Join me today for Episode 1041 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Bybit Ether Cold Wallet Hacked: $1.2 Billion
- Costa Rica Launches BTC ETF
- Africa's Altvest Adopts BTC Treasury
- ECB Decides to Die On CBDC Hill
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 09:02AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten forty one of Bitcoin, and I say goodbye to a dear friend of mine, Bill McKenna. Sir, may you rest in peace. I found out, early this morning that a very good and very old friend of mine passed away. And it's always, always sad when your friends and people that you know and love, you know, leave this planet. But I can only hope and I also presume that Bill McKenna is in a much better place than he was during the last few years of his life. I'm gonna miss you, pal. I'm gonna miss you. Now that said, we've got the SEC is in the news. Lord have mercy. They are in the news, alongside Coinbase. We'll get into that one.
It appears that a hack has occurred. A hack. It's a hack attack, which is the name of today's episode. It's the hack attack. And then we've got Costa Rica in the news and Africa, baby. Africa is on deck. And then the European Central Bank is gonna do some some blockchain chicanery, and we're gonna end with this report about Bitcoin being used with the Lightning Network and apparently being able to deploy six fifty million users. I'm not exactly sure, but it is a breeze and one a one z report on the lightning network. So we'll end up with that one because that's gonna be kinda long, but I think in all in all, this is gonna be a rather shorter show. So let's buckle up and get on with the SEC who has agreed to drop the enforcement case against Coinbase.
This thing has been dragging on for a long time, and Vince Quill and Cointelegraph is gonna tell us how they wrapped it up. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against the exchange firm Coinbase, which had accused the company of operating as an unregistered securities broker. According to the announcement from Coinbase, the dismissal is still subject to approval by an SEC commissioner before the suit is officially withdrawn. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, quote, if this goes through, it's a really big deal, not just for us, but for the whole crypto industry, the 50,000,000 Americans who hold crypto, and I think for the rest of the world because this is an important signal about where things are going. And, apparently, they're going towards unregistered securities being legal. I'm just saying.
Okay? The SEC sued Coinbase in June of twenty twenty three amid a torrent of litigation attempting to frame many crypto firms and projects as either unregistered securities brokers or unregistered securities in and of themselves, placing heavy regulatory and financial pressure on the industry. Well, the SEC, under the leadership of former chair Gary Gensler, claimed that Coinbase failed to register its staking services with the financial regulator, and several cryptocurrencies were named as unregistered securities in the SEC's twenty twenty three lawsuit against Coinbase, including Solana, Cardano, Filecoin, Polygon, and a whole host of others.
Coinbase characterized the lawsuit as regulatory overreach and slammed the SEC for filing a suit after approving the company's public listing on The US stock exchanges in 2021. The company also responded to the lawsuit by mobilizing political pressure alongside Ripple and other industry firms donating tens of millions of dollars to Fair Shake, a political action committee that spreads public awareness about crypto regulations and lobbies the United States government for industry friendly regulations. Coinbase also backed the stand with crypto advocacy group to promote voter education about pro crypto lawmakers and important regulatory policies. Quote, crypto voters won't be taken seriously until we send a clear message to political candidates that it is bad politics to be anti crypto, Coinbase CEO, Armstrong said in June of twenty twenty four. These advocacy efforts seem to have helped influence the outcome of the twenty twenty four elections in The United States, which Tonya Evans, a tenured professor at Pennsylvania State University, told CoinTelegraph was determined by razor thin margins.
Razor thin. Alright. So what's the implications here? Shitcoinery is on its way. Because apparently, the SEC is just saying, you know what? We just we just don't wanna we just don't wanna enforce, excuse me, we don't wanna enforce The United States versus Howie anymore. It's okay. You that means all of us can just spin up our own coins. Why not? I mean, they're they're not going to enforce anything. It's not like we're gonna you know, nobody's gonna sue us anymore. So we can just we can sell crap to anybody that we want now. That that's what this is really telegraphing to me. Solana is an unregistered security. Ether is an unregistered security. They're all unregistered securities. All of them all of them pass.
Not only pass, but pass with flying colors, the Howey Test. And the Howey Test is what determines whether or not something is a security. And if you don't register that security with the SEC and go through all those little, you know, hoops and and ring all their little bells and blow all their little whistles, well, then it's unregistered. And it and and it's a scam. That's the whole point between US versus Howie. That was the whole point is that mister Howie was scamming pensioners in Florida and actually all up and down the Eastern Seaboard out of their hard earned money to buy orange trees that he swore up and down. He would take care of the trees. He would pick the oranges off the trees. He would sell the oranges, and you'd get a cut, which means that you're buying money you're you're spending your money on with this guy to buy a thing, in this case, a tree or a row of trees, in the expectation to make a profit through the actions of a third party.
That's the that's the that there's a little bit more to it, but, essentially, that's the Howey test. Only one thing does not in in, quote, unquote, crypto, only only one thing does not pass Howey, and that's Bitcoin. So be aware, people. This is gonna get ugly. And with the onset of meme coins and with the SEC dropping their lawsuit against Coinbase, sure, it sounds good on the surface, but you gotta remember what that entire case was about. The SEC was actually at that particular point, they were doing their function. They were performing the function that they were hired to do, and that was to make sure that you were able to just scam any idiot out of their money because you promised them a return of 500% every single day.
Anyway, there's a hack attack, and this is a bad one. This is from The Block. It's written by Daniel Kuhn. Crypto exchange Bybit confirms it was hacked for over $1,400,000,000 worth of ETH as it leaves wallets. Yes. ETH. Straight up ETH is leaving wallets. Bybit's been hacked for its ETH. And it's $1,400,000,000 is nothing to sneeze at, guys. So let's get into this one. In one of the largest crypto heists ever, and they ain't lying, hackers have reportedly made off with more than $1,400,000,000 in ETH from Bybit's cold wallet. Cold wallet, not a hot wallet.
Their cold wallet, their cold storage wallet screams to me inside job. We'll find out. Early estimates suggest the exchange has lost over $1,000,000,000 worth of ETH and significant quantities of other tokens, though the investigation is still ongoing. Quote, Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about an hour ago. It appears that this specific transaction was musked, m u s k e d. Musked. I don't know what that means. All the signers saw the musked UI, which showed the correct address and the URL was from safe. However, the signing message was to change the smart contract logic of our ETH cold wallet, Bybit cofounder and CEO Ben Zhao posted to Twitter, likely referring to a masked URL used to alter code while appearing legitimate.
Wow. Quote, this resulted hold on. This is this is the I swear to god. This is the sentence. This resulted hacker took control of the specific ETH cold wallet we signed and transferred all ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address. Please rest assured that all other cold wallets are secure. All withdrawals are normal. In other words, the hacker appears to have tricked Bybit's ETH cold wallet signers into approving a malicious transaction to serendipitously gain control of the wallet. And on Tuesday, the exchange announced announced that it would be performing scheduled maintenance on its line server today stretching into tomorrow, which caused controversy as security researchers looked into the suspicious transactions.
Over the past hour, the hacker has split the stolen funds, including stETH and meth, into dozens of additional wallets. The funds were initially sent to an address beginning with o x 4 7 6, which received over 400,000 worth of ETH or $1,100,000,000, 90 thousand worth of STETH or STETH, I guess, 15,000 Centimeters ETH, and 8,000 CEETH. The attacker used to the sweep ETH function, a smart contract mechanism designed to transfer all available tokens from one contract to another, which likely explains why the transferred amounts are round numbers. The attacker then moved the majority of the funds into three separate distribution addresses, and they give the headers of the addresses. I'm not gonna read them.
Which then broke down the funds further into dozens of newly created addresses that began swapping funds using decentralized exchanges including Uniswap, Paraswap, and KyberSwap. Data on ARCEM research shows the initial 0 x $4.76 wallet Bybit hack only holds about $3,700,000 worth of crypto as of 11:30AM on Friday. Bybit says it's either hot or cold wallets are unaffected, and only their ETH wallets were impacted. Quote, Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered. All of clients' assets are one to one backed. We can cover the loss, Zhao also posted, quote, all withdrawals are normal. So he's reiterating the fact that you can still withdraw your shit. And I highly recommend you do that because this is what we keep saying. If you keep your coin, and I don't care if it's a shitcoin or actual bitcoin, on an exchange, you're in danger.
