Join me today for Episode 879 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
- CSW Has Assets Frozen
- 4.9 Million Gamer Accounts Cheated for Bitcoin
- Options Expiry Came and Went: Nothing Happened
- Judge Excoriates SBF's Character in Sentencing Brief
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
Peruvian Hot Sauce
https://delgadosfuego.com/btc
nostr: @Delgado's Fuego
npub: npub1jz5pyzg6zrqqtqafslg95r8hhp2wcnr7zupgm20a9spd7pagxklqzfvd4d
DedBird: @delgadosfuego
Articles:
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/03/29/uk-judge-freezes-craig-wright-assets-to-prevent-him-evading-court-costs/
https://decrypt.co/223957/call-of-duty-players-bitcoin-swiped-cheats-malware
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/03/29/sbf-is-going-to-prison-for-25-years/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-above-69-000-largest-quarterly-options-expiry
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/asias-microstrategy-metalpha-on-hedging-for-sustainable-crypto-investing-
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/labelbase-v2-0-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/unchained-ios-app-launched/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/bdk-v1-0-0-alpha8/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/geyser-launches-week-13-24/
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Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Ant, 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 two 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 11:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the, what, 29th, god, of March already, 2024.
And this is episode 879 of Bitcoin and the circle p. That's right. Circular economy for plebs. Circle P is open for business. Today's vendor is Delgado's Fuego. That's right. Delgado's Fuego. What is it? Well, it's Peruvian hot sauce. Total transparency, haven't tried it. However, they take Bitcoin for their product. They take Bitcoin for their product. Therefore, I've put them in the circle pea. Okay, so yes, it's true. I haven't tried the product. Bad me bad me. I get it. I understand. However, they're a vendor that takes Bitcoin for their product, and that is one of the things that is necessary for any of the plebs to be in the circle p. You have to sell your goods and or services for Bitcoin. Otherwise, strange things are not afoot for you at the circle p. So you can get to Delgado's fuego. In fact, I got a website for them up here. Hold on for a sec. And let me throw this up in the, in the chat. This is their, this is their webpage.
And as you can see their landing page is about Bitcoin. It's got the the stupid, you know, r bit r slash Bitcoin Bitcoin wizard for when it was magic Internet money. It was one of the very first memes about Bitcoin, and that is on their front page. And the first question they ask is what is Bitcoin? This is on their front page. It's not their product on their front page. This is one of the reasons why they're in the Circle P. So, let's see. Well, let's scroll down here and see if we can get to some of their, oh, there there's some some pictures of their salsas and their hot sauces. Remember, this is Peruvian hot sauce Delgado's Fuego. You I I will have their in pub for Noster down in the show notes as well as their dead bird site or their dead bird handle is at delgados fuego all one word that's delgados fuego.
Give them a try because, you know, hey, they take Well, they take Bitcoin for their product. So that's why they're in the Circle P today. Now, let's get on into the news. I'm going to start with this one. Everybody's favorite person in the space Craig Wright Apparently Craig Wright actually had assets. Like real tangible assets. I still I don't know man The jury for me is basically out on whether or not he's actually got assets, but according to judge James Miller the guy that basically told the world that no, this guy is not Satoshi. The dude is is is just no, he's not Satoshi.
He has apparently frozen his assets to prevent him evading court costs. Hey Kidwarp, I see you there in the, zap stream chat. Thanks for being here and thank you for the 420. Thank you for the 420 Satoshis. I appreciate it. Let's get into this one out of CoinDesk. A UK judge imposed a worldwide freezing order on £6,000,000 or $7,600,000 worth of Craig Wright's assets to prevent him moving them offshore and evading costs arising from a court case that found that he was not indeed, as he claimed to be, the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. In a March 14th deposition or decision, Judge James Miller, who heard the case brought by COPPA, the crypto open patent alliance, also found that Wright didn't author the Bitcoin white paper nor the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.
Shortly after that, Wright notified Companies House, the UK's register of companies, that shares of his RCJBR holding company had been transferred to De Morgan, which is a company organized under the laws of Singapore, so he started immediately shuttling around what he owned. According to a judgment dated Wednesday and posted on the website of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, COPPA's cost amounts to about 6 point £7,000,000 sterling. That is an that is an expensive court case to bring. £6,700,000 just to put this dude in a chair in front of a judge to find out once and for all what the hell was going on with this guy and they did. He's not satoshi.
Quote, understandably, that gave rise to serious concerns on Copa's part that doctor Wright was implementing measures to seek to evade the costs of consequences due to the loss at trial, Mellor wrote in the judgment referring to the share transfer. Quote, doctor Wright has a history of default in relation to orders for the payment of money, Miller wrote before detailing some examples. Quote, COPPA has a very powerful claim to be awarded a very substantial sum in costs. I consider there is a very real risk of dissipation. And dissipation in this particular case just means that he's dissipating his assets from one form to another so that nobody can get their hands on them. But again, I have to reiterate that I am very shocked that this man had the amount of capital that is being frozen here.
$6,700,000 worth of of cash is that's a lot of assets. I still I don't know man. There's something about this that smells funky. I just don't believe that Craig Wright has that much money. I Was actually very surprised that he's got any money left at all, but apparently he does have some assets What if only that there was a way if only there was a way that we had some kind of vehicle that you could you know, store your wealth and your items of value in that would be able to be non confiscatable and transferable across all manner of, you know, country borders.
