Join me today for Episode 935 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- MARA USA Branded Blocks
- Catless Hair Lady to Hate on BTC More
- 3AC Sues Terraform Labs
- Mempool Accelerator: Now With Lightning
- El Salvador Bitcoin City Sea Port
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/kamala-harris-may-continue-the-biden-administration-s-crypto-crackdown
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https://decrypt.co/244376/el-salvador-announces-1-6-billion-investment-that-will-kickstart-bitcoin-city
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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 8:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 13th day of August 2024, and this is episode a 935 of Bitcoin.
And we got a couple of pieces of news from digital. We'll talk a little bit about Kamala Harris and the fact that she may, you know, continue the Biden administration's attack on Bitcoin and other things. 3ac liquidators are back in the news. It's gonna be a It's gonna be a goddamn bloodbath over there, man. I swear to God. And then there's some mempool news that I think really demonstrates how it's absurd when people say that there's nothing going on in bitcoin that there's no development whatsoever. It's it's it's insane I've never understood that attitude myself because every time I turn around it's something new is just dropped either a new integration between 2 completely different products and we'll get into one of those today or something like what's going on with Mempool and their acceleration feature.
El Salvador is back in the news with yet another investment. We'll see if that one, you know, actually materializes unlike the Hilton Hotel debacle. And then, you know, we've got this Zeus thing, Meta Planet. There's all kinds of interesting stuff happening today. So let's just well, let's just bail on into this first one here about Marathon Digital. It's kind of embarrassing, so get ready for just a bit of cringe from Bitcoin Magazine and Nick Hoffman. Marathon Digital is now stamping all of the Bitcoin they mine in America as made in USA.
Yes. They're they're doing that in the header. It's all patriotic and shit. Right? So, Marathon Digital Holdings, a leading US based Bitcoin mining company, has announced that all Bitcoin blocks mined in America will now be stamped with the label Made in USA The company declared on Twitter, Mera is Team USA proudly declared in each American made Bitcoin block we mine. I'm telling you man, this is a bit cringe. Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital emphasized this commitment stating, quote, every block mined by Mariupol in the USA is proudly stamped made in USA. We are the only large scale miner who can do this because we run our own pool and ensure that all the blocks mined by Maripul are made in the USA.
This initiative coincides with comments made earlier this summer by presidential candidate Donald Trump who expressed a desire for all of the remaining Bitcoin to be, quote, made in the USA, as Trump believes more Bitcoin mining done in the country will to America's goal of becoming energy dominant. He also reiterated his support for domestic Bitcoin mining at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, pledging to ensure that American miners receive the electricity they need to mine more Bitcoin here in the USA. Earlier today, Marathon Digital announced a $250,000,000 private offering.
We'll get to that in a second in in the second story. But I just I kinda I just can't help myself. I'm looking at the tweet from Bitcoin Magazine. Just in, Marathon announced it. It announces it is now stamping each Bitcoin block it mines with made in USA. And, of course, they provide a little screenshot of the block header of this particular block that was mined by Mara. And highlighted in the block header is marapool made in USA. Honestly, who cares? How is this not just lip service? And I don't even know who they're paying lip service to. It doesn't matter if the block is found in the USA.
You would actually have to stamp all the you'd have to treat it like an inscription and an ordinal for this to carry through because who gives a shit about the block? I mean, I care about the block insofar as that it represents the security of the transactions in the block. But it's not like the satoshis in the block that is mined is somehow or another going to be irreparably changed by the fact that it was included in a particular block that was mined in the USA. So, they could have what they should have just said is instead of marapool made in USA, they should have just said marapool mined in USA. That would actually make a little bit more sense considering that the only thing really being mined is the block.
But understand that the header of the block has absolutely nothing to do with the transactions that are inside the block. So it's not like all of a sudden if if I make another transaction like let's say that I made a transaction. It was included in in a block that was mined by Mara. And all of a sudden, that transaction is in the block that is stamped made in USA in the block header. And then, I make another transaction from like let let let's say that I got the Bitcoin in that transaction. Somebody was giving me a Bitcoin in that transaction. And that transaction was mined in the USA by Mara, and this block is stamped that way. And then I take those satoshis and I put them into another transaction because I want to pay somebody.
Do you think that that transaction somehow or another is going to have any evidence whatsoever that the satoshis that were put into those transact that transaction is going to somehow or another carry with within it forever made in USA. No, it won't. It's not. It's just it this is dumb. It's lip service. It's this it's this faux patriotism that just drives me crazy. So, just understand that Mara, because they're doing this, is demonstrating that I don't think they actually care as much about Bitcoin as you think they do. Okay.
Now, let's get on to the other Marathon news. Digital Holdings. Marathon Digital Holdings, in fact, is going to raise $250,000,000 simply to buy more Bitcoin, Vivex, and also Bitcoin Magazine. Marathon, one of the U. S. Largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners, announced plans to raise $250,000,000 through a private offering of convertible senior notes. The funds will be used primarily to expand Marathon's bitcoin holdings. The Nevada based company operates a fleet of miners producing around 579 bitcoin in July. Marathon's balance sheet contains over 20,000 bitcoin which is worth well over $1,100,000,000 Earlier in July, Marathon bought $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin on the open market as part of its long term HODL strategy. The company said that it will hold all newly made Bitcoin, as reserved or newly mined Bitcoin as reserves. And this latest move to capital for direct Bitcoin purchasing mirrors the strategy pioneered by MicroStrategy.
Yes. We know. Marathon aims to position itself atop the nascent but rapidly evolving Bitcoin mining and services industry by aggressively expanding its Bitcoin stack. This fundraising approach will allows public equity investors indirect exposure to Bitcoin with growing adoption from firms like MicroStrategy and Similar Scientific as well as MetaPlanet, Bitcoin is emerging as a corporate treasury asset class. Again, we know that as well. The MicroStrategy, what do they get? The playbook. Remember Michael, Sailor released the MicroStrategy playbook, I don't know, like two and a half years ago and nobody bit. It took a while.
Now they're biting. Like I said, MicroStrategy and Similar Scientific seem well positioned to be able to do this because they have positive revenue flow from a completely different business model. But Meta Planet just it just seems that they're trying to save their own ass. As well as at least one other company whose name escapes me right now. And I don't think it works as well for them. Although, that doesn't mean that it won't work. I'm just saying it just it's almost a Hail Mary, which is okay. I'm not saying anything bad about that. I'm just saying that there doesn't seem to be an overarching high quality revenue model for something like Meta Planet as opposed to similar scientific and clearly MicroStrategy who's been selling business intelligence software for decades decades.
Now, you ready for the political stuff? You ready for Kamala Harris? The the the catless bag lady or whatever the hell JD Vance called her? Anyway, Kamala Harris may continue the Biden administration's crypto crackdown, Cointelegraph, Zoltan Vardy. The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, aims to maintain the Biden administration's stringent stance on cryptocurrency regulation. Harris is reportedly working with Brian Deese and Bahrat Ramamurti, 2 former economic advisers for the the Biden administration who have heavily opposed the previous Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2023 for being just too permissive for issuers.
