Episode 1072 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
nostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
Price list
1 qt. $27
2 qt. $47
3 qt. $68
1 half gal $45
2 half gal. $80
4 pt. $50
6 pt. $75
10 cup share box $80
https://cointelegraph.com/news/signal-should-add-bitcoin-p2p-payments
https://decrypt.co/314140/binance-debut-reward-bearing-asset-ldusdt
https://ditto.pub/@[email protected]/posts/6569a3c2ec5bea1358b43b4e21b3660b29d1037ec79ba683d99c5806d444521e
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/04/09/u-s-cpi-declined-in-march-core-rate-rose-just-0-1
https://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/de-dollarization-russia-china-bitcoin/
https://atlas21.com/former-ethereum-developer-virgil-griffith-released-from-custody/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/robosats-v0-7-6-alpha/
https://lightning.news/bull-bitcoin-expands-into-eurozone/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Topics for today:
- Senate Confirms New SEC Chair
- Binance Unleashes "Gambling Rewards"
- Markets Tank on Light Inflation News
- Pakistan To Mine BTC
Circle P:
Maple Syrup and Soapsnostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
Price list
1 qt. $27
2 qt. $47
3 qt. $68
1 half gal $45
2 half gal. $80
4 pt. $50
6 pt. $75
10 cup share box $80
Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/senate-confirms-pro-bitcoin-paul-atkins-as-sec-chairhttps://cointelegraph.com/news/signal-should-add-bitcoin-p2p-payments
https://decrypt.co/314140/binance-debut-reward-bearing-asset-ldusdt
https://ditto.pub/@[email protected]/posts/6569a3c2ec5bea1358b43b4e21b3660b29d1037ec79ba683d99c5806d444521e
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/04/09/u-s-cpi-declined-in-march-core-rate-rose-just-0-1
- 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://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/de-dollarization-russia-china-bitcoin/
https://atlas21.com/former-ethereum-developer-virgil-griffith-released-from-custody/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/robosats-v0-7-6-alpha/
https://lightning.news/bull-bitcoin-expands-into-eurozone/
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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Music by:
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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:51AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025, and this is episode ten seventy two of Bitcoin. And and if you wanna know why you're listening to this show right now, it's because I'm gonna tell you everything that's happening in Bitcoin today as it relates to the wider market, the wider world, what's going on with the price. If you want a snapshot of what the hell it is you gotta look for today, this is your show. And we're gonna start this one with the senate confirmation of the pro Bitcoin, Paul Atkins, as the SEC chair.
Vivek send Bitcoin starts us off from Bitcoin magazine. The United States senate has confirmed Paul Atkins as the new chair of the Securities and Chain Exchange Commission in a 52 to 44 vote, placing the longtime Wall Street Consultant and former Republican commissioner at the helm of one of the most powerful financial regulatory agencies in the country. Atkins, known for his deregulatory stance, is expected to usher in a Bitcoin and crypto friendlier approach at the SEC, reversing many of the enforcement heavy policies implemented under his predecessor, Gary Gensler.
His confirmation follows months of political debate and comes during a period of significant transition in financial regulation. Yeah. You could say that. A vocal critic of what he has described as regulatory overreach, Atkins has previously advised several crypto firms through his consultancy, Potomac Global Partners, industry insiders see his appointment as a turning point for Bitcoin in The United States, particularly as the agency redefines its jurisdiction. Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott applauded the confirmation stating on Wednesday that, quote, his tenure will mark a pivotal moment to roll back harmful Biden era policies, promote capital formation, and enhance opportunities for retail investors.
Chairman Atkins will also provide regulatory clarity for digital assets, allowing American innovation to flourish and ensuring we remain competitive on the global stage, Scott said. Since taking office, the Trump administration has already directed the SEC to scale back its crypto oversight. Under interim chair Mark Ueda, the agency dismissed a number of high profile Bitcoin and crypto cases and issued internal guidance including or excluding several crypto categories. With Atkins now confirmed, those changes are expected to be formalized into long term policy, and insiders suggest that Atkins will work closely with the CFTC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, to implement a more unified framework for Bitcoin and crypto, potentially paving the way for congressional legislation that redefines how crypto is regulated in The US.
Okay. So we've got a new SEC chair, Paul Adkins. He is Bitcoin friendly, but what is more intriguing about this is him reaching out to the CFTC because the CFTC versus the SEC, when they're not communicating, causes all manner of problems. And maybe, just maybe, they'll start working together in a more cohesive way so that people are not so freaking confused. And I don't know. I mean, when people say that they're pro this or against that and then halfway through their tenure, they flip flop, I that's that's always on the table. You know? It's just always on the table, so just be aware. Just because he's pro Bitcoin now doesn't mean that he'll stay that way. And as usual, in this show as a theme, we will have to wait and see.
But what we did see, either early this morning or sometime late yesterday, Jack Dorsey is pushing signal to adopt Bitcoin payments. Helen Parts has it from Cointelegraph. Jack Dorsey, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO is encouraging Signal Messenger to integrate Bitcoin for its peer to peer payments, a move that could shift the platform's crypto strategy away from altcoins. Quote, Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments. Dorsey wrote on Twitter on April, so that would be yesterday, replying to a post by Bitcoin developer, Cali, who suggested that Bitcoin would be a perfect fit for Signal's private communication channel. And indeed, they show a screenshot of Jack's retweet of Cali saying, yes, true. Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments.
Anyway, so Dorsey's call to action was echoed by other industry leaders, including the former PayPal president, David Marcus. And he wrote, quote, all non transactional apps should connect to Bitcoin. Now I'm I'm not rewording his sentence. That is a straight up quote. He didn't say cryptocurrency. No. No. No. The former president of PayPal said, connect to Bitcoin. The endorsements reflect a growing push to promote bitcoin as the functional payment system rather than just digital gold or a pure store of value which alone, according to Dorsey, won't ensure the success of BTC.
Founded in 2014, Signal is an open source encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls. The messenger currently offers in app payments on MobileCoin, a privacy focused ERC 20 token, which rebranded rebranded to Stence or sorry. Sense with an s, s e n t z, in November of twenty twenty three. Backed by high profile industry players like Blocktower Capital and Coinbase Ventures, Synth was founded in 2017 by Josh Goldberg and Shane Glenn to enable a fast, private, and easy to use cryptocurrency. Signal then came under fire over its mobile coin integration in 2021 with many raising concerns over potential ties between signals founder and MTCN opacity around its issuance and suspicious gains leading up to the partnership announcement.
Signal is far from being alone in pushing altcoin payments instead of offering its users payments in Bitcoin, which is designed for p two p payments as its core use case, according to the anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Although former PayPal president, Marcus, is now advocating for Bitcoin usage by all non transactional applications, he previously led Meta's project developing the firm's own payment cryptocurrency, initially known as Libra, which eventually failed. Telegram is another messenger popular in the community, and they've also been aggressively pushing its ecosystem to use Toncoin, a crypto asset linked to Telegram founders, though not technically itself managed by Telegram.
Elon Musk's Everything AppX has also been suspected of planning to launch its own coin for a long time, but Musk publicly denied that in August of twenty twenty three. Alright. So it seems a little bit overblown that the the headline of this particular news article out of Cointelegraph talks about Jack Dorsey pushing for crypto payments when all he really said was all all Jack did was retweet Cali's quote or Cali's tweet, which said, would be an amazing proof of concept. Signal would be so much more useful if they could just use it with Bitcoin. It would be ideal for eCash since Signal already provides an extremely private communication channel. Alright. So that was the tweet from Cali. All Jack did was retweet it and with that said true. Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments.
So when I first read that, I was like, you know, I'm not even gonna do this story. But then when I read further and now we got David Marcus, the former president of PayPal, and the guy that took off from the Libra project out of Meta, he's saying all all non transactional apps should connect to Bitcoin. That is what that's why you're hearing this story today. That's that's why I'm bringing bringing it to you because it's not just Jack. It's also David Marcus. And as we see all these altcoins just completely fail in the face of what Bitcoin's doing, even though we do have a reversal going on today, we are at 78,805, and we're gonna get to why that reversal is occurring, not only at Bitcoin, but across all markets, whether they're cryptocurrency or legacy financial.
We'll get to that. I promise. But if I go and I just look specifically at the ETHBTC pair, it's even lower today than it was well, it was it's lowered it's as low today as it was yesterday and the day before, which brings it back to the level it was at somewhere around January of twenty twenty. Talking about over five years of of of evaporating wealth out of people holding ether instead of just cashing out and buying b t c. It's just losing wealth. The eth b t c pair is the pair that I use to judge all cryptocurrencies in general against the performance of Bitcoin itself, and all of them essentially have just been losing ground. Now you'll say, well, yeah, but Sol is is increasing. Yeah. Over the last, you know, few weeks.
But there was a few times when we've had a past few weeks when ETH was increasing, but then it didn't. And then it started reversing course. And I've got a whole chart on that shit. Yeah. Like, for the entire length of time that ETH has been alive, I've got an entire chart showing its performance directly against BTC, and it is not pretty. Not one bit at all pretty. It's really just ugly. So it's interesting that David Marcus himself, along with Jack Dorsey, is pushing Signal, which is probably the most popular messaging app out there. I hate Telegram. That I it's impossible to use in my opinion. But signal is very, very good. It's very slick. It's very robust.
All these people use it. In fact, it was in the news because with this this the military strike and somebody inviting, you know, the Atlantic's lead editor to come on board while they were doing battle plans. That signal. We're not talking about, you know, Sammy's backyard signal that he developed. No. We're talking about the signal. If they can if they would adopt even if they they didn't even you wouldn't even really have to adopt Bitcoin main chain payments out of signal for this to be just badass. You could do Lightning payments, and then people will say, oh, well, Lightning is this and that and Lightning has failed, and, of course, it's all bullshit. But even if you said, okay. Well, fine. Let's just do e cash.
