Join me today for Episode 1065 of Bitcoin And . . .
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https://www.theblock.co/post/348831/strategy-bitcoin-btc
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/metaplanet-issues-13-3-million-in-bonds-to-buy-bitcoin
https://decrypt.co/312370/bitcoin-miner-mara-buy-btc-2-billion
https://atlas21.com/ftx-will-begin-reimbursing-its-primary-creditors-on-may-30/
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Topics for today:
- Saylor Buys More Bitcoin
- MARA Buys More Bitcoin
- Metaplanet Issues $13.3 Million in Bonds For Bitcoin
- Larry Fink: U.S. Dollar "At Risk" Due to Bitcoin
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https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoin-covenants-checktemplateverify-bip-119
https://cointelegraph.com/news/metaplanet-issues-13-3-million-in-bonds-to-buy-bitcoin
https://decrypt.co/312370/bitcoin-miner-mara-buy-btc-2-billion
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https://atlas21.com/ftx-will-begin-reimbursing-its-primary-creditors-on-may-30/
https://lightning.news/smiles-web-app-supercharges-sat-stacking/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 09:42AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the March, the '30 first '20 '20 '5. This is episode ten sixty five of Bitcoin Andal, I do believe. Yep. Ten sixty five. It certainly is. And we're just gonna jump right in. Probably gonna be a shorter show today. There's honestly, it's weird, but there's just not that much stuff going on. Except Trump is getting into mining. This should be good. So Hut eight partners with Trump backed firm to launch American Bitcoin mining company, Naga Avan Namayo, has it for the block. Let's how involved is Trump actually in with this?
I don't know, man. I think this is when they say Trump backed company, I'm like, you're just using the name. But publicly traded HUD eight has announced a partnership with American Data Centers whose investors include Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior to launch a new Bitcoin mining company, American Bitcoin. The deal expands the Trump family's corporate exposure to the cryptocurrency sector under the cashless merger, Hut eight will own 80% of American Bitcoin and manage operations through a shared services agreement. The Trump backed firm will hold a 20% stake according to a Monday press release.
Hut eight will also deploy more than 60,000 ASIC machines to the new standalone Bitcoin mining business. Shares of the Florida based company rose more than 6% in premarket trading following the announcement. However, Hut eight stock remains down 46% year to date as Bitcoin miners navigate revenue pressures following April's Bitcoin having a quadrennial event that cuts mining rewards by 50%. American Bitcoin's leadership team includes Mike Ho as executive chairman, Matt Prusick as CEO, and Eric Trump as, oh my god, the chief strategy officer.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold the phone. Because as much as I as much as I don't know all that much about Bitcoin mining, it seems awfully weird that a mining company's chief strategy officer would be somebody who probably knows even less about Bitcoin mining than I do. I don't remember Eric Trump saying that he's been in the mines. I I don't remember Eric Trump pulling apart an ASIC machine and cleaning out the fans. I certainly don't ever see pictures of him standing in front of a, I don't know, a container with a whole bunch of ASIC miners in there, you know, strapped up to natural gas and and and, you know, an electric motor running and him changing the air filters. I've never seen this.
I I'm not sure that this is a high quality decision on the part of American Bitcoin, but I guess you gotta put the man somewhere. But Ho will also serve on the board alongside Justin Mateen, Michael Bruchem, and Hut eight CEO Asher Gannute. Quote, by carving out our mining business into a stand alone entity, which will raise its own capital, we align each segment of the business with its respective cost of capital, Gannute said. The partnership marks another move by the Trump family to expand its presence in digital assets. Quote, from the start, we've backed our conviction in Bitcoin personally and through our businesses, said Donald Trump junior.
Quote, simply buying Bitcoin is only half the story. Mining it on favorable economics opens an even bigger opportunity. End quote. The Trumps have also backed decentralized finance protocol World Liberty Financial, which plans to launch, yeah, the stablecoin as the president and US Regulators push for clear crypto regulations. Additionally, the family was affiliated with two official Trump meme coins, both Trump and Melania, blah blah blah, which have lost, like, almost all of their value. Please don't get into meme coins, ladies and gentlemen, no matter whose name is on the coin.
They're all worthless. Please, please, for the love of God, stop. Otherwise, you're gonna lose all your money. Alright. So strategy has bought more Bitcoin. If you did not know, and you probably did, they have bought another 22,000 Bitcoin for another $1,900,000,000. Holy crap. James Hunt, the block. Let's see if there's anything different about this one. Bitcoin treasury company strategy acquired an additional 22,048 Bitcoin for approximately 1,920,000,000.00 at an average price of 86,969 per Bitcoin between March or the twenty fourth and March according to an eight k filing.
Strategy now holds a total of 528,185 Bitcoin worth over $43,000,000,000 bought at an average price of 67,458 per Bitcoin for a total cost of around $35,630,000,000 including fees and expenses according to the company's cofounder, Michael Saylor. That's the equivalent of more than 2.5% of Bitcoin's total 21,000,000 coin supply. 2.5%, ladies and gentlemen, is owned by one guy. Well well, did not Michael Saylor himself, but the company. And, yes, that's that's actually kinda concerning. But what are you gonna do about it? The only the only thing that keeps Michael Saylor from buying more Bitcoin is for other people to buy Bitcoin.
2 point 5 percent is quite a lot of Bitcoin for any one person or company or entity, whatever you want, however you want to frame it, that's just too much but again, there's not a damn thing you and I can do about it, so there you go. Now, the latest acquisitions were made using the proceeds from the sale of its class a common stock, MicroStrategy or MSTR, and the perpetual strike preferred stock STRK is its ticker. Last week's strategy sold 3,640,000.00 shares of MSTR for approximately 1,200,000,000.0. As of March, dollars '2 point '3 '7 billion worth of MSTR shares remain available for issuance and sale under the program, the firm said.
Strategy also sold 213,807 Strike shares for approximately $18,520,000 last week with approximately 20,970,000,000.00 worth of STRK shares remaining available for issuance. Strategy Strike and Strife, perpetual preferred stocks are in addition to the firm's initial 2121 plan, which targets a total capital raise of $42,000,000,000 in equity offerings and fixed income securities for Bitcoin acquisitions. So it seems that there's there's no less appetite for buying the debt of MicroStrategy so that they can take that money and go buy Bitcoin with it. I would have thought that that would have kind of cooled off a little bit.
So begs the question, is this really the only place or rather, is the issuance of debt by private companies now the only visible quote unquote safe haven for investors. I it this it just you know, housing is overblown. That housing market, all houses cost way too much money. Entirely too much money. Alright? So that seems to have petered out. Art? People aren't really buying that much art anymore. At least it doesn't look like it. Gold now gold's doing well. Gold is doing well. Why not just buy the actual Bitcoin? And and I am never going to have a good high quality answer for you, and nobody's really gonna be able to have an answer for, you know, a really good high quality answer for me. When I ask the question, why not just buy the Bitcoin instead of buying debt that's issued by a company in in a very, very fiat feel. Like, they're just issuing it. They're just, like, willing it into existence, and it's they don't even have to will it. They just have to print it. Somebody's just gotta pick up a phone and say, issue more shares.
Of course, you gotta jump through a few hoops to be able to do it, but it's not it's it ain't rocket science neither. So I don't know. I mean, I I I wish I had a better quality line of thinking for y'all, but I just I just don't. I find it flabbergasting to me that people really just wanna buy the debt of a private company who's turned into a Bitcoin company and has essentially left the very goods and services that they were creating that made the company what it is behind. It it it kind of baffling. But, hey, you wanna talk about covenant some more?
Because Shinobi has a new piece about Bitcoin covenants, which he had promised he was gonna do. This one is gonna be the check template verify or BIP 119. And this is the first article in the covenant series examining check template verify, otherwise known as the CTV proposal from Jeremy Rubin Jeremy Rubin. And like I said, it's written by Shinobi out of Bitcoin Magazine. Check template verify or CTV put forward by Jeremy Rubin with BIP one one nine is the most mature and fully fleshed out covenant proposal, not only out of the proposals that we will be covering, but out of all the covenant proposals in their entirety.
As I mentioned in the introduction article to this series, there are many concerns in the ecosystem regarding covenants that are too flexible enabling things that wind up having very detrimental consequences for Bitcoin. CTV was designed specifically to constrain its capabilities tightly enough to avoid any of those concerns. To first understand how CTV functions, we need to understand the individual parts of a Bitcoin transaction. This is a very high level view of a Bitcoin transaction. It has inputs, or unspent coins, also known as UTXOs. And it has outputs, the new unspit coins that the transaction will create when it is confirmed in a block.
