Join me today for Episode 1009 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- MSTR Buys More
- Thailand on Deck
- Tando: Africa's Fiat Bridge to Lightning
- OpenSats 9th Round of nostr Grants
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/microstrategy-buys-15350-bitcoin-100k-per-btc
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomerniv/2024/12/16/the-cold-war-of-national-bitcoin-reserve-global-race-for-digital-gold/
https://atlas21.com/thailand-should-study-bitcoin-and-digital-assets-the-appeal-from-former-prime-minister-shinawatra/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/tando-was-all-the-rage-at-this-years-africa-bitcoin-conference
https://decrypt.co/296745/woman-kidnapped-bitcoin-avoids-jail
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https://primal.net/e/note12ewdxergz3u8wfamf96773u647jrx7rfwnn3jcspqwmvey3wwxdsvtcgtm
https://www.theblock.co/post/331033/ripple-to-launch-rlusd-tuesday-monthly-attestations-to-follow
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/coracle-v0-5-0/
https://www.theblock.co/post/330917/riot-platforms-buys-more-bitcoin-raising-holdings-to-17429-btc
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/opensats-announces-9th-wave-of-nostr-grants/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/mempal-v1-4-0/
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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 9:53 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 16th day of December 2024.
And this is episode 1,009 of Bitcoin and a couple of announcements here. I am going to be leaving on Friday for a day 1 of the 2 day journey to Southwest Colorado because it takes that long to get from eastern Washington to southwest Colorado. It's like 18 it's like 18 hours of of just straight driving. I did it once with the family all in one shot one time. Not not recommended. It's just not. Just don't do that shit. Just get a hotel room and, you know, just bite the bullet because it's just not worth driving 18 hours unless you are a professionally trained Walmart trucker or something like that. So, I will not be doing a show on Friday, and I will probably try to do one on Monday. I am gonna be taking my, the mobile studio along with me. It may be spotty because the only room that I've got in Colorado is not heated.
And the tip overnight temperatures have reached down to 10 degrees, so it may it may be a situation where I'm not able to do shows because I don't want to freeze to death, and I do hope that everybody here understands. Now, new all time highs. What could possibly have triggered that shit? Well, Helen Partz, Cointelegraph, MicroStrategy has bought 15,300,000 Bitcoin for $1,500,000,000 Their holdings have now reached 439,000 bitcoin. And before I begin this one, it should be noted that last night he announced it this morning, Michael Saylor did, that he had actually purchased. But last night, he made a comment on Twitter that maybe he was going to buy Bitcoin above 100 k, and that's when we started seeing these spikes start start going up.
And then we started coming back down. And then this morning, I guess, after he announced it, we started seeing spike ups again. So it very well may be that this particular new all time high was specifically generated by the actions of everybody's favorite Bitcoin troll, Michael Saylor. MicroStrategy, a major corporate Bitcoin holder, has added 15,350 BTC to its reserves, Spending 1,500,000,000 in cash, the company said, today, December 16th. They acquired the fresh stash of Bitcoin between the dates of December 9th 15th, the company announced.
The latest purchase was made at an average price of 100,386,000 per Bitcoin using proceeds from the issuance and sales of shares under a convertible note sales agreement. And that is that 42 plan, the 21/21, 21,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 in equities and 21,000,000,000 in debt, whatever. It's the 42 plan. Anyway, it should be noted that this is the first purchase of MicroStrategy or first purchase of Bitcoin by MicroStrategy at prices above on average 100,000 BTC. The acquisition brings the total Bitcoin holdings of MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries to 439,000 Bitcoin, which is now worth $45,600,000,000 You know? Wow.
That's half of half of the cash that, Microsoft is sitting on at $88,000,000,000. This is damn near this is actually a little bit more than half of the value of Microsoft's cash. And as famously noted, they decided not to buy Bitcoin. Oh, well. Anyway, they bought at the aggregate purchase price of $27,100,000,000 or an average price of $61,725 per BTC. That's like the whole kit and caboodle. So all of the Bitcoin that they've ever bought since he started buying in the summer of, what was it, 2020, he bought at an average price of $61,725 per. Not not bad.
MicroStrategy founder, Michael Sailor, highlighted the company's Bitcoin performance, noting a 46.4% yield quarter to quarter and 72% yield to date. Again, not bad. The latest MicroStrategy Bitcoin acquisition comes shortly after Saylor said he'd continue to buy Bitcoin above 100,000 amid MicroStrategy announcing another 21,550 Bitcoin purchase on December 9th. Quote, I'm sure that I will be buying Bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin. Probably $1,000,000,000 a day of Bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin, Saylor said in an appearance on Yahoo Finance's market, domination.
MicroStrategy's aggressive Bitcoin buying comes amid a ongoing rally in its share price, which has climbed 490% year to date according to TradingView data. On December 14th, Nasdaq announced MicroStrategy stock will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index, which tracks the performance of the 100 largest non financial companies on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Let's just put that in again because we said like, I told John Friday that this may be coming. It has indeed happened. After the show, back on 14th, let's see. Friday was 14th. I do believe let me make sure. No. Friday was or 14th was Saturday.
So on 13th, which was, the last show that I did, I read a couple stories that said that this may happen. And then the day after that show, they announced that it did happen. So Nasdaq has announced publicly. Alright. So it's official that MicroStrategy stock will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index. Although MicroStrategy is expected to join the index before the market open on December 23rd, the announcement has fueled a rally in its stock price, edging up 3% in premarket trading according to CNBC. And at the time of writing, the MicroStrategy stock traded in the premarket for around $408 according to data from TradingView.
Bitcoin traded at a 103,941, up around 1.3% over the past 24 hours according to CoinGecko. So there you go. Not only have they bought more Bitcoin, MicroStrategy has been officially included or will has been announced that they're going to be officially included into the Nasdaq 100 on the 23rd of this month. Now Forbes, Tomer Niv is writing this one entitled the Cold War of National Bitcoin Reserves, Global Race for Digital Gold. And this should be an overview of what we know so far of other nation states that have tipped their hat, winked their eye, nudge their elbow, or otherwise hinted that they may be looking at a Bitcoin strategic reserve themselves following suit with the United States.
As the global economy evolves, a new arms race is emerging. Yes. Because, of course, we always have to boil it down to war. Have you noticed this? It's always an arms race. I just know. You know, I think we need to get out of this stupid mindset. But anyway, a new arms race is emerging, not in conventional weaponry, but in Bitcoin. The world's most prominent cryptocurrency is now at the center of geopolitical strategies with nations vying to establish national Bitcoin reserves that may redefine their financial sovereignty. In this new cold war of Bitcoin.
The United States, Russia, China, Japan, and other countries are staking claims. The United States and the strategic accumulation through seizures. Don't have a seizure, man. Have a conniption. The United States is currently the largest geopolitical holder of Bitcoin with approximately 207,000 Bitcoin in its possession. The massive stockpile is valued over at over $20,000,000,000 at current prices. The United States government's Bitcoin holdings have primarily been acquired through asset seizures from various criminal investigations, most notably the Silk Road case.
And recently, the United States government transferred 20,000 Bitcoin worth 1,900,000,000 to Coinbase Prime, according to ARCEM Intelligence, demonstrating active management of its holdings. Despite these transfers, the government still retains a significant portion of its Bitcoin assets with discussions ongoing about potentially using these holdings as a strategic reserve or to address national debt. And if I was president-elect Trump, I would be on the phone to the United States Treasury and the United States Marshals Service and tell them 2 things. One, you don't sell any of this Bitcoin.
And number 2, you need to stop transferring this Bitcoin unless you are prepared to make a full disclosure as to why and where it's going and that you will not be selling it because this shit rocks the market. And 3rd, I guess three things. 3rd, if you do sell or if you do transfer without a full disclosure that you are not intending to sell it and the reasoning why you're transferring it, then I will have your heads on platters on day 1. That's exactly what I would tell them. Because this shit is just straight up market manipulation the way that they're doing it. Okay. On to Russia with a response to sanctions.
Russia's interest in Bitcoin escalated after the imposition of severe western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. While the Kremlin denies using Bitcoin to evade sanctions, public records reveal that state controlled entities and oligarchs have increased Bitcoin transactions, signaling a pivot to decentralized finance. And recently, a Russian lawmaker proposed creating a national Bitcoin reserve to hedge against geopolitical risks and sanctions. This proposal, if implemented, could significantly increase Russia's official Bitcoin holdings in the future. So that's 2 down.
United States and Russia. Who's next but China? China ranks as the 2nd largest government holder of Bitcoin with an estimated 190 to 194,000 Bitcoin in its possession. The Chinese government's Bitcoin holdings are primarily the result of seizures linked to illegal activities, most notably the Plus token Ponzi scheme. Despite China's strict regulation and crackdowns of cryptocurrency related activities, including mining and trading, the government has maintained its substantial Bitcoin reserves. Next on deck, Japan. Japanese lawmakers led by Satoshi Aroyama have proposed the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve.
As reported by Decrypt, Aoyama argues that Bitcoin could act as a hedge against global financial instability, especially given Japan's high national debt and the reliance on fiat currencies. Japan's government does not directly hold Bitcoin, but but the country's government pension investment fund, the world's largest pension fund managing over 1.5 trillion, that's trillion with a t, dollars worth of assets, has announced plans to explore diversifying a portion of its portfolio into Bitcoin. While the GPIF has not yet invested in Bitcoin, this move signals a potential shift in Japan's approach to cryptocurrency investments.
Number 5 is Germany, who are learning lessons from selling their bitcoin because Germany's 2022 Bitcoin sales stem from the dismantling of Movie 2 k, an illegal streaming site whose operators laundered 1,000,000 of dollars in Bitcoin. Authorities seized the cryptocurrency and then sold it, citing legal requirements to convert assets to fiat in a preference for immediate liquidity over market risk. And while the sale generated significant revenue, critics argued that holding the Bitcoin could have yielded greater long term gains. This reflects Germany's cautious stance on cryptocurrencies prioritizing fiscal stability over speculation.
Who holds the most Bitcoin today? Well, there's a National Bitcoin Reserve Comparison Chart that if Forbes website would stop freaking the hell out, I could actually read good lord. Nations' Bitcoin reserves are often shrouded in mystery, but public data provides a glimpse into the emerging trend. Most holdings come from seized operations because all governments are criminal. They just steal your shit. They just steal it, dude. They don't oh, sorry. Illustrating the legal complexities and opportunities in managing digital assets. And below is a table summarizing the largest Bitcoin National Holdings. Now this chart almost almost looks exactly exactly like that doofus guy that I I told you about on either Thursday or Friday that had a chart with wrong numbers all over it. And his concern was, well, if all these people get a hold of all this Bitcoin, they're gonna be able to control the coin. No. They're not.
