Join me today for Episode 1071 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/04/09/trump-backed-world-liberty-financial-begins-selling-eth-as-losses-top-usd125m
https://cointelegraph.com/news/digital-euro-limit-stablecoin-use-europe-ecb
https://decrypt.co/314057/new-york-bill-blockchain-safeguard-election-results
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/human-rights-foundation-bitcoin-q1-2025/
https://www.theblock.co/post/350186/bitwise-cio-tariff-tantrum-bitcoin
https://atlas21.com/investigations-into-exchanges-and-wallets-dropped-phoenix-wallet-returns-to-the-u-s/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cove-wallet-v0-3-0/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Topics for today:
- Kraken Marries Mastercard
- Trump Sells His Ether
- Digital Euro is Too Late
- Tariff Tantrum: Trump's Dollar Desires
Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/kraken-partners-with-mastercard-to-bring-bitcoin-payments-to-over-150-million-merchantshttps://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/04/09/trump-backed-world-liberty-financial-begins-selling-eth-as-losses-top-usd125m
https://cointelegraph.com/news/digital-euro-limit-stablecoin-use-europe-ecb
https://decrypt.co/314057/new-york-bill-blockchain-safeguard-election-results
- 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://www.nobsbitcoin.com/human-rights-foundation-bitcoin-q1-2025/
https://www.theblock.co/post/350186/bitwise-cio-tariff-tantrum-bitcoin
https://atlas21.com/investigations-into-exchanges-and-wallets-dropped-phoenix-wallet-returns-to-the-u-s/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cove-wallet-v0-3-0/
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
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:23AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025, and this is episode ten seventy one of Bitcoin and we really are going to dive right in today. Don't want to draw this out too long, so we've got lots of stuff to cover. We're going to start with Kraken partnering with Mastercard, ostensibly to bring Bitcoin payments to over 150,000,000 merchants. So, yeah, we've heard merchant adoption before. Let's see what Kraken brings to the table. Nick from Bitcoin magazine is writing. Mastercard has announced a landmark partnership with Kraken to enable real world Bitcoin and crypto payments at scale across The United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. The collaboration aims to allow Kraken's users to spend their digital assets at over 150,000,000 merchants worldwide that accept Mastercard, marking a major step forward in the integration of Bitcoin into everyday commerce.
Mastercard is committing to driving innovation and expanding the possibilities of digital payments, stated Scott Abrahams, executive vice president of global partnerships at Mastercard. Our partnership with Kraken is a concrete demonstration of this as we work together to unlock the true potential of crypto assets for everyday use with a shared ambition to simplify, interoperate, and secure the digital asset ecosystem, we are proud to collaborate with Kraken and bring real value to their user base, end quote. Alright. I I've I've read worse suit speak on this show before.
All in all, not so bad. Still put a tie on the suit speak. Kraken, one of the most established cryptocurrency exchanges with over 15,000,000 customers globally themselves is using Mastercard's expansive payment infrastructure to expand its product suite. This includes the rapid rollout of physical and digital debit cards, oh, here they come, that connect their crypto balances to retail spending. The partnership also builds on the growing momentum of Kraken Pay, a feature introduced by the exchange to offer fast borderless payments in cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.
In just three months since its launch, more than 200,000 users have activated their personal crack tag. Oh my god. I got a crack addiction, yo. Crack tag to send money worldwide with the simplicity of sending a text, the announcement stated. Quote, crypto is transforming the payments industry, and we envision a future where global commerce and everyday payments are powered by crypto assets, said Kraken co CEO David Ripley in the release. Quote, our customers want to be able to easily pay for real world goods and services with their cryptocurrencies or stablecoins.
Our partnership with Mastercard is a major step in realizing this vision, and together, we will unlock the full potential of crypto assets in everyday life, ensuring their long term relevance and utility. Guy, can I just pause here for a second and just just, I don't know, vent my disdain for that which I label suit speak? Corporate releases, who writes these things? Is if we just lost the ability to just talk to people, do we always have to use these weird words in this this corporate syntax that just makes everything sound like a, I don't know, like a call to action? It just it's gross.
It's not it's bad writing y'all. Bad. Bad. Kraken users in The UK and Europe can now join the wait list for the upcoming crypto debit cards and start preparing to use their Bitcoin. Oh, they finally actually say Bitcoin in day to day spending, signaling a new chapter in the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin as a functional payment tool. Last year, Mastercard partnered with exchange Mercado Bitcoin to launch its own Mastercard crypto credential, enabling its first peer to peer pilot transactions using aliases instead of long and complex blockchain addresses.
Yes. I remember bringing that to you, when that came out. But now it looks like Kraken and Mastercard are partnering up, and that's honestly, Mastercard are partnering up, and that's honestly we'll have we're as usual, we'll have to see if in you know, how many people actually use their, oh god, their crypto balances on Kraken to pay for goods and services. Because generally speaking, an exchange like Kraken, it's an exchange. It's not a bank. It's not a savings account. It's not a checking account. And yet, this this marriage between an exchange and wallets honestly has only come about because of things like Bitcoin.
So from that standpoint, we can see how this landscape is changing. For and the reason I know that is if do you have, like, I don't know, well, like, a Wells Fargo brokerage account? If you do, please dig into that thing and find me where you can pay for a burrito with a share of Texaco stock or whatever, you know, Chevron or whatever. I Texaco got folded into Chevron. So like, no. It doesn't exist. Goldman Sachs account? Debt? Nope. Nope. You'd actually have to exchange your, your Chevron share for, like, US dollars and then transfer those US dollars into your actual bank account, and then you can use it to buy the burrito, but no. So in a real way, this is this demonstrates the power of what's been built.
But in also just the same real way, I'm not sure that this is all that healthy because an exchange is there for a reason. It's not a bank account. It's not a checking account, And yet they are able to activate these very same kinds of procedures that a bank has combined with an exchange. And I don't think anybody can really can really suss out what kind of emergent properties that are not all that good can come from this. So be be careful as this thing rolls out. I I I don't wanna poo poo it completely, but, you know, a, the suit speak containing so much crypto language is kind of ghastly, and b, we really do need to be careful here. We're on the precipice of something that's never been done, and I'm sure that there's probably gonna be some problems. And I think it's gonna be more the psychology of traders trading on the very same platform that they can buy stuff from Alibaba from. I I don't know, man. Something about this is kinda weird, but, not as weird as not as weird as what's next.
It took him a while, but Trump decided, I guess, to cut his losses on ether. He's selling it. Trump backed World Liberty Financial begin selling ETH as losses top $125,000,000. Oh, good lord. Oliver Knight, CoinDesk, World Liberty Financial, the Donald Trump family backed DeFi project reportedly started to sell its ether. Now this is reportedly okay? We definitely gonna need confirmation on this, and I don't have it. But reportedly, Trump World Liberty Financial has started selling its ETH stash at $1,465 a token despite purchasing the assets for 3,259 at the start of the year.
Yeah. You got hosed. We've been telling you, get out of ETH. I don't even I don't even know if I want to look right now as to what the hell's going on with with ETH, the ETHBTC pair. Wow. God almighty. 0.019 is the ratio between Ethereum and Bitcoin right now. That is, in fact let's see. I'm just gonna go back here if my trading view will play nice with me, and it may not. I'm gonna go back in time. We're gonna go back in the space get get to get into the time machine, the way back machine, and go way, way, way back here to where the hell was it? Last time it was at this per at this ratio was, wow, February.
You know, just a just a week ago, the last time that the ETHBTC pair fell low and fell low, and we started looking to how far back in time was that, that was in, like, January of twenty twenty one. So within the space of a week, we've been able to take the price, the the Bitcoin, Ethereum, or ether ratio from where it was one year or for five years ago, all the way to, like, you know, or four years ago, all the way to sit, you know, five years ago. That was fast. That's within a week. This thing is losing its ass. Nobody should be in this.
This is a bad deal, and even Trump knows it. Oh my god. It's just it's awful. And I don't I'm I'm really not dancing on the graves of people that hold ETH. I don't wanna see anybody get blown out like this, but we have been warning for years. It doesn't solve anything. And I guess Trump knows about it because on chain data from Arkham shows that a wallet closely tied with World Liberty Financial sold 5,471 ETH for around $8,000,000 on Wednesday after racking up a hundred and $25,000,000 loss. The sale comes just two months after Eric Trump, one of the president's sons, said it was a great time. It was a great time to buy ETH, which was trading at the time at 2,880.
The main World Liberty Financial wallet still holds $98,000,000 worth of crypto, $11,700,000 of which is still in ether. You need to get out, Don. Donald Trump wrote on Wednesday that it is a great time to buy on truth social while global markets tumbled on the escalating risks of a trade war. And since trip Trump was inaugurated on January, the Nasdaq is down by 20%. With the S and P 500, it's down by 17%, and Bitcoin is down by 24%. The Trump and Melania meme coins have fared worse, losing 8395% of their values, respectively. World Liberty Financial did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
So even Trump is getting out of ETH. I'm telling you, man, if you are still holding on to this thing and you don't wanna sell it because and and I get it. Tax burden. I I I understand. I get it. But, I mean, at what point do you wanna cut loose from this thing and still retain some kind of value? You know, and it's it really is. It's just a math thing. You actually have to get a piece of paper and a pencil, and you gotta write numbers and you gotta do adding and subtracting and, you know, probably some division and maybe long division. It doesn't matter. Just do the math and figure out what it is that you wanna be left over with after taxes versus waiting for this thing to plunge anymore. Get out. Get out. Get out. And if you're also in the European Union, you might consider getting out because the European Central Bank or the ECB, one of their executives has renewed a push for the digital euro to counter US Stablecoin growth, Helen Parks, Cointelegraph.
The European Central Bank is intensifying its warnings over stablecoin adoption with one of its top officials calling for the digital euro to curb the influence of US dollar peg stablecoins across the continent. I'm going to pause to say the following. It's already too late for you. It's already too late. It's already too late. It's already too late for the European Union. There is no combating this. The guys over at Tether, they've they put a nail they put a nail in the global fiat legacy financial framework, and nobody even saw it happen. I didn't see it happen. I had no idea what tether was gonna turn into. But now you can kiss all your central bank digital currencies goodbye.
Because like the US dollar, tether is going to burn down the entire world. And we're I'm not saying that it's good. I'm saying I'm telling you what is. And Tether, that's gonna be the outreach program for The United States Federal Reserve And Treasury to print phenomenal amounts of debt. And we're going to be able to directly export it across the globe, and we won't have to load it into a c one thirty and fly it into Iraq. We won't have to, you know, figure out a way to to print that money and buy gold so that we can fly it into, I don't know, Iraq. I mean, I don't know how many dollars of physical cash and bullion was found in these countries in The Middle East after we were done bombing them back into the stone age. It doesn't matter.
That'll never have to happen again. We can just export stablecoin digitally, and it's gonna be tied to US debt, and we are going to print the ever living l out of US debt. So the European Union, I don't know, man. This the whole thing worries me, but the ECB executive board member named Piero Cipollone has pinned yet another article highlighting concerns over the growing popularity of US dollar stablecoins arguing that launching a central bank digital currency could help preserve the Eurozone's monetary sovereignty. Spoiler alert, it won't.
