Join me today for Episode 1005 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Microsoft Decides to be Poor
- Quantum FUD is Overblown
- Riot Platforms Raises $500 Million to Buy BTC
- Florida State Pension to Allocate $1.85 Billion to Bitcoin
- Bitmain Now Builds Miners in US
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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 9:22 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 10th day of December 2024, and this is episode 1,005 of Bitcoin. And Microsoft voted no.
That news just dropped. We'll get it from Tristan Greene out of Cointelegraph. Microsoft shareholders vote no on Bitcoin Reserve because I guess they wanna remain poor. Microsoft shareholders did vote no against or voted against a resolution to add bitcoin to the company's balance sheets during the firm's annual meeting today, December 10th. The National Center For Public Policy Research, a pro free market think tank based in Washington, DC, has proposed the resolution framing it as a corporate duty to provide value to shareholders through profit diversification.
The NCPPR submitted a prerecorded video outlining their proposal, which was played during the shareholders meeting. The video, which opened with a line, Microsoft Microsoft can't afford to miss the next technology wave and Bitcoin is that wave, was replete with charts and figures demonstrating the potential value of holding bitcoin. In making its case, the group promised that adopting bitcoin would create 1,000,000,000,000 in value and strip away risk from shareholders. The video echoed sentiments previously made in the text of its resolution, quote, the institutional and corporate adoption of Bitcoin is becoming more commonplace.
Microsoft's 2nd largest shareholder, BlackRock, offers its clients a bitcoin ETF, end quote. The proposal did point out that bitcoin was more volatile than corporate bonds and thus advised against holding too much of it, but also advised against risking shareholder value by ignoring bitcoin altogether. As such, the NCPPR recommended using between 1 5% of the firm's profits to purchase bitcoin. The proposal formally requested that Microsoft conduct an assessment to determine if diversifying the company's balance sheet by including bitcoin is in the best long term interest of shareholders. Quote, as the proposal itself notes, volatility is a factor to consider in evaluating cryptocurrency investments for corporate treasury applications that require stable and predictable investments to ensure liquidity and operational funding, end quote.
So there it is. We got the word Microsoft to remain chilling out on its 88, what, $1,000,000,000 worth of cash and cash equivalents. That's that's a lot of cash. And, of course, it is affecting the price of Bitcoin. We saw earlier weakness in the market, and we are seeing it again now that this news has just broken. We are down to $94,876. And when you think about it, that's really not all that scary. I mean, it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were chilling out around $68,000. So honestly, guys, I I I'm I'm not exactly sure why retail is just absolutely going apeshit over the last couple of days.
And maybe people are are are doing their whole, end of year readjustments and rebalancing of their portfolios. I honestly I really truly believe that if you have Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you probably shouldn't be using that to sell to get cash to rebalance simply because you're overweight on Bitcoin. That you rebalance all the rest of your portfolio, but honestly, it's kinda dumb to single out Bitcoin and or not single it out, but group it like it was an equity or like corporate bonds or something like that. But, I mean, retail is gonna retail, dude, and and they're scared about other shit too. There's FUD around this new quantum computing chip. And Steven Cottey from Cointelegraph has this one. Google unveils a new quantum computing chick chip. Clock is ticking for crypto encryption?
Oh, no. Willow, quantum AI team from Google says its new quantum computing chip is capable of solving a computational problem in less than 5 minutes. And that same problem would take one of the best supercomputers in the world about 10 septillion years to solve. The chip, known as Willow, can exponentially correct errors and process certain computations at a mind boggling pace. This mind boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lend lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse a prediction first made by David Deutsch, Nevin added.
According to Nevin, the second major achievement the team pulled off with Willow is the ability to reduce errors exponentially as it scaled up using more qubits, cracking a key challenge in quantum error correction that experts in the field have pursued for almost 30 years. Using our latest advances in quantum error correction, we were able to cut the error rate in half. In other words, we achieved an exponential reduction in the error rate. Quote, this historic accomplishment is known in the field as below threshold being able to drive errors down while scaling up the numbers of cubits.
