Join me today for Episode 1039 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Fidelity Assets Highlights Lightning Network
- Milei's Sister Embroiled in Chicanery
- Fold Listed on NASDAQ
- CZ Donates to Libra Victims
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
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https://atlas21.com/libra-alleged-payments-to-the-argentine-presidents-sister-to-promote-the-token/
https://www.theblock.co/post/342013/lightning-bitcoin-investment-thesis-fidelity-digital-assets
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/amboss-ceo-talks-growth-of-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-tether-usdt-on-lightning
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https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/02/19/bitcoin-rewards-app-fold-makes-wall-street-debut-rallying-30
https://decrypt.co/306632/cz-donates-150-bnb-to-libra-scam-victims
https://www.theblock.co/post/342081/blockchain-association-urges-lawmakers-to-vote-for-sen-ted-cruzs-measure-to-repeal-controversial-tax-rule
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:23AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the nineteenth day of the second month of twenty '20 '5. This is episode ten thirty nine nine of Bitcoin, and we got the Czech Central Bank back in the news. The guy, the the governor, he's saying stuff. He is. And it makes me wonder if this might not end up with being, you know, being a fight with Christine Lagarde because she swore up and down that there was just he she talked to the governor. And there was just no way that Bitcoin was gonna be part of the Central Bank of Czech Republic.
Yeah. It just wasn't gonna happen. Libra's back in the news. Apparently, there's some sister action going on. And then lightning. We've I've gotta do a pretty big piece on lightning network and how it is, you know, entangled into the entire Bitcoin world and now it looks as if people are talking about it in terms of how it's going to help institutional adoption of Bitcoin. We'll get into that one and then what else we got? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fold is in the news. Gambrian is in the news. And CZ is flipping some coin to some of the Libra scam victims. We'll talk about it and then we're gonna finish off with Blockchain Association getting inside the ear of senator Ted Cruz. But first, Zoltan Vardai from Cointelegraph.
Gotta love that name, Zoltan. Honestly, mister Vardai, you should write your mom and dad a letter and say thank you mom and dad for coming up with the freaking name Zoltan because honestly, that is an awesome name. Bitcoin should be studied. Not feared, says Czech central bank head. That's right. This is the head guy studying Bitcoin's underlying technology and economic impact could strengthen central banks despite past hesitancy from financial institutions concerned about its volatility according to Aylis Michael, governor of the Czech National Bank.
Bitcoin should be broadly studied by central banks, not feared, Michael stated in a February 19 Twitter post. He said bitcoin's unique technology should not be lumped together with other crypto assets adding quote, we central bankers should study it and explore the technology it is built on. Studying Bitcoin won't harm us. On the contrary, it will strengthen us. Now, I'm gonna pause here so that we all understand that the Central Bank of Czech Republic, the governor is actually saying Bitcoin not Shitcoin. He's saying that Bitcoin is completely separate from the other crypto assets.
This is important because it is a fundamental knowledge point that you finally pick up. It takes a while after you get into Bitcoin and then you see all the shit coins running around going, oh my god. I can I can diversify my portfolio? You doop dee doop dee. No. No, you don't want to do that because you're diversifying into it's like it's like diversifying into a sewer. If you want to hold stocks and bonds and then go crawl around in the sewer for diversification purposes, then go ahead. Go ahead. You'll be fine. I'm sure I'm sure you won't get sepsis. You won't end up with hepatitis as you crawl over dirty needles and shit like that. No. No. No. No. This guy gets it, And that's that's a a major point in his favor. Let's continue Michael or Mickle.
Mickle's comments comes nearly three weeks after the governor shared a proposal for creating a Bitcoin test portfolio with the CNB's bank board meeting on January. Quote, this step is motivated by a desire to learn about and try out this highly risky alternative asset, added the governor. Now here's his whole here's his whole Twitter post. It says this, and it's from it's directly from his actual account. Yes, he's got the little blue check and all that kind of stuff. Bitcoin update, all start broadly. If you intend to invest in crypto assets, exercise extreme caution.
The market is still in its infancy. I remember the nineteen nineties in our country when the transition from socialism to capitalism saw the birth and simultaneous collapse of many investment funds. The crypto asset market will experience similar failures and successes. So only invest money in things you understand and are willing to accept the risk of potentially losing your entire investment. Bitcoin, however, is a different story. It should not be lumped together with other crypto assets. We, central bankers, should study it and explore the technology it is built on. Studying built Bitcoin will not harm us. On the contrary, it will strengthen us. At the CNB Bank board meeting on January 2025, I tabled a proposal to analyze the possibility of creating a Bitcoin test portfolio.
This step is motivated by a desire to learn about and try out this highly risky alternative asset. I emphasized the need to adapt to changing conditions in the financial markets and to explore new reserve management options. I stated that Bitcoin is highly volatile and could one day be worth one of two extremes, either zero or a huge amount. I also stressed that Bitcoin is a high risk asset for professional investors who are aware of the risks. Alright. So now that's his post. So we get back to the article. However, Michael emphasized that this is not this is only the initial stage of the analysis and that a final decision will depend on the outcome of that analysis. Michael started looking at Bitcoin as a potential reserve asset on January when he was considering acquiring a few Bitcoin for diversification, Cointelegraph reported.
Bitcoin's 1 hundred and 30 percent yearly returns for 2024 make it difficult to ignore for financial institutions and large investment funds. The CNB may become the first European central bank to invest in Bitcoin if the proposal is approved. And if approved, the investment may amount to over $7,300,000,000 in bitcoin purchases given that the CNB's total reserves of more than $146,000,000,000 according to Andrei Drogash, head of research at Bitwise. Dragos noted the significance of the proposal in a January 29 post on Twitter writing quote, just to put this into perspective, these BTC purchases alone would be equivalent to around five point three months of newly mined Bitcoin supply.
That's a big number. Well, while Bitcoin is an interesting asset worth considering for a large portfolio anyway, the board of the bank will need to provide thoughtful analysis before making its final decision, wrote Mickle on January 29 in yet another Twitter post. Quote oh, not not quote. Still, while Bitcoin remains pressured by ongoing trade tensions between The US and China and a whole they don't they only say China, but it's like essentially trade tensions between The United States and the rest of the world according to Volker Usy Zad, chief operating officer at Bitget. Quote, while this headwind remains in the market with president Trump eyeing more tariff hikes in the coming weeks, Bitcoin has traded with resilience, Zaid told Cointelegraph.
Yeah. It is. It's in this narrow it's walking around this narrow range. It looks like it's coiling up. We'll have to see. We had that pretty massive drop yesterday on the news or on the day that, FTX, stuff started getting, plant you know, given out to the creditors. So we'll we'll have to see. It looks like it's kinda mostly recovered for today and is back in my trading triangle. And, no, I don't trade Bitcoin. I just I look and I I use some small trading, you know, analysis techniques just to make sure that I'm not seeing something that I shouldn't be seeing. Now this whole thing brings up a statement that was made by Christine Lagarde, which is the central European Central Bank head, where she said that she that it was, like, later on that day or the very next day after Alice Mickle or however you pronounce this guy's name said that they were looking at Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet at the Czech National Bank. And it was either later on that afternoon or earlier in or earlier the next morning or something like that, where Christine Lagarde said she had just talked to the governor of the Czech Central Bank and that she could guarantee that there was no way Bitcoin was gonna end up on that balance sheet. Yet, here we have Michael or Mikkel saying it again.
So this makes me wonder. Is it possible that the Czech central bank is basically telling Lagarde to go screw herself? I hope that that is what is occurring because Christine Lagarde is a, a felon. B, she's an orange woman, and nobody makes fun of everybody makes fun of Trump for being an orange man. Right? Oh, the orange man because he's got the fake tan. Have you seen a picture of Christine Lagarde? It's the same fake tan. She's she's not able to do that shit herself. That is a spray on tan, yet we never call her orange woman, do we? Well, it doesn't even matter if we wanna be derogatory because three, she's a globalist.
She's just straight up a globalist. She doesn't give a shit about any of the citizens of the world. She just cares about her rich ass friends who can get her out of trouble. She never spent a day in jail after she got convicted in France. She didn't even have to show up to that particular trial. She was she was found guilty. She wasn't even in the room. Do you know where she was? She was on a plane flying to New York City where she was going to go to a party in her honor at the United Nations because she was just gonna be named head of the European Central Bank. Yeah. Yeah. She's got no trouble for being freaking convicted.
The whole thing makes me sick. So what I'm hoping is that this is the Central Bank of the Czech Republic basically telling Christine Lagarde to go sit and spin. Now I don't know that for a fact. I I don't know any of these people. I've never had a beer with them, so I couldn't say definitively if that's what's going on. But I do find it odd that Mickle, you know, in January says, hey. We're gonna look at this. You know, within twelve hours, I got orange woman saying, they're not gonna look at it. I talked to the guy. Well, that same guy is now talking about Bitcoin again and telling his banking friends, we need to be looking at this.
We don't need to be scared of it. To me, that sends a pretty large message. And I wonder, yeah, I wonder what kind of messaging was going on between brother and sister. Because atlas21.com has this one, Libra alleged payments to the Argentine president's sister to promote the token. Oh my my my. According to La Nacion, Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures and a key figure behind Libra's launch, you know, the meme coin for Argentina that died and crashed and burned like all the other ones, claimed. He claimed to have made direct payments to president Javier Malay's sister in exchange for promoting the token on Twitter.
In messages reviewed by the newspaper, Davis allegedly told an executive from a crypto investment firm that he could exercise, quote, control over the Argentine president through payments to his sister, Corina. One message oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One message from December reads, quote, we can also have Malay tweet and meet in person and do promote, end quote. Another message attributed to Davis states, quote, I send dollar sign dollar sign to his sister, and he signs whatever I say and does what I want, end quote. And then there's a screenshot here.
