Join me today for Episode 891 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Jesus Hauled Before Pontius 2.0
- Jack's Block Now in Fed Crosshairs
- Coal Miner Mines Bitcoin
- Coinbase Rolls out Lightning
- They Gave CZ 4 Months
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
"Sovereignty in style"
https://theleathermint.com/
Nostr: @LeatherMint
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Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/doj-arrests-early-bitcoin-investor-roger-ver-bitcoin-jesus-on-charges-of-tax-fraud
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/prosecutors-examining-transactions-block-owner-cash-app-squarc-rcna147181
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-bitcoin-ether-etfs-attract-200m-day1
https://decrypt.co/228881/this-2-8-billion-coal-miner-has-been-mining-bitcoin-too
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/01/bitcoin-sinks-below-58k-crypto-market-drops-9-in-run-up-to-fed-decision/
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/coinbase-starts-rolling-out-lightning/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/mynode-v0-3-28/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cz-sentenced-to-4-months-in-prison/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/samourai-wallet-co-founder-keonne-rodriguez-pleads-not-guilty/
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[00:00:00]
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Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 1st day of May. It's May Day.
It's May Day 2024. This is episode 891 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is definitely open for business. And if I can get my circle p up here, I will tell you exactly what's going on. Wow. Here we go. Sovereigntyinstylefromtheleatherment.com. That is the leathermint all one word dot com Belts wallets, yeah, passport holders, cold card holders. You name it, they got it. Well, maybe not. I mean, I guess they're probably not gonna make you a man purse, otherwise known as a mersse. But if they did, I guarantee you, it would be stitched well and made out of the highest quality leather that you can find in all manner of colors, And not those garish, ugly ass colors. No. No. No. No. We're talking like good, nice, solid, slightly muted tones. It's it it It's great. It's great. It's just great. Hold on. There's an issue going on with the zap.stream Let's see if if it's going live. Why?
What the hell, man? Why are you pausing? It's this is weird. Anyway, the Leatherman's got a, Scarce Dot City auction going on. And I'm gonna throw that into the zap stream right here, so that you guys can see it. So the auction ends in a little over one day. Right now the highest bid for this particular wallet that I will describe to you, hold on, just hold your horses, is 500,000 sats. And at right now prices that's about $284 for a wallet and this isn't just any kind of wallet I started like, I I brought this wallet to you yesterday and I really wasn't up on exactly what was going on. But after having looked at this thing, this is a special this is a they've made a very special wallet.
Here's the description. It's full Bitcoin themed. Alright. So it's got the bold Bitcoin thing stamped in it. They've branded the leather with hot metal, so it's in there permanently. It's got a true block height signature backed by video. Now, the only thing that I can assume because they don't have a link to the video but the only thing that I can assume is it actually shows them branding the numbers 80 what? 840,000 into the wallet at the time that that particular halving block turned over. That's the only thing that I can assume about that video. It is shell cordovan and pueblo colored leathers.
It's fully lined. It has 8 plus 2 pockets, and I still don't know exactly what that means, but I just assume 10 pockets. Crease lines, it's got an NFC chip behind the bull, and it says it's customizable. So here's what I can only assume about what's going on with the NFC chip, that they've put a chip embedded into the leather and That you can basically program that chip to function in whatever way that you want it to function and most people I would assume would just turn that NFC chip into a lightning wallet and then you could just pay lightning invoices, at point of sale devices that have the ability to take NFC communications.
I it's really cool. That I mean, if that's what they're doing, Honestly, that's pretty as cool. It says it has a SATS chip behind the block height, which is a functioning private key. I again, they're not really filling me in all the details here. So I'm just I'm going with what I got guys. I'm going with what I got. The whole wallet is RFID shielded. So you put your regular fiat credit cards in there and nobody can, you know, take a butt scan of your private information or your credit card numbers. This is a wallet, a key, and a business card. See Twitter for more, but they don't actually give me the link to that particular tweet. So I I I don't know.
I think that this is gonna be the kind of wallet that that if you were gonna bid on something like a wallet, then this would be the wallet to bid on. Right now, there are 4 bids and Node Runner is in the top spot with 500,000 satoshis. And again, that ends up being about $284 at today's prices. So there you go. Now, I'm just gonna leave this up here, just so that you guys can check it out while we're doing the zap. Stream. And let's get into well, let's get into the news. And we all know what we're gonna begin with because we kinda gotta do it. Bitcoin Jesus has been arrested by the, what, Pharisees?
I can't remember who actually, you know, arrested Jesus and brought him to, Pontius Pilate, but it was somebody who was a dick. But Bitcoin Jesus has been arrested. The DOJ arrests Roger Ver on charges of tax fraud. This is out of Bitcoin Magazine, Nick Hoffman. Roger Ver, a prominent early investor in Bitcoin and famously dubbed Bitcoin Jesus, has been indicted by the Department of Justice on charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns. Vir was arrested over the weekend in Spain based on these criminal charges, and the United States seeks extradition for trial.
The indictment alleges that Vir, formerly of Santa Clara, California, owned and operated Memorydealers dotcom, Incorporated and Agilestar dotcom, Incorporated both of which were involved in selling computer and networking equipment. Starting in 2011, Vir reportedly began acquiring Bitcoin for himself and his companies, amassing a significant amount by 2014, totaling around 131,000 bitcoin with a value of approximately $240,000,000 and I do not know if that was at 2014 prices. Whatever. Vr then obtained citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2014 and renounced his United States citizenship shortly thereafter in a process known as expatriation.
This action subjected him to United States tax laws, including reporting capital gains from the sale of his worldwide assets, including bitcoin and paying an exit tax upon those gains. The indictment alleges that Vr provided false or misleading information to a law firm and an appraiser concealing the true number of bitcoin owned by him and his companies. This resulted in the preparation and filing of false tax returns that significantly undervalued the companies and their Bitcoin holdings. By 2017, Ver's companies still held approximately 70,000 Bitcoin, which he allegedly sold on cryptocurrency exchanges for around $240,000,000 Despite not being a US citizen at the time, Vir was still legally obligated to report to the IRS and pay taxes on certain distributions, which he allegedly failed to do, causing a loss to the IRS estimated at over $48,000,000 The indictment stated, well, I guess maybe Zelensky would be able to take his wife out to a jewelry shopping trip with 48,000,000.
