Join me today for Episode 1049 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- BTC to be Treated "Differently" in Strategic Reserve
- Bukele Thumbs Nose at IMF Demands
- Did GameStop Buy Bitcoin?
- Belarus Considers Mining BTC
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 09:36AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the March 2025. This is episode ten forty eight of Bitcoin, and there's going to be a Bitcoin reserve announcement coming this Friday according to Commerce Secretary Lutnick. And he's talking about well, he's talking about this White House crypto summit, and we're gonna talk about the attendees who have so far confirmed that they're going to be there. Also, some interesting developments with GameStop. I'll talk about it. I promise. El Salvador is gonna be back in the news. And it seems that Bukele is thumbing his nose yet again at the IMF. And, honestly, I'm flat ass confused by exactly what all this is. It doesn't make sense.
I'll try to parse it out for you. Got a a a a note here from Bitcoin headline on Noster that looks like it's tracing every single, Ethereum or Ether transaction from the Bybit hack, and it has an interesting development at the end. And then and then we're gonna talk about what happened to the Dixie or the dollar index before we do the numbers. And then Meta Planet's in the news, and then I got Belarus. Lushchenko is in the news as well, and it's obviously about Bitcoin. And then we have some ATMs, and I'm not talking about at the market. I'm talking about actual automate automated teller machines going dark, and then we will have, news on a Phoenix wallet update. But first, Bitcoin reserve announcement coming on Friday says commerce secretary from Decrypt dot CEO written by Stephen Graves.
The proposed US crypto strategic reserve is expected to be announced this Friday, according to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, with Bitcoin set to hold a unique status while other cryptocurrencies will be, quote, treated differently. Let me just pause because I am a podcast listener too. And chances are good, you might have just perked your ears up right in the middle of that. So I'm going to read that entire sentence one more time. Listen up. The proposed United States crypto strategic reserve is expected to be announced this coming Friday, according to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.
And here's the important part. With Bitcoin set to hold a unique status while shitcoins will be, quote, treated differently. Now I've seen several news articles about this. Let's see what Decrypt has to say further. Speaking to news outlet, The Pavlovic, today, Lutnick said that, quote, a Bitcoin strategic reserve is something that the president's interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you're going to see it executed on Friday, end quote. The United States commerce department did not immediately respond to a request from decrypt for further comment. Of course, they're not. They're gonna wait until Friday, dude. Letnik discussed the status of other cryptocurrencies earmarked for a US strategic crypto reserve stating that, quote, Bitcoin is one thing and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently, positively, but differently, end quote.
In a Sunday post on his true social account, United States President Donald Trump said, hey. We're gonna add shit coins, and it freaked everybody out, and that's all I wanna say about that. So let's move on to this next paragraph. The expected announcement of the United States strategic crypto reserve on Friday, that's this coming Friday, not today, not tomorrow, but the day after that, would coincide with the White House's first crypto summit with confirmed in attendees including and then there's a bunch of names, and I've got a whole list of names that we'll get to here in a second. But it's set to be chaired by artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sachs.
The gathering is the first in a series of sporadic crypto summits that will essentially replace president Donald Trump's promised, quote, crypto council, which was abandoned due to industry infighting over priorities. Yeah. The only priority here is Bitcoin. Everything else is a shitcoin, and if you hold it, you're going to get rugged. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Every single time something of note comes up, the very first idiots that spill out of the woodwork like the fucking termites that they are is people like Brad Garlinghouse and Brian Armstrong and the rest of the Hitler youth who absolutely just love shitcoins and just seem to not under well, Garlinghouse understands. Brian understands. They understand it, but they are affinity scammers.
Hey. This is like Bitcoin, and it's going to be just as good as Bitcoin, or it will still have utility. It may not be as good as Bitcoin, but it's gonna have its utility, and you're gonna need to buy some. And so, therefore, they're all basically infighting on two fronts. One is their Shitcoin is better than the other guy's Shitcoin, and all of them together are trying to go after Bitcoin itself. So there's there's two infighting fronts. And the only way to really survive all of this is to buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, and only talk to people about Bitcoin. And if they bring up anything else, just lambasted.
Somebody comes up to you and says, well, I know that you're into Bitcoin, but what do you think about Ether? Shit coin. But surely, Ripple's okay. Shit coin. But what about Cardech? Shit coin. What shit coin. You see how this works? Now speaking of the attendees at this White House crypto summit, we have confirmed and unconfirmed names. So who is unconfirmed first? Well, amazingly enough, Howard Lutnick himself, the commerce commerce secretary, is unconfirmed, as is the treasury secretary, Scott Bessant. And Pam Bondi is also unconfirmed. Now outside of that, who else is unconfirmed?
Cathie Wood, which is the founder and CEO of ARK Invest, God forbid Vitalik Buterin, you know who he is, Jeremy Allaire, cofounder and CEO of Circle, is also unconfirmed. Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, unconfirmed. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano. An and hold on. Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder of Solana, and Marc Andreessen of a sixteen z, or as we all know it, Andreessen Horowitz, which was an early investor in Ripple. All those people are unconfirmed. Let's get to the confirmed side of this page. From the White House or at least in the government, Beau Hines is confirmed, executive director of the presidential council of advisors for digital assets. Of course, David Sachs, the AI and crypto czar is going to be there. Mark Ulleda, the acting chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Carolyn Pham, the acting chairman of the US Commodity Futures and Trading Commission. Now outside the United States government, Michael Saylor will be there. David Bailey, the CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, Matt Huang, cofounder of Paradigm, JP Richardson, the CEO of Exodus, Kyle Simani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, Zach Whitkopf, cofounder of Trump linked World Liberty Financial, Sergei Nazarov, the cofounder of Chainlink, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.
Oh, that's gonna be interesting. Arjun Sethi from Kraken, Chris Marzalek from Crypto.com, and, of course, Brad freaking Garlinghouse. So it's going to be interesting this Friday. I do not know the time at which this is supposed to occur. Wait a minute. No. No. I do. The summit is on March, and the roundtable is scheduled from 06:30PM to 10:30PM UTC. That is UTC, not not Pacific Standard Time. It's 06:30PM to 10:30PM UTC. Go grab your world clock and see what time that is for you. Let me see if there's anything else of note in this particular one. I don't think there really is. But, hey, you know, the shitcoiners are coming out of the woodwork.
It's gonna be all kinds of fun. Now GameStop. I saw a very interesting, Twitter post, yesterday. And this one is from a guy named, at value orion. That's his handle on Twitter. And he says, confirming, autopilot is showing GameStop as the third largest publicly traded company with Bitcoin holdings. No confirmation yet from GameStop, Ryan Cohen, or Larry VC. Now that is a retweet of this Peruvian bull tweet over on Twitter that says the autopilot app and autopilot is sort of like it's like a app you get on your phone. You can follow people's trades, and it's kinda like you can trade with the best of them, you know, like like Nancy Pelosi.
And there used to be I can't remember what it was. There used to be I think it was, like, TradeOne where you could, like, load BTC into a BTC wallet on TradeOne and then follow other traders and just invest exactly the way that they invested. And autopilot seems to be kinda like that, but people are looking at this autopilot app, and they're seeing that GameStop is showing as now this approving bullet says that he's looking at games at at this autopilot, and GameStop is showing as the third largest holder of Bitcoin, not confirmed, but bullish.
