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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:27AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the August 2025. This is episode eleven forty one of bit Bitcoin, and it seems that a new nonprofit organization in Tennessee to help with Bitcoin has been spun up, and we are quietly waiting on the jury verdict in the tornado cash trial. It's almost over, at least this this particular portion of it because it looks like there might be a deadlock. I'm I'll be monitoring Lola Leitz's, Noster account here because she's she's there, and she's reporting on it sort of live. So, she says that the jury is still deadlocked. We'll see if she updates at at some point during the show, which is probably gonna be probably a shorter show.
And then I kinda wanna say a few more words about, crowd health because this is just it's just becoming ridiculous. I've I've said it before. The the rise of health insurance companies enabled hospitals to go almost full administrative and increase their cost just like college loans did the same thing to college tuition. It it increased the administrative staff of colleges and universities. It increased the cost for students because the they knew that they were gonna get the money. I mean, the the hospitals knew they were gonna get the money. The, you know, care clinics and whatnot knew they were gonna get the money because of health insurance. So they just pushed the lever all the way over and, well, we end up with crap. And, you know, it happened in universities. It's happening to the health care industry, and crowd health seems to be helping people out, you know, people with this kind of thing. And it's just it's sad that it's happening, but the pendulum is swinging.
We got a crypto phishing issue going on. Brazil is gonna be in the news as is the state of Michigan. But let's go back and let's talk about this Tennessee issue. Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance to position the volunteer state at the center of America's Bitcoin revolution. Dave Birnbaum is writing this one for Bitcoin Magazine. A new nonprofit organization, the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance, has been formed to accelerate Bitcoin adoption across the state of Tennessee through coordinated public education programs and a focused legislative agenda.
Its stated mission is to integrate Bitcoin with commercial activity in the state. The organization was founded by seasoned technologists, entrepreneurs, and political activists and aims to translate Tennessee's favorable energy mix and business climate into long term leadership in the adoption of Bitcoin. The TNBTC launched last month with an in person event in Franklin, Tennessee with several state lawmakers and policy specialists attending. TNBTC will begin rolling out statewide workshops this fall. Sessions for households will cover practical topics such as acquiring, securing, and spending Bitcoin, while merchant oriented programs will provide hands on guidance for integrating lightning enabled point of sale systems.
Additional free materials and Bitcoin education curricula are planned for educators, civic groups, and local officials to ensure a common understanding of Bitcoin's technical fundamentals and economic implications. On the policy front, the alliance is circulating draft language for a twenty twenty six general assembly that would affirm every resident's right to self custody, recognize Bitcoin node operations as constitutionally protected free speech, permit contracts to be settled in Bitcoin without adverse tax treatment, and distinguish Bitcoin from other digital assets in the state code. Quote, Tennessee already combines a top 10 freedom ranking, abundant low cost nuclear power, and a bipartisan appetite for innovation, said David Birnbaum, TNBTC's president and cofounder, quote, our goal is to combine these advantages with Bitcoin and position our state for rapid economic growth, end quote.
The Tennessee Valley Authority's grid, which is nearly half nuclear, offers miners and data center operators a stable, low carbon power source. The state also hosts existing high performance compute infrastructure from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the XAI facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. And according to the Coinbits Bitcoin index, which aggregates tax policy, energy pricing, regulatory climate, and adoption metrics, Tennessee currently ranks number five nationwide for Bitcoin friendliness, and TNBTC believes it can build upon that momentum. Quote, from Oak Ridge's frontier supercomputer to FedEx's global logistics hub, Tennessee has a history of converting frontier technology into real jobs, said Steve Girard, TNBTC vice president and cofounder.
Bitcoin is the next frontier, and this initiative will make sure that the economic opportunity that Bitcoin affords can reach every country or county in the state. TMBTC is supported entirely by individual and corporate donations. Membership information program schedules and volunteer opportunities are available at tnbitcoinalliance.org. That's tnbitcoinalliance.org. The organization's first county level meetups are slated for August with pilot workshops targeting public school educators and small business owners. If successful, the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance could provide a replicable framework for state level Bitcoin adoption rooted in practical education and clear statutory protections cementing the volunteer state's reputation as a leading jurisdiction for innovative technologies that advance personal liberty.
So we've got basically another Bitcoin institute rising up in the state of Tennessee. Tennessee is not they're just not messing around, and they've got the infrastructure to support just about everything that you would want to do. So it's honestly what I find so fascinating about all this is that you've got Bitcoin Park, which is Matt Odell's outfit out in Tennessee. And then you got what the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, Texas. Right? And those two cities, Austin and Nashville, have been kinda like, battling as to which is the better Bitcoin hub. You know? And it's like it's fun. Yeah. It's they're they're not really, you know, they're they're not really rivals. They're they're actually working together. But it's it it was fun to see, but now it's sort of expanded to the whole state of Texas, and the whole state of Tennessee are now sort of kind of battling.
And I don't I hate that word. They're not really battling. They are working together, but they're providing tension across the Eastern Part of The United States for for like, think of it as a tug of war between Tennessee and Texas. Right? And this is a big tug of war. Texas and Tennessee have lots of energy. They've got lots of technological prowess. They've got lots of technological know how. They've got all the infrastructure to be able to take this stuff on, and no other state is stepping up to the plate in the way that both Texas and Tennessee are. And I kinda find that I kind of find that a fascinating pack. I also think other states they're they're missing out. They're just kind of sitting on their thumbs.
I mean, I I live I live in Washington state, which has a shit ton of hydroelectric power. I mean, a lot. Electricity is fairly cheap in in Washington state, and there's also a lot of electrical infrastructure in so far as large companies that are electrical engineering companies that are top notch top notch outfits. And Washington is doing absolutely freaking nothing in this entire arena. You know? And then it's like and it's I'm not rah rah ing Washington. I believe me, man. If I could get back to Texas, I in a heartbeat, I would. But that's not gonna happen anytime soon, so I'm kinda stuck. But in the meantime, I might as well look around and say, well, what do you got and how are you leveraging it into this new world? And I don't see any other state really stepping up the way Texas and Tennessee are, which probably means that Texas and Tennessee are gonna be ruling the nation before too terribly long. Let's check-in on Lola.
Let's see if anything's changed here. I'm just, using a no strudel.ninja as my noster client here. Nope. They're still deadlocked. Let's move on to a small Twitter thread. I know. Well, actually, no. This isn't gonna be Twitter. This this one is on Primal. There is I've got this thing up here and it's really the the response that I want to read, but without the context, the original posters context that started Evelyn's response, it's not really you need the context. So Ghost on Noster here says, when the mandatory face ID know your customer rolls out, it won't come from the government that you know, like a president or congress or prime minister.
It'll quietly roll out through corporations and major financial network services. It won't be a law or a bill up for debate, just page three recommendations by FinCEN, the World Economic Foundation, and the SEC. Quiet control that isn't mandated by law, but necessary if you want to apply for a job, loan, or invest. And he's got a screenshot here, and it's a press release from Companies House, which I presume is a UK company. But the headline of the press release says, Companies House confirms identity verification rollout from the 11/18/2025. We are phasing in identity verification over twelve months to make things simpler for companies and business owners.
Yeah. No. You're not making things this isn't to make things simpler. This is much more nefarious, which is given in Evelyn and her response. Right? So Evelyn's over here on Noster, and she writes back with sort of a boots on the ground situation. She says, this is, unfortunately, entirely accurate. In recent days, correspondence from every bank we're associated with has been arriving, demanding our consent to new EU regulations. Accompanying these requests are up to 34 page documents of terms and conditions that virtually no one reads thoroughly.
And buried in the fine print is a clause requiring transfer recipients to be unequivocally identifiable through facial recognition and or official identification. It's absolutely infuriating, utterly maddening. What recourse does one have? You're essentially compelled to agree. For businesses, there's simply no alternative. Moreover, just last week, my bank representative called me, interrogating me about the receipt, or rather the recipient and purpose of one of my transfers. Since when is it their concern how I choose to spend my money? The transaction amount wasn't even particularly significant.
