Join me today for Episode 912 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Julian Assange is Free?
- 100 Million Customers onboarded to LN
- German Sell Pressure Continues
- Mt. GOX Sell Pressure Next?
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https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/06/25/julian-assange-reaches-plea-deal-with-us-doj/
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Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 9:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 25th June 2024, and this is episode 912 of Bitcoin. And today, the circle p is open for business. And today's vendor in the circle p, sovereign T in Style from the leathermint.com.
If you want a really good, really good leather wallet, high quality, handmade, made by a pleb. Because if you're not a pleb, you're not in the circle p. If you want any of that, then I highly recommend that you go over there to the leathermint.com or check out at Leathermint on Noster. If you want to get them on Deadbird's site for whatever reason, you can. That handle is at the Leathermint. And if you tell them that the Bitcoin and podcast and the Circle p sent you to them by using the coupon code Bitcoin and, you'll get 10% percent off and they will know that, hey, I made them a sale and they will throw me satoshis. Clearly, you can buy them All of their stuff. Their belts, their passport holders, their wallets. You can get it all. Get it all, brothers and sisters, for, 10% off. But you can also use Bitcoin either Lightning Network or they take, main chain payments. And if they didn't, they wouldn't be in circle p because the circle p is about getting a circular economy in Bitcoin up and off the ground or at least trying to help. It's not gonna be just me. It's it's about all of us. Right? So in either event, make sure that you tell them Bitcoin and sent them or sent you, use the code Bitcoin and for 10% off, and then they will give me some Satoshis back for making them a sale. Alright. Now, maybe a shorter show today.
Let's find out, but let's get straight on into the news. And, yes, I'm gonna talk about Julian Assange. Gonna talk about that on the second part of the show. But first, let's get into the business, Bitcoin Magazine. And who's writing it? But Nick Hoffman is telling us that Latin America's largest Fintech bank has integrated Bitcoin Lightning Payments. Let's find out about what the hell's going on here. It's down south. Nu Holdings, n u. Nu Holdings, also known as NuBank. Latin America's largest fintech bank, has partnered with Lightspark to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network and UMA or universal money address into its platform.
This collaboration aims to enhance new bank services by enabling near real time low cost Bitcoin and fiat transactions according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine. Quote, we're excited. Oh, sounds like suits speak already. We're excited to play a role in bringing lightning to news 100,000,000 customers. That's a lot. That's a lot of people, man. And adding solutions to make their financial lives simpler, more efficient, stated David Marcus, CEO and cofounder of Lightspark. That name sounds familiar. Quote, at Lightspark, we're delighted to enable NewBank to keep evolving its crypto solutions.
It has also been fantastic to work with the talented team at New. LightSpark's advanced technology, including their SDKs, their APIs and AI tools, aims to facilitate seamless integration and optimization transactions. This partnership aligns with Nubank's mission to provide efficient cost effective solutions for its customers, while LightSpark aims to support Nubank's evolving Bitcoin services. According to the announcement quote, the partnership with Lightspark, which has developed an excellent technical solution for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, is another step in Nubank's mission to provide the best solutions for our clients and reinforce our long term with all of them, said Thomas Fortes, executive director at NewBank Crypto. Quote, the future integration of Lightning Underscores News and you news ongoing mission to offer more efficient services with greater speed and lower cost through blockchain technology end quote And to finish us off, Lightspark further emphasizes the importance of this partnership in making another big milestone for the Lightning Network, which could see it potentially boost its overall usage and advancing a new bank's Bitcoin experiences for all over its 100,000,000 customers across Brazil and Mexico, as well as Colombia.
Okay. So a 100,000,000 100,000,000 customers in 3 countries, 2 of them are huge, Brazil and Mexico. Colombia's big, but it's not like Brazil or Mexico. So, is it really a 100,000,000 customers? We really gonna get a 100,000,000? I'm in a little bit of a cynical mood this morning because this whole Julian Assange thing that's going on. Not to say I'm not happy for them. I am. But I'm a little cynical about some stuff today. And I might as well go ahead and and and say the words now.
[00:06:12] Unknown:
If you're if you have a dog and you walk your dog, put the dog on a leash, please, for the love of God. Honestly,
[00:06:23] Unknown:
last night, walking my dog, little bitty dog, little bitty lap dog. You know, it's not his fault. He can't help it. He's a small dog. I'm walking him because I have to, you know. I I gotta take him out at night. He's gotta do his business. And, you know, there's this woman and she's just walking her 2 dogs and, you know, I see I see a leash. I'm like, okay. Well, that's fine. And she looks over at me. I'm listening to a podcast. I have to take my earbud out. And she said, oh, don't worry about him. And she's pointing down to one of her dogs and says, he just doesn't know any boundaries. And I'm like, okay. She's all the way across the street. I'm like, alright okay fine that's cool I go on my merry way I'm walking my little dog he's happy I'm happy Walking at night. Blah blah blah. Walking down the sidewalk. Walk all the way down a block and then hang a right and walk all the way down the side part of the block where I see homegirl again with her 2 dogs.
