Join me today for Episode 1029 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Tether On Bitcoin and LN
- MSTR's STRK Stock Offering 2xX Oversubscribed
- Pump.Fun Hit With Class Action
- Texas Makes SBR a Priority
- Arkansas Says NO to Mining Ban
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://www.theblock.co/post/338214/stablecoin-expansion-could-drive-the-next-cryptocurrency-rally-cryptoquant
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/01/31/microstrategy-upsizes-preferred-stock-offering-raising-usd563m-for-more-bitcoin
https://cointelegraph.com/news/pump-fun-sued-claims-all-memecoins-securities
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- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
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https://atlas21.com/texas-bets-on-bitcoin-strategic-reserve-as-a-priority-for-2025/
https://decrypt.co/303832/british-men-jailed-brutal-crypto-theft
https://atlas21.com/arkansas-says-no-to-mining-ban-near-military-bases/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/the-first-ever-bitcoin-hashrate-fundraiser-actually-found-a-block-2/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 8:37 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the last day of January 2025. And this is episode 1029 of Bitcoin and was gonna be probably a quick show today or at least, shorter than than normal. We are gonna talk about MicroStrategy because they are releasing. They have released the price for their strike preferred stock. We gotta talk about that. We also gotta talk about pump dot fun. Those are the, cats that are behind all the meme coins like hawk to a coin and god only knows what coin, which actually may be a a real meme coin. Who knows? But, yeah, we're gonna talk about pub.fund because I think they're about to get theirs. Texas, you're betting on Bitcoin.
Some people in Britain got jailed for, well, chicanery around trying to abscond with somebody's Bitcoin. Arkansas is also gonna be in the news. So let's let's just get into this. At first up on the chopping block is Tether. Got big, big news out of, Starkness or Elizabeth Stark, who's behind, the original the original lightning labs that originally brought us the first. I believe it was the first instantiation of the lightning network. The, you know, an actual honest to God beyond the white paper Lightning Network. She was talking alongside Paolo Ardoino from Tether and it seems that they're bringing Tether over to the Lightning Network.
And a long time ago, there used to be that and then there wasn't that. And now it looks like Tether is back on Bitcoin according to Bitcoin Magazine's Guillermo Girard. Lightning dominance is just starting according to Guillermo Earlier today at the plan b conference in El Salvador Tether made an announcement that has been years in the making USDT is back on Bitcoin using Taproot assets. The next steps will be for Tether to mint the asset, which will be available initially via Bitfinex. Well, of course, because that's where that's where Tether was born. But Tether's return to the Bitcoin ecosystem via Taproot assets is not just a simple reentry.
It's a strategic pivot that could herald a new era for both Bitcoin's Lightning Network and the broader stablecoin landscape. With USDT now returning to the Bitcoin network in a way that's also interoperable with Lightning, it has no direct impact on bitcoin the asset except that it's massively bullish users can enjoy the benefits of near instant low fee transactions which are critical for the practical use of stablecoins in everyday commerce or remittances. The integration is particularly beneficial in regions where financial infrastructure is either lacking or prohibitively expensive. And having said that, the Lightning Network is probably not capable of handling the activity and user flow happening on competing chains like Solana or Tron.
Then there's also the question of how well the Lightning Network will handle the increased load of stablecoin transactions without degrading performance or leading to centralization of node operations due to the need for higher liquidities. The answer to this lies in one simple variable Good infrastructure. And this is where Jolts comes in, j o l t z. It's almost like a native ad, isn't it? Anyway, also present at the plan b conference, Jolts' early bet on Taproot assets now looks prescient. Jolts introduced some notable advancements in the Bitcoin infrastructure ecosystem with its unique features.
It's one of the only self custodial mobile wallets supporting Taproot Assets enabling users to manage multi asset payments and swaps directly on Bitcoin. Beyond the standalone wallet, Joltz offers a software development kit that could be integrated by other developers reducing the time and cost involved in adding support for these assets as well as Bitcoin on chain and Lightning transactions. This could be beneficial for crypto or existing crypto wallets, asset issuers, stablecoin platforms, Fintechs, payment apps and exchanges offering them a way or a pathway to enhance their services with less developmental effort.
Developers who want early access to the Joltz SDK can sign up here, and that's at forms.gleforward/a whole shit ton of numbers. As normal, this, the URL to this particular story, this Bitcoin Magazine story, will be in the show notes. If you want to sign up for the Joltz SDK, just open up the URL, scroll down to where you can access Joltz SDK, can sign up here sentence and look for here. It's underlined. It's clearly a link. Okay. Continuing. Similar to how Trump promised to free Ross on day 1, we should demand that USDT be supported everywhere on day 1 with good UX.
Jolts will deliver on that, hopefully leading the way for others to see the scale of the opportunity that lies ahead for Bitcoin. So why should we even want stablecoins on Bitcoin? Yes. I hear you out there. I know some of you are groaning. So I'm gonna just pause to say the following. I'm I'm done being pissed off at shit that I can't control. I can't control this and neither can you. If you remember, when we all first got into this, one of the central tenets of Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is for enemies. Bitcoin is going to be used by people to do things that you don't want them to do and you got exactly jack shit to say about it.
It doesn't mean that you suck. It doesn't mean that you're ineffectual. It doesn't mean that you're a a lowly creepy human being. It just means that there are going to be many things as we walk into the future that are outside of our control. And that would have been true even without the existence of Bitcoin. I'm done being pissed about this. I don't use Tether. I probably will never use Tether. And if I do, maybe it actually will do the thing that I need it to do. I don't really know. Right? But one thing is for certain. I'm not picking up the phone today and calling up Paolo Ordino and Elizabeth Stark and tell them, hey, you know what? You guys don't need to be doing this and have them go, you know, mister Bennett, you're right. We're, you know, we're gonna scuttle the plan. Dude, not gonna happen.
So we can have we have 2 choices here. We can be eternally pissed off at shit that we can't do anything about, which means that we're just gonna do nothing but be pissed off about it for years years years, or we can make terms with this right now and figure out the best way forward for everybody. And I don't know what that looks like. But I am going to continue the story because the recent surge in meme coin activity on Solana has led to significant network congestion, pushing transaction fees to record highs. And Solana's daily fee revenue hit nearly $78,000,000 in late 2024, which is a direct result of the meme coin boom, but this came at the higher cost of transaction fees and occasional network congestion challenging the user experience.
Similarly, Tron has faced its own challenges with transaction fees. Tron's daily fee revenue has been reported to surpass $5,000,000 reflecting its significant role in handling stablecoin transactions, but also highlighting the pressure on its heavily centralized network. We want those fees on Bitcoin for miners and routing operators. Lightning Network offers nearly infinite scalability by allowing transactions to occur off chain, only settling on Bitcoin when necessary. This approach contrasts starkly with the scalability struggles of single layer blockchains like Solana and Tron. And furthermore, with Lightning Network, there's potential for new financial products.
Locking Bitcoin within lightning channels can open up yield generating opportunities like liquidity provision, you know, like also known as leasing, or even more complex financial instruments related to routing, providing users with new ways to generate native Bitcoin yields not based on questionable practices. The announcement today underscores a broader lesson in the crypto space. While specific chains like Solana and Tron have made strides in speed and cost, true scalability requires time and a lot of investment into infrastructure to guarantee decentralization and trustless exits.
Otherwise, what's the point? Centralized chains on stablecoins is temporary. Bitcoin is forever. Tether's return to Bitcoin through Taproot assets signifies a vote of confidence in Bitcoin's evolving capabilities. It's a testament to the innovation within the Bitcoin space and a reminder of how foundational technologies like Bitcoin can adapt and expand to meet new demands despite the yapping of high time preference critics of Lightning Network focused on chasing distractions instead of true utility. This move could very well set the stage for further innovations in decentralized finance on Bitcoin, reshaping how we think about Bitcoin as the ultimate settlement layer for all types of economic activity.
