Join me today for Episode 1083 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
nostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
https://www.theblock.co/post/352196/tethers-gold-backed-xaut-stablecoin-holds-7-7-tons-of-reserves-after-first-quarter
https://www.theblock.co/post/352173/coinbase-eyes-4-8-annualized-btc-returns-via-bitcoin-yield-fund
https://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/swiss-national-bank-no-bitcoin-reserve/
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/slice-making-pplns-work-for-demand-response
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/robosats-v0-7-7-alpha/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Topics for today:
- Bukele Thumbs Nose at IMF
- Tether's Gold Backed Stablecoin
- Coinbase Looks for "Yield"
- SLICE: A New Way in Miner Payouts
Circle P:
Maple Syrup and Soapsnostr handle: https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
Twitter: https://x.com/beisnerds
Articles:
https://decrypt.co/316650/el-salvador-is-buying-bitcoin-despite-imf-compliance-howhttps://www.theblock.co/post/352196/tethers-gold-backed-xaut-stablecoin-holds-7-7-tons-of-reserves-after-first-quarter
https://www.theblock.co/post/352173/coinbase-eyes-4-8-annualized-btc-returns-via-bitcoin-yield-fund
https://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/swiss-national-bank-no-bitcoin-reserve/
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https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/slice-making-pplns-work-for-demand-response
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/robosats-v0-7-7-alpha/
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:01 Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten eighty three of Bitcoin, and looks like, Europe is undergoing a massive power outage. Spain, like the whole country, apparently is in dark as well as Portugal. Yes. The entire country. There's word that parts of France are hit. I'm pretty sure that that's going to be the South Of France. But there's also news that something is going on in Belgium. They're having some electrical issues as well. So, hope all we can do is pray for the people and and hope that everything works out okay.
Thankfully, however, we could at least say this, it's not in the depths of winter nor is it in the height of summer. So it's springtime, and God knows if you gotta have something like this happen in the temperate zone, it might as well be spring. At least it's not too cold and it ain't too hot, like El Salvador. And they're getting hot as well. There seems to be some sort of kerfuffle between El Salvador and the IMF. I've talked about it here before, but it's really come to the fore. Apparently, a speech was given by one of the cats out of the, International Monetary Fund who basically say was saying that El Salvador was complying with their non Bitcoin accumulation stipulation for this latest $1,000,000,000 loan that, that El Salvador took out. El Salvador posted a tweet of them buying yet more Bitcoin. People are confused, and I really hope that Vismeia v from decrypt.co can set shed some light on what the hell is going on with El Salvador.
Are they buying Bitcoin despite IMF compliance? How? Well, El Salvador's Bitcoin accumulation quietly persists under International Monetary Fund watch. While president Nayib Bukele's government formally paused its Bitcoin acquisitions by public sector entities to satisfy International Monetary Fund loan conditions, the country's Bitcoin office continues to quietly expand the country's national reserves. In the past month, El Salvador added another 32 BTC worth more than $650,000, bringing its total holdings to 6,161.18 BTC valued at roughly $584,000,000,000 consistent with its one Bitcoin per day policy.
Under the $1,400,000,000 loan agreement signed back in December, El Salvador committed to strict conditions, including rolling back mandatory Bitcoin acceptance laws and reducing public sector involvement in Bitcoin related activities like the Chivo wallet program and FIDA Bitcoin trust. Quote, in terms of El Salvador, let me say that I can confirm that they continue to comply with their commitment of nonaccumulation of Bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance criteria that we have, IMF Western Hemisphere department director Rodrigo Valdez said during a Saturday press briefing for the regional economic outlook.
While IMF rules have frozen direct government Bitcoin purchases, El Salvador's Bitcoin office operates in a space technically outside the fiscal sectors defined boundaries, allowing the country to continue buying small daily amounts without breaching the loan deal. Quote, the program of El Salvador is not about Bitcoin. It's much more, much deeper in structural reforms in terms of governance, in terms of transparency, mister Valdez said, citing, quote, a lot of progress has been made on fiscal reforms and improvements in macroeconomic management.
Meanwhile, president Bukele remains defiantly defy sorry, defiantly committed to the Bitcoin strategy that has defined much of his administration's global brand. Back in March, Bukele publicly mocked suggestions that the Bitcoin plan would end under IMF pressure, quote, this all stops in April. This all stops in June. This all stops in December. No. It's not stopping, he tweeted last month. Days later, the Bitcoin office announced further purchases showing that the policy was alive even if it was adapted. To meet IMF conditions, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed changes to its Bitcoin law in January, stripping Bitcoin of its mandatory legal tender status for private transactions while retaining it as an optional currency.
These reforms, which take effect May, so getting real close to that, also eliminate Bitcoin as an accepted means of paying taxes, another concession aimed at mollifying international lenders Beyond the $1,400,000,000 IMF package, the broader agreement is expected to unlock another $2,000,000,000 in development bank financing, support fiscal consolidation efforts, and boost investor confidence as El Salvador looks to tame its debt, which hit 85% of GDP last year. The IMF is currently preparing its first program review, which will assess El Salvador's formal compliance and whether its Bitcoin activity has undermined broader financial stability reforms.
Mister Valdez said the IMF program aims to help El Salvador, quote, create the conditions for stronger private investment and stronger growth supported by a much better macro and the dividends from improved security. With its current holdings, El Salvador now ranks as the world's sixth largest sovereign Bitcoin holder behind The United States, China, The UK, Ukraine, and Bhutan according to Bitcoin Treasury's data. So it appears they're using the loophole. The Bitcoin office, somehow or another, is about as federal as Federal Express, it would seem. And I guess that works in Bukele's favor, but, you know, for how long? But there's several other questions that I have. And the the one that is the largest question about all of this is why?
Why take IMF loans? You know they're evil. You know the people behind those loans don't use those loans for anything other than exertion of control over a foreign sovereign nation by members of Europe and The United States and the rest of, quote, unquote, the West. So why, mister Bukele, would you ever even consider sitting in a room with the IMF? And many people will say, to take their money and buy Bitcoin. I think that that's a very naive position to take. If it could be proven by the IMF that that loan money was actually being used to to purchase Bitcoin, or even worse, that loan money being used to offset the gaps of El Salvador's balance sheet as they use their own money and not the IMF's money to actually purchase the Bitcoin.
In both of those events, I would look at that as breach of contract by naive Nayib Bukele against the IMF his obligations to the IMF in their loan package deal. Not to say that that contract shouldn't be breached. The IMF is wholly evil and really should be just chucked off of a cliff only after a right good tar and feathering. In either event, we have a situation here. Where is the money coming from? If it's not the IMF money, and I don't think it is, and the IMF money is not being used to stopgap the use of El Salvador's sovereign funds to purchase actual Bitcoin, and I don't think it is, then, again, the question becomes, where is the money coming from? And then, of course, why did they take the loans in the first place? I'm not sure what Bukele is doing at this point.
But, I mean, if you're if you're gonna play with fire and we can hate the IMF as much as we want, I suppose, but that does not mean that they are not without a row a few rows of teeth, by the way, because they are rather shark like. So given that, I don't know what game he's playing, but it looks to me like it's a dangerous game. I mean, I hope they continue to stack. There's no reason not to. I I still just am kind of I don't know. My mouth is just kinda, like, left hanging open as to why the hell he took this deal in the first place, but I don't know. There's other news. And I didn't even I'm not even certain that I heard about this next story.
I'm I'm kind of, like, going, uh-oh. You know? Watch out. Tether is is I continue to talk about how they are on the move as a company. I didn't even see this when it came out, or at least I don't think I did. But RT Watson from the block is reporting that Tether's gold backed x a u t stablecoin yes. Tether has a gold backed stablecoin, I guess. Well, it holds 7.7 tons of gold reserves after just the first quarter. Has anybody heard of this? I I feel really bad that that I missed this, but I'm it's smacking me square in the face today with a price of gold rising amid global economic uncertainty. Tether had nearly eight tons of gold backing its x a u t token at the end of the first quarter according to a Monday release.
Quote, Tether Gold maintains its position as the highest market cap, most secure and compliant tokenized gold product in the market, the company said in a statement. At the end of the first quarter, Tether said that it had 7.7 tons or just under a quarter million ounces of gold backing its gold backed stablecoin, which it launched in 2020. I I've I'd either I forgot about this or I never saw this. I it makes me a little angry that I missed it. But the company also called the Monday release, quote, the first official attestation specific to Tether Gold.