I don't think it's that much, and it certainly isn't worth all this bullshit, but they're going to do it. They're sending a message. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stewart m Goldberg and United States Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges with IRS Criminal Investigation Cybercrimes Unit handling the case. An indictment is an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. Okay. So here's the the fallout, as you might imagine, was pretty intense. And it just happened to be at the time that we were coming into the Fed meeting.
And there's like a Gaza, you know, Israel ceasefire that may be in the works and that's causing all manner of pressure in the oil markets. It was just essentially what I'm saying is that it was a Conflagration of all these things that happened and then they just put the cherry on top of the cake with the whole Roger Ver arrest. Now they could have done this shit at any time but they had 10 years. It's been it's been brought to my attention by somebody on Nostrad that they have 10 years at the time of expatriation to do whatever it is that they're gonna do, to you know to Roger Vr or anybody else. So this was the last year that they were going to be able to actually file these charges. Now, here's the thing.
Many people are losing their ever loving minds that this is an attack on Bitcoin. I don't think it actually is. I think the timing is more of an attack on Bitcoin than the actual charges themselves, and here's here here's why. It wouldn't have mattered what assets memorydealers.com and Agilestar.com owned. It wouldn't have mattered. It could have been condos in the south of France. It could have been gold bricks. It could have been coins. It could have been silver. It could have been a, I don't know, a container full of Lamborghinis. If he had sold those and disposed of of those assets and not reported and bitcoin was not involved in any of this they would have done the same thing That I mean, especially when, like, you know, when it's, like, $50,000,000 that they're gonna be able to get. And again, that's a nice shopping trip for Zelensky's wife. For the rest of us, it's life changing amounts of money. The IRS, at this point, I don't think they care. They just want their they want their pound of flesh and they're going to get their pound of flesh.
So, in my opinion, Especially if we link this back to samurai, let's let's bring let's mix a little bit of samurai into our you know hot fudge sundae here Samurai was out there in public Taunting the Department of Justice does not mean that I agree with the DOJ's decision to arrest these guys But holy crap I mean you're just poking the bear don't poke the bear every every time you poke the bear somebody gets hurt and now it's gonna be the guys at samurai but again I don't necessarily think that Bitcoin itself was in the crosshairs it does clearly send a message that hey we're you know we we don't like self custody blah blah blah but yeah you know they're not there you know I just don't think that it's directly both of these events are not directly about Bitcoin itself.
You're poking the bear. Don't poke the bear. I mean many of us have accidentally poked the bear Who you know? Did but we weren't out there just thumbing our nose at the bear while we were poking the bear. Right? And both Roger Ver and Samurai guys kind of did that. Again, I don't think that they're being I don't think this is necessary, and this is clearly theft. I mean, but that goes back to just what the IRS is in the first place. It's just a it's just organized crime. It's protection you're paying protection money to not be arrested. That's all it is. If they were actually doing something with the money that was good for society, that would be one thing, but they haven't done that if if ever then in a very long time. It's just war after war after war after war.
I am funding the the the literal killing of 1,000 and hundreds of thousands of innocent people, you know, every couple of years just because somebody gets their panties in a snit that Morton Thicall and you know some of the other companies in the in the military industrial space didn't have good profits and didn't make enough money for their shareholders. I'm sick of it myself. And that's exactly, you know, if they recoup this $50,000,000 from Roger Ver, they're just gonna send it to Ukraine, or they're gonna send it to, you know, the guys over in Jerusalem or they're gonna send it to the protests for Palestine, going on on college campuses. It's definitely not going to do anybody any good. It's just going to be used to fan the flames.
But with all that said, I honestly believe that we should probably not lose our minds over the situation saying that this is that them them just coming after Bitcoin because we know that they can't not not terminally not to the very end there's 2 it's it's too widespread it's the network is too ingrained and the only way to really shut down bitcoin is to shut down the Internet and you'd have to do it worldwide. And even then, some smart individuals are probably going to figure out a way around that. And I won't get into it, but I just I I have nothing but hope for the human beings that are on this planet and I've seen them do some phenomenal things in the face of what looked like there's no way you're getting out of this. So I don't really think that we should be thinking in terms of oh, well, this is it. Dude, it's been it forever.
It happens all the time. I just honestly, people just need to calm down. We really need to calm down. Even in the face of the Cash App thing, which broke apparently for me this morning. Now this is from NBC News. We'll just read the first, you know, couple of paragraphs here. Federal prosecutors are examining the financial transactions at Block, owner of Cash App and Square. And this is Gretchen Morganson writing for nbcnews.com. Federal prosecutors are digging into internal practices at The Bloc or atBloc, the financial technology firm launched by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, discussing with a former employee alleged widespread and years long compliance lapses at the company's 2 main units Square and Cash App, 2 people with direct knowledge of the contact say.
During the discussions, the former employee provided prosecutors from Southern District of New York, of course, documents that they say show that insufficient information is collected from Square and Cash App customers to assess their risks, that Square processed thousands of transactions involving countries subject to economic sanctions, and that block processed multiple cryptocurrency transactions for terrorist groups. Of course, they're bringing in the terrorists. Most of the transactions discussed with prosecutors involving credit card transactions, dollar transfers, and Bitcoin were not reported to the government as required, the former employee said.
Block did not correct company, hold on. Block did not correct company processes when it was alerted to the breaches the former employee told prosecutors and NBC News. Roughly a 100 pages of documents the former employee provided to NBC News identified transactions, many in small dollar amounts, involving entities and countries subject to US sanction restrictions like Cuba, Iran, Russian, Venezuela as recently as last year. Alright. So that's all we really need from this. So this this is kind of interesting because Cash App has been around for years and it was around for years before they even started offering Bitcoin services like being able to buy Bitcoin being able to you know send Bitcoin to other wallets and being able to exchange Bitcoin for fiat currency and of course vice versa.
This one has more this one, I would think, sends up a red flag to me that suggests that the government is more concerned about the Bitcoin aspect with Cash App than the Roger Ver and the Samurai thing. I know that might sound a little silly but here's why there's many payment processors out there people that build point of sale devices of which of you know so this one of you know? So this one seems more convincing to me if we were to make an argument that the government is actually doing this because of Bitcoin, but there's no evidence here that they actually are.
What this looks like to me is somebody that got fired that was committing corporate espionage because they were collecting data while they were there. And the reason I say that is that this former employee provided a hundred pages of documents a 100 pages of documents this guy provided the feds and the southern district of New York, which, of course, is always in the mix when it comes to this kind of thing. That sounds like somebody was in there and they were gathering information. And either they were gathering information because that's why they were sent in there as a spook or the person got fired and grabbed what they could and immediately, you know, because his pant or his or her panties were all in a snit went all the way over to the federal, you know, regulators and and Department of Justice and said, look. They're doing shit illegal. There's no way any of these payment processors are going to be able to catch all this.
