Join me today for Episode 946 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- FBI's FUD Slinging Continues
- Swiss Bank ZKB Opens BTC Trading and Custody
- Deaton is a Ripple Guy; Don't Trust Him
- US Jobs Report Looks Terrible
- Strike Has BOTL12 Capabilities Now
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/switzerlands-fourth-largest-bank-zkb-launches-bitcoin-trading
https://cointelegraph.com/news/john-deaton-pro-xrp-lawyer-wins-republican-senate-primary-massachusetts
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/09/04/tradfi-companies-want-to-transact-in-bitcoin-says-cantor-fitzgerald-ceo/
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/us-jolts-job-openings-decline-to-767-million-in-july-vs-81-million-expected-202409041405
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https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/mutiny-wallet-shutdown-timeline-announced/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/strike-now-supports-sending-payments-to-bolt-12-offers/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/older-yubikeys-vulnerable-to-cloning-attacks/
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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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 9:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 4th day of September already, 2024.
This is episode 900 and 46 of Bitcoin and an FBI warning. Oh, my God. Yes, we're gonna talk about it. Switzerland's in the news. And then there's this dude named Deaton that's apparently going to go up against Elizabeth Warren. We'll get into that. Jobs data dropped this morning at 7 am Pacific Daylight Time. And as you might expect, as I was saying yesterday, that news isn't all that good. It's we'll we'll I'll give you the numbers when we get into the, into the market roundup. And then what else we got going on? Oh, Bitfarms is fighting back against Riot.
Mutiny Wallet has given a timeline for their complete disassociation of their wallet. And Strike is in the news as well as, Yubikey. If you don't know what Yubikey is, you will find out here directly. So let's start with the fear mongering. And it is fear mongering. This is I'm just gonna preface this saying that everything about this smells like constructed and engineered FUD fear, uncertainty, and doubt that's being given by the FBI. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thing. So what is the thing? Well, it's we'll get it from Bitcoin Magazine. Nick Hoffman is writing it today, which was actually yesterday, the FBI issued an alert warning. Oh, alert alert alert alert. Well, the alert warning that North Korean hackers are targeting United States cryptocurrency exchange traded funds in a bid to steal digital assets.
You see, I'm already I'm already I'm just calling bullshit because it's so targeted. It's so targeted, it's not even funny. I think this is an amount of FUD given by the 3 letter agencies. I don't believe this shit at all. But the hackers are using advanced social engineering techniques to breach the security of companies associated with these financial products, the FBI stated. According to the FBI, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has been conducting highly targeted social engineering attacks on employees within the decentralized finance and cryptocurrency industries. These attacks involve detailed pre operational research and customized scenarios designed to exploit the victims' specific interests and connections.
Quote, North Korean malicious cyberattack actors conducted research on a variety of targets connected to cryptocurrency exchange traded funds, the ETFs, over the last several months, the FBI said quote, this research includes pre operational preparations suggesting North Korean actors may attempt malicious cyber activities against companies associated with cryptocurrency ETFs and other cryptocurrency related financial products. Yes, be scared of crypto, be scared of Bitcoin, be scared of the ETFs. The FBI emphasized that North Korean cyber attackers or cyber actors are a persistent threat to organizations managing large quantities of cryptocurrency their tactics include impersonating trusted contacts creating fake scenarios involving job offers or investments, and deploying malware through prolonged and convincing interactions with their targets.
I guess prolonged phishing attacks is what they're talking about. The agency urged businesses in the cryptocurrency sector to adopt stringent security measures, including multifactor authentication, limiting access to sensitive information, and verifying the identities of contacts through multiple channels. The FBI also recommended that companies with access to significant cryptocurrency holdings take extra precautions to safeguard their assets against these sophisticated cyber threats. Oh, bullshit. It's bullshit. I'm sorry. It just is. Now, Liv, what they're talking about here is that there's this somehow the the North Koreans have figured out all the people that hold all of the multisig keys for the wallets of these cryptocurrency ETF companies.
Again, bullshit. They don't publish that information. BlackRock has not published, oh, by the way, here's the people that you need to contact, you know, for managing the keys. Because this guy's got key 1, this guy's got key 2, this chick over here's got key 3. No. No. And there's no intelligence that's going to be leaked by anybody that has any sense about the whatsoever in these companies of that information. That information is the last bit of information that you'll ever be able to find out. So the only way that these guys would actually be able to quote pre engineer the way they're going to do this sophisticated cyber phishing attack and all that bullshit is to target everybody in the company.
Right? How stupid do you think these people are? Yes. Everybody gets a situation where they're working at a place and, yes, they open up a phishing email and, yes, they click the link. I've done it. But you know who I don't work for? I don't work for BlackRock. I haven't been trained in their security protocols. I guarantee you that BlackRock and Fidelity and a lot of these other people have extraordinary amounts of training for this kind of shit. This is not the training that you're gonna receive if you're working at a university. It's not the kind of training you're gonna receive if you're a public school teacher. It's not the training you're going to get if you are a firefighter.
This is going to be high grade, very expensive, and long term training operations for people that are at the highest echelons of these kinds of companies. This report by the FBI is complete and utter bullshit. It's designed to not scare the people at the ETF companies. It's designed to scare retail. That's because their backs are up against the wall. They're fighting like cornered animals and it's gonna get bloody AF. Now on to Switzerland who doesn't seem to give a shit about the FBI and what they say because Switzerland's 4th largest bank, ZKB, has launched their own Bitcoin trading desk. Vivek Sin, again, from Bitcoin Magazine.
Zuktjerkantanelbank, I guess that's how you pronounce it, Switzerland's 4th largest bank, has begun offering its clients Bitcoin and crypto trading and custody services. With over $290,000,000,000 that's billion with a b, in assets under management, ZKB provides services to retail, corporate, and institutional clients. ZKB now allows their clients to trade and hold Bitcoin and other shit coins through its mobile app, online banking, and traditional channels. The bank partnered with Deutsche Borse owned crypto finance AG for brokerage services and developed its own custody solution. Oh, god. They rolled their own.
Whatever. I'm I'm sure it's probably just multisig. The move reflects the country's openness to Bitcoin and cements ZKB as one of the largest mainstream financial institutions to embrace Bitcoin. And as well, Switzerland is taking a relatively positive stance on Bitcoin and crypto including the Swiss National Bank revealing that it held shares in MicroStrategy. I don't I think they should I don't know. I hate it when people do that. That's MicroStrategy, Yes, they hold a shit ton of Bitcoin. But I don't think it's a relatively positive stance of the Swiss National Bank on crypto or Bitcoin because they hold shares in MicroStrategy.
I think that's a lot of hyperbole. So just take with a grain of salt the launch comes as more major financial players adopt Bitcoin amid Bitcoin surge in legitimacy in the United States the successful debut of the Bitcoin ETFs which now the FBI is scaring the living piss out of everybody about has accelerated institutional adoption. ZKB's move may pressure other Swiss and European banks to provide Bitcoin services. Banks worldwide such as Hong Kong's Futu and Standard Chartered's MOX have also recently launched Bitcoin and Bitcoin ETF trading. This growing trend shows that traditional finance is increasingly embracing Bitcoin, which probably leads into the fact that the FBI is so keen on scaring you retail plebs out of any possibility of having a crypto or Bitcoin ETF.
I personally will never buy a Bitcoin ETF unless I'm working for somebody who has a 401k and the only exposure they're going to get is because they have exposure to a Bitcoin ETF. That was the only reason this shit was important in the first place. If you're just pleb retail guy on the street, all you want is some falafel and maybe a frickin burrito every once in a while because it makes you feel good. You're retail and that's okay. The FBI is trying to scare you, retail man, out of getting into a Bitcoin ETF through any means necessary.
