Join me today for Episode 1037 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Galoy Launches Bitcoin Loan Software For Banks
- JPMorgan Spreads Tether FUD
- Another Bitcoin Family Kidnapped
- U.S. Customs Are Seizing ASICS
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
nostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
Product: Maple Syrup and Soaps
The King Ranch Donation Pages:
https://www.ruralamericainaction.com/fundraising/save-king-ranch-and-agriculture-in-washington
https://www.givesendgo.com/Kingranch
Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/galoy-launches-bitcoin-backed-loan-software-sets-groundwork-for-open-source-banking
https://cointelegraph.com/news/fed-governor-waller-calls-framework-banks-issue-stablecoins
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/02/13/tether-may-have-to-sell-some-reserves-to-comply-with-u-s-stablecoin-rules-jpmorgan
https://www.theblock.co/post/340679/tether-ceo-jpmorgan-analysis-reserves
- 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://decrypt.co/305764/wyoming-highway-patrol-association-bitcoin
https://atlas21.com/kidnapping-in-chicago-family-held-for-15-million-crypto-ransom/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/coracle-v0-6-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cbp-broadens-crackdown-on-asian-asics/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/coldcard-mk4-v5-4-1-q-v1-3-1/
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:
Missing $4.20 by a mere five hours. This is episode ten thirty seven of Bitcoin. And, yes, it is the February 2025. It's 09:20AM Pacific Standard Time. Like I said, man, I just clipped. I just barely missed coming on at 04:20. But, you know, hey. What are you gonna do? Okay. So, we got I'm gonna do some, instead of like yesterday, I did a whole episode or almost a whole half episode on, mycelial connections in the forest and whatnot. And people seem to really enjoy that. Today, I am going to go back to the news because it is a news heavy day and there's some funky stuff going on. We're gonna talk about Galois is launching a loan product against Bitcoin.
We're gonna find out by reading this thing if this is something that is worthy or worthy to be thrown in the trash because most loan products, I I just I don't like. Ever since BlockFi ever since BlockFi, man, a lot of us that looked at it and started looking deeper into BlockFi started realizing that it was just it was either gonna be a straight up scam or it was gonna just end poorly. I mean, it didn't matter. It was going to it was going to end badly either way, and it did. It was part of the whole FTX, Alameda Research, BlockFi, the whole tumble when all the shit came tumbling down.
Yeah. BlockFi was there and they were doing Bitcoin loans. We warned. Let's let's see if Galloy is going to actually do this the right way or if they're just gonna do it the wrong way. One of the Fed governors is saying that banks or non banks should also be able to, you know, issue stablecoins. And we've got a battle between JP Morgan and Tether. They're sniping at each other, and it is on an important subject. So we're gonna go through that. Wyoming is in the news. There's, yet more warnings as to why you don't talk about Bitcoin and meet space or wear swag or, you know, get hammered at a Bitcoin conference and walk your happy ass out into the parking lot all by your loan, submit 02:00 in the morning. Alright? Another warning.
Coracle has an update. There's some stuff going on with the US Customs and Border Patrol, and then Coldcard also has an update. But, before we do any of that, I wanna go back to yesterday's episode because what I I failed to do is I had I had alluded to the fact that I I was listening to the survival podcast, Jack Spirit Coast podcast, and he had done an entire two entire episodes that were not generated by AI because it's his voice. He's the one that's doing it. He's just used AI to simply get some, you know, topics and then refine those topics and get it into place. And he was talking about how, you know, what would have normally taken him, like, two hours and forty five minutes or two and a half hours and cut it down to, like, being able to prep that show in something like thirty minutes. And he's trying to demonstrate the use of these tools are not all bad.
And he's absolutely correct. However, there what I what I was wanting to bring to the table was sort of like how I used Obsidian to set up yesterday's show. And if you've heard this podcast, you know, enough times, you've heard me talk about Obsidian as a note taking app. And you're going, what the hell is a note taking app? Okay. It it there are several note taking apps that are available. Apple Notes is one of the, you know, one of the main ones, but that's that just taking a note isn't really all that interesting. I I it reminded me of something. No. No. No. No.
This is a note taking application that follows in the footsteps of this thing called Zettelkasten, which I won't get into, like, the history of it. But what Zettelkasten enables people to do is when you're reading a book or maybe a scientific paper, maybe you're just reading a fiction book and and there was a really good idea in there and you you highlighted it. Right? But you put the book back on the shelf and you forgot that that note was there. Without a system of being able to take these notes from the stuff that you read or or you could even take you can use it to even take notes from, like, something that you heard on a podcast or an audiobook or, you know, as as long as you have a system to where after you've taken the note, you have a place to go compile that note alongside the rest of the other notes that you're doing, then you have the possibility to make the connections between the notes.
And that's one of the reasons why I use Obsidian. And and there's other things like it. There's something called Roam, and there's, like, I don't know, two or three other ones. But I love Obsidian. It is rock solid as a platform. It doesn't tweak out on me. It's got a great community community development, developer community behind it. And and the the plugins that that those people build and make and whatever, Most of them are free. You can, you know, you can give them money if you want, and and I highly recommend doing that. But the the main application of Obsidian is also free, and you can, you know, tip those developers as well. And I also recommend that you do that. But the platform is so rock solid. I've never had a problem. I've never seen it glitch out. I've never seen it crash. And I put my shit through through the wringer. Right? So that's one of the reasons why I use Obsidian.
Now any of these note taking apps that work sort of in the Zettelkasten mentality of being able to take notes and relate those notes to other notes, maybe not even from the same book. Maybe I'm reading something about mycorrhizal fungi and they talk about carbon, and then all of a sudden, I start looking around my my Obsidian repository, which is it's got a great search function. And I could say search only in my my old notes that I've already done for the word carbon. Don't look anywhere else. And then all of a sudden it will show me all the notes where I talked about carbon because I know somewhere in there I've got a note that somehow relates to what it is that I'm just writing. And then I go and I look and it takes time, but it's worth it because then I'll all happen across the note saying that's the what I was thinking about.
Now, see, now I can remember if I were to try to do this with a bookshelf full of books that I've read. Good luck, because it shit ain't going to happen. You're not even going to remember where the hell it was. This enables you to use computers to and the and the and the beauty of a search function to be able to go pull out these notes. Now, that's half of the story. The other half of the story is that now that I'm writing this new note and I found my old note, I can slip in a function, and it's real easy. To me, it's just I start with with bracket bracket, and Obsidian knows that I'm trying to link to another thing in my Obsidian repository where I keep everything.
And then it will give me some suggestions, but I already know the name of the note, the title of the note that I'm looking for because I just found it. And I start typing it that in, and it's like, oh, yeah. You mean this one? And it populates a pop up list, and I just select that note in the pop up list and boom, I've got a link. It's like a URL or like a hyperlink, except it only goes back to that note. So now the next time that I see that note, I look down and go, oh, I've got this related to another note. And then if I click that, I get that other note that I've related this other note to. I know that sounds kind of confusing, but it's a way to it's it's a way to form a relationship between two things that might be dissimilar. But when you're reading it and this all boils down to it depends on how you take notes, on what you're looking for, on what your center of interest is in, and everybody's gonna be different. So all I can describe is sort of how I used it to do yesterday's show.
So now that I've got this note and I go down to the bottom where I put, hey. This is all my related notes are are, like, right here. And then I put, like and and I might have one. I might have two. Hell, I might find that a note that I just wrote relates to three different notes from three completely different books. So when I now I've got, like, a little bibliography inside of my new note that takes me to what I remembered it related to last year. You're not going to be able to remember that all by yourself, and that's the power. So that's the way that I used Obsidian to build the show yesterday.
It's not artificial intelligence. It doesn't I'm not suggesting that my method is better than Jack's method of using AI. It's comp it's comparing apples and oranges. However, we were both able to produce some really good shows simply by using a toolset. He used AI for his two Matrix shows, and I used Obsidian and the Zettelkasten method to do yesterday's show, and y'all seem to really like it. So what I was able to do is start with a single note and say, where does this lead me? Well, I know I I have directionality. I I know the direction that I can take because I can just look at the bottom of the note and say, okay. Well, there's two notes there. What are they how how are they related? And then I'm going down the rabbit hole.
And twenty minutes to thirty minutes later, I had an entire show set up, and all I had to do was use my own brain to sort of organize it. And boom, I already had all the material that I needed to talk about right in front of my face. And I because I had all the notes opened, and I and and and I organized them in the way that I wanted to do that. So, like, I would, like, start looking at one note as I was talking and go, you know, tell you the information in there and how it related to what I was talking about, and then boom, close that tab because I can keep multiple tabs open, and each tab represents a different note in Obsidian. And then I move to the next note, and then I move to the next note. So it's a combination of presentation skill, public speaking skill, and having solid material to actually work with.
So this is another way. However, what I want to make painfully clear is that I've been working on this Obsidian repository for over a year and a half, and it's pretty big. There's going to be a way to get AI to crawl through just my notes, not connect to the Internet, not look at anything else, just my one or possibly two repositories and ask it a question. On a weighted scale of one to 10, where 10 being the most relational weight between two notes, Go tie everything together and show me a map. That doesn't mean that it's going to do the right thing, but it what it will do is it will give me some ideas like, oh, I did not realize that that one note related to three other notes that I never actually put two and two together. And then I'll go vet that or, quote, unquote, ground truth that and say, yes.
The AI was actually right, at least about maybe these two notes. The other one, not so much, but it drew me there. When we look at where this future is going, we don't have to be scared of AI. We can use it as a tool. Nobody is scared of Obsidian taking over somebody's job. But what they should be scared of is the use of these two tools both separately and at one point or another together, and that's coming fast. People that do not leverage these tools are going to be toast. Absolute toast. In fact, maybe I'm thinking about possibly doing a ZapStream where I talk about Obsidian so that you can actually see what it is that I'm doing.
If you really wanna see that, boost today's show. Not yesterday's show or the day before. Boost today's show. I don't care if it's only a hundred sats because that's the minimum that you can do. I don't care I don't need you going, hey. I'll do 27 give me 27,000 sats so that I'll put your ID up there. That that's not it. I just need some feedback as to whether or not you would want to go sit on a ZapStream and look at you know, watch a video, maybe ask me some questions about Obsidian and how it's used and what it looks like. And if you guys really want that, I'll do it. And I may do it anyway. I don't know. But we're gonna get into the news. Let's transition to this whole Bitcoin magazine's article on Galloy who's launching a Bitcoin backed loan software and sets the groundwork for open source banking.