I wonder what that would I wonder what that would look like? Oh Yeah, yeah, we've already got that and he claimed to be the inventor of it and Has not actually used it in any way shape form or fashion to secure this particular side of his wealth, which I'm still surprised that he even has, against seizure and or freezing of the assets. Kind of makes you wonder, This dude I swear this dude is just and I I guarantee it This is not the last you've heard from this guy. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. Everybody thinks it is or not everybody. There's a probably a few people that are thinking along the way the lines that I'm thinking. But for the most part, I think the majority of people in the Bitcoin space actually believe that this is done.
I don't think he's finished. I don't know why I say that, but there's something about his personality and the fact that he still has apparently a considerable amount of assets left that may actually be in Bitcoin. Who knows? But I just don't think he's done. I I think we're gonna hear more from this guy somewhere else maybe not in court cases but in magazine articles. He's probably gonna write a book. He's probably gonna be claiming the same shit over and over and over and over and over again. And even if he cannot do it through the court system of the world, he's going to do whatever he can to make the lives of everybody at Bitcoin Core miserable.
He's just not done. I just I just think that we should not think that he's done. Okay, so we're done with that for now. Now we gotta go over to video games. Anybody ever play Call of Duty? I used to play that shit all the time. I played the very first iteration for hours at a time. The very first iteration, it was back when it was when Call of Duty first came out, it was about World War 2. You started out the game by landing on the beaches of France during d day, and it was an awesome game. It it was. It was an awesome game. Their play their, their, head to head combat mode and their group combat mode was awesome. It was really vibrant. I loved playing that game. It's gotten to the point now where they're glamorizing, you know, torture of people, which I don't like, but whatever.
It's still being played around the world. And in this particular case brought to us by Jason Nelson out of decrypt.c0, we've got this one. Call of duty players have their Bitcoin swiped thanks to malware, but it's not what you think. K? Hold let's be just hold on to your hats. Call of Duty players seeking out third party cheating software to manipulate the popular first person shooter game were among the victims of a targeted phishing attack cybersecurity VX Underground said on Wednesday. The attack also targeted players seeking pay to cheat software for use on Activision's Blizzard's battle dot net the PC platform for games like World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
The cheat software installed cryptodrainer malware onto the user's computer and could be used to gain access to information to swipe coins from their Bitcoin wallets. Over the past couple of days, we have become aware of malware targeting gamers, VX Underground said on Twitter. More specifically, a currently unidentified threat actor is utilizing an information stealer to target individuals who cheat with pay to cheat types of applications in video games, end quote. According to VXUnderground, the crypto draining malware potentially impacted more than 4,900,000 accounts in total, including nearly 3,700,000 battle.net accounts, over 560,000 Activision accounts, and about 117,000 elite pvpeer, pv peers accounts. Crypto wallet drainers refer to malware that once installed, targets a user's hot wallet either installed as an application on their computer or browser extension. In January, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky warned Mac users of an exploit targeting Bitcoin and Exodus wallets.
VX underground said the drainer in this case targeted Electrum Bitcoin wallets specifically, but acknowledged that the exact amount stolen is unknown. Quote, the scope of the impact is so large, and in a bizarre twist of fate, Activision Blizzard is coordinating with the cheat providers to aid users impacted by the massive information stealer campaign, they said. Also included in the malware attack were cheat provider, unknown cheats, and Phantom Overlay, which had 572 1,000 and 1,365 compromised accounts respectively. As vx underground explained, Phantom Overlay was alerted to the attack by users who reported unauthorized purchases. Quote, when elite pvpeers was approached by Phantom Overlay administrative staff about the compromised accounts, elite PVPers confirmed they have identified 40 1,000 valid user accounts that have been compromised, VX Underground said.
A spokesperson for Activision Blizzard emphasized that the attack was not just related to their games and platforms and is not directly related to their own servers. There have been claims that some players' credentials across the broader industry could have been compromised from malware from downloading or using unauthorized software. Well, honestly, that's always been the case, but whatever. Activision Blizzard servers remain secure and uncompromised. Our priority is always player account security. If players believe that they have clicked on a suspicious link, get in touch with us and we'll help you out, basically, is what they're saying. At the time of writing, VX Underground still does not know how the attackers delivered the malware. But, traditionally, malware comes through malicious websites, phishing emails, or messages that install programs on the victim's computer after being clicked.
Other forms of malware, for example cloned websites, drain wallets after the victim signs a transaction in their own browser wallets, unwittingly giving the hackers access to their funds and NFTs. Like, I give a shit. Well, about the NFTs. Anyway, on Tuesday, the oh god the founder of Bitcoin Ordinals project Ordinal Rugs said they were the victim of a wallet drainer phishing attack targeting the Bitcoin rock Discord server, where thieves stole 1.47 BTC Around $103,000 and 4 BTC, which is around $208,000 worth of ordinal inscriptions from the wallet of pseudonymous founder, Archon.
Quote, no funds or accounts or logins related to the Ordinal Rug site were affected. This was just my own personal wallet, and I only have myself to blame here. Needless to say, I will not allow this to happen again. Yeah. Bullshit. Okay. One of the things that caught my attention is that they they talked about Macs, you know, Macintosh computers. And I wonder if this has something to do with the m one and m two chip security issues that I brought to you on Wednesday. Right? If you were if you were here on Wednesday, you you were listening to me talk about that. So that is I wonder about that because because if it's true that this was an outbound attack or rather an inbound attack to computers that have the m one m two chip, then that would verify that inbound people can attach to the problem with these 2 chips from Apple and indeed get people's, you know, basically break cryptography.
