Join me today for Episode 1023 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Ross Ulbricht is NOT a Murderer
- David Balland Freed From Kidnapping
- Lummis Knows How to Hype
- Ethereum Mutiny
- Kansas on Deck
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/ledger-co-founder-david-balland-freed-after-kidnapping-in-france
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/01/23/lummis-to-lead-crypto-vital-u-s-senate-panel-with-digital-assets-industry-defenders
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
Wow. It is 9:43 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 23rd day of January 2025. This is episode 1023 of bitcoin ant. Damn. The 23rd, 1,023rd show on the 23rd day of January. Man, the numerology just keeps racking up and we got all kinds of weird shit going on today. Today feels weird and I don't know if you feel weird, but I I I don't know what, but somehow or another I kind of woke up and things just feel weird. Not bad, not good, just neutral straight up strange. Like, I'm a stranger in a strange land or something like that. And and no, it has nothing to do with Trump or Davos or literally Hitler or anything else that's going on in the world today.
Somehow or another, I just got this, it's like being in tune with the universe and the universe is like, Dave, weird shit's going on today. So, be aware. Alright? So, yeah. I don't know. Like I said, I if you guys feel weird, then please boost the show and tell me if you feel weird too, or if it's it could just be me. I mean, there are several occasions when I think something is going on and other people get it, and I'm the only one that's getting it, which basically means that I'm probably hallucinating, which is which is fine. It's it's okay. I've hallucinated before.
Generally speaking, there's other items involved in those hallucinations, but not today. Today just feels straight up weird. So let's start with some big news. China to have fun staying poor. Why? Well, because China sold nearly $20,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin from the plus token seizure according to CryptoQuant CEO. This is out of Cointelegraph, Zolton Vardai. Tell us how China is going to have fun staying poor. The Chinese government has likely likely sold its nearly $20,000,000,000 bitcoin stack, contributing to significant sell pressure for the world's first cryptocurrency. China's treasury sold over $19,700,000,000 worth of Bitcoin leading up to today, January 23rd, according to Kai Yong Zhu, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm, CryptoKwan.
The crypto seized from PlusToken in 2019 was likely sent to cryptocurrency exchanges such as Huobi, wrote Zhu in a January 23rd Twitter post. A censored regime holding censorship resistant money feels unlikely, he said. The large scale selling comes over 4 years after Chinese authorities seized $4,200,000,000 worth of crypto from the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, which has led to the arrest of at least 109 individuals so far. They're all probably literally Hitler. Just saying. There's literally Hitler is just, like, all over the place lately. It's one of the reasons why things feel weird this morning. But continuing, Bitcoin remained above the $101,000 market on on January 23rd despite the near $20,000,000,000 sale.
However, BTC's price fell over 3.7% in the 24 hours leading up to the 12:22 AM UTC Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows. Okay. That whatever. Bitcoin's resilience is partly thanks to continued purchases from the world's largest asset manager, your friend and mine, BlackRock, which has been acquiring Bitcoin for 5 consecutive trading days, Farside Investor Data shows. Notably, BlackRock's Bitcoin exchange traded funds bought 6 $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin on January 21st, which marks its biggest buy of this year according to ARCEM Intelligence. Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains sensitive to to economic developments in the absence of news regarding United States crypto regulation, and concerns over tightening monetary policy will continue pressuring Bitcoin's price, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.
The analyst told Cointelegraph, quote, a recent dip and concerns over potential global interest rate hikes have created short term bearish sentiment. However, institutional buying, particularly from World Liberty Finance, may stabilize prices. That's Trump's outfit, dude. Don't if you're gonna, like, actually put your eggs in that basket, oh, my eggs will be safe here. Oh, oh, like, I I feel good about crypto because World Liberty Financial is going to save the day. You're putting your eggs in a wrong basket. Please don't do that. It's World Liberty Financial is not going to save you.
Right? It is ridiculous to even think that an outfit the size of World Liberty Financial has anything at all to do with the greater crypto landscape. It's just all bullshit, right? Anyway, to end it, markets are now expecting the next US interest rate cut to occur on June 18th, according to the latest estimates of the CME Group's FedWatch tool. So China, in their great, striding walk towards irrelevance, has decided to just up and sell all their Bitcoin. And given what I'm looking at on the charts on an hourly basis, I generally keep it on the hour chart just to get, like, daily trends, this was just, for the last couple of days, just a stair step down.
Just moderate stair steps down and then it'll kind of go up a little bit and then like more sell pressure and more sell pressure. So it would not surprise me if, in fact, China did sell their entire stack of future wealth, the future of their country, the future of their citizenry, the future of everything China. I have not seen this level of stupidity since the United States decided to sell off a whole bunch of Bitcoin that they seized to what was that guy's name? Some billionaire bought it at, like I think he was paying, like, either 300 per coin or 3,000 per coin. You know the guy I'm talking about. And he made out like bandits because he bought it all at a United States Marshals Service auction.
The dude is banking, and he was already, like, extremely wealthy. So my question for China is, who did you sell your Bitcoin to? I'd laugh if you were selling your Bitcoin to Larry Fink. And, honestly, that's probably who China sold it to. So as China is selling out their country's future for fiat currency, which is essentially just not worth the paper that it's written on, we have a story that has been written by LOLA Leaks. And this is about Ross Olbrich or Ulbrich, who got pardoned, not had his sentence commuted. He got a full pardon, which means that the federal convictions never happened.
They never happened. As far as Ross Ulbricht is concerned, he never went to court. He was never charged. He was never convicted. It's all gone, and thank God for it. But a lot of people don't know about some of the other stuff that went along with this entire Silk Road case. So let's let Lola Leitz kinda fill us in as to some of the particulars of, well, the whole Silk Road case. And this is out of Bitcoin Magazine, again, written by Lola Leitz headline Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht. Why defend a murderer? Attention grab right there. Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of any parole for creating the darknetmarket Silk Road is free.
Ulbricht is a freedom fighter to some and a dangerous criminal to others. The former know Ulbricht as described in Forbes, quote, a principled libertarian in cypherpunk in the same vein as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Bulbruck TADA theory that violent drug cartels would have no chance sustaining themselves in a free market environment where the state did not control the use of substances as nonviolent operations would simply outperform the violent ones based on demand. Most who believe the latter, however, often base their opinion on claims that Ulbricht allegedly attempted to hire a hitman on a former Silk Road administrator who stood accused of embezzling Bitcoin from the site.
While Olbricht's supporters celebrate, critics are asking why would an online community so vehemently defend an attempted murderer? The controversies and outright corruption surrounding Ulbrich's prosecution should therefore not be forgotten. The charges against Ulbrich On February 5, 2015, a jury in the Southern District of New York found Ulbricht guilty of exclusively nonviolent crimes, including several charges of narcotics distribution, computer hacking, conspiracy to run a criminal enterprise, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The judge sentenced Olbertt to 2 life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole, almost twice the sentence of the very violent Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
The alleged murder for hire charges arose out of a different case filed in May of 2013 in Maryland. That indictment alleged that based on chat logs obtained from the Silk Road site, Ulbricht attempted to murder Curtis Greene for stealing Bitcoin from the project. As the chat logs read according to the indictment, Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym often attributed to Olbert, wrote to another Silk Road user whom he believed to be a drug kingpin capable of ordering a hitman, quote, I'd like to beat him up. Then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back. Like, sit him down at his computer and make him do it, end quote.
A day later, the indictment states, DPR, Dread Pirate Roberts, excuse me, changed his mind writing, can you change the order to execute rather than torture? Well, according to the indictment, DPR stated that Greene was on the inside for a while and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he'll give up info. Allegedly, adding that he had never killed a man before, but this is the right move in this case, end quote. And a few days later, $40,000 was wired into the hitman's account and DPR asked for proof of death via video or pictures to send the rest of the payment. On February 21, 2013, the kingpin informed DPR that Greene was dead. Quote, they killed him this weekend, he wrote, telling him that he died of asphyxiation and that the body was completely destroyed to eliminate any evidence.
Except the kingpin wasn't a kingpin. It was a DEA agent, Karl Force, who, as it would later turn out, liked to engage in a little criminal enterprise himself when granted the opportunity. So was it a real theft and a fake murder? Well, during the course of the investigation, Greene had been cooperating with law enforcement giving DEA agent Carl Force and Secret Service agent Shawn Bridges access to the Silk Road site. During one of law enforcement's sessions on Silk Road, a series of sizable thefts occurred on the site, which would later be traced back to Bridges, who plead guilty to stealing $350,000 worth of Bitcoin at the time of the theft, or $800,000 at the time of his guilty plea.
The account in question, operated by Bridges and in consultation with Force, had received no less than 20,000 bitcoin according to the complaint. Force, posing as the drug kingpin called Nob, n o b, then orchestrated the fake hit, together with Bridges, faked Green's death. Force went on to create the fake identity, death from above, to extort $250,000 from DPR stating, quote, I know that you had something to do with Greene's disappearance and death. Just wanted to let you know that I'm coming for you. You are a dead man. Don't think you can elude me, end quote. Well, Bridges was sentenced to 24 months in prison to be served consecutively with a 71 month sentence he received for a similar crime back in 2015, while Force was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
Information on the corrupt agents was never made available to be used in Ulbrich's defense. Let me tell you that again. After all that I'm pausing here. After all that, this information that you now know, if you didn't know it before, was never available to Ross Ulbrich's defense. It was never given to them in discovery. So who is Dread Pirate Roberts? Well, Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym attributed to Ulbrich, is taken from the 1973 novel, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, depicting an identity that is assumed by multiple characters. The identity, Dread Pirate Roberts, as written by Goldman, is shared between pirates to intimidate opponents, and passed on in secret.
In the course of the public proceedings of the case, evidence mounted that Silk Road's DPR was not solely operated by Ross Ulbricht. In a conversation with former friend Richard Bates, who helped Ulbricht set up the Silk Road site, Ulbricht responded with glad that's not my problem anymore when made aware of news coverage concerning the site. During the trial, prosecutors attempted to stop the defense from questioning another law enforcement officer, special agent Jared Der Yeagerhan, for the Department of Homeland Security, who believed that DPR was actually Mark Carpelles, the former Mt. Gox CEO, who was later convicted for falsifying Mt. Gox records and inflating the exchange's supply by tens of 1,000,000.
Duryagihan, however you pronounce his name, had referred to an exclusive interview with DPR and Forbes in which the pseudonymous Silk Road operator had stated that, quote, he hadn't actually created the Silk Road, but instead had befriended its creator and later acquired the site from him, end quote. Well, according to this gentleman, Der Jagerhan, DPR's writing sounded very much like that of his suspect, Mark Carpelles. Ander Yagerhan is not the only one alleged or or alleging that DPR sounded like someone else. As former dark wallet developer Amir Tarkey stated, quote, years ago, when I messaged the Silk Road, I had a conversation with the DPR, a very personal conversation where he was talking about how one day he hopes to be on the outside struggling for freedom together, you know, not having to hide his identity.