Right? They're gonna scare you from going to HR and saying, hey. Do we have, you know, a 401 k that has Bitcoin exposure? And they say, yes. Well, then that would be the one that I would that would be the one that I would buy. But the FBI warning is scaring people to actually even ask that question. So the question now becomes, what's the FBI scared of? Well, maybe they're scared of this dude, John Deaton. I'm not scared of him though because he's pro XRP. Right? He's he's he's a ripple head. Let me just get to it. Cointelegraph, Martin Young, pro XRP attorney, John Deaton, has won the Republican United States Senate primary. Now before you start going, David, why are you telling me about a ripple head? Well, I got there's a point to it. Just trust me, man. Trust me, bro. Let me get into it. Pro crypto attorney John Deaton has won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in Massachusetts primary elections and is set to face off against Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren. That's right. Pocahontas in November.
Deaton, a former marine and outspoken advocate of Ripple, defeated, 2 other Republican candidates, including industrial engineer Bob Antonellis and Quincy City Council President Ian Kane to nab the Republican nod, according to a September 4th report from the Associated Press. He has secured 64% of the votes so far, with just over 43% of total votes in Massachusetts being counted at the time of publication according to election tracking data from Politico. Yeah, he's he's pretty much won it. Deaton will face off against Warren in November. His opponent, who has won a senate seat twice, had stiff competition for her senate bid in 2012, beating Republican incumbent Scott Brown, but she received more than 60% of the vote in 2018.
And she is seeking yet a third term, a third 6 year term this year and is unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Yeah. Probably because she cut a deal with the Biden admin, but whatever. Warren, who currently sits on the senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee, has waged war on the crypto industry in recent years claiming that it facilitates terrorism and spying and contributes to the spread of malware and drug abuse. She has proposed several sweeping bills that seek to stifle the growth of the crypto industry in the United States. Notably, Deaton made several pledges in his victory speech, which he posted on X, but did not make any specific mentions of crypto.
Deaton's primary campaign got a boost from some very big names in the crypto industry including the Winklevoss twins and here we go, executives from the Fintech firm Ripple. The Commonwealth Unity Fund, a crypto political action committee distributed more than $1,000,000 in Massachusetts to support Deaton's bid for the United States Senate. Deaton's top donors included Ripple executives Chris Larsen and of course Brad Garlinghouse the Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci Cardano co founder Charles Hoskinson and Kraken co founder Jesse Powell.
According to federal election commission records, Deaton has raised roughly $1,700,000 in his bid for the senate as of July 31st. In April, Deaton filed an amicus or amicus brief on behalf of the of 400 and no. 4,701 Coinbase customers in support of the firm in its case against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Okay. So now, here's my reasoning for letting you know this. They won. Who's they? Chris Larsen, Brad Garlinghouse, DeWinkle Vai, Scaramucci, Charles Hoskinson, and fucking Jesse Powell. They won.
And what this is demonstrating is 2 things all at once. It is very clear at this point that the crypto industry has enough power to start getting into United States senatorial and what will end up being presidential elections. House of Representatives, that's probably alongside of the senatorial influence. But it's influence. Right? It's influence from private citizens and private businesses that have a shit ton of money that how did they get it? In the case of the Ripple and that asshole Charles Hoskinson, they stole it by printing bullshit money out of thin air and that brings me to my second point there's nobody in there there's nobody in this list of donors to Deaton that is a solid Bitcoiner.
I used to have a lot of faith in Jesse Powell. Not anymore. Anthony Scaramucci, that dude has shown his true colors time and time again that he never really cared about Bitcoin. And this is a problem. Now, it can't be stopped. Shit coins are for enemies just like Bitcoin is for enemies too. Right? I can't can't stop them. But I do need to sound the alarm that alongside of watching, you know, people like Cynthia Lummis come into power that is, you know, a solid Bitcoiner and other folks that are also solid Bitcoiners, you have solid shitcoiners that are able to now affect the way a senatorial race is going to play out.
So, Deaton is I don't think Deaton is anybody's friend. He's just going to shill for Ripple and it's gonna be a mess. And so, here's the thing. You know, better the devil you know. So at this point, I kinda hope that Elizabeth Warren wins the election. Why? Well, because she's fucking ineffective. She hasn't passed anything. All she does is sit up there and yell at people and tell them that, I don't know, that we're somehow or another trafficking children because we own Bitcoin. And we're going to destroy the entire planet because of mining.
But she hasn't been able to affect a single thing. That, in my opinion, is actually a safer safer thing than having a goddamn shit coiner who's backed by Charles Hoskinson, Brad Garlinghouse, and this idiot Chris Larson. I would much rather Elizabeth Warren stay in power so that she can remain ineffectual for the next 6 years. I mean, I'm just saying. Okay? I mean, I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of backlash. I do not like Warren. She lied straight up to the American people and the rest of the world that she was, like, 1 quarter Native American and that was bullshit.
It was proven bullshit. She even released the results of her genetic test herself. And she's, like, 180th Choctaw or something like that. By this time, almost everybody in the United States probably has some Indian blood in them unless they came over from, you know, Europe or something like that in the last, you know, 100 or or, like, let's say, 50 years. Right? I mean, it's like it was a native population. The native Americans were already here. If you don't think that there was some interbreeding going on, you're lying to yourself. Right? That was happening all over the place. But it's been happening for so long that we're probably all a little bit Native American at this point.
But she straight up lied about it. And she put that shit on her, like, application employment application when she went over to Harvard. Did she get more money in pay because of that? Well, then that's a straight up fraud. So don't think for a second and a half that I like Elizabeth Warren. I don't. But I do like the fact that she hasn't been able to affect a single thing. And I would much rather her be in than some ripple headed shit coiner. That's all I'm gonna say. TradFi companies want to transact in Bitcoin, says Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick.
CoinDesk, Jamie Crawley is writing it. Cantor Fitzgerald's or Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick has said that TradFi, traditional finance companies, want to transact in Bitcoin as a new asset class, but but but are being held back by the existing requirements of US regulators. Letnik said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that Bitcoin was an outsider to the TradFi community that's only now dipping its toe into global finance. If a bank were to hold your Bitcoin, they would have to set aside their own money equal to that amount, sort of being put in jail. That's why you don't hold it. But if the regulatory environment was good, you will see all the traditional financial companies go head first into Bitcoin, Lutnick said.
As well as being CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which unveiled its plans to open up a Bitcoin financing business in June, Lutnick was also picked by the pro crypto Republican candidate Donald Trump to chair his presidential transition team. Cantor Fitzgerald, which owns a shitload of bitcoin, according to Letnick, plans to launch its bitcoin financing business with $2,000,000,000 in lending, providing leverage to BTC holders. It already handles US Treasury trading with stablecoin issuer Tether. Okay. So lesser of 2 evils, the Howard Lutnick much better than this Deaton guy that's gonna go up against, Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren.
Still though, I don't trust him. But he's bringing up a good point. Everything he said was true. The way that United States banking regulations are written right now, if they want to hold in custody custody a customer's Bitcoin, they actually have to set aside exactly that same amount of money of their own money to do it. Because the banking regulations are not allowing Bitcoin to be, quote, a bank's asset. It can't be put on the balance sheet. Therefore, they have to make up for that the ability to make good on anybody's withdrawal their own money.
So until that shit changes, Howard Lutnick is saying, we're kinda gonna be in this, I don't know, this malaise that that we're this regulatory malaise where nobody really knows what the hell is going on. I don't really need more institutions into this shit, but they're coming. Okay? They're they're they're definitely coming. Meanwhile, let's run the numbers. Jobs report dropped. That's right. The United States Jolts, j o l t s, job openings report has dropped and there has been a decline. So let's get into it from FX Street.
Aaron Sengenser is writing this one. The number of job openings on the last business day of July stood at $7,670,000 or 1,000,000 jobs. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in the job openings and labor turnover survey, that's the Jolts, on Wednesday. This reading followed the 7,900,000 openings revised from 8,100,000 reported in June and came in below the market expectation of 8,100,000 jobs. Quote, over the last month, hires changed little at 5,500,000, the BLS noted in its press release. Separations increased to 5,400,000.
