touch on at least one thing here in in the world events here in a second. But first, who are we listening to just now? Well, that was Joe Kernan's crew on CNBC talking with a guy, and I don't know his name. Right? So let's be very upfront about this particular piece. I don't know who this guy is. I have no idea what company he is from. Okay? So let's get that shit right out of the gates. However, assuming the fact that he was on CNBC, I can only presume that he has some kind of, you know, credentials and might actually know what he's talking about, is above board, does work for a company that does make loans. And now it appears that whoever this is is, at least in this particular instance, making a cash loan.
Okay? A flat out cash loan to pay off the mortgage of a 63 apartment or 63 unit multiple family dwelling building. And that would be like an apartment building. Okay. So there's a loan on the 63 unit apartment building. The owners want to take out another loan to extinguish the previous loan, do some fix up around the property. Maybe they wanna make it to where when they increase rent on people, which is maybe what's going to happen, that they say, well, we look look at all the improvements we've done. Of course, you're going to pay more rent. And I don't know if that's if that's what's going on here or not. But they are clearly going to be able to pay off the loan, make improvements to the property, and the loan is going to be securitized by bitcoin as well as the property itself, which is, when you think about it, sort of a kind of a classic loan. Whenever you buy a house you basically put up a down payment.
And if it's enough of a down payment, the rest of the loan is securitized by the property itself. So if you stop making mortgage payments, they take the house, and then they sell it on the open market hoping that they'll be able to cover all their loan costs, make a little bit of money on the side, whatever. Right? But this loan is different. This loan uses Bitcoin as the primary securitization asset and then is cope well, now I don't wanna use the word commingled, but is added to the property also as securitization. And this leads me to think of this scenario as being a little bit of a synthesis of what we've seen in the past and this new frontier that we find ourselves in, this one that includes this asset called Bitcoin.
There's really not been in and I'm not in business finance. Okay. So I don't know what kind of instrumentation that there usually is. But generally speaking, you know, we all a lot of us have experience buying a house, getting, you know, getting a mortgage and all that kind of stuff, or possibly even buying, like, investment condominiums or possibly even, you know, partial partner in an apartment building or something like that. Generally speaking, you don't see synthesized loans like this where the securitization is on multiple fronts.
Right? So this kind of is a a brand in a way, is a brand new thing. It's just that it's only brand new because it's bringing in Bitcoin. So I expect to see a lot more of this. And what's good is that the securitization portion, the Bitcoin portion, has to be held on the books. It it cannot be sold. It cannot be liquefied by either party for any reason for 4 years. This is they've also not only have they introduced Bitcoin into the mix, they've also introduced part of the Bitcoin ethos into the mix, the ethics behind Bitcoin, the the reason it was here in the first place, the reason we think it is the asset that we think it is. And like I said, I expect to see quite a bit more of this. Okay.
That said, let's look at what's going on with my bid acts. Woo hoo. Yes. I got my me and my son set up the bid acts yesterday. It was a little bit more convoluted than I wanted it to be, but still I got it up and running inside of 15 minutes. I had to look at a couple of different videos. The bid acts itself comes with a little card that comes inside and it's got a QR code on it and it that will send you right to the setup video. The problem is the new axe OS which is the operating system that runs this entire package has been tweaked just a little bit from what the video was suggesting because the first thing that you have to do is get your computer over wifi to connect to the bit axe, the bit axe is Wi Fi enabled. You don't have it it doesn't take an what what are those? A cat 5 cable. You don't have to plug it into a LAN. If you've got Wi Fi, then you can just put the bit axe anywhere that it gets signal from your Wi Fi and you are you are good to go.
Now that said I had to connect either I can either connect my phone like my iPhone, I could connect an Android phone to it because you have to do a particular step first. You communicate with the Bittax over Wi Fi so that you can change two parameters of the Wi Fi. You need to point it to your home or business Wi Fi connection because otherwise it's just going to sit there and spin. And I was, like, looking at my you know, looking at it going, oh, you're not even hashing. You have 0 hash rate. What the hell is going on? And this is this step is how you basically say you need to look at the home Wi Fi. And once you give it the SSID or essentially the name of your your home Wi Fi and the password to your Wi Fi, yes, you're going to have to put that in. Otherwise, it it can't access Wi Fi every time it boots up.
It starts hashing. Now mine, right now, is hashing roughly at 1.08 terahashes per second. It is expected to hash at 1.07 terahashes per second. It has an efficiency right now of 17.78 joules per terahash. It has found no blocks. And, yes, I am actually, at this point, connected to let me go over here to settings. I'm connected to stratum. Okay? So the public hyphen pool. Io is the pool that I am helping to mine in, and I need to learn a lot more about what's going on here because I can change things. So it took me 15 minutes to set it up. It was only mildly confusing at first, but, you know, with a modicum of just, like, you know, looking at different videos and whatnot, you'll find out where it is that you need to go change the settings to get it to talk to your Wi Fi and once you do that it just starts hashing and then starts giving you metrics back. So again if you want to have a reason to get into mining but you don't want to buy like old s9s and have a bunch like a jet engine running in your house consider the bit axe and I got mine from solo satoshi so thank you guys over there at Solo Satoshi.
