Join me today for Episode 1038 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Milei Lies, Coin Sinks Like Titanic
- Associated Companies Complicit in LIBRA
- Tether Gets Into . . . Farming?
- Chinese Man Dons Tin-Foil Hat
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://atlas21.com/libra-the-rug-pull-that-involved-milei-what-really-happened/
https://www.theblock.co/post/341479/standard-chartered-bitcoin-sovereign-wealth-funds
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/02/18/tether-makes-unsolicited-offer-for-buying-majority-stake-in-agrodeco
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https://decrypt.co/306498/co-founder-of-crypto-firm-behind-trump-melania-tokens-resigns-amid-insider-trading-allegations
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/fountain-v1-1-16/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-man-burns-eth-mind-control-claims
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/alby-hub-v1-14-2/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:58AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten thirty eight of Bitcoin, and it's named the fire hose of lies. That's right. It's the fire hose of lies. We're gonna get into the Malay bullshit because it is complete garbage. It very unfortunate the way that whole thing, turned out to be, well, a scam. It was a just an awful, awful thing to have to witness, but it is causing Solana some some serious issues itself. And then then after that, we're we're we're gonna talk about the fact that we have a couple of pretty good red candles this morning, and you may be wondering why. We'll we'll we'll get into it. I promise.
And then, what is this one here down here? Oh, yes. Tether is in the news in LatAm yet one more time. And this time, I'm not a I'm not a real big fan of Tether and agriculture. And as you might imagine, we'll we'll get into it. Texas Bitcoin reserve bill is in the news. The cofounder of crypto firm behind Trump has resigned, and I'm talking about Trump coin, not not the actual Trump guy. Heather, we got a couple of updates, and I got a pretty good juicy, tinfoil hat story coming out of China today. It's gonna be a little interesting. But first, first, let's start with what is affecting the markets this morning.
FTX, their $1,200,000,000 repayments are starting today, and they're marking a key moment in the crypto industry recovery. I'm not sure what they mean by recovery, but we'll find out from Zoltan Vardai, CoinTelegraph. Yeah, buddy. FTX digital markets, the Bahamian unit of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is set to repay the very first group of creditors today, February, in a significant development for the crypto industry following the exchange's almost $9,000,000,000 collapse and the downfall of FTX and more than 130 subsidiaries launched a series of insolvencies that led to the industry's longest ever crypto winter, which saw Bitcoin's price bottom out at around $1,600.
In a key moment for the crypto industry's recovery, FTX's Bahama Wing will honor the first batch of repayments for users who are owed less than $50,000 worth of claims. Users will receive their funds at 3PM UTC on February according to a February 4 Twitter post from FTX creditor, Sunil, who is part of the largest group of more than 1,500 FTX, coordinators oh, creditors. Sorry. Creditors. The FTX customer ad hoc committee said, I guess that's a bad sentence anyway, that repayments will bring an estimated of $1,200,000,000 worth of capital to the first wave of defrauded FTX users.
And by the way, I was just checking on something. UTC time right now for me is 05:02PM. So this washes with the red candle timing that I'm seeing. It appears that, people started immediately selling some of their Bitcoin to get back into cash, I guess. I I I don't know. All I know is that there seems to be a fire sale on Bitcoin, and I also did not see any kind of announcement from Saylor that he usually post on Sunday, saying that he was gonna basic essentially signaling that he was about to announce that they bought yet more Bitcoin. So it looks like it's possible that Sailor, maybe he waited because we knew February 18 was coming, guys. This isn't a surprise.
I talked about this at least three times over the last three months saying February 18 was coming, and it was bringing to the market a whole bunch of people that got their their shit lit up because of the FTX and BlockFi and Alameda and all that when it all went away. They all got host, and they've been waiting patiently at this point for years, but not quite as bad as Mt. Gox, but yet for years to get a hold of their money, and they were getting a hold they're getting a hold of actual Bitcoin and whatever shit coins that they actually have. It was not sold off directly to USD. They said that they were going to actually give the Bitcoin back. And so it appears that they have, and it appears that everybody that was involved with FTX has lettuce hands. Well, whatever.
Continuing on, the FTX repayments are being viewed as a positive signal for the crypto industry's recovery according to Alvin Kahn, chief operating officer at Bitget Wallet. The $1,200,000,000 repayments may see a significant portion reinvested into cryptocurrencies potentially impacting market liquidity and prices, he told Cointelegraph. This event could boost investor sentiment by demonstrating market recovery from the FTX collapse, though the sentiment might be mixed due to the payout being based on lower twenty twenty two valuations, Khan said.
Quote, the scale of this repayment marks a notable event in terms of both capital flow and the psychological impact on crypto investors, he added. Despite the positive news, some creditors have criticized the repayment model, which reimburses claimants based on cryptocurrency prices. This is weird. At the time of bankruptcy, bitcoin prices, for example, have increased by more than 370% since November 2022. It seems that I'm I'm wrong. I was squarely under the impression that they were actually getting their Bitcoin back. So this would suggest that they've already sold all their Bitcoin and they're getting their cash back on shitty ass prices and yet we're still seeing a sell off in the market. Something doesn't wash here ladies and gentlemen. I'm not sure what's going on here because I wholeheartedly and honestly believe that they were getting their Bitcoin back and not cash.
So how the hell are we having a sell off in the markets today? It's gotta be a sell the news event. I I have no other explanation for this. If they didn't get their Bitcoin back and they got cash, then what the hell's going on? Again, I don't know, man. Something doesn't something doesn't sound right, but let's finish it out. While the first FTX repayment represents a significant step forward, the capital may only have a limited effect on the cryptocurrency market. While it may not be a market moving catalyst, the first FTX payout represents a significant victory for justice at overall market sentiment according to Magdalena Hristova, public relations manager at Nexo, who says, quote, the collapse impacted many investors and cast a shadow, a pall over crypto.
For retail investors, especially those without diversified portfolios, these repayments offer not just the return of funds, but a sense of stability and peace of mind, end quote. Bullshit. Since the first batch of repayments is limited to creditors with claims under $50,000, The reinvestment rate into crypto assets may be relatively low. Many recipients may opt for safer investments rather than reentering the volatile digital assets market. The FTX repayment process remains ongoing, with larger creditors awaiting further announcements regarding their claims. So the big fish have not been paid back yet.
The small fish are being paid back yet, and it appears they're being paid back in cash and not in actual coin, which is confusing the shit out of me because I thought and and I don't mind being wrong. You can just go, oh, shit. You're so wrong. Fine. Whatever. Nobody can always be right. But I was firmly under the impression that they were getting their coinage back. And, again, this doesn't these giant red candles don't make sense to me If they got cash and they decided to just not enter the market, then what?
So if it is the case that nobody from the FTX, Alameda, BlockFi, all that stuff, nobody got paid back in anything but USD, then they can't sell their coins. So, therefore, if that is true, this is 100 what we're seeing in the Bitcoin market today is 100% sell the news event. Well, somebody else sold something. Yes, they did. And it was a guy I had really high hopes for, Mille, Libri coin. Atlas 20 1 has picked up a pretty pretty detailed account on, like, what happened. So let's do it. It's entitled Libra, the rug pull that involved Malay. What really happened?
Last weekend, another rug pull involved the cryptocurrency world. After Trump and the president of the Central African Republic, this time, the scandal involved the Argentinian president Javier Millet and the new Libra token, promoted as a digital asset intended to, quote, and I do quote, support the Argentine economy. The token's rapid rise and then sudden collapse shortly afterwards caused major losses among investors and cast a shadow, a pall, if you will, over Malay's political career. So what happened? The Libra story began way back when, way back on February with a tweet from president Malay in which he promoted the token to his 3,800,000 followers on Twitter.
The post described the project as a private initiative aimed at strengthening the Argentine economy by financing local companies. The Argentine president's endorsement triggered a speculative frenzy with the token price shooting from almost zero to five dollars or just shy of, with a market capitalization reaching $4,400,000,000 within hours. But the surge was short lived because a few hours later, the token crashed below $1. Blockchain analysts quickly discovered that 82% of the tokens were controlled by insiders who withdrew $107,000,000 in USDC and Solana or SOL, Solana's token, from liquidity pools, which are sets of tokens locked in smart contracts used in defi platforms to facilitate cryptocurrency exchange.
Well, within hours, the Libra token crashed by 94%. President Malay is at the center of the scandal. After the tokens collapsed, he deleted his initial support tweet, posting a new one claiming that he was unaware of the project's details and stating he had withdrawn his endorsement once the flaws were discovered. Oh, yeah. Right. I just a truckload of bullshit. And that this is this is where I'm really disappointed in Malay. Is him being so stupid as to think that him being a complete public figure with almost every spotlight in the world shining upon him that he's going to be able to pull some stunt like he's talking to cops, like he was a homeless person that nobody knows.
That's the for me, that's the real issue here. Now I and I am odd honestly disappointed that he even engaged in any of this shit. But it's this it's this weird backpedaling that is so transparent that it means that he doesn't respect anybody. And I was really afraid of this, and it's come to pass. But we have more to the story because other controversial figures associated with Libra's creation and promotion have past histories of similar fraudulent activities. In particular, blockchain analysis firm Bubble Maps found connections between Libra developers and those responsible for the Melania coin, another meme coin involved in a pump and dump scheme earlier this year. The same wallets involved in the Melania token's early gains were identified in Libra transactions, suggesting a pattern of coordinated pump and dump schemes.
According to Bubble Maps, one piece of evidence in the investigation is the activity of a Solana wallet called P5TB4. The wallet accumulated over $2,400,000 through quick operations on the Melania token and subsequently transferred these funds to an avalanche based EVM wallet, 0 x c e a, directly linked to the Melania token creator. The token or the connection was made through funding transactions and cross chain exchanges. Bubble Maps states that weeks later, the 0 x c e a address began funding def c y k wallet, and that's the main wallet of Libra's creator, which is also identified as the team wallet on Solscan.
Well, after Libra tokens launch on February, the 0 x c e a wallet repeated the same operation with the latter, making a profit of no less than $6,000,000. In this case too, the operations were conducted using multiple secondary addresses funded through cross chain transfer protocols from wallets on Arbitrum and Avalanche. Analysts noted that Libra's website was created just hours before launch. Speaking to CNN, analyst Pablo Sabotilla stated, quote, the first thing I saw was that the website had been registered yesterday, which was Friday, which is typical of a scam, end quote. As reported by CryptoVolta.it, the domain was registered on February.
In an interview with YouTube channel creator or the YouTube channel, Voidzilla, journalist Coffeezilla's channel, Hayden Davis, CEO of Calc Kelsier Ventures and key figure behind the Libra token launch, admitted to being part of the same group that launched the Melania token and that the team adopted the same sniping strategy at that token's launch. The term sniping refers to the use of automated bots or smart contracts to execute program transactions that purchase a large amount of a newly launched token. This is done very quickly, often within milliseconds, with the aim of reselling the tokens at a higher price and making a profit.