Anyway, BitMEX research estimates that around 75% of Bybit users' ETH deposits were drained. 75% of their clients' ETH deposits were drained. The exchange still holds over $20,000,000,000 worth of other crypto tokens, including nearly $6,900,000,000 in bitcoin, 4 point 1 billion in USDT, and two no. 1,200,000,000.0 in straight ETH. Arkham shows that the exchange has moved $560,000,000 worth of USDT on TRON from what appears to be a treasury wallet to a hot wallet. This story is breaking and will be updated as the block learns more. Alright. So ETH in trouble today, and it's dragging the markets down. Let me actually, let me go check old trading view and see exactly what's going on and see exactly what this thing looks like.
Yeah. We're wow. Wow. Yeah. So we were up like, about four hours ago, we were up to 99,508, and right now we're we're sitting at 97,929. But ETH is having an even worse day, and against Bitcoin, it's down to 0.027. It's yeah. It's not looking good. So it it kinda makes guys, it it actually literally makes me wonder. This sounds like it might have been an inside job because you're talking about a multisig wallet, however I wonder if the logic in these multisig ETH wallets are of any quality whatsoever. This kind of, for whatever reason, again, my gut feeling is saying inside job, and it just happens to happen on a Friday.
And we always know that going into the weekend, all kinds of shit happens in these markets because Wall Street banks and legacy markets are closed. You know, the like like, we'll be like, let's see. What is what is iBit doing right now? Even iBit's down a half a percent and MicroStrategy or, well, strategy now is down 2.34%. So this is really this hack has really rocked, the market. So just be aware. And and when we tell when when, you know, Bitcoiners are trying to tell you, please, please, please get your stuff off the exchanges, we're not lying.
Just be careful out there, folks. Okay. Costa Rica has finally made its first foray into Bitcoin with a new Bitcoin ETF, and Tom Carreras is writing this one for CoinDesk, state owned Banco National, the world's or no. Sorry. The largest commercial bank in Costa Rica, and one of the biggest in Central America with over $7,000,000,000 in assets under management is launching a spot bitcoin exchange traded fund through its investment management arm BN Fundos according to local reports. This marks the first time that Costa Ricans will have access to any type of crypto investment product through the country's banking system.
The firm is also launching a S and P 500 ETF alongside the bitcoin vehicle. The minimum investment amount for each fund is $100 Oh, so they're they're allowing plebs to get into the game. Wow. Thanks, dude. Investments will be taken in US dollars instead of Costa Rican colones. Quote, Costa Rican regulation doesn't permit investments in things that aren't investment vehicles, and Bitcoin isn't considered an investment vehicle from a regulatory perspective. But the ETF is, said Pablo Montes de Oca, general manager at BN Fundos, which I guess is Spanish for funds. Anyway, Banco Nacional serves over 2,100,000 customers in Costa Rica. That's more than 40% of the country's entire population.
Costa Rica doesn't have any formal crypto laws, but under the country's constitution and civil codes, as far as private parties are concerned, any activity that is not explicitly forbidden by the law is permitted. Costa Ricans are therefore technically allowed to trade and own cryptocurrencies based on the fact that there is no law that prohibits it. A comprehensive crypto regulation bill called the Crypto Asset Market Law was introduced at the legislative assembly in 2022, but it got stuck at the commission level. The bill aimed to codify the use of cryptocurrencies for the payment of goods and services in Costa Rica, but without making any of them, not even Bitcoin, legal tender.
So coast Costa Rica now now is on deck. And that and for those of you who struggle with geography like I do, Costa Rica sits sits, I think, south of is it Nicaragua? Here. Hold on. World map. World map. I just wanna find out because because from a strategic standpoint, this is actually rather important. Let me get to images here. Okay. So I've got a map here of Central America, which includes Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. That's considered Central America. We all know about El Salvador. Costa Rica is two countries away from is South of El Salvador. You gotta go through Honduras First, and then you gotta go through Nicaragua, and then you get to Costa Rica.
So what happens if you've got El Salvador that's that's Bitcoin friendly and you've got Costa Rica that's Bitcoin friendly? If they go Bitcoin friendly, then Costa Rica ends up being a bottleneck between Panama and the rest of North America, including the rest of Central America. You have to go through Costa Rica from Panama, which also means, like, the the Panama ends up being the land bridge between South America and North America. You have to go through Costa Rica before you can get to any other country north of Costa Rica and Panama. I think that that actually ends up being kind of a kind of a bottleneck.
And if Costa Rica ends up, like, in the next few years going full bore on accepting Bitcoin, you might end up with Central America being one of the richest It's already one of the most beautiful places on the planet. If you just look at pictures of Costa Rica, you'll see why. But, you know, El Salvador, Nicaragua, even though it's really kinda dangerous over there, but Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, these are all wonderful countries. If we could just stop meddling with them and stop basically forcing them to, you know, essentially take part in corruption, these places would be fine places to live. And if they end up being Bitcoin friendly in the next few years, it could change the face of the Western Hemisphere.
I know that's a little bit of hyper you know, hyperbolic speech there, but, hey. Here's to hoping. Alright. So now Africa. Bitcoin treasury bandwagon has reached Africa as alt vest jumps on board, And we're going to be talking about South Africa. Will Canny is writing for CoinDesk. Alvest Capital became the first listed company on the continent of Africa to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset, the company said in a press release. Altvest said it bought one Bitcoin for its strategic treasury following the paths set by strategy in The US and Meta Planet in Japan.
The Johannesburg based company paid R1,800,000 or $98,200 for just over 1 BTC and said it doesn't plan to buy alternative cryptocurrencies. Altvest sees it as, well, quote, Bitcoin as the only digital asset that meets its stringent investment criteria for a long term treasury allocation, end quote. Corporates are increasingly adding Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset. Michael Saylor's strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, pioneered the move, and we all know where that went. The South African investment firm said that the initiative to acquire Bitcoin was, quote, focused on preserving shareholder value, mitigating currency depreciation risks, and gaining exposure to a globally recognized store of value.
Since Tokyo based Meta Planet Meta Planet had started buying Bitcoin in April of last year, it has acquired over 2,000 tokens worth nearly 200,000,000, and its shares became the best performing Japanese equity over the past twelve months with a gain of 3900%. Oh, mother. Earlier this month, investment bank KBW started coverage of strategy with an outperform rating and a $560 price target. The shares are currently trading at $323.92. Alvest shares were trading more than 9% lower at R590 at time of publication. So we'll have to see, but this is the the the flag has been planted firmly on the continent of of Africa. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities Oil. West Texas Intermediate is getting sandbagged 2.15 to the downside at $70.92 a barrel. Brent and North Sea down likewise 2% to $74.94. Natural gas doing the other direction, 5% to the upside back up to $4.35 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is down 1.74% to $2.05 a gallon. All your shiny metal rocks are having a very, really bad day. Gold is down point 13%. Silver is down over 1%. Platinum is down two thirds of a point. Copper is down point 86%, and palladium is down one and a half. Ag, looking pretty much in the green today.
Biggest loser is chocolate. It is down double digits. Holy smokes. What the hell happened? 10.12% to the downside for my favorite food stuff. 1.28 to the upside to the biggest winner, sugar. And live cattle is up a quarter of a point. Lean hogs are down a third. Feeder cattle are up three quarters of a point. Indices are not looking good for equity markets. Dow is down just under a point, lost 419 points off of its, well, its its index. S and P is down point 73%. Nasdaq is down just under a point, and the S and P Mini is down one and a quarter. What the hell happened? Because the I don't think the, the ether hack affected the the equity markets. Let's see. What's going on?
Oh, yes. Weaker than expected consumer sentiment. So numbers came out today. And yeah. So well, we kinda knew that from the Walmart news that I was telling you about last night or or rather yesterday morning or afternoon whenever it is that you heard it. Walmart was saying that they didn't expect to get as much revenue, this time around as they did last time this year, and that basically told the world that they know that their customers don't have the money to even go to Walmart. And so this is what's really going on is there's no liquidity in retail. Sure, I guess there's like, you know, there's credit markets and all the bankers are having a heyday and there's all kinds of money floating around corporate. But as far as, like, you know, Joe on the street, there's just not that much money. There's not that much liquidity. There's not that much disposable income, and everything got hit blown out of the water today. There is blood all over the streets. But, Bitcoin seems to be kinda, you know, doing okay. $97,950, that's still a $1,940,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 33.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,827,091.72 of. And average fees per block are still low, guys.
