Join me today for Episode 974 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Razzlekahn Getting Reduced Sentence
- Italy To Commit Suicide
- US Miners Hold 29% of Hashrate
- Warren Describes Herself Yelling at Deaton
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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 10:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 16th day of October 2024.
And this is episode 974 of Bitcoin and Rosalcon is back in the news. If you don't know who Rosalcon is, let's do it right now. From the block, US prosecutors call for reduced 5 year prison sentence for 2016 Bitfinex hacker, Ilya Liechtenstein. US prosecutors called for Ilya Liechtenstein to serve a 60 month or a 5 year prison sentence followed by 3 years of supervised release over money laundering charges related to the 2016 hack against crypto exchange, Bitfinex. Despite engaging in prior cybercriminal activities before the Bitfinex hack, the US government is seeking to lower sentencing than the advisory guidelines of 121 to 151 months due to the defendant's cooperation in the case as well as assistance in other investigations beyond his own. This is Rosal Khan's boyfriend, Ilya. We'll get to Rosal Khan here in a second or at least I think they do.
According to a sentencing memorandum filled, filed with the United States District Court of the District of Columbia on Tuesday, for example, Liechtenstein, I love that name, man, testified against the operator of the crypto mixer, Bitcoin Fog, during a trial earlier this year. Uh-huh. Yeah, dude. However, Lichtenstein would still serve significantly more time behind bars than his wife and co conspirator Heather Morgan as he was primarily responsible for the Bitfinex hack according to the filing. Last week, prosecutors recommended an 18 month sentence for Heather Morgan, a rapper also known as Rosalcon, given her lesser role in helping Lichtenstein to launder the funds after she found out he was behind the attack.
Regardless, prosecutors said a strong sentence for Liechtenstein would help break the cycle of young cybercriminal defendants who develop impressive technical expertise from an early age, but feel socially isolated and seek out community online. Quote, they are exposed to criminal activity in those online spaces and the activity is normalized in a way that trivializes the impact on the victims, the prosecutors told the federal judge. Liechtenstein and Morgan pleaded guilty back in August of 2023 to money laundering conspiracy charges in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex security breach.
The 2 allegedly conspired to launder 119,754 Bitcoin in August of 2016, which at the time was valued at around $70,000,000 according to the government. It's now worth around $8,000,000,000 with a b. The pair were arrested in 2022 and charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. When the stolen funds were recovered, it represented the US, Justice Department's largest ever financial seizure. And according to Tuesday's filing, a forfeiture money judgment of $72,600,000 was agreed upon, but the value of the seized assets is expected to exceed this amount.
Liechtenstein agreed to forfeit significant assets linked to the hack, including around 94,000 BTC and additional cryptocurrencies like whatever. Just a whole bunch of crap is listed here. Anyway, collectively valued at more than $6,000,000,000 at current prices as in kind restitution to Bitfinex. Now Morgan is also to be held jointly liable for any restitution ordered. And last week, the US government said Bitfinex might be the sole remaining victim of the 2016 hack involving those defendants. Following a restructuring of Bitfinex's operations amid solvency issues after the hack, parent company Ifenex said customers were able to sell bfx tokens issued by the crypto exchange on the market or back to the platform for cash or hyphenx stock among other options.
All customers holding bfx tokens chose to exercise one of those options and as of April 3, 2017 all BFX tokens were fully redeemed, the firm said. However, out of an abundance of caution, the government asked the court to allow Bitfinex account holders a chance to submit claims ahead of sentencing. Liechtenstein sentencing is scheduled for November 14th, and Morgan's, is the day after. So there's a couple of things here is that they're they're seeking a reduced sentence. The US government is seeking a reduced sentence in this particular case because Liechtenstein, apparently the the guy behind the hack, which I still don't believe.
I don't believe it. I got no proof to not believe it, but I don't know. Something about this entire Rosalcon Lichtenstein Bitfinex thing has always smelled really fishy to me, and that hasn't changed. In fact, it's getting a little bit more fishier because I honestly don't think that the United States government is seeking a reduced sentence for at least Liechtenstein simply because he helped out the Bitcoin fog trial, which this is the first I've heard that Lichtenstein testified against the guy behind bitcoin fog and I can't remember his name right now but that is another major case that's going on in the cryptosphere, if that's what you wanna call it, that is a real problem.
I mean, it's like the, you know, the the guy in question whose name I can't remember behind Bitcoin Fog has been cooling his heels inside of a shoebox for at least was it over a year maybe 2 years over 2 years something like that and yet bitcoin they say he created bitcoin fog the guy's like dude I did not create bitcoin fog and Bitcoin Fog still operates just fine. And this guy has absolutely nothing to do with it because he's in jail, and he's not allowed computer access, at least I I presume. And if he is allowed computer access, it's probably to Facebook and not to anything else. Still, it doesn't matter. This smells fishy.
So my question is this. What the hell did Liechtenstein say in the trial against Bitcoin Fog? What was there was there an did these Bitfinex coins go through the Bitcoin Fog Mixer? What's going on here? I really wish the block had dug into the connection between Bitcoin Fog, the Bitcoin fog trial, and this Liechtenstein and his testimony at the Bitcoin fog trial. But let's go over to Italy where they're being stupid. Somebody wants to put a gun to their own head, and it looks like Italy is just they're just fine loading the chamber, pulling the hammer back, pointing it right at their face because Italy is considering raising capital gains tax on Bitcoin to 42%, up from 26% presently.
Helen Partz, Cointelegraph, the Italian government is considering increasing the capital gains tax for investments in bitcoin to 42% from 26%, according to the deputy economy minister, Maurizio Leo. And I've got a note here. Here's my note. I guess that means Bitcoin isn't worthless. There's the admission right there from the Italian government. The Italian government is saying to the world that Bitcoin has value, that Bitcoin is an asset, that Bitcoin is something that is real. It's not a figment of somebody's imagination. It's not made up, you know, monopoly money. It's not Internet magic money. It's not any of those things. It's actual real wealth.
Otherwise, they would have nothing to tax. Move on. Speaking at a news conference at on October 16th, Leo commented on Italy's new budget bill which the council of ministers approved. The minister said the withholding tax on bitcoin capital gains should rise to 42% according to the budget bill. Leo also said that the bill would remove the mini minimum revenue requirement for Italy's web tax or the digital services tax which was introduced as part of the country's budget back in 2019. The DST, digital service tax, now applies to companies that generated at least €750,000,000 in the past calendar year and at least €5,500,000 in revenue from operating digital services in Italy. The minister said, quote, on capital gains from bitcoin, the withholding tax increases from 26% to 42%.
