Join me today for Episode 1045 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Digital Assets Subcommittee Hearing was Awful
- Presidential Memecoin Ban
- Bank of Americoin is On The Way
- FBI Begs For Help in Bybit Hack
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
The King Ranch Donation Pages:
https://www.ruralamericainaction.com/fundraising/save-king-ranch-and-agriculture-in-washington
https://www.givesendgo.com/Kingranch
Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/house-democrats-law-ban-presidential-memecoins
https://www.therage.co/self-custodial-wallets-are-hamas/
https://decrypt.co/307856/bank-america-stablecoin-planned-ceo
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/02/27/fbi-seeks-crypto-industry-help-to-track-block-laundering-of-bybit-hack-funds
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://value4value.info/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
https://cointelegraph.com/news/metaplanet-bitcoin-bond-purchase-2025
https://decrypt.co/308019/uk-introduces-new-crime-bill-expanding-powers-for-crypto-seizures
PayPal: https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqyqzph8vt2k2hskf0yrcjzc5n95k0lpcxxpfmgw4z3dgscwjvdem8c200ur9wd
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/ark-v0-5-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/satochip-v0-14-0-2-beta/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/nunchuk-group-wallet/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find me on nostr
npub1vwymuey3u7mf860ndrkw3r7dz30s0srg6tqmhtjzg7umtm6rn5eq2qzugd (npub)
6389be6491e7b693e9f368ece88fcd145f07c068d2c1bbae4247b9b5ef439d32 (Hex)
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/DavidB84567
StackerNews:
stacker.news/NunyaBidness
Podcasting 2.0:
fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
Apple Podcasts:
tinyurl.com/unm35bjh
Mastodon:
https://noauthority.social/@NunyaBidness
Support Bitcoin And . . . on Patreon:
patreon.com/BitcoinAndPodcast
Find Lightning Network Channel partners here:
https://t.me/+bj-7w_ePsANlOGEx (Nodestrich)
https://t.me/plebnet (Plebnet)
Music by:
Flutey Funk Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
[00:00:03]
David Bennett:
It is 08:42AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten forty five of Bitcoin and we got chicanery going on all over the place, man. We've got, house democrats are on the hill proposing a bill. And it has something to do with Orange Man. You can probably guess what, but we'll do it a little bit later. And then Lol Elites has a full blown report on the first digital asset hearing that was done. And if you did not know that that actually happened and senator Cynthia Lummis is the chairperson of that particular committee.
Things were discussed and almost none of them is what we wanted them to discuss. Could could you imagine? Is it possible that that surprises you coming out of a government? Well, yeah. We'll we'll do that one too. Bank of America is definitely gonna go full bore chicanery, and then we've got the FBI in with their fingers in some pies. Meta Planet's in the news. United Kingdom is in the news and not in the way that we want. PayPal CEO is doing some stuff and then we've got some software updates. But first, house Democrats propose a bill to ban presidential meme coins. Meme coins. They're writing an entire bill because Orange Man and his wife had released some meme coins. And as much as I think that that was bad form, this is just as bad form.
If I mean, let's just let's just do it. Helen Parks, Cointelegraph, tell us all about it, man. US Congress has reportedly set to consider legislation that would ban the issuance of meme coins like president Donald Trump's official Trump token. House Democrats are preparing to introduce the, wait for it, modern emule emoluments emoluments. Yes. Modern emoluments and malfeasance enforcement act, otherwise known as the meme act, which would prohibit public officials from profiting from digital assets, California representative Sam Liccardo told ABC News on February.
The draft legislation would prohibit a broad range of public officials and related persons from issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing any security commodity or digital asset. Quote, let's make corruption criminal again, Liccardo said, adding that US public offices began or belong to the public and that officials should not be allowed to leverage their political authority for financial gain. Well, gee. How does that explain Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren and a whole smattering of other people that are worth north of $50,000,000, and their only source of revenue seems to be from their, well, their paycheck being in Congress.
Elizabeth Warren is worth, like, $69,000,000. She makes, like, a hundred and $27,000 a year. How do you do that? I mean, are all these people master traders? Are they all financial experts and little wiz kids? How come they're not looking into that? I'll bet you that's the retaliatory strike if this thing goes down. If this bill ends up getting and here's the thing, Trump's gotta sign it. If this goes all the way to Trump's desk, you know he's just gonna veto it, and then they're gonna have to send it back into congress where it would have to be the whole thing done again. And this time, he would have to pass out of congress by two thirds majority to override the Trump veto.
It's it's amazing. But I guarantee you, if if that if this ends up going to his desk, he will not only veto it. By the same time it gets to his desk, there will be full blown investigations into just how Nancy Pelosi got all of her money. And nobody wants that. Nancy Pelosi does not want that. Elizabeth Warren does not want that. So I kinda don't expect this bill to go anywhere. But the meme act, which is expected to be introduced today, February, will concern the president, the vice president, congress members, senior executive branch officials, and their spouses, and dependent children. Locardo said the bill has a dozen democratic sponsors who are working to build bipartisan support.
Quote, the Trump's issuance of meme coins financially exploits the public for personal gain and raises the specter of insider trading and foreign influence over the executive branch. He stated, Locardo's initiative is one of the first attempts to regulate the nascent meme coin market amid the ongoing legal uncertainty surrounding the cryptocurrency sector. And then we know when he launched his coin, and then his wife launched her coin. And since their launch, both meme coins have plummeted massively with Trump sinking 82% from all time highs and Melania sliding 93%.
And as investors lose billions from the meme coin downturn, Hester Peirce, director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's crypto task force, said most meme coins do not fall under the SEC's jurisdiction. Per stated, or Pierce, however you want to pronounce her last name, stated that oversight should come from Congress or agencies like the Commodities Futures and Trading Commission. Many in the community subsequently criticized regulators for not taking a proactive approach to protect investors, urging the need to establish clear regulations for the market.
Locardo's bill is not the only meme coin related proposal, however, because on February, United States Democratic senator Cortez Mazzo submit submitted an amendment to the concurrent resolution s con resolution seven, proposing to prohibit federal employees or officials from issuing, promoting, or financially benefiting from meme coins in which the Chinese Communist Party invests. Kind of a kind of a weird that's kinda weird. A meme coin, you can't invest in it if and only if the communist Chinese party does? First of all, how would you know?
I don't know. Yeah. All these people are stupid. Anyway, according to some crypt crypto observers, meme coins have partly contributed to the ongoing sell off on the cryptocurrency markets. Quote, what crypto is digesting right now is the end of the meme coin boom, Bitwise chief investment officer, Matt Hogan, said to the financial times. Yeah. You say that are you calling Pete Cloud world mister Hogan? Because, yeah. I I don't expect this to actually end. It'll take a breather, and then it will resurrect itself like the dead zombie piece of crap that it is. But, again, if this bill gets anywhere close to striking distance, I can almost guarantee you the Republican side will have a full retaliatory strike.
It will be mutually assured destruction almost because they will start demanding that United States Senators that are worth oh, I don't know. They might actually put a, you know, like, a a a floor on it. Say, if you're worth more than $10,000,000 and your only salary has ever come from the United States Congress in the last, say, twenty years, then, yeah, we're gonna dig through your bank accounts and all of your trading accounts and all of your brokerage accounts and any hedge fund manager that you've ever freaking talked to, and we're gonna find out how you got $10,000,000 when you were just banking, like, you know, a hundred and $27,000 a year because that's bullshit. And we all know it's bullshit.
That doesn't mean that I'm saying it's okay for Trump to do the meme coin thing. The day the very next day after that shit happened, the the very first episode of this show, I was all over Orange Man for doing that shit. It looks bad. It's unethical. It's very clear that that should never have happened, and yet it did. And there's no excuse for it. And the excuse that he gave looks a little bit or sounds a little bit like Malay, although not as bad as Malay's excuse, because Trump said he just didn't really know all that much about it. But he did promote it, and he didn't say that he didn't say that I didn't promote it, but he did say publicly, I don't know that much about it. Well, that means you're promoting something that you know nothing about, and that's almost worse. Malay, well, we all know what Malay did, so we don't really need to go back into that one. But now it's time to shift gear. I wanna read this piece from Lol Elites.
But first, I want you to hear mister Timothy Massad and what he said at the committee that we're gonna be talking about. Just just
[00:10:07] Unknown:
buckle up and listen. The the challenge is that those stablecoins can then be transferred without going through a centralized intermediary. Our entire BSA, AML, CFT framework relies on centralized intermediary. Mhmm. All transactions run through those centralized intermediaries in some way. And so we've imposed obligations on those intermediaries, banks and others, to do the compliance checks that we want. Stablecoins are very different in that once they've been issued Uh-huh. They can be transferred, exchanged for other, crypto assets, without going through a centralized intermediary. So we have to sort of creatively rethink Uh-huh. How we achieve these, goals. And I think that includes extending the regulatory perimeter, if you will, but also looking at a lot of other creative measures requiring Stablecoin issuers to aggressively monitor transactions Mhmm. Freeze Stablecoins, looking at ways to, design the smart code of a contract so that a transaction doesn't go through Uh-huh. Unless someone has effectively been cleared by an appropriate authority.
[00:11:27] David Bennett:
Rewrite the smart code so that unless you've been confirmed or or or cleared or vetted, your transaction isn't going through. Now half of me was to say that this dude doesn't know a damn thing of what he's talking about because what he's suggesting there is a little bit more difficult than I think he realizes, but that's not the point, is it? Because the real point here is the fact that we've got somebody who just is looking at stablecoins and saying, this is something we can wholeheartedly regulate. Now it gets just a little worse, and Lola Elites from her, publication called The Rage, and you can find it at the rage C o, has this to say, first digital asset hearing, self custodial wallets are Hamas.