And that was from, you know, that was from yesterday. I have yet to see any confirmation at all. And it it shows that GME is an 11% holder of Bitcoin, and and nobody knows what the hell that means. IBit, it's like I'm what I'm doing is I'm I'm looking at the screenshot from this autopilot, and this is the screenshot that the header says companies holding Bitcoin, and the number one on top is iBit, and then it just says 18%. What do you mean 18%? I don't understand these percentage numbers. If anybody understands autopilot a hell of a lot better than I do because I don't even have the app yet, I haven't I haven't loaded it in, this is the first time even hearing about it, please tell me what the hell these percentages mean because they don't make any sense. Because MSR or MSTR, it says 16%.
This is a company under the heading companies holding Bitcoin. 16 percent of what? And then we go to GameStop, which is at 11%, and then Coinbase is at 10%, Mara's at nine, Tesla at eight, Riot seven, x y z at six, and something called CLSK at five. And, again, a, completely unconfirmed. Cannot get any news story at all about whether or not GameStop actually bought a bunch of Bitcoin because they would have to have bought a bunch of Bitcoin to get to the number two spot behind iBit. So amazing. It's and, honestly yeah. No. I mean, I behind, MicroStrategy, They would had to have bought a lot.
I cannot find anything, and I don't know what these percentages mean. So, again, please, please, sending out the the the bat signal for help. I'd if you understand what the hell that means, please let me know. Now from El Salvador, Bukele is vowing to continue Bitcoin purchases despite the International Monetary Fund deal. Danny Park is writing this one for the block. President Nayib Bukele said that El Salvador will not stop purchasing Bitcoin despite its deal with the IMF to scale back Bitcoin activities. Quote, no. It's not stopping. If it didn't stop when the world ostracized us and most, quote, Bitcoiners abandoned us, it won't stop now, and it won't stop in the future, end quote.
Last December, El Salvador and the IMF reached an agreement for the country to limit Bitcoin related activities in exchange for a financing package, including a $1,400,000,000 loan with the total package expected to be worth over $3,500,000,000. The IMF previously said that El Salvador's Bitcoin reserve held potential risks that have not yet materialized. The country's congress moved quickly to comply with IMF requirements approving amendments that included making the acceptance of Bitcoin voluntary for the private sector according to Reuters. And last month, the IMF approved the $1,400,000,000 loan, giving El Salvador an immediate disbursement of around a hundred and $13,000,000.
Quote, going forward, program commitments will confine government engagement in Bitcoin related economic activities as well as government transactions in and the purchases of Bitcoin, the IMF wrote in a press release. Nonetheless, El Salvador Strategic Reserve announced earlier Tuesday that it added more Bitcoin to its holdings, raising the total to 6,101.18 BTC worth over $535,000,000. In a reply to Bukele's ex post, Jan three CEO, Samson Moe, questioned how the IMF deal will impact El Salvador's future Bitcoin purchases. Gukele has yet to respond to Moe's question, opting instead to repost other supportive messages from strategy CEO Michael Saylor and crypto podcast host Peter McCormick.
The block has reached out to the El Salvador government for further comment. And they bought they bought, another Bitcoin yesterday or yesterday evening. So I don't know what's going on here. I mean, this is the only thing that I can figure or as a as a potential possibility is that Bukele is just playing he's just playing with the IMF like a cat plays with the mouse before it kills it. Now Bukele can't kill the IMF, but he can certainly play with it. And I don't know because I don't know what his game is. If if El Salvador needs this loan, and I don't know why they do, so that's one question, then they need the $3,500,000,000 loan.
They have only gotten approved so far for a $1,400,000,000 loan, and they've only had $113,000,000 of that preliminary loan actually dispersed as cash that they can use, which they immediately started buying Bitcoin. I don't know if they used exactly that money, but it really doesn't matter, does it? Because they got they got a whole I got a hundred and $13,000,000 from the IMF on a $1,400,000,000 loan. They start buying Bitcoin. It doesn't matter where the money came from. Okay. So then the IMF gets pissed. It says, look. You're gonna have to stop buying Bitcoin.
Otherwise, we're not gonna give you the loan, and I haven't actually seen any of that language at all. They just said they issued the statement yesterday and said you gotta stop buying Bitcoin. You can't purchase it as part of, you know, your government activities. And then Bukele ends up buying more Bitcoin. And then as if to add insult to injury, he tweets out that he's never going to stop buying Bitcoin. Well, would that not anger the IMF and have them pull the plug on this loan? See, that's where it starts to get really, really gray. What the hell is is Bukele doing? There's two questions in my mind that I think are the most important questions here.
Why does El Salvador need this loan? Is something going on in El Salvador where they would purposely put themselves under the thumb of an institution that Bukele knows has become inherently evil, that the IMF is evil. Make no mistake. Okay. So what could be going on that you would do that? Second, how is this not going if they need the loan, how is his activities of continuously thumbing his nose at the IMF and possibly using directly their fundage to actually buy Bitcoin in clear violation of what they want in order for this whole deal to go forward, what is that what happens?
And I cannot find any clear answers at all about this deal. What is it for? I mean, there it's vague. Everything about this is vague, and it just bugs the crap out of me that I cannot find any credible information as to exactly what this loan is for, under what situation Bukele's thought this was a good idea to put himself back underneath the thumb of the IMF, and what the IMF's reaction is to the continuous nosing of the thumb or thumbing of the nose or however you wanna put it. It's all bizarre to me, but we got other fish to fry, and those fish have been converted to Bitcoin. The Ethereum or the ether or whatever you wanna call that shitcoin that got hacked from Bybit, according to Bitcoin headline and Arkham Intelligence, has been fully 100% converted into Bitcoin.
There's no Ethereum left or no ether left. And the this guy has got a screenshot of a very, very convoluted, very convoluted tracing of all of the wallet addresses from whence the ether came to where the ether went, and it just there's just wallet upon wallet upon wallet upon wallet until finally the ether just disappears. And I'm going to take the guy's word for it that the North Korea Lazarus Group has fully laundered the proceeds of the Bybit hack. They swapped the stolen ETH for BTC according to Arkham Intelligence. And, again, that is Bitcoin headline or, yeah, Bitcoin headline over on Nostr. It's got a full screenshot.
If you want to see exactly what I'm looking at, the primal.net URL link directly to this note is in the show notes. So go click it, and it will take you right here. Now do you want some maple syrup? Because the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you with goods and services to plebs just like you who want to buy with Bitcoin goods and services. And if you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. Maple trade is in the circle p because he sells his handmade Ohio maple syrup for Bitcoin.
And if you tell Maple trade that you bought your that you bought your his maple syrup because I told you here on the Circle p for the Bitcoin and podcast, he will cut me Satoshis for what he thinks the value of me bringing his product to you actually was. It's value for value advertising, and you will not find it anywhere but the circle p. I've had his maple syrup. It is made by hand. He taps the trees himself. He does all the work. He boils it down. He does osmosis. I'm not exactly sure what goes on in in the whole thing of making maple syrup, but it I think the last I think he said he tapped a 75 trees, maple trees, which means he's gotta go lug all of that sap after those bottles are full and then boil it all down. It's a labor intensive labor of love, ladies and gentlemen. And, also, ask him about his sister Sarah's soaps. His sister Sarah makes some fine soaps. I've used those as well. Can't recommend them enough. Make sure that you tell Maple Trade that you heard it here here on the circle p, and you can find his. And I've got this time, I've got his, Bysnerd's Twitter handle URL in my so all you gotta do is find where it says, like, maple syrup, and then there's, like, a a a a Twitter URL.