On web tax revenues, we are working to eliminate the ceiling of €750,000,000 5,000,000 in Italy. Therefore, we are eliminating the thresholds, end quote. The news came as Italy's government approved a €30,000,000,000 budget for 2025, which would be partly funded by a levy on Italian banks and insurers, so those people that insure, like insurance companies. According to an Associated Press report, the new budget measures have yet to receive a nod from the Italian parliament. A final vote is expected by the end of the year. On October 15th, prime minister Giorgio Milone announced that the Italian government is expected to raise €3,500,000,000 from banks and insurance companies to improve public services and help the most vulnerable citizens. Quote, as we promised, there will be no new taxes for citizens, Maroney stated in a Twitter post, adding that the raised capital will be directed to health care and the most vulnerable to ensure better services. I guess she's talking about the children.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Italy's senate increased the capital gains tax on crypto asset trading over €2,000 to 26% in late 2022 as part of its approved budget for 2023. Now that's the end of the article. Remember that Maloney was basically lit on fire in the media for being a fascist. For being a fascist. And now and and and the rest of us were, like, going, no, man. Screw it. She's not she's not a fascist. We don't know what she is, but we're pretty sure she's not a fascist. She's probably gonna be good because then she broke that stranglehold on the president being at the highest echelons of the Italian government, which was corrupt from the ground up and had been for years. We were hoping hoping that she would break that, that she would not be so corrupt. And yet, here we are with raising capital gains tax. It is the same boss just like the old boss. It's just nothing changes with these people. They lie all the time about who they are, what they want, and we keep eating their slop. Stop believing these people. All they want to do when they go to get into government is extract as much wealth from you, the chattel, the cattle, the goats, the sheep. Whatever you are, you sure as shit ain't a human. You are a barnyard animal as all of us are, and we are just here to give milk every single day.
You never know, man. I mean, maybe one of these days, we'll have a maybe somebody will go out and do a protest, and they'll carry some signs and march around in a circle for a couple of days, and that'll fix our little red wagon. But until then, we're going over to Texas or at least to the United States where listed Bitcoin miners have hit 29% of network hash rate in October according to JPMorgan. CoinDesk, who's writing it? Will Kenny is writing this one. The blended hash rate of the 14 United States listed Bitcoin mining stocks that JPMorgan tracks now accounts for a record 28.9 percent of network hash rate, the investment bank said. Quote, the combined hash rate of the 14 US listed miners that we track has increased 70% year to date versus a 33% increase in the network hash rate and today accounts for a record 28.9 percent of the global network hash rate.
This is an almost 8% increase since the Bitcoin halving event earlier this year and reflects the efficiency and financing advantages of some of the publicly listed miners. JPMorgan noted that the network hash rate has increased 4% so far this month to an average of 672 exahashes per second. Hash rate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions. Yes, we know. The total market cap of the miners that the bank covers has risen 7% since the end of September and now trades at 1.9 times their share of the 4 year block reward, the lowest level since May, and could offer a potential, quote, attractive entry point heading into the election, end quote.
The bank noted that mining stocks rallied in the 1st 2 weeks of the month as bitcoin gained and companies with high performance computing exposure continued to see interest in deals from hyperscalers. Greenridge generation was the outperformer with a 29% gain, and stronghold underperformed the sector with a 17% slump. Rival Wall Street Bank Jefferies warned this October could be a harder month for the miners in a research report on Sunday. Well, I don't really I'm not really worried as to whether or not miners are having a hard time right now or not. We've got some pretty good price action going on in Bitcoin. Maybe October's here. I don't know. I'm I'm I I need to see a a straight up 5th 12% to 15% god candle before I say, yes, October is here. But the fact that the amount of hash rate since China banned Bitcoin mining has is now representing damn near a third of all of the hash rate in the world just in the United States is 1 cause for celebration and 2 cause for some concern.
I don't want that much hash power being concentrated in any one country in the world. And while people are still laughing at bit acts, it represents a model that may help us get rid of this this centralization of mining hashrate. It is happening and it's going to continue to happen and we don't need it to happen. What we really really need to do is think of the following scenario. 1, hash rate becomes so concentrated, let's say, in the United States. Let let's further drill that down and say into the state of Texas, where the state of Texas has 75% of the hash rate. And the federal government decides that they're gonna crack down on Bitcoin mining, but they're not gonna crack down on Bitcoin mining somehow or another through various forces and various discussions and getting people like, I don't know, Brian Armstrong to sign yet another New York agreement letter that they're going to fork Bitcoin and make it more federal government friendly.
And that they're gonna force that 75% of hash rate in the state of Texas. And let's say that whatever let's say it happens and we have a weak really weak governor. We have a really weak state legislature. We've got nobody with a spine that says, no. You're not touching our minors. If you send any of your federal goons into the state of Texas, they will immediately be arrested by the sheriff in any county that they're in. We will literally hunt you down. Now if they don't do that and they say, fine. Do whatever you want. And they get a hold of these minors and they force them at the end of a gun to change whatever it is that they're gonna change to supply the hash power to this new Bitcoin fork, it's going to be up to the true decentralized mining crew in the world to take care of the hash rate of real actual Bitcoin because it's not going to go away.
Therefore, things like BitX while they don't necessarily have a lot of power on their own, and they don't, if there's a fuck ton of them then they do. If you get bit by 1 ant it's an annoyance. It hurts a little bit. In 15 minutes, you'll forget it even happened. I guarantee it. Unless, of course, you're deathly allergic to it, like anaphylactic shock on on one ant. But it's when you get covered by the 50% population of an anthill you accidentally kicked over and didn't realize you kicked it over and are just standing there. That's when you realize the true potential of these tiny decentralized miners spread all around the world. We need to have this happen.
I need I really wish that people would stop laughing at BitX. I really wish people would stop laughing at people who want to buy a BitX. I really wish people would stop badmouthing people and saying, you know, you're an idiot because you think you're gonna hit a block. Maybe that's not it for most of us. Do I run a lightning node because I'm routing so many transactions that I'm getting rich? Oh, hell no. I'm running a lightning node for two reasons. 1, to support the lightning network. That's why I have multiple open channels. 2, to support myself because when you boost this show or you stream sats to this show or you give me a zap over on Nostr, it all goes to my lightning node and the only way that it can do that is if it's connected through channels which is the other reason why I have open channels but I'm not getting rich on routing fees I'm doing it for to those two reasons and those two reasons alone Please stop making fun of the people that want to engage in bitaxe mining, solo mining, and all of that. It's not helpful.
And neither is this, probably. Ireland to draft urgent new crypto rules ahead of EU money laundering crackdown. This is Will McCurdy out of Decrypt. Ireland is set to draft new rules governing cryptocurrency ahead of the EU's new package of laws aimed at cracking down on money laundering and terrorist financing. If you actually believe that that's what it's for, you're fooling yourself. And I got bridges all over Arizona to sell you. Finance minister Jack Chambers is set to draft urgent oh my god. It's urgent. Whatever shall we do? Think of the children. Urgent legislation to update the country's crypto regulations according to the reporting by the Irish examiner, but the minister didn't give any clear hints as to what these rules would consist of or when they would come into effect.