Frank Korva writing this one again for Bitcoin Magazine. Last week, Galloy, g a l o y, launched Lana, software that enables banks to accept Bitcoin as collateral for loans. Lana or Lana helps community and challenger banks, which is the banks with which Galloy is looking to work, to offer bitcoin backed loans to various types of customers. Some banks might want to use it to sell to retail and some might want to use it to sell commercial customers or high net worth individuals, Bertie told Bitcoin Magazine. And by the way, the founder of Galois is Nicholas Bertie, so that's who they're talking to. Now in offering such loans to a wide array of customers, Bertie believes that the high cost of borrowing currently associated with such products will come down.
Today's interest rates are 12 to 15% if you want to get a loan using your bitcoin as collateral, said Bertie. The rates are high because there are so few financial institutions offering this type of product. We see an opportunity now that the regulations are allowing banks to do things with bitcoin. We think a lot of banks will want to enter this market, he added. Well, if Berty is correct in his predictions that banks are keen to offer bitcoin back loans, this will not only lower rates for such loans, but it will also introduce open source bitcoin software into the world of banking which could initiate a new trend in the industry. But more on that in a minute. First, some background on Galloy.
Founded in September of twenty nineteen, Galloy had intentions to enable banks to use Bitcoin from the start, but it had to hold off on doing so due to an unfriendly regulatory environment. So instead, it focused its efforts on creating and supporting Blink Wallet. Remember Blink Wallet? It was originally called the Bitcoin Beach Wallet and which Galois recently sold. And it's a custodial Bitcoin and lightning wallet predominantly used at first back in El Salvador and then in Bitcoin circular economies globally. Quote, Galloy's mission was to onboard banks to Bitcoin 5 years ago, said Bertie.
Quote, but the regulatory environment was so bad during the last five years that we decided to create blank. The reason we are now focusing on our original mission is because with the end of the choke point two point o situation and the repeal of SAB one twenty one, we think now is the perfect time to help banks adopt Bitcoin. Well, Bertie spoke about his work in creating and growing Blink Fondly and shared what he that he had to stop working on the project only because it would be too difficult to continue managing it while also aiming to serve a brand new type of clientele. Quote, Blink is a business to customer play, and it's hard as an early stage start up to focus on too many things.
Galloy is a business to business driven business, and we want to work with banks and financial institutions. It's good to be focused on just one thing, he added. And as mentioned, that one thing will now be Lana. So how does Lana work? Lana is a software that Galloy uses to help banks integrate and manage for a subscription fee. With the software, banks can issue Bitcoin backed loans under the terms that they create. Quote, we're not the only ones deciding how much interest will be charged or anything like that. We give banks the platform to do this, and then they can figure out their cost of capital, the duration of the loan, the liquidation price for the Bitcoin in the loan, and the rate at which they want to lend. We're giving you software and helping you run and automate that software, Goloy or, well, Bertie said. Something else that Goloy doesn't do for banks is custody that Bitcoin provided as collateral for the loans they issue.
Each of the banks with whom the company works is responsible for selecting their own custodian. You can go Bitco or Fireblocks or each or or each loan can have its own multisig. We're agnostic on custody. With that said, Lana helps banks monitor the Bitcoin in custody so that banks can be aware of whether or not collateral is nearing liquidation levels. Quote, a key piece of this product is risk management. Bitcoin is so volatile, and the bank will need a tool to show that it's taking calculated risk. So we'll provide banks with a dashboard to monitor this risk, said Bertie. So who's gonna use Lana?
Well, Gloy, like we said, is targeting community banks and other smaller financial institutions with this new product mostly because they think these smaller players will benefit most from it and because the big banks likely won't need such a product. Quote, we don't think JPMorgan will really want to work with us, said Bernie. They're probably building something like this themselves, whereas a smaller bank, credit union, or a small company probably is not. Bertie also understands that smaller lenders incorporating LANA, as opposed to building something comparable themselves, can save these financial institutions a significant amount amount of time and effort. Quote, our goal is to say, look, you can develop this internally, which will take you six months, a year, or longer depending on how much you know about Bitcoin.
Or we have a lending product as a service for you, and you can launch it much more quickly, said Bertie. And as Bertie and his team onboard their first round of smaller banks, they'll not only be making history in enabling more banks to accept Bitcoin as collateral for loans, but they'll potentially be altering the trajectory of banking in general by introducing open soft open source software. Oh, sweet. Open source Bitcoin banking. Bertie's long term vision for Galloy is to do much more than just help banks issue Bitcoin backed loans. He's looking to introduce open source software into banking as more banks begin to embrace Bitcoin. However, it's important to note that Lana isn't open source just yet. It's fair source software, and under such a license, code becomes open source after two years.
Quote, it's a delayed open source system, but it's all available on GitHub. You can go try it, test it, and play with it on your own. Under the FairSource license, no company other than Galloy can sell the product to a bank right now, allowing Galloy to profit while still building with auditable code. Quote, we sell the deployment and we help banks to plug it into their custodian. We're building in the open, but we also want to generate revenue. Beyond helping banks implement LANA, Berties wants to develop open source core banking software as he's looking to disrupt the, quote, core leg ledger oligopoly.
The core ledger is where banks store the account data, customer information, and transaction details. It's the source of truth for banks. And only three companies, FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry have the core ledger market cornered. Quote, these are all like hundred billion dollar companies that you've probably never heard about because all they do is focus on selling software to banks. Our long term goal is to disrupt this industry by making something that is open source. Today, there is no company that does core banking with the idea of open source, and we're working towards this. Bertie envisions a world in which open source software can make it much easier for someone to start a Bitcoin bank.
To start a bank today is a very expensive and complicated process, said Bertie. You have to pay a hundred thousand dollars plus just to purchase the CoreLedger tech. Berti then referenced his own experience in in starting the Blink Wallet, essentially a Bitcoin bank run on open source code before continuing, quote, I just I just went to El Salvador and started what was effectively my own bank because I wanted to. We need to reinvent how core banking software is being made in the world of bitcoin and I think this is where open source becomes relevant.
This is really why I think the world of banking and Bitcoin will become very different from the world of banking with fiat, and I think we're one of the companies at the forefront of this. Okay. Again, that was written by Frank Korva, who sounds to me like you just had a flat ass interview with, mister Bertie over there. I'm liking what I'm seeing because it's not a loan product that Bertie is constructing himself. That's what BlockFi did, and we all saw how that shit went. Right? This is a software package that is open source and or or will become open source after two years, but you can still go look at the code. You can still go audit it. You can still go run it. You just can't make a buck from it for two years. I actually don't have a problem with that. I'm surprised it's not five.
But still, I like the fact that they are not offering a loan product. They're offering a set of or a software suite to banks to make it easier for banks to make those loan products. That way it'll be up to each individual bank as to whether or not they're going to rug somebody or not. Now all I do I have not seen the software. I don't know how it works. I can only conjecture, But I am going to make an assumption that this is rock solid software just to say this. If it is rock solid software and it does exactly what mister Birney says it's going to do, well, then banks can just that's just turnkey.
They just get this stuff, plug it into their system, learn how to use it, and boom, they're off to the races. And if you hold Bitcoin, you already have collateral. You just need to go select the bank that won't rug pull your ass. But whoever does, it will not be Galloy's fault unless the software is faulty. But I'm like I said, I'm just making the assumption that it's not faulty. Let's move on to the Federal Reserve's governor, Waller, says that banks and non banks should be allowed to issue stablecoins. Buckle up. You're not gonna like this one, by the way. And it's written by Martin Young for Cointelegraph.
The United States Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said that stablecoins could expand the reach of the United States dollar while calling for a regulatory framework that would allow banks to issue dollar peg digital currencies. Stablecoins are an important innovation in the crypto ecosystem, Waller said at a conference in San Francisco. He added that the stablecoin market had matured and would benefit from a US regulatory and supervisory framework that addresses stablecoin risks directly, fully, and narrowly, adding that both non banks and banks should be able to issue stable coins. Well, I'm a non bank.
Gee, mister Waller, can can I just issue any kind of stable coin? Because I'm not a bank. I don't have a banking license. Hell yeah, brother. Let's go. Let's get some meme stablecoins going on. Anyway, quote, the framework should allow both non banks like me and and banks to issue regulated stablecoins and should consider the effects of regulation on the payments landscape including competing payment instruments. He also expressed confidence in the private sector to build stablecoin solutions for businesses and consumers while calling for clear regulations.
I believe in the power of the private sector to develop solutions that benefit businesses and consumers with the job of the public sector to create a fair set of rules for market participants to operate within. Waller acknowledged their current use cases in providing a safe store value within crypto trading access to the United States dollar. This is really important, and it's gonna come back to bite us in the ass in the next two stories. Especially in high inflation countries, cross border payments and retail payments, which are currently limited. Quote, I'm seeing a lot of new private sector entrants looking to find ways to support the use of stablecoins for retail payments.
However, there are challenges such as lack of a clear regulatory framework in The US for and the fragmentation between different state and international regulations and the need for balanced regulation that ensures safety without stifling innovation. He also highlighted the risks of de pegs and failures. While speaking at the Atlantic Council on February, Waller described stablecoins as, quote, synthetic dollars that were just like commercial bank money and that opens up other payment possibilities. If they can do that in a way that opens competition, broadens the reach of the payment system, drives down costs, makes things faster and cheaper.
I'm all for it. The Fed governor concluded with the hope that the stablecoin market will grow or diminish on the merits of their benefits to consumers and the broader economy. He reiterated that the private sector needs to continue developing innovative solutions, quote, that fit a market need while building sustainable business models, while the public sector needs to establish clear and targeted legal and regulatory framework coordinated across states and national boundaries, quote, to enable private sector innovation at a global scale.
Alright. So a lot of words, but there's there this is the thing. I've been telling you a lot about how stable coins are gonna be used to essentially reignite the bonfire of debt and be able to take the ashes and the coals and the burning embers of that bonfire and scatter them to the wind everywhere but The United States. We're going to offshore our debt again. We've been doing it forever, and now they've got a brand spanking new way to get this shit done. And everything that that Waller is saying is basically like like this one. If they can do that in a way that opens competition, you stop about stable coins, and broadens the reach of the payment system and drives down cost and makes things faster and cheaper, I'm all for it.
That's just that is a smokescreen because what they they don't give a shit if it lowers cost. They don't care if it's faster and cheaper. I guarantee it. What they care about is that Tether and USDC and any other idiot that issues stablecoins starts and continues to buy United States Treasury bonds, which is the way that we build debt. We just print it. This is this is so far beyond credit markets. It's not even funny. This is just flat debt, and we're going to offshore all of that debt to every other country in the world, and they're gonna do it through stablecoins. This is and this does worry me because stablecoins are I mean, they're they're I'm sorry. They're centralized.
That's why they that's why they work fast. Tether is a centralized thing. It is not decentralized. Do you have a Tether node? No. You don't. There's no such thing that I know of. It's it's not decentralized. It this is this debt under a brand spanking new banner that nobody has recognized before because the treasury market itself, nobody wants the treasuries. But if we offload the treasury in the debt construction to people like Tether and everybody in the world is, like, saying, oh, man, stablecoins are great, then that's how you're gonna be able to offload the debt because, basically, you're just going to have a third party custody the debt and turn that into what people think is money. It's the same fiat game all the way down.