Within separations, quits of 3,300,000 and layoffs and discharges of 1,800,000 changed little. The United States dollar came under renewed selling pressure following these data. At the time of press, the US dollar index was down 0.44 percent on the day and stands at 101.33. So the jobs data came out and it was not good. In fact, in some people's views that I've read, it's very much a dismal a dismal jobs report. So how did markets react? We're gonna find out right now. Oil getting kicked in the nuts. West Texas Intermediate down 3 quarters of a point to 69.84.
Brent, North Sea down 0.64% to 73.28. Natural gas down 2.77 to $2.14, a 1000 cubic feet. And gasoline is down damn near a full point, chilling out at $1.96 a gallon. Most of the shiny metal rocks are not faring well, but gold is. It's up at $2,527.40 after a 5th of a point move to the upside. Silver is up damn near a point to 28.59. But platinum is down but sideways, 0.04. Copper down a quarter of a point. Palladium down almost a half. Biggest winner in ag is rough rice at 2 points to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate again, 5 and a half points to the downside. Man, chocolate guys are getting hammered.
Live cattle moving sideways, but lean hogs are down 0.48%. Feeder cattle down almost a full half. The Dow is up by 0.09%. The S and P is up 0.02%. The Nasdaq is up a quarter of a point, but the S and P Mini is down 0.16%. Now, to the number everybody cares about, 58 k gang. Yay, 58 k. We're channeling out 58 k. It's like for how long? A year at 58 k? My god almighty. $58,460. We're back up to a $1,150,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 23.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000,749,346.12 of and fees per block remain low.
0.06 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. There are 133 blocks carrying 276,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority prices of 7 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. 626.5 exahashes per second, so we have dipped quite a bit from the 746 exahash mark that we saw sometime yesterday. Now from slogtimber, which was episode 945 of Bitcoin and let's see. Who's given what? Joeydd with 3,333 sats sends a single emoji, and I'm embarrassed to that I can't read it because my operating system is so old. My browsers won't read emojis. No.
Not not all emojis. I mean, so I get some of them, but this one is just a square, which tells me that it's time for this operating system to go. DeBravco with 2270 says, regarding Binance exec in need of mobility equipment. 2 things are true at the same time. 1, people in court very often overplay their feebleness or injury. A bonafide jerkface that beat up cops shows up in a wheelchair and a neck brace, as an example. And number 2, people that need mobility aids have large ebbs and flows in their physical abilities. Sometimes they can walk unaided, pick up a child, etcetera.
And sometimes their whole body aches and they can't leave their chair or bed. So thank you to Bravo for, throwing a little bit of, reality in on what I was saying about it yesterday. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. Axelrod with 500 says, I like that you admit that you intend to use your Bitcoin. It's a savings technology, not a religion. Cheers. And I just want to make sure that I'm prefacing this correctly. I'm not telling anybody to go sell their Bitcoin if they don't have to. I am saying that if you have what you think is enough that you can kind of make it through another month and just kind of, like, figure out something else to do with your life, like change a job or something like that, then that's sort of what savings is for.
It's not it's not to die with. You should be able to have, like, for instance, I'm very much keen on building a company that I pass on to my children, but not as an inheritance where they don't inherit the company and then inherit the the, you know, the money or the the the assets that are involved in that company. They simply are officers of that company and can make discretionary decisions about the future of the company, the future of the assets, and be able to take distributions on those assets if they so choose at their discretion because I'd be dead.
Right? So I'm not against leaving with no money either. I'm very much in the gray area. Use some, save most. It's not that hard, honestly. So that's what I wanted to say about that one. Wartime with 333 is asking if Pies is around or if he's just not seeing them on fountain. Wartime, I haven't seen Pies in a couple of shows. I'm sure he's fine. He'll be back. Wartime with another 333 says testing NIMVPN on mobile RN, not bad. And Nobile says with a 100,000 with a 100 sat sorry, not a 100,000. That would be nice though. NEM VPN seems to be associated with an ETH token, for your information, NEMTECH or something like that. Okay.
Good point. I can't do anything about that. I'm still looking at at NIM VPN as something that's good, and I have hopes that if they are associated with said ETH token that they soon drop it because it's just gonna do nothing but get them in trouble. I do want you guys if if you're not able to listen on the Podcasting 2.0 app, which I don't see why not, you should be listening on the Podcasting 2.0 app. That way you can boost me satoshis, you can stream me satoshis. It's the way that hell, it's the way that I paid for gas to go over to central Washington and get like a really good interview from somebody who's fighting the good fight for some ranchers that are being well really really bad things are being done to these ranchers. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go listen to, my episode entitled Ranch Wars The King Ranch and you'll learn all about what's going on with that shit. But if for whatever reason you just can't you can't donate to the show through those means, you can always go to geyser.fund geyser.fundforward/projectforward/thebitcoinandpodcast and you can throw me some satoshis over there for the Bitcoin and podcast project.
That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Bitfarms calls out Riot's misleading letter ahead of their special meeting, Jason Jason Shrubnell from the block. Actually, that's pronounced Shubnell, not Shrubnell. The misleading or mudslinging. The mudslinging, oh my god. It continues in the months long takeover battle between Bitcoin miners, Riot Platforms, and Bitfarms. On Tuesday, Riot executive chairman, Benjamin Yee, and CEO, Jason Less, expressed concern about Bitfarms' recent governance changes and the proposed acquisition of Stronghold Digital ahead of a special meeting to vote on reconstituting Bitfarms board of directors.
More specifically, the executives said that Bitfarms board changes were reactive and insufficient to address the company's governance issues. On Wednesday, Bitfarms issued a response to what it called misleading claims from Riot. Quote, the upcoming special meeting is not about corporate governance, as Riot has repeatedly positioned it to be, but rather about Riot attempting to acquire Bitfarms at a discounted price for the benefit of Riot shareholders, not Bitfarms shareholders, Bitfarms said in a statement. Further quote, Riot has declined to engage with us constructively, including by refusing to enter into a standard non disclosure agreement with Bitfarms or to put forth a revised proposal for our consideration, and has instead taken to public attacks and actions to harm the interests of other Bitfarms shareholders.
Bitfarms said on Wednesday that its recent board and leadership changes were made on behalf of shareholders and not for Riot's approval. Quote, the Bitfarms team is best in class, comprising the right mix of skills and experience to effectively oversee the company's strategery plan. It's strategic, not strategery. I just like the word strategery. I can't help it. On the contrary, it is not clear how Riot's nominees would enhance the board. Furthermore, the miner justified its proposed acquisition of Stronghold by noting the transaction would add up to 307 megawatts of power capacity and is expected to put Bitfarms on track to increase its energy portfolio to over 950 megawatts with nearly 50% of that residing in the US by the end of 2025.
Bitfarms board will consider and respond to Riot's amended requisition proposal, maybe they meant acquisition proposal, in due course. The special meeting is scheduled for October 29th. So at least Riot's saying something out in the public. But you know what this is starting to look like? Is that I when I first started reporting on this, it seemed to me that Riot was indeed trying to get bitfarms at an extremely discounted price. Why wouldn't you? I mean, you know, you can haggle. There's nothing illegal about haggling. But when you're haggling with a used car salesman, and then you start attacking the the, the quality of humanity of said used car salesman, that's not it's not that it's not playing fair. It's more about activism, is what I'm getting at. This looks very much like an activist takeover of Bitfarms and not an actual business.
And and Riot is an actual business, but it doesn't feel anymore like it's just a fight, you know, of trying to get a discount on a price, which again, you would wanna do for your shareholders. These the the tone that's coming out of Riot now seems more on the activist investor side of the spectrum and not just good business dealings. This is this thing is devolving into a mudslinging shit show And it's really sad to see, honestly. But not as sad as Mutiny Wallet's shutdown timeline being announced last month. Mutiny Wallet announced the shutdown of its wallet service. It will be removed from app stores and the web by December 31, 2024.
So they have till the end of the year. Mutiny wallets are being or mutiny wallet users need to move their funds out and close open lightning channels immediately. It supports sending to Bitcoin Lightning and Fedimint wallets. Users can self host Mutiny, though, or the one click install on Star OS. The project will continue as open source code. You can also transfer any e cash balance to the Fetti app with low fees if in the same federation. The self hosted version can still act as a Fedimint wallet. Quote, the mutiny team is not going anywhere. We care very much about the need for strong data privacy and are working on novel security tools for developers across the ecosystem.