There's a lot more pieces we will go through, but this is the highest level view of a transaction's structure. Every transaction also has a version number field for the whole transaction indicating applicability of new versions of rules or features. There is also the marker and the flag, which are set to specific values to indicate the transaction uses segwit. After this is the input count, the number of inputs in the transaction. Then comes the actual inputs. Each input contains a TX ID of the transaction that created the unspent coins that are being spent. A v out which marks what output in that transaction is being spent, the size of the script sig, and the script sig, which may be twice, which is the unlocking script proving the input being spent is authorized by its locking script rules. And finally finally, a sequence number, which is used to ensure the input being spent is following relative time lock rules. For example, the input has existed for a certain number of blocks or length of time since its creation.
The output count is the next piece of data the number of outputs in the transaction. After this comes the actual outputs, which contain an amount of Satoshis assigned to that output, the scriptPubKey size, and the actual scriptPubKey, which is the locking script for that output. Lastly, the inLockTime field applies a time lock value in the timestamp or block height that applies to the entire transaction. Each segwit transaction also contains a witness section where each input has a corresponding witness containing a stack items count, which how many things will be put in the script stack, a size field for each item, and the actual data item to go on the stack.
So how does CTV work? CTV is an opcode that enables the most basic form of introspection and forward data carrying out all of the covenant proposals. It allows a script to take a predefined 32 byte hash and compare that against a hash of most of the fields of the spending transaction. If the hash derived from the actual spending transaction does not match the predefined hash, that transaction is invalid. The fields it commits to are inversion, inlock time, input count, a hash of all the in sequence fields, output count, a hash of all the outputs, and an input index which is the place the input has in the transaction like first input, second input, etcetera, etcetera. These are all the fields committed to by the CTV hash in their entirety and with no ability to pick and choose.
This is the degree of introspection CTV enables. Does the hash of these fields in the spending transaction match the hash in the locking script of the input being spent? That's it. The hash commits to essentially the entire transaction except the actual inputs. There's a reason the hash does not include the inputs. In order to lock an output to a 32 bit or 32 byte hash with CTV, you need to know the hash of the transaction that you are ensuring is the only way for it to be spent. The input locked with CTV being spent will have to include this hash in order to be verified against CTV.
That necessitates having the hash of that transaction before you create the complete transaction. That is not possible. You can also nest CTV scripts, like, for instance, have an initial CTV script commit to a transaction with outputs that also include CTV scripts. This is what allows CTV to, quote, carry forward data. All it carries forward in practice, though, is whatever data is contained in the chain of transactions. You can do this in theory to an infinite depth, but you are limited in practice to a finite depth because the nesting must be generated backwards starting from the end. This is because each level or hop must have the hash of the transaction moving to the next one. Otherwise, you can't create the locking script in the first place.
If you don't already know the next transaction, you cannot generate the previous one. So what is this useful for? CTV allows you to restrict an output so that it can only be spent according to consensus rules by an exact predefined transaction. Some of you might be asking what the big deal is. We can already pre sign transactions. If the level of introspection is so limited that it can only accomplish something we can already do just pre signing, what is the value add? First, pre signed transactions always leave open the possibility of the keyholders signing new transactions and spending those coins in a different way.
You have to trust that the keyholder will not do this or will delete the key needed to sign with, which you also have to trust them on. You there's a lot of trust involved in this is what Shenobi's saying. CTV, though, remove removes that trust entirely. Once the spending transaction is defined and the output locked to that CTV hash is created, there's no possibility of being spent any other way enforced by consensus. Currently, the only way around that trust is to be involved in pre signing transactions yourself using multisig. Then you can be completely certain that unless you choose to sign one yourself, no other valid transaction spending a coin in a different way can be created.
The problem is the more people are involved, the more difficult and unreliable coordinating everyone to pre sign a transaction at the same time becomes. Past small sizes, it becomes a totally impractical problem to solve reliably. CTV or CTV gives a way for people to know a set of transactions is committed without everyone having to get online at the same time to sign them. It greatly simplifies the coordination process by allowing everyone to get the needed information to anyone else wherever they can. And once that person has everyone's information, they can then create the chain of CTV transactions without anyone else's involvement.
And everyone can verify and be certain that the correct outcome is the only possible one. That is incredibly valuable on its own, but CTV can also enable even more valuable things in combination with other opcodes, which we will see in the next article. So in closing, CTV is a tightly restricted covenant that enables a degree of introspection and forward data carrying that is so limited, it does not exceed the actual functionality of anything that can be done with pre signed transactions. The value proposition is not in enabling new functionality in its own right, but drastically improving the efficiency, scalability, and security guarantees of what can be built currently using pre signed transactions.
This alone is a massive benefit to almost every currently deployed protocol using pre signed transactions. Here are some of the projects demonstrate demonstrating how thoroughly fleshed out and explored this particular covenant is compared to others. A basic payment pool example by s t u t x o. A CTV Vault implementation by James O'Bearney, who went on to propose Op Vault, which makes use of CTV. There's a proof of concept port of the pre signed transaction based ARC implementation from second by Stephen Roos to use the CTV instead. The Sapio language by Jeremy Rubin himself, a higher level language for building contracts with CTV.
There's Timeout Trees, which is a proposal for a very basic coin pool designed by John Law. And numerous other possible protocols such as optimized discrete log contracts, non interactive lightning channels one party can open without the other, and even decentralized ways for miners to pool together. CTV is an incredibly mature proposal at this point with a high value add and no risk of enabling anything driving the concerns around covenants. This should not only be very seriously considered, but in my personal opinion, should have been activated years ago.
Okay. That's the end of Shinobi's article. And, yes, it is high level, and I I get that. But if you I'm I'm reading the this article word for word. If you really wanna understand what covenants is, replay it. Replay it a couple of times. Shinobi does a really good job here. Yeah. His his language does border on the two technical, but everybody can understand this. It's just gonna take more people more than one reading or, in this case, more than one listening. So do yourself a favor. Replay this. Learn what covenants are and how CTV seems to be probably our best shot at getting something like covenants in there. Now the Circle P is open for business, and we're gonna get clean with handmade tallow soap from my buddy Soap Miner. He's got peppermint tallow soap. He's got lavender. He's got pine tar. He's got tea tree. And then he's got something with no scent at all called rustic tallow. It's got, count them, three. One, two, three ingredients.
Beef tallow, lye, and distilled water. And the rest of them have, you know, like peppermint's got some peppermint oil or whatever. What is it? Yeah. Peppermint oil. And then, oh, and it's got some French green clay in it. And then there's lavender. It's got lavender oil and distilled water. Oh, and Brazilian purple clay for coloring. See see how this works? This is clean soap. Not only is the soap designed to get you clean, it is in itself free from all of the crap that you get when you go buy soap at a Walmart. So go to soapminer.com.
That's soapminer.com, s 0 a p miner Com. And when you order soap from soap miner, in the notes field on your order form online, just tell them that you heard it here on the circle p and maybe under the value for value advertising model that is the Circle p, SoapMiner will decide to cut me some satoshis for the advertising onto the Japanese firm, Meta Planet. They're issuing or have issued. It's happened. They did it. They they reported it today. $13,300,000 in bonds to buy more Bitcoin. Adrian Zmunsky for Cointelegraph. MetaPlanet issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen or $13,300,000 US of bonds to buy more BTC according to a March 31 filing, that's today.
Meta Planet issued zero interest bonds by allocating them via its EVO fund to fuel its Bitcoin appetite. Investors will be allowed to redeem the newly issued securities at full face value by September. The firm's CEO, Simon Gurevich, wrote on a Twitter post that the company was taking advantage of the recent downturn in Bitcoin prices. The announcement comes as Bitcoin changed hands for about $82,000 at the time of writing, down 25% from its all time high of around 109,000 per coin. Meta Planet is Asia's top corporate Bitcoin holder and the tenth in the world according to Bitcoin Treasury's data. Currently, the firm owns 3,200 Bitcoin worth somewhere around 1 and a quarter billion dollars.