You shipped it quick. It came exactly as expected. I love it. It's sitting right here next to me and it's going to be with me through the rest of the show and the rest of my life. Unless it, you know, catches on fire or something like that. Alright. We've got a rumor. Now, understand this is a rumor. Maduro does not know if he can verify the source of what he's saying here, But that's okay. As long as we all understand that this is just a rumor and may not be true, then I think we're okay. Because Madaroo put out this post that says, this just happened.
Warren Buffett just yoloed into $1,000,000,000 worth of MicroStrategy bonds. Who would have thought the Oracle of Omaha would seek Bitcoin exposure this way? This is just the start. And let's not forget, even the most conservative players like insurance companies are jumping onto this bandwagon. Fear of missing out or FOMO is real from Invest Answers. Okay. So looks like he got this from in something called Invest Answers. I've asked Madaroo directly if he has, like, a link to any kind of press release about this or anything. He even he's saying, I I don't know. I he's like, it may be bullshit, but it is like, at least this Invest Answers is at least saying this. Again, rumor.
Rumor. But if it's true, think about this. I said bonds, not stock. If Warren Buffett put a $1,000,000,000 of, purchasing power of from Berkshire Hathaway into buying MicroStrategy stock, then that's one kind of story. But if this rumor is true, he didn't. He put it into the bond issuance, and I'm going to get to the bond issuance here in a second. He bought the bonds. This would actually be what more along the lines of what I would expect somebody like Warren Buffett to actually do. And if it's true, okay, this the the implication is that one of the most savvy investors over the past 5 decades, something like that because we understand, Warren Buffett did not become a millionaire or well, I think it was I don't I think he did not become a millionaire or at least sizable wealth in the, you know, multiple 1,000,000 of dollars, not 1,000,000,000, 1,000,000 of dollars until he was after he was 50 years old or something like that, maybe 45.
He didn't start do I mean, he started doing this when he was, like, 20, 30 years old, but he really didn't start hitting pay dirt until he was in his fifties. Alright? So just just keep that shit in mind. In either event, no matter what you think about Warren Buffett, he's clearly he clearly knows what he's doing. He's clearly been successful over the past few decades. You can't argue with that. You may hate the fact that he hangs out with Bill Gates and eats ice cream alongside of the likes of Joe Biden and those idiots, but still, you can't deny the fact that the man knows what he's doing.
If it's true that Warren Buffett bought MicroStrategy bonds, the the convertible senior notes, then it is a complete affirmation of what Michael Sailor's been telling people to do. It means that Warren Buffett is like, yep. This this is this is effective. This makes sense. I'm going to do this. Again, please take it with a grain of salt because we do not know at this point if it's actually true or not. But what we do know is that I was right. Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph affirms my suspicion as being correct because MicroStrategy completed the $3,000,000,000 raise to buy more Bitcoin as MicroStrategy stock falls 25%.
We'll get into that. MicroStrategy has completed a $3,000,000,000 offering of convertible senior notes due December 20 29 with plans to use a portion or all of the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin. The business intelligence firm announced the completion of its shares, retraced more than 25% on November 21st. Google Finance data shows the convertible senior notes came at a 55% premium with an implied strike price of MicroStrategy stock at $672 per share. Holy smokes. I'm just saying, man. Just saying. Like, something shiny caught my attention. Okay. 55% premium.
That's a hell of a premium. I mean, I'm not did Grayscale ever hit that kind of premium back in the heyday? I I kinda don't think it did. But what this means, the 0% senior convertible note means that it will not pay regular interest to bondholders. These convertibles are sold at a discount and will instead mature to face value if they are not converted prior to the maturity date. They're also senior to common stock in the sense that holders have priority in the event of any bankruptcies or liquidations. MicroStrategy could buy an additional 30,600 Bitcoin if it were to spend the entire $3,000,000,000 on the cryptocurrency. Microstrad or the $3,000,000,000 offering follows MicroStrategy's November 18th announcement to raise 1,750,000,000 at 0% interest, which was then increased to 2,600,000,000 on November 20th. And I told you, dear listener, that before they even increased to $2,600,000,000 that this was going to go to exactly $3,000,000,000.
Ask me how I know. So I was right. Yes. I'm gonna take my victory lap, drink a little bit of coffee, and then we're gonna go right in here to Mara Holdings. Alright. So Josh O'Sullivan from coin also from Cointelegraph says that Mara Holdings has raised $1,000,000,000 successfully raised $1,000,000,000, past tense. This is done for Bitcoin acquisition as well as debt buyback. Mara Holdings, a cryptocurrency mining and blockchain com technology company, has completed a $1,000,000,000 issuance of 0 coupon convertible senior notes due March 1, 2030.