No. Seriously, that's that's what she titled it, which means that there's we're probably in for one hell of a ride here. Yesterday, the senate banking subcommittee on digital assets held its first meeting chaired by senator Lummis of Wyoming to explore bipartisan legislative frameworks for digital assets. Invited as witnesses were former CFTC chair and research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Tim Mossad, and that's the guy you just heard from. The global head of policy and government relations at Kraken, Jonathan Joachim or Joachim, I it's hard to pronounce his name. Chief legal officer at Lightspark, Jai Messari, and Lewis Cohen, partner at Cahill Gordon and Rheindale LLP.
As reported by Bitcoin Magazine, the hearing mainly focused on stablecoin regulation with witnesses praising regulatory frameworks in Wyoming and the EU's MICA framework. Quote, stablecoins must be backed one to one with reserves of high quality liquid assets, said LightSparks Messari. Quote, assets should be segregated and beneficially owned by stablecoin holders. Additionally, he said, stablecoin issuers should compete based on innovative payment use cases, not on reserve design. Former CFTC chair, Mossad, agreed, stating that he supports the Genius Act's full reserve requirements. Overall, the hearing's focus on stablecoin reserves may be bad news for Tether, which has recently been driven out of the EU due to Micah's full reserve requirements and has faced widespread critique for the intra or wait. Oh, sorry.
Intra wait. Intrans oh, yes. Sorry. In transparency surrounding its stablecoin backing. I'm pausing to say how many audits have they been through. They they actually have been through quite a few audits, but this is what I was getting at yesterday. There is a full blown attack on Tether, and I think that that this attack on Tether, which is full has a full throated yeehaw from Jeremy Allaire's circle, which also issues their own stablecoin called USDC, I think it's because Paulo Ardoino and his team are not under the thumb of Western governments in general.
And this is what this is highly concerning to me. And it's not because I am a fan of Tether. But like I said yesterday, I would rather have Tether be doing this shit than Jeremy Allaire's circle. But it looks like they're starting to put Tether on the ropes even though they are one of the largest buyers of United States Treasury bonds in the world. They're, like, number thirteenth or sixteenth or something like that. They're they are nation state level buyers of US debt. Did Jeremy Allaire has he made a deal with the United States government to buy even more? I don't know. And I'm not sure what else to say about it. So let's get back to what Lowell is talking about.
However, much more interesting than possible stablecoin regulation was the committee's focus on digital asset compliance. While stablecoins remained in focus, witnesses agreed that existing banking laws should extend to all digital assets. Quote, the Genius Act does not do enough to address the risks of financial crime and sanctions evasion, Mossad stated. It's good that it says that stablecoin issuers are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, but the Bank Secrecy Act only focuses on obligations on centralized intermediaries while stablecoins can be transferred without a centralized intermediary, whether that's on a self hosted wallet or on an automated decentralized exchange, end quote.
While stablecoins do have KYC requirements, once that stablecoin has been issued, it can be transferred many times. There's no requirement to follow that customer, said senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Quote, I can transfer a digital asset from self hosted wallet to self hosted wallet, agreed Mossad. Quote, that can happen several times, and that's why we've seen these things be used for sanctions evasion and for money laundering by Russian smugglers, by Hamas, and by others, end quote. You you see where this is going, don't you? Warner stated that he recognizes what others have said from a classified side that these assets are used as a whole bunch of bad stuff due to the anonymity and the disintermediation role that blockchain plays, asking how do we put in place some protection from the issuer all the way to conversion to fiat.
End quote. Messari agreed stating that quote, the use of stablecoins as a true means of payment is dependent on our ability to get it right when it comes to combating illicit finance and enforcing sanctions. When a transaction happens between self custody wallets, they keep saying this, and if you're not if it's not sinking in, they're talking about me not being able to custody my own Bitcoin. Alright? So get it through your head. When a transaction happens between self custody wallets, there isn't KYC obligations on those, and so those can happen without KYC, Messari continued.
However, adding that, quote, there is an immutable on chain record of those transactions that can be monitored not only by the issuer but by third parties. But isn't this a process of mixers where you still have that blockchain to follow the entity, but you may not know who that entity is without KYC next to it, senator Warren or Warner asked? Quote, absolutely right, Messari responded. People can use a variety of different technologies to, on purpose, obfuscate their financial transaction. That's true on blockchain. That's true in traditional finance.
I think it's really important a really important issue, and I agree that as an industry, we need to continue to develop new tools to address these issues. Quote, when a user transfers a stablecoin to a custodial wallet, so in exchange, there's another point of KYC right there, so the gap is widest when you're talking about unhosted wallet transfers, Messari agreed. Quote, Kraken's role in the market is as a centralized intermediary, and we know who's coming in, who's coming out, said Kraken's Joachim or Jackam. We track not only KYC so we know everyone coming into our platform.
Anything that leaves our platform, if there's any risk of hitting a sanctioned address, it's blocked. There's enhanced monitoring tools. We run these assets through rigor rigorous due diligence tests, cybersecurity tests, legal tests to make sure that everyone participating in our market is subject to KYC and sanctions, Jocham stated. Quote, my colleague, mister Mossad, is absolutely correct that there is an ecosystem out there outside of centralized intermediaries, but the surveillance, the traceability that is available thanks to blockchain technology is unparalleled to any technology that we have seen in history, Joachim continued.
Quote, we briefly alluded to the ability with crypto assets to freeze and seize, which is different from tracking, added Cohen. But it can mean that if a stablecoin issuer identifies that a particular amount of stablecoin is added to an address controlled by an illicit actor, they can functionally turn that off at that time. Stablecoins, in many ways, are a step change better than other assets, end quote. Go. Now this is purely what Lowell Leads has to say in this next paragraph. Going purely on vibes, it seems plausible that we may see congress attempt to rewrite 18 United States code paragraph nineteen sixty as well as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to apply KYC, AML, CFT requirements to self custodial wallet providers and decentralized services as suggested by the fifth circuit's tornado cash sanctions reversal as well as financial action task force virtual asset guidance.
Okay. So it's it sounds pretty bad. Here's the thing, though. I remember a time in Bitcoin when we were when we would all say, k y c k y c my hardware wallet and see how see what you find. Go do it. Current like, yeah. Yeah. You you tell me that I I've gotta put, KYC on my cold card wallet. Good luck. Not gonna do it. And you'll say, but, David, when they when when when somebody sees a transaction from your wallet and, like, let's say you're sending it to a bank or something, they're just gonna say, hey. It's not coming in with KYC. Sorry for you. Yes. And that's that's probably going to be on the horizon.
Will it actually happen? We don't really know. But let's make for the for the sake of argument that it is going to happen. Well, if I send my Bitcoin to you because you're providing me with a half of beef that I'm gonna put into my freezer, that's between me, you, and the side of beef that's in my freezer, and nobody else really needs to know. And then you'll say, yeah, but then they're gonna see when that guy wants wants to send it to to, you know, send that Bitcoin to convert to fiat. They're gonna look down the chain and said, the initial transaction originated from a non k y c self custodial wallet. We're not gonna let you do that. Then then the farmer is incentivized to work with somebody else who also deals on Bitcoin.
This is the way black markets came up. This is exactly why we have black markets in the first place. And if you think they're going away because some bald asshole with glasses is sitting there not wanting to get his lazy ass up and do the actual fucking police work when an actual crime has been committed, but instead would just rather monitor everybody from the from the ease of his armchair, sitting next to his fire in his great big mansion, which he can no way, shape, form, possibly afford on his salary, but somehow or another is worth a hundred million dollars or whatever like Elizabeth Warren is, well, it's easier for him to do that. And it has honestly, it has nothing to do with about with it crushing crime.
Okay? He's he's he's not like the crime dog in the eighties. He's not like that dude. He's not like McGruff. Right? He he's not the the crime dog in the in the Dick Tracy raincoat with the, you know, magnifying glass in the, like, fedora. Right? No. But it's going to go that way. And you're either going to be prepared to continuously get bad news like this and be able to deal with it and rock on through it, or you're gonna continuously be stymied by it. And I see a lot of people in this space, especially in well, actually, clear more in in general shit coin land, but I'm also seeing a lot of hardcore Bitcoiners that I have a lot of respect for start forgetting, or it's become clear to me that they are forgetting from whence they came.
And I think we need to get back into being the serious asshole Bitcoin maximalist that we used to be and say go ahead see if I KYC my own wallet. You know, fuck off. It's just this the whole thing is laughable, but the thing that pisses me off is that throughout this entire thing, if if I were to go if I go back and I read the Bitcoin magazine article that Lowell Lowell Leitz referenced, what we find out is that Bitcoin the word Bitcoin was used exactly two times, once by Cynthia Lummis in her opening statement, and another time by one of the witnesses or one of the one of the people that were testifying.
And that was it. It was all about stablecoins, and it clearly rocked on over into AML, KYC, CFT, Bank Secrecy Act. Everybody's a criminal except us even though we're the actual criminals. And Cynthia Lummis had no spine to say, no. We are not going to just talk about stablecoins. We we wanted to talk they she actually said we're gonna talk about the Bitcoin oh, the her Bitcoin act, and I can't remember the exact name of it. And that's where she said the word Bitcoin in in in her first opening statement. But after that, she just basically let the testimony go completely to stablecoins.
And remember, stablecoins is the last ditch it's not a last ditch attempt. It's probably the last brand new, shiny brand new mechanism for The United States to transport debt away from The United States so that we can continue to rob the rest of the world because that's essentially what we're doing. And it's going to be done by stablecoin. And I have a sneaky suspicion that Tether may be putting up a fight or somehow or another has intimated that maybe this isn't the best, you know, thing that The United States be doing. Maybe they backed off on buying treasury bonds. I don't know. But this sounds like a coordinated effort to me to kill Tether and get Jeremy Allaire's Circle USDC coin as the preeminent stablecoin for the world.