A potential digital euro would limit the potential for foreign currency stablecoins to become a common medium of exchange within the euro area, Cipollone wrote in a statement. The remarks follow a string of similar public statements from Cipollone who has been a very vocal advocate for a digital euro as a strategic response to the dominance of US backed stablecoins in Europe in the latest piece. He reiterated that excessive reliance on foreign providers, including stablecoins, as well as international card schemes compromises the monetary sovereignty of Europe. In that, yes, sir. You are absolutely correct. Quote, it also underscores the urgent need for a digital euro.
Failing to act would not only expose us to significant risks, but also deprive us of a great opportunity, the central banker said. Cipollone also cited concerns about The United States' increasingly crypto friendly stance under the current administration, including efforts to promote dollar based stablecoins globally, quote, they could potentially result not just in further losses on fees and data, whatever the hell that means, but also in euro deposits being moved to The United States and in a further strengthening of the role of the US dollar in cross border payments. Faced with these challenges, we need a public private partnership to retain our sovereignty, The digital euro as a sovereign European means of payment based on EU legislation would be the cornerstone of this partnership, end quote.
Cipollone or Cipollone or however you pronounce his name, also highlighted the vital role of cash in ensuring financial inclusion and resilience stating that cash remains a cornerstone of the European financial system and is its only sovereign means of payment. However, a growing preference for digital payments has limited the use of cash amid the rapid growth of online shopping, which now accounts for a full one third of European retail transactions. Quote, cash cannot be used online, and it is often not possible to possible to pay using a European payment service, meaning we need to rely on non European European payment systems.
The time to act is now, he said, Making progress on both the digital euro regulation and the regulation on the legal tender status of cash has become urgent if we are to increase our resilience to possible disruptions and reverse our ever increasing dependence on foreign companies. Despite the ECB's ongoing efforts, the proposed digital euro has faced criticism and skepticism among European consumers, especially around data privacy concerns. An ECB working paper on the digital euro published in March showed that European consumers are not interested in adopting a digital euro with many seeing little value in the potential CBDC.
Europe is toast. It ain't just them. Okay? It ain't just them. What I'm seeing here is panic and and not Trump tariff related panic. These guys are panicking because they know what I've already told you. We are going to flood Europe and the rest of the world with United States printed debt instruments, and we're going to do it with Tether. That's what's going to happen. Yeah. Circle USDC will be there, but it's really gonna be USDT. And I I'm not happy about it. I hope that you understand that. I really am not happy about this. I'm not rah rah jumping up and down and putting on a little cheerleading outfit and and and, you know, go team. No. No. No. No.
I think this is bad, but it's going to happen. And when it happens, it's going to absolutely cause ruin in places like Europe, in places like Australia, in places like New Zealand. The only people that will have any kind of resilience whatsoever are absolutely 100% authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, possibly India. But the rest of them gonna fold like a house of cards, man. There's no there's no resisting the onslaught that they are going to witness. It's gonna be it's gonna be a sight to behold. It's gonna suck, but it's gonna be exciting.
And then there's New York. There's a New York bill being proposed to use blockchain to safeguard election results. This is Maya v from decrypt.co. Blockchain may soon be a part of New York strategy to secure the democratic process by democracy. That's the hope of Clyde Vannell who filed assembly bill a seven seven one six on Tuesday proposing that New York State Board of Elections study how blockchain technology could be used to protect voter records and election results. The bill currently in the assembly election Law Committee, calls for a comprehensive report within a year examining blockchain's potential as a tool for election integrity.
The legislation defines blockchain as a decentralized, cryptographically secured, immutable, and auditable ledger. What? Auditable? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. It is auditable. An auditable ledger capable of delivering an, quote, and I quote, quote, uncensored truth. I don't I don't think New York State wants this, honestly. It it mandates that the board of elections collaborate with the office of information technology services and engage experts in blockchain cybersecurity, voter fraud, and election systems. The final report must also consider blockchain implementations in other states and jurisdictions.
If the bill advances, it would need to pass through the full assembly, undergo the same process in the senate, and then be signed into law by the governor. And for now, it remains under committee review pending discussion or amendment. Yet, should the bill be enacted, the state board would be legally obligated to deliver its findings within twelve months. This is not Vandal's first push for such legislation. Versions of the bill have appeared in legislation legislative sessions since 02/2017. Though none have made it to the governor's desk, this year's version, however, arrives amid growing nationwide interest in exploring blockchain's role in public infrastructure even as other states pursue very different use cases such as crypto investments and regulatory reform.
Last month, Utah lawmakers approved HB two thirty, a block chain friendly bill that protects crypto activities and infrastructure, but stripped language that would have allowed the state to invest in Bitcoin directly. HB two thirty prohibits state and local governments from restricting individuals and businesses' ability to accept digital assets as payment, use self hosted or hardware wallets, and participate in blockchain activities such as operating nodes, developing software, transferring assets, and staking. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin investment strategy gained momentum following president Trump's March executive order to establish the strategic Bitcoin reserve at the federal level. Okay. So elections. You know where what was not mentioned at all anywhere in this particular news article was and I gotta go back and find it. I had it here. Yes.
Do do do do do do do. Simple proof. I've talked about I talked extensively well, well, not extensively. I've read a couple of articles about this thing called Simple Proof, and the last time I talked about it was episode 1,064. Right? Simple proof was I think it was Guatemala. Either that or Honduras. I can't remember. But it was it used the Bitcoin blockchain to verify election or or basically to have an immutable record of certified election results from the different reporting places in what in this particular South American or Central American country. Right? It works.
In fact, it works so well that they had to go they were asked to go up to Georgia to Screven County. I think Screven County is yes. Screven County, Georgia. And that simple proof was used to provide transparency to voters linking, the the oh, tells the story of the event. Now I'm looking back at at my transcript, from, episode ten sixty four. And sometimes those transcripts, they don't get transcribed very, very well through AI. So just understand that. But I'm what I'm saying is that this thing exists. They don't need to real I mean, all they really need to do is call this dude from Simple Proof, and I can't remember his name offhand.
But they've been doing this for, like he built it, like, four years ago, and they've been working with it ever since. And, like, it was, like, last year or the year before that they actually used it live in the field, and it works beautifully. It does exactly what New York State wants, and yet they're not even mentioning it in this bill, which tells me that our job of further education of what is available, how these things can be applied to whatever x you got a problem with, is still pretty dismal. We really need to ramp up our education. How I don't know. I do this show every single day.
I like, if somebody that is connected to anybody in, like, this about this bill in New York, about their election results, please give them a call if you know them, or you can get in touch with them somehow and tell them about simple proof that if they wanna look into it, all they really gotta do is that's their first call. Go talk to the guys at Simple Proof. And while they do that, we'll run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities breaking. Trump has announced a ninety day tariff pause for at least some countries. That's from CNBC.com. It is the banner on their futures and commodities, and everything is green.
Oil, West Texas Intermediate is up almost two points, back up to $60.72 after hitting $57 this morning. I mean, that's, like, really low. That's the kind of low that causes real problems for oil companies and entire nations because especially for places like Russia, which actually depend on, like, $60.65, $70 oil to be able to actually functionally operate because I think I've heard 40% of Russia's, GDP or, well, not their GDP, but their income as a as a nation comes from oil, 40%. And at $57 a barrel, that doesn't work for Putin. Brent Norsey is also up two points to $64.00 5. Natural gas is up six full points back to 3 60 7 a thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up only point 12% though. It is actually under $2 a barrel, $1.99.
Gold rallying up above 3,000 to 3,082 and 70¢ after a three point gain. Silver up three and a half. Platinum up two and a quarter. Copper is up five and a half. Palladium is up 2%. What's AG doing? Oh, look. It's almost all in the green except for Sugar, who's taken a hit today. 2.29% to the downside. Biggest winner is chocolate, a full seven and a half points to the upside. Meanwhile, live cattle is up two points. Lean hogs are up 2.78, and feeder cattle are up one and a half. And here's the equities. Brace yourselves. The Dow is up five and a half points.
The S and P is up six and a quarter. Nasdaq shooting for the moon, brother. Seven and a half percent to the upside, and the S and P mini following six and a quarter percent to the upside. And another breaking news, Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries, but hits China harder. I have something to say about this. We don't need China. I know what you're gonna say. You're stupid. I don't I know. It's okay. I can take the hit. Probably because I can't actually hear you say that I'm stupid, but I I'm just pretending that I can hear you screaming. Oh my god. Who's gonna make the cheap Chinese crap? Well, it sure as shit isn't gonna be China.
[00:28:58] Unknown:
You don't think they can make stuff in Vietnam?
[00:29:01] David Bennett:
You know, my what this is what I've always wondered about. We offshored so much crap to China. Hey. Build our stuff for us, and we'll just buy it from you, and you buy our debt. It'll be it'll be great. It'll be a great trade partnership. Why didn't we even consider Mexico? Shit. They're our neighbors to the south.
[00:29:22] Unknown:
And for that matter,
[00:29:23] David Bennett:
maybe we could have done a little bit more stuff up in Canada, but Canada's not to say anything bad about Canadians. The people are fine, but your government's kinda screwed. It's not like The United States isn't screwed as well. But we could have done a whole lot of stuff in Mexico. And what would have happened if we had built all instead of sending all of our stuff to China for them to do, what if we had sent it down to Mexico and worked with the Mexican government to educate their people in in a way, like, with trade maybe trade schools or or something so that because one of the arguments of why we didn't go down to Mexico is because the population of Mexico is just uneducated.
I personally call bullshit. Some of the smartest people I've ever known came from Mexico. Their school system is honestly kinda fine. It's not the greatest in the world, but it's not the worst in the world. But but they have huge poverty. What would have happened if instead of making a deal to go put out a house fire 1,200 blocks away that we just made a deal with our neighbor to say, hey. Look. If my house catches on fire, please put it out. If your house catches on fire, I'll be right there. There Mexico is our freaking neighbors. We could have been spending we could have spent since 1971 when we took the money off the gold standard is when all this shit started. We started offshoring all production.
That happened in 1971. What would have happened if we had concentrated on our own hemisphere? I I wish I could answer that, but I will tell you this. It would have been a hell of a lot better. We would have much better relationships with Mexico. We'd have much better relationships with Central America and South America. This could have been, but we chose to walk a different path. And now we're telling China, who, by the way, is probably sitting in the middle of one hell of a recession themselves and they're not really talking about it, they're about to lose all of The United States as their customers for their cheap, bullshit Chinese crap. And it doesn't mean that I'm also rah rah ing that. I'm just saying that's what's happening right now. You're seeing China basically being sidelined.
I and do they launch missiles because of it and kinetic warfare?
[00:31:59] Unknown:
I don't know. I my gut says no. But it
[00:32:05] David Bennett:
China's not the only country in the world that makes stuff. We could form a really good relationship with Mexico right now to say, not only are we gonna have manufacturing in The United States, we're going to also bring Mexico along for the ride. And guess what happens? All the people that bitch about illegal aliens coming up from Mexico, that stops. Why? Because we turn Mexico into something that is economically and financially viable for the people that live there and the people that immigrate there. It it's not hard. This is not rocket science.