Chambers, appointed to the role in June of 2024, has little prior history as a crypto regulator. Oh, they're the best kind. The anti money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism act coming into play on December 30, 2024 provides much greater investigative powers to EU countries, financial intelligence units, and gives them the ability to suspend transactions. Yeah. Good luck, motherfucker. The wide ranging basket of measures will also include an EU wide band on cash payments of more than €10,000 and much more stringent reporting requirements for many types of financial service firms, including crypto exchanges. Well, of course.
The revamped any money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism act should not be confused with the markets and crypto assets act, otherwise known as MICA, which specifically governs virtual assets like crypto and stable coins. Both acts are set to come into effect in December of 2024. So it's a 1 two punch. There have been many notable cases of organized crime in Ireland using crypto for money laundering. And to combat this, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau, also known as CAB, call me 1, has already taken steps to educate officers on investigating crypto crime, holding workshops in partnership with firms including crypto exchange Binance. Yes. Your favorite company. In 2020, the cab seized Bitcoin then worth 56,000,000 from a Dublin man who was accused of operating a cannabis farm. And to date, the cab has been unable to access the funds, which is now worth 378,000,000.
At the time, it was worth only 56. Though it's unclear exactly how Ireland will choose to legislate in response to the new anti money laundering rules, many companies have begun speculating about the impact that coming EU rules will have on the sector. Binance left Cyprus in July of 2023 ahead of the incoming Michael legislation, while other firms have highlighted it as a coming opportunity. Beta Syvak, crypto exchange Kraken's head of government relations and policy for Europe, said that Micah, quote, gives us the ability to invest in the region as well as the legal certainty it needs at Brussels Blockchain Week. Oh, for alright. So, again, a one two punch is coming. It's not just Micah in December, guys. It's this other one, this this act on, you know, anti money laundering and counterfeiting or countering the financing of terrorism act. They're both coming in December of this year to the EU.
That is a very large segment of people that use Bitcoin. What's it gonna mean? Dude, I don't know. I don't I honestly don't even think the regulators at this point know what their actions are going to do. You know how, like, you know how, like, when people, I don't suggest consensus rule changes for Bitcoin, like, I don't know, increasing the block size or, you know, increasing the amount of of total minted Bitcoin available by the year 21.40, like, instead of 21,000,000, it's, like, 42. Every single time that people talk about consensus rule changes, the very first thing that comes up is a discussion of, well, if we did that, how can that be gained? What what do what are the the after effects of that? What are the knock on effects of that? What emergent properties arise that we cannot see?
We already saw that shit with the Taproot and SegWit. Once a SegWit was in place, we got Taproot. And what what was the unseen force that came up that really screwed shit up for a few months? Ordinals and inscriptions. Nobody saw it coming. But that that one two punch of SegWit and Taproot enabled something that nobody could see. How come we don't look at this when it comes to government legislation? How can we perform jujitsu on these guys? What holes have they left open? And are places like the Bitcoin Policy Institute actually looking at how we can completely make these guys look like asswipes every time they try to put a regulation in place.
I don't think that they're that good at it. Not the government, not Bitcoin Policy Institute. I don't think governments really know what they're doing. I think that if we were to go and look very in a very hardcore way at the legislation that's been imposed that we might find a lot of opportunity like that guy at the at the bottom of the article was talking about. There might be opportunity not in the way that we think not in the way that we think. Okay. You know, maybe they're talking about there's an opportunity in the way to, like, literally use these new regulations as a way to gut the regulations themselves or to get rich quick because the regulations left like these major loopholes.
I don't know. That's I that's way above my pay grade. It is for people like bitcoin policy institute to take a look at I hope they do I hope they start releasing reports on just how we can screw up their little red wagon let's run the numbers CNBC, Futures and Commodities, Amazon goes nuclear. Apparently, they're going to invest more than $500,000,000 to develop small modular reactors or SMRs for short. That's in the trending now, bar over on CNBC Futures and Commodities. Interesting that Amazon's going to do this. We'll have to see how that shit shakes out. They've been talking about it for a while, but it looks like we actually have enough, there's enough of numbers, to suggest that they're actually going to do $500,000,000.
Makes you wonder if that's gonna be enough considering how expensive everything is. But oil is not expensive today. It's up, but only slightly for West Texas Intermediate, chilling out at $70.6 2. Brenton, North Sea up a quarter, $74.40. Natural gas is, of course, down 4.6%. Gasoline is up 0.63% to $2.05. All of your shiny metal rocks are doing well. Gold up a half point to $26.91.40. Silver is up 0.63. Platinum is up 3 quarters of a point as is copper. Palladium is up 1 and a third. Now over here in ag, what's going on? It's fully mixed today. Biggest loser is sugar. 3.5% to the downside. Biggest winner gonna be wheat. 1.25 percent to the upside. But live cattle has lost point 16%.
Lean hogs, up 2.79%, but feeder cattle are down a third. Dow is up a half point, s and p is up a quarter. Nasdaq is down a tenth of a point, and the s and p mini is up almost a full point. And guess what else is up? Bitcoin, $67,940 for 1 Bitcoin. That is a $1,340,000,000,000 market cap allowing us to now buy 25.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,768,317.99 of. And 0.22 BTC in average fees per block represents this trend of rising fees. How many blocks are there? There's a 119 of them, carrying 250,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of whoop dee doo 38 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 32.
I'm seeing I'm looking at, minpool.space, and I am seeing a lot of data blocks. Let me filter that out. Oh, wow. This this next upcoming block is almost all data, which means ordinals and inscriptions and basically bullshit transactions that don't really mean anything. It is what it is. Hash rate looking to be 640.5 exahashes per second. It has been 5 minutes since the last block from, Bitcoin open uninterest, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got letter 6173 sending me 6,001 sat says best daily bitcoin show. Thank you.
Henry with a 1,000 says communists love a good panda. Just look at the CCP. God's death. 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. User 115-568-42 with 500 says, nice rant. I like the logical extension of unrealized gain taxes should include include unrealized losses as a tax write off. Imagine the misallocation of capital that would be made to capture the tax write off on that genius economic policy. Cheers. Cheers right back at you, brother. Mark says, morning. Bitcoin hashtag Bitcoin, hashtag noster, catch up done at fountain_app. And then pies to play with a 100 sat says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report.
We'll get to part 2 of the news you can use. You know, what I haven't done in a while is the circle p. It is open for business today. Today's sponsored vendor is The Leather Mint. You can go find them at the leathermint.com. The leather mint. Like, you know, the leathermint.com. The leathermint.com, where you can purchase all manner of some of the finest wallets available. They are Bitcoin centric. They take Bitcoin. And if they didn't, they wouldn't be in the circle p. If you want a coupon code, it is Bitcoin and and you will get 10% off. And if they if you buy anything and you tell them by using the coupon code, they'll know that I made a sale for them and they will hit me up on the backside with a zap or a boost or some kind of something, and basically give me like a little slice of the pie there. On Noster, you can find the Leathermint at Leathermint, all one word. That is Noster at Leathermint, all one word. Look for that handle. And over on Twitter, it is at the Leathermint, all one word. That is the Circle p vendor for the day. Now senator Warren says that her political rival, Deaton, will fight for crypto if elected to replace her in the senate.