Tether regularly publishes attestations for its USDT stablecoin, which is pegged to the US dollar and has a supply of nearly a 48,000,000,000 worth. And at the end of the first quarter, x a u t had a market cap of 770,000,000, Tether also said. While Tether's gold backed token is not nearly as popular as USDT, the gold backed cryptocurrency has been appreciating in value as the price of the precious metal climbs in concert with global economic uncertainty. Markets have been particularly volatile in recent weeks largely due to president Trump's tariff policies and generally considered a store of value with a stable price, gold's value is up by about 8% during the last thirty days.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has gained over 14% during the exact same period. With gold prices rising, Tether said XAUT hit its highest all time price one week ago when it reached $3,423 per ounce. Quote, each XAUT token is backed one for one by one troy ounce of physical gold securely stored in a dedicated vault within world class facilities in Switzerland according to Tether. Alright. So that's the breaking story here. And, again, I am remiss. It or I my apologies if I've been remiss and I did not report on that when their gold token first came out, or that I've not been paying any attention to it whatsoever. I have not I mean, I've been doing this show for years. Right?
I this is the if if it is the case that I saw and reported on the release of the gold backed Tether token, x a u t, then it has not been in the news since. And that was 2020. It's been it's been alive for five years, and it's just been chilling out, humming under the hood. So why why is this kind of important? Well, this fits with my thesis. My thesis is this. Tether, the company, made $13,900,000,000 last year of profit. That's not that's not gross. That was net. They netted, like, $13,900,000,000. They've got, like, maybe 17 people on their staff. Let's say 30, just to be conserve conservative about it. They are the seventh largest purchaser or at you know, not too long ago, they turned out to be the seventh largest purchaser of United States Treasury bonds, also known as US debt, in the world.
Right? They bought more US treasuries than Mexico and Canada combined. That should tell you something. This is a private company. And my thesis is The United States will print the ever loving daylights out of US debt. Tether will buy that debt, and they will export that debt across the world, making all other countries poorer for it. I'm not, again, I'm I'm not telling you whether or not I like or hate Tether. It's that's not the point. This is the thesis that Tether is going to be one of the buyers of last resort for United States debt, and it's going to inject brand new life into the United States dollar, allowing it to remain the world's reserve currency for a lot longer than it actually should be. Right? And I'm not saying that we need to go to the yuan. I think we don't the only reserve currency we need is actual Bitcoin.
But there's the twist with this gold thing going on. I don't hate precious metals. I don't think they're they're not at all transmissible digitally, and that's a problem. They weigh a lot of you know, they have a lot gold has a lot of weight, and you need a lot of security. You know, whereas with Bitcoin, it's a hell of a lot easier to secure it and you sure can buy something from somebody halfway around the world if you wanted to and transmit that value at speed of light speeds and everything's settled. Everything's fine. It's ten minutes. Hey. Whoop de doo. Gold?
I don't it doesn't rub me the wrong way. I'm I'm just saying that it really only works if you wanna use it as a currency or or a actual hard money. It really only works if I can pull it out of my pocket and physically hand it over to you for whatever goods and services you have. But, ah, now enter Tether. So they're already backing their Tether stablecoin with US debt. Now they've got another coin that, apparently, I completely missed out that's backed by gold. Now let's get back to my thesis. At one point or another, I fully expect Tether, probably in conjunction with United States policy, that they stop buying United States debt. And I'm not talking next year. I'm not talking the year after that. I'm talking about somewhere between five and ten years.
The dollar, at that point, loses its reserve currency status at the same time that Tether announces that they start backing Tether with actual Bitcoin. But now they've got this other gold backed coin. I think that's what's gonna happen. I think that they're going to actually back tether with Bitcoin. They're going to have this other thing where they're also able maybe what they do is they collapse the gold token in with a regular token and use Bitcoin and gold in conjunction to back their stable coin. And that's after they have printed a shit ton of these tokens, and that printing will occur because they will continue to buy US debt and print those tokens accordingly as to well, in conjunction with how much debt they actually purchase.
So is it good or bad? I I'd honestly, Ben, I don't know. I I don't think it's probably gonna be a real good idea if Tether becomes the world's reserve currency. Could it happen? Yeah. Yes. It could happen. If Bitcoin ends up just being the backing layer of Tether, I don't know what that actually looks like. I really don't. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. I wish I could be able to tell you, but I just don't know. But watch out for Tether. If you're not looking at this company because you hate them and you think they're printing I don't know. I've heard every story under the sun that it's because of Tether that the Bitcoin's price is so high because of, I don't know, manipulation. I mean, it's all in quotes. Right? I I I don't know. I I just I can't stop looking at this company.
Because if you're not looking at what they're doing, then chances are good they're gonna shock the living shit out of global markets one of these days. So you need to keep an eye on them whether or not you hate them. It doesn't matter. They are a thing, and they are a thing to be reckoned with. Now moving on to a complete shit show, Coinbase, and I'm not gonna be talking about any of their back end failures right now. They are looking to release a four to 8% annualized BTC return via God only knows their Bitcoin yield fund.
Naga Ava Namoyo is riding this one for the block. Coinbase Asset Management is is launching, not not thinking about it, is launching a new institutional fund designed to generate sustainable Bitcoin denominated returns for international institutional clients that are outside of The United States. Dubbed the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund and scheduled to debut in a few days on May, the new product intends to expand Bitcoin's value proposition beyond just holding the asset according to a press release. And unlike crypto assets such as shitcoin number one and two, which offer native staking rewards, Bitcoin lacks built in yield mechanisms.
That's probably a good thing, in my opinion. But Coinbase argued that attempts to generate Bitcoin yield often carries significant investment and operational risks. It does. To address this, CBYF will employ a conservation trading strategy based on cash and carry arbitrage, which profits from price differences between Bitcoin spot and derivatives markets. Coinbase added that the fund will avoid riskier strategies such as high interest Bitcoin loans and systematic call selling, while third party custodians will be used to mitigate counterparty risk. The CBYF targets an annual net return of between four to 8% paid in Bitcoin, and several investors have already ceded the fund, including Abu Dhabi regulated Aspen Digital.
And furthermore, Aspen Digital was announced as CBYF's initial exclusive distribution partner for investors in The United Arab Emirates and Asia. Quote, long term holders have been searching for ways to generate Bitcoin denominated returns on their assets in a sustainable and compliant way, Elliot Andrews, CEO of Aspen Digital. Is it Aspen or Asper? Yeah. Aspen. Okay. Aspen Digital remarked in a statement, quote, Coinbase is the most trusted counterparty in the asset class and combined with a huge amount of investor demand for Bitcoin yield, we are looking forward to bringing this product to the private wealth market end quote. That's the end of the article. Did you not what watch what happened to BlockFi, Alameda Research, FTX, all the shit.
They're doing it again. So please be very, very careful. And anything out of Coinbase should be about as trusted as far as you can throw it. So just honestly, man, this yield thing, it it's turning people into just degenerate gamblers that did not used to be degenerate gamblers. And I I get it. I've got hey, man. Like, let's say that I've got a whole Bitcoin. Oh, I can't believe a whole coin or yeehaw. But but I'm just sitting on it. It it's not it's and I've said it before, you should make money your slave to go out and make more money. In this particular case, I'm very, very, very wary of releasing any of my Bitcoin in a slavery type fashion.
Right? I I'm not looking for yield on my Bitcoin at this point in time. If if I was maybe born fifty years from now and somehow or another some Bitcoin got handed down to me and that maybe the price appreciation is starting to stall out at one point, then maybe, just maybe, I would take a portion of that and start looking to enslave it in order to produce more capital somehow. But right now, this is not the environment to start looking for four to 8% yield from Coinbase on your Bitcoin. Please stop doing stuff like this and get yourself some maple syrup.
Circle p is open for business. Circle p is where I bring plebs with goods and services, and they're plebs just like you, two plebs just like you who might want to actually purchase those goods and services. And today, it's maple trade. This is the last week maple trade will have maple syrup. After this week, it's gone. Alright? He's already promised almost all of his remaining stock, which ain't a whole lot, to a buddy of his that goes to a far that does a farmer's market and apparently it's selling so you know, very, very well. If you want handmade artisan maple syrup and artisan just means made the old fashioned way, the way that people used to do it before. I don't know. Stainless steel vats and, you know, like, high pressure pumps and people walking around in hard hats and lab coats. That's not where you want your maple syrup from. You want it from a guy that taps his own maple trees, carries the sap in buckets to an outdoor, dehumidifier, and basically boils this shit down so that you can have the way maple syrup was, the way it used to be, the way it used to be manufactured.
