Join me today for Episode 1034 of Bitcoin And . .
Topics for today:
- Ron Paul Asked to Audit the FED?
- Ether Looking Weak
- Strategy Buys More Bitcoin
- Man Digs in Trash For BTC . . . Again
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
nostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
Product: Maple Syrup and Soaps
Prices for nostr users only:
1 qt. $27
3 qt. $68
1 half gal $45
2 half gal. $80
4 pt. $50
The King Ranch Donation Pages:
https://www.ruralamericainaction.com/fundraising/save-king-ranch-and-agriculture-in-washington
https://www.givesendgo.com/Kingranch
Articles:
https://thehill.com/video/elon-musk-wants-ron-paul-to-audit-the-fed-for-doge-robby-soave/10443092/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/lightning-companies-are-raising-again-this-is-good-for-bitcoin-
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-hedge-funds-short-bets-price-struggles
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/02/10/new-trump-tariffs-spell-caution-for-bitcoin-ether-dogecoin-bets
https://decrypt.co/305225/central-african-republic-president-meme-coin
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://value4value.info/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
https://www.theblock.co/post/339722/strategy-resumes-bitcoin-acquisitions
https://www.theblock.co/post/339768/lost-bitcoin-fortune
https://cointelegraph.com/news/austin-university-launch-5-m-bitcoin-fund-5-year-hodl-strategy-report
https://atlas21.com/strategic-bitcoin-reserve-florida-maryland-and-iowa-introduce-new-bills/
https://bitcoinlaws.io/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/proton-wallet-v0-0-57-0/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find me on nostr
npub1vwymuey3u7mf860ndrkw3r7dz30s0srg6tqmhtjzg7umtm6rn5eq2qzugd (npub)
6389be6491e7b693e9f368ece88fcd145f07c068d2c1bbae4247b9b5ef439d32 (Hex)
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/DavidB84567
StackerNews:
stacker.news/NunyaBidness
Podcasting 2.0:
fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
Apple Podcasts:
tinyurl.com/unm35bjh
Mastodon:
https://noauthority.social/@NunyaBidness
Support Bitcoin And . . . on Patreon:
patreon.com/BitcoinAndPodcast
Find Lightning Network Channel partners here:
https://t.me/+bj-7w_ePsANlOGEx (Nodestrich)
https://t.me/plebnet (Plebnet)
Music by:
Flutey Funk Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
Man, it is 10:30AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the February 2025. This is episode ten thirty four of Bitcoin and beep beep beep beep beep beep beep breaking news. Did did did did the Elon Musk wants Ron Paul to audit the Fed for Doge. According to some dude named Bobby Soav. I I don't have no idea who the hell Bobby Soav is, but this is coming out of thehill.com, but that's that's all it is. It's just a headline and a freaking video, and I just I don't know anything about this. All I know is that Federal Reserve was trending over there on dead bird site. I clicked on it, and the next thing I know, I'm inundated with all these people making tweets about Ron Paul gonna audit the Fed.
Do you believe this? Or do does anybody out there have any kind of credible sources other than dude named Bobby? I hey. Don't get me wrong. I hope it happens, and I can't think of a better person than Ron Paul to do it. But honestly, man, Ron Paul, he's he's getting up there in age. I I think he's done his bit for king and country, and unless he just is chomping at the bit to do it, man, you might want to get somebody else to audit the Fed. But, you know, you know, here's what the fascinating thing was. I'm sitting here, I don't believe this bull hockey for, you know, horse hockey for a second.
So I go over to Google. Yeah, I know, I know. But I go over to Google and I'm like top typing in, let's audit, federal reserve, Ron Paul, And one of the first things that Google AI comes up with, you know, at the very top of the stack, they let Google AI answer so that you don't have to actually look at anything else. And all you would actually see then is that the fact of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, of The United States Of America, the Federal Reserve is audited heavily all the time. Every year, it's audited. And if you buy that, I got bridges to sell you all over the place. Now for the rest of the show, we're gonna talk about lightning and some of the lightning based companies that are out there.
Ethereum not looking good. And while this is not a shitcoin podcast, there there very well may be some blood in the water about Ethereum. And then and then, we've got a president over there in Africa that is climbing head and shoulders onto the meme coin wagon and it came back to bite them in a little butt. And then strategy, formerly micro strategy, has resumed its Bitcoin buying. And then and then after that, we're gonna get into this dude who refuses, absolutely refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to finding his lost hard drive that has something like $768,000,000 of of Bitcoin on it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll we'll tell you about it. And a university in Texas is launching a Bitcoin fund.
And then we've got some new states that are also wanting to start their own strategic Bitcoin fund or in some cases, of course, just a general shitcoin wallet. And Proton wallet is in the news. But first, lightning companies are raising money again, and this is good for Bitcoin according to Guillerme Gerard, I think. And that's from Bitcoin magazine. Recently, FlashNet announced that it had raised $4,500,000 in a seed round led by Abstract Ventures with participation from UTXO Management and others. FlashNet is a Bitcoin native decentralized exchange based on Spark, a Bitcoin l two designed between the FlashNet team and LightSpark.
It's designed to rival the performance of a centralized exchange with none of the custody issues. Spark enables instant and unlimited self custodial transactions of Bitcoin and tokens while also enabling users to send and receive natively via Lightning. It's open sourced and it's secured by Bitcoin. Spark was built to address Bitcoin and Lightning's remaining challenges, focusing on scaling self custody wallets and enabling stablecoins on Bitcoin. I'm personally a fan of recent l two proposals like ARK or Spark trying to complement Lightning Network instead of trying to replace it.
Having this burgeoning scaling ecosystem opens up the design space for something great, obsoleting Uniswap and bringing all of the fees to Bitcoin. And this is why I'm so adamant about the utility of Bitcoin finance for Bitcoin. Bitcoin finance is being written here as BTCFi. Just so you know, I'm not a fan of them writing BTCFi. I hope I never hear BTCFi ever again because this just it's horrible. It reminds me of DeFi, which is all a bunch of horse pucky. Anyway, of course, the question remains, are we really talking about a decentralized exchange? Well, from the documentation available, here's how FlashNet would work.
When a user places a limit or a market order, they send funds to a multi party computation wallet or an MPC, where the user, the exchange, and a set of validators act as signers. Funds in the MPC wallet are not claimed until a match is made, similar to how approvals work in Ethereum. Oh, yes. Let's bring Ethereum over to Bitcoin. For market makers and high volume actors, there's an option to keep funds in the MPC wallet to avoid the need for a spark transaction for each other, in which case, they become validators incurring a bit more trust.
The MPC wallet receives signed maker slash taker orders to settle trades and initiate fund dispersals. All validators must agree on the user's intent to match with the counterparty order, ensuring that a limit order for, say, a hundred b t c is only valid if the counterparty order matches or exceeds 100 b t c. This intent is known because of the user signed order submitted at the placement of the order. All trades are settled instantly and atomically on spark through its native atomic swap mechanism. Trust is only required during the brief interval between matching and settlement which lasts a few milliseconds.
Additionally, users can unilaterally exit the MPC at any time using Spark's unilateral exit feature providing an extra layer of security. RFQ, I guess that means request for quote offers, are also available for wallets, mining pools, and platforms enabling users to request quotes from market makers for seamless BTC token to or BTC to token swaps. Sorry about that. This development not only complements lightning, but it also pushes Bitcoin's ecosystem towards greater adoption and utility showcasing why the resurgent surgeons.
The resurgence. Good lord. It's Monday. The resurgence of investment in lightning adjacent technologies is a positive sign for Bitcoin's future. I I don't like the word BTCFi. I hope like I said, I hope I'd never hear that b s ever again, But, I mean, I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of behind this. And I do agree with the author when they're talking about that instead of trying to replace Lightning, things like Arc and Spark are trying to actually complement Lightning. And I also fundamentally believe that that is the better way to go. You build your own network, and then you connect that network that you're building to a larger, more robust network, and everybody gets to grow together. It is a completely new world that we're entering into. It is almost sans competition.
And I've I've seen it in Bitcoin again and again and again and again, where I would be expecting us to enter an age where we have just unrelenting sniping at each other from particular Bitcoin companies saying, no. Those guys suck. Only we are good. You know, that's what I've kind of expected. And I I mean, while I do see some sniping, I don't see a, that kind of sniping. And b, the only sniping that I really do see is kind of few and far between. When it happens, everybody loses their mind over it, but then it kinda settles down and you don't really hear anything. So I'm I'm glad that we still exist in this time of Bitcoin where competition is not taking the central chair. It is basically a wallflower right now waiting for the big dance.
And the big dance may be coming to an end for Ethereum, at least as far as market sentiment is concerned, not really about laws or, you know, somebody's saying that, you know, Ethereum is gonna be illegal. But the Ethereum short positions have surged by 500% as hedge funds bet on a decline, and this is according to Zoltan Vardy from Cointelegraph. Now before you scream your head off saying I don't wanna hear about Ethereum, you kinda wanna gonna hear about this so that you're up to speed of what's been going on and what the landscape looks like.
Because Bitcoin's not exactly off the hook here for various reasons that we'll get into. But first, let's do this one. Hedge funds are increasing short positions against ether as the world's second largest cryptocurrency struggles to gain momentum. Ether has struggled to gain momentum over the past year. Okay. I'm pausing right there to interject the following. Bullshit. Sorry. I know if you had kids in the car, I'm trying to do better, but sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade. Four years against Bitcoin, ether has been losing its ever loving ass.
Four years, not a year. All these people keep looking at the Ethereum price in USD. They do not look at the ether BTC pair. And when you look at that chart, it looks complete it tells a completely different story than the Ethereum or ether USD chart. When you compare it to the dollar, you get, oh, look. It's going up into the right, and we've got some struggles here at the very end over this last year. Yeah. That's the story it tells. The Ethereum BTC chart, Now that tells a story of absolute destruction over the last four years. Anyway, short positions on Ethereum have risen more than 500% or five x since the US presidential election just last November according to data shared by the Khobisi letter. In a February 10 Twitter post, the financial newsletter wrote, quote, short positioning in Ethereum is now up 40% in one week and 500% since November of twenty twenty four.