Either way, we are going to export United States debt everywhere using stablecoins. We've been using the US dollar, but now we don't even need that shit anymore. We can just use it we could just use stablecoins. So be prepared. Shit's gonna get weird. And more stablecoin stuff from the Bank of America. What are you talking about, Dave? Bank of Ameri coin. I'd I swear that's what they're gonna call it. Bank of America is planning to launch a stablecoin if legislation passes, and that was out of the mouth of their very own CEO.
This is Andrei Bogansky writing for Decrypt. Bank of America is prepared to debut its very own stablecoin in The US driving or diving headfirst into the crypto space once regulation is passed, said Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. And speaking with the businessman and philanthropist David Rubinstein at the economic club of Washington DC, Moynihan predicted that the endeavor is only a matter of time and the passing of pending legislation, quote, it's pretty clear there's going to be a stablecoin, which is going to be fully dollar backed, he said. If they make that legal, we will go into that business.
Those stablecoins have blossomed into a $232,000,000,000 market without clear rules in The United States. Experts expect that stablecoin legislation could unlock a myriad of new players. What was I telling you weeks ago? You're not going to just see Tether and USDC and a couple of others. You're going to see hundreds, hundreds, absolute hundreds of stablecoins. Most of them are going to be rug pulls and scams. They're gonna be clones of, like, Bank of America coin, but they're not actually going to be Bank of America stablecoin. It is going to be a free for all in in in the scamming world. Do not be fooled.
Continuing, Bank of America is the second largest United States bank behind only JPMorgan. According to its latest earnings release, the Wall Street giant had a whopping two point no. $3,260,000,000,000 in total assets. That's trillion with a t, guys. President Donald Trump may be trying to uplift the industry broadly, but Moynihan described stablecoins as distinct compared to assets like Bitcoin or blockchains in general. He compared stablecoins to money market funds. I'm saying it again for effect. He compared stablecoins to money market funds while saying that they are closely they also closely resemble bank accounts.
Quote, the question of what is useful for what it's useful for is going to be interesting, Moynihan said, referring to the banks would be stable coin as Bank of American sorry, Bank of America coin. You're Moynahan, you're missing the marketing. Bank of Americoin. Bank how how do you miss Bank of Americoin? I'm a I'm the shittiest marketer ever and even I can see that one. Anyway, earlier this year, Moynihan said during an appearance on CNBC Squawk Box that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of stablecoins if legislation is passed. They would find broad use in payments, he said.
Lawmakers have debated for years what a pathway to the legality for stablecoin issuers would look like. Earlier this month, however, senate banking committee chairman Tim Scott vowed to get a regulatory framework for stablecoins passed within Trump's first one hundred days in office. To the consternation of some lawmakers, payment firms, including PayPal, have jumped into the stablecoin space without clear federal rules. The firm debuted its Pi USD stablecoin in 02/2023 and said this week that it wants 20,000,000 merchants using the product this year.
As Bank of America's largest competitor, JPMorgan, has dabbled in the stablecoin space since 02/2020 while pioneering its Onyx blockchain. The firm has positioned JPM Coin as a tool for cross border transactions and payments between financial institutions. Alright. That's the end of the article. Stablecoins at this point become an enemy of Bitcoin. It it it just does. Now I don't make the rules. I just abide by them, but payments, they've got the end. They're leveraging the stable coin. And the stable coin really only came up to facilitate trading on exchanges so that you could dive into something that wasn't the United States dollar. It's kinda like has some some better tax implications than The U you know, good you know, selling your doge or whatever to USD.
You could go into a stable coin and you could keep it there. And that's where Tether came from. It was really all about facilitating trading. And now we're seeing it turn into something that is actually not that good for Bitcoin. And I was thinking I was thinking that if Bitcoin was going to be used as the backer for stablecoins and therefore backing The United States debt issuance because that's what's going to happen with or without Bitcoin, then it probably would be pretty good for Bitcoin. But what I'm starting to sense, and I probably should have sensed it a long time ago, is that Tether, Circle, Pi USD are now being looked at by Western facilitators as something that could put the kibosh on Bitcoin.
That coupled with KYC, AML, CFT regulations on self custodial wallets, we enter into a very dangerous territory. The kind of territory that we should have been in seven years ago but weren't. And we were thinking that they missed it. Do not put these people in the dumpster and label them retarded. They are smart. They are conniving. They're fucking brilliant, in fact, but they're evil. They want control, and they're looking at stablecoins as a method of control against Bitcoin. Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Well, if you're rich like Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, and Gail King, you're gonna be able to go on Jeff Bezos' brand new Blue Origin spaceflight. They're they're scheduled for the next launch. They're putting Katy Perry into orbit.
Thought we'd begin with some ludicrous bullshit that, you know, is this is just ridiculous. But oil is being buoyed. Why? It's the oil markets and energy markets are all in the green today. Why? Because yesterday, Trump canceled Chevron's ability to export oil out of Venezuela to The United States. And West Texas Intermediate acted appropriately, up two and a quarter points back up to $70.14 a barrel. Brent Norsee, likewise, up two points, $73.91. Natural gas up over a point and a half to $4.02 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 1.79%, just shy of $2 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are having a bad day, and, of course, Bitcoin is having a bad day as well. Copper is woah. Hold on. What the hell? Where where's gold? Why is gold at the bottom? Oh, oh, I accidentally sorry. I I accidentally hit the hit the sort button. Okay. Gold is at, down 1.41% to $28.89, so down below 2,900. A lot of profit taking has been going on lately. Silver is down 1.65%. Platinum is down two. Palladium down one and a half. Copper is the only one in the green. It's up almost a point. Pretty much mixed in ag land today. Biggest winner today looks to be lumber, point 8% to the upside. Biggest loser is sugar, four and a half to the downside. Live cattle is up three quarters of a point, but lean hogs taking a bath.
Woah. Wow. Taking a bath with the hogs. Four points to the downside. Feeder cattle are up three quarters of a point. Legacy markets rattling around, but most of them are in the red. Dow is the only one up. It's up a third of a point, but the S and P is down a third. Nasdaq is down three quarters, and the S and P Mini is down a third. And Bitcoin is at $84,390. That is a 1,670,000,000,000 market cap. You can only get 29.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,829,738.54 of, and average fees per block are still low.
And that's even with mempools around the world having about, I don't know, I guess about 70. Yeah. About 70 blocks carrying 54,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority gonna get you in at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority transactions are gonna cost you 3 Satoshis per v byte. Hash rate is stable at 784.1 exahashes per second. We did have a downward difficulty adjustment two days ago, 3.15% to the downside on that one. And from the unlaunderables, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and Axelrod, which I haven't seen in a while, but 21,000 sats. Woo hoo hoo, doggy.
Been listening daily, but my wallet was not working since the fountain update. Here's my back sats. Thank you for your great show. Axelrod, you're welcome. Thank you for that huge boost. Oh, and here's another one. Anonymous. 21,000 sats, dude. Been listening daily. Oh, no. It's the same one. So it's possible that I've only got one of those. If there's every once in a while, fountain, kind of I don't know if it's the website that messes up or what, but I've got Axelrod with with 21,000, and I've got anonymous with 21,000 sats, but they have the exact same message. So I'm just gonna go with 21,000 sats.
It doesn't take two weeks for credit cards to settle. War time is arguing with me with 30 333 sats. He says, the payment to the business settles in zero to forty eight hours. However however, they are exposed to chargeback risk for sixty to ninety days, someday sometimes longer. So two weeks, I don't know where you got that. Well, wartime, I got that because I used to run a business and we had credit cards, and we didn't get our money until about two weeks. Now, granted, that was 02/2001 through 02/2005 when we were running that thing, and so I guess shit might have changed, but I hear quite a few people say that they don't get their money in two days from Visa or Mastercard.
So I guess I might be able to say the same thing back to you is where do you get your information? And I mean, because I've got I've got direct experience even though it's, you know, older experience, but still, you know, we'll have to find out who the hell is right. Anyway, he says, but you can look at it settling in two days or ninety days depending on how settled you are referring to. Yeah. If you get charged back on day 89, you're hosed. You know? Like, you you like, you had the money, you thought you had the money, and then all of a sudden, they take the money away. And Bitcoin solves this because essentially, it basically says, hey. You bought it, and then and then your business is with directly with the seller.
So there you go. Anyway, god's def $2.37 says thank you, sir, no thank you. Nick underscore dose with a hundred and 1 says cheers. Pies with a hundred says value for value, hashtag h p w. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And I think that's I think that's it. Yeah. That's it for the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Wartime still pissing me off. No. Actually, at wartime, you're you're fine, dude. I'm just giving you shit, man. The FBI seeks crypto industry help to track, block the laundering of by bit hack funds. Well, I was told by the guys over at Ethereum that that those funds were frozen. There is no way anybody could possibly move that shit. I cannot believe the people associated with Ethereum lied to me. I'm shocked that gambling is going on here. The Federal Bureau of Investigation asked for crypto's industry's help in tracking and blocking transactions intended to launder the $1,500,000,000 stolen by Bybit from the Lazarus Group. The FBI published a list of Ethereum addresses that are holding or have held assets from that theft in a public service announcement on Wednesday.
The announcement reiterated the country's involvement and labeled it a traitor, traitor activity. Really? That's an actual word? Traitor, traitor is all one word, like trader VIX and then trader on the on the end. So it's trader trader. Man, bunch of idiots. The hack had already been attributed to the North Korean link Lazarus Group by blockchain analytics firm, and the ether and eth staking tokens were stolen in the largest hack ever. The illicit actors are converting some of their stolen assets to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains, the PSA said. Oh, I thought I thought those funds were frozen.
