Join me today for Episode 1100 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
Artisan pecan butter, date bars and chocolates
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nostr Profile: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqswp94gnm4epqsgjkndl4lnd8krzdj5u4mzuppdtxksdymkty63g7gdurlfc
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-passes-stablecoin-bill-opens-licensing-by-year-end
https://www.theblock.co/post/355185/stablecoin-bill-could-pave-the-way-for-a-multi-year-crypto-bull-market-bitwise-cio-says
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/attendees-at-first-new-york-city-crypto-summit-implore-mayor-adams-to-end-the-bitlicense
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/21/days-to-cover-mnav-the-new-standard-for-evaluating-bitcoin-equities
https://atlas21.com/coinbase-69461-users-affected-by-december-2024-data-breach/
https://decrypt.co/321273/crypto-founder-abducted-500k-gunpoint
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Topics for today:
- Strive to Buy Cheap Bitcoin
- HK Stablecoin Bill Passes
- Supplicatnts Beg NY Mayor to Kill BitLicense
- mNAV: The Newest Indicator on the Block
Circle P:
OshiArtisan pecan butter, date bars and chocolates
Website: https://www.oshigood.us/products
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Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/strive-targets-75000-bitcoin-in-mt-gox-claimshttps://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-passes-stablecoin-bill-opens-licensing-by-year-end
https://www.theblock.co/post/355185/stablecoin-bill-could-pave-the-way-for-a-multi-year-crypto-bull-market-bitwise-cio-says
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/attendees-at-first-new-york-city-crypto-summit-implore-mayor-adams-to-end-the-bitlicense
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://www.bitcoinandshow.com/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/21/days-to-cover-mnav-the-new-standard-for-evaluating-bitcoin-equities
https://atlas21.com/coinbase-69461-users-affected-by-december-2024-data-breach/
https://decrypt.co/321273/crypto-founder-abducted-500k-gunpoint
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 10:10AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the May 2025, and this is episode 1,100 of Bitcoin. And you're here because there's news about Bitcoin. Yes, there is. I'm sure that everybody is losing their ever loving minds over yet another all time high. We'll see if it holds. And then while we're doing that, the reason you're here, there's news about Bitcoin. And Vivek Ramaswamy's Strive is right in the thick of things. We'll tell you about that one. Hong Kong is in, all in, on stablecoins, as is Bitwise chief investment officer. And then we've got the attendees at the very first New York City crypto summit. They're begging the mega, the mega, mega Adams. They're they're begging. They're they're supplicating themselves. They are trying to get something done.
And, yeah, we'll tell you all about it. And then Unchained Capital has announced a regulated Bitcoin native trust company. We'll see what the hell that entails. And then over to days to cover MNAV. Do you have any idea what the hell that means? Well, I kind of do. It seems to be, yet a new Bitcoin metric for Bitcoin treasury companies. And Coinbase, the extent of their data breach, they're not even calling it a hack anymore. They're calling it what it should be called, a data breach. The extent of which is pretty disturbing, honestly. And then we will have yet yet another cautionary tale at the end of the show.
Please, guys, stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Don't tell people you own Bitcoin. If you're gonna go to a Bitcoin conference, just be aware you are a target. Now on to the news of the day, Brendan or Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph is gonna tell us about Strive targeting 75,000 Bitcoin from Mount Gox claims to build their very own Bitcoin treasury because apparently that's the thing to do nowadays. Vivek Ramaswamy Strive is looking to build its very own Bitcoin holdings by purchasing distressed Bitcoin claims at a discount starting with claims tied to 75,000 Bitcoin at the bankrupt crypto exchange, Mt. Gox.
Strive said in a May 20 regulatory filing that it has partnered with something called one one seven Castell Advisory Group LLC to target claims to Bitcoin that have received definitive legal rulings but are still awaiting distribution. The company said buying the claims would allow it to purchase Bitcoin at a discount and grow its Bitcoin per share ratio ahead of its planned reverse merger with asset entities, and that one is expected to be completed sometime in the middle of this year. Strive hasn't disclosed any any Bitcoin holdings at all, but claims it will face fewer restrictions on purchasing Bitcoin than companies going public through special purpose acquisition company mergers.
Strive said that it would need shareholder approval to pursue these Mt. Gox claims, and the company said it intends to lodge a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to outline the full terms of the proposed transaction. A proxy statement would then be sent to shareholders to seek their approval. Strive would need to obtain shareholder approval relatively soon as Mt. Gox is expected to fully repay its creditors by October thirty first of this year. The Japanese based Mt. Gox was the largest Bitcoin exchange before it collapsed in 2014 from a security breach that they had themselves that resulted in the theft of approximately 750,000 Bitcoin.
Strive's pivot to become a Bitcoin Treasury Company or BTC reflects a broader industry trend as yet more firms look to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet as a long term strategic asset. Twenty one Capital is another newly launched Bitcoin treasury firm that has received backing from the likes of Tether, SoftBank, and Cantor Fitzgerald. The Jack Mallers led firm plans to launch with 42,000 Bitcoin once it completes a blank check merger with Cantor Equity Partners. Asset entities, ticker symbol a s s t, Why anybody has the word ass anywhere close to their ticker symbol is beyond me, but whatever. A social media marketing company.
So asset entities, this this company that Strive is supposed to merge with is a social media marketing company. They said that Strive announced it would merge with them on May to create a Bitcoin investment company, and it has seen its shares close on May up 18.2% to $7.74 according to Google Finance. The latest share price bump brings its market cap to a measly, pitily ass $122,100,000, and ass is now up 1,170 percent since Strive announced its merger plan. Strive is expected to own 94.2% of the company or rather the combined entity once the reverse merger is complete while asset entities will hold the remaining 5.8%.
Jeez. I'm not exactly sure what they were aiming to do there, but they just lost their entire company. The merged companies will be named Strive and asset entities. Wow. And will still trade under the ASST ticker. So Strive wants to become a BTC company. They're merging with a social media marketing company. Honestly, this just this sounds like haphazard aggregation of a whole bunch of shit companies that are out there. They just happen to be close enough together that they're like, yeah. Sure. We have absolutely no idea how we fit together, but, you know, whatever. Gravity. Let's just glom onto each other and see what happens because, you know, Bitcoin asset.
Look, I'll you know, me, this is a Bitcoin show. The name of the show is Bitcoin and but even I'm sitting here going, we may be getting a little overheated on this whole Bitcoin treasury company thing because I don't know, man. It just it seems seems, it just feels very FTX like. I don't think it ends the way FTX does, but I I I've been wrong before. Maybe it's just me being hopeful that we don't become just entirely too stupid, but who knows? We'll we'll have to wait and see. Now Hong Kong, getting over to into Asia, they themselves have passed their very own stablecoin bill, and it's set to open licensing by the end of this year.
Hong Kong's legislative council passed a stablecoin bill, paving the way for regulated framework that could position the region as a global leader in digital assets and, God forbid, web three development. In a May 21 post on Twitter, legislative council member Johnny Kit Chang said that the bill had passed its third reading, clearing the final hurdle for adoption. Quote, it is expected that by the end of this year, major institutions will be able to apply to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to become, and here it is, licensed stablecoin issuers.
Said. That's n g, and I don't know how to pronounce it, but, hey, it's for me. That's the that's the crux of the stablecoin bill here in The United States as well, to allow banks to issue issue their own stablecoins. That's that's that's the regulate that's where that gets regulated, is that they will get a license. And that license will then allow them to create their own stablecoins, not dabble and and trade and do stuff with USDT or Tether or USDC, a circle zone stable coin. No. No. No. Be able to spin up their very own stable coins. So when I told you that a raft of stablecoins was going to be coming down the river the likes of which you've never seen in comparison to the amount of ICOs that we got, the whole shitcoin, Cambrian, you know, explosion.
Right? All of that is going to pale in comparison to the amount of stable coin onslaught that you're about to see because of these stable coin bills. But according to the new Hong Kong legislation, stablecoins must be backed by fiat currencies as underlying assets. Ng and Hong Kong is welcoming global enterprises and institutions interested in issuing stablecoins to apply in Hong Kong, offering to personally assist with introductions and collaboration. Quote, I am also happy to facilitate connections and collaborate with all stakeholders to advance the development of Web three in Asia and globally with Hong Kong at the center, end quote. Ng said that the legislation marks the very first step on the road towards building Web three infrastructure in Hong Kong. Quote, the most crucial step is to develop more real world applications.
Ng said that stablecoin adoption has the potential to drive innovation in retail payments, cross border trade, and peer to peer transactions, and added that he encourages the development and adoption of stablecoins since they represent a, well, a major financial innovation. Regarding enhancing market stability, said that, distributing interest earnings to stablecoin holders is on the table. According to Ng, I wish they'd used one of his other names. What is one of his other names? Let's see. Let's just call him Chong from now on because Ng just sounds bad. Anyway, Chong's remarks that yield bearing stablecoins are more competitive follow recent positive data.
Research indicates that yield bearing stablecoins have soared to $11,000,000,000 in circulation, representing 4.5% of the total stablecoin market, a steep climb from just $1,500,000,000 and only 1% of the market share at the start of last year 2024. That's the end of the article. The stablecoin business is definitely going to get out of hand. It's going to get out of hand, and the reason is because it's following the exact same path as fiat currencies except at this point they're just completely dispensing with any of the smoke and mirrors that disguised fiat currency for what it really was fiat currency They're they just said, you know what? It's just we're just gonna call what it's being tied to as fiat currency, and we're seeking yield.