Never in history has Wall Street hedge funds been so short on Ethereum, and it's not even close, end quote. Quote, we saw the effects of this extreme positioning on February. Ethereum fell 37% in sixty hours as the trade war headlines emerged, the post suggested further. Ethereum has underperformed Bitcoin largely due to this extreme positioning, which may result in a short squeeze. This occurs when the price of an asset makes a sharp increase, prompting short sellers to buy ether to avoid yet greater losses. While Bitcoin is recognized as the digital gold of the industry, Ethereum faces growing competition among other layer one blockchains.
This may be another fundamental reason for Ether's underperforming Bitcoin price according to James Wo, the founder and CEO of venture capital firm, DFG. And he writes, quote, Ethereum is competing with multiple other high performance layer one tokens. Given that there are no or sorry. Given that there are so many new chains being launched, the dilution for altcoins is worsened, which has not helped in Ethereum's lackluster price action. Ethereum still has the largest ecosystem of DeFi and is home to many well established protocols such as Uniswap, Lido, and Aave. When on chain activity picks up again, we can expect Ethereum's price action to improve, Wo added. Yeah.
I don't think so. Anyway, other experts also believe that Ethereum needs more blockchain activity to start recovering above 4,000. To reverse the decline and move towards previous highs, Ether will need more fundamental blockchain activity first according to Ariel Barthe, principal research analyst at Nansen. Quote, other layer ones are catching up with Ethereum regarding apps, use cases, fees, and the amount state, she said. She believes Ethereum could benefit from increased collaboration with private and public sector entities, particularly in The United States, given recent regulatory momentum momentum in favor of blockchain and crypto.
So the only way Ethereum can survive is to basically beg the United States government to adopt it for some job. Okay. That's number one. Second, yeah, a short squeeze is probably coming. Third, Ethereum looks like garbage against Bitcoin for the last four years, and anybody who's still holding on to this coin because of, quote, reasons, you are missing out. And was am I on four or am I on five? Fuck it. Let's say number 10. This applies to Bitcoin. This this lack of on chain activity could also apply to Bitcoin. It's not just Ethereum.
There's some real weird vibes that I've been picking up lately, and, no, I'm not gonna punch out a Bitcoin. That that's not what I'm I'm just saying we should be cautious. If anybody was out there saying, yes. Only Ethereum is going to die. Well, you know, I and I'm not and I'm not suggesting that we don't celebrate the demise of the mother asshole from whence all shitcoins have been birthed. No. No. No. I'm just saying don't get smug. Remember to stay humble. Remember to stack your sats. But we are seeing decreased boat not momentum. We're seeing decreased activity across all manner of things except what?
Stablecoins. I told you Stablecoins were going to come, and there's going to be more and more Stablecoin launches, and it's going to be ugly. Right? We are nowhere close to out of the woods. And even if orange man says the words, we're doing a Bitcoin or a strategic Bitcoin reserve for The United States as part of the sovereign wealth fund, yes, the price of Bitcoin will definitely go up, but I don't trust it. I don't trust Orange Man to, a, say the words, and, b, even if he does say the words, I think we should just remain cautious. And I don't think we should do stupid things like max out our credit card so we can go all in Bitcoin and take four mortgages out on our on our primary residence or or rather our only residence.
Because you could find yourself homeless. It's happened before. It can happen again. So, guys, be cautious. Now before I bag on Ethereum a little bit more, I want to mention my friend, Maple Trade. That's right. Maple Trade. He has sold out of his handmade maple syrup until what he says is March. And he is selling all of his maple syrup and his sister Sarah Soaps for Bitcoin. And if I can get down to if I can find it again, I'll tell you what the prices are. But these prices, according to Maple Trade, are now good for Nostr customers only.
So if you're not getting a hold of Maple Trade and his his Nostr, you the I put a URL into the show notes for the circle p, and it goes right to his pry like the like, if you wanna get to him on primal, just click the URL. It'll take you right to primal, right to his in pub, and you can get a hold of him there. But you're gonna have to get a hold of him if you still want a quart of his handmade maple syrup for $27. Half gallon for 45 or four full pints for $50 in case you wanna buy them for friends, you know, and and spread the love around. You can get a pack of four pints. I've had his maple syrup. It's awesome maple syrup. He does make it by hand. I've he's, like, thrown out videos. He's got pictures. He's got the receipts. He's not buying it from a wholesaler and rejugging it and selling it to you at overpriced stock. No. This is made by hand, the old fashioned way. So if you wanna know what it was like, if you wanna taste of something that happened decades ago, then get a hold of my friend, Maple Trade. And if you do buy from him, make damn sure that you tell him that you heard about him in the circle p. That way, he will cut me some satoshis on his end for giving him some advertisement in the circle p where I bring plebs like you with goods and services for sale to plebs just like you, but only if you're selling for Bitcoin. If you're not selling your good and service for Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p. Now, let's go for another round of bagging on Ethereum because I feel like it. So this one is out of CoinDesk.
New Trump tariffs spell caution for Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin bets. So this kinda goes in a little bit by Showera Malwa as to why it is that I'm kind of, you know, not just bagging on Ethereum, but we should be cautious about our feelings about Bitcoin right now and and not let our feelings get in the way and cause us to do something stupid, like I said. You know, rack up a whole bunch of credit card debt because it's gonna go to the moon. Just be careful out there because a fresh round of tariffs by United States president Donald Trump and the lack of short term catalyst is inciting caution from market watchers who believe Ethereum's ether may be particularly affected.
Trump on Sunday said that he's going to introduce 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into The US on top of existing duties with reciprocal tariffs later in the week applicable to all the countries. The rhetoric and spike in inflation expectations could bring debt breed it could breed downside volatility with a key indicator that foresaged a move between a hundred thousand dollars for Bitcoin when it traded under 70,000, and that turned bearish on Sunday. Crypto majors remained little changed in European afternoon hours with US futures, Dow, and S and P five hundred up almost a half a percent ahead of the New York open. Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, oh god, Ripple, Solanas, Balboa, Doge were all up under 1% in the past twenty four hours.
But the tariffs introduced economic uncertainty by potentially escalating trade wars, which can lead to market volatility. Such events tend to impact Bitcoin in the broader crypto market as investors tend to move away from risk assets to safer investments like just hanging out inside of the US dollar. That's the safer investment right there. That's what they mean when they say safer investment. Because at this point, you can't even trust putting your money into NVIDIA. God only knows what the hell is gonna happen with real estate. So you'll see a bunch of people rotate over just straight up into US dollars. I guarantee it. Some traders say ether could be further impacted as sentiment for crypto fades down, adding to an already tumultuous year for the asset which saw a widely watched Bitcoin ether ratio drop to 2,021 levels indicative of a fallout for ETH and a preference for BTC.
A drop in ETH may further spell bad news for related beta bets such as meme coin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum based DeFi tokens, which tend to mirror the movements of the parent asset. Quote, the rise of BTC versus everything else is the most evident in comparison with ETH, which is seeing record short interest and FUD with the second largest token being down 23% year to date versus a 2.5% gain in BTC, Augustine Phan, head of insights at Signal Plus, told CoinDesk. Quote, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, but a lack of l one catalysts and narrative leadership will likely continue to weigh on Ethereum in the foreseeable future, Ethereum has been hit particularly hard as ether or, well, ETH reversed its entire pump from late November last year, unwinding any gains to holders, shared Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research in a Telegram message.
Due to expectations of increased inflation, investors are betting on only one interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year instead of two, casting a grim outlook for risk assets including crypto. Meanwhile, traders at Singapore based QCP Capital expect crypto markets to flip flop in the coming weeks as Trump's words continue to impact markets. Quote, a feedback loop is emerging. President Trump, highly sensitive to market reactions, is facing a market increasingly calling his bluff. This could embolden him further, adding another layer of volatility, the firm said in a Monday broadcast message, quote, BTC volatility now skews in favor of puts until April, reflecting a lack of upside catalyst.
Alright. So the that's what they're talking about with this this lack of upside catalyst, that's like Trump saying we're gonna put we are going to put Bitcoin in the strategic reserve. That's what they're looking for. And I don't know if that's gonna be forthcoming by Trump. Right now, I regard orange man as having boldface lied right to my face when he said that day one Bitcoin reserve. I ain't seen it. I ain't seen shit except him talk about crap coins. So until we get that, everybody's just biding their time. Everybody's just and this is the thing that kinda sucks when you've watched Bitcoin do what it's done since 2015 when I really started watching what it's doing.
The problems that it solves is just watching people fall into the old patterns of the legacy markets. This is Bitcoin is just it is not the it's not Bitcoin itself. The asset doesn't know what the hell is going on. But the human beings that are trading it and trying to hold it and trying to use it are being outpaced by the well, actually, I I said traders. I should've I should've backed up and say, the guys that are trying to use it, the guys that are see what it actually is, are being outpaced by the traders who have brought with them their legacy market mentality.
And, I mean, it's not like it's gonna kill Bitcoin, But if you are thinking that by the end of this year, you're gonna be able to buy 10 houses in the South Of France with one Bitcoin, you you might wanna hold on for a little while longer, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just saying, be particularly careful right now, especially if you're in Africa, especially if you're in the Central African Republic because your president just posted a meme coin, and it surged to $900,000,000 before, guess what, collapsing. Ryan s Gladwin for Decrypt. The Central African Republic President appears to have launched a national meme coin 3 years after making Bitcoin legal in 2022.
Despite many doubting the legitimacy of the social media post, the Solana meme coin skyrocketed to a market cap just shy of 900,000,000 before crashing back down to earth. The official Twitter account of Faustine Ochchain's Tawilkin there's no way I can pronounce the president of Central African Republic's name. But he posted that the contract address was to a pump dot fund token on Sunday. He claimed it was an experiment designed to show how a meme coin can unite people, support national development, and put his nation on the world stage in a unique way.
Did you sneak up on it? Well, whatever. Red flags were raised around the timing of the post as it would have almost been midnight in the Central African Republic. On top of this, the nation's official languages are French and San Go, but the social media post was in English. And as a result, many skeptics believe that the post was the result of a hack. But when the president posted a video speaking in French endorsing the token and creating a Twitter account just for that token, many doubters were silenced, at least temporarily, quote, the Central African Republic has always believed in the power and the importance of community. And based on belief and as a symbol of unity, I am proud to announce the launch of the official meme coin of the Central African Republic.