1 year or 2 years later, when I messaged the guy, I'm pretty certain it was not the same guy. The tone was completely different. He had no recollection of the events that happened before, and his attitude to me was in stark contrast to the exuberant and wordy DPR of the early days. This argument was further backed by pseudonymous Silk Road vendor, who stated that, there were at least 2 other people, if not 3, who were administrating Silk Road. Der Jagerhand corroborates this belief in an email 10 days before Ulbrich's arrest stating that, quote, we contributed to the other 2 admins getting away, end quote.
Silk Road employee, Andrew Jones, who had established a quote secret handshake with Ulbricht in 2012 to confirm his identity, did not believe that the late DPR was Ulbricht either. And according to court documents, Jones would ask DPR for a book recommendation to which the correct answer would be anything by Rothbard, an answer which DPR did not provide when asked 1 year later. To add intellectual insult to operational injuries, someone had logged in to DPR's account 6 weeks after Ross Ulbrich had been arrested and was in custody and in or rather in federal custody at the time, which may have been the corrupt agents who had administrative access to the site or another DPR altogether.
As stated by Green himself: and to everyone that says there were multiple DPRs absolutely there was. I was DPR once. So if I was, who else was? Regarding the murder for hire charges, Greene stated that he did not believe Ulbricht would have ordered a hit on him. As Greene stated in 2017, Ross Ulbricht got a raw deal. There is so much more on the Silk Road story than people know, and I can't yet talk about it. I don't believe Ross is dangerous or that it's in his character to order a hit on anyone. He should never have gotten that horrible sentence to cut to the chase yes, Ross Ulbricht operated Silk Road no, Ross Ulbricht was likely not the person with access to the DPR account Ross Ulbricht was never convicted of the murder for hire charges.
The case was dismissed in 2018 with prejudice, meaning that it can never be filed again. For all we know, we are all Dread Pirate Roberts. So, there there are many people and I get them I I still get them today, many people that I respect as well that somehow or another are holding this murder for hire charge shit close to their chest In one of 2 different ways. Either they believe that Ross Ulbricht actually tried to have somebody murdered or that he could still be charged for that murder for hire charges. And they're saying somehow or another giving lending some kind of actual credence to these charges.
There is no credence to these charges. Those charges were dropped. The case is dismissed. It was dropped with prejudice. He can never ever ever ever be charged for this shit again. And second of all, the reason it was dropped with prejudice is because it's clear. It was clear at the time that the judge dismissed the whole thing with prejudice that it was these 2, at least 2, if not fully 3, federal employees that had something to do with the investigatory process or the Justice Department or whatever, agents of the United States government were doing this.
Ross is free. I'm sorry if you keep looking for some other shoe to drop. There is no other shoe to drop. Ross is free. If you think he's a murderer, you can go fuck yourself. Because you clearly are fucked in your head, and you have no fucking clue what you're fucking talking about. Now, for all the people that just had children in their car and they're just aghast, I'm sorry. But this kind of shit is unfucking tenable. I'm sick of hearing that, well, what about the murder for hire charges? Then you have literally no idea what you're talking about at all.
You have no understanding of what this story is. You've never dug into it. You are weak minded. You are lazy, and you have absolutely no reason to be sharing the same fucking oxygen that I do. Because you're not worth my time. I'm pissed because this shit keeps getting spread. And I'm sick of it. Stop talking about Ross Ulbricht being a murderer. There is not a scrap of evidence to suggest that he did anything even remotely like it. And not only that, the court system agreed and dismissed the case with prejudice. It's never coming back because it never happened in the first place.
Stop it. I'm sick of it. And also stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Thankfully, the gentleman in question did not get killed, but I think he might have lost a finger. Ledger cofounder has been released after days in captivity in France according to a report. Mihab Queshri from Cointelegraph is writing this one. David Ballant, cofounder of the French cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was released following a harrowing kidnapping incident according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office cited by Bloomberg. Ballard was abducted from his home in central France during the early hours of, you guessed it, January 21st.
He was held captive until a police operation on the night of January 22nd secured his release. The kidnappers had demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency. The company or ledger was established in 2014 by Ballard and others, and the devices are designed to keep users' private keys offline, thereby safeguarding digital assets from online vulnerabilities. Pausing to say do not use Ledger. It is not safe. It is not safe. It is not safe. Please use something else. Either get a cold card or get a treasure or something like that. I used to use Ledger. I had to buy 3 of them because they kept breaking on me. I'm never going to do business with that company ever again. I highly recommend you run, not walk away from Ledger. But continuing, the company which raised €100,000,000 in 2020 3, now boasts a valuation of €1,300,000,000 and employs about 700 people.
Ransomware gangs extorted over $1,100,000,000 in cryptocurrency payments from victims in 2023, according to data from the blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis. This entire thing came amid widespread rumors circulating on social media January 20 second about a potential kidnapping of a Ledger executive, and the rumors lacked any concrete evidence until this particular confirmation. On January 22nd, former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, took to Twitter to express concern over the situation without committing to any specific details. Zhao acknowledged rumors of a potential ransom scenario but admitted that he wasn't sure what was true for now.
Jamieson Laupp, chief technology officer and co founder at Casa, a self custody service, referred to the situation as unconfirmed rumors. Quote, we have no reliable info on what has transpired. Though Ledger's silence makes my spidey senses tingle, I suspect that there is an ongoing incident involving an undisclosed person, said Jameson Lop. Currently, Ledger's baseline offerings, the NanoSeries, we don't need that. Why are you telling me about the product line? Stop it. Alright. So they don't say anything about the missing finger in this report, but and unconfirmed, clearly, it looks like he that this David Ballard might have lost a finger during this entire thing because allegedly and again unconfirmed, there has been a couple of reports that a finger, David Bay or Ballard's finger was sent along with a ransom demand.
Now we'll have to we'll have to I guess we'll have to figure out if David Ballard is gonna show us one of his hands that that is missing a finger. I don't know. It doesn't matter. The guy got kidnapped. I hope he I hope he has no injuries whatsoever because losing a finger would suck. Losing anything off your body is gotta suck. Alright. Let's just hope and pray that David Ballard is okay. Even though I don't like his product, he's a human being. He doesn't need to be kidnapped. So I go into the 100th time that I've begged everybody within the sound of my voice to listen to me. Stop wearing Bitcoin swag.
It doesn't look cool, and it makes you a target. And it's the second part that's more problematic. I see people wearing shit that doesn't look cool all day. That's just because that's my style, man. Just because I think a great big orange disk with a with a Bitcoin symbol in the middle of it on your freaking chest looks kinda dumb anyway, all I really see is a 3 ring target. Like, shoot here. Come get me. I've got Bitcoin. That's all that shit says. That's all whether you're wearing just a hat or, god forbid, you've got freaking, like, crypto tattoos on your forearms in a sleeve of all the shit coins that you've gotten raped by over the last 10 fucking years, then, yeah, sure. If you wanna walk around with sleeves of shit coins, be my guest, sayonora. Because at one point or another, it's gonna do you in.
It's gonna do you in, man. I don't wear Bitcoin hats. I don't wear shirts. I don't wear I don't even wear the socks. And those would probably be the safest swag to wear, but the minute that you pull up your pant leg and somebody goes, oh, he might have Bitcoin. Because that's all that signals. It doesn't signal coolness. It signals that you might be some a person of interest. Like David Ballard. Thank God he came out of this whole thing alive. But I'm serious, man. If you think I'm just kind of blowing smoke here, I don't know what to tell you. We live in very serious times. There is nothing but strife and and people that are scared to death out there because of the way that we've completely destroyed the monetary systems of every country on the planet. And if you don't think that the that there is enough people out there that know what Bitcoin is to look at you and your Bitcoin shirt and say, I might be able to get myself out of the hole I'm in, then you're lying to yourself.
Don't wear swag. Now Lummis posted a couple of things this morning on Twitter causing the Bitcoin price to escalate a little bit. Nobody really knows what the hell is going on. But let's see what the hell CoinDesk has to say. Oh, and by the way, CoinDesk is moving or has moved to a subscription model. If you didn't know, I found out this morning when I was doing research for the show, came across this particular thing and and all of a sudden this paywall comes up or a subscription wall comes up with, you've only got 4 free articles left this month for CoinDesk, so be sure to become a member. I'm like, okay, let's see what happens when I click, subscribe.
And you know what happened? They want me to sign up with email. No. No. We we live in a time of nostril identification that is so stupidly easy with things like, you know, go get Albie and nostril wallet connect and all the tools that, you know, Insect Bunker, that there's no reason in the world that CoinDesk couldn't have a lightning network or even an or like, well, a lightning network paywall, so that I could buy this particular article for like 50¢ or even a buck. Right? I mean it's not I mean a buck isn't gonna kill me but no no no no they're they're doing the same thing that Forbes wants you to do. They want you to have a full monthly subscription.
And as far as I can tell, there's no ability for me to pay them in Lightning Network even on a subscription basis. So they're going to be like, I I'm not going to stop reading CoinDesk. I'm just going to be sending their articles over to archive.ph and read them to you anyway. Because if you're too stupid to figure out a way to do business with me, then you don't deserve my money. Lummis, to lead crypto vital US senate panel with digital asset industry defenders. Whoo. We're being defended by Cynthia Lummis. And this is written by Jesse Hamilton, by the way. The US Senate Banking Committee has officially set its roster for the new digital assets committee, putting senator Cynthia Lummis at the top as expected.
But it also includes two names that received heavy backing from the Crypto Political Action Committee Fair Shake in the 2024 elections. New senator Bernie Moreno, the Ohio blockchain entrepreneur who knocked off former Democratic chairman Sherrod Brown, is among the panel's 5 Republicans. The crypto super PAC devoted a towering $40,000,000 to back that one guy, Bernie Moreno, in that contest. And among the 4 Democrats, the ranking senator is Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego, who received about $10,000,000 in ad support from Fair Shake. The subcommittee is likely to represent the tip of the spear for crypto legislation in this session of congress. The house of representatives had been far ahead of the senate last year in approving digital asset measures, but the senate banking committee led by Brown had resisted taking up the bills.
With the new subcommittee in place, led by Wyoming Republican Lummus, the industry is likely to soon take up bills and Lummus has authored a few herself in previous sessions. So I guess her announcement on Twitter fooled everybody into believing that she was going to be releasing she was she made an she pulled a Justin Sun. Right? The Tron founder. He was famous for making announcements of an announcement soon to come. And it was a whole inside joke thing. Oh, Justin Sun, did he did he announce that he was going to make an announcement about going to the bathroom? Yeah. It was, like, literally that bad. I mean, it was just terrible. So she puts out a couple of tweets this morning or last late last night or something that said, 10 AM, big things are happening.
And then another one that said, I don't know. It's like big things are on the horizon. And then and then she, like, replied to that with 10 AM, Big things are happening. And it caused everybody to automatically assume that there was going to be some kind of statement about the SBR. Now I I'm I'm recording the show right now, so I don't know if that has happened or not. But it started looking after we had this massive spike past a 105,000, which did occur. We had like a little like a little mini god candle, a little, god godlet candle, I guess, is what you might wanna call it.