Meta Planet is often called Asia's micro strategy as its corporate plan closely mirrors that of strategy, the US based market intelligence firm that shifted its primary focus to accumulating a bunch of corn. Meta Planet's US based older brother is the top corporate Bitcoin holder with over 500,000 BTC in its coffers worth nearly $82,000,000,000. And, of course, as you know from earlier in the show, that number changed precipitously going north. Let's see. Is there anything else in here? Oh, Meta Planet is making powerful friends in The United States political landscape. Now remember, this is a Japanese company. Earlier in March, the company appointed US president Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, to its newly established strategic board of advisors to further meta plan its mission to become a global leader in the Bitcoin economy.
Quote, Eric Trump brings a wealth of experience in real estate, finance, brand development, and strategic business growth, and has become a leading voice and advocate of digital asset adoption worldwide. Well, okay. So that's the end of that article. But let me go back here. Where are where yo, I need to look at this one again. This Hut eight deal with Trump. Is Eric let's see where Eric is. Oh, my god. Eric Trump is the chief strategy officer of the new American Bitcoin company, and he's also doing stuff with Meta Planet. This is a this is a busy Eric Trump. I gotta tell you, man. He's a busy, busy, busy, busy man.
So what to say about Meta Planet? It's it's a Japanese firm, and they have a substantial amount of coin. They're clearly following MicroStrategy's play, but they're getting into United States political landscape by having Eric Trump as an adviser. So this is this is either ends up being really silly, and I'm not talking just about Meta Planet. I'm talking about the Trump family and whether or not they actually give a shit about Bitcoin. In my opinion, it can only go two ways. It can go really good or it's just gonna be a damn circus. Because I I and I my my gut is screaming that Eric Trump does not know that much about this particular industry to be put in these positions.
It yes. It it bugs me, but not because I I it's not has nothing to do with whether or not I hate or love Trump. That's not it. I'm just this this guy's wheelhouse is so far away from anything actually technical with Bitcoin that it makes me wonder, what is he doing for these companies? Hopefully, somebody will be able to tell us soon. But in the meantime, Bitcoin miner Mara is raising $2,000,000,000 with a stock offering of their own to buy Bitcoin, Vismaya v, riding for decrypt.co. The largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, formerly Marathon Digital, revealed in a form eight k and prospectus filed with the SEC that it entered into an at the market agreement with major financial firms, including Barclays Capital, BMO Capital Markets, BTIG, and, of course, Cantor Fitzgerald, which seems to be a major player nowadays in this realm.
The agreement also allows them to sell up to $2,000,000,000 worth of Mars stock from time to time, that's in quotes, with proceeds earmarked for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin and for working capital. As of now, Bitcoin is trading at 81,416. Whatever. Coin analysts said that investors have been reacting to heightened trade war tensions and signs that inflation could keep inching higher. Well, we we saw that in the inflation report that came out on Friday. Inflation is not exactly under control. So I could keep inching higher? No. The sentence is keeps inching higher. Still, investors appeared cautious.
Yahoo finance data shows Mara stock fell eight and a half percent on March to $12.47 as crypto mining stocks broadly declined amid macroeconomic uncertainty. The latest offering signals Mars' intent to double down on a treasury strategy that's rapidly gaining popularity among corporates from GameStop's one point three billion dollar convertible no plan to other big players like similar scientific and Japan's Meta Planet. The strategy was made famous by Michael Saylor. Yeah. We know, dude. We know. But last July, Mara CEO, Fred Teal, did say that the company was going full HODL, and that's a quote, committing to retain all mined BTC and even periodically make strategic purchases on the open market, end quote.
The SEC filing comes just weeks after Mara reported record earnings for the fourth quarter of last year with revenue climbing 37% year over year to 214,400,000.0 and a net income jumping 248% to 528,300,000.0 despite a 27% drop in BTC production due to last April's halving. Rising Bitcoin prices helped Mara beat expectations with a 1 and a quarter dollar in earnings per share. Holy crap. I mean, I don't like Mara, but those numbers are solid freaking numbers. So I guess good for you. Let's run our own numbers. Futures and commodities.
Whoo doggy. Oil is up, way up, like, three and a quarter percentage points, taking it over seventy to seventy one dollars and sixty three cents. That's that's a hell of a jump. Brent Norsey up one and a half percent to $74.76. Natural gas up almost a half, back over $4 to $4.08 per thousand cubic feet. And gasoline is also up 2.15% to a buck and a quarter. No. I don't know why I said that. $2.28 a gallon. Gold with another all time high. It is an all time high. 1.23% for the shiny metal rock puts it at $3,152.40 per ounce. Holy smokes. Silver is down a half. Platinum is up well over three full points. Copper is down 1.7%, and palladium is up 1.7%.
Ag futures. What do we got here? Looks completely mixed. Biggest winner today is wheat. 1.94 to the upside. Biggest loser is gonna be lumber, down 1.4%. Live cattle, down point 66%. Lean hogs, up almost a half. And feeder cattle, down a third. Now what's going on in equities? Well, the Dow is the only one in the green today. It's up a third. But the S and P is down a quarter, Nasdaq is down over a full point, and the S and P Mini is down a third of a point themselves. And we've got fluctuations in Bitcoin right now. We are chilling out at $83,390. That is a $1,650,000,000,000 market cap, and we're only gonna be able to get our hands on 26.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000.
8 hundred and 40 4 thousand 4 hundred and 10 and a third of an average fees per block are lower than normal. 0.03 BTC taking fees on a per block basis. And, guys, there's only three blocks. There's only three blocks and one of them is not even full yet. And high priority is gonna get your transaction in at 3 Satoshis per v buy, low priority is at 2. And just because I missed it, there's just under 5,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear. Alright. But wow. So miners just refusing refusing to shut down their machines. Hash rate is at 832.8 exahashes per second, still very, very high.
It's amazing. In fact, in July let's see where we're on July, we had a hash rate of 600 x of hashes per second. And then we get over into November, we get this spike up to 753 x of hashes per second that was right before the November. And then, let's get over here to where around the time that we knew Trump was gonna be in office. We hit six ninety four, and then let's see. Let's see. But he got in January, was inauguration day, so I'll pull it back to January, I'm looking at, if it'll be still, 836 exahashes per second. Alright? And then we rose up a little bit, and then we came down a little bit, and now we're we're over what our hash rate was when Donald Trump got elected, and then we went to a 9,000.
We were at a hundred we're going back and forth between a hundred thousand and and and 99,000 for a while, and then we had this big huge, you know, 20% drop. And we we are now where we are now, yet hash rate remains the same. I find that fascinating. But from Blood Red Streets, Friday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Will with 5,000 sats says, permaculture also helped me see Bitcoin's value. I think the permy crowd is probably the second largest demographic on Nostra as well. I tend to agree there. Well, Oak Grove with a 64 says, didn't listen yet.
Family in town, but you won't be disappointed. Turkey gave me a thousand said nothing. Psyduck with 573 says Psyduck. God's death February. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Paul, sir, 9 with 500. Thank you again for this excellent and concise overview of current news. Always a pleasure listening to your episodes and the variety of topics. You're my favorite podcast when it comes to Bitcoin, and I appreciate your dedication to provide people like me with episodes that are consistently worthwhile listening to. Keep up the good work, my friend. Thank you, Paul. Kind words like that are worth their weight in gold. God's death two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Perma Nerd says, this episode is more valuable than a cheese reserve.
Ask the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use, and this is a weird one. This is out of CoinDesk written by Helene Braun. Bitcoin could threaten dollars reserve currency status. And you're saying to yourself, well, David, we've heard that before. Yeah. But not from BlackRock's Larry Fink you haven't. That's that's what that's not some idiot walking around talking about the dollar reserve being knocked on its ass by Bitcoin. This is one of the heaviest hitters in finance that the West has ever seen. And he's still a big fan of digital assets.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink nevertheless said that he's not blind to the possible risk to The US from Bitcoin's rise to prominence. Quote, The United States has benefited from the dollar serving as the world's reserve currency for decades, said Fink in his annual letter to shareholders. Oh. But that's not guaranteed to last forever. If The United States doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin. I'm obviously not anti digital assets, Fink continued, quote, but two things can be true at the same time.
Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper, and more transparent. Yet, that same innovation could undermine America's economic advantage if investors begin seeing Bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar, end quote. Fink's letter comes at a time of high market uncertainty and anxiety among investors about the economic state of the country amid policy changes set in place by Donald Trump. To balance out the national deficit, Fink said, investors should diversify their portfolios to add private market assets in addition to stocks and bonds, Doubling down on his commitment and belief in digital assets, Larry Fink said that he believes that tokenized funds will be as well known among investors as exchange traded funds provided that the industry can create a better infrastructure for digital identities, which Fink believes to be a hurdle in getting institutional investors from fully embracing decentralized finance. Quote, every stock, every bond, every fund, every asset can be tokenized.