And that's exactly when I and I I start turning right. I don't think anything's wrong. And all of a sudden, one of her dogs, which was clearly not on a leash, attacks my dog. I mean, grabs it by the neck, rag dolls it a little bit, you know. It's like I I pull the dog off, I'm looking at my dog, he is freaked out. And, like, I'm checking for blood. She's right there. She has done nothing to control her animal at this point. And he goes after my dog again while I'm there. This is a dog that needs to be put down. I'm sorry. This dog needs to be put down.
Thankfully, my dog immediately hightails it. Gets gets the f out and runs. And I'm running after my dog. And all the time I'm thinking, what is wrong with this person? There's no way that you know what your animal is going to do unless you have a highly trained dog and you spend a lot of time with your dog and you're like sit and lay down and it's, you know, it's obedient, Right? Otherwise, if it's not that if that's not the case, then your dog not being on a leash could potentially cause some very serious damage. Now thankfully, my dog's okay. But it really freaked him out. And if I hadn't have been there, I don't think that dog would have survived that attack. But I'm just saying, please, I beg you, if you're gonna walk your dog, walk your dog on a leash. That's I don't like leash laws. I think you should just have your dog on a leash because you respect other people's property. My dog is my property.
That's that's why I'm asking. I'm not calling for more leash laws. I'm not I'm not asking the government to step in. I'm just saying, look, man, if you want to respect your fellow human and your fellow human's property, then do the things that you would do to respect other people's property and other people's safety. Put your dog on a leash and everything will be fine. I I don't I I don't understand this. Anyway, I'm a little bit cynical. So let's see what the next thing has up in store for us today. Bitcoin Lightning app strike has expanded to the UK finally with global transfers. And this is Vivek Sin or Sin from Bitcoin Magazine.
The Bitcoin Lightning payments app, Stripe, has expanded into the United Kingdom, enabling UK residents to buy, sell, and transfer Bitcoin globally. Founded by Jack Mallor, Strike aims to make Bitcoin accessible through its mobile app, which leverages the Lightning Network. With the UK launch, strike is now available in 100 countries worldwide in total. Jack Mallor said they are committed to growing Bitcoin adoption and providing its services globally despite regulatory complexities, quote, our work is far from done. Yeah. No shit. That's about all of us. To use strike in the UK, users must pass an appropriateness assessment. Oh, for here we go. An appropriateness assessment quiz about Bitcoin which is required under local regulations.
The app also includes customary risk warnings. Strike offers several features for UK customers, including buying Bitcoin with instant bank transfers, setting recurring purchases, and self custody and withdrawals. The app also utilizes the Lightning Network to enable instant unlimited and free payments globally between Strike users, providing a frictionless transnational transfer experience. When sorry. While strike and some companies have exited the UK market, its expansion reflects a belief in Bitcoin's potential. The UK presents opportunities as the world's 6th largest economy.
Strike continues working to make Bitcoin accessible for regular users and business worldwide, while region specific regulations create hurdles. The company aims to comply while delivering key functionality. And it's gonna be someone like Jack Mallers and his company, Strike, that's able to do this. And you're obviously asking the question out there, well,
[00:11:41] Unknown:
why aren't they scared? That's a good question.
[00:11:46] Unknown:
Why aren't why isn't strike pulling out of, you know, the United States and the UK and, like, you know, basically tucking their tail between their legs like all these other companies have been doing, like Phoenix. Okay? And and I nothing against the guys at Phoenix. I don't wanna go to jail either. But the question remains, how come Strike can do this? What what does Jack Mallers got in his back pocket that he's able to say, you know what? I'm not scared. I'm I'm gonna be able to do this. I'll expand into every freaking country. Again, it's probably because I'm in more of a cynical mood, but it's probably because of his connections to the legacy financial markets that he has through his dad and his grandfather.
I think his grandfather is dead, but he's he's legacy finance. I mean, let's let's not kid ourselves. He's legacy finance and I believe that he's got a lot more inside knowledge and a lot more he's playing the inside baseball, as it were, with he's playing nice with US regulatory guys. Which means that there's going to be a payment for that on the other end. And that payment's going to be borne by the people using strike. And this is just the trade off that we're going to make. It's not Jack Mallor's fault. It's not your fault. If you don't want to do it, then you need to find another service. But I'm saying there are trade offs for everything as we'll see with the Julian Assange thing that's coming up in the second part of the show. Now let's move on to the German government has offloaded yet another 900 Bitcoin, and 400 BTC has been sent to Coinbase and Kraken.