This is the way. And it I mean, for me, having it done outside, like, under like, you know, on top of a wood fire to actually boil this stuff off, you're going to impart a completely different flavor profile than the sterile insides of some maple syrup missus Butterworth's factory, which isn't even maple syrup. It's just corn syrup. Just let's get that straight. But this is the last week for maple trade. His in pub and his Twitter stuff is gonna be in the show notes, and that's the way that you're going to have to order it because he doesn't have a website. Clearly, he doesn't need one to sell almost everything that he has, like, a few weeks after he's made it because he made all this maple syrup just a few weeks ago.
And after today or after this week, it's all gone. It's all gone. Make sure that you mention the Bitcoin and podcast and the circle p when you order from buys nerds. That is b e I s n. Yeah. Nerd. N e r d s. B e I s e. No. God. B e I s n e r d s. Beisenerds, both on Twitter and on Noster. And, again, URLs directly to him will be in the show notes, and you've got to, like, DM him or or mention him in a note or something like that or in a tweet and say, I wanna buy your maple syrup, and then he will get in touch with you and he will sell you his maple syrup. Make sure that you tell him that you heard it here. That way, he will know where he made his sale, and he will need to or he will be able to direct whatever Satoshis he thinks that sale was worth to me, David Bennett, over here at the Bitcoin and podcast. Now Swiss National Bank has doubled down on their, well, idiocracy by staying firm against the Bitcoin reserve push. So this is not once but twice that the Swiss National Bank has decided to load up the gun and shoot themselves in the foot.
This is Alex Larry writing for Bitcoin news. The Swiss National Bank has rejected calls to add Bitcoin to its official reserves despite growing pressure from local advocates and a, well, global trend towards digital assets. At the SNB's annual general meeting on April in Bern, Chairman Martin Schlegel was clear. Bitcoin does not meet the SNB strict requirements for reserve assets. Quote, cryptocurrency cannot fulfill our currency reserve requirements, citing volatility and lack of liquidity. Schlegel said the SMB needs assets that are stable, reliable, and tradable, qualities he believes Bitcoin can't provide. How is it not tradable?
We've got, like, what, 25 worldwide trading exchanges for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is traded twenty four seven. It's one of the high most highly liquid assets on the planet at this point and has been for years. They're just scared. Probably, they're looking for loans from the IMF, but whatever. Quote, cryptocurrencies are also known for their high volatility, which is a risk for long term value preservation, end quote. Not unless it's volatile to the upside, brother. Despite the SMBs firm stance, a group of Swiss Bitcoin advocates are insisting. A citizen's initiative has launched a campaign to force a national referendum that would require the SMB to hold Bitcoin alongside gold in its reserves.
The campaign, backed like figure or backed by figures like Lucius Lucius, Messier and a board member of Bitcoin Swiss, argues that Bitcoin could protect Switzerland's wealth in times of financial turmoil. Messier said during the meeting, quote, Bitcoin will be worth a lot in the scenario of a multipolar world order with fading trust in government debt. He's talking about fiat currencies in general. He added that Bitcoin could be a hedge against the weakening of traditional currencies like the dollar and the euro. The proposal wants to amend article 99 of the Swiss constitution by adding Bitcoin to the list of reserve assets.
So they're they're they're fighting the good fight over there in Switzerland. And like I said, this isn't the first time that the Swiss National Bank has poo pooed this. This happened actually a couple of months ago, and this one happened, you know, well, on the twenty fifth according to this particular this particular article. But at least they're still fighting to get Bitcoin on their balance sheet, and it's just gonna take somebody with a lot more stones than mister Schlegel to push it through. Let's run the numbers. Oil is getting hit hard today, two and a quarter down for West Texas Intermediate to $61.60.
Brent Norsey is likewise down two and a quarter to $65.35. Natural gas rocketing 6.91% to the upside, $3.14 per thousand, and gasoline is down a point to $2.09 a gallon. Gold rallying one and a half points to the upside, $33.44 and 80¢. Silver is moving sideways. Platinum is up 2.1%. Copper is down a tenth. Palladium, it's up 1.3%. Ag is looking mostly in the red today. Biggest loser is chocolate, again, five points to the downside. Biggest winner, coffee, 2.6% to the upside. Live cattle is up just almost a half point, but lean hogs are down two thirds and feeder cattle are down point one three percent. The Dow and all the rest of legacy equities are moving lower today. Dow is down a half, 83 points off.
S and P is down almost a full point. Nasdaq is down a point and a quarter, and the S and P Mini is down a half. Why, you might ask? Well, because we got a whole bunch of earnings that are coming out. Jolt's job report is gonna come out this entire week as usual. It's the last week of the month. It's gonna be fraught with all manner of economic data that's going to suggest, a, inflation is not under control, b, people are spending less money, And c, I don't know. Pick one. But it all points to the fact that they don't have this crap under control. And guess what? That means that they're not going to lower rates, which means no cheap money, which means risk assets look even riskier, and they will lose probably some price potential there.
So just expect it and live with it, and we'll go on into May, and we'll see what happens there. But right now, nobody, literally nobody in the world knows what to do with the immense piles of United States dollars they're sitting on. The amount of cash that is just sitting there waiting to strike is immense, huge, eye wateringly large, and nobody knows where to put it. It's amazing. And even Bitcoin was having a rally earlier this morning. It went up to, like, $95.06. We are back down to 93,600. Still, though, $1,860,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 27.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,857,108 what?
19,857,100.87 BTC up. And, average fees are relatively subdued, not too bad. 0.05 BTC taking in fees on a per block basis. There are about 18 blocks waiting to clear with 3 Satoshis per v byte on high priority, and low priority rates are also 3 Satoshis per v byte. Let's see. Do we have yes. We have more mining capitulation. We are down to 826.9 exahashes per second. So lagging indicator there. The the some of the miners are definitely taking their machines offline. We'll see how low that number goes. Now from understanding knowledge, which was Friday's episode of Bitcoin and I got TKCTV 80 HPW with 5,000 sats says, great find and an awesome read. Thanks for that episode. No, man. Dude, thank you, brother.
Hearn 88 with 900 says, there are dozens of people taking nostrils seriously. There there are dozens of us, man. There are dozens of us. Psyduck with five ninety one says, Psyduck Yodle Yodle with five zero one says good reading choice. Brandon Quidham approves. I can imagine that. I I can see that. And then, coming, bringing up the rear is Liminal, the author of the piece that I read, the understanding knowledge piece that I read on Friday. Liminal himself is, weighing in saying, you don't have ideas. Ideas have you.
They enter your head through interactions and observations of the world. Finding a safe haven to grow, they coil around you, sprouting roots, tendrils sprawl, feeding on more ideas and interactions until they mature and are ready to spread, and then you speak. That's the weather report. I guess I don't have to tell you That strategy has added 15,355 Bitcoin valued at $1,420,000,000 at about $92,000 a coin. That's probably well in your head right now, so I'm going to skip any of the details. But welcome to the second part of Bitcoin, and it's the news you can use. This is the one that I wanna get to today. This is this is the big one for the day, in my opinion. It's out of Bitcoin magazine written by General Kenobi Nakamoto entitled Slice, making PPLNS work for demand response.
Buckle up, man. Bitcoin mining has come a long way since the days of GPUs and basement setups. In that time, miners have advanced in countless ways. For example, ASICs are now the standard, not GPUs. Furthermore, enterprise grade players have entered the field, opening new frontiers and bringing with them the size and institutional recognition that opens the doors to otherwise unreachable places for smaller miners. Nowadays, the mining landscape is one where grid services, curtailment strategies, and energy market participation are no longer edge cases, but core strategies.
As the world around it has moved forward, there's one question we keep hearing from miners. Can PPLNS adapt? Many miners, particularly those working closely with energy providers or integrating demand response mechanisms, have come to view PPLNS with suspicion. They worry that it penalizes downtime and rewards only uninterrupted hash rate. A bad deal for those who routinely routinely curtail machines to support the grid or provide other services. This fear isn't baseless. It traces back to a pivotal moment in the mining industry's recent past. One that apparently sealed the deal for many on PPLNS style payouts, the fallout between Riot and Brains Pool.
At the time, Brains was using the SCORE payout system. Designed in 02/2011 by Slush himself, Score was engineered to solve the problem of pool hopping, when miners would jump between pools to exploit reward systems. There's also been a misconception that score is a PPLNS style payment system. But as Rosenfeld's bible on pool payout systems describes, SCORE and PPLNS are distinctly different payout methods. The main difference is how they account for shares specifically. SCORE implemented a rolling window with exponential decay function. This effectively made the look back window very short. On the other hand, PPLNS is a family of payout systems with various types of fixed length look back windows.
