Join me today for Episode 961 of Bitcoin And . . .
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- PayPal Allows Buying/Selling Bitcoin
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- BOLT12 Merged Into Lightning Protocol
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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 9:0:7 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 26th day of September, 2024, and this is episode 961 of Bitcoin. And we've got some pretty pretty earth shattering news coming out of Israel. And, no, it doesn't really have anything directly to do with the, Hamas thing going on.
But it is pretty big. It's probably a much larger situation than we are are giving it credit for. I'm gonna get into that, but first I'm gonna talk about PayPal and then we've got some other, you know, other stuff to get through. But honestly, today is really about the heckle shekel, honestly. That's why I'd named it heckles for shekels. This is just gonna be it's just gonna suck for the people of Israel. And it's gonna suck for the people of Palestine, too, because they depend on the shekel. We'll do it after we talk about PayPal from Bitcoin Magazine, Nicholas Hoffman. PayPal has enabled business accounts to buy, hold, and sell crypto as well as Bitcoin.
God, for the love of God PayPal Holdings has enabled U. S. Business account holders to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies supported on its platforms such as Bitcoin directly from their PayPal accounts. While this service is available nationwide it will not be available in New York State at launch, PayPal stated. Can you imagine why? I mean, honestly, can you imagine why? Since we launched the ability for PayPal and Venmo consumers to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency in their wallets, we have learned a lot about how they want to use their cryptocurrency, said Jose Fernandez da Puente, senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital currencies at PayPal.
Quote, business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers. We're excited to meet that demand by delivering this new offering, empowering them to engage with digital currencies effortlessly, end quote. In addition to buying and selling, US merchants can now externally transfer cryptocurrency to third party wallets. That's huge. This new functionality further increases the flexibility of crypto transactions for businesses. PayPal's expansion into offering businesses the ability to buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin or, well, buy and hold Bitcoin and crypto on its platform builds on its growing digital currency initiatives. And this doll this includes the launch of crypto consumer services in 2020 and the introduction of its US dollar backed stable coin, PayPal USD, also known as PYUSD, in 2013.
Sorry about that. I got some cats that are deciding to settle some business behind me. All right, so. Externally transferring cryptocurrency to 3rd party wallets. Nothing at all is said as to whether or not there is an approved list of third party wallets I take this at face value and just say if I buy it from PayPal I can transfer it to my to the wallet that was created by my cold card that I'm just gonna take it at face value But I don't trust these people. I mean, that doesn't make it's not that it doesn't make sense. It makes sense to us. Yes. We want that functionality. But PayPal is part of the larger gauntlet that we all have to run through. That's the legacy financial system and they don't like Bitcoin and they certainly don't seem to be of the mind that they want anybody to just be able to transfer it into their own custody that's not been that has not been what we've been seeing, you know, with the powers that be across the universe. It just they don't like this. They don't even like cash.
They in fact, they don't like cash so much that we're about to get into the shekel thing. But I want you to keep in mind this has been done in India. And it was done I want to say 2017 somewhere around there. I think it was right in 2017 where they took away one of the bills. But over in Israel, Netanyahu has decided that Israel is to go cashless. Okay? So, it's not just the deletion of this particular bill. That's where they're starting. The point is to go cashless. And Efrat Feinegusen I know I pronounced that wrong. I am sorry. Out of Bitcoin Magazine is writing a few days ago a new initiative promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu was announced removing the 200 shekel bills from circulation as a first step to abolish cash altogether within a few years the official excuse fighting financial crimes and black money in the Arab society For those who aren't aware, 1,600,000 citizens in Israel are indeed Arab. And that stands for about 17% of the country's entire population.
As expected, this move identical to India's move in 2016 okay, 2016, will cause further destabilization of Israel's economy and of its citizens physical and mental states. A derivative of this economical shakeup will ripple into Gaza who is relying on the Israeli shekel as its currency. And clearly, its population is heavily reliant upon cash. So let's break it down. The value of the Israeli 200 shekel bills surpasses 100,000,000,000 shekels and make up nearly 80% of the banknotes held by the public. In recent attempts to smear cash holders it was reported that quote most of the 200 shekel bills are not used for purchases but for the accumulation of black capital End quote.
A team of so called experts, 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector, who initiated the idea to abolish these bills claimed that the bill's removal will recover more than 20,000,000,000 shekels or $5,300,000,000 by next year and a 110,000,000,000 shekels or $29,000,000,000 in the next 5 years bringing it back to the state and will force tax evaders to be revealed. 2 weeks ago, the 1st mainstream media article about this new initiative popped up to normalize and prepare people for this draconian measure. I'm going to pause because this is a longer this is a slightly longer article than I normally read. But there's a couple of things here that I want to make sure that I that I comment on. Alright?
First of all, it's this situation where a team of so called experts, which is 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector, they're the ones who initiated this entire idea to abolish these bills. 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector. Okay. What is this this you know what this sounds like? It sounds like Jekyll Island. Where all those businessmen and a couple of former, you know, officials got on the train and they and all in secret in, like, 1911 or whatever it was and they rode their happy ass over to this island where they had this super secret meeting where they created the Federal Reserve.
And then in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act was then passed. This just feels the same. This feels like the same story where this group of private and slightly public officials got together and are making a decision which in my opinion doesn't is sort of like not really including the general government even though you know that the government is involved it's just weird Everything about this is weird. Now the other thing is that this saying that they're going to recover this money and and and and force tax evaders to be revealed. You know what I'm starting to think of? You know how, like, they say, oh, it's for the women. It's for the children or because of terrorism or whatever.
And we know that that's never the truth. That's always a lie. That's become very evident. But now I'm starting to think that they don't even give a shit about who's evading taxes that that's not it either that it you know like on the surface you go sure of course it is if if they want to recover even more money because the world, you know, they've they've broken the economy, and we know that, then, of course, they need to go out for the tax evaders. They're going to try to get that money. I don't think they care. I don't think it's just Israel that doesn't care. I think when you hear US politicians talk about how that they're going to recover all this tax money from tax evaders or, quote, unquote, force the billionaires to pay their fair share, we already know that if they recovered every dollar from every tax evader plus confiscated the entirety of the wealth of all billionaires in the US you might be able to run the United States for 100 days before they have to print another $1,000,000,000,000 This this tax evasion thing I'm now putting this firmly into the let's wrap this package with what do you want? Terrorism?
Child pornography? Child sex trafficking? Or do you want now tax evasion? We have 3 flavors of wrapping paper for your present. Okay. Let's move on. The proposed policy documents suggest several steps to combat, quote, black capital. 1, removing the 200 shekel bills from circulation as well as broadening the obligation to report on cash holdings to the authorities. This is part of a larger plan to abolish cash completely in 3 phases. 1st, limit cash transactions to 3,000 shekels which is $800 within 2 to 3 years. 2, lower transaction amount to 2,000 shekels or $530 then 3, cancel cash usage completely while encouraging digital payment methods number 2 leveraging AI tools for monitoring and enforcing tax evasion this pausing tax evasion is bullshit they want to know what you're buying they want to know everything about you these people have gone completely insane number 3 launching a collaborative enforcement effort that includes various key bodies such as the tax authority and anti money laundering authority, the police, the prosecutor's office, and the counterterrorism economic warfare headquarters.
Counterterrorism economic warfare headquarters. They're declaring war on the citizenry of the world. The Israelis are doing it against their own people and, of course, the Arab capital or the Arab black market, but it really is against the citizenry of the world because this is coming to every government that is that just hates their citizenry. 4. Banning the possession of cash substitutes such as gold silver metals, and coins on a significant scale. 5, enhancing regulation of non banking financial entities including currency exchange services which manages significant volume of quote illicit funds.
And finally, 6, the seizure of digital currencies linked to terrorist activities of sanctioned entities. Quote, there are technologies that enable the real time identification of such money transfers, and Israel needs to implement them immediately. This will allow for disrupting the flow of funds for terrorism and crime, identifying terrorist operatives, and seizing 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars for the state, potentially 1,000,000,000 in the future. This part from a leaked draft of the plan dated March 2024. It did not appear in mainstream media publications.
That is a note in parentheses by the author of this article. So let's read it again. Seizing 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars for the state potentially 1,000,000,000 in the future. Seizing the money for the state. And it was in the draft plan dated 2024 but did not appear in mainstream media publications according to the author. Lo and behold, 2 weeks after the first suggestion of this new policy, prime minister Netanyahu announced he's now advancing this reform urgently in order to fight black capital, especially amongst the Arab population, and called in a special committee to discuss the new policy.
Israel already introduced a new big brother regulation last year for preapproving any business to business transaction with the tax authority of anything over 25,000 shekels. The new policy plan now proposes lowering the threshold for transactions requiring preapproval from the tax authority from 25,000 or $6,750 to 5,000 so to 25,000 shekels to 5,000 that is a 80% reduction or $13.50 a highly controversial move Israel's largest mainstream publication Ynet reminded its readers that similar steps have been implemented in other countries in parts of China the use of cash has been completely banned in certain cities.
Israel's governing bodies love using other countries that are doing this already as well. Excuse to justify their acts. The same mantra is being played again and again when the digital shekel is mentioned I recently listened to a podcast with Israel's central bank governor which mentioned favorably how advanced the ECB is with the digital euro for example I asked Roger Huang, the author and a journalist, about the accuracy of this statement regarding China's cashless cities. Quote, China's central bank actually makes it illegal to not accept cash as a payment option and has punished businesses in the past for doing so even during COVID.
This is in direct contradiction to a statement justifying the restrictions on cash in Israel that certain cities ban the use of cash. This has not been reported. And with no primary source verified, very hard to prove. The Chinese central bank's action suggests the very opposite. Though China is going more cashless and is the most aggressive country at advancing a CBDC or central bank digital currency, it has not implemented bans nor restrictions on using cash. And in fact, its central bank punishes those that restrict the use of cash.
So if I'm gonna pause because it's important to understand what was just said. Israel is stating that countries like China are banning cash transactions and that they should do the same. However, Israel cannot point to any credible source that that is in fact going on. And this Roger Huang, a journalist who seems to know something about what's going on in China, is saying that China hasn't done that. They're not banning cash. They can't find evidence of any city anywhere in China that's actually banning cash. While that is surprising to both me and you, dear listener, If this is the case, then Israel is flat lying and saying they're just doing what other countries do. And they're pointing to China as an example. Yet, there is no example in China of any city or the government banning any cash. And in fact, arresting those who refuse to take cash as a viable means of transaction currency.
