Join me today for Episode 1044 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Bybit Hack Forensics Suggests Incompetence
- Bybit Hacker Launders $335 Million
- Circle Directly Targets Tether
- Block in Talks With NYFDS on AML Accusations
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 09:04AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the February 2025. This is episode ten forty four of Bitcoin, and Bybit is back in the news, not once, but twice. We've got some, hacking forensics showing some interesting, some interesting things that I think you're gonna wanna know. The hacker themselves seems to be also moving these funds around. I was assured on Twitter by people close to the Ethereum Foundation that there was no way these funds were gonna be able to be touched. Clearly, that was a lie. And speaking of people that lie, Jerry Jeremy Allaire's circle is in battle with Tether, and they're going for the throat on Tether. And it's gonna be interesting to see just how Jeremy Allaire, aligns himself in a way that might actually work.
Because right now, Tether is pretty much it as far as stablecoins go, And Jeremy, I think he wants a bigger piece of the pie. We'll get into it. Voltage is going to bring Bitcoin's Lightning Network to every business in the world. Yeah. We'll we'll see. Just words on the page for right now. And speaking of words on the page, Jeff Bezos decided that he was going to share a note with his guy and his crew over there at the Washington Post, which he has owned for a while. It seems that the Washington Post is up for a change in direction, and somebody that probably has blue hair is already pissed off about it. We'll we'll we'll get into it.
Back to the Lightning Network, this time with Bitcoin ATMs, Blink is in the news with their API to leverage the Lightning Network. And then Block is in trouble in New York, and they are in discussions with some people over there because of, well, AML KYC issues. And GrainRelay for Nostr has been upgraded, and we'll do that at the very end. But first, Sam Borgie, Cointelegraph. Bybit hack forensics shows safe wallet compromise led to stolen funds. A series of third party forensic investigations into the recent Bybit exploit revealed that compromised safe wallet credentials led to more than $1,400,000,000 worth of ether being stolen by North Korea's Lazarus Group.
On February 26, Bybit confirmed that forensic reviews conducted by Signia and Verichains revealed that, quote, the credentials of a safe wallet developer were compromised, which allowed the hacker to gain unauthorized access to the safe wallet infrastructure and totally deceive signers into approving a malicious transaction, end quote. According to Signia's report, the attacker originated or the attack originated from a malicious JavaScript code injected into SafeWallets Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Now I'm just gonna pause because I I think actually, I'm not just gonna pause. I'm gonna read that sentence again, and then we're gonna pause. According to Signia's report, the attack originated from a malicious JavaScript code injected into SafeWallets Amazon Web Services infrastructure.
Are you kidding me? I mean, this is this is almost like I I remember in 2017, '20 '16, '20 '18, all manner of chicanery was going on every once in a while with Ether's Meta wallet. And around that time, there was a whole bunch of altcoins that were, quote, unquote, rolling their own crypto. I swear to god this sounds exactly like those times. Amazon Web Services? Oh, you're allowing somehow or another, you're so unsecure that you let JavaScript code get injected? This seems rookie a f to me. And it's it's honestly, it's really scary. Let's let's find out what else is scary. The findings were also confirmed by the Safe Wallet developer, which said it had, quote, added security measures to eliminate the attack vector.
What's done is done, brother. The Safewall team has fully rebuilt, reconfigured all infrastructure, and rotated all credentials ensuring the attack vector is fully eliminated, the announcement said. Bullshit. If you are still running a wallet bay like, that essentially is based on JavaScript on Amazon Web Services, unless you've changed that, you have not eliminated the attack vector. I'm sorry, but whatever. The forensic experts and Safe Wallet confirmed that Bybit's infrastructure was not compromised in the hack. The Bybit attack was carried out on February when Lazarus Group hackers stole more than $1,400,000,000 of liquid staked ether.
As Cointelegraph reported, the Bybit exploit was the largest in crypto history, dwarfing the twenty twenty two Ronin network attack and the twenty twenty one Poly Network heist. The single attack also represented more than 60% of all crypto funds that were stolen last year based on a cyber's data report. In the wake of the attack, Bybit quickly replenished users' crypto assets and maintained operations without significant downtime. To meet customer withdrawals, the exchange borrowed borrowed 40,000 ETH from Bitget. Those funds have since been repaid to Bitget.
In total, the exchange restored its reserves through a combination of loans, asset purchases, and large holder deposits. Oh, so they use their clients' money? Is that what you're saying? Because that's a problem. Whatever. Bybit CEO, Ben Zhao, also confirmed that the exchanges, quote, back to a % full backing of client assets. Nevertheless, the attack has rattled investor confidence leading to sharp drops in ether in the broader cryptocurrency market. Yeah. Well okay. So it seems clear that Safe Wallet and the developers thereof have absolutely not sure they know what they're doing in some cases, but it seems to me that their security was put on the back burner when it came to just rolling something out. And people got hosed for it, Except for the hacker himself, who, like I said, everybody told me on x or Twitter that there was no way these funds could be touched.
Yet the Bybit hacker is laundering 335,000,000 as the funds continue to move Zolt and Vardai, Cointelegraph. The hacker behind the $1,400,000,000 Bybit exploit has laundered more than 335,000,000 in digital assets with investigators continuing to track the movement of stolen funds. Crypto investor sentiment was hit by the largest hack in crypto history on February when Bybit lost over $1,400,000,000 in liquid staked ether, mantle staked ETH, and, well, other digital assets. On chain data shows that the hackers moved 45,900 ether, worth about a hundred and $13,000,000 in the past twenty four hours, bringing the total amount laundered to more than $335,000,000 US. That leaves the hacker with about 363,900 ETH worth around 900,000,000 according to pseudonymous blockchain analyst, Ember CN.
Quote, there are still $900,000,000 worth of ether in the Bybit hacker address. At the current rate, it will only take another eight to ten days to clean it all up, end quote. Blockchain security firms, including Arkham Intelligence, have identified North Korea's Lazarus Group as the likely culprit behind the Bybit exploit. On February, '4 days after the exploit, Bybit cofounder and CEO, Bin Zhao, declared, quote, war on the Lazarus Group. You know, that reminds me of OJ Simpson swearing up and down. He is gonna go out and find Nicole kit or Nicole's killer. Yeah. Him and and or her and that other dude that she was with. I can't remember his name. Remember that? He was gonna do his own investigation. He was gonna bring the killers to justice.
Yeah. That was bullshit. Anyway, meanwhile, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has flagged 11,008 or 11,084 cryptocurrency wallet addresses suspected of being linked to the Bybit exploit. That list is expected to grow as the investigation continues despite the scale of the attack. Bybit's response may help rebuild trust in centralized cryptocurrency exchanges according to industry figures. Dan Hughes, founder of the decentralized finance platform, Radix, said Bybit's immediate response prevented a larger market sell off. Quote, assuming the worst is behind us, the manner in which Bybit handled the situation may actually recover some confidence in centralized exchanges.
It would demonstrate that with adults at the wheel, oh, Jesus. Centralized exchanges can be, quote, trustworthy and responsible custodians of our assets, end quote. Further, quote, primarily, it matters most if Bybit can indeed absorb that loss as claimed. And so far, withdrawals have been honored, and all seems good, Hughes added. Bybit has continued to honor customer withdrawals and has fully replaced the stolen $1,400,000,000 ether by February, just three days after the attack. Still, the Bybit hack alone accounts for more than half of the 2,300,000,000 stolen in crypto related hacks in 2024, marking a significant setback for the industry.
Yeah. So this entire quote that this Hugh Dan Hughes guy said, quote, assuming the worst is behind us, it's not. The manner in which Bybit handled the situation may recover confidence in CEXs, they won't. It would demonstrate that with adults at the wheel, there are none. Centralized exchanges can be trustworthy. They aren't and responsible. They aren't custodians. They aren't of our assets, which should be yours. Your assets in your wallet secured by your keys. There is no trust in these people at this point with anybody who has more than two neurons to rub together and make a fire in their mind. This is ridiculous.
JavaScript code injected into the wallet on Amazon Web Services is and the fact that the, quote, unquote, adults at the wheel selected this piece of shit to be part of their Bybit infrastructure. Now they said that the infrastructure of Bybit itself is fine, and I'm sure that that's true. But when you select a wallet for your customers to use that can be changed by somebody else with the injection of malicious JavaScript on Amazon Web Services? Really? And there are adults at the wheel. No. There are not adults at the wheel. There are not.
But there are other children who are acting just like children. There are no adults at the wheel anywhere in this space right now as is confirmed by stablecoin firms being registered in The US. Well, that's what circles Jeremy Allaire wants. Jeremy Allaire wants stablecoin firms registered in The US. This is not a shot across the bow. He's trying to torpedo Tether directly. Zoltan Vardai from Cointelegraph tells us just a little bit more. Stablecoin issuers worldwide worldwide should be required to register with United States authorities according to Jeremy Allaire, cofounder of Circle, the company behind the world's second largest stablecoin.
Second, not the first, the second largest stablecoin. US legislature, Lake Tours, should introduce mandatory registration requirements for firms issuing United States dollar based stablecoins such as Circle's USD coin, regardless of the company's physical location, Allaire said. Citing consumer protection, Allaire argued that The United States Dollar based stablecoin issuers should not get a free pass enabling them to just ignore The United States laws and go do whatever the hell you want wherever and sell into The United States, Allaire told Bloomberg, quote, whether you are an offshore company or based in Hong Kong, if you want to offer your US dollar stablecoin in The US, you should need to register in The US just like we have to go register everywhere else, end quote.
