Join me today for Episode 1002 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- M5M's Changing Perception on Bitcoin
- Ordinals Used to Secure Wiki Leaks' War Diaries
- Trump Takes Credit for $100K
- CBDCs Losing Allure at Central Banks
- That MATRIX Wasn't Our MATRIX
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoins-change-in-media-perception-from-0-to-100000-dollars
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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. It is 10:23 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 5th day of December 2024.
This is episode 1,002 of Bitcoin, and a lot of shit happened yesterday. Not the least of which, yes, I know, Bitcoin hit a 100,000. Hey. It's great. I understand it. I get it. Do not do not be perturbed when we get a snap back to 98 or something like that, because there will be profit taking. There are enough people in the world that don't understand. They do have the asset, but they don't understand the asset. They still think it is a Fiat play, so we're gonna have to do what we always do. You stack sats, you stay humble, you hold your own keys. So as long as you're doing that, it really won't matter what the morons in the markets trading this shit, you know, do. You'll be you'll be fine. But France is not because that was another thing that happened as well as the UnitedHealthcare CEO getting blown away in France outside of a Hilton hotel, if you didn't hear about that.
They believe that UnitedHealthcare is probably considered the largest, if not, it's one of the top three largest health care institutions in the United States of America. He was on his way to give some kind of speech to the shareholders at an annual meeting, and a guy was laying in wait and blew him away. Now what's interesting about this story is that there was writing on the shell casings. One casing had the word deny, the other one had the word defend, and a third shell casing had the word depose written on them. And these are the shell casings that were collected by the cops at the scene of the crime. It has there's a reference. I saw that this might be referencing a book that was written a long long time ago by a Feingold or Feinstein or some kind of name like that where it was deny or or rather the book's name was delay, deny, defend, colon, how health care screws you and what you can do about it. Now that's not exactly what the, the last part of that title actually reads. I don't have it in front of me, so I don't know. But it it was like that. It was like, hey, man. The health care companies, they, you know, they'll delay your payment. They'll defend their actions, and then they will, you know, depose your ass to make it try to go away.
Have you ever seen the the movie called The Rainmaker with Matt Damon? It is about exactly that, or at least that's one of the subplots that's going on in that movie is this health insurance company that just continuously denies these claims, and this is a thing. Anyway, so I we don't know anything about the guy. He's still at large, but he blew this dude away and took the time to write words on the shell casing. That guys, that that is a different kind of that is that's ridiculously premeditated. And I got a gut feeling that it's probably more than that. It seems that the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was also, being investigated by the DOJ for insider trading or something like that. But France, well, France's parliament and their entire government has collapsed, and this is the first time that's happened in 60 years.
That's gonna cause some serious serious issues. Does what this means is that their prime minister has basically been ousted or ouster, however the hell you pronounce it. Macron is still president, but he's going to have to install the 7th prime minister since he's been president. He's gone through. He will now be getting on his 7th prime minister, and this dude lasted exactly 91 days. It is the shortest French government in the history of the 5th Republic of France, which is that's what they're on. They're on their 5th Republic in the history of that country. And this is the shortest lived government that they've ever had.
That's not good. All this shit is collapsing in on itself. The whole thing is freaking imploding. But I wanna tell you about my friend, Shishi, and his confre out of the circle p where if you're not selling your goods and services for satoshis or bitcoin, which is the same thing, then you're not in the circle p. This is part of the way to get a circular economy going. I have a show. It is, let's see. Let's see. I need to get over back over to where where was I? It's episode 726, and it will tell you all about the plant known as comfrey. It's a medicine.
It is a soil conditioner. It does all kinds of things that I don't wanna go through right now. That's why you can go listen to episode 726 on fountain or what however you you listen to this, and you will find out all about Comfrey. And then when you figure out, oh, shit. He's right. I need this stuff. You can buy it from Shishi. His name is Shishi, s h I s h I 21 m. He's over there on Noster. I will have his in pub, in the show notes so that you can get right to him. If you wanna email him, you can get him at, [email protected]. But if you order that way, it's a little bit slower.
You can get one full root for $20 or you can get root cuttings for a buck each. Now I I kind of recommend getting root cuttings, because they're gonna grow just fine. You're gonna be able to propagate this plant forever. You'll never have to rebuy this stuff. He has 2 strains. 1 is blocking 14, which is better for animal forage, and he has blocking 4, which is the root stock that I provided Shishi well over 3 years ago when I had to move from Canyon to east, Eastern Washington State. So just if you if you figure out the magic that is the conferee plant, This is where you're going to buy your root cuttings from, and you want this plant in your garden. And the reason that I bring it bringing it to you, at least in the northern hemisphere in essentially, we're about to come into the very first part of winter.
This is so you can get your orders in early. Tell XiXi you want them. And remember, XiXi is not a professional retailer, so you gotta stay on his ass. But you want this plant. You want it in your garden. When you listen to episode 726 of Bitcoin, and you will understand why. Now onto the Bitcoin news. Do we want another Bitcoin country? Well, if you do, you need to do something about it. This is Frank Korva writing for Bitcoin Magazine. Bitcoin is its own network state. To borrow a term from Balaji Srinivasan, that is, while Bitcoin proponents aren't bound to one geographical region, they have collective power and can enact change. We just saw some version of this power exercised in the US political sphere as the Bitcoin lobby fiercely supported pro Bitcoin candidates in the recent US election cycle.
Because this lobby was so strong, many pro Bitcoin candidates were elected and or reelected into positions of power, and one could argue that Trump won the election because he embraced Bitcoin, while Harris could only seem to muster up the ability to make lukewarm, offbeat statements about being pro crypto. Now there's another country for the Bitcoin community to rally behind a candidate. For the first time in history, a country has a presidential nominee who's running on the notion of putting her country on a Bitcoin standard. That country is Suriname, and the candidate's name is Maya Parbo.
I think that's how you're pronouncing it or how I'm pronouncing it. Anyway, Parbo understands the transformative power of Bitcoin and believes that making it legal tender, not just a reserve asset, ladies and gentlemen, a legal tender, it can help get Suriname's 600,000 citizens out of survival mode. So my question to you as a Bitcoin enthusiast is this, do you wanna watch as Parvo attempts to make history? Or do you wanna play a role in helping her make it? In other words, are you going to contribute to her campaign as Bitcoin allows you to do from anywhere in the world permissionlessly, or are you simply going to be a spectator?
Well, you can also reach out to Parbo's campaign via hello at maya 2025.com to offer support in other ways if you feel so inclined. The election takes place in May of this next year, 2025, and Parbo and her team are currently gearing up for campaign season. It's hard to say just yet anyway how much of a shot she has at winning. But she'll likely have less of one with out your support. So if you'd like to see the Bitcoin network state include another nation state, you have the opportunity here to play a part in potentially making that happen. Right? So I know you're probably sitting there going, dude, this is this you know, why do we give a shit about Suriname?
Yeah. I mean, I don't even you know, I'm I'm gonna admit it. I don't know where Suriname is. I I suspect it's somewhere in Southeast Asia, but, yeah, I don't really know. But having yet one more country, even if it's only 600,000 citizens, one more sovereign nation on a Bitcoin standard is going to make it better for all of us that hold Bitcoin or advocate for Bitcoin or at least think that one day we might want to hold and then advocate for Bitcoin. It's just the way it works. So consider it. I mean, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm you know, money is always tight in my family, so I'm going to probably not be able to contribute to another country's presidential election. But, hey, if you got the bread, if you got the sats, you know, you might wanna consider it. Okay. So, clearly, we're gonna have to talk about Bitcoin at a 100,000.
Right? Because this we've been waiting for this for a long time. We're in 6 digit territory, which is kind of funny that I just turned over the Bitcoin and podcast to a 4 digit episode, territory a couple of days ago, and all of a sudden we hit a 100,000. I will I will take the thanks. Not really. I'm not that much of an asshole. But Braden Lindria, also not an asshole. And writing for Cointelegraph, he says Bitcoin at a 100 k. How's the media's perception shifted since 2009? So he's doing a compare and contrast against what the media used to be saying and what they're saying today, and it's kinda interesting.
Bitcoin has reached the historic $100,000 milestone almost 16 years after launching in 2009. But the road hasn't been easy, and most of the brutal attacks have come from mainstream media's biggest names. Media coverage of Bitcoin slowly started picking up around the time its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, vanished from Bitcoin talk boards back in 2011. It caught the attention of the likes of Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and CNN, who were publishing mostly negative stories, which was or has, without a doubt, significantly influenced society's perception of Bitcoin today.
The ratio of positive Bitcoin stories has, however, increased as Bitcoin soared to new highs and became more institutionalized in the early 20 twenties according to Bitcoin perception data shared exclusively with Cointelegraph. And here are some of MSM's most brutal headlines and comments that Bitcoiners were faced with on the road to a $100,000. Quote, so that's the end of Bitcoin then, end quote, Forbes in 2011. Yes. Well, Forbes prematurely called the end of Bitcoin when its price fell from $17 to mere pennies in a matter of minutes in June of 2011. The price collapse was triggered by 1 trader attempting to sell more Bitcoin than cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox could absorb.