If they are, it will revolutionize investing. If we're serious about building an efficient and accessible financial system, championing tokenization alone won't suffice. We must solve digital verification too. End quote. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, digital identification kinda scares the piss out of me when it comes out of the mouths of people like Larry Fink. Because their their idea of digital identity is not a sovereign view. It is more of a prison guard kind of view. Hey, who's in Cell Number 18? Oh, yeah. It's it's it's Donnie. Donnie's in Cell 8. See, it's more of a prison ID card when you're talking about digital identification coming out of the mouths of people like Larry Fink and anybody who's in government, no matter whether the they're in The United States or, god forbid, Europe, which just seems to be burning right now with I I don't know. I I read a couple of things earlier today, like the like, Marie Le Pen has been convicted.
She was found guilty of embezzlement, and now she can no longer run as president. And I saw, like, there was, like, five or six different stories all out of Europe, all about people that somehow or another are not going to be able to run for president or somehow or another has been thrown in jail or been found guilty. This, it's bad. And it's gonna get worse. But digital identification, when we just step back over here across the pond back to The United States and just think about what digital identity means to these guys, they are not talking about, like, a private public key pair like we have for Noster.
They are not talking about, you know, like like what John Carvallo when he talks about digital identities because he has he has a schema for it. He doesn't like the Nostr schema. That's okay. What I'm getting at is that John is a sovereign. He has a sovereign mindset. They're not going to be adopting John Carvallo's system. They're not going to be adopting digital identity as laid down in Nostr. They are going to want something much more sinister. So when this guy talks about Bitcoin and then he starts talking about digital identities, you know, probably need to reevaluate just how sinister Larry Fink actually is and stop rah rah ing him just because he's into Bitcoin. Anyway, FTX is on the horizon come May 30. So the bankruptcy, you know, you know, wunderkind, the guy that currently had to do they sent to prison because he stole a bunch of money from all his customers.
Well, FTX will begin reimbursing its primary creditors, not all, just the first guys on the list. And is that's going to begin on May according to Atlas21.com. FTX is preparing to begin reimbursing its primary creditors on May according to court documents and a Bloomberg report. The exchange will start reimbursements for creditors with claims exceeding $50,000 drawing from its $11,400,000,000 liquidity reserve. Andrew Dietrich, the company's attorney, emphasized that FTX is managing an extraordinary number of claims, many of which are fraudulent or inflated, totaling what he referred to as 27 quintillion claims.
Holy crap. Some smaller creditors classified in the convenience class have already received their reimbursements. All claims related to digital assets are being evaluated based on the date FTX filed for bankruptcy, which was November 2022, if you have forgotten. Although FTX has stated that many creditors could receive up to 118% of the value of their claims in cash, critics argue this figure does not reflect the price increase of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have occurred since that collapse. Major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, XRP, and Solana have seen significant increases since the filing, and Solana has risen by 650, and they talk about two other shit coins. I don't I don't even care. However, since claims are being settled at November 2022 fiat values, many creditors feel shortchanged.
Sunil Carvuri, a representative of a group of FTX creditors said, quote, this leads to some closure, but the recovery is based on outdated prices. The creditors are not fully compensated in terms of cryptocurrencies, end quote. FTX will also pay an annual interest rate of 9% on outstanding claims. Although reimbursements represent a step forward, the entire process could extend for months as the company works to resolve remaining claims and close the books on one of the largest bankruptcies in cryptocurrency history. BitGo and Kraken have announced their involvement in assisting FTX's reimbursements.
If all eligible users submit complete claims, FTX could distribute around $16,000,000,000 in total recoveries. So there you go, man. So why is this important? Well, I seem to remember that FTX has already liquidated everything. They've sold their Bitcoin for cash. They've sold their shitcoins for cash. As far as I know, unless I'm horrendously wrong, that liquidation has already happened. However, in news cycles, you cannot depend on people understanding that that has happened. They're going to see FTX claims going out, and they're going to just think that it's going out in Bitcoin and that the people that get those reimbursements in Bitcoin are going to sell and and you see what I'm what I'm getting at.
Now if I'm wrong and they are actually going to give out the coinage itself, but it doesn't make sense because then you'd be able to sell it at today's prices, and that wouldn't be a tangible argument that that guy was making in the article. Right? So that's one of the reasons why I'm pretty sure that they've already liquefied everything, and that was done a long time ago. Still, there you're gonna see downward price pressure on Bitcoin and broader crypto once those payments hit because you're gonna have every magazine and every newspaper under the sun saying, oh my god, it's gonna be a shitpocalypse.
If the price is gonna Bitcoin's dead. It's gonna die. Once these things get out into winter, but I was gonna sell it's already sold, man. And yet people are gonna freak. So just please, please, please be aware. Alright. Let's see. We got one more for you, from Lightning News written by Kurkurubai. He has this one entitled earn Bitcoin on your desktop smiles web app supercharges sat stacking I've never heard of smiles before. What is it? Smiles the trailblazing platform that turns daily tasks into tangible Bitcoin rewards, has unveiled its all new smiles web app. Designed for desktop users, this feature rich platform revolutionizes how individuals accumulate Bitcoin by integrating shopping, surveys, and exclusive offers into a single intuitive interface.
With enhanced flexibility, real time tracking, and cross device compatibility, Smiles is redefining what it means to earn Bitcoin in the modern digital economy. So Bitcoin's rise as a decentralized store of value has sparked global interest yet many still view it as inaccessible or exclusive to traders. Smiles challenges this narrative by empowering users to grow their BTC holdings organically through activities that they already engage in, like online shopping, sharing opinions, or exploring new products. The launch of the Smiles web app marks a pivotal expansion, merging the convenience of mobile rewards with the functionality of desktop browsing.
So the key features of the Smiles web app are one. Effortless cross device integration two, Bitcoin cashback shopping partnering with top brands three, paid surveys where you can turn your opinions into Bitcoin 4, high value offers and five, real time earnings dashboard six, bitcoin news hub stay informed while you earn this is interesting the integrated news feed aggregates updates from trusted sources and Smile's editorial team. From regulatory developments to market analysis, users can stay informed without leaving the app. Interesting. And seven, and finally, customizable interface. They'll give you a dark mode.
Honestly, at this point in time, if you're if you've got an app and you don't have dark mode, I'm not using it. The shit the white backgrounds hurt my eyes. It's like it's like a a and especially at night because, you know, a lot a lot of us like to be up at night. And one thing that sucks when you're up at night and looking at a screen is that everything else around you is dark and you've got this, it's like looking, it's like staring into a headlight or if you've got two screens like I do, staring into two headlights. I don't wanna do it. If you don't have dark mode on your app, whether it's mobile or not, I'm not using it unless it's absolutely critical.
Alright? So please, if you haven't put dark mode on your app, please please for the love of God do that. Alright. That's the end of the show. We are here. This so now, like, $10.66 or $10.65 is in the bag. It is yeah. It absolutely is in the bag. So donate to the show. So the call call to action here, help me help you stay informed about Bitcoin news on mostly a daily basis. You can use the fountain app or any podcasting two point o enabled app, and you can just stream me Satoshis while you listen. You can set it to I think fountain app's limit is is 10 Satoshis per minute. I think I I haven't seen one or two or three or like, I haven't seen any single digit payments flowing through my lightning node, which is where all of my when whenever you donate to the show in in Satoshis, it's always coming to my node. I don't use a third party to custody my node. I do it all myself. It works just fine for me.
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You know, say say, say that you want me to say hello to your, you know, your son or something like that. I'll read it. I don't mind. You guys have been awesome with your messages lately, and I I want that to expand. I think that that's an important part of the show. Because you you don't get that with, like, highfalutin podcasters, man. You gotta you gotta have a pleb based podcast like me. So I do hope that you will consider supporting the show, donate directly to it. Oh, and I've got a I've got a website. I finally pulled the trigger and got a domain and set up a, set up a web page or, like, a couple of web pages. You can find this show at bitcoin and show. All one word. Bitcoin and show. It's like the show. It's my show. It's the bitcoinandshow.com.
Bitcoin and show Com. I've only got a couple of posts. I'm not a web I'm not a web guy. I'm not good at it. Okay? So I'm learning as I go. This is one of the reasons why I didn't really want a web page, but everybody's like going, no, dude. You you you gotta have a web page. So if you if you do go to Bitcoin and show, I've got only two posts up there right now. One is Friday show, Blood Red Streets. And then last night, I posted an article entitled brewing biology, a novel system for biochar, compost tea, and microbial inoculation in plants and soils. I've been kind of had this idea in my head for quite a while.
