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- Strategy Made Money in Q3!
- France Hates its Citizenry
- Brazil Hates its Citizenry
- Bankman Wants OUT!
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https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/10/31/strategy-eyes-global-credit-expansion-with-focus-on-international-marketshttps://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/04/strategy-introduces-a-euro-denominated-preferred-stock-stream-following-q3-earnings
https://decrypt.co/347193/bitcoin-miners-iren-cipher-rise-billion-dollar-microsoft-amazon
https://cointelegraph.com/news/french-mps-ok-measure-tax-crypto-holdings-unproductive-wealth
https://atlas21.com/brazil-considers-30-tax-on-undeclared-cryptocurrencies/
https://www.theblock.co/post/377558/former-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-returns-to-court-seeking-new-trial-after-ftx-fraud-conviction
https://atlas21.com/united-states-seeks-maximum-sentence-for-samourai-wallet-developers/
https://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/scott-bessent-praises-bitcoin/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/lava-raises-200m-for-bitcoin-backed-line-of-credit-announces-new-borrow-rates-starting-at-5
https://cointelegraph.com/news/116m-balancer-hack-insiders-sophisticated-hacker-months-preparation
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It is 08:40AM Pacific Standard Time. Finally, we've got the the time change, which I think is evil incarnate, but that's another rant altogether. It is the November 4 already 2025, and this is episode 11 o three of Bitcoin. And we're gonna talk about Michael Saylor just a little bit. I I was surprised. Earnings came out for MicroStrategy or or, well, strategy, and I was I was surprised. There there actually may be a light at the end of the strategy tunnel. Then we're gonna talk a little bit about iron and this entire money circle jerk going on between all the FAANG companies and the outlying reaches such as Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure. We'll we'll I promise we'll get to that. France is just stupid at this point.
And, of course, as always, it is not the French people. It is the government. All governments are stupid. All the people that live underneath those governments, they're okay. It just for the love of God, just do something about your freaking French government, man. It's just it's disgusting. And Brazil, yeah, we'll talk about it. They're not exactly, not exactly turning the other direction. I'm I'm kinda surprised about this one as well. And then Sam Bankman fried. It's like this guy won't he's like a what what do they call that? Like a bad penny. He always turns up. Well, he's turned up again.
Then we're gonna talk about the samurai wallet developers, Scott Bessent. Lava is the company that we're gonna talk a little bit about. And then the balancer hack, just because that's where I normally put shitcoin bad news. Shitcoin bad news goes to the back of the show as a reminder. A, don't shitcoin. B, here's why you don't shitcoin. First up, CoinDesk, and it's written by James Van Stratten. Strategy Eyes global credit expansion with a focus on international markets. They're branching out, babies. Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Treasury Company strategy is exploring credit security opportunities in international jurisdictions as part of its goal to become the dominant global credit issuer.
I told you. I told you this was going to happen. Not just going international, but the issuer of credit needed to be on the table as a model of revenue generation for strategy. Quote, we are also actively laying the groundwork for credit securities in international jurisdictions, positioning strategy to become a dominant credit issuer globally, said Fong Li, president and CEO. This move underscores strategy's ambition to expand its financial footprint beyond The United States and position itself as a leader in other markets for Bitcoin backed and digital asset backed credit instruments. Strategy reported operating and net income for q three of $3,900,000,000 and $2,900,000,000, respectively.
These compare to the losses of 432,600,000.0 and $340,200,000 for the same quarter one year ago. So now earnings per share was in the $8.42 range compared to the $1.72 range in 2024. Let's pause and just digest this for a little bit just so you understand what what it was that I was trying to get at when I said that earnings came out and I was surprised. Strategy actually made money. For the first time in quite a long time, did they post not only actual positive revenue, but substantial revenue. I mean, $3,900,000,000 for the quarter is not bad.
Dude, it is it is not bad. Net income of $2,900,000,000 is not bad, considering the conversion that strategy has just gone through over the last four years where they've essentially bought a shitload of Bitcoin, put it on their balance sheet, and essentially ejected most of their old school software development and service regime. However, as I told you a couple of weeks ago, they've launched this new AI business strategy suite of software, and it looks like people have been buying it as far as I can tell because they, I don't know, actually made money compared to some very serious losses over the last, you know, couple of handfuls of quarters.
So maybe with the addition of actual positive revenue earnings coming alongside the Bitcoin on their balance sheet, although, as we all know, shit's going south yesterday and today and the day before and the day before that. It's I I know. I get it. It's it sucks. There's no other way to put it. But as far as strategy is concerned, they've actually crossed back over the Rubicon to a place where they can make money instead of just issuing debt instrumentation. This is a critical juncture for strategy and the rest of these Bitcoin strategy or Bitcoin, what do they call it, treasury strategies. Okay? So it's happening.
Y'all just hold on because, you know, maybe, just maybe, strategy will will show the way one more time. Again, not a strategy fan. I'm just saying I see a change. Anyway, for the last nine months of 2025, Strategy's operating income was $12,000,000,000 compared to a loss of 800,000,000 one year earlier, while net income rose to 8,600,000,000.0 from $500,000,000 loss, and earnings per share have surged to $27.71 from negative $2.71 per share. The company has 689,000,000 in annual dividend and interest obligations comprising $522,000,000 from cumulative preferreds, like Strife and Strike and the STRC debt instrument, and a $125,000,000 from noncumulative STRIDE or STRD.