Another headline. So that's the end of Bitcoin then. The former probe's opinion writer, Tim Worstall, claimed Bitcoin wasn't liquid or secure enough to be a medium of exchange or a store of value, a semi plausible opinion at the time that looks far less plausible now. And the Bitcoin price was about $17. Here's another one. Out of CNN, this headline, Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymity, a huge red flag. And that was in 2013. Many critics couldn't fathom the idea that Bitcoin could be secure with an off the radar pseudonymous creator, including former CNN opinion writer James Angel, who strongly believes Satoshi Nakamoto's unknown identity made Bitcoin a huge red flag, quote, I would certainly not trust my life savings to some mysterious computer algorithm created by a shadowy anonymous character in a system that attracts underworld types, end quote.
Well, like many others, Angel didn't like how Bitcoin's transactions offered a degree of anonymity. His views are less commonly held now in 2024 as transactions on Bitcoin are publicly visible and can be investigated by blockchain forensics firms like Chainalysis. Okay. So Bitcoin may be legitimate after all. Bloomberg writes that one in 2013. There were times, albeit rare, when Bitcoin was seen in a better light as Bitcoin soared from $12 to around 900 in 2013. More financial experts invited on mainstream media brought a loud and clear message. Bitcoin is legitimate.
One of these experts was Nick Colas, a founder at Datatech Research who championed Bitcoin's security, predictable money supply, and ability to transact across borders in 2013, an interview with Bloomberg. In 2014, the Washington Post interviewed Marc Andreessen, a founder at software focused venture venture capital firm a 16 z, who bullishly predicted that Bitcoin would become as influential as the Internet by 2034. Here's another one. Satoshi is like a reckless doctor overprescribing drugs. That's the Financial Times in 2014. God, how embarrassing.
A former risk examiner at the United States Federal Reserve criticized Satoshi for building a poorly designed Bitcoin supply schedule that doesn't account for the ebbs and flows of economic cycles. Quote, Nakamoto's writings seem to indicate that the motivation, at least in part, was the libertarian ideal of putting money creation beyond the reach of meddling central bankers. But this is a mistake, Mark Williams said. Quote, it ignores the ebbs and flows of economic cycles, a reckless approach that is the equivalent of a doctor giving penicillin to every patient without first checking whether they are suffering from an infection, depression, or mania.
End quote. A dangerous mistake lies at Bitcoin's intellectual core. And this is an opinion from the Financial Times. Williams praised Bitcoin as a technological innovation or invention, but he feared it would undermine central banks as it showed people that currency could be nationless. Central banks are tasked with controlling money supplies and interest rates while preventing runaway inflation to spur economic growth. But Bitcoin aims to take these roles away and give it to an algorithm instead, Williams said. Quote, the software behind Bitcoin is a remarkable technical achievement, but those who tout such systems as a way of saving capitalism are profoundly wrong.
The price of Bitcoin, $672. Bitcoin is an energy glutton that could harm Earth's climate. This is when we started hearing about it. It's first from The Washington Post in 2018. Yes. We started hearing about the climate issue with Bitcoin. 6 years ago, MSM turned to criticize Bitcoin for its high energy consumption as the network's hash rate increased to over 50 exahashes per second. Pausing to let you know we're at about 750 x of hashes per second. So what? A 14 x increase, a 15 x increase since then? Anyway, the Washington Post referred to Bitcoin as an energy glutton, something that uses excessive or greedy indulgence.
In an October 28 report, which cited data suggesting that Bitcoin's greenhouse gas emissions were already comparable to those of a midsized country, quote, it could catapult the planet to dangerous levels of warming if it continues its rapid growth, the Washington Post said from the research. Bitcoin's hash rate has since soared to nearly 800 exahashes per second, of which approximately 54.5% is sourced from renewable energy the price of bitcoin at the time $6,300 well bitcoin is too cumbersome slow and expensive to use Hello, New York Times. In 2021, the MSM started pointing to network congestion and high fees once Bitcoin's user base and transaction count soared in 2020 and 2021.
Bitcoin has become too cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use, Cornell University professor Eswar Prasad said in an opinion piece titled the brutal truth about Bitcoin back in June of 2021. Quote, it is as though your $10 bill could buy you a beer on one day and a bottle of fine wine on another. It has no intrinsic value and is not backed by anything, Prasad said. Yeah. Price of Bitcoin at that time was $40,200. Bitcoin ETFs approved, but think before jumping on the bandwagon, says CNN in 2024. Following the approval of the Bitcoin ETFs in January, CNN cautioned investors to think twice before buying Bitcoin ETFs, sharing commentary from investment advisers who suggesting steering clear of the products or allocating 3% to their portfolios at the very most.
CNN said, those considering jumping on the bandwagon should understand they would be investing in an asset that has a new wrapper but carries many of the same risks, like market manipulation and volatility. Price of Bitcoin at the time, 46,300. The Economist also claimed that the Bitcoin ETFs were off to a bad start 3 weeks later when Bitcoin retraced to a mere 42,500, and outflows from Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust ETF were running rampant. These remarks were made around the time when BlackRock's Ishares Bitcoin Trust was rounding more in or recording more inflows than 99.8% of ETFs in the United States, far exceeding all industry expectations.
Fast forward nearly 10 months, inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs, excluding GBTC, are $47,000,000,000 contributing significantly to the meteoric price rise from 46,200 to over $100,000 today. From Forbes, also in 2024, so long as Bitcoin is the noisy price story, it won't ever be money. Forbes contributing writer, Jon Tamney, noted that a continued rise in Bitcoin's price would make it impossible for it to become widely used currencies or as Satoshi initially envisioned. Quote, money is just the reasonably trusted store value that moves production between buyer, seller, lender, and borrower. So why would a Bitcoin cheerleader use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange when they think it's going up? Tamney pondered in a November 17th Forbes article, quote, if you agree with the present narrative that Bitcoin surge is of the early days variety, then you're by definition accepting what's similarly true, that Bitcoin will never become money, end quote.
And Bitcoin's price at that time? $89,895. Many industry pundits tipped Bitcoin to notch its next $100,000 far quicker than the first $100,000 was reached. Will that finally change the minds of mainstream media opinion writers? History says, probably not. Yeah. No shit. It's ridiculous. The the mainstream media has been nothing but wrong. And if you really wanna know if you really wanna know, it's called, Bitcoin obituaries. Hold on. I need to find it now. Bitcoin obituaries. Let's see if I can find it. Yeah. Bitcoin obituaries. You can go to 99 bitcoins.com, that's the number 9 number 9 bitcoins with an s.com, and you will find the Bitcoin obituaries.
And as of right now and they I okay. They looks like they stopped recording in April of 2024, the obituary timeline. So the last one here is BTC headed to the end game, and that was on Twitter. And at the time, the price was $60,000 900 or $60,996.71. Bitcoin has died according to Bitcoin obituaries, and each obituary is essentially a either a Twitter, a tweet by somebody famous, or a full blown news article or an interview on CNN or something like that. But according at that metric, if you're looking at that, then Bitcoin has died 477 times.
Do you really think Bitcoin is dead? I just I just don't think so. I think all these people are continuously wrong. They're always going to be wrong. So I just feel bad for them. I feel bad for them in 2 ways. 1st, they're always wrong. And second of all, you apparently, it's unethical for you to hold the very thing that you report on. So if you hold Bitcoin, you can't actually report on it. If you and if you don't hold Bitcoin, generally speaking, you're gonna be pissed off that you don't because you've seen what it does. So you're always going to write negative shit about it. It's a catch 22, the likes of which is I've never really seen as bad of a catch 22, but, you know, here it is. So just be aware that this is also not going to end. There's always going to be a whole bunch of people that just decide that no matter what they do or no matter what Bitcoin does itself is that it's not money. It's going to die.
It's going to 0. I just figured that Dan Pena needs to be in in play here. And if you don't know who Dan Pena is, you need to go check him out. He's kinda he's kinda fun to watch, but my god almighty does he hate Bitcoin. Okay. Bitcoin ordinals startup. Yes. I know. You're gonna freak out because I'm gonna be talking about ordinals today. Look. Here here's something that I wanna get across. I'm not a fan of ordinals. But in the past, I have said that there may be a use case for them, but it would have to be something that is kind of profound. It can't be like, I don't know, you know, pictures of cats or Yogi the bear or some bullshit like that. All of that's worthless.
However, it seems that somebody may have a good use case, And I'm gonna have to leave it up to your opinion. Alright. I'm not gonna drive you either way. I'm just gonna read you the news. Treat me like the weatherman. It doesn't mean that I'm for it or against it. It just means that something's changed. So this is out of Decrypt written by Jason Nelson, and he starts us off with Bitcoin ordinal startup, Project Spartacus, revive WikiLeaks Afghan war logs. And, hopefully, we'll get into what those war logs are, so that you'll understand. I know what they are. And if they don't talk about it very much, I'll I'll let you know. But the Bitcoin ordinal startup, ordinals bought, and project Spartacus, a group of anonymous activists dedicated to preserving WikiLeaks legacy on the Bitcoin blockchain, are reigniting efforts to inscribe the Afghan war diary using the ordinals protocol.