And, again, as we should always ask ourselves, where does the yield come from? And in this particular case, it gets even more rampant because where is the yield going to come from in with thousands, tens of thousands, possibly a hundred thousand or multiple hundreds of thousands of different stablecoins. This is the Scambrian explosion all over again. Right? Who's gonna win, Tether? None of the nobody's gonna want that. Like the, the, like your bank at the end of your block, your like, whatever, like Hong Kong fifth and main bank. Right. Or, or fifth and, and, like, noodle bowl alley bank, you know, like your your four employee bank. They're gonna have their own stable coin. Are you really gonna deal on that stable coin?
Or are you gonna use something that everybody recognizes? And that's either gonna be Bitcoin or Tether. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. This entire experiment is doomed. Will it will it work for the people that want it to work, or will it work for the people that are going to make the most money out of it? Yeah. For a very short time to a medium term, you know, time frame, yes. It'll be fine. I'm always thinking about the long term. And all I see is a it's like rinse and repeat of altcoins, which was rinse and repeat of ICOs. You know? Or, well, ICO depending on where you were when you first came into the space, It's all all coins technically came first and then there were ICOs and then we had all the rest of the crap, the NFTs, the ordinals, the inscriptions. So this is just another in the long line of we've got to figure out a way to get ours.
These stable coins don't mean a goddamn thing. Not when there's a hundred thousand of them, just like just like cryptocurrency doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Not when there's hundreds of thousands of them. The only thing that actually matters is Bitcoin. And the only thing that matters after that that's going to going to tie itself to the fiat world land is gonna be Tether. Everything else isn't going to matter, and it's not that I'm suggesting that Tether is good. I'm neutral on Tether because I don't use it, and there's nothing I can do about its existence. There's also nothing I can do about the rest of this bullshit, but it's going to happen whether we want it to or not because we have yet more stable coin bill news.
The stable coin bill could pave the way for a multi year crypto bull market according to Bitwise CIO. This is written by James Hunt out of the block. The US Senate voted to progress landmark stablecoin legislation on Monday, and I've already told you about that. A move that could pave the way for a multiyear digital asset bull market according to Matt Hugan, Bitwise CIO. He described it as akin to Wall Street and crypto getting married. Be careful with this guy, and you'll see why here in a few minutes. Senators voted 66 to 32 to advance the Genius Act with bipartisan support, including 16 Democrats who flipped from opposing it last week.
They flipped 16 Democrats from last week to this week. 16 flipped their vote. That's important to note, by the way. That's why I'm saying it three times. Crypto leaders and lawmakers hailed the vote as as a historic win that could help ensure United States dollar dominance. However, following the cloture vote, lawmakers must approve any potential amendments before holding a final vote on the bill. Politicians in Washington did the right thing, Hugan wrote in a note to clients late Tuesday. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but it looks like we will have our first fully fledged piece of crypto legislation passed in The United States by this summer.
Aside from the January 2024 approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs including Bitwise's BITB, with Bitcoin up around a 55% since, this marks the most significant regulatory milestone in crypto's history. In Hughan's view, this could be bigger. Quote, I believe it sets the stage for a long term sustained rally in crypto assets beyond Bitcoin, and that's where you need to be careful with this guy. The largest beneficiaries are Shitcoin number one, Shitcoin number two, and decentralized Shitville or DeFi, assets like Uniswap and Aave. Now Matt Hugan's probably not wrong, but these are all shit coins.
They mean nothing. Continuing in the hours leading up to the vote, crypto supporters sent more than 60,000 emails to senators urging them to support the bill according to advocacy group Stand With Crypto. Quote, this groundbreaking bipartisan legislation will bring America's payment system into the twenty first century, Republican senator Bill Hagerty who led the legislation said. However, not everyone is happy about this bill with some warning that it could create a backdoor towards a central bank digital currency. Democrat senator senator Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren also criticized the bill for overlooking president Trump's crypto ties and family connections to World Liberty Financial's USD one stablecoin.
The Genius Act legislation would mandate full backing of stablecoins with US Treasuries and US dollar equivalents as well as introduce provisions related to foreign issuers. The bill also required federal bank regulator registration and annual audits for issuers with market capitalizations exceeding $50,000,000,000. Stablecoin issuers will also need to apply anti money laundering restrictions to their tokens. So, again, if you were confused as what the Genius Act does here in The United States, it's the same shit as Hong Kong. They're going to allow JPMorgan Chase to spin up their own bank branded stablecoin that is not USDT, that is not USDC, that is not any of the other stablecoins that already exist today, they're gonna be able to spin up JPMorgan Chase stablecoin, and they will have a license to do it. We're seeing the beginnings of the regulatory moding around stable coins, but I almost can almost guarantee you that USDT or Tether is gonna still end up being on top.
Now the question, the real question is, how is Tether going to move forward? And this is what I really, really think. Tether's job is to remain outside The United States. That's, I think, what will happen. I don't think Tether is going to apply. And if they did, they would not receive a license to print their own, well, to be able to use Tether inside the domiciled United States. So not in Hawaii, not in Alaska, not in the Continental United States, and not in any of The United States territories. I think that they're go that The United States, as well as as Tether themselves, know full well that that is not where their future lies.
Tether's future lies in buying The United States debt as fast as we can print it, spin up Tether to represent that debt, thereby monetizing it the second that they release those monetized coins to the rest of the world so that we basically abscond with the rest of the world's wealth. And inside The United States, it will be up to Chase Manhattan, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. They will all spin up their own stablecoin. It's gonna be it's gonna be ugly, and I I don't like the way that that's going. But for those who say, well, this is gonna destroy Tether, no. It won't.
It will not. Tether is designed is going to be it's already a fairly effective weapon against the rest of the world. And the reason I know it's against the rest of the world is that Tether's not really backing their coin with anything but United States debt assets and some other kinds of paper. But generally speaking, this is the way that I see it going is gonna be mostly in the future backed by United States debt instrumentation. See the way this works? The the genius act is to produce stablecoins inside domiciled United States territory. Tether's job is to take the debt that we spin up and spill it out into the rest of the world.
It's it's really that simple, and it's going to work. I don't want to use JPMorgan Chase Coin, but it's going to be here, and there's nothing I can do about it. Let's finish this one off. As one of crypto's killer apps, Stablecoins has already grown to a market cap of more than $236,000,000,000 according to block data. However, they have long existed in a regulatory gray zone, the Bitwise CIO noted, but the bill would put federal weight behind them allowing big banks to issue stablecoins and merchants the ability to accept those stablecoins. Quote, with those protections in place, I expect that this will be a $2,500,000,000,000 market in no time.
Close your eyes and imagine a world where JPMorgan and Bank of America issue stablecoins, where Amazon gives you a 2% discount if you buy using stablecoins instead of Visa, and where it's as common to accept stablecoins as it is to accept Venmo and PayPal. That's the world we're going to be living in soon, end quote. In Hogan's view, stablecoins is just the beginning. Once moving dollars over blockchain networks becomes normalized with some of the largest financial institutions in the world participating, it will be a small step to moving stocks, bonds, and any other financial asset over the same rails.
Quote, and get ready to get ready to get a little nauseous here, this is the fundamental thesis for investing in non Bitcoin crypto assets like Ethereum, Solana, and the like. That $100,000,000,000,000 of financial assets will eventually move over blockchains. Passage of this bill starts that ball rolling downhill. A genius act indeed. And I've lost every bit of respect that I ever had for Matt Hoogan. I knew that it was he had the potential of being a grade a class shit coiner, and he just proved it with that particular set of state of sentences. I don't like him. I don't trust him. I never will.
In fact, it makes me makes me a little, you know, kinda watering at the mouth to, chew on something else. Like a huddle bar from my friend, Oshi. You can go get one of the best absolute best snack bars. And when I mean snack bar, I mean, this is like actually, this is a little bit more of a meal bar. There's no beef involved. There's no chicken involved. It's like, you know, it's made out of pecans and dates and all kinds of all kinds of stuff. In fact, let me just read you the ingredient list for the mint cookie hotel bar. You get them in a full in a four pack for 21,000 satoshis.
They have dates, pecan butter, peanut flour, chocolate power powder, peppermint extract, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and sea salt. That's it. That's it, man. These bars, this is what you want in your backpack when you go on a hike. Have you ever had one of those protein bars you take with you and bite into it and it's like biting into a chalk? You know, like, yeah, yeah, tasting like chalk powder from the school class board when you were like, you know, I don't know, in elementary school if they still have chalkboards. Yeah. It chalky, nasty, icky. It's it's a bad it's not only a bad flavor, it's it's it's a bad texture.
That is exactly what you will not find in Oshi's Mint Cookie Hotels Bars. Again, four pack, 21,000. Go to oshigood.us. Oshii, 0 s h I good, g 0 0 d U s. That's Oshii good dot u s. He only accepts Bitcoin. That's why he's in the circle p today because if you're not in the circle or if you're not taking Bitcoin for your goods and services, you're not in the circle p. Again, go to oshigood.us and make sure you use the coupon code bitcoin and he will not give you a discount. I know it's like, why why why do I want to put it? Because it lets both of us both Oshhee and I know that you heard about it here on the Bitcoin and podcast.
That kind of data, I we we both need that. He needs to know who made the sale for him because he's giving me Satoshis for every sale he makes. So when you support Oshii, Oshii supports me, and I can come back and support you by bringing you the Bitcoin news every single day just like this stuff. Attendees at the very first New York City crypto summit implores mayor Adams, the mayor, to end the bit license. Frank Korva is writing this one for Bitcoin magazine. Today, New York City hosted its very first ever crypto summit, and the event took place at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence, the mayor, and was attended by prominent figures from the crypto industry, many of whom are based in New York. And at the event, mayor Adams made the case that he have felt that he felt the attendees pain stating that they've been wrongfully persecuted.
