Join me today for Episode 1075 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
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Coupon code is BitcoinAnd for 10% off.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/brazil-meliuz-floats-boosting-bitcoin-buys
https://decrypt.co/315018/semler-scientific-500m-offering-targets-bitcoin-buys-amid-doj-settlement
https://www.theblock.co/post/350955/china-government-selling-seized-crypto
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/project-eleven-to-award-1-btc-to-tackle-bitcoins-quantum-vulnerability
https://www.theblock.co/post/351003/bitcoin-miner-manufacturer-auradine-series-c-funding-ai-expansion
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/04/16/mantra-plans-comprehensive-burn-program-of-om-following-90-crash
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Topics for today:
- US Stablecoins Are Tariffying
- Brazil's Meliuz Wants BTC For Company
- Chinese Cities Liquidating Crypto
- Mantra to BURN Tokens to Gain 'Trust'
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Articles:
https://atlas21.com/us-stablecoins-more-dangerous-than-tariffs-says-italian-minister-giorgetti/https://cointelegraph.com/news/brazil-meliuz-floats-boosting-bitcoin-buys
https://decrypt.co/315018/semler-scientific-500m-offering-targets-bitcoin-buys-amid-doj-settlement
https://www.theblock.co/post/350955/china-government-selling-seized-crypto
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://value4value.info/
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- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/project-eleven-to-award-1-btc-to-tackle-bitcoins-quantum-vulnerability
https://www.theblock.co/post/351003/bitcoin-miner-manufacturer-auradine-series-c-funding-ai-expansion
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/04/16/mantra-plans-comprehensive-burn-program-of-om-following-90-crash
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:17AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten seventy five of Bitcoin and welcome to the day after Slave Day. And for those of you who are not in The United States, I am referring to April 15, which is traditionally when we allow the government to steal, a lot of our time in the form of the money that we got in trade for that time simply because we allowed them to do so back in 1913, somewhere around there, with the passing of what I believe is the sixteenth amendment and the income tax, which we had never really had before in The United States.
But we've survived yet one more theft day. So congratulations for all of you who were able to not cry when you performed your, your supplication to the federal government. Now got a lot to cover today, and I'm just gonna dive into it. And by the way and if you're wondering why you're here for The Bitcoin Ann Show, it's because I bring you the news that you can use about Bitcoin and the wider macroeconomic world as it pertains to the finest money ever invented by mankind. This is from Atlas 21, and this is going to demonstrate kind of what I've been saying about stablecoins because these are going to be and they already are, but they're going to become increasingly important.
And the reason I can definitely tell that I'm correct on that assumption is because of this one, again, from Atlas twenty one. US stablecoins are more dangerous than tariffs according to Italian minister, Giorghetti. Yeah. They're dangerous. They're more dangerous than tariffs. God. As reported by Reuters, during an asset management event in Milan, Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Gioregetti voiced concern that go well beyond the ongoing debate over trade tariffs, identifying US dollar denominated stablecoins as a more insidious threat.
It's a threat, ladies and gentlemen. US stablecoins are a threat, and I'll bet you this guy actually understands why. According to Giorgetti or Giorgetti, while public attention is focused on tariffs, the new US approach to cryptocurrencies, particularly to stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, presents a more serious danger. Quote, even more dangerous is the new US policy on cryptocurrencies and in particular, that on dollar denominated stablecoins, the minister told attendees. Initially used mainly for crypto trading, stablecoins have evolved into tools for cross border transactions between digital and traditional currencies.
Their ease of use and ability to operate across national borders make them especially attractive to Eurozone citizens. The minister emphasized that such financial instrumentation allows individuals to invest in assets perceived as low risk without needing a traditional American bank account, effectively bypassing the European financial system. Giorghetti pointed out the fragmentation in the EU's payment infrastructure, urging European institutions to find solutions to strengthen the Euro as a continental reserve currency. In this context, he praised the European Central Bank's efforts to develop a digital euro, which he sees as crucial for improving the EU's fiscal independence. Quote, the digital euro will be essential to minimize the need for European citizens to resort to foreign solutions to access such a basic service as payments, the minister noted.
According to the European Central Bank, a digital euro would allow EU residents to hold accounts directly with the central bank and manage daily transactions such as online purchases, in store payments, and peer to peer transfers. However, some European banks fear that the digital euro could divert customer deposits away from commercial banks to wallets controlled by the ECB, potentially threatening the region's financial stability. Okay. So he missed it. I mean, he's he's not wrong in what he's thinking. Right? And let's so let's pull it apart.
First of all, I want to address this this last part where a digital euro would allow residents to hold accounts directly with the European Central Bank. And then this statement that says, some European banks fear that the digital euro could divert customer deposits away from commercial banks to wallets controlled by the ECB. Yes. That's exactly it. You're being handed your hat, banks of Europe. That and any any country that is entertaining a central bank digital currency where that currency is held in account on behalf of the people by the actual central bank itself and not subsidiary banks that themselves have accounts with the central bank. No. No. No. No. That you are being handed your hat.
And from that standpoint, this this Italian minister is indeed correct. This is this is a problem. Although the minister himself doesn't seem to care about the subsidiary banks and their banking business, which will all go away. No. No. No. He's so he's he's missing that point as well. What his problem is is he doesn't want the euro to die, and the euro is dying along with the rest of Europe. It may not look like that way right now, but it is. So here's the other here's the other part that he doesn't understand. The US dollar pegged stablecoins aren't dangerous simply because European citizens will be able to use this foreign instrument to do whatever it is that they're going to do rather than using the euro, rather than using the European Central Bank, which would then deplete the European Central Bank of its power, which would blow apart the Eurozone even though that's going to happen whether the European Central Bank fails or not. Okay? No. No. The real danger is that The United States is going to flood Europe and the rest of the world with debt that we print.
And we're going to export that debt to the other nations like Europe and the rest of the world through USDT, otherwise known as Tether. We're going to print the living ever living shit out of bonds. Tether, the company, is going to buy those bonds, and they are going to print Tether as currency against those bonds that they hold. So, essentially, The United States prints debt, not money, but prints debt. Tether then converts that debt into actual money or actual currency, and that currency is going to go hither and yon and is going to wreak absolute havoc by air dropping United States debt to the rest of the world. That's what this guy is missing.
He's not wrong in what he assumes, but he's not going far enough. And if he realized what I realized, then he would be even more scared than he is right now. But, honestly, I'm not in a position to really care because Europe is tearing itself apart anyway. But we've got other business down in Brazil. Brazil's floats to boost Bitcoin buying strategy. This is out of Cointelegraph. Stephen Coddy is writing this one. Brazilian fintech firm, if that's how you pronounce it, has floated a plan to expand its Bitcoin holdings and make the cryptocurrency a strategic asset on their company's books.
Melouse, which provides cashback and financial technology services, is taking the plan to make Bitcoin the primary, the not secondary, not tertiary, not quaternary, no, the primary strategic asset in the firm's treasury to shareholders in a meeting slated for May according to a translated April 14 statement. The company said, its core business will remain unchanged, but, quote, the generation of cash from operations is fundamental to the strategy of acquiring more Bitcoin over time, end quote. If shareholders approve the measure, Bitcoin will be adopted as the firm's main primary strategic treasury asset, but it will also look to foster the incremental generation of Bitcoin for its shareholders, whether through the generation of operating cash or through possible financial transactions and strategic initiatives.
Shareholders who disagree with the new direction and held their shares before April 14 would be able to request reimbursement. In the trading session after its new Bitcoin plan was announced, Miluz jumped over 14% from 3.28 Brazilian rials, which is about 56¢ in United States dollars terms, to 3.76 Brazilian rials or 64¢ on the Brazilian stock exchange according to Google Finance. Miluz purchased Bitcoin for the very first time in March after its board of directors approved using up to 10% of the company's cash for Bitcoin, and they purchased 45 Bitcoin for about $4,100,000. The amount of Bitcoin held on the books of publicly traded companies rose by 16.1 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five according to Bitwise.
Public companies bought around 95,431 Bitcoin over the quarter, increasing the total holdings across all company balance sheets to around 688,000 BTC. Miluz was among 12 firms that added Bitcoin to their balance sheets for the first time in the first quarter of this year joining the likes of video sharing platform Rumble. And then they talk about Michael Saylor because what story about a company putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet is complete without mentioning Michael Saylor. So you already know that story. We're not gonna do that one. But Similar Scientific is back in the news again because they filed a $500,000,000 offering targeting Bitcoin buys amid the Department of Justice settlement. And I didn't realize that there was a problem with the DOJ and similar scientific, or if I did, I completely forgot about it. But Vince De Aquino is here to remind me from Decrypt.