Why not? E cash is simple. And at this point, it's so intrinsically linked to the Bitcoin ecosystem that you might as well be using Bitcoin. I'd like to see this happen, and I hope we do. Meanwhile, did you need some maple syrup? Well, the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs just like you with goods and services for sale to plebs just like you who might want to buy said goods and services. And today, it's maple syrup and soaps from my friend, Maple Trade. And you can get a quart of his maple syrup for, like, $27.
And you might go, well, I could just go to the store. Yeah. Well, you're do you know where the maple syrup came from? Did you watch it be made? Because that's what maple trade does. He makes his own maple syrup by hand. He does it the old fashioned way. He taps his own trees in Ohio. It's like 270 maple trees. He gathers the sap. He boils it down. He puts it into bottles, and he ships it to you for Bitcoin. Because if you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you decide to buy maple syrup and his sister Sarah's soaps, which are also very, very good, then make sure you tell Maple Train that you bought his goods because he you heard about it here on the circle p. The circle p, again, where I'm bringing just regular plebs like you who can't afford advertising to other regular plebs who may want to actually buy a product but don't know it exists because nobody ever said anything about it. It's just my way of trying to give back to this community.
Just make sure that you tell Maple Trade you heard about it here. So you're saying, wait. Wait. Wait. Where do I order it? Dude, you're gonna have to go to Twitter or Noster. I've got his Twitter handle is b e I s n e r d s, Biesnerds is how you pronounce it. It's just that's his handle on Twitter. The URL directly to his Twitter profile will be in the show notes. You just gotta hit the URL and boom, you're gonna go do his profile. Give him a direct message or call him out in the Twitter feed and say, hey. I wanna buy your I wanna buy your maple syrup. I heard about it on the circle p, or you can reach him on Nostr. Now I'm not gonna read his in pub for Nostr because it's just a string of letters and numbers.
If you're a you a Nostr user, the URL directly to his profile on Nostr will also be available in the show notes, and it will be under the heading maple syrup and soaps. So make sure you tell Maple Trade that you heard about it here. Buy his maple syrup and his sister's Sarah's soap. Meanwhile, Binance is debuting a reward bearing asset for its futures market. Oh, rewards. Yay. Matt DeSalvo has got it from Decrypt. Binance futures will, this month, debut a new yield bearing product, l d u s d t. L d u s d t allowing traders to earn rewards that can be used for futures trading.
As if the gambling casino wasn't enough, you gotta give them a a frequent flyer card? They announced this yesterday, l d u s d t is not a stablecoin, nor is it a swappable token, but users will be able to trade Tether USDT for LD USDT via the company's simple earned flexible products to use as collateral for speculating in futures. I find this hilarious. I'm sorry, but it's it's like I don't know. Somehow, it's like would would you give points to like, if you were a crack dealer, you know, and you had, like, all your crack customers, would you give them points so that they could get free crack later on when they're already addicted?
I mean, no. I this I don't know. I just find this hilarious because it's, a, it's bad. B, this is funny as shit. Futures trading is where traders buy and sell contracts that bet. The functional word is bet on the future price of an asset. LDUSDT increases capital efficiency for users and lets users put their assets to work for them as both a reward earning and a liquid trading margin asset, all while retaining flexibility to redeploy their capital at any time, said the VP of product, Jeff Lee. Binance's latest initiative follows the successful introduction of yet another reward bearing margin asset called BFUSD last November.
BFUSD enables users to generate returns on qualifying balances in their futures accounts and can be used as margin in futures accounts with multiple assets while also earning rewards. These products come as crypto and traditional finance companies try to address the rising demand for gambling, oh I mean crypto products. Traders using Binance can already earn USDT via the exchange's Simple Earn flexible product service. Assets contracted on the Simple Earn platform can be used as collateral for flexible loans the company offers. And Binance, the company's Binance Pay, which allows users to pay and receive in crypto.
Lee added that Futures products are among the most popular in the market. LDUSDT is a useful way to help our users explore more opportunities on Binance. CoinGecko shows the data shows that Binance Futures is the biggest derivatives exchange in the crypto market with a twenty four hour trading volume of a hundred and $30,000,000,000. Everything about this reeks. Everything about this reeks to high heaven. It is addicting gamblers to gamble more. It as if it wasn't bad enough that we had a time when BitMex was allowing users to do 100 times leverage on futures contracts trading.
Now we have Binance who's offering you frequent gambling points. This is the way it's going. Right? It's like I I'm telling you this because you need to watch out for these products. Do I would I would not no more touch one of these products that I just described with a 10 foot pole with a dead cat on the end of it, then I would go swim in a sewer. It this it don't do this. But it's indicative of the fact that humans continuously amaze me how they refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past. Gambling is not good. When when people say they're a futures trader, that's not something I look on as being, oh, that guy must be must be, you know, really smart.
Would you say somebody who's, like, you know, throwing dice in a casino is just smart? I wouldn't. They may be smart. They may be stupider and shit, but I wouldn't cert I certainly wouldn't just assume that they're brilliant because they're, you know, throwing craps. That's what that when I hear few I'm a futures trader. Oh, you mean you're a professional gambler. That that's what that shit is. So speaking of casino, the original casino, Fiat Legacy Markets, And I started thinking to myself yesterday, self, because, you know, we got these rewards things coming out, and it just reward points for futures contracts. What what if what if companies that have dividends like real like Nike and I don't know if Nike stock has dividend.
Just I'm just talking about legacy financial equities. Right? Companies that produce a product, that sell that product, and then return those profits back to the shareholders as a dividend in the form of United States dollars. What if what if instead of US dollars, what if you had the option to take your dividend in Bitcoin? What would this do? Well, the company themself would actually have to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet so that they would be able to convert well, so they'd be able to give you the Bitcoin instead of US dollars. And you could you could say, well, why don't I just take the US dollars? Well, because you'd be actually, what you'd be doing is you'd be putting yourself depending on how much stock you have, you'd be putting yourself in the possibility of a tax consequence because you're essentially cashing out that money. Right? So if they gave you Bitcoin instead of USD and you did not take possession of that Bitcoin, and you should, but that puts you in a tax consequence issue again.
Let's say you left it there. And then all of a sudden, now that company ends up with Bitcoin straight up on its balance sheet. What if a lot of companies started doing that? What if it was just, like like, straight up standard practice that companies around the world just gave you the options that, hey, you can take your dividend in cash or you could take your dividend in Bitcoin. And either way, you still have the option as to whether or not you want to reinvest that and buy more stock with it. And, like so let's say that your dividend was delineated in terms of Bitcoin because you said, okay. I'm gonna take the I'm gonna take the Bitcoin option.
And then you turn around and say, okay. Well, I just wanna buy more stock with it. There's no tax consequence because you never took possession of the Bitcoin. And then what happens to the Bitcoin then? Okay. Essentially, you've traded that Bitcoin back to the company for more of their stock issuance. Okay. So that means that at at least for a modicum amount of time, that Bitcoin remains on the company's balance sheet as an asset. Wouldn't that be kind of an easier way for companies that are way legacy companies? Instead of issuing debt, instead of issuing zero coupon, 8% coupon, 10% coupon senior notes, right, and buy Bitcoin with the cash raised from those sales, wouldn't it be easier for companies that don't want to follow the straight up strategy playbook when it comes to Bitcoin, you know, Michael Saylor's group? Wouldn't it just be easier to say, well, what if we just offer you Bitcoin instead of cash?
And if, for whatever reason, our shareholders don't actually take the Bitcoin out but decide to trade that Bitcoin for more shares of our company, wouldn't that be an easier entry point? I'm just putting that out there because I I wrote a note the other yesterday or the day before where I said, I'm waiting for the day when companies pay shareholders their dividends in Bitcoin rather than US dollars or more corporate stock. I'm just saying, I think it's I I think it's something that's plausible. I really do. And I'm kinda surprised that I haven't seen anybody do it yet. But on to inflation.
Okay. So we've got this reversal going on in all markets, oil markets or rather, let's just say energy markets. We've got all equities are down, like, between five and four points. All like, Dow's down four points. The S and P is down five. The Nasdaq is down five. West Texas Intermediate and Brent Norsee are are all down. Every it's it's it's a almost a complete reversal from yesterday when we shot up to the moon again. Right? So what what happened? Well, the inflation numbers came out. That's what happened. And, also, the Fed notes or minutes from their meeting dropped yesterday, and nobody said a word because we were all distracted by tariffs.
Well, The United States CPI declined in March, and the core rate rose just point 1%. This is written by James Van Stratten out of CoinDesk. Inflation in The United States actually declined at the headline level last month, and the core rate barely rose, possibly possibly reigniting debate about whether the Federal Reserve would resume trimming rates at its next meeting come May. That's it. That's the state. If you wanna know what happened, if you were looking at TradingView or you were looking at charts and you were like, wait a minute. What happened? I thought we were all safe. No. No. No.
No. No. Because the news, these numbers out of labor department, out of the fed, out of US they never stop coming. And every time a new piece of information drops, somebody somewhere shits their bed and everybody goes, oh, man. That sucked. So what exactly happened? Well, the consumer price index fell point 1% in March. Economists had expected a point 1% increase following February's point 2% gain on a year over year basis. Headline CPI increased just 2.4% compared to forecast of 2.6 versus February's '2 point '8 percent increase. Well, Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, climbed only point 1% in March against forecast of point three and February's point two reading.
Core CPI rose 2.8% year over year, well shy of the expected 3% and comparing it against February's '3 point '1 percent. The price of Bitcoin rose modestly to above $82,000 in minutes following the news after yesterday's historic move higher US stock index futures are under pressure on Thursday morning. The Nasdaq is off by 2.7 and the S and P two point one, and that has become much worse since they wrote this. Right? And by the way, the this where they say the price of Bitcoin rose modestly above $8,082,000, they shouldn't have even put that in. They should have known they should have known that Bitcoin also as a risk asset was going to fall. Why?