As shown in this archived website of how score worked, you can see that ninety minutes of your hash rate had no more presence on the pool. This means that the moment a miner starts mining, their share of rewards fairly quickly reaches the fair value of the hash rate. On the other hand, when the miner stops mining, it drops equally fast as shown in the GIF below. And indeed, they are showing a function that looks like a nice curve from the left going all the way up to the right, and then it plateaus. And then it just falls off a cliff and goes right back down to zero. This might have worked well in the era of cowboys and hackers, but it was never designed with today's complex mining environments in mind.
Certainly not with demand response, where miners intentionally and profitably take machines offline to stabilize whole energy grids or bid into ancillary markets. To score, that kind of behavior looks no different than a pool hopper, someone attempting to cheat the system. So when Riot left brains, citing concerns about payout mechanics, it sent shock waves through the mining world. Due to the aforementioned misconception, SCORE systems' flaws got unfairly projected onto a broader category of payouts. PPLNS got caught in the fray, catching a stray bullet in the process, and the industry collectively threw the baby out with the bathwater. But the mining world has changed, and it's time for the phoenix to rise from the ashes.
Slice, a payout mechanism for the twenty first century grid. Enter Slice, a modern, open source, Stratum v two ready payout system created by the DMND team. It's the improvement and evolution of PPLNS that rethinks how miners get paid, how rewards are calculated, and most importantly, how downtime is treated with respect. All while preserving miners' rights to build their own block templates with s v two. At its core, Slice is about fairness and transparency. It preserves the foundational idea of PPLNS, paying miners in proportion to their actual contribution in solving blocks, while modernizing it for today's decentralized mining landscape.
The key innovation lies in how Slice structures reward calculations and on how the look back window works. Rather than treating the entire pool as a monolith, slice breaks time into smaller dynamic slices of work to properly distribute the fee component. These slices represent batches of shares submitted over a specific period where we control for the amount of fees in the mempool and compare the score different job templates for the financial value that they represent. When a block is found, slice distributes the block subsidy and transaction fees separately. The subsidy is allocated proportionally by hash rate while the fees are distributed based on hash rate and financial value.
This is particularly relevant in a world where miners can choose their own transaction sets. Some miners may prioritize high fee MEV style bundles. Others may exclude certain types of transactions for ideological, political, or technical reasons. Slice ensures that within each slice, miners are rewarded according to both the quantity and quality of their work without punishing them for downtime or strategic energy decisions. For those curious to learn more, this article can prove helpful. And, of course, this article is an actual link to that article entitled understanding Slice PPLNS.
Demand response without penalty. What makes Slice especially attractive for minors participating in demand response or curtailment programs is that it doesn't penalize you for being offline. That's because Slice doesn't decay your payout just because you took a break. Your shares remain in the PPLNS window, which is the rolling window of recent work that is eligible for payouts as long as they're recent enough. In this way, each share is treated independently and is expected to get eight payouts. Since Slice uses an eight block rolling window, each valid share remains eligible for payout across the net next eight blocks on average.
This means that regardless of how big or small the pool is, you will never have the abysmal luck of eating excuse me. Of eating up bad luck days without a block, disconnecting, having the pool find the block, and then not get paid. That means miners can power down during peak demand hours supporting their regional grid and still collect their fair cut from blocks found after they resume operations, most importantly, even while they're offline if their shares are still in the window. In other words, if the pool has a streak of bad luck and then the miner is called to perform demand response and shuts off, even if the pool finds a block during their downtime, that miner will get paid their fair share for all the time that they were online.
That's because each share generated during that time will be active in getting paid for eight blocks on average. It's not a workaround. This is a feature. It makes Slice fully compatible with modern energy strategies that require flexibility whether you're participating in frequency regulation markets, ramping down during grid emergencies, or simply optimizing for off peak pricing. For example, let's say that a miner is mining at a pool, and the pool hasn't found that day's block yet. That means that the pool hasn't found the block yet, and thus, the miners haven't gotten paid for that day yet. Now the miner shuts off to provide, ancillary services during peak summer loads for a few hours. And during that time, the pool finds the block.
In a score based system, the miner would not see a single sat of that after ninety minutes when the decay has had full effect. But even if the pool found a block thirty minutes later, due to the exponential decay, the miner would barely see anything. On the other hand, the miner would have all of the shares they mined over the day receive a payment since each share receives on average eight payments. Thus, the miner would benefit in the good times and not be penalized in the bad times. Furthermore, Slice doesn't just modernize payout fairness, it does so in a way that minimizes trust in the pool operator. Every Slice is fully auditable.
Each share is tracked, indexed, and publicly verifiable by any miner so miners can independently verify their share of the block reward. There's no black box. No trust me, bro. And if the pool operator attempts to cheat, say, by injecting fake shares to dilute payouts, miners can challenge the integrity of the Slice. The job declaration extension to Stratum v two, which Slice relies on, includes mechanisms for publishing share data, verifying Merkle roots, and ensuring that each share corresponds to real computational work.
For miners who care about decentralization, Slice isn't just a payment scheme, it's an accountability tool. The shift from score to Slice represents more than a technical upgrade. It's a mental shift. Mining pools no longer need to defend against bad actors by penalizing anyone. Instead, they can structure payouts in a way that reflects reality that miners are sophisticated participants working not only in the Bitcoin blockchain but also the energy ecosystem. With Slice, PPLNS stops being a liability and becomes a strategic advantage. It enables better revenue capture, more transparency and auditability, and smoother integration with grid services.
And in a world where uptime is optional, but fairness is nonnegotiable, That's exactly what enterprise grade miners need, a strategic pool partner that pushes forward and innovates, bringing the future today and enabling miners to make money with the same hardware. K. That's the end of the article. And, yes, I understand that it's a fair bit technical. But let's look at it from this standpoint. What it's demonstrating is that there are people that are continuously innovating in all aspects of what's going on in Bitcoin. So for those people that say there's no innovation in Bitcoin, you're just not looking in the right place.
You want dogs and rocks and, I don't know, interplanetary pictures from galaxies or something like that on the blockchain. You think an NFT is some kind of innovation or or whatever. But innovation is everywhere. And why this is innovative is, well, because of this. In the early days of Bitcoin mining, there wasn't enough mining to actually put a dent in electrical systems or electrical grids. Didn't really consume that much energy. Now it does. Now it puts a huge pressure on grids, whether regional grids, statewide grids, countrywide grids, whatever.
It is a noticeable, appreciable, a very material amount of electricity. And the old way of doing this stuff where you're mining in a pool now, well, considering that the pool might be taking, you know, industrial miners from, like, 12 different countries and each one of them are, if they're participating in something like demand response like they do at the ERCOT grid in Texas, if you go down under the old systems, you basically got hosed. You were penalized for diverting your energy instead of into mining Bitcoin into somewhere else, like, I don't know, powering people's homes while it's freezing outside or something like that.
So the innovation here is being is the fact that you've got people that are looking at how mining has changed and what needed to be done at the pool level and the payout level and these particular kinds of scripts that are being installed, the Stratum v two and and and Slice and all this stuff. These are all coming online as a response to how mining has changed. We never would have foreseen this. I mean, back I guarantee you back in 02/2009, there was probably three people that were talking about if this shit gets big, it's really going to screw up energy grids. There might have been four. But for the most part, people really weren't talking about that. We really weren't noticing that. That wasn't a thing. Right? But now it is.
And it looks to me like everything else, once a demand is needed, that demand is met through innovation. So please, please, for the love of God, stop talking about how Bitcoin isn't doing anything. And finally, up for the for the last, part of the show, we're gonna do this one, RoboSats version zero point seven point seven alpha has been released. A new coordinator's view is what they're calling it, I suppose. And RoboSats offers a simple and private way for exchanging Bitcoin for fiat currencies. It streamlines the peer to peer experience and utilizes lightning hold invoices to minimize custody and trust requirements as determine deterministically generated avatars help users stick to best security practices.