0.04 BTC taken in fees on an average on a per block basis. And there looks to be about 61, 60 two blocks in mempools around the world carrying 77,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority is gonna cost you 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get your transaction in at 4 Satoshis per vByte. So the mempools look kinda, you know, much more healthy than they they've been looking kind of anemic over the last couple of weeks. Not so anymore. And finally, finally, some people took hash rate off of the network. We are down below 800 exahashes per second. We're actually at 796.2 exahashes per second. So you can do with that what you will from Meme Coinery, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got a thousand sats from somebody who doesn't have a handle. That may be that may be an issue with fountain. I'm not sure.
Thank you, sir. I see your picture. Or is it ma'am? I can't tell. Anyway, pay duck with four twenty says, cide duck. And then pies with four twenty says, hashtag 40 h p w means forty hours of Bitcoin podcast per week. Thank you, Pies. I appreciate you telling me what the hell that meant. God's death with $2.37 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with four twenty says, hashtag 40 p w. And digital panhandler didn't give me nothing, didn't say nothing, but he did retool or renote the fountain URL for the show, so it showed up in my fountain where I'm reading all these boosts and stuff like that. Anyway, that's gonna do it for the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. European Central Bank tips takes a step towards blockchain based payment system. If you're rolling your eyes, I'm right there with you, son. Liz Napolitano writing for Decrypt.co. The European Central Bank is expanding its efforts to establish a payment system built on blockchain technology, a move that could lead to Europe's largest monetary policymaker issuing a central bank digital currency. Yay. We're still here. It's like we won't leave. The digital payments infrastructure initiative announced on Thursday by the ECB will roll out in two phases.
In the first stage, the Eurozone's monetary authority will develop and implement a payments platform for settlements in central bank money through an interoperability link with the Trans European Automated Real Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System, also known as the Target. Target is a payment settlement system that is responsible for facilitating the free flow of cash, collateral, and securities across the Eurozone. In the second phase, the EU Monetary Authority will explore a more integrated long term solution for settlements of central bank money denominated transactions on a blockchain.
Quote, this is an important contribution to enhancing European financial market efficiency through innovation, executive board member Piero Ciplione said on Thursday in a statement. The ECB's embrace of, quote, innovative solutions, end quote, such as blockchain technology could shape the Eurozone's financial future by providing the infrastructure for its monetary authority to issue a digital euro, a centrally issued cryptocurrency that would enable Europeans to make fast and secure digital payments across Continental Europe, the bank said. The digital euro project is part of the ECB's larger goal to achieve a single market for capital across Europe, according to the ECB website.
Supporters for the project contend that the CBDC would bolster the Eurozone's economic strength in addition to reinforcing the region's autonomy and monetary sovereignty by reducing regional banks' reliance on non European payment service providers. The ECB began working on its plans to develop a digital euro back in 2021 when it started an investigation into design and distribution models for digital currencies. Two years later, the central bank that it signaled that it would take more concrete steps to realize its plan to issue a CBDC by establishing a list of priorities for the first phase of its digital euro project.
Amid its project's first phase, the ECB, this is the European Central Bank, if you're not catching this, the ECB will continue ironing out the details of its blockchain based payment system. The central bank will also engage with public and private stakeholders to tailor the new system to the needs of Europeans, it said in a statement. The timeline for its efforts on the project will be revealed in due course, the ECB added. Here's what's going to happen. Tether. That's what's going to happen. It just it it it I got this feeling, and it's more than a gut feeling. It's sort of like it the hackles on the back of my neck are starting to stand up.
It is always there's there's a I don't know. It's it's hard to describe. There is a feeling that I've been getting, and it's more than a feeling. But I think that Europe is not exactly as much loved by The United States and, generally speaking, the financial system of the West. Even though Europe itself is part of the West, I don't think we love them as much as everybody thinks we love them. I've heard, like, Gloria, whatever her name is, Nuland, the old secretary of state, on a phone call say fuck the EU. I saw Jerome Powell completely blow out the guilt market and and European, sovereign bonds by raising interest rates really, really fast after COVID.
Right? And and they really had a major problem on their hands in Europe. Europe basically almost dried up in liquidity. Right? The this is these are not the actions from a from a bunch of people that hold all the keys to the power in Western financial markets. This is not as playing nice. And it looks like it's gonna get even worse because we got this whole NATO questionality questioning thing going on with the Trump administration. We got the very end of the Ukraine Russian conflict is basically on our hands. You got threats of The United States just flat ass pulling out of NATO altogether.
It looks to me like the death knell for Europe right now is the fact that they're wanting to try to do the CBDC, whereas The United States already has one. It's Tether. You may not like it, and I certainly don't either. I I'm not rah rah ing this at all, so don't don't get me wrong. But what I am saying, the facts that are in in right in front of me basically suggest that while any other country is China may be the only one to get away with it because they're completely authoritarian, completely communist. There there's essentially a an like, some kind of, like, you know, the Great Wall Of China basically keeping all of their people inside. So they can do with their people what they want, but that's like, what, 1,400,000,000 people.
There's 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. And if you take India out okay. So you've taken out, like, let's say, 3,000,000,000, three point one billion people, you still got 4,900,000,000 people on the planet. It's not going to be European CBDC. It's going to be Tether. And we're going to sell The United States is going to create that. We're going to sell it into the bond market. The bond market is gonna be bought by Tether. Tether is going to issue more Tether coins or USDT. And somehow or another somehow or another, I still feel that that Bitcoin is going to be the one thing that they can say it's backed by Bitcoin.
They don't have to, and they may not. That's actually kind of, like, in the back of my head as well. They could prop they might be able to do it just by, like, you know, saying, well, trust us again even though that they are all these people are completely untrustworthy. But if Europe continues to waste their time on a CBDC, Europe's gonna go down in flames. That's the way I see it because they're not gonna be able to compete with the straight up network effect that Tether already has. I guarantee you there's hundreds of thousands of people in Europe that probably use Tether or at least have used it at least once.
It's not gonna work, guys. The c European CBDC is not going to work because we we also have Tether on Lightning. Now this report that I'm about to get go through, it may or may not say something directly about Tether. It's more about the Lightning Network itself. But remember, while we get into this, that Tether is now on Lightning. So from Atlas twenty one, we have this headline, Bitcoin beyond digital gold. 650,000,000 users can access the Lightning Network. A new report by Breeze and one a hold on. One a one z titled Bitcoin payments from digital gold to everyday currency reveals Bitcoin's transformation path from a store of value to a daily currency according to the study.
Bitcoin is no longer just a digital safe haven asset, but is establishing itself as a true global payment tool. The research argues that over six fifty million people today have access to Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. It is worth noting that this figure refers to users who can use l n today and not those who have actually used it. From the African retail giant Pick n Pay to the Japanese ecommerce giant Mercari up to the Italian furniture leader Mondo Convinzia, the data shows how Bitcoin is rapidly penetrating various sectors and geographical markets beyond or rather, according to the authors.
While the comparison with digital gold has helped many understand Bitcoin's quality as a store of value, such a metaphor risks obscuring Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision. Bitcoin's creator had indeed imagined a peer to peer electronic money system designed to move without intermediaries. This vision is finally taking shape with growing adoption of Bitcoin payments globally, and it is precisely the Lightning Network that is making Bitcoin an optimal tool for daily transactions. According to the research, the Lightning Network has reached over six fifty million potential users.
The number is a result of a series of l n or lightning network integrations on major global exchanges. So for instance, when lightning network was integrated on o k x, a 10,000,000 users immediately have the potential to use the Lightning Network. When Binance integrated it, there was 200,000,000. One hundred million through users through Nubank, fifty seven million users through Coinbase, and 49,000,000 users through Cash App. Unlike other networks, Lightning Networks growth occurs organically without anyone forcing companies and services to integrate this payment method. According to the reports authors, here we go, USDT integration on Lightning Network could accelerate the network's mass adoption, combining stablecoins lack of volatility with LN's efficiency and speed.