Now I won't get into it because I did that on Wednesday. In either event, that is one of the issues. The other issue is the scope of this attack. This is huge. I mean, this there's a lot of freaking people. Where where were the numbers? Let's get to it. The numbers, 4,900,000 accounts in total across at least 3, if not 4, different websites. And when I mean website, I mean like battle.net, their set of servers for Activision. Right? Or, no. I mean, not Activision for Blizzard. And then Activision has their own set of servers. So I don't really mean website. I mean, their whatever it is that you connect to when you're playing these games online. And 4,900,000 people or accounts is nothing to sneeze at.
This is this is an one of probably even though the amount of money isn't the kind of money that we've seen in other attacks, the amount of users I think that this is one of the largest attacks ever. Now this gets real important real fast when we consider that games and video games are moving towards this model where you're able to use other currencies instead of their own in game currency. And that's going to progress, and it's not going to stop. More and more gaming companies are just gonna fold. They're gonna go screw it. We you know, the our token is worthless compared to what people actually want. We'll just take a cut of that through transaction fees and more and more and more game companies are gonna start doing this, which increases what? The surface area of the attack.
So 4,900,000 could turn into 10,500,000. It could turn into 20,000,000 real quick, unless they put a lid on this shit. So this is a very dangerous situation to be a part of. How do you protect yourself against it with your Bitcoin? Cold storage on a device that you do not use to connect to the computer that you're gaming with. Use a different device. Like I use a cold card wallet that's a device but I never connect that cold card wallet to my computer I connect it directly to my node my Bitcoin full node and then I actually use the the feature that allows me to sign in a different spot and then put the signature for alright. Well, I I create the transaction on my computer that I do use for gaming when I whenever it is that I get time to gain. I take the SIM card that that transaction transaction is on and then I shove it into my cold card and then I sign that transaction offline.
Then I take the SIM card back out of my signing device my cold card wallet. I put it back over into the wallet software that I'm using on my computer that I use for gaming and now I have a signed transaction that's ready for broadcast. Nowhere did my keys touch the actual Internet and that's what's really important. So please, please, please, if if you're ever wondering why the hell you would actually wanna go through all this rigmarole of doing stuff like, you know, getting a hardware wallet and doing cold storage and doing all that stuff. It's because of shit like this, because this shit is not gonna stop. In fact, it's gonna get a lot worse. But it got a lot worse for Sam Bateman fried. It certainly did. I'm actually surprised that he got as much time as he did. What am I talking about? SBF trial. He got sentenced to 25 years.
CoinDesk and Cheyenne Lignan and Nicholas Day are co writing this one. Sam Beckman fried is going to the pen. He won't be spending time in a maximum security facility, and he'll be placed as close to his family in the San Francisco Bay Area as possible, but he is going to prison. And he'll be there for the next 25 years. He was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison yesterday, nearly 6 months after being convicted on a host of fraud charges. The sentence is lengthy, but it could have been much worse. It's only a quarter of the 105 years recommended by the Department of Probation and roughly half of the 40 to 50 year sentence prosecutors pushed for at the New York court, which was overseeing the case to impose.
That said, it's also much higher than the 5 to 6.5 year sentence Bateman fried and his lawyers were hoping for. The defense relied on a combination of arguments, most importantly, that no one actually lost money in the FTX collapse because the estate has pledged to pay them back and character statements about Bankman Fried to support their conclusions that it was essentially unfair to compare their client to other stone cold financial assassins. I love it. As lead defense attorney Mark Mus Bukowski put it, like Bernie Madoff and Carl Greenwood. And nobody knows who the hell Carl Greenwood is, including myself. Kaplan tossed out the first argument as bunk, saying he rejected entirely the defense's argument that no one was hurt in the collapse and describing it as misleading, logically flawed, as well as speculative.
The assertions that Bankman Fried had a heart of gold, that he was motivated solely by altruistic impulses and was a beautiful puzzle with a terrible sadness at his core were equally unpersuasive to Caplet. Oh my god. It's like bad writing for a fucking Hallmark movie. I swear to god. So too were attempts to use Bateman Fried's autism diagnosis as an explanation for some of his poor choices, including, you know, attempted witness tampering. In Kaplan's eyes, Bankman Fried's effective altruism was an act. Instead of a gentle, souled, awkward math nerd his lawyers and family attempted to paint him as. The Bankman Fried of Kaplan's courtroom was power hungry, a liar, someone drawn to reckless gambling, who'd insufficiently expressed remorse for his crimes and had an exceptional flexibility with the truth.
Wow. Quote, when he wasn't outright lying, he was often evasive. Hair spitting, splitting, dodging questions and trying to get the prosecutor to reword questions in ways that he could answer in ways that he thought would be less harmful than an actual truthful answer to the question that was posed to begin with, he said. I've been doing this job for close to 30 years. I've never seen a performance quite like that. Well, honey, you ain't seen Craig Wright in court, so buckle up, pal. Caplan pointed out 3 instances of perjury during Bateman Frights trial testimony taking care to stress repeatedly that they were not the only instances just enough to make his point.
Kaplan seemed particularly struck by Carolyn Ellison's testimony that Bankman Fried was drawn to coin flips, that he was willing to take enormous risks as long as there was a minuscule chance that he would succeed. Quote, in other words, a man willing to flip a coin as to the continued existence of life and civil civilization on earth, if the chances were imperceptibly greater that he would come out with that catastrophic outcome that's really a leitmotif in my judgment of this entire case Kaplan mused Though Mukasey or Mukasey and his awkward math nerd client had been sufficiently deterred by his 6 month stint in a Brooklyn jail to prevent him from ever committing another financial crime, Caplan again disagreed, arguing that a longer sentence was necessary to deter Bankman Fried from committing another serious financial crime.