There's no way. The the regulations that have come up are so onerous and they've come up so fast nobody can reconfigure that quickly. Nobody can. All of them are probably in the same boat. So here's the you know, here's the idea. I guess here's the the advice to companies You know like treat your people well Don't fire them and if for whatever reason you're planning to fire somebody because they just suck, you know, which is no skin off of your nose, I get that. Then don't put them in a place where they can, you know, gather that much information. You know, move them to a different department, keep them there for 6 or 7 weeks, and then cut them loose. Make sure the department that you move move them to doesn't have anything that can even remotely be looked at as, you know, it's just, we put them in janitorial.
You're you're you're pushing them up for 6 weeks and then and then cut them loose. But this kind of shit, I mean, honestly, if it wouldn't surprise me if Square or Block didn't come back and sued the former employee directly for, you know, charges of, you know, corporate espionage, you know, for literally stealing their property, taking it off premises, and then providing it to somebody. Who knows? Will whistleblower protection protect this particular person I don't know honestly that the vagaries of all this is just you know lost on me But of all the three things, the Roger Ver, the Samurai, and the Cash App.
The Cash App thing is the closest to sending up a clear red flag that the government is going after Bitcoin itself Just so that's just my take on it. So we had patiently waited until, you know, April 30th for the Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong to open up. And they did. And then we immediately got a huge red dildo. This is out of Cointelegraph. Zhiyuan Sun is writing it. Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs attract over $200,000,000 on day 1. And, of course, shitcoin number 1 ETFs is included in that number, but I just can't say the name. Hong Kong spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds have attracted more than $200,000,000 in total assets on their April 30th debut.
According to data provided by Arkham Intelligence, the Bossera Hash Key Spot Bitcoin and I guess I'll say it Ether ETFs have accumulated 964 Bitcoin and over 4,000 ether respectively, totaling $71,940,000 in assets under management. Meanwhile, Eric Balchuna, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, revealed that spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs created by China AMC have amassed 123,000,000 in combined assets and at the time of publication, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has not updated the asset management data for the spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs of Harvest Global, the 3rd issuer.
However, the combined turnover turnover of these 2 ETFs has reached $23,000,000 The value of the assets solicited pales in comparison to their United States counterparts where spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted nearly $4,000,000,000 in assets under management during their 1st week of debut and 4,500,000,000 in volume on January 12th alone according or, on the 1st day of trading on Wall Street. Quote, we tried to warn everyone to lower expectations regarding Hong Kong, commented Balchunas. That said, if you localize numbers, this was big.
For example, China AMC Bitcoin ETF took in 123,000,000 on day 1, which already ranks it 6th of 82 ETFs launched in past 3 years in Hong Kong and top 20 percent overall, he added. Meanwhile, Hasky wrote that Importantly, non Hong Kong nationals can subscribe for or purchase units of the ETFs if they meet local regulatory requirements such as passing customer due diligence. In addition, Hong Kong crypto ETFs allow investors to subscribe for ETF units directly using BTC and vice versa, which is not available for their United States counterparts. And according to an April 28 survey conducted by Hong Kong regulated exchange OSL, 76.9 percent of crypto knowledgeable respondents in the city planned to invest in the novel spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs.
This positive investor sentiment powerfully points to the growing acceptance and importance of digital assets in the region's economy, and Hong Kong is once again marking its place as the digital asset hub, commented OSL's Executive Director and Head of Regulatory Affairs Gary Tu. Despite the enthusiasm, Hong Kong crypto ETFs remain accessible only to the city's estimated 6,400,000 adult residents. Mainland Chinese investors, whose numbers are north of 1,000,000,000 are currently barred from accessing these ETFs until they possess a Hong Kong residence permit. So that's the story, and we're sticking to it. And looking at the numbers, you know, the first day, it looks to me like there was less than 4, you know, dollars 4,000,000,000 actually inflowing into the ETFs.
And I'm getting that from the block. I think it's the block.com. They have an entire section on the ETFs and what the flows and assets under management are like. And if you look at it, 200,000,000 compared to what they did drag in in the United States. It's actually Eric's right. It's kind of impressive considering that there's only 6 point 4,000,000 people living in Hong Kong as it is which you know I mean Mexico City is like 25,000,000 people. I'm actually surprised Hong Kong doesn't have that, you know, that many more residents than it already does. But be that as it may, it was still a pretty successful launch.
And then we immediately hit to the downside. You what are you gonna do? You know, it's like in it's like it it we're just gonna bounce around this this particular part of the price thing and Here's the here's the thing about the giant red dildo that happened again this morning Hats off and pour one out to the 58 k gang because they can't have it, in either direction. We shot up through 58 k within a blink of an eye and we went down through 58 k within a blink of an eye. I you know, Greg and and crew at the 58 k Club, I you know, I I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Now getting into some dirty business, coal. This $2,800,000,000 coal miner has been mining Bitcoin too. Decrypt Andrew Andrew Thorvallis, a coal mining company, has revealed that it has quietly been mining Bitcoin for over 3 years. Alliance Resource Partners listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the ticker ARLP disclosed the crypto initiative during its Q1 earnings call, quote, it was just an opportunity that we saw due to the fact that we've got excessive or excess power at our mining operations, said Kerry Marshall, senior vice president and CFO at Alliance. The search for a way to monetize those spare resources the firm to purchase Bitcoin mining equipment in 2020 and 2021 during one of the largest periods of price growth in Bitcoin's history. Today, Marshall said the Boulder, Colorado based company holds 425 BTC on its balance sheet worth $25,000,000 as of writing.
ARLP has a market cap of $2,800,000,000 which is up 6% over the last 5 trading days, although it's probably down today. The disclosure means Alliance has been involved with Bitcoin for roughly as long as MicroStrategy, the world's largest Bitcoin holder, which purchased its first BTC in August of 2020. Oh, and by the way, if you didn't know, Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy bought, like, another 214 Bitcoin. And then immediately we got the red dildo. It's just it amazes me how this works. It's almost like somebody has it out for Mike. I I don't know. Anyway, quote, we're not actually out there buying Bitcoin or anything of that nature.
