Join me today for Episode 979 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Bitaxe and Open Source Mining
- Peter Todd Books it
- "Inevitable Bond Market Crash", Paul Tudor Jones
- River's New Yield Product
- Binance Executive is Free to Go
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitaxe-and-the-open-source-bitcoin-mining-movement
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/23/peter-todd-bitcoin-developer-named-as-satoshi-nakamoto-in-hbo-documentary-goes-into-hiding/
https://decrypt.co/287881/vitalik-buterin-michael-saylors-bitcoin-self-custody-comments-are-batshit-insane
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https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/bitbox-10-2024-lugano-update/
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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 9:30 AM on the dot Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 23rd day of October 2024.
This is episode oh, it's a palindrome episode. 900 and 79 of Bitcoin and the circle p is open for business. And today, I bring you the Leathermint at the leathermint.com. That is the leathermint.com. Do you need a wallet? Do you want a good wallet? You know, a wallet that doesn't fall apart? One that was handmade, built by somebody who knows exactly what they're doing? Well, then you're gonna wanna go over to theleathermint.com and get one of yours get yourself one of their cordovan crossovers. You can build your own. You can select from different leather colors. You can do all kinds of neat combinations. You've got all kinds of craftsmanship is built into the Leathermint wallets.
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Honestly go over there just look at the stitching. I know it sounds weird, but it's all about the stitching when it comes to a high quality long lasting leather good. Whether it's a wallet, a coat, it doesn't really matter. It really is all about the stitching. Okay. Let's start the day off with some good news. Nigeria has dropped the money laundering charges against the Binance executive that they've been holding in their jail for, like, 7 months. The Nigerian government has dropped all charges against Binance executive Tigran Gembarian, who has been detained in prison in Nigeria for more than 7 months, a lawyer representing Nigeria's government prosecutor, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, announced the withdrawal of charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja on October 23rd, Local news agency Premium Times reported. The EFCC lawyer said that Tiernan or Tigran, sorry, Tigran, a United States citizen, wasn't serving a key role at Binance whose activities were the target of the prosecution. Oh, it took you 7 months to figure that shit out. Wow. That's just amazing. The EFCC reportedly dropped the charges against Tigran at a hearing coming 2 days before a courtroom session scheduled for October 25th. According to the report, the hearing on Wednesday appeared to have been held to avoid public attention as much as possible.
I can't imagine why. While Premium Times indicated the main reason for dropping charges against Tigran was his non senior role at Binance, other reports alluded to another factor. A Reuters report suggested the EFCC lawyer withdrew the case to allow Tigran to seek medical treatment abroad. According to a report by Bloomberg Law, the court discontinued the case on the grounds of Tigran's deteriorating health, citing anonymous sources familiar with the decision. Tigran's lawyer, Mark Morty, had repeatedly argued that Tigran's health had worsened during his detention at Kuje Prison in Abuja however the EFCC objected claiming that his defense exaggerated the severity of his condition Morty also insisted that Nigeria's healthcare system could not adequately manage these issues.
Tigran, a former cryptocurrency focused U. S. Tax agent, was detained by the Nigerian government in February after travelling to Nigeria to address a dispute with Binance over allegations of unlawful operations in the country. Despite Binance announcing its full and 100% complete exit from Nigeria back in March, the Nigerian government continued to detain Tigran denying bail on not one but two occasions. Judge, Emike Nuit first denied Tigran's bail application in May. Duite also rejected the 2nd bail application in October. Despite dropping charges against Tigran, Nigeria will continue its money laundering case against Binance according to multiple sources.
Reuters reported that Nigeria's separate tax charges against Binance also remain in place despite the exchange denying the allegations. As previously reported, Binance is facing 4 counts of tax evasion, including failure to register with Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service. I tell them to go pound sand. There is no way if you're in Binance at any level, if you if you on your at your own volition take a plane ride and enter the country of Nigeria, you're beyond stupid. You just don't go. You don't send any of your physical presence down there, whether it's yourself as one of the leaders of the company or if it's one of your lawyers or I mean, literally, you just stay out of Nigeria.
If they wanna talk to you, they need to do it over Zoom or some shit like that. But their detainment of Tigran for this long under these circumstances and telling me that it took them 7 months to figure out that he was just a regular old employee and really didn't have a damn thing to do with the tax evasion. You don't want to have nothing to do with this country. You don't want to have nothing to do with their judicial system. You don't want to have nothing to do with anything. And what are they going to do? Are they going to send an aircraft carrier to come get your ass? I think not. Pound saying Nigeria. G f y while you're at it. Okay.
Bitax. I've talked a lot about Bitax. I'm going to talk more about Bitax. If you were somebody who thinks it's stupid, well, I don't know what to tell you. I just don't understand why you think it's stupid. It's not stupid. What is a BitX? We're gonna find out a little bit more about that. If you haven't been listening to the show, a BitX is a very small solo miner. It mines Bitcoin with 1 single ASIC chip. It's very small. It's very lightweight. It has almost no chance of winning a block all by itself. But that doesn't make it any less important than what it actually is. It's it is important. Let's find out more from Frank Korva who's writing for Bitcoin Magazine.
BitX's founder who goes by the name Scott or the NIM Scott has taken his hobby of tinkering with electronics and not only transformed it into a full time gig but has catalyzed 1,000 to follow his lead. Harnessing his training as an electrical engineer and his Bitcoin enthusiasm Scott s k o t began deconstructing Bitmain's bitcoin mining machines approximately 2 years ago. After gaining a better understanding of how they work, he reverse engineered one creating the blueprint for bitaxe the first ever open source ASIC based bitcoin mining machine in early of 2023. It was just a technical challenge initially, Scott told bitcoin magazine.
The technical challenge has transformed into something larger and bigger than he could have ever imagined though. Scott created a low power and affordable bitcoin miner that anyone can plug in at home without running up a huge energy bill while his work also paved the way for others interested in open source bitcoin mining to begin contributing to bitax itself and other open source mining initiatives like it and related to it. The project has morphed into something that's bringing mining back to the open source fundamentals of bitcoin itself Scott said quote I've really become convinced that to be truly decentralized which I think most people understand bitcoin needs to be all aspects of the development of bitcoin need to be open source, he added.
It needs to be open so that anyone who is even remotely interested can get in. Years back, while taking liberal arts courses at a community college Scott stumbled on an issue of Make Magazine a publication that features tutorials for DIY electronics projects. A switch flipped inside of him as he perused the magazine. He completed a degree as in electrical engineering and then co founded a design consultancy for Internet of Things related products which he ran for 10 years. Scott enjoyed the work but admitted that the downside was that he was constantly working on other peoples ideas. In 2011 a friend introduced him to Bitcoin at a party showing him how to use Bitcoin to buy drugs on the now defunct Silk Road. While he was intrigued it wasn't enough to get him to buy Bitcoin or drugs at the time.
And 2 years later Scott learned about bitcoin mining and soon after that built his first bitcoin miner quote I actually built an fpga bitcoin miner fpga's were the precursors to asics which is an application specific integrated circuit in case you're wondering FPGA miners were designed with open source code making it easy for Scott to figure out how to construct one while he lost all of the bitcoin that he mined in a pool hack he didn't become discouraged in fact he became more fascinated with this cross section of electronics and the permissionless nature of bitcoin when I was learning about it I was like well okay so these are the rules of how bitcoin mining works but who made the rules who enforces these rules learning that no one is at the center of this and no one enforces these rules or we all do was mind blowing it it's a beautiful thing technically and that intrigued me end quote a few years later he dove in deeper and developed the bitaxe so what is a bitaxe well a bitaxe is technically just open source code that anyone can use to build a physical mining machine Scott has only built about a dozen bit axes himself, while 1,000 have been built and sold.
Anyone can build and sell bit axes under its open source license. The circuit board for physical bit axes isn't much bigger than a credit card while the device's fan protrudes out about 3 centimeters from the board. The machine runs on a 5 volt power source and connects to the internet over wifi. Users interface with bit axis via their personal computer or phone. The device uses between 12 18 watts of electricity which is comparable to an iPad charger running a bitax full time should only increase users energy bill by a few dollars per month but this varies obviously based on jurisdiction and it costs less than what running a bitcoin node cost to run pausing to remind you I do run a full bitcoin node I haven't really actually noticed any increase or in my electricity bill, honestly. It's of course, then again, I'm in Eastern Washington, and a quite a bit of our electricity in Washington state is generated by hydro. So it's like 4¢ per megawatt hour or something like that. It's or kilowatt hour. It's really cheap. It's cheap cheap cheap electricity. Anyway, quote, my hope is that by decentralizing the number of brains that are operating these things that enough people will make different decisions.
If we can exponentially increase the number of different brains and all the crazy ways they think I think they will pick different pools. Bringing more of these brains in was part of scott's motivation creating bit acts which I'll touch more on in a moment while other part of another part of his motivation was simply to bring a new kind of bitcoin mining machine to the market. Most bitcoin mining equipment is built for the major players in the industry. 99.9 percent of the bitcoin mining hardware that's out there is specifically designed for being used in an on grid data center.
They're all designed to be plugged into the grid and operate at full power, 247 on industrial power lines, said Scott. Scott explained that while this is great for industrial miners who tend to point their hash power at the big mining pools, it does very little for the bitcoin enthusiast who simply wants to contribute to the hash rate. He also shared that ASIC chips aren't currently sold independently not like they used to be anyway of bitcoin bit main miners and that it's difficult to understand how these chips work because the machines in which they operate are designed with closed source code Quote, we have essentially just one chipmaker right now when it really comes down to it and that's Bitmain, said Scott.
They're really far ahead of the pack and I don't think that advantage that they have is going to last forever. I think some of these chipmakers will come up. While Scott is patiently awaiting on the ASIC chip that Jack Dorsey's block is developing which will be able to be used in any mining device he continues to work on open sourcing the bitcoin mining stack so that it's easier to compete on the ASIC market quote let's open source as much of that stack as we can because like we saw with the internet, random people can do cool stuff in their garages that sometimes, sometimes turns into a market standard.
And he should know as he created a new standard in bitcoin mining in his figurative garage with the Bitax just over a year and a half ago which has led many others to follow his lead. I've been doing it for about a year and a half and it is growing exponentially. My goal is to keep up this exponential growth. After receiving a grant from Open Sats early this year Scott has been able to focus full time on bitax and the community that is formed around the project. When I first started this I met some random person on bitcoin talk who was like I'm going to start a discord group and it's going to be called Open Source Miners United. You should come and check it out.
Start this discord group the gentleman did and now it has over 4,000 members all of whom share ideas for how to further Bitaxe and the broader open source mining movement. But Open Source Miners United has become even bigger than just a group in which people share ideas. Quote, it's been set up so that anyone who wants to contribute to the Bitaxe project can do so whether it's a random person who wants to donate or the manufacturers of Bitax that contribute back to the project, explains Scott. OSMU has this fund and that's the open source miners united. OSMU has this fund this treasury now that's growing because we're selling lots of bitaxes and we're providing small grants to other people working on open source mining Scott also shared that for every bitax sold $5 is donated to OSMU, which helps to financially support both himself and OSMU grant recipients.
He stressed in a follow-up email that this practice is totally optional and that he is very appreciative of the manufacturers that choose to do this. The Betaxe and open source mining movement has taken on a life of its own according to Scott. That is, Scott doesn't necessarily feel that he's at the center of it anymore. It's become decentralized. And while he's excited about the pace at which the movement is growing, he's still grounded and mission focused. He hasn't created a roadmap for what comes next for bitax and the community he helped found though he is quite sure of what the aim of his work is.