Because when if they're if the Fed has any news at all that they can say or that they can use to tell the world that we have a good reason not to reduce rates at this time. And one of their mandates is to get inflation to 2%. And inflation has now dropped, not below 2%. It's well above 2%. But they're going in the to them and what they tell the world, they're going in the right direction. Therefore, they don't need to use any of that ammunition, which is the federal funds lending rate. So the chances of them actually dropping another 25 basis points has just decreased come their May meeting.
When your money is more expensive to borrow so that you can do things like buy what would be called a risk asset, and right now, most of the world considers Bitcoin a risk asset. You don't borrow that money. You're waiting for cheaper rates. And because of that, the people that were holding Bitcoin that are weak hands and keep thinking that it's just a gambling play, where they're just cutting and running. They're saying, well, there's not gonna be any action here. We got we're gonna sell, and we're gonna go find somebody something else to go gamble on.
This is a giant casino, ladies and gentlemen. It is a giant casino. It's open even though they say the market's closed. That's bullshit. These markets play twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Some stock exchange and and equities markets are always open somewhere in the world. And if you're playing the world roulette table, then you're constantly shifting where you're doing business at. Retail Joe's, they're not doing that. You know, they're they're barely looking at what's in their four zero one k. They have almost no idea how much exposure to The United States equities market that they have. Right? They just see a number at the at the bottom go, oh, there's a hundred thousand dollars there. I'm go I'm doing good, but they have no conception of where that number is actually generated from.
It's all a casino. So and we've got we've got more numbers coming out, later. Let's see. What what else do we have on the horizon? Well, the month over month producers price index is coming out on April. That's tomorrow. Yay. Fun. And then also on the same day, later on in the afternoon or early evening, the Michigan consumer sentiment comes out. Well, what will those numbers show? Well, right now, the forecast, just so you know, for the PPI is point 2%. That's the forecast. And I'm not exactly I'm not gonna explain exactly what that means.
But previously, there was no change in the PPI. And this is sort of the producer's price index is like, how much does it cost for a producer to produce? If the producers are going to have to spend more money, that's not good for the producers. So that's probably going to weigh on the markets if it turns out to be true, the forecast. And then the Michigan consumer sentiment looks like it's going to drop. The forecast is 54.5, and the previous was 57. So the forecast, if it comes true, maybe, the consumers don't really wanna buy as much stuff, which puts even more pressure on the producers. These numbers never stop coming, and they always cause problems, especially in situations where we find ourselves in now because nobody even realized that the Federal Reserve dropped their minutes yesterday, and their language was hawkish, which means that they're probably not going to lower rates in May, which is another data point that people that were paying attention are taking into consideration when it comes to whether or not they wanna be lettuce hands or if they wanna hold strong.
That's what you're seeing today. That's why the price is down. You don't have to go look at any of those shiny headlines that say, why is the price of Bitcoin down today? You can just get it all here every single day, Monday to Friday on the Bitcoin and podcast. Let's run the numbers. Oil taking a hit. All energy is down, way down, way, way, way down. Oil is down almost 5% back to $59.41, which is essentially where it was trading yesterday before the tariff news came out that we were gonna enter we were gonna get a a ninety day pause on all tariffs except for China. Yeah. And then we all shot up, including energy. Yeah. That reversed. Brett Norce reversed. 4.12% of the downside to $62.77.
Natural gas, hardest hit at 7% of the downside, $3.54 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline fell four and a half points well below $2 to $1.94 per gallon. Gold, however, looks like it's going to reach for a new all time high after a 3% gain to $3,173 an ounce. Silver is up a point. Platinum is up a point. Copper is up 3.6. Palladium is up one quarter of one point. Biggest loser in ag today is lumber losing six and a quarter percent. Wow. And the biggest winner today is sugar. 1.62% to the upside. Live cattle down one and a third. Lean hogs up a point. And feeder cattle down a full point. And then here comes your equities.
The Dow is down four and a third points back to 39,058. It just it's like it's like yesterday never happened. S and P is down 5%. Nasdaq down 5.7. S and P Mini down 5.7% as well. And then there's Bitcoin who's lost. What did what was our handle yesterday? We hit all the way up to 83,500, some somewhere around there. Now we are back down to $78,860. Holy smokes. It's like nobody can get their shit straight here. It's still a $1,560,000,000,000 market cap, though, but you're only gonna be able to get 24.8 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,849,000 a hundred and 69 and 6.66 of an average fees per block are still low, 0.04 BTC, taking the fees on a per block basis, and there are five blocks carrying 7,000 unconfirmed transactions.
Yeah. Waiting to waiting to get confirmed at high priority rates of 3 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get you in at the same. Hash rate, however, 903 x of hashes per second. Still, no minor capitulation. I keep looking for it. I'm not finding it. Just like I can't find what's in my wallet, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got chill now one with 333 sat says, hop through your control. It's just a math thing. Do the math. Crack and pay plus master slave equals crack addiction. Corporate syntax, crack tag.
Printed instruments of debt, you'll follow her into the dark, foreshadowing things that are going to occur. Suits speak decoded, trust terminated, architect breakthroughs, transform resistance into radical emergence, end transmission. Anonymous with 500 says retired at 61. I'm now 62. I ain't worried about shit. At my age, I'm more worried about if I shit regularly. Yodle Yodle with 444 says great episode. So much insight. Viva Mexico. Perma Nerd with 234 says, give this podcast a listen. If you do, you will become smarter, guaranteed, or your money back.
Pies with a hundred. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Matt f r l one hundred. Good morning, team. Speedy with a hundred. Doesn't say nothing. Matt f r l with a hundred says good morning, team. Oh, this was actually the same it was it's the same handle, but it's written in a it the handle comes up looking completely different in these two things. That's really strange. Oh, well. Pies with another hundred says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Remember, last week when I brought you news about Pakistan planning to legalize Bitcoin and crypto?
Well, if you don't remember, yeah, Pakistan is planning to legalize Bitcoin and crypto, and now we find out why. Because as of today, it's been announced that Pakistan is planning to fuel Bitcoin mining with their surplus electricity according to Reuters. Danny Park writes it up from the block. Pakistan is considering using surplus electricity to power its Bitcoin mining and AI data centers, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The suggestion came from Bilal bin Saqib, adviser to Pakistan's Finance Minister and CEO of the Crypto Council. Saqib reportedly said there have already been talks with several mining firms.
The plan is expected to help the country overcome the challenges of having leftover energy and high electricity tariffs and the expansion of alternative energy sources. The council will finalize the location of the mining centers based on excess power availability, Saqib told Reuters. Pakistan formed its crypto council last month in a bid to push blockchain and crypto powered initiatives. Saqib explained in a previous interview with Bloomberg that the country's crypto push follows the election of pro crypto president Donald Trump who promised to make The US the world's leader in digital assets. Quote, our plan as the Pakistan Crypto Council is very clear. Pakistan is done sitting on the sidelines.
Now that was from the last, the not the last episode, but last week when I brought you that, that statement was in the news story then. And it looks like they're just moving forward at full steam because it they've got I've heard and see if it's in in here. It's not in here. I heard through other channels that the amount of excess energy that Pakistan has is totaling somewhere around 10,000 megawatts, which is a massive amount of power. I mean, that's a lot of power, and it's not being used. So somehow they're able to create now I'm not exactly sure. I don't know if it's hydro. I I don't know how Pakistan's electricity generation is being done.
But whatever they're doing, they're apparently doing it very well, and they cannot get rid of the electricity. You just heard tariffs. Except that if you're if you're generating electricity and you're trying to sell it to your neighboring country, like, let's say, India, which is maybe what they're talking about tariffs because Pakistan and India, they don't get along. And they have pretty much never really gotten along ever since especially ever since the disputed region of Kashmir came into play. But be that as it may, you got 10,000 megawatts of unused power. They can't sell it because tariffs are high to apparently all of their neighboring countries. So now we have Bitcoin that comes in, and not only does it negate sanctions for countries, as we will soon see, it can negate localized electricity tariffs.
Didn't see that one coming. I really did not see that one coming, but I just mentioned evading sanctions. Well, we've got the dedollarization coming. Russia and China are trading energy with Bitcoin. Now we've heard this before. However, there seems to be some fairly serious confirmation of the rumor. Guy Malone from Bitcoin News tells us more. Founder and principal attorney Sasha Hodder of Hodder Law Firm, a firm specializing in cryptocurrency related business law founded in 2022, commented on the implications of the Trump administration's tariffs to the US dollar as highlighted in an article released Wednesday by asset manager Van Eck.
The article, digital assets, D Dollarization Moves Bitcoin Towards Monetary Role, was won in a series released Tuesday by Van Eck from their portfolio managers being tasked with providing insights on the multiple current impacts of these tariffs. VanEck was founded in 1955, claiming an assets under management figure of a hundred and $13,800,000,000 is described by their website's about section as one of the first US asset managers to offer investors access to international markets and recognized early the transformative potential of gold investing, ETFs, and digital assets.
The insight piece, penned by VanEck's US head of digital assets research, Matthew Segel, points to Bitcoin as the solution for nations seeking forms of trade settlement independent of the United States dollar stating, quote, the weaponization of trade and financial infrastructure continues to drive interest in neutral settlement rails. China and Russia have reportedly begun settling some energy transactions in Bitcoin and other digital assets. Bolivia has announced plans to import electricity using crypto, and French energy utility EDF is exploring whether it can mine Bitcoin with surplus electricity currently exported to Germany.
These are all early signs that Bitcoin is evolving from a speculative asset into a functional monetary tool, particularly in economies looking to bypass the dollar and reduce exposure to US led financial systems. All that was a quote directly from the piece that was written by Siegel. No stranger to informally expressing what might fairly be called her professional expert opinions, Hodder's Wednesday expost, which received over 3,000 likes and over 600 reposts in under five hours, said, succinctly, quote, VanEck confirms that China and Russia are settling energy trades in Bitcoin.