Convertible bonds total $8,200,000,000 in notional value with a blended interest rate of 0.421%, translating to about $35,000,000 in annual interest, and 39% of that debt is in the money while the 2029 and 02/1930 coupon tranches remain out of the money by about $5,000,000,000 until their 2028 put dates. These notes collectively have a market value of $10,600,000,000. CEO, Fong Li, reaffirmed the goal of having no convertible debt by 2029, a point noted by S and P in strategies credit rating, while executive chairman Michael Saylor highlighted the company's multiple to net asset value or MNAV sitting at around 1.25, its weakest level since the start of 2024.
Saylor puts this compression to a number of factors such as maturing Bitcoin market with reduced volatility, the success of iBit, and the growing influence of derivatives, which dampens volatility, though Saylor expects digital credit expansion via the preferred equities to lift MNAV over time. Strategy has raised $20,000,000,000 year to date across six different securities, nearly matching the 22,600,000,000 raised in 2024. On the regulatory side, the firm clarified that under treasury and IRS interim guidance issued September 30, it does not expect to be subject to the corporate alternative minimum tax on unrealized Bitcoin gains. For the second consecutive quarter, strategy is qualified for potential inclusion in the S and P 500.
MicroStrategy shares are up 6% premarket, trading at $270 per share. So there you go. Strategy's not out of the game. Whether you love them or hate them, strategy's not out of the game, and those, revenue numbers look pretty good considering the past, I'm gonna say, two years. It hasn't well, at least a year and a half hasn't looked all that great. And then we come to the Bitcoin miner named Iron or Iron, however you wanna pronounce it. Bitcoin miners Iron, CipherRise, and multibillion dollar Microsoft and Amazon deals. Yay. Matt DeSalvo, tell us more from Decrypt. Iron stock rocketed up after the former Bitcoin miner and data center company said it had inked a $9,700,000,000 deal with Microsoft in the latest transaction between a magnificent seven firm and crypto infrastructure provider.
Sydney, Australia based Airon, which has pivoted to AI cloud computing, shot up nearly $73 per share. Wow. Oh, sorry. Shot up to nearly $73 per share Monday morning. New York time, a nearly 21% rise. Iron has since settled at $67.30. The deal will allow Microsoft to access NVIDIA's GB 300 GPUs as it presses ahead with its AI ambitions, Microsoft stock also rose on the news. Quote, this agreement not only validates Iron's or Iron's position as a trusted provider of AI cloud services, but also opens access to new customer segments among global hyperscalers, said their CEO.
The news came as Bitcoin miner Cipher Mining on Monday announced an approximately $5,500,000,000 fifteen year lease agreement with Amazon Web Services to provide turnkey space and power for AI workloads. Cipher will deliver 300 megawatts of capacity in 2026, including both air and liquid cooling to the racks. Nasdaq listed Cipher's stock rose on that news. It was recently trading about 22% higher. Top tech companies are making deals with data center firms in a bid to snap up compute. As demand for AI increases, Cypher in September signed a ten year, roughly $3,000,000,000 high performance computing collocation agreement with FluidStack, and that was backed by Google.
Google also, in August, said it was upping its stake in Bitcoin miner, Terra Wolf, by providing an incremental $1,400,000,000 backstop to support project related debt financing, bringing its total stake to 3,200,000,000.0. In the actual Bitcoin mining world, companies use warehouses full of computers to process transactions on the crypto network. Yada yada yada yada. And then for some reason, we start talking about the Bitcoin price, which is, as we know, down. So this is part of that giant pallet of money that's being circle jerked around all the FAANG companies. And on the periphery are all these AI compute companies and Bitcoin mining companies who are converting to AI compute.
And it does make me wonder. Because, like, you know, Microsoft is, you know, using this money that they got from Nvidia to basically buy stuff from Nvidia. And the circle jerk is much larger than that. There's, like, 15 companies, maybe even 20 or 25. And it looks to a lot of people, including me, that this is, in fact, the exact same amount of money that's basically being traded around, and every company is able to put that number on their balance sheet. So I wonder if these peripheral connections to AI, cloud compute, Bitcoin mining centers, and all this stuff is some kind of possible pressure release valve when this scheme, and it is a scheme, blows up in their face where they can point and say, no, it was all their fault. That's where the money went. Look at those guys. Yeah. Look at Iron, and look at, you know, the Terra Wolf, and look at all these other because they're oh, it's all the Bitcoin miners, which is what they'll say, even though most of them are basically AI compute providers now.
So I don't know that that you know, I don't know that for a fact, but it does make me wonder. So you watch this space because, you know, quote, more to come. But not from France. Well, yeah. Actually, there is more to come from France. It's not just this stupidity we're about to get into. I'm absolutely certain that the French stupidity will carry on well into next year. So from Jesse Coughlin, Cointelegraph, French members of parliament advance a measure to tax crypto as, quote, unproductive wealth. We've heard this before, but from other countries.
Now it's France. And all those other countries, by the way, are all part of the European Union, so do with that one what you will. Lawmakers in France have voted to advance an amendment in the country's tax laws that would impose levies on unproductive wealth, including some types of property and, of course, crypto holdings. Centrist MP Jean Paul Matte filed the amendment on October 22 with members of the National Assembly, the country's lower house, passing the amendment with a vote of a 163 to a 150 late on Friday with the backing of, of course, socialist and far right MPs. And I'm not sure how they define far right in France.
It doesn't sound like something that would be voted for by the, quote, unquote, far right over here on United States. But the measure will still have to survive the remainder of the parliamentary process as lawmakers look to pass a budget for 2026 and will have to pass through the senate before it becomes law. Betay's, or if that's how you pronounce his name, summary of the amendment said that the current real estate wealth tax law was economically inconsistent as it excludes unproductive goods from its plate, such as gold, coins, classic cars, yachts, and works of art.