The revival focused on preserving the war logs on the Bitcoin network is supported by Assange campaign chairman Gabriel Shipton who noted the importance of safeguarding the Afghan war diary for future generations, quote, obviously, having all that data stored on chain forever, immutable, is very important for our society to learn from our mistakes, Shipton told decrypt. Quote, that's what Julian was always about, publishing these secrets so that people could understand what went on, what actually happened, and hopefully make corrections to their institutions and their own society, end quote. Shipton Shipton partnered with the ordinals bot to inscribe 76,911 uncensored articles from the Afghan war logs on the Bitcoin network. And starting December 12th, OrdinalsBot will relaunch the effort allowing users to participate in minting the Afghan war diary.
Having this information on the blockchain just really takes Julian Julian's legacy and WikiLeaks legacy to the next level. The Afghan war diary is no longer on a service somewhere that could go down. So what is the Afghan war diary? The Afghan war diary, or also known as the Afghan war logs, is a collection of over 91,000 classified United States military documents leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, in July of 2010. Covering the years 20 or 2004 to 2010, the logs reveal insights into the Afghan war, including military operations, intelligence, covert missions, and civilian casualties, and reshaped how the public understood the war in Afghanistan, transparency, and modern warfare.
One of the main criticisms of WikiLeaks releasing the war logs in 2010 was that it would put lives in danger if it were released. Anticipating this, Shipton said Assange made plans to protect the identity of the people listed in the documents, quote, I think what's really missed about this story is that Julian created technology to help redact these massive files, redactions that previously weren't available to these journalists who were taking out names, like that they weren't able to do that with these files, Shipton told Decrypt in a very weirdly worded sentence. But he continued, quote, Julian developed technology to protect people, and these releases eventually brought an end to this war.
So I think those benefits really outweigh those accusations. Assange was arrested in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his asylum, ending nearly 7 years in their London embassy, and faced extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing classified documents. In June, Assange accepted a plea deal and was released from Belmarsh prison in London. In in November, US representatives, Tom Massey and James McGovern, called on president Joe Biden to part pardon Assange before leaving office. Quote, a pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea deal and send a clear message that the United States government, under your leadership, will not target nor investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs, the congressman wrote.
The Afghan war diary is the latest in high profile inscriptions orchestrated by the OrdinalsBot team. In March, founding member of the legacy Wu Tan Clan, Ghostface Killah, tapped the platform to launch a collection of music themed ordinal inscriptions. That same month, ordinalsbot collaborated with Marathon Digital Holdings to mint the runestone, the largest ordinal inscription at the time at 4 megabytes. The Runestone inscription was sent to a wallet that supposedly belonged to Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Named after the famous Roman gladiator turned rebel leader, project Spartacus is an initiative to permanently inscribe the Afghan war logs initially published by Julian Assange onto the Bitcoin blockchain.
Quote, it's in the name as well. Project Spartacus. You're standing up and each bit Bitcoiner is standing up alongside Julian. OrdinalsBot cofounder Toby Lewis told Decrypt, quote, it's how they can share a piece of history that's very controversial but considered very important, especially by Bitcoiners. It's a moment in time, end quote. In October of 2023, 2,000 of these logs were inscribed during the project's initial phases before it stalled. Starting next week, WikiLeaks supporters will be able to choose how many articles from the Afghan war diary they want to mint in bundles of 1, 5, 20, 50, or a 100.
Inspired by Stella Assange's presentation on project Spartacus at the Bitcoin conference in 2023, OrdinalsBot cofounder Brian Laflin said that ordinal the OrdinalsBot team joined in to revive the stalled Afghan war diary initiative. Quote, the project stalled for a while due to technical reasons. The previous team, overwhelmed or unable to continue, eventually moved on through our contacts at Bitcoin Magazine. Of course, we connected with Gabriel and felt honored to step in. We were ready to plug the project back in and power it back up with services prepared.
Laughlin emphasized his belief that ordinals could be used as a tool for immutable resistant data storage beyond NFTs. He added that minting the Afghan war diary inscriptions is free with collectors paying the Bitcoin network fees. Quote, to be clear, this isn't about making money. Our service fee only covers the cost, Laflin added. For Shipton, bringing the war diary to Bitcoin follows a long relationship between WikiLeaks and Bitcoin since the very early days of the cryptocurrency when WikiLeaks began accepting it for donations. One of the last posts from Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, before disappearing in 2011 was regarding WikiLeaks and the group turning to Bitcoin after its financial services were cut off.
In 2017, following rumors that he had died, Assange put those rumors to bed by reading out Bitcoin's latest blockhash during an online talk. Quote, WikiLeaks was able to continue paying for its servers, paying for its staff, and everything in Bitcoin shipped and said, quote, Bitcoin was their operating currency, and they had the biggest state on the planet, the most powerful state totally debanking them, and they were able to survive and keep publishing. K. That's the end of the article. I'm all for this. I'm gonna say it. I I know that there's gonna be a lot of people out there that just absolutely freaking hate me for it because it's ordinals. This is the only use case that I would ever see as being worthwhile usage of the Bitcoin block space.
I know that's gonna be no matter what I say about it, there's going to be people out there that absolutely think I'm wrong. Fine. Tell me how I'm wrong, but do it in a boostagram. Attach some satoshis with it. If you're gonna if if you're gonna make the argument that no matter what how important something could possibly be, that it does not belong in the format of an ordinal on the Bitcoin blockchain. Make the argument, but but put your money where your mouth is. You know, and make it also, make it a good argument. I don't and it's not that I wanna lambaste you. It's not that I wanna prove that you're wrong. I actually wanna know. Because I read this and I'm like, at this point, it doesn't mean that I like ordinals.
It just means that for the first time, I've well, maybe for the second time, I've actually seen something that used the ordinal technology, for lack of a better term, for something that was worthwhile. Everything else is a pile of shit. NFTs, pile of shit. The runestone, pile of shit. Was it a picture of Yogi Bear or a cat? Then it's a pile of shit. And anybody who lost all of their money because they were just degeneratively going all in on stupid shit because they were ordinals deserves to lose every satoshi they lost, and I'm sorry for you. Well, actually, I'm not all that sorry for you. However, there does come a time when maybe we should consider that some use cases are actually good for humanity. I believe this is actually one use case that ordinals can provide that's good for humanity. And before you completely hit the ceiling, understand the following.
There was a guy a few years back that was using what was it? He was, somehow or another, he was using the Bitcoin blockchain. And this is before NFTs. This is before ordinals. This is before all of this crap. He was stamping headlines and small news stories inside transactions. And he was paying out the wazoo for it, by the way. He was paying a good amount of fees because his transactions were so heavy because they would have news inside of them. Right? There's nothing different from that time to now. So just take a breath, take a step back, and think.
Do we want these Afghan war logs to be preserved forever? Then if you think that they deserve that kind of preservation, then it seems to me that Bitcoin is the only preservation technology that we have for this because it's gonna be protected by humanity's greed. And I'll I'll will make you a level bet that you will not find a more powerful suit of armor than human greed. Doesn't necessarily mean that greed is good, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that greed is bad. It's a tool, and I think in this case, it's probably being used appropriately. But that's my opinion. You let me know. Let's run numbers. Oil is essentially moving sideways. West Texas Intermediate is at $68.59.
Brent Norsey, 72.39. Natural gas, however, is up over 1 and a half points to $3.9 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline has fallen a 10th no. Yeah. Yeah. A 10th of a point to, a buck 93 a gallon. Good luck finding it. Gold, however, has fallen a full point, so has silver, so has platinum. And copper is off only by a quarter, but palladium is off by 2 full points. Everything in ag futures is in the green except for cotton and lumber. Lumber is down 1.86%, making it our biggest loser. Chocolate is our biggest winner, 4.79% to the upside. I got live cattle down a whole point.
Lean hogs are down 0.12%, feeder cattle are down 0.7%. The Dow is down a third of a point. Nas or the S and P is moving sideways. Nasdaq is down a 5th of a point, and the S and P mini is down over half a point. We're looking at $100,280 bitcoin. That is just a couple of hairs underneath $1,980,000,000,000 in market cap. And like I said, don't get upset when this shit dips under a 100,000. I'm surprised we lasted at above a 100,000 for as long as we have. It's going to get there again, but people are going to take their profit. It's just going to happen. And it looks like it's gonna happen here pretty damn quick. We're down to a 100,080. Come on. Are we gonna go? We We gonna do it? No. We're back up to a 100,000 and 120. You can get 38.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,79,177.13 of. And fees, you would think they'd be high, but they're not.