I'm just saying so that we're clear about that. Now now I'm continuing. In November 2016, the Indian government made a similar decision to the one Israel is now considering by withdrawing the 501,000 rupee notes from circulation. In the aftermath of this decision, 100 of people lost their lives. Many more faced hardship and the country's GDP took a significant hit. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of cities throughout India to protest an an economic policy you probably haven't heard of before. Demonetization.
By the way, this is a large quote. 3 weeks ago, Indian prime minister Modi surprised the country with an announcement banning the 501,000 rupee notes worth about $7.15 respectively in a bid to tackle quote corruption and terrorism. He estimated that forcing people to exchange the country's largest currency bills for brand new banknotes would allow the government to crack down on black money. See, there's there's a theme here. Unaccounted for cash holdings that haven't been taxed but under the law should be. He also argued that it would strike at domestic terrorist financing operations by capturing counterfeit money and rendering the legitimate cash they kept in the shadows worthless.
Banning widely used banknotes would have a huge impact on any economy. But in India, the policy is transformative. Modi's sudden ban instantly meant that 86% of all cash in circulation in India was no longer considered legal tender. And that means that businesses could refuse to accept those bills as a form of payment. And the Indian economy simply runs on cash. It's estimated that between 90 98% of all transactions in India measured in terms of volume involve cash. Unsurprisingly, Modi's demonetization initiative has caused chaos across the country. People want new banknotes, but the current supply of these new banknotes isn't even close to meeting the demand.
That's created headaches for people as they wait in long lines outside ATMs and banks which routinely run out of cash. For people who rely on daily cash earnings to survive, it can mean not being able to obtain food. In this excellent lecture by Andreas Antonopoulos, a famous Bitcoin developer and lecturer dating back to 2016, Andreas discusses the currency war of countries. He details the cash crisis in India and other examples of countries where citizens are punished due to their failed currencies, like Venezuela, Argentina, Ukraine, Turkey, and more. All of these trials conducted in one country serve as testing grounds for future implementations elsewhere.
As debt continues to rise, the economic situation deteriorates. Inflation worsens and these experiments will only speed up. We can expect more taxes further restrictions on cash More confiscations and rising prices alongside inflation Eventually, this deteriorating state will provide a sufficient justification to introduce a new digital control system known as the CBDC if another crisis or emergency does not proceed it. Israel's government has been tightening its policy on cash usage in recent years and today there are still no official restrictions on the amount of cash that can be kept at home but the government has repeatedly emphasized that it does not view this practice favorably and prefers that as many transactions as possible be conducted through non cash payment and money management methods.
At the same time, the government is working to advance legislation that would make it illegal to hold more than 200,000 shekels in cash. Additionally, holding cash amounts. Or hold sorry about that. Holding cash amounts of 50,000 shekels or more would require providing explanations to the authorities about the source of the money and its intended use. In August of 2022, Israel announced that it forbids cash purchases larger than 6,000 shekels. This reform aims, according to a statement issued by the Israeli tax authority, to fight organized crime, money laundering, and non compliance of taxes.
The Jerusalem Post reported back in 2022 under the new law, any payment to a business above 6,000 shekels or $1700 must be made using alternative methods such as a digital transfer or a debit card. Trading between private citizens who are not listed as business owners will be limited to 15,000 shekels or 43 4360 in cash. This is another step in Israel's fight against the use of cash. Previously, cash up to the amount of 11,000 shekels could be used in business deals. Quote, we want the public to reduce the use of cash money. Tamar Braca, who is in charge of executing the law on behalf of Israel's tax authority, told the media line, quote, the goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash by limiting the use of it criminal activity is much harder to carry out the goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash. So they repeated that twice because it's important.
And my commentary, that means that they just think that everybody is a criminal. And when a government starts looking at the the entirety of their citizenry and the citizenry of the surrounding nations as nothing but criminals, we've got a fucking problem. Continuing. The cash shortage in Gaza has intensified the already dire conditions making it even harder for people to buy essential food and supplies. In Gaza, the scarcity isn't limited to food, water, and electricity. Almost a year into the conflict, there's a severe shortage of cash. Banks have been destroyed And frequent power outages have rendered ATMs all but inoperable.
Reports from the region highlight how this lack of cash is worsening the daily struggle for survival while raids by the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, on Hamas outpost have uncovered 1,000,000 of shekels and large sums of US dollars that have been stored there. As reported on Ynet, quote, a shortage of fresh cash and the closure of many bank branches due to the war have forced Gaza's residents to reuse the same bank notes for almost a year. With so much use, the notes become worn out and decayed and I refuse to accept them, says one market vendor. Meanwhile, a new profession is emerging in the strip.
Cleaning and refurbishing worn banknotes. I've never never heard about that in my entire life. I would never thought this possible, but it's happening. Because the closure of numerous bank branches in Gaza since the beginning of the war has led to a severe cash shortage, forcing residents to continue using old tattered notes. The new trade called note cleaning is emerging, where old bills are cleaned and restored for reuse, with the service costing between 2 and 5 shekels per note. Merchants, particularly in northern Gaza, warn that the only real solution to this crisis is reopening the closed banks and injecting fresh cash into the market. Otherwise, the risk of counterfeit currency spreading grows.
Additionally, cash withdrawals from ATMs in Gaza come with hefty fees ranging from 10% to 20%. Before the war, there were around 20 currency exchanges offices in Gaza City alone run by Hamas or taxed by organizations these offices traded in various currencies and converted them alongside several informal money changers operating in the market corners So where do we go from here? Israeli going or rather Israel going cashless is yet another step in tightening control and violating property rights for its citizens as well as its neighbors.
This going cashless development is added to other worrying trends in Israel such as chewing on people's pensions and progressing Israel's CBDC, also known as the digital shekel. A new economic reality is ahead of us. In such times, learning about Bitcoin becomes a necessity. In order to hedge against government tyranny with the only truly decentralized secure cryptocurrency which is controlled by no one and is fully permissionless outside of government control. That's the end of the article. If it didn't send chills down your spine, then nothing will. You're you're in a coma. Everything about what I just read you from Ephrat is terrifying.
I don't know what's happened to Israel. I don't know I just I just don't know. I mean, some of you that are listening are probably staunch supporters of Israel. Others that are listening are most likely staunch haters of Israel, and they haven't really acted in in the very nice to their neighbors, and they haven't done so since the installation of Israel as an actual country post World War 2. I believe that was 1948 or 47, somewhere around there. So late forties, but really close to the end of World War 2, specifically the war the war, World War 2 ending with victory in Japan. There was victory in Europe and then like a year later we started dropping bombs on Hiroshima and that pretty much sewn up the end of World War II. But right after that, we had the installation of Israel.
It was not always there. It was there in the Bible, but, you know, if you want to go through the history of it, then, honestly, read the Old Testament. It's actually a pretty good it's actually a pretty good account of what was going on. So Israel, the way that we know it today with its modern borders, wasn't actually there for a very very long time right before world, you know, right before the end of World War 2. With the help of Europe and, the United States, basically the the winners of World War 2, we we installed it, Israel, the way that it kinda looks today.
They've gone over their borders on several occasions. And I'm not making a I'm not making a judgment call here. I'm just saying this is what happened. Palestine, Lebanon, all their neighbors have basically been spoiling for a fight. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that Israel has this penchant for taking over land and making new settlements. Like I said, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make a judgment call on that. But but one one thing that is sure, when you take people's land, you're going to piss them off. And this has been going on for decades. So it's very clear that the neighbors of or Israel's neighbors are very very pissed off. But it also so happens that Israel's currency is so strong in the region that essentially it's sort of like, in like, before Nayib Bukele made Bitcoin legal tender, El Salvador's currency, they didn't have their own. They just used the United States dollar. There are many dollarized nations in the world. They don't have their own currency. They depend hold on.
Something my cat is being really weird. They depend on the United States dollar alone and nothing else. Same is true in many of the regions that are surrounding Israel. They've been shekelized. Right? It's, you know, it's for up until now, it's been a really good currency. And all the reasons that Israel is giving for them taking away the cash has nothing to do with black money it has nothing to do with black markets it doesn't have anything to do with terrorism or counterterrorism it doesn't have anything to do with child trafficking or child pornography on the Internet it doesn't have anything to do with getting tax evaders to pay their fair share it doesn't have anything to do with anything It's control and remember what I said in the episode entitled What is wealth?
What you think wealth is and I've thought it too. Okay? I'm not at all able to say that I always knew that it wasn't true. Nope. I'm right alongside you. The wealth that we've been taught is wealth. Is a lie. It's not wealth at all. It's chains. We have been told that instead of chains that chain us to the wall so that we can't actually go do anything we've been told that those chains are actually wealth in the form of Lear Jets and Bugattis and 5 houses in the south of France oodles of cash and being able to eat at restaurants that cost $1,000 every time you go in that door that is not wealth nothing could be further from the truth that is a prison it just happens to be nice and shiny and things are really odd when it comes to human beings and birds we are attracted to shiny things Crows especially love crumpled up aluminum foil. They decorate their nests with it. And other birds do it as well.
But it's not a building material that actually does anything other than look shiny. It doesn't add structural stability to a nest the nest is the real wealth the nest is what keeps it you know keeps the babies warm that's actual wealth what we've been told is wealth is now it is becoming so clear to me especially after reading this that it was never actually wealth it was a prison that you were told I was told was wealth and like a dumbass we aped into it. We did everything we could to secure that prison for ourselves. What's the way out this effort says Bitcoin that's that's one way it's not but it if you rely on Bitcoin to get out of what I just read you and this isn't just for Israel. This is going to be everywhere.
This is coming to the United States. It's definitely going to Europe. If it's a western country, it's coming to you. Right? That's one of the reasons why I say you need to look at Africa and you need to look at what's going on in Latin America. Because these guys most likely most of the countries and on those continents will escape this because they're they're done with this with with the way that this is working. It's changing our perception of what actual wealth is. And in the United States specifically, it will be up to each individual state as to whether or not they're going to take any more of this bullshit.