The company plans to use most of the proceeds to acquire Bitcoin. The notes issued to institutional investors under rule 14 4 a of the Securities Act of 1933 includes a conversion price significantly higher than Mara's recent stock value. The notes can be redeemed under favorable conditions beginning in 2028. So this is the play. You sell that. You you raise the cash. You use it to buy bitcoin. Holding bitcoin on your balance sheet increases your stock price. And then when it's time to convert the notes the holder generally speaking, is going to see be able to get into any of these companies at a much lower price than what they're expecting to see as the stock rises in its own price.
So both in both events, MicroStrategy is looking at a $625 strike price after all this is said and done. Mara isn't saying what they're they're they don't say what they expect to happen to their stock price other than that it's going to go up. So this is sort of boiling the ocean down into what the hell is MicroStrategy done. This is the playbook. You sell that. People loan you money. You use that loaned money from other people that you've interest you've issued a debt instrument against to buy bitcoin and hold it on your balance sheet, it causes your stock price to rise.
The bondholders that lent you the money in the first place are not only made whole, they're made happy. It's not rocket science. Anyway, the development follows a similar approach to MicroStrategy which has recently increased its note sales to 2,600,000,000 and now we know it's now 3,000,000,000 for Bitcoin purchases. So it's everybody's dancing on the bandwagon. Everybody's getting lifted up onto the bandwagon. Everybody taking a trip on the bandwagon except for Gary Gensler, who has announced this morning that he will be leaving the SEC, but his replacement may face scrutiny. We don't know. Christopher O'Rourke from Cointelegraph. Please tell us more. On November 22nd, US SEC commissioner chair or commission chair Gary Gensler announced that he will step down from his position on January 20th.
He is widely regarded as one of the most anti crypto SEC chairs in history, and crypto users are celebrating his departure on Twitter. However, the new pick for sec chair will face scrutiny from the US senate which must confirm any nominee to the sec. The SEC announced Gensler's departure in a press release. During his term in office, the SEC filed lawsuits against several popular web three protocols and exchanges including Coinbase, Uniswap, Metamask developer, consensus, blockchain video streaming platform library, and others. The lawsuits have been criticized by many crypto users and investors.
One of president-elect Donald Trump's promises during the campaign was to fire Gary Gensler on his first day in office. However, attempting to fire him could have led to a court battle since members of regulatory agencies can only be removed for cause. Gensler's resignation means that this battle will not take place. Let's see. They're gonna talk about people bitching about it on Twitter. That's not worth our while. But Trump has not yet announced who he will pick to replace Gensler, but speculation has centered around a few possibilities. A Reuters report suggested CFTC or the Commodities and Futures Exchange Commission sorry. The Commodities and Futures Exchange Commission chair, Summer Mersinger, she has argued that the SEC should make rules for crypto protocols instead of filing lawsuits against them. Yeah. Probably a good idea. Predictions.
Platform Kashi is predicting a 33% chance of former Binance US CEO Brian Brooks being given a job and a 32% chance that it will go to Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner. The 2 candidates are receiving the most bets out of any on the platform. And as we know, maybe we should not scoff at what's going on over there on, Kashi and whatever that other other, degen gambling side is. But former CFTC chair Chris Giancarlo has denied that he will accept the position, stating that he has already cleaned up the mess, that Gensler left the last time Gensler was in office, and he doesn't wanna do it again. Wow, man. Oh, that's not nice. Wow. Who anyway, whoever Trump nominates, they may face intense scrutiny from the United States Senate, which must confirm all commission members.
Trump has stated that he will attempt to bypass some confirmations through recess appointments. However, this would require congress to vote to adjourn, which they may not be willing to do except for noncontroversial nominees. A report from Financial Times suggested that several congress members from Trump's own party are deeply skeptical of at least some of his picks, including those of attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz, who withdrew yesterday, and health and human services secretary nominee, Robert f Kennedy Junior. If Trump chooses a nominee for the position that is seen as weak at enforcing securities laws against crypto companies, they may fail to be confirmed by the senate, leading to a tougher candidate being chosen instead.
But onto the lawsuits. Even if a strongly pro crypto nominee gets confirmed, it won't necessarily lead to the lawsuits against Coinbase, Uniswap, consensus, and others being dropped right away. The new chair only represents 1 vote on the commission and commission members may be reluctant may be reluctant to drop lawsuits that are already ongoing as doing so might make the commission look like it's being political. So if anybody's thinking that just because Gary Gensler is going away, that the lawsuits are going away, you might wanna think again, oh, it's Polymarket. That's the other degen gambling site that I could not remember the name of, but I've been reminded by this one written by Danny Nelson out of CoinDesk.
Polymarket has now blocked French traders amid a gambling inquire inquiry. The Polymarket blocked French traders on Friday, weeks after reports that the country's government was investigating the prediction market's juggernaut for gambling law compliance. The ban was not reflected in Polymarket's terms of service at press time, but on Friday a reporter using a vpn attempted to access the website from a French server and ran into a digital blockade and it says you appear to be located in the united states France, or other restricted jurisdiction.