But it looks like he might have gotten a lot of his information from this particular chart, which says that United States has 207,100 and 89 Bitcoin. China has a 194,000. The United Kingdom holds 61,000. And it still says Germany holds 50,000, but they don't. They sold it all. So I wish people would update their shit. It says here that Ukraine owns 46,351 Bitcoin and El Salvador, just under 6,000 Bitcoin. Not sure about the Ukraine number, but, hey, you know, whatever, dude. Let's see. Oh, hold on. Wow. Forbes' website is really freaking out on me, dude. Okay. There we go. The geopolitical landscape of Bitcoin is still unfolding.
While the US leads in holdings, nations like China and Russia are quietly building their reserves often through opaque channels. Meanwhile, smaller players like El Salvador demonstrate how bitcoin can transform national strategies. If an actual raise for bitcoin reserves were to begin, it would likely intensify along the lines of existing financial and strategic capabilities. Wealthy nations with vast foreign exchange reserves, such as United States and China, could leverage that financial power to acquire massive amounts of Bitcoin. In a hypothetical scenario, hypothetical, where nations allocate the equivalent value of their gold reserves to Bitcoin, the market would experience unprecedented demand with the price of Bitcoin projected to surpass $952,000 in the total market cap reaching approximately 20,000,000,000,000, that's trillion with a t, middle tier powers like the United Kingdom and Germany might increase their holdings through aggressive seizure policies or direct purchases aiming to secure a hedge against financial instability.
Countries with significant technological infrastructures like Japan and South Korea could enhance their reserves through government backed mining initiatives similar to Bhutan's model. Meanwhile, nations like Russia and Iran might focus on state sponsored mining to bypass sanctions and acquire Bitcoin covertly. If nations actively begin hoarding national Bitcoin reserves at this scale, the world could witness the dawn of an era where digital gold replaces traditional assets and national treasuries. This shift would mark a transformative moment in financial history as Bitcoin's unique properties challenge the dominance of fiat currencies like the US dollar.
This movement could also have profound implications for geopolitics. Smaller, economically agile nations might gain a competitive edge by adopting Bitcoin early, leveraging it as a hedge against inflation and a tool for economic empowerment. In contrast, larger economies would face increasing pressure to incorporate Bitcoin into their reserves to avoid losing influence in a changing financial landscape. As bitcoin becomes integral to national treasuries, it could reduce dependence on traditional financial systems and institutions like central banks, altering the dynamics of international trade, diplomacy and sanctions.
The era of national Bitcoin reserves would also usher in brand new challenges. Nations would need to address security risks, the volatility and public trust in a decentralized asset. However, those that successfully navigate this shift could achieve unprecedented monetary sovereignty, fostering resilience against economic crises and external pressures. The geopolitical strategies of the digital age would revolve around technological innovation, God forbid, crypto infrastructure, and the race to dominate the decentralized financial ecosystem, fundamentally reshaping the global order for decades to come.
I'm just starting to see FOMO at the nation state level. And, honestly, I'm a bit concerned about it. I I I honestly I I mean, I can't just let it go. I can't just sit here and be the guy that says, this is great. We're all gonna get Lambos and girlfriends. Because honestly, I think there's a lot more at stake here. You're talking about a massive sea change in attitudes of nation states around the world. I honestly don't think that there's not going to be some manner of pain, and I don't necessarily mean pain in the price of or the purchasing power of whatever Bitcoin you might hold.
I'm talking about maybe escalations in border disputes. Maybe we see more military or militaristic actions. Maybe we see more covert actions insofar as trying to overthrow governments through, I don't know, manipulation of presidential elections. It's not like the United States hasn't manipulated damn near every presidential election in South and Central America for the last, what, 4 decades, if not 7? I mean, this shit happens. This is a this is a thing. It's not I'm not imagining this crap. But no matter what happens, I still am starting to see nation state FOMO.
And when I asked myself the question, have you ever seen a nation state have fear of missing out on anything in your entire span of life here on this planet? And I gotta say no. It's been pretty much real estate, gold, odd marketable securities, you know, that kind you know, equities, stocks. I mean, that but but it's never been FOMO. It's just something that's been a a it's been a static thing. Right? Real estate has always been here. Gold has always been here. Everything has always been here. The stock market has always been here. As far as anybody on the face of this planet that's living and breathing right now, they have never known a day without a stock market. And that goes way and that's just in the United States. If you wanna go back to any stock market, you gotta go back 100 of years.
Now it wasn't clearly, it wasn't electrified or anything like that, but this is not a new concept. So silver, platinum, all these things, they've always been here. Everybody alive on this planet has always seen the exact same when it comes to financial instrumentation. This is the first time humanity has seen something new, I'm gonna say, since the discovery of gold, or rather since humans discovery that gold may actually have other properties than just being a nice pretty shiny metal rock. You get my drift? We've never seen nation states experience fear of missing out and that's what concerns me.
Because they I mean, they fuck everything up even shit that they know how to do. How are nation states going to act if they really experience serious FOMO around the first asset that actually has a hard upper limit? And the answer to that is I don't know. I can only speculate, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it might not be as pleasant as we all make it out to be. Now one, country was not actually mentioned in that story, so I'm gonna let Atlas 21, written by the newsroom. I that they don't have an author. It's just atlas21.com. And this is by the newsroom, and it says, Thailand should study Bitcoin and digital assets according to an appeal from the former prime minister, Shinawatra, if I've pronounced that even remotely right.
During a conference in Hua Hin, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Sinawatra deep made an appeal to the government emphasizing the urgency for Thailand to deepen its study of cryptocurrencies in order to keep pace with the evolution of the global economy. In his speech, the former prime minister Yoon Kyuk Kyung Kyuk had ordered the Ministry of Finance to set up a sandbox to experiment with accepting Bitcoin payments in fuck it and to study the issuance of stablecoins backed by government bonds instead of printing banknotes. Shinawatra stated, quote, what I am saying is not to buy it, but the trend is like that.
Today, the Thai people must reflect and understand this reality. The prime minister may assign the Ministry of Finance to study whether to accept Bitcoin or not. Can we use sandboxes in tourist areas like fuck it or haw in? Use Bitcoin to allow people who hold it to spend it, end quote. He also highlighted the potential implications of the Trump administration's trade policies and its intention to use Bitcoin for national debt. Thailand is already making strides in the digital asset sector. The Thai SEC has established a regulatory framework to allow selected providers to experiment with digital assets and intends to grant access to crypto investments for mutual and private funds, fostering institutional adoption in the country.
In September, Casicorna Bank became the first authorized crypto custodian in the country. And in October, the Bank of Thailand initiated a partnership with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to test cross border tokenized regulations, not payments. Testing cross border tokenized regulations. K? So there there's actually, that's probably the the quiet part said out loud is you can regulate something in your own country. But if it is easily liquefiable across those borders, then both the both the owners of those borders need to come together with some kind of cogent, understandable regulations between the two partners.
Right? And we're we're definitely gonna see more of that. But I think it should be said that we don't forget that Thailand is a communist state. It's a it it's communism. I get a I just need to make sure about that. Hold on. I just wanna make sure that I'm not blowing smoke out of my ass. Yeah. Communist party of Thailand. It does yeah. It it hold on for a sec. I need to make sure about this. Okay. No. I guess wherever it is that I picked that up because I'm not a scholar of Southeast Asia, so you're just gonna have to forgive me for that one. But before 1992, Thailand was a communist country.
Now it says, according to the United States Department of State, that Thailand is a functional democracy. Who knows? It really is going to take somebody from actual Thailand to tell me whether or not Thailand is communist or a functional democracy. But it doesn't matter because now even Southeast Asian countries like Thailand are starting to understand that they're gonna have to do this. They don't wanna be left out, man. Nobody wants to be left out of this stuff. So, that said, let's move on to something called Tando, t a n d o.
Tando was all the rage at this year's Africa Bit Coin Conference according to Frank Korva from Bitcoin Magazine, who I guess was there because he says before I even arrived at this year's Africa Bitcoin Conference, I saw attendees posting about Tondo, a new Kenya based payments app that allows users to spend their sats with merchants who don't accept Bitcoin directly. How is this possible? You might ask. Well, I'll explain it. To use Tondo, you simply download the app and prepare to pay any merchant who accepts payments via M Pesa, Kenya's mobile money service.
When the merchant presents you with your bill, you simply click on the send money square on the app's home screen. From there, you enter the mobile number tied to the M Pesa account to which you're sending money and then input the amount of Kenyan shillings you want to send. The app automatically calculates the amount of sats it will take to cover the shilling amount that you've input, then you click on the green create invoice button to obtain a lightning invoice. And after that, you copy the invoice and pay it via your preferred lightning wallet. Tand0 receives the sats and then settles the bill in shillings with the merchants within seconds.
I can barely count how many times I've watched Bitcoiners use Tondo to pay restaurant bills or taxi fares since I've been here. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Tondo interfaces with a fiat payment system which means that it should be excommunicated from the church of Bitcoin. But before you allow yourself to entertain that kind of thinking, please consider the following notions. Number 1, you're a loser. Number 2, here in Kenya, much like in other parts of Africa, people e people actually use Bitcoin for payments. 3, when you show someone how to use Tondo, it provides you with an opportunity to show the merchant what Bitcoin is as you show them how the app works.
I watched Gorillazats' Brendan Meeweni masterfully do this for a waitress at a conference after party. And number 4, M Pesa requires that its users, KYC, and some Kenyan citizens don't have the proper documentation to do so, which means they're excluded from the system. Using Tondo, they can be included in Kenya's broader monetary system. The excitement around Tondo at the conference was part of the broader enthusiasm around apps that make Bitcoin easier to use across the African continent apps like bit Bitsacco?
Bitsacco? Yeah. Bitsacco manchuruk men well met met met met chan kura fetti and bit not my god these names holy shit African bitcoiners are far ahead of counterparts in the United States when it comes to using bitcoin as it is intended to be used as a peer to peer electronic cash. And while many Africans are working tirelessly to onboard as many merchants as they can to Bitcoin, Tondo is an excellent intermediary step that allows Bitcoiners to spend their sats even if the merchants with whom they're spending don't yet accept Bitcoin payments. And here's my here's my, estimation of what's going to happen in the future. By the way, that's the end of the article.
These apps, like Tondo, are going to be everywhere. They're going to be the primary bridges between Bitcoin and the fiat conventional systems of countries around the nations. And then people are gonna get fucking greedy like they always damn well do. And they're gonna start charging 1% and 2% and then 3%, maybe even upwards into the 4s and fives, maybe sixes. Maybe 7% of your payment has to go to something. And I'm not gonna say Tondo by name, but some intermediary bridge. And merchants are gonna have to pay part of that. Right?
Or if it goes and it's, like, solely on the purchaser, someone's some well, e neither one either either one or both of those two parties are gonna get pissed, except that the merchant like, let's say that the merchant has to split the cost with the with the customer. Right? They're both paying 3% on this transaction. And the customer looks at the merchant and says, you know, dude, if you would just learn how to do this shit directly and have your own Bitcoin wallet or your own Lightning node set up, we don't need this. Off to the races.