Allaire's comments come shortly after United States Representatives French Hill and Brian Steele introduced a draft bill that would establish a regulatory framework for dollar pegged payment stablecoins in the world's largest economy. The draft bill's release follows confirmation from the Trump administration that it plans to regulate and bring stablecoins onshore. President Donald Trump's crypto czar David Sachs said stablecoins could extend the dollar's dominance internationally, pausing just to tell you, I knew this was coming. And now even David Sachs is saying the quiet part out loud.
Stablecoins will be used to inject toxic United States debt that we will print, not only the debt that we have, but the debt that we're going to be allowed to print because we're going to be able to push that debt off on everybody else in the world through the use of these stablecoins. Alright? So I was right. Even David Sacks is saying it out of his own mouth. Meanwhile, the cofounder of Tether, the issue of the world's largest stablecoin, USDT, said the firm is facing increasing pressure from competitors and politicians aiming to push Tether out of the crypto market. Tether is facing mounting pressure, wrote Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, in a February 25 Twitter post. Quote, while our competitors' business model should be to build a better product and even bigger distribution network, their real intent is kill Tether. Every single business or political meeting that they have culminates with this intent.
Okay. I read you his entire post yesterday. There's no reason to go back over it again. If you wanna read it, it'll be in the show notes. It'll there the whole URL to this crypto or cointelegraph.com will be there. You can go read it for yourself, but I read it yesterday. Arduinos comments follow Tether's exclusion from the list of 10 firms approved to issue stablecoins under the European Union markets and crypto assets or the MICA, regulatory framework. Tether has faced growing regulatory challenges in Europe since MICA regulations went into effect at the end of twenty twenty four. To comply with Europe's MICA regulation, crypto exchange Kraken said it would delist five stablecoins including USDT starting March 31.
Crypto dot com, another major exchange, confirmed that it would also delist USDT and nine other stablecoins starting 01/31/2025. And I that's the end of the article, and I'm about to say something that's going to make nobody happy. The fact that they are are targeting Tether and they being who? The suits. Right? Not not that Tether doesn't have their own suits. But Jeremy Allaire is more aligned with central banking, JPMorgan, Bank of America than Palo Altoino is. It's my contention here that we should probably god. I'd I'm just gonna catch so much flack for it, but fuck it. If we gotta have a stablecoin, I'd rather have Tether because they're they don't seem to be as much part of the cabal of bullshit that Jeremy Allaire and his group of fucking miscreants is.
And make no mistake, Jeremy Jeremy Allaire is a miscreant. He's morally reprehensible. He's ethically challenged. Not to say that Paolo Ordano is, like, you know, not, but I guarantee you he is not as friendly with the people that we hate. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So maybe, maybe, just maybe, we should, I don't know, not should. You do whatever you want. I'm of the mind that I would rather defend the existence of Tether. Well, actually, here's what I would rather do. I would rather all stablecoins just go away. Okay? That's never going to happen. So I've got my fallback position is to level two, where I would rather have Tether be the majority stablecoin issuer than Jeremy Allaire's circle.
My fallback position after that, if somehow or another Jeremy Allaire and his little band of merry men win this battle and somehow or another is able to successfully scuttle Tether and their group, then I just don't see any reason to use stablecoins connected to The United States at all. I I mean, I I I'm not a trader. So if I was, I would realize what an idiotic statement that is if you're a trader. But since I'm not, I just it's going to make me sick to my stomach if somehow or another because of Jeremy Allaire's ties to the banking sector of The United States, that he's able to torpedo tether because he wants the pie all to himself, then nobody has really learned anything, have they?
So you do what you want. But if you would rather see circle win than tether, my gut feeling is that is the wrong direction to roll. I'm just saying. Okay? I'm just saying. Now let's get over here to voltage and the lightning network. We've got wait a minute. Hold on for a second. I missed something. I definitely missed something. Where did it go? Where did it go? Oh, never mind. I didn't miss anything. This was the one that I wanted, but I was going, wait a minute. Did I miss Frank Korva? And it just so happens this is the Frank Korva article from Bitcoin Magazine.
Voltage aims to bring Bitcoin's lightning network to every business in the world. Yeah. We'll see. Let's see what's going on here. In 2012, soon after Graham Kriesic discovered Bitcoin and subsequently began contributing to Bitcoin Core and building his own applications on Bitcoin, he noticed an issue that was hindering Bitcoin builders. Quote, the problem that I saw was that everyone was building everything from scratch over and over and over again. There was no cloud environment where you could just spin up Bitcoin infrastructure and be able to start developing against it, Krizick told Bitcoin Magazine. At the time, Krizick didn't feel compelled to act on this issue, though. He was still primarily focused on his career as a software engineer outside of the Bitcoin space, working for various start ups as well as companies as large as Salesforce while contributing to Bitcoin in his free time.
But something shifted within him when he learned about the Lightning Network. He saw its potential and knew that it would have to be made easier to use if it were to be widely adopted. When I found Lightning, I said to myself, okay, this is the next phase of Bitcoin adoption, the thing that's really going to drive it to the next level, said Krizic. Quote, then I saw the same pattern happening as I did with Bitcoin. Everyone kept starting from scratch while building. But the problems were more intense because lightning is that much more complicated. I was like, we need a cloud provider where you can just click a button and have a lightning node running and maintained for you. It can just be there so we can develop applications and build the projects we want to build much easier, much faster.
And so Krizik got to work in creating such a project. He shared the initial iteration of it with friends and acquaintances, many of whom began using it so much that the project demanded more of his attention. Quote, the usage grew to a point where I was like, man, I either need to shut this down because I can't maintain it anymore, or I need to turn this into a business and do it for real, said Krizick. And he decided on the latter, and by late twenty twenty, he had founded Voltage. So how does Voltage work? Voltage abstracts away the complexity of using Lightning by allowing users to deploy a Lightning node and spin up a channel in just a few clicks.
While Lightning, or rather, while Voltage hosts your node in its cloud, its public keys, peers, channels, balance, and transaction all remain private, as all of the traffic routed through the node is transferred via Tor. While your node is running in the Voltage cloud, which is supported by the Google Cloud and several other cloud service providers, Voltage also helps users manage liquidity and offers other forms of customer support. Essentially, Voltage abstracts away the difficulties of engaging with Lightning while supporting its users in the process, and it does this in efforts to help institutions more readily adopt Lightning.
Kreesick also mentioned that they have new products and capabilities to help even traditional finance companies with the integration. Quote, the mission of Voltage is to make Bitcoin and the Lightning Network accessible to every business on the planet. Lightning is fantastic. It's got a lot of really amazing capabilities, but it can be really hard to wrap your head around and especially to incorporate it for business operations, especially for businesses that maybe aren't in the Bitcoin or crypto space. We make it easy to use and plug in, end quote.
So what types of companies are using Lightning? In the past year, notable companies such as major crypto exchange Coinbase and Latin America's largest fintech bank, NuBank, have incorporated Lightning into their operations. Krios exceeds this trend of crypto exchanges, neobanks, and other financial service platforms onboarding to lightning continuing in the year ahead. Quote, finance companies are definitely going to be the biggest movers because if you can take the value of sub second settlement with zero fees and apply that to a big payment processor that does global payments, it's an incredible value add for their business, said Krizek.
What is more, Krizek sees companies outside of the Bitcoin, crypto, and finance space also beginning to utilize Lightning in 2025 in part because companies like Voltage are making it easy to do so. Quote, 2025 will be a big year for starting to branch out of our niche market, said Krizik. Quote, the technology has still been a little rough around the edges for a big company like Walmart to be like, hey. We're gonna plug this in now. Even with Voltage, we haven't been perfect the entire time with making Lightning super easy to use. I think we've made huge strides in the last year, like, though and we have a lot more coming out, end quote.
Another major hurdle for companies looking to adopt Lightning is the risk that comes with managing Bitcoin's volatility, but that risk doesn't exist if companies send Tether over Lightning instead of Bitcoin, which they may be able to do soon. And we come to the section called Tether on Lightning. Quote, I think we're going to have a lot of products and solutions around Tether, said Krizic. It's not just me being personally excited about it. A lot of our customer base is very excited about it. They're asking for it directly from us because stablecoins are pretty much the biggest use case in crypto today. When you couple stablecoins with sub second settlement fees and very low fees, that's a huge unlock.
With fees on Tron getting more expensive, people are looking for an alternative, end quote. As far as U USDT running over lightning potentially presenting a security risk to Bitcoin, Kreesick does not seem con concerned. Quote, it doesn't worry me at all. I think that we've advanced since the block size war in terms of takeovers, as I don't think it's as easy for a large institution to coerce the Bitcoin ecosystem like some did during the block size wars, he added referring to Tether potentially gaining outsized influence over Bitcoin, quote, and it's even better to integrate sub excuse me, something like Tether on Lightning because it's a peer to peer network.
It's not public consensus. So you have much more ability to say, hey. If you don't want to participate in the USDT transfers, just don't do it, end quote. Moving forward in a pro Bitcoin regulatory environment, United States Crypto Czar David Sachs is an investor in Voltage. This would indicate that he has some understanding of the Lightning Network and the role of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. So does this mean that The US is on the verge of embracing Bitcoin as such? According to Kriziuk, not exactly. Quote, everyone is screaming at the government right now for a strategic Bitcoin reserve which treats Bitcoin as a store of value.
Over time, we will definitely hear more and more about Bitcoin as a means of payment. We just need to get through this strategic reserve conversation first and then say, okay. What else can we do with it? The fact that the government is painting Bitcoin in any sort of positive light at all, though, is exciting to Krizik. Since 2012, when he first entered the Bitcoin space, the government has either dismissed Bitcoin or been antagonistic towards it. Quote, when I started in Bitcoin, it was completely ignored. And the last four years were very bad for companies like us. With this new administration, we've definitely seen the tone shift.