Welcome back, Tether. Okay. Again, I know that there's gonna be some of you that are groaning. And, again, I'm gonna say it again. We we got jack shit to say about it. We we could all sign a letter, like a New York agreement letter, and Elizabeth Stark is probably not even gonna read it. And Paolo Adorno is probably just gonna laugh. They're going to do this. This is already gonna be done. It it's it's a done deal. The whole issue is is that they're using Taproot Assets in a different not a different way. Taproot Assets brought us ordinals.
We didn't want ordinals. We didn't want runes, but we had to deal with them anyway. And now all that crap, it seems to that fad seems to have died given the fact that the men pools around the world seem to have damn near cleared last night. Before I went to bed, the mempool.space mempool was showing 4 blocks. 4 blocks. Not 44, not 404, 4 with clearance rates of transactions at 2 satoshis per v byte for priority transactions. 2, not 20, not 200. Right. So that entire it looks like ordinals and runes and cats on the Bitcoin blockchain. It seems like it just has died. Because nobody there's no utility there.
And I was always saying that at one point or another, somebody's gonna figure out a way to use the exact same situation, except it's going to have some kind of utility. I cannot argue the fact that Tether has utility. It clearly has some kind of utility. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I don't know, honestly. So I gotta remain neutral on it. But here's what I do know. Tether and USDC are the top 2 stable coins on the planet. There will be many, many more and 99.98% of those are probably gonna be rug pulls. Right? So don't if if somebody says, hey, we've got the Trump meme coin stable coin, it's a scam.
Not because it's Trump, just because it's gonna be a scam. If it was the HOK 2e version 2 stablecoin, it's a scam. Right? You're gonna have to be real careful about what stablecoins you decide to use, which is one of the reasons why USDC and Tether are probably going to be the twins walking around for the next few decades when it comes to stable coin stability. 2, Tether is one of the largest purchasers of US treasuries in the world right now. I think they were either number some they're somewhere between number 8 and number 16 as far as purchasing of United States Treasury bonds are concerned. And that's how the United States prints its debt. That's how it monetizes debt. It just prints these bonds. People buy these bonds. And all of a sudden, the United States has money to go, oh, I don't know, drop bombs on brown people, whatever it is that we do, which most of which seems completely stupid. But I say that and I can't do anything about that shit either.
But what I was saying was that the United States dollar is going to be used as ammunition fired from a gun, and that gun has 2 parts to it. The United States treasury market and stable coins. The marriage between the United States treasury bond market and stable coins is the weapon that is going to be used to fire United States dollars across the globe. It very well may be that Bitcoin ends up being the backing the complete rails and the complete actual store of value behind all of this stuff, except we're gonna go through this phase where the United States just has a license to print.
We already do, but now it's almost as if they're they've got, like, a second breath of air to be able to print debt. It's coming. But this time, that debt is gonna be sprayed like a machine gun across all the plant the countries on this planet. Now, that's going to happen. We can't stop that. Again, this is another thing that you and I cannot stop. We have no say where there's no way that we can affect that situation. So this is one of the reasons why I'm not all that angry. In fact, I'm not angry at all. I'm completely neutral about the fact that they've made this announcement that they're putting stablecoins on the Lightning Network.
And here's what's going to happen after that. After we really get Lightning Network running with state with stablecoins and using this the the Taproot assets are being used instead of putting, you know, pictures of cats on the blockchain. It's actually used for something of measurable utility. We're going to start bottlenecking again. There will be a high fee environment on Bitcoin. And guess who's going to be the pressure release valve? ECash, Fedimants, Cashew. They're gonna come to the rescue because if you think for a second that stablecoins are just going to remain only on the Lightning Network after this, you're fooling yourself because the best place for this stuff to actually go is going to end up going to e cash.
So you will have stable coins on main chain. You will have stable coins on lightning network. You will have stable coins in the e cash, cash UFEDIMENT universe. And all of that is going to be running around Noster because what we're seeing is the 16 year old Bitcoin network that is massive. You've got a 7 year old lightning network going on. These are networks. Think of networks, right? You've got Nostra, which is like 3 years old as far as most usage, but it was, like, been in the works for, like, 5 years. And then you've got e cash, which is, you know, was actually constructed around 1989 or something like that, put into a little bit of use in the early nineties, and then basically just nothing was done with it until last year or the year before when Cali from Cashew made it work for Bitcoin and Lightning Network and the whole the whole ball of wax.
So when when these net when you're looking at a single network you have and I had to get I had to ask Guy Swan what what the the mathematical model on a network was that describes the power of a network given the amount of users or, in other words, the amount of nodes. And it's Metcalfe's law. He was kind enough to answer me. Thank you, guy. I appreciate the information. But essentially, the power of the network is a function of the square of the amount of nodes that are on that network, whether it's people or telephones or telegraph registers or whatever it is that your network is. Right? We got a 16 year old Bitcoin network. We got a 7 year old Lightning network, and I just described the rest of it to you. But now instead of adding more nodes to each one of these individual networks which are massive all by themselves now we're starting to fuse entire networks together because they're going to speak this common language. They already essentially do.
We've got Bitcoin and Lightning Network and eCash and Noster. But now now now here comes Tether. Honestly, my gut instinct is to say that this is probably pretty good for Bitcoin. And I know you don't want me to say it or some of you don't want me to say it. Others don't care and others may agree with me. But my gut feeling and I always got to go with my gut. I'm thinking that this is going to be like it's just gonna set Bitcoin on fire. But stablecoin expansions could drive the next cryptocurrency rally, according to The Block and Brian MacLean. Let's see what Brian has to say about this whole stablecoin thing.
A new report from CryptoQuant highlighted the expansion of stablecoins in circulation likely to be a key driver for the next cryptocurrency rally. Liquidity conditions in the crypto markets, as measured by the total value of stablecoins in circulation, have experienced a boost since the presidential election in the United States according to CryptoQuant. Quote, historically, growing liquidity via stablecoins is associated with sustained gains in crypto markets. Data from the report showed that the total market cap of stablecoins recently surpassed $200,000,000,000 reaching a new all time high of 204,000,000,000 This marks a significant growth of $37,000,000,000 since November 4, 2024, when Donald Trump won the presidential election.
The report attributes this growth primarily to Tether, although Circle's USDC has also regained momentum. The data showed that USDT deposits on centralized exchanges has risen from 30,500,000,000 on November 4, 2024 to 43,000,000,000 and that is a 41% increase just from November 4th last year. The total value of stablecoins is an important source of liquidity for trading on exchanges and its expansion is generally associated with higher crypto prices, CryptoQuant analysts said. A cex. Io report highlighted that stablecoin transfer volume in 2024 surpassed the combined transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard by more than 7.68%.
The total stablecoin transfer volume for the year reached $27,600,000,000,000 I'm gonna pause for effect. Let's have a moment of silence for that number here because none of us understand it. The total stablecoin transfer volume for a year this year reached 27.6 $1,000,000,000,000 slightly exceeding the $23,800,000,000,000 from Visa and Mastercard combined. The report also revealed that 70% of stablecoin transaction volume in 2024 was driven by bot activity with Solana and Base Networks seeing bot transaction accounts for an astounding 98% of the volume. Additionally, the report found that yield bearing stablecoins now represent over 3% of the stablecoin market contributing to a 414% surge in the market cap of tokenized treasuries.
So there's the background of the essential power that you're seeing in the stablecoin market, mostly garnered by Tether itself. USDC is kind of like a minor player, but I don't see them going anywhere. It the utility can't be denied. It doesn't mean I'm gonna rush right out and use it. I don't need it. I'm I'm not I'm not somebody that needs Tether. And this a lot of this has to do with the fact that I have a I have a relatively stable banking infrastructure in the United States, relative to Zimbabwe. When I say relative, I mean, like, relative to, like, provinces in freaking rural India, you know, relative to, you know, a a shitty ass Russian bank or something like that.
The banking system in the United States, as evil as it's become, is still works pretty damn well if you are given permission to use it. Let's not forget about that little caveat there. But I can pretty much access United States dollars whenever I need. If I lived in El Salvador, if I lived in Nicaragua, or if I lived in even Costa Rica, it may not be that way. So what I'm saying is the utility that was just described by the numbers, you can't laugh at $27,600,000,000,000 of transfer volume of USDT. You can't you can't look at that and say, that's not important. I'm sorry, but it is. And now it looks like it's gonna be coming to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, and it's going to outscale those networks.