Go read it, and let me know what you think. It's it's under construction, but I I like the way that the article is is has been framed out, and I'm gonna be working on that for a little while. But, give bitcoin and show.com a spin. And, no, I don't have a donate button directly on the website yet. Give me some time, man. I'm I'm working on it, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and, and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 09:42AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the March, the '30 first '20 '20 '5. This is episode ten sixty five of Bitcoin Andal, I do believe. Yep. Ten sixty five. It certainly is. And we're just gonna jump right in. Probably gonna be a shorter show today. There's honestly, it's weird, but there's just not that much stuff going on. Except Trump is getting into mining. This should be good. So Hut eight partners with Trump backed firm to launch American Bitcoin mining company, Naga Avan Namayo, has it for the block. Let's how involved is Trump actually in with this?
I don't know, man. I think this is when they say Trump backed company, I'm like, you're just using the name. But publicly traded HUD eight has announced a partnership with American Data Centers whose investors include Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior to launch a new Bitcoin mining company, American Bitcoin. The deal expands the Trump family's corporate exposure to the cryptocurrency sector under the cashless merger, Hut eight will own 80% of American Bitcoin and manage operations through a shared services agreement. The Trump backed firm will hold a 20% stake according to a Monday press release.
Hut eight will also deploy more than 60,000 ASIC machines to the new standalone Bitcoin mining business. Shares of the Florida based company rose more than 6% in premarket trading following the announcement. However, Hut eight stock remains down 46% year to date as Bitcoin miners navigate revenue pressures following April's Bitcoin having a quadrennial event that cuts mining rewards by 50%. American Bitcoin's leadership team includes Mike Ho as executive chairman, Matt Prusick as CEO, and Eric Trump as, oh my god, the chief strategy officer.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold the phone. Because as much as I as much as I don't know all that much about Bitcoin mining, it seems awfully weird that a mining company's chief strategy officer would be somebody who probably knows even less about Bitcoin mining than I do. I don't remember Eric Trump saying that he's been in the mines. I I don't remember Eric Trump pulling apart an ASIC machine and cleaning out the fans. I certainly don't ever see pictures of him standing in front of a, I don't know, a container with a whole bunch of ASIC miners in there, you know, strapped up to natural gas and and and, you know, an electric motor running and him changing the air filters. I've never seen this.
I I'm not sure that this is a high quality decision on the part of American Bitcoin, but I guess you gotta put the man somewhere. But Ho will also serve on the board alongside Justin Mateen, Michael Bruchem, and Hut eight CEO Asher Gannute. Quote, by carving out our mining business into a stand alone entity, which will raise its own capital, we align each segment of the business with its respective cost of capital, Gannute said. The partnership marks another move by the Trump family to expand its presence in digital assets. Quote, from the start, we've backed our conviction in Bitcoin personally and through our businesses, said Donald Trump junior.
Quote, simply buying Bitcoin is only half the story. Mining it on favorable economics opens an even bigger opportunity. End quote. The Trumps have also backed decentralized finance protocol World Liberty Financial, which plans to launch, yeah, the stablecoin as the president and US Regulators push for clear crypto regulations. Additionally, the family was affiliated with two official Trump meme coins, both Trump and Melania, blah blah blah, which have lost, like, almost all of their value. Please don't get into meme coins, ladies and gentlemen, no matter whose name is on the coin.
They're all worthless. Please, please, for the love of God, stop. Otherwise, you're gonna lose all your money. Alright. So strategy has bought more Bitcoin. If you did not know, and you probably did, they have bought another 22,000 Bitcoin for another $1,900,000,000. Holy crap. James Hunt, the block. Let's see if there's anything different about this one. Bitcoin treasury company strategy acquired an additional 22,048 Bitcoin for approximately 1,920,000,000.00 at an average price of 86,969 per Bitcoin between March or the twenty fourth and March according to an eight k filing.
Strategy now holds a total of 528,185 Bitcoin worth over $43,000,000,000 bought at an average price of 67,458 per Bitcoin for a total cost of around $35,630,000,000 including fees and expenses according to the company's cofounder, Michael Saylor. That's the equivalent of more than 2.5% of Bitcoin's total 21,000,000 coin supply. 2.5%, ladies and gentlemen, is owned by one guy. Well well, did not Michael Saylor himself, but the company. And, yes, that's that's actually kinda concerning. But what are you gonna do about it? The only the only thing that keeps Michael Saylor from buying more Bitcoin is for other people to buy Bitcoin.
2 point 5 percent is quite a lot of Bitcoin for any one person or company or entity, whatever you want, however you want to frame it, that's just too much but again, there's not a damn thing you and I can do about it, so there you go. Now, the latest acquisitions were made using the proceeds from the sale of its class a common stock, MicroStrategy or MSTR, and the perpetual strike preferred stock STRK is its ticker. Last week's strategy sold 3,640,000.00 shares of MSTR for approximately 1,200,000,000.0. As of March, dollars '2 point '3 '7 billion worth of MSTR shares remain available for issuance and sale under the program, the firm said.
Strategy also sold 213,807 Strike shares for approximately $18,520,000 last week with approximately 20,970,000,000.00 worth of STRK shares remaining available for issuance. Strategy Strike and Strife, perpetual preferred stocks are in addition to the firm's initial 2121 plan, which targets a total capital raise of $42,000,000,000 in equity offerings and fixed income securities for Bitcoin acquisitions. So it seems that there's there's no less appetite for buying the debt of MicroStrategy so that they can take that money and go buy Bitcoin with it. I would have thought that that would have kind of cooled off a little bit.
So begs the question, is this really the only place or rather, is the issuance of debt by private companies now the only visible quote unquote safe haven for investors. I it this it just you know, housing is overblown. That housing market, all houses cost way too much money. Entirely too much money. Alright? So that seems to have petered out. Art? People aren't really buying that much art anymore. At least it doesn't look like it. Gold now gold's doing well. Gold is doing well. Why not just buy the actual Bitcoin? And and I am never going to have a good high quality answer for you, and nobody's really gonna be able to have an answer for, you know, a really good high quality answer for me. When I ask the question, why not just buy the Bitcoin instead of buying debt that's issued by a company in in a very, very fiat feel. Like, they're just issuing it. They're just, like, willing it into existence, and it's they don't even have to will it. They just have to print it. Somebody's just gotta pick up a phone and say, issue more shares.
Of course, you gotta jump through a few hoops to be able to do it, but it's not it's it ain't rocket science neither. So I don't know. I mean, I I I wish I had a better quality line of thinking for y'all, but I just I just don't. I find it flabbergasting to me that people really just wanna buy the debt of a private company who's turned into a Bitcoin company and has essentially left the very goods and services that they were creating that made the company what it is behind. It it it kind of baffling. But, hey, you wanna talk about covenant some more?
Because Shinobi has a new piece about Bitcoin covenants, which he had promised he was gonna do. This one is gonna be the check template verify or BIP 119. And this is the first article in the covenant series examining check template verify, otherwise known as the CTV proposal from Jeremy Rubin Jeremy Rubin. And like I said, it's written by Shinobi out of Bitcoin Magazine. Check template verify or CTV put forward by Jeremy Rubin with BIP one one nine is the most mature and fully fleshed out covenant proposal, not only out of the proposals that we will be covering, but out of all the covenant proposals in their entirety.
As I mentioned in the introduction article to this series, there are many concerns in the ecosystem regarding covenants that are too flexible enabling things that wind up having very detrimental consequences for Bitcoin. CTV was designed specifically to constrain its capabilities tightly enough to avoid any of those concerns. To first understand how CTV functions, we need to understand the individual parts of a Bitcoin transaction. This is a very high level view of a Bitcoin transaction. It has inputs, or unspent coins, also known as UTXOs. And it has outputs, the new unspit coins that the transaction will create when it is confirmed in a block.
There's a lot more pieces we will go through, but this is the highest level view of a transaction's structure. Every transaction also has a version number field for the whole transaction indicating applicability of new versions of rules or features. There is also the marker and the flag, which are set to specific values to indicate the transaction uses segwit. After this is the input count, the number of inputs in the transaction. Then comes the actual inputs. Each input contains a TX ID of the transaction that created the unspent coins that are being spent. A v out which marks what output in that transaction is being spent, the size of the script sig, and the script sig, which may be twice, which is the unlocking script proving the input being spent is authorized by its locking script rules. And finally finally, a sequence number, which is used to ensure the input being spent is following relative time lock rules. For example, the input has existed for a certain number of blocks or length of time since its creation.