There was no way the hackers were gonna be able to spend that money. Telling you, man, don't listen to anything the people out of Ethereum tell you, man. It is all just bogus or lies or misinformation or just straight up ignorance. It's pathetic. Whatever. Meta Planet, they bought some they bought the dip. They did. Meta Planet buys the dip. They issued $13,400,000 in bonds for Bitcoin purchases. This happened today. Arjeet Sarkar, Cointelegraph. Japanese Bitcoin treasury firm, Meta Planet, issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen in bonds to continue expanding its BTC reserves.
On February 27, that is today, Meta Planet announced the fresh issuance of 0% ordinary bonds worth 2,000,000,000 yen to purchase bitcoin. According to the notice, this was the seventh time Meta Planet issued ordinary bonds for making bitcoin purchases. Meta Planet will issue 40 ordinary bonds each with a face value of 50,000,000 yen. The bonds, which bear zero interest, will be redeemable in full August twenty six of twenty twenty five. So that's end of this summer. According to the company, the proceeds will be allocated to evo fund, Meta Planet's dedicated bitcoin acquisition fund. Since May 2024, Meta Planet has purchased bitcoin on 17 occasions, its biggest being 619 BTC on December 2024.
The company has accumulated 2,235 BTC valued at a hundred and $92,400,000. While the company was founded in 1999, the stock prices have struggled since 2013. The company shift towards Bitcoin accumulation has drawn comparisons to, well, of course, strategy, formally micro strategy. So they have bought the dip, I guess. All they're really talking about is that they issued these bonds, but these bonds are for buying Bitcoin. So maybe they're out there buying it right now. Who knows? Let's move on. UK introduces a new crime bill expanding the powers of crypto seizures. Remember we were talking about the senate banking committee and like, you know, the crypto assets senate sub committee with Cynthia Loomis and that idiot Timothy.
I'm telling you, man. This shit's not going away. It's just not. Vismayah, v from Decrypt, the UK government has introduced a brand new spanking bill, expanding its powers to seize and destroy crypto linked to criminal activities. Following the crime and policing bill's first reading in the house of commons, the bill is now undergoing its second reading and will soon proceed to the committee stage. The new legislation seeks to improve law enforcement's ability to confiscate illicit crypto assets and return them to victims while also bolstering the country's overall approach to economic crime.
A key provision of the bill grants the crown court extended power to handle confiscation orders involving crypto. The crown court is a UK court that handles serious criminal cases such as murder, fraud, robbery, etcetera. It also has the authority to pass major sentences. The bill also outlines how to handle assets that must be destroyed, ensuring their value is properly assessed based on market prices at the time of its destruction. In addition to expanding seizure powers, the bill includes provisions to simplify the asset recovery process, allowing law enforcement to recover stolen funds and redirect them to the victims. Oh, we're all victims.
But we're all we're all also criminals, So we steal from ourselves, anyway. The bill strives to ensure that those responsible for crime involving digital assets do not retain the benefits of their ill gotten gains. This new bill compliments the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act passed in 2023, which gave law enforcement additional powers to freeze and seize crypto. The EECTA also aimed to improve corporate accountability in financial crimes, and now this new bill enhances these measures to address the growing threats posed by crypto crime.
Crypto crime sounds like trader traders. Okay. Now, remember I was talking about Pi USD PayPal's, stablecoin? I find this the following fascinating because stable coins, they're all getting into it. It's good, like, stable okay. Altcoins were to retail scammers as stable coins are to industry heavyweights. That's what this is. Stablecoins are they're they're nothing but altcoins, except they attract you thought you thought altcoins and shitcoins attracted the wrong element. Oh, Nelly, you ain't seen nothing yet. And that's why this is so fascinating.
Flash, and this is a note over on Noster, and it will be in the show notes. You'll be there's URL directly to this. PayPal CEO, Alex Chris, post a video of purchasing a hat with Bitcoin over PayPal. Quote, with PayPal, consumers can seamlessly use crypto to pay at millions of merchants. They didn't. He wasn't talking about PiCoin or Pi USD. And and and, like, I'm looking at the video right now, and it's like, hey. I wanna buy these hats. And then down below, it's like, okay. Well, what how do you wanna pay? And then it says, pay with, and then he hits the pay with button.
And there's a drop down, and there's Bitcoin, Pi USD, Ethereum, and PayPal rewards if you have any. And he chose Bitcoin, not Pi USD. I and he bought five hats for, like, $209. I thought he bought one Celtics hat at $209, but I was instantly corrected by my friends on Primal saying that I'm retarded, and I don't I don't really watch what I need to be watching, and they're correct. I'm I'm I'm I'm very retarded. But PayPal think about it this way. You got Bank of America wanting to do stablecoins. PayPal did it in '2 in 2023 with no federal guidance whatsoever. I'm not rah rah them. I'm just saying that they've already got their hooks into the whole stablecoin market, and PayPal is like a disease, man. It's like a virus. It's freaking everywhere. You can buy almost all websites have the choice to be able to pay with PayPal.
And because PayPal will allow you to actually use Bitcoin underneath in its own payment sections, that means all these people can use Bitcoin to buy shit with. And this is the CEO of PayPal. And why he wasn't saying with all the stable coin stuff that's in the news, why the why Chris or whatever his name is, Alex Chris or whatever, wasn't using his own dog food. I find it fascinating. What the hell is going on? And I don't know. I I I don't know. I wish I did know. I wish I could tell you, like, straight up an answer as to why he just bought used Bitcoin instead of his own dog food. I don't know.
But I honestly my gut, which I go with all the time, tells me that that's good news. Let's move on to ARC version 0.5 branch only signing sessions and connector trees. And if you did not know, ARC is a different kind of layer two like the lightning network for bitcoin, but it's not the lightning network. It doesn't utilize the lightning network. It's its own thing, man. Arc version 0.5 is maintenance focused release and it aims to improve overall efficiency and ARC user experience. Quote, ARC 0.5 is about refining the experience for active participants by reducing the number of transactions that you need to sign, speeding up rounds, and simplifying how forfeits work, we aim to lessen the overhead so that you can focus on what matters.
We encourage anyone who wants to be more efficient and have a more efficient arc workflow to upgrade and share any feedback or questions that you have. It's a small but meaningful step towards a more robust user friendly arc. And unless you wanna hear what connector trees are and branch only v t x o tree signing is and network compatibility with transaction costs, I'm not going to read it. What I am going to recommend is that you go look into ARC. If you were excited about Lightning and you're excited about eCash and you were excited about Fediment, we need all of them and we also need ARC. It handles income it handles beginning beginning users liquidity.
Are they all beginning users of of Lightning always have to open a channel. There's no liquidity. It's a it's a heavy lift. And the only reason that there's a whole bunch of us that have actually done that is because we were so geeky and nerdy and, like, completely, like, you know, enamored with lightning that we were definitely willing to do that heavy lift. But most people, they just wanna pay for shit. Arc, from what I understand, has a solution to that onboarding problem and instantaneous liquidity. So if you don't know what ARC is, go check it out. There's links in this particular nobsbitcoin.com story.
The URL to this story will be in the show notes. It's a full URL. All you gotta do is click it. It will open your browser or open a tab, take you right to the story. You'll scroll down and then you'll be able to go to their GitHub repo and read all the stuff that you need to read about ARC, but I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with yet this new up up and coming level two technology for Bitcoin. Sato chip. Sato chip version 0.14 dash 0.2, which is a beta, has Schnorr support for Taproot and Gnoster. And I am unfamiliar with Sato chip. So it is an open source Java card applet implementing a cryptocurrency signing device with full bip 32 bip 39 support.
The SATO chip, with snore snore support for Taproot and Gnoster is out. The new beta version of the sat chip applet brings Schnorr signature support for Taproot that can be used with Sparrow's Sato chip wallet and Schnorr signature support for Nostr that can be tested using the the, what, Pi. Oh, Pi Sato chip version zero point one five point three command line interface. Instructions and supported commands for Nostr testing are available here. So you'll be able to sign a note send on Nostr with well, it looks like a chipped card. And I've I'd like I said, I've never seen Sato chip before. This is a new one on me. Again, URL in the show notes if you want to look at how you might be able to use an outboard signing device with Nasr.
Nunchuk has launched a new and improved group wallet with chat. Nunchuk is a Bitcoin multisig wallet containing premium features such as inheritance planning, scheduled transactions, emergency lockdowns, Taproot multisig decoy wallets, and more available on Android, iOS, and desktop. Nunchuck desktop version one point nine point four three, Android version one point nine point six four, and iOS version one point nine point seven one all introduce a new and improved end to end encrypted group wallet and chat utilizing output descriptors to derive a single shared encryption key for the group.
Quote, we're excited to unveil a completely redesigned group wallet that streamlines collaboration, boosts reliability and simplifies recovery, and best of all, it's available to all Nunchuck users free or paid, announced the project. The feature is powered by a two phase asymmetric and symmetric encryption scheme, then they go into that one. Let's see if there's anything else about here. The new group wallet is our answer to the complexity of collaborative custody. By harnessing output descriptors for encryption, we reduce key management headaches and provide a powerful, secure channel for coordinating transactions, said the project. So I did not know Nunchuk had something called had this thing called group wallet. And I suspect, and I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that it's probably something like this.
You and I, whoever you may be, enter into an agreement and we're gonna start a business. I don't know. Selling snow cones. But we're taking all of our money in Bitcoin and we're paying all of our vendors in Bitcoin. Now we may have to pay our vendors through strike so that we can send strike to Bitcoin and then that vendor automatically has it converted to cash. But let's just say our both of our inputs to the business and our outputs to the business run through a Bitcoin wallet that is a group wallet. And me and you have access to that. And I cannot send money by myself without your say so, without your signature like a multisig. And I and you can't send money unless I sign that particular transaction.