A cubit, or quantum bit, is a basic unit of information and key to quantum computing. The more you have, the higher computational power is achieved. Still though, adding more qubits increases the risk of errors. And if error rates are too high, the computation will become unreliable and produce incorrect results making it difficult to scale up the technology to practical large scale use. In a December 9th statement on Twitter, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Willow is an important step in the tech giant's journey to build a useful quantum computer. With practical applications in drug discovery, fusion energy and battery design, Google hopes to one day develop a computer capable of complex error corrected computations.
Its quantum computing roadmap shows the company has only reached milestone 2 of 6 which it hit in 2023. Advances in quantum computing have long been feared as an inflection point for the crypto industry. Computers capable of breaking encryption could expose user funds to thieves in large volumes or yeah. In large volumes and at rapid rates. Now this is where I'm pausing here. This is where a lot of this FUD was is coming from that hit, I think, sometime last night. And people were, like, automatically terrified that every, like, every key every private key in Bitcoin was going to be cracked. Well, we'll get to that. So just just hang on. But this is where it is.
People are worried that it's going to be able to break encryption. Continuing tech entrepreneur and former senior product manager for Google, Kevin Rose, also on Twitter said that Willow was still far short of being a threat to crypto. According to Rose, estimates for compromising Bitcoin's encryption would require a quantum computer with approximately 13,000,000 cubits to achieve decryption within 24 hours. In contrast, Google's Willow chip, while a significant advancement, comprises a 105 cubits, he said. David Marcus, CEO of payment platform, WhiteSpark, said he doesn't think most people fully understand the significance of the breakthrough by Google.
According to Marcus, it means post quantum cryptography and encryption need to get moving. Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has already proposed a way to mitigate the risk of quantum computing for Ethereum, explaining in March in a March Twitter post that a simple hard fork could subvert the issue. Buterin said that the blockchain would have to hard fork and users would have to download brand new solid wallet software, but few would actually lose their funds. Okay. So this is literally the only thing that I've seen where it would it would get me to a point where I would say a a hard fork for Bitcoin is going to be necessary.
Now we've already got one that's gonna happen, something to do with, the way that it it does time, it's computing time, it's gonna break or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but it's pretty much the time stamping functionality is kind of in question here. Now as far as quantum computing breaking encryption, right, that's this is the other hard fork that I would be amenable to. I don't like hard forks. Nobody should like hard forks. It is a shitty thing to have to go through because it really doesn't help the guy in the coma when you hard fork. And we've been able to stay away from hard work hard forks in Bitcoin for quite a while.
We've done very well. However, if it does come to pass that we get close to a quantum computer that can actually crack encryption of something like SHA 256 or the private keys which are generated by ECDSA, If we get close to that, we're gonna have to do something about that. And the only way that we can do something about that is use the quantum resistant encryption, which means that SHA 256 might have to change, ECDSA might have to change to something else. And this has already been thought about. It's not like this is catching, like, the the core developers by surprise or anything like that, so don't think that. But nobody wants to do a hard fork.
But here's the other thing. It's always this perception in our world of bitcoin that the minute quantum computers can decrypt something that they're automatically going to go for bitcoin. Honey, if if quantum computers d it can decrypt something like an ECDSA private key, baby, you got bigger problems. You've got nuclear launch keys. You've got every bank account in the world. You've got the keys to every single Federal Reserve master account for all of the banks in the United States. Do you see where I'm going with this? You could send nuclear submarines to any place on the planet that you wanted to, and they would think that they were viable orders because you've cracked that encryption.
All encryption gets cracked not just bitcoin not just the shit coins right it's everything if it has anything to do with encryption it it all gets broken at once What makes you think they're automatically going to go only after Bitcoin and not after nuclear launch keys? Of course, we'll have a much bigger problem with nuclear launch keys getting leaked than your wallet, which sucks. I'm not saying that it wouldn't suck. I'm just saying that we have much larger problems on our hands. And for all the fear mongering that was done in the year, you know, years 1997 through 1999, leading up to what was then known as the year 2000 switch for computer software where people thought planes were gonna fall out of the sky and water purification systems were going to explode and natural gas lines were going to, you know, kill us all because there was going to be another timing issue. That's what the Y2K switch was all about.
For all the fear mongering that was done there, this is what you should be actually kind of worried about. Is all encryption on the planet being broken all at once. And don't think that nobody else in the world, like all the banking guys that do banking software and encryption for that, They're worried about it. They're working on it. The guys that hold that figure out nuclear launch keys encryption. I guarantee you they've been worried about this shit for a while. They've probably got something in line in place to go. I really am not worried about quantum computing doing this kind of thing.