However, an aspect emerging from the study is Bitcoin's superiority over stablecoins. Native digital currency. Bitcoin is the only true native currency of the Internet. Independence. Bitcoin is not subject to dollar inflation or central banks' monetary manipulations. Under regulation, risk of delisting by exchanges as in the case of USDT after the MICA implementation, Bitcoin's not subject to that. Then there's centralization. Stablecoins are vulnerable to censorship and external control by involved intermediaries. For the authors of the study, Bitcoin payments do not merely replace existing systems, but introduce possibilities that were previously technically unfeasible.
Thanks to the combination of self custody and lightning network, sending very small amounts of money has become as simple as sending an email. Conventional payment systems, particularly credit cards, have structural limitations that make them unsuitable for the following, micropayments, streaming payments, and high frequency transactions. Moreover, current financial intermediaries impose additional obstacles like geographic restrictions, chargeback risks, minimum transaction thresholds, very long processing times, average international remittance cost of 6.2%, and as always, very high administrative costs.
Well, with the advent of Lightning Network, these limitations are overcome by the use of minimal fees. Instant settlement, which you do not get with credit cards. People think you get it with credit cards, but you don't. It looks like they settle immediately, but, like, when you go and you pay with your credit card and it's we're talking about credit cards, not debit card. When we pay with a credit card, that merchant does not get that money for, like, anywhere between two weeks and an entire month. You get to walk out with the merchandise immediately, so therefore, you think that it's instant settlement. It is not. Ask me how I know. I ran a business. I had we took Visa and Mastercard.
We didn't get our money for until, like, like, three weeks later. After like, I started looking at that going, what the hell? Why didn't we get this $500 fee? You know, like, I called Visa, and that's when I learned, oh, you got no. That's like that that that comes later. So I'm out goods and services and time upfront. I gotta wait three weeks for my $500. So it is credit cards are not instant settlement. Do not let anybody tell you different. And then finally, with the Lightning Network solution, we have global coverage. There's just no geographical restrictions. There's no geofencing.
A concrete example of how Lightning Network is transforming certain sectors is represented by Thunder, t h n d r, which is a gaming app, and they've been around forever, guys. The company has developed a system that allows game integration with betting on any website or application using exclusively Bitcoin as a payment method. The uniqueness of the Thunder model lies in its ability to eliminate one of the major obstacles in online gaming, the need to pre fund user accounts. And thanks to Lightning Network, which allows deposits of less than $1 with negligible fees, players can place their bets in real time without having to block funds in advance.
This approach not only increases security by eliminating the need for Thunder to hold any user funds at all, but also makes transactions economically sustainable that would be impractical with traditional payment methods like credit cards. In three and a half years, Thunder has processed over 7,500,000 Bitcoin payments. As confirmed by cofounder Jack Everett, the choice to exclusively accept Bitcoin has proven successful. Quote, no one is requesting alternative payment methods to bitcoin, which is a positive sign. End quote. Through l n integration, the l n markets trading platform registered a 445% volume increase and a 640% revenue growth between 2023 and 2024.
The platform eliminated traditional financial trading obstacles allowing users to operate directly from their wallets with instant deposits, instant withdrawals, and instant settlements. As cofounder Roman Rafael highlights, quote, using Bitcoin overcomes numerous financial bottlenecks, making operations possible that in traditional markets would be slowed down by banking integrations and counterparty risks. The Charity Colon Water Organization, and it's just literally Charity, the symbol for the colon, not not your not your lower bowel. I'm talking charity colon water organization, has integrated Bitcoin for donations.
As Ben Green, the organized organization's chief revenue officer points out, the reduced transaction fees of Bitcoin compared to credit cards has already represented a significant advantage. But it was the Bitcoin Water Trust strategy that made the difference. Launched in 2021, the trust, thanks to Bitcoin's appreciation, transformed initial donations of $4,000,000 into $10,000,000. That's a 250% growth simply by holding the Bitcoin until 2025, quote, Bitcoin's multiplier effect has been profound. Donations that once helped a few dozen people now have the potential to transform thousands of lives, greens green states.
By launching a Bitcoin trading service accessible to its own 23,000,000 users in March of twenty twenty three, the Japanese ecommerce giant Mercari attracted over 2,000,000 new users in twelve months. The subsequent launch of Bitcoin payments in February of twenty twenty four generated over 100,000 transactions in their very first month. 3,000,000 users have purchased Bitcoin there. 86% of those users are brand new Bitcoin HODLers. 100,000 Bitcoin transactions again were completed in the first month. And then we have Namecheap. The domain site Namecheap, a pioneer in Bitcoin adoption since way back in 2013, has refined its payment system through BTC pay server, eliminating intermediaries and ensuring peer to peer transactions.
The strategy led to a 23% increase in revenue per user last year alone reaching 146.55 per person. There's $73,000,000 in Bitcoin payment revenue since 2020, and this is still talking about BTCPay server, and 1,100,000 Bitcoin transactions have been completed. Then we got Pick n Pay, an African retail giant that became the first major retailer on the entire continent to accept Bitcoin payments in February of twenty twenty four. That's just a year. Through the partnership with Money Badger, the company implemented lightning payments that proved faster and more economical than traditional methods, attracting a brand new customer segment. There's $55,000 in average monthly revenues from Bitcoin payments for Pick n Pay and 285% growth in the customer base using Bitcoin from the years 2023 to 2024.
The Italian furniture leader, Mondo Convinzia, introduced Bitcoin payments in July of twenty twenty two aiming to attract millennials and Gen z. The move, made possible through collaboration with something called ChainSide, contributed to a 10% growth in Bitcoin payments between September and November of last year. And here are the bullet points for those guys. €500,000 in annual revenue from crypto payments, a 10% growth in Bitcoin payments alone from September through November of twenty twenty four. The growth of the l n equal ecosystem is supported by an increasingly diversified technological infrastructure that ranges from l n node implementations to noncustodial wallets, from integrated payment processors to streaming and podcast apps, creating a complete and interconnected ecosystem for Bitcoin payments.
I've gotta scroll down here. As highlighted in the document, Bitcoin payments are here in all sectors and countries. They are enabling real time peer to peer interactions and transactions without any inter intermediaries. Good lord. The growth of the LN ecosystem is, quote, laying the foundations for a new era of native Internet payments powered by native Internet currency. The success will depend on three key factors. One, continuous innovation and development tools. Two, integration into mainstream products. And three, support for the developer community.
As the report emphasizes, quote, Bitcoin is pure money and pure software, and software improves through developers' efforts. If Bitcoin wins over developers, it wins the world. That's the end of the article. Okay. So what has not what was not talked about at all are the other layer twos that are coming. ECash, Fedimin are already here. ARC is still in development, I believe, but it has a it has a fascinating potential ecosystem in in and of itself. That's not even talked about. We're just talking about the Lightning Network, and everybody laughed. Remember when you may not remember. I remember I do. I remember when Roger Ver could not make a Lightning payment, and he was showing himself fumbling trying to make a lightning payment in 2020 saying, see, this shit doesn't work. You need to have Bitcoin Cash. That's what works because we have big blocks.
Well, yeah. Just because you don't know how to use something doesn't mean it doesn't work there, Rog. But, hey, more I I I'm glad that you sold all your Bitcoin for Bitcoin Cash instead of just learning how to use the Lightning Network. But this is actually rather good news. It as to the efficacy of this particular report, I don't know. I'm not exact I I I'm not exactly sure. I I know that the Breeze are some solid guys. I don't know anything about who's these other guys? This one a one z. I'm not sure I mean, I know I've I've talked about it before. They seem to be rather new.
Let me just kinda go and see what I 1a1a1z.com. You can go find the report directly from there. But one a one z bills themselves as Bitcoin and FreedomTech Research. I know not I I can't tell who's involved. So, really, you kinda gotta take all this with sort of, you know, a grain of salt. But the Breeze guys, now those guys actually do know what they've been taught what they're talking about, and they've been in the Lightning Network ecosystem since, honestly, kinda since the day it was born. Breeze has always been there for the Lightning Network ecosystem, so they really do know what they're talking about. And I and just gonna conclude that if this report is true, then the future looks very, very bright.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you on the other side.