Davis emphasized that every launch is subject to these dynamics that disadvantage retail investors unaware of privileged information. He then compared the cryptocurrency landscape to a casino where the odds are always against the average investor. You think? Whatever. Opposition parliamentarians have called for Malay's impeachment, it accusing him of abusing his political influence to promote a speculative and deceptive financial asset, legal experts argue that Malais could face fraud charges under article two six five of the Argentine penal code, which covers market manipulation and financial crimes.
Several lawsuits have already been filed against Malay, arguing that his endorsement misled investors. Malay has tasked the anti corruption office with investigating his own actions? Weird. Investigating whether other government officials committed illegal conduct regarding Libra's launch and and and has announced the creation of a commission to investigate the creators for alleged fraud. If found guilty, Malay could face up to six years in prison and possible removal from office. Well, I don't know how your president would be able to go to prison and remain in office if he was convicted while actually in office. This is the same crap.
It's it doesn't matter who the person is or what their station in life is, how famous they are, or how Joe Schmo retail they are. This is all about greed. And it would not surprise it what actually, fund, which it would not surprise me if it came out later that we find out that pump.fund is is part of it, but they don't need to be. They're not the only people that make meme coins. And why I bring that up is because of this. Hawk to a girl, the guy with the squirrel and the raccoon that got, I don't know, summarily executed, you know, at some far dude's farm, They had coins.
I am absolutely convinced at this point with everything that I've read about it that neither one of the neither the Hocktua girl nor the squirrel man, if you wanna call him that, had any idea how to launch any meme coin whatsoever. They had to have been contacted by pump dot fund who did, in fact, do both of those meme coins. And they told them now I don't know this for a fact, but my gut feeling and, again, I am convinced the following is true. Pump dot fund got a hold of these guys and said, we'll make you a millionaire. All you gotta do is x, y, and z. And they both said, fuck it. As long as I get a million dollars, I don't give a shit who gets hurt.
Because that's what this entails. It means that you have to not care who loses their money, and you also have to not care that it's very possible that the people who do, in fact, lose their money are the very people that cannot afford to lose their money. It's the same thing as putting a goddamn casino in the poorest parts of fucking New Mexico. Ask me how I know. You wanna keep a people poor? You put a casino where they can take their hard earned paycheck that barely covers their living expenses anyway. You put a casino for them to go cash that check at a window for clay tokens and have them basically go give that money right back to you, except instead of all at once, it takes them a few hours, and they get a couple of drinks to get good lit up along the way.
But if you go and you drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico, this is one example of where this should occur. From Santa Fe, New Mexico to Es North to Espanola, New Mexico, you will see abject poverty, except for the casinos themselves. They look great. They look fine. They look awesome. But if you look around the fields, you see either broken down or flat ass burned out bullshit trailers, hovels that people are living in because all they're doing is they're getting paid for whatever shit work they can pick up over there and take it right over there to the the what was it? The camel toe casino or whatever they call that thing.
Camel Rock. Yeah. There's Camel Rock casinos out there if it's still open. A new one just got built a couple of years ago, and then there's a third one out there. And that's all you need to make sure that you keep everybody in that valley poor ass shit. Except they don't have the advantage of being able to do online gambling, do they? No. No. No. These people in New Mexico, they have to actually look at the people who they're robbing in the face. They have to see them at the grocery store. They have to get you know, pump gas next to them. They gotta go buy clothes with them. They gotta see them walking down the street.
They see the people they rob. At least they have that going for him. This motherfucker, Javier Millet, doesn't give a shit, and now he's trying to back out of the whole deal like, oh, I didn't know anything. Oh, bullshit. And that's reprehensible. I hope he goes to jail. I hope they arrest his ass. I hope they throw his ass in jail. And I I know that the effect of that is going to be that Argentina's gonna fall right back into the soup that it was in. He was doing a good job, and he lit his ass get in front of the cart. And next thing you know, he's like, man, we're gonna clean up.
How did you not know that your Libra token wasn't going to follow the exact same bar chart pattern that every other meme coin follows? And everybody is making it out to be like somehow that this is worse than Trump coin or worse than Melania coin because it fell so hard. Bullshit. It followed the same pattern. The only reason that it's worse this time, I guess, is that it's the president of Argentina because our own president did the exact same shit. Like, what what on inauguration weekend is the exact same thing. I don't know, man. This whole thing is bad.
I hope Malay goes to prison. I certainly hope he ceases to be president, but my heart goes out to all the Argentinians that lost their money. Sure. He's saying that a bunch of America it was mostly Americans and Chinese people. How would you know? If you didn't know how the mechanics of this coin worked because that's what you're claiming right now, then how do you know it was mostly Americans and Chinese people that lost their money? You don't because you're a scum sucking liar. Now standard chartered. We're getting into something else, so break away from the thought pattern before.
Standard Chartered sees more sovereign wealth funds buying Bitcoin. This is from Yogita Khatri out of the block. After Abu Dhabi's recent investment in BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Jeffrey Kendrick, expects more sovereign wealth funds to enter the market. We're talking about sovereign wealth funds, not companies, countries. When you hear the word sovereign wealth fund, that's not a wealth fund that's like Wells Fargo. No. That's like Saudi Arabia, The United States, Canada.
Or in the case of Alaska, which is a state, they sort of have a they have their own kind of sovereign wealth fund, but it's a state sovereign wealth fund. But these are not companies. These are not institutions. These are entire governments that we're talking about. Quote, the 13 f filings for the fourth quarter show that process is now underway, Kendrick said in an email to the block on Tuesday, quote, it is happening. Form 13 f is a quarterly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by institutional investment managers overseeing at least $100,000,000 worth of assets.
Kendrick analyzed q four data from 13 f filings and said in a new report published on Tuesday that the data is very encouraging for his recent forecast that Bitcoin could reach $500,000 by 2028. While hedge funds once again dominated the buying in q four, bank buying, which started in q three, was also very strong. Kendrick said in the report, quote, even more importantly, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund reported a 4,700.0 BTC equivalent position in BlackRock's iBit ETF. While this is small for now, we would expect the size to increase over time and indeed for other sovereigns to start buying.
As the Bitcoin market matures, Kendrick expects it to attract a wider range of buyers. The trend has already shifted from predominantly retail investors before ETFs to hedge funds in the early ETF phase, and now sovereigns are starting to participate according to Kendrick. Quote, this gives us comfort to say that even if buying by strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, slows down dramatically, it has bought a staggering 227,000 BTC since the US election, more than 1% of ever to exist supply, we think other buyers are waiting to step in, Kendrick said. Looking ahead, Kendrick expects, quote, more super long term long only money such as state pension funds like the state of Wisconsin investment board and the state of Michigan department of the treasury to invest in bitcoin. He also predicts central banks could follow, pointing to the Czech National Bank considering a Bitcoin allocation of up to 5% of its €140,000,000,000 reserves, which is around 7,000,000,000.
I don't know what it's saying. It says a hundred and 40,000,000,000 worth of reserves, which oh, 5% is €7,000,000,000, and the Swiss National Bank in the early stages of Bitcoin investment consideration. As institutional access to Bitcoin improves and volatility declines, Kendrick expects more portfolios to migrate towards their optimal level from an underweight Bitcoin starting point. Alright. Well, so so now we've we had retail. That's this is the breakdown. We had retail buying Bitcoin, and everybody laughed at us. And then last year, at the very beginning of last year, all of a sudden hedge funds moved in and started pretty much taking up the spotlight.
Some people stopped laughing. Other people kept laughing. Well, now sovereign states this year. So for what was it? Fourteen years. Let's say fifteen years of Bitcoin retail only. For the last year, it's been hedge funds and super massive people like MicroStrategy, which is now strategy, but they did start buying in 2021. Now we're talking about sovereigns, and this is a different game yet again. It's it's like step functions. Retail is the first step. Hedge funds was the first step function up. Sovereigns, completely new ballgame. And it happened in with just a year.
A year and one and a half months because hedge funds started ostensibly January 2024. Here we are, February 2025, and sovereign nations and states in The United States are looking at Bitcoin for their wealth reserves that represent the citizenry of either their state or their country, and that's what sovereign actually means. Now maple syrup. Do you want sun? Maple trade. You got it. Maple trade sells maple syrup. He makes it by hand. He also sells his sister Sarah's soaps, which she makes by hand. Both of these products are phenomenal. I've tried them both myself. I would buy them again, and I probably will once I run out of the maple syrup that maple trade has already given me because I tried not to consume that much sugar. But this guy's sugar is sweet, man, and he does it all himself. He's not reselling. He's making it himself. He's tapping his own trees.
He's boiling it down himself. He's packaging itself, and he's selling it to you through the circle p where I bring plebs just like you to plebs with goods and services that are also just like you, but you have to sell your goods and services in Bitcoin. Because if you don't sell your goods or service in Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you buy anything from Mapletrading, make sure you tell him you heard it here on the circle p, and he will cut me in on some of those sweet, sweet satoshis. But you gotta make sure that you tell him, hey. I heard it on the circle p. And how do you get a hold of Mapletrading? Well, you can go to the show notes.
And under the heading in the show notes that says circle p, right underneath that, there will be a URL directly to his Nostr account. Well, I don't wanna call it an account, but his nose it's his Nostr handle, but it will take you right to if you're not playing around with Nostr, it'll take you right there, and you can you can figure out how to get a hold of him there. But if you're not a Nostra user, it probably means you're a Twitter user, and you can get a hold of him over there too. And his URL directly to his Twitter handle is also in the show notes.
Buy his maple syrup. Buy his sister Sarah's soaps. You will not be disappointed. And if you buy, I get some too. Well, Satoshi's, anyway. Alright. Tether is getting into ag? This scares the shit out of me. I don't need any more large concerns of any way, shape, or form getting into agriculture. We've got enough problems as it is. Tether has made an unsolicited bid for a majority stake in a $1,000,000,000 Latin American agribusiness called Adacorago Coa gro. I can't pronounce it. It doesn't matter. They own farmland and industrial facilities across Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
Tether, the crypto firm behind the $140,000,000,000 USDT stablecoin, has made an unsolicited proposal to acquire a majority stake in Latin American agricultural commodities producer firm, Agrodeco. Okay. Maybe that maybe the other one was a a misspelling. Submitted on February, the $12.41 per share offer was to bring to Tether stake in the company from the current 19.4% to a full 51% controlling standpoint according to a Tuesday press release by Adacorago or whatever it is. Anyway, their board met on February to discuss the bid and has engaged financial and legal advisers to determine whether accepting the offer aligns with shareholders' interests.