Pausing just to remind you that these are all being looked at. They want a piece of all of it. If you own it, it's considered unproductive wealth. Let's say I had a $100,000 antique Lalique crystal vase that would actually fall under this. Even though even though maybe I got it because my dad died and it was part of the estate, now I have it and all it I don't actually have this thing. I I don't know if there's a piece of a leak worth a 100,000, but just pretend. Now it sits on my shelf as a reminder of my father's life. They want a piece of it, and they want a piece of it every year.
These people are fucking ghouls. The the oh, well, they're just people. You know what? No. No. They're not. They're really not. This kind of thing I mean, I can excuse some other things, but this kind of thing is pure theft. It is a shakedown of mammoth mafioso proportion, and it's got to be stopped. And the only people that can do it in France are the people of France. Get gussy up your panties, people. Stop this shit. This is gonna it's gonna kill you. Anyway, he claimed that this new tax, and this is Bete, would encourage productive investment as the current system did not account for assets that could contribute to the dynamism of the French economy.
The summary notes that unproductive goods would no longer be exempt under the law, and taxable assets have been expanded to include nonproductive real estate properties, such as precious objects, as I explained, and planes, as well as digital assets. Only those with unproductive wealth exceeding €2,000,000 will be taxed, rising from the threshold of €1,300,000 under current laws. The tax rate is also changed, charging a flat rate of 1% on taxable assets over the $2,000,000 or €2,000,000 threshold. The current real estate wealth tax is progressive ranging from no tax on assets below €800,000 and jumping to 1.5 when you hit above €10,000,000.
The amendment to include digital assets has seemingly disappointed local crypto enthusiasts, Eric LaVache, if that's how you pronounce it, the cofounder of crypto wallet maker, Ledger, said on Saturday that the amendment punishes all savers who wish to financially anchor themselves to gold and Bitcoin in order to protect their future. Quote, the political message is clear. Crypto is equated with the unproductive reserve, not useful to the real economy. This is a major ideological error, but revealing of a fiscal shift, punishing the holding of value outside of the Fiat monetary system. They don't have control over art and yachts yet. It's coming.
Stated that French crypto holders may be compelled to sell their assets to pay the tax if they have no other liquid assets and expressed concern that the €2,000,000 threshold could be substantially lowered, quote, there is a or there is certainly still a legislative process for this to be included in the 2026 budget, but the probability of it coming into effect on January 1 remains strong. So let those words echo. If you're listening to me in France, there is a strong possibility that if you own a yacht that is valued at 201 you're €201,000,000, that you're going to have to pay a tax of 1% on the value of that yacht every single year. And if somehow or another, the value of that yacht actually appreciates, and it most likely won't, it's a depreciating asset, but just pretend.
Then you're gonna pay a 1% tax on that, and you're gonna do it every single year. Every single year. You know what this might do to the, what we would call it, the art industry? All of a sudden, we might see a landmark issue where art that has been valued in multimillion dollar valuations somehow suddenly plummet magically in value. I wonder I wonder why that would occur. Okay. So sometimes you gotta cook. Sometimes you gotta use butter. You don't always have to use butter. You can use something like butter that is actually made from butter, and sometimes it's better than butter. It's great ghee. My friend, [email protected], that's g h ee is how you spell ghee. And [email protected] makes the most wonderful ghee. I'm telling you, it's clarified butter, and it's made by simmering butter to remove all the rest of the water, all the rest of the milk solids, and any other impurities.
And you get a golden, lactose free oil with a nutty flavor and a very high smoking point. Unlike regular butter, ghee is shelf stable and versatile. Shelf stable means you don't have to refrigerate it even after it's been opened. Now if you are gonna keep the ghee around and you've used it, like, a jar of this, like, once and you haven't refrigerated it for six months, it there could be issues. But if you never open it, that shit will stay on your shelf for years until you start deciding to use it. We use so much of it that when we open one, we don't worry about putting it in the fridge because within, like, a month, it's all gonna be gone. Get yours today.
Buy it in Bitcoin because if you're not selling your goods and services for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. It's where I bring plebs with goods and services just like you to plebs just like you who wish to buy those goods and services and buy them in Bitcoin. Greatghee.com has the best ghee in the business. Go to greatghee.com, say, Bitcoin and in the coupon code to get yourself a little bit of a discount, but it basically lets Great Gi know that I made a sale for him. And with the value for value advertising model that the Circle p is, he will be able to make a determination how much that sale was worth, and then he will get me on the other side with some Satoshis.
Now Brazil. Let's go down south. Brazil considers a 30% tax on undeclared cryptocurrency. Everybody wants their peace. That's the problem with criminals. They, for some reason, think they are entitled to something they did not earn. And it's not just France. It's not just the rest of the European Union. It's not just The UK. It's not just The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and god knows anywhere else that I can rattle off my tongue. No. No. No. It's this shits in Brazil and and other portions of Latin America. But they are preparing to change the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies with a new legislative proposal.
The government has introduced a bill that would allow citizens to declare previously hidden digital assets to tax authorities and paying a 30% charge. 30%. They want a third of it. They didn't earn it. They did nothing to attain that wealth, but, by God, they want a third of it. Again, ghouls and people who should not be treated as human beings. I'm sorry. That's the way it is. I look at these people and I say, you know what? You're not a human being. I don't know what you are, but I'm not going to actually give you any of the compassion or emotion or technical or non tech technical treatments that I would provide a fellow human being.