Harris' choice of economic advisers could signal her intention to continue the Biden administration's hostile crypto regulatory approach, according to Alex Thorne, the head of research at Galaxy, who wrote in an August 13th Twitter post, quote, new evidence that Kamala Harris will continue the crypto crackdown. Her adviser choice suggests that she will keep Biden's hostile attitude to crypto, end quote. Harris is preparing to unveil plans regarding her economic policy agenda in a mid August speech which would offer investors more cues about her approach towards cryptocurrency regulation. In March of 2023, the U. S. Banking system took a hit, following the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the voluntary liquidation of Silvergate Bank.
Signature Bank was also forced to close operations by New York Regulators on March 12th, 2 days after Silvergate Bank's liquidation. The sudden collapse of the 3 crypto friendly U. S. Banks was called Operation Choke Point 2.0 by crypto venture capitalist Nick Carter who saw it as a coordinated effort to unbank the crypto industry. In a concerning sign for future crypto regulation, Deese and Ramamurti were allegedly part of the operation according to Galaxy's Thorn, who wrote, Deese and Ramamurti are 2 key architects of the Biden administration's anti crypto crusade including ChokePoint 2.0 Popular American Business Magazine Fortune has previously referred to Bharat as the White House's top crypto critic who serves as a National Economic Council deputy director in the White House until October 2023.
This is another reason why Harris' choice of economic adviser spells a tougher stance for the crypto industry, added Thorn, quote, people are policy at the end of the day. And if Brian Deese, Bahrat Brahmapurthy, Wally Adeyemo et al. Are set to lead economic policy in a Harris waltz administration, it's very unlikely that the administration will soften its stance on crypto. The announcement comes a week after Harris revealed Minnesota governor Tim Waltz as her running mate for the 2024 US presidential election on August the 6th. And so who knows which way this is going? Because right now, the the oracle that and I can't remember who it is. It's some kind of crypto betting thing and everybody knows its name but me because it's, you know, only 9:10 in the morning and I don't have more than 3 brain cells firing at any given time. I can't remember its name, but right now that shifted to I think Harris has pulled ahead by 50 to 54.6% in that particular style of polling. And then in the rest of the, national polls, showing her ahead too. But, you know, just do remember what happened in 2016 because all the polls, everything showed that, oh, oh, what's her face? Clinton was going to just it was just going to be a drubbing, and then she ended up losing. And then we come to find out that there was all kinds of chicanery with the polling.
So, at this point, I don't know what the hell's going on. I can't believe a single thing that I hear any longer. We'll just have to we'll just have to figure that out. So, anyway, let's move on to 3AC liquidators filing a $1,300,000,000 claim against TerraForm Labs. Helen Partes liquidators of the collapsed cryptocurrency hedge fund 3 Arrows Capital. Remember 3 Arrows Capital? That sort that was sort of the entry point a couple of years ago to the whole FTX and we talked about those, crypto banks also folding FTX, Alameda Research, BlockFi, 3AC, the 3 those 3 crypto banks all of that kind of collapsed together.
So, just I want you to remember when we talk about 3AC, we're talking about just before that entire thing happened. And like the zombies always do, they are back because they filed a $1,300,000,000 claim in the TerraForm Labs bankruptcy in Delaware Federal Court on August 9th according to a legal news service Law 360 report. In a proof of claim form, 3AC Liquidators alleged that TerraForm Labs misled the Singaporean Hedge Fund about the stability of tokens in the Terra ecosystem, including Terra's algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD And the UST tied token, Terra Luna, whose ticker symbol was LUNA. Or actually still is because God forbid that it should actually die, right? The liquidators represented by Russell Crumpler and Christopher Farmer of Taneo Holding argued that TerraForm Labs advertised the tokens in a manner that artificially inflated the price of the asset.
Those mis representations and omissions induced 3AC to invest heavily in Terra just a few months after UST depegged from the dollar causing a massive crash in the Terra ecosystem that impacted a lot of cryptocurrency firms. As such, 3AC Liquidators are now seeking damages caused by its direct purchases of UST and Luna and associated damages from the complete loss of value of 3AC's cryptocurrency investments caused by the collapse of LUNA and UST. The new claim by 3AC Liquidators comes a few months after TerraForm Labs cofounder Do Kwon was found liable for defrauding investors in a civil case with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in April of 2024. Previously, Kwon was released from prison in Montenegro on extradition requests from the United States as well as South Korea.
Founded in 2012 by Columbia University alum, Sue Zhu and Kyle Davies, 3AC was one of the largest crypto hedge funds handling up to $18,000,000,000 in assets under management at its peak. Just a few months after Terra crashed, 3AC failed to meet margin calls from its lenders and filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. The company is currently proceeding with insolvency proceedings in the British Virgin Islands. And last year, a court in those islands reportedly banned 3AC cofounders Zhu and Davies from transferring or selling assets worth up to $1,100,000,000 3AC's liquidator, Taneo, estimated that 3AC creditors were owed roughly $3,300,000,000 following its collapse in 2022. So the zombies are back.
And just I mean this is just kind of par for the course. And any anytime anything changes like Duquan gets, sued successfully in court for maybe something else, that will trigger a cascade of other people coming after what it is that they feel that they got. And my the the way that I feel about it is that you should you either knew or you should have known that this shit was a scam. And if you didn't then you didn't do enough due diligence. There were many of us that didn't even have to look at the books of all these assholes and we were screaming scam. We were screaming this is bullshit. We were telling everybody that would listen to us to get as far away from this crap as it possibly could and everybody, as usual, just pointed to us or at us and laughed.
Well. Screw them all. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down 2.2% but still holding just above 78 dollars a barrel. Brent Norsee, likewise, down 2% to $80.65. Natural gas is down also 2 points to $2.14 dollars per 1,000. And gasoline is down 2.65 to $2.37 a gallon. Gold is the and palladium are the only shiny metal rocks that are doing anything at all today. Gold is up 0.18 percent to $2508.60. Silver is down 1.12%. Platinum is down 0.6%. Copper is down 0.7. But palladium is up 2 a half percent. Ag is pretty much fully mixed. Biggest winner is chocolate. Yeah.
Chocolate making a rebound, 2.69%. Biggest loser today is gonna be coffee, 3.92% to the down side. Live cattle is up 0.14. Lean hogs down 3. And feeder cattle up 0.1%. The Dow is up 2 thirds of a point. S and P is up 1.14%. NASDAQ is up 1.8. S and P Mini is up 0.8 2%. Clark Moody's dashboard flashing a price of Bitcoin at $59,960 that is holding at a 1.18 $1,000,000,000,000 market cap. And we can now only buy 24.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,739,211.74 of. Average fees per block have increased but only slightly to 0.06 BTC in fees on a per block basis. And how many blocks are there? But 121.
And they are carrying 238,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 4 satoshis per vbyte. Low priorities are also 4 satoshis per vbyte. Hash rate is at 610 exahashes per second. And I saw yesterday that we hit an all time high. I'm not sure what they were talking about because I'm pretty sure that the all time high was somewhere over 700 exahashes per second. And yesterday, we didn't hit that. So I'm not exactly sure what those, news stories were saying. But we are pretty I mean, we are up there. I mean, it's just that this graph of hash rate is up and to the right, honestly. So, I'm not worried about security of of the system, like, at all. Now Freedom attacked, which was Bitcoin and episode 300 no. No. 934.