Bateman Fried is persistent, Kaplan said, and, quote, a great marketing guy who already used his skills and drive to attempt to shift the media narrative surrounding his case. Quote, it doesn't take much imagination to see the outlines of the campaign, Kaplan said. The risk that this man will be in the position to do something very bad in the future is not a trivial risk. It's not a trivial risk at all, end quote. At the end of the day, the criminal justice system in this country can enjoy the support of the public only if, on the whole, people think it works fairly. That's what we depend on. If that's not happening, we're back to trial by combat folks.
Trial by combat. No shit. Alright, so there's a little bit more to this particular, to the story, but that's what we that's I've given you what we need to know. 25 years in the statement of this judge basically telling us that he understands what we already knew, that's a relief. That's an actual honest to God relief for me that somebody other than just me and the people I hang out with on Noster Understand the gravity of the situation and just what a menace a person like Sam Bateman fried really was and still is according to the judge, which is also good to hear. But, again, this judge has never been in a trial courtroom with Craig Wright.
And until that day occurs, this is going to be the person that he's going to look at as the most untruthful person he's ever had to deal with. But Craig Wright makes Sam Bankman Fried look like he's trying to get out of, you know, getting caught for stealing a sucker from from a neighborhood store. Craig Wright, nobody seen anything like that ever. Not in even including this judge has no idea what is actually out there when it comes to lying, so there's that now Oh, let's see. Where we at? Okay. We've got a red candle, but that came well after the expiry on all those, you know, all those, futures contracts because they expired this morning.
We've got this one from Zoltan Vardy from Cointelegraph. Bitcoin trades above 69,000 following the largest quarterly options expiry in history. Bitcoin price remained above 69,000 on March 29th despite the market experiencing the biggest quarterly Bitcoin futures options expiry event in history. Hao Yang, the global head of derivatives trading at Bybit Exchange told Cointelegraph, quote, we have experienced we have experienced the largest option expiration in history for both Bybit and Derabit as well. People may roll over or unwind their hedging position during the expiration time, and the action of unwinding may have a small impact on the price movement in the very short term, end quote. Over $15,100,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency futures options expired on Deribit on, well, today at 8 am UTC according to a March 28th expos by Derabit.
Of the $25,400,000,000 represented the notional value of just Bitcoin options expiring at a put to call ratio of 0.84 with a max pain price potential of $51,000 All that to say that the this is the largest options expiry in the history of cryptocurrency and it looks to me like it's also the largest in the history of Bitcoin itself as the only asset that actually makes any difference ever. And yet, we have we're still holding at $69,450. I think the futures market is being buoyed by the installation of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, and that's what it was supposed to do.
I've we've talked about it before and you've heard other people talk about it as well. It doesn't make sense to have quote, unquote, a commodity, have futures options and contracts and ETFs wrapped around it without a spot Bitcoin ETF to buoy the other side. But now that we have them we're starting to see the effect of what happens when you have spot as well as futures contracts So, this will be an interesting dynamic to watch play out as time rolls on. But first we need to move on over to Asia. Bitcoin Magazine Yi Wei Wang has this one, Asia's micro strategy meta or sorry, Met Alpha on hedging for sustainable investing.
Met Alpha Technology Holding Limited provides qualified investors and institutions with boutique crypto wealth management services as a rising star in Asia, akin to MicroStrategy. Adrian Wang, CEO, founded the company on a mission to build a sustainable crypto ecosystem with effective hedging solutions in an industry known for its boom and bust cycles. With the right application of derivative products, investors can earn higher and lose less when the market is in turmoil. Yeah. Right. Whatever. The company changed its name from Dragon Victory International Limited and is backed by the ant what? Ant Alpha Technologies Limited, the world's leading blockchain financial services. In the past year, Met Alpha not only built a stronger trading, research, and compliance team in house, but also sealed numerous partnerships such as Lite Litecoin Foundation, NextGen Digital Venture, GRVT, ParaX, and many, many more. As a Nasdaq listed company, Metalpha holds type 4 and type 9 licenses.
1 is for advising on securities, and the type 9 is for asset management, through its wholly owned subsidiary, LSQ Capital Limited by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong. The emphasis on compliance paid off when the SFC granted an uplift on the type 4 license. Met Alpha and LSQ Capital have been actively working with the SFC on the type 4 license uplift. With the uplifted type 4 license, in addition to offering securities advising services, LSQ Capital is now able to issue analysis and reports on virtual assets to qualified investors. So why is this even important? Well, let's look at the differentials between Met Alpha versus MicroStrategy.
While Met Alpha shares many similarities with MicroStrategy, key differences remain in the business model, the service locations, and the products. Met Alpha's revenue is highly growth focused in a bull market as Bitcoin price increases resulting in balance sheet expansion and trading revenue increases. In a bull market, a more active user base generally results in a higher subscription rate. Therefore, the company's revenue and scale experience high growth in a bull market. While MicroStrategy is headquartered in the US, Metalpha is based in Hong Kong.
Recent web 3 policies promoted by the Hong Kong regulators have proven effective and forward looking. It is a reasonable or it is reasonable to anticipate the digital assets industry will also bloom in 2024 as Hong Kong fully embraces Bitcoin ETFs, and other milestone innovations. But on a product level, Metalfa offers bespoke hedging solutions and derivative products to qualified investors and institutions. Compared to MicroStrategy, Met Alpha's business model is expansive, covering not only Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also other mainstream cryptos upon request. The company offers a fully customized investing and trading experience to its customers.