We're still working through certain things, but we're definitely turning a corner and heading in the right direction. I'm really excited to see where that can go in the coming year, and I think it's going to be positive. Kreesick added. So Kreesick and Voltage, I've known about Voltage for a long time, and I've never used it. I do run my own node, but I will tell you this. Manage managing channel liquidity is a bitch. It just is. It's not impossible, but it's a pain in the ass. Now most not most. I'm gonna say many lightning network node runners like me, we all do the same thing. We basically let the channel the the channels kinda balance out on their own.
Some do and some don't. And those that don't, you really gotta keep your eye on those. And sometimes I just let it go. Sometimes, like, I've got, like, a a channel from, oh, god, podcast index that's just maxed out on my side. There is no incoming liquidity on it. It's all it's a % outgoing liquidity. It should be at least 50%, like like if like, let's there's a million sats there. It's a million sats channel. 500,000 should be incoming liquidity, and 500,000 should be outgoing liquidity. It should be balanced. That's what we mean by a balanced payment channel. And I've got three of them that are that way. Unbalanced, in in other words, like full blown, nothing but outbound liquidity.
And I've got a couple of channels that are fully blown inbound liquidity. The it's not a well balanced node. I have, on several occasions, toyed with the idea of possibly letting Voltage take control of it over it, but I don't like the fact of paying a fee, and I don't think that what voltage the way that voltage is doing it, what I don't think that they're doing is just taking a percentage of routing fees or settlement fee or whatever's going on on our lightning nodes. They're not taking a percentage of it. They're it's it from what I understand, it's a flat rate. Now that may have changed because I haven't checked it in a while. But if I'm just paying through the nose just to have a Lightning lightning channel and it's balanced and it's not paying for itself, then it's not worth it to me. But it very well may be worth it to a lot of people, especially the people that Krizic built this thing for in the first place, and that's projects that are working on lightning, they need a lightning node, but they would rather have somebody else manage it so that they can just build on top of it, and that's what Voltage does.
So if you are a developer in the space or you're thinking about, you know, a project that you wanna do that involves lightning, you may wanna consider looking at Voltage and Graham Kriesic, the CEO. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. Oil taking it in the pants again, dude. West Texas Intermediate down another half point to $68.58 a barrel. Britton, or C down over half a point to $72.53. Natural gas kicked in the crotch is down five points to $3.97 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline down a full point and a half to a buck 93 a gallon. We haven't seen those prices since, like, four or five months ago. Gold is having a good day as are all the shiny metal rocks. It's up a third to $29.28, and 70¢. Silver is up one and a half percent. Platinum is up just over 1%. Copper is up well no. Actually, it just hit one point one and a quarter no. One and three quarters percent of the upside.
Palladium is up a quarter of a percent. Ag is everything is in the red for agriculture except for chocolate. It is up almost 4.7 points. Let's see. Biggest loser in that field is sugar, 3.73% to the downside. I just got news that Brazil is expecting a bumper crop of sugar, and that is affecting the sugar price. By the way, mortgage rates, I'm I'm reading a a there's a a headline on the side here. Mortgage rates have dropped to the lowest since mid December, but they still can't sell mortgages. They still the the demand for taking on a new house is low still because the prices are so inflated, it doesn't matter.
You could take mortgages down to 1%, and you would still have a a field day. You you would still have a field day of people that have a lot of money picking up houses and whatnot like that, but the majority of the people that actually need the housing, they can't afford the down payment. They just can't. The houses are too expensive and everybody's broke. And speaking of broke, ranchers are not having fun today. Live cattle are down point 42%. Lean hogs, however, are up over a full point, but feeder cattle are essentially moving sideways. Everything in equity, futures or rather index, equities legacy markets, they're having a good day too. Dow is up point 17%.
S and P is up three quarters of a point. Nasdaq is up over a full point, and the S and P Mini is up just under one full point. And we've got more downside pressure on Bitcoin this morning, $86,460. That is a $1,710,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 29.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,829,276.05 of, and average fees per block are low. Again, 0.07 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. Lots of consolidation in the blockchains are going on. Well, actually, in the MIM pools, I should have said. High priority rates, 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority rates are the same. There's 78 blocks carrying 86,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear. And I'm just gonna scan through some of these, and it looks like a lot of these are consolidation blocks.
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of consolidation going on. Oh, good lord. Every single one is just almost all consolidation. So that's that's that's what, that's what low fees will get you, is good consolidation prices. So where we at on mining? 760.9 exahashes per second, that's pretty much the same as yesterday, so do with that what you will. And from technical bear, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Psyduck with $5.56. Sat says, Psy duck. Pies with $4.20 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Yodle with 240 says, and that's the weather report. We already did that, brother. Nick Dose with a hundred and one says, cheers. Paul Cernine with a hundred says, thanks again for a great overview of the state of affairs.
Always appreciated. An undervalued feature of your podcast is the show notes. Highly recommended browsing for anyone. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate it. And that is the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Let's get into this thing from Jeff Bezos who's written a note, on Twitter. Actually, it's not a note. It's a tweet on Twitter, about some information that he shared with his newspaper, The Washington Post, and the team there. But first, let's talk a little bit about one of the replies to this particular tweet from a guy named Jeffrey Evangold. And who, may you ask, is Jeffrey Evan Gold? Well, his bio says that he's an attorney slash legal analyst on CNN, HLN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, Comcast, et al. So this guy is hip deep in the mainstream media, the same media that's been lying to you for years. So what did he reply?
Well, he replied the following, last straw. And then he's got a cute little screen capture of the Washington Post website where it says, we've canceled your subscription. He canceled his subscription because of this thing that Jeff Bezos has said. What what could possibly infuriate Jeffrey Evan Gold, aka mainstream media sycophant, to get so incensed that he would cancel his subscription and take away all of $19.99 a month from Jeff Bezos. Well, let's read this note from Jeff Bezos. And this is clearly on Twitter. I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning. I'm writing to let you know about a change coming in our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the Internet does that job. I am of America and for America, oh god, the hyperbole, and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical, and a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical. It minimizes coercion and practical because it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity. I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no. After careful consideration, David Shipley decided to step away. This is a significant shift. It won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment.
I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction. I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void. Signed, Jeff. Oh, Jeff. So maybe maybe it was a fact that, this guy, what's his name, Jeffrey Evangold, he might be pissed at one of two things. Let me take the second thing first. He might be pissed that Jeff Bezos is full of shit and it's just words on a page.
But I don't think so. I think Jeffrey Evan Gold is incensed that Jeff Bezos seems to be pivoting to writing about freedom, to writing about free markets, personal liberties. This is something that somebody who is a mainstream media sycophant cannot stand and will not abide. And that's why I think Jeffrey Evangold actually canceled his subscription. But the most important part here is, is Jeff Bezos telling the truth? Is he really going to get The Washington Post to be writing every day in their opinion pages about personal liberties and free markets?
I'm gonna go with no. I'm going to go with the fact that this is just words on a page. It is yet to be seen whether or not Jeff Bezos is going to actually execute anywhere close to the direction that he describes here in this Twitter post. If he does, amen, brother. Good for you, pal. Excellent work, sir. If not, well, then my heart's not gonna be broken because I don't expect them to. I think that Jeff Bezos and Jeffrey Evan Gold are probably more alike than either one of them wants to admit because they're both, well, they're both legacy financial, legacy media, legacy business, legacy markets, legacy financial bullshit sycophants.
I don't trust either one of them, and I can't muster the strength to be able to throw them under the bus because I'm just too tired of dealing with these assholes. Let's move on to Bitcoin ATMs use Blink's API to leverage the lightning network. This is from lightning.news. And, oh, I can't remember who I put out on Nostr. I said, look, man, I know there was a lightning news or lightningnews.com or something like that on the on the interwebs, and I cannot for the life of me find it. Maybe I'm just hallucinating, but if you know what I'm talking about, please let me know and give me a link, a hashtag ask noster. Within one minute, I got an answer. It's lightning.news.
If you wanna hear news about lightning, go to lightning.news, and we're gonna do it right now with this one about the Bitcoin ATMs, Blinks API, and Lightning Network. As Bitcoin and the Lightning Network continue to gain traction, businesses are seeking efficient ways to integrate these technologies into their services. Bitcoin ATM brands like Lamassu, k one, and the DIY Lightning ATM projects are leveraging the Blink API to enhance their offerings. Bitcoin ATM operators are increasingly turning to Blink's payment infrastructure to solve a pressing challenge, integrating the lightning network capabilities into their existing machines without having to overhaul their systems.
Lamasu and k one, which are two manufacturers of Bitcoin ATM model, sir, have begun implementing Blink's API to handle lightning network transactions, signaling a shift in how these companies approach fast settlement Bitcoin payments. The move comes as Lightning, network's capacity is reaching new highs in recent months. K one's implementation notably leverages Blink's StableSats feature, which allows operators to denominate transactions in US dollars whilst settling in Bitcoin. This approach helps shield operators from Bitcoin's price volatility, a key concern for ATM businesses that typically seek to avoid market risk.
The development marks a strategic shift for Bitcoin ATM operators who have historically struggled with managing lightning network liquidity, and I talked about that, handling volatile Bitcoin prices, everybody knows about that, maintaining complex payment infrastructure, and ensuring reliable transaction processing. In a parallel development, the open source community has embraced Blink's API for DIY Lightning ATM projects. These installations can be configured to dispense funds from either Bitcoin or StableSats balances, potentially lowering the barrier to entry for micro operators.