It looked like what she was really talking about is the announcement that she was announcing was going to be the announcement that she was in fact installed as the head of this, senate panel. So the whole the hype cycle, when it get when the people that are senators and representatives know how to play the hype cycle, that's when I really I really want my hole in the ground. I want my cave. I want my shack in the middle of the woods. I want my hermitage. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities, breaking. OpenAI has introduced something called Operator to automate tasks like vacation planning and restaurant reservations.
Because, yes, that's what the best thing for humanity is, is to use AI to make dinner reservations for fuck's sake. Okay. So oil taking it on the chin because over in Davos, where they're, I guess, in between skiing sessions determining how to yet destroy more of our lives, Trump is talking about he wants lower oil prices. Okay, brother. Okay. Whatever, dude. Oil is reacting because it's down 3 quarters of a point to $74.86 a barrel. Brent Norsee is down 0.62 percent to 78.50. Natural gas is down 1 and a quarter to $3.90 per 1,000 cubic feet. And gasoline is up up a third of a point to $2.6 a gallon.
Gold is down a quarter. Silver is down damn near 2%. Platinum is down well, it's not even down. It's moving sideways. And copper is up 2 thirds of a point while palladium swinging for the fences at a full 1 and a third percentage point to the upside. Most agricultural futures are in the green today. Biggest winner is sugar, 3.14% to the downside or to the upside. And biggest loser is chocolate, almost a half percent to the downside. Live cattle up a third. Lean hogs moving sideways. Feeder cattle up a quarter. The Dow is up 0.8%.
The S and P is up a quarter. Nasdaq, however, only 1 in the red. It's down a quarter and the S and P mini is essentially moving sideways. Now, bitcoin, $105,500 puts us squarely in the $2,090,000,000,000 market cap. We can purchase 38.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,813,932 and a half of, and average fees per block are a little lower this morning. 0.05 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. And there are 52 blocks carrying a measly 120,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte.
Low priorities, you can count on 4. Hash rate on a 1 week moving average is pegging 785 hexahashes per second. And from yesterday's episode, Ross is free. I got anonymous with 3,333 SAT says abused. Anonymous with 3,333 SAT says, peas happy oh, PS. Happy birthday, bruh. Thank you, anonymous. I appreciate both those boosts. 1,000 sats from at says, thank you from Denmark. And it's always such a good feeling when somebody from a completely different country than my country of origin is listening from. It, like, it makes me international. That makes me feel like I should go to Germany in some kind of black unitard and go to, you know, drink drink my ass under the table at some kind of weird club listening to weird dance music. And now it's time for the dance.
God's depth of 537 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. 210 sats from Pye says, loaded some sats to wish you a happy birthday, sir. Oh, being a Pye's thanks, brother. Nick underscore dose with a 101 says, cheers. And I believe no. Wait. Wait. We've got Vermilion who hasn't actually given me any sats, but says, happy belated birthday. Sorry, but I'm unable to boost on fountain for some unknown reason. One down, many to go. One I don't hear enough of is Ian Freeman of the crypto 6. Uh-oh. Locked up for selling Bitcoin without a license, and that license didn't exist. Totally unjust.
Is he a oh, is he a shit coiner? Yes. But he was once a Bitcoiner. Details at www.freeinnow.org. That's freeeannow. And we might as well just we gotta get Snowden out, we gotta get the samurai guys out, we gotta get the tornado cash guys out. The amount of fixing that we have to do is immense. And I don't know if we're gonna be able to get any of it done, much less some of it done, much less most of it done. But I had not heard about Ian Freeman, e I or sorry sorry. Not e. I a n. Ian, that's a good British name. Ian Freeman. I had not heard about the crypto 6.
So I appreciate Vermillion for bringing that up. I'll go look into that and see what I come up with. Is there anything else? No. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. There's a mutiny afoot at the Ethereum Foundation. YETH HODLers are calling for a wartime CEO, and all I can think of is The Godfather. That's if you never seen The Godfather, if you haven't seen that movie, you need to see that movie. At least Godfather 1 and Godfather 2. Not sure about the third one. I mean, I like all 3 of them. But, dude, 12, if you have not seen those movies, those movies are freaking masterpieces.
Right? So there's a scene. It's the go to the mattresses scene. And if you ever if you watched, like, You Have Male with Meg Ryan and, Tom Hanks, he is explaining what go to the mattresses means. Anyway, there there's this the go to the mattresses scene has, Robert Duvall because he's the lawyer for the family, the the the mobster family. Al Pacino is the guy that's taken over the family from his father. Alright? So now he's he's the mobster. He's the big boss. He's the he's the head of the family. And there's, like, some other guy in there. Anyway, what they're talking about is that they're going to war with well, they're just going to war. Right? They're they're they're under attack.
They're, you know, they're they're losing territory. They've gotta defend it. So they're that's when he explains that they're going to the mattresses. So Robert Duvall, his character is talking to Al Pacino's character and says something like, I'll do all I can. And Al Pacino just kinda grabs him on the shoulder and said it gives him a squeeze and says, I'm sorry. I need a wartime consigliere. That's consigliere, I guess, is counsel in Italian. I I I don't know. I'm not gonna pretend that I do know. But that's what I figure since he's the lawyer. He needs a wartime consigliere.
And Robert Duvall looks all dejected because he knows that he doesn't have the chops to be the wartime lawyer for this mobster family. And that's all I can think of when I read shit like Mutiny at the Ethereum Foundation, why ETH holders are calling for a wartime CEO. I mean, could you imagine, like, looking at Vitalik Buterin and going, yeah, he looks like he's about to throw down. I I mean, his dad? His dad looks like he could throw down. Vitalik looks like if he threw down anything, he would break in half. But let's get into what the hell is going on over there.
Not because this is a shitcoin podcast, but because ETH is losing its ass against Bitcoin, and this is a good thing. And maybe this will accelerate by throwing gasoline on the dumpster fire that is the mother asshole from which all shit coins flow from, or at least most of them. On Wednesday morning, a mysterious Twitter profile emerged calling itself the second foundation. An apparent reference to a splinter organization from the Ethereum Foundation, which has come under fire in recent days due to widespread perceptions that one of Ethereum's leading research and development units is falling behind.
While not much is known about the second foundation entity, which only follows the first and to date only official Ethereum Foundation account on Twitter, it seems to have been created as a sort of protest against the current foundation without the goal of necessarily building a second foundation. Quote, the tweet was just a tweet. No actual second foundation has been created yet, said Lido founder, Konstantin Lemshuk, following rumors that he was involved with its creation. Although the second foundation isn't currently planning to set up a real foundation, its creation and the subsequent conversation around it are significant.
The situation has struck a nerve within the Ethereum Foundation or the Ethereum community, which is currently splintering amid a period of intense self criticism and apparent strife within the Ethereum Foundation itself. Quote, people explicitly challenge the original Ethereum Foundation is a real demonstration of lack of faith by the community, Columbia Business School associate professor Austin Campbell told The Block in a direct message. Quote, it's basically a mutiny, said a prominent DeFi founder who asked not to be named. Uh-oh.
A mutiny user. A wide ranging debate over the past and future of Ethereum is taking place on social media platforms like Twitter and Discord. And privately, amongst Ethereum's of influential decision makers with many once adamant ETH defenders declaring that they've lost hope on the protocol. Quote, the sentiment from from what I can tell is that people are fed up with Ethereum Foundation's inaction and lack of leadership vision. Woz, a pseudonymous crypto trader and frequently critical commentator, told The Block in a direct message. Perhaps most notably, Ethereum co creator and consensus CEO Joseph Lubin called upon Danny Ryan, a former EF, Ethereum Foundation, researcher who led the network's complicated switch to proof of stake and Ethereum France president Jerome De Taicci to co lead the foundation and exert energy, talent, outside of the box thinking in Ethereum's marketing and output.
Again, Ethereum's marketing, their market it's a fucking security, people. For god's sakes, get it through your head. This would be to replace current EF executive direct Aya Mayaguchi who has drawn particular ire from many in the Ethereum community due to her perceived dovishness. Quote, the problem here is that Ethereum leaders like Aya lack skin in the game, Internet theorist, Roko Michak told The Block, quote, imagine taking your entire net worth, withdrawing it as cash, and handing this giant pile of cash to the squirrel in the garden, and the squirrel starts burying it in the ground and using it to make a nice nest and so on. And you're like, fuck you. You said you would invest my money, not make a nest with it. That is basically the situation that ETH whales are in with Aya et al. You said you you said you would invest my money.
That sounds a lot like part of the Howey test, does it not? Ethereum's a security. Make no mistake. Anyway, it's a point echoed by many and exacerbated by the rising competition from alternative blockchains as well as the ETH tokens relative market underperformance. For instance, the ETHBTC price ratio, which tracks the relative value of Ethereum to Bitcoin, is at its lowest point since 2021. Quote, I think most crypto natives, myself included, are frustrated with the Ethereum Foundation's lack of competitiveness. Feels like they got complacent being number 2, and now Solana is clearly threatening that, another pseudonymous ETH supporter, Gleb, told The Block. Quote, haven't written them off just yet, but, obviously, we want to see some major changes in leadership that can make decisions that benefit holders instead of themselves.
I think that would turn sentiment around and have a positive impact on the community and price. So let's get into that underperformance. One of the most consistent complaints centers around the Ethereum Foundation's arguably untenable burn rate. The organization, which currently holds approximately $800,000,000 worth of ETH, spent around $240,000,000 combined in 2022 and 2023 according to a year end report, with many saying it has little to show for that spending. Well, there's no real clarity on how the Ethereum Foundation works, what its governance model is, how decisions are made, who even works for the EF, what are they paid, how is the money spent in any detail at all, said Bob Summerill, an early Ethereum supporter who is now executive director at the ETC Cooperative.
Moreover, for years, the EF has been criticized for dumping ETH to pay salaries. To be sure, roughly 3 quarters of its annual spending goes to layer 1 research and development and funding new institutions and community development, whatever the hell that means. All told, the Ethereum Foundation spends about as much, approximately 8% per year, on internal operations as it does on separate l 2, zk, and blockchain tooling research and development. Asked what he'd want the Ethereum Foundation to spend money on, Campbell said, actually focus on the things users and future users care about instead of your niche, personal, or technical interests.
This isn't to suggest that everyone disagrees with the EF's direction. Blockchain lead at Paul Brody, said that while he doesn't agree with all of its decisions at the big picture level, they have successfully delivered. Yeah. They've delivered the ability to change proof of work to proof of stake and thereby completely replicating what we already had, which is antithetical to the entire existence of Bitcoin anyway and all the things that came after it. But, yeah, sure. Go ahead, Paul Brody from Ernst and Young. Anyway, quote, there are some substantive complaints about EF, Brody said.
It's not business friendly. They spend too much money and not always on the right things. They don't monetize the things that they should like DevCon. I don't think that they will, but they could replenish the entire amount of money by monetizing just DevCon and permitting sponsorships, end quote. Yes. Because we have to market everything. Others have suggested the organization could be more active on chain beyond simply using cowswap, a decentralized exchange aggregator to trade ether for DAI, d a I. Over the past several days, there have been many suggestions for the Ethereum Foundation to stake a portion of its holdings to earn revenue to fund the organization or participate in decentralized finance.