So here's the timeline. August 5th is the announcement of the shutdown. Right? August 20th, voltage announcement of LSP shutdown. September 3rd, the timeline and frequently asked questions has been posted, October 1st. Now, this is starting to get into the future. The receive button will be disabled in the hosted app. Users may only move funds out. On December 31st, wallet at app. Mutinywallet.com shuts down. The app is pulled from Apple and Google app stores. Also on December 31st, emergency kit with data download replaces the wallet interface at app.mutinywallet.com.
And the Q1 of 2025, as traffic decreases, the emergency kit will sunset. So the emergency kit, which I guess is geared to help your ass out, will be slow will be sunsetted, But they're only saying sometime in Q1. So, if you're a mutiny wallet user, as sad as it is to see this happen, especially for the reasons we're seeing it happen and if you don't know the reasons, it's because everybody is scared to do business with American customers because the Department of Justice, the, I don't know, the the Federal Reserve, the Southern District of Court of New York, and all those assholes, and the FBI.
They're they are all over these people simply because they have a way to do it. That is because they have access to American customers or United States of American customers. Then apparently the long arm of the American justice system can reach out and bitch slap anybody that they want no matter what country they're in and whether that country is sovereign or not. Because we apparently we have that right. I guess maybe it was part of our manifest destiny. It's all bullshit, of course, but it's enough to scare the living crap out of a lot of people. And Mutiny Wallet is being kind of smart and saying we don't want to do business with you. We don't want to do business with anybody that even looks like they're they're a United States citizen.
But thank God they're actually going to still work on the self hosting thing. I just wonder when, you know, when that starts becoming attacked. Strike. They now support sending payments to BOLT 12 offers. Yay. Today, we're excited to announce our support for BOLT 12 offers, a revolutionary technology that enables a more private, versatile, and user friendly way to send and receive sats over the Bitcoin Lightning Network, announced Tom Kirkpatrick in a blog post. Whilst we have successfully achieved I love when people use whilst. Whilst we have successfully achieved our goal of enabling bolt 12 payments from strike, our initial integration only supports a basic offer payment flow. However, it paves the way for exciting and more advanced BOLT 12 features over time.
With much of this groundwork now done and out there in the open source universe, we've proven that there is a viable path to deliver a Bolt 12 experience with LND. Today. Not tomorrow, but today. We're excited to see the continued evolution of Bolt 12 as more and more services and node operators upgrade over the coming months years. So let's see how it works. Here's how strike uses LND, l n or LDK, and LNDK to facilitate onion message routing and the bolt 12 protocol. Number 1, the payment request. The strike user initiates a payment by scanning a bolt 12 offer QR code or entering a human readable DNS address from where a BOLT 12 offer can be fetched using BIP 353.
2 LDK offer parsing LDK Lightning Development Kit is used to parse the BOLT 12 offer to extract the payment details. 3 onion message construction LNDK utilizes LDK's libraries and LND's gRPC APIs to construct onion messages containing the invoice request details. Relaying the onion. The constructed onion message is then relayed through the lightning network by LND The destination node uses onion messaging to send back an invoice that includes a blinded path detailing how it can be paid. 6, and finally, sending the payment. LNDK interacts with LND's gRPC API to initiate the payment process.
If you'd like to give it a try, you can donate to the Human Rights Foundation's BOLT 12 offer by scanning the QR code below or by paying to their BOLT 12 Lightning address which is bolt12hrf.org. That's bolt12 then it's b o l t the numbers 1 the number 2 bolt12 athrf.org as was stated in the blog post. So you can test it out by and this is a good test, by the way. If you want to if you if you want to test something out, what better way than to send the Human Rights Foundation a little bit of money? Doesn't even have to be a lot. I mean, we are talking about a lightning payment, essentially. But it is bolt 12. We've been waiting on bolt 12 forever. And it looks like it's finally starting to filter down into retail usable apps.
This is good. This is very good. However, the following is bad very, very bad. If you have an older YubiKey, it's vulnerable to a sophisticated cloning attack according to a report. Oh, joy joy joy joy. YubiKey is a small hardware device commonly used for multi factor authentication sorry authentication handling time based based one time passwords and signing, encrypting, and decrypting messages. The attack requires, get this, $11,000 in equipment, so this shit ain't cheap, and advanced electrical and cryptographic knowledge, likely limiting it to nation state or similar entities in targeted scenarios, the risk of widespread attacks is extremely low. Alright. So if anybody that heard this YubiKey news yesterday, don't freak out just yet. Okay? Just chill out.
UbKeys with firmware before version 5.7 that's version 5.7 if you've got 5.6 and below, you're probably vulnerable, right? The firmware updates aren't possible, so affected YubiKeys remain permanently at risk. That, you should note, okay? If you've got something under 5.7, it's forever hosed. And you'd probably need to get a new YubiKey. Yubico issued an advisory alongside NinjaLab's detailed disclosure report. NinjaLab reverse engineered the YubiKey 5 series and developed the cloning attack. An attacker could exploit this issue as part of a sophisticated and targeted attack to recover affected private keys.
The attacker would need physical possession of the ubkey, security key, or UBHSM, knowledge of the accounts they want to target and specialized equipment to perform the necessary attack. Depending on the use case, the attacker may also require additional knowledge including the username the PIN, the account password, or authentication key the advisory confirmed. So, honestly, guys, it's not as bad as we think. But there's some further information here. The cryptographic flaw a side channel exists in a microcontroller used in many authentication devices like smart cards, electronic passports, and secure access cards.
Researchers confirmed YubiKey 5 models can be cloned, but haven't tested other devices with the same microcontroller such as the Infineon SLE78 and its successors. Optica Trust M and Optica TPM, they suspect these devices share the same vulnerability. A key question remains at the moment, and that is what other security devices rely on the 3 vulnerable Infineon secure modules and use the Infineon crypto library? Infineon has yet to issue an advisory and did not respond to an email asking for one writes, ArsTechnica. Back in July, Bitcoin self custody services firm Casa announced integration with Ubiquees for enhanced security of user Bitcoin vaults.
The vulnerability is unlikely to affect that firm's customers as the service works with the newer firmware, you know, 5.7 and above devices that ship with expanded data storage capabilities. And then Seed Signer says something here in a note, Yubikey has a larger security budget than your favorite hardware wallet. Hardware wallet is a never ending cat and mouse game. Better to put your trust in functionally unsolvable math problems rather than unhackable hardware. A little jab there at the end from Seed signer. I love those guys. Okay. This isn't as bad as people think.
There's no reason in the world that if you are a YubiKey user, you should probably start and I understand that you probably can't migrate your YubiKey to another YubiKey. I get that part. I really do. But if you are a YubiKey user, you need to get a new one. 5.7 and above and start fresh, right? And then if you're really freaked out then go and and do whatever it is that you needed whatever you're using your YubiKey for your old one. Then go figure out what it is that you're doing there and then act accordingly. In so far as can you change your passwords there? Can you can you change your YubiKey there? You know, can can you do something else? I don't know, I'm not a YubiKey user. I'm just conjecturing at this point. But if you at if at all possible, migrate either the YubiKey itself or the information that the YubiKey your old YubiKey manages for you to a new YubiKey.
Other than that, you gotta go through a lot of shit to get some to break somebody's YubiKey. $11,000 in equipment, you know, advanced knowledge of electrical and, you know, cryptographic stuff. It's not I mean, if you're if you're like me, you're like joe blow on the street that just wants the falafel and the burrito, put, you know, put it in a safe or or something like that, you know? Or if you don't have a safe, don't walk around with it. Don't be like an idiot and have your, you know, YubiKey hanging around your neck on a chain like you're some kind of badass. Don't do that shit. Don't carry it with you. If if you are somebody that uses YubiKey and you have to carry it with you, you need to migrate to a new one. Okay? That's just that's just it. Because then your YubiKey is actually way more vulnerable to be snatched physically off your body, taken to a lab. But then again, if you're just trying to, you know, buy a burrito and somebody snatches your YubiKey, then you're a hell of a lot more important important person than somebody that just likes falafel and a burrito.