The adoption of Blink's API by established players suggest a maturing Bitcoin ATM industry, one that's increasingly focused on operational efficiency and user experience. For ATM operators, the integration promises to reduce technical overhead while expanding their service offerings. Quote, this is fundamentally about simplifying what has been a complex infrastructure challenge. Operators can now focus on their core business rather than managing payment rails. End quote. The move comes as traditional financial institutions are showing renewed interest in cryptocurrency infrastructure with Bitcoin ATM serving as a crucial bridge between digital and physical banking services.
For smaller operators and new entrants, Blink's open source approach could significantly reduce barriers to entry in the Bitcoin ATM market, potentially leading to increased competition in a sector traditionally denominated by larger players. So there you go. Blink's API, looks like it's being integrated into a lot of the Bitcoin ATMs, which, in my opinion, really still have yet to see, you know, any kind of significant adoption. And that's not me bagging on it. I'm just saying that we're we are just very early. No matter what the price of Bitcoin is, no matter who's doing what with lightning, we are really early.
It took a long time for credit cards to actually take off, and a lot of people don't really understand that. First credit card was Diner's Club. It wasn't American Express. Diner's Club International, and everybody had Diner's Club. You'd use it at restaurants, and that's when they still had the little they they put the credit card in inside this little this little case thing, and then they put some paper on top of it, and they'd write how much you owe on it, and then they'd crunch it and basically make a carbon copy of the raised letters that were on your credit card. And it took a long time for that thing to settle because they had to mail the receipts into the bank. All kinds of stuff had to happen behind the scenes there, so it could take a month for you to get, you know, your money. It still takes, like like, up to two weeks at this point, and that's with everything being digital.
But the first credit cards, they didn't see widespread adoption. In fact, most people thought they were a scam. My dad was one of them. My dad was like, dude, just stay away from these things. And slowly but surely, even my father started using credit cards. And he was very careful about it too. Like, you know, spend, like, you know, I don't know. He'd have a budget for the month as to what he would allow to go on a credit card, and he would pay it off at the end of the month and only spend, you know, a fraction of the amount of interest because he was never really carrying a balance for any more than a month. The same is true for Lightning and Bitcoin and Bitcoin ATMs and Lightning ATMs and all that kind of stuff. It's slower than you think. But then all of a sudden, one day, you turn around and everybody's using them.
Hardly anybody uses cash now. I haven't seen anybody write a a handwritten check at a counter in, god, probably actual years. Last time I saw somebody write a check, I wasn't even living in Eastern Washington. So don't think that I'm bagging on the ATMs, but I am just not seeing as much adoption as I I as I think is worthy the amount of money being invested in that particular space at the moment, but that's just my opinion. Block, Jack Dorsey's outfit is in talks with New York. There's ongoing negotiations over Bitcoin linked money laundering allegations. If you forgot, the Southern District Of New York decided to go up against Jack Dorsey.
This is out of Atlas21.com. Let's find out what's going on here. Block Incorporated, the payment company led by Jack Dorsey, has revealed that it has been in negotiations with New York's regulatory authorities to resolve disputes related to its anti money laundering programs in Bitcoin, according to a document filed on February with the SEC, Block is engaged in, quote, ongoing negotiations with the NYDFS concerning, among other things, aspects of its program related to the Bank Secrecy Act and anti money laundering and Bitcoin. The document states, quote, the company is in discussions with the New York Department of Financial Services to determine if this issue could be resolved on acceptable terms.
So they are in talks to see if they can clear all this b s up. This has been going on for quite a while. In fact, it looks like this has been going on since January of twenty twenty one. So maybe they'll finally be able to get rid of this thing with orange man in office. Who knows? Let's get to our last thing of the day. The Grain Relay version 0.3 has been released. It has Nostra login and profile page and user sync functionality. And if you don't know what the hell Grain is, Grain is an open source Nostra Relay implementation written in Go, aiming to provide a highly efficient and configurable Nostra Relay.
Quote, good morning. New release or new Grain release finally. Appreciate any support I receive. Announced ocean slim. Version 0.3 of Grain introduces nostril login and profile pages, allowing users to manage their relay data, experimental user sync functionality for syncing user events from their outboxes and bug fixes and related improvements. The upcoming release will prioritize improvements in logging and debugging specifically by enhancing error reporting, improving user sync tracking, and optimizing the entire relay process. Quote, thanks for your patience on this release.
Most of the work is done by a single dev, so feedback and testing are always appreciated, said Ocean Slim. So, Nostr login and profile page. They added Nostr login to the front end for authentication via Nostr key. After logging in, users access a profile page showing their kinds zero metadata if available on the relay. And then there's the experimental part called the user sync functionality allowing the relay to sync events for its users from their outboxes. The feature supports configurable sync options for defining which kinds of events to sync, limits on how many events to retrieve, and excluding non white listed users.
So and there's a whole bunch of bug fixes in WebSocket client. We don't need to get into all that. If you are interested in running a Nostra Relay for yourself, this might be something that you want to go look at. And how would you run a Nostra Relay by your you know, for yourself? Well, on my node BTC, I can drop a Nostra Relay on there. And and I did. I started one up, but I, you know, I was like, you know what? I don't know enough about this to to understand if this is something that I really wanna be jacking with long term. I'll I'll let it ride, and we'll we'll talk about it. You know, I was like, yeah. Hey, brain. We'll talk about this later.
And then when I got my, my start nine node to run a new Bitcoin node and a new Lightning Network node, lo and behold, I can install a Nostra Relay on that. So here's what I've done. I've got two Bitcoin nodes and two lightning nodes. Well, no. I'd scuttled my Lightning node off of my b t or off of my node BTC because I'm fixing to shut down that node fully. That is running on a Raspberry Pi four. Alright? So since I've got I've I've taken all the channels, I've closed down all the channels on my old lightning node. I've opened new channels up on my new lightning node. There's no reason for me to actually use my old raspberry pi four, so I'm probably going to repurpose it and its one terabyte SSD hard drive to become a fully functional standalone Nostra Relay just so that I can play with it. So if you have something like that and you want a singular purpose, a Nostra Relay node might be a nice little hobby, you know, to start playing around with because I have always believed that when we talk about these relays and you like, if you're on Nostr, you connect to a bunch of relays, and those relays are how you get notes and how other people get the notes that you send. It's a network of relays, and they all chitter and chatter and gossip with each other. And they basically relay your notes from end to end, from, you know, from you to whoever's following you.
But these nodes or these relays can definitely come in different kinds of flavors. Like, some nodes can have where all the kinds of notes, whether it's just a very, very short note or a very, very long note or some of the notes that that contain pictures is a different kind, some of the notes that do other things are different kinds. There's, like, all manner of different kinds of events. Like, a kind zero is where you say good morning, and that's all you do. No pictures, no zaps, no nothing. It's just straight up good morning. That's like a kind zero note. I could configure a relay where all it did was collect up and spit out to other relays kind zero notes and deal with nothing else.
Or I could get fancy and say kind zero, kind x y z, kind a b c, and kind whatever, and have, like, five or six different kinds. For me, because there's so many different clearly different kinds of notes or kinds of events on Nostr, it's sort of like being able to mix and match and build up an experience. Like, if all I did was you like, for instance, I could have a node or a relay that all it did was collect up and spit back out, events for the Alexandria slash Git Citadel project called project Alexandria, I could just do nothing but that. And that would mean that that whatever is going on on my relay, if you're connected to it, would completely change in addition to all your other relays. It would completely inject something that you may not see before, thereby changing your experience.
And if, for whatever reason, I just want to experience nothing but what's going on in Project Alexandria, that is clearly a completely different experience than any other client that I would have if I had those clients connected to, like, five or six different relays, which I normally do. I'm connected to, like, 12. And at any given time, I'm getting data and sending getting data from and sending data to 10 of them Because some sometimes some are down and whatnot. But my generalized Nostra experience is pretty much vanilla. I get all kinds of stuff. Right? And that's what you would expect. But if you start saying, I only really want, you know, like, I want a I don't know. I'll use, like, let's say, Coracle and connect, like, have a completely different insect in pub, and then select only, like, three very highly specific relays, then now I'm sort of, like, reading off a menu, like, here's my the appetizer that I want. Like, I want, like, a braised lamb shanks, in my entree, I want, I don't know, pumpkin soup, and for a dessert, I want tiramisu.
Right? That is a dining experience. And I kind of look at the relays that we have as not only items on a menu, but the kinds of events actually being subheadings of a menu, like appetizers, salad, soup, entrees, lunch, breakfast, dessert, aperitifs. Get you know, the the the menu that they give you after you eat, and it comes from the bar, and it's like get good liquored up and pissed off before you go home. Here's your here's your liquor menu. That's sort of the way that I look at at this entire thing. And I think a lot of people still miss the fact that this is all this has real potential to where you can completely customize your online experience as to what kinds of information you're taking in.
What are they long articles? Are they long posts? Are they only short? Do they contain pictures? Are they Olas? Are they do they have, like, I don't know. That's what what I'm saying is there's so many different kinds of notes that if you start mixing and matching them, you get a particular experience. And you can kinda start that by running your own node and say, I'm only doing kind one nodes, plus kind zero, plus the Git Citadel kinds of events, which is like 5,300 or something something like that. I can't I can't remember the kind of event that it is offhand, but you get my drift. So if you have an old Raspberry Pi and you wanna play around, you might consider using the GrainRelay that's just been updated to version 0.3.