I have a legitimate invoice. This is money I've already paid taxes on. When I attempted to explain the transfer was for blockchain technology, her blank response made it clear she was utterly unacquainted with the concept. The entire situation is nothing short of absurd. This is where it's going.
[00:13:30] Unknown:
No laws. No debatable bills.
[00:13:35] David Bennett:
Just comp companies
[00:13:38] Unknown:
putting in place
[00:13:40] David Bennett:
terms and conditions that the government wants to have it done, but doesn't want the debate. They just want it done. So they go to their little friends at people like Companies House and says, you need to do this. And then Companies House says, yes, sir. Let's do it. And it it so these guys are acting they are putting in place laws and regulations by proxy. It's not a law. It's not a regulation. It is a term of service by a private company that you have a private relationship with, not a public one. This is a frightening and we it's not like I'm just learning about this now. I've been talking about this for a while, and most of us have been seeing the writing on the wall for years, and here it is.
It's right here. It's being put on a plate. It's that plate's being put in front of you as you sit at the dining room table, and you get your fork and knife ready to chow down and the waiter lifts the lid of your entree and all of a sudden what you see is something that is very unappetizing yet it is the only thing on the table and you're starving to death.
[00:14:57] Unknown:
What are you gonna do?
[00:15:00] David Bennett:
If I had a solution, I would definitely tell you what it was, but I don't. I mean, I could sit here and I could say civil disobedience and, revolution and I don't know be nonviolent and I don't know do a sit in, walk around in a circle and scream at Lake Michigan while you carry a sign. I I none of that's gonna do anything. It's just not. The only honestly, the only way out is what we're already doing. We're building a parallel system. And then it's gonna be how do we defend the parallel system. You know? And the only way that I can think about doing this is building parallel systems that are not are that they're all not for profit, and that we have I I kinda almost see this next ten years, and I I don't wanna say the following, but I'm gonna say it.
To get away from what I've just read to you about what's going on in UK and the EU, A whole host of people are going to have to come together and apply the most fascinating and in-depth technological solutions to bypass this bullshit and that the only way that they don't go to jail is they can't make any money from it, and that's the only way that they would be able to keep their anonymity and work behind the scenes. That that that means no profit for ten years. It's gonna take a minimum ten years to route around this bullshit because our fucking apathy
[00:16:41] Unknown:
and our, oh, they'll take care of us attitude has absolutely come back to roost like bad chickens who don't even give any eggs. Right? So I I if you've got a better solution,
[00:16:59] David Bennett:
please let me know because I do not think storming all the capitals of all the nations in a violent manner is actually going to do a damn thing except get a bunch of people killed, arrested, thrown in prison for the rest of their life and their families. God only knows what happens to them. These the all the people because of our apathy, all the people that are in power are the worst kinds of people. They don't care about your family. They don't care if your family gets hurt. They don't care if they drag your family in front of you and make you watch them hurt your family. I absolutely believe at this point that we are ruled by monsters.
I used to tell my kids that there are no monsters, at least not that are living under your bed, but there are monsters, and they just happen to be in the form of human beings. No I'm not talking about lizard people I'm talking about people that have a different type of brain structure. Like something's off, something's not wired right and that's how we get sociopaths And sociopaths migrate to the kinds of power structures that government provides. I got into an argument on Nostra with somebody. I just, I, you know, I honestly, I didn't even have time for it because this is a bootlicker. Right? I had to lie. I just muted him. I'm like, oh, no. I don't have I don't have time for your ass. Because he was like, oh, well, yeah. But the human race, we we we have to have government.
Really? And then the argument was every time that groups of people have come together, there's always been leaders. Yeah. I guess. But that government's a little bit different. I mean, it's like having somebody that you trust, that you go get advice from is one thing. Having somebody mandate what you do and how you live is quite another thing. Having a leader is sort of somebody that you can trust that you can go get advice from. When that leader says, you know what? I'm gonna take this one step further, and I'm gonna make you do what I say.
Well, that's no longer a leader. That's a fucking sociopath. And that's what we have. And the only way around it that I can see is to build around it. And the only way that you can build around you can't have a company. You can't say, hey. We're gonna have a new banking system. And my name's David Bennett, and I'm going to build it. And here's my bank. It's not going to work that way. It's all going to be done in the shadows. It's sad. But I like I said, if you've got another way out, man, boost the show and let me know what your thoughts are. Because other than just ignoring these people, detaching your life from these people as much as humanly possible, making yourself.
I was about to say small, but I don't mean that. What I mean is almost invisible except to your other friends, you know, the people that think like you. But you're you're like, we've got to reduce reduce our attack surface. We've got to start thinking of ourselves like nodes on a network, like on on a Bitcoin network. And the code that we run has to have reduced attack surfaces, and our apathy has allowed ourselves to have a very large attack surface. You can't even cut somebody's hair without getting a license. Are you kidding me?
[00:20:30] Unknown:
Really?
[00:20:31] David Bennett:
What I mean, yes. Actually, like I was about to say, what are they gonna do? Come in and arrest you? Yes. They are. Or they're gonna fine the shit out of you. And then when you don't pay that fine, then they will arrest you. So that's that's a huge attack surface when you think about what we're talking about. We're talking about cutting someone's hair. We're not talking about doing open heart surgery without a medical degree. You can't open a restaurant without a health permit. You can't you a business license. Think about it that way. What the hell does that even mean? I mean, if I get a driver's license, I had to take a written test. I had to study when I was, like, you know, 15.
By the time driver's ed in Texas was over, you're 16 years old, and you gotta take a written test, and you gotta pass that. And then you gotta sign up to have somebody sit in the car and watch you drive around for about twenty minutes to make sure that you know what the hell you're doing, and then you get a license to drive. Hell, I almost agree with that. Almost. Not not entirely. But what the hell is a business license? Do do you take classes to run a business? Do you take a test to run a business? I mean, how many tests would there be? How many different kinds of businesses are there? And then and then what what I run the business for, like, you know, a couple of days and somebody watches me, I don't know what, take money from a customer customer and put it in a cash register, and then I get a business license? No. No. No. No. It's fucking grift.
It's just grift. It it is it is you paying for the right. It's like you there used to be a there used to be a term for it in in, like, in old England when they had kings and queens and shit like that, and I can't remember what it is. But you're you're simply it's not a license. It's just it's just a bribe. Homage, if you were there's like I said, there's another word for it, but I just I don't know what it is. It's what I'm demonstrating here is that our attack surface is so large because we don't even question business license. We don't question, you gotta have a a license to cut hair.
Yeah. Well, hardly. Most people don't. They they'll just go do it. That's the demonstration of just how large our attack surface as a species is. Just something something to think about. Alright. Let's see. Checking in on Lola. Lola, tell us tell us some good news here, man. Come on. Tell tell us tell us and she has not updated. It's been fifty four minutes since Lola Leitz said, jury still deadlocked, partial verdict incoming. So here's what here here's what, let's see. I'm gonna show more on this one. The rage, which is Lola Leitz's, newsletter, she the rage also has a note out that says, jury in trial against Roman Storm says that it's deadlocked on some of the charges.
The court has asked the jury to reconsider. If the deadlock remains, the court will accept a partial verdict. Government may retry the remaining charges. So that just means that they are in in agreement on some of the charges, and we don't know in in what way they agree on. Do they agree that they're not guilty, or do they agree that they're guilty? But on some of these, they are not in agreement, which means that there is at least some people that think that they are are at least guilty on some charges, but we have no idea which ones. Alright. So I will keep, low elites, around while we finish up the rest of the story.
So if you're not listening to Once Bitten Once Bitten podcast with my good friend, Daniel Prince, you are missing out. There's interviews, real conversations, deep dives, and honestly, his daughter Lauren kicks things off with better questions than most podcasters do, including me. And I've been on that show a couple of times. It's always a blast. Once bitten, go listen. I'm gonna put the fountain link in the show notes so that you'll have it there so you can go right to it. Daniel's a good friend of mine. Please go listen to Once Bitten podcast. I think you'll be very pleased.