You, my friend, are persona non grata. That's the way that these people need to be treated in every aspect of their lives. Whether they're asked questions by the media or they're confronted by citizenry, they need to be treated as if they are not actually human so that they can really start feeling deep within their bones just how evil they have become. The legislative proposal contained in bill four fifty eight slash 21 was approved by the Brazilian National Congress on October 29 and now awaits a final vote in the senate. If passed, it will introduce the special regime for asset update and regularization, which is actually spelled almost like reap.
It's rearp, r e a r p, and it looks so much like reap that all I can think about it is that they're really trying to tell you what they're gonna do. They're going to reap what you have sown. They're going to take your property. They're gonna take your money. And they're not gonna ask permission, and they're not gonna say thank you. They're gonna have the attitude of, I deserve this. Scumbags. Investors who decide to comply will face a total rate of 30% split equally between tax and administrative penalties. The tax will apply to the value of assets as of 12/31/2024, so they're gonna backdate it. The digital asset sector in Brazil is experiencing growth, strong growth.
According to a recent Chainalysis report, transaction volumes in the country reached 1,700,000,000,000.0 Brazilian rials between mid twenty twenty four and mid twenty twenty five. That is a 110% increase on a twelve month period. Stablecoins are the main driver of the growth used for international remittances, commercial payments, and corporate transactions. In this growth context, the government views the new tax as a dual tool. On one hand, it provides regulatory clarity, but on the other, it represents an opportunity to increase national revenue.
You mean an opportunity to steal from you blind without any ramifications or repercussions whatsoever. If I tried to do that to a fellow citizen on the street, that's called theft and I'd be arrested, and then I'd be convicted, and I would go to jail. But these fucking people, they just don't care anymore. As long as there's a law, that's fine. They'll take whatever you have. However, their proposal is not universally supported. Gee, you think? Opposition lawmakers accuse the government of reintroducing tax measures that had previously been rejected.
Politicians such as Sostenes Cavalcante and Gibson Marquez have called the initiative a government expedient to raise taxes and tax revenue while supporters argue it is necessary to strengthen the state budget for 2026. How about you start managing money better? Why not do that? Probably impossible. Let's run the numbers. Energy sector is mixed. We got Brent North Sea oil down point 59% to $64.51 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate is down point six to sixty and sixty seven cents. Natural gas doing its thing, being the hedge, point 87% to the upside now at $4.30.
Gasoline is up point 4% to a buck 95, and Murbin crude is down point 7% to $66.82. Shiny metal rocks having just as much of a bad day as Bitcoin is. Palladium is down one and a half. Gold is down point 8% to under 4,000 again. Early this morning, it had topped 4,000, but now no. Not sorry for you. 3,979 an ounce. Platinum is down 1.4. Silver is down a point. Copper is down 2.15%. Ag is mostly in the red this morning. Biggest winner is cocoa, point 85% to the upside. The biggest loser appears to be sugar. Yep. Sugar, 2.7 to the downside. Live cattle having a bad day again.
1.38% to the downside. Lean hogs down a half. Feeder cattle down one and one half. Equities aren't doing well either today. It's like, basically, everybody's just shitting the bed. S and P is down point 75%. Nasdaq down one and a third. Dow is down a third of a point, and the S and P Mini is down one full half of one full point. A $101,340 brings us scathingly close to under a $2,000,000,000,000 market cap, which I don't like. It is standing right now at $2,020,000,000,000. We can only purchase 25.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,944,204.29 of.
Average fees per block are low, 0.02 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There's about 30 blocks carrying 54,000 unconfirmed transactions. High priorities get you in at 2 Satoshis per v byte. Low priorities get you in at one. Still Zed Hash territory for the hash rate on the Bitcoin network. It's all the security you can use and more. 1.11 Zed Hash's per second. So there you go for a nice row of sticks. From demon possessed AI, which was last Friday's episode of Bitcoin and I got Psyduck six I'm sorry. Seven six two side act.
Tulips with 12 o two says, I love the payment versus savings argument because both sides are trying to tell the most disagreeable cohort on the planet what to do with their money. Like Sailor telling Bitcoiners never to sell their Bitcoin, but proceeding to buy billions of the shit himself. Who is going to sell it to you, Mike? I love the news because, yeah, absolutely everything is absurd and funny. The c z buying a pardon, SBF asking for one, actually more like begging for one there, tulips. Politicians abusing the system and almost everybody I know in real life walking with a smile, trying to be good, and living a happy life.
The world as we know it is just tulips, and it is going to zero. Psyduck with another 762 says Psyduck. God's death with two thirty seven. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. Wartime with a 133 says, I don't know. I can't read the freaking emoji. I think it's a ghost. I think he's saying boo. And then let's see. What else we got? Jay with 20 1 100 sats. Alright. SBF is never getting out. Happy white paper day. PS, my name is currently a joke. You can ignore all the other stuff after Jay. Okay. I I I I get you, pal. I get you. Nah. Naka's eighteen with 210 says, hashtag live aloha.
Pies with one twenty one says, emojis I can't read. And that looks like it's it, man. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Former FTX chief executive officer Sam Bankman Fried returns to court seeking a brand spanking new trial after FTX fraud conviction Sarah Wynne from the block. Jailed former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried's case is back in court as he looks to get a redo after being found guilty two years ago on multiple fraud charges. Bankman Fried filed an appeal in September 2024 and asked for a new trial. And at the time, a lawyer representing the former executive criticized New York judge Lewis Kaplan's handling of the case and said Bankman Fried should not have been blocked from introducing certain evidence.