The output count is the next piece of data the number of outputs in the transaction. After this comes the actual outputs, which contain an amount of Satoshis assigned to that output, the scriptPubKey size, and the actual scriptPubKey, which is the locking script for that output. Lastly, the inLockTime field applies a time lock value in the timestamp or block height that applies to the entire transaction. Each segwit transaction also contains a witness section where each input has a corresponding witness containing a stack items count, which how many things will be put in the script stack, a size field for each item, and the actual data item to go on the stack.
So how does CTV work? CTV is an opcode that enables the most basic form of introspection and forward data carrying out all of the covenant proposals. It allows a script to take a predefined 32 byte hash and compare that against a hash of most of the fields of the spending transaction. If the hash derived from the actual spending transaction does not match the predefined hash, that transaction is invalid. The fields it commits to are inversion, inlock time, input count, a hash of all the in sequence fields, output count, a hash of all the outputs, and an input index which is the place the input has in the transaction like first input, second input, etcetera, etcetera. These are all the fields committed to by the CTV hash in their entirety and with no ability to pick and choose.
This is the degree of introspection CTV enables. Does the hash of these fields in the spending transaction match the hash in the locking script of the input being spent? That's it. The hash commits to essentially the entire transaction except the actual inputs. There's a reason the hash does not include the inputs. In order to lock an output to a 32 bit or 32 byte hash with CTV, you need to know the hash of the transaction that you are ensuring is the only way for it to be spent. The input locked with CTV being spent will have to include this hash in order to be verified against CTV.
That necessitates having the hash of that transaction before you create the complete transaction. That is not possible. You can also nest CTV scripts, like, for instance, have an initial CTV script commit to a transaction with outputs that also include CTV scripts. This is what allows CTV to, quote, carry forward data. All it carries forward in practice, though, is whatever data is contained in the chain of transactions. You can do this in theory to an infinite depth, but you are limited in practice to a finite depth because the nesting must be generated backwards starting from the end. This is because each level or hop must have the hash of the transaction moving to the next one. Otherwise, you can't create the locking script in the first place.
If you don't already know the next transaction, you cannot generate the previous one. So what is this useful for? CTV allows you to restrict an output so that it can only be spent according to consensus rules by an exact predefined transaction. Some of you might be asking what the big deal is. We can already pre sign transactions. If the level of introspection is so limited that it can only accomplish something we can already do just pre signing, what is the value add? First, pre signed transactions always leave open the possibility of the keyholders signing new transactions and spending those coins in a different way.
You have to trust that the keyholder will not do this or will delete the key needed to sign with, which you also have to trust them on. You there's a lot of trust involved in this is what Shenobi's saying. CTV, though, remove removes that trust entirely. Once the spending transaction is defined and the output locked to that CTV hash is created, there's no possibility of being spent any other way enforced by consensus. Currently, the only way around that trust is to be involved in pre signing transactions yourself using multisig. Then you can be completely certain that unless you choose to sign one yourself, no other valid transaction spending a coin in a different way can be created.
The problem is the more people are involved, the more difficult and unreliable coordinating everyone to pre sign a transaction at the same time becomes. Past small sizes, it becomes a totally impractical problem to solve reliably. CTV or CTV gives a way for people to know a set of transactions is committed without everyone having to get online at the same time to sign them. It greatly simplifies the coordination process by allowing everyone to get the needed information to anyone else wherever they can. And once that person has everyone's information, they can then create the chain of CTV transactions without anyone else's involvement.
And everyone can verify and be certain that the correct outcome is the only possible one. That is incredibly valuable on its own, but CTV can also enable even more valuable things in combination with other opcodes, which we will see in the next article. So in closing, CTV is a tightly restricted covenant that enables a degree of introspection and forward data carrying that is so limited, it does not exceed the actual functionality of anything that can be done with pre signed transactions. The value proposition is not in enabling new functionality in its own right, but drastically improving the efficiency, scalability, and security guarantees of what can be built currently using pre signed transactions.
This alone is a massive benefit to almost every currently deployed protocol using pre signed transactions. Here are some of the projects demonstrate demonstrating how thoroughly fleshed out and explored this particular covenant is compared to others. A basic payment pool example by s t u t x o. A CTV Vault implementation by James O'Bearney, who went on to propose Op Vault, which makes use of CTV. There's a proof of concept port of the pre signed transaction based ARC implementation from second by Stephen Roos to use the CTV instead. The Sapio language by Jeremy Rubin himself, a higher level language for building contracts with CTV.
There's Timeout Trees, which is a proposal for a very basic coin pool designed by John Law. And numerous other possible protocols such as optimized discrete log contracts, non interactive lightning channels one party can open without the other, and even decentralized ways for miners to pool together. CTV is an incredibly mature proposal at this point with a high value add and no risk of enabling anything driving the concerns around covenants. This should not only be very seriously considered, but in my personal opinion, should have been activated years ago.
Okay. That's the end of Shinobi's article. And, yes, it is high level, and I I get that. But if you I'm I'm reading the this article word for word. If you really wanna understand what covenants is, replay it. Replay it a couple of times. Shinobi does a really good job here. Yeah. His his language does border on the two technical, but everybody can understand this. It's just gonna take more people more than one reading or, in this case, more than one listening. So do yourself a favor. Replay this. Learn what covenants are and how CTV seems to be probably our best shot at getting something like covenants in there. Now the Circle P is open for business, and we're gonna get clean with handmade tallow soap from my buddy Soap Miner. He's got peppermint tallow soap. He's got lavender. He's got pine tar. He's got tea tree. And then he's got something with no scent at all called rustic tallow. It's got, count them, three. One, two, three ingredients.
Beef tallow, lye, and distilled water. And the rest of them have, you know, like peppermint's got some peppermint oil or whatever. What is it? Yeah. Peppermint oil. And then, oh, and it's got some French green clay in it. And then there's lavender. It's got lavender oil and distilled water. Oh, and Brazilian purple clay for coloring. See see how this works? This is clean soap. Not only is the soap designed to get you clean, it is in itself free from all of the crap that you get when you go buy soap at a Walmart. So go to soapminer.com.
That's soapminer.com, s 0 a p miner Com. And when you order soap from soap miner, in the notes field on your order form online, just tell them that you heard it here on the circle p and maybe under the value for value advertising model that is the Circle p, SoapMiner will decide to cut me some satoshis for the advertising onto the Japanese firm, Meta Planet. They're issuing or have issued. It's happened. They did it. They they reported it today. $13,300,000 in bonds to buy more Bitcoin. Adrian Zmunsky for Cointelegraph. MetaPlanet issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen or $13,300,000 US of bonds to buy more BTC according to a March 31 filing, that's today.
Meta Planet issued zero interest bonds by allocating them via its EVO fund to fuel its Bitcoin appetite. Investors will be allowed to redeem the newly issued securities at full face value by September. The firm's CEO, Simon Gurevich, wrote on a Twitter post that the company was taking advantage of the recent downturn in Bitcoin prices. The announcement comes as Bitcoin changed hands for about $82,000 at the time of writing, down 25% from its all time high of around 109,000 per coin. Meta Planet is Asia's top corporate Bitcoin holder and the tenth in the world according to Bitcoin Treasury's data. Currently, the firm owns 3,200 Bitcoin worth somewhere around 1 and a quarter billion dollars.
Meta Planet is often called Asia's micro strategy as its corporate plan closely mirrors that of strategy, the US based market intelligence firm that shifted its primary focus to accumulating a bunch of corn. Meta Planet's US based older brother is the top corporate Bitcoin holder with over 500,000 BTC in its coffers worth nearly $82,000,000,000. And, of course, as you know from earlier in the show, that number changed precipitously going north. Let's see. Is there anything else in here? Oh, Meta Planet is making powerful friends in The United States political landscape. Now remember, this is a Japanese company. Earlier in March, the company appointed US president Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, to its newly established strategic board of advisors to further meta plan its mission to become a global leader in the Bitcoin economy.
