Join me today for Episode 959 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Santa Monica Ready to Embrace Bitcoin
- Blackrock BTC ETF's Options Play
- Kamala Better for the Corn??
- Riot Looks to Have Won Over Bitfarms
- Samurai Wallet LIVES! as Ashigaru
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/23/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-options-to-set-stage-for-gamestop-like-gamma-squeeze-rally-bitwise-predicts/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-amendment-coinbase
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Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 9:0:5 am Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 23rd day of September 2024.
And this is a palindrome episode 959 of Bitcoin. And we're gonna get right into it because I got stuff to do. Bitcoin Magazine, Vivek Sin, is writing Santa Monica Bitcoin office case study to be presented at the CMRTA annual conference. Let's find out about some of this. Proof of workforce, joined by Santa Monica Vice Mayor Lana Negrete, will showcase the Santa Monica Bitcoin office at the upcoming California Municipal Revenue and Tax Association, the aforementioned CMRTA. Their annual conference is going to happen on October 9th through 10th. They are going to present a case study on the Innovative Municipal Office, which is the first of its kind in all of the United States, according to Vivexan, launched in July of 2024 after a unanimous city council vote.
The Santa Monica Bitcoin office aims to educate residents about Bitcoin's potential while identifying industry partnerships to support economic recovery and job creation. Proof of workforce is excited to share our experiences and insights with other municipal leaders at the CMRTA conference, said founder Dom Bey Already though, our early initial work or through, sorry already through our early initial work there are many valuable lessons learned and opportunities that have emerged Vice Mayor Negrete added, quote, we have received an overwhelming amount of interest and positive engagement as we continue to learn about Bitcoin as a community This is kind of weirding me out man I'm not expecting this The presentation will highlight challenges and opportunities in implementing the novel office it will offer lessons for other municipalities considering similar initiatives the CMRTA conference which convenes municipal finance experts from across the state of California covers topics such as personal branding, regulatory updates, ballot measures and emerging issues like Bitcoin Proof of Workforce coordinates the Bitcoin office at no cost to Santa Monica The nonprofit provides Bitcoin education and adoption resources for workers, unions, pension funds, and cities.
Okay. So what so what we've got here is the mayor of Santa Monica kinda showcasing proof of workforce at their tax association annual conference. This is California. What the hell is going on? Because Bitcoin is definitely not is definitely not something that I would have figured would have been something that people in California or at least at the at the governmental level whether city, county, state, or state. I just it just doesn't seem it I don't know, man. It's kind of confusing me. However, I'm going to take this as good news that at least somebody in this case the vice mayor of Santa Monica anyway maybe not the mayor but the vice mayor yeah is is taking an interest in learning more about Bitcoin and presenting this entire thing at the California Municipal Revenue and Tax Association and if you've got that's what this is right so California municipalities like the cities their revenue and tax offices are going to this CMRTA so this is where revenue comes from for a city this is this is their tax base so they're starting to become interested in Bitcoin and my question is what do they see in Bitcoin that is making them not pooh pooh it but actually want to engage with it. At least at least engage to the point of trying to find out more about it.
I honestly can't think of this as anything but, you know, relatively good news for Bitcoin. This other thing that I'm about to read though spooks me a bit. BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Options to set stage for a GameStop like gamma squeeze rally Bitwise predicts. Now, I'm not really concerned as much about this what sets the stage for a gamma squeeze in a rally in Bitcoin price. No, no, no. My problem here is Bitcoin ETF options. It's a derivative and you know me I don't like derivatives because they don't actually produce anything useful. One of the exciting developments from last week was the US Securities and Exchange Commission's nod of approval and the listing of physically settled options tied to BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, the Ishares Bitcoin Trust.
There is consensus that the Ibit options, which still needs to be greenlighted by the Options Clearing Corporation and the Commodities Future Trading Commission will further help draw institutions to the crypto market. The crypto community, however, seems split on how it would affect the Bitcoin market volatility. Per Bitwise Asset Management, gamma squeeze, a rapid price rally catalyzed by options market dynamics, could become a feature of the Bitcoin market following the debut of the iBit options. So, more about the gamma squeeze. To understand the gamma squeeze, readers must know how options work.
Options are derivatives that allow the buyer the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy and represents a bullish bet on the market, while a put option represents a bearish bet. Options gamma is a metric that gauges how an option's delta or the sensitivity of the option's price to movements in the underlying asset changes for every $1 move in the underlying asset's price. When investors buy a lot of call options anticipating a price rally market makers who are mandated to maintain a net market neutral exposure end up on the other side of the trade holding large amounts of short call positions often called short gamma exposure as such they purchase the underlying asset as the market rallies because they are obligated to deliver the underlying asset to the call option buyer the hedging activity puts upward pressure on the spot price causing a sharp rally like the one in shares of American video game retailer GameStop back in 2021 per Jeff Park head of alpha strategies and portfolio manager at bitwise asset management iBit options offering regulated leverage on a supply constrained BTC will draw solid institutional demand for calls setting the stage for a big gamma squeeze. Quote, bitcoin options have negative Vanna.
Vanna, yes, v a n n a. As spot goes up, so does volatility, meaning delta increases even faster. When dealers, or market makers, who are short gamma hedge, this gamma squeeze, Bitcoin's case becomes explosively recursive. More upside leads to even more upside as dealers are forced to keep buying at higher and higher prices. A negative Vana gamma squeeze acts like a refueling rocket, Park said on Twitter. Park explained that Ibit options will eliminate the jump to default risk that has kept institutions at bay allowing bitcoin synthetic notional exposure to grow exponentially.
JTD refers to the risk of an issue or counterpart defaulting suddenly before the market can adjust for the increased risk. He expects a strong investor bias for longer duration out of the money or higher strike calls once the options go live. With Bitcoin options, investors can now make duration based portfolio allocation bets especially for long term horizons. There's a good chance that owning long dated OTM calls as premium spend will give investors more bang for their buck than a fully collateralized position that could drop by 80% over that same period, Parkes said. During an interview with CoinDesk, Bitwise Asset Management's head of research for Europe, Andre Dragos, voiced a similar opinion saying quote, the consequence of this would be a price spike similar to what we have seen with GME, which is akin to the short squeeze in futures, end quote.
He added that the upside volatility from the so called gamma squeeze could be more pronounced due to the fact that Bitcoin's supply is capped at 21,000,000 BTC. But the other side of the story is this. Per Greg Magadine, director of derivatives at Amber Data, the gamma squeeze could be seen as a perfect bullish storm characterized by Republican candidate Donald Trump's victory in the upcoming US elections and federal reserve rate cuts grips the market. However, over the long run, increased institutional participation via the ETF and ETF options is likely to dampen volatility. Quote, institutional flows in particular are countercycled or countercyclical.
Portfolio managers tend to trim exposure through quarterly rebalancing, selling appreciated assets when bitcoin rallies too much, Magadine said in a weekly newsletter. Bitcoin's realized or historical volatility has been trending lower since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange listed Bitcoin futures back in December of 2017, opening doors for traditional institutions to take exposure to the cryptocurrency. Besides, institutional flows via Ibit options could temper Bitcoin's upside, implied, or expected volatility according to Magadini. Quote, another well known effect of these flows is their impact on implied volatility.
Institutions buy protective puts and sell covered calls, which dampens the upside implied volatility. Implied volatility, or investors expectations for the degree of price turbulence over a specific period, is influenced by demand for options. Upside implied volatility picks up when investors buy calls and vice versa. Sophisticated investors use the covered call strategy to generate additional income on top of their ETF holdings as observed in the gold market. Keep that in mind, the gold market. The strategy involves selling a higher strike ETF call option and pocketing the premium while holding a long position in the ETF.
The short leg puts downward pressure on the implied volatility. Crypto traders have been setting up covered calls through Derabits Bitcoin options, leading to lower implied volatility over the past few years. Quote as institutional ownership grows their behavior has a greater impact and this means that ultimately institutional adoption leads to lower volatility in Bitcoin this is merely a continuation of the clear structural decline in bitcoin's volatility Magadini summed up. Alright, so it's Magadini's argument that I'm more concerned about than this gamma squeeze to the upside like we're gonna follow GME. Because if you looked if you followed GameStop, it went up, sure. But, I mean, there's no there's first of all, there's just GameStop is a shitty store.
It just is. Have you been to a GameStop as of late? If you haven't, go walk around. Go into a GameStop and look at what it is that is the underlying asset value of the company, which is their branch stores. Right? The whole reason they're in existence is what's inside their stores. Go look at what's inside their stores and you tell me if this shit was worth the upside spike that we saw in 2021 when people were getting all freaky about meme stocks. Right? Roaring Kitty and all that kind of stuff. It's not worth it. Bitcoin is a completely different animal.
What bugs me here is that as we add more derivative products that this gentleman, what's his name, gambabini, Magadini yes Magadini what he's suggesting here is that the way that this is these put and call options but you know on this Bitcoin ETF that is BlackRock's Ibit, the Bitcoin Shares Trust, is it going to dampen volatility. I honestly, for half of me, doesn't think that that's so bad. The the part of me that understands what volatility is understands that the people that depend on volatility for trading, which I don't do, they're the ones that are kind of gonna get they're not gonna be making as much money here in the future. But I honestly don't give a shit because they're they're continuous buying and selling of these assets and like just begging for volatility whether it goes up or down. They're begging for any kind of volatility not just upside volatility because they can they can play that market on the way up as well as on the way down right yeah Magadini is saying that this entire structure that's about to come in with these options on the ishares Bitcoin trust is going to dampen that volatility in a way I think that that may be kind of good for Bitcoin but the other side of that story is that we're talking about derivatives and they don't really do anything And I think that there's another type of dampening that could occur with these derivatives. And that's just sideways price action.