It'll be up to a state like Texas to say, you know what? We're done. Secession is now on the table. And if it's a United States government piece of property that is in the boundaries of Texas, that Texas just says we own it now. Sorry for you. And if Texas falls out of the United States, you've the United States has problems. And I've always said this before, the only way to reconstitute the United States of America is a complete dissolution of the United States of America to the point that the only thing left of the United States of America is Washington DC. And that, the great guts and feathers of the states have just washed their hands of that have their own banks do their own regulations which some states will do it wrong and they'll be assholes about it but some states will will not do it wrong and some states will do it so well that they will end up being the powerhouses of the future and I'm going to be alive to see probably this happen you know I'm not that young but I ain't that old either I'm probably going to see this happen And this, this has to happen.
And one of the ways they're getting us to look at this prison that they've told us is actual wealth is to make it so uncomfortable to think about change that we don't think about change. And if we don't think about the possibilities on the other side of changing our perceptions, of changing what we expect on a daily basis, of changing how we just think about our place in the universe as humans, then change will never occur and we can go on with the status quo and the very very few that are the actual prime movers of the human species even though that's nothing but hubris it will continue As always, all of these stories that I'm reading to you today are going they're going to have, the URL in the show notes.
I you need to go read this one again from Bitcoin Magazine. Again, it's Israel goes cashless. You need to go read it for yourself. You can't rely on me and my commentary to, to get you to understand what was just said. Okay? We've been at this for almost 30 about 35 minutes. Took me a couple of minutes to read the the very first story. I've devoted a huge amount of time to this because I'm trying to get it through everybody's head including my own. We can't ignore this. If China did it that's one thing. Israel doing it, this is different because Israel has always sort of been the tip of the atyp of the spears of the west.
So, keep that in mind and let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities oil taking a hit because of the news out of OPEC Plus. West Texas Intermediate is down 3 points. Brenton Noursee is down damn near 3 points. OPEC Plus basically made the statement that well, Saudi Arabia said that they're just gonna open up the pipes again. They tried to keep oil at $100. They they the OPEC Plus basically wanted a $100 barrel, you know $100 barrel oil that's what they wanted so they never got it they got it a couple of times but it never stayed there and they really wanted to they really wanted it to stay there And that was their strike price. And that is it was just not happening. The the the oil traders and the futures and the commodities guys over in New York were are just too strong right now for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the guys at OPEC plus. So they've yelled uncle, and they're gonna open up the pipes. That news was released this morning and oil fell accordingly.
Natural gas not doing well either. 2.73% of the downside. And gasoline is down to a buck 96 a gallon. Again, good luck to actually trying to find it at that price. Gold is up a quarter of a point to $2691. It's going to pass $27100 before the week is out. I almost guarantee it. Silver is up 0.88% to $32. Platinum is up 2.15%. Copper is up over 3. Palladium is up just over 1%. Biggest winner in ag today is it's a tie between sugar and chocolate. Wow. Biggest loser today looks like it's gonna be, oh, soybeans down point 1, 71%.
Live cattle is down, scant, but lean hogs are down well over 2 to 2.77% to the downside. Feeder cattle are down 0.13%, but all your equities are doing very, very well today. Percent, but all your equities are doing very, very well today. 0.61% to the upside for the Dow. S and P is up a quarter of a point. Nasdaq is up a third. S and P Mini is up 3 quarters of a point. And, well, Bitcoin's doing well today. Had a pretty good green candle to the upside and it's holding so far at 65,520. That is just shy of a $1,300,000,000,000 market cap. You can get 24.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,759,058.62 of.
Average fees per block have fallen from, the day before yesterday to 0.05 BTC on a per block basis. And there are only 96 blocks that are carrying a 190,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of 9 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 8. So we've had a slight fee spike as of late this morning. Now from what is wealth, the last episode of Bitcoin and that would be episode what was it? 960. Colin b with 10,000 sat says, your wealth section really spoke to me and how the fiat system is a way to control especially the mega wealthy. Thank you, sir. No, thank you.
And, Colin, I appreciate I appreciate that you got that. That the fiat system is a way to control mega wealthy. Because the mega wealthy control everything else underneath them. This is a management structure. Make no mistake about it. This isn't novel. It's not new. If you work at a company you've got probably a supervisor. That supervisor has a supervisor. That supervisor is probably part of a management team which then reports to one of the officers of the company. That officer's boss ultimately is the CEO. And the CEO, in many cases, has a further boss. That would be the board of directors.
Everybody knows the name of the CEO of Apple. Tim Apple or Tim Cook. Do you know the names of the people that sit on the board of directors of Apple? Without going and looking them up, can you tell me that you know the name of every one of the board of directors of Apple? No you do not and neither do I. I'm not going to pretend that I do. I have no clue who those people are. This is the exact same shit I was talking about in the episode what is wealth. You think it's Elon Musk in control. It's not. You think it's Tim Cook that's in, you know, control, but it's not. You think it's Putin or the president of the United States or the presidents and prime ministers of all these countries around the world. It is not.
All of those motherfuckers have a board of directors and you don't know their names, neither do I. Duo 10 with 5,000 says, sorry for multiple copies. Keep up the great content. The bird with 5,000 says, solid show. Slow slow with 21100 says, Matthew 619 through 21st describes true wealth. It it it does. You should go read Matthew 619 through 21. Even if you don't believe in god, it doesn't matter. Go read Matthew 619 through 21st. Alright. Darke with 2121 says, thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And God's death with 537 says, thank you, sir, no thank you. And he does it again with another 537, thank you, sir, no thank you, and pies the pleb, 420, Thank you, sir. No, thank you. And we have some other ones here. Duo 10 says, pretty sure Durov holds a significant portion of his wealth in BTC and some shit coins. He lived a fairly minimal minimalist lifestyle too. I'll bet they have something on him outside of his, quote, assets.
You may very well be correct because he does hold a significant portion of his wealth in BTC. What I mean, other than the fact that just throwing his ass in prison, I'm not sure what else that they could actually threaten him with. Because if you can't spend your money because you're in a physical prison, well, then you've got other problems. TW Cattell with 500 says nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. That's a quote from Lao Tzu. A satisfied mind is pure wealth. Great message for tough times. Duo ten s with 500 says the same thing. That's where he said it was copying. And he says it again with another 500 sat. So three times he said pretty sure Durov holds significant portion of his wealth blah blah blah blah. Wartime with 333 says my cookie emoji was a cookie.
And the bird says, solid morning drive show. This one was really good in my opinion. Gustavo Lima Chavez says, baller episode. Thanks, David. I appreciate it. Thank you. And that's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And I forgot to mention that if you hadn't heard already, New York mayor, has been indicted, and they're searching his mansion, which is also named Gracie. And and it doesn't matter. He was he was one of the guys that I told you to watch out for because he started talking about how he was he was gonna get Bitcoin and New York was gonna be a Bitcoin center. And he was taking his pay in Bitcoin and I told you to, not trust him? Yeah. Don't trust him.
Adams, Mayor Adams is now under indictment mayor of New York. Okay. Now, let's I'm gonna actually forgo this one because we are running out of time and I don't want to detract from the shekel story that I read up front because I still kind of want you guys understanding that as we talk about some of these releases and updates, to software and and other things. Don't worry. I'm gonna try to make it painless this time because I'm using Bitcoin Magazine Frank Korva writing for this one. Albie releases Albie go for everyone. It's a mobile app for self custodial Bitcoin lightning payments.
Alright, so, today, Albie announced the release of AlbieGo, which is a mobile application available for iOS, as well as Android that allows users to make self custodial payments via their lightning node. I'm gonna pause because what should be said is that you don't have to run your own node to do this. You kinda do, but you don't. I run my own node, right? I physically have a node. I could, if I wanted to, buy liquidity through one of the partners of Alby as either a payment channel or I could run my own full blown lightning node with multiple payment channels inside of it as part of a cloud, also through some of Albee's partners.
I don't need to physically run my own node if I don't want to. I recommend that you learn how to do it, but there's no reason that you have to. You can simply buy liquidity through some of Alby's partners and still be able to use Alby Go and it is as easy as using the old wallet of satoshi. Now, users can connect to the light or connect the app to lightning nodes and wallets including AlbiHub, Umbral, Start9, LiftPay, and CoinOS to enable self custodial lightning payments. The app most easily integrates with Albi Hub, an open source wallet that Albi recently released that makes lightning nodes easy to access and use for multiple devices.
Albi Go also provides a straightforward wallet interface to noster wallet connect enabled lightning wallets quote Albigo is our next step in making bitcoin accessible everywhere now bringing it to the user's pocket said Albibi co founder Albibi Michael Boiman co co found Albie co founder, Albie Michael Boomen? Is his name Albie or is that a typo? I don't know. Is it Michael Boomen? I'm just gonna say Michael Boomen. He said that in a press release and he further says, by utilizing the NWC messaging protocol, we facilitate seamless use of multiple nodes and wallets in a lightweight app, end quote. Other features of AlbieGo include a contact list, which lets users store lightning addresses of frequent contacts for quick and convenient transactions, currency conversion, and dark and light theme settings.
Albie Go is currently in version 1.5, and Albie encourages users to contact the Albie team with suggestions on how to improve the app. The app's code is open sourced and ready for review, as well as contributions. Now, if you had been with me and I will see if I can find it here. I'm gonna try to find the, episode that I did with Tomek. We'll see. Where was it? Good idea of the Trump Burgers, now the knife. Oh, it's Tomek from ALBE was episode 955. So I interviewed one of the guys from ALBE and his name is Tomek Kaye. And we had a great discussion about all things ALBBI.
ALBBI Hub, Uncle Jim and your friends, ALBBI Go, how all this stuff works, whether or not why you don't really need to run your physical own node, how you might go about getting, you know, in touch with some of their partners about buying liquidity and having it hosted in the cloud for you for a low, low fee and all that kind of stuff. It's all in episode 955. That's episode 955 of the bitcoin and podcast. It's called it's Tomek from Albi. So just so you know if you wanna go listen to that one. Now, did I do that twice? I think I did. Alright. So bolt 12. We've been talking a lot about it lately.
