Join me today for Episode 958 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- 3 Great Ideas For nostr
- Court Dismisses Consensys' Case Against SEC
- New ASIC Mining Architecture
- OpenSats 7th Wave of nostr Grants
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
The King Ranch Donation Pages:
https://www.ruralamericainaction.com/fundraising/save-king-ranch-and-agriculture-in-washington
https://www.givesendgo.com/Kingranch
Articles:
Forbes: https://archive.ph/Ld3Pk
https://www.theblock.co/post/317533/microstrategy-acquires-7420-bitcoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/hut-8-and-bitmain-to-launch-next-generation-asic-bitcoin-miner-with-liquid-to-chip-cooling
https://decrypt.co/250431/consensys-lawsuit-sec-ethereum-tossed-out
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://btcframe.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
nostresumes: https://primal.net/e/note1q6uqxf7g6msfln77mw66zghrvjxmd7w2ydngdt7npv939e8wm5uqdedlkv
- https://primal.net/e/note1jmf5kh9cf3kaynffkwjdwvs3sqmk32wks620t7wqc99h54z8hkdqh6n7sy
Idea by Karnage: [email protected]
nostr DLCs: https://primal.net/e/note1uv5zqqjz3ugjvrwyftrezn9g268u5uwngumt735hmutpmpj5nyystszjl0
Idea by Abhay: [email protected]
Zap Battles: https://primal.net/e/note1xjmhps2nr77x5j9lrrwu3mulk9k5sdsm7lclrcu3lgt44j2xm8yqkzlj7z
Idea by Jake Woodhouse:
https://primal.net/p/npub1ltz38gwwmmg740r5qlqjn96gth5thv5wmhkwlgqks9lu3485q7jsy6k4fh
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/opensats-announces-seventh-wave-of-nostr-grants/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/wasabi-wallet-v2-2-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cln-v24-08-1/
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Find me on nostr
npub1vwymuey3u7mf860ndrkw3r7dz30s0srg6tqmhtjzg7umtm6rn5eq2qzugd (npub)
6389be6491e7b693e9f368ece88fcd145f07c068d2c1bbae4247b9b5ef439d32 (Hex)
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Music by:
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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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[00:00:00]
David Bennett:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:55 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 20th day of September 2024.
This is episode 958 of Bitcoin and BlackRock is in the news. We're gonna do it. We're gonna talk about this really interesting article out of Forbes Magazine. So, it's not what we're gonna talk about is not gonna be out of Bob's backyard banking newsletter, right? This is out of Forbes. Even though their mainstream media is still Forbes. And we should probably kinda take note as to what that is going to tell us. MicroStrategy is in the news. You probably can imagine why. HUT 8 and Bitmain, 2, mining companies have decided to join forces but not not not in a takeover kind of way. They're actually just like shaking hands and they're gonna do a couple of they're gonna do at least one pretty major looking deal together. It's going to be interesting.
We're gonna get into that. Consensus lawsuit against the SEC has been tossed tossed out. We'll get into that one as well. Then there's gonna be some OpenSats news. We got some Wasabi Wallet stuff going on, Core Lightning. Then at the very end of the show, last night I stayed up a little bit later than normal because I kept running across people like Carnage on Nostr that are starting to put out these really really good ideas. And it's not just Carnage. There's, Abhey has got another idea. And then, Jake Woodhouse was weighing in on some things as to what Nostra and this is all Nostra based, by the way. So when I mean good ideas, I mean good ideas in insofar as Nostra.
So we're gonna do all of that. But I wanna start with this BlackRock news. Excuse me. Pardon me. A little, a little, there's some pollen and stuff running around, I guess, as the fall starts to set in up here in the inland northwest. So let's just do it. BlackRock reveals it's quietly preparing for a $35,000,000,000,000 Federal Reserve dollar crisis with Bitcoin. It's predicted to spark a sudden price boom. I'm not as interested in the last part of that because that's the hopium part, right? It's the first part. BlackRock quietly preparing for a $35,000,000,000,000 Federal Reserve crisis.
What the hell? Literally, what the hell, man? So, Bitcoin, and again, this is out of out of Forbes and Billy Bambro is writing this one. Bitcoin has suddenly surged higher following the Federal Reserve's first post pandemic interest rate cut that's predicted to send the Bitcoin price skyrocketing. And they start out with a little bit of hopium, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt. The Bitcoin price has climbed to over $62,000 per Bitcoin with traders now turning to China and its shock and awe earthquake after the Fed surprised traders with a 50 basis point cut, kicking off what's expected to be fresh liquidity that could put the Bitcoin and crypto market on the cusp of a major move.
Now, as fears swirl that the US dollar is on the verge of total collapse seriously, dude, this is out of Forbes. As fears swirl that the US dollar is on the verge of a total collapse, the world's largest asset manager BlackRock has warned of growing concerns around the spiraling 35 $1,000,000,000,000 US debt pile that's predicted to drive institutional interest in Bitcoin. The growing concern in the United States and abroad over the state of the United States federal deficit and debt has increased the appeal of potential alternative reserve assets as a potential hedge against possible future events affecting the US dollar, BlackRock's Exchange Traded Fund Chief Investment Officer, its head of crypto and its head of fixed income global macro wrote in a paper outlining the investment case for Bitcoin.
Woah. This is why some have called Bitcoin the second amendment of money. Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted to Twitter adding the US debt pile of $35,000,000,000,000 that's growing at a clip of $1,000,000,000,000 every 100 days has no end in sight. Another quote, this dynamic appears to also be taking hold in other countries where debt accumulation has been significant, the authors of the BlackRock paper added. In our experience with clients to date, this explains a substantial portion of the recent broadening institutional interest in Bitcoin.
BlackRock, which has around $10,000,000,000,000 in assets under management definitely not to be sneezed at, described Bitcoin as a unique diversifier to hedge against economic and political risk. Quote, while Bitcoin has shown instances in short term co movements with equities and other risk assets over the longer term, its fundamental drivers are starkly different and in many cases inverted versus most traditional investment assets, the paper concluded. In July, BlackRock's chief executive Larry Fink said he had been wrong about Bitcoin when he previously dismissed it as an index of money laundering, admitting that Bitcoin is digital gold and a legit financial instrument.
BlackRock's successful campaign to bring a fully fledged US spot bitcoin exchange traded fund to market last year has been one of the major driving force forces in the bitcoin price in 2024 as Wall Street has piled into the bitcoin market. In May, BlackRock's Ishares Bitcoin Trust overtook Grayscales as the world's largest bitcoin exchange traded investment fund with the Ibit inflows recently topping $21,000,000,000 The Bitcoin price rally following the Fed's historic 0.5 percent interest rate cut is expected by many Bitcoin and crypto watchers to signal the beginning of a new Bitcoin bull run. Quote While there are other macro factors currently impacting the outlook for Bitcoin and other risk assets, including geopolitical tensions and election uncertainty, these markets should benefit from the formalization of the Fed's dovish shift.
Samir Khurbaj, chief investment officer at Bitcoin and crypto investment company Hashdex said in emailed comments, our long term investment thesis for Bitcoin remains intact and regardless of the near term direction of monetary policy, Bitcoin remains well positioned for growth as institutional adoption continues to gain momentum. Okay. That's Billy's article for Forbes. Understand that there was quite a bit more hopium described in this article than I've ever seen in a Forbes or mainstream financial news outlet before. It's it's a little unnerving, to tell you the damn truth.
Because I don't like it when people start talking this way. It's like, oh my God, we're all gonna get rich and it's gonna be like lightning fast. No, it's not. I've been in this game for a long, long time. I am still nowhere close to smoking ass rich. But the fact that we are talking that that that Forbes is is really bringing to the table in this particular article, that $35,000,000,000,000 in debt is not a good thing. Especially when it is the leading oh, I don't know what to call the United States. I'm just gonna call it the leading country in the world. The leaders of the free world and pretty much everybody else has to fall in line because we are the world's reserve currency. The United States dollar is. Right? That said, don't get too caught up in the hopium in this thing.
Instead, look at the fact that we are that other outlets are starting to very much become concerned with 35 $1,000,000,000,000 in debt. And that honestly that doesn't even touch the unfunded liabilities. Right? The unfunded liabilities is a much scarier number. What's an unfunded liability? Social Security. And, oh, all kinds there's all manner of, pension funds that are either state or federally, you know, the federal government of the United States is supposed to back. And a whole bunch of other stuff too, by the way. I mean, it's kinda it's kinda sad, but if you rack it all up, and I'm not gonna give you the number because I don't wanna be talking out of my ass, it makes $35,000,000,000,000 look like a walk in a park.
This is money that is promised by the government to the citizenry over the longer term that we already know they don't have the money for. Right? So, $35,000,000,000,000 in solid debt that we can actually see is one thing. It's the debt that we can't see that scares the living piss out of me. It's easier to get a grasp on the enemy that you know and you can see them and you know where they are you can get their position relative to you and because you have a position on the enemy relative to you you actually know what distance the enemy has to close on you before it comes and bites your head off like a freaking zombie or something like that.
It's the zombie that's behind you that you can't see that should be more terrifying than the $35,000,000,000,000 zombie that we can actually see. We can rate its movement. We know how much time we have before it gets to us. We know we can run faster than it. That that's not that's not an issue. It's the zombie you can't see that's standing behind you ready to rip you limb from limb that should really scare the piss out of you. Because that's the one that scares the piss out of me. So BlackRock knows it. Forbes knows it. Everybody is starting to understand this. Now, here's the thing. They were talking about the rate cut. You know who didn't cut rates?
Bank of Japan. You know who else is not really kind of budging after this? And, albeit, I'll give you know, I understand. It's only been since Wednesday, Maybe on Monday the other people will fall in line. But so far China isn't budging. You got Japan, you got China, they don't seem to be moving their rates. Yet we're dropping ours. This could have way more impactful nuances on the American public and the rest of the world than we might think. It's an interesting situation. That's definitely one we're gonna have to keep an eye on. And now over to MicroStrategy, you know what happened, right? They have acquired another tranche of Bitcoin for $458,000,000 and they're taking their holdings to 252,220 BTC after Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy purchased 7,000 420 Bitcoin.
They did. No, seriously, that's not an exaggeration. It's 7420. 7420 Bitcoin is what Michael purchased. The business intelligence firm and corporate Bitcoin holder MicroStrategy acquired an additional 7,420 Bitcoin for approximately $458,200,000 at an average price of $61,750 per Bitcoin between the dates September 13th September 19th according to an SEC filing on Friday. The company now holds 252,220 Bitcoin which is worth roughly 15.8 $1,000,000,000 Biconstrategy's total holdings were bought at an average price of $39,266 per bitcoin at a total cost of around $9,900,000,000 including fees and expenses, according to the company's founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor.
The announcement follows earlier news on Friday of MicroStrategy completing an upsized $1,010,000,000 private offering of convertible senior notes which is due 2028 with a 0.625% coupon and a 40% conversion premium. As the company confirmed earlier this week, it planned to use the proceeds to fully redeem its $500,000,000 senior secured notes which is due 2028 expected to be completed on September 26th and to use any balance of the net proceeds to acquire additional Bitcoin and for general corporate purchases or purposes. Upon redemption, the collateral securing these notes including approximately 69,080 BTC valued at $4,400,000,000 will be released, the firm stated in the filing.
MicroStrategy MicroStrategy's latest Bitcoin purchase follows its acquisition of 18,300 BTC for 1,100,000,000 between August 6th September 12th. Alright. So, there's a little bit more to the article. It doesn't really go any it just kind of runs over the history of when they started making Bitcoin purchases and and we know all that. But here's the gist of what I just read. We all heard, and I brought it to you a couple of weeks ago, that that MicroStrategy purchased a whole assload of Bitcoin for $1,100,000,000 If you're thinking that this article is just about that, you're wrong.
