Join me today for Episode 873 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- BTC Overtakes Gold in Portfolios
- Price Go Down
- JPMorgan Can't Decide on a Narrative
- Check out FrostSnap
- Boltz For Rebalancing Released
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
npub: npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
nostr handle: @beisnerds
Twitter: @beisnerds
Product: Maple Syrup and Soaps
Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-overtakes-gold-investor-portfolio-jpmorgan
https://decrypt.co/221801/bitcoin-down-below-69000-grayscale-moves-400-million-btc
https://cointelegraph.com/news/spot-bitcoin-etf-net-inflow-dropped-80
https://decrypt.co/221873/microstrategy-bitcoin-buys-severe-deleveraging-jp-morgan
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2NLXC0A6W7Q46
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/03/15/el-salvador-has-thousands-more-bitcoins-than-previously-known/
https://primal.net/e/note1nmemz2hhh97rvc52xjgha2lpq7vdlanzxnngrk0au20u8y4sl9uq796gu5
https://frostsnap.com/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/protecting-americans-from-foreign-adversary-controlled-applications-act/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/boltz-client-v2-0-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/bitgo-introduced-rbf/
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[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Ant, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 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 9:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 15th day of March, otherwise known as the Ides of March. This is the day, way back in the day, that Caesar got offed by his best friend, Brutus, and a couple of other cats in the Roman Senate. If you were not sure what the Ides of March actually were, this is what the Ides of March actually is.
[00:01:09] Unknown:
It is the offing of a dictator,
[00:01:12] Unknown:
the offing of the king, the offing of, you know well, it's just gonna get whacked is what it is. It's a day it's the day of whacking. It's whacking day is another way to to put it. Circle p is open for business. Circle p is where I bring you plebs just like you that have goods and services for sale in Bitcoin. If it ain't for sale in Bitcoin, it ain't in the circle b. You can get maple syrup and soap from my good friend, Beisnerds. That is at bizoners at b e I s n e r d s Both on dead birdsite as well as on Noster, and you can get 2 different products from him. You can get his handmade maple syrup or and and or you can get his sister Sarah's soaps. I've put sister Sarah's soaps up into the, zap. Stream live chat so that you can kind of get a look at what she's making. This is all tallow based soap, so it's animal fat based soap. It is some of the best soap that I've ever used and the reason I say that is because It doesn't melt away when it's like wet I don't know if you've ever had handmade soaps before that you buy and you think it's gonna be all great and then it just ends up being a gooey mess Yeah, not with this stuff. This stuff is actually really really good.
And it's just as good as buys nerds or maple trade, aka maple trade. It depends on how you wanna how you wanna look at it. It is at b e I s n e r d s, both on dead bird and Twitter. Make sure that you send him or let him know that you heard about it here on the, in the Circle p Store on the Bitcoin ad podcast, and he will cut me in for some of those sweet sweet profits. Honestly, check out this soap, though. I mean, and these are actually really good pictures too. Most people can't take product pictures to save their life. God knows I can't. But these pictures are actually pretty good.
Tea tree soap, eucalyptus, lavender, nettle, orange, peppermint, honeysuckle. Damn. I bet that's pretty good. Orange clove, apple bourbon, beer. Beer soap, I love it, lilac, Kentucky bourbon, lemon eucalyptus, pure tallow soap. Wow. Man, I mean, she's got it all. These are all pretty much going for 6.50 a bar. $6.50 a bar, but you can buy them with Bitcoin if you DM Bizonards either on Twitter or Noster. Okay? So there you go. That's that's all there is to that one. Alright. Now let's get on with this one. Oh, god. This is kind of funny. It was not more than I don't know. It was sometime this week. I wanna say it was, like, 48 hours ago.
[00:04:00] Unknown:
JPMorgan
[00:04:01] Unknown:
was bitching about how there was no possible way, no possible way under the sun that Bitcoin would overtake gold in investors' individual portfolios. Well, Prashant Jha from Cointelegraph has this headline Bitcoin overtakes gold in investor portfolio allocation a report from JPMorgan. Bitcoin is now overtaking gold in investor portfolio allocation when adjusted for volatility according to a JPMorgan analyst. Managing director Nicholas can't pronounce his name, reportedly said that when adjusting for volatility, allocation in investor portfolios is 3.7 times greater than gold.
Now, I'm not going to lie to you and let you think that I understand what adjusted for volatility actually means because I don't know. And I'm praying to god that we find out more about that little that little tidbit here. The analyst highlighted the significant inflows of over $10,000,000,000 into spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds since their approval in January and claimed the potential Bitcoin ETF market size could reach $62,000,000,000 using gold as a benchmark. Another report from JPM Securities predicts that the spot Bitcoin ETF market could grow as large as 220,000,000,000 in the next 2 or 3 years. Quote, we estimate $220,000,000,000 of incremental flows will come into the ETFs over the next 3 years, which could also be quite impactful on Bitcoin's price given the multiplier on capital.
End quote. The ETFs have proven to be a net positive for the crypto market with the world's largest cryptocurrency gaining over 45% in market cap in February. Net sales for spot Bitcoin ETFs climbed to 6,100,000,000 in February compared to 1,500,000,000 in January, the largest daily inflows. To the spot Bitcoin ETFs peaked at over $1,000,000,000 on March 12th. And analysts believe this number could rise further once outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF stop. I don't see them staunching that wound. They just refuse. They absolutely refuse to get rid of their 2.5 percent, management fee. They're just not going to do it.
I don't understand it. Yes. I can do the math. I get the math part that at a certain point that they will start losing money and but that point hasn't been hit yet because they're always going to be able to take 2.5 percent but as long as they keep it this high they risk a general run on people just saying, you know what, I'm just done. I don't want to see 2.5. And once you've moved from a certain thing like an allocation fund like GBTC you're not you're not going to do the work to go back after they drop their fees I think that this is I think that this is if gbt well gbt shareholders or anybody that's invested in gbtc I would be pissed off and I would be looking for legal retribution against the management team over at GBTC and what a DCG, digital whatever they call that that group over there. Anyway, with the Bitcoin having just over a month away, the supply of daily BTC would be cut in half which could fuel the demand further and lead to a supply crisis within the next 6 months predicts Kyung Joo, the CEO of cryptoanalytic firm CryptoKwon, after a prolonged crypto winter lasting nearly 3 years.
Spot Bitcoin ETF approvals became a catalyst for BTC's mammoth price action and has pushed it past the last bull cycle's all time high of above 69,000 as well as opening the doors for institutional adoption led by the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. Well, yes. We know that. That part we understand greatly. They never explained this issue of that adjusting for volatility, Bitcoin allocation in investor portfolios is 3.7 times greater than gold. I still am not coming away from this article understanding what adjusting for volatility actually means. So if you're out out there and you know what that what the hell that actually means, give me a boostagram or DM me on Nostra or something like that and let me know how I screwed all this up. DeFi Yogi, good morning to you as well, sir. He's one of the guys that's over there in the chat that has actually said something today. Now let's move on.
BTC has fallen below 69,000 as Grayscale moves over $400,000,000 worth of BTC to Coinbase. It for decryp.co. Bitcoin took another hit today, falling well below its fresh all time high of or 2 under $69,000 per coin. The biggest digital coin by market cap has since recovered and is back above 70,000 at time of writing. No. It's actually not. We're at 67,768 because idiots don't know what they actually want. Bitcoin has been on a roll thanks to the massive success of the ETFs but then data dropped on Thursday from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the producer price index jumped 0.6% last month. Oh my god.
The humanity. The important inflation indicator shows that prices were higher than expected in February. Traders then interpreted this data as a sign that the Federal Reserve might not cut interest rates in May leading to a sell off of digital assets as well as stocks in the legacy financial markets. Another possible factor? Well, you know, $400,000,000 worth of Bitcoin was shifted by grayscale to its custodian Coinbase, Arkham Intelligence Data Showed Today. Quote, I think the inflation narrative is playing a part but also perhaps there is more grayscale selling than usual, but we won't know that for sure until tomorrow, he said. Now now tomorrow is actually today.
In January, the fund manager was getting rid of a huge amount of digital coin, at one point moving 2,200,000,000 in a matter of days to the exchange, and this led to downward pressure on the price. Grayscale started shifting its BTC to Coinbase for selling after it converted its fund to a BTC exchange traded fund in January. James Butterfield, head of research at Coinshares, told Decrypt both developments are factors. Before Grayscale's Bitcoin Fund ETF conversion it operated like a closed end fund and investors had to hold their shares for at least 6 months. Now that it's an ETF, investors have been keen to redeem their holdings and take home profits. It's likely that they're doing so again.