Because if it does, again, we've got much bigger problems. And it's not like we're being caught unaware. We understand that this is going on. Right? So for all the FUD that's being thrown around about how quantum computing is going to destroy bitcoin, just stop it. There's a lot there's a lot of problems that could happen. It's not just bitcoin. Now let's go over to Russia where the Russian state Duma deputy proposes a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Everybody seems to be getting on, the the the Bitcoin train. Nicholas Hoffman out of, Bitcoin Magazine's got it. Today, Russian state owned domestic news agency, RIA Novositi, something like that, reported that the state Duma deputy Anton Khakchev proposed creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve for Russia, claiming they have obtained a copy of the document.
Khakchev from the new People's Party sent the proposal to Russia's finance minister Anton Salehyanov to create a Bitcoin reserve similar to Russia's traditional currency reserves. Quote, I ask you, dear Anton, to assess the feasibility of creating a strategic reserve of Bitcoin in Russia, by analogy with state reserves in traditional currencies, the document reportedly stated. If this initiative is approved, I ask you to submit it to the government of the Russian Federation for further implementation in conditions of limited access to traditional international payment systems for countries under sanctions, cryptocurrencies are becoming virtually the only instrument for international trade.
The Central Bank of Russia is already preparing to launch an experiment in cross border settlements in cryptocurrency, the document reportedly goes on to explain. Taktchev's document explains that creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve could enhance Russia's financial stability, noting that traditional currency reserves such as the dollar, euro and yuan are all subject to inflation and sanctions and that a new alternative independent of any individual country is needed. This development continues the trend of countries looking to build strategic Bitcoin reserves, including the US, El Salvador, Brazil, and Poland, among others.
So here's the deal is that if you if you didn't hear him, Putin was actually giving an interview a few days back and he where he stated and it went around Noster pretty heavily, so I'm sure it was over there on dead bird side too, where he was saying nobody can stop Bitcoin. So you got him saying that, and then all of a sudden, you've got this dude at the State Douma who's wanting a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the reasons that it can't be stopped, that you can't sanction the country using Bitcoin to buy things because they're not using traditional rails. It almost looks like it is Russia telegraphing to the world that they are indeed going to get a Bitcoin strategic reserve.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, Riot Platforms is raising $500,000,000 to buy yet more BTC, and it looks like they're gonna be able to pick it up at $64,641 as of right now because the poors are out in force today. But publicly traded Bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms plans to raise 500,000,000 of private senior convertible notes. It's the same playbook. It's the same thing Saylor's doing. It's the same thing Mara is doing. Right? It's senior convertible notes but the offering which will be made available to and I love this. This offering is only going to be for, quote, persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers.
One hell of a description there. And it's it's expected to allow up to an additional $75,000,000 in note purchases beyond the core 500 million offering, that means that they're going to be oversubscribed and they're already planning for that. So they'll probably end up at $700,000,000 even though if you add 75 to 500, you get 5.75. Dude, this is not my first rodeo. $700,000,000 is probably what they're actually going to end up with. The notes, which are unsecured senior obligations of right, will mature January 15, 2030 unless converted, repurchased, or redeemed earlier.
The initial conversion rate and other terms related to the notes will not be revealed in the official offering. If successful in raising 575,000,000, Riot Platforms could add about 5,877 Bitcoin to its holdings at today's Bitcoin price. As of November 30th, the Bitcoin mining company held 11,500 Bitcoin valued at more than $1,100,000,000. So here we go. Now it's riot is on deck, for using using debt instruments to purchase Bitcoin. Let's let's pop on over and check out Ray Dalio because he said some stuff, And Helen Parks wrote it down from Cointelegraph. Ray Dalio predicts global debt crisis and then backs Bitcoin and gold.