Their shares jumped 8% premarket to $10.48 in premarket trading in New York. They are a major player in South America's agribusiness sector focusing on sugar, ethanol, dairy, and crop production, as well as operating across Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Quote, land is a critical asset class, scarce, yielding long term returns, and historically a safe haven during geopolitical uncertainty, a Tether spokesman said. Investing in agriculture aligns with our vision of resilience and sustainability complementing our existing holdings in Bitcoin and gold. Adrocorago or whatever with its focus on essential agricultural production represents an opportunity to support an industry's fundamental or industries that are fundamental to humanity's future, end quote. Tether's investment offer comes as the company is expanding beyond its core crypto business. The stablecoin issuer said it ranked in 30 raked in $13,000,000,000 in profits of last year, and they have 25 people working for them for Tether.
Twenty five. Not not 2,500. No. Not 25,000. Nope. Like, 25. Sub 50 people are at Tether, and they raked in $13,000,000,000. This does not end well. This I mean, it ends well for them because they're all they're all rich. At this point, they don't need to do anything. It but it it's disconcerting that they are looking at agriculture. It makes sense. I'm not saying that they're dumb. That's not what I'm saying at all. This is actually the smart play. It's just that agriculture has been under attack by big everything, big pharma, big business, big ag itself, big everything. Big everything. Big energy.
Because we grow a bunch of corn for freaking ethanol production, which is dumb, but be that as it may. What it's caused is widespread soil death, and that just gets worse and worse and worse over time. I if if Tether is going to get into some kind of regenerative agriculture thing and take Adorocko or whatever the however the hell you pronounce it along that route, then good for him, but I don't expect to see that. But we will have to see. Still, though, everything about that is disconcerting. Let let let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. They got West Texas Intermediate Oil up 1.15% to $71.55.
Brent North Sea up a half to 75 and a half dollars. Natural gas is up almost four points to $3.86 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is sideways, $2.08 a gallon. Gold, getting into the all time high territory again, 1.7% to the upside brings it to $50 shy of $3,000 an ounce. Silver up one and a half percent. Platinum is down over a point. Copper is down almost two points, but palladium is moving sideways slightly in the green. Ag futures mostly in the green today. Biggest loser, coffee, point five five percent to the downside. Biggest winner appears to be chocolate, one and a half to the upside.
Live cattle is down a quarter. Lean hogs are up one and a third. Feeder cattle are up just over a point. The Dow is down point 13%. The S and P is moving sideways. Nasdaq is up or down a tenth of a point, and the S and P Mini is up point 68%. Yay. And, of course, we are getting hammered on the Bitcoin price at $94,260 a coin. That brings us down to $1,870,000,000,000 of market cap, and we can only purchase 31.9 ounces of the shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,825,873 of, and fees are still highly, well, highly low. They're damn low. 0.05 BTC taking in fees on a per block basis kind of low. And there are, well, I don't know, 18 blocks, carrying 17,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of four sats per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three.
And we have 828.9 exahashes per second of, wow, of mining power. That's I keep thinking that we're going to see a crash in mining because fees are so low, but apparently, miners don't give a shit. They are rocking it right up to the end, I guess. Now from seize this, which was, what, Thursday's episode of Bitcoin and I got anonymous who's giving me 20,000 satoshis and says worth every episode. God, I wish I know who this dude was. You're a hell of a patron, sir, anonymous. Paul Cernine with 500 says, thanks for yet another insightful and entertaining episode. I'd love to hear more about Obsidian and how you think its many features could be leveraged to maximize utility. Have a great weekend and keep up the good work. You're welcome, my good sir.
$4.20 sats comes from somebody whose handle does not appear in fountain and says, would love to see an Obsidian zap stream. Okay. Alright. Thank you for letting me know. God's death with two thirty seven. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with 222 sat says, show me your Obsidian. Y'all Yodle with 200 says, would be interested in a ZapStream about Obsidian. Okay. So that's like three or four people that said, oh, anonymous with a hundred and eight says, l f g Obsidian, Cummins Mcjohn no. Cummins Mcjohn. With a hundred says, love Obsidian, would love another program on it. And Boaz with a hundred says, all sats [email protected].
And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. I got a, post here from Bitcoin Laws on Twitter. It says that the Texas Bitcoin Reserve Bill, SB 21, will be heard by the Business and Commerce Committee this morning according to senator Charles Schwartner. And Charles Schwartner's got this, Twitter or this tweet that says, this morning, the Business and Commerce Committee will hear my bill, SB 21, which if passed and signed into law, would make Texas the first state to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I look forward to discussing what this means for Texas' future and economic growth. So s b 21 in Texas is actually going to have its first hearing in the business and commerce committee this morning, so it's moving ahead. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening.
And here from, decrypt.c0 written by Vizmaya v, we've got cofounder of crypto firm behind the Trump and Melania tokens resigns amid insider trading allegations. So we're continuing on. I'm sure that they're going to connect it with the, Libra and Argentine or Argentinian president Javier Molay at one point or another. Let's find out. Ben Chow. His name is Ben Chow, and he's the cofounder of Metoria or whatever, the Solana based platform behind the controversial Trump and Melania token launches has resigned following insider trading allegations that have surfaced after the collapse of Libra token, a crypto initially backed by Argentine president Javier Malay whose value plummeted over 90% within hours after its launch.
Meow, the pseudonymous cofounder of both Meteora and Jupiter Exchange confirmed in a tweet on Monday that Ben's resignation came following his lack of judgment as a product lead in the past few months. Neither Chao nor Meow have responded to request for comments. The Libra Tokens collapse has cranked up insider trading accusations with on chain analysts pointing to suspicious wallet activity and the possible involvement of insiders dumping tokens at the asset's peak price. I am shocked that there's gambling going on in here. Gambling. Who would have freaking thunk it? Amid the allegations, platforms such as Metoria or whatever, which provided technical support for the token launch, got caught in the crossfire.
With the firm now seeking new leadership, Chao's exit has raised questions about the ethics surrounding high profile token launches and their far reaching impact on crypto. Went a bridge too far, did we? In the wake of the allegations, Meow clarified his company's stance, noting that neither Jupiter nor Mitoria were involved in insider trading or financial misconduct. Jupiter has previously acknowledged while the launch of an Argentina coin has been an open secret within meme coin circles, no one at Jupyter knew the specifics in advance. Meteora or meet Meteora.
Meteora. Meteora. I guess that's the name. Is it m e t e o r a? You figured it out. Meteora had been reported reportedly operating independently of Jupiter for well over a year with Ben running the firm without significant involvement from Meow. Yeah. I'm pausing here because it's bullshit. Miao knew exactly what Ben Chow was doing. That's why you separate this shit so that you have only one clear communications line between the two people, one from each platform or one from each company or whatever you wanna call it. And that way, you limit exposure to only those two people. But those two people are both in the best positions to tell the other one exactly what's going on. It's the best coordination scheme that you can get.
Both Jupiter and Meteora were both fucking in on this. This is another it's not probably not as much money involved, but this is this is FTX and Alameda research. That's what this shit is. It's just not as big. But it's probably going to go away, and it couldn't go away soon enough in my opinion. Anyway, Chao has not released any official statement, but he has previously addressed the controversy on Twitter offering his side of the story. And in a series of tweets on Saturday, he initially explained that Meteora's involvement in the Libra launch was limited to simply providing technical support. Quote, the Libra team used Meteora, which is a permissionless platform.
We never had any access to the tokens or to Javier Malay himself. Well, he clarified that Meteora did not play a role in the launch decision making or market making activities as the platform allows anyone to create pools and tokens without direct involvement from the Meteora team. However, Ben later backtracked on his initial tweet acknowledging that questions had arisen regarding Meteora's role in the launch of Libra and other tokens. Ben Chow explained his relationship with Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures, who was also involved in the launch of Libra, Trump, and the Melania meme coins. Quote, I referred to them or I referred them, that being Hayden Davis, to a handful of other projects that had inquired with us about Deployer firms, which included the team behind Melania, Ben wrote.
He reportedly referred Kyle Kelsier Ventures to other projects and said that their relationship was built upon mutual trust. Mutual trust developed during the successful launch of the m 3 m 3 token in December. In response to community backlash, Meow announced plans for the independent third party investigation. They are seeking to hire California based law firm, Fenwick and West, to handle the allegations and promote transparency. Chow's resignation has been met with mixed reactions with some support for figures such as Cash Dahanda, a founding member of super team DAO and a cat herder at Jupiter who defended him as a victim of, quote, strategic mistakes rather than any form of misconduct.
Libra saw its market cap surge to $4,000,000,000 before before plummeting by 91% fueling suspicions of market manipulation. The fallout from Libra continues to shadow Malay who now faces impeachment calls and legal action accusing him of fraud over his promotion of the token. Yeah. So that's the end of the story. And and again, and I'm going back to Trump here. How is it that how is it that you just don't think that this is a massive conflict of interest? You cannot be the president of any country and then launch a meme coin. Well, you can, clearly. We watched it happen, not once, not twice, but thrice. We're gonna watch we're gonna see it happen over and over and over again into the future. Right? That's that's not in question.
What I question is, how hard is it to be a person, to be a man, and have people come up to you and you're the president of a country? Could be The United States, could be Argentina. Fuck it. Let's say it's Mexico City or or I'm at Mexican the country Mexico. Hey, man. We got a meme coin for you. You're gonna launch it. You're gonna make millions of dollars, and it's gonna be good for your country. My initial reaction is and this initial reaction would assume that I know being the president of Mexico what I actually know, what what I've experienced watching this shit happen, I would say, go screw.
You have no intention of doing me any good. You have no intention of doing the country of Mexico any good. You certainly don't have any intention other than theft of the money of my citizenry, so get out of my palace before I have you arrested and thrown in a fucking dungeon. Now how hard is that? Okay. Let's let's assume that I don't know anything. That I'm just a complete when it comes to cryptocurrency, I am a moron. I don't I've never I don't even I've only heard of Bitcoin, and I don't even know how it works. Let's make that assumption. A guy comes to me and says, hey, president of Mexico, I got a meme coin for you, and you're gonna make a lot of money, and it's gonna do great for your country.
My reaction is, I have literally no idea what you're talking about. It sounds like a giant scam to me. And unless you do something for my country that is, I don't know, substantial, I won't even look into it. And if you continue to waste my time, I will have you thrown out of my palace. How hard is that? How hard is is it that difficult to just look at something and go, I don't know, man. This doesn't sound good. This sounds like people could get hurt. Does that make me weak because I believe that? Does that make me some kind of effeminate man because I actually give shit one about other people and the possibility that they may, I I don't know, starve because I took all their money or allowed somebody else to take all their money and even I don't get any of it?