Yeah. We we knew that. I'm not a fan of Deaton, but I don't think Warren did herself any services here. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, democrat from Massachusetts, launched a pointed attack at her republican opponent, attorney John Deaton, during a heated Massachusetts senate debate cohosted by WBZ and the Boston Globe late Tuesday evening, accusing him of being beholden to the crypto industry. Yeah, honey. Like, you ain't beholden to the banking industry. The Massachusetts senator, a longtime advocate for tighter regulation on digital assets, claimed Deaton prioritized crypto interest over the needs of the working class Americans. God, the political speak here is just it's so fucking transparent. You don't give a shit about working class Americans.
You're you haven't been a working class American in so ever. You've never been a working okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Quote, one candidate standing here gets 90% of their campaign funding from 1 industry. That's the crypto industry. One candidate has openly admitted that 80% of his personal worth is tied to crypto, Warren said during the debate. Yeah, honey. Like, all your money doesn't come from banks. Quote, if John Deaton goes to Washington, his crypto buddies will expect a return on their investment, the senator added. He's going to be there to fight for crypto.
You can I'm pausing. I've got I've got to do it. This is she's talking about herself. That's it sounds stupid. She's she she's not talking about herself. She's talking about Deaton. But what she's doing is she's giving me a description of herself. All I have to do is say the exact same sentences, replace her name for Deaton's name, and banking for crypto, and she's the same person. The fact that she has the unmitigated gall to not even try to couch this as different than what she's doing for the banking industry is really rankling me. It's just disgusting. But continuing, Deaton, a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, shared a personal story about how crypto offered a lifeline to unbanked individuals, including his mom, who struggled with predatory banking fees.
When bitcoin came along, I thought of my mom, who couldn't maintain a bank account due to fees. Bitcoin offered a way out of the predatory banks and the middlemen, Deaton explained. The republican candidate also criticized Warren for focusing on attacking attacking crypto instead of, you know, addressing inflation and economic issues. Quote, I wish senator Warren attacked inflation the way she attacks crypto, Deaton quipped, questioning her decision to build what she has termed as an anti crypto army amid ongoing broader economic woes. Warren remains steadfast, reiterating her well worn narrative regarding crypto as a means to, of course, facilitate money laundering, human trafficking, and terrorism financing.
But Warren, you forgot about the children. Who's gonna think about the children? Apparently not Warren. Quote, I just want crypto to follow the same rules as every bank, stock broker, and credit union, she said. That's not what she was saying during the, the that whole banking crisis when it came to, 2008. That's not what that's not what that was not what she was saying back then. Sure. She's relatively new since then as far as the senator's concerned, but she's been vocal about how she hated banks until almost just what recently?
Yeah. Because all of the banks were like, we need to get her under our thumb, so we're going to do it the old fashioned way. We're gonna bribe her ass with campaign contributions. That whole thing is a racket, but I don't need to tell you that. Deaton also brought up Warren's stance on Bitcoin self custody, accusing her of favoring banks over the working class. Quote, her bill bans Bitcoin self custody in America, but she's allowing banks to custody Bitcoin, he said, arguing that her policies do not benefit ordinary people. Warren, in turn, pressed Deaton on his connections to the crypto industry, repeatedly asking what crypto insiders expected in return for their financial support of his campaign. Quote, I I'm just trying to understand why crypto folks are so mad at him. So mad that they're funding 90% of his campaign, she remarked, which doesn't even make sense to me, but Deaton, known for his involvement in the Ripple v SEC lawsuit, highlighted his advocacy for Ripple holders during the case, which he said helped expose regulatory overreach and protect small investors.
He further noted that his actions led to a significant XRP donation to vice president Kamala Harris' campaign from Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen. Oh, god. This is just a mess. Quote, if I hadn't taken action on the SEC on behalf of small investors, that donation to your very candidate of choice would not have happened, Deaton told Warren. Madam vice president, if you're watching, you're welcome. Oh, damn. God, it just put the stick in her eye, man. In July 2024, Ripple Labs donated a $1,000,000 to the super pacs supporting Deaton's campaign. The company currently involved in a legal battle with the SEC supports Deaton's run in an effort to unseat Warren. Sure. Because Warren's not wrong.
Chris Larsen and the rest of the Ripple scumbag crew of fucking miscreants are going to be able to do untold damage if Deaton gets selected. I almost kinda want Warren to win because at least it's the devil you know. This dude, the fact that he's connected so deeply with Ripple, she makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I would rather see Elizabeth Warren win this race. I know it's it's ludicrous because I just I cannot stand her mere existence. The carbon in her body would be better used upon my charcoal grill or in my garden soil where it would actually do some good. But I digress.
Warren herself has consistently voiced concern over crypto warning that digital assets expose consumers to fraud and volatility and facilitated illicit activities and contribute to environmental degradation through Bitcoin mining, but she's still not thinking of the fucking children. Back in February, in response to Dayton entering the race, Warren sent her supporters an email stating her stance against crypto scams has made her the target of industry lobbyists, but that she isn't afraid of taking on the challenge. She argues that stronger regulations are necessary to protect both consumers and the broader financial system. Oh, bullshit. She's a scumbag.
Deaton's a scumbag. Is there really nobody else that can run-in the state of Massachusetts that isn't just a Massachusetts that isn't just a overt scumbag? Is there anybody in that state that is a better choice for any of this? You could probably pick a bus driver in Boston and actually have somebody who's better minded, better moral compass, better ethics. I don't know. Whatever. At least we've got OpenSats giving a long term grant support for GreenArt 7c3. Yay. GreenArt 7c3 is the creator and lead developer of Citrine, an Android based Nostr Relay that serves both as a local relay and a shared database, and Amber, an android based noster signer utilizing nip 46.
With this grant, GreenArt 7c3 will continue the ongoing development of Citrine and Amber. The focus will be on extending cross platform usability beyond Android devices, enhancing the user experience, and developing and refining new and existing NIP55 libraries. Consider making a donation to OpenSats, the Noster Fund, to support important Noster Protocol contributors OpenSats is a 501c3 nonprofit organization so all gifts and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law or at least Foundation Passport version 2.3.4 has been released restored compatibility with Casa app we're excited to announce the latest version of the passport firmware it's now live announced the project this version includes several minor fixes to restore compatibility with the Casa app along with various visual bug corrections. We've worked closely with the Casa team or Casa depending on how you want to pronounce it, Casa team on a number of small fixes to restore full compatibility with their excellent multisig services, the team said in a release note.
Casa users will now be able to properly perform health checks for their setups, and there's minor visual bug fixes involved in niche scenarios. Users can upgrade their firmware by initiating the update from Envoy, which can be found at foundation.xyzforward/envoy, e n v o y. Alright. That's it for the stories that I had lined out for you today. I'm going to go ahead and kill it here. I gotta go take my wife to an appointment, so I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 16th day of October 2024.