In the in the best sense of the word is going a word is going to help us build out the the at least the Lightning Network. But we're going to need a pressure release valve, and that's going to spill over into eCash, Fediment, Cashew, all that stuff. And that that's going to cause that entire section of the ecosystem network to also expand. They are going to add developers hand over fist. If you have ever been interested in possibly working in the Bitcoin ecosystem and you're fascinated with eCash and you are like you've got a little bit of time to get your programming chops in order, you will have a job in the next 3 years. If you kick that ass and you start hammering home on being able to produce this kind of stuff and you make it very evident that you are, you're going to end up working for one of these e cash companies if you so choose and you're probably gonna have a great life.
I'm just saying. Now on to MicroStrategy, yeah, their strike thing just, they they finally priced it today. And yesterday, I saw I I posted to Nasr, a a screenshot of, I think it was a Reuters report or or something with Financial Times possibly. It was saying that nobody was really all that interested in MicroStrategy's new strike preferred stock offering. And I had mentioned that we probably wouldn't find out until today. And we found out today that MicroStrategy has upsized its preferred stock offering, raising $563,000,000 for more Bitcoin.
Wow. The initial dividend yield will be 10% instead of the initially, say it was gonna be initially be 8%, but now it seems to be 10. Oh, by the way, this is written by who the hell wrote this thing? James Van Stratton, from CoinDesk. MicroStrategy's initial attempt to expand its capital raising activities via perpetual preferred stock appears to have been met with strong demand. The company more than doubled the $250,000,000 it was looking to raise, selling 7,300,000 shares of STRK. That's the ticker symbol for the strike preferred stock. But they're selling it at $80 a share and coming away with $563,400,000 after expenses.
The new pricing raises the dividend yield to 10% from an initially expected 8%, a move that's likely to increase investor demand. Funds will be used to acquire more Bitcoin. And that's all that needs to be said about this. The other the reports yesterday were saying that nobody was it was lukewarm for investors, and retail just really wasn't interested. Yeah. That sounds a lot like, who's that leather face chick with the gray hair that got convicted in France that is now in control of the European Central Bank? Oh, yeah. Lagarde. She was saying yesterday that she talked to that governor over there at the Czech Republic and that she's absolutely certain that the the Bitcoin will never be held on any European Central Bank, or any European Union Central Bank balance sheet ever.
It's all bullshit. It's all FUD. It's all smoke and mirrors. These guys are terrified of what's coming because they can't control it because you cannot have a hope in hell to control something that you fundamentally do not understand. These guys don't know how to code. They don't know about network theory. The the guys that are in control of the world's finance system are dinosaurs when it comes to this shit. They have no hope. So they're going to result to subterfuge, disinformation, and straight up violence. Because yesterday's story told me that nobody really wanted this thing from Micah's strategy, and now it turns out that they did.
And he had to double. He was so oversubscribed. I'm telling you, man, don't trust any of these people. But, moreover, do not trust pump dot fund because they've been hit with a lawsuit claiming that all meme coins are indeed securities, and it is a class action lawsuit that's been proposed. Cointelegraph Martin Young gonna tell us all about it right here. Solana meme coin creation platform pump dot fund was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit alleging every token it helped make is an unregistered security from which it made nearly $500,000,000 in fees.
The suit filed by Diego Aguilar in a New York federal court on January 30th claimed that pump dot fund, allegedly run by the UK based Baton Corporation, used guerilla marketing to generate artificial urgency for highly volatile tokens, which resulted in retail investors suffering significant losses. Quote, pump.fund's core function is to work alongside influencers to coissue and market unregistered securities inherent to its operations is a novel evolution of the Ponzi and pump and dump schemes, it claimed. The complaint also names Alon Cohen, Diller oh, Dylan Koehler, and Noah Bernhard Hugo Tweedale wow. That's a hell of a name, dude. Noah Bernhard Hugo Tweedale.
Nice. All of which are listed as Baton Corporation's officers on UK company's house. And I don't know what UK's company house means. But Aguilar claimed he purchased a number of meme coins from pump dot fund, but his suit targets all of the tokens on the platform which are named unregistered security memecoins. The lawsuit alleges that pump.fund functioned as an issuer and statutory seller controlling the token's infrastructure, liquidity, pricing, and promotion. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Securities Act and seeks relief in the form of rescission of all token purchases, monetary damages for affected investors, and litigation costs.
Pump dot fund and Baton could not be reached for comment. In mid January, US law firm, Breuerick Law, stated that it was taking legal action against pump dot fund, claiming investors had suffered losses for memecoinrug pulls and unfulfilled promises, quote, in the past few months. Pump dot fund has collected 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in fees while illicit drug use, self harm, racism, anti sympathism, lewd acts, bestiality, violent, and other antisocial acts were displayed on the platform. Wow. Bestiality? Really?
Dude, I had I had no idea. Pump.fund, usage surged over the past week when it recorded an all time high of $3,300,000,000 in weekly trading volume following the launch of the Trump family meme coins. And pump.fund, again, is where Hochtua Girl got her meme coin. And then the the whole squirrel and raccoon business where the guys the animal control came in and executed this dude's pets, and he made these 2 pet coins. Yeah. All of these guys, I guarantee you, they did pump dot fund part of their marketing strategy and I don't know this for a fact but I know I'm going to end up being right. Part of their marketing strategy is to look over social media.
Find anything that they could possibly use as a running meme. Contact the person that either is the progenitor of the meme or somehow was involved in the meme. But otherwise the poster child for that particular meme, think of hawk to a girl, contacted her and said, we can make 1,000,000 of dollars together. We'll do all the back end. You're the face of the coin. We just need you to, you know, sign this piece of paper that you won't sue us, and we'll we'll give you, I don't know, x amount profit or percentage of the profits. That's how pump.fund works.
It they are unregistered securities. This is going to end badly. Thankfully, it's not gonna be anywhere close to as bad as FTX, but it's going to end very poorly for a lot of people. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. They got oil. West Texas Intermediate up 0.15% to 72.84 a barrel. Brent Norsee is moving sideways, hanging out at 76.86 a barrel. Natural gas is moving sideways as well. Gasoline, 0.77% to the downside, $2.2 for a gallon of gas, 0.18 percent of the upside for gold, landing at $2,850.20. Silver is sideways. Platinum is up 1.67%.
Copper is down well over a half, and palladium is up 5.73%. For whatever reason, we need palladium. And I I have no idea what we use palladium for. Lumber, biggest winner in ag today, 5.69% to the upside. Biggest loser appears to be chocolate again, taking it on the chin over 2 points of the downside. Live cattle is up 2 thirds of a point. Lean hogs are down 0.8. Feeder cattle are up 1a half. Dow Jones moving sideways, kind of in the red a little bit. But the S and P is up well over a half point. Nasdaq is up 1 and a quarter. S and P mini is essentially moving sideways.
We've got a lot of chop in Bitcoin this morning. A $104,700, that is $2,070,000,000,000 of market cap, but we're only gonna be able to get 37.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,000 817,482 and a half. And average fees per block are really low, 0.03 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. And the block, blocks in NIM pools are building back up. We are up to 22 blocks this morning. High priority transaction is gonna clear at 7 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. Hash rate dipping 781.2 xahashes per second, so not too terribly bad from yesterday's woman yells at bank episode of Bitcoin, and I got Geek Toshi with 1028 sat says, I've been enjoying your no b s take this last week since I found your pod too much not to send you some sats. Here's 1028 for making it 1028 episodes. It is a show boost. Thank you Geektoshi. I appreciate it. Dk black sheep with a 1000 says thank you, no thank you. God's desk with 537 says thank you, sir, no thank you.
Pies with 420 says thank you, sir, no thank you. And Nick underscore dose with a 101 sat says cheers. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use from atlas21.com. We've got this one. Texas bets on Bitcoin strategic reserve as a priority for 2025. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced that the creation of a state Bitcoin reserve will be one of the top legislative priorities of 2025. Among the 25 priority bills announced by Patrick, the Texas Doge project stands out along with proposals to strengthen the electrical infrastructure that could literally benefit the mining sector in the state. As the governor himself clarified, quote, just because a bill is not in the top 40 does not mean it's not a priority.