D dollarization is here. The US should immediately end sanctions on Russia or it is game over for the United States dollar. Hodder is highly endorsed on the firm's website by many industry experts, including Exodus Wallet, Movement CEO JP Richardson. According to her LinkedIn profile, Hodder serves as senior counsel for Exodus. While a full time practicing attorney, she additionally post industry updates on navigating digital asset regulations. Expounding for Bitcoin news readers via direct messages about her use of the phrase game over for the USD, Hodder clarified, quote, If China and Russia can settle energy trades in Bitcoin, the US dollar loses its most important function, being the global reserve and settlement currency.
It's not an overnight collapse, but it's the beginning of the end of the dollar's dominance over global trade. End quote. The same screenshot of the Siegel opinion piece gained further traction within the Bitcoin community being also reposted by Coin Stories host Natalie Brunel. And on her thread, one x user, Der Kirk, called into question, quote, what source Sigel is citing on Bitcoin settlement for energy trade between Russia and China. On Sigel's feed, user Ricky Rahm likewise demanded demanded to know, quote, reportedly, reported by whom and where?
Response came quickly from Siegel, self described on his Twitter account, which boasts over 40,000 followers as a recovering CFA, a chartered financial analyst, a title recognized worldwide according to Investopedia. Siegel replied, perhaps with a sigh, by citing three recent news links and saying, I don't know why this is so difficult, end quote. Two of the links he provided were from well known news agencies, Reuters, describing the worldwide scenario unfolding, And it says that it shows a picture of one of the articles and the, Reuters headline is Russia leans on cryptocurrencies for oil trade, sources say, and that was March 13, 2025.
So just, you know, what, last month. Quote, Russia leans on cryptocurrencies for oil trade sources say, and Bolivia turns to crypto for energy imports amid dollar and fuel shortages is another headline. Siegel's third provided news link was to the big whale reporting with the headline, quote, the French government opens the door to Bitcoin mining by EDF. According to the article, EDF is the state owned, that France owns it, energy giant. Commenting in signals feed, Russian user Brian McDonald summed up the situation saying, quote, Van Eck calls it the first real step towards a parallel system beyond swift, beyond sanctions, beyond the dollar, end quote.
Bitcoin news reported on the developing multinational exit from the petrodollar dependence, likewise featuring VanEck Sigel in October of twenty twenty four's article named BRICS nation I Bitcoin to break free from the dollar according to Van Eck. The BRICS alliance of formerly five nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, now includes at least 10 countries representing about 45% of the world's population. Even prior to The United States Elections and the Bitcoin industry friendly promises new policies of president Trump's administration, Sigel cited that countries including Argentina, Ethiopia, and The United Arab Emirates were all mining Bitcoin, as Bitcoin News stated in the fall, quote, to create additional sources of revenue and, perhaps more importantly, establish alternatives to the United States dollar in international trade as well as, quote, this shift is part of a broader strategy among emerging economies to reduce their reliance on the dollar, which has long been the dominant currency in global trade, end quote.
Continuing discussion on Hodder's fee brought up treasury bills and stablecoins. Hodder expressed her belief in Bitcoin's presumed future dominant role in world's finances, referring or referencing the Trump administration's recent stablecoin act, quote, to reinforce US dollar dominance according to a March 27 Forbes headline. Hodder posited that with Tether, stablecoins would likely, quote, prop up the dollar for the next few years until it breaks, end quote. Sigel's recent report echoed the sentiment of Hodder as well as the BRICS nation stating that, quote, Bitcoin is evolving from a speculative asset into a functional monetary tool, particularly in economies looking to bypass the dollar and reduce exposure to US led financial systems.
So that's a a lot to take in. I understand that. But it looks like there's confirmation that China and Russia are settling oil or at least some of them in Bitcoin trades and probably other cryptocurrencies, and they may actually be, using Tether for that. Who knows? It doesn't matter because that's not the point. The point is that you've got countries that can mine an asset with excess electricity that can then be used to circumvent sanctions, the United States dollar, and tariffs all in one shot without breaking a sweat. What the hell does that tell you? Again, let me just say it again.
You've got countries that can mine an asset by themselves. They don't have to procure it from anybody by trading on the forex markets. They can simply get miners, set them up, plug them in, mine Bitcoin, and then use the mined Bitcoin to circumvent United States and other world sanctions, United States tariffs as well as any other tariffs, and the United States dollar, which represents the petrodollar. All of them at once. It doesn't even breathe hard. It's not a good situation for the dollar. And when you marry that to this to the speculation I talked about yesterday that Donald Trump may very well want to break the the the world's what did what is the what what's a good way to put this?
To make it where the dollar is no longer the world reserve currency, which yesterday, I don't buy. I didn't buy it then. I still don't buy it. I don't think that's Donald Trump's MO, but it could happen whether he wants it or not simply because of the way Bitcoin works. We've been speculating on it for a while. It's not like this is new news or anything like that, but we're starting to actually see it happen, and that's what's going to be important. And Hodder's statement here is exactly what I agree with. USDT and any other stablecoin is going to do two things.
It is going to wildly export United States' printed debt instruments to the rest of the world's population and make them even more poor fuckers than they already are. And two, it's going to breathe new life into the dollar, but it's going to be short lived. It's gonna be like the alcoholic that finally gets the liver transplant and then finally heals up and then starts going to the bar again. Within a year, that dude is dead. I've seen it happen. It's the same damn thing. But we do have some good news. Even though it's about Ethereum, former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been released from custody. Do you not remember Virgil Griffith?
Let's we'll we'll clue you in here. On April, Virgil Griffith, a former developer of the Ethereum Foundation, was released on supervised release. According to crypto developer Brantley Milligan, Griffith will remain in a halfway house for several weeks while awaiting the next steps in his parole process. Griffith was sentenced to sixty three months in a United States prison after prosecutors accused him of violating international sanctions laws. Those charges stemmed from a presentation titled blockchains for peace that Griffith gave in North Korea. According to prosecutors, during the event, he allegedly provided technical advice on using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to evade sanctions.
We were just talking about that. The researcher pleaded guilty to the violations in 2021. In July of twenty twenty four, US district judge Kevin Castle later reduced his sentence to fifty six months, which still sucks. But Griffith joined the Ethereum Foundation around 2016 and became became known for his work on the Ethereum name service and other protocol level improvements. He holds a PhD in computation and neural systems from the California Institute of Technology and previously created Wikiscanner, a tool to trace anonymous Wikipedia edits. He also collaborated with cryptographer Aaron Schwartz to develop Tor two web, a service that allows users to access Tor network websites through regular web browsers. I had no idea he worked with Aaron Schwartz.
Holy shit. And Aaron Schwartz, if you did not know, was well, I think he was suicided, but he was arrested for scraping, I don't know, like, a whole bunch of of journals, scientific journals, and all their articles. He base I think it was it he was caught in the computer compute system of MIT, I believe, where he was scraping every article from publications like Elsevier, which are the people that publish things like Cell and Nature and Science, you know, like the big bad boy articles. And his what he said was, this research belongs to the world. It at least belongs to The United States public because all the research that was done was funded by United States taxpayer dollars, and he was trying to get it out into the world. They caught him. They threw him in jail. He was gonna get married, and his girlfriend was like, yeah, man. When he gets out, we're we're getting married. And then all of a sudden, they found him hung in his cell. And he's a very young man. I think he was in his mid twenties or late twenties, maybe.
Girlfriend says this is bullshit. He did not hang himself. So what I've always posited is that it had nothing at all to do with the journals that he was scraping, that it had everything to do that he may have run across something in those computer systems that was incriminating, maybe to MIT, maybe to a whole group of other people, maybe both. I don't know. I wasn't there. But it seems very odd that they would suicide somebody over a bunch of journal articles that were already published even even if you were gonna have to buy them to be able to read them, which was what he was saying what he was trying to get away from. He was trying to get the articles out so that everybody could read them because unless you've got a $1,500 a year subscription to science, you ain't reading anything in science, not until way, way, way years later.
I don't think they would have killed him over that. I really don't. But his girlfriend and his mom both said he was not depressed. He was he was gonna get out. He was excited about getting out. He was excited about starting a life with with this young woman that he was involved with, and he was never the type of person to hang himself or talk about suicide in the first place. And all of a sudden, he hangs himself in prison over this bullshit? I don't know. I don't buy it. I think something way fishier than what they said happened actually happened. But Robosats, we're gonna do it. This is an upgrade.
Robosats version 0.6 no. Zero point seven point six alpha coordinator rating over Nasr. So even Robosats is getting into using Nasr. And if you did not know, Robosats is a simple and private way to exchange Bitcoin. It simplifies the peer to peer user experience and uses lightning hold invoices to minimize custody and trust requirements while helping users stick to best privacy practices. It's available for the web, Androids, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. So it says, this update includes a beta version of coordinator rating u Avia Noster, new messages in the trade workflow to address common questions, and a requirements for submitting a contract method in dispute statements. So coordinators are used by Robosats as sort of I hate to say it, but it's just the easiest way to say it. Trusted third parties.
It's not impossible that a coordinator can go bad. And by going bad, I don't mean going offline or going dark or or, you know, unaccessible. Somebody basically stealing money. Alright? It's it's probably I don't even know if it's ever actually happened, but it's one of the concerns about the way that RoboSats works. But if you're got RoboSats and and you're hooked up to a coordinator to help you do the things all the wonderful things that shit, it would be nice to have a web of trust rating for it. And it looks like that's what they've connected to with Noster so that people can rate coordinators so that you can gain a certain modicum of trust in what it is that you're using to hold funds. But on to Bull Bitcoin, which has expanded into the Eurozone, reinforces commitment to privacy and noncustodial innovation.