So why I'm bringing this to you is to let you know that what's going on in Asia is starting to really explode. Now it's been fairly explosive over the past few years, but that was basically with altcoins and ICOs and other bullshit that you really don't want to lay your hands on. But now Asia is starting to focus in on Bitcoin. Yes, they're also focusing they're going to focus in on Bitcoin number 1 through 5. But as far as the ICO craze and the altcoin stuff, it's almost over. That part is almost done. That fad has almost run its course. So now it's gonna be Bitcoin and shit coins 1 through 5, which are going to include Dogecoin.
I'm sorry I'm sorry for you. I I don't like it myself, but it is what it is, so I might as well be prepared. But Asia is a massive market. And if they start and and they're already at one point or another, I think it's South Korea is about to get their own spot Bitcoin ETF. If it's if it's not South Korea, then it's Hong Kong. That's going to open up floodgates on the other side of the planet. So we got MicroStrategy, we got players like Met Alpha that are starting to crop up in Asia and starting to get big, by the way. These are not small potatoes.
And, of course, you've got BlackRock and the other 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States. I I I'm nothing but bullshit at this point. Absolutely nothing but bullshit. And from those numbers, we will run other numbers. Okay. Futures and commodities. Oil, West Texas Intermediate is up over 2 points to $83.11. That's gonna put some serious inflation pressure in play. Brent Norsee is likewise up almost 2 points to $87 a barrel. Natural gas is also up 2 full points to a buck 75 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline, summer driving season's coming, and you can tell because it's up almost 2 points, $2.72 All of your shiny metal rocks are also doing well because they're also hedges against inflation.
1.9% increase for gold, and gold is looking square in the face of $2,254. Silver is up 1 and a half. Platinum is up 1 and a half. Copper is up a quarter. Palladium is up 3.23%. We will forego agriculture and I will get into livestock. Live cattle is up over a point. Lean hogs are up 0.73%. Feeder cattle are up a quarter. Legacy markets are reacting to the fact, I believe, that oil prices are continuing to rise, which are signaling inflation. We're seeing some depression on prices in the Dow, but it's down only scant. However, it's still sitting at 40,140, which is basically an all time high.
Essentially, it's an all time high. S and p is down also scant. Nasdaq is down a quarter of a point. S and p mini is the only thing in the green, 0.34% to the upside. Bonds are relatively mixed. Most yields have increased except for the 20 30 year bonds. 30 year bond is yielding 4.34% and the 20 year 4.45%. Clark Moody's dashboard, 69 440. We're 20 away from 420. $1,370,000,000,000 of market cap. There's 19,000,000 667,492.99 Bitcoin in circulation. Over the last 20 2 sorry, 2016 blocks, the hash rate is averaging 594.8 exahashes per second. Average fees per block are 0.23 BTC.
The halving estimate is still for 4 2024. And as Kid Warp reminds us, it would be fascinating if the price of Bitcoin was 69420 on 4 202024. That's a hell of a palindrome, man. It's a hell of a palindrome. Block space that is being devoted to ordinals stands at 1.6%. So maybe maybe the wind have been sucked out of the sails of all the idiots sailing the seas of, you know, cheesy ass crap. 179 blocks carrying a 119,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear high priority rates of 26 satoshis per vbyte. You get in at low priority for 17, and anything under 4 is gonna be purged from mempools around the world. From hedgehogs and machankura, episode 878, we've got Arceus BTC boosted me 2,718 stats. Said He streamed 720 sats and boosting for your testing. Hope it's all working.
Show notes all working now too. Thank god. Finally, after 5 years. I still don't understand what the hell was going on with SoundCloud, but it is what it is. James 420 with 420 says, David, you fucking legend. The having on 422 holidays in 1. 420, bro. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 337. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pgs with a 100 sat says, the show notes are looking gorgeous for the first time. Sorry for the all caps coming right from Nostra to boost on fountain. Dude, I appreciate it. Pies with a 100 finishes us out with thank you, sir, no thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news You can use I'm just gonna throw these up here as I go for the second part of the show. Label based version 2.0.0 self hosted option, automated output management, seamless synchronization, and more.
Labelbase is a label management service for Bitcoin transactions and addresses. It supports BIP 329, which is a format for unifying unifying labeled data. The goal of the project is to offer a convenient solution for managing labels associated with Bitcoin transactions and addresses across wallets as well as other tools. Quote, we're thrilled to announce that the next version of label base, our pioneering open source Bitcoin BIP 329 label management platform is now live and available for installation on your own system. Legacy version users, transition smoothly to the new version by visiting legacy.labelbase.space We recommend exporting your labels from the legacy version and importing them to the self hosted or the new platform for an enhanced experience.
Thanks to a generous grant from OpenSats, we've overhauled the core system, integrated automatic synchronization with Electrum as well as mempool while also enhancing the user interface and experience. For a detailed installation guide, you can find it at github.comforward/labelbaseforward/labelbaseforwardblastadbob. I did the story now that the show notes are working, you're gonna be able to pull this directly up from the show notes and you can go to all these places by yourself. So what's new? Well, automated output management label base automatically updates spendable outputs using Electrum and converts their valuable to fiat currency based on mempools currency records, which helps you keep track of your bitcoin holdings effectively.