So we both have to do it. So I'm presuming that what Nunchuk has here in this thing called a group wallet is an easy way for people to interact with Bitcoin multisig and be able to say, hey, we both in control of this wallet. We both have to sign all transactions. I don't like the vendor you've chosen. I'm not signing that transaction. You know, it's like and and then you if the worst case scenario happens and you split up and the business dissolves, well, you know, I guess that's that. But, you know, I I this makes sense to me. If you've got partners and all the partners have to vote in a business to be able to buy something, whether it's gonna be, you know, an investment or you're buying something for a business or something like that. And all the parties in that business, they have to all agree.
There's no better way to take a vote than just say, do we vote to sign this do do we vote to to pay this bill? Your vote is basically you signing the transaction to pay that bill. And then if you've got like, if there's three partners and it's a two out of three multisig and two of the partners sign it with valid keys, then boom, it doesn't matter what the third partner wants. They would have been voted no on and the payment just goes through. In a way, it sort of minimizes that step. But that is the end of everything that I had for you this morning. I do hope that you're having a good day and have a better one tomorrow. I'll see you on the other side.
[00:59:31] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 08:42AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the February 2025. This is episode ten forty five of Bitcoin and we got chicanery going on all over the place, man. We've got, house democrats are on the hill proposing a bill. And it has something to do with Orange Man. You can probably guess what, but we'll do it a little bit later. And then Lol Elites has a full blown report on the first digital asset hearing that was done. And if you did not know that that actually happened and senator Cynthia Lummis is the chairperson of that particular committee.
Things were discussed and almost none of them is what we wanted them to discuss. Could could you imagine? Is it possible that that surprises you coming out of a government? Well, yeah. We'll we'll do that one too. Bank of America is definitely gonna go full bore chicanery, and then we've got the FBI in with their fingers in some pies. Meta Planet's in the news. United Kingdom is in the news and not in the way that we want. PayPal CEO is doing some stuff and then we've got some software updates. But first, house Democrats propose a bill to ban presidential meme coins. Meme coins. They're writing an entire bill because Orange Man and his wife had released some meme coins. And as much as I think that that was bad form, this is just as bad form.
If I mean, let's just let's just do it. Helen Parks, Cointelegraph, tell us all about it, man. US Congress has reportedly set to consider legislation that would ban the issuance of meme coins like president Donald Trump's official Trump token. House Democrats are preparing to introduce the, wait for it, modern emule emoluments emoluments. Yes. Modern emoluments and malfeasance enforcement act, otherwise known as the meme act, which would prohibit public officials from profiting from digital assets, California representative Sam Liccardo told ABC News on February.
The draft legislation would prohibit a broad range of public officials and related persons from issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing any security commodity or digital asset. Quote, let's make corruption criminal again, Liccardo said, adding that US public offices began or belong to the public and that officials should not be allowed to leverage their political authority for financial gain. Well, gee. How does that explain Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren and a whole smattering of other people that are worth north of $50,000,000, and their only source of revenue seems to be from their, well, their paycheck being in Congress.
Elizabeth Warren is worth, like, $69,000,000. She makes, like, a hundred and $27,000 a year. How do you do that? I mean, are all these people master traders? Are they all financial experts and little wiz kids? How come they're not looking into that? I'll bet you that's the retaliatory strike if this thing goes down. If this bill ends up getting and here's the thing, Trump's gotta sign it. If this goes all the way to Trump's desk, you know he's just gonna veto it, and then they're gonna have to send it back into congress where it would have to be the whole thing done again. And this time, he would have to pass out of congress by two thirds majority to override the Trump veto.
It's it's amazing. But I guarantee you, if if that if this ends up going to his desk, he will not only veto it. By the same time it gets to his desk, there will be full blown investigations into just how Nancy Pelosi got all of her money. And nobody wants that. Nancy Pelosi does not want that. Elizabeth Warren does not want that. So I kinda don't expect this bill to go anywhere. But the meme act, which is expected to be introduced today, February, will concern the president, the vice president, congress members, senior executive branch officials, and their spouses, and dependent children. Locardo said the bill has a dozen democratic sponsors who are working to build bipartisan support.
Quote, the Trump's issuance of meme coins financially exploits the public for personal gain and raises the specter of insider trading and foreign influence over the executive branch. He stated, Locardo's initiative is one of the first attempts to regulate the nascent meme coin market amid the ongoing legal uncertainty surrounding the cryptocurrency sector. And then we know when he launched his coin, and then his wife launched her coin. And since their launch, both meme coins have plummeted massively with Trump sinking 82% from all time highs and Melania sliding 93%.
And as investors lose billions from the meme coin downturn, Hester Peirce, director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's crypto task force, said most meme coins do not fall under the SEC's jurisdiction. Per stated, or Pierce, however you want to pronounce her last name, stated that oversight should come from Congress or agencies like the Commodities Futures and Trading Commission. Many in the community subsequently criticized regulators for not taking a proactive approach to protect investors, urging the need to establish clear regulations for the market.
Locardo's bill is not the only meme coin related proposal, however, because on February, United States Democratic senator Cortez Mazzo submit submitted an amendment to the concurrent resolution s con resolution seven, proposing to prohibit federal employees or officials from issuing, promoting, or financially benefiting from meme coins in which the Chinese Communist Party invests. Kind of a kind of a weird that's kinda weird. A meme coin, you can't invest in it if and only if the communist Chinese party does? First of all, how would you know?
I don't know. Yeah. All these people are stupid. Anyway, according to some crypt crypto observers, meme coins have partly contributed to the ongoing sell off on the cryptocurrency markets. Quote, what crypto is digesting right now is the end of the meme coin boom, Bitwise chief investment officer, Matt Hogan, said to the financial times. Yeah. You say that are you calling Pete Cloud world mister Hogan? Because, yeah. I I don't expect this to actually end. It'll take a breather, and then it will resurrect itself like the dead zombie piece of crap that it is. But, again, if this bill gets anywhere close to striking distance, I can almost guarantee you the Republican side will have a full retaliatory strike.
It will be mutually assured destruction almost because they will start demanding that United States Senators that are worth oh, I don't know. They might actually put a, you know, like, a a a floor on it. Say, if you're worth more than $10,000,000 and your only salary has ever come from the United States Congress in the last, say, twenty years, then, yeah, we're gonna dig through your bank accounts and all of your trading accounts and all of your brokerage accounts and any hedge fund manager that you've ever freaking talked to, and we're gonna find out how you got $10,000,000 when you were just banking, like, you know, a hundred and $27,000 a year because that's bullshit. And we all know it's bullshit.
That doesn't mean that I'm saying it's okay for Trump to do the meme coin thing. The day the very next day after that shit happened, the the very first episode of this show, I was all over Orange Man for doing that shit. It looks bad. It's unethical. It's very clear that that should never have happened, and yet it did. And there's no excuse for it. And the excuse that he gave looks a little bit or sounds a little bit like Malay, although not as bad as Malay's excuse, because Trump said he just didn't really know all that much about it. But he did promote it, and he didn't say that he didn't say that I didn't promote it, but he did say publicly, I don't know that much about it. Well, that means you're promoting something that you know nothing about, and that's almost worse. Malay, well, we all know what Malay did, so we don't really need to go back into that one. But now it's time to shift gear. I wanna read this piece from Lol Elites.
But first, I want you to hear mister Timothy Massad and what he said at the committee that we're gonna be talking about. Just just
[00:10:07] Unknown:
buckle up and listen. The the challenge is that those stablecoins can then be transferred without going through a centralized intermediary. Our entire BSA, AML, CFT framework relies on centralized intermediary. Mhmm. All transactions run through those centralized intermediaries in some way. And so we've imposed obligations on those intermediaries, banks and others, to do the compliance checks that we want. Stablecoins are very different in that once they've been issued Uh-huh. They can be transferred, exchanged for other, crypto assets, without going through a centralized intermediary. So we have to sort of creatively rethink Uh-huh. How we achieve these, goals. And I think that includes extending the regulatory perimeter, if you will, but also looking at a lot of other creative measures requiring Stablecoin issuers to aggressively monitor transactions Mhmm. Freeze Stablecoins, looking at ways to, design the smart code of a contract so that a transaction doesn't go through Uh-huh. Unless someone has effectively been cleared by an appropriate authority.
[00:11:27] David Bennett:
Rewrite the smart code so that unless you've been confirmed or or or cleared or vetted, your transaction isn't going through. Now half of me was to say that this dude doesn't know a damn thing of what he's talking about because what he's suggesting there is a little bit more difficult than I think he realizes, but that's not the point, is it? Because the real point here is the fact that we've got somebody who just is looking at stablecoins and saying, this is something we can wholeheartedly regulate. Now it gets just a little worse, and Lola Elites from her, publication called The Rage, and you can find it at the rage C o, has this to say, first digital asset hearing, self custodial wallets are Hamas.
No. Seriously, that's that's what she titled it, which means that there's we're probably in for one hell of a ride here. Yesterday, the senate banking subcommittee on digital assets held its first meeting chaired by senator Lummis of Wyoming to explore bipartisan legislative frameworks for digital assets. Invited as witnesses were former CFTC chair and research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Tim Mossad, and that's the guy you just heard from. The global head of policy and government relations at Kraken, Jonathan Joachim or Joachim, I it's hard to pronounce his name. Chief legal officer at Lightspark, Jai Messari, and Lewis Cohen, partner at Cahill Gordon and Rheindale LLP.
As reported by Bitcoin Magazine, the hearing mainly focused on stablecoin regulation with witnesses praising regulatory frameworks in Wyoming and the EU's MICA framework. Quote, stablecoins must be backed one to one with reserves of high quality liquid assets, said LightSparks Messari. Quote, assets should be segregated and beneficially owned by stablecoin holders. Additionally, he said, stablecoin issuers should compete based on innovative payment use cases, not on reserve design. Former CFTC chair, Mossad, agreed, stating that he supports the Genius Act's full reserve requirements. Overall, the hearing's focus on stablecoin reserves may be bad news for Tether, which has recently been driven out of the EU due to Micah's full reserve requirements and has faced widespread critique for the intra or wait. Oh, sorry.