That was already done between August 6th September 12th. Now, we have a new tranche. This is a completely different tranche of Bitcoin and it had $1,010,000,000 private offering. So the other one was 1,110,000,000 or 11.1. This is 1.01. All this man is doing is buying Bitcoin. That's all this guy is doing at this point. It's it's I haven't actually heard him talk about any strategy for MicroStrategy other than Bitcoin. There doesn't seem to be any new software products coming out of MicroStrategy. I I I At this point, it's kinda it's almost I don't want to laugh at Michael Saylor. Why? Because he's got yachts and 12 houses and I don't. Not that I want 12 houses or a yacht. I'm just saying he's clearly more successful than many of us. So, when I say the following it's not because I'm trying to dig at Michael Saylor, nor am I suggesting that the man is stupid.
I think that what we're witnessing here is a complete conversion of the mental status of a billionaire that thought they knew what money was. They thought they knew what running a company was. They thought they knew that the tranche of goods and services that they offer they thought it was good and now I think Michael Saylor is looking at his entire past and MicroStrategy and and the software suite that they have and and all the things that they've done and saying my God if Bitcoin had been here when I started this company we wouldn't have done any of this Because it is very clear to me now that he is looking at MicroStrategy as something that is 100% being converted from something that offers goods and services to something that is straight up financial.
A financial holding company. So this begs the question, what happens to the software engineers that works for Michael Saylor? Do they get let go because they're they're not finance guys? Does he keep them on? What does MicroStrategy look like as a company in 10 years? In 5 years? Does it have any software suites available anymore? Does he just say, you know what? We're all we're no, we're done. We're done building software. We don't need this shit anymore. We're just gonna go into Bitcoin. We're gonna be a holding company. And then, of course, everybody's yapping about the fact that he mentioned how do you get yield on Bitcoin.
I'm not gonna go into that because honestly, we've got other fish to fry and their name is Hut 8 and Bitmain. They've come together to launch the next generation ASIC Bitcoin miner with liquid to chip cooling. Nicholas Hoffman is writing this one for bitcoin magazine. Hud 8 Corp, corporation, a leading bitcoin mining company, has expanded its partnership with Bitmain Technologies Limited, the world's largest producer of bitcoin mining servers, to launch the u3s21exph, a next generation ASIC miner. And this model will be the first mass commercialized miner to feature direct liquid to chip cooling within a u form factor. I hope they explain what the hell a u form factor is.
Hut 8 plans to deploy the new miner in the Q2 of 2025 with an initial hosting agreement handling approximately 15 xa hashes per second. Wow. This hosting deployment facilitated by custom built data center infrastructure developed in house by Hut 8 is a key part of the company's strategy to expand its compute power across Bitcoin mining and AI computing sectors. Quote, our partnership with Bitmain has allowed us to advance our thinking on ASIC compute and create a more scalable model for data centric design as we expand our footprint, said Asher Ghanute, CEO of Hut 8. Quote, the u three s twenty one x e x p h will be the 1st miner from bitmain broadly commercialized with dlc cooling that's the direct liquid to chip cooling within a u form factor making it rack ready like traditional data center hardware This innovation bridges critical engineering gaps between bitcoin mining and ai data center infrastructure in both form factor and cooling technologies and we believe this convergence will enable us to unlock significant synergies and flexibility moving forward.
The u3s21exph can achieve an efficiency of 13 joules per terahash producing up to 8 60 terahash. It uses dlc cooling, a technology traditionally reserved for high computing data centers to make Bitcoin mining more energy efficient and scalable. Quote, Asher and Mike have been invaluable thought partners to Bitmain since the early days of US Bitcoin Corp. Where they demonstrated a unique focus on cost efficient procurement and operations, said Irene Gao, vice president of mining at Bitmain. Quote, Hut 8's technical expertise, operating strength, and track record of innovation made this partnership a natural evolution of our relationship as we began the journey of developing next generation ASIC technology.
The commercial agreement between Hut 8 and Bitmain includes a fixed hosting fee and a purchase option for Hut 8 to buy the hosted machines in up to 3 tranches. This structure allows HUD 8 to assess market conditions before making further investments, minimizing financial risk. If HUD 8 exercises this purchase option, its self mining capacity could grow from 5.6 exahashes per second to 20.6 exahashes per second. Holy smokes. So, HUD 8 is gonna house these things. Now, here's the thing about the u form factor that I'm thinking that what they're saying. There's 2 ways to do liquid cooling on computers, whether they're ASIC or high performance compute or GPU, whatever.
One is you just submerge the entire damn board into this coolant material, which is a liquid, right? And so there you have essentially liquid baths, right? So you've got a whole bunch of liquids swirling around these bath bathtub like things and the hot water exits and then goes to somewhere where there a heat exchanger takes the heat away from it and then it swirls back in and cold liquid is dumped back into the pool. The problem is is that you have these open vats of liquid. You can't really rack these things up, right? Why? Because this shit's heavy. It's a hell of a lot of heat. I mean liquid by itself is fairly heavy. I mean it's as probably not as heavy as water.
Oil is generally speaking less dense than water so it's lighter but that doesn't make it where it's like light as a feather. So you can't actually put just like, the your water or your your liquid baths that you submerge all of your equipment into are basically on the first floor. Sure, you could try to build a whole bunch of infrastructure to hold a shit ton of weight and build a second story above that. But that's a lot of weight. Okay? These ASIC miners, when you rack them all up, they're a hell of a lot of weight anyway. So, here's what I think is going on. They're building a form factor.
Like, basically it looks like something that you would like a standard miner that you would always see that you could rack it up without putting it into a liquid bath because the liquid is flowing it through pipes into the actual miner itself contacting the chips because the way the this particular architecture is built. And then flowing back out of the miner and then collecting into I don't I guess like a flow pipe or whatever so that the hot liquid goes to the cooling coolant or the heat exchanger gets cooled and then flows back in through another pipe. So you've got cold in hot out but nothing's actually directly submerged in liquid.
And this means that you can rack up just like you were rack up asics just like you were racking up fan based asics except this time everything's liquid cooled but not in a water bath. And so now you've got the potential to use exactly the infrastructure that you've always used, except that you're going to get the benefits of liquid cooling. That's the way that I'm reading this. So, if true, if I'm right in how this works, you're going to see exahash for the exahash or the the mining security go through the freaking roof. If this thing works and it's not a dog, right? If this a this what the hell is it? This u3s21exph, if it works is gonna have insane efficiency.
I mean, what'd they say? 13 joules per terahash? Right now, we we got excited about somewhere between 1516 joules per terahash on bitmain's last release of ASIC miners. And we were I mean that was like 6 months ago and we were like, oh, look at this look at this efficiency. Shit, they just shaved off another 2, 2 joules per terahash doing this thing. And if you can just rack it up like you were racking up anything else you're gonna save a shit ton of money and get the same efficiency as liquid cooling as if you were submerging them into coolant baths. Okay. That's none of that shit's gonna help Ethereum, though. And this one that I'm about to read also doesn't help Ethereum. Thank God. Consensus lawsuit against the SEC over Ethereum has been tossed out. This is Andrew Hayward and Matt DeSalvo writing for Decrypt. A lawsuit brought by Ethereum software giant, Consensus, against the SEC was dismissed by a US district judge on Thursday who wrote that the firm's claims were ultimately moot because the agency's alleged actions were not final.
Quote, because plaintiff has not identified final agency action that would render the claim fit for judicial review and because withholding consideration subjects plaintiff to scant, if any, hardship, the claim lacks a ripe case of controversy, judge Reid O'Connor wrote. Wall Street's top regulator and consensus have been warring for some time now. Consensus had filed a preemptive lawsuit against the SEC in April after receiving a so called Wells notice or a warning of an impending lawsuit over securities violations over its popular Ethereum wallet, MetaMask.
Consensus alleged in the suit that the SEC internally viewed Ethereum as a security and was seeking a declaration from the regulator that it was not, in fact, considered a security. The US Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to regulate ETH as a security, even though ETH bears none of the attributes of a security. Oh, bullshit. Yes, it does. Fucking liars. And even though the SEC has previously told the world that ETH is not a security and not within the SEC's statutory jurisdiction, the original lawsuit alleged. Consensus said that in June, it had heard the regulator was dropping its investigation into Ethereum.
But later that month, the SEC sued consensus over its MetaMask swaps service, which allows users to stake crypto. Staking is the process of locking up cryptocurrency to keep a blockchain's network running, which is dumb. Those who stake cryptocurrency can earn rewards in the process. Yeah, we call it a scam. Anyway, the SEC has gone after a number of crypto companies for providing the service though, alleging that it gives investors too much risk and too little protection. Ethereum is the programming platform and block chain behind the second whatever. They're just gonna describe what Ethereum is and they don't actually use the word scam which is bad on decrypt. But ConsenSys is a prominent company that builds these dApps. The firm issued a statement following the ruling quote, In April of 2024, Consensus filed a lawsuit to protect the Ethereum ecosystem from the SEC's regulatory overreach and stands up for the industry that has been subject to the agency's reckless enforcement agenda.
Unfortunately, the Texas court today dismissed our lawsuit on procedural grounds without looking at the merits of our claims against the SEC. Oh, poor baby. Quote, our suit against the SEC laid bare the overzealous investigation of Ethereum. And policymakers and the public at large voiced deep concern over the SEC's investigation of blockchain software development, the statement continued. Quote, in a significant win for the industry, the SEC dropped its Ethereum 2.0 investigation after our litigation was filed and the Texas court today recognized that the SEC already gave consensus the relief it sought on that critical issue for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Outside of court, we have also seen signs of what could be a momentous step change in Washington's sentiment towards cryptocurrencies and digital assets during a crucial period for US politics. We're on the right path, but we must remain vigilant. Consensus is resolved to keep fighting for the rights of blockchain developers in the US as we cancess contest the SEC's actions in Brooklyn. And the SEC didn't respond to decrypts request for comments. Who gives a shit? Look, Ethereum is is has all the hallmarks of a security.
And it does more so now than it did when it was actually being mined through the use of GPU, because at least there was still proof of work. But now it's just proof of stake. It's all bullshit. This is a security. So you're gonna ask me, okay, Dave, when do you think that the SEC is gonna declare it a security and we could be done with this shit? They're not. They're not. This is what happens when you allow people to scam so much money so fast before you get your heads wrapped around it. They have enough money to lobby. And that's what consensus is doing. They're successful lobbyers.
Ethereum isn't going away. I wish it would die. I mean, when you look at the chart of Ethereum price over BTC price as relative to the US dollar All you see is complete degradation of your purchasing power. You should have just bought Bitcoin. Let's run the numbers. Okay. There's a little bit of news, over here on the sidebar for cnbc.com futuresandcommodities. Check this shit out. Constellation Energy is going to restart Three Mile Island's nuclear power plant and sell the power to Microsoft for guess what? AI.
Dude, 3 Mile Island. If you don't know what 3 Mile Island is, I highly recommend that you look up the history of the United States' worst nuclear accident in its history. In the continental United States, actually all the states of the United States, what makes up the union that is the United States, Of all the nuclear accidents, the one at Three Mile Island was the worst one. It's not as bad as Fukushima, clearly. It's not as bad as what happened in the, Ukraine over there. Oh, God, when it was still in Russia, Chernobyl. Right? It was not that bad, but bad. It was bad.