And this is episode 974 of Bitcoin and Rosalcon is back in the news. If you don't know who Rosalcon is, let's do it right now. From the block, US prosecutors call for reduced 5 year prison sentence for 2016 Bitfinex hacker, Ilya Liechtenstein. US prosecutors called for Ilya Liechtenstein to serve a 60 month or a 5 year prison sentence followed by 3 years of supervised release over money laundering charges related to the 2016 hack against crypto exchange, Bitfinex. Despite engaging in prior cybercriminal activities before the Bitfinex hack, the US government is seeking to lower sentencing than the advisory guidelines of 121 to 151 months due to the defendant's cooperation in the case as well as assistance in other investigations beyond his own. This is Rosal Khan's boyfriend, Ilya. We'll get to Rosal Khan here in a second or at least I think they do.
According to a sentencing memorandum filled, filed with the United States District Court of the District of Columbia on Tuesday, for example, Liechtenstein, I love that name, man, testified against the operator of the crypto mixer, Bitcoin Fog, during a trial earlier this year. Uh-huh. Yeah, dude. However, Lichtenstein would still serve significantly more time behind bars than his wife and co conspirator Heather Morgan as he was primarily responsible for the Bitfinex hack according to the filing. Last week, prosecutors recommended an 18 month sentence for Heather Morgan, a rapper also known as Rosalcon, given her lesser role in helping Lichtenstein to launder the funds after she found out he was behind the attack.
Regardless, prosecutors said a strong sentence for Liechtenstein would help break the cycle of young cybercriminal defendants who develop impressive technical expertise from an early age, but feel socially isolated and seek out community online. Quote, they are exposed to criminal activity in those online spaces and the activity is normalized in a way that trivializes the impact on the victims, the prosecutors told the federal judge. Liechtenstein and Morgan pleaded guilty back in August of 2023 to money laundering conspiracy charges in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex security breach.
The 2 allegedly conspired to launder 119,754 Bitcoin in August of 2016, which at the time was valued at around $70,000,000 according to the government. It's now worth around $8,000,000,000 with a b. The pair were arrested in 2022 and charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. When the stolen funds were recovered, it represented the US, Justice Department's largest ever financial seizure. And according to Tuesday's filing, a forfeiture money judgment of $72,600,000 was agreed upon, but the value of the seized assets is expected to exceed this amount.
Liechtenstein agreed to forfeit significant assets linked to the hack, including around 94,000 BTC and additional cryptocurrencies like whatever. Just a whole bunch of crap is listed here. Anyway, collectively valued at more than $6,000,000,000 at current prices as in kind restitution to Bitfinex. Now Morgan is also to be held jointly liable for any restitution ordered. And last week, the US government said Bitfinex might be the sole remaining victim of the 2016 hack involving those defendants. Following a restructuring of Bitfinex's operations amid solvency issues after the hack, parent company Ifenex said customers were able to sell bfx tokens issued by the crypto exchange on the market or back to the platform for cash or hyphenx stock among other options.
All customers holding bfx tokens chose to exercise one of those options and as of April 3, 2017 all BFX tokens were fully redeemed, the firm said. However, out of an abundance of caution, the government asked the court to allow Bitfinex account holders a chance to submit claims ahead of sentencing. Liechtenstein sentencing is scheduled for November 14th, and Morgan's, is the day after. So there's a couple of things here is that they're they're seeking a reduced sentence. The US government is seeking a reduced sentence in this particular case because Liechtenstein, apparently the the guy behind the hack, which I still don't believe.
I don't believe it. I got no proof to not believe it, but I don't know. Something about this entire Rosalcon Lichtenstein Bitfinex thing has always smelled really fishy to me, and that hasn't changed. In fact, it's getting a little bit more fishier because I honestly don't think that the United States government is seeking a reduced sentence for at least Liechtenstein simply because he helped out the Bitcoin fog trial, which this is the first I've heard that Lichtenstein testified against the guy behind bitcoin fog and I can't remember his name right now but that is another major case that's going on in the cryptosphere, if that's what you wanna call it, that is a real problem.
I mean, it's like the, you know, the the guy in question whose name I can't remember behind Bitcoin Fog has been cooling his heels inside of a shoebox for at least was it over a year maybe 2 years over 2 years something like that and yet bitcoin they say he created bitcoin fog the guy's like dude I did not create bitcoin fog and Bitcoin Fog still operates just fine. And this guy has absolutely nothing to do with it because he's in jail, and he's not allowed computer access, at least I I presume. And if he is allowed computer access, it's probably to Facebook and not to anything else. Still, it doesn't matter. This smells fishy.
So my question is this. What the hell did Liechtenstein say in the trial against Bitcoin Fog? What was there was there an did these Bitfinex coins go through the Bitcoin Fog Mixer? What's going on here? I really wish the block had dug into the connection between Bitcoin Fog, the Bitcoin fog trial, and this Liechtenstein and his testimony at the Bitcoin fog trial. But let's go over to Italy where they're being stupid. Somebody wants to put a gun to their own head, and it looks like Italy is just they're just fine loading the chamber, pulling the hammer back, pointing it right at their face because Italy is considering raising capital gains tax on Bitcoin to 42%, up from 26% presently.
Helen Partz, Cointelegraph, the Italian government is considering increasing the capital gains tax for investments in bitcoin to 42% from 26%, according to the deputy economy minister, Maurizio Leo. And I've got a note here. Here's my note. I guess that means Bitcoin isn't worthless. There's the admission right there from the Italian government. The Italian government is saying to the world that Bitcoin has value, that Bitcoin is an asset, that Bitcoin is something that is real. It's not a figment of somebody's imagination. It's not made up, you know, monopoly money. It's not Internet magic money. It's not any of those things. It's actual real wealth.
Otherwise, they would have nothing to tax. Move on. Speaking at a news conference at on October 16th, Leo commented on Italy's new budget bill which the council of ministers approved. The minister said the withholding tax on bitcoin capital gains should rise to 42% according to the budget bill. Leo also said that the bill would remove the mini minimum revenue requirement for Italy's web tax or the digital services tax which was introduced as part of the country's budget back in 2019. The DST, digital service tax, now applies to companies that generated at least €750,000,000 in the past calendar year and at least €5,500,000 in revenue from operating digital services in Italy. The minister said, quote, on capital gains from bitcoin, the withholding tax increases from 26% to 42%.