So it very well may be that these bridges and the greed that they will instill might actually be one of the many touch points that it takes to get into a fully circular Bitcoin economy without having to touch fiat payment rails, but that will come directly in the future. But one more thing, this reminds me of something that happened today this morning at my Toastmasters club meeting, which we have at 6:30 in the morning. Yes. Sometimes you have to be prepared to speak publicly at 6:45. Just saying. You want some training in public speaking? Do it that early in the morning when you're still working on your first cup of coffee. We have a we meet at a coffee shop. Right? So there's a barrister. There's actually a couple of them. And every Christmas, this particular club gives the barristers, like, you know, Christmas cards and money, you know, in cash because of their service to the club throughout the throughout the year. And it's a it's a nice little thing, but I realized I didn't have any cash in my wallet.
Wouldn't it have been cool if I could have gone up to the barrister and said, can I borrow your point of sale device because I see you're using let's say that they've got a square point of sale device? Let's say they've got some point of sale device that somehow or another is, you know, used majorly around the world, but yet the owner of the company or that company itself was forward sided enough to have it somewhere or another integrate with Bitcoin. Right? So now I can just go up to the barrister and say, look. I need I need to be able to connect to this point of sale using my phone, Except instead of giving that point of sale money, what it does is it just lets me use the point of sale's printer.
And I print out a QR code. So I, like, make a lightning invoice for $20 and then I send that information just through Bluetooth or whatever directly to that point of sale terminal. And instead of taking the actual money itself, it just prints something like an Azteca receipt. And then I take that Azteca receipt and I shove it in with the cash for the barrister that that we're all collecting up. And then when the barrister actually gets that back, like in the Christmas card whenever the Christmas card is delivered, then they look at it and say and it says scan with your phone.
And you you get where I'm going with this. Because there was no there was no way that I could leave something of physical nature for the barrister that could be converted into cash. But doing something like this, what I'm just suggesting, that we would be in a way, it'd be like being able to print an on the fly check that is like a cashier's check where it's already been paid for and cannot be taken back. See what I'm saying? If any of you people are out there, wanna, you know, get get on that, I think that that actually may be helpful. I can't code myself out of a wet paper bag with holes in it, so I can't do it. But you know who else might not be able to do it? This woman who kidnapped a Saudi roll royal, stole $40,000 in Bitcoin, but somehow has not only avoid jail, has avoid avoided death. And Ryan s Gladwin from decrypt tells us more about it. A 24 year old woman kidnapped a Saudi Arabian royal family member with the help of 3 others and forced him to pay $40,000 in Bitcoin after threatening to cut his fingers off.
But as reported by the Daily Mail, the perpetrator was not put behind bars despite pleading guilty. How is she not dead? Catherine Culvis faced a maximum sentence of 25 years at her Monday hearing at Victoria, Australia. She pleaded guilty to kidnapping, extortion, recklessly causing industry, theft, and gun possession. However, she only received a community corrections order, essentially Australian's version of community service. The county court of Victoria heard that Colvis went for drinks and dinner with the Saudi rule royal after they matched on a dating app. And then Colvis date drove her back home. As the royal walked Colvis to her door, he was ambushed by 3 men including Colvis's own boyfriend.
Wow. They had planned this one. The victim was then cable tied so he couldn't leave and threatened at knifepoint. The judge heard that he was told that his fingers would be cut off if he did not pay the perpetrator's money. As he was a crypto trader, the victim offered Bitcoin and had a phone had to phone a friend to complete the transfer of $40,000. And after this, his keys were stolen and the perpetrators raided his home. Court documents say they stole designer clothes, a PlayStation 5, and several iPhones. The victim was then released and immediately went to the police before spending the night in the hospital nursing the wounds to his head and wrist. But despite the severity of the crime that Colvis pleaded guilty to, the judge believed a 30 month community corrections order was sufficient due to exceptional circumstances.
Namely, the judge cited her youth, her troubled upbringing, her fragile mental health, the prospects for her rehabilitation, and that her brother had died while awaiting her trial as reasons for the sentencing. Okay. This is just stupid. Alright. So this is just an object lesson here, boys and girls. You don't talk about your Bitcoin. Alright? I'm talking I talk about my bitcoin, but I'm a podcaster. Right? I I had to make this decision. Now let's say for whatever reason that I wasn't married and I wanted to get, like, a dating app. And believe me, I don't wanna do either one of those fucking things, but I got a dating app. I'm not going to tell the people that I might go out on a date with that I've got Bitcoin.
Now he didn't, But still, he was a Saudi royal, which meant he's going to have some money somewhere. So for this standpoint, it really didn't matter except that he, for whatever reason, offered bitcoin instead of just straight cash. But for those people out there that do, telegraph to the public, like, you're you're, you know, whether you're dating or you're just talking in a bar, if you're talking in a bar and you're hammered as shit and you say you got 10 bitcoin and the dude next right next to you is like, dude, this guy's hammered as shit. This is a problem.
This is an absolute problem and we really gotta we really gotta wrap our little handles around it. So I still advise don't wear bitcoin swag don't wear the bitcoin t shirt in my case I wouldn't even wear a satoshi t shirt it would have to be something so esoteric that only another bitcoin would ever have hope to even you know, be coming close to getting it. And it would have to be a hardcore bitcoin or 2. That's how esoteric it would have to be for me to wear any kind of remotely adjacent bitcoin swag. Just don't do it you're paying a target on your back and worse off you're paying a target on the backs of the people that you're with because that is you're going your shirt that says bitcoin means not only do you have Bitcoin, but the people that you're hanging around, they probably got Bitcoin too. So you're kind of endangering everybody. Please reconsider wearing all of the Bitcoin swag.
It's not that I don't want, you know, it's not that I don't love it. It's not that I don't want people to make money making the t shirts and stuff like that. I'm just saying it's a target, so be aware. Let's run the number. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down a third of a point, but it's still at $71.4 a barrel. Brent Norcia is down 0.4 percent to 74.19. Natural gas down almost 2 points to $3.21 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline is down 0.81%, back under 2 bucks to a buck 98 per gallon. Gold, not doing all that well. It's down a quarter to $26.68.70 Silver is moving sideways. Platinum is up 1.74%.
Copper is down a 5th of a point. And palladium is down 1 a quarter percent. We got agricultural futures. The biggest winner is chocolate again. 3.75 percent to the upside. Biggest loser, Lumber, 0.65 percent to the downside. Live cattle is down almost a point. Lean hogs are down, wow, 2.69%. Feeder cattle are down a third. The Dow is moving sideways, and the S and P is up 0.6 percent. Nasdaq is up 1 and a half, and the S and P mini is up a third of a point. And Bitcoin is at $107,600, which is a, wow, $2,130,000,000,000 market cap. That's trillion with a d. And we oh, god. Okay. Somebody check on Peter Schiff.
You can now get 40.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, and that is an all time high. 19,796,795.4 BTC in circulation at the time, and the average fees per block are 0.08 bitcoin, taken in fees on average on a per block basis, of which there are 105 blocks carrying 266,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priorities of 8 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 6. 780.7 exahashes per second is the hash rate at this time on a 1 week rolling average. And from Friday's show, the ghost of peanut future, I have crazy 69 giving me 10,001 sats. Palindrome boost says congrats on 1,000 episodes.
You are an inspiration. Yeah. Well, and I'm also broke. But, hey, if I can inspire somebody, I will do so. Jay with 21100 says, I did the Ron Swanson giggle several times during the first half of this. Also, fountain streaming is temperamental right now, so my sat streaming cut off almost every time. Dude, Jay, it's okay. We are also very early to all of this. The only way to make value for value really work is to constantly try to use value for value even when it's broken. And when it is broken, to tell the people who need to be told that it is broken.
Mister Satstacker with a 1000 says, nothing god's death with 537 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Steve 420 says, fault coins. I like that. Mister Satstacker with another 500 says, nothing again. User 115-568-42 with 451 says, death to modern advertising models. Yeah. I hear you, pal. Lupin with 450 says, thanks for your always appreciated overview and assessment. PIE with 420 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Wartime with 333 says, cheers with an emoji. And that's gonna be the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news. You can use Miljean. We had some problems with Primal Wallet over the weekend, and Miljean, this morning, comes out to describe a little bit about what's going on and where we're at.
Says, apologies to Primal Wallet users for the service disruption last night and this morning. During this period, users could access their wallet balances and transaction lists as well as send and receive funds between primal users. However, external transactions were not possible. All systems are now operational. We are working on improving the system to making it more resilient moving forward. Thank you for your understanding. Yeah. Sure. No problem, Miljean. Just next time this happens if there's like a way that, primal doesn't supersede my, oh, god. What is it? My nip? I can't remember what here's what happened.
People were telling me they weren't able to to send me money through, Primal and and other like, in a couple of other apps too. So when I went to go look at my profile in in Primal because that's that's one of the ones that I use for for desktop actually, I was looking at it in Domus on iOS. I was looking at my profile because I was wondering what the hell was going on, and my bitcoin lightning address had been changed from [email protected] to nonya I think it was [email protected] I never changed it in my profile it also screwed up my NIP 0 5 address my verified nostr address is another way of saying that and my verified nostr address I use my Stacker news address which is noneyabusinessstacker.news Both of those had been changed to a primal address, and I didn't do that.
Now, here's I mean and I I get that, you know, Miljon, he's him and his team own primal. They can do whatever the hell they want. I get it. Except that when those were changed, that propagated all the way down to domus. I and I assume coracle and I assume, satellite dot earth. I assume that it propagated to everything. And this is a problem. And I'm not mad. I'm not I'm not even all that annoyed because like I've said, and I've said it before and I will say it again, we are very early to all this. Things are going to break. You and me have to be vigilant.
I had no clue that this had happened. Thank God people were, like, going, hey, why can't I zap you? And I'm, like, I don't know. I have no idea. And it's, like, well, here's here's what it, you know, what the what it says. And I'm like, that's when I found out because the error that they were getting through, I think they were trying to zap me directly from primal. It said, I we cannot reach this address. And then it gave the address and it was like none your business at primal.com. And I'm like, what? That's that's not my lightning address. And I went to go check and that's when I found out that both my lightning address and my verified address were both changed and I didn't make the change in my primal profile.