Trading is not available to US persons, persons located in the United States, France, or persons located in restricted jurisdictions. Use of measures to circumvent or attempt to circumvent these restrictions is strictly prohibited. See terms of use. So it looks like Poly Market made good on their plan to block anybody who wanted to do degen gambling out of France. Let's run the numbers. Oil. It makes the world run, and it is up today. West Texas Intermediate is up one point 4% to $71.9. Brent Norsey also up 1.12%. But natural gas doing exactly what I expect, down 6 a half percent.
Wow. Gasoline is up a half point to $2.7 a gallon. This is because of the ICBM or supposed ICBM that Russia launched back in the direction of Ukraine. I saw video of something falling out of the sky at night on a city, and people are saying that this was this medium range, hypersonic, intercontinental ballistic missile, non nuclear tipped. So whatever payload it was carrying was non nuclear. I don't know if this actually occurred. Lots of people are saying it's happened. Some people are saying that it was not in fact an ICBM. I don't care because whatever I saw falling on this city, if it was indeed a city in Ukraine and it was indeed from this Russian, quote, unquote, hypersonic missile, you don't wanna have nothing to do with this thing. But what I found odd was the the footage that I'm looking at was taken at night, and things were falling directly down, not at an not at very much of an angle, but, like, just right through the cloud layer directly on top of buildings in in the middle, you know, in the middle of the city. And this is a long range view, by the way, is what I'm looking at. So I'm seeing a great expansive city, not like we're not at the block level looking at something pound a building. So we're seeing this from kinda far away. We can still see streets and city lights and, you know, buildings and stuff like that, but it's like a lot of the city is in the view.
And I'm seeing these things fall from the sky at clearly I mean, they are clearly going faster than just something, you know, like a like a regular old missile. These things are pounding into the ground, but I'm not seeing that much of an explosion behind these I think it was, like, 5 or 6 sets of stuff falling out of the sky. It would go, that kind of thing. So it wasn't just all one big barrage. It was just, like like, 5 or 6, I guess, warheads fell out of the sky and then 5 or 6 more and then 5 or 6 more. But they were, like, hauling ass, man. I mean, hauling ass.
Now whoever was under this, whether or not there was a much of a explosive payload in these warheads, wouldn't have mattered to them, man, because they got vaporized just by the velocity and the weight of whatever it was that fell on their ass. But I wasn't seeing, like, small little you know, like I don't wanna say mushroom cloud because, again, this was the whatever fell out of the sky was non nuclear. Right? But you I would have expected to see something bigger than just, like, a flash of light on the ground. Because that's what I saw. In either event, it's freaking people out as well it should.
I mean, I don't know what people expected, that I I guess people really thought that Russia's capacity to wage war was completely crushed by Ukraine. I don't know how people came to that conclusion. I mean, you know, I've been around long enough to know that you don't you don't make that assumption about somebody like Russia. You just don't. I mean, you you can you can think whatever it is that you were taught to think by MSNBC and how weak Russia is. Russia ain't weak, guys. They ain't. In in fact, it like, I think I was right again. I think Putin's been in, you know, harbor you know, allowing himself to be restrained, you know, not just go full bore. But this shit, if he's got more of these things and he puts a more of a more of a warhead on these things, you don't wanna be nowhere around Ukraine.
So for all those people that are that that have actually thought that Ukraine was gonna win this thing, you gotta stop thinking that way. This is this is a terrible state of affairs for everybody involved. The whole world should be just like stop this. Stop this right now. Figure it out. Stop it. And and you don't stop it by sending 6 ATACMS into Russian territory. You don't that's that's not stopping it. That's helping to escalate it. And maybe this explains the price of gold, which is up 1 and a quarter percent to $2708.40. Silver is up 1.3. Platinum is up a half. Copper is down 3 quarters of a point, and palladium is down 2 a third.
I got lumber. It's down a 3rd, but the biggest loser today is wheat. Point 79% to the downside. Chocolate is up almost 4 full points. Live cattle is up a quarter. Lean hogs are up almost a point. Feeder cattle up over a third. The Dow is up 3 quarters of a point. S and P is up a 3rd. NASDAQ is up point 13%, and the S and P Mini is up 1.4. What's Bitcoin doing? Well, it had a massive dip, and then it came right back up, and then it started drifting back down. We were over $99,000. And according to Clark Moody Bitcoin, we're at 99,150. So it looks like my little, m 5 stack that has the Bitcoin price on it hasn't updated yet. But we're at a $1,960,000,000,000 market cap.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're just shy of $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap, which not terribly long ago was the entire was the market cap of the entirety of all crypto. And it looks like we're taking the whole the whole thing. And we can get 36.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,785,783.61 of. And average fees per block are manageable. Point 11 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are a 113 blocks carrying 305,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of right now, they're bad. 36 Satoshis per vbyte. Low priority, gonna get you in at 29. I expect that that will probably dive down after a while.