Quote, Eric Trump brings a wealth of experience in real estate, finance, brand development, and strategic business growth, and has become a leading voice and advocate of digital asset adoption worldwide. Well, okay. So that's the end of that article. But let me go back here. Where are where yo, I need to look at this one again. This Hut eight deal with Trump. Is Eric let's see where Eric is. Oh, my god. Eric Trump is the chief strategy officer of the new American Bitcoin company, and he's also doing stuff with Meta Planet. This is a this is a busy Eric Trump. I gotta tell you, man. He's a busy, busy, busy, busy man.
So what to say about Meta Planet? It's it's a Japanese firm, and they have a substantial amount of coin. They're clearly following MicroStrategy's play, but they're getting into United States political landscape by having Eric Trump as an adviser. So this is this is either ends up being really silly, and I'm not talking just about Meta Planet. I'm talking about the Trump family and whether or not they actually give a shit about Bitcoin. In my opinion, it can only go two ways. It can go really good or it's just gonna be a damn circus. Because I I and I my my gut is screaming that Eric Trump does not know that much about this particular industry to be put in these positions.
It yes. It it bugs me, but not because I I it's not has nothing to do with whether or not I hate or love Trump. That's not it. I'm just this this guy's wheelhouse is so far away from anything actually technical with Bitcoin that it makes me wonder, what is he doing for these companies? Hopefully, somebody will be able to tell us soon. But in the meantime, Bitcoin miner Mara is raising $2,000,000,000 with a stock offering of their own to buy Bitcoin, Vismaya v, riding for decrypt.co. The largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, formerly Marathon Digital, revealed in a form eight k and prospectus filed with the SEC that it entered into an at the market agreement with major financial firms, including Barclays Capital, BMO Capital Markets, BTIG, and, of course, Cantor Fitzgerald, which seems to be a major player nowadays in this realm.
The agreement also allows them to sell up to $2,000,000,000 worth of Mars stock from time to time, that's in quotes, with proceeds earmarked for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin and for working capital. As of now, Bitcoin is trading at 81,416. Whatever. Coin analysts said that investors have been reacting to heightened trade war tensions and signs that inflation could keep inching higher. Well, we we saw that in the inflation report that came out on Friday. Inflation is not exactly under control. So I could keep inching higher? No. The sentence is keeps inching higher. Still, investors appeared cautious.
Yahoo finance data shows Mara stock fell eight and a half percent on March to $12.47 as crypto mining stocks broadly declined amid macroeconomic uncertainty. The latest offering signals Mars' intent to double down on a treasury strategy that's rapidly gaining popularity among corporates from GameStop's one point three billion dollar convertible no plan to other big players like similar scientific and Japan's Meta Planet. The strategy was made famous by Michael Saylor. Yeah. We know, dude. We know. But last July, Mara CEO, Fred Teal, did say that the company was going full HODL, and that's a quote, committing to retain all mined BTC and even periodically make strategic purchases on the open market, end quote.
The SEC filing comes just weeks after Mara reported record earnings for the fourth quarter of last year with revenue climbing 37% year over year to 214,400,000.0 and a net income jumping 248% to 528,300,000.0 despite a 27% drop in BTC production due to last April's halving. Rising Bitcoin prices helped Mara beat expectations with a 1 and a quarter dollar in earnings per share. Holy crap. I mean, I don't like Mara, but those numbers are solid freaking numbers. So I guess good for you. Let's run our own numbers. Futures and commodities.
Whoo doggy. Oil is up, way up, like, three and a quarter percentage points, taking it over seventy to seventy one dollars and sixty three cents. That's that's a hell of a jump. Brent Norsey up one and a half percent to $74.76. Natural gas up almost a half, back over $4 to $4.08 per thousand cubic feet. And gasoline is also up 2.15% to a buck and a quarter. No. I don't know why I said that. $2.28 a gallon. Gold with another all time high. It is an all time high. 1.23% for the shiny metal rock puts it at $3,152.40 per ounce. Holy smokes. Silver is down a half. Platinum is up well over three full points. Copper is down 1.7%, and palladium is up 1.7%.
Ag futures. What do we got here? Looks completely mixed. Biggest winner today is wheat. 1.94 to the upside. Biggest loser is gonna be lumber, down 1.4%. Live cattle, down point 66%. Lean hogs, up almost a half. And feeder cattle, down a third. Now what's going on in equities? Well, the Dow is the only one in the green today. It's up a third. But the S and P is down a quarter, Nasdaq is down over a full point, and the S and P Mini is down a third of a point themselves. And we've got fluctuations in Bitcoin right now. We are chilling out at $83,390. That is a $1,650,000,000,000 market cap, and we're only gonna be able to get our hands on 26.5 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,000,000.
8 hundred and 40 4 thousand 4 hundred and 10 and a third of an average fees per block are lower than normal. 0.03 BTC taking fees on a per block basis. And, guys, there's only three blocks. There's only three blocks and one of them is not even full yet. And high priority is gonna get your transaction in at 3 Satoshis per v buy, low priority is at 2. And just because I missed it, there's just under 5,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear. Alright. But wow. So miners just refusing refusing to shut down their machines. Hash rate is at 832.8 exahashes per second, still very, very high.
It's amazing. In fact, in July let's see where we're on July, we had a hash rate of 600 x of hashes per second. And then we get over into November, we get this spike up to 753 x of hashes per second that was right before the November. And then, let's get over here to where around the time that we knew Trump was gonna be in office. We hit six ninety four, and then let's see. Let's see. But he got in January, was inauguration day, so I'll pull it back to January, I'm looking at, if it'll be still, 836 exahashes per second. Alright? And then we rose up a little bit, and then we came down a little bit, and now we're we're over what our hash rate was when Donald Trump got elected, and then we went to a 9,000.
We were at a hundred we're going back and forth between a hundred thousand and and and 99,000 for a while, and then we had this big huge, you know, 20% drop. And we we are now where we are now, yet hash rate remains the same. I find that fascinating. But from Blood Red Streets, Friday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Will with 5,000 sats says, permaculture also helped me see Bitcoin's value. I think the permy crowd is probably the second largest demographic on Nostra as well. I tend to agree there. Well, Oak Grove with a 64 says, didn't listen yet.
Family in town, but you won't be disappointed. Turkey gave me a thousand said nothing. Psyduck with 573 says Psyduck. God's death February. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Paul, sir, 9 with 500. Thank you again for this excellent and concise overview of current news. Always a pleasure listening to your episodes and the variety of topics. You're my favorite podcast when it comes to Bitcoin, and I appreciate your dedication to provide people like me with episodes that are consistently worthwhile listening to. Keep up the good work, my friend. Thank you, Paul. Kind words like that are worth their weight in gold. God's death two thirty seven says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Perma Nerd says, this episode is more valuable than a cheese reserve.
Ask the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use, and this is a weird one. This is out of CoinDesk written by Helene Braun. Bitcoin could threaten dollars reserve currency status. And you're saying to yourself, well, David, we've heard that before. Yeah. But not from BlackRock's Larry Fink you haven't. That's that's what that's not some idiot walking around talking about the dollar reserve being knocked on its ass by Bitcoin. This is one of the heaviest hitters in finance that the West has ever seen. And he's still a big fan of digital assets.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink nevertheless said that he's not blind to the possible risk to The US from Bitcoin's rise to prominence. Quote, The United States has benefited from the dollar serving as the world's reserve currency for decades, said Fink in his annual letter to shareholders. Oh. But that's not guaranteed to last forever. If The United States doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin. I'm obviously not anti digital assets, Fink continued, quote, but two things can be true at the same time.
Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper, and more transparent. Yet, that same innovation could undermine America's economic advantage if investors begin seeing Bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar, end quote. Fink's letter comes at a time of high market uncertainty and anxiety among investors about the economic state of the country amid policy changes set in place by Donald Trump. To balance out the national deficit, Fink said, investors should diversify their portfolios to add private market assets in addition to stocks and bonds, Doubling down on his commitment and belief in digital assets, Larry Fink said that he believes that tokenized funds will be as well known among investors as exchange traded funds provided that the industry can create a better infrastructure for digital identities, which Fink believes to be a hurdle in getting institutional investors from fully embracing decentralized finance. Quote, every stock, every bond, every fund, every asset can be tokenized.
If they are, it will revolutionize investing. If we're serious about building an efficient and accessible financial system, championing tokenization alone won't suffice. We must solve digital verification too. End quote. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, digital identification kinda scares the piss out of me when it comes out of the mouths of people like Larry Fink. Because their their idea of digital identity is not a sovereign view. It is more of a prison guard kind of view. Hey, who's in Cell Number 18? Oh, yeah. It's it's it's Donnie. Donnie's in Cell 8. See, it's more of a prison ID card when you're talking about digital identification coming out of the mouths of people like Larry Fink and anybody who's in government, no matter whether the they're in The United States or, god forbid, Europe, which just seems to be burning right now with I I don't know. I I read a couple of things earlier today, like the like, Marie Le Pen has been convicted.