Now onto crowd health. How Andy Shuvnova, crowd health are dismantling medical fiat. Connor Japenic from Bitcoin News is writing it. What if someone told you that ditching health insurance could save you money, help you stack sats, and get better health care? Most Bitcoiners would be intrigued but skeptical. Don't trust. Verify. Right? But once you've seen how fiat money corrupts the monetary system, it's not a huge leap to recognize the same manipulation infecting health care. Andy Shuvnova, CEO of CrowdHealth, discovered the brutal reality of health insurance when his one year old daughter needed a routine fifteen minute procedure to repair a hole in her eardrum.
Despite paying $1,200 a month for the Affordable Care Act plan, the hospital billed $8,000 and his insurance company refused to pay it, declaring that it was medically unnecessary. Quote, I went through two rounds of appeals process, and they were still like, nope. We're not paying for it. And so at that point, I was just like, screw this. I'm not doing health insurance. This is such a scam, said Shubhnover. The immediate aftermath was not fun. So I called them. This is a quote. I called them and I said, I quit. And so then I went back to my wife and I was like, so we don't have health insurance anymore. And she's like, say what? Excuse me?
This would lead to the beginning of something entirely new. As a Bitcoiner since 2021 with 80% of his liquid assets in Bitcoin, Shubh Nova saw an opportunity to align crowd health with the ethos of sound money. Quote, Jimmy Song is a buddy of mine. He was like, instead of a big fiat pool in the back end, why not a Bitcoin pool? Regulatory constraints ruled out pooled Bitcoin funds for now, but CrowdHealth found a clever workaround. Members make two separate payments each month. A $55 advocacy fee covers bill negotiation, access to the app, and a personal care advocate.
And then there's the crowdfunding contribution, sent directly to other members to pay medical bills. For non Bitcoin members, this amount changes monthly based on need. For Bitcoin members, it's fixed at $140 In the Bitcoin plan, if the month's actual need is less than a $140, say, $75, then the leftover $65 difference is automatically deposited into their Fold account. It's a great way to stack. Ultimately, we're trying to create enough scale within our Bitcoin community so that all the transactions can be done over Lightning. His vision?
Replace the dollar as the medium of exchange
[00:28:13] Unknown:
in one of the largest industries on the planet, health care.
[00:28:19] David Bennett:
Quote, if we can do that, this goes a long way towards displacing the dollar, end quote. With 12,000 members and over 15,000 people helped, CrowdHealth is quickly gaining traction. A quarter of its user base are Bitcoiners. I wanna come back to that one. That's an interesting little snippet there. The back end Lightning infrastructure is already built. Bitcoin friendly doctors are reaching out to get paid in sats. Even one of the 10 largest hospitals systems in The United States has shown interest in accepting Bitcoin. Quote, if we can get patients who want to pay in Bitcoin, doctors who want to receive Bitcoin, and the infrastructure in place, then I think we've got something really special shooting over said.
The platform's members are hard to ignore, or rather the platform's numbers are hard to ignore. For medical bills over 2,500, members pay about 50% less than they would through traditional insurance. Imagine our health care system if all the prices were slashed by 50%, Shubh Nover said. That is a $2,500,000,000,000 impact. That's $2,500,000,000,000 going back into people's pockets, people who could be buying Bitcoin. And it's not just about saving money. Like Bitcoin, crowd health incentivizes sovereignty, not just financially, but physically. Quote, when you're personally responsible for your own stuff, your behavior starts changing.
I see this with Bitcoiners. They take better care of themselves. CrowdHealth even rewards members who stay metabolically healthy. Members with fasting insulin under five or low visceral fat receive a 10% discount with plans for that to rise 20% next year. They also don't accept smokers or those who are over two hundred and sixty pounds. Quote, we want people who are opting out of the system and taking responsibility shooting over notes. Quote, fifty percent of our babies in April were born at home. The national average is one point eight percent. That tells you the type of people we serve.
To skeptics, Shuv Novos offers real hold on. Shuv Novos offers real world results like like Brian, a crowd health member who accidentally shot himself. Oh, shit. Holy crap. This is ugly. Brian, a crowd health member who accidentally shot himself with a 44 magnum while fishing in Bexar County, Montana. The bullet traveled through his calf, thigh, and into his chest. He was airlifted to a hospital two hours away, placed in a coma, and hit with a million dollar bill. CrowdHealth negotiated it down to somewhere between 200 and $250,000, and the community funded that.
Quote, I get to tell that story now, Shubhnova said. I'm not excited Brian went through that. No kidding, dude. I'm excited that Crowd Health was his ally, not his enemy. Despite the philosophical overlap, many Bitcoin are still clean to traditional insurance. Shubhnover doesn't get it. Quote, if you're okay with leaving Fiat, why are you still afraid to leave Fiat health care? To him, the parallels are clear. Both systems are opaque, centralized, and built to extract. Both can deny access, dictate choices, and delay help when it matters most. Quote, they can say we're not paying for that, and that means you don't get it, Shubhnover explains. Quote, that's more control than the dollar ever had, at least with money.
You can choose how to spend it. But when it when it comes to health insurance, they can block care entirely. That affects your body, your time, and your life. For a community that prides itself on personal responsibility and opting out of broken systems, it's a contradiction worth examining, at least. CrowdHealth is a simple idea built and designed for people looking to take back control of their health and their health care. With subsidies, there you go, with subsidies and Medicaid support expected to tighten, millions will be searching for alternatives.
Crowd health is ready. The platform is expanding community groups. From Bitcoiners to carnivores, faith based families, and more, the idea is simple. Shared values, increased generosity, and accountability. Quote, we want people who are metabolically healthy, who are raising babies, who are living active lives, not people whose chronic conditions cost five times more because of bad lifestyle choices. The top crowd health expenses aren't chronic illnesses. They're sports injuries and pregnancies. That's a good sign. Quote, we want people to thrive. I want my customers at 80 years old out back playing wiffle ball with their grandkids. I want them to live hard and die fast, not suffer a slow, expensive decline.
And that's the vision, not just lower premiums or faster payments, but a health care system that actually makes you healthier. Crowd health is not health insurance. It's a parallel system where members fund each other directly based on shared values and mutual trust. That trust is the foundation, not bureaucracy, not claims departments, not fine print. Bitcoin doesn't rely on trust, it relies on code and consensus. But what unites both systems is the desire to escape manipulation and reclaim control. The dollar system is broken, so is health care. Crowded Health offers a path out of both, and here's the question scoo scooved over sorry, scooved over wants every Bitcoiner to ask, quote, what keeps you from decentralizing your health care?
If you're already orange pilled in your savings, maybe it's time to do the same with your health care. Are you still unsure? Then tweet your questions to at join crowd health. I guess that's on Twitter. Let me see. Is it on Twitter?
[00:34:26] Unknown:
Yeah. It's on Twitter. Anyway,
[00:34:31] David Bennett:
so the parallel system comes up again in this. It's not a parallel health system. It's not parallel doctors. It's not a parallel medical training. It's not parallel hospitals. It's literally short circuiting between the patient and the caregivers and that caregiver's infrastructure. And I'm talking about the hospital, not not not the infrastructure part of health insurance. And, certainly, we need to do something about the administrative bloat in hospitals, but that's that's on down the line. This is just short circuiting because right now, the health insurance plays the middleman between you and your health care.
If you build a parallel system that short circuits the bureaucracy of the health insurance, then water is going to find the easier path. Be like water, my friend. Be like water. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up a quarter of a point, but still only at $65.34. Brent, North Sea is up point 4% to $67.91. Natural gas is up to or up by 0.8% to $3.03 a thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 1.12% to $2.11. Shiny metal rocks doing well all except palladium, which is down 4%, but gold is moved up only slightly, however, $3,437 and 6 dimes. Silver is up a third of a point. Platinum is up 1.25.