And he claimed that it's now safe for those in the Bitcoin and crypto industry to both speak up and set up shop in New York. Quote, look at how they've treated you, said mayor Adams. You were treated as though you were the enemy instead of the believers, he added. You've been hiding in the shadows afraid to come out. Come out now, end quote. As Demayah continued, he recommitted to making New York the crypto capital of the world, something that he first claimed that he would do in 02/2021, though not that much has actually, you know, materialized on this front since then. New York has continued to be a jurisdiction that's nearly impossible for Bitcoin and crypto startups to do business in thanks to the BitLicense, a license required to operate a digital asset company within the state.
Obtaining a bit license often costs upwards of a hundred thousand dollars and takes months, if not years, of cutting through red tape and hopping over bureaucratic hurdles to attain. Sounds like the old fashioned, taxi medallion that they were, cost used to cost about a million dollars before Uber destroyed it. Anyway, most startups do not have the time nor the funds to obtain that. So when mayor Adams and New York City's Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Fraser, tasked the attendees at today's event with coming up with solutions that would help make New York York City a more crypto friendly jurisdiction, many of them brought up the need to abolish bit license or at least make New York City immune to its reach.
Quote, To build a thriving economy, we have to get rid of the bit license, said one attendee. We at least need to build a regulatory sandbox in New York City. Well, another attendee argued that New York City should become a sanctuary city from the bit license. Attendees made comments like these after sessions of roundtable discussions during which the attendees discussed different issues related to bitcoin and crypto before having a representative from their table share proposals with the room at large. Because the attendees agreed to honor the Chatham House rules, we cannot offer the names of those who spoke on behalf of their groups at the event. However, I can offer the names of the keynote speakers.
Another one of the another one of the attendees who said that New York license should be or New York should become a crypto sanctuary city pointed out that there is precedent for this as the city allowed the cannabis industry to operate within its borders while the rest of the state did not. Nick Spanos, who founded the first in person exchange and the earliest in person Bitcoin meeting space in New York City, the Bitcoin Center, in 2013, also made the case for New York as a crypto sanctuary city. Quote, we're giving sanctuary to immigrants. We can give sanctuary to crypto companies.
Interesting thought. Spanos went on to critique the bit license calling it into question well, calling into question its legitimacy anyway. Quote, what kind of license is it when after twelve years, there are only 30 of them, cried Spanos. That's an insider license. Yep. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz highlighted that now is the time for New York to pass legislation that will benefit the crypto industry, quote, after five years. Washington DC has said, let's embrace this technology, alluding to the notion that New York should follow the federal government's lead. Quote, New York state has not made crypto easy. It's taken a long time for people to get licenses, he added. And then Novogratz shared that the crypto industry is ready for takeoff.
Though he also put the onus on the industry to prove itself by creating products that provide real value to users, and he concluded by saying that thus far, he's only really seen value in Bitcoin and stable coins. I did not expect that from Mike Novogratz, honestly. I really didn't. But on the topic of stable coins, Brock Pierce, oh god, cofounder of Tether, called the Albany, New York well, Albany, to pass, assembly bill sixty two sixty six and senate bill thirty two sixty two, both of which would establish requirements for the creation and operation of limited purpose trust companies if enacted into law. And such law would seemingly play a role in enabling Tether to operate in New York. So there you go. These guys are all hanging around the mayor, mister Adams, in New York begging him to get rid of the bit license.
And I found the number 30, the amount of bit licenses that have actually been, you know, given out to be insanely low. I had no idea that there were only 30 of these light. New York has effectively walled themselves off from the rest of the world at this point, and there's probably no catching up. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down half a percent to $61.69 a barrel. Brent, North Sea is down a half percent. Natural gas is down almost a full point to $3.39 per thousand, and gasoline is down point 4% to $2.14 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are doing very, very well, all of them, including gold, Up point 85% to $33.12 and 6 dimes. Silver is up just over a point. Platinum is up just over two. Copper is crab walking sideways, still in the green. Palladium is up 1.75. Ag is mostly in the green today. Biggest winner is rough rice, three and a half percent to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate, 1.6% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third and lean hogs are down a full point. Feeder cattle are down, well, one third of a point. Oh, wow. Equities are getting slammed. There must be some news going on because everything seems to be in the red in the equities.
Dow is down 1.7%. That is a 712 shave, bringing the price to 42,060. S and P is down 1.18%. Nasdaq is down just under a point, and the S and P Mini is down, wow, 2.12%. What the hell is going on? I'm not seeing any breaking news or anything like that. So I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened, but something happened. And, oh, wow. We were up at a hundred and $9,000 when I started the show. We're already back down to a hundred and 6,640 yet. That is a $2,120,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 32.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,867,675.85 of. An average fees per block are 0.06 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis.
There are five blocks carrying 6,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at 2 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is also gonna get you in at two. Hash rate has increased from yesterday. 877.4 exahashes per second. We are due for a one and a half percent increase in difficulty in nine days, fourteen hundred and ten blocks away. And before we enter this, it's a reminder, donate to the show. You can donate to the show simply by throwing me boostograms when you're listening to the show. And you do that via podcasting two point o enabled apps like fountain.fm. That's my favorite one.
Right? I have just go to fountain.fm and they will guide you over to where you can get it on your Android or iOS phone. Stream me Satoshis. But if you don't wanna do that, take the time and give me a five star review on Apple reviews on or or Apple podcast because that helps. That puts me in places where I wouldn't normally be seen. And that one, it's not free because you have to spend your time. And that is just as much as appreciated as you guys who boost me. 10,000, 20 thousand, 30 thousand satoshis. These things make a difference. These things put smiles on my faces. They also put shoes on my kids feet. So if you will do that, I can keep this show going. Now from yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and called French fried, got Psyduck with 702.
Satoshi says Psyduck. Turkey with 500 literally says nothing. No. He actually typed it out and he actually says says nothing. Thank you, sir. With 500 sat says, thank you, sir. Very interesting. Yodel with 444 sat says, by YouTuber Cameron Coward, why would you name yourself that? And then two skulls. Little skull icons. Perma Nerd with three thirty three says, this episode should be listed or listened to by all Coinbase active losers. I mean, users. Pies with a hundred says thank you, sir, no thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use.
$10,400,000,000 Bitcoin firm Unchained has announced the first regulated Bitcoin native trust company, Oscar Perez, writing for Bitcoin Magazine. Today, the state of Wyoming has officially chartered Gannett Trust Company, the first Bitcoin native trust company in The United States according to a press release. Backed by Unchained, a leader in Bitcoin financial services, Gannet Trust is purpose built to serve individuals, family offices, and businesses integrating Bitcoin into a estate and inheritance plans, investment portfolios, trusts, and treasury strategies.
The launch of Gannet Trust directly addresses a growing need for secure, compliant bitcoin native solutions for long term wealth management. Estimates say around 3,700,000.0 Bitcoin may be lost forever, largely due to poor planning and the absence of trusted custodial tools. Gannet Trust seeks to prevent future loss by offering a suite of fiduciary services tailored to the unique needs of Bitcoin holder holders. Gannet trust will offer both qualified custody and non custodial configurations, enabling clients to manage, protect, and transfer their Bitcoin with confidence. Gannet Trust advances Unchained's long term vision of building a durable foundation for multi generational Bitcoin wealth. Quote, Bitcoin is becoming a pillar of long term wealth, said CEO of Unchained, Joe Kelly.
With Gannett Trust, we're combining the regulatory clarity of a trust company with the proven security of Unchained's collaborative custody, a major step forward. Prioritizing sovereignty, control, compliance, Gannet Trust aims to equip families and businesses with clear tax optimized strategies tailored to every aspect of Bitcoin based planning and wealth management. With the launch of Gannet Trust, Unchained adds yet another layer to its Bitcoin native infrastructure contributing to the development of institutional tools designed to support long term custody and management of Bitcoin wealth.
And this is gonna become more and more important as we move forward. The the as the price of Bitcoin starts to increase and it gets to a certain point, those that didn't really think that they were ever going to have wealth are going to find themselves in a situation where they indeed do have wealth. And the younger you are that you started this journey, the more likely that is to become. Now, I don't know anything about Gannet Trust. I do know some things about Unchained. A, they've been in the game for a long time. B, they were one of the very first people, one of the very first companies to really start looking at how are we going to handle our Bitcoin upon death.
Who gets it? How do they get it? Who gets trusted with the keys? How are keys managed? Unchained has been doing this for a long time. It seemed very clear to me that at one point or another they were going to spend something off that just does nothing but that, that wealth management for people as their Bitcoin goes beyond the lifespan of the original holder. Because this is the first generation that's ever seen Bitcoin. We're not dead yet. We have yet to really start dealing with this en masse. So just think about it. You may not want to actually spend the money to, you know, you know, do the service, but it I guess it really boils down to how much wealth do you have and how much do you want it to live on. I that that could only be answered by you.
And hopefully, we'll get an answer to the next question with which is what is days to cover m Nav? Well, this apparently has emerged as a new standard for evaluating Bitcoin equities. It's written by James Van Stratton from CoinDesk, a Bitcoin as Bitcoin continues to mature, as an institutional asset. A growing number of public companies are integrating BTC into their treasuries, sparking renewed investor interest in so called leveraged Bitcoin equities or LBEs. But with valuations soaring, the key question remains, Which companies are genuinely earning their premiums through consistent BTC accumulation and which ones are simply coasting on reputation?