Is it that difficult to be moral? Is it that difficult to have some manner of ethic? And I'm rapidly approaching the answer that apparently it is, And it's sad to watch this happen. But here's here's my prediction. We're going to have another string of complete failures in the altcoin, meme coin, shitcoin, whatever it is that's not Bitcoin market. And it's going to scare people. It's already scaring people. We're down to $94,153 a coin. I got I got four red bars in a row on the hour chart. Because Malay couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Trump couldn't keep his dick in his pants.
His wife, who doesn't have a dick, if she did have a dick, wouldn't be able to keep her dick in her pants. And I I have I don't understand it. How much do you need? The people behind Haktoua, the people behind Squirrelcoin or Beavercoin or what I I just it this is so obvious. All these mean coins follow the exact same pump and dump pattern. If you were to paste every single meme coin from the time of their launch to the time of their death, it's the exact same pattern usually within a handful of hours, if not maybe, I'll give you two. I'll give you 10. On a ten hour scale, you paste every single meme coin chart over on top of each other and overlay it with some manner of transparency and you're going to see the same curve.
Who is surprised anymore? You have no excuse. If you launch a meme coin and I hear you say the words after it crashes that nobody could have foreseen this, I'm going to find you, and I'm going to tie, like, 20 you know, like, 200 pound bags of freaking concrete to your ankles, and I'm going to throw you in the nearest body of water that will submerge your head. Because there there is no excuse for this level of stupidity. There's no excuse for this level of greed. There's just no excuse for any of this. I'm I'm I'm just I'm perpetually surprised here.
I shouldn't be, but I am. Thank God for people that bring me back down to Earth. You know, like the the podcast that I listen to, the the people that I learned how to, you know, how to determine whether something was a scam or not, which is it didn't take long. It took me about six months of listening to a bunch of Bitcoin and Ethereum and other shitcoin podcast to be able to figure out, oh, it's just Bitcoin. And most of that has been brought to you by Fountain app. Yes. It's a podcasting two point o enabled app. It's one of the very first ones, and they have released version one point one point one six, and it features Nostr livestreams and a storage manager.
And if you did not know, if you need the description, it is a lightning and Nostr powered value for value podcasting app and community where listeners and podcasters can get rewarded for the value that they provide as available on both iOS and Android. And now now you can watch Noster livestreams directly from the fountain app on your phone, and you can join live chats during the recordings. This includes shows like rabbit hole recap, the bitcoin podcast, and simply bitcoin, as well as live podcasts, music events from Phantom Power Music, radio stations such as No Good and Node Runners, and channels for gaming, art, coding, and more. And you didn't even mention me, Oscar.
I'm talking to you, Oscar, Mary. Could you at least could you at least have the with the announcement, could you at least have put, you know, the Bitcoin ad podcast in there? I you know, just just just for the hell of it anyway. Live streams from accounts that you follow on Nostra appear at the top of the home screen screen. Quote, Nostra live streams are a beta feature. You know, for example, they still have more work to do. We will continue to make improvements to live streams over the coming months, so we would love to hear your feedback, the company said in a blog post. The app settings now include a storage manager to view and delete file storage for audio, video, transcripts, image cache, feed cache, and temp files, freeing up device storage for optimal performance. Oh, that's gonna be nice.
I'm really thrilled about that one. The fountain development team is making several performance and stability improvements to the app. And in the coming weeks, they plan to roll out an image proxy service which aims to reduce mobile data usage and optimize device storage. To test the new features before they're released or to provide feedback and feature requests, join the fountain beta group on Telegram. The beta is open to all iOS and Android users. And, by the way, to upgrade your fountain app, this is not on test flight. This upgrade is in the app store. So go if you're a fountain user, and if you're not, I got only I don't know why not. It's a fabulous app. Go over to Apple, to the Apple Store or whatever you wanna call it, the App Store, and download the update for your for your fountain.
And I've already done that. It seems to be working great. I haven't tried out the live stream yet to actually watch one because when I first opened it up, there really wasn't a live stream going on. But I'll report back, to you when I actually am able to access that. Now from put on your tinfoil hats. Yep. That's right. And and and and heat up your drone catchers because we're going deep, deep, deep into Chinese Ethereum holder has spent $6,800,000 to warn the masses against mind control. I'm channeling my my inner Alex Jones. Arjeet Sarkar from Cointelegraph writes it.
A Chinese man transferred more than 2,500 ether worth $6,800,000 to various addresses, including a burn address and a WikiLeaks donations page while claiming that Chinese entities and corporations are controlling people with mind control technology and devices. On February, an ether investor named Q La Z transferred 500 ETH to a null address or zero x 0000. That is a wallet associated with token burn events. This unusual transfer of funds was flagged by crypto intelligence and trading platform, Arkham. Further investigation from Cointelegraph found that Lizzie made 16 high value transactions to various addresses including WikiLeaks donations, Ethereum Foundation, and a few unlabeled and other burn addresses.
Each of the transactions contained on chain messages in which Li zi claimed Chinese companies and entities were using brain computer weapons to persecute employees and turn their victims into, quote, puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine. Leezy described himself as a computer programmer who recently realized that he had been monitoring and or had been monitored and manipulated for his entire life. The people controlling his mind had intensified their harm towards him since that realization, he claimed. And among other things, he specifically blamed Kuwandi Investments' Chinese CEOs, Feng Jin and Zhu Yuzhi, accusing them both of using, quote, brain computer weapons to persecute employees.
Li Li claimed that the CEO's minds were also controlled by the same technology. Lizard people, I guess. I don't know. The transfers began on February and were spaced out until February, many with a common message. Good god. Quote, there is a new mode of crime in which the victim is gradually deprived of his senses of desire until he becomes a complete slave to the digital machine. And if one day I become a victim of the final stage, I will leave the world, end quote. In total, Lizzie gave away 2,553 and a quarter ETH to highlight his message. It had a market value of $6,860,000 US as of February.
Alright. So let's go back up here because there is a there's a screenshot of some of these messages that he sent. Let's read the first one. Hi. I'm Hugh Lee z, an ordinary programmer and entrepreneur. And since October 22 and 2022, I have realized that I have been monitored and manipulated by brain controlled organizations since I was born. And when I realized the existence of the brain control organization, they were also increasing the harm to me. I have been very miserable for the past two years, and now I have reached the point where I have completely lost my dignity as a human being. I have decided to leave the world, and I also hope that this ugly world will be destroyed as soon as possible.
Here's another one, a shorter one. Brain computer chips have been deployed on a large scale, and all military powers are using base stations, radios, and nano brain computer chips to control all citizens. Here's the third one. As the brain computer interface and mind reading technology keeps developing, there is a new mode of crime in which wild animals become puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine. I just I I don't even know what to say about this because here's the problem. I can't say that he's not right, and that's the problem.
I can't I I can't and neither can you. See, this is the problem. This is why it's complete tinfoil hatchery. Do I believe it? I I don't believe it nor do I not believe it. I'm I'm sitting squarely on the fence on this. I mean, you got Neuralink, brain chip computer. We've already heard about, like, several different kinds of weapons that make people, like, I don't know, see colors and then give them, like, you know, huge massive migraine headaches and make them, like, literally miserable. We've heard about and we've heard this for decades that there's, like, frequencies that you can blast into somebody's chest and it causes their heart to stop. And I don't know if any of this shit's true. And the reason I don't know if it's true or false is because I've never seen any of these machines, and I never will because I'm not part of the spook squad.
But with that said, we got a guy who was in China who just gave up $6,800,000 worth of of money. If he had cashed out all that Ethereum and just went straight to USD, he would have been able to probably get out of China. Why the hell would he do this? This while I bring this to you as anecdotally kind of humorous and a little bit sketchy on the whole, you know, tinfoil hat thing, I we would probably do well to not dismiss it out of hand because we know we live in a world of creatures that we would rather see burn in hell than hang out with at a bar drinking beer. Alright. Moving on to AlbiHub version one point one four point two, we have basic swap functionality, home widgets, and more.
AlbiHub is an open source hub for setting up and or controlling your lightning node and wallet from various applications that support Nostra Wallet Connect. I am a user of AlbiHub, and I love it. I use AlbiHub on my start nine machine at home, which is where I have my Bitcoin full node and my lightning node. It's all on there. I got mempool dot space on there. I got I got, like, the I got, like, Electris running on it. I've got I'm fully sovereign when it comes to my own Bitcoin, and AlbiHub is part of that sovereignty. They say about this that this release adds new widgets to the home screen and many new apps to the new app store to the app store, including NostrCheck server, Nostiter, n o s t t e r, BTC pay server, Coreacle, and l n bits. Quote, AlbiHub now has a health check indicator, better fiat support, NIP 44 encryption, and a way for self hosters to support ALBII. We've also added basic swap functionality to the new node page so you can more easily manage your liquidity without having to open new channels, said the project.
The Cashew back end allows users to recover stuck funds and provide new users with a recovery phase for fund recovery in other wallets so you can just take your recovery phrase to somewhere else and get your money. The Phoenix, Phoenix d back end has been updated to support sub wallets. So there's and then there's a whole list of of new stuff that they've added. This is a massive update. So if you are running, Albi Hub on, like, your sovereign machine, then go check out your whoever it is, whether it's, like, myNodeBTC, RaspiBlitz, Umbrel, start 9, whatever it is. Go check to see if that update is now available to you in your store, and that's what I'm gonna go do right now. In fact, and I'm gonna do it right here on air. Let's go to let's see. Let's Let's go to updates, and I'm gonna refresh that.
And I have, like I said, nope. The only update I see available is updating LND from 0.180.4 to 0.180.5. So there is a sub, sub point update going on for lightning network daemon. So I do not have the ability well, wait a minute. Hold on now. Nope. Not even in the community registry. Alright. So as far as my start nine is concerned, I do not have this AlbiHub update. Let me actually go see what AlbiHub says about it itself because I'm I'm actually starting up my my Albi Hub, which I am running version 1.13, and there are no notifications as to anything.
So I guess I don't get it yet. So keep your eye out for that though. And, you know, that's it, man. That's it for the show. My apologies for not coming to you on Friday and Monday. Kids were out of school. They had a day off on Friday and clearly because, you know, mattress day, you know, president's day, was yesterday. They had a four day weekend. I decided to kick back and just sort of hang out here. And, consequently, my numbers fell through the floor on downloads and whatnot like that. So if you do me a favor, help a brother out, spread the show.
