Join me today for Episode 1004 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
- El Salvador Folds Like Cheap Suit
- Amazon's $88 Billion on Deck
- Sell All the Gold For Bitcoin!
- Microstrategy buys 21,000 More Bitcoin
- Bhutan Moves $40 Million Bitcoin
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://www.theblock.co/post/329999/el-salvador-plans-to-ease-bitcoin-acceptance-requirement-to-unlock-3-billion-in-loans-report
https://cointelegraph.com/news/national-center-public-policy-research-proposes-bitcoin-treasury-tamazon
https://cointelegraph.com/news/microstrategy-purchases-21500-bitcoin-at-peak-prices
https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2024/12/08/michael-saylor-says-the-united-states-should-buy-bitcoin-and-sell-gold/
https://archive.ph/IszwX
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https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/12/06/proof-of-operation-chokepoint-2-0
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/press-releases/lead-great-and-green-mining-forward-
https://opensats.org/blog/renewing-our-commitment-to-bitcoin
https://decrypt.co/295486/peanut-pet-owners-token-collapses-two-weeks-after-launch
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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 9:49 AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the 9th day of December 2024.
This is episode 1,004 of Bitcoin, and I got some bad news. I'm bringing bad news right to the table. El Salvador has completely collapsed. Well, at least on its ideals. Let me just explain this. We'll do it from the block. RT Wilson or Watson is the rider. El Salvador plans to ease Bitcoin acceptance requirement to unlock $3,000,000,000 in loans. We said that they would never do this. Bukele said that he was never going to be, you know, under the thumb of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and he's completely lost his spine.
I mean, I hate to say it, but this was supposed to not happen. He was putting El Salvador in the on the right track, and he was doing all that. He was getting it all done, man. He was getting it all done. He didn't want loans. He didn't wanna be under the thumb of some kind of weird, you know, world governance structure. And we believed him. And he's folded like a cheap suit. And I'm not I'm not happy about it. I'm not. I mean, I'm not gonna cry, but I'm not I'm not happy because I don't like it when people say that they're going to do something or not do something and then either do it if they said they weren't gonna do it or don't do it if they said that they were gonna do it.
It's it's it's a matter of integrity here. Well, let's get into it. El Salvador plans to ease a requirement that forced local businesses to accept Bitcoin. The move is being made to secure more than $3,000,000,000 in loans according to the Financial Times. By shifting to a policy that makes it voluntary for businesses to accept bitcoin, El Salvador can close a loan with, you guessed it, the International Monetary Fund worth $1,300,000,000 That particular deal will then unlock 2 more loans. One of $1,000,000,000 from the World Bank and another $1,000,000,000 from the Inter American Development Bank.
The Financial Times further reported on Monday the development may not come as a surprise to some as back in October, the IMF repeated its recommendation that El Salvador narrow the scope of its Bitcoin ambitions and accompanying legislation. When El Salvador's Bitcoin legislation took effect in 2021, it became the 1st nation to adopt the cryptocurrency as legal tender. Quote, the IMF opposed El Salvador's adoption of the digital currency, citing risks to financial stability and integrity, and has urged El Salvador's president to stop accepting cryptocurrency as legal tender, the report said. In August, El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, who championed the bill to make Bitcoin legal tender, conceded the nation's monetary experiment had mixed results, adding that Bitcoin had seen limited domestic adoption.
To secure the IMF loan, the country has also agreed to reduce its budget deficit, pass an anti corruption law and increase reserves, the Financial Times said. El Salvador possessed 5,750 bitcoin as of May 20 or May of 2024 which is now worth $570,000,000 Bitcoin was changing hands at $99,259 as of 9:42 am and that is no longer the that's no longer the case. We are now down to 97,843. I wonder why. Well, we'll get into it. But before we do, I do wanna say a couple things about this this issue here. It's not that I'm I'm disappointed with Nayib Bukele for dropping the Bitcoin requirement of local businesses to accept it as legal tender.
That's not what that that's not an issue. Right? It's it's the fact that he's going to be taking money from the very people that he swore he would never do business with. The World Bank being mentioned directly by name and the International Monetary Fund being another name, but it wasn't I don't think he actually ever said that. He but he did say no World Bank loans. Well, now he's got a World Bank loan. So the the question is why? Why the change of heart? Why does he need this money? He he put El Salvador on the map. He cleaned up the country's crime ridden reputation, definitely.
The tourism was booming. People were going. Why do you need the money? What does he need the money for? Why is he putting himself in the palms of these wretched morons, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter American Development Fund or whatever that is. Sounds like a spook bank to me, but, hey, whatever. So it's it's that. And but if I have something if I had something positive to say, I and I kinda do, I don't want it to be all bad news here, Is that that was such low hanging fruit for him to actually get. Right? And I'm not talking about the loans. Him dropping the requirement for businesses to accept it as legal tender. Well, there was a lot, you know, there's a lot of people in El Salvador that do use Bitcoin, but more but most of them don't.
We we knew this was going to be an issue way back in the day, way way back when he first started doing this. But, you know, okay. Legal tender, that's fine. But he he all he had to do was drop the legal tender requirement to get $3,000,000,000 in loans. From his perspective, that's a good deal. Except for the fact that he's now under back under the thumb of IMF and World Bank and Inter American Development Bank or whatever. Right? So now he's got bosses. I don't what what what was so important that you needed to go work for somebody like the IMF, the World Bank, and this other bank? Because that's essentially what he's done. But maybe you'll build a bit piggy.
Maybe you'll build a lightning piggy and give it to your kids so that they can experience how to save money in Bitcoin and not have to go get loans from the World Bank. And I mentioned lightning piggy because the circle p is open for business and the circle p is where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you. These plebs have goods and services and they offer them for Bitcoin because if you're not taking Bitcoin for your goods or service, you're not in the circle p and lightning piggy definitely takes bitcoin. So if you want to build your own piggy bank, from from scratch, they've got an entire instruction set at lightningpiggy.comforward/build.
That's lightning, as in lightning strike, piggy.comforward/build. And, you know, it's it's got, like, you know, it's there's 4 basically 4 steps. You source the parts, you create the wallet, you flash the firmware, and you make a case and assemble the parts. What could be easier, man? And they have an entire instruction set of where to go get the stuff you need, like on source the parts. They've got links and everything to Al, AliExpress, LilyGo, MakerFocus. They they source they you source the parts but they tell you where to go. If you want to get one that's already built, they have an entire page just for where you can already get pre built ones in the market section. And, like, you can get it from Robo Techy, you can get it from the Bitcoin stuff store in the Netherlands, and they'll and they ship they'll ship worldwide. So get yourself or your children set up with a lightning piggy, get them saving in bitcoin, start giving them their allowance in bitcoin, and see what happens.
Maybe you won't end up with somebody like Nayib Bukele who tells us one thing and then does exactly the other. Now here's somebody who has is doing what they say they do. The National Center For Public Policy Research has proposed to Amazon a Bitcoin Treasury. This is Vince Quill from Cointelegraph. The National Center For Public Policy Research, a Washington DC based think tank championing free markets, submitted a shareholder proposal to Amazon saying that a Bitcoin corporate treasury strategy should be considered at the upcoming April 2025 shareholder meeting. And according to the proposal, the consumer price index used to measure inflation, which currently puts inflation at roughly 4.95 percent is a remarkably poor measure of true currency debasement.
The authors suggested that true inflation rate may be double the reported CPI figure. This greatly erodes Amazon's $88,000,000,000 in cash and short term cash equivalents the letter said and to protect shareholder value bitcoin should be used as a hedge against the risk. Quote, as of December 6, 2024 the price of bitcoin increased by 131% over the previous year, outperforming corporate bonds by 126% on average. Wow. So they corporate bonds were only netting an average of 5%. That's pretty ugly. Over the past 5 years, the price of Bitcoin increased by 1,246%, outperforming corporate bonds by 1,242 percent on average. Again, there's a 5% or in this case a what 4% differential.
The authors concluded by proposing that Amazon allocate at least 5% of its assets to bitcoin to protect the value of its treasury assets, citing MicroStrategy's success with its bitcoin strategy. MicroStrategy and founder, Michael Saylor popularized the corporate Bitcoin Treasury strategy and is now gaining traction among companies and pension funds. And according to the MicroStrategy tracker, the company's Bitcoin holdings are currently worth over $40,000,000,000 Mining company Mara formerly known as Marathon Digital followed MicroStrategy's lead and completed a $1,000,000,000 convertible note offering and they used the funds to purchase 6,474 bitcoin.
Genius Group an artificial intelligence firm announced the conversion of its treasury assets into bitcoin and the company kicked off its treasury accrual by purchasing 110 BTC at $90,932 per coin. So Amazon is now on deck. Microsoft was last week. They are on deck as well. But now it's Amazon. And I had no idea that they're sitting on $88,000,000,000 of cash. And that's gotta be ugly no matter what was going on. It just so happens that bitcoin is an escape valve and as Marie Le Pen, put it very succinctly on stage, probably at a Davos meeting, is that if there is an escape hatch, the people will use it.
And she was talking about Bitcoin at the time. Okay. So we just mentioned Michael Michael Sailor. They've done it again, which is probably why we saw a $3,500 negative candle this morning. Because 3 hours ago, MicroStrategy bought 21,500,000 Bitcoin at peak prices. Ellen Parks, Cointelegraph. MicroStrategy is one of the largest corporate holders of bitcoin and is continuing to stack BTC despite the cryptocurrency surging to new all time high prices above 100,000. Dollars MicroStrategy acquired 21,550 BTC for $2,100,000,000 from December 2 December 8th at an average price of $98,783 per BTC.