Intra wait. Intrans oh, yes. Sorry. In transparency surrounding its stablecoin backing. I'm pausing to say how many audits have they been through. They they actually have been through quite a few audits, but this is what I was getting at yesterday. There is a full blown attack on Tether, and I think that that this attack on Tether, which is full has a full throated yeehaw from Jeremy Allaire's circle, which also issues their own stablecoin called USDC, I think it's because Paulo Ardoino and his team are not under the thumb of Western governments in general.
And this is what this is highly concerning to me. And it's not because I am a fan of Tether. But like I said yesterday, I would rather have Tether be doing this shit than Jeremy Allaire's circle. But it looks like they're starting to put Tether on the ropes even though they are one of the largest buyers of United States Treasury bonds in the world. They're, like, number thirteenth or sixteenth or something like that. They're they are nation state level buyers of US debt. Did Jeremy Allaire has he made a deal with the United States government to buy even more? I don't know. And I'm not sure what else to say about it. So let's get back to what Lowell is talking about.
However, much more interesting than possible stablecoin regulation was the committee's focus on digital asset compliance. While stablecoins remained in focus, witnesses agreed that existing banking laws should extend to all digital assets. Quote, the Genius Act does not do enough to address the risks of financial crime and sanctions evasion, Mossad stated. It's good that it says that stablecoin issuers are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, but the Bank Secrecy Act only focuses on obligations on centralized intermediaries while stablecoins can be transferred without a centralized intermediary, whether that's on a self hosted wallet or on an automated decentralized exchange, end quote.
While stablecoins do have KYC requirements, once that stablecoin has been issued, it can be transferred many times. There's no requirement to follow that customer, said senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Quote, I can transfer a digital asset from self hosted wallet to self hosted wallet, agreed Mossad. Quote, that can happen several times, and that's why we've seen these things be used for sanctions evasion and for money laundering by Russian smugglers, by Hamas, and by others, end quote. You you see where this is going, don't you? Warner stated that he recognizes what others have said from a classified side that these assets are used as a whole bunch of bad stuff due to the anonymity and the disintermediation role that blockchain plays, asking how do we put in place some protection from the issuer all the way to conversion to fiat.
End quote. Messari agreed stating that quote, the use of stablecoins as a true means of payment is dependent on our ability to get it right when it comes to combating illicit finance and enforcing sanctions. When a transaction happens between self custody wallets, they keep saying this, and if you're not if it's not sinking in, they're talking about me not being able to custody my own Bitcoin. Alright? So get it through your head. When a transaction happens between self custody wallets, there isn't KYC obligations on those, and so those can happen without KYC, Messari continued.
However, adding that, quote, there is an immutable on chain record of those transactions that can be monitored not only by the issuer but by third parties. But isn't this a process of mixers where you still have that blockchain to follow the entity, but you may not know who that entity is without KYC next to it, senator Warren or Warner asked? Quote, absolutely right, Messari responded. People can use a variety of different technologies to, on purpose, obfuscate their financial transaction. That's true on blockchain. That's true in traditional finance.
I think it's really important a really important issue, and I agree that as an industry, we need to continue to develop new tools to address these issues. Quote, when a user transfers a stablecoin to a custodial wallet, so in exchange, there's another point of KYC right there, so the gap is widest when you're talking about unhosted wallet transfers, Messari agreed. Quote, Kraken's role in the market is as a centralized intermediary, and we know who's coming in, who's coming out, said Kraken's Joachim or Jackam. We track not only KYC so we know everyone coming into our platform.
Anything that leaves our platform, if there's any risk of hitting a sanctioned address, it's blocked. There's enhanced monitoring tools. We run these assets through rigor rigorous due diligence tests, cybersecurity tests, legal tests to make sure that everyone participating in our market is subject to KYC and sanctions, Jocham stated. Quote, my colleague, mister Mossad, is absolutely correct that there is an ecosystem out there outside of centralized intermediaries, but the surveillance, the traceability that is available thanks to blockchain technology is unparalleled to any technology that we have seen in history, Joachim continued.
Quote, we briefly alluded to the ability with crypto assets to freeze and seize, which is different from tracking, added Cohen. But it can mean that if a stablecoin issuer identifies that a particular amount of stablecoin is added to an address controlled by an illicit actor, they can functionally turn that off at that time. Stablecoins, in many ways, are a step change better than other assets, end quote. Go. Now this is purely what Lowell Leads has to say in this next paragraph. Going purely on vibes, it seems plausible that we may see congress attempt to rewrite 18 United States code paragraph nineteen sixty as well as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to apply KYC, AML, CFT requirements to self custodial wallet providers and decentralized services as suggested by the fifth circuit's tornado cash sanctions reversal as well as financial action task force virtual asset guidance.
Okay. So it's it sounds pretty bad. Here's the thing, though. I remember a time in Bitcoin when we were when we would all say, k y c k y c my hardware wallet and see how see what you find. Go do it. Current like, yeah. Yeah. You you tell me that I I've gotta put, KYC on my cold card wallet. Good luck. Not gonna do it. And you'll say, but, David, when they when when when somebody sees a transaction from your wallet and, like, let's say you're sending it to a bank or something, they're just gonna say, hey. It's not coming in with KYC. Sorry for you. Yes. And that's that's probably going to be on the horizon.
Will it actually happen? We don't really know. But let's make for the for the sake of argument that it is going to happen. Well, if I send my Bitcoin to you because you're providing me with a half of beef that I'm gonna put into my freezer, that's between me, you, and the side of beef that's in my freezer, and nobody else really needs to know. And then you'll say, yeah, but then they're gonna see when that guy wants wants to send it to to, you know, send that Bitcoin to convert to fiat. They're gonna look down the chain and said, the initial transaction originated from a non k y c self custodial wallet. We're not gonna let you do that. Then then the farmer is incentivized to work with somebody else who also deals on Bitcoin.
This is the way black markets came up. This is exactly why we have black markets in the first place. And if you think they're going away because some bald asshole with glasses is sitting there not wanting to get his lazy ass up and do the actual fucking police work when an actual crime has been committed, but instead would just rather monitor everybody from the from the ease of his armchair, sitting next to his fire in his great big mansion, which he can no way, shape, form, possibly afford on his salary, but somehow or another is worth a hundred million dollars or whatever like Elizabeth Warren is, well, it's easier for him to do that. And it has honestly, it has nothing to do with about with it crushing crime.
Okay? He's he's he's not like the crime dog in the eighties. He's not like that dude. He's not like McGruff. Right? He he's not the the crime dog in the in the Dick Tracy raincoat with the, you know, magnifying glass in the, like, fedora. Right? No. But it's going to go that way. And you're either going to be prepared to continuously get bad news like this and be able to deal with it and rock on through it, or you're gonna continuously be stymied by it. And I see a lot of people in this space, especially in well, actually, clear more in in general shit coin land, but I'm also seeing a lot of hardcore Bitcoiners that I have a lot of respect for start forgetting, or it's become clear to me that they are forgetting from whence they came.
And I think we need to get back into being the serious asshole Bitcoin maximalist that we used to be and say go ahead see if I KYC my own wallet. You know, fuck off. It's just this the whole thing is laughable, but the thing that pisses me off is that throughout this entire thing, if if I were to go if I go back and I read the Bitcoin magazine article that Lowell Lowell Leitz referenced, what we find out is that Bitcoin the word Bitcoin was used exactly two times, once by Cynthia Lummis in her opening statement, and another time by one of the witnesses or one of the one of the people that were testifying.
And that was it. It was all about stablecoins, and it clearly rocked on over into AML, KYC, CFT, Bank Secrecy Act. Everybody's a criminal except us even though we're the actual criminals. And Cynthia Lummis had no spine to say, no. We are not going to just talk about stablecoins. We we wanted to talk they she actually said we're gonna talk about the Bitcoin oh, the her Bitcoin act, and I can't remember the exact name of it. And that's where she said the word Bitcoin in in in her first opening statement. But after that, she just basically let the testimony go completely to stablecoins.
And remember, stablecoins is the last ditch it's not a last ditch attempt. It's probably the last brand new, shiny brand new mechanism for The United States to transport debt away from The United States so that we can continue to rob the rest of the world because that's essentially what we're doing. And it's going to be done by stablecoin. And I have a sneaky suspicion that Tether may be putting up a fight or somehow or another has intimated that maybe this isn't the best, you know, thing that The United States be doing. Maybe they backed off on buying treasury bonds. I don't know. But this sounds like a coordinated effort to me to kill Tether and get Jeremy Allaire's Circle USDC coin as the preeminent stablecoin for the world.
Either way, we are going to export United States debt everywhere using stablecoins. We've been using the US dollar, but now we don't even need that shit anymore. We can just use it we could just use stablecoins. So be prepared. Shit's gonna get weird. And more stablecoin stuff from the Bank of America. What are you talking about, Dave? Bank of Ameri coin. I'd I swear that's what they're gonna call it. Bank of America is planning to launch a stablecoin if legislation passes, and that was out of the mouth of their very own CEO.
This is Andrei Bogansky writing for Decrypt. Bank of America is prepared to debut its very own stablecoin in The US driving or diving headfirst into the crypto space once regulation is passed, said Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. And speaking with the businessman and philanthropist David Rubinstein at the economic club of Washington DC, Moynihan predicted that the endeavor is only a matter of time and the passing of pending legislation, quote, it's pretty clear there's going to be a stablecoin, which is going to be fully dollar backed, he said. If they make that legal, we will go into that business.