I've been so intrigued and motivated to promote this idea that bitcoin is fundamentally open source. This decentralized network needs to be developed in a decentralized way we can't have one without the other so I think this open source part is so important end quote Scott said quote bitcoin mining has become just totally forgotten about the open source ethos of bitcoin and how important open source development is we've got to bring this back End of article. Again, that's written by Frank Korva who I guess had a long interview or something with, Scott, and I think it's s k o t nine thousand. I think is the I think is how you can find him at least on Noster. I have been singing the praises of bit axe for a while, and I don't even have one. Not yet. I'm waiting on the gamma.
I went I want to be able to get a hold of the bit axe gamma before I dive in myself into this. But I've heard from many people, and Pies De Pleb is one of them, that the bit axe really has showed him how to actually do and think about and navigate the bitcoin mining complex without having to go quote unquote all in on massive electricity bills and huge miner purchases and having to deal with the noise that these things make because the fan on a bit acts is a lot freaking different than the fans on a bitmain s19 or s21 or s21 plus those things whine like a jet engine.
They are really annoying. They're really really loud and not only they annoy you if you're in close quarters you will annoy your neighbors and that's one of the reasons why they end up being industrial and they've been this way for a long time because home mining has just basically fallen by the wayside and as home mining has fallen by the wayside guess what else has fallen by the wayside and that's the knowledge of many many people of how to actually engage in and be functional with the bitcoin mining stack, its process, its ethos, its community.
I've never known how to mine and I know that after I get my bitaxe gamma I'm going to know how to mine. Does that mean that I'm going to hit a block and get 3.125 Bitcoin out of it? I doubt it. There's always the chance that it could happen but I'm not actually betting any money on it. I'm actually going to pay money to get a BitX gamma so that I can learn what mining is about. Maybe it will turn into something. Maybe I'll figure out how to get a whole mess of miners and use it for I don't know heating a greenhouse one of these days but I'm not going to do that without actually understanding how mining works because I don't like if I just order 15 old s19s I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm not I think it's just a dumb idea to start out with a case law or a pallet full of old miners and think I'm gonna be able to to navigate all that why not just start small just use the Bitax that that's why this is important that's why I keep bringing you news about Bitax I don't however like bringing you the following news this one really does suck Peter Todd, the Bitcoin developer named as Satoshi Nakamoto in that horrendous HBO documentary, has gone into hiding.
This is Sharra Malwa out of CoinDesk. I've seen a couple of, articles about this, but they never really said anything more about the hiding. They just said why he went into hiding, but not really what was going on. This one does a little bit better job. Peter Todd, the bitcoin developer alleged to be satoshi, the well, we know who he is. In money electric, the bitcoin mystery from HBO has reportedly gone into hiding, and that's according to the magazine Wired. Todd was revealed as nakamoto in the documentary by cullin Hoback and is now again in hiding hoback's supposed evidence for todd being nakamoto was his interest in cryptography from a young age and his technical ability and British linguistics.
The documentary provided its strongest clue through a 2010 public forum exchange where Todd inadvertently seemed to reply to a post as himself instead of the mysterious Bitcoin creator suggesting a potential slip up in identity Hoback posited that this is this as evidence that Todd might be Nakamoto although the documentary stopped short of making the definitive claim well Todd told Wired Magazine that the fallout from the documentary has forced him into hiding. His email has become inundated with requests for financial help. But then there is a threat of continued harassment by crazy people. And that's a quote. Personal safety is the number one concern for Todd now in case criminals do believe him being Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wallets belonging to Nakamoto hold over 1,000,000 BTC that is at the time worth about $66,000,000,000 at current prices. That puts the unknown persona on a list of the top 25 wealthiest people in the world. Falsely claiming that ordinary people of ordinary wealth are extraordinarily rich exposes them to threats like robbery and kidnapping, Todd told Wired. Not only is this sorry not only is the question dumb it's dangerous. Satoshi obviously didn't want to be found for good reasons and no one should help people trying to find satoshi. Todd remains active online on his Twitter account.
Well, he should honestly really just move on over to to Noster, for various reasons which I won't get into. I had said on this show that Holbeck or whatever that the filmmaker's name is was, that was misfeasance. I don't think it was malfeasance. I think it was misfeasance, but it doesn't matter because feasance has been committed. You and nobody else should be look not only should we be not looking for Satoshi Nakamoto, we shouldn't be pointing fingers at who we think satoshi Nakamoto is and we sure as shit shouldn't be positing some kind of evidence of the claim.
I knew something like this was going to happen to Todd. I knew Peter was going to have to figure out a way to somehow or another get out of this mess somehow prove that he's not Satoshi Nakamoto but there's no way to prove a negative from a logical standpoint it doesn't matter what it is there's no way to prove a negative at least in this in well in this particular in this particular circumstances I suppose that if I have a, you know, a receipt that from my credit card that says that I was in Wisconsin buying gas when I have to prove that I wasn't in Arizona because a crime was committed, yeah. Sure. I guess I can use that to, quote, unquote, prove a negative, but I can't prove that I'm not somebody else.
I can't do that. It's there there are things that are just impossible to prove a negative, and Peter Todd has found himself in a world of shit. And as much as I just kind of loathe the, you know, like the fact that the United States and Canada and the West is basically highly litigious and anybody will sue anybody else at the drop of a freaking hat, I think that Peter Todd should sue the living shit out of HBO and name the filmmaker personally so that he never does this kind of crap again. He knowingly put Peter Todd into danger. You'd have to be an idiot to think that everything was just gonna be fine after you suggested on a platform as large as HBO with as media hyped as this HBO documentary was that everything was going to be fine for Peter Todd.
No! There's no human in their right mind that would have ever actually thought that This is a horrendous turn of events for Peter Todd. I just hope that he can get his life back and I hope one of his first steps is to become a billionaire by suing the living crap out of HBO they should never have released that documentary that without editing it without forcing the director to edit the entire part of Peter Todd being Satoshi Nakamoto out You can't do this to people. People have lives to live and they can't do it this way. All right. Vitalik Buterin.
I know, but it's not what you think. Well, we're gonna talk about his, Vitalik's thought that Michael Saylor is, well, bat shit insane for his custody comments. But first, I want to read this from Lynn Alden. And it's entitled 101 on how gold was confiscated. Because if you're following the Michael Saylor debacle or frenzy or hype or whatever you wanna call it that's been occurring over the last few days, he was basically saying government should custody of the Bitcoin. Oh, joy. Okay. So and everybody's like, oh my god. See, he really is the villain. I don't care. I don't give a shit. That's not the point. But I did say either yesterday or Monday I did make mention of the confiscation of gold. The what was it the 1930s or whatever 61 executive order 6102.
Well, Lynn has got some good thoughts on this and I want to read this note that she posted on Noster. It says, You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation. And there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in but very little resources in terms of investigating who didn't turn the gold in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average. Institutions had to comply immediately since it's all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market which was enough for their purposes.
Gold became a hard to trade illegal relic for those that held it. If a small family held some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay. But can the government track Bitcoin in the 20 twenties better or worse than gold in the 19 thirties for law enforcement purposes? That's the right question. And don't think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that far more within the current rule of law. That's the sophisticated approach don't take it selectively tax it by a lot those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective So that's I kinda want you to be thinking about that as we get into Vitalik Buterin's pushback against what Michael Saylor said. I normally won't read anything from Vitalik Buterin, but you gotta understand something. I do have a modicum of respect for Vitalik Buterin because as a mere like damn I think he was a like a, I don't know, 19 or 21 when he stood up in the audience at a conference at the height of Craig Wright pulling his I'm Satoshi Nakamoto bullshit and called him out as a liar and a fraud in front of the entire auditorium and we're talking about a cut you know at least a few thousand people probably more it looked like it was packed he didn't couch it He didn't whisper it. He made sure everybody knew that it was Vitalik Buterin because he stood up out of his chair, pointed at Craig Wright, and said, I don't even know why you're here. I don't know how you got invited to this you are a liar and you are a fraud and from that perspective I have a modicum of respect for vitality vitality buterin I don't like ethereum I think it's an entire shit coin I think it's going to get people into mondo amounts of financial trouble but respect where respect is due so let's see what vitalik has to say about Michael Saylor's latest insanity.
By the way this is out of decrypt written by Adrian Zmulinski. Ethereum co founder Vitalik Buterin has openly criticized Michael Saylor's recent remarks on Bitcoin self custody. During a recent interview Saylor was asked whether leaving bitcoin custody to large banks and third party entities poses a centralization risk with the potential for government seizure of individuals' crypto holdings. The MicroStrategy co founder responded that when bitcoin is held by paranoid crypto anarchists who do not acknowledge government regulations the risk of seizure increases.
This is that 6102. This is that gold seizure stuff that Lynn Alden, that I was telling you about right before this. Now Buterin disagreed in a subsequent tweet. Quote, I'll happily say that I think Sailor's comments are bat shit insane, he wrote, adding that Saylor seems to be explicitly arguing for a regulatory capture approach to protecting crypto. The Ethereum co founder also added that such an approach does not align with the core principles of cryptocurrency. Self custody is the process of retaining control over one's private keys. You've probably heard it. Not your keys. Not your coins. But because this approach involves a degree of inconvenience and risk because keys can be lost or stolen with no redress some users instead turn to third party custody.
This involves an independent custodian controlling the private keys to a wallet where the user's crypto is held. The risks associated with third party custody are often summarized by saying not your keys not your coins meaning that the third party has full control over the assets and could, in theory, either freeze or appropriate them or be pressured into doing so by authorities. Buterin was responding to a tweet by Jameson Lop, Cypherpunk and co founder of Bitcoin self custody platform Casa Hoddle who shared his perspective on self custody. Lop emphasized that self custody is essential not just for individual Bitcoin holders but for the network's overall health.
Self custody is important for the continued strengthening and improvement of the entire network, he said. Lop explained how centralizing coins in a few wallets increases systemic risk of loss and seizure and disenfranchises users from running full nodes or trading forks. He also claimed that it would decrease deployment incentives since institutions don't care about more advanced cryptographic features and permissionless scaling gets deprioritized because we just scale via trusted third parties. While Saylor seemingly disagrees, the movement for crypto self custody is seemingly seeing renewed impetus ever since the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in 2022.
Back in May, Oklahoma Oklahoma of all states became the 1st U. S. State to pass a law protecting the right to self custody bitcoin. As executive chair of MicroStrategy, Saylor has pursued an aggressive strategy of acquiring bitcoin for the company's treasury. And the company now holds over 1% of the bitcoin that will ever be mined with a dollar value of around 16,000,000,000 Earlier this month, Saylor outlined MicroStrategy's plan to shift from being a software company to what he called a bitcoin bank with a potential $1,000,000,000,000 valuation by issuing securities backed by bitcoin. And they're not the only one. Meta Planet raised another 10,000,000,000 yen to buy some more Bitcoin, but I'm not gonna do that one today. I'm gonna wait till somebody writes a good brief about that one. So while this story is a little bit more lopsided on the lop side. Get it? Lop is a little bit lopsided?
That's the joke for the day, I guess. I still have I still have a respect for Vitalik when it comes to stuff like this. When he gets out of his his his fantasy land of Ethereum and comes back to actual reality, he's actually a pretty smart dude. And he also has no problem calling out what many bitcoiners suggest as being the new bitcoin Jesus or Bitcoin apostle 2.0 or something like that. I don't give a shit. I mean, the man is batshit crazy, but then again, he built he built himself into a billionaire. I have respect for Michael Saylor too. Do I agree with his stance on Bitcoin custody? Absolutely freaking not.