We're mining the Bitcoin associated with the miners that we have, he clarified. Marshall's claims are supported by the firm's Q1 8 ks report filed with the SEC, which says it held $30,300,000 worth of digital assets on its balance sheet. Alliance's embrace of Bitcoin is one example of how BTC mining can benefit the energy industry at large, albeit via a nonrenewable source. I don't give a shit. Digital currency mining is locate is location agnostic and dynamic enough to be quickly curtailed when market conditions turn unfavorable, making it a flexible means of demand response. Quote, Alliance Resources' foray into mining as a logical step considering the process's ability to harness underutilized electricity and its economic advantages.
Nishit Sharma, founder at Bitcoin mining research firm, Blocksbridge, told Decrypt, quote, over time, we anticipate the emergence of more Bitcoin mining pilot projects initiated by other prominent energy firms, Sharma added. Alliance claimed that its miners are utilizing already paid for yet underutilized electricity load implying that the firm isn't burning any additional coal just to mine more BTC. However, some think alliances reveal could still be a bad look for Bitcoin, which has been criticized by non profits and regulators for polluting the environment. Yeah, we've got better things to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. CH4 Capital cofounder Daniel Batten said he is hesitant to jump to conclusions about the company until conducting further research but conceded that Alliance's involvement doesn't help the cause of pro Bitcoin environmentalist I suspect that nuance will be lost given the low standard of analysis on Bitcoin's environmental impact by GPUs and hold on hold on I'm gonna say that again I suspect that nuance will be lost given the low standard of analysis on Bitcoin's environmental impact by, in all capital letters, GPUS and many traditional media outlets to date, Batten told Decrypt. I'm not yet convinced that it would have been burnt off anyway. Okay. So we got a coal company that is getting into it, and it appears to me that they're just using the excess energy that as they burn coal to produce electricity is actually not being used by the grid. So they're just forking it over into some Bitcoin miners and have clearly done fairly well.
And it's it's interesting because I kinda thought we would see more oil companies, getting into this than, than a coal company. Because, you know, of I will admit, of all fossil fuels coal is probably the dirtiest and a lot of that has to do with sulfur dioxide not as much as the co2 thing everybody keeps freaking out about co2. God the sulfur dioxide associated with coal burning, that can be a problem if you don't have proper scrubbers. But what's worse is the coal mining. Coal mining is just it is dirty business, man. And it has got the it's got huge potential for environmental catastrophes downstream of any watershed that it happens to be sitting on simply because it's when you pull that much stuff out of the bowels of the earth and lay it on the ground it's going to get into the water and they're shitting coal you don't want to have nothing to do with. I wouldn't go bathe in a barrel of crude oil.
I certainly wouldn't want to pour it out on the ground. Well, coal's sorted the same way. And there's just sort of it's inevitable when you mine coal. It's going to cause some really bad shit to happen to the environment but at least at least they're not letting side. We're going to run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. What do we got over here? We've got oil is taking it on the chin today, and this has everything to do with that whole Gaza thing. 3.53 to the downside brings West Texas Intermediate to $79 Brent Norcia is down 3 and a third to 83 48. Natural gas is down 2 and a third to a dollar 94 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline is down, wow, 3.8 percent to $2.58 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gold is doing well. It is up a third of a point to $2309.80. Silver is up a quarter of a point. Platinum is up 2 thirds of a point, but copper is down a half as is palladium. Biggest winner in ag today is who's got it? Who's got it? It's gonna be corn. 0.78% to the upside. But chocolate is taking taking it on the chin again. Big big kick in the crotch. 14% to the downside. So I don't know what the hell is going on with chocolate. Maybe they cleared up that whole fungal mess that was going on. Live cattle is down a half. Lean hogs are down, wow, 1 3 quarters, and feeder cattle are down 1 a third.
The Dow is doing okay. It's up a quarter of a percent, but the S and P is down a quarter. The Nasdaq is down over half, and the S and P mini is down scant. And Bitcoin is down as well, as you might know. 57 $1,830 brings us to a $1,140,000,000,000 market cap. You can only get 25.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,692,499 0.24 of yeah. Let's see if you can do that with United States dollars, the supply of gold, or the supply of silver, or any of the rest of this bullshit. Right? Average fees per block are a third of a Bitcoin, and the unspent capacity in in Whirlpool is down to 9 1,928.59.
So it looks like Whirlpool is being drained. Even though I don't think you I don't think people that have their SATs in Whirlpool should be worried, simply because it it stands alone. It's just out there. It's not really controlled by anybody but the people that are actually using it. And not, I mean, using it, like, actually putting their Bitcoin into it. It just operates. So I really don't think a mad ass rush to the exits is is required, but you should keep your own counsel on what you wanna do. Blocks. How many are there? My god. 240.
240. 240 blocks are carrying about 200,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 23 satoshis per vbyte. That's about a buck 87 for a regular transaction. And low priorities at 20 satoshis per vbyte. Everything under 5.6 satoshis per vbyte are being purged from impulse around the world. And hash rate is holding at 562 exahashes per second. Now, before we get into the boostograms the ask is this to support Bitcoin and the podcast support me, your podcaster I bring you news as much as I can. I try to do it in a way that, you know, doesn't make people sad or or doesn't, you know, I don't know. I try to keep the hopium at a minimum as well and just give you a neutral view of what's going on in Bitcoin. And if you think that what I do is valuable, then please send boostograms up your satoshis per minute when you're streaming to podcast apps and you know boost me over there on nostril because honestly it's the only real way that I just I mean I love the circle p and I love the people that are in the circle p. I simply bring them to you as advertisers because they don't have the money to advertise.
They don't have support if I can give them support. That's why I bring them to you. So I'm asking for your support and for all of those people that are not using a podcasting 2.0 app, which is how you give me boostograms. It's how you support the show through streaming satoshis. I have for you podcastindex.org/apps. You can also go to new podcast or search Google for new podcast apps with an s on the end, because when this whenever I do that and I actually go to the website, it resolves to podcast index.org, and I never remember what the hell the actual URL is.
But this on podcast index.orgforward/apps, you'll find a list of in this case, I'm gonna read you the list of Android and iOS podcast apps that you can use and you'll get chapters you'll get like some of them have like transcripts I I transcribe all of these episodes now. So since I provide a transcript when I'm uploading to my host podhome. Fm, that transcript generally speaking will go through to the other podcast apps like True Fans. True Fans is podcast 2.0. So is Podverse. Podcast Guru. Fountain App, which is my daily driver. Disctopia, Medicast, Pocket Casts, Breeze, Sphinx dot chat, Podvine, Moonbeam, Zion, Overhaul FM, Play Playa pod, satoshis.