100 of proposals will pass through the senate, all important for Texas, end quote. In recent weeks, Texas has presented 2 distinct legislative proposals. The first, introduced by representative Giovanni Capri Gallione, focuses on collecting Bitcoin through taxes, fees, and donations with a requirement to hold them for at least 5 years. The second proposal, presented by senator Charles Schwertner as senate bill 778, envisions the creation of a special fund separate from the general revenue fund that would allow the state to hold Bitcoin as a financial asset with an investment limit of 1% of general revenue for purchases. These bills signal growing institutional interest in Bitcoin with Texas reaffirming its role as an innovation hub in regulation and adoption.
This Texas initiative is part of a broader context where 15, count them now, 15 United States states are working on laws to establish state Bitcoin reserves. It was like 2 weeks ago, it was 8, and now it's doubled to 15. Holy smokes, man. So Dan Patrick is a bit of a he's a bit of a weasel, so don't trust him. Right? Now I love Texas, but I was, you know, I've lived a long time in Texas with Dan Patrick as my lieutenant governor, and he's a snake. He just is, dude. It doesn't matter if he's saying the right things. Don't trust him. Alright? So I'm I this is just a word of the wise.
Don't trust politicians, especially somebody like Dan Patrick who carries around a lot of possibly potentially corrupt baggage with him. He may just be saying this shit just to garner or curry favor with what is clearly a massive voting class. So be careful out there. And, again, be very careful out there because this one is part of my ongoing warning to everybody to not wear Bitcoin swag. Tell everybody under the sun that you got Bitcoin. Tell everybody under the sun that you bought Bitcoin in 2009 for a penny a per a piece and you've got 1,000. Just don't do it because from Will McCurdy out of the crypt, we have this headline, British men have been jailed for a combined 76 years after a brutal crypto theft.
A group of 7 British men have been jailed for a combined 76 years after kidnapping and brutalizing a man in an attempt to acquire 100 of 1,000 of dollars' worth of crypto assets. According to a report by local police, the unidentified victim was kidnapped from his home in Earlham, Greater Manchester in December before being thrown into a van and forcibly taken to a nearby property with a bag over his head. The victim was then tied to a bed and hit with a weapon by the men, acquiring bruising and burn marks. Police later seized a working firearm, 3 rounds of ammunition, an imitation firearm, an air pistol, knives, meat cleavers, and a metal baseball bat, a machete, and a hammer from the scene. I'm surprised there's no $5 wrench.
The police received an anonymous call reporting concerns for welfare at the property. And upon arriving at the scene saw a man running away from the address later identified as I'm not going to say his name. The group of men had reportedly visited the victim on multiple occasions throughout 2023 to threaten him into transferring his large crypto portfolio, estimated to be worth 100 of 1,000 of dollars, to them. The wave of attacks began in January of 2023 and across 5 completely successive and different incidents saw the victim being locked into a cupboard, drugged with morphine, assaulted with machetes and knives, and threatened with death.
The victim had already paid the criminals over $124,000 in the run up to this ultimate incident. A forensic analysis of a pistol and ammunition that police seized from the scene of the final kidnapping matched a man called Jonathan Nunes. He was jailed for 20 years for 2 counts of attempted robbery, 2 counts of false imprisonment, kidnapping, and possession of a prohibited firearm. Another man, David Povey, was jailed for 20 years for robbery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and attempted robbery. The other 5 men received sentences of between 2 14 years for their part in the series of crimes. The police report did not elaborate on how the criminals found out about the victim's crypto ownership. He was probably wearing a huge Bitcoin orange t shirt or something.
In recent years, there have been a number of cases of criminals conducting targeted violent home invasions on large crypto holders, both inside and outside the UK. In March of 2020, a Scottish man was threatened with a machete in his own home in the town of Blanchard. I can't pronounce it. I'm I'm not Scottish. But, anyway, it's near Glasgow. And it was done by a group of men attempting to get him to transfer his crypto holdings. In June of 2024, the FBI revealed how a Florida based group used sophisticated methods to identify and target their home invasion victims, such as unauthorized access to email accounts and physical surveillance.
Guys, be careful. If you're a Bitcoiner out there actually, if you're any if you have Bitcoin or shit coins, I don't care. You need to clam up. You really do. You don't need to be telling people in meat space about your shit. Don't wear don't wear Bitcoin swag. And if you're somebody out there that's listening to me that hates me when I say that because you actually produce Bitcoin swag and you try to sell it, Man, my heart goes out to you. Try to figure out something else, an inside joke for Bitcoin or something where you've you gotta be deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole that before you can recognize that a t shirt somebody is wearing is like something to do with Bitcoin related. The big orange b with the Bitcoin symbol, no.
Everybody knows that one. Every any idiot can look at somebody wearing that shirt and say, he's got Bitcoin. Let's go kill him. But before we do, let's take all his shit. On to Arkansas, where Arkansas says no to a mining ban near military bases. This is atlas21.com. The Arkansas senate committee on city, county, and local affairs has voted down a proposed bill aimed at restricting Bitcoin mining operations near military installations. The decision was made with 6 votes against and 1 in favor. The rejected bill would have imposed a total ban on mining activities within 30 miles of any military facility, including hospitals and military clinics.
The proposal also included provisions for revoking previously granted licenses and contained an emergency clause for immediate enforcement citing potential risks to national and state security. Last May, the Biden administration blocked Mine One Partners Limited, a Chinese majority owned mining company, from acquiring property near a US Air Force base in Wyoming, citing national security concerns. The Arkansas decision could set a precedent for other US states as they seek to balance the interest of the mining industry with national security needs. Well, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't sound like like Arkansas balanced shit at all. They just said, we want Bitcoin mining.
You can go pound sand if you tell us that we're not gonna be able to put it within 30 miles of a military base. Screw those guys. You know, let them defend themselves. They're a military base. I can't imagine anybody who's more ready to defend themselves than a United States military base. But at least Arkansas said, you know what? No. We're Arkansas. We're gonna do shit our own way. And that's the way all states need to be. They need to make their own decisions about this stuff. Look it up. 10th amendment, guys. Last up is the first ever Bitcoin telehash fundraiser actually found a block.
This is from nobsbitcoin.com. Quote, the 256 or 256 Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Econo, Alchemist, and BitKite with a mission to advance free and open source Bitcoin mining software, firmware, and hardware solutions, held its 1st annual fundraiser, the Telehash, to raise money for open source mining development. Quote, we thought it would be appropriate to raise this money by having miners point their hash rate to our self hosted node. Against incredible odds, we actually solved the block, said Acano Alchemist on Twitter. The winning moment was captured during a live broadcast of the telehash event at Bitcoin Park in Nashville.
That's Matt Odell's outfit out there in Nashville. The event ran for almost 10 hours, and at one point, there was over 1.12 exahashes from approximately 350 different entities. At the time the block was found, about 881 petahashes per second was directed at the 256 Foundations pool. The winning nonce came from 1 of Megawatts' miners. Quote, in total, we raised 3.146 BTC to support the 256 Foundation's projects. We wouldn't have been able to do it without an amazing community of people supporting us and our vision. We thank you. Special thanks to and then there's a whole list of people on this that I'm not gonna read it. The 256 Foundation was formed in February of last year. It's almost oh, wow. It's almost a 1 year anniversary, And they're on a mission to dismantle the proprietary mining empire to make Bitcoin and Freedom Tech accessible to everyone.
The organization supports projects such as EmberOne, LibreBoard, Mujine Firmware, Hydropool, and blockwatcher. All of the projects from the 256 foundation are open source either through GPL 3.0 or CERN OHL slash s licensed. If you're a developer aligned with the 256 foundation's mission, apply for funding here, and of course, here is a link. You can support the 256 Foundation's work and projects at 2 5 256. The number's 256foundation.org. So there you go. That was a if you heard about the solo, solo miner getting winning a block. It wasn't exactly solo.