Alright? They closed down the plant. Right? There's like it was it was a bad deal. And now AI is forcing somebody to figure out how to restart that son of a bitch up. We're gonna have to watch that one, ladies and gentlemen, because it's probably not a good deal. Okay. Oil. West Texas Intermediate is up 0.13% to 7204. Brent Norsey is down a third to 74.64. Natural gas is up 2 points to $2.39 per 1,000 and gasoline is down over a point back down to $2.03 per gallon. Gold is up 1 and a third to 26.48. Wow. Congratulations, Peter.
You're still losing your ass compared to Bitcoin. Silver is up 0.63%. Platinum is down 1 and a third. Copper is down a quarter, and Palladium is down 1 3 quarters. Biggest winner in ag today is sugar. 3.36 percent to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate. 1 percent to no. Coffee is 4% to the downside. Woah. Sorry about that. Alright. Live cattle is up almost a full point. Lean hogs are down a tenth of a point. Feeder cattle are up a third. Profit taking is occurring on this Friday in the equities markets. Dow future or the Dow is down 0.18%. The S and P down 0.4.
NASDAQ is down almost a full half. And the S and P mini worst off 0.78 percent to the downside. There's a lot of there's profit taking going on in Bitcoin too. Everybody everybody everybody is taking profit since yesterday's full blown spike on damn near everything since the fed cut the rates and everybody got a chance to digest it. Currently, we are below 63,000. We're down to $62,940. That is a $1,240,000,000,000 market cap. And we can only purchase 24 ounces of our favorite shiny metal rock for 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,756,467.99 of.
And average fees per block are sitting at 0.06 Bitcoin per block on average on a per block basis. Now, how many blocks are there? Oh, wait wait wait. Okay, we'll do that. We'll do that. Hold on. There are 9 oh, wow. Sub 100. We finally hit it. 97 blocks carrying 177,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 7. Satoshis per vbyte low priority is gonna get you in at 4. Hash rate oh, shit. New all time high. 743.6 exahashes per second, ladies and gentlemen. That is a new all time high as far as the hash rate for Bitcoin mining. Okay. I ran across this thing yesterday. It's called BTCframe.com.
It's a website. You know, I go to Clark Moody's, dashboard for a lot of the information that I get because it's just easier that way. However, I just discovered BTC frame. It doesn't I don't think it it doesn't have as much information. But if you want to get a good live look at what's going on in Bitcoin, BTC frame has a really nice looking interface. It's got a it's got some good information on it. So there's like the first page that you get to on their dashboard has 9 frames. They're like like 9 blocks. Like there's 1, 2, 3 across the top and 1, 2, 3 from top to bottom. So it's a grid of 9 blocks and each block has a different piece of information. So like the price is 62,981 according to these guys. That's 1588 sats per dollar. There's an average transaction fee of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Block height is 862,139.
Current hash rate is 743.64 exahashes per second. Network difficulty is 92.67 trillion. Circulating supply is 19,756,653. That's a little different than what I think I just said. In fact, I wanna I want hold on. Let's do this. We're gonna go back over to Clark Moody because I don't like it when I see different numbers. That's that oh, wait. Hold on. Clark Moody dashboard. Come on. Give it to me. Give it to me. Okay. So, 19,756,467 versus 19,756,653. That is quite a bit different number. Is it because Clark Moody isn't updating as fast as I think it should be? I don't know. But there's a difference in numbers. I don't like that. That that does not bode well for auditing. Whose fault is it? Oh, hell, I don't know. But one other thing that this thing says is it gives me the market cap of 1.25 trillion and the difficulty adjustment, is coming in 7 0 9 blocks.
So there you go. We're 64.83% through this particular difficulty adjustment period. But there's, like, some arrows on the bottom and it will get you to a price graph of Bitcoin. There is another scene, like, there's arrows on the bottom, right? So you'd go backward and forward to different types of frames. And this one, this frame is giving me 5 different prices of Bitcoin. 62,981 in USD, 56,369 in Euros, 47,275 in the Great British pound. You see how this is going, okay? So there's several different prices. There's all kinds of neat information on this particular, website.
So if you want to look at something different or something new, BTC frame, all one word, BTC frame.com.btcframe.com. Go there and check it on out. Now, for some reason or another, let's see. Okay. There it goes. Finally. Okay. Now, from Trump Burgers and All For All, which was Bitcoin and episode 957, I have FADE 1651214f5f33f386 with 900 and 57 sat says, anyone know the block number of the Trump cheeseburger transaction? That transaction was a Lightning Network transaction. It was not a full Bitcoin transaction. However, PubKey did give us the timestamp, and I think it was, like, 4:55 PM or 4:37 PM, which would be ease, I guess, Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time, whatever the hell we're in right now.
So we could go back and look for the block. But what what's interesting here is that people were like saying, oh, look, they're really happy that the transaction went through. Isn't that kind of like make it look, you know, like lightning network doesn't really work all that well? Now I know why they were excited. Trump didn't just buy 1 cheeseburger, he bought 50. He bought 50 drinks, he bought 50 fries, and whatever it was. The bill after a 20% tip was like $998.77. So it was like $1,000 Lightning Network transaction. That's a pretty big transaction for Lightning Network. Even by, you know, even by our standards of having lightning network around for this long.
So that makes sense. That's no wonder that they were kind of, you know, that some people were going holy shit. It went through. Right? Because that's that's a lot of money for the lightning network right now. It'll get better. Just be patient. So that the only way that we can find out the block number is through the the the time stamp and the date of that transaction which pubkey did post an Auster note and I'm sure it's up there on Twitter. God's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Bitcoin Sandy with 500 gives me a flame emoji. The bird, the, 500 sat says panda bears. And the way Shitcoin takes no hesitation is always entertaining. Thank you. I appreciate that, pal. Paul Allen with a 100 gives me a period. He literally says just puts a dot up there. And Pies De Plebs says, thank you, sir. No, thank you. And that is the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news. You can use there's a note by carnage. Resumes over Nostr. If you're not following Carnage, I will put his, carnage at zap dot stream. His basically is is like I can't remember what nippo 7 or I can't remember what what the identifiers. You can find carnage on Nostr by carnage at zap dot stream. And all these guys, I'm not gonna put I'm not going to put their in pubs in. I'm gonna do it this way, but I'm gonna put their, like, carnages, carnage at zap dot stream will be in the show notes. So lift that, you know, just highlight it and copy it and then take it over to whatever, like, you know, primal or coracle or something like that and throw that into the search bar and see if that gets gets to you or, like, if that gets you to, like, the the people that I'm gonna be talking about. But these are the ideas that I was talking about.
These are good ideas. These are these are really good ideas for Noster, in particular. But it just shows that there are so many people that are thinking about how do we do how do we handle legacy bullshit given these new tools? And Carnage was the one that caught my attention last night and started me down a road of finding other ideas. So he comes up with this one. Resumes over Noster. The problem. Employers want the best candidates but get an overwhelming number of unqualified or underqualified applicants. The candidate wants the best possible job with the best possible company, like Think Reputation, but is probably already employed because they are in high demand.
Employers never see the best possible candidate. And the best possible candidate does not apply because that process is stressful. Solution? Resumes over Nostr. How it can work? 1. Anyone can create a Nostr native resume which would require a new nip. Right? A new event type. Something something that is specific to resumes. 2. This resume benefits from the web of trust score of the creator. Employers get a glimpse of whether this is someone who is in some way connected to people they know or follow. Referrals are generally better than cold applicants. 3, individual gets to put themselves out into the market without applying. Think LinkedIn.
Employers then search a pool of candidates based on their criteria. This could include a web of trust score, shared working connections, a new NIP could support this, skills criteria, etcetera, etcetera. Let let's say I know Kieran and trust his judgment and would like to know all the people he is connected to. Maybe also dedicated some, specific level of trust who happen to have public resumes. I could then search for semi vetted candidates. Number 4. Companies can send offers to candidates who may not even be available yet, but are possibly open to new opportunities with the right company for the right compensation amount.
5. Companies also have profiles that benefit from their own web of trust. The more people that follow them, the more likely they are to have a better reputation as a company. And 6, public resumes keep candidates honest about their work history, their education, etcetera, because anyone can verify that. And then he ends with this: Thoughts? So I write back there's a lot of people that have written back about this because it's a damn good idea. What I wrote back was that number 5 okay, now I'm gonna read you number 5. Well, actually, let me read you this first. Number 5 is just as important as 1 through 4 and number 6. It's vital that companies be held to the fire publicly when it comes to their rep their reputation.
I love this whole idea and I hope you really flesh it out to its logical conclusion, which is implementation. Okay. So why am I saying that 5 is just as important as all the rest of them? Let me read you 5 again. Companies also have profiles. Like, if I'm putting my resume up on Noster as a new nip, companies would have a profile that benefit from their own web of trust. The more people that follow them, the more likely they are to have a better reputation. Why is this why for me is this so much just as important as 1 through 4 and number 6 all added together? Well, because I went to go work for a little while at a at a quote unquote Bitcoin only company that turned out not to be a Bitcoin only company. It was a fucking shit coin company with some very very sketch bullshit going on in the background with shit coins, with all kinds of tokens.
It was not not not not at all what it was billed as. It was billed billed as a Bitcoin company. Bitcoin only. With with a pretty heavy hitting, you know, individual in the space. People know them. Them. I'm not gonna say who. I'm never gonna tell anybody who on this show because that's not the point. But the point is, I wish that they had had a rep score that I could have looked at. That I would have been, like, okay. This is here's the web of trust. Filter out part of their web of trust and only give me the people that are that have web of trust that surrounds Bitcoin. Bitcoin only. People that have a web of trust that are known for calling out shitcoiners and crappy employment practices.
And then filter that company through that web of trust. And then what I'm saying is that I can look at a company and say, yeah, it's a Bitcoin company. I'm gonna, you know, maybe maybe I wanna go work for them. And then I look at their web of trust and figure out through various means and maybe various filtration and maybe a couple of nips applied to it. I don't know that they're not really a Bitcoin company. That they have a lot of people going, hey, why are you shit coining? And then I can look at the history of their shitcoinery and make a better judged decision as to whether or not I wanna risk my reputation by working for a, quote, unquote, Bitcoin company that really is more about shitcoinery, like I accidentally got into a couple of years ago. I'm just I'm just done with it. I'm done with fucking companies that are able to treat their people like shit and nobody knows that they treat their people like shit or put them into very unethical situations without giving a crap about how they feel.
No, no, no. That shit needs to change. Carnage has got an incredible idea. Because companies should be able to look at applicants and go, no, you're a shit applicant. And not just, you've got everything that we want, but your web of trust looks like crap, dude. You're just like you are not you are not the droids we're looking for, to coin a a Star Wars phrase. And I I would I begged Carnage, I'm like, please do this, and he's like that's he's like that's not what I'm built for. I'm built for the idea, which means that somebody else has to implement this. So, me and Carnage is probably, like, we're a lot like each other. We have ideas, but we can't implement them because we don't know how to code, which is our fault. I know, I get it. But if you have any idea how to get this shit done, please, please, please, for the love of God, do so. Because carnage isn't done.
He says this in another completely different note. We called the first one Nosterezumae, Alright? Just, you know, because lack of a better term. I I coined that. So he writes the following. He says, similar to Nosterresume, grant foundations such as OpenSats could significantly lower the time it takes to sift through applicants with a web of trust based application system. A NOSTR client that does the following. 1. Allows anyone to add a project they wish to get funded. 2. Displays relevant links and or shows your Github activity if you're the developer.
3. Option to reveal funding amount or keep it open. 4. Foundation benefits by narrowing down candidates based on web of trust or other filter criteria. I got distracted. Sorry. Shiny bit of metal just flashed in front of me. Or other filter criteria. It doesn't need to be web of based or web of trust based. 5, this process creates transparency and people can see what's being applied for and not have to duplicate the same request. If there are 10 applications to build yet another Twitter clone, applicants can see that perhaps it's a waste of time and propose something else to be done. This could be merged with Nosta Resume somehow so that info is readily available.