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio expressed concerns about a potential pending debt money problem in global finance and urged urged a shift towards hard assets like Bitcoin and gold. Dalio, the founder of one of the world's largest hedge funds, Bridgewater Associates, said that he would invest in hard money like gold and Bitcoin while avoiding debt assets, the South China Morning Post reported on December 10th. The veteran investor referred to unprecedented levels of indebtedness seen in every major country, including the United States as well as China, stressing that its currents current levels of debt will not be sustainable, quote, it is impossible for these countries to be able to not have a debt crisis in the years ahead that will lead to a great decline of money value, Ray Dalio said in a speech at a financial conference in Abu Dhabi. Quote, I believe that there would likely be a pending debt money problem, Dalio said, referring to debt as one of the 5 big forces driving the global economy alongside money, economy, internal political orders, and external geopolitical orders. Quote, don't get too caught up on the twist and turns of the day to day headlines and instead think more about the big forces.
Quote, I wanna steer away from debt assets like bonds and debt and have some hard money like gold and Bitcoin, end quote. Dalio previously believed cryptocurrencies like bitcoin would not succeed in the way people hoped they would, but he has emerged as a major BTC supporter in recent years. In 2022, he said, it's reasonable to allocate up to 2% of your investment portfolio in Bitcoin in addition to gold to hedge against inflation. Previously, the billionaire investor said that he would still choose gold over Bitcoin, highlighting the importance of diversification. Now here comes Peter Schiff.
Dalio's acknowledgment of Bitcoin as a hard asset comes as US president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in January with many expecting the launch of a US Bitcoin National Reserve in 2025. However, some financial observers, including gold advocate, Peter Schiff, have urged that the implications of a Bitcoin reserve in the US could be harmful. And here's what Peter Schiff says in a tweet. The one good thing Biden can do before leaving office is sell all of the Bitcoin currently held by the United States government. Not only would the money raised reduce the 2024 budget deficit, but it would put an end to all the nonsense about creating a harmful strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Schiff took to Twitter to suggest that in to suggest just that. It's just sorry. The the the end of this article is a little weird. It's it's not really written that well. But that's the end of the article. So we got Ray Dalio, who's, like, he's been a superstar investor for, like, decades. And he's basically saying gold and bitcoin. Just gold and bitcoin. Get get out of government bonds. And that's not that's not good for US treasuries. Alright? But, I mean, it's I I don't recommend anybody get into US treasuries, like, at all. The only buyer of any force in US treasuries at this point and going forward are going to be stable coin issuers, which is sad, but that's just the way it is.
And yet Peter Schiff is never he's never going to change. It's sad because Peter Schiff and Bitcoiners agree on everything except Bitcoin. That's it. That's the only thing. Everything is the exact same mindset between Bitcoiners and Peter Schiff, except Peter Schiff is just never going to relinquish his stance that Bitcoin is bad and only gold matters. I personally believe that they both matter. But if you cannot custody the physical gold yourself, then you don't own gold. And what do you have to do for that? Well, you gotta get a safe depending on how much gold you actually have. But if you want a substantial stash of of the physical metal, you're going to need a safe.
You can't send it anywhere. If you mail it, it's going to be stolen. I suppose you can mail it and insure it, but I don't think that that's a wise move. I'm just saying, this is why I bitcoin. I I don't necessarily hate gold. I actually rather kind of like it, but it is a pain in the ass if you want to do the right thing. And the right thing is self custody. It is just sad that Peter Schiff is just never going to change his tune no matter what we say to the man, so you might as well save your breath and we'll run the numbers instead. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up again today, probably because the whole Mideast thing collapsing around everybody's ears.
Set 0.75% to the upside leads West Texas Intermediate to 68 88 a barrel. Brent Norsee is up a half point to 7252. Natural gas is down over 1 point to $3.14 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline is up 2 no. 3 quarters of a point to a buck 96 a gallon. Gold doing well today. It's up well over a point to $27.17.30. Silver is up a quarter of a point, but platinum, copper, and palladium are all down. Palladium is down by 2 points. And the biggest winner in ag today is gonna be chocolate, 5.46 percent to the upside, biggest loser is sugar, 2 points to the downside.
Live cattle is up over a point, but lean hogs are down 2a half. Feeder cattle are up 3 quarters of a point. Everything in, legacy indices are moving sideways. Dow, S and P, Nasdaq is fully unchanged, and the S and P Mini are sub point 1% changes. So they're just somebody's waiting on something. And it may be they may be waiting on some, inflation information that's supposed to come out, I think, later today or tomorrow. Where we at on Bitcoin? $95,330 is a $1,899,000,000,000 market cap. We can only purchase 35.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,793,00945.75 of, and average fees on a per block basis are point one BTC.