Karube is writing this one for lightning.news. Bull Bitcoin, a trailblazing Bitcoin only exchange renowned for its privacy first non custodial model announced its expansion into the European Union, establishing a dedicated team in France to serve the entire Eurozone. This strategic move follows the company's successful 2024 entry into Costa Rica, underscoring its mission to empower users globally with self sovereign financial tools. Unlike custodial exchanges that dominate the digital currency landscape, Bull Bitcoin ensures users retain full control over their funds. Every Bitcoin purchase is sent directly to the user's wallet, eliminating counterparty risk.
Let's see. Is there anything else? Nope. They've just expanded into Europe. They had already gone into Costa Rica. So bull Bitcoin coming out of Canada strong. I think that's Francis is it Francis Poulliott? Hold on. Let me see here. Yeah. Francis Poulliott, and I'm sure I'm butchering his last name, been around since 2013. This is one of the oldest OG Bitcoin you know, solid Bitcoin maximalist companies that you will find, and now they look to be infecting Europe. Alright. So that's the news for the day. If you didn't know why you were tuning in to the Bitcoin and podcast, it's because I give you the news on a daily basis about Bitcoin and its place in the rest of the world.
So shine on, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 08:51AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025, and this is episode ten seventy two of Bitcoin. And and if you wanna know why you're listening to this show right now, it's because I'm gonna tell you everything that's happening in Bitcoin today as it relates to the wider market, the wider world, what's going on with the price. If you want a snapshot of what the hell it is you gotta look for today, this is your show. And we're gonna start this one with the senate confirmation of the pro Bitcoin, Paul Atkins, as the SEC chair.
Vivek send Bitcoin starts us off from Bitcoin magazine. The United States senate has confirmed Paul Atkins as the new chair of the Securities and Chain Exchange Commission in a 52 to 44 vote, placing the longtime Wall Street Consultant and former Republican commissioner at the helm of one of the most powerful financial regulatory agencies in the country. Atkins, known for his deregulatory stance, is expected to usher in a Bitcoin and crypto friendlier approach at the SEC, reversing many of the enforcement heavy policies implemented under his predecessor, Gary Gensler.
His confirmation follows months of political debate and comes during a period of significant transition in financial regulation. Yeah. You could say that. A vocal critic of what he has described as regulatory overreach, Atkins has previously advised several crypto firms through his consultancy, Potomac Global Partners, industry insiders see his appointment as a turning point for Bitcoin in The United States, particularly as the agency redefines its jurisdiction. Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott applauded the confirmation stating on Wednesday that, quote, his tenure will mark a pivotal moment to roll back harmful Biden era policies, promote capital formation, and enhance opportunities for retail investors.
Chairman Atkins will also provide regulatory clarity for digital assets, allowing American innovation to flourish and ensuring we remain competitive on the global stage, Scott said. Since taking office, the Trump administration has already directed the SEC to scale back its crypto oversight. Under interim chair Mark Ueda, the agency dismissed a number of high profile Bitcoin and crypto cases and issued internal guidance including or excluding several crypto categories. With Atkins now confirmed, those changes are expected to be formalized into long term policy, and insiders suggest that Atkins will work closely with the CFTC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, to implement a more unified framework for Bitcoin and crypto, potentially paving the way for congressional legislation that redefines how crypto is regulated in The US.
Okay. So we've got a new SEC chair, Paul Adkins. He is Bitcoin friendly, but what is more intriguing about this is him reaching out to the CFTC because the CFTC versus the SEC, when they're not communicating, causes all manner of problems. And maybe, just maybe, they'll start working together in a more cohesive way so that people are not so freaking confused. And I don't know. I mean, when people say that they're pro this or against that and then halfway through their tenure, they flip flop, I that's that's always on the table. You know? It's just always on the table, so just be aware. Just because he's pro Bitcoin now doesn't mean that he'll stay that way. And as usual, in this show as a theme, we will have to wait and see.
But what we did see, either early this morning or sometime late yesterday, Jack Dorsey is pushing signal to adopt Bitcoin payments. Helen Parts has it from Cointelegraph. Jack Dorsey, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO is encouraging Signal Messenger to integrate Bitcoin for its peer to peer payments, a move that could shift the platform's crypto strategy away from altcoins. Quote, Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments. Dorsey wrote on Twitter on April, so that would be yesterday, replying to a post by Bitcoin developer, Cali, who suggested that Bitcoin would be a perfect fit for Signal's private communication channel. And indeed, they show a screenshot of Jack's retweet of Cali saying, yes, true. Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments.
Anyway, so Dorsey's call to action was echoed by other industry leaders, including the former PayPal president, David Marcus. And he wrote, quote, all non transactional apps should connect to Bitcoin. Now I'm I'm not rewording his sentence. That is a straight up quote. He didn't say cryptocurrency. No. No. No. The former president of PayPal said, connect to Bitcoin. The endorsements reflect a growing push to promote bitcoin as the functional payment system rather than just digital gold or a pure store of value which alone, according to Dorsey, won't ensure the success of BTC.
Founded in 2014, Signal is an open source encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls. The messenger currently offers in app payments on MobileCoin, a privacy focused ERC 20 token, which rebranded rebranded to Stence or sorry. Sense with an s, s e n t z, in November of twenty twenty three. Backed by high profile industry players like Blocktower Capital and Coinbase Ventures, Synth was founded in 2017 by Josh Goldberg and Shane Glenn to enable a fast, private, and easy to use cryptocurrency. Signal then came under fire over its mobile coin integration in 2021 with many raising concerns over potential ties between signals founder and MTCN opacity around its issuance and suspicious gains leading up to the partnership announcement.
Signal is far from being alone in pushing altcoin payments instead of offering its users payments in Bitcoin, which is designed for p two p payments as its core use case, according to the anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Although former PayPal president, Marcus, is now advocating for Bitcoin usage by all non transactional applications, he previously led Meta's project developing the firm's own payment cryptocurrency, initially known as Libra, which eventually failed. Telegram is another messenger popular in the community, and they've also been aggressively pushing its ecosystem to use Toncoin, a crypto asset linked to Telegram founders, though not technically itself managed by Telegram.
Elon Musk's Everything AppX has also been suspected of planning to launch its own coin for a long time, but Musk publicly denied that in August of twenty twenty three. Alright. So it seems a little bit overblown that the the headline of this particular news article out of Cointelegraph talks about Jack Dorsey pushing for crypto payments when all he really said was all all Jack did was retweet Cali's quote or Cali's tweet, which said, would be an amazing proof of concept. Signal would be so much more useful if they could just use it with Bitcoin. It would be ideal for eCash since Signal already provides an extremely private communication channel. Alright. So that was the tweet from Cali. All Jack did was retweet it and with that said true. Signal should use Bitcoin for p two p payments.
So when I first read that, I was like, you know, I'm not even gonna do this story. But then when I read further and now we got David Marcus, the former president of PayPal, and the guy that took off from the Libra project out of Meta, he's saying all all non transactional apps should connect to Bitcoin. That is what that's why you're hearing this story today. That's that's why I'm bringing bringing it to you because it's not just Jack. It's also David Marcus. And as we see all these altcoins just completely fail in the face of what Bitcoin's doing, even though we do have a reversal going on today, we are at 78,805, and we're gonna get to why that reversal is occurring, not only at Bitcoin, but across all markets, whether they're cryptocurrency or legacy financial.
We'll get to that. I promise. But if I go and I just look specifically at the ETHBTC pair, it's even lower today than it was well, it was it's lowered it's as low today as it was yesterday and the day before, which brings it back to the level it was at somewhere around January of twenty twenty. Talking about over five years of of of evaporating wealth out of people holding ether instead of just cashing out and buying b t c. It's just losing wealth. The eth b t c pair is the pair that I use to judge all cryptocurrencies in general against the performance of Bitcoin itself, and all of them essentially have just been losing ground. Now you'll say, well, yeah, but Sol is is increasing. Yeah. Over the last, you know, few weeks.
But there was a few times when we've had a past few weeks when ETH was increasing, but then it didn't. And then it started reversing course. And I've got a whole chart on that shit. Yeah. Like, for the entire length of time that ETH has been alive, I've got an entire chart showing its performance directly against BTC, and it is not pretty. Not one bit at all pretty. It's really just ugly. So it's interesting that David Marcus himself, along with Jack Dorsey, is pushing Signal, which is probably the most popular messaging app out there. I hate Telegram. That I it's impossible to use in my opinion. But signal is very, very good. It's very slick. It's very robust.
All these people use it. In fact, it was in the news because with this this the military strike and somebody inviting, you know, the Atlantic's lead editor to come on board while they were doing battle plans. That signal. We're not talking about, you know, Sammy's backyard signal that he developed. No. We're talking about the signal. If they can if they would adopt even if they they didn't even you wouldn't even really have to adopt Bitcoin main chain payments out of signal for this to be just badass. You could do Lightning payments, and then people will say, oh, well, Lightning is this and that and Lightning has failed, and, of course, it's all bullshit. But even if you said, okay. Well, fine. Let's just do e cash.
Why not? E cash is simple. And at this point, it's so intrinsically linked to the Bitcoin ecosystem that you might as well be using Bitcoin. I'd like to see this happen, and I hope we do. Meanwhile, did you need some maple syrup? Well, the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs just like you with goods and services for sale to plebs just like you who might want to buy said goods and services. And today, it's maple syrup and soaps from my friend, Maple Trade. And you can get a quart of his maple syrup for, like, $27.
And you might go, well, I could just go to the store. Yeah. Well, you're do you know where the maple syrup came from? Did you watch it be made? Because that's what maple trade does. He makes his own maple syrup by hand. He does it the old fashioned way. He taps his own trees in Ohio. It's like 270 maple trees. He gathers the sap. He boils it down. He puts it into bottles, and he ships it to you for Bitcoin. Because if you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you decide to buy maple syrup and his sister Sarah's soaps, which are also very, very good, then make sure you tell Maple Train that you bought his goods because he you heard about it here on the circle p. The circle p, again, where I'm bringing just regular plebs like you who can't afford advertising to other regular plebs who may want to actually buy a product but don't know it exists because nobody ever said anything about it. It's just my way of trying to give back to this community.