Those stablecoins have blossomed into a $232,000,000,000 market without clear rules in The United States. Experts expect that stablecoin legislation could unlock a myriad of new players. What was I telling you weeks ago? You're not going to just see Tether and USDC and a couple of others. You're going to see hundreds, hundreds, absolute hundreds of stablecoins. Most of them are going to be rug pulls and scams. They're gonna be clones of, like, Bank of America coin, but they're not actually going to be Bank of America stablecoin. It is going to be a free for all in in in the scamming world. Do not be fooled.
Continuing, Bank of America is the second largest United States bank behind only JPMorgan. According to its latest earnings release, the Wall Street giant had a whopping two point no. $3,260,000,000,000 in total assets. That's trillion with a t, guys. President Donald Trump may be trying to uplift the industry broadly, but Moynihan described stablecoins as distinct compared to assets like Bitcoin or blockchains in general. He compared stablecoins to money market funds. I'm saying it again for effect. He compared stablecoins to money market funds while saying that they are closely they also closely resemble bank accounts.
Quote, the question of what is useful for what it's useful for is going to be interesting, Moynihan said, referring to the banks would be stable coin as Bank of American sorry, Bank of America coin. You're Moynahan, you're missing the marketing. Bank of Americoin. Bank how how do you miss Bank of Americoin? I'm a I'm the shittiest marketer ever and even I can see that one. Anyway, earlier this year, Moynihan said during an appearance on CNBC Squawk Box that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of stablecoins if legislation is passed. They would find broad use in payments, he said.
Lawmakers have debated for years what a pathway to the legality for stablecoin issuers would look like. Earlier this month, however, senate banking committee chairman Tim Scott vowed to get a regulatory framework for stablecoins passed within Trump's first one hundred days in office. To the consternation of some lawmakers, payment firms, including PayPal, have jumped into the stablecoin space without clear federal rules. The firm debuted its Pi USD stablecoin in 02/2023 and said this week that it wants 20,000,000 merchants using the product this year.
As Bank of America's largest competitor, JPMorgan, has dabbled in the stablecoin space since 02/2020 while pioneering its Onyx blockchain. The firm has positioned JPM Coin as a tool for cross border transactions and payments between financial institutions. Alright. That's the end of the article. Stablecoins at this point become an enemy of Bitcoin. It it it just does. Now I don't make the rules. I just abide by them, but payments, they've got the end. They're leveraging the stable coin. And the stable coin really only came up to facilitate trading on exchanges so that you could dive into something that wasn't the United States dollar. It's kinda like has some some better tax implications than The U you know, good you know, selling your doge or whatever to USD.
You could go into a stable coin and you could keep it there. And that's where Tether came from. It was really all about facilitating trading. And now we're seeing it turn into something that is actually not that good for Bitcoin. And I was thinking I was thinking that if Bitcoin was going to be used as the backer for stablecoins and therefore backing The United States debt issuance because that's what's going to happen with or without Bitcoin, then it probably would be pretty good for Bitcoin. But what I'm starting to sense, and I probably should have sensed it a long time ago, is that Tether, Circle, Pi USD are now being looked at by Western facilitators as something that could put the kibosh on Bitcoin.
That coupled with KYC, AML, CFT regulations on self custodial wallets, we enter into a very dangerous territory. The kind of territory that we should have been in seven years ago but weren't. And we were thinking that they missed it. Do not put these people in the dumpster and label them retarded. They are smart. They are conniving. They're fucking brilliant, in fact, but they're evil. They want control, and they're looking at stablecoins as a method of control against Bitcoin. Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Well, if you're rich like Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, and Gail King, you're gonna be able to go on Jeff Bezos' brand new Blue Origin spaceflight. They're they're scheduled for the next launch. They're putting Katy Perry into orbit.
Thought we'd begin with some ludicrous bullshit that, you know, is this is just ridiculous. But oil is being buoyed. Why? It's the oil markets and energy markets are all in the green today. Why? Because yesterday, Trump canceled Chevron's ability to export oil out of Venezuela to The United States. And West Texas Intermediate acted appropriately, up two and a quarter points back up to $70.14 a barrel. Brent Norsee, likewise, up two points, $73.91. Natural gas up over a point and a half to $4.02 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 1.79%, just shy of $2 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are having a bad day, and, of course, Bitcoin is having a bad day as well. Copper is woah. Hold on. What the hell? Where where's gold? Why is gold at the bottom? Oh, oh, I accidentally sorry. I I accidentally hit the hit the sort button. Okay. Gold is at, down 1.41% to $28.89, so down below 2,900. A lot of profit taking has been going on lately. Silver is down 1.65%. Platinum is down two. Palladium down one and a half. Copper is the only one in the green. It's up almost a point. Pretty much mixed in ag land today. Biggest winner today looks to be lumber, point 8% to the upside. Biggest loser is sugar, four and a half to the downside. Live cattle is up three quarters of a point, but lean hogs taking a bath.
Woah. Wow. Taking a bath with the hogs. Four points to the downside. Feeder cattle are up three quarters of a point. Legacy markets rattling around, but most of them are in the red. Dow is the only one up. It's up a third of a point, but the S and P is down a third. Nasdaq is down three quarters, and the S and P Mini is down a third. And Bitcoin is at $84,390. That is a 1,670,000,000,000 market cap. You can only get 29.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,829,738.54 of, and average fees per block are still low.
And that's even with mempools around the world having about, I don't know, I guess about 70. Yeah. About 70 blocks carrying 54,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priority gonna get you in at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority transactions are gonna cost you 3 Satoshis per v byte. Hash rate is stable at 784.1 exahashes per second. We did have a downward difficulty adjustment two days ago, 3.15% to the downside on that one. And from the unlaunderables, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and Axelrod, which I haven't seen in a while, but 21,000 sats. Woo hoo hoo, doggy.
Been listening daily, but my wallet was not working since the fountain update. Here's my back sats. Thank you for your great show. Axelrod, you're welcome. Thank you for that huge boost. Oh, and here's another one. Anonymous. 21,000 sats, dude. Been listening daily. Oh, no. It's the same one. So it's possible that I've only got one of those. If there's every once in a while, fountain, kind of I don't know if it's the website that messes up or what, but I've got Axelrod with with 21,000, and I've got anonymous with 21,000 sats, but they have the exact same message. So I'm just gonna go with 21,000 sats.
It doesn't take two weeks for credit cards to settle. War time is arguing with me with 30 333 sats. He says, the payment to the business settles in zero to forty eight hours. However however, they are exposed to chargeback risk for sixty to ninety days, someday sometimes longer. So two weeks, I don't know where you got that. Well, wartime, I got that because I used to run a business and we had credit cards, and we didn't get our money until about two weeks. Now, granted, that was 02/2001 through 02/2005 when we were running that thing, and so I guess shit might have changed, but I hear quite a few people say that they don't get their money in two days from Visa or Mastercard.
So I guess I might be able to say the same thing back to you is where do you get your information? And I mean, because I've got I've got direct experience even though it's, you know, older experience, but still, you know, we'll have to find out who the hell is right. Anyway, he says, but you can look at it settling in two days or ninety days depending on how settled you are referring to. Yeah. If you get charged back on day 89, you're hosed. You know? Like, you you like, you had the money, you thought you had the money, and then all of a sudden, they take the money away. And Bitcoin solves this because essentially, it basically says, hey. You bought it, and then and then your business is with directly with the seller.
So there you go. Anyway, god's def $2.37 says thank you, sir, no thank you. Nick underscore dose with a hundred and 1 says cheers. Pies with a hundred says value for value, hashtag h p w. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And I think that's I think that's it. Yeah. That's it for the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Wartime still pissing me off. No. Actually, at wartime, you're you're fine, dude. I'm just giving you shit, man. The FBI seeks crypto industry help to track, block the laundering of by bit hack funds. Well, I was told by the guys over at Ethereum that that those funds were frozen. There is no way anybody could possibly move that shit. I cannot believe the people associated with Ethereum lied to me. I'm shocked that gambling is going on here. The Federal Bureau of Investigation asked for crypto's industry's help in tracking and blocking transactions intended to launder the $1,500,000,000 stolen by Bybit from the Lazarus Group. The FBI published a list of Ethereum addresses that are holding or have held assets from that theft in a public service announcement on Wednesday.
The announcement reiterated the country's involvement and labeled it a traitor, traitor activity. Really? That's an actual word? Traitor, traitor is all one word, like trader VIX and then trader on the on the end. So it's trader trader. Man, bunch of idiots. The hack had already been attributed to the North Korean link Lazarus Group by blockchain analytics firm, and the ether and eth staking tokens were stolen in the largest hack ever. The illicit actors are converting some of their stolen assets to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains, the PSA said. Oh, I thought I thought those funds were frozen.
There was no way the hackers were gonna be able to spend that money. Telling you, man, don't listen to anything the people out of Ethereum tell you, man. It is all just bogus or lies or misinformation or just straight up ignorance. It's pathetic. Whatever. Meta Planet, they bought some they bought the dip. They did. Meta Planet buys the dip. They issued $13,400,000 in bonds for Bitcoin purchases. This happened today. Arjeet Sarkar, Cointelegraph. Japanese Bitcoin treasury firm, Meta Planet, issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen in bonds to continue expanding its BTC reserves.
On February 27, that is today, Meta Planet announced the fresh issuance of 0% ordinary bonds worth 2,000,000,000 yen to purchase bitcoin. According to the notice, this was the seventh time Meta Planet issued ordinary bonds for making bitcoin purchases. Meta Planet will issue 40 ordinary bonds each with a face value of 50,000,000 yen. The bonds, which bear zero interest, will be redeemable in full August twenty six of twenty twenty five. So that's end of this summer. According to the company, the proceeds will be allocated to evo fund, Meta Planet's dedicated bitcoin acquisition fund. Since May 2024, Meta Planet has purchased bitcoin on 17 occasions, its biggest being 619 BTC on December 2024.