How many blocks are there? Well, let's find out. There's a 109, and it they are carrying 279,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high and low priority rates being the same at 10 satoshis per vbyte. Hash rate on a 1 week rolling average is 760.7 xahashes per second. And from Peanut and Fred, yesterday's Bitcoin and episode, I got Graham with a 1,000 satoshis. He says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 537 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with another 537 sat says, we are witnessing financial Darwinism. Yes. We are, and we're witnessing it again today as all the morons sell their Bitcoin to Michael Saylor.
Pies with a 100 says thank you. And he says thank you again with another 100 sats. He says thank you, sir. This time, no thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. Bitcoin investment app, Relay or Relay, hit $72,000,000 valuation after a brand spanking new $12,000,000 funding round. This is Yogiti Katra writing for the block. Relay, a self custodial app focused exclusively on buying and selling Bitcoin, has raised $12,000,000 in a series a funding round. The round was led by Bitcoin only venture capital fund, Ego Death Capital, which contributed 4,000,000, Relay said on Tuesday. Additional investors include Planb Bitcoin Fund, Time Chain and Solit Group. The startup began preparing for the fundraise in June, held initial investor discussions in August, and officially closed the round earlier this month, cofounder and CEO Julian Lineager, told The Block. The funding round was structured as plain vanilla equity consistent with Relay's previous fundraisers.
The round brings Relay's total funding to about $20,000,000 and raises its valuation from 60,000,000 to $72,000,000. Relay was valued at $20,000,000 back in March of last year when it raised 4,500,000 in a seed extension round. Relay's valuation surge aligns with its rapid growth, driven by Bitcoin's rising price this year. Lininger said that the app had facilitated $650,000,000 in Bitcoin investments since its launch in 2020 with 450,000,000 of that total occurring this year alone. And he expects this figure to reach $1,000,000,000 by 2025.
The Relay app or Relay I can't pronounce it. Is it Relay or Relay? R e l a I. I'm just gonna say Relay. The Relay app currently has 450,000 downloads, a 147,000 active users, 70,000 registered users, and 35 month 35,000 monthly active users. Downloads are growing by 20 to 30,000 per month, adding that, he expects the app to reach 1,000,000 downloads by 2025. Damn. Relay also caters to businesses through its Relay business segment, which launched about a year ago. Its business serves around 200 small and medium sized enterprises and 250 high net worth individuals collectively generating 30,000,000 in trading volume since launch, he noted or Linger noted, this segment is growing rapidly at 10 to 20% month over month rate. So medium and small sized enterprises and high net worth individuals are growing in his company at 10 to 20% month over month. That's nothing to sneeze at, ladies and gentlemen. That is nothing to sneeze at at all.
Relay generates revenue through transaction fees on Bitcoin purchases and sales. While profitability has been achieved in certain months this year, he expects Relay to definitely be profitable for the entirety of next year. It's been growing at 2 to 3 times year over year since its 2020 inception. And it Linger said that the app anticipates further extension once it secures a markets and crypto assets license expected in the Q1 of 2025. And this license would facilitate growth across EU countries building on its Swiss home base. Currently employing 44 sorry, 40 people, Relay plans to double its headcount next year. Man, this plate thing is blowing up.
Relay remains committed to its Bitcoin only philosophy. There is no second best, Linenger said, emphasizing the firm's focus on the world's first and largest cryptocurrency. So there you go. Relay knocking it out of the park. And maybe maybe they even service, some, pension plans in Florida. Because from Atlas 21, we have this headline, Florida bets on Bitcoin, 1.8 $5,000,000,000 investment plan from the State Pension Fund. I didn't hear anything about this. I I saw this for the first time this morning, so I guess it's brand new. But Florida has announced a plan to invest 1,850,000,000 of its pension fund into bitcoin.