So this version brings a new and improved coordinator view with reviews signed both by the robot and the coordinator. It adds market price sources in coordinator profiles, shows a correct warning for canceling non taken orders after a payment attempt, adds Uzbek sum currency, and, includes package library updates for coordinators. So if you are a user of Robosats, be aware that they have upgraded. It is alpha software, so also be aware of that, but it is at version zero point seven point seven. And if you want to buy Bitcoin or trade Bitcoin and not actually go through an exchange, peer to peer is pretty much the way to go, and Robosats has been there for a long time. Bisk is one of the other ways that you can do it as well. It's a peer to peer way to exchange Bitcoin for Fiat and and vice versa depending on which way you wanna go. Alright. So apologies that this is a shorter show, but, honestly, today's just I think people are just waiting. I think they're just holding their breath on everything.
We don't know what the hell's gonna happen, but we've got four, count them, four major pieces of United States economic data that's gonna drop. So just buckle up, man, because god only knows how this is going to affect anything and everything. Y'all be good to yourselves, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:01 Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten eighty three of Bitcoin, and looks like, Europe is undergoing a massive power outage. Spain, like the whole country, apparently is in dark as well as Portugal. Yes. The entire country. There's word that parts of France are hit. I'm pretty sure that that's going to be the South Of France. But there's also news that something is going on in Belgium. They're having some electrical issues as well. So, hope all we can do is pray for the people and and hope that everything works out okay.
Thankfully, however, we could at least say this, it's not in the depths of winter nor is it in the height of summer. So it's springtime, and God knows if you gotta have something like this happen in the temperate zone, it might as well be spring. At least it's not too cold and it ain't too hot, like El Salvador. And they're getting hot as well. There seems to be some sort of kerfuffle between El Salvador and the IMF. I've talked about it here before, but it's really come to the fore. Apparently, a speech was given by one of the cats out of the, International Monetary Fund who basically say was saying that El Salvador was complying with their non Bitcoin accumulation stipulation for this latest $1,000,000,000 loan that, that El Salvador took out. El Salvador posted a tweet of them buying yet more Bitcoin. People are confused, and I really hope that Vismeia v from decrypt.co can set shed some light on what the hell is going on with El Salvador.
Are they buying Bitcoin despite IMF compliance? How? Well, El Salvador's Bitcoin accumulation quietly persists under International Monetary Fund watch. While president Nayib Bukele's government formally paused its Bitcoin acquisitions by public sector entities to satisfy International Monetary Fund loan conditions, the country's Bitcoin office continues to quietly expand the country's national reserves. In the past month, El Salvador added another 32 BTC worth more than $650,000, bringing its total holdings to 6,161.18 BTC valued at roughly $584,000,000,000 consistent with its one Bitcoin per day policy.
Under the $1,400,000,000 loan agreement signed back in December, El Salvador committed to strict conditions, including rolling back mandatory Bitcoin acceptance laws and reducing public sector involvement in Bitcoin related activities like the Chivo wallet program and FIDA Bitcoin trust. Quote, in terms of El Salvador, let me say that I can confirm that they continue to comply with their commitment of nonaccumulation of Bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance criteria that we have, IMF Western Hemisphere department director Rodrigo Valdez said during a Saturday press briefing for the regional economic outlook.
While IMF rules have frozen direct government Bitcoin purchases, El Salvador's Bitcoin office operates in a space technically outside the fiscal sectors defined boundaries, allowing the country to continue buying small daily amounts without breaching the loan deal. Quote, the program of El Salvador is not about Bitcoin. It's much more, much deeper in structural reforms in terms of governance, in terms of transparency, mister Valdez said, citing, quote, a lot of progress has been made on fiscal reforms and improvements in macroeconomic management.
Meanwhile, president Bukele remains defiantly defy sorry, defiantly committed to the Bitcoin strategy that has defined much of his administration's global brand. Back in March, Bukele publicly mocked suggestions that the Bitcoin plan would end under IMF pressure, quote, this all stops in April. This all stops in June. This all stops in December. No. It's not stopping, he tweeted last month. Days later, the Bitcoin office announced further purchases showing that the policy was alive even if it was adapted. To meet IMF conditions, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed changes to its Bitcoin law in January, stripping Bitcoin of its mandatory legal tender status for private transactions while retaining it as an optional currency.
These reforms, which take effect May, so getting real close to that, also eliminate Bitcoin as an accepted means of paying taxes, another concession aimed at mollifying international lenders Beyond the $1,400,000,000 IMF package, the broader agreement is expected to unlock another $2,000,000,000 in development bank financing, support fiscal consolidation efforts, and boost investor confidence as El Salvador looks to tame its debt, which hit 85% of GDP last year. The IMF is currently preparing its first program review, which will assess El Salvador's formal compliance and whether its Bitcoin activity has undermined broader financial stability reforms.
Mister Valdez said the IMF program aims to help El Salvador, quote, create the conditions for stronger private investment and stronger growth supported by a much better macro and the dividends from improved security. With its current holdings, El Salvador now ranks as the world's sixth largest sovereign Bitcoin holder behind The United States, China, The UK, Ukraine, and Bhutan according to Bitcoin Treasury's data. So it appears they're using the loophole. The Bitcoin office, somehow or another, is about as federal as Federal Express, it would seem. And I guess that works in Bukele's favor, but, you know, for how long? But there's several other questions that I have. And the the one that is the largest question about all of this is why?
Why take IMF loans? You know they're evil. You know the people behind those loans don't use those loans for anything other than exertion of control over a foreign sovereign nation by members of Europe and The United States and the rest of, quote, unquote, the West. So why, mister Bukele, would you ever even consider sitting in a room with the IMF? And many people will say, to take their money and buy Bitcoin. I think that that's a very naive position to take. If it could be proven by the IMF that that loan money was actually being used to to purchase Bitcoin, or even worse, that loan money being used to offset the gaps of El Salvador's balance sheet as they use their own money and not the IMF's money to actually purchase the Bitcoin.
In both of those events, I would look at that as breach of contract by naive Nayib Bukele against the IMF his obligations to the IMF in their loan package deal. Not to say that that contract shouldn't be breached. The IMF is wholly evil and really should be just chucked off of a cliff only after a right good tar and feathering. In either event, we have a situation here. Where is the money coming from? If it's not the IMF money, and I don't think it is, and the IMF money is not being used to stopgap the use of El Salvador's sovereign funds to purchase actual Bitcoin, and I don't think it is, then, again, the question becomes, where is the money coming from? And then, of course, why did they take the loans in the first place? I'm not sure what Bukele is doing at this point.
But, I mean, if you're if you're gonna play with fire and we can hate the IMF as much as we want, I suppose, but that does not mean that they are not without a row a few rows of teeth, by the way, because they are rather shark like. So given that, I don't know what game he's playing, but it looks to me like it's a dangerous game. I mean, I hope they continue to stack. There's no reason not to. I I still just am kind of I don't know. My mouth is just kinda, like, left hanging open as to why the hell he took this deal in the first place, but I don't know. There's other news. And I didn't even I'm not even certain that I heard about this next story.
I'm I'm kind of, like, going, uh-oh. You know? Watch out. Tether is is I continue to talk about how they are on the move as a company. I didn't even see this when it came out, or at least I don't think I did. But RT Watson from the block is reporting that Tether's gold backed x a u t stablecoin yes. Tether has a gold backed stablecoin, I guess. Well, it holds 7.7 tons of gold reserves after just the first quarter. Has anybody heard of this? I I feel really bad that that I missed this, but I'm it's smacking me square in the face today with a price of gold rising amid global economic uncertainty. Tether had nearly eight tons of gold backing its x a u t token at the end of the first quarter according to a Monday release.
Quote, Tether Gold maintains its position as the highest market cap, most secure and compliant tokenized gold product in the market, the company said in a statement. At the end of the first quarter, Tether said that it had 7.7 tons or just under a quarter million ounces of gold backing its gold backed stablecoin, which it launched in 2020. I I've I'd either I forgot about this or I never saw this. I it makes me a little angry that I missed it. But the company also called the Monday release, quote, the first official attestation specific to Tether Gold.
Tether regularly publishes attestations for its USDT stablecoin, which is pegged to the US dollar and has a supply of nearly a 48,000,000,000 worth. And at the end of the first quarter, x a u t had a market cap of 770,000,000, Tether also said. While Tether's gold backed token is not nearly as popular as USDT, the gold backed cryptocurrency has been appreciating in value as the price of the precious metal climbs in concert with global economic uncertainty. Markets have been particularly volatile in recent weeks largely due to president Trump's tariff policies and generally considered a store of value with a stable price, gold's value is up by about 8% during the last thirty days.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has gained over 14% during the exact same period. With gold prices rising, Tether said XAUT hit its highest all time price one week ago when it reached $3,423 per ounce. Quote, each XAUT token is backed one for one by one troy ounce of physical gold securely stored in a dedicated vault within world class facilities in Switzerland according to Tether. Alright. So that's the breaking story here. And, again, I am remiss. It or I my apologies if I've been remiss and I did not report on that when their gold token first came out, or that I've not been paying any attention to it whatsoever. I have not I mean, I've been doing this show for years. Right?