Well, bolt 12 offers officially merged into the lightning specification. This is interesting. This is should be like larger news than you think it is. Bolt 12 is now part of the official Lightning specification. It is a significant enhancement to the Lightning network, streamlining payments, improving privacy, and supporting new use cases like subscriptions and advanced payment conditions. Bolt 12, which are also known as offers, upgrade to the lightning specification, aims to boost the network's efficiency and flexibility. The central innovation introduced by Bolt 12 is the offers protocol.
Offers is spelled like I'm making an offer. O f f e r s. Like, hey, do you have an offer for me? Okay. So the offers protocol, which makes creating, managing, and executing lightning invoices easier. Offers, the offers protocol, present a more adaptable and reusable option compared to conventional invoices, allowing for automatic invoice creation recurring payments and enhanced privacy. By adopting BOLT 12, the Lightning Network can accommodate a wider variety of applications such as subscriptions donations and pay as you go services all while simplifying payment interactions.
For users, it also means better receiver privacy and improved censorship resistance. And if you want to learn more about BOLT 12, then you can go to BOLT12.org. That's bolt12 with the numbers 12, not spelled in letters, but numbers. Bolt12.org. Bolt12.org, and you can read all about it there. Okay. So bitcoin core developer receives a grant for maintaining the BIP repository. Ezra Reguera for Cointelegraph Investment Fund Maelstrom has awarded a grant to the Bitcoin core developer for maintaining the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal Repository. The grant was given to John Attack, a senior developer at Bitcoin Core who started contributing back in 2019.
In a press release sent to Cointelegraph, Maelstrom chief investment officer Arthur Hayes said that the financial support allows John Attack to focus on his work on Bitcoin. Hayes said that one of the fund's goals is to support seasoned Bitcoin Core developers and the executive said, quote, John has complete freedom to work on whichever part of the Bitcoin code base he likes from any location around the globe. As a senior developer on Bitcoin Core, John represents an early adopter and a key member of the community, end quote. Hayes hopes to identify more grant candidates to help educate the next generation of developers within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
In the announcement, Jon Atack said that the open source software and Bitcoin play a role in striving for causes like human freedom, decentralization of power, individual privacy and self sovereignty. However, maintaining the network requires continued work. Jon explained, quote, bitcoin isn't perfect. Among other things it needs further decentralization continued vigilance review bug fixing updates maintenance and improved robustness performance privacy scaling documentation as well as user experience Because of this, the developer pledged to help and service the network and said that he would continue to work on the decentralization and robustness of Bitcoin my time will be primarily invested in reviewing and context packing proposals for these projects to help move them forward and potentially catch breaking changes and be able to help maintain them, attack added.
Maelstrom told Cointelegraph that John received a $100,000 grant. The developer is also receiving another grant from the Bitcoin initiative, Open Sats. Malestrom announced the grant program July 17th to advance Bitcoin's development. The grant program offers funds ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 on a 12 month basis, which can stack up to $250,000 per individual developer. In a previous Cointelegraph interview, Arthur Hayes emphasized the importance of supporting developers in maintaining the network. The executive said that the ecosystem could be vulnerable to threats without funding. Yes. This is true. And it's good to see that within what, what within a week's worth of time, that Maelstrom, which is the family office, it's the grant development arm of the family office of Arthur Hayes, which I I don't know. I don't mean to snicker, but I don't know why they keep saying the family office of Arthur Hayes, but they don't ever say there are other I mean, does when, like, for instance, when, oh, when, who's that guy from Twitter?
Jesus Christ. I can't remember. I can't remember the guy's name. Jesus Christ. May fuck. You know who I'm talking about. Does he have a family office? See, because he gives grants. He gives personal grants, but I don't hear family office used. So is it the fact that Arthur Hayes actually built up a family office? Or I don't know. It just it just there's something about this that doesn't seem it just seems a little funky. You know, and I know I'm reading way too much into it. I like Arthur Hayes, by the way. I think he's when he was, when he was behind BitMEX and and BitMEX was just full blown terrorizing people with a 100x, you know, a 100x leverage on shitcoin trades.
It was it was a thing to watch. I mean, it was like I would watch BitMex and I would just like, you know, like especially on a down day, I would go over to BitMex and just watch people be become just wiped out. Now that was before I started having, like, you know, heartfelt sentiment and started understanding that the the, you know, this entire ecosystem was rife with a bunch of scammers. And and all of a sudden, I started seeing more and more postings of the suicide hotline number up on places like Reddit. And I started figuring out this is not good. And even Arthur started, you know, kind of backing away from BitMex. But there was that time that you just it was just a a sliver of time in Bitcoin history that Arthur Hayes's smile was dead. You know, it was a damn near a meme. You know, somebody get white. Like, you see a red candle go down like like a 10% red candle. The downside and you see memes of Arthur Hayes just smiling. And you knew that it meant that people on BitMex were getting wiped out because degenerate gamblers are gonna get wiped out. Don't gamble your Bitcoin. Okay. So with all that said, we should revisit at least a little bit of the fact that the shekel is under attack.
And along with the shekel being under attack, there's a lot more that's under attack. All of our freedoms are under attack. Not because Israel rules the world. That's not it. That's not what I'm getting at. I don't believe that shit for a second. I don't think that Israel rules the world. I think there's a board of directors whose name we do not know, and Israel is one of the many CEOs under that corporate structure. That that's the way that I I view this. Whoever is in charge, it ain't Israel. Sure as shit isn't Biden. Putin?
Maybe. Maybe he's carved in his own way. I don't know. I don't know anything about Putin. I don't know anything about the structure of Russia. China? Who the hell knows? Nobody knows what the hell is going on in China except that the excuse that Israel is using to ban cash is because, well, look, they're doing it in China, yet we see no evidence of this actually occurring in China. We see them they want a CBDC. They have one. It seems to work. It is evil, incarnate, but it seems to work and they do have one. But I haven't seen any reports of people not no longer being able to use cash.
Right? So keep keep that in mind. But this is coming. Hell even even you know Alex Jones warned everybody about this shit years ago saying everybody's going cashless. We got to keep cash alive. That's not going to happen. Not in the near term. Not with these people that are in charge. Because what's gonna happen is that people are gonna go out and they're gonna do what? They're gonna protest. And it's going to affect exactly what? It's going to exactly it's going to affect exactly nothing. Protests. I don't know why people do it. It's a waste of fucking time. I mean, there's not gonna be any change from marching around with the sign on a stick, you know? I don't care if you get a a 1,000,000,000 people in the streets chanting what do we want? Something. When do we want it? Now.
It's not gonna do anything because the people that are watching the 1000000000 people are safely away from any possibility of harm whatsoever if things were to go south. Not not the not the I'm talking about the nameless, faceless board of directors. They're nowhere close to that shit. They don't care. They're they're and they're never going to care. And it's never going to do anything. You can you can pitch tents outside of banks all day long for a straight year. It's not gonna change a fucking thing. And if you think it does, then you're fucking stupid. I'm sorry, but I'm not calling for anything. But what I'm going to what I've decided to do is that I'm going to every time every time I see a protest, I'm going to talk about it on this show and tell you that it's not going to work and that it's fucking stupid.
Walk around in a circle all you want. All you're gonna do is walk around in a circle. Shout at your lungs, at the top of your lungs all you want. All you're gonna do is lose your voice. Nobody else is gonna lose anything. Your protests are unseen and unheard. Understand that. And if you're planning on going and protesting the Israeli shekel being, you know, scuttled, good luck. Happy for you. You know, you're just gonna get, you know, probably cold and hungry, maybe shot. I don't know. But it's not going to do anything. So what's the only way out?
And I've said it before, like, in the United States, I can see a situation where a few states go, you know what? We've had enough. And it'll be something like Texas and Florida. And if they had enough Oklahoma will probably go with Texas it'll be things like that you know Arkansas maybe Louisiana there's a good chance I could see that kind of shit happening but it'll be stuff it'll be stuff like that but what I think is actually more important is things like Arthur Hayes and his family office OpenSats, Jack Dorsey. That's the guy's name. That's his name. Jack Dorsey. These guys who are starting to realize that the only way out of this is FreedomTech.
That's the only way out. And it's not just Bitcoin. Noster is there. Value for value the entire structure of value for value for podcasting that was created by Adam Curry. That's part of this. It's not technically FreedomTech. It's an idea of value for value. But it's going to ride upon the rails of Freedom Tech like Lightning Network and Bolt 12 and Bitcoin itself and e cash and Fedimintz and being able to zap people on Nostr and and and the the podcast apps that that have enabled the Lightning Network in their podcast apps. That's that's where it's going to happen that's where it's going to happen first and that's what's going to carry through everything else and without continued funding of the developers of Freedom Tech then we're gonna be lost. This is the only way out, ladies and gentlemen. It's the only door available to us.
There are no windows. There's no escape hatch. There's no fire hatch. There's no way out of the elevator. This we the doors this is the only way out. It's FreedomTech and that FreedomTech will enable places like Texas to basically thumb their nose at the federal government of the United States. It will allow, I don't know, let's just say Palestine to be able to have their own money and not worry about what the hell happened to the shekel. They've got other shit to worry about. And the Israeli people themselves, they're they're not going to fare well with this if they're being considered a criminal all the time.
It'll be it'll be nations like El Salvador, possibly Argentina. I'm still I'm still not really all convinced that convinced that Malay is on everybody's on the side that everybody thinks he is. But it'll be states like that. It'll be Latin America. It'll be Africa. But the west, the west is lost. And you can go protest about it all you want, and it's not gonna do anything. Right? So, again, if you're planning on protesting, I I wish you'd, like, you know, spend your time doing something else because it's not going to work. They don't care. They don't even see you protesting anymore.
They're nowhere close to where you're protesting. You're gonna protest outside the Federal Reserve. Nobody that actually makes a fuck is actually in the Federal Reserve. They're not there. You're protesting in the wrong place. And even if you found the right place, which you never will, that protest, that's not gonna do anything. And you need to find something else to do. FreedomTech is one way to do it. And Freedom Tech will enable various states and nations to get away from the corruption that has suffused Western nations. And it's not the West's fault.
Alright? That the people of the West are different than the people that have suffused themselves into the positions of power, the board of directors. Those are the people that are causing all the problems. And they've installed their problems in the form of fooling us into believing that wealth as we know it is actually a prison and fooling us into believing that it's not a prison but it is a prison and if you doubt me then go back and listen to What is Wealth That was the last podcast. Alright. With all that said, I will 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 9:0:7 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 26th day of September, 2024, and this is episode 961 of Bitcoin. And we've got some pretty pretty earth shattering news coming out of Israel. And, no, it doesn't really have anything directly to do with the, Hamas thing going on.