There's if somebody were to come up to me and say, I I could give you 10 reasons why we don't wanna do that, I would say, you know what? I I'm just gonna automatically call bullshit. I don't even wanna hear the 10 reasons. What what do you think is gonna happen? We're gonna, like, make good friends with Mexico. We're gonna we're gonna do all kinds of really cool deals with them for manufacturing. We're gonna become intensely good trade partners. And instead of shipping shit across the from the other side of the planet, we're going to just be going across the the the Texas, Arizona, Nevada borders and and Baja, Mexico.
How is that going to cause an asteroid to strike the Earth and and everybody dies? That's not going to cause World War three. It's just not. I'm just like it's just not. We had the chance to work that deal. We've had that chance since the early seventies, and we screwed it up. That's on us. And we have the chance to fix that shit right now. We can just tell China, go screw, and we can go down to Mexico, and we can make really good friends. Drugs will probably stop being that much of an important deal because people will actually be able to afford to live in Mexico and they won't be used as human trafficking mules. Right? There's that.
I I could go on, but I won't because we do have Clark Moody flashing $81,990 putting us back to a $1,630,000,000,000 market cap, and we can now get 26.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,848,735 at a quarter of. Average fees per block remain low, 0.04 BTC, taken in fees on a per block basis of which there are five blocks carrying a measly, a a bone crushing, a blockchain stopping 13,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get you in at four. And, you know, because there's just no activity on the Bitcoin blockchain, we have a hash rate of 909.6 x a hashes per second, which still tells me that the miners are not capitulating.
They are not capitulating. And I wasn't capitulating either when I put out Quantum Me Harder. That was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Soap Miner with 5,000 sets. Soap Miner, I am so glad. I'm so glad to see you. He said that he wasn't able to, to zap me, and I I'm not exactly sure if this came through his zap or he had to go through another means. SoapMiner, thank you very, very much. Again, as always, me and my wife love your soap. I would I I would try to do my part to promote you and your product, and I I this what the CircleP is supposed to do.
It's how I designed it. It's probably not the best model in the world, but as long as I can help another brother, you know, do what they really wanna do, then, you know, it'll it'll all have been worth it. Psyduck five seventy nine says, Psyduck, Paul Cernine with 500 says, thank you again for a great episode. Ray Dalio has a lot of great insights from personal development, his principles, to the cycle of world history, highly recommended reading. Yeah. I have mixed feelings on all these titans. They're titans for a reason. The kind of person that you wanna be.
But then there's the other side of those some of those people and it's just I don't know. I never I would have to meet Ray and have a couple of beers with him to kinda suss out whether or not he's a complete scumbag or if he's just, you know, absolutely brilliant and just has different ways of thinking about life. But be that as it made, Turkey gave me 500 sats. Thank you. Yodle with 444 says super cycle. Chill now with three thirty three says echo of duality, please make it stop. Tokenize real estate, weaponize debt, repatriate your assets, or they will be reflections of what once were.
Consciousness is the quantum portal where inner chaos transforms into creative genius. Resilience is the alchemical key. Transmute resistance into radiant possibility. Embrace the revolutionary frequency of your untapped potential and echo. Nice. Good job, brother. Perma nerd with 234 sat says, node one makes better soap than soap miner and node body makes a better podcast than none your business oh I see what you did there perma nerd nice very well done sir Matt for real or f r l, hundred sats. Thank you. Pies with a hundred says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Soap miner says, it's a good listen. Haven't been paying much attention to fountain, but it looks like I'm going to start check them out. Yeah. And I told SoapMiner on, Nostra earlier this morning that the I just put up the the, the fountain link to each one of these episodes because like the vendors in the circle p, when I find something that I really like, I wanna promote it. I may not get paid for it, and it may still be an advertisement, but I like fountain app. It's my it is my daily driver. It's my go to podcasting app.
You can find me there, and you can just click the link whenever I mention a show. But, dude, I'm on every single podcast app, platform. I Spotify, yes. I'm on Spotify. Apple, yeah. I'm there too. You don't have to use Fountain. In fact, in the show notes, right around, like, after the articles and after the I think it's after the trans or no. Right before the transcript, there's a link where where I I titled the link, something like, find me on every podcast platform. So if you don't wanna use Fountain, you don't have to. You just click that link, and all of a sudden it will take you to a page and then you have the you can say, I want today's episode and then it takes you to a different page and it gives you, like, every place that you can find that same episode.
And there's, like, 40 podcast apps there. Right? So look for that in the show notes. If you if you don't wanna use fountain and you wanna use something else, you can just search for Bitcoin Ant, and you'll probably find me because I'm I'm on every particular app that you can see. Or and if your other friends go, well, I don't wanna use fountains, tell them. It's like, you don't have to use fountain to listen to Bitcoin, and you listen to them on anything. You tell them that. Meanwhile, that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news. You can use former Riot vice president Pierre Rochard launches the Bitcoin bond company.
Alex Larry writing for Bitcoin news. Let's find out about this one. Pierre is one of my favorite OGs in the space. He is a longtime Bitcoin advocate and well known figure in the space, and he has launched a new venture to bring Bitcoin to traditional fixed income markets. The new company named the Bitcoin Bond Company will offer Bitcoin backed financial products for institutional investors who want exposure to Bitcoin without actually holding the asset. And here is the note directly from the chief executive officer himself, Pierre Ochart, and it says, over the past twelve years of researching and educating about Bitcoin, I found that its market price divides the world into four categories.
Strangers who see it as worthless, interested investors who feel it is too volatile, risk takers who want to outperform it, and sovereign individuals who accept it. Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision has been fulfilled. Bitcoin allows anyone in the world to seamlessly transact with electronic cash. Anyone can access the fundamental value of Bitcoin's utility. Decentralized decentralization empowers you with the freedom to control your own money. Now it is time to accelerate adoption by securitizing Bitcoin for a wider set of investor risk appetites.
Rochard, this goes on in the back end of the article, Rochard has been involved with Bitcoin since 02/2012 and is known in the community as what is known as a Bitcoin maximalist, OGE. Over the past years, he's played key roles at major Bitcoin companies like BitPay and Kraken, and most recently was vice president of research at Riot Platforms, a large Bitcoin mining company. At Riot, he was known for pushing back against environmental criticism of Bitcoin mining and led to the viral video campaign that reframed mining as a form of value creation. Now his sites are bigger. The Bitcoin bond company will acquire $1,000,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin over the next twenty one years by offering transparent, regulated, and secure Bitcoin only products for traditional credit investors.
The company is building structured financial products Similar to bonds that use Bitcoin as the underlying asset, these products are designed for credit allocators who want returns but are wary of Bitcoin's volatility. Unlike direct ownership of Bitcoin, which can be complex for institutions due to regulatory and custody issues, these bonds offer a more familiar and manageable structure. Rochard believes this will unlock institutional capital that has so far stayed on the sidelines. He says they are creating a bridge between credit allocators who want stability and speculators who want high returns, adding, quote, Bitcoin backed credit products are inevitable, end quote.
The launch of the Bitcoin bond company marks a bigger shift in how Bitcoin is viewed in the financial world. Rochard says Bitcoin is no longer just a fringe experiment or a speculative asset, but a core monetary technology. He also believes Bitcoin's price movements, are no longer best explained in the four year having cycle, which is a popular theory amongst early Bitcoin users. Instead, he points to Bitcoin's growing status as a global macro asset increasingly influenced by interest rates and broader economic trends. Bitcoin's CAGR or CAGR is now tied to interest rates, Rochard said.
Higher fed rates pull capital out of Bitcoin. That's what slows adoption, end quote. This is the macro view that the Bitcoin bond company is built around. They will build investment products that can work in any economic environment and offer tranches of risk like traditional structured finance. Despite institutional interest in Bitcoin, Rochard sees education, there you go, as the biggest hurdle. Many fixed income investors are used to products backed by real estate or corporate debt, not decentralized digital assets. Quote, most investors have never seen a fixed income product backed purely by Bitcoin.
That's a new asset class for them, end quote, to fix this. Rochard will be speaking at Consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto where he'll be accelerating education among institutions exploring new asset classes. His point is clear. Bitcoin backed bonds aren't just possible. They're necessary for the next phase of adoption. The company's launch comes at a time of potential regulatory shifting. Richard is optimistic that under a changing US political environment, regulatory agencies like the SEC will be more neutral and merit based with Bitcoin related financial products. So good luck, Pierre.
I disagree with one thing, though. I I'm not I'm not entirely certain that this is going to be any easier of a product for companies and institutions to manage than just buying the ETF out of iBit. Not I'm not a fan of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, but they're here and they're going to be used, and therefore, I gotta know about them. So I'm looking at at this bond, and I hear the the word yield, and you know what happens when I'm hearing the word yield. Where where does the yield come from? It's not not technically explained. I think it's inferred, but I I still really like it when people go, I'm going to tell you exactly how we generate yield. This is how it works. Here is the math. Still have yet to see that. But Pierre, he is he is OG.
He is Bitcoin maximalist. He's I I I have no problem with him doing this. My and I don't even have a concern. I'm just saying, what makes this different than just buying spot Bitcoin ETFs if an institution wants an easier way to have exposure to Bitcoin? Sure. The ETFs don't provide the yield. Again, I need to know way more about that yield and how that yield is produced before I just say, oh, yeah. Okay. That's a good idea. Alright. Well, what's always a good idea is human rights. And the Human Rights Foundation is granting yet another 10 Bitcoin to 23 Bitcoin projects worldwide.
This is out of nobsbitcoin.com, and I'm glad to see them writing again. They were they were kinda like on hiatus for a little bit. Oh, and they redesigned their website, nobsbitcoin.com. That's nobsbitcoin.com. Go check out their new website. It looks really nice. The Bitcoin Development Fund aims to support individuals and projects that enhance Bitcoin and related technologies as tools for human rights defenders in difficult political context. And since its inception in 2020, the BDF has contributed around $7,800,000 worth of Bitcoin to 284 projects across 62 countries.
So here's the list of the new recipients. NetBlocks, Tollgate, Vintium, BTC pay server, Africa Bitcoin Institute, Bitcoin Core Graphical User Interface, r Crux, LSAT, RelayWizard, Weiyi, Hashpool, Cashew, Brandon Black, Stable Channels, Betasco, the core, Bitcoin Babies, East Asia Bitcoin Developer Apprentice Program, Talent Land twenty twenty five, Base fifty eights Bitcoin Live Action Role Play, BT, San Espanol, Daniel Batten, and Bitcoin for Good. So some of those I think were actually mentioned in the last, a couple of weeks ago. There was another announcement of the Human Rights Foundation.