Copper is up two thirds of a point. Most of ag is in the doldrums today. Biggest loser appears to be coffee, 1.6% to the downside. Biggest winner is chocolate, point 6% to the upside. Live cattle is up a third. Lean hogs down one point. Feeder cattle up a half. The Dow is up a third. The S and P is up three quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is up just over one, and the S and P Mini is crawling in the red sideways. Yay. And let's see where we at. Okay. 115,440 is the price of one Bitcoin. That is a $2,300,000,000,000 market cap.
You can get 34 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,902,550.82 of. Average fees per block are relatively low. There are it looks to be about 20 blocks in mempools around the world carrying 91,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority rates of four Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three. 965 exahashes per second is the hash rate on a one week moving average, so we are climbing back higher. So you can do with that what you will. And from Clankers Coin Factory, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and, man, the donations really fell fallen off the cliff, and I don't know if it's because it's late summer activity or if people are just not enjoying the show. So if you if you don't enjoy the show, let let me know. I mean, it would be good to actually have some feedback because Psyduck's 740 sats only tells me Psyduck.
Turkey with 500 sats basically gives me a fountain link, which I think is the link back to this exact show. Is it? Yes. It is. It's the link back to this exact episode. And user 42752445 with 511 sats says, ahoy. Well, aye, captain. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Brazil's lower house is going to hold a hearing on creating a national Bitcoin reserve. Christopher Tepedino from Cointelegraph is gonna tell us all about it here. Brazil's house of reps will hold a hearing on August 20 to discuss a bill proposing the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve in the country. According to the house website, at least six institutions are slated to participate, including the Central Bank of Brazil, the Ministry of Finance, a crypto advocacy association, and various representatives from fintech companies and the banking sector.
The bill, which was introduced back in November 2024, seeks to allow up to 5% of the country's treasury funds to be used to buy Bitcoin, which translates to a potential investment of roughly $15,000,000,000 assuming the central bank's total reserves of about $300,000,000,000 as of February. According to the bill, the cryptocurrency reserve would protect international reserves against exchange rate fluctuations and, of course, geopolitical risks and promote the use of blockchain technologies in the public and private sector. Good god. We're we're still on blockchain. If approved by lawmakers in the house, the legislation will lead to the senate or rather head to the senate, the upper chamber of congress before being signed into law or vetoed by president Luis Ignacio da Silva.
The idea of a Bitcoin reserve in the country has been met with mixed response. Yeah. When do we talk about the IMF? That's that's all I wanna know. Quote, debating the creation of a sovereign Bitcoin reserve is in the public interest and vital to Brazil's prosperity, Pedro Guerra, chief of staff to vice president Geraldo Ackerman, said in March according to a translated statement cited by Poder three sixty. Quote, after all, Bitcoin is the digital gold, the gold of the Internet. Oh, that's an interesting way to put it. However, Brazil's central bank director of monetary policy, good lord, Milton David reportedly said it would be inappropriate to include crypto assets in the country's foreign exchange reserves.
After Trump signed an executive order in March to create a national strategic Bitcoin reserve, other countries followed suit. In June, a government agency revealed that Kazakhstan plans to start a strategic Bitcoin reserve likely from seized coins. India and Sweden have also been the subject of speculation regarding similar reserves. In descending order, the six countries that hold the most Bitcoin are The United States, China, The UK, Ukraine, Bhutan, and bringing up the rear, El Salvador.
[00:41:41] Unknown:
Are you dirty? You might wanna get clean
[00:41:45] David Bennett:
with SoapMiner. SoapMiner brand soaps. You can get them at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. Soapminer.com has handmade tallow soap. It's the best soap that I've ever used. It's the best soap that my wife says that she's ever used. My kids love it. I'm serious, man. It makes washing hands fun again because you actually feel them get clean, but it's more than that. It's a lotion. Now this is not what SoapMiner says. This is how I use SoapMiner brand soaps. I use it as a hand lotion.
[00:42:20] Unknown:
How? Just get your hand one of your hands wet.
[00:42:25] David Bennett:
Use the other hand to pick up the dry bar of soap, and then rub the soap along with your wet hand onto your dry hand, and it will sort of, like, strip off some of the tallow soap, and it goes on the backs of your hands and then you just kind of sit there and you just treat it like a lotion. You do I do that for about thirty seconds, sometimes up to a minute, put the soap down, turn on the like, turn on the water if the water is not already on and then actually start rubbing rubbing the soap off. You know, it's like start, you know, washing your hands. So that way it acts as two things. It acts as a lotion, a skin lotion, which does wonders for your skin and an actual get you clean soap, but it's also a shampoo for me. I wash my hair with SoapMiner brand soaps all the time.
And my honestly, my hair is actually gaining body. It's really weird. I got thick hair to begin with, but, dude, I I could even then, I can I can tell a huge difference? I shave with it, so it's a shaving cream. Right? This thing this stuff is amazing, and it lasts forever. And he's got all kinds of flavors of soap. Well, flavor is not a really good term, but he's got Earl Grey tallow. He's got goat's milk tallow. He's got lemongrass tallow. He's got orange and clove tallow. He's got redacted tallow, which is a it's got a bunch of, it's got a bunch of charcoal in it. So it's it it deodorizes and gets you really, really, really nice and clean. It's a nice big black bar of soap. I love it. There's rough cut tallow. There's tea tree. There's pine tar. There's cedarwood. There's peppermint, and there's lavender tallow. All these soaps are top notch.
They last forever, and they perform multiple functions. And it's built by a plaid, man. You can get 10% off of your purchase of all soap minor products using the code bitcoin, and that's 10% off when you use the code bitcoin and all one word over at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. Get clean today. Okay. Let's check on Lola Leads. Let's see if she's got any updates here. Okay. Waiting for it. I'm waiting for it. It's spinning. It's I see it spinning. Nope. Jury's still deadlocked. Partial verdict incoming. Okay. So I guess we're just gonna have to wait. Alright. Let's get on to the last one of the day. Michigan State Pension has boosted its Bitcoin ETF stake, signaling cautious confidence in crypto's future.
And let's see who's writing it. Helene Braun is writing this one for CoinDesk. The state of Michigan retirement system, also known as SMRS, SMRS, has notably expanded its investment in Bitcoin, perhaps, demonstrating either a growing appetite for risk or a firm belief in the cryptocurrency's future value. In a 13 f filing with the SEC on Tuesday, the pension fund revealed it had increased its position in the ARC Bitcoin ETF to 300,000 shares, which was up from a 100 and 10,000 the previous quarter. So they tripled almost their holdings.
At Bitcoin's current value around a 114,000, the current price of ARC b is $37.79 per share. This position is now valued at approximately approximately $11,300,000. That would be just 0.03% of the fund, $79,000,000,000 in assets under management. Pension funds are typically very risk averse, making it rare for them to allocate significant fundage into cryptocurrencies with only a few having done so. The fact that Michigan's pension system is increasing its holdings suggests a highly cautious but nevertheless positive outlook on Bitcoin's future value.
The fund also continues to hold the grayscale shit coin number 1 trust. Whatever, dude. If that's what you want if that's how you wanna play it, man, you you you go right ahead. Alright. One more shot to see if the rage or Lola has updated anything. No. They probably I I I didn't think that they would. Let me just, let's see. Roman storm trial. Let's see what the old Google has to say on news. See if there's anything that she's let's see. Nope. Last yeah. Judge pushes jury to end storm trial after days of gridlock. So they've been in deliberations for four days now, guys.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
And
[00:47:24] David Bennett:
I'm tentatively optimistic because of that, But we won't know we won't know until the the jury comes out and gives us a verdict, and they have not done so yet. So we will patiently wait and see. Meanwhile, 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 08:27AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the August 2025. This is episode eleven forty one of bit Bitcoin, and it seems that a new nonprofit organization in Tennessee to help with Bitcoin has been spun up, and we are quietly waiting on the jury verdict in the tornado cash trial. It's almost over, at least this this particular portion of it because it looks like there might be a deadlock. I'm I'll be monitoring Lola Leitz's, Noster account here because she's she's there, and she's reporting on it sort of live. So, she says that the jury is still deadlocked. We'll see if she updates at at some point during the show, which is probably gonna be probably a shorter show.