Yep. Their selling pressure continues because this article is today. Right? This that we already talked about the selling pressure that was, you know, caused by the government of Germany yesterday. This is a new one. Let's get into it. And this is out of Cointelegraph and it's written by Zoltan Vardy. A German government labeled cryptocurrency wallet has sold sold, past tense, already sold $54,000,000 worth of Bitcoin. The German government's wallet sold 900 Bitcoin in 3 individual transactions on June 25th. Okay? So I believe that we're talking about today because they started selling like last Friday.
And here we are. It's Tuesday. This is more sell pressure. Right? The first 200 BTC transaction was sent to the Coinbase exchange, while the second 200 BTC transfer was sent to the Kraken exchange. However, a third transaction, which was worth 500 BTC or $30,000,000, was sent to wallet labeled 139p0, which remains unknown according to on chain intelligence provider, ARCIM Intelligence. While wallet 139p0 remains unknown, it's not the first time the German government has interacted with it. The German government previously sent 800 BTC to the address on June 20th and another 500 BTC on June 19th, just 6 days ago.
Following today's transfers, the wallet still holds 46,000 Bitcoin according to Arcam Intelligence. Holy. How much did this movie place make? That's where they got all this great guts and feathers of this cash was closing down something. I think it was called movie 2 k or something. It was some kind of movie pirating site. That's a lot of bitcoin. I'm a I I feel remiss that I didn't hear anything about movie 2 ks, but whatever. It doesn't really matter at this point. The government labeled wallet holds over $2,800,000,000 worth of BTC and could introduce significant selling pressure that could tank Bitcoin's price below the key 60,000 psychological mark.
Bitcoin price has been in a downtrend According to a popular analyst, Willie Wu, technical According to a popular analyst, Willie Wu, technical chart patterns suggest that Bitcoin might experience a correction lasting up to 4 weeks before its price rally resumes. The analyst wrote in a June 22nd ex post, to his over 1,100,000 followers, quote, eyeballing this model, probably 1 to 4 weeks more of cooling down before Bitcoin price action is sufficiently boring. Chart intensity of speculators, playing casino games. Oh, good lord. Have mercy. And then we go into the rest of it, but we don't really need to to, you know, to be in there because it's kinda talking about what's already happened, and we already know what's happened. The point is, Germany has a lot of ammunition.
[00:16:41] Unknown:
That's just the way it is.
[00:16:42] Unknown:
I I wish I could do something about it, but I can't. They hold the Bitcoin. They can do whatever they want with the Bitcoin, and I got dick to say about it. As it should be, amazingly enough, it it's sort of like the first and second amendments, you know, or let's just call it the bill of right, the whole bill of rights from, you know, the United States constitution. I gotta defend all of them if I want any of the ones that I do want. Now, technically, actually not technically, from a personal standpoint, there's none of the bill of rights that I don't like. I think they all make sense. But there's some people that are like, oh, well, you know what? We could do without the, you know, 4th Amendment, your right to privacy. And we might as well get rid of that sec you know, that that pesky old second Amendment. Well, if you do that, then you can kiss all the rest of them goodbye.
If if I am calling for the German government to not be able to to transact with the Bitcoin that they that they own, they have can whether rightfully, wrongfully, whether you love them or hate them or neutral about them, they have control of vectoring that Bitcoin and there's not a damn thing anybody can say about it. Nothing. There's nothing anybody can say. Not you, not me, not my dog who almost died last night. None of them. We got jack shit to say about it. So the point is that they have ammunition. Now there's 2 things about this.
It is very clear to all of us that the governments, especially in the West, that essentially control the world do so by their monetary I was about to say policy, but it's more than that. It's not just policy. It's their monetary monarchy. They control everything. Whether they're the United States is is king. You know, Germany, we might consider her a princess. Prince. It's the United States and the rest of the West. They control what everybody does. They control everybody's money no matter what you think. They do so in the bond markets. That's that is essentially what is controlling the entire world's economy right now is the bonds. I used to think it was just money supply and all that kind of stuff. No. No. That's all noise, the bonds. Right?
They do not like Bitcoin. It is a threat to them. And these Western governments somehow or another have been able to abscond with a whole bunch of Bitcoin. And they are just too shortsighted to keep it on their balance sheet. And they think that they're going to do long term damage through this continuous selling at certain psychological break points. And I don't think it's gonna work. I really don't. I think they're fooling themselves.