And if I can get down to it yeah. There we go. More than two months after it bought its Bitcoin brought its Bitcoin holdings to 3,192 Bitcoin, the health care technological firm, Similar Scientific, is preparing to buy more Bitcoin. It plans to raise up to $500,000,000 through a, you guessed it, a new securities offering that could boost its Bitcoin holdings according to a Tuesday SEC filing. The filing was a shelf registration statement that would allow it to issue various securities, including common stock, preferred stock, debt securities, warrants, and units over time the filing shows.
Similar will use the proceeds primarily for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin, and that is a direct quote. The firm has not yet responded to comments on the size of its next Bitcoin buy, but additional uses may include working capital, research expenses, and potential investments in technologies that complement its core health care business. The fundraising efforts comes amid a separate Tuesday filing detailing how Similar Scientific has reached a tentative $29,750,000 settlement with the US DOJ, Department of Justice, to resolve allegations of federal anti fraud law violations related to its QuantaFlo product marketing.
In the filing, Similar Scientific said that it intends to borrow from Coinbase to pay its dues to the DOJ. The law enforcement agency did not immediately return to Cripps request for comment, but the health care firm's cash on hand would also be used alongside proceeds from its loan agreement with Coinbase. It also plans to use its Bitcoin holdings as collateral for that loan. Talks for the settlement began four days after Similar Scientific added $88,000,000 to its Bitcoin treasury on February. And at the time, Semler Scientific claimed to have generated a 52% yield from its Bitcoin treasury.
Semler's Bitcoin treasury strategy implemented in May of twenty twenty four has already transformed the company's financial profile. Before the shift, the firm was described as a zombie company by Eric Simler himself, its chairman, publicly listed on Nasdaq and profitable, but with stagnant stock performance despite sizable cash reserves. Similar scientific sees Bitcoin as a reliable store of value and a compelling investment its s three filing shows. Bitcoin has, quote, unique characteristics as a scarce and finite asset which positions it as a reasonable inflation hedge and a safe haven amid global instability, it claimed.
Similar ranks twelfth amongst public companies holding Bitcoin according to data from Bitcoin treasuries. Okay. So the zombie company, allegation made by mister Simler himself. Let's let's dive into that for just a little bit because it dawns on me that you got a profitable company, which Eric Simler said it was, but its stock performance had basically stagnated. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, it means that they're selling enough goods and products or goods and services that they're making money, but nobody gives a shit. So their stock price, nobody knows to buy similar stock. It's it's not on anybody's radar.
But they've been profitable throughout the years. They've got a shit ton of cash on hand. What's one to do? Well, you you buy Bitcoin and you put it on your balance sheet. How many zombie companies are out there that we've called zombie companies that may be in the in the same type of zombie ness that similar finds themselves in? They're not completely defunct. They have cash on hand. They have goods and services that they are still selling. They are profitable companies, but their stock, nobody gives a shit about. Maybe it's bad marketing. Maybe it's simply because everybody's all into the AI or or that, generally speaking, only the stocks of that people like Jim Cramer suggest on CNBC.
Maybe it's just now zombie company some zombie companies are zombies not because they suck, but because there's so many companies out there, nobody knows where to invest. And therefore, these companies end up with a stagnant stock performance, and people will classify them those companies as zombies even though they've got two things going for them, cash and positive cash flow. So what's a company to do? You buy Bitcoin. How many of these companies are out there? How many of these companies are going to put fuel in their tank simply by converting their cash reserves, which they can easily replenish because these the zombie companies that I'm talking about aren't defunct. They actually make cash.
And then they're going to rocket propel themselves into back into the news with their and let Bitcoin be its marketing department simply by saying, yet one more company is doing the thing. They're printing they're, you know, printing securities against their company, and they're using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. They're using the cash that they have on hand to buy Bitcoin. The one thing that I don't like but similar similar scientific is about to do is to take a loan against the Bitcoin they already have from Coinbase.
I don't think that's a good idea. I dude, don't do that. Just print securities. Print debt. Let people buy the debt because you're going you're back in the news. Your stock similar stock performance is completely turned around. How many other companies are going to do that? I'm telling you, man, you're gonna see a cascade of this kind of thing. I'm actually kind of surprised we haven't seen it already. But then again, remember how surprised we were that when Michael Saylor went out there with the MicroStrategy at the time playbook, and he he had that webinar that was free for all the CFOs of all these, like, top 500 fortune companies, and a lot of people came to that webinar.
And a lot of people ingested that information, and then what? Nothing. For well over a year and a half, nothing. And then Meta Planet, and then similar scientific, and there's a whole and then milus. And we've got a whole host of them now, and it's going to be a torrent. It's going to be a torrent. Watch out. Watch out. You may wanna get a belt for the, to keep your pants up so they don't get blown off. And where can you get a belt? You can get a belt from my buddy buddy at Leathermint at the Leathermint.com. The Circle p is open for business. The Circle p is where I bring plebs with goods and services to plebs just like you that may want to buy those goods and services. And this one is in the form of a nice leather belt.
Leathermint makes lots of stuff. They make high quality wallets. They make all kinds of other gear. Some of the gear they use to you can use to store your cold card and other gear for your cold card. They call it, like, little little what do they call it? Cold clutch. But they're right now, they're sold out right now, but, hey, they may get that back. They've got a cup they got a cold sleeve. They've got many, many wallets, but this belt is called the belt of truth. It is a simple black leather belt with a clasp on it that shows the infinity symbol with a line underneath it and 21 m, which basically means infinity divided by 21,000,000.
It's a good looking belt, and you can get yours for $63.93 or 0.00075 BTC because he takes Bitcoin for his goods and services. Well well well, his goods. He I don't think he really provides a service. But for his goods, he takes Bitcoin. And if you don't take Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you go buy Leathermint products from the leathermint.com, that's the leathermint.com, make sure you tell the Leathermint that you heard about the products and services from the Circle p here on the Bitcoin and podcast. And maybe, just maybe, he will cut me off some of those sweet, sweet Satoshis. Now on to China where local governments are selling seized crypto to refill their public coffers despite the Chinese trading ban on trading in crypto. Oh my god. This is from Reuters. Timmy Shin is writing it.
Chinese local governments have been selling seized cryptocurrencies via private companies despite an ongoing crypto trading ban in Mainland China according to Reuters. Amid a slowing economy, local governments have been selling crypto assets confiscated from illicit activities for cash to replenish their public coffers, a practice that legal experts say could lead to opaque processes and foster corruption, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing transactions and court documents. China continues to ban cryptocurrency trading and mining activities on the Mainland, while Hong Kong has repeatedly expressed its ambition to become a crypto hub with a trading licensing regime.
The Chinese authorities, however, have enlisted local companies to help dispose of seized crypto assets. While it is illegal for individuals to trade crypto, operating a business that assists the government in selling crypto remains legitimate, which has attracted a growing number of participants, the report said. For example, Shenzhen based tech firm, Jiafenzhijiang, there's no way I could pronounce it, has facilitated the sale of over 3,000,000,000 yuan or $408,000,000 US worth of cryptocurrencies in offshore markets since 2018, acting on behalf of several local governments in Jiangsu province according to well, including the cities of Shaoxue, Kuan, and Xinjiang, according to the report.
Transactions records cited by Reuters show that US dollar proceeds were first converted into yuan through local banks and then transferred to regional finance bureau accounts. According to data from Bitcointreasuries.net, China holds about a hundred and 90,000 BTC, making it the world's second largest national holder of Bitcoin behind The US. Handling crypto and legal cases has become a key topic in the country's judicial system with authorities holding multiple seminars on the issue. For example, in February, representatives from the Supreme People's Court and several other top judiciary authorities and universities gathered in Beijing for a seminar to discuss research studies and the legal treatment of cryptocurrency.
In December, the PBOC, the central bank, highlighted crypto regulation in its latest annual financial stability report, noting that it is working to improve an international regulatory framework for crypto assets. So China's gonna buckle eventually on all this. They they've already got their municipalities selling seized cryptocurrency at the local levels so that they can get money to operate. And that actually feeds into a larger theme that that we've been hearing about out of China is that they are in the grips of a really bad recession, but they're not actually telling the world about it.
