Join me today for Episode 1031 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- China Dip
- Trump's Sovereign Wealth Fund
- Missouri SBR On Deck
- Semler Buys a Lot of Bitcoin
- Taproot Wizards Shake Down Investors
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https://decrypt.co/304274/crypto-dips-again-as-china-set-to-impose-tariffs-on-us-goods
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/buying-and-holding-bitcoin-is-the-best-strategy-to-navigate-the-trump-tariff-war
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/trump-orders-creation-us-sovereign-wealth-fund-part-118409596
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-lawmakers-crypto-regulation-campaign-anthony-scaramucci
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/02/04/u-s-senate-s-effort-on-stablecoins-revealed-in-new-bill-from-hagerty
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https://www.theblock.co/post/338805/taproot-wizards-raises-30-million-to-expand-op_cat-functionality-on-bitcoin
https://www.theblock.co/post/338786/semler-scientific-3192-bitcoin
https://atlas21.com/missouri-opens-up-to-bitcoin-proposal-to-invest-up-to-10-of-public-funds/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/sparrow-wallet-v2-1-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/envoy-wallet-v1-8-6/
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[00:00:03]
David Bennett:
It is 9:37 in AM in the Pacific Inland Northwest, I might add, which would be Pacific Standard Time. It's the 4th day of February 2025. This is episode 1031. Bitcoin and might remind you that 1031 also stands for October 31st, which is Bitcoin's white paper day, but we don't really need to get into that because it's not the actual date. It's just the number of the damn show. We got well, we got a dip again because of tariffs. This time in a retaliatory stance. And then we got, what what else is up here? Oh, yeah. We're gonna talk about, navigating the Trump tariff war and Bitcoin. Of course, Bitcoin is gonna be there. And then, well, sovereign wealth fund, but Trump didn't actually say what was gonna be in it.
See, I hate that. I it's like, don't tell me you're gonna create a sovereign wealth fund and don't tell me what the wealth is actually going to be. But, apparently, it's going to be able to buy TikTok or something or other than that. There's gonna be some crypto regulations coming in November according to the Scaramooch, the Mooch man, Anthony Scaramooch. And then Taproot Wizards got more money. They did. Yes. And Simler Scientific has bought some more Bitcoin. And then we've got yet another state in the United States entering the fray to be able to invest public funds into Bitcoin. And then we got a couple of software updates, but first, from decrypt.c0, the dip.
The crypto dip. Because crypto dipped again as China is set to impose their own tariffs on us here in the United States. How dare they? How dare they? Cryptocurrencies tumbled early Tuesday after China announced its retaliatory measures against the United States including a probe into Google and new levies on American goods. Crypto is still reeling from the global market route that saw over $2,200,000,000 in liquidations caused by investor uncertainties following the tariffs imposed by the US on Mexico, Canada, and China. Alright. So it's not really 2,200,000,000.
It's actually estimated to be between somewhere between $810,000,000,000 of liquidations. But, sure, let's let's let's take let's take the easy road and go with 2,200,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. That that'll make everybody feel better. The top 10 cryptos, excluding stable coins, have reacted negatively to the news with Chic coin number 3 or 4, whatever, leading the losses down 5.8%, followed by Cripple and its 5.1% decline. Bitcoin showed relative resistance, however, dropping a mere 1.3% to $98,934. It follows Asia media reports, including the South China Morning Post, which stated that Beijing has announced tariffs on US goods between 10 15%.
Bloomberg further reported Beijing will impose 15% levies on coal and LNG imports, that would be liquefied natural gas, alongside a 10% tariff on oil and John Deere tractors. Actually, straight up agricultural equipment built in America. And that shit is effective right now, immediately. It's in place, ladies and gentlemen. John Deere. I feel bad for you guys. Nasdaq 100 futures have also seen immediate reactions, dropping 1.7% on the day, 8 hours before the United States markets opened. By late afternoon, futures pared losses slightly but remained down 1.2% for the day according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Commodities are seeing broad based pressure with natural gas dropping sharply by 2% and crude oil declining by 1.7 percent while copper stands out as the lone gainer among major commodities with a modest 1 third of a point increase. China's state administration for market regulation has also launched an antitrust investigation into Google moments after the United States tariffs took effect, according to a separate report from Bloomberg. The story is developing and will be updated accordingly. Well, you know what? Here's the deal with China.
They don't have a whole lot of oil. They do have they do have a relative decent amount of coal, but they I'm pretty sure that they do not have the ability nor the raw materials to refine, liquefy, or to create liquefied natural gas. Now that said, it is also clear that they import a whole bunch of coal, a whole bunch of oil, and a whole bunch of liquefied natural gas from the United States. So when will China crumble? When will they bend to their knees, get on the floor, and prostate themselves like some plebeian in front of the Roman senate?
They might not because they have petroleum trading partners in OPEC, which the United States is not part of. If you thought the United States was part of OPEC cartel, you are wrong. We've never been invited. We've never wanted to go. We've always stood out on our own energy production legs, but OPEC is a thing. And in fact, in the early eighties, OPEC single handedly tanked United States oil markets, sending people with PhDs in geology to work as sackers at the grocery store. I saw it with my own eyes. It just it devastated West Texas. I grew up in the Permian Basin, and it absolutely crushed us. They just opened up the pipes and said, let the oil flow. So if you don't think that Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC countries won't work out a deal with China, you are wrong.
So what I'm suggesting here is that China doesn't actually need our oil, just like we don't really need Canadian oil, which is why we had we've seen a massive cave in from Trudeau's provisional government. I I mean, he resigned, and he programmed the the parliament. So I don't really know what the hell is going on over there. He said he was gonna stay on until the parliament found somebody to replace him, but parliament is kind of in suspension right now from what I understand. So he's sort of like a quasi dictator. But even even he crumbled like a cheap suit and said, okay. Okay. We'll do what Mexico did. We'll send 10,000 troops to our northern border, and we'll make sure that fentanyl doesn't get across.
Well, I don't think that that's going to be the case with China. Now I say that, but China's they're they're not idiots. And China has Mexico and and Canada did not have what China has, a leg to stand on. Now if you're if if you're a Canadian listener, I'm not going after you. The Canadians that I've met are fine people. The citizenry of Canada, the citizenry of Mexico, generally speaking, fine people. It's the governments that suck. It and and while, yes, you're gonna get hurt, I I don't know what to tell you. You can get mad at orange man all you want. There's people over here that are mad at orange man, like, hand over fist. It's really not gonna matter because this shit's going to happen.
Except that we didn't really need Canadian oil. It's it's sour and it's heavy, and they can't even refine it for themselves, much like Venezuela can't refine their own oil because it's super, super heavy oil. But the sourness and the heaviness of Canadian oil makes it damn near, like, the bottom like, if you go to the shopping market for oil, you want heavy crude and you want some light sweet crude and you want some West Texas Intermediate crude. That that's your shopping list. Because you can get everything from asphalt to high test, high octane gasoline out of that shit.
But the sour, heavy crude, you can get asphalt out of it and diesel and and stuff like that, but the sourness means that it's got a bunch of hydrogen sulfide or h two s gas associated with it. And if you mix h two s gas with water, you know what you get? You get sulfuric acid, which is highly corrosive. And it's not exactly what refiners want to work with. So the refineries that are that are tooled to be able to use that particular raw material to do refining, that that's not a that's not your standard run-in the mill oil refinery like you'll find everywhere. They're heavy duty. They're extra heavy duty, and they're very expensive. And Canada doesn't have them. They don't have a choice. They have to sell that crap to us if they want to take a crappy substance out of their ground and make some money out of it.
Mexico ain't exactly standing on a whole bunch of economic legs either. They need us way more than we need them. No matter what anybody says about people coming to pick fruit, that's not what I'm talking about. That's going to happen regardless no matter what is going on with the southern border. We we've got we've always had agricultural handshakes with Mexico to get people up here all the way up to all the way up to Washington. They they will come all the way to Washington state to pick fruit, and then they go back home. That's not gonna change. That that's ridiculous that anybody thinks that that's going to change. So what I'm getting at though is that they these guys don't have that much of a leg to stand on. China, however, does.
Rare earth minerals, they've got I mean, most of the shit that you buy at Walmart is is produced by the slave labor that China has absolutely no problem enslaving. They don't have the they America is not exactly great on human rights. You know, we are certainly not great on human rights. We're bombing Iraq back into the third world and making sure that we kill a 1000000 brown people because somebody wanted to have a war. That is definitely an atrocity that at one point or another, the chickens are gonna come roost come home to roost on. But here in the United States, we have relative human rights for, you know, most people. Yeah. There's some chicanery that goes on, but not like in China.
There's nowhere in the United States where it is basically, like, government sanctioned that you will be able to build a factory and lock people into that factory so they can build your crap for you so that you can sell to the United States for cheap. Right? Mexico didn't have that. Canada didn't have that. China, they got that shit in spades, and they have trading partners for oil. They don't need our coal. They really don't need our oil. So they have a bargaining chip, which is what I think the 15 10% tariffs are. They're doing what Trump is doing. However, because Justin Trudeau and the president of Mexico folded like a cheap suit, the real battle, the real deal is gonna be struck between Trump and Xi Jinping or whatever that guy's name is. That's gonna be an actual negotiation, I think. I don't think these tariffs are gonna stand up for very long. I think that the these are both negotiating tactics.
And China is basically saying, we don't hate you, but we are going to negotiate with you because we don't want your deal and you don't want our deal, so we need to start talking. So I'm not worried about these tariffs, not in not in the medium to long term. But in the short term, they do a lot of damage, and they're they're making they're making my my screen have red bars, and I don't like red bars. I don't like them. So, what's the best strategy to navigate this? Well, let's find out for Bitcoin Magazine's Nicholas Hoffman, who has this one. Buying and holding Bitcoin is the best strategy to navigate the Trump tariff war. Today, The Wall Street Journal published an article attempting to assassinate Bitcoin amidst the recent US, Canada, and Mexico tariff trade war because Bitcoin's price, oh my god, has gone down.
Quote, Bitcoin touted as a borderless digital store value is down more than, oh my god, 4% over the last 24 hours after the White House instigated cross border tariffs. The article stated, quote, cryptocurrencies were once promoted as investments that act independently of stocks, but in fact their moves often resemble outsized versions of broader market swings. In the second sentence cited above, the Wall Street Journal attempts to diminish bitcoin's value proposition by pointing out that bitcoin's prices just correlated with other traditional assets. What the author of the article doesn't share though is that bitcoin's price is going to go down and up much more so than traditional assets because it's incredibly liquid and it's easy to buy and sell. But bitcoin is a distributed network made up of miners, nodes, developers, and users. On a technical level, it is quite different from any other asset like stocks, as it has no central party controlling it. And because of this, bitcoin has been a safe haven for those trying to navigate geopolitical fears.