I this is the if if it is the case that I saw and reported on the release of the gold backed Tether token, x a u t, then it has not been in the news since. And that was 2020. It's been it's been alive for five years, and it's just been chilling out, humming under the hood. So why why is this kind of important? Well, this fits with my thesis. My thesis is this. Tether, the company, made $13,900,000,000 last year of profit. That's not that's not gross. That was net. They netted, like, $13,900,000,000. They've got, like, maybe 17 people on their staff. Let's say 30, just to be conserve conservative about it. They are the seventh largest purchaser or at you know, not too long ago, they turned out to be the seventh largest purchaser of United States Treasury bonds, also known as US debt, in the world.
Right? They bought more US treasuries than Mexico and Canada combined. That should tell you something. This is a private company. And my thesis is The United States will print the ever loving daylights out of US debt. Tether will buy that debt, and they will export that debt across the world, making all other countries poorer for it. I'm not, again, I'm I'm not telling you whether or not I like or hate Tether. It's that's not the point. This is the thesis that Tether is going to be one of the buyers of last resort for United States debt, and it's going to inject brand new life into the United States dollar, allowing it to remain the world's reserve currency for a lot longer than it actually should be. Right? And I'm not saying that we need to go to the yuan. I think we don't the only reserve currency we need is actual Bitcoin.
But there's the twist with this gold thing going on. I don't hate precious metals. I don't think they're they're not at all transmissible digitally, and that's a problem. They weigh a lot of you know, they have a lot gold has a lot of weight, and you need a lot of security. You know, whereas with Bitcoin, it's a hell of a lot easier to secure it and you sure can buy something from somebody halfway around the world if you wanted to and transmit that value at speed of light speeds and everything's settled. Everything's fine. It's ten minutes. Hey. Whoop de doo. Gold?
I don't it doesn't rub me the wrong way. I'm I'm just saying that it really only works if you wanna use it as a currency or or a actual hard money. It really only works if I can pull it out of my pocket and physically hand it over to you for whatever goods and services you have. But, ah, now enter Tether. So they're already backing their Tether stablecoin with US debt. Now they've got another coin that, apparently, I completely missed out that's backed by gold. Now let's get back to my thesis. At one point or another, I fully expect Tether, probably in conjunction with United States policy, that they stop buying United States debt. And I'm not talking next year. I'm not talking the year after that. I'm talking about somewhere between five and ten years.
The dollar, at that point, loses its reserve currency status at the same time that Tether announces that they start backing Tether with actual Bitcoin. But now they've got this other gold backed coin. I think that's what's gonna happen. I think that they're going to actually back tether with Bitcoin. They're going to have this other thing where they're also able maybe what they do is they collapse the gold token in with a regular token and use Bitcoin and gold in conjunction to back their stable coin. And that's after they have printed a shit ton of these tokens, and that printing will occur because they will continue to buy US debt and print those tokens accordingly as to well, in conjunction with how much debt they actually purchase.
So is it good or bad? I I'd honestly, Ben, I don't know. I I don't think it's probably gonna be a real good idea if Tether becomes the world's reserve currency. Could it happen? Yeah. Yes. It could happen. If Bitcoin ends up just being the backing layer of Tether, I don't know what that actually looks like. I really don't. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. I wish I could be able to tell you, but I just don't know. But watch out for Tether. If you're not looking at this company because you hate them and you think they're printing I don't know. I've heard every story under the sun that it's because of Tether that the Bitcoin's price is so high because of, I don't know, manipulation. I mean, it's all in quotes. Right? I I I don't know. I I just I can't stop looking at this company.
Because if you're not looking at what they're doing, then chances are good they're gonna shock the living shit out of global markets one of these days. So you need to keep an eye on them whether or not you hate them. It doesn't matter. They are a thing, and they are a thing to be reckoned with. Now moving on to a complete shit show, Coinbase, and I'm not gonna be talking about any of their back end failures right now. They are looking to release a four to 8% annualized BTC return via God only knows their Bitcoin yield fund.
Naga Ava Namoyo is riding this one for the block. Coinbase Asset Management is is launching, not not thinking about it, is launching a new institutional fund designed to generate sustainable Bitcoin denominated returns for international institutional clients that are outside of The United States. Dubbed the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund and scheduled to debut in a few days on May, the new product intends to expand Bitcoin's value proposition beyond just holding the asset according to a press release. And unlike crypto assets such as shitcoin number one and two, which offer native staking rewards, Bitcoin lacks built in yield mechanisms.
That's probably a good thing, in my opinion. But Coinbase argued that attempts to generate Bitcoin yield often carries significant investment and operational risks. It does. To address this, CBYF will employ a conservation trading strategy based on cash and carry arbitrage, which profits from price differences between Bitcoin spot and derivatives markets. Coinbase added that the fund will avoid riskier strategies such as high interest Bitcoin loans and systematic call selling, while third party custodians will be used to mitigate counterparty risk. The CBYF targets an annual net return of between four to 8% paid in Bitcoin, and several investors have already ceded the fund, including Abu Dhabi regulated Aspen Digital.
And furthermore, Aspen Digital was announced as CBYF's initial exclusive distribution partner for investors in The United Arab Emirates and Asia. Quote, long term holders have been searching for ways to generate Bitcoin denominated returns on their assets in a sustainable and compliant way, Elliot Andrews, CEO of Aspen Digital. Is it Aspen or Asper? Yeah. Aspen. Okay. Aspen Digital remarked in a statement, quote, Coinbase is the most trusted counterparty in the asset class and combined with a huge amount of investor demand for Bitcoin yield, we are looking forward to bringing this product to the private wealth market end quote. That's the end of the article. Did you not what watch what happened to BlockFi, Alameda Research, FTX, all the shit.
They're doing it again. So please be very, very careful. And anything out of Coinbase should be about as trusted as far as you can throw it. So just honestly, man, this yield thing, it it's turning people into just degenerate gamblers that did not used to be degenerate gamblers. And I I get it. I've got hey, man. Like, let's say that I've got a whole Bitcoin. Oh, I can't believe a whole coin or yeehaw. But but I'm just sitting on it. It it's not it's and I've said it before, you should make money your slave to go out and make more money. In this particular case, I'm very, very, very wary of releasing any of my Bitcoin in a slavery type fashion.
Right? I I'm not looking for yield on my Bitcoin at this point in time. If if I was maybe born fifty years from now and somehow or another some Bitcoin got handed down to me and that maybe the price appreciation is starting to stall out at one point, then maybe, just maybe, I would take a portion of that and start looking to enslave it in order to produce more capital somehow. But right now, this is not the environment to start looking for four to 8% yield from Coinbase on your Bitcoin. Please stop doing stuff like this and get yourself some maple syrup.
Circle p is open for business. Circle p is where I bring plebs with goods and services, and they're plebs just like you, two plebs just like you who might want to actually purchase those goods and services. And today, it's maple trade. This is the last week maple trade will have maple syrup. After this week, it's gone. Alright? He's already promised almost all of his remaining stock, which ain't a whole lot, to a buddy of his that goes to a far that does a farmer's market and apparently it's selling so you know, very, very well. If you want handmade artisan maple syrup and artisan just means made the old fashioned way, the way that people used to do it before. I don't know. Stainless steel vats and, you know, like, high pressure pumps and people walking around in hard hats and lab coats. That's not where you want your maple syrup from. You want it from a guy that taps his own maple trees, carries the sap in buckets to an outdoor, dehumidifier, and basically boils this shit down so that you can have the way maple syrup was, the way it used to be, the way it used to be manufactured.
This is the way. And it I mean, for me, having it done outside, like, under like, you know, on top of a wood fire to actually boil this stuff off, you're going to impart a completely different flavor profile than the sterile insides of some maple syrup missus Butterworth's factory, which isn't even maple syrup. It's just corn syrup. Just let's get that straight. But this is the last week for maple trade. His in pub and his Twitter stuff is gonna be in the show notes, and that's the way that you're going to have to order it because he doesn't have a website. Clearly, he doesn't need one to sell almost everything that he has, like, a few weeks after he's made it because he made all this maple syrup just a few weeks ago.