On web tax revenues, we are working to eliminate the ceiling of €750,000,000 5,000,000 in Italy. Therefore, we are eliminating the thresholds, end quote. The news came as Italy's government approved a €30,000,000,000 budget for 2025, which would be partly funded by a levy on Italian banks and insurers, so those people that insure, like insurance companies. According to an Associated Press report, the new budget measures have yet to receive a nod from the Italian parliament. A final vote is expected by the end of the year. On October 15th, prime minister Giorgio Milone announced that the Italian government is expected to raise €3,500,000,000 from banks and insurance companies to improve public services and help the most vulnerable citizens. Quote, as we promised, there will be no new taxes for citizens, Maroney stated in a Twitter post, adding that the raised capital will be directed to health care and the most vulnerable to ensure better services. I guess she's talking about the children.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Italy's senate increased the capital gains tax on crypto asset trading over €2,000 to 26% in late 2022 as part of its approved budget for 2023. Now that's the end of the article. Remember that Maloney was basically lit on fire in the media for being a fascist. For being a fascist. And now and and and the rest of us were, like, going, no, man. Screw it. She's not she's not a fascist. We don't know what she is, but we're pretty sure she's not a fascist. She's probably gonna be good because then she broke that stranglehold on the president being at the highest echelons of the Italian government, which was corrupt from the ground up and had been for years. We were hoping hoping that she would break that, that she would not be so corrupt. And yet, here we are with raising capital gains tax. It is the same boss just like the old boss. It's just nothing changes with these people. They lie all the time about who they are, what they want, and we keep eating their slop. Stop believing these people. All they want to do when they go to get into government is extract as much wealth from you, the chattel, the cattle, the goats, the sheep. Whatever you are, you sure as shit ain't a human. You are a barnyard animal as all of us are, and we are just here to give milk every single day.
You never know, man. I mean, maybe one of these days, we'll have a maybe somebody will go out and do a protest, and they'll carry some signs and march around in a circle for a couple of days, and that'll fix our little red wagon. But until then, we're going over to Texas or at least to the United States where listed Bitcoin miners have hit 29% of network hash rate in October according to JPMorgan. CoinDesk, who's writing it? Will Kenny is writing this one. The blended hash rate of the 14 United States listed Bitcoin mining stocks that JPMorgan tracks now accounts for a record 28.9 percent of network hash rate, the investment bank said. Quote, the combined hash rate of the 14 US listed miners that we track has increased 70% year to date versus a 33% increase in the network hash rate and today accounts for a record 28.9 percent of the global network hash rate.
This is an almost 8% increase since the Bitcoin halving event earlier this year and reflects the efficiency and financing advantages of some of the publicly listed miners. JPMorgan noted that the network hash rate has increased 4% so far this month to an average of 672 exahashes per second. Hash rate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions. Yes, we know. The total market cap of the miners that the bank covers has risen 7% since the end of September and now trades at 1.9 times their share of the 4 year block reward, the lowest level since May, and could offer a potential, quote, attractive entry point heading into the election, end quote.
The bank noted that mining stocks rallied in the 1st 2 weeks of the month as bitcoin gained and companies with high performance computing exposure continued to see interest in deals from hyperscalers. Greenridge generation was the outperformer with a 29% gain, and stronghold underperformed the sector with a 17% slump. Rival Wall Street Bank Jefferies warned this October could be a harder month for the miners in a research report on Sunday. Well, I don't really I'm not really worried as to whether or not miners are having a hard time right now or not. We've got some pretty good price action going on in Bitcoin. Maybe October's here. I don't know. I'm I'm I I need to see a a straight up 5th 12% to 15% god candle before I say, yes, October is here. But the fact that the amount of hash rate since China banned Bitcoin mining has is now representing damn near a third of all of the hash rate in the world just in the United States is 1 cause for celebration and 2 cause for some concern.
I don't want that much hash power being concentrated in any one country in the world. And while people are still laughing at bit acts, it represents a model that may help us get rid of this this centralization of mining hashrate. It is happening and it's going to continue to happen and we don't need it to happen. What we really really need to do is think of the following scenario. 1, hash rate becomes so concentrated, let's say, in the United States. Let let's further drill that down and say into the state of Texas, where the state of Texas has 75% of the hash rate. And the federal government decides that they're gonna crack down on Bitcoin mining, but they're not gonna crack down on Bitcoin mining somehow or another through various forces and various discussions and getting people like, I don't know, Brian Armstrong to sign yet another New York agreement letter that they're going to fork Bitcoin and make it more federal government friendly.
And that they're gonna force that 75% of hash rate in the state of Texas. And let's say that whatever let's say it happens and we have a weak really weak governor. We have a really weak state legislature. We've got nobody with a spine that says, no. You're not touching our minors. If you send any of your federal goons into the state of Texas, they will immediately be arrested by the sheriff in any county that they're in. We will literally hunt you down. Now if they don't do that and they say, fine. Do whatever you want. And they get a hold of these minors and they force them at the end of a gun to change whatever it is that they're gonna change to supply the hash power to this new Bitcoin fork, it's going to be up to the true decentralized mining crew in the world to take care of the hash rate of real actual Bitcoin because it's not going to go away.
Therefore, things like BitX while they don't necessarily have a lot of power on their own, and they don't, if there's a fuck ton of them then they do. If you get bit by 1 ant it's an annoyance. It hurts a little bit. In 15 minutes, you'll forget it even happened. I guarantee it. Unless, of course, you're deathly allergic to it, like anaphylactic shock on on one ant. But it's when you get covered by the 50% population of an anthill you accidentally kicked over and didn't realize you kicked it over and are just standing there. That's when you realize the true potential of these tiny decentralized miners spread all around the world. We need to have this happen.
I need I really wish that people would stop laughing at BitX. I really wish people would stop laughing at people who want to buy a BitX. I really wish people would stop badmouthing people and saying, you know, you're an idiot because you think you're gonna hit a block. Maybe that's not it for most of us. Do I run a lightning node because I'm routing so many transactions that I'm getting rich? Oh, hell no. I'm running a lightning node for two reasons. 1, to support the lightning network. That's why I have multiple open channels. 2, to support myself because when you boost this show or you stream sats to this show or you give me a zap over on Nostr, it all goes to my lightning node and the only way that it can do that is if it's connected through channels which is the other reason why I have open channels but I'm not getting rich on routing fees I'm doing it for to those two reasons and those two reasons alone Please stop making fun of the people that want to engage in bitaxe mining, solo mining, and all of that. It's not helpful.
And neither is this, probably. Ireland to draft urgent new crypto rules ahead of EU money laundering crackdown. This is Will McCurdy out of Decrypt. Ireland is set to draft new rules governing cryptocurrency ahead of the EU's new package of laws aimed at cracking down on money laundering and terrorist financing. If you actually believe that that's what it's for, you're fooling yourself. And I got bridges all over Arizona to sell you. Finance minister Jack Chambers is set to draft urgent oh my god. It's urgent. Whatever shall we do? Think of the children. Urgent legislation to update the country's crypto regulations according to the reporting by the Irish examiner, but the minister didn't give any clear hints as to what these rules would consist of or when they would come into effect.
Chambers, appointed to the role in June of 2024, has little prior history as a crypto regulator. Oh, they're the best kind. The anti money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism act coming into play on December 30, 2024 provides much greater investigative powers to EU countries, financial intelligence units, and gives them the ability to suspend transactions. Yeah. Good luck, motherfucker. The wide ranging basket of measures will also include an EU wide band on cash payments of more than €10,000 and much more stringent reporting requirements for many types of financial service firms, including crypto exchanges. Well, of course.