We cannot stop being greedy. We cannot stop taking money from other people. We cannot stop diluting people's experience upon this planet, and we just fucking can't stop not moving the human race forward. We are shooting ourselves in the foot every single fucking day. I hate to say it that way, but that's what's going on. And it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. Remember what we were what I was just saying about about that. Now let's talk about what JPMorgan is saying about Tether. Now this is from CoinDesk, and it's written by Will Kenny, and it says Tether may have to sell some Bitcoin to comply with US Stablecoin rules according to JP Morgan.
USDT, issuer of Tether could face, sorry, USDT issuer Tether could face challenges, if proposed US Stablecoin regulations is passed. And the company may have to sell some of its reserves to comply with the new rules according to Wall Street Bank JP Morgan. The senate's guiding and establishing national innovation for US Stablecoins, aka the Genius Act, I hate these names, mandates that federal regulation for the stablecoin market cap of over $10,000,000,000, the report noted, with the potential for state regulation if it aligns with federal rules.
The House of Representatives STABLE Act calls for the state regulation without any conditions, Quote, reserve requirements under the STABLE Act are stricter, allowing insured deposits, United States Treasury bills, Treasury short term repo, and Central Bank reserves, analysts led by Nicholas, there's no way I can pronounce his last name, wrote, adding that the senate bill also permits money market funds and reverse repos. Quote, both bills, genius and stable, allow only high quality and liquid assets as reserves, the author of the JPMorgan report wrote. Tether dominates the stablecoin universe with a 60% market share. USDT has a market cap of about a hundred and 42,000,000,000.
JPMorgan said that the issuers reserves are only 66% compliant under the stable act and only 83% under the Genius Act citing the company's report. Furthermore, both figures suggest a decline in compliance ratio since the middle of last year as stablecoins simply surged, the bank added. Under the proposed regulations, Tether would have to replace non compliant assets with compliant ones, the report said. And this implies sales of their non compliant assets such as precious metals, Bitcoin, corporate paper, secured loans, and other investments, and purchases of compliant assets such as treasury bills.
Quote, Tether is closely monitoring the evolution of The United States' different stablecoin bills and also actively engaging with local regulators. Consultation from the industry needs to happen, and it's still unclear which bill will move forward, a Tether spokesperson said in an emailed comments. Even in the most extreme scenario, JPMorgan discounts the fact that Tether's group equity is over $20,000,000,000 in other very liquid assets and is generating more than 1,200,000,000.0 in profits every quarter, not year. 1,200,000,000.0 in profits is what Tether is doing every freaking quarter.
Adapting new requirements will be straightforward, the person added. Tether CEO Paolo Adorno said in a tweet on Twitter on Thursday, following publication of the bank's report that, quote, JPM analysts are just salty because they don't own Bitcoin, end quote. New rules calling for increased transparency and more frequent reserve audits could also pose further challenges for Tether, the report added. Okay. So JPMorgan is looks it looks to me like they may be engaging in FUD. It's possible. It's possible that they might, but here we've got a situation where JPMorgan's released this report saying Tether's gonna have to sell their Bitcoin.
Yeah. Sure. Right. Whatever. It's the most liquid asset out there. And now Tether's hitting back saying, essentially, you're you're not even seeing the rest of this stuff that that is absolutely liquid and absolutely compliant. We're not gonna have to do dick. So who's right? I don't know. But you know what? I'll bet you my hat that they don't have to sell their Bitcoin. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that right now. Alright. Let's move on to the weather report. It's gonna be brought to you by Maple Trade. Maple Trade is over in the Circle P. The Circle P is open for business, and he is sold out until March according to his Noster profile. What does he make? He makes maple syrup. He makes it by hand. It's very good. I have tried this stuff.
It is absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and you could actually get real maple syrup damn near anywhere that you went in the grocery store, and now it's all basically corn syrup with maple flavoring. That's not what you're gonna get from Maple Trade. Make damn sure that you start getting your orders in. You'll have to DM him or get a hold of him on Noster or on Twitter. On Twitter, it is at b e I s n e r d s. And by the way, in the show notes, you will have direct links, URLs to both his Nostra profile and his Twitter profile.
Get a hold of him. If you order anything, including his sister Sarah's soaps, which are handmade soaps, and I've tried those too and they're awesome, make sure you tell him that you heard about him here on Circle p. And that way, he can cut me some satoshis for any sales that I might make. Alright. Let's get into the weather report. CNBC futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate oil is down point 13% after a pretty brutal, aftermarket performance last night. It's down to $71.28. Brent Norsee, however, holding its own.
It's down slightly to 75 and 1¢. Natural gas is swinging for the fences. 1.7% to the upside brings it to $3.62 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up over half to $2.10 a gallon. Gold doing well today, up two thirds of a point to $29.46 and 50¢. Congratulations, Peter Schiff. Silver is down a quarter of a point. Platinum is down a half. Copper is up one and a half, and palladium is up three and a third. Ag is looking pretty green today. Biggest winner is chocolate. 3.64% to the upside. The only one in the red is cotton, point 79% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third. Lean hogs are down a third. Feeder cattle are up almost a full point.
The Dow is up over a quarter of a point. The S and P is up over a half point. Nasdaq is point 82% to the upside, and the S and P Mini is point three. Now on to Clark Moody Bitcoin or dashboard.clarkmoody.com, where we have a price of 95,740 because paper hands out there just keep lighting themselves on fire. We got a $1,900,000,000,000 market cap. We can only purchase 32.7 ounces of the shiny metal rock with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,823,551.16 of. And average fees per block are low, but don't expect that to last. Why?
Well, because the mempool is now chilling out, high priorities, 8 Satoshis per v byte, low priorities are at six. But we have 23,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting on a total of, I don't know, 16 blocks to clear. Now why am I saying get ready? Well, it looks like those, Blockchain wizard guys, the Inscriptions and Ordinal guys, you know, Ernie Udi Wertheimer, I told you that they were gonna get, like, $30,000,000. Well, it looks like they've closed that deal because inscriptions are all over the blockchain. They started coming in today, and it's just they're everywhere. It's like what the blockchain or it's like what the mempools around the world used to look like, except there's not quite so many blocks as of yet.
But, man, I mean, I'm just I'm looking at mempool dot space right now, and I've got it set to where all I'm seeing is inscriptions, and they're freaking everywhere. So it looks like they've been funded over at Bitcoin Wizards or whatever they call themselves, and spam is now entering the blockchain again. So I hope you did your consolidations. If you haven't, you might wanna consider doing that shit right now. Okay? Now over to mining where we have a hash rate of 813.5 exahashes per second. So we still have quite a bit of hash rate online, and it looks like we're clearing blocks at an average of ten point five minutes.
So, yeah, just wait for the inscriptions. They're they're they're piling up. I've never I mean, I haven't seen this kind of activity on the blockchain in at least a week. So there it is. Alright. From my forest mentor, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got FOMO chronic with 5,000 sats. Dude, thanks. He says, enjoyed the mycology segment. Wouldn't say no to more of that. Yeah. You'll probably get more of that. Anonymous with 5,000 says, always enjoy the Bitcoin content, but these types of topics are great. This episode was incredibly interesting. Alright.
Ju Huang with 5,000 sat says, love it when Bitcoiners nerd out on nonprofit ideas. No. Sorry. Not nonprofit. Non Bitcoin ideas. Jay with twenty one hundred says, there's a lot to learn from the forest. Thanks for sharing your insights. And then Jay actually gives me another 2,100 and says there's a lot to learn from the forest. Thanks for sharing your speech. Interesting. Chef Tommy with a thousand says, early in my career as a young chef, I was introduced to mushroom foraging, which I still practice and hope to pass down to my children. Once I learned about how to find them, it unlocked my mind to how everything is connected.
My hobby is farming a small vineyard, yeah, and making wine from it every year. Promoting soil health has been a game changer over the years. I'm not only practicing viticulture, but, also performing or also becoming a mycelium and dirt farmer. This was a joy to hear, and thanks for making more connections with this subject to Bitcoin. Absolutely brilliant. Here is some value for value. Hopefully, one day the world will understand how much mycelium can help and heal our planet. Connection is protection. Chef Tommy must listen to, no agenda, the the no agenda, podcast because connection is protection is something they say all the time over there. Thank you, chef Tommy. I appreciate, you writing that note.
You're not a dirt farmer. Just I I just wanna be clear about how I I feel about that. Dirt is simply the the crystallized minerals from rock, but it's an absolute necessary component as the matrix for soil. And the other part of that matrix for soil is the life, like bugs and critters and bacteria and amoeba and fungi and all the the the neat stuff that makes soil soil, but you wouldn't be able to do that without the mate the other crystalline matrix that is dirt. When I see dirt, I see dead. You're not farming dirt. You're farming soil.
Dirt is what you're beginning with, And I like thinking of it that way for myself. Of course, chef Tommy, you are free to do whatever the hell you you want. Yes, chef. Anonymous with a thousand says great episode. Oh, bo de gebox boy says five with 500, absolutely nothing. Four twenty from a guy who doesn't even have a handle says, love that you brought the fungi. Talk to the podcast. Really had me thinking about comparisons between fungal networks and social media. Yeah. It's the same dude. May have to write a follow-up, to my only zaps article with a fungal twist. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with four twenty says value for value, ring the bell something in strong-arm.
Pies with four twenty with another three bells and three strong arms. Pies with four twenty says v four v. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with two twenty two says you are a fountain app of knowledge. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Jay with two ten says, oops. I boosted twice. I tripped, and now all of my sats are falling out of my pockets. Yodel with 200 says, into the woods. Paragon with a hundred says, bro, I was totally engaged with your section on mycorrhizae fungi. I really appreciate that mind opener.
Yeah. It's it is it's actually, it's what I touched on barely even scratches the surface. It's it's it's a hell of a rabbit hole. That's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Take this first one with a grain of salt. Wyoming Highway Patrol Association considers buying bitcoin. Connor Sefton from Decrypt. A United States law enforcement agency might soon add bitcoin to its balance sheet for the very first time. The Wyoming Highway Patrol Association, which supports officers and staff across the state, is evaluating whether to start investing in this digital asset. Quote, we are excited to explore bitcoin as a network and asset to evaluate ways it can further support our organization and its members, WHPA vice president Austin Bloomel said. Okay. I gotta pause.