Do I believe that that was a complete thought by Michael Saylor? Absolutely not. I think he was talking about himself. MicroStrategy. I think he is so entrenched in the legacy finance and the rules in which that game is played that he can't see any other way out. I do not think that he was really talking about me. I don't think Michael Saylor was saying that individuals should not self custody. I think he was more coming at it from the standpoint of his position which is very much different than plebs out there on the streets that have a few 100,000,000, 100,000,000 satoshis depending on where you are on the size of fish scale. Are you a shrimp, a crab, or a whale, or a killer whale? I I don't give a shit.
Right? That doesn't mean that I'm excusing Michael Saylor for being kind of a moron when it comes to self custody. Of all the people that are in a position to change the legacy financial paradigm, it's gonna be people like Michael Saylor, yet he's folding like a cheap suit and he just wants to kiss regulatory ass. Hey, if he wants to be that way that's his imperative or or sorry that's his prerogative. He can do whatever the hell he wants but it's not going to affect me. So you will say, well, when they 6102 bitcoin what are you gonna do? I'm not going to turn my bitcoin in. I've already lost it in several different boating accidents.
There's no way that they can prove a negative. They cannot prove the statement I do not have Bitcoin is false. Now, if I were to say I've never owned Bitcoin that shit they can prove to be false because I have indeed bought kyseed bitcoin on exchanges under my identity on several occasions I will never be able to stand up in a court of law in the united states and safely say I have never owned bitcoin because they can prove that I have. But what they cannot do is prove that I would be saying a falsehood if I said I do not hold any Bitcoin at this time. I have no ability to move any bitcoin right now therefore because I can't vector the bitcoin that I don't have control over the bitcoin so therefore I don't own any bitcoin.
They cannot prove that to be false. They could even say, we still see that there's this wallet here that's got some bitcoin in it and we know you sold some of that to Cash App and that you converted that into cash and that it went into your bank account. That's your Bitcoin. How do I control it? Well, let's see your keys. Surely you have the private keys. No, I do not. Oh, we can prove that you that you actually have the private keys. How? How? How do you prove the negative? This is just like the identity thing with Peter Todd. How do you prove that you're not someone else? How do you prove that you don't have the keys? You can't.
But also, another party cannot prove that you are somebody else. They cannot prove that you do hold the private key to a wallet. There's no way anyone can prove that I own bitcoin unless I give them the price the the the 20 or 12 word seed phrase and I actually they actually watch me vector a Bitcoin transaction if they see me do it and I'm having no help whatsoever then and only then will they be actually able to prove that I am in control of that coin. That's never going to happen. I'm never going to sit down in front of a camera and show them that I can vector Bitcoin. I don't own any. It's all gone in a tragic boating accident. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities, everything is red today. Oil down 1.63 percent to $70.57. Brit Brit North Sea is down 1.63 as well to $74.74. Natural gas is down a half point. Gasoline itself is down almost 2 points back to $2.03 a gallon. Why is everything in the red? As far as energy is concerned, everything's in the red because, amazingly, after the Chinese stimulus of yesterday, the EIA came out with their report on how much crude oil are in reserves in the United States, and it was a fabulously large number magically. Because what happens to Harris is, like, whatever string Harris is hanging on to to be president, the Biden administration is gonna look awfully bad if oil prices go up to $90 a barrel under their watch right before the election.
What I'm seeing is electioneering in the form of keeping oil prices down. This is I think this is false. I really do. Gold, however, was doing well earlier, but it is now down itself a full point, back down to $2,733.20, while silver is down 3 and a half points. Platinum is down 1 point as is copper, and palladium is down a point and a half. However, everything in ag is in the green today except for the loser of the day, chocolate, 2.5% to the downside. The biggest winner today is sugar. 2.8% to the upside. Live cattle down a quarter, but lean hogs are up just over 1 point. Feeder cattle are down just under a point. The Dow is down almost a full percent.
Excuse me. The S and P is down almost 1 full percent. The Nasdaq is down 1.5 percentage points, and the S and P Mini is down 2 thirds of a point. Not looking good for equities either. It's also not looking good for Bitcoin. We are having a sell off today. We've got some red candles going on. Don't know why I haven't seen anything other than this custody talk about and 6102 shit. I don't think that that's it. I think people are taking profit after 7 full days of inflows, positive net inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. We're seeing a negative outflow today of something like 79.79,000,000,000 or something like that. Or I care no. $79,000,000 or something like that. But it's brought the price of Bitcoin down to $65,590 that is now a $1,300,000,000,000 market cap, and we can no longer get 24, but almost we can get 23.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin, of which there are 19,771,755 and a half of. And average fees per block are kind of high, but not terrible.
0.16 BTC in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are a 111 blocks. That's a row of sticks. Carrying 208,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at 20 satoshis per vbyte. High priority, low priority, gonna get you in at 17. And the hash rate is at, whoo, 724.6 x the hashes per second from yesterday's episode, shaking the tree, that was episode 978 of bitcoin. And I've got dark with 2,121 sats says, Daniel, your shaking the tree thesis on the bullshit ECB white paper and the Minnesota Fed's statement about BTC is on point. Great take. Dark, you did not have to pay me another 21121 to make the correction that I'm not Daniel but David. Yes. He actually writes, asterisk David is a correction. I do appreciate it, though. Pies to play with 21100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you.
And user 115-568-42 with 500 says anarchy. No bueno l t I says, it's important to also ignore polls. And this he's paid me a 100 sats, by the way. 0 chance that that is accurate to begin with. Anyone under 35 doesn't answer phone calls or takes part in polls. I don't believe there is any way to accurately predict elections at this scale as there is no real representative sample any longer. Perhaps there never was. Polls are garbage through and through. Yeah. I tend to agree with you there, sir. No bueno l t I with another 100 says, also, the name is no bueno l t I as in not good, less than ideal. Well, that's the weather report.
Alright. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And coming off of nobueno ltis talk about polls in the weather report, we've got this one from the block. US elections could trigger a Minsky moment. Bond market crash as Paul Tudor Jones bets on Bitcoin. And, apparently, that's according to analysts, but this whole thing's written by James Hunt from the block. Analyst at trading and financial services firm Presto said the US elections could trigger a Minsky moment bond market crash with implications for other assets like bitcoin. Presto analyst Peter Chung and Min Jung made the warning following Paul Tudor Jones' interview with CNBC on Tuesday in which the renowned investor said that he was bullish on bitcoin, gold, commodities and NASDAQ stocks amid the risk.
With the US debt to GDP ratio rising from 40% to 100% in the last 2 and a half decades and likely to reach 124 to 200% in the next 10 to 30 years, The US election could trigger a Minsky moment where bond market wakes up to the problem and demands much higher compensation for funding the deficit, the analyst wrote in a report. The risk of a bond market crash is heightened by both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris' promises of fiscal extravagance and rising government debt levels, Chung and Young argue. Inflating their way out of the problem is the only solution, they said, echoing Jones' view that quote all roads lead to inflation, end quote.
During the CNBC interview, Jones, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist known for a successful prediction of the 1987 stock market crash also said he would own 0 fixed income, meaning no allocation to fixed income securities such as bonds in an investment portfolio. The playbook to get out of this is that you inflate your way out of this. You run interest rates below inflation and nominal growth rates above inflation, and that's how you reduce your debt to GDP, Jones said, adding that the Federal Reserve should continue to cut interest rates, quote, historically.
The way every civilization has gotten out is they've inflated away their debts, end quote. See, Weimar Republic. I don't think it really they got out. They just changed up from Weimar to Germany, I I guess. I don't know. The whole thing's bizarre. But Jones's view is noteworthy as it may be behind the recent rise in treasury yields indicating that investors are demanding higher returns to hold US government debt and the credit default swap rate on sovereign risk, the cost of insuring against a potential default, the Presto analysts said.
Zheng or Chung and Zheng argued that the Bitcoin Act of 2024 currently awaiting congressional approval could help stabilize the US debt and potentially the global financial system. The lack of focus on the debt issue from either presidential candidate, however, suggests that it's not a top priority for most voters, they added. Bitcoin is trading at $66,368 at the time of publication, blah blah blah. Blocks bitcoin page they just get into they just do a whole bunch of bitcoin prices I I don't what the what what the hell that is Jesus Christ man I don't I just I don't understand why why we're we're about to test the upper bound of the wedge on that price, price wedge that I've got on a chart that we just broke out of a few days ago, and here we are again.
Everything is crazy. I want this election to be done. I'm tired of the text messages that I have to report as junk. I'm sick of getting phone calls all the time that I just don't answer because I know it's gonna be electioneering. I need this all to go away. Thankfully, we're just a couple of weeks away from this most important election of all time, and we can get on with our lives that don't include pandering to politicians, which I believe should all be thrown in the river and floated downstream over a waterfall, hopefully to crash on rocks below. I'm sorry. Did I say that shit out loud? Well, let me say this one out loud.
River introduces BTC yield on USD deposits. Oh, where does the yield come from? Maybe we'll find out. And by the way, this is nobsbitcoin.com. Bitcoin financial services firm River has teamed up with LeadBank to launch bitcoin interest on cash products allowing users to earn bitcoin or USD interest on their cash deposits. Today at River we are announcing interest on cash. Now US dollars in your River account will earn 3.8 percent paid in bitcoin. That means more money for the things you care about, announced River. LeadBank is a member of the FDIC, meaning that user deposits are protected up to the value of $1,250,000 Good luck on getting it back if we have a crash.
According to River, Bitcoin interest on cash represents a significant shift in how individuals can manage their savings by combining the best of both fiat and bitcoin worlds. In a world where traditional savings accounts are unable to fully protect your wealth, bitcoin interest on cash offers a new path forward. By combining the predictability of cash with the opportunity of Bitcoin, we're empowering you to take control of your financial future and earn more money for the things that matter, said Alex Leishman, CEO of River.
Most people still need dollars in their daily lives. The real challenge is holding those dollars while still getting ahead. And that's where bitcoin interest on cash comes in. River protects your assets with FDIC insured cash up to $250,000 and bitcoin that is always held in full reserve, said the firm. So here are the features. A 3.8 percent interest on cash which can be paid in either bitcoin or cash. Deposits are FDIC insured up to a $250,000 There are no hidden fees or minimums. That's important. User cash can be withdrawn at any time, and that's important. And bitcoin is held in full reserve custody with proof of reserves.
This I don't like. If you're going to give me interest payments then I need a payout schedule that I'm able to program so that I can say, look, if I've got so much interest accrued in the form of Bitcoin on river, then every quarter I want that dumped into this wallet address that is under my key, my custody, my sovereignty. That's really that's the one the thing that I don't like about this the most. The second thing that I don't like about this the most is the question, where does the yield come from? Are you loaning is lead bank loaning this cash out?
Are they making car loans and auto loans and motorcycle loans? Are they making house loans and condominium loans and small business loans? Or I don't know where the yield comes from, mister Leishman. And that worries me because that shit has been what's been getting us into trouble on many, many different occasions. See, BlockFi, and its spectacular dissolution during the FTX Alameda and the rest of that bullshit that happened in 2022, 2023. I don't know where the yield's coming from. However, I will say this. I mean I want to be fair because I think River I think that they're good Joes think they're good Bitcoiners just because I'm concerned because I've heard something that I don't necessarily cotton to doesn't mean that I automatically start hating Alex Leishman and River. That's not the case. Because what I do like is this.