And this is one of the things what I hate about derivatives in any market. Any market doesn't matter if it's gold oil does not matter don't care every derivative when they come online screws up the market of the underlying asset itself that that's why I'm having kind of an issue with this this options derivative bullshit coming out of left field for the Bitcoin iShares bit or the iShares Bitcoin Trust. So that's sort of what I'm getting at. And it's like structurally, we don't really need to go through how derivative works.
All you really need to know about a derivative is that it doesn't have anything to do ultimately with the underlying asset itself. It has everything to do with the perceived price and that price movement up or down of that asset. That's why I don't like derivatives. They don't make any sense to me because I'm not a derivatives trader. That's why they don't make sense to me. But we've got another thing going on with BlackRock. Right? This isn't derivatives. This has everything to do with the underlying asset itself because BlackRock Bitcoin ETF has demanded a 12 hour BTC withdrawal time from Coinbase. And Zoltan Vardy is gonna get into the weeds with Cointelegraph.
The world's largest asset manager has filed for an amendment for its Bitcoin exchange traded fund following widespread investor concerns over Coinbase's on chain settlement practices. BlackRock has filed an amendment to require Bitcoin withdrawals within 12 hours from the ETF's custodian Coinbase according to a September 16th filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BlackRock wrote in the filing quote subject to confirmation of the foregoing required minimum balance Coinbase Custody shall process a withdrawal of digital assets from the custodial account to a public blockchain address within 12 hours of obtaining an instruction from client or clients' authorized representatives.
The new amendment follows widespread industry concerns about Coinbase's ETF custodial practices. Increasingly, investors have been asking Coinbase to provide on chain proof of the Bitcoin bought on behalf of the spot ETFs. Coinbase is the custodian for 10 out of the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs and 8 out of the 9 recently approved shitcoin number 1 ETFs in the United States. Despite the newfound institutional inflows from Bitcoin ETFs, BTC prices have been stagnating for the past 3 months. This is partly what prompted widespread investor concerns that Coinbase was buying paper BTC or bitcoin IOUs on behalf of bitcoin ETF issuers, hence suppressing the bitcoin price. However, all ETF transactions are ultimately settled on chain despite not publicly sharing all ETF addresses according to Brian Armstrong, the cofounder and CEO of Coinbase.
In response to investor concerns, Armstrong wrote, quote, if you want audits, Deluitt audits us annually. We're a public company. I doubt our institutional clients want people dusting all their addresses. And it's not our place to share for them. This is what it looks like if you want a bunch of institutional money to flow into bitcoin wow what a juvenile response from from naked mole rat out there anyway so not sure what this is all about oh wait hold on no no no no no and burns we process are ultimately settled on chain. Institutional clients have trade financing and OTC options before trades are settled on chain. This is the norm. All funds are settled in our prime vaults within about one business day.
This is what it looks like if you want the bunch of institutional money to flow into Bitcoin. As for cbBTC, yes, you're trusting a centralized custodian to store the underlying BTC. We've never claimed otherwise. And they're talking about the their stable coin, cbbtc, which I guess stands for Coinbase wrapped BTC or something like that. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Investor concerns started intensifying in August after Coinbase first teased the development of a new wrapped Bitcoin called Coinbase BTC, which we just talked about. Since their launch in January, however, the ETFs have amassed over $59,200,000,000 worth of cumulative on chain holdings according to Dune Data.
BlackRock's Ibit remains the largest Bitcoin ETF. Despite the increasing accusations, ETFs weren't the reason behind Bitcoin's recent price slump because, or rather, caused by native Bitcoin holders according to Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg. And he writes, quote, I get why these theories exist and people want to scapegoat the ETFs because it is too unthinkable that the native hodlers could be the sellers. But they are. All of the ETFs and BlackRock have done is save BTC's price from the abyss repeatedly. Okay. Maybe that yeah. Who knows if if Eric is is actually functionally and tangentially correct on that one.
This has always been an issue for many many people in the space is Coinbase and and are they performing fractional reserve Bitcoin holding? Where they say they have this amount of Bitcoin but they really don't. They don't have anywhere close to the amount of Bitcoin that they say they have for either all of their customers or some of their customers or whatever. Whatever's on their balance sheet that they're showing that like like their custody of, BlackRock shares. Yeah. The the BTC for BlackRock's iBit, the underlying asset, is it the case or is it not the case that Coinbase indeed has the amount of Bitcoin that they say they do?
The charge has been that they don't, but there's really not been a whole shred lot of evidence. Note that I haven't seen a shred of direct evidence that says, look, Coinbase does not have this. I'm not saying that that they're above board. I mean, if anybody was gonna do pull some kind of hanky stuff like that, it'd be Coinbase, honestly. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, but I need evidence that they don't hold the amount of Bitcoin that they say they hold. However, I'm going to kind of side with the people who say that they don't. Because because Brian Armstrong has not been forthcoming with what is actually occurring at Coinbase and their custody, I'm going to go ahead and side with the people who say and suggest, even though there's no evidence, that they do not have the amount of Bitcoin that they say they have.
And this is the problem that people have been saying that this is how you this is how you suppress prices because they're because they're not really buying the amount of bitcoin that they say that they're buying That has to be the reason that the price isn't spiking up with all these purchases in this these iBit and the the rest of the ETFs. Right? Because coinbase custodies 10 out of the 11 of them. So 10 out of the 11 or, you know, 10 out of the 11 of all the ETFs have all of their Bitcoin custody with Coinbase. So, therefore, it would stand to reason that on all these buys that the that BlackRock and all the rest of these guys do, you would see more upward price action than we have been seeing.
And yet, this is not the case. And the the people that are saying that this must mean that Coinbase doesn't have the Bitcoin, This is their evidence, but it's it's tangential evidence. It's smoking gun at best. Right? Still still can't get a conviction on that. So, the only way to really remedy this is to make sure that if you have your Bitcoin on exchanges, that you start considering how to get your Bitcoin off of the exchanges. That's just to protect yourself. You're not gonna be able to protect BlackRock. And honestly, screw them. I don't care about them. If they wanna play this game, they can play this game. But you don't have to play this game. And if you're concerned at all that Coinbase may be telling you that you have an amount of Bitcoin but they don't really have that much in reserve for you then I would very much consider getting a hardware wallet and going through the motions on how to get your Bitcoin off of Coinbase or any other exchange and start that process sooner rather than later.
And what comes later? Well, this is interesting. This is out of out of decrypt. It's about Kamala Harris. I don't like this woman. I don't. So do not think that I'm reading the following because all of a sudden, I want Kamala to be president. I don't. But this seems kind of an interesting thought experiment. So here it is for your Monday. Could Kamala Harris be better for Bitcoin than Trump? Van Eck thinks so. Oh, good. Matt DeSalvo, again, decrypt. Many Bitcoiners have their fingers crossed that crypto friendly Donald Trump will win the US presidential election in November. The former president has painted himself as the bitcoin loving candidate.
But what if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is the better overall option for the orange coin? That's an idea VanEck analysts floated in a report this week. Their reasoning is that a Harris presidency would continue the economic policies that they believe would weaken the US dollar and push Bitcoin adoption higher. The 2 analysts argued in July that major world economies could turn to Bitcoin as a result of noticing the endemic flaws of fiat currencies. The democrat in the White House would be unlikely to cure the current financial problems in their view, quote, we would argue that a Harris presidency might even be better for Bitcoin than a second term for Trump because it would, in our view, accelerate many of the structural issues that drive Bitcoin adoption in the first place.
The Thursday report by Matthew Siegel and Patrick Bush argued they added that as inflation and currency devaluation continue challenging fiat monetary systems bitcoin can serve as a vital hedge The 2 went on to say that Trump would be better for the digital asset ecosystem as a whole, not just Bitcoin on its own. Quote, conversely, we believe a Trump presidency is generally bullish for the entire crypto ecosystem as it would likely produce more deregulation and business friendly policies, perhaps particularly so for crypto entrepreneurs who regulators have increasingly scrutinized in the past 4 years.
Ex president Donald Trump used to call the crypto space a scam, but has since embraced NFTs, Bitcoin, and has even launched his own shitcoin decentralized finance project called World Liberty Financial. Still don't understand that. That was a dumb fucking move. Just Wednesday, the Republican candidate used Bitcoin to pay for burgers at Pub Key in New York City. It's the beginning of a new era, he said after using the technology. Vice president Harris, on the other hand, has said very little about the crypto industry. Some bigwigs in the industry, like billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have hinted that her campaign is taking more of an interest in crypto, but the democratic candidate has yet to make her views or plans public. Okay. So, yeah, I know it's a hard pill to swallow probably for most of my most of my listeners. But is it possible? Is it possible that they're right?
Now, understand, this has nothing to do about any other world issues. This is just about Bitcoin. And what happens to, like, the rest of the world issues under a Harris presidency versus a Trump presidency? I honestly don't know. I real I I wish I could tell you could just flat out tell you that it's gonna be worse under Harris. It probably will be. I I can't I can't see them I don't think they're gonna stop bombing brown people in the Middle East. At least Trump tried. At least he tried to get out, but the Pentagon, for whatever reason, was able to overrule him and he didn't immediately fire the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whoever what the whoever is command of the of the freaking Pentagon. Right?