And then I kinda wanna say a few more words about, crowd health because this is just it's just becoming ridiculous. I've I've said it before. The the rise of health insurance companies enabled hospitals to go almost full administrative and increase their cost just like college loans did the same thing to college tuition. It it increased the administrative staff of colleges and universities. It increased the cost for students because the they knew that they were gonna get the money. I mean, the the hospitals knew they were gonna get the money. The, you know, care clinics and whatnot knew they were gonna get the money because of health insurance. So they just pushed the lever all the way over and, well, we end up with crap. And, you know, it happened in universities. It's happening to the health care industry, and crowd health seems to be helping people out, you know, people with this kind of thing. And it's just it's sad that it's happening, but the pendulum is swinging.
We got a crypto phishing issue going on. Brazil is gonna be in the news as is the state of Michigan. But let's go back and let's talk about this Tennessee issue. Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance to position the volunteer state at the center of America's Bitcoin revolution. Dave Birnbaum is writing this one for Bitcoin Magazine. A new nonprofit organization, the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance, has been formed to accelerate Bitcoin adoption across the state of Tennessee through coordinated public education programs and a focused legislative agenda.
Its stated mission is to integrate Bitcoin with commercial activity in the state. The organization was founded by seasoned technologists, entrepreneurs, and political activists and aims to translate Tennessee's favorable energy mix and business climate into long term leadership in the adoption of Bitcoin. The TNBTC launched last month with an in person event in Franklin, Tennessee with several state lawmakers and policy specialists attending. TNBTC will begin rolling out statewide workshops this fall. Sessions for households will cover practical topics such as acquiring, securing, and spending Bitcoin, while merchant oriented programs will provide hands on guidance for integrating lightning enabled point of sale systems.
Additional free materials and Bitcoin education curricula are planned for educators, civic groups, and local officials to ensure a common understanding of Bitcoin's technical fundamentals and economic implications. On the policy front, the alliance is circulating draft language for a twenty twenty six general assembly that would affirm every resident's right to self custody, recognize Bitcoin node operations as constitutionally protected free speech, permit contracts to be settled in Bitcoin without adverse tax treatment, and distinguish Bitcoin from other digital assets in the state code. Quote, Tennessee already combines a top 10 freedom ranking, abundant low cost nuclear power, and a bipartisan appetite for innovation, said David Birnbaum, TNBTC's president and cofounder, quote, our goal is to combine these advantages with Bitcoin and position our state for rapid economic growth, end quote.
The Tennessee Valley Authority's grid, which is nearly half nuclear, offers miners and data center operators a stable, low carbon power source. The state also hosts existing high performance compute infrastructure from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the XAI facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. And according to the Coinbits Bitcoin index, which aggregates tax policy, energy pricing, regulatory climate, and adoption metrics, Tennessee currently ranks number five nationwide for Bitcoin friendliness, and TNBTC believes it can build upon that momentum. Quote, from Oak Ridge's frontier supercomputer to FedEx's global logistics hub, Tennessee has a history of converting frontier technology into real jobs, said Steve Girard, TNBTC vice president and cofounder.
Bitcoin is the next frontier, and this initiative will make sure that the economic opportunity that Bitcoin affords can reach every country or county in the state. TMBTC is supported entirely by individual and corporate donations. Membership information program schedules and volunteer opportunities are available at tnbitcoinalliance.org. That's tnbitcoinalliance.org. The organization's first county level meetups are slated for August with pilot workshops targeting public school educators and small business owners. If successful, the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance could provide a replicable framework for state level Bitcoin adoption rooted in practical education and clear statutory protections cementing the volunteer state's reputation as a leading jurisdiction for innovative technologies that advance personal liberty.
So we've got basically another Bitcoin institute rising up in the state of Tennessee. Tennessee is not they're just not messing around, and they've got the infrastructure to support just about everything that you would want to do. So it's honestly what I find so fascinating about all this is that you've got Bitcoin Park, which is Matt Odell's outfit out in Tennessee. And then you got what the Bitcoin Commons in Austin, Texas. Right? And those two cities, Austin and Nashville, have been kinda like, battling as to which is the better Bitcoin hub. You know? And it's like it's fun. Yeah. It's they're they're not really, you know, they're they're not really rivals. They're they're actually working together. But it's it it was fun to see, but now it's sort of expanded to the whole state of Texas, and the whole state of Tennessee are now sort of kind of battling.
And I don't I hate that word. They're not really battling. They are working together, but they're providing tension across the Eastern Part of The United States for for like, think of it as a tug of war between Tennessee and Texas. Right? And this is a big tug of war. Texas and Tennessee have lots of energy. They've got lots of technological prowess. They've got lots of technological know how. They've got all the infrastructure to be able to take this stuff on, and no other state is stepping up to the plate in the way that both Texas and Tennessee are. And I kinda find that I kind of find that a fascinating pack. I also think other states they're they're missing out. They're just kind of sitting on their thumbs.
I mean, I I live I live in Washington state, which has a shit ton of hydroelectric power. I mean, a lot. Electricity is fairly cheap in in Washington state, and there's also a lot of electrical infrastructure in so far as large companies that are electrical engineering companies that are top notch top notch outfits. And Washington is doing absolutely freaking nothing in this entire arena. You know? And then it's like and it's I'm not rah rah ing Washington. I believe me, man. If I could get back to Texas, I in a heartbeat, I would. But that's not gonna happen anytime soon, so I'm kinda stuck. But in the meantime, I might as well look around and say, well, what do you got and how are you leveraging it into this new world? And I don't see any other state really stepping up the way Texas and Tennessee are, which probably means that Texas and Tennessee are gonna be ruling the nation before too terribly long. Let's check-in on Lola.
Let's see if anything's changed here. I'm just, using a no strudel.ninja as my noster client here. Nope. They're still deadlocked. Let's move on to a small Twitter thread. I know. Well, actually, no. This isn't gonna be Twitter. This this one is on Primal. There is I've got this thing up here and it's really the the response that I want to read, but without the context, the original posters context that started Evelyn's response, it's not really you need the context. So Ghost on Noster here says, when the mandatory face ID know your customer rolls out, it won't come from the government that you know, like a president or congress or prime minister.
It'll quietly roll out through corporations and major financial network services. It won't be a law or a bill up for debate, just page three recommendations by FinCEN, the World Economic Foundation, and the SEC. Quiet control that isn't mandated by law, but necessary if you want to apply for a job, loan, or invest. And he's got a screenshot here, and it's a press release from Companies House, which I presume is a UK company. But the headline of the press release says, Companies House confirms identity verification rollout from the 11/18/2025. We are phasing in identity verification over twelve months to make things simpler for companies and business owners.
Yeah. No. You're not making things this isn't to make things simpler. This is much more nefarious, which is given in Evelyn and her response. Right? So Evelyn's over here on Noster, and she writes back with sort of a boots on the ground situation. She says, this is, unfortunately, entirely accurate. In recent days, correspondence from every bank we're associated with has been arriving, demanding our consent to new EU regulations. Accompanying these requests are up to 34 page documents of terms and conditions that virtually no one reads thoroughly.
And buried in the fine print is a clause requiring transfer recipients to be unequivocally identifiable through facial recognition and or official identification. It's absolutely infuriating, utterly maddening. What recourse does one have? You're essentially compelled to agree. For businesses, there's simply no alternative. Moreover, just last week, my bank representative called me, interrogating me about the receipt, or rather the recipient and purpose of one of my transfers. Since when is it their concern how I choose to spend my money? The transaction amount wasn't even particularly significant.