Just make sure that you tell Maple Trade you heard about it here. So you're saying, wait. Wait. Wait. Where do I order it? Dude, you're gonna have to go to Twitter or Noster. I've got his Twitter handle is b e I s n e r d s, Biesnerds is how you pronounce it. It's just that's his handle on Twitter. The URL directly to his Twitter profile will be in the show notes. You just gotta hit the URL and boom, you're gonna go do his profile. Give him a direct message or call him out in the Twitter feed and say, hey. I wanna buy your I wanna buy your maple syrup. I heard about it on the circle p, or you can reach him on Nostr. Now I'm not gonna read his in pub for Nostr because it's just a string of letters and numbers.
If you're a you a Nostr user, the URL directly to his profile on Nostr will also be available in the show notes, and it will be under the heading maple syrup and soaps. So make sure you tell Maple Trade that you heard about it here. Buy his maple syrup and his sister's Sarah's soap. Meanwhile, Binance is debuting a reward bearing asset for its futures market. Oh, rewards. Yay. Matt DeSalvo has got it from Decrypt. Binance futures will, this month, debut a new yield bearing product, l d u s d t. L d u s d t allowing traders to earn rewards that can be used for futures trading.
As if the gambling casino wasn't enough, you gotta give them a a frequent flyer card? They announced this yesterday, l d u s d t is not a stablecoin, nor is it a swappable token, but users will be able to trade Tether USDT for LD USDT via the company's simple earned flexible products to use as collateral for speculating in futures. I find this hilarious. I'm sorry, but it's it's like I don't know. Somehow, it's like would would you give points to like, if you were a crack dealer, you know, and you had, like, all your crack customers, would you give them points so that they could get free crack later on when they're already addicted?
I mean, no. I this I don't know. I just find this hilarious because it's, a, it's bad. B, this is funny as shit. Futures trading is where traders buy and sell contracts that bet. The functional word is bet on the future price of an asset. LDUSDT increases capital efficiency for users and lets users put their assets to work for them as both a reward earning and a liquid trading margin asset, all while retaining flexibility to redeploy their capital at any time, said the VP of product, Jeff Lee. Binance's latest initiative follows the successful introduction of yet another reward bearing margin asset called BFUSD last November.
BFUSD enables users to generate returns on qualifying balances in their futures accounts and can be used as margin in futures accounts with multiple assets while also earning rewards. These products come as crypto and traditional finance companies try to address the rising demand for gambling, oh I mean crypto products. Traders using Binance can already earn USDT via the exchange's Simple Earn flexible product service. Assets contracted on the Simple Earn platform can be used as collateral for flexible loans the company offers. And Binance, the company's Binance Pay, which allows users to pay and receive in crypto.
Lee added that Futures products are among the most popular in the market. LDUSDT is a useful way to help our users explore more opportunities on Binance. CoinGecko shows the data shows that Binance Futures is the biggest derivatives exchange in the crypto market with a twenty four hour trading volume of a hundred and $30,000,000,000. Everything about this reeks. Everything about this reeks to high heaven. It is addicting gamblers to gamble more. It as if it wasn't bad enough that we had a time when BitMex was allowing users to do 100 times leverage on futures contracts trading.
Now we have Binance who's offering you frequent gambling points. This is the way it's going. Right? It's like I I'm telling you this because you need to watch out for these products. Do I would I would not no more touch one of these products that I just described with a 10 foot pole with a dead cat on the end of it, then I would go swim in a sewer. It this it don't do this. But it's indicative of the fact that humans continuously amaze me how they refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past. Gambling is not good. When when people say they're a futures trader, that's not something I look on as being, oh, that guy must be must be, you know, really smart.
Would you say somebody who's, like, you know, throwing dice in a casino is just smart? I wouldn't. They may be smart. They may be stupider and shit, but I wouldn't cert I certainly wouldn't just assume that they're brilliant because they're, you know, throwing craps. That's what that when I hear few I'm a futures trader. Oh, you mean you're a professional gambler. That that's what that shit is. So speaking of casino, the original casino, Fiat Legacy Markets, And I started thinking to myself yesterday, self, because, you know, we got these rewards things coming out, and it just reward points for futures contracts. What what if what if companies that have dividends like real like Nike and I don't know if Nike stock has dividend.
Just I'm just talking about legacy financial equities. Right? Companies that produce a product, that sell that product, and then return those profits back to the shareholders as a dividend in the form of United States dollars. What if what if instead of US dollars, what if you had the option to take your dividend in Bitcoin? What would this do? Well, the company themself would actually have to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet so that they would be able to convert well, so they'd be able to give you the Bitcoin instead of US dollars. And you could you could say, well, why don't I just take the US dollars? Well, because you'd be actually, what you'd be doing is you'd be putting yourself depending on how much stock you have, you'd be putting yourself in the possibility of a tax consequence because you're essentially cashing out that money. Right? So if they gave you Bitcoin instead of USD and you did not take possession of that Bitcoin, and you should, but that puts you in a tax consequence issue again.
Let's say you left it there. And then all of a sudden, now that company ends up with Bitcoin straight up on its balance sheet. What if a lot of companies started doing that? What if it was just, like like, straight up standard practice that companies around the world just gave you the options that, hey, you can take your dividend in cash or you could take your dividend in Bitcoin. And either way, you still have the option as to whether or not you want to reinvest that and buy more stock with it. And, like so let's say that your dividend was delineated in terms of Bitcoin because you said, okay. I'm gonna take the I'm gonna take the Bitcoin option.
And then you turn around and say, okay. Well, I just wanna buy more stock with it. There's no tax consequence because you never took possession of the Bitcoin. And then what happens to the Bitcoin then? Okay. Essentially, you've traded that Bitcoin back to the company for more of their stock issuance. Okay. So that means that at at least for a modicum amount of time, that Bitcoin remains on the company's balance sheet as an asset. Wouldn't that be kind of an easier way for companies that are way legacy companies? Instead of issuing debt, instead of issuing zero coupon, 8% coupon, 10% coupon senior notes, right, and buy Bitcoin with the cash raised from those sales, wouldn't it be easier for companies that don't want to follow the straight up strategy playbook when it comes to Bitcoin, you know, Michael Saylor's group? Wouldn't it just be easier to say, well, what if we just offer you Bitcoin instead of cash?
And if, for whatever reason, our shareholders don't actually take the Bitcoin out but decide to trade that Bitcoin for more shares of our company, wouldn't that be an easier entry point? I'm just putting that out there because I I wrote a note the other yesterday or the day before where I said, I'm waiting for the day when companies pay shareholders their dividends in Bitcoin rather than US dollars or more corporate stock. I'm just saying, I think it's I I think it's something that's plausible. I really do. And I'm kinda surprised that I haven't seen anybody do it yet. But on to inflation.
Okay. So we've got this reversal going on in all markets, oil markets or rather, let's just say energy markets. We've got all equities are down, like, between five and four points. All like, Dow's down four points. The S and P is down five. The Nasdaq is down five. West Texas Intermediate and Brent Norsee are are all down. Every it's it's it's a almost a complete reversal from yesterday when we shot up to the moon again. Right? So what what happened? Well, the inflation numbers came out. That's what happened. And, also, the Fed notes or minutes from their meeting dropped yesterday, and nobody said a word because we were all distracted by tariffs.
Well, The United States CPI declined in March, and the core rate rose just point 1%. This is written by James Van Stratten out of CoinDesk. Inflation in The United States actually declined at the headline level last month, and the core rate barely rose, possibly possibly reigniting debate about whether the Federal Reserve would resume trimming rates at its next meeting come May. That's it. That's the state. If you wanna know what happened, if you were looking at TradingView or you were looking at charts and you were like, wait a minute. What happened? I thought we were all safe. No. No. No.
No. No. Because the news, these numbers out of labor department, out of the fed, out of US they never stop coming. And every time a new piece of information drops, somebody somewhere shits their bed and everybody goes, oh, man. That sucked. So what exactly happened? Well, the consumer price index fell point 1% in March. Economists had expected a point 1% increase following February's point 2% gain on a year over year basis. Headline CPI increased just 2.4% compared to forecast of 2.6 versus February's '2 point '8 percent increase. Well, Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, climbed only point 1% in March against forecast of point three and February's point two reading.
Core CPI rose 2.8% year over year, well shy of the expected 3% and comparing it against February's '3 point '1 percent. The price of Bitcoin rose modestly to above $82,000 in minutes following the news after yesterday's historic move higher US stock index futures are under pressure on Thursday morning. The Nasdaq is off by 2.7 and the S and P two point one, and that has become much worse since they wrote this. Right? And by the way, the this where they say the price of Bitcoin rose modestly above $8,082,000, they shouldn't have even put that in. They should have known they should have known that Bitcoin also as a risk asset was going to fall. Why?
Because when if they're if the Fed has any news at all that they can say or that they can use to tell the world that we have a good reason not to reduce rates at this time. And one of their mandates is to get inflation to 2%. And inflation has now dropped, not below 2%. It's well above 2%. But they're going in the to them and what they tell the world, they're going in the right direction. Therefore, they don't need to use any of that ammunition, which is the federal funds lending rate. So the chances of them actually dropping another 25 basis points has just decreased come their May meeting.
When your money is more expensive to borrow so that you can do things like buy what would be called a risk asset, and right now, most of the world considers Bitcoin a risk asset. You don't borrow that money. You're waiting for cheaper rates. And because of that, the people that were holding Bitcoin that are weak hands and keep thinking that it's just a gambling play, where they're just cutting and running. They're saying, well, there's not gonna be any action here. We got we're gonna sell, and we're gonna go find somebody something else to go gamble on.