You can have easy import and export. You can import the label data from various wallets in and export your Bitcoin labels in BIP 329 format, including encrypted labels as 7z archives. Seamless synchronization. Sync your Bitcoin labels across various platforms and services for consistent access and management. Additionally, a REST API is available to facilitate easy integration with other systems and services. Efficient label management so stay organized with features like seamless transaction labeling bulk and background operations, hashtags, and easy label rectification, flexible hosting options.
Choose between self hosted and cloud hosted solutions to fit your specific needs. On demand support. You can benefit from our integrated on demand opt in support chat, ensuring your privacy and providing assistance when needed. Yeah. When you're do using their chat, you might wanna be very very careful of what information you put into that chat. I don't know these guys, but they are being funded by OpenSat. And the reason that that's important for a trust model is that there's 9 people at least that I know of that sit on the board of open sats as to who they're going to fund.
And most of them most of them I've known about for quite some time. I do trust them. There's always gonna be a trust model in the human experience. You can't get away from it. It's gonna be impossible. But be that as it may, why is this important? Why label your transactions? It's going to be important. It's important today, but it's going to continuously increase in importance. You're gonna need to know where the Satoshis came from, and you're going to use that to figure out when when it's time to send satoshis to buy something or or transfer somewhere, you want to keep track of where these things came from and where these things are going and you want that history.
And what this is doing what Bitcoin is forcing us to do is is to keep track of not only all of our money at once but various different piles of money. When did you buy it? When did you sell it? At what point is the government going to, you know, ask you for capital gains tax? Without that labeling information, it becomes very very difficult to figure out when you bought it, when you sold it, when you transferred it, how old it is, how young it is, labeling helps. Now I use Spectre. That's one of my that is one of the wallets that I use when I'm constructing transactions. I use Specter. Why? Because they allow you to label your transactions.
I have never heard of this before. Okay? This, what is it? This, label base? Yeah. Label base. Haven't heard of it before, but it seems very interesting. And it's definitely something I'm gonna look into because that may be helpful in the future. So if, you have ever wondered how the hell you're gonna keep track of all this shit, you're gonna do it through labels. Whether it's with these guys or somebody else. Now Unchained has launched their iOS app. It's a bitcoin native financial service company offering collaborative custody, multi signature wallets trading inheritance individual retirement accounts and loans for Bitcoin holders.
So now they've they've built this thing that they've had on as a website for years years and chain capitals out there in Austin. I think that they run out of the Bitcoin Commons area. I've I've I've known about these guys for years and I do trust them. Now I haven't used any of their services because I haven't needed to. But I mean, this is Parker Lewis's out fit from way back. Now Parker Lewis has left and he's gone to do something else, but Parker Lewis is one of the people in the space that I do respect the most. He has never shitcoined as far as I can tell. He has never done anything that has taken money out of the mouths of anybody else and therefore, I do have a tendency to trust this guy. So if you've ever if you're an unchained, you know, capital you or an unchained user with they changed their name from unchained capital back to to unchained sometime last year, I think if you were a user now, you can use it on your smartphone.
So there's that. Now b d k version 1.0.0 alpha 8 has been released. That's the bitcoin development kit. So if you're developing it for bitcoin, this is for you. The BDK libraries aim to provide well engineered and reviewed components for Bitcoin based applications. The Bitcoin devkit developers are in the process of releasing version 1.0, which is a fundamental rewrite of how the entire library works. The incremental biweekly release migrates the API to use the rust Bitcoin fee rate type It fixes partially signed Bitcoin transaction finalization to remove extra Taproot fields and fixes blockchain scanning, stopgap definitions and documentation.
They fixed removing the extra Taproot fields when finalizing the partially signed Bitcoin transaction AKA PSBT and defined and documented stop gap. They've migrated, to Bitcoin, the fee rate and let's see what else is here. Is anything else of definition? No. But if if you are a developer out there in the space and you're using the BDK, it's highly recommended that you start using the version 1.0.00alpha8 release. So there's that one. And finally, last one up today, new on geyser. BTC ISLA, s 19 hash board cheater, m k one, public pool for start OS and more.
So I'm just bringing this to you because if you forgot about Geyser, it's a fundraising site like GoFundMe. Except you can use Bitcoin. That's important. So there's like let's say, so like so there's a fundraising by BTC ISLA and the group that's doing that is called Satoshi's Legacy. Let's see what they say. They say, my name is Isabella Santos, and I am the cofounder of Get Based, a Bitcoin media company. In February 2024, I packed my bags and I moved to Isla Mujeres, an island with about 22,000 people. My goal is to transform this island and give its people the freedom that's been taken from them. And to lead this Bitcoin revolution, I'm gonna need some help. Because as of right now, it's me against the island.
Okay. So if, you know, if you wanna like dive into her geyser campaign, you can go do that. And let's see. Yeah. Let's let's dive into that geyser campaign just so that we can see what the interface looks like. And of course, you guys won't see it, because you're listening. But it's geyser.fundgeyser.fund. Geyser.fund. And it looks like she's already raised a little over 3,000,000 satoshis. She is 27% of the way to what she wants to do and it looks like milestone 3 that she's talking about here is to hire a teacher to teach English.
So these guys speak Spanish. She wants them to learn how to speak English. I myself think that it's important for us for those of us that are all in the Western Hemisphere. I think it's important to learn how to speak Spanish. I really do. And it's not just because a whole bunch of people are coming up into the United States from Central and South America. However you wanna think about that, you think about it however you want. I cast no dispersions. Right? I not on on how you think about it anyway. I've got my own thoughts, not for public consumption, at least not at this time.