As of December 8th, which was yesterday, MicroStrategy held a total of 423,650 BTC acquired for $25,600,000,000 at $60,324 per BTC. The announcement came shortly after Saylor predicted he would still be buying bitcoin at $1,000,000 one day. Quote, I'm sure that I will be buying bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin, end quote. MicroStrategy's latest purchase came when bitcoin had reached new all time highs, breaking above 100,000 for the first time on December 5th. Despite the new highs, Saylor reiterated his bullish stance on the cryptocurrency and his HODL philosophy, quote, I'm sure that I will be buying Bitcoin at $1,000,000 per coin, probably $1,000,000,000 a day of Bitcoin at $1,000,000 per coin, Saylor said in an appearance on Yahoo Finance's market domination.
The Bitcoin bull also urged the United States government to dump gold reserves and buy more bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. And I've got an entire story on that one. This one is out of the coin republic. Vingesh Carmunadahi is no way to pronounce this gentleman's name, and I'm sorry for the butchering. But let's get it going on. Michael Saylor says the United States should buy bitcoin and sell its gold. Now before I read the article to you, I actually disagree with this. I don't think there's any reason that we should sell our gold. In fact, what we should probably do is just print a shit ton of money and use that crap to buy Bitcoin because gold actually has some physical uses other than just being a store of value. But, hey, he's the billionaire. I'm not. Micro executive chairman, Michael Saylor, has proposed a strategy for US economic dominance.
Sell the gold and invest it in bitcoin. In a recent Yahoo Finance interview, Saylor suggested the US government could acquire approximately 5,000,000 Bitcoin by liquidating its gold holdings, potentially controlling the world's reserve capital network. Pausing to say, no. You don't get to control it. You might be able to affect the price really badly or very solidly depending on which way you wanna go, but you can't you don't control the network even if you hold 5,000,000 of the 21,000,000 ever to be minted Bitcoin. I did say fundamental misunderstanding of the network.
But the proposal comes as Bitcoin solidifies its position as the 7th largest asset globally by market cap, with Sailor's own MicroStrategy Holdings, showing substantial gains of 70.72%. His vision positions bitcoin not just as a digital currency but as a strategic national asset that could reshape global economic power dynamics. During the conversation, Saylor outlined an ambitious proposal. Saylor's arguing that this strategic move would simultaneously achieve multiple objectives. It could establish US dominance over the world's reserve capital network while potentially devaluing assets held by geopolitical competitors. That's interesting.
He suggested that this would catalyze the development of the of that world reserve capital network. He emphasized that selling US gold reserves could finance this acquisition essentially, quote, for free while strategically impacting nations holding significant gold reserves. So now he wants to weaponize gold via Bitcoin. This this dude is a billionaire for a reason. I don't like it. I'm not saying that I do. I just I'm just saying when you start thinking the way that this guy's thinking, that's that's when that's when billionaires be become created, is thinking in this way. I don't like it. It's not that I don't like you know, I would I would like a $1,000,000,000.
Yeah. Sure. But I don't know if I would want to weaponize the very thing that I love to do so and at the same time destroying the wealth of nations. This is just not kosher, man. It's just not. But the MicroStrategy executive's proposal extends beyond simple asset reallocation, because he's suggesting that such a move could potentially drive Bitcoin's value to a $100,000,000,000,000. And at the same time, it could give the United States control over both the world's reserve capital network and currency network. Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bitcoin network, but whatever.
According to market capitalization data presented by Saylor in another tweet, Bitcoin has emerged as the 7th largest asset globally with $1,935,000,000,000,000 of valuation, and this positions BTC among tech giants and traditional assets. The cryptocurrency ranks behind only gold, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, but ahead of Saudi Aramco, Silver and Meta Platforms. This positioning reflects Bitcoin's remarkable 62% annual return rate. It's outperformed the traditional market benchmark of 18% seen in other top assets and Saylor emphasizes bitcoin's characteristics setting it apart.
It positions as the fastest growing, most popular, most digital, most useful and most global asset in the marketplace. The comparison particularly highlights bitcoin's potential trajectory toward becoming a $2,000,000,000,000 force in global markets. MicroStrategy's bitcoin position has reached unprecedented levels. The scale of MicroStrategy's Bitcoin accumulation becomes particularly important when viewed against the broader market landscape with current holdings representing a substantial portion of Bitcoin circulating supply, the company has emerged as one of the largest institutional holders of the cryptocurrency. This position has been achieved through a consistent acquisition strategy.
Saylor has maintained a buy and hold approach despite all market fluctuations. The company's success in accumulating and maintaining such a significant position has also generated substantial shareholder value. Okay, let's go back up to where where is it that he weaponizes bitcoin. Selling United States gold reserves could finance the acquisition essentially for free while strategically impacting nations holding significant gold reserves. Again, I don't like this. And and it's not it it's not the the the thought of the United States getting rid of its gold that irks me as much as destroying the wealth of other nations because they hold gold.
Why do that? That's a destabilizing front. It doesn't help the United States to impoverish yet more countries by destroying their wealth, by doing something, in my opinion, while bold and technically a smart move, it is is just it I don't see how that is going to help the united states sure on a balance sheet aspect of course it would help the united states we completely devalue gold we move it all over into into bitcoin which is going to definitely bolster that price aspect if they were to do that you would see probably $1,000,000 bitcoin at one point or another inside the next 5 years. If they were to do that tomorrow, yeah, in 5 years, you would see $1,000,000 Bitcoin. I don't think it's gonna happen.
Because, again, just because it looks good on paper does not mean this is the right move to do. I think it's a bad deal all the way around. So that's my 2¢ on that. But but but hold on. What the hell are you doing here? Oh oh oh you want to do that to me, Hold on. Pardon the interruption I had to use archive.ph to get a hold of this article from, Benzinga because while it was up on I had it up and then it decided to like I don't know after 15, 20 minutes or so decided to get all blurry and say I have to, you know, give them a annual subscription, which I'm not going to do. What they need to do is use the Lightning Network and I would have paid I would have paid a buck to read this to you today.
Bitcoin's sellers delight, Bhutan has transferred $40,000,000 in Bitcoin to QCP Capital. So there are three things that are going on that's trying to push Bitcoin down and is doing a good job. $35100 to the downside is is nothing to sneeze at. We got El Salvador folding like a cheap suit. Michael Saylor just bought another buttload of Bitcoin, 21,000 coin, which every time he does, that pushes the price down. But now we've got Bhutan transferring $40,000,000 in BTC to QCP Capital. Mertza Merchant is riding this one for Benzinga.
The Royal Government of Bhutan has transferred 406 BTC to QCP Capital. While the exact purpose of the transfer remains speculative, it is suspected to be linked to a potential sale because that's what we always go to. We always go to, oh, it's going to be sold. We don't know. We we have no idea what they're doing. It's just transferred from the, oh, whatever whoever it is that they use to hold to custody their Bitcoin, to somebody else. And QCP Capital, as far as I know, was not a Bitcoin exchange. But Bhutan's government wallet continues to hold almost 12,000 BTC worth $1,160,000,000 making it the 4th largest government holder of Bitcoin globally.
Data from ARCEM Intelligence reveals the Royal Government of Bhutan's robust cryptocurrency portfolio. It holds primarily Bitcoin valued at 1.6 no. $1,160,000,000 and, God forbid, Ethereum worth $2,530,000,000. So substantially less Ethereum. They should just sell it for Bitcoin. And then they also have various smaller holdings, but all of them total under $3,000, so it's not worth our time. The government's Bitcoin reserves dwarf those of El Salvador whose holdings are valued at 30 335,000,000 despite Bhutan having only 12% of El Salvador's population. The substantial reserves originate from Bhutan's hydro powered Bitcoin mining operations, which they adopted in 2019, but we only found out about it, I think, sometime this year at the, head of the or either that or last year, when it was revealed in bankruptcy filings that they had some kind of relationship with FTX.
And that was how we found out that Bhutan had been mining. They weren't they never said anything about it. It was completely hush-hush. But the hydropower accounts for 30% of Bhutan's GDP with the nation harnessing approximately 23,000 megawatts of technically feasible hydropower capacity. The clean energy approach aligns with Bhutan's commitment to sustainability while allowing for large scale mining operations. This strategy emerged as part of Bhutan's effort to diversify its economic I said diversify its economy amid declining tourism revenue, a sector contributing $88,600,000 annually pre pandemic.
The economic fallout from COVID 19 further reinforced the importance of alternative revenue streams like cryptocurrency mining. So Bhutan has moved $40,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, and we have absolutely no idea what they're going to do with it. But we have other numbers that we can look at, so let's run them. So the Syrian government collapsed yesterday, I suppose, is when that happened. And it had been going on some kind of revolution that nobody really heard of, had been going on in the country for 9 straight days. And as you might imagine, it's affected the price of oil. West Texas Intermediate is up over 2 full points today, back to 68.63. Britton, North Sea up 1 and 3 quarters of a point to 7238.
And natural gas falling in line, it is 3.71% to the upside. Gasoline is up 2.72%, back to a buck 95 a gallon. Gold and all the other shiny metal rocks are doing very well today probably because Syria collapsed and that has wider economic ramifications for the Middle East. But gold is up over a full point to $2,686. Silver is up 3 and a quarter points. Platinum is up 2.13%. Copper is up 1.79%, and palladium up over 3 points. Ag is fully mixed today. The biggest winner is chocolate, 3.34% to the upside, and the biggest loser is sugar, 1 and a half to the downside. And I got live cattle up a half point, lean hogs are down 0.89%, and feeder cattle are essentially moving sideways.