No one can just print more bitcoin out of thin air and inflate the supply, enforce any unwanted network changes overnight, or overthrow and stop the network from running. But don't just take my word for it. Take Larry Fink, the CEO of the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. Just a couple of weeks ago, Fink said that he is a true believer in Bitcoin's value proposition and that if you're frightened of the geopolitical fears in your country, you can now have an international based asset that operates completely independently from those tensions.
Sure, Bitcoin's price will respond to news and events happening in the short term, causing very large price actions to the upside as well as the downside. But cherry picking data in an attempt to make Bitcoin look like it's a bad investment is just bad reporting, and it's misleading. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for the last 15 years and will likely continue to perform well. The important point to understand here is that while Bitcoin is a volatile asset reacting to daily events, over the long term, bitcoin's value proposition is what takes its price higher and higher.
For the first time in history, we have money that cannot be hyperinflated. It allows people to transact across borders freely without permission, giving users an escape hatch for anyone whose country is attempting to control them financially. Forget short term price when it comes to bitcoin as a tool to help navigate geopolitical tensions. Over the long term, bitcoin supply and demand will take the price higher than it is today. Mainstream media articles on bitcoin have always missed the bigger picture and end up misleading the people who read them. As geopolitical tensions increase, Bitcoin is the safest asset that you can own.
So what we've got here is essentially Wall Street Journal, you know, writing yet one of their generalized hit pieces on Bitcoin, and it's only to get clicks because the mainstream media is already dead. They just don't know it yet. Nobody's really reading The Wall Street Journal on a subscription basis, except for those guys like this who are reporters for, you know, other, you know, other things. Right? They they wanna know what the the big boys are saying. So, yes, they have a Bloomberg terminal. Yes. They have subscriptions to Wall Street Journal and all the rest of them. But those are the only people that really do. Because we we we've entered into an age, and we've been here for a long time where we can get our news from anywhere we want to get our news from.
There used to be a time where if you wanted business news, ladies and gentlemen, if you did not have a subscription to Wall Street Journal, sorry for you. You had to wait for the, you know, morning news, lunchtime news, and the 6 o'clock, you know, evening report on NBC and ABC, and then World Report that came around right after that. That was the only way you were gonna find out. And then you had to trust that they were gonna tell you what it is that you needed to know. If you were looking at something completely different that they never report on, you were going to need a subscription to Wall Street Journal. Nobody needs that shit anymore.
They don't need Bloomberg. They don't need Wall Street Journal. Somebody somewhere has already gotten this stuff, and they're all read they're always putting it into archive.ph or art your or the Internet archive and just archiving these things for free. You can go read anything you want. Nobody needs this crap anymore. The only way they can get people to read their garbage at this point at the retail level and not institutional subscribers is clickbait. It's sad, but it's true. Circle p is open for business, and maple trade is prepping his maple syrup creation ceremony. We're getting close.
We're getting close. Yes. I know. It's only the 4th February. He's in Ohio. Maple sap is gonna start flowing here pretty damn quick. Amazingly enough, it's going to start happening. And he wants to sell you his maple syrup. He makes it by hand, and he doesn't buy in maple sap from other producers. No. No. He goes to his own trees on his property and he taps these maple trees himself. And then he's got to lug these pails of essentially sugar water all the way over to a wood fired outside rig where he boils this stuff down and makes some of the best maple syrup you've ever had. How do I know? Two reasons. I've had it before because he sent me some, and it's breaking delicious. And 2, last year, that dude sold out like that.
Like that. I'm serious, man. So if you want to get in on the maple train, and yes, I know yesterday's yesterday's cover art for the episode said, you know, do away with maple syrup. I was had Trump in there, and then my little guy was in there saying do away with maple syrup. It not really about maple syrup. It was about the Canadian tariffs and all that, but whatever. Because and and I'm about to give you prices. But you gotta understand, these are last year's prices. I do not know if Maple Trade has increased or kept his prices the same. So in a relative way, one quart is gonna cost you $27, and he'll ship it to you.
At least in the United States, I don't know if he does international shipping. You'll have to get a hold of him. 3 quarts for 68, you can get a half gallon for $45 or you can get a set of 4 pints for $50. It's worth it. It's made by a pleb. He takes bitcoin for sales. His sister Sarah makes soaps, so hit her hit him up about his hand his sister's sister Sarah's handmade soaps. Yes. That's it. Sister Sarah soaps. They're great soaps too. I've he sent me some of those too. If you wanna get a hold of Maple Trade, you're going to have to get ahold of him on Noster. His handle is at b e I s n e r d s. You can also put in at mapletrade, m a p l e t r a d e. And somehow or another, the clients will resolve it to Maple Trade. If you just can't get a hold of him there and you still are on dead birdsite, aka Twitter, it is at Bys nerds is his handle over there too.
And if you want, you can just go to the show notes. I've got 2 URLs. If you hit either one of them, if you hit the one for primal.net, it'll take you to primal.net, and it will take you right to maple trade. If you hit the x.comforward/biz nerds, it'll take you right to his x or Twitter account. And you can DM him and say, I heard about this on circle p. Because if you buy it and you mentioned that you heard it on the circle p, he is going to give me sats. And he did today, but we're not gonna do that right now. If you're not selling your sats or your goods and services for satoshis and bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. Now, on to Trump orders the creation of United States sovereign wealth fund and says it could own part, oh, part of TikTok.
And this is from Zeke Miller out of ABC News, Washington, DC, I don't know. Whatever. President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the US to take steps to start developing a government owned investment fund that he said could be used to profit off of TikTok if he's successful at finding it an American buyer. Trump signed an order on his first day of office to grant the Chinese owned TikTok until early April to find a domestic partner or buyer, but he said that he's looking for the US to take a 50 50% stake in the massive social media platform. He said Monday in the Oval Office that TikTok was an example of what could put be put in the new US sovereign wealth fund. Quote, we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund.
Whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options, he said of TikTok, quote, but we could put that as an example in the fund. We have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund, end quote. See what I'm saying? There's what? There's a lot of stuff I could put in my toilet, but I'm not describing it. So, therefore, nobody knows if I flush that toilet if I'm gonna have call a plumber because until I do, I'm not gonna be able to take a dump. See, details, m f or details. Trump noted many other nations have such investment funds and predicted that the US could eventually top Saudi Arabia's fund size. He says, quote, eventually we'll catch it.
Trump put treasury secretary Scott DeSantis and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in charge of laying the groundwork for creating such a fund and with it'll likely take act of congress to do. But former president Joe Biden's administration had studied the possibility of creating a sovereign wealth fund for national security investments, but the idea did not yield any concrete action before he left office last month. Besant said that the administration's goal was to have the fund open within the next 12 months, and Lutnick said another use of the fund could have been for the government to take profit earning stake in vaccine manufacturers. Oh, Jesus.
Wow. That's a conflict of interest of of immense proportions, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not like, I'm just being the weather man. I'm just saying that it's raining. If you have a deal to purchase vaccines from private companies and you put profits of vaccine companies into the sovereign wealth fund, then you have every you need to make sure that you have every American take as many vaccines as possible. This is not good. This this is horrible. This is horror say bad move, man. As my dad said, he would always tell me it's a bad deal, Dave. Bad deal. Quote, the extraordinary size and scale of the US government and the business it does with companies should create value for American citizens. Well, that that I I I agree with. But, yeah, that's a conflict of interest, man.
And to my real point about this, that was a little surprised that I just stumbled upon and you heard me react to it. But the the real point here is that we don't know anything about this. It's just, hey. Let's do this fund. Okay, man. What's gonna be in it? Oh, I don't know stuff. Maybe some junk. Maybe some crap. I don't know. Just make it fun. This wow. And what bugs me is that senator Cynthia Lummis tweeted or retweeted that announcement that the creation of a sovereign wealth fund and said basically hinted in a way that because it's her, the fact that she retweeted and said something like, oh, I don't know. Big things are on the horizon. Everybody's looking is is this the Bitcoin sovereign fund? Is this a sovereign Bitcoin, you know, reserve? Is this the SBR?
We don't know. He hadn't say shit about it. Didn't even say anything about crappy crypto. So I don't know, man, but I I wouldn't trust it. I I'm just saying. Be be aware. Be aware. The stakes are in the grass everywhere. Now Turner Wright from Cointelegraph is writing that US lawmakers will propose crypto regulation by November according to Anthony Scaramucci. The mooch man, Anthony Scaramucci, which is the founder of SkyBridge Capital and former White House director of communications, yeah, for, like, 6 weeks, during Donald Trump's first term, has suggested that members of congress will act to curry favor with the crypto industry before the 2026 midterm elections.
In an interview with the Financial Times published February 4th, the mooch said US lawmakers in the house of representatives and senate facing primary challenges and close elections in swing districts will likely wanna show a record of proposing positive crypto legislation before the midterm elections. Yeah. Because as we saw, there's enough Bitcoiners and crypto guys out there that it's actually a voting block that you can no longer ignore, and you risk getting your ass primaried if you go against anything that we want. Anyway, the former White House communications director suggested that congress could enact a burst of legislative activity before it breaks for the 2025 holidays, potentially including a crypto market structure bill. Quote, you'll probably get it in November before that recess.
But if you don't, I don't think you'll get it much later than the timeline I'm suggesting. End quote. The mooch, who famously holds the record for the shortest serving communications director at the White House, oh, 11 days. Damn. Didn't even make it 2 weeks. Was a vocal critic of Trump in the 2024 election claiming the US president's support of the crypto industry was purely transactional. The Financial Times reported that the mooch called Trump an unwell person who had amassed a lot of political power. In addition to potentially courting single issue crypto voters, house members and senators running for reelection in 2026 could face opposition or support from political action committees funded by industry players, like the Fair Shake PAC, which spent roughly $131,000,000 on media buys for candidates in the 2024 US elections.
And they said that they were, quote, keeping their foot on the gas for these 2026 midterm elections. So, yeah. We're already talking about the midterm elections. This is this shit's gotta stop, man. This it's every 2 years. How anything gets done in this country is beyond beyond my reckoning. But let's move on. Jesse Hamilton is writing another one from this time from CoinDesk, and he says US Senate's effort on stablecoins is revealed in a new bill put forth from Hagerty. Let's see what old mister Hagerty has to say. The opening shot is being fired in the new congress' crypto push with a plan for a Tuesday introduction of a stablecoin oversight bill from senator Bill Hagerty.