This is not a law enforcement agency. It is a the Wyoming Highway Patrol Association. It's a nonprofit. They do not actually employ any law enforcement officers. Okay? So the a bit misleading at the very top of this article, no. The Highway Patrol of Wyoming is not considering buying Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet, which I would assume would be for their pension plan. No. No. No. No. No. No. This is the Wyoming State Highway Patrol Association. These are the guys that call you, ask you for money, and send you a sticker that looks like a badge so you can put it on your windshield because you think you're not gonna get a ticket because you gave money to the cops. It is it it's a racket is what it is. But, hey, at least they wanna buy some Bitcoin.
Now maybe maybe if they were an actual law enforcement, you know, agency and they had actual real law enforcement officers, they could have stopped the following from happening. From atlas21.com, kidnapping in Chicago. Entire family held for $15,000,000 crypto ransom. I'm telling you, stop telling people in meat space that you have Bitcoin. Stop it. Just stop. An unbelievable case of kidnapping and extortion has shaken Chicago where six, count them, six men have been charged with kidnapping an entire family of three and their babysitter, forcing them to transfer the equivalent of $15,000,000 in cryptocurrency.
According to a recently declassified FBI document reported by the Chicago Tribune, the kidnappers carried out a detailed plan showing up at the family's home under the pretext of accidentally damaging their garage. Once inside, they raided the house at gunpoint. The victims were then forced into a van and taken to an Airbnb an hour away where they spent the night before being moved to another location the next day. During their five days, five days of captivity, the kidnappers threatened to kill the hostages if they did not pay the ransom in Bitcoin or Shitcoin number one.
The breakthrough came when one of the victims managed to contact their father via the Chinese messaging app WeChat informing him of the kidnapping. On November 2024, the hostages were released and went to a local hospital after calling an Uber from a nearby laundromat. Although the victims claimed to have transferred cryptocurrency worth 15,000,000, United States authorities have so far been, able to trace only 6,000,000 of that 15. On December, '6 suspects were formally charged, and then they give their names. One is 34, and the other was yeah.
I can't pronounce his name. This guy, he's 34 years old, arrested while attempting to reenter The US from Mexico on January, and Fan Zhang Huang Yan, Xinjiang Jibugan. I cannot pronounce these names. Some are believed to have fled to China after Wei's arrest. Evidence collected by investigators include surveillance footage from the Airbnb, crypto wallet analysis, and forensic evidence from the white Ford van used in the kidnapping. Investigators also collected DNA samples from the Chrysler Pacifica rented by way. At least two victims identified some of the alleged kidnappers through mug shots, and the victims reported that the kidnappers spoke both Mandarin and Spanish.
Sounds like we've got a much bigger problem on our hands than we thought. Seems like I mean, Mandarin and Spanish, and he was arrested at the, United States Mexico border, but he's a Chinese national. Sorry. Pausing to take a sip of coffee there because that's bullshit. So family of three and their babysitter. So you got a young child, probably a not much older child as the babysitter, and the mother and the father, at gunpoint because somebody lied to them about running into their garage and damaging it and gained access to the house, and they had an Airbnb waiting. This this family was being cased. I am telling you, this shit is gonna get worse.
You need to stop wearing Bitcoin swag. And I really do apologize to all the guys out there that listen to me that make Bitcoin t shirts. I'm not trying to screw your sales up. I'm trying to keep people alive. I'm not lying here, man. I'm not I'm not this isn't hyperbole. This shit's getting worse and worse and worse. And if you go out in public and you're wearing a great big orange shirt with a great big Bitcoin on it, that is not a Bitcoin. That is a target symbol. That is a kidnap me. I've got Bitcoin. They don't know how much you have and you know what? It's probably not gonna matter. They're just going to assume that you've got some and they want it. But now they know who to look at. They know who to throw in the van. They know who who's head to bag.
Stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Stop it. Stop getting hammered at fucking bars and telling people that you got 300 Bitcoin. Stop doing that. It's nobody's business but your own. Yes. I know. You know my full name. You know I live in Eastern Washington. I have a little bit of Bitcoin. I shouldn't be saying that, but I've already been saying that for six years. What do you think? I I mean, I I am guilty of my very own stupidity. That's why I'm saying, look, please, for the love of God, don't say anything in public. Certainly, don't if you know somebody knows you've got Bitcoin and they've invited you back to their hotel room, big red flag. Even if you know them well, you don't know them well enough.
You cannot allow yourself to be put in these vulnerable situations. Right? Stop wearing the swag because that way, people you've never even talked to, and that's bad enough, but people you haven't even talked to now know that you probably have Bitcoin and you are now a target. So I'm I'm serious. This is getting bad and it's probably gonna get worse. Now, Coracle, my friend HODL bot has released version 0.6. It features end start onboarding, note scheduling, nice, and Olas Media Support. It is a free and open source web client for the Nostra protocol focused on relay selection and management, web of trust based moderation, and content recommendations, as well as privacy protection. It's available on the web and on Android.
Coreacle version 0.6 is out. I know the hype has died down, but this release brings long awaited support for rendering kind 20 or o lost notes. Along with that, media viewing has gotten an overhaul and should be a much nicer experience now, announced hodl mod. This release introduces several notable improvements including support for the kind 20 image events, the implementation of end start for onboarding brand new users, and note scheduling via DVMs or data vending machines. Additionally, it comes with support for Tor and local relays. Quote, other than that, we've got note publish scheduling via DVM, pinned note support, and lots of improvements to, to speed and stability, you know, fewer spinners added huddle bot. So what's new?
Well, support for Tor and local relays, using end start for onboarding, organized media into grids and add full screen overlay view for images. There's a lot of bug fixes. There's a lot of stuff in here guys. So if for whatever reason you have not been trying Coracle, I highly recommend that you go try Coracle. And where are you gonna go get Coreacle? Well, you're gonna go get Coreacle at hold on. Don't I I gotta access core.social. Yeah. It's coreacle.social. I've just when I use it, I've I it's just a like a it's a cookie in my browser. It just comes it just populates up, so I never can remember what if it's com or org or social or what. But it's coracle.social. So go check it out today and tell Huddl bod that I told you all about it. US Customs and Border Protection broadens its crackdown on Asian ASICs according to a report.
The US Customs and Border Protection is seizing Bitcoin mining ASICs. Oh, joy. US Customs and Border Protection is seizing Bitcoin mining ASICs at US ports of entry at the Federal Communication Commission's direction. That's the FCC. So the FCC is telling customs and border patrol or protection to physically seize mining machines. The agency is now also detaining micro b t and kanan units according to CBP documents reviewed by blocks based media and industry sources. One of the sources said that it had $5,000,000 worth of its equipment seized.
Quote, this is to inform you that US Customs and Border Protection seized, seized this, honkis, seized the property described below at San Francisco International Airport on January 2025, a Bitmain s twenty one pro two hundredth cryptocurrency mining machine states the CBP letter shared with blockspace media. The letter states that the miners were seized and subject to forfeiture under section, was 19 of United States code one five nine five a c two a for involving unauthorized communication devices, interfering radio frequency equipment, and non compliant FCC devices. Oh, this is not good.
Virtually every Asian ASIC manufacturer is being impacted by customs clearance issues, said Syntech Digital CEO, Taras Kilyuk. Additionally, the custom clearance issues are now occurring at numerous ports instead of just Detroit or San Francisco. One affected company said that it is seeking partners to take legal action against the government for the seizures. Jesus. So it's just Asian it's just Asian asics, but that's like 95% of the market. I don't know of anybody else outside of Asia that's actually building these things, except possibly, I think, Ocean is, like, about to get into it.
I'm not sure, man. But this this is not good. And it is in direct it it completely is a an about face from the Trump administration saying that we're going to be the center for Bitcoin mining. Well, not if you don't let the miners in. That's not gonna happen there, Don. So get off your ass and tell the FCC to stop fucking around. Maybe maybe doge should be sent out to the FCC to see what the hell's going on. I'll bet that'll turn them around right quick. Alright. Cold card mark four version five point four point one and q version one point three point one have been released.
There's new message signing features, new address display, and more. Coldcard mark four is an ultra secure and verifiable hardware wallet for bitcoin. Coldcard q is the higher end cold card that comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, a larger LCD screen, a real QR scanner, and more. The latest firmware updates for Coldcard Mark four and q hardware signer devices deliver new message signing features including the ability to sign a message from secure note text or password note, json messaging signing, signing with a key resulting from a positive ownership check, and signing with a key selected from the address explorer custom path menu. It also includes delta mode enhancements, address display changes, and many more other improvements.
Quote, delta mode is a special trick pin mode where we let it seem this is a terrible sentence and I I'm just gonna read it word for word because I can't readjust it. Delta mode is a special trick pin mode where we let seem to let the attackers into your vault. They see the true xpub and your actual UTXO. Signing even seems to work, but if the transaction is broadcast, it will not be accepted by the network. We've added some updates to handle more cases where the, quote, jig is up and the cold card wipes the seed rather than reveal your seed words or other secrets, said the project. Okay. I am a cold card user. I have a mark four.
No. I've no. I yeah. It is a mark four. I do not have the queue, although one of these days I want one. About these tricks and being able to, you know, not show, you know, allow people to get to your Bitcoin by using, a fake pin or or in this case, this delta mode where it looks like you send a transaction, but the transaction can never hit the blockchain. If they if your attacker is is smart enough to to figure out how to do all this, they're probably smart enough to check to see if the transaction hit the blockchain. And if it's not, they're gonna know something's up. They might just beat you because they're pissed. What I'm getting at is that while I think it's a good idea to have these features developed and further developed as time goes on, I I I want to iterate the fact that just because you've got the ability to, I don't know, like, enter in a twenty fifth word on your seed phrase in your cold card and you actually default to a different wallet that has only, like, 0.01 Bitcoin in it, and you say, that's my wallet, that's all I've got, that is in no way, shape, or form guarantees that your attacker doesn't get straight up pissed off that that's all they're gonna get and just decides to shoot your ass just because.
Do not put it past the any member of the human race to be despicable, ugly, and and just a straight up monster. When my children were younger, and I still tell them this today, even though that they don't worry about monsters under their bed, I tell them that the monster under their bed is probably nicer than some of the human beings that they're going to meet. Many humans are genuine good people. In fact, I'd say the the great guts and feathers of humanity has good intentions and just wants to be left alone and furthermore wants to leave each other alone. But there are fucking psychopaths out there that you have no idea how they're gonna react to anything, much less taking the time to abduct your ass, take you to an Airbnb that they spent money on, and then find out that you've put in the wrong password and have your cold card wiped and that's it, sayonora motherfucker, you don't think that you might get not get beat within an inch of your life? You are fooling yourself.
So much better precautions than just a twenty fifth word that you assign as a different wallet in your cold card that has a scant amount of Bitcoin in it that you don't mind if you lose is not guaranteed to assuage whatever attack you're gonna go under. And let's pray to God that everybody in the range of my voice is never gonna have to do that. And I hope that for myself too. Because you saw that Chicago family, five days of captivity under constant threat of being killed. That will jack your mind up like you're fucked for life mentally.
