Join me today for Episode 933 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Putin Minin'
- Tax Free Bitcoin?
- OKX Terminating Tornado Cash Associated Accounts
- Another Company Buys Bitcoin
- It Took 7 Years to Freeze Cryptoqueen Assets
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-tax-free-zone-us-economic-dominance
https://cointelegraph.com/news/okx-terminates-tornado-cash-accounts-compliance
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/08/08/ftx-alameda-ordered-to-pay-127b-to-creditors-by-us-judge/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/08/08/medical-data-company-onemednet-latest-to-pursue-bitcoin-treasury-strategy-after-capital-raise/
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https://decrypt.co/243716/onecoin-cryptoqueen-ruja-ignatovas-assets-frozen-by-uk-court
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[00:00:00]
David Bennett:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 9th day of August 2024.
This is episode 933 of Bitcoin, and I am back from the mountains in Colorado much to my chagrin. Much of my wife's do chagrin and much to my children's chagrin. Yeah. When you when you're in that kind of beauty, you just you just don't wanna come home. And it's not just about the beauty. You know, we were hanging out for the entire two and a half weeks that we were up there with my sister, so we were all having family meals together. And that right there, I mean, I could probably do that in a, you know, some kind of rundown ass house inside of a junkyard, and it would still be a kind of a special thing because there's nothing like there's just nothing like family. It just if you think that there is there's not. That's the only real wealth that that we have is ourselves, our health, each other, each other's health, and to be in close proximity together. Ever after that everything else is just kind of a a distraction, honestly. And we have many distractions.
After, after episode 932, that's when the bottom fell out of the market and the guys over in Japan decided to well, essentially, well, they didn't really do anything. The market itself just kinda said, look. That that raise that you did, of 25 basis points at the Central Bank of Japan, Yeah. That that we just can't do that. But what I found odd was that it was it took a while for that, signal to propagate through the market. And on all, you know, all of a sudden, everybody going, you know, I'm I'm I'm out. I can't. We we just we just can't. Like a lot of banks were sitting there going, we're holding these bonds. You've done it again. This time, it's Japanese bonds, and you've raised your basis points. And now, the face value of the bonds that we're using to back as collateral our bank and and put it on our books has now lost so much value that we've gotta do something. And the next thing you know, ripple effects just blasted out through everything and bitcoin was the first to get hit because bitcoin is the most liquid market and it trades 20 fourseven365 So the signal was there with Bitcoin before anybody anybody had a chance to even blink.
The signal was was being flashed by the Bitcoin market because all the other legacy markets were actually closed and after that I was gonna do I really was I promise I was gonna do a show that day and on Tuesday but we were leaving on Wednesday house has to be cleaned It's the last days that we're gonna be up there. So that's that's why I said, you know what? This will I'm just gonna I'm just gonna lay off. There's nothing I can say about what's going on that's gonna make anybody feel any better at all it probably would have been a show with with like 15% of the listeners as usual because everybody freaked out and this, you know, it wasn't that this time it's different. This time it's not different. It this time it's the exact same as all the other things. If anybody says, you know, oh, well, this time it's different. The only way that it could be Everybody's exhausted. I've heard more talk about burnout.
Everybody's exhausted. I've heard more talk about burnout over the last couple of weeks than I have in in quite a while but what do you expect? We've been at this you know since 2009. People are gonna fall away. You know people are. People are gonna fall away like Mutiny Wallet. That was a real surprise to me. You know? The, quote, our company is exploring alternative products. We'll be shutting down the wallet at the end of the year, but you can still self host. And thank god they're allowing that I mean I I think that there's a real opportunity for for these projects that started out open source to just go ahead and and say look we're not going to do it anymore but hey here's all the code knock yourself out and I think what we'll see in the future is a lot of resurrections I I really do not zombies just resurrections of projects where the original founders, the original people that that did the the coding just they've gone away, but the project itself gets picked back up in some form, fashion, or another.
And I that's what I'm that's what I think we're gonna start seeing. We're gonna start seeing a sort of a second layer of some of these projects that we thought were dead or that we're very sad to see go away like I'm very sad to see Mutiny Wallet go away I'm very sad of the underpinnings of of why they're going away. It seems that one of the developers of Mutiny Wallet is going to go work with that idiot Udi, and I'm going to call him an idiot. I'm sorry. I I just don't think there's anything right about what Udi is doing with Taproot Wizards and all the rest of that stuff, And it's a real shame.
It is a real shame that we still live in a world where you have to have so much cash to feel anywhere close to comfortable that you will do something like trade in, you know, a fair set of ethics because what Taproot Wizards is doing is not ethical and I think everybody knows it including Udi himself. And I'm pretty sure the developer that from Mutiny that is is going over there, also understands that what what is going on is unethical but maybe maybe the developer's at the end of the rope. I don't know. It's we this time is is go we're going to find that this particular time is very delicate.
It's not that anything's gonna break it's just that reactions are running really high so something happens and all of a sudden the reaction just is so overwrought that because that's what I think that this is I think that this developer going over to Taproot Wizards is an overwrought reaction to the pressures that we find going on in the outside world whether you're in crypto whether you're in bitcoin no matter where you are the weak men seem to have taken the wheel fuck the bears The Bears, we don't give a shit about the Bears anymore. It's the weak men that are behind the Bears and they seem to have said, you know what, Bear? Get out of the way. You're not steaming to disaster fast enough.
Thank God for bitcoin. Otherwise, I and very many other people would have lost hope a long long time ago maybe even Putin would have lost hope but apparently not because he has signed a law legalizing cryptocurrency mining in Russia bitcoin magazine Nick Hoffman Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially signed a law that legalizes cryptocurrency mining in Russia according to a report by Russian news news agency Tas. The law introduces several key concepts including digital currency mining, mining pools, and mining infrastructure operators.
Mining activities are now recognized by Russia as part of turnover rather than the issuance of digital currency. The new legislation specifies that only Russian legal entities and individual entrepreneurs registered with the government will be allowed to engage in cryptocurrency mining, however Individual miners can participate without registration provided their energy consumption remains within government set limits. Yeah. That's gatekeeping right there. Additionally, the law permits the trading of foreign digital financial assets on Russian blockchain platforms. However, the Bank of Russia retains the authority to ban the placement of certain assets if they are deemed a threat to the country's financial stability.
According to TASS, t a s s, during a recent government meeting, president Putin emphasized Russia needed to seize the moment, that's in quotes, in establishing a legal framework for digital currencies. And he highlighted the potential of digital currencies to contribute to Russia's economic development, stressing the need for proper regulation and infrastructure. The law is set to take effect 10 days after its official publication except for specific provisions that may have different implementation dates and all I see right here is the exact same weak handed fiat mindset that has gotten us into the situation that bitcoin needed to be developed in the first place and what I mean by that is this laws and regulations, and you've got to be registered, and all this, and yes, you can still mine because, you know, out of the goodness of our hearts, we're gonna allow you to mine, but your energy consumption must come in at a certain limit. This is nothing but regulatory moat making.
Only the chosen ones will be able to actually do the thing in Russia, which is no different than what we already have. It's just that they're just looking at mining as a different form of money that's really what this boils down to they still these people these weak minded individuals cannot wrap their minds around the fact that they are losing control of everything because everything is based out of money. We've done that part to ourselves as far as humanity is concerned over the last, well since the agricultural revolution about 12,000, 11000 years ago when we started staying in one place and building cities and we were no longer traipsing around with tribes that's when that's when we really started developing systems of money and those systems of money became corrupt very very quickly, and everything that money touches, which is everything, also got imbued with that corruption.
So now here we are all the way, you know, 1000 and 1000 of years later we have this new chance of salvation upon the horizon. What do these people do? They're thinking the exact same way that people 10000 years ago started thinking how can I control it I think they're actually thinking of how they can control it first and how can I benefit from it second whereas if they just switch the roles if they just said how can I benefit from this instead of how can I control it then they would actually benefit from it more because once they start controlling it they'll lose the benefit they'll it's just I really believe that that's the way this shit works we're not thinking about how it can benefit us we're thinking about how can we control it All the way down to the individual, the the pleb on the street, we think about control and not benefit?
So we'll have to see how Putin you know goes on with this but honestly we think that the news that you know them saying cryptocurrency mining in Russia is now legal is good I think it literally means nothing I mean I don't think it's bad either I just don't think that it means what we think it it means maybe we'll get something here out of Savannah Fortis writing coin from Cointelegraph U. S. Policy Group proposes a Bitcoin tax free zone for digital economic growth Well, this sounds good Let's get into it A new proposal is underway in the United States which aims to establish the country as a global leader in the digital economy through the creation of a Bitcoin tax free digital economic zone also being called the DEZ.
The initiative spearheaded by the newly formed USA BTC Policy Group now keep that shit in mind advocates for the tax free DEZ where Bitcoin can be traded and accumulated without capital gains tax but with a tax on redemption According to USABTC, the initiative could secure the U. S. Financial future by fostering a resilient and innovative economic environment leveraging the potential of Bitcoin while maintaining the central role of the dollar. Bitcoin has already challenged policymakers around the world to rethink traditional financial strategies The USABTC proposal argues that an outright government purchase of Bitcoin would be both unfeasible and politically untenable oh here we go therefore therefore it advocates for the creation of a DEZ where Bitcoin transactions can be carried out tax free while incorporating a tax redemption process to ensure revenue generation the initiative says offering tax free capital gains within this zone could attract investors and foster wealth growth within a regulated environment.
USABTC goes on to say that the exit tax on Bitcoin conversions back to traditional currency could provide a new revenue stream for the government, which could benefit both the federal and state treasuries. As part of the plan, here we go, USABTC envisions the creation of a wait for it pegged Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure efficient and secure transactions. You know what that's reading as for me right now? Shit coin a not actual bitcoin something else a coin that represents a relationship that's what I that's sort of how I'm reading it although it doesn't actually say it directly let's continue the proposal also outlines a phased approach on how such a DEZ would be implemented in the U. S, starting with the president issuing an executive directive to authorize the use of the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a tool within the U. S. Treasury originally established by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.