But this kinda looks to me like this is is yet more evidence that that is true because you've got cities, regions themselves selling regionally seized cryptocurrency to be used at the regional level. They need money, and they're going to defy the the Chinese government to do it. And the Chinese government is, like, saying, brother, you you go right ahead. Everything we're we're not gonna come after you. You know? And they're saying in this news piece that, well, the individuals can't technically do it, but, you know, the the municipalities can. Well, actually, I'm not technically sure that's true, or I'm not sure that that's technically true. I think it's a I think it's a ban, but the Chinese government is just basically saying, okay. You guys can do it after the fact because the wording of the original law was so opaque. Okay. It I'm just saying that I think China is in a much larger problem than they've led the world to believe.
I pretty much think that these tariff things are probably going to put them on the ropes in a way that the president doesn't that their president does not want to see. And I kinda think that they're gonna come to the table, and we're gonna work out a deal. But until we do, it's probably gonna be fairly dicey. But, again, I leave you with this. I think China is in a much worse financial situation than they've led the world to believe, and I think that is gonna put the ball bouncing right directly in our court. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities oil up almost two points to sixty two forty five for West Texas Intermediate. Brent North Sea is up 1.82% to $65.85.
Natural gas is down 2.85% to $3.23 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up almost a full point to $2.04 per gallon. Have you noticed that gasoline basically did not budge ever since oil came down from, like, $67? We're we're at $62.44. It was at $67. Gas prices has essentially not really budged all that much. I'm just I'm just saying. Just just saying. Anyway, gold is up 3%. It looks like it might be a new all time high, $3,347.20 per ounce. Silver is up two points. Platinum is up a point. Copper is up one and a third, but palladium is crawling sideways and slightly in the red. We got ag futures mostly in the green. Biggest winner today is gonna be coffee, two and a quarter to the upside.
Biggest loser is rough rice. Two points to the downside. Live cattle is up, point no. No. I'm sorry. 1.13%. Lean hogs are up three. Oh, cattle cattle or, the hog guys are getting getting rich today. Feeder cattle is up a third, and federal reserve chairman Jerome Powell just started talking. And he said they're gonna wait on rate cuts. He said they are well we are well positioned to seek greater clarity before we make any moves. And immediately, the Dow lost 500 points. It is down 1.16%. The S and P is down 1.75. Nasdaq is down 2.6%, and the S and P Mini is down point 85%.
And Bitcoin's taken a hit. Went from north of 85,000 and immediately plummeted in a one hour candlestick to $83,970. It completely erased almost the last fifteen hours of gains. We are back to a $1,670,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 25 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,500 no. 851,988.39 of. Average fees per block remain low, however, 0.04 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are five blocks carrying a measly 14,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of four. Count them four, Satoshi's per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three.
And the hash rate looks to be unaffected, 900 exahashes per second, so there is no minor capitulation again. Yet another day of zero minor capitulation from Refining Bitcoin, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin. And I got Maple Trade, who I guess I sold some maple syrup for him because he gave me 10,000 Satoshis and says circle p again. I'm trying to catch up. And I've seen several 10,000 Satoshi transactions come across. I'm presuming they're from Maple Trade, and I do not know if it's because I successfully sold his maple syrup. But he is a Circle p vendor, and if you want handmade maple syrup out of Ohio, go visit visit my friend Maple Trade. Just start typing in Maple Trade on any of your Nostra clients, and you'll probably find them. Make sure that you heard about it on the Circle P. Oak Grove with 3222 SAT says, triple episode boost as I keep dropping the ball. That untapped growth interview was great. When I listened to the part about the generations of people, cattle, sheep, and dogs, there I remembered the interview where the ranch is fighting the government and the government attorney stated that if they are wrong, they can write the ranch a check.
Talk about a face in need of a fist. This looks like a job for the federal department of, oh, punching you in the face. Crude oil being the base layer of all these refined products is a great thought to adopt. Thank you. Also, all the plastic everywhere is a byproduct of petroleum production we haven't figured out how to get rid of when I learned that all plastic recycling was a motherfucking lie. It was the biggest kick to the stomach I had for a while. Yeah. Plastic recycling is kinda bullshit. In some cases, it works, but in most cases, it doesn't. And it depends on the type of plastic that was produced and the type of plastic trying to be recycled.
Some plastics just don't they just don't recycle. They just don't. They it just falls apart. So, yeah, I've I kinda had the same thought. Paul Cernine, five hundred Sat says, thanks again for the very informative episode. Bhutan gets it and should be taken as a role model by many other countries, L F G. I hear you, Paul. Psyduck with five eighty three says Psyduck. Psyduck with another five hundred and 82 sats says nothing this time. Yodle with four hundred and 44 sats says the wave of four chain users is dizzying. Sarcasm.
Wartime with 333 sets says tax season. Don't know that. Well, wartime, tax season is what Americans have come to, you you colloquial call the time of of of of which we are stolen from, but we don't wanna feel like complete dumbasses so we make it sound like it's a sporting event. Right? Anyway, God's death with two thirty seven says thank you sir, no thank you. And Justin with a hundred says enjoy the state sanctioned debt slavery day, everyone. I hear you. Ask the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. OKX has reentered The US market following a $505,000,000 Department of Justice settlement.
I don't know, man. It sounds like a bribe to me, but Adrian Zmunksy has it for Cointelegraph. Seychelles based crypto company exchange, OKX, has announced that it is indeed reentering The United States market. According to an April 16 blog post, OKX will return to The United States market along with the appointment of former Barclays director Roshan Robert as its US CEO. Robert said in the post, quote, today, I am thrilled to announce the launch of OKX's centralized crypto exchange and OKX wallet in The United States alongside the establishment of our regional headquarters in San Jose, California, end quote.
All existing Okcoin users will be migrated to the new platform, which Robert said will lead to a better overall experience. The promise or rather, the promised improvements include deeper liquidity, lower fees, and advancing trade tools. OKX will not roll out the upgrade in one shot. Instead, the new platform will take a phased approach to onboard new customers. The exchange plans to follow the cautious approach with a nationwide launch later in 2025. Quote, we're beginning with a phased rollout for new customers to ensure a smooth and secure onboarding process, Robert said.
OKX also promised integrations with local banks and support for major assets including Bitcoin, a whole bunch of shitcoins, and USDT. Robert noted that the company maintains a global proof of reserves for all of its assets, which is published every month by cybersecurity firm, Hacken. Dmytro Jasmanovich, compliance services, lead at Hacken, told Cointelegraph that its team expands upon simple proof of reserves by validating OKX's liabilities by reconstructing and verifying their z k stark circuit using official tools and reviewing 21,000 user proof files into individually.
The firm also verifies wallet control by the company by checking signatures. In addition to its trading platform, the firm is also rolling out the OKX wallet to its US based customers. The wallet supports a 30 blockchains. Don't use this wallet. Do not use this wallet. I'll tell you why in a sec. The wallet supports a 30 blockchains and features a decentralized exchange aggregator allowing access to over 10,000,000 tokens on platforms including shitcoin number one, shitcoin number two, and shitcoin number three. Don't use this wallet.
Don't use any wallet that has this I mean, honestly, if you're gonna shit coin, stop listening to the show, please, for the love of God, because I can't I haven't if I haven't reached you by now, I'm there's no way I'm ever gonna reach you. Use a wallet that is Bitcoin only. It makes better sense to just have a dedicated wallet. If you have to go shitcoin, then by all means, go get a freaking Trezor or a Ledger or one of these other pieces of crap because they are all pieces of crap. Well, I hear Trezor is actually very very good. Ledger, I've had three of them and all but one of them are bricked on a firmware upgrade. So I don't I I'm not ever I would never use that again. My personal favorite is Coldcard. It only does Bitcoin.
But having that many wallets inside or or that many blockchains represented inside of, like, a ledger wallet or, God forbid, this OKX wallet is I don't know, man. That just sounds like it's you're just begging for something to fail when you need it most. Please stop shit coining. Please just get a Bitcoin only wallet and stop with the nonsense. Okay? I'm just just saying. Continuing on, the report follows OKX hiring former New York governor Andrew Cuomo to advise over over a federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pony up $505,000,000 in fines and penalties.