The company has accumulated 2,235 BTC valued at a hundred and $92,400,000. While the company was founded in 1999, the stock prices have struggled since 2013. The company shift towards Bitcoin accumulation has drawn comparisons to, well, of course, strategy, formally micro strategy. So they have bought the dip, I guess. All they're really talking about is that they issued these bonds, but these bonds are for buying Bitcoin. So maybe they're out there buying it right now. Who knows? Let's move on. UK introduces a new crime bill expanding the powers of crypto seizures. Remember we were talking about the senate banking committee and like, you know, the crypto assets senate sub committee with Cynthia Loomis and that idiot Timothy.
I'm telling you, man. This shit's not going away. It's just not. Vismayah, v from Decrypt, the UK government has introduced a brand new spanking bill, expanding its powers to seize and destroy crypto linked to criminal activities. Following the crime and policing bill's first reading in the house of commons, the bill is now undergoing its second reading and will soon proceed to the committee stage. The new legislation seeks to improve law enforcement's ability to confiscate illicit crypto assets and return them to victims while also bolstering the country's overall approach to economic crime.
A key provision of the bill grants the crown court extended power to handle confiscation orders involving crypto. The crown court is a UK court that handles serious criminal cases such as murder, fraud, robbery, etcetera. It also has the authority to pass major sentences. The bill also outlines how to handle assets that must be destroyed, ensuring their value is properly assessed based on market prices at the time of its destruction. In addition to expanding seizure powers, the bill includes provisions to simplify the asset recovery process, allowing law enforcement to recover stolen funds and redirect them to the victims. Oh, we're all victims.
But we're all we're all also criminals, So we steal from ourselves, anyway. The bill strives to ensure that those responsible for crime involving digital assets do not retain the benefits of their ill gotten gains. This new bill compliments the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act passed in 2023, which gave law enforcement additional powers to freeze and seize crypto. The EECTA also aimed to improve corporate accountability in financial crimes, and now this new bill enhances these measures to address the growing threats posed by crypto crime.
Crypto crime sounds like trader traders. Okay. Now, remember I was talking about Pi USD PayPal's, stablecoin? I find this the following fascinating because stable coins, they're all getting into it. It's good, like, stable okay. Altcoins were to retail scammers as stable coins are to industry heavyweights. That's what this is. Stablecoins are they're they're nothing but altcoins, except they attract you thought you thought altcoins and shitcoins attracted the wrong element. Oh, Nelly, you ain't seen nothing yet. And that's why this is so fascinating.
Flash, and this is a note over on Noster, and it will be in the show notes. You'll be there's URL directly to this. PayPal CEO, Alex Chris, post a video of purchasing a hat with Bitcoin over PayPal. Quote, with PayPal, consumers can seamlessly use crypto to pay at millions of merchants. They didn't. He wasn't talking about PiCoin or Pi USD. And and and, like, I'm looking at the video right now, and it's like, hey. I wanna buy these hats. And then down below, it's like, okay. Well, what how do you wanna pay? And then it says, pay with, and then he hits the pay with button.
And there's a drop down, and there's Bitcoin, Pi USD, Ethereum, and PayPal rewards if you have any. And he chose Bitcoin, not Pi USD. I and he bought five hats for, like, $209. I thought he bought one Celtics hat at $209, but I was instantly corrected by my friends on Primal saying that I'm retarded, and I don't I don't really watch what I need to be watching, and they're correct. I'm I'm I'm I'm very retarded. But PayPal think about it this way. You got Bank of America wanting to do stablecoins. PayPal did it in '2 in 2023 with no federal guidance whatsoever. I'm not rah rah them. I'm just saying that they've already got their hooks into the whole stablecoin market, and PayPal is like a disease, man. It's like a virus. It's freaking everywhere. You can buy almost all websites have the choice to be able to pay with PayPal.
And because PayPal will allow you to actually use Bitcoin underneath in its own payment sections, that means all these people can use Bitcoin to buy shit with. And this is the CEO of PayPal. And why he wasn't saying with all the stable coin stuff that's in the news, why the why Chris or whatever his name is, Alex Chris or whatever, wasn't using his own dog food. I find it fascinating. What the hell is going on? And I don't know. I I I don't know. I wish I did know. I wish I could tell you, like, straight up an answer as to why he just bought used Bitcoin instead of his own dog food. I don't know.
But I honestly my gut, which I go with all the time, tells me that that's good news. Let's move on to ARC version 0.5 branch only signing sessions and connector trees. And if you did not know, ARC is a different kind of layer two like the lightning network for bitcoin, but it's not the lightning network. It doesn't utilize the lightning network. It's its own thing, man. Arc version 0.5 is maintenance focused release and it aims to improve overall efficiency and ARC user experience. Quote, ARC 0.5 is about refining the experience for active participants by reducing the number of transactions that you need to sign, speeding up rounds, and simplifying how forfeits work, we aim to lessen the overhead so that you can focus on what matters.
We encourage anyone who wants to be more efficient and have a more efficient arc workflow to upgrade and share any feedback or questions that you have. It's a small but meaningful step towards a more robust user friendly arc. And unless you wanna hear what connector trees are and branch only v t x o tree signing is and network compatibility with transaction costs, I'm not going to read it. What I am going to recommend is that you go look into ARC. If you were excited about Lightning and you're excited about eCash and you were excited about Fediment, we need all of them and we also need ARC. It handles income it handles beginning beginning users liquidity.
Are they all beginning users of of Lightning always have to open a channel. There's no liquidity. It's a it's a heavy lift. And the only reason that there's a whole bunch of us that have actually done that is because we were so geeky and nerdy and, like, completely, like, you know, enamored with lightning that we were definitely willing to do that heavy lift. But most people, they just wanna pay for shit. Arc, from what I understand, has a solution to that onboarding problem and instantaneous liquidity. So if you don't know what ARC is, go check it out. There's links in this particular nobsbitcoin.com story.
The URL to this story will be in the show notes. It's a full URL. All you gotta do is click it. It will open your browser or open a tab, take you right to the story. You'll scroll down and then you'll be able to go to their GitHub repo and read all the stuff that you need to read about ARC, but I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with yet this new up up and coming level two technology for Bitcoin. Sato chip. Sato chip version 0.14 dash 0.2, which is a beta, has Schnorr support for Taproot and Gnoster. And I am unfamiliar with Sato chip. So it is an open source Java card applet implementing a cryptocurrency signing device with full bip 32 bip 39 support.
The SATO chip, with snore snore support for Taproot and Gnoster is out. The new beta version of the sat chip applet brings Schnorr signature support for Taproot that can be used with Sparrow's Sato chip wallet and Schnorr signature support for Nostr that can be tested using the the, what, Pi. Oh, Pi Sato chip version zero point one five point three command line interface. Instructions and supported commands for Nostr testing are available here. So you'll be able to sign a note send on Nostr with well, it looks like a chipped card. And I've I'd like I said, I've never seen Sato chip before. This is a new one on me. Again, URL in the show notes if you want to look at how you might be able to use an outboard signing device with Nasr.
Nunchuk has launched a new and improved group wallet with chat. Nunchuk is a Bitcoin multisig wallet containing premium features such as inheritance planning, scheduled transactions, emergency lockdowns, Taproot multisig decoy wallets, and more available on Android, iOS, and desktop. Nunchuck desktop version one point nine point four three, Android version one point nine point six four, and iOS version one point nine point seven one all introduce a new and improved end to end encrypted group wallet and chat utilizing output descriptors to derive a single shared encryption key for the group.
Quote, we're excited to unveil a completely redesigned group wallet that streamlines collaboration, boosts reliability and simplifies recovery, and best of all, it's available to all Nunchuck users free or paid, announced the project. The feature is powered by a two phase asymmetric and symmetric encryption scheme, then they go into that one. Let's see if there's anything else about here. The new group wallet is our answer to the complexity of collaborative custody. By harnessing output descriptors for encryption, we reduce key management headaches and provide a powerful, secure channel for coordinating transactions, said the project. So I did not know Nunchuk had something called had this thing called group wallet. And I suspect, and I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that it's probably something like this.
You and I, whoever you may be, enter into an agreement and we're gonna start a business. I don't know. Selling snow cones. But we're taking all of our money in Bitcoin and we're paying all of our vendors in Bitcoin. Now we may have to pay our vendors through strike so that we can send strike to Bitcoin and then that vendor automatically has it converted to cash. But let's just say our both of our inputs to the business and our outputs to the business run through a Bitcoin wallet that is a group wallet. And me and you have access to that. And I cannot send money by myself without your say so, without your signature like a multisig. And I and you can't send money unless I sign that particular transaction.
So we both have to do it. So I'm presuming that what Nunchuk has here in this thing called a group wallet is an easy way for people to interact with Bitcoin multisig and be able to say, hey, we both in control of this wallet. We both have to sign all transactions. I don't like the vendor you've chosen. I'm not signing that transaction. You know, it's like and and then you if the worst case scenario happens and you split up and the business dissolves, well, you know, I guess that's that. But, you know, I I this makes sense to me. If you've got partners and all the partners have to vote in a business to be able to buy something, whether it's gonna be, you know, an investment or you're buying something for a business or something like that. And all the parties in that business, they have to all agree.
There's no better way to take a vote than just say, do we vote to sign this do do we vote to to pay this bill? Your vote is basically you signing the transaction to pay that bill. And then if you've got like, if there's three partners and it's a two out of three multisig and two of the partners sign it with valid keys, then boom, it doesn't matter what the third partner wants. They would have been voted no on and the payment just goes through. In a way, it sort of minimizes that step. But that is the end of everything that I had for you this morning. I do hope that you're having a good day and have a better one tomorrow. I'll see you on the other side.
[00:59:31] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
Market Updates and Bitcoin Analysis