787.5 xahashes per second is the strength of the security model of Bitcoin at this time. Value inversion. As we do get into our value for value part of the show, the definition of value inversion. Information isn't scarce. It can be copied at 0 marginal cost and, consequently, selling digital things on a per item basis is unnatural and counterproductive. V for v flips the value proposition on its head. You are free to consume the content, but you're also free to give value back after the fact if you so choose. And I do hope you so choose to give value back to the Bitcoin and podcast and from Microsoft strategy.
Oh, wait. Hold on. Pardon the interruption there. That was my wife calling me. And as you know, if my wife calls, you gotta wait. Okay. So from Microsoft strategy, yesterday's oh, actually, the day before yesterday's Bitcoin and episode, I got Graham with a 1,000 sats says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies to play with 420 says, thank you, sir. No, thank you. And Bitcoin Sandy breaks it with 500 sets, says, great chat as always. Bag of sets 21 with 420 says, thanks. You're welcome, bro. Wartime with 333 says, fountain has been doubling up some of the comments for some reason, LOL. Yes.
Yeah. I'm I'm starting to see that too. We we have we're in a new world. Let's give the developers of this new world some latitude. We've all been used to shit coming out of the box working damn near perfectly. Right? I think that that's doing ourselves and the developers in this new frontier that we find ourselves in a disservice. Let's give them all a break and just deal with it for right now. And wartime, I know you're not bitching about it, but other people are. Anyway, Pies to play with another 100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. At b 48, and I mean this a lot of numbers here. He gives me a 100 sat, says great show. I appreciate that, brother.
He also comes back and says great show, but this time, he just did it on Noster, so there was no associated Satoshis with that. Again, time, talent, and treasure, ladies and gentlemen. If you think that what I do here gives you some value, lets you know what the hell's going on with Bitcoin and the landscape on a daily basis, well, excluding yesterday, then if you find it value valuable, then give me some value back. You don't have to. It's all up to you. That's the model of value for value, and that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. A Shanghai court has ruled that crypto ownership is legal under Chinese law amid the Bitcoin price surge.
This is out of it looks like it's out of my news. I'm actually reading it from a link from archive.ph because they were stupid enough not to allow me to pay them 25¢ to read it with a fucking lightning invoice. Come on, guys. Dude, really? Whatever. As long as you're gonna be dumb, then I'm taking your shit. I'm sorry. If you're not going to give me the ability to pay in the currency that I wanna pay in, in the method that I wanna pay, then I'm going to take the article and I'm gonna go over to archive.ph and I'm gonna put it there.
I still have yet to see a single mainstream outlet say, you know, we should at least experiment with this lightning address as as a paywall. I I I find it offensive that these people aren't even trying, and they are all dying. All of these news outlets are dying. And television, man, they are flat ass on fire. But a Shanghai court has released an opinion stating that personal ownership of cryptocurrency is not against Chinese law, offering explicit legal clarity for crypto hodlers on the mainland amid a record setting Bitcoin price surge. Sun Xi, a judge at the Shanghai Songjiang People's Court, wrote in an article published on Shanghai High People's Court official WeChat account this week that it is not illegal for individuals to hold cryptocurrency even though Chinese business entities are not allowed to take part in cryptocurrency investments or token issuance at will, and at will is in quotes.
The comments were part of a case review for a recent lawsuit involving disputes between 2 companies about an initial coin offering, which is considered illicit financing in China. Beijing sees cryptocurrencies as a threat to financial stability, and commercial activity related to these assets remains banned on the mainland, which has put their legal standing in doubt. As a virtual commodity with the attributes of property, cryptocurrency ownership is not prohibited by Chinese law, Sun wrote. This does not extend to business activity, however, as it can disrupt economic and financial order or act as payment for illegal activity, according to the judge.
Quote, that is why laws and regulations always maintain high pressure crackdown on speculative activities in the cryptocurrency trading, Sun said in the opinion. Beijing first banned initial coin offerings and ordered the closure of crypto exchanges in 2017. Then, as if not to outdo themselves, they ramped up its crackdown in 2021 when it banned bitcoin mining and declared crypto related businesses illegal. So it looks like they've got at least one judge who's saying, well, you can have it. If you're a business, that's a problem. But if you're, like, just a regular old mainland and that's important to note.
Not a territory of China. A mainland Chinese citizen can legally own Bitcoin. So we'll have to see if that changes any of the direction of where China's been going over the past 5 years. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe they'll join us in this new frontier that we find ourselves in. Charles Schwab certainly is because they have mulled crypto trading. Incoming CEO now feels silly for not buying Bitcoin. Decrypt Sebastian Sinclair. Charles Schwab plans to enter the spot crypto market once US regulations provide clear pathways. Incoming CEO Rick Wurster said on Thursday.