Wow. This video helped the token soar 1210% from a market cap of 68,000,000 to 897,000,000 in two and a half hours according to Dexscreener. For context, the country's gross domestic product is just $3,000,000,000 according to the International Monetary Fund. This means at its high, the token was a third of the way to marching the nation's GDP. Good god. According to the meme coin's tokenomics page, 35% of the token supply is earmarked to aid with the country's development, 25 for creators and company. I don't know what that means, but that's what it says. 20% for liquidity, 10% for charity, and 9% for public distribution.
9%. Everybody gets a huge chunk but you, you stinking pleb. Anyway, blockchain analytics company Bubble Maps claims that on chain data matches up with this tokenomics page. Skeptics resurfaced, however, with some claiming the video was deep faked and others complaining that the token site is no longer working. And as such, the Solana meme coin crashed 87% to a market cap of a hundred and 20 5 million dollars all within eleven hours of its all time high. Yeah. They they go on to a couple of other paragraphs, but honestly, this is all you need. And why is it important to understand this? Because it's important to understand that people are people.
This guy might be the president of an African nation. Oh, not a state because a lot of people make that mistake. I know. It's weird, but Africa's a continent, and all the countries in Africa are just that. They're countries. They're not states of the country of Africa, and I've seen people make that mistake. Okay? So just I just wanna be clear about this. We're talking about the president of a nation of the planet Earth is meme coining, and it's not even a meme. How the hell is the Central African Republic even a meme? Which means to me that this guy doesn't understand anything at all.
Is you just launch a meme coin. If I find out that pump dot fund contacted these these guys, like these presidents of the central, you know, African nations and probably we'll find out that they've contacted presidents of, like, some Latin smaller Latin American countries to launch mean coins, then if I find that out, then pump dot fund needs to burn in hell for the wanton destruction of wealth on a worldwide level. They I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. It's and this is the legacy this is the legacy financial mindset that is being carried over into the Bitcoin markets.
They don't really give a shit about freedom. They don't care about privacy. That they don't they don't even think about it. They their brains may not even be wired to have a feeling of what privacy is. They just want wealth, and they swear to God that wealth is extremely high piles of money. I think we're coming into a future where that is not going to be the case, but let's run the numbers anyway. CNBC Futures and Commodities. I got West Texas Intermediate Oil is up. It's actually up 1.73% to $72.23 a barrel. Brent Norsee is up a point and a half. Natural gas, whoop de doo, is four and a half points to the upside.
But gasoline is basically moving sideways, chilling out at the ripe old age of $2.10 a gallon. Every metal rock is doing well. If you have pet rocks, go pet them right now and tell it what a good boy it's doing because gold is up to a new all time high of $2,900. After a 1.6% change to the upside. Silver is up point 16%. Platinum is up 1.6%. Copper is up two and a half, and Palladium is up 2.7%. Ag, what's going on in Ag? Well, I'll tell you what's going on in Ag. It looks like the biggest winner is coffee, up seven full points. Biggest loser is chocolate, down three points.
I got live cattle, up three quarters of a point, but lean hogs are down a half. Feeder cattle are up a point and a quarter. The Dow is up a whole third of a point, and the S and P is up three quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is flying high 1.33% to the upside while the S and P Mini is up a third of a point. What do we got going on in Bitcoin? 90 7 thousand 5 hundred and 80 dollars per coin. We have a $1,930,000,000,000 market cap, ladies and gentlemen, and you can only now purchase 33.4 ounces of your favorite shiny metal rock with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,822,294.93 of, and average fees per block are low.
It's low prices. It's a fire sale at zero point zero three BTC per block on average anyway. And there look to be about nine blocks carrying a oh, god. 12,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of three. Satoshis per vByte, low priority is gonna get you in at two. And what's the oh, not did we did have a difficulty change, by the way, and it was up 5.6%, and that was about thirty four hours ago. Our next one, difficulty change is also scheduled to be to the upside by 2.21% in twelve days, but you might wanna let that calm down just to see. Now from where we at? Oh, yeah. That's right. It was from Friday's Obsidian Rocks episode of Bitcoin, and I got Dan at e t x b t c fiat sucks dirty jersey with 1,976 sats says, what does this button do?
Boost. That's exactly what it does. Paul sirr nine with five hundred says, thank you again, sir, for a thoroughly enjoyable episode, and thanks for your insight into Obsidian. Greatly appreciated. Always very valuable to hear from experienced users about their best practices and recommendations. Keep up the good work. Thank you, sir. Pies with four twenty says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with a row of sticks, one one one. Great episode. It is difficult to track sometimes, but I love the fractal, nostril, obsidian discussions.
Yeah. That's my fault. I just gotta get better at public presentations. It's all part of the game. Pip, the social graph guy with a hundred says, hey. Thanks for covering Vertex. It's very interesting your idea to consider analyzing content and not just in pubs. The problem, in my opinion, is that it's going to be much, much more computationally expensive, and it's hard to know if it's worth it. Yes, Pip. It absolutely will. And on both counts. It will be worth it, but it will be expensive, which is why I gotta go back to to preexisting network theory.
And what I mean by that is a network that already exists if if there's two networks that already exist and they're not connected to each other. Right? They could be connected to each other if each one of them spoke each other's language or or they settled on a common protocol that they both understood. In that case, you can then fuse those two networks together, and you get orders of magnitude explosion in that network's new valuableness, for lack of a better term. So what I'm proposing is how about I analyze my own notes first, do that computation first, and then other people might be able to do the same for their own notes.
And then all of a sudden, we've got some of the some of the the the brunt of the the legwork actually already done. Now we can possibly think about what it would mean to connect two or more networks. And I understand that it's possible that what I'm suggesting won't reduce the absolute computational power that it would take. But I wonder I wonder if it's at least worth examining before we start doing the compute as to whether or not I could be right. Is it possible that me just, you know, using my own computer to do some of the hard processing of my own notes, is it possible that that could give people a leg up so that they don't have to produce the same kind of intense processing power since I've already done some of the work? Just suggesting it as a possibility.
Tony? Oh, Tony didn't give me anything. And, let's see. Hocktu a girl to be assistant crypto czar according to Bitcoin Bugle. That's awesome dude. That's awesome. Okay. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. And first up right now is gonna be MicroStrategy. Oh, I'm sorry. They've rebranded to just strategy. I'm serious. I still contend that this very well may be the worst rebranding ever, but they have resumed Bitcoin acquisitions. This time with $742,000,000 worth of buying, bringing its total Bitcoin holdings to 478,007 hundred and 40 BTC.
This is by James Hunt from theblock.co. Bitcoin treasury company strategy acquired an additional 7,633 at an average price of $97,255 per coin, and they are just a little bit below that number right now. So I just I every time he announces, the second the news hits the newswire, Bitcoin price crash Bitcoin price crashes a little bit. It's to sell the news of it, but it's so well timed because he always releases what he's gonna do on Sunday nights when he post a he post on Twitter a picture of this graph that says, essentially, that he's about to buy more Bitcoin, and he's going to announce it Monday morning. And this morning was absolutely no different.
The latest acquisition follows the sale of a further 516,000 shares of its class a common stock and 7,000,300 shares of its 8% series a perpetual strike preferred stock. As of February, the company said approximately $4,170,000,000 worth of shares remained available for sale as part of the 2121 plan, targeting a total capital raise of $42,000,000,000 in equity offerings and fixed income securities for Bitcoin acquisition. Strategy, which rebranded from MicroStrategy on Wednesday with a logo including a b symbol in orange coloring, has acquired around 200 no. I'm sorry. $20,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin over the past few months alone, pausing its prior twelve week buying streak amid its earnings release last week along with its rebranding.
Strategy reported a net loss of $670,800,000 in its fourth quarter with operational expenses rising almost 700% year over year to 1,100,000,000, and that includes just over a billion dollars worth of impairment losses related to the company's Bitcoin holdings compared to 39,200,000.0 during the same period in 2023. Previously, digital asset values on a company's books had to be marked down when prices fell, but could not be adjusted upwards if the price rose unless they sold the underlying asset. However, with MicroStrategy, or rather, strategy adopting the Financial Accounting Standards Board's new fair value accounting rules from January 2025, this will lead to a one time cumulative adjustment of 12,750,000,000 to the opening balance of its retained earnings according to analysts.
However, uncertainty remains over the tax treatment of Strategy's Bitcoin holdings under the new FASB rules in combination with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provisions, meaning that it could require a special exemption from the IRS. Strategy's eighty two point three billion dollar market cap trades at a significant premium to its Bitcoin net asset value with some investors airing reservations about the firm's premium to NAV valuation and its equity and debt funded Bitcoin acquisition program in general. Strategy shares closed up point seven to $327 on Friday, gaining more than 518% over the past year.
Good god almighty. So even though I finally under understand the micro or the strategy trade, and it took me a long time to wrap my head around it, and I talked about it, I believe, last week sometime, I'm still not in the mood to buy strategy stock. I would just rather buy the Bitcoin and hold the Bitcoin. But sometimes even holding the Bitcoin ain't gonna help you out because there's a British guy, and he's been looking for lost Bitcoin for a long time. Well, he's still looking for the lost $768,000,000 Bitcoin treasure, but now he wants to buy a garbage dump to do it. I'll explain from The Block and James Hunt gonna help me out.
James Howells, a resident of Newport, South Wales, wants to buy the landfill where he believes he lost £620,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, despite a UK Judge dismissing his case last month. And I brought you that news, by the way. Howes, a computer engineer, believes his former partner mistakenly threw out the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet from 2013 and took legal action to access his local landfill or pursue $609,000,000 worth of compensation from the Newport City Council. Judge Andrew John Kieser KC threw out the case on January stating that there were no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim and no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial given the amount of time that had passed.
However, if the current owners are willing to negotiate at fair market rates, House and his investment partners would now be interested in just buying the whole Newport Docksway landfill site outright. At least that's what he told the block. Howells said he had discussions with several interested parties in recent months with a few options on the table. The first step would be to determine if Newport City Council is willing to sell the site to an investment and maintenance group, then to discuss the possibility of natural resource whales granting an excavation and reclamation permit before any potential deals and figures could be discussed in serious detail according to Howells.