You should it's like, no. What do you mean no? No, we're getting out we're getting out of all these places. The Pentagon said no, you're fired. Get somebody in there, somebody else in there. That has always disturbed me that they that the Pentagon overruled the commander in chief when it came to a military decision of getting us the hell out of the Middle East. And then the way we finally got out of the Middle East was just basically an embarrassment. But we're still bombing brown people in in all these places in the Middle East. It's still happening. I don't think Harris is gonna stop that.
I don't know, man. The whole thing the whole thing is bad. The fact that we have that this is our choice of individuals and the fact that this has been our choice of individuals for this long, not just these 2. I mean the whole I mean, Mitt Romney? Really? I mean, Bush and Obama and Clinton. These guys are all they're like all in that little club that George Collin used to talk about and we ain't in it. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Woah. Oil taking a hit today. Two points to the downside. I wonder what happened because it was up earlier this morning. $69.56.
Brent Norcey down 1 3 quarters to 73.17, but natural gas spiking 5.79 percent to the upside. 2.57 per 1,000. Gasoline down over 3 points, back down to $1.97. I guess maybe China isn't gonna burn as much gas this week. It's always China right now. Gold is up a quarter of a point, but silver is down 1.6, but still chilling out at almost $31 an ounce. It's been doing well lately. Platinum is down 2 2 points and copper is moving sideways while palladium is down 3 and a half. Biggest winner in ag today is coffee, 5.2% to the upside. Biggest loser is sugar, 1.1 to the downside.
Live cattle up 0.3%. Lean hogs up 2 thirds of a point. Feeder cattle up a quarter of a point. The Dow is moving sideways but in the green. S and P is up 0.17%. Nasdaq is up a quarter as is the S and P Mini. $63,250 is a price of your Bitcoin. That is a $1,250,000,000,000 market cap, and we may buy exactly 24 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,757,746.12 of. And fees have dropped to local record lows. 0.04 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are only 92 blocks in the mempool, carrying 180,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of 3. Count them 1, 2, 3 satoshis per v byte. Low priorities is the same.
Hash rate is looking at 705.1 exahashes per second. So we're off of the highs of 743 that I said on Friday, but we're still over 700. It's pretty good, man. It's not bad. Alright. So from good ideas, Friday's episode 8 no, 958 of Bitcoin and the Bitcoin potter with 5,000 sets says ITM, which is short speak for in the morning. The Bitcoin potter with another 5,000 says a u is a standardized server rack vertical height equivalent to 1.75 inches So a 2u server would take up 3.5 inches of rack space. 3u would take up 5.25. A standard server rack typically has 31u of vertical space. Right now, mining rigs are big blocks of machines and have not been standardized to fit in existing server footprints.
This means custom solutions are used to house the mining rigs, usually large industrial warehouse style shelving which become costly when at scale however developing a standardized mining rig would result in a far more efficient usage of space due to existing server rack systems The fact that they are direct liquid cool is the reason that the machines are now able to be standardized because the machines get very very hot. And, since the servers will be stacked on top of each other, the only way to mitigate all that expelled heat would be via conduction through a liquid medium as opposed to convection via air.
A bonus of this method should be that the machines themselves should be orders of magnitude quieter. If Hutt and Bitmain are successful and this isn't vaporware, it could potentially rev, be revolutionary in the Bitcoin mining space. And the Bitcoin potter comes back with a second with a third 5,000 sat donation. However, he he writes the exact same note. So, the Bitcoin potter, let me know if you accidentally sent me that last 5,000 sats and we can work out a way that I can get them back to you. So, slow slow with 21 100 says if you're scared, well, look, they shut the world down with a common cold to win the power. What do you think they will do to stay in power?
Yeah. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. The Bitcoin HODL writes, in your episode, you asked if the Trump title mattered and I just wanted to let you know that I listen every day no matter what you put in the title, but that's just me. I appreciate that. Pies to Pleb with a 100. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Alright. Bitfarms and Riot Platforms have reached a settlement in this entire saga of the takeover. So the block has it. James Hunt is writing it. Let's get into it. Riot platforms attempted hostile takeover of Bitcoin mining rival, Bitfarms appear to have come to an end for now according to a joint settlement agreement announced by the 2 firms today, Monday.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bitfarms co founder, Andres Finkelstein, has stepped down from the board with Riot's proposed independent director, Amy Friedman, a corporate governance and capital markets expert with 25 years of experience, taking his place effective immediately. Riot agreed to withdraw its amended requisition and to accept customary standstill provisions until Bitfarms 2026 annual meeting with certain exceptions. The settlement comes ahead of a special meeting of Bitfarms shareholders that was scheduled for November 6th. A special meeting will still be held virtually. However, it may be delayed as a result of an agreement to nominate an additional 5th independent director and vote on Bitfarm shareholder right plan, which Riot has agreed to vote to vote in favor of. But the companies said that it would not be held any later than November 20th.
We're pleased to announce or pleased to reach this agreement with Riot and look forward to turning our full attention to executing our growth strategy, Bitfarms CEO, Ben Gagnon, said, quote, we remain focused on diversifying the business beyond Bitcoin mining into exciting and synergistic new areas like energy generation, energy trading, heat recycling, and other high value revenue streams like high performance computing and AI. Honestly, guys, that heat recycling, that I wanna I'm keeping an eye on heat recycling because this is something that we need to figure out. Quote, this agreement represents a significant step to advance shareholder value creation at our respective companies, and we are pleased to have reached this constructive resolution with Bitfarms, Riot CEO Jason Less added, quote, as Bitfarms' largest shareholder, we look forward to supporting a reconstituted Bitfarms board and continued engagement with management.
Honestly, it looks like Riot has won. That's what that's how this reads. It it makes me think that Bitfarms is like they just don't have enough fuel in tank. So they were able to come to this agreement, but I guarantee you this is just the first step on walking down the stairs, not walking up them. And I I don't know anything about Riot. They may be a damn fine company and that Bitt Farms isn't so well run. I don't know. I don't know any of the guys at either company. But when I'm reading this, I basically sense just general capitulation and that this is a face saving move and Riot Riot won.
And that's okay because it's still still still I'm looking at this statement from Ben Gagnon, the CEO of Bitfarms, who seems to be capitulating. And when he says synergistic new areas like energy generation, energy trading, and heat recycling, I I am very interested in that. High performance compute? I'm kind of interested in that. AI? It's, I mean, it's not that it doesn't have its uses. It does. But I don't know, man. I don't know. I think it's still too it's just kind of reeks of too much fad, you know, it's like it seems like a fad right now. And that does again, don't get me wrong. AI has its place.
It's machine learning and high performance compute and and artificial intelligence, quote unquote, they all have their place. Right? There there are certain things that we can do with these things that we weren't able to do before. The the only problem I have when especially when it comes to ai is when people say that it's going to, like, take everybody's jobs. That's not true. It will it will it eviscerate some jobs yeah but it will create entirely it will create entirely new kinds of jobs right that which I know it doesn't help some of the people that are going to lose their jobs because of AI today.
But, you know, I just I don't know what to say about that. I feel bad. I don't want that shit to happen. But we've seen it happen before, the industrial revolution. I mean, wow. You wanna talk about some people losing their jobs. But, you know, it didn't take too long for new jobs to to open up. It really didn't. Somebody had to figure out how to take care of these machines. Somebody had to go they would literally hire a guy with an oil can to go and just do the rounds, like, 3 times a day. And by the time he came to the end of his first round, it was time to start the second round. So for the entirety of his shift, he had an oil can, and he would go oil the wheels as they were spinning in whatever factory he was working at. That was a whole job all by itself, to keep the oil can filled and keep everything running and lubricated.
That was a whole job that did not really exist before the industrial revolution. So I I'm way more interested in the energy part of this, statement by Ben Gagnon Much more than the high performance compute or AI, but that's going to happen regardless of what I want. Okay. Big news here. Remember samurai wallet? It's been forked. Yep. It has. It's been forked. Ashigaru version 1.0.0 a privacy first mobile Bitcoin wallet. Ashigaru is a self custodial open source and secure mobile Bitcoin wallet that is private by design. It has been forked and built upon Samura Wallet's source code, including all the commits from Samura Wallet's master and development branches up to the 24th April, 2024.
It is available on Android. The first release of Ashigaru Open Source Projects Mobile Wallet builds directly from SamuraI Wallet's 0.99.98ii app release and their development work carried out up to the 24th April 2024. It comes with PayNEM support, onion routing over Tor, ricochet transactions, encrypted key recovery, post mix and batch spending, stealth mode via decoy launcher, peer to peer coin joins, also known as, I guess, stowaway and stonewall x2 coin control features, and an advanced fee algorithm for determining a rate from unconfirmed transactions in the mempool. For the first release of the mobile wallet, developers focused on the familiarization with the code base, assessing and testing the development changes made by Samura Wallet up to 24th April, removing all dependencies on SamuraI Wallet infrastructure within the codebase tailoring the app UI UX for dojo only usage adding some small enhancements to the UI UX assessing the PayNIM Server API interaction between client and server, and deploying a new PayNIM Server altogether.
Note: unlike SamuraI Wallet, the Ashigaru mobile wallet requires a dojo node for full functionality. Connecting to your own dojo wallet server is mandatory unless you are using the mobile wallet in an offline mode. The Ashigaru open source project does not offer a publicly accessible dojo node for users. Yeah. And if you did, you'd go to jail just like the samurai wallet guys are are like facing whatever that they're facing. Anyway, it is recommended to use dojo version, version v 1.25.0 to access all features additionally connecting a dojo running fulcrum as the indexer is advised as it offers the best performance.