Wurster emphasized the firm's readiness to expand its offerings to clients once regulatory conditions improve, he said during an interview, Quote, we will get into spot crypto with when the regulatory environment changes, Wurster said, who is set to take over as CEO in January. He added that the firm anticipates favorable changes under the incoming Donald Trump administration. Schwab, who is already active okay. That that's why I'm emphasizing they're that they're going to do spot trading because they've already been active in the crypto space via exchange traded funds and futures. They aim to bolster its offerings amid a renewed craze this year for digital assets.
The firm faces increasing competition from newer platforms like Robinhood Markets, which is basically gaining traction among retail investors. And crypto has become a focal point in the race to capture retail investor interest in general, driven by its volatility and growth potential. An October survey by the multinational financial services firm found nearly half half half of the respondents plan to invest in crypto via ETFs, oh god, over the coming year. God, for sakes. The ability to offer trading directly through its platform would seek to build on its cryptothematic ETF, which provides global exposure to companies that may benefit from the development or utilization of crypto and other digital asset products.
While the STCE, that's the cryptothematic ETF, does not invest directly in crypto, it does focus on businesses within the industry, including those engaged in mining, trading, and, blockchain technology applications. Yay. Yay. Do do do do do do do do. Pressure has been mounting on Wall Street to begin opening up the asset class from clients eager to capture upside amid shifting regulatory winds. Despite these tailwinds, however, Wurster has noted that he has not personally invested into crypto but acknowledged its appeal among investors. And here's the quote. Here's the takeaway. Quote, crypto has certainly caught many's attention, and they've made a lot of money doing it, he reportedly said, quote, I have not bought crypto, and now I feel silly.
Yeah. I'll bet you feel silly. Oh, well, you know, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve. So on to Reuters and Hannah Lang who's writing this one. Crypto industry jockeys for seats at Trump's promised crypto council. You're not gonna like these names guys. I certainly do not like these names but it's going to happen so we got to be prepared for it. A slew of crypto companies including Ripple, Kraken, and Circle are jostling for a seat on president-elect Donald Trump's promised crypto advisory council, seeking a say in his planned overhaul of US policy according to several digital asset industry executives. Oh, joy.
Coffee. Campaigning at a July Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Trump promised a new council as part of a crypto friendly administration. His transition team is discussing how the structure or how to structure and how to staff it and which company should be included. Several top US crypto companies are clamoring for seats at the table. Among them, venture firm Paradigm, said one source. While venture capital giant, Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm, a 16 z, is also expected to grab a spot. Oh, joy. Quote, it's being fleshed out. Yeah. Like, ghoulish flesh. But I anticipate the leading executives from America's Bitcoin and crypto firms to be represented, said David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, who arranged for Trump to speak at the July conference and has spoken with the president-elect about Bitcoin policy, quote, people are eager to advise and give input, yeah, probably to their shit coin. Anyway, a Kraken, spokesperson and a spokesperson for a 16 z declined to comment.
Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong recently met with Trump, said a source familiar with the matter confirming a Monday Wall Street Journal report, and it was unclear what they discussed. The source added that Coinbase was also interested in being on the council. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told The New York Times this month he wants to be on the council. The crypto council would likely be housed under the White House's National Economic Council, which coordinates and implements the president's economic policies or a separate White House apparatus.
2 of the people said it is expected to advise on digital asset policy, work with Congress on crypto legislation, establish Trump's promised Bitcoin reserve, and coordinate between agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodities Future Trading Commission, and the Treasury, they and other executives said. The council may also include enforcement representatives and former policymakers, one of the sources also said. Trump's transition team, which did not respond for a request for comment, is also discussing creating a crypto czar, t s a r.
The first czar we had in the United States, I can't remember. I think it was something Bennett. He was the drug czar. And when that term started be started to become bandied about at the level of presidential and, you know, of congressional circles, I started getting really sick to my stomach. Because I'm like, I don't know. Are we Russia now? I mean, because that's where the term came from. Are we Russia? Are are we the United States? I I I don't know, but we're apparently going to get a crypto czar. One added that the czar would likely lead the council. Trump's team is vetting candidates for that role.
Former CFTC chair Heath Tarbot, chief legal officer at Circle, and former Republican CFTC commissioner Brian Kendetz, head of policy for a 16 z, z crypto, have been advising the Trump transition team on crypto policy. As of now, excitement over a crypto friendly Trump administration has helped push Bitcoin to record highs. Yeah. No. Well, whatever. The industry is pushing for executive orders guaranteeing crypto companies access to banking services, an end to enforcement actions, and other changes. You don't necessarily need an executive order for that. Anyway, some consumer groups have warned that the crypto industry should not be able to write its own rules, and some of the sources said ethics considerations could slow personnel appointments. But others said it makes sense for industry experts to have a say in critical policy issues. Quote, it's absolutely the wise choice to put together a council of people who understand how both the industry ought to be regulated and how to situate the industry to be a strategic asset, said Nathan Macauley, CEO of crypto platform Anchorage Digital, who has urged the Trump team to reverse Biden's stance on crypto.