But it is pretty big. It's probably a much larger situation than we are are giving it credit for. I'm gonna get into that, but first I'm gonna talk about PayPal and then we've got some other, you know, other stuff to get through. But honestly, today is really about the heckle shekel, honestly. That's why I'd named it heckles for shekels. This is just gonna be it's just gonna suck for the people of Israel. And it's gonna suck for the people of Palestine, too, because they depend on the shekel. We'll do it after we talk about PayPal from Bitcoin Magazine, Nicholas Hoffman. PayPal has enabled business accounts to buy, hold, and sell crypto as well as Bitcoin.
God, for the love of God PayPal Holdings has enabled U. S. Business account holders to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies supported on its platforms such as Bitcoin directly from their PayPal accounts. While this service is available nationwide it will not be available in New York State at launch, PayPal stated. Can you imagine why? I mean, honestly, can you imagine why? Since we launched the ability for PayPal and Venmo consumers to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency in their wallets, we have learned a lot about how they want to use their cryptocurrency, said Jose Fernandez da Puente, senior vice president of blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital currencies at PayPal.
Quote, business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers. We're excited to meet that demand by delivering this new offering, empowering them to engage with digital currencies effortlessly, end quote. In addition to buying and selling, US merchants can now externally transfer cryptocurrency to third party wallets. That's huge. This new functionality further increases the flexibility of crypto transactions for businesses. PayPal's expansion into offering businesses the ability to buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin or, well, buy and hold Bitcoin and crypto on its platform builds on its growing digital currency initiatives. And this doll this includes the launch of crypto consumer services in 2020 and the introduction of its US dollar backed stable coin, PayPal USD, also known as PYUSD, in 2013.
Sorry about that. I got some cats that are deciding to settle some business behind me. All right, so. Externally transferring cryptocurrency to 3rd party wallets. Nothing at all is said as to whether or not there is an approved list of third party wallets I take this at face value and just say if I buy it from PayPal I can transfer it to my to the wallet that was created by my cold card that I'm just gonna take it at face value But I don't trust these people. I mean, that doesn't make it's not that it doesn't make sense. It makes sense to us. Yes. We want that functionality. But PayPal is part of the larger gauntlet that we all have to run through. That's the legacy financial system and they don't like Bitcoin and they certainly don't seem to be of the mind that they want anybody to just be able to transfer it into their own custody that's not been that has not been what we've been seeing, you know, with the powers that be across the universe. It just they don't like this. They don't even like cash.
They in fact, they don't like cash so much that we're about to get into the shekel thing. But I want you to keep in mind this has been done in India. And it was done I want to say 2017 somewhere around there. I think it was right in 2017 where they took away one of the bills. But over in Israel, Netanyahu has decided that Israel is to go cashless. Okay? So, it's not just the deletion of this particular bill. That's where they're starting. The point is to go cashless. And Efrat Feinegusen I know I pronounced that wrong. I am sorry. Out of Bitcoin Magazine is writing a few days ago a new initiative promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu was announced removing the 200 shekel bills from circulation as a first step to abolish cash altogether within a few years the official excuse fighting financial crimes and black money in the Arab society For those who aren't aware, 1,600,000 citizens in Israel are indeed Arab. And that stands for about 17% of the country's entire population.
As expected, this move identical to India's move in 2016 okay, 2016, will cause further destabilization of Israel's economy and of its citizens physical and mental states. A derivative of this economical shakeup will ripple into Gaza who is relying on the Israeli shekel as its currency. And clearly, its population is heavily reliant upon cash. So let's break it down. The value of the Israeli 200 shekel bills surpasses 100,000,000,000 shekels and make up nearly 80% of the banknotes held by the public. In recent attempts to smear cash holders it was reported that quote most of the 200 shekel bills are not used for purchases but for the accumulation of black capital End quote.
A team of so called experts, 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector, who initiated the idea to abolish these bills claimed that the bill's removal will recover more than 20,000,000,000 shekels or $5,300,000,000 by next year and a 110,000,000,000 shekels or $29,000,000,000 in the next 5 years bringing it back to the state and will force tax evaders to be revealed. 2 weeks ago, the 1st mainstream media article about this new initiative popped up to normalize and prepare people for this draconian measure. I'm going to pause because this is a longer this is a slightly longer article than I normally read. But there's a couple of things here that I want to make sure that I that I comment on. Alright?
First of all, it's this situation where a team of so called experts, which is 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector, they're the ones who initiated this entire idea to abolish these bills. 9 businessmen and former officials in the public sector. Okay. What is this this you know what this sounds like? It sounds like Jekyll Island. Where all those businessmen and a couple of former, you know, officials got on the train and they and all in secret in, like, 1911 or whatever it was and they rode their happy ass over to this island where they had this super secret meeting where they created the Federal Reserve.
And then in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act was then passed. This just feels the same. This feels like the same story where this group of private and slightly public officials got together and are making a decision which in my opinion doesn't is sort of like not really including the general government even though you know that the government is involved it's just weird Everything about this is weird. Now the other thing is that this saying that they're going to recover this money and and and and force tax evaders to be revealed. You know what I'm starting to think of? You know how, like, they say, oh, it's for the women. It's for the children or because of terrorism or whatever.
And we know that that's never the truth. That's always a lie. That's become very evident. But now I'm starting to think that they don't even give a shit about who's evading taxes that that's not it either that it you know like on the surface you go sure of course it is if if they want to recover even more money because the world, you know, they've they've broken the economy, and we know that, then, of course, they need to go out for the tax evaders. They're going to try to get that money. I don't think they care. I don't think it's just Israel that doesn't care. I think when you hear US politicians talk about how that they're going to recover all this tax money from tax evaders or, quote, unquote, force the billionaires to pay their fair share, we already know that if they recovered every dollar from every tax evader plus confiscated the entirety of the wealth of all billionaires in the US you might be able to run the United States for 100 days before they have to print another $1,000,000,000,000 This this tax evasion thing I'm now putting this firmly into the let's wrap this package with what do you want? Terrorism?
Child pornography? Child sex trafficking? Or do you want now tax evasion? We have 3 flavors of wrapping paper for your present. Okay. Let's move on. The proposed policy documents suggest several steps to combat, quote, black capital. 1, removing the 200 shekel bills from circulation as well as broadening the obligation to report on cash holdings to the authorities. This is part of a larger plan to abolish cash completely in 3 phases. 1st, limit cash transactions to 3,000 shekels which is $800 within 2 to 3 years. 2, lower transaction amount to 2,000 shekels or $530 then 3, cancel cash usage completely while encouraging digital payment methods number 2 leveraging AI tools for monitoring and enforcing tax evasion this pausing tax evasion is bullshit they want to know what you're buying they want to know everything about you these people have gone completely insane number 3 launching a collaborative enforcement effort that includes various key bodies such as the tax authority and anti money laundering authority, the police, the prosecutor's office, and the counterterrorism economic warfare headquarters.
Counterterrorism economic warfare headquarters. They're declaring war on the citizenry of the world. The Israelis are doing it against their own people and, of course, the Arab capital or the Arab black market, but it really is against the citizenry of the world because this is coming to every government that is that just hates their citizenry. 4. Banning the possession of cash substitutes such as gold silver metals, and coins on a significant scale. 5, enhancing regulation of non banking financial entities including currency exchange services which manages significant volume of quote illicit funds.
And finally, 6, the seizure of digital currencies linked to terrorist activities of sanctioned entities. Quote, there are technologies that enable the real time identification of such money transfers, and Israel needs to implement them immediately. This will allow for disrupting the flow of funds for terrorism and crime, identifying terrorist operatives, and seizing 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars for the state, potentially 1,000,000,000 in the future. This part from a leaked draft of the plan dated March 2024. It did not appear in mainstream media publications.
That is a note in parentheses by the author of this article. So let's read it again. Seizing 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars for the state potentially 1,000,000,000 in the future. Seizing the money for the state. And it was in the draft plan dated 2024 but did not appear in mainstream media publications according to the author. Lo and behold, 2 weeks after the first suggestion of this new policy, prime minister Netanyahu announced he's now advancing this reform urgently in order to fight black capital, especially amongst the Arab population, and called in a special committee to discuss the new policy.
Israel already introduced a new big brother regulation last year for preapproving any business to business transaction with the tax authority of anything over 25,000 shekels. The new policy plan now proposes lowering the threshold for transactions requiring preapproval from the tax authority from 25,000 or $6,750 to 5,000 so to 25,000 shekels to 5,000 that is a 80% reduction or $13.50 a highly controversial move Israel's largest mainstream publication Ynet reminded its readers that similar steps have been implemented in other countries in parts of China the use of cash has been completely banned in certain cities.
Israel's governing bodies love using other countries that are doing this already as well. Excuse to justify their acts. The same mantra is being played again and again when the digital shekel is mentioned I recently listened to a podcast with Israel's central bank governor which mentioned favorably how advanced the ECB is with the digital euro for example I asked Roger Huang, the author and a journalist, about the accuracy of this statement regarding China's cashless cities. Quote, China's central bank actually makes it illegal to not accept cash as a payment option and has punished businesses in the past for doing so even during COVID.
This is in direct contradiction to a statement justifying the restrictions on cash in Israel that certain cities ban the use of cash. This has not been reported. And with no primary source verified, very hard to prove. The Chinese central bank's action suggests the very opposite. Though China is going more cashless and is the most aggressive country at advancing a CBDC or central bank digital currency, it has not implemented bans nor restrictions on using cash. And in fact, its central bank punishes those that restrict the use of cash.
So if I'm gonna pause because it's important to understand what was just said. Israel is stating that countries like China are banning cash transactions and that they should do the same. However, Israel cannot point to any credible source that that is in fact going on. And this Roger Huang, a journalist who seems to know something about what's going on in China, is saying that China hasn't done that. They're not banning cash. They can't find evidence of any city anywhere in China that's actually banning cash. While that is surprising to both me and you, dear listener, If this is the case, then Israel is flat lying and saying they're just doing what other countries do. And they're pointing to China as an example. Yet, there is no example in China of any city or the government banning any cash. And in fact, arresting those who refuse to take cash as a viable means of transaction currency.