The revamped any money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism act should not be confused with the markets and crypto assets act, otherwise known as MICA, which specifically governs virtual assets like crypto and stable coins. Both acts are set to come into effect in December of 2024. So it's a 1 two punch. There have been many notable cases of organized crime in Ireland using crypto for money laundering. And to combat this, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau, also known as CAB, call me 1, has already taken steps to educate officers on investigating crypto crime, holding workshops in partnership with firms including crypto exchange Binance. Yes. Your favorite company. In 2020, the cab seized Bitcoin then worth 56,000,000 from a Dublin man who was accused of operating a cannabis farm. And to date, the cab has been unable to access the funds, which is now worth 378,000,000.
At the time, it was worth only 56. Though it's unclear exactly how Ireland will choose to legislate in response to the new anti money laundering rules, many companies have begun speculating about the impact that coming EU rules will have on the sector. Binance left Cyprus in July of 2023 ahead of the incoming Michael legislation, while other firms have highlighted it as a coming opportunity. Beta Syvak, crypto exchange Kraken's head of government relations and policy for Europe, said that Micah, quote, gives us the ability to invest in the region as well as the legal certainty it needs at Brussels Blockchain Week. Oh, for alright. So, again, a one two punch is coming. It's not just Micah in December, guys. It's this other one, this this act on, you know, anti money laundering and counterfeiting or countering the financing of terrorism act. They're both coming in December of this year to the EU.
That is a very large segment of people that use Bitcoin. What's it gonna mean? Dude, I don't know. I don't I honestly don't even think the regulators at this point know what their actions are going to do. You know how, like, you know how, like, when people, I don't suggest consensus rule changes for Bitcoin, like, I don't know, increasing the block size or, you know, increasing the amount of of total minted Bitcoin available by the year 21.40, like, instead of 21,000,000, it's, like, 42. Every single time that people talk about consensus rule changes, the very first thing that comes up is a discussion of, well, if we did that, how can that be gained? What what do what are the the after effects of that? What are the knock on effects of that? What emergent properties arise that we cannot see?
We already saw that shit with the Taproot and SegWit. Once a SegWit was in place, we got Taproot. And what what was the unseen force that came up that really screwed shit up for a few months? Ordinals and inscriptions. Nobody saw it coming. But that that one two punch of SegWit and Taproot enabled something that nobody could see. How come we don't look at this when it comes to government legislation? How can we perform jujitsu on these guys? What holes have they left open? And are places like the Bitcoin Policy Institute actually looking at how we can completely make these guys look like asswipes every time they try to put a regulation in place.
I don't think that they're that good at it. Not the government, not Bitcoin Policy Institute. I don't think governments really know what they're doing. I think that if we were to go and look very in a very hardcore way at the legislation that's been imposed that we might find a lot of opportunity like that guy at the at the bottom of the article was talking about. There might be opportunity not in the way that we think not in the way that we think. Okay. You know, maybe they're talking about there's an opportunity in the way to, like, literally use these new regulations as a way to gut the regulations themselves or to get rich quick because the regulations left like these major loopholes.
I don't know. That's I that's way above my pay grade. It is for people like bitcoin policy institute to take a look at I hope they do I hope they start releasing reports on just how we can screw up their little red wagon let's run the numbers CNBC, Futures and Commodities, Amazon goes nuclear. Apparently, they're going to invest more than $500,000,000 to develop small modular reactors or SMRs for short. That's in the trending now, bar over on CNBC Futures and Commodities. Interesting that Amazon's going to do this. We'll have to see how that shit shakes out. They've been talking about it for a while, but it looks like we actually have enough, there's enough of numbers, to suggest that they're actually going to do $500,000,000.
Makes you wonder if that's gonna be enough considering how expensive everything is. But oil is not expensive today. It's up, but only slightly for West Texas Intermediate, chilling out at $70.6 2. Brenton, North Sea up a quarter, $74.40. Natural gas is, of course, down 4.6%. Gasoline is up 0.63% to $2.05. All of your shiny metal rocks are doing well. Gold up a half point to $26.91.40. Silver is up 0.63. Platinum is up 3 quarters of a point as is copper. Palladium is up 1 and a third. Now over here in ag, what's going on? It's fully mixed today. Biggest loser is sugar. 3.5% to the downside. Biggest winner gonna be wheat. 1.25 percent to the upside. But live cattle has lost point 16%.
Lean hogs, up 2.79%, but feeder cattle are down a third. Dow is up a half point, s and p is up a quarter. Nasdaq is down a tenth of a point, and the s and p mini is up almost a full point. And guess what else is up? Bitcoin, $67,940 for 1 Bitcoin. That is a $1,340,000,000,000 market cap allowing us to now buy 25.3 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,768,317.99 of. And 0.22 BTC in average fees per block represents this trend of rising fees. How many blocks are there? There's a 119 of them, carrying 250,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of whoop dee doo 38 satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 32.
I'm seeing I'm looking at, minpool.space, and I am seeing a lot of data blocks. Let me filter that out. Oh, wow. This this next upcoming block is almost all data, which means ordinals and inscriptions and basically bullshit transactions that don't really mean anything. It is what it is. Hash rate looking to be 640.5 exahashes per second. It has been 5 minutes since the last block from, Bitcoin open uninterest, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got letter 6173 sending me 6,001 sat says best daily bitcoin show. Thank you.
Henry with a 1,000 says communists love a good panda. Just look at the CCP. God's death. 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. User 115-568-42 with 500 says, nice rant. I like the logical extension of unrealized gain taxes should include include unrealized losses as a tax write off. Imagine the misallocation of capital that would be made to capture the tax write off on that genius economic policy. Cheers. Cheers right back at you, brother. Mark says, morning. Bitcoin hashtag Bitcoin, hashtag noster, catch up done at fountain_app. And then pies to play with a 100 sat says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report.
We'll get to part 2 of the news you can use. You know, what I haven't done in a while is the circle p. It is open for business today. Today's sponsored vendor is The Leather Mint. You can go find them at the leathermint.com. The leather mint. Like, you know, the leathermint.com. The leathermint.com, where you can purchase all manner of some of the finest wallets available. They are Bitcoin centric. They take Bitcoin. And if they didn't, they wouldn't be in the circle p. If you want a coupon code, it is Bitcoin and and you will get 10% off. And if they if you buy anything and you tell them by using the coupon code, they'll know that I made a sale for them and they will hit me up on the backside with a zap or a boost or some kind of something, and basically give me like a little slice of the pie there. On Noster, you can find the Leathermint at Leathermint, all one word. That is Noster at Leathermint, all one word. Look for that handle. And over on Twitter, it is at the Leathermint, all one word. That is the Circle p vendor for the day. Now senator Warren says that her political rival, Deaton, will fight for crypto if elected to replace her in the senate.