They probably don't. This is me. They probably don't because they know DeFi is all fake, smoke and mirrors, a dumpster fire, a clown show, and a shit show all wrapped into 1. Anyway, continuing, the Ethereum Foundation holds 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars and has huge impact on how the Ethereum ecosystem plays out, Somerville said. Well, these critiques and suggestions are not going unheard. On Sunday, Ethereum co creator and spiritual leader, I swear to God they actually write this, Spiritual leader Vitalik Buterin said on Twitter that the Ethereum Foundation have been planning changes to the foundation for the past several months to make the organization more transparent and better able to execute.
The following day, Heiseu Wei Wang, who was recently appointed to a leadership role at the EF, said the firm plans to diversify its significant Ethereum holdings by participating in defi. Oh, good. I hope you get wrecked. For many, however, this is too little, too late. A problem only compounded by later posts suggesting Buterin remain in support of Mayaguchi who Buterin named executive director back in 2018. On Tuesday, Buterin responded to criticisms of Miyaguchi as an attempted scapegoat attack and noted he was the ultimate decision maker until a proper board was established. Buterin claims to be in charge of restructuring the foundation, as well as Miyaguchi's fate, have drawn mixed reactions.
Some see his declaration of being the ultimate decision maker as a sign of him stepping into the role of a wartime CEO. Ethereum, while others note it's emblematic of Ethereum's ivory tower. Quote, you can't reform a kingdom while a king sits on the throne, prominent NFT influencer DC investor said on Twitter. Quote, Vitalik is the leader, but he does not want to be the leader, Summerall wrote to the block. Quote, Vitalik has to lead with the current setup, but in my humble opinion, should have set up professional leadership years ago and been in a chief scientist kind of role with those professionals driven with community input.
All of this circles back to the idea of a second foundation. A type of organization that could help take some of the organizational responsibilities away from the Ethereum Foundation. On Tuesday, in response to Buterin saying that the EF is only one part of the world computer, Uniswap founder, Hayden Adams, pitched the idea of moving technical development to an alternative organization funded by the Ethereum Foundation, Consensus, and various Ethereum aligned organizations, noting that Uniswap's treasury alone sits at over $6,000,000,000 It was an idea that has seemingly caught on despite differing views on what this auxiliary organization might do.
For instance, our Amanda Cassett, founder of PR firm Serotonin and former marketing lead at Consensus, noted that Ethereum needs a marketing engine and that Ethereum Foundation isn't fit for purpose. Pausing to highlight, Ethereum needs a marketing engine, and this is from a marketer, from a PR firm founder. I'm sorry, but again, I have to direct everybody to let you understand that this marketing push, this this passes part of the Howey test. I'm marketing you a security and through the actions of a third party you can expect income.
You can expect your investment to grow. This is a security, except it's unregistered. Everything about Ethereum is illegal and that makes everything that came out of Ethereum illegal. They're all securities. I can tell because they keep talking about marketing their shitcoin. Anyway, quote, it's important to work with professional marketers who have dealt with these issues, David Phelps, co founder of Joke Race, told The Block. Quote, spinning off a second foundation without any of the support of the Ethereum community or the Ethereum Foundation is just antagonistic.
But if they're going to do a bunch of marketing e f isn't going to do, it's a win. One crypto Twitter mainstay, Alif, noted that at best, quote, without doxxed founders and a plan to get money to cover funding, it seems unlikely to do anything. And at worst, grift. End quote. Others note that even if it's real, there's a huge chance things will go awry. As Andre Andre Cronje remarked in a direct message, and I believe Andre Cronje is the guy that started SushiSwap, the quote, the foundation's power is its funding. Without the Ethereum Foundation willingly moving all of its funds, which it won't, 2nd foundation is meaningless, end quote.
There are also no barriers in place to prevent further forks, perhaps leading to a situation of multiple warring organizations if they cannot remain aligned. It's definitely an untried idea, at least I think. High risk if it would really work, says Lighten Cusack, ecosystem lead at Tools for Humanity and founder of the pool together protocol. Quote, protocols should have multiple foundations, maintaining decentralization by having multiple foundations that have different specialties and operate in centralized ways.
That said, Cusack said, there's a certain unnoticed benefit to how the Ethereum Foundation has operated over the years. In being insular and a bit out of touch, the Ethereum Foundation has largely avoided the eye of watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission and helped maintain a vision of Ethereum as truly being decentralized. Quote, we have the perfect foundation for a hostile regulatory environment based in Switzerland, super under the radar, he said, quote, the Ethereum ETF that would not have happened if they were more active, end quote. Bad sentence. Whatever. Others note that even if the second foundation doesn't come to pass, the recent conversation, while perhaps fraught at times, can also lead to substantive changes at the existent Ethereum foundation.
Honestly, it's all bullshit. This is the I'm not calling I'm not calling it. I'm not saying that this means that Ethereum is dead. But dude, this does not look good for those guys. And I'm all for it. Because I have hated Ethereum for years. Everything about everything that I've seen since 2015 when it comes to Ethereum. In the 1st 6 months after I bought my very first Bitcoin, I was interested in Ethereum. Because they were using the catchphrases. They were using things like, the world computer and, what else they use? Oh, like the they used a whole bunch of different things, But it was proof of work at the time. It it was run being run the mining Ethereum had to be done using GPU's.
They hadn't even made a 6 for it. It was still new. It was still fresh. And, yeah, I bought some. And then like 6 months later, I was like, this is complete horseshit. I'm getting out and I sold it all into Bitcoin. And I've done pretty well because of that, say, selling into Bitcoin. I have seen nothing but a downward slide of the of Ethereum against Bitcoin. And honestly, it's, you know, a lot longer. This has been going on for a long time. I think it's like, I think it actually, that slide started more around 2020 than it actually did, 2021, but whatever for 4 years, for 4 full years, Ethereum has done nothing but slide against Bitcoin.
So if you held Bitcoin, you're you're doing fine. But if you're holding Ethereum, you're just losing money and purchasing power in terms of Bitcoin. I highly recommend getting the hell out. If you want to, you know, fine. If you don't, fine. I don't honestly, I don't care. You can't save everybody. So let's move away from this wartime Vitalik Buterin bullshit, which is sounds like that entire thing is about to die. And move on over to Kansas where yet another bill to invest public pension funds into Bitcoin ETFs has been tabled.
Atlas21.com has this one. Kansas Republican senator Craig Bowser has introduced bill number 34, a proposal that would pave the way for public pension funds to invest in spot Bitcoin ETFs in Kansas. The legislative proposal filed January 16th would authorize the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, or Keepers, to invest up to 10% of state pension assets in financial products linked to Bitcoin. The bill includes the creation of a dedicated board of directors, to oversee the investments with an annual reporting requirement to the governor on the program's progress. An interesting detail of the proposal is that the clause that does not mandate the sale of positions even if the value of Bitcoin investments exceeds the 10% threshold, as long as it is in the beneficiary's best interest.
That is interesting. There's no forced sale if they make a shit ton of money on it. Because that's that that's sort of like everybody has is sort of the fiduciary responsibility of the of people like this is to rebalance portfolios, take profit, and move that use that profit to rebalance the portfolios. This doesn't have that provision as far as this particular, asset is concerned. Anyway, the initiative fits into a broader context of growing institutional acceptance of digital assets facilitated by the SEC's approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs. So will they buy Bitcoin or will they buy the Bitcoin ETF? They'll probably buy the Bitcoin ETF.
Well, actually, that's what what what it says. Invest public pension funds in Bitcoin ETFs and not Bitcoin directly. Hey, it's a start. It it's a start. So we'll have to see what they do. Just so you know, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is bullish on Bitcoin and says that adoption could push the price past $700,000. Do we believe them? When? When? When, Larry? When will it happen is all I gotta say. The idiots that are over there at Davos, they're gonna be talking out of their ass for a while. I would just ignore it, honestly. And this is where the World Economic Forum is what what is it? How did Ben Kenobi say it?
Yes. The World Economic Forum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. All of them are complicit. None of them like you. They all hate you. They would rather all of the citizenry of the world dies that they could just have these massive estates. That's what I actually believe. I don't think they want to rub shoulders with me or you or Joe the plumber. I think they just want the world to themselves and they will do anything to destroy anybody's hope to get there, which is why I think Larry Fink is undercutting Bitcoin by about $10,000,000 per coin.
Let's see. Do we need to do this one? Let's do let's do a part of this one and then we'll, call it good for the day. Sam Borgie, writing for coin telegraph.com, says that the real estate firm named Phantom can now add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. So buckle up. I mean, I told you yesterday we're gonna have more and more companies start doing this and it's gonna put a liquidity squeeze to the point that price starts popping up. Let's find out what these guys are planning on doing. The Nasdaq listed real estate services company Fathom Holdings is going to add Bitcoin to its corporate treasury.
And according to a January 23rd announcement, Fathom said that it is now going to allocate up to 50% of excess cash reserves towards bitcoin purchases. Initially, the company plans to allocate up to $500,000 towards Bitcoin or Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, God. The allocation will be adjusted to align with the company's operational requirements and prevailing market conditions. Fathom CEO Joanne Zoc said the decision reflects a desire to diversify the company's treasury holdings with a decentralized store of value that has seen rapid adoption since 2024. Zoc further stated, the integration of Bitcoin into commercial and financial strategies has accelerated across financial markets, positioning it as both a hedge against inflation and a safeguard against economic and currency risks in the global economy.
Fathom's stock price remained mostly unchanged following the news, is currently trading around $1.33 per share for a total market capitalization of $30,000,000 So it's a very small company at $30,000,000 but that actually makes me even more bullish. Cause even the small guys are getting into this shit. Now, it could be a hail Mary. You know, I'm seeing this with some of the other smaller companies. But that, for whatever reason, doesn't necessarily makes me any less bullish. We've got huge companies buying Bitcoin. We've got unite some states of the United States talking about their own Bitcoin Treasury Reserve.
We don't know what the hell the federal government is going to do with their SBR because Trump hasn't said a word about it and everybody's holding their breath like little babies. And then we've got massive companies like MicroStrategy and small companies like Simler Scientific and Fathom. Fathom is a $30,000,000 market cap, you know, mortgage and real estate services company. That's small potatoes. That's like mom and pop level stuff at $30,000,000. It it really is. It's that is not big. I mean, even a long time ago, when, you know, before we destroyed destroyed the money system all around the world, that was still not that big of a company when you consider it as part of when you consider it from the standpoint of market capitalization. Right?
So from the big to the very very big, all the way down to the very very small, everybody's getting in on this. And all it takes is for a lot of people to buy just a little. And all of a sudden you start getting liquidity issues because people start going, well, I don't want to sell my bitcoin at that low of a price. I'll I'll put in, you know, I'll put in my sells, like, way up at 250,000 or like Larry Fink at 700,000. Or if you're more like me, when like, right now, in my mind, when when you guys zap me for the show, or when you guys give me boostograms, when you guys are giving me, like, 3,000 satoshis, somehow in in the little a little part of the lizard brain that is, you know, my brain stem, somehow I actually see that as $3,000.