Five star reviews on Apple, podcast always does me good. But you guys, if you guys can go out there and pretend to be my marketing team for fifteen minutes and just give down, you know, like, URLs to show episodes or to the whole show, it doesn't matter what podcast app you do. I'm I'm not you know, I I want you to use podcasting two point o. I want you to spread that word too, but getting more numbers for the show is sort of tantamount for me right now. If you would do, you know, help a brother out, I would appreciate it. Let your friends friends and family know that if they need Bitcoin news, if they wanna hear it pretty much every day of the week, except every once in a while when I take off, that they can come to the Bitcoin and podcast and they will be kept up to date on what's going on that day in Bitcoin.
And I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and, and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 08:58AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten thirty eight of Bitcoin, and it's named the fire hose of lies. That's right. It's the fire hose of lies. We're gonna get into the Malay bullshit because it is complete garbage. It very unfortunate the way that whole thing, turned out to be, well, a scam. It was a just an awful, awful thing to have to witness, but it is causing Solana some some serious issues itself. And then then after that, we're we're we're gonna talk about the fact that we have a couple of pretty good red candles this morning, and you may be wondering why. We'll we'll we'll get into it. I promise.
And then, what is this one here down here? Oh, yes. Tether is in the news in LatAm yet one more time. And this time, I'm not a I'm not a real big fan of Tether and agriculture. And as you might imagine, we'll we'll get into it. Texas Bitcoin reserve bill is in the news. The cofounder of crypto firm behind Trump has resigned, and I'm talking about Trump coin, not not the actual Trump guy. Heather, we got a couple of updates, and I got a pretty good juicy, tinfoil hat story coming out of China today. It's gonna be a little interesting. But first, first, let's start with what is affecting the markets this morning.
FTX, their $1,200,000,000 repayments are starting today, and they're marking a key moment in the crypto industry recovery. I'm not sure what they mean by recovery, but we'll find out from Zoltan Vardai, CoinTelegraph. Yeah, buddy. FTX digital markets, the Bahamian unit of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is set to repay the very first group of creditors today, February, in a significant development for the crypto industry following the exchange's almost $9,000,000,000 collapse and the downfall of FTX and more than 130 subsidiaries launched a series of insolvencies that led to the industry's longest ever crypto winter, which saw Bitcoin's price bottom out at around $1,600.
In a key moment for the crypto industry's recovery, FTX's Bahama Wing will honor the first batch of repayments for users who are owed less than $50,000 worth of claims. Users will receive their funds at 3PM UTC on February according to a February 4 Twitter post from FTX creditor, Sunil, who is part of the largest group of more than 1,500 FTX, coordinators oh, creditors. Sorry. Creditors. The FTX customer ad hoc committee said, I guess that's a bad sentence anyway, that repayments will bring an estimated of $1,200,000,000 worth of capital to the first wave of defrauded FTX users.
And by the way, I was just checking on something. UTC time right now for me is 05:02PM. So this washes with the red candle timing that I'm seeing. It appears that, people started immediately selling some of their Bitcoin to get back into cash, I guess. I I I don't know. All I know is that there seems to be a fire sale on Bitcoin, and I also did not see any kind of announcement from Saylor that he usually post on Sunday, saying that he was gonna basic essentially signaling that he was about to announce that they bought yet more Bitcoin. So it looks like it's possible that Sailor, maybe he waited because we knew February 18 was coming, guys. This isn't a surprise.
I talked about this at least three times over the last three months saying February 18 was coming, and it was bringing to the market a whole bunch of people that got their their shit lit up because of the FTX and BlockFi and Alameda and all that when it all went away. They all got host, and they've been waiting patiently at this point for years, but not quite as bad as Mt. Gox, but yet for years to get a hold of their money, and they were getting a hold they're getting a hold of actual Bitcoin and whatever shit coins that they actually have. It was not sold off directly to USD. They said that they were going to actually give the Bitcoin back. And so it appears that they have, and it appears that everybody that was involved with FTX has lettuce hands. Well, whatever.
Continuing on, the FTX repayments are being viewed as a positive signal for the crypto industry's recovery according to Alvin Kahn, chief operating officer at Bitget Wallet. The $1,200,000,000 repayments may see a significant portion reinvested into cryptocurrencies potentially impacting market liquidity and prices, he told Cointelegraph. This event could boost investor sentiment by demonstrating market recovery from the FTX collapse, though the sentiment might be mixed due to the payout being based on lower twenty twenty two valuations, Khan said.
Quote, the scale of this repayment marks a notable event in terms of both capital flow and the psychological impact on crypto investors, he added. Despite the positive news, some creditors have criticized the repayment model, which reimburses claimants based on cryptocurrency prices. This is weird. At the time of bankruptcy, bitcoin prices, for example, have increased by more than 370% since November 2022. It seems that I'm I'm wrong. I was squarely under the impression that they were actually getting their Bitcoin back. So this would suggest that they've already sold all their Bitcoin and they're getting their cash back on shitty ass prices and yet we're still seeing a sell off in the market. Something doesn't wash here ladies and gentlemen. I'm not sure what's going on here because I wholeheartedly and honestly believe that they were getting their Bitcoin back and not cash.
So how the hell are we having a sell off in the markets today? It's gotta be a sell the news event. I I have no other explanation for this. If they didn't get their Bitcoin back and they got cash, then what the hell's going on? Again, I don't know, man. Something doesn't something doesn't sound right, but let's finish it out. While the first FTX repayment represents a significant step forward, the capital may only have a limited effect on the cryptocurrency market. While it may not be a market moving catalyst, the first FTX payout represents a significant victory for justice at overall market sentiment according to Magdalena Hristova, public relations manager at Nexo, who says, quote, the collapse impacted many investors and cast a shadow, a pall over crypto.
For retail investors, especially those without diversified portfolios, these repayments offer not just the return of funds, but a sense of stability and peace of mind, end quote. Bullshit. Since the first batch of repayments is limited to creditors with claims under $50,000, The reinvestment rate into crypto assets may be relatively low. Many recipients may opt for safer investments rather than reentering the volatile digital assets market. The FTX repayment process remains ongoing, with larger creditors awaiting further announcements regarding their claims. So the big fish have not been paid back yet.
The small fish are being paid back yet, and it appears they're being paid back in cash and not in actual coin, which is confusing the shit out of me because I thought and and I don't mind being wrong. You can just go, oh, shit. You're so wrong. Fine. Whatever. Nobody can always be right. But I was firmly under the impression that they were getting their coinage back. And, again, this doesn't these giant red candles don't make sense to me If they got cash and they decided to just not enter the market, then what?
So if it is the case that nobody from the FTX, Alameda, BlockFi, all that stuff, nobody got paid back in anything but USD, then they can't sell their coins. So, therefore, if that is true, this is 100 what we're seeing in the Bitcoin market today is 100% sell the news event. Well, somebody else sold something. Yes, they did. And it was a guy I had really high hopes for, Mille, Libri coin. Atlas 20 1 has picked up a pretty pretty detailed account on, like, what happened. So let's do it. It's entitled Libra, the rug pull that involved Malay. What really happened?
Last weekend, another rug pull involved the cryptocurrency world. After Trump and the president of the Central African Republic, this time, the scandal involved the Argentinian president Javier Millet and the new Libra token, promoted as a digital asset intended to, quote, and I do quote, support the Argentine economy. The token's rapid rise and then sudden collapse shortly afterwards caused major losses among investors and cast a shadow, a pall, if you will, over Malay's political career. So what happened? The Libra story began way back when, way back on February with a tweet from president Malay in which he promoted the token to his 3,800,000 followers on Twitter.
The post described the project as a private initiative aimed at strengthening the Argentine economy by financing local companies. The Argentine president's endorsement triggered a speculative frenzy with the token price shooting from almost zero to five dollars or just shy of, with a market capitalization reaching $4,400,000,000 within hours. But the surge was short lived because a few hours later, the token crashed below $1. Blockchain analysts quickly discovered that 82% of the tokens were controlled by insiders who withdrew $107,000,000 in USDC and Solana or SOL, Solana's token, from liquidity pools, which are sets of tokens locked in smart contracts used in defi platforms to facilitate cryptocurrency exchange.
Well, within hours, the Libra token crashed by 94%. President Malay is at the center of the scandal. After the tokens collapsed, he deleted his initial support tweet, posting a new one claiming that he was unaware of the project's details and stating he had withdrawn his endorsement once the flaws were discovered. Oh, yeah. Right. I just a truckload of bullshit. And that this is this is where I'm really disappointed in Malay. Is him being so stupid as to think that him being a complete public figure with almost every spotlight in the world shining upon him that he's going to be able to pull some stunt like he's talking to cops, like he was a homeless person that nobody knows.
That's the for me, that's the real issue here. Now I and I am odd honestly disappointed that he even engaged in any of this shit. But it's this it's this weird backpedaling that is so transparent that it means that he doesn't respect anybody. And I was really afraid of this, and it's come to pass. But we have more to the story because other controversial figures associated with Libra's creation and promotion have past histories of similar fraudulent activities. In particular, blockchain analysis firm Bubble Maps found connections between Libra developers and those responsible for the Melania coin, another meme coin involved in a pump and dump scheme earlier this year. The same wallets involved in the Melania token's early gains were identified in Libra transactions, suggesting a pattern of coordinated pump and dump schemes.
According to Bubble Maps, one piece of evidence in the investigation is the activity of a Solana wallet called P5TB4. The wallet accumulated over $2,400,000 through quick operations on the Melania token and subsequently transferred these funds to an avalanche based EVM wallet, 0 x c e a, directly linked to the Melania token creator. The token or the connection was made through funding transactions and cross chain exchanges. Bubble Maps states that weeks later, the 0 x c e a address began funding def c y k wallet, and that's the main wallet of Libra's creator, which is also identified as the team wallet on Solscan.
Well, after Libra tokens launch on February, the 0 x c e a wallet repeated the same operation with the latter, making a profit of no less than $6,000,000. In this case too, the operations were conducted using multiple secondary addresses funded through cross chain transfer protocols from wallets on Arbitrum and Avalanche. Analysts noted that Libra's website was created just hours before launch. Speaking to CNN, analyst Pablo Sabotilla stated, quote, the first thing I saw was that the website had been registered yesterday, which was Friday, which is typical of a scam, end quote. As reported by CryptoVolta.it, the domain was registered on February.
In an interview with YouTube channel creator or the YouTube channel, Voidzilla, journalist Coffeezilla's channel, Hayden Davis, CEO of Calc Kelsier Ventures and key figure behind the Libra token launch, admitted to being part of the same group that launched the Melania token and that the team adopted the same sniping strategy at that token's launch. The term sniping refers to the use of automated bots or smart contracts to execute program transactions that purchase a large amount of a newly launched token. This is done very quickly, often within milliseconds, with the aim of reselling the tokens at a higher price and making a profit.
