Join me today for Episode 1030 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Tariffs, Triffin, and Trump
- MSTR DID NOT BUY BITCOIN
- Pump.fun Lawsuit and Sticky Fingers
- HRF's 11 BTC Bounties All Fulfilled
- Proto, 256 Foundation Pairs Up
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-tariffs-mass-bitcoin-crypto-liquidations
https://dgt10011.substack.com/p/tariffs-triffin-and-trump-how-the
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/02/03/microstrategy-pauses-weekly-bitcoin-purchases-ahead-of-earnings
https://decrypt.co/304124/bitcoin-xrp-dogecoin-rebound-trump-mexican-trade-war
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://value4value.info/
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- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
https://cointelegraph.com/news/law-firm-that-sued-pump-fun-created-3-m-dog-shit-coin-build-its-legal-case
https://atlas21.com/utah-could-be-the-first-u-s-state-to-adopt-bitcoin-reserves/
https://atlas21.com/texas-cold-winter-challenges-bitcoin-mining/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/blocks-proto-partners-with-the-256-foundation-to-support-open-source-bitcoin-mining/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/notedeck-v0-3-0-alpha-2/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/the-human-rights-foundation-awarded-all-11-bitcoin-development-bounties/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:42AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February, 2025. We're already in the second month of this brand spanking new year. This is episode 1030 of Bitcoin and Woah Nelly. Right? Woah Nelly. Yesterday was a bag of shit. Actually, the whole weekend was pretty much just like one of those weekends you wanna forget ever happened. There's, some recovery going on this morning, but, yeah, giant red candles definitely not what you wanna see. And this all boils down to Trump and the tariffs. Oh my god. Oh my god. So what do we got on? We're gonna talk about the tariffs today. And MicroStrategy is in the news, but not for what you think it will be. Then we got, well, the Mexican standoff.
It seems that the tariffs may have actually opened up the ears of our neighbors to the south. We'll find out. That law firm that was, gonna, oh, do a class action lawsuit against pump dot fun, looks like they might have gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar. We'll find out more. Utah getting close. They could actually be the very first state to enact, enable, and otherwise install a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Texas, well, got cold and it affected mining. We've got, some we got some, partnerships between the two fifty six foundation, you know, those guys that actually found a block while they were having their hashathon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Block seems to be partnering with them. We'll get details on that.
Domus, note deck version 0.3 is on the way. It's got some interesting features. And then we've got the Human Rights Foundation also in the news. But first up, we got tariff talk. Is it risk on assets? Well, the Trump tariffs leads to mass Bitcoin and crypto liquidations. Aaron Wood gonna start us out from Cointelegraph. Oh, no. Bitcoin went down. We're all gonna die. United States President Donald Trump has introduced tariffs on major trading partners Canada, Mexico, and China, sending markets into a dizzy. Oh, it's such a dizzy. Bitcoin slumped below a hundred thousand dollars on February, while altcoins like Ripple and Cardano are down over 1722% respectively as of the time of writing.
Trump's own World Liberty Financial portfolio suffered losses of over 20% according to Spot on Chain. Yeah. That's not that is probably gonna make this okay. Hold on. I I gotta pause because I've I've been talking about this ethics thing with Trump and the fact that he's gonna be the Trump, you know, the the crypto president and but but he's also got these meme coins and this World Liberty Financial. Let's just kinda roll back and just just, I don't know, kind of revel in the fact that we have this conundrum, this it is an ethical situation.
It just is. It doesn't matter if you like Trump or hate Trump. It is an ethical situation because, well, he's gonna be the he wants crypto policies in The United States. He's the crypto president, and yet he's got his fingers in the cookie jar as well. But since what he does, like with this whole tariff thing, kicked his own he kicked himself in his own ass. So from that standpoint, we actually have a guy, because he's got his hands in the cookie jar, every time he makes a move, he's gonna get immediate feedback as to whether or not that shit works for his interests or not. Anyway, I I had to say it. The total market liquidation from this weekend is estimated to be at least around 8 to 10,000,000,000.
That's billion with a b. The amount of total market liquidation is estimated to be be between 8 and $10,000,000,000. That's the at least number, according to Bybit cofounder and CEO, Ben Zhao. Responding to a Cointelegraph post on Twitter, the crypto exchange executive said, quote, Bybit's twenty four hour liquidation alone was $210,000,000,0.0 Holy shit, end quote. On February, placed a 25% additional import tariff on Mexico and Canada and then 10% for China. Markets spiraled, major stock indices and crypto just racked up losses across the board. Trump stated that he plans to introduce tariffs on the European Union as well as superconductors, oil, gas, steel, and copper as soon as February.
This train is a rolling, ladies and gentlemen. And while many are saying that investors should buy the dip, some analysts are noting the increasing correlation between crypto and traditional markets stating that the incoming tariffs could send Bitcoin tumbling further and increase market uncertainty. As Bitcoin adoption grows, the role of the asset has changed. Traders, investors, and enthusiasts still debate whether Bitcoin is ultimately a risk on or risk off asset. The price of risk on assets is driven by factors such as earnings, market sentiment, bank policies, and speculation, while risk off assets serve as safe havens during times of market uncertainty.
With the effect that the tariffs have had on the crypto markets, many analysts are now firmly in the camp that Bitcoin is, at the moment, a risk on asset, and that further market turbulence will likely negatively affect BTC price. Crypto and finance influencer, Amit Kakukuru, just said, quote, unfortunately, crypto is not a safe haven. Bitcoin trades on liquidity, and global liquidity decreases with tariffs, end quote. Wait. What? Bitcoin trades on liquidity, and global liquidity decreases with tariffs. Unless you're actually talking about the fiat liquidity that you use to either get into a Bitcoin trade, as in buy Bitcoin, or get out of the trade, I e sell Bitcoin, then you're wrong.
Bitcoin is liquid itself. It is the most liquid asset that there is. I it has absolutely nothing affects how much Bitcoin that I that if I have it, it that doesn't affect how much I can send if somebody's willing to trade their goods and services for Bitcoin. Now where this is an issue is these on and off ramps. If you're moving fiat into Bitcoin and you just don't have enough fiat because of, quote, unquote, Trump tariffs, well, then yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That could definitely affect it. Or vice versa, if you're moving off, if you're getting out of your Bitcoin and into fiat, again, it's for the same reasons just on the other side of the street. If the guy that wants to buy your Bitcoin, like, is paying, like, 50% more for diapers because we I don't know that all the diaper manufacturers are in Canada, and I don't I don't think that that's true. I'm just saying if all the diaper manufacturers, you know, because of all the babies, is in Canada, well, then, yeah, you're gonna not have as much fiat currency to, you know, go and buy the dip.
So that's the but that's the only way the liquidity issue plays into Bitcoin. Let's continue on. Economist and Trader, Alex Krueger posted, February on Twitter, quote, Bitcoin is mainly a risk asset. Tariffs this aggressive are very negative for risk assets, and the economy will take a hit, end quote. According to Kruger, the best hope is that retaliations from countries targeted by the tariffs aren't too high and that The US and other countries find common ground fast so tariffs may be pared back fast and soon, end quote. The prospect of reconciliation seems especially far away given that as Trump signed the order, he said The US was not seeking any concessions from Canada, Mexico, or China as he told reporters on February, quote, if they want to play the game, I don't mind.
We can play the game all they want, end quote. His comments regarding tariffs on the EU and possibly The UK were not particularly conciliatory either, quote, The UK is out of line, but I think that one can be worked out. But the European Union, it's an atrocity what they've done, end quote. So he's gonna he he UK is probably gonna be alright during all this, but I get the feeling that Trump, like, well, several people that Trump would claim would be swamp creatures, they don't like the EU. We're we on several occasions, United States fiscal policy has put the EU into a hell of a state, and it looks like Trump's about to do it again. So drain the swamp? Well, do so at your own risk if you need some swamp creatures on your side. But in either event, other market observers are unfazed by the market's recent dip.
And they believe that conditions currently putting downward pressure on Bitcoin can soon create a meteoric rise. And over the weekend, analysts and crypto Twitter, DGMs repeated the old adage that investors should buy the dip in anticipation of further gains. Bitwise's European head of research, Andre Dragos, said on February that there were, quote, big declines in sentiment and positioning across the board and that it's a good time to start adding exposure in Bitcoin in my opinion, end quote. Later in the same day, he said that accumulations were already starting to pick up, and he gives a graph showing that a lot of people are starting to buy some Bitcoin.
Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise Invest, predicted that, quote, as the financial war unravels, the price of Bitcoin will go violently higher. Well, now Trump's World Liberty Financial was not spared from the market sell off at all. In fact, Trump himself could be feeling some pain. His family's decentralized finance protocol, World Liberty Financial, went on an altcoin buying spree just hours, hours before his inauguration on January. You remember that, ladies and gentlemen? Remember how he put wrapped Bitcoin into his portfolio? And God only knows I think he bought Solana too, but he got wrecked, man.
Wrecked because the investments which totaled over $270,000,000 earlier this week fell by over 21% or 5,170,000,0.0 on February. So the dude is standing from $270,000,000 to a little bit less than what? 200 and like, he's, like, sitting at $218,000 or a million dollars off of the $2.70 that he put into the Shitcoin Casino. And he immediately rubbed his own ass. I'm telling you, this is the only time where I think possible ethics issues could work in our favor. I'm I'm just saying. Now that this is that's the end of that story. Jeff a a person by the name of Jeff Park was mentioned in that story and what he thought was going on and why we could see a rise in Bitcoin.
Well, so happens that they're referring to this substack article that Jeff Park wrote. And I've got it for you. And if Jeff Park is gonna be mad at me for reading this without permission, I'm sorry, Jeff. But I think people need to know more about what you're saying. Plus, you can always go to his substack. Jeff has a substack, and it this is where I'm reading it from. I'm not paying a subscription for it, so it's public domain. Alright? I'm just just so anybody is like, oh, man. I can't believe you're just ripping them off. I'm not. A lot of people don't even know who the hell Jeff Park is. If anything, I'm giving the guy a hand.
Anyway, the name of the article is Tariffs, Trifin, and Trump, how the endgame sends Bitcoin vertical. You simply have not yet grasped how amazing a sustained tariff war is going to be for Bitcoin in the long run. Now he wrote this yesterday, February, or at least that's when he published it. To understand tariffs today, there are two contexts that you have to frame the conversation in. Number one, the curse of the Triffin dilemma, and number two, Trump's personal goals. By analyzing both, the endgame becomes clear. Tariffs might be just a temporary tool, but the permanent conclusion is that Bitcoin is not only going higher, but faster.