If the potential options fall through, Howells also doesn't rule out launching a utility token or NFT related to the effort saying he is pretty confident the crypto world would have my back. You see, this is the mentality. He's not looking for the Bitcoin because he wants all that freedom money. No. He just wants cash. He just wants cash. He's like the Central African Republic President, dude. Doesn't I mean, I'm gonna launch a meme coin. What's gonna be on the meme coin? Is it gonna be a landfill, or are you just gonna say it's Hal's coin and then say it's a meme coin? You actually have to have a meme to back the coin.
And right now, you digging through a filthy landfill is not meme worthy, my friend. It's just not. But during a hearing in December, the court learned that Al's, an early Bitcoin adopter, mined over 7,500 BTC in 02/2009, and that's when it held very little value. But as the cryptocurrency's worth skyrocketed, he organized a team of experts to locate and recover the accidentally discarded hard drive and repeatedly sought permission from the council to access the landfill. Well, the council urged the high court judge to strike out the legal actions at the hearing arguing that existing laws meant the device had become its property once it entered the landfill and environmental permits forbade its excavation.
Earlier this month, the BBC reported that the landfill site is expected to close for business in the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six financial year with Newport Council securing planning permission to convert part of the land to a solar farm. Quote, the council planning on closing the landfill so soon is quite a surprise, especially since it claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway, Hals told the BBC on Monday. Well, given this and having appealed on January, Hals still intends to pursue access and told the block he was very confident in the case he had put forward.
And Howells has speculated that the inaccessible funds could be worth over 1,000,000,000, what, pounds sterling. Wow. £1,000,000,000 sterling by 2026 and previously told the court or the BBC that he was willing to take the case to the supreme court, not the United States supreme court apparently. But, anyway, the block reached out to Newport Council for comment and ain't heard nothing yet. So here's what happens. They're closing the land the landfill. They're not gonna give Hal's permission. And you're going to have you're going to have just a fiasco on your hands once they put that solar farm on there because this is never going to end for this landfill.
If it's not housed, it's gonna be somebody else who figures out how they can stymie this project so that they can get in there. Or the project itself could say, hey, now that we own the land or it was gifted to us or whatever, we're gonna dig for the hard drive. Everybody's gonna want that 7,500 Bitcoin. And it's just gonna be an absolute mess, and I am here to watch it with you. Now over to Austin, Texas in The United States where Austin University is going to launch a $5,000,000 Bitcoin fund with a five year HODL strategy according to Zoltan Vardai as he reports for the Cointelegraph.
Now when I first read this, I immediately somehow in my brain, it said that the University of Texas was doing this. No. It is not UT, which is one of the largest university programs or networks in the world, much less The United States. It is absolutely massive. They are not the ones doing this. No. No. No. This is Austin University, so be clear about that. Don't say, hey, man. This is u even UT is doing it. Well, they kinda already, I think, have said that they own a little bit, but they're not planning a a fund like this. This is the University of Austin, and it's launching a first of its kind Bitcoin investment fund showcasing the growing Bitcoin adoption among United States institutions.
The University of Austin will raise a Bitcoin fund worth over $5,000,000 as part of the institution's $200,000,000 endowment fund. Quote, we don't wanna be left behind when their cryptocurrency's potential materializes dramatically, Chun Lai, the foundation's chief investment officer told Financial Times according to a February 9 report. The news of the fund comes over three months after a regulatory filing revealed that Emory University accumulated over $15,000,000 worth of Bitcoin through Grayscale Spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund, and Emory University's move marked the very first US university endowment to report holding Bitcoin ETFs.
Continued institutional ETF adoption may in may significantly bolster Bitcoin's price since institutions hold large amount of capital that can move crypto markets. Bitcoin needs continued institutional adoption to reach new all time highs. No. It doesn't. It needs adoption, but it doesn't necessarily have to be institutional. If 8,000,000,000 people decided that they needed to get at least a little bit of Bitcoin, you don't need an institution to to see, like, $5,000,000 a coin. But getting eight p billion people to do the same thing is, you know but even if you got a couple of billion, you know, that would move the markets. I'm just saying you don't need necessarily institutions or, you know, or even governments, you know, whether state or national. You just need a whole bunch of people. That's all it would take.
They have more power than all the institutions combined anyway, or at least with purchasing. If everybody on the planet got $5 worth of Bitcoin, you wow. You wanna talk about a hell of a price spike, but be that as it may, another Texas university or at least this Texas university is going to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. I wish them well, and I didn't even realize that there was such a place called University of Austin. I I I think that this is I think it's a little weird. In fact hold on for a second. I wanna look at something. University of Austin.
Let's see what I can see here. Liberal Arts University, is I'm trying to find its, oh, number of okay. According to a quick Google search, the number of students at the University of Austin is 92. Not 9,200. Not 92,000. No. No. No. 92. It was founded November 2021. And honestly, I'm wondering if this is the university that I was listening to a Bitcoin podcast and somebody was talking about starting a school, but I don't remember them saying it was gonna be called the University of Austin. But 92 students and a $200,000,000 endowment fund. This these small potatoes, ladies and gentlemen.
However, you gotta start you gotta take baby steps from you know, you gotta start somewhere is what I'm saying. Now we started with the states, and now we're taking even more steps with more states because Florida, Maryland, and now Iowa have all introduced new strategic Bitcoin reserve bills. According to Atlas twenty one, Florida, Maryland, and Iowa have joined the growing number of US states US states proposing legislation to integrate Bitcoin into their state financial strategies. On February, in Florida, Republican senator Joe Greuthers introduced a bill that would allow the state to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Florida's chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, had already revealed last October that the state held approximately $800,000,000 in digital asset related investments. Meanwhile, over in Iowa, representative Taylor Collins has introduced house file two forty six outlining new investment opportunities for the state treasurer. And the bill authorizes investments in precious metals and digital assets with a market capitalization exceeding $750,000,000,000 averaged over the previous calendar year. It also allows investments in stablecoins. At the same time over in Maryland, state rep, Kaylin Kaylin? Yeah. Kaylin Young introduced a bill, HB thirteen eighty nine, to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve fund designed specifically as a hedge against fiat currency inflation.
So with those three states joining the fray, I am over here at bitcoinlaws.io. That's bitcoinlaws.i0 where you can see a map of all of the states that have anything to do with with trying to get legislation through at the state level for some kind of strategic reserve that either includes Bitcoin, a mix of Bitcoin and shitcoins, or just those that say only digital assets. And lo and behold, we've gone from, like we started with, like, seven states. Actually, we started with, like, four. Let's let's be honest. We started with, like, you know, a couple. And then it grew and grew and grew. And then, you know, couple of weeks ago was eight states.
Well, now all bills, whether they say Bitcoin or Bitcoin and shit coins or just digital assets, that number of states is now over half of the nation. 27 states have some form of a of either a bill or a proposal or something at the state government level suggesting they buy Bitcoin, Bitcoins and shitcoins, or just straight up digital assets without actually naming anything. Anything. 27 in a handful of weeks since Trump got elected. It's basically a a few handfuls of weeks. That's it, man. And all of a sudden, we've got over half of The United States interested in doing this. We don't even need a strategic Bitcoin reserve at the federal level. We'll just we should just let the states do it.
That's what I think. Anyway, last up for today, Proton Wallet is now available to all users on Android, iOS, as well as desktop. Proton Wallet is a self custodial and end to end encrypted Bitcoin only wallet by Proton. The same guys that make ProtonMail. This is their wallet. They've released it to everybody in the world that wants it. It's now available on iOS, Android, and web after a successful early access program was completed. Quote, thank you to everyone who participated in Proton Wallet's early access period. Your feedback allowed us to dramatically improve the app such as improving blockchain syncing performance and adding a replace by fee feature for speeding up transactions.
Thanks to your support, we also have ambitious developments planned for 2025. Please continue sharing your input on Twitter, Reddit, and UserVoice to help us further refine the user experience and develop new and improved features. Announce the project. Existing Proton account holders can begin using Proton Wallet by visiting wallet.proton.me, that's wallet.proton.me, or downloading the app for Android and iPhone. Simply log in with your Proton credentials to get started. Key features. A self custodial Bitcoin wallet with robust recovery mechanisms. Proton does not have access to your coins, according to them.
End to end encryption. All of users' bitcoin transactions, notes, and messages are end to end encrypted before being sent to Proton servers, so the company does not know your transaction history nor your balances. Bitcoin via email. Yes. Users can send BTC directly to recipients using their email addresses as long as the recipient has a Proton wallet. Each address is signed with PGP, ensuring that transactions remain secure. Quote, if you wanna try sending Bitcoin via email while supporting our fight for financial privacy and freedom, you can send BTC donations to the nonprofit Proton Foundation at [email protected].
That's [email protected]. There is automatic address rotation. It is open source software. You can buy Bitcoin directly in the app, and it has something called Proton Sentinel. And they say that that is Proton's advanced account security system that uses machine learning with human analysis to prevent attackers from accessing your account even if you lose your credentials. And they have a 24 a day, seven days a week support desk, and you can always reach a real human and get support for all sorts of inquiries. So there you go.
I remember when the news came out that ProtonMail was going to have their own Bitcoin wallet. And I was immediately one of the ones that was a skeptic saying, oh, they're gonna end up shit coining. I was wrong. And I'm so happy to be wrong here. The guys over at Proton seem that they seem to be the kind of guys that we want that we expect from good Bitcoiners. They don't waste their time with, like, finding new and improved ways to jack up your bitcoin experience by having a wallet that offers you how to buy doge with Solana on defy bullshit. We had never needed any of that. That's one of the one of the reasons why I stopped using the ledger wallet and went cold card.
I went over to CoinKite. I'd go I got one of Novak's cold cold cards. That's that's the hardware wallet that I wanna use. It's Bitcoin only. I don't have to I don't have to jack around with all the rest of the crap. And Ledger just got so shit coin heavy that it was just left a bad taste in my mouth to use their anything from them. So, Proton, I'm so happy that you proved me wrong by being Bitcoin only from start to finish on your Bitcoin wallet. Thank you so much for proving me wrong. Okay. So that's it for the day. I'm telling you guys, be careful out there with your attitude towards Bitcoin and thinking that we're in this spot where nothing can happen.