I don't think this is the exact same one because some of these names, seem a little different and some of them are the same. So maybe this is a compilation of a little a couple of new grants along with the old grants. I don't know. Honestly, I kinda don't care. Human Rights Foundation is continuously granting Bitcoin to those who actually need to use it as a tool in the context of these difficult political situations. And what they really mean when they say that is, dude, if we find out through the bank of our particular authoritarian country that you're operating and saying shit we don't like, we're going to find you and we're going to kill you. Or we're going to imprison you for the rest of your natural born life and possibly do mean and nasty things to any of your friends and family that we find. That's the difficult political context when the human rights calls it that. That's what should be in the back of your mind.
Now on to Bitwise, their CIO claims tariff tantrum likely bullish for Bitcoin as a more fractured reserve system forms. Well, yeah, except that we've apparently announced a ninety day stay and all the markets are reacting positively. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard for us to for Trump and his administration to go, like, at the end of that ninety days go, yep. We're doing tariffs again. It's it's gonna be difficult. It's it begs the question. Did did is it possible that this was all done on purpose so that the Trump family could get in at a way lower rate with, Dow prices down? I don't know. I have no proof. I'm not even making that as a as as even a lighthearted accusation.
There's no proof. I if there is, if I see it, it's gonna be a while from now. But be that as it may, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies remained in flux while world superpowers launched tariffs against one another like freaking intercontinental ballistic missiles in a global trade war as US president Donald Trump announced wide ranging import duties last week, hurling panic on equities and crashing already subdued risk assets, quote, it's hard to be an investor at times like this. The market is volatile, and the news flow is constant, wrote Matt Hougan, Bitwise chief investment officer, in a Tuesday note.
The deluge of media headlines and divergent expert analysis has further shaken investor sentiment, but the White House's game plan also became more clear this week, Hogan remarked. Steve Mirren, chairman of the White House's Council on Economic Advisors, published a speech on Monday focused on the dollar's reserve currency role. Mirren said this dynamic has weighed on The United States manufacturing workforce and kept currency markets distorted. The underlying message is clear, said Hogan. The dollar needs to go lower. So when it comes to the tariff push, the thing I'm most certain of is this.
The Trump administration wants a significantly weaker dollar even if it means sacrificing the dollar's role as the world's sole reserve currency.
[00:51:45] Unknown:
No, brother. I disagree.
[00:51:48] David Bennett:
I think that that is a I don't think that that is what's in Trump's head because nobody wants to lose that kind of power. No. Because it once lost, it's gone forever. You'll never get it back. So I I am in 100% disagreement with Matt on the on him thinking that it's Trump's plan to crash the dollar into world irrelevancy. I I don't know what he's talking about there, but let's move on. The move has vast implications for Bitcoin. Well, of course. Hogan foresees Bitcoin strengthening as the dollar weakens in the near term. Since 2020, BTC has gained ground whenever the US dollar index declined, Hogan remarked, quote, dollar down equals Bitcoin up. I expect this pattern to continue, end quote.
The long term view paints an even more bullish picture for Bitcoin. Tariff led rebalancing and global de dollarization may cause economies to adopt new reserve currencies. Hogan opined that the world will increasingly look to hard money like BTC and gold amid a shift from a or to a more fractured reserve system in this context? The case for Bitcoin is simple. When international dynamics are fraught and global currencies are in flux, where else can investors go for a scarce, global, digital store of value that sits outside of the control of any government or entity Hogan posted?
Well, that I that I tend to agree with, but I'm still having a big, big problem that he it sounds to me like Matt is thinking that Trump is thinking that he wants to crash the dollar and become not the world's reserve currency. I guarantee you that is the wrong sentiment. I guarantee you Trump wants the dollar to win. He wants the dollar to always win. He's always wanted the dollar to win. He's been saying it since he was ever interviewed on Oprah Winfrey back in the mid eighties. He's talked about tariffs since the mid eighties. He's talked about the strength of the dollar and the dollar being the world reserve currency since the mid eighties. He's never stopped talking about it.
And all of a sudden, he wants to blow the dollar into irrelevance? I'm sorry. I call straight up bullshit on that. Moving on to investigations into exchanges and wallets dropped, Phoenix wallet returns to The US rising from the ashes of the old Phoenix is properly named. Brothers and sisters, Atlas21.com, according to Fortune, on April, The United States Department of Justice announced that it will cease investigations and criminal charges against cryptocurrency exchanges, mixing services, and wallets, and I brought that to you yesterday. In its official statement, the DOJ declared, quote, the Department of Justice will no longer engage in regulation through enforcement in this sector.
Specifically, the department will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline wallets for the actions of their end users or for unintentional regulatory violations. Hence, Phoenix Wallet can now and is planning to come back to The United States. Thank god. I love Phoenix. One of the first consequences of this new policy comes from the Lightning Network wallet, Phoenix Wallet, which announced on its Twitter profile that it is indeed returning to The United States market. I, for one, am very, very glad. I'm very happy for Phoenix that they're rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the old into flight into the new world without all this regulatory hoop regulatory hoopla.
Will will that last if if the Republicans get their clocks cleaned in four years? I don't I don't know. I I kinda doubt it. I think we'll I think it'll go snap back right to where it was.
[00:56:16] Unknown:
I don't know, man. See, this is this is the thing that concerns me.
[00:56:24] David Bennett:
Trump better play this right. I mean, he is scathingly close to playing this the wrong way with, and I'm not saying that I believe tariffs are right nor are am I saying that they are wrong. I'm just saying that there is a lot of pain in the market right now. And I understand that, you know, a lot of people are, like, looking at their four zero one k's and they're freaking the hell out, but they're doing it on the shortest of time scales possible. Now if this crap lasts, if the people that are 64 years old, like, right now, like, they're like, they turn like, let's say on January, a whole bunch of people turned 64.
If by 65, when they are planning to retire, if if they can, if they were planning on it, and if they if they could have before Trump and they can't because of Trump after the after a year, that sentiment is going to burn into their hearts, and three years hence, they will vote the other direction. I guarantee it. So I don't know exactly what orange man has planned.
[00:57:31] Unknown:
All I can say though is it better work. Otherwise, sayonora.
[00:57:37] David Bennett:
Cove wallet version 0.3 with tap signer report or soft report. Got it. It's the end of the show, guys. I'm doing my best. Tap signer support. Cove, which is in beta, is a mobile Bitcoin wallet built on top of the BDK library. It is available only on iOS with an Android version expected to be released in the near future. Cove Wallet is a simple mobile Bitcoin wallet developed by Praveen Pereira aiming to become the best mobile wallet. It features the ability to import hardware wallets and send transactions via NFC, file, or QR codes for transferring partially signed Bitcoin transactions. It also allows users to create and back up hot wallets. It supports BIP three twenty nine labels, offers the ability to connect to your own node, utilizes decoy pins, and more quote.
We provide hot wallet support, but one of the main goals is to be the best mobile wallet to use with hardware wallets. Cove is currently in beta. Be careful when using it with large amounts of Bitcoin. Well, that's always a concern. Cove offers full support for TapSigner. It supports setting up an initial PIN for or, yeah, or importing an already initialized card, signing transactions, changing the PIN, and downloading backups. Upcoming updates will include support for Sats card, a UTXO list, and coin control, the ability to lock and unlock individual UTXOs, as well as the aforementioned Android release. You can download and test the app from the test flight beta on iOS.
Let's see. Is there anything in the key features that we did not you can use a face ID to lock your wallets. I just don't like biometrics, man. It just just gives me the willies. So be on the lookout for Cove. That is spelled c o v e. And, honestly, man, that well, shit, guys. That's it. I enjoyed my time with you today. Sort of like the old mister Rogers. Hey. How are you doing? I really enjoyed hanging out with you today. Oh, there's a nice little song. Anyway, again, I think it's really important that the Trump administration play this right. Otherwise, his VP Vance is not gonna have a shot in hell to continue what what they're trying to do here on into the future.
This is this is a one shot deal, and it's I'm glad that I'm glad that they decided to do it upfront within the first three months of the presidency so that they'd have all manner of time to figure out how they're gonna proceed with it and iron out wrinkles or fix any problems or and all the you know, not to mention having to put out all the fires he set because, yes, you love them or hate them, this dude has set a bunch of fires. And that 64 year old turning 65 and not having enough to be able to retire on as they planned for is not something that he's going to be able to allow. It's just not. And I can sit here and I can bitch about, oh, you poor little boomer. I don't I'm not gonna do that. That's a boomer, gen x, gen z.
You know what they all share in common?
[01:01:09] Unknown:
They're all human beings. They're all somebody's mother,
[01:01:13] David Bennett:
father, or sister, or brother. They're all somebody's sons. You know? They're somebody's daughter, somebody's cousin, somebody's friend. Just because you don't like boomers or you don't like gen xers, you don't like millennials, you don't like gen zers or the whatever, that they somehow or another deserve some kind of shitty deal? No. That that's not right. That that's that's a horrible way to think about your fellow man or woman depending on whether or not you're gonna lose your mind if I say your fellow man or mankind, be that as it may. I I mean, even the people that that are completely on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me, I don't want them dead.
If I wanted somebody drug out into the street, it would be it would be at the level of a politician. You know, that that's that's who that's my that's the people I got a problem with because they're the ones that caused all this uncertainty in the first place.
[01:02:15] Unknown:
And what's happening right now
[01:02:18] David Bennett:
is that if it was fractured in the system, it is breaking loose from the system right now as we speak. The amount of stress that was put on the worldwide economies and the worldwide financial markets at this point should have broken off any if it was about to break off in the next ten years, it has completely shattered and is floating down to the ground right now as we speak. This is the stress test everybody said that they were going to do on the banks but didn't. This is the stress test that actually cleans up a whole bunch of crap. The problem is the lasting effects and how many people, and there will be some, that never recover from this.
And my heart goes out to them, but I'm and I'm certainly not gonna throw them under the bus, but I am gonna recognize that there are gonna be some people that get fucked for life on this deal. And if there's too many of them, then we're all gonna be screwed if we have a complete sea change again in four years. And it doesn't mean that I'm I'm all about being a Republican, nor am I all about being a Democrat. I'm just saying that when you have a situation where we have like, in in our space, right, with cryptocurrency god. Sorry. I said that with Bitcoin.
We had a regulatory landscape that really sucked that seems to have taken care of itself almost about 90%. We still have the samurai guys that we gotta get out, and we got the tornado cash guys that we gotta get out. But other than that, almost every SEC lawsuit from a regulatory standpoint has been dropped. That looks pretty good going into the future. But if Vance doesn't win or who yeah. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be Vance that runs for president because that's normally what happens. If he doesn't
[01:04:16] Unknown:
win, you're not getting an independent, and you're sure as shit not getting a libertarian.
[01:04:23] David Bennett:
That's just never gonna happen. That that that party is too libertarian to actually come together with any cohesiveness because libertarianism kinda kinda goes its own way. So, therefore, there's not really gonna be a whole lot of, you know, socialism, which is kinda necessary when you want to build a group with a singular voice. See how that works? That's that's why you'll never have a libertarian president. It's not and I love libertarianism, but it's so it's so libertarian that they're never gonna be able to be president, which leaves you with a group of people that are absolutely absolutely going to set fire to everything that we build here.