Despite the grayscale redemptions, net inflows for the 9 other ETF trading past the $1,000,000,000 mark, which was a record on Tuesday, but that has that flow has since been a little bit squelched since we've got this price drop. But no nowhere in this particular article are they talking about the 2.5% management fee that GBTC refuses, absolutely refuses to come down on. Now in other in other situations, I can understand why you would be willing to pay a higher price for a good or a service, but there's nothing special about GBTC in the way that they actually custody their the Bitcoin. They don't make loans against it. They don't have an investment portfolio that when you put your BTC into this thing, that they invest somehow or another leverage against it to invest in other things that are going to make you more money.
Right? If I had the choice between somebody who just sold me stocks and kept it that way and didn't do jack shit with them versus somebody who who charged me 2.5% management fee and actually made me more money than I would just by sitting on the stock if I made more money than the management fee then I would do that but that's not the case of GBTC it's just they're charging you to hold BTC and doing nothing with it they don't do they don't break a sweat they don't do anything The only thing that they have to do is make sure that they don't lose it. That's it. Now I'm not saying that that's all that easy, but I'm I am saying that it's not as hard as making day over day, month over month portfolio management and change decisions. So therefore, I don't see why they refuse to to come down off of their 2.5% fee. And I think that that is a third pressure point that people are not just taking profits, but they are exiting to other platforms so that they don't have to pay the 2.5.
Now at one point or another, GBTC is gonna be sitting on an amount of Bitcoin that is not really worth getting the 2.5% on because they're just going to see a continuous decline in the amount that they get, and they will be making less and less and less and less and less to the point that it doesn't even make sense to be in the business anymore. So again for the people that are investors in the digital currency group DCG which is the umbrella corporation for GBTC and all their stuff, I would be I'd be hopping mad and I would be on the phone to lawyers saying that they have a fiduciary commitment at this point to compete on the open market with the other ETFs that are not charging 2.5 percent because none of them do.
Now, here we go with the spot Bitcoin ETF inflows. They have dropped by 80% as the BTC prices dipped below $69,000 Prashant Jha 4 coin telegraph, United States based spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds recorded one of their lowest net inflow days of just $132,000,000 on March 14th, which was yesterday, the lowest level in the past 8 trading days and an 80% fall from March 13th. The 3rd day drop marked the 2nd consecutive day of decline. On Wednesday. Inflows hit $684,000,000 which represented a 38.3% drop from March 12th. Tuesday saw record breaking single inflows of, what? $1,050,000,000 Man. The total flow of funds into ETFs stood at 390,000,000 on March 14th with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust seeing yet another $257,000,000 in outflows, bringing net inflows to 132,000,000.
On the same day, the Van Eck Bitcoin Trust ETF and Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund recorded inflows of $13,800,000 and 13.7 respectively. Despite a significant outflow from GBTC, net flows remained positive on Thursday. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF recorded the largest inflows of 345,000,000 The cumulative net inflows into the US spot Bitcoin ETFs remain significant, however, nearing the $12,000,000,000 market mark after 44 days of trading. The change in investor sentiment comes amid a broader downturn in the crypto market as the BTC price drop below $69,000 The impact of declining ETF inflows correlated with fluctuations in the BTC price.
After bullish price action on Wednesday, March 13th, BTC posted a new all time high of above $73,000 before reversing course on Thursday. The price dipped lower on Friday, March 15th to around 66,000 as 1,000,000 in leveraged positions were liquidated. According to data from Coin Glass, 193,431
[00:16:10] Unknown:
traders were liquidated. Let's say that again. Almost 200,000 people that thought they were gonna beat the market got liquidated in the past 24 hours with a total liquidation amount of $682,140,000.
[00:16:30] Unknown:
Do not play this market. It's going to kill you. Market pundits suspect the current market volatility, regulatory uncertainties and macroeconomic factors have made investors cautious. The current decline is also attributed to next week's Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which could shed some light on the Federal Reserve's plan for interest rates in the future. Let me tell you what the interest rates plans in the future are for the Federal Reserve. They're not going to move. I I don't see why people I don't see why nobody, everybody thinks that they're going to be saved by the Federal Reserve, that is not going to happen.
At one point they will start reducing their interest rates it ain't gonna be May it's not it's just not and for the people that continuously think they're just going to cash out and sit on this cash because because sure enough, at one point or another, the Fed's gonna come in and save their bacon. They're just going to have their cash reserves inflated away. That's all that's gonna happen. So I don't know. Have fun staying poor or something like that. Anyway, moving on to micro strategy. JPMorgan, which cannot figure out which way they wanna go with with whether it's good or bad for Bitcoin, has this one. MicroStrategy's leveraged Bitcoin buying could lead to severe deleveraging if the market drops, says JPMorgan, Stacy Elliott, decrypt dotco.
MicroStrategy has amassed a 205 1,000 Bitcoin corporate treasury worth nearly 14,000,000,000 at current market prices. It's almost enough to have kept pace with the $15,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin that BlackRock has bought up to back shares of its iShares Bitcoin trust. But there's a reason to worry, oh my god, about the way that the company, has been buying the BTC, says JPMorgan Analysts We believe debt funded Bitcoin purchases by MicroStrategy adds leverage and froth to the current crypto rally and raises the risk of more severe deleveraging in a potential downturn in the future, Nicholas Percagabalu said on Thursday. I can't pronounce his name. Sorry, dude. I don't mean to to be a dick about it. I just simply cannot pronounce Greek names, and it's a Greek name.
MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor has been lauded by laser eyed Bitcoiners for his aggressive strategy. Quote, it's the best investment asset. So the end game is to acquire more Bitcoin, he recently told Yahoo Finance. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. There is no other end game, end quote. Saylor and MicroStrategy, which trades on the NASDAQ under the MSTR ticker, are no strangers to using Bitcoin as collateral to borrow cash to buy more Bitcoin. In the latest round earlier this week, MicroStrategy said it's offering up to $500,000,000 worth of convertible senior notes due 2031 to buy more Bitcoin yet.
I'm sorry. But there's not yet record high amounts of leverage in the market. Leverage refers to the ability to borrow funds to amplify the returns of an investment, for instance. A trader might use a 5x leverage to open a $500 Bitcoin futures contract with only $100 worth of BTC in their exchange account. But leverage cuts both ways. It can maximize profits and exacerbate losses. In the US, leverage trading, especially with high ratios, faces lots of regulatory restrictions for this reason. For instance, crypto trading platforms like Coinbase and Kraken are permitted to offer leverage but only up to 10x and 5x respectively, which is conservative compared to other countries.
The notional open interest to Bitcoin future contracts recently reached an all time high of $34,000,000,000 signaling a surge in optimism about the Bitcoin price rally. Despite the optimism, leveraged users in the market is still a moderate 0.2 according to CryptoKwan, and that means there is not yet a high risk of widespread liquidations that could potentially trigger a market crash. Bitcoin leverage last peaked at 0.4 in October of 2022. And actual open interest measured in BTC units is way below the high of 667,000 BTC seen in October 2022.
Current open interest expressed in BTC has only reached 496 BTC according to Coin Glass, and that suggests that while leverage is present, it hasn't reached alarming levels that could indicate a bubble or imminent correction. I don't like any of the language being used in this particular piece. That is the end of the piece. But the one thing that I don't like the most about it is this quote from Saylor. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. There's no other endgame. Gonna call bullshit. I like Saylor but dude that is one of the most short sighted things that I've ever heard of.
[00:21:39] Unknown:
I thought we were all supposed to win. Humanity is supposed to win. That's what this whole thing is about. So I I
[00:21:49] Unknown:
I'm really disappointed in Michael Saylor and that particular statement. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. That is not true. The the number the most amount of different people that are able to procure at least some Bitcoin wins. Because this is the attitude of kings. This is the attitude of governments. This is the attitude of bullshit. I don't like it. I wish he'd retract that statement, but he's never gonna listen to me. But meanwhile, he's running numbers. CNBC, features CNBC, features and commodities. And before we begin, thank you, DeFi Yogi, for the 2,100 satoshis that you just zapped me over on zap.stream.
Let's get into it. Oil is down just scant. It's been up pretty much all morning long. It's sitting at $81.19 per barrel. Brenton Norcia is up scant. It's been up all day long. $85.44 a barrel. Natural gas, however, is down 5 and a quarter percent to $1.65. Gasoline is up almost a half a point to $2.71 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks, except for gold, are doing well this morning. Gold is down a quarter of a point to $2,163, but silver is up almost one and a half. Platinum is up almost 1 point. Copper is up 1.7%. Palladium is up 1 and a half.