[00:49:35] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin, and and I am 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 09:02AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten forty one of Bitcoin, and I say goodbye to a dear friend of mine, Bill McKenna. Sir, may you rest in peace. I found out, early this morning that a very good and very old friend of mine passed away. And it's always, always sad when your friends and people that you know and love, you know, leave this planet. But I can only hope and I also presume that Bill McKenna is in a much better place than he was during the last few years of his life. I'm gonna miss you, pal. I'm gonna miss you. Now that said, we've got the SEC is in the news. Lord have mercy. They are in the news, alongside Coinbase. We'll get into that one.
It appears that a hack has occurred. A hack. It's a hack attack, which is the name of today's episode. It's the hack attack. And then we've got Costa Rica in the news and Africa, baby. Africa is on deck. And then the European Central Bank is gonna do some some blockchain chicanery, and we're gonna end with this report about Bitcoin being used with the Lightning Network and apparently being able to deploy six fifty million users. I'm not exactly sure, but it is a breeze and one a one z report on the lightning network. So we'll end up with that one because that's gonna be kinda long, but I think in all in all, this is gonna be a rather shorter show. So let's buckle up and get on with the SEC who has agreed to drop the enforcement case against Coinbase.
This thing has been dragging on for a long time, and Vince Quill and Cointelegraph is gonna tell us how they wrapped it up. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against the exchange firm Coinbase, which had accused the company of operating as an unregistered securities broker. According to the announcement from Coinbase, the dismissal is still subject to approval by an SEC commissioner before the suit is officially withdrawn. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, quote, if this goes through, it's a really big deal, not just for us, but for the whole crypto industry, the 50,000,000 Americans who hold crypto, and I think for the rest of the world because this is an important signal about where things are going. And, apparently, they're going towards unregistered securities being legal. I'm just saying.
Okay? The SEC sued Coinbase in June of twenty twenty three amid a torrent of litigation attempting to frame many crypto firms and projects as either unregistered securities brokers or unregistered securities in and of themselves, placing heavy regulatory and financial pressure on the industry. Well, the SEC, under the leadership of former chair Gary Gensler, claimed that Coinbase failed to register its staking services with the financial regulator, and several cryptocurrencies were named as unregistered securities in the SEC's twenty twenty three lawsuit against Coinbase, including Solana, Cardano, Filecoin, Polygon, and a whole host of others.
Coinbase characterized the lawsuit as regulatory overreach and slammed the SEC for filing a suit after approving the company's public listing on The US stock exchanges in 2021. The company also responded to the lawsuit by mobilizing political pressure alongside Ripple and other industry firms donating tens of millions of dollars to Fair Shake, a political action committee that spreads public awareness about crypto regulations and lobbies the United States government for industry friendly regulations. Coinbase also backed the stand with crypto advocacy group to promote voter education about pro crypto lawmakers and important regulatory policies. Quote, crypto voters won't be taken seriously until we send a clear message to political candidates that it is bad politics to be anti crypto, Coinbase CEO, Armstrong said in June of twenty twenty four. These advocacy efforts seem to have helped influence the outcome of the twenty twenty four elections in The United States, which Tonya Evans, a tenured professor at Pennsylvania State University, told CoinTelegraph was determined by razor thin margins.
Razor thin. Alright. So what's the implications here? Shitcoinery is on its way. Because apparently, the SEC is just saying, you know what? We just we just don't wanna we just don't wanna enforce, excuse me, we don't wanna enforce The United States versus Howie anymore. It's okay. You that means all of us can just spin up our own coins. Why not? I mean, they're they're not going to enforce anything. It's not like we're gonna you know, nobody's gonna sue us anymore. So we can just we can sell crap to anybody that we want now. That that's what this is really telegraphing to me. Solana is an unregistered security. Ether is an unregistered security. They're all unregistered securities. All of them all of them pass.
Not only pass, but pass with flying colors, the Howey Test. And the Howey Test is what determines whether or not something is a security. And if you don't register that security with the SEC and go through all those little, you know, hoops and and ring all their little bells and blow all their little whistles, well, then it's unregistered. And it and and it's a scam. That's the whole point between US versus Howie. That was the whole point is that mister Howie was scamming pensioners in Florida and actually all up and down the Eastern Seaboard out of their hard earned money to buy orange trees that he swore up and down. He would take care of the trees. He would pick the oranges off the trees. He would sell the oranges, and you'd get a cut, which means that you're buying money you're you're spending your money on with this guy to buy a thing, in this case, a tree or a row of trees, in the expectation to make a profit through the actions of a third party.
That's the that's the that there's a little bit more to it, but, essentially, that's the Howey test. Only one thing does not in in, quote, unquote, crypto, only only one thing does not pass Howey, and that's Bitcoin. So be aware, people. This is gonna get ugly. And with the onset of meme coins and with the SEC dropping their lawsuit against Coinbase, sure, it sounds good on the surface, but you gotta remember what that entire case was about. The SEC was actually at that particular point, they were doing their function. They were performing the function that they were hired to do, and that was to make sure that you were able to just scam any idiot out of their money because you promised them a return of 500% every single day.
Anyway, there's a hack attack, and this is a bad one. This is from The Block. It's written by Daniel Kuhn. Crypto exchange Bybit confirms it was hacked for over $1,400,000,000 worth of ETH as it leaves wallets. Yes. ETH. Straight up ETH is leaving wallets. Bybit's been hacked for its ETH. And it's $1,400,000,000 is nothing to sneeze at, guys. So let's get into this one. In one of the largest crypto heists ever, and they ain't lying, hackers have reportedly made off with more than $1,400,000,000 in ETH from Bybit's cold wallet. Cold wallet, not a hot wallet.
Their cold wallet, their cold storage wallet screams to me inside job. We'll find out. Early estimates suggest the exchange has lost over $1,000,000,000 worth of ETH and significant quantities of other tokens, though the investigation is still ongoing. Quote, Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about an hour ago. It appears that this specific transaction was musked, m u s k e d. Musked. I don't know what that means. All the signers saw the musked UI, which showed the correct address and the URL was from safe. However, the signing message was to change the smart contract logic of our ETH cold wallet, Bybit cofounder and CEO Ben Zhao posted to Twitter, likely referring to a masked URL used to alter code while appearing legitimate.
Wow. Quote, this resulted hold on. This is this is the I swear to god. This is the sentence. This resulted hacker took control of the specific ETH cold wallet we signed and transferred all ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address. Please rest assured that all other cold wallets are secure. All withdrawals are normal. In other words, the hacker appears to have tricked Bybit's ETH cold wallet signers into approving a malicious transaction to serendipitously gain control of the wallet. And on Tuesday, the exchange announced announced that it would be performing scheduled maintenance on its line server today stretching into tomorrow, which caused controversy as security researchers looked into the suspicious transactions.
Over the past hour, the hacker has split the stolen funds, including stETH and meth, into dozens of additional wallets. The funds were initially sent to an address beginning with o x 4 7 6, which received over 400,000 worth of ETH or $1,100,000,000, 90 thousand worth of STETH or STETH, I guess, 15,000 Centimeters ETH, and 8,000 CEETH. The attacker used to the sweep ETH function, a smart contract mechanism designed to transfer all available tokens from one contract to another, which likely explains why the transferred amounts are round numbers. The attacker then moved the majority of the funds into three separate distribution addresses, and they give the headers of the addresses. I'm not gonna read them.
Which then broke down the funds further into dozens of newly created addresses that began swapping funds using decentralized exchanges including Uniswap, Paraswap, and KyberSwap. Data on ARCEM research shows the initial 0 x $4.76 wallet Bybit hack only holds about $3,700,000 worth of crypto as of 11:30AM on Friday. Bybit says it's either hot or cold wallets are unaffected, and only their ETH wallets were impacted. Quote, Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered. All of clients' assets are one to one backed. We can cover the loss, Zhao also posted, quote, all withdrawals are normal. So he's reiterating the fact that you can still withdraw your shit. And I highly recommend you do that because this is what we keep saying. If you keep your coin, and I don't care if it's a shitcoin or actual bitcoin, on an exchange, you're in danger.