First, the Triffin dilemma. The United States dollar status as a reserve currency gives The US what is called exorbitant privilege in financial transactions and trade, and it has a few implications. Number one, the dollar is structurally overvalued due to its need to be held as a reserve by other countries in a price inelastic manner. And number two, the US has to run a persistent trade balance deficit to supply the world with those dollars. And three, the US government, therefore, can borrow persistently cheaper than it should be able to.
The United States wants to keep number three, but get rid of number one and number two. But how? Say hello to tariffs. Recognize that tariffs are often a temporary a temporary negotiation tool to achieve a goal. The ultimate goal is to seek a multilateral agreement to weaken the dollar, essentially, a Plaza Accord two point o. Gonna pause there. I had to look up Plaza Accords. This was in 1985. And France and a whole bunch of European guys got together in a room, and they tried to figure out a way to take a little bit of the steam out of the United States dollar. Now The United States was part of this agreement. Right? They were part of the agreement. It's not like this was being done behind The United States' backs. The Plaza Accord basically sucked a little bit of the juju out of the dollar.
But in so doing, we were able to supply the world with dollars. It's it's an interesting financial set of tools when people get together from different countries, sit in a room, and say, how in in what other ways outside of the market can we make agreements that set prices on our fiat currencies? Honestly, I don't think this is the best way to go about doing shit because that means you're trying to control something over and above a free market. And free markets have this tendency to thumb their nose at your ass, and you end up, well, where we are today. But I'm not blaming the plaza, of course. I'm just kinda trying to describe what it was, but that's sort of what it was. It was an agreement between The United States and and a whole bunch of European guys to devalue the dollar a little bit on the world stage. So continuing with the article, one hypothetical way that this could happen, weakening the dollar like the Plaza Accord two point o, that The US would explicitly specify that countries have to reduce their dollar reserves while also requiring them to shift the duration of the United States Treasury holding further out. In other words, Trump is trying to find a way to implement a YCC, not YCC strategy within the realms of the executive branch.
No doubt, Besant is on board, recognizing that he was left a bag of trash by former secretary of the treasury, Yellen, whose legacy will have been the near permanent impairment of the treasury's ability to manage duration by doubling the proportion of debt financing to treasury bills, also known as adding fake liquidity, exposing The US to the mercy of the whims of refinancing idiotically while interest rates were beginning to rise. The cost to US taxpayers here cannot be understated. And as a result, The United States is charting a path to achieve the holy grail of fiat alchemy, lower dollar and lower yield.
And this brings me to my second point. I have shared before that Trump's number one goal is to lower the ten year rate. The reason being that his own bags depend on it. Real estate. His obsession with Powell cutting short term rates then realizing it's not working is the catalyst. Never doubt the uncomplicated incentives of the transparently profit motivated and align yourself next to him. Mark my words, the ten year is going to go down, whatever it takes. So the asset to own, therefore, is Bitcoin. In a world of a weaker dollar and weaker US rates, something broken pundits will tell you is impossible because they can't model statecraft. Risk assets in The United States will fly through the roof beyond your wildest imaginations.
Four, it is likely a giant tax cut will have to accompany the higher cost borne by the loss of a competitive advantage or a comparative advantage. The tariff cost, most likely, though through higher inflation, will be shared by both US and trade partners, but the relative impact will be much heavier on the foreign nations. These countries then will have to find a way to fend off their weak ass growth issues leading to stimulating the economy through monetary and fiscal policies that ultimately cause currency debasement. The outraged citizens of these countries will experience a mini financial crisis and look for alternatives. And unlike the when the world was largely offline, today we are not only online, we are on chain.
So while both sides of the trade imbalance equation will want Bitcoin for two different reasons, the end result is the same, higher, violently, violently faster, for we are at war. The TLDR, you simply have not yet grasped how amazing a sustained tariff war is going to be for Bitcoin in the long run. So this guy, unlike some of the other dudes that we were talking about in the first, first story we were reading, This guy has the opposite view. He thinks the tariffs are going to cause such financial pressures on citizenries around the world that they are going to use what Christine Lagarde called the escape hatch.
But this time, Christine Lagarde isn't going to be worried about this escape hatch. Why? Because she's distracted. She's distracted by what orange man is doing. Everybody, in fact, is distracted by what orange man is doing. So, therefore, therefore, what the hell is it we're not seeing? I'm not saying that the only reason he's doing tariffs is to distract everybody. I'm just saying that it gives a nice pleasant fog of war kind of cover for all kinds of other chicanery going on in the background, but we can't see it because our attention is directed at angry Canadians and, well, it seems that Mexico may be, like, you know, lightening up. We'll have to find out. But I wanna get over here to MicroStrategy because they've done something that they haven't done in weeks and weeks and weeks.
MicroStrategy has not bought Bitcoin. They didn't buy Bitcoin this week. They they didn't. They didn't. In fact, Michael Saylor actually announced that they didn't buy Bitcoin. So this is from CoinDesk written by Helene Braun. MicroStrategy, the fourth largest owner of Bitcoin, did not buy any new Bitcoin last week. Executive chairman Michael Saylor announced on Twitter, and that ended a twelve week string of purchases. So since November, the Tysons Corner, Virginia based company has bought 218,887 Bitcoin according to Saylor, and it currently holds 471,107 Bitcoin.
While Saylor didn't say why the company held back, a likely reason could be its impending earnings release after the market closed in two days on February, said James Van Stratten, a senior analyst over there at CoinDesk. Public companies go into a so called blackout period for some time before earnings release to prevent insider trading. And during that period, which can last for days, weeks, or even months, people with financial information about the company are restricted from buying or selling the company's securities. In MicroStrategy's case, given that the majority of its balance sheet is Bitcoin, this could include trading the cryptocurrency. And last week, the company announced a preferred share offering of roughly $250,000,000 to purchase even more BTC.
Then just a few days later, it more than doubled that amount as it sold roughly 730,000,0.0 shares of the series. So what does all that shit mean? Well, it means that, a, on February, they released their earnings from MicroStrategy. Now what what this earnings release is not going to be able to do is include any gains made on the Bitcoin holdings because the new was it FASB? I can't remember the FASB, the fair accounting something rules, those don't come into play until, I think, May 0. And so May 0 and after will be the first time that companies that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet will be able to look at Bitcoin and see gains and say that's they can put that as earnings. Or or it will factor into their earning statement, whereas before, they could only count it as a loss if Bitcoin lost value while they were holding it. Alright. So that's gonna be different, but that's not going to play any role on February, which is, what, a Wednesday.
Right? So on Wednesday, MicroStrategy is gonna drop their numbers, and they're probably going to suck. Because I MicroStrategy, in my view, doesn't give one shit about software that they've been building for business intelligence. They don't care. I get the feeling that all they're gonna do is service all of their old customers until those customers start using something else or they go out of business or they die or whatever. Because MicroStrategy does not care about making software anymore. They're completely changing gears. Alright. So that's the first thing. Now the second thing is, and this is what I find odd, is if they knew they weren't going to buy Bitcoin because they were going into earning season in Feb. 0 the like, drop their earnings on February, and therefore, they weren't going to be doing any coins or anything like that, then why did they go ahead and sell the shares of this strike preferred stock?
Strike is the name of this stock. STRK, I believe, is the ticker symbol. They they not only did they sell all they wanted to, it was so oversubscribed they had to more than double it. And it was for expressly two purposes, to buy Bitcoin and have a little bit of money for operating costs. But yet they did not buy any Bitcoin during the period in which this stock actually sold hand over fist. So they're sitting on a mountain of cash. They could be buying Bitcoin, but because according to James Van Stratten, they're not doing that because it's a blackout period or could be not that they're not doing it because it's a blackout period until their earnings are dropped on February. Does that mean after they drop their earnings and then after that, they start buying Bitcoin with this money they got, this from selling 730,000,0.0 shares. I don't know. It's like half a billion dollars is what they're sitting on. So I don't know, man.
But I do find it kinda odd that they are not buying any Bitcoin this week. Okay. So now the Circle P is open for business and Osiris, or rather premium sun grown flower from CryptoVantage is being sold on plebeian.market, p l e b e I a n Market. And it's got a a picture of a whole bunch of, you know, like, good looking pot from Osiris exotics. I I it just says it's got a picture of Osiris Exotics in the background of this picture of the pot. So I don't know. But the details are this. If you wanna get high, this is a genu generously filled one ounce bag of fresh organic sun grown flowers, and it's weedy. It's pot. You shove it in your pipe and you smoke it and you get good and high. Well, you can get this ounce of good looking pot for 100,000 satoshis.
Says here he's got a hundred in stock and that is from crypto underscore vantage. Now if you want if you want, you can go into the show notes and you can look for the plebian.market URL and click it, and it will take you directly to this page where you can buy all the pot you want. And right below that will actually be the guy's prime or a Noster, page so you can go talk to him directly on Noster if you want to. But, you know, me, myself, I haven't smoked pot in, like, well over a year. Before that, it was, like, ten years, and before that, it was, like, five years. Me, myself, I just don't care anymore. But if you're somebody out there and you really wanna give, like, this guy a try, well, go to plebian.market and buy yourself some black market pot on the Internet because that's what plebian market allows you to do. And because he's selling it for Satoshis, I e Bitcoin, well, that's why he's in the circle p. Because if you're not selling your goods and services for Bitcoin, then you're not in the circle p. Let's get on to the rest of the show.
Bitcoin, XRP, and Dogecoin rebound as Trump pauses the Mexican trade tariffs. Oh, Mexican standoff, and it looks like somebody might be bending some knees. Andrew Hayward riding for decrypt. Bitcoin and other major assets are on a surprise upswing after a brutal day of declines following word that president Trump will pause the planned implementation of trade tariffs against Mexico and attempt to negotiate a deal with that country. Nothing about China. Nothing about Canada. This is only about Mexico. Let's be clear about that. The price of Bitcoin rose nearly $4,000 in the span of an hour as news started to spread. Oh my god. And while Bitcoin took a hit, other major assets plunged harder over the weekend.
And they talk about a couple of shit coins, and I really don't give a shit. Let's see. Let's get on down here to where Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum announced on Monday that she did, in fact, speak with Donald Trump and agree on a pause to The US tariffs as well as Mexico's planned retaliation, and that Mexico will send 10000 soldiers to The United States border to attempt to prevent illegal cross border drug trafficking and migration. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the countries, quote, agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period with negotiations planned with secretary of state Marco Rubio, secretary of treasury Scott Besant, and secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick.