Ag, it's pretty much mixed today, but chocolate knocking it out of the park 8 a half percent to the upside on that one, and the biggest loser day is going to be what lumber is down almost a full point. Live is unchanged. Lean hogs are up 2.5%. Feeder cattle are up a third. The Dow is down over half a point. The S and P is down over 3 quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is down 1 and a quarter points. The S and P mini is essentially trading sideways. So everybody's getting hit. So we're right now, Bitcoin prices coupled directly to legacy markets because everybody's thinking the same way, that the Fed is gonna come save them and that cheap money is on the horizon without understanding that cheap money is what brought us to the impasse that we're at now where the money is essentially worthless.
And with the only reason that it buys anything at all is because we are living in this fantasy land. But we'll we'll I'll talk more about that in other shows. And it just stop thinking that the Fed is gonna save you. Right? It's not working for the legacy markets. It's not working for crypto. It's not working for any of this shit. And one of the one of the things that's okay. Here here's a major change that I'm seeing. Generally speaking, losses and gains in general sectors, I'm seeing energy gaining a shit ton. And you know what's losing the most? Real estate. It's coming, guys.
I don't know when. I don't know when the correction happens in real estate, but it's coming. I wish I could tell you the day, but there's no way that I can do that. But I saw a graph yesterday that kinda was frightening. The biggest gainer in sectors in the United States was energy and the biggest loser overall was real estate. So just put that in your hat. Bonds are pretty much mixed today. 30 year 20 year has lost some of their yield, and there's gains on yields everywhere else. Nah. That's we don't really need to go through the yields potential on that one. $68,070 is what you're getting for 1 Bitcoin.
$1,340,000,000,000 market cap, 19,654,936 and 3 quarter BTC in circulation. Hash rate for the last 2016 blocks is averaging 602 exahashes per second. Average fees per block remain at 0.34 BTC. Halving estimate remains April 18th. Block space percentage for taking out the garbage has actually been reduced today from 2.4 yesterday to 2.2 percent today. That's the amount of block space per each block being used to wrangle up the trash that is ordinals and inscriptions. So, thankfully, some people for at least a short period of time have come to their senses. Mempools.
What are the mempools doing? It looks like we have a 185 blocks carrying a 127,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 36 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get in at 24. Anything under 2.2, you're gonna be purged from mempools around the world. The mining number here for mempool.spaceforward/mining is 567 exahashes per second. So we've actually have lost a little bit of mining hash rate. From Sailor once more, episode 800 and 72 of Bitcoin and podcast, Dubravco with 1660. Satoshi says, I'll take one of those Get Alby invites for a friend on TikTok.
Inbox me, please. Okay. I did that, Dubravco. Check your inbox on Noster. I've you you've got an invite for Albie waiting for you. What is the difference between a hormone and an enzyme? You can't hear an enzyme. Anyone interested in learning about the hormone cholacalciferol mistakenly named vitamin d 3, I can remend 3 amazing books on it. Read them thinnest to thickest just so happens that is the correct order. Okay, so now I've actually got those books, right here And I've put it up into the zap stream so you guys can actually see the Amazon list. We have the optimal dose, restore your health with the power of vitamin d 3. The second one is how not to die.
Gotta love it. How not to die with true high dose vitamin d therapy. The third one is the miraculous results of extremely high doses of the sunshine hormone, vitamin d 3, my experiment with huge doses of d 3 from 25,000 to 50000 to a 100000 IU a day over a 1 year period. So if you're interested in any of those, go check them out. Vitamin d 3 is something that I highly recommend, especially if you're if you think you're even feeling a little bit sick, start eating d 3. It works like a charm. Pies with 420 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with 420 says boost boost. God's death with 337 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Dubravco, with a 100 sat says, also, I made a clip for you that you can share with your friends on TikTok, but I'm not on TikTok. I get he might be talking about the friends coming over from TikTok to Noster, which still seems to be unabated, but we'll have to see if they last.
Because, you know, coming over to Noster,
[00:28:57] Unknown:
it's a little weird, can be a little weird. Alright. That's gonna do it for the weather report.
[00:29:12] Unknown:
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Wanna thank Arceres for 2,100 satoshis that he zapped me in the zap. Stream says keep it going. I will, sir. Orange Mart with 420. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. He says, good morning, Bitcoin. And I appreciate all you guys for showing up in the live chat. And if I can remember, I'll try to raid you guys into some other, livestream that's going on at the end of this show. Now down south to El Salvador, this is interesting. El Salvador has 1,000 more Bitcoin than previously known according to CoinDesk's Danny Nelson. Let's find out more.
Bitcoin forward Central American nation, El Salvador, this week moved $400,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, quote, a big chunk, end quote, into a cold wallet according to president Nayib Bukele. In a post on dead bird site, Bukele referred to the new new setup as our first Bitcoin piggy bank. El Salvador stored the cold wallet in a physical vault within our national territory, he said, including a photo of a wallet that held 5.68 no. Sorry. 5,689.68 BTC, which is worth $411,000,000 at Thursday's prices. A Bitcoin Treasury of that size places El Salvador's holdings far higher than previously believed.
Even on Thursday, public trackers placed the nation's trove at less than 3,000, which is about $205,000,000. Earlier this week, Bukele teased that the country was not simply buying BTC, but also getting it by selling passports through currency conversions for businesses, from from mining, and from government services. The revelation represents the first time that Bukele has tied his nation's holdings to a specific address. He previously relied solely on social media posts to make claims about the size of his trove, providing occasional updates whenever El Salvador bought more. El Salvador became the first country to purchase Bitcoin as a treasury asset back in September of 2021 when a single coin cost around 52,000.
On Thursday, BTC prices were north of 72,000, though in the past 24 hours, it has traded above 73, but as low as 68. And right now, we're here at 68,280. The on chain transfers into El Salvador's cold wallet occurred over the past week, though the majority arrived on Thursday. Most of the Bitcoin held in that wallet came from Bitfinex according to Arcum Intelligence. And so that's that's that particular story. And this is indeed the first time that I've actually seen Bukele say, okay, here's proof. Now here's the thing, and I don't think what I'm about to say is true.
He could have just taken a snapshot of any idiot's wallet. Right? I don't think that that's the case. But the reason that I that I pause it that is simply to so that we can remember to always be adversarially thinking. Because if we start trusting anybody, we're going to get our asses handed to us and we don't want to have our asses handed to us. But here's an interesting development ever since he flashed that wallet because that wallet's got a picture of the QR code. It's got the address. It's got how much Bitcoin is in there and now it's got even more because El Salvador has begun to receive anonymous donations in Bitcoin after the president's publication of the wallet.
And according to data from mempool.space, several people are making donations to the Salvadoran state that range anywhere between $3 to a $100. From what I've understood, he's even gotten some of those idiot ordinals that are like the cats. Those ordinal cat thingies? Apparently, the now the wallet holds some of those and some other stuff.
[00:33:21] Unknown:
So my question becomes, why?
[00:33:25] Unknown:
Why would you why would you willfully give your money over to the Salvadoran government?
[00:33:32] Unknown:
The do they need the your money? You know who actually needs your money? The the
[00:33:40] Unknown:
the people in El Salvador are like okay. Let's look at the country of El Salvador as a whole. You got the people and you got the government. The people have basically been raided for decades. Their their money just got destroyed. They had to go to the dollar. We started destroying the dollar. So these people just keep getting more and more screwed as time goes on. And then all of a sudden, here comes this Bukele guy, and he puts a whole bunch of people in prison. He makes Bitcoin legal tender, and he starts putting it on the balance sheet for the El Salvadoran government. All of a sudden, things start looking up. I say what you want about human rights abuses. I nobody seemed to be worried about the human rights abuses of the drug dealers, you know, terrorizing the citizenry, but that's another story.
[00:34:21] Unknown:
Right? So you got the government, which seems to be set up pretty well right now.
[00:34:27] Unknown:
But you got the people that are still reeling from decades decades decades of theft, inflation, which is also theft, and all kinds of other and and the whole gang the whole gang thing in El Salvador has just been awful. That's where MS 13 comes from. If you don't know what MS 13 is, look it up. It's kind of a scary bunch. But right now, tourism is booming. People are moving there. Businesses are moving there. Now he's not gonna attack he's not gonna tax your money if you take it from one country and and move it into El Salvador. Alright? So
[00:34:58] Unknown:
in my opinion, I think it's weird that people would willingly give over a $100 to the El Salvadoran government because no matter what you think about them, good, ill, or neutral, I wouldn't trust any government with any amount of money.