I have a legitimate invoice. This is money I've already paid taxes on. When I attempted to explain the transfer was for blockchain technology, her blank response made it clear she was utterly unacquainted with the concept. The entire situation is nothing short of absurd. This is where it's going.
[00:13:30] Unknown:
No laws. No debatable bills.
[00:13:35] David Bennett:
Just comp companies
[00:13:38] Unknown:
putting in place
[00:13:40] David Bennett:
terms and conditions that the government wants to have it done, but doesn't want the debate. They just want it done. So they go to their little friends at people like Companies House and says, you need to do this. And then Companies House says, yes, sir. Let's do it. And it it so these guys are acting they are putting in place laws and regulations by proxy. It's not a law. It's not a regulation. It is a term of service by a private company that you have a private relationship with, not a public one. This is a frightening and we it's not like I'm just learning about this now. I've been talking about this for a while, and most of us have been seeing the writing on the wall for years, and here it is.
It's right here. It's being put on a plate. It's that plate's being put in front of you as you sit at the dining room table, and you get your fork and knife ready to chow down and the waiter lifts the lid of your entree and all of a sudden what you see is something that is very unappetizing yet it is the only thing on the table and you're starving to death.
[00:14:57] Unknown:
What are you gonna do?
[00:15:00] David Bennett:
If I had a solution, I would definitely tell you what it was, but I don't. I mean, I could sit here and I could say civil disobedience and, revolution and I don't know be nonviolent and I don't know do a sit in, walk around in a circle and scream at Lake Michigan while you carry a sign. I I none of that's gonna do anything. It's just not. The only honestly, the only way out is what we're already doing. We're building a parallel system. And then it's gonna be how do we defend the parallel system. You know? And the only way that I can think about doing this is building parallel systems that are not are that they're all not for profit, and that we have I I kinda almost see this next ten years, and I I don't wanna say the following, but I'm gonna say it.
To get away from what I've just read to you about what's going on in UK and the EU, A whole host of people are going to have to come together and apply the most fascinating and in-depth technological solutions to bypass this bullshit and that the only way that they don't go to jail is they can't make any money from it, and that's the only way that they would be able to keep their anonymity and work behind the scenes. That that that means no profit for ten years. It's gonna take a minimum ten years to route around this bullshit because our fucking apathy
[00:16:41] Unknown:
and our, oh, they'll take care of us attitude has absolutely come back to roost like bad chickens who don't even give any eggs. Right? So I I if you've got a better solution,
[00:16:59] David Bennett:
please let me know because I do not think storming all the capitals of all the nations in a violent manner is actually going to do a damn thing except get a bunch of people killed, arrested, thrown in prison for the rest of their life and their families. God only knows what happens to them. These the all the people because of our apathy, all the people that are in power are the worst kinds of people. They don't care about your family. They don't care if your family gets hurt. They don't care if they drag your family in front of you and make you watch them hurt your family. I absolutely believe at this point that we are ruled by monsters.
I used to tell my kids that there are no monsters, at least not that are living under your bed, but there are monsters, and they just happen to be in the form of human beings. No I'm not talking about lizard people I'm talking about people that have a different type of brain structure. Like something's off, something's not wired right and that's how we get sociopaths And sociopaths migrate to the kinds of power structures that government provides. I got into an argument on Nostra with somebody. I just, I, you know, I honestly, I didn't even have time for it because this is a bootlicker. Right? I had to lie. I just muted him. I'm like, oh, no. I don't have I don't have time for your ass. Because he was like, oh, well, yeah. But the human race, we we we have to have government.
Really? And then the argument was every time that groups of people have come together, there's always been leaders. Yeah. I guess. But that government's a little bit different. I mean, it's like having somebody that you trust, that you go get advice from is one thing. Having somebody mandate what you do and how you live is quite another thing. Having a leader is sort of somebody that you can trust that you can go get advice from. When that leader says, you know what? I'm gonna take this one step further, and I'm gonna make you do what I say.
Well, that's no longer a leader. That's a fucking sociopath. And that's what we have. And the only way around it that I can see is to build around it. And the only way that you can build around you can't have a company. You can't say, hey. We're gonna have a new banking system. And my name's David Bennett, and I'm going to build it. And here's my bank. It's not going to work that way. It's all going to be done in the shadows. It's sad. But I like I said, if you've got another way out, man, boost the show and let me know what your thoughts are. Because other than just ignoring these people, detaching your life from these people as much as humanly possible, making yourself.
I was about to say small, but I don't mean that. What I mean is almost invisible except to your other friends, you know, the people that think like you. But you're you're like, we've got to reduce reduce our attack surface. We've got to start thinking of ourselves like nodes on a network, like on on a Bitcoin network. And the code that we run has to have reduced attack surfaces, and our apathy has allowed ourselves to have a very large attack surface. You can't even cut somebody's hair without getting a license. Are you kidding me?
[00:20:30] Unknown:
Really?
[00:20:31] David Bennett:
What I mean, yes. Actually, like I was about to say, what are they gonna do? Come in and arrest you? Yes. They are. Or they're gonna fine the shit out of you. And then when you don't pay that fine, then they will arrest you. So that's that's a huge attack surface when you think about what we're talking about. We're talking about cutting someone's hair. We're not talking about doing open heart surgery without a medical degree. You can't open a restaurant without a health permit. You can't you a business license. Think about it that way. What the hell does that even mean? I mean, if I get a driver's license, I had to take a written test. I had to study when I was, like, you know, 15.
By the time driver's ed in Texas was over, you're 16 years old, and you gotta take a written test, and you gotta pass that. And then you gotta sign up to have somebody sit in the car and watch you drive around for about twenty minutes to make sure that you know what the hell you're doing, and then you get a license to drive. Hell, I almost agree with that. Almost. Not not entirely. But what the hell is a business license? Do do you take classes to run a business? Do you take a test to run a business? I mean, how many tests would there be? How many different kinds of businesses are there? And then and then what what I run the business for, like, you know, a couple of days and somebody watches me, I don't know what, take money from a customer customer and put it in a cash register, and then I get a business license? No. No. No. No. It's fucking grift.
It's just grift. It it is it is you paying for the right. It's like you there used to be a there used to be a term for it in in, like, in old England when they had kings and queens and shit like that, and I can't remember what it is. But you're you're simply it's not a license. It's just it's just a bribe. Homage, if you were there's like I said, there's another word for it, but I just I don't know what it is. It's what I'm demonstrating here is that our attack surface is so large because we don't even question business license. We don't question, you gotta have a a license to cut hair.
Yeah. Well, hardly. Most people don't. They they'll just go do it. That's the demonstration of just how large our attack surface as a species is. Just something something to think about. Alright. Let's see. Checking in on Lola. Lola, tell us tell us some good news here, man. Come on. Tell tell us tell us and she has not updated. It's been fifty four minutes since Lola Leitz said, jury still deadlocked, partial verdict incoming. So here's what here here's what, let's see. I'm gonna show more on this one. The rage, which is Lola Leitz's, newsletter, she the rage also has a note out that says, jury in trial against Roman Storm says that it's deadlocked on some of the charges.
The court has asked the jury to reconsider. If the deadlock remains, the court will accept a partial verdict. Government may retry the remaining charges. So that just means that they are in in agreement on some of the charges, and we don't know in in what way they agree on. Do they agree that they're not guilty, or do they agree that they're guilty? But on some of these, they are not in agreement, which means that there is at least some people that think that they are are at least guilty on some charges, but we have no idea which ones. Alright. So I will keep, low elites, around while we finish up the rest of the story.
So if you're not listening to Once Bitten Once Bitten podcast with my good friend, Daniel Prince, you are missing out. There's interviews, real conversations, deep dives, and honestly, his daughter Lauren kicks things off with better questions than most podcasters do, including me. And I've been on that show a couple of times. It's always a blast. Once bitten, go listen. I'm gonna put the fountain link in the show notes so that you'll have it there so you can go right to it. Daniel's a good friend of mine. Please go listen to Once Bitten podcast. I think you'll be very pleased.