And I'm not exactly sure I'm not exactly sure what the screenshot where it's from. Okay. Here here it is. Let me, wow. This is sick. Okay. Here's a screenshot of clearly somebody's phone that shows the messages between this Davis guy and whoever he's talking to. Right? So here's the messages from Davis. Or yeah. Is it dev? Yeah. Wait. Hold on. No. This is the message from oh, good god. Yeah. I guess I guess from Davis. He says, sweet. Also, we can have Malay tweet and meet in person and do promo. And then right but down below that from the same guy, he says, I control that nigga, n I g g a.
The reply to those two messages is, that's fucking sick. And then Davis writes back and says, I send dollar sign dollar sign to his sister, and he signs whatever I say and does what I want. And then right below that, he also replies again and says, craziest shit. This is getting bad. Anyway, when asked for comment, Davis denied through a spokesperson that he had sent such messages or made payments to Malay's sister. Davis and Kelsier Ventures were among the main beneficiaries of the rug pull, which alleged profits of around a hundred million dollars.
Karina Malay, who serves as general secretary of the presidency, has remained silent on the matter. In a recent interview with Todo Notisas I can't pronounce that one. I'm sorry. Some publication, president Malay dismissed allegations of fraudulent promotion raised in several lawsuits claiming he had merely shared information. Well, this looks pretty damn damning. I mean, if if this turns out to be true, then we got a major problem on our hands with this dude down in Argentina. And like I said, I said it yesterday, I'll say it again, I had the highest of hopes for Javier Malay, and he was doing a good job in Argentina at least as far as I was getting information.
It it seemed like he was turning the country around. It seemed like he was doing good work. Now I say seemed because I don't live in Argentina. I'm not an Argentinian. So, essentially, I'm talking out of my ass. I don't know what I'm talking about because I don't live there. I can only understand Argentina through the eyes of people that I very much kinda don't trust. However, it was looking like things were going pretty well. And then he pulls this shit. And then we've got these messages that appear to be connected directly to Malay's sister, who is involved in the cabinet of the presidency of his of her brother.
This is not good. And if it all turns out to be true, then I hope they arrest Malay. I hope they throw him in prison for the rest of his natural born life, and I feel really bad for what's going to happen to the Argentinian people if that occurs. Because Argentina, it's almost as if they had one chance to get out of this shit. Now you might have just been struck by an idea that just popped up in my head. What if he's being made to take this fall? Maybe all of this was constructed because he really was doing a good job. Maybe he really didn't know what the hell was going on. I'm just throwing that out there as a possibility. It's not what I want to have happen. It's not what I want to be true. I'm just saying, what if? Because he, like I said, he seemed to be doing a good job.
He seemed to be turning the country around. He seemed to be gaining quite a bit of popularity. And then all of a sudden, we have this thing with this meme coin happen. We've got ties to his sister. His sister is clearly part of the presidential entourage and the cabinet and all that. And that would be a really good and cheap and easy way to scuttle that country's presidency and put Argentina back into the control of the UN, European Central Bank, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the whole thing. Just I'm just positing that as maybe a possibility.
Circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you. Well, how the hell am I gonna say that? Where I bring plebs like you with goods and services. Two plebs like you that may want to buy those goods and services, but you gotta buy them in Bitcoin and they gotta be sold in Bitcoin. Otherwise, they ain't in the circle p. Today, it's Peony Lane Vineyards. That's Ben Justman's outfit out of the, high altitudes of Colorado. Anyway, he does definitely sell his wine for Bitcoin. In fact, he uses Zapprite as the payment link and you can go to pandelanewine.com/bitcoin and if you he's got two boxes and they both have six bottles and they're a little pricey.
However, he says down here, if you'd like to customize a bitcoin order, please email us directly. So maybe, Ben, I and I don't know. I haven't asked Ben about this. But maybe if you ask really nicely, maybe you can buy just a couple of bottles of his fabulous Peony Lane wine, Peony Lane Vineyards wine, with Bitcoin and you can mail Ben Justman. That's b e n, you know, guy named Ben, Justman, j u s t m a n, at peonylaine wine dot com. That's Ben Justman at peonylaine wine dot com. If you wanna get him, a hold of him through, either Twitter or Noster, I will have the URLs not only to pandelainewine.com, but the URLs directly to his Twitter account as well as his Noster in pub. So you'll be able to click it and go right to Ben Justman and orders wine. Now make sure you tell him you heard about it here on the Bitcoin and podcast, circle p. And if you make if he makes a sale because of me, well, he's gonna flip me some satoshis.
And he gets he gets to decide what it was worth for me to make that sale for him. We have no agreement other than he gets to make the decision. And if I don't sell his wine, he doesn't pay me sats. If I sell some wine, he gets to make the decision as to how much that sale was worth to him. It is value for value advertising, ladle ladies and gentlemen. You will find it nowhere else but here on the Bitcoin and podcast. Now moving on to the block and James Hunt, and we're gonna start our lightning discussion, and we're gonna start out with this one. Lightning could strengthen Bitcoin's investment thesis, Fidelity Digital Assets says. Let's find out exactly what they say. Fidelity Digital Assets sees Lightning as a transformative technology that not only embraces Bitcoin and Bitcoin's utility, but also bolsters its investment case by increasing the network's transactional use and expanding its adoption across various sectors.
The lightning network is a second layer solution of payment channels built on top of the bitcoin blockchain designed to enable near instant transactions at negligible cost. While first launched in 2018, it was not until 2024 that its adoption gained momentum, Fidelity Digital Assets argued in a Wednesday report produced in collaboration with data from Voltage, a lightning payment provider backed by president Trump's cryptos are David Sachs. I'm I'm not a fan of David Sachs, but whatever. Quote, over the past year, we've seen firsthand how businesses are scaling with the lightning network, payment reliability is improving, transaction costs are dropping, and adoption is accelerating faster than ever, end quote, Voltage founder and CEO Graham Krzyzyk told The Block.
Since 2020, the Lightning Network's average capacity has grown by 384, holding 5,358 and a half Bitcoin, which at a Bitcoin price of 95,000 values the capacity at around $509,000,000 as of January. Fidelity noted adding that this does not include private or unannounced channels that it estimates to be substantial. The entire capacity of the network combining public and private channels is unknown. More businesses integrate with the Lightning Network in 2024 than any other year prior, including US crypto exchange giant Coinbase joining rivals such as Bitfinex, OKX, Kraken, and Binance, a trend that Fidelity expects to continue in 2025.
The Lightning Network is also showing other signs of maturity, according to Fidelity anyway, with smaller, less efficient channels deployed in earlier years closing in favor of larger, more streamlined channels. A well optimized Lightning Network participant can see transaction fees as low as 0% and payment completion times in less than half a second as a result. Though poor channel management, which we all suffer, can result in much higher costs with more inconsistent payment successes. A shift is also occurring in favor of fewer, larger, well connected nodes as opposed to many smaller nodes Fidelity noted with average Bitcoin capacity growing substantially over the last four years while average channels per node fell 30%.
Though this improves the chances of payment success, it also contributes to the increasing number of users now relying on centralized lightning network wallet services rather than running their own nodes. Shame on you. Beyond offering an efficient transaction platform, Lightning also potentially functions as a yield bearing network, Fidelity argued, allowing node operators to retain full control over their assets while earning returns through well managed liquidity. Finally, Lightning is also emerging as the language protocol for multiple new layers and services in the Bitcoin ecosystem Fidelity set.
Applications like Fedimint, Cashew, and Nostr are all utilizing the network and expanding its use cases, while newer layer two protocols on the horizon such as ARC will offer interoperability with Lightning. Tether's recent proposal or proposed integration of USDT with the Bitcoin layer two represents perhaps the biggest driver of Lightning Network adoption globally with a potential of 1197% increase in transaction volume according to Solve protocol cofounder, Seb Bunny. Seb Bunny. Alright. That's a great name, man. By enabling fast, low cost micropayments, Lightning expands Bitcoin's utility for everyday purchases and new digital commerce models, Fidelity said, without needing to rely on a different blockchain or some god awful token.
While lightning payments need to work 100% of the time for it to be truly effective as the network matures, it shows promise for institutional adoption offering a competitive edge for financial institutions in global remittances and transaction processing, allowing it to meet such demand. This could strengthen Bitcoin's role in the global financial system and improve its long term value proposition, making it more attractive as an investment, the firm concluded. Fidelity Digital Assets is a subsidiary of asset blah blah blah. It's the cover your ass statement. I'd I'd I'm probably not going to get sued. I'm not reading it. I don't need to read a cover your ass statement. Okay. Stop it. Okay. So what what's being said here is what we've been saying for the last four years.
Lightning makes Bitcoin better. It's been making it better for four years. It's just now that Fidelity is actually talking about it. Why? Because of the whole Tether thing. I love it, hate it, neutral on it. This shit is happening. Can't do a damn thing about it. But what does bug me is not as much that Tether is now on Lightning. It's node runners not running Lightning nodes. If you're running a Bitcoin full node, there's no reason for you not to try learning how to use a lightning node. It's not that hard. Is channel management hard?
No. Is it a pain in the ass? Yes. And peep when people say hard, what what I think happens is something switches on in your brain. Like, you go back to high school, like, you know, like the the harp noise plays, and you go back in time to when you're trying to learn, I don't know, precalculus in high school, and you don't even get into the class for the first day of class before somebody tells you, oh, shit. You're in precalc? That's hard. No. It's not hard. It's just freaking annoying. Unless you're just a math lover, it's annoying, but it's not hard. You actually have to do work to understand it, at least enough to be able to survive it. But in and of itself, you're not theorizing about the pressure differentials in the heart of a freaking sun.