If I'm getting 3.8% interest in cash on my cash deposits, that is never going to be higher than inflation. Sure. Oh, well, David, inflation is at 2.7%. Even if it's at 3, you're making 0.8%. No. No. That's that CPI. That is bullshit. It is bullshit. We are running way more than what whatever inflation rate the CPI suggested we're running at. Add at least 4 to 5 points to it minimum. I'm not making any money on 3.8 percent interest rate, but if I'm not taking that in cash and I am indeed keeping it in bitcoin, well then, there is a very real chance that not only am I beat or like matching inflation and therefore have actual savings, I'm beating inflation like a dead dog on the side of the street with a big stick with a nail in it. That's what I'm talking about. See, that's the kind of interest rate that I want.
So I'm not entirely against it. I do want to know where the interest is coming from. Where is the yield coming from? Let's pop over to Germany where their sovereign tech fund has invested $25,000,000 to support free and open source projects. We've got another one on the line. Germany's sovereign tech fund or the STF announced that it has invested nearly 25,000,000 dollars or €23,000,000 and 60, count them, 60 global open source technologies over the past 2 years. And during this time, it's received over 500 submissions proposing more than 114,000,000 euros in work Sovereign Tech Fund has enabled open source projects, to provide much needed maintenance to their software, improve security, and make important enhancements for foundational open source technologies.
Established in October of 2022, the fund has received government support of €11,500,000 for 2023 and 17 for this year 2024 and last week the budget committee of the Bundestag or Bundestag decided to increase the sovereign tech fund's current allocation by another €4,000,000 for 2025 quote with nearly 500 submissions proposing over €114,000,000 worth of work since we started accepting applications, the need for support has never been more clear. By financing critical projects like Log 4 j, we're commissioning much needed maintenance, security work, and improvements in the public interest. The work on these components benefit all of the companies, organizations, and individuals who depend on the open technologies that comprise our shared digital infrastructure, said the fund in a blog post.
Projects that have received investments include freebsd, mamba, samba, PHP, gnome, reproducible builds, gfortran, systemd, ffmpeg, gstreamer, log, 4 j, Drupal, Fortran. Why are you funding Fortran? Oh my god. It's like an ancient language. It's like fucking Latin. Nobody speaks it anymore. Oh my god. Anyway, they have a complete list of supported projects that can be found at sovereigntechfunddot deforward/tech. Okay. So the STF also initiated the bug resilience program aimed at bolstering the resilience of open source software. This includes services like technical debt management, security audits, and a bug bounty platform to address vulnerabilities.
In August, the fund announced the fellowship for maintainers initiative which will support up to 5 maintainers of critical open source components for a full year focusing on work that's hard to quantify for funding applications. Over the last year, we've made much progress towards becoming an independent and permanent organization working closely with spring sprintd, s p r I n d, a German federal agency for disruptive innovation, and our partners at German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, oh god, which funds us as was stated in the blog. Learn more about the general state of open source project funding in this presentation by Cara Sowells Delos, open source program manager at GitHub.
So, more and more we are seeing open source projects whether they're Bitcoin or Nostr or well, what was it? I mean, some of these are really great programs. The PHP, NOME, GFortran, Systemd, FFMPG, GStreamer, Drupal. I I mean, a lot of people hate Drupal, but a lot of people love Drupal. And I'm not gonna get into what it is, but I'm just saying that these are all open source projects. Open source is the only way that we're moving into the future. It we are leaving the corporations and the walled gardens behind, and even governments seem to understand where this is going, at least Germany. And I'm honestly shocked. I'm shocked that gambling is going on in here. No. I'm shocked that the German government is actually doing this.
I kinda figured that the German government has been basically acting like a bunch of authoritarians and totalitarians for so long that they wouldn't even consider giving any money at all to something that can pull the teeth from their power structure. But here we are. And speaking of, tor browser version 14.0 has been released Firefox esr 128 new circuit option for android and more the tor browser is a privacy focused web browser available for desktop and mobile platforms 14.0 is out. It's based on Firefox esr 128 with enhanced privacy protections and bug fixes. The new version also comes with the new circuit option for Android to refresh your connection and legacy platforms support until March of 2025.
Quote, we overcame many other technical challenges that you can read about, in Morgan's series of blog posts chronicling the team's progress with Tor Browser Alpha and some other stuff. Additionally, it packages a series of improvements to the usability and compatibility of fingerprinting protections, thus enabling useful feature features like picture in picture, screenshots, and more, quote, as part of this process. We have also completed our annual ESR transition audit where we reviewed and addressed over 200 bugzilla issues for changes in Firefox that may negatively affect the privacy and security of Tor Browser users.
Our final report from this audit is now available in the Tor Browser spec repository on our GitLab instance added project. Donations to the Tor project, which was up to $300,000 will be matched 1 to 1 until the end of the year courtesy of power up privacy so tor browser has been the new one has been released if you are a tor browser user you might want to go check that shit out now bit box 10.2024 Lugano update has been released. Sending to silent payments and mini tap script is apparently involved. The Bitbox Lugano update for bitbox02 hardware signer version 9.21 and bitbox app version 4.45 enables payments to silent payment addresses and implements mini tap script.
We're excited to announce that bitbox02 is now the 1st hardware wallet to support sending to silent payment addresses. This means that bitbox02 users can now send bitcoin to the same silent payment address multiple times without the sender losing privacy and eliminating the need to constantly generate new addresses. This update also introduces Mini Tapscript merging Taproot's privacy and efficiency with MiniScript's capabilities. It's perfect for creating more complex wallet setups like inheritance planning while keeping transactions smaller and more private, said the firm.
Users will soon be able to use BitBox 2 with wallets like Liana once a software update enabling mini Tap script is released in a few weeks according to the blog post. They've added support for sending to silent payment addresses, and we already kinda knew about that one. And that's about it. So that is that's the end of the list for the day. What is, where are we at on Bitcoin price? We're at 65,803. So there's still selling pressure on the backside of this day. I think, in fact, it is now 10:34 AM Pacific Daylight Time. I like going to day and night world map, and you can find that at timeanddate.com.
That's timeanddate.com. And here's the issue. For the last several hours let's see. I'm gonna say 1 let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So 9 hours, and I'll explain what I'm doing here in a second. So 12 hours ago. Okay. So 9 hours, say, minus, let's add an hour to that, an hour to that, an hour to that. Okay. So this sell off started while most of the population of China was awake. This is important. And and I'm getting this by looking at this day and night world map, by putting in times, knowing what my time is versus what the time of GMT is, I can get a sense of where the sun is shining on this globe. And that means who the hell is actually awake to be able to execute trades? Obviously, there are automated trades. But, generally speaking, I still think that it makes sense to find out who is awake and who is asleep when you start getting price slides on whatever it is that you're interested in. In this case, it's Bitcoin.
So, it looks like the Chinese were aware that we were going down in price on Bitcoin by the time they went to sleep. So, where are they right now? They are in the midst of pure darkness. So the question becomes, were enough people in China already out of their positions that they wanted to be out of on Bitcoin by the time they went to sleep? Or are we going to have a whole bunch of Chinese citizens wake up in the next 6 hours and go, oh, fuck, and start selling off their Bitcoin? Just honestly, guys, be prepared. Be, like, just, you know, I don't I don't get it.
I don't understand at this point why everybody is like there is no there was nothing but a sea of red on my trading view. All legacy markets, the oil markets were in red, Gold was starting to do poorly. Everything the only thing that wasn't red was gold's price against bitcoin. That was the only green thing. And I've got like 25 or 20 indicators up on my trading view and everything is sucking swamp water. This is why we really need to pray that the election is over with. I don't care who wins. I really well, actually, I do. I do care if Trump wins that he holds true to his promise and gets Ross Ulrich or Ulrich out of jail.
That's all that that is the only thing that I at this point that's the only thing I care about is somebody to get this poor person out of jail. I he needs he needs this. He needs to get out. And is it like, would would you sacrifice the whole world for 1 person? I don't know. Would you sacrifice the whole world for it for being able to shine a light on the western judicial system that is more in tune with keeping itself safe and in power? Yeah. You're goddamn right I would. Because as long as these assholes are out there being able to put anybody in jail for any reason even at unreasonable lengths of time that will destroy their lives, then yes.
If I can just if if if we can just look at if if Trump gets elected and he does what he says he's gonna do and day 1, Ross Ulbrich gets released, we can shine a light. That will be another flashlight on this pissant judicial system of the West that is owned and controlled by the rich. And the only reason Ross went to jail is because he dared dared to create something that was outside of the control of the behemoths that are the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the Federal Reserve, the BIS. Who else? Council of Foreign Relations, all of these people, the club that you don't belong to, they are the ones that have done this to Ross, either through direct messaging to the judicial system or the judicial system is just they've been given their marching orders for so long ago that every time they come up with something like a Ross Ulbrich, they know exactly how to act. They know exactly what to do, and they know exactly how to destroy this person's life to sow fear into the rest of the citizenry of the world.
Sailor is not acting in a very good way in this particular instance. His suggestion that maybe government should control Bitcoin. And, again, I still give it give him the fact that maybe he was just talking about himself and his corporate brethren and not really about us. But let's, for the moment, pause it that maybe he was talking about all Bitcoin, no matter who the fuck holds it, needs to be held by governments. That's part of the club that you're not in telegraphing the messaging to the judicial system. This is how you're going to act when you run up against somebody who accidentally let it slip and prove that they are in control of Bitcoin that is not owned by that is not in government control. What are you gonna do? Why are you gonna put them in prison for the rest of their lives? Possibly with, like, Ross Ulbricht, 2 life terms plus 40 years. That's what he got if you didn't know.
Yeah. Serving life times 2 plus 40 years for building a website and nobody at this point has any reason to believe the bullshit charges that he was trying to conspire to hire somebody to kill somebody else. That never happened. And it was proven in the very court that he was at trial at, that that was a bad FBI actor, and that that was whole thing was fabricated to make sure that they got Ross Ulbrich in that fucking courtroom. And it didn't matter. They still gave him 2 life sentences plus 40 years, Even though the FBI agent himself said that this shit never happened. And nothing happened to that FBI agent because the judiciary is never going to go after themselves or any part or any appendage. They are not going to cut their finger off despite their hand.
It's never ever going to happen. This is the club that we are not part of doing what clubs that we are not part of do messaging the apparati of the world that is stronger than we will ever be how they're going to act. That's the only reason I give shit one about this election, but I want it over with. It's causing problems everywhere. Nobody knows what's true in pricing at all and it's and we've never known it, but now it's even worse. I call bullshit on oil falling back to $70. It's complete bullshit. It just so happens that the EIA comes out with their inventories and says, look, we've we've got all kinds of oil. Bullshit. Prove it. By the way, nobody's doing a full fucking inventory on the entire reserves of the of a country the size of the United States every other day.
There's no way you can collect those numbers. It's a bullshit number. That's what I'm saying. It's like the CPI. They're just like, well, what effect do we want the numbers to have? We want x to happen. Okay. Well, then let's write the numbers to look like this because that will cause x to happen. It happens in the CPI. It happens in the PPI. It happens in maybe housing inventories. However, I have a tendency to believe that that actually may be true, but it sure as shit doesn't hold when it comes to oil inventories. There's no way you can know.
There's just no way. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I am. Doesn't matter. I'm working myself up. 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 9:30 AM on the dot Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 23rd day of October 2024.