The Dow and the rest of the equity markets do not like what's going on in the Middle East because the Dow is down a quarter of a point, the S and P is down almost a half point, NASDAQ is down a full 3 quarters of a point, and the S and P mini is essentially moving sideways, only slightly red. Bitcoin is back to $98,080 that is just shy of a $2,000,000,000,000 market cap and we can get 36.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,793,000 477.03 of and a tenth of a bitcoin is being taken in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are a 118 blocks carrying 282,000 unconfirmed transactions going for high priority rates of 13 satoshis per vbyte, low priority transactions you can you can purchase for 10 satoshis per vbyte, and the hash rate is at 769.4 exahashes per second on a 1 week rolling average. So pretty stable so far. Now from Hoch Tuohy Correctional Facility For Women, that was, Friday's, episode of Bitcoin and, Arceus has given me 10,101 satoshis. That's a lot of satoshis, brother. And he says, congrats on the 1,000.
This was supposed to be sent on episode 1,001, but fountain gave me an issue. Yes. These are all early times for all of us, including the guys over there building fountain, which is still my favorite app. But, yeah, every once in a while, it it will basically throw up all over you much like a baby. BTC master with 1,021 sat says, all stats matter at all stats matter.com. Camper with a thousand says, don't fade the Czechoslovak boys and girls, none you. They mean serious business there. Hardened by communism. Fascinating history of the circular parallel economy, mecca of the Austrian Economics, and European Bitcoin OGs. He's not he's not lying.
Always with a beer in hand, laughing into the face of, 'authorize, it's the ultimate Bitcoin pleb country.' You would do a huge favor to yourself to come sip the vibes first hand during the summer where BTC Prague will be held mid June. PS, one thing is for damn sure we're not letting Brussels or anyone else reopen their commie shop out there ever again. Good for you, camper. And there's absolutely I have no animosity towards Czechoslovakia. If if I may if I did not make that clear, when I was talking about it last time, my apologies. Czechoslovakia is a kick ass country. It has endured so much shit. It's not even funny. I mean, they're sandwiched right between Russia and Europe.
I mean, of course, there was going they've been having shit. They've been having problems since freaking Hitler. Alright? So and before that, by the way. But God's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with a 100 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Hue Janice. Hue You, Janice. Yeah. Figure it out. 200 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Comes back with another thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Nosteregg says, pretty sure sniping is known as front running. So front running. Thank you, Nostereggs. I appreciate that correction.
And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. So now we know. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 was real. This is out of CoinDesk. There really was a coordinated federal government effort to de bank crypto following the collapse of 3 midsize crypto friendly lenders Signature, Silvergate and Silicon Valley Banks in March of 2023. The crypto industry, led by VC commentator Nick Carter, has long suspected and railed against debanking. But until today, we didn't have much documentary evidence. Well, Friday morning, internal communications at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were released after a research firm, History Associates Incorporated, hired by Coinbase, sued them to get them uncovered. Quote, the heavily redacted documents emerged on Friday showing the banking regulator slamming the brakes on lenders offering or considering products and services in the digital assets sector.
CoinDesk's Jesse Hamilton wrote in his report today, quote, we respectfully ask that you pause all crypto asset related activity, the FDIC wrote in one of the 23 internal letters released by Coinbase. The FDIC will notify all FDIC supervised banks at a later date when a determination has been made on the supervisory expectations for engaging in crypto asset related activity. The FDIC and other regulators have long denied that they pressured the 3 struggling banks to stop banking crypto companies, many of which were suffering following the collapse of FTX and others in late 2022.
The letters show that this was no conspiracy theory at all. That this was not just rank speculation or the musings of a paranoid industry, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Gruel told Hamilton. There was a concerted plan on the part of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC, that they carried out without any reluctance to deny banking service to a legal American industry. That should give everyone great pause. Debanking has been a hot issue recently after mega VC Mark Andreessen discussed Operation Chokepoint 2.0 on Joe Rogan's podcast.
The house committee on financial services heard testimony from several crypto leaders this week attesting to difficulties gaining banking services. The heavily redacted letters show FDIC demanding onerous compliance information while being unclear as to what was actually required of the banks before they could approve the provision of financial services to the businesses. Hamilton writes that some letters show the agency wasn't yet sure what regulatory filings would even be required before it could green light crypto businesses. Gruel said Coinbase will petition the court to allow the documents to be released unredacted.
Aside from hurting the crypto industry, critics argue financial services are a fundamental right and that the federal government should not be able to effectively outlaw legal businesses. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is a reference to an official Obama administration policy to restrict financial services to payday lenders, gun sellers and other undesirable businesses. It's now clear that de banking was as much a matter for crypto as it was for porn, which says a lot about the current administration's attitude towards it.
I want to be fairly clear here as to how I'm interpreting this. Because it's now true beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the FDIC and other entities were involved in straight up denying services, goods, business activities to these banks that were dealing in bitcoin. It's a first amendment issue. It's absolutely 100% a first amendment issue. Why? Well, let's just go back just for a second. Start looking at what was it called? Hold on. Citizens United. That was that was one of these one of these things that gave corporations personhood. It it and when personhood.
It it and when they did that, it allowed corporations to have freedom of speech. And that whole thing was done so major corporations would have no gates in front of them, no hindrance, no blocks to being able to give extraordinary amounts of money to political candidates. We know honestly, I think everybody in the sound of my voice kind of rankles at that going, you're no. Ford Company is not a person. It's not. It's not a person. But if they're going to do that, then that sets a precedence. They are able to use money to affect certain things, then if that's true and sets precedent, then you cannot deny somebody else that is a company to be able to use financial tools to affect external changes.
I think that I think it's a I can make a very good argument that this should actually be brought to trial by Coinbase and anybody else who wants to join in as a first amendment issue that might actually go all the way up to the Supreme Court. And one of 2 things would happen. They'd either overturn Citizens United and everything stays the same, or they keep Citizens United in play and and admit that they have you the Wyoming bank was a not Cynthia Lummis. What's her name? Caitlin Long. She's been trying to open this Wyoming bank forever, and she cannot get a master account at the Federal Reserve. And she needs that to be able to do all the for the rest of the pieces to fall in place for her bank in Wyoming.
And they refused to give her a master account. They'd have to. And I think Caitlin Long actually has a good argument if she were to choose that this is a first amendment issue. And then waive Citizens United all in front of them saying, hey, dude, president. This is freedom of speech and you're you and governmental operatives and other institutions are hindering my right to free speech. I think that that I think that they could make a big play for that. But let's get into mining a little bit. Lead great and green mining forward. This is from Bitcoin Magazine written by Bitcoin Magazine. Microbt, a world leading Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer, has once again showcased its technological prowess and innovation driven approach introducing the latest What's Miner M6XS Plus Plus series at the Bitcoin MENA 2024 conference in Abu Dhabi.
During the conference, Doctor. Zhao Jing Yang, the founder and CEO of MicroBT delivered a keynote address titled Lead Great and Green Mining Forward. In his speech, he unveiled advancements in solar power mining technology, highlighted the innovative heat utilization in hydro cooling mining systems, and introduced the new What's Miner models. The mining industry stands at a pivotal juncture, with green mining emerging as a forefront trend for the future. Doctor. Yang emphasized the transformative potential of solar mining, predicting a significant reduction in electricity costs for solar power mining to approximately 3.4¢ USD. Well, 3.4 American pennies, let's just say, per kilowatt hour by 2025. And furthermore, Whatsminer's groundbreaking high temperature water outlet hydro cooling technology is pushing the boundaries of comprehensive heat recovery. This is important.
This technology enables the wet miner hydro cooling system to either minimize mining cooling needs or repurpose heat for advanced applications such as industrial steam production, seawater desalination, heating systems, and thereby reinforcing microbt's prominent position in the green mining sector. Subsequently, Doctor. Yang unveiled the latest generation of Whatsminer products. The air cooled M60s plus plus has a hash rate of 226 terahashes per second with an efficiency of 15.5 joules per terahash. The m sixty three s plus plus you get 478 terahashes per second more than double and it maintains the same power efficiency at 15.5 joules per terahash.
Holy crap. The immersion cooled m 66s+plus you can get 356 terahashes per second out of it and have a mining of a power efficiency of 15.5 joules per sec per terahash. And additionally, the what's minor line includes the air cooled m sixty one s plus. You get 236 out of that, but you're gonna be eating 17 joules per terahash for it. The hydro cooled, m sixty four s plus and m sixty five s plus, you get up to 236 terahashes to 440 terahashes respectively with both having a power efficiency of 17 joules per terahash. Doctor Yang proudly announced Microbt's steadfast dedication to pioneering sustainable and eco friendly mining practices, heralding a new era of green mining excellence and visionary leadership With the unveiling of the latest What's Minor products, Microbt stands poised and confident to decisively spearhead the green mining revolution. Okay. Well, that's great. How are you going to determine who uses what kind of power generator to power those things.
You see, that's the bullshit part of this story is that he's go we're going green. No. You're just making highly efficient miners. And, honestly, these are those are really cool numbers. 478 terahashes per second at 15.5 joules per terahash is amazing. That is a wholesale change over what we have been seeing. But what I do like is the hydro cooling system and how it's it was featured prominently in doctor Yang's speech. Repurposing heat. Humans are terrible about heat, and I'm not talking about climate change. That's all bullshit. I'm just saying the heat in your engine.
Right? When you're driving your car, if you're driving a gas powered car or diesel or whatever, then your engine gets hot. And it has a cooling system to make sure that it doesn't explode because it gets so hot. You can repurpose that heat in the wintertime to heat your car. But in the summertime, no. No. The heat just goes away. There's a bunch of energy that's just wasted all the time. And if we start thinking like permaculturists people that that look at systems level design like it's it's essentially natural systems engineering is another way to actually look at what is permaculture. Natural systems engineering.