[00:19:27] Unknown:
In the short term, certainly, it's going to cause a lot of pain. What's your pain tolerance? That's the real question, is it not? What what's my pain tolerance? I'm feeling a lot of pain. I can't help it. I mean, that is just the way it is. But that said, we've gotta get out of this.
[00:19:50] Unknown:
We've got to get out of this monetary situation. Bitcoin at this point represents the only hope. And the only way that we're going to be able to get to the other side of this is that that that whole Winston Churchill thing if you're going through hell don't stop You have to go to the other side. You have. We have to. No matter what Germany does, no matter what Mexico City does, no matter what Washington DC does, no matter what the UK does, Australia, New Zealand, all the rest of these
[00:20:22] Unknown:
small dick assholes,
[00:20:25] Unknown:
we're gonna have to persevere. We're gonna have to survive to the other side. So be prepared for a fight. And while you're preparing, let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Oh my God. I got breaking news. What is it? SolarEdge Technologies, Pool Corp, Carnival Cruise Lines? This is breaking? Oh, whatever, man. Screw screw all these people. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down 0.72% to $81.4 a barrel. Brenton or Sea holding at 85.29 after an almost 1% drop. Natural gas has dropped 3 quarters of a point to $2.79. Gasoline is up 0.14% to $2.51.
All of your shiny metal rocks are having a bad day, which means that Peter Schiff is having a bad day. Gold is down 0.6% to 2330. Silver is down, wow, well over 2 points. Platinum is down 1.18. Copper is down 1.26, and palladium taking it in the nuts at 3.8% of the downside. Ag ain't looking good. I've only got cotton in the green today. 2.38% to the upside. Everything else is really doing poorly. All of them well over a point to the downside. And the biggest loser today is coffee, 2.71% of the downside. Live cattle is down as well, a quarter of a point, but lean hogs are up 0.61%. Feeder cattle are down, scant.
Legacy markets mixed. 1.04% to the downside for the Dow, but the S and P is up 0.04. Nasdaq, however, is up 0.74%, and the S and P Mini is down 1.38%. Clark Moody's dashboard, we're flashing $61,500. That is a one $210,000,000,000,000 market cap for Bitcoin, and we can get to no. 26.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 Bitcoin, which there are. 19,716,836.74 of and average fees per block are still pretty low. Amazingly enough, with all the sell pressure, apparently, that was really not on chain selling. That was all internal in all of the crap because all through this, fees have been low, which tells me what? Through this entire downtrend, through these massive red dildo spikes, none of this is really hitting the chain. This is all internal ledger trading inside the exchanges.
If you wanted an example of what paper Bitcoin looks like, that's what paper Bitcoin looks like. I'm I'm I'm just saying. Now, getting to blocks, how many are there? Let's find out. A 186 blocks, are carrying 216,000 transactions that are unconfirmed, waiting to clear at high priority rates of 11 satoshis per vByte. See? See? I mean, we're even coming back up in the markets today, and none none of this shit's happening on chain. 9 satoshis per vbyte for low priorities. Hold on. Truck coming by. Anything under 3.23 satoshis per vbyte are being purged from pimples around the world. We just got to soldier through this, guys.
Hash rate is flashing 536.9 exahashes per second. Yeah. So we dropped quite a bit from yesterday. Good Lord. Oh, by the way, next halving is April 18, 2028, in case you wanted to know. Now, on to Sound Money, which was yesterday's show, that was episode 911 of Bitcoin. And I got Dubravko who, threw me 8,000 satoshis and says, apologies. Been lurking. The meetup went great. Fun place and people. The e cash to pay for Internet situation takes begs the question, what came first? The chicken or the egg? Yeah. No shit. And answers, yes.
Exactly. Both. Can anyone tell us anything about this l n thingy? A friend got scammed. And he gives me a a it looks like a lightning invoice. Yeah. I think it's a it's an lnbc1. It's a lightning invoice. Dubrav, I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I wish I could, but I I just I don't even know how to go back to the lightning network and look through past transactions. Btc Jason 5000sat says that e cash over sound is pretty cool. Hopefully, it will put to rest some of the dumb arguments like your Bitcoin will be useless if they shut down the Internet or decide to block the Internet. BS. So many potential workarounds in a SHTF scenario, and this is just one of them. Agreed. However, at one point or another, the transactions have to hit the chain.