This is a giant casino, ladies and gentlemen. It is a giant casino. It's open even though they say the market's closed. That's bullshit. These markets play twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Some stock exchange and and equities markets are always open somewhere in the world. And if you're playing the world roulette table, then you're constantly shifting where you're doing business at. Retail Joe's, they're not doing that. You know, they're they're barely looking at what's in their four zero one k. They have almost no idea how much exposure to The United States equities market that they have. Right? They just see a number at the at the bottom go, oh, there's a hundred thousand dollars there. I'm go I'm doing good, but they have no conception of where that number is actually generated from.
It's all a casino. So and we've got we've got more numbers coming out, later. Let's see. What what else do we have on the horizon? Well, the month over month producers price index is coming out on April. That's tomorrow. Yay. Fun. And then also on the same day, later on in the afternoon or early evening, the Michigan consumer sentiment comes out. Well, what will those numbers show? Well, right now, the forecast, just so you know, for the PPI is point 2%. That's the forecast. And I'm not exactly I'm not gonna explain exactly what that means.
But previously, there was no change in the PPI. And this is sort of the producer's price index is like, how much does it cost for a producer to produce? If the producers are going to have to spend more money, that's not good for the producers. So that's probably going to weigh on the markets if it turns out to be true, the forecast. And then the Michigan consumer sentiment looks like it's going to drop. The forecast is 54.5, and the previous was 57. So the forecast, if it comes true, maybe, the consumers don't really wanna buy as much stuff, which puts even more pressure on the producers. These numbers never stop coming, and they always cause problems, especially in situations where we find ourselves in now because nobody even realized that the Federal Reserve dropped their minutes yesterday, and their language was hawkish, which means that they're probably not going to lower rates in May, which is another data point that people that were paying attention are taking into consideration when it comes to whether or not they wanna be lettuce hands or if they wanna hold strong.
That's what you're seeing today. That's why the price is down. You don't have to go look at any of those shiny headlines that say, why is the price of Bitcoin down today? You can just get it all here every single day, Monday to Friday on the Bitcoin and podcast. Let's run the numbers. Oil taking a hit. All energy is down, way down, way, way, way down. Oil is down almost 5% back to $59.41, which is essentially where it was trading yesterday before the tariff news came out that we were gonna enter we were gonna get a a ninety day pause on all tariffs except for China. Yeah. And then we all shot up, including energy. Yeah. That reversed. Brett Norce reversed. 4.12% of the downside to $62.77.
Natural gas, hardest hit at 7% of the downside, $3.54 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline fell four and a half points well below $2 to $1.94 per gallon. Gold, however, looks like it's going to reach for a new all time high after a 3% gain to $3,173 an ounce. Silver is up a point. Platinum is up a point. Copper is up 3.6. Palladium is up one quarter of one point. Biggest loser in ag today is lumber losing six and a quarter percent. Wow. And the biggest winner today is sugar. 1.62% to the upside. Live cattle down one and a third. Lean hogs up a point. And feeder cattle down a full point. And then here comes your equities.
The Dow is down four and a third points back to 39,058. It just it's like it's like yesterday never happened. S and P is down 5%. Nasdaq down 5.7. S and P Mini down 5.7% as well. And then there's Bitcoin who's lost. What did what was our handle yesterday? We hit all the way up to 83,500, some somewhere around there. Now we are back down to $78,860. Holy smokes. It's like nobody can get their shit straight here. It's still a $1,560,000,000,000 market cap, though, but you're only gonna be able to get 24.8 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,849,000 a hundred and 69 and 6.66 of an average fees per block are still low, 0.04 BTC, taking the fees on a per block basis, and there are five blocks carrying 7,000 unconfirmed transactions.
Yeah. Waiting to waiting to get confirmed at high priority rates of 3 Satoshis per vByte. Low priority is gonna get you in at the same. Hash rate, however, 903 x of hashes per second. Still, no minor capitulation. I keep looking for it. I'm not finding it. Just like I can't find what's in my wallet, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got chill now one with 333 sat says, hop through your control. It's just a math thing. Do the math. Crack and pay plus master slave equals crack addiction. Corporate syntax, crack tag.
Printed instruments of debt, you'll follow her into the dark, foreshadowing things that are going to occur. Suits speak decoded, trust terminated, architect breakthroughs, transform resistance into radical emergence, end transmission. Anonymous with 500 says retired at 61. I'm now 62. I ain't worried about shit. At my age, I'm more worried about if I shit regularly. Yodle Yodle with 444 says great episode. So much insight. Viva Mexico. Perma Nerd with 234 says, give this podcast a listen. If you do, you will become smarter, guaranteed, or your money back.
Pies with a hundred. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Matt f r l one hundred. Good morning, team. Speedy with a hundred. Doesn't say nothing. Matt f r l with a hundred says good morning, team. Oh, this was actually the same it was it's the same handle, but it's written in a it the handle comes up looking completely different in these two things. That's really strange. Oh, well. Pies with another hundred says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Remember, last week when I brought you news about Pakistan planning to legalize Bitcoin and crypto?
Well, if you don't remember, yeah, Pakistan is planning to legalize Bitcoin and crypto, and now we find out why. Because as of today, it's been announced that Pakistan is planning to fuel Bitcoin mining with their surplus electricity according to Reuters. Danny Park writes it up from the block. Pakistan is considering using surplus electricity to power its Bitcoin mining and AI data centers, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The suggestion came from Bilal bin Saqib, adviser to Pakistan's Finance Minister and CEO of the Crypto Council. Saqib reportedly said there have already been talks with several mining firms.
The plan is expected to help the country overcome the challenges of having leftover energy and high electricity tariffs and the expansion of alternative energy sources. The council will finalize the location of the mining centers based on excess power availability, Saqib told Reuters. Pakistan formed its crypto council last month in a bid to push blockchain and crypto powered initiatives. Saqib explained in a previous interview with Bloomberg that the country's crypto push follows the election of pro crypto president Donald Trump who promised to make The US the world's leader in digital assets. Quote, our plan as the Pakistan Crypto Council is very clear. Pakistan is done sitting on the sidelines.
Now that was from the last, the not the last episode, but last week when I brought you that, that statement was in the news story then. And it looks like they're just moving forward at full steam because it they've got I've heard and see if it's in in here. It's not in here. I heard through other channels that the amount of excess energy that Pakistan has is totaling somewhere around 10,000 megawatts, which is a massive amount of power. I mean, that's a lot of power, and it's not being used. So somehow they're able to create now I'm not exactly sure. I don't know if it's hydro. I I don't know how Pakistan's electricity generation is being done.
But whatever they're doing, they're apparently doing it very well, and they cannot get rid of the electricity. You just heard tariffs. Except that if you're if you're generating electricity and you're trying to sell it to your neighboring country, like, let's say, India, which is maybe what they're talking about tariffs because Pakistan and India, they don't get along. And they have pretty much never really gotten along ever since especially ever since the disputed region of Kashmir came into play. But be that as it may, you got 10,000 megawatts of unused power. They can't sell it because tariffs are high to apparently all of their neighboring countries. So now we have Bitcoin that comes in, and not only does it negate sanctions for countries, as we will soon see, it can negate localized electricity tariffs.
Didn't see that one coming. I really did not see that one coming, but I just mentioned evading sanctions. Well, we've got the dedollarization coming. Russia and China are trading energy with Bitcoin. Now we've heard this before. However, there seems to be some fairly serious confirmation of the rumor. Guy Malone from Bitcoin News tells us more. Founder and principal attorney Sasha Hodder of Hodder Law Firm, a firm specializing in cryptocurrency related business law founded in 2022, commented on the implications of the Trump administration's tariffs to the US dollar as highlighted in an article released Wednesday by asset manager Van Eck.
The article, digital assets, D Dollarization Moves Bitcoin Towards Monetary Role, was won in a series released Tuesday by Van Eck from their portfolio managers being tasked with providing insights on the multiple current impacts of these tariffs. VanEck was founded in 1955, claiming an assets under management figure of a hundred and $13,800,000,000 is described by their website's about section as one of the first US asset managers to offer investors access to international markets and recognized early the transformative potential of gold investing, ETFs, and digital assets.
The insight piece, penned by VanEck's US head of digital assets research, Matthew Segel, points to Bitcoin as the solution for nations seeking forms of trade settlement independent of the United States dollar stating, quote, the weaponization of trade and financial infrastructure continues to drive interest in neutral settlement rails. China and Russia have reportedly begun settling some energy transactions in Bitcoin and other digital assets. Bolivia has announced plans to import electricity using crypto, and French energy utility EDF is exploring whether it can mine Bitcoin with surplus electricity currently exported to Germany.
These are all early signs that Bitcoin is evolving from a speculative asset into a functional monetary tool, particularly in economies looking to bypass the dollar and reduce exposure to US led financial systems. All that was a quote directly from the piece that was written by Siegel. No stranger to informally expressing what might fairly be called her professional expert opinions, Hodder's Wednesday expost, which received over 3,000 likes and over 600 reposts in under five hours, said, succinctly, quote, VanEck confirms that China and Russia are settling energy trades in Bitcoin.
D dollarization is here. The US should immediately end sanctions on Russia or it is game over for the United States dollar. Hodder is highly endorsed on the firm's website by many industry experts, including Exodus Wallet, Movement CEO JP Richardson. According to her LinkedIn profile, Hodder serves as senior counsel for Exodus. While a full time practicing attorney, she additionally post industry updates on navigating digital asset regulations. Expounding for Bitcoin news readers via direct messages about her use of the phrase game over for the USD, Hodder clarified, quote, If China and Russia can settle energy trades in Bitcoin, the US dollar loses its most important function, being the global reserve and settlement currency.
It's not an overnight collapse, but it's the beginning of the end of the dollar's dominance over global trade. End quote. The same screenshot of the Siegel opinion piece gained further traction within the Bitcoin community being also reposted by Coin Stories host Natalie Brunel. And on her thread, one x user, Der Kirk, called into question, quote, what source Sigel is citing on Bitcoin settlement for energy trade between Russia and China. On Sigel's feed, user Ricky Rahm likewise demanded demanded to know, quote, reportedly, reported by whom and where?