Hey, Bill. Well, the legislation would set up a US regulatory framework for issuing the dollar denominated tokens, according to a person familiar with the effort. The Tennessee Republican, who had shepherded a stable coin effort in the previous session, is now pushing a bill with the backing of the senate banking committee's new chairman, Tim Scott, and and and the head of its digital asset subcommittee, Cynthia Lummis. That's a big difference from the 2024 effort that couldn't break through the crypto roadblock maintained by previous committee chief, Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat, who was defeated in November's elections.
Hagerty's bill, which is he's calling the guiding and establishing national innovation in US stable coins act. And I'm disgusted because the the name of the well, the acronym is genius. They're going to call it the genius bill, ladies and gentlemen, and it would define payment stablecoins and set up the procedures for issuing them, including establishing the Federal Reserve as watchdog for the big bank issuers and the office of the comptroller of the currency as regulator for non bank issuers of more than $10,000,000,000, the person said.
The legislation additionally outlines the reserves issuers would have to maintain. State regulators would be in place for the smaller issuers and for larger firms who can seek waivers. The distinction between federal and state regulators has been the main sticking point when Democrats and Republicans sought to work out a compromise bill on stablecoins in the previous congress, and any new version will still have to thread a bipartisan needle. And it's unclear whether Hagerty's plan, of which senator Lummis said she'd be working to get this bill to the president's desk, will draw Democrat support with its lighter regulatory approach.
The house of representatives had approved a stablecoin oversight bill in the previous session, but it met resistance in getting a matching senate version, which had been sought by Hagerty. He is set to introduce the new legislation today, according to news first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by Hagerty in a posting on Twitter. Stablecoins are designed as steady cryptocurrency tokens whose prices linked to other assets, usually the dollar. Later on Tuesday, president Donald Trump's crypto czar David Sachs is set to lead a press conference with congressional leaders to outline with congressional I'm sorry. To outline their crypto strategy. This stablecoin effort is expected to be raised to that event. Wow. Okay. Well, that's just that's just peachy.
Sounds like honestly, it sounds like cbdcs in a different way. That's my gut feeling. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. Oil, West Texas Intermediate taking a beating today. 0.7% to the downside, all the way down to 72.68 a barrel. Brent Norcia is up a quarter, however, to 76.18. Natural gas is down by 1.7% to $3.29 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline fell well a full point to $2.9 a gallon. Gold rallying 0.63% of the upside to $28.75.30. Silver is up 1 and a half. Platinum is up just over 1%. Copper is up 1.2, but palladium yeah. Palladium is down 2.83%.
Ag, I have not a whole lot of red. Lumber, however, is definitely the biggest loser of the day. 3 and 2 thirds point to the downside. Biggest winner is sugar, 2 and a quarter to the upside. And then we got live cattle, which is down almost a full point, but lean hogs erasing their losses from yesterday, up 3.8%. Feeder cattle off by 3 quarters of a percent. Dow, not a whole lot going on in legacy markets. Point 18% to the upside. S and P is up a half, but the Nasdaq is doing well. It's up a full point and the s and p mini is up over a half point. And, of course, bitcoin is down again because, you know, China. Anyway, $99,010 a coin has a $1,960,000,000,000,000 market cap.
34.8 ounces of shiny metal rocks can be had with your 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000. 819,500 and 7 and a half of an average fees per block are low. Have we cleared? No. But we're getting close. There's only 5 blocks carrying a measly ass 37100 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of, oh, 2 satoshis per v byte. Low priorities gonna get you in at 2 satoshis per v byte. And hash rate on a 1 week rolling average is still chilling out at about 832 exahashes per second. And, wow, that's kind of amazing. I really figured that Hashrate would be pulled off of the network, but from what I'm seeing, that is not the case.
Whatever. From dissidents and developers, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin Ant, I got well, it says anonymous, but I know who this is. Let me read it to you first. With 75,233 satoshis anonymous says, circle p only works if the vendors come through. Long time coming for last portion of the 2024 maple syrup or maple season. Bring on 2025. Syrup is coming soon. Yeah. That's maple trade. Now I don't know why on fountain.fm, which is where I'm reading these boosts from, I don't know why it says anonymous, but whatever. I know that that's maple trade because he said, hey. In a DM, he d m me and said, I got 75, you know, 76,000 sats for you.
Do you want me to boost the show or do you want me to, you know, whatever? And I'm like, dude, boost the show. I I need all the boosts I can get. Gotta get in them charts, man, because that's the only way it works. But he's right. Circle P only works if the vendors come through. Because I don't invoice y'all. If you guys want to be in the Circle P, we end up having a relationship with each other where I put an add on for you, let people, you know, let my audience know that they can buy from plebs like you, and if you find out that I sold you something, cut me some satoshis, man.
Don't cut me slack, cut me some satoshis. Bitcoin arborist with 5,000 says, You are a gentleman and a scholar. Appreciate your efforts to just fucking say how it is. I finally figured out how to boost. Well, apparently so with 5,000. I appreciate that. Aggie with a 1,000 says Lynn Alden explains perfectly well what is meant by global liquidity. And, yeah, Aggie, if you have a direct link to where she, really describes global liquidity, I'd appreciate it. Pies with a 1000 says value for value. Cheers, Bell and strong-arm. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Bitcoin for president with a 1000 says your end of show rant was spot on. Epic. I am always appreciative of your podcast. Please donate more often if you are able to everybody, and thank you. No. Thank you. Anonymous with a 1,000. I have a hard time interpreting all the sinister laughs on this on.
I guess he's talking about me. God's death with 5:37. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Wartime with 333 says, cheers. Mark with 210 says, this is the first weed commercial I've ever heard. Yeah. I know. I'm probably already in trouble with the FCC. But you know what? I don't care. Nick underscore dose with a 101 sat says, cheers. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. From the blocks, Daniel Kuhn. We've got this one and it's gonna make your it's gonna rankle. Taproot Wizards raise $30,000,000 to expand opcat functionality on Bitcoin.
We thought we got rid of ordinals, because that's who these people are. These are the people behind ordinals and shit. And and, like, magic cats and shit on the on on the blockchain. They took full full abilities of opcat, taproot, and everything else to put the shittiest crap. And this is Udi Wertheimer, by the way, and his little band of miscreants out there causing problems. And we just got empty mempools. We we just got empty mempools. And they couldn't have that. So they had to go raise money to do what? I don't know. Sell more stupidity on the blockchain.
Bitcoin ordinals project Taproot Wizards has raised $30,000,000 in its first post seed round. According to an announcement on Tuesday, the funds, like its previous $7,500,000 round, were raised to further the project's effort at quote, making bitcoin magical again, cofounder Udi Wertheimer told the block. Taproot Wizards gets its name from the bitcoin wizard meme, created in MS Paint as an early independent advertisement for magic internet money. And the round was led by early Taproot Wizards supporter, Standard Crypto with participation from Cyber Fund, Collider Ventures, among others.
Wertheimer, who cofounded Taproot Wizards in 2023 with a compatriot from crypto Twitter, Eric Wall, noted that the project will use the fresh capital to advance the opcat ecosystem that is advancing smart contract functionality on Bitcoin. Pausing to say that OPCAT is an operation code used in the Bitcoin protocol. And when it got unleashed, and it was had been deprecated. So OPCAT was kinda I think if it was that it was deprecated because it was always there, but it caused some problems in the early days, so Satoshi shut it down. Well, in after Taproot got in, everything was fine and we were like, hey, you know what? We should probably have OPCAT in there again. And the combination between Taproot being present and OPCAT also now being functional caused ordinals.
That's what allowed ordinals to happen. It was it was a game theoretic that nobody really saw what the full outcome was going to be, which is why I love Bitcoin because it's very slow to change. And it's for bullshit like this as to why it's very hard to change. But even when we changed it and it was hard to change, we didn't see everything. And this whole ordinal thing is has probably made it even harder in the future for us to do stuff to the Bitcoin protocol. But let's continue. We're really focused on OPCAT as the future of Bitcoin, Wertheimer said. So this will be both for development in house and talent that will build this stuff in house at our company and to help build the ecosystem outside of our company too.
Well, at least I don't have to put a tie on that suit speak because it's one of the worst written statements I've ever heard. Opcat, short for opcode concatenate or op_concat, is a relatively simple scripted capability for Bitcoin to enable automated, customizable transactions. Wertheimer noted that the function is just 10 lines of code. Opcat was enabled when Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, was still an active participant in the ecosystem but then was disabled due to a lack of use cases. It was revisited in recent years to enable the types of applications being built on shitcoin number 1 and shitcoin number 2 directly on Bitcoin. The cool thing about opcap because it's so flexible, Wertheimer said, the what or what I expect is that people are going to create tons of new protocols.
And instead of having ordinals and brc twenties once per quarter, a new protocol like that shows up like the hey days of Ethereum or Solana where people create new protocols on a daily basis, end quote. The ordinals protocol created by Casey Rod Armour kicked off a revolution of activity on bitcoin and fomented the mentality that bitcoin could be used as an on chain currency rather than just held as a form of digital gold. So called bitcoin maximalists have advanced the idea that launching native tokens and nfts on bitcoin is cluttering the chain and at the worst of times raising fees for others who would use Bitcoin, for payments.
Taproot Wizards is among the most popular Bitcoin based projects as seen by its launch. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever, dude. It sounds like the block here is making a case to go all in on ordinals again. And honestly, I could not give less of a shit. And I couldn't give less of a shit either way. I think NFTs on Bitcoin is stupid. And I also realized that I can't do a damn thing about it. So since I can't affect any of it, I don't care. But what I what I find odd is that we had this, like, 2, 3 years of this of this Taproot Wizards NFT kitty cats on the blockchain bullshit, and it just died.
So what do they do? They have to go get money to resurrect it. That's what I see. I see that they had an idea that they thought everybody wanted, and for a while it looked like a whole bunch of people did want it. And then it was a fad. It died, like fads do. If it doesn't if it doesn't like bell bottoms. Yeah, they looked cool, but they didn't do anything else. They're just pants. Right? So it was just a style, I. E. A fad. This doesn't Taproot Wizards brings nothing to Bitcoin except bullshit. It's just crap. But, again, I can't do anything about it. I just find it funny that their fail was so epic that they had to go get more money so that they could fail again.