Well, there's a new metric to answer that and it's named days to cover MNAV and it's emerging as a sharp analytical tool to answer this question. It measures how long it would take a company, at its current Bitcoin stacking pace, to accumulate enough Bitcoin to justify its actual market cap based on its current multiple of net asset value and its daily BTC yield. Multiple of net asset value. That's m Nav. The formula, days to cover equals the natural log of m Nav divided by the natural log of one plus BTC yield. That accounts for compounding, providing a forward looking growth adjusted view of a company's valuation.
The latest data points from an article by MicroStrategist paints a revealing picture, strategy, the institutional leader holds an m nav of 2.1, but a low daily BTC yield of just 0.12% resulting in a sluggish six hundred and twenty six days to cover its valuation. In contrast, Upstart's Meta Planet and the Blockchain Group are compounding rapidly with one hundred day one hundred day average BTC yields near 1.5%, allowing them to support much higher m navs like five point zero eight and nine point four respectively in just 01/2010 and January.
In addition, similar scientific, SMLR, with an mNAV of 1.5 and a yield of 0.33% post a competitive one hundred and fourteen days to cover. These figures reinforced by the days to cover mNAV chart from October 2024 to May 2025 shows a clear trend. Faster accumulators are compressing their coverage times and catching up to more established players. Meta Planet and Alt BG, in particular, have seen investor enthusiasm surge as they demonstrate the ability to turn BTC compounding into valuation to the upside. In a sector defined by speed and volatility, the days to cover mNav provides a clear data driven lens through which to evaluate long term sustainability and upside potential.
What did all that shit mean? Well, it meant that some some pencil pocket protector having geek figured out an equation that suggests how fast the company needs to stack Bitcoin to be able to rightfully say that their value that their company is really correctly valued. Get in terms of how much Bitcoin they have. So it's like you start out with a valuation, you got zero Bitcoin. You start buying Bitcoin and all of a sudden your valuation changes. So this thing seems to like, well, your valuation went up, but do you have enough Bitcoin to actually cover that valuation? Because there seems to be a lot of heat. A lot of, you know, it's a fad. Bitcoin treasury companies are very hot right now, so you get valuations that very well may be much higher than the actual Bitcoin you have to cover that increase in your company's valuation when you started stacking Bitcoin.
So this particular equation seems to come to the rescue and makes a chart for us, yet one more chart for the chartalist to use and the fabulous autistics in this space to be able to say, we're gonna make a billion dollars today because I got me a chart. That doesn't mean that this equation is stupid. Actually makes a lot of sense. But whether or not it is indeed stupid or absolutely brilliant is not going to make a difference because here's why. You're going to see this chart being used from today until forever. Well, at least until the end of your life.
It's going to be used. It's going to be used. It's going to be used. It's going to be yet another tool in the toolbox of the traders, and they're going to think that it's going to be their way that they can the analogy would be like, I've got a system for roulette. I'm gonna go to Vegas, I'm gonna play nothing but but roulette at 35 to one odds, and I'm gonna win every time because I got a system. Yeah, buddy. It doesn't work that way. But some people are gonna make this work for them. I guarantee it. But, you know, we've got, like, three major yield metrics that Bitcoin treasury companies are using.
This one's going to be the fourth one. Just be prepared for what mayhem it may cause because it probably will cause a little bit of mayhem. But moving on to the data breach on Coinbase, we've got a number of how many people it has affected, and that number is not 10,000 like what was earlier reported. No, no, it's seven times worse than that. 69,461 users have been found to be affected by the December 2024 data breach. This is atlas21.com. Coinbase has disclosed that the personal data of almost 70,000 users was compromised during the breach in December of twenty twenty four according to documentation filed with the Maine Attorney General's office. That would be the state of Maine, okay, in The United States. So they've they've disclosed that to legal authorities.
And the disclosure comes after Coinbase announced last week that a group of hackers had demanded a $20,000,000 ransom threatening to publish the stolen data on the dark web if they didn't comply, and the attackers allegedly bribed overseas customers or rather overseas customer service agents to extract information from the company systems. Again, why they had access other than being able to screenshot or take I don't know. Maybe I don't know. Maybe somebody just put their phone up and just recorded their entire session and just recorded the screen of every single customer that they helped. And over months and months and months, they were able to extract all that information through, who knows, maybe AI.
But it seems odd if we come to find out that they had access to full databases. I I just think that that would be very, very that would not be the way that you would wanna run that shit. But, hey, Coinbase does weird stuff. So, following the reports, the SEC reportedly opened an official investigation to verify whether corn Coinbase may have inflated user metrics ahead of its 2021 initial public offering. Separately, the Department of Justice is investigating the breach at Coinbase's request according to CEO Brian Armstrong. So maybe maybe, this is, opened a can of worms that Brian Armstrong did not want opened because the Department of Justice or rather the SCC, looking at, you know, officially investigating whether or not Coinbase inflated their user metrics.
Maybe they're going, wait a minute. You said you had a lot more, users than 70,000 or, you know, whatever whatever number in their head they're putting together given these metrics. Maybe they've found something going, oh, shit. No. You guys basically didn't tell us the truth about how many users you have. So this this is a sticky situation for Brian. And honestly, I I kinda hope Brian gets caught with his pants down on this entire thing because Coinbase is one of the worst companies you could do business with, always has been, always will be. Cautionary tale to end this offer today.
Be careful with your Bitcoin. A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, and he was forced to send $500,000 at gunpoint. Vince De Aquino from Decrypt. A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, held at gunpoint, and forced to send crypto worth half a million dollars to his attackers. Festo Ivalibi, I guess is how you pronounce it, founder of crypto education hub Mitropolis Labs, was abducted May near his house on Bunwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda. And the attackers were reportedly armed and dressed in military uniforms and claimed to be security operatives of the Uganda People's Defense Force according to a formal statement from Metapolis, bless me, Afro token project account on Twitter.
The armed group allegedly forced him to unlock crypto wallets to transfer half a million in crypto to their very own controlled wallet. A portion of Afro token, a meme coin, was also sold under coercion, Metropolis Labs claimed. Quote, this is not just an attack on one person. It's an attack on a growing vision. Yeah. I don't think your meme coin should be a vision, but nobody should be held at gunpoint for this crap. Afro token was created on Sunpump, a meme coin platform on the Tron blockchain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't really give a shit. Mitropolis Labs alleges that the attack is part of a coordinated pattern involving informants posing as crypto traders, rogue law enforcement officers, and two Chinese nationals.
The firm claimed that at least 48 similar attacks have been identified with many cases being dismissed at the influence of their crime ring. Wrench attacks, thefts in which crypto holders are physically threatened, have proliferated in recent months. Earlier this year, David Ballant, cofounder of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was kidnapped and mutilated, his they took his pinky finger, as part of a ransom demand. In February, a crypto broker broke his ankles attempting to flee captors by jumping out of a window. This month, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was freed in a police raid after kidnappers demanded $8,000,000 in ransom.
The challenges with wrench attacks lies in how they are physically executed to reveal private keys or authorize transactions under duress, says Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at blockchain security firm, Syvers. Pearl suggests security methods such as multifactor authentication could help force transfers harder or to make forced transfers harder to execute without alerting others. Monitoring unusual transaction patterns or access from new devices could also help by triggering alerts or temporary freezes to protect assets, he added.
Still, wrench attacks continue amid widening income disparity and the skyrocketing value of cryptocurrencies, Harry Halpin, CEO of decentralized VPN service, Nim, told Decrypt. And yet, governments are demanding more transparency and identity data, which easily gets leaked to criminals trying to target very the very same crypto holders. Using VPNs is one of a number of techniques that crypto users could practice to maintain security, Halpin suggested. That's the end of the article, but honestly, this goes far beyond that. Going look.
I know everybody's really excited about Nas Vegas and, the, Bitcoin magazine, Bitcoin conference twenty twenty five, which is in in Las Vegas as well. If you go, you're a target. If you don't assume that, you're not doing yourself or your family or your friends any favors whatsoever. If you do assume that and you don't act accordingly, then you're still putting yourself, your friends, and your family at risk. Because if if you go away, your friends and your family are going to miss you. It's going to hurt them. Alright? It's not just about you, you you asshole.
It's about everybody that loves you. And I see I just see, like, complete disregard for personal security. In a time when when you may not think you need personal security, you could be okay. Listen. Here's the way this works. Let's say this. You've got no Bitcoin. You own zero Bitcoin. You've told everybody that you can tell that you hold hold no Bitcoin. You've done it on Twitter, and you've got 50,000 followers that you don't hold any Bitcoin. You hate Bitcoin. It's like you you like Peter Schiff. You like gold. Right? You've told everybody on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Blue Sky, on Noster, on Twitter, on every possible way that you could get your message out on your podcast, on your YouTube channel. You hate fucking Bitcoin as much as you can hate it. And yet, you walk in to the conference in Las Vegas, Bitcoin Twenty Twenty Five, you're a target.
Simply because you're there. It does not matter how much Bitcoin you have or how little Bitcoin you have or if you have no Bitcoin. If you are present at any of these conferences, you're a target. If you're out on the street and you're not even at a conference, you're just walking down the street minding your own damn business and you've got a bright orange t shirt on with a Bitcoin symbol on it, you could still own no Bitcoin. Buddy, you're a target. They don't know that you don't own Bitcoin. They don't know that you don't like Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got a thousand Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got a hundred Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got point $0.01 Bitcoin.