I'm just saying. Alright. That's gonna do it for the morning roundup. I got other stuff to do, so I'm gonna leave you here and say it. I'm gonna say 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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 9:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 4th day of September already, 2024.
This is episode 900 and 46 of Bitcoin and an FBI warning. Oh, my God. Yes, we're gonna talk about it. Switzerland's in the news. And then there's this dude named Deaton that's apparently going to go up against Elizabeth Warren. We'll get into that. Jobs data dropped this morning at 7 am Pacific Daylight Time. And as you might expect, as I was saying yesterday, that news isn't all that good. It's we'll we'll I'll give you the numbers when we get into the, into the market roundup. And then what else we got going on? Oh, Bitfarms is fighting back against Riot.
Mutiny Wallet has given a timeline for their complete disassociation of their wallet. And Strike is in the news as well as, Yubikey. If you don't know what Yubikey is, you will find out here directly. So let's start with the fear mongering. And it is fear mongering. This is I'm just gonna preface this saying that everything about this smells like constructed and engineered FUD fear, uncertainty, and doubt that's being given by the FBI. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thing. So what is the thing? Well, it's we'll get it from Bitcoin Magazine. Nick Hoffman is writing it today, which was actually yesterday, the FBI issued an alert warning. Oh, alert alert alert alert. Well, the alert warning that North Korean hackers are targeting United States cryptocurrency exchange traded funds in a bid to steal digital assets.
You see, I'm already I'm already I'm just calling bullshit because it's so targeted. It's so targeted, it's not even funny. I think this is an amount of FUD given by the 3 letter agencies. I don't believe this shit at all. But the hackers are using advanced social engineering techniques to breach the security of companies associated with these financial products, the FBI stated. According to the FBI, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has been conducting highly targeted social engineering attacks on employees within the decentralized finance and cryptocurrency industries. These attacks involve detailed pre operational research and customized scenarios designed to exploit the victims' specific interests and connections.
Quote, North Korean malicious cyberattack actors conducted research on a variety of targets connected to cryptocurrency exchange traded funds, the ETFs, over the last several months, the FBI said quote, this research includes pre operational preparations suggesting North Korean actors may attempt malicious cyber activities against companies associated with cryptocurrency ETFs and other cryptocurrency related financial products. Yes, be scared of crypto, be scared of Bitcoin, be scared of the ETFs. The FBI emphasized that North Korean cyber attackers or cyber actors are a persistent threat to organizations managing large quantities of cryptocurrency their tactics include impersonating trusted contacts creating fake scenarios involving job offers or investments, and deploying malware through prolonged and convincing interactions with their targets.
I guess prolonged phishing attacks is what they're talking about. The agency urged businesses in the cryptocurrency sector to adopt stringent security measures, including multifactor authentication, limiting access to sensitive information, and verifying the identities of contacts through multiple channels. The FBI also recommended that companies with access to significant cryptocurrency holdings take extra precautions to safeguard their assets against these sophisticated cyber threats. Oh, bullshit. It's bullshit. I'm sorry. It just is. Now, Liv, what they're talking about here is that there's this somehow the the North Koreans have figured out all the people that hold all of the multisig keys for the wallets of these cryptocurrency ETF companies.
Again, bullshit. They don't publish that information. BlackRock has not published, oh, by the way, here's the people that you need to contact, you know, for managing the keys. Because this guy's got key 1, this guy's got key 2, this chick over here's got key 3. No. No. And there's no intelligence that's going to be leaked by anybody that has any sense about the whatsoever in these companies of that information. That information is the last bit of information that you'll ever be able to find out. So the only way that these guys would actually be able to quote pre engineer the way they're going to do this sophisticated cyber phishing attack and all that bullshit is to target everybody in the company.
Right? How stupid do you think these people are? Yes. Everybody gets a situation where they're working at a place and, yes, they open up a phishing email and, yes, they click the link. I've done it. But you know who I don't work for? I don't work for BlackRock. I haven't been trained in their security protocols. I guarantee you that BlackRock and Fidelity and a lot of these other people have extraordinary amounts of training for this kind of shit. This is not the training that you're gonna receive if you're working at a university. It's not the kind of training you're gonna receive if you're a public school teacher. It's not the training you're going to get if you are a firefighter.
This is going to be high grade, very expensive, and long term training operations for people that are at the highest echelons of these kinds of companies. This report by the FBI is complete and utter bullshit. It's designed to not scare the people at the ETF companies. It's designed to scare retail. That's because their backs are up against the wall. They're fighting like cornered animals and it's gonna get bloody AF. Now on to Switzerland who doesn't seem to give a shit about the FBI and what they say because Switzerland's 4th largest bank, ZKB, has launched their own Bitcoin trading desk. Vivek Sin, again, from Bitcoin Magazine.
Zuktjerkantanelbank, I guess that's how you pronounce it, Switzerland's 4th largest bank, has begun offering its clients Bitcoin and crypto trading and custody services. With over $290,000,000,000 that's billion with a b, in assets under management, ZKB provides services to retail, corporate, and institutional clients. ZKB now allows their clients to trade and hold Bitcoin and other shit coins through its mobile app, online banking, and traditional channels. The bank partnered with Deutsche Borse owned crypto finance AG for brokerage services and developed its own custody solution. Oh, god. They rolled their own.
Whatever. I'm I'm sure it's probably just multisig. The move reflects the country's openness to Bitcoin and cements ZKB as one of the largest mainstream financial institutions to embrace Bitcoin. And as well, Switzerland is taking a relatively positive stance on Bitcoin and crypto including the Swiss National Bank revealing that it held shares in MicroStrategy. I don't I think they should I don't know. I hate it when people do that. That's MicroStrategy, Yes, they hold a shit ton of Bitcoin. But I don't think it's a relatively positive stance of the Swiss National Bank on crypto or Bitcoin because they hold shares in MicroStrategy.
I think that's a lot of hyperbole. So just take with a grain of salt the launch comes as more major financial players adopt Bitcoin amid Bitcoin surge in legitimacy in the United States the successful debut of the Bitcoin ETFs which now the FBI is scaring the living piss out of everybody about has accelerated institutional adoption. ZKB's move may pressure other Swiss and European banks to provide Bitcoin services. Banks worldwide such as Hong Kong's Futu and Standard Chartered's MOX have also recently launched Bitcoin and Bitcoin ETF trading. This growing trend shows that traditional finance is increasingly embracing Bitcoin, which probably leads into the fact that the FBI is so keen on scaring you retail plebs out of any possibility of having a crypto or Bitcoin ETF.
I personally will never buy a Bitcoin ETF unless I'm working for somebody who has a 401k and the only exposure they're going to get is because they have exposure to a Bitcoin ETF. That was the only reason this shit was important in the first place. If you're just pleb retail guy on the street, all you want is some falafel and maybe a frickin burrito every once in a while because it makes you feel good. You're retail and that's okay. The FBI is trying to scare you, retail man, out of getting into a Bitcoin ETF through any means necessary.
Right? They're gonna scare you from going to HR and saying, hey. Do we have, you know, a 401 k that has Bitcoin exposure? And they say, yes. Well, then that would be the one that I would that would be the one that I would buy. But the FBI warning is scaring people to actually even ask that question. So the question now becomes, what's the FBI scared of? Well, maybe they're scared of this dude, John Deaton. I'm not scared of him though because he's pro XRP. Right? He's he's he's a ripple head. Let me just get to it. Cointelegraph, Martin Young, pro XRP attorney, John Deaton, has won the Republican United States Senate primary. Now before you start going, David, why are you telling me about a ripple head? Well, I got there's a point to it. Just trust me, man. Trust me, bro. Let me get into it. Pro crypto attorney John Deaton has won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in Massachusetts primary elections and is set to face off against Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren. That's right. Pocahontas in November.