There was a lot of people that were doing it, but honestly a telehash event sounds amazing. Instead of directing your money at something, you direct your hash rate at something. And if we direct enough hash rate, then the block reward itself takes care of the funds that we would have given out of our own pockets. It is brilliant. I love that idea. I hope I see many, many more. Okay. So as promised, this is a shorter show this morning. I got stuff to go do, so I'm gonna cut it short and tell you that I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
It is 8:37 AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the last day of January 2025. And this is episode 1029 of Bitcoin and was gonna be probably a quick show today or at least, shorter than than normal. We are gonna talk about MicroStrategy because they are releasing. They have released the price for their strike preferred stock. We gotta talk about that. We also gotta talk about pump dot fun. Those are the, cats that are behind all the meme coins like hawk to a coin and god only knows what coin, which actually may be a a real meme coin. Who knows? But, yeah, we're gonna talk about pub.fund because I think they're about to get theirs. Texas, you're betting on Bitcoin.
Some people in Britain got jailed for, well, chicanery around trying to abscond with somebody's Bitcoin. Arkansas is also gonna be in the news. So let's let's just get into this. At first up on the chopping block is Tether. Got big, big news out of, Starkness or Elizabeth Stark, who's behind, the original the original lightning labs that originally brought us the first. I believe it was the first instantiation of the lightning network. The, you know, an actual honest to God beyond the white paper Lightning Network. She was talking alongside Paolo Ardoino from Tether and it seems that they're bringing Tether over to the Lightning Network.
And a long time ago, there used to be that and then there wasn't that. And now it looks like Tether is back on Bitcoin according to Bitcoin Magazine's Guillermo Girard. Lightning dominance is just starting according to Guillermo Earlier today at the plan b conference in El Salvador Tether made an announcement that has been years in the making USDT is back on Bitcoin using Taproot assets. The next steps will be for Tether to mint the asset, which will be available initially via Bitfinex. Well, of course, because that's where that's where Tether was born. But Tether's return to the Bitcoin ecosystem via Taproot assets is not just a simple reentry.
It's a strategic pivot that could herald a new era for both Bitcoin's Lightning Network and the broader stablecoin landscape. With USDT now returning to the Bitcoin network in a way that's also interoperable with Lightning, it has no direct impact on bitcoin the asset except that it's massively bullish users can enjoy the benefits of near instant low fee transactions which are critical for the practical use of stablecoins in everyday commerce or remittances. The integration is particularly beneficial in regions where financial infrastructure is either lacking or prohibitively expensive. And having said that, the Lightning Network is probably not capable of handling the activity and user flow happening on competing chains like Solana or Tron.
Then there's also the question of how well the Lightning Network will handle the increased load of stablecoin transactions without degrading performance or leading to centralization of node operations due to the need for higher liquidities. The answer to this lies in one simple variable Good infrastructure. And this is where Jolts comes in, j o l t z. It's almost like a native ad, isn't it? Anyway, also present at the plan b conference, Jolts' early bet on Taproot assets now looks prescient. Jolts introduced some notable advancements in the Bitcoin infrastructure ecosystem with its unique features.
It's one of the only self custodial mobile wallets supporting Taproot Assets enabling users to manage multi asset payments and swaps directly on Bitcoin. Beyond the standalone wallet, Joltz offers a software development kit that could be integrated by other developers reducing the time and cost involved in adding support for these assets as well as Bitcoin on chain and Lightning transactions. This could be beneficial for crypto or existing crypto wallets, asset issuers, stablecoin platforms, Fintechs, payment apps and exchanges offering them a way or a pathway to enhance their services with less developmental effort.
Developers who want early access to the Joltz SDK can sign up here, and that's at forms.gleforward/a whole shit ton of numbers. As normal, this, the URL to this particular story, this Bitcoin Magazine story, will be in the show notes. If you want to sign up for the Joltz SDK, just open up the URL, scroll down to where you can access Joltz SDK, can sign up here sentence and look for here. It's underlined. It's clearly a link. Okay. Continuing. Similar to how Trump promised to free Ross on day 1, we should demand that USDT be supported everywhere on day 1 with good UX.
Jolts will deliver on that, hopefully leading the way for others to see the scale of the opportunity that lies ahead for Bitcoin. So why should we even want stablecoins on Bitcoin? Yes. I hear you out there. I know some of you are groaning. So I'm gonna just pause to say the following. I'm I'm done being pissed off at shit that I can't control. I can't control this and neither can you. If you remember, when we all first got into this, one of the central tenets of Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is for enemies. Bitcoin is going to be used by people to do things that you don't want them to do and you got exactly jack shit to say about it.
It doesn't mean that you suck. It doesn't mean that you're ineffectual. It doesn't mean that you're a a lowly creepy human being. It just means that there are going to be many things as we walk into the future that are outside of our control. And that would have been true even without the existence of Bitcoin. I'm done being pissed about this. I don't use Tether. I probably will never use Tether. And if I do, maybe it actually will do the thing that I need it to do. I don't really know. Right? But one thing is for certain. I'm not picking up the phone today and calling up Paolo Ordino and Elizabeth Stark and tell them, hey, you know what? You guys don't need to be doing this and have them go, you know, mister Bennett, you're right. We're, you know, we're gonna scuttle the plan. Dude, not gonna happen.
So we can have we have 2 choices here. We can be eternally pissed off at shit that we can't do anything about, which means that we're just gonna do nothing but be pissed off about it for years years years, or we can make terms with this right now and figure out the best way forward for everybody. And I don't know what that looks like. But I am going to continue the story because the recent surge in meme coin activity on Solana has led to significant network congestion, pushing transaction fees to record highs. And Solana's daily fee revenue hit nearly $78,000,000 in late 2024, which is a direct result of the meme coin boom, but this came at the higher cost of transaction fees and occasional network congestion challenging the user experience.
Similarly, Tron has faced its own challenges with transaction fees. Tron's daily fee revenue has been reported to surpass $5,000,000 reflecting its significant role in handling stablecoin transactions, but also highlighting the pressure on its heavily centralized network. We want those fees on Bitcoin for miners and routing operators. Lightning Network offers nearly infinite scalability by allowing transactions to occur off chain, only settling on Bitcoin when necessary. This approach contrasts starkly with the scalability struggles of single layer blockchains like Solana and Tron. And furthermore, with Lightning Network, there's potential for new financial products.
Locking Bitcoin within lightning channels can open up yield generating opportunities like liquidity provision, you know, like also known as leasing, or even more complex financial instruments related to routing, providing users with new ways to generate native Bitcoin yields not based on questionable practices. The announcement today underscores a broader lesson in the crypto space. While specific chains like Solana and Tron have made strides in speed and cost, true scalability requires time and a lot of investment into infrastructure to guarantee decentralization and trustless exits.
Otherwise, what's the point? Centralized chains on stablecoins is temporary. Bitcoin is forever. Tether's return to Bitcoin through Taproot assets signifies a vote of confidence in Bitcoin's evolving capabilities. It's a testament to the innovation within the Bitcoin space and a reminder of how foundational technologies like Bitcoin can adapt and expand to meet new demands despite the yapping of high time preference critics of Lightning Network focused on chasing distractions instead of true utility. This move could very well set the stage for further innovations in decentralized finance on Bitcoin, reshaping how we think about Bitcoin as the ultimate settlement layer for all types of economic activity.
Welcome back, Tether. Okay. Again, I know that there's gonna be some of you that are groaning. And, again, I'm gonna say it again. We we got jack shit to say about it. We we could all sign a letter, like a New York agreement letter, and Elizabeth Stark is probably not even gonna read it. And Paolo Adorno is probably just gonna laugh. They're going to do this. This is already gonna be done. It it's it's a done deal. The whole issue is is that they're using Taproot Assets in a different not a different way. Taproot Assets brought us ordinals.