There are 2 types of coin joins available to the app that can be used via QR with existing samurai users and either QR or Soroband with Ashigaru users. There is no service fee to be paid for either of these transaction types only the transaction minor fee paid by the sender or shared between the sender and collaborator to ensure transaction entropy as was stated in the blog post. So, stowaway appears as a typical Bitcoin transaction with 2 outputs but has inputs from different entities and transactions the transaction amount is not visible on the blockchain leading to multiple interpretations okay so that means kind of busting up the heuristic as people are trying to track They kind of don't have the input. So at this point, their guessing becomes even more extreme as to where these things could have come from. Right? The the UTXO's.
Stonewall X2 is a transaction involving a sender and a collaborator appearing identical to a single user stonewall with 4 outputs: spend, a decoy and 2 changes. And mixed inputs. It conceals details from observers as well as recipients. Ideal for spending to offline or non coin joined wallets. The Ashigaru open source project now hosts its own Soroban server that other wallet providers are welcome to use. We have made this available only via, excuse me, a hidden service for now. And users will therefore need to be a little bit more patient due to bandwidth limitations, said the developer.
And there's a whole bunch of stuff in the change log, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that's just flat ass brand new. But the biggest news here is that samurai lives. Samurai now lives as Ashigaru. Will that be the only Fort Samurai version? I don't know. Probably not. But we at least have 1fort fully functional samurai wallet that is coming back into the wild. And the second that these guys offer a dojo of their own or anything like that, that's the only way that they're gonna stay out of jail is to not offer any service at all. If you wanna run a dojo, then by all means you can do it and you can take the heat. But the developers, these people, not just these guys from from Ashigaru, all developers of everything and that I honestly believe that this kind of includes Nostra developers should be at least beware and not attach your name.
Or if you do attach your name to never develop any kind of centralized service that goes along with the client that you're developing or develop a centralized service that other clients can connect to that you advertise as such. Right? I I honestly think that that's the only way. The only way forward for true decentralization is that any coordinator or coin join or relay or any of these things that kinda need to be the back end of whether it's a wallet, a lightning network service, a nostril client, those need to be run by us. They need to be run by the users.
There's there needs to be many many many many many of them. We need to really look at the entanglements of a mycelial network in the forest soil and see just how there's no way you can follow a thread. There's no way. There's no way, no way, no way that you could start at the origin the spore that landed in the soil and followed the mycelial thread all the way to the other end of the network, you will not make it. The heuristics are too broken because there's so much mass to comb through. And that's what I keep that's why I keep bringing back the the mycelial network.
We need to figure out a way to look like the mycelial network in a forest floor, to be as massive as the mycelial network in the forest floor, to be as resilient as that mat, to be able to digest and get our nutrients from that mat. I mean, if there's any kind of logical way to mimic any structure or function of what goes on in the forest soil with mycelium from, you know, fungus, we need to be able to do that. We need to become the fungus. I'm serious because our lives and our freedom all depend on it. I think it'll come, but I'm gonna keep harping on it until I'm satisfied that we are we have it fully in our head that we need to look like a fungus. Okay. Now kibo.money is satinomics version 0.4.0 but rebranded.
Now I talked to you about satinomics before, And now, they've changed their name to Kibo, specifically kibo. Money. Kibo, k I b o, by the way. Kibo, formerly Satanomics, is a bitcoin only on chain data generator and visualizer that's fully free and open source. It's verifiable, local first, and self hostable. Quote, very pumped to finally release version 0.4.0 satanomics. Or or or should I say, Kibo, announced the project's developer. Kibo is a continuation of the free and open source satanomics project and it offers free open source and self hostable alternatives to things like Glassnode.
Try it at kibo. Money. That's kibo. Money kibo. Money. Kibo. Money. Quote, this project was started as an answer to the outrageous pricing from Glassnode and their 3rd tier which starts at $833.33 a month and that's for their 3rd tier. That's you're getting bottom of the barrel data on that shit, man. But it's a lot of work and has been worked on full time since November of 2023. It has also been operational since then without any ads, said the developer. Support the project's development here. And here is geyser.fundforward/project forward slash kibo. That's geyser.fundproject kibo. Okay. So go go find it there.
A new brand. So this is what's new. Kibo, the word, means hope in Japanese. And there's a new website made from the ground up with pure HTML, cascading stylesheets, and JavaScript, easier self hosting. The node has been removed with only Rust as the project's dependency. Many more changes and improvements to come. So, Kibo let's see what see if it changed the look of it. I'm just gonna go check it out right now. And it does look a little bit different. It's still kinda loading up here. Actually, it kinda looks a little broken. Let's see. Hold on.
Well, yeah. It's looking it's looking a little broke. I'm not getting I'm not getting anything out of this. It's all jacked up on this. And it may be because because of my brave browser. I don't know. And actually let me take the shield my brave shields down and see if that does anything. And it really didn't. Okay. So, if you're listening on Brave Browser it's not working for me. That's okay though, because it like the other one was working and I got to tell you satanomics is it has a ton a ton of data. And if you're the kind of guy that's a data hound that really wants to pull stuff apart like you would, with using the data out of glass node or something like it, you need to go check it out. It it it's probably just my old ass operating system being stupid and me being dumb for not replacing my operating system. But the minute that I do that, I lose a lot of software permanently.
A lot of software I'm going to have to rebuy. And I don't want to rebuy it. So for all those people that are like, why are you being so dumb? Because I don't want to buy I don't want to buy Adobe, Creative Suite. Well, actually, you can't buy it anymore, can you? No, no, no. Now it's all a subscription model. So when you start asking me questions like why I don't want to change my old ass Windows 7 operating system, I've got a laptop. If I need something newer, I'll use my laptop. But my desktop where I do the majority of my work, yeah, it's an old ass operating system. And it's literally because I don't want to have to rebuy all this stuff. That's a it's an expensive proposition to rebuy the amount of stuff that I've got on my computer. So for any of those people that were, you know, that were, you know, wondering why the hell I haven't changed over operating systems yet that's really why.
Yeah, I mean I'm kind of a cheapskate but it's also it's also the principle of the thing. I don't want to rent my software. I want to own the products that I use. I don't want to ask permission month over month. I don't want to have to remember that oh my god here comes another charge because you have to do it where it's recursive billing. You know, and bitcoin fixes this. Specifically, value for value with Lightning Network fixes this. We talk about streaming sats for songs. Right now, as you're listening to me, you might still be streaming me sats to listen to this podcast to support the production of this show.
Why not with software? Let's take kibo. Money. No ads there. So, what if I were able to have, like, a, to get a license from, you know, the guy that does Kibo and say look, if you want to turn on if I want to turn on like, I don't know, a premium tier, Like I can get the 1st tier for free. Totally fine. Right? But the 2nd tier, the one that's got even more data in it, I have to stream these satoshis at 1 satoshi per minute. And that's my license. That particular thing that is chilling out in that website that is like you need to attach your wallet and you need to stream satoshis. Do you want to turn on streaming? And the minute I say yes turn on streaming at 1 satoshi per minute or whatever it is 10 I don't know whatever it's gonna be you know worth to me but it's some kind of minimum like either 5 or 10 satoshis per v or well for per viva but 5 or 10 satoshis per minute and then I can unlock the second tier That's just one way to do it. Like, if I was using Adobe Photoshop, when I turn on Photoshop and I start doing stuff I should be able to get a pop up that says: Hey, you know, you don't own this thing and if you want to use it you're gonna have to start streaming us satoshis. And I doubt Adobe is gonna get into Bitcoin anytime soon, but that's just gonna cause them to be the losers. Because somebody is gonna figure this shit out on how to put a lightning wallet essentially, like let's just call it, I don't know, a cookie. A payment cookie.
I don't know what else to call it. But it's like a tracking cookie, only it's a payment cookie. And that cookie is attached to my wallet. And I can turn it on and off. And something like Kibo Money says, ah, yes you have our payment cookie. Good for you. If you would like to turn it on you can experience the full feature set of that which is kibo.money. And I say, hell yes. It's got a little button on there that says, hell yes or hell no. I hit hell yes and automatically it starts streaming satoshis. And as long as I'm my cursor is on that screen, let's say that that payment cookie is now context specific.
If I click into another window, it knows and it says stop stop use you're going to stop making streaming payments to me because you're not really using kibo.money. I see that you're out of the context of the of kibo. Money's website. And because of that, we're stopping. But I go back to kibo. Money. I put my cursor somewhere in the screen and I click anywhere on that son of a bitch and I start doing stuff. Boom. Same thing with Adobe Photoshop. I use, I use Fruity Loop Studio or FL Studio. And I pay your actually, I paid once for it. So they still operate under the old school model. But let's say they changed that and said, no. We're gonna go to a subscription model. I would be begging them for a payment cookie. And if somebody's got a better term for that, please let me know because I think that that would be good to know. But when I mean payment cookie, I mean a seat license that gives me permission to use a thing in real time while making payments from a wallet directly attached to that cookie, for lack of a better term.
If somebody can build that if somebody can build that it could be marketed to software companies for in replacement of this bullshit. Hey, we'll give you 10% off if you buy a you know 12 months at $9.99 a month instead of $10.99 a month or whatever it is. I'm sick of it. And the whole thing can be used for things like Time Magazine. Just give me a freaking paywall in that particular case and let me read the article for $25. But I'm not gonna buy a year subscription. I'm done. I'm done with subscriptions. And that's why I think the payment cookie idea is a really good idea.