Anyway, BitMEX research estimates that around 75% of Bybit users' ETH deposits were drained. 75% of their clients' ETH deposits were drained. The exchange still holds over $20,000,000,000 worth of other crypto tokens, including nearly $6,900,000,000 in bitcoin, 4 point 1 billion in USDT, and two no. 1,200,000,000.0 in straight ETH. Arkham shows that the exchange has moved $560,000,000 worth of USDT on TRON from what appears to be a treasury wallet to a hot wallet. This story is breaking and will be updated as the block learns more. Alright. So ETH in trouble today, and it's dragging the markets down. Let me actually, let me go check old trading view and see exactly what's going on and see exactly what this thing looks like.
Yeah. We're wow. Wow. Yeah. So we were up like, about four hours ago, we were up to 99,508, and right now we're we're sitting at 97,929. But ETH is having an even worse day, and against Bitcoin, it's down to 0.027. It's yeah. It's not looking good. So it it kinda makes guys, it it actually literally makes me wonder. This sounds like it might have been an inside job because you're talking about a multisig wallet, however I wonder if the logic in these multisig ETH wallets are of any quality whatsoever. This kind of, for whatever reason, again, my gut feeling is saying inside job, and it just happens to happen on a Friday.
And we always know that going into the weekend, all kinds of shit happens in these markets because Wall Street banks and legacy markets are closed. You know, the like like, we'll be like, let's see. What is what is iBit doing right now? Even iBit's down a half a percent and MicroStrategy or, well, strategy now is down 2.34%. So this is really this hack has really rocked, the market. So just be aware. And and when we tell when when, you know, Bitcoiners are trying to tell you, please, please, please get your stuff off the exchanges, we're not lying.
Just be careful out there, folks. Okay. Costa Rica has finally made its first foray into Bitcoin with a new Bitcoin ETF, and Tom Carreras is writing this one for CoinDesk, state owned Banco National, the world's or no. Sorry. The largest commercial bank in Costa Rica, and one of the biggest in Central America with over $7,000,000,000 in assets under management is launching a spot bitcoin exchange traded fund through its investment management arm BN Fundos according to local reports. This marks the first time that Costa Ricans will have access to any type of crypto investment product through the country's banking system.
The firm is also launching a S and P 500 ETF alongside the bitcoin vehicle. The minimum investment amount for each fund is $100 Oh, so they're they're allowing plebs to get into the game. Wow. Thanks, dude. Investments will be taken in US dollars instead of Costa Rican colones. Quote, Costa Rican regulation doesn't permit investments in things that aren't investment vehicles, and Bitcoin isn't considered an investment vehicle from a regulatory perspective. But the ETF is, said Pablo Montes de Oca, general manager at BN Fundos, which I guess is Spanish for funds. Anyway, Banco Nacional serves over 2,100,000 customers in Costa Rica. That's more than 40% of the country's entire population.
Costa Rica doesn't have any formal crypto laws, but under the country's constitution and civil codes, as far as private parties are concerned, any activity that is not explicitly forbidden by the law is permitted. Costa Ricans are therefore technically allowed to trade and own cryptocurrencies based on the fact that there is no law that prohibits it. A comprehensive crypto regulation bill called the Crypto Asset Market Law was introduced at the legislative assembly in 2022, but it got stuck at the commission level. The bill aimed to codify the use of cryptocurrencies for the payment of goods and services in Costa Rica, but without making any of them, not even Bitcoin, legal tender.
So coast Costa Rica now now is on deck. And that and for those of you who struggle with geography like I do, Costa Rica sits sits, I think, south of is it Nicaragua? Here. Hold on. World map. World map. I just wanna find out because because from a strategic standpoint, this is actually rather important. Let me get to images here. Okay. So I've got a map here of Central America, which includes Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. That's considered Central America. We all know about El Salvador. Costa Rica is two countries away from is South of El Salvador. You gotta go through Honduras First, and then you gotta go through Nicaragua, and then you get to Costa Rica.
So what happens if you've got El Salvador that's that's Bitcoin friendly and you've got Costa Rica that's Bitcoin friendly? If they go Bitcoin friendly, then Costa Rica ends up being a bottleneck between Panama and the rest of North America, including the rest of Central America. You have to go through Costa Rica from Panama, which also means, like, the the Panama ends up being the land bridge between South America and North America. You have to go through Costa Rica before you can get to any other country north of Costa Rica and Panama. I think that that actually ends up being kind of a kind of a bottleneck.
And if Costa Rica ends up, like, in the next few years going full bore on accepting Bitcoin, you might end up with Central America being one of the richest It's already one of the most beautiful places on the planet. If you just look at pictures of Costa Rica, you'll see why. But, you know, El Salvador, Nicaragua, even though it's really kinda dangerous over there, but Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, these are all wonderful countries. If we could just stop meddling with them and stop basically forcing them to, you know, essentially take part in corruption, these places would be fine places to live. And if they end up being Bitcoin friendly in the next few years, it could change the face of the Western Hemisphere.
I know that's a little bit of hyper you know, hyperbolic speech there, but, hey. Here's to hoping. Alright. So now Africa. Bitcoin treasury bandwagon has reached Africa as alt vest jumps on board, And we're going to be talking about South Africa. Will Canny is writing for CoinDesk. Alvest Capital became the first listed company on the continent of Africa to adopt Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset, the company said in a press release. Altvest said it bought one Bitcoin for its strategic treasury following the paths set by strategy in The US and Meta Planet in Japan.
The Johannesburg based company paid R1,800,000 or $98,200 for just over 1 BTC and said it doesn't plan to buy alternative cryptocurrencies. Altvest sees it as, well, quote, Bitcoin as the only digital asset that meets its stringent investment criteria for a long term treasury allocation, end quote. Corporates are increasingly adding Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset. Michael Saylor's strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, pioneered the move, and we all know where that went. The South African investment firm said that the initiative to acquire Bitcoin was, quote, focused on preserving shareholder value, mitigating currency depreciation risks, and gaining exposure to a globally recognized store of value.
Since Tokyo based Meta Planet Meta Planet had started buying Bitcoin in April of last year, it has acquired over 2,000 tokens worth nearly 200,000,000, and its shares became the best performing Japanese equity over the past twelve months with a gain of 3900%. Oh, mother. Earlier this month, investment bank KBW started coverage of strategy with an outperform rating and a $560 price target. The shares are currently trading at $323.92. Alvest shares were trading more than 9% lower at R590 at time of publication. So we'll have to see, but this is the the the flag has been planted firmly on the continent of of Africa. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities Oil. West Texas Intermediate is getting sandbagged 2.15 to the downside at $70.92 a barrel. Brent and North Sea down likewise 2% to $74.94. Natural gas doing the other direction, 5% to the upside back up to $4.35 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is down 1.74% to $2.05 a gallon. All your shiny metal rocks are having a very, really bad day. Gold is down point 13%. Silver is down over 1%. Platinum is down two thirds of a point. Copper is down point 86%, and palladium is down one and a half. Ag, looking pretty much in the green today.
Biggest loser is chocolate. It is down double digits. Holy smokes. What the hell happened? 10.12% to the downside for my favorite food stuff. 1.28 to the upside to the biggest winner, sugar. And live cattle is up a quarter of a point. Lean hogs are down a third. Feeder cattle are up three quarters of a point. Indices are not looking good for equity markets. Dow is down just under a point, lost 419 points off of its, well, its its index. S and P is down point 73%. Nasdaq is down just under a point, and the S and P Mini is down one and a quarter. What the hell happened? Because the I don't think the, the ether hack affected the the equity markets. Let's see. What's going on?
Oh, yes. Weaker than expected consumer sentiment. So numbers came out today. And yeah. So well, we kinda knew that from the Walmart news that I was telling you about last night or or rather yesterday morning or afternoon whenever it is that you heard it. Walmart was saying that they didn't expect to get as much revenue, this time around as they did last time this year, and that basically told the world that they know that their customers don't have the money to even go to Walmart. And so this is what's really going on is there's no liquidity in retail. Sure, I guess there's like, you know, there's credit markets and all the bankers are having a heyday and there's all kinds of money floating around corporate. But as far as, like, you know, Joe on the street, there's just not that much money. There's not that much liquidity. There's not that much disposable income, and everything got hit blown out of the water today. There is blood all over the streets. But, Bitcoin seems to be kinda, you know, doing okay. $97,950, that's still a $1,940,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 33.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,827,091.72 of. And average fees per block are still low, guys.