The exchange admitted on February to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in violation of USAML laws. As a consequence, OKX agreed to pay $84,000,000 worth of penalties while it was forfeiting 400 forfeiting 421,000,000 worth of fees earned primarily from institutional clients. After the investigation concluded, OKX said that it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the problems revealed by the federal probe and improve its compliance efforts, OKX's CEO, Starzoo, wrote in a February 24 Twitter post, quote, our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies, end quote.
So there you go. Oh, yet another one is coming back to The United States. Another crypto exchange that went offshore because of the regulatory nightmare that is the landscape of The United States is they're they're they're coming back because that regulatory landscape has now changed in the favor of having these, I don't know, these crypto exchanges come back, and OKX is the second one that I've reported on. I cannot remember who the other one was that's coming back. I wanna say it's I wanna say it's Binance, but Binance already has a Binance US division, so who knows?
They're just coming back. And Phoenix Wallet is coming back. And maybe that means that, Wallet of Satoshi, one of these days, will come back to The US. Who knows? Wallet of Satoshi was one of my favorites. On to project eleven, who is awarding 1 Bitcoin to tackle Bitcoin's quantum vulnerability. Vivek send Bitcoin from Bitcoin Magazine. Project eleven, a quantum computing research organization, has announced the launch of the Q Day prize, a global challenge offering 1 BTC, to the first team able to break an elliptic curve cryptographic key using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer.
The first team to successfully achieve this breakthrough before April 2026 will be awarded 1 Bitcoin. The challenge directly targets the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, ECDSA, which underpins Bitcoin's security model. While theoretical discussions about quantum threats have persisted for years, project 11 seeks to turn speculation into measurable risk by encouraging practical demonstrations of cryptographic vulnerability. According to the initiative, more than 6,200,000.0 BTC worth nearly $500,000,000,000 are currently held in wallets with exposed public keys and could be at risk if quantum capabilities advance any further.
Quote, we have no clear idea how close we are to a quantum doomsday scenario for existing cryptography, said Alex Pruden, CEO and cofounder of Project eleven. Quote, the Q Day prize is designed to take a theoretical threat from a quantum computer and turn that into a concrete model. End quote. Recent developments in the quantum computing space have added urgency to the initiative. Google's Willow chip recently solved a complex computation in five minutes that would take supercomputers ten septillion years demonstrating progress in error correction.
Amazon's Ocelot and Microsoft's Majorana One chips have also made significant strides, while SAI Quantum raised $750,000,000 in the first quarter of this year, citing developments in photonic chip design and optimization of Shor's algorithm. Access to quantum computing is also expanding through cloud based services from providers such as IBM, AWS, Google, and Alibaba, making the technology more accessible for researchers and developers. The Q Day prize continues a tradition of cryptographic benchmarking challenges similar to RSA factoring challenge in 1991 and Hal Finney's nineteen ninety five SSL cipher challenge, both of which played key roles in measuring cryptographic resilience.
Quote, this is an open call to the boldest minds in quantum computing. Prove what's possible and help us secure the future of digital assets, Prudin added. So there you go. People are freaking out about quantum pretty hardcore, and some people dismiss it. And I'm I pretty much put AI and quantum computing in the same boat. It is not ready for prime time, but it is useful. It will become better, and it will get to a point where it becomes so very useful that you're just not going to get be able to escape it. And Quantum and AI are both paddling that same boat. It's like each one of them has a paddle.
AI seems to be progressing a little bit faster than quantum computing. But for those that dismiss both as stupid or impossible, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It doesn't mean you have to embrace it. It doesn't mean that you have to like it. Hell, it doesn't even mean that you have to use it. But if you really think that neither one of these things will actually ever be worth their salt, you are really well, you're gonna miss that boat because AI and quantum computing have stolen it and are paddling off into the sunset. Anyway, Bitcoin miner manufacturer Auradine, has raised a hundred and 53,000,000 in a series c funding amid AI expansion as we expand upon our AI talk, and I've never even heard of Auradine before.
But Auradyne sounds a lot like Cyberdyne. And if you don't know what Cyberdyne is, I suggest you go back and watch rewatch the Terminator movies. Anyway, this is from Yogita Khatri writing for the block. Auradene, a Bitcoin mining manufacturer, has raised a hundred and $53,000,000 in the series c funding round. Like its previous two rounds, the series c funding includes both equity and debt with equity making up the majority. Quote, the series c round is largely an equity investment of a hundred and 38,000,000 with an added $15,000,000 of venture capital debt, R. A. D. And cofounder and CEO Rajeev Kenname told The Block.
Kima oh, sorry. Kimani is probably how you pronounce it. Kimani said the round was oversubscribed oversubscribed by 22% as the company originally planned to raise a mere hundred and $25,000,000. The round was led by StepStone Group with participation from Maverick Silicon, Primgy Invest, the Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayfield, Mara Holdings, GS Backers, and other existing investors according to Auradigm. The company began raising for the series c in late twenty twenty four and closed it earlier this month, Kamani said. The Fresh Capital brings Auradigm's total funding to over 300,000,000, while Kamani declined to disclose the company's valuation, which is interesting.
He noted that Auradigm expects to be EBITDA or EBITDA positive within the next few quarters, e b whatever, refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. With new funding, Auradyn plans to expand both its core Bitcoin mining infrastructure business and its newly launched AI infrastructure division called Aurlinx AI. And founded in 2022 and based in California, Auradyne manufactures Bitcoin miners under the Teraflux brand. The company says it is the only United States based firm producing American engineered Bitcoin miners directly competing with Chinese hardware makers.
Auradyne said its machines power over 40 major data center operators, including Marathon Digital. Auradyne currently has an annualized revenue run rate of over a hundred and 50,000,000 from its Bitcoin mining manufacturing business with a strong and growing order pipeline according to Kobani. The company's newly launched AuraLynx AI division is focused on building networking infrastructure for AI data centers. Quote, the vision there is to develop breakthrough open data center networking solutions for the artificial intelligence era. We are in the development phase and plan to announce products later this year, Khemani said.
Last December, Aradyne announced Arlynx, a networking fabric, the tech that efficiently moves data across AI servers. And today's Arlynx AI announcement marks the launch of a dedicated AI business unit. Ardine previously also incubated an AI cybersecurity tool startup called rEscape in 2023, and commodities said rEscape AI has since spun out as a separate company with its own products and strong market momentum. While Ardine is expanding into AI, Bitcoin mining remains its primary business. Quote, AI also has strong complementarity with Bitcoin mining technology and go to market in terms of leading edge silicon thermal cooling solutions, full system solutions, and energy load balancing across Bitcoin and AI data centers, Kamani said.
Aradyne currently employs about a hundred people and plans to grow its headcount particularly on the engineering side. So Auradyne, never heard about it before, and I've also never heard about TeraFlux mining, so it's a new one on me. If you guys have ever heard about it before, let me know what you think. Give me a boost or something like that. And we're going to end with this one, and it is entitled Mantra plans a comprehensive burn program for the OM token following that 90% crash that I told you about yesterday. And this is written by Jamie Crowley for CoinDesk real world asset project mantra.
They are planning to create a comprehensive burning program for its OM token, CEO John Mullen said in a Twitter post on Wednesday. Mullen was responding to a post which said that he was planning to burn his team's tokens to win back the trust of the community after OM abruptly lost over 90% of its value on Tuesday. Quote, to be 100% clear, I am stating that I am burning my team's tokens, and we will create a comprehensive burn program for other parts of the OM supply. End quote. Token burns refer to the process of permanently removing a proportion of a cryptocurrency supply from circulation in order to increase the value of the tokens that remain.
If you remember, the OM token fell from over $6 a token to under 45 pennies in a matter of hours on no particular or sudden catalyst. Mullen blames the drop on exchanges closing OM positions, but not everybody was buying this explanation. OKX founder, Start Xu, referred to the incidents or the incident as a big scandal, Otherwise, translated as rug pull. OM trades at around 81¢ at the time of writing, which is 87% lower than its price prior to Tuesday's events. So they're gonna burn their tokens, their team's tokens. Of course, they're gonna be able to prove that. Right? They're gonna be able to absolutely 100% prove that they are burning the tokens that they hold and not tokens that they spun up to then burn.