You will never be able to heal from that. It doesn't mean that you won't be fully functional. It just means that that will always be with you. You will carry that as a mother and a father thinking that for five straight days your child could be killed in front of your eyes, and much less yourself, too. Could you imagine being the father? First, they start with the babysitter, then they kill your child, and then they off your wife? This shit happens, man, because humans have not figured out a way to fully crawl out from the muck that is the slime from whence we came.
I still have a high hope for humanity in general, but it's shit like this that pisses me off. So do your best to protect yourself, and I will see you on the other side.
[01:05:15] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Missing $4.20 by a mere five hours. This is episode ten thirty seven of Bitcoin. And, yes, it is the February 2025. It's 09:20AM Pacific Standard Time. Like I said, man, I just clipped. I just barely missed coming on at 04:20. But, you know, hey. What are you gonna do? Okay. So, we got I'm gonna do some, instead of like yesterday, I did a whole episode or almost a whole half episode on, mycelial connections in the forest and whatnot. And people seem to really enjoy that. Today, I am going to go back to the news because it is a news heavy day and there's some funky stuff going on. We're gonna talk about Galois is launching a loan product against Bitcoin.
We're gonna find out by reading this thing if this is something that is worthy or worthy to be thrown in the trash because most loan products, I I just I don't like. Ever since BlockFi ever since BlockFi, man, a lot of us that looked at it and started looking deeper into BlockFi started realizing that it was just it was either gonna be a straight up scam or it was gonna just end poorly. I mean, it didn't matter. It was going to it was going to end badly either way, and it did. It was part of the whole FTX, Alameda Research, BlockFi, the whole tumble when all the shit came tumbling down.
Yeah. BlockFi was there and they were doing Bitcoin loans. We warned. Let's let's see if Galloy is going to actually do this the right way or if they're just gonna do it the wrong way. One of the Fed governors is saying that banks or non banks should also be able to, you know, issue stablecoins. And we've got a battle between JP Morgan and Tether. They're sniping at each other, and it is on an important subject. So we're gonna go through that. Wyoming is in the news. There's, yet more warnings as to why you don't talk about Bitcoin and meet space or wear swag or, you know, get hammered at a Bitcoin conference and walk your happy ass out into the parking lot all by your loan, submit 02:00 in the morning. Alright? Another warning.
Coracle has an update. There's some stuff going on with the US Customs and Border Patrol, and then Coldcard also has an update. But, before we do any of that, I wanna go back to yesterday's episode because what I I failed to do is I had I had alluded to the fact that I I was listening to the survival podcast, Jack Spirit Coast podcast, and he had done an entire two entire episodes that were not generated by AI because it's his voice. He's the one that's doing it. He's just used AI to simply get some, you know, topics and then refine those topics and get it into place. And he was talking about how, you know, what would have normally taken him, like, two hours and forty five minutes or two and a half hours and cut it down to, like, being able to prep that show in something like thirty minutes. And he's trying to demonstrate the use of these tools are not all bad.
And he's absolutely correct. However, there what I what I was wanting to bring to the table was sort of like how I used Obsidian to set up yesterday's show. And if you've heard this podcast, you know, enough times, you've heard me talk about Obsidian as a note taking app. And you're going, what the hell is a note taking app? Okay. It it there are several note taking apps that are available. Apple Notes is one of the, you know, one of the main ones, but that's that just taking a note isn't really all that interesting. I I it reminded me of something. No. No. No. No.
This is a note taking application that follows in the footsteps of this thing called Zettelkasten, which I won't get into, like, the history of it. But what Zettelkasten enables people to do is when you're reading a book or maybe a scientific paper, maybe you're just reading a fiction book and and there was a really good idea in there and you you highlighted it. Right? But you put the book back on the shelf and you forgot that that note was there. Without a system of being able to take these notes from the stuff that you read or or you could even take you can use it to even take notes from, like, something that you heard on a podcast or an audiobook or, you know, as as long as you have a system to where after you've taken the note, you have a place to go compile that note alongside the rest of the other notes that you're doing, then you have the possibility to make the connections between the notes.
And that's one of the reasons why I use Obsidian. And and there's other things like it. There's something called Roam, and there's, like, I don't know, two or three other ones. But I love Obsidian. It is rock solid as a platform. It doesn't tweak out on me. It's got a great community community development, developer community behind it. And and the the plugins that that those people build and make and whatever, Most of them are free. You can, you know, you can give them money if you want, and and I highly recommend doing that. But the the main application of Obsidian is also free, and you can, you know, tip those developers as well. And I also recommend that you do that. But the platform is so rock solid. I've never had a problem. I've never seen it glitch out. I've never seen it crash. And I put my shit through through the wringer. Right? So that's one of the reasons why I use Obsidian.
Now any of these note taking apps that work sort of in the Zettelkasten mentality of being able to take notes and relate those notes to other notes, maybe not even from the same book. Maybe I'm reading something about mycorrhizal fungi and they talk about carbon, and then all of a sudden, I start looking around my my Obsidian repository, which is it's got a great search function. And I could say search only in my my old notes that I've already done for the word carbon. Don't look anywhere else. And then all of a sudden it will show me all the notes where I talked about carbon because I know somewhere in there I've got a note that somehow relates to what it is that I'm just writing. And then I go and I look and it takes time, but it's worth it because then I'll all happen across the note saying that's the what I was thinking about.
Now, see, now I can remember if I were to try to do this with a bookshelf full of books that I've read. Good luck, because it shit ain't going to happen. You're not even going to remember where the hell it was. This enables you to use computers to and the and the and the beauty of a search function to be able to go pull out these notes. Now, that's half of the story. The other half of the story is that now that I'm writing this new note and I found my old note, I can slip in a function, and it's real easy. To me, it's just I start with with bracket bracket, and Obsidian knows that I'm trying to link to another thing in my Obsidian repository where I keep everything.
And then it will give me some suggestions, but I already know the name of the note, the title of the note that I'm looking for because I just found it. And I start typing it that in, and it's like, oh, yeah. You mean this one? And it populates a pop up list, and I just select that note in the pop up list and boom, I've got a link. It's like a URL or like a hyperlink, except it only goes back to that note. So now the next time that I see that note, I look down and go, oh, I've got this related to another note. And then if I click that, I get that other note that I've related this other note to. I know that sounds kind of confusing, but it's a way to it's it's a way to form a relationship between two things that might be dissimilar. But when you're reading it and this all boils down to it depends on how you take notes, on what you're looking for, on what your center of interest is in, and everybody's gonna be different. So all I can describe is sort of how I used it to do yesterday's show.
So now that I've got this note and I go down to the bottom where I put, hey. This is all my related notes are are, like, right here. And then I put, like and and I might have one. I might have two. Hell, I might find that a note that I just wrote relates to three different notes from three completely different books. So when I now I've got, like, a little bibliography inside of my new note that takes me to what I remembered it related to last year. You're not going to be able to remember that all by yourself, and that's the power. So that's the way that I used Obsidian to build the show yesterday.
It's not artificial intelligence. It doesn't I'm not suggesting that my method is better than Jack's method of using AI. It's comp it's comparing apples and oranges. However, we were both able to produce some really good shows simply by using a toolset. He used AI for his two Matrix shows, and I used Obsidian and the Zettelkasten method to do yesterday's show, and y'all seem to really like it. So what I was able to do is start with a single note and say, where does this lead me? Well, I know I I have directionality. I I know the direction that I can take because I can just look at the bottom of the note and say, okay. Well, there's two notes there. What are they how how are they related? And then I'm going down the rabbit hole.
And twenty minutes to thirty minutes later, I had an entire show set up, and all I had to do was use my own brain to sort of organize it. And boom, I already had all the material that I needed to talk about right in front of my face. And I because I had all the notes opened, and I and and and I organized them in the way that I wanted to do that. So, like, I would, like, start looking at one note as I was talking and go, you know, tell you the information in there and how it related to what I was talking about, and then boom, close that tab because I can keep multiple tabs open, and each tab represents a different note in Obsidian. And then I move to the next note, and then I move to the next note. So it's a combination of presentation skill, public speaking skill, and having solid material to actually work with.
So this is another way. However, what I want to make painfully clear is that I've been working on this Obsidian repository for over a year and a half, and it's pretty big. There's going to be a way to get AI to crawl through just my notes, not connect to the Internet, not look at anything else, just my one or possibly two repositories and ask it a question. On a weighted scale of one to 10, where 10 being the most relational weight between two notes, Go tie everything together and show me a map. That doesn't mean that it's going to do the right thing, but it what it will do is it will give me some ideas like, oh, I did not realize that that one note related to three other notes that I never actually put two and two together. And then I'll go vet that or, quote, unquote, ground truth that and say, yes.
The AI was actually right, at least about maybe these two notes. The other one, not so much, but it drew me there. When we look at where this future is going, we don't have to be scared of AI. We can use it as a tool. Nobody is scared of Obsidian taking over somebody's job. But what they should be scared of is the use of these two tools both separately and at one point or another together, and that's coming fast. People that do not leverage these tools are going to be toast. Absolute toast. In fact, maybe I'm thinking about possibly doing a ZapStream where I talk about Obsidian so that you can actually see what it is that I'm doing.
If you really wanna see that, boost today's show. Not yesterday's show or the day before. Boost today's show. I don't care if it's only a hundred sats because that's the minimum that you can do. I don't care I don't need you going, hey. I'll do 27 give me 27,000 sats so that I'll put your ID up there. That that's not it. I just need some feedback as to whether or not you would want to go sit on a ZapStream and look at you know, watch a video, maybe ask me some questions about Obsidian and how it's used and what it looks like. And if you guys really want that, I'll do it. And I may do it anyway. I don't know. But we're gonna get into the news. Let's transition to this whole Bitcoin magazine's article on Galloy who's launching a Bitcoin backed loan software and sets the groundwork for open source banking.
Frank Korva writing this one again for Bitcoin Magazine. Last week, Galloy, g a l o y, launched Lana, software that enables banks to accept Bitcoin as collateral for loans. Lana or Lana helps community and challenger banks, which is the banks with which Galloy is looking to work, to offer bitcoin backed loans to various types of customers. Some banks might want to use it to sell to retail and some might want to use it to sell commercial customers or high net worth individuals, Bertie told Bitcoin Magazine. And by the way, the founder of Galois is Nicholas Bertie, so that's who they're talking to. Now in offering such loans to a wide array of customers, Bertie believes that the high cost of borrowing currently associated with such products will come down.
Today's interest rates are 12 to 15% if you want to get a loan using your bitcoin as collateral, said Bertie. The rates are high because there are so few financial institutions offering this type of product. We see an opportunity now that the regulations are allowing banks to do things with bitcoin. We think a lot of banks will want to enter this market, he added. Well, if Berty is correct in his predictions that banks are keen to offer bitcoin back loans, this will not only lower rates for such loans, but it will also introduce open source bitcoin software into the world of banking which could initiate a new trend in the industry. But more on that in a minute. First, some background on Galloy.