You'll go right to them, give him a a direct message or reply to him or or, you know, hit him up in x and, you know, tell him that you want his maple syrup. Alright? So and then make sure that you tell him that that I sent you. What else we got? Oh, the Dixie. I would start singing the song, but I'd be calling a racist. Dollar index declines below $1.00 5 as the Bitcoin price hits 90 k, and this is out of CoinDesk, and it's written by James Van Stratten. At the start of the year, CoinDesk research indicated that the dollar index, a measure of the United States dollar strength against a basket of major trading partners, was mirroring its trajectory from Donald Trump's first term as president.
Between September 2024 and January 2025 coinciding with Trump's reelection, the dollar index, or the Dixie, climbed from 100 to 110. This current cycle, the index peaked at 110 in mid January, but has since dropped below one zero five for the first time since the November. If the Dixie were to fall to around a hundred and three, it would erase all of its gains since Trump's victory in November. Typically, a Dixie index above 100 is considered strong, which tends to put pressure on risk assets. However, as the index dipped below one zero five, Bitcoin rose above $88,000 A similar pattern was observed in 2017 when the Dixie fell from 103 to below 90 coinciding with Bitcoin's bull run that year.
That saw it top out at $20,000 in September. Despite this, macroeconomic uncertainty persists with concerns surrounding tariffs, inflation, and US GDP growth. The economy appears to be slowing, and Friday's jobs report is expected to show a continuation of 4% unemployment. If the report comes in weaker than anticipated, treasury yields could continue declining, increasing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve could consider a rate cut in its March meeting, and that March meeting is coming up, I believe, this Friday, if I'm not mistaken. So yields on the treasury bonds have been have been going down.
The Dixie and people say, well, we want a strong dollar. Half of those people have absolutely no idea what they're saying. Most of those people, in fact, think that a strong dollar means rah rah USA. That's not exactly what it means. It means that a lot of other countries don't want to, sell us well, they don't really wanna sell us their goods and services because the dollar is strong, and they've got a they've got they've, you know, they've got to buy stuff and sell stuff to us at their at their currency. The way that the way that their currency works at their country, what they can buy, what they can sell for, If we have a strong dollar, it makes it much less likely that business is being conducted between countries other countries in The United States.
Whereas a weaker dollar, they do. Like, like, if it like, if if I got a strong dollar, a really, really strong dollar, and somebody from Ireland that is comparatively weak currency against The United States Dollar flies their happy ass over here. Their hotel room is a lot more expensive. Their food is a lot more expensive. They don't really wanna be here. So from a travel and tourism standpoint, a strong dollar does not really help tourism of people coming from other countries to The United States. That's one example of why when people say we want a strong dollar, you kinda don't. But you don't want it so freakishly weak that the the the inverse is true. Where if you're a United States citizen and you go, I don't know, anywhere else in the world, all of a sudden your dollar when it's converted to, like, bought in Thailand or whatever it is that they use, doesn't buy as much.
So there's there's a there's a happy sweet spot in there somewhere. So just be aware that sometimes when we talk about a strong dollar, it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. I got all kinds of weirdness happening today. The oil is on its ass really bad, and this has to do with OPEC plus saying that they are gonna go ahead and add, I think it's a 38,000 barrels of oil a day to its production. Starting April is what they said, and, of course, oil reacted violently. West Texas Intermediate is down three full points to sixty six dollars and twenty two cents a a barrel, and Brent, North Sea is down two and a half to $69.24.
But natural gas is making its gains. One and a half percent of the upside brings it to $4.41 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline off its ass, 33.27% to the downside brings it to $2.12 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks doing okay. Gold is up point 13%. Silver is up well over two full points. Platinum is up a fifth of a point. Copper is up 5.1%, and palladium is down three quarters of a point. Ag is mostly in the green today. Biggest winner today looks to be coffee, 2.33% to the upside. Chocolate, as usual, is the biggest loser, 2% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third of a point. Lean hogs are up 3.37%, and feeder cattle are up point 81%.
The Dow now here's where here's where it gets weird. All of the equity legacy indices are in the green. Point 72% to the upside for the Dow. S and P is up two thirds of a point. Nasdaq is up point 85%, and the S and P Mini is up almost a half. Why? Because earlier this morning at about 5AM, my time, shit was down like, the Dow was down 300 points. It is now up 300 points. Right? So that was like that that was a reversal, a complete reversal for the Dow and all the rest all the rest of the equities markets they all gained. Why?
Because the jobs report came out. And there's word on the street that Trump might be relaxing some of his tariff rhetoric, but I think this is actually more about the jobs print than anything else. I've got this one from finance.yahoo.com. A fresh look at the jobs market on Wednesday provided another sign of potential cracks in the economy. Data from ADP showed that private sector companies added only 77,000 jobs in February, a significant slump from January, and also far below economist expectations. The ADP print is one in a series of jobs readings that tee up Friday's all important nonfarm payrolls report.
We came in on a really soft print on jobs. So why does that affect the Dow and the rest of the equity markets? Because now now we've got a crack in the economy. Therefore, the Fed very well may, in this this month, reduce the federal funds lending rate. So we may see a point 25% drop. We don't know. We we literally don't know what the hell the Fed is gonna do. But this just makes it more likely that they will or at least strongly consider either this month or next month dropping the federal funds rate to help the economy along, which makes risk assets not so risky because the cost of borrowing the money to buy into those risk assets becomes cheaper.
And therefore, people are, like, kind of like hedging what they think is going to be a fed funds rate cut this month. So we'll we'll have to see. But let's get on in on into, Bitcoin, which is having slight rally this morning. $89,390, that's a 1,770,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 30.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,832,419.75 of an average fees per block are still low, 0.04, taking fees on a per block basis. There are about 55 blocks carrying 16,400 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priorities get you in at four.
And let's see. Hash rate has has fallen precipitously. We are back down to 788.4 exahashes per second, so do with that what you will. From Trump and dump, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got FOMO chronic with 1,001 sats. It's a palindrome boost. And he says, nothing. Damn it. Anonymous with a thousand says nothing. But Bitcoin for president didn't give me a thousand sats and a boostagram that says press pause and donate to the show. You will make mister Bennett happy, and you will feel better about yourself. Value for value, folks. Your services are appreciated, sir. You know what I appreciate? You spelled my name correctly.
B e n n e t t. Most people screw that up, and and Bitcoin for president nailed it to the cross. Michael Sparks with seven seven seven says, great show, David. I need to listen more. I recommend you do. Psyduck with 560 says, Psyduck. Bodega box boy. Is that right? Yes. Bodega box boy with 500 says, well, damn it. Nothing. Paul Cernine with 500 says, thanks again, sir. Always a pleasure to listen to your overview of the news as well as your opinions and recommendations. Unlike other podcasts, you consistently succeed in keeping your episodes at an attractive length. That's a massive and potentially undervalued selling point. Plus, your acoustics are very nice and a pleasure to listen to. Keep up the good work. By the way, I'm quite puzzled at what's happening in El Salvador and looking forward to the development there as well as your reporting on that topic. Well, I hope you got that in the very first part of the show there, Paul. Thank you for the sats and the kind words, my friend. Bodega box boy with another 500 says, another nothing. Yodl with 300 says nothing. God's death with two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No thank you. Justin with a hundred says thank you. No thank you. And that's the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Meta Planet scoops up another $43,000,000 in Bitcoin amid crypto market slump they bought the dip, baby. Vismaya v would decrypt. Japanese investment firm Meta Planet Incorporated has doubled down on its aggressive Bitcoin accumulation strategy during the dip. The Tokyo based firm announced the acquisition of 497 Bitcoin for $43,900,000 in line with the company's goals of acquiring 10,000 BTC by 2025 and 21,000 by 2026. Meta Planet's purchase made at an average price of $88,448 per coin brings its total Bitcoin holdings to 2,888 BTC valued at around $240,000,000 at current prices.