It's always the case that anything can happen. Orange man opens his mouth sideways, we can see a 20% plunge. If he opens his mouth the other sideways, we could see a 20 to 25% rise. If he will just say the freaking words, there's going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve, I am authorizing it right now with my signature. As of tomorrow, the United States Treasury or whoever's gonna hold this stuff will hold, I don't know, 20 200 more Bitcoin than we held yesterday. And then the week after that, and then actually give me a buying schedule. If you were to say that and then the first execution of that actually proven to me that you did in fact buy Bitcoin, you would see a hundred you would probably see $250,000 Bitcoin by the time the first nose even thawed in The United States.
But until he actually does the thing, you've got to understand that things are weak. But nothing is as as weak as I've seen as ether is right now. If you are in ether, you really need to rethink your priorities. Ask yourself the question, why why am I in ether? What does it actually do? And if you are are honest to your with yourself about answering that question and you go look, it should scare the living shit right out of you. And hopefully, you will sell all of your ether directly into Bitcoin, and then I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
Man, it is 10:30AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the February 2025. This is episode ten thirty four of Bitcoin and beep beep beep beep beep beep beep breaking news. Did did did did the Elon Musk wants Ron Paul to audit the Fed for Doge. According to some dude named Bobby Soav. I I don't have no idea who the hell Bobby Soav is, but this is coming out of thehill.com, but that's that's all it is. It's just a headline and a freaking video, and I just I don't know anything about this. All I know is that Federal Reserve was trending over there on dead bird site. I clicked on it, and the next thing I know, I'm inundated with all these people making tweets about Ron Paul gonna audit the Fed.
Do you believe this? Or do does anybody out there have any kind of credible sources other than dude named Bobby? I hey. Don't get me wrong. I hope it happens, and I can't think of a better person than Ron Paul to do it. But honestly, man, Ron Paul, he's he's getting up there in age. I I think he's done his bit for king and country, and unless he just is chomping at the bit to do it, man, you might want to get somebody else to audit the Fed. But, you know, you know, here's what the fascinating thing was. I'm sitting here, I don't believe this bull hockey for, you know, horse hockey for a second.
So I go over to Google. Yeah, I know, I know. But I go over to Google and I'm like top typing in, let's audit, federal reserve, Ron Paul, And one of the first things that Google AI comes up with, you know, at the very top of the stack, they let Google AI answer so that you don't have to actually look at anything else. And all you would actually see then is that the fact of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, of The United States Of America, the Federal Reserve is audited heavily all the time. Every year, it's audited. And if you buy that, I got bridges to sell you all over the place. Now for the rest of the show, we're gonna talk about lightning and some of the lightning based companies that are out there.
Ethereum not looking good. And while this is not a shitcoin podcast, there there very well may be some blood in the water about Ethereum. And then and then, we've got a president over there in Africa that is climbing head and shoulders onto the meme coin wagon and it came back to bite them in a little butt. And then strategy, formerly micro strategy, has resumed its Bitcoin buying. And then and then after that, we're gonna get into this dude who refuses, absolutely refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to finding his lost hard drive that has something like $768,000,000 of of Bitcoin on it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll we'll tell you about it. And a university in Texas is launching a Bitcoin fund.
And then we've got some new states that are also wanting to start their own strategic Bitcoin fund or in some cases, of course, just a general shitcoin wallet. And Proton wallet is in the news. But first, lightning companies are raising money again, and this is good for Bitcoin according to Guillerme Gerard, I think. And that's from Bitcoin magazine. Recently, FlashNet announced that it had raised $4,500,000 in a seed round led by Abstract Ventures with participation from UTXO Management and others. FlashNet is a Bitcoin native decentralized exchange based on Spark, a Bitcoin l two designed between the FlashNet team and LightSpark.
It's designed to rival the performance of a centralized exchange with none of the custody issues. Spark enables instant and unlimited self custodial transactions of Bitcoin and tokens while also enabling users to send and receive natively via Lightning. It's open sourced and it's secured by Bitcoin. Spark was built to address Bitcoin and Lightning's remaining challenges, focusing on scaling self custody wallets and enabling stablecoins on Bitcoin. I'm personally a fan of recent l two proposals like ARK or Spark trying to complement Lightning Network instead of trying to replace it.
Having this burgeoning scaling ecosystem opens up the design space for something great, obsoleting Uniswap and bringing all of the fees to Bitcoin. And this is why I'm so adamant about the utility of Bitcoin finance for Bitcoin. Bitcoin finance is being written here as BTCFi. Just so you know, I'm not a fan of them writing BTCFi. I hope I never hear BTCFi ever again because this just it's horrible. It reminds me of DeFi, which is all a bunch of horse pucky. Anyway, of course, the question remains, are we really talking about a decentralized exchange? Well, from the documentation available, here's how FlashNet would work.
When a user places a limit or a market order, they send funds to a multi party computation wallet or an MPC, where the user, the exchange, and a set of validators act as signers. Funds in the MPC wallet are not claimed until a match is made, similar to how approvals work in Ethereum. Oh, yes. Let's bring Ethereum over to Bitcoin. For market makers and high volume actors, there's an option to keep funds in the MPC wallet to avoid the need for a spark transaction for each other, in which case, they become validators incurring a bit more trust.
The MPC wallet receives signed maker slash taker orders to settle trades and initiate fund dispersals. All validators must agree on the user's intent to match with the counterparty order, ensuring that a limit order for, say, a hundred b t c is only valid if the counterparty order matches or exceeds 100 b t c. This intent is known because of the user signed order submitted at the placement of the order. All trades are settled instantly and atomically on spark through its native atomic swap mechanism. Trust is only required during the brief interval between matching and settlement which lasts a few milliseconds.
Additionally, users can unilaterally exit the MPC at any time using Spark's unilateral exit feature providing an extra layer of security. RFQ, I guess that means request for quote offers, are also available for wallets, mining pools, and platforms enabling users to request quotes from market makers for seamless BTC token to or BTC to token swaps. Sorry about that. This development not only complements lightning, but it also pushes Bitcoin's ecosystem towards greater adoption and utility showcasing why the resurgent surgeons.
The resurgence. Good lord. It's Monday. The resurgence of investment in lightning adjacent technologies is a positive sign for Bitcoin's future. I I don't like the word BTCFi. I hope like I said, I hope I'd never hear that b s ever again, But, I mean, I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of behind this. And I do agree with the author when they're talking about that instead of trying to replace Lightning, things like Arc and Spark are trying to actually complement Lightning. And I also fundamentally believe that that is the better way to go. You build your own network, and then you connect that network that you're building to a larger, more robust network, and everybody gets to grow together. It is a completely new world that we're entering into. It is almost sans competition.
And I've I've seen it in Bitcoin again and again and again and again, where I would be expecting us to enter an age where we have just unrelenting sniping at each other from particular Bitcoin companies saying, no. Those guys suck. Only we are good. You know, that's what I've kind of expected. And I I mean, while I do see some sniping, I don't see a, that kind of sniping. And b, the only sniping that I really do see is kind of few and far between. When it happens, everybody loses their mind over it, but then it kinda settles down and you don't really hear anything. So I'm I'm glad that we still exist in this time of Bitcoin where competition is not taking the central chair. It is basically a wallflower right now waiting for the big dance.
And the big dance may be coming to an end for Ethereum, at least as far as market sentiment is concerned, not really about laws or, you know, somebody's saying that, you know, Ethereum is gonna be illegal. But the Ethereum short positions have surged by 500% as hedge funds bet on a decline, and this is according to Zoltan Vardy from Cointelegraph. Now before you scream your head off saying I don't wanna hear about Ethereum, you kinda wanna gonna hear about this so that you're up to speed of what's been going on and what the landscape looks like.
Because Bitcoin's not exactly off the hook here for various reasons that we'll get into. But first, let's do this one. Hedge funds are increasing short positions against ether as the world's second largest cryptocurrency struggles to gain momentum. Ether has struggled to gain momentum over the past year. Okay. I'm pausing right there to interject the following. Bullshit. Sorry. I know if you had kids in the car, I'm trying to do better, but sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade. Four years against Bitcoin, ether has been losing its ever loving ass.
Four years, not a year. All these people keep looking at the Ethereum price in USD. They do not look at the ether BTC pair. And when you look at that chart, it looks complete it tells a completely different story than the Ethereum or ether USD chart. When you compare it to the dollar, you get, oh, look. It's going up into the right, and we've got some struggles here at the very end over this last year. Yeah. That's the story it tells. The Ethereum BTC chart, Now that tells a story of absolute destruction over the last four years. Anyway, short positions on Ethereum have risen more than 500% or five x since the US presidential election just last November according to data shared by the Khobisi letter. In a February 10 Twitter post, the financial newsletter wrote, quote, short positioning in Ethereum is now up 40% in one week and 500% since November of twenty twenty four.
Never in history has Wall Street hedge funds been so short on Ethereum, and it's not even close, end quote. Quote, we saw the effects of this extreme positioning on February. Ethereum fell 37% in sixty hours as the trade war headlines emerged, the post suggested further. Ethereum has underperformed Bitcoin largely due to this extreme positioning, which may result in a short squeeze. This occurs when the price of an asset makes a sharp increase, prompting short sellers to buy ether to avoid yet greater losses. While Bitcoin is recognized as the digital gold of the industry, Ethereum faces growing competition among other layer one blockchains.
This may be another fundamental reason for Ether's underperforming Bitcoin price according to James Wo, the founder and CEO of venture capital firm, DFG. And he writes, quote, Ethereum is competing with multiple other high performance layer one tokens. Given that there are no or sorry. Given that there are so many new chains being launched, the dilution for altcoins is worsened, which has not helped in Ethereum's lackluster price action. Ethereum still has the largest ecosystem of DeFi and is home to many well established protocols such as Uniswap, Lido, and Aave. When on chain activity picks up again, we can expect Ethereum's price action to improve, Wo added. Yeah.