She was found guilty of embezzlement, and now she can no longer run as president. And I saw, like, there was, like, five or six different stories all out of Europe, all about people that somehow or another are not going to be able to run for president or somehow or another has been thrown in jail or been found guilty. This, it's bad. And it's gonna get worse. But digital identification, when we just step back over here across the pond back to The United States and just think about what digital identity means to these guys, they are not talking about, like, a private public key pair like we have for Noster.
They are not talking about, you know, like like what John Carvallo when he talks about digital identities because he has he has a schema for it. He doesn't like the Nostr schema. That's okay. What I'm getting at is that John is a sovereign. He has a sovereign mindset. They're not going to be adopting John Carvallo's system. They're not going to be adopting digital identity as laid down in Nostr. They are going to want something much more sinister. So when this guy talks about Bitcoin and then he starts talking about digital identities, you know, probably need to reevaluate just how sinister Larry Fink actually is and stop rah rah ing him just because he's into Bitcoin. Anyway, FTX is on the horizon come May 30. So the bankruptcy, you know, you know, wunderkind, the guy that currently had to do they sent to prison because he stole a bunch of money from all his customers.
Well, FTX will begin reimbursing its primary creditors, not all, just the first guys on the list. And is that's going to begin on May according to Atlas21.com. FTX is preparing to begin reimbursing its primary creditors on May according to court documents and a Bloomberg report. The exchange will start reimbursements for creditors with claims exceeding $50,000 drawing from its $11,400,000,000 liquidity reserve. Andrew Dietrich, the company's attorney, emphasized that FTX is managing an extraordinary number of claims, many of which are fraudulent or inflated, totaling what he referred to as 27 quintillion claims.
Holy crap. Some smaller creditors classified in the convenience class have already received their reimbursements. All claims related to digital assets are being evaluated based on the date FTX filed for bankruptcy, which was November 2022, if you have forgotten. Although FTX has stated that many creditors could receive up to 118% of the value of their claims in cash, critics argue this figure does not reflect the price increase of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have occurred since that collapse. Major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, XRP, and Solana have seen significant increases since the filing, and Solana has risen by 650, and they talk about two other shit coins. I don't I don't even care. However, since claims are being settled at November 2022 fiat values, many creditors feel shortchanged.
Sunil Carvuri, a representative of a group of FTX creditors said, quote, this leads to some closure, but the recovery is based on outdated prices. The creditors are not fully compensated in terms of cryptocurrencies, end quote. FTX will also pay an annual interest rate of 9% on outstanding claims. Although reimbursements represent a step forward, the entire process could extend for months as the company works to resolve remaining claims and close the books on one of the largest bankruptcies in cryptocurrency history. BitGo and Kraken have announced their involvement in assisting FTX's reimbursements.
If all eligible users submit complete claims, FTX could distribute around $16,000,000,000 in total recoveries. So there you go, man. So why is this important? Well, I seem to remember that FTX has already liquidated everything. They've sold their Bitcoin for cash. They've sold their shitcoins for cash. As far as I know, unless I'm horrendously wrong, that liquidation has already happened. However, in news cycles, you cannot depend on people understanding that that has happened. They're going to see FTX claims going out, and they're going to just think that it's going out in Bitcoin and that the people that get those reimbursements in Bitcoin are going to sell and and you see what I'm what I'm getting at.
Now if I'm wrong and they are actually going to give out the coinage itself, but it doesn't make sense because then you'd be able to sell it at today's prices, and that wouldn't be a tangible argument that that guy was making in the article. Right? So that's one of the reasons why I'm pretty sure that they've already liquefied everything, and that was done a long time ago. Still, there you're gonna see downward price pressure on Bitcoin and broader crypto once those payments hit because you're gonna have every magazine and every newspaper under the sun saying, oh my god, it's gonna be a shitpocalypse.
If the price is gonna Bitcoin's dead. It's gonna die. Once these things get out into winter, but I was gonna sell it's already sold, man. And yet people are gonna freak. So just please, please, please be aware. Alright. Let's see. We got one more for you, from Lightning News written by Kurkurubai. He has this one entitled earn Bitcoin on your desktop smiles web app supercharges sat stacking I've never heard of smiles before. What is it? Smiles the trailblazing platform that turns daily tasks into tangible Bitcoin rewards, has unveiled its all new smiles web app. Designed for desktop users, this feature rich platform revolutionizes how individuals accumulate Bitcoin by integrating shopping, surveys, and exclusive offers into a single intuitive interface.
With enhanced flexibility, real time tracking, and cross device compatibility, Smiles is redefining what it means to earn Bitcoin in the modern digital economy. So Bitcoin's rise as a decentralized store of value has sparked global interest yet many still view it as inaccessible or exclusive to traders. Smiles challenges this narrative by empowering users to grow their BTC holdings organically through activities that they already engage in, like online shopping, sharing opinions, or exploring new products. The launch of the Smiles web app marks a pivotal expansion, merging the convenience of mobile rewards with the functionality of desktop browsing.
So the key features of the Smiles web app are one. Effortless cross device integration two, Bitcoin cashback shopping partnering with top brands three, paid surveys where you can turn your opinions into Bitcoin 4, high value offers and five, real time earnings dashboard six, bitcoin news hub stay informed while you earn this is interesting the integrated news feed aggregates updates from trusted sources and Smile's editorial team. From regulatory developments to market analysis, users can stay informed without leaving the app. Interesting. And seven, and finally, customizable interface. They'll give you a dark mode.
Honestly, at this point in time, if you're if you've got an app and you don't have dark mode, I'm not using it. The shit the white backgrounds hurt my eyes. It's like it's like a a and especially at night because, you know, a lot a lot of us like to be up at night. And one thing that sucks when you're up at night and looking at a screen is that everything else around you is dark and you've got this, it's like looking, it's like staring into a headlight or if you've got two screens like I do, staring into two headlights. I don't wanna do it. If you don't have dark mode on your app, whether it's mobile or not, I'm not using it unless it's absolutely critical.
Alright? So please, if you haven't put dark mode on your app, please please for the love of God do that. Alright. That's the end of the show. We are here. This so now, like, $10.66 or $10.65 is in the bag. It is yeah. It absolutely is in the bag. So donate to the show. So the call call to action here, help me help you stay informed about Bitcoin news on mostly a daily basis. You can use the fountain app or any podcasting two point o enabled app, and you can just stream me Satoshis while you listen. You can set it to I think fountain app's limit is is 10 Satoshis per minute. I think I I haven't seen one or two or three or like, I haven't seen any single digit payments flowing through my lightning node, which is where all of my when whenever you donate to the show in in Satoshis, it's always coming to my node. I don't use a third party to custody my node. I do it all myself. It works just fine for me.
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I use Fountain. Fountain is my daily driver. I love that thing and it looks like it's about to go into upgrade. I am on the testing. Well, I've I've asked Oscar Mary if I could be one of the people to test the new version and he has agreed. So I get to get the new version, and I get to report on any kind of bugs or anything like that. But that fountain app is is highly stable. If you're looking to get a new podcast app and if you're using one of the old ones, what are you doing? You gotta get a podcasting two point o app. You won't get chapters. You won't get transcripts. You won't get you won't get all kinds of neat stuff, and you also don't have the ability to support this show, the Bitcoin and podcast directly with your sats and the push of a button and write me a message.
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Bitcoin and show Com. I've only got a couple of posts. I'm not a web I'm not a web guy. I'm not good at it. Okay? So I'm learning as I go. This is one of the reasons why I didn't really want a web page, but everybody's like going, no, dude. You you you gotta have a web page. So if you if you do go to Bitcoin and show, I've got only two posts up there right now. One is Friday show, Blood Red Streets. And then last night, I posted an article entitled brewing biology, a novel system for biochar, compost tea, and microbial inoculation in plants and soils. I've been kind of had this idea in my head for quite a while.
Go read it, and let me know what you think. It's it's under construction, but I I like the way that the article is is has been framed out, and I'm gonna be working on that for a little while. But, give bitcoin and show.com a spin. And, no, I don't have a donate button directly on the website yet. Give me some time, man. I'm I'm working on it, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and, and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