0.04 BTC taken in fees on an average on a per block basis. And there looks to be about 61, 60 two blocks in mempools around the world carrying 77,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority is gonna cost you 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get your transaction in at 4 Satoshis per vByte. So the mempools look kinda, you know, much more healthy than they they've been looking kind of anemic over the last couple of weeks. Not so anymore. And finally, finally, some people took hash rate off of the network. We are down below 800 exahashes per second. We're actually at 796.2 exahashes per second. So you can do with that what you will from Meme Coinery, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got a thousand sats from somebody who doesn't have a handle. That may be that may be an issue with fountain. I'm not sure.
Thank you, sir. I see your picture. Or is it ma'am? I can't tell. Anyway, pay duck with four twenty says, cide duck. And then pies with four twenty says, hashtag 40 h p w means forty hours of Bitcoin podcast per week. Thank you, Pies. I appreciate you telling me what the hell that meant. God's death with $2.37 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with four twenty says, hashtag 40 p w. And digital panhandler didn't give me nothing, didn't say nothing, but he did retool or renote the fountain URL for the show, so it showed up in my fountain where I'm reading all these boosts and stuff like that. Anyway, that's gonna do it for the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. European Central Bank tips takes a step towards blockchain based payment system. If you're rolling your eyes, I'm right there with you, son. Liz Napolitano writing for Decrypt.co. The European Central Bank is expanding its efforts to establish a payment system built on blockchain technology, a move that could lead to Europe's largest monetary policymaker issuing a central bank digital currency. Yay. We're still here. It's like we won't leave. The digital payments infrastructure initiative announced on Thursday by the ECB will roll out in two phases.
In the first stage, the Eurozone's monetary authority will develop and implement a payments platform for settlements in central bank money through an interoperability link with the Trans European Automated Real Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System, also known as the Target. Target is a payment settlement system that is responsible for facilitating the free flow of cash, collateral, and securities across the Eurozone. In the second phase, the EU Monetary Authority will explore a more integrated long term solution for settlements of central bank money denominated transactions on a blockchain.
Quote, this is an important contribution to enhancing European financial market efficiency through innovation, executive board member Piero Ciplione said on Thursday in a statement. The ECB's embrace of, quote, innovative solutions, end quote, such as blockchain technology could shape the Eurozone's financial future by providing the infrastructure for its monetary authority to issue a digital euro, a centrally issued cryptocurrency that would enable Europeans to make fast and secure digital payments across Continental Europe, the bank said. The digital euro project is part of the ECB's larger goal to achieve a single market for capital across Europe, according to the ECB website.
Supporters for the project contend that the CBDC would bolster the Eurozone's economic strength in addition to reinforcing the region's autonomy and monetary sovereignty by reducing regional banks' reliance on non European payment service providers. The ECB began working on its plans to develop a digital euro back in 2021 when it started an investigation into design and distribution models for digital currencies. Two years later, the central bank that it signaled that it would take more concrete steps to realize its plan to issue a CBDC by establishing a list of priorities for the first phase of its digital euro project.
Amid its project's first phase, the ECB, this is the European Central Bank, if you're not catching this, the ECB will continue ironing out the details of its blockchain based payment system. The central bank will also engage with public and private stakeholders to tailor the new system to the needs of Europeans, it said in a statement. The timeline for its efforts on the project will be revealed in due course, the ECB added. Here's what's going to happen. Tether. That's what's going to happen. It just it it it I got this feeling, and it's more than a gut feeling. It's sort of like it the hackles on the back of my neck are starting to stand up.
It is always there's there's a I don't know. It's it's hard to describe. There is a feeling that I've been getting, and it's more than a feeling. But I think that Europe is not exactly as much loved by The United States and, generally speaking, the financial system of the West. Even though Europe itself is part of the West, I don't think we love them as much as everybody thinks we love them. I've heard, like, Gloria, whatever her name is, Nuland, the old secretary of state, on a phone call say fuck the EU. I saw Jerome Powell completely blow out the guilt market and and European, sovereign bonds by raising interest rates really, really fast after COVID.
Right? And and they really had a major problem on their hands in Europe. Europe basically almost dried up in liquidity. Right? The this is these are not the actions from a from a bunch of people that hold all the keys to the power in Western financial markets. This is not as playing nice. And it looks like it's gonna get even worse because we got this whole NATO questionality questioning thing going on with the Trump administration. We got the very end of the Ukraine Russian conflict is basically on our hands. You got threats of The United States just flat ass pulling out of NATO altogether.
It looks to me like the death knell for Europe right now is the fact that they're wanting to try to do the CBDC, whereas The United States already has one. It's Tether. You may not like it, and I certainly don't either. I I'm not rah rah ing this at all, so don't don't get me wrong. But what I am saying, the facts that are in in right in front of me basically suggest that while any other country is China may be the only one to get away with it because they're completely authoritarian, completely communist. There there's essentially a an like, some kind of, like, you know, the Great Wall Of China basically keeping all of their people inside. So they can do with their people what they want, but that's like, what, 1,400,000,000 people.
There's 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. And if you take India out okay. So you've taken out, like, let's say, 3,000,000,000, three point one billion people, you still got 4,900,000,000 people on the planet. It's not going to be European CBDC. It's going to be Tether. And we're going to sell The United States is going to create that. We're going to sell it into the bond market. The bond market is gonna be bought by Tether. Tether is going to issue more Tether coins or USDT. And somehow or another somehow or another, I still feel that that Bitcoin is going to be the one thing that they can say it's backed by Bitcoin.
They don't have to, and they may not. That's actually kind of, like, in the back of my head as well. They could prop they might be able to do it just by, like, you know, saying, well, trust us again even though that they are all these people are completely untrustworthy. But if Europe continues to waste their time on a CBDC, Europe's gonna go down in flames. That's the way I see it because they're not gonna be able to compete with the straight up network effect that Tether already has. I guarantee you there's hundreds of thousands of people in Europe that probably use Tether or at least have used it at least once.
It's not gonna work, guys. The c European CBDC is not going to work because we we also have Tether on Lightning. Now this report that I'm about to get go through, it may or may not say something directly about Tether. It's more about the Lightning Network itself. But remember, while we get into this, that Tether is now on Lightning. So from Atlas twenty one, we have this headline, Bitcoin beyond digital gold. 650,000,000 users can access the Lightning Network. A new report by Breeze and one a hold on. One a one z titled Bitcoin payments from digital gold to everyday currency reveals Bitcoin's transformation path from a store of value to a daily currency according to the study.
Bitcoin is no longer just a digital safe haven asset, but is establishing itself as a true global payment tool. The research argues that over six fifty million people today have access to Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. It is worth noting that this figure refers to users who can use l n today and not those who have actually used it. From the African retail giant Pick n Pay to the Japanese ecommerce giant Mercari up to the Italian furniture leader Mondo Convinzia, the data shows how Bitcoin is rapidly penetrating various sectors and geographical markets beyond or rather, according to the authors.
While the comparison with digital gold has helped many understand Bitcoin's quality as a store of value, such a metaphor risks obscuring Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision. Bitcoin's creator had indeed imagined a peer to peer electronic money system designed to move without intermediaries. This vision is finally taking shape with growing adoption of Bitcoin payments globally, and it is precisely the Lightning Network that is making Bitcoin an optimal tool for daily transactions. According to the research, the Lightning Network has reached over six fifty million potential users.
The number is a result of a series of l n or lightning network integrations on major global exchanges. So for instance, when lightning network was integrated on o k x, a 10,000,000 users immediately have the potential to use the Lightning Network. When Binance integrated it, there was 200,000,000. One hundred million through users through Nubank, fifty seven million users through Coinbase, and 49,000,000 users through Cash App. Unlike other networks, Lightning Networks growth occurs organically without anyone forcing companies and services to integrate this payment method. According to the reports authors, here we go, USDT integration on Lightning Network could accelerate the network's mass adoption, combining stablecoins lack of volatility with LN's efficiency and speed.