This accomplishes the following. 1, transparency to the process. 2, saves time sifting through many applications. 3, clarity regarding what type of projects are getting funded. And 4, clarity regarding desired level of proof of work sought by the funding committees. And again, he says thoughts. So go tell Carnage your thoughts because this is a good idea, too. Now, I already hear one person out there already screaming. Web of trust is going to, well, automatically preclude good people. K? Like people that don't maybe they don't have the web of trust yet. Maybe they're brand new but they've got an exceptional idea. They're brand new to Nostr.
They haven't formed their web of trust yet because they're brand new to Noster. And if we go by web of trust, we're gonna filter these people out. And there could be some very very good people there. And so I hear you screaming. So here's what I replied to this particular idea. I said you need to add the ability for a complete unknown person to be sponsored using someone else's web of trust if they think that the idea has legs. For example, let's say I run across an idea, like Nostra Resume, but Carnage has very little a very low Web of Trust score because he's new to Nostra. He's new to this entire thing.
I love the idea. So I make the decision to sponsor Carnage's application to OpenSats using my own web of trust score. If Carnage scams OpenSats, then my web of trust takes a hit because I was the sponsor. I had skin in the game. If his project goes nowhere, but he didn't scam OpenSats, my web of trust remains unaffected. If it's a huge hit, maybe my web of trust gets a bump. I don't know. But what I'm saying here is that if we go solely by web of trust on resumes or applications to OpenSats or the Human Rights Foundation, we might very well be sifting over somebody who has a stupendous idea that would be groundbreaking earth shattering, in fact, simply because they did not pass the web of trust score.
But if I sponsor, like, somebody's resume like, let's say, Carnage builds his resume and I know carnage per well, actually, let me let me take that back. I know huddlebod personally. Right? I met with him physically in meatspace on several occasions. We've had beer together. We've had long discussions together. I've interviewed him face to face for over an hour and 30 minutes before. I know this man. I know what Korekle looks like. The man's got his chops. I could, if for whatever reason, huddlebod did not have a serious web of trust in this particular environment, I would say, you know what?
I know this guy's good for what he says he can do. I'm going to sponsor that resume and have some kind of nip that allows me to physically prove that I've got skin in the game on his resume, that I'm sponsoring his resume, that I'm basically saying I there's something in linkedin linkedin where you can get people that give you credit, like, you you like, all these people come and say you know how to do public speaking. Right? Like, the endorsements. That that's it. I'm endorsing huddlebod's resume, but I'm doing it through a provable way. I had to sign the message on Nostr that I am attaching my web of trust to Hodlebod's resume because Hodlebod doesn't have a web of trust. You see what I'm getting at?
You see how we can crowdsource almost everything because of something like noster? It gets better. It gets better. I swear to God it gets better. I ran across this guy abha y. I can only presume that it's abhae. And I've been following him for a while. I hadn't seen really and it's not because probably for lack he's not it's probably not because he hasn't been posting. But Noster is funny, as you know, so I hadn't seen anything out of him in a while. But this one I saw and it says 58 ks gang failed me. And then he's got a screenshot. And he had put up a poll.
And the poll says: What will be the price of bitcoin in terms of USD at 10 pm UTC on 19th September 2024? Required difficulty: 12 bits. Poll concluded at 9 192024 at 23:55 or 11:55 pm. And 58 for for all the the people that responded that there was 50 it was gonna be 58,000 There was 25%. And that actually ended up being Abhey himself voting on his own poll because this looks to be sort of an experiment. We'll get to this in a second. Hold on. Over somewhere over 60 to 70,000 k, 50% of the people that were polled said, yeah. Between 50 60 k itself, another person said voted and it was so that was 25%. And then there was other comments to which nobody said anything. That's a nice looking poll because it looks like it kind of looks like it's written, you know, it's using the the, the font that makes it look like it's written in, you know, handwriting, you know, pencil, like, you know, like it just looks that way. It looks nice.
But all of a sudden, the minute I saw it, all I could think of was this: that this poll could be a nostril event that creates a DLC and the bedding is done directly through a special kind of zap. Of course, I reserve the right to not know what the hell I'm talking about. Well, but, Abhay writes back and says, you are correct. Kind of the general direction I'm going with these types of polls as well. Thought you'd need to add relays that don't accept backdated events to ensure 100% authenticity. Melvin Carvalho, also wrote back and said, yes.
This could have been done years ago. I literally got a message last week that says, quote, by this, I never sent one nip about DLC's data on Nostra via pull request because I knew fiatjoff could remove it in some moment. What I did with a question mark, I did implementation myself. What am I getting at? What is what is a poll? When you run a poll, what what's a poll? Well, generally speaking, it's just to to you're getting the sentiment of a group of people as to what you think might happen. But if you go and take it further than that, you could actually run a bet.
You could actually run a bet on Nostra with an NIP using, basically, kind of like a poll, but it's a flat out bet where you could say you could run this poll and say, what do you think the price of you of Bitcoin is gonna be at USD at 10 PM UTC on the 19th September 2024? And then you can require difficulty or a web of trust or you can't bet on this unless you like, you could do it through zaps, like a special kind of zap. That's like a bet zap or zap bet or something like that. And it basically feeds this particular kind of nip. So now when I vote in the poll, what I'm actually doing is I'm placing a bet that it's going to be that the price of US or Bitcoin and USD at that time on that date is gonna be 58 k.
If it turns out that a that we can process this to be turned into a DLC that queries an oracle and maybe that's a different kind of relay, I don't know. If I am part of the betting pool that bet on 58 k, then all the people that bet on that gets to split up the entire pool. So the people that bet on between 60 70k or 50 60k, they lost their sets and it goes to all the winners of, well, the people that were right. So if there was like a 100 people total and 25% said 58 k, another 25% said something else, another 25% said something else, and another 25 percent said something else. But the 58 k gang won, then the 75% of people that place their bets lose their money, and all that money is divvied up along with the money that you put in yourself to the winners that said 58 k.
It would be a DLC, it would look at a couple of oracles, and it would determine that the price was indeed somewhere in in the 58 k range on that time, on that day. So this would be a new way to run betting on Noster with DLCs looking at oracles and have zap based betting. But I'm not done. I'm not done in the long shot. Jake Woodhouse has his own damn idea. He says, I just heard the phrase zap battle for the first time. 1, I love it. 2, just think about a charity event. And there's an auction for something. The biggest bin wins.
Ego? Yes. Impact? Yes. Completion? For sure. At scale, public zap battles have the potential to create huge amounts of capital flow. Doesn't have to be just donations. Why not equity investing? Or a bid for a limited edition product? Just another mind bending idea that just wasn't truly possible pre Noster. And that brings us to the final thought that I have in here. We haven't been able to think about any of this shit pre noster. Not in this way. Not where we have almost full group or crowd sourced control over shit like resumes, making bets and doing bidding.
None of this was possible in this format before Nostra. And for those people that just refuse absolutely freaking refuse to look at Nostra as anything other than a Twitter clone, you are missing out. If you're listening to my voice and you have not yet built a profile on Nostr, secured your Nsec and Npub public p or or key pair. Your Nsec and Npub key pair. If you haven't done that. If you haven't started claiming your namespace, if you haven't started making friends, if you haven't started forming your web of trust, if you haven't started doing any of this shit, you're going to be last to the party.
The buffet is going to be eaten through. The alcohol is going to be drained. All the drugs that we had set out are going to be used up by the hookers. Right? You're gonna miss out on the fun. You cannot wait anymore. We're moving we're moving away from Twitter and Facebook and all the other bullshit Because they're never going to allow us to have the kind of fun that we could have with Noster. I'm not a betting man. I'm not the guy that's gonna throw down a 100,000 sats on who's gonna win president on a DLC based nip that uses 4 different relays as a fucking oracle. That's not gonna be me. But that doesn't mean that there's not a whole shit ton of people out there that wouldn't. And what if we base that? What if Jake Woodhouse's idea on zap battles was combined somehow with making bets?
The bet is, like, there's I don't know, there's 4 different like, let let's say that we're let's go to Jake Woodhouse. Let's say we're at a charity event. We're live at the Bitcoin conference or or at Honey Badger. Right? Let's do Baltic Honey Badger. And there are 4 absolutely gorgeous people on stage. 2 of them are men, 2 of them are women. And you're you're betting you're not you're bidding on a date with these people. Right? So you could have maybe you could combine the bet with the bid and say, I don't know how that would work. That somehow or another if your your bet on who's going to be the 1st person chosen to go out on a date, is somehow or another the bid that you give that charity.
I don't I don't know if that makes sense and if it doesn't my apologies. I'm just a little excited about the fact that within I saw these ideas guys within an hour of each other. Odd just just browsing Nostr. This isn't going to stop and that's why it's so critically important that you put aside whatever reservations you have about Nostr And get on Noster. Do it now. Do it today. I'm not saying leave Twitter or leave Facebook. Personally, I think you should because it's just a bunch of hate machines. But I okay. So you don't want to get get rid of it? Okay. I get it. But what's stopping you? I mean, do you think that you're going to lose your Twitter account if you get an insect in pub key pair and just try out an Oscar? Do you think for some reason or another, if you do that, all of a sudden Google's going to ban you from the Internet?
If the answer is no, of course that's not going to happen, then what's holding you back from trying out Nostra and seeing what we're talking about here? You cannot sleep on this anymore. There are no excuses. There are no excuses. Now, getting on to Open Sats, they have announced the 7th wave of Noster grants. Noster grants. Again, if you're if you're a developer and you want to possibly get a grant for doing something and you're not on Nostr, then you're missing out on being able to apply for grants. And please, let's keep in mind, Carnage's idea of having that as a nip, the application to open sas be as as a full blown Nostr nip. Okay. So who got it?
Nostra Arduino is an open source library that allows Arduino microcontrollers to use the Nostra protocol, facilitating the sending and receiving of Nostra events by embedded services. Okay. Just gonna pause right there. Arduinos are very good controllers for things like a greenhouse. Like like, let's say that you've got a small greenhouse and you get some hydraulic jacks to open windows, you get some servos to connect up to signaling devices. And what do you hook it up to? You hook it up to an Arduino. And you hook up the temperature gauge that's inside your greenhouse to the Arduino. And all by itself, the Arduino says, oh, the temperature in this greenhouse has now fallen to below 65 degrees. So I'm going to close the upper windows.
And then, because this is now over Noster, that event of closing the windows because the temperature fell to 65 degrees Fahrenheit now get sent to your phone or to your to your end pub. The amount of shit we could do with this is insane. You're never gonna get that through Twitter because their API is closed. It's gone. It's done. Forget it. Never gonna be able to do it. Not unless you pay $10,000 a month or whatever hell they want. Nostr is the only way to go. Stop sleeping on Nostr. White Noise by Jeff g got funded. F u t r or fudder is a decentralized Nostr client in Haskell. It got funded.
Note deck, which is let's say, let's call it damas 2.0. Jb55 or Will Kessarian, he's the guy that's behind damas. He's also doing note deck. So it's sort of like tweet deck was in the old days, except clearly it's for Noster. Keystash has been funded as well. So there are let's see. It says 7th wave and there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 recipients. Five recipients just for Nostr stuff. They they're gonna pay you to build on Nostr. And and you're listening to me thinking about how Twitter rules. Honestly, you're just when was the last time Twitter developers got a grant? No. Yeah. I gotta go work for Twitter.