While presidential advisory councils are not new, there has never been one dedicated to cryptocurrencies, which did not exist until Bitcoin's launch in 2,009. Biden has multiple councils, including on science and technology, which was established via executive order in in the 1st month that he took office. I did not know that. Interesting. Kristen Smith, chief executive of crypto trade group, the Blockchain Association, said setting up the crypto council is something Trump could do very quickly. Yeah. Well, of course, he's probably going to do that very quickly, but these names these names are making me ill.
Ripple. Ripple. Just by itself. And I'm not happy about cracking at all, but Circle and especially the name Ripple being set for this is disturbing. It's very disturbing. I am not looking forward to it. So that's why we continue to have to build out not only Bitcoin infrastructure supporting of Bitcoin developers education, the whole ball of wax, man, we cannot stop. We absolutely cannot stop. And we also cannot stop making sure that we put pressure on all of these people. I mean, by flat out I don't know. Even just by replying to tweets, if you're on over on Twitter, making sure that anybody connected with this decision or these decision making excursions know that Ripple is all those people should absolutely not be considered at all for the position because they are an unregistered security.
They have engaged in the sale at the retail and institutional level of unregistered securities, I'm sorry. If you're a Ripple holder, you got hosed. They they you hold an unregistered security. It's ridiculous that they're even being considered. It's sad. But, thankfully, we do have developers in this space. This time, we're turning our attention to Noster. Primal version 2 has been released. There's a reads and explore tab. There's feed mark feed marketplace and advanced search. And if you didn't know, Primal is a free and open source Nostr client focused on seamless user experience. You can get it on Android, iOS, and the web. Quote, at long last, Primal 2 is here.
Our team has been working around the clock for many months to reach the milestone, announced Miljian, founder of CEO founder and CEO of Primal. I don't know if I pronounced his name right. I'm pretty sure I didn't. Primal now offers a much more comprehensive view of Nostra on its web and mobile apps with the following additions. A reads tab, an explorer tab, a feed marketplace, comprehensive advanced search functions, and multiple performance improvements. Quote, we've also launched Primal Premium. For the low, low price of $7 a month, you can get a Primal name and Nasser Tools for power users. We'll cover all this in much more detail in the coming days. In the meantime, we invite you to download Primal 2.0. Try it out and let us know how you like it, said the developer.
Alright. So I've been given 7 free months of being a, this whole primal premium so I don't have to pay $7 a month for 7 months so that I guess I can figure out if I like it or not. So I do have all these things on my browser. And I was checking out feeds. I'm gonna check it out even more, this whole this whole new setup. I'm not seeing a lot of okay. Lead back up. I didn't even know that this had occurred to my web browsing experience until I saw that they said, hey, we've released this stuff, blah blah blah. And all of a sudden, I look over my left hand bar, and I'm like, what the hell are feeds? Like, holy shit. I guess I got the update. I went over to feeds, and it it looks nice.
I can't say anything bad about it. It looks great. Primal's still functioning pretty much like it always has. I haven't explored all the rest of it, but I did explore feeds. And I gotta say, they've done a bang up job on releasing at least that part of primal 2 point o. So what are reads? Alright. So explore the latest native long form content via multiple feeds including noster reads, bitcoin reads, philosophy reads, news reads, and a variety of other custom feeds available on the feed marketplace. Explore is a new tab and you can explore custom feeds profiles and people, zap events, media posts, and hashtag related topics. There's the feed marketplace where you can explore a variety of custom and paid data vending machines or dvms that deliver focused notes on demand.
Advanced search is a new highly customizable search option including specific words, event type, time, scope, and much more. Dude, the time the time thing, like, hey, I need you to look for yes you know, something that occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday that I know I saw. This is, like, reminds me of Twitter advanced search which I used to rely on heavily to be able to find something that I know, like, I don't know, like, Peter Schiff said, like, 3 days ago. So I have not really messed around with the advanced search feature. But I guarantee you I'm going to be doing that because searching Nostr right now really sucks. So I'm just gonna put that out there. Primal premium is a $7 a month paid service for supporters, allowing them to obtain premium services such as a custom primal name and other nostril nostril tools for power users.
I'm sure that you can pay that in satoshis. I under like, I had a allergic reaction to the fact that they're saying $7 a month. Why can't they just put up satoshis, per month? Well, because wow. You're like, at what you know, what are you purchasing over what month at what time given the Bitcoin price in USD? I don't blame them for actually using fiat currency to denominate the actual monthly cost. But I'm pretty sure you can pay for it in Satoshis. If not, then shame on them, but I I doubt that very seriously. There are, performance improvements that make the whole thing better, faster, harder, and stronger. And that's about all they say about that. So, if you want to go check out primal 2.0, go to, you know, go to, well, was it primal, let's see, primal.net, and make sure you you you look to see if it says update.