[00:35:16] Unknown:
But you know who I would actually wanna give my money to if I was gonna donate to El Salvador? Would be like the pupusa vendor on the street. And we did we were doing that. There were people in El Salvador that were taking pictures of the QR codes of some of these street food vendors and people were donating directly to them. If you wanna donate your BTC, then start asking people in El Salvador to take pictures, Like go on Noster, go on dead birdsite, whatever it is you gotta do. Ask people that live in El Salvador to take pictures of the people that are on the street that take BTC and ask them to take a picture of their QR codes of either their online wall their well, not online wallet, their their Bitcoin wallet or their lightning wallet or both. And if you wanna give $3 or a $100, give it to them.
Don't give it to Bukele. Bukele doesn't need it. Alright? I just think it's weird that that this is occurring. But it is what it is. I can't do anything other than what I've just done. Now, frost snap. I think that this is interesting. I'm gonna put the picture of or the website up in the zap.stream so you can see what this is, but this looks kind of cool. So as far as I can tell, it's these little things that plug in to your phone and they have a this just a little, like, a little circuit card with the USB 3, plug for your iPhone or whatever and each one of them is a signing device.
It's a signing device for a Bitcoin wallet. So here's what they say. Self custody made simple. Connect 1 or more FrostNAP devices to your phone and easily create a Bitcoin wallet in our application. If you create a 2 of 3, any 2 devices are required to access your wallet. You can geographically separate your Frost snap devices or share them amongst individuals that you trust. With FrostSnap, the strong security you need is now accessible. FrostSnap is building customizable access policies for your wallet for inheritance. You can simply create sets of keys and share them with your loved ones. So each one of these things that plugs into your phone is not very big, not very big at all. Probably about the size of 2 of your thumbs, stacked side to side. Right? And probably about as long. And then it's got a USB port, and that plugs into your phone. And on the the little circuit board that plugs into your phone is a little screen.
And it looks to me like each one of those can be a key. And so you can do maybe you can just do, like, plug it in and then you can, like, have Bitcoin in in their app on your wallet and then that's what you use as your signing device. But let's say that I, like, I've got one of these keys And my son has another key and my daughter has the 3rd key. Well, I need all 3 keys together on my phone and the way that they do that is they have a a USB port on the other end of each of these. So you can stack them. So you plug 1 into the phone, you plug another signing key into the first signing key, You plug the 3rd signing key into the second signing key and they basically are all plugged in together. It looks a little funky. Yeah. Sure.
But it's an interest it's a very interesting way to go about multisig on your phone with a device that's easily portable. And, again, like they said, you can geographically stash them, like, keep 1 in a safety deposit box, 1 at home. I don't know. 1 in like, at your friend's house. And you only need 2 of those 3 to be able to do a transaction. Check it out. It's frost snap.com. At least go check it out for yourself and take a look at it. It looks pretty nifty. I don't I don't know if they've got a I don't know if they've got a price on these yet. I don't see it. I do not see a price on it. So but again, frostnap.com.
Go go check it out because it actually pretty damn cool. Now on to the next one. US House has passed the TikTok ban bill for dealing with, foreign owned apps deemed national security risk. This is no bullshit Bitcoin. The protecting Americans from foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, boy, that's a mouthful, passed by a vote of 352 to 65 in the House of Representatives. Now it goes to the Senate where its prospects are unclear. So this is just a notation of what I was talking about yesterday. Yesterday. Let's let's find out if there's any kind of details here that that isn't coming out. House passage of the bill is only the first step. Yes, we know. President Joe Biden has said that if congress passes the measure, he will sign it. Okay. So if it gets out of the senate, if it passes out of senate, Biden's gonna sign this to ban TikTok from the United States soil.
The bill also sets a process up for the president to address any future threats from any foreign owned apps if they are deemed a national security risk. As written, the bill currently states, it shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update, or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out within the land of maritime borders of the United States any of the following: One, providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application, including any source code of such application, by means of a marketplace, including an online mobile application store, through which users within the land of maritime borders or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
2, providing Internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for uses within the land or maritime borders of the United States. Okay. So that sounds like, oh, well, that's that's just TikTok. No. No. No. It's not. All they have to do at this point is to declare anything
[00:41:48] Unknown:
foreign adversary controlled.
[00:41:51] Unknown:
That's all they have to do is declare it. They don't have to prove it. There's no there's nothing in this bill that says how they are actually going to prove that it's a foreign, adversarially controlled application. What does this mean for GitHub? Can GitHub be concluded to be a marketplace? Are they going to require that I pay for it to be a marketplace? Because that's what I always assume. A marketplace is somewhere where I want something, I gotta pay money for it. GitHub, not generally speaking, not the case because most of it's free and open source software. That's the repository. Will they make GitHub illegal to interact with if they can prove or actually they don't have to prove it. If they just declare a piece of free and open source software on the marketplace that is GitHub falls under this bill. You see where I'm going with this? I don't think this is about TikTok at all.
I think that this could hit a lot of other stuff that you don't want it to hit. I don't need to mention any names. Let's carry on. Bolt's client version 2.0.1 or 0.0. Swap client for automated cheap CLN and LND channel channel rebalancing. Oh. Oh, nice. This could work for me. Today we are excited to launch Bolt's client. A swap client for lightning node runners that connects to CLN or LND device nodes and allows for automated, unfairly cheap channel rebalancing. Oh, I'm gonna have to try this out because I I need something like this. Today, we are making Bolt's client available to the general public.
Big shout out to our newest team member, Jack Star, who bought Bolt clients to life. Bolt Client is based on Bolt's LND and is written in go. Bolt's LND was our go to swap client for LND runners estimated to be 2020. It was built for the very simple purpose. Let LND runners swap lightning and the Bitcoin main chain on demand to rebalance channels. Initially, Bolt's LND was a standalone CLI based client, but later it was integrated in UI based tools like the popular ride the lightning node management software. This release marks a major update for Bolt's LND rebranding to Bolt's client as now multiple lightning node implementations are supported, and that is CLN and LND.
This release of Bolt's client is backwards compatible to the latest Bolt's LND release, and the migration is expected to run smoothly. To be on the safe side, you can back up your Bolt's LND folder before performing the upgrade. Do not start the migration if you still have pending swaps. We estimate Bolt's LND to be running on 1,000 lightning nodes today. All these will be able to seamlessly upgrade to Bolt's client in the coming weeks. Documents are available here, and you can grab the latest release here, and both of those go to where? Docs.bolt.exchangeandgithub.comforward/boltexchange, and you can go get that stuff there.
We acknowledge that perfection is elusive and Bolt's client is no exception. So they're basically doing a cover your ass statement. So, yes, if you need channel rebalancing, and God knows I do, we're going to need to go check out this Boltz client version 2.0. 0. And moving on to the last thing today, BitGo has introduced replace by fee support for hot custodial and self managed wallets. Clients will have an option to signal for RBF in their withdrawals by enabling transaction acceleration in the withdrawal flow. Similarly, they will be able to see if withdrawal is enabled for transaction acceleration in the transfers detail view.
For internal management transactions such as consolidations and fan outs, BitGo will, by default, signal for RBF so that later these transactions can be accelerated easily if such transactions get stuck. I've never been a huge fan of BitGo because they were on the wrong side of the scaling debate, and I'm never going to think differently about that. But since then, they've actually acted pretty decently. I I have I have to give credit where credit is due. Just like I will have no problem bitching them out for being on the wrong side of history back in the day in 2017, I do have to give them a shout out today for doing replace by fee. I know that pisses a lot of other people off, because they don't like replace by fee for whatever reason.
It saved my bacon a couple of times, so I'm glad that they're, over there at BitGo or at least introducing it as an option. And that is gonna do it for the morning roundup. Dad says jokes. I was driving to the airport to catch my flight when I saw a sign that said airport left so I turned around and went home That's exactly what's going on today. Where are we at with have they come to their senses over there? $68,300. No. They have not come to their senses yet. So you're just gonna have to wait. Wow, somebody just spammed the living crap out of this Oh, thank you for spamming the living daylights out of me there in pub something something something. Wow. That's a lot of spam. Sorry about that, for you guys over there in zap.stream, but, just be aware Michael Sailor said something that makes me believe that he still has a couple more steps to go. I know that sounds like real like a lot of hubris from my side, but the end goal is not to have the most Bitcoin of anybody. That's that's not a winning state for humanity going forward.