O two z x boosted me 5,000 sats, brother. Thank you. Boosh. Albie interview. Love to hear a Plevman's AlbieHub medium deep dive preparing to self host it. Sometimes audible sinks in better than a written AMA. PS, sorry, last attempt to joke was bad delivery. Tried to reference last great Mitch Hedberg. Okay. Get Albie. I am working with one of the guys over at, Get Albie now to get him on to talk about Get Albie. But but I really wanna start, you know, to get a handle on this Albie hub. I'm trying to side load it into my start 9 and it's just it's just failing and I don't understand why. I've got it unzipped. I mean, I've done all the instructions.
The only thing that I can think of is that it's a large enough package that my wireless antenna is not fast enough, or my wireless gear on my on my computer isn't fast enough to get enough data over to the start 9 via wireless. So I maybe I'm thinking that the start 9 is going, dude, you're this isn't going fast enough. I'm just gonna shut this shit down. I I don't wanna take forever doing this crap. So I might have to just go get me a landline and and just physically connect my computer to the to the modem and see if that works. If it doesn't, I definitely wanna talk about what's going on there. And I also wanna talk about the user interface, about how how is it that I can get somebody like with the the guy that I interviewed while I was up in Colorado, Cody.
How can I get him to easily be able to self host AlbieHub when he's got actual other stuff that he's gotta go be doing? So I definitely wanna talk to him about that. Anyway, the bird boosted a 1,000 sat says high signal will keep up the good work. Pies with 420 says, I got a Louisville slugger ready to beat the baby seals, l f g. Pies with another 420 says, non compliance, this is the way. And yet another 420 from Pies, non compliance, this is the way. And another 420 from Pye says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Agich00te, agich00te.
If you know how to pronounce that, let me know. What the 100 says. And he does this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times. Each one is a 100 sats and it says the exact same thing. International Baby Seals Rights Organization is ready for a fight. Well, look, if you want to keep the baby seals safe, there's one way that you can do that. You can donate to the show. I have locked down a third time with my lawyer friend for the King Ranch, Tony. As far as I can tell I'm going out there Monday 26th with the mobile rig to her ranch to set up and do a face to face sit down interview, I could use some gas money. Let's start there. It's gonna cost me about probably it's 2 hours either way.
It's gonna be about $45 in cash. So if you wanna buy gas, you can do that through boostagrams. You can do that through streaming satoshis. If you do it through boostagram, tell me gas money or something like that and I will take it easy on the baby seals. Alright. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Orange Surf over on, Nostr, tweeted something out or tweeted. God. I I feel bad about saying that. Noted something today. It said, using the public mempool accelerator API, you can now fetch a lightning invoice to boost any transaction integrate into your appservice today. Okay, so.
I started looking at this realizing that this is one of these innovations that you you can't sleep on. There's no sleeping allowed any longer. And for those people for those people that say that there's nothing going on in Bitcoin, that there's no development, that's all horseshit. Right? There is development going on. At this point, it's going on in levels outside of the actual core protocol. So, in this particular case, if you've got a transaction and it's stuck but you, for whatever reason, don't want to go back into your wallet and use your wallet software to accelerate from that standpoint, that particular transaction, you can go to mempool. Now this is the public mempool. This is like, you know, what mempool?
Was it mempool.space? Right? That means that if if you are privacy concerned using the public mempool to search up your transaction is not the best idea. Because somebody could be, you know, somebody could be looking and say, oh, that must be that must be his transaction. I use my own mempool, but understand that my mempool is on my start 9. And I'm pretty sure that some of those features are deprecated from mempool. Space the public mempool. So, I'm pretty sure. I haven't tried it yet, but I haven't I I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be able to directly accelerate a transaction from my start 9 mempool software. Now, that said, this is still pretty cool because what what what does this mean?
If you've got a stuck transaction and you don't mind using mempool. Space to accelerate the transaction directly, you can simply go over to mempool.space, find and and then type, if you've got your transaction ID, you put that in the search bar, it will take you right to your transaction, and then you will have the ability to accelerate that thing. And anybody can accelerate any transaction. That's right. You don't have to accelerate your own transaction because there's no way for MNPL to really know. So they've just basically opened it up. So, like, if somebody sends you a transaction and you're impatient and they send you the transaction ID, you yourself can go put that transaction ID into the search bar and then accelerate directly from mempool. Space. And that's anybody. It's out of beta. It looks like it's, like, open to everybody.
So, I'm over here at at mempool.space and I'm just gonna pick a transaction. So, the transaction comes up and then let's see down here Where is it? Where is it? There's somewhere. Oh, yeah. So now that I've got the transaction up on the screen, which you can't see so I'm going to try to describe it. I've got the transaction data. Like when it was first seen, its ETA, its features, how much the fee for this particular transaction is like just under $70 and the fee rate is at 3.01, satoshis per vbyte. There's a purple accelerate button in that transaction field. And the field below that is flow, and below that is inputs and outputs, and below that is more details.
In the first field, the transaction field, right to the right of ETA is the accelerate button. Now, if I hit that accelerate button, it says, okay, I can accelerate to 12 satoshis per Vbyte. And I can customize that. So I hit the customize button and it gives me some data. It gives me some graphics that I can sit there and go, you know what? I don't want 12 satoshis per vbyte. I don't want to go down to 8 satoshis per vbyte. I'm gonna accelerate it for the cost of 700,000 satoshis, 19 satoshis per vbyte. Then I'm going to hit a purple accelerate button because it's yet another accelerate button.
And it's sitting there spinning. And it comes up with a lightning invoice. An LNBC headed address. Right? So now I can just simply pay this invoice through my GetAlBI wallet through the lightning network and just accelerate this transaction. Which I'm not gonna do. I have no idea who the hell this is. And I'm certainly not going to pay an additional $419 to do this shit. So, I'm just gonna turn this right off. But understand that they've what has just happened is they've basically given you a public button that you can just press and accelerate with a lightning invoice any transaction in the mempool. Whether it's your transaction, whether it's somebody else's transaction and they're sending you bitcoin and you're just that impatient that you want that money right now, then you have the option to do that.
Or for whatever reason, you feel like, I don't know, being magnanimous and accelerating somebody else's. But understand, there is constant development in this space. Now, let's get out of this space and go over to a crypto wallet that's holding $2,000,000,000 worth of Mt. Gox Bitcoin. It sends a test transaction as distribution continues according to an Arkhem report. CoinDesk Christian Sandor has it a crypto wallet that recently received $2,000,000,000 in Bitcoin from defunct exchange Mt. Gox trustee initiated a test transaction on Tuesday, perhaps to prepare distributing funds to creditors, blockchain analytics firm Archim Intelligence noted.
Arkim analyst said that the wallet initiated the transfer. It well, it's probably likely belongs to crypto custody platform BitGo, one of the 5 exchanges that distribute tokens to creditors. BitGo is the last remaining distribution partner, they added. The test transaction followed a $33,100 or no. 33,100 Bitcoin transfer 2 weeks ago worth $2,200,000,000 at the time from a Mt. Gox cold wallet holding creditors funds. Arkhem explained that the process of tagging the wallet as likely being BitGo in a telegram message to CoinDesk. The address was clustered with a large input cluster which we were able to identify as BitGo due to custody structure and wallet types used, an Arkam analyst said.