We didn't want ordinals. We didn't want runes, but we had to deal with them anyway. And now all that crap, it seems to that fad seems to have died given the fact that the men pools around the world seem to have damn near cleared last night. Before I went to bed, the mempool.space mempool was showing 4 blocks. 4 blocks. Not 44, not 404, 4 with clearance rates of transactions at 2 satoshis per v byte for priority transactions. 2, not 20, not 200. Right. So that entire it looks like ordinals and runes and cats on the Bitcoin blockchain. It seems like it just has died. Because nobody there's no utility there.
And I was always saying that at one point or another, somebody's gonna figure out a way to use the exact same situation, except it's going to have some kind of utility. I cannot argue the fact that Tether has utility. It clearly has some kind of utility. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I don't know, honestly. So I gotta remain neutral on it. But here's what I do know. Tether and USDC are the top 2 stable coins on the planet. There will be many, many more and 99.98% of those are probably gonna be rug pulls. Right? So don't if if somebody says, hey, we've got the Trump meme coin stable coin, it's a scam.
Not because it's Trump, just because it's gonna be a scam. If it was the HOK 2e version 2 stablecoin, it's a scam. Right? You're gonna have to be real careful about what stablecoins you decide to use, which is one of the reasons why USDC and Tether are probably going to be the twins walking around for the next few decades when it comes to stable coin stability. 2, Tether is one of the largest purchasers of US treasuries in the world right now. I think they were either number some they're somewhere between number 8 and number 16 as far as purchasing of United States Treasury bonds are concerned. And that's how the United States prints its debt. That's how it monetizes debt. It just prints these bonds. People buy these bonds. And all of a sudden, the United States has money to go, oh, I don't know, drop bombs on brown people, whatever it is that we do, which most of which seems completely stupid. But I say that and I can't do anything about that shit either.
But what I was saying was that the United States dollar is going to be used as ammunition fired from a gun, and that gun has 2 parts to it. The United States treasury market and stable coins. The marriage between the United States treasury bond market and stable coins is the weapon that is going to be used to fire United States dollars across the globe. It very well may be that Bitcoin ends up being the backing the complete rails and the complete actual store of value behind all of this stuff, except we're gonna go through this phase where the United States just has a license to print.
We already do, but now it's almost as if they're they've got, like, a second breath of air to be able to print debt. It's coming. But this time, that debt is gonna be sprayed like a machine gun across all the plant the countries on this planet. Now, that's going to happen. We can't stop that. Again, this is another thing that you and I cannot stop. We have no say where there's no way that we can affect that situation. So this is one of the reasons why I'm not all that angry. In fact, I'm not angry at all. I'm completely neutral about the fact that they've made this announcement that they're putting stablecoins on the Lightning Network.
And here's what's going to happen after that. After we really get Lightning Network running with state with stablecoins and using this the the Taproot assets are being used instead of putting, you know, pictures of cats on the blockchain. It's actually used for something of measurable utility. We're going to start bottlenecking again. There will be a high fee environment on Bitcoin. And guess who's going to be the pressure release valve? ECash, Fedimants, Cashew. They're gonna come to the rescue because if you think for a second that stablecoins are just going to remain only on the Lightning Network after this, you're fooling yourself because the best place for this stuff to actually go is going to end up going to e cash.
So you will have stable coins on main chain. You will have stable coins on lightning network. You will have stable coins in the e cash, cash UFEDIMENT universe. And all of that is going to be running around Noster because what we're seeing is the 16 year old Bitcoin network that is massive. You've got a 7 year old lightning network going on. These are networks. Think of networks, right? You've got Nostra, which is like 3 years old as far as most usage, but it was, like, been in the works for, like, 5 years. And then you've got e cash, which is, you know, was actually constructed around 1989 or something like that, put into a little bit of use in the early nineties, and then basically just nothing was done with it until last year or the year before when Cali from Cashew made it work for Bitcoin and Lightning Network and the whole the whole ball of wax.
So when when these net when you're looking at a single network you have and I had to get I had to ask Guy Swan what what the the mathematical model on a network was that describes the power of a network given the amount of users or, in other words, the amount of nodes. And it's Metcalfe's law. He was kind enough to answer me. Thank you, guy. I appreciate the information. But essentially, the power of the network is a function of the square of the amount of nodes that are on that network, whether it's people or telephones or telegraph registers or whatever it is that your network is. Right? We got a 16 year old Bitcoin network. We got a 7 year old Lightning network, and I just described the rest of it to you. But now instead of adding more nodes to each one of these individual networks which are massive all by themselves now we're starting to fuse entire networks together because they're going to speak this common language. They already essentially do.
We've got Bitcoin and Lightning Network and eCash and Noster. But now now now here comes Tether. Honestly, my gut instinct is to say that this is probably pretty good for Bitcoin. And I know you don't want me to say it or some of you don't want me to say it. Others don't care and others may agree with me. But my gut feeling and I always got to go with my gut. I'm thinking that this is going to be like it's just gonna set Bitcoin on fire. But stablecoin expansions could drive the next cryptocurrency rally, according to The Block and Brian MacLean. Let's see what Brian has to say about this whole stablecoin thing.
A new report from CryptoQuant highlighted the expansion of stablecoins in circulation likely to be a key driver for the next cryptocurrency rally. Liquidity conditions in the crypto markets, as measured by the total value of stablecoins in circulation, have experienced a boost since the presidential election in the United States according to CryptoQuant. Quote, historically, growing liquidity via stablecoins is associated with sustained gains in crypto markets. Data from the report showed that the total market cap of stablecoins recently surpassed $200,000,000,000 reaching a new all time high of 204,000,000,000 This marks a significant growth of $37,000,000,000 since November 4, 2024, when Donald Trump won the presidential election.
The report attributes this growth primarily to Tether, although Circle's USDC has also regained momentum. The data showed that USDT deposits on centralized exchanges has risen from 30,500,000,000 on November 4, 2024 to 43,000,000,000 and that is a 41% increase just from November 4th last year. The total value of stablecoins is an important source of liquidity for trading on exchanges and its expansion is generally associated with higher crypto prices, CryptoQuant analysts said. A cex. Io report highlighted that stablecoin transfer volume in 2024 surpassed the combined transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard by more than 7.68%.
The total stablecoin transfer volume for the year reached $27,600,000,000,000 I'm gonna pause for effect. Let's have a moment of silence for that number here because none of us understand it. The total stablecoin transfer volume for a year this year reached 27.6 $1,000,000,000,000 slightly exceeding the $23,800,000,000,000 from Visa and Mastercard combined. The report also revealed that 70% of stablecoin transaction volume in 2024 was driven by bot activity with Solana and Base Networks seeing bot transaction accounts for an astounding 98% of the volume. Additionally, the report found that yield bearing stablecoins now represent over 3% of the stablecoin market contributing to a 414% surge in the market cap of tokenized treasuries.
So there's the background of the essential power that you're seeing in the stablecoin market, mostly garnered by Tether itself. USDC is kind of like a minor player, but I don't see them going anywhere. It the utility can't be denied. It doesn't mean I'm gonna rush right out and use it. I don't need it. I'm I'm not I'm not somebody that needs Tether. And this a lot of this has to do with the fact that I have a I have a relatively stable banking infrastructure in the United States, relative to Zimbabwe. When I say relative, I mean, like, relative to, like, provinces in freaking rural India, you know, relative to, you know, a a shitty ass Russian bank or something like that.
The banking system in the United States, as evil as it's become, is still works pretty damn well if you are given permission to use it. Let's not forget about that little caveat there. But I can pretty much access United States dollars whenever I need. If I lived in El Salvador, if I lived in Nicaragua, or if I lived in even Costa Rica, it may not be that way. So what I'm saying is the utility that was just described by the numbers, you can't laugh at $27,600,000,000,000 of transfer volume of USDT. You can't you can't look at that and say, that's not important. I'm sorry, but it is. And now it looks like it's gonna be coming to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, and it's going to outscale those networks.
In the in the best sense of the word is going a word is going to help us build out the the at least the Lightning Network. But we're going to need a pressure release valve, and that's going to spill over into eCash, Fediment, Cashew, all that stuff. And that that's going to cause that entire section of the ecosystem network to also expand. They are going to add developers hand over fist. If you have ever been interested in possibly working in the Bitcoin ecosystem and you're fascinated with eCash and you are like you've got a little bit of time to get your programming chops in order, you will have a job in the next 3 years. If you kick that ass and you start hammering home on being able to produce this kind of stuff and you make it very evident that you are, you're going to end up working for one of these e cash companies if you so choose and you're probably gonna have a great life.