President Trump added that he hopes to, quote, achieve a deal with Mexico. Planned trade tariffs against Canada and China are still currently set to go in effect on Tuesday, and my boy howdy. The kid the Canucks are pissed. They're booing United States teams like it at hockey face offs. Right? It's it's amazing. You piss off some Canadians and they don't they're not polite anymore. They're not nice anymore. No. No. No. They're basically saying giving the finger to The United States. It's all kind of hilarious. We'll have to see how this crap plays out. But Mexico, to send 10000 troops to their own border, and we'll have to see if they they actually do that because talk is cheap.
Actually, busting those dudes out there to the border and 10000 of them, that shit's expensive. But if they do it if they do it, The United States and Mexico might end up with much better relations. Not because it's Trump and not because of the tariffs. I think what it is is just a collective sigh from The United States that we're just freaking tired of the bullshit on the southern border. Everybody keeps talking about this northern border stuff. I don't see a whole lot of immigration coming over the border from the north. We do see it in the southern borders.
Right? But it's not just that. It really is a lot about drugs. And that and the the southern border is so ridiculously porous anyway that maybe, just maybe, both countries are like, this may be getting out of hand. Maybe even the countries themselves, not just The United States, but even Mexico is like, nobody wants to live here. Why does everybody keep going to The United States? You can't tax people if they don't live in your country. And it may be getting to the point that Mexico is going, we might wanna keep some of these people here. I'm just saying maybe that maybe it could be a change in a positive direction for both countries.
At least for Texas, Mexico is a huge part of the Texas story, and Texas is a massive part of the Mexican story. You cannot have one of those stories without the other one. Alright? Texas and Mexico share a special relationship, And a lot of people will go, well, yeah. Well, Texas is one of the people that really hates immigration. No. That's not entirely true. Not in that is not entirely true. Most of the immigration that happens in Texas is actually short term cross border crossings. In the port the border is really porous down there, but it's short term, which means that people from Mexico will literally cross the Rio Grande. The the, you know, the the stream that it's become is not really a river anymore.
They will cross it. They will go to a Dollar General in, like, El Paso or, you know, somewhere, you know, whatever cities are are on the border, and then they will go back. They'll just go back. I mean I mean, there is a huge amount of short term. We're talking, like, four, five, six hour immigration and then emigration on the Texas on the Texas Mexican border. In Texas, as far as long term shit, we've been dealing with it for years. Texas has been dealing with it for years. But that does not make it where people people think that all Texans hate Mexicans because of this. That is not true. That is not fucking true.
You might hear a couple of people on the news that was put in front of your face make it sound that way, but that is not at all what's going on in Texas. When you get too many peo like, we could have too many people from Louisiana flooding over our borders, and we'd be going, hey. Stop that shit. You can't just come over here and just bum off of us. Did same thing for New Mexico. The same thing for Oklahoma. Right? For those of you out there that were led to believe that all Texans hate all Mexicans, that is so not the case. Our stories, the Texas story and the Mexican story, are so closely woven together that we cannot be the warm, cozy blanket that we are without those threads of both of the histories being woven together into this story.
Please stop believing the bullshit CNN and NBC and CBS tells you. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. They got West Texas Intermediate Oil, which is up after it was down after it was up. But right now, it's up half a point to $72.91. It got as high as $75 when tariffs were on the table 100% and there was no capitulation from anybody anywhere. And then it abruptly fell the second that Mexico and Trump started talking. That's how shaky all these markets are. Brent Norcia is up a quarter of a point. Natural gas is up ten and one third points, back up to $3.35 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline up over two and a half points to $2.11.
Gold is up point 79%. Wow. $2,857.50. Good for you, Peter Schiff. Silver up point 8%. Platinum is down 4%. Copper is up almost a point. Palladium is down two and a quarter points. Everything in ag is in the green except for rough rice and sugar. And rough rice is the biggest loser of the day, three quarters of a point to the downside. Biggest winner looks like it's gonna be soybeans, one and a half to the upside. Live cattle down a full point. Lean hogs are down, woah, four and a half. And feeder cattle are down too. I guess this has something to do with the tariffs as well. The Dow is now moving sideways after it clawed back some pretty steep losses because of, well, tariffs.
44,666 is what the Dow stands at right now. S and P is down a half point as is the Nasdaq, but the S and P Mini sharper losses point 85% to the downside. And, of course, as we all know, well, we took a licking in Bitcoin. We went all the way down to something like I wanna say it was 584,006. Since then, we've erased part of that. We've come back up $100,880. No. It looks like we're on a huge tear because it's changing right in front of my eyes. Now it's a hundred thousand $940, and that puts us smack dab right at $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap. You can get 35.7 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,819,091,.85 of. And average fees per block are low because mempools kept clearing over the weekend and Bitcoin was gonna die again.
Again, it's how many times have we been through empty mempools? How many times have we been through full men pool? It doesn't matter. And all the time, all the time that the men pools were clearing out. You know, what was being added? Hash rate. We were we were at like 816 x a hashes per second sometime over the weekend, and that was up from like 780 while men pools were clearing at one Satoshi per v byte. And guess what? Bitcoin didn't die. Isn't that amazing? It's just I it never ever ceases to amaze me. The shortsightedness and the, like, the damn near, like, what is it when you lose your memory?
Oh, god. See, now go with the anaphasia. I cannot remember the word for it. Amnesia. There we go. It's like they have amnesia. How many times was Bitcoin going to die because either the mempools were too full or the mempool was empty? Not the mempool. Mempools around the world. Mempools around the world were empty. Either too many people are using Bitcoin or nobody's using Bitcoin. And either one of those extremes, Bitcoin dies. And guess what never happened? It never died. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There are 12 blocks in mempools around the world carrying a a scant 2700 transactions. That's right. Not 27000, not 207000, but 2700.
And high priorities are gonna clear you at two Satoshis per v byte, same for low priority transactions. We have 835.6 exahashes per second. Holy smokes. Oh my god. It looks like we have an estimated difficulty, increase coming at 7.6%. So let's see. That will be let's see. When is that? When is that coming? Oh, 05/00 In five days, we're estimated to go up in difficulty 7.6%. Yet, mempools are clear. Why? Because hash rate keeps coming online. Well, why would you do that if you're not getting any fees? Well, we we still have the subsidy. Right? I mean, that's the rub.
All these people that are saying Bitcoin's gonna die because this week, nobody was using Bitcoin. Because the miners are still putting on hash rate because they want that subsidy, but it sure shit ain't the fees. That's the argument. They're looking at, like, two, eight, sixteen years in the future, and they still don't wrap their head around it. If Bitcoin was $2,000,000 4 years from now, miners would be actually making even more money on a hell of a lot less of a subsidy on mining. This is what they don't get, and it's almost analogous to the micro micro strategy trade.
You sell that because you're hoping or actually, you kinda realize that Bitcoin's going to increase in value, and you'll be able to pay that debt off at a fraction of what it cost you to buy the actual Bitcoin. It's just nobody ever gets this. It's just it's it's almost as if Michael Saylor said, I'm going to model everything that I do from now on over Bitcoin mining. Anyway, let's get on to stable corn, which was Friday's episode of Bitcoin. And I got Vinny giving me 2,048. Sat says, let's do something about that zap amount floor. Thank you, Vinny. I appreciate it. Anonymous with a thousand says, insert random emoji here. Yeah. Well, I probably wouldn't be able to read it anyway. God's death with five thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Nick Dose with a hundred and one says, cheers. Paul Serene with a hundred says, thank you, sir. Always appreciate your episodes and choice of news stories.
Keep rocking. I will do so, sir. And then Grin simply says, interesting. And because she included the fountain.fm URL to this particular episode, she didn't actually have to give me any Satoshis to get in here. God dang it. Cheapskate. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Law firm that sued pump.fund is being linked to a $23,000,000 dog shit 2 coin. Seriously, this is a meme coin. Stephen Kati from Cointelegraph. A meme coin believed to have been launched by a law firm to help it build a class action lawsuit against Solana meme coin creator pump dot fund recently has gained attention in the community, hitting a $23,000,000 market cap.
Pump dot fund was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit on January by investors alleging that every token it helped make is an unregistered security from which it made nearly $500,000,000 in fees. The lawsuit was filed by US law firms Berwick Law and Wolf Popper on behalf of the investors. However, however, hold up, y'all. Hold up. Observers within the crypto community quickly noticed that the address shown in exhibit c of the court documents match the wallet address behind dog shit going nowhere, otherwise known as dog shit 2, leading many to believe the law firms are behind the token.
Oh, what interesting webs we weave. Exhibit c of the court documents has the launch date as while the listing comes with a warning, don't buy this coin. Data from Gecko terminal shows the meme coin spiked in value since January after the proposed lawsuit was filed as observers made the connection. At its peak on Jan. 31, a dog shit 2 market cap exceeded 23,000,000 according to data on pump.fund. It has now fallen back to 240,000,0.0. But meanwhile, the token's price hit its all time high of 0.,003,968 on February before tumbling 34%.
Berwick Law and Wolf Popper did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph's request for comment. Last Dec. 0, also requested that anyone who lost money on viral influencer, Hayley Welch's hawk to a meme coin contact them. It comes amid a new flurry of meme coin activity. Elon Musk's father has been the latest figure to discuss a potential meme coin launch, calls it Musket. Jesus. Oh my god. Amid growing interest in celebrity backed meme tokens, Pump.fun usage surged over the past week when it recorded an all time high of 330,000,000,0.0 in weekly trading. Oh, for god's sakes.
So the very lawsuit law or law firms that the lawsuit against pump dot fun is coming from seems to have spun up a meme coin called dog shit too with a proviso that you do not buy this meme coin. I don't think that's going to help. And honestly, maybe maybe it does help them. May you know, maybe what they were doing was saying, look. This is how easy it is for scammers to spin up a meme coin and exhibit c, and I haven't looked at exhibit c. Just shows exactly how easy it is to get on pump.fun and essentially vacuum up money from people's pockets, you know, their cold hard cash that they can't afford to lose, and just basically steal it. Who knows?