And if you can get the waste product of one system to be the input of a completely different system that does a completely different thing, then you were thinking at the systems level engineering. Yeah. That's that that is a great way to think. And heat is one of these waste products that humans have we just don't give a shit. We just don't care. We don't do what would be necessary to harvest all that wasted energy. But now that Bitcoin is here, people are starting to think about, how can I make this the the most efficient thing to do?
How can I not only build efficient Bitcoin miners, but how can I make it even more efficient by really hammering on the issue of what do we do with the wasted heat? I've been harping on this forever now, guys, but it looks like other people are starting to really take that up. And I'm really happy that microbt, again, featured heat recovery and heat extraction and the energy extracting out of that heat as a prominent part of this new line of microbt miners. Who knows? Maybe they'll even get a get a grand from opensats.org who is renewing their commitment to bitcoin. And this was, Saturday, December 7th.
OpenSats released this. It says, over the past 2 years, we have made 41 announcements from our general fund highlighting our commitment to support individual contributors and projects working to not only grow the Bitcoin ecosystem, but also make it more resilient and robust in the process. Without the tireless effort of these open source contributors as well as their innovation, dedication, collaboration and commitment to financial freedom, Bitcoin wouldn't be where it is today. Bitcoin's influence is ever expanding, not just for individuals reclaiming their financial independence, but redefining what it means to send value without middlemen, but also affecting public markets, creating new financial instruments and other innovations that bridge traditional finance with what has become the world's most pristine asset.
All this demonstrates that bitcoin is working as intended. It is slowly but surely reshaping how money operates every 10 minutes. And in addition to the grants that we have announced in the past we are renewing our commitment to 9 exceptional projects advancing the ecosystems on various fronts. BTC Pay Server Stratum V2, RaspiBlitz, LNbits, Vexel, Blixit, CrUX, BitX, and Labelbase. So they are renewing their commitments, their long term commitments to these 9 companies. I know. Open Sats gets a lot of people get angry about Open Sats, but mostly because they had their grants denied. If you got a grant denied, then rewrite the grant, resubmit it.
Believe me, man. I saw how the sausage was made in academic sciences. You wouldn't believe what those dudes go through. I mean, these some of these grant proposals are 50, 60 pages, and they'll write 15 of them a year to all these different people. They'll repurpose the say they'll repurpose the same experiments that they've done. They'll they're doing everything that they can to get any amount of money whatsoever. And the amount of of work that goes into these grant proposals is so intense. It it's really scary. So understand, if if you're not getting the grant, maybe you need to up your game.
Did you know that there are people like my wife that are that specialize in grant writing? Is one of one of her specialties is grant writing because she's a technical communications and rhetorician expert. Right? And rhetoric is the ability to make your argument. It's a lot more than that, but that's one of the main things. If you're getting grant proposals denied from OpenSats, you need to up your grant writing game. Just because they have money doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to pry it from their cold dead fingers without one hell of an argument.
Alright? So there are whole there are whole companies that can help you write grants. They'll you'll have to give them a cut of that grant money and that may actually be a problem for OpenSats, but if you're getting your grants denied from OpenSats, please, please, please just understand that what you're going through versus what I've seen other people go through to try to get that money is wow. I mean what they do is amazing. And the amount of resilience that they contain by having all but one of their grant proposals denied every single year. Sometimes they never get anything. They never get any funding. They are constantly getting denied and yet they run their lab, they do their budgets.
You cannot these scientists, at least in in the academic sciences that I was at at Texas Tech Health Science Center, you could not find somebody that just got beaten to death by not getting grants. They always had money in a pile. They were constantly doing it. It was just part of the job. So if you can look at it that way, instead of going mean old dir Gigi and mean old Matt, they're they don't like me, so they're not giving me money. That is the wrong attitude, brothers and sisters. You've gotta go into it understanding that you need to really up your game. And, well, somebody else up their game and, well, it's not going well.
No. It's not Hock 2 a girl. She's we've already done her. This is yet another example of the same kind of bullshit. Peanut pet owners token collapses 2 weeks after launch. I don't even remember this happening. I may have even reported on it. Who knows? I might go back through my Obsidian files and see if I talked about this, but I do not remember Peanut the squirrel being or being idolized in the form of a shitcoin or meme token or whatever you wanna call it. But Vince De Aquino from Decrypt is gonna finish us us out today. A token created by Mark Longo to honor his euthanized pets has plummeted over 99% since its November 26th launch with on chain data revealing significant selling pressure as controversy grows over the project's inception.
The Justice for Peanut and Fred, otherwise known as the Justice token, launched through Solana based meme coin platform, pump dot fund, and it's now trading at 0.0003834, marking a dramatic decline from its initial trading levels. The project's market capitalization has contracted to a mere $375,000 despite maintaining over 31,000 holders. They got 31,000 people to buy this crap. Wow. Longo did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment regarding the token's performance. But the launch came after Longo publicly criticized crypto traders for allegedly monetizing his personal tragedy through the popular meme coin, peanut, p n u t. Quote, the fact that people wanna make money off this is nothing short of despicable, Longo stated in a Twitter video before pivoting to launch the token.
At the time, peanut community members pointed to approximately $50,000 in donations made to Longo, which they claim he immediately liquidated. By Friday, December 6th, the account associated with Longo posted on X or Twitter about a new contact address implying that the initial Justice token was shifting to a new one. Some 7 minutes after the post, the account posted the new contract address with a new ticker JFP. Upon examination, Decrypt found that the Justice for Peanut, the JFP token, suffered roughly the same fate as its predecessor. The new JFP token is down 67% since its creation 3 days ago.
For context, the justice peanutfred account is verified on the, Twitter platform as an official organization. Decrypt has reached out for confirmation. The same account went on to thank 4 news publications for covering the story of Mark Longo and the launch of JFP. It is not clear which publications the account was referring to on the same day. It claimed to have submitted a request for listing on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. The case involving Longo and his pets, Peanut and Fred, gained significant political traction when vice president-elect JD Vance revealed at a North Carolina rally that Trump was fired up about the euthanization.
Wow. The story's virality intensified after Elon Musk commentary, sparked increased trading activity in various associated meme coins. The incident originated when New York State environmental officers decided to raid Longo's Pine City animal sanctuary on October 30th, citing violations of wildlife protection laws. So they immediately killed them. Peanut, who had accumulated over 500,000 social media followers, was murdered. Well, actually, they say euthanized, but I'm just gonna say it, was murdered alongside Fred after allegedly biting someone during the seizure.
Well, that's what happens when you try to wrangle up wild animals. They'll bite your ass. That's bite their wild animals. Whatever. Longo's latest moves with the justice for peanut and Fred meme coins add to the growing trend of controversial meme coin launches on pump dot fun. The platform's accessible token creation system has revolutionized how meme coins enter the crypto market enabling projects such as Justice and JFP to launch with minimal financial and technical barriers. For 0.02 SOL, or Sol, which is around $4.8 users can create tokens without technical expertise. And the platform's bonding curve mechanism automatically adjusts prices based on market activity, though this feature can amplify volatility in trending tokens.
Since late 2024, the Solana based platform has facilitated over 3,850,000 token launches. Let's read that again. In about 12 months, since January of this year, this platform has released 3.85000000 different tokens. What in the hell? What in the hell, man? So on November 25th, Decrypt covered how self harm and other forms of violence and abuse have proliferated on pump dot fund, this platform. The platform dropped its live streaming feature after a report about, about it ignited community backlash. On Saturday, pump dot fund was ban or has banned UK users after it received warnings from the country's financial regulator.
Pump thought fund is about to go down. That's what's gonna happen here. So let let me just, let me hold on. Pump.fund and, hawk2ey. Because I have a suspicion here. Yep. Hawk the the Hawk token was released through Pump Thought Fund. Here's what I here's what I think is going on. I think people that are representing either either overtly or, you know, covertly, pump dot fun is getting a hold of people like the hawk to a girl. This dude that had, you know, the the murdered the the parents of the murdered, Peanut and Fred animals. And saying, hey, man, we can make a lot of money with meme coins because you guys are now memes, and we're gonna do all that shit for you. But we're gonna take, you know, we'll take a slice of the pie, but you're gonna get the cherry on top.
There get ready. People are going to go to jail. This is just about to break loose. I guarantee you that I hear probably not too long from now, I'm going to be reporting on pump dot fund being raided, if they can find where these guys are, arresting them, and then you're gonna see Hawk 2 a girl and you're gonna see the murdered parent or the the the, you know, parent of murdered Fred and Peanut hauled into Congress, if not just flat ass court, to answer for ripping people off, knowingly ripping people off. There's no two ways about it. You if you are somebody that's generating meme tokens, shame on you. You're ripping people off. It's not fun. It's not funny. There's nothing humorous about it.
But this shit's going I think this shit has gone on for too long. 3,840,000 projects. As far as as far as I can tell. I mean, we used to we used to say there's 20,000 shit coins. No. There's not. There's millions. At this point, there's millions of them. And I don't even know. I you I guess you have to get on pump dot fund to find the next meme coin, and that that's what people do. Maybe they're addicted to it like some people are addicted to online poker and get, you know, like full blown gambling, online poker. There are people that just that's all they do is they play poker all day long.