And after today or after this week, it's all gone. It's all gone. Make sure that you mention the Bitcoin and podcast and the circle p when you order from buys nerds. That is b e I s n. Yeah. Nerd. N e r d s. B e I s e. No. God. B e I s n e r d s. Beisenerds, both on Twitter and on Noster. And, again, URLs directly to him will be in the show notes, and you've got to, like, DM him or or mention him in a note or something like that or in a tweet and say, I wanna buy your maple syrup, and then he will get in touch with you and he will sell you his maple syrup. Make sure that you tell him that you heard it here. That way, he will know where he made his sale, and he will need to or he will be able to direct whatever Satoshis he thinks that sale was worth to me, David Bennett, over here at the Bitcoin and podcast. Now Swiss National Bank has doubled down on their, well, idiocracy by staying firm against the Bitcoin reserve push. So this is not once but twice that the Swiss National Bank has decided to load up the gun and shoot themselves in the foot.
This is Alex Larry writing for Bitcoin news. The Swiss National Bank has rejected calls to add Bitcoin to its official reserves despite growing pressure from local advocates and a, well, global trend towards digital assets. At the SNB's annual general meeting on April in Bern, Chairman Martin Schlegel was clear. Bitcoin does not meet the SNB strict requirements for reserve assets. Quote, cryptocurrency cannot fulfill our currency reserve requirements, citing volatility and lack of liquidity. Schlegel said the SMB needs assets that are stable, reliable, and tradable, qualities he believes Bitcoin can't provide. How is it not tradable?
We've got, like, what, 25 worldwide trading exchanges for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is traded twenty four seven. It's one of the high most highly liquid assets on the planet at this point and has been for years. They're just scared. Probably, they're looking for loans from the IMF, but whatever. Quote, cryptocurrencies are also known for their high volatility, which is a risk for long term value preservation, end quote. Not unless it's volatile to the upside, brother. Despite the SMBs firm stance, a group of Swiss Bitcoin advocates are insisting. A citizen's initiative has launched a campaign to force a national referendum that would require the SMB to hold Bitcoin alongside gold in its reserves.
The campaign, backed like figure or backed by figures like Lucius Lucius, Messier and a board member of Bitcoin Swiss, argues that Bitcoin could protect Switzerland's wealth in times of financial turmoil. Messier said during the meeting, quote, Bitcoin will be worth a lot in the scenario of a multipolar world order with fading trust in government debt. He's talking about fiat currencies in general. He added that Bitcoin could be a hedge against the weakening of traditional currencies like the dollar and the euro. The proposal wants to amend article 99 of the Swiss constitution by adding Bitcoin to the list of reserve assets.
So they're they're they're fighting the good fight over there in Switzerland. And like I said, this isn't the first time that the Swiss National Bank has poo pooed this. This happened actually a couple of months ago, and this one happened, you know, well, on the twenty fifth according to this particular this particular article. But at least they're still fighting to get Bitcoin on their balance sheet, and it's just gonna take somebody with a lot more stones than mister Schlegel to push it through. Let's run the numbers. Oil is getting hit hard today, two and a quarter down for West Texas Intermediate to $61.60.
Brent Norsey is likewise down two and a quarter to $65.35. Natural gas rocketing 6.91% to the upside, $3.14 per thousand, and gasoline is down a point to $2.09 a gallon. Gold rallying one and a half points to the upside, $33.44 and 80¢. Silver is moving sideways. Platinum is up 2.1%. Copper is down a tenth. Palladium, it's up 1.3%. Ag is looking mostly in the red today. Biggest loser is chocolate, again, five points to the downside. Biggest winner, coffee, 2.6% to the upside. Live cattle is up just almost a half point, but lean hogs are down two thirds and feeder cattle are down point one three percent. The Dow and all the rest of legacy equities are moving lower today. Dow is down a half, 83 points off.
S and P is down almost a full point. Nasdaq is down a point and a quarter, and the S and P Mini is down a half. Why, you might ask? Well, because we got a whole bunch of earnings that are coming out. Jolt's job report is gonna come out this entire week as usual. It's the last week of the month. It's gonna be fraught with all manner of economic data that's going to suggest, a, inflation is not under control, b, people are spending less money, And c, I don't know. Pick one. But it all points to the fact that they don't have this crap under control. And guess what? That means that they're not going to lower rates, which means no cheap money, which means risk assets look even riskier, and they will lose probably some price potential there.
So just expect it and live with it, and we'll go on into May, and we'll see what happens there. But right now, nobody, literally nobody in the world knows what to do with the immense piles of United States dollars they're sitting on. The amount of cash that is just sitting there waiting to strike is immense, huge, eye wateringly large, and nobody knows where to put it. It's amazing. And even Bitcoin was having a rally earlier this morning. It went up to, like, $95.06. We are back down to 93,600. Still, though, $1,860,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 27.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,857,108 what?
19,857,100.87 BTC up. And, average fees are relatively subdued, not too bad. 0.05 BTC taking in fees on a per block basis. There are about 18 blocks waiting to clear with 3 Satoshis per v byte on high priority, and low priority rates are also 3 Satoshis per v byte. Let's see. Do we have yes. We have more mining capitulation. We are down to 826.9 exahashes per second. So lagging indicator there. The the some of the miners are definitely taking their machines offline. We'll see how low that number goes. Now from understanding knowledge, which was Friday's episode of Bitcoin and I got TKCTV 80 HPW with 5,000 sats says, great find and an awesome read. Thanks for that episode. No, man. Dude, thank you, brother.
Hearn 88 with 900 says, there are dozens of people taking nostrils seriously. There there are dozens of us, man. There are dozens of us. Psyduck with five ninety one says, Psyduck Yodle Yodle with five zero one says good reading choice. Brandon Quidham approves. I can imagine that. I I can see that. And then, coming, bringing up the rear is Liminal, the author of the piece that I read, the understanding knowledge piece that I read on Friday. Liminal himself is, weighing in saying, you don't have ideas. Ideas have you.
They enter your head through interactions and observations of the world. Finding a safe haven to grow, they coil around you, sprouting roots, tendrils sprawl, feeding on more ideas and interactions until they mature and are ready to spread, and then you speak. That's the weather report. I guess I don't have to tell you That strategy has added 15,355 Bitcoin valued at $1,420,000,000 at about $92,000 a coin. That's probably well in your head right now, so I'm going to skip any of the details. But welcome to the second part of Bitcoin, and it's the news you can use. This is the one that I wanna get to today. This is this is the big one for the day, in my opinion. It's out of Bitcoin magazine written by General Kenobi Nakamoto entitled Slice, making PPLNS work for demand response.
Buckle up, man. Bitcoin mining has come a long way since the days of GPUs and basement setups. In that time, miners have advanced in countless ways. For example, ASICs are now the standard, not GPUs. Furthermore, enterprise grade players have entered the field, opening new frontiers and bringing with them the size and institutional recognition that opens the doors to otherwise unreachable places for smaller miners. Nowadays, the mining landscape is one where grid services, curtailment strategies, and energy market participation are no longer edge cases, but core strategies.
As the world around it has moved forward, there's one question we keep hearing from miners. Can PPLNS adapt? Many miners, particularly those working closely with energy providers or integrating demand response mechanisms, have come to view PPLNS with suspicion. They worry that it penalizes downtime and rewards only uninterrupted hash rate. A bad deal for those who routinely routinely curtail machines to support the grid or provide other services. This fear isn't baseless. It traces back to a pivotal moment in the mining industry's recent past. One that apparently sealed the deal for many on PPLNS style payouts, the fallout between Riot and Brains Pool.
At the time, Brains was using the SCORE payout system. Designed in 02/2011 by Slush himself, Score was engineered to solve the problem of pool hopping, when miners would jump between pools to exploit reward systems. There's also been a misconception that score is a PPLNS style payment system. But as Rosenfeld's bible on pool payout systems describes, SCORE and PPLNS are distinctly different payout methods. The main difference is how they account for shares specifically. SCORE implemented a rolling window with exponential decay function. This effectively made the look back window very short. On the other hand, PPLNS is a family of payout systems with various types of fixed length look back windows.
As shown in this archived website of how score worked, you can see that ninety minutes of your hash rate had no more presence on the pool. This means that the moment a miner starts mining, their share of rewards fairly quickly reaches the fair value of the hash rate. On the other hand, when the miner stops mining, it drops equally fast as shown in the GIF below. And indeed, they are showing a function that looks like a nice curve from the left going all the way up to the right, and then it plateaus. And then it just falls off a cliff and goes right back down to zero. This might have worked well in the era of cowboys and hackers, but it was never designed with today's complex mining environments in mind.