This is why you buy Bitcoin and you don't buy any of this other crap. This always happens. It always has happened. It's continuing to happen today. It always will happen. If you ever are keeping your money in anything but Bitcoin, when it comes to cryptocurrency, you're gonna get robbed. Please stop acting like a fool. Okay? I'm just this is like, I just recently gained access back to a very old Facebook account of mine. I don't spend a lot of time there, but I was like, I might as well go ahead and, like, because you kinda can't delete your Facebook page anymore, or at least that's what I know. So I kinda worked just to get my credentials back, and I finally got them back. And I started looking around the feed. And, oh my god, is Facebook a goddamn dumpster fire just like Twitter is. It's even worse if that's possibly imaginable.
Yet, that's where some of my high school buddies are, and one of my high school buddies is shilling XRP. And I just can't bring myself to waste my fucking time trying to tell this individual that he's screwing up and that he's gonna screw up other people's lives because Cripple or XRP or whatever the hell you wanna call it is a goddamn scam. Please, please, for the love of God, stop getting taken in. God, I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:17AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten seventy five of Bitcoin and welcome to the day after Slave Day. And for those of you who are not in The United States, I am referring to April 15, which is traditionally when we allow the government to steal, a lot of our time in the form of the money that we got in trade for that time simply because we allowed them to do so back in 1913, somewhere around there, with the passing of what I believe is the sixteenth amendment and the income tax, which we had never really had before in The United States.
But we've survived yet one more theft day. So congratulations for all of you who were able to not cry when you performed your, your supplication to the federal government. Now got a lot to cover today, and I'm just gonna dive into it. And by the way and if you're wondering why you're here for The Bitcoin Ann Show, it's because I bring you the news that you can use about Bitcoin and the wider macroeconomic world as it pertains to the finest money ever invented by mankind. This is from Atlas 21, and this is going to demonstrate kind of what I've been saying about stablecoins because these are going to be and they already are, but they're going to become increasingly important.
And the reason I can definitely tell that I'm correct on that assumption is because of this one, again, from Atlas twenty one. US stablecoins are more dangerous than tariffs according to Italian minister, Giorghetti. Yeah. They're dangerous. They're more dangerous than tariffs. God. As reported by Reuters, during an asset management event in Milan, Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Gioregetti voiced concern that go well beyond the ongoing debate over trade tariffs, identifying US dollar denominated stablecoins as a more insidious threat.
It's a threat, ladies and gentlemen. US stablecoins are a threat, and I'll bet you this guy actually understands why. According to Giorgetti or Giorgetti, while public attention is focused on tariffs, the new US approach to cryptocurrencies, particularly to stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, presents a more serious danger. Quote, even more dangerous is the new US policy on cryptocurrencies and in particular, that on dollar denominated stablecoins, the minister told attendees. Initially used mainly for crypto trading, stablecoins have evolved into tools for cross border transactions between digital and traditional currencies.
Their ease of use and ability to operate across national borders make them especially attractive to Eurozone citizens. The minister emphasized that such financial instrumentation allows individuals to invest in assets perceived as low risk without needing a traditional American bank account, effectively bypassing the European financial system. Giorghetti pointed out the fragmentation in the EU's payment infrastructure, urging European institutions to find solutions to strengthen the Euro as a continental reserve currency. In this context, he praised the European Central Bank's efforts to develop a digital euro, which he sees as crucial for improving the EU's fiscal independence. Quote, the digital euro will be essential to minimize the need for European citizens to resort to foreign solutions to access such a basic service as payments, the minister noted.
According to the European Central Bank, a digital euro would allow EU residents to hold accounts directly with the central bank and manage daily transactions such as online purchases, in store payments, and peer to peer transfers. However, some European banks fear that the digital euro could divert customer deposits away from commercial banks to wallets controlled by the ECB, potentially threatening the region's financial stability. Okay. So he missed it. I mean, he's he's not wrong in what he's thinking. Right? And let's so let's pull it apart.
First of all, I want to address this this last part where a digital euro would allow residents to hold accounts directly with the European Central Bank. And then this statement that says, some European banks fear that the digital euro could divert customer deposits away from commercial banks to wallets controlled by the ECB. Yes. That's exactly it. You're being handed your hat, banks of Europe. That and any any country that is entertaining a central bank digital currency where that currency is held in account on behalf of the people by the actual central bank itself and not subsidiary banks that themselves have accounts with the central bank. No. No. No. No. That you are being handed your hat.
And from that standpoint, this this Italian minister is indeed correct. This is this is a problem. Although the minister himself doesn't seem to care about the subsidiary banks and their banking business, which will all go away. No. No. No. He's so he's he's missing that point as well. What his problem is is he doesn't want the euro to die, and the euro is dying along with the rest of Europe. It may not look like that way right now, but it is. So here's the other here's the other part that he doesn't understand. The US dollar pegged stablecoins aren't dangerous simply because European citizens will be able to use this foreign instrument to do whatever it is that they're going to do rather than using the euro, rather than using the European Central Bank, which would then deplete the European Central Bank of its power, which would blow apart the Eurozone even though that's going to happen whether the European Central Bank fails or not. Okay? No. No. The real danger is that The United States is going to flood Europe and the rest of the world with debt that we print.
And we're going to export that debt to the other nations like Europe and the rest of the world through USDT, otherwise known as Tether. We're going to print the living ever living shit out of bonds. Tether, the company, is going to buy those bonds, and they are going to print Tether as currency against those bonds that they hold. So, essentially, The United States prints debt, not money, but prints debt. Tether then converts that debt into actual money or actual currency, and that currency is going to go hither and yon and is going to wreak absolute havoc by air dropping United States debt to the rest of the world. That's what this guy is missing.
He's not wrong in what he assumes, but he's not going far enough. And if he realized what I realized, then he would be even more scared than he is right now. But, honestly, I'm not in a position to really care because Europe is tearing itself apart anyway. But we've got other business down in Brazil. Brazil's floats to boost Bitcoin buying strategy. This is out of Cointelegraph. Stephen Coddy is writing this one. Brazilian fintech firm, if that's how you pronounce it, has floated a plan to expand its Bitcoin holdings and make the cryptocurrency a strategic asset on their company's books.
Melouse, which provides cashback and financial technology services, is taking the plan to make Bitcoin the primary, the not secondary, not tertiary, not quaternary, no, the primary strategic asset in the firm's treasury to shareholders in a meeting slated for May according to a translated April 14 statement. The company said, its core business will remain unchanged, but, quote, the generation of cash from operations is fundamental to the strategy of acquiring more Bitcoin over time, end quote. If shareholders approve the measure, Bitcoin will be adopted as the firm's main primary strategic treasury asset, but it will also look to foster the incremental generation of Bitcoin for its shareholders, whether through the generation of operating cash or through possible financial transactions and strategic initiatives.
Shareholders who disagree with the new direction and held their shares before April 14 would be able to request reimbursement. In the trading session after its new Bitcoin plan was announced, Miluz jumped over 14% from 3.28 Brazilian rials, which is about 56¢ in United States dollars terms, to 3.76 Brazilian rials or 64¢ on the Brazilian stock exchange according to Google Finance. Miluz purchased Bitcoin for the very first time in March after its board of directors approved using up to 10% of the company's cash for Bitcoin, and they purchased 45 Bitcoin for about $4,100,000. The amount of Bitcoin held on the books of publicly traded companies rose by 16.1 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five according to Bitwise.
Public companies bought around 95,431 Bitcoin over the quarter, increasing the total holdings across all company balance sheets to around 688,000 BTC. Miluz was among 12 firms that added Bitcoin to their balance sheets for the first time in the first quarter of this year joining the likes of video sharing platform Rumble. And then they talk about Michael Saylor because what story about a company putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet is complete without mentioning Michael Saylor. So you already know that story. We're not gonna do that one. But Similar Scientific is back in the news again because they filed a $500,000,000 offering targeting Bitcoin buys amid the Department of Justice settlement. And I didn't realize that there was a problem with the DOJ and similar scientific, or if I did, I completely forgot about it. But Vince De Aquino is here to remind me from Decrypt.
And if I can get down to it yeah. There we go. More than two months after it bought its Bitcoin brought its Bitcoin holdings to 3,192 Bitcoin, the health care technological firm, Similar Scientific, is preparing to buy more Bitcoin. It plans to raise up to $500,000,000 through a, you guessed it, a new securities offering that could boost its Bitcoin holdings according to a Tuesday SEC filing. The filing was a shelf registration statement that would allow it to issue various securities, including common stock, preferred stock, debt securities, warrants, and units over time the filing shows.