Somewhere, some way, Internet is, generally speaking, going to be involved. So, I don't think we should I think we should be really guarded about how much hubris we allow ourselves to have on all of these workarounds. I don't my thing is I think the Internet is pretty much self protected. It has become of such utility that shutting down the Internet in cities would be like shutting down the sewers, garbage, water, natural gas pipes, police forces. It's it's that you know, fire departments is that kind of utility. Right?
So I think that the Internet at this point protects itself. Nobody is going to vote to shut off their water. Nobody's going to vote to shut down the internet. And the banks depend on it. Like the phone companies depend on it. All of your streaming services, all the media companies depend on it. And who depends on the media companies to throw their slop around? Pharmaceuticals. Everybody gets hosed all at once with the deletion of the Internet, which is one of the reasons why a, it'll never be shut down, and b, we still need to worry about it because some bright person that's getting paid a lot a lot of money that doesn't have very many ethics and morals can come up with a way to filter, block, otherwise negate certain things that a government doesn't want. That is always a potential.
So we cannot become too hubristic about it. Vake with a 1,000 boosts fire emojis and God's death with 537 says, thank you, sir. No, thank you. And Chris Hartz Hartsell? Yeah. Chris Hartsell, 16, with a 100, says this, and this is interesting. Bitcoin has already been sent over ham radio and PSK 31 is a digital ham radio protocol. Now the first one I knew about, we that was Adam Curry and, Rodolfo Novak from CoinKite. They did a ham radio tran Bitcoin transaction and it worked. So that one we know about. The PSK 31, that issue is really about the sound thing that I was telling you about yesterday.
That's the protocol that was being used, and I'm just now discovering that it is a ham radio protocol. And I understand what you're trying to say. This has already happened. I think we should make this happen more often. But here's the other thing that I think.
[00:28:18] Unknown:
The light transmission of a e cash, transaction, that needs to happen.
[00:28:27] Unknown:
We need to be able to have a laser on one side transmit an e cash transaction to a receiver camera and have that happen across distance. Like, from a mountaintop, like by, you know, to like, I don't know, like the top of Mount Everest to a 100 miles away by light. All of a sudden now we're not talking about ham radio, we're talking about something else. I'm just saying while it is the case that I'm not worried about the internet shutting down, we still need all of, we still need possibilities.
[00:29:07] Unknown:
We still need anything else that we can get our hands on. So I definitely agree with what Chris is saying here.
[00:29:15] Unknown:
It's just that we cannot stop. We can't just say, okay, well, just because this happened before, we could just, you know, we we can rest our on our lawyer laurels. No, we can't. No. No. We can't. We've gotta go faster. We gotta go harder. I wish I was a developer and I would try to do it myself, but I couldn't code myself out of a wet paper bag with holes in it as I normally say. Pies ends us with a 100. Satoshi says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report.
[00:29:51] Unknown:
Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use Julian Assange is free. I think. Maybe. Honestly, and I say this with all humility and completely truthfully, I don't know.
[00:30:07] Unknown:
I'm not sure. Again, I'm real cynical. Not just because of the dog thing. This is actually more why I'm cynical, because of what I've been reading since the news dropped yesterday that Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the United States Department of Justice. And this one's out of CoinDesk written by Sam Reynolds. Julian Assange is free. The WikiLeaks cofounder who spent 5 years in the UK jail cell and nearly 7 years holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London, boarded a private jet at Stansted Airport and left the country, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter. Assange's departure from the UK follows prolonged negotiations with the United States Department of Justice, culminating in a deal that has not yet been formally finalized. Assange was arrested in the UK for breaching his bail conditions after seeking asylum in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition on various charges, including those related to his role in publishing classified documents provided by Chelsea Manning.
Manning had her own sentence commuted in 2013 by then president Obama. Assange's first stop is Saipan, the capital of Northern Mariana Island, a US protectorate where he is expected to be sentenced to 5 years while getting credit for the 5 years of time served in the UK. That's what we call time served. The history of WikiLeaks and crypto have been closely intertwined. In a 2014 interview, Assange said that Bitcoin and WikiLeaks helped each other keep each other alive or helped keep each other alive. As CoinDesk reported at the time, Assange said that WikiLeaks initially refrained from accepting Bitcoin to avoid drawing government scrutiny that could hinder the cryptocurrency's growth after a personal request from Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. Later, when facing a financial blockade, it adopted Bitcoin for donations, providing vital funding for WikiLeaks, and simultaneously enhancing BTC's legitimacy as well as utility.
And in 2017, when rumors circulated that Assange was dead, he read off the latest Bitcoin block hash as proof of life. During his legal battle with the United States and UK governments, Assange and WikiLeaks supporters have turned to a decentralized autonomous organization to help fundraise for his legal fight, raising over, God forbid, 16,500 ether which is worth $555,200,000 at current prices for his defense. Okay. That's all great. You know what I don't get out of any of the news stories that I've read is any details about this plea plea deal. There's no details about it other than
[00:32:57] Unknown:
5 years time served. Okay. He gets to go back to Australia. Okay.