The company's stock rose by over 20% to $27.08 per share following the announcement of its Bitcoin acquisition according to Yahoo Finance. Yeah. And I looked at that today. A 20 a 20% bump, made their chart not so ugly over the last couple of weeks. Meta Planet's latest buy comes as Bitcoin faced price volatility, dipping to $83 earlier this week after US president Trump confirmed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Meta Planet CEO Simon Jaravich announced the company's BTC yield performance for 2025 rose to 45.1%, well above its target of 35% yield per quarter.
BTC yield refers to the percentage change in the ratio of total Bitcoin holdings to fully diluted shares outstanding. Okay. So Meta Planet buying up some Bitcoin themselves during the dip. Belarus might consider Bitcoin mining. Lyshenko says, quote, we have excess electricity. Atlas twenty one, on March, during a government meeting, Belarusian president Alexander Lyshenko instructed the new minister of energy, Alexei Kerkashnarenko, to develop the Bitcoin mining industry in the country. According to the state news agency, Bell TA, Lyshenko stated, quote, let's analyze this mining.
If it is possible for sorry. If it is profitable for us, let's do it. We have excess electricity, end quote. This move is part of a broader plan to modernize the national electricity grid spanning 5,700 kilometers. The decision appears to have been influenced by The United States, which has announced its ambition to become the world capital of cryptocurrencies by creating a strategic reserve in Bitcoin and and shitcoins. For god's sakes, they list them and I don't wanna read the names. The Belarusian president remarked, quote, you see the direction the world is going, and especially the largest economy in the world.
Yesterday, they announced that they will keep cryptocurrency in reserve, end quote. Belarus offers particularly favorable favorable conditions for mining because it ranks among the three European countries with the lowest electricity costs. It has a significant energy surplus. It has already attracted interest from potential investors in the sector according to statements from the Ministry of Energy. According to former deputy minister of energy, Dennis Moroz, preliminary consultations are already underway with investors interested in establishing mining operations in the country.
I I do but Belarus was not at all on my bingo card this morning, so interesting. That's gonna be interesting, to see if that actually happens. Because here's what I here's what I think is probably gonna happen. We'll give you tax breaks if you bring your miners over, and then people bring their miners over. And then a year later, they go, whoopsies. No more tax breaks, and you're captive. So be aware, guys. It's not it's not like Lyshenko is a great guy, so be careful with this dude. Alright? So 1,200 Bitcoin ATMs have gone dark in The United States as fraud concerns grow according to bitcoinnews.com's Alex Larry.
In early March, the United States saw a massive and sudden drop in Bitcoin ATMs with over 1,200 machines going offline. This came just days after Illinois senator Dick Durbin introduced a new bill to prevent fraud specifically in the Bitcoin ATM industry. The proposed, quote, crypto ATM fraud prevention act has operators and regulators worried about the future of these machines in The United States. And according to Coin ATM Radar, the global Bitcoin ATM network lost more than 1,000 machines in early March. Of those, 1,233 were removed from The United States market alone.
While other countries like Canada, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Switzerland have new installations, The US decline was a major surprise. Despite this reduction, The US still has the most Bitcoin ATMs with 29,731 machines, which is 80% of the world's total. Canada has only 3,144, and Australia about 1,500. The timing of this massive decline suggests a connection to new regulatory scrutiny, AKA senator Durbin's Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act. Well, it aims to prevent scams by requiring operators to warn users about scams, implement financial loss prevention measures, and give law enforcement better tools to track illegal transactions.
Yes, sir. The bill was introduced after scams involving Bitcoin ATM surged with criminals using the machines to steal money from unsuspecting victims. Senator Durbin said digital asset ATMs are being used by scammers, and they want operators to be held accountable, you know, to protect the public. The bill puts several new measures in place including, and listen up, one, mandatory warnings on ATMs to inform users about scams. That's like putting skulls and crossbones on packs of cigarettes, people. Nobody gives a shit. Stronger compliance requirements for operators to submit anti fraud policies to FinCEN or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Transaction limits for new users at $2,000 daily and $10,000 within fourteen days. And then refunds for fraud victims if they report losses within thirty days. So essentially, a chargeback. Transactions over 500 will require live verbal confirmation to ensure the user is aware of the risks. Pausing right there, voiceprint. It's a voice print. If I do a transaction at an ATM of over $500, then senator Dick Durbin, tricky dick, he wants my voice print. Now he's saying they're saying that, no. This is just so that that we can confirm that you're aware. Bullshit.
They want my voice printed alongside the timestamp of that transaction. So they know what my voiceprint looks like and be able to attach it forever and yon to that transaction. Just say no, guys. This is like drugs, man. Just say no. Fraudsters have used the machines to run different kinds of scams, including romance scams where victims are asked to send digital assets to fake online partners. Impersonation scams were also employed in which criminals posed as government officials and demanded payment through digital asset ATMs. And there were also reports of investment scams where scammers promised high returns for digital asset deposits.
Dude, that's a shit coin right there. We have those we have those without ATMs, and nobody seems to be interested in going after that shit anymore since the SEC tucked its tail in between its leg on the rest of the shit coins in the world and said, you know what? You're fine. You all fail the Howey test. You're gonna be just but you can you can spin up whatever shit you want. And it's not like I'm a big fan of regulation, but my god almighty, I've never seen anything like what the SEC has been pulling over the last couple of weeks. These are unregistered securities.
It is in the purview of the SEC to say, this is an unregistered security. And because you offered it and you didn't tell anybody and you didn't file with us, you're gonna go to jail. I'm sorry because all these are scams, but I'm sorry. I'm getting off on a tangent. Digital asset ATM operators are being hit hard with intense regulatory pressures, and and it's not just a US issue. Other countries are taking action. In The UK, Olimide Osuyankoya was just sentenced to four years in prison for running illegal digital asset ATMs for money laundering. The Financial Conduct Authority has since removed dozens of unregistered machines and warned consumers about the risks of using them.
The regulatory heat has many US based Bitcoin ATM operators rethinking their business model. Yeah. Well, I would too with this kind of crap going on. I doubt, however, that senator Tricky Dick Durbin's, bill is going to pass. They've got bigger fish on the grill. I guarantee it, man. So let's get to the last one of the day. Phoenix Wallet version 2.5, APK size reduction, improved QR scanning, and changes in Tor. If you did not know, Phoenix is a mobile self custodial Bitcoin wallet using lightning to send and receive payments. It's available on both Android and iOS. The new version has been released with major improvements in QR code scanning on Android, a 78% reduction in APK size, and the display of pending on chain funds on the home screen in the iOS app.
And then there's access to Tor via Tor proxy VPN apps such as Orbot. Previously, Phoenix embedded a Tor library for network access, which was convenient, but, you know, led to performance issues, particularly with background payments due to on the fly connection establishment. Now with the Tor connection managed as a persistent VPN by a dedicated application, the connection is more stable, significantly improving the performance of background payments. And that's gonna be really that's gonna be really important be to be able to do this over VPN and tour or over Tor to mask what what the hell it is that you're doing because with people like Tricky Dick Durbin out there, who wants you to voice print your transactions, yeah, you're gonna need all the security from these yahoos that you can get. So that is it for the day. We are definitely short on time, forty six minutes.