Deaton, a former marine and outspoken advocate of Ripple, defeated, 2 other Republican candidates, including industrial engineer Bob Antonellis and Quincy City Council President Ian Kane to nab the Republican nod, according to a September 4th report from the Associated Press. He has secured 64% of the votes so far, with just over 43% of total votes in Massachusetts being counted at the time of publication according to election tracking data from Politico. Yeah, he's he's pretty much won it. Deaton will face off against Warren in November. His opponent, who has won a senate seat twice, had stiff competition for her senate bid in 2012, beating Republican incumbent Scott Brown, but she received more than 60% of the vote in 2018.
And she is seeking yet a third term, a third 6 year term this year and is unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Yeah. Probably because she cut a deal with the Biden admin, but whatever. Warren, who currently sits on the senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee, has waged war on the crypto industry in recent years claiming that it facilitates terrorism and spying and contributes to the spread of malware and drug abuse. She has proposed several sweeping bills that seek to stifle the growth of the crypto industry in the United States. Notably, Deaton made several pledges in his victory speech, which he posted on X, but did not make any specific mentions of crypto.
Deaton's primary campaign got a boost from some very big names in the crypto industry including the Winklevoss twins and here we go, executives from the Fintech firm Ripple. The Commonwealth Unity Fund, a crypto political action committee distributed more than $1,000,000 in Massachusetts to support Deaton's bid for the United States Senate. Deaton's top donors included Ripple executives Chris Larsen and of course Brad Garlinghouse the Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci Cardano co founder Charles Hoskinson and Kraken co founder Jesse Powell.
According to federal election commission records, Deaton has raised roughly $1,700,000 in his bid for the senate as of July 31st. In April, Deaton filed an amicus or amicus brief on behalf of the of 400 and no. 4,701 Coinbase customers in support of the firm in its case against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Okay. So now, here's my reasoning for letting you know this. They won. Who's they? Chris Larsen, Brad Garlinghouse, DeWinkle Vai, Scaramucci, Charles Hoskinson, and fucking Jesse Powell. They won.
And what this is demonstrating is 2 things all at once. It is very clear at this point that the crypto industry has enough power to start getting into United States senatorial and what will end up being presidential elections. House of Representatives, that's probably alongside of the senatorial influence. But it's influence. Right? It's influence from private citizens and private businesses that have a shit ton of money that how did they get it? In the case of the Ripple and that asshole Charles Hoskinson, they stole it by printing bullshit money out of thin air and that brings me to my second point there's nobody in there there's nobody in this list of donors to Deaton that is a solid Bitcoiner.
I used to have a lot of faith in Jesse Powell. Not anymore. Anthony Scaramucci, that dude has shown his true colors time and time again that he never really cared about Bitcoin. And this is a problem. Now, it can't be stopped. Shit coins are for enemies just like Bitcoin is for enemies too. Right? I can't can't stop them. But I do need to sound the alarm that alongside of watching, you know, people like Cynthia Lummis come into power that is, you know, a solid Bitcoiner and other folks that are also solid Bitcoiners, you have solid shitcoiners that are able to now affect the way a senatorial race is going to play out.
So, Deaton is I don't think Deaton is anybody's friend. He's just going to shill for Ripple and it's gonna be a mess. And so, here's the thing. You know, better the devil you know. So at this point, I kinda hope that Elizabeth Warren wins the election. Why? Well, because she's fucking ineffective. She hasn't passed anything. All she does is sit up there and yell at people and tell them that, I don't know, that we're somehow or another trafficking children because we own Bitcoin. And we're going to destroy the entire planet because of mining.
But she hasn't been able to affect a single thing. That, in my opinion, is actually a safer safer thing than having a goddamn shit coiner who's backed by Charles Hoskinson, Brad Garlinghouse, and this idiot Chris Larson. I would much rather Elizabeth Warren stay in power so that she can remain ineffectual for the next 6 years. I mean, I'm just saying. Okay? I mean, I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of backlash. I do not like Warren. She lied straight up to the American people and the rest of the world that she was, like, 1 quarter Native American and that was bullshit.
It was proven bullshit. She even released the results of her genetic test herself. And she's, like, 180th Choctaw or something like that. By this time, almost everybody in the United States probably has some Indian blood in them unless they came over from, you know, Europe or something like that in the last, you know, 100 or or, like, let's say, 50 years. Right? I mean, it's like it was a native population. The native Americans were already here. If you don't think that there was some interbreeding going on, you're lying to yourself. Right? That was happening all over the place. But it's been happening for so long that we're probably all a little bit Native American at this point.
But she straight up lied about it. And she put that shit on her, like, application employment application when she went over to Harvard. Did she get more money in pay because of that? Well, then that's a straight up fraud. So don't think for a second and a half that I like Elizabeth Warren. I don't. But I do like the fact that she hasn't been able to affect a single thing. And I would much rather her be in than some ripple headed shit coiner. That's all I'm gonna say. TradFi companies want to transact in Bitcoin, says Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick.
CoinDesk, Jamie Crawley is writing it. Cantor Fitzgerald's or Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick has said that TradFi, traditional finance companies, want to transact in Bitcoin as a new asset class, but but but are being held back by the existing requirements of US regulators. Letnik said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that Bitcoin was an outsider to the TradFi community that's only now dipping its toe into global finance. If a bank were to hold your Bitcoin, they would have to set aside their own money equal to that amount, sort of being put in jail. That's why you don't hold it. But if the regulatory environment was good, you will see all the traditional financial companies go head first into Bitcoin, Lutnick said.
As well as being CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which unveiled its plans to open up a Bitcoin financing business in June, Lutnick was also picked by the pro crypto Republican candidate Donald Trump to chair his presidential transition team. Cantor Fitzgerald, which owns a shitload of bitcoin, according to Letnick, plans to launch its bitcoin financing business with $2,000,000,000 in lending, providing leverage to BTC holders. It already handles US Treasury trading with stablecoin issuer Tether. Okay. So lesser of 2 evils, the Howard Lutnick much better than this Deaton guy that's gonna go up against, Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren.
Still though, I don't trust him. But he's bringing up a good point. Everything he said was true. The way that United States banking regulations are written right now, if they want to hold in custody custody a customer's Bitcoin, they actually have to set aside exactly that same amount of money of their own money to do it. Because the banking regulations are not allowing Bitcoin to be, quote, a bank's asset. It can't be put on the balance sheet. Therefore, they have to make up for that the ability to make good on anybody's withdrawal their own money.
So until that shit changes, Howard Lutnick is saying, we're kinda gonna be in this, I don't know, this malaise that that we're this regulatory malaise where nobody really knows what the hell is going on. I don't really need more institutions into this shit, but they're coming. Okay? They're they're they're definitely coming. Meanwhile, let's run the numbers. Jobs report dropped. That's right. The United States Jolts, j o l t s, job openings report has dropped and there has been a decline. So let's get into it from FX Street.
Aaron Sengenser is writing this one. The number of job openings on the last business day of July stood at $7,670,000 or 1,000,000 jobs. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in the job openings and labor turnover survey, that's the Jolts, on Wednesday. This reading followed the 7,900,000 openings revised from 8,100,000 reported in June and came in below the market expectation of 8,100,000 jobs. Quote, over the last month, hires changed little at 5,500,000, the BLS noted in its press release. Separations increased to 5,400,000.
Within separations, quits of 3,300,000 and layoffs and discharges of 1,800,000 changed little. The United States dollar came under renewed selling pressure following these data. At the time of press, the US dollar index was down 0.44 percent on the day and stands at 101.33. So the jobs data came out and it was not good. In fact, in some people's views that I've read, it's very much a dismal a dismal jobs report. So how did markets react? We're gonna find out right now. Oil getting kicked in the nuts. West Texas Intermediate down 3 quarters of a point to 69.84.