And that's it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. If you did, send me some sats through Boostagram, Streamy sats through podcasting two point o applications, or just hit me up on Nostra and just boost the shit out of my post, man. Every sat counts. I'll see you on the other side. 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 09:04AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the February 2025. This is episode ten forty four of Bitcoin, and Bybit is back in the news, not once, but twice. We've got some, hacking forensics showing some interesting, some interesting things that I think you're gonna wanna know. The hacker themselves seems to be also moving these funds around. I was assured on Twitter by people close to the Ethereum Foundation that there was no way these funds were gonna be able to be touched. Clearly, that was a lie. And speaking of people that lie, Jerry Jeremy Allaire's circle is in battle with Tether, and they're going for the throat on Tether. And it's gonna be interesting to see just how Jeremy Allaire, aligns himself in a way that might actually work.
Because right now, Tether is pretty much it as far as stablecoins go, And Jeremy, I think he wants a bigger piece of the pie. We'll get into it. Voltage is going to bring Bitcoin's Lightning Network to every business in the world. Yeah. We'll we'll see. Just words on the page for right now. And speaking of words on the page, Jeff Bezos decided that he was going to share a note with his guy and his crew over there at the Washington Post, which he has owned for a while. It seems that the Washington Post is up for a change in direction, and somebody that probably has blue hair is already pissed off about it. We'll we'll we'll get into it.
Back to the Lightning Network, this time with Bitcoin ATMs, Blink is in the news with their API to leverage the Lightning Network. And then Block is in trouble in New York, and they are in discussions with some people over there because of, well, AML KYC issues. And GrainRelay for Nostr has been upgraded, and we'll do that at the very end. But first, Sam Borgie, Cointelegraph. Bybit hack forensics shows safe wallet compromise led to stolen funds. A series of third party forensic investigations into the recent Bybit exploit revealed that compromised safe wallet credentials led to more than $1,400,000,000 worth of ether being stolen by North Korea's Lazarus Group.
On February 26, Bybit confirmed that forensic reviews conducted by Signia and Verichains revealed that, quote, the credentials of a safe wallet developer were compromised, which allowed the hacker to gain unauthorized access to the safe wallet infrastructure and totally deceive signers into approving a malicious transaction, end quote. According to Signia's report, the attacker originated or the attack originated from a malicious JavaScript code injected into SafeWallets Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Now I'm just gonna pause because I I think actually, I'm not just gonna pause. I'm gonna read that sentence again, and then we're gonna pause. According to Signia's report, the attack originated from a malicious JavaScript code injected into SafeWallets Amazon Web Services infrastructure.
Are you kidding me? I mean, this is this is almost like I I remember in 2017, '20 '16, '20 '18, all manner of chicanery was going on every once in a while with Ether's Meta wallet. And around that time, there was a whole bunch of altcoins that were, quote, unquote, rolling their own crypto. I swear to god this sounds exactly like those times. Amazon Web Services? Oh, you're allowing somehow or another, you're so unsecure that you let JavaScript code get injected? This seems rookie a f to me. And it's it's honestly, it's really scary. Let's let's find out what else is scary. The findings were also confirmed by the Safe Wallet developer, which said it had, quote, added security measures to eliminate the attack vector.
What's done is done, brother. The Safewall team has fully rebuilt, reconfigured all infrastructure, and rotated all credentials ensuring the attack vector is fully eliminated, the announcement said. Bullshit. If you are still running a wallet bay like, that essentially is based on JavaScript on Amazon Web Services, unless you've changed that, you have not eliminated the attack vector. I'm sorry, but whatever. The forensic experts and Safe Wallet confirmed that Bybit's infrastructure was not compromised in the hack. The Bybit attack was carried out on February when Lazarus Group hackers stole more than $1,400,000,000 of liquid staked ether.
As Cointelegraph reported, the Bybit exploit was the largest in crypto history, dwarfing the twenty twenty two Ronin network attack and the twenty twenty one Poly Network heist. The single attack also represented more than 60% of all crypto funds that were stolen last year based on a cyber's data report. In the wake of the attack, Bybit quickly replenished users' crypto assets and maintained operations without significant downtime. To meet customer withdrawals, the exchange borrowed borrowed 40,000 ETH from Bitget. Those funds have since been repaid to Bitget.
In total, the exchange restored its reserves through a combination of loans, asset purchases, and large holder deposits. Oh, so they use their clients' money? Is that what you're saying? Because that's a problem. Whatever. Bybit CEO, Ben Zhao, also confirmed that the exchanges, quote, back to a % full backing of client assets. Nevertheless, the attack has rattled investor confidence leading to sharp drops in ether in the broader cryptocurrency market. Yeah. Well okay. So it seems clear that Safe Wallet and the developers thereof have absolutely not sure they know what they're doing in some cases, but it seems to me that their security was put on the back burner when it came to just rolling something out. And people got hosed for it, Except for the hacker himself, who, like I said, everybody told me on x or Twitter that there was no way these funds could be touched.
Yet the Bybit hacker is laundering 335,000,000 as the funds continue to move Zolt and Vardai, Cointelegraph. The hacker behind the $1,400,000,000 Bybit exploit has laundered more than 335,000,000 in digital assets with investigators continuing to track the movement of stolen funds. Crypto investor sentiment was hit by the largest hack in crypto history on February when Bybit lost over $1,400,000,000 in liquid staked ether, mantle staked ETH, and, well, other digital assets. On chain data shows that the hackers moved 45,900 ether, worth about a hundred and $13,000,000 in the past twenty four hours, bringing the total amount laundered to more than $335,000,000 US. That leaves the hacker with about 363,900 ETH worth around 900,000,000 according to pseudonymous blockchain analyst, Ember CN.
Quote, there are still $900,000,000 worth of ether in the Bybit hacker address. At the current rate, it will only take another eight to ten days to clean it all up, end quote. Blockchain security firms, including Arkham Intelligence, have identified North Korea's Lazarus Group as the likely culprit behind the Bybit exploit. On February, '4 days after the exploit, Bybit cofounder and CEO, Bin Zhao, declared, quote, war on the Lazarus Group. You know, that reminds me of OJ Simpson swearing up and down. He is gonna go out and find Nicole kit or Nicole's killer. Yeah. Him and and or her and that other dude that she was with. I can't remember his name. Remember that? He was gonna do his own investigation. He was gonna bring the killers to justice.
Yeah. That was bullshit. Anyway, meanwhile, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has flagged 11,008 or 11,084 cryptocurrency wallet addresses suspected of being linked to the Bybit exploit. That list is expected to grow as the investigation continues despite the scale of the attack. Bybit's response may help rebuild trust in centralized cryptocurrency exchanges according to industry figures. Dan Hughes, founder of the decentralized finance platform, Radix, said Bybit's immediate response prevented a larger market sell off. Quote, assuming the worst is behind us, the manner in which Bybit handled the situation may actually recover some confidence in centralized exchanges.
It would demonstrate that with adults at the wheel, oh, Jesus. Centralized exchanges can be, quote, trustworthy and responsible custodians of our assets, end quote. Further, quote, primarily, it matters most if Bybit can indeed absorb that loss as claimed. And so far, withdrawals have been honored, and all seems good, Hughes added. Bybit has continued to honor customer withdrawals and has fully replaced the stolen $1,400,000,000 ether by February, just three days after the attack. Still, the Bybit hack alone accounts for more than half of the 2,300,000,000 stolen in crypto related hacks in 2024, marking a significant setback for the industry.
Yeah. So this entire quote that this Hugh Dan Hughes guy said, quote, assuming the worst is behind us, it's not. The manner in which Bybit handled the situation may recover confidence in CEXs, they won't. It would demonstrate that with adults at the wheel, there are none. Centralized exchanges can be trustworthy. They aren't and responsible. They aren't custodians. They aren't of our assets, which should be yours. Your assets in your wallet secured by your keys. There is no trust in these people at this point with anybody who has more than two neurons to rub together and make a fire in their mind. This is ridiculous.
JavaScript code injected into the wallet on Amazon Web Services is and the fact that the, quote, unquote, adults at the wheel selected this piece of shit to be part of their Bybit infrastructure. Now they said that the infrastructure of Bybit itself is fine, and I'm sure that that's true. But when you select a wallet for your customers to use that can be changed by somebody else with the injection of malicious JavaScript on Amazon Web Services? Really? And there are adults at the wheel. No. There are not adults at the wheel. There are not.
But there are other children who are acting just like children. There are no adults at the wheel anywhere in this space right now as is confirmed by stablecoin firms being registered in The US. Well, that's what circles Jeremy Allaire wants. Jeremy Allaire wants stablecoin firms registered in The US. This is not a shot across the bow. He's trying to torpedo Tether directly. Zoltan Vardai from Cointelegraph tells us just a little bit more. Stablecoin issuers worldwide worldwide should be required to register with United States authorities according to Jeremy Allaire, cofounder of Circle, the company behind the world's second largest stablecoin.
Second, not the first, the second largest stablecoin. US legislature, Lake Tours, should introduce mandatory registration requirements for firms issuing United States dollar based stablecoins such as Circle's USD coin, regardless of the company's physical location, Allaire said. Citing consumer protection, Allaire argued that The United States Dollar based stablecoin issuers should not get a free pass enabling them to just ignore The United States laws and go do whatever the hell you want wherever and sell into The United States, Allaire told Bloomberg, quote, whether you are an offshore company or based in Hong Kong, if you want to offer your US dollar stablecoin in The US, you should need to register in The US just like we have to go register everywhere else, end quote.