The matter is now in front of the US Court of Appeals for the second circuit on Tuesday morning to decide the next steps. Bankman Fried was found guilty. Yes. We know. We don't have to go through it. Samson Enser, a partner at Cahill Gordon and Rheindell LLP and former federal prosecutor said, Bankman Fried's defense faces a steep uphill battle, but said, listening to the arguments and tone of the questioning from the circuit judges will be telling, quote, of the arguments raised by SBF, the most interesting and significant to me is whether the trial court erred in limiting the evidence in support of his alleged, quote, presence of counsel defense that SBF was permitted to tell the jury about and whether any such error was harmless or would warrant a retrial, Inzer said in an email to the block. Bankman Fried's lawyers had previously argued that the former CEO acted in good faith in relaying or relying on his attorneys at the exchange.
Howard Fisher, partner at Moses and Singer LLP, said appellate courts usually give district court judges considerable flexibility in how they conduct trials. Fisher was also previously senior trial counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, quote, unless there are multiple errors which, taken together, deprive the defendant of a fair trial, they will strain to uphold the behavior of the trial judge. It is not likely that the circuit court will reverse based on the trial judge's conduct nor comments, Fisher said in an emailed statement.
If questions are sparse during the hearing and the judges only ask pro form a questions, the original decision will likely be upheld. Quote, the attitude of the panel will also be an indication, although not determinative. Do they treat the issue raised by Bankman Fried seriously, or do they indicate by their tone that they do not, end quote. And that's what Fisher said. So what's next? Fisher said the court will issue an opinion over the course of the next several months. Months. If there is no appeal, Bankman Fried's parents, Joseph and Barbara, will push harder for a pardon, Fisher said, pausing to say, that should be backdoored right now.
Okay. I don't wanna be pardoned. He doesn't deserve a pardon. But if I was his parents, I wouldn't be waiting. I would be, like, I would be all over the pardon. Waiting until the result of this is freaking stupid. Okay? That's just that's just me being logical and practical, I guess. But whatever. His parents are looking to get their son a pardon from Trump following other attempts to pardon high profile crypto figures, the best known being CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. However, Bankman Fried's pardon, chances seem slim.
He was one of the largest donors to the Biden campaign in 2020. He donated $5,200,000 to defeat Trump at the time. Ahead of his hearing, Bankman Fried was active on x. On September 30, he wrote in a 15 page document, 15 pages to say that Alameda Research and FTX were, quote, never insolvent, and that customer funds could have been repaid in full shortly after their twenty twenty two liquidity crisis. Sam, that is not how this works. It doesn't hindsight has always been 2020, and that is exactly why bankruptcies proceed the way they proceed. Whatever you had at the time that this shit went down is what you had. You were insolvent.
Coming back two years later and saying, if you would just waited, like, a half a year for all this shit to go down, we would have been able to pay everybody back. They didn't know that at the time, and I guarantee you, but all the people in that bankruptcy were like, what if we did wait? But that's not the way the procedure works. They have a protocol. It is tight. It is known. It is proven. It's what they do. This shit this kid, I'm sorry, not a human. Not human. Entirely to what do they call it? Narcissistic to be walking the planet with actual good wholesome human beings that are just trying to get their shit together and put a smile on their face and love their kids.
But, no, We gotta share our air and space with these fucking miscreants all the goddamn time, and I'm honestly kinda sick of it. I really am. Just trying to do my best. You guys are just trying to do your best, and here we just basically see this flaunting of wealth by some of the most miscreant individuals ever to rise from the slime and filth. United States is seeking the maximum sentence for the samurai wallet developers. They want them to go to hell. I thought it was supposed to be a pro crypto administration, but I guess not. Atlas21.com says, according to the rage, the United States Department of Justice has requested the maximum sentence of five years imprisonment for Keone Rodriguez and William Hill, the creators of Samurai Wallet, who plead guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission service earlier earlier this year.
According to the prosecution, the developers did not simply provide a privacy tool used indirectly by criminals, but deliberately solicited criminal activity by designing the service specifically for money laundering. The defense has instead requested that the sentence be limited to time already served in detention. The prosecution's memorandum states that the developers facilitated the laundering of at least $237,000,000 from drug trafficking, dark net marketplaces, computer intrusions, fraud, murder for hire schemes, and, of course, the ever loved and present child pornography site. The allegations related to murder for hire and child porn had never actually been mentioned previously.
Yeah. They they do that at the federal level, dude. They introduce new terminology after you thought everything was said and done. But, no, here we are, wrap it in child porn, and let's let's let's let's run with it. Quote, the defendant's crimes are not based on a regulatory gap, but on the unequivocal desire, intent, and actions taken to help criminals launder money and evade sanctions through samurai wallet. That's what the indictment reads. The charge of conspiracy to evade sanctions, which also carried a maximum sentence of twenty years, was dropped, thank god, in exchange for the developer's plea of guilty.
Yeah. I probably would have done that too. The prosecution argues that samurai wallets very design. Now listen to these words very carefully. I design something. I have a like, let's say I'm a designer. I design a thing. Right? I I look at it and I see a particular design, but that's not going to translate. My intent in the design does not translate to anybody else. Why? Because they're not inside my head. They don't know what my intentions were. They don't know how I view the thing I designed. Somebody else could go, I cannot believe you just designed a sculpture of child pornography.
And I'd be like, what are you talking about? It doesn't matter because they can because I can't be in their head. Right? This this notion of the intent of the design is a it's evil. It should be thrown out as an argument. It's it cannot be substantiated. It is not quantitative. And by that me I mean, you can't put numbers to it. You can't tell me what my intent was. You don't know. You don't have an fMRI of my head and, I don't know, linked to some kind of fucking ape in the in the jungles that's translating the f r m I data for you so that you can say, oh, yeah. He was definitely intending to do this and this and this. That's, again, that's not how this works.