Founded in September of twenty nineteen, Galloy had intentions to enable banks to use Bitcoin from the start, but it had to hold off on doing so due to an unfriendly regulatory environment. So instead, it focused its efforts on creating and supporting Blink Wallet. Remember Blink Wallet? It was originally called the Bitcoin Beach Wallet and which Galois recently sold. And it's a custodial Bitcoin and lightning wallet predominantly used at first back in El Salvador and then in Bitcoin circular economies globally. Quote, Galloy's mission was to onboard banks to Bitcoin 5 years ago, said Bertie.
Quote, but the regulatory environment was so bad during the last five years that we decided to create blank. The reason we are now focusing on our original mission is because with the end of the choke point two point o situation and the repeal of SAB one twenty one, we think now is the perfect time to help banks adopt Bitcoin. Well, Bertie spoke about his work in creating and growing Blink Fondly and shared what he that he had to stop working on the project only because it would be too difficult to continue managing it while also aiming to serve a brand new type of clientele. Quote, Blink is a business to customer play, and it's hard as an early stage start up to focus on too many things.
Galloy is a business to business driven business, and we want to work with banks and financial institutions. It's good to be focused on just one thing, he added. And as mentioned, that one thing will now be Lana. So how does Lana work? Lana is a software that Galloy uses to help banks integrate and manage for a subscription fee. With the software, banks can issue Bitcoin backed loans under the terms that they create. Quote, we're not the only ones deciding how much interest will be charged or anything like that. We give banks the platform to do this, and then they can figure out their cost of capital, the duration of the loan, the liquidation price for the Bitcoin in the loan, and the rate at which they want to lend. We're giving you software and helping you run and automate that software, Goloy or, well, Bertie said. Something else that Goloy doesn't do for banks is custody that Bitcoin provided as collateral for the loans they issue.
Each of the banks with whom the company works is responsible for selecting their own custodian. You can go Bitco or Fireblocks or each or or each loan can have its own multisig. We're agnostic on custody. With that said, Lana helps banks monitor the Bitcoin in custody so that banks can be aware of whether or not collateral is nearing liquidation levels. Quote, a key piece of this product is risk management. Bitcoin is so volatile, and the bank will need a tool to show that it's taking calculated risk. So we'll provide banks with a dashboard to monitor this risk, said Bertie. So who's gonna use Lana?
Well, Gloy, like we said, is targeting community banks and other smaller financial institutions with this new product mostly because they think these smaller players will benefit most from it and because the big banks likely won't need such a product. Quote, we don't think JPMorgan will really want to work with us, said Bernie. They're probably building something like this themselves, whereas a smaller bank, credit union, or a small company probably is not. Bertie also understands that smaller lenders incorporating LANA, as opposed to building something comparable themselves, can save these financial institutions a significant amount amount of time and effort. Quote, our goal is to say, look, you can develop this internally, which will take you six months, a year, or longer depending on how much you know about Bitcoin.
Or we have a lending product as a service for you, and you can launch it much more quickly, said Bertie. And as Bertie and his team onboard their first round of smaller banks, they'll not only be making history in enabling more banks to accept Bitcoin as collateral for loans, but they'll potentially be altering the trajectory of banking in general by introducing open soft open source software. Oh, sweet. Open source Bitcoin banking. Bertie's long term vision for Galloy is to do much more than just help banks issue Bitcoin backed loans. He's looking to introduce open source software into banking as more banks begin to embrace Bitcoin. However, it's important to note that Lana isn't open source just yet. It's fair source software, and under such a license, code becomes open source after two years.
Quote, it's a delayed open source system, but it's all available on GitHub. You can go try it, test it, and play with it on your own. Under the FairSource license, no company other than Galloy can sell the product to a bank right now, allowing Galloy to profit while still building with auditable code. Quote, we sell the deployment and we help banks to plug it into their custodian. We're building in the open, but we also want to generate revenue. Beyond helping banks implement LANA, Berties wants to develop open source core banking software as he's looking to disrupt the, quote, core leg ledger oligopoly.
The core ledger is where banks store the account data, customer information, and transaction details. It's the source of truth for banks. And only three companies, FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry have the core ledger market cornered. Quote, these are all like hundred billion dollar companies that you've probably never heard about because all they do is focus on selling software to banks. Our long term goal is to disrupt this industry by making something that is open source. Today, there is no company that does core banking with the idea of open source, and we're working towards this. Bertie envisions a world in which open source software can make it much easier for someone to start a Bitcoin bank.
To start a bank today is a very expensive and complicated process, said Bertie. You have to pay a hundred thousand dollars plus just to purchase the CoreLedger tech. Berti then referenced his own experience in in starting the Blink Wallet, essentially a Bitcoin bank run on open source code before continuing, quote, I just I just went to El Salvador and started what was effectively my own bank because I wanted to. We need to reinvent how core banking software is being made in the world of bitcoin and I think this is where open source becomes relevant.
This is really why I think the world of banking and Bitcoin will become very different from the world of banking with fiat, and I think we're one of the companies at the forefront of this. Okay. Again, that was written by Frank Korva, who sounds to me like you just had a flat ass interview with, mister Bertie over there. I'm liking what I'm seeing because it's not a loan product that Bertie is constructing himself. That's what BlockFi did, and we all saw how that shit went. Right? This is a software package that is open source and or or will become open source after two years, but you can still go look at the code. You can still go audit it. You can still go run it. You just can't make a buck from it for two years. I actually don't have a problem with that. I'm surprised it's not five.
But still, I like the fact that they are not offering a loan product. They're offering a set of or a software suite to banks to make it easier for banks to make those loan products. That way it'll be up to each individual bank as to whether or not they're going to rug somebody or not. Now all I do I have not seen the software. I don't know how it works. I can only conjecture, But I am going to make an assumption that this is rock solid software just to say this. If it is rock solid software and it does exactly what mister Birney says it's going to do, well, then banks can just that's just turnkey.
They just get this stuff, plug it into their system, learn how to use it, and boom, they're off to the races. And if you hold Bitcoin, you already have collateral. You just need to go select the bank that won't rug pull your ass. But whoever does, it will not be Galloy's fault unless the software is faulty. But I'm like I said, I'm just making the assumption that it's not faulty. Let's move on to the Federal Reserve's governor, Waller, says that banks and non banks should be allowed to issue stablecoins. Buckle up. You're not gonna like this one, by the way. And it's written by Martin Young for Cointelegraph.
The United States Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said that stablecoins could expand the reach of the United States dollar while calling for a regulatory framework that would allow banks to issue dollar peg digital currencies. Stablecoins are an important innovation in the crypto ecosystem, Waller said at a conference in San Francisco. He added that the stablecoin market had matured and would benefit from a US regulatory and supervisory framework that addresses stablecoin risks directly, fully, and narrowly, adding that both non banks and banks should be able to issue stable coins. Well, I'm a non bank.
Gee, mister Waller, can can I just issue any kind of stable coin? Because I'm not a bank. I don't have a banking license. Hell yeah, brother. Let's go. Let's get some meme stablecoins going on. Anyway, quote, the framework should allow both non banks like me and and banks to issue regulated stablecoins and should consider the effects of regulation on the payments landscape including competing payment instruments. He also expressed confidence in the private sector to build stablecoin solutions for businesses and consumers while calling for clear regulations.
I believe in the power of the private sector to develop solutions that benefit businesses and consumers with the job of the public sector to create a fair set of rules for market participants to operate within. Waller acknowledged their current use cases in providing a safe store value within crypto trading access to the United States dollar. This is really important, and it's gonna come back to bite us in the ass in the next two stories. Especially in high inflation countries, cross border payments and retail payments, which are currently limited. Quote, I'm seeing a lot of new private sector entrants looking to find ways to support the use of stablecoins for retail payments.
However, there are challenges such as lack of a clear regulatory framework in The US for and the fragmentation between different state and international regulations and the need for balanced regulation that ensures safety without stifling innovation. He also highlighted the risks of de pegs and failures. While speaking at the Atlantic Council on February, Waller described stablecoins as, quote, synthetic dollars that were just like commercial bank money and that opens up other payment possibilities. If they can do that in a way that opens competition, broadens the reach of the payment system, drives down costs, makes things faster and cheaper.
I'm all for it. The Fed governor concluded with the hope that the stablecoin market will grow or diminish on the merits of their benefits to consumers and the broader economy. He reiterated that the private sector needs to continue developing innovative solutions, quote, that fit a market need while building sustainable business models, while the public sector needs to establish clear and targeted legal and regulatory framework coordinated across states and national boundaries, quote, to enable private sector innovation at a global scale.
Alright. So a lot of words, but there's there this is the thing. I've been telling you a lot about how stable coins are gonna be used to essentially reignite the bonfire of debt and be able to take the ashes and the coals and the burning embers of that bonfire and scatter them to the wind everywhere but The United States. We're going to offshore our debt again. We've been doing it forever, and now they've got a brand spanking new way to get this shit done. And everything that that Waller is saying is basically like like this one. If they can do that in a way that opens competition, you stop about stable coins, and broadens the reach of the payment system and drives down cost and makes things faster and cheaper, I'm all for it.
That's just that is a smokescreen because what they they don't give a shit if it lowers cost. They don't care if it's faster and cheaper. I guarantee it. What they care about is that Tether and USDC and any other idiot that issues stablecoins starts and continues to buy United States Treasury bonds, which is the way that we build debt. We just print it. This is this is so far beyond credit markets. It's not even funny. This is just flat debt, and we're going to offshore all of that debt to every other country in the world, and they're gonna do it through stablecoins. This is and this does worry me because stablecoins are I mean, they're they're I'm sorry. They're centralized.
That's why they that's why they work fast. Tether is a centralized thing. It is not decentralized. Do you have a Tether node? No. You don't. There's no such thing that I know of. It's it's not decentralized. It this is this debt under a brand spanking new banner that nobody has recognized before because the treasury market itself, nobody wants the treasuries. But if we offload the treasury in the debt construction to people like Tether and everybody in the world is, like, saying, oh, man, stablecoins are great, then that's how you're gonna be able to offload the debt because, basically, you're just going to have a third party custody the debt and turn that into what people think is money. It's the same fiat game all the way down.
We cannot stop being greedy. We cannot stop taking money from other people. We cannot stop diluting people's experience upon this planet, and we just fucking can't stop not moving the human race forward. We are shooting ourselves in the foot every single fucking day. I hate to say it that way, but that's what's going on. And it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. Remember what we were what I was just saying about about that. Now let's talk about what JPMorgan is saying about Tether. Now this is from CoinDesk, and it's written by Will Kenny, and it says Tether may have to sell some Bitcoin to comply with US Stablecoin rules according to JP Morgan.