Maybe one of you guys that's out there knows how to build that shit and can build it because I don't have a hope in hell of building it. And I'm not gonna sue you if you build it, but please at least give me credit or 1% of gross. I'm just, yeah, just throwing that out there. Alright, guys. Have a wonderful week, and 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 9:0:5 am Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 23rd day of September 2024.
And this is a palindrome episode 959 of Bitcoin. And we're gonna get right into it because I got stuff to do. Bitcoin Magazine, Vivek Sin, is writing Santa Monica Bitcoin office case study to be presented at the CMRTA annual conference. Let's find out about some of this. Proof of workforce, joined by Santa Monica Vice Mayor Lana Negrete, will showcase the Santa Monica Bitcoin office at the upcoming California Municipal Revenue and Tax Association, the aforementioned CMRTA. Their annual conference is going to happen on October 9th through 10th. They are going to present a case study on the Innovative Municipal Office, which is the first of its kind in all of the United States, according to Vivexan, launched in July of 2024 after a unanimous city council vote.
The Santa Monica Bitcoin office aims to educate residents about Bitcoin's potential while identifying industry partnerships to support economic recovery and job creation. Proof of workforce is excited to share our experiences and insights with other municipal leaders at the CMRTA conference, said founder Dom Bey Already though, our early initial work or through, sorry already through our early initial work there are many valuable lessons learned and opportunities that have emerged Vice Mayor Negrete added, quote, we have received an overwhelming amount of interest and positive engagement as we continue to learn about Bitcoin as a community This is kind of weirding me out man I'm not expecting this The presentation will highlight challenges and opportunities in implementing the novel office it will offer lessons for other municipalities considering similar initiatives the CMRTA conference which convenes municipal finance experts from across the state of California covers topics such as personal branding, regulatory updates, ballot measures and emerging issues like Bitcoin Proof of Workforce coordinates the Bitcoin office at no cost to Santa Monica The nonprofit provides Bitcoin education and adoption resources for workers, unions, pension funds, and cities.
Okay. So what so what we've got here is the mayor of Santa Monica kinda showcasing proof of workforce at their tax association annual conference. This is California. What the hell is going on? Because Bitcoin is definitely not is definitely not something that I would have figured would have been something that people in California or at least at the at the governmental level whether city, county, state, or state. I just it just doesn't seem it I don't know, man. It's kind of confusing me. However, I'm going to take this as good news that at least somebody in this case the vice mayor of Santa Monica anyway maybe not the mayor but the vice mayor yeah is is taking an interest in learning more about Bitcoin and presenting this entire thing at the California Municipal Revenue and Tax Association and if you've got that's what this is right so California municipalities like the cities their revenue and tax offices are going to this CMRTA so this is where revenue comes from for a city this is this is their tax base so they're starting to become interested in Bitcoin and my question is what do they see in Bitcoin that is making them not pooh pooh it but actually want to engage with it. At least at least engage to the point of trying to find out more about it.
I honestly can't think of this as anything but, you know, relatively good news for Bitcoin. This other thing that I'm about to read though spooks me a bit. BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Options to set stage for a GameStop like gamma squeeze rally Bitwise predicts. Now, I'm not really concerned as much about this what sets the stage for a gamma squeeze in a rally in Bitcoin price. No, no, no. My problem here is Bitcoin ETF options. It's a derivative and you know me I don't like derivatives because they don't actually produce anything useful. One of the exciting developments from last week was the US Securities and Exchange Commission's nod of approval and the listing of physically settled options tied to BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, the Ishares Bitcoin Trust.
There is consensus that the Ibit options, which still needs to be greenlighted by the Options Clearing Corporation and the Commodities Future Trading Commission will further help draw institutions to the crypto market. The crypto community, however, seems split on how it would affect the Bitcoin market volatility. Per Bitwise Asset Management, gamma squeeze, a rapid price rally catalyzed by options market dynamics, could become a feature of the Bitcoin market following the debut of the iBit options. So, more about the gamma squeeze. To understand the gamma squeeze, readers must know how options work.
Options are derivatives that allow the buyer the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy and represents a bullish bet on the market, while a put option represents a bearish bet. Options gamma is a metric that gauges how an option's delta or the sensitivity of the option's price to movements in the underlying asset changes for every $1 move in the underlying asset's price. When investors buy a lot of call options anticipating a price rally market makers who are mandated to maintain a net market neutral exposure end up on the other side of the trade holding large amounts of short call positions often called short gamma exposure as such they purchase the underlying asset as the market rallies because they are obligated to deliver the underlying asset to the call option buyer the hedging activity puts upward pressure on the spot price causing a sharp rally like the one in shares of American video game retailer GameStop back in 2021 per Jeff Park head of alpha strategies and portfolio manager at bitwise asset management iBit options offering regulated leverage on a supply constrained BTC will draw solid institutional demand for calls setting the stage for a big gamma squeeze. Quote, bitcoin options have negative Vanna.
Vanna, yes, v a n n a. As spot goes up, so does volatility, meaning delta increases even faster. When dealers, or market makers, who are short gamma hedge, this gamma squeeze, Bitcoin's case becomes explosively recursive. More upside leads to even more upside as dealers are forced to keep buying at higher and higher prices. A negative Vana gamma squeeze acts like a refueling rocket, Park said on Twitter. Park explained that Ibit options will eliminate the jump to default risk that has kept institutions at bay allowing bitcoin synthetic notional exposure to grow exponentially.
JTD refers to the risk of an issue or counterpart defaulting suddenly before the market can adjust for the increased risk. He expects a strong investor bias for longer duration out of the money or higher strike calls once the options go live. With Bitcoin options, investors can now make duration based portfolio allocation bets especially for long term horizons. There's a good chance that owning long dated OTM calls as premium spend will give investors more bang for their buck than a fully collateralized position that could drop by 80% over that same period, Parkes said. During an interview with CoinDesk, Bitwise Asset Management's head of research for Europe, Andre Dragos, voiced a similar opinion saying quote, the consequence of this would be a price spike similar to what we have seen with GME, which is akin to the short squeeze in futures, end quote.
He added that the upside volatility from the so called gamma squeeze could be more pronounced due to the fact that Bitcoin's supply is capped at 21,000,000 BTC. But the other side of the story is this. Per Greg Magadine, director of derivatives at Amber Data, the gamma squeeze could be seen as a perfect bullish storm characterized by Republican candidate Donald Trump's victory in the upcoming US elections and federal reserve rate cuts grips the market. However, over the long run, increased institutional participation via the ETF and ETF options is likely to dampen volatility. Quote, institutional flows in particular are countercycled or countercyclical.
Portfolio managers tend to trim exposure through quarterly rebalancing, selling appreciated assets when bitcoin rallies too much, Magadine said in a weekly newsletter. Bitcoin's realized or historical volatility has been trending lower since the Chicago Mercantile Exchange listed Bitcoin futures back in December of 2017, opening doors for traditional institutions to take exposure to the cryptocurrency. Besides, institutional flows via Ibit options could temper Bitcoin's upside, implied, or expected volatility according to Magadini. Quote, another well known effect of these flows is their impact on implied volatility.
Institutions buy protective puts and sell covered calls, which dampens the upside implied volatility. Implied volatility, or investors expectations for the degree of price turbulence over a specific period, is influenced by demand for options. Upside implied volatility picks up when investors buy calls and vice versa. Sophisticated investors use the covered call strategy to generate additional income on top of their ETF holdings as observed in the gold market. Keep that in mind, the gold market. The strategy involves selling a higher strike ETF call option and pocketing the premium while holding a long position in the ETF.
The short leg puts downward pressure on the implied volatility. Crypto traders have been setting up covered calls through Derabits Bitcoin options, leading to lower implied volatility over the past few years. Quote as institutional ownership grows their behavior has a greater impact and this means that ultimately institutional adoption leads to lower volatility in Bitcoin this is merely a continuation of the clear structural decline in bitcoin's volatility Magadini summed up. Alright, so it's Magadini's argument that I'm more concerned about than this gamma squeeze to the upside like we're gonna follow GME. Because if you looked if you followed GameStop, it went up, sure. But, I mean, there's no there's first of all, there's just GameStop is a shitty store.
It just is. Have you been to a GameStop as of late? If you haven't, go walk around. Go into a GameStop and look at what it is that is the underlying asset value of the company, which is their branch stores. Right? The whole reason they're in existence is what's inside their stores. Go look at what's inside their stores and you tell me if this shit was worth the upside spike that we saw in 2021 when people were getting all freaky about meme stocks. Right? Roaring Kitty and all that kind of stuff. It's not worth it. Bitcoin is a completely different animal.
What bugs me here is that as we add more derivative products that this gentleman, what's his name, gambabini, Magadini yes Magadini what he's suggesting here is that the way that this is these put and call options but you know on this Bitcoin ETF that is BlackRock's Ibit, the Bitcoin Shares Trust, is it going to dampen volatility. I honestly, for half of me, doesn't think that that's so bad. The the part of me that understands what volatility is understands that the people that depend on volatility for trading, which I don't do, they're the ones that are kind of gonna get they're not gonna be making as much money here in the future. But I honestly don't give a shit because they're they're continuous buying and selling of these assets and like just begging for volatility whether it goes up or down. They're begging for any kind of volatility not just upside volatility because they can they can play that market on the way up as well as on the way down right yeah Magadini is saying that this entire structure that's about to come in with these options on the ishares Bitcoin trust is going to dampen that volatility in a way I think that that may be kind of good for Bitcoin but the other side of that story is that we're talking about derivatives and they don't really do anything And I think that there's another type of dampening that could occur with these derivatives. And that's just sideways price action.