The subsequent phases would involve drafting legal opinions, legislative efforts and extensive public outreach to ensure broad understanding and support. The Internal Revenue Service would also play a collaborative role in the establishment of a robust legal framework and approving the proposed tax framework. USABTC says that if it's successful, the implications of this initiative could be a major push towards the U. S. Position as a leader in a digital economy. It also explicitly protects against government overreach, a continual concern for many of the cryptocurrency community by enshrining the right to self custody into law.
As currently outlined, the implementation phases of USABTC's plans are slated to begin in 2025. If all legislative and regulatory approvals are secured the DEZ could be fully operational by 2026 okay again it's this one sentence that I want everybody to listen to As part of the plan, USABTC envisions the creation of a pegged Bitcoin system Say it that again. A pegged Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure efficient and secure transactions well Billy Boy we already have that shit we already have it what are you planning on building what creation of what are you talking about a pegged bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution sounds exactly like I said before a new coin which if it's not bitcoin it's shitcoin and I don't care if the if this particular token is a pegged token to bitcoin I don't care that it's on a layer 2 solution on the Bitcoin system.
This sounds to me very much like a shitcoin and it's wrapped in what everybody wants to hear. Tax free, a tax free capital gains, a zone of tax free, and oh oh oh my god revenue generation. Alright so that I see 2 major problems. I just told you one. The other one was let's see. Hold on. Where was it? Let's see. Where was it? Where was it? Oh, here it is. This other sentence. The USA BTC proposal argues that an outright government purchase of Bitcoin would be both unfeasible and politically untenable. Why? I don't think either one of those are true. I don't think it's unfeasible, and I don't think it's politically untenable. So why?
USABTC at this point to me seems to be a trojan horse. It seems to be polluting the possibility in the minds of people that read this or the minds of the people that go to their talks or the minds of the people that want to figure out what the hell USABTC is doing that oh well it's just unfeasible for a government to purchase it and it's politically untenable. So, therefore, here's our solution. As part of the plan, we envision the creation of a peg Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure do you see how this runs? Do you see the pattern? It's a pattern of control. It's a pattern of propaganda to pollute the possibilities of positivity and drive the person to buy a shit coin.
Right now usabtc is not in the camp of people that I trust okay so I you can make your own decisions but understand I don't think they're above board let's move on okayx cracks down on Tornado Cash users with account terminations. Oh boy. Cointelegraph. Who's this one? Amaka Nawa no. I'm gonna really try. Amaka Nuwa Kocher. There's no way. I am never gonna pronounce that name correctly. That's just that's on me. I'm sorry. I don't mean to to make fun of her name, but dude, I can't pronounce it. In an announcement named at reinforcing financial integrity and improving compliance measures with international sanctions, OKX CEO Starzoo declared that any accounts on the exchange found to be interacting with Tornado Cash would be terminated The announcement comes in response to escalating concerns about Tornado Cash a decentralized mixing service that enables users to obfuscate the origin and destination of their cryptocurrency transactions.
While Tornado Cash is a popular is popular among privacy conscious users, malicious actors tend to launder stolen funds. Zhu emphasized that if users deposit money from sanctioned entities such as guarantex and Tornado Cash into OKX accounts or attempt to withdraw funds from OKX to these entities, the Exchange's risk control mechanisms will be triggered, resulting in account closures. We are required to comply with applicable sanctions policies including US sanctions, Zhu stated. The warning was issued following a public call from a user named satoshi friends who urged his community and users from the Commonwealth of Independent States countries to urgently withdraw all funds from OKX and cease using the exchange indefinitely.
He cited the exchange's stringent policies and personal experiences claiming that users risk facing sudden account blocks, fund freezes, and asset losses. Satoshi Friends mentioned that several influencers have had their accounts blocked and funds limited with partial resolution only occurring after direct intervention with the OKX team. In response, Zhu acknowledged that the user's accounts had multiple significant transactions related to sanctioned exchanges or DeFi protocols. Zhu noted that the user had been allowed to withdraw his clean funds before blocking his account.
However, OKX refused to transfer the user's data from an old account to a new one citing that it would violate their company's compliance policy and be a potential workaround. Dude, whatever. Zhu reiterated the importance of compliance. Yes. Let's comply. We must be compliant. Noting that OKX does not onboard any customers on the specially designated nationals list and cannot offer services to sanctioned persons or entities. He reassured the majority of users that they are unlikely to be affected by these measures because they are far from those sanctioned programs and will never conduct transactions related to a sanctioned person. Tornado Cash has recently been used to launder stolen funds. Yada yada yada. We know we know we know.
So yet another exchange is folding up like a cheap suit and doing exactly what daddy government is telling them to do this is why we don't need anything like this. We need something completely different. And it just had me thinking that let's see how to how to put this tornado cash as a protocol right so in its its ether I know I'm not talking about bitcoin right now but I mean I don't think that the developers of tornado cash should be going through what they're going through but it's a good it's a good demonstration of what I what I mean here tornado cash is a protocol it may be decentralized Right? But it's a known protocol.
And the minute that you send to this protocol address well that's tracked online so let's think about layer 2 what would happen right if you just ran like let's go back to to, the only the only, cryptocurrency that matters bitcoin and you've got something like lightning network and you're just sending you know sats to this particular protocol and but that may not work either. It's what I'm getting at is that how do you send sats to something that looks completely innocuous and it goes through so many changes and and and reroutes and whatnot like that, that by the time it finally comes out the other side, there's no way to tell where the hell that thing came from. And in a very real way, lightning network already works that way. It's just that I would be sending to a lightning address, I. E. A known protocol.
Right? So, how do we how do we manufacture doors in these systems that look like regular doors that don't say lnbc1? That don't say whatever the address of a tornado cache protocol is. And I you know, I that way beyond my pay grade. But what I'm saying is that if we continuously fingerprint the identities of things in this system rather than somehow mimicking possibly my one of my favorite subjects, mycelium, in the ground, you know, mushrooms. Right? They have vast networks that go everywhere. It's and and vast networks have the potential to be able to connect with each other and transfer data.
What if the identity of the transaction was carried within itself but is able to be sent to any of the protocols. And that somehow or another, the transaction itself is like a self guided missile, knows where to go but doesn't have any quote unquote finger like I wasn't I could just send it as a bitcoin transaction but somehow or another you see what I'm saying what I'm suggesting at this point is mostly impossible given the way the structure is because we constantly build if you go into that door you're in bitcoin if you go into that door you're lightning if you go into that door it's an e cash if you go into that you see what I'm saying how can we just have like how can we make this more like a mall instead of individual stores that we want to walk into and each individual store has different products How about we can just go and walk into the main entrance of like South Plains Mall in Lubbock?
And then we can self guide ourselves to wherever the hell it is that we're going to whatever store is inside that mall. I'm just putting that out there as an idea. And if anybody knows why that won't work, believe me, I want to know why. I want to know exactly how it is. And I'm not not not because I want to start an argument. I want to know how it is that I'm wrong. Because I if I'm wrong and there's it is just completely impossible what I suggest then I definitely want to be the first one know about it. Alright. Moving on. FTX Alameda have been ordered by a judge to pay $12,700,000,000 back to creditors.
CoinDesk is written by Sharra Malwa. Defunct crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research will pay 12.7 $1,000,000,000 to creditors as a New York judge officially approved a consent order on Wednesday ending a 20 month long lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Judge Peter Castle passed the approval on August 7th of filing shows. It did not seek a civil monetary penalty. Interesting. The order doesn't include civil penalties but bans FTX and its sister concern Alameda, formerly a heavyweight crypto market maker, from trading digital assets and acting as intermediaries in the market. I guess that means that we're not going to have zombie Alameda and zombie FTX. Oh, well. FTX filed for bankruptcy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. Okay. So that that we've already got the meat and potatoes of what just happened.
So on a couple of days ago, August 7th, well, apparently, while I was on the road in the first leg of coming back home, the judge basically ended this lawsuit. So this lawsuit is by the CFTC against FTX and Alameda is now officially over. And they will just pay $12,700,000,000 to creditors and they will not pay any civil penalties. But they're banned forever from dealing with crypto. And there was already talk on the street by the guy that was handling can't remember his name right now, George something the third. He did, Enron's bankruptcy. The bankruptcy guy for FTX had already there was I've already brought to you, like, 3 or 4 stories about the fact that they might resurrect FTX and that it was coming back.
So according to this judge, unless the ruling is appealed, this judge has said that will never happen. You can have FTX, but you're no longer allowed in any way, shape, or form to trade cryptocurrency. I think that that's actually a good deal, but, you know, it is what it is. Alright. One beef one more before we get to numbers. Medical data company, OneMedNet, is the latest to pursue a Bitcoin Treasury strategy after a capital raise. CoinDesk Helene Braun is writing it. OneMedNet late last month raised 4,600,000. Okay. 1,000,000, not 1,000,000,000.
4,600,000 in a private placement and used 1,800,000 of the proceeds to purchase bitcoin. According or among the investors was Off The Chain Capital, a crypto investment fund with ties to Block Chairman Matthew Rosack and Fortress founder Rob Kaufman, which purchased a combination of shares and warrants in ONMD. That's OneMedNet. OneMedNet has seen its stock price fall more than 90% since it became public via a SPAC deal late last year. Quote, it's an opportunity that if it works correctly, it can outperform Bitcoin's performance. Jesus Christ. These people just need to die. I'm sorry. Brian Dixon, fuck you. Brian Dixon, CEO of Off The Chain Capital, told CoinDesk.
From our goal as an investor, quote, this is a quote. We're looking for these discounts or value opportunities, and we work really hard to try to outperform Bitcoin. Well, that's a lofty goal there, I suppose. Dixon believes that it is crucial, crucial, crucial for public companies to reinvest some of their cash into Bitcoin rather than, you know, real estate, stocks, or bonds in order to add the most shareholder value. Quote, I think more and more public companies are going to wake up to the fact that if you don't have Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you're not being intelligent as a fiduciary to that additional cash flow that you have in terms of where you allocate this part of your treasury reserve strategy. That is a clunky ass sentence, dude. In this, off the chain and OneMedNet is making similar arguments to that of Michael Saylor, whose MicroStrategy has seen its stock price outperform the return of Bitcoin since the company began adding the crypto to its balance sheet in August of 2020.