You're you're in the old world. Get out of it. Do it now. Quickly. Wasabi Wallet version 2.2.0 Taproot receive addresses, free coordinators, and more. So the Wasabi Wallet has been updated. And finally on the list, Core Lightning version 24.08.1 has been released and it fixes crashes and then there's some other bug fixes. So there you go. That's the news for your day. Actually, that's the news for the week because tomorrow's Saturday and I'm gonna be listening on the radio to the Texas Tech Red Raiders play football. Thank god.
But if I noticed that nobody seemed to like yesterday's episode. I wonder if it was because I named it named it Trump Burger. And and I I don't know. Somebody tell me if you were completely uninterested in in listening to the our, episode yesterday because of the name of the episode. If you were like if you're a listener and you're like, I don't wanna listen to this one because it's named Trump Burgers for everyone or for all or whatever the hell I named it. If that was the case that caused you to not listen to that episode because there was a lot of pea a lot of people have been listening lately and that one performed poorly. And that's a Thursday episode. They usually do pretty well.
I'm wondering if it was just because of the title of the episode. If that's the case, please let me know and do it through a boostogram or some other type of podcasting 2.0 technology or better yet actually, not better yet, just as good. Tag me on Noster, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:55 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 20th day of September 2024.
This is episode 958 of Bitcoin and BlackRock is in the news. We're gonna do it. We're gonna talk about this really interesting article out of Forbes Magazine. So, it's not what we're gonna talk about is not gonna be out of Bob's backyard banking newsletter, right? This is out of Forbes. Even though their mainstream media is still Forbes. And we should probably kinda take note as to what that is going to tell us. MicroStrategy is in the news. You probably can imagine why. HUT 8 and Bitmain, 2, mining companies have decided to join forces but not not not in a takeover kind of way. They're actually just like shaking hands and they're gonna do a couple of they're gonna do at least one pretty major looking deal together. It's going to be interesting.
We're gonna get into that. Consensus lawsuit against the SEC has been tossed tossed out. We'll get into that one as well. Then there's gonna be some OpenSats news. We got some Wasabi Wallet stuff going on, Core Lightning. Then at the very end of the show, last night I stayed up a little bit later than normal because I kept running across people like Carnage on Nostr that are starting to put out these really really good ideas. And it's not just Carnage. There's, Abhey has got another idea. And then, Jake Woodhouse was weighing in on some things as to what Nostra and this is all Nostra based, by the way. So when I mean good ideas, I mean good ideas in insofar as Nostra.
So we're gonna do all of that. But I wanna start with this BlackRock news. Excuse me. Pardon me. A little, a little, there's some pollen and stuff running around, I guess, as the fall starts to set in up here in the inland northwest. So let's just do it. BlackRock reveals it's quietly preparing for a $35,000,000,000,000 Federal Reserve dollar crisis with Bitcoin. It's predicted to spark a sudden price boom. I'm not as interested in the last part of that because that's the hopium part, right? It's the first part. BlackRock quietly preparing for a $35,000,000,000,000 Federal Reserve crisis.
What the hell? Literally, what the hell, man? So, Bitcoin, and again, this is out of out of Forbes and Billy Bambro is writing this one. Bitcoin has suddenly surged higher following the Federal Reserve's first post pandemic interest rate cut that's predicted to send the Bitcoin price skyrocketing. And they start out with a little bit of hopium, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt. The Bitcoin price has climbed to over $62,000 per Bitcoin with traders now turning to China and its shock and awe earthquake after the Fed surprised traders with a 50 basis point cut, kicking off what's expected to be fresh liquidity that could put the Bitcoin and crypto market on the cusp of a major move.
Now, as fears swirl that the US dollar is on the verge of total collapse seriously, dude, this is out of Forbes. As fears swirl that the US dollar is on the verge of a total collapse, the world's largest asset manager BlackRock has warned of growing concerns around the spiraling 35 $1,000,000,000,000 US debt pile that's predicted to drive institutional interest in Bitcoin. The growing concern in the United States and abroad over the state of the United States federal deficit and debt has increased the appeal of potential alternative reserve assets as a potential hedge against possible future events affecting the US dollar, BlackRock's Exchange Traded Fund Chief Investment Officer, its head of crypto and its head of fixed income global macro wrote in a paper outlining the investment case for Bitcoin.
Woah. This is why some have called Bitcoin the second amendment of money. Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted to Twitter adding the US debt pile of $35,000,000,000,000 that's growing at a clip of $1,000,000,000,000 every 100 days has no end in sight. Another quote, this dynamic appears to also be taking hold in other countries where debt accumulation has been significant, the authors of the BlackRock paper added. In our experience with clients to date, this explains a substantial portion of the recent broadening institutional interest in Bitcoin.
BlackRock, which has around $10,000,000,000,000 in assets under management definitely not to be sneezed at, described Bitcoin as a unique diversifier to hedge against economic and political risk. Quote, while Bitcoin has shown instances in short term co movements with equities and other risk assets over the longer term, its fundamental drivers are starkly different and in many cases inverted versus most traditional investment assets, the paper concluded. In July, BlackRock's chief executive Larry Fink said he had been wrong about Bitcoin when he previously dismissed it as an index of money laundering, admitting that Bitcoin is digital gold and a legit financial instrument.
BlackRock's successful campaign to bring a fully fledged US spot bitcoin exchange traded fund to market last year has been one of the major driving force forces in the bitcoin price in 2024 as Wall Street has piled into the bitcoin market. In May, BlackRock's Ishares Bitcoin Trust overtook Grayscales as the world's largest bitcoin exchange traded investment fund with the Ibit inflows recently topping $21,000,000,000 The Bitcoin price rally following the Fed's historic 0.5 percent interest rate cut is expected by many Bitcoin and crypto watchers to signal the beginning of a new Bitcoin bull run. Quote While there are other macro factors currently impacting the outlook for Bitcoin and other risk assets, including geopolitical tensions and election uncertainty, these markets should benefit from the formalization of the Fed's dovish shift.
Samir Khurbaj, chief investment officer at Bitcoin and crypto investment company Hashdex said in emailed comments, our long term investment thesis for Bitcoin remains intact and regardless of the near term direction of monetary policy, Bitcoin remains well positioned for growth as institutional adoption continues to gain momentum. Okay. That's Billy's article for Forbes. Understand that there was quite a bit more hopium described in this article than I've ever seen in a Forbes or mainstream financial news outlet before. It's it's a little unnerving, to tell you the damn truth.
Because I don't like it when people start talking this way. It's like, oh my God, we're all gonna get rich and it's gonna be like lightning fast. No, it's not. I've been in this game for a long, long time. I am still nowhere close to smoking ass rich. But the fact that we are talking that that that Forbes is is really bringing to the table in this particular article, that $35,000,000,000,000 in debt is not a good thing. Especially when it is the leading oh, I don't know what to call the United States. I'm just gonna call it the leading country in the world. The leaders of the free world and pretty much everybody else has to fall in line because we are the world's reserve currency. The United States dollar is. Right? That said, don't get too caught up in the hopium in this thing.
Instead, look at the fact that we are that other outlets are starting to very much become concerned with 35 $1,000,000,000,000 in debt. And that honestly that doesn't even touch the unfunded liabilities. Right? The unfunded liabilities is a much scarier number. What's an unfunded liability? Social Security. And, oh, all kinds there's all manner of, pension funds that are either state or federally, you know, the federal government of the United States is supposed to back. And a whole bunch of other stuff too, by the way. I mean, it's kinda it's kinda sad, but if you rack it all up, and I'm not gonna give you the number because I don't wanna be talking out of my ass, it makes $35,000,000,000,000 look like a walk in a park.
This is money that is promised by the government to the citizenry over the longer term that we already know they don't have the money for. Right? So, $35,000,000,000,000 in solid debt that we can actually see is one thing. It's the debt that we can't see that scares the living piss out of me. It's easier to get a grasp on the enemy that you know and you can see them and you know where they are you can get their position relative to you and because you have a position on the enemy relative to you you actually know what distance the enemy has to close on you before it comes and bites your head off like a freaking zombie or something like that.
It's the zombie that's behind you that you can't see that should be more terrifying than the $35,000,000,000,000 zombie that we can actually see. We can rate its movement. We know how much time we have before it gets to us. We know we can run faster than it. That that's not that's not an issue. It's the zombie you can't see that's standing behind you ready to rip you limb from limb that should really scare the piss out of you. Because that's the one that scares the piss out of me. So BlackRock knows it. Forbes knows it. Everybody is starting to understand this. Now, here's the thing. They were talking about the rate cut. You know who didn't cut rates?
Bank of Japan. You know who else is not really kind of budging after this? And, albeit, I'll give you know, I understand. It's only been since Wednesday, Maybe on Monday the other people will fall in line. But so far China isn't budging. You got Japan, you got China, they don't seem to be moving their rates. Yet we're dropping ours. This could have way more impactful nuances on the American public and the rest of the world than we might think. It's an interesting situation. That's definitely one we're gonna have to keep an eye on. And now over to MicroStrategy, you know what happened, right? They have acquired another tranche of Bitcoin for $458,000,000 and they're taking their holdings to 252,220 BTC after Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy purchased 7,000 420 Bitcoin.
They did. No, seriously, that's not an exaggeration. It's 7420. 7420 Bitcoin is what Michael purchased. The business intelligence firm and corporate Bitcoin holder MicroStrategy acquired an additional 7,420 Bitcoin for approximately $458,200,000 at an average price of $61,750 per Bitcoin between the dates September 13th September 19th according to an SEC filing on Friday. The company now holds 252,220 Bitcoin which is worth roughly 15.8 $1,000,000,000 Biconstrategy's total holdings were bought at an average price of $39,266 per bitcoin at a total cost of around $9,900,000,000 including fees and expenses, according to the company's founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor.
The announcement follows earlier news on Friday of MicroStrategy completing an upsized $1,010,000,000 private offering of convertible senior notes which is due 2028 with a 0.625% coupon and a 40% conversion premium. As the company confirmed earlier this week, it planned to use the proceeds to fully redeem its $500,000,000 senior secured notes which is due 2028 expected to be completed on September 26th and to use any balance of the net proceeds to acquire additional Bitcoin and for general corporate purchases or purposes. Upon redemption, the collateral securing these notes including approximately 69,080 BTC valued at $4,400,000,000 will be released, the firm stated in the filing.
MicroStrategy MicroStrategy's latest Bitcoin purchase follows its acquisition of 18,300 BTC for 1,100,000,000 between August 6th September 12th. Alright. So, there's a little bit more to the article. It doesn't really go any it just kind of runs over the history of when they started making Bitcoin purchases and and we know all that. But here's the gist of what I just read. We all heard, and I brought it to you a couple of weeks ago, that that MicroStrategy purchased a whole assload of Bitcoin for $1,100,000,000 If you're thinking that this article is just about that, you're wrong.
That was already done between August 6th September 12th. Now, we have a new tranche. This is a completely different tranche of Bitcoin and it had $1,010,000,000 private offering. So the other one was 1,110,000,000 or 11.1. This is 1.01. All this man is doing is buying Bitcoin. That's all this guy is doing at this point. It's it's I haven't actually heard him talk about any strategy for MicroStrategy other than Bitcoin. There doesn't seem to be any new software products coming out of MicroStrategy. I I I At this point, it's kinda it's almost I don't want to laugh at Michael Saylor. Why? Because he's got yachts and 12 houses and I don't. Not that I want 12 houses or a yacht. I'm just saying he's clearly more successful than many of us. So, when I say the following it's not because I'm trying to dig at Michael Saylor, nor am I suggesting that the man is stupid.