Brent, North Sea down 0.64% to 73.28. Natural gas down 2.77 to $2.14, a 1000 cubic feet. And gasoline is down damn near a full point, chilling out at $1.96 a gallon. Most of the shiny metal rocks are not faring well, but gold is. It's up at $2,527.40 after a 5th of a point move to the upside. Silver is up damn near a point to 28.59. But platinum is down but sideways, 0.04. Copper down a quarter of a point. Palladium down almost a half. Biggest winner in ag is rough rice at 2 points to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate again, 5 and a half points to the downside. Man, chocolate guys are getting hammered.
Live cattle moving sideways, but lean hogs are down 0.48%. Feeder cattle down almost a full half. The Dow is up by 0.09%. The S and P is up 0.02%. The Nasdaq is up a quarter of a point, but the S and P Mini is down 0.16%. Now, to the number everybody cares about, 58 k gang. Yay, 58 k. We're channeling out 58 k. It's like for how long? A year at 58 k? My god almighty. $58,460. We're back up to a $1,150,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 23.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000,749,346.12 of and fees per block remain low.
0.06 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. There are 133 blocks carrying 276,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority prices of 7 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 5. 626.5 exahashes per second, so we have dipped quite a bit from the 746 exahash mark that we saw sometime yesterday. Now from slogtimber, which was episode 945 of Bitcoin and let's see. Who's given what? Joeydd with 3,333 sats sends a single emoji, and I'm embarrassed to that I can't read it because my operating system is so old. My browsers won't read emojis. No.
Not not all emojis. I mean, so I get some of them, but this one is just a square, which tells me that it's time for this operating system to go. DeBravco with 2270 says, regarding Binance exec in need of mobility equipment. 2 things are true at the same time. 1, people in court very often overplay their feebleness or injury. A bonafide jerkface that beat up cops shows up in a wheelchair and a neck brace, as an example. And number 2, people that need mobility aids have large ebbs and flows in their physical abilities. Sometimes they can walk unaided, pick up a child, etcetera.
And sometimes their whole body aches and they can't leave their chair or bed. So thank you to Bravo for, throwing a little bit of, reality in on what I was saying about it yesterday. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. Axelrod with 500 says, I like that you admit that you intend to use your Bitcoin. It's a savings technology, not a religion. Cheers. And I just want to make sure that I'm prefacing this correctly. I'm not telling anybody to go sell their Bitcoin if they don't have to. I am saying that if you have what you think is enough that you can kind of make it through another month and just kind of, like, figure out something else to do with your life, like change a job or something like that, then that's sort of what savings is for.
It's not it's not to die with. You should be able to have, like, for instance, I'm very much keen on building a company that I pass on to my children, but not as an inheritance where they don't inherit the company and then inherit the the, you know, the money or the the the assets that are involved in that company. They simply are officers of that company and can make discretionary decisions about the future of the company, the future of the assets, and be able to take distributions on those assets if they so choose at their discretion because I'd be dead.
Right? So I'm not against leaving with no money either. I'm very much in the gray area. Use some, save most. It's not that hard, honestly. So that's what I wanted to say about that one. Wartime with 333 is asking if Pies is around or if he's just not seeing them on fountain. Wartime, I haven't seen Pies in a couple of shows. I'm sure he's fine. He'll be back. Wartime with another 333 says testing NIMVPN on mobile RN, not bad. And Nobile says with a 100,000 with a 100 sat sorry, not a 100,000. That would be nice though. NEM VPN seems to be associated with an ETH token, for your information, NEMTECH or something like that. Okay.
Good point. I can't do anything about that. I'm still looking at at NIM VPN as something that's good, and I have hopes that if they are associated with said ETH token that they soon drop it because it's just gonna do nothing but get them in trouble. I do want you guys if if you're not able to listen on the Podcasting 2.0 app, which I don't see why not, you should be listening on the Podcasting 2.0 app. That way you can boost me satoshis, you can stream me satoshis. It's the way that hell, it's the way that I paid for gas to go over to central Washington and get like a really good interview from somebody who's fighting the good fight for some ranchers that are being well really really bad things are being done to these ranchers. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go listen to, my episode entitled Ranch Wars The King Ranch and you'll learn all about what's going on with that shit. But if for whatever reason you just can't you can't donate to the show through those means, you can always go to geyser.fund geyser.fundforward/projectforward/thebitcoinandpodcast and you can throw me some satoshis over there for the Bitcoin and podcast project.
That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Bitfarms calls out Riot's misleading letter ahead of their special meeting, Jason Jason Shrubnell from the block. Actually, that's pronounced Shubnell, not Shrubnell. The misleading or mudslinging. The mudslinging, oh my god. It continues in the months long takeover battle between Bitcoin miners, Riot Platforms, and Bitfarms. On Tuesday, Riot executive chairman, Benjamin Yee, and CEO, Jason Less, expressed concern about Bitfarms' recent governance changes and the proposed acquisition of Stronghold Digital ahead of a special meeting to vote on reconstituting Bitfarms board of directors.
More specifically, the executives said that Bitfarms board changes were reactive and insufficient to address the company's governance issues. On Wednesday, Bitfarms issued a response to what it called misleading claims from Riot. Quote, the upcoming special meeting is not about corporate governance, as Riot has repeatedly positioned it to be, but rather about Riot attempting to acquire Bitfarms at a discounted price for the benefit of Riot shareholders, not Bitfarms shareholders, Bitfarms said in a statement. Further quote, Riot has declined to engage with us constructively, including by refusing to enter into a standard non disclosure agreement with Bitfarms or to put forth a revised proposal for our consideration, and has instead taken to public attacks and actions to harm the interests of other Bitfarms shareholders.
Bitfarms said on Wednesday that its recent board and leadership changes were made on behalf of shareholders and not for Riot's approval. Quote, the Bitfarms team is best in class, comprising the right mix of skills and experience to effectively oversee the company's strategery plan. It's strategic, not strategery. I just like the word strategery. I can't help it. On the contrary, it is not clear how Riot's nominees would enhance the board. Furthermore, the miner justified its proposed acquisition of Stronghold by noting the transaction would add up to 307 megawatts of power capacity and is expected to put Bitfarms on track to increase its energy portfolio to over 950 megawatts with nearly 50% of that residing in the US by the end of 2025.
Bitfarms board will consider and respond to Riot's amended requisition proposal, maybe they meant acquisition proposal, in due course. The special meeting is scheduled for October 29th. So at least Riot's saying something out in the public. But you know what this is starting to look like? Is that I when I first started reporting on this, it seemed to me that Riot was indeed trying to get bitfarms at an extremely discounted price. Why wouldn't you? I mean, you know, you can haggle. There's nothing illegal about haggling. But when you're haggling with a used car salesman, and then you start attacking the the, the quality of humanity of said used car salesman, that's not it's not that it's not playing fair. It's more about activism, is what I'm getting at. This looks very much like an activist takeover of Bitfarms and not an actual business.
And and Riot is an actual business, but it doesn't feel anymore like it's just a fight, you know, of trying to get a discount on a price, which again, you would wanna do for your shareholders. These the the tone that's coming out of Riot now seems more on the activist investor side of the spectrum and not just good business dealings. This is this thing is devolving into a mudslinging shit show And it's really sad to see, honestly. But not as sad as Mutiny Wallet's shutdown timeline being announced last month. Mutiny Wallet announced the shutdown of its wallet service. It will be removed from app stores and the web by December 31, 2024.
So they have till the end of the year. Mutiny wallets are being or mutiny wallet users need to move their funds out and close open lightning channels immediately. It supports sending to Bitcoin Lightning and Fedimint wallets. Users can self host Mutiny, though, or the one click install on Star OS. The project will continue as open source code. You can also transfer any e cash balance to the Fetti app with low fees if in the same federation. The self hosted version can still act as a Fedimint wallet. Quote, the mutiny team is not going anywhere. We care very much about the need for strong data privacy and are working on novel security tools for developers across the ecosystem.