This is episode oh, it's a palindrome episode. 900 and 79 of Bitcoin and the circle p is open for business. And today, I bring you the Leathermint at the leathermint.com. That is the leathermint.com. Do you need a wallet? Do you want a good wallet? You know, a wallet that doesn't fall apart? One that was handmade, built by somebody who knows exactly what they're doing? Well, then you're gonna wanna go over to theleathermint.com and get one of yours get yourself one of their cordovan crossovers. You can build your own. You can select from different leather colors. You can do all kinds of neat combinations. You've got all kinds of craftsmanship is built into the Leathermint wallets.
And if you would like to make sure that I get a little bit on the side from bringing you this fabulous, and I mean fabulous product, then make sure that you use the coupon code bitcoin and for 10% off. And it lets the guys over at Leathermint know that I sold a wallet for them, and they will get me back on the backside with some satoshis because that's why they're in the circle p. They do sell all of their products for Bitcoin because if you're not selling your goods and services for Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p. If you wanna get a hold of them on Nostr, it's at Leathermint. If you wanna get a hold of them on dead bird site, otherwise known as Twitter, it is theleathermint and you can go over to their website and order one now at the leathermint.com that is the leathermint.com.
Honestly go over there just look at the stitching. I know it sounds weird, but it's all about the stitching when it comes to a high quality long lasting leather good. Whether it's a wallet, a coat, it doesn't really matter. It really is all about the stitching. Okay. Let's start the day off with some good news. Nigeria has dropped the money laundering charges against the Binance executive that they've been holding in their jail for, like, 7 months. The Nigerian government has dropped all charges against Binance executive Tigran Gembarian, who has been detained in prison in Nigeria for more than 7 months, a lawyer representing Nigeria's government prosecutor, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, announced the withdrawal of charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja on October 23rd, Local news agency Premium Times reported. The EFCC lawyer said that Tiernan or Tigran, sorry, Tigran, a United States citizen, wasn't serving a key role at Binance whose activities were the target of the prosecution. Oh, it took you 7 months to figure that shit out. Wow. That's just amazing. The EFCC reportedly dropped the charges against Tigran at a hearing coming 2 days before a courtroom session scheduled for October 25th. According to the report, the hearing on Wednesday appeared to have been held to avoid public attention as much as possible.
I can't imagine why. While Premium Times indicated the main reason for dropping charges against Tigran was his non senior role at Binance, other reports alluded to another factor. A Reuters report suggested the EFCC lawyer withdrew the case to allow Tigran to seek medical treatment abroad. According to a report by Bloomberg Law, the court discontinued the case on the grounds of Tigran's deteriorating health, citing anonymous sources familiar with the decision. Tigran's lawyer, Mark Morty, had repeatedly argued that Tigran's health had worsened during his detention at Kuje Prison in Abuja however the EFCC objected claiming that his defense exaggerated the severity of his condition Morty also insisted that Nigeria's healthcare system could not adequately manage these issues.
Tigran, a former cryptocurrency focused U. S. Tax agent, was detained by the Nigerian government in February after travelling to Nigeria to address a dispute with Binance over allegations of unlawful operations in the country. Despite Binance announcing its full and 100% complete exit from Nigeria back in March, the Nigerian government continued to detain Tigran denying bail on not one but two occasions. Judge, Emike Nuit first denied Tigran's bail application in May. Duite also rejected the 2nd bail application in October. Despite dropping charges against Tigran, Nigeria will continue its money laundering case against Binance according to multiple sources.
Reuters reported that Nigeria's separate tax charges against Binance also remain in place despite the exchange denying the allegations. As previously reported, Binance is facing 4 counts of tax evasion, including failure to register with Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service. I tell them to go pound sand. There is no way if you're in Binance at any level, if you if you on your at your own volition take a plane ride and enter the country of Nigeria, you're beyond stupid. You just don't go. You don't send any of your physical presence down there, whether it's yourself as one of the leaders of the company or if it's one of your lawyers or I mean, literally, you just stay out of Nigeria.
If they wanna talk to you, they need to do it over Zoom or some shit like that. But their detainment of Tigran for this long under these circumstances and telling me that it took them 7 months to figure out that he was just a regular old employee and really didn't have a damn thing to do with the tax evasion. You don't want to have nothing to do with this country. You don't want to have nothing to do with their judicial system. You don't want to have nothing to do with anything. And what are they going to do? Are they going to send an aircraft carrier to come get your ass? I think not. Pound saying Nigeria. G f y while you're at it. Okay.
Bitax. I've talked a lot about Bitax. I'm going to talk more about Bitax. If you were somebody who thinks it's stupid, well, I don't know what to tell you. I just don't understand why you think it's stupid. It's not stupid. What is a BitX? We're gonna find out a little bit more about that. If you haven't been listening to the show, a BitX is a very small solo miner. It mines Bitcoin with 1 single ASIC chip. It's very small. It's very lightweight. It has almost no chance of winning a block all by itself. But that doesn't make it any less important than what it actually is. It's it is important. Let's find out more from Frank Korva who's writing for Bitcoin Magazine.
BitX's founder who goes by the name Scott or the NIM Scott has taken his hobby of tinkering with electronics and not only transformed it into a full time gig but has catalyzed 1,000 to follow his lead. Harnessing his training as an electrical engineer and his Bitcoin enthusiasm Scott s k o t began deconstructing Bitmain's bitcoin mining machines approximately 2 years ago. After gaining a better understanding of how they work, he reverse engineered one creating the blueprint for bitaxe the first ever open source ASIC based bitcoin mining machine in early of 2023. It was just a technical challenge initially, Scott told bitcoin magazine.
The technical challenge has transformed into something larger and bigger than he could have ever imagined though. Scott created a low power and affordable bitcoin miner that anyone can plug in at home without running up a huge energy bill while his work also paved the way for others interested in open source bitcoin mining to begin contributing to bitax itself and other open source mining initiatives like it and related to it. The project has morphed into something that's bringing mining back to the open source fundamentals of bitcoin itself Scott said quote I've really become convinced that to be truly decentralized which I think most people understand bitcoin needs to be all aspects of the development of bitcoin need to be open source, he added.
It needs to be open so that anyone who is even remotely interested can get in. Years back, while taking liberal arts courses at a community college Scott stumbled on an issue of Make Magazine a publication that features tutorials for DIY electronics projects. A switch flipped inside of him as he perused the magazine. He completed a degree as in electrical engineering and then co founded a design consultancy for Internet of Things related products which he ran for 10 years. Scott enjoyed the work but admitted that the downside was that he was constantly working on other peoples ideas. In 2011 a friend introduced him to Bitcoin at a party showing him how to use Bitcoin to buy drugs on the now defunct Silk Road. While he was intrigued it wasn't enough to get him to buy Bitcoin or drugs at the time.
And 2 years later Scott learned about bitcoin mining and soon after that built his first bitcoin miner quote I actually built an fpga bitcoin miner fpga's were the precursors to asics which is an application specific integrated circuit in case you're wondering FPGA miners were designed with open source code making it easy for Scott to figure out how to construct one while he lost all of the bitcoin that he mined in a pool hack he didn't become discouraged in fact he became more fascinated with this cross section of electronics and the permissionless nature of bitcoin when I was learning about it I was like well okay so these are the rules of how bitcoin mining works but who made the rules who enforces these rules learning that no one is at the center of this and no one enforces these rules or we all do was mind blowing it it's a beautiful thing technically and that intrigued me end quote a few years later he dove in deeper and developed the bitaxe so what is a bitaxe well a bitaxe is technically just open source code that anyone can use to build a physical mining machine Scott has only built about a dozen bit axes himself, while 1,000 have been built and sold.
Anyone can build and sell bit axes under its open source license. The circuit board for physical bit axes isn't much bigger than a credit card while the device's fan protrudes out about 3 centimeters from the board. The machine runs on a 5 volt power source and connects to the internet over wifi. Users interface with bit axis via their personal computer or phone. The device uses between 12 18 watts of electricity which is comparable to an iPad charger running a bitax full time should only increase users energy bill by a few dollars per month but this varies obviously based on jurisdiction and it costs less than what running a bitcoin node cost to run pausing to remind you I do run a full bitcoin node I haven't really actually noticed any increase or in my electricity bill, honestly. It's of course, then again, I'm in Eastern Washington, and a quite a bit of our electricity in Washington state is generated by hydro. So it's like 4¢ per megawatt hour or something like that. It's or kilowatt hour. It's really cheap. It's cheap cheap cheap electricity. Anyway, quote, my hope is that by decentralizing the number of brains that are operating these things that enough people will make different decisions.
If we can exponentially increase the number of different brains and all the crazy ways they think I think they will pick different pools. Bringing more of these brains in was part of scott's motivation creating bit acts which I'll touch more on in a moment while other part of another part of his motivation was simply to bring a new kind of bitcoin mining machine to the market. Most bitcoin mining equipment is built for the major players in the industry. 99.9 percent of the bitcoin mining hardware that's out there is specifically designed for being used in an on grid data center.
They're all designed to be plugged into the grid and operate at full power, 247 on industrial power lines, said Scott. Scott explained that while this is great for industrial miners who tend to point their hash power at the big mining pools, it does very little for the bitcoin enthusiast who simply wants to contribute to the hash rate. He also shared that ASIC chips aren't currently sold independently not like they used to be anyway of bitcoin bit main miners and that it's difficult to understand how these chips work because the machines in which they operate are designed with closed source code Quote, we have essentially just one chipmaker right now when it really comes down to it and that's Bitmain, said Scott.
They're really far ahead of the pack and I don't think that advantage that they have is going to last forever. I think some of these chipmakers will come up. While Scott is patiently awaiting on the ASIC chip that Jack Dorsey's block is developing which will be able to be used in any mining device he continues to work on open sourcing the bitcoin mining stack so that it's easier to compete on the ASIC market quote let's open source as much of that stack as we can because like we saw with the internet, random people can do cool stuff in their garages that sometimes, sometimes turns into a market standard.
And he should know as he created a new standard in bitcoin mining in his figurative garage with the Bitax just over a year and a half ago which has led many others to follow his lead. I've been doing it for about a year and a half and it is growing exponentially. My goal is to keep up this exponential growth. After receiving a grant from Open Sats early this year Scott has been able to focus full time on bitax and the community that is formed around the project. When I first started this I met some random person on bitcoin talk who was like I'm going to start a discord group and it's going to be called Open Source Miners United. You should come and check it out.
Start this discord group the gentleman did and now it has over 4,000 members all of whom share ideas for how to further Bitaxe and the broader open source mining movement. But Open Source Miners United has become even bigger than just a group in which people share ideas. Quote, it's been set up so that anyone who wants to contribute to the Bitaxe project can do so whether it's a random person who wants to donate or the manufacturers of Bitax that contribute back to the project, explains Scott. OSMU has this fund and that's the open source miners united. OSMU has this fund this treasury now that's growing because we're selling lots of bitaxes and we're providing small grants to other people working on open source mining Scott also shared that for every bitax sold $5 is donated to OSMU, which helps to financially support both himself and OSMU grant recipients.
He stressed in a follow-up email that this practice is totally optional and that he is very appreciative of the manufacturers that choose to do this. The Betaxe and open source mining movement has taken on a life of its own according to Scott. That is, Scott doesn't necessarily feel that he's at the center of it anymore. It's become decentralized. And while he's excited about the pace at which the movement is growing, he's still grounded and mission focused. He hasn't created a roadmap for what comes next for bitax and the community he helped found though he is quite sure of what the aim of his work is.