Certainly not with demand response, where miners intentionally and profitably take machines offline to stabilize whole energy grids or bid into ancillary markets. To score, that kind of behavior looks no different than a pool hopper, someone attempting to cheat the system. So when Riot left brains, citing concerns about payout mechanics, it sent shock waves through the mining world. Due to the aforementioned misconception, SCORE systems' flaws got unfairly projected onto a broader category of payouts. PPLNS got caught in the fray, catching a stray bullet in the process, and the industry collectively threw the baby out with the bathwater. But the mining world has changed, and it's time for the phoenix to rise from the ashes.
Slice, a payout mechanism for the twenty first century grid. Enter Slice, a modern, open source, Stratum v two ready payout system created by the DMND team. It's the improvement and evolution of PPLNS that rethinks how miners get paid, how rewards are calculated, and most importantly, how downtime is treated with respect. All while preserving miners' rights to build their own block templates with s v two. At its core, Slice is about fairness and transparency. It preserves the foundational idea of PPLNS, paying miners in proportion to their actual contribution in solving blocks, while modernizing it for today's decentralized mining landscape.
The key innovation lies in how Slice structures reward calculations and on how the look back window works. Rather than treating the entire pool as a monolith, slice breaks time into smaller dynamic slices of work to properly distribute the fee component. These slices represent batches of shares submitted over a specific period where we control for the amount of fees in the mempool and compare the score different job templates for the financial value that they represent. When a block is found, slice distributes the block subsidy and transaction fees separately. The subsidy is allocated proportionally by hash rate while the fees are distributed based on hash rate and financial value.
This is particularly relevant in a world where miners can choose their own transaction sets. Some miners may prioritize high fee MEV style bundles. Others may exclude certain types of transactions for ideological, political, or technical reasons. Slice ensures that within each slice, miners are rewarded according to both the quantity and quality of their work without punishing them for downtime or strategic energy decisions. For those curious to learn more, this article can prove helpful. And, of course, this article is an actual link to that article entitled understanding Slice PPLNS.
Demand response without penalty. What makes Slice especially attractive for minors participating in demand response or curtailment programs is that it doesn't penalize you for being offline. That's because Slice doesn't decay your payout just because you took a break. Your shares remain in the PPLNS window, which is the rolling window of recent work that is eligible for payouts as long as they're recent enough. In this way, each share is treated independently and is expected to get eight payouts. Since Slice uses an eight block rolling window, each valid share remains eligible for payout across the net next eight blocks on average.
This means that regardless of how big or small the pool is, you will never have the abysmal luck of eating excuse me. Of eating up bad luck days without a block, disconnecting, having the pool find the block, and then not get paid. That means miners can power down during peak demand hours supporting their regional grid and still collect their fair cut from blocks found after they resume operations, most importantly, even while they're offline if their shares are still in the window. In other words, if the pool has a streak of bad luck and then the miner is called to perform demand response and shuts off, even if the pool finds a block during their downtime, that miner will get paid their fair share for all the time that they were online.
That's because each share generated during that time will be active in getting paid for eight blocks on average. It's not a workaround. This is a feature. It makes Slice fully compatible with modern energy strategies that require flexibility whether you're participating in frequency regulation markets, ramping down during grid emergencies, or simply optimizing for off peak pricing. For example, let's say that a miner is mining at a pool, and the pool hasn't found that day's block yet. That means that the pool hasn't found the block yet, and thus, the miners haven't gotten paid for that day yet. Now the miner shuts off to provide, ancillary services during peak summer loads for a few hours. And during that time, the pool finds the block.
In a score based system, the miner would not see a single sat of that after ninety minutes when the decay has had full effect. But even if the pool found a block thirty minutes later, due to the exponential decay, the miner would barely see anything. On the other hand, the miner would have all of the shares they mined over the day receive a payment since each share receives on average eight payments. Thus, the miner would benefit in the good times and not be penalized in the bad times. Furthermore, Slice doesn't just modernize payout fairness, it does so in a way that minimizes trust in the pool operator. Every Slice is fully auditable.
Each share is tracked, indexed, and publicly verifiable by any miner so miners can independently verify their share of the block reward. There's no black box. No trust me, bro. And if the pool operator attempts to cheat, say, by injecting fake shares to dilute payouts, miners can challenge the integrity of the Slice. The job declaration extension to Stratum v two, which Slice relies on, includes mechanisms for publishing share data, verifying Merkle roots, and ensuring that each share corresponds to real computational work.
For miners who care about decentralization, Slice isn't just a payment scheme, it's an accountability tool. The shift from score to Slice represents more than a technical upgrade. It's a mental shift. Mining pools no longer need to defend against bad actors by penalizing anyone. Instead, they can structure payouts in a way that reflects reality that miners are sophisticated participants working not only in the Bitcoin blockchain but also the energy ecosystem. With Slice, PPLNS stops being a liability and becomes a strategic advantage. It enables better revenue capture, more transparency and auditability, and smoother integration with grid services.
And in a world where uptime is optional, but fairness is nonnegotiable, That's exactly what enterprise grade miners need, a strategic pool partner that pushes forward and innovates, bringing the future today and enabling miners to make money with the same hardware. K. That's the end of the article. And, yes, I understand that it's a fair bit technical. But let's look at it from this standpoint. What it's demonstrating is that there are people that are continuously innovating in all aspects of what's going on in Bitcoin. So for those people that say there's no innovation in Bitcoin, you're just not looking in the right place.
You want dogs and rocks and, I don't know, interplanetary pictures from galaxies or something like that on the blockchain. You think an NFT is some kind of innovation or or whatever. But innovation is everywhere. And why this is innovative is, well, because of this. In the early days of Bitcoin mining, there wasn't enough mining to actually put a dent in electrical systems or electrical grids. Didn't really consume that much energy. Now it does. Now it puts a huge pressure on grids, whether regional grids, statewide grids, countrywide grids, whatever.
It is a noticeable, appreciable, a very material amount of electricity. And the old way of doing this stuff where you're mining in a pool now, well, considering that the pool might be taking, you know, industrial miners from, like, 12 different countries and each one of them are, if they're participating in something like demand response like they do at the ERCOT grid in Texas, if you go down under the old systems, you basically got hosed. You were penalized for diverting your energy instead of into mining Bitcoin into somewhere else, like, I don't know, powering people's homes while it's freezing outside or something like that.
So the innovation here is being is the fact that you've got people that are looking at how mining has changed and what needed to be done at the pool level and the payout level and these particular kinds of scripts that are being installed, the Stratum v two and and and Slice and all this stuff. These are all coming online as a response to how mining has changed. We never would have foreseen this. I mean, back I guarantee you back in 02/2009, there was probably three people that were talking about if this shit gets big, it's really going to screw up energy grids. There might have been four. But for the most part, people really weren't talking about that. We really weren't noticing that. That wasn't a thing. Right? But now it is.
And it looks to me like everything else, once a demand is needed, that demand is met through innovation. So please, please, for the love of God, stop talking about how Bitcoin isn't doing anything. And finally, up for the for the last, part of the show, we're gonna do this one, RoboSats version zero point seven point seven alpha has been released. A new coordinator's view is what they're calling it, I suppose. And RoboSats offers a simple and private way for exchanging Bitcoin for fiat currencies. It streamlines the peer to peer experience and utilizes lightning hold invoices to minimize custody and trust requirements as determine deterministically generated avatars help users stick to best security practices.
So this version brings a new and improved coordinator view with reviews signed both by the robot and the coordinator. It adds market price sources in coordinator profiles, shows a correct warning for canceling non taken orders after a payment attempt, adds Uzbek sum currency, and, includes package library updates for coordinators. So if you are a user of Robosats, be aware that they have upgraded. It is alpha software, so also be aware of that, but it is at version zero point seven point seven. And if you want to buy Bitcoin or trade Bitcoin and not actually go through an exchange, peer to peer is pretty much the way to go, and Robosats has been there for a long time. Bisk is one of the other ways that you can do it as well. It's a peer to peer way to exchange Bitcoin for Fiat and and vice versa depending on which way you wanna go. Alright. So apologies that this is a shorter show, but, honestly, today's just I think people are just waiting. I think they're just holding their breath on everything.
We don't know what the hell's gonna happen, but we've got four, count them, four major pieces of United States economic data that's gonna drop. So just buckle up, man, because god only knows how this is going to affect anything and everything. Y'all be good to yourselves, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and European Power Outage