I'm just saying so that we're clear about that. Now now I'm continuing. In November 2016, the Indian government made a similar decision to the one Israel is now considering by withdrawing the 501,000 rupee notes from circulation. In the aftermath of this decision, 100 of people lost their lives. Many more faced hardship and the country's GDP took a significant hit. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of cities throughout India to protest an an economic policy you probably haven't heard of before. Demonetization.
By the way, this is a large quote. 3 weeks ago, Indian prime minister Modi surprised the country with an announcement banning the 501,000 rupee notes worth about $7.15 respectively in a bid to tackle quote corruption and terrorism. He estimated that forcing people to exchange the country's largest currency bills for brand new banknotes would allow the government to crack down on black money. See, there's there's a theme here. Unaccounted for cash holdings that haven't been taxed but under the law should be. He also argued that it would strike at domestic terrorist financing operations by capturing counterfeit money and rendering the legitimate cash they kept in the shadows worthless.
Banning widely used banknotes would have a huge impact on any economy. But in India, the policy is transformative. Modi's sudden ban instantly meant that 86% of all cash in circulation in India was no longer considered legal tender. And that means that businesses could refuse to accept those bills as a form of payment. And the Indian economy simply runs on cash. It's estimated that between 90 98% of all transactions in India measured in terms of volume involve cash. Unsurprisingly, Modi's demonetization initiative has caused chaos across the country. People want new banknotes, but the current supply of these new banknotes isn't even close to meeting the demand.
That's created headaches for people as they wait in long lines outside ATMs and banks which routinely run out of cash. For people who rely on daily cash earnings to survive, it can mean not being able to obtain food. In this excellent lecture by Andreas Antonopoulos, a famous Bitcoin developer and lecturer dating back to 2016, Andreas discusses the currency war of countries. He details the cash crisis in India and other examples of countries where citizens are punished due to their failed currencies, like Venezuela, Argentina, Ukraine, Turkey, and more. All of these trials conducted in one country serve as testing grounds for future implementations elsewhere.
As debt continues to rise, the economic situation deteriorates. Inflation worsens and these experiments will only speed up. We can expect more taxes further restrictions on cash More confiscations and rising prices alongside inflation Eventually, this deteriorating state will provide a sufficient justification to introduce a new digital control system known as the CBDC if another crisis or emergency does not proceed it. Israel's government has been tightening its policy on cash usage in recent years and today there are still no official restrictions on the amount of cash that can be kept at home but the government has repeatedly emphasized that it does not view this practice favorably and prefers that as many transactions as possible be conducted through non cash payment and money management methods.
At the same time, the government is working to advance legislation that would make it illegal to hold more than 200,000 shekels in cash. Additionally, holding cash amounts. Or hold sorry about that. Holding cash amounts of 50,000 shekels or more would require providing explanations to the authorities about the source of the money and its intended use. In August of 2022, Israel announced that it forbids cash purchases larger than 6,000 shekels. This reform aims, according to a statement issued by the Israeli tax authority, to fight organized crime, money laundering, and non compliance of taxes.
The Jerusalem Post reported back in 2022 under the new law, any payment to a business above 6,000 shekels or $1700 must be made using alternative methods such as a digital transfer or a debit card. Trading between private citizens who are not listed as business owners will be limited to 15,000 shekels or 43 4360 in cash. This is another step in Israel's fight against the use of cash. Previously, cash up to the amount of 11,000 shekels could be used in business deals. Quote, we want the public to reduce the use of cash money. Tamar Braca, who is in charge of executing the law on behalf of Israel's tax authority, told the media line, quote, the goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash by limiting the use of it criminal activity is much harder to carry out the goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash. So they repeated that twice because it's important.
And my commentary, that means that they just think that everybody is a criminal. And when a government starts looking at the the entirety of their citizenry and the citizenry of the surrounding nations as nothing but criminals, we've got a fucking problem. Continuing. The cash shortage in Gaza has intensified the already dire conditions making it even harder for people to buy essential food and supplies. In Gaza, the scarcity isn't limited to food, water, and electricity. Almost a year into the conflict, there's a severe shortage of cash. Banks have been destroyed And frequent power outages have rendered ATMs all but inoperable.
Reports from the region highlight how this lack of cash is worsening the daily struggle for survival while raids by the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, on Hamas outpost have uncovered 1,000,000 of shekels and large sums of US dollars that have been stored there. As reported on Ynet, quote, a shortage of fresh cash and the closure of many bank branches due to the war have forced Gaza's residents to reuse the same bank notes for almost a year. With so much use, the notes become worn out and decayed and I refuse to accept them, says one market vendor. Meanwhile, a new profession is emerging in the strip.
Cleaning and refurbishing worn banknotes. I've never never heard about that in my entire life. I would never thought this possible, but it's happening. Because the closure of numerous bank branches in Gaza since the beginning of the war has led to a severe cash shortage, forcing residents to continue using old tattered notes. The new trade called note cleaning is emerging, where old bills are cleaned and restored for reuse, with the service costing between 2 and 5 shekels per note. Merchants, particularly in northern Gaza, warn that the only real solution to this crisis is reopening the closed banks and injecting fresh cash into the market. Otherwise, the risk of counterfeit currency spreading grows.
Additionally, cash withdrawals from ATMs in Gaza come with hefty fees ranging from 10% to 20%. Before the war, there were around 20 currency exchanges offices in Gaza City alone run by Hamas or taxed by organizations these offices traded in various currencies and converted them alongside several informal money changers operating in the market corners So where do we go from here? Israeli going or rather Israel going cashless is yet another step in tightening control and violating property rights for its citizens as well as its neighbors.
This going cashless development is added to other worrying trends in Israel such as chewing on people's pensions and progressing Israel's CBDC, also known as the digital shekel. A new economic reality is ahead of us. In such times, learning about Bitcoin becomes a necessity. In order to hedge against government tyranny with the only truly decentralized secure cryptocurrency which is controlled by no one and is fully permissionless outside of government control. That's the end of the article. If it didn't send chills down your spine, then nothing will. You're you're in a coma. Everything about what I just read you from Ephrat is terrifying.
I don't know what's happened to Israel. I don't know I just I just don't know. I mean, some of you that are listening are probably staunch supporters of Israel. Others that are listening are most likely staunch haters of Israel, and they haven't really acted in in the very nice to their neighbors, and they haven't done so since the installation of Israel as an actual country post World War 2. I believe that was 1948 or 47, somewhere around there. So late forties, but really close to the end of World War 2, specifically the war the war, World War 2 ending with victory in Japan. There was victory in Europe and then like a year later we started dropping bombs on Hiroshima and that pretty much sewn up the end of World War II. But right after that, we had the installation of Israel.
It was not always there. It was there in the Bible, but, you know, if you want to go through the history of it, then, honestly, read the Old Testament. It's actually a pretty good it's actually a pretty good account of what was going on. So Israel, the way that we know it today with its modern borders, wasn't actually there for a very very long time right before world, you know, right before the end of World War 2. With the help of Europe and, the United States, basically the the winners of World War 2, we we installed it, Israel, the way that it kinda looks today.
They've gone over their borders on several occasions. And I'm not making a I'm not making a judgment call here. I'm just saying this is what happened. Palestine, Lebanon, all their neighbors have basically been spoiling for a fight. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that Israel has this penchant for taking over land and making new settlements. Like I said, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make a judgment call on that. But but one one thing that is sure, when you take people's land, you're going to piss them off. And this has been going on for decades. So it's very clear that the neighbors of or Israel's neighbors are very very pissed off. But it also so happens that Israel's currency is so strong in the region that essentially it's sort of like, in like, before Nayib Bukele made Bitcoin legal tender, El Salvador's currency, they didn't have their own. They just used the United States dollar. There are many dollarized nations in the world. They don't have their own currency. They depend hold on.
Something my cat is being really weird. They depend on the United States dollar alone and nothing else. Same is true in many of the regions that are surrounding Israel. They've been shekelized. Right? It's, you know, it's for up until now, it's been a really good currency. And all the reasons that Israel is giving for them taking away the cash has nothing to do with black money it has nothing to do with black markets it doesn't have anything to do with terrorism or counterterrorism it doesn't have anything to do with child trafficking or child pornography on the Internet it doesn't have anything to do with getting tax evaders to pay their fair share it doesn't have anything to do with anything It's control and remember what I said in the episode entitled What is wealth?
What you think wealth is and I've thought it too. Okay? I'm not at all able to say that I always knew that it wasn't true. Nope. I'm right alongside you. The wealth that we've been taught is wealth. Is a lie. It's not wealth at all. It's chains. We have been told that instead of chains that chain us to the wall so that we can't actually go do anything we've been told that those chains are actually wealth in the form of Lear Jets and Bugattis and 5 houses in the south of France oodles of cash and being able to eat at restaurants that cost $1,000 every time you go in that door that is not wealth nothing could be further from the truth that is a prison it just happens to be nice and shiny and things are really odd when it comes to human beings and birds we are attracted to shiny things Crows especially love crumpled up aluminum foil. They decorate their nests with it. And other birds do it as well.
But it's not a building material that actually does anything other than look shiny. It doesn't add structural stability to a nest the nest is the real wealth the nest is what keeps it you know keeps the babies warm that's actual wealth what we've been told is wealth is now it is becoming so clear to me especially after reading this that it was never actually wealth it was a prison that you were told I was told was wealth and like a dumbass we aped into it. We did everything we could to secure that prison for ourselves. What's the way out this effort says Bitcoin that's that's one way it's not but it if you rely on Bitcoin to get out of what I just read you and this isn't just for Israel. This is going to be everywhere.
This is coming to the United States. It's definitely going to Europe. If it's a western country, it's coming to you. Right? That's one of the reasons why I say you need to look at Africa and you need to look at what's going on in Latin America. Because these guys most likely most of the countries and on those continents will escape this because they're they're done with this with with the way that this is working. It's changing our perception of what actual wealth is. And in the United States specifically, it will be up to each individual state as to whether or not they're going to take any more of this bullshit.