This may be one of the shortest episodes that I've done so far, but there's nothing else to talk about. So I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 09:36AM Pacific Standard Time. It is the March 2025. This is episode ten forty eight of Bitcoin, and there's going to be a Bitcoin reserve announcement coming this Friday according to Commerce Secretary Lutnick. And he's talking about well, he's talking about this White House crypto summit, and we're gonna talk about the attendees who have so far confirmed that they're going to be there. Also, some interesting developments with GameStop. I'll talk about it. I promise. El Salvador is gonna be back in the news. And it seems that Bukele is thumbing his nose yet again at the IMF. And, honestly, I'm flat ass confused by exactly what all this is. It doesn't make sense.
I'll try to parse it out for you. Got a a a a note here from Bitcoin headline on Noster that looks like it's tracing every single, Ethereum or Ether transaction from the Bybit hack, and it has an interesting development at the end. And then and then we're gonna talk about what happened to the Dixie or the dollar index before we do the numbers. And then Meta Planet's in the news, and then I got Belarus. Lushchenko is in the news as well, and it's obviously about Bitcoin. And then we have some ATMs, and I'm not talking about at the market. I'm talking about actual automate automated teller machines going dark, and then we will have, news on a Phoenix wallet update. But first, Bitcoin reserve announcement coming on Friday says commerce secretary from Decrypt dot CEO written by Stephen Graves.
The proposed US crypto strategic reserve is expected to be announced this Friday, according to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, with Bitcoin set to hold a unique status while other cryptocurrencies will be, quote, treated differently. Let me just pause because I am a podcast listener too. And chances are good, you might have just perked your ears up right in the middle of that. So I'm going to read that entire sentence one more time. Listen up. The proposed United States crypto strategic reserve is expected to be announced this coming Friday, according to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.
And here's the important part. With Bitcoin set to hold a unique status while shitcoins will be, quote, treated differently. Now I've seen several news articles about this. Let's see what Decrypt has to say further. Speaking to news outlet, The Pavlovic, today, Lutnick said that, quote, a Bitcoin strategic reserve is something that the president's interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you're going to see it executed on Friday, end quote. The United States commerce department did not immediately respond to a request from decrypt for further comment. Of course, they're not. They're gonna wait until Friday, dude. Letnik discussed the status of other cryptocurrencies earmarked for a US strategic crypto reserve stating that, quote, Bitcoin is one thing and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently, positively, but differently, end quote.
In a Sunday post on his true social account, United States President Donald Trump said, hey. We're gonna add shit coins, and it freaked everybody out, and that's all I wanna say about that. So let's move on to this next paragraph. The expected announcement of the United States strategic crypto reserve on Friday, that's this coming Friday, not today, not tomorrow, but the day after that, would coincide with the White House's first crypto summit with confirmed in attendees including and then there's a bunch of names, and I've got a whole list of names that we'll get to here in a second. But it's set to be chaired by artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sachs.
The gathering is the first in a series of sporadic crypto summits that will essentially replace president Donald Trump's promised, quote, crypto council, which was abandoned due to industry infighting over priorities. Yeah. The only priority here is Bitcoin. Everything else is a shitcoin, and if you hold it, you're going to get rugged. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Every single time something of note comes up, the very first idiots that spill out of the woodwork like the fucking termites that they are is people like Brad Garlinghouse and Brian Armstrong and the rest of the Hitler youth who absolutely just love shitcoins and just seem to not under well, Garlinghouse understands. Brian understands. They understand it, but they are affinity scammers.
Hey. This is like Bitcoin, and it's going to be just as good as Bitcoin, or it will still have utility. It may not be as good as Bitcoin, but it's gonna have its utility, and you're gonna need to buy some. And so, therefore, they're all basically infighting on two fronts. One is their Shitcoin is better than the other guy's Shitcoin, and all of them together are trying to go after Bitcoin itself. So there's there's two infighting fronts. And the only way to really survive all of this is to buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, and only talk to people about Bitcoin. And if they bring up anything else, just lambasted.
Somebody comes up to you and says, well, I know that you're into Bitcoin, but what do you think about Ether? Shit coin. But surely, Ripple's okay. Shit coin. But what about Cardech? Shit coin. What shit coin. You see how this works? Now speaking of the attendees at this White House crypto summit, we have confirmed and unconfirmed names. So who is unconfirmed first? Well, amazingly enough, Howard Lutnick himself, the commerce commerce secretary, is unconfirmed, as is the treasury secretary, Scott Bessant. And Pam Bondi is also unconfirmed. Now outside of that, who else is unconfirmed?
Cathie Wood, which is the founder and CEO of ARK Invest, God forbid Vitalik Buterin, you know who he is, Jeremy Allaire, cofounder and CEO of Circle, is also unconfirmed. Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, unconfirmed. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano. An and hold on. Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder of Solana, and Marc Andreessen of a sixteen z, or as we all know it, Andreessen Horowitz, which was an early investor in Ripple. All those people are unconfirmed. Let's get to the confirmed side of this page. From the White House or at least in the government, Beau Hines is confirmed, executive director of the presidential council of advisors for digital assets. Of course, David Sachs, the AI and crypto czar is going to be there. Mark Ulleda, the acting chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Carolyn Pham, the acting chairman of the US Commodity Futures and Trading Commission. Now outside the United States government, Michael Saylor will be there. David Bailey, the CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, Matt Huang, cofounder of Paradigm, JP Richardson, the CEO of Exodus, Kyle Simani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, Zach Whitkopf, cofounder of Trump linked World Liberty Financial, Sergei Nazarov, the cofounder of Chainlink, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.
Oh, that's gonna be interesting. Arjun Sethi from Kraken, Chris Marzalek from Crypto.com, and, of course, Brad freaking Garlinghouse. So it's going to be interesting this Friday. I do not know the time at which this is supposed to occur. Wait a minute. No. No. I do. The summit is on March, and the roundtable is scheduled from 06:30PM to 10:30PM UTC. That is UTC, not not Pacific Standard Time. It's 06:30PM to 10:30PM UTC. Go grab your world clock and see what time that is for you. Let me see if there's anything else of note in this particular one. I don't think there really is. But, hey, you know, the shitcoiners are coming out of the woodwork.
It's gonna be all kinds of fun. Now GameStop. I saw a very interesting, Twitter post, yesterday. And this one is from a guy named, at value orion. That's his handle on Twitter. And he says, confirming, autopilot is showing GameStop as the third largest publicly traded company with Bitcoin holdings. No confirmation yet from GameStop, Ryan Cohen, or Larry VC. Now that is a retweet of this Peruvian bull tweet over on Twitter that says the autopilot app and autopilot is sort of like it's like a app you get on your phone. You can follow people's trades, and it's kinda like you can trade with the best of them, you know, like like Nancy Pelosi.
And there used to be I can't remember what it was. There used to be I think it was, like, TradeOne where you could, like, load BTC into a BTC wallet on TradeOne and then follow other traders and just invest exactly the way that they invested. And autopilot seems to be kinda like that, but people are looking at this autopilot app, and they're seeing that GameStop is showing as now this approving bullet says that he's looking at games at at this autopilot, and GameStop is showing as the third largest holder of Bitcoin, not confirmed, but bullish.
And that was from, you know, that was from yesterday. I have yet to see any confirmation at all. And it it shows that GME is an 11% holder of Bitcoin, and and nobody knows what the hell that means. IBit, it's like I'm what I'm doing is I'm I'm looking at the screenshot from this autopilot, and this is the screenshot that the header says companies holding Bitcoin, and the number one on top is iBit, and then it just says 18%. What do you mean 18%? I don't understand these percentage numbers. If anybody understands autopilot a hell of a lot better than I do because I don't even have the app yet, I haven't I haven't loaded it in, this is the first time even hearing about it, please tell me what the hell these percentages mean because they don't make any sense. Because MSR or MSTR, it says 16%.