It's the most amount of people having some, And I don't know exactly how that works, but somehow that's gotta work because we're already seeing what's left of the Bitcoin supply that's going to be coming out is all gonna be gobbled up by institutions. That yeah. I mean, there it's not going to be like it used to be. Thankfully, most of the BTC in existence today is actually in the hands of regular folks. I only hope that they make the proper decisions and that we can move towards more of a Bitcoin circular economy, but we'll have to find out.
So you think about that during the weekend, and I will see you on the other side of it.
[00:48:30] Unknown:
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.
[00:48:39] Unknown:
Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Ant, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 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 9:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 15th day of March, otherwise known as the Ides of March. This is the day, way back in the day, that Caesar got offed by his best friend, Brutus, and a couple of other cats in the Roman Senate. If you were not sure what the Ides of March actually were, this is what the Ides of March actually is.
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It is the offing of a dictator,
[00:01:12] Unknown:
the offing of the king, the offing of, you know well, it's just gonna get whacked is what it is. It's a day it's the day of whacking. It's whacking day is another way to to put it. Circle p is open for business. Circle p is where I bring you plebs just like you that have goods and services for sale in Bitcoin. If it ain't for sale in Bitcoin, it ain't in the circle b. You can get maple syrup and soap from my good friend, Beisnerds. That is at bizoners at b e I s n e r d s Both on dead birdsite as well as on Noster, and you can get 2 different products from him. You can get his handmade maple syrup or and and or you can get his sister Sarah's soaps. I've put sister Sarah's soaps up into the, zap. Stream live chat so that you can kind of get a look at what she's making. This is all tallow based soap, so it's animal fat based soap. It is some of the best soap that I've ever used and the reason I say that is because It doesn't melt away when it's like wet I don't know if you've ever had handmade soaps before that you buy and you think it's gonna be all great and then it just ends up being a gooey mess Yeah, not with this stuff. This stuff is actually really really good.
And it's just as good as buys nerds or maple trade, aka maple trade. It depends on how you wanna how you wanna look at it. It is at b e I s n e r d s, both on dead bird and Twitter. Make sure that you send him or let him know that you heard about it here on the, in the Circle p Store on the Bitcoin ad podcast, and he will cut me in for some of those sweet sweet profits. Honestly, check out this soap, though. I mean, and these are actually really good pictures too. Most people can't take product pictures to save their life. God knows I can't. But these pictures are actually pretty good.
Tea tree soap, eucalyptus, lavender, nettle, orange, peppermint, honeysuckle. Damn. I bet that's pretty good. Orange clove, apple bourbon, beer. Beer soap, I love it, lilac, Kentucky bourbon, lemon eucalyptus, pure tallow soap. Wow. Man, I mean, she's got it all. These are all pretty much going for 6.50 a bar. $6.50 a bar, but you can buy them with Bitcoin if you DM Bizonards either on Twitter or Noster. Okay? So there you go. That's that's all there is to that one. Alright. Now let's get on with this one. Oh, god. This is kind of funny. It was not more than I don't know. It was sometime this week. I wanna say it was, like, 48 hours ago.
[00:04:00] Unknown:
JPMorgan
[00:04:01] Unknown:
was bitching about how there was no possible way, no possible way under the sun that Bitcoin would overtake gold in investors' individual portfolios. Well, Prashant Jha from Cointelegraph has this headline Bitcoin overtakes gold in investor portfolio allocation a report from JPMorgan. Bitcoin is now overtaking gold in investor portfolio allocation when adjusted for volatility according to a JPMorgan analyst. Managing director Nicholas can't pronounce his name, reportedly said that when adjusting for volatility, allocation in investor portfolios is 3.7 times greater than gold.
Now, I'm not going to lie to you and let you think that I understand what adjusted for volatility actually means because I don't know. And I'm praying to god that we find out more about that little that little tidbit here. The analyst highlighted the significant inflows of over $10,000,000,000 into spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds since their approval in January and claimed the potential Bitcoin ETF market size could reach $62,000,000,000 using gold as a benchmark. Another report from JPM Securities predicts that the spot Bitcoin ETF market could grow as large as 220,000,000,000 in the next 2 or 3 years. Quote, we estimate $220,000,000,000 of incremental flows will come into the ETFs over the next 3 years, which could also be quite impactful on Bitcoin's price given the multiplier on capital.
End quote. The ETFs have proven to be a net positive for the crypto market with the world's largest cryptocurrency gaining over 45% in market cap in February. Net sales for spot Bitcoin ETFs climbed to 6,100,000,000 in February compared to 1,500,000,000 in January, the largest daily inflows. To the spot Bitcoin ETFs peaked at over $1,000,000,000 on March 12th. And analysts believe this number could rise further once outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF stop. I don't see them staunching that wound. They just refuse. They absolutely refuse to get rid of their 2.5 percent, management fee. They're just not going to do it.
I don't understand it. Yes. I can do the math. I get the math part that at a certain point that they will start losing money and but that point hasn't been hit yet because they're always going to be able to take 2.5 percent but as long as they keep it this high they risk a general run on people just saying, you know what, I'm just done. I don't want to see 2.5. And once you've moved from a certain thing like an allocation fund like GBTC you're not you're not going to do the work to go back after they drop their fees I think that this is I think that this is if gbt well gbt shareholders or anybody that's invested in gbtc I would be pissed off and I would be looking for legal retribution against the management team over at GBTC and what a DCG, digital whatever they call that that group over there. Anyway, with the Bitcoin having just over a month away, the supply of daily BTC would be cut in half which could fuel the demand further and lead to a supply crisis within the next 6 months predicts Kyung Joo, the CEO of cryptoanalytic firm CryptoKwon, after a prolonged crypto winter lasting nearly 3 years.
Spot Bitcoin ETF approvals became a catalyst for BTC's mammoth price action and has pushed it past the last bull cycle's all time high of above 69,000 as well as opening the doors for institutional adoption led by the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. Well, yes. We know that. That part we understand greatly. They never explained this issue of that adjusting for volatility, Bitcoin allocation in investor portfolios is 3.7 times greater than gold. I still am not coming away from this article understanding what adjusting for volatility actually means. So if you're out out there and you know what that what the hell that actually means, give me a boostagram or DM me on Nostra or something like that and let me know how I screwed all this up. DeFi Yogi, good morning to you as well, sir. He's one of the guys that's over there in the chat that has actually said something today. Now let's move on.
BTC has fallen below 69,000 as Grayscale moves over $400,000,000 worth of BTC to Coinbase. It for decryp.co. Bitcoin took another hit today, falling well below its fresh all time high of or 2 under $69,000 per coin. The biggest digital coin by market cap has since recovered and is back above 70,000 at time of writing. No. It's actually not. We're at 67,768 because idiots don't know what they actually want. Bitcoin has been on a roll thanks to the massive success of the ETFs but then data dropped on Thursday from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the producer price index jumped 0.6% last month. Oh my god.
The humanity. The important inflation indicator shows that prices were higher than expected in February. Traders then interpreted this data as a sign that the Federal Reserve might not cut interest rates in May leading to a sell off of digital assets as well as stocks in the legacy financial markets. Another possible factor? Well, you know, $400,000,000 worth of Bitcoin was shifted by grayscale to its custodian Coinbase, Arkham Intelligence Data Showed Today. Quote, I think the inflation narrative is playing a part but also perhaps there is more grayscale selling than usual, but we won't know that for sure until tomorrow, he said. Now now tomorrow is actually today.
In January, the fund manager was getting rid of a huge amount of digital coin, at one point moving 2,200,000,000 in a matter of days to the exchange, and this led to downward pressure on the price. Grayscale started shifting its BTC to Coinbase for selling after it converted its fund to a BTC exchange traded fund in January. James Butterfield, head of research at Coinshares, told Decrypt both developments are factors. Before Grayscale's Bitcoin Fund ETF conversion it operated like a closed end fund and investors had to hold their shares for at least 6 months. Now that it's an ETF, investors have been keen to redeem their holdings and take home profits. It's likely that they're doing so again.
Despite the grayscale redemptions, net inflows for the 9 other ETF trading past the $1,000,000,000 mark, which was a record on Tuesday, but that has that flow has since been a little bit squelched since we've got this price drop. But no nowhere in this particular article are they talking about the 2.5% management fee that GBTC refuses, absolutely refuses to come down on. Now in other in other situations, I can understand why you would be willing to pay a higher price for a good or a service, but there's nothing special about GBTC in the way that they actually custody their the Bitcoin. They don't make loans against it. They don't have an investment portfolio that when you put your BTC into this thing, that they invest somehow or another leverage against it to invest in other things that are going to make you more money.