And this is one of the things what I hate about derivatives in any market. Any market doesn't matter if it's gold oil does not matter don't care every derivative when they come online screws up the market of the underlying asset itself that that's why I'm having kind of an issue with this this options derivative bullshit coming out of left field for the Bitcoin iShares bit or the iShares Bitcoin Trust. So that's sort of what I'm getting at. And it's like structurally, we don't really need to go through how derivative works.
All you really need to know about a derivative is that it doesn't have anything to do ultimately with the underlying asset itself. It has everything to do with the perceived price and that price movement up or down of that asset. That's why I don't like derivatives. They don't make any sense to me because I'm not a derivatives trader. That's why they don't make sense to me. But we've got another thing going on with BlackRock. Right? This isn't derivatives. This has everything to do with the underlying asset itself because BlackRock Bitcoin ETF has demanded a 12 hour BTC withdrawal time from Coinbase. And Zoltan Vardy is gonna get into the weeds with Cointelegraph.
The world's largest asset manager has filed for an amendment for its Bitcoin exchange traded fund following widespread investor concerns over Coinbase's on chain settlement practices. BlackRock has filed an amendment to require Bitcoin withdrawals within 12 hours from the ETF's custodian Coinbase according to a September 16th filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BlackRock wrote in the filing quote subject to confirmation of the foregoing required minimum balance Coinbase Custody shall process a withdrawal of digital assets from the custodial account to a public blockchain address within 12 hours of obtaining an instruction from client or clients' authorized representatives.
The new amendment follows widespread industry concerns about Coinbase's ETF custodial practices. Increasingly, investors have been asking Coinbase to provide on chain proof of the Bitcoin bought on behalf of the spot ETFs. Coinbase is the custodian for 10 out of the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs and 8 out of the 9 recently approved shitcoin number 1 ETFs in the United States. Despite the newfound institutional inflows from Bitcoin ETFs, BTC prices have been stagnating for the past 3 months. This is partly what prompted widespread investor concerns that Coinbase was buying paper BTC or bitcoin IOUs on behalf of bitcoin ETF issuers, hence suppressing the bitcoin price. However, all ETF transactions are ultimately settled on chain despite not publicly sharing all ETF addresses according to Brian Armstrong, the cofounder and CEO of Coinbase.
In response to investor concerns, Armstrong wrote, quote, if you want audits, Deluitt audits us annually. We're a public company. I doubt our institutional clients want people dusting all their addresses. And it's not our place to share for them. This is what it looks like if you want a bunch of institutional money to flow into bitcoin wow what a juvenile response from from naked mole rat out there anyway so not sure what this is all about oh wait hold on no no no no no and burns we process are ultimately settled on chain. Institutional clients have trade financing and OTC options before trades are settled on chain. This is the norm. All funds are settled in our prime vaults within about one business day.
This is what it looks like if you want the bunch of institutional money to flow into Bitcoin. As for cbBTC, yes, you're trusting a centralized custodian to store the underlying BTC. We've never claimed otherwise. And they're talking about the their stable coin, cbbtc, which I guess stands for Coinbase wrapped BTC or something like that. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Investor concerns started intensifying in August after Coinbase first teased the development of a new wrapped Bitcoin called Coinbase BTC, which we just talked about. Since their launch in January, however, the ETFs have amassed over $59,200,000,000 worth of cumulative on chain holdings according to Dune Data.
BlackRock's Ibit remains the largest Bitcoin ETF. Despite the increasing accusations, ETFs weren't the reason behind Bitcoin's recent price slump because, or rather, caused by native Bitcoin holders according to Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg. And he writes, quote, I get why these theories exist and people want to scapegoat the ETFs because it is too unthinkable that the native hodlers could be the sellers. But they are. All of the ETFs and BlackRock have done is save BTC's price from the abyss repeatedly. Okay. Maybe that yeah. Who knows if if Eric is is actually functionally and tangentially correct on that one.
This has always been an issue for many many people in the space is Coinbase and and are they performing fractional reserve Bitcoin holding? Where they say they have this amount of Bitcoin but they really don't. They don't have anywhere close to the amount of Bitcoin that they say they have for either all of their customers or some of their customers or whatever. Whatever's on their balance sheet that they're showing that like like their custody of, BlackRock shares. Yeah. The the BTC for BlackRock's iBit, the underlying asset, is it the case or is it not the case that Coinbase indeed has the amount of Bitcoin that they say they do?
The charge has been that they don't, but there's really not been a whole shred lot of evidence. Note that I haven't seen a shred of direct evidence that says, look, Coinbase does not have this. I'm not saying that that they're above board. I mean, if anybody was gonna do pull some kind of hanky stuff like that, it'd be Coinbase, honestly. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, but I need evidence that they don't hold the amount of Bitcoin that they say they hold. However, I'm going to kind of side with the people who say that they don't. Because because Brian Armstrong has not been forthcoming with what is actually occurring at Coinbase and their custody, I'm going to go ahead and side with the people who say and suggest, even though there's no evidence, that they do not have the amount of Bitcoin that they say they have.
And this is the problem that people have been saying that this is how you this is how you suppress prices because they're because they're not really buying the amount of bitcoin that they say that they're buying That has to be the reason that the price isn't spiking up with all these purchases in this these iBit and the the rest of the ETFs. Right? Because coinbase custodies 10 out of the 11 of them. So 10 out of the 11 or, you know, 10 out of the 11 of all the ETFs have all of their Bitcoin custody with Coinbase. So, therefore, it would stand to reason that on all these buys that the that BlackRock and all the rest of these guys do, you would see more upward price action than we have been seeing.
And yet, this is not the case. And the the people that are saying that this must mean that Coinbase doesn't have the Bitcoin, This is their evidence, but it's it's tangential evidence. It's smoking gun at best. Right? Still still can't get a conviction on that. So, the only way to really remedy this is to make sure that if you have your Bitcoin on exchanges, that you start considering how to get your Bitcoin off of the exchanges. That's just to protect yourself. You're not gonna be able to protect BlackRock. And honestly, screw them. I don't care about them. If they wanna play this game, they can play this game. But you don't have to play this game. And if you're concerned at all that Coinbase may be telling you that you have an amount of Bitcoin but they don't really have that much in reserve for you then I would very much consider getting a hardware wallet and going through the motions on how to get your Bitcoin off of Coinbase or any other exchange and start that process sooner rather than later.
And what comes later? Well, this is interesting. This is out of out of decrypt. It's about Kamala Harris. I don't like this woman. I don't. So do not think that I'm reading the following because all of a sudden, I want Kamala to be president. I don't. But this seems kind of an interesting thought experiment. So here it is for your Monday. Could Kamala Harris be better for Bitcoin than Trump? Van Eck thinks so. Oh, good. Matt DeSalvo, again, decrypt. Many Bitcoiners have their fingers crossed that crypto friendly Donald Trump will win the US presidential election in November. The former president has painted himself as the bitcoin loving candidate.
But what if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is the better overall option for the orange coin? That's an idea VanEck analysts floated in a report this week. Their reasoning is that a Harris presidency would continue the economic policies that they believe would weaken the US dollar and push Bitcoin adoption higher. The 2 analysts argued in July that major world economies could turn to Bitcoin as a result of noticing the endemic flaws of fiat currencies. The democrat in the White House would be unlikely to cure the current financial problems in their view, quote, we would argue that a Harris presidency might even be better for Bitcoin than a second term for Trump because it would, in our view, accelerate many of the structural issues that drive Bitcoin adoption in the first place.
The Thursday report by Matthew Siegel and Patrick Bush argued they added that as inflation and currency devaluation continue challenging fiat monetary systems bitcoin can serve as a vital hedge The 2 went on to say that Trump would be better for the digital asset ecosystem as a whole, not just Bitcoin on its own. Quote, conversely, we believe a Trump presidency is generally bullish for the entire crypto ecosystem as it would likely produce more deregulation and business friendly policies, perhaps particularly so for crypto entrepreneurs who regulators have increasingly scrutinized in the past 4 years.
Ex president Donald Trump used to call the crypto space a scam, but has since embraced NFTs, Bitcoin, and has even launched his own shitcoin decentralized finance project called World Liberty Financial. Still don't understand that. That was a dumb fucking move. Just Wednesday, the Republican candidate used Bitcoin to pay for burgers at Pub Key in New York City. It's the beginning of a new era, he said after using the technology. Vice president Harris, on the other hand, has said very little about the crypto industry. Some bigwigs in the industry, like billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have hinted that her campaign is taking more of an interest in crypto, but the democratic candidate has yet to make her views or plans public. Okay. So, yeah, I know it's a hard pill to swallow probably for most of my most of my listeners. But is it possible? Is it possible that they're right?
Now, understand, this has nothing to do about any other world issues. This is just about Bitcoin. And what happens to, like, the rest of the world issues under a Harris presidency versus a Trump presidency? I honestly don't know. I real I I wish I could tell you could just flat out tell you that it's gonna be worse under Harris. It probably will be. I I can't I can't see them I don't think they're gonna stop bombing brown people in the Middle East. At least Trump tried. At least he tried to get out, but the Pentagon, for whatever reason, was able to overrule him and he didn't immediately fire the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whoever what the whoever is command of the of the freaking Pentagon. Right?
You should it's like, no. What do you mean no? No, we're getting out we're getting out of all these places. The Pentagon said no, you're fired. Get somebody in there, somebody else in there. That has always disturbed me that they that the Pentagon overruled the commander in chief when it came to a military decision of getting us the hell out of the Middle East. And then the way we finally got out of the Middle East was just basically an embarrassment. But we're still bombing brown people in in all these places in the Middle East. It's still happening. I don't think Harris is gonna stop that.