Or or in a more tinfoil hat way, maybe pump.fund and these two law firms are working together somehow to increase the amount of maybe it's money laundering. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe the guys over at pump dot fund realize that they're gonna get all their money stolen from them by the US government because the SEC is gonna come down hard as a hammer on their ass for unregistered securities, which is what they are. So luckily, though, there's a law firm that's going to be able to take a third a third. This is what these guys are gonna get paid. It's generally speaking. It is a third of the settlement if they win the settlement on the investors behalf, so they at least get to retain a third of all these ill gotten gains.
It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Now do I know this for a fact? No, man. I am so spitballing. And it's not even a gut feeling, but it would be interesting to see see that as a type of money laundering kind of thing. Anyway, let's get on over to Utah where the Mormons are running around, and they could be the first US state to adopt a Bitcoin reserve. Utah could this is from by the way. Utah could become the first state to officially establish a Bitcoin reserve. Why? Well, this milestone could be reached because the state's legislative calendar, it only allows a forty five day window for law approval.
And in a recent interview with Cynthia Lummis and Dennis Porter, which is CEO of the Satoshi Action Fund, they highlighted Utah's privileged position in the Bitcoin race. Quote, it's either sink or swim in forty five days. No other state has a faster calendar, and no other state has more political momentum and willpower to get it done. On January, a committee in the Utah House approved a bill with an eight to one vote, which would allow the state to invest a portion of its public funds in digital assets. Point Porter, sorry, Porter pointed out that every bill passed by the Utah House Economic Development Committee in recent year has turned out to be law, strengthening the prospects of success for this particular initiative.
Arizona is the only other state to have reached a similar stage in the legislative process, and other states such as Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Texas have proposed similar bills. Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky, and South Dakota have publicly expressed support for the idea, although they have yet to formalize legislative proposals. So what did all that mean? It just means that Utah, the the second that you pass it out of committee and you put it on the floor for a vote, you get only forty five days. No other state has such a short time span.
I don't know what the other states' time spans are, but it's more than forty five days. And since all of there's only one other proposal that's been passed out of committee and sent to the floor for vote, and that's Arizona. Everything else is either just fully proposed or under review in some committee before it can actually go for a vote on the legislative floor of those states. So let's say that let's say that the day okay. Let's do it this way. The day that Utah passed that bill out of committee and put it to a vote in legislature, If the very next day, twenty four hours later, every single other state had also done the same, but twenty four hours later, Utah would still possibly be able to be the first state in The United States to do it because they have to do it in forty five days, and all the rest of these guys can take longer.
So there you go. There you go. Now speaking of Texas, they had a cold winter, or rather they are having a cold winter. And I miss my state. I wish I was home. But the cold winter is challenging Bitcoin mining. This is also from Atlas twenty one. According to hash rate index, the cold wave that hit The United States in Jan. 0 had a significant impact on Bitcoin mining activities in Texas, a state that alone accounts for 17% of total US mining. Temperatures plunged to zero degrees Celsius in a region traditionally known for its mild winters, and the mining industry faced a dual challenge, a surge in electricity consumption for home heating and the resulting increase in energy costs.
The rising energy demand combined with supply challenges from renewable sources such as wind and solar forced grid operators to rely more on natural gas whose prices spiked significantly as well. Following the temporary suspension of numerous mining operations due to unsustainable operating costs, Bitcoin recorded its first And it did it on January. Minor revenue per and it did it on January. Revenue per terahash decreased slightly in Jan. 0 compared to Dec. 0, suggesting that firms had a harder time mining bitcoin profitably. And according to analysts at Luxor's mining pool, the situation is expected to normalize as temperatures return to seasonal levels. Colder weather in The US is a temporary disruption, and we expect hash rate stability to improve as temperatures normalize.
You know, it it just dawned on me. When is Bitcoin mining projections going to be included in the old Farmers' Almanac? If any of you out there are like me and you geek out on the new Farmers' Almanac or the old Farmers' Almanac, those are actually two different publications, then you'll know what I'm talking about. It'll be in the web it would be in the weather section. And what it the the Farmers Almanac comes out, and they basically leverage, like, you know, a century and a half of weather data for The United States to to tell you what these winters or the summer's gonna be like or the spring's gonna be like, what your sustained temperatures are gonna be. And, honestly, they're not terribly far off most of the times.
Most of the time, that's why people buy the Farmers' Almanac. Because generally speaking, they're they're close enough for you to be able to plan, like, you that comes out in, like, I think the new Farmers' Almanac comes out in Jan. 0 or the old Farmers' Almanac comes out in Jan. 0. I think. I can't really remember. But so six months later is is like or or getting into summer, and they're saying what the summer's gonna be like. And lo and behold, most of the times are actually pretty damn accurate. So when will Bitcoin mining be introduced into the old Farmers' Almanac? I would love to see that. That would be great. Now speaking of mining, blocks proto partners, that's block, you know, like Jack Dorsey's outfit.
Blocks proto partners hold on. Let me do this again for the eighth time. Blocks Proto partners with the two fifty six Foundation to support open source Bitcoin mining. Woo. Good god almighty. Today, quote, today we're pleased to announce a long term partnership with the two fifty six Foundation, a Nashville based nonprofit focused on developing and advocating for solutions that lower Bitcoin mining's barrier to entry, from educational resources to open source software, firmware, and hardware solutions. To support the initiative, Proto has donated up to 256 k b z m two ASIC chips. Oh, wow. 256000 b z m two ASIC chips to the foundation allowing them to allocate these resources to emerging mining projects at their own discretion.
Quote, in the end, Bitcoin's decentralized future is up to all of us to define. And while industrial mining will certainly play an important role, communities like the two fifty six foundation may ultimately determine the network's enduring character and make meaningful contributions to its decentralization. So, wow, that's a 02/6000 ASIC chips is a lot. Now I don't know what the b z m two ASIC chip cost, but I can guarantee you it's more than a dollar. Just saying. Non to Damus Damus NoteDeck. Not just Damus, but Damus NoteDeck version 0.3 or the alpha two has been released publicly.
And if you did not know, note deck is sort of like the old tweet deck where you can have multiple columns and each column is like your tweet or, well, your notes and this is Noster, so we're talking about notes. Like, your notes in one column, likes and reactions in another column, maybe zaps in the third column if you if you got any zaps or something like that, maybe a hashtag in the fourth column that you're following. And note that or a Twitter deck or tweet deck was great. I used it almost exclusively before I got booted off of Twitter, and now I've come to find out that tweet deck is essentially just basically gone.
I I don't know anymore about it. But NoteDeck for Domus is out. It does seem to be working, and here is the project's announcement. We can't believe it's been two years today that Domus has been on the App Store. We are beyond excited that you all have stuck around and supported the team for this long. And to celebrate the occasion, we're launching Domus NoteDeck, our very alpha, multiplatform Nostr client. NoteDeck is now publicly available for anyone or everyone to test. Previously limited to purple subscribers, this release also includes media uploads, post hashtags, profile editing and enhanced command line interface for user interactions and various improvements and bug fixes let's see what's new clicking a mention now opens the profile page note previews, when hovering over reply descriptions, there are media uploads, there's profile editing, you can add hashtags to post now, enhanced command line interface for user interactions, various android updates because this is also available on android, although I don't know how the hell you'd have multiple columns in an on a phone, but whatever.
And then there's debug features for user relay list and mute list, synchronization. So there's that. Now, finally, for today, the Human Rights Foundation awarded every single one of the 11 Bitcoin development bounties that they had out, and this is out of no bullshit Bitcoin. It was the The Human Rights Foundation launched a Bitcoin bounty program offering 11 bounties to fund developers creating tools for activists fighting authoritarianism. The bounties aim to improve UX enhanced privacy and open source closed systems with the deadline of Dec. 31, 2024.
Quote, we are excited to announce that every single bounty was claimed and that the resulting tools and upgrades are now empowering human rights activists daily across popular apps such as BlueWallet, Zeus, Stack Wallet, Iris, Coreacle, Keeper, Bull Bitcoin, Cake Wallet, and more, announced the organization. The bounties awarded to the following projects, developers, and contributors. Number one, open sourcing the Bitcoin design guide had a bounty of 2 BTC. That's a lot of money, y'all. Serverless pay join got one b 1 and a half b t c. End to end encrypted nostril group chats, two b t c.
Silent payments got 1 b t c. Human readable offers, 1 BTC. Self custodial mobile lightning address, 1 BTC. Mobile border wallets, 2 bitcoin. Easy mobile multisig, 1 bitcoin. Frost multisig wallet, 1 bitcoin. Cash you upgrades to bitcoin. And BIP 47 expansion, one half of 1 Bitcoin. Quote, excuse me. We learned a lot through this process, and we look forward to doing similar things in the future. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers, said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. Today, HRF also announced the launch of its first AI program. Yes. You heard it. Artificial intelligence.
The program is aiming to monitor and expose the use of AI by autocrats as a tool of repression and to support open source AI tools for dissidents, especially those laboring under tyranny. Learn more about it here. And that is a link. And it goes to it looks like it goes to njump.me, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do that. This sentence right here needs to be said probably a couple more times. This is what this is the quote from Alex Gladstein. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers.
Mixing political dissidents with developers. Gotta say it one more time. Mixing political dissidents with developers. All of these tools since the release of Bitcoin and, yes, before, but it really came to a head with the release of Bitcoin back in 02/8, 02/00 09/00. Before that time, most people would look at computer programming, software engineering, a computer programmer, computer development, the software development, developers, as something that stood over there, and they did you didn't talk to them and they didn't come out of the they didn't wanna come to your party because they're geeky and they're introverts and they'd rather eat Hot Pockets while playing a video game and then coding from 02:00 in the morning until the sun comes up. Right? They're they're they're geeks. They're nerds. They're math guys. You know, they don't wanna hang out with you. Bullshit they don't.
Now after Bitcoin, what we're seeing across the board is this mixing of software, software development, developers. All all of that is crashing like an iceberg into the good ship lollipop that carries all of the dissidents, all the people that are tired of totalitarianism. And I'm not talking about, oh my god, Chip, the orange man is totality. I don't give a shit. That's not my that's not the guy I'm worried about. I'm not worried about the president of France. He's just a fucking puppet. They're all puppets. They're being the strings that are on their arms and legs are being bounced up and down by somebody else. And that somebody has a shit ton of money and you don't know who they are because they were smart enough forever and ever and ever to do what Satoshi Nakamoto did is basically not only ever appear, much less give you their name.