Now, I may not ever be alive to actually see sat dollar parity, But for some reason, there's this little part of my brain that just sees it as $3,000 even though it's not. Well, not yet. We'll have to see. And when we do, I'll see you there 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.
Wow. It is 9:43 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the 23rd day of January 2025. This is episode 1023 of bitcoin ant. Damn. The 23rd, 1,023rd show on the 23rd day of January. Man, the numerology just keeps racking up and we got all kinds of weird shit going on today. Today feels weird and I don't know if you feel weird, but I I I don't know what, but somehow or another I kind of woke up and things just feel weird. Not bad, not good, just neutral straight up strange. Like, I'm a stranger in a strange land or something like that. And and no, it has nothing to do with Trump or Davos or literally Hitler or anything else that's going on in the world today.
Somehow or another, I just got this, it's like being in tune with the universe and the universe is like, Dave, weird shit's going on today. So, be aware. Alright? So, yeah. I don't know. Like I said, I if you guys feel weird, then please boost the show and tell me if you feel weird too, or if it's it could just be me. I mean, there are several occasions when I think something is going on and other people get it, and I'm the only one that's getting it, which basically means that I'm probably hallucinating, which is which is fine. It's it's okay. I've hallucinated before.
Generally speaking, there's other items involved in those hallucinations, but not today. Today just feels straight up weird. So let's start with some big news. China to have fun staying poor. Why? Well, because China sold nearly $20,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin from the plus token seizure according to CryptoQuant CEO. This is out of Cointelegraph, Zolton Vardai. Tell us how China is going to have fun staying poor. The Chinese government has likely likely sold its nearly $20,000,000,000 bitcoin stack, contributing to significant sell pressure for the world's first cryptocurrency. China's treasury sold over $19,700,000,000 worth of Bitcoin leading up to today, January 23rd, according to Kai Yong Zhu, founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm, CryptoKwan.
The crypto seized from PlusToken in 2019 was likely sent to cryptocurrency exchanges such as Huobi, wrote Zhu in a January 23rd Twitter post. A censored regime holding censorship resistant money feels unlikely, he said. The large scale selling comes over 4 years after Chinese authorities seized $4,200,000,000 worth of crypto from the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, which has led to the arrest of at least 109 individuals so far. They're all probably literally Hitler. Just saying. There's literally Hitler is just, like, all over the place lately. It's one of the reasons why things feel weird this morning. But continuing, Bitcoin remained above the $101,000 market on on January 23rd despite the near $20,000,000,000 sale.
However, BTC's price fell over 3.7% in the 24 hours leading up to the 12:22 AM UTC Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows. Okay. That whatever. Bitcoin's resilience is partly thanks to continued purchases from the world's largest asset manager, your friend and mine, BlackRock, which has been acquiring Bitcoin for 5 consecutive trading days, Farside Investor Data shows. Notably, BlackRock's Bitcoin exchange traded funds bought 6 $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin on January 21st, which marks its biggest buy of this year according to ARCEM Intelligence. Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains sensitive to to economic developments in the absence of news regarding United States crypto regulation, and concerns over tightening monetary policy will continue pressuring Bitcoin's price, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.
The analyst told Cointelegraph, quote, a recent dip and concerns over potential global interest rate hikes have created short term bearish sentiment. However, institutional buying, particularly from World Liberty Finance, may stabilize prices. That's Trump's outfit, dude. Don't if you're gonna, like, actually put your eggs in that basket, oh, my eggs will be safe here. Oh, oh, like, I I feel good about crypto because World Liberty Financial is going to save the day. You're putting your eggs in a wrong basket. Please don't do that. It's World Liberty Financial is not going to save you.
Right? It is ridiculous to even think that an outfit the size of World Liberty Financial has anything at all to do with the greater crypto landscape. It's just all bullshit, right? Anyway, to end it, markets are now expecting the next US interest rate cut to occur on June 18th, according to the latest estimates of the CME Group's FedWatch tool. So China, in their great, striding walk towards irrelevance, has decided to just up and sell all their Bitcoin. And given what I'm looking at on the charts on an hourly basis, I generally keep it on the hour chart just to get, like, daily trends, this was just, for the last couple of days, just a stair step down.
Just moderate stair steps down and then it'll kind of go up a little bit and then like more sell pressure and more sell pressure. So it would not surprise me if, in fact, China did sell their entire stack of future wealth, the future of their country, the future of their citizenry, the future of everything China. I have not seen this level of stupidity since the United States decided to sell off a whole bunch of Bitcoin that they seized to what was that guy's name? Some billionaire bought it at, like I think he was paying, like, either 300 per coin or 3,000 per coin. You know the guy I'm talking about. And he made out like bandits because he bought it all at a United States Marshals Service auction.
The dude is banking, and he was already, like, extremely wealthy. So my question for China is, who did you sell your Bitcoin to? I'd laugh if you were selling your Bitcoin to Larry Fink. And, honestly, that's probably who China sold it to. So as China is selling out their country's future for fiat currency, which is essentially just not worth the paper that it's written on, we have a story that has been written by LOLA Leaks. And this is about Ross Olbrich or Ulbrich, who got pardoned, not had his sentence commuted. He got a full pardon, which means that the federal convictions never happened.
They never happened. As far as Ross Ulbricht is concerned, he never went to court. He was never charged. He was never convicted. It's all gone, and thank God for it. But a lot of people don't know about some of the other stuff that went along with this entire Silk Road case. So let's let Lola Leitz kinda fill us in as to some of the particulars of, well, the whole Silk Road case. And this is out of Bitcoin Magazine, again, written by Lola Leitz headline Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht. Why defend a murderer? Attention grab right there. Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of any parole for creating the darknetmarket Silk Road is free.
Ulbricht is a freedom fighter to some and a dangerous criminal to others. The former know Ulbricht as described in Forbes, quote, a principled libertarian in cypherpunk in the same vein as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Bulbruck TADA theory that violent drug cartels would have no chance sustaining themselves in a free market environment where the state did not control the use of substances as nonviolent operations would simply outperform the violent ones based on demand. Most who believe the latter, however, often base their opinion on claims that Ulbricht allegedly attempted to hire a hitman on a former Silk Road administrator who stood accused of embezzling Bitcoin from the site.
While Olbricht's supporters celebrate, critics are asking why would an online community so vehemently defend an attempted murderer? The controversies and outright corruption surrounding Ulbrich's prosecution should therefore not be forgotten. The charges against Ulbrich On February 5, 2015, a jury in the Southern District of New York found Ulbricht guilty of exclusively nonviolent crimes, including several charges of narcotics distribution, computer hacking, conspiracy to run a criminal enterprise, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The judge sentenced Olbertt to 2 life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole, almost twice the sentence of the very violent Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
The alleged murder for hire charges arose out of a different case filed in May of 2013 in Maryland. That indictment alleged that based on chat logs obtained from the Silk Road site, Ulbricht attempted to murder Curtis Greene for stealing Bitcoin from the project. As the chat logs read according to the indictment, Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym often attributed to Olbert, wrote to another Silk Road user whom he believed to be a drug kingpin capable of ordering a hitman, quote, I'd like to beat him up. Then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back. Like, sit him down at his computer and make him do it, end quote.
A day later, the indictment states, DPR, Dread Pirate Roberts, excuse me, changed his mind writing, can you change the order to execute rather than torture? Well, according to the indictment, DPR stated that Greene was on the inside for a while and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he'll give up info. Allegedly, adding that he had never killed a man before, but this is the right move in this case, end quote. And a few days later, $40,000 was wired into the hitman's account and DPR asked for proof of death via video or pictures to send the rest of the payment. On February 21, 2013, the kingpin informed DPR that Greene was dead. Quote, they killed him this weekend, he wrote, telling him that he died of asphyxiation and that the body was completely destroyed to eliminate any evidence.
Except the kingpin wasn't a kingpin. It was a DEA agent, Karl Force, who, as it would later turn out, liked to engage in a little criminal enterprise himself when granted the opportunity. So was it a real theft and a fake murder? Well, during the course of the investigation, Greene had been cooperating with law enforcement giving DEA agent Carl Force and Secret Service agent Shawn Bridges access to the Silk Road site. During one of law enforcement's sessions on Silk Road, a series of sizable thefts occurred on the site, which would later be traced back to Bridges, who plead guilty to stealing $350,000 worth of Bitcoin at the time of the theft, or $800,000 at the time of his guilty plea.
The account in question, operated by Bridges and in consultation with Force, had received no less than 20,000 bitcoin according to the complaint. Force, posing as the drug kingpin called Nob, n o b, then orchestrated the fake hit, together with Bridges, faked Green's death. Force went on to create the fake identity, death from above, to extort $250,000 from DPR stating, quote, I know that you had something to do with Greene's disappearance and death. Just wanted to let you know that I'm coming for you. You are a dead man. Don't think you can elude me, end quote. Well, Bridges was sentenced to 24 months in prison to be served consecutively with a 71 month sentence he received for a similar crime back in 2015, while Force was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
Information on the corrupt agents was never made available to be used in Ulbrich's defense. Let me tell you that again. After all that I'm pausing here. After all that, this information that you now know, if you didn't know it before, was never available to Ross Ulbrich's defense. It was never given to them in discovery. So who is Dread Pirate Roberts? Well, Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym attributed to Ulbrich, is taken from the 1973 novel, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, depicting an identity that is assumed by multiple characters. The identity, Dread Pirate Roberts, as written by Goldman, is shared between pirates to intimidate opponents, and passed on in secret.
In the course of the public proceedings of the case, evidence mounted that Silk Road's DPR was not solely operated by Ross Ulbricht. In a conversation with former friend Richard Bates, who helped Ulbricht set up the Silk Road site, Ulbricht responded with glad that's not my problem anymore when made aware of news coverage concerning the site. During the trial, prosecutors attempted to stop the defense from questioning another law enforcement officer, special agent Jared Der Yeagerhan, for the Department of Homeland Security, who believed that DPR was actually Mark Carpelles, the former Mt. Gox CEO, who was later convicted for falsifying Mt. Gox records and inflating the exchange's supply by tens of 1,000,000.
Duryagihan, however you pronounce his name, had referred to an exclusive interview with DPR and Forbes in which the pseudonymous Silk Road operator had stated that, quote, he hadn't actually created the Silk Road, but instead had befriended its creator and later acquired the site from him, end quote. Well, according to this gentleman, Der Jagerhan, DPR's writing sounded very much like that of his suspect, Mark Carpelles. Ander Yagerhan is not the only one alleged or or alleging that DPR sounded like someone else. As former dark wallet developer Amir Tarkey stated, quote, years ago, when I messaged the Silk Road, I had a conversation with the DPR, a very personal conversation where he was talking about how one day he hopes to be on the outside struggling for freedom together, you know, not having to hide his identity.
1 year or 2 years later, when I messaged the guy, I'm pretty certain it was not the same guy. The tone was completely different. He had no recollection of the events that happened before, and his attitude to me was in stark contrast to the exuberant and wordy DPR of the early days. This argument was further backed by pseudonymous Silk Road vendor, who stated that, there were at least 2 other people, if not 3, who were administrating Silk Road. Der Jagerhand corroborates this belief in an email 10 days before Ulbrich's arrest stating that, quote, we contributed to the other 2 admins getting away, end quote.