So here's the timeline. August 5th is the announcement of the shutdown. Right? August 20th, voltage announcement of LSP shutdown. September 3rd, the timeline and frequently asked questions has been posted, October 1st. Now, this is starting to get into the future. The receive button will be disabled in the hosted app. Users may only move funds out. On December 31st, wallet at app. Mutinywallet.com shuts down. The app is pulled from Apple and Google app stores. Also on December 31st, emergency kit with data download replaces the wallet interface at app.mutinywallet.com.
And the Q1 of 2025, as traffic decreases, the emergency kit will sunset. So the emergency kit, which I guess is geared to help your ass out, will be slow will be sunsetted, But they're only saying sometime in Q1. So, if you're a mutiny wallet user, as sad as it is to see this happen, especially for the reasons we're seeing it happen and if you don't know the reasons, it's because everybody is scared to do business with American customers because the Department of Justice, the, I don't know, the the Federal Reserve, the Southern District of Court of New York, and all those assholes, and the FBI.
They're they are all over these people simply because they have a way to do it. That is because they have access to American customers or United States of American customers. Then apparently the long arm of the American justice system can reach out and bitch slap anybody that they want no matter what country they're in and whether that country is sovereign or not. Because we apparently we have that right. I guess maybe it was part of our manifest destiny. It's all bullshit, of course, but it's enough to scare the living crap out of a lot of people. And Mutiny Wallet is being kind of smart and saying we don't want to do business with you. We don't want to do business with anybody that even looks like they're they're a United States citizen.
But thank God they're actually going to still work on the self hosting thing. I just wonder when, you know, when that starts becoming attacked. Strike. They now support sending payments to BOLT 12 offers. Yay. Today, we're excited to announce our support for BOLT 12 offers, a revolutionary technology that enables a more private, versatile, and user friendly way to send and receive sats over the Bitcoin Lightning Network, announced Tom Kirkpatrick in a blog post. Whilst we have successfully achieved I love when people use whilst. Whilst we have successfully achieved our goal of enabling bolt 12 payments from strike, our initial integration only supports a basic offer payment flow. However, it paves the way for exciting and more advanced BOLT 12 features over time.
With much of this groundwork now done and out there in the open source universe, we've proven that there is a viable path to deliver a Bolt 12 experience with LND. Today. Not tomorrow, but today. We're excited to see the continued evolution of Bolt 12 as more and more services and node operators upgrade over the coming months years. So let's see how it works. Here's how strike uses LND, l n or LDK, and LNDK to facilitate onion message routing and the bolt 12 protocol. Number 1, the payment request. The strike user initiates a payment by scanning a bolt 12 offer QR code or entering a human readable DNS address from where a BOLT 12 offer can be fetched using BIP 353.
2 LDK offer parsing LDK Lightning Development Kit is used to parse the BOLT 12 offer to extract the payment details. 3 onion message construction LNDK utilizes LDK's libraries and LND's gRPC APIs to construct onion messages containing the invoice request details. Relaying the onion. The constructed onion message is then relayed through the lightning network by LND The destination node uses onion messaging to send back an invoice that includes a blinded path detailing how it can be paid. 6, and finally, sending the payment. LNDK interacts with LND's gRPC API to initiate the payment process.
If you'd like to give it a try, you can donate to the Human Rights Foundation's BOLT 12 offer by scanning the QR code below or by paying to their BOLT 12 Lightning address which is bolt12hrf.org. That's bolt12 then it's b o l t the numbers 1 the number 2 bolt12 athrf.org as was stated in the blog post. So you can test it out by and this is a good test, by the way. If you want to if you if you want to test something out, what better way than to send the Human Rights Foundation a little bit of money? Doesn't even have to be a lot. I mean, we are talking about a lightning payment, essentially. But it is bolt 12. We've been waiting on bolt 12 forever. And it looks like it's finally starting to filter down into retail usable apps.
This is good. This is very good. However, the following is bad very, very bad. If you have an older YubiKey, it's vulnerable to a sophisticated cloning attack according to a report. Oh, joy joy joy joy. YubiKey is a small hardware device commonly used for multi factor authentication sorry authentication handling time based based one time passwords and signing, encrypting, and decrypting messages. The attack requires, get this, $11,000 in equipment, so this shit ain't cheap, and advanced electrical and cryptographic knowledge, likely limiting it to nation state or similar entities in targeted scenarios, the risk of widespread attacks is extremely low. Alright. So if anybody that heard this YubiKey news yesterday, don't freak out just yet. Okay? Just chill out.
UbKeys with firmware before version 5.7 that's version 5.7 if you've got 5.6 and below, you're probably vulnerable, right? The firmware updates aren't possible, so affected YubiKeys remain permanently at risk. That, you should note, okay? If you've got something under 5.7, it's forever hosed. And you'd probably need to get a new YubiKey. Yubico issued an advisory alongside NinjaLab's detailed disclosure report. NinjaLab reverse engineered the YubiKey 5 series and developed the cloning attack. An attacker could exploit this issue as part of a sophisticated and targeted attack to recover affected private keys.
The attacker would need physical possession of the ubkey, security key, or UBHSM, knowledge of the accounts they want to target and specialized equipment to perform the necessary attack. Depending on the use case, the attacker may also require additional knowledge including the username the PIN, the account password, or authentication key the advisory confirmed. So, honestly, guys, it's not as bad as we think. But there's some further information here. The cryptographic flaw a side channel exists in a microcontroller used in many authentication devices like smart cards, electronic passports, and secure access cards.
Researchers confirmed YubiKey 5 models can be cloned, but haven't tested other devices with the same microcontroller such as the Infineon SLE78 and its successors. Optica Trust M and Optica TPM, they suspect these devices share the same vulnerability. A key question remains at the moment, and that is what other security devices rely on the 3 vulnerable Infineon secure modules and use the Infineon crypto library? Infineon has yet to issue an advisory and did not respond to an email asking for one writes, ArsTechnica. Back in July, Bitcoin self custody services firm Casa announced integration with Ubiquees for enhanced security of user Bitcoin vaults.
The vulnerability is unlikely to affect that firm's customers as the service works with the newer firmware, you know, 5.7 and above devices that ship with expanded data storage capabilities. And then Seed Signer says something here in a note, Yubikey has a larger security budget than your favorite hardware wallet. Hardware wallet is a never ending cat and mouse game. Better to put your trust in functionally unsolvable math problems rather than unhackable hardware. A little jab there at the end from Seed signer. I love those guys. Okay. This isn't as bad as people think.
There's no reason in the world that if you are a YubiKey user, you should probably start and I understand that you probably can't migrate your YubiKey to another YubiKey. I get that part. I really do. But if you are a YubiKey user, you need to get a new one. 5.7 and above and start fresh, right? And then if you're really freaked out then go and and do whatever it is that you needed whatever you're using your YubiKey for your old one. Then go figure out what it is that you're doing there and then act accordingly. In so far as can you change your passwords there? Can you can you change your YubiKey there? You know, can can you do something else? I don't know, I'm not a YubiKey user. I'm just conjecturing at this point. But if you at if at all possible, migrate either the YubiKey itself or the information that the YubiKey your old YubiKey manages for you to a new YubiKey.
Other than that, you gotta go through a lot of shit to get some to break somebody's YubiKey. $11,000 in equipment, you know, advanced knowledge of electrical and, you know, cryptographic stuff. It's not I mean, if you're if you're like me, you're like joe blow on the street that just wants the falafel and the burrito, put, you know, put it in a safe or or something like that, you know? Or if you don't have a safe, don't walk around with it. Don't be like an idiot and have your, you know, YubiKey hanging around your neck on a chain like you're some kind of badass. Don't do that shit. Don't carry it with you. If if you are somebody that uses YubiKey and you have to carry it with you, you need to migrate to a new one. Okay? That's just that's just it. Because then your YubiKey is actually way more vulnerable to be snatched physically off your body, taken to a lab. But then again, if you're just trying to, you know, buy a burrito and somebody snatches your YubiKey, then you're a hell of a lot more important important person than somebody that just likes falafel and a burrito.
I'm just saying. Alright. That's gonna do it for the morning roundup. I got other stuff to do, so I'm gonna leave you here and say it. I'm gonna say 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.