US listed Semler Scientific in Japan's Meta Planet are among other publicly traded companies pursuing similar strategies. I just think that this might be turned into a little bit more of a fad but only in the short term. Because the big the the best play is to buy bitcoin, hold it on your balance sheet, don't sell it. That I'm not arguing with that part. What I'm arguing with is that, like, this company, OneMedNet, goes public, loses 90% of its share price almost instantly. So, what do they do? They buy Bitcoin because that'll help. I don't I I don't I honestly know.
I don't think that helps you in in in the in the short term, and I think it helps you in the long term. I think what Michael Saylor did is actually the correct move, And I think that the people that are trying to emulate what he's done are doing the correct thing. But this seems very reactionary to me. And they're not the only one. Right? So I think, I can't remember if it's oh, Meta Planet. I think Meta Planet is being reactionary. Now I'm going to buffer that and say that the similar scientific guys they may be onto something because they they have a really good product and they have had a really good product for quite a while so for them they already have positive cash flow but when you lose 90% of your value the minute you start trading that kind of tells me that there may be an issue with your underlying plan or your underlying revenue model or whatever it is that you're trying to make money off of and that just by buying well we'll just buy some bitcoin and and that'll work I don't know.
I I don't I honestly, I don't think that saves everybody. I think you actually have to come in this with 2 things. 1, a commitment to your service and and product and or product and a proven revenue flow because of that commitment to your revenue or product. And second then you buy bitcoin you or or you buy bitcoin along the way right what while you're being successful with your original idea you add bitcoin to that but if your idea sucks so hard that your share price crashes through the floor like a fucking duck in winner and you're just gonna fix it by buying Bitcoin with this cash that you have I don't know. I'd be very, very careful. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC, futures and commodities, West Texas Intermediate is actually up today since being hammered over the last, couple of weeks. 0.74% of the upside brings us to 76.75 a barrel. Brent Norcea up over half a point to 79.61. Natural gas is up scant to $2.13 per 1,000 cubic feet. Excuse me. Gasoline is down a quarter of a point to $2.39 a gallon. Gold, and, copper are the only metal rocks doing well today. Gold is up a third of a point to 24.71. Copper is up just exactly one point, and everything else is in the red. Not terrible bad, but, you know, it's still in the red. Ag is fully mixed today. The biggest winner is chocolate. 10% to the upside. Double digits swinging for the fences. Oh, bitch.
Biggest loser is coffee. 3.07% to the downside. Live cattle is up 1.24%. Lean hogs are up scant, and feeder cattle are up 1 a quarter. The Dow and the rest of the, legacy indices are down in the red today. Dow is down a 5th of a point. The S and P is down 0.09%. The Nasdaq is down a quarter, and the S and P mini is down a half. Onto Clark Moody's dashboard where the price is $59,980, we're back down to a $1,180,000,000,000 market cap. But somehow or another, we're able to still get 24.7 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000 737,439.87 of, and the average fees per block are very, very low point 0 7 BTC on average on a per block basis. And how many blocks are there? There's a 127.
Wow. And, was it 263 unconfirmed transactions are stuck in those, and they're waiting for clearing at high priority rates at 7 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. What's hash rate looking like right now? Gee, 569 0.9 exahashes per second. So, yes, while we did hit a major major milestone, like 780 exahashes per second while I was up in the mountains, in Colorado, we are now back down to something, you know, resembling what we've seen for quite a while now. 569.9 exahashes per second, as I said. Now on to the torque begins, which was the last episode of Bitcoin and from the San Juan Mountains, which was recorded at about, I don't know, 7,300 feet, somewhere around there, somewhere around there. Anyway, Arcelorus BTC boosted 2,718 sats and says boosting because I haven't in a while.
Appreciate you. Yeah. I appreciate you too dude. Debravco 2,150 says I kiss you David. Not with that beard you son of a bitch. God's death with 21100 says, thank you sir. Great road shows. Well, you know, I'm gonna say something about that. I was definitely off. New place, completely new system. There's just no way around it. You're gonna be off. I, you know, I was off and I really I I appreciate you sticking with me. These will the the road shows will be better. I promise. It's just it's gonna take some practice. It really is. Pies with 21100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. 02zx with 750, general appreciation boost.
Thank you. Tyler BTC with 500 says cheers. Yeagerow with 21100 says the economy is screwing everyone pretty hard. All of the shops in my neighborhood say the same thing, quote, things have just been getting slower and slower slowly. People be broke. Cyber Planet HODL with 200 says nothing. Feral Hippie with a 100 says nothing. And I want to remind you all, and that was that's the end of the boost. I wanna remind you all that value for value is the only way that this works. It really is. We have to we have to migrate to the value for value model. I need your donations so that I can go out into the world and say, look. It's working.
This works for me. I don't have any commercials. I don't want commercials. If if I get the chance and it's, like, you know, makes the bills, I would probably do that. I don't want to. It's just that, you know, there's rent, there's water, there's electricity, there's gasoline, there's all manner of stuff that I really would like this show to be able to take care of, and I can't do that without people donating to the show. And you can do that with a podcasting 2.0 enabled podcasting app, otherwise known as a modern podcasting app. That's right. If you don't want an old clunky ass Apple based bullshit, you know, podcast app, go and get a new podcast app. I think you can actually get those at new podcastapps.com.
Hold on. Let's see. Newpodcastapp.com. Let's see if that works. Nope. Oh, deceptive side ahead. No. Oh, bullshit. It's not. Just go to podcast index. Let's see. We won't do that. Podcast index dot org. Okay. It's podcastindex.org. There's a tab up at the top right. It says apps. It's right it's right on the right side of the search bar. And you can have filters. And you can just go, I just want the app and then so there's Trufans, there's Podverse, there's Podcast Guru, there's Fountain which is My Daily Driver, there's PeerTube, Podfriend, LN Beats, Podcast Addicts, CurioCaster.
What else is there? There's a couple of more. Breeze has its own, podcast app inside the wallet. It's, there's Sphinx chat, which is sort of the same thing. It has its own it was its own thing, and then they added a podcast, app to the wallet. There's antennapod. There's all manner of stuff. And all of these allow you to boost me, satoshis, boost your favorite other podcasters, Satoshis. You can stream at Satoshis. You but what you're really doing is making a statement that I don't want commercials. I want you I want to listen to your show. I want to be informed, but we can't do this work without your support. So please donate and donate kindly. I would appreciate it very much. So that's the end of the morning ground. No. What did I use? Oh, the weather report. That's the end of the weather report. God, I'm out of practice.
Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. Remember, Meta Planet? I was talking about them as being one of the companies that not doing so well, so they decide to buy Bitcoin and it's gonna fix everything. Well, they've done it again. Meta Planet secures 1,000,000,000 yen, not dollar, 1,000,000,000 yen loan to buy yet more Bitcoin. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese investment firm, has secured a $6,800,000 US dollar loan to purchase additional Bitcoin. That's quite a bit, man. This comes just days after announcing plans to raise 10,080,000,000 yen through a stock rights offering mostly for Bitcoin buys.
They first revealed its Bitcoin treasury strategy back in May aiming to hedge against the yen depreciation. The firm currently holds around 246 Bitcoin worth 14,000,000 acquired over many buys. The 0 0.1 percent APR or annual percentage rate loan from shareholder MMXX Ventures has a 6 month term. Meta Planet plans to allocate the entire 1,000,000,000 yen to expand its Bitcoin reserves. At current prices, the 1,000,000,000 yen could purchase around 118 additional Bitcoin. This mimics MicroStrategy's playbook of raising debt to fund Bitcoin purchases since 2020. MicroStrategy's Bitcoin bet has increased its share price dramatically.
CEO Simon Gurevich stated that the firm believes Bitcoin offers twin benefits as an asset that can appreciate and hedge against a weakening yen. By securing loans and issuing stock to accumulate Meta Planet is essentially borrowing in to Stack Sats. The company can pay back loans using future Bitcoin appreciation. That's a that's a gamble. Okay? We all know that it's going up and right for, you know, forever, but there's going to be dips along the way, and they always seem to occur when you need it not to dip the most. Right? So that goes for companies too. Anyway, the loan and plan stock offering highlight Meta Planet's commitment to aggressively growing its Bitcoin war chest. Yes, we know.
But what's your what's your underlying service? You're say your Meta Planet says it's an investment firm. That's not what it used to be, but it apparently, that's what they're naming it now. And I just can't help but see a scrambling to success. And I don't mean that in a positive light. I I literally mean that I I think I think MicroStrategy and similar scientific are doing it the right way. I think Meta Planet and whatever that other one was, I can't even remember what the hell it was, 1 Medcoin or 1 Mednet. I don't think that I don't think that they fully appreciate what it is that they're getting into.
I don't know them. I've never met them. I've never interviewed them. But there's this gut feeling that I have that we have a 50% success rate going forward, at least right now. And that's MicroStrategy and Semler Scientific. And I'm not even sure exactly a And it does seem to be very necessary in the medical world. So, therefore, their revenue model makes sense. So since the revenue model makes sense, then they're able to engage in the Michael Sailor playbook. For for Michael Sailor himself and Michael Strategy, they actually have a product that they've had for a very long time. But as I've said on the show before, Michael Saylor himself said that in his view, that he thinks that they've kind of come to a limit.