Silk Road employee, Andrew Jones, who had established a quote secret handshake with Ulbricht in 2012 to confirm his identity, did not believe that the late DPR was Ulbricht either. And according to court documents, Jones would ask DPR for a book recommendation to which the correct answer would be anything by Rothbard, an answer which DPR did not provide when asked 1 year later. To add intellectual insult to operational injuries, someone had logged in to DPR's account 6 weeks after Ross Ulbrich had been arrested and was in custody and in or rather in federal custody at the time, which may have been the corrupt agents who had administrative access to the site or another DPR altogether.
As stated by Green himself: and to everyone that says there were multiple DPRs absolutely there was. I was DPR once. So if I was, who else was? Regarding the murder for hire charges, Greene stated that he did not believe Ulbricht would have ordered a hit on him. As Greene stated in 2017, Ross Ulbricht got a raw deal. There is so much more on the Silk Road story than people know, and I can't yet talk about it. I don't believe Ross is dangerous or that it's in his character to order a hit on anyone. He should never have gotten that horrible sentence to cut to the chase yes, Ross Ulbricht operated Silk Road no, Ross Ulbricht was likely not the person with access to the DPR account Ross Ulbricht was never convicted of the murder for hire charges.
The case was dismissed in 2018 with prejudice, meaning that it can never be filed again. For all we know, we are all Dread Pirate Roberts. So, there there are many people and I get them I I still get them today, many people that I respect as well that somehow or another are holding this murder for hire charge shit close to their chest In one of 2 different ways. Either they believe that Ross Ulbricht actually tried to have somebody murdered or that he could still be charged for that murder for hire charges. And they're saying somehow or another giving lending some kind of actual credence to these charges.
There is no credence to these charges. Those charges were dropped. The case is dismissed. It was dropped with prejudice. He can never ever ever ever be charged for this shit again. And second of all, the reason it was dropped with prejudice is because it's clear. It was clear at the time that the judge dismissed the whole thing with prejudice that it was these 2, at least 2, if not fully 3, federal employees that had something to do with the investigatory process or the Justice Department or whatever, agents of the United States government were doing this.
Ross is free. I'm sorry if you keep looking for some other shoe to drop. There is no other shoe to drop. Ross is free. If you think he's a murderer, you can go fuck yourself. Because you clearly are fucked in your head, and you have no fucking clue what you're fucking talking about. Now, for all the people that just had children in their car and they're just aghast, I'm sorry. But this kind of shit is unfucking tenable. I'm sick of hearing that, well, what about the murder for hire charges? Then you have literally no idea what you're talking about at all.
You have no understanding of what this story is. You've never dug into it. You are weak minded. You are lazy, and you have absolutely no reason to be sharing the same fucking oxygen that I do. Because you're not worth my time. I'm pissed because this shit keeps getting spread. And I'm sick of it. Stop talking about Ross Ulbricht being a murderer. There is not a scrap of evidence to suggest that he did anything even remotely like it. And not only that, the court system agreed and dismissed the case with prejudice. It's never coming back because it never happened in the first place.
Stop it. I'm sick of it. And also stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Thankfully, the gentleman in question did not get killed, but I think he might have lost a finger. Ledger cofounder has been released after days in captivity in France according to a report. Mihab Queshri from Cointelegraph is writing this one. David Ballant, cofounder of the French cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was released following a harrowing kidnapping incident according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office cited by Bloomberg. Ballard was abducted from his home in central France during the early hours of, you guessed it, January 21st.
He was held captive until a police operation on the night of January 22nd secured his release. The kidnappers had demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency. The company or ledger was established in 2014 by Ballard and others, and the devices are designed to keep users' private keys offline, thereby safeguarding digital assets from online vulnerabilities. Pausing to say do not use Ledger. It is not safe. It is not safe. It is not safe. Please use something else. Either get a cold card or get a treasure or something like that. I used to use Ledger. I had to buy 3 of them because they kept breaking on me. I'm never going to do business with that company ever again. I highly recommend you run, not walk away from Ledger. But continuing, the company which raised €100,000,000 in 2020 3, now boasts a valuation of €1,300,000,000 and employs about 700 people.
Ransomware gangs extorted over $1,100,000,000 in cryptocurrency payments from victims in 2023, according to data from the blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis. This entire thing came amid widespread rumors circulating on social media January 20 second about a potential kidnapping of a Ledger executive, and the rumors lacked any concrete evidence until this particular confirmation. On January 22nd, former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, took to Twitter to express concern over the situation without committing to any specific details. Zhao acknowledged rumors of a potential ransom scenario but admitted that he wasn't sure what was true for now.
Jamieson Laupp, chief technology officer and co founder at Casa, a self custody service, referred to the situation as unconfirmed rumors. Quote, we have no reliable info on what has transpired. Though Ledger's silence makes my spidey senses tingle, I suspect that there is an ongoing incident involving an undisclosed person, said Jameson Lop. Currently, Ledger's baseline offerings, the NanoSeries, we don't need that. Why are you telling me about the product line? Stop it. Alright. So they don't say anything about the missing finger in this report, but and unconfirmed, clearly, it looks like he that this David Ballard might have lost a finger during this entire thing because allegedly and again unconfirmed, there has been a couple of reports that a finger, David Bay or Ballard's finger was sent along with a ransom demand.
Now we'll have to we'll have to I guess we'll have to figure out if David Ballard is gonna show us one of his hands that that is missing a finger. I don't know. It doesn't matter. The guy got kidnapped. I hope he I hope he has no injuries whatsoever because losing a finger would suck. Losing anything off your body is gotta suck. Alright. Let's just hope and pray that David Ballard is okay. Even though I don't like his product, he's a human being. He doesn't need to be kidnapped. So I go into the 100th time that I've begged everybody within the sound of my voice to listen to me. Stop wearing Bitcoin swag.
It doesn't look cool, and it makes you a target. And it's the second part that's more problematic. I see people wearing shit that doesn't look cool all day. That's just because that's my style, man. Just because I think a great big orange disk with a with a Bitcoin symbol in the middle of it on your freaking chest looks kinda dumb anyway, all I really see is a 3 ring target. Like, shoot here. Come get me. I've got Bitcoin. That's all that shit says. That's all whether you're wearing just a hat or, god forbid, you've got freaking, like, crypto tattoos on your forearms in a sleeve of all the shit coins that you've gotten raped by over the last 10 fucking years, then, yeah, sure. If you wanna walk around with sleeves of shit coins, be my guest, sayonora. Because at one point or another, it's gonna do you in.
It's gonna do you in, man. I don't wear Bitcoin hats. I don't wear shirts. I don't wear I don't even wear the socks. And those would probably be the safest swag to wear, but the minute that you pull up your pant leg and somebody goes, oh, he might have Bitcoin. Because that's all that signals. It doesn't signal coolness. It signals that you might be some a person of interest. Like David Ballard. Thank God he came out of this whole thing alive. But I'm serious, man. If you think I'm just kind of blowing smoke here, I don't know what to tell you. We live in very serious times. There is nothing but strife and and people that are scared to death out there because of the way that we've completely destroyed the monetary systems of every country on the planet. And if you don't think that the that there is enough people out there that know what Bitcoin is to look at you and your Bitcoin shirt and say, I might be able to get myself out of the hole I'm in, then you're lying to yourself.
Don't wear swag. Now Lummis posted a couple of things this morning on Twitter causing the Bitcoin price to escalate a little bit. Nobody really knows what the hell is going on. But let's see what the hell CoinDesk has to say. Oh, and by the way, CoinDesk is moving or has moved to a subscription model. If you didn't know, I found out this morning when I was doing research for the show, came across this particular thing and and all of a sudden this paywall comes up or a subscription wall comes up with, you've only got 4 free articles left this month for CoinDesk, so be sure to become a member. I'm like, okay, let's see what happens when I click, subscribe.
And you know what happened? They want me to sign up with email. No. No. We we live in a time of nostril identification that is so stupidly easy with things like, you know, go get Albie and nostril wallet connect and all the tools that, you know, Insect Bunker, that there's no reason in the world that CoinDesk couldn't have a lightning network or even an or like, well, a lightning network paywall, so that I could buy this particular article for like 50¢ or even a buck. Right? I mean it's not I mean a buck isn't gonna kill me but no no no no they're they're doing the same thing that Forbes wants you to do. They want you to have a full monthly subscription.
And as far as I can tell, there's no ability for me to pay them in Lightning Network even on a subscription basis. So they're going to be like, I I'm not going to stop reading CoinDesk. I'm just going to be sending their articles over to archive.ph and read them to you anyway. Because if you're too stupid to figure out a way to do business with me, then you don't deserve my money. Lummis, to lead crypto vital US senate panel with digital asset industry defenders. Whoo. We're being defended by Cynthia Lummis. And this is written by Jesse Hamilton, by the way. The US Senate Banking Committee has officially set its roster for the new digital assets committee, putting senator Cynthia Lummis at the top as expected.
But it also includes two names that received heavy backing from the Crypto Political Action Committee Fair Shake in the 2024 elections. New senator Bernie Moreno, the Ohio blockchain entrepreneur who knocked off former Democratic chairman Sherrod Brown, is among the panel's 5 Republicans. The crypto super PAC devoted a towering $40,000,000 to back that one guy, Bernie Moreno, in that contest. And among the 4 Democrats, the ranking senator is Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego, who received about $10,000,000 in ad support from Fair Shake. The subcommittee is likely to represent the tip of the spear for crypto legislation in this session of congress. The house of representatives had been far ahead of the senate last year in approving digital asset measures, but the senate banking committee led by Brown had resisted taking up the bills.
With the new subcommittee in place, led by Wyoming Republican Lummus, the industry is likely to soon take up bills and Lummus has authored a few herself in previous sessions. So I guess her announcement on Twitter fooled everybody into believing that she was going to be releasing she was she made an she pulled a Justin Sun. Right? The Tron founder. He was famous for making announcements of an announcement soon to come. And it was a whole inside joke thing. Oh, Justin Sun, did he did he announce that he was going to make an announcement about going to the bathroom? Yeah. It was, like, literally that bad. I mean, it was just terrible. So she puts out a couple of tweets this morning or last late last night or something that said, 10 AM, big things are happening.
And then another one that said, I don't know. It's like big things are on the horizon. And then and then she, like, replied to that with 10 AM, Big things are happening. And it caused everybody to automatically assume that there was going to be some kind of statement about the SBR. Now I I'm I'm recording the show right now, so I don't know if that has happened or not. But it started looking after we had this massive spike past a 105,000, which did occur. We had like a little like a little mini god candle, a little, god godlet candle, I guess, is what you might wanna call it.
It looked like what she was really talking about is the announcement that she was announcing was going to be the announcement that she was in fact installed as the head of this, senate panel. So the whole the hype cycle, when it get when the people that are senators and representatives know how to play the hype cycle, that's when I really I really want my hole in the ground. I want my cave. I want my shack in the middle of the woods. I want my hermitage. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities, breaking. OpenAI has introduced something called Operator to automate tasks like vacation planning and restaurant reservations.