I think it's important to learn Spanish so that as Bitcoiners, we can spend more time conversing with the people that really truly need Bitcoin technology in their lives. I really do think that we should be going down to be able to go down to Costa Rica and El Salvador and be able to at least have functional knowledge of how to hold small conversations with the people in their native tongue. It's better than forcing them to learn English because honestly, English is kind of a jacked up language. When you actually look at how it's it's constructed, it's very confusing language.
It's probably easier for us to learn Spanish. I'm using Duolingo just because my wife decided And if you have something that you want funded, you might wanna consider looking at geyser.fund. Again, that is geysergeyser.fund, and they it it works with Bitcoin, and that's important. Alright. That's gonna do it for the morning roundup. Dad says jokes Yesterday, I went to a DIY place to get manure for my garden, but they were out of stock. I wasn't taking shit from anyone that day. That's a good dad joke. Okay, so I think the first part of the show demonstrates that it's possible that it's possible, that justice might have prevailed.
Maybe. Maybe in this case. My problem here in what I'm talking about, just to reiterate, is that Craig Wright got $6,700,000 worth of his assets, which I didn't know that he had any left, seized or at least frozen by the court by judge Miller so that he wouldn't be able to not pay his debts, which he has a tendency to do. He does not pay the court cost. He does it when he gets ruled against, which is almost every single time, he doesn't pay what he what he owes. So judge Miller froze $6,700,000 of his accounts so that COPPA can recoup their, you know, very, very, very my god. I had no idea they spent that much money on that court case, but 1,000,000 of dollars on that court case. And COPPA needs to be refunded so that they can continue the good fight.
Alright? And then we have the little kid, basically the little liar, the guy that's destroyed more lives than you can count Because yes, he did destroy lives. Nobody that got hosed out of FTX is getting anywhere close to the amount of their money back. The big players will, but if you were one of the smaller guys, you're hosed for life. There is no payback. No matter what the little shit says. He gets 25 years. So he's gonna be cool in his heels in club fed. And from what I read, it's actually a true club fed. He will not be inside with hardened criminals, and he's gonna be closer to mommy and daddy. Be that as it may, he is going to be spending at least 21 years of those 25 even with good behavior because this is the way this particular thing was structured.
For every year of good behavior, he gets 54 days taken off of his sentence. Doing the math, he if he's good every single year for 21 years, he will get out in 21 years. And like I think it's like 21 years 8 months. So we might be going into the weekend thinking that justice has finally worked and that therefore we can trust it. Don't. Do not. This, in my view, is an aberration. Maybe it's because the justice system views the world of Bitcoin, whether it's Craig Wright or this little idiot with his autism medication walking around as unimportant and they just don't give a shit. Therefore, justice can go ahead and function. But when we're talking about Ross Ulbricht, and I'm talking to the asshole that decided to get up in my shit on Noster yesterday about how he was definitely needing the justice that was given to him because he killed a child by giving him a hot load of heroin.
Yeah, that guy. And chances are good, you didn't see this. So I'm going to just tell you just a little bit about it. I basically wrote something free Ross and free Assange as a quote when I re noted out Jack Dorsey's well his note about basically, you know, Ross Ulbert. Free Ross man get him out of there and this guy comes back and Has the fucking balls to say that Ross got what he deserved because a kid bought drugs on the Silk Road and died because he got a hot load or some bullshit like that. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna look for something because I think that this is this is more important than than even eyelid on.
Let me see if I can find this thing. Alright. I'm gonna go over here. Let me get over to my Primal I'm using Primal today, and go over to my notifications and see if I can easily find this thing Yeah, here we go So this is what I wrote yesterday in response not to the guy himself, but just in general, like its own it was his own note. I wasn't replying. I wasn't quote noting him. I'm just basically saying this all by itself. If you think that it's Ross Ulbrich's fault that you're really doing what you're really doing is denying that it's your fault for everything.
It's called chained liability, And it's simply a way to fill out prisons and get fines and it's bullshit. You buy drugs and die, there are only 2 people to blame you and the guy who sold them to you. It is not the drug dealers landlords fault that you died because he was renting an apartment to the dealer that allowed the dealer to deal the drugs out of the apartment. It's not the construction company's fault for building the apartments that you died doing the drugs bought from the renter of 1 of the apartments. It is not the developer fault for putting together the deal and hiring the construction company and so on and so on and so on and so on ad infinitum.
No one is coming to save you, so stop being a fucking pussy. That's the note. And that was written just completely in response to these people that continuously think that Ross Ulbricht actually deserves what he got. And I'm never going to understand the inner workings of the people that actually fucking think this. It's infuriating beyond all measure of the word. Ross Ulbricht built a website. He did not deal the drugs to the kid. The kid got on the website bought drugs from somebody else not Ross Ulbricht And then whatever it is that he got a hold of apparently killed him. And then there's the other people that think that Ross Ulbricht did that whole, you know, murder for hire thing. All those charges were dropped. So if you're still thinking that that's in play, that hasn't been in play for like 5 years.
Right? I mean, that's that that's so old it's not even funny. So if you said, well he was he was hiring people to murder somebody. Bullshit. He never did that. That was a lie said by federal investigators to get this guy into even more trouble than he already was. They gave him 2 life sentences plus 40 years. What more do you fucking want? It's not his fault. Because if it was his fault, then everything is your fault. Because it's called chained liability. If I can prove that there's a connection to you between you and something else that caused something else that caused something else that caused something else that caused something else ad infinitum to kill somebody or basically steal their property or make their lives miserable, then it's your fault because you're connected to the chained liability. In this particular case, Ross Ulbricht has chained liability because he built a website.