I've been so intrigued and motivated to promote this idea that bitcoin is fundamentally open source. This decentralized network needs to be developed in a decentralized way we can't have one without the other so I think this open source part is so important end quote Scott said quote bitcoin mining has become just totally forgotten about the open source ethos of bitcoin and how important open source development is we've got to bring this back End of article. Again, that's written by Frank Korva who I guess had a long interview or something with, Scott, and I think it's s k o t nine thousand. I think is the I think is how you can find him at least on Noster. I have been singing the praises of bit axe for a while, and I don't even have one. Not yet. I'm waiting on the gamma.
I went I want to be able to get a hold of the bit axe gamma before I dive in myself into this. But I've heard from many people, and Pies De Pleb is one of them, that the bit axe really has showed him how to actually do and think about and navigate the bitcoin mining complex without having to go quote unquote all in on massive electricity bills and huge miner purchases and having to deal with the noise that these things make because the fan on a bit acts is a lot freaking different than the fans on a bitmain s19 or s21 or s21 plus those things whine like a jet engine.
They are really annoying. They're really really loud and not only they annoy you if you're in close quarters you will annoy your neighbors and that's one of the reasons why they end up being industrial and they've been this way for a long time because home mining has just basically fallen by the wayside and as home mining has fallen by the wayside guess what else has fallen by the wayside and that's the knowledge of many many people of how to actually engage in and be functional with the bitcoin mining stack, its process, its ethos, its community.
I've never known how to mine and I know that after I get my bitaxe gamma I'm going to know how to mine. Does that mean that I'm going to hit a block and get 3.125 Bitcoin out of it? I doubt it. There's always the chance that it could happen but I'm not actually betting any money on it. I'm actually going to pay money to get a BitX gamma so that I can learn what mining is about. Maybe it will turn into something. Maybe I'll figure out how to get a whole mess of miners and use it for I don't know heating a greenhouse one of these days but I'm not going to do that without actually understanding how mining works because I don't like if I just order 15 old s19s I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm not I think it's just a dumb idea to start out with a case law or a pallet full of old miners and think I'm gonna be able to to navigate all that why not just start small just use the Bitax that that's why this is important that's why I keep bringing you news about Bitax I don't however like bringing you the following news this one really does suck Peter Todd, the Bitcoin developer named as Satoshi Nakamoto in that horrendous HBO documentary, has gone into hiding.
This is Sharra Malwa out of CoinDesk. I've seen a couple of, articles about this, but they never really said anything more about the hiding. They just said why he went into hiding, but not really what was going on. This one does a little bit better job. Peter Todd, the bitcoin developer alleged to be satoshi, the well, we know who he is. In money electric, the bitcoin mystery from HBO has reportedly gone into hiding, and that's according to the magazine Wired. Todd was revealed as nakamoto in the documentary by cullin Hoback and is now again in hiding hoback's supposed evidence for todd being nakamoto was his interest in cryptography from a young age and his technical ability and British linguistics.
The documentary provided its strongest clue through a 2010 public forum exchange where Todd inadvertently seemed to reply to a post as himself instead of the mysterious Bitcoin creator suggesting a potential slip up in identity Hoback posited that this is this as evidence that Todd might be Nakamoto although the documentary stopped short of making the definitive claim well Todd told Wired Magazine that the fallout from the documentary has forced him into hiding. His email has become inundated with requests for financial help. But then there is a threat of continued harassment by crazy people. And that's a quote. Personal safety is the number one concern for Todd now in case criminals do believe him being Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wallets belonging to Nakamoto hold over 1,000,000 BTC that is at the time worth about $66,000,000,000 at current prices. That puts the unknown persona on a list of the top 25 wealthiest people in the world. Falsely claiming that ordinary people of ordinary wealth are extraordinarily rich exposes them to threats like robbery and kidnapping, Todd told Wired. Not only is this sorry not only is the question dumb it's dangerous. Satoshi obviously didn't want to be found for good reasons and no one should help people trying to find satoshi. Todd remains active online on his Twitter account.
Well, he should honestly really just move on over to to Noster, for various reasons which I won't get into. I had said on this show that Holbeck or whatever that the filmmaker's name is was, that was misfeasance. I don't think it was malfeasance. I think it was misfeasance, but it doesn't matter because feasance has been committed. You and nobody else should be look not only should we be not looking for Satoshi Nakamoto, we shouldn't be pointing fingers at who we think satoshi Nakamoto is and we sure as shit shouldn't be positing some kind of evidence of the claim.
I knew something like this was going to happen to Todd. I knew Peter was going to have to figure out a way to somehow or another get out of this mess somehow prove that he's not Satoshi Nakamoto but there's no way to prove a negative from a logical standpoint it doesn't matter what it is there's no way to prove a negative at least in this in well in this particular in this particular circumstances I suppose that if I have a, you know, a receipt that from my credit card that says that I was in Wisconsin buying gas when I have to prove that I wasn't in Arizona because a crime was committed, yeah. Sure. I guess I can use that to, quote, unquote, prove a negative, but I can't prove that I'm not somebody else.
I can't do that. It's there there are things that are just impossible to prove a negative, and Peter Todd has found himself in a world of shit. And as much as I just kind of loathe the, you know, like the fact that the United States and Canada and the West is basically highly litigious and anybody will sue anybody else at the drop of a freaking hat, I think that Peter Todd should sue the living shit out of HBO and name the filmmaker personally so that he never does this kind of crap again. He knowingly put Peter Todd into danger. You'd have to be an idiot to think that everything was just gonna be fine after you suggested on a platform as large as HBO with as media hyped as this HBO documentary was that everything was going to be fine for Peter Todd.
No! There's no human in their right mind that would have ever actually thought that This is a horrendous turn of events for Peter Todd. I just hope that he can get his life back and I hope one of his first steps is to become a billionaire by suing the living crap out of HBO they should never have released that documentary that without editing it without forcing the director to edit the entire part of Peter Todd being Satoshi Nakamoto out You can't do this to people. People have lives to live and they can't do it this way. All right. Vitalik Buterin.
I know, but it's not what you think. Well, we're gonna talk about his, Vitalik's thought that Michael Saylor is, well, bat shit insane for his custody comments. But first, I want to read this from Lynn Alden. And it's entitled 101 on how gold was confiscated. Because if you're following the Michael Saylor debacle or frenzy or hype or whatever you wanna call it that's been occurring over the last few days, he was basically saying government should custody of the Bitcoin. Oh, joy. Okay. So and everybody's like, oh my god. See, he really is the villain. I don't care. I don't give a shit. That's not the point. But I did say either yesterday or Monday I did make mention of the confiscation of gold. The what was it the 1930s or whatever 61 executive order 6102.
Well, Lynn has got some good thoughts on this and I want to read this note that she posted on Noster. It says, You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation. And there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in but very little resources in terms of investigating who didn't turn the gold in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average. Institutions had to comply immediately since it's all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market which was enough for their purposes.
Gold became a hard to trade illegal relic for those that held it. If a small family held some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay. But can the government track Bitcoin in the 20 twenties better or worse than gold in the 19 thirties for law enforcement purposes? That's the right question. And don't think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that far more within the current rule of law. That's the sophisticated approach don't take it selectively tax it by a lot those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective So that's I kinda want you to be thinking about that as we get into Vitalik Buterin's pushback against what Michael Saylor said. I normally won't read anything from Vitalik Buterin, but you gotta understand something. I do have a modicum of respect for Vitalik Buterin because as a mere like damn I think he was a like a, I don't know, 19 or 21 when he stood up in the audience at a conference at the height of Craig Wright pulling his I'm Satoshi Nakamoto bullshit and called him out as a liar and a fraud in front of the entire auditorium and we're talking about a cut you know at least a few thousand people probably more it looked like it was packed he didn't couch it He didn't whisper it. He made sure everybody knew that it was Vitalik Buterin because he stood up out of his chair, pointed at Craig Wright, and said, I don't even know why you're here. I don't know how you got invited to this you are a liar and you are a fraud and from that perspective I have a modicum of respect for vitality vitality buterin I don't like ethereum I think it's an entire shit coin I think it's going to get people into mondo amounts of financial trouble but respect where respect is due so let's see what vitalik has to say about Michael Saylor's latest insanity.
By the way this is out of decrypt written by Adrian Zmulinski. Ethereum co founder Vitalik Buterin has openly criticized Michael Saylor's recent remarks on Bitcoin self custody. During a recent interview Saylor was asked whether leaving bitcoin custody to large banks and third party entities poses a centralization risk with the potential for government seizure of individuals' crypto holdings. The MicroStrategy co founder responded that when bitcoin is held by paranoid crypto anarchists who do not acknowledge government regulations the risk of seizure increases.
This is that 6102. This is that gold seizure stuff that Lynn Alden, that I was telling you about right before this. Now Buterin disagreed in a subsequent tweet. Quote, I'll happily say that I think Sailor's comments are bat shit insane, he wrote, adding that Saylor seems to be explicitly arguing for a regulatory capture approach to protecting crypto. The Ethereum co founder also added that such an approach does not align with the core principles of cryptocurrency. Self custody is the process of retaining control over one's private keys. You've probably heard it. Not your keys. Not your coins. But because this approach involves a degree of inconvenience and risk because keys can be lost or stolen with no redress some users instead turn to third party custody.
This involves an independent custodian controlling the private keys to a wallet where the user's crypto is held. The risks associated with third party custody are often summarized by saying not your keys not your coins meaning that the third party has full control over the assets and could, in theory, either freeze or appropriate them or be pressured into doing so by authorities. Buterin was responding to a tweet by Jameson Lop, Cypherpunk and co founder of Bitcoin self custody platform Casa Hoddle who shared his perspective on self custody. Lop emphasized that self custody is essential not just for individual Bitcoin holders but for the network's overall health.
Self custody is important for the continued strengthening and improvement of the entire network, he said. Lop explained how centralizing coins in a few wallets increases systemic risk of loss and seizure and disenfranchises users from running full nodes or trading forks. He also claimed that it would decrease deployment incentives since institutions don't care about more advanced cryptographic features and permissionless scaling gets deprioritized because we just scale via trusted third parties. While Saylor seemingly disagrees, the movement for crypto self custody is seemingly seeing renewed impetus ever since the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in 2022.
Back in May, Oklahoma Oklahoma of all states became the 1st U. S. State to pass a law protecting the right to self custody bitcoin. As executive chair of MicroStrategy, Saylor has pursued an aggressive strategy of acquiring bitcoin for the company's treasury. And the company now holds over 1% of the bitcoin that will ever be mined with a dollar value of around 16,000,000,000 Earlier this month, Saylor outlined MicroStrategy's plan to shift from being a software company to what he called a bitcoin bank with a potential $1,000,000,000,000 valuation by issuing securities backed by bitcoin. And they're not the only one. Meta Planet raised another 10,000,000,000 yen to buy some more Bitcoin, but I'm not gonna do that one today. I'm gonna wait till somebody writes a good brief about that one. So while this story is a little bit more lopsided on the lop side. Get it? Lop is a little bit lopsided?
That's the joke for the day, I guess. I still have I still have a respect for Vitalik when it comes to stuff like this. When he gets out of his his his fantasy land of Ethereum and comes back to actual reality, he's actually a pretty smart dude. And he also has no problem calling out what many bitcoiners suggest as being the new bitcoin Jesus or Bitcoin apostle 2.0 or something like that. I don't give a shit. I mean, the man is batshit crazy, but then again, he built he built himself into a billionaire. I have respect for Michael Saylor too. Do I agree with his stance on Bitcoin custody? Absolutely freaking not.