I don't think so. Anyway, other experts also believe that Ethereum needs more blockchain activity to start recovering above 4,000. To reverse the decline and move towards previous highs, Ether will need more fundamental blockchain activity first according to Ariel Barthe, principal research analyst at Nansen. Quote, other layer ones are catching up with Ethereum regarding apps, use cases, fees, and the amount state, she said. She believes Ethereum could benefit from increased collaboration with private and public sector entities, particularly in The United States, given recent regulatory momentum momentum in favor of blockchain and crypto.
So the only way Ethereum can survive is to basically beg the United States government to adopt it for some job. Okay. That's number one. Second, yeah, a short squeeze is probably coming. Third, Ethereum looks like garbage against Bitcoin for the last four years, and anybody who's still holding on to this coin because of, quote, reasons, you are missing out. And was am I on four or am I on five? Fuck it. Let's say number 10. This applies to Bitcoin. This this lack of on chain activity could also apply to Bitcoin. It's not just Ethereum.
There's some real weird vibes that I've been picking up lately, and, no, I'm not gonna punch out a Bitcoin. That that's not what I'm I'm just saying we should be cautious. If anybody was out there saying, yes. Only Ethereum is going to die. Well, you know, I and I'm not and I'm not suggesting that we don't celebrate the demise of the mother asshole from whence all shitcoins have been birthed. No. No. No. I'm just saying don't get smug. Remember to stay humble. Remember to stack your sats. But we are seeing decreased boat not momentum. We're seeing decreased activity across all manner of things except what?
Stablecoins. I told you Stablecoins were going to come, and there's going to be more and more Stablecoin launches, and it's going to be ugly. Right? We are nowhere close to out of the woods. And even if orange man says the words, we're doing a Bitcoin or a strategic Bitcoin reserve for The United States as part of the sovereign wealth fund, yes, the price of Bitcoin will definitely go up, but I don't trust it. I don't trust Orange Man to, a, say the words, and, b, even if he does say the words, I think we should just remain cautious. And I don't think we should do stupid things like max out our credit card so we can go all in Bitcoin and take four mortgages out on our on our primary residence or or rather our only residence.
Because you could find yourself homeless. It's happened before. It can happen again. So, guys, be cautious. Now before I bag on Ethereum a little bit more, I want to mention my friend, Maple Trade. That's right. Maple Trade. He has sold out of his handmade maple syrup until what he says is March. And he is selling all of his maple syrup and his sister Sarah Soaps for Bitcoin. And if I can get down to if I can find it again, I'll tell you what the prices are. But these prices, according to Maple Trade, are now good for Nostr customers only.
So if you're not getting a hold of Maple Trade and his his Nostr, you the I put a URL into the show notes for the circle p, and it goes right to his pry like the like, if you wanna get to him on primal, just click the URL. It'll take you right to primal, right to his in pub, and you can get a hold of him there. But you're gonna have to get a hold of him if you still want a quart of his handmade maple syrup for $27. Half gallon for 45 or four full pints for $50 in case you wanna buy them for friends, you know, and and spread the love around. You can get a pack of four pints. I've had his maple syrup. It's awesome maple syrup. He does make it by hand. I've he's, like, thrown out videos. He's got pictures. He's got the receipts. He's not buying it from a wholesaler and rejugging it and selling it to you at overpriced stock. No. This is made by hand, the old fashioned way. So if you wanna know what it was like, if you wanna taste of something that happened decades ago, then get a hold of my friend, Maple Trade. And if you do buy from him, make damn sure that you tell him that you heard about him in the circle p. That way, he will cut me some satoshis on his end for giving him some advertisement in the circle p where I bring plebs like you with goods and services for sale to plebs just like you, but only if you're selling for Bitcoin. If you're not selling your good and service for Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p. Now, let's go for another round of bagging on Ethereum because I feel like it. So this one is out of CoinDesk.
New Trump tariffs spell caution for Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin bets. So this kinda goes in a little bit by Showera Malwa as to why it is that I'm kind of, you know, not just bagging on Ethereum, but we should be cautious about our feelings about Bitcoin right now and and not let our feelings get in the way and cause us to do something stupid, like I said. You know, rack up a whole bunch of credit card debt because it's gonna go to the moon. Just be careful out there because a fresh round of tariffs by United States president Donald Trump and the lack of short term catalyst is inciting caution from market watchers who believe Ethereum's ether may be particularly affected.
Trump on Sunday said that he's going to introduce 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into The US on top of existing duties with reciprocal tariffs later in the week applicable to all the countries. The rhetoric and spike in inflation expectations could bring debt breed it could breed downside volatility with a key indicator that foresaged a move between a hundred thousand dollars for Bitcoin when it traded under 70,000, and that turned bearish on Sunday. Crypto majors remained little changed in European afternoon hours with US futures, Dow, and S and P five hundred up almost a half a percent ahead of the New York open. Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, oh god, Ripple, Solanas, Balboa, Doge were all up under 1% in the past twenty four hours.
But the tariffs introduced economic uncertainty by potentially escalating trade wars, which can lead to market volatility. Such events tend to impact Bitcoin in the broader crypto market as investors tend to move away from risk assets to safer investments like just hanging out inside of the US dollar. That's the safer investment right there. That's what they mean when they say safer investment. Because at this point, you can't even trust putting your money into NVIDIA. God only knows what the hell is gonna happen with real estate. So you'll see a bunch of people rotate over just straight up into US dollars. I guarantee it. Some traders say ether could be further impacted as sentiment for crypto fades down, adding to an already tumultuous year for the asset which saw a widely watched Bitcoin ether ratio drop to 2,021 levels indicative of a fallout for ETH and a preference for BTC.
A drop in ETH may further spell bad news for related beta bets such as meme coin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum based DeFi tokens, which tend to mirror the movements of the parent asset. Quote, the rise of BTC versus everything else is the most evident in comparison with ETH, which is seeing record short interest and FUD with the second largest token being down 23% year to date versus a 2.5% gain in BTC, Augustine Phan, head of insights at Signal Plus, told CoinDesk. Quote, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, but a lack of l one catalysts and narrative leadership will likely continue to weigh on Ethereum in the foreseeable future, Ethereum has been hit particularly hard as ether or, well, ETH reversed its entire pump from late November last year, unwinding any gains to holders, shared Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research in a Telegram message.
Due to expectations of increased inflation, investors are betting on only one interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year instead of two, casting a grim outlook for risk assets including crypto. Meanwhile, traders at Singapore based QCP Capital expect crypto markets to flip flop in the coming weeks as Trump's words continue to impact markets. Quote, a feedback loop is emerging. President Trump, highly sensitive to market reactions, is facing a market increasingly calling his bluff. This could embolden him further, adding another layer of volatility, the firm said in a Monday broadcast message, quote, BTC volatility now skews in favor of puts until April, reflecting a lack of upside catalyst.
Alright. So the that's what they're talking about with this this lack of upside catalyst, that's like Trump saying we're gonna put we are going to put Bitcoin in the strategic reserve. That's what they're looking for. And I don't know if that's gonna be forthcoming by Trump. Right now, I regard orange man as having boldface lied right to my face when he said that day one Bitcoin reserve. I ain't seen it. I ain't seen shit except him talk about crap coins. So until we get that, everybody's just biding their time. Everybody's just and this is the thing that kinda sucks when you've watched Bitcoin do what it's done since 2015 when I really started watching what it's doing.
The problems that it solves is just watching people fall into the old patterns of the legacy markets. This is Bitcoin is just it is not the it's not Bitcoin itself. The asset doesn't know what the hell is going on. But the human beings that are trading it and trying to hold it and trying to use it are being outpaced by the well, actually, I I said traders. I should've I should've backed up and say, the guys that are trying to use it, the guys that are see what it actually is, are being outpaced by the traders who have brought with them their legacy market mentality.
And, I mean, it's not like it's gonna kill Bitcoin, But if you are thinking that by the end of this year, you're gonna be able to buy 10 houses in the South Of France with one Bitcoin, you you might wanna hold on for a little while longer, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just saying, be particularly careful right now, especially if you're in Africa, especially if you're in the Central African Republic because your president just posted a meme coin, and it surged to $900,000,000 before, guess what, collapsing. Ryan s Gladwin for Decrypt. The Central African Republic President appears to have launched a national meme coin 3 years after making Bitcoin legal in 2022.
Despite many doubting the legitimacy of the social media post, the Solana meme coin skyrocketed to a market cap just shy of 900,000,000 before crashing back down to earth. The official Twitter account of Faustine Ochchain's Tawilkin there's no way I can pronounce the president of Central African Republic's name. But he posted that the contract address was to a pump dot fund token on Sunday. He claimed it was an experiment designed to show how a meme coin can unite people, support national development, and put his nation on the world stage in a unique way.
Did you sneak up on it? Well, whatever. Red flags were raised around the timing of the post as it would have almost been midnight in the Central African Republic. On top of this, the nation's official languages are French and San Go, but the social media post was in English. And as a result, many skeptics believe that the post was the result of a hack. But when the president posted a video speaking in French endorsing the token and creating a Twitter account just for that token, many doubters were silenced, at least temporarily, quote, the Central African Republic has always believed in the power and the importance of community. And based on belief and as a symbol of unity, I am proud to announce the launch of the official meme coin of the Central African Republic.
Wow. This video helped the token soar 1210% from a market cap of 68,000,000 to 897,000,000 in two and a half hours according to Dexscreener. For context, the country's gross domestic product is just $3,000,000,000 according to the International Monetary Fund. This means at its high, the token was a third of the way to marching the nation's GDP. Good god. According to the meme coin's tokenomics page, 35% of the token supply is earmarked to aid with the country's development, 25 for creators and company. I don't know what that means, but that's what it says. 20% for liquidity, 10% for charity, and 9% for public distribution.
9%. Everybody gets a huge chunk but you, you stinking pleb. Anyway, blockchain analytics company Bubble Maps claims that on chain data matches up with this tokenomics page. Skeptics resurfaced, however, with some claiming the video was deep faked and others complaining that the token site is no longer working. And as such, the Solana meme coin crashed 87% to a market cap of a hundred and 20 5 million dollars all within eleven hours of its all time high. Yeah. They they go on to a couple of other paragraphs, but honestly, this is all you need. And why is it important to understand this? Because it's important to understand that people are people.