They didn't even have to disappear because they were never on the stage in the first freaking place. The guys that are doing the real control behind the scenes, that's the bullshit. It's not the guy they put in front of the camera. That's the fall guy. If you if you can recognize that guy walking down the street as the president of France, you can be assured it's because they put him there for you to recognize because he's or she's the distraction. That's not the people pulling the strings. And now now we have a hell of a pool party, ladies and gentlemen. We've got dissidents on one side. We've got software developers on the other side.
Hookers are in the middle. Beer's in the fridge. Coke and amphetamines are over there. I mean, it's it's just it's a free for all. And mixing political dissidents with software development, you know what falls out of that? You know what babies are created by that union? Freedom or something very much like it. I'm in love with that sentence. So I'll say it one more time. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers. 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 10:42AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February, 2025. We're already in the second month of this brand spanking new year. This is episode 1030 of Bitcoin and Woah Nelly. Right? Woah Nelly. Yesterday was a bag of shit. Actually, the whole weekend was pretty much just like one of those weekends you wanna forget ever happened. There's, some recovery going on this morning, but, yeah, giant red candles definitely not what you wanna see. And this all boils down to Trump and the tariffs. Oh my god. Oh my god. So what do we got on? We're gonna talk about the tariffs today. And MicroStrategy is in the news, but not for what you think it will be. Then we got, well, the Mexican standoff.
It seems that the tariffs may have actually opened up the ears of our neighbors to the south. We'll find out. That law firm that was, gonna, oh, do a class action lawsuit against pump dot fun, looks like they might have gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar. We'll find out more. Utah getting close. They could actually be the very first state to enact, enable, and otherwise install a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Texas, well, got cold and it affected mining. We've got, some we got some, partnerships between the two fifty six foundation, you know, those guys that actually found a block while they were having their hashathon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Block seems to be partnering with them. We'll get details on that.
Domus, note deck version 0.3 is on the way. It's got some interesting features. And then we've got the Human Rights Foundation also in the news. But first up, we got tariff talk. Is it risk on assets? Well, the Trump tariffs leads to mass Bitcoin and crypto liquidations. Aaron Wood gonna start us out from Cointelegraph. Oh, no. Bitcoin went down. We're all gonna die. United States President Donald Trump has introduced tariffs on major trading partners Canada, Mexico, and China, sending markets into a dizzy. Oh, it's such a dizzy. Bitcoin slumped below a hundred thousand dollars on February, while altcoins like Ripple and Cardano are down over 1722% respectively as of the time of writing.
Trump's own World Liberty Financial portfolio suffered losses of over 20% according to Spot on Chain. Yeah. That's not that is probably gonna make this okay. Hold on. I I gotta pause because I've I've been talking about this ethics thing with Trump and the fact that he's gonna be the Trump, you know, the the crypto president and but but he's also got these meme coins and this World Liberty Financial. Let's just kinda roll back and just just, I don't know, kind of revel in the fact that we have this conundrum, this it is an ethical situation.
It just is. It doesn't matter if you like Trump or hate Trump. It is an ethical situation because, well, he's gonna be the he wants crypto policies in The United States. He's the crypto president, and yet he's got his fingers in the cookie jar as well. But since what he does, like with this whole tariff thing, kicked his own he kicked himself in his own ass. So from that standpoint, we actually have a guy, because he's got his hands in the cookie jar, every time he makes a move, he's gonna get immediate feedback as to whether or not that shit works for his interests or not. Anyway, I I had to say it. The total market liquidation from this weekend is estimated to be at least around 8 to 10,000,000,000.
That's billion with a b. The amount of total market liquidation is estimated to be be between 8 and $10,000,000,000. That's the at least number, according to Bybit cofounder and CEO, Ben Zhao. Responding to a Cointelegraph post on Twitter, the crypto exchange executive said, quote, Bybit's twenty four hour liquidation alone was $210,000,000,0.0 Holy shit, end quote. On February, placed a 25% additional import tariff on Mexico and Canada and then 10% for China. Markets spiraled, major stock indices and crypto just racked up losses across the board. Trump stated that he plans to introduce tariffs on the European Union as well as superconductors, oil, gas, steel, and copper as soon as February.
This train is a rolling, ladies and gentlemen. And while many are saying that investors should buy the dip, some analysts are noting the increasing correlation between crypto and traditional markets stating that the incoming tariffs could send Bitcoin tumbling further and increase market uncertainty. As Bitcoin adoption grows, the role of the asset has changed. Traders, investors, and enthusiasts still debate whether Bitcoin is ultimately a risk on or risk off asset. The price of risk on assets is driven by factors such as earnings, market sentiment, bank policies, and speculation, while risk off assets serve as safe havens during times of market uncertainty.
With the effect that the tariffs have had on the crypto markets, many analysts are now firmly in the camp that Bitcoin is, at the moment, a risk on asset, and that further market turbulence will likely negatively affect BTC price. Crypto and finance influencer, Amit Kakukuru, just said, quote, unfortunately, crypto is not a safe haven. Bitcoin trades on liquidity, and global liquidity decreases with tariffs, end quote. Wait. What? Bitcoin trades on liquidity, and global liquidity decreases with tariffs. Unless you're actually talking about the fiat liquidity that you use to either get into a Bitcoin trade, as in buy Bitcoin, or get out of the trade, I e sell Bitcoin, then you're wrong.
Bitcoin is liquid itself. It is the most liquid asset that there is. I it has absolutely nothing affects how much Bitcoin that I that if I have it, it that doesn't affect how much I can send if somebody's willing to trade their goods and services for Bitcoin. Now where this is an issue is these on and off ramps. If you're moving fiat into Bitcoin and you just don't have enough fiat because of, quote, unquote, Trump tariffs, well, then yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That could definitely affect it. Or vice versa, if you're moving off, if you're getting out of your Bitcoin and into fiat, again, it's for the same reasons just on the other side of the street. If the guy that wants to buy your Bitcoin, like, is paying, like, 50% more for diapers because we I don't know that all the diaper manufacturers are in Canada, and I don't I don't think that that's true. I'm just saying if all the diaper manufacturers, you know, because of all the babies, is in Canada, well, then, yeah, you're gonna not have as much fiat currency to, you know, go and buy the dip.
So that's the but that's the only way the liquidity issue plays into Bitcoin. Let's continue on. Economist and Trader, Alex Krueger posted, February on Twitter, quote, Bitcoin is mainly a risk asset. Tariffs this aggressive are very negative for risk assets, and the economy will take a hit, end quote. According to Kruger, the best hope is that retaliations from countries targeted by the tariffs aren't too high and that The US and other countries find common ground fast so tariffs may be pared back fast and soon, end quote. The prospect of reconciliation seems especially far away given that as Trump signed the order, he said The US was not seeking any concessions from Canada, Mexico, or China as he told reporters on February, quote, if they want to play the game, I don't mind.
We can play the game all they want, end quote. His comments regarding tariffs on the EU and possibly The UK were not particularly conciliatory either, quote, The UK is out of line, but I think that one can be worked out. But the European Union, it's an atrocity what they've done, end quote. So he's gonna he he UK is probably gonna be alright during all this, but I get the feeling that Trump, like, well, several people that Trump would claim would be swamp creatures, they don't like the EU. We're we on several occasions, United States fiscal policy has put the EU into a hell of a state, and it looks like Trump's about to do it again. So drain the swamp? Well, do so at your own risk if you need some swamp creatures on your side. But in either event, other market observers are unfazed by the market's recent dip.
And they believe that conditions currently putting downward pressure on Bitcoin can soon create a meteoric rise. And over the weekend, analysts and crypto Twitter, DGMs repeated the old adage that investors should buy the dip in anticipation of further gains. Bitwise's European head of research, Andre Dragos, said on February that there were, quote, big declines in sentiment and positioning across the board and that it's a good time to start adding exposure in Bitcoin in my opinion, end quote. Later in the same day, he said that accumulations were already starting to pick up, and he gives a graph showing that a lot of people are starting to buy some Bitcoin.
Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise Invest, predicted that, quote, as the financial war unravels, the price of Bitcoin will go violently higher. Well, now Trump's World Liberty Financial was not spared from the market sell off at all. In fact, Trump himself could be feeling some pain. His family's decentralized finance protocol, World Liberty Financial, went on an altcoin buying spree just hours, hours before his inauguration on January. You remember that, ladies and gentlemen? Remember how he put wrapped Bitcoin into his portfolio? And God only knows I think he bought Solana too, but he got wrecked, man.
Wrecked because the investments which totaled over $270,000,000 earlier this week fell by over 21% or 5,170,000,0.0 on February. So the dude is standing from $270,000,000 to a little bit less than what? 200 and like, he's, like, sitting at $218,000 or a million dollars off of the $2.70 that he put into the Shitcoin Casino. And he immediately rubbed his own ass. I'm telling you, this is the only time where I think possible ethics issues could work in our favor. I'm I'm just saying. Now that this is that's the end of that story. Jeff a a person by the name of Jeff Park was mentioned in that story and what he thought was going on and why we could see a rise in Bitcoin.
Well, so happens that they're referring to this substack article that Jeff Park wrote. And I've got it for you. And if Jeff Park is gonna be mad at me for reading this without permission, I'm sorry, Jeff. But I think people need to know more about what you're saying. Plus, you can always go to his substack. Jeff has a substack, and it this is where I'm reading it from. I'm not paying a subscription for it, so it's public domain. Alright? I'm just just so anybody is like, oh, man. I can't believe you're just ripping them off. I'm not. A lot of people don't even know who the hell Jeff Park is. If anything, I'm giving the guy a hand.
Anyway, the name of the article is Tariffs, Trifin, and Trump, how the endgame sends Bitcoin vertical. You simply have not yet grasped how amazing a sustained tariff war is going to be for Bitcoin in the long run. Now he wrote this yesterday, February, or at least that's when he published it. To understand tariffs today, there are two contexts that you have to frame the conversation in. Number one, the curse of the Triffin dilemma, and number two, Trump's personal goals. By analyzing both, the endgame becomes clear. Tariffs might be just a temporary tool, but the permanent conclusion is that Bitcoin is not only going higher, but faster.
First, the Triffin dilemma. The United States dollar status as a reserve currency gives The US what is called exorbitant privilege in financial transactions and trade, and it has a few implications. Number one, the dollar is structurally overvalued due to its need to be held as a reserve by other countries in a price inelastic manner. And number two, the US has to run a persistent trade balance deficit to supply the world with those dollars. And three, the US government, therefore, can borrow persistently cheaper than it should be able to.