We've also been able to identify the other fur, f u r, fur exchange partners used for Mt. Gox distribution, so there's also a process of elimination. And I have no idea what the other Fur Exchange Partners I don't know what Fur means here, so please it's possibly a typo. Who knows? Anyway, meanwhile, some users in a Reddit channel dedicated to Mt. Gox creditors reported that they received funds to their BitGo accounts. CoinDesk hasn't verified those claims though. BitGo has not returned a request to confirm the transaction. Japan based Mt. Gox was at one point the largest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know. So they go through just a little bit of history at the very end of that article. But that's all we need to know is that these coins are still on the move. It's going to scare everybody.
Everybody's getting, you know, this is just nothing but fear and loathing in Las Vegas. So just be prepared for any kind of chicanery to go on. Mostly it's just going to be psychological. It's not going to actually be a whole bunch of people just automatically selling. But whatever. El Salvador going down south has announced a $1,600,000,000 investment that will kick start bitcoin city Yeah. Well, we've heard this story before. Andrew Thorvallis, decrypt.co. El Salvador is getting a massive infrastructure investment that's expected to support the build out of its visionary Bitcoin City.
The government said on Sunday that Gilport, a Turkish holding company, will invest $1,620,000,000 in 2 of El Salvador's seaports, making the largest private investment in the country's history. Quote, This will be a mixed ownership company between the Yield Port Company and El Salvador which will operate both seaports for the next 50 years, said the government in a video statement shared by El Salvador president Nayib Bukele on Monday. The agreement is a product of Bukele's visit to Turkey in 2022. One of the ports involved is the Acajutla seaport, which handles most of the nation's exports of coffee, sugar and balsamic salts from Peru.
The other is the La Union Seaport, an inactive and neglected seaport located where Bitcoin City is planned for construction. Oh, this is interesting. Stacy Herbert, head of El Salvador's National Bitcoin Office, retweeted a statement that the project will create 1,000 of direct and indirect jobs and more investment in underlying local infrastructure. Max Keiser, Herbert's husband and also a member of the Bitcoin Office, characterized the deal as a Bitcoin City infrastructure investment. Pukele's Turkey trip paid off bigly, he wrote on Twitter. Qatar on deck. Well, Bitcoin City was first pitched in November of 2021 as a tax free city that would fund itself through Bitcoin mining powered by its regional volcanoes rather than from its civilian powered grid.
The president shared a potential architectural model of the city in May of 2022, though little has been said of the project since that time. The city was supposed to be funded through El Salvador's long anticipated Bitcoin bonds, but the fundraising effort has been postponed numerous times. The country has found alternative sources of capital, however, including a renewable Bitcoin mining partnership with Tether and a Freedom Visa program offered to generous wealthy Bitcoiners. According to the Bitcoin Office website, El Salvador currently holds 5,840.76 BTC, currently worth around $345,000,000 It continues to add 1 BTC to its holdings every day. That's the end of the article. But if you'll remember, Bukele made that promise about a year and a half ago or at least minimum a year ago, and said that every day, every single day, day after day, that they will buy 1 bitcoin and add it to their treasury.
I have I mean, I've seen some kind of evidence given, you know, that we can see their wallet that that may be occurring. But unless we continuously watch it, you never know what's going on with that thing. So, on to Zeus. Zeus has announced Olympus integrations with both lightning. Pub and Mutiny Wallet. Now, I'm not sure how this is gonna work since Mutiny Wallet the wallet itself isn't going away, but the people behind the wallet are moving on. So they're basically saying we're we're kind of done with mutiny. I can only presume that Mutiny being rather rather open sourced is just going to be probably taken over by somebody and maintained because it is a very good wallet. Anyway, lightning. Pub is a nostril powered lightning node that simplifies the Uncle Jim model allowing users to connect friends and family to their node.
Pub introduces a Nostra native account system making node management easier than ever. This free, open source software is available under the GNU AGPL version 3.0 license. Quote, in PUB, node management happens all under the hood. Multiple providers are available with Olympus being the top provider for channels in excess of 3,000,000 sats under current fee conditions. Smaller channels will leverage other service providers, Evan Kaludis wrote in a blog post. Here we go. The Mutiny team will shut down its wallet at year's end, but users can still self host it indefinitely.
Mutiny allows users to manually deploy a node on any server or platform. The Olympus by Zeus LSP will continue to work with the Mutiny Wallet regardless of where it is deployed, and if you are using the self custodial lightning wallet and mutiny, it will default to using Olympus by Zeus LSP. Developers looking to integrate Olympus into their app can explore the API documentation for Olympus by Zeus LSP services. So mute mutiny is dead. Long live mutiny. And I like the fact that Zeus immediately built an integration, for their, their system into Mutiny Wallet as well as lightning. Pub.
It's sad to see Mutiny Team go away, especially, given that where some of them are going, but it is what it is. And last up, Meta Planet has bought yet another 500,000,000 yen worth of Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin Magazine. Vivek Sin is writing. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese investment firm, purchased an additional 500,000,000 yen, which is about 3 point $4,000,000 US worth of Bitcoin. And this brings the company's total Bitcoin holdings to 303 acquired for 2,950,000,000 yen or $20,000,000 On August 6th, Meta Planet announced plans to raise 10,080,000,000 yen through a stock rights offering to expand its Bitcoin reserves.
It followed on August 8th with a 1,000,000,000 yen loan secured to buy more Bitcoin. And the firm is going on to aggressively purchase yet more Bitcoin. But I caution people, this is a very very small investment firm in Japan that almost nobody had heard of until they started buying Bitcoin. So, it's hype. I I don't mean to say that these guys suck and that they're completely evil and that they're not gonna do right. It I don't know. That's the whole point is I have no clue what's going on with these guys, but nobody had ever heard of them before this. And now, all of a sudden, Meta Planet's in the news, Meta Planet's doing this, Meta Planet's doing that, and now there it's like it it that name is on people's radar.
And that just gives me a little bit of pause to think maybe they're just using Bitcoin to hype their name. Maybe it's just a strategy. And if it is, it probably won't work out the way they think it's going to work out. But that's it for the day. And oh, my dog. It's I keep hearing these footsteps behind me, and it's my dog just walking around. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing? Stop walking around in a circle. Okay. So, yeah. That's, that's the end of the news that I got for you today. I've got a couple of people on on the hook. I finally have an agreement with the James Ranch out in Durango, Colorado.
They're just north of Durango, to do a sit down interview this Christmas. So, I think I'm going to make that a Christmas special. But I I got a chance to talk at length with the, cattle management guy. He's a guy named, Joe or Joseph. He handles all the cattle out there and does a couple of other things. And me and him sat down and and kind of kind of like just had a discussion about where how we think about these these things. And even though I'm not a rancher, me and the way that that he thinks and the way that I think about the relationship between soil and ruminants, and the ruminants relationship with humans, and the humans relationship with soil and nutrition and beef, the attacks on All of that we're pretty much in agreement on. So, we're I'm really excited that even though it's going to be all the way to Christmas, right?
Before I can even, you know, sit down with this guy, it's going to be a face to face sit down interview with the mobile recording studio out there at the James Ranch. I'm really excited about it. So, be looking forward to that as well as the King Ranch interview that I'll be doing with Tony Meacham coming up here pretty quickly. I think I'm gonna talk to her on the 26th. I and I'm gonna start trying to not release the the the interview episodes, like, immediately the same day. Take a little bit more care with the show notes and art and and stuff like that. We're usually I've been trying to turn them around the exact same day because one of the things that I hate is when people sit on an interview for weeks weeks weeks.