Do I believe that that was a complete thought by Michael Saylor? Absolutely not. I think he was talking about himself. MicroStrategy. I think he is so entrenched in the legacy finance and the rules in which that game is played that he can't see any other way out. I do not think that he was really talking about me. I don't think Michael Saylor was saying that individuals should not self custody. I think he was more coming at it from the standpoint of his position which is very much different than plebs out there on the streets that have a few 100,000,000, 100,000,000 satoshis depending on where you are on the size of fish scale. Are you a shrimp, a crab, or a whale, or a killer whale? I I don't give a shit.
Right? That doesn't mean that I'm excusing Michael Saylor for being kind of a moron when it comes to self custody. Of all the people that are in a position to change the legacy financial paradigm, it's gonna be people like Michael Saylor, yet he's folding like a cheap suit and he just wants to kiss regulatory ass. Hey, if he wants to be that way that's his imperative or or sorry that's his prerogative. He can do whatever the hell he wants but it's not going to affect me. So you will say, well, when they 6102 bitcoin what are you gonna do? I'm not going to turn my bitcoin in. I've already lost it in several different boating accidents.
There's no way that they can prove a negative. They cannot prove the statement I do not have Bitcoin is false. Now, if I were to say I've never owned Bitcoin that shit they can prove to be false because I have indeed bought kyseed bitcoin on exchanges under my identity on several occasions I will never be able to stand up in a court of law in the united states and safely say I have never owned bitcoin because they can prove that I have. But what they cannot do is prove that I would be saying a falsehood if I said I do not hold any Bitcoin at this time. I have no ability to move any bitcoin right now therefore because I can't vector the bitcoin that I don't have control over the bitcoin so therefore I don't own any bitcoin.
They cannot prove that to be false. They could even say, we still see that there's this wallet here that's got some bitcoin in it and we know you sold some of that to Cash App and that you converted that into cash and that it went into your bank account. That's your Bitcoin. How do I control it? Well, let's see your keys. Surely you have the private keys. No, I do not. Oh, we can prove that you that you actually have the private keys. How? How? How do you prove the negative? This is just like the identity thing with Peter Todd. How do you prove that you're not someone else? How do you prove that you don't have the keys? You can't.
But also, another party cannot prove that you are somebody else. They cannot prove that you do hold the private key to a wallet. There's no way anyone can prove that I own bitcoin unless I give them the price the the the 20 or 12 word seed phrase and I actually they actually watch me vector a Bitcoin transaction if they see me do it and I'm having no help whatsoever then and only then will they be actually able to prove that I am in control of that coin. That's never going to happen. I'm never going to sit down in front of a camera and show them that I can vector Bitcoin. I don't own any. It's all gone in a tragic boating accident. Let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities, everything is red today. Oil down 1.63 percent to $70.57. Brit Brit North Sea is down 1.63 as well to $74.74. Natural gas is down a half point. Gasoline itself is down almost 2 points back to $2.03 a gallon. Why is everything in the red? As far as energy is concerned, everything's in the red because, amazingly, after the Chinese stimulus of yesterday, the EIA came out with their report on how much crude oil are in reserves in the United States, and it was a fabulously large number magically. Because what happens to Harris is, like, whatever string Harris is hanging on to to be president, the Biden administration is gonna look awfully bad if oil prices go up to $90 a barrel under their watch right before the election.
What I'm seeing is electioneering in the form of keeping oil prices down. This is I think this is false. I really do. Gold, however, was doing well earlier, but it is now down itself a full point, back down to $2,733.20, while silver is down 3 and a half points. Platinum is down 1 point as is copper, and palladium is down a point and a half. However, everything in ag is in the green today except for the loser of the day, chocolate, 2.5% to the downside. The biggest winner today is sugar. 2.8% to the upside. Live cattle down a quarter, but lean hogs are up just over 1 point. Feeder cattle are down just under a point. The Dow is down almost a full percent.
Excuse me. The S and P is down almost 1 full percent. The Nasdaq is down 1.5 percentage points, and the S and P Mini is down 2 thirds of a point. Not looking good for equities either. It's also not looking good for Bitcoin. We are having a sell off today. We've got some red candles going on. Don't know why I haven't seen anything other than this custody talk about and 6102 shit. I don't think that that's it. I think people are taking profit after 7 full days of inflows, positive net inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. We're seeing a negative outflow today of something like 79.79,000,000,000 or something like that. Or I care no. $79,000,000 or something like that. But it's brought the price of Bitcoin down to $65,590 that is now a $1,300,000,000,000 market cap, and we can no longer get 24, but almost we can get 23.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin, of which there are 19,771,755 and a half of. And average fees per block are kind of high, but not terrible.
0.16 BTC in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are a 111 blocks. That's a row of sticks. Carrying 208,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at 20 satoshis per vbyte. High priority, low priority, gonna get you in at 17. And the hash rate is at, whoo, 724.6 x the hashes per second from yesterday's episode, shaking the tree, that was episode 978 of bitcoin. And I've got dark with 2,121 sats says, Daniel, your shaking the tree thesis on the bullshit ECB white paper and the Minnesota Fed's statement about BTC is on point. Great take. Dark, you did not have to pay me another 21121 to make the correction that I'm not Daniel but David. Yes. He actually writes, asterisk David is a correction. I do appreciate it, though. Pies to play with 21100 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you.
And user 115-568-42 with 500 says anarchy. No bueno l t I says, it's important to also ignore polls. And this he's paid me a 100 sats, by the way. 0 chance that that is accurate to begin with. Anyone under 35 doesn't answer phone calls or takes part in polls. I don't believe there is any way to accurately predict elections at this scale as there is no real representative sample any longer. Perhaps there never was. Polls are garbage through and through. Yeah. I tend to agree with you there, sir. No bueno l t I with another 100 says, also, the name is no bueno l t I as in not good, less than ideal. Well, that's the weather report.
Alright. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And coming off of nobueno ltis talk about polls in the weather report, we've got this one from the block. US elections could trigger a Minsky moment. Bond market crash as Paul Tudor Jones bets on Bitcoin. And, apparently, that's according to analysts, but this whole thing's written by James Hunt from the block. Analyst at trading and financial services firm Presto said the US elections could trigger a Minsky moment bond market crash with implications for other assets like bitcoin. Presto analyst Peter Chung and Min Jung made the warning following Paul Tudor Jones' interview with CNBC on Tuesday in which the renowned investor said that he was bullish on bitcoin, gold, commodities and NASDAQ stocks amid the risk.
With the US debt to GDP ratio rising from 40% to 100% in the last 2 and a half decades and likely to reach 124 to 200% in the next 10 to 30 years, The US election could trigger a Minsky moment where bond market wakes up to the problem and demands much higher compensation for funding the deficit, the analyst wrote in a report. The risk of a bond market crash is heightened by both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris' promises of fiscal extravagance and rising government debt levels, Chung and Young argue. Inflating their way out of the problem is the only solution, they said, echoing Jones' view that quote all roads lead to inflation, end quote.
During the CNBC interview, Jones, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist known for a successful prediction of the 1987 stock market crash also said he would own 0 fixed income, meaning no allocation to fixed income securities such as bonds in an investment portfolio. The playbook to get out of this is that you inflate your way out of this. You run interest rates below inflation and nominal growth rates above inflation, and that's how you reduce your debt to GDP, Jones said, adding that the Federal Reserve should continue to cut interest rates, quote, historically.
The way every civilization has gotten out is they've inflated away their debts, end quote. See, Weimar Republic. I don't think it really they got out. They just changed up from Weimar to Germany, I I guess. I don't know. The whole thing's bizarre. But Jones's view is noteworthy as it may be behind the recent rise in treasury yields indicating that investors are demanding higher returns to hold US government debt and the credit default swap rate on sovereign risk, the cost of insuring against a potential default, the Presto analysts said.
Zheng or Chung and Zheng argued that the Bitcoin Act of 2024 currently awaiting congressional approval could help stabilize the US debt and potentially the global financial system. The lack of focus on the debt issue from either presidential candidate, however, suggests that it's not a top priority for most voters, they added. Bitcoin is trading at $66,368 at the time of publication, blah blah blah. Blocks bitcoin page they just get into they just do a whole bunch of bitcoin prices I I don't what the what what the hell that is Jesus Christ man I don't I just I don't understand why why we're we're about to test the upper bound of the wedge on that price, price wedge that I've got on a chart that we just broke out of a few days ago, and here we are again.
Everything is crazy. I want this election to be done. I'm tired of the text messages that I have to report as junk. I'm sick of getting phone calls all the time that I just don't answer because I know it's gonna be electioneering. I need this all to go away. Thankfully, we're just a couple of weeks away from this most important election of all time, and we can get on with our lives that don't include pandering to politicians, which I believe should all be thrown in the river and floated downstream over a waterfall, hopefully to crash on rocks below. I'm sorry. Did I say that shit out loud? Well, let me say this one out loud.
River introduces BTC yield on USD deposits. Oh, where does the yield come from? Maybe we'll find out. And by the way, this is nobsbitcoin.com. Bitcoin financial services firm River has teamed up with LeadBank to launch bitcoin interest on cash products allowing users to earn bitcoin or USD interest on their cash deposits. Today at River we are announcing interest on cash. Now US dollars in your River account will earn 3.8 percent paid in bitcoin. That means more money for the things you care about, announced River. LeadBank is a member of the FDIC, meaning that user deposits are protected up to the value of $1,250,000 Good luck on getting it back if we have a crash.
According to River, Bitcoin interest on cash represents a significant shift in how individuals can manage their savings by combining the best of both fiat and bitcoin worlds. In a world where traditional savings accounts are unable to fully protect your wealth, bitcoin interest on cash offers a new path forward. By combining the predictability of cash with the opportunity of Bitcoin, we're empowering you to take control of your financial future and earn more money for the things that matter, said Alex Leishman, CEO of River.
Most people still need dollars in their daily lives. The real challenge is holding those dollars while still getting ahead. And that's where bitcoin interest on cash comes in. River protects your assets with FDIC insured cash up to $250,000 and bitcoin that is always held in full reserve, said the firm. So here are the features. A 3.8 percent interest on cash which can be paid in either bitcoin or cash. Deposits are FDIC insured up to a $250,000 There are no hidden fees or minimums. That's important. User cash can be withdrawn at any time, and that's important. And bitcoin is held in full reserve custody with proof of reserves.
This I don't like. If you're going to give me interest payments then I need a payout schedule that I'm able to program so that I can say, look, if I've got so much interest accrued in the form of Bitcoin on river, then every quarter I want that dumped into this wallet address that is under my key, my custody, my sovereignty. That's really that's the one the thing that I don't like about this the most. The second thing that I don't like about this the most is the question, where does the yield come from? Are you loaning is lead bank loaning this cash out?
Are they making car loans and auto loans and motorcycle loans? Are they making house loans and condominium loans and small business loans? Or I don't know where the yield comes from, mister Leishman. And that worries me because that shit has been what's been getting us into trouble on many, many different occasions. See, BlockFi, and its spectacular dissolution during the FTX Alameda and the rest of that bullshit that happened in 2022, 2023. I don't know where the yield's coming from. However, I will say this. I mean I want to be fair because I think River I think that they're good Joes think they're good Bitcoiners just because I'm concerned because I've heard something that I don't necessarily cotton to doesn't mean that I automatically start hating Alex Leishman and River. That's not the case. Because what I do like is this.