Point 09 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis on average, and there are a 107 blocks carrying 275,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 10 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 9. Hash rate on a 1 week rolling average is 754.5 xahashes per second. And from Infinite Kimchi, yesterday's palindrome episode of Bitcoin, and I got pies to pled with 1,001 sat says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And then I've got god's death with 1,001 sat that says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's it. That's all. Those are the only people that commented on the first and the very first palindrome episode of the 4 digit era for Bitcoin, and I love them both. Now that's gonna do it for the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use from the block, James Hunt writing. Trump is congratulating Bitcoiners on the $100,000 milestone as industry reacts to new all time high. Well, let's see what the block has to say about Trump. As Bitcoin soared past the $100,000 level for the first time, the crypto industry weighed in on what's driving the move and what's coming next. Quote, Bitcoin reaching $100,000 marks a pivotal milestone. Underscoring its increasing adoption and perceived value, Bitget Research chief analyst Ryan Lee told The Block, quote, analysts are now shifting focus to the next potential resistance level, eyeing targets of a 150,000 and even 200.
The market's measured reaction suggests there may still be room for growth, end quote. Those targets were shared by several other analysts in the crypto market. President-elect Trump's nomination of crypto friendly blockchain advocate Paul Atkins for securities and exchange commissioner chair late Wednesday was the final and decisive nudge for Bitcoin to breach a $100,000, Bernstein analyst led by Gautman Shugani wrote in a Thursday note to clients, quote, we believe that the appointment and the broader regulatory direction under Trump 2 point o is materially positive for the wider crypto industry and the longer tail of the block chain assets that dealt with regulation by enforcement so far, Chugani said. We remain convinced a 100,000 is not the final milestone and expect Bitcoin to hit a cycle high of $200,000 in late of 2025, end quote.
Pro crypto Trump congratulated Bitcoins on reaching Bitcoiners on reaching the milestone in a post on truth social where he said, congratulations, Bitcoiners. A 100,000. You're welcome. Together, we will make America great again. God. The Hebrews is freaking eye watering. Analyst at Bitfinex said, the 4th having event in April, the Federal Reserve avoiding a plausible recession, Trump's election win, and Fed chair Jerome Powell's comments that Bitcoin is similar to gold and not a competitor to the US dollar were all factors in the price rise. Quote, our short term target is a 112 k, but we need to keep in mind that a lot of trading will slow over the holiday period.
Bullshit. Have you ever seen the holiday period in trading? It ain't exactly slow. Although, I I I guess I should include this would be the 1st holiday season that ETFs are involved, and those will slow down because their markets close Friday afternoon. Right? So, well, whatever. Standard Chartered analyst Jeffrey Kendrick highlighted the role of institutional flows into Bitcoin in a Thursday note with over $32,000,000,000 in total net inflows now generated by the combined US spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds alone. Kendrick also noted MicroStrategy's acquisition of 213,000 BTC in 2024 so far, expecting its purchases to match or exceed those levels worth tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars in 2025 as part of its $42,000,000,000 capital raise plan to acquire yet more Bitcoin. However, his target remains the same as Bernstein's.
Quote, given the potential for further institutional flows in 2025, we remain comfortable with our end 2025 price level of around $200,000 greater than expected uptake by US retirement accounts, pension funds, global SWFs, or a potential US strategic reserve fund would make us even more bullish, Kendrick said. Alright. So that's honestly, that's all we need to really know about that. Trump's taken credit, and everybody is pointing to certain reasons as to why we went past a $100,000. Nobody really knows. I mean, a lot of this shit is just coincidence, but there's no real way to actually know.
And for if any of you guys that are out there are listening to traders and analysts and economic advisers, and some of them are telling you that they know for a fact that that's why it happened, they are lying to you. Unless they are so filthy freaking rich that they don't need any other money. And the reason I say that is because if you are poor and you're telling people that you've got you've got the way you subscribe to my newsletter and I'll teach you how to turn 10 the $10 into $10,000,000, then why are you so poor? It's sort of that same kind of thing. Right? So generally speaking, all these analysts and all these traders and the guys that are drawing lines on charts that are trying to figure out why x y and z happened, nobody knows.
They don't know. Nobody knows, including the guys at Nano Labs. Yes. You heard it right. Nano Labs. And if you don't know who they are, don't worry about it. Neither did I until this morning when the following fell across my desk. Nano Labs Limited reveals a strategy to allocate, you guessed it, excess liquidity to Bitcoin as a long term reserve asset. Nano Labs Limited, a prominent fabless integrated circuit design company based in China. China, not California, but China announced its plans to invest a portion of excess liquidity into Bitcoin as a long term strategic reserve asset.
By the way, this is out of barchart.com. A long term strategic reserve asset. This decision highlights the company's confidence in Bitcoin's reliability as a store of value amid its increasing global adoption and recent market trends that show significant price appreciation. So there you go. It's yet one more company that's putting Bitcoin on its books. This time, however, it's a it's a Chinese company in China. Not a Chinese company in Australia or in Bangladesh or something like that. No. No. No. They're in China. So there's a larger breath of fresh air at work there just because of that.
When China starts rolling into Bitcoin because they've they've tried to ban it twice. They've they've banned mining. They've banned ownership. They've done at least 2 full bans on Bitcoin have occurred from the Chinese government. And now you got a Chinese company on Chinese sovereign soil that's going to start allocating to Bitcoin and using the term strategic reserve asset. That's the the SRA is gonna be everywhere. So buckle up, man, because I don't think we are we are anywhere close to at the end of the top of this cycle. CBDCs, this is out of Atlas 21.
Central banks are showing, and this is good news, they show declining interest in digital currencies, specifically central bank digital currencies. A recent survey by the off official monetary Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum reveals that central banks are losing interest in CBDCs despite ongoing research efforts. The annual future of payments report highlights a sharp decline in support for CBDCs as a solution for cross border payments. Only 13% of respondents in 2024 see them as a viable option compared to a third of respondents in 2023. Preference is shifting towards interconnected instant payment systems such as the US FedNow service, which is backed by 47% of central bankers. Stablecoins, meanwhile, received no votes for the 2nd consecutive year.
This cooling interest coincides with the withdrawal of the bank for international settlements from the Embiidj project, a multi CBDC initiative led by China. Although the BIS denies political motives, the move underscores the geopolitical tension surrounding digital currency adoption. The survey also reaffirms the dominance of the US dollar, with only 11% of central banks reporting a reduction in its use. Currently, over 130 countries are exploring CBDCs. Early adopters include China, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria. While others, such as the United States are moving more cautiously, president-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced opposition to the potential issuance of a digital dollar.
So you gotta understand who who are the respondents? The this this survey went out to not Joe on the street. This survey went out to central bankers. So when they say that only 13% of the respondents see CBDCs as viable options, that means 13% of the central banking staff that responded to the survey. Not Joe on the street, not politicians, but central bankers and central banking staff. That's huge. Hopefully, CBDCs die all by themselves, and we don't have to carry firearms out into the street 20 years from now. Oh, here's a good one, by the way.
Europol dismantles the criminal messaging service matrix in major global takedown. Now this news broke yesterday. It's not the matrix you think of. It's not the matrix that we know. It's not the matrix that is the decentralized thing. This is a different matrix. Alright? So this is from the hacker news, written by Rave LakshasheShaman. I can't pronounce it, dude. Don't mean to be offensive there. Europol on Tuesday announced the takedown of an invite only encrypted messaging service called Matrix that's created by criminals for criminal purposes.
The joint operation conducted by French and Dutch authorities under the moniker, Passionflower, comes in the aftermath of an investigation that was launched in 2021 after the messaging service was discovered on the phone of a criminal convicted for the murder of a Dutch journalist, Peter de Vries. This allowed authorities to intercept messages being sent via the service for a period of 3 months, amassing a total of more than 2,300,000 messages in 33 different languages. The messages, Europol said, are associated with serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering.
It's worth noting at this stage that Matrix is different. This is where you need to to really understand what's going on here because a lot of people got this wrong yesterday. It's worth noting at this stage that Matrix is different from the open source decentralized messaging app of the same name, matrix.org. Okay. So matrix.org is the messaging service that is decentralized that Nostra users and Bitcoiners just love and love and love, it ain't that matrix that they're talking about here. That's not the one that got it's not it's not possible to do the matrix, our matrix, what these guys were able to do to this centralized matrix.
So please please please get that one right. The matrix that we know and love is fine. It's okay. It is not being jacked with in any way, shape, or form and kinda can't be unless it was actually centralized. And if we were to ever find out that our matrix got snagged by Department of Justice or something like that, then we would know that it was not actually decentralized. But as far as we know right now, our matrix is just fine. They are talking about a completely different matrix. So that is the news for the day, ladies and gentlemen. Now, let me go back over here. I wanna make sure of something that I didn't miss something. Where are we at on the price? Just so that I can leave you off with what the hell happened.
As I'm signing off, we are at $100,691. It looks maybe like the people that have been furiously selling have lit up a little bit. I'm we're sitting on a green candle. It's coming up. It's now $100,748. We'll have to see. I hope I'm wrong. I I hope we don't dip below $100,000. But, you know, if you've been in this in this world for a while, you kinda know that at one point or another, there's gonna be a retest. So don't freak out about it, and I will 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 a great 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. It is 10:23 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 5th day of December 2024.