Right? And maybe that limit was is the advent of AI because what he offers is is business strategy software. Like, given your revenues and given your assets, what can you do with them? What kind of strategies can you form? And there's software that helps with that. And maybe he saw it on the horizon and said, you know, after a while, they're gonna be able to run through through so many iterations with AI and and most of them will probably be wrong. But if you get a field of them and you've got, you know, some human experts looking at what these things are coming up with, then you might be able to very quickly come up with a high quality strategy. Maybe he saw that. But I remember him distinctly saying that he thinks that MicroStrategy, as far as the the company, the way it's structured right now, with its products and services right now, are sort of seeing the end of the road sort of sunsetting and he's just converting all of that into a complete Bitcoin strategy that is different than what similar scientific is doing because similar scientific doesn't have an end of the road or a sunsetting anytime soon because their product is necessary for medicine.
They have a good product. People buy the shit out of it. They have an in the continuous revenue stream. So that's even different between MicroStrategy and similar scientific. But Meta Planet and 1 Med Net, I don't know. You flip a coin on that son of a bitch. Speaking of flipping a coin, 1 coin, Crypto Queen, Arusha, Ignatova's assets has been frozen by a UK court. Why did it take them so long? Interesting. Adrian Zmadeszewski, can't pronounce it, decryp.c0. London's high court has issued a worldwide freeze order for the assets of alleged 1 coin fraudsters, including those of the infamous crypto queen, Ruja Ignatova.
According to the announcement shared with Decrypt, the case initiated by over 400 victims of OneCoin resulted in a freeze order on the assets of Ignatova and OneCoin cofounder Sebastian Greenwood along with Christopher Hamilton and Robert McDonald. Hamilton and McDonald allegedly helped launder the funds on behalf of the OneCoin schemes organizers. The funds of 4 influencers who promoted the scheme were also frozen along with those of business entities that Ignatova allegedly used to launder the funds from OneCoin and purchase assets. Launched in 2014, OneCoin billed itself as a Bitcoin killer, but it was subsequently revealed to be a Ponzi scheme with absolutely no network for the token having ever been built.
Ignatova, also known as the crypto queen, defrauded investors worldwide through a $4,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme until it collapsed in 2017 and then her subsequent disappearance. She was last seen fleeing Bulgaria on a plane to Athens, Greece in 2017 and made it onto the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 10 most wanted list. Congratulations, Ignatova. Although, she herself has not been seen since she fled Bulgaria in the year of 2017, she seemingly resurfaced in a 2023 UK government filing linking to a London property. When the property was listed for $15,500,000 later reduced to 13.6, she was reportedly forced to step forward as its owner.
This was due to a recent rule in change involving overseas companies in the UK and her status as a so called beneficial owner of the company owning the property. However, a BBC report at the time noted that the listing could be traced back to prosecutors of the German city of Bielefeld rather than UK law office officials or Ignatova herself. Ignatova's page on the FBI's 10 most wanted list notes that the US Department of State's Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program offers up to $5,000,000 for information leading to her arrest or conviction. Getting close to her would be rather challenging though since she is believed to travel with armed guards and or associates.
The FBI also notes that she may have had plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance. Yeah we know that so my question and this will be the question that I think a lot of people are asking why is it just now 2017 was was a while ago was what 7 years it's taken the 7 years to I mean, I would have figured that the minute that she hit the at least the minute that she hit the FBI's 10 most wanted list, that they would freeze her assets then. And she made it to the 10 most wanted list years years years ago. Why now?
And and what has been allowed to occur on those assets? Has there been the ability to withdraw assets? Has there been the ability to buy other assets with those assets? What the hell? This doesn't make any sense, especially for the governments that we deal with that we know, for a fact, love to freeze people's shit when they don't like them. So why didn't they freeze hers? I don't know the answer to that question but if you have a theory I'd love to hear it and read it on the air. So throw me a boost to gram, support the show, and let's get into some tinfoil hatchery. Last up today, Build Asset Management is going to donate 10% of its management fees to support open source Bitcoin development.
Build Asset Management has committed to donating 10% of management fees from its Bitcoin backed direct lending fund, build secured income fund 1 to bolster open source Bitcoin development. The donation is set to be a no strings attached and occur on a monthly basis. The fund is split equally between OpenSats and the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund. Quote, Bitcoin is advancing financial freedom and economic empowerment for individuals from the bottom up across the globe and on open and level playing fields. We are committed to supporting its continued development for a brighter future. And the these two organizations exhibit remarkable leadership and track records through their work in this area, said Matt Dines, CIO of Build Asset Management.
Quote, every profitable Bitcoin business should support the open source contributors that make this movement possible. We are incredibly grateful for Build Asset Management choosing to lead by example with a long term commitment to the OpenSats General Fund, added Matt O'Dell, co founder of OpenSats itself. Okay. So, build asset management isn't funneling profits whether gross profits or net profits from their investment product or their management product. They're donating 10% of management fees so if they're taking like I don't know let's say they take 1% as a management fee then they're going to donate point 001% or a point 01% of that to open sats and the human was a human rights foundation's bitcoin development fund so it's an it's it's interesting that they're using that they're going to do the management fees rather than rather than another model.
Honestly, I kind of like it because the management fee itself seems to be the only way. Now, I I don't know anything. I don't know very much about, you know, build asset management, but I will probably be right in assuming that their only revenue is the management fee revenue from the product that they've built and are trying to sell or service? However you wanna, you know, however you wanna look at it. And that the management fee itself is the only revenue. So is it now my question becomes, is it is it net management fees? Like, after everybody's been paid, the electricity has been paid you know and you're left with nothing but pure profit is it 1 is it 10% of that or is it 10% of gross before everybody's paid? Because that's a very, very, very different number. But I'm just glad that they're going to donate 10% of their management fees whether net or gross to support open source Bitcoin development because if their revenue model depends on the security of the underlying asset and that asset was also built by bitcoin development then they need to fund bitcoin development it's I mean the companies are in the best position to be able to do that If they don't, then then what are they doing? If you really get down to it if you depend on your car, do you run it on 4 flat tires all the time?
No. You don't. If you depend on your fish let's say you got a fishing boat and your job is to go out there and catch fish and bring it to market and sell it to people because they like to eat fish. Would you fish with holes in your nets and never repair them? Does that sound like a very smart thing to do? No. And one more. If you're flying a plane for a living and you're flying passengers, do you consistently fly on a broken engine? Probably not. You probably can't even get off the ground, which is actually good news, because then then you won't be in the air and have gravity, you know, decide to not be your best friend anymore. Right? So this is the same thing.
All of these funds, you know, BlackRock and BlackRock's Ibit and all these other people, the these 11 e spot Bitcoin ETFs, only 2 of them, as far as I know, are donating to open stats and human rights foundation and one other one, and I can't remember what it was, but they're all trying to support the open source bitcoin development infrastructure right the people the the the institutions that have set these things up They're really trying to support it because their products absolutely depend on the smooth functioning of the underlying asset, and the security of that underlying asset. And the asset is the security and the security is the asset. And if you don't know that about Bitcoin, then you need to read some more.
Because those two things go together. It's not just 2 people holding hands. It's like 2 sides of the same ball. And if one side of the ball, you know, falls off, you ain't got a ball. What you've got is a, I don't know, some oblong looking thing that doesn't really do much except wobble around. So therefore, without that other side, without the without the token of value and the security of that token being squished together all in one package and having that having both those sides developed upon concurrently, then you don't have a ball that you can go play with.
So, if you want to, you know, keep your ball and keep playing on the court, you're gonna need to support open source development in the Bitcoin infrastructure and ecosystem as well as Lightning Network and Nostr and eCash and god only knows what else is on the horizon. Right now, I see 4. Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Nostr, and Ecash. Now you'll say, why Nostr? It's not money. Why would you say that it's not money? I'm not saying that it's a token. I'm not saying the that an event when I say good morning to somebody, I'm not saying that that has, you know, an inherent value in and of itself, but it's a rail of money.
So if I look at Lightning Network, that is a Bitcoin rail. If I look at e cash, that is also a Bitcoin as well as a Lightning Network Rail those are communication protocols They have a token involved. Nostra is just a bit different. It is a rail that has events involved. Pablo has figured out a way. If Pablo is a developer on Noster, he's been around for a while. He doesn't sleep very much because he's always delivering. He's always shipping. And he's figured out a way to turn a node into an e cash wallet. What I have is two sides of a ball.
I have a token of value that has security, and then I have communication rails. Along with that, all 4 of these networks are going to talk are are now talking to each other, and they're going to figure out ways to communicate even better, translate between each other, either even better, like 4 different kinds of mushrooms growing in a forest that are all connected to the trees and bushes and grasses and whatnot, and they're all sharing nutrients, but then they start the the four networks start to talk to each other. Now, the network that is attached to, like, a 100000 cypress trees is now able to share in the resources of a 100000 pine trees.
And that would be the Noster network. And then there's the Lightning Network, which can share in half of both of those networks and just be a routing type of thing for the for the other two networks. And then you've got other networks that can come along and start to attach to the do all these networks until you end up with a mall that has the same door. If you remember what I was talking about before, this is what I mean. Walking into a mall, it doesn't matter what entrance you use. You're just going to the mall. Inside that mall are separate networks but once you're inside the mall you can deploy an instruction set as to where you need to go away from the prying eyes of people outside the mall. All they saw was that you just went into the mall.
What you do in the mall should be your business as directed by an instruction set that you have in your transaction if I'm not being clear it's probably because this is an idea that has just been forming for me today but I've been trying to figure this out like if I go into a mall what I'm walking into is an ecosystem And once I'm in the mall, I can go to Dillard's to go pick up a suit. That is a network like the Bitcoin network. Or I might be able to go over to Kohl's and get something cheaper let me rock over there well that's its own mycelial mushroom network and it's its own thing.
But what if somehow or another I can walk into Dillard's but still buy Kohl's or walk into Kohl's and still buy Dillard's, the first thing on your head is that both those companies will go out of business. I get that. The analogy is a little rough. I'll work on it. I promise. But what about Spencer's? If, God, if they're still open, or what about, you know, a jewelry store? These are all their own separate networks. The mall itself combines them or or at least it allows an ecosystem for them to start interacting. Whether or not they interact with each other is up to those particular networks sensibilities.