The decision involving the 4th largest pension fund in the United States and it's valued at 185,700,000,000 dollars highlights the growing interest among institutions in adopting Bitcoin. The initiative, strongly supported by the Florida Blockchain Business Association, calls for allocating 1% of the pension fund to Bitcoin aiming to diversify the portfolio and ensure strategic exposure to the digital asset market. Samuel Armes, president of the FBBA, emphasized that this move could serve as a model for other United States states. The strategy could expand further, thanks to the projected budget surplus for 2024 through 2025 estimated at 100 and $16,500,000,000 Authorities are considering the possibility of dedicating an additional 1% to Bitcoin investment.
Governor Ron DeSantis, along with house speaker Danny Perez and senate president Ben Arbriton, has expressed strong support for the initiative, which also claims to protect the state from the potential negative impacts of CBDCs. Florida has already shown interest in Bitcoin. Some statements from the state's chief financial officer, Jimmy Petronas, revealed that the state currently holds about $800,000,000 in digital asset related investments. So Florida on deck with $1,850,000,000 which represents a 1% allocation directly to only Bitcoin out of their $185,700,000,000 pension fund in Florida.
And, I mean, honestly, they're estimating a budget surplus for the state at a 116 point $500,000,000? What the hell is Florida doing down there that they're making so much money? Well, I guess they're not using wabi sabi because a vulnerability has been found that allows malicious coordinators to de anonymize coinjoin users. So this is out of no bs bitcoin.com. A vulnerability in the wabi sabi protocol allows malicious coordinators to de anonymize users coins and link inputs to outputs, compromising the privacy of coin joined participants. Users are urged to update their instances immediately, so if you were using Wabi Sabi, you need to listen up.
The vulnerability affects Wabi Sabi or Wasabi Wallet version 2.2.1.0 or earlier, the Ginger Wallet version 2.0.13 or earlier, and this is a big one the BTC pay server coin join plugin version 1.0.101.0 or earlier. Quote, Given that this attack can be carried out without raising suspicion and the lack of client side checks on previously issued events, the vulnerability is highly exploitable by any party running the coordination services, reported the team behind Ginger Wallet. Ginger Wallet is a fork of Wasabi Wallet that screens coinjoin round inputs with a chain surveillance partner company. So be aware, the effective versions of wabi sabi protocol have a vulnerability due to an inadequate client side validation of credential issuers.
It allows malicious coordinators to use multiple issuers to differentiate inputs from outputs, trace input ownership, and break the anonymity set of Bitcoin's coin join process compromising user privacy. So actions taken by the attacker. Okay? This is like a a little a little screenshot. So these are the actions taken by an attacker to exploit this weakness. The malicious coordinator initiates a coin join round and then waits for the clients to begin polling the round status. For every round state request that asks for the full list of events, the coordinator rotates the max amount credential value in powers of 2 ranging from 22nd power to 236th power BTC.
This creates 34 distinct groups. A similar approach can be applied with the max v size credential value to double the number of groups. When a client registers its inputs, the coordinator then identifies which max amount, credential value the client's request matches. If it's the first time that this particular issuer has been used, it is removed from the rotation list. For each subsequent input or output registration the coordinator determines the associated credential issuer, creates a dictionary linking inputs and outputs to that issuer, and tracks the registrations accordingly. And once the coin joined transaction is fully constructed, the malicious coordinator has all inputs and outputs segregated into distinct groups based on the credential issuers.
So that's sort of the way that that runs out. And it's a little bit above my pay grade, so if you're a wobby sobby user, you probably know what that means a hell of a lot better than I do. But still, there's a couple more things here. Any malicious coordinator with full control over a coin join round can exploit the vulnerability without needing special privileges or external tools making it easy to compromise user privacy. Quote, we believe that this vulnerability is not actively being exploited Based on tests constructed on 3 of the most popular coordinators, the round state responses were consistent in all cases, added the Ginger privacy team.
And Shinobi has a tweet about it. That's Brian Trolls. He says, there is a major privacy issue with, Wasabi Wallet. As I've said, since the zk Snacks coordinator shutdown, do not use coordinators unless ran by someone you know who you trust. So, yeah, that's not the best news that could have come out today. Of course, it's been you know, it's Tuesday. It's it's definitely being a day because we still have some red candles going down. We are at 94,424, in case you wanted to know. Bitcoin ASIC maker, Bitmain, is expanding their production line into the United States.