Whatever. Similar Scientific taking a different way out though, also from the block. This one written by James Hunt. Similar Scientific buys another 871 Bitcoin for $88,500,000 bringing its holdings to 3,192 Bitcoin. Holy shit. That's actually a pretty hefty buy for these guys. The health care tech firm, Similar Scientific acquired all these bitcoin for approximately $88,500,000 at an average price of 101,616 per bitcoin from January 11th through February 3rd according to an 8 k filing. Semler's latest purchases were made with proceeds generated from its January 2025 senior convertible notes offering and monetization of a portion of its minority investment in Monarch Medical Technologies.
As of February 3rd, they have 3192 bitcoin worth approximately $320,000,000 bought for an average price of $87,854 per coin for a total cost of around $280,000,000 including fees and expenses. Quote, we're thrilled with the progress we're making in growing our Bitcoin stockpile. Semler Scientific Chair, Eric Semler said on Tuesday, quote, we are especially pleased with our successful convertible notes offering, which was substantially oversubscribed with investor demand. Additionally, we were pleased to have monetized part of our investment in Monarch Medical in order to buy more Bitcoin. And they go on to talk about MicroStrategy because this is the MicroStrategy playbook.
So I was talking with my sister yesterday because I sent her a podcast. In fact, I sent her a, TFTC, the old tales from the crypt podcast, which is now was it tales for the commoner? Something like that. I can't remember what he changed it to. But it's Marty Ben. Marty Ben's podcast. And he was talking to a guy, and I can't remember his name, about the micro strategy trade, and that it was pissing people off. And it was pissing people off because they don't understand the trade. And I was like, some bitch, neither do I. I don't understand this trade. And you might be saying, which trade, David? Which which MicroStrategy trade are you referring to? All of them.
It's all one trade. It is the selling of debt to get fiat to convert that fiat into Bitcoin, which is then placed on the company's balance sheet. So it comes back to spiral. And there's something about the selling of debt that I didn't understand. I went with it. I was like, okay. I I kinda get it. Kind of. But, you know, I've got 4 brain cells left, guys. I'm not like, you know, I didn't go to Yale or Harvard Business School. I'm I'm a pleb. I'm just like you. I don't understand this shit either. Except I finally understand it. And I'm not gonna be able to explain it to you because I've I've got to work out how to string certain words and have a have them in things called sentences that build up a thing called a paragraph that actually makes sense. But I wanted to say at least this.
It really wasn't until strike, the preferred stock option or the stock offering came out from MicroStrategy, not strike the company, not Jack Mallard's deal. No. Strike is a preferred stock that's being offered or was offered by MicroStrategy last week. STRK is the ticker symbol, I believe. And it was like, you buy this thing for $80. You get a 10% coupon. You do not get any say in what happens to the company, so there's you don't get to vote like you do with common shares of stock. And it's preferred stock, which means in the event of a bankruptcy, you get paid out first as the creditor.
That's when I really was, like, I don't understand this trade. I don't understand them ginning up Borscht's, you know, common shares, class a common shares of MicroStrategy stock to sell. I don't understand the convertible note thing for sale. All I all I knew was that they were getting people to buy this stuff for fiat that they would then put on the balance sheet in the form of Bitcoin. And then the the I have seen nothing but an entire set of discussions around insurance and reinsurance companies. And I sent my sister this particular episode of Marty Bentz podcast because I go, you need to listen to this because he's talking to a guy that is fully, you know, fully admitting that he thinks he might understand the trade, but there's enough about it that he just doesn't get. And I'm like, I'm right there with you. And I'm, like, you know, sister's been in merger and acquisitions on the legal side for decades.
Surely, surely, she'd be able to listen to it and tell me what I'm missing. Both of us are completely blown away by this trade now. I was blown away before, but when you don't fully understand a thing, you cannot fully appreciate the thing. So here's where it really clicked into me. I need to let go of the fact that he's he's essentially doing the same thing all these companies do. They're selling stock as a promise that you will get more money in the future. That's why it's a security. That's why it passes the Howey test. And because it passes the Howey test, it has to be registered as a security. So you're selling a promise, which is basically thin air.
I give you actual money for it, which represents my time that's real on this planet, and then they do whatever they're going to do with it. In this particular case, he's buying Bitcoin. This asset just goes up. Sure. It's got its it's got its moments like today when it's going down, But generally speaking, it just goes up. So he puts that on the balance sheet. It makes the company more valuable. Now I can pay off the creditors. Oh, k. Now this is starting to make sense. And then we get the preferred stock in. Okay. This is another instrument when you just want the dividend. And you don't even have to convert this into common stock shares. You can hold this at at a 10% coupon and get 10% on your $80 for as long as you want to or as long as Bitcoin keeps on going up and MicroStrategy stays solvent.
Where it really clicked is that that's all retail and institutional, you know, style investment. It was the insurance and reinsurance side when I figured out that, oh my god, this trade, this MicroStrategy trade appeals to 2 completely different classes of risk assessment. When you are a risk assessment junkie, you're trying to figure out how much would I lose versus how much do I have to gain and does this make sense, you have 2 completely different classes of people that make those assessments. Companies like MicroStrategy or IBM or Microsoft or whatever, all the equity guys, they have a completely different style of risk assessment than insurance companies.
Because, sure, they can go through like, they have a bad product sale. Whatever. Their stock price goes down. You can hold it. You, as the investor, can hold that stock. But if you're a insurance policyholder and your house burns down, the insurance company can't just say, hey, man. You know, things are a little rough right now. We'll get back to you in 6 months. Just just hold on to your policy. It's gonna be fine. That does not happen in insurance. When my house burns down and I have an insurance policy on that fucking house, I need a check. Which means that the way that insurance companies invest is a completely different model. It is under a completely different set of auspices for risk assessment than all the rest of the companies of the world.
They have to they have to invest their money where they are damn sure that if Cedar Sinai burns down, that they're going to have enough money to rebuild that hospital and make everybody whole. They have they have to have enough money. They have to do their risk assessment in a completely different way way where they can ensure that they have enough cash to pay out a 1,000 homes burning down in the Palisades or whatever, even if those guys did have insurance. But you get my drift. This isn't something where I can my fears can be assuaged because, you know, Michael Saylor says calm down. It'll be fine. And I just decide to hold.
When I'm an insurance policyholder, I can't hold. I need that converted into cash. I need the money to rebuild the house. I need the money to buy a new car because I got in a wreck. Whatever. This instrument, this trade, this micro strategy trade appeals to both risk assessment models. That was what I was missing. And because of that, you have a massive potential pool of buyers into this thing. That's why this trade is pissing people off. They don't understand that part. That was the last linchpin for me was the fact that 2 completely different risk assessment models are satisfied by this trade. Does that mean it can never get wiped out?
No. That's not how risk assessment works. But what I am saying is that it satisfies both models and that's why you're seeing insurance company speed or you're seeing more talk about insurance companies in Bitcoin Twitter and on Nostr than ever before ever before and it all boils down to the fact that the underlying asset is the most rock solid asset we've ever seen And Missouri sees it because Missouri is opening up to Bitcoin. They've they've got a proposal to invest up to 10% of public funds. Let's see what instrumentation this takes. And this is out of Atlas 21.
And it's a senate bill, SB 614. Missouri is joining the growing list of US states that have introduced legislation. That's the instrument. Legislation to explore Bitcoin adoption at the state level. The proposal would allow the state to invest up to 10% of public funds in digital assets. The Missouri state's treasurer funds total they gotta do it again. The Missouri State Treasurer's Fund totaled approximately $18,000,000,000 meaning that the potential investment could reach a maximum of 1.8 $1,000,000,000 That's with a b. Dollars. This bill stands out from the others by introducing protections for industry participants.
Specifically, it enshrines the right to self custody, ensuring that Missouri residents can retain full control over their digital assets without government interference. It also provides legal protection for bitcoin mining activities. Additionally, the bill establishes that bitcoin nodes are exempt from the requirements to obtain a money transmitter license. The proposal now awaits review by the Missouri State Senate. So Missouri is on deck, ladies and gentlemen. And it looks like they are actually saying saying the word Bitcoin and not crypto, and that's always a good sign.
Sparrow Wallet. We're into a little bit of software updates. If you're a Sparrow Wallet user, version 2.1.0 has been released, Lark for USB signers, PSBT version 2 support, and more. Sparrow is a free and open source modern desktop Bitcoin wallet application supporting most hardware wallets and built on common standards such as PSBT with an emphasis on transparency and usability. Yeah. Emphasis, not emphasis, but it's a little joke. The release implements Lark for USB hardware wallets. It releases support loading of PSBT version 2 files, multisig wallet registration save functionality for ledger devices, jade plus USB support, restores tables, restore tables, sort and sizing on wallet load and more. And if I were to actually read you the entire list of things that have been changed, added, updated, we'd be here all day.
This is a huge update to Sparrow Wallet. If you are a Sparrow Wallet user, you will want to look into version 2.1.0. And finally, for today, Envoy Wallet version 1.8.6 has some improvements and fixes. Envoy is a free and open source mobile Bitcoin wallet and a companion app for passport signing device. It can also be used as a standalone Bitcoin mobile wallet and it is available on both Android and iOS. Quote, in Envoy version 1.8.6, we focused on small bug fixes while we prepare the app for the upcoming Passport Prime integration announced the project. This version removes the buy button when the buy in envoy option is disabled.
It adds a link to Foundation's new community forums and updates the Bitcoin ATM map to retrieve information from OpenStreet Maps among other fixes and improvements. Okay. So that's the end of the show, ladies and gentlemen. We are at $99,486 a coin. And if if I made a epic fail on trying to explain the micro strategy trade, first, my apologies. 2nd, boost the show and tell me what it is that you're missing. What did I miss? Because that's going to help me understand this trade even better. I am finally satisfied in in thinking that I've got my head wrapped around the micro strategy trade, but I'd like to write it down in a way that is digestible for other people that are plebs like me that didn't go to Harvard Business School or have a degree from Yale on a sheepskin somewhere chilling out on our walls, I want you to understand it too. Because this trade, ever since 2021, when Michael Saylor entered the fray, I've been wondering about how can you just print bonds and get people to buy them?