I don't know, man. The whole thing the whole thing is bad. The fact that we have that this is our choice of individuals and the fact that this has been our choice of individuals for this long, not just these 2. I mean the whole I mean, Mitt Romney? Really? I mean, Bush and Obama and Clinton. These guys are all they're like all in that little club that George Collin used to talk about and we ain't in it. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Woah. Oil taking a hit today. Two points to the downside. I wonder what happened because it was up earlier this morning. $69.56.
Brent Norcey down 1 3 quarters to 73.17, but natural gas spiking 5.79 percent to the upside. 2.57 per 1,000. Gasoline down over 3 points, back down to $1.97. I guess maybe China isn't gonna burn as much gas this week. It's always China right now. Gold is up a quarter of a point, but silver is down 1.6, but still chilling out at almost $31 an ounce. It's been doing well lately. Platinum is down 2 2 points and copper is moving sideways while palladium is down 3 and a half. Biggest winner in ag today is coffee, 5.2% to the upside. Biggest loser is sugar, 1.1 to the downside.
Live cattle up 0.3%. Lean hogs up 2 thirds of a point. Feeder cattle up a quarter of a point. The Dow is moving sideways but in the green. S and P is up 0.17%. Nasdaq is up a quarter as is the S and P Mini. $63,250 is a price of your Bitcoin. That is a $1,250,000,000,000 market cap, and we may buy exactly 24 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,757,746.12 of. And fees have dropped to local record lows. 0.04 BTC taken in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are only 92 blocks in the mempool, carrying 180,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of 3. Count them 1, 2, 3 satoshis per v byte. Low priorities is the same.
Hash rate is looking at 705.1 exahashes per second. So we're off of the highs of 743 that I said on Friday, but we're still over 700. It's pretty good, man. It's not bad. Alright. So from good ideas, Friday's episode 8 no, 958 of Bitcoin and the Bitcoin potter with 5,000 sets says ITM, which is short speak for in the morning. The Bitcoin potter with another 5,000 says a u is a standardized server rack vertical height equivalent to 1.75 inches So a 2u server would take up 3.5 inches of rack space. 3u would take up 5.25. A standard server rack typically has 31u of vertical space. Right now, mining rigs are big blocks of machines and have not been standardized to fit in existing server footprints.
This means custom solutions are used to house the mining rigs, usually large industrial warehouse style shelving which become costly when at scale however developing a standardized mining rig would result in a far more efficient usage of space due to existing server rack systems The fact that they are direct liquid cool is the reason that the machines are now able to be standardized because the machines get very very hot. And, since the servers will be stacked on top of each other, the only way to mitigate all that expelled heat would be via conduction through a liquid medium as opposed to convection via air.
A bonus of this method should be that the machines themselves should be orders of magnitude quieter. If Hutt and Bitmain are successful and this isn't vaporware, it could potentially rev, be revolutionary in the Bitcoin mining space. And the Bitcoin potter comes back with a second with a third 5,000 sat donation. However, he he writes the exact same note. So, the Bitcoin potter, let me know if you accidentally sent me that last 5,000 sats and we can work out a way that I can get them back to you. So, slow slow with 21 100 says if you're scared, well, look, they shut the world down with a common cold to win the power. What do you think they will do to stay in power?
Yeah. God's death with 537. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. The Bitcoin HODL writes, in your episode, you asked if the Trump title mattered and I just wanted to let you know that I listen every day no matter what you put in the title, but that's just me. I appreciate that. Pies to Pleb with a 100. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Alright. Bitfarms and Riot Platforms have reached a settlement in this entire saga of the takeover. So the block has it. James Hunt is writing it. Let's get into it. Riot platforms attempted hostile takeover of Bitcoin mining rival, Bitfarms appear to have come to an end for now according to a joint settlement agreement announced by the 2 firms today, Monday.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bitfarms co founder, Andres Finkelstein, has stepped down from the board with Riot's proposed independent director, Amy Friedman, a corporate governance and capital markets expert with 25 years of experience, taking his place effective immediately. Riot agreed to withdraw its amended requisition and to accept customary standstill provisions until Bitfarms 2026 annual meeting with certain exceptions. The settlement comes ahead of a special meeting of Bitfarms shareholders that was scheduled for November 6th. A special meeting will still be held virtually. However, it may be delayed as a result of an agreement to nominate an additional 5th independent director and vote on Bitfarm shareholder right plan, which Riot has agreed to vote to vote in favor of. But the companies said that it would not be held any later than November 20th.
We're pleased to announce or pleased to reach this agreement with Riot and look forward to turning our full attention to executing our growth strategy, Bitfarms CEO, Ben Gagnon, said, quote, we remain focused on diversifying the business beyond Bitcoin mining into exciting and synergistic new areas like energy generation, energy trading, heat recycling, and other high value revenue streams like high performance computing and AI. Honestly, guys, that heat recycling, that I wanna I'm keeping an eye on heat recycling because this is something that we need to figure out. Quote, this agreement represents a significant step to advance shareholder value creation at our respective companies, and we are pleased to have reached this constructive resolution with Bitfarms, Riot CEO Jason Less added, quote, as Bitfarms' largest shareholder, we look forward to supporting a reconstituted Bitfarms board and continued engagement with management.
Honestly, it looks like Riot has won. That's what that's how this reads. It it makes me think that Bitfarms is like they just don't have enough fuel in tank. So they were able to come to this agreement, but I guarantee you this is just the first step on walking down the stairs, not walking up them. And I I don't know anything about Riot. They may be a damn fine company and that Bitt Farms isn't so well run. I don't know. I don't know any of the guys at either company. But when I'm reading this, I basically sense just general capitulation and that this is a face saving move and Riot Riot won.
And that's okay because it's still still still I'm looking at this statement from Ben Gagnon, the CEO of Bitfarms, who seems to be capitulating. And when he says synergistic new areas like energy generation, energy trading, and heat recycling, I I am very interested in that. High performance compute? I'm kind of interested in that. AI? It's, I mean, it's not that it doesn't have its uses. It does. But I don't know, man. I don't know. I think it's still too it's just kind of reeks of too much fad, you know, it's like it seems like a fad right now. And that does again, don't get me wrong. AI has its place.
It's machine learning and high performance compute and and artificial intelligence, quote unquote, they all have their place. Right? There there are certain things that we can do with these things that we weren't able to do before. The the only problem I have when especially when it comes to ai is when people say that it's going to, like, take everybody's jobs. That's not true. It will it will it eviscerate some jobs yeah but it will create entirely it will create entirely new kinds of jobs right that which I know it doesn't help some of the people that are going to lose their jobs because of AI today.
But, you know, I just I don't know what to say about that. I feel bad. I don't want that shit to happen. But we've seen it happen before, the industrial revolution. I mean, wow. You wanna talk about some people losing their jobs. But, you know, it didn't take too long for new jobs to to open up. It really didn't. Somebody had to figure out how to take care of these machines. Somebody had to go they would literally hire a guy with an oil can to go and just do the rounds, like, 3 times a day. And by the time he came to the end of his first round, it was time to start the second round. So for the entirety of his shift, he had an oil can, and he would go oil the wheels as they were spinning in whatever factory he was working at. That was a whole job all by itself, to keep the oil can filled and keep everything running and lubricated.
That was a whole job that did not really exist before the industrial revolution. So I I'm way more interested in the energy part of this, statement by Ben Gagnon Much more than the high performance compute or AI, but that's going to happen regardless of what I want. Okay. Big news here. Remember samurai wallet? It's been forked. Yep. It has. It's been forked. Ashigaru version 1.0.0 a privacy first mobile Bitcoin wallet. Ashigaru is a self custodial open source and secure mobile Bitcoin wallet that is private by design. It has been forked and built upon Samura Wallet's source code, including all the commits from Samura Wallet's master and development branches up to the 24th April, 2024.
It is available on Android. The first release of Ashigaru Open Source Projects Mobile Wallet builds directly from SamuraI Wallet's 0.99.98ii app release and their development work carried out up to the 24th April 2024. It comes with PayNEM support, onion routing over Tor, ricochet transactions, encrypted key recovery, post mix and batch spending, stealth mode via decoy launcher, peer to peer coin joins, also known as, I guess, stowaway and stonewall x2 coin control features, and an advanced fee algorithm for determining a rate from unconfirmed transactions in the mempool. For the first release of the mobile wallet, developers focused on the familiarization with the code base, assessing and testing the development changes made by Samura Wallet up to 24th April, removing all dependencies on SamuraI Wallet infrastructure within the codebase tailoring the app UI UX for dojo only usage adding some small enhancements to the UI UX assessing the PayNIM Server API interaction between client and server, and deploying a new PayNIM Server altogether.
Note: unlike SamuraI Wallet, the Ashigaru mobile wallet requires a dojo node for full functionality. Connecting to your own dojo wallet server is mandatory unless you are using the mobile wallet in an offline mode. The Ashigaru open source project does not offer a publicly accessible dojo node for users. Yeah. And if you did, you'd go to jail just like the samurai wallet guys are are like facing whatever that they're facing. Anyway, it is recommended to use dojo version, version v 1.25.0 to access all features additionally connecting a dojo running fulcrum as the indexer is advised as it offers the best performance.