All they see is that you're wearing a great big target on your back. If you're not acting accordingly with your own personal security, if you're not watching your exits, if you're not looking at who you're with, if you're not looking at how you might be able to get away if shit goes south, then you're not acting accordingly. You're not taking your personal security seriously. And when you don't take your personal security seriously when you're in the situation such as we find ourselves in, then you're not taking your family seriously and you're not taking your friends seriously.
It's not just about you asshole, it's about everybody around you. And if you don't figure that shit out now, you could end up like this guy in Uganda. You could end up, like, almost getting abducted like that crypto founder's daughter and his granddaughter in France. Right? All the rest of these attacks, they're not going away. Hell, just yesterday, I had to tell you about France having no situation but to give crypto founders of their own police hotline. They have, like, special dispensation to be rescued first before anybody else because they're crypto because it's so bad in France. Man, don't let that shit be you.
Do not let that shit be you. Be safe. Be careful. Take your security seriously, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:10AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the May 2025, and this is episode 1,100 of Bitcoin. And you're here because there's news about Bitcoin. Yes, there is. I'm sure that everybody is losing their ever loving minds over yet another all time high. We'll see if it holds. And then while we're doing that, the reason you're here, there's news about Bitcoin. And Vivek Ramaswamy's Strive is right in the thick of things. We'll tell you about that one. Hong Kong is in, all in, on stablecoins, as is Bitwise chief investment officer. And then we've got the attendees at the very first New York City crypto summit. They're begging the mega, the mega, mega Adams. They're they're begging. They're they're supplicating themselves. They are trying to get something done.
And, yeah, we'll tell you all about it. And then Unchained Capital has announced a regulated Bitcoin native trust company. We'll see what the hell that entails. And then over to days to cover MNAV. Do you have any idea what the hell that means? Well, I kind of do. It seems to be, yet a new Bitcoin metric for Bitcoin treasury companies. And Coinbase, the extent of their data breach, they're not even calling it a hack anymore. They're calling it what it should be called, a data breach. The extent of which is pretty disturbing, honestly. And then we will have yet yet another cautionary tale at the end of the show.
Please, guys, stop wearing Bitcoin swag. Don't tell people you own Bitcoin. If you're gonna go to a Bitcoin conference, just be aware you are a target. Now on to the news of the day, Brendan or Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph is gonna tell us about Strive targeting 75,000 Bitcoin from Mount Gox claims to build their very own Bitcoin treasury because apparently that's the thing to do nowadays. Vivek Ramaswamy Strive is looking to build its very own Bitcoin holdings by purchasing distressed Bitcoin claims at a discount starting with claims tied to 75,000 Bitcoin at the bankrupt crypto exchange, Mt. Gox.
Strive said in a May 20 regulatory filing that it has partnered with something called one one seven Castell Advisory Group LLC to target claims to Bitcoin that have received definitive legal rulings but are still awaiting distribution. The company said buying the claims would allow it to purchase Bitcoin at a discount and grow its Bitcoin per share ratio ahead of its planned reverse merger with asset entities, and that one is expected to be completed sometime in the middle of this year. Strive hasn't disclosed any any Bitcoin holdings at all, but claims it will face fewer restrictions on purchasing Bitcoin than companies going public through special purpose acquisition company mergers.
Strive said that it would need shareholder approval to pursue these Mt. Gox claims, and the company said it intends to lodge a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to outline the full terms of the proposed transaction. A proxy statement would then be sent to shareholders to seek their approval. Strive would need to obtain shareholder approval relatively soon as Mt. Gox is expected to fully repay its creditors by October thirty first of this year. The Japanese based Mt. Gox was the largest Bitcoin exchange before it collapsed in 2014 from a security breach that they had themselves that resulted in the theft of approximately 750,000 Bitcoin.
Strive's pivot to become a Bitcoin Treasury Company or BTC reflects a broader industry trend as yet more firms look to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet as a long term strategic asset. Twenty one Capital is another newly launched Bitcoin treasury firm that has received backing from the likes of Tether, SoftBank, and Cantor Fitzgerald. The Jack Mallers led firm plans to launch with 42,000 Bitcoin once it completes a blank check merger with Cantor Equity Partners. Asset entities, ticker symbol a s s t, Why anybody has the word ass anywhere close to their ticker symbol is beyond me, but whatever. A social media marketing company.
So asset entities, this this company that Strive is supposed to merge with is a social media marketing company. They said that Strive announced it would merge with them on May to create a Bitcoin investment company, and it has seen its shares close on May up 18.2% to $7.74 according to Google Finance. The latest share price bump brings its market cap to a measly, pitily ass $122,100,000, and ass is now up 1,170 percent since Strive announced its merger plan. Strive is expected to own 94.2% of the company or rather the combined entity once the reverse merger is complete while asset entities will hold the remaining 5.8%.
Jeez. I'm not exactly sure what they were aiming to do there, but they just lost their entire company. The merged companies will be named Strive and asset entities. Wow. And will still trade under the ASST ticker. So Strive wants to become a BTC company. They're merging with a social media marketing company. Honestly, this just this sounds like haphazard aggregation of a whole bunch of shit companies that are out there. They just happen to be close enough together that they're like, yeah. Sure. We have absolutely no idea how we fit together, but, you know, whatever. Gravity. Let's just glom onto each other and see what happens because, you know, Bitcoin asset.
Look, I'll you know, me, this is a Bitcoin show. The name of the show is Bitcoin and but even I'm sitting here going, we may be getting a little overheated on this whole Bitcoin treasury company thing because I don't know, man. It just it seems seems, it just feels very FTX like. I don't think it ends the way FTX does, but I I I've been wrong before. Maybe it's just me being hopeful that we don't become just entirely too stupid, but who knows? We'll we'll have to wait and see. Now Hong Kong, getting over to into Asia, they themselves have passed their very own stablecoin bill, and it's set to open licensing by the end of this year.
Hong Kong's legislative council passed a stablecoin bill, paving the way for regulated framework that could position the region as a global leader in digital assets and, God forbid, web three development. In a May 21 post on Twitter, legislative council member Johnny Kit Chang said that the bill had passed its third reading, clearing the final hurdle for adoption. Quote, it is expected that by the end of this year, major institutions will be able to apply to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to become, and here it is, licensed stablecoin issuers.
Said. That's n g, and I don't know how to pronounce it, but, hey, it's for me. That's the that's the crux of the stablecoin bill here in The United States as well, to allow banks to issue issue their own stablecoins. That's that's that's the regulate that's where that gets regulated, is that they will get a license. And that license will then allow them to create their own stablecoins, not dabble and and trade and do stuff with USDT or Tether or USDC, a circle zone stable coin. No. No. No. Be able to spin up their very own stable coins. So when I told you that a raft of stablecoins was going to be coming down the river the likes of which you've never seen in comparison to the amount of ICOs that we got, the whole shitcoin, Cambrian, you know, explosion.
Right? All of that is going to pale in comparison to the amount of stable coin onslaught that you're about to see because of these stable coin bills. But according to the new Hong Kong legislation, stablecoins must be backed by fiat currencies as underlying assets. Ng and Hong Kong is welcoming global enterprises and institutions interested in issuing stablecoins to apply in Hong Kong, offering to personally assist with introductions and collaboration. Quote, I am also happy to facilitate connections and collaborate with all stakeholders to advance the development of Web three in Asia and globally with Hong Kong at the center, end quote. Ng said that the legislation marks the very first step on the road towards building Web three infrastructure in Hong Kong. Quote, the most crucial step is to develop more real world applications.
Ng said that stablecoin adoption has the potential to drive innovation in retail payments, cross border trade, and peer to peer transactions, and added that he encourages the development and adoption of stablecoins since they represent a, well, a major financial innovation. Regarding enhancing market stability, said that, distributing interest earnings to stablecoin holders is on the table. According to Ng, I wish they'd used one of his other names. What is one of his other names? Let's see. Let's just call him Chong from now on because Ng just sounds bad. Anyway, Chong's remarks that yield bearing stablecoins are more competitive follow recent positive data.
Research indicates that yield bearing stablecoins have soared to $11,000,000,000 in circulation, representing 4.5% of the total stablecoin market, a steep climb from just $1,500,000,000 and only 1% of the market share at the start of last year 2024. That's the end of the article. The stablecoin business is definitely going to get out of hand. It's going to get out of hand, and the reason is because it's following the exact same path as fiat currencies except at this point they're just completely dispensing with any of the smoke and mirrors that disguised fiat currency for what it really was fiat currency They're they just said, you know what? It's just we're just gonna call what it's being tied to as fiat currency, and we're seeking yield.
And, again, as we should always ask ourselves, where does the yield come from? And in this particular case, it gets even more rampant because where is the yield going to come from in with thousands, tens of thousands, possibly a hundred thousand or multiple hundreds of thousands of different stablecoins. This is the Scambrian explosion all over again. Right? Who's gonna win, Tether? None of the nobody's gonna want that. Like the, the, like your bank at the end of your block, your like, whatever, like Hong Kong fifth and main bank. Right. Or, or fifth and, and, like, noodle bowl alley bank, you know, like your your four employee bank. They're gonna have their own stable coin. Are you really gonna deal on that stable coin?
Or are you gonna use something that everybody recognizes? And that's either gonna be Bitcoin or Tether. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. This entire experiment is doomed. Will it will it work for the people that want it to work, or will it work for the people that are going to make the most money out of it? Yeah. For a very short time to a medium term, you know, time frame, yes. It'll be fine. I'm always thinking about the long term. And all I see is a it's like rinse and repeat of altcoins, which was rinse and repeat of ICOs. You know? Or, well, ICO depending on where you were when you first came into the space, It's all all coins technically came first and then there were ICOs and then we had all the rest of the crap, the NFTs, the ordinals, the inscriptions. So this is just another in the long line of we've got to figure out a way to get ours.