Now onto crowd health. How Andy Shuvnova, crowd health are dismantling medical fiat. Connor Japenic from Bitcoin News is writing it. What if someone told you that ditching health insurance could save you money, help you stack sats, and get better health care? Most Bitcoiners would be intrigued but skeptical. Don't trust. Verify. Right? But once you've seen how fiat money corrupts the monetary system, it's not a huge leap to recognize the same manipulation infecting health care. Andy Shuvnova, CEO of CrowdHealth, discovered the brutal reality of health insurance when his one year old daughter needed a routine fifteen minute procedure to repair a hole in her eardrum.
Despite paying $1,200 a month for the Affordable Care Act plan, the hospital billed $8,000 and his insurance company refused to pay it, declaring that it was medically unnecessary. Quote, I went through two rounds of appeals process, and they were still like, nope. We're not paying for it. And so at that point, I was just like, screw this. I'm not doing health insurance. This is such a scam, said Shubhnover. The immediate aftermath was not fun. So I called them. This is a quote. I called them and I said, I quit. And so then I went back to my wife and I was like, so we don't have health insurance anymore. And she's like, say what? Excuse me?
This would lead to the beginning of something entirely new. As a Bitcoiner since 2021 with 80% of his liquid assets in Bitcoin, Shubh Nova saw an opportunity to align crowd health with the ethos of sound money. Quote, Jimmy Song is a buddy of mine. He was like, instead of a big fiat pool in the back end, why not a Bitcoin pool? Regulatory constraints ruled out pooled Bitcoin funds for now, but CrowdHealth found a clever workaround. Members make two separate payments each month. A $55 advocacy fee covers bill negotiation, access to the app, and a personal care advocate.
And then there's the crowdfunding contribution, sent directly to other members to pay medical bills. For non Bitcoin members, this amount changes monthly based on need. For Bitcoin members, it's fixed at $140 In the Bitcoin plan, if the month's actual need is less than a $140, say, $75, then the leftover $65 difference is automatically deposited into their Fold account. It's a great way to stack. Ultimately, we're trying to create enough scale within our Bitcoin community so that all the transactions can be done over Lightning. His vision?
Replace the dollar as the medium of exchange
[00:28:13] Unknown:
in one of the largest industries on the planet, health care.
[00:28:19] David Bennett:
Quote, if we can do that, this goes a long way towards displacing the dollar, end quote. With 12,000 members and over 15,000 people helped, CrowdHealth is quickly gaining traction. A quarter of its user base are Bitcoiners. I wanna come back to that one. That's an interesting little snippet there. The back end Lightning infrastructure is already built. Bitcoin friendly doctors are reaching out to get paid in sats. Even one of the 10 largest hospitals systems in The United States has shown interest in accepting Bitcoin. Quote, if we can get patients who want to pay in Bitcoin, doctors who want to receive Bitcoin, and the infrastructure in place, then I think we've got something really special shooting over said.
The platform's members are hard to ignore, or rather the platform's numbers are hard to ignore. For medical bills over 2,500, members pay about 50% less than they would through traditional insurance. Imagine our health care system if all the prices were slashed by 50%, Shubh Nover said. That is a $2,500,000,000,000 impact. That's $2,500,000,000,000 going back into people's pockets, people who could be buying Bitcoin. And it's not just about saving money. Like Bitcoin, crowd health incentivizes sovereignty, not just financially, but physically. Quote, when you're personally responsible for your own stuff, your behavior starts changing.
I see this with Bitcoiners. They take better care of themselves. CrowdHealth even rewards members who stay metabolically healthy. Members with fasting insulin under five or low visceral fat receive a 10% discount with plans for that to rise 20% next year. They also don't accept smokers or those who are over two hundred and sixty pounds. Quote, we want people who are opting out of the system and taking responsibility shooting over notes. Quote, fifty percent of our babies in April were born at home. The national average is one point eight percent. That tells you the type of people we serve.
To skeptics, Shuv Novos offers real hold on. Shuv Novos offers real world results like like Brian, a crowd health member who accidentally shot himself. Oh, shit. Holy crap. This is ugly. Brian, a crowd health member who accidentally shot himself with a 44 magnum while fishing in Bexar County, Montana. The bullet traveled through his calf, thigh, and into his chest. He was airlifted to a hospital two hours away, placed in a coma, and hit with a million dollar bill. CrowdHealth negotiated it down to somewhere between 200 and $250,000, and the community funded that.
Quote, I get to tell that story now, Shubhnova said. I'm not excited Brian went through that. No kidding, dude. I'm excited that Crowd Health was his ally, not his enemy. Despite the philosophical overlap, many Bitcoin are still clean to traditional insurance. Shubhnover doesn't get it. Quote, if you're okay with leaving Fiat, why are you still afraid to leave Fiat health care? To him, the parallels are clear. Both systems are opaque, centralized, and built to extract. Both can deny access, dictate choices, and delay help when it matters most. Quote, they can say we're not paying for that, and that means you don't get it, Shubhnover explains. Quote, that's more control than the dollar ever had, at least with money.
You can choose how to spend it. But when it when it comes to health insurance, they can block care entirely. That affects your body, your time, and your life. For a community that prides itself on personal responsibility and opting out of broken systems, it's a contradiction worth examining, at least. CrowdHealth is a simple idea built and designed for people looking to take back control of their health and their health care. With subsidies, there you go, with subsidies and Medicaid support expected to tighten, millions will be searching for alternatives.
Crowd health is ready. The platform is expanding community groups. From Bitcoiners to carnivores, faith based families, and more, the idea is simple. Shared values, increased generosity, and accountability. Quote, we want people who are metabolically healthy, who are raising babies, who are living active lives, not people whose chronic conditions cost five times more because of bad lifestyle choices. The top crowd health expenses aren't chronic illnesses. They're sports injuries and pregnancies. That's a good sign. Quote, we want people to thrive. I want my customers at 80 years old out back playing wiffle ball with their grandkids. I want them to live hard and die fast, not suffer a slow, expensive decline.
And that's the vision, not just lower premiums or faster payments, but a health care system that actually makes you healthier. Crowd health is not health insurance. It's a parallel system where members fund each other directly based on shared values and mutual trust. That trust is the foundation, not bureaucracy, not claims departments, not fine print. Bitcoin doesn't rely on trust, it relies on code and consensus. But what unites both systems is the desire to escape manipulation and reclaim control. The dollar system is broken, so is health care. Crowded Health offers a path out of both, and here's the question scoo scooved over sorry, scooved over wants every Bitcoiner to ask, quote, what keeps you from decentralizing your health care?
If you're already orange pilled in your savings, maybe it's time to do the same with your health care. Are you still unsure? Then tweet your questions to at join crowd health. I guess that's on Twitter. Let me see. Is it on Twitter?
[00:34:26] Unknown:
Yeah. It's on Twitter. Anyway,
[00:34:31] David Bennett:
so the parallel system comes up again in this. It's not a parallel health system. It's not parallel doctors. It's not a parallel medical training. It's not parallel hospitals. It's literally short circuiting between the patient and the caregivers and that caregiver's infrastructure. And I'm talking about the hospital, not not not the infrastructure part of health insurance. And, certainly, we need to do something about the administrative bloat in hospitals, but that's that's on down the line. This is just short circuiting because right now, the health insurance plays the middleman between you and your health care.
If you build a parallel system that short circuits the bureaucracy of the health insurance, then water is going to find the easier path. Be like water, my friend. Be like water. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up a quarter of a point, but still only at $65.34. Brent, North Sea is up point 4% to $67.91. Natural gas is up to or up by 0.8% to $3.03 a thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 1.12% to $2.11. Shiny metal rocks doing well all except palladium, which is down 4%, but gold is moved up only slightly, however, $3,437 and 6 dimes. Silver is up a third of a point. Platinum is up 1.25.