See, this is this all these people, whether they're financial idiots, tax regulatory idiots, justice idiots, they're they're out of control. We our apathy have literally unlocked their gates, and we're letting them roam out of the zoo all on their own without any thoughts as to what they were going to eat. Our apathy was our apathy was the opening of the cage. Right? The the walls of the zoo, whatever the opposite of apathy is, the wall that whatever the opposite of apathy is was the walls of the zoo that kept the non humans at bay. And through apathy, we've lit those bars and cages and locks and doors erode into dust.
And now all the nonhumans are walking around actual human beings and they're hungry and they wanna eat. Where do you think they're gonna get their meals from? Anyway, the prosecution continues by citing how the website boasted that its ricochet functionality could assist customers in further obscuring the link between deposits and withdrawals, describing it as a premium tool that adds extra steps of history to your transaction, allowing customers to, quote, confuse blacklists and protect themselves against unfair account closures by third parties. I see nothing in there that says basically allows money laundering.
Now they know that that would be able to be done with their with their stuff. But, essentially, when you're designing for privacy, you're designing all of privacy. It's about privacy. What you can do with that privacy is strictly up to the individuals. It is not up to me to design something to provide containment in certain types of things that people might do. That's impossible. But a controversial element of the case concerns the fact that the prosecution sentencing memorandum makes scant reference to the charge of conspiracy to operate a unlicensed money transmission service, the only charge to which the developers have plead guilty.
Despite the dismissal of charges for conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to evade sanctions, the prosecution's document relies almost entirely on the assertion that the developers built samurai wallet to profit from money laundering and sanctions evasion going so far as to state that, quote, Rodriguez and Hill were promoting samurai to criminal dark net users and not to mainstream cryptocurrency users. I remember being told several times that samurai wallet was good, and I had no intention of dark net or money laundering activities. I am I'm the cryptocurrency user these guys are saying they never sold to. They were they were marketing it directly to me.
So that shit's just false. Anyway, the memorandum cites an exchange on x between Rodriguez and a samurai user about censorship resistance. Rodriguez referred to Bitcoin as black market money. Rodriguez and Hill were not merely passive observers. They wanted and intended criminals to use samurai to launder proceeds for crimes, and they advertised samurai accordingly, citing pages of private messages and forum posts in which the developers referred to samurai as similar to a laundry service. Okay. That's a little bit a little bit over the line there. Hill has since admitted to regretting our approach to marketing the surface.
Yeah. I'll bet. Yeah. They're going for the maximum of this thing, boys and girls. Ladies and gentlemen, the maximum. You can say what you want about samurai, but, honestly, they they really need to be able to get out. They've already been there for two and a half years. It's it's time. It's it's over. It's done. If they do something again and they use the term laundry service, then maybe go revisit everything, but it's over. Let's go to Scott Bessett, who's praising Bitcoin. Says, quote, it never shuts down. Bitcoin news, Alex Larry writing US Treasury secretary Scott Bessett marked the seventeenth birthday of the Bitcoin white paper in a way that really sent shock waves to both the world of politics and digital assets.
He posted on x, praising the reliability of Bitcoin while tossing a little jab at senate democrats because of the ongoing shutdown. He says in the tweet, seventeen years after the white paper, the Bitcoin network is still operational and more resilient than ever. Bitcoin never shuts down. Senate Dems could learn something from that. So he took Bitcoin and turned it into a political bludgeon. Let that sink in. He's not just praising Bitcoin. Actually, he's more turning it into a political bludgeon than he is actually praising Bitcoin. Let's let's be very honest about what Besson just did. Oh, sure. But he praised it. Not really.
He praised it insofar as to sheathe the bludgeon in some spiky, you know, stuff like barb wrapping back barbed wire wire around your Louisville Slugger like that dude in that zombie series did. Right? That's what I'm talking about. That's the praise. But a baseball bat is a baseball bat. Doesn't matter what it's ripped in or what it wrapped in. It hits you upside the head. Son of a bitch hurt. Seventeen years after the Bitcoin white paper, it's still operational. It never shuts down. The secretary's message came at a moment when the US government has been shut down for over a month.
And this left around 900,000 employees plus millions of working, without getting paid. Besson's point of comparison between the scarce digital assets uninterrupted operation and the political chaos on Capitol Hill certainly got people's attention. October 31 is, of course, the special day, the anniversary of the dropping of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008. Besson's post turned that anniversary celebration into a broader and political economic statement. His choice to tag senate Democrats underscored the partisan nature of Washington's feed funding deadlock, which has now become one of the longest shutdowns in US history. While the post was short, its impact was immediate.
Traders, analysts, and policymakers flooded x with reactions. They saw it as a policy signal from the treasury. That would be a mistake. Do not make that assumption. So watching somebody beat somebody's ass with a baseball bat right in front of you does not mean he wants to buy you lunch. You actually may be the second person that he clubs to death with said baseball bat. Just saying. But James Lavish, a director at Bitcoin treasury firm Strive, wrote, quote, pay attention to the signals. This is a signal, end quote. I guess. Many interpreted the statement as confirmation that the Trump admin remains committed to digital assets following a series of comments and policies in recent months. And then they kinda go on into a brief history of what's going on, and we don't need it. Because everybody took this Bessent quote to heart and saying, see?
Bessent understands Bitcoin. Bessent loves Bitcoin. Bessent even knows the anniversary day of the Bitcoin white paper. And he knows exactly how many none of that shit. None of that shit matters. That's not a fucking signal, ladies and gentlemen. The only thing that you got signaled is that he's got a staffer that knows enough about this stuff so that he can compose a tweet that Bessett probably didn't even write himself. And I don't know, find something about Bitcoin not shutting down, that much I know, drag out the particulars, and then tag the senate dims and say, learn your lesson.