And now once that preferred stock came up, that strike preferred stock from my MicroStrategy, that's when I was like, I have to understand what's going on here. I do not understand what's going on here. I feel that I finally understand the MicroStrategy trade. If I explained it poorly, if you still do not understand it, if you tell me what it is that you're having a problem with, it will help me design a way to explain it to people better and I would appreciate it. It's okay to criticize me for not being able to get it through your head what it is that's in my head. This is why we write.
And this is why it's hard to write. Because it forces you to look at what you probably don't understand. And there's very there is a very good chance that I don't have it all wrapped up in my head about the micro strategy trade. So if you help me help you understand this trade, it will literally help me help you to understand this trade, and I will see you on the other side.
[01:01:49] Unknown:
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 9:37 in AM in the Pacific Inland Northwest, I might add, which would be Pacific Standard Time. It's the 4th day of February 2025. This is episode 1031. Bitcoin and might remind you that 1031 also stands for October 31st, which is Bitcoin's white paper day, but we don't really need to get into that because it's not the actual date. It's just the number of the damn show. We got well, we got a dip again because of tariffs. This time in a retaliatory stance. And then we got, what what else is up here? Oh, yeah. We're gonna talk about, navigating the Trump tariff war and Bitcoin. Of course, Bitcoin is gonna be there. And then, well, sovereign wealth fund, but Trump didn't actually say what was gonna be in it.
See, I hate that. I it's like, don't tell me you're gonna create a sovereign wealth fund and don't tell me what the wealth is actually going to be. But, apparently, it's going to be able to buy TikTok or something or other than that. There's gonna be some crypto regulations coming in November according to the Scaramooch, the Mooch man, Anthony Scaramooch. And then Taproot Wizards got more money. They did. Yes. And Simler Scientific has bought some more Bitcoin. And then we've got yet another state in the United States entering the fray to be able to invest public funds into Bitcoin. And then we got a couple of software updates, but first, from decrypt.c0, the dip.
The crypto dip. Because crypto dipped again as China is set to impose their own tariffs on us here in the United States. How dare they? How dare they? Cryptocurrencies tumbled early Tuesday after China announced its retaliatory measures against the United States including a probe into Google and new levies on American goods. Crypto is still reeling from the global market route that saw over $2,200,000,000 in liquidations caused by investor uncertainties following the tariffs imposed by the US on Mexico, Canada, and China. Alright. So it's not really 2,200,000,000.
It's actually estimated to be between somewhere between $810,000,000,000 of liquidations. But, sure, let's let's let's take let's take the easy road and go with 2,200,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. That that'll make everybody feel better. The top 10 cryptos, excluding stable coins, have reacted negatively to the news with Chic coin number 3 or 4, whatever, leading the losses down 5.8%, followed by Cripple and its 5.1% decline. Bitcoin showed relative resistance, however, dropping a mere 1.3% to $98,934. It follows Asia media reports, including the South China Morning Post, which stated that Beijing has announced tariffs on US goods between 10 15%.
Bloomberg further reported Beijing will impose 15% levies on coal and LNG imports, that would be liquefied natural gas, alongside a 10% tariff on oil and John Deere tractors. Actually, straight up agricultural equipment built in America. And that shit is effective right now, immediately. It's in place, ladies and gentlemen. John Deere. I feel bad for you guys. Nasdaq 100 futures have also seen immediate reactions, dropping 1.7% on the day, 8 hours before the United States markets opened. By late afternoon, futures pared losses slightly but remained down 1.2% for the day according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Commodities are seeing broad based pressure with natural gas dropping sharply by 2% and crude oil declining by 1.7 percent while copper stands out as the lone gainer among major commodities with a modest 1 third of a point increase. China's state administration for market regulation has also launched an antitrust investigation into Google moments after the United States tariffs took effect, according to a separate report from Bloomberg. The story is developing and will be updated accordingly. Well, you know what? Here's the deal with China.
They don't have a whole lot of oil. They do have they do have a relative decent amount of coal, but they I'm pretty sure that they do not have the ability nor the raw materials to refine, liquefy, or to create liquefied natural gas. Now that said, it is also clear that they import a whole bunch of coal, a whole bunch of oil, and a whole bunch of liquefied natural gas from the United States. So when will China crumble? When will they bend to their knees, get on the floor, and prostate themselves like some plebeian in front of the Roman senate?
They might not because they have petroleum trading partners in OPEC, which the United States is not part of. If you thought the United States was part of OPEC cartel, you are wrong. We've never been invited. We've never wanted to go. We've always stood out on our own energy production legs, but OPEC is a thing. And in fact, in the early eighties, OPEC single handedly tanked United States oil markets, sending people with PhDs in geology to work as sackers at the grocery store. I saw it with my own eyes. It just it devastated West Texas. I grew up in the Permian Basin, and it absolutely crushed us. They just opened up the pipes and said, let the oil flow. So if you don't think that Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC countries won't work out a deal with China, you are wrong.
So what I'm suggesting here is that China doesn't actually need our oil, just like we don't really need Canadian oil, which is why we had we've seen a massive cave in from Trudeau's provisional government. I I mean, he resigned, and he programmed the the parliament. So I don't really know what the hell is going on over there. He said he was gonna stay on until the parliament found somebody to replace him, but parliament is kind of in suspension right now from what I understand. So he's sort of like a quasi dictator. But even even he crumbled like a cheap suit and said, okay. Okay. We'll do what Mexico did. We'll send 10,000 troops to our northern border, and we'll make sure that fentanyl doesn't get across.
Well, I don't think that that's going to be the case with China. Now I say that, but China's they're they're not idiots. And China has Mexico and and Canada did not have what China has, a leg to stand on. Now if you're if if you're a Canadian listener, I'm not going after you. The Canadians that I've met are fine people. The citizenry of Canada, the citizenry of Mexico, generally speaking, fine people. It's the governments that suck. It and and while, yes, you're gonna get hurt, I I don't know what to tell you. You can get mad at orange man all you want. There's people over here that are mad at orange man, like, hand over fist. It's really not gonna matter because this shit's going to happen.
Except that we didn't really need Canadian oil. It's it's sour and it's heavy, and they can't even refine it for themselves, much like Venezuela can't refine their own oil because it's super, super heavy oil. But the sourness and the heaviness of Canadian oil makes it damn near, like, the bottom like, if you go to the shopping market for oil, you want heavy crude and you want some light sweet crude and you want some West Texas Intermediate crude. That that's your shopping list. Because you can get everything from asphalt to high test, high octane gasoline out of that shit.
But the sour, heavy crude, you can get asphalt out of it and diesel and and stuff like that, but the sourness means that it's got a bunch of hydrogen sulfide or h two s gas associated with it. And if you mix h two s gas with water, you know what you get? You get sulfuric acid, which is highly corrosive. And it's not exactly what refiners want to work with. So the refineries that are that are tooled to be able to use that particular raw material to do refining, that that's not a that's not your standard run-in the mill oil refinery like you'll find everywhere. They're heavy duty. They're extra heavy duty, and they're very expensive. And Canada doesn't have them. They don't have a choice. They have to sell that crap to us if they want to take a crappy substance out of their ground and make some money out of it.
Mexico ain't exactly standing on a whole bunch of economic legs either. They need us way more than we need them. No matter what anybody says about people coming to pick fruit, that's not what I'm talking about. That's going to happen regardless no matter what is going on with the southern border. We we've got we've always had agricultural handshakes with Mexico to get people up here all the way up to all the way up to Washington. They they will come all the way to Washington state to pick fruit, and then they go back home. That's not gonna change. That that's ridiculous that anybody thinks that that's going to change. So what I'm getting at though is that they these guys don't have that much of a leg to stand on. China, however, does.
Rare earth minerals, they've got I mean, most of the shit that you buy at Walmart is is produced by the slave labor that China has absolutely no problem enslaving. They don't have the they America is not exactly great on human rights. You know, we are certainly not great on human rights. We're bombing Iraq back into the third world and making sure that we kill a 1000000 brown people because somebody wanted to have a war. That is definitely an atrocity that at one point or another, the chickens are gonna come roost come home to roost on. But here in the United States, we have relative human rights for, you know, most people. Yeah. There's some chicanery that goes on, but not like in China.
There's nowhere in the United States where it is basically, like, government sanctioned that you will be able to build a factory and lock people into that factory so they can build your crap for you so that you can sell to the United States for cheap. Right? Mexico didn't have that. Canada didn't have that. China, they got that shit in spades, and they have trading partners for oil. They don't need our coal. They really don't need our oil. So they have a bargaining chip, which is what I think the 15 10% tariffs are. They're doing what Trump is doing. However, because Justin Trudeau and the president of Mexico folded like a cheap suit, the real battle, the real deal is gonna be struck between Trump and Xi Jinping or whatever that guy's name is. That's gonna be an actual negotiation, I think. I don't think these tariffs are gonna stand up for very long. I think that the these are both negotiating tactics.
And China is basically saying, we don't hate you, but we are going to negotiate with you because we don't want your deal and you don't want our deal, so we need to start talking. So I'm not worried about these tariffs, not in not in the medium to long term. But in the short term, they do a lot of damage, and they're they're making they're making my my screen have red bars, and I don't like red bars. I don't like them. So, what's the best strategy to navigate this? Well, let's find out for Bitcoin Magazine's Nicholas Hoffman, who has this one. Buying and holding Bitcoin is the best strategy to navigate the Trump tariff war. Today, The Wall Street Journal published an article attempting to assassinate Bitcoin amidst the recent US, Canada, and Mexico tariff trade war because Bitcoin's price, oh my god, has gone down.
Quote, Bitcoin touted as a borderless digital store value is down more than, oh my god, 4% over the last 24 hours after the White House instigated cross border tariffs. The article stated, quote, cryptocurrencies were once promoted as investments that act independently of stocks, but in fact their moves often resemble outsized versions of broader market swings. In the second sentence cited above, the Wall Street Journal attempts to diminish bitcoin's value proposition by pointing out that bitcoin's prices just correlated with other traditional assets. What the author of the article doesn't share though is that bitcoin's price is going to go down and up much more so than traditional assets because it's incredibly liquid and it's easy to buy and sell. But bitcoin is a distributed network made up of miners, nodes, developers, and users. On a technical level, it is quite different from any other asset like stocks, as it has no central party controlling it. And because of this, bitcoin has been a safe haven for those trying to navigate geopolitical fears.
No one can just print more bitcoin out of thin air and inflate the supply, enforce any unwanted network changes overnight, or overthrow and stop the network from running. But don't just take my word for it. Take Larry Fink, the CEO of the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. Just a couple of weeks ago, Fink said that he is a true believer in Bitcoin's value proposition and that if you're frightened of the geopolitical fears in your country, you can now have an international based asset that operates completely independently from those tensions.