But they could because they'd been provided a space. So instead of sending our cache to tornado cash to quote unquote mix it so that we can obfuscate where it comes from, what if we had this idea where everything was the mixer and that if the government was using bitcoin it's using a mixer only not because we changed the protocol but because we change the environment of the ecosystem where all these things already exist as they are without change That's what I'm suggesting. Alright. That's gonna be it for today. I hope you enjoyed the show. We are at 60 minutes and 46 seconds, so I'm just gonna say it. 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.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 9th day of August 2024.
This is episode 933 of Bitcoin, and I am back from the mountains in Colorado much to my chagrin. Much of my wife's do chagrin and much to my children's chagrin. Yeah. When you when you're in that kind of beauty, you just you just don't wanna come home. And it's not just about the beauty. You know, we were hanging out for the entire two and a half weeks that we were up there with my sister, so we were all having family meals together. And that right there, I mean, I could probably do that in a, you know, some kind of rundown ass house inside of a junkyard, and it would still be a kind of a special thing because there's nothing like there's just nothing like family. It just if you think that there is there's not. That's the only real wealth that that we have is ourselves, our health, each other, each other's health, and to be in close proximity together. Ever after that everything else is just kind of a a distraction, honestly. And we have many distractions.
After, after episode 932, that's when the bottom fell out of the market and the guys over in Japan decided to well, essentially, well, they didn't really do anything. The market itself just kinda said, look. That that raise that you did, of 25 basis points at the Central Bank of Japan, Yeah. That that we just can't do that. But what I found odd was that it was it took a while for that, signal to propagate through the market. And on all, you know, all of a sudden, everybody going, you know, I'm I'm I'm out. I can't. We we just we just can't. Like a lot of banks were sitting there going, we're holding these bonds. You've done it again. This time, it's Japanese bonds, and you've raised your basis points. And now, the face value of the bonds that we're using to back as collateral our bank and and put it on our books has now lost so much value that we've gotta do something. And the next thing you know, ripple effects just blasted out through everything and bitcoin was the first to get hit because bitcoin is the most liquid market and it trades 20 fourseven365 So the signal was there with Bitcoin before anybody anybody had a chance to even blink.
The signal was was being flashed by the Bitcoin market because all the other legacy markets were actually closed and after that I was gonna do I really was I promise I was gonna do a show that day and on Tuesday but we were leaving on Wednesday house has to be cleaned It's the last days that we're gonna be up there. So that's that's why I said, you know what? This will I'm just gonna I'm just gonna lay off. There's nothing I can say about what's going on that's gonna make anybody feel any better at all it probably would have been a show with with like 15% of the listeners as usual because everybody freaked out and this, you know, it wasn't that this time it's different. This time it's not different. It this time it's the exact same as all the other things. If anybody says, you know, oh, well, this time it's different. The only way that it could be Everybody's exhausted. I've heard more talk about burnout.
Everybody's exhausted. I've heard more talk about burnout over the last couple of weeks than I have in in quite a while but what do you expect? We've been at this you know since 2009. People are gonna fall away. You know people are. People are gonna fall away like Mutiny Wallet. That was a real surprise to me. You know? The, quote, our company is exploring alternative products. We'll be shutting down the wallet at the end of the year, but you can still self host. And thank god they're allowing that I mean I I think that there's a real opportunity for for these projects that started out open source to just go ahead and and say look we're not going to do it anymore but hey here's all the code knock yourself out and I think what we'll see in the future is a lot of resurrections I I really do not zombies just resurrections of projects where the original founders, the original people that that did the the coding just they've gone away, but the project itself gets picked back up in some form, fashion, or another.
And I that's what I'm that's what I think we're gonna start seeing. We're gonna start seeing a sort of a second layer of some of these projects that we thought were dead or that we're very sad to see go away like I'm very sad to see Mutiny Wallet go away I'm very sad of the underpinnings of of why they're going away. It seems that one of the developers of Mutiny Wallet is going to go work with that idiot Udi, and I'm going to call him an idiot. I'm sorry. I I just don't think there's anything right about what Udi is doing with Taproot Wizards and all the rest of that stuff, And it's a real shame.
It is a real shame that we still live in a world where you have to have so much cash to feel anywhere close to comfortable that you will do something like trade in, you know, a fair set of ethics because what Taproot Wizards is doing is not ethical and I think everybody knows it including Udi himself. And I'm pretty sure the developer that from Mutiny that is is going over there, also understands that what what is going on is unethical but maybe maybe the developer's at the end of the rope. I don't know. It's we this time is is go we're going to find that this particular time is very delicate.
It's not that anything's gonna break it's just that reactions are running really high so something happens and all of a sudden the reaction just is so overwrought that because that's what I think that this is I think that this developer going over to Taproot Wizards is an overwrought reaction to the pressures that we find going on in the outside world whether you're in crypto whether you're in bitcoin no matter where you are the weak men seem to have taken the wheel fuck the bears The Bears, we don't give a shit about the Bears anymore. It's the weak men that are behind the Bears and they seem to have said, you know what, Bear? Get out of the way. You're not steaming to disaster fast enough.
Thank God for bitcoin. Otherwise, I and very many other people would have lost hope a long long time ago maybe even Putin would have lost hope but apparently not because he has signed a law legalizing cryptocurrency mining in Russia bitcoin magazine Nick Hoffman Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially signed a law that legalizes cryptocurrency mining in Russia according to a report by Russian news news agency Tas. The law introduces several key concepts including digital currency mining, mining pools, and mining infrastructure operators.
Mining activities are now recognized by Russia as part of turnover rather than the issuance of digital currency. The new legislation specifies that only Russian legal entities and individual entrepreneurs registered with the government will be allowed to engage in cryptocurrency mining, however Individual miners can participate without registration provided their energy consumption remains within government set limits. Yeah. That's gatekeeping right there. Additionally, the law permits the trading of foreign digital financial assets on Russian blockchain platforms. However, the Bank of Russia retains the authority to ban the placement of certain assets if they are deemed a threat to the country's financial stability.
According to TASS, t a s s, during a recent government meeting, president Putin emphasized Russia needed to seize the moment, that's in quotes, in establishing a legal framework for digital currencies. And he highlighted the potential of digital currencies to contribute to Russia's economic development, stressing the need for proper regulation and infrastructure. The law is set to take effect 10 days after its official publication except for specific provisions that may have different implementation dates and all I see right here is the exact same weak handed fiat mindset that has gotten us into the situation that bitcoin needed to be developed in the first place and what I mean by that is this laws and regulations, and you've got to be registered, and all this, and yes, you can still mine because, you know, out of the goodness of our hearts, we're gonna allow you to mine, but your energy consumption must come in at a certain limit. This is nothing but regulatory moat making.
Only the chosen ones will be able to actually do the thing in Russia, which is no different than what we already have. It's just that they're just looking at mining as a different form of money that's really what this boils down to they still these people these weak minded individuals cannot wrap their minds around the fact that they are losing control of everything because everything is based out of money. We've done that part to ourselves as far as humanity is concerned over the last, well since the agricultural revolution about 12,000, 11000 years ago when we started staying in one place and building cities and we were no longer traipsing around with tribes that's when that's when we really started developing systems of money and those systems of money became corrupt very very quickly, and everything that money touches, which is everything, also got imbued with that corruption.
So now here we are all the way, you know, 1000 and 1000 of years later we have this new chance of salvation upon the horizon. What do these people do? They're thinking the exact same way that people 10000 years ago started thinking how can I control it I think they're actually thinking of how they can control it first and how can I benefit from it second whereas if they just switch the roles if they just said how can I benefit from this instead of how can I control it then they would actually benefit from it more because once they start controlling it they'll lose the benefit they'll it's just I really believe that that's the way this shit works we're not thinking about how it can benefit us we're thinking about how can we control it All the way down to the individual, the the pleb on the street, we think about control and not benefit?
So we'll have to see how Putin you know goes on with this but honestly we think that the news that you know them saying cryptocurrency mining in Russia is now legal is good I think it literally means nothing I mean I don't think it's bad either I just don't think that it means what we think it it means maybe we'll get something here out of Savannah Fortis writing coin from Cointelegraph U. S. Policy Group proposes a Bitcoin tax free zone for digital economic growth Well, this sounds good Let's get into it A new proposal is underway in the United States which aims to establish the country as a global leader in the digital economy through the creation of a Bitcoin tax free digital economic zone also being called the DEZ.
The initiative spearheaded by the newly formed USA BTC Policy Group now keep that shit in mind advocates for the tax free DEZ where Bitcoin can be traded and accumulated without capital gains tax but with a tax on redemption According to USABTC, the initiative could secure the U. S. Financial future by fostering a resilient and innovative economic environment leveraging the potential of Bitcoin while maintaining the central role of the dollar. Bitcoin has already challenged policymakers around the world to rethink traditional financial strategies The USABTC proposal argues that an outright government purchase of Bitcoin would be both unfeasible and politically untenable oh here we go therefore therefore it advocates for the creation of a DEZ where Bitcoin transactions can be carried out tax free while incorporating a tax redemption process to ensure revenue generation the initiative says offering tax free capital gains within this zone could attract investors and foster wealth growth within a regulated environment.
USABTC goes on to say that the exit tax on Bitcoin conversions back to traditional currency could provide a new revenue stream for the government, which could benefit both the federal and state treasuries. As part of the plan, here we go, USABTC envisions the creation of a wait for it pegged Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure efficient and secure transactions. You know what that's reading as for me right now? Shit coin a not actual bitcoin something else a coin that represents a relationship that's what I that's sort of how I'm reading it although it doesn't actually say it directly let's continue the proposal also outlines a phased approach on how such a DEZ would be implemented in the U. S, starting with the president issuing an executive directive to authorize the use of the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a tool within the U. S. Treasury originally established by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.
The subsequent phases would involve drafting legal opinions, legislative efforts and extensive public outreach to ensure broad understanding and support. The Internal Revenue Service would also play a collaborative role in the establishment of a robust legal framework and approving the proposed tax framework. USABTC says that if it's successful, the implications of this initiative could be a major push towards the U. S. Position as a leader in a digital economy. It also explicitly protects against government overreach, a continual concern for many of the cryptocurrency community by enshrining the right to self custody into law.