Yet, the change was made and that change propagated everywhere. So I may be having issues getting zaps from other places. If this is the case, somehow or another, let me know and I will endeavor to fix all that. I've got my lightning Bitcoin lightning address and my verified Noster address in I'm looking at primal right now, and it is has changed because I physically replaced these with what should be there. So my Bitcoin lightning address is now showing [email protected], which is what it should be. And my verified nostril address is [email protected], which is what it should be. So I just wanted to put that up. If you are, you know, if you or if you're having problems, you you need to go check what you need it doesn't matter what app you're on. If you're seeing problems with zapping somebody or getting zapped, you need to go to your profile and you need to check your verified address and your bit coin lightning address and you need to make sure it's how you actually have it set up okay if it's not set up that way then then fix it otherwise we're going to have problems so let's move on to ripple Yeah. We're gonna talk about the shit one of the shittiest of all the shit coins that there ever was a shit coin of, and the shittiest of the shit is Ripple. And they are going to launch r l u s d on Tuesday, monthly attestations to follow. So Ripple is launching a stablecoin.
That's what this boils down to. Remember over the last 3 weeks that I've kept telling everybody that you're going to see a plethora of stablecoins come out and it's going to rival this the Cambrian explosion of shitcoins that we saw from 2016 through 2018. Well, here it comes. And it's starting with Ripple. This is out of the block written by RT Watson. Ripple's much anticipated US dollar peg stablecoin has a launch date, and that's tomorrow, Tuesday, December 17th. RlUSD will be available on global exchanges starting tomorrow, Ripple said in a statement on Monday. Each rlusd token is fully backed by US dollar deposits, US government bonds, and cash equivalents. Pausing to remind everybody, again, these this is going to be a scam. Okay. 2 things. It's going to be a scam brain explosion of of stablecoins, and most of them are going to rug you. Okay? That's number 1. Number 2, you don't know it what these things are backed by unless somehow or another they get audited by something like Ernst and Young and they publish that audit and that audit is actually signed by somebody like Ernst and Young.
Alright? And 3, those that actually do do the audit, it is proven that they are buying and holding United States Treasury bills. Those stablecoins will be the largest purchasers of United States debt. It will no longer be nation states. They're done with us. It's going to be the stablecoin. It's going to be the stablecoin and the stablecoin companies that buy US debt. I don't know what the future holds, but honestly, my gut feeling is that this is not good. I I don't really, you know, all that wary of something like Tether and, for god forbid, even USDC only because they've been around a long, long time.
Right? And when I look back on it, I realize that they've been around for a lot longer than I expected them to ever be be around. But outside of those 2, if you have to use a stable coin, you need to be really careful of what horse you decide to back. Because I can almost guarantee that you're going to be seeing 75% pure scam coin with all these released stablecoins. Now, one thing that I will say about Ripple stablecoin is that Ripple has been been around long enough. I I hate it. Right? What I'm saying is that they have an almost immovable relationship with the United States government, specifically through the SEC and the DOJ.
It would not surprise me if Ripple's stablecoin ends up being very successful. It may also be the the situation where it's so successful that XRP just goes away, and that is Ripple's token is their XRP token. It's a pile of crap. It's an ugly shit coin, but maybe it will actually go away when the guys over at Ripple realize that they're probably going to get a lot more rich by buying and holding United States Treasury bills and charging whatever it is they charge for their stable coin service than they would just trying to hold, you know, and and and get people to actually use this bullshit stablecoin called XRP.
So it's coming, guys. It's coming. Now, Corekle version 0.5.0 is faster. It has a nostr editor and a reworked login and this is my friend huddl bod's project, corecal corecal.social. Corecal is a free and open source web client for the Nostra protocol focused on relay selection and management, web of trust based moderation, and content recommendations, as well as privacy protections. It's available on the web and on Android. It's not available for the iOS. It's finally arrived and the focus of the release is, well, focus. It's a huge release with lots of improvements to existing features and the removal of, oh, I don't know, about a few few thousand lines of code.
This version comes with reworked login and onboarding experience, performance improvements to feeds and relay based feeds, undo option via delayed send. Oh, that's gonna be nice. Nostra editor for smoother note reply editing experience and more. This version also removes groups, calendars, marketplaces, and the ability to send NIP 04 messages. Quote, the good news is that the feeds are better and will continue to get improved, including render support for almost any noster event. If you're very attached to NIP 72 communities or NIP 89 private groups, well, rest in peace. You can still access the previous version of Coracle at groups.coracle.social, or if you want the better groups, you need to use flotilla.social.
Again that's flotilla like a flotilla of boats flotilla. Social is how huddlebot has reintegrated groups but it's just he's just pulled it out of coracle and built flotilla You need to go check it out because flotilla. Groups is pretty cool. So what's new? Well, there's an undo via delayed send. It allows users to quickly connect, correct those typos that you notice just as you press send. The option can be enabled in settings. Reworked login and onboarding, the new flow, aims to strike a delicate balance between flexibility and security and a comprehensible user experience.
Feeds are faster, especially the relay based feeds. The controls for feeds should also be incrementally improved. A nostr editor for a smoother note and reply editing experience Information about relay connections and notice messages on the heads up display, you can access in the left sidebar on desktop. They've removed groups, calendars, and marketplaces. Removed support for sending a NIP, 04. Yeah. So we know that. So give the new Coracle a try. I have not yet, so I'm gonna give it a spin right now live. We're gonna do it live Coracle. And somehow or another, my entire all my cookies got wiped from my web browser and I'm having to redo everything. And I don't know how it happened, but whatever.
Let's see here with coracle dot social. Come on. Come on. You can do it. You can do it. Alright. It's coming up. Hey. Yeah. It is faster. It is faster. 1 once it finally initiated, it is faster. Oh my god. Dude, this is look. This is looking good. Huddlebod, dude. Excellent work, my friend, brother. Alright. Let's move on to, oh, Riot. Forgot to to include Riot in the news. Riot Platforms, they too have bought more Bitcoin raising their holdings to 17,429. Jason Shubnell reports that from The Block. Riot Platforms has used the proceeds from their recent convertible senior notes offering to increase its Bitcoin holdings. They said they were gonna do it, and they've already done it. Quote, with the additional proceeds from Riot's upsized $594,000,000 0.75 percent coupon convertible bond issue, the company has acquired 667 Bitcoin at an average price of 101,135 per Bitcoin.
The the Bitcoin miner has already used a portion of these net proceeds from the offering to acquire 505,000 sorry. 5,117 Bitcoin between December 10th December 12th. Riot's stock was down 25% this year as miner struggled to maintain profitability. However, its fortunes began to change following a December 12th report from the Wall Street Journal that activist hedge fund manager Starboard Value bought a stake in Riot and wants to convert some of its Bitcoin mining facilities into capacity for hyperscalers, whatever the hell that is.
So Riot is starting to shore up their financial balance sheets by buying and holding Bitcoin instead of just relying on the Bitcoin that they mine, and you're going to see a lot more of that. I guarantee it. OpenSats has announced their 9th wave of noster grants. So the last time I reported on open sats grants, it was about Bitcoin core grants. Now they're doing what they said they were gonna do and they're continuing to support the development of Nostr, which is a good thing. Let's see who's in this list. Algo Relay is the 1st algorithmic relay on Nostr designed to deliver personalized feeds while ensuring transparency and user control.
Unlike proprietary solutions, it supports multiple clients and fosters a diverse ecosystem of algorithms for creating engaging social feeds. So algorithms seem to be on the way in a relay packaged format. Interesting. Pokey got a grant. It, Pokey is a poll notifications app for Android that offers multi account support, efficient notifications, and online Bluetooth mesh networking. Oh, hell yeah, brother. Nostra Safebox is an open source wallet for the Nostra network that stores Cashew tokens as encrypted relay events. It enables secure fund management and transfers without relying on centralized databases offering a scalable decentralized payment system.
And then Persian NIPs. That's an open source ebook that provides Persian slash Farsi speakers with localized nostril resources. It includes translations of key NIPs, user guides for tools like nip05 and lightning, and developer documentation for managing nostril relays and clients. Finally, Lumi Lumi, it's a lightweight nostril web client that enhances accessibility and usability. It offers custom emojis, relay configuration, NIP 0 5 verification, and data settings making it ideal for data limited environments. Oh, data saving settings making it ideal for data limited environments.
It's it's the pokey and the algo relay one that is my favorite part of these things. It it's not that you're going to be forced to use the algorithms. And and if you're using a client that forces an algorithm on you, you need to be your own algorithm and stop using that client if you don't want to use that. Right? It's you you've got your choice of 50 different clients. I'm sure you can find one that's not going to force an algorithm. But I don't think any of them actually are because it's that doesn't make sense. You it it makes better sense to have, like, a marketplace of algorithms that you can choose to use.
And we've been promised this, and it looks like we're starting to get it. Now, that pokey thing, the blue offline Bluetooth mesh networking, if you don't know what mesh networking is, then, well, Google it or duck duck go it. However you wanna do it. But also look into things like GoTenna and there's like a couple of other a couple of other things about mesh networking. It's sort of like a localized low power radio based, you know, network. Right? Where if you're connected on one end of the mesh network, like, a mile away, on, like, I don't know, across town and I am able to send you a noster message.
I can use a noster this noster client, pokey, to actually send a message, but not over noster. I can just send it directly over the blue like, using Bluetooth connected to the mesh network and then that mesh network bounces that message around until it finally finds you, the the authorized recipient of that message, and then you can read the message. But it's also an Oster client, kind of. It's not really a client. It's really stripped down and lightweight but what I'm fascinated with is that we're now starting to really take mesh network more seriously when it comes to bitcoin lightning e cash FEDIMENT and now noster this is all going to be important mesh network has always been important so don't don't you know let that pass you by and then we got mempal this is a will finish this up today. Mempal version 1.4.0 tap to refresh multiple custom servers and major optimizations mempal m e m like memory like mempool, but mempool is a Bitcoin mempool monitoring and notification app. It allows users to track real time fee rates and mempool depth for smarter transaction and fee managements. It's available only on Android though. So, let's see. Mempool offers detailed Bitcoin Mempool insights, including the current size of the Mempool, the transaction fee levels, and the fee distribution.
It also allows users to set custom customizable notifications for when transaction fees reach a certain threshold specific transaction confirmations and when new bitcoin blocks are mined the app comes with real time widgets that provide up to date information helping users optimize transaction cost The latest version of the app introduces a new icon, major optimizations, and some other stuff. What I really like about this is the customizable notification to tell me when a transaction fee has reached a certain threshold. Let's say that I'm planning at one point or another to do a a transaction today, but it can wait it can wait for another 10 hours. I don't really need it to do it. So let's say that I've got a custom but but let let's say that that fee rates are at, like, I don't know, a 127 satoshas per v byte. Ah, screw that.
I can wait till it goes back down to, like, I don't know, 8, somewhere between 820. So I set a customizable notification to say, hey. When fees hit 8, you let me know. That sounds to me to be a very very useful tool and I'm really surprised that mempool.space doesn't have that. And if mempool.here's what's neat. If mempool.space just added nostril functionability, they'd be able to blast out fee rates directly to the nostril, network. And I could use nostril to actually give me a, directly from mempool, like a fee or better yet if since I can sign into men pool under like sort of a log in and if that log in was my nostril log in my my nostril in pub then if I tell tell the people that space hey You need to send to my end pub every time fees hit 10 satoshas per v byte for today, and then only I'm the one that gets that message.