Stream, and speaker from Iheart. Anyway, so all of those like True Fans and Podverse, you can use to boost, you can use to stream me satoshis you can use these things to support the show but moreover It's podcasting 2.0 The rest the legacy podcast apps at this point, I can't even look at them. They don't do anything. They don't give me chapters. They don't give me artwork. Well, I think Apple Podcasts does now, finally. But podcasting 2.0 has been doing these things forever. There's many features in podcasting 2.0 and if you're not using one of the new apps, you're really missing out. Tell your friends about it too. Let's see if we can get everybody to move over to where people can support the people that they want to listen to directly instead of having them depend on pennies falling from heaven from people like Spotify because that's just bullshit. Now from Country Non Grata, which was episode 890 of Bitcoin and Richard Grieser boosted me 5,000 sats and says David where did you go to journalism school?
You know, I never actually went I guess I forgot Richard Grieser Richard Grieser that name sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, That's Dick Greezer. Oh, and if I if I had my mind about me, I would tell you what it, it's, not no bullshit Bitcoin. It's one of the publications that is like, it's like a satire and you find them on Nostr. Damn it, Dick. Do me a favor. If you're listening, make sure that you, that you lambast me on Noster so that I will get the name straight and never forget it again. I've read I've read pieces on the Bitcoin and podcast from them on at least a couple of occasions.
It's it's a great piece and I I wanna promote them as well. Bubba with 2112, that's a full rush boost, says, ditch the CB 15 years ago. The satellites and tracking software are in full force. They know where I am every minute of every day because the whole world has gone insane. Communication is a tower of babble. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. There's no way that I'm going to argue with my friend Bubba. Although I honestly am freaked out that he ditched his CB radio 15 years ago. That's a kind of a critical piece of equipment, but he knows his business more than I do. So I'm not gonna say anything more. The bird with a thousand says USA, USA, USA, Freeest nation on earth. The tagline that used to make make it seem great are no longer Hashtag allsats matter at allsatsmatter.com with a100 and Hashtag all sats matter at allsatsmatter.com with a 121 satoshis. Thank you, brother. Kenneth Lloyd with 500 says nothing. Pies with 420. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 337 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And the bird with 200.
So does that mean I get my taxes back that I may have paid since it's no longer property, but currency? I don't know. We could all wish about that. Alright. That's it for the weather report. It's part 2 of the news that you can use. Yes. It is. It certainly is indeed. Hold on for a sec. I gotta get my I gotta get my my guys back. There we go. Okay. For the guys over in zap.stream, Tom Finnegan, thank you for being here and everything. Satoshi, Hey, man. LFG yourself, pal. Alright. Coinbase starts rolling out Lightning Network support in partnership with Lightspark.
Coinbase has finally introduced the lightning network to its customers fulfilling a promise made by Brian Armstrong last year, April of, you know, last year. It took them a year to get lightning online. It's just disgusting. Anyway, starting today, support for the Lightning network via LightSpark will begin rolling out. Bitcoin is one of the most important assets in crypto. And since our inception, we've continued to support the Bitcoin ecosystem through our exchange and numerous investments. Yeah. For god's sakes. Let's see if there's anything else of importance here. We're thrilled to be part of this journey to bring lightning to 100 of millions of people in over a 100 countries.
Big milestone for the entire network and for Bitcoin. Let's go, David Marcus, CEO and co founder of Lightspark said on X. Yes. That's right. I will agree with that. Coinbase's Lightning Network integration is not available in all regions, however. The cost comparison between the Lightning Network and the traditional Bitcoin network does not apply to all transfers, was clarified in a blog post. Okay. So just take it to take that last one to mean the following. You're not guaranteed that they're going to select lightning for you as your apparent network of, the your your, wanted network of transaction.
I don't use Coinbase, so I don't know how this is integrated. Alright? I haven't used Coinbase in years since, like, 20 16 or 2017 or something like that. After 2017, I I definitely know. I I just stopped using them. So I don't know how they're integrating. I can't imagine them not allowing you to select whether you want to do a lightning transaction or a main chain transaction. If anybody has, like, credible information on exactly how they're implementing this, please let me know. Now my node version 0.3.28 has been released.
MyNode is the software that I use on my Raspberry Pi to run a Bitcoin full node as well as my Lightning Network node. I have really enjoyed my node. I've been using them for I think I'm on my 4th year or 5th year of running a full node on yeah. It's probably 4 years. Let's we'll go with 4. I'll be conservative, and I'll say 4 years on the same Raspberry Pi. I've had no problems with neither the software nor my Raspberry Pi unit. However, very soon I think I'm going to switch over to a start 9 unit simply because I'm starting to get a little worried about the fact that my Raspberry Pi has been operating this long without a hitch.
And a backup is, you know, probably called for at this point. Anyway, my node is a free and open source Bitcoin and lightning node and management interface optimized for uptime, reliability, and ease of use. And they are completely correct about all that. It is very easy to use. So what's new in this release? They're upgrading Bitcoin to version 26.1 They're upgrading LND to 0.17.4 Upgrade lnbits to 0.12.5. Upgrade loop to version 28.1. They're they've resolved an issue with dev, DB and back port updates. They've removed Dojo and Whirlpool from the marketplace. Of course, they did because they don't want to be swept up into this bullshit either.
Yeah. So that's it. They're they've upgraded their own software and they are offering other software as well. Anyway, so the issue that they took Dojo and Whirlpool down shouldn't surprise anybody because they're coming after all of us. Whether you're in Bitcoin or not. See, this what this is what I don't think people understand. Oh, if you're not in Bitcoin, you're safe. Bullshit. Nobody is safe with this crew of miscreants running the world. None of these people need to be sharing air with us at this point. They don't provide they don't bring anything to the table except misery and destruction wholesale physical destruction of property and people.
They don't do anything. They they have horrible money spending, you know, habits. They spend their money on the wrong things namely death and destruction. They steal money from everybody they can. They engage in some of the most ludicrous behavior I've ever seen. None of these people need to be on this planet at this point. And yet, we have to deal with them. And apparently, it seems to me, we're going to put up with this behavior for a lot longer than I ever thought possible before in my entire existence. It's sad, but it's true. Now one of these days, we will hit a breaking point with humanity and humanity will just fight back against the lizard people. I don't know. But before that, Binance founder CZ has to spend 4 months in prison.