But there's no reason not to be able to sit on an interview for at least a day, a couple of days, just to make sure that that product looks really really good, sounds excellent, and has a lot of information that you guys can dig into. With all that said, I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
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 8:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 13th day of August 2024, and this is episode a 935 of Bitcoin.
And we got a couple of pieces of news from digital. We'll talk a little bit about Kamala Harris and the fact that she may, you know, continue the Biden administration's attack on Bitcoin and other things. 3ac liquidators are back in the news. It's gonna be a It's gonna be a goddamn bloodbath over there, man. I swear to God. And then there's some mempool news that I think really demonstrates how it's absurd when people say that there's nothing going on in bitcoin that there's no development whatsoever. It's it's it's insane I've never understood that attitude myself because every time I turn around it's something new is just dropped either a new integration between 2 completely different products and we'll get into one of those today or something like what's going on with Mempool and their acceleration feature.
El Salvador is back in the news with yet another investment. We'll see if that one, you know, actually materializes unlike the Hilton Hotel debacle. And then, you know, we've got this Zeus thing, Meta Planet. There's all kinds of interesting stuff happening today. So let's just well, let's just bail on into this first one here about Marathon Digital. It's kind of embarrassing, so get ready for just a bit of cringe from Bitcoin Magazine and Nick Hoffman. Marathon Digital is now stamping all of the Bitcoin they mine in America as made in USA.
Yes. They're they're doing that in the header. It's all patriotic and shit. Right? So, Marathon Digital Holdings, a leading US based Bitcoin mining company, has announced that all Bitcoin blocks mined in America will now be stamped with the label Made in USA The company declared on Twitter, Mera is Team USA proudly declared in each American made Bitcoin block we mine. I'm telling you man, this is a bit cringe. Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital emphasized this commitment stating, quote, every block mined by Mariupol in the USA is proudly stamped made in USA. We are the only large scale miner who can do this because we run our own pool and ensure that all the blocks mined by Maripul are made in the USA.
This initiative coincides with comments made earlier this summer by presidential candidate Donald Trump who expressed a desire for all of the remaining Bitcoin to be, quote, made in the USA, as Trump believes more Bitcoin mining done in the country will to America's goal of becoming energy dominant. He also reiterated his support for domestic Bitcoin mining at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, pledging to ensure that American miners receive the electricity they need to mine more Bitcoin here in the USA. Earlier today, Marathon Digital announced a $250,000,000 private offering.
We'll get to that in a second in in the second story. But I just I kinda I just can't help myself. I'm looking at the tweet from Bitcoin Magazine. Just in, Marathon announced it. It announces it is now stamping each Bitcoin block it mines with made in USA. And, of course, they provide a little screenshot of the block header of this particular block that was mined by Mara. And highlighted in the block header is marapool made in USA. Honestly, who cares? How is this not just lip service? And I don't even know who they're paying lip service to. It doesn't matter if the block is found in the USA.
You would actually have to stamp all the you'd have to treat it like an inscription and an ordinal for this to carry through because who gives a shit about the block? I mean, I care about the block insofar as that it represents the security of the transactions in the block. But it's not like the satoshis in the block that is mined is somehow or another going to be irreparably changed by the fact that it was included in a particular block that was mined in the USA. So, they could have what they should have just said is instead of marapool made in USA, they should have just said marapool mined in USA. That would actually make a little bit more sense considering that the only thing really being mined is the block.
But understand that the header of the block has absolutely nothing to do with the transactions that are inside the block. So it's not like all of a sudden if if I make another transaction like let's say that I made a transaction. It was included in in a block that was mined by Mara. And all of a sudden, that transaction is in the block that is stamped made in USA in the block header. And then, I make another transaction from like let let let's say that I got the Bitcoin in that transaction. Somebody was giving me a Bitcoin in that transaction. And that transaction was mined in the USA by Mara, and this block is stamped that way. And then I take those satoshis and I put them into another transaction because I want to pay somebody.
Do you think that that transaction somehow or another is going to have any evidence whatsoever that the satoshis that were put into those transact that transaction is going to somehow or another carry with within it forever made in USA. No, it won't. It's not. It's just it this is dumb. It's lip service. It's this it's this faux patriotism that just drives me crazy. So, just understand that Mara, because they're doing this, is demonstrating that I don't think they actually care as much about Bitcoin as you think they do. Okay.
Now, let's get on to the other Marathon news. Digital Holdings. Marathon Digital Holdings, in fact, is going to raise $250,000,000 simply to buy more Bitcoin, Vivex, and also Bitcoin Magazine. Marathon, one of the U. S. Largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners, announced plans to raise $250,000,000 through a private offering of convertible senior notes. The funds will be used primarily to expand Marathon's bitcoin holdings. The Nevada based company operates a fleet of miners producing around 579 bitcoin in July. Marathon's balance sheet contains over 20,000 bitcoin which is worth well over $1,100,000,000 Earlier in July, Marathon bought $100,000,000 worth of Bitcoin on the open market as part of its long term HODL strategy. The company said that it will hold all newly made Bitcoin, as reserved or newly mined Bitcoin as reserves. And this latest move to capital for direct Bitcoin purchasing mirrors the strategy pioneered by MicroStrategy.
Yes. We know. Marathon aims to position itself atop the nascent but rapidly evolving Bitcoin mining and services industry by aggressively expanding its Bitcoin stack. This fundraising approach will allows public equity investors indirect exposure to Bitcoin with growing adoption from firms like MicroStrategy and Similar Scientific as well as MetaPlanet, Bitcoin is emerging as a corporate treasury asset class. Again, we know that as well. The MicroStrategy, what do they get? The playbook. Remember Michael, Sailor released the MicroStrategy playbook, I don't know, like two and a half years ago and nobody bit. It took a while.
Now they're biting. Like I said, MicroStrategy and Similar Scientific seem well positioned to be able to do this because they have positive revenue flow from a completely different business model. But Meta Planet just it just seems that they're trying to save their own ass. As well as at least one other company whose name escapes me right now. And I don't think it works as well for them. Although, that doesn't mean that it won't work. I'm just saying it just it's almost a Hail Mary, which is okay. I'm not saying anything bad about that. I'm just saying that there doesn't seem to be an overarching high quality revenue model for something like Meta Planet as opposed to similar scientific and clearly MicroStrategy who's been selling business intelligence software for decades decades.
Now, you ready for the political stuff? You ready for Kamala Harris? The the the catless bag lady or whatever the hell JD Vance called her? Anyway, Kamala Harris may continue the Biden administration's crypto crackdown, Cointelegraph, Zoltan Vardy. The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, aims to maintain the Biden administration's stringent stance on cryptocurrency regulation. Harris is reportedly working with Brian Deese and Bahrat Ramamurti, 2 former economic advisers for the the Biden administration who have heavily opposed the previous Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2023 for being just too permissive for issuers.
Harris' choice of economic advisers could signal her intention to continue the Biden administration's hostile crypto regulatory approach, according to Alex Thorne, the head of research at Galaxy, who wrote in an August 13th Twitter post, quote, new evidence that Kamala Harris will continue the crypto crackdown. Her adviser choice suggests that she will keep Biden's hostile attitude to crypto, end quote. Harris is preparing to unveil plans regarding her economic policy agenda in a mid August speech which would offer investors more cues about her approach towards cryptocurrency regulation. In March of 2023, the U. S. Banking system took a hit, following the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the voluntary liquidation of Silvergate Bank.