I I honestly think that this kind of thing is is this type of of alert automation is gonna be kind of pivotal coming in the future, but that is the end of what I have for you today. It is snowing out here in Eastern Washington. I think I'm gonna go, take a little walk in it, maybe eat a little bit of chow, wash my dog considering he's gonna be in the car with us for 2 days. So and he's pretty sneaky. So I'm going to go do of all of that. You do all of you, 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 9:53 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 16th day of December 2024.
And this is episode 1,009 of Bitcoin and a couple of announcements here. I am going to be leaving on Friday for a day 1 of the 2 day journey to Southwest Colorado because it takes that long to get from eastern Washington to southwest Colorado. It's like 18 it's like 18 hours of of just straight driving. I did it once with the family all in one shot one time. Not not recommended. It's just not. Just don't do that shit. Just get a hotel room and, you know, just bite the bullet because it's just not worth driving 18 hours unless you are a professionally trained Walmart trucker or something like that. So, I will not be doing a show on Friday, and I will probably try to do one on Monday. I am gonna be taking my, the mobile studio along with me. It may be spotty because the only room that I've got in Colorado is not heated.
And the tip overnight temperatures have reached down to 10 degrees, so it may it may be a situation where I'm not able to do shows because I don't want to freeze to death, and I do hope that everybody here understands. Now, new all time highs. What could possibly have triggered that shit? Well, Helen Partz, Cointelegraph, MicroStrategy has bought 15,300,000 Bitcoin for $1,500,000,000 Their holdings have now reached 439,000 bitcoin. And before I begin this one, it should be noted that last night he announced it this morning, Michael Saylor did, that he had actually purchased. But last night, he made a comment on Twitter that maybe he was going to buy Bitcoin above 100 k, and that's when we started seeing these spikes start start going up.
And then we started coming back down. And then this morning, I guess, after he announced it, we started seeing spike ups again. So it very well may be that this particular new all time high was specifically generated by the actions of everybody's favorite Bitcoin troll, Michael Saylor. MicroStrategy, a major corporate Bitcoin holder, has added 15,350 BTC to its reserves, Spending 1,500,000,000 in cash, the company said, today, December 16th. They acquired the fresh stash of Bitcoin between the dates of December 9th 15th, the company announced.
The latest purchase was made at an average price of 100,386,000 per Bitcoin using proceeds from the issuance and sales of shares under a convertible note sales agreement. And that is that 42 plan, the 21/21, 21,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 in equities and 21,000,000,000 in debt, whatever. It's the 42 plan. Anyway, it should be noted that this is the first purchase of MicroStrategy or first purchase of Bitcoin by MicroStrategy at prices above on average 100,000 BTC. The acquisition brings the total Bitcoin holdings of MicroStrategy and its subsidiaries to 439,000 Bitcoin, which is now worth $45,600,000,000 You know? Wow.
That's half of half of the cash that, Microsoft is sitting on at $88,000,000,000. This is damn near this is actually a little bit more than half of the value of Microsoft's cash. And as famously noted, they decided not to buy Bitcoin. Oh, well. Anyway, they bought at the aggregate purchase price of $27,100,000,000 or an average price of $61,725 per BTC. That's like the whole kit and caboodle. So all of the Bitcoin that they've ever bought since he started buying in the summer of, what was it, 2020, he bought at an average price of $61,725 per. Not not bad.
MicroStrategy founder, Michael Sailor, highlighted the company's Bitcoin performance, noting a 46.4% yield quarter to quarter and 72% yield to date. Again, not bad. The latest MicroStrategy Bitcoin acquisition comes shortly after Saylor said he'd continue to buy Bitcoin above 100,000 amid MicroStrategy announcing another 21,550 Bitcoin purchase on December 9th. Quote, I'm sure that I will be buying Bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin. Probably $1,000,000,000 a day of Bitcoin at $1,000,000 a coin, Saylor said in an appearance on Yahoo Finance's market, domination.
MicroStrategy's aggressive Bitcoin buying comes amid a ongoing rally in its share price, which has climbed 490% year to date according to TradingView data. On December 14th, Nasdaq announced MicroStrategy stock will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index, which tracks the performance of the 100 largest non financial companies on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Let's just put that in again because we said like, I told John Friday that this may be coming. It has indeed happened. After the show, back on 14th, let's see. Friday was 14th. I do believe let me make sure. No. Friday was or 14th was Saturday.
So on 13th, which was, the last show that I did, I read a couple stories that said that this may happen. And then the day after that show, they announced that it did happen. So Nasdaq has announced publicly. Alright. So it's official that MicroStrategy stock will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index. Although MicroStrategy is expected to join the index before the market open on December 23rd, the announcement has fueled a rally in its stock price, edging up 3% in premarket trading according to CNBC. And at the time of writing, the MicroStrategy stock traded in the premarket for around $408 according to data from TradingView.
Bitcoin traded at a 103,941, up around 1.3% over the past 24 hours according to CoinGecko. So there you go. Not only have they bought more Bitcoin, MicroStrategy has been officially included or will has been announced that they're going to be officially included into the Nasdaq 100 on the 23rd of this month. Now Forbes, Tomer Niv is writing this one entitled the Cold War of National Bitcoin Reserves, Global Race for Digital Gold. And this should be an overview of what we know so far of other nation states that have tipped their hat, winked their eye, nudge their elbow, or otherwise hinted that they may be looking at a Bitcoin strategic reserve themselves following suit with the United States.
As the global economy evolves, a new arms race is emerging. Yes. Because, of course, we always have to boil it down to war. Have you noticed this? It's always an arms race. I just know. You know, I think we need to get out of this stupid mindset. But anyway, a new arms race is emerging, not in conventional weaponry, but in Bitcoin. The world's most prominent cryptocurrency is now at the center of geopolitical strategies with nations vying to establish national Bitcoin reserves that may redefine their financial sovereignty. In this new cold war of Bitcoin.
The United States, Russia, China, Japan, and other countries are staking claims. The United States and the strategic accumulation through seizures. Don't have a seizure, man. Have a conniption. The United States is currently the largest geopolitical holder of Bitcoin with approximately 207,000 Bitcoin in its possession. The massive stockpile is valued over at over $20,000,000,000 at current prices. The United States government's Bitcoin holdings have primarily been acquired through asset seizures from various criminal investigations, most notably the Silk Road case.
And recently, the United States government transferred 20,000 Bitcoin worth 1,900,000,000 to Coinbase Prime, according to ARCEM Intelligence, demonstrating active management of its holdings. Despite these transfers, the government still retains a significant portion of its Bitcoin assets with discussions ongoing about potentially using these holdings as a strategic reserve or to address national debt. And if I was president-elect Trump, I would be on the phone to the United States Treasury and the United States Marshals Service and tell them 2 things. One, you don't sell any of this Bitcoin.
And number 2, you need to stop transferring this Bitcoin unless you are prepared to make a full disclosure as to why and where it's going and that you will not be selling it because this shit rocks the market. And 3rd, I guess three things. 3rd, if you do sell or if you do transfer without a full disclosure that you are not intending to sell it and the reasoning why you're transferring it, then I will have your heads on platters on day 1. That's exactly what I would tell them. Because this shit is just straight up market manipulation the way that they're doing it. Okay. On to Russia with a response to sanctions.
Russia's interest in Bitcoin escalated after the imposition of severe western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. While the Kremlin denies using Bitcoin to evade sanctions, public records reveal that state controlled entities and oligarchs have increased Bitcoin transactions, signaling a pivot to decentralized finance. And recently, a Russian lawmaker proposed creating a national Bitcoin reserve to hedge against geopolitical risks and sanctions. This proposal, if implemented, could significantly increase Russia's official Bitcoin holdings in the future. So that's 2 down.
United States and Russia. Who's next but China? China ranks as the 2nd largest government holder of Bitcoin with an estimated 190 to 194,000 Bitcoin in its possession. The Chinese government's Bitcoin holdings are primarily the result of seizures linked to illegal activities, most notably the Plus token Ponzi scheme. Despite China's strict regulation and crackdowns of cryptocurrency related activities, including mining and trading, the government has maintained its substantial Bitcoin reserves. Next on deck, Japan. Japanese lawmakers led by Satoshi Aroyama have proposed the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve.
As reported by Decrypt, Aoyama argues that Bitcoin could act as a hedge against global financial instability, especially given Japan's high national debt and the reliance on fiat currencies. Japan's government does not directly hold Bitcoin, but but the country's government pension investment fund, the world's largest pension fund managing over 1.5 trillion, that's trillion with a t, dollars worth of assets, has announced plans to explore diversifying a portion of its portfolio into Bitcoin. While the GPIF has not yet invested in Bitcoin, this move signals a potential shift in Japan's approach to cryptocurrency investments.
Number 5 is Germany, who are learning lessons from selling their bitcoin because Germany's 2022 Bitcoin sales stem from the dismantling of Movie 2 k, an illegal streaming site whose operators laundered 1,000,000 of dollars in Bitcoin. Authorities seized the cryptocurrency and then sold it, citing legal requirements to convert assets to fiat in a preference for immediate liquidity over market risk. And while the sale generated significant revenue, critics argued that holding the Bitcoin could have yielded greater long term gains. This reflects Germany's cautious stance on cryptocurrencies prioritizing fiscal stability over speculation.
Who holds the most Bitcoin today? Well, there's a National Bitcoin Reserve Comparison Chart that if Forbes website would stop freaking the hell out, I could actually read good lord. Nations' Bitcoin reserves are often shrouded in mystery, but public data provides a glimpse into the emerging trend. Most holdings come from seized operations because all governments are criminal. They just steal your shit. They just steal it, dude. They don't oh, sorry. Illustrating the legal complexities and opportunities in managing digital assets. And below is a table summarizing the largest Bitcoin National Holdings. Now this chart almost almost looks exactly exactly like that doofus guy that I I told you about on either Thursday or Friday that had a chart with wrong numbers all over it. And his concern was, well, if all these people get a hold of all this Bitcoin, they're gonna be able to control the coin. No. They're not.
But it looks like he might have gotten a lot of his information from this particular chart, which says that United States has 207,100 and 89 Bitcoin. China has a 194,000. The United Kingdom holds 61,000. And it still says Germany holds 50,000, but they don't. They sold it all. So I wish people would update their shit. It says here that Ukraine owns 46,351 Bitcoin and El Salvador, just under 6,000 Bitcoin. Not sure about the Ukraine number, but, hey, you know, whatever, dude. Let's see. Oh, hold on. Wow. Forbes' website is really freaking out on me, dude. Okay. There we go. The geopolitical landscape of Bitcoin is still unfolding.