They gave him months. I actually saw a headline where it said, Binance founder sentenced to months in prison. Not 4 months. It just said months. Like, years. And all of a sudden all I could think of is that the meme where it's like, there are dozens of us. 4 months. My god. Binance founder CZ was sentenced to 4 months in prison for breaking anti money laundering laws at the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. He received a significantly reduced sentence, to of 4 months from a Seattle federal court much less than the 3 year term federal prosecutors were pursuing, quote, there's no evidence that the defendant was ever informed of illegal activity at Binance.
Even I call bullshit. The court finds the defendant has accepted responsibility. Everything I see about you and your characteristics are of a mitigating nature, the judge said to Zao before handing down the sentence. What the hell is that? I think the first step in taking responsibility is to fully recognize the mistakes. Here, I failed to fully set up a KYC program. I also recognize the importance of having robust KYC AML programs. That is why I directed Binance to cooperate with the United States investigation, Zhou said before hearing the judge's decision.
In November, Zhou pleaded guilty to failing to implement anti anti money laundering measures at Binance. He also resigned as Binance CEO and committed to a $4,300,000,000 payment to settle related allegations. So he basically bought off that 3 years time. Honestly, 4,300,000,000 might have been worth the 3 years cool in your heels writing a book in federal prison. I don't know. Nobody wants to go to to the penitentiary, but $4,300,000,000? Holy smokes, dude. That that that's a lot of bread. Okay. So let's end it with the samurai wallet cofounder, Keon Rodriguez pleading not guilty, and he has been released on a $1,000,000 bond, which means that he had to put up a $100,000 in cash to get out. That's the way it works in the United States, 10%.
10% of what whatever it is that your, your bail is set out, that's what you gotta bond out for. He pleaded not guilty to 2 criminal charges tied to creating and marketing the privacy focused Bitcoin wallet and coin join tools in the Manhattan courtroom on Monday. Rodriguez was initially arrested at approximately 6 AM at his home in Harmony, Pennsylvania on April 24th. A Pennsylvania judge subsequently released him on a $25,000 bond and ordered him to appear before a magistrate judge in the Southern District of New York on Monday morning. Today, the judge agreed to release Rodriguez on a $1,000,000 bond accepting the conditions outlined in a bail package that both federal prosecutors and Rodriguez's lawyers agreed upon.
Other than traveling to and from court proceedings, he will remain at home and will be monitored by location tracking technology, which means an ankle bracelet. His next hearing will be in Manhattan, May 14th at 2 PM in front of district judge Richard Berman. And that's pretty much what I I'm the only thing that I'm surprised about is the bond was set at only $1,000,000. I'm surprised that he didn't get 500 or, $5,000,000 or something like that. Okay. So where are we at on the 4th halving wallet, which is the name of it? There are no new bids and the auction ends in one day and 40 minutes and 50 seconds. That's called the 4th having wallet.
It is at scarce.cityforward/auctionsforward/the4thhavingwallet and put hyphens in between each individual word and you'll get to it. Otherwise, you can just use scarce dot city's search function. And if you've never heard of scarce dot city, it's because they've just I don't know why. They I guess it's because they are really only talking about scarce dot city, and themselves over on Twitter. And since I spend almost no time on Twitter and almost all of my time essentially on Noster and they don't seem to really grok Noster yet, they're not marketing. I I just don't think that they're marketing themselves well. I reported on, scarce dot city when it first came out a couple of years ago. I was still living in Canyon, Texas when they first hit the the newswires and and, you know, made the announcement that they were gonna have an auction house. But if you don't know what scarce dot city is, just go. And you'll figure it out but the short the short end of the story is this you can auction goods like a used amplifier Like I've got a really pretty Mesa Boogie Mark 3 that I'm thinking seriously about getting fixed. It's got a bad capacitor in it.
Get it fixed and get it up on scarce dot city because they I can sell it for Bitcoin. That's the whole point. We want circular economies. We've gotta do things like scarce dot city. We've gotta do things like circle p. We've gotta be we've gotta be willing to support our podcasters directly instead of depending on centralized platforms who can take them away from us at any given time through their advertising dollars. Because that's what's gone on as we've centralized all this stuff to these huge companies and those companies are not doing well with advertising.
The advertising model got to the point where it depended on tens and 100 and maybe 100 of 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 of dollars flowing out of VC firms to continuously give them free money. And so advertising and the way that advertising worked and the clicks per minute and all the CPMs and all the other stuff that all podcasters and musicians and Spotify and Apple Podcasts used as metrics turns out it was all a lie and it wasn't really a lie as much as it was just nobody really knew what the hell was going on why because fiat money was flooding the system and as we know fiat money is nothing, but noise it suppresses the truth because nobody can see through the you know meters and meters of bullshit that fiat actually is, and it's polluted everything.
So, again, support the people directly that produce the content you think is valuable for you to consume. That's the way that we get Bitcoin circular economies. It's not the way is is it won't so Bitcoin circular economies have to happen in multiple places and start growing outwards. So it can't be just once, oh, it began because we were supporting our podcasters. No. That's not the way this works. It has to begin there. It has to begin at point of sale units. It has to begin at, like, 5 other places. And at one point or another when the two areas of growth on 2 of these different places where Bitcoin circular economies when they start to overlap with each other other wow that's when you'll see some real fireworks but we're not there yet It's gonna take you. It's gonna take me. It's gonna take all of us.
With that said, I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 1st day of May. It's May Day.
It's May Day 2024. This is episode 891 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is definitely open for business. And if I can get my circle p up here, I will tell you exactly what's going on. Wow. Here we go. Sovereigntyinstylefromtheleatherment.com. That is the leathermint all one word dot com Belts wallets, yeah, passport holders, cold card holders. You name it, they got it. Well, maybe not. I mean, I guess they're probably not gonna make you a man purse, otherwise known as a mersse. But if they did, I guarantee you, it would be stitched well and made out of the highest quality leather that you can find in all manner of colors, And not those garish, ugly ass colors. No. No. No. No. We're talking like good, nice, solid, slightly muted tones. It's it it It's great. It's great. It's just great. Hold on. There's an issue going on with the zap.stream Let's see if if it's going live. Why?
What the hell, man? Why are you pausing? It's this is weird. Anyway, the Leatherman's got a, Scarce Dot City auction going on. And I'm gonna throw that into the zap stream right here, so that you guys can see it. So the auction ends in a little over one day. Right now the highest bid for this particular wallet that I will describe to you, hold on, just hold your horses, is 500,000 sats. And at right now prices that's about $284 for a wallet and this isn't just any kind of wallet I started like, I I brought this wallet to you yesterday and I really wasn't up on exactly what was going on. But after having looked at this thing, this is a special this is a they've made a very special wallet.