Right? If I had the choice between somebody who just sold me stocks and kept it that way and didn't do jack shit with them versus somebody who who charged me 2.5% management fee and actually made me more money than I would just by sitting on the stock if I made more money than the management fee then I would do that but that's not the case of GBTC it's just they're charging you to hold BTC and doing nothing with it they don't do they don't break a sweat they don't do anything The only thing that they have to do is make sure that they don't lose it. That's it. Now I'm not saying that that's all that easy, but I'm I am saying that it's not as hard as making day over day, month over month portfolio management and change decisions. So therefore, I don't see why they refuse to to come down off of their 2.5% fee. And I think that that is a third pressure point that people are not just taking profits, but they are exiting to other platforms so that they don't have to pay the 2.5.
Now at one point or another, GBTC is gonna be sitting on an amount of Bitcoin that is not really worth getting the 2.5% on because they're just going to see a continuous decline in the amount that they get, and they will be making less and less and less and less and less to the point that it doesn't even make sense to be in the business anymore. So again for the people that are investors in the digital currency group DCG which is the umbrella corporation for GBTC and all their stuff, I would be I'd be hopping mad and I would be on the phone to lawyers saying that they have a fiduciary commitment at this point to compete on the open market with the other ETFs that are not charging 2.5 percent because none of them do.
Now, here we go with the spot Bitcoin ETF inflows. They have dropped by 80% as the BTC prices dipped below $69,000 Prashant Jha 4 coin telegraph, United States based spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds recorded one of their lowest net inflow days of just $132,000,000 on March 14th, which was yesterday, the lowest level in the past 8 trading days and an 80% fall from March 13th. The 3rd day drop marked the 2nd consecutive day of decline. On Wednesday. Inflows hit $684,000,000 which represented a 38.3% drop from March 12th. Tuesday saw record breaking single inflows of, what? $1,050,000,000 Man. The total flow of funds into ETFs stood at 390,000,000 on March 14th with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust seeing yet another $257,000,000 in outflows, bringing net inflows to 132,000,000.
On the same day, the Van Eck Bitcoin Trust ETF and Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund recorded inflows of $13,800,000 and 13.7 respectively. Despite a significant outflow from GBTC, net flows remained positive on Thursday. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF recorded the largest inflows of 345,000,000 The cumulative net inflows into the US spot Bitcoin ETFs remain significant, however, nearing the $12,000,000,000 market mark after 44 days of trading. The change in investor sentiment comes amid a broader downturn in the crypto market as the BTC price drop below $69,000 The impact of declining ETF inflows correlated with fluctuations in the BTC price.
After bullish price action on Wednesday, March 13th, BTC posted a new all time high of above $73,000 before reversing course on Thursday. The price dipped lower on Friday, March 15th to around 66,000 as 1,000,000 in leveraged positions were liquidated. According to data from Coin Glass, 193,431
[00:16:10] Unknown:
traders were liquidated. Let's say that again. Almost 200,000 people that thought they were gonna beat the market got liquidated in the past 24 hours with a total liquidation amount of $682,140,000.
[00:16:30] Unknown:
Do not play this market. It's going to kill you. Market pundits suspect the current market volatility, regulatory uncertainties and macroeconomic factors have made investors cautious. The current decline is also attributed to next week's Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which could shed some light on the Federal Reserve's plan for interest rates in the future. Let me tell you what the interest rates plans in the future are for the Federal Reserve. They're not going to move. I I don't see why people I don't see why nobody, everybody thinks that they're going to be saved by the Federal Reserve, that is not going to happen.
At one point they will start reducing their interest rates it ain't gonna be May it's not it's just not and for the people that continuously think they're just going to cash out and sit on this cash because because sure enough, at one point or another, the Fed's gonna come in and save their bacon. They're just going to have their cash reserves inflated away. That's all that's gonna happen. So I don't know. Have fun staying poor or something like that. Anyway, moving on to micro strategy. JPMorgan, which cannot figure out which way they wanna go with with whether it's good or bad for Bitcoin, has this one. MicroStrategy's leveraged Bitcoin buying could lead to severe deleveraging if the market drops, says JPMorgan, Stacy Elliott, decrypt dotco.
MicroStrategy has amassed a 205 1,000 Bitcoin corporate treasury worth nearly 14,000,000,000 at current market prices. It's almost enough to have kept pace with the $15,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin that BlackRock has bought up to back shares of its iShares Bitcoin trust. But there's a reason to worry, oh my god, about the way that the company, has been buying the BTC, says JPMorgan Analysts We believe debt funded Bitcoin purchases by MicroStrategy adds leverage and froth to the current crypto rally and raises the risk of more severe deleveraging in a potential downturn in the future, Nicholas Percagabalu said on Thursday. I can't pronounce his name. Sorry, dude. I don't mean to to be a dick about it. I just simply cannot pronounce Greek names, and it's a Greek name.
MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor has been lauded by laser eyed Bitcoiners for his aggressive strategy. Quote, it's the best investment asset. So the end game is to acquire more Bitcoin, he recently told Yahoo Finance. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. There is no other end game, end quote. Saylor and MicroStrategy, which trades on the NASDAQ under the MSTR ticker, are no strangers to using Bitcoin as collateral to borrow cash to buy more Bitcoin. In the latest round earlier this week, MicroStrategy said it's offering up to $500,000,000 worth of convertible senior notes due 2031 to buy more Bitcoin yet.
I'm sorry. But there's not yet record high amounts of leverage in the market. Leverage refers to the ability to borrow funds to amplify the returns of an investment, for instance. A trader might use a 5x leverage to open a $500 Bitcoin futures contract with only $100 worth of BTC in their exchange account. But leverage cuts both ways. It can maximize profits and exacerbate losses. In the US, leverage trading, especially with high ratios, faces lots of regulatory restrictions for this reason. For instance, crypto trading platforms like Coinbase and Kraken are permitted to offer leverage but only up to 10x and 5x respectively, which is conservative compared to other countries.
The notional open interest to Bitcoin future contracts recently reached an all time high of $34,000,000,000 signaling a surge in optimism about the Bitcoin price rally. Despite the optimism, leveraged users in the market is still a moderate 0.2 according to CryptoKwan, and that means there is not yet a high risk of widespread liquidations that could potentially trigger a market crash. Bitcoin leverage last peaked at 0.4 in October of 2022. And actual open interest measured in BTC units is way below the high of 667,000 BTC seen in October 2022.
Current open interest expressed in BTC has only reached 496 BTC according to Coin Glass, and that suggests that while leverage is present, it hasn't reached alarming levels that could indicate a bubble or imminent correction. I don't like any of the language being used in this particular piece. That is the end of the piece. But the one thing that I don't like the most about it is this quote from Saylor. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. There's no other endgame. Gonna call bullshit. I like Saylor but dude that is one of the most short sighted things that I've ever heard of.
[00:21:39] Unknown:
I thought we were all supposed to win. Humanity is supposed to win. That's what this whole thing is about. So I I
[00:21:49] Unknown:
I'm really disappointed in Michael Saylor and that particular statement. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins. That is not true. The the number the most amount of different people that are able to procure at least some Bitcoin wins. Because this is the attitude of kings. This is the attitude of governments. This is the attitude of bullshit. I don't like it. I wish he'd retract that statement, but he's never gonna listen to me. But meanwhile, he's running numbers. CNBC, features CNBC, features and commodities. And before we begin, thank you, DeFi Yogi, for the 2,100 satoshis that you just zapped me over on zap.stream.
Let's get into it. Oil is down just scant. It's been up pretty much all morning long. It's sitting at $81.19 per barrel. Brenton Norcia is up scant. It's been up all day long. $85.44 a barrel. Natural gas, however, is down 5 and a quarter percent to $1.65. Gasoline is up almost a half a point to $2.71 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks, except for gold, are doing well this morning. Gold is down a quarter of a point to $2,163, but silver is up almost one and a half. Platinum is up almost 1 point. Copper is up 1.7%. Palladium is up 1 and a half.
Ag, it's pretty much mixed today, but chocolate knocking it out of the park 8 a half percent to the upside on that one, and the biggest loser day is going to be what lumber is down almost a full point. Live is unchanged. Lean hogs are up 2.5%. Feeder cattle are up a third. The Dow is down over half a point. The S and P is down over 3 quarters of a point. The Nasdaq is down 1 and a quarter points. The S and P mini is essentially trading sideways. So everybody's getting hit. So we're right now, Bitcoin prices coupled directly to legacy markets because everybody's thinking the same way, that the Fed is gonna come save them and that cheap money is on the horizon without understanding that cheap money is what brought us to the impasse that we're at now where the money is essentially worthless.