So Trump better hopes this shit works. I'm I'm I'm just saying. I'm not saying that it won't. I'm not saying it will. Telling you, though, if this doesn't work and there's enough people that get burned badly enough, We can kiss a lot of this shit goodbye. And if we don't get the Bitcoin strategic reserve bill actually passed in congress and all the way to Trump's desk and signed into law, we're gonna have some real problems in The United States. And it won't be because they hate Bitcoiners. It will literally be because that was one of the very things that he got elected on. And if they can destroy that, they can destroy almost everything else in that legacy because it was a major running point, that and tariffs.
It was Bitcoin and tariffs. That's what got him elected.
[01:06:01] Unknown:
So we'll have to see how this shit goes. But
[01:06:05] David Bennett:
I'm out of time, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:23AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025, and this is episode ten seventy one of Bitcoin and we really are going to dive right in today. Don't want to draw this out too long, so we've got lots of stuff to cover. We're going to start with Kraken partnering with Mastercard, ostensibly to bring Bitcoin payments to over 150,000,000 merchants. So, yeah, we've heard merchant adoption before. Let's see what Kraken brings to the table. Nick from Bitcoin magazine is writing. Mastercard has announced a landmark partnership with Kraken to enable real world Bitcoin and crypto payments at scale across The United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. The collaboration aims to allow Kraken's users to spend their digital assets at over 150,000,000 merchants worldwide that accept Mastercard, marking a major step forward in the integration of Bitcoin into everyday commerce.
Mastercard is committing to driving innovation and expanding the possibilities of digital payments, stated Scott Abrahams, executive vice president of global partnerships at Mastercard. Our partnership with Kraken is a concrete demonstration of this as we work together to unlock the true potential of crypto assets for everyday use with a shared ambition to simplify, interoperate, and secure the digital asset ecosystem, we are proud to collaborate with Kraken and bring real value to their user base, end quote. Alright. I I've I've read worse suit speak on this show before.
All in all, not so bad. Still put a tie on the suit speak. Kraken, one of the most established cryptocurrency exchanges with over 15,000,000 customers globally themselves is using Mastercard's expansive payment infrastructure to expand its product suite. This includes the rapid rollout of physical and digital debit cards, oh, here they come, that connect their crypto balances to retail spending. The partnership also builds on the growing momentum of Kraken Pay, a feature introduced by the exchange to offer fast borderless payments in cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.
In just three months since its launch, more than 200,000 users have activated their personal crack tag. Oh my god. I got a crack addiction, yo. Crack tag to send money worldwide with the simplicity of sending a text, the announcement stated. Quote, crypto is transforming the payments industry, and we envision a future where global commerce and everyday payments are powered by crypto assets, said Kraken co CEO David Ripley in the release. Quote, our customers want to be able to easily pay for real world goods and services with their cryptocurrencies or stablecoins.
Our partnership with Mastercard is a major step in realizing this vision, and together, we will unlock the full potential of crypto assets in everyday life, ensuring their long term relevance and utility. Guy, can I just pause here for a second and just just, I don't know, vent my disdain for that which I label suit speak? Corporate releases, who writes these things? Is if we just lost the ability to just talk to people, do we always have to use these weird words in this this corporate syntax that just makes everything sound like a, I don't know, like a call to action? It just it's gross.
It's not it's bad writing y'all. Bad. Bad. Kraken users in The UK and Europe can now join the wait list for the upcoming crypto debit cards and start preparing to use their Bitcoin. Oh, they finally actually say Bitcoin in day to day spending, signaling a new chapter in the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin as a functional payment tool. Last year, Mastercard partnered with exchange Mercado Bitcoin to launch its own Mastercard crypto credential, enabling its first peer to peer pilot transactions using aliases instead of long and complex blockchain addresses.
Yes. I remember bringing that to you, when that came out. But now it looks like Kraken and Mastercard are partnering up, and that's honestly, Mastercard are partnering up, and that's honestly we'll have we're as usual, we'll have to see if in you know, how many people actually use their, oh god, their crypto balances on Kraken to pay for goods and services. Because generally speaking, an exchange like Kraken, it's an exchange. It's not a bank. It's not a savings account. It's not a checking account. And yet, this this marriage between an exchange and wallets honestly has only come about because of things like Bitcoin.
So from that standpoint, we can see how this landscape is changing. For and the reason I know that is if do you have, like, I don't know, well, like, a Wells Fargo brokerage account? If you do, please dig into that thing and find me where you can pay for a burrito with a share of Texaco stock or whatever, you know, Chevron or whatever. I Texaco got folded into Chevron. So like, no. It doesn't exist. Goldman Sachs account? Debt? Nope. Nope. You'd actually have to exchange your, your Chevron share for, like, US dollars and then transfer those US dollars into your actual bank account, and then you can use it to buy the burrito, but no. So in a real way, this is this demonstrates the power of what's been built.
But in also just the same real way, I'm not sure that this is all that healthy because an exchange is there for a reason. It's not a bank account. It's not a checking account, And yet they are able to activate these very same kinds of procedures that a bank has combined with an exchange. And I don't think anybody can really can really suss out what kind of emergent properties that are not all that good can come from this. So be be careful as this thing rolls out. I I I don't wanna poo poo it completely, but, you know, a, the suit speak containing so much crypto language is kind of ghastly, and b, we really do need to be careful here. We're on the precipice of something that's never been done, and I'm sure that there's probably gonna be some problems. And I think it's gonna be more the psychology of traders trading on the very same platform that they can buy stuff from Alibaba from. I I don't know, man. Something about this is kinda weird, but, not as weird as not as weird as what's next.
It took him a while, but Trump decided, I guess, to cut his losses on ether. He's selling it. Trump backed World Liberty Financial begin selling ETH as losses top $125,000,000. Oh, good lord. Oliver Knight, CoinDesk, World Liberty Financial, the Donald Trump family backed DeFi project reportedly started to sell its ether. Now this is reportedly okay? We definitely gonna need confirmation on this, and I don't have it. But reportedly, Trump World Liberty Financial has started selling its ETH stash at $1,465 a token despite purchasing the assets for 3,259 at the start of the year.
Yeah. You got hosed. We've been telling you, get out of ETH. I don't even I don't even know if I want to look right now as to what the hell's going on with with ETH, the ETHBTC pair. Wow. God almighty. 0.019 is the ratio between Ethereum and Bitcoin right now. That is, in fact let's see. I'm just gonna go back here if my trading view will play nice with me, and it may not. I'm gonna go back in time. We're gonna go back in the space get get to get into the time machine, the way back machine, and go way, way, way back here to where the hell was it? Last time it was at this per at this ratio was, wow, February.
You know, just a just a week ago, the last time that the ETHBTC pair fell low and fell low, and we started looking to how far back in time was that, that was in, like, January of twenty twenty one. So within the space of a week, we've been able to take the price, the the Bitcoin, Ethereum, or ether ratio from where it was one year or for five years ago, all the way to, like, you know, or four years ago, all the way to sit, you know, five years ago. That was fast. That's within a week. This thing is losing its ass. Nobody should be in this.
This is a bad deal, and even Trump knows it. Oh my god. It's just it's awful. And I don't I'm I'm really not dancing on the graves of people that hold ETH. I don't wanna see anybody get blown out like this, but we have been warning for years. It doesn't solve anything. And I guess Trump knows about it because on chain data from Arkham shows that a wallet closely tied with World Liberty Financial sold 5,471 ETH for around $8,000,000 on Wednesday after racking up a hundred and $25,000,000 loss. The sale comes just two months after Eric Trump, one of the president's sons, said it was a great time. It was a great time to buy ETH, which was trading at the time at 2,880.
The main World Liberty Financial wallet still holds $98,000,000 worth of crypto, $11,700,000 of which is still in ether. You need to get out, Don. Donald Trump wrote on Wednesday that it is a great time to buy on truth social while global markets tumbled on the escalating risks of a trade war. And since trip Trump was inaugurated on January, the Nasdaq is down by 20%. With the S and P 500, it's down by 17%, and Bitcoin is down by 24%. The Trump and Melania meme coins have fared worse, losing 8395% of their values, respectively. World Liberty Financial did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
So even Trump is getting out of ETH. I'm telling you, man, if you are still holding on to this thing and you don't wanna sell it because and and I get it. Tax burden. I I I understand. I get it. But, I mean, at what point do you wanna cut loose from this thing and still retain some kind of value? You know, and it's it really is. It's just a math thing. You actually have to get a piece of paper and a pencil, and you gotta write numbers and you gotta do adding and subtracting and, you know, probably some division and maybe long division. It doesn't matter. Just do the math and figure out what it is that you wanna be left over with after taxes versus waiting for this thing to plunge anymore. Get out. Get out. Get out. And if you're also in the European Union, you might consider getting out because the European Central Bank or the ECB, one of their executives has renewed a push for the digital euro to counter US Stablecoin growth, Helen Parks, Cointelegraph.
The European Central Bank is intensifying its warnings over stablecoin adoption with one of its top officials calling for the digital euro to curb the influence of US dollar peg stablecoins across the continent. I'm going to pause to say the following. It's already too late for you. It's already too late. It's already too late. It's already too late for the European Union. There is no combating this. The guys over at Tether, they've they put a nail they put a nail in the global fiat legacy financial framework, and nobody even saw it happen. I didn't see it happen. I had no idea what tether was gonna turn into. But now you can kiss all your central bank digital currencies goodbye.
Because like the US dollar, tether is going to burn down the entire world. And we're I'm not saying that it's good. I'm saying I'm telling you what is. And Tether, that's gonna be the outreach program for The United States Federal Reserve And Treasury to print phenomenal amounts of debt. And we're going to be able to directly export it across the globe, and we won't have to load it into a c one thirty and fly it into Iraq. We won't have to, you know, figure out a way to to print that money and buy gold so that we can fly it into, I don't know, Iraq. I mean, I don't know how many dollars of physical cash and bullion was found in these countries in The Middle East after we were done bombing them back into the stone age. It doesn't matter.
That'll never have to happen again. We can just export stablecoin digitally, and it's gonna be tied to US debt, and we are going to print the ever living l out of US debt. So the European Union, I don't know, man. This the whole thing worries me, but the ECB executive board member named Piero Cipollone has pinned yet another article highlighting concerns over the growing popularity of US dollar stablecoins arguing that launching a central bank digital currency could help preserve the Eurozone's monetary sovereignty. Spoiler alert, it won't.
A potential digital euro would limit the potential for foreign currency stablecoins to become a common medium of exchange within the euro area, Cipollone wrote in a statement. The remarks follow a string of similar public statements from Cipollone who has been a very vocal advocate for a digital euro as a strategic response to the dominance of US backed stablecoins in Europe in the latest piece. He reiterated that excessive reliance on foreign providers, including stablecoins, as well as international card schemes compromises the monetary sovereignty of Europe. In that, yes, sir. You are absolutely correct. Quote, it also underscores the urgent need for a digital euro.