Similar will use the proceeds primarily for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin, and that is a direct quote. The firm has not yet responded to comments on the size of its next Bitcoin buy, but additional uses may include working capital, research expenses, and potential investments in technologies that complement its core health care business. The fundraising efforts comes amid a separate Tuesday filing detailing how Similar Scientific has reached a tentative $29,750,000 settlement with the US DOJ, Department of Justice, to resolve allegations of federal anti fraud law violations related to its QuantaFlo product marketing.
In the filing, Similar Scientific said that it intends to borrow from Coinbase to pay its dues to the DOJ. The law enforcement agency did not immediately return to Cripps request for comment, but the health care firm's cash on hand would also be used alongside proceeds from its loan agreement with Coinbase. It also plans to use its Bitcoin holdings as collateral for that loan. Talks for the settlement began four days after Similar Scientific added $88,000,000 to its Bitcoin treasury on February. And at the time, Semler Scientific claimed to have generated a 52% yield from its Bitcoin treasury.
Semler's Bitcoin treasury strategy implemented in May of twenty twenty four has already transformed the company's financial profile. Before the shift, the firm was described as a zombie company by Eric Simler himself, its chairman, publicly listed on Nasdaq and profitable, but with stagnant stock performance despite sizable cash reserves. Similar scientific sees Bitcoin as a reliable store of value and a compelling investment its s three filing shows. Bitcoin has, quote, unique characteristics as a scarce and finite asset which positions it as a reasonable inflation hedge and a safe haven amid global instability, it claimed.
Similar ranks twelfth amongst public companies holding Bitcoin according to data from Bitcoin treasuries. Okay. So the zombie company, allegation made by mister Simler himself. Let's let's dive into that for just a little bit because it dawns on me that you got a profitable company, which Eric Simler said it was, but its stock performance had basically stagnated. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, it means that they're selling enough goods and products or goods and services that they're making money, but nobody gives a shit. So their stock price, nobody knows to buy similar stock. It's it's not on anybody's radar.
But they've been profitable throughout the years. They've got a shit ton of cash on hand. What's one to do? Well, you you buy Bitcoin and you put it on your balance sheet. How many zombie companies are out there that we've called zombie companies that may be in the in the same type of zombie ness that similar finds themselves in? They're not completely defunct. They have cash on hand. They have goods and services that they are still selling. They are profitable companies, but their stock, nobody gives a shit about. Maybe it's bad marketing. Maybe it's simply because everybody's all into the AI or or that, generally speaking, only the stocks of that people like Jim Cramer suggest on CNBC.
Maybe it's just now zombie company some zombie companies are zombies not because they suck, but because there's so many companies out there, nobody knows where to invest. And therefore, these companies end up with a stagnant stock performance, and people will classify them those companies as zombies even though they've got two things going for them, cash and positive cash flow. So what's a company to do? You buy Bitcoin. How many of these companies are out there? How many of these companies are going to put fuel in their tank simply by converting their cash reserves, which they can easily replenish because these the zombie companies that I'm talking about aren't defunct. They actually make cash.
And then they're going to rocket propel themselves into back into the news with their and let Bitcoin be its marketing department simply by saying, yet one more company is doing the thing. They're printing they're, you know, printing securities against their company, and they're using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin. They're using the cash that they have on hand to buy Bitcoin. The one thing that I don't like but similar similar scientific is about to do is to take a loan against the Bitcoin they already have from Coinbase.
I don't think that's a good idea. I dude, don't do that. Just print securities. Print debt. Let people buy the debt because you're going you're back in the news. Your stock similar stock performance is completely turned around. How many other companies are going to do that? I'm telling you, man, you're gonna see a cascade of this kind of thing. I'm actually kind of surprised we haven't seen it already. But then again, remember how surprised we were that when Michael Saylor went out there with the MicroStrategy at the time playbook, and he he had that webinar that was free for all the CFOs of all these, like, top 500 fortune companies, and a lot of people came to that webinar.
And a lot of people ingested that information, and then what? Nothing. For well over a year and a half, nothing. And then Meta Planet, and then similar scientific, and there's a whole and then milus. And we've got a whole host of them now, and it's going to be a torrent. It's going to be a torrent. Watch out. Watch out. You may wanna get a belt for the, to keep your pants up so they don't get blown off. And where can you get a belt? You can get a belt from my buddy buddy at Leathermint at the Leathermint.com. The Circle p is open for business. The Circle p is where I bring plebs with goods and services to plebs just like you that may want to buy those goods and services. And this one is in the form of a nice leather belt.
Leathermint makes lots of stuff. They make high quality wallets. They make all kinds of other gear. Some of the gear they use to you can use to store your cold card and other gear for your cold card. They call it, like, little little what do they call it? Cold clutch. But they're right now, they're sold out right now, but, hey, they may get that back. They've got a cup they got a cold sleeve. They've got many, many wallets, but this belt is called the belt of truth. It is a simple black leather belt with a clasp on it that shows the infinity symbol with a line underneath it and 21 m, which basically means infinity divided by 21,000,000.
It's a good looking belt, and you can get yours for $63.93 or 0.00075 BTC because he takes Bitcoin for his goods and services. Well well well, his goods. He I don't think he really provides a service. But for his goods, he takes Bitcoin. And if you don't take Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. If you go buy Leathermint products from the leathermint.com, that's the leathermint.com, make sure you tell the Leathermint that you heard about the products and services from the Circle p here on the Bitcoin and podcast. And maybe, just maybe, he will cut me off some of those sweet, sweet Satoshis. Now on to China where local governments are selling seized crypto to refill their public coffers despite the Chinese trading ban on trading in crypto. Oh my god. This is from Reuters. Timmy Shin is writing it.
Chinese local governments have been selling seized cryptocurrencies via private companies despite an ongoing crypto trading ban in Mainland China according to Reuters. Amid a slowing economy, local governments have been selling crypto assets confiscated from illicit activities for cash to replenish their public coffers, a practice that legal experts say could lead to opaque processes and foster corruption, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing transactions and court documents. China continues to ban cryptocurrency trading and mining activities on the Mainland, while Hong Kong has repeatedly expressed its ambition to become a crypto hub with a trading licensing regime.
The Chinese authorities, however, have enlisted local companies to help dispose of seized crypto assets. While it is illegal for individuals to trade crypto, operating a business that assists the government in selling crypto remains legitimate, which has attracted a growing number of participants, the report said. For example, Shenzhen based tech firm, Jiafenzhijiang, there's no way I could pronounce it, has facilitated the sale of over 3,000,000,000 yuan or $408,000,000 US worth of cryptocurrencies in offshore markets since 2018, acting on behalf of several local governments in Jiangsu province according to well, including the cities of Shaoxue, Kuan, and Xinjiang, according to the report.
Transactions records cited by Reuters show that US dollar proceeds were first converted into yuan through local banks and then transferred to regional finance bureau accounts. According to data from Bitcointreasuries.net, China holds about a hundred and 90,000 BTC, making it the world's second largest national holder of Bitcoin behind The US. Handling crypto and legal cases has become a key topic in the country's judicial system with authorities holding multiple seminars on the issue. For example, in February, representatives from the Supreme People's Court and several other top judiciary authorities and universities gathered in Beijing for a seminar to discuss research studies and the legal treatment of cryptocurrency.
In December, the PBOC, the central bank, highlighted crypto regulation in its latest annual financial stability report, noting that it is working to improve an international regulatory framework for crypto assets. So China's gonna buckle eventually on all this. They they've already got their municipalities selling seized cryptocurrency at the local levels so that they can get money to operate. And that actually feeds into a larger theme that that we've been hearing about out of China is that they are in the grips of a really bad recession, but they're not actually telling the world about it.
But this kinda looks to me like this is is yet more evidence that that is true because you've got cities, regions themselves selling regionally seized cryptocurrency to be used at the regional level. They need money, and they're going to defy the the Chinese government to do it. And the Chinese government is, like, saying, brother, you you go right ahead. Everything we're we're not gonna come after you. You know? And they're saying in this news piece that, well, the individuals can't technically do it, but, you know, the the municipalities can. Well, actually, I'm not technically sure that's true, or I'm not sure that that's technically true. I think it's a I think it's a ban, but the Chinese government is just basically saying, okay. You guys can do it after the fact because the wording of the original law was so opaque. Okay. It I'm just saying that I think China is in a much larger problem than they've led the world to believe.