They they don't they don't, you know, either they don't need to work because they're so good at it that that's how they make their money, or they're between jobs and they got nothing else to do with their day so they just sit there on, like, some, like, PokerStars or whatever, you know, whatever online outlet for, poker that there is and just get addicted to it like a video game. I'll I'll bet you that that's what's going on with this pump dot fun stuff, but that shit's coming to an end. This shit is coming to an end, man. Between Hawk 2, a girl, and Peanut and Fred's, you know, the poor deers that that died. This shit is getting has is is clearly out of hand, but now it's coming to the attention of those that can do real damage. And they are going to do real damage.
Okay. So that's all I got for today. Where are we at on the price? 97,980. There a little bit of a little bit of recovery, but I don't know. You're gonna see all kinds of chicanery this week, so just be prepared, 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 9:49 AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the 9th day of December 2024.
This is episode 1,004 of Bitcoin, and I got some bad news. I'm bringing bad news right to the table. El Salvador has completely collapsed. Well, at least on its ideals. Let me just explain this. We'll do it from the block. RT Wilson or Watson is the rider. El Salvador plans to ease Bitcoin acceptance requirement to unlock $3,000,000,000 in loans. We said that they would never do this. Bukele said that he was never going to be, you know, under the thumb of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and he's completely lost his spine.
I mean, I hate to say it, but this was supposed to not happen. He was putting El Salvador in the on the right track, and he was doing all that. He was getting it all done, man. He was getting it all done. He didn't want loans. He didn't wanna be under the thumb of some kind of weird, you know, world governance structure. And we believed him. And he's folded like a cheap suit. And I'm not I'm not happy about it. I'm not. I mean, I'm not gonna cry, but I'm not I'm not happy because I don't like it when people say that they're going to do something or not do something and then either do it if they said they weren't gonna do it or don't do it if they said that they were gonna do it.
It's it's it's a matter of integrity here. Well, let's get into it. El Salvador plans to ease a requirement that forced local businesses to accept Bitcoin. The move is being made to secure more than $3,000,000,000 in loans according to the Financial Times. By shifting to a policy that makes it voluntary for businesses to accept bitcoin, El Salvador can close a loan with, you guessed it, the International Monetary Fund worth $1,300,000,000 That particular deal will then unlock 2 more loans. One of $1,000,000,000 from the World Bank and another $1,000,000,000 from the Inter American Development Bank.
The Financial Times further reported on Monday the development may not come as a surprise to some as back in October, the IMF repeated its recommendation that El Salvador narrow the scope of its Bitcoin ambitions and accompanying legislation. When El Salvador's Bitcoin legislation took effect in 2021, it became the 1st nation to adopt the cryptocurrency as legal tender. Quote, the IMF opposed El Salvador's adoption of the digital currency, citing risks to financial stability and integrity, and has urged El Salvador's president to stop accepting cryptocurrency as legal tender, the report said. In August, El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, who championed the bill to make Bitcoin legal tender, conceded the nation's monetary experiment had mixed results, adding that Bitcoin had seen limited domestic adoption.
To secure the IMF loan, the country has also agreed to reduce its budget deficit, pass an anti corruption law and increase reserves, the Financial Times said. El Salvador possessed 5,750 bitcoin as of May 20 or May of 2024 which is now worth $570,000,000 Bitcoin was changing hands at $99,259 as of 9:42 am and that is no longer the that's no longer the case. We are now down to 97,843. I wonder why. Well, we'll get into it. But before we do, I do wanna say a couple things about this this issue here. It's not that I'm I'm disappointed with Nayib Bukele for dropping the Bitcoin requirement of local businesses to accept it as legal tender.
That's not what that that's not an issue. Right? It's it's the fact that he's going to be taking money from the very people that he swore he would never do business with. The World Bank being mentioned directly by name and the International Monetary Fund being another name, but it wasn't I don't think he actually ever said that. He but he did say no World Bank loans. Well, now he's got a World Bank loan. So the the question is why? Why the change of heart? Why does he need this money? He he put El Salvador on the map. He cleaned up the country's crime ridden reputation, definitely.
The tourism was booming. People were going. Why do you need the money? What does he need the money for? Why is he putting himself in the palms of these wretched morons, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter American Development Fund or whatever that is. Sounds like a spook bank to me, but, hey, whatever. So it's it's that. And but if I have something if I had something positive to say, I and I kinda do, I don't want it to be all bad news here, Is that that was such low hanging fruit for him to actually get. Right? And I'm not talking about the loans. Him dropping the requirement for businesses to accept it as legal tender. Well, there was a lot, you know, there's a lot of people in El Salvador that do use Bitcoin, but more but most of them don't.
We we knew this was going to be an issue way back in the day, way way back when he first started doing this. But, you know, okay. Legal tender, that's fine. But he he all he had to do was drop the legal tender requirement to get $3,000,000,000 in loans. From his perspective, that's a good deal. Except for the fact that he's now under back under the thumb of IMF and World Bank and Inter American Development Bank or whatever. Right? So now he's got bosses. I don't what what what was so important that you needed to go work for somebody like the IMF, the World Bank, and this other bank? Because that's essentially what he's done. But maybe you'll build a bit piggy.
Maybe you'll build a lightning piggy and give it to your kids so that they can experience how to save money in Bitcoin and not have to go get loans from the World Bank. And I mentioned lightning piggy because the circle p is open for business and the circle p is where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you. These plebs have goods and services and they offer them for Bitcoin because if you're not taking Bitcoin for your goods or service, you're not in the circle p and lightning piggy definitely takes bitcoin. So if you want to build your own piggy bank, from from scratch, they've got an entire instruction set at lightningpiggy.comforward/build.
That's lightning, as in lightning strike, piggy.comforward/build. And, you know, it's it's got, like, you know, it's there's 4 basically 4 steps. You source the parts, you create the wallet, you flash the firmware, and you make a case and assemble the parts. What could be easier, man? And they have an entire instruction set of where to go get the stuff you need, like on source the parts. They've got links and everything to Al, AliExpress, LilyGo, MakerFocus. They they source they you source the parts but they tell you where to go. If you want to get one that's already built, they have an entire page just for where you can already get pre built ones in the market section. And, like, you can get it from Robo Techy, you can get it from the Bitcoin stuff store in the Netherlands, and they'll and they ship they'll ship worldwide. So get yourself or your children set up with a lightning piggy, get them saving in bitcoin, start giving them their allowance in bitcoin, and see what happens.
Maybe you won't end up with somebody like Nayib Bukele who tells us one thing and then does exactly the other. Now here's somebody who has is doing what they say they do. The National Center For Public Policy Research has proposed to Amazon a Bitcoin Treasury. This is Vince Quill from Cointelegraph. The National Center For Public Policy Research, a Washington DC based think tank championing free markets, submitted a shareholder proposal to Amazon saying that a Bitcoin corporate treasury strategy should be considered at the upcoming April 2025 shareholder meeting. And according to the proposal, the consumer price index used to measure inflation, which currently puts inflation at roughly 4.95 percent is a remarkably poor measure of true currency debasement.
The authors suggested that true inflation rate may be double the reported CPI figure. This greatly erodes Amazon's $88,000,000,000 in cash and short term cash equivalents the letter said and to protect shareholder value bitcoin should be used as a hedge against the risk. Quote, as of December 6, 2024 the price of bitcoin increased by 131% over the previous year, outperforming corporate bonds by 126% on average. Wow. So they corporate bonds were only netting an average of 5%. That's pretty ugly. Over the past 5 years, the price of Bitcoin increased by 1,246%, outperforming corporate bonds by 1,242 percent on average. Again, there's a 5% or in this case a what 4% differential.
The authors concluded by proposing that Amazon allocate at least 5% of its assets to bitcoin to protect the value of its treasury assets, citing MicroStrategy's success with its bitcoin strategy. MicroStrategy and founder, Michael Saylor popularized the corporate Bitcoin Treasury strategy and is now gaining traction among companies and pension funds. And according to the MicroStrategy tracker, the company's Bitcoin holdings are currently worth over $40,000,000,000 Mining company Mara formerly known as Marathon Digital followed MicroStrategy's lead and completed a $1,000,000,000 convertible note offering and they used the funds to purchase 6,474 bitcoin.
Genius Group an artificial intelligence firm announced the conversion of its treasury assets into bitcoin and the company kicked off its treasury accrual by purchasing 110 BTC at $90,932 per coin. So Amazon is now on deck. Microsoft was last week. They are on deck as well. But now it's Amazon. And I had no idea that they're sitting on $88,000,000,000 of cash. And that's gotta be ugly no matter what was going on. It just so happens that bitcoin is an escape valve and as Marie Le Pen, put it very succinctly on stage, probably at a Davos meeting, is that if there is an escape hatch, the people will use it.
And she was talking about Bitcoin at the time. Okay. So we just mentioned Michael Michael Sailor. They've done it again, which is probably why we saw a $3,500 negative candle this morning. Because 3 hours ago, MicroStrategy bought 21,500,000 Bitcoin at peak prices. Ellen Parks, Cointelegraph. MicroStrategy is one of the largest corporate holders of bitcoin and is continuing to stack BTC despite the cryptocurrency surging to new all time high prices above 100,000. Dollars MicroStrategy acquired 21,550 BTC for $2,100,000,000 from December 2 December 8th at an average price of $98,783 per BTC.
As of December 8th, which was yesterday, MicroStrategy held a total of 423,650 BTC acquired for $25,600,000,000 at $60,324 per BTC. The announcement came shortly after Saylor predicted he would still be buying bitcoin at $1,000,000 one day. Quote, I'm sure that I will be buying bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin, end quote. MicroStrategy's latest purchase came when bitcoin had reached new all time highs, breaking above 100,000 for the first time on December 5th. Despite the new highs, Saylor reiterated his bullish stance on the cryptocurrency and his HODL philosophy, quote, I'm sure that I will be buying Bitcoin at $1,000,000 per coin, probably $1,000,000,000 a day of Bitcoin at $1,000,000 per coin, Saylor said in an appearance on Yahoo Finance's market domination.