This is a company under the heading companies holding Bitcoin. 16 percent of what? And then we go to GameStop, which is at 11%, and then Coinbase is at 10%, Mara's at nine, Tesla at eight, Riot seven, x y z at six, and something called CLSK at five. And, again, a, completely unconfirmed. Cannot get any news story at all about whether or not GameStop actually bought a bunch of Bitcoin because they would have to have bought a bunch of Bitcoin to get to the number two spot behind iBit. So amazing. It's and, honestly yeah. No. I mean, I behind, MicroStrategy, They would had to have bought a lot.
I cannot find anything, and I don't know what these percentages mean. So, again, please, please, sending out the the the bat signal for help. I'd if you understand what the hell that means, please let me know. Now from El Salvador, Bukele is vowing to continue Bitcoin purchases despite the International Monetary Fund deal. Danny Park is writing this one for the block. President Nayib Bukele said that El Salvador will not stop purchasing Bitcoin despite its deal with the IMF to scale back Bitcoin activities. Quote, no. It's not stopping. If it didn't stop when the world ostracized us and most, quote, Bitcoiners abandoned us, it won't stop now, and it won't stop in the future, end quote.
Last December, El Salvador and the IMF reached an agreement for the country to limit Bitcoin related activities in exchange for a financing package, including a $1,400,000,000 loan with the total package expected to be worth over $3,500,000,000. The IMF previously said that El Salvador's Bitcoin reserve held potential risks that have not yet materialized. The country's congress moved quickly to comply with IMF requirements approving amendments that included making the acceptance of Bitcoin voluntary for the private sector according to Reuters. And last month, the IMF approved the $1,400,000,000 loan, giving El Salvador an immediate disbursement of around a hundred and $13,000,000.
Quote, going forward, program commitments will confine government engagement in Bitcoin related economic activities as well as government transactions in and the purchases of Bitcoin, the IMF wrote in a press release. Nonetheless, El Salvador Strategic Reserve announced earlier Tuesday that it added more Bitcoin to its holdings, raising the total to 6,101.18 BTC worth over $535,000,000. In a reply to Bukele's ex post, Jan three CEO, Samson Moe, questioned how the IMF deal will impact El Salvador's future Bitcoin purchases. Gukele has yet to respond to Moe's question, opting instead to repost other supportive messages from strategy CEO Michael Saylor and crypto podcast host Peter McCormick.
The block has reached out to the El Salvador government for further comment. And they bought they bought, another Bitcoin yesterday or yesterday evening. So I don't know what's going on here. I mean, this is the only thing that I can figure or as a as a potential possibility is that Bukele is just playing he's just playing with the IMF like a cat plays with the mouse before it kills it. Now Bukele can't kill the IMF, but he can certainly play with it. And I don't know because I don't know what his game is. If if El Salvador needs this loan, and I don't know why they do, so that's one question, then they need the $3,500,000,000 loan.
They have only gotten approved so far for a $1,400,000,000 loan, and they've only had $113,000,000 of that preliminary loan actually dispersed as cash that they can use, which they immediately started buying Bitcoin. I don't know if they used exactly that money, but it really doesn't matter, does it? Because they got they got a whole I got a hundred and $13,000,000 from the IMF on a $1,400,000,000 loan. They start buying Bitcoin. It doesn't matter where the money came from. Okay. So then the IMF gets pissed. It says, look. You're gonna have to stop buying Bitcoin.
Otherwise, we're not gonna give you the loan, and I haven't actually seen any of that language at all. They just said they issued the statement yesterday and said you gotta stop buying Bitcoin. You can't purchase it as part of, you know, your government activities. And then Bukele ends up buying more Bitcoin. And then as if to add insult to injury, he tweets out that he's never going to stop buying Bitcoin. Well, would that not anger the IMF and have them pull the plug on this loan? See, that's where it starts to get really, really gray. What the hell is is Bukele doing? There's two questions in my mind that I think are the most important questions here.
Why does El Salvador need this loan? Is something going on in El Salvador where they would purposely put themselves under the thumb of an institution that Bukele knows has become inherently evil, that the IMF is evil. Make no mistake. Okay. So what could be going on that you would do that? Second, how is this not going if they need the loan, how is his activities of continuously thumbing his nose at the IMF and possibly using directly their fundage to actually buy Bitcoin in clear violation of what they want in order for this whole deal to go forward, what is that what happens?
And I cannot find any clear answers at all about this deal. What is it for? I mean, there it's vague. Everything about this is vague, and it just bugs the crap out of me that I cannot find any credible information as to exactly what this loan is for, under what situation Bukele's thought this was a good idea to put himself back underneath the thumb of the IMF, and what the IMF's reaction is to the continuous nosing of the thumb or thumbing of the nose or however you wanna put it. It's all bizarre to me, but we got other fish to fry, and those fish have been converted to Bitcoin. The Ethereum or the ether or whatever you wanna call that shitcoin that got hacked from Bybit, according to Bitcoin headline and Arkham Intelligence, has been fully 100% converted into Bitcoin.
There's no Ethereum left or no ether left. And the this guy has got a screenshot of a very, very convoluted, very convoluted tracing of all of the wallet addresses from whence the ether came to where the ether went, and it just there's just wallet upon wallet upon wallet upon wallet until finally the ether just disappears. And I'm going to take the guy's word for it that the North Korea Lazarus Group has fully laundered the proceeds of the Bybit hack. They swapped the stolen ETH for BTC according to Arkham Intelligence. And, again, that is Bitcoin headline or, yeah, Bitcoin headline over on Nostr. It's got a full screenshot.
If you want to see exactly what I'm looking at, the primal.net URL link directly to this note is in the show notes. So go click it, and it will take you right here. Now do you want some maple syrup? Because the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you with goods and services to plebs just like you who want to buy with Bitcoin goods and services. And if you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. Maple trade is in the circle p because he sells his handmade Ohio maple syrup for Bitcoin.
And if you tell Maple trade that you bought your that you bought your his maple syrup because I told you here on the Circle p for the Bitcoin and podcast, he will cut me Satoshis for what he thinks the value of me bringing his product to you actually was. It's value for value advertising, and you will not find it anywhere but the circle p. I've had his maple syrup. It is made by hand. He taps the trees himself. He does all the work. He boils it down. He does osmosis. I'm not exactly sure what goes on in in the whole thing of making maple syrup, but it I think the last I think he said he tapped a 75 trees, maple trees, which means he's gotta go lug all of that sap after those bottles are full and then boil it all down. It's a labor intensive labor of love, ladies and gentlemen. And, also, ask him about his sister Sarah's soaps. His sister Sarah makes some fine soaps. I've used those as well. Can't recommend them enough. Make sure that you tell Maple Trade that you heard it here here on the circle p, and you can find his. And I've got this time, I've got his, Bysnerd's Twitter handle URL in my so all you gotta do is find where it says, like, maple syrup, and then there's, like, a a a a Twitter URL.
You'll go right to them, give him a a direct message or reply to him or or, you know, hit him up in x and, you know, tell him that you want his maple syrup. Alright? So and then make sure that you tell him that that I sent you. What else we got? Oh, the Dixie. I would start singing the song, but I'd be calling a racist. Dollar index declines below $1.00 5 as the Bitcoin price hits 90 k, and this is out of CoinDesk, and it's written by James Van Stratten. At the start of the year, CoinDesk research indicated that the dollar index, a measure of the United States dollar strength against a basket of major trading partners, was mirroring its trajectory from Donald Trump's first term as president.