This guy might be the president of an African nation. Oh, not a state because a lot of people make that mistake. I know. It's weird, but Africa's a continent, and all the countries in Africa are just that. They're countries. They're not states of the country of Africa, and I've seen people make that mistake. Okay? So just I just wanna be clear about this. We're talking about the president of a nation of the planet Earth is meme coining, and it's not even a meme. How the hell is the Central African Republic even a meme? Which means to me that this guy doesn't understand anything at all.
Is you just launch a meme coin. If I find out that pump dot fund contacted these these guys, like these presidents of the central, you know, African nations and probably we'll find out that they've contacted presidents of, like, some Latin smaller Latin American countries to launch mean coins, then if I find that out, then pump dot fund needs to burn in hell for the wanton destruction of wealth on a worldwide level. They I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. It's and this is the legacy this is the legacy financial mindset that is being carried over into the Bitcoin markets.
They don't really give a shit about freedom. They don't care about privacy. That they don't they don't even think about it. They their brains may not even be wired to have a feeling of what privacy is. They just want wealth, and they swear to God that wealth is extremely high piles of money. I think we're coming into a future where that is not going to be the case, but let's run the numbers anyway. CNBC Futures and Commodities. I got West Texas Intermediate Oil is up. It's actually up 1.73% to $72.23 a barrel. Brent Norsee is up a point and a half. Natural gas, whoop de doo, is four and a half points to the upside.
But gasoline is basically moving sideways, chilling out at the ripe old age of $2.10 a gallon. Every metal rock is doing well. If you have pet rocks, go pet them right now and tell it what a good boy it's doing because gold is up to a new all time high of $2,900. After a 1.6% change to the upside. Silver is up point 16%. Platinum is up 1.6%. Copper is up two and a half, and Palladium is up 2.7%. Ag, what's going on in Ag? Well, I'll tell you what's going on in Ag. It looks like the biggest winner is coffee, up seven full points. Biggest loser is chocolate, down three points.
I got live cattle, up three quarters of a point, but lean hogs are down a half. Feeder cattle are up a point and a quarter. The Dow is up a whole third of a point, and the S and P is up three quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is flying high 1.33% to the upside while the S and P Mini is up a third of a point. What do we got going on in Bitcoin? 90 7 thousand 5 hundred and 80 dollars per coin. We have a $1,930,000,000,000 market cap, ladies and gentlemen, and you can only now purchase 33.4 ounces of your favorite shiny metal rock with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,822,294.93 of, and average fees per block are low.
It's low prices. It's a fire sale at zero point zero three BTC per block on average anyway. And there look to be about nine blocks carrying a oh, god. 12,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of three. Satoshis per vByte, low priority is gonna get you in at two. And what's the oh, not did we did have a difficulty change, by the way, and it was up 5.6%, and that was about thirty four hours ago. Our next one, difficulty change is also scheduled to be to the upside by 2.21% in twelve days, but you might wanna let that calm down just to see. Now from where we at? Oh, yeah. That's right. It was from Friday's Obsidian Rocks episode of Bitcoin, and I got Dan at e t x b t c fiat sucks dirty jersey with 1,976 sats says, what does this button do?
Boost. That's exactly what it does. Paul sirr nine with five hundred says, thank you again, sir, for a thoroughly enjoyable episode, and thanks for your insight into Obsidian. Greatly appreciated. Always very valuable to hear from experienced users about their best practices and recommendations. Keep up the good work. Thank you, sir. Pies with four twenty says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with a row of sticks, one one one. Great episode. It is difficult to track sometimes, but I love the fractal, nostril, obsidian discussions.
Yeah. That's my fault. I just gotta get better at public presentations. It's all part of the game. Pip, the social graph guy with a hundred says, hey. Thanks for covering Vertex. It's very interesting your idea to consider analyzing content and not just in pubs. The problem, in my opinion, is that it's going to be much, much more computationally expensive, and it's hard to know if it's worth it. Yes, Pip. It absolutely will. And on both counts. It will be worth it, but it will be expensive, which is why I gotta go back to to preexisting network theory.
And what I mean by that is a network that already exists if if there's two networks that already exist and they're not connected to each other. Right? They could be connected to each other if each one of them spoke each other's language or or they settled on a common protocol that they both understood. In that case, you can then fuse those two networks together, and you get orders of magnitude explosion in that network's new valuableness, for lack of a better term. So what I'm proposing is how about I analyze my own notes first, do that computation first, and then other people might be able to do the same for their own notes.
And then all of a sudden, we've got some of the some of the the the brunt of the the legwork actually already done. Now we can possibly think about what it would mean to connect two or more networks. And I understand that it's possible that what I'm suggesting won't reduce the absolute computational power that it would take. But I wonder I wonder if it's at least worth examining before we start doing the compute as to whether or not I could be right. Is it possible that me just, you know, using my own computer to do some of the hard processing of my own notes, is it possible that that could give people a leg up so that they don't have to produce the same kind of intense processing power since I've already done some of the work? Just suggesting it as a possibility.
Tony? Oh, Tony didn't give me anything. And, let's see. Hocktu a girl to be assistant crypto czar according to Bitcoin Bugle. That's awesome dude. That's awesome. Okay. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. And first up right now is gonna be MicroStrategy. Oh, I'm sorry. They've rebranded to just strategy. I'm serious. I still contend that this very well may be the worst rebranding ever, but they have resumed Bitcoin acquisitions. This time with $742,000,000 worth of buying, bringing its total Bitcoin holdings to 478,007 hundred and 40 BTC.
This is by James Hunt from theblock.co. Bitcoin treasury company strategy acquired an additional 7,633 at an average price of $97,255 per coin, and they are just a little bit below that number right now. So I just I every time he announces, the second the news hits the newswire, Bitcoin price crash Bitcoin price crashes a little bit. It's to sell the news of it, but it's so well timed because he always releases what he's gonna do on Sunday nights when he post a he post on Twitter a picture of this graph that says, essentially, that he's about to buy more Bitcoin, and he's going to announce it Monday morning. And this morning was absolutely no different.
The latest acquisition follows the sale of a further 516,000 shares of its class a common stock and 7,000,300 shares of its 8% series a perpetual strike preferred stock. As of February, the company said approximately $4,170,000,000 worth of shares remained available for sale as part of the 2121 plan, targeting a total capital raise of $42,000,000,000 in equity offerings and fixed income securities for Bitcoin acquisition. Strategy, which rebranded from MicroStrategy on Wednesday with a logo including a b symbol in orange coloring, has acquired around 200 no. I'm sorry. $20,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin over the past few months alone, pausing its prior twelve week buying streak amid its earnings release last week along with its rebranding.
Strategy reported a net loss of $670,800,000 in its fourth quarter with operational expenses rising almost 700% year over year to 1,100,000,000, and that includes just over a billion dollars worth of impairment losses related to the company's Bitcoin holdings compared to 39,200,000.0 during the same period in 2023. Previously, digital asset values on a company's books had to be marked down when prices fell, but could not be adjusted upwards if the price rose unless they sold the underlying asset. However, with MicroStrategy, or rather, strategy adopting the Financial Accounting Standards Board's new fair value accounting rules from January 2025, this will lead to a one time cumulative adjustment of 12,750,000,000 to the opening balance of its retained earnings according to analysts.
However, uncertainty remains over the tax treatment of Strategy's Bitcoin holdings under the new FASB rules in combination with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provisions, meaning that it could require a special exemption from the IRS. Strategy's eighty two point three billion dollar market cap trades at a significant premium to its Bitcoin net asset value with some investors airing reservations about the firm's premium to NAV valuation and its equity and debt funded Bitcoin acquisition program in general. Strategy shares closed up point seven to $327 on Friday, gaining more than 518% over the past year.
Good god almighty. So even though I finally under understand the micro or the strategy trade, and it took me a long time to wrap my head around it, and I talked about it, I believe, last week sometime, I'm still not in the mood to buy strategy stock. I would just rather buy the Bitcoin and hold the Bitcoin. But sometimes even holding the Bitcoin ain't gonna help you out because there's a British guy, and he's been looking for lost Bitcoin for a long time. Well, he's still looking for the lost $768,000,000 Bitcoin treasure, but now he wants to buy a garbage dump to do it. I'll explain from The Block and James Hunt gonna help me out.
James Howells, a resident of Newport, South Wales, wants to buy the landfill where he believes he lost £620,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, despite a UK Judge dismissing his case last month. And I brought you that news, by the way. Howes, a computer engineer, believes his former partner mistakenly threw out the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet from 2013 and took legal action to access his local landfill or pursue $609,000,000 worth of compensation from the Newport City Council. Judge Andrew John Kieser KC threw out the case on January stating that there were no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim and no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial given the amount of time that had passed.
However, if the current owners are willing to negotiate at fair market rates, House and his investment partners would now be interested in just buying the whole Newport Docksway landfill site outright. At least that's what he told the block. Howells said he had discussions with several interested parties in recent months with a few options on the table. The first step would be to determine if Newport City Council is willing to sell the site to an investment and maintenance group, then to discuss the possibility of natural resource whales granting an excavation and reclamation permit before any potential deals and figures could be discussed in serious detail according to Howells.
If the potential options fall through, Howells also doesn't rule out launching a utility token or NFT related to the effort saying he is pretty confident the crypto world would have my back. You see, this is the mentality. He's not looking for the Bitcoin because he wants all that freedom money. No. He just wants cash. He just wants cash. He's like the Central African Republic President, dude. Doesn't I mean, I'm gonna launch a meme coin. What's gonna be on the meme coin? Is it gonna be a landfill, or are you just gonna say it's Hal's coin and then say it's a meme coin? You actually have to have a meme to back the coin.
And right now, you digging through a filthy landfill is not meme worthy, my friend. It's just not. But during a hearing in December, the court learned that Al's, an early Bitcoin adopter, mined over 7,500 BTC in 02/2009, and that's when it held very little value. But as the cryptocurrency's worth skyrocketed, he organized a team of experts to locate and recover the accidentally discarded hard drive and repeatedly sought permission from the council to access the landfill. Well, the council urged the high court judge to strike out the legal actions at the hearing arguing that existing laws meant the device had become its property once it entered the landfill and environmental permits forbade its excavation.