It's not that hard. It's just a pain in the ass. Please take the pain in the ass. I promise you it will be worth it. Run a lightning node today. And it's not just lightning node. You gotta open some channels and you gotta ask people to open channels with you. And you can do that over on a place called amboss, a m b o s s. No. This is not an advertisement. I am introducing Frank Corva's Bitcoin magazine article and discussion with Amboss's CEO. So let's get into this one because this is the other end of the story about Lightning and where we might be headed. And by the way, and I did not know this, Amboss, their location for their headquarters is Nashville, Tennessee.
Nice. I'm I'm excited about that. Why? Well, because Bitcoin Park is in Nashville, Tennessee. So I wonder if Jesse Schrader is is chilling out over there at Bitcoin Park every once in a while. I'll bet he is. Here it is. The article from Frank Korva. Jesse Schroeder thinks that this will be an important year for the Lightning Network. With Bitcoin's price on the rise and Tether coming to Lightning, Schroeder posits that more and more businesses and institutions will begin to see Lightning, use begin to see lightning for payments in the year ahead. Sorry. I blew that, Frank. Didn't no disrespect, sir. In his company, Amboss, is poised to make this vision a reality. Quote, we want to extend Bitcoin as a payment system and use Lightning to do that, Schrader told Bitcoin magazine. We want to make Lightning a high efficiency, high performance system.
Through a suite of tools and services, Schrader and the team at Amboss have developed, that they are prepared to onboard the next wave of institutional users to the world's largest permissionless payment network, especially now that USDT runs on lightning. Amboss primarily provides intelligent payment infrastructure for digital payments using the lightning network. Quote, we deliver insights to people regarding what they should do to increase efficiency of payments on the network. To accomplish this, they offer a number of products and services. One of the most notable of these is called Amboss Space, which is a lightning network explorer that employs machine learning to help users retrieve information on or connect to any node in the network. This is one of the tools that I used to use. This is me talking.
This is one of the tools that I used to use, and I actually still use it when I am looking to open a channel with another channel partner. I I use this product. I'm just just putting that out there. I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. Anyway, beyond the analytics software, Amboss also provides its customers with tools and services to help improve liquidity conditions on lightning. And one such service is Magma Marketplace, which lets users buy and sell liquidity on the lightning network. Using Magma, users can provide liquidity without giving up custody of their Bitcoin for a yield.
Another is Hydro, an extension of Magma. That software enables users to automate their liquidity purchases to better ensure the success of payments. Amboss' analytics software and tools are built for high volume transactions, which are becoming easier to make on lightning. Quote, we measure businesses' ability to make payments with simulations, explained Trader. Quote, we'll help businesses see how much of the network can they actually reach when they attempt a payment. End quote. Trader is optimistic when it comes to the growth of lightning. With each passing day, users are relying on the network to send more than just micropayments.
We've been successfully processing everyday payments on lightning, which I'm defining as between $10 and $4,000 payments, said trader. Quote, we're working to enhance the network's capabilities even further with a focus on decentralization. Payments larger than $4,000 are still difficult to process. Yeah. I would imagine. Schrader explained that more capital is needed to help make processing larger payments a reality. However, he also noted that the recent increase in Bitcoin's price has helped larger payments to be processed more easily.
What we saw recently is that the Bitcoin price has increased, which has increased the capability for settlement across all Lightning channels. Since the channels are Bitcoin denominated, we like it well, hold on. It's like we get bigger pipes. End quote. And while Schrader is optimistic about these bigger pipes allowing for more throughput, he also believes that Tether's coming to Lightning will attract even more liquidity to the network. At the end of last month, Lightning Labs announced that it's bringing USDT to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network via the Taproot assets protocol.
This upgrade enables Bitcoin service providers to integrate and accept USDT more easily, which Schrader believes will be a boon for lightning. Quote, one thing that's very clear is Tether has product market fit. Last year, it served $10,000,000,000,000 in payments, which exceeds Visa and Mastercard. It's very clear that the world wants United States dollars, end quote, and that was Schrader. Schrader is a pragmatist, acknowledged the fact that many hardline Bitcoiners have issues with USDT running on Bitcoin and lightning, and he sympathizes with them as he appreciates the Bitcoin's sound money qualities.
At the same time, he thinks the benefits of having USDT on lightning clearly outweigh the cons as many still don't understand what Bitcoin is nor are they willing to stomach its volatility. Quote, many haven't taken or yet taken the orange pill and come to understand the advantages of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is an incredible tool, and I want to bring that to as many people as possible. With that said, there are a lot of problems with traditional payments, and Bitcoin has this very secure auditable system, which is something that I want to bring to the world at scale.
While Bitcoin's price action is great for me, a lot of people are afraid of volatility. If you have an asset with very low volatility like USDT now on very secure trustless rails, well, that's a huge win, end quote. And again, that was Schrader. Schrader recounted how the first Bitcoin related conference MicroStrategy hosted was actually called Lightning for Corporations. At that conference, companies were encouraged to start paying employees in Bitcoin over Lightning without fully realizing the trouble that this would cause at the time. Quote, what employers realized was that all of the ten ninety nines that needed to be submitted to employees was a hassle.
And there was a whole bunch of regulatory overhead that they had to contend with as well, said Trader. Trader pointed out that not only can paying employees in USDT over lightning reduce accounting and regulatory headaches, but it also reduces some of the counterparty risk associated with using banks, a reality with which Trader is quite familiar. Our payroll used to go through Silicon Valley Bank, said Trader. And at one point, the payroll provider contacted me to resend my mid month payroll after I had had attempted to pay the staff. I lost half a month's runway.
This was all because of Silicon Valley Bank being insolvent. So if I can avoid the counterparty risk in the financial system by moving to Bitcoin and Lightning, then that means I'm in a much better place, said Schrader. Schrader noted some of the risks of USDT on Bitcoin and Lightning, but didn't seem too concerned about them. Quote, there are some MEV risks when you have assets other than a blockchain's native asset being traded on chain, said Trader. But Bitcoin already has ordinal inscriptions that create other assets, so the problem already exists, end quote. He also didn't seem too flustered when I brought up the risk of a Bitcoin fork resulting in the USDT on one of the chains becoming worthless, Nor did he feel that there is notable risk of larger economic nodes in the bitcoin network like coinbase which custodies the bitcoin for The US spot bitcoin ETFs opting to support a tether fork of bitcoin which could also include other upgrades that could hurt bitcoin in the long run. Quote, bitcoin consensus is not determined by custody of bitcoin.
So while an important business like coinbase may support various changes or initiatives, that doesn't guarantee that protocol changes would be effective or affected, Schroeder said. Instead of focusing on the risks associated with USDT on Bitcoin, Schroeder is doing the opposite. Quote, what's more interesting is probably the opportunities that unlocks where you where you have actual arbitrage ability on Bitcoin itself since every node is capable of transacting in both USDT and Bitcoin is also capable of exchanging between them natively on Lightning, you can send Bitcoin out of one Lightning channel and receive USDT in another of your Lightning channels.
That can be as simple as generating a USDT invoice and paying it with BTC, instantly rebalancing holdings. In Schrader's final thoughts from my interview with him, he shared two last key reasons why 2025 will be the year of lightning. The first is that holding Bitcoin is no longer required to use lightning. Quote, up until this year, if people or businesses wanted to switch to lightning, they needed to have bitcoin first. That's a huge barrier, explained Schrader. Schrader added in a response to a follow-up question that outside of The US, it's relatively easy and common to get access to USDT. Quote, the Bitcoin only market for payment processing is tiny, but this year, we've removed that barrier, and consumers can pay with another asset, USDT.
There's already a large market for that, he added. What's more, Schrader noted that Lightning users will only pay a small fraction of what they had been paying in transaction fees using the traditional financial rails. Quote, we're supplying liquidity at less than one half of a percent, said trader. Quote, as a user of big payment card networks, I'm paying 4% for all that payment processing, and the money doesn't show up for days to weeks after the payment is made. With Lightning, your payment processing fees drops by almost 10 x. Given Schrader's points, it's hard to imagine that 2025 won't be a big year for Lightning.
Yeah. Okay. That's the end of that article, and I agree with Frank. Lightning is going to have a good is going to have a good year. But you know who else is gonna have a good year? ECash. Fedimence and that entire ecosystem that we're see, what what we'll see here is that four years from now, we'll see a Fidelity digital assets report that says eCash instead of Lightning because Lightning will be old news. It will be like and and I don't mean old news as in we're gonna get rid of it. It's gonna be like old news like, do you talk to your friends about the street that you drive your car on?
No. You don't. You that's just what you do. You you don't have to marvel at the construction that is an asphalt blacktop in front of your house so that your axles don't break in potholes because it's, you know, a paved road. It's actually kind of an incredible invention, yet we don't talk about it anymore because it's old news. We use it every day. Lightning is gonna be that. And and I don't even think it's gonna take four years for Fidelity Digital Assets. In fact, I kind of expect either at the end of twenty twenty five or somewhere in 2026, Fidelity Digital Assets or somebody like them will come out essentially with the exact same report talking about eCash and Fedimint and all that stuff. But what I really found interesting in the article before this one was that Fidelity Digital Assets specifically named Nostr.
That's an important detail that I really didn't clarify there. If you didn't hear me say it, yes. Infidelity Digital Assets report on Lightning. They said eCash. Yeah. They actually said eCash too, but they didn't really go into it. But they also said Nostr, n o s t r, notes and other stuff transmitted by or over relays depending on what what part of the farm you're living on when it comes to Nostr. And if you haven't got on Nostr yet, why? It don't cost you nothing. It ain't that hard. It's just sometimes it's a little annoying because you you do things a different way. But if you actually learn how to use Nostr, you learn what an in pub is, and you learn what the insect is, all of a sudden and you if you log in using those same credentials to, like, 12 different things, you start seeing the real power.