And 2 people decided to do some illicit shit that resulted in the death of 1 party. Because the the thought is, in chain liability, that because Ross Ulbrich facilitated this transaction between these two individuals that he has the liability. And that's not true. I could have just as easily sold a case of 7 up to a diabetic on his website and nobody would give a shit. Nobody would care. I poisoned this dude with type 1 diabetes that he was dying from and already had 2 feet chopped off and one of his arms gone because that's what diabetes do and is half fucking blind, and I sell him some 7 up. Nobody's gonna come after me. Nobody's gonna care.
Not just because it's not illegal, but because nobody's gonna care. But yet yet now now we care. Now we care. So if I built a website that facilitated sugary snacks being sold to diabetics, if I actually said that that was the purpose of the website, I could see it. But if I just built a website where marketplace meets the market and they do something and some some market maker decides that he wants to sell sugary shit to diabetics, that's his issue. That is not my issue because I built a website that facilitated it. Etsy.
I guarantee you, in the early days of Etsy, drugs were sold on Etsy. There probably still are. You if you know the the code words, you can probably still buy drugs on Etsy. Same goes same is true for Craigslist. Probably even Angie's list, even though it's not really a marketplace. It's for contractors. But, you know, if my contractor might wanna come to over to my, shop and pick up some lumber and maybe drop off a pound of coke, who knows? I could have facilitated that through Angie's List. See, but is it just Angie's list that's the problem or Craigslist or is it Ross Ulbrich's fault? Why is it not AT and T's fault? Why do I say AT and T? Well, they they're they've they've provided the phone lines that the information from Ross Ulbrich's website, Silk Road, was traveling over. How come AT and T is not at fault?
They provided the communication infrastructure for that kid to buy that drug from that dude on Silk Road. And if it wasn't for AT and T being there providing that infrastructure, this transaction never would have occurred, would it? No. So but where does AT and T what's being transferred? What's being transferred along some of these lines? Some of them are electrons. Some lots of them are photons because we're moving over, but those photons are generated by something that was eating electrons to be able to generate the light that is being pulsed and and and used as information carriers. Right? Oh, well then why isn't the power companies, why isn't it their fault?
They're connected to AT and T, which is connected to to Silk Road, which is connected to Ross Ulbricht, which apparently made and facilitated this transaction that killed this poor kid. Why is the electric company not involved in this? Why don't they have chain liability? And better yet, where does the electric company get their power? Many of them buy them buy their power from power production places. Whole companies that just sell power from power generation units that they built. They they they have the capital expenditure to put in all the stuff that pipes natural gas and burns it and makes steam and drives generation for electricity. And then the power company buys that power and then they sell that power to AT and T, which facilitated the drug transaction between the kid and the dude that sold the drugs.
So it's it's the power generation folks fault for killing this child. Is it not? But it gets better. Who loans the power generation company the money to be able to build all the capital infrastructure? The capital intensive infrastructure that it would take. A bank. Why aren't the banks at fault? Do you see where how how change liability as a concept is fucking stupid? Anybody that's out there that actually believes that there's chained liability is somebody who is not ready to take a hold of their own Bitcoin. They're not prepared to take personal responsibility for their own actions.
That's why I muted this motherfucker. And he was following me too. I don't even know if he listened I don't know if he listened to the show or not. I don't I don't really care. If if you're listening to the show, you know who you are. Fuck you, dude. You have the audacity to tell me that I'm not gonna make it. He literally said not gonna make it because you believe that it was the kids fault. It was the kids fault, as well as the drug dealers fault. Ross had nothing to do with it. Just like the AT and T had nothing to do with it. Just like the power company had nothing to do it. Just like the banks that allowed the capital infrastructure to be built to produce the fucking electrons in the first place to do it. And it goes on and on and on. We could get to the federal regulators.
Go right up the chain to Biden himself, not that he's not guilty of a whole bunch of other stuff. It doesn't matter. Biden doesn't have anything to do with this kid offing himself with a hot load of freaking heroin. If you're somebody who believes that chain liability exists and should be prosecuted, then at one point or another somebody is going to find you and they're going to prosecute you. They're going to take your shit. They're going to take your life and you're gonna be the one who doesn't make it. Because you don't know anything about what personal responsibility actually means.
That kid, he could have been 10 years old, needed to take responsibility for his actions. Oh, but he's too young. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit that he's too young. You wanna blame the parents? Fine, I guess, go ahead. But that's another issue of chain liability. In fact, that one's so murky, that one I might actually see. That the parents are sort of at fault for not actually talking to their children time and time again about how dangerous this crap is. And that no matter who offers it to you or how the hell you wanna get it, you don't wanna have it. You don't wanna take it. You don't wanna smoke it. You don't wanna inject it. You don't wanna have nothing to do with the people that are around it. I do that to my kids all the time. I'm always telling them. It's like, this is just bad shit. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of your money. It's a waste of your life.
So at this point, if one of my children decides to buy a hot load on the Internet and gets themselves killed, will I be sad? Absolutely. I will be fucking heartbroken. But it's not my fault. I did my part. I did the best that I could not just once, but several times over the span of their lives have I talked about this and other things. Personal responsibility means that you understand that Ross Ulbricht is not to blame. Chained liability means you're a slave. Have a good weekend. It's good Friday. Happy Easter to you all. I will see you all 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.