These stable coins don't mean a goddamn thing. Not when there's a hundred thousand of them, just like just like cryptocurrency doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Not when there's hundreds of thousands of them. The only thing that actually matters is Bitcoin. And the only thing that matters after that that's going to going to tie itself to the fiat world land is gonna be Tether. Everything else isn't going to matter, and it's not that I'm suggesting that Tether is good. I'm neutral on Tether because I don't use it, and there's nothing I can do about its existence. There's also nothing I can do about the rest of this bullshit, but it's going to happen whether we want it to or not because we have yet more stable coin bill news.
The stable coin bill could pave the way for a multi year crypto bull market according to Bitwise CIO. This is written by James Hunt out of the block. The US Senate voted to progress landmark stablecoin legislation on Monday, and I've already told you about that. A move that could pave the way for a multiyear digital asset bull market according to Matt Hugan, Bitwise CIO. He described it as akin to Wall Street and crypto getting married. Be careful with this guy, and you'll see why here in a few minutes. Senators voted 66 to 32 to advance the Genius Act with bipartisan support, including 16 Democrats who flipped from opposing it last week.
They flipped 16 Democrats from last week to this week. 16 flipped their vote. That's important to note, by the way. That's why I'm saying it three times. Crypto leaders and lawmakers hailed the vote as as a historic win that could help ensure United States dollar dominance. However, following the cloture vote, lawmakers must approve any potential amendments before holding a final vote on the bill. Politicians in Washington did the right thing, Hugan wrote in a note to clients late Tuesday. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but it looks like we will have our first fully fledged piece of crypto legislation passed in The United States by this summer.
Aside from the January 2024 approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs including Bitwise's BITB, with Bitcoin up around a 55% since, this marks the most significant regulatory milestone in crypto's history. In Hughan's view, this could be bigger. Quote, I believe it sets the stage for a long term sustained rally in crypto assets beyond Bitcoin, and that's where you need to be careful with this guy. The largest beneficiaries are Shitcoin number one, Shitcoin number two, and decentralized Shitville or DeFi, assets like Uniswap and Aave. Now Matt Hugan's probably not wrong, but these are all shit coins.
They mean nothing. Continuing in the hours leading up to the vote, crypto supporters sent more than 60,000 emails to senators urging them to support the bill according to advocacy group Stand With Crypto. Quote, this groundbreaking bipartisan legislation will bring America's payment system into the twenty first century, Republican senator Bill Hagerty who led the legislation said. However, not everyone is happy about this bill with some warning that it could create a backdoor towards a central bank digital currency. Democrat senator senator Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren also criticized the bill for overlooking president Trump's crypto ties and family connections to World Liberty Financial's USD one stablecoin.
The Genius Act legislation would mandate full backing of stablecoins with US Treasuries and US dollar equivalents as well as introduce provisions related to foreign issuers. The bill also required federal bank regulator registration and annual audits for issuers with market capitalizations exceeding $50,000,000,000. Stablecoin issuers will also need to apply anti money laundering restrictions to their tokens. So, again, if you were confused as what the Genius Act does here in The United States, it's the same shit as Hong Kong. They're going to allow JPMorgan Chase to spin up their own bank branded stablecoin that is not USDT, that is not USDC, that is not any of the other stablecoins that already exist today, they're gonna be able to spin up JPMorgan Chase stablecoin, and they will have a license to do it. We're seeing the beginnings of the regulatory moding around stable coins, but I almost can almost guarantee you that USDT or Tether is gonna still end up being on top.
Now the question, the real question is, how is Tether going to move forward? And this is what I really, really think. Tether's job is to remain outside The United States. That's, I think, what will happen. I don't think Tether is going to apply. And if they did, they would not receive a license to print their own, well, to be able to use Tether inside the domiciled United States. So not in Hawaii, not in Alaska, not in the Continental United States, and not in any of The United States territories. I think that they're go that The United States, as well as as Tether themselves, know full well that that is not where their future lies.
Tether's future lies in buying The United States debt as fast as we can print it, spin up Tether to represent that debt, thereby monetizing it the second that they release those monetized coins to the rest of the world so that we basically abscond with the rest of the world's wealth. And inside The United States, it will be up to Chase Manhattan, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. They will all spin up their own stablecoin. It's gonna be it's gonna be ugly, and I I don't like the way that that's going. But for those who say, well, this is gonna destroy Tether, no. It won't.
It will not. Tether is designed is going to be it's already a fairly effective weapon against the rest of the world. And the reason I know it's against the rest of the world is that Tether's not really backing their coin with anything but United States debt assets and some other kinds of paper. But generally speaking, this is the way that I see it going is gonna be mostly in the future backed by United States debt instrumentation. See the way this works? The the genius act is to produce stablecoins inside domiciled United States territory. Tether's job is to take the debt that we spin up and spill it out into the rest of the world.
It's it's really that simple, and it's going to work. I don't want to use JPMorgan Chase Coin, but it's going to be here, and there's nothing I can do about it. Let's finish this one off. As one of crypto's killer apps, Stablecoins has already grown to a market cap of more than $236,000,000,000 according to block data. However, they have long existed in a regulatory gray zone, the Bitwise CIO noted, but the bill would put federal weight behind them allowing big banks to issue stablecoins and merchants the ability to accept those stablecoins. Quote, with those protections in place, I expect that this will be a $2,500,000,000,000 market in no time.
Close your eyes and imagine a world where JPMorgan and Bank of America issue stablecoins, where Amazon gives you a 2% discount if you buy using stablecoins instead of Visa, and where it's as common to accept stablecoins as it is to accept Venmo and PayPal. That's the world we're going to be living in soon, end quote. In Hogan's view, stablecoins is just the beginning. Once moving dollars over blockchain networks becomes normalized with some of the largest financial institutions in the world participating, it will be a small step to moving stocks, bonds, and any other financial asset over the same rails.
Quote, and get ready to get ready to get a little nauseous here, this is the fundamental thesis for investing in non Bitcoin crypto assets like Ethereum, Solana, and the like. That $100,000,000,000,000 of financial assets will eventually move over blockchains. Passage of this bill starts that ball rolling downhill. A genius act indeed. And I've lost every bit of respect that I ever had for Matt Hoogan. I knew that it was he had the potential of being a grade a class shit coiner, and he just proved it with that particular set of state of sentences. I don't like him. I don't trust him. I never will.
In fact, it makes me makes me a little, you know, kinda watering at the mouth to, chew on something else. Like a huddle bar from my friend, Oshi. You can go get one of the best absolute best snack bars. And when I mean snack bar, I mean, this is like actually, this is a little bit more of a meal bar. There's no beef involved. There's no chicken involved. It's like, you know, it's made out of pecans and dates and all kinds of all kinds of stuff. In fact, let me just read you the ingredient list for the mint cookie hotel bar. You get them in a full in a four pack for 21,000 satoshis.
They have dates, pecan butter, peanut flour, chocolate power powder, peppermint extract, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and sea salt. That's it. That's it, man. These bars, this is what you want in your backpack when you go on a hike. Have you ever had one of those protein bars you take with you and bite into it and it's like biting into a chalk? You know, like, yeah, yeah, tasting like chalk powder from the school class board when you were like, you know, I don't know, in elementary school if they still have chalkboards. Yeah. It chalky, nasty, icky. It's it's a bad it's not only a bad flavor, it's it's it's a bad texture.
That is exactly what you will not find in Oshi's Mint Cookie Hotels Bars. Again, four pack, 21,000. Go to oshigood.us. Oshii, 0 s h I good, g 0 0 d U s. That's Oshii good dot u s. He only accepts Bitcoin. That's why he's in the circle p today because if you're not in the circle or if you're not taking Bitcoin for your goods and services, you're not in the circle p. Again, go to oshigood.us and make sure you use the coupon code bitcoin and he will not give you a discount. I know it's like, why why why do I want to put it? Because it lets both of us both Oshhee and I know that you heard about it here on the Bitcoin and podcast.
That kind of data, I we we both need that. He needs to know who made the sale for him because he's giving me Satoshis for every sale he makes. So when you support Oshii, Oshii supports me, and I can come back and support you by bringing you the Bitcoin news every single day just like this stuff. Attendees at the very first New York City crypto summit implores mayor Adams, the mayor, to end the bit license. Frank Korva is writing this one for Bitcoin magazine. Today, New York City hosted its very first ever crypto summit, and the event took place at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence, the mayor, and was attended by prominent figures from the crypto industry, many of whom are based in New York. And at the event, mayor Adams made the case that he have felt that he felt the attendees pain stating that they've been wrongfully persecuted.
And he claimed that it's now safe for those in the Bitcoin and crypto industry to both speak up and set up shop in New York. Quote, look at how they've treated you, said mayor Adams. You were treated as though you were the enemy instead of the believers, he added. You've been hiding in the shadows afraid to come out. Come out now, end quote. As Demayah continued, he recommitted to making New York the crypto capital of the world, something that he first claimed that he would do in 02/2021, though not that much has actually, you know, materialized on this front since then. New York has continued to be a jurisdiction that's nearly impossible for Bitcoin and crypto startups to do business in thanks to the BitLicense, a license required to operate a digital asset company within the state.