While the US leads in holdings, nations like China and Russia are quietly building their reserves often through opaque channels. Meanwhile, smaller players like El Salvador demonstrate how bitcoin can transform national strategies. If an actual raise for bitcoin reserves were to begin, it would likely intensify along the lines of existing financial and strategic capabilities. Wealthy nations with vast foreign exchange reserves, such as United States and China, could leverage that financial power to acquire massive amounts of Bitcoin. In a hypothetical scenario, hypothetical, where nations allocate the equivalent value of their gold reserves to Bitcoin, the market would experience unprecedented demand with the price of Bitcoin projected to surpass $952,000 in the total market cap reaching approximately 20,000,000,000,000, that's trillion with a t, middle tier powers like the United Kingdom and Germany might increase their holdings through aggressive seizure policies or direct purchases aiming to secure a hedge against financial instability.
Countries with significant technological infrastructures like Japan and South Korea could enhance their reserves through government backed mining initiatives similar to Bhutan's model. Meanwhile, nations like Russia and Iran might focus on state sponsored mining to bypass sanctions and acquire Bitcoin covertly. If nations actively begin hoarding national Bitcoin reserves at this scale, the world could witness the dawn of an era where digital gold replaces traditional assets and national treasuries. This shift would mark a transformative moment in financial history as Bitcoin's unique properties challenge the dominance of fiat currencies like the US dollar.
This movement could also have profound implications for geopolitics. Smaller, economically agile nations might gain a competitive edge by adopting Bitcoin early, leveraging it as a hedge against inflation and a tool for economic empowerment. In contrast, larger economies would face increasing pressure to incorporate Bitcoin into their reserves to avoid losing influence in a changing financial landscape. As bitcoin becomes integral to national treasuries, it could reduce dependence on traditional financial systems and institutions like central banks, altering the dynamics of international trade, diplomacy and sanctions.
The era of national Bitcoin reserves would also usher in brand new challenges. Nations would need to address security risks, the volatility and public trust in a decentralized asset. However, those that successfully navigate this shift could achieve unprecedented monetary sovereignty, fostering resilience against economic crises and external pressures. The geopolitical strategies of the digital age would revolve around technological innovation, God forbid, crypto infrastructure, and the race to dominate the decentralized financial ecosystem, fundamentally reshaping the global order for decades to come.
I'm just starting to see FOMO at the nation state level. And, honestly, I'm a bit concerned about it. I I I honestly I I mean, I can't just let it go. I can't just sit here and be the guy that says, this is great. We're all gonna get Lambos and girlfriends. Because honestly, I think there's a lot more at stake here. You're talking about a massive sea change in attitudes of nation states around the world. I honestly don't think that there's not going to be some manner of pain, and I don't necessarily mean pain in the price of or the purchasing power of whatever Bitcoin you might hold.
I'm talking about maybe escalations in border disputes. Maybe we see more military or militaristic actions. Maybe we see more covert actions insofar as trying to overthrow governments through, I don't know, manipulation of presidential elections. It's not like the United States hasn't manipulated damn near every presidential election in South and Central America for the last, what, 4 decades, if not 7? I mean, this shit happens. This is a this is a thing. It's not I'm not imagining this crap. But no matter what happens, I still am starting to see nation state FOMO.
And when I asked myself the question, have you ever seen a nation state have fear of missing out on anything in your entire span of life here on this planet? And I gotta say no. It's been pretty much real estate, gold, odd marketable securities, you know, that kind you know, equities, stocks. I mean, that but but it's never been FOMO. It's just something that's been a a it's been a static thing. Right? Real estate has always been here. Gold has always been here. Everything has always been here. The stock market has always been here. As far as anybody on the face of this planet that's living and breathing right now, they have never known a day without a stock market. And that goes way and that's just in the United States. If you wanna go back to any stock market, you gotta go back 100 of years.
Now it wasn't clearly, it wasn't electrified or anything like that, but this is not a new concept. So silver, platinum, all these things, they've always been here. Everybody alive on this planet has always seen the exact same when it comes to financial instrumentation. This is the first time humanity has seen something new, I'm gonna say, since the discovery of gold, or rather since humans discovery that gold may actually have other properties than just being a nice pretty shiny metal rock. You get my drift? We've never seen nation states experience fear of missing out and that's what concerns me.
Because they I mean, they fuck everything up even shit that they know how to do. How are nation states going to act if they really experience serious FOMO around the first asset that actually has a hard upper limit? And the answer to that is I don't know. I can only speculate, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it might not be as pleasant as we all make it out to be. Now one, country was not actually mentioned in that story, so I'm gonna let Atlas 21, written by the newsroom. I that they don't have an author. It's just atlas21.com. And this is by the newsroom, and it says, Thailand should study Bitcoin and digital assets according to an appeal from the former prime minister, Shinawatra, if I've pronounced that even remotely right.
During a conference in Hua Hin, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Sinawatra deep made an appeal to the government emphasizing the urgency for Thailand to deepen its study of cryptocurrencies in order to keep pace with the evolution of the global economy. In his speech, the former prime minister Yoon Kyuk Kyung Kyuk had ordered the Ministry of Finance to set up a sandbox to experiment with accepting Bitcoin payments in fuck it and to study the issuance of stablecoins backed by government bonds instead of printing banknotes. Shinawatra stated, quote, what I am saying is not to buy it, but the trend is like that.
Today, the Thai people must reflect and understand this reality. The prime minister may assign the Ministry of Finance to study whether to accept Bitcoin or not. Can we use sandboxes in tourist areas like fuck it or haw in? Use Bitcoin to allow people who hold it to spend it, end quote. He also highlighted the potential implications of the Trump administration's trade policies and its intention to use Bitcoin for national debt. Thailand is already making strides in the digital asset sector. The Thai SEC has established a regulatory framework to allow selected providers to experiment with digital assets and intends to grant access to crypto investments for mutual and private funds, fostering institutional adoption in the country.
In September, Casicorna Bank became the first authorized crypto custodian in the country. And in October, the Bank of Thailand initiated a partnership with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to test cross border tokenized regulations, not payments. Testing cross border tokenized regulations. K? So there there's actually, that's probably the the quiet part said out loud is you can regulate something in your own country. But if it is easily liquefiable across those borders, then both the both the owners of those borders need to come together with some kind of cogent, understandable regulations between the two partners.
Right? And we're we're definitely gonna see more of that. But I think it should be said that we don't forget that Thailand is a communist state. It's a it it's communism. I get a I just need to make sure about that. Hold on. I just wanna make sure that I'm not blowing smoke out of my ass. Yeah. Communist party of Thailand. It does yeah. It it hold on for a sec. I need to make sure about this. Okay. No. I guess wherever it is that I picked that up because I'm not a scholar of Southeast Asia, so you're just gonna have to forgive me for that one. But before 1992, Thailand was a communist country.
Now it says, according to the United States Department of State, that Thailand is a functional democracy. Who knows? It really is going to take somebody from actual Thailand to tell me whether or not Thailand is communist or a functional democracy. But it doesn't matter because now even Southeast Asian countries like Thailand are starting to understand that they're gonna have to do this. They don't wanna be left out, man. Nobody wants to be left out of this stuff. So, that said, let's move on to something called Tando, t a n d o.
Tando was all the rage at this year's Africa Bit Coin Conference according to Frank Korva from Bitcoin Magazine, who I guess was there because he says before I even arrived at this year's Africa Bitcoin Conference, I saw attendees posting about Tondo, a new Kenya based payments app that allows users to spend their sats with merchants who don't accept Bitcoin directly. How is this possible? You might ask. Well, I'll explain it. To use Tondo, you simply download the app and prepare to pay any merchant who accepts payments via M Pesa, Kenya's mobile money service.
When the merchant presents you with your bill, you simply click on the send money square on the app's home screen. From there, you enter the mobile number tied to the M Pesa account to which you're sending money and then input the amount of Kenyan shillings you want to send. The app automatically calculates the amount of sats it will take to cover the shilling amount that you've input, then you click on the green create invoice button to obtain a lightning invoice. And after that, you copy the invoice and pay it via your preferred lightning wallet. Tand0 receives the sats and then settles the bill in shillings with the merchants within seconds.
I can barely count how many times I've watched Bitcoiners use Tondo to pay restaurant bills or taxi fares since I've been here. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Tondo interfaces with a fiat payment system which means that it should be excommunicated from the church of Bitcoin. But before you allow yourself to entertain that kind of thinking, please consider the following notions. Number 1, you're a loser. Number 2, here in Kenya, much like in other parts of Africa, people e people actually use Bitcoin for payments. 3, when you show someone how to use Tondo, it provides you with an opportunity to show the merchant what Bitcoin is as you show them how the app works.
I watched Gorillazats' Brendan Meeweni masterfully do this for a waitress at a conference after party. And number 4, M Pesa requires that its users, KYC, and some Kenyan citizens don't have the proper documentation to do so, which means they're excluded from the system. Using Tondo, they can be included in Kenya's broader monetary system. The excitement around Tondo at the conference was part of the broader enthusiasm around apps that make Bitcoin easier to use across the African continent apps like bit Bitsacco?
Bitsacco? Yeah. Bitsacco manchuruk men well met met met met chan kura fetti and bit not my god these names holy shit African bitcoiners are far ahead of counterparts in the United States when it comes to using bitcoin as it is intended to be used as a peer to peer electronic cash. And while many Africans are working tirelessly to onboard as many merchants as they can to Bitcoin, Tondo is an excellent intermediary step that allows Bitcoiners to spend their sats even if the merchants with whom they're spending don't yet accept Bitcoin payments. And here's my here's my, estimation of what's going to happen in the future. By the way, that's the end of the article.
These apps, like Tondo, are going to be everywhere. They're going to be the primary bridges between Bitcoin and the fiat conventional systems of countries around the nations. And then people are gonna get fucking greedy like they always damn well do. And they're gonna start charging 1% and 2% and then 3%, maybe even upwards into the 4s and fives, maybe sixes. Maybe 7% of your payment has to go to something. And I'm not gonna say Tondo by name, but some intermediary bridge. And merchants are gonna have to pay part of that. Right?
Or if it goes and it's, like, solely on the purchaser, someone's some well, e neither one either either one or both of those two parties are gonna get pissed, except that the merchant like, let's say that the merchant has to split the cost with the with the customer. Right? They're both paying 3% on this transaction. And the customer looks at the merchant and says, you know, dude, if you would just learn how to do this shit directly and have your own Bitcoin wallet or your own Lightning node set up, we don't need this. Off to the races.
So it very well may be that these bridges and the greed that they will instill might actually be one of the many touch points that it takes to get into a fully circular Bitcoin economy without having to touch fiat payment rails, but that will come directly in the future. But one more thing, this reminds me of something that happened today this morning at my Toastmasters club meeting, which we have at 6:30 in the morning. Yes. Sometimes you have to be prepared to speak publicly at 6:45. Just saying. You want some training in public speaking? Do it that early in the morning when you're still working on your first cup of coffee. We have a we meet at a coffee shop. Right? So there's a barrister. There's actually a couple of them. And every Christmas, this particular club gives the barristers, like, you know, Christmas cards and money, you know, in cash because of their service to the club throughout the throughout the year. And it's a it's a nice little thing, but I realized I didn't have any cash in my wallet.