If I'm getting 3.8% interest in cash on my cash deposits, that is never going to be higher than inflation. Sure. Oh, well, David, inflation is at 2.7%. Even if it's at 3, you're making 0.8%. No. No. That's that CPI. That is bullshit. It is bullshit. We are running way more than what whatever inflation rate the CPI suggested we're running at. Add at least 4 to 5 points to it minimum. I'm not making any money on 3.8 percent interest rate, but if I'm not taking that in cash and I am indeed keeping it in bitcoin, well then, there is a very real chance that not only am I beat or like matching inflation and therefore have actual savings, I'm beating inflation like a dead dog on the side of the street with a big stick with a nail in it. That's what I'm talking about. See, that's the kind of interest rate that I want.
So I'm not entirely against it. I do want to know where the interest is coming from. Where is the yield coming from? Let's pop over to Germany where their sovereign tech fund has invested $25,000,000 to support free and open source projects. We've got another one on the line. Germany's sovereign tech fund or the STF announced that it has invested nearly 25,000,000 dollars or €23,000,000 and 60, count them, 60 global open source technologies over the past 2 years. And during this time, it's received over 500 submissions proposing more than 114,000,000 euros in work Sovereign Tech Fund has enabled open source projects, to provide much needed maintenance to their software, improve security, and make important enhancements for foundational open source technologies.
Established in October of 2022, the fund has received government support of €11,500,000 for 2023 and 17 for this year 2024 and last week the budget committee of the Bundestag or Bundestag decided to increase the sovereign tech fund's current allocation by another €4,000,000 for 2025 quote with nearly 500 submissions proposing over €114,000,000 worth of work since we started accepting applications, the need for support has never been more clear. By financing critical projects like Log 4 j, we're commissioning much needed maintenance, security work, and improvements in the public interest. The work on these components benefit all of the companies, organizations, and individuals who depend on the open technologies that comprise our shared digital infrastructure, said the fund in a blog post.
Projects that have received investments include freebsd, mamba, samba, PHP, gnome, reproducible builds, gfortran, systemd, ffmpeg, gstreamer, log, 4 j, Drupal, Fortran. Why are you funding Fortran? Oh my god. It's like an ancient language. It's like fucking Latin. Nobody speaks it anymore. Oh my god. Anyway, they have a complete list of supported projects that can be found at sovereigntechfunddot deforward/tech. Okay. So the STF also initiated the bug resilience program aimed at bolstering the resilience of open source software. This includes services like technical debt management, security audits, and a bug bounty platform to address vulnerabilities.
In August, the fund announced the fellowship for maintainers initiative which will support up to 5 maintainers of critical open source components for a full year focusing on work that's hard to quantify for funding applications. Over the last year, we've made much progress towards becoming an independent and permanent organization working closely with spring sprintd, s p r I n d, a German federal agency for disruptive innovation, and our partners at German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, oh god, which funds us as was stated in the blog. Learn more about the general state of open source project funding in this presentation by Cara Sowells Delos, open source program manager at GitHub.
So, more and more we are seeing open source projects whether they're Bitcoin or Nostr or well, what was it? I mean, some of these are really great programs. The PHP, NOME, GFortran, Systemd, FFMPG, GStreamer, Drupal. I I mean, a lot of people hate Drupal, but a lot of people love Drupal. And I'm not gonna get into what it is, but I'm just saying that these are all open source projects. Open source is the only way that we're moving into the future. It we are leaving the corporations and the walled gardens behind, and even governments seem to understand where this is going, at least Germany. And I'm honestly shocked. I'm shocked that gambling is going on in here. No. I'm shocked that the German government is actually doing this.
I kinda figured that the German government has been basically acting like a bunch of authoritarians and totalitarians for so long that they wouldn't even consider giving any money at all to something that can pull the teeth from their power structure. But here we are. And speaking of, tor browser version 14.0 has been released Firefox esr 128 new circuit option for android and more the tor browser is a privacy focused web browser available for desktop and mobile platforms 14.0 is out. It's based on Firefox esr 128 with enhanced privacy protections and bug fixes. The new version also comes with the new circuit option for Android to refresh your connection and legacy platforms support until March of 2025.
Quote, we overcame many other technical challenges that you can read about, in Morgan's series of blog posts chronicling the team's progress with Tor Browser Alpha and some other stuff. Additionally, it packages a series of improvements to the usability and compatibility of fingerprinting protections, thus enabling useful feature features like picture in picture, screenshots, and more, quote, as part of this process. We have also completed our annual ESR transition audit where we reviewed and addressed over 200 bugzilla issues for changes in Firefox that may negatively affect the privacy and security of Tor Browser users.
Our final report from this audit is now available in the Tor Browser spec repository on our GitLab instance added project. Donations to the Tor project, which was up to $300,000 will be matched 1 to 1 until the end of the year courtesy of power up privacy so tor browser has been the new one has been released if you are a tor browser user you might want to go check that shit out now bit box 10.2024 Lugano update has been released. Sending to silent payments and mini tap script is apparently involved. The Bitbox Lugano update for bitbox02 hardware signer version 9.21 and bitbox app version 4.45 enables payments to silent payment addresses and implements mini tap script.
We're excited to announce that bitbox02 is now the 1st hardware wallet to support sending to silent payment addresses. This means that bitbox02 users can now send bitcoin to the same silent payment address multiple times without the sender losing privacy and eliminating the need to constantly generate new addresses. This update also introduces Mini Tapscript merging Taproot's privacy and efficiency with MiniScript's capabilities. It's perfect for creating more complex wallet setups like inheritance planning while keeping transactions smaller and more private, said the firm.
Users will soon be able to use BitBox 2 with wallets like Liana once a software update enabling mini Tap script is released in a few weeks according to the blog post. They've added support for sending to silent payment addresses, and we already kinda knew about that one. And that's about it. So that is that's the end of the list for the day. What is, where are we at on Bitcoin price? We're at 65,803. So there's still selling pressure on the backside of this day. I think, in fact, it is now 10:34 AM Pacific Daylight Time. I like going to day and night world map, and you can find that at timeanddate.com.
That's timeanddate.com. And here's the issue. For the last several hours let's see. I'm gonna say 1 let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So 9 hours, and I'll explain what I'm doing here in a second. So 12 hours ago. Okay. So 9 hours, say, minus, let's add an hour to that, an hour to that, an hour to that. Okay. So this sell off started while most of the population of China was awake. This is important. And and I'm getting this by looking at this day and night world map, by putting in times, knowing what my time is versus what the time of GMT is, I can get a sense of where the sun is shining on this globe. And that means who the hell is actually awake to be able to execute trades? Obviously, there are automated trades. But, generally speaking, I still think that it makes sense to find out who is awake and who is asleep when you start getting price slides on whatever it is that you're interested in. In this case, it's Bitcoin.
So, it looks like the Chinese were aware that we were going down in price on Bitcoin by the time they went to sleep. So, where are they right now? They are in the midst of pure darkness. So the question becomes, were enough people in China already out of their positions that they wanted to be out of on Bitcoin by the time they went to sleep? Or are we going to have a whole bunch of Chinese citizens wake up in the next 6 hours and go, oh, fuck, and start selling off their Bitcoin? Just honestly, guys, be prepared. Be, like, just, you know, I don't I don't get it.
I don't understand at this point why everybody is like there is no there was nothing but a sea of red on my trading view. All legacy markets, the oil markets were in red, Gold was starting to do poorly. Everything the only thing that wasn't red was gold's price against bitcoin. That was the only green thing. And I've got like 25 or 20 indicators up on my trading view and everything is sucking swamp water. This is why we really need to pray that the election is over with. I don't care who wins. I really well, actually, I do. I do care if Trump wins that he holds true to his promise and gets Ross Ulrich or Ulrich out of jail.
That's all that that is the only thing that I at this point that's the only thing I care about is somebody to get this poor person out of jail. I he needs he needs this. He needs to get out. And is it like, would would you sacrifice the whole world for 1 person? I don't know. Would you sacrifice the whole world for it for being able to shine a light on the western judicial system that is more in tune with keeping itself safe and in power? Yeah. You're goddamn right I would. Because as long as these assholes are out there being able to put anybody in jail for any reason even at unreasonable lengths of time that will destroy their lives, then yes.
If I can just if if if we can just look at if if Trump gets elected and he does what he says he's gonna do and day 1, Ross Ulbrich gets released, we can shine a light. That will be another flashlight on this pissant judicial system of the West that is owned and controlled by the rich. And the only reason Ross went to jail is because he dared dared to create something that was outside of the control of the behemoths that are the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the Federal Reserve, the BIS. Who else? Council of Foreign Relations, all of these people, the club that you don't belong to, they are the ones that have done this to Ross, either through direct messaging to the judicial system or the judicial system is just they've been given their marching orders for so long ago that every time they come up with something like a Ross Ulbrich, they know exactly how to act. They know exactly what to do, and they know exactly how to destroy this person's life to sow fear into the rest of the citizenry of the world.
Sailor is not acting in a very good way in this particular instance. His suggestion that maybe government should control Bitcoin. And, again, I still give it give him the fact that maybe he was just talking about himself and his corporate brethren and not really about us. But let's, for the moment, pause it that maybe he was talking about all Bitcoin, no matter who the fuck holds it, needs to be held by governments. That's part of the club that you're not in telegraphing the messaging to the judicial system. This is how you're going to act when you run up against somebody who accidentally let it slip and prove that they are in control of Bitcoin that is not owned by that is not in government control. What are you gonna do? Why are you gonna put them in prison for the rest of their lives? Possibly with, like, Ross Ulbricht, 2 life terms plus 40 years. That's what he got if you didn't know.
Yeah. Serving life times 2 plus 40 years for building a website and nobody at this point has any reason to believe the bullshit charges that he was trying to conspire to hire somebody to kill somebody else. That never happened. And it was proven in the very court that he was at trial at, that that was a bad FBI actor, and that that was whole thing was fabricated to make sure that they got Ross Ulbrich in that fucking courtroom. And it didn't matter. They still gave him 2 life sentences plus 40 years, Even though the FBI agent himself said that this shit never happened. And nothing happened to that FBI agent because the judiciary is never going to go after themselves or any part or any appendage. They are not going to cut their finger off despite their hand.
It's never ever going to happen. This is the club that we are not part of doing what clubs that we are not part of do messaging the apparati of the world that is stronger than we will ever be how they're going to act. That's the only reason I give shit one about this election, but I want it over with. It's causing problems everywhere. Nobody knows what's true in pricing at all and it's and we've never known it, but now it's even worse. I call bullshit on oil falling back to $70. It's complete bullshit. It just so happens that the EIA comes out with their inventories and says, look, we've we've got all kinds of oil. Bullshit. Prove it. By the way, nobody's doing a full fucking inventory on the entire reserves of the of a country the size of the United States every other day.
There's no way you can collect those numbers. It's a bullshit number. That's what I'm saying. It's like the CPI. They're just like, well, what effect do we want the numbers to have? We want x to happen. Okay. Well, then let's write the numbers to look like this because that will cause x to happen. It happens in the CPI. It happens in the PPI. It happens in maybe housing inventories. However, I have a tendency to believe that that actually may be true, but it sure as shit doesn't hold when it comes to oil inventories. There's no way you can know.
There's just no way. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I am. Doesn't matter. I'm working myself up. 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.