So if you're not on Nostr, you need to get on Nostr. Let's run the number. Breaking. Breaking. Breaking. Fed officials are worried about tariffs impact on inflation and see rate cuts on hold. And that was the Fed minutes were were just released and Bitcoin reacted accordingly by dropping what it how much did it shave off? Let's see what it shaved off here. It had a high of $96.04 and is at now $95.06. So it looks like it shaved off a thousand a thousand bucks in an instant because the Fed opened their minutes book and let the public see that they are just not interested in doing anything with interest rates.
Remember, we were promised we'd have four quarter point rate cuts this year. Then that dropped to three as inflation numbers kept you know, and housing numbers and employment numbers remained high, and then we got down to two. And then about a month well, actually, about two weeks ago, it looked like there was only gonna be one. Now it looks like we got a gigantic goose egg, and it's not going to work. Keeping the rates the same are not going to reign in inflation. That ship sailed the minute they ran the money printer beyond all conception of human thought patterns. It's and even if they raise interest rates, it's going to probably do something that they don't even it'll break the system.
It'll probably just break the system. I have no idea what the Federal Reserve is gonna do at this point. And it may just be that somehow or another, Trump steps in and tells Jerome Powell how the hell it's gonna be, and they're actually going to lower rates even though that's probably what well, at least as far as history is concerned, that's not what you do. Maybe this is the time that we do it, and we floor those things down to zero and see what the hell happens. Because you I mean, keeping them the same ain't gonna do nothing. Not with this not when you print 40% of all US dollars in existence in the last three years.
It does all of us you broke that lever. The lever that controls the interest rates and that that or the lever that is the interest rates that controls the economy, they broke that when they printed all that money. The plane doesn't fly the same way and that lever doesn't control what they think it controls anymore because they fucked up the plane. So it's funny just watching Bitcoin react accordingly. Like, well, it's not Bitcoin. It's the paper hands that hold Bitcoin are just at this point, there's so many institutional guys into Bitcoin that they act the way that they've always acted.
They're I mean, I can't imagine living my life one inch away from a heart attack twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year for the entirety of my career. Screw that. I'd rather live under a bridge and have actual friends. Anyway, let's get to the numbers. Oil is up a half point to $72.20. That's West Texas Intermediate Brent. North Sea is up a fifth of a point to $75.98. Natural gas, swinging swinging for the fences, bro. Seven points to the upside. We went way past $4. We are now at $4.28 per thousand cubic feet.
Gasoline falling almost a half point to $2.07 a gallon. All your shiny metal rocks are also reacting to the fed minutes. Everything's in the red. Gold down a third. After hitting an all time high this morning, I might add, Silver is down three quarters of a point. Platinum is down 1.75%. Copper is down two thirds of a point. Palladium is down just over two full points. It doesn't look like ag had a very good day either. I have no idea what it was doing before, but everything's in the red except for coffee, which is our biggest winner of the day. 1.88% to the upside.
Biggest loser, do do do. It's a tie between chocolate and cotton, both over one and a half percent to the downside. I got live cattle up point 4%. Lean hogs, however, are down 3.76%. And feeder cattle are down one fifth of a point. The Dow, not taken too kindly to Fed chairman Powell's, talk on the minutes, it's down a quarter of a point. S and P, however, is up one tenth of one point. Nasdaq effectively moving sideways. S and P shit the bed point 74% to the downside. And, of course, we've got Bitcoin, which was over $1,900,000,000,000 of market cap until federal chair Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell opens his big mouth, and we are now at $95,530 a coin. That is just under $1,900,000,000,000 of market cap. We can only purchase 32.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,826,297.99 of.
Average fees per block are low. 0.04 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. It looks like there's, oh, I don't know, 27 blocks carrying 38,000. Oh, impressive. 38,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority rates get you in 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priorities at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Hash rate is at eight twenty five point nine exahashes per second. So still still pumping along. Wow. I'm I keep thinking that miners are just gonna ditch and say we're gonna turn them off for now until you guys pony up some satoshis. From fire hose of lies, yesterday's episode of bitcoin and I got Canadian hash and coin with 905 sets says Argentina lit down yet again. Yeah. I I hear you, brother.
Paul Cernai with 500 says, thanks for this episode. It seems that the combination of sound ethics and shit coinery is very rare. Yodle with 333 sets says, headphones and smiley face emojis. God's death with two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Anonymous with a hundred and eight says, regarding anonymous boosts, I think Fountain's doing it depending on your device and OS. That's true. It could be. It sometimes fails to display profile. No harm in being anonymous in this space. That's true. That's true. It's just that I just feel bad that I can't properly appreciate people that throw me 20,000 Satoshis.
It's it's just I'm just old school that way. Anyway, Jess Potto with a hundred says, pain is the way people will learn. Shit coins gonna shit coin. So have fun staying wait. What? HDSP? H so HDSP for them until they learn. I don't know which HDSP is. I'm sure I should probably know it. Just bought it with another hundred says zap zap. Pies with a hundred says value for value. Thank you, sir. No thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Bitcoin rewards app, Bold, is volatile in its Wall Street debut.
And you might be going, Fold? What? Like like the Fold app? The Fold card? Fold, fold, fold? Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they got listed. Let's find out more. This is CoinDesk and it's being written by Christian Sandor, who writes Bitcoin rewards financial services firm, Fold Holdings, ticker symbol FLD, debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Wednesday with shares surging higher in early action before pulling back. Oh, trading like a meme coin, is it? Well, just because it's legacy equity markets. That's the way it works there too. The firm went public via business a business merger with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC.
FLD jumped more than 30% above $13 in the early minutes of trading before pulling back to the $11 area. Fold is the latest addition of publicly traded companies with Bitcoin on its balance sheet following the footsteps of Michael Saylor's strategy and smaller companies like Simler Scientific and Meta Planet, Fold holds 1,000 BTC worth $96,000,000 at current prices according to public filings. So congratulations to the gentlemen and ladies over at Fold. I hope you do well in the equity legacy markets. Honestly, I why? I I I don't know. Okay. CZ.
Xinping Zheng donates a hundred and 50 BNB coin to the Libra scam victims, and he ends up with more than he gave. Why is anybody giving this dude who is a billionaire any money at all? He has his money. Save your money. Don't don't give it don't give it to c z. Anyway, this may have been is writing it for Decrypt. What started as an act of goodwill by Binance founder, Shengpeng Zhao, to help victims of the Libra meme coin scam took an unexpected turn when Zhao received more crypto than he had originally donated. On Tuesday, Zhao pledged 150 BNB worth a hundred thousand dollars to support those affected by the collapse of the controversial libre coin after a college student in Hang began raising funds to assist the victims.
Bizau's decision to publicly share his donation address led to an influx of additional crypto in the same, surpassing his initial contribution. Why? God, why? Inhang, moved by the devastating losses caused by Argentine or the Argentina President Javier Mille promoted Libra crypto, which wiped out more than 40,000 investors and resulted in over $4,000,000,000 in damages, announced their own donation of $50,000, quote, when you try to make money quick, you often lose, Zhao quipped on Twitter. When you give money away, you get more back, end quote.
Despite the increased donations, Zhao made it clear that he would not keep any of the additional funds. I won't be keeping a satoshi of it, Zhao clarified in his tweet, saying that he would donate the extra crypto to further support the victims, specifically those affected by other meme coins like TST and Broccoli. Yes. There's a meme coin named Broccoli. The latter being inspired by CZ's pet dog. Zhao also warned his followers not to misinterpret his actions as an endorsement of the tokens involved. Last Friday, the Libra tokens launched a controversy when Argentine president Javier Molay publicly endorsed it on his Twitter account.
And we know the rest of the story there. So let's go scroll down. Yeah. So it looks like c z was trying to do right or not right. He was trying to be good. I don't know how a hundred thousand dollars is gonna help a $4,000,000,000 hole, but, hey, he got news out of it. Right? Right? So there you go. And he got more back than he than he gave. And I still I'm going to go to bed tonight going, why? Why the hell would you do that? It doesn't really matter because Ted Cruz, the block, and Sarah Wynne writing, Blockchain Association urges lawmakers to vote for senator Ted Cruz's measure to repeal a controversial tax rule.
What's the tax rule? I don't know. I guess we'll find out. The Blockchain Association is calling on congressional leadership to vote for a legislative measure to overturn a controversial tax rule finalized late last year that requires certain decentralized finance brokers to file reports on gross proceeds. The industry group with 75 members such as Coinbase Kraken and Uniswap Labs penned a letter to senate majority leader John Thune, house speaker Mike Johnson, senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday, asking them to vote to repeal that rule, calling it misguided.
Quote, the DeFi broker rule, finalized in the waning days of the Biden administration, represents regulatory overreach that fundamentally misunderstands the technology it attempts to regulate and ignores congress' intent, the Blockchain Association said in the letter. The group's letter comes after senator Ted Cruz introduced a legislative measure aimed at overturning the rule last month. The United States Internal Revenue Service finalized the rule in late December that requires defi brokers to act like traditional security brokers who are required to collect information about their users' trades.
Some decentralized finance industry participants will have to send their customers form ten ninety nine tax returns, which are used to report payments that typically aren't from an employer like gambling winnings, rents, and royalties. The US Treasury Department has also noted that the finalized rule applies to front end service providers that interact, quote, directly with customers. That suggests entities that run the primary website used to access a decentralized protocol rather than the protocol itself. The rule is expected to go into effect on or after January 2027.
So we do have some time, just so you know. Okay. So blockchain association trying to get whip up some support for Ted Cruz's bill to repeal a law that honestly only affects degenerate gamblers. I guess I shouldn't be so mean, but I'm just getting so tired of the traders. I mean, the wind blows a different direction by, like, one degree on the compass, and all of a sudden, they puke, shit the bed, and sell all their Bitcoin. It's the most we live in a timeline of amazement, wonderment, and crawling through sewers over broken glass and used hypodermic needles because it's just the strangest shit. Is it I mean, the minutes of the feds say, hey. You remember we said four and then three and then two and then one. Well, now we're doing zero like we didn't expect it to happen and every Bitcoin trader said sell sell sell.