Signature Bank was also forced to close operations by New York Regulators on March 12th, 2 days after Silvergate Bank's liquidation. The sudden collapse of the 3 crypto friendly U. S. Banks was called Operation Choke Point 2.0 by crypto venture capitalist Nick Carter who saw it as a coordinated effort to unbank the crypto industry. In a concerning sign for future crypto regulation, Deese and Ramamurti were allegedly part of the operation according to Galaxy's Thorn, who wrote, Deese and Ramamurti are 2 key architects of the Biden administration's anti crypto crusade including ChokePoint 2.0 Popular American Business Magazine Fortune has previously referred to Bharat as the White House's top crypto critic who serves as a National Economic Council deputy director in the White House until October 2023.
This is another reason why Harris' choice of economic adviser spells a tougher stance for the crypto industry, added Thorn, quote, people are policy at the end of the day. And if Brian Deese, Bahrat Brahmapurthy, Wally Adeyemo et al. Are set to lead economic policy in a Harris waltz administration, it's very unlikely that the administration will soften its stance on crypto. The announcement comes a week after Harris revealed Minnesota governor Tim Waltz as her running mate for the 2024 US presidential election on August the 6th. And so who knows which way this is going? Because right now, the the oracle that and I can't remember who it is. It's some kind of crypto betting thing and everybody knows its name but me because it's, you know, only 9:10 in the morning and I don't have more than 3 brain cells firing at any given time. I can't remember its name, but right now that shifted to I think Harris has pulled ahead by 50 to 54.6% in that particular style of polling. And then in the rest of the, national polls, showing her ahead too. But, you know, just do remember what happened in 2016 because all the polls, everything showed that, oh, oh, what's her face? Clinton was going to just it was just going to be a drubbing, and then she ended up losing. And then we come to find out that there was all kinds of chicanery with the polling.
So, at this point, I don't know what the hell's going on. I can't believe a single thing that I hear any longer. We'll just have to we'll just have to figure that out. So, anyway, let's move on to 3AC liquidators filing a $1,300,000,000 claim against TerraForm Labs. Helen Partes liquidators of the collapsed cryptocurrency hedge fund 3 Arrows Capital. Remember 3 Arrows Capital? That sort that was sort of the entry point a couple of years ago to the whole FTX and we talked about those, crypto banks also folding FTX, Alameda Research, BlockFi, 3AC, the 3 those 3 crypto banks all of that kind of collapsed together.
So, just I want you to remember when we talk about 3AC, we're talking about just before that entire thing happened. And like the zombies always do, they are back because they filed a $1,300,000,000 claim in the TerraForm Labs bankruptcy in Delaware Federal Court on August 9th according to a legal news service Law 360 report. In a proof of claim form, 3AC Liquidators alleged that TerraForm Labs misled the Singaporean Hedge Fund about the stability of tokens in the Terra ecosystem, including Terra's algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD And the UST tied token, Terra Luna, whose ticker symbol was LUNA. Or actually still is because God forbid that it should actually die, right? The liquidators represented by Russell Crumpler and Christopher Farmer of Taneo Holding argued that TerraForm Labs advertised the tokens in a manner that artificially inflated the price of the asset.
Those mis representations and omissions induced 3AC to invest heavily in Terra just a few months after UST depegged from the dollar causing a massive crash in the Terra ecosystem that impacted a lot of cryptocurrency firms. As such, 3AC Liquidators are now seeking damages caused by its direct purchases of UST and Luna and associated damages from the complete loss of value of 3AC's cryptocurrency investments caused by the collapse of LUNA and UST. The new claim by 3AC Liquidators comes a few months after TerraForm Labs cofounder Do Kwon was found liable for defrauding investors in a civil case with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in April of 2024. Previously, Kwon was released from prison in Montenegro on extradition requests from the United States as well as South Korea.
Founded in 2012 by Columbia University alum, Sue Zhu and Kyle Davies, 3AC was one of the largest crypto hedge funds handling up to $18,000,000,000 in assets under management at its peak. Just a few months after Terra crashed, 3AC failed to meet margin calls from its lenders and filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. The company is currently proceeding with insolvency proceedings in the British Virgin Islands. And last year, a court in those islands reportedly banned 3AC cofounders Zhu and Davies from transferring or selling assets worth up to $1,100,000,000 3AC's liquidator, Taneo, estimated that 3AC creditors were owed roughly $3,300,000,000 following its collapse in 2022. So the zombies are back.
And just I mean this is just kind of par for the course. And any anytime anything changes like Duquan gets, sued successfully in court for maybe something else, that will trigger a cascade of other people coming after what it is that they feel that they got. And my the the way that I feel about it is that you should you either knew or you should have known that this shit was a scam. And if you didn't then you didn't do enough due diligence. There were many of us that didn't even have to look at the books of all these assholes and we were screaming scam. We were screaming this is bullshit. We were telling everybody that would listen to us to get as far away from this crap as it possibly could and everybody, as usual, just pointed to us or at us and laughed.
Well. Screw them all. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down 2.2% but still holding just above 78 dollars a barrel. Brent Norsee, likewise, down 2% to $80.65. Natural gas is down also 2 points to $2.14 dollars per 1,000. And gasoline is down 2.65 to $2.37 a gallon. Gold is the and palladium are the only shiny metal rocks that are doing anything at all today. Gold is up 0.18 percent to $2508.60. Silver is down 1.12%. Platinum is down 0.6%. Copper is down 0.7. But palladium is up 2 a half percent. Ag is pretty much fully mixed. Biggest winner is chocolate. Yeah.
Chocolate making a rebound, 2.69%. Biggest loser today is gonna be coffee, 3.92% to the down side. Live cattle is up 0.14. Lean hogs down 3. And feeder cattle up 0.1%. The Dow is up 2 thirds of a point. S and P is up 1.14%. NASDAQ is up 1.8. S and P Mini is up 0.8 2%. Clark Moody's dashboard flashing a price of Bitcoin at $59,960 that is holding at a 1.18 $1,000,000,000,000 market cap. And we can now only buy 24.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,739,211.74 of. Average fees per block have increased but only slightly to 0.06 BTC in fees on a per block basis. And how many blocks are there? But 121.
And they are carrying 238,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 4 satoshis per vbyte. Low priorities are also 4 satoshis per vbyte. Hash rate is at 610 exahashes per second. And I saw yesterday that we hit an all time high. I'm not sure what they were talking about because I'm pretty sure that the all time high was somewhere over 700 exahashes per second. And yesterday, we didn't hit that. So I'm not exactly sure what those, news stories were saying. But we are pretty I mean, we are up there. I mean, it's just that this graph of hash rate is up and to the right, honestly. So, I'm not worried about security of of the system, like, at all. Now Freedom attacked, which was Bitcoin and episode 300 no. No. 934.
O two z x boosted me 5,000 sats, brother. Thank you. Boosh. Albie interview. Love to hear a Plevman's AlbieHub medium deep dive preparing to self host it. Sometimes audible sinks in better than a written AMA. PS, sorry, last attempt to joke was bad delivery. Tried to reference last great Mitch Hedberg. Okay. Get Albie. I am working with one of the guys over at, Get Albie now to get him on to talk about Get Albie. But but I really wanna start, you know, to get a handle on this Albie hub. I'm trying to side load it into my start 9 and it's just it's just failing and I don't understand why. I've got it unzipped. I mean, I've done all the instructions.