I think that what we're witnessing here is a complete conversion of the mental status of a billionaire that thought they knew what money was. They thought they knew what running a company was. They thought they knew that the tranche of goods and services that they offer they thought it was good and now I think Michael Saylor is looking at his entire past and MicroStrategy and and the software suite that they have and and all the things that they've done and saying my God if Bitcoin had been here when I started this company we wouldn't have done any of this Because it is very clear to me now that he is looking at MicroStrategy as something that is 100% being converted from something that offers goods and services to something that is straight up financial.
A financial holding company. So this begs the question, what happens to the software engineers that works for Michael Saylor? Do they get let go because they're they're not finance guys? Does he keep them on? What does MicroStrategy look like as a company in 10 years? In 5 years? Does it have any software suites available anymore? Does he just say, you know what? We're all we're no, we're done. We're done building software. We don't need this shit anymore. We're just gonna go into Bitcoin. We're gonna be a holding company. And then, of course, everybody's yapping about the fact that he mentioned how do you get yield on Bitcoin.
I'm not gonna go into that because honestly, we've got other fish to fry and their name is Hut 8 and Bitmain. They've come together to launch the next generation ASIC Bitcoin miner with liquid to chip cooling. Nicholas Hoffman is writing this one for bitcoin magazine. Hud 8 Corp, corporation, a leading bitcoin mining company, has expanded its partnership with Bitmain Technologies Limited, the world's largest producer of bitcoin mining servers, to launch the u3s21exph, a next generation ASIC miner. And this model will be the first mass commercialized miner to feature direct liquid to chip cooling within a u form factor. I hope they explain what the hell a u form factor is.
Hut 8 plans to deploy the new miner in the Q2 of 2025 with an initial hosting agreement handling approximately 15 xa hashes per second. Wow. This hosting deployment facilitated by custom built data center infrastructure developed in house by Hut 8 is a key part of the company's strategy to expand its compute power across Bitcoin mining and AI computing sectors. Quote, our partnership with Bitmain has allowed us to advance our thinking on ASIC compute and create a more scalable model for data centric design as we expand our footprint, said Asher Ghanute, CEO of Hut 8. Quote, the u three s twenty one x e x p h will be the 1st miner from bitmain broadly commercialized with dlc cooling that's the direct liquid to chip cooling within a u form factor making it rack ready like traditional data center hardware This innovation bridges critical engineering gaps between bitcoin mining and ai data center infrastructure in both form factor and cooling technologies and we believe this convergence will enable us to unlock significant synergies and flexibility moving forward.
The u3s21exph can achieve an efficiency of 13 joules per terahash producing up to 8 60 terahash. It uses dlc cooling, a technology traditionally reserved for high computing data centers to make Bitcoin mining more energy efficient and scalable. Quote, Asher and Mike have been invaluable thought partners to Bitmain since the early days of US Bitcoin Corp. Where they demonstrated a unique focus on cost efficient procurement and operations, said Irene Gao, vice president of mining at Bitmain. Quote, Hut 8's technical expertise, operating strength, and track record of innovation made this partnership a natural evolution of our relationship as we began the journey of developing next generation ASIC technology.
The commercial agreement between Hut 8 and Bitmain includes a fixed hosting fee and a purchase option for Hut 8 to buy the hosted machines in up to 3 tranches. This structure allows HUD 8 to assess market conditions before making further investments, minimizing financial risk. If HUD 8 exercises this purchase option, its self mining capacity could grow from 5.6 exahashes per second to 20.6 exahashes per second. Holy smokes. So, HUD 8 is gonna house these things. Now, here's the thing about the u form factor that I'm thinking that what they're saying. There's 2 ways to do liquid cooling on computers, whether they're ASIC or high performance compute or GPU, whatever.
One is you just submerge the entire damn board into this coolant material, which is a liquid, right? And so there you have essentially liquid baths, right? So you've got a whole bunch of liquids swirling around these bath bathtub like things and the hot water exits and then goes to somewhere where there a heat exchanger takes the heat away from it and then it swirls back in and cold liquid is dumped back into the pool. The problem is is that you have these open vats of liquid. You can't really rack these things up, right? Why? Because this shit's heavy. It's a hell of a lot of heat. I mean liquid by itself is fairly heavy. I mean it's as probably not as heavy as water.
Oil is generally speaking less dense than water so it's lighter but that doesn't make it where it's like light as a feather. So you can't actually put just like, the your water or your your liquid baths that you submerge all of your equipment into are basically on the first floor. Sure, you could try to build a whole bunch of infrastructure to hold a shit ton of weight and build a second story above that. But that's a lot of weight. Okay? These ASIC miners, when you rack them all up, they're a hell of a lot of weight anyway. So, here's what I think is going on. They're building a form factor.
Like, basically it looks like something that you would like a standard miner that you would always see that you could rack it up without putting it into a liquid bath because the liquid is flowing it through pipes into the actual miner itself contacting the chips because the way the this particular architecture is built. And then flowing back out of the miner and then collecting into I don't I guess like a flow pipe or whatever so that the hot liquid goes to the cooling coolant or the heat exchanger gets cooled and then flows back in through another pipe. So you've got cold in hot out but nothing's actually directly submerged in liquid.
And this means that you can rack up just like you were rack up asics just like you were racking up fan based asics except this time everything's liquid cooled but not in a water bath. And so now you've got the potential to use exactly the infrastructure that you've always used, except that you're going to get the benefits of liquid cooling. That's the way that I'm reading this. So, if true, if I'm right in how this works, you're going to see exahash for the exahash or the the mining security go through the freaking roof. If this thing works and it's not a dog, right? If this a this what the hell is it? This u3s21exph, if it works is gonna have insane efficiency.
I mean, what'd they say? 13 joules per terahash? Right now, we we got excited about somewhere between 1516 joules per terahash on bitmain's last release of ASIC miners. And we were I mean that was like 6 months ago and we were like, oh, look at this look at this efficiency. Shit, they just shaved off another 2, 2 joules per terahash doing this thing. And if you can just rack it up like you were racking up anything else you're gonna save a shit ton of money and get the same efficiency as liquid cooling as if you were submerging them into coolant baths. Okay. That's none of that shit's gonna help Ethereum, though. And this one that I'm about to read also doesn't help Ethereum. Thank God. Consensus lawsuit against the SEC over Ethereum has been tossed out. This is Andrew Hayward and Matt DeSalvo writing for Decrypt. A lawsuit brought by Ethereum software giant, Consensus, against the SEC was dismissed by a US district judge on Thursday who wrote that the firm's claims were ultimately moot because the agency's alleged actions were not final.
Quote, because plaintiff has not identified final agency action that would render the claim fit for judicial review and because withholding consideration subjects plaintiff to scant, if any, hardship, the claim lacks a ripe case of controversy, judge Reid O'Connor wrote. Wall Street's top regulator and consensus have been warring for some time now. Consensus had filed a preemptive lawsuit against the SEC in April after receiving a so called Wells notice or a warning of an impending lawsuit over securities violations over its popular Ethereum wallet, MetaMask.
Consensus alleged in the suit that the SEC internally viewed Ethereum as a security and was seeking a declaration from the regulator that it was not, in fact, considered a security. The US Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to regulate ETH as a security, even though ETH bears none of the attributes of a security. Oh, bullshit. Yes, it does. Fucking liars. And even though the SEC has previously told the world that ETH is not a security and not within the SEC's statutory jurisdiction, the original lawsuit alleged. Consensus said that in June, it had heard the regulator was dropping its investigation into Ethereum.
But later that month, the SEC sued consensus over its MetaMask swaps service, which allows users to stake crypto. Staking is the process of locking up cryptocurrency to keep a blockchain's network running, which is dumb. Those who stake cryptocurrency can earn rewards in the process. Yeah, we call it a scam. Anyway, the SEC has gone after a number of crypto companies for providing the service though, alleging that it gives investors too much risk and too little protection. Ethereum is the programming platform and block chain behind the second whatever. They're just gonna describe what Ethereum is and they don't actually use the word scam which is bad on decrypt. But ConsenSys is a prominent company that builds these dApps. The firm issued a statement following the ruling quote, In April of 2024, Consensus filed a lawsuit to protect the Ethereum ecosystem from the SEC's regulatory overreach and stands up for the industry that has been subject to the agency's reckless enforcement agenda.
Unfortunately, the Texas court today dismissed our lawsuit on procedural grounds without looking at the merits of our claims against the SEC. Oh, poor baby. Quote, our suit against the SEC laid bare the overzealous investigation of Ethereum. And policymakers and the public at large voiced deep concern over the SEC's investigation of blockchain software development, the statement continued. Quote, in a significant win for the industry, the SEC dropped its Ethereum 2.0 investigation after our litigation was filed and the Texas court today recognized that the SEC already gave consensus the relief it sought on that critical issue for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Outside of court, we have also seen signs of what could be a momentous step change in Washington's sentiment towards cryptocurrencies and digital assets during a crucial period for US politics. We're on the right path, but we must remain vigilant. Consensus is resolved to keep fighting for the rights of blockchain developers in the US as we cancess contest the SEC's actions in Brooklyn. And the SEC didn't respond to decrypts request for comments. Who gives a shit? Look, Ethereum is is has all the hallmarks of a security.
And it does more so now than it did when it was actually being mined through the use of GPU, because at least there was still proof of work. But now it's just proof of stake. It's all bullshit. This is a security. So you're gonna ask me, okay, Dave, when do you think that the SEC is gonna declare it a security and we could be done with this shit? They're not. They're not. This is what happens when you allow people to scam so much money so fast before you get your heads wrapped around it. They have enough money to lobby. And that's what consensus is doing. They're successful lobbyers.
Ethereum isn't going away. I wish it would die. I mean, when you look at the chart of Ethereum price over BTC price as relative to the US dollar All you see is complete degradation of your purchasing power. You should have just bought Bitcoin. Let's run the numbers. Okay. There's a little bit of news, over here on the sidebar for cnbc.com futuresandcommodities. Check this shit out. Constellation Energy is going to restart Three Mile Island's nuclear power plant and sell the power to Microsoft for guess what? AI.
Dude, 3 Mile Island. If you don't know what 3 Mile Island is, I highly recommend that you look up the history of the United States' worst nuclear accident in its history. In the continental United States, actually all the states of the United States, what makes up the union that is the United States, Of all the nuclear accidents, the one at Three Mile Island was the worst one. It's not as bad as Fukushima, clearly. It's not as bad as what happened in the, Ukraine over there. Oh, God, when it was still in Russia, Chernobyl. Right? It was not that bad, but bad. It was bad.
Alright? They closed down the plant. Right? There's like it was it was a bad deal. And now AI is forcing somebody to figure out how to restart that son of a bitch up. We're gonna have to watch that one, ladies and gentlemen, because it's probably not a good deal. Okay. Oil. West Texas Intermediate is up 0.13% to 7204. Brent Norsey is down a third to 74.64. Natural gas is up 2 points to $2.39 per 1,000 and gasoline is down over a point back down to $2.03 per gallon. Gold is up 1 and a third to 26.48. Wow. Congratulations, Peter.
You're still losing your ass compared to Bitcoin. Silver is up 0.63%. Platinum is down 1 and a third. Copper is down a quarter, and Palladium is down 1 3 quarters. Biggest winner in ag today is sugar. 3.36 percent to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate. 1 percent to no. Coffee is 4% to the downside. Woah. Sorry about that. Alright. Live cattle is up almost a full point. Lean hogs are down a tenth of a point. Feeder cattle are up a third. Profit taking is occurring on this Friday in the equities markets. Dow future or the Dow is down 0.18%. The S and P down 0.4.
NASDAQ is down almost a full half. And the S and P mini worst off 0.78 percent to the downside. There's a lot of there's profit taking going on in Bitcoin too. Everybody everybody everybody is taking profit since yesterday's full blown spike on damn near everything since the fed cut the rates and everybody got a chance to digest it. Currently, we are below 63,000. We're down to $62,940. That is a $1,240,000,000,000 market cap. And we can only purchase 24 ounces of our favorite shiny metal rock for 1 Bitcoin of which there are 19,756,467.99 of.