I'm just saying. Now on to MicroStrategy, yeah, their strike thing just, they they finally priced it today. And yesterday, I saw I I posted to Nasr, a a screenshot of, I think it was a Reuters report or or something with Financial Times possibly. It was saying that nobody was really all that interested in MicroStrategy's new strike preferred stock offering. And I had mentioned that we probably wouldn't find out until today. And we found out today that MicroStrategy has upsized its preferred stock offering, raising $563,000,000 for more Bitcoin.
Wow. The initial dividend yield will be 10% instead of the initially, say it was gonna be initially be 8%, but now it seems to be 10. Oh, by the way, this is written by who the hell wrote this thing? James Van Stratton, from CoinDesk. MicroStrategy's initial attempt to expand its capital raising activities via perpetual preferred stock appears to have been met with strong demand. The company more than doubled the $250,000,000 it was looking to raise, selling 7,300,000 shares of STRK. That's the ticker symbol for the strike preferred stock. But they're selling it at $80 a share and coming away with $563,400,000 after expenses.
The new pricing raises the dividend yield to 10% from an initially expected 8%, a move that's likely to increase investor demand. Funds will be used to acquire more Bitcoin. And that's all that needs to be said about this. The other the reports yesterday were saying that nobody was it was lukewarm for investors, and retail just really wasn't interested. Yeah. That sounds a lot like, who's that leather face chick with the gray hair that got convicted in France that is now in control of the European Central Bank? Oh, yeah. Lagarde. She was saying yesterday that she talked to that governor over there at the Czech Republic and that she's absolutely certain that the the Bitcoin will never be held on any European Central Bank, or any European Union Central Bank balance sheet ever.
It's all bullshit. It's all FUD. It's all smoke and mirrors. These guys are terrified of what's coming because they can't control it because you cannot have a hope in hell to control something that you fundamentally do not understand. These guys don't know how to code. They don't know about network theory. The the guys that are in control of the world's finance system are dinosaurs when it comes to this shit. They have no hope. So they're going to result to subterfuge, disinformation, and straight up violence. Because yesterday's story told me that nobody really wanted this thing from Micah's strategy, and now it turns out that they did.
And he had to double. He was so oversubscribed. I'm telling you, man, don't trust any of these people. But, moreover, do not trust pump dot fund because they've been hit with a lawsuit claiming that all meme coins are indeed securities, and it is a class action lawsuit that's been proposed. Cointelegraph Martin Young gonna tell us all about it right here. Solana meme coin creation platform pump dot fund was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit alleging every token it helped make is an unregistered security from which it made nearly $500,000,000 in fees.
The suit filed by Diego Aguilar in a New York federal court on January 30th claimed that pump dot fund, allegedly run by the UK based Baton Corporation, used guerilla marketing to generate artificial urgency for highly volatile tokens, which resulted in retail investors suffering significant losses. Quote, pump.fund's core function is to work alongside influencers to coissue and market unregistered securities inherent to its operations is a novel evolution of the Ponzi and pump and dump schemes, it claimed. The complaint also names Alon Cohen, Diller oh, Dylan Koehler, and Noah Bernhard Hugo Tweedale wow. That's a hell of a name, dude. Noah Bernhard Hugo Tweedale.
Nice. All of which are listed as Baton Corporation's officers on UK company's house. And I don't know what UK's company house means. But Aguilar claimed he purchased a number of meme coins from pump dot fund, but his suit targets all of the tokens on the platform which are named unregistered security memecoins. The lawsuit alleges that pump.fund functioned as an issuer and statutory seller controlling the token's infrastructure, liquidity, pricing, and promotion. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Securities Act and seeks relief in the form of rescission of all token purchases, monetary damages for affected investors, and litigation costs.
Pump dot fund and Baton could not be reached for comment. In mid January, US law firm, Breuerick Law, stated that it was taking legal action against pump dot fund, claiming investors had suffered losses for memecoinrug pulls and unfulfilled promises, quote, in the past few months. Pump dot fund has collected 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in fees while illicit drug use, self harm, racism, anti sympathism, lewd acts, bestiality, violent, and other antisocial acts were displayed on the platform. Wow. Bestiality? Really?
Dude, I had I had no idea. Pump.fund, usage surged over the past week when it recorded an all time high of $3,300,000,000 in weekly trading volume following the launch of the Trump family meme coins. And pump.fund, again, is where Hochtua Girl got her meme coin. And then the the whole squirrel and raccoon business where the guys the animal control came in and executed this dude's pets, and he made these 2 pet coins. Yeah. All of these guys, I guarantee you, they did pump dot fund part of their marketing strategy and I don't know this for a fact but I know I'm going to end up being right. Part of their marketing strategy is to look over social media.
Find anything that they could possibly use as a running meme. Contact the person that either is the progenitor of the meme or somehow was involved in the meme. But otherwise the poster child for that particular meme, think of hawk to a girl, contacted her and said, we can make 1,000,000 of dollars together. We'll do all the back end. You're the face of the coin. We just need you to, you know, sign this piece of paper that you won't sue us, and we'll we'll give you, I don't know, x amount profit or percentage of the profits. That's how pump.fund works.
It they are unregistered securities. This is going to end badly. Thankfully, it's not gonna be anywhere close to as bad as FTX, but it's going to end very poorly for a lot of people. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. They got oil. West Texas Intermediate up 0.15% to 72.84 a barrel. Brent Norsee is moving sideways, hanging out at 76.86 a barrel. Natural gas is moving sideways as well. Gasoline, 0.77% to the downside, $2.2 for a gallon of gas, 0.18 percent of the upside for gold, landing at $2,850.20. Silver is sideways. Platinum is up 1.67%.
Copper is down well over a half, and palladium is up 5.73%. For whatever reason, we need palladium. And I I have no idea what we use palladium for. Lumber, biggest winner in ag today, 5.69% to the upside. Biggest loser appears to be chocolate again, taking it on the chin over 2 points of the downside. Live cattle is up 2 thirds of a point. Lean hogs are down 0.8. Feeder cattle are up 1a half. Dow Jones moving sideways, kind of in the red a little bit. But the S and P is up well over a half point. Nasdaq is up 1 and a quarter. S and P mini is essentially moving sideways.
We've got a lot of chop in Bitcoin this morning. A $104,700, that is $2,070,000,000,000 of market cap, but we're only gonna be able to get 37.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,000 817,482 and a half. And average fees per block are really low, 0.03 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. And the block, blocks in NIM pools are building back up. We are up to 22 blocks this morning. High priority transaction is gonna clear at 7 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. Hash rate dipping 781.2 xahashes per second, so not too terribly bad from yesterday's woman yells at bank episode of Bitcoin, and I got Geek Toshi with 1028 sat says, I've been enjoying your no b s take this last week since I found your pod too much not to send you some sats. Here's 1028 for making it 1028 episodes. It is a show boost. Thank you Geektoshi. I appreciate it. Dk black sheep with a 1000 says thank you, no thank you. God's desk with 537 says thank you, sir, no thank you.
Pies with 420 says thank you, sir, no thank you. And Nick underscore dose with a 101 sat says cheers. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use from atlas21.com. We've got this one. Texas bets on Bitcoin strategic reserve as a priority for 2025. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced that the creation of a state Bitcoin reserve will be one of the top legislative priorities of 2025. Among the 25 priority bills announced by Patrick, the Texas Doge project stands out along with proposals to strengthen the electrical infrastructure that could literally benefit the mining sector in the state. As the governor himself clarified, quote, just because a bill is not in the top 40 does not mean it's not a priority.