As currently outlined, the implementation phases of USABTC's plans are slated to begin in 2025. If all legislative and regulatory approvals are secured the DEZ could be fully operational by 2026 okay again it's this one sentence that I want everybody to listen to As part of the plan, USABTC envisions the creation of a pegged Bitcoin system Say it that again. A pegged Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure efficient and secure transactions well Billy Boy we already have that shit we already have it what are you planning on building what creation of what are you talking about a pegged bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution sounds exactly like I said before a new coin which if it's not bitcoin it's shitcoin and I don't care if the if this particular token is a pegged token to bitcoin I don't care that it's on a layer 2 solution on the Bitcoin system.
This sounds to me very much like a shitcoin and it's wrapped in what everybody wants to hear. Tax free, a tax free capital gains, a zone of tax free, and oh oh oh my god revenue generation. Alright so that I see 2 major problems. I just told you one. The other one was let's see. Hold on. Where was it? Let's see. Where was it? Where was it? Oh, here it is. This other sentence. The USA BTC proposal argues that an outright government purchase of Bitcoin would be both unfeasible and politically untenable. Why? I don't think either one of those are true. I don't think it's unfeasible, and I don't think it's politically untenable. So why?
USABTC at this point to me seems to be a trojan horse. It seems to be polluting the possibility in the minds of people that read this or the minds of the people that go to their talks or the minds of the people that want to figure out what the hell USABTC is doing that oh well it's just unfeasible for a government to purchase it and it's politically untenable. So, therefore, here's our solution. As part of the plan, we envision the creation of a peg Bitcoin system on a layer 2 solution that would ensure do you see how this runs? Do you see the pattern? It's a pattern of control. It's a pattern of propaganda to pollute the possibilities of positivity and drive the person to buy a shit coin.
Right now usabtc is not in the camp of people that I trust okay so I you can make your own decisions but understand I don't think they're above board let's move on okayx cracks down on Tornado Cash users with account terminations. Oh boy. Cointelegraph. Who's this one? Amaka Nawa no. I'm gonna really try. Amaka Nuwa Kocher. There's no way. I am never gonna pronounce that name correctly. That's just that's on me. I'm sorry. I don't mean to to make fun of her name, but dude, I can't pronounce it. In an announcement named at reinforcing financial integrity and improving compliance measures with international sanctions, OKX CEO Starzoo declared that any accounts on the exchange found to be interacting with Tornado Cash would be terminated The announcement comes in response to escalating concerns about Tornado Cash a decentralized mixing service that enables users to obfuscate the origin and destination of their cryptocurrency transactions.
While Tornado Cash is a popular is popular among privacy conscious users, malicious actors tend to launder stolen funds. Zhu emphasized that if users deposit money from sanctioned entities such as guarantex and Tornado Cash into OKX accounts or attempt to withdraw funds from OKX to these entities, the Exchange's risk control mechanisms will be triggered, resulting in account closures. We are required to comply with applicable sanctions policies including US sanctions, Zhu stated. The warning was issued following a public call from a user named satoshi friends who urged his community and users from the Commonwealth of Independent States countries to urgently withdraw all funds from OKX and cease using the exchange indefinitely.
He cited the exchange's stringent policies and personal experiences claiming that users risk facing sudden account blocks, fund freezes, and asset losses. Satoshi Friends mentioned that several influencers have had their accounts blocked and funds limited with partial resolution only occurring after direct intervention with the OKX team. In response, Zhu acknowledged that the user's accounts had multiple significant transactions related to sanctioned exchanges or DeFi protocols. Zhu noted that the user had been allowed to withdraw his clean funds before blocking his account.
However, OKX refused to transfer the user's data from an old account to a new one citing that it would violate their company's compliance policy and be a potential workaround. Dude, whatever. Zhu reiterated the importance of compliance. Yes. Let's comply. We must be compliant. Noting that OKX does not onboard any customers on the specially designated nationals list and cannot offer services to sanctioned persons or entities. He reassured the majority of users that they are unlikely to be affected by these measures because they are far from those sanctioned programs and will never conduct transactions related to a sanctioned person. Tornado Cash has recently been used to launder stolen funds. Yada yada yada. We know we know we know.
So yet another exchange is folding up like a cheap suit and doing exactly what daddy government is telling them to do this is why we don't need anything like this. We need something completely different. And it just had me thinking that let's see how to how to put this tornado cash as a protocol right so in its its ether I know I'm not talking about bitcoin right now but I mean I don't think that the developers of tornado cash should be going through what they're going through but it's a good it's a good demonstration of what I what I mean here tornado cash is a protocol it may be decentralized Right? But it's a known protocol.
And the minute that you send to this protocol address well that's tracked online so let's think about layer 2 what would happen right if you just ran like let's go back to to, the only the only, cryptocurrency that matters bitcoin and you've got something like lightning network and you're just sending you know sats to this particular protocol and but that may not work either. It's what I'm getting at is that how do you send sats to something that looks completely innocuous and it goes through so many changes and and and reroutes and whatnot like that, that by the time it finally comes out the other side, there's no way to tell where the hell that thing came from. And in a very real way, lightning network already works that way. It's just that I would be sending to a lightning address, I. E. A known protocol.
Right? So, how do we how do we manufacture doors in these systems that look like regular doors that don't say lnbc1? That don't say whatever the address of a tornado cache protocol is. And I you know, I that way beyond my pay grade. But what I'm saying is that if we continuously fingerprint the identities of things in this system rather than somehow mimicking possibly my one of my favorite subjects, mycelium, in the ground, you know, mushrooms. Right? They have vast networks that go everywhere. It's and and vast networks have the potential to be able to connect with each other and transfer data.
What if the identity of the transaction was carried within itself but is able to be sent to any of the protocols. And that somehow or another, the transaction itself is like a self guided missile, knows where to go but doesn't have any quote unquote finger like I wasn't I could just send it as a bitcoin transaction but somehow or another you see what I'm saying what I'm suggesting at this point is mostly impossible given the way the structure is because we constantly build if you go into that door you're in bitcoin if you go into that door you're lightning if you go into that door it's an e cash if you go into that you see what I'm saying how can we just have like how can we make this more like a mall instead of individual stores that we want to walk into and each individual store has different products How about we can just go and walk into the main entrance of like South Plains Mall in Lubbock?
And then we can self guide ourselves to wherever the hell it is that we're going to whatever store is inside that mall. I'm just putting that out there as an idea. And if anybody knows why that won't work, believe me, I want to know why. I want to know exactly how it is. And I'm not not not because I want to start an argument. I want to know how it is that I'm wrong. Because I if I'm wrong and there's it is just completely impossible what I suggest then I definitely want to be the first one know about it. Alright. Moving on. FTX Alameda have been ordered by a judge to pay $12,700,000,000 back to creditors.
CoinDesk is written by Sharra Malwa. Defunct crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research will pay 12.7 $1,000,000,000 to creditors as a New York judge officially approved a consent order on Wednesday ending a 20 month long lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Judge Peter Castle passed the approval on August 7th of filing shows. It did not seek a civil monetary penalty. Interesting. The order doesn't include civil penalties but bans FTX and its sister concern Alameda, formerly a heavyweight crypto market maker, from trading digital assets and acting as intermediaries in the market. I guess that means that we're not going to have zombie Alameda and zombie FTX. Oh, well. FTX filed for bankruptcy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. Okay. So that that we've already got the meat and potatoes of what just happened.
So on a couple of days ago, August 7th, well, apparently, while I was on the road in the first leg of coming back home, the judge basically ended this lawsuit. So this lawsuit is by the CFTC against FTX and Alameda is now officially over. And they will just pay $12,700,000,000 to creditors and they will not pay any civil penalties. But they're banned forever from dealing with crypto. And there was already talk on the street by the guy that was handling can't remember his name right now, George something the third. He did, Enron's bankruptcy. The bankruptcy guy for FTX had already there was I've already brought to you, like, 3 or 4 stories about the fact that they might resurrect FTX and that it was coming back.
So according to this judge, unless the ruling is appealed, this judge has said that will never happen. You can have FTX, but you're no longer allowed in any way, shape, or form to trade cryptocurrency. I think that that's actually a good deal, but, you know, it is what it is. Alright. One beef one more before we get to numbers. Medical data company, OneMedNet, is the latest to pursue a Bitcoin Treasury strategy after a capital raise. CoinDesk Helene Braun is writing it. OneMedNet late last month raised 4,600,000. Okay. 1,000,000, not 1,000,000,000.
4,600,000 in a private placement and used 1,800,000 of the proceeds to purchase bitcoin. According or among the investors was Off The Chain Capital, a crypto investment fund with ties to Block Chairman Matthew Rosack and Fortress founder Rob Kaufman, which purchased a combination of shares and warrants in ONMD. That's OneMedNet. OneMedNet has seen its stock price fall more than 90% since it became public via a SPAC deal late last year. Quote, it's an opportunity that if it works correctly, it can outperform Bitcoin's performance. Jesus Christ. These people just need to die. I'm sorry. Brian Dixon, fuck you. Brian Dixon, CEO of Off The Chain Capital, told CoinDesk.
From our goal as an investor, quote, this is a quote. We're looking for these discounts or value opportunities, and we work really hard to try to outperform Bitcoin. Well, that's a lofty goal there, I suppose. Dixon believes that it is crucial, crucial, crucial for public companies to reinvest some of their cash into Bitcoin rather than, you know, real estate, stocks, or bonds in order to add the most shareholder value. Quote, I think more and more public companies are going to wake up to the fact that if you don't have Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you're not being intelligent as a fiduciary to that additional cash flow that you have in terms of where you allocate this part of your treasury reserve strategy. That is a clunky ass sentence, dude. In this, off the chain and OneMedNet is making similar arguments to that of Michael Saylor, whose MicroStrategy has seen its stock price outperform the return of Bitcoin since the company began adding the crypto to its balance sheet in August of 2020.