[00:33:05] Unknown:
What is it that he cannot do? What is it that he is not going to be allowed for the rest of his life to engage in? What activity could possibly piss off somebody in the future that Julian Assange is really, really good at that he will never be able to do again upon pain of death or imprisonment. Be Julian Assange. We don't know a damn thing about this plea deal, but I guarantee you one thing. For all the people that think he's gonna go right back to WikiLeaks and start doing the same shit that he's been doing for the last, you know, god, 20 years or however long WikiLeaks has been alive, you are fooling yourself, and I'm sorry to be the one to tell you.
If you think he's gonna get back on Twitter and start doing the same thing that he's always done, you're lying to yourself and you're lying to anybody that you say that that's going that you tell that that's going to happen because that's not going to happen. The Julian Assange that we knew and love is dead. He's already dead. And I don't mean in the proverbial, I've you know, like, he's really dead and we got a body double. No. No. I mean, who we knew as Julian Assange, that person no longer exists. That was burned out of him in the Ecuadorian embassy. If there was any remnant of what Julian Assange was, the rest of it was burned out of him in solitary confinement of 23 hours a day for 5 years in a 2 by 3 cell.
Do you have any idea what that would do to a person's mentality? If any clue what kind of psychologies are at work here? Plus, he goes back to Australia if he even gets there. I'm still I'm still really worried about this whole thing. But let's just let's just assume for the present time that he gets to go back to Australia, that he that that because that's part of the plea deal. He gets to go back to Australia. That part, we do know. That's like going back to prison. I'm I'm sorry. And I love my ostriches. I love the people in Australia. But y'all's government is so bad and so criminal at this point that there's no way that Julian Assange would be able to do the things that you that the Julian Assange that we know and love did in the past.
He would be immediately turned over to the United States government if he were to engage in any activity that even remotely resembles the what he does. So what is he gonna he's he's going to he he's going to retire, and you're not going to hear very much from Julian Assange. I hope we do. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I don't want to be right but I cannot for the life of me, think that it is a plausible situation that we're going to get Julian Assange to just start heading up WikiLeaks again, and they're gonna start, you know, putting the screws to the United States and the rest of the western governments and China if they do something stupid or Russia when they do something stupid. I mean, everybody needs to be brought to the table on this shit. But it ain't gonna be Julian.
He's done. I'm pretty sure he's done. And I'll bet you that that's part of the plea deal. That it's sort of like think of it this way, when you got a computer hacker that, I don't know, you hear stories about these guys that hack into AT and T, you know, in the like the 90s or the early 2000s and then they get busted And because they did something kinda reprehensible just by breaking into the, you know, to the network itself, they're barred for life from using a computer. It very well may be that Julian ends up being barred for life for using a computer. I don't even know if we're ever gonna know the details of the plea deal. But I guarantee you that that's going to be part of the plea deal. They're not going to let him open his mouth ever again. He might as well still be in prison. I am thankful that he is out, so don't get me wrong. I am glad that he's flying home.
But I don't trust any of the governments involved in this as far as I can throw them. To wit, we get into our next piece of the puzzle about Julian Assange. Stella Assange on Twitter posted the following this morning.
[00:37:40] Unknown:
Urgent emergency appeal for donations
[00:37:45] Unknown:
to cover massive $520,000
[00:37:50] Unknown:
debt for the jet.
[00:37:53] Unknown:
They're making them pay for the jet. Julian's travel to freedom comes at massive cost. Julian will owe $520,000 half a $1,000,000 for which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for the charter flight vj199. He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. No. Any contribution, big or small, is much appreciated. And then she gives the link which is a crowdfunder.co.uk forward slash p forward slash free hyphen Julian hyphen something else. Actually, let me give that to you. Hold on for a second. Because, you know, I mean, this is all bullshit.
Oh, no. I can't. I I I can't do it. I don't know what the link is. I should have gotten it because I took a screenshot of that. So, already, there's 2 things here automatically 1 you have to take a private jet I mean, you if if you think he's just send the United States Marshals with him on the flight. Send a team. Send 10. Send 20. I mean, apparently, this guy is, like, you know, such a big bad wolf that he's going to topple, like, multiple western governments all at once if you don't let him out of your sight for 10 seconds. Freaking ridiculous. I mean, the childishness here is sickening.