Davis emphasized that every launch is subject to these dynamics that disadvantage retail investors unaware of privileged information. He then compared the cryptocurrency landscape to a casino where the odds are always against the average investor. You think? Whatever. Opposition parliamentarians have called for Malay's impeachment, it accusing him of abusing his political influence to promote a speculative and deceptive financial asset, legal experts argue that Malais could face fraud charges under article two six five of the Argentine penal code, which covers market manipulation and financial crimes.
Several lawsuits have already been filed against Malay, arguing that his endorsement misled investors. Malay has tasked the anti corruption office with investigating his own actions? Weird. Investigating whether other government officials committed illegal conduct regarding Libra's launch and and and has announced the creation of a commission to investigate the creators for alleged fraud. If found guilty, Malay could face up to six years in prison and possible removal from office. Well, I don't know how your president would be able to go to prison and remain in office if he was convicted while actually in office. This is the same crap.
It's it doesn't matter who the person is or what their station in life is, how famous they are, or how Joe Schmo retail they are. This is all about greed. And it would not surprise it what actually, fund, which it would not surprise me if it came out later that we find out that pump.fund is is part of it, but they don't need to be. They're not the only people that make meme coins. And why I bring that up is because of this. Hawk to a girl, the guy with the squirrel and the raccoon that got, I don't know, summarily executed, you know, at some far dude's farm, They had coins.
I am absolutely convinced at this point with everything that I've read about it that neither one of the neither the Hocktua girl nor the squirrel man, if you wanna call him that, had any idea how to launch any meme coin whatsoever. They had to have been contacted by pump dot fund who did, in fact, do both of those meme coins. And they told them now I don't know this for a fact, but my gut feeling and, again, I am convinced the following is true. Pump dot fund got a hold of these guys and said, we'll make you a millionaire. All you gotta do is x, y, and z. And they both said, fuck it. As long as I get a million dollars, I don't give a shit who gets hurt.
Because that's what this entails. It means that you have to not care who loses their money, and you also have to not care that it's very possible that the people who do, in fact, lose their money are the very people that cannot afford to lose their money. It's the same thing as putting a goddamn casino in the poorest parts of fucking New Mexico. Ask me how I know. You wanna keep a people poor? You put a casino where they can take their hard earned paycheck that barely covers their living expenses anyway. You put a casino for them to go cash that check at a window for clay tokens and have them basically go give that money right back to you, except instead of all at once, it takes them a few hours, and they get a couple of drinks to get good lit up along the way.
But if you go and you drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico, this is one example of where this should occur. From Santa Fe, New Mexico to Es North to Espanola, New Mexico, you will see abject poverty, except for the casinos themselves. They look great. They look fine. They look awesome. But if you look around the fields, you see either broken down or flat ass burned out bullshit trailers, hovels that people are living in because all they're doing is they're getting paid for whatever shit work they can pick up over there and take it right over there to the the what was it? The camel toe casino or whatever they call that thing.
Camel Rock. Yeah. There's Camel Rock casinos out there if it's still open. A new one just got built a couple of years ago, and then there's a third one out there. And that's all you need to make sure that you keep everybody in that valley poor ass shit. Except they don't have the advantage of being able to do online gambling, do they? No. No. No. These people in New Mexico, they have to actually look at the people who they're robbing in the face. They have to see them at the grocery store. They have to get you know, pump gas next to them. They gotta go buy clothes with them. They gotta see them walking down the street.
They see the people they rob. At least they have that going for him. This motherfucker, Javier Millet, doesn't give a shit, and now he's trying to back out of the whole deal like, oh, I didn't know anything. Oh, bullshit. And that's reprehensible. I hope he goes to jail. I hope they arrest his ass. I hope they throw his ass in jail. And I I know that the effect of that is going to be that Argentina's gonna fall right back into the soup that it was in. He was doing a good job, and he lit his ass get in front of the cart. And next thing you know, he's like, man, we're gonna clean up.
How did you not know that your Libra token wasn't going to follow the exact same bar chart pattern that every other meme coin follows? And everybody is making it out to be like somehow that this is worse than Trump coin or worse than Melania coin because it fell so hard. Bullshit. It followed the same pattern. The only reason that it's worse this time, I guess, is that it's the president of Argentina because our own president did the exact same shit. Like, what what on inauguration weekend is the exact same thing. I don't know, man. This whole thing is bad.
I hope Malay goes to prison. I certainly hope he ceases to be president, but my heart goes out to all the Argentinians that lost their money. Sure. He's saying that a bunch of America it was mostly Americans and Chinese people. How would you know? If you didn't know how the mechanics of this coin worked because that's what you're claiming right now, then how do you know it was mostly Americans and Chinese people that lost their money? You don't because you're a scum sucking liar. Now standard chartered. We're getting into something else, so break away from the thought pattern before.
Standard Chartered sees more sovereign wealth funds buying Bitcoin. This is from Yogita Khatri out of the block. After Abu Dhabi's recent investment in BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, Jeffrey Kendrick, expects more sovereign wealth funds to enter the market. We're talking about sovereign wealth funds, not companies, countries. When you hear the word sovereign wealth fund, that's not a wealth fund that's like Wells Fargo. No. That's like Saudi Arabia, The United States, Canada.
Or in the case of Alaska, which is a state, they sort of have a they have their own kind of sovereign wealth fund, but it's a state sovereign wealth fund. But these are not companies. These are not institutions. These are entire governments that we're talking about. Quote, the 13 f filings for the fourth quarter show that process is now underway, Kendrick said in an email to the block on Tuesday, quote, it is happening. Form 13 f is a quarterly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by institutional investment managers overseeing at least $100,000,000 worth of assets.
Kendrick analyzed q four data from 13 f filings and said in a new report published on Tuesday that the data is very encouraging for his recent forecast that Bitcoin could reach $500,000 by 2028. While hedge funds once again dominated the buying in q four, bank buying, which started in q three, was also very strong. Kendrick said in the report, quote, even more importantly, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund reported a 4,700.0 BTC equivalent position in BlackRock's iBit ETF. While this is small for now, we would expect the size to increase over time and indeed for other sovereigns to start buying.
As the Bitcoin market matures, Kendrick expects it to attract a wider range of buyers. The trend has already shifted from predominantly retail investors before ETFs to hedge funds in the early ETF phase, and now sovereigns are starting to participate according to Kendrick. Quote, this gives us comfort to say that even if buying by strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, slows down dramatically, it has bought a staggering 227,000 BTC since the US election, more than 1% of ever to exist supply, we think other buyers are waiting to step in, Kendrick said. Looking ahead, Kendrick expects, quote, more super long term long only money such as state pension funds like the state of Wisconsin investment board and the state of Michigan department of the treasury to invest in bitcoin. He also predicts central banks could follow, pointing to the Czech National Bank considering a Bitcoin allocation of up to 5% of its €140,000,000,000 reserves, which is around 7,000,000,000.
I don't know what it's saying. It says a hundred and 40,000,000,000 worth of reserves, which oh, 5% is €7,000,000,000, and the Swiss National Bank in the early stages of Bitcoin investment consideration. As institutional access to Bitcoin improves and volatility declines, Kendrick expects more portfolios to migrate towards their optimal level from an underweight Bitcoin starting point. Alright. Well, so so now we've we had retail. That's this is the breakdown. We had retail buying Bitcoin, and everybody laughed at us. And then last year, at the very beginning of last year, all of a sudden hedge funds moved in and started pretty much taking up the spotlight.
Some people stopped laughing. Other people kept laughing. Well, now sovereign states this year. So for what was it? Fourteen years. Let's say fifteen years of Bitcoin retail only. For the last year, it's been hedge funds and super massive people like MicroStrategy, which is now strategy, but they did start buying in 2021. Now we're talking about sovereigns, and this is a different game yet again. It's it's like step functions. Retail is the first step. Hedge funds was the first step function up. Sovereigns, completely new ballgame. And it happened in with just a year.
A year and one and a half months because hedge funds started ostensibly January 2024. Here we are, February 2025, and sovereign nations and states in The United States are looking at Bitcoin for their wealth reserves that represent the citizenry of either their state or their country, and that's what sovereign actually means. Now maple syrup. Do you want sun? Maple trade. You got it. Maple trade sells maple syrup. He makes it by hand. He also sells his sister Sarah's soaps, which she makes by hand. Both of these products are phenomenal. I've tried them both myself. I would buy them again, and I probably will once I run out of the maple syrup that maple trade has already given me because I tried not to consume that much sugar. But this guy's sugar is sweet, man, and he does it all himself. He's not reselling. He's making it himself. He's tapping his own trees.
He's boiling it down himself. He's packaging itself, and he's selling it to you through the circle p where I bring plebs just like you to plebs with goods and services that are also just like you, but you have to sell your goods and services in Bitcoin. Because if you don't sell your goods or service in Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you buy anything from Mapletrading, make sure you tell him you heard it here on the circle p, and he will cut me in on some of those sweet, sweet satoshis. But you gotta make sure that you tell him, hey. I heard it on the circle p. And how do you get a hold of Mapletrading? Well, you can go to the show notes.
And under the heading in the show notes that says circle p, right underneath that, there will be a URL directly to his Nostr account. Well, I don't wanna call it an account, but his nose it's his Nostr handle, but it will take you right to if you're not playing around with Nostr, it'll take you right there, and you can you can figure out how to get a hold of him there. But if you're not a Nostra user, it probably means you're a Twitter user, and you can get a hold of him over there too. And his URL directly to his Twitter handle is also in the show notes.
Buy his maple syrup. Buy his sister Sarah's soaps. You will not be disappointed. And if you buy, I get some too. Well, Satoshi's, anyway. Alright. Tether is getting into ag? This scares the shit out of me. I don't need any more large concerns of any way, shape, or form getting into agriculture. We've got enough problems as it is. Tether has made an unsolicited bid for a majority stake in a $1,000,000,000 Latin American agribusiness called Adacorago Coa gro. I can't pronounce it. It doesn't matter. They own farmland and industrial facilities across Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
Tether, the crypto firm behind the $140,000,000,000 USDT stablecoin, has made an unsolicited proposal to acquire a majority stake in Latin American agricultural commodities producer firm, Agrodeco. Okay. Maybe that maybe the other one was a a misspelling. Submitted on February, the $12.41 per share offer was to bring to Tether stake in the company from the current 19.4% to a full 51% controlling standpoint according to a Tuesday press release by Adacorago or whatever it is. Anyway, their board met on February to discuss the bid and has engaged financial and legal advisers to determine whether accepting the offer aligns with shareholders' interests.