That's that's that's what happened. Alright. This isn't Bessette giving the nod to Bitcoin. Everybody calm down. Oh my god. Meanwhile, lava, l a v a, that's right. Like, you know, molten lava raises 200,000,000 for Bitcoin backed line of credit, announces new borrowing rates starting at 5%. Is this a loan company? We're gonna find out for Bitcoin Magazine. It's written by Jean or Juan Gault. Lava, a global platform for Bitcoin backed loans, today announced a $200,000,000 funding round in the launch of a new product, a Bitcoin line of credit.
Ah, the product offers similar functionality to securities backed loan or home equity line of credit, but users' ability to flex flexibly borrow against their Bitcoin as collateral without the monthly payments or term limits common in the Bitcoin backed loans market today. According to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, the financing includes a combination of venture and debt capital and brings two new high profile angels on board. Oh my god. Anthony Pompliano, Bitcoin investor and entrepreneur as well as a guy named Eric Jackson, an activist, a public markets investor, and a founder of EMJ Capital. Sorry. I meant activist public markets investor.
He's one of these dipshits that go, you're not you're not ESG compliant, so I'm going to short your stock. See? I'm doing good for humanity. I'm an activist. No. You're a billionaire. You can afford to make stupid errors. It's not gonna affect how much steak you get to eat, you dipshit. Quote, I'm thrilled. To be joining Lava as an investor, says Jackson, Shizen and his team are world class, and they've been incredibly innovative on the product side. Not only is their revolving line of credit a first in the industry, but they've also managed to secure the lowest borrowing rates for their users, beating the rates of much older incumbents in the space. This is hands down the best product in the market, and lava is setting a new standard. Oh, it's a new standard for Bitcoin backed loans, end quote.
As a result of the new fundraising, Lava now offers what may be the lowest fixed interest rates available in the Bitcoin lending market starting at just 5% for year long durations. Quote, the interest rate will update yearly, and you can simply leave your line of credit open to refinance at a new rate if you want. According to the announcement blog, law of his line of credit functions like a revolving account. Users can borrow, repay, and borrow again at any time with the interest rates only being marked for the amounts borrowed, not the total capacity of the loan. Quote, we believe that this is the best possible borrowing experience for Bitcoin holders.
You can get dollars instantly. You don't have to worry about monthly payments or loan durations, and you can get access to the lowest fixed interest rates. This has been their most requested product, and it will be Lava's core focus moving forward, said Chezin Maridia, the CEO. Beyond the 5% fixed interest, the line of credit carries a capital charge equal to 2% of the largest outstanding balance you have on your line of credit during the year as explained in the FAQ. For example, if the user's loan balance reaches $5,000 at some point throughout the borrowing period, the capital charge for the entire year is $100 bringing the total cost of the bitcoin backed loan to roughly 7% yearly, a rate that remains competitive with the bitcoin backed loans on the market.
As many companies also have similar fees on top of their interest rates. Loans could be up to 50% of the total USD value of the Bitcoin balance, and the Lava app, a powerful and modern closed source self custody wallet, it's closed source. Watch out, guys. Most of the loan products and the USD payment rails could be accessed without personal information, making Lava stand out among its competitors, placing it somewhere between pure DeFi and more modern crypto savvy financial institutions. Lava also has a liquidation protection feature, which can draw from the Bitcoin balance deposited into the app and add it to the collateral account to protect users from liquidation in the case of extreme price volatility in Bitcoin.
50% loan to value is good. I mean, I don't know anything about lava. I don't know if all these guys are completely full of shit or not. But one thing that stands out through this entire thing, it's not the 2% capital, it's not the 5% loan, it's not the fact that it's a line of credit. I don't care about Anthony Pompliano being in on it. I don't care what Eric says. It's the 50% loan to value. I gotta give them 1 Bitcoin to get $50,000 worth of a line of credit. That that is a green flag. That is a green flag. Not a red flag. This is a green flag. It says at least somebody somewhere gets it.
Because there was there BlockFi did not have 50%. They had much higher, and people were getting liquidated all the time out of BlockFi until they went belly up alongside their friend Sam Bankman Fried and that girlfriend of his, Carolyn, whatever her last name is, with FTX and Alameda. So that one tidbit alone lets me kinda breathe easy that maybe these guys aren't just complete idiots, Unlike shitcoiners who keep thinking they're going to beat Bitcoin and then get hacked, like the balancer hack, which Zoltan Vardai from Cointelegraph tells us about. That hack shows signs of a months long planning by a very skilled attacker.
That's the headline. The on chain transactions of the exploiter behind the $116,000,000 balancer hack point to a sophisticated actor. The decentralized exchange and automated market maker balancer was exploited for a $116,000,000 on Monday. That was yesterday. Blockchain data shows the attacker carefully funded their account using small 0.1 ether deposits from cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash to avoid detection. Conor Grogan, director at Coinbase, said the exploiter had at least 100 ETH stored in Tornado Cash smart contracts indicating possible links to previous hacks. Quote, the hacker seems experienced.
One, he seeded the account via the 100 ETH and 0.1 tornado cash deposits, no OPSEC leaks. Since there was no recent 100 ETH tornado deposits, likely, that exploiter had funds from previous exploits, end quote. Grogan noted that users rarely store such large sums and privacy mixers, further suggesting the attackers professionalism. Maybe he just got lucky. Who knows? Anyway, Balancer offered the exploiter a 20% white hat bounty if the funds were returned in full amount minus the reward by Wednesday. Quote, our team is working with leading security researchers to understand the issue. Oh my god. You built a system, it got hacked, and you're just now trying to understand the issue, which means that you don't understand what you built.