Be that as it may. They're not letting him fly commercial, so he has to take a private jet. And this brings me to my second point. Half a $1,000,000 to fuel this jet and pay its pilots, and I assume a couple of stewards and or stewardesses. Do you believe that? Do you believe for a second that it's $500,000 to fuel this jet and fly it from the UK to Saipan, and then on to, Australia. Sure, it would be expensive, no doubt. But half a $1,000,000? Do you really believe that? No, I don't believe that for a second. And even if it's true, I can just default back to the why didn't you let him take commercial? He's is he gonna be I mean, I am hoping that he will come up with a donation so that he's free and clear. But this is like a parting shot from the Western governments of the world. And the fact that it's Australia that's making him pay include even though that on several occasions, many people in the government of Australia all the way up to the prime minister has said this is all bullshit. He needs to come home. Nothing else can be gained by his further incarceration.
Bring him home. And now they're somehow or another, Australia gets the bill for the flight, and they're just gonna pass that on to Julian. Do do you see what I'm saying about why it is that I'm very, very cynical about this whole Julian Assange is free. Is he really free? I mean, when you're automatically saddled by $520,000 in debt that you didn't ask for and you would have been more than happy to take a regular commercial flight at commercial flight prices, which almost, you know, several, you know, 1000000 people in the world can afford to do. No. You you give them a half $1,000,000 bill. Really?
And you trust these assholes to let him do anything that made him Julian Assange? And there's some there's a, and I cannot remember the Nostraich's name over on Noster. And I wasn't picking on him when I when I renoted or quote noted as it is termed, his note about, getting, Julian Assange on Noster. I retweeted that and and let's see. Actually, let me let me pull that up because that's actually that's gonna be kind of important. Hold on for a second. Let me get over here to, my primal
[00:42:05] Unknown:
I'm using primal this morning instead of coracle. Sorry, huddle bod. It just happened.
[00:42:13] Unknown:
I was I started off with a link. Alright. Let me see here. So you let me see if I can find it.
[00:42:18] Unknown:
Because I I want this is the last part that I wanna talk about when it comes to Julian. Good lord. Why are you being a freak?
[00:42:26] Unknown:
Sorry. My browser's being weird today. Just bear with me. I'm I'm I'm just trying to get all this stuff done here. Alright. Let's see. Don't want that one. Don't want that one. Don't want that one. Don't want that one. Don't want that one. Don't want that one. I should have had it done. I know. Bad host. Bad host. Okay. Here it is. It's Taylan, t a y l a n. And I did not mean to pick on you. Alright? It's just that that your note had everything that I needed to get the note that I wanted to put out included in the note. What Talen said was bring Assange to hashtag noster at jack at Odell.
And I said, okay. I'm gonna re note that so that I can have, you know, the hashtag noster at jack and at Odell directly in this thing so that they would be notified that I said this. Not that they're gonna care. I'm just saying what I said was this. I'd like to suggest that we leave mister Assange alone for at least a year. The mental trauma may very well have destroyed who we knew as Julian Assange and if not, it no doubt worked his mind over pretty good. I suspect he doesn't have the will to get back into that game and if he's going to be living in the slave nation of Australia, then he has no choice but to not engage with anything that even remotely looks like his past actions.
I wish he would, and I do, But I have to respect that he's tired, terrified, and probably suffers from such extreme PTSD PTSD that he needs to rest for a good long time. And it wasn't just Talen that was saying this about bringing, you know, Julian Assange and Oster. And I hope he does. I hope he comes on there. But I don't wanna see the man go back to prison because somebody misconstrued something that he says and says, see he's working against the governments of the west again. He's broken his plea deal. Off to jail you go. And we'll put you with the bill for flying you on a Gulfstream 5.
[00:44:30] Unknown:
This is the way the world works. This is one of the reasons why I can't stand these fucking people anymore.
[00:44:35] Unknown:
And everybody gets to, why are you so angry? How are you not pissed off? How are you just walking around going, oh, yeah. They I'm sure it'll be fine that he's gotta pay $520,000 for a little jet ride that he was forced to take over the Pacific Ocean. I the whole thing is all it's all bullshit. That's sort of what I'm getting at. That's one of the reasons why I kinda got a little cynical from last night. Again, just to end it off, I'm not unhappy that he's free. Not like that idiot, Mike Pence, who got his ass handed to him on Twitter. Everybody was telling him to go fuck yourself when he said something about how he's a traitor and he shouldn't be free and he should spend rest of his life in jail and how he got the US military in trouble and he gave away certain positions and which is all bullshit.