This is episode 1,002 of Bitcoin, and a lot of shit happened yesterday. Not the least of which, yes, I know, Bitcoin hit a 100,000. Hey. It's great. I understand it. I get it. Do not do not be perturbed when we get a snap back to 98 or something like that, because there will be profit taking. There are enough people in the world that don't understand. They do have the asset, but they don't understand the asset. They still think it is a Fiat play, so we're gonna have to do what we always do. You stack sats, you stay humble, you hold your own keys. So as long as you're doing that, it really won't matter what the morons in the markets trading this shit, you know, do. You'll be you'll be fine. But France is not because that was another thing that happened as well as the UnitedHealthcare CEO getting blown away in France outside of a Hilton hotel, if you didn't hear about that.
They believe that UnitedHealthcare is probably considered the largest, if not, it's one of the top three largest health care institutions in the United States of America. He was on his way to give some kind of speech to the shareholders at an annual meeting, and a guy was laying in wait and blew him away. Now what's interesting about this story is that there was writing on the shell casings. One casing had the word deny, the other one had the word defend, and a third shell casing had the word depose written on them. And these are the shell casings that were collected by the cops at the scene of the crime. It has there's a reference. I saw that this might be referencing a book that was written a long long time ago by a Feingold or Feinstein or some kind of name like that where it was deny or or rather the book's name was delay, deny, defend, colon, how health care screws you and what you can do about it. Now that's not exactly what the, the last part of that title actually reads. I don't have it in front of me, so I don't know. But it it was like that. It was like, hey, man. The health care companies, they, you know, they'll delay your payment. They'll defend their actions, and then they will, you know, depose your ass to make it try to go away.
Have you ever seen the the movie called The Rainmaker with Matt Damon? It is about exactly that, or at least that's one of the subplots that's going on in that movie is this health insurance company that just continuously denies these claims, and this is a thing. Anyway, so I we don't know anything about the guy. He's still at large, but he blew this dude away and took the time to write words on the shell casing. That guys, that that is a different kind of that is that's ridiculously premeditated. And I got a gut feeling that it's probably more than that. It seems that the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was also, being investigated by the DOJ for insider trading or something like that. But France, well, France's parliament and their entire government has collapsed, and this is the first time that's happened in 60 years.
That's gonna cause some serious serious issues. Does what this means is that their prime minister has basically been ousted or ouster, however the hell you pronounce it. Macron is still president, but he's going to have to install the 7th prime minister since he's been president. He's gone through. He will now be getting on his 7th prime minister, and this dude lasted exactly 91 days. It is the shortest French government in the history of the 5th Republic of France, which is that's what they're on. They're on their 5th Republic in the history of that country. And this is the shortest lived government that they've ever had.
That's not good. All this shit is collapsing in on itself. The whole thing is freaking imploding. But I wanna tell you about my friend, Shishi, and his confre out of the circle p where if you're not selling your goods and services for satoshis or bitcoin, which is the same thing, then you're not in the circle p. This is part of the way to get a circular economy going. I have a show. It is, let's see. Let's see. I need to get over back over to where where was I? It's episode 726, and it will tell you all about the plant known as comfrey. It's a medicine.
It is a soil conditioner. It does all kinds of things that I don't wanna go through right now. That's why you can go listen to episode 726 on fountain or what however you you listen to this, and you will find out all about Comfrey. And then when you figure out, oh, shit. He's right. I need this stuff. You can buy it from Shishi. His name is Shishi, s h I s h I 21 m. He's over there on Noster. I will have his in pub, in the show notes so that you can get right to him. If you wanna email him, you can get him at, [email protected]. But if you order that way, it's a little bit slower.
You can get one full root for $20 or you can get root cuttings for a buck each. Now I I kind of recommend getting root cuttings, because they're gonna grow just fine. You're gonna be able to propagate this plant forever. You'll never have to rebuy this stuff. He has 2 strains. 1 is blocking 14, which is better for animal forage, and he has blocking 4, which is the root stock that I provided Shishi well over 3 years ago when I had to move from Canyon to east, Eastern Washington State. So just if you if you figure out the magic that is the conferee plant, This is where you're going to buy your root cuttings from, and you want this plant in your garden. And the reason that I bring it bringing it to you, at least in the northern hemisphere in essentially, we're about to come into the very first part of winter.
This is so you can get your orders in early. Tell XiXi you want them. And remember, XiXi is not a professional retailer, so you gotta stay on his ass. But you want this plant. You want it in your garden. When you listen to episode 726 of Bitcoin, and you will understand why. Now onto the Bitcoin news. Do we want another Bitcoin country? Well, if you do, you need to do something about it. This is Frank Korva writing for Bitcoin Magazine. Bitcoin is its own network state. To borrow a term from Balaji Srinivasan, that is, while Bitcoin proponents aren't bound to one geographical region, they have collective power and can enact change. We just saw some version of this power exercised in the US political sphere as the Bitcoin lobby fiercely supported pro Bitcoin candidates in the recent US election cycle.
Because this lobby was so strong, many pro Bitcoin candidates were elected and or reelected into positions of power, and one could argue that Trump won the election because he embraced Bitcoin, while Harris could only seem to muster up the ability to make lukewarm, offbeat statements about being pro crypto. Now there's another country for the Bitcoin community to rally behind a candidate. For the first time in history, a country has a presidential nominee who's running on the notion of putting her country on a Bitcoin standard. That country is Suriname, and the candidate's name is Maya Parbo.
I think that's how you're pronouncing it or how I'm pronouncing it. Anyway, Parbo understands the transformative power of Bitcoin and believes that making it legal tender, not just a reserve asset, ladies and gentlemen, a legal tender, it can help get Suriname's 600,000 citizens out of survival mode. So my question to you as a Bitcoin enthusiast is this, do you wanna watch as Parvo attempts to make history? Or do you wanna play a role in helping her make it? In other words, are you going to contribute to her campaign as Bitcoin allows you to do from anywhere in the world permissionlessly, or are you simply going to be a spectator?
Well, you can also reach out to Parbo's campaign via hello at maya 2025.com to offer support in other ways if you feel so inclined. The election takes place in May of this next year, 2025, and Parbo and her team are currently gearing up for campaign season. It's hard to say just yet anyway how much of a shot she has at winning. But she'll likely have less of one with out your support. So if you'd like to see the Bitcoin network state include another nation state, you have the opportunity here to play a part in potentially making that happen. Right? So I know you're probably sitting there going, dude, this is this you know, why do we give a shit about Suriname?
Yeah. I mean, I don't even you know, I'm I'm gonna admit it. I don't know where Suriname is. I I suspect it's somewhere in Southeast Asia, but, yeah, I don't really know. But having yet one more country, even if it's only 600,000 citizens, one more sovereign nation on a Bitcoin standard is going to make it better for all of us that hold Bitcoin or advocate for Bitcoin or at least think that one day we might want to hold and then advocate for Bitcoin. It's just the way it works. So consider it. I mean, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm you know, money is always tight in my family, so I'm going to probably not be able to contribute to another country's presidential election. But, hey, if you got the bread, if you got the sats, you know, you might wanna consider it. Okay. So, clearly, we're gonna have to talk about Bitcoin at a 100,000.
Right? Because this we've been waiting for this for a long time. We're in 6 digit territory, which is kind of funny that I just turned over the Bitcoin and podcast to a 4 digit episode, territory a couple of days ago, and all of a sudden we hit a 100,000. I will I will take the thanks. Not really. I'm not that much of an asshole. But Braden Lindria, also not an asshole. And writing for Cointelegraph, he says Bitcoin at a 100 k. How's the media's perception shifted since 2009? So he's doing a compare and contrast against what the media used to be saying and what they're saying today, and it's kinda interesting.
Bitcoin has reached the historic $100,000 milestone almost 16 years after launching in 2009. But the road hasn't been easy, and most of the brutal attacks have come from mainstream media's biggest names. Media coverage of Bitcoin slowly started picking up around the time its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, vanished from Bitcoin talk boards back in 2011. It caught the attention of the likes of Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and CNN, who were publishing mostly negative stories, which was or has, without a doubt, significantly influenced society's perception of Bitcoin today.
The ratio of positive Bitcoin stories has, however, increased as Bitcoin soared to new highs and became more institutionalized in the early 20 twenties according to Bitcoin perception data shared exclusively with Cointelegraph. And here are some of MSM's most brutal headlines and comments that Bitcoiners were faced with on the road to a $100,000. Quote, so that's the end of Bitcoin then, end quote, Forbes in 2011. Yes. Well, Forbes prematurely called the end of Bitcoin when its price fell from $17 to mere pennies in a matter of minutes in June of 2011. The price collapse was triggered by 1 trader attempting to sell more Bitcoin than cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox could absorb.