Obtaining a bit license often costs upwards of a hundred thousand dollars and takes months, if not years, of cutting through red tape and hopping over bureaucratic hurdles to attain. Sounds like the old fashioned, taxi medallion that they were, cost used to cost about a million dollars before Uber destroyed it. Anyway, most startups do not have the time nor the funds to obtain that. So when mayor Adams and New York City's Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Fraser, tasked the attendees at today's event with coming up with solutions that would help make New York York City a more crypto friendly jurisdiction, many of them brought up the need to abolish bit license or at least make New York City immune to its reach.
Quote, To build a thriving economy, we have to get rid of the bit license, said one attendee. We at least need to build a regulatory sandbox in New York City. Well, another attendee argued that New York City should become a sanctuary city from the bit license. Attendees made comments like these after sessions of roundtable discussions during which the attendees discussed different issues related to bitcoin and crypto before having a representative from their table share proposals with the room at large. Because the attendees agreed to honor the Chatham House rules, we cannot offer the names of those who spoke on behalf of their groups at the event. However, I can offer the names of the keynote speakers.
Another one of the another one of the attendees who said that New York license should be or New York should become a crypto sanctuary city pointed out that there is precedent for this as the city allowed the cannabis industry to operate within its borders while the rest of the state did not. Nick Spanos, who founded the first in person exchange and the earliest in person Bitcoin meeting space in New York City, the Bitcoin Center, in 2013, also made the case for New York as a crypto sanctuary city. Quote, we're giving sanctuary to immigrants. We can give sanctuary to crypto companies.
Interesting thought. Spanos went on to critique the bit license calling it into question well, calling into question its legitimacy anyway. Quote, what kind of license is it when after twelve years, there are only 30 of them, cried Spanos. That's an insider license. Yep. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz highlighted that now is the time for New York to pass legislation that will benefit the crypto industry, quote, after five years. Washington DC has said, let's embrace this technology, alluding to the notion that New York should follow the federal government's lead. Quote, New York state has not made crypto easy. It's taken a long time for people to get licenses, he added. And then Novogratz shared that the crypto industry is ready for takeoff.
Though he also put the onus on the industry to prove itself by creating products that provide real value to users, and he concluded by saying that thus far, he's only really seen value in Bitcoin and stable coins. I did not expect that from Mike Novogratz, honestly. I really didn't. But on the topic of stable coins, Brock Pierce, oh god, cofounder of Tether, called the Albany, New York well, Albany, to pass, assembly bill sixty two sixty six and senate bill thirty two sixty two, both of which would establish requirements for the creation and operation of limited purpose trust companies if enacted into law. And such law would seemingly play a role in enabling Tether to operate in New York. So there you go. These guys are all hanging around the mayor, mister Adams, in New York begging him to get rid of the bit license.
And I found the number 30, the amount of bit licenses that have actually been, you know, given out to be insanely low. I had no idea that there were only 30 of these light. New York has effectively walled themselves off from the rest of the world at this point, and there's probably no catching up. Let's run the numbers. CNBC futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is down half a percent to $61.69 a barrel. Brent, North Sea is down a half percent. Natural gas is down almost a full point to $3.39 per thousand, and gasoline is down point 4% to $2.14 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are doing very, very well, all of them, including gold, Up point 85% to $33.12 and 6 dimes. Silver is up just over a point. Platinum is up just over two. Copper is crab walking sideways, still in the green. Palladium is up 1.75. Ag is mostly in the green today. Biggest winner is rough rice, three and a half percent to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate, 1.6% to the downside. Live cattle is up a third and lean hogs are down a full point. Feeder cattle are down, well, one third of a point. Oh, wow. Equities are getting slammed. There must be some news going on because everything seems to be in the red in the equities.
Dow is down 1.7%. That is a 712 shave, bringing the price to 42,060. S and P is down 1.18%. Nasdaq is down just under a point, and the S and P Mini is down, wow, 2.12%. What the hell is going on? I'm not seeing any breaking news or anything like that. So I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened, but something happened. And, oh, wow. We were up at a hundred and $9,000 when I started the show. We're already back down to a hundred and 6,640 yet. That is a $2,120,000,000,000 market cap, and we can get 32.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,867,675.85 of. An average fees per block are 0.06 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis.
There are five blocks carrying 6,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at 2 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is also gonna get you in at two. Hash rate has increased from yesterday. 877.4 exahashes per second. We are due for a one and a half percent increase in difficulty in nine days, fourteen hundred and ten blocks away. And before we enter this, it's a reminder, donate to the show. You can donate to the show simply by throwing me boostograms when you're listening to the show. And you do that via podcasting two point o enabled apps like fountain.fm. That's my favorite one.
Right? I have just go to fountain.fm and they will guide you over to where you can get it on your Android or iOS phone. Stream me Satoshis. But if you don't wanna do that, take the time and give me a five star review on Apple reviews on or or Apple podcast because that helps. That puts me in places where I wouldn't normally be seen. And that one, it's not free because you have to spend your time. And that is just as much as appreciated as you guys who boost me. 10,000, 20 thousand, 30 thousand satoshis. These things make a difference. These things put smiles on my faces. They also put shoes on my kids feet. So if you will do that, I can keep this show going. Now from yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and called French fried, got Psyduck with 702.
Satoshi says Psyduck. Turkey with 500 literally says nothing. No. He actually typed it out and he actually says says nothing. Thank you, sir. With 500 sat says, thank you, sir. Very interesting. Yodel with 444 sat says, by YouTuber Cameron Coward, why would you name yourself that? And then two skulls. Little skull icons. Perma Nerd with three thirty three says, this episode should be listed or listened to by all Coinbase active losers. I mean, users. Pies with a hundred says thank you, sir, no thank you. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use.
$10,400,000,000 Bitcoin firm Unchained has announced the first regulated Bitcoin native trust company, Oscar Perez, writing for Bitcoin Magazine. Today, the state of Wyoming has officially chartered Gannett Trust Company, the first Bitcoin native trust company in The United States according to a press release. Backed by Unchained, a leader in Bitcoin financial services, Gannet Trust is purpose built to serve individuals, family offices, and businesses integrating Bitcoin into a estate and inheritance plans, investment portfolios, trusts, and treasury strategies.
The launch of Gannet Trust directly addresses a growing need for secure, compliant bitcoin native solutions for long term wealth management. Estimates say around 3,700,000.0 Bitcoin may be lost forever, largely due to poor planning and the absence of trusted custodial tools. Gannet Trust seeks to prevent future loss by offering a suite of fiduciary services tailored to the unique needs of Bitcoin holder holders. Gannet trust will offer both qualified custody and non custodial configurations, enabling clients to manage, protect, and transfer their Bitcoin with confidence. Gannet Trust advances Unchained's long term vision of building a durable foundation for multi generational Bitcoin wealth. Quote, Bitcoin is becoming a pillar of long term wealth, said CEO of Unchained, Joe Kelly.
With Gannett Trust, we're combining the regulatory clarity of a trust company with the proven security of Unchained's collaborative custody, a major step forward. Prioritizing sovereignty, control, compliance, Gannet Trust aims to equip families and businesses with clear tax optimized strategies tailored to every aspect of Bitcoin based planning and wealth management. With the launch of Gannet Trust, Unchained adds yet another layer to its Bitcoin native infrastructure contributing to the development of institutional tools designed to support long term custody and management of Bitcoin wealth.
And this is gonna become more and more important as we move forward. The the as the price of Bitcoin starts to increase and it gets to a certain point, those that didn't really think that they were ever going to have wealth are going to find themselves in a situation where they indeed do have wealth. And the younger you are that you started this journey, the more likely that is to become. Now, I don't know anything about Gannet Trust. I do know some things about Unchained. A, they've been in the game for a long time. B, they were one of the very first people, one of the very first companies to really start looking at how are we going to handle our Bitcoin upon death.
Who gets it? How do they get it? Who gets trusted with the keys? How are keys managed? Unchained has been doing this for a long time. It seemed very clear to me that at one point or another they were going to spend something off that just does nothing but that, that wealth management for people as their Bitcoin goes beyond the lifespan of the original holder. Because this is the first generation that's ever seen Bitcoin. We're not dead yet. We have yet to really start dealing with this en masse. So just think about it. You may not want to actually spend the money to, you know, you know, do the service, but it I guess it really boils down to how much wealth do you have and how much do you want it to live on. I that that could only be answered by you.
And hopefully, we'll get an answer to the next question with which is what is days to cover m Nav? Well, this apparently has emerged as a new standard for evaluating Bitcoin equities. It's written by James Van Stratton from CoinDesk, a Bitcoin as Bitcoin continues to mature, as an institutional asset. A growing number of public companies are integrating BTC into their treasuries, sparking renewed investor interest in so called leveraged Bitcoin equities or LBEs. But with valuations soaring, the key question remains, Which companies are genuinely earning their premiums through consistent BTC accumulation and which ones are simply coasting on reputation?
Well, there's a new metric to answer that and it's named days to cover MNAV and it's emerging as a sharp analytical tool to answer this question. It measures how long it would take a company, at its current Bitcoin stacking pace, to accumulate enough Bitcoin to justify its actual market cap based on its current multiple of net asset value and its daily BTC yield. Multiple of net asset value. That's m Nav. The formula, days to cover equals the natural log of m Nav divided by the natural log of one plus BTC yield. That accounts for compounding, providing a forward looking growth adjusted view of a company's valuation.
The latest data points from an article by MicroStrategist paints a revealing picture, strategy, the institutional leader holds an m nav of 2.1, but a low daily BTC yield of just 0.12% resulting in a sluggish six hundred and twenty six days to cover its valuation. In contrast, Upstart's Meta Planet and the Blockchain Group are compounding rapidly with one hundred day one hundred day average BTC yields near 1.5%, allowing them to support much higher m navs like five point zero eight and nine point four respectively in just 01/2010 and January.