Here's the description. It's full Bitcoin themed. Alright. So it's got the bold Bitcoin thing stamped in it. They've branded the leather with hot metal, so it's in there permanently. It's got a true block height signature backed by video. Now, the only thing that I can assume because they don't have a link to the video but the only thing that I can assume is it actually shows them branding the numbers 80 what? 840,000 into the wallet at the time that that particular halving block turned over. That's the only thing that I can assume about that video. It is shell cordovan and pueblo colored leathers.
It's fully lined. It has 8 plus 2 pockets, and I still don't know exactly what that means, but I just assume 10 pockets. Crease lines, it's got an NFC chip behind the bull, and it says it's customizable. So here's what I can only assume about what's going on with the NFC chip, that they've put a chip embedded into the leather and That you can basically program that chip to function in whatever way that you want it to function and most people I would assume would just turn that NFC chip into a lightning wallet and then you could just pay lightning invoices, at point of sale devices that have the ability to take NFC communications.
I it's really cool. That I mean, if that's what they're doing, Honestly, that's pretty as cool. It says it has a SATS chip behind the block height, which is a functioning private key. I again, they're not really filling me in all the details here. So I'm just I'm going with what I got guys. I'm going with what I got. The whole wallet is RFID shielded. So you put your regular fiat credit cards in there and nobody can, you know, take a butt scan of your private information or your credit card numbers. This is a wallet, a key, and a business card. See Twitter for more, but they don't actually give me the link to that particular tweet. So I I I don't know.
I think that this is gonna be the kind of wallet that that if you were gonna bid on something like a wallet, then this would be the wallet to bid on. Right now, there are 4 bids and Node Runner is in the top spot with 500,000 satoshis. And again, that ends up being about $284 at today's prices. So there you go. Now, I'm just gonna leave this up here, just so that you guys can check it out while we're doing the zap. Stream. And let's get into well, let's get into the news. And we all know what we're gonna begin with because we kinda gotta do it. Bitcoin Jesus has been arrested by the, what, Pharisees?
I can't remember who actually, you know, arrested Jesus and brought him to, Pontius Pilate, but it was somebody who was a dick. But Bitcoin Jesus has been arrested. The DOJ arrests Roger Ver on charges of tax fraud. This is out of Bitcoin Magazine, Nick Hoffman. Roger Ver, a prominent early investor in Bitcoin and famously dubbed Bitcoin Jesus, has been indicted by the Department of Justice on charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns. Vir was arrested over the weekend in Spain based on these criminal charges, and the United States seeks extradition for trial.
The indictment alleges that Vir, formerly of Santa Clara, California, owned and operated Memorydealers dotcom, Incorporated and Agilestar dotcom, Incorporated both of which were involved in selling computer and networking equipment. Starting in 2011, Vir reportedly began acquiring Bitcoin for himself and his companies, amassing a significant amount by 2014, totaling around 131,000 bitcoin with a value of approximately $240,000,000 and I do not know if that was at 2014 prices. Whatever. Vr then obtained citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2014 and renounced his United States citizenship shortly thereafter in a process known as expatriation.
This action subjected him to United States tax laws, including reporting capital gains from the sale of his worldwide assets, including bitcoin and paying an exit tax upon those gains. The indictment alleges that Vr provided false or misleading information to a law firm and an appraiser concealing the true number of bitcoin owned by him and his companies. This resulted in the preparation and filing of false tax returns that significantly undervalued the companies and their Bitcoin holdings. By 2017, Ver's companies still held approximately 70,000 Bitcoin, which he allegedly sold on cryptocurrency exchanges for around $240,000,000 Despite not being a US citizen at the time, Vir was still legally obligated to report to the IRS and pay taxes on certain distributions, which he allegedly failed to do, causing a loss to the IRS estimated at over $48,000,000 The indictment stated, well, I guess maybe Zelensky would be able to take his wife out to a jewelry shopping trip with 48,000,000.
I don't think it's that much, and it certainly isn't worth all this bullshit, but they're going to do it. They're sending a message. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stewart m Goldberg and United States Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges with IRS Criminal Investigation Cybercrimes Unit handling the case. An indictment is an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. Okay. So here's the the fallout, as you might imagine, was pretty intense. And it just happened to be at the time that we were coming into the Fed meeting.
And there's like a Gaza, you know, Israel ceasefire that may be in the works and that's causing all manner of pressure in the oil markets. It was just essentially what I'm saying is that it was a Conflagration of all these things that happened and then they just put the cherry on top of the cake with the whole Roger Ver arrest. Now they could have done this shit at any time but they had 10 years. It's been it's been brought to my attention by somebody on Nostrad that they have 10 years at the time of expatriation to do whatever it is that they're gonna do, to you know to Roger Vr or anybody else. So this was the last year that they were going to be able to actually file these charges. Now, here's the thing.
Many people are losing their ever loving minds that this is an attack on Bitcoin. I don't think it actually is. I think the timing is more of an attack on Bitcoin than the actual charges themselves, and here's here here's why. It wouldn't have mattered what assets memorydealers.com and Agilestar.com owned. It wouldn't have mattered. It could have been condos in the south of France. It could have been gold bricks. It could have been coins. It could have been silver. It could have been a, I don't know, a container full of Lamborghinis. If he had sold those and disposed of of those assets and not reported and bitcoin was not involved in any of this they would have done the same thing That I mean, especially when, like, you know, when it's, like, $50,000,000 that they're gonna be able to get. And again, that's a nice shopping trip for Zelensky's wife. For the rest of us, it's life changing amounts of money. The IRS, at this point, I don't think they care. They just want their they want their pound of flesh and they're going to get their pound of flesh.
So, in my opinion, Especially if we link this back to samurai, let's let's bring let's mix a little bit of samurai into our you know hot fudge sundae here Samurai was out there in public Taunting the Department of Justice does not mean that I agree with the DOJ's decision to arrest these guys But holy crap I mean you're just poking the bear don't poke the bear every every time you poke the bear somebody gets hurt and now it's gonna be the guys at samurai but again I don't necessarily think that Bitcoin itself was in the crosshairs it does clearly send a message that hey we're you know we we don't like self custody blah blah blah but yeah you know they're not there you know I just don't think that it's directly both of these events are not directly about Bitcoin itself.