I pretty much think that these tariff things are probably going to put them on the ropes in a way that the president doesn't that their president does not want to see. And I kinda think that they're gonna come to the table, and we're gonna work out a deal. But until we do, it's probably gonna be fairly dicey. But, again, I leave you with this. I think China is in a much worse financial situation than they've led the world to believe, and I think that is gonna put the ball bouncing right directly in our court. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities oil up almost two points to sixty two forty five for West Texas Intermediate. Brent North Sea is up 1.82% to $65.85.
Natural gas is down 2.85% to $3.23 per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is up almost a full point to $2.04 per gallon. Have you noticed that gasoline basically did not budge ever since oil came down from, like, $67? We're we're at $62.44. It was at $67. Gas prices has essentially not really budged all that much. I'm just I'm just saying. Just just saying. Anyway, gold is up 3%. It looks like it might be a new all time high, $3,347.20 per ounce. Silver is up two points. Platinum is up a point. Copper is up one and a third, but palladium is crawling sideways and slightly in the red. We got ag futures mostly in the green. Biggest winner today is gonna be coffee, two and a quarter to the upside.
Biggest loser is rough rice. Two points to the downside. Live cattle is up, point no. No. I'm sorry. 1.13%. Lean hogs are up three. Oh, cattle cattle or, the hog guys are getting getting rich today. Feeder cattle is up a third, and federal reserve chairman Jerome Powell just started talking. And he said they're gonna wait on rate cuts. He said they are well we are well positioned to seek greater clarity before we make any moves. And immediately, the Dow lost 500 points. It is down 1.16%. The S and P is down 1.75. Nasdaq is down 2.6%, and the S and P Mini is down point 85%.
And Bitcoin's taken a hit. Went from north of 85,000 and immediately plummeted in a one hour candlestick to $83,970. It completely erased almost the last fifteen hours of gains. We are back to a $1,670,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 25 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,000,500 no. 851,988.39 of. Average fees per block remain low, however, 0.04 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are five blocks carrying a measly 14,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of four. Count them four, Satoshi's per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three.
And the hash rate looks to be unaffected, 900 exahashes per second, so there is no minor capitulation again. Yet another day of zero minor capitulation from Refining Bitcoin, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin. And I got Maple Trade, who I guess I sold some maple syrup for him because he gave me 10,000 Satoshis and says circle p again. I'm trying to catch up. And I've seen several 10,000 Satoshi transactions come across. I'm presuming they're from Maple Trade, and I do not know if it's because I successfully sold his maple syrup. But he is a Circle p vendor, and if you want handmade maple syrup out of Ohio, go visit visit my friend Maple Trade. Just start typing in Maple Trade on any of your Nostra clients, and you'll probably find them. Make sure that you heard about it on the Circle P. Oak Grove with 3222 SAT says, triple episode boost as I keep dropping the ball. That untapped growth interview was great. When I listened to the part about the generations of people, cattle, sheep, and dogs, there I remembered the interview where the ranch is fighting the government and the government attorney stated that if they are wrong, they can write the ranch a check.
Talk about a face in need of a fist. This looks like a job for the federal department of, oh, punching you in the face. Crude oil being the base layer of all these refined products is a great thought to adopt. Thank you. Also, all the plastic everywhere is a byproduct of petroleum production we haven't figured out how to get rid of when I learned that all plastic recycling was a motherfucking lie. It was the biggest kick to the stomach I had for a while. Yeah. Plastic recycling is kinda bullshit. In some cases, it works, but in most cases, it doesn't. And it depends on the type of plastic that was produced and the type of plastic trying to be recycled.
Some plastics just don't they just don't recycle. They just don't. They it just falls apart. So, yeah, I've I kinda had the same thought. Paul Cernine, five hundred Sat says, thanks again for the very informative episode. Bhutan gets it and should be taken as a role model by many other countries, L F G. I hear you, Paul. Psyduck with five eighty three says Psyduck. Psyduck with another five hundred and 82 sats says nothing this time. Yodle with four hundred and 44 sats says the wave of four chain users is dizzying. Sarcasm.
Wartime with 333 sets says tax season. Don't know that. Well, wartime, tax season is what Americans have come to, you you colloquial call the time of of of of which we are stolen from, but we don't wanna feel like complete dumbasses so we make it sound like it's a sporting event. Right? Anyway, God's death with two thirty seven says thank you sir, no thank you. And Justin with a hundred says enjoy the state sanctioned debt slavery day, everyone. I hear you. Ask the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. OKX has reentered The US market following a $505,000,000 Department of Justice settlement.
I don't know, man. It sounds like a bribe to me, but Adrian Zmunksy has it for Cointelegraph. Seychelles based crypto company exchange, OKX, has announced that it is indeed reentering The United States market. According to an April 16 blog post, OKX will return to The United States market along with the appointment of former Barclays director Roshan Robert as its US CEO. Robert said in the post, quote, today, I am thrilled to announce the launch of OKX's centralized crypto exchange and OKX wallet in The United States alongside the establishment of our regional headquarters in San Jose, California, end quote.
All existing Okcoin users will be migrated to the new platform, which Robert said will lead to a better overall experience. The promise or rather, the promised improvements include deeper liquidity, lower fees, and advancing trade tools. OKX will not roll out the upgrade in one shot. Instead, the new platform will take a phased approach to onboard new customers. The exchange plans to follow the cautious approach with a nationwide launch later in 2025. Quote, we're beginning with a phased rollout for new customers to ensure a smooth and secure onboarding process, Robert said.
OKX also promised integrations with local banks and support for major assets including Bitcoin, a whole bunch of shitcoins, and USDT. Robert noted that the company maintains a global proof of reserves for all of its assets, which is published every month by cybersecurity firm, Hacken. Dmytro Jasmanovich, compliance services, lead at Hacken, told Cointelegraph that its team expands upon simple proof of reserves by validating OKX's liabilities by reconstructing and verifying their z k stark circuit using official tools and reviewing 21,000 user proof files into individually.
The firm also verifies wallet control by the company by checking signatures. In addition to its trading platform, the firm is also rolling out the OKX wallet to its US based customers. The wallet supports a 30 blockchains. Don't use this wallet. Do not use this wallet. I'll tell you why in a sec. The wallet supports a 30 blockchains and features a decentralized exchange aggregator allowing access to over 10,000,000 tokens on platforms including shitcoin number one, shitcoin number two, and shitcoin number three. Don't use this wallet.
Don't use any wallet that has this I mean, honestly, if you're gonna shit coin, stop listening to the show, please, for the love of God, because I can't I haven't if I haven't reached you by now, I'm there's no way I'm ever gonna reach you. Use a wallet that is Bitcoin only. It makes better sense to just have a dedicated wallet. If you have to go shitcoin, then by all means, go get a freaking Trezor or a Ledger or one of these other pieces of crap because they are all pieces of crap. Well, I hear Trezor is actually very very good. Ledger, I've had three of them and all but one of them are bricked on a firmware upgrade. So I don't I I'm not ever I would never use that again. My personal favorite is Coldcard. It only does Bitcoin.
But having that many wallets inside or or that many blockchains represented inside of, like, a ledger wallet or, God forbid, this OKX wallet is I don't know, man. That just sounds like it's you're just begging for something to fail when you need it most. Please stop shit coining. Please just get a Bitcoin only wallet and stop with the nonsense. Okay? I'm just just saying. Continuing on, the report follows OKX hiring former New York governor Andrew Cuomo to advise over over a federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pony up $505,000,000 in fines and penalties.
The exchange admitted on February to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in violation of USAML laws. As a consequence, OKX agreed to pay $84,000,000 worth of penalties while it was forfeiting 400 forfeiting 421,000,000 worth of fees earned primarily from institutional clients. After the investigation concluded, OKX said that it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the problems revealed by the federal probe and improve its compliance efforts, OKX's CEO, Starzoo, wrote in a February 24 Twitter post, quote, our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies, end quote.
So there you go. Oh, yet another one is coming back to The United States. Another crypto exchange that went offshore because of the regulatory nightmare that is the landscape of The United States is they're they're they're coming back because that regulatory landscape has now changed in the favor of having these, I don't know, these crypto exchanges come back, and OKX is the second one that I've reported on. I cannot remember who the other one was that's coming back. I wanna say it's I wanna say it's Binance, but Binance already has a Binance US division, so who knows?