Or it's either that or Jim Cramer said, buy, buy, buy. I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:23AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the nineteenth day of the second month of twenty '20 '5. This is episode ten thirty nine nine of Bitcoin, and we got the Czech Central Bank back in the news. The guy, the the governor, he's saying stuff. He is. And it makes me wonder if this might not end up with being, you know, being a fight with Christine Lagarde because she swore up and down that there was just he she talked to the governor. And there was just no way that Bitcoin was gonna be part of the Central Bank of Czech Republic.
Yeah. It just wasn't gonna happen. Libra's back in the news. Apparently, there's some sister action going on. And then lightning. We've I've gotta do a pretty big piece on lightning network and how it is, you know, entangled into the entire Bitcoin world and now it looks as if people are talking about it in terms of how it's going to help institutional adoption of Bitcoin. We'll get into that one and then what else we got? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fold is in the news. Gambrian is in the news. And CZ is flipping some coin to some of the Libra scam victims. We'll talk about it and then we're gonna finish off with Blockchain Association getting inside the ear of senator Ted Cruz. But first, Zoltan Vardai from Cointelegraph.
Gotta love that name, Zoltan. Honestly, mister Vardai, you should write your mom and dad a letter and say thank you mom and dad for coming up with the freaking name Zoltan because honestly, that is an awesome name. Bitcoin should be studied. Not feared, says Czech central bank head. That's right. This is the head guy studying Bitcoin's underlying technology and economic impact could strengthen central banks despite past hesitancy from financial institutions concerned about its volatility according to Aylis Michael, governor of the Czech National Bank.
Bitcoin should be broadly studied by central banks, not feared, Michael stated in a February 19 Twitter post. He said bitcoin's unique technology should not be lumped together with other crypto assets adding quote, we central bankers should study it and explore the technology it is built on. Studying Bitcoin won't harm us. On the contrary, it will strengthen us. Now, I'm gonna pause here so that we all understand that the Central Bank of Czech Republic, the governor is actually saying Bitcoin not Shitcoin. He's saying that Bitcoin is completely separate from the other crypto assets.
This is important because it is a fundamental knowledge point that you finally pick up. It takes a while after you get into Bitcoin and then you see all the shit coins running around going, oh my god. I can I can diversify my portfolio? You doop dee doop dee. No. No, you don't want to do that because you're diversifying into it's like it's like diversifying into a sewer. If you want to hold stocks and bonds and then go crawl around in the sewer for diversification purposes, then go ahead. Go ahead. You'll be fine. I'm sure I'm sure you won't get sepsis. You won't end up with hepatitis as you crawl over dirty needles and shit like that. No. No. No. No. This guy gets it, And that's that's a a major point in his favor. Let's continue Michael or Mickle.
Mickle's comments comes nearly three weeks after the governor shared a proposal for creating a Bitcoin test portfolio with the CNB's bank board meeting on January. Quote, this step is motivated by a desire to learn about and try out this highly risky alternative asset, added the governor. Now here's his whole here's his whole Twitter post. It says this, and it's from it's directly from his actual account. Yes, he's got the little blue check and all that kind of stuff. Bitcoin update, all start broadly. If you intend to invest in crypto assets, exercise extreme caution.
The market is still in its infancy. I remember the nineteen nineties in our country when the transition from socialism to capitalism saw the birth and simultaneous collapse of many investment funds. The crypto asset market will experience similar failures and successes. So only invest money in things you understand and are willing to accept the risk of potentially losing your entire investment. Bitcoin, however, is a different story. It should not be lumped together with other crypto assets. We, central bankers, should study it and explore the technology it is built on. Studying built Bitcoin will not harm us. On the contrary, it will strengthen us. At the CNB Bank board meeting on January 2025, I tabled a proposal to analyze the possibility of creating a Bitcoin test portfolio.
This step is motivated by a desire to learn about and try out this highly risky alternative asset. I emphasized the need to adapt to changing conditions in the financial markets and to explore new reserve management options. I stated that Bitcoin is highly volatile and could one day be worth one of two extremes, either zero or a huge amount. I also stressed that Bitcoin is a high risk asset for professional investors who are aware of the risks. Alright. So now that's his post. So we get back to the article. However, Michael emphasized that this is not this is only the initial stage of the analysis and that a final decision will depend on the outcome of that analysis. Michael started looking at Bitcoin as a potential reserve asset on January when he was considering acquiring a few Bitcoin for diversification, Cointelegraph reported.
Bitcoin's 1 hundred and 30 percent yearly returns for 2024 make it difficult to ignore for financial institutions and large investment funds. The CNB may become the first European central bank to invest in Bitcoin if the proposal is approved. And if approved, the investment may amount to over $7,300,000,000 in bitcoin purchases given that the CNB's total reserves of more than $146,000,000,000 according to Andrei Drogash, head of research at Bitwise. Dragos noted the significance of the proposal in a January 29 post on Twitter writing quote, just to put this into perspective, these BTC purchases alone would be equivalent to around five point three months of newly mined Bitcoin supply.
That's a big number. Well, while Bitcoin is an interesting asset worth considering for a large portfolio anyway, the board of the bank will need to provide thoughtful analysis before making its final decision, wrote Mickle on January 29 in yet another Twitter post. Quote oh, not not quote. Still, while Bitcoin remains pressured by ongoing trade tensions between The US and China and a whole they don't they only say China, but it's like essentially trade tensions between The United States and the rest of the world according to Volker Usy Zad, chief operating officer at Bitget. Quote, while this headwind remains in the market with president Trump eyeing more tariff hikes in the coming weeks, Bitcoin has traded with resilience, Zaid told Cointelegraph.
Yeah. It is. It's in this narrow it's walking around this narrow range. It looks like it's coiling up. We'll have to see. We had that pretty massive drop yesterday on the news or on the day that, FTX, stuff started getting, plant you know, given out to the creditors. So we'll we'll have to see. It looks like it's kinda mostly recovered for today and is back in my trading triangle. And, no, I don't trade Bitcoin. I just I look and I I use some small trading, you know, analysis techniques just to make sure that I'm not seeing something that I shouldn't be seeing. Now this whole thing brings up a statement that was made by Christine Lagarde, which is the central European Central Bank head, where she said that she that it was, like, later on that day or the very next day after Alice Mickle or however you pronounce this guy's name said that they were looking at Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet at the Czech National Bank. And it was either later on that afternoon or earlier in or earlier the next morning or something like that, where Christine Lagarde said she had just talked to the governor of the Czech Central Bank and that she could guarantee that there was no way Bitcoin was gonna end up on that balance sheet. Yet, here we have Michael or Mikkel saying it again.
So this makes me wonder. Is it possible that the Czech central bank is basically telling Lagarde to go screw herself? I hope that that is what is occurring because Christine Lagarde is a, a felon. B, she's an orange woman, and nobody makes fun of everybody makes fun of Trump for being an orange man. Right? Oh, the orange man because he's got the fake tan. Have you seen a picture of Christine Lagarde? It's the same fake tan. She's she's not able to do that shit herself. That is a spray on tan, yet we never call her orange woman, do we? Well, it doesn't even matter if we wanna be derogatory because three, she's a globalist.
She's just straight up a globalist. She doesn't give a shit about any of the citizens of the world. She just cares about her rich ass friends who can get her out of trouble. She never spent a day in jail after she got convicted in France. She didn't even have to show up to that particular trial. She was she was found guilty. She wasn't even in the room. Do you know where she was? She was on a plane flying to New York City where she was going to go to a party in her honor at the United Nations because she was just gonna be named head of the European Central Bank. Yeah. Yeah. She's got no trouble for being freaking convicted.
The whole thing makes me sick. So what I'm hoping is that this is the Central Bank of the Czech Republic basically telling Christine Lagarde to go sit and spin. Now I don't know that for a fact. I I don't know any of these people. I've never had a beer with them, so I couldn't say definitively if that's what's going on. But I do find it odd that Mickle, you know, in January says, hey. We're gonna look at this. You know, within twelve hours, I got orange woman saying, they're not gonna look at it. I talked to the guy. Well, that same guy is now talking about Bitcoin again and telling his banking friends, we need to be looking at this.
We don't need to be scared of it. To me, that sends a pretty large message. And I wonder, yeah, I wonder what kind of messaging was going on between brother and sister. Because atlas21.com has this one, Libra alleged payments to the Argentine president's sister to promote the token. Oh my my my. According to La Nacion, Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures and a key figure behind Libra's launch, you know, the meme coin for Argentina that died and crashed and burned like all the other ones, claimed. He claimed to have made direct payments to president Javier Malay's sister in exchange for promoting the token on Twitter.
In messages reviewed by the newspaper, Davis allegedly told an executive from a crypto investment firm that he could exercise, quote, control over the Argentine president through payments to his sister, Corina. One message oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. One message from December reads, quote, we can also have Malay tweet and meet in person and do promote, end quote. Another message attributed to Davis states, quote, I send dollar sign dollar sign to his sister, and he signs whatever I say and does what I want, end quote. And then there's a screenshot here.
And I'm not exactly sure I'm not exactly sure what the screenshot where it's from. Okay. Here here it is. Let me, wow. This is sick. Okay. Here's a screenshot of clearly somebody's phone that shows the messages between this Davis guy and whoever he's talking to. Right? So here's the messages from Davis. Or yeah. Is it dev? Yeah. Wait. Hold on. No. This is the message from oh, good god. Yeah. I guess I guess from Davis. He says, sweet. Also, we can have Malay tweet and meet in person and do promo. And then right but down below that from the same guy, he says, I control that nigga, n I g g a.