In addition, similar scientific, SMLR, with an mNAV of 1.5 and a yield of 0.33% post a competitive one hundred and fourteen days to cover. These figures reinforced by the days to cover mNAV chart from October 2024 to May 2025 shows a clear trend. Faster accumulators are compressing their coverage times and catching up to more established players. Meta Planet and Alt BG, in particular, have seen investor enthusiasm surge as they demonstrate the ability to turn BTC compounding into valuation to the upside. In a sector defined by speed and volatility, the days to cover mNav provides a clear data driven lens through which to evaluate long term sustainability and upside potential.
What did all that shit mean? Well, it meant that some some pencil pocket protector having geek figured out an equation that suggests how fast the company needs to stack Bitcoin to be able to rightfully say that their value that their company is really correctly valued. Get in terms of how much Bitcoin they have. So it's like you start out with a valuation, you got zero Bitcoin. You start buying Bitcoin and all of a sudden your valuation changes. So this thing seems to like, well, your valuation went up, but do you have enough Bitcoin to actually cover that valuation? Because there seems to be a lot of heat. A lot of, you know, it's a fad. Bitcoin treasury companies are very hot right now, so you get valuations that very well may be much higher than the actual Bitcoin you have to cover that increase in your company's valuation when you started stacking Bitcoin.
So this particular equation seems to come to the rescue and makes a chart for us, yet one more chart for the chartalist to use and the fabulous autistics in this space to be able to say, we're gonna make a billion dollars today because I got me a chart. That doesn't mean that this equation is stupid. Actually makes a lot of sense. But whether or not it is indeed stupid or absolutely brilliant is not going to make a difference because here's why. You're going to see this chart being used from today until forever. Well, at least until the end of your life.
It's going to be used. It's going to be used. It's going to be used. It's going to be yet another tool in the toolbox of the traders, and they're going to think that it's going to be their way that they can the analogy would be like, I've got a system for roulette. I'm gonna go to Vegas, I'm gonna play nothing but but roulette at 35 to one odds, and I'm gonna win every time because I got a system. Yeah, buddy. It doesn't work that way. But some people are gonna make this work for them. I guarantee it. But, you know, we've got, like, three major yield metrics that Bitcoin treasury companies are using.
This one's going to be the fourth one. Just be prepared for what mayhem it may cause because it probably will cause a little bit of mayhem. But moving on to the data breach on Coinbase, we've got a number of how many people it has affected, and that number is not 10,000 like what was earlier reported. No, no, it's seven times worse than that. 69,461 users have been found to be affected by the December 2024 data breach. This is atlas21.com. Coinbase has disclosed that the personal data of almost 70,000 users was compromised during the breach in December of twenty twenty four according to documentation filed with the Maine Attorney General's office. That would be the state of Maine, okay, in The United States. So they've they've disclosed that to legal authorities.
And the disclosure comes after Coinbase announced last week that a group of hackers had demanded a $20,000,000 ransom threatening to publish the stolen data on the dark web if they didn't comply, and the attackers allegedly bribed overseas customers or rather overseas customer service agents to extract information from the company systems. Again, why they had access other than being able to screenshot or take I don't know. Maybe I don't know. Maybe somebody just put their phone up and just recorded their entire session and just recorded the screen of every single customer that they helped. And over months and months and months, they were able to extract all that information through, who knows, maybe AI.
But it seems odd if we come to find out that they had access to full databases. I I just think that that would be very, very that would not be the way that you would wanna run that shit. But, hey, Coinbase does weird stuff. So, following the reports, the SEC reportedly opened an official investigation to verify whether corn Coinbase may have inflated user metrics ahead of its 2021 initial public offering. Separately, the Department of Justice is investigating the breach at Coinbase's request according to CEO Brian Armstrong. So maybe maybe, this is, opened a can of worms that Brian Armstrong did not want opened because the Department of Justice or rather the SCC, looking at, you know, officially investigating whether or not Coinbase inflated their user metrics.
Maybe they're going, wait a minute. You said you had a lot more, users than 70,000 or, you know, whatever whatever number in their head they're putting together given these metrics. Maybe they've found something going, oh, shit. No. You guys basically didn't tell us the truth about how many users you have. So this this is a sticky situation for Brian. And honestly, I I kinda hope Brian gets caught with his pants down on this entire thing because Coinbase is one of the worst companies you could do business with, always has been, always will be. Cautionary tale to end this offer today.
Be careful with your Bitcoin. A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, and he was forced to send $500,000 at gunpoint. Vince De Aquino from Decrypt. A crypto founder was abducted in Uganda, held at gunpoint, and forced to send crypto worth half a million dollars to his attackers. Festo Ivalibi, I guess is how you pronounce it, founder of crypto education hub Mitropolis Labs, was abducted May near his house on Bunwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda. And the attackers were reportedly armed and dressed in military uniforms and claimed to be security operatives of the Uganda People's Defense Force according to a formal statement from Metapolis, bless me, Afro token project account on Twitter.
The armed group allegedly forced him to unlock crypto wallets to transfer half a million in crypto to their very own controlled wallet. A portion of Afro token, a meme coin, was also sold under coercion, Metropolis Labs claimed. Quote, this is not just an attack on one person. It's an attack on a growing vision. Yeah. I don't think your meme coin should be a vision, but nobody should be held at gunpoint for this crap. Afro token was created on Sunpump, a meme coin platform on the Tron blockchain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't really give a shit. Mitropolis Labs alleges that the attack is part of a coordinated pattern involving informants posing as crypto traders, rogue law enforcement officers, and two Chinese nationals.
The firm claimed that at least 48 similar attacks have been identified with many cases being dismissed at the influence of their crime ring. Wrench attacks, thefts in which crypto holders are physically threatened, have proliferated in recent months. Earlier this year, David Ballant, cofounder of hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, was kidnapped and mutilated, his they took his pinky finger, as part of a ransom demand. In February, a crypto broker broke his ankles attempting to flee captors by jumping out of a window. This month, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was freed in a police raid after kidnappers demanded $8,000,000 in ransom.
The challenges with wrench attacks lies in how they are physically executed to reveal private keys or authorize transactions under duress, says Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at blockchain security firm, Syvers. Pearl suggests security methods such as multifactor authentication could help force transfers harder or to make forced transfers harder to execute without alerting others. Monitoring unusual transaction patterns or access from new devices could also help by triggering alerts or temporary freezes to protect assets, he added.
Still, wrench attacks continue amid widening income disparity and the skyrocketing value of cryptocurrencies, Harry Halpin, CEO of decentralized VPN service, Nim, told Decrypt. And yet, governments are demanding more transparency and identity data, which easily gets leaked to criminals trying to target very the very same crypto holders. Using VPNs is one of a number of techniques that crypto users could practice to maintain security, Halpin suggested. That's the end of the article, but honestly, this goes far beyond that. Going look.
I know everybody's really excited about Nas Vegas and, the, Bitcoin magazine, Bitcoin conference twenty twenty five, which is in in Las Vegas as well. If you go, you're a target. If you don't assume that, you're not doing yourself or your family or your friends any favors whatsoever. If you do assume that and you don't act accordingly, then you're still putting yourself, your friends, and your family at risk. Because if if you go away, your friends and your family are going to miss you. It's going to hurt them. Alright? It's not just about you, you you asshole.
It's about everybody that loves you. And I see I just see, like, complete disregard for personal security. In a time when when you may not think you need personal security, you could be okay. Listen. Here's the way this works. Let's say this. You've got no Bitcoin. You own zero Bitcoin. You've told everybody that you can tell that you hold hold no Bitcoin. You've done it on Twitter, and you've got 50,000 followers that you don't hold any Bitcoin. You hate Bitcoin. It's like you you like Peter Schiff. You like gold. Right? You've told everybody on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Blue Sky, on Noster, on Twitter, on every possible way that you could get your message out on your podcast, on your YouTube channel. You hate fucking Bitcoin as much as you can hate it. And yet, you walk in to the conference in Las Vegas, Bitcoin Twenty Twenty Five, you're a target.
Simply because you're there. It does not matter how much Bitcoin you have or how little Bitcoin you have or if you have no Bitcoin. If you are present at any of these conferences, you're a target. If you're out on the street and you're not even at a conference, you're just walking down the street minding your own damn business and you've got a bright orange t shirt on with a Bitcoin symbol on it, you could still own no Bitcoin. Buddy, you're a target. They don't know that you don't own Bitcoin. They don't know that you don't like Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got a thousand Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got a hundred Bitcoin. They don't know that you've got point $0.01 Bitcoin.
All they see is that you're wearing a great big target on your back. If you're not acting accordingly with your own personal security, if you're not watching your exits, if you're not looking at who you're with, if you're not looking at how you might be able to get away if shit goes south, then you're not acting accordingly. You're not taking your personal security seriously. And when you don't take your personal security seriously when you're in the situation such as we find ourselves in, then you're not taking your family seriously and you're not taking your friends seriously.
It's not just about you asshole, it's about everybody around you. And if you don't figure that shit out now, you could end up like this guy in Uganda. You could end up, like, almost getting abducted like that crypto founder's daughter and his granddaughter in France. Right? All the rest of these attacks, they're not going away. Hell, just yesterday, I had to tell you about France having no situation but to give crypto founders of their own police hotline. They have, like, special dispensation to be rescued first before anybody else because they're crypto because it's so bad in France. Man, don't let that shit be you.
Do not let that shit be you. Be safe. Be careful. Take your security seriously, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Bitcoin News Overview