The United States wants to keep number three, but get rid of number one and number two. But how? Say hello to tariffs. Recognize that tariffs are often a temporary a temporary negotiation tool to achieve a goal. The ultimate goal is to seek a multilateral agreement to weaken the dollar, essentially, a Plaza Accord two point o. Gonna pause there. I had to look up Plaza Accords. This was in 1985. And France and a whole bunch of European guys got together in a room, and they tried to figure out a way to take a little bit of the steam out of the United States dollar. Now The United States was part of this agreement. Right? They were part of the agreement. It's not like this was being done behind The United States' backs. The Plaza Accord basically sucked a little bit of the juju out of the dollar.
But in so doing, we were able to supply the world with dollars. It's it's an interesting financial set of tools when people get together from different countries, sit in a room, and say, how in in what other ways outside of the market can we make agreements that set prices on our fiat currencies? Honestly, I don't think this is the best way to go about doing shit because that means you're trying to control something over and above a free market. And free markets have this tendency to thumb their nose at your ass, and you end up, well, where we are today. But I'm not blaming the plaza, of course. I'm just kinda trying to describe what it was, but that's sort of what it was. It was an agreement between The United States and and a whole bunch of European guys to devalue the dollar a little bit on the world stage. So continuing with the article, one hypothetical way that this could happen, weakening the dollar like the Plaza Accord two point o, that The US would explicitly specify that countries have to reduce their dollar reserves while also requiring them to shift the duration of the United States Treasury holding further out. In other words, Trump is trying to find a way to implement a YCC, not YCC strategy within the realms of the executive branch.
No doubt, Besant is on board, recognizing that he was left a bag of trash by former secretary of the treasury, Yellen, whose legacy will have been the near permanent impairment of the treasury's ability to manage duration by doubling the proportion of debt financing to treasury bills, also known as adding fake liquidity, exposing The US to the mercy of the whims of refinancing idiotically while interest rates were beginning to rise. The cost to US taxpayers here cannot be understated. And as a result, The United States is charting a path to achieve the holy grail of fiat alchemy, lower dollar and lower yield.
And this brings me to my second point. I have shared before that Trump's number one goal is to lower the ten year rate. The reason being that his own bags depend on it. Real estate. His obsession with Powell cutting short term rates then realizing it's not working is the catalyst. Never doubt the uncomplicated incentives of the transparently profit motivated and align yourself next to him. Mark my words, the ten year is going to go down, whatever it takes. So the asset to own, therefore, is Bitcoin. In a world of a weaker dollar and weaker US rates, something broken pundits will tell you is impossible because they can't model statecraft. Risk assets in The United States will fly through the roof beyond your wildest imaginations.
Four, it is likely a giant tax cut will have to accompany the higher cost borne by the loss of a competitive advantage or a comparative advantage. The tariff cost, most likely, though through higher inflation, will be shared by both US and trade partners, but the relative impact will be much heavier on the foreign nations. These countries then will have to find a way to fend off their weak ass growth issues leading to stimulating the economy through monetary and fiscal policies that ultimately cause currency debasement. The outraged citizens of these countries will experience a mini financial crisis and look for alternatives. And unlike the when the world was largely offline, today we are not only online, we are on chain.
So while both sides of the trade imbalance equation will want Bitcoin for two different reasons, the end result is the same, higher, violently, violently faster, for we are at war. The TLDR, you simply have not yet grasped how amazing a sustained tariff war is going to be for Bitcoin in the long run. So this guy, unlike some of the other dudes that we were talking about in the first, first story we were reading, This guy has the opposite view. He thinks the tariffs are going to cause such financial pressures on citizenries around the world that they are going to use what Christine Lagarde called the escape hatch.
But this time, Christine Lagarde isn't going to be worried about this escape hatch. Why? Because she's distracted. She's distracted by what orange man is doing. Everybody, in fact, is distracted by what orange man is doing. So, therefore, therefore, what the hell is it we're not seeing? I'm not saying that the only reason he's doing tariffs is to distract everybody. I'm just saying that it gives a nice pleasant fog of war kind of cover for all kinds of other chicanery going on in the background, but we can't see it because our attention is directed at angry Canadians and, well, it seems that Mexico may be, like, you know, lightening up. We'll have to find out. But I wanna get over here to MicroStrategy because they've done something that they haven't done in weeks and weeks and weeks.
MicroStrategy has not bought Bitcoin. They didn't buy Bitcoin this week. They they didn't. They didn't. In fact, Michael Saylor actually announced that they didn't buy Bitcoin. So this is from CoinDesk written by Helene Braun. MicroStrategy, the fourth largest owner of Bitcoin, did not buy any new Bitcoin last week. Executive chairman Michael Saylor announced on Twitter, and that ended a twelve week string of purchases. So since November, the Tysons Corner, Virginia based company has bought 218,887 Bitcoin according to Saylor, and it currently holds 471,107 Bitcoin.
While Saylor didn't say why the company held back, a likely reason could be its impending earnings release after the market closed in two days on February, said James Van Stratten, a senior analyst over there at CoinDesk. Public companies go into a so called blackout period for some time before earnings release to prevent insider trading. And during that period, which can last for days, weeks, or even months, people with financial information about the company are restricted from buying or selling the company's securities. In MicroStrategy's case, given that the majority of its balance sheet is Bitcoin, this could include trading the cryptocurrency. And last week, the company announced a preferred share offering of roughly $250,000,000 to purchase even more BTC.
Then just a few days later, it more than doubled that amount as it sold roughly 730,000,0.0 shares of the series. So what does all that shit mean? Well, it means that, a, on February, they released their earnings from MicroStrategy. Now what what this earnings release is not going to be able to do is include any gains made on the Bitcoin holdings because the new was it FASB? I can't remember the FASB, the fair accounting something rules, those don't come into play until, I think, May 0. And so May 0 and after will be the first time that companies that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet will be able to look at Bitcoin and see gains and say that's they can put that as earnings. Or or it will factor into their earning statement, whereas before, they could only count it as a loss if Bitcoin lost value while they were holding it. Alright. So that's gonna be different, but that's not going to play any role on February, which is, what, a Wednesday.
Right? So on Wednesday, MicroStrategy is gonna drop their numbers, and they're probably going to suck. Because I MicroStrategy, in my view, doesn't give one shit about software that they've been building for business intelligence. They don't care. I get the feeling that all they're gonna do is service all of their old customers until those customers start using something else or they go out of business or they die or whatever. Because MicroStrategy does not care about making software anymore. They're completely changing gears. Alright. So that's the first thing. Now the second thing is, and this is what I find odd, is if they knew they weren't going to buy Bitcoin because they were going into earning season in Feb. 0 the like, drop their earnings on February, and therefore, they weren't going to be doing any coins or anything like that, then why did they go ahead and sell the shares of this strike preferred stock?
Strike is the name of this stock. STRK, I believe, is the ticker symbol. They they not only did they sell all they wanted to, it was so oversubscribed they had to more than double it. And it was for expressly two purposes, to buy Bitcoin and have a little bit of money for operating costs. But yet they did not buy any Bitcoin during the period in which this stock actually sold hand over fist. So they're sitting on a mountain of cash. They could be buying Bitcoin, but because according to James Van Stratten, they're not doing that because it's a blackout period or could be not that they're not doing it because it's a blackout period until their earnings are dropped on February. Does that mean after they drop their earnings and then after that, they start buying Bitcoin with this money they got, this from selling 730,000,0.0 shares. I don't know. It's like half a billion dollars is what they're sitting on. So I don't know, man.
But I do find it kinda odd that they are not buying any Bitcoin this week. Okay. So now the Circle P is open for business and Osiris, or rather premium sun grown flower from CryptoVantage is being sold on plebeian.market, p l e b e I a n Market. And it's got a a picture of a whole bunch of, you know, like, good looking pot from Osiris exotics. I I it just says it's got a picture of Osiris Exotics in the background of this picture of the pot. So I don't know. But the details are this. If you wanna get high, this is a genu generously filled one ounce bag of fresh organic sun grown flowers, and it's weedy. It's pot. You shove it in your pipe and you smoke it and you get good and high. Well, you can get this ounce of good looking pot for 100,000 satoshis.
Says here he's got a hundred in stock and that is from crypto underscore vantage. Now if you want if you want, you can go into the show notes and you can look for the plebian.market URL and click it, and it will take you directly to this page where you can buy all the pot you want. And right below that will actually be the guy's prime or a Noster, page so you can go talk to him directly on Noster if you want to. But, you know, me, myself, I haven't smoked pot in, like, well over a year. Before that, it was, like, ten years, and before that, it was, like, five years. Me, myself, I just don't care anymore. But if you're somebody out there and you really wanna give, like, this guy a try, well, go to plebian.market and buy yourself some black market pot on the Internet because that's what plebian market allows you to do. And because he's selling it for Satoshis, I e Bitcoin, well, that's why he's in the circle p. Because if you're not selling your goods and services for Bitcoin, then you're not in the circle p. Let's get on to the rest of the show.
Bitcoin, XRP, and Dogecoin rebound as Trump pauses the Mexican trade tariffs. Oh, Mexican standoff, and it looks like somebody might be bending some knees. Andrew Hayward riding for decrypt. Bitcoin and other major assets are on a surprise upswing after a brutal day of declines following word that president Trump will pause the planned implementation of trade tariffs against Mexico and attempt to negotiate a deal with that country. Nothing about China. Nothing about Canada. This is only about Mexico. Let's be clear about that. The price of Bitcoin rose nearly $4,000 in the span of an hour as news started to spread. Oh my god. And while Bitcoin took a hit, other major assets plunged harder over the weekend.
And they talk about a couple of shit coins, and I really don't give a shit. Let's see. Let's get on down here to where Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum announced on Monday that she did, in fact, speak with Donald Trump and agree on a pause to The US tariffs as well as Mexico's planned retaliation, and that Mexico will send 10000 soldiers to The United States border to attempt to prevent illegal cross border drug trafficking and migration. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the countries, quote, agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period with negotiations planned with secretary of state Marco Rubio, secretary of treasury Scott Besant, and secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick.
President Trump added that he hopes to, quote, achieve a deal with Mexico. Planned trade tariffs against Canada and China are still currently set to go in effect on Tuesday, and my boy howdy. The kid the Canucks are pissed. They're booing United States teams like it at hockey face offs. Right? It's it's amazing. You piss off some Canadians and they don't they're not polite anymore. They're not nice anymore. No. No. No. They're basically saying giving the finger to The United States. It's all kind of hilarious. We'll have to see how this crap plays out. But Mexico, to send 10000 troops to their own border, and we'll have to see if they they actually do that because talk is cheap.