Whatever whatever was released didn't have any wasn't going to impact boots on the ground security. I'm sorry. I I don't care when when you come and say, well, it was the military and you weren't. So therefore, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. And I'm gonna be unabashed about it. The truth is he wasn't endangering anybody but the government's good standing with the people of the world. That's why they were pissed. And Mike Pence can go fuck himself for saying the evil shit that he did. And thankfully, the rest of the world figured it out. He got ratioed like I mean, epic ratio. I'm not even gonna look it up because it ain't worth my time.
But I am not thinking of the Julian Assange situation that I don't want him to be free, that I that I don't think he's a good person, that I don't think that he has value to society. I do. All of those things to me are true. I would love for him to just jump right back into WikiLeaks and start really pounding the pavement hard, but can we really expect a man that has been through what he's been through to just cast it all off and say, let's go. And nothing would make me happier if he did, but I would immediately know that at one point or another, that son of a bitch is gonna go back to jail Unless he gets major plastic surgery and fakes his own death and gets another identity and moves to, I don't know, Ecuador or something like that.
Not gonna happen. I'm just I'm just saying. Now, finally, last last thing of the day, The Mt. Gox redemption fears may be overblown, say traders, as 10,000,000,000 BTC holdings, draw concern. And what I mean, I mean $10,000,000,000 worth of BTC. This is CoinDesk. Shahramal was gonna finish this off. Crypto traders say selling pressure from Mount Gox's newly announced repayments could be much less than market observers fear, easing concerns about an imminent sell off. Quote, The impact of Bitcoin's price from Mt. Gox distributing Bitcoin is likely overblown, Sam Callahan, senior analyst at Swan Bitcoin said in a Tuesday email to CoinDesk.
Creditors who wanted to sell their Bitcoin have now had more than 10 years to do so through selling their bankruptcy claims to more convicted long term investors. Quote, in addition, most creditors will likely hold their Bitcoin because, dudes, their cost basis is less than $700 per Bitcoin. Galaxy Research said in a Monday note that of the total 141,000 BTC earmarked for distribution, 65,000 will be delivered to individual creditors and another 30,000 will be delivered to claims funds and a separate bankruptcy. Quote, it's reasonable to assume that most of the BTC received by the funds that acquired claims from creditors will be distributed to LPs or limited partners in kind and not sold off alleviating concerns.
The defunct crypto exchanges trustee said that they are preparing to distribute the Bitcoin stolen from clients in the 2014 hack in the 1st week of July. The exact bitcoin amount to be distributed remains unknown publicly but the exchange consolidated 140,000 BTC worth around $9,000,000,000 from multiple cold wallets to a single address in May. Expectations of the upcoming selling pressure sent Bitcoin spiraling down more than 4% on Monday, briefly driving it to below $60,000 for the first time since early May. Okay. Last thing I'm gonna say about this, we don't know what the selling pressure is actually going to be. If we can speculate the worst case scenario or the best case scenario and, clearly, the truth is gonna be somewhere in between.
But they do make a kind of a good point. If you were so hell bent in selling this Bitcoin the minute you get your hands on it, you should have sold it 3 years ago when you had the chance to sell it, you know, for, like, 80%, 80¢ on the dollar? I can't remember what it was. It was like, you could probably gotten 70¢ on the dollar to give your rights to that Bitcoin over to some other company that there were several companies that were buying all that stuff.
[00:49:52] Unknown:
But the people that have already sold have already sold that.
[00:49:57] Unknown:
And that's good. The rest of the other point they was making was that, well, their cost basis is $700. If they're still surviving, they may not want to sell. We'll have to see what happens. But I'm more worried about Germany, honestly. I'm more worried about the United States marshal service selling off their chunk. I'm really worried that we're that we are in countries whose leadership is so shortsighted that all they can see is war,
[00:50:34] Unknown:
and they can never see anything other than the US dollar and the United States Treasury bond. Look what happened to Japan.
[00:50:49] Unknown:
The whole thing is bizarre. But pray for Julian Assange, and if you are the, of the person that doesn't believe in God, atheist, or or, you know, whatever, then just send out positive vibes. You know? Do do that. I used to say, I would one of these days, if I have enough money, I'm going to buy a billboard in Lubbock, Texas that says, pray for rain. Atheists or, like, Christians, pray for rain. Atheists, go wash your car and leave your windows down. 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.
Circle P and Leathermint Promotion
Bitcoin News: Latin America's Largest Fintech Bank Integrates Bitcoin Lightning Payments
Dog Walking Incident and Leash Laws
Bitcoin Lightning App Strike Expands to the UK
German Government Sells 900 Bitcoin
Market Updates and Analysis
Julian Assange's Release and Plea Deal
Mt. Gox Bitcoin Redemption Concerns
Closing Remarks