Failing to act would not only expose us to significant risks, but also deprive us of a great opportunity, the central banker said. Cipollone also cited concerns about The United States' increasingly crypto friendly stance under the current administration, including efforts to promote dollar based stablecoins globally, quote, they could potentially result not just in further losses on fees and data, whatever the hell that means, but also in euro deposits being moved to The United States and in a further strengthening of the role of the US dollar in cross border payments. Faced with these challenges, we need a public private partnership to retain our sovereignty, The digital euro as a sovereign European means of payment based on EU legislation would be the cornerstone of this partnership, end quote.
Cipollone or Cipollone or however you pronounce his name, also highlighted the vital role of cash in ensuring financial inclusion and resilience stating that cash remains a cornerstone of the European financial system and is its only sovereign means of payment. However, a growing preference for digital payments has limited the use of cash amid the rapid growth of online shopping, which now accounts for a full one third of European retail transactions. Quote, cash cannot be used online, and it is often not possible to possible to pay using a European payment service, meaning we need to rely on non European European payment systems.
The time to act is now, he said, Making progress on both the digital euro regulation and the regulation on the legal tender status of cash has become urgent if we are to increase our resilience to possible disruptions and reverse our ever increasing dependence on foreign companies. Despite the ECB's ongoing efforts, the proposed digital euro has faced criticism and skepticism among European consumers, especially around data privacy concerns. An ECB working paper on the digital euro published in March showed that European consumers are not interested in adopting a digital euro with many seeing little value in the potential CBDC.
Europe is toast. It ain't just them. Okay? It ain't just them. What I'm seeing here is panic and and not Trump tariff related panic. These guys are panicking because they know what I've already told you. We are going to flood Europe and the rest of the world with United States printed debt instruments, and we're going to do it with Tether. That's what's going to happen. Yeah. Circle USDC will be there, but it's really gonna be USDT. And I I'm not happy about it. I hope that you understand that. I really am not happy about this. I'm not rah rah jumping up and down and putting on a little cheerleading outfit and and and, you know, go team. No. No. No. No.
I think this is bad, but it's going to happen. And when it happens, it's going to absolutely cause ruin in places like Europe, in places like Australia, in places like New Zealand. The only people that will have any kind of resilience whatsoever are absolutely 100% authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, possibly India. But the rest of them gonna fold like a house of cards, man. There's no there's no resisting the onslaught that they are going to witness. It's gonna be it's gonna be a sight to behold. It's gonna suck, but it's gonna be exciting.
And then there's New York. There's a New York bill being proposed to use blockchain to safeguard election results. This is Maya v from decrypt.co. Blockchain may soon be a part of New York strategy to secure the democratic process by democracy. That's the hope of Clyde Vannell who filed assembly bill a seven seven one six on Tuesday proposing that New York State Board of Elections study how blockchain technology could be used to protect voter records and election results. The bill currently in the assembly election Law Committee, calls for a comprehensive report within a year examining blockchain's potential as a tool for election integrity.
The legislation defines blockchain as a decentralized, cryptographically secured, immutable, and auditable ledger. What? Auditable? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. It is auditable. An auditable ledger capable of delivering an, quote, and I quote, quote, uncensored truth. I don't I don't think New York State wants this, honestly. It it mandates that the board of elections collaborate with the office of information technology services and engage experts in blockchain cybersecurity, voter fraud, and election systems. The final report must also consider blockchain implementations in other states and jurisdictions.
If the bill advances, it would need to pass through the full assembly, undergo the same process in the senate, and then be signed into law by the governor. And for now, it remains under committee review pending discussion or amendment. Yet, should the bill be enacted, the state board would be legally obligated to deliver its findings within twelve months. This is not Vandal's first push for such legislation. Versions of the bill have appeared in legislation legislative sessions since 02/2017. Though none have made it to the governor's desk, this year's version, however, arrives amid growing nationwide interest in exploring blockchain's role in public infrastructure even as other states pursue very different use cases such as crypto investments and regulatory reform.
Last month, Utah lawmakers approved HB two thirty, a block chain friendly bill that protects crypto activities and infrastructure, but stripped language that would have allowed the state to invest in Bitcoin directly. HB two thirty prohibits state and local governments from restricting individuals and businesses' ability to accept digital assets as payment, use self hosted or hardware wallets, and participate in blockchain activities such as operating nodes, developing software, transferring assets, and staking. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin investment strategy gained momentum following president Trump's March executive order to establish the strategic Bitcoin reserve at the federal level. Okay. So elections. You know where what was not mentioned at all anywhere in this particular news article was and I gotta go back and find it. I had it here. Yes.
Do do do do do do do. Simple proof. I've talked about I talked extensively well, well, not extensively. I've read a couple of articles about this thing called Simple Proof, and the last time I talked about it was episode 1,064. Right? Simple proof was I think it was Guatemala. Either that or Honduras. I can't remember. But it was it used the Bitcoin blockchain to verify election or or basically to have an immutable record of certified election results from the different reporting places in what in this particular South American or Central American country. Right? It works.
In fact, it works so well that they had to go they were asked to go up to Georgia to Screven County. I think Screven County is yes. Screven County, Georgia. And that simple proof was used to provide transparency to voters linking, the the oh, tells the story of the event. Now I'm looking back at at my transcript, from, episode ten sixty four. And sometimes those transcripts, they don't get transcribed very, very well through AI. So just understand that. But I'm what I'm saying is that this thing exists. They don't need to real I mean, all they really need to do is call this dude from Simple Proof, and I can't remember his name offhand.
But they've been doing this for, like he built it, like, four years ago, and they've been working with it ever since. And, like, it was, like, last year or the year before that they actually used it live in the field, and it works beautifully. It does exactly what New York State wants, and yet they're not even mentioning it in this bill, which tells me that our job of further education of what is available, how these things can be applied to whatever x you got a problem with, is still pretty dismal. We really need to ramp up our education. How I don't know. I do this show every single day.
I like, if somebody that is connected to anybody in, like, this about this bill in New York, about their election results, please give them a call if you know them, or you can get in touch with them somehow and tell them about simple proof that if they wanna look into it, all they really gotta do is that's their first call. Go talk to the guys at Simple Proof. And while they do that, we'll run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities breaking. Trump has announced a ninety day tariff pause for at least some countries. That's from CNBC.com. It is the banner on their futures and commodities, and everything is green.
Oil, West Texas Intermediate is up almost two points, back up to $60.72 after hitting $57 this morning. I mean, that's, like, really low. That's the kind of low that causes real problems for oil companies and entire nations because especially for places like Russia, which actually depend on, like, $60.65, $70 oil to be able to actually functionally operate because I think I've heard 40% of Russia's, GDP or, well, not their GDP, but their income as a as a nation comes from oil, 40%. And at $57 a barrel, that doesn't work for Putin. Brent Norsey is also up two points to $64.00 5. Natural gas is up six full points back to 3 60 7 a thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up only point 12% though. It is actually under $2 a barrel, $1.99.
Gold rallying up above 3,000 to 3,082 and 70¢ after a three point gain. Silver up three and a half. Platinum up two and a quarter. Copper is up five and a half. Palladium is up 2%. What's AG doing? Oh, look. It's almost all in the green except for Sugar, who's taken a hit today. 2.29% to the downside. Biggest winner is chocolate, a full seven and a half points to the upside. Meanwhile, live cattle is up two points. Lean hogs are up 2.78, and feeder cattle are up one and a half. And here's the equities. Brace yourselves. The Dow is up five and a half points.
The S and P is up six and a quarter. Nasdaq shooting for the moon, brother. Seven and a half percent to the upside, and the S and P mini following six and a quarter percent to the upside. And another breaking news, Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries, but hits China harder. I have something to say about this. We don't need China. I know what you're gonna say. You're stupid. I don't I know. It's okay. I can take the hit. Probably because I can't actually hear you say that I'm stupid, but I I'm just pretending that I can hear you screaming. Oh my god. Who's gonna make the cheap Chinese crap? Well, it sure as shit isn't gonna be China.
[00:28:58] Unknown:
You don't think they can make stuff in Vietnam?
[00:29:01] David Bennett:
You know, my what this is what I've always wondered about. We offshored so much crap to China. Hey. Build our stuff for us, and we'll just buy it from you, and you buy our debt. It'll be it'll be great. It'll be a great trade partnership. Why didn't we even consider Mexico? Shit. They're our neighbors to the south.
[00:29:22] Unknown:
And for that matter,
[00:29:23] David Bennett:
maybe we could have done a little bit more stuff up in Canada, but Canada's not to say anything bad about Canadians. The people are fine, but your government's kinda screwed. It's not like The United States isn't screwed as well. But we could have done a whole lot of stuff in Mexico. And what would have happened if we had built all instead of sending all of our stuff to China for them to do, what if we had sent it down to Mexico and worked with the Mexican government to educate their people in in a way, like, with trade maybe trade schools or or something so that because one of the arguments of why we didn't go down to Mexico is because the population of Mexico is just uneducated.
I personally call bullshit. Some of the smartest people I've ever known came from Mexico. Their school system is honestly kinda fine. It's not the greatest in the world, but it's not the worst in the world. But but they have huge poverty. What would have happened if instead of making a deal to go put out a house fire 1,200 blocks away that we just made a deal with our neighbor to say, hey. Look. If my house catches on fire, please put it out. If your house catches on fire, I'll be right there. There Mexico is our freaking neighbors. We could have been spending we could have spent since 1971 when we took the money off the gold standard is when all this shit started. We started offshoring all production.
That happened in 1971. What would have happened if we had concentrated on our own hemisphere? I I wish I could answer that, but I will tell you this. It would have been a hell of a lot better. We would have much better relationships with Mexico. We'd have much better relationships with Central America and South America. This could have been, but we chose to walk a different path. And now we're telling China, who, by the way, is probably sitting in the middle of one hell of a recession themselves and they're not really talking about it, they're about to lose all of The United States as their customers for their cheap, bullshit Chinese crap. And it doesn't mean that I'm also rah rah ing that. I'm just saying that's what's happening right now. You're seeing China basically being sidelined.
I and do they launch missiles because of it and kinetic warfare?
[00:31:59] Unknown:
I don't know. I my gut says no. But it
[00:32:05] David Bennett:
China's not the only country in the world that makes stuff. We could form a really good relationship with Mexico right now to say, not only are we gonna have manufacturing in The United States, we're going to also bring Mexico along for the ride. And guess what happens? All the people that bitch about illegal aliens coming up from Mexico, that stops. Why? Because we turn Mexico into something that is economically and financially viable for the people that live there and the people that immigrate there. It it's not hard. This is not rocket science.
There's if somebody were to come up to me and say, I I could give you 10 reasons why we don't wanna do that, I would say, you know what? I I'm just gonna automatically call bullshit. I don't even wanna hear the 10 reasons. What what do you think is gonna happen? We're gonna, like, make good friends with Mexico. We're gonna we're gonna do all kinds of really cool deals with them for manufacturing. We're gonna become intensely good trade partners. And instead of shipping shit across the from the other side of the planet, we're going to just be going across the the the Texas, Arizona, Nevada borders and and Baja, Mexico.