Chances are good if if you don't have the reads, like, over here on the left hand side, it's I've got home and then right under it used to be Explorer, but now it's reads. So r e a d s. If you don't see reads, then refresh your browser and see if it doesn't ingest the the update. And then there's a couple of other things here. Let's see where this I'm not seeing any difference in the search function. I'm not seeing something like no. I don't know what how to get to this, quote unquote, search function. Maybe it's under explore. Nope.
No. Oh. Oh, advanced search. Okay. Under explore, there it is. Okay. Under explore, which is right under reeds in the left hand side of the of the primal bar, there is explore. And under explore, you will see at the right hand side up at the top something that says blue sir or, blue search. My god. Advanced search. It's a link. And you click that, and it goes to advanced search. And you have the ability to include certain words. At the same time, you can also exclude other words. You can search kinds, and there's notes, reads, note replies, reads comments, images, video, and audio. So that will help if you're trying to search. Hey, I knew I know this was a reply to somebody. I can't remember who, but it definitely included this one word, blah blah blah.
And you can also have the search by who posted it. You can search you can also search replying to, and you can also search who zapped something. So if you know a note was zapped by, like, let's say, Odell, and you know a couple of the words so you can include the those couple of words. You know it was a, you know it was a kind of note or rather, you know it was a kind of note reply, and you know it was posted by, like, Cordelorian, and you know it was posted or it was zapped by Odell, then you'll probably get to the exact thing that you want. Because you can also use time posted. And you could the selections are today, this week, this month, this year, and custom. If I go to custom, I can select the date range, which is very nice, although that didn't really work.
Let's see. Custom. Select a date range. And if I go to that, all I get is search results of something, and I've got pornography right in my face. Oh, my god. Holy shit. So, guys, I think you're gonna have to select work on the select the date range function here in primal version 2. But there's a global scope. There's, you can, narrow the scope to my follows or my network or my follows interactions or my network interactions or my notifications or somebody who doesn't follow you at all or somebody that you don't follow, rather. And then there's an order, content score, number of replies, sat zaps, number of interactions.
And that's ordering, like, how many results you get. You can order them by the time that they occurred. I don't know what content scope actually means. Anyway, there's and there's filters. So you can, put filters on this whole thing. Looks pretty good to me, except, again, the time frame, Miljan, you might you might just consider fixing that select date range because it doesn't actually go to a place where I can put in a date range. I just I just get some chick who's completely naked. Anyway, Coin Center's post election policy outlook, positive for securities and banking. Uncertain, however, on surveillance issues. This is going to finish us off for today.
No bsbitcoin.com has it. Coin Center anticipates good policy in areas of securities and banking regulation, but the outlook is way less certain in the anti money laundering, tax reporting, and sanctions areas. Let's see what they've got to say about it. In its latest analysis of the changing cryptocurrency policy landscape, Coin Center, a nonprofit focused on Bitcoin and digital asset policy issues, said it expects positive developments in policies concerning investor protection. However, areas concerning surveillance issues might remain more challenging. Quote, coin center will remain focused on protecting the rights of developers who are working on software for self custody and privacy as well as the rights of ordinary Americans who want to use those tools.
The research and advocacy group stressed that it aims for good policy on all dimensions, but its core mission remains protecting the rights of developers and users of decentralized peer to peer protocols. Coin Center's mission is focused on decentralized infrastructure developers' rights to publish code, which is a First Amendment issue, and on stopping unwarranted surveillance obligations, which is a 4th Amendment issue. And that 4th quadrant box is the overlapping battleground for both topics. And, of course, they're talking about this this little table here. That basically is sort of like they're a small outline of what it is that they wanna do.
Like, for instance, centralized businesses under the auspices of investor protection, you've got 2 things. You've got agencies and congress. And under agencies, it it says SEC enforcement actions against custodial exchanges and CFTC actions. And then under congress, it says market structure bills, like the fit 21 and payment stablecoin legislation, like the payment stablecoins act. Essentially, basically, they're they're still they're just kinda breaking it down saying, look, man, we're really concerned with these first amendment issues, these 4th amendment issues, and here's the here's where these scenarios actually occur.
And that's pretty much it for the day, guys. So Coin Center is not going to give up. They're they're going to, still engage with this new administration because nobody can let their guard down. None of us can let our guard down, especially when you've got Trump considering ripple as part I mean, these guys are criminals. They're just fraudsters. They're scammers of the first order. They are scammers of the corporate order, and they need to not be considered. I do hope that somebody like coin Coin Center won't probably may not say anything about it, but I'm hoping Bitcoin Policy Institute will, attack the notion that anybody from Ripple has any place whatsoever on this board. And all honestly, Jeremy Allaire, he doesn't need to be there either.
But I don't expect anything, any fights on that to fall on anything but deaf ears. So we're probably going to have, god forbid, Brad Garlinghouse from Ripple or his coconspirator, whatever his name is, on this crypto council. And expect chicanery, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have
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