100 of proposals will pass through the senate, all important for Texas, end quote. In recent weeks, Texas has presented 2 distinct legislative proposals. The first, introduced by representative Giovanni Capri Gallione, focuses on collecting Bitcoin through taxes, fees, and donations with a requirement to hold them for at least 5 years. The second proposal, presented by senator Charles Schwertner as senate bill 778, envisions the creation of a special fund separate from the general revenue fund that would allow the state to hold Bitcoin as a financial asset with an investment limit of 1% of general revenue for purchases. These bills signal growing institutional interest in Bitcoin with Texas reaffirming its role as an innovation hub in regulation and adoption.
This Texas initiative is part of a broader context where 15, count them now, 15 United States states are working on laws to establish state Bitcoin reserves. It was like 2 weeks ago, it was 8, and now it's doubled to 15. Holy smokes, man. So Dan Patrick is a bit of a he's a bit of a weasel, so don't trust him. Right? Now I love Texas, but I was, you know, I've lived a long time in Texas with Dan Patrick as my lieutenant governor, and he's a snake. He just is, dude. It doesn't matter if he's saying the right things. Don't trust him. Alright? So I'm I this is just a word of the wise.
Don't trust politicians, especially somebody like Dan Patrick who carries around a lot of possibly potentially corrupt baggage with him. He may just be saying this shit just to garner or curry favor with what is clearly a massive voting class. So be careful out there. And, again, be very careful out there because this one is part of my ongoing warning to everybody to not wear Bitcoin swag. Tell everybody under the sun that you got Bitcoin. Tell everybody under the sun that you bought Bitcoin in 2009 for a penny a per a piece and you've got 1,000. Just don't do it because from Will McCurdy out of the crypt, we have this headline, British men have been jailed for a combined 76 years after a brutal crypto theft.
A group of 7 British men have been jailed for a combined 76 years after kidnapping and brutalizing a man in an attempt to acquire 100 of 1,000 of dollars' worth of crypto assets. According to a report by local police, the unidentified victim was kidnapped from his home in Earlham, Greater Manchester in December before being thrown into a van and forcibly taken to a nearby property with a bag over his head. The victim was then tied to a bed and hit with a weapon by the men, acquiring bruising and burn marks. Police later seized a working firearm, 3 rounds of ammunition, an imitation firearm, an air pistol, knives, meat cleavers, and a metal baseball bat, a machete, and a hammer from the scene. I'm surprised there's no $5 wrench.
The police received an anonymous call reporting concerns for welfare at the property. And upon arriving at the scene saw a man running away from the address later identified as I'm not going to say his name. The group of men had reportedly visited the victim on multiple occasions throughout 2023 to threaten him into transferring his large crypto portfolio, estimated to be worth 100 of 1,000 of dollars, to them. The wave of attacks began in January of 2023 and across 5 completely successive and different incidents saw the victim being locked into a cupboard, drugged with morphine, assaulted with machetes and knives, and threatened with death.
The victim had already paid the criminals over $124,000 in the run up to this ultimate incident. A forensic analysis of a pistol and ammunition that police seized from the scene of the final kidnapping matched a man called Jonathan Nunes. He was jailed for 20 years for 2 counts of attempted robbery, 2 counts of false imprisonment, kidnapping, and possession of a prohibited firearm. Another man, David Povey, was jailed for 20 years for robbery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and attempted robbery. The other 5 men received sentences of between 2 14 years for their part in the series of crimes. The police report did not elaborate on how the criminals found out about the victim's crypto ownership. He was probably wearing a huge Bitcoin orange t shirt or something.
In recent years, there have been a number of cases of criminals conducting targeted violent home invasions on large crypto holders, both inside and outside the UK. In March of 2020, a Scottish man was threatened with a machete in his own home in the town of Blanchard. I can't pronounce it. I'm I'm not Scottish. But, anyway, it's near Glasgow. And it was done by a group of men attempting to get him to transfer his crypto holdings. In June of 2024, the FBI revealed how a Florida based group used sophisticated methods to identify and target their home invasion victims, such as unauthorized access to email accounts and physical surveillance.
Guys, be careful. If you're a Bitcoiner out there actually, if you're any if you have Bitcoin or shit coins, I don't care. You need to clam up. You really do. You don't need to be telling people in meat space about your shit. Don't wear don't wear Bitcoin swag. And if you're somebody out there that's listening to me that hates me when I say that because you actually produce Bitcoin swag and you try to sell it, Man, my heart goes out to you. Try to figure out something else, an inside joke for Bitcoin or something where you've you gotta be deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole that before you can recognize that a t shirt somebody is wearing is like something to do with Bitcoin related. The big orange b with the Bitcoin symbol, no.
Everybody knows that one. Every any idiot can look at somebody wearing that shirt and say, he's got Bitcoin. Let's go kill him. But before we do, let's take all his shit. On to Arkansas, where Arkansas says no to a mining ban near military bases. This is atlas21.com. The Arkansas senate committee on city, county, and local affairs has voted down a proposed bill aimed at restricting Bitcoin mining operations near military installations. The decision was made with 6 votes against and 1 in favor. The rejected bill would have imposed a total ban on mining activities within 30 miles of any military facility, including hospitals and military clinics.
The proposal also included provisions for revoking previously granted licenses and contained an emergency clause for immediate enforcement citing potential risks to national and state security. Last May, the Biden administration blocked Mine One Partners Limited, a Chinese majority owned mining company, from acquiring property near a US Air Force base in Wyoming, citing national security concerns. The Arkansas decision could set a precedent for other US states as they seek to balance the interest of the mining industry with national security needs. Well, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't sound like like Arkansas balanced shit at all. They just said, we want Bitcoin mining.
You can go pound sand if you tell us that we're not gonna be able to put it within 30 miles of a military base. Screw those guys. You know, let them defend themselves. They're a military base. I can't imagine anybody who's more ready to defend themselves than a United States military base. But at least Arkansas said, you know what? No. We're Arkansas. We're gonna do shit our own way. And that's the way all states need to be. They need to make their own decisions about this stuff. Look it up. 10th amendment, guys. Last up is the first ever Bitcoin telehash fundraiser actually found a block.
This is from nobsbitcoin.com. Quote, the 256 or 256 Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Econo, Alchemist, and BitKite with a mission to advance free and open source Bitcoin mining software, firmware, and hardware solutions, held its 1st annual fundraiser, the Telehash, to raise money for open source mining development. Quote, we thought it would be appropriate to raise this money by having miners point their hash rate to our self hosted node. Against incredible odds, we actually solved the block, said Acano Alchemist on Twitter. The winning moment was captured during a live broadcast of the telehash event at Bitcoin Park in Nashville.
That's Matt Odell's outfit out there in Nashville. The event ran for almost 10 hours, and at one point, there was over 1.12 exahashes from approximately 350 different entities. At the time the block was found, about 881 petahashes per second was directed at the 256 Foundations pool. The winning nonce came from 1 of Megawatts' miners. Quote, in total, we raised 3.146 BTC to support the 256 Foundation's projects. We wouldn't have been able to do it without an amazing community of people supporting us and our vision. We thank you. Special thanks to and then there's a whole list of people on this that I'm not gonna read it. The 256 Foundation was formed in February of last year. It's almost oh, wow. It's almost a 1 year anniversary, And they're on a mission to dismantle the proprietary mining empire to make Bitcoin and Freedom Tech accessible to everyone.
The organization supports projects such as EmberOne, LibreBoard, Mujine Firmware, Hydropool, and blockwatcher. All of the projects from the 256 foundation are open source either through GPL 3.0 or CERN OHL slash s licensed. If you're a developer aligned with the 256 foundation's mission, apply for funding here, and of course, here is a link. You can support the 256 Foundation's work and projects at 2 5 256. The number's 256foundation.org. So there you go. That was a if you heard about the solo, solo miner getting winning a block. It wasn't exactly solo.
There was a lot of people that were doing it, but honestly a telehash event sounds amazing. Instead of directing your money at something, you direct your hash rate at something. And if we direct enough hash rate, then the block reward itself takes care of the funds that we would have given out of our own pockets. It is brilliant. I love that idea. I hope I see many, many more. Okay. So as promised, this is a shorter show this morning. I got stuff to go do, so I'm gonna cut it short and tell you that I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
MicroStrategy's Stock Release
Lightning Network and Infrastructure
US Treasury Bonds and Stablecoins