How is that going to cause an asteroid to strike the Earth and and everybody dies? That's not going to cause World War three. It's just not. I'm just like it's just not. We had the chance to work that deal. We've had that chance since the early seventies, and we screwed it up. That's on us. And we have the chance to fix that shit right now. We can just tell China, go screw, and we can go down to Mexico, and we can make really good friends. Drugs will probably stop being that much of an important deal because people will actually be able to afford to live in Mexico and they won't be used as human trafficking mules. Right? There's that.
I I could go on, but I won't because we do have Clark Moody flashing $81,990 putting us back to a $1,630,000,000,000 market cap, and we can now get 26.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,848,735 at a quarter of. Average fees per block remain low, 0.04 BTC, taken in fees on a per block basis of which there are five blocks carrying a measly, a a bone crushing, a blockchain stopping 13,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get you in at four. And, you know, because there's just no activity on the Bitcoin blockchain, we have a hash rate of 909.6 x a hashes per second, which still tells me that the miners are not capitulating.
They are not capitulating. And I wasn't capitulating either when I put out Quantum Me Harder. That was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Soap Miner with 5,000 sets. Soap Miner, I am so glad. I'm so glad to see you. He said that he wasn't able to, to zap me, and I I'm not exactly sure if this came through his zap or he had to go through another means. SoapMiner, thank you very, very much. Again, as always, me and my wife love your soap. I would I I would try to do my part to promote you and your product, and I I this what the CircleP is supposed to do.
It's how I designed it. It's probably not the best model in the world, but as long as I can help another brother, you know, do what they really wanna do, then, you know, it'll it'll all have been worth it. Psyduck five seventy nine says, Psyduck, Paul Cernine with 500 says, thank you again for a great episode. Ray Dalio has a lot of great insights from personal development, his principles, to the cycle of world history, highly recommended reading. Yeah. I have mixed feelings on all these titans. They're titans for a reason. The kind of person that you wanna be.
But then there's the other side of those some of those people and it's just I don't know. I never I would have to meet Ray and have a couple of beers with him to kinda suss out whether or not he's a complete scumbag or if he's just, you know, absolutely brilliant and just has different ways of thinking about life. But be that as it made, Turkey gave me 500 sats. Thank you. Yodle with 444 says super cycle. Chill now with three thirty three says echo of duality, please make it stop. Tokenize real estate, weaponize debt, repatriate your assets, or they will be reflections of what once were.
Consciousness is the quantum portal where inner chaos transforms into creative genius. Resilience is the alchemical key. Transmute resistance into radiant possibility. Embrace the revolutionary frequency of your untapped potential and echo. Nice. Good job, brother. Perma nerd with 234 sat says, node one makes better soap than soap miner and node body makes a better podcast than none your business oh I see what you did there perma nerd nice very well done sir Matt for real or f r l, hundred sats. Thank you. Pies with a hundred says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Soap miner says, it's a good listen. Haven't been paying much attention to fountain, but it looks like I'm going to start check them out. Yeah. And I told SoapMiner on, Nostra earlier this morning that the I just put up the the, the fountain link to each one of these episodes because like the vendors in the circle p, when I find something that I really like, I wanna promote it. I may not get paid for it, and it may still be an advertisement, but I like fountain app. It's my it is my daily driver. It's my go to podcasting app.
You can find me there, and you can just click the link whenever I mention a show. But, dude, I'm on every single podcast app, platform. I Spotify, yes. I'm on Spotify. Apple, yeah. I'm there too. You don't have to use Fountain. In fact, in the show notes, right around, like, after the articles and after the I think it's after the trans or no. Right before the transcript, there's a link where where I I titled the link, something like, find me on every podcast platform. So if you don't wanna use Fountain, you don't have to. You just click that link, and all of a sudden it will take you to a page and then you have the you can say, I want today's episode and then it takes you to a different page and it gives you, like, every place that you can find that same episode.
And there's, like, 40 podcast apps there. Right? So look for that in the show notes. If you if you don't wanna use fountain and you wanna use something else, you can just search for Bitcoin Ant, and you'll probably find me because I'm I'm on every particular app that you can see. Or and if your other friends go, well, I don't wanna use fountains, tell them. It's like, you don't have to use fountain to listen to Bitcoin, and you listen to them on anything. You tell them that. Meanwhile, that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news. You can use former Riot vice president Pierre Rochard launches the Bitcoin bond company.
Alex Larry writing for Bitcoin news. Let's find out about this one. Pierre is one of my favorite OGs in the space. He is a longtime Bitcoin advocate and well known figure in the space, and he has launched a new venture to bring Bitcoin to traditional fixed income markets. The new company named the Bitcoin Bond Company will offer Bitcoin backed financial products for institutional investors who want exposure to Bitcoin without actually holding the asset. And here is the note directly from the chief executive officer himself, Pierre Ochart, and it says, over the past twelve years of researching and educating about Bitcoin, I found that its market price divides the world into four categories.
Strangers who see it as worthless, interested investors who feel it is too volatile, risk takers who want to outperform it, and sovereign individuals who accept it. Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision has been fulfilled. Bitcoin allows anyone in the world to seamlessly transact with electronic cash. Anyone can access the fundamental value of Bitcoin's utility. Decentralized decentralization empowers you with the freedom to control your own money. Now it is time to accelerate adoption by securitizing Bitcoin for a wider set of investor risk appetites.
Rochard, this goes on in the back end of the article, Rochard has been involved with Bitcoin since 02/2012 and is known in the community as what is known as a Bitcoin maximalist, OGE. Over the past years, he's played key roles at major Bitcoin companies like BitPay and Kraken, and most recently was vice president of research at Riot Platforms, a large Bitcoin mining company. At Riot, he was known for pushing back against environmental criticism of Bitcoin mining and led to the viral video campaign that reframed mining as a form of value creation. Now his sites are bigger. The Bitcoin bond company will acquire $1,000,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin over the next twenty one years by offering transparent, regulated, and secure Bitcoin only products for traditional credit investors.
The company is building structured financial products Similar to bonds that use Bitcoin as the underlying asset, these products are designed for credit allocators who want returns but are wary of Bitcoin's volatility. Unlike direct ownership of Bitcoin, which can be complex for institutions due to regulatory and custody issues, these bonds offer a more familiar and manageable structure. Rochard believes this will unlock institutional capital that has so far stayed on the sidelines. He says they are creating a bridge between credit allocators who want stability and speculators who want high returns, adding, quote, Bitcoin backed credit products are inevitable, end quote.
The launch of the Bitcoin bond company marks a bigger shift in how Bitcoin is viewed in the financial world. Rochard says Bitcoin is no longer just a fringe experiment or a speculative asset, but a core monetary technology. He also believes Bitcoin's price movements, are no longer best explained in the four year having cycle, which is a popular theory amongst early Bitcoin users. Instead, he points to Bitcoin's growing status as a global macro asset increasingly influenced by interest rates and broader economic trends. Bitcoin's CAGR or CAGR is now tied to interest rates, Rochard said.
Higher fed rates pull capital out of Bitcoin. That's what slows adoption, end quote. This is the macro view that the Bitcoin bond company is built around. They will build investment products that can work in any economic environment and offer tranches of risk like traditional structured finance. Despite institutional interest in Bitcoin, Rochard sees education, there you go, as the biggest hurdle. Many fixed income investors are used to products backed by real estate or corporate debt, not decentralized digital assets. Quote, most investors have never seen a fixed income product backed purely by Bitcoin.
That's a new asset class for them, end quote, to fix this. Rochard will be speaking at Consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto where he'll be accelerating education among institutions exploring new asset classes. His point is clear. Bitcoin backed bonds aren't just possible. They're necessary for the next phase of adoption. The company's launch comes at a time of potential regulatory shifting. Richard is optimistic that under a changing US political environment, regulatory agencies like the SEC will be more neutral and merit based with Bitcoin related financial products. So good luck, Pierre.
I disagree with one thing, though. I I'm not I'm not entirely certain that this is going to be any easier of a product for companies and institutions to manage than just buying the ETF out of iBit. Not I'm not a fan of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, but they're here and they're going to be used, and therefore, I gotta know about them. So I'm looking at at this bond, and I hear the the word yield, and you know what happens when I'm hearing the word yield. Where where does the yield come from? It's not not technically explained. I think it's inferred, but I I still really like it when people go, I'm going to tell you exactly how we generate yield. This is how it works. Here is the math. Still have yet to see that. But Pierre, he is he is OG.
He is Bitcoin maximalist. He's I I I have no problem with him doing this. My and I don't even have a concern. I'm just saying, what makes this different than just buying spot Bitcoin ETFs if an institution wants an easier way to have exposure to Bitcoin? Sure. The ETFs don't provide the yield. Again, I need to know way more about that yield and how that yield is produced before I just say, oh, yeah. Okay. That's a good idea. Alright. Well, what's always a good idea is human rights. And the Human Rights Foundation is granting yet another 10 Bitcoin to 23 Bitcoin projects worldwide.
This is out of nobsbitcoin.com, and I'm glad to see them writing again. They were they were kinda like on hiatus for a little bit. Oh, and they redesigned their website, nobsbitcoin.com. That's nobsbitcoin.com. Go check out their new website. It looks really nice. The Bitcoin Development Fund aims to support individuals and projects that enhance Bitcoin and related technologies as tools for human rights defenders in difficult political context. And since its inception in 2020, the BDF has contributed around $7,800,000 worth of Bitcoin to 284 projects across 62 countries.
So here's the list of the new recipients. NetBlocks, Tollgate, Vintium, BTC pay server, Africa Bitcoin Institute, Bitcoin Core Graphical User Interface, r Crux, LSAT, RelayWizard, Weiyi, Hashpool, Cashew, Brandon Black, Stable Channels, Betasco, the core, Bitcoin Babies, East Asia Bitcoin Developer Apprentice Program, Talent Land twenty twenty five, Base fifty eights Bitcoin Live Action Role Play, BT, San Espanol, Daniel Batten, and Bitcoin for Good. So some of those I think were actually mentioned in the last, a couple of weeks ago. There was another announcement of the Human Rights Foundation.
I don't think this is the exact same one because some of these names, seem a little different and some of them are the same. So maybe this is a compilation of a little a couple of new grants along with the old grants. I don't know. Honestly, I kinda don't care. Human Rights Foundation is continuously granting Bitcoin to those who actually need to use it as a tool in the context of these difficult political situations. And what they really mean when they say that is, dude, if we find out through the bank of our particular authoritarian country that you're operating and saying shit we don't like, we're going to find you and we're going to kill you. Or we're going to imprison you for the rest of your natural born life and possibly do mean and nasty things to any of your friends and family that we find. That's the difficult political context when the human rights calls it that. That's what should be in the back of your mind.
Now on to Bitwise, their CIO claims tariff tantrum likely bullish for Bitcoin as a more fractured reserve system forms. Well, yeah, except that we've apparently announced a ninety day stay and all the markets are reacting positively. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard for us to for Trump and his administration to go, like, at the end of that ninety days go, yep. We're doing tariffs again. It's it's gonna be difficult. It's it begs the question. Did did is it possible that this was all done on purpose so that the Trump family could get in at a way lower rate with, Dow prices down? I don't know. I have no proof. I'm not even making that as a as as even a lighthearted accusation.