US listed Semler Scientific in Japan's Meta Planet are among other publicly traded companies pursuing similar strategies. I just think that this might be turned into a little bit more of a fad but only in the short term. Because the big the the best play is to buy bitcoin, hold it on your balance sheet, don't sell it. That I'm not arguing with that part. What I'm arguing with is that, like, this company, OneMedNet, goes public, loses 90% of its share price almost instantly. So, what do they do? They buy Bitcoin because that'll help. I don't I I don't I honestly know.
I don't think that helps you in in in the in the short term, and I think it helps you in the long term. I think what Michael Saylor did is actually the correct move, And I think that the people that are trying to emulate what he's done are doing the correct thing. But this seems very reactionary to me. And they're not the only one. Right? So I think, I can't remember if it's oh, Meta Planet. I think Meta Planet is being reactionary. Now I'm going to buffer that and say that the similar scientific guys they may be onto something because they they have a really good product and they have had a really good product for quite a while so for them they already have positive cash flow but when you lose 90% of your value the minute you start trading that kind of tells me that there may be an issue with your underlying plan or your underlying revenue model or whatever it is that you're trying to make money off of and that just by buying well we'll just buy some bitcoin and and that'll work I don't know.
I I don't I honestly, I don't think that saves everybody. I think you actually have to come in this with 2 things. 1, a commitment to your service and and product and or product and a proven revenue flow because of that commitment to your revenue or product. And second then you buy bitcoin you or or you buy bitcoin along the way right what while you're being successful with your original idea you add bitcoin to that but if your idea sucks so hard that your share price crashes through the floor like a fucking duck in winner and you're just gonna fix it by buying Bitcoin with this cash that you have I don't know. I'd be very, very careful. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC, futures and commodities, West Texas Intermediate is actually up today since being hammered over the last, couple of weeks. 0.74% of the upside brings us to 76.75 a barrel. Brent Norcea up over half a point to 79.61. Natural gas is up scant to $2.13 per 1,000 cubic feet. Excuse me. Gasoline is down a quarter of a point to $2.39 a gallon. Gold, and, copper are the only metal rocks doing well today. Gold is up a third of a point to 24.71. Copper is up just exactly one point, and everything else is in the red. Not terrible bad, but, you know, it's still in the red. Ag is fully mixed today. The biggest winner is chocolate. 10% to the upside. Double digits swinging for the fences. Oh, bitch.
Biggest loser is coffee. 3.07% to the downside. Live cattle is up 1.24%. Lean hogs are up scant, and feeder cattle are up 1 a quarter. The Dow and the rest of the, legacy indices are down in the red today. Dow is down a 5th of a point. The S and P is down 0.09%. The Nasdaq is down a quarter, and the S and P mini is down a half. Onto Clark Moody's dashboard where the price is $59,980, we're back down to a $1,180,000,000,000 market cap. But somehow or another, we're able to still get 24.7 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000 737,439.87 of, and the average fees per block are very, very low point 0 7 BTC on average on a per block basis. And how many blocks are there? There's a 127.
Wow. And, was it 263 unconfirmed transactions are stuck in those, and they're waiting for clearing at high priority rates at 7 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. What's hash rate looking like right now? Gee, 569 0.9 exahashes per second. So, yes, while we did hit a major major milestone, like 780 exahashes per second while I was up in the mountains, in Colorado, we are now back down to something, you know, resembling what we've seen for quite a while now. 569.9 exahashes per second, as I said. Now on to the torque begins, which was the last episode of Bitcoin and from the San Juan Mountains, which was recorded at about, I don't know, 7,300 feet, somewhere around there, somewhere around there. Anyway, Arcelorus BTC boosted 2,718 sats and says boosting because I haven't in a while.
Appreciate you. Yeah. I appreciate you too dude. Debravco 2,150 says I kiss you David. Not with that beard you son of a bitch. God's death with 21100 says, thank you sir. Great road shows. Well, you know, I'm gonna say something about that. I was definitely off. New place, completely new system. There's just no way around it. You're gonna be off. I, you know, I was off and I really I I appreciate you sticking with me. These will the the road shows will be better. I promise. It's just it's gonna take some practice. It really is. Pies with 21100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. 02zx with 750, general appreciation boost.
Thank you. Tyler BTC with 500 says cheers. Yeagerow with 21100 says the economy is screwing everyone pretty hard. All of the shops in my neighborhood say the same thing, quote, things have just been getting slower and slower slowly. People be broke. Cyber Planet HODL with 200 says nothing. Feral Hippie with a 100 says nothing. And I want to remind you all, and that was that's the end of the boost. I wanna remind you all that value for value is the only way that this works. It really is. We have to we have to migrate to the value for value model. I need your donations so that I can go out into the world and say, look. It's working.
This works for me. I don't have any commercials. I don't want commercials. If if I get the chance and it's, like, you know, makes the bills, I would probably do that. I don't want to. It's just that, you know, there's rent, there's water, there's electricity, there's gasoline, there's all manner of stuff that I really would like this show to be able to take care of, and I can't do that without people donating to the show. And you can do that with a podcasting 2.0 enabled podcasting app, otherwise known as a modern podcasting app. That's right. If you don't want an old clunky ass Apple based bullshit, you know, podcast app, go and get a new podcast app. I think you can actually get those at new podcastapps.com.
Hold on. Let's see. Newpodcastapp.com. Let's see if that works. Nope. Oh, deceptive side ahead. No. Oh, bullshit. It's not. Just go to podcast index. Let's see. We won't do that. Podcast index dot org. Okay. It's podcastindex.org. There's a tab up at the top right. It says apps. It's right it's right on the right side of the search bar. And you can have filters. And you can just go, I just want the app and then so there's Trufans, there's Podverse, there's Podcast Guru, there's Fountain which is My Daily Driver, there's PeerTube, Podfriend, LN Beats, Podcast Addicts, CurioCaster.
What else is there? There's a couple of more. Breeze has its own, podcast app inside the wallet. It's, there's Sphinx chat, which is sort of the same thing. It has its own it was its own thing, and then they added a podcast, app to the wallet. There's antennapod. There's all manner of stuff. And all of these allow you to boost me, satoshis, boost your favorite other podcasters, Satoshis. You can stream at Satoshis. You but what you're really doing is making a statement that I don't want commercials. I want you I want to listen to your show. I want to be informed, but we can't do this work without your support. So please donate and donate kindly. I would appreciate it very much. So that's the end of the morning ground. No. What did I use? Oh, the weather report. That's the end of the weather report. God, I'm out of practice.
Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. Remember, Meta Planet? I was talking about them as being one of the companies that not doing so well, so they decide to buy Bitcoin and it's gonna fix everything. Well, they've done it again. Meta Planet secures 1,000,000,000 yen, not dollar, 1,000,000,000 yen loan to buy yet more Bitcoin. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese investment firm, has secured a $6,800,000 US dollar loan to purchase additional Bitcoin. That's quite a bit, man. This comes just days after announcing plans to raise 10,080,000,000 yen through a stock rights offering mostly for Bitcoin buys.
They first revealed its Bitcoin treasury strategy back in May aiming to hedge against the yen depreciation. The firm currently holds around 246 Bitcoin worth 14,000,000 acquired over many buys. The 0 0.1 percent APR or annual percentage rate loan from shareholder MMXX Ventures has a 6 month term. Meta Planet plans to allocate the entire 1,000,000,000 yen to expand its Bitcoin reserves. At current prices, the 1,000,000,000 yen could purchase around 118 additional Bitcoin. This mimics MicroStrategy's playbook of raising debt to fund Bitcoin purchases since 2020. MicroStrategy's Bitcoin bet has increased its share price dramatically.
CEO Simon Gurevich stated that the firm believes Bitcoin offers twin benefits as an asset that can appreciate and hedge against a weakening yen. By securing loans and issuing stock to accumulate Meta Planet is essentially borrowing in to Stack Sats. The company can pay back loans using future Bitcoin appreciation. That's a that's a gamble. Okay? We all know that it's going up and right for, you know, forever, but there's going to be dips along the way, and they always seem to occur when you need it not to dip the most. Right? So that goes for companies too. Anyway, the loan and plan stock offering highlight Meta Planet's commitment to aggressively growing its Bitcoin war chest. Yes, we know.
But what's your what's your underlying service? You're say your Meta Planet says it's an investment firm. That's not what it used to be, but it apparently, that's what they're naming it now. And I just can't help but see a scrambling to success. And I don't mean that in a positive light. I I literally mean that I I think I think MicroStrategy and similar scientific are doing it the right way. I think Meta Planet and whatever that other one was, I can't even remember what the hell it was, 1 Medcoin or 1 Mednet. I don't think that I don't think that they fully appreciate what it is that they're getting into.
I don't know them. I've never met them. I've never interviewed them. But there's this gut feeling that I have that we have a 50% success rate going forward, at least right now. And that's MicroStrategy and Semler Scientific. And I'm not even sure exactly a And it does seem to be very necessary in the medical world. So, therefore, their revenue model makes sense. So since the revenue model makes sense, then they're able to engage in the Michael Sailor playbook. For for Michael Sailor himself and Michael Strategy, they actually have a product that they've had for a very long time. But as I've said on the show before, Michael Saylor himself said that in his view, that he thinks that they've kind of come to a limit.
Right? And maybe that limit was is the advent of AI because what he offers is is business strategy software. Like, given your revenues and given your assets, what can you do with them? What kind of strategies can you form? And there's software that helps with that. And maybe he saw it on the horizon and said, you know, after a while, they're gonna be able to run through through so many iterations with AI and and most of them will probably be wrong. But if you get a field of them and you've got, you know, some human experts looking at what these things are coming up with, then you might be able to very quickly come up with a high quality strategy. Maybe he saw that. But I remember him distinctly saying that he thinks that MicroStrategy, as far as the the company, the way it's structured right now, with its products and services right now, are sort of seeing the end of the road sort of sunsetting and he's just converting all of that into a complete Bitcoin strategy that is different than what similar scientific is doing because similar scientific doesn't have an end of the road or a sunsetting anytime soon because their product is necessary for medicine.