The Bitcoin bull also urged the United States government to dump gold reserves and buy more bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. And I've got an entire story on that one. This one is out of the coin republic. Vingesh Carmunadahi is no way to pronounce this gentleman's name, and I'm sorry for the butchering. But let's get it going on. Michael Saylor says the United States should buy bitcoin and sell its gold. Now before I read the article to you, I actually disagree with this. I don't think there's any reason that we should sell our gold. In fact, what we should probably do is just print a shit ton of money and use that crap to buy Bitcoin because gold actually has some physical uses other than just being a store of value. But, hey, he's the billionaire. I'm not. Micro executive chairman, Michael Saylor, has proposed a strategy for US economic dominance.
Sell the gold and invest it in bitcoin. In a recent Yahoo Finance interview, Saylor suggested the US government could acquire approximately 5,000,000 Bitcoin by liquidating its gold holdings, potentially controlling the world's reserve capital network. Pausing to say, no. You don't get to control it. You might be able to affect the price really badly or very solidly depending on which way you wanna go, but you can't you don't control the network even if you hold 5,000,000 of the 21,000,000 ever to be minted Bitcoin. I did say fundamental misunderstanding of the network.
But the proposal comes as Bitcoin solidifies its position as the 7th largest asset globally by market cap, with Sailor's own MicroStrategy Holdings, showing substantial gains of 70.72%. His vision positions bitcoin not just as a digital currency but as a strategic national asset that could reshape global economic power dynamics. During the conversation, Saylor outlined an ambitious proposal. Saylor's arguing that this strategic move would simultaneously achieve multiple objectives. It could establish US dominance over the world's reserve capital network while potentially devaluing assets held by geopolitical competitors. That's interesting.
He suggested that this would catalyze the development of the of that world reserve capital network. He emphasized that selling US gold reserves could finance this acquisition essentially, quote, for free while strategically impacting nations holding significant gold reserves. So now he wants to weaponize gold via Bitcoin. This this dude is a billionaire for a reason. I don't like it. I'm not saying that I do. I just I'm just saying when you start thinking the way that this guy's thinking, that's that's when that's when billionaires be become created, is thinking in this way. I don't like it. It's not that I don't like you know, I would I would like a $1,000,000,000.
Yeah. Sure. But I don't know if I would want to weaponize the very thing that I love to do so and at the same time destroying the wealth of nations. This is just not kosher, man. It's just not. But the MicroStrategy executive's proposal extends beyond simple asset reallocation, because he's suggesting that such a move could potentially drive Bitcoin's value to a $100,000,000,000,000. And at the same time, it could give the United States control over both the world's reserve capital network and currency network. Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bitcoin network, but whatever.
According to market capitalization data presented by Saylor in another tweet, Bitcoin has emerged as the 7th largest asset globally with $1,935,000,000,000,000 of valuation, and this positions BTC among tech giants and traditional assets. The cryptocurrency ranks behind only gold, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, but ahead of Saudi Aramco, Silver and Meta Platforms. This positioning reflects Bitcoin's remarkable 62% annual return rate. It's outperformed the traditional market benchmark of 18% seen in other top assets and Saylor emphasizes bitcoin's characteristics setting it apart.
It positions as the fastest growing, most popular, most digital, most useful and most global asset in the marketplace. The comparison particularly highlights bitcoin's potential trajectory toward becoming a $2,000,000,000,000 force in global markets. MicroStrategy's bitcoin position has reached unprecedented levels. The scale of MicroStrategy's Bitcoin accumulation becomes particularly important when viewed against the broader market landscape with current holdings representing a substantial portion of Bitcoin circulating supply, the company has emerged as one of the largest institutional holders of the cryptocurrency. This position has been achieved through a consistent acquisition strategy.
Saylor has maintained a buy and hold approach despite all market fluctuations. The company's success in accumulating and maintaining such a significant position has also generated substantial shareholder value. Okay, let's go back up to where where is it that he weaponizes bitcoin. Selling United States gold reserves could finance the acquisition essentially for free while strategically impacting nations holding significant gold reserves. Again, I don't like this. And and it's not it it's not the the the thought of the United States getting rid of its gold that irks me as much as destroying the wealth of other nations because they hold gold.
Why do that? That's a destabilizing front. It doesn't help the United States to impoverish yet more countries by destroying their wealth, by doing something, in my opinion, while bold and technically a smart move, it is is just it I don't see how that is going to help the united states sure on a balance sheet aspect of course it would help the united states we completely devalue gold we move it all over into into bitcoin which is going to definitely bolster that price aspect if they were to do that you would see probably $1,000,000 bitcoin at one point or another inside the next 5 years. If they were to do that tomorrow, yeah, in 5 years, you would see $1,000,000 Bitcoin. I don't think it's gonna happen.
Because, again, just because it looks good on paper does not mean this is the right move to do. I think it's a bad deal all the way around. So that's my 2¢ on that. But but but hold on. What the hell are you doing here? Oh oh oh you want to do that to me, Hold on. Pardon the interruption I had to use archive.ph to get a hold of this article from, Benzinga because while it was up on I had it up and then it decided to like I don't know after 15, 20 minutes or so decided to get all blurry and say I have to, you know, give them a annual subscription, which I'm not going to do. What they need to do is use the Lightning Network and I would have paid I would have paid a buck to read this to you today.
Bitcoin's sellers delight, Bhutan has transferred $40,000,000 in Bitcoin to QCP Capital. So there are three things that are going on that's trying to push Bitcoin down and is doing a good job. $35100 to the downside is is nothing to sneeze at. We got El Salvador folding like a cheap suit. Michael Saylor just bought another buttload of Bitcoin, 21,000 coin, which every time he does, that pushes the price down. But now we've got Bhutan transferring $40,000,000 in BTC to QCP Capital. Mertza Merchant is riding this one for Benzinga.
The Royal Government of Bhutan has transferred 406 BTC to QCP Capital. While the exact purpose of the transfer remains speculative, it is suspected to be linked to a potential sale because that's what we always go to. We always go to, oh, it's going to be sold. We don't know. We we have no idea what they're doing. It's just transferred from the, oh, whatever whoever it is that they use to hold to custody their Bitcoin, to somebody else. And QCP Capital, as far as I know, was not a Bitcoin exchange. But Bhutan's government wallet continues to hold almost 12,000 BTC worth $1,160,000,000 making it the 4th largest government holder of Bitcoin globally.
Data from ARCEM Intelligence reveals the Royal Government of Bhutan's robust cryptocurrency portfolio. It holds primarily Bitcoin valued at 1.6 no. $1,160,000,000 and, God forbid, Ethereum worth $2,530,000,000. So substantially less Ethereum. They should just sell it for Bitcoin. And then they also have various smaller holdings, but all of them total under $3,000, so it's not worth our time. The government's Bitcoin reserves dwarf those of El Salvador whose holdings are valued at 30 335,000,000 despite Bhutan having only 12% of El Salvador's population. The substantial reserves originate from Bhutan's hydro powered Bitcoin mining operations, which they adopted in 2019, but we only found out about it, I think, sometime this year at the, head of the or either that or last year, when it was revealed in bankruptcy filings that they had some kind of relationship with FTX.
And that was how we found out that Bhutan had been mining. They weren't they never said anything about it. It was completely hush-hush. But the hydropower accounts for 30% of Bhutan's GDP with the nation harnessing approximately 23,000 megawatts of technically feasible hydropower capacity. The clean energy approach aligns with Bhutan's commitment to sustainability while allowing for large scale mining operations. This strategy emerged as part of Bhutan's effort to diversify its economic I said diversify its economy amid declining tourism revenue, a sector contributing $88,600,000 annually pre pandemic.
The economic fallout from COVID 19 further reinforced the importance of alternative revenue streams like cryptocurrency mining. So Bhutan has moved $40,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, and we have absolutely no idea what they're going to do with it. But we have other numbers that we can look at, so let's run them. So the Syrian government collapsed yesterday, I suppose, is when that happened. And it had been going on some kind of revolution that nobody really heard of, had been going on in the country for 9 straight days. And as you might imagine, it's affected the price of oil. West Texas Intermediate is up over 2 full points today, back to 68.63. Britton, North Sea up 1 and 3 quarters of a point to 7238.
And natural gas falling in line, it is 3.71% to the upside. Gasoline is up 2.72%, back to a buck 95 a gallon. Gold and all the other shiny metal rocks are doing very well today probably because Syria collapsed and that has wider economic ramifications for the Middle East. But gold is up over a full point to $2,686. Silver is up 3 and a quarter points. Platinum is up 2.13%. Copper is up 1.79%, and palladium up over 3 points. Ag is fully mixed today. The biggest winner is chocolate, 3.34% to the upside, and the biggest loser is sugar, 1 and a half to the downside. And I got live cattle up a half point, lean hogs are down 0.89%, and feeder cattle are essentially moving sideways.
The Dow and the rest of the equity markets do not like what's going on in the Middle East because the Dow is down a quarter of a point, the S and P is down almost a half point, NASDAQ is down a full 3 quarters of a point, and the S and P mini is essentially moving sideways, only slightly red. Bitcoin is back to $98,080 that is just shy of a $2,000,000,000,000 market cap and we can get 36.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,793,000 477.03 of and a tenth of a bitcoin is being taken in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are a 118 blocks carrying 282,000 unconfirmed transactions going for high priority rates of 13 satoshis per vbyte, low priority transactions you can you can purchase for 10 satoshis per vbyte, and the hash rate is at 769.4 exahashes per second on a 1 week rolling average. So pretty stable so far. Now from Hoch Tuohy Correctional Facility For Women, that was, Friday's, episode of Bitcoin and, Arceus has given me 10,101 satoshis. That's a lot of satoshis, brother. And he says, congrats on the 1,000.