Actually, busting those dudes out there to the border and 10000 of them, that shit's expensive. But if they do it if they do it, The United States and Mexico might end up with much better relations. Not because it's Trump and not because of the tariffs. I think what it is is just a collective sigh from The United States that we're just freaking tired of the bullshit on the southern border. Everybody keeps talking about this northern border stuff. I don't see a whole lot of immigration coming over the border from the north. We do see it in the southern borders.
Right? But it's not just that. It really is a lot about drugs. And that and the the southern border is so ridiculously porous anyway that maybe, just maybe, both countries are like, this may be getting out of hand. Maybe even the countries themselves, not just The United States, but even Mexico is like, nobody wants to live here. Why does everybody keep going to The United States? You can't tax people if they don't live in your country. And it may be getting to the point that Mexico is going, we might wanna keep some of these people here. I'm just saying maybe that maybe it could be a change in a positive direction for both countries.
At least for Texas, Mexico is a huge part of the Texas story, and Texas is a massive part of the Mexican story. You cannot have one of those stories without the other one. Alright? Texas and Mexico share a special relationship, And a lot of people will go, well, yeah. Well, Texas is one of the people that really hates immigration. No. That's not entirely true. Not in that is not entirely true. Most of the immigration that happens in Texas is actually short term cross border crossings. In the port the border is really porous down there, but it's short term, which means that people from Mexico will literally cross the Rio Grande. The the, you know, the the stream that it's become is not really a river anymore.
They will cross it. They will go to a Dollar General in, like, El Paso or, you know, somewhere, you know, whatever cities are are on the border, and then they will go back. They'll just go back. I mean I mean, there is a huge amount of short term. We're talking, like, four, five, six hour immigration and then emigration on the Texas on the Texas Mexican border. In Texas, as far as long term shit, we've been dealing with it for years. Texas has been dealing with it for years. But that does not make it where people people think that all Texans hate Mexicans because of this. That is not true. That is not fucking true.
You might hear a couple of people on the news that was put in front of your face make it sound that way, but that is not at all what's going on in Texas. When you get too many peo like, we could have too many people from Louisiana flooding over our borders, and we'd be going, hey. Stop that shit. You can't just come over here and just bum off of us. Did same thing for New Mexico. The same thing for Oklahoma. Right? For those of you out there that were led to believe that all Texans hate all Mexicans, that is so not the case. Our stories, the Texas story and the Mexican story, are so closely woven together that we cannot be the warm, cozy blanket that we are without those threads of both of the histories being woven together into this story.
Please stop believing the bullshit CNN and NBC and CBS tells you. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. They got West Texas Intermediate Oil, which is up after it was down after it was up. But right now, it's up half a point to $72.91. It got as high as $75 when tariffs were on the table 100% and there was no capitulation from anybody anywhere. And then it abruptly fell the second that Mexico and Trump started talking. That's how shaky all these markets are. Brent Norcia is up a quarter of a point. Natural gas is up ten and one third points, back up to $3.35 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline up over two and a half points to $2.11.
Gold is up point 79%. Wow. $2,857.50. Good for you, Peter Schiff. Silver up point 8%. Platinum is down 4%. Copper is up almost a point. Palladium is down two and a quarter points. Everything in ag is in the green except for rough rice and sugar. And rough rice is the biggest loser of the day, three quarters of a point to the downside. Biggest winner looks like it's gonna be soybeans, one and a half to the upside. Live cattle down a full point. Lean hogs are down, woah, four and a half. And feeder cattle are down too. I guess this has something to do with the tariffs as well. The Dow is now moving sideways after it clawed back some pretty steep losses because of, well, tariffs.
44,666 is what the Dow stands at right now. S and P is down a half point as is the Nasdaq, but the S and P Mini sharper losses point 85% to the downside. And, of course, as we all know, well, we took a licking in Bitcoin. We went all the way down to something like I wanna say it was 584,006. Since then, we've erased part of that. We've come back up $100,880. No. It looks like we're on a huge tear because it's changing right in front of my eyes. Now it's a hundred thousand $940, and that puts us smack dab right at $2,000,000,000,000 of market cap. You can get 35.7 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,819,091,.85 of. And average fees per block are low because mempools kept clearing over the weekend and Bitcoin was gonna die again.
Again, it's how many times have we been through empty mempools? How many times have we been through full men pool? It doesn't matter. And all the time, all the time that the men pools were clearing out. You know, what was being added? Hash rate. We were we were at like 816 x a hashes per second sometime over the weekend, and that was up from like 780 while men pools were clearing at one Satoshi per v byte. And guess what? Bitcoin didn't die. Isn't that amazing? It's just I it never ever ceases to amaze me. The shortsightedness and the, like, the damn near, like, what is it when you lose your memory?
Oh, god. See, now go with the anaphasia. I cannot remember the word for it. Amnesia. There we go. It's like they have amnesia. How many times was Bitcoin going to die because either the mempools were too full or the mempool was empty? Not the mempool. Mempools around the world. Mempools around the world were empty. Either too many people are using Bitcoin or nobody's using Bitcoin. And either one of those extremes, Bitcoin dies. And guess what never happened? It never died. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There are 12 blocks in mempools around the world carrying a a scant 2700 transactions. That's right. Not 27000, not 207000, but 2700.
And high priorities are gonna clear you at two Satoshis per v byte, same for low priority transactions. We have 835.6 exahashes per second. Holy smokes. Oh my god. It looks like we have an estimated difficulty, increase coming at 7.6%. So let's see. That will be let's see. When is that? When is that coming? Oh, 05/00 In five days, we're estimated to go up in difficulty 7.6%. Yet, mempools are clear. Why? Because hash rate keeps coming online. Well, why would you do that if you're not getting any fees? Well, we we still have the subsidy. Right? I mean, that's the rub.
All these people that are saying Bitcoin's gonna die because this week, nobody was using Bitcoin. Because the miners are still putting on hash rate because they want that subsidy, but it sure shit ain't the fees. That's the argument. They're looking at, like, two, eight, sixteen years in the future, and they still don't wrap their head around it. If Bitcoin was $2,000,000 4 years from now, miners would be actually making even more money on a hell of a lot less of a subsidy on mining. This is what they don't get, and it's almost analogous to the micro micro strategy trade.
You sell that because you're hoping or actually, you kinda realize that Bitcoin's going to increase in value, and you'll be able to pay that debt off at a fraction of what it cost you to buy the actual Bitcoin. It's just nobody ever gets this. It's just it's it's almost as if Michael Saylor said, I'm going to model everything that I do from now on over Bitcoin mining. Anyway, let's get on to stable corn, which was Friday's episode of Bitcoin. And I got Vinny giving me 2,048. Sat says, let's do something about that zap amount floor. Thank you, Vinny. I appreciate it. Anonymous with a thousand says, insert random emoji here. Yeah. Well, I probably wouldn't be able to read it anyway. God's death with five thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Nick Dose with a hundred and one says, cheers. Paul Serene with a hundred says, thank you, sir. Always appreciate your episodes and choice of news stories.
Keep rocking. I will do so, sir. And then Grin simply says, interesting. And because she included the fountain.fm URL to this particular episode, she didn't actually have to give me any Satoshis to get in here. God dang it. Cheapskate. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Law firm that sued pump.fund is being linked to a $23,000,000 dog shit 2 coin. Seriously, this is a meme coin. Stephen Kati from Cointelegraph. A meme coin believed to have been launched by a law firm to help it build a class action lawsuit against Solana meme coin creator pump dot fund recently has gained attention in the community, hitting a $23,000,000 market cap.
Pump dot fund was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit on January by investors alleging that every token it helped make is an unregistered security from which it made nearly $500,000,000 in fees. The lawsuit was filed by US law firms Berwick Law and Wolf Popper on behalf of the investors. However, however, hold up, y'all. Hold up. Observers within the crypto community quickly noticed that the address shown in exhibit c of the court documents match the wallet address behind dog shit going nowhere, otherwise known as dog shit 2, leading many to believe the law firms are behind the token.
Oh, what interesting webs we weave. Exhibit c of the court documents has the launch date as while the listing comes with a warning, don't buy this coin. Data from Gecko terminal shows the meme coin spiked in value since January after the proposed lawsuit was filed as observers made the connection. At its peak on Jan. 31, a dog shit 2 market cap exceeded 23,000,000 according to data on pump.fund. It has now fallen back to 240,000,0.0. But meanwhile, the token's price hit its all time high of 0.,003,968 on February before tumbling 34%.
Berwick Law and Wolf Popper did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph's request for comment. Last Dec. 0, also requested that anyone who lost money on viral influencer, Hayley Welch's hawk to a meme coin contact them. It comes amid a new flurry of meme coin activity. Elon Musk's father has been the latest figure to discuss a potential meme coin launch, calls it Musket. Jesus. Oh my god. Amid growing interest in celebrity backed meme tokens, Pump.fun usage surged over the past week when it recorded an all time high of 330,000,000,0.0 in weekly trading. Oh, for god's sakes.
So the very lawsuit law or law firms that the lawsuit against pump dot fun is coming from seems to have spun up a meme coin called dog shit too with a proviso that you do not buy this meme coin. I don't think that's going to help. And honestly, maybe maybe it does help them. May you know, maybe what they were doing was saying, look. This is how easy it is for scammers to spin up a meme coin and exhibit c, and I haven't looked at exhibit c. Just shows exactly how easy it is to get on pump.fun and essentially vacuum up money from people's pockets, you know, their cold hard cash that they can't afford to lose, and just basically steal it. Who knows?
Or or in a more tinfoil hat way, maybe pump.fund and these two law firms are working together somehow to increase the amount of maybe it's money laundering. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe the guys over at pump dot fund realize that they're gonna get all their money stolen from them by the US government because the SEC is gonna come down hard as a hammer on their ass for unregistered securities, which is what they are. So luckily, though, there's a law firm that's going to be able to take a third a third. This is what these guys are gonna get paid. It's generally speaking. It is a third of the settlement if they win the settlement on the investors behalf, so they at least get to retain a third of all these ill gotten gains.
It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Now do I know this for a fact? No, man. I am so spitballing. And it's not even a gut feeling, but it would be interesting to see see that as a type of money laundering kind of thing. Anyway, let's get on over to Utah where the Mormons are running around, and they could be the first US state to adopt a Bitcoin reserve. Utah could this is from by the way. Utah could become the first state to officially establish a Bitcoin reserve. Why? Well, this milestone could be reached because the state's legislative calendar, it only allows a forty five day window for law approval.