Earlier this month, the BBC reported that the landfill site is expected to close for business in the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six financial year with Newport Council securing planning permission to convert part of the land to a solar farm. Quote, the council planning on closing the landfill so soon is quite a surprise, especially since it claimed at the high court that closing the landfill to allow me to search would have a huge detrimental impact on the people of Newport whilst at the same time they were planning to close the landfill anyway, Hals told the BBC on Monday. Well, given this and having appealed on January, Hals still intends to pursue access and told the block he was very confident in the case he had put forward.
And Howells has speculated that the inaccessible funds could be worth over 1,000,000,000, what, pounds sterling. Wow. £1,000,000,000 sterling by 2026 and previously told the court or the BBC that he was willing to take the case to the supreme court, not the United States supreme court apparently. But, anyway, the block reached out to Newport Council for comment and ain't heard nothing yet. So here's what happens. They're closing the land the landfill. They're not gonna give Hal's permission. And you're going to have you're going to have just a fiasco on your hands once they put that solar farm on there because this is never going to end for this landfill.
If it's not housed, it's gonna be somebody else who figures out how they can stymie this project so that they can get in there. Or the project itself could say, hey, now that we own the land or it was gifted to us or whatever, we're gonna dig for the hard drive. Everybody's gonna want that 7,500 Bitcoin. And it's just gonna be an absolute mess, and I am here to watch it with you. Now over to Austin, Texas in The United States where Austin University is going to launch a $5,000,000 Bitcoin fund with a five year HODL strategy according to Zoltan Vardai as he reports for the Cointelegraph.
Now when I first read this, I immediately somehow in my brain, it said that the University of Texas was doing this. No. It is not UT, which is one of the largest university programs or networks in the world, much less The United States. It is absolutely massive. They are not the ones doing this. No. No. No. This is Austin University, so be clear about that. Don't say, hey, man. This is u even UT is doing it. Well, they kinda already, I think, have said that they own a little bit, but they're not planning a a fund like this. This is the University of Austin, and it's launching a first of its kind Bitcoin investment fund showcasing the growing Bitcoin adoption among United States institutions.
The University of Austin will raise a Bitcoin fund worth over $5,000,000 as part of the institution's $200,000,000 endowment fund. Quote, we don't wanna be left behind when their cryptocurrency's potential materializes dramatically, Chun Lai, the foundation's chief investment officer told Financial Times according to a February 9 report. The news of the fund comes over three months after a regulatory filing revealed that Emory University accumulated over $15,000,000 worth of Bitcoin through Grayscale Spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund, and Emory University's move marked the very first US university endowment to report holding Bitcoin ETFs.
Continued institutional ETF adoption may in may significantly bolster Bitcoin's price since institutions hold large amount of capital that can move crypto markets. Bitcoin needs continued institutional adoption to reach new all time highs. No. It doesn't. It needs adoption, but it doesn't necessarily have to be institutional. If 8,000,000,000 people decided that they needed to get at least a little bit of Bitcoin, you don't need an institution to to see, like, $5,000,000 a coin. But getting eight p billion people to do the same thing is, you know but even if you got a couple of billion, you know, that would move the markets. I'm just saying you don't need necessarily institutions or, you know, or even governments, you know, whether state or national. You just need a whole bunch of people. That's all it would take.
They have more power than all the institutions combined anyway, or at least with purchasing. If everybody on the planet got $5 worth of Bitcoin, you wow. You wanna talk about a hell of a price spike, but be that as it may, another Texas university or at least this Texas university is going to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. I wish them well, and I didn't even realize that there was such a place called University of Austin. I I I think that this is I think it's a little weird. In fact hold on for a second. I wanna look at something. University of Austin.
Let's see what I can see here. Liberal Arts University, is I'm trying to find its, oh, number of okay. According to a quick Google search, the number of students at the University of Austin is 92. Not 9,200. Not 92,000. No. No. No. 92. It was founded November 2021. And honestly, I'm wondering if this is the university that I was listening to a Bitcoin podcast and somebody was talking about starting a school, but I don't remember them saying it was gonna be called the University of Austin. But 92 students and a $200,000,000 endowment fund. This these small potatoes, ladies and gentlemen.
However, you gotta start you gotta take baby steps from you know, you gotta start somewhere is what I'm saying. Now we started with the states, and now we're taking even more steps with more states because Florida, Maryland, and now Iowa have all introduced new strategic Bitcoin reserve bills. According to Atlas twenty one, Florida, Maryland, and Iowa have joined the growing number of US states US states proposing legislation to integrate Bitcoin into their state financial strategies. On February, in Florida, Republican senator Joe Greuthers introduced a bill that would allow the state to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Florida's chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, had already revealed last October that the state held approximately $800,000,000 in digital asset related investments. Meanwhile, over in Iowa, representative Taylor Collins has introduced house file two forty six outlining new investment opportunities for the state treasurer. And the bill authorizes investments in precious metals and digital assets with a market capitalization exceeding $750,000,000,000 averaged over the previous calendar year. It also allows investments in stablecoins. At the same time over in Maryland, state rep, Kaylin Kaylin? Yeah. Kaylin Young introduced a bill, HB thirteen eighty nine, to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve fund designed specifically as a hedge against fiat currency inflation.
So with those three states joining the fray, I am over here at bitcoinlaws.io. That's bitcoinlaws.i0 where you can see a map of all of the states that have anything to do with with trying to get legislation through at the state level for some kind of strategic reserve that either includes Bitcoin, a mix of Bitcoin and shitcoins, or just those that say only digital assets. And lo and behold, we've gone from, like we started with, like, seven states. Actually, we started with, like, four. Let's let's be honest. We started with, like, you know, a couple. And then it grew and grew and grew. And then, you know, couple of weeks ago was eight states.
Well, now all bills, whether they say Bitcoin or Bitcoin and shit coins or just digital assets, that number of states is now over half of the nation. 27 states have some form of a of either a bill or a proposal or something at the state government level suggesting they buy Bitcoin, Bitcoins and shitcoins, or just straight up digital assets without actually naming anything. Anything. 27 in a handful of weeks since Trump got elected. It's basically a a few handfuls of weeks. That's it, man. And all of a sudden, we've got over half of The United States interested in doing this. We don't even need a strategic Bitcoin reserve at the federal level. We'll just we should just let the states do it.
That's what I think. Anyway, last up for today, Proton Wallet is now available to all users on Android, iOS, as well as desktop. Proton Wallet is a self custodial and end to end encrypted Bitcoin only wallet by Proton. The same guys that make ProtonMail. This is their wallet. They've released it to everybody in the world that wants it. It's now available on iOS, Android, and web after a successful early access program was completed. Quote, thank you to everyone who participated in Proton Wallet's early access period. Your feedback allowed us to dramatically improve the app such as improving blockchain syncing performance and adding a replace by fee feature for speeding up transactions.
Thanks to your support, we also have ambitious developments planned for 2025. Please continue sharing your input on Twitter, Reddit, and UserVoice to help us further refine the user experience and develop new and improved features. Announce the project. Existing Proton account holders can begin using Proton Wallet by visiting wallet.proton.me, that's wallet.proton.me, or downloading the app for Android and iPhone. Simply log in with your Proton credentials to get started. Key features. A self custodial Bitcoin wallet with robust recovery mechanisms. Proton does not have access to your coins, according to them.
End to end encryption. All of users' bitcoin transactions, notes, and messages are end to end encrypted before being sent to Proton servers, so the company does not know your transaction history nor your balances. Bitcoin via email. Yes. Users can send BTC directly to recipients using their email addresses as long as the recipient has a Proton wallet. Each address is signed with PGP, ensuring that transactions remain secure. Quote, if you wanna try sending Bitcoin via email while supporting our fight for financial privacy and freedom, you can send BTC donations to the nonprofit Proton Foundation at [email protected].
That's [email protected]. There is automatic address rotation. It is open source software. You can buy Bitcoin directly in the app, and it has something called Proton Sentinel. And they say that that is Proton's advanced account security system that uses machine learning with human analysis to prevent attackers from accessing your account even if you lose your credentials. And they have a 24 a day, seven days a week support desk, and you can always reach a real human and get support for all sorts of inquiries. So there you go.
I remember when the news came out that ProtonMail was going to have their own Bitcoin wallet. And I was immediately one of the ones that was a skeptic saying, oh, they're gonna end up shit coining. I was wrong. And I'm so happy to be wrong here. The guys over at Proton seem that they seem to be the kind of guys that we want that we expect from good Bitcoiners. They don't waste their time with, like, finding new and improved ways to jack up your bitcoin experience by having a wallet that offers you how to buy doge with Solana on defy bullshit. We had never needed any of that. That's one of the one of the reasons why I stopped using the ledger wallet and went cold card.
I went over to CoinKite. I'd go I got one of Novak's cold cold cards. That's that's the hardware wallet that I wanna use. It's Bitcoin only. I don't have to I don't have to jack around with all the rest of the crap. And Ledger just got so shit coin heavy that it was just left a bad taste in my mouth to use their anything from them. So, Proton, I'm so happy that you proved me wrong by being Bitcoin only from start to finish on your Bitcoin wallet. Thank you so much for proving me wrong. Okay. So that's it for the day. I'm telling you guys, be careful out there with your attitude towards Bitcoin and thinking that we're in this spot where nothing can happen.
It's always the case that anything can happen. Orange man opens his mouth sideways, we can see a 20% plunge. If he opens his mouth the other sideways, we could see a 20 to 25% rise. If he will just say the freaking words, there's going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve, I am authorizing it right now with my signature. As of tomorrow, the United States Treasury or whoever's gonna hold this stuff will hold, I don't know, 20 200 more Bitcoin than we held yesterday. And then the week after that, and then actually give me a buying schedule. If you were to say that and then the first execution of that actually proven to me that you did in fact buy Bitcoin, you would see a hundred you would probably see $250,000 Bitcoin by the time the first nose even thawed in The United States.
But until he actually does the thing, you've got to understand that things are weak. But nothing is as as weak as I've seen as ether is right now. If you are in ether, you really need to rethink your priorities. Ask yourself the question, why why am I in ether? What does it actually do? And if you are are honest to your with yourself about answering that question and you go look, it should scare the living shit right out of you. And hopefully, you will sell all of your ether directly into Bitcoin, and then I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.
Stablecoins and Market Sentiments