Between September 2024 and January 2025 coinciding with Trump's reelection, the dollar index, or the Dixie, climbed from 100 to 110. This current cycle, the index peaked at 110 in mid January, but has since dropped below one zero five for the first time since the November. If the Dixie were to fall to around a hundred and three, it would erase all of its gains since Trump's victory in November. Typically, a Dixie index above 100 is considered strong, which tends to put pressure on risk assets. However, as the index dipped below one zero five, Bitcoin rose above $88,000 A similar pattern was observed in 2017 when the Dixie fell from 103 to below 90 coinciding with Bitcoin's bull run that year.
That saw it top out at $20,000 in September. Despite this, macroeconomic uncertainty persists with concerns surrounding tariffs, inflation, and US GDP growth. The economy appears to be slowing, and Friday's jobs report is expected to show a continuation of 4% unemployment. If the report comes in weaker than anticipated, treasury yields could continue declining, increasing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve could consider a rate cut in its March meeting, and that March meeting is coming up, I believe, this Friday, if I'm not mistaken. So yields on the treasury bonds have been have been going down.
The Dixie and people say, well, we want a strong dollar. Half of those people have absolutely no idea what they're saying. Most of those people, in fact, think that a strong dollar means rah rah USA. That's not exactly what it means. It means that a lot of other countries don't want to, sell us well, they don't really wanna sell us their goods and services because the dollar is strong, and they've got a they've got they've, you know, they've got to buy stuff and sell stuff to us at their at their currency. The way that the way that their currency works at their country, what they can buy, what they can sell for, If we have a strong dollar, it makes it much less likely that business is being conducted between countries other countries in The United States.
Whereas a weaker dollar, they do. Like, like, if it like, if if I got a strong dollar, a really, really strong dollar, and somebody from Ireland that is comparatively weak currency against The United States Dollar flies their happy ass over here. Their hotel room is a lot more expensive. Their food is a lot more expensive. They don't really wanna be here. So from a travel and tourism standpoint, a strong dollar does not really help tourism of people coming from other countries to The United States. That's one example of why when people say we want a strong dollar, you kinda don't. But you don't want it so freakishly weak that the the the inverse is true. Where if you're a United States citizen and you go, I don't know, anywhere else in the world, all of a sudden your dollar when it's converted to, like, bought in Thailand or whatever it is that they use, doesn't buy as much.
So there's there's a there's a happy sweet spot in there somewhere. So just be aware that sometimes when we talk about a strong dollar, it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. I got all kinds of weirdness happening today. The oil is on its ass really bad, and this has to do with OPEC plus saying that they are gonna go ahead and add, I think it's a 38,000 barrels of oil a day to its production. Starting April is what they said, and, of course, oil reacted violently. West Texas Intermediate is down three full points to sixty six dollars and twenty two cents a a barrel, and Brent, North Sea is down two and a half to $69.24.
But natural gas is making its gains. One and a half percent of the upside brings it to $4.41 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline off its ass, 33.27% to the downside brings it to $2.12 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks doing okay. Gold is up point 13%. Silver is up well over two full points. Platinum is up a fifth of a point. Copper is up 5.1%, and palladium is down three quarters of a point. Ag is mostly in the green today. Biggest winner today looks to be coffee, 2.33% to the upside. Chocolate, as usual, is the biggest loser, 2% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third of a point. Lean hogs are up 3.37%, and feeder cattle are up point 81%.
The Dow now here's where here's where it gets weird. All of the equity legacy indices are in the green. Point 72% to the upside for the Dow. S and P is up two thirds of a point. Nasdaq is up point 85%, and the S and P Mini is up almost a half. Why? Because earlier this morning at about 5AM, my time, shit was down like, the Dow was down 300 points. It is now up 300 points. Right? So that was like that that was a reversal, a complete reversal for the Dow and all the rest all the rest of the equities markets they all gained. Why?
Because the jobs report came out. And there's word on the street that Trump might be relaxing some of his tariff rhetoric, but I think this is actually more about the jobs print than anything else. I've got this one from finance.yahoo.com. A fresh look at the jobs market on Wednesday provided another sign of potential cracks in the economy. Data from ADP showed that private sector companies added only 77,000 jobs in February, a significant slump from January, and also far below economist expectations. The ADP print is one in a series of jobs readings that tee up Friday's all important nonfarm payrolls report.
We came in on a really soft print on jobs. So why does that affect the Dow and the rest of the equity markets? Because now now we've got a crack in the economy. Therefore, the Fed very well may, in this this month, reduce the federal funds lending rate. So we may see a point 25% drop. We don't know. We we literally don't know what the hell the Fed is gonna do. But this just makes it more likely that they will or at least strongly consider either this month or next month dropping the federal funds rate to help the economy along, which makes risk assets not so risky because the cost of borrowing the money to buy into those risk assets becomes cheaper.
And therefore, people are, like, kind of like hedging what they think is going to be a fed funds rate cut this month. So we'll we'll have to see. But let's get on in on into, Bitcoin, which is having slight rally this morning. $89,390, that's a 1,770,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 30.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,832,419.75 of an average fees per block are still low, 0.04, taking fees on a per block basis. There are about 55 blocks carrying 16,400 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priorities get you in at four.
And let's see. Hash rate has has fallen precipitously. We are back down to 788.4 exahashes per second, so do with that what you will. From Trump and dump, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got FOMO chronic with 1,001 sats. It's a palindrome boost. And he says, nothing. Damn it. Anonymous with a thousand says nothing. But Bitcoin for president didn't give me a thousand sats and a boostagram that says press pause and donate to the show. You will make mister Bennett happy, and you will feel better about yourself. Value for value, folks. Your services are appreciated, sir. You know what I appreciate? You spelled my name correctly.
B e n n e t t. Most people screw that up, and and Bitcoin for president nailed it to the cross. Michael Sparks with seven seven seven says, great show, David. I need to listen more. I recommend you do. Psyduck with 560 says, Psyduck. Bodega box boy. Is that right? Yes. Bodega box boy with 500 says, well, damn it. Nothing. Paul Cernine with 500 says, thanks again, sir. Always a pleasure to listen to your overview of the news as well as your opinions and recommendations. Unlike other podcasts, you consistently succeed in keeping your episodes at an attractive length. That's a massive and potentially undervalued selling point. Plus, your acoustics are very nice and a pleasure to listen to. Keep up the good work. By the way, I'm quite puzzled at what's happening in El Salvador and looking forward to the development there as well as your reporting on that topic. Well, I hope you got that in the very first part of the show there, Paul. Thank you for the sats and the kind words, my friend. Bodega box boy with another 500 says, another nothing. Yodl with 300 says nothing. God's death with two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No thank you. Justin with a hundred says thank you. No thank you. And that's the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Meta Planet scoops up another $43,000,000 in Bitcoin amid crypto market slump they bought the dip, baby. Vismaya v would decrypt. Japanese investment firm Meta Planet Incorporated has doubled down on its aggressive Bitcoin accumulation strategy during the dip. The Tokyo based firm announced the acquisition of 497 Bitcoin for $43,900,000 in line with the company's goals of acquiring 10,000 BTC by 2025 and 21,000 by 2026. Meta Planet's purchase made at an average price of $88,448 per coin brings its total Bitcoin holdings to 2,888 BTC valued at around $240,000,000 at current prices.