The reply to those two messages is, that's fucking sick. And then Davis writes back and says, I send dollar sign dollar sign to his sister, and he signs whatever I say and does what I want. And then right below that, he also replies again and says, craziest shit. This is getting bad. Anyway, when asked for comment, Davis denied through a spokesperson that he had sent such messages or made payments to Malay's sister. Davis and Kelsier Ventures were among the main beneficiaries of the rug pull, which alleged profits of around a hundred million dollars.
Karina Malay, who serves as general secretary of the presidency, has remained silent on the matter. In a recent interview with Todo Notisas I can't pronounce that one. I'm sorry. Some publication, president Malay dismissed allegations of fraudulent promotion raised in several lawsuits claiming he had merely shared information. Well, this looks pretty damn damning. I mean, if if this turns out to be true, then we got a major problem on our hands with this dude down in Argentina. And like I said, I said it yesterday, I'll say it again, I had the highest of hopes for Javier Malay, and he was doing a good job in Argentina at least as far as I was getting information.
It it seemed like he was turning the country around. It seemed like he was doing good work. Now I say seemed because I don't live in Argentina. I'm not an Argentinian. So, essentially, I'm talking out of my ass. I don't know what I'm talking about because I don't live there. I can only understand Argentina through the eyes of people that I very much kinda don't trust. However, it was looking like things were going pretty well. And then he pulls this shit. And then we've got these messages that appear to be connected directly to Malay's sister, who is involved in the cabinet of the presidency of his of her brother.
This is not good. And if it all turns out to be true, then I hope they arrest Malay. I hope they throw him in prison for the rest of his natural born life, and I feel really bad for what's going to happen to the Argentinian people if that occurs. Because Argentina, it's almost as if they had one chance to get out of this shit. Now you might have just been struck by an idea that just popped up in my head. What if he's being made to take this fall? Maybe all of this was constructed because he really was doing a good job. Maybe he really didn't know what the hell was going on. I'm just throwing that out there as a possibility. It's not what I want to have happen. It's not what I want to be true. I'm just saying, what if? Because he, like I said, he seemed to be doing a good job.
He seemed to be turning the country around. He seemed to be gaining quite a bit of popularity. And then all of a sudden, we have this thing with this meme coin happen. We've got ties to his sister. His sister is clearly part of the presidential entourage and the cabinet and all that. And that would be a really good and cheap and easy way to scuttle that country's presidency and put Argentina back into the control of the UN, European Central Bank, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the whole thing. Just I'm just positing that as maybe a possibility.
Circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you. Well, how the hell am I gonna say that? Where I bring plebs like you with goods and services. Two plebs like you that may want to buy those goods and services, but you gotta buy them in Bitcoin and they gotta be sold in Bitcoin. Otherwise, they ain't in the circle p. Today, it's Peony Lane Vineyards. That's Ben Justman's outfit out of the, high altitudes of Colorado. Anyway, he does definitely sell his wine for Bitcoin. In fact, he uses Zapprite as the payment link and you can go to pandelanewine.com/bitcoin and if you he's got two boxes and they both have six bottles and they're a little pricey.
However, he says down here, if you'd like to customize a bitcoin order, please email us directly. So maybe, Ben, I and I don't know. I haven't asked Ben about this. But maybe if you ask really nicely, maybe you can buy just a couple of bottles of his fabulous Peony Lane wine, Peony Lane Vineyards wine, with Bitcoin and you can mail Ben Justman. That's b e n, you know, guy named Ben, Justman, j u s t m a n, at peonylaine wine dot com. That's Ben Justman at peonylaine wine dot com. If you wanna get him, a hold of him through, either Twitter or Noster, I will have the URLs not only to pandelainewine.com, but the URLs directly to his Twitter account as well as his Noster in pub. So you'll be able to click it and go right to Ben Justman and orders wine. Now make sure you tell him you heard about it here on the Bitcoin and podcast, circle p. And if you make if he makes a sale because of me, well, he's gonna flip me some satoshis.
And he gets he gets to decide what it was worth for me to make that sale for him. We have no agreement other than he gets to make the decision. And if I don't sell his wine, he doesn't pay me sats. If I sell some wine, he gets to make the decision as to how much that sale was worth to him. It is value for value advertising, ladle ladies and gentlemen. You will find it nowhere else but here on the Bitcoin and podcast. Now moving on to the block and James Hunt, and we're gonna start our lightning discussion, and we're gonna start out with this one. Lightning could strengthen Bitcoin's investment thesis, Fidelity Digital Assets says. Let's find out exactly what they say. Fidelity Digital Assets sees Lightning as a transformative technology that not only embraces Bitcoin and Bitcoin's utility, but also bolsters its investment case by increasing the network's transactional use and expanding its adoption across various sectors.
The lightning network is a second layer solution of payment channels built on top of the bitcoin blockchain designed to enable near instant transactions at negligible cost. While first launched in 2018, it was not until 2024 that its adoption gained momentum, Fidelity Digital Assets argued in a Wednesday report produced in collaboration with data from Voltage, a lightning payment provider backed by president Trump's cryptos are David Sachs. I'm I'm not a fan of David Sachs, but whatever. Quote, over the past year, we've seen firsthand how businesses are scaling with the lightning network, payment reliability is improving, transaction costs are dropping, and adoption is accelerating faster than ever, end quote, Voltage founder and CEO Graham Krzyzyk told The Block.
Since 2020, the Lightning Network's average capacity has grown by 384, holding 5,358 and a half Bitcoin, which at a Bitcoin price of 95,000 values the capacity at around $509,000,000 as of January. Fidelity noted adding that this does not include private or unannounced channels that it estimates to be substantial. The entire capacity of the network combining public and private channels is unknown. More businesses integrate with the Lightning Network in 2024 than any other year prior, including US crypto exchange giant Coinbase joining rivals such as Bitfinex, OKX, Kraken, and Binance, a trend that Fidelity expects to continue in 2025.
The Lightning Network is also showing other signs of maturity, according to Fidelity anyway, with smaller, less efficient channels deployed in earlier years closing in favor of larger, more streamlined channels. A well optimized Lightning Network participant can see transaction fees as low as 0% and payment completion times in less than half a second as a result. Though poor channel management, which we all suffer, can result in much higher costs with more inconsistent payment successes. A shift is also occurring in favor of fewer, larger, well connected nodes as opposed to many smaller nodes Fidelity noted with average Bitcoin capacity growing substantially over the last four years while average channels per node fell 30%.
Though this improves the chances of payment success, it also contributes to the increasing number of users now relying on centralized lightning network wallet services rather than running their own nodes. Shame on you. Beyond offering an efficient transaction platform, Lightning also potentially functions as a yield bearing network, Fidelity argued, allowing node operators to retain full control over their assets while earning returns through well managed liquidity. Finally, Lightning is also emerging as the language protocol for multiple new layers and services in the Bitcoin ecosystem Fidelity set.
Applications like Fedimint, Cashew, and Nostr are all utilizing the network and expanding its use cases, while newer layer two protocols on the horizon such as ARC will offer interoperability with Lightning. Tether's recent proposal or proposed integration of USDT with the Bitcoin layer two represents perhaps the biggest driver of Lightning Network adoption globally with a potential of 1197% increase in transaction volume according to Solve protocol cofounder, Seb Bunny. Seb Bunny. Alright. That's a great name, man. By enabling fast, low cost micropayments, Lightning expands Bitcoin's utility for everyday purchases and new digital commerce models, Fidelity said, without needing to rely on a different blockchain or some god awful token.
While lightning payments need to work 100% of the time for it to be truly effective as the network matures, it shows promise for institutional adoption offering a competitive edge for financial institutions in global remittances and transaction processing, allowing it to meet such demand. This could strengthen Bitcoin's role in the global financial system and improve its long term value proposition, making it more attractive as an investment, the firm concluded. Fidelity Digital Assets is a subsidiary of asset blah blah blah. It's the cover your ass statement. I'd I'd I'm probably not going to get sued. I'm not reading it. I don't need to read a cover your ass statement. Okay. Stop it. Okay. So what what's being said here is what we've been saying for the last four years.
Lightning makes Bitcoin better. It's been making it better for four years. It's just now that Fidelity is actually talking about it. Why? Because of the whole Tether thing. I love it, hate it, neutral on it. This shit is happening. Can't do a damn thing about it. But what does bug me is not as much that Tether is now on Lightning. It's node runners not running Lightning nodes. If you're running a Bitcoin full node, there's no reason for you not to try learning how to use a lightning node. It's not that hard. Is channel management hard?
No. Is it a pain in the ass? Yes. And peep when people say hard, what what I think happens is something switches on in your brain. Like, you go back to high school, like, you know, like the the harp noise plays, and you go back in time to when you're trying to learn, I don't know, precalculus in high school, and you don't even get into the class for the first day of class before somebody tells you, oh, shit. You're in precalc? That's hard. No. It's not hard. It's just freaking annoying. Unless you're just a math lover, it's annoying, but it's not hard. You actually have to do work to understand it, at least enough to be able to survive it. But in and of itself, you're not theorizing about the pressure differentials in the heart of a freaking sun.
It's not that hard. It's just a pain in the ass. Please take the pain in the ass. I promise you it will be worth it. Run a lightning node today. And it's not just lightning node. You gotta open some channels and you gotta ask people to open channels with you. And you can do that over on a place called amboss, a m b o s s. No. This is not an advertisement. I am introducing Frank Corva's Bitcoin magazine article and discussion with Amboss's CEO. So let's get into this one because this is the other end of the story about Lightning and where we might be headed. And by the way, and I did not know this, Amboss, their location for their headquarters is Nashville, Tennessee.