It'll be up to a state like Texas to say, you know what? We're done. Secession is now on the table. And if it's a United States government piece of property that is in the boundaries of Texas, that Texas just says we own it now. Sorry for you. And if Texas falls out of the United States, you've the United States has problems. And I've always said this before, the only way to reconstitute the United States of America is a complete dissolution of the United States of America to the point that the only thing left of the United States of America is Washington DC. And that, the great guts and feathers of the states have just washed their hands of that have their own banks do their own regulations which some states will do it wrong and they'll be assholes about it but some states will will not do it wrong and some states will do it so well that they will end up being the powerhouses of the future and I'm going to be alive to see probably this happen you know I'm not that young but I ain't that old either I'm probably going to see this happen And this, this has to happen.
And one of the ways they're getting us to look at this prison that they've told us is actual wealth is to make it so uncomfortable to think about change that we don't think about change. And if we don't think about the possibilities on the other side of changing our perceptions, of changing what we expect on a daily basis, of changing how we just think about our place in the universe as humans, then change will never occur and we can go on with the status quo and the very very few that are the actual prime movers of the human species even though that's nothing but hubris it will continue As always, all of these stories that I'm reading to you today are going they're going to have, the URL in the show notes.
I you need to go read this one again from Bitcoin Magazine. Again, it's Israel goes cashless. You need to go read it for yourself. You can't rely on me and my commentary to, to get you to understand what was just said. Okay? We've been at this for almost 30 about 35 minutes. Took me a couple of minutes to read the the very first story. I've devoted a huge amount of time to this because I'm trying to get it through everybody's head including my own. We can't ignore this. If China did it that's one thing. Israel doing it, this is different because Israel has always sort of been the tip of the atyp of the spears of the west.
So, keep that in mind and let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities oil taking a hit because of the news out of OPEC Plus. West Texas Intermediate is down 3 points. Brenton Noursee is down damn near 3 points. OPEC Plus basically made the statement that well, Saudi Arabia said that they're just gonna open up the pipes again. They tried to keep oil at $100. They they the OPEC Plus basically wanted a $100 barrel, you know $100 barrel oil that's what they wanted so they never got it they got it a couple of times but it never stayed there and they really wanted to they really wanted it to stay there And that was their strike price. And that is it was just not happening. The the the oil traders and the futures and the commodities guys over in New York were are just too strong right now for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the guys at OPEC plus. So they've yelled uncle, and they're gonna open up the pipes. That news was released this morning and oil fell accordingly.
Natural gas not doing well either. 2.73% of the downside. And gasoline is down to a buck 96 a gallon. Again, good luck to actually trying to find it at that price. Gold is up a quarter of a point to $2691. It's going to pass $27100 before the week is out. I almost guarantee it. Silver is up 0.88% to $32. Platinum is up 2.15%. Copper is up over 3. Palladium is up just over 1%. Biggest winner in ag today is it's a tie between sugar and chocolate. Wow. Biggest loser today looks like it's gonna be, oh, soybeans down point 1, 71%.
Live cattle is down, scant, but lean hogs are down well over 2 to 2.77% to the downside. Feeder cattle are down 0.13%, but all your equities are doing very, very well today. Percent, but all your equities are doing very, very well today. 0.61% to the upside for the Dow. S and P is up a quarter of a point. Nasdaq is up a third. S and P Mini is up 3 quarters of a point. And, well, Bitcoin's doing well today. Had a pretty good green candle to the upside and it's holding so far at 65,520. That is just shy of a $1,300,000,000,000 market cap. You can get 24.6 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,759,058.62 of.
Average fees per block have fallen from, the day before yesterday to 0.05 BTC on a per block basis. And there are only 96 blocks that are carrying a 190,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priorities of 9 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 8. So we've had a slight fee spike as of late this morning. Now from what is wealth, the last episode of Bitcoin and that would be episode what was it? 960. Colin b with 10,000 sat says, your wealth section really spoke to me and how the fiat system is a way to control especially the mega wealthy. Thank you, sir. No, thank you.
And, Colin, I appreciate I appreciate that you got that. That the fiat system is a way to control mega wealthy. Because the mega wealthy control everything else underneath them. This is a management structure. Make no mistake about it. This isn't novel. It's not new. If you work at a company you've got probably a supervisor. That supervisor has a supervisor. That supervisor is probably part of a management team which then reports to one of the officers of the company. That officer's boss ultimately is the CEO. And the CEO, in many cases, has a further boss. That would be the board of directors.
Everybody knows the name of the CEO of Apple. Tim Apple or Tim Cook. Do you know the names of the people that sit on the board of directors of Apple? Without going and looking them up, can you tell me that you know the name of every one of the board of directors of Apple? No you do not and neither do I. I'm not going to pretend that I do. I have no clue who those people are. This is the exact same shit I was talking about in the episode what is wealth. You think it's Elon Musk in control. It's not. You think it's Tim Cook that's in, you know, control, but it's not. You think it's Putin or the president of the United States or the presidents and prime ministers of all these countries around the world. It is not.
All of those motherfuckers have a board of directors and you don't know their names, neither do I. Duo 10 with 5,000 says, sorry for multiple copies. Keep up the great content. The bird with 5,000 says, solid show. Slow slow with 21100 says, Matthew 619 through 21st describes true wealth. It it it does. You should go read Matthew 619 through 21. Even if you don't believe in god, it doesn't matter. Go read Matthew 619 through 21st. Alright. Darke with 2121 says, thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And God's death with 537 says, thank you, sir, no thank you. And he does it again with another 537, thank you, sir, no thank you, and pies the pleb, 420, Thank you, sir. No, thank you. And we have some other ones here. Duo 10 says, pretty sure Durov holds a significant portion of his wealth in BTC and some shit coins. He lived a fairly minimal minimalist lifestyle too. I'll bet they have something on him outside of his, quote, assets.
You may very well be correct because he does hold a significant portion of his wealth in BTC. What I mean, other than the fact that just throwing his ass in prison, I'm not sure what else that they could actually threaten him with. Because if you can't spend your money because you're in a physical prison, well, then you've got other problems. TW Cattell with 500 says nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. That's a quote from Lao Tzu. A satisfied mind is pure wealth. Great message for tough times. Duo ten s with 500 says the same thing. That's where he said it was copying. And he says it again with another 500 sat. So three times he said pretty sure Durov holds significant portion of his wealth blah blah blah blah. Wartime with 333 says my cookie emoji was a cookie.
And the bird says, solid morning drive show. This one was really good in my opinion. Gustavo Lima Chavez says, baller episode. Thanks, David. I appreciate it. Thank you. And that's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And I forgot to mention that if you hadn't heard already, New York mayor, has been indicted, and they're searching his mansion, which is also named Gracie. And and it doesn't matter. He was he was one of the guys that I told you to watch out for because he started talking about how he was he was gonna get Bitcoin and New York was gonna be a Bitcoin center. And he was taking his pay in Bitcoin and I told you to, not trust him? Yeah. Don't trust him.
Adams, Mayor Adams is now under indictment mayor of New York. Okay. Now, let's I'm gonna actually forgo this one because we are running out of time and I don't want to detract from the shekel story that I read up front because I still kind of want you guys understanding that as we talk about some of these releases and updates, to software and and other things. Don't worry. I'm gonna try to make it painless this time because I'm using Bitcoin Magazine Frank Korva writing for this one. Albie releases Albie go for everyone. It's a mobile app for self custodial Bitcoin lightning payments.
Alright, so, today, Albie announced the release of AlbieGo, which is a mobile application available for iOS, as well as Android that allows users to make self custodial payments via their lightning node. I'm gonna pause because what should be said is that you don't have to run your own node to do this. You kinda do, but you don't. I run my own node, right? I physically have a node. I could, if I wanted to, buy liquidity through one of the partners of Alby as either a payment channel or I could run my own full blown lightning node with multiple payment channels inside of it as part of a cloud, also through some of Albee's partners.
I don't need to physically run my own node if I don't want to. I recommend that you learn how to do it, but there's no reason that you have to. You can simply buy liquidity through some of Alby's partners and still be able to use Alby Go and it is as easy as using the old wallet of satoshi. Now, users can connect to the light or connect the app to lightning nodes and wallets including AlbiHub, Umbral, Start9, LiftPay, and CoinOS to enable self custodial lightning payments. The app most easily integrates with Albi Hub, an open source wallet that Albi recently released that makes lightning nodes easy to access and use for multiple devices.
Albi Go also provides a straightforward wallet interface to noster wallet connect enabled lightning wallets quote Albigo is our next step in making bitcoin accessible everywhere now bringing it to the user's pocket said Albibi co founder Albibi Michael Boiman co co found Albie co founder, Albie Michael Boomen? Is his name Albie or is that a typo? I don't know. Is it Michael Boomen? I'm just gonna say Michael Boomen. He said that in a press release and he further says, by utilizing the NWC messaging protocol, we facilitate seamless use of multiple nodes and wallets in a lightweight app, end quote. Other features of AlbieGo include a contact list, which lets users store lightning addresses of frequent contacts for quick and convenient transactions, currency conversion, and dark and light theme settings.
Albie Go is currently in version 1.5, and Albie encourages users to contact the Albie team with suggestions on how to improve the app. The app's code is open sourced and ready for review, as well as contributions. Now, if you had been with me and I will see if I can find it here. I'm gonna try to find the, episode that I did with Tomek. We'll see. Where was it? Good idea of the Trump Burgers, now the knife. Oh, it's Tomek from ALBE was episode 955. So I interviewed one of the guys from ALBE and his name is Tomek Kaye. And we had a great discussion about all things ALBBI.
ALBBI Hub, Uncle Jim and your friends, ALBBI Go, how all this stuff works, whether or not why you don't really need to run your physical own node, how you might go about getting, you know, in touch with some of their partners about buying liquidity and having it hosted in the cloud for you for a low, low fee and all that kind of stuff. It's all in episode 955. That's episode 955 of the bitcoin and podcast. It's called it's Tomek from Albi. So just so you know if you wanna go listen to that one. Now, did I do that twice? I think I did. Alright. So bolt 12. We've been talking a lot about it lately.
Well, bolt 12 offers officially merged into the lightning specification. This is interesting. This is should be like larger news than you think it is. Bolt 12 is now part of the official Lightning specification. It is a significant enhancement to the Lightning network, streamlining payments, improving privacy, and supporting new use cases like subscriptions and advanced payment conditions. Bolt 12, which are also known as offers, upgrade to the lightning specification, aims to boost the network's efficiency and flexibility. The central innovation introduced by Bolt 12 is the offers protocol.