Wouldn't it have been cool if I could have gone up to the barrister and said, can I borrow your point of sale device because I see you're using let's say that they've got a square point of sale device? Let's say they've got some point of sale device that somehow or another is, you know, used majorly around the world, but yet the owner of the company or that company itself was forward sided enough to have it somewhere or another integrate with Bitcoin. Right? So now I can just go up to the barrister and say, look. I need I need to be able to connect to this point of sale using my phone, Except instead of giving that point of sale money, what it does is it just lets me use the point of sale's printer.
And I print out a QR code. So I, like, make a lightning invoice for $20 and then I send that information just through Bluetooth or whatever directly to that point of sale terminal. And instead of taking the actual money itself, it just prints something like an Azteca receipt. And then I take that Azteca receipt and I shove it in with the cash for the barrister that that we're all collecting up. And then when the barrister actually gets that back, like in the Christmas card whenever the Christmas card is delivered, then they look at it and say and it says scan with your phone.
And you you get where I'm going with this. Because there was no there was no way that I could leave something of physical nature for the barrister that could be converted into cash. But doing something like this, what I'm just suggesting, that we would be in a way, it'd be like being able to print an on the fly check that is like a cashier's check where it's already been paid for and cannot be taken back. See what I'm saying? If any of you people are out there, wanna, you know, get get on that, I think that that actually may be helpful. I can't code myself out of a wet paper bag with holes in it, so I can't do it. But you know who else might not be able to do it? This woman who kidnapped a Saudi roll royal, stole $40,000 in Bitcoin, but somehow has not only avoid jail, has avoid avoided death. And Ryan s Gladwin from decrypt tells us more about it. A 24 year old woman kidnapped a Saudi Arabian royal family member with the help of 3 others and forced him to pay $40,000 in Bitcoin after threatening to cut his fingers off.
But as reported by the Daily Mail, the perpetrator was not put behind bars despite pleading guilty. How is she not dead? Catherine Culvis faced a maximum sentence of 25 years at her Monday hearing at Victoria, Australia. She pleaded guilty to kidnapping, extortion, recklessly causing industry, theft, and gun possession. However, she only received a community corrections order, essentially Australian's version of community service. The county court of Victoria heard that Colvis went for drinks and dinner with the Saudi rule royal after they matched on a dating app. And then Colvis date drove her back home. As the royal walked Colvis to her door, he was ambushed by 3 men including Colvis's own boyfriend.
Wow. They had planned this one. The victim was then cable tied so he couldn't leave and threatened at knifepoint. The judge heard that he was told that his fingers would be cut off if he did not pay the perpetrator's money. As he was a crypto trader, the victim offered Bitcoin and had a phone had to phone a friend to complete the transfer of $40,000. And after this, his keys were stolen and the perpetrators raided his home. Court documents say they stole designer clothes, a PlayStation 5, and several iPhones. The victim was then released and immediately went to the police before spending the night in the hospital nursing the wounds to his head and wrist. But despite the severity of the crime that Colvis pleaded guilty to, the judge believed a 30 month community corrections order was sufficient due to exceptional circumstances.
Namely, the judge cited her youth, her troubled upbringing, her fragile mental health, the prospects for her rehabilitation, and that her brother had died while awaiting her trial as reasons for the sentencing. Okay. This is just stupid. Alright. So this is just an object lesson here, boys and girls. You don't talk about your Bitcoin. Alright? I'm talking I talk about my bitcoin, but I'm a podcaster. Right? I I had to make this decision. Now let's say for whatever reason that I wasn't married and I wanted to get, like, a dating app. And believe me, I don't wanna do either one of those fucking things, but I got a dating app. I'm not going to tell the people that I might go out on a date with that I've got Bitcoin.
Now he didn't, But still, he was a Saudi royal, which meant he's going to have some money somewhere. So for this standpoint, it really didn't matter except that he, for whatever reason, offered bitcoin instead of just straight cash. But for those people out there that do, telegraph to the public, like, you're you're, you know, whether you're dating or you're just talking in a bar, if you're talking in a bar and you're hammered as shit and you say you got 10 bitcoin and the dude next right next to you is like, dude, this guy's hammered as shit. This is a problem.
This is an absolute problem and we really gotta we really gotta wrap our little handles around it. So I still advise don't wear bitcoin swag don't wear the bitcoin t shirt in my case I wouldn't even wear a satoshi t shirt it would have to be something so esoteric that only another bitcoin would ever have hope to even you know, be coming close to getting it. And it would have to be a hardcore bitcoin or 2. That's how esoteric it would have to be for me to wear any kind of remotely adjacent bitcoin swag. Just don't do it you're paying a target on your back and worse off you're paying a target on the backs of the people that you're with because that is you're going your shirt that says bitcoin means not only do you have Bitcoin, but the people that you're hanging around, they probably got Bitcoin too. So you're kind of endangering everybody. Please reconsider wearing all of the Bitcoin swag.
It's not that I don't want, you know, it's not that I don't love it. It's not that I don't want people to make money making the t shirts and stuff like that. I'm just saying it's a target, so be aware. Let's run the number. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down a third of a point, but it's still at $71.4 a barrel. Brent Norcia is down 0.4 percent to 74.19. Natural gas down almost 2 points to $3.21 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline is down 0.81%, back under 2 bucks to a buck 98 per gallon. Gold, not doing all that well. It's down a quarter to $26.68.70 Silver is moving sideways. Platinum is up 1.74%.
Copper is down a 5th of a point. And palladium is down 1 a quarter percent. We got agricultural futures. The biggest winner is chocolate again. 3.75 percent to the upside. Biggest loser, Lumber, 0.65 percent to the downside. Live cattle is down almost a point. Lean hogs are down, wow, 2.69%. Feeder cattle are down a third. The Dow is moving sideways, and the S and P is up 0.6 percent. Nasdaq is up 1 and a half, and the S and P mini is up a third of a point. And Bitcoin is at $107,600, which is a, wow, $2,130,000,000,000 market cap. That's trillion with a d. And we oh, god. Okay. Somebody check on Peter Schiff.
You can now get 40.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, and that is an all time high. 19,796,795.4 BTC in circulation at the time, and the average fees per block are 0.08 bitcoin, taken in fees on average on a per block basis, of which there are 105 blocks carrying 266,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priorities of 8 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 6. 780.7 exahashes per second is the hash rate at this time on a 1 week rolling average. And from Friday's show, the ghost of peanut future, I have crazy 69 giving me 10,001 sats. Palindrome boost says congrats on 1,000 episodes.
You are an inspiration. Yeah. Well, and I'm also broke. But, hey, if I can inspire somebody, I will do so. Jay with 21100 says, I did the Ron Swanson giggle several times during the first half of this. Also, fountain streaming is temperamental right now, so my sat streaming cut off almost every time. Dude, Jay, it's okay. We are also very early to all of this. The only way to make value for value really work is to constantly try to use value for value even when it's broken. And when it is broken, to tell the people who need to be told that it is broken.
Mister Satstacker with a 1000 says, nothing god's death with 537 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Steve 420 says, fault coins. I like that. Mister Satstacker with another 500 says, nothing again. User 115-568-42 with 451 says, death to modern advertising models. Yeah. I hear you, pal. Lupin with 450 says, thanks for your always appreciated overview and assessment. PIE with 420 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Wartime with 333 says, cheers with an emoji. And that's gonna be the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news. You can use Miljean. We had some problems with Primal Wallet over the weekend, and Miljean, this morning, comes out to describe a little bit about what's going on and where we're at.
Says, apologies to Primal Wallet users for the service disruption last night and this morning. During this period, users could access their wallet balances and transaction lists as well as send and receive funds between primal users. However, external transactions were not possible. All systems are now operational. We are working on improving the system to making it more resilient moving forward. Thank you for your understanding. Yeah. Sure. No problem, Miljean. Just next time this happens if there's like a way that, primal doesn't supersede my, oh, god. What is it? My nip? I can't remember what here's what happened.
People were telling me they weren't able to to send me money through, Primal and and other like, in a couple of other apps too. So when I went to go look at my profile in in Primal because that's that's one of the ones that I use for for desktop actually, I was looking at it in Domus on iOS. I was looking at my profile because I was wondering what the hell was going on, and my bitcoin lightning address had been changed from [email protected] to nonya I think it was [email protected] I never changed it in my profile it also screwed up my NIP 0 5 address my verified nostr address is another way of saying that and my verified nostr address I use my Stacker news address which is noneyabusinessstacker.news Both of those had been changed to a primal address, and I didn't do that.
Now, here's I mean and I I get that, you know, Miljon, he's him and his team own primal. They can do whatever the hell they want. I get it. Except that when those were changed, that propagated all the way down to domus. I and I assume coracle and I assume, satellite dot earth. I assume that it propagated to everything. And this is a problem. And I'm not mad. I'm not I'm not even all that annoyed because like I've said, and I've said it before and I will say it again, we are very early to all this. Things are going to break. You and me have to be vigilant.
I had no clue that this had happened. Thank God people were, like, going, hey, why can't I zap you? And I'm, like, I don't know. I have no idea. And it's, like, well, here's here's what it, you know, what the what it says. And I'm like, that's when I found out because the error that they were getting through, I think they were trying to zap me directly from primal. It said, I we cannot reach this address. And then it gave the address and it was like none your business at primal.com. And I'm like, what? That's that's not my lightning address. And I went to go check and that's when I found out that both my lightning address and my verified address were both changed and I didn't make the change in my primal profile.
Yet, the change was made and that change propagated everywhere. So I may be having issues getting zaps from other places. If this is the case, somehow or another, let me know and I will endeavor to fix all that. I've got my lightning Bitcoin lightning address and my verified Noster address in I'm looking at primal right now, and it is has changed because I physically replaced these with what should be there. So my Bitcoin lightning address is now showing [email protected], which is what it should be. And my verified nostril address is [email protected], which is what it should be. So I just wanted to put that up. If you are, you know, if you or if you're having problems, you you need to go check what you need it doesn't matter what app you're on. If you're seeing problems with zapping somebody or getting zapped, you need to go to your profile and you need to check your verified address and your bit coin lightning address and you need to make sure it's how you actually have it set up okay if it's not set up that way then then fix it otherwise we're going to have problems so let's move on to ripple Yeah. We're gonna talk about the shit one of the shittiest of all the shit coins that there ever was a shit coin of, and the shittiest of the shit is Ripple. And they are going to launch r l u s d on Tuesday, monthly attestations to follow. So Ripple is launching a stablecoin.