Nice. I'm I'm excited about that. Why? Well, because Bitcoin Park is in Nashville, Tennessee. So I wonder if Jesse Schrader is is chilling out over there at Bitcoin Park every once in a while. I'll bet he is. Here it is. The article from Frank Korva. Jesse Schroeder thinks that this will be an important year for the Lightning Network. With Bitcoin's price on the rise and Tether coming to Lightning, Schroeder posits that more and more businesses and institutions will begin to see Lightning, use begin to see lightning for payments in the year ahead. Sorry. I blew that, Frank. Didn't no disrespect, sir. In his company, Amboss, is poised to make this vision a reality. Quote, we want to extend Bitcoin as a payment system and use Lightning to do that, Schrader told Bitcoin magazine. We want to make Lightning a high efficiency, high performance system.
Through a suite of tools and services, Schrader and the team at Amboss have developed, that they are prepared to onboard the next wave of institutional users to the world's largest permissionless payment network, especially now that USDT runs on lightning. Amboss primarily provides intelligent payment infrastructure for digital payments using the lightning network. Quote, we deliver insights to people regarding what they should do to increase efficiency of payments on the network. To accomplish this, they offer a number of products and services. One of the most notable of these is called Amboss Space, which is a lightning network explorer that employs machine learning to help users retrieve information on or connect to any node in the network. This is one of the tools that I used to use. This is me talking.
This is one of the tools that I used to use, and I actually still use it when I am looking to open a channel with another channel partner. I I use this product. I'm just just putting that out there. I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. Anyway, beyond the analytics software, Amboss also provides its customers with tools and services to help improve liquidity conditions on lightning. And one such service is Magma Marketplace, which lets users buy and sell liquidity on the lightning network. Using Magma, users can provide liquidity without giving up custody of their Bitcoin for a yield.
Another is Hydro, an extension of Magma. That software enables users to automate their liquidity purchases to better ensure the success of payments. Amboss' analytics software and tools are built for high volume transactions, which are becoming easier to make on lightning. Quote, we measure businesses' ability to make payments with simulations, explained Trader. Quote, we'll help businesses see how much of the network can they actually reach when they attempt a payment. End quote. Trader is optimistic when it comes to the growth of lightning. With each passing day, users are relying on the network to send more than just micropayments.
We've been successfully processing everyday payments on lightning, which I'm defining as between $10 and $4,000 payments, said trader. Quote, we're working to enhance the network's capabilities even further with a focus on decentralization. Payments larger than $4,000 are still difficult to process. Yeah. I would imagine. Schrader explained that more capital is needed to help make processing larger payments a reality. However, he also noted that the recent increase in Bitcoin's price has helped larger payments to be processed more easily.
What we saw recently is that the Bitcoin price has increased, which has increased the capability for settlement across all Lightning channels. Since the channels are Bitcoin denominated, we like it well, hold on. It's like we get bigger pipes. End quote. And while Schrader is optimistic about these bigger pipes allowing for more throughput, he also believes that Tether's coming to Lightning will attract even more liquidity to the network. At the end of last month, Lightning Labs announced that it's bringing USDT to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network via the Taproot assets protocol.
This upgrade enables Bitcoin service providers to integrate and accept USDT more easily, which Schrader believes will be a boon for lightning. Quote, one thing that's very clear is Tether has product market fit. Last year, it served $10,000,000,000,000 in payments, which exceeds Visa and Mastercard. It's very clear that the world wants United States dollars, end quote, and that was Schrader. Schrader is a pragmatist, acknowledged the fact that many hardline Bitcoiners have issues with USDT running on Bitcoin and lightning, and he sympathizes with them as he appreciates the Bitcoin's sound money qualities.
At the same time, he thinks the benefits of having USDT on lightning clearly outweigh the cons as many still don't understand what Bitcoin is nor are they willing to stomach its volatility. Quote, many haven't taken or yet taken the orange pill and come to understand the advantages of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is an incredible tool, and I want to bring that to as many people as possible. With that said, there are a lot of problems with traditional payments, and Bitcoin has this very secure auditable system, which is something that I want to bring to the world at scale.
While Bitcoin's price action is great for me, a lot of people are afraid of volatility. If you have an asset with very low volatility like USDT now on very secure trustless rails, well, that's a huge win, end quote. And again, that was Schrader. Schrader recounted how the first Bitcoin related conference MicroStrategy hosted was actually called Lightning for Corporations. At that conference, companies were encouraged to start paying employees in Bitcoin over Lightning without fully realizing the trouble that this would cause at the time. Quote, what employers realized was that all of the ten ninety nines that needed to be submitted to employees was a hassle.
And there was a whole bunch of regulatory overhead that they had to contend with as well, said Trader. Trader pointed out that not only can paying employees in USDT over lightning reduce accounting and regulatory headaches, but it also reduces some of the counterparty risk associated with using banks, a reality with which Trader is quite familiar. Our payroll used to go through Silicon Valley Bank, said Trader. And at one point, the payroll provider contacted me to resend my mid month payroll after I had had attempted to pay the staff. I lost half a month's runway.
This was all because of Silicon Valley Bank being insolvent. So if I can avoid the counterparty risk in the financial system by moving to Bitcoin and Lightning, then that means I'm in a much better place, said Schrader. Schrader noted some of the risks of USDT on Bitcoin and Lightning, but didn't seem too concerned about them. Quote, there are some MEV risks when you have assets other than a blockchain's native asset being traded on chain, said Trader. But Bitcoin already has ordinal inscriptions that create other assets, so the problem already exists, end quote. He also didn't seem too flustered when I brought up the risk of a Bitcoin fork resulting in the USDT on one of the chains becoming worthless, Nor did he feel that there is notable risk of larger economic nodes in the bitcoin network like coinbase which custodies the bitcoin for The US spot bitcoin ETFs opting to support a tether fork of bitcoin which could also include other upgrades that could hurt bitcoin in the long run. Quote, bitcoin consensus is not determined by custody of bitcoin.
So while an important business like coinbase may support various changes or initiatives, that doesn't guarantee that protocol changes would be effective or affected, Schroeder said. Instead of focusing on the risks associated with USDT on Bitcoin, Schroeder is doing the opposite. Quote, what's more interesting is probably the opportunities that unlocks where you where you have actual arbitrage ability on Bitcoin itself since every node is capable of transacting in both USDT and Bitcoin is also capable of exchanging between them natively on Lightning, you can send Bitcoin out of one Lightning channel and receive USDT in another of your Lightning channels.
That can be as simple as generating a USDT invoice and paying it with BTC, instantly rebalancing holdings. In Schrader's final thoughts from my interview with him, he shared two last key reasons why 2025 will be the year of lightning. The first is that holding Bitcoin is no longer required to use lightning. Quote, up until this year, if people or businesses wanted to switch to lightning, they needed to have bitcoin first. That's a huge barrier, explained Schrader. Schrader added in a response to a follow-up question that outside of The US, it's relatively easy and common to get access to USDT. Quote, the Bitcoin only market for payment processing is tiny, but this year, we've removed that barrier, and consumers can pay with another asset, USDT.
There's already a large market for that, he added. What's more, Schrader noted that Lightning users will only pay a small fraction of what they had been paying in transaction fees using the traditional financial rails. Quote, we're supplying liquidity at less than one half of a percent, said trader. Quote, as a user of big payment card networks, I'm paying 4% for all that payment processing, and the money doesn't show up for days to weeks after the payment is made. With Lightning, your payment processing fees drops by almost 10 x. Given Schrader's points, it's hard to imagine that 2025 won't be a big year for Lightning.
Yeah. Okay. That's the end of that article, and I agree with Frank. Lightning is going to have a good is going to have a good year. But you know who else is gonna have a good year? ECash. Fedimence and that entire ecosystem that we're see, what what we'll see here is that four years from now, we'll see a Fidelity digital assets report that says eCash instead of Lightning because Lightning will be old news. It will be like and and I don't mean old news as in we're gonna get rid of it. It's gonna be like old news like, do you talk to your friends about the street that you drive your car on?
No. You don't. You that's just what you do. You you don't have to marvel at the construction that is an asphalt blacktop in front of your house so that your axles don't break in potholes because it's, you know, a paved road. It's actually kind of an incredible invention, yet we don't talk about it anymore because it's old news. We use it every day. Lightning is gonna be that. And and I don't even think it's gonna take four years for Fidelity Digital Assets. In fact, I kind of expect either at the end of twenty twenty five or somewhere in 2026, Fidelity Digital Assets or somebody like them will come out essentially with the exact same report talking about eCash and Fedimint and all that stuff. But what I really found interesting in the article before this one was that Fidelity Digital Assets specifically named Nostr.
That's an important detail that I really didn't clarify there. If you didn't hear me say it, yes. Infidelity Digital Assets report on Lightning. They said eCash. Yeah. They actually said eCash too, but they didn't really go into it. But they also said Nostr, n o s t r, notes and other stuff transmitted by or over relays depending on what what part of the farm you're living on when it comes to Nostr. And if you haven't got on Nostr yet, why? It don't cost you nothing. It ain't that hard. It's just sometimes it's a little annoying because you you do things a different way. But if you actually learn how to use Nostr, you learn what an in pub is, and you learn what the insect is, all of a sudden and you if you log in using those same credentials to, like, 12 different things, you start seeing the real power.
So if you're not on Nostr, you need to get on Nostr. Let's run the number. Breaking. Breaking. Breaking. Fed officials are worried about tariffs impact on inflation and see rate cuts on hold. And that was the Fed minutes were were just released and Bitcoin reacted accordingly by dropping what it how much did it shave off? Let's see what it shaved off here. It had a high of $96.04 and is at now $95.06. So it looks like it shaved off a thousand a thousand bucks in an instant because the Fed opened their minutes book and let the public see that they are just not interested in doing anything with interest rates.