Remember what I was talking about with design and the intentions behind the design? Generally speaking, when I design something, I really look at it. I really look at it. Where where can this fail? These people build these products, and they have no idea how this shit works. That's a red flag. The balancer exploit was one of the the most sophisticated attacks we've seen this year according to Dede Levid, cofounder and CEO of blockchain security firm, Cyber's, quote, the attackers bypassed access control layers to manipulate asset balances directly, a critical failure in operational governance rather than core protocol logic. Yeah, dude. It's still the design of the system.
Hey. Whatever, dude. Lavid said that the attack demonstrates the static code audits are no longer sufficient. Oh, boy. Instead, he called for continuous real time monitoring to flag suspicious flows before funds are drained. The infamous North Korean Lazarus Group has been known for extensive preparations ahead of their biggest hacks. And according to blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis, illicit activity tied to North Korean cyber actors sharply declined after 07/01/2024 despite a surge in attacks earlier that year. The slowdown ahead of the Bybit hack signaled that the state backed hacking group was, quote, regrouping to select new targets according to Eric Jardine, Chainalysis cybercrime's research lead. Quote, the slowdown that we observed could have been a regrouping to select new targets, probe infrastructure, or it could have been leaked or linked to those geopolitical events. It took the Lazarus Group ten days to launder a 100% of the stolen Bybit funds through the decentralized cross chain protocol, Thorchain, Cointelegraph reported on the force. So another hack, another $116,000,000 gone, another set of people who built a thing that they don't understand what they built. It goes on and on and on and on and on.
It's just I mean, honestly, the whole damn thing is amazing. Hold on for a second. I wanna look at I I ran across something. Oh, here. This. Levid said the attack demonstrates that static code audits are no longer sufficient. And here here's where you prick your ears up on this one. Instead, he called for continuous real time monitoring to flag suspicious flows before funds are drained. Is it possible that this hack was done by possibly, I don't know, governmental agencies so that they would have a reason to surveil everything?
Is it possible that this isn't just some guy in his grandma's basement, you know, with zits all over his face who just wants a shit ton of money? Is it possible that they're basically building a, you know, an ironclad reason why everything you know what? Screw it. This is why we Bitcoin. You say whatever you put whatever regulation, you gotta declare your Bitcoin. Good luck with that. I'm not gonna declare fucking shit. I'm I mean, if I sell some, that I declare. Where'd you find it? I don't know. I mean, it's it's a terrible argument. I'm gonna get in trouble for it, but somebody's gotta do something. Somebody's gotta provide resistance. Otherwise, all these nonhuman entities walking around in the street because our apathy and letting our guard down let them go and not providing them any resistance whatsoever is not helping.
It's just it's just not helping. I mean, so keep it all keep it all together, people. I know that it's a bad day. It was a bad day yesterday. It's a bad day right now. I get it. I really do. Nothing is escaping this, though. Cattle ranchers are just as pissed off as Bitcoiners, just as pissed off as people in the equity markets, just as pissed off as gold holders, just as there's nowhere safe. You can't put your money anywhere except in yourself, building up your own skills. Use it maybe maybe I don't know. Use it to get meditation training. You know, spend money on on on a coach that can help you learn how to meditate. If that's not your bag, then use it to, you know, buy better food for yourself.
Yeah. Use it to better yourself. You are the best investment you will ever make. It's not the house. It's not a boat. It's not a plane. It's not a bar of gold. It's not even Bitcoin. It really is yourself. So in times where you look around and you say, there is nowhere I can put my money and this is one of those times, honey, then maybe you should look inward. Maybe you should look at yourself. What can you do? What can you spend some of your money on instead of trying to figure out what stock is not going to shit the bed? What if you spit that money on yourself? I'm not talking like a new suit.
I'm not talking about a new car. I'm talking about something that will actually impart something permanent to you, something that you can carry with you if all of your possessions somehow disappear. You're naked in a field. You spent, I don't know, let's say a thousand dollars on something a year ago. You're naked in a field. You have nothing. But you have whatever it is that you spent that thousand dollars on. And, again, let's not presume we're talking about memorizing a 24 word seed phrase in your head. Let's not talk about Bitcoin for just a fucking second and just look at yourself. What did you learn that you now know how to do no matter where you land or what color clothes you put on when you finally decide that you're done being naked? Right? You see what I'm saying?
What skill can you get that will better your life for the rest of your life? Because we are in that phase. I'm looking at around and I'm like going and for me, other than Bitcoin, there's no place to put my money, but I'm also not a complete idiot. If I was putting money in Bitcoin at a $125,000, I'm down on that. Peter Schiff would say, see, you're finally getting it. No. I'm not getting it because I'm still buying Bitcoin. It's like, you know, like, the long term play is just as important as the short medium term play. But the longest play that you can make is asking yourself the question, when do I die?
And before that day, how do I make myself better? And what will that cost? And what will I gain? That's the investment, especially in times where everything's in the red. Think about the close your eyes. This is this is the exercise for you to go home with right after you listen to this. Close your eyes. Just be quiet. Right? Just for a second. What's the first thought in your head about what you wanna learn? Think about it. I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Cold open, time change rant, and episode setup
Earnings details, debt structure, and MNAV compression
Market rundown: energy, metals, ag, equities, Bitcoin metrics
Boostagram mailbag and listener shout‑outs
Why we Bitcoin: resistance, regulation, and self‑reliance
Invest in yourself: skills over assets in red markets
Closing thoughts and sign‑off