There are 2 types of coin joins available to the app that can be used via QR with existing samurai users and either QR or Soroband with Ashigaru users. There is no service fee to be paid for either of these transaction types only the transaction minor fee paid by the sender or shared between the sender and collaborator to ensure transaction entropy as was stated in the blog post. So, stowaway appears as a typical Bitcoin transaction with 2 outputs but has inputs from different entities and transactions the transaction amount is not visible on the blockchain leading to multiple interpretations okay so that means kind of busting up the heuristic as people are trying to track They kind of don't have the input. So at this point, their guessing becomes even more extreme as to where these things could have come from. Right? The the UTXO's.
Stonewall X2 is a transaction involving a sender and a collaborator appearing identical to a single user stonewall with 4 outputs: spend, a decoy and 2 changes. And mixed inputs. It conceals details from observers as well as recipients. Ideal for spending to offline or non coin joined wallets. The Ashigaru open source project now hosts its own Soroban server that other wallet providers are welcome to use. We have made this available only via, excuse me, a hidden service for now. And users will therefore need to be a little bit more patient due to bandwidth limitations, said the developer.
And there's a whole bunch of stuff in the change log, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that's just flat ass brand new. But the biggest news here is that samurai lives. Samurai now lives as Ashigaru. Will that be the only Fort Samurai version? I don't know. Probably not. But we at least have 1fort fully functional samurai wallet that is coming back into the wild. And the second that these guys offer a dojo of their own or anything like that, that's the only way that they're gonna stay out of jail is to not offer any service at all. If you wanna run a dojo, then by all means you can do it and you can take the heat. But the developers, these people, not just these guys from from Ashigaru, all developers of everything and that I honestly believe that this kind of includes Nostra developers should be at least beware and not attach your name.
Or if you do attach your name to never develop any kind of centralized service that goes along with the client that you're developing or develop a centralized service that other clients can connect to that you advertise as such. Right? I I honestly think that that's the only way. The only way forward for true decentralization is that any coordinator or coin join or relay or any of these things that kinda need to be the back end of whether it's a wallet, a lightning network service, a nostril client, those need to be run by us. They need to be run by the users.
There's there needs to be many many many many many of them. We need to really look at the entanglements of a mycelial network in the forest soil and see just how there's no way you can follow a thread. There's no way. There's no way, no way, no way that you could start at the origin the spore that landed in the soil and followed the mycelial thread all the way to the other end of the network, you will not make it. The heuristics are too broken because there's so much mass to comb through. And that's what I keep that's why I keep bringing back the the mycelial network.
We need to figure out a way to look like the mycelial network in a forest floor, to be as massive as the mycelial network in the forest floor, to be as resilient as that mat, to be able to digest and get our nutrients from that mat. I mean, if there's any kind of logical way to mimic any structure or function of what goes on in the forest soil with mycelium from, you know, fungus, we need to be able to do that. We need to become the fungus. I'm serious because our lives and our freedom all depend on it. I think it'll come, but I'm gonna keep harping on it until I'm satisfied that we are we have it fully in our head that we need to look like a fungus. Okay. Now kibo.money is satinomics version 0.4.0 but rebranded.
Now I talked to you about satinomics before, And now, they've changed their name to Kibo, specifically kibo. Money. Kibo, k I b o, by the way. Kibo, formerly Satanomics, is a bitcoin only on chain data generator and visualizer that's fully free and open source. It's verifiable, local first, and self hostable. Quote, very pumped to finally release version 0.4.0 satanomics. Or or or should I say, Kibo, announced the project's developer. Kibo is a continuation of the free and open source satanomics project and it offers free open source and self hostable alternatives to things like Glassnode.
Try it at kibo. Money. That's kibo. Money kibo. Money. Kibo. Money. Quote, this project was started as an answer to the outrageous pricing from Glassnode and their 3rd tier which starts at $833.33 a month and that's for their 3rd tier. That's you're getting bottom of the barrel data on that shit, man. But it's a lot of work and has been worked on full time since November of 2023. It has also been operational since then without any ads, said the developer. Support the project's development here. And here is geyser.fundforward/project forward slash kibo. That's geyser.fundproject kibo. Okay. So go go find it there.
A new brand. So this is what's new. Kibo, the word, means hope in Japanese. And there's a new website made from the ground up with pure HTML, cascading stylesheets, and JavaScript, easier self hosting. The node has been removed with only Rust as the project's dependency. Many more changes and improvements to come. So, Kibo let's see what see if it changed the look of it. I'm just gonna go check it out right now. And it does look a little bit different. It's still kinda loading up here. Actually, it kinda looks a little broken. Let's see. Hold on.
Well, yeah. It's looking it's looking a little broke. I'm not getting I'm not getting anything out of this. It's all jacked up on this. And it may be because because of my brave browser. I don't know. And actually let me take the shield my brave shields down and see if that does anything. And it really didn't. Okay. So, if you're listening on Brave Browser it's not working for me. That's okay though, because it like the other one was working and I got to tell you satanomics is it has a ton a ton of data. And if you're the kind of guy that's a data hound that really wants to pull stuff apart like you would, with using the data out of glass node or something like it, you need to go check it out. It it it's probably just my old ass operating system being stupid and me being dumb for not replacing my operating system. But the minute that I do that, I lose a lot of software permanently.
A lot of software I'm going to have to rebuy. And I don't want to rebuy it. So for all those people that are like, why are you being so dumb? Because I don't want to buy I don't want to buy Adobe, Creative Suite. Well, actually, you can't buy it anymore, can you? No, no, no. Now it's all a subscription model. So when you start asking me questions like why I don't want to change my old ass Windows 7 operating system, I've got a laptop. If I need something newer, I'll use my laptop. But my desktop where I do the majority of my work, yeah, it's an old ass operating system. And it's literally because I don't want to have to rebuy all this stuff. That's a it's an expensive proposition to rebuy the amount of stuff that I've got on my computer. So for any of those people that were, you know, that were, you know, wondering why the hell I haven't changed over operating systems yet that's really why.
Yeah, I mean I'm kind of a cheapskate but it's also it's also the principle of the thing. I don't want to rent my software. I want to own the products that I use. I don't want to ask permission month over month. I don't want to have to remember that oh my god here comes another charge because you have to do it where it's recursive billing. You know, and bitcoin fixes this. Specifically, value for value with Lightning Network fixes this. We talk about streaming sats for songs. Right now, as you're listening to me, you might still be streaming me sats to listen to this podcast to support the production of this show.
Why not with software? Let's take kibo. Money. No ads there. So, what if I were able to have, like, a, to get a license from, you know, the guy that does Kibo and say look, if you want to turn on if I want to turn on like, I don't know, a premium tier, Like I can get the 1st tier for free. Totally fine. Right? But the 2nd tier, the one that's got even more data in it, I have to stream these satoshis at 1 satoshi per minute. And that's my license. That particular thing that is chilling out in that website that is like you need to attach your wallet and you need to stream satoshis. Do you want to turn on streaming? And the minute I say yes turn on streaming at 1 satoshi per minute or whatever it is 10 I don't know whatever it's gonna be you know worth to me but it's some kind of minimum like either 5 or 10 satoshis per v or well for per viva but 5 or 10 satoshis per minute and then I can unlock the second tier That's just one way to do it. Like, if I was using Adobe Photoshop, when I turn on Photoshop and I start doing stuff I should be able to get a pop up that says: Hey, you know, you don't own this thing and if you want to use it you're gonna have to start streaming us satoshis. And I doubt Adobe is gonna get into Bitcoin anytime soon, but that's just gonna cause them to be the losers. Because somebody is gonna figure this shit out on how to put a lightning wallet essentially, like let's just call it, I don't know, a cookie. A payment cookie.
I don't know what else to call it. But it's like a tracking cookie, only it's a payment cookie. And that cookie is attached to my wallet. And I can turn it on and off. And something like Kibo Money says, ah, yes you have our payment cookie. Good for you. If you would like to turn it on you can experience the full feature set of that which is kibo.money. And I say, hell yes. It's got a little button on there that says, hell yes or hell no. I hit hell yes and automatically it starts streaming satoshis. And as long as I'm my cursor is on that screen, let's say that that payment cookie is now context specific.
If I click into another window, it knows and it says stop stop use you're going to stop making streaming payments to me because you're not really using kibo.money. I see that you're out of the context of the of kibo. Money's website. And because of that, we're stopping. But I go back to kibo. Money. I put my cursor somewhere in the screen and I click anywhere on that son of a bitch and I start doing stuff. Boom. Same thing with Adobe Photoshop. I use, I use Fruity Loop Studio or FL Studio. And I pay your actually, I paid once for it. So they still operate under the old school model. But let's say they changed that and said, no. We're gonna go to a subscription model. I would be begging them for a payment cookie. And if somebody's got a better term for that, please let me know because I think that that would be good to know. But when I mean payment cookie, I mean a seat license that gives me permission to use a thing in real time while making payments from a wallet directly attached to that cookie, for lack of a better term.
If somebody can build that if somebody can build that it could be marketed to software companies for in replacement of this bullshit. Hey, we'll give you 10% off if you buy a you know 12 months at $9.99 a month instead of $10.99 a month or whatever it is. I'm sick of it. And the whole thing can be used for things like Time Magazine. Just give me a freaking paywall in that particular case and let me read the article for $25. But I'm not gonna buy a year subscription. I'm done. I'm done with subscriptions. And that's why I think the payment cookie idea is a really good idea.
Maybe one of you guys that's out there knows how to build that shit and can build it because I don't have a hope in hell of building it. And I'm not gonna sue you if you build it, but please at least give me credit or 1% of gross. I'm just, yeah, just throwing that out there. Alright, guys. Have a wonderful week, and 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.
Concerns Over Bitcoin Derivatives