Offers is spelled like I'm making an offer. O f f e r s. Like, hey, do you have an offer for me? Okay. So the offers protocol, which makes creating, managing, and executing lightning invoices easier. Offers, the offers protocol, present a more adaptable and reusable option compared to conventional invoices, allowing for automatic invoice creation recurring payments and enhanced privacy. By adopting BOLT 12, the Lightning Network can accommodate a wider variety of applications such as subscriptions donations and pay as you go services all while simplifying payment interactions.
For users, it also means better receiver privacy and improved censorship resistance. And if you want to learn more about BOLT 12, then you can go to BOLT12.org. That's bolt12 with the numbers 12, not spelled in letters, but numbers. Bolt12.org. Bolt12.org, and you can read all about it there. Okay. So bitcoin core developer receives a grant for maintaining the BIP repository. Ezra Reguera for Cointelegraph Investment Fund Maelstrom has awarded a grant to the Bitcoin core developer for maintaining the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal Repository. The grant was given to John Attack, a senior developer at Bitcoin Core who started contributing back in 2019.
In a press release sent to Cointelegraph, Maelstrom chief investment officer Arthur Hayes said that the financial support allows John Attack to focus on his work on Bitcoin. Hayes said that one of the fund's goals is to support seasoned Bitcoin Core developers and the executive said, quote, John has complete freedom to work on whichever part of the Bitcoin code base he likes from any location around the globe. As a senior developer on Bitcoin Core, John represents an early adopter and a key member of the community, end quote. Hayes hopes to identify more grant candidates to help educate the next generation of developers within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
In the announcement, Jon Atack said that the open source software and Bitcoin play a role in striving for causes like human freedom, decentralization of power, individual privacy and self sovereignty. However, maintaining the network requires continued work. Jon explained, quote, bitcoin isn't perfect. Among other things it needs further decentralization continued vigilance review bug fixing updates maintenance and improved robustness performance privacy scaling documentation as well as user experience Because of this, the developer pledged to help and service the network and said that he would continue to work on the decentralization and robustness of Bitcoin my time will be primarily invested in reviewing and context packing proposals for these projects to help move them forward and potentially catch breaking changes and be able to help maintain them, attack added.
Maelstrom told Cointelegraph that John received a $100,000 grant. The developer is also receiving another grant from the Bitcoin initiative, Open Sats. Malestrom announced the grant program July 17th to advance Bitcoin's development. The grant program offers funds ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 on a 12 month basis, which can stack up to $250,000 per individual developer. In a previous Cointelegraph interview, Arthur Hayes emphasized the importance of supporting developers in maintaining the network. The executive said that the ecosystem could be vulnerable to threats without funding. Yes. This is true. And it's good to see that within what, what within a week's worth of time, that Maelstrom, which is the family office, it's the grant development arm of the family office of Arthur Hayes, which I I don't know. I don't mean to snicker, but I don't know why they keep saying the family office of Arthur Hayes, but they don't ever say there are other I mean, does when, like, for instance, when, oh, when, who's that guy from Twitter?
Jesus Christ. I can't remember. I can't remember the guy's name. Jesus Christ. May fuck. You know who I'm talking about. Does he have a family office? See, because he gives grants. He gives personal grants, but I don't hear family office used. So is it the fact that Arthur Hayes actually built up a family office? Or I don't know. It just it just there's something about this that doesn't seem it just seems a little funky. You know, and I know I'm reading way too much into it. I like Arthur Hayes, by the way. I think he's when he was, when he was behind BitMEX and and BitMEX was just full blown terrorizing people with a 100x, you know, a 100x leverage on shitcoin trades.
It was it was a thing to watch. I mean, it was like I would watch BitMex and I would just like, you know, like especially on a down day, I would go over to BitMex and just watch people be become just wiped out. Now that was before I started having, like, you know, heartfelt sentiment and started understanding that the the, you know, this entire ecosystem was rife with a bunch of scammers. And and all of a sudden, I started seeing more and more postings of the suicide hotline number up on places like Reddit. And I started figuring out this is not good. And even Arthur started, you know, kind of backing away from BitMex. But there was that time that you just it was just a a sliver of time in Bitcoin history that Arthur Hayes's smile was dead. You know, it was a damn near a meme. You know, somebody get white. Like, you see a red candle go down like like a 10% red candle. The downside and you see memes of Arthur Hayes just smiling. And you knew that it meant that people on BitMex were getting wiped out because degenerate gamblers are gonna get wiped out. Don't gamble your Bitcoin. Okay. So with all that said, we should revisit at least a little bit of the fact that the shekel is under attack.
And along with the shekel being under attack, there's a lot more that's under attack. All of our freedoms are under attack. Not because Israel rules the world. That's not it. That's not what I'm getting at. I don't believe that shit for a second. I don't think that Israel rules the world. I think there's a board of directors whose name we do not know, and Israel is one of the many CEOs under that corporate structure. That that's the way that I I view this. Whoever is in charge, it ain't Israel. Sure as shit isn't Biden. Putin?
Maybe. Maybe he's carved in his own way. I don't know. I don't know anything about Putin. I don't know anything about the structure of Russia. China? Who the hell knows? Nobody knows what the hell is going on in China except that the excuse that Israel is using to ban cash is because, well, look, they're doing it in China, yet we see no evidence of this actually occurring in China. We see them they want a CBDC. They have one. It seems to work. It is evil, incarnate, but it seems to work and they do have one. But I haven't seen any reports of people not no longer being able to use cash.
Right? So keep keep that in mind. But this is coming. Hell even even you know Alex Jones warned everybody about this shit years ago saying everybody's going cashless. We got to keep cash alive. That's not going to happen. Not in the near term. Not with these people that are in charge. Because what's gonna happen is that people are gonna go out and they're gonna do what? They're gonna protest. And it's going to affect exactly what? It's going to exactly it's going to affect exactly nothing. Protests. I don't know why people do it. It's a waste of fucking time. I mean, there's not gonna be any change from marching around with the sign on a stick, you know? I don't care if you get a a 1,000,000,000 people in the streets chanting what do we want? Something. When do we want it? Now.
It's not gonna do anything because the people that are watching the 1000000000 people are safely away from any possibility of harm whatsoever if things were to go south. Not not the not the I'm talking about the nameless, faceless board of directors. They're nowhere close to that shit. They don't care. They're they're and they're never going to care. And it's never going to do anything. You can you can pitch tents outside of banks all day long for a straight year. It's not gonna change a fucking thing. And if you think it does, then you're fucking stupid. I'm sorry, but I'm not calling for anything. But what I'm going to what I've decided to do is that I'm going to every time every time I see a protest, I'm going to talk about it on this show and tell you that it's not going to work and that it's fucking stupid.
Walk around in a circle all you want. All you're gonna do is walk around in a circle. Shout at your lungs, at the top of your lungs all you want. All you're gonna do is lose your voice. Nobody else is gonna lose anything. Your protests are unseen and unheard. Understand that. And if you're planning on going and protesting the Israeli shekel being, you know, scuttled, good luck. Happy for you. You know, you're just gonna get, you know, probably cold and hungry, maybe shot. I don't know. But it's not going to do anything. So what's the only way out?
And I've said it before, like, in the United States, I can see a situation where a few states go, you know what? We've had enough. And it'll be something like Texas and Florida. And if they had enough Oklahoma will probably go with Texas it'll be things like that you know Arkansas maybe Louisiana there's a good chance I could see that kind of shit happening but it'll be stuff it'll be stuff like that but what I think is actually more important is things like Arthur Hayes and his family office OpenSats, Jack Dorsey. That's the guy's name. That's his name. Jack Dorsey. These guys who are starting to realize that the only way out of this is FreedomTech.
That's the only way out. And it's not just Bitcoin. Noster is there. Value for value the entire structure of value for value for podcasting that was created by Adam Curry. That's part of this. It's not technically FreedomTech. It's an idea of value for value. But it's going to ride upon the rails of Freedom Tech like Lightning Network and Bolt 12 and Bitcoin itself and e cash and Fedimintz and being able to zap people on Nostr and and and the the podcast apps that that have enabled the Lightning Network in their podcast apps. That's that's where it's going to happen that's where it's going to happen first and that's what's going to carry through everything else and without continued funding of the developers of Freedom Tech then we're gonna be lost. This is the only way out, ladies and gentlemen. It's the only door available to us.
There are no windows. There's no escape hatch. There's no fire hatch. There's no way out of the elevator. This we the doors this is the only way out. It's FreedomTech and that FreedomTech will enable places like Texas to basically thumb their nose at the federal government of the United States. It will allow, I don't know, let's just say Palestine to be able to have their own money and not worry about what the hell happened to the shekel. They've got other shit to worry about. And the Israeli people themselves, they're they're not going to fare well with this if they're being considered a criminal all the time.
It'll be it'll be nations like El Salvador, possibly Argentina. I'm still I'm still not really all convinced that convinced that Malay is on everybody's on the side that everybody thinks he is. But it'll be states like that. It'll be Latin America. It'll be Africa. But the west, the west is lost. And you can go protest about it all you want, and it's not gonna do anything. Right? So, again, if you're planning on protesting, I I wish you'd, like, you know, spend your time doing something else because it's not going to work. They don't care. They don't even see you protesting anymore.
They're nowhere close to where you're protesting. You're gonna protest outside the Federal Reserve. Nobody that actually makes a fuck is actually in the Federal Reserve. They're not there. You're protesting in the wrong place. And even if you found the right place, which you never will, that protest, that's not gonna do anything. And you need to find something else to do. FreedomTech is one way to do it. And Freedom Tech will enable various states and nations to get away from the corruption that has suffused Western nations. And it's not the West's fault.
Alright? That the people of the West are different than the people that have suffused themselves into the positions of power, the board of directors. Those are the people that are causing all the problems. And they've installed their problems in the form of fooling us into believing that wealth as we know it is actually a prison and fooling us into believing that it's not a prison but it is a prison and if you doubt me then go back and listen to What is Wealth That was the last podcast. Alright. With all that said, I will 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.
The Impact of Cashless Policies
Global Examples of Cashless Transitions
Bitcoin as a Hedge Against Government Control
Market Updates and Financial News
The Future of Cash and Freedom Tech