They have a good product. People buy the shit out of it. They have an in the continuous revenue stream. So that's even different between MicroStrategy and similar scientific. But Meta Planet and 1 Med Net, I don't know. You flip a coin on that son of a bitch. Speaking of flipping a coin, 1 coin, Crypto Queen, Arusha, Ignatova's assets has been frozen by a UK court. Why did it take them so long? Interesting. Adrian Zmadeszewski, can't pronounce it, decryp.c0. London's high court has issued a worldwide freeze order for the assets of alleged 1 coin fraudsters, including those of the infamous crypto queen, Ruja Ignatova.
According to the announcement shared with Decrypt, the case initiated by over 400 victims of OneCoin resulted in a freeze order on the assets of Ignatova and OneCoin cofounder Sebastian Greenwood along with Christopher Hamilton and Robert McDonald. Hamilton and McDonald allegedly helped launder the funds on behalf of the OneCoin schemes organizers. The funds of 4 influencers who promoted the scheme were also frozen along with those of business entities that Ignatova allegedly used to launder the funds from OneCoin and purchase assets. Launched in 2014, OneCoin billed itself as a Bitcoin killer, but it was subsequently revealed to be a Ponzi scheme with absolutely no network for the token having ever been built.
Ignatova, also known as the crypto queen, defrauded investors worldwide through a $4,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme until it collapsed in 2017 and then her subsequent disappearance. She was last seen fleeing Bulgaria on a plane to Athens, Greece in 2017 and made it onto the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 10 most wanted list. Congratulations, Ignatova. Although, she herself has not been seen since she fled Bulgaria in the year of 2017, she seemingly resurfaced in a 2023 UK government filing linking to a London property. When the property was listed for $15,500,000 later reduced to 13.6, she was reportedly forced to step forward as its owner.
This was due to a recent rule in change involving overseas companies in the UK and her status as a so called beneficial owner of the company owning the property. However, a BBC report at the time noted that the listing could be traced back to prosecutors of the German city of Bielefeld rather than UK law office officials or Ignatova herself. Ignatova's page on the FBI's 10 most wanted list notes that the US Department of State's Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program offers up to $5,000,000 for information leading to her arrest or conviction. Getting close to her would be rather challenging though since she is believed to travel with armed guards and or associates.
The FBI also notes that she may have had plastic surgery or otherwise altered her appearance. Yeah we know that so my question and this will be the question that I think a lot of people are asking why is it just now 2017 was was a while ago was what 7 years it's taken the 7 years to I mean, I would have figured that the minute that she hit the at least the minute that she hit the FBI's 10 most wanted list, that they would freeze her assets then. And she made it to the 10 most wanted list years years years ago. Why now?
And and what has been allowed to occur on those assets? Has there been the ability to withdraw assets? Has there been the ability to buy other assets with those assets? What the hell? This doesn't make any sense, especially for the governments that we deal with that we know, for a fact, love to freeze people's shit when they don't like them. So why didn't they freeze hers? I don't know the answer to that question but if you have a theory I'd love to hear it and read it on the air. So throw me a boost to gram, support the show, and let's get into some tinfoil hatchery. Last up today, Build Asset Management is going to donate 10% of its management fees to support open source Bitcoin development.
Build Asset Management has committed to donating 10% of management fees from its Bitcoin backed direct lending fund, build secured income fund 1 to bolster open source Bitcoin development. The donation is set to be a no strings attached and occur on a monthly basis. The fund is split equally between OpenSats and the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund. Quote, Bitcoin is advancing financial freedom and economic empowerment for individuals from the bottom up across the globe and on open and level playing fields. We are committed to supporting its continued development for a brighter future. And the these two organizations exhibit remarkable leadership and track records through their work in this area, said Matt Dines, CIO of Build Asset Management.
Quote, every profitable Bitcoin business should support the open source contributors that make this movement possible. We are incredibly grateful for Build Asset Management choosing to lead by example with a long term commitment to the OpenSats General Fund, added Matt O'Dell, co founder of OpenSats itself. Okay. So, build asset management isn't funneling profits whether gross profits or net profits from their investment product or their management product. They're donating 10% of management fees so if they're taking like I don't know let's say they take 1% as a management fee then they're going to donate point 001% or a point 01% of that to open sats and the human was a human rights foundation's bitcoin development fund so it's an it's it's interesting that they're using that they're going to do the management fees rather than rather than another model.
Honestly, I kind of like it because the management fee itself seems to be the only way. Now, I I don't know anything. I don't know very much about, you know, build asset management, but I will probably be right in assuming that their only revenue is the management fee revenue from the product that they've built and are trying to sell or service? However you wanna, you know, however you wanna look at it. And that the management fee itself is the only revenue. So is it now my question becomes, is it is it net management fees? Like, after everybody's been paid, the electricity has been paid you know and you're left with nothing but pure profit is it 1 is it 10% of that or is it 10% of gross before everybody's paid? Because that's a very, very, very different number. But I'm just glad that they're going to donate 10% of their management fees whether net or gross to support open source Bitcoin development because if their revenue model depends on the security of the underlying asset and that asset was also built by bitcoin development then they need to fund bitcoin development it's I mean the companies are in the best position to be able to do that If they don't, then then what are they doing? If you really get down to it if you depend on your car, do you run it on 4 flat tires all the time?
No. You don't. If you depend on your fish let's say you got a fishing boat and your job is to go out there and catch fish and bring it to market and sell it to people because they like to eat fish. Would you fish with holes in your nets and never repair them? Does that sound like a very smart thing to do? No. And one more. If you're flying a plane for a living and you're flying passengers, do you consistently fly on a broken engine? Probably not. You probably can't even get off the ground, which is actually good news, because then then you won't be in the air and have gravity, you know, decide to not be your best friend anymore. Right? So this is the same thing.
All of these funds, you know, BlackRock and BlackRock's Ibit and all these other people, the these 11 e spot Bitcoin ETFs, only 2 of them, as far as I know, are donating to open stats and human rights foundation and one other one, and I can't remember what it was, but they're all trying to support the open source bitcoin development infrastructure right the people the the the institutions that have set these things up They're really trying to support it because their products absolutely depend on the smooth functioning of the underlying asset, and the security of that underlying asset. And the asset is the security and the security is the asset. And if you don't know that about Bitcoin, then you need to read some more.
Because those two things go together. It's not just 2 people holding hands. It's like 2 sides of the same ball. And if one side of the ball, you know, falls off, you ain't got a ball. What you've got is a, I don't know, some oblong looking thing that doesn't really do much except wobble around. So therefore, without that other side, without the without the token of value and the security of that token being squished together all in one package and having that having both those sides developed upon concurrently, then you don't have a ball that you can go play with.
So, if you want to, you know, keep your ball and keep playing on the court, you're gonna need to support open source development in the Bitcoin infrastructure and ecosystem as well as Lightning Network and Nostr and eCash and god only knows what else is on the horizon. Right now, I see 4. Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Nostr, and Ecash. Now you'll say, why Nostr? It's not money. Why would you say that it's not money? I'm not saying that it's a token. I'm not saying the that an event when I say good morning to somebody, I'm not saying that that has, you know, an inherent value in and of itself, but it's a rail of money.
So if I look at Lightning Network, that is a Bitcoin rail. If I look at e cash, that is also a Bitcoin as well as a Lightning Network Rail those are communication protocols They have a token involved. Nostra is just a bit different. It is a rail that has events involved. Pablo has figured out a way. If Pablo is a developer on Noster, he's been around for a while. He doesn't sleep very much because he's always delivering. He's always shipping. And he's figured out a way to turn a node into an e cash wallet. What I have is two sides of a ball.
I have a token of value that has security, and then I have communication rails. Along with that, all 4 of these networks are going to talk are are now talking to each other, and they're going to figure out ways to communicate even better, translate between each other, either even better, like 4 different kinds of mushrooms growing in a forest that are all connected to the trees and bushes and grasses and whatnot, and they're all sharing nutrients, but then they start the the four networks start to talk to each other. Now, the network that is attached to, like, a 100000 cypress trees is now able to share in the resources of a 100000 pine trees.
And that would be the Noster network. And then there's the Lightning Network, which can share in half of both of those networks and just be a routing type of thing for the for the other two networks. And then you've got other networks that can come along and start to attach to the do all these networks until you end up with a mall that has the same door. If you remember what I was talking about before, this is what I mean. Walking into a mall, it doesn't matter what entrance you use. You're just going to the mall. Inside that mall are separate networks but once you're inside the mall you can deploy an instruction set as to where you need to go away from the prying eyes of people outside the mall. All they saw was that you just went into the mall.
What you do in the mall should be your business as directed by an instruction set that you have in your transaction if I'm not being clear it's probably because this is an idea that has just been forming for me today but I've been trying to figure this out like if I go into a mall what I'm walking into is an ecosystem And once I'm in the mall, I can go to Dillard's to go pick up a suit. That is a network like the Bitcoin network. Or I might be able to go over to Kohl's and get something cheaper let me rock over there well that's its own mycelial mushroom network and it's its own thing.
But what if somehow or another I can walk into Dillard's but still buy Kohl's or walk into Kohl's and still buy Dillard's, the first thing on your head is that both those companies will go out of business. I get that. The analogy is a little rough. I'll work on it. I promise. But what about Spencer's? If, God, if they're still open, or what about, you know, a jewelry store? These are all their own separate networks. The mall itself combines them or or at least it allows an ecosystem for them to start interacting. Whether or not they interact with each other is up to those particular networks sensibilities.
But they could because they'd been provided a space. So instead of sending our cache to tornado cash to quote unquote mix it so that we can obfuscate where it comes from, what if we had this idea where everything was the mixer and that if the government was using bitcoin it's using a mixer only not because we changed the protocol but because we change the environment of the ecosystem where all these things already exist as they are without change That's what I'm suggesting. Alright. That's gonna be it for today. I hope you enjoyed the show. We are at 60 minutes and 46 seconds, so I'm just gonna say it. 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.
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