Remember, we were promised we'd have four quarter point rate cuts this year. Then that dropped to three as inflation numbers kept you know, and housing numbers and employment numbers remained high, and then we got down to two. And then about a month well, actually, about two weeks ago, it looked like there was only gonna be one. Now it looks like we got a gigantic goose egg, and it's not going to work. Keeping the rates the same are not going to reign in inflation. That ship sailed the minute they ran the money printer beyond all conception of human thought patterns. It's and even if they raise interest rates, it's going to probably do something that they don't even it'll break the system.
It'll probably just break the system. I have no idea what the Federal Reserve is gonna do at this point. And it may just be that somehow or another, Trump steps in and tells Jerome Powell how the hell it's gonna be, and they're actually going to lower rates even though that's probably what well, at least as far as history is concerned, that's not what you do. Maybe this is the time that we do it, and we floor those things down to zero and see what the hell happens. Because you I mean, keeping them the same ain't gonna do nothing. Not with this not when you print 40% of all US dollars in existence in the last three years.
It does all of us you broke that lever. The lever that controls the interest rates and that that or the lever that is the interest rates that controls the economy, they broke that when they printed all that money. The plane doesn't fly the same way and that lever doesn't control what they think it controls anymore because they fucked up the plane. So it's funny just watching Bitcoin react accordingly. Like, well, it's not Bitcoin. It's the paper hands that hold Bitcoin are just at this point, there's so many institutional guys into Bitcoin that they act the way that they've always acted.
They're I mean, I can't imagine living my life one inch away from a heart attack twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year for the entirety of my career. Screw that. I'd rather live under a bridge and have actual friends. Anyway, let's get to the numbers. Oil is up a half point to $72.20. That's West Texas Intermediate Brent. North Sea is up a fifth of a point to $75.98. Natural gas, swinging swinging for the fences, bro. Seven points to the upside. We went way past $4. We are now at $4.28 per thousand cubic feet.
Gasoline falling almost a half point to $2.07 a gallon. All your shiny metal rocks are also reacting to the fed minutes. Everything's in the red. Gold down a third. After hitting an all time high this morning, I might add, Silver is down three quarters of a point. Platinum is down 1.75%. Copper is down two thirds of a point. Palladium is down just over two full points. It doesn't look like ag had a very good day either. I have no idea what it was doing before, but everything's in the red except for coffee, which is our biggest winner of the day. 1.88% to the upside.
Biggest loser, do do do. It's a tie between chocolate and cotton, both over one and a half percent to the downside. I got live cattle up point 4%. Lean hogs, however, are down 3.76%. And feeder cattle are down one fifth of a point. The Dow, not taken too kindly to Fed chairman Powell's, talk on the minutes, it's down a quarter of a point. S and P, however, is up one tenth of one point. Nasdaq effectively moving sideways. S and P shit the bed point 74% to the downside. And, of course, we've got Bitcoin, which was over $1,900,000,000,000 of market cap until federal chair Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell opens his big mouth, and we are now at $95,530 a coin. That is just under $1,900,000,000,000 of market cap. We can only purchase 32.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,826,297.99 of.
Average fees per block are low. 0.04 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. It looks like there's, oh, I don't know, 27 blocks carrying 38,000. Oh, impressive. 38,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority rates get you in 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priorities at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Hash rate is at eight twenty five point nine exahashes per second. So still still pumping along. Wow. I'm I keep thinking that miners are just gonna ditch and say we're gonna turn them off for now until you guys pony up some satoshis. From fire hose of lies, yesterday's episode of bitcoin and I got Canadian hash and coin with 905 sets says Argentina lit down yet again. Yeah. I I hear you, brother.
Paul Cernai with 500 says, thanks for this episode. It seems that the combination of sound ethics and shit coinery is very rare. Yodle with 333 sets says, headphones and smiley face emojis. God's death with two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Anonymous with a hundred and eight says, regarding anonymous boosts, I think Fountain's doing it depending on your device and OS. That's true. It could be. It sometimes fails to display profile. No harm in being anonymous in this space. That's true. That's true. It's just that I just feel bad that I can't properly appreciate people that throw me 20,000 Satoshis.
It's it's just I'm just old school that way. Anyway, Jess Potto with a hundred says, pain is the way people will learn. Shit coins gonna shit coin. So have fun staying wait. What? HDSP? H so HDSP for them until they learn. I don't know which HDSP is. I'm sure I should probably know it. Just bought it with another hundred says zap zap. Pies with a hundred says value for value. Thank you, sir. No thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Bitcoin rewards app, Bold, is volatile in its Wall Street debut.
And you might be going, Fold? What? Like like the Fold app? The Fold card? Fold, fold, fold? Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they got listed. Let's find out more. This is CoinDesk and it's being written by Christian Sandor, who writes Bitcoin rewards financial services firm, Fold Holdings, ticker symbol FLD, debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Wednesday with shares surging higher in early action before pulling back. Oh, trading like a meme coin, is it? Well, just because it's legacy equity markets. That's the way it works there too. The firm went public via business a business merger with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC.
FLD jumped more than 30% above $13 in the early minutes of trading before pulling back to the $11 area. Fold is the latest addition of publicly traded companies with Bitcoin on its balance sheet following the footsteps of Michael Saylor's strategy and smaller companies like Simler Scientific and Meta Planet, Fold holds 1,000 BTC worth $96,000,000 at current prices according to public filings. So congratulations to the gentlemen and ladies over at Fold. I hope you do well in the equity legacy markets. Honestly, I why? I I I don't know. Okay. CZ.
Xinping Zheng donates a hundred and 50 BNB coin to the Libra scam victims, and he ends up with more than he gave. Why is anybody giving this dude who is a billionaire any money at all? He has his money. Save your money. Don't don't give it don't give it to c z. Anyway, this may have been is writing it for Decrypt. What started as an act of goodwill by Binance founder, Shengpeng Zhao, to help victims of the Libra meme coin scam took an unexpected turn when Zhao received more crypto than he had originally donated. On Tuesday, Zhao pledged 150 BNB worth a hundred thousand dollars to support those affected by the collapse of the controversial libre coin after a college student in Hang began raising funds to assist the victims.
Bizau's decision to publicly share his donation address led to an influx of additional crypto in the same, surpassing his initial contribution. Why? God, why? Inhang, moved by the devastating losses caused by Argentine or the Argentina President Javier Mille promoted Libra crypto, which wiped out more than 40,000 investors and resulted in over $4,000,000,000 in damages, announced their own donation of $50,000, quote, when you try to make money quick, you often lose, Zhao quipped on Twitter. When you give money away, you get more back, end quote.
Despite the increased donations, Zhao made it clear that he would not keep any of the additional funds. I won't be keeping a satoshi of it, Zhao clarified in his tweet, saying that he would donate the extra crypto to further support the victims, specifically those affected by other meme coins like TST and Broccoli. Yes. There's a meme coin named Broccoli. The latter being inspired by CZ's pet dog. Zhao also warned his followers not to misinterpret his actions as an endorsement of the tokens involved. Last Friday, the Libra tokens launched a controversy when Argentine president Javier Molay publicly endorsed it on his Twitter account.
And we know the rest of the story there. So let's go scroll down. Yeah. So it looks like c z was trying to do right or not right. He was trying to be good. I don't know how a hundred thousand dollars is gonna help a $4,000,000,000 hole, but, hey, he got news out of it. Right? Right? So there you go. And he got more back than he than he gave. And I still I'm going to go to bed tonight going, why? Why the hell would you do that? It doesn't really matter because Ted Cruz, the block, and Sarah Wynne writing, Blockchain Association urges lawmakers to vote for senator Ted Cruz's measure to repeal a controversial tax rule.
What's the tax rule? I don't know. I guess we'll find out. The Blockchain Association is calling on congressional leadership to vote for a legislative measure to overturn a controversial tax rule finalized late last year that requires certain decentralized finance brokers to file reports on gross proceeds. The industry group with 75 members such as Coinbase Kraken and Uniswap Labs penned a letter to senate majority leader John Thune, house speaker Mike Johnson, senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday, asking them to vote to repeal that rule, calling it misguided.
Quote, the DeFi broker rule, finalized in the waning days of the Biden administration, represents regulatory overreach that fundamentally misunderstands the technology it attempts to regulate and ignores congress' intent, the Blockchain Association said in the letter. The group's letter comes after senator Ted Cruz introduced a legislative measure aimed at overturning the rule last month. The United States Internal Revenue Service finalized the rule in late December that requires defi brokers to act like traditional security brokers who are required to collect information about their users' trades.
Some decentralized finance industry participants will have to send their customers form ten ninety nine tax returns, which are used to report payments that typically aren't from an employer like gambling winnings, rents, and royalties. The US Treasury Department has also noted that the finalized rule applies to front end service providers that interact, quote, directly with customers. That suggests entities that run the primary website used to access a decentralized protocol rather than the protocol itself. The rule is expected to go into effect on or after January 2027.
So we do have some time, just so you know. Okay. So blockchain association trying to get whip up some support for Ted Cruz's bill to repeal a law that honestly only affects degenerate gamblers. I guess I shouldn't be so mean, but I'm just getting so tired of the traders. I mean, the wind blows a different direction by, like, one degree on the compass, and all of a sudden, they puke, shit the bed, and sell all their Bitcoin. It's the most we live in a timeline of amazement, wonderment, and crawling through sewers over broken glass and used hypodermic needles because it's just the strangest shit. Is it I mean, the minutes of the feds say, hey. You remember we said four and then three and then two and then one. Well, now we're doing zero like we didn't expect it to happen and every Bitcoin trader said sell sell sell.
Or it's either that or Jim Cramer said, buy, buy, buy. I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
Bitcoin as a Reserve Asset
Christine Lagarde's Opposition
USDT on Bitcoin and Lightning