USDT, issuer of Tether could face, sorry, USDT issuer Tether could face challenges, if proposed US Stablecoin regulations is passed. And the company may have to sell some of its reserves to comply with the new rules according to Wall Street Bank JP Morgan. The senate's guiding and establishing national innovation for US Stablecoins, aka the Genius Act, I hate these names, mandates that federal regulation for the stablecoin market cap of over $10,000,000,000, the report noted, with the potential for state regulation if it aligns with federal rules.
The House of Representatives STABLE Act calls for the state regulation without any conditions, Quote, reserve requirements under the STABLE Act are stricter, allowing insured deposits, United States Treasury bills, Treasury short term repo, and Central Bank reserves, analysts led by Nicholas, there's no way I can pronounce his last name, wrote, adding that the senate bill also permits money market funds and reverse repos. Quote, both bills, genius and stable, allow only high quality and liquid assets as reserves, the author of the JPMorgan report wrote. Tether dominates the stablecoin universe with a 60% market share. USDT has a market cap of about a hundred and 42,000,000,000.
JPMorgan said that the issuers reserves are only 66% compliant under the stable act and only 83% under the Genius Act citing the company's report. Furthermore, both figures suggest a decline in compliance ratio since the middle of last year as stablecoins simply surged, the bank added. Under the proposed regulations, Tether would have to replace non compliant assets with compliant ones, the report said. And this implies sales of their non compliant assets such as precious metals, Bitcoin, corporate paper, secured loans, and other investments, and purchases of compliant assets such as treasury bills.
Quote, Tether is closely monitoring the evolution of The United States' different stablecoin bills and also actively engaging with local regulators. Consultation from the industry needs to happen, and it's still unclear which bill will move forward, a Tether spokesperson said in an emailed comments. Even in the most extreme scenario, JPMorgan discounts the fact that Tether's group equity is over $20,000,000,000 in other very liquid assets and is generating more than 1,200,000,000.0 in profits every quarter, not year. 1,200,000,000.0 in profits is what Tether is doing every freaking quarter.
Adapting new requirements will be straightforward, the person added. Tether CEO Paolo Adorno said in a tweet on Twitter on Thursday, following publication of the bank's report that, quote, JPM analysts are just salty because they don't own Bitcoin, end quote. New rules calling for increased transparency and more frequent reserve audits could also pose further challenges for Tether, the report added. Okay. So JPMorgan is looks it looks to me like they may be engaging in FUD. It's possible. It's possible that they might, but here we've got a situation where JPMorgan's released this report saying Tether's gonna have to sell their Bitcoin.
Yeah. Sure. Right. Whatever. It's the most liquid asset out there. And now Tether's hitting back saying, essentially, you're you're not even seeing the rest of this stuff that that is absolutely liquid and absolutely compliant. We're not gonna have to do dick. So who's right? I don't know. But you know what? I'll bet you my hat that they don't have to sell their Bitcoin. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that right now. Alright. Let's move on to the weather report. It's gonna be brought to you by Maple Trade. Maple Trade is over in the Circle P. The Circle P is open for business, and he is sold out until March according to his Noster profile. What does he make? He makes maple syrup. He makes it by hand. It's very good. I have tried this stuff.
It is absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and you could actually get real maple syrup damn near anywhere that you went in the grocery store, and now it's all basically corn syrup with maple flavoring. That's not what you're gonna get from Maple Trade. Make damn sure that you start getting your orders in. You'll have to DM him or get a hold of him on Noster or on Twitter. On Twitter, it is at b e I s n e r d s. And by the way, in the show notes, you will have direct links, URLs to both his Nostra profile and his Twitter profile.
Get a hold of him. If you order anything, including his sister Sarah's soaps, which are handmade soaps, and I've tried those too and they're awesome, make sure you tell him that you heard about him here on Circle p. And that way, he can cut me some satoshis for any sales that I might make. Alright. Let's get into the weather report. CNBC futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate oil is down point 13% after a pretty brutal, aftermarket performance last night. It's down to $71.28. Brent Norsee, however, holding its own.
It's down slightly to 75 and 1¢. Natural gas is swinging for the fences. 1.7% to the upside brings it to $3.62 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up over half to $2.10 a gallon. Gold doing well today, up two thirds of a point to $29.46 and 50¢. Congratulations, Peter Schiff. Silver is down a quarter of a point. Platinum is down a half. Copper is up one and a half, and palladium is up three and a third. Ag is looking pretty green today. Biggest winner is chocolate. 3.64% to the upside. The only one in the red is cotton, point 79% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third. Lean hogs are down a third. Feeder cattle are up almost a full point.
The Dow is up over a quarter of a point. The S and P is up over a half point. Nasdaq is point 82% to the upside, and the S and P Mini is point three. Now on to Clark Moody Bitcoin or dashboard.clarkmoody.com, where we have a price of 95,740 because paper hands out there just keep lighting themselves on fire. We got a $1,900,000,000,000 market cap. We can only purchase 32.7 ounces of the shiny metal rock with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,823,551.16 of. And average fees per block are low, but don't expect that to last. Why?
Well, because the mempool is now chilling out, high priorities, 8 Satoshis per v byte, low priorities are at six. But we have 23,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting on a total of, I don't know, 16 blocks to clear. Now why am I saying get ready? Well, it looks like those, Blockchain wizard guys, the Inscriptions and Ordinal guys, you know, Ernie Udi Wertheimer, I told you that they were gonna get, like, $30,000,000. Well, it looks like they've closed that deal because inscriptions are all over the blockchain. They started coming in today, and it's just they're everywhere. It's like what the blockchain or it's like what the mempools around the world used to look like, except there's not quite so many blocks as of yet.
But, man, I mean, I'm just I'm looking at mempool dot space right now, and I've got it set to where all I'm seeing is inscriptions, and they're freaking everywhere. So it looks like they've been funded over at Bitcoin Wizards or whatever they call themselves, and spam is now entering the blockchain again. So I hope you did your consolidations. If you haven't, you might wanna consider doing that shit right now. Okay? Now over to mining where we have a hash rate of 813.5 exahashes per second. So we still have quite a bit of hash rate online, and it looks like we're clearing blocks at an average of ten point five minutes.
So, yeah, just wait for the inscriptions. They're they're they're piling up. I've never I mean, I haven't seen this kind of activity on the blockchain in at least a week. So there it is. Alright. From my forest mentor, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got FOMO chronic with 5,000 sats. Dude, thanks. He says, enjoyed the mycology segment. Wouldn't say no to more of that. Yeah. You'll probably get more of that. Anonymous with 5,000 says, always enjoy the Bitcoin content, but these types of topics are great. This episode was incredibly interesting. Alright.
Ju Huang with 5,000 sat says, love it when Bitcoiners nerd out on nonprofit ideas. No. Sorry. Not nonprofit. Non Bitcoin ideas. Jay with twenty one hundred says, there's a lot to learn from the forest. Thanks for sharing your insights. And then Jay actually gives me another 2,100 and says there's a lot to learn from the forest. Thanks for sharing your speech. Interesting. Chef Tommy with a thousand says, early in my career as a young chef, I was introduced to mushroom foraging, which I still practice and hope to pass down to my children. Once I learned about how to find them, it unlocked my mind to how everything is connected.
My hobby is farming a small vineyard, yeah, and making wine from it every year. Promoting soil health has been a game changer over the years. I'm not only practicing viticulture, but, also performing or also becoming a mycelium and dirt farmer. This was a joy to hear, and thanks for making more connections with this subject to Bitcoin. Absolutely brilliant. Here is some value for value. Hopefully, one day the world will understand how much mycelium can help and heal our planet. Connection is protection. Chef Tommy must listen to, no agenda, the the no agenda, podcast because connection is protection is something they say all the time over there. Thank you, chef Tommy. I appreciate, you writing that note.
You're not a dirt farmer. Just I I just wanna be clear about how I I feel about that. Dirt is simply the the crystallized minerals from rock, but it's an absolute necessary component as the matrix for soil. And the other part of that matrix for soil is the life, like bugs and critters and bacteria and amoeba and fungi and all the the the neat stuff that makes soil soil, but you wouldn't be able to do that without the mate the other crystalline matrix that is dirt. When I see dirt, I see dead. You're not farming dirt. You're farming soil.
Dirt is what you're beginning with, And I like thinking of it that way for myself. Of course, chef Tommy, you are free to do whatever the hell you you want. Yes, chef. Anonymous with a thousand says great episode. Oh, bo de gebox boy says five with 500, absolutely nothing. Four twenty from a guy who doesn't even have a handle says, love that you brought the fungi. Talk to the podcast. Really had me thinking about comparisons between fungal networks and social media. Yeah. It's the same dude. May have to write a follow-up, to my only zaps article with a fungal twist. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with four twenty says value for value, ring the bell something in strong-arm.
Pies with four twenty with another three bells and three strong arms. Pies with four twenty says v four v. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with two twenty two says you are a fountain app of knowledge. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Jay with two ten says, oops. I boosted twice. I tripped, and now all of my sats are falling out of my pockets. Yodel with 200 says, into the woods. Paragon with a hundred says, bro, I was totally engaged with your section on mycorrhizae fungi. I really appreciate that mind opener.
Yeah. It's it is it's actually, it's what I touched on barely even scratches the surface. It's it's it's a hell of a rabbit hole. That's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Take this first one with a grain of salt. Wyoming Highway Patrol Association considers buying bitcoin. Connor Sefton from Decrypt. A United States law enforcement agency might soon add bitcoin to its balance sheet for the very first time. The Wyoming Highway Patrol Association, which supports officers and staff across the state, is evaluating whether to start investing in this digital asset. Quote, we are excited to explore bitcoin as a network and asset to evaluate ways it can further support our organization and its members, WHPA vice president Austin Bloomel said. Okay. I gotta pause.
This is not a law enforcement agency. It is a the Wyoming Highway Patrol Association. It's a nonprofit. They do not actually employ any law enforcement officers. Okay? So the a bit misleading at the very top of this article, no. The Highway Patrol of Wyoming is not considering buying Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet, which I would assume would be for their pension plan. No. No. No. No. No. No. This is the Wyoming State Highway Patrol Association. These are the guys that call you, ask you for money, and send you a sticker that looks like a badge so you can put it on your windshield because you think you're not gonna get a ticket because you gave money to the cops. It is it it's a racket is what it is. But, hey, at least they wanna buy some Bitcoin.
Now maybe maybe if they were an actual law enforcement, you know, agency and they had actual real law enforcement officers, they could have stopped the following from happening. From atlas21.com, kidnapping in Chicago. Entire family held for $15,000,000 crypto ransom. I'm telling you, stop telling people in meat space that you have Bitcoin. Stop it. Just stop. An unbelievable case of kidnapping and extortion has shaken Chicago where six, count them, six men have been charged with kidnapping an entire family of three and their babysitter, forcing them to transfer the equivalent of $15,000,000 in cryptocurrency.