Response came quickly from Siegel, self described on his Twitter account, which boasts over 40,000 followers as a recovering CFA, a chartered financial analyst, a title recognized worldwide according to Investopedia. Siegel replied, perhaps with a sigh, by citing three recent news links and saying, I don't know why this is so difficult, end quote. Two of the links he provided were from well known news agencies, Reuters, describing the worldwide scenario unfolding, And it says that it shows a picture of one of the articles and the, Reuters headline is Russia leans on cryptocurrencies for oil trade, sources say, and that was March 13, 2025.
So just, you know, what, last month. Quote, Russia leans on cryptocurrencies for oil trade sources say, and Bolivia turns to crypto for energy imports amid dollar and fuel shortages is another headline. Siegel's third provided news link was to the big whale reporting with the headline, quote, the French government opens the door to Bitcoin mining by EDF. According to the article, EDF is the state owned, that France owns it, energy giant. Commenting in signals feed, Russian user Brian McDonald summed up the situation saying, quote, Van Eck calls it the first real step towards a parallel system beyond swift, beyond sanctions, beyond the dollar, end quote.
Bitcoin news reported on the developing multinational exit from the petrodollar dependence, likewise featuring VanEck Sigel in October of twenty twenty four's article named BRICS nation I Bitcoin to break free from the dollar according to Van Eck. The BRICS alliance of formerly five nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, now includes at least 10 countries representing about 45% of the world's population. Even prior to The United States Elections and the Bitcoin industry friendly promises new policies of president Trump's administration, Sigel cited that countries including Argentina, Ethiopia, and The United Arab Emirates were all mining Bitcoin, as Bitcoin News stated in the fall, quote, to create additional sources of revenue and, perhaps more importantly, establish alternatives to the United States dollar in international trade as well as, quote, this shift is part of a broader strategy among emerging economies to reduce their reliance on the dollar, which has long been the dominant currency in global trade, end quote.
Continuing discussion on Hodder's fee brought up treasury bills and stablecoins. Hodder expressed her belief in Bitcoin's presumed future dominant role in world's finances, referring or referencing the Trump administration's recent stablecoin act, quote, to reinforce US dollar dominance according to a March 27 Forbes headline. Hodder posited that with Tether, stablecoins would likely, quote, prop up the dollar for the next few years until it breaks, end quote. Sigel's recent report echoed the sentiment of Hodder as well as the BRICS nation stating that, quote, Bitcoin is evolving from a speculative asset into a functional monetary tool, particularly in economies looking to bypass the dollar and reduce exposure to US led financial systems.
So that's a a lot to take in. I understand that. But it looks like there's confirmation that China and Russia are settling oil or at least some of them in Bitcoin trades and probably other cryptocurrencies, and they may actually be, using Tether for that. Who knows? It doesn't matter because that's not the point. The point is that you've got countries that can mine an asset with excess electricity that can then be used to circumvent sanctions, the United States dollar, and tariffs all in one shot without breaking a sweat. What the hell does that tell you? Again, let me just say it again.
You've got countries that can mine an asset by themselves. They don't have to procure it from anybody by trading on the forex markets. They can simply get miners, set them up, plug them in, mine Bitcoin, and then use the mined Bitcoin to circumvent United States and other world sanctions, United States tariffs as well as any other tariffs, and the United States dollar, which represents the petrodollar. All of them at once. It doesn't even breathe hard. It's not a good situation for the dollar. And when you marry that to this to the speculation I talked about yesterday that Donald Trump may very well want to break the the the world's what did what is the what what's a good way to put this?
To make it where the dollar is no longer the world reserve currency, which yesterday, I don't buy. I didn't buy it then. I still don't buy it. I don't think that's Donald Trump's MO, but it could happen whether he wants it or not simply because of the way Bitcoin works. We've been speculating on it for a while. It's not like this is new news or anything like that, but we're starting to actually see it happen, and that's what's going to be important. And Hodder's statement here is exactly what I agree with. USDT and any other stablecoin is going to do two things.
It is going to wildly export United States' printed debt instruments to the rest of the world's population and make them even more poor fuckers than they already are. And two, it's going to breathe new life into the dollar, but it's going to be short lived. It's gonna be like the alcoholic that finally gets the liver transplant and then finally heals up and then starts going to the bar again. Within a year, that dude is dead. I've seen it happen. It's the same damn thing. But we do have some good news. Even though it's about Ethereum, former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been released from custody. Do you not remember Virgil Griffith?
Let's we'll we'll clue you in here. On April, Virgil Griffith, a former developer of the Ethereum Foundation, was released on supervised release. According to crypto developer Brantley Milligan, Griffith will remain in a halfway house for several weeks while awaiting the next steps in his parole process. Griffith was sentenced to sixty three months in a United States prison after prosecutors accused him of violating international sanctions laws. Those charges stemmed from a presentation titled blockchains for peace that Griffith gave in North Korea. According to prosecutors, during the event, he allegedly provided technical advice on using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to evade sanctions.
We were just talking about that. The researcher pleaded guilty to the violations in 2021. In July of twenty twenty four, US district judge Kevin Castle later reduced his sentence to fifty six months, which still sucks. But Griffith joined the Ethereum Foundation around 2016 and became became known for his work on the Ethereum name service and other protocol level improvements. He holds a PhD in computation and neural systems from the California Institute of Technology and previously created Wikiscanner, a tool to trace anonymous Wikipedia edits. He also collaborated with cryptographer Aaron Schwartz to develop Tor two web, a service that allows users to access Tor network websites through regular web browsers. I had no idea he worked with Aaron Schwartz.
Holy shit. And Aaron Schwartz, if you did not know, was well, I think he was suicided, but he was arrested for scraping, I don't know, like, a whole bunch of of journals, scientific journals, and all their articles. He base I think it was it he was caught in the computer compute system of MIT, I believe, where he was scraping every article from publications like Elsevier, which are the people that publish things like Cell and Nature and Science, you know, like the big bad boy articles. And his what he said was, this research belongs to the world. It at least belongs to The United States public because all the research that was done was funded by United States taxpayer dollars, and he was trying to get it out into the world. They caught him. They threw him in jail. He was gonna get married, and his girlfriend was like, yeah, man. When he gets out, we're we're getting married. And then all of a sudden, they found him hung in his cell. And he's a very young man. I think he was in his mid twenties or late twenties, maybe.
Girlfriend says this is bullshit. He did not hang himself. So what I've always posited is that it had nothing at all to do with the journals that he was scraping, that it had everything to do that he may have run across something in those computer systems that was incriminating, maybe to MIT, maybe to a whole group of other people, maybe both. I don't know. I wasn't there. But it seems very odd that they would suicide somebody over a bunch of journal articles that were already published even even if you were gonna have to buy them to be able to read them, which was what he was saying what he was trying to get away from. He was trying to get the articles out so that everybody could read them because unless you've got a $1,500 a year subscription to science, you ain't reading anything in science, not until way, way, way years later.
I don't think they would have killed him over that. I really don't. But his girlfriend and his mom both said he was not depressed. He was he was gonna get out. He was excited about getting out. He was excited about starting a life with with this young woman that he was involved with, and he was never the type of person to hang himself or talk about suicide in the first place. And all of a sudden, he hangs himself in prison over this bullshit? I don't know. I don't buy it. I think something way fishier than what they said happened actually happened. But Robosats, we're gonna do it. This is an upgrade.
Robosats version 0.6 no. Zero point seven point six alpha coordinator rating over Nasr. So even Robosats is getting into using Nasr. And if you did not know, Robosats is a simple and private way to exchange Bitcoin. It simplifies the peer to peer user experience and uses lightning hold invoices to minimize custody and trust requirements while helping users stick to best privacy practices. It's available for the web, Androids, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. So it says, this update includes a beta version of coordinator rating u Avia Noster, new messages in the trade workflow to address common questions, and a requirements for submitting a contract method in dispute statements. So coordinators are used by Robosats as sort of I hate to say it, but it's just the easiest way to say it. Trusted third parties.
It's not impossible that a coordinator can go bad. And by going bad, I don't mean going offline or going dark or or, you know, unaccessible. Somebody basically stealing money. Alright? It's it's probably I don't even know if it's ever actually happened, but it's one of the concerns about the way that RoboSats works. But if you're got RoboSats and and you're hooked up to a coordinator to help you do the things all the wonderful things that shit, it would be nice to have a web of trust rating for it. And it looks like that's what they've connected to with Noster so that people can rate coordinators so that you can gain a certain modicum of trust in what it is that you're using to hold funds. But on to Bull Bitcoin, which has expanded into the Eurozone, reinforces commitment to privacy and noncustodial innovation.
Karube is writing this one for lightning.news. Bull Bitcoin, a trailblazing Bitcoin only exchange renowned for its privacy first non custodial model announced its expansion into the European Union, establishing a dedicated team in France to serve the entire Eurozone. This strategic move follows the company's successful 2024 entry into Costa Rica, underscoring its mission to empower users globally with self sovereign financial tools. Unlike custodial exchanges that dominate the digital currency landscape, Bull Bitcoin ensures users retain full control over their funds. Every Bitcoin purchase is sent directly to the user's wallet, eliminating counterparty risk.
Let's see. Is there anything else? Nope. They've just expanded into Europe. They had already gone into Costa Rica. So bull Bitcoin coming out of Canada strong. I think that's Francis is it Francis Poulliott? Hold on. Let me see here. Yeah. Francis Poulliott, and I'm sure I'm butchering his last name, been around since 2013. This is one of the oldest OG Bitcoin you know, solid Bitcoin maximalist companies that you will find, and now they look to be infecting Europe. Alright. So that's the news for the day. If you didn't know why you were tuning in to the Bitcoin and podcast, it's because I give you the news on a daily basis about Bitcoin and its place in the rest of the world.
So shine on, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Maple Syrup and Soaps for Bitcoin
Global Economic Shifts and Bitcoin's Role