There's no proof. I if there is, if I see it, it's gonna be a while from now. But be that as it may, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies remained in flux while world superpowers launched tariffs against one another like freaking intercontinental ballistic missiles in a global trade war as US president Donald Trump announced wide ranging import duties last week, hurling panic on equities and crashing already subdued risk assets, quote, it's hard to be an investor at times like this. The market is volatile, and the news flow is constant, wrote Matt Hougan, Bitwise chief investment officer, in a Tuesday note.
The deluge of media headlines and divergent expert analysis has further shaken investor sentiment, but the White House's game plan also became more clear this week, Hogan remarked. Steve Mirren, chairman of the White House's Council on Economic Advisors, published a speech on Monday focused on the dollar's reserve currency role. Mirren said this dynamic has weighed on The United States manufacturing workforce and kept currency markets distorted. The underlying message is clear, said Hogan. The dollar needs to go lower. So when it comes to the tariff push, the thing I'm most certain of is this.
The Trump administration wants a significantly weaker dollar even if it means sacrificing the dollar's role as the world's sole reserve currency.
[00:51:45] Unknown:
No, brother. I disagree.
[00:51:48] David Bennett:
I think that that is a I don't think that that is what's in Trump's head because nobody wants to lose that kind of power. No. Because it once lost, it's gone forever. You'll never get it back. So I I am in 100% disagreement with Matt on the on him thinking that it's Trump's plan to crash the dollar into world irrelevancy. I I don't know what he's talking about there, but let's move on. The move has vast implications for Bitcoin. Well, of course. Hogan foresees Bitcoin strengthening as the dollar weakens in the near term. Since 2020, BTC has gained ground whenever the US dollar index declined, Hogan remarked, quote, dollar down equals Bitcoin up. I expect this pattern to continue, end quote.
The long term view paints an even more bullish picture for Bitcoin. Tariff led rebalancing and global de dollarization may cause economies to adopt new reserve currencies. Hogan opined that the world will increasingly look to hard money like BTC and gold amid a shift from a or to a more fractured reserve system in this context? The case for Bitcoin is simple. When international dynamics are fraught and global currencies are in flux, where else can investors go for a scarce, global, digital store of value that sits outside of the control of any government or entity Hogan posted?
Well, that I that I tend to agree with, but I'm still having a big, big problem that he it sounds to me like Matt is thinking that Trump is thinking that he wants to crash the dollar and become not the world's reserve currency. I guarantee you that is the wrong sentiment. I guarantee you Trump wants the dollar to win. He wants the dollar to always win. He's always wanted the dollar to win. He's been saying it since he was ever interviewed on Oprah Winfrey back in the mid eighties. He's talked about tariffs since the mid eighties. He's talked about the strength of the dollar and the dollar being the world reserve currency since the mid eighties. He's never stopped talking about it.
And all of a sudden, he wants to blow the dollar into irrelevance? I'm sorry. I call straight up bullshit on that. Moving on to investigations into exchanges and wallets dropped, Phoenix wallet returns to The US rising from the ashes of the old Phoenix is properly named. Brothers and sisters, Atlas21.com, according to Fortune, on April, The United States Department of Justice announced that it will cease investigations and criminal charges against cryptocurrency exchanges, mixing services, and wallets, and I brought that to you yesterday. In its official statement, the DOJ declared, quote, the Department of Justice will no longer engage in regulation through enforcement in this sector.
Specifically, the department will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline wallets for the actions of their end users or for unintentional regulatory violations. Hence, Phoenix Wallet can now and is planning to come back to The United States. Thank god. I love Phoenix. One of the first consequences of this new policy comes from the Lightning Network wallet, Phoenix Wallet, which announced on its Twitter profile that it is indeed returning to The United States market. I, for one, am very, very glad. I'm very happy for Phoenix that they're rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the old into flight into the new world without all this regulatory hoop regulatory hoopla.
Will will that last if if the Republicans get their clocks cleaned in four years? I don't I don't know. I I kinda doubt it. I think we'll I think it'll go snap back right to where it was.
[00:56:16] Unknown:
I don't know, man. See, this is this is the thing that concerns me.
[00:56:24] David Bennett:
Trump better play this right. I mean, he is scathingly close to playing this the wrong way with, and I'm not saying that I believe tariffs are right nor are am I saying that they are wrong. I'm just saying that there is a lot of pain in the market right now. And I understand that, you know, a lot of people are, like, looking at their four zero one k's and they're freaking the hell out, but they're doing it on the shortest of time scales possible. Now if this crap lasts, if the people that are 64 years old, like, right now, like, they're like, they turn like, let's say on January, a whole bunch of people turned 64.
If by 65, when they are planning to retire, if if they can, if they were planning on it, and if they if they could have before Trump and they can't because of Trump after the after a year, that sentiment is going to burn into their hearts, and three years hence, they will vote the other direction. I guarantee it. So I don't know exactly what orange man has planned.
[00:57:31] Unknown:
All I can say though is it better work. Otherwise, sayonora.
[00:57:37] David Bennett:
Cove wallet version 0.3 with tap signer report or soft report. Got it. It's the end of the show, guys. I'm doing my best. Tap signer support. Cove, which is in beta, is a mobile Bitcoin wallet built on top of the BDK library. It is available only on iOS with an Android version expected to be released in the near future. Cove Wallet is a simple mobile Bitcoin wallet developed by Praveen Pereira aiming to become the best mobile wallet. It features the ability to import hardware wallets and send transactions via NFC, file, or QR codes for transferring partially signed Bitcoin transactions. It also allows users to create and back up hot wallets. It supports BIP three twenty nine labels, offers the ability to connect to your own node, utilizes decoy pins, and more quote.
We provide hot wallet support, but one of the main goals is to be the best mobile wallet to use with hardware wallets. Cove is currently in beta. Be careful when using it with large amounts of Bitcoin. Well, that's always a concern. Cove offers full support for TapSigner. It supports setting up an initial PIN for or, yeah, or importing an already initialized card, signing transactions, changing the PIN, and downloading backups. Upcoming updates will include support for Sats card, a UTXO list, and coin control, the ability to lock and unlock individual UTXOs, as well as the aforementioned Android release. You can download and test the app from the test flight beta on iOS.
Let's see. Is there anything in the key features that we did not you can use a face ID to lock your wallets. I just don't like biometrics, man. It just just gives me the willies. So be on the lookout for Cove. That is spelled c o v e. And, honestly, man, that well, shit, guys. That's it. I enjoyed my time with you today. Sort of like the old mister Rogers. Hey. How are you doing? I really enjoyed hanging out with you today. Oh, there's a nice little song. Anyway, again, I think it's really important that the Trump administration play this right. Otherwise, his VP Vance is not gonna have a shot in hell to continue what what they're trying to do here on into the future.
This is this is a one shot deal, and it's I'm glad that I'm glad that they decided to do it upfront within the first three months of the presidency so that they'd have all manner of time to figure out how they're gonna proceed with it and iron out wrinkles or fix any problems or and all the you know, not to mention having to put out all the fires he set because, yes, you love them or hate them, this dude has set a bunch of fires. And that 64 year old turning 65 and not having enough to be able to retire on as they planned for is not something that he's going to be able to allow. It's just not. And I can sit here and I can bitch about, oh, you poor little boomer. I don't I'm not gonna do that. That's a boomer, gen x, gen z.
You know what they all share in common?
[01:01:09] Unknown:
They're all human beings. They're all somebody's mother,
[01:01:13] David Bennett:
father, or sister, or brother. They're all somebody's sons. You know? They're somebody's daughter, somebody's cousin, somebody's friend. Just because you don't like boomers or you don't like gen xers, you don't like millennials, you don't like gen zers or the whatever, that they somehow or another deserve some kind of shitty deal? No. That that's not right. That that's that's a horrible way to think about your fellow man or woman depending on whether or not you're gonna lose your mind if I say your fellow man or mankind, be that as it may. I I mean, even the people that that are completely on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me, I don't want them dead.
If I wanted somebody drug out into the street, it would be it would be at the level of a politician. You know, that that's that's who that's my that's the people I got a problem with because they're the ones that caused all this uncertainty in the first place.
[01:02:15] Unknown:
And what's happening right now
[01:02:18] David Bennett:
is that if it was fractured in the system, it is breaking loose from the system right now as we speak. The amount of stress that was put on the worldwide economies and the worldwide financial markets at this point should have broken off any if it was about to break off in the next ten years, it has completely shattered and is floating down to the ground right now as we speak. This is the stress test everybody said that they were going to do on the banks but didn't. This is the stress test that actually cleans up a whole bunch of crap. The problem is the lasting effects and how many people, and there will be some, that never recover from this.
And my heart goes out to them, but I'm and I'm certainly not gonna throw them under the bus, but I am gonna recognize that there are gonna be some people that get fucked for life on this deal. And if there's too many of them, then we're all gonna be screwed if we have a complete sea change again in four years. And it doesn't mean that I'm I'm all about being a Republican, nor am I all about being a Democrat. I'm just saying that when you have a situation where we have like, in in our space, right, with cryptocurrency god. Sorry. I said that with Bitcoin.
We had a regulatory landscape that really sucked that seems to have taken care of itself almost about 90%. We still have the samurai guys that we gotta get out, and we got the tornado cash guys that we gotta get out. But other than that, almost every SEC lawsuit from a regulatory standpoint has been dropped. That looks pretty good going into the future. But if Vance doesn't win or who yeah. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be Vance that runs for president because that's normally what happens. If he doesn't
[01:04:16] Unknown:
win, you're not getting an independent, and you're sure as shit not getting a libertarian.
[01:04:23] David Bennett:
That's just never gonna happen. That that that party is too libertarian to actually come together with any cohesiveness because libertarianism kinda kinda goes its own way. So, therefore, there's not really gonna be a whole lot of, you know, socialism, which is kinda necessary when you want to build a group with a singular voice. See how that works? That's that's why you'll never have a libertarian president. It's not and I love libertarianism, but it's so it's so libertarian that they're never gonna be able to be president, which leaves you with a group of people that are absolutely absolutely going to set fire to everything that we build here.
So Trump better hopes this shit works. I'm I'm I'm just saying. I'm not saying that it won't. I'm not saying it will. Telling you, though, if this doesn't work and there's enough people that get burned badly enough, We can kiss a lot of this shit goodbye. And if we don't get the Bitcoin strategic reserve bill actually passed in congress and all the way to Trump's desk and signed into law, we're gonna have some real problems in The United States. And it won't be because they hate Bitcoiners. It will literally be because that was one of the very things that he got elected on. And if they can destroy that, they can destroy almost everything else in that legacy because it was a major running point, that and tariffs.
It was Bitcoin and tariffs. That's what got him elected.
[01:06:01] Unknown:
So we'll have to see how this shit goes. But
[01:06:05] David Bennett:
I'm out of time, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Market Reactions to Tariff Announcements