Allaire's comments come shortly after United States Representatives French Hill and Brian Steele introduced a draft bill that would establish a regulatory framework for dollar pegged payment stablecoins in the world's largest economy. The draft bill's release follows confirmation from the Trump administration that it plans to regulate and bring stablecoins onshore. President Donald Trump's crypto czar David Sachs said stablecoins could extend the dollar's dominance internationally, pausing just to tell you, I knew this was coming. And now even David Sachs is saying the quiet part out loud.
Stablecoins will be used to inject toxic United States debt that we will print, not only the debt that we have, but the debt that we're going to be allowed to print because we're going to be able to push that debt off on everybody else in the world through the use of these stablecoins. Alright? So I was right. Even David Sacks is saying it out of his own mouth. Meanwhile, the cofounder of Tether, the issue of the world's largest stablecoin, USDT, said the firm is facing increasing pressure from competitors and politicians aiming to push Tether out of the crypto market. Tether is facing mounting pressure, wrote Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, in a February 25 Twitter post. Quote, while our competitors' business model should be to build a better product and even bigger distribution network, their real intent is kill Tether. Every single business or political meeting that they have culminates with this intent.
Okay. I read you his entire post yesterday. There's no reason to go back over it again. If you wanna read it, it'll be in the show notes. It'll there the whole URL to this crypto or cointelegraph.com will be there. You can go read it for yourself, but I read it yesterday. Arduinos comments follow Tether's exclusion from the list of 10 firms approved to issue stablecoins under the European Union markets and crypto assets or the MICA, regulatory framework. Tether has faced growing regulatory challenges in Europe since MICA regulations went into effect at the end of twenty twenty four. To comply with Europe's MICA regulation, crypto exchange Kraken said it would delist five stablecoins including USDT starting March 31.
Crypto dot com, another major exchange, confirmed that it would also delist USDT and nine other stablecoins starting 01/31/2025. And I that's the end of the article, and I'm about to say something that's going to make nobody happy. The fact that they are are targeting Tether and they being who? The suits. Right? Not not that Tether doesn't have their own suits. But Jeremy Allaire is more aligned with central banking, JPMorgan, Bank of America than Palo Altoino is. It's my contention here that we should probably god. I'd I'm just gonna catch so much flack for it, but fuck it. If we gotta have a stablecoin, I'd rather have Tether because they're they don't seem to be as much part of the cabal of bullshit that Jeremy Allaire and his group of fucking miscreants is.
And make no mistake, Jeremy Jeremy Allaire is a miscreant. He's morally reprehensible. He's ethically challenged. Not to say that Paolo Ordano is, like, you know, not, but I guarantee you he is not as friendly with the people that we hate. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So maybe, maybe, just maybe, we should, I don't know, not should. You do whatever you want. I'm of the mind that I would rather defend the existence of Tether. Well, actually, here's what I would rather do. I would rather all stablecoins just go away. Okay? That's never going to happen. So I've got my fallback position is to level two, where I would rather have Tether be the majority stablecoin issuer than Jeremy Allaire's circle.
My fallback position after that, if somehow or another Jeremy Allaire and his little band of merry men win this battle and somehow or another is able to successfully scuttle Tether and their group, then I just don't see any reason to use stablecoins connected to The United States at all. I I mean, I I I'm not a trader. So if I was, I would realize what an idiotic statement that is if you're a trader. But since I'm not, I just it's going to make me sick to my stomach if somehow or another because of Jeremy Allaire's ties to the banking sector of The United States, that he's able to torpedo tether because he wants the pie all to himself, then nobody has really learned anything, have they?
So you do what you want. But if you would rather see circle win than tether, my gut feeling is that is the wrong direction to roll. I'm just saying. Okay? I'm just saying. Now let's get over here to voltage and the lightning network. We've got wait a minute. Hold on for a second. I missed something. I definitely missed something. Where did it go? Where did it go? Oh, never mind. I didn't miss anything. This was the one that I wanted, but I was going, wait a minute. Did I miss Frank Korva? And it just so happens this is the Frank Korva article from Bitcoin Magazine.
Voltage aims to bring Bitcoin's lightning network to every business in the world. Yeah. We'll see. Let's see what's going on here. In 2012, soon after Graham Kriesic discovered Bitcoin and subsequently began contributing to Bitcoin Core and building his own applications on Bitcoin, he noticed an issue that was hindering Bitcoin builders. Quote, the problem that I saw was that everyone was building everything from scratch over and over and over again. There was no cloud environment where you could just spin up Bitcoin infrastructure and be able to start developing against it, Krizick told Bitcoin Magazine. At the time, Krizick didn't feel compelled to act on this issue, though. He was still primarily focused on his career as a software engineer outside of the Bitcoin space, working for various start ups as well as companies as large as Salesforce while contributing to Bitcoin in his free time.
But something shifted within him when he learned about the Lightning Network. He saw its potential and knew that it would have to be made easier to use if it were to be widely adopted. When I found Lightning, I said to myself, okay, this is the next phase of Bitcoin adoption, the thing that's really going to drive it to the next level, said Krizic. Quote, then I saw the same pattern happening as I did with Bitcoin. Everyone kept starting from scratch while building. But the problems were more intense because lightning is that much more complicated. I was like, we need a cloud provider where you can just click a button and have a lightning node running and maintained for you. It can just be there so we can develop applications and build the projects we want to build much easier, much faster.
And so Krizik got to work in creating such a project. He shared the initial iteration of it with friends and acquaintances, many of whom began using it so much that the project demanded more of his attention. Quote, the usage grew to a point where I was like, man, I either need to shut this down because I can't maintain it anymore, or I need to turn this into a business and do it for real, said Krizick. And he decided on the latter, and by late twenty twenty, he had founded Voltage. So how does Voltage work? Voltage abstracts away the complexity of using Lightning by allowing users to deploy a Lightning node and spin up a channel in just a few clicks.
While Lightning, or rather, while Voltage hosts your node in its cloud, its public keys, peers, channels, balance, and transaction all remain private, as all of the traffic routed through the node is transferred via Tor. While your node is running in the Voltage cloud, which is supported by the Google Cloud and several other cloud service providers, Voltage also helps users manage liquidity and offers other forms of customer support. Essentially, Voltage abstracts away the difficulties of engaging with Lightning while supporting its users in the process, and it does this in efforts to help institutions more readily adopt Lightning.
Kreesick also mentioned that they have new products and capabilities to help even traditional finance companies with the integration. Quote, the mission of Voltage is to make Bitcoin and the Lightning Network accessible to every business on the planet. Lightning is fantastic. It's got a lot of really amazing capabilities, but it can be really hard to wrap your head around and especially to incorporate it for business operations, especially for businesses that maybe aren't in the Bitcoin or crypto space. We make it easy to use and plug in, end quote.
So what types of companies are using Lightning? In the past year, notable companies such as major crypto exchange Coinbase and Latin America's largest fintech bank, NuBank, have incorporated Lightning into their operations. Krios exceeds this trend of crypto exchanges, neobanks, and other financial service platforms onboarding to lightning continuing in the year ahead. Quote, finance companies are definitely going to be the biggest movers because if you can take the value of sub second settlement with zero fees and apply that to a big payment processor that does global payments, it's an incredible value add for their business, said Krizek.
What is more, Krizek sees companies outside of the Bitcoin, crypto, and finance space also beginning to utilize Lightning in 2025 in part because companies like Voltage are making it easy to do so. Quote, 2025 will be a big year for starting to branch out of our niche market, said Krizik. Quote, the technology has still been a little rough around the edges for a big company like Walmart to be like, hey. We're gonna plug this in now. Even with Voltage, we haven't been perfect the entire time with making Lightning super easy to use. I think we've made huge strides in the last year, like, though and we have a lot more coming out, end quote.
Another major hurdle for companies looking to adopt Lightning is the risk that comes with managing Bitcoin's volatility, but that risk doesn't exist if companies send Tether over Lightning instead of Bitcoin, which they may be able to do soon. And we come to the section called Tether on Lightning. Quote, I think we're going to have a lot of products and solutions around Tether, said Krizic. It's not just me being personally excited about it. A lot of our customer base is very excited about it. They're asking for it directly from us because stablecoins are pretty much the biggest use case in crypto today. When you couple stablecoins with sub second settlement fees and very low fees, that's a huge unlock.
With fees on Tron getting more expensive, people are looking for an alternative, end quote. As far as U USDT running over lightning potentially presenting a security risk to Bitcoin, Kreesick does not seem con concerned. Quote, it doesn't worry me at all. I think that we've advanced since the block size war in terms of takeovers, as I don't think it's as easy for a large institution to coerce the Bitcoin ecosystem like some did during the block size wars, he added referring to Tether potentially gaining outsized influence over Bitcoin, quote, and it's even better to integrate sub excuse me, something like Tether on Lightning because it's a peer to peer network.
It's not public consensus. So you have much more ability to say, hey. If you don't want to participate in the USDT transfers, just don't do it, end quote. Moving forward in a pro Bitcoin regulatory environment, United States Crypto Czar David Sachs is an investor in Voltage. This would indicate that he has some understanding of the Lightning Network and the role of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. So does this mean that The US is on the verge of embracing Bitcoin as such? According to Kriziuk, not exactly. Quote, everyone is screaming at the government right now for a strategic Bitcoin reserve which treats Bitcoin as a store of value.
Over time, we will definitely hear more and more about Bitcoin as a means of payment. We just need to get through this strategic reserve conversation first and then say, okay. What else can we do with it? The fact that the government is painting Bitcoin in any sort of positive light at all, though, is exciting to Krizik. Since 2012, when he first entered the Bitcoin space, the government has either dismissed Bitcoin or been antagonistic towards it. Quote, when I started in Bitcoin, it was completely ignored. And the last four years were very bad for companies like us. With this new administration, we've definitely seen the tone shift.