This was supposed to be sent on episode 1,001, but fountain gave me an issue. Yes. These are all early times for all of us, including the guys over there building fountain, which is still my favorite app. But, yeah, every once in a while, it it will basically throw up all over you much like a baby. BTC master with 1,021 sat says, all stats matter at all stats matter.com. Camper with a thousand says, don't fade the Czechoslovak boys and girls, none you. They mean serious business there. Hardened by communism. Fascinating history of the circular parallel economy, mecca of the Austrian Economics, and European Bitcoin OGs. He's not he's not lying.
Always with a beer in hand, laughing into the face of, 'authorize, it's the ultimate Bitcoin pleb country.' You would do a huge favor to yourself to come sip the vibes first hand during the summer where BTC Prague will be held mid June. PS, one thing is for damn sure we're not letting Brussels or anyone else reopen their commie shop out there ever again. Good for you, camper. And there's absolutely I have no animosity towards Czechoslovakia. If if I may if I did not make that clear, when I was talking about it last time, my apologies. Czechoslovakia is a kick ass country. It has endured so much shit. It's not even funny. I mean, they're sandwiched right between Russia and Europe.
I mean, of course, there was going they've been having shit. They've been having problems since freaking Hitler. Alright? So and before that, by the way. But God's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with a 100 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Hue Janice. Hue You, Janice. Yeah. Figure it out. 200 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Comes back with another thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Nosteregg says, pretty sure sniping is known as front running. So front running. Thank you, Nostereggs. I appreciate that correction.
And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. So now we know. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 was real. This is out of CoinDesk. There really was a coordinated federal government effort to de bank crypto following the collapse of 3 midsize crypto friendly lenders Signature, Silvergate and Silicon Valley Banks in March of 2023. The crypto industry, led by VC commentator Nick Carter, has long suspected and railed against debanking. But until today, we didn't have much documentary evidence. Well, Friday morning, internal communications at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were released after a research firm, History Associates Incorporated, hired by Coinbase, sued them to get them uncovered. Quote, the heavily redacted documents emerged on Friday showing the banking regulator slamming the brakes on lenders offering or considering products and services in the digital assets sector.
CoinDesk's Jesse Hamilton wrote in his report today, quote, we respectfully ask that you pause all crypto asset related activity, the FDIC wrote in one of the 23 internal letters released by Coinbase. The FDIC will notify all FDIC supervised banks at a later date when a determination has been made on the supervisory expectations for engaging in crypto asset related activity. The FDIC and other regulators have long denied that they pressured the 3 struggling banks to stop banking crypto companies, many of which were suffering following the collapse of FTX and others in late 2022.
The letters show that this was no conspiracy theory at all. That this was not just rank speculation or the musings of a paranoid industry, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Gruel told Hamilton. There was a concerted plan on the part of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC, that they carried out without any reluctance to deny banking service to a legal American industry. That should give everyone great pause. Debanking has been a hot issue recently after mega VC Mark Andreessen discussed Operation Chokepoint 2.0 on Joe Rogan's podcast.
The house committee on financial services heard testimony from several crypto leaders this week attesting to difficulties gaining banking services. The heavily redacted letters show FDIC demanding onerous compliance information while being unclear as to what was actually required of the banks before they could approve the provision of financial services to the businesses. Hamilton writes that some letters show the agency wasn't yet sure what regulatory filings would even be required before it could green light crypto businesses. Gruel said Coinbase will petition the court to allow the documents to be released unredacted.
Aside from hurting the crypto industry, critics argue financial services are a fundamental right and that the federal government should not be able to effectively outlaw legal businesses. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is a reference to an official Obama administration policy to restrict financial services to payday lenders, gun sellers and other undesirable businesses. It's now clear that de banking was as much a matter for crypto as it was for porn, which says a lot about the current administration's attitude towards it.
I want to be fairly clear here as to how I'm interpreting this. Because it's now true beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the FDIC and other entities were involved in straight up denying services, goods, business activities to these banks that were dealing in bitcoin. It's a first amendment issue. It's absolutely 100% a first amendment issue. Why? Well, let's just go back just for a second. Start looking at what was it called? Hold on. Citizens United. That was that was one of these one of these things that gave corporations personhood. It it and when personhood.
It it and when they did that, it allowed corporations to have freedom of speech. And that whole thing was done so major corporations would have no gates in front of them, no hindrance, no blocks to being able to give extraordinary amounts of money to political candidates. We know honestly, I think everybody in the sound of my voice kind of rankles at that going, you're no. Ford Company is not a person. It's not. It's not a person. But if they're going to do that, then that sets a precedence. They are able to use money to affect certain things, then if that's true and sets precedent, then you cannot deny somebody else that is a company to be able to use financial tools to affect external changes.
I think that I think it's a I can make a very good argument that this should actually be brought to trial by Coinbase and anybody else who wants to join in as a first amendment issue that might actually go all the way up to the Supreme Court. And one of 2 things would happen. They'd either overturn Citizens United and everything stays the same, or they keep Citizens United in play and and admit that they have you the Wyoming bank was a not Cynthia Lummis. What's her name? Caitlin Long. She's been trying to open this Wyoming bank forever, and she cannot get a master account at the Federal Reserve. And she needs that to be able to do all the for the rest of the pieces to fall in place for her bank in Wyoming.
And they refused to give her a master account. They'd have to. And I think Caitlin Long actually has a good argument if she were to choose that this is a first amendment issue. And then waive Citizens United all in front of them saying, hey, dude, president. This is freedom of speech and you're you and governmental operatives and other institutions are hindering my right to free speech. I think that that I think that they could make a big play for that. But let's get into mining a little bit. Lead great and green mining forward. This is from Bitcoin Magazine written by Bitcoin Magazine. Microbt, a world leading Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer, has once again showcased its technological prowess and innovation driven approach introducing the latest What's Miner M6XS Plus Plus series at the Bitcoin MENA 2024 conference in Abu Dhabi.
During the conference, Doctor. Zhao Jing Yang, the founder and CEO of MicroBT delivered a keynote address titled Lead Great and Green Mining Forward. In his speech, he unveiled advancements in solar power mining technology, highlighted the innovative heat utilization in hydro cooling mining systems, and introduced the new What's Miner models. The mining industry stands at a pivotal juncture, with green mining emerging as a forefront trend for the future. Doctor. Yang emphasized the transformative potential of solar mining, predicting a significant reduction in electricity costs for solar power mining to approximately 3.4¢ USD. Well, 3.4 American pennies, let's just say, per kilowatt hour by 2025. And furthermore, Whatsminer's groundbreaking high temperature water outlet hydro cooling technology is pushing the boundaries of comprehensive heat recovery. This is important.
This technology enables the wet miner hydro cooling system to either minimize mining cooling needs or repurpose heat for advanced applications such as industrial steam production, seawater desalination, heating systems, and thereby reinforcing microbt's prominent position in the green mining sector. Subsequently, Doctor. Yang unveiled the latest generation of Whatsminer products. The air cooled M60s plus plus has a hash rate of 226 terahashes per second with an efficiency of 15.5 joules per terahash. The m sixty three s plus plus you get 478 terahashes per second more than double and it maintains the same power efficiency at 15.5 joules per terahash.
Holy crap. The immersion cooled m 66s+plus you can get 356 terahashes per second out of it and have a mining of a power efficiency of 15.5 joules per sec per terahash. And additionally, the what's minor line includes the air cooled m sixty one s plus. You get 236 out of that, but you're gonna be eating 17 joules per terahash for it. The hydro cooled, m sixty four s plus and m sixty five s plus, you get up to 236 terahashes to 440 terahashes respectively with both having a power efficiency of 17 joules per terahash. Doctor Yang proudly announced Microbt's steadfast dedication to pioneering sustainable and eco friendly mining practices, heralding a new era of green mining excellence and visionary leadership With the unveiling of the latest What's Minor products, Microbt stands poised and confident to decisively spearhead the green mining revolution. Okay. Well, that's great. How are you going to determine who uses what kind of power generator to power those things.
You see, that's the bullshit part of this story is that he's go we're going green. No. You're just making highly efficient miners. And, honestly, these are those are really cool numbers. 478 terahashes per second at 15.5 joules per terahash is amazing. That is a wholesale change over what we have been seeing. But what I do like is the hydro cooling system and how it's it was featured prominently in doctor Yang's speech. Repurposing heat. Humans are terrible about heat, and I'm not talking about climate change. That's all bullshit. I'm just saying the heat in your engine.
Right? When you're driving your car, if you're driving a gas powered car or diesel or whatever, then your engine gets hot. And it has a cooling system to make sure that it doesn't explode because it gets so hot. You can repurpose that heat in the wintertime to heat your car. But in the summertime, no. No. The heat just goes away. There's a bunch of energy that's just wasted all the time. And if we start thinking like permaculturists people that that look at systems level design like it's it's essentially natural systems engineering is another way to actually look at what is permaculture. Natural systems engineering.
And if you can get the waste product of one system to be the input of a completely different system that does a completely different thing, then you were thinking at the systems level engineering. Yeah. That's that that is a great way to think. And heat is one of these waste products that humans have we just don't give a shit. We just don't care. We don't do what would be necessary to harvest all that wasted energy. But now that Bitcoin is here, people are starting to think about, how can I make this the the most efficient thing to do?