The only thing that I can think of is that it's a large enough package that my wireless antenna is not fast enough, or my wireless gear on my on my computer isn't fast enough to get enough data over to the start 9 via wireless. So I maybe I'm thinking that the start 9 is going, dude, you're this isn't going fast enough. I'm just gonna shut this shit down. I I don't wanna take forever doing this crap. So I might have to just go get me a landline and and just physically connect my computer to the to the modem and see if that works. If it doesn't, I definitely wanna talk about what's going on there. And I also wanna talk about the user interface, about how how is it that I can get somebody like with the the guy that I interviewed while I was up in Colorado, Cody.
How can I get him to easily be able to self host AlbieHub when he's got actual other stuff that he's gotta go be doing? So I definitely wanna talk to him about that. Anyway, the bird boosted a 1,000 sat says high signal will keep up the good work. Pies with 420 says, I got a Louisville slugger ready to beat the baby seals, l f g. Pies with another 420 says, non compliance, this is the way. And yet another 420 from Pies, non compliance, this is the way. And another 420 from Pye says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Agich00te, agich00te.
If you know how to pronounce that, let me know. What the 100 says. And he does this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times. Each one is a 100 sats and it says the exact same thing. International Baby Seals Rights Organization is ready for a fight. Well, look, if you want to keep the baby seals safe, there's one way that you can do that. You can donate to the show. I have locked down a third time with my lawyer friend for the King Ranch, Tony. As far as I can tell I'm going out there Monday 26th with the mobile rig to her ranch to set up and do a face to face sit down interview, I could use some gas money. Let's start there. It's gonna cost me about probably it's 2 hours either way.
It's gonna be about $45 in cash. So if you wanna buy gas, you can do that through boostagrams. You can do that through streaming satoshis. If you do it through boostagram, tell me gas money or something like that and I will take it easy on the baby seals. Alright. That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Orange Surf over on, Nostr, tweeted something out or tweeted. God. I I feel bad about saying that. Noted something today. It said, using the public mempool accelerator API, you can now fetch a lightning invoice to boost any transaction integrate into your appservice today. Okay, so.
I started looking at this realizing that this is one of these innovations that you you can't sleep on. There's no sleeping allowed any longer. And for those people for those people that say that there's nothing going on in Bitcoin, that there's no development, that's all horseshit. Right? There is development going on. At this point, it's going on in levels outside of the actual core protocol. So, in this particular case, if you've got a transaction and it's stuck but you, for whatever reason, don't want to go back into your wallet and use your wallet software to accelerate from that standpoint, that particular transaction, you can go to mempool. Now this is the public mempool. This is like, you know, what mempool?
Was it mempool.space? Right? That means that if if you are privacy concerned using the public mempool to search up your transaction is not the best idea. Because somebody could be, you know, somebody could be looking and say, oh, that must be that must be his transaction. I use my own mempool, but understand that my mempool is on my start 9. And I'm pretty sure that some of those features are deprecated from mempool. Space the public mempool. So, I'm pretty sure. I haven't tried it yet, but I haven't I I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be able to directly accelerate a transaction from my start 9 mempool software. Now, that said, this is still pretty cool because what what what does this mean?
If you've got a stuck transaction and you don't mind using mempool. Space to accelerate the transaction directly, you can simply go over to mempool.space, find and and then type, if you've got your transaction ID, you put that in the search bar, it will take you right to your transaction, and then you will have the ability to accelerate that thing. And anybody can accelerate any transaction. That's right. You don't have to accelerate your own transaction because there's no way for MNPL to really know. So they've just basically opened it up. So, like, if somebody sends you a transaction and you're impatient and they send you the transaction ID, you yourself can go put that transaction ID into the search bar and then accelerate directly from mempool. Space. And that's anybody. It's out of beta. It looks like it's, like, open to everybody.
So, I'm over here at at mempool.space and I'm just gonna pick a transaction. So, the transaction comes up and then let's see down here Where is it? Where is it? There's somewhere. Oh, yeah. So now that I've got the transaction up on the screen, which you can't see so I'm going to try to describe it. I've got the transaction data. Like when it was first seen, its ETA, its features, how much the fee for this particular transaction is like just under $70 and the fee rate is at 3.01, satoshis per vbyte. There's a purple accelerate button in that transaction field. And the field below that is flow, and below that is inputs and outputs, and below that is more details.
In the first field, the transaction field, right to the right of ETA is the accelerate button. Now, if I hit that accelerate button, it says, okay, I can accelerate to 12 satoshis per Vbyte. And I can customize that. So I hit the customize button and it gives me some data. It gives me some graphics that I can sit there and go, you know what? I don't want 12 satoshis per vbyte. I don't want to go down to 8 satoshis per vbyte. I'm gonna accelerate it for the cost of 700,000 satoshis, 19 satoshis per vbyte. Then I'm going to hit a purple accelerate button because it's yet another accelerate button.
And it's sitting there spinning. And it comes up with a lightning invoice. An LNBC headed address. Right? So now I can just simply pay this invoice through my GetAlBI wallet through the lightning network and just accelerate this transaction. Which I'm not gonna do. I have no idea who the hell this is. And I'm certainly not going to pay an additional $419 to do this shit. So, I'm just gonna turn this right off. But understand that they've what has just happened is they've basically given you a public button that you can just press and accelerate with a lightning invoice any transaction in the mempool. Whether it's your transaction, whether it's somebody else's transaction and they're sending you bitcoin and you're just that impatient that you want that money right now, then you have the option to do that.
Or for whatever reason, you feel like, I don't know, being magnanimous and accelerating somebody else's. But understand, there is constant development in this space. Now, let's get out of this space and go over to a crypto wallet that's holding $2,000,000,000 worth of Mt. Gox Bitcoin. It sends a test transaction as distribution continues according to an Arkhem report. CoinDesk Christian Sandor has it a crypto wallet that recently received $2,000,000,000 in Bitcoin from defunct exchange Mt. Gox trustee initiated a test transaction on Tuesday, perhaps to prepare distributing funds to creditors, blockchain analytics firm Archim Intelligence noted.
Arkim analyst said that the wallet initiated the transfer. It well, it's probably likely belongs to crypto custody platform BitGo, one of the 5 exchanges that distribute tokens to creditors. BitGo is the last remaining distribution partner, they added. The test transaction followed a $33,100 or no. 33,100 Bitcoin transfer 2 weeks ago worth $2,200,000,000 at the time from a Mt. Gox cold wallet holding creditors funds. Arkhem explained that the process of tagging the wallet as likely being BitGo in a telegram message to CoinDesk. The address was clustered with a large input cluster which we were able to identify as BitGo due to custody structure and wallet types used, an Arkam analyst said.
We've also been able to identify the other fur, f u r, fur exchange partners used for Mt. Gox distribution, so there's also a process of elimination. And I have no idea what the other Fur Exchange Partners I don't know what Fur means here, so please it's possibly a typo. Who knows? Anyway, meanwhile, some users in a Reddit channel dedicated to Mt. Gox creditors reported that they received funds to their BitGo accounts. CoinDesk hasn't verified those claims though. BitGo has not returned a request to confirm the transaction. Japan based Mt. Gox was at one point the largest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know. So they go through just a little bit of history at the very end of that article. But that's all we need to know is that these coins are still on the move. It's going to scare everybody.