That's what this boils down to. Remember over the last 3 weeks that I've kept telling everybody that you're going to see a plethora of stablecoins come out and it's going to rival this the Cambrian explosion of shitcoins that we saw from 2016 through 2018. Well, here it comes. And it's starting with Ripple. This is out of the block written by RT Watson. Ripple's much anticipated US dollar peg stablecoin has a launch date, and that's tomorrow, Tuesday, December 17th. RlUSD will be available on global exchanges starting tomorrow, Ripple said in a statement on Monday. Each rlusd token is fully backed by US dollar deposits, US government bonds, and cash equivalents. Pausing to remind everybody, again, these this is going to be a scam. Okay. 2 things. It's going to be a scam brain explosion of of stablecoins, and most of them are going to rug you. Okay? That's number 1. Number 2, you don't know it what these things are backed by unless somehow or another they get audited by something like Ernst and Young and they publish that audit and that audit is actually signed by somebody like Ernst and Young.
Alright? And 3, those that actually do do the audit, it is proven that they are buying and holding United States Treasury bills. Those stablecoins will be the largest purchasers of United States debt. It will no longer be nation states. They're done with us. It's going to be the stablecoin. It's going to be the stablecoin and the stablecoin companies that buy US debt. I don't know what the future holds, but honestly, my gut feeling is that this is not good. I I don't really, you know, all that wary of something like Tether and, for god forbid, even USDC only because they've been around a long, long time.
Right? And when I look back on it, I realize that they've been around for a lot longer than I expected them to ever be be around. But outside of those 2, if you have to use a stable coin, you need to be really careful of what horse you decide to back. Because I can almost guarantee that you're going to be seeing 75% pure scam coin with all these released stablecoins. Now, one thing that I will say about Ripple stablecoin is that Ripple has been been around long enough. I I hate it. Right? What I'm saying is that they have an almost immovable relationship with the United States government, specifically through the SEC and the DOJ.
It would not surprise me if Ripple's stablecoin ends up being very successful. It may also be the the situation where it's so successful that XRP just goes away, and that is Ripple's token is their XRP token. It's a pile of crap. It's an ugly shit coin, but maybe it will actually go away when the guys over at Ripple realize that they're probably going to get a lot more rich by buying and holding United States Treasury bills and charging whatever it is they charge for their stable coin service than they would just trying to hold, you know, and and and get people to actually use this bullshit stablecoin called XRP.
So it's coming, guys. It's coming. Now, Corekle version 0.5.0 is faster. It has a nostr editor and a reworked login and this is my friend huddl bod's project, corecal corecal.social. Corecal is a free and open source web client for the Nostra protocol focused on relay selection and management, web of trust based moderation, and content recommendations, as well as privacy protections. It's available on the web and on Android. It's not available for the iOS. It's finally arrived and the focus of the release is, well, focus. It's a huge release with lots of improvements to existing features and the removal of, oh, I don't know, about a few few thousand lines of code.
This version comes with reworked login and onboarding experience, performance improvements to feeds and relay based feeds, undo option via delayed send. Oh, that's gonna be nice. Nostra editor for smoother note reply editing experience and more. This version also removes groups, calendars, marketplaces, and the ability to send NIP 04 messages. Quote, the good news is that the feeds are better and will continue to get improved, including render support for almost any noster event. If you're very attached to NIP 72 communities or NIP 89 private groups, well, rest in peace. You can still access the previous version of Coracle at groups.coracle.social, or if you want the better groups, you need to use flotilla.social.
Again that's flotilla like a flotilla of boats flotilla. Social is how huddlebot has reintegrated groups but it's just he's just pulled it out of coracle and built flotilla You need to go check it out because flotilla. Groups is pretty cool. So what's new? Well, there's an undo via delayed send. It allows users to quickly connect, correct those typos that you notice just as you press send. The option can be enabled in settings. Reworked login and onboarding, the new flow, aims to strike a delicate balance between flexibility and security and a comprehensible user experience.
Feeds are faster, especially the relay based feeds. The controls for feeds should also be incrementally improved. A nostr editor for a smoother note and reply editing experience Information about relay connections and notice messages on the heads up display, you can access in the left sidebar on desktop. They've removed groups, calendars, and marketplaces. Removed support for sending a NIP, 04. Yeah. So we know that. So give the new Coracle a try. I have not yet, so I'm gonna give it a spin right now live. We're gonna do it live Coracle. And somehow or another, my entire all my cookies got wiped from my web browser and I'm having to redo everything. And I don't know how it happened, but whatever.
Let's see here with coracle dot social. Come on. Come on. You can do it. You can do it. Alright. It's coming up. Hey. Yeah. It is faster. It is faster. 1 once it finally initiated, it is faster. Oh my god. Dude, this is look. This is looking good. Huddlebod, dude. Excellent work, my friend, brother. Alright. Let's move on to, oh, Riot. Forgot to to include Riot in the news. Riot Platforms, they too have bought more Bitcoin raising their holdings to 17,429. Jason Shubnell reports that from The Block. Riot Platforms has used the proceeds from their recent convertible senior notes offering to increase its Bitcoin holdings. They said they were gonna do it, and they've already done it. Quote, with the additional proceeds from Riot's upsized $594,000,000 0.75 percent coupon convertible bond issue, the company has acquired 667 Bitcoin at an average price of 101,135 per Bitcoin.
The the Bitcoin miner has already used a portion of these net proceeds from the offering to acquire 505,000 sorry. 5,117 Bitcoin between December 10th December 12th. Riot's stock was down 25% this year as miner struggled to maintain profitability. However, its fortunes began to change following a December 12th report from the Wall Street Journal that activist hedge fund manager Starboard Value bought a stake in Riot and wants to convert some of its Bitcoin mining facilities into capacity for hyperscalers, whatever the hell that is.
So Riot is starting to shore up their financial balance sheets by buying and holding Bitcoin instead of just relying on the Bitcoin that they mine, and you're going to see a lot more of that. I guarantee it. OpenSats has announced their 9th wave of noster grants. So the last time I reported on open sats grants, it was about Bitcoin core grants. Now they're doing what they said they were gonna do and they're continuing to support the development of Nostr, which is a good thing. Let's see who's in this list. Algo Relay is the 1st algorithmic relay on Nostr designed to deliver personalized feeds while ensuring transparency and user control.
Unlike proprietary solutions, it supports multiple clients and fosters a diverse ecosystem of algorithms for creating engaging social feeds. So algorithms seem to be on the way in a relay packaged format. Interesting. Pokey got a grant. It, Pokey is a poll notifications app for Android that offers multi account support, efficient notifications, and online Bluetooth mesh networking. Oh, hell yeah, brother. Nostra Safebox is an open source wallet for the Nostra network that stores Cashew tokens as encrypted relay events. It enables secure fund management and transfers without relying on centralized databases offering a scalable decentralized payment system.
And then Persian NIPs. That's an open source ebook that provides Persian slash Farsi speakers with localized nostril resources. It includes translations of key NIPs, user guides for tools like nip05 and lightning, and developer documentation for managing nostril relays and clients. Finally, Lumi Lumi, it's a lightweight nostril web client that enhances accessibility and usability. It offers custom emojis, relay configuration, NIP 0 5 verification, and data settings making it ideal for data limited environments. Oh, data saving settings making it ideal for data limited environments.
It's it's the pokey and the algo relay one that is my favorite part of these things. It it's not that you're going to be forced to use the algorithms. And and if you're using a client that forces an algorithm on you, you need to be your own algorithm and stop using that client if you don't want to use that. Right? It's you you've got your choice of 50 different clients. I'm sure you can find one that's not going to force an algorithm. But I don't think any of them actually are because it's that doesn't make sense. You it it makes better sense to have, like, a marketplace of algorithms that you can choose to use.
And we've been promised this, and it looks like we're starting to get it. Now, that pokey thing, the blue offline Bluetooth mesh networking, if you don't know what mesh networking is, then, well, Google it or duck duck go it. However you wanna do it. But also look into things like GoTenna and there's like a couple of other a couple of other things about mesh networking. It's sort of like a localized low power radio based, you know, network. Right? Where if you're connected on one end of the mesh network, like, a mile away, on, like, I don't know, across town and I am able to send you a noster message.
I can use a noster this noster client, pokey, to actually send a message, but not over noster. I can just send it directly over the blue like, using Bluetooth connected to the mesh network and then that mesh network bounces that message around until it finally finds you, the the authorized recipient of that message, and then you can read the message. But it's also an Oster client, kind of. It's not really a client. It's really stripped down and lightweight but what I'm fascinated with is that we're now starting to really take mesh network more seriously when it comes to bitcoin lightning e cash FEDIMENT and now noster this is all going to be important mesh network has always been important so don't don't you know let that pass you by and then we got mempal this is a will finish this up today. Mempal version 1.4.0 tap to refresh multiple custom servers and major optimizations mempal m e m like memory like mempool, but mempool is a Bitcoin mempool monitoring and notification app. It allows users to track real time fee rates and mempool depth for smarter transaction and fee managements. It's available only on Android though. So, let's see. Mempool offers detailed Bitcoin Mempool insights, including the current size of the Mempool, the transaction fee levels, and the fee distribution.
It also allows users to set custom customizable notifications for when transaction fees reach a certain threshold specific transaction confirmations and when new bitcoin blocks are mined the app comes with real time widgets that provide up to date information helping users optimize transaction cost The latest version of the app introduces a new icon, major optimizations, and some other stuff. What I really like about this is the customizable notification to tell me when a transaction fee has reached a certain threshold. Let's say that I'm planning at one point or another to do a a transaction today, but it can wait it can wait for another 10 hours. I don't really need it to do it. So let's say that I've got a custom but but let let's say that that fee rates are at, like, I don't know, a 127 satoshas per v byte. Ah, screw that.
I can wait till it goes back down to, like, I don't know, 8, somewhere between 820. So I set a customizable notification to say, hey. When fees hit 8, you let me know. That sounds to me to be a very very useful tool and I'm really surprised that mempool.space doesn't have that. And if mempool.here's what's neat. If mempool.space just added nostril functionability, they'd be able to blast out fee rates directly to the nostril, network. And I could use nostril to actually give me a, directly from mempool, like a fee or better yet if since I can sign into men pool under like sort of a log in and if that log in was my nostril log in my my nostril in pub then if I tell tell the people that space hey You need to send to my end pub every time fees hit 10 satoshas per v byte for today, and then only I'm the one that gets that message.
I I honestly think that this kind of thing is is this type of of alert automation is gonna be kind of pivotal coming in the future, but that is the end of what I have for you today. It is snowing out here in Eastern Washington. I think I'm gonna go, take a little walk in it, maybe eat a little bit of chow, wash my dog considering he's gonna be in the car with us for 2 days. So and he's pretty sneaky. So I'm going to go do of all of that. You do all of you, 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.
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