Another headline. So that's the end of Bitcoin then. The former probe's opinion writer, Tim Worstall, claimed Bitcoin wasn't liquid or secure enough to be a medium of exchange or a store of value, a semi plausible opinion at the time that looks far less plausible now. And the Bitcoin price was about $17. Here's another one. Out of CNN, this headline, Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymity, a huge red flag. And that was in 2013. Many critics couldn't fathom the idea that Bitcoin could be secure with an off the radar pseudonymous creator, including former CNN opinion writer James Angel, who strongly believes Satoshi Nakamoto's unknown identity made Bitcoin a huge red flag, quote, I would certainly not trust my life savings to some mysterious computer algorithm created by a shadowy anonymous character in a system that attracts underworld types, end quote.
Well, like many others, Angel didn't like how Bitcoin's transactions offered a degree of anonymity. His views are less commonly held now in 2024 as transactions on Bitcoin are publicly visible and can be investigated by blockchain forensics firms like Chainalysis. Okay. So Bitcoin may be legitimate after all. Bloomberg writes that one in 2013. There were times, albeit rare, when Bitcoin was seen in a better light as Bitcoin soared from $12 to around 900 in 2013. More financial experts invited on mainstream media brought a loud and clear message. Bitcoin is legitimate.
One of these experts was Nick Colas, a founder at Datatech Research who championed Bitcoin's security, predictable money supply, and ability to transact across borders in 2013, an interview with Bloomberg. In 2014, the Washington Post interviewed Marc Andreessen, a founder at software focused venture venture capital firm a 16 z, who bullishly predicted that Bitcoin would become as influential as the Internet by 2034. Here's another one. Satoshi is like a reckless doctor overprescribing drugs. That's the Financial Times in 2014. God, how embarrassing.
A former risk examiner at the United States Federal Reserve criticized Satoshi for building a poorly designed Bitcoin supply schedule that doesn't account for the ebbs and flows of economic cycles. Quote, Nakamoto's writings seem to indicate that the motivation, at least in part, was the libertarian ideal of putting money creation beyond the reach of meddling central bankers. But this is a mistake, Mark Williams said. Quote, it ignores the ebbs and flows of economic cycles, a reckless approach that is the equivalent of a doctor giving penicillin to every patient without first checking whether they are suffering from an infection, depression, or mania.
End quote. A dangerous mistake lies at Bitcoin's intellectual core. And this is an opinion from the Financial Times. Williams praised Bitcoin as a technological innovation or invention, but he feared it would undermine central banks as it showed people that currency could be nationless. Central banks are tasked with controlling money supplies and interest rates while preventing runaway inflation to spur economic growth. But Bitcoin aims to take these roles away and give it to an algorithm instead, Williams said. Quote, the software behind Bitcoin is a remarkable technical achievement, but those who tout such systems as a way of saving capitalism are profoundly wrong.
The price of Bitcoin, $672. Bitcoin is an energy glutton that could harm Earth's climate. This is when we started hearing about it. It's first from The Washington Post in 2018. Yes. We started hearing about the climate issue with Bitcoin. 6 years ago, MSM turned to criticize Bitcoin for its high energy consumption as the network's hash rate increased to over 50 exahashes per second. Pausing to let you know we're at about 750 x of hashes per second. So what? A 14 x increase, a 15 x increase since then? Anyway, the Washington Post referred to Bitcoin as an energy glutton, something that uses excessive or greedy indulgence.
In an October 28 report, which cited data suggesting that Bitcoin's greenhouse gas emissions were already comparable to those of a midsized country, quote, it could catapult the planet to dangerous levels of warming if it continues its rapid growth, the Washington Post said from the research. Bitcoin's hash rate has since soared to nearly 800 exahashes per second, of which approximately 54.5% is sourced from renewable energy the price of bitcoin at the time $6,300 well bitcoin is too cumbersome slow and expensive to use Hello, New York Times. In 2021, the MSM started pointing to network congestion and high fees once Bitcoin's user base and transaction count soared in 2020 and 2021.
Bitcoin has become too cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use, Cornell University professor Eswar Prasad said in an opinion piece titled the brutal truth about Bitcoin back in June of 2021. Quote, it is as though your $10 bill could buy you a beer on one day and a bottle of fine wine on another. It has no intrinsic value and is not backed by anything, Prasad said. Yeah. Price of Bitcoin at that time was $40,200. Bitcoin ETFs approved, but think before jumping on the bandwagon, says CNN in 2024. Following the approval of the Bitcoin ETFs in January, CNN cautioned investors to think twice before buying Bitcoin ETFs, sharing commentary from investment advisers who suggesting steering clear of the products or allocating 3% to their portfolios at the very most.
CNN said, those considering jumping on the bandwagon should understand they would be investing in an asset that has a new wrapper but carries many of the same risks, like market manipulation and volatility. Price of Bitcoin at the time, 46,300. The Economist also claimed that the Bitcoin ETFs were off to a bad start 3 weeks later when Bitcoin retraced to a mere 42,500, and outflows from Grayscale's Bitcoin Trust ETF were running rampant. These remarks were made around the time when BlackRock's Ishares Bitcoin Trust was rounding more in or recording more inflows than 99.8% of ETFs in the United States, far exceeding all industry expectations.
Fast forward nearly 10 months, inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs, excluding GBTC, are $47,000,000,000 contributing significantly to the meteoric price rise from 46,200 to over $100,000 today. From Forbes, also in 2024, so long as Bitcoin is the noisy price story, it won't ever be money. Forbes contributing writer, Jon Tamney, noted that a continued rise in Bitcoin's price would make it impossible for it to become widely used currencies or as Satoshi initially envisioned. Quote, money is just the reasonably trusted store value that moves production between buyer, seller, lender, and borrower. So why would a Bitcoin cheerleader use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange when they think it's going up? Tamney pondered in a November 17th Forbes article, quote, if you agree with the present narrative that Bitcoin surge is of the early days variety, then you're by definition accepting what's similarly true, that Bitcoin will never become money, end quote.
And Bitcoin's price at that time? $89,895. Many industry pundits tipped Bitcoin to notch its next $100,000 far quicker than the first $100,000 was reached. Will that finally change the minds of mainstream media opinion writers? History says, probably not. Yeah. No shit. It's ridiculous. The the mainstream media has been nothing but wrong. And if you really wanna know if you really wanna know, it's called, Bitcoin obituaries. Hold on. I need to find it now. Bitcoin obituaries. Let's see if I can find it. Yeah. Bitcoin obituaries. You can go to 99 bitcoins.com, that's the number 9 number 9 bitcoins with an s.com, and you will find the Bitcoin obituaries.
And as of right now and they I okay. They looks like they stopped recording in April of 2024, the obituary timeline. So the last one here is BTC headed to the end game, and that was on Twitter. And at the time, the price was $60,000 900 or $60,996.71. Bitcoin has died according to Bitcoin obituaries, and each obituary is essentially a either a Twitter, a tweet by somebody famous, or a full blown news article or an interview on CNN or something like that. But according at that metric, if you're looking at that, then Bitcoin has died 477 times.
Do you really think Bitcoin is dead? I just I just don't think so. I think all these people are continuously wrong. They're always going to be wrong. So I just feel bad for them. I feel bad for them in 2 ways. 1st, they're always wrong. And second of all, you apparently, it's unethical for you to hold the very thing that you report on. So if you hold Bitcoin, you can't actually report on it. If you and if you don't hold Bitcoin, generally speaking, you're gonna be pissed off that you don't because you've seen what it does. So you're always going to write negative shit about it. It's a catch 22, the likes of which is I've never really seen as bad of a catch 22, but, you know, here it is. So just be aware that this is also not going to end. There's always going to be a whole bunch of people that just decide that no matter what they do or no matter what Bitcoin does itself is that it's not money. It's going to die.
It's going to 0. I just figured that Dan Pena needs to be in in play here. And if you don't know who Dan Pena is, you need to go check him out. He's kinda he's kinda fun to watch, but my god almighty does he hate Bitcoin. Okay. Bitcoin ordinals startup. Yes. I know. You're gonna freak out because I'm gonna be talking about ordinals today. Look. Here here's something that I wanna get across. I'm not a fan of ordinals. But in the past, I have said that there may be a use case for them, but it would have to be something that is kind of profound. It can't be like, I don't know, you know, pictures of cats or Yogi the bear or some bullshit like that. All of that's worthless.
However, it seems that somebody may have a good use case, And I'm gonna have to leave it up to your opinion. Alright. I'm not gonna drive you either way. I'm just gonna read you the news. Treat me like the weatherman. It doesn't mean that I'm for it or against it. It just means that something's changed. So this is out of Decrypt written by Jason Nelson, and he starts us off with Bitcoin ordinal startup, Project Spartacus, revive WikiLeaks Afghan war logs. And, hopefully, we'll get into what those war logs are, so that you'll understand. I know what they are. And if they don't talk about it very much, I'll I'll let you know. But the Bitcoin ordinal startup, ordinals bought, and project Spartacus, a group of anonymous activists dedicated to preserving WikiLeaks legacy on the Bitcoin blockchain, are reigniting efforts to inscribe the Afghan war diary using the ordinals protocol.