Sure, Bitcoin's price will respond to news and events happening in the short term, causing very large price actions to the upside as well as the downside. But cherry picking data in an attempt to make Bitcoin look like it's a bad investment is just bad reporting, and it's misleading. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for the last 15 years and will likely continue to perform well. The important point to understand here is that while Bitcoin is a volatile asset reacting to daily events, over the long term, bitcoin's value proposition is what takes its price higher and higher.
For the first time in history, we have money that cannot be hyperinflated. It allows people to transact across borders freely without permission, giving users an escape hatch for anyone whose country is attempting to control them financially. Forget short term price when it comes to bitcoin as a tool to help navigate geopolitical tensions. Over the long term, bitcoin supply and demand will take the price higher than it is today. Mainstream media articles on bitcoin have always missed the bigger picture and end up misleading the people who read them. As geopolitical tensions increase, Bitcoin is the safest asset that you can own.
So what we've got here is essentially Wall Street Journal, you know, writing yet one of their generalized hit pieces on Bitcoin, and it's only to get clicks because the mainstream media is already dead. They just don't know it yet. Nobody's really reading The Wall Street Journal on a subscription basis, except for those guys like this who are reporters for, you know, other, you know, other things. Right? They they wanna know what the the big boys are saying. So, yes, they have a Bloomberg terminal. Yes. They have subscriptions to Wall Street Journal and all the rest of them. But those are the only people that really do. Because we we we've entered into an age, and we've been here for a long time where we can get our news from anywhere we want to get our news from.
There used to be a time where if you wanted business news, ladies and gentlemen, if you did not have a subscription to Wall Street Journal, sorry for you. You had to wait for the, you know, morning news, lunchtime news, and the 6 o'clock, you know, evening report on NBC and ABC, and then World Report that came around right after that. That was the only way you were gonna find out. And then you had to trust that they were gonna tell you what it is that you needed to know. If you were looking at something completely different that they never report on, you were going to need a subscription to Wall Street Journal. Nobody needs that shit anymore.
They don't need Bloomberg. They don't need Wall Street Journal. Somebody somewhere has already gotten this stuff, and they're all read they're always putting it into archive.ph or art your or the Internet archive and just archiving these things for free. You can go read anything you want. Nobody needs this crap anymore. The only way they can get people to read their garbage at this point at the retail level and not institutional subscribers is clickbait. It's sad, but it's true. Circle p is open for business, and maple trade is prepping his maple syrup creation ceremony. We're getting close.
We're getting close. Yes. I know. It's only the 4th February. He's in Ohio. Maple sap is gonna start flowing here pretty damn quick. Amazingly enough, it's going to start happening. And he wants to sell you his maple syrup. He makes it by hand, and he doesn't buy in maple sap from other producers. No. No. He goes to his own trees on his property and he taps these maple trees himself. And then he's got to lug these pails of essentially sugar water all the way over to a wood fired outside rig where he boils this stuff down and makes some of the best maple syrup you've ever had. How do I know? Two reasons. I've had it before because he sent me some, and it's breaking delicious. And 2, last year, that dude sold out like that.
Like that. I'm serious, man. So if you want to get in on the maple train, and yes, I know yesterday's yesterday's cover art for the episode said, you know, do away with maple syrup. I was had Trump in there, and then my little guy was in there saying do away with maple syrup. It not really about maple syrup. It was about the Canadian tariffs and all that, but whatever. Because and and I'm about to give you prices. But you gotta understand, these are last year's prices. I do not know if Maple Trade has increased or kept his prices the same. So in a relative way, one quart is gonna cost you $27, and he'll ship it to you.
At least in the United States, I don't know if he does international shipping. You'll have to get a hold of him. 3 quarts for 68, you can get a half gallon for $45 or you can get a set of 4 pints for $50. It's worth it. It's made by a pleb. He takes bitcoin for sales. His sister Sarah makes soaps, so hit her hit him up about his hand his sister's sister Sarah's handmade soaps. Yes. That's it. Sister Sarah soaps. They're great soaps too. I've he sent me some of those too. If you wanna get a hold of Maple Trade, you're going to have to get ahold of him on Noster. His handle is at b e I s n e r d s. You can also put in at mapletrade, m a p l e t r a d e. And somehow or another, the clients will resolve it to Maple Trade. If you just can't get a hold of him there and you still are on dead birdsite, aka Twitter, it is at Bys nerds is his handle over there too.
And if you want, you can just go to the show notes. I've got 2 URLs. If you hit either one of them, if you hit the one for primal.net, it'll take you to primal.net, and it will take you right to maple trade. If you hit the x.comforward/biz nerds, it'll take you right to his x or Twitter account. And you can DM him and say, I heard about this on circle p. Because if you buy it and you mentioned that you heard it on the circle p, he is going to give me sats. And he did today, but we're not gonna do that right now. If you're not selling your sats or your goods and services for satoshis and bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. Now, on to Trump orders the creation of United States sovereign wealth fund and says it could own part, oh, part of TikTok.
And this is from Zeke Miller out of ABC News, Washington, DC, I don't know. Whatever. President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the US to take steps to start developing a government owned investment fund that he said could be used to profit off of TikTok if he's successful at finding it an American buyer. Trump signed an order on his first day of office to grant the Chinese owned TikTok until early April to find a domestic partner or buyer, but he said that he's looking for the US to take a 50 50% stake in the massive social media platform. He said Monday in the Oval Office that TikTok was an example of what could put be put in the new US sovereign wealth fund. Quote, we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund.
Whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options, he said of TikTok, quote, but we could put that as an example in the fund. We have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund, end quote. See what I'm saying? There's what? There's a lot of stuff I could put in my toilet, but I'm not describing it. So, therefore, nobody knows if I flush that toilet if I'm gonna have call a plumber because until I do, I'm not gonna be able to take a dump. See, details, m f or details. Trump noted many other nations have such investment funds and predicted that the US could eventually top Saudi Arabia's fund size. He says, quote, eventually we'll catch it.
Trump put treasury secretary Scott DeSantis and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in charge of laying the groundwork for creating such a fund and with it'll likely take act of congress to do. But former president Joe Biden's administration had studied the possibility of creating a sovereign wealth fund for national security investments, but the idea did not yield any concrete action before he left office last month. Besant said that the administration's goal was to have the fund open within the next 12 months, and Lutnick said another use of the fund could have been for the government to take profit earning stake in vaccine manufacturers. Oh, Jesus.
Wow. That's a conflict of interest of of immense proportions, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not like, I'm just being the weather man. I'm just saying that it's raining. If you have a deal to purchase vaccines from private companies and you put profits of vaccine companies into the sovereign wealth fund, then you have every you need to make sure that you have every American take as many vaccines as possible. This is not good. This this is horrible. This is horror say bad move, man. As my dad said, he would always tell me it's a bad deal, Dave. Bad deal. Quote, the extraordinary size and scale of the US government and the business it does with companies should create value for American citizens. Well, that that I I I agree with. But, yeah, that's a conflict of interest, man.
And to my real point about this, that was a little surprised that I just stumbled upon and you heard me react to it. But the the real point here is that we don't know anything about this. It's just, hey. Let's do this fund. Okay, man. What's gonna be in it? Oh, I don't know stuff. Maybe some junk. Maybe some crap. I don't know. Just make it fun. This wow. And what bugs me is that senator Cynthia Lummis tweeted or retweeted that announcement that the creation of a sovereign wealth fund and said basically hinted in a way that because it's her, the fact that she retweeted and said something like, oh, I don't know. Big things are on the horizon. Everybody's looking is is this the Bitcoin sovereign fund? Is this a sovereign Bitcoin, you know, reserve? Is this the SBR?
We don't know. He hadn't say shit about it. Didn't even say anything about crappy crypto. So I don't know, man, but I I wouldn't trust it. I I'm just saying. Be be aware. Be aware. The stakes are in the grass everywhere. Now Turner Wright from Cointelegraph is writing that US lawmakers will propose crypto regulation by November according to Anthony Scaramucci. The mooch man, Anthony Scaramucci, which is the founder of SkyBridge Capital and former White House director of communications, yeah, for, like, 6 weeks, during Donald Trump's first term, has suggested that members of congress will act to curry favor with the crypto industry before the 2026 midterm elections.
In an interview with the Financial Times published February 4th, the mooch said US lawmakers in the house of representatives and senate facing primary challenges and close elections in swing districts will likely wanna show a record of proposing positive crypto legislation before the midterm elections. Yeah. Because as we saw, there's enough Bitcoiners and crypto guys out there that it's actually a voting block that you can no longer ignore, and you risk getting your ass primaried if you go against anything that we want. Anyway, the former White House communications director suggested that congress could enact a burst of legislative activity before it breaks for the 2025 holidays, potentially including a crypto market structure bill. Quote, you'll probably get it in November before that recess.
But if you don't, I don't think you'll get it much later than the timeline I'm suggesting. End quote. The mooch, who famously holds the record for the shortest serving communications director at the White House, oh, 11 days. Damn. Didn't even make it 2 weeks. Was a vocal critic of Trump in the 2024 election claiming the US president's support of the crypto industry was purely transactional. The Financial Times reported that the mooch called Trump an unwell person who had amassed a lot of political power. In addition to potentially courting single issue crypto voters, house members and senators running for reelection in 2026 could face opposition or support from political action committees funded by industry players, like the Fair Shake PAC, which spent roughly $131,000,000 on media buys for candidates in the 2024 US elections.
And they said that they were, quote, keeping their foot on the gas for these 2026 midterm elections. So, yeah. We're already talking about the midterm elections. This is this shit's gotta stop, man. This it's every 2 years. How anything gets done in this country is beyond beyond my reckoning. But let's move on. Jesse Hamilton is writing another one from this time from CoinDesk, and he says US Senate's effort on stablecoins is revealed in a new bill put forth from Hagerty. Let's see what old mister Hagerty has to say. The opening shot is being fired in the new congress' crypto push with a plan for a Tuesday introduction of a stablecoin oversight bill from senator Bill Hagerty.
Hey, Bill. Well, the legislation would set up a US regulatory framework for issuing the dollar denominated tokens, according to a person familiar with the effort. The Tennessee Republican, who had shepherded a stable coin effort in the previous session, is now pushing a bill with the backing of the senate banking committee's new chairman, Tim Scott, and and and the head of its digital asset subcommittee, Cynthia Lummis. That's a big difference from the 2024 effort that couldn't break through the crypto roadblock maintained by previous committee chief, Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat, who was defeated in November's elections.