According to a recently declassified FBI document reported by the Chicago Tribune, the kidnappers carried out a detailed plan showing up at the family's home under the pretext of accidentally damaging their garage. Once inside, they raided the house at gunpoint. The victims were then forced into a van and taken to an Airbnb an hour away where they spent the night before being moved to another location the next day. During their five days, five days of captivity, the kidnappers threatened to kill the hostages if they did not pay the ransom in Bitcoin or Shitcoin number one.
The breakthrough came when one of the victims managed to contact their father via the Chinese messaging app WeChat informing him of the kidnapping. On November 2024, the hostages were released and went to a local hospital after calling an Uber from a nearby laundromat. Although the victims claimed to have transferred cryptocurrency worth 15,000,000, United States authorities have so far been, able to trace only 6,000,000 of that 15. On December, '6 suspects were formally charged, and then they give their names. One is 34, and the other was yeah.
I can't pronounce his name. This guy, he's 34 years old, arrested while attempting to reenter The US from Mexico on January, and Fan Zhang Huang Yan, Xinjiang Jibugan. I cannot pronounce these names. Some are believed to have fled to China after Wei's arrest. Evidence collected by investigators include surveillance footage from the Airbnb, crypto wallet analysis, and forensic evidence from the white Ford van used in the kidnapping. Investigators also collected DNA samples from the Chrysler Pacifica rented by way. At least two victims identified some of the alleged kidnappers through mug shots, and the victims reported that the kidnappers spoke both Mandarin and Spanish.
Sounds like we've got a much bigger problem on our hands than we thought. Seems like I mean, Mandarin and Spanish, and he was arrested at the, United States Mexico border, but he's a Chinese national. Sorry. Pausing to take a sip of coffee there because that's bullshit. So family of three and their babysitter. So you got a young child, probably a not much older child as the babysitter, and the mother and the father, at gunpoint because somebody lied to them about running into their garage and damaging it and gained access to the house, and they had an Airbnb waiting. This this family was being cased. I am telling you, this shit is gonna get worse.
You need to stop wearing Bitcoin swag. And I really do apologize to all the guys out there that listen to me that make Bitcoin t shirts. I'm not trying to screw your sales up. I'm trying to keep people alive. I'm not lying here, man. I'm not I'm not this isn't hyperbole. This shit's getting worse and worse and worse. And if you go out in public and you're wearing a great big orange shirt with a great big Bitcoin on it, that is not a Bitcoin. That is a target symbol. That is a kidnap me. I've got Bitcoin. They don't know how much you have and you know what? It's probably not gonna matter. They're just going to assume that you've got some and they want it. But now they know who to look at. They know who to throw in the van. They know who who's head to bag.
Stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Stop it. Stop getting hammered at fucking bars and telling people that you got 300 Bitcoin. Stop doing that. It's nobody's business but your own. Yes. I know. You know my full name. You know I live in Eastern Washington. I have a little bit of Bitcoin. I shouldn't be saying that, but I've already been saying that for six years. What do you think? I I mean, I I am guilty of my very own stupidity. That's why I'm saying, look, please, for the love of God, don't say anything in public. Certainly, don't if you know somebody knows you've got Bitcoin and they've invited you back to their hotel room, big red flag. Even if you know them well, you don't know them well enough.
You cannot allow yourself to be put in these vulnerable situations. Right? Stop wearing the swag because that way, people you've never even talked to, and that's bad enough, but people you haven't even talked to now know that you probably have Bitcoin and you are now a target. So I'm I'm serious. This is getting bad and it's probably gonna get worse. Now, Coracle, my friend HODL bot has released version 0.6. It features end start onboarding, note scheduling, nice, and Olas Media Support. It is a free and open source web client for the Nostra protocol focused on relay selection and management, web of trust based moderation, and content recommendations, as well as privacy protection. It's available on the web and on Android.
Coreacle version 0.6 is out. I know the hype has died down, but this release brings long awaited support for rendering kind 20 or o lost notes. Along with that, media viewing has gotten an overhaul and should be a much nicer experience now, announced hodl mod. This release introduces several notable improvements including support for the kind 20 image events, the implementation of end start for onboarding brand new users, and note scheduling via DVMs or data vending machines. Additionally, it comes with support for Tor and local relays. Quote, other than that, we've got note publish scheduling via DVM, pinned note support, and lots of improvements to, to speed and stability, you know, fewer spinners added huddle bot. So what's new?
Well, support for Tor and local relays, using end start for onboarding, organized media into grids and add full screen overlay view for images. There's a lot of bug fixes. There's a lot of stuff in here guys. So if for whatever reason you have not been trying Coracle, I highly recommend that you go try Coracle. And where are you gonna go get Coreacle? Well, you're gonna go get Coreacle at hold on. Don't I I gotta access core.social. Yeah. It's coreacle.social. I've just when I use it, I've I it's just a like a it's a cookie in my browser. It just comes it just populates up, so I never can remember what if it's com or org or social or what. But it's coracle.social. So go check it out today and tell Huddl bod that I told you all about it. US Customs and Border Protection broadens its crackdown on Asian ASICs according to a report.
The US Customs and Border Protection is seizing Bitcoin mining ASICs. Oh, joy. US Customs and Border Protection is seizing Bitcoin mining ASICs at US ports of entry at the Federal Communication Commission's direction. That's the FCC. So the FCC is telling customs and border patrol or protection to physically seize mining machines. The agency is now also detaining micro b t and kanan units according to CBP documents reviewed by blocks based media and industry sources. One of the sources said that it had $5,000,000 worth of its equipment seized.
Quote, this is to inform you that US Customs and Border Protection seized, seized this, honkis, seized the property described below at San Francisco International Airport on January 2025, a Bitmain s twenty one pro two hundredth cryptocurrency mining machine states the CBP letter shared with blockspace media. The letter states that the miners were seized and subject to forfeiture under section, was 19 of United States code one five nine five a c two a for involving unauthorized communication devices, interfering radio frequency equipment, and non compliant FCC devices. Oh, this is not good.
Virtually every Asian ASIC manufacturer is being impacted by customs clearance issues, said Syntech Digital CEO, Taras Kilyuk. Additionally, the custom clearance issues are now occurring at numerous ports instead of just Detroit or San Francisco. One affected company said that it is seeking partners to take legal action against the government for the seizures. Jesus. So it's just Asian it's just Asian asics, but that's like 95% of the market. I don't know of anybody else outside of Asia that's actually building these things, except possibly, I think, Ocean is, like, about to get into it.
I'm not sure, man. But this this is not good. And it is in direct it it completely is a an about face from the Trump administration saying that we're going to be the center for Bitcoin mining. Well, not if you don't let the miners in. That's not gonna happen there, Don. So get off your ass and tell the FCC to stop fucking around. Maybe maybe doge should be sent out to the FCC to see what the hell's going on. I'll bet that'll turn them around right quick. Alright. Cold card mark four version five point four point one and q version one point three point one have been released.
There's new message signing features, new address display, and more. Coldcard mark four is an ultra secure and verifiable hardware wallet for bitcoin. Coldcard q is the higher end cold card that comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, a larger LCD screen, a real QR scanner, and more. The latest firmware updates for Coldcard Mark four and q hardware signer devices deliver new message signing features including the ability to sign a message from secure note text or password note, json messaging signing, signing with a key resulting from a positive ownership check, and signing with a key selected from the address explorer custom path menu. It also includes delta mode enhancements, address display changes, and many more other improvements.
Quote, delta mode is a special trick pin mode where we let it seem this is a terrible sentence and I I'm just gonna read it word for word because I can't readjust it. Delta mode is a special trick pin mode where we let seem to let the attackers into your vault. They see the true xpub and your actual UTXO. Signing even seems to work, but if the transaction is broadcast, it will not be accepted by the network. We've added some updates to handle more cases where the, quote, jig is up and the cold card wipes the seed rather than reveal your seed words or other secrets, said the project. Okay. I am a cold card user. I have a mark four.
No. I've no. I yeah. It is a mark four. I do not have the queue, although one of these days I want one. About these tricks and being able to, you know, not show, you know, allow people to get to your Bitcoin by using, a fake pin or or in this case, this delta mode where it looks like you send a transaction, but the transaction can never hit the blockchain. If they if your attacker is is smart enough to to figure out how to do all this, they're probably smart enough to check to see if the transaction hit the blockchain. And if it's not, they're gonna know something's up. They might just beat you because they're pissed. What I'm getting at is that while I think it's a good idea to have these features developed and further developed as time goes on, I I I want to iterate the fact that just because you've got the ability to, I don't know, like, enter in a twenty fifth word on your seed phrase in your cold card and you actually default to a different wallet that has only, like, 0.01 Bitcoin in it, and you say, that's my wallet, that's all I've got, that is in no way, shape, or form guarantees that your attacker doesn't get straight up pissed off that that's all they're gonna get and just decides to shoot your ass just because.
Do not put it past the any member of the human race to be despicable, ugly, and and just a straight up monster. When my children were younger, and I still tell them this today, even though that they don't worry about monsters under their bed, I tell them that the monster under their bed is probably nicer than some of the human beings that they're going to meet. Many humans are genuine good people. In fact, I'd say the the great guts and feathers of humanity has good intentions and just wants to be left alone and furthermore wants to leave each other alone. But there are fucking psychopaths out there that you have no idea how they're gonna react to anything, much less taking the time to abduct your ass, take you to an Airbnb that they spent money on, and then find out that you've put in the wrong password and have your cold card wiped and that's it, sayonora motherfucker, you don't think that you might get not get beat within an inch of your life? You are fooling yourself.
So much better precautions than just a twenty fifth word that you assign as a different wallet in your cold card that has a scant amount of Bitcoin in it that you don't mind if you lose is not guaranteed to assuage whatever attack you're gonna go under. And let's pray to God that everybody in the range of my voice is never gonna have to do that. And I hope that for myself too. Because you saw that Chicago family, five days of captivity under constant threat of being killed. That will jack your mind up like you're fucked for life mentally.
You will never be able to heal from that. It doesn't mean that you won't be fully functional. It just means that that will always be with you. You will carry that as a mother and a father thinking that for five straight days your child could be killed in front of your eyes, and much less yourself, too. Could you imagine being the father? First, they start with the babysitter, then they kill your child, and then they off your wife? This shit happens, man, because humans have not figured out a way to fully crawl out from the muck that is the slime from whence we came.
I still have a high hope for humanity in general, but it's shit like this that pisses me off. So do your best to protect yourself, and I will see you on the other side.
[01:05:15] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
Bitcoin News and Galloy's Loan Product
Stablecoins and Regulatory Discussions
Obsidian and Note-Taking Systems