The revival focused on preserving the war logs on the Bitcoin network is supported by Assange campaign chairman Gabriel Shipton who noted the importance of safeguarding the Afghan war diary for future generations, quote, obviously, having all that data stored on chain forever, immutable, is very important for our society to learn from our mistakes, Shipton told decrypt. Quote, that's what Julian was always about, publishing these secrets so that people could understand what went on, what actually happened, and hopefully make corrections to their institutions and their own society, end quote. Shipton Shipton partnered with the ordinals bot to inscribe 76,911 uncensored articles from the Afghan war logs on the Bitcoin network. And starting December 12th, OrdinalsBot will relaunch the effort allowing users to participate in minting the Afghan war diary.
Having this information on the blockchain just really takes Julian Julian's legacy and WikiLeaks legacy to the next level. The Afghan war diary is no longer on a service somewhere that could go down. So what is the Afghan war diary? The Afghan war diary, or also known as the Afghan war logs, is a collection of over 91,000 classified United States military documents leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, in July of 2010. Covering the years 20 or 2004 to 2010, the logs reveal insights into the Afghan war, including military operations, intelligence, covert missions, and civilian casualties, and reshaped how the public understood the war in Afghanistan, transparency, and modern warfare.
One of the main criticisms of WikiLeaks releasing the war logs in 2010 was that it would put lives in danger if it were released. Anticipating this, Shipton said Assange made plans to protect the identity of the people listed in the documents, quote, I think what's really missed about this story is that Julian created technology to help redact these massive files, redactions that previously weren't available to these journalists who were taking out names, like that they weren't able to do that with these files, Shipton told Decrypt in a very weirdly worded sentence. But he continued, quote, Julian developed technology to protect people, and these releases eventually brought an end to this war.
So I think those benefits really outweigh those accusations. Assange was arrested in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his asylum, ending nearly 7 years in their London embassy, and faced extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing classified documents. In June, Assange accepted a plea deal and was released from Belmarsh prison in London. In in November, US representatives, Tom Massey and James McGovern, called on president Joe Biden to part pardon Assange before leaving office. Quote, a pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea deal and send a clear message that the United States government, under your leadership, will not target nor investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs, the congressman wrote.
The Afghan war diary is the latest in high profile inscriptions orchestrated by the OrdinalsBot team. In March, founding member of the legacy Wu Tan Clan, Ghostface Killah, tapped the platform to launch a collection of music themed ordinal inscriptions. That same month, ordinalsbot collaborated with Marathon Digital Holdings to mint the runestone, the largest ordinal inscription at the time at 4 megabytes. The Runestone inscription was sent to a wallet that supposedly belonged to Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Named after the famous Roman gladiator turned rebel leader, project Spartacus is an initiative to permanently inscribe the Afghan war logs initially published by Julian Assange onto the Bitcoin blockchain.
Quote, it's in the name as well. Project Spartacus. You're standing up and each bit Bitcoiner is standing up alongside Julian. OrdinalsBot cofounder Toby Lewis told Decrypt, quote, it's how they can share a piece of history that's very controversial but considered very important, especially by Bitcoiners. It's a moment in time, end quote. In October of 2023, 2,000 of these logs were inscribed during the project's initial phases before it stalled. Starting next week, WikiLeaks supporters will be able to choose how many articles from the Afghan war diary they want to mint in bundles of 1, 5, 20, 50, or a 100.
Inspired by Stella Assange's presentation on project Spartacus at the Bitcoin conference in 2023, OrdinalsBot cofounder Brian Laflin said that ordinal the OrdinalsBot team joined in to revive the stalled Afghan war diary initiative. Quote, the project stalled for a while due to technical reasons. The previous team, overwhelmed or unable to continue, eventually moved on through our contacts at Bitcoin Magazine. Of course, we connected with Gabriel and felt honored to step in. We were ready to plug the project back in and power it back up with services prepared.
Laughlin emphasized his belief that ordinals could be used as a tool for immutable resistant data storage beyond NFTs. He added that minting the Afghan war diary inscriptions is free with collectors paying the Bitcoin network fees. Quote, to be clear, this isn't about making money. Our service fee only covers the cost, Laflin added. For Shipton, bringing the war diary to Bitcoin follows a long relationship between WikiLeaks and Bitcoin since the very early days of the cryptocurrency when WikiLeaks began accepting it for donations. One of the last posts from Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, before disappearing in 2011 was regarding WikiLeaks and the group turning to Bitcoin after its financial services were cut off.
In 2017, following rumors that he had died, Assange put those rumors to bed by reading out Bitcoin's latest blockhash during an online talk. Quote, WikiLeaks was able to continue paying for its servers, paying for its staff, and everything in Bitcoin shipped and said, quote, Bitcoin was their operating currency, and they had the biggest state on the planet, the most powerful state totally debanking them, and they were able to survive and keep publishing. K. That's the end of the article. I'm all for this. I'm gonna say it. I I know that there's gonna be a lot of people out there that just absolutely freaking hate me for it because it's ordinals. This is the only use case that I would ever see as being worthwhile usage of the Bitcoin block space.
I know that's gonna be no matter what I say about it, there's going to be people out there that absolutely think I'm wrong. Fine. Tell me how I'm wrong, but do it in a boostagram. Attach some satoshis with it. If you're gonna if if you're gonna make the argument that no matter what how important something could possibly be, that it does not belong in the format of an ordinal on the Bitcoin blockchain. Make the argument, but but put your money where your mouth is. You know, and make it also, make it a good argument. I don't and it's not that I wanna lambaste you. It's not that I wanna prove that you're wrong. I actually wanna know. Because I read this and I'm like, at this point, it doesn't mean that I like ordinals.
It just means that for the first time, I've well, maybe for the second time, I've actually seen something that used the ordinal technology, for lack of a better term, for something that was worthwhile. Everything else is a pile of shit. NFTs, pile of shit. The runestone, pile of shit. Was it a picture of Yogi Bear or a cat? Then it's a pile of shit. And anybody who lost all of their money because they were just degeneratively going all in on stupid shit because they were ordinals deserves to lose every satoshi they lost, and I'm sorry for you. Well, actually, I'm not all that sorry for you. However, there does come a time when maybe we should consider that some use cases are actually good for humanity. I believe this is actually one use case that ordinals can provide that's good for humanity. And before you completely hit the ceiling, understand the following.
There was a guy a few years back that was using what was it? He was, somehow or another, he was using the Bitcoin blockchain. And this is before NFTs. This is before ordinals. This is before all of this crap. He was stamping headlines and small news stories inside transactions. And he was paying out the wazoo for it, by the way. He was paying a good amount of fees because his transactions were so heavy because they would have news inside of them. Right? There's nothing different from that time to now. So just take a breath, take a step back, and think.
Do we want these Afghan war logs to be preserved forever? Then if you think that they deserve that kind of preservation, then it seems to me that Bitcoin is the only preservation technology that we have for this because it's gonna be protected by humanity's greed. And I'll I'll will make you a level bet that you will not find a more powerful suit of armor than human greed. Doesn't necessarily mean that greed is good, but it also doesn't necessarily mean that greed is bad. It's a tool, and I think in this case, it's probably being used appropriately. But that's my opinion. You let me know. Let's run numbers. Oil is essentially moving sideways. West Texas Intermediate is at $68.59.
Brent Norsey, 72.39. Natural gas, however, is up over 1 and a half points to $3.9 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline has fallen a 10th no. Yeah. Yeah. A 10th of a point to, a buck 93 a gallon. Good luck finding it. Gold, however, has fallen a full point, so has silver, so has platinum. And copper is off only by a quarter, but palladium is off by 2 full points. Everything in ag futures is in the green except for cotton and lumber. Lumber is down 1.86%, making it our biggest loser. Chocolate is our biggest winner, 4.79% to the upside. I got live cattle down a whole point.
Lean hogs are down 0.12%, feeder cattle are down 0.7%. The Dow is down a third of a point. Nas or the S and P is moving sideways. Nasdaq is down a 5th of a point, and the S and P mini is down over half a point. We're looking at $100,280 bitcoin. That is just a couple of hairs underneath $1,980,000,000,000 in market cap. And like I said, don't get upset when this shit dips under a 100,000. I'm surprised we lasted at above a 100,000 for as long as we have. It's going to get there again, but people are going to take their profit. It's just going to happen. And it looks like it's gonna happen here pretty damn quick. We're down to a 100,080. Come on. Are we gonna go? We We gonna do it? No. We're back up to a 100,000 and 120. You can get 38.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,79,177.13 of. And fees, you would think they'd be high, but they're not.