Everybody's getting, you know, this is just nothing but fear and loathing in Las Vegas. So just be prepared for any kind of chicanery to go on. Mostly it's just going to be psychological. It's not going to actually be a whole bunch of people just automatically selling. But whatever. El Salvador going down south has announced a $1,600,000,000 investment that will kick start bitcoin city Yeah. Well, we've heard this story before. Andrew Thorvallis, decrypt.co. El Salvador is getting a massive infrastructure investment that's expected to support the build out of its visionary Bitcoin City.
The government said on Sunday that Gilport, a Turkish holding company, will invest $1,620,000,000 in 2 of El Salvador's seaports, making the largest private investment in the country's history. Quote, This will be a mixed ownership company between the Yield Port Company and El Salvador which will operate both seaports for the next 50 years, said the government in a video statement shared by El Salvador president Nayib Bukele on Monday. The agreement is a product of Bukele's visit to Turkey in 2022. One of the ports involved is the Acajutla seaport, which handles most of the nation's exports of coffee, sugar and balsamic salts from Peru.
The other is the La Union Seaport, an inactive and neglected seaport located where Bitcoin City is planned for construction. Oh, this is interesting. Stacy Herbert, head of El Salvador's National Bitcoin Office, retweeted a statement that the project will create 1,000 of direct and indirect jobs and more investment in underlying local infrastructure. Max Keiser, Herbert's husband and also a member of the Bitcoin Office, characterized the deal as a Bitcoin City infrastructure investment. Pukele's Turkey trip paid off bigly, he wrote on Twitter. Qatar on deck. Well, Bitcoin City was first pitched in November of 2021 as a tax free city that would fund itself through Bitcoin mining powered by its regional volcanoes rather than from its civilian powered grid.
The president shared a potential architectural model of the city in May of 2022, though little has been said of the project since that time. The city was supposed to be funded through El Salvador's long anticipated Bitcoin bonds, but the fundraising effort has been postponed numerous times. The country has found alternative sources of capital, however, including a renewable Bitcoin mining partnership with Tether and a Freedom Visa program offered to generous wealthy Bitcoiners. According to the Bitcoin Office website, El Salvador currently holds 5,840.76 BTC, currently worth around $345,000,000 It continues to add 1 BTC to its holdings every day. That's the end of the article. But if you'll remember, Bukele made that promise about a year and a half ago or at least minimum a year ago, and said that every day, every single day, day after day, that they will buy 1 bitcoin and add it to their treasury.
I have I mean, I've seen some kind of evidence given, you know, that we can see their wallet that that may be occurring. But unless we continuously watch it, you never know what's going on with that thing. So, on to Zeus. Zeus has announced Olympus integrations with both lightning. Pub and Mutiny Wallet. Now, I'm not sure how this is gonna work since Mutiny Wallet the wallet itself isn't going away, but the people behind the wallet are moving on. So they're basically saying we're we're kind of done with mutiny. I can only presume that Mutiny being rather rather open sourced is just going to be probably taken over by somebody and maintained because it is a very good wallet. Anyway, lightning. Pub is a nostril powered lightning node that simplifies the Uncle Jim model allowing users to connect friends and family to their node.
Pub introduces a Nostra native account system making node management easier than ever. This free, open source software is available under the GNU AGPL version 3.0 license. Quote, in PUB, node management happens all under the hood. Multiple providers are available with Olympus being the top provider for channels in excess of 3,000,000 sats under current fee conditions. Smaller channels will leverage other service providers, Evan Kaludis wrote in a blog post. Here we go. The Mutiny team will shut down its wallet at year's end, but users can still self host it indefinitely.
Mutiny allows users to manually deploy a node on any server or platform. The Olympus by Zeus LSP will continue to work with the Mutiny Wallet regardless of where it is deployed, and if you are using the self custodial lightning wallet and mutiny, it will default to using Olympus by Zeus LSP. Developers looking to integrate Olympus into their app can explore the API documentation for Olympus by Zeus LSP services. So mute mutiny is dead. Long live mutiny. And I like the fact that Zeus immediately built an integration, for their, their system into Mutiny Wallet as well as lightning. Pub.
It's sad to see Mutiny Team go away, especially, given that where some of them are going, but it is what it is. And last up, Meta Planet has bought yet another 500,000,000 yen worth of Bitcoin. This is Bitcoin Magazine. Vivek Sin is writing. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese investment firm, purchased an additional 500,000,000 yen, which is about 3 point $4,000,000 US worth of Bitcoin. And this brings the company's total Bitcoin holdings to 303 acquired for 2,950,000,000 yen or $20,000,000 On August 6th, Meta Planet announced plans to raise 10,080,000,000 yen through a stock rights offering to expand its Bitcoin reserves.
It followed on August 8th with a 1,000,000,000 yen loan secured to buy more Bitcoin. And the firm is going on to aggressively purchase yet more Bitcoin. But I caution people, this is a very very small investment firm in Japan that almost nobody had heard of until they started buying Bitcoin. So, it's hype. I I don't mean to say that these guys suck and that they're completely evil and that they're not gonna do right. It I don't know. That's the whole point is I have no clue what's going on with these guys, but nobody had ever heard of them before this. And now, all of a sudden, Meta Planet's in the news, Meta Planet's doing this, Meta Planet's doing that, and now there it's like it it that name is on people's radar.
And that just gives me a little bit of pause to think maybe they're just using Bitcoin to hype their name. Maybe it's just a strategy. And if it is, it probably won't work out the way they think it's going to work out. But that's it for the day. And oh, my dog. It's I keep hearing these footsteps behind me, and it's my dog just walking around. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing? Stop walking around in a circle. Okay. So, yeah. That's, that's the end of the news that I got for you today. I've got a couple of people on on the hook. I finally have an agreement with the James Ranch out in Durango, Colorado.
They're just north of Durango, to do a sit down interview this Christmas. So, I think I'm going to make that a Christmas special. But I I got a chance to talk at length with the, cattle management guy. He's a guy named, Joe or Joseph. He handles all the cattle out there and does a couple of other things. And me and him sat down and and kind of kind of like just had a discussion about where how we think about these these things. And even though I'm not a rancher, me and the way that that he thinks and the way that I think about the relationship between soil and ruminants, and the ruminants relationship with humans, and the humans relationship with soil and nutrition and beef, the attacks on All of that we're pretty much in agreement on. So, we're I'm really excited that even though it's going to be all the way to Christmas, right?
Before I can even, you know, sit down with this guy, it's going to be a face to face sit down interview with the mobile recording studio out there at the James Ranch. I'm really excited about it. So, be looking forward to that as well as the King Ranch interview that I'll be doing with Tony Meacham coming up here pretty quickly. I think I'm gonna talk to her on the 26th. I and I'm gonna start trying to not release the the the interview episodes, like, immediately the same day. Take a little bit more care with the show notes and art and and stuff like that. We're usually I've been trying to turn them around the exact same day because one of the things that I hate is when people sit on an interview for weeks weeks weeks.
But there's no reason not to be able to sit on an interview for at least a day, a couple of days, just to make sure that that product looks really really good, sounds excellent, and has a lot of information that you guys can dig into. With all that said, I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Market Updates and Analysis
Zeus and Mutiny Wallet Integration
Upcoming Interviews and Closing Remarks