And with the only reason that it buys anything at all is because we are living in this fantasy land. But we'll we'll I'll talk more about that in other shows. And it just stop thinking that the Fed is gonna save you. Right? It's not working for the legacy markets. It's not working for crypto. It's not working for any of this shit. And one of the one of the things that's okay. Here here's a major change that I'm seeing. Generally speaking, losses and gains in general sectors, I'm seeing energy gaining a shit ton. And you know what's losing the most? Real estate. It's coming, guys.
I don't know when. I don't know when the correction happens in real estate, but it's coming. I wish I could tell you the day, but there's no way that I can do that. But I saw a graph yesterday that kinda was frightening. The biggest gainer in sectors in the United States was energy and the biggest loser overall was real estate. So just put that in your hat. Bonds are pretty much mixed today. 30 year 20 year has lost some of their yield, and there's gains on yields everywhere else. Nah. That's we don't really need to go through the yields potential on that one. $68,070 is what you're getting for 1 Bitcoin.
$1,340,000,000,000 market cap, 19,654,936 and 3 quarter BTC in circulation. Hash rate for the last 2016 blocks is averaging 602 exahashes per second. Average fees per block remain at 0.34 BTC. Halving estimate remains April 18th. Block space percentage for taking out the garbage has actually been reduced today from 2.4 yesterday to 2.2 percent today. That's the amount of block space per each block being used to wrangle up the trash that is ordinals and inscriptions. So, thankfully, some people for at least a short period of time have come to their senses. Mempools.
What are the mempools doing? It looks like we have a 185 blocks carrying a 127,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 36 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get in at 24. Anything under 2.2, you're gonna be purged from mempools around the world. The mining number here for mempool.spaceforward/mining is 567 exahashes per second. So we've actually have lost a little bit of mining hash rate. From Sailor once more, episode 800 and 72 of Bitcoin and podcast, Dubravco with 1660. Satoshi says, I'll take one of those Get Alby invites for a friend on TikTok.
Inbox me, please. Okay. I did that, Dubravco. Check your inbox on Noster. I've you you've got an invite for Albie waiting for you. What is the difference between a hormone and an enzyme? You can't hear an enzyme. Anyone interested in learning about the hormone cholacalciferol mistakenly named vitamin d 3, I can remend 3 amazing books on it. Read them thinnest to thickest just so happens that is the correct order. Okay, so now I've actually got those books, right here And I've put it up into the zap stream so you guys can actually see the Amazon list. We have the optimal dose, restore your health with the power of vitamin d 3. The second one is how not to die.
Gotta love it. How not to die with true high dose vitamin d therapy. The third one is the miraculous results of extremely high doses of the sunshine hormone, vitamin d 3, my experiment with huge doses of d 3 from 25,000 to 50000 to a 100000 IU a day over a 1 year period. So if you're interested in any of those, go check them out. Vitamin d 3 is something that I highly recommend, especially if you're if you think you're even feeling a little bit sick, start eating d 3. It works like a charm. Pies with 420 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with 420 says boost boost. God's death with 337 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Dubravco, with a 100 sat says, also, I made a clip for you that you can share with your friends on TikTok, but I'm not on TikTok. I get he might be talking about the friends coming over from TikTok to Noster, which still seems to be unabated, but we'll have to see if they last.
Because, you know, coming over to Noster,
[00:28:57] Unknown:
it's a little weird, can be a little weird. Alright. That's gonna do it for the weather report.
[00:29:12] Unknown:
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Wanna thank Arceres for 2,100 satoshis that he zapped me in the zap. Stream says keep it going. I will, sir. Orange Mart with 420. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. He says, good morning, Bitcoin. And I appreciate all you guys for showing up in the live chat. And if I can remember, I'll try to raid you guys into some other, livestream that's going on at the end of this show. Now down south to El Salvador, this is interesting. El Salvador has 1,000 more Bitcoin than previously known according to CoinDesk's Danny Nelson. Let's find out more.
Bitcoin forward Central American nation, El Salvador, this week moved $400,000,000 worth of Bitcoin, quote, a big chunk, end quote, into a cold wallet according to president Nayib Bukele. In a post on dead bird site, Bukele referred to the new new setup as our first Bitcoin piggy bank. El Salvador stored the cold wallet in a physical vault within our national territory, he said, including a photo of a wallet that held 5.68 no. Sorry. 5,689.68 BTC, which is worth $411,000,000 at Thursday's prices. A Bitcoin Treasury of that size places El Salvador's holdings far higher than previously believed.
Even on Thursday, public trackers placed the nation's trove at less than 3,000, which is about $205,000,000. Earlier this week, Bukele teased that the country was not simply buying BTC, but also getting it by selling passports through currency conversions for businesses, from from mining, and from government services. The revelation represents the first time that Bukele has tied his nation's holdings to a specific address. He previously relied solely on social media posts to make claims about the size of his trove, providing occasional updates whenever El Salvador bought more. El Salvador became the first country to purchase Bitcoin as a treasury asset back in September of 2021 when a single coin cost around 52,000.
On Thursday, BTC prices were north of 72,000, though in the past 24 hours, it has traded above 73, but as low as 68. And right now, we're here at 68,280. The on chain transfers into El Salvador's cold wallet occurred over the past week, though the majority arrived on Thursday. Most of the Bitcoin held in that wallet came from Bitfinex according to Arcum Intelligence. And so that's that's that particular story. And this is indeed the first time that I've actually seen Bukele say, okay, here's proof. Now here's the thing, and I don't think what I'm about to say is true.
He could have just taken a snapshot of any idiot's wallet. Right? I don't think that that's the case. But the reason that I that I pause it that is simply to so that we can remember to always be adversarially thinking. Because if we start trusting anybody, we're going to get our asses handed to us and we don't want to have our asses handed to us. But here's an interesting development ever since he flashed that wallet because that wallet's got a picture of the QR code. It's got the address. It's got how much Bitcoin is in there and now it's got even more because El Salvador has begun to receive anonymous donations in Bitcoin after the president's publication of the wallet.
And according to data from mempool.space, several people are making donations to the Salvadoran state that range anywhere between $3 to a $100. From what I've understood, he's even gotten some of those idiot ordinals that are like the cats. Those ordinal cat thingies? Apparently, the now the wallet holds some of those and some other stuff.
[00:33:21] Unknown:
So my question becomes, why?
[00:33:25] Unknown:
Why would you why would you willfully give your money over to the Salvadoran government?
[00:33:32] Unknown:
The do they need the your money? You know who actually needs your money? The the
[00:33:40] Unknown:
the people in El Salvador are like okay. Let's look at the country of El Salvador as a whole. You got the people and you got the government. The people have basically been raided for decades. Their their money just got destroyed. They had to go to the dollar. We started destroying the dollar. So these people just keep getting more and more screwed as time goes on. And then all of a sudden, here comes this Bukele guy, and he puts a whole bunch of people in prison. He makes Bitcoin legal tender, and he starts putting it on the balance sheet for the El Salvadoran government. All of a sudden, things start looking up. I say what you want about human rights abuses. I nobody seemed to be worried about the human rights abuses of the drug dealers, you know, terrorizing the citizenry, but that's another story.
[00:34:21] Unknown:
Right? So you got the government, which seems to be set up pretty well right now.
[00:34:27] Unknown:
But you got the people that are still reeling from decades decades decades of theft, inflation, which is also theft, and all kinds of other and and the whole gang the whole gang thing in El Salvador has just been awful. That's where MS 13 comes from. If you don't know what MS 13 is, look it up. It's kind of a scary bunch. But right now, tourism is booming. People are moving there. Businesses are moving there. Now he's not gonna attack he's not gonna tax your money if you take it from one country and and move it into El Salvador. Alright? So
[00:34:58] Unknown:
in my opinion, I think it's weird that people would willingly give over a $100 to the El Salvadoran government because no matter what you think about them, good, ill, or neutral, I wouldn't trust any government with any amount of money.
[00:35:16] Unknown:
But you know who I would actually wanna give my money to if I was gonna donate to El Salvador? Would be like the pupusa vendor on the street. And we did we were doing that. There were people in El Salvador that were taking pictures of the QR codes of some of these street food vendors and people were donating directly to them. If you wanna donate your BTC, then start asking people in El Salvador to take pictures, Like go on Noster, go on dead birdsite, whatever it is you gotta do. Ask people that live in El Salvador to take pictures of the people that are on the street that take BTC and ask them to take a picture of their QR codes of either their online wall their well, not online wallet, their their Bitcoin wallet or their lightning wallet or both. And if you wanna give $3 or a $100, give it to them.