Hagerty's bill, which is he's calling the guiding and establishing national innovation in US stable coins act. And I'm disgusted because the the name of the well, the acronym is genius. They're going to call it the genius bill, ladies and gentlemen, and it would define payment stablecoins and set up the procedures for issuing them, including establishing the Federal Reserve as watchdog for the big bank issuers and the office of the comptroller of the currency as regulator for non bank issuers of more than $10,000,000,000, the person said.
The legislation additionally outlines the reserves issuers would have to maintain. State regulators would be in place for the smaller issuers and for larger firms who can seek waivers. The distinction between federal and state regulators has been the main sticking point when Democrats and Republicans sought to work out a compromise bill on stablecoins in the previous congress, and any new version will still have to thread a bipartisan needle. And it's unclear whether Hagerty's plan, of which senator Lummis said she'd be working to get this bill to the president's desk, will draw Democrat support with its lighter regulatory approach.
The house of representatives had approved a stablecoin oversight bill in the previous session, but it met resistance in getting a matching senate version, which had been sought by Hagerty. He is set to introduce the new legislation today, according to news first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by Hagerty in a posting on Twitter. Stablecoins are designed as steady cryptocurrency tokens whose prices linked to other assets, usually the dollar. Later on Tuesday, president Donald Trump's crypto czar David Sachs is set to lead a press conference with congressional leaders to outline with congressional I'm sorry. To outline their crypto strategy. This stablecoin effort is expected to be raised to that event. Wow. Okay. Well, that's just that's just peachy.
Sounds like honestly, it sounds like cbdcs in a different way. That's my gut feeling. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. Oil, West Texas Intermediate taking a beating today. 0.7% to the downside, all the way down to 72.68 a barrel. Brent Norcia is up a quarter, however, to 76.18. Natural gas is down by 1.7% to $3.29 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline fell well a full point to $2.9 a gallon. Gold rallying 0.63% of the upside to $28.75.30. Silver is up 1 and a half. Platinum is up just over 1%. Copper is up 1.2, but palladium yeah. Palladium is down 2.83%.
Ag, I have not a whole lot of red. Lumber, however, is definitely the biggest loser of the day. 3 and 2 thirds point to the downside. Biggest winner is sugar, 2 and a quarter to the upside. And then we got live cattle, which is down almost a full point, but lean hogs erasing their losses from yesterday, up 3.8%. Feeder cattle off by 3 quarters of a percent. Dow, not a whole lot going on in legacy markets. Point 18% to the upside. S and P is up a half, but the Nasdaq is doing well. It's up a full point and the s and p mini is up over a half point. And, of course, bitcoin is down again because, you know, China. Anyway, $99,010 a coin has a $1,960,000,000,000,000 market cap.
34.8 ounces of shiny metal rocks can be had with your 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000. 819,500 and 7 and a half of an average fees per block are low. Have we cleared? No. But we're getting close. There's only 5 blocks carrying a measly ass 37100 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of, oh, 2 satoshis per v byte. Low priorities gonna get you in at 2 satoshis per v byte. And hash rate on a 1 week rolling average is still chilling out at about 832 exahashes per second. And, wow, that's kind of amazing. I really figured that Hashrate would be pulled off of the network, but from what I'm seeing, that is not the case.
Whatever. From dissidents and developers, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin Ant, I got well, it says anonymous, but I know who this is. Let me read it to you first. With 75,233 satoshis anonymous says, circle p only works if the vendors come through. Long time coming for last portion of the 2024 maple syrup or maple season. Bring on 2025. Syrup is coming soon. Yeah. That's maple trade. Now I don't know why on fountain.fm, which is where I'm reading these boosts from, I don't know why it says anonymous, but whatever. I know that that's maple trade because he said, hey. In a DM, he d m me and said, I got 75, you know, 76,000 sats for you.
Do you want me to boost the show or do you want me to, you know, whatever? And I'm like, dude, boost the show. I I need all the boosts I can get. Gotta get in them charts, man, because that's the only way it works. But he's right. Circle P only works if the vendors come through. Because I don't invoice y'all. If you guys want to be in the Circle P, we end up having a relationship with each other where I put an add on for you, let people, you know, let my audience know that they can buy from plebs like you, and if you find out that I sold you something, cut me some satoshis, man.
Don't cut me slack, cut me some satoshis. Bitcoin arborist with 5,000 says, You are a gentleman and a scholar. Appreciate your efforts to just fucking say how it is. I finally figured out how to boost. Well, apparently so with 5,000. I appreciate that. Aggie with a 1,000 says Lynn Alden explains perfectly well what is meant by global liquidity. And, yeah, Aggie, if you have a direct link to where she, really describes global liquidity, I'd appreciate it. Pies with a 1000 says value for value. Cheers, Bell and strong-arm. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Bitcoin for president with a 1000 says your end of show rant was spot on. Epic. I am always appreciative of your podcast. Please donate more often if you are able to everybody, and thank you. No. Thank you. Anonymous with a 1,000. I have a hard time interpreting all the sinister laughs on this on.
I guess he's talking about me. God's death with 5:37. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Wartime with 333 says, cheers. Mark with 210 says, this is the first weed commercial I've ever heard. Yeah. I know. I'm probably already in trouble with the FCC. But you know what? I don't care. Nick underscore dose with a 101 sat says, cheers. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. From the blocks, Daniel Kuhn. We've got this one and it's gonna make your it's gonna rankle. Taproot Wizards raise $30,000,000 to expand opcat functionality on Bitcoin.
We thought we got rid of ordinals, because that's who these people are. These are the people behind ordinals and shit. And and, like, magic cats and shit on the on on the blockchain. They took full full abilities of opcat, taproot, and everything else to put the shittiest crap. And this is Udi Wertheimer, by the way, and his little band of miscreants out there causing problems. And we just got empty mempools. We we just got empty mempools. And they couldn't have that. So they had to go raise money to do what? I don't know. Sell more stupidity on the blockchain.
Bitcoin ordinals project Taproot Wizards has raised $30,000,000 in its first post seed round. According to an announcement on Tuesday, the funds, like its previous $7,500,000 round, were raised to further the project's effort at quote, making bitcoin magical again, cofounder Udi Wertheimer told the block. Taproot Wizards gets its name from the bitcoin wizard meme, created in MS Paint as an early independent advertisement for magic internet money. And the round was led by early Taproot Wizards supporter, Standard Crypto with participation from Cyber Fund, Collider Ventures, among others.
Wertheimer, who cofounded Taproot Wizards in 2023 with a compatriot from crypto Twitter, Eric Wall, noted that the project will use the fresh capital to advance the opcat ecosystem that is advancing smart contract functionality on Bitcoin. Pausing to say that OPCAT is an operation code used in the Bitcoin protocol. And when it got unleashed, and it was had been deprecated. So OPCAT was kinda I think if it was that it was deprecated because it was always there, but it caused some problems in the early days, so Satoshi shut it down. Well, in after Taproot got in, everything was fine and we were like, hey, you know what? We should probably have OPCAT in there again. And the combination between Taproot being present and OPCAT also now being functional caused ordinals.
That's what allowed ordinals to happen. It was it was a game theoretic that nobody really saw what the full outcome was going to be, which is why I love Bitcoin because it's very slow to change. And it's for bullshit like this as to why it's very hard to change. But even when we changed it and it was hard to change, we didn't see everything. And this whole ordinal thing is has probably made it even harder in the future for us to do stuff to the Bitcoin protocol. But let's continue. We're really focused on OPCAT as the future of Bitcoin, Wertheimer said. So this will be both for development in house and talent that will build this stuff in house at our company and to help build the ecosystem outside of our company too.
Well, at least I don't have to put a tie on that suit speak because it's one of the worst written statements I've ever heard. Opcat, short for opcode concatenate or op_concat, is a relatively simple scripted capability for Bitcoin to enable automated, customizable transactions. Wertheimer noted that the function is just 10 lines of code. Opcat was enabled when Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, was still an active participant in the ecosystem but then was disabled due to a lack of use cases. It was revisited in recent years to enable the types of applications being built on shitcoin number 1 and shitcoin number 2 directly on Bitcoin. The cool thing about opcap because it's so flexible, Wertheimer said, the what or what I expect is that people are going to create tons of new protocols.
And instead of having ordinals and brc twenties once per quarter, a new protocol like that shows up like the hey days of Ethereum or Solana where people create new protocols on a daily basis, end quote. The ordinals protocol created by Casey Rod Armour kicked off a revolution of activity on bitcoin and fomented the mentality that bitcoin could be used as an on chain currency rather than just held as a form of digital gold. So called bitcoin maximalists have advanced the idea that launching native tokens and nfts on bitcoin is cluttering the chain and at the worst of times raising fees for others who would use Bitcoin, for payments.
Taproot Wizards is among the most popular Bitcoin based projects as seen by its launch. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever, dude. It sounds like the block here is making a case to go all in on ordinals again. And honestly, I could not give less of a shit. And I couldn't give less of a shit either way. I think NFTs on Bitcoin is stupid. And I also realized that I can't do a damn thing about it. So since I can't affect any of it, I don't care. But what I what I find odd is that we had this, like, 2, 3 years of this of this Taproot Wizards NFT kitty cats on the blockchain bullshit, and it just died.
So what do they do? They have to go get money to resurrect it. That's what I see. I see that they had an idea that they thought everybody wanted, and for a while it looked like a whole bunch of people did want it. And then it was a fad. It died, like fads do. If it doesn't if it doesn't like bell bottoms. Yeah, they looked cool, but they didn't do anything else. They're just pants. Right? So it was just a style, I. E. A fad. This doesn't Taproot Wizards brings nothing to Bitcoin except bullshit. It's just crap. But, again, I can't do anything about it. I just find it funny that their fail was so epic that they had to go get more money so that they could fail again.
Whatever. Similar Scientific taking a different way out though, also from the block. This one written by James Hunt. Similar Scientific buys another 871 Bitcoin for $88,500,000 bringing its holdings to 3,192 Bitcoin. Holy shit. That's actually a pretty hefty buy for these guys. The health care tech firm, Similar Scientific acquired all these bitcoin for approximately $88,500,000 at an average price of 101,616 per bitcoin from January 11th through February 3rd according to an 8 k filing. Semler's latest purchases were made with proceeds generated from its January 2025 senior convertible notes offering and monetization of a portion of its minority investment in Monarch Medical Technologies.