Their shares jumped 8% premarket to $10.48 in premarket trading in New York. They are a major player in South America's agribusiness sector focusing on sugar, ethanol, dairy, and crop production, as well as operating across Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Quote, land is a critical asset class, scarce, yielding long term returns, and historically a safe haven during geopolitical uncertainty, a Tether spokesman said. Investing in agriculture aligns with our vision of resilience and sustainability complementing our existing holdings in Bitcoin and gold. Adrocorago or whatever with its focus on essential agricultural production represents an opportunity to support an industry's fundamental or industries that are fundamental to humanity's future, end quote. Tether's investment offer comes as the company is expanding beyond its core crypto business. The stablecoin issuer said it ranked in 30 raked in $13,000,000,000 in profits of last year, and they have 25 people working for them for Tether.
Twenty five. Not not 2,500. No. Not 25,000. Nope. Like, 25. Sub 50 people are at Tether, and they raked in $13,000,000,000. This does not end well. This I mean, it ends well for them because they're all they're all rich. At this point, they don't need to do anything. It but it it's disconcerting that they are looking at agriculture. It makes sense. I'm not saying that they're dumb. That's not what I'm saying at all. This is actually the smart play. It's just that agriculture has been under attack by big everything, big pharma, big business, big ag itself, big everything. Big everything. Big energy.
Because we grow a bunch of corn for freaking ethanol production, which is dumb, but be that as it may. What it's caused is widespread soil death, and that just gets worse and worse and worse over time. I if if Tether is going to get into some kind of regenerative agriculture thing and take Adorocko or whatever the however the hell you pronounce it along that route, then good for him, but I don't expect to see that. But we will have to see. Still, though, everything about that is disconcerting. Let let let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. They got West Texas Intermediate Oil up 1.15% to $71.55.
Brent North Sea up a half to 75 and a half dollars. Natural gas is up almost four points to $3.86 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is sideways, $2.08 a gallon. Gold, getting into the all time high territory again, 1.7% to the upside brings it to $50 shy of $3,000 an ounce. Silver up one and a half percent. Platinum is down over a point. Copper is down almost two points, but palladium is moving sideways slightly in the green. Ag futures mostly in the green today. Biggest loser, coffee, point five five percent to the downside. Biggest winner appears to be chocolate, one and a half to the upside.
Live cattle is down a quarter. Lean hogs are up one and a third. Feeder cattle are up just over a point. The Dow is down point 13%. The S and P is moving sideways. Nasdaq is up or down a tenth of a point, and the S and P Mini is up point 68%. Yay. And, of course, we are getting hammered on the Bitcoin price at $94,260 a coin. That brings us down to $1,870,000,000,000 of market cap, and we can only purchase 31.9 ounces of the shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,825,873 of, and fees are still highly, well, highly low. They're damn low. 0.05 BTC taking in fees on a per block basis kind of low. And there are, well, I don't know, 18 blocks, carrying 17,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of four sats per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three.
And we have 828.9 exahashes per second of, wow, of mining power. That's I keep thinking that we're going to see a crash in mining because fees are so low, but apparently, miners don't give a shit. They are rocking it right up to the end, I guess. Now from seize this, which was, what, Thursday's episode of Bitcoin and I got anonymous who's giving me 20,000 satoshis and says worth every episode. God, I wish I know who this dude was. You're a hell of a patron, sir, anonymous. Paul Cernine with 500 says, thanks for yet another insightful and entertaining episode. I'd love to hear more about Obsidian and how you think its many features could be leveraged to maximize utility. Have a great weekend and keep up the good work. You're welcome, my good sir.
$4.20 sats comes from somebody whose handle does not appear in fountain and says, would love to see an Obsidian zap stream. Okay. Alright. Thank you for letting me know. God's death with two thirty seven. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Perma nerd with 222 sat says, show me your Obsidian. Y'all Yodle with 200 says, would be interested in a ZapStream about Obsidian. Okay. So that's like three or four people that said, oh, anonymous with a hundred and eight says, l f g Obsidian, Cummins Mcjohn no. Cummins Mcjohn. With a hundred says, love Obsidian, would love another program on it. And Boaz with a hundred says, all sats [email protected].
And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. I got a, post here from Bitcoin Laws on Twitter. It says that the Texas Bitcoin Reserve Bill, SB 21, will be heard by the Business and Commerce Committee this morning according to senator Charles Schwartner. And Charles Schwartner's got this, Twitter or this tweet that says, this morning, the Business and Commerce Committee will hear my bill, SB 21, which if passed and signed into law, would make Texas the first state to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I look forward to discussing what this means for Texas' future and economic growth. So s b 21 in Texas is actually going to have its first hearing in the business and commerce committee this morning, so it's moving ahead. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening.
And here from, decrypt.c0 written by Vizmaya v, we've got cofounder of crypto firm behind the Trump and Melania tokens resigns amid insider trading allegations. So we're continuing on. I'm sure that they're going to connect it with the, Libra and Argentine or Argentinian president Javier Molay at one point or another. Let's find out. Ben Chow. His name is Ben Chow, and he's the cofounder of Metoria or whatever, the Solana based platform behind the controversial Trump and Melania token launches has resigned following insider trading allegations that have surfaced after the collapse of Libra token, a crypto initially backed by Argentine president Javier Malay whose value plummeted over 90% within hours after its launch.
Meow, the pseudonymous cofounder of both Meteora and Jupiter Exchange confirmed in a tweet on Monday that Ben's resignation came following his lack of judgment as a product lead in the past few months. Neither Chao nor Meow have responded to request for comments. The Libra Tokens collapse has cranked up insider trading accusations with on chain analysts pointing to suspicious wallet activity and the possible involvement of insiders dumping tokens at the asset's peak price. I am shocked that there's gambling going on in here. Gambling. Who would have freaking thunk it? Amid the allegations, platforms such as Metoria or whatever, which provided technical support for the token launch, got caught in the crossfire.
With the firm now seeking new leadership, Chao's exit has raised questions about the ethics surrounding high profile token launches and their far reaching impact on crypto. Went a bridge too far, did we? In the wake of the allegations, Meow clarified his company's stance, noting that neither Jupiter nor Mitoria were involved in insider trading or financial misconduct. Jupiter has previously acknowledged while the launch of an Argentina coin has been an open secret within meme coin circles, no one at Jupyter knew the specifics in advance. Meteora or meet Meteora.
Meteora. Meteora. I guess that's the name. Is it m e t e o r a? You figured it out. Meteora had been reported reportedly operating independently of Jupiter for well over a year with Ben running the firm without significant involvement from Meow. Yeah. I'm pausing here because it's bullshit. Miao knew exactly what Ben Chow was doing. That's why you separate this shit so that you have only one clear communications line between the two people, one from each platform or one from each company or whatever you wanna call it. And that way, you limit exposure to only those two people. But those two people are both in the best positions to tell the other one exactly what's going on. It's the best coordination scheme that you can get.
Both Jupiter and Meteora were both fucking in on this. This is another it's not probably not as much money involved, but this is this is FTX and Alameda research. That's what this shit is. It's just not as big. But it's probably going to go away, and it couldn't go away soon enough in my opinion. Anyway, Chao has not released any official statement, but he has previously addressed the controversy on Twitter offering his side of the story. And in a series of tweets on Saturday, he initially explained that Meteora's involvement in the Libra launch was limited to simply providing technical support. Quote, the Libra team used Meteora, which is a permissionless platform.
We never had any access to the tokens or to Javier Malay himself. Well, he clarified that Meteora did not play a role in the launch decision making or market making activities as the platform allows anyone to create pools and tokens without direct involvement from the Meteora team. However, Ben later backtracked on his initial tweet acknowledging that questions had arisen regarding Meteora's role in the launch of Libra and other tokens. Ben Chow explained his relationship with Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures, who was also involved in the launch of Libra, Trump, and the Melania meme coins. Quote, I referred to them or I referred them, that being Hayden Davis, to a handful of other projects that had inquired with us about Deployer firms, which included the team behind Melania, Ben wrote.
He reportedly referred Kyle Kelsier Ventures to other projects and said that their relationship was built upon mutual trust. Mutual trust developed during the successful launch of the m 3 m 3 token in December. In response to community backlash, Meow announced plans for the independent third party investigation. They are seeking to hire California based law firm, Fenwick and West, to handle the allegations and promote transparency. Chow's resignation has been met with mixed reactions with some support for figures such as Cash Dahanda, a founding member of super team DAO and a cat herder at Jupiter who defended him as a victim of, quote, strategic mistakes rather than any form of misconduct.
Libra saw its market cap surge to $4,000,000,000 before before plummeting by 91% fueling suspicions of market manipulation. The fallout from Libra continues to shadow Malay who now faces impeachment calls and legal action accusing him of fraud over his promotion of the token. Yeah. So that's the end of the story. And and again, and I'm going back to Trump here. How is it that how is it that you just don't think that this is a massive conflict of interest? You cannot be the president of any country and then launch a meme coin. Well, you can, clearly. We watched it happen, not once, not twice, but thrice. We're gonna watch we're gonna see it happen over and over and over again into the future. Right? That's that's not in question.
What I question is, how hard is it to be a person, to be a man, and have people come up to you and you're the president of a country? Could be The United States, could be Argentina. Fuck it. Let's say it's Mexico City or or I'm at Mexican the country Mexico. Hey, man. We got a meme coin for you. You're gonna launch it. You're gonna make millions of dollars, and it's gonna be good for your country. My initial reaction is and this initial reaction would assume that I know being the president of Mexico what I actually know, what what I've experienced watching this shit happen, I would say, go screw.
You have no intention of doing me any good. You have no intention of doing the country of Mexico any good. You certainly don't have any intention other than theft of the money of my citizenry, so get out of my palace before I have you arrested and thrown in a fucking dungeon. Now how hard is that? Okay. Let's let's assume that I don't know anything. That I'm just a complete when it comes to cryptocurrency, I am a moron. I don't I've never I don't even I've only heard of Bitcoin, and I don't even know how it works. Let's make that assumption. A guy comes to me and says, hey, president of Mexico, I got a meme coin for you, and you're gonna make a lot of money, and it's gonna do great for your country.
My reaction is, I have literally no idea what you're talking about. It sounds like a giant scam to me. And unless you do something for my country that is, I don't know, substantial, I won't even look into it. And if you continue to waste my time, I will have you thrown out of my palace. How hard is that? How hard is is it that difficult to just look at something and go, I don't know, man. This doesn't sound good. This sounds like people could get hurt. Does that make me weak because I believe that? Does that make me some kind of effeminate man because I actually give shit one about other people and the possibility that they may, I I don't know, starve because I took all their money or allowed somebody else to take all their money and even I don't get any of it?
Is it that difficult to be moral? Is it that difficult to have some manner of ethic? And I'm rapidly approaching the answer that apparently it is, And it's sad to watch this happen. But here's here's my prediction. We're going to have another string of complete failures in the altcoin, meme coin, shitcoin, whatever it is that's not Bitcoin market. And it's going to scare people. It's already scaring people. We're down to $94,153 a coin. I got I got four red bars in a row on the hour chart. Because Malay couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Trump couldn't keep his dick in his pants.