They're just coming back. And Phoenix Wallet is coming back. And maybe that means that, Wallet of Satoshi, one of these days, will come back to The US. Who knows? Wallet of Satoshi was one of my favorites. On to project eleven, who is awarding 1 Bitcoin to tackle Bitcoin's quantum vulnerability. Vivek send Bitcoin from Bitcoin Magazine. Project eleven, a quantum computing research organization, has announced the launch of the Q Day prize, a global challenge offering 1 BTC, to the first team able to break an elliptic curve cryptographic key using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer.
The first team to successfully achieve this breakthrough before April 2026 will be awarded 1 Bitcoin. The challenge directly targets the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, ECDSA, which underpins Bitcoin's security model. While theoretical discussions about quantum threats have persisted for years, project 11 seeks to turn speculation into measurable risk by encouraging practical demonstrations of cryptographic vulnerability. According to the initiative, more than 6,200,000.0 BTC worth nearly $500,000,000,000 are currently held in wallets with exposed public keys and could be at risk if quantum capabilities advance any further.
Quote, we have no clear idea how close we are to a quantum doomsday scenario for existing cryptography, said Alex Pruden, CEO and cofounder of Project eleven. Quote, the Q Day prize is designed to take a theoretical threat from a quantum computer and turn that into a concrete model. End quote. Recent developments in the quantum computing space have added urgency to the initiative. Google's Willow chip recently solved a complex computation in five minutes that would take supercomputers ten septillion years demonstrating progress in error correction.
Amazon's Ocelot and Microsoft's Majorana One chips have also made significant strides, while SAI Quantum raised $750,000,000 in the first quarter of this year, citing developments in photonic chip design and optimization of Shor's algorithm. Access to quantum computing is also expanding through cloud based services from providers such as IBM, AWS, Google, and Alibaba, making the technology more accessible for researchers and developers. The Q Day prize continues a tradition of cryptographic benchmarking challenges similar to RSA factoring challenge in 1991 and Hal Finney's nineteen ninety five SSL cipher challenge, both of which played key roles in measuring cryptographic resilience.
Quote, this is an open call to the boldest minds in quantum computing. Prove what's possible and help us secure the future of digital assets, Prudin added. So there you go. People are freaking out about quantum pretty hardcore, and some people dismiss it. And I'm I pretty much put AI and quantum computing in the same boat. It is not ready for prime time, but it is useful. It will become better, and it will get to a point where it becomes so very useful that you're just not going to get be able to escape it. And Quantum and AI are both paddling that same boat. It's like each one of them has a paddle.
AI seems to be progressing a little bit faster than quantum computing. But for those that dismiss both as stupid or impossible, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It doesn't mean you have to embrace it. It doesn't mean that you have to like it. Hell, it doesn't even mean that you have to use it. But if you really think that neither one of these things will actually ever be worth their salt, you are really well, you're gonna miss that boat because AI and quantum computing have stolen it and are paddling off into the sunset. Anyway, Bitcoin miner manufacturer Auradine, has raised a hundred and 53,000,000 in a series c funding amid AI expansion as we expand upon our AI talk, and I've never even heard of Auradine before.
But Auradyne sounds a lot like Cyberdyne. And if you don't know what Cyberdyne is, I suggest you go back and watch rewatch the Terminator movies. Anyway, this is from Yogita Khatri writing for the block. Auradene, a Bitcoin mining manufacturer, has raised a hundred and $53,000,000 in the series c funding round. Like its previous two rounds, the series c funding includes both equity and debt with equity making up the majority. Quote, the series c round is largely an equity investment of a hundred and 38,000,000 with an added $15,000,000 of venture capital debt, R. A. D. And cofounder and CEO Rajeev Kenname told The Block.
Kima oh, sorry. Kimani is probably how you pronounce it. Kimani said the round was oversubscribed oversubscribed by 22% as the company originally planned to raise a mere hundred and $25,000,000. The round was led by StepStone Group with participation from Maverick Silicon, Primgy Invest, the Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayfield, Mara Holdings, GS Backers, and other existing investors according to Auradigm. The company began raising for the series c in late twenty twenty four and closed it earlier this month, Kamani said. The Fresh Capital brings Auradigm's total funding to over 300,000,000, while Kamani declined to disclose the company's valuation, which is interesting.
He noted that Auradigm expects to be EBITDA or EBITDA positive within the next few quarters, e b whatever, refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. With new funding, Auradyn plans to expand both its core Bitcoin mining infrastructure business and its newly launched AI infrastructure division called Aurlinx AI. And founded in 2022 and based in California, Auradyne manufactures Bitcoin miners under the Teraflux brand. The company says it is the only United States based firm producing American engineered Bitcoin miners directly competing with Chinese hardware makers.
Auradyne said its machines power over 40 major data center operators, including Marathon Digital. Auradyne currently has an annualized revenue run rate of over a hundred and 50,000,000 from its Bitcoin mining manufacturing business with a strong and growing order pipeline according to Kobani. The company's newly launched AuraLynx AI division is focused on building networking infrastructure for AI data centers. Quote, the vision there is to develop breakthrough open data center networking solutions for the artificial intelligence era. We are in the development phase and plan to announce products later this year, Khemani said.
Last December, Aradyne announced Arlynx, a networking fabric, the tech that efficiently moves data across AI servers. And today's Arlynx AI announcement marks the launch of a dedicated AI business unit. Ardine previously also incubated an AI cybersecurity tool startup called rEscape in 2023, and commodities said rEscape AI has since spun out as a separate company with its own products and strong market momentum. While Ardine is expanding into AI, Bitcoin mining remains its primary business. Quote, AI also has strong complementarity with Bitcoin mining technology and go to market in terms of leading edge silicon thermal cooling solutions, full system solutions, and energy load balancing across Bitcoin and AI data centers, Kamani said.
Aradyne currently employs about a hundred people and plans to grow its headcount particularly on the engineering side. So Auradyne, never heard about it before, and I've also never heard about TeraFlux mining, so it's a new one on me. If you guys have ever heard about it before, let me know what you think. Give me a boost or something like that. And we're going to end with this one, and it is entitled Mantra plans a comprehensive burn program for the OM token following that 90% crash that I told you about yesterday. And this is written by Jamie Crowley for CoinDesk real world asset project mantra.
They are planning to create a comprehensive burning program for its OM token, CEO John Mullen said in a Twitter post on Wednesday. Mullen was responding to a post which said that he was planning to burn his team's tokens to win back the trust of the community after OM abruptly lost over 90% of its value on Tuesday. Quote, to be 100% clear, I am stating that I am burning my team's tokens, and we will create a comprehensive burn program for other parts of the OM supply. End quote. Token burns refer to the process of permanently removing a proportion of a cryptocurrency supply from circulation in order to increase the value of the tokens that remain.
If you remember, the OM token fell from over $6 a token to under 45 pennies in a matter of hours on no particular or sudden catalyst. Mullen blames the drop on exchanges closing OM positions, but not everybody was buying this explanation. OKX founder, Start Xu, referred to the incidents or the incident as a big scandal, Otherwise, translated as rug pull. OM trades at around 81¢ at the time of writing, which is 87% lower than its price prior to Tuesday's events. So they're gonna burn their tokens, their team's tokens. Of course, they're gonna be able to prove that. Right? They're gonna be able to absolutely 100% prove that they are burning the tokens that they hold and not tokens that they spun up to then burn.
This is why you buy Bitcoin and you don't buy any of this other crap. This always happens. It always has happened. It's continuing to happen today. It always will happen. If you ever are keeping your money in anything but Bitcoin, when it comes to cryptocurrency, you're gonna get robbed. Please stop acting like a fool. Okay? I'm just this is like, I just recently gained access back to a very old Facebook account of mine. I don't spend a lot of time there, but I was like, I might as well go ahead and, like, because you kinda can't delete your Facebook page anymore, or at least that's what I know. So I kinda worked just to get my credentials back, and I finally got them back. And I started looking around the feed. And, oh my god, is Facebook a goddamn dumpster fire just like Twitter is. It's even worse if that's possibly imaginable.
Yet, that's where some of my high school buddies are, and one of my high school buddies is shilling XRP. And I just can't bring myself to waste my fucking time trying to tell this individual that he's screwing up and that he's gonna screw up other people's lives because Cripple or XRP or whatever the hell you wanna call it is a goddamn scam. Please, please, for the love of God, stop getting taken in. God, I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Tax Day Reflection
Market Updates and Economic Insights