However, an aspect emerging from the study is Bitcoin's superiority over stablecoins. Native digital currency. Bitcoin is the only true native currency of the Internet. Independence. Bitcoin is not subject to dollar inflation or central banks' monetary manipulations. Under regulation, risk of delisting by exchanges as in the case of USDT after the MICA implementation, Bitcoin's not subject to that. Then there's centralization. Stablecoins are vulnerable to censorship and external control by involved intermediaries. For the authors of the study, Bitcoin payments do not merely replace existing systems, but introduce possibilities that were previously technically unfeasible.
Thanks to the combination of self custody and lightning network, sending very small amounts of money has become as simple as sending an email. Conventional payment systems, particularly credit cards, have structural limitations that make them unsuitable for the following, micropayments, streaming payments, and high frequency transactions. Moreover, current financial intermediaries impose additional obstacles like geographic restrictions, chargeback risks, minimum transaction thresholds, very long processing times, average international remittance cost of 6.2%, and as always, very high administrative costs.
Well, with the advent of Lightning Network, these limitations are overcome by the use of minimal fees. Instant settlement, which you do not get with credit cards. People think you get it with credit cards, but you don't. It looks like they settle immediately, but, like, when you go and you pay with your credit card and it's we're talking about credit cards, not debit card. When we pay with a credit card, that merchant does not get that money for, like, anywhere between two weeks and an entire month. You get to walk out with the merchandise immediately, so therefore, you think that it's instant settlement. It is not. Ask me how I know. I ran a business. I had we took Visa and Mastercard.
We didn't get our money for until, like, like, three weeks later. After like, I started looking at that going, what the hell? Why didn't we get this $500 fee? You know, like, I called Visa, and that's when I learned, oh, you got no. That's like that that that comes later. So I'm out goods and services and time upfront. I gotta wait three weeks for my $500. So it is credit cards are not instant settlement. Do not let anybody tell you different. And then finally, with the Lightning Network solution, we have global coverage. There's just no geographical restrictions. There's no geofencing.
A concrete example of how Lightning Network is transforming certain sectors is represented by Thunder, t h n d r, which is a gaming app, and they've been around forever, guys. The company has developed a system that allows game integration with betting on any website or application using exclusively Bitcoin as a payment method. The uniqueness of the Thunder model lies in its ability to eliminate one of the major obstacles in online gaming, the need to pre fund user accounts. And thanks to Lightning Network, which allows deposits of less than $1 with negligible fees, players can place their bets in real time without having to block funds in advance.
This approach not only increases security by eliminating the need for Thunder to hold any user funds at all, but also makes transactions economically sustainable that would be impractical with traditional payment methods like credit cards. In three and a half years, Thunder has processed over 7,500,000 Bitcoin payments. As confirmed by cofounder Jack Everett, the choice to exclusively accept Bitcoin has proven successful. Quote, no one is requesting alternative payment methods to bitcoin, which is a positive sign. End quote. Through l n integration, the l n markets trading platform registered a 445% volume increase and a 640% revenue growth between 2023 and 2024.
The platform eliminated traditional financial trading obstacles allowing users to operate directly from their wallets with instant deposits, instant withdrawals, and instant settlements. As cofounder Roman Rafael highlights, quote, using Bitcoin overcomes numerous financial bottlenecks, making operations possible that in traditional markets would be slowed down by banking integrations and counterparty risks. The Charity Colon Water Organization, and it's just literally Charity, the symbol for the colon, not not your not your lower bowel. I'm talking charity colon water organization, has integrated Bitcoin for donations.
As Ben Green, the organized organization's chief revenue officer points out, the reduced transaction fees of Bitcoin compared to credit cards has already represented a significant advantage. But it was the Bitcoin Water Trust strategy that made the difference. Launched in 2021, the trust, thanks to Bitcoin's appreciation, transformed initial donations of $4,000,000 into $10,000,000. That's a 250% growth simply by holding the Bitcoin until 2025, quote, Bitcoin's multiplier effect has been profound. Donations that once helped a few dozen people now have the potential to transform thousands of lives, greens green states.
By launching a Bitcoin trading service accessible to its own 23,000,000 users in March of twenty twenty three, the Japanese ecommerce giant Mercari attracted over 2,000,000 new users in twelve months. The subsequent launch of Bitcoin payments in February of twenty twenty four generated over 100,000 transactions in their very first month. 3,000,000 users have purchased Bitcoin there. 86% of those users are brand new Bitcoin HODLers. 100,000 Bitcoin transactions again were completed in the first month. And then we have Namecheap. The domain site Namecheap, a pioneer in Bitcoin adoption since way back in 2013, has refined its payment system through BTC pay server, eliminating intermediaries and ensuring peer to peer transactions.
The strategy led to a 23% increase in revenue per user last year alone reaching 146.55 per person. There's $73,000,000 in Bitcoin payment revenue since 2020, and this is still talking about BTCPay server, and 1,100,000 Bitcoin transactions have been completed. Then we got Pick n Pay, an African retail giant that became the first major retailer on the entire continent to accept Bitcoin payments in February of twenty twenty four. That's just a year. Through the partnership with Money Badger, the company implemented lightning payments that proved faster and more economical than traditional methods, attracting a brand new customer segment. There's $55,000 in average monthly revenues from Bitcoin payments for Pick n Pay and 285% growth in the customer base using Bitcoin from the years 2023 to 2024.
The Italian furniture leader, Mondo Convinzia, introduced Bitcoin payments in July of twenty twenty two aiming to attract millennials and Gen z. The move, made possible through collaboration with something called ChainSide, contributed to a 10% growth in Bitcoin payments between September and November of last year. And here are the bullet points for those guys. €500,000 in annual revenue from crypto payments, a 10% growth in Bitcoin payments alone from September through November of twenty twenty four. The growth of the l n equal ecosystem is supported by an increasingly diversified technological infrastructure that ranges from l n node implementations to noncustodial wallets, from integrated payment processors to streaming and podcast apps, creating a complete and interconnected ecosystem for Bitcoin payments.
I've gotta scroll down here. As highlighted in the document, Bitcoin payments are here in all sectors and countries. They are enabling real time peer to peer interactions and transactions without any inter intermediaries. Good lord. The growth of the LN ecosystem is, quote, laying the foundations for a new era of native Internet payments powered by native Internet currency. The success will depend on three key factors. One, continuous innovation and development tools. Two, integration into mainstream products. And three, support for the developer community.
As the report emphasizes, quote, Bitcoin is pure money and pure software, and software improves through developers' efforts. If Bitcoin wins over developers, it wins the world. That's the end of the article. Okay. So what has not what was not talked about at all are the other layer twos that are coming. ECash, Fedimin are already here. ARC is still in development, I believe, but it has a it has a fascinating potential ecosystem in in and of itself. That's not even talked about. We're just talking about the Lightning Network, and everybody laughed. Remember when you may not remember. I remember I do. I remember when Roger Ver could not make a Lightning payment, and he was showing himself fumbling trying to make a lightning payment in 2020 saying, see, this shit doesn't work. You need to have Bitcoin Cash. That's what works because we have big blocks.
Well, yeah. Just because you don't know how to use something doesn't mean it doesn't work there, Rog. But, hey, more I I I'm glad that you sold all your Bitcoin for Bitcoin Cash instead of just learning how to use the Lightning Network. But this is actually rather good news. It as to the efficacy of this particular report, I don't know. I'm not exact I I I'm not exactly sure. I I know that the Breeze are some solid guys. I don't know anything about who's these other guys? This one a one z. I'm not sure I mean, I know I've I've talked about it before. They seem to be rather new.
Let me just kinda go and see what I 1a1a1z.com. You can go find the report directly from there. But one a one z bills themselves as Bitcoin and FreedomTech Research. I know not I I can't tell who's involved. So, really, you kinda gotta take all this with sort of, you know, a grain of salt. But the Breeze guys, now those guys actually do know what they've been taught what they're talking about, and they've been in the Lightning Network ecosystem since, honestly, kinda since the day it was born. Breeze has always been there for the Lightning Network ecosystem, so they really do know what they're talking about. And I and just gonna conclude that if this report is true, then the future looks very, very bright.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you on the other side.
[00:49:35] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin, and and I am 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 Tribute to Bill McKenna
SEC Drops Case Against Coinbase
Bybit Hack: A $1.4 Billion Heist
Costa Rica's Bitcoin ETF Launch
Bitcoin Adoption in Africa
European Central Bank's Blockchain Initiative
Lightning Network's Global Reach