Because, yes, that's what the best thing for humanity is, is to use AI to make dinner reservations for fuck's sake. Okay. So oil taking it on the chin because over in Davos, where they're, I guess, in between skiing sessions determining how to yet destroy more of our lives, Trump is talking about he wants lower oil prices. Okay, brother. Okay. Whatever, dude. Oil is reacting because it's down 3 quarters of a point to $74.86 a barrel. Brent Norsee is down 0.62 percent to 78.50. Natural gas is down 1 and a quarter to $3.90 per 1,000 cubic feet. And gasoline is up up a third of a point to $2.6 a gallon.
Gold is down a quarter. Silver is down damn near 2%. Platinum is down well, it's not even down. It's moving sideways. And copper is up 2 thirds of a point while palladium swinging for the fences at a full 1 and a third percentage point to the upside. Most agricultural futures are in the green today. Biggest winner is sugar, 3.14% to the downside or to the upside. And biggest loser is chocolate, almost a half percent to the downside. Live cattle up a third. Lean hogs moving sideways. Feeder cattle up a quarter. The Dow is up 0.8%.
The S and P is up a quarter. Nasdaq, however, only 1 in the red. It's down a quarter and the S and P mini is essentially moving sideways. Now, bitcoin, $105,500 puts us squarely in the $2,090,000,000,000 market cap. We can purchase 38.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,813,932 and a half of, and average fees per block are a little lower this morning. 0.05 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. And there are 52 blocks carrying a measly 120,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte.
Low priorities, you can count on 4. Hash rate on a 1 week moving average is pegging 785 hexahashes per second. And from yesterday's episode, Ross is free. I got anonymous with 3,333 SAT says abused. Anonymous with 3,333 SAT says, peas happy oh, PS. Happy birthday, bruh. Thank you, anonymous. I appreciate both those boosts. 1,000 sats from at says, thank you from Denmark. And it's always such a good feeling when somebody from a completely different country than my country of origin is listening from. It, like, it makes me international. That makes me feel like I should go to Germany in some kind of black unitard and go to, you know, drink drink my ass under the table at some kind of weird club listening to weird dance music. And now it's time for the dance.
God's depth of 537 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. 210 sats from Pye says, loaded some sats to wish you a happy birthday, sir. Oh, being a Pye's thanks, brother. Nick underscore dose with a 101 says, cheers. And I believe no. Wait. Wait. We've got Vermilion who hasn't actually given me any sats, but says, happy belated birthday. Sorry, but I'm unable to boost on fountain for some unknown reason. One down, many to go. One I don't hear enough of is Ian Freeman of the crypto 6. Uh-oh. Locked up for selling Bitcoin without a license, and that license didn't exist. Totally unjust.
Is he a oh, is he a shit coiner? Yes. But he was once a Bitcoiner. Details at www.freeinnow.org. That's freeeannow. And we might as well just we gotta get Snowden out, we gotta get the samurai guys out, we gotta get the tornado cash guys out. The amount of fixing that we have to do is immense. And I don't know if we're gonna be able to get any of it done, much less some of it done, much less most of it done. But I had not heard about Ian Freeman, e I or sorry sorry. Not e. I a n. Ian, that's a good British name. Ian Freeman. I had not heard about the crypto 6.
So I appreciate Vermillion for bringing that up. I'll go look into that and see what I come up with. Is there anything else? No. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. There's a mutiny afoot at the Ethereum Foundation. YETH HODLers are calling for a wartime CEO, and all I can think of is The Godfather. That's if you never seen The Godfather, if you haven't seen that movie, you need to see that movie. At least Godfather 1 and Godfather 2. Not sure about the third one. I mean, I like all 3 of them. But, dude, 12, if you have not seen those movies, those movies are freaking masterpieces.
Right? So there's a scene. It's the go to the mattresses scene. And if you ever if you watched, like, You Have Male with Meg Ryan and, Tom Hanks, he is explaining what go to the mattresses means. Anyway, there there's this the go to the mattresses scene has, Robert Duvall because he's the lawyer for the family, the the the mobster family. Al Pacino is the guy that's taken over the family from his father. Alright? So now he's he's the mobster. He's the big boss. He's the he's the head of the family. And there's, like, some other guy in there. Anyway, what they're talking about is that they're going to war with well, they're just going to war. Right? They're they're they're under attack.
They're, you know, they're they're losing territory. They've gotta defend it. So they're that's when he explains that they're going to the mattresses. So Robert Duvall, his character is talking to Al Pacino's character and says something like, I'll do all I can. And Al Pacino just kinda grabs him on the shoulder and said it gives him a squeeze and says, I'm sorry. I need a wartime consigliere. That's consigliere, I guess, is counsel in Italian. I I I don't know. I'm not gonna pretend that I do know. But that's what I figure since he's the lawyer. He needs a wartime consigliere.
And Robert Duvall looks all dejected because he knows that he doesn't have the chops to be the wartime lawyer for this mobster family. And that's all I can think of when I read shit like Mutiny at the Ethereum Foundation, why ETH holders are calling for a wartime CEO. I mean, could you imagine, like, looking at Vitalik Buterin and going, yeah, he looks like he's about to throw down. I I mean, his dad? His dad looks like he could throw down. Vitalik looks like if he threw down anything, he would break in half. But let's get into what the hell is going on over there.
Not because this is a shitcoin podcast, but because ETH is losing its ass against Bitcoin, and this is a good thing. And maybe this will accelerate by throwing gasoline on the dumpster fire that is the mother asshole from which all shit coins flow from, or at least most of them. On Wednesday morning, a mysterious Twitter profile emerged calling itself the second foundation. An apparent reference to a splinter organization from the Ethereum Foundation, which has come under fire in recent days due to widespread perceptions that one of Ethereum's leading research and development units is falling behind.
While not much is known about the second foundation entity, which only follows the first and to date only official Ethereum Foundation account on Twitter, it seems to have been created as a sort of protest against the current foundation without the goal of necessarily building a second foundation. Quote, the tweet was just a tweet. No actual second foundation has been created yet, said Lido founder, Konstantin Lemshuk, following rumors that he was involved with its creation. Although the second foundation isn't currently planning to set up a real foundation, its creation and the subsequent conversation around it are significant.
The situation has struck a nerve within the Ethereum Foundation or the Ethereum community, which is currently splintering amid a period of intense self criticism and apparent strife within the Ethereum Foundation itself. Quote, people explicitly challenge the original Ethereum Foundation is a real demonstration of lack of faith by the community, Columbia Business School associate professor Austin Campbell told The Block in a direct message. Quote, it's basically a mutiny, said a prominent DeFi founder who asked not to be named. Uh-oh.
A mutiny user. A wide ranging debate over the past and future of Ethereum is taking place on social media platforms like Twitter and Discord. And privately, amongst Ethereum's of influential decision makers with many once adamant ETH defenders declaring that they've lost hope on the protocol. Quote, the sentiment from from what I can tell is that people are fed up with Ethereum Foundation's inaction and lack of leadership vision. Woz, a pseudonymous crypto trader and frequently critical commentator, told The Block in a direct message. Perhaps most notably, Ethereum co creator and consensus CEO Joseph Lubin called upon Danny Ryan, a former EF, Ethereum Foundation, researcher who led the network's complicated switch to proof of stake and Ethereum France president Jerome De Taicci to co lead the foundation and exert energy, talent, outside of the box thinking in Ethereum's marketing and output.
Again, Ethereum's marketing, their market it's a fucking security, people. For god's sakes, get it through your head. This would be to replace current EF executive direct Aya Mayaguchi who has drawn particular ire from many in the Ethereum community due to her perceived dovishness. Quote, the problem here is that Ethereum leaders like Aya lack skin in the game, Internet theorist, Roko Michak told The Block, quote, imagine taking your entire net worth, withdrawing it as cash, and handing this giant pile of cash to the squirrel in the garden, and the squirrel starts burying it in the ground and using it to make a nice nest and so on. And you're like, fuck you. You said you would invest my money, not make a nest with it. That is basically the situation that ETH whales are in with Aya et al. You said you you said you would invest my money.
That sounds a lot like part of the Howey test, does it not? Ethereum's a security. Make no mistake. Anyway, it's a point echoed by many and exacerbated by the rising competition from alternative blockchains as well as the ETH tokens relative market underperformance. For instance, the ETHBTC price ratio, which tracks the relative value of Ethereum to Bitcoin, is at its lowest point since 2021. Quote, I think most crypto natives, myself included, are frustrated with the Ethereum Foundation's lack of competitiveness. Feels like they got complacent being number 2, and now Solana is clearly threatening that, another pseudonymous ETH supporter, Gleb, told The Block. Quote, haven't written them off just yet, but, obviously, we want to see some major changes in leadership that can make decisions that benefit holders instead of themselves.
I think that would turn sentiment around and have a positive impact on the community and price. So let's get into that underperformance. One of the most consistent complaints centers around the Ethereum Foundation's arguably untenable burn rate. The organization, which currently holds approximately $800,000,000 worth of ETH, spent around $240,000,000 combined in 2022 and 2023 according to a year end report, with many saying it has little to show for that spending. Well, there's no real clarity on how the Ethereum Foundation works, what its governance model is, how decisions are made, who even works for the EF, what are they paid, how is the money spent in any detail at all, said Bob Summerill, an early Ethereum supporter who is now executive director at the ETC Cooperative.
Moreover, for years, the EF has been criticized for dumping ETH to pay salaries. To be sure, roughly 3 quarters of its annual spending goes to layer 1 research and development and funding new institutions and community development, whatever the hell that means. All told, the Ethereum Foundation spends about as much, approximately 8% per year, on internal operations as it does on separate l 2, zk, and blockchain tooling research and development. Asked what he'd want the Ethereum Foundation to spend money on, Campbell said, actually focus on the things users and future users care about instead of your niche, personal, or technical interests.
This isn't to suggest that everyone disagrees with the EF's direction. Blockchain lead at Paul Brody, said that while he doesn't agree with all of its decisions at the big picture level, they have successfully delivered. Yeah. They've delivered the ability to change proof of work to proof of stake and thereby completely replicating what we already had, which is antithetical to the entire existence of Bitcoin anyway and all the things that came after it. But, yeah, sure. Go ahead, Paul Brody from Ernst and Young. Anyway, quote, there are some substantive complaints about EF, Brody said.
It's not business friendly. They spend too much money and not always on the right things. They don't monetize the things that they should like DevCon. I don't think that they will, but they could replenish the entire amount of money by monetizing just DevCon and permitting sponsorships, end quote. Yes. Because we have to market everything. Others have suggested the organization could be more active on chain beyond simply using cowswap, a decentralized exchange aggregator to trade ether for DAI, d a I. Over the past several days, there have been many suggestions for the Ethereum Foundation to stake a portion of its holdings to earn revenue to fund the organization or participate in decentralized finance.