Don't give it to Bukele. Bukele doesn't need it. Alright? I just think it's weird that that this is occurring. But it is what it is. I can't do anything other than what I've just done. Now, frost snap. I think that this is interesting. I'm gonna put the picture of or the website up in the zap.stream so you can see what this is, but this looks kind of cool. So as far as I can tell, it's these little things that plug in to your phone and they have a this just a little, like, a little circuit card with the USB 3, plug for your iPhone or whatever and each one of them is a signing device.
It's a signing device for a Bitcoin wallet. So here's what they say. Self custody made simple. Connect 1 or more FrostNAP devices to your phone and easily create a Bitcoin wallet in our application. If you create a 2 of 3, any 2 devices are required to access your wallet. You can geographically separate your Frost snap devices or share them amongst individuals that you trust. With FrostSnap, the strong security you need is now accessible. FrostSnap is building customizable access policies for your wallet for inheritance. You can simply create sets of keys and share them with your loved ones. So each one of these things that plugs into your phone is not very big, not very big at all. Probably about the size of 2 of your thumbs, stacked side to side. Right? And probably about as long. And then it's got a USB port, and that plugs into your phone. And on the the little circuit board that plugs into your phone is a little screen.
And it looks to me like each one of those can be a key. And so you can do maybe you can just do, like, plug it in and then you can, like, have Bitcoin in in their app on your wallet and then that's what you use as your signing device. But let's say that I, like, I've got one of these keys And my son has another key and my daughter has the 3rd key. Well, I need all 3 keys together on my phone and the way that they do that is they have a a USB port on the other end of each of these. So you can stack them. So you plug 1 into the phone, you plug another signing key into the first signing key, You plug the 3rd signing key into the second signing key and they basically are all plugged in together. It looks a little funky. Yeah. Sure.
But it's an interest it's a very interesting way to go about multisig on your phone with a device that's easily portable. And, again, like they said, you can geographically stash them, like, keep 1 in a safety deposit box, 1 at home. I don't know. 1 in like, at your friend's house. And you only need 2 of those 3 to be able to do a transaction. Check it out. It's frost snap.com. At least go check it out for yourself and take a look at it. It looks pretty nifty. I don't I don't know if they've got a I don't know if they've got a price on these yet. I don't see it. I do not see a price on it. So but again, frostnap.com.
Go go check it out because it actually pretty damn cool. Now on to the next one. US House has passed the TikTok ban bill for dealing with, foreign owned apps deemed national security risk. This is no bullshit Bitcoin. The protecting Americans from foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, boy, that's a mouthful, passed by a vote of 352 to 65 in the House of Representatives. Now it goes to the Senate where its prospects are unclear. So this is just a notation of what I was talking about yesterday. Yesterday. Let's let's find out if there's any kind of details here that that isn't coming out. House passage of the bill is only the first step. Yes, we know. President Joe Biden has said that if congress passes the measure, he will sign it. Okay. So if it gets out of the senate, if it passes out of senate, Biden's gonna sign this to ban TikTok from the United States soil.
The bill also sets a process up for the president to address any future threats from any foreign owned apps if they are deemed a national security risk. As written, the bill currently states, it shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update, or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out within the land of maritime borders of the United States any of the following: One, providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application, including any source code of such application, by means of a marketplace, including an online mobile application store, through which users within the land of maritime borders or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
2, providing Internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for uses within the land or maritime borders of the United States. Okay. So that sounds like, oh, well, that's that's just TikTok. No. No. No. It's not. All they have to do at this point is to declare anything
[00:41:48] Unknown:
foreign adversary controlled.
[00:41:51] Unknown:
That's all they have to do is declare it. They don't have to prove it. There's no there's nothing in this bill that says how they are actually going to prove that it's a foreign, adversarially controlled application. What does this mean for GitHub? Can GitHub be concluded to be a marketplace? Are they going to require that I pay for it to be a marketplace? Because that's what I always assume. A marketplace is somewhere where I want something, I gotta pay money for it. GitHub, not generally speaking, not the case because most of it's free and open source software. That's the repository. Will they make GitHub illegal to interact with if they can prove or actually they don't have to prove it. If they just declare a piece of free and open source software on the marketplace that is GitHub falls under this bill. You see where I'm going with this? I don't think this is about TikTok at all.
I think that this could hit a lot of other stuff that you don't want it to hit. I don't need to mention any names. Let's carry on. Bolt's client version 2.0.1 or 0.0. Swap client for automated cheap CLN and LND channel channel rebalancing. Oh. Oh, nice. This could work for me. Today we are excited to launch Bolt's client. A swap client for lightning node runners that connects to CLN or LND device nodes and allows for automated, unfairly cheap channel rebalancing. Oh, I'm gonna have to try this out because I I need something like this. Today, we are making Bolt's client available to the general public.
Big shout out to our newest team member, Jack Star, who bought Bolt clients to life. Bolt Client is based on Bolt's LND and is written in go. Bolt's LND was our go to swap client for LND runners estimated to be 2020. It was built for the very simple purpose. Let LND runners swap lightning and the Bitcoin main chain on demand to rebalance channels. Initially, Bolt's LND was a standalone CLI based client, but later it was integrated in UI based tools like the popular ride the lightning node management software. This release marks a major update for Bolt's LND rebranding to Bolt's client as now multiple lightning node implementations are supported, and that is CLN and LND.
This release of Bolt's client is backwards compatible to the latest Bolt's LND release, and the migration is expected to run smoothly. To be on the safe side, you can back up your Bolt's LND folder before performing the upgrade. Do not start the migration if you still have pending swaps. We estimate Bolt's LND to be running on 1,000 lightning nodes today. All these will be able to seamlessly upgrade to Bolt's client in the coming weeks. Documents are available here, and you can grab the latest release here, and both of those go to where? Docs.bolt.exchangeandgithub.comforward/boltexchange, and you can go get that stuff there.
We acknowledge that perfection is elusive and Bolt's client is no exception. So they're basically doing a cover your ass statement. So, yes, if you need channel rebalancing, and God knows I do, we're going to need to go check out this Boltz client version 2.0. 0. And moving on to the last thing today, BitGo has introduced replace by fee support for hot custodial and self managed wallets. Clients will have an option to signal for RBF in their withdrawals by enabling transaction acceleration in the withdrawal flow. Similarly, they will be able to see if withdrawal is enabled for transaction acceleration in the transfers detail view.
For internal management transactions such as consolidations and fan outs, BitGo will, by default, signal for RBF so that later these transactions can be accelerated easily if such transactions get stuck. I've never been a huge fan of BitGo because they were on the wrong side of the scaling debate, and I'm never going to think differently about that. But since then, they've actually acted pretty decently. I I have I have to give credit where credit is due. Just like I will have no problem bitching them out for being on the wrong side of history back in the day in 2017, I do have to give them a shout out today for doing replace by fee. I know that pisses a lot of other people off, because they don't like replace by fee for whatever reason.
It saved my bacon a couple of times, so I'm glad that they're, over there at BitGo or at least introducing it as an option. And that is gonna do it for the morning roundup. Dad says jokes. I was driving to the airport to catch my flight when I saw a sign that said airport left so I turned around and went home That's exactly what's going on today. Where are we at with have they come to their senses over there? $68,300. No. They have not come to their senses yet. So you're just gonna have to wait. Wow, somebody just spammed the living crap out of this Oh, thank you for spamming the living daylights out of me there in pub something something something. Wow. That's a lot of spam. Sorry about that, for you guys over there in zap.stream, but, just be aware Michael Sailor said something that makes me believe that he still has a couple more steps to go. I know that sounds like real like a lot of hubris from my side, but the end goal is not to have the most Bitcoin of anybody. That's that's not a winning state for humanity going forward.
It's the most amount of people having some, And I don't know exactly how that works, but somehow that's gotta work because we're already seeing what's left of the Bitcoin supply that's going to be coming out is all gonna be gobbled up by institutions. That yeah. I mean, there it's not going to be like it used to be. Thankfully, most of the BTC in existence today is actually in the hands of regular folks. I only hope that they make the proper decisions and that we can move towards more of a Bitcoin circular economy, but we'll have to find out.
So you think about that during the weekend, and I will see you on the other side of it.
[00:48:30] Unknown:
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.
[00:48:39] Unknown:
Have a great day.