Yeah. We we knew that. I'm not a fan of Deaton, but I don't think Warren did herself any services here. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, democrat from Massachusetts, launched a pointed attack at her republican opponent, attorney John Deaton, during a heated Massachusetts senate debate cohosted by WBZ and the Boston Globe late Tuesday evening, accusing him of being beholden to the crypto industry. Yeah, honey. Like, you ain't beholden to the banking industry. The Massachusetts senator, a longtime advocate for tighter regulation on digital assets, claimed Deaton prioritized crypto interest over the needs of the working class Americans. God, the political speak here is just it's so fucking transparent. You don't give a shit about working class Americans.
You're you haven't been a working class American in so ever. You've never been a working okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Quote, one candidate standing here gets 90% of their campaign funding from 1 industry. That's the crypto industry. One candidate has openly admitted that 80% of his personal worth is tied to crypto, Warren said during the debate. Yeah, honey. Like, all your money doesn't come from banks. Quote, if John Deaton goes to Washington, his crypto buddies will expect a return on their investment, the senator added. He's going to be there to fight for crypto.
You can I'm pausing. I've got I've got to do it. This is she's talking about herself. That's it sounds stupid. She's she she's not talking about herself. She's talking about Deaton. But what she's doing is she's giving me a description of herself. All I have to do is say the exact same sentences, replace her name for Deaton's name, and banking for crypto, and she's the same person. The fact that she has the unmitigated gall to not even try to couch this as different than what she's doing for the banking industry is really rankling me. It's just disgusting. But continuing, Deaton, a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, shared a personal story about how crypto offered a lifeline to unbanked individuals, including his mom, who struggled with predatory banking fees.
When bitcoin came along, I thought of my mom, who couldn't maintain a bank account due to fees. Bitcoin offered a way out of the predatory banks and the middlemen, Deaton explained. The republican candidate also criticized Warren for focusing on attacking attacking crypto instead of, you know, addressing inflation and economic issues. Quote, I wish senator Warren attacked inflation the way she attacks crypto, Deaton quipped, questioning her decision to build what she has termed as an anti crypto army amid ongoing broader economic woes. Warren remains steadfast, reiterating her well worn narrative regarding crypto as a means to, of course, facilitate money laundering, human trafficking, and terrorism financing.
But Warren, you forgot about the children. Who's gonna think about the children? Apparently not Warren. Quote, I just want crypto to follow the same rules as every bank, stock broker, and credit union, she said. That's not what she was saying during the, the that whole banking crisis when it came to, 2008. That's not what that's not what that was not what she was saying back then. Sure. She's relatively new since then as far as the senator's concerned, but she's been vocal about how she hated banks until almost just what recently?
Yeah. Because all of the banks were like, we need to get her under our thumb, so we're going to do it the old fashioned way. We're gonna bribe her ass with campaign contributions. That whole thing is a racket, but I don't need to tell you that. Deaton also brought up Warren's stance on Bitcoin self custody, accusing her of favoring banks over the working class. Quote, her bill bans Bitcoin self custody in America, but she's allowing banks to custody Bitcoin, he said, arguing that her policies do not benefit ordinary people. Warren, in turn, pressed Deaton on his connections to the crypto industry, repeatedly asking what crypto insiders expected in return for their financial support of his campaign. Quote, I I'm just trying to understand why crypto folks are so mad at him. So mad that they're funding 90% of his campaign, she remarked, which doesn't even make sense to me, but Deaton, known for his involvement in the Ripple v SEC lawsuit, highlighted his advocacy for Ripple holders during the case, which he said helped expose regulatory overreach and protect small investors.
He further noted that his actions led to a significant XRP donation to vice president Kamala Harris' campaign from Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen. Oh, god. This is just a mess. Quote, if I hadn't taken action on the SEC on behalf of small investors, that donation to your very candidate of choice would not have happened, Deaton told Warren. Madam vice president, if you're watching, you're welcome. Oh, damn. God, it just put the stick in her eye, man. In July 2024, Ripple Labs donated a $1,000,000 to the super pacs supporting Deaton's campaign. The company currently involved in a legal battle with the SEC supports Deaton's run in an effort to unseat Warren. Sure. Because Warren's not wrong.
Chris Larsen and the rest of the Ripple scumbag crew of fucking miscreants are going to be able to do untold damage if Deaton gets selected. I almost kinda want Warren to win because at least it's the devil you know. This dude, the fact that he's connected so deeply with Ripple, she makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I would rather see Elizabeth Warren win this race. I know it's it's ludicrous because I just I cannot stand her mere existence. The carbon in her body would be better used upon my charcoal grill or in my garden soil where it would actually do some good. But I digress.
Warren herself has consistently voiced concern over crypto warning that digital assets expose consumers to fraud and volatility and facilitated illicit activities and contribute to environmental degradation through Bitcoin mining, but she's still not thinking of the fucking children. Back in February, in response to Dayton entering the race, Warren sent her supporters an email stating her stance against crypto scams has made her the target of industry lobbyists, but that she isn't afraid of taking on the challenge. She argues that stronger regulations are necessary to protect both consumers and the broader financial system. Oh, bullshit. She's a scumbag.
Deaton's a scumbag. Is there really nobody else that can run-in the state of Massachusetts that isn't just a Massachusetts that isn't just a overt scumbag? Is there anybody in that state that is a better choice for any of this? You could probably pick a bus driver in Boston and actually have somebody who's better minded, better moral compass, better ethics. I don't know. Whatever. At least we've got OpenSats giving a long term grant support for GreenArt 7c3. Yay. GreenArt 7c3 is the creator and lead developer of Citrine, an Android based Nostr Relay that serves both as a local relay and a shared database, and Amber, an android based noster signer utilizing nip 46.
With this grant, GreenArt 7c3 will continue the ongoing development of Citrine and Amber. The focus will be on extending cross platform usability beyond Android devices, enhancing the user experience, and developing and refining new and existing NIP55 libraries. Consider making a donation to OpenSats, the Noster Fund, to support important Noster Protocol contributors OpenSats is a 501c3 nonprofit organization so all gifts and donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law or at least Foundation Passport version 2.3.4 has been released restored compatibility with Casa app we're excited to announce the latest version of the passport firmware it's now live announced the project this version includes several minor fixes to restore compatibility with the Casa app along with various visual bug corrections. We've worked closely with the Casa team or Casa depending on how you want to pronounce it, Casa team on a number of small fixes to restore full compatibility with their excellent multisig services, the team said in a release note.
Casa users will now be able to properly perform health checks for their setups, and there's minor visual bug fixes involved in niche scenarios. Users can upgrade their firmware by initiating the update from Envoy, which can be found at foundation.xyzforward/envoy, e n v o y. Alright. That's it for the stories that I had lined out for you today. I'm going to go ahead and kill it here. I gotta go take my wife to an appointment, so I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Market Updates and Amazon's Nuclear Investment