We're still working through certain things, but we're definitely turning a corner and heading in the right direction. I'm really excited to see where that can go in the coming year, and I think it's going to be positive. Kreesick added. So Kreesick and Voltage, I've known about Voltage for a long time, and I've never used it. I do run my own node, but I will tell you this. Manage managing channel liquidity is a bitch. It just is. It's not impossible, but it's a pain in the ass. Now most not most. I'm gonna say many lightning network node runners like me, we all do the same thing. We basically let the channel the the channels kinda balance out on their own.
Some do and some don't. And those that don't, you really gotta keep your eye on those. And sometimes I just let it go. Sometimes, like, I've got, like, a a channel from, oh, god, podcast index that's just maxed out on my side. There is no incoming liquidity on it. It's all it's a % outgoing liquidity. It should be at least 50%, like like if like, let's there's a million sats there. It's a million sats channel. 500,000 should be incoming liquidity, and 500,000 should be outgoing liquidity. It should be balanced. That's what we mean by a balanced payment channel. And I've got three of them that are that way. Unbalanced, in in other words, like full blown, nothing but outbound liquidity.
And I've got a couple of channels that are fully blown inbound liquidity. The it's not a well balanced node. I have, on several occasions, toyed with the idea of possibly letting Voltage take control of it over it, but I don't like the fact of paying a fee, and I don't think that what voltage the way that voltage is doing it, what I don't think that they're doing is just taking a percentage of routing fees or settlement fee or whatever's going on on our lightning nodes. They're not taking a percentage of it. They're it's it from what I understand, it's a flat rate. Now that may have changed because I haven't checked it in a while. But if I'm just paying through the nose just to have a Lightning lightning channel and it's balanced and it's not paying for itself, then it's not worth it to me. But it very well may be worth it to a lot of people, especially the people that Krizic built this thing for in the first place, and that's projects that are working on lightning, they need a lightning node, but they would rather have somebody else manage it so that they can just build on top of it, and that's what Voltage does.
So if you are a developer in the space or you're thinking about, you know, a project that you wanna do that involves lightning, you may wanna consider looking at Voltage and Graham Kriesic, the CEO. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. Oil taking it in the pants again, dude. West Texas Intermediate down another half point to $68.58 a barrel. Britton, or C down over half a point to $72.53. Natural gas kicked in the crotch is down five points to $3.97 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline down a full point and a half to a buck 93 a gallon. We haven't seen those prices since, like, four or five months ago. Gold is having a good day as are all the shiny metal rocks. It's up a third to $29.28, and 70¢. Silver is up one and a half percent. Platinum is up just over 1%. Copper is up well no. Actually, it just hit one point one and a quarter no. One and three quarters percent of the upside.
Palladium is up a quarter of a percent. Ag is everything is in the red for agriculture except for chocolate. It is up almost 4.7 points. Let's see. Biggest loser in that field is sugar, 3.73% to the downside. I just got news that Brazil is expecting a bumper crop of sugar, and that is affecting the sugar price. By the way, mortgage rates, I'm I'm reading a a there's a a headline on the side here. Mortgage rates have dropped to the lowest since mid December, but they still can't sell mortgages. They still the the demand for taking on a new house is low still because the prices are so inflated, it doesn't matter.
You could take mortgages down to 1%, and you would still have a a field day. You you would still have a field day of people that have a lot of money picking up houses and whatnot like that, but the majority of the people that actually need the housing, they can't afford the down payment. They just can't. The houses are too expensive and everybody's broke. And speaking of broke, ranchers are not having fun today. Live cattle are down point 42%. Lean hogs, however, are up over a full point, but feeder cattle are essentially moving sideways. Everything in equity, futures or rather index, equities legacy markets, they're having a good day too. Dow is up point 17%.
S and P is up three quarters of a point. Nasdaq is up over a full point, and the S and P Mini is up just under one full point. And we've got more downside pressure on Bitcoin this morning, $86,460. That is a $1,710,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 29.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,829,276.05 of, and average fees per block are low. Again, 0.07 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. Lots of consolidation in the blockchains are going on. Well, actually, in the MIM pools, I should have said. High priority rates, 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority rates are the same. There's 78 blocks carrying 86,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear. And I'm just gonna scan through some of these, and it looks like a lot of these are consolidation blocks.
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of consolidation going on. Oh, good lord. Every single one is just almost all consolidation. So that's that's that's what, that's what low fees will get you, is good consolidation prices. So where we at on mining? 760.9 exahashes per second, that's pretty much the same as yesterday, so do with that what you will. And from technical bear, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Psyduck with $5.56. Sat says, Psy duck. Pies with $4.20 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Yodle with 240 says, and that's the weather report. We already did that, brother. Nick Dose with a hundred and one says, cheers. Paul Cernine with a hundred says, thanks again for a great overview of the state of affairs.
Always appreciated. An undervalued feature of your podcast is the show notes. Highly recommended browsing for anyone. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate it. And that is the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Let's get into this thing from Jeff Bezos who's written a note, on Twitter. Actually, it's not a note. It's a tweet on Twitter, about some information that he shared with his newspaper, The Washington Post, and the team there. But first, let's talk a little bit about one of the replies to this particular tweet from a guy named Jeffrey Evangold. And who, may you ask, is Jeffrey Evan Gold? Well, his bio says that he's an attorney slash legal analyst on CNN, HLN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, Comcast, et al. So this guy is hip deep in the mainstream media, the same media that's been lying to you for years. So what did he reply?
Well, he replied the following, last straw. And then he's got a cute little screen capture of the Washington Post website where it says, we've canceled your subscription. He canceled his subscription because of this thing that Jeff Bezos has said. What what could possibly infuriate Jeffrey Evan Gold, aka mainstream media sycophant, to get so incensed that he would cancel his subscription and take away all of $19.99 a month from Jeff Bezos. Well, let's read this note from Jeff Bezos. And this is clearly on Twitter. I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning. I'm writing to let you know about a change coming in our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the Internet does that job. I am of America and for America, oh god, the hyperbole, and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical, and a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical. It minimizes coercion and practical because it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity. I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no. After careful consideration, David Shipley decided to step away. This is a significant shift. It won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment.
I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction. I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void. Signed, Jeff. Oh, Jeff. So maybe maybe it was a fact that, this guy, what's his name, Jeffrey Evangold, he might be pissed at one of two things. Let me take the second thing first. He might be pissed that Jeff Bezos is full of shit and it's just words on a page.
But I don't think so. I think Jeffrey Evan Gold is incensed that Jeff Bezos seems to be pivoting to writing about freedom, to writing about free markets, personal liberties. This is something that somebody who is a mainstream media sycophant cannot stand and will not abide. And that's why I think Jeffrey Evangold actually canceled his subscription. But the most important part here is, is Jeff Bezos telling the truth? Is he really going to get The Washington Post to be writing every day in their opinion pages about personal liberties and free markets?
I'm gonna go with no. I'm going to go with the fact that this is just words on a page. It is yet to be seen whether or not Jeff Bezos is going to actually execute anywhere close to the direction that he describes here in this Twitter post. If he does, amen, brother. Good for you, pal. Excellent work, sir. If not, well, then my heart's not gonna be broken because I don't expect them to. I think that Jeff Bezos and Jeffrey Evan Gold are probably more alike than either one of them wants to admit because they're both, well, they're both legacy financial, legacy media, legacy business, legacy markets, legacy financial bullshit sycophants.
I don't trust either one of them, and I can't muster the strength to be able to throw them under the bus because I'm just too tired of dealing with these assholes. Let's move on to Bitcoin ATMs use Blink's API to leverage the lightning network. This is from lightning.news. And, oh, I can't remember who I put out on Nostr. I said, look, man, I know there was a lightning news or lightningnews.com or something like that on the on the interwebs, and I cannot for the life of me find it. Maybe I'm just hallucinating, but if you know what I'm talking about, please let me know and give me a link, a hashtag ask noster. Within one minute, I got an answer. It's lightning.news.
If you wanna hear news about lightning, go to lightning.news, and we're gonna do it right now with this one about the Bitcoin ATMs, Blinks API, and Lightning Network. As Bitcoin and the Lightning Network continue to gain traction, businesses are seeking efficient ways to integrate these technologies into their services. Bitcoin ATM brands like Lamassu, k one, and the DIY Lightning ATM projects are leveraging the Blink API to enhance their offerings. Bitcoin ATM operators are increasingly turning to Blink's payment infrastructure to solve a pressing challenge, integrating the lightning network capabilities into their existing machines without having to overhaul their systems.
Lamasu and k one, which are two manufacturers of Bitcoin ATM model, sir, have begun implementing Blink's API to handle lightning network transactions, signaling a shift in how these companies approach fast settlement Bitcoin payments. The move comes as Lightning, network's capacity is reaching new highs in recent months. K one's implementation notably leverages Blink's StableSats feature, which allows operators to denominate transactions in US dollars whilst settling in Bitcoin. This approach helps shield operators from Bitcoin's price volatility, a key concern for ATM businesses that typically seek to avoid market risk.
The development marks a strategic shift for Bitcoin ATM operators who have historically struggled with managing lightning network liquidity, and I talked about that, handling volatile Bitcoin prices, everybody knows about that, maintaining complex payment infrastructure, and ensuring reliable transaction processing. In a parallel development, the open source community has embraced Blink's API for DIY Lightning ATM projects. These installations can be configured to dispense funds from either Bitcoin or StableSats balances, potentially lowering the barrier to entry for micro operators.