As of February 3rd, they have 3192 bitcoin worth approximately $320,000,000 bought for an average price of $87,854 per coin for a total cost of around $280,000,000 including fees and expenses. Quote, we're thrilled with the progress we're making in growing our Bitcoin stockpile. Semler Scientific Chair, Eric Semler said on Tuesday, quote, we are especially pleased with our successful convertible notes offering, which was substantially oversubscribed with investor demand. Additionally, we were pleased to have monetized part of our investment in Monarch Medical in order to buy more Bitcoin. And they go on to talk about MicroStrategy because this is the MicroStrategy playbook.
So I was talking with my sister yesterday because I sent her a podcast. In fact, I sent her a, TFTC, the old tales from the crypt podcast, which is now was it tales for the commoner? Something like that. I can't remember what he changed it to. But it's Marty Ben. Marty Ben's podcast. And he was talking to a guy, and I can't remember his name, about the micro strategy trade, and that it was pissing people off. And it was pissing people off because they don't understand the trade. And I was like, some bitch, neither do I. I don't understand this trade. And you might be saying, which trade, David? Which which MicroStrategy trade are you referring to? All of them.
It's all one trade. It is the selling of debt to get fiat to convert that fiat into Bitcoin, which is then placed on the company's balance sheet. So it comes back to spiral. And there's something about the selling of debt that I didn't understand. I went with it. I was like, okay. I I kinda get it. Kind of. But, you know, I've got 4 brain cells left, guys. I'm not like, you know, I didn't go to Yale or Harvard Business School. I'm I'm a pleb. I'm just like you. I don't understand this shit either. Except I finally understand it. And I'm not gonna be able to explain it to you because I've I've got to work out how to string certain words and have a have them in things called sentences that build up a thing called a paragraph that actually makes sense. But I wanted to say at least this.
It really wasn't until strike, the preferred stock option or the stock offering came out from MicroStrategy, not strike the company, not Jack Mallard's deal. No. Strike is a preferred stock that's being offered or was offered by MicroStrategy last week. STRK is the ticker symbol, I believe. And it was like, you buy this thing for $80. You get a 10% coupon. You do not get any say in what happens to the company, so there's you don't get to vote like you do with common shares of stock. And it's preferred stock, which means in the event of a bankruptcy, you get paid out first as the creditor.
That's when I really was, like, I don't understand this trade. I don't understand them ginning up Borscht's, you know, common shares, class a common shares of MicroStrategy stock to sell. I don't understand the convertible note thing for sale. All I all I knew was that they were getting people to buy this stuff for fiat that they would then put on the balance sheet in the form of Bitcoin. And then the the I have seen nothing but an entire set of discussions around insurance and reinsurance companies. And I sent my sister this particular episode of Marty Bentz podcast because I go, you need to listen to this because he's talking to a guy that is fully, you know, fully admitting that he thinks he might understand the trade, but there's enough about it that he just doesn't get. And I'm like, I'm right there with you. And I'm, like, you know, sister's been in merger and acquisitions on the legal side for decades.
Surely, surely, she'd be able to listen to it and tell me what I'm missing. Both of us are completely blown away by this trade now. I was blown away before, but when you don't fully understand a thing, you cannot fully appreciate the thing. So here's where it really clicked into me. I need to let go of the fact that he's he's essentially doing the same thing all these companies do. They're selling stock as a promise that you will get more money in the future. That's why it's a security. That's why it passes the Howey test. And because it passes the Howey test, it has to be registered as a security. So you're selling a promise, which is basically thin air.
I give you actual money for it, which represents my time that's real on this planet, and then they do whatever they're going to do with it. In this particular case, he's buying Bitcoin. This asset just goes up. Sure. It's got its it's got its moments like today when it's going down, But generally speaking, it just goes up. So he puts that on the balance sheet. It makes the company more valuable. Now I can pay off the creditors. Oh, k. Now this is starting to make sense. And then we get the preferred stock in. Okay. This is another instrument when you just want the dividend. And you don't even have to convert this into common stock shares. You can hold this at at a 10% coupon and get 10% on your $80 for as long as you want to or as long as Bitcoin keeps on going up and MicroStrategy stays solvent.
Where it really clicked is that that's all retail and institutional, you know, style investment. It was the insurance and reinsurance side when I figured out that, oh my god, this trade, this MicroStrategy trade appeals to 2 completely different classes of risk assessment. When you are a risk assessment junkie, you're trying to figure out how much would I lose versus how much do I have to gain and does this make sense, you have 2 completely different classes of people that make those assessments. Companies like MicroStrategy or IBM or Microsoft or whatever, all the equity guys, they have a completely different style of risk assessment than insurance companies.
Because, sure, they can go through like, they have a bad product sale. Whatever. Their stock price goes down. You can hold it. You, as the investor, can hold that stock. But if you're a insurance policyholder and your house burns down, the insurance company can't just say, hey, man. You know, things are a little rough right now. We'll get back to you in 6 months. Just just hold on to your policy. It's gonna be fine. That does not happen in insurance. When my house burns down and I have an insurance policy on that fucking house, I need a check. Which means that the way that insurance companies invest is a completely different model. It is under a completely different set of auspices for risk assessment than all the rest of the companies of the world.
They have to they have to invest their money where they are damn sure that if Cedar Sinai burns down, that they're going to have enough money to rebuild that hospital and make everybody whole. They have they have to have enough money. They have to do their risk assessment in a completely different way way where they can ensure that they have enough cash to pay out a 1,000 homes burning down in the Palisades or whatever, even if those guys did have insurance. But you get my drift. This isn't something where I can my fears can be assuaged because, you know, Michael Saylor says calm down. It'll be fine. And I just decide to hold.
When I'm an insurance policyholder, I can't hold. I need that converted into cash. I need the money to rebuild the house. I need the money to buy a new car because I got in a wreck. Whatever. This instrument, this trade, this micro strategy trade appeals to both risk assessment models. That was what I was missing. And because of that, you have a massive potential pool of buyers into this thing. That's why this trade is pissing people off. They don't understand that part. That was the last linchpin for me was the fact that 2 completely different risk assessment models are satisfied by this trade. Does that mean it can never get wiped out?
No. That's not how risk assessment works. But what I am saying is that it satisfies both models and that's why you're seeing insurance company speed or you're seeing more talk about insurance companies in Bitcoin Twitter and on Nostr than ever before ever before and it all boils down to the fact that the underlying asset is the most rock solid asset we've ever seen And Missouri sees it because Missouri is opening up to Bitcoin. They've they've got a proposal to invest up to 10% of public funds. Let's see what instrumentation this takes. And this is out of Atlas 21.
And it's a senate bill, SB 614. Missouri is joining the growing list of US states that have introduced legislation. That's the instrument. Legislation to explore Bitcoin adoption at the state level. The proposal would allow the state to invest up to 10% of public funds in digital assets. The Missouri state's treasurer funds total they gotta do it again. The Missouri State Treasurer's Fund totaled approximately $18,000,000,000 meaning that the potential investment could reach a maximum of 1.8 $1,000,000,000 That's with a b. Dollars. This bill stands out from the others by introducing protections for industry participants.
Specifically, it enshrines the right to self custody, ensuring that Missouri residents can retain full control over their digital assets without government interference. It also provides legal protection for bitcoin mining activities. Additionally, the bill establishes that bitcoin nodes are exempt from the requirements to obtain a money transmitter license. The proposal now awaits review by the Missouri State Senate. So Missouri is on deck, ladies and gentlemen. And it looks like they are actually saying saying the word Bitcoin and not crypto, and that's always a good sign.
Sparrow Wallet. We're into a little bit of software updates. If you're a Sparrow Wallet user, version 2.1.0 has been released, Lark for USB signers, PSBT version 2 support, and more. Sparrow is a free and open source modern desktop Bitcoin wallet application supporting most hardware wallets and built on common standards such as PSBT with an emphasis on transparency and usability. Yeah. Emphasis, not emphasis, but it's a little joke. The release implements Lark for USB hardware wallets. It releases support loading of PSBT version 2 files, multisig wallet registration save functionality for ledger devices, jade plus USB support, restores tables, restore tables, sort and sizing on wallet load and more. And if I were to actually read you the entire list of things that have been changed, added, updated, we'd be here all day.
This is a huge update to Sparrow Wallet. If you are a Sparrow Wallet user, you will want to look into version 2.1.0. And finally, for today, Envoy Wallet version 1.8.6 has some improvements and fixes. Envoy is a free and open source mobile Bitcoin wallet and a companion app for passport signing device. It can also be used as a standalone Bitcoin mobile wallet and it is available on both Android and iOS. Quote, in Envoy version 1.8.6, we focused on small bug fixes while we prepare the app for the upcoming Passport Prime integration announced the project. This version removes the buy button when the buy in envoy option is disabled.
It adds a link to Foundation's new community forums and updates the Bitcoin ATM map to retrieve information from OpenStreet Maps among other fixes and improvements. Okay. So that's the end of the show, ladies and gentlemen. We are at $99,486 a coin. And if if I made a epic fail on trying to explain the micro strategy trade, first, my apologies. 2nd, boost the show and tell me what it is that you're missing. What did I miss? Because that's going to help me understand this trade even better. I am finally satisfied in in thinking that I've got my head wrapped around the micro strategy trade, but I'd like to write it down in a way that is digestible for other people that are plebs like me that didn't go to Harvard Business School or have a degree from Yale on a sheepskin somewhere chilling out on our walls, I want you to understand it too. Because this trade, ever since 2021, when Michael Saylor entered the fray, I've been wondering about how can you just print bonds and get people to buy them?
And now once that preferred stock came up, that strike preferred stock from my MicroStrategy, that's when I was like, I have to understand what's going on here. I do not understand what's going on here. I feel that I finally understand the MicroStrategy trade. If I explained it poorly, if you still do not understand it, if you tell me what it is that you're having a problem with, it will help me design a way to explain it to people better and I would appreciate it. It's okay to criticize me for not being able to get it through your head what it is that's in my head. This is why we write.
And this is why it's hard to write. Because it forces you to look at what you probably don't understand. And there's very there is a very good chance that I don't have it all wrapped up in my head about the micro strategy trade. So if you help me help you understand this trade, it will literally help me help you to understand this trade, and I will see you on the other side.
[01:01:49] Unknown:
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
Impact of Tariffs on Bitcoin and Global Markets
Market Updates and Bitcoin's Performance