They probably don't. This is me. They probably don't because they know DeFi is all fake, smoke and mirrors, a dumpster fire, a clown show, and a shit show all wrapped into 1. Anyway, continuing, the Ethereum Foundation holds 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars and has huge impact on how the Ethereum ecosystem plays out, Somerville said. Well, these critiques and suggestions are not going unheard. On Sunday, Ethereum co creator and spiritual leader, I swear to God they actually write this, Spiritual leader Vitalik Buterin said on Twitter that the Ethereum Foundation have been planning changes to the foundation for the past several months to make the organization more transparent and better able to execute.
The following day, Heiseu Wei Wang, who was recently appointed to a leadership role at the EF, said the firm plans to diversify its significant Ethereum holdings by participating in defi. Oh, good. I hope you get wrecked. For many, however, this is too little, too late. A problem only compounded by later posts suggesting Buterin remain in support of Mayaguchi who Buterin named executive director back in 2018. On Tuesday, Buterin responded to criticisms of Miyaguchi as an attempted scapegoat attack and noted he was the ultimate decision maker until a proper board was established. Buterin claims to be in charge of restructuring the foundation, as well as Miyaguchi's fate, have drawn mixed reactions.
Some see his declaration of being the ultimate decision maker as a sign of him stepping into the role of a wartime CEO. Ethereum, while others note it's emblematic of Ethereum's ivory tower. Quote, you can't reform a kingdom while a king sits on the throne, prominent NFT influencer DC investor said on Twitter. Quote, Vitalik is the leader, but he does not want to be the leader, Summerall wrote to the block. Quote, Vitalik has to lead with the current setup, but in my humble opinion, should have set up professional leadership years ago and been in a chief scientist kind of role with those professionals driven with community input.
All of this circles back to the idea of a second foundation. A type of organization that could help take some of the organizational responsibilities away from the Ethereum Foundation. On Tuesday, in response to Buterin saying that the EF is only one part of the world computer, Uniswap founder, Hayden Adams, pitched the idea of moving technical development to an alternative organization funded by the Ethereum Foundation, Consensus, and various Ethereum aligned organizations, noting that Uniswap's treasury alone sits at over $6,000,000,000 It was an idea that has seemingly caught on despite differing views on what this auxiliary organization might do.
For instance, our Amanda Cassett, founder of PR firm Serotonin and former marketing lead at Consensus, noted that Ethereum needs a marketing engine and that Ethereum Foundation isn't fit for purpose. Pausing to highlight, Ethereum needs a marketing engine, and this is from a marketer, from a PR firm founder. I'm sorry, but again, I have to direct everybody to let you understand that this marketing push, this this passes part of the Howey test. I'm marketing you a security and through the actions of a third party you can expect income.
You can expect your investment to grow. This is a security, except it's unregistered. Everything about Ethereum is illegal and that makes everything that came out of Ethereum illegal. They're all securities. I can tell because they keep talking about marketing their shitcoin. Anyway, quote, it's important to work with professional marketers who have dealt with these issues, David Phelps, co founder of Joke Race, told The Block. Quote, spinning off a second foundation without any of the support of the Ethereum community or the Ethereum Foundation is just antagonistic.
But if they're going to do a bunch of marketing e f isn't going to do, it's a win. One crypto Twitter mainstay, Alif, noted that at best, quote, without doxxed founders and a plan to get money to cover funding, it seems unlikely to do anything. And at worst, grift. End quote. Others note that even if it's real, there's a huge chance things will go awry. As Andre Andre Cronje remarked in a direct message, and I believe Andre Cronje is the guy that started SushiSwap, the quote, the foundation's power is its funding. Without the Ethereum Foundation willingly moving all of its funds, which it won't, 2nd foundation is meaningless, end quote.
There are also no barriers in place to prevent further forks, perhaps leading to a situation of multiple warring organizations if they cannot remain aligned. It's definitely an untried idea, at least I think. High risk if it would really work, says Lighten Cusack, ecosystem lead at Tools for Humanity and founder of the pool together protocol. Quote, protocols should have multiple foundations, maintaining decentralization by having multiple foundations that have different specialties and operate in centralized ways.
That said, Cusack said, there's a certain unnoticed benefit to how the Ethereum Foundation has operated over the years. In being insular and a bit out of touch, the Ethereum Foundation has largely avoided the eye of watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission and helped maintain a vision of Ethereum as truly being decentralized. Quote, we have the perfect foundation for a hostile regulatory environment based in Switzerland, super under the radar, he said, quote, the Ethereum ETF that would not have happened if they were more active, end quote. Bad sentence. Whatever. Others note that even if the second foundation doesn't come to pass, the recent conversation, while perhaps fraught at times, can also lead to substantive changes at the existent Ethereum foundation.
Honestly, it's all bullshit. This is the I'm not calling I'm not calling it. I'm not saying that this means that Ethereum is dead. But dude, this does not look good for those guys. And I'm all for it. Because I have hated Ethereum for years. Everything about everything that I've seen since 2015 when it comes to Ethereum. In the 1st 6 months after I bought my very first Bitcoin, I was interested in Ethereum. Because they were using the catchphrases. They were using things like, the world computer and, what else they use? Oh, like the they used a whole bunch of different things, But it was proof of work at the time. It it was run being run the mining Ethereum had to be done using GPU's.
They hadn't even made a 6 for it. It was still new. It was still fresh. And, yeah, I bought some. And then like 6 months later, I was like, this is complete horseshit. I'm getting out and I sold it all into Bitcoin. And I've done pretty well because of that, say, selling into Bitcoin. I have seen nothing but a downward slide of the of Ethereum against Bitcoin. And honestly, it's, you know, a lot longer. This has been going on for a long time. I think it's like, I think it actually, that slide started more around 2020 than it actually did, 2021, but whatever for 4 years, for 4 full years, Ethereum has done nothing but slide against Bitcoin.
So if you held Bitcoin, you're you're doing fine. But if you're holding Ethereum, you're just losing money and purchasing power in terms of Bitcoin. I highly recommend getting the hell out. If you want to, you know, fine. If you don't, fine. I don't honestly, I don't care. You can't save everybody. So let's move away from this wartime Vitalik Buterin bullshit, which is sounds like that entire thing is about to die. And move on over to Kansas where yet another bill to invest public pension funds into Bitcoin ETFs has been tabled.
Atlas21.com has this one. Kansas Republican senator Craig Bowser has introduced bill number 34, a proposal that would pave the way for public pension funds to invest in spot Bitcoin ETFs in Kansas. The legislative proposal filed January 16th would authorize the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, or Keepers, to invest up to 10% of state pension assets in financial products linked to Bitcoin. The bill includes the creation of a dedicated board of directors, to oversee the investments with an annual reporting requirement to the governor on the program's progress. An interesting detail of the proposal is that the clause that does not mandate the sale of positions even if the value of Bitcoin investments exceeds the 10% threshold, as long as it is in the beneficiary's best interest.
That is interesting. There's no forced sale if they make a shit ton of money on it. Because that's that that's sort of like everybody has is sort of the fiduciary responsibility of the of people like this is to rebalance portfolios, take profit, and move that use that profit to rebalance the portfolios. This doesn't have that provision as far as this particular, asset is concerned. Anyway, the initiative fits into a broader context of growing institutional acceptance of digital assets facilitated by the SEC's approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs. So will they buy Bitcoin or will they buy the Bitcoin ETF? They'll probably buy the Bitcoin ETF.
Well, actually, that's what what what it says. Invest public pension funds in Bitcoin ETFs and not Bitcoin directly. Hey, it's a start. It it's a start. So we'll have to see what they do. Just so you know, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is bullish on Bitcoin and says that adoption could push the price past $700,000. Do we believe them? When? When? When, Larry? When will it happen is all I gotta say. The idiots that are over there at Davos, they're gonna be talking out of their ass for a while. I would just ignore it, honestly. And this is where the World Economic Forum is what what is it? How did Ben Kenobi say it?
Yes. The World Economic Forum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. All of them are complicit. None of them like you. They all hate you. They would rather all of the citizenry of the world dies that they could just have these massive estates. That's what I actually believe. I don't think they want to rub shoulders with me or you or Joe the plumber. I think they just want the world to themselves and they will do anything to destroy anybody's hope to get there, which is why I think Larry Fink is undercutting Bitcoin by about $10,000,000 per coin.
Let's see. Do we need to do this one? Let's do let's do a part of this one and then we'll, call it good for the day. Sam Borgie, writing for coin telegraph.com, says that the real estate firm named Phantom can now add Bitcoin to its balance sheet. So buckle up. I mean, I told you yesterday we're gonna have more and more companies start doing this and it's gonna put a liquidity squeeze to the point that price starts popping up. Let's find out what these guys are planning on doing. The Nasdaq listed real estate services company Fathom Holdings is going to add Bitcoin to its corporate treasury.
And according to a January 23rd announcement, Fathom said that it is now going to allocate up to 50% of excess cash reserves towards bitcoin purchases. Initially, the company plans to allocate up to $500,000 towards Bitcoin or Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, God. The allocation will be adjusted to align with the company's operational requirements and prevailing market conditions. Fathom CEO Joanne Zoc said the decision reflects a desire to diversify the company's treasury holdings with a decentralized store of value that has seen rapid adoption since 2024. Zoc further stated, the integration of Bitcoin into commercial and financial strategies has accelerated across financial markets, positioning it as both a hedge against inflation and a safeguard against economic and currency risks in the global economy.
Fathom's stock price remained mostly unchanged following the news, is currently trading around $1.33 per share for a total market capitalization of $30,000,000 So it's a very small company at $30,000,000 but that actually makes me even more bullish. Cause even the small guys are getting into this shit. Now, it could be a hail Mary. You know, I'm seeing this with some of the other smaller companies. But that, for whatever reason, doesn't necessarily makes me any less bullish. We've got huge companies buying Bitcoin. We've got unite some states of the United States talking about their own Bitcoin Treasury Reserve.
We don't know what the hell the federal government is going to do with their SBR because Trump hasn't said a word about it and everybody's holding their breath like little babies. And then we've got massive companies like MicroStrategy and small companies like Simler Scientific and Fathom. Fathom is a $30,000,000 market cap, you know, mortgage and real estate services company. That's small potatoes. That's like mom and pop level stuff at $30,000,000. It it really is. It's that is not big. I mean, even a long time ago, when, you know, before we destroyed destroyed the money system all around the world, that was still not that big of a company when you consider it as part of when you consider it from the standpoint of market capitalization. Right?
So from the big to the very very big, all the way down to the very very small, everybody's getting in on this. And all it takes is for a lot of people to buy just a little. And all of a sudden you start getting liquidity issues because people start going, well, I don't want to sell my bitcoin at that low of a price. I'll I'll put in, you know, I'll put in my sells, like, way up at 250,000 or like Larry Fink at 700,000. Or if you're more like me, when like, right now, in my mind, when when you guys zap me for the show, or when you guys give me boostograms, when you guys are giving me, like, 3,000 satoshis, somehow in in the little a little part of the lizard brain that is, you know, my brain stem, somehow I actually see that as $3,000.
Now, I may not ever be alive to actually see sat dollar parity, But for some reason, there's this little part of my brain that just sees it as $3,000 even though it's not. Well, not yet. We'll have to see. And when we do, I'll see you there on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Numerology
Bitcoin Swag and Personal Safety