His wife, who doesn't have a dick, if she did have a dick, wouldn't be able to keep her dick in her pants. And I I have I don't understand it. How much do you need? The people behind Haktoua, the people behind Squirrelcoin or Beavercoin or what I I just it this is so obvious. All these mean coins follow the exact same pump and dump pattern. If you were to paste every single meme coin from the time of their launch to the time of their death, it's the exact same pattern usually within a handful of hours, if not maybe, I'll give you two. I'll give you 10. On a ten hour scale, you paste every single meme coin chart over on top of each other and overlay it with some manner of transparency and you're going to see the same curve.
Who is surprised anymore? You have no excuse. If you launch a meme coin and I hear you say the words after it crashes that nobody could have foreseen this, I'm going to find you, and I'm going to tie, like, 20 you know, like, 200 pound bags of freaking concrete to your ankles, and I'm going to throw you in the nearest body of water that will submerge your head. Because there there is no excuse for this level of stupidity. There's no excuse for this level of greed. There's just no excuse for any of this. I'm I'm I'm just I'm perpetually surprised here.
I shouldn't be, but I am. Thank God for people that bring me back down to Earth. You know, like the the podcast that I listen to, the the people that I learned how to, you know, how to determine whether something was a scam or not, which is it didn't take long. It took me about six months of listening to a bunch of Bitcoin and Ethereum and other shitcoin podcast to be able to figure out, oh, it's just Bitcoin. And most of that has been brought to you by Fountain app. Yes. It's a podcasting two point o enabled app. It's one of the very first ones, and they have released version one point one point one six, and it features Nostr livestreams and a storage manager.
And if you did not know, if you need the description, it is a lightning and Nostr powered value for value podcasting app and community where listeners and podcasters can get rewarded for the value that they provide as available on both iOS and Android. And now now you can watch Noster livestreams directly from the fountain app on your phone, and you can join live chats during the recordings. This includes shows like rabbit hole recap, the bitcoin podcast, and simply bitcoin, as well as live podcasts, music events from Phantom Power Music, radio stations such as No Good and Node Runners, and channels for gaming, art, coding, and more. And you didn't even mention me, Oscar.
I'm talking to you, Oscar, Mary. Could you at least could you at least have the with the announcement, could you at least have put, you know, the Bitcoin ad podcast in there? I you know, just just just for the hell of it anyway. Live streams from accounts that you follow on Nostra appear at the top of the home screen screen. Quote, Nostra live streams are a beta feature. You know, for example, they still have more work to do. We will continue to make improvements to live streams over the coming months, so we would love to hear your feedback, the company said in a blog post. The app settings now include a storage manager to view and delete file storage for audio, video, transcripts, image cache, feed cache, and temp files, freeing up device storage for optimal performance. Oh, that's gonna be nice.
I'm really thrilled about that one. The fountain development team is making several performance and stability improvements to the app. And in the coming weeks, they plan to roll out an image proxy service which aims to reduce mobile data usage and optimize device storage. To test the new features before they're released or to provide feedback and feature requests, join the fountain beta group on Telegram. The beta is open to all iOS and Android users. And, by the way, to upgrade your fountain app, this is not on test flight. This upgrade is in the app store. So go if you're a fountain user, and if you're not, I got only I don't know why not. It's a fabulous app. Go over to Apple, to the Apple Store or whatever you wanna call it, the App Store, and download the update for your for your fountain.
And I've already done that. It seems to be working great. I haven't tried out the live stream yet to actually watch one because when I first opened it up, there really wasn't a live stream going on. But I'll report back, to you when I actually am able to access that. Now from put on your tinfoil hats. Yep. That's right. And and and and heat up your drone catchers because we're going deep, deep, deep into Chinese Ethereum holder has spent $6,800,000 to warn the masses against mind control. I'm channeling my my inner Alex Jones. Arjeet Sarkar from Cointelegraph writes it.
A Chinese man transferred more than 2,500 ether worth $6,800,000 to various addresses, including a burn address and a WikiLeaks donations page while claiming that Chinese entities and corporations are controlling people with mind control technology and devices. On February, an ether investor named Q La Z transferred 500 ETH to a null address or zero x 0000. That is a wallet associated with token burn events. This unusual transfer of funds was flagged by crypto intelligence and trading platform, Arkham. Further investigation from Cointelegraph found that Lizzie made 16 high value transactions to various addresses including WikiLeaks donations, Ethereum Foundation, and a few unlabeled and other burn addresses.
Each of the transactions contained on chain messages in which Li zi claimed Chinese companies and entities were using brain computer weapons to persecute employees and turn their victims into, quote, puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine. Leezy described himself as a computer programmer who recently realized that he had been monitoring and or had been monitored and manipulated for his entire life. The people controlling his mind had intensified their harm towards him since that realization, he claimed. And among other things, he specifically blamed Kuwandi Investments' Chinese CEOs, Feng Jin and Zhu Yuzhi, accusing them both of using, quote, brain computer weapons to persecute employees.
Li Li claimed that the CEO's minds were also controlled by the same technology. Lizard people, I guess. I don't know. The transfers began on February and were spaced out until February, many with a common message. Good god. Quote, there is a new mode of crime in which the victim is gradually deprived of his senses of desire until he becomes a complete slave to the digital machine. And if one day I become a victim of the final stage, I will leave the world, end quote. In total, Lizzie gave away 2,553 and a quarter ETH to highlight his message. It had a market value of $6,860,000 US as of February.
Alright. So let's go back up here because there is a there's a screenshot of some of these messages that he sent. Let's read the first one. Hi. I'm Hugh Lee z, an ordinary programmer and entrepreneur. And since October 22 and 2022, I have realized that I have been monitored and manipulated by brain controlled organizations since I was born. And when I realized the existence of the brain control organization, they were also increasing the harm to me. I have been very miserable for the past two years, and now I have reached the point where I have completely lost my dignity as a human being. I have decided to leave the world, and I also hope that this ugly world will be destroyed as soon as possible.
Here's another one, a shorter one. Brain computer chips have been deployed on a large scale, and all military powers are using base stations, radios, and nano brain computer chips to control all citizens. Here's the third one. As the brain computer interface and mind reading technology keeps developing, there is a new mode of crime in which wild animals become puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine. I just I I don't even know what to say about this because here's the problem. I can't say that he's not right, and that's the problem.
I can't I I can't and neither can you. See, this is the problem. This is why it's complete tinfoil hatchery. Do I believe it? I I don't believe it nor do I not believe it. I'm I'm sitting squarely on the fence on this. I mean, you got Neuralink, brain chip computer. We've already heard about, like, several different kinds of weapons that make people, like, I don't know, see colors and then give them, like, you know, huge massive migraine headaches and make them, like, literally miserable. We've heard about and we've heard this for decades that there's, like, frequencies that you can blast into somebody's chest and it causes their heart to stop. And I don't know if any of this shit's true. And the reason I don't know if it's true or false is because I've never seen any of these machines, and I never will because I'm not part of the spook squad.
But with that said, we got a guy who was in China who just gave up $6,800,000 worth of of money. If he had cashed out all that Ethereum and just went straight to USD, he would have been able to probably get out of China. Why the hell would he do this? This while I bring this to you as anecdotally kind of humorous and a little bit sketchy on the whole, you know, tinfoil hat thing, I we would probably do well to not dismiss it out of hand because we know we live in a world of creatures that we would rather see burn in hell than hang out with at a bar drinking beer. Alright. Moving on to AlbiHub version one point one four point two, we have basic swap functionality, home widgets, and more.
AlbiHub is an open source hub for setting up and or controlling your lightning node and wallet from various applications that support Nostra Wallet Connect. I am a user of AlbiHub, and I love it. I use AlbiHub on my start nine machine at home, which is where I have my Bitcoin full node and my lightning node. It's all on there. I got mempool dot space on there. I got I got, like, the I got, like, Electris running on it. I've got I'm fully sovereign when it comes to my own Bitcoin, and AlbiHub is part of that sovereignty. They say about this that this release adds new widgets to the home screen and many new apps to the new app store to the app store, including NostrCheck server, Nostiter, n o s t t e r, BTC pay server, Coreacle, and l n bits. Quote, AlbiHub now has a health check indicator, better fiat support, NIP 44 encryption, and a way for self hosters to support ALBII. We've also added basic swap functionality to the new node page so you can more easily manage your liquidity without having to open new channels, said the project.
The Cashew back end allows users to recover stuck funds and provide new users with a recovery phase for fund recovery in other wallets so you can just take your recovery phrase to somewhere else and get your money. The Phoenix, Phoenix d back end has been updated to support sub wallets. So there's and then there's a whole list of of new stuff that they've added. This is a massive update. So if you are running, Albi Hub on, like, your sovereign machine, then go check out your whoever it is, whether it's, like, myNodeBTC, RaspiBlitz, Umbrel, start 9, whatever it is. Go check to see if that update is now available to you in your store, and that's what I'm gonna go do right now. In fact, and I'm gonna do it right here on air. Let's go to let's see. Let's Let's go to updates, and I'm gonna refresh that.
And I have, like I said, nope. The only update I see available is updating LND from 0.180.4 to 0.180.5. So there is a sub, sub point update going on for lightning network daemon. So I do not have the ability well, wait a minute. Hold on now. Nope. Not even in the community registry. Alright. So as far as my start nine is concerned, I do not have this AlbiHub update. Let me actually go see what AlbiHub says about it itself because I'm I'm actually starting up my my Albi Hub, which I am running version 1.13, and there are no notifications as to anything.
So I guess I don't get it yet. So keep your eye out for that though. And, you know, that's it, man. That's it for the show. My apologies for not coming to you on Friday and Monday. Kids were out of school. They had a day off on Friday and clearly because, you know, mattress day, you know, president's day, was yesterday. They had a four day weekend. I decided to kick back and just sort of hang out here. And, consequently, my numbers fell through the floor on downloads and whatnot like that. So if you do me a favor, help a brother out, spread the show.
Five star reviews on Apple, podcast always does me good. But you guys, if you guys can go out there and pretend to be my marketing team for fifteen minutes and just give down, you know, like, URLs to show episodes or to the whole show, it doesn't matter what podcast app you do. I'm I'm not you know, I I want you to use podcasting two point o. I want you to spread that word too, but getting more numbers for the show is sort of tantamount for me right now. If you would do, you know, help a brother out, I would appreciate it. Let your friends friends and family know that if they need Bitcoin news, if they wanna hear it pretty much every day of the week, except every once in a while when I take off, that they can come to the Bitcoin and podcast and they will be kept up to date on what's going on that day in Bitcoin.
And I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and, and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