The company's stock rose by over 20% to $27.08 per share following the announcement of its Bitcoin acquisition according to Yahoo Finance. Yeah. And I looked at that today. A 20 a 20% bump, made their chart not so ugly over the last couple of weeks. Meta Planet's latest buy comes as Bitcoin faced price volatility, dipping to $83 earlier this week after US president Trump confirmed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Meta Planet CEO Simon Jaravich announced the company's BTC yield performance for 2025 rose to 45.1%, well above its target of 35% yield per quarter.
BTC yield refers to the percentage change in the ratio of total Bitcoin holdings to fully diluted shares outstanding. Okay. So Meta Planet buying up some Bitcoin themselves during the dip. Belarus might consider Bitcoin mining. Lyshenko says, quote, we have excess electricity. Atlas twenty one, on March, during a government meeting, Belarusian president Alexander Lyshenko instructed the new minister of energy, Alexei Kerkashnarenko, to develop the Bitcoin mining industry in the country. According to the state news agency, Bell TA, Lyshenko stated, quote, let's analyze this mining.
If it is possible for sorry. If it is profitable for us, let's do it. We have excess electricity, end quote. This move is part of a broader plan to modernize the national electricity grid spanning 5,700 kilometers. The decision appears to have been influenced by The United States, which has announced its ambition to become the world capital of cryptocurrencies by creating a strategic reserve in Bitcoin and and shitcoins. For god's sakes, they list them and I don't wanna read the names. The Belarusian president remarked, quote, you see the direction the world is going, and especially the largest economy in the world.
Yesterday, they announced that they will keep cryptocurrency in reserve, end quote. Belarus offers particularly favorable favorable conditions for mining because it ranks among the three European countries with the lowest electricity costs. It has a significant energy surplus. It has already attracted interest from potential investors in the sector according to statements from the Ministry of Energy. According to former deputy minister of energy, Dennis Moroz, preliminary consultations are already underway with investors interested in establishing mining operations in the country.
I I do but Belarus was not at all on my bingo card this morning, so interesting. That's gonna be interesting, to see if that actually happens. Because here's what I here's what I think is probably gonna happen. We'll give you tax breaks if you bring your miners over, and then people bring their miners over. And then a year later, they go, whoopsies. No more tax breaks, and you're captive. So be aware, guys. It's not it's not like Lyshenko is a great guy, so be careful with this dude. Alright? So 1,200 Bitcoin ATMs have gone dark in The United States as fraud concerns grow according to bitcoinnews.com's Alex Larry.
In early March, the United States saw a massive and sudden drop in Bitcoin ATMs with over 1,200 machines going offline. This came just days after Illinois senator Dick Durbin introduced a new bill to prevent fraud specifically in the Bitcoin ATM industry. The proposed, quote, crypto ATM fraud prevention act has operators and regulators worried about the future of these machines in The United States. And according to Coin ATM Radar, the global Bitcoin ATM network lost more than 1,000 machines in early March. Of those, 1,233 were removed from The United States market alone.
While other countries like Canada, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Switzerland have new installations, The US decline was a major surprise. Despite this reduction, The US still has the most Bitcoin ATMs with 29,731 machines, which is 80% of the world's total. Canada has only 3,144, and Australia about 1,500. The timing of this massive decline suggests a connection to new regulatory scrutiny, AKA senator Durbin's Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act. Well, it aims to prevent scams by requiring operators to warn users about scams, implement financial loss prevention measures, and give law enforcement better tools to track illegal transactions.
Yes, sir. The bill was introduced after scams involving Bitcoin ATM surged with criminals using the machines to steal money from unsuspecting victims. Senator Durbin said digital asset ATMs are being used by scammers, and they want operators to be held accountable, you know, to protect the public. The bill puts several new measures in place including, and listen up, one, mandatory warnings on ATMs to inform users about scams. That's like putting skulls and crossbones on packs of cigarettes, people. Nobody gives a shit. Stronger compliance requirements for operators to submit anti fraud policies to FinCEN or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Transaction limits for new users at $2,000 daily and $10,000 within fourteen days. And then refunds for fraud victims if they report losses within thirty days. So essentially, a chargeback. Transactions over 500 will require live verbal confirmation to ensure the user is aware of the risks. Pausing right there, voiceprint. It's a voice print. If I do a transaction at an ATM of over $500, then senator Dick Durbin, tricky dick, he wants my voice print. Now he's saying they're saying that, no. This is just so that that we can confirm that you're aware. Bullshit.
They want my voice printed alongside the timestamp of that transaction. So they know what my voiceprint looks like and be able to attach it forever and yon to that transaction. Just say no, guys. This is like drugs, man. Just say no. Fraudsters have used the machines to run different kinds of scams, including romance scams where victims are asked to send digital assets to fake online partners. Impersonation scams were also employed in which criminals posed as government officials and demanded payment through digital asset ATMs. And there were also reports of investment scams where scammers promised high returns for digital asset deposits.
Dude, that's a shit coin right there. We have those we have those without ATMs, and nobody seems to be interested in going after that shit anymore since the SEC tucked its tail in between its leg on the rest of the shit coins in the world and said, you know what? You're fine. You all fail the Howey test. You're gonna be just but you can you can spin up whatever shit you want. And it's not like I'm a big fan of regulation, but my god almighty, I've never seen anything like what the SEC has been pulling over the last couple of weeks. These are unregistered securities.
It is in the purview of the SEC to say, this is an unregistered security. And because you offered it and you didn't tell anybody and you didn't file with us, you're gonna go to jail. I'm sorry because all these are scams, but I'm sorry. I'm getting off on a tangent. Digital asset ATM operators are being hit hard with intense regulatory pressures, and and it's not just a US issue. Other countries are taking action. In The UK, Olimide Osuyankoya was just sentenced to four years in prison for running illegal digital asset ATMs for money laundering. The Financial Conduct Authority has since removed dozens of unregistered machines and warned consumers about the risks of using them.
The regulatory heat has many US based Bitcoin ATM operators rethinking their business model. Yeah. Well, I would too with this kind of crap going on. I doubt, however, that senator Tricky Dick Durbin's, bill is going to pass. They've got bigger fish on the grill. I guarantee it, man. So let's get to the last one of the day. Phoenix Wallet version 2.5, APK size reduction, improved QR scanning, and changes in Tor. If you did not know, Phoenix is a mobile self custodial Bitcoin wallet using lightning to send and receive payments. It's available on both Android and iOS. The new version has been released with major improvements in QR code scanning on Android, a 78% reduction in APK size, and the display of pending on chain funds on the home screen in the iOS app.
And then there's access to Tor via Tor proxy VPN apps such as Orbot. Previously, Phoenix embedded a Tor library for network access, which was convenient, but, you know, led to performance issues, particularly with background payments due to on the fly connection establishment. Now with the Tor connection managed as a persistent VPN by a dedicated application, the connection is more stable, significantly improving the performance of background payments. And that's gonna be really that's gonna be really important be to be able to do this over VPN and tour or over Tor to mask what what the hell it is that you're doing because with people like Tricky Dick Durbin out there, who wants you to voice print your transactions, yeah, you're gonna need all the security from these yahoos that you can get. So that is it for the day. We are definitely short on time, forty six minutes.
This may be one of the shortest episodes that I've done so far, but there's nothing else to talk about. So I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Bitcoin Reserve Announcement and White House Crypto Summit
Ethereum Transactions and Bybit Hack
The Shitcoin Debate and Bitcoin Advocacy
Jobs Report and Economic Implications