How can I not only build efficient Bitcoin miners, but how can I make it even more efficient by really hammering on the issue of what do we do with the wasted heat? I've been harping on this forever now, guys, but it looks like other people are starting to really take that up. And I'm really happy that microbt, again, featured heat recovery and heat extraction and the energy extracting out of that heat as a prominent part of this new line of microbt miners. Who knows? Maybe they'll even get a get a grand from opensats.org who is renewing their commitment to bitcoin. And this was, Saturday, December 7th.
OpenSats released this. It says, over the past 2 years, we have made 41 announcements from our general fund highlighting our commitment to support individual contributors and projects working to not only grow the Bitcoin ecosystem, but also make it more resilient and robust in the process. Without the tireless effort of these open source contributors as well as their innovation, dedication, collaboration and commitment to financial freedom, Bitcoin wouldn't be where it is today. Bitcoin's influence is ever expanding, not just for individuals reclaiming their financial independence, but redefining what it means to send value without middlemen, but also affecting public markets, creating new financial instruments and other innovations that bridge traditional finance with what has become the world's most pristine asset.
All this demonstrates that bitcoin is working as intended. It is slowly but surely reshaping how money operates every 10 minutes. And in addition to the grants that we have announced in the past we are renewing our commitment to 9 exceptional projects advancing the ecosystems on various fronts. BTC Pay Server Stratum V2, RaspiBlitz, LNbits, Vexel, Blixit, CrUX, BitX, and Labelbase. So they are renewing their commitments, their long term commitments to these 9 companies. I know. Open Sats gets a lot of people get angry about Open Sats, but mostly because they had their grants denied. If you got a grant denied, then rewrite the grant, resubmit it.
Believe me, man. I saw how the sausage was made in academic sciences. You wouldn't believe what those dudes go through. I mean, these some of these grant proposals are 50, 60 pages, and they'll write 15 of them a year to all these different people. They'll repurpose the say they'll repurpose the same experiments that they've done. They'll they're doing everything that they can to get any amount of money whatsoever. And the amount of of work that goes into these grant proposals is so intense. It it's really scary. So understand, if if you're not getting the grant, maybe you need to up your game.
Did you know that there are people like my wife that are that specialize in grant writing? Is one of one of her specialties is grant writing because she's a technical communications and rhetorician expert. Right? And rhetoric is the ability to make your argument. It's a lot more than that, but that's one of the main things. If you're getting grant proposals denied from OpenSats, you need to up your grant writing game. Just because they have money doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to pry it from their cold dead fingers without one hell of an argument.
Alright? So there are whole there are whole companies that can help you write grants. They'll you'll have to give them a cut of that grant money and that may actually be a problem for OpenSats, but if you're getting your grants denied from OpenSats, please, please, please just understand that what you're going through versus what I've seen other people go through to try to get that money is wow. I mean what they do is amazing. And the amount of resilience that they contain by having all but one of their grant proposals denied every single year. Sometimes they never get anything. They never get any funding. They are constantly getting denied and yet they run their lab, they do their budgets.
You cannot these scientists, at least in in the academic sciences that I was at at Texas Tech Health Science Center, you could not find somebody that just got beaten to death by not getting grants. They always had money in a pile. They were constantly doing it. It was just part of the job. So if you can look at it that way, instead of going mean old dir Gigi and mean old Matt, they're they don't like me, so they're not giving me money. That is the wrong attitude, brothers and sisters. You've gotta go into it understanding that you need to really up your game. And, well, somebody else up their game and, well, it's not going well.
No. It's not Hock 2 a girl. She's we've already done her. This is yet another example of the same kind of bullshit. Peanut pet owners token collapses 2 weeks after launch. I don't even remember this happening. I may have even reported on it. Who knows? I might go back through my Obsidian files and see if I talked about this, but I do not remember Peanut the squirrel being or being idolized in the form of a shitcoin or meme token or whatever you wanna call it. But Vince De Aquino from Decrypt is gonna finish us us out today. A token created by Mark Longo to honor his euthanized pets has plummeted over 99% since its November 26th launch with on chain data revealing significant selling pressure as controversy grows over the project's inception.
The Justice for Peanut and Fred, otherwise known as the Justice token, launched through Solana based meme coin platform, pump dot fund, and it's now trading at 0.0003834, marking a dramatic decline from its initial trading levels. The project's market capitalization has contracted to a mere $375,000 despite maintaining over 31,000 holders. They got 31,000 people to buy this crap. Wow. Longo did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment regarding the token's performance. But the launch came after Longo publicly criticized crypto traders for allegedly monetizing his personal tragedy through the popular meme coin, peanut, p n u t. Quote, the fact that people wanna make money off this is nothing short of despicable, Longo stated in a Twitter video before pivoting to launch the token.
At the time, peanut community members pointed to approximately $50,000 in donations made to Longo, which they claim he immediately liquidated. By Friday, December 6th, the account associated with Longo posted on X or Twitter about a new contact address implying that the initial Justice token was shifting to a new one. Some 7 minutes after the post, the account posted the new contract address with a new ticker JFP. Upon examination, Decrypt found that the Justice for Peanut, the JFP token, suffered roughly the same fate as its predecessor. The new JFP token is down 67% since its creation 3 days ago.
For context, the justice peanutfred account is verified on the, Twitter platform as an official organization. Decrypt has reached out for confirmation. The same account went on to thank 4 news publications for covering the story of Mark Longo and the launch of JFP. It is not clear which publications the account was referring to on the same day. It claimed to have submitted a request for listing on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. The case involving Longo and his pets, Peanut and Fred, gained significant political traction when vice president-elect JD Vance revealed at a North Carolina rally that Trump was fired up about the euthanization.
Wow. The story's virality intensified after Elon Musk commentary, sparked increased trading activity in various associated meme coins. The incident originated when New York State environmental officers decided to raid Longo's Pine City animal sanctuary on October 30th, citing violations of wildlife protection laws. So they immediately killed them. Peanut, who had accumulated over 500,000 social media followers, was murdered. Well, actually, they say euthanized, but I'm just gonna say it, was murdered alongside Fred after allegedly biting someone during the seizure.
Well, that's what happens when you try to wrangle up wild animals. They'll bite your ass. That's bite their wild animals. Whatever. Longo's latest moves with the justice for peanut and Fred meme coins add to the growing trend of controversial meme coin launches on pump dot fun. The platform's accessible token creation system has revolutionized how meme coins enter the crypto market enabling projects such as Justice and JFP to launch with minimal financial and technical barriers. For 0.02 SOL, or Sol, which is around $4.8 users can create tokens without technical expertise. And the platform's bonding curve mechanism automatically adjusts prices based on market activity, though this feature can amplify volatility in trending tokens.
Since late 2024, the Solana based platform has facilitated over 3,850,000 token launches. Let's read that again. In about 12 months, since January of this year, this platform has released 3.85000000 different tokens. What in the hell? What in the hell, man? So on November 25th, Decrypt covered how self harm and other forms of violence and abuse have proliferated on pump dot fund, this platform. The platform dropped its live streaming feature after a report about, about it ignited community backlash. On Saturday, pump dot fund was ban or has banned UK users after it received warnings from the country's financial regulator.
Pump thought fund is about to go down. That's what's gonna happen here. So let let me just, let me hold on. Pump.fund and, hawk2ey. Because I have a suspicion here. Yep. Hawk the the Hawk token was released through Pump Thought Fund. Here's what I here's what I think is going on. I think people that are representing either either overtly or, you know, covertly, pump dot fun is getting a hold of people like the hawk to a girl. This dude that had, you know, the the murdered the the parents of the murdered, Peanut and Fred animals. And saying, hey, man, we can make a lot of money with meme coins because you guys are now memes, and we're gonna do all that shit for you. But we're gonna take, you know, we'll take a slice of the pie, but you're gonna get the cherry on top.
There get ready. People are going to go to jail. This is just about to break loose. I guarantee you that I hear probably not too long from now, I'm going to be reporting on pump dot fund being raided, if they can find where these guys are, arresting them, and then you're gonna see Hawk 2 a girl and you're gonna see the murdered parent or the the the, you know, parent of murdered Fred and Peanut hauled into Congress, if not just flat ass court, to answer for ripping people off, knowingly ripping people off. There's no two ways about it. You if you are somebody that's generating meme tokens, shame on you. You're ripping people off. It's not fun. It's not funny. There's nothing humorous about it.
But this shit's going I think this shit has gone on for too long. 3,840,000 projects. As far as as far as I can tell. I mean, we used to we used to say there's 20,000 shit coins. No. There's not. There's millions. At this point, there's millions of them. And I don't even know. I you I guess you have to get on pump dot fund to find the next meme coin, and that that's what people do. Maybe they're addicted to it like some people are addicted to online poker and get, you know, like full blown gambling, online poker. There are people that just that's all they do is they play poker all day long.
They they don't they don't, you know, either they don't need to work because they're so good at it that that's how they make their money, or they're between jobs and they got nothing else to do with their day so they just sit there on, like, some, like, PokerStars or whatever, you know, whatever online outlet for, poker that there is and just get addicted to it like a video game. I'll I'll bet you that that's what's going on with this pump dot fun stuff, but that shit's coming to an end. This shit is coming to an end, man. Between Hawk 2, a girl, and Peanut and Fred's, you know, the poor deers that that died. This shit is getting has is is clearly out of hand, but now it's coming to the attention of those that can do real damage. And they are going to do real damage.
Okay. So that's all I got for today. Where are we at on the price? 97,980. There a little bit of a little bit of recovery, but I don't know. You're gonna see all kinds of chicanery this week, so just be prepared, 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.