The adoption of Blink's API by established players suggest a maturing Bitcoin ATM industry, one that's increasingly focused on operational efficiency and user experience. For ATM operators, the integration promises to reduce technical overhead while expanding their service offerings. Quote, this is fundamentally about simplifying what has been a complex infrastructure challenge. Operators can now focus on their core business rather than managing payment rails. End quote. The move comes as traditional financial institutions are showing renewed interest in cryptocurrency infrastructure with Bitcoin ATM serving as a crucial bridge between digital and physical banking services.
For smaller operators and new entrants, Blink's open source approach could significantly reduce barriers to entry in the Bitcoin ATM market, potentially leading to increased competition in a sector traditionally denominated by larger players. So there you go. Blink's API, looks like it's being integrated into a lot of the Bitcoin ATMs, which, in my opinion, really still have yet to see, you know, any kind of significant adoption. And that's not me bagging on it. I'm just saying that we're we are just very early. No matter what the price of Bitcoin is, no matter who's doing what with lightning, we are really early.
It took a long time for credit cards to actually take off, and a lot of people don't really understand that. First credit card was Diner's Club. It wasn't American Express. Diner's Club International, and everybody had Diner's Club. You'd use it at restaurants, and that's when they still had the little they they put the credit card in inside this little this little case thing, and then they put some paper on top of it, and they'd write how much you owe on it, and then they'd crunch it and basically make a carbon copy of the raised letters that were on your credit card. And it took a long time for that thing to settle because they had to mail the receipts into the bank. All kinds of stuff had to happen behind the scenes there, so it could take a month for you to get, you know, your money. It still takes, like like, up to two weeks at this point, and that's with everything being digital.
But the first credit cards, they didn't see widespread adoption. In fact, most people thought they were a scam. My dad was one of them. My dad was like, dude, just stay away from these things. And slowly but surely, even my father started using credit cards. And he was very careful about it too. Like, you know, spend, like, you know, I don't know. He'd have a budget for the month as to what he would allow to go on a credit card, and he would pay it off at the end of the month and only spend, you know, a fraction of the amount of interest because he was never really carrying a balance for any more than a month. The same is true for Lightning and Bitcoin and Bitcoin ATMs and Lightning ATMs and all that kind of stuff. It's slower than you think. But then all of a sudden, one day, you turn around and everybody's using them.
Hardly anybody uses cash now. I haven't seen anybody write a a handwritten check at a counter in, god, probably actual years. Last time I saw somebody write a check, I wasn't even living in Eastern Washington. So don't think that I'm bagging on the ATMs, but I am just not seeing as much adoption as I I as I think is worthy the amount of money being invested in that particular space at the moment, but that's just my opinion. Block, Jack Dorsey's outfit is in talks with New York. There's ongoing negotiations over Bitcoin linked money laundering allegations. If you forgot, the Southern District Of New York decided to go up against Jack Dorsey.
This is out of Atlas21.com. Let's find out what's going on here. Block Incorporated, the payment company led by Jack Dorsey, has revealed that it has been in negotiations with New York's regulatory authorities to resolve disputes related to its anti money laundering programs in Bitcoin, according to a document filed on February with the SEC, Block is engaged in, quote, ongoing negotiations with the NYDFS concerning, among other things, aspects of its program related to the Bank Secrecy Act and anti money laundering and Bitcoin. The document states, quote, the company is in discussions with the New York Department of Financial Services to determine if this issue could be resolved on acceptable terms.
So they are in talks to see if they can clear all this b s up. This has been going on for quite a while. In fact, it looks like this has been going on since January of twenty twenty one. So maybe they'll finally be able to get rid of this thing with orange man in office. Who knows? Let's get to our last thing of the day. The Grain Relay version 0.3 has been released. It has Nostra login and profile page and user sync functionality. And if you don't know what the hell Grain is, Grain is an open source Nostra Relay implementation written in Go, aiming to provide a highly efficient and configurable Nostra Relay.
Quote, good morning. New release or new Grain release finally. Appreciate any support I receive. Announced ocean slim. Version 0.3 of Grain introduces nostril login and profile pages, allowing users to manage their relay data, experimental user sync functionality for syncing user events from their outboxes and bug fixes and related improvements. The upcoming release will prioritize improvements in logging and debugging specifically by enhancing error reporting, improving user sync tracking, and optimizing the entire relay process. Quote, thanks for your patience on this release.
Most of the work is done by a single dev, so feedback and testing are always appreciated, said Ocean Slim. So, Nostr login and profile page. They added Nostr login to the front end for authentication via Nostr key. After logging in, users access a profile page showing their kinds zero metadata if available on the relay. And then there's the experimental part called the user sync functionality allowing the relay to sync events for its users from their outboxes. The feature supports configurable sync options for defining which kinds of events to sync, limits on how many events to retrieve, and excluding non white listed users.
So and there's a whole bunch of bug fixes in WebSocket client. We don't need to get into all that. If you are interested in running a Nostra Relay for yourself, this might be something that you want to go look at. And how would you run a Nostra Relay by your you know, for yourself? Well, on my node BTC, I can drop a Nostra Relay on there. And and I did. I started one up, but I, you know, I was like, you know what? I don't know enough about this to to understand if this is something that I really wanna be jacking with long term. I'll I'll let it ride, and we'll we'll talk about it. You know, I was like, yeah. Hey, brain. We'll talk about this later.
And then when I got my, my start nine node to run a new Bitcoin node and a new Lightning Network node, lo and behold, I can install a Nostra Relay on that. So here's what I've done. I've got two Bitcoin nodes and two lightning nodes. Well, no. I'd scuttled my Lightning node off of my b t or off of my node BTC because I'm fixing to shut down that node fully. That is running on a Raspberry Pi four. Alright? So since I've got I've I've taken all the channels, I've closed down all the channels on my old lightning node. I've opened new channels up on my new lightning node. There's no reason for me to actually use my old raspberry pi four, so I'm probably going to repurpose it and its one terabyte SSD hard drive to become a fully functional standalone Nostra Relay just so that I can play with it. So if you have something like that and you want a singular purpose, a Nostra Relay node might be a nice little hobby, you know, to start playing around with because I have always believed that when we talk about these relays and you like, if you're on Nostr, you connect to a bunch of relays, and those relays are how you get notes and how other people get the notes that you send. It's a network of relays, and they all chitter and chatter and gossip with each other. And they basically relay your notes from end to end, from, you know, from you to whoever's following you.
But these nodes or these relays can definitely come in different kinds of flavors. Like, some nodes can have where all the kinds of notes, whether it's just a very, very short note or a very, very long note or some of the notes that that contain pictures is a different kind, some of the notes that do other things are different kinds. There's, like, all manner of different kinds of events. Like, a kind zero is where you say good morning, and that's all you do. No pictures, no zaps, no nothing. It's just straight up good morning. That's like a kind zero note. I could configure a relay where all it did was collect up and spit out to other relays kind zero notes and deal with nothing else.
Or I could get fancy and say kind zero, kind x y z, kind a b c, and kind whatever, and have, like, five or six different kinds. For me, because there's so many different clearly different kinds of notes or kinds of events on Nostr, it's sort of like being able to mix and match and build up an experience. Like, if all I did was you like, for instance, I could have a node or a relay that all it did was collect up and spit back out, events for the Alexandria slash Git Citadel project called project Alexandria, I could just do nothing but that. And that would mean that that whatever is going on on my relay, if you're connected to it, would completely change in addition to all your other relays. It would completely inject something that you may not see before, thereby changing your experience.
And if, for whatever reason, I just want to experience nothing but what's going on in Project Alexandria, that is clearly a completely different experience than any other client that I would have if I had those clients connected to, like, five or six different relays, which I normally do. I'm connected to, like, 12. And at any given time, I'm getting data and sending getting data from and sending data to 10 of them Because some sometimes some are down and whatnot. But my generalized Nostra experience is pretty much vanilla. I get all kinds of stuff. Right? And that's what you would expect. But if you start saying, I only really want, you know, like, I want a I don't know. I'll use, like, let's say, Coracle and connect, like, have a completely different insect in pub, and then select only, like, three very highly specific relays, then now I'm sort of, like, reading off a menu, like, here's my the appetizer that I want. Like, I want, like, a braised lamb shanks, in my entree, I want, I don't know, pumpkin soup, and for a dessert, I want tiramisu.
Right? That is a dining experience. And I kind of look at the relays that we have as not only items on a menu, but the kinds of events actually being subheadings of a menu, like appetizers, salad, soup, entrees, lunch, breakfast, dessert, aperitifs. Get you know, the the the menu that they give you after you eat, and it comes from the bar, and it's like get good liquored up and pissed off before you go home. Here's your here's your liquor menu. That's sort of the way that I look at at this entire thing. And I think a lot of people still miss the fact that this is all this has real potential to where you can completely customize your online experience as to what kinds of information you're taking in.
What are they long articles? Are they long posts? Are they only short? Do they contain pictures? Are they Olas? Are they do they have, like, I don't know. That's what what I'm saying is there's so many different kinds of notes that if you start mixing and matching them, you get a particular experience. And you can kinda start that by running your own node and say, I'm only doing kind one nodes, plus kind zero, plus the Git Citadel kinds of events, which is like 5,300 or something something like that. I can't I can't remember the kind of event that it is offhand, but you get my drift. So if you have an old Raspberry Pi and you wanna play around, you might consider using the GrainRelay that's just been updated to version 0.3.
And that's it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. If you did, send me some sats through Boostagram, Streamy sats through podcasting two point o applications, or just hit me up on Nostra and just boost the shit out of my post, man. Every sat counts. I'll see you on the other side. 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 Episode Overview
Market Updates and Economic Insights