Point 09 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis on average, and there are a 107 blocks carrying 275,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 10 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 9. Hash rate on a 1 week rolling average is 754.5 xahashes per second. And from Infinite Kimchi, yesterday's palindrome episode of Bitcoin, and I got pies to pled with 1,001 sat says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And then I've got god's death with 1,001 sat that says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's it. That's all. Those are the only people that commented on the first and the very first palindrome episode of the 4 digit era for Bitcoin, and I love them both. Now that's gonna do it for the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use from the block, James Hunt writing. Trump is congratulating Bitcoiners on the $100,000 milestone as industry reacts to new all time high. Well, let's see what the block has to say about Trump. As Bitcoin soared past the $100,000 level for the first time, the crypto industry weighed in on what's driving the move and what's coming next. Quote, Bitcoin reaching $100,000 marks a pivotal milestone. Underscoring its increasing adoption and perceived value, Bitget Research chief analyst Ryan Lee told The Block, quote, analysts are now shifting focus to the next potential resistance level, eyeing targets of a 150,000 and even 200.
The market's measured reaction suggests there may still be room for growth, end quote. Those targets were shared by several other analysts in the crypto market. President-elect Trump's nomination of crypto friendly blockchain advocate Paul Atkins for securities and exchange commissioner chair late Wednesday was the final and decisive nudge for Bitcoin to breach a $100,000, Bernstein analyst led by Gautman Shugani wrote in a Thursday note to clients, quote, we believe that the appointment and the broader regulatory direction under Trump 2 point o is materially positive for the wider crypto industry and the longer tail of the block chain assets that dealt with regulation by enforcement so far, Chugani said. We remain convinced a 100,000 is not the final milestone and expect Bitcoin to hit a cycle high of $200,000 in late of 2025, end quote.
Pro crypto Trump congratulated Bitcoins on reaching Bitcoiners on reaching the milestone in a post on truth social where he said, congratulations, Bitcoiners. A 100,000. You're welcome. Together, we will make America great again. God. The Hebrews is freaking eye watering. Analyst at Bitfinex said, the 4th having event in April, the Federal Reserve avoiding a plausible recession, Trump's election win, and Fed chair Jerome Powell's comments that Bitcoin is similar to gold and not a competitor to the US dollar were all factors in the price rise. Quote, our short term target is a 112 k, but we need to keep in mind that a lot of trading will slow over the holiday period.
Bullshit. Have you ever seen the holiday period in trading? It ain't exactly slow. Although, I I I guess I should include this would be the 1st holiday season that ETFs are involved, and those will slow down because their markets close Friday afternoon. Right? So, well, whatever. Standard Chartered analyst Jeffrey Kendrick highlighted the role of institutional flows into Bitcoin in a Thursday note with over $32,000,000,000 in total net inflows now generated by the combined US spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds alone. Kendrick also noted MicroStrategy's acquisition of 213,000 BTC in 2024 so far, expecting its purchases to match or exceed those levels worth tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars in 2025 as part of its $42,000,000,000 capital raise plan to acquire yet more Bitcoin. However, his target remains the same as Bernstein's.
Quote, given the potential for further institutional flows in 2025, we remain comfortable with our end 2025 price level of around $200,000 greater than expected uptake by US retirement accounts, pension funds, global SWFs, or a potential US strategic reserve fund would make us even more bullish, Kendrick said. Alright. So that's honestly, that's all we need to really know about that. Trump's taken credit, and everybody is pointing to certain reasons as to why we went past a $100,000. Nobody really knows. I mean, a lot of this shit is just coincidence, but there's no real way to actually know.
And for if any of you guys that are out there are listening to traders and analysts and economic advisers, and some of them are telling you that they know for a fact that that's why it happened, they are lying to you. Unless they are so filthy freaking rich that they don't need any other money. And the reason I say that is because if you are poor and you're telling people that you've got you've got the way you subscribe to my newsletter and I'll teach you how to turn 10 the $10 into $10,000,000, then why are you so poor? It's sort of that same kind of thing. Right? So generally speaking, all these analysts and all these traders and the guys that are drawing lines on charts that are trying to figure out why x y and z happened, nobody knows.
They don't know. Nobody knows, including the guys at Nano Labs. Yes. You heard it right. Nano Labs. And if you don't know who they are, don't worry about it. Neither did I until this morning when the following fell across my desk. Nano Labs Limited reveals a strategy to allocate, you guessed it, excess liquidity to Bitcoin as a long term reserve asset. Nano Labs Limited, a prominent fabless integrated circuit design company based in China. China, not California, but China announced its plans to invest a portion of excess liquidity into Bitcoin as a long term strategic reserve asset.
By the way, this is out of barchart.com. A long term strategic reserve asset. This decision highlights the company's confidence in Bitcoin's reliability as a store of value amid its increasing global adoption and recent market trends that show significant price appreciation. So there you go. It's yet one more company that's putting Bitcoin on its books. This time, however, it's a it's a Chinese company in China. Not a Chinese company in Australia or in Bangladesh or something like that. No. No. No. They're in China. So there's a larger breath of fresh air at work there just because of that.
When China starts rolling into Bitcoin because they've they've tried to ban it twice. They've they've banned mining. They've banned ownership. They've done at least 2 full bans on Bitcoin have occurred from the Chinese government. And now you got a Chinese company on Chinese sovereign soil that's going to start allocating to Bitcoin and using the term strategic reserve asset. That's the the SRA is gonna be everywhere. So buckle up, man, because I don't think we are we are anywhere close to at the end of the top of this cycle. CBDCs, this is out of Atlas 21.
Central banks are showing, and this is good news, they show declining interest in digital currencies, specifically central bank digital currencies. A recent survey by the off official monetary Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum reveals that central banks are losing interest in CBDCs despite ongoing research efforts. The annual future of payments report highlights a sharp decline in support for CBDCs as a solution for cross border payments. Only 13% of respondents in 2024 see them as a viable option compared to a third of respondents in 2023. Preference is shifting towards interconnected instant payment systems such as the US FedNow service, which is backed by 47% of central bankers. Stablecoins, meanwhile, received no votes for the 2nd consecutive year.
This cooling interest coincides with the withdrawal of the bank for international settlements from the Embiidj project, a multi CBDC initiative led by China. Although the BIS denies political motives, the move underscores the geopolitical tension surrounding digital currency adoption. The survey also reaffirms the dominance of the US dollar, with only 11% of central banks reporting a reduction in its use. Currently, over 130 countries are exploring CBDCs. Early adopters include China, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria. While others, such as the United States are moving more cautiously, president-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced opposition to the potential issuance of a digital dollar.
So you gotta understand who who are the respondents? The this this survey went out to not Joe on the street. This survey went out to central bankers. So when they say that only 13% of the respondents see CBDCs as viable options, that means 13% of the central banking staff that responded to the survey. Not Joe on the street, not politicians, but central bankers and central banking staff. That's huge. Hopefully, CBDCs die all by themselves, and we don't have to carry firearms out into the street 20 years from now. Oh, here's a good one, by the way.
Europol dismantles the criminal messaging service matrix in major global takedown. Now this news broke yesterday. It's not the matrix you think of. It's not the matrix that we know. It's not the matrix that is the decentralized thing. This is a different matrix. Alright? So this is from the hacker news, written by Rave LakshasheShaman. I can't pronounce it, dude. Don't mean to be offensive there. Europol on Tuesday announced the takedown of an invite only encrypted messaging service called Matrix that's created by criminals for criminal purposes.
The joint operation conducted by French and Dutch authorities under the moniker, Passionflower, comes in the aftermath of an investigation that was launched in 2021 after the messaging service was discovered on the phone of a criminal convicted for the murder of a Dutch journalist, Peter de Vries. This allowed authorities to intercept messages being sent via the service for a period of 3 months, amassing a total of more than 2,300,000 messages in 33 different languages. The messages, Europol said, are associated with serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering.
It's worth noting at this stage that Matrix is different. This is where you need to to really understand what's going on here because a lot of people got this wrong yesterday. It's worth noting at this stage that Matrix is different from the open source decentralized messaging app of the same name, matrix.org. Okay. So matrix.org is the messaging service that is decentralized that Nostra users and Bitcoiners just love and love and love, it ain't that matrix that they're talking about here. That's not the one that got it's not it's not possible to do the matrix, our matrix, what these guys were able to do to this centralized matrix.
So please please please get that one right. The matrix that we know and love is fine. It's okay. It is not being jacked with in any way, shape, or form and kinda can't be unless it was actually centralized. And if we were to ever find out that our matrix got snagged by Department of Justice or something like that, then we would know that it was not actually decentralized. But as far as we know right now, our matrix is just fine. They are talking about a completely different matrix. So that is the news for the day, ladies and gentlemen. Now, let me go back over here. I wanna make sure of something that I didn't miss something. Where are we at on the price? Just so that I can leave you off with what the hell happened.
As I'm signing off, we are at $100,691. It looks maybe like the people that have been furiously selling have lit up a little bit. I'm we're sitting on a green candle. It's coming up. It's now $100,748. We'll have to see. I hope I'm wrong. I I hope we don't dip below $100,000. But, you know, if you've been in this in this world for a while, you kinda know that at one point or another, there's gonna be a retest. So don't freak out about it, and I will 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 a great day.
Bitcoin Hits $100,000: Market Reactions
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