And average fees per block are sitting at 0.06 Bitcoin per block on average on a per block basis. Now, how many blocks are there? Oh, wait wait wait. Okay, we'll do that. We'll do that. Hold on. There are 9 oh, wow. Sub 100. We finally hit it. 97 blocks carrying 177,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 7. Satoshis per vbyte low priority is gonna get you in at 4. Hash rate oh, shit. New all time high. 743.6 exahashes per second, ladies and gentlemen. That is a new all time high as far as the hash rate for Bitcoin mining. Okay. I ran across this thing yesterday. It's called BTCframe.com.
It's a website. You know, I go to Clark Moody's, dashboard for a lot of the information that I get because it's just easier that way. However, I just discovered BTC frame. It doesn't I don't think it it doesn't have as much information. But if you want to get a good live look at what's going on in Bitcoin, BTC frame has a really nice looking interface. It's got a it's got some good information on it. So there's like the first page that you get to on their dashboard has 9 frames. They're like like 9 blocks. Like there's 1, 2, 3 across the top and 1, 2, 3 from top to bottom. So it's a grid of 9 blocks and each block has a different piece of information. So like the price is 62,981 according to these guys. That's 1588 sats per dollar. There's an average transaction fee of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Block height is 862,139.
Current hash rate is 743.64 exahashes per second. Network difficulty is 92.67 trillion. Circulating supply is 19,756,653. That's a little different than what I think I just said. In fact, I wanna I want hold on. Let's do this. We're gonna go back over to Clark Moody because I don't like it when I see different numbers. That's that oh, wait. Hold on. Clark Moody dashboard. Come on. Give it to me. Give it to me. Okay. So, 19,756,467 versus 19,756,653. That is quite a bit different number. Is it because Clark Moody isn't updating as fast as I think it should be? I don't know. But there's a difference in numbers. I don't like that. That that does not bode well for auditing. Whose fault is it? Oh, hell, I don't know. But one other thing that this thing says is it gives me the market cap of 1.25 trillion and the difficulty adjustment, is coming in 7 0 9 blocks.
So there you go. We're 64.83% through this particular difficulty adjustment period. But there's, like, some arrows on the bottom and it will get you to a price graph of Bitcoin. There is another scene, like, there's arrows on the bottom, right? So you'd go backward and forward to different types of frames. And this one, this frame is giving me 5 different prices of Bitcoin. 62,981 in USD, 56,369 in Euros, 47,275 in the Great British pound. You see how this is going, okay? So there's several different prices. There's all kinds of neat information on this particular, website.
So if you want to look at something different or something new, BTC frame, all one word, BTC frame.com.btcframe.com. Go there and check it on out. Now, for some reason or another, let's see. Okay. There it goes. Finally. Okay. Now, from Trump Burgers and All For All, which was Bitcoin and episode 957, I have FADE 1651214f5f33f386 with 900 and 57 sat says, anyone know the block number of the Trump cheeseburger transaction? That transaction was a Lightning Network transaction. It was not a full Bitcoin transaction. However, PubKey did give us the timestamp, and I think it was, like, 4:55 PM or 4:37 PM, which would be ease, I guess, Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time, whatever the hell we're in right now.
So we could go back and look for the block. But what what's interesting here is that people were like saying, oh, look, they're really happy that the transaction went through. Isn't that kind of like make it look, you know, like lightning network doesn't really work all that well? Now I know why they were excited. Trump didn't just buy 1 cheeseburger, he bought 50. He bought 50 drinks, he bought 50 fries, and whatever it was. The bill after a 20% tip was like $998.77. So it was like $1,000 Lightning Network transaction. That's a pretty big transaction for Lightning Network. Even by, you know, even by our standards of having lightning network around for this long.
So that makes sense. That's no wonder that they were kind of, you know, that some people were going holy shit. It went through. Right? Because that's that's a lot of money for the lightning network right now. It'll get better. Just be patient. So that the only way that we can find out the block number is through the the the time stamp and the date of that transaction which pubkey did post an Auster note and I'm sure it's up there on Twitter. God's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Bitcoin Sandy with 500 gives me a flame emoji. The bird, the, 500 sat says panda bears. And the way Shitcoin takes no hesitation is always entertaining. Thank you. I appreciate that, pal. Paul Allen with a 100 gives me a period. He literally says just puts a dot up there. And Pies De Plebs says, thank you, sir. No, thank you. And that is the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news. You can use there's a note by carnage. Resumes over Nostr. If you're not following Carnage, I will put his, carnage at zap dot stream. His basically is is like I can't remember what nippo 7 or I can't remember what what the identifiers. You can find carnage on Nostr by carnage at zap dot stream. And all these guys, I'm not gonna put I'm not going to put their in pubs in. I'm gonna do it this way, but I'm gonna put their, like, carnages, carnage at zap dot stream will be in the show notes. So lift that, you know, just highlight it and copy it and then take it over to whatever, like, you know, primal or coracle or something like that and throw that into the search bar and see if that gets gets to you or, like, if that gets you to, like, the the people that I'm gonna be talking about. But these are the ideas that I was talking about.
These are good ideas. These are these are really good ideas for Noster, in particular. But it just shows that there are so many people that are thinking about how do we do how do we handle legacy bullshit given these new tools? And Carnage was the one that caught my attention last night and started me down a road of finding other ideas. So he comes up with this one. Resumes over Noster. The problem. Employers want the best candidates but get an overwhelming number of unqualified or underqualified applicants. The candidate wants the best possible job with the best possible company, like Think Reputation, but is probably already employed because they are in high demand.
Employers never see the best possible candidate. And the best possible candidate does not apply because that process is stressful. Solution? Resumes over Nostr. How it can work? 1. Anyone can create a Nostr native resume which would require a new nip. Right? A new event type. Something something that is specific to resumes. 2. This resume benefits from the web of trust score of the creator. Employers get a glimpse of whether this is someone who is in some way connected to people they know or follow. Referrals are generally better than cold applicants. 3, individual gets to put themselves out into the market without applying. Think LinkedIn.
Employers then search a pool of candidates based on their criteria. This could include a web of trust score, shared working connections, a new NIP could support this, skills criteria, etcetera, etcetera. Let let's say I know Kieran and trust his judgment and would like to know all the people he is connected to. Maybe also dedicated some, specific level of trust who happen to have public resumes. I could then search for semi vetted candidates. Number 4. Companies can send offers to candidates who may not even be available yet, but are possibly open to new opportunities with the right company for the right compensation amount.
5. Companies also have profiles that benefit from their own web of trust. The more people that follow them, the more likely they are to have a better reputation as a company. And 6, public resumes keep candidates honest about their work history, their education, etcetera, because anyone can verify that. And then he ends with this: Thoughts? So I write back there's a lot of people that have written back about this because it's a damn good idea. What I wrote back was that number 5 okay, now I'm gonna read you number 5. Well, actually, let me read you this first. Number 5 is just as important as 1 through 4 and number 6. It's vital that companies be held to the fire publicly when it comes to their rep their reputation.
I love this whole idea and I hope you really flesh it out to its logical conclusion, which is implementation. Okay. So why am I saying that 5 is just as important as all the rest of them? Let me read you 5 again. Companies also have profiles. Like, if I'm putting my resume up on Noster as a new nip, companies would have a profile that benefit from their own web of trust. The more people that follow them, the more likely they are to have a better reputation. Why is this why for me is this so much just as important as 1 through 4 and number 6 all added together? Well, because I went to go work for a little while at a at a quote unquote Bitcoin only company that turned out not to be a Bitcoin only company. It was a fucking shit coin company with some very very sketch bullshit going on in the background with shit coins, with all kinds of tokens.
It was not not not not at all what it was billed as. It was billed billed as a Bitcoin company. Bitcoin only. With with a pretty heavy hitting, you know, individual in the space. People know them. Them. I'm not gonna say who. I'm never gonna tell anybody who on this show because that's not the point. But the point is, I wish that they had had a rep score that I could have looked at. That I would have been, like, okay. This is here's the web of trust. Filter out part of their web of trust and only give me the people that are that have web of trust that surrounds Bitcoin. Bitcoin only. People that have a web of trust that are known for calling out shitcoiners and crappy employment practices.
And then filter that company through that web of trust. And then what I'm saying is that I can look at a company and say, yeah, it's a Bitcoin company. I'm gonna, you know, maybe maybe I wanna go work for them. And then I look at their web of trust and figure out through various means and maybe various filtration and maybe a couple of nips applied to it. I don't know that they're not really a Bitcoin company. That they have a lot of people going, hey, why are you shit coining? And then I can look at the history of their shitcoinery and make a better judged decision as to whether or not I wanna risk my reputation by working for a, quote, unquote, Bitcoin company that really is more about shitcoinery, like I accidentally got into a couple of years ago. I'm just I'm just done with it. I'm done with fucking companies that are able to treat their people like shit and nobody knows that they treat their people like shit or put them into very unethical situations without giving a crap about how they feel.
No, no, no. That shit needs to change. Carnage has got an incredible idea. Because companies should be able to look at applicants and go, no, you're a shit applicant. And not just, you've got everything that we want, but your web of trust looks like crap, dude. You're just like you are not you are not the droids we're looking for, to coin a a Star Wars phrase. And I I would I begged Carnage, I'm like, please do this, and he's like that's he's like that's not what I'm built for. I'm built for the idea, which means that somebody else has to implement this. So, me and Carnage is probably, like, we're a lot like each other. We have ideas, but we can't implement them because we don't know how to code, which is our fault. I know, I get it. But if you have any idea how to get this shit done, please, please, please, for the love of God, do so. Because carnage isn't done.
He says this in another completely different note. We called the first one Nosterezumae, Alright? Just, you know, because lack of a better term. I I coined that. So he writes the following. He says, similar to Nosterresume, grant foundations such as OpenSats could significantly lower the time it takes to sift through applicants with a web of trust based application system. A NOSTR client that does the following. 1. Allows anyone to add a project they wish to get funded. 2. Displays relevant links and or shows your Github activity if you're the developer.
3. Option to reveal funding amount or keep it open. 4. Foundation benefits by narrowing down candidates based on web of trust or other filter criteria. I got distracted. Sorry. Shiny bit of metal just flashed in front of me. Or other filter criteria. It doesn't need to be web of based or web of trust based. 5, this process creates transparency and people can see what's being applied for and not have to duplicate the same request. If there are 10 applications to build yet another Twitter clone, applicants can see that perhaps it's a waste of time and propose something else to be done. This could be merged with Nosta Resume somehow so that info is readily available.
This accomplishes the following. 1, transparency to the process. 2, saves time sifting through many applications. 3, clarity regarding what type of projects are getting funded. And 4, clarity regarding desired level of proof of work sought by the funding committees. And again, he says thoughts. So go tell Carnage your thoughts because this is a good idea, too. Now, I already hear one person out there already screaming. Web of trust is going to, well, automatically preclude good people. K? Like people that don't maybe they don't have the web of trust yet. Maybe they're brand new but they've got an exceptional idea. They're brand new to Nostr.
They haven't formed their web of trust yet because they're brand new to Noster. And if we go by web of trust, we're gonna filter these people out. And there could be some very very good people there. And so I hear you screaming. So here's what I replied to this particular idea. I said you need to add the ability for a complete unknown person to be sponsored using someone else's web of trust if they think that the idea has legs. For example, let's say I run across an idea, like Nostra Resume, but Carnage has very little a very low Web of Trust score because he's new to Nostra. He's new to this entire thing.