Copper is up two thirds of a point. Most of ag is in the doldrums today. Biggest loser appears to be coffee, 1.6% to the downside. Biggest winner is chocolate, point 6% to the upside. Live cattle is up a third. Lean hogs down one point. Feeder cattle up a half. The Dow is up a third. The S and P is up three quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is up just over one, and the S and P Mini is crawling in the red sideways. Yay. And let's see where we at. Okay. 115,440 is the price of one Bitcoin. That is a $2,300,000,000,000 market cap.
You can get 34 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,902,550.82 of. Average fees per block are relatively low. There are it looks to be about 20 blocks in mempools around the world carrying 91,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority rates of four Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at three. 965 exahashes per second is the hash rate on a one week moving average, so we are climbing back higher. So you can do with that what you will. And from Clankers Coin Factory, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and, man, the donations really fell fallen off the cliff, and I don't know if it's because it's late summer activity or if people are just not enjoying the show. So if you if you don't enjoy the show, let let me know. I mean, it would be good to actually have some feedback because Psyduck's 740 sats only tells me Psyduck.
Turkey with 500 sats basically gives me a fountain link, which I think is the link back to this exact show. Is it? Yes. It is. It's the link back to this exact episode. And user 42752445 with 511 sats says, ahoy. Well, aye, captain. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Brazil's lower house is going to hold a hearing on creating a national Bitcoin reserve. Christopher Tepedino from Cointelegraph is gonna tell us all about it here. Brazil's house of reps will hold a hearing on August 20 to discuss a bill proposing the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve in the country. According to the house website, at least six institutions are slated to participate, including the Central Bank of Brazil, the Ministry of Finance, a crypto advocacy association, and various representatives from fintech companies and the banking sector.
The bill, which was introduced back in November 2024, seeks to allow up to 5% of the country's treasury funds to be used to buy Bitcoin, which translates to a potential investment of roughly $15,000,000,000 assuming the central bank's total reserves of about $300,000,000,000 as of February. According to the bill, the cryptocurrency reserve would protect international reserves against exchange rate fluctuations and, of course, geopolitical risks and promote the use of blockchain technologies in the public and private sector. Good god. We're we're still on blockchain. If approved by lawmakers in the house, the legislation will lead to the senate or rather head to the senate, the upper chamber of congress before being signed into law or vetoed by president Luis Ignacio da Silva.
The idea of a Bitcoin reserve in the country has been met with mixed response. Yeah. When do we talk about the IMF? That's that's all I wanna know. Quote, debating the creation of a sovereign Bitcoin reserve is in the public interest and vital to Brazil's prosperity, Pedro Guerra, chief of staff to vice president Geraldo Ackerman, said in March according to a translated statement cited by Poder three sixty. Quote, after all, Bitcoin is the digital gold, the gold of the Internet. Oh, that's an interesting way to put it. However, Brazil's central bank director of monetary policy, good lord, Milton David reportedly said it would be inappropriate to include crypto assets in the country's foreign exchange reserves.
After Trump signed an executive order in March to create a national strategic Bitcoin reserve, other countries followed suit. In June, a government agency revealed that Kazakhstan plans to start a strategic Bitcoin reserve likely from seized coins. India and Sweden have also been the subject of speculation regarding similar reserves. In descending order, the six countries that hold the most Bitcoin are The United States, China, The UK, Ukraine, Bhutan, and bringing up the rear, El Salvador.
[00:41:41] Unknown:
Are you dirty? You might wanna get clean
[00:41:45] David Bennett:
with SoapMiner. SoapMiner brand soaps. You can get them at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. Soapminer.com has handmade tallow soap. It's the best soap that I've ever used. It's the best soap that my wife says that she's ever used. My kids love it. I'm serious, man. It makes washing hands fun again because you actually feel them get clean, but it's more than that. It's a lotion. Now this is not what SoapMiner says. This is how I use SoapMiner brand soaps. I use it as a hand lotion.
[00:42:20] Unknown:
How? Just get your hand one of your hands wet.
[00:42:25] David Bennett:
Use the other hand to pick up the dry bar of soap, and then rub the soap along with your wet hand onto your dry hand, and it will sort of, like, strip off some of the tallow soap, and it goes on the backs of your hands and then you just kind of sit there and you just treat it like a lotion. You do I do that for about thirty seconds, sometimes up to a minute, put the soap down, turn on the like, turn on the water if the water is not already on and then actually start rubbing rubbing the soap off. You know, it's like start, you know, washing your hands. So that way it acts as two things. It acts as a lotion, a skin lotion, which does wonders for your skin and an actual get you clean soap, but it's also a shampoo for me. I wash my hair with SoapMiner brand soaps all the time.
And my honestly, my hair is actually gaining body. It's really weird. I got thick hair to begin with, but, dude, I I could even then, I can I can tell a huge difference? I shave with it, so it's a shaving cream. Right? This thing this stuff is amazing, and it lasts forever. And he's got all kinds of flavors of soap. Well, flavor is not a really good term, but he's got Earl Grey tallow. He's got goat's milk tallow. He's got lemongrass tallow. He's got orange and clove tallow. He's got redacted tallow, which is a it's got a bunch of, it's got a bunch of charcoal in it. So it's it it deodorizes and gets you really, really, really nice and clean. It's a nice big black bar of soap. I love it. There's rough cut tallow. There's tea tree. There's pine tar. There's cedarwood. There's peppermint, and there's lavender tallow. All these soaps are top notch.
They last forever, and they perform multiple functions. And it's built by a plaid, man. You can get 10% off of your purchase of all soap minor products using the code bitcoin, and that's 10% off when you use the code bitcoin and all one word over at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. Get clean today. Okay. Let's check on Lola Leads. Let's see if she's got any updates here. Okay. Waiting for it. I'm waiting for it. It's spinning. It's I see it spinning. Nope. Jury's still deadlocked. Partial verdict incoming. Okay. So I guess we're just gonna have to wait. Alright. Let's get on to the last one of the day. Michigan State Pension has boosted its Bitcoin ETF stake, signaling cautious confidence in crypto's future.
And let's see who's writing it. Helene Braun is writing this one for CoinDesk. The state of Michigan retirement system, also known as SMRS, SMRS, has notably expanded its investment in Bitcoin, perhaps, demonstrating either a growing appetite for risk or a firm belief in the cryptocurrency's future value. In a 13 f filing with the SEC on Tuesday, the pension fund revealed it had increased its position in the ARC Bitcoin ETF to 300,000 shares, which was up from a 100 and 10,000 the previous quarter. So they tripled almost their holdings.
At Bitcoin's current value around a 114,000, the current price of ARC b is $37.79 per share. This position is now valued at approximately approximately $11,300,000. That would be just 0.03% of the fund, $79,000,000,000 in assets under management. Pension funds are typically very risk averse, making it rare for them to allocate significant fundage into cryptocurrencies with only a few having done so. The fact that Michigan's pension system is increasing its holdings suggests a highly cautious but nevertheless positive outlook on Bitcoin's future value.
The fund also continues to hold the grayscale shit coin number 1 trust. Whatever, dude. If that's what you want if that's how you wanna play it, man, you you you go right ahead. Alright. One more shot to see if the rage or Lola has updated anything. No. They probably I I I didn't think that they would. Let me just, let's see. Roman storm trial. Let's see what the old Google has to say on news. See if there's anything that she's let's see. Nope. Last yeah. Judge pushes jury to end storm trial after days of gridlock. So they've been in deliberations for four days now, guys.
[00:47:22] Unknown:
And
[00:47:24] David Bennett:
I'm tentatively optimistic because of that, But we won't know we won't know until the the jury comes out and gives us a verdict, and they have not done so yet. So we will patiently wait and see. Meanwhile, 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.
Introduction and Current Events
The Rise of Health Insurance and Its Impact
Bitcoin Hubs: Tennessee vs. Texas
Building a Parallel System