And in a recent interview with Cynthia Lummis and Dennis Porter, which is CEO of the Satoshi Action Fund, they highlighted Utah's privileged position in the Bitcoin race. Quote, it's either sink or swim in forty five days. No other state has a faster calendar, and no other state has more political momentum and willpower to get it done. On January, a committee in the Utah House approved a bill with an eight to one vote, which would allow the state to invest a portion of its public funds in digital assets. Point Porter, sorry, Porter pointed out that every bill passed by the Utah House Economic Development Committee in recent year has turned out to be law, strengthening the prospects of success for this particular initiative.
Arizona is the only other state to have reached a similar stage in the legislative process, and other states such as Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Texas have proposed similar bills. Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky, and South Dakota have publicly expressed support for the idea, although they have yet to formalize legislative proposals. So what did all that mean? It just means that Utah, the the second that you pass it out of committee and you put it on the floor for a vote, you get only forty five days. No other state has such a short time span.
I don't know what the other states' time spans are, but it's more than forty five days. And since all of there's only one other proposal that's been passed out of committee and sent to the floor for vote, and that's Arizona. Everything else is either just fully proposed or under review in some committee before it can actually go for a vote on the legislative floor of those states. So let's say that let's say that the day okay. Let's do it this way. The day that Utah passed that bill out of committee and put it to a vote in legislature, If the very next day, twenty four hours later, every single other state had also done the same, but twenty four hours later, Utah would still possibly be able to be the first state in The United States to do it because they have to do it in forty five days, and all the rest of these guys can take longer.
So there you go. There you go. Now speaking of Texas, they had a cold winter, or rather they are having a cold winter. And I miss my state. I wish I was home. But the cold winter is challenging Bitcoin mining. This is also from Atlas twenty one. According to hash rate index, the cold wave that hit The United States in Jan. 0 had a significant impact on Bitcoin mining activities in Texas, a state that alone accounts for 17% of total US mining. Temperatures plunged to zero degrees Celsius in a region traditionally known for its mild winters, and the mining industry faced a dual challenge, a surge in electricity consumption for home heating and the resulting increase in energy costs.
The rising energy demand combined with supply challenges from renewable sources such as wind and solar forced grid operators to rely more on natural gas whose prices spiked significantly as well. Following the temporary suspension of numerous mining operations due to unsustainable operating costs, Bitcoin recorded its first And it did it on January. Minor revenue per and it did it on January. Revenue per terahash decreased slightly in Jan. 0 compared to Dec. 0, suggesting that firms had a harder time mining bitcoin profitably. And according to analysts at Luxor's mining pool, the situation is expected to normalize as temperatures return to seasonal levels. Colder weather in The US is a temporary disruption, and we expect hash rate stability to improve as temperatures normalize.
You know, it it just dawned on me. When is Bitcoin mining projections going to be included in the old Farmers' Almanac? If any of you out there are like me and you geek out on the new Farmers' Almanac or the old Farmers' Almanac, those are actually two different publications, then you'll know what I'm talking about. It'll be in the web it would be in the weather section. And what it the the Farmers Almanac comes out, and they basically leverage, like, you know, a century and a half of weather data for The United States to to tell you what these winters or the summer's gonna be like or the spring's gonna be like, what your sustained temperatures are gonna be. And, honestly, they're not terribly far off most of the times.
Most of the time, that's why people buy the Farmers' Almanac. Because generally speaking, they're they're close enough for you to be able to plan, like, you that comes out in, like, I think the new Farmers' Almanac comes out in Jan. 0 or the old Farmers' Almanac comes out in Jan. 0. I think. I can't really remember. But so six months later is is like or or getting into summer, and they're saying what the summer's gonna be like. And lo and behold, most of the times are actually pretty damn accurate. So when will Bitcoin mining be introduced into the old Farmers' Almanac? I would love to see that. That would be great. Now speaking of mining, blocks proto partners, that's block, you know, like Jack Dorsey's outfit.
Blocks proto partners hold on. Let me do this again for the eighth time. Blocks Proto partners with the two fifty six Foundation to support open source Bitcoin mining. Woo. Good god almighty. Today, quote, today we're pleased to announce a long term partnership with the two fifty six Foundation, a Nashville based nonprofit focused on developing and advocating for solutions that lower Bitcoin mining's barrier to entry, from educational resources to open source software, firmware, and hardware solutions. To support the initiative, Proto has donated up to 256 k b z m two ASIC chips. Oh, wow. 256000 b z m two ASIC chips to the foundation allowing them to allocate these resources to emerging mining projects at their own discretion.
Quote, in the end, Bitcoin's decentralized future is up to all of us to define. And while industrial mining will certainly play an important role, communities like the two fifty six foundation may ultimately determine the network's enduring character and make meaningful contributions to its decentralization. So, wow, that's a 02/6000 ASIC chips is a lot. Now I don't know what the b z m two ASIC chip cost, but I can guarantee you it's more than a dollar. Just saying. Non to Damus Damus NoteDeck. Not just Damus, but Damus NoteDeck version 0.3 or the alpha two has been released publicly.
And if you did not know, note deck is sort of like the old tweet deck where you can have multiple columns and each column is like your tweet or, well, your notes and this is Noster, so we're talking about notes. Like, your notes in one column, likes and reactions in another column, maybe zaps in the third column if you if you got any zaps or something like that, maybe a hashtag in the fourth column that you're following. And note that or a Twitter deck or tweet deck was great. I used it almost exclusively before I got booted off of Twitter, and now I've come to find out that tweet deck is essentially just basically gone.
I I don't know anymore about it. But NoteDeck for Domus is out. It does seem to be working, and here is the project's announcement. We can't believe it's been two years today that Domus has been on the App Store. We are beyond excited that you all have stuck around and supported the team for this long. And to celebrate the occasion, we're launching Domus NoteDeck, our very alpha, multiplatform Nostr client. NoteDeck is now publicly available for anyone or everyone to test. Previously limited to purple subscribers, this release also includes media uploads, post hashtags, profile editing and enhanced command line interface for user interactions and various improvements and bug fixes let's see what's new clicking a mention now opens the profile page note previews, when hovering over reply descriptions, there are media uploads, there's profile editing, you can add hashtags to post now, enhanced command line interface for user interactions, various android updates because this is also available on android, although I don't know how the hell you'd have multiple columns in an on a phone, but whatever.
And then there's debug features for user relay list and mute list, synchronization. So there's that. Now, finally, for today, the Human Rights Foundation awarded every single one of the 11 Bitcoin development bounties that they had out, and this is out of no bullshit Bitcoin. It was the The Human Rights Foundation launched a Bitcoin bounty program offering 11 bounties to fund developers creating tools for activists fighting authoritarianism. The bounties aim to improve UX enhanced privacy and open source closed systems with the deadline of Dec. 31, 2024.
Quote, we are excited to announce that every single bounty was claimed and that the resulting tools and upgrades are now empowering human rights activists daily across popular apps such as BlueWallet, Zeus, Stack Wallet, Iris, Coreacle, Keeper, Bull Bitcoin, Cake Wallet, and more, announced the organization. The bounties awarded to the following projects, developers, and contributors. Number one, open sourcing the Bitcoin design guide had a bounty of 2 BTC. That's a lot of money, y'all. Serverless pay join got one b 1 and a half b t c. End to end encrypted nostril group chats, two b t c.
Silent payments got 1 b t c. Human readable offers, 1 BTC. Self custodial mobile lightning address, 1 BTC. Mobile border wallets, 2 bitcoin. Easy mobile multisig, 1 bitcoin. Frost multisig wallet, 1 bitcoin. Cash you upgrades to bitcoin. And BIP 47 expansion, one half of 1 Bitcoin. Quote, excuse me. We learned a lot through this process, and we look forward to doing similar things in the future. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers, said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. Today, HRF also announced the launch of its first AI program. Yes. You heard it. Artificial intelligence.
The program is aiming to monitor and expose the use of AI by autocrats as a tool of repression and to support open source AI tools for dissidents, especially those laboring under tyranny. Learn more about it here. And that is a link. And it goes to it looks like it goes to njump.me, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do that. This sentence right here needs to be said probably a couple more times. This is what this is the quote from Alex Gladstein. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers.
Mixing political dissidents with developers. Gotta say it one more time. Mixing political dissidents with developers. All of these tools since the release of Bitcoin and, yes, before, but it really came to a head with the release of Bitcoin back in 02/8, 02/00 09/00. Before that time, most people would look at computer programming, software engineering, a computer programmer, computer development, the software development, developers, as something that stood over there, and they did you didn't talk to them and they didn't come out of the they didn't wanna come to your party because they're geeky and they're introverts and they'd rather eat Hot Pockets while playing a video game and then coding from 02:00 in the morning until the sun comes up. Right? They're they're they're geeks. They're nerds. They're math guys. You know, they don't wanna hang out with you. Bullshit they don't.
Now after Bitcoin, what we're seeing across the board is this mixing of software, software development, developers. All all of that is crashing like an iceberg into the good ship lollipop that carries all of the dissidents, all the people that are tired of totalitarianism. And I'm not talking about, oh my god, Chip, the orange man is totality. I don't give a shit. That's not my that's not the guy I'm worried about. I'm not worried about the president of France. He's just a fucking puppet. They're all puppets. They're being the strings that are on their arms and legs are being bounced up and down by somebody else. And that somebody has a shit ton of money and you don't know who they are because they were smart enough forever and ever and ever to do what Satoshi Nakamoto did is basically not only ever appear, much less give you their name.
They didn't even have to disappear because they were never on the stage in the first freaking place. The guys that are doing the real control behind the scenes, that's the bullshit. It's not the guy they put in front of the camera. That's the fall guy. If you if you can recognize that guy walking down the street as the president of France, you can be assured it's because they put him there for you to recognize because he's or she's the distraction. That's not the people pulling the strings. And now now we have a hell of a pool party, ladies and gentlemen. We've got dissidents on one side. We've got software developers on the other side.
Hookers are in the middle. Beer's in the fridge. Coke and amphetamines are over there. I mean, it's it's just it's a free for all. And mixing political dissidents with software development, you know what falls out of that? You know what babies are created by that union? Freedom or something very much like it. I'm in love with that sentence. So I'll say it one more time. There's so so much to be gained from mixing political dissidents with developers. 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
Trump's Financial Moves and Ethics
Market Updates and Analysis