This is probably a much larger thing that I think we're giving it credit for. Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph, please, for the love of god, tell me more. Bitcoin mining hardware firm Bitmain said that it has expanded its production line to the United States to improve supply chain efficiency as trade tensions continue to escalate between China and the US. Quote, this strategic move aims to provide faster response times and more efficient services to the North American customers, said, Bitmain in a Twitter post. Bitmain is a crypto mining equipment manufacturer. Yes. We all know this. Blah blah blah blah. Bitmain said that the first batch of Antminer s 21 pro miners will be rolled out later this month, providing a significant boost to its industry partners.
Trade restrictions between the US and China have intensified in recent weeks, with the US expanding export controls to limit the sale of high bandwidth memory chips to China, while China announced a ban on critical mineral sales to the US. A report in late November claims that US Customs and Border Protection Agency had delayed the delivery of Bitmain's application specific integrated circuit machines at US ports of entry, and some US miners have been forced to wait 2 months to access their Bitmain manufacturer factored hardware as a result.
Bitmain said it hasn't been involved in any supply chain investigations as reported by the media recently, so there's that. Bitmain's expansion coincides with president-elect Donald's Donald Trump's desire for, quote, all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA, claiming in a June 12th truth social post that it would help the US become energy dominant. Over 44.3 percent of the Bitcoin network's hash rate is based in the US and Canada according to the Chain Bulletin's Bitcoin Mining Map, and 4 of the largest Bitcoin miners by valuation, which is Mara Holdings, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, and Riot Platforms are also based in the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump has been communicating plans to impose tariffs on imports. He said the move could eliminate federal income tax in the US. However, several economists don't favor the idea, while other experts say that he may face legislative hurdles in enacting such measures. So that's the news for the day. But before I leave you, just you know, before I go away completely, it's a little bit of a shorter show today, I do wanna say something about these tariffs and this this thing going on with Bitmain. Because Bitmain very well may become a poster child for what I kinda see happening if these tariffs come in.
Now a lot of people are going, okay. You put it put in tariffs, that means that that goods become more expensive. But since there's a good chance that we get rid of the federal income tax, which I am 100% for, then you will have the extra money to buy it. And this means it changes the dynamic from I have to give the United States government my money to I only have to give the United States money on the shit that I want to buy. So if I like, for instance, if I don't need a car and I don't and I and I'm I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna buy a car, I still have to pay income tax to the United States government. Now if I wanna buy an imported car and there's import there's import tariffs and I have to buy that car and I have to pay more for it using import tariffs, but I don't have a federal income tax, then that means that I'm making a choice.
I'm allowed to at least choose how I want to get robbed by the United States government. You see how this works? Right? So but there's one more thing to this. Because of these the it it seems to me that Bitmain's like, okay. Look. Here's what we're gonna do. We're just gonna start manufacturing the Bitmain, at least the s twenty ones, inside the United States so that we don't have to deal with this crap. And we don't have to be importing, you know, or or exporting our machines as an import to the United States where they can sit for 2 months in a cargo container. We're just gonna cut all that shit out. Do you think Bitmain is going to be the only company that doesn't do this?
If you do, then you'd be wrong. And what I'm getting at is that this may be this tariff initiation may be the spark that allows a whole bunch of manufacturing to come back to the United States, which we so desperately need. We outsourced everything to China. All of our manufacturing is done in China. But if there's going to be imports or there's going to be, like, a lot of friction at ports of entry into the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that these companies will go, fuck that. We'll just spend the money. We'll go over to the United States, and we'll open up a small manufacturing place there so that we don't have to worry about this. I think that the tariffs are going to be good if if they actually are able to get in.
And if they do get in and I don't see a complete deletion of the federal income tax, I'm going to be pissed and so should you. Maybe we could be pissed together 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.
Introduction to Bitcoin and Podcast
Microsoft's Bitcoin Reserve Proposal Rejected
Quantum Computing and Crypto Encryption Concerns
Potential Hard Forks for Bitcoin's Future
Russia's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Proposal
Riot Platforms' Bitcoin Investment Strategy
Ray Dalio's Shift to Bitcoin and Gold
US Bitcoin National Reserve Speculations
Market Updates and Financial Insights
Relay's Bitcoin Investment App Success
Florida's Pension Fund Bitcoin Investment
Wabi Sabi Protocol Vulnerability
Bitmain Expands Production to the US