I love the idea. So I make the decision to sponsor Carnage's application to OpenSats using my own web of trust score. If Carnage scams OpenSats, then my web of trust takes a hit because I was the sponsor. I had skin in the game. If his project goes nowhere, but he didn't scam OpenSats, my web of trust remains unaffected. If it's a huge hit, maybe my web of trust gets a bump. I don't know. But what I'm saying here is that if we go solely by web of trust on resumes or applications to OpenSats or the Human Rights Foundation, we might very well be sifting over somebody who has a stupendous idea that would be groundbreaking earth shattering, in fact, simply because they did not pass the web of trust score.
But if I sponsor, like, somebody's resume like, let's say, Carnage builds his resume and I know carnage per well, actually, let me let me take that back. I know huddlebod personally. Right? I met with him physically in meatspace on several occasions. We've had beer together. We've had long discussions together. I've interviewed him face to face for over an hour and 30 minutes before. I know this man. I know what Korekle looks like. The man's got his chops. I could, if for whatever reason, huddlebod did not have a serious web of trust in this particular environment, I would say, you know what?
I know this guy's good for what he says he can do. I'm going to sponsor that resume and have some kind of nip that allows me to physically prove that I've got skin in the game on his resume, that I'm sponsoring his resume, that I'm basically saying I there's something in linkedin linkedin where you can get people that give you credit, like, you you like, all these people come and say you know how to do public speaking. Right? Like, the endorsements. That that's it. I'm endorsing huddlebod's resume, but I'm doing it through a provable way. I had to sign the message on Nostr that I am attaching my web of trust to Hodlebod's resume because Hodlebod doesn't have a web of trust. You see what I'm getting at?
You see how we can crowdsource almost everything because of something like noster? It gets better. It gets better. I swear to God it gets better. I ran across this guy abha y. I can only presume that it's abhae. And I've been following him for a while. I hadn't seen really and it's not because probably for lack he's not it's probably not because he hasn't been posting. But Noster is funny, as you know, so I hadn't seen anything out of him in a while. But this one I saw and it says 58 ks gang failed me. And then he's got a screenshot. And he had put up a poll.
And the poll says: What will be the price of bitcoin in terms of USD at 10 pm UTC on 19th September 2024? Required difficulty: 12 bits. Poll concluded at 9 192024 at 23:55 or 11:55 pm. And 58 for for all the the people that responded that there was 50 it was gonna be 58,000 There was 25%. And that actually ended up being Abhey himself voting on his own poll because this looks to be sort of an experiment. We'll get to this in a second. Hold on. Over somewhere over 60 to 70,000 k, 50% of the people that were polled said, yeah. Between 50 60 k itself, another person said voted and it was so that was 25%. And then there was other comments to which nobody said anything. That's a nice looking poll because it looks like it kind of looks like it's written, you know, it's using the the, the font that makes it look like it's written in, you know, handwriting, you know, pencil, like, you know, like it just looks that way. It looks nice.
But all of a sudden, the minute I saw it, all I could think of was this: that this poll could be a nostril event that creates a DLC and the bedding is done directly through a special kind of zap. Of course, I reserve the right to not know what the hell I'm talking about. Well, but, Abhay writes back and says, you are correct. Kind of the general direction I'm going with these types of polls as well. Thought you'd need to add relays that don't accept backdated events to ensure 100% authenticity. Melvin Carvalho, also wrote back and said, yes.
This could have been done years ago. I literally got a message last week that says, quote, by this, I never sent one nip about DLC's data on Nostra via pull request because I knew fiatjoff could remove it in some moment. What I did with a question mark, I did implementation myself. What am I getting at? What is what is a poll? When you run a poll, what what's a poll? Well, generally speaking, it's just to to you're getting the sentiment of a group of people as to what you think might happen. But if you go and take it further than that, you could actually run a bet.
You could actually run a bet on Nostra with an NIP using, basically, kind of like a poll, but it's a flat out bet where you could say you could run this poll and say, what do you think the price of you of Bitcoin is gonna be at USD at 10 PM UTC on the 19th September 2024? And then you can require difficulty or a web of trust or you can't bet on this unless you like, you could do it through zaps, like a special kind of zap. That's like a bet zap or zap bet or something like that. And it basically feeds this particular kind of nip. So now when I vote in the poll, what I'm actually doing is I'm placing a bet that it's going to be that the price of US or Bitcoin and USD at that time on that date is gonna be 58 k.
If it turns out that a that we can process this to be turned into a DLC that queries an oracle and maybe that's a different kind of relay, I don't know. If I am part of the betting pool that bet on 58 k, then all the people that bet on that gets to split up the entire pool. So the people that bet on between 60 70k or 50 60k, they lost their sets and it goes to all the winners of, well, the people that were right. So if there was like a 100 people total and 25% said 58 k, another 25% said something else, another 25% said something else, and another 25 percent said something else. But the 58 k gang won, then the 75% of people that place their bets lose their money, and all that money is divvied up along with the money that you put in yourself to the winners that said 58 k.
It would be a DLC, it would look at a couple of oracles, and it would determine that the price was indeed somewhere in in the 58 k range on that time, on that day. So this would be a new way to run betting on Noster with DLCs looking at oracles and have zap based betting. But I'm not done. I'm not done in the long shot. Jake Woodhouse has his own damn idea. He says, I just heard the phrase zap battle for the first time. 1, I love it. 2, just think about a charity event. And there's an auction for something. The biggest bin wins.
Ego? Yes. Impact? Yes. Completion? For sure. At scale, public zap battles have the potential to create huge amounts of capital flow. Doesn't have to be just donations. Why not equity investing? Or a bid for a limited edition product? Just another mind bending idea that just wasn't truly possible pre Noster. And that brings us to the final thought that I have in here. We haven't been able to think about any of this shit pre noster. Not in this way. Not where we have almost full group or crowd sourced control over shit like resumes, making bets and doing bidding.
None of this was possible in this format before Nostra. And for those people that just refuse absolutely freaking refuse to look at Nostra as anything other than a Twitter clone, you are missing out. If you're listening to my voice and you have not yet built a profile on Nostr, secured your Nsec and Npub public p or or key pair. Your Nsec and Npub key pair. If you haven't done that. If you haven't started claiming your namespace, if you haven't started making friends, if you haven't started forming your web of trust, if you haven't started doing any of this shit, you're going to be last to the party.
The buffet is going to be eaten through. The alcohol is going to be drained. All the drugs that we had set out are going to be used up by the hookers. Right? You're gonna miss out on the fun. You cannot wait anymore. We're moving we're moving away from Twitter and Facebook and all the other bullshit Because they're never going to allow us to have the kind of fun that we could have with Noster. I'm not a betting man. I'm not the guy that's gonna throw down a 100,000 sats on who's gonna win president on a DLC based nip that uses 4 different relays as a fucking oracle. That's not gonna be me. But that doesn't mean that there's not a whole shit ton of people out there that wouldn't. And what if we base that? What if Jake Woodhouse's idea on zap battles was combined somehow with making bets?
The bet is, like, there's I don't know, there's 4 different like, let let's say that we're let's go to Jake Woodhouse. Let's say we're at a charity event. We're live at the Bitcoin conference or or at Honey Badger. Right? Let's do Baltic Honey Badger. And there are 4 absolutely gorgeous people on stage. 2 of them are men, 2 of them are women. And you're you're betting you're not you're bidding on a date with these people. Right? So you could have maybe you could combine the bet with the bid and say, I don't know how that would work. That somehow or another if your your bet on who's going to be the 1st person chosen to go out on a date, is somehow or another the bid that you give that charity.
I don't I don't know if that makes sense and if it doesn't my apologies. I'm just a little excited about the fact that within I saw these ideas guys within an hour of each other. Odd just just browsing Nostr. This isn't going to stop and that's why it's so critically important that you put aside whatever reservations you have about Nostr And get on Noster. Do it now. Do it today. I'm not saying leave Twitter or leave Facebook. Personally, I think you should because it's just a bunch of hate machines. But I okay. So you don't want to get get rid of it? Okay. I get it. But what's stopping you? I mean, do you think that you're going to lose your Twitter account if you get an insect in pub key pair and just try out an Oscar? Do you think for some reason or another, if you do that, all of a sudden Google's going to ban you from the Internet?
If the answer is no, of course that's not going to happen, then what's holding you back from trying out Nostra and seeing what we're talking about here? You cannot sleep on this anymore. There are no excuses. There are no excuses. Now, getting on to Open Sats, they have announced the 7th wave of Noster grants. Noster grants. Again, if you're if you're a developer and you want to possibly get a grant for doing something and you're not on Nostr, then you're missing out on being able to apply for grants. And please, let's keep in mind, Carnage's idea of having that as a nip, the application to open sas be as as a full blown Nostr nip. Okay. So who got it?
Nostra Arduino is an open source library that allows Arduino microcontrollers to use the Nostra protocol, facilitating the sending and receiving of Nostra events by embedded services. Okay. Just gonna pause right there. Arduinos are very good controllers for things like a greenhouse. Like like, let's say that you've got a small greenhouse and you get some hydraulic jacks to open windows, you get some servos to connect up to signaling devices. And what do you hook it up to? You hook it up to an Arduino. And you hook up the temperature gauge that's inside your greenhouse to the Arduino. And all by itself, the Arduino says, oh, the temperature in this greenhouse has now fallen to below 65 degrees. So I'm going to close the upper windows.
And then, because this is now over Noster, that event of closing the windows because the temperature fell to 65 degrees Fahrenheit now get sent to your phone or to your to your end pub. The amount of shit we could do with this is insane. You're never gonna get that through Twitter because their API is closed. It's gone. It's done. Forget it. Never gonna be able to do it. Not unless you pay $10,000 a month or whatever hell they want. Nostr is the only way to go. Stop sleeping on Nostr. White Noise by Jeff g got funded. F u t r or fudder is a decentralized Nostr client in Haskell. It got funded.
Note deck, which is let's say, let's call it damas 2.0. Jb55 or Will Kessarian, he's the guy that's behind damas. He's also doing note deck. So it's sort of like tweet deck was in the old days, except clearly it's for Noster. Keystash has been funded as well. So there are let's see. It says 7th wave and there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 recipients. Five recipients just for Nostr stuff. They they're gonna pay you to build on Nostr. And and you're listening to me thinking about how Twitter rules. Honestly, you're just when was the last time Twitter developers got a grant? No. Yeah. I gotta go work for Twitter.
You're you're in the old world. Get out of it. Do it now. Quickly. Wasabi Wallet version 2.2.0 Taproot receive addresses, free coordinators, and more. So the Wasabi Wallet has been updated. And finally on the list, Core Lightning version 24.08.1 has been released and it fixes crashes and then there's some other bug fixes. So there you go. That's the news for your day. Actually, that's the news for the week because tomorrow's Saturday and I'm gonna be listening on the radio to the Texas Tech Red Raiders play football. Thank god.
But if I noticed that nobody seemed to like yesterday's episode. I wonder if it was because I named it named it Trump Burger. And and I I don't know. Somebody tell me if you were completely uninterested in in listening to the our, episode yesterday because of the name of the episode. If you were like if you're a listener and you're like, I don't wanna listen to this one because it's named Trump Burgers for everyone or for all or whatever the hell I named it. If that was the case that caused you to not listen to that episode because there was a lot of pea a lot of people have been listening lately and that one performed poorly. And that's a Thursday episode. They usually do pretty well.
I'm wondering if it was just because of the title of the episode. If that's the case, please let me know and do it through a boostogram or some other type of podcasting 2.0 technology or better yet actually, not better yet, just as good. Tag me on Noster, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Market Updates and Analysis
Innovative Ideas on Nostr (See Show Notes For Links)