You're poking the bear. Don't poke the bear. I mean many of us have accidentally poked the bear Who you know? Did but we weren't out there just thumbing our nose at the bear while we were poking the bear. Right? And both Roger Ver and Samurai guys kind of did that. Again, I don't think that they're being I don't think this is necessary, and this is clearly theft. I mean, but that goes back to just what the IRS is in the first place. It's just a it's just organized crime. It's protection you're paying protection money to not be arrested. That's all it is. If they were actually doing something with the money that was good for society, that would be one thing, but they haven't done that if if ever then in a very long time. It's just war after war after war after war.
I am funding the the the literal killing of 1,000 and hundreds of thousands of innocent people, you know, every couple of years just because somebody gets their panties in a snit that Morton Thicall and you know some of the other companies in the in the military industrial space didn't have good profits and didn't make enough money for their shareholders. I'm sick of it myself. And that's exactly, you know, if they recoup this $50,000,000 from Roger Ver, they're just gonna send it to Ukraine, or they're gonna send it to, you know, the guys over in Jerusalem or they're gonna send it to the protests for Palestine, going on on college campuses. It's definitely not going to do anybody any good. It's just going to be used to fan the flames.
But with all that said, I honestly believe that we should probably not lose our minds over the situation saying that this is that them them just coming after Bitcoin because we know that they can't not not terminally not to the very end there's 2 it's it's too widespread it's the network is too ingrained and the only way to really shut down bitcoin is to shut down the Internet and you'd have to do it worldwide. And even then, some smart individuals are probably going to figure out a way around that. And I won't get into it, but I just I I have nothing but hope for the human beings that are on this planet and I've seen them do some phenomenal things in the face of what looked like there's no way you're getting out of this. So I don't really think that we should be thinking in terms of oh, well, this is it. Dude, it's been it forever.
It happens all the time. I just honestly, people just need to calm down. We really need to calm down. Even in the face of the Cash App thing, which broke apparently for me this morning. Now this is from NBC News. We'll just read the first, you know, couple of paragraphs here. Federal prosecutors are examining the financial transactions at Block, owner of Cash App and Square. And this is Gretchen Morganson writing for nbcnews.com. Federal prosecutors are digging into internal practices at The Bloc or atBloc, the financial technology firm launched by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, discussing with a former employee alleged widespread and years long compliance lapses at the company's 2 main units Square and Cash App, 2 people with direct knowledge of the contact say.
During the discussions, the former employee provided prosecutors from Southern District of New York, of course, documents that they say show that insufficient information is collected from Square and Cash App customers to assess their risks, that Square processed thousands of transactions involving countries subject to economic sanctions, and that block processed multiple cryptocurrency transactions for terrorist groups. Of course, they're bringing in the terrorists. Most of the transactions discussed with prosecutors involving credit card transactions, dollar transfers, and Bitcoin were not reported to the government as required, the former employee said.
Block did not correct company, hold on. Block did not correct company processes when it was alerted to the breaches the former employee told prosecutors and NBC News. Roughly a 100 pages of documents the former employee provided to NBC News identified transactions, many in small dollar amounts, involving entities and countries subject to US sanction restrictions like Cuba, Iran, Russian, Venezuela as recently as last year. Alright. So that's all we really need from this. So this this is kind of interesting because Cash App has been around for years and it was around for years before they even started offering Bitcoin services like being able to buy Bitcoin being able to you know send Bitcoin to other wallets and being able to exchange Bitcoin for fiat currency and of course vice versa.
This one has more this one, I would think, sends up a red flag to me that suggests that the government is more concerned about the Bitcoin aspect with Cash App than the Roger Ver and the Samurai thing. I know that might sound a little silly but here's why there's many payment processors out there people that build point of sale devices of which of you know so this one of you know? So this one seems more convincing to me if we were to make an argument that the government is actually doing this because of Bitcoin, but there's no evidence here that they actually are.
What this looks like to me is somebody that got fired that was committing corporate espionage because they were collecting data while they were there. And the reason I say that is that this former employee provided a hundred pages of documents a 100 pages of documents this guy provided the feds and the southern district of New York, which, of course, is always in the mix when it comes to this kind of thing. That sounds like somebody was in there and they were gathering information. And either they were gathering information because that's why they were sent in there as a spook or the person got fired and grabbed what they could and immediately, you know, because his pant or his or her panties were all in a snit went all the way over to the federal, you know, regulators and and Department of Justice and said, look. They're doing shit illegal. There's no way any of these payment processors are going to be able to catch all this.
There's no way. The the regulations that have come up are so onerous and they've come up so fast nobody can reconfigure that quickly. Nobody can. All of them are probably in the same boat. So here's the you know, here's the idea. I guess here's the the advice to companies You know like treat your people well Don't fire them and if for whatever reason you're planning to fire somebody because they just suck, you know, which is no skin off of your nose, I get that. Then don't put them in a place where they can, you know, gather that much information. You know, move them to a different department, keep them there for 6 or 7 weeks, and then cut them loose. Make sure the department that you move move them to doesn't have anything that can even remotely be looked at as, you know, it's just, we put them in janitorial.
You're you're you're pushing them up for 6 weeks and then and then cut them loose. But this kind of shit, I mean, honestly, if it wouldn't surprise me if Square or Block didn't come back and sued the former employee directly for, you know, charges of, you know, corporate espionage, you know, for literally stealing their property, taking it off premises, and then providing it to somebody. Who knows? Will whistleblower protection protect this particular person I don't know honestly that the vagaries of all this is just you know lost on me But of all the three things, the Roger Ver, the Samurai, and the Cash App.
The Cash App thing is the closest to sending up a clear red flag that the government is going after Bitcoin itself Just so that's just my take on it. So we had patiently waited until, you know, April 30th for the Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong to open up. And they did. And then we immediately got a huge red dildo. This is out of Cointelegraph. Zhiyuan Sun is writing it. Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs attract over $200,000,000 on day 1. And, of course, shitcoin number 1 ETFs is included in that number, but I just can't say the name. Hong Kong spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds have attracted more than $200,000,000 in total assets on their April 30th debut.
According to data provided by Arkham Intelligence, the Bossera Hash Key Spot Bitcoin and I guess I'll say it Ether ETFs have accumulated 964 Bitcoin and over 4,000 ether respectively, totaling $71,940,000 in assets under management. Meanwhile, Eric Balchuna, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, revealed that spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs created by China AMC have amassed 123,000,000 in combined assets and at the time of publication, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has not updated the asset management data for the spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs of Harvest Global, the 3rd issuer.
However, the combined turnover turnover of these 2 ETFs has reached $23,000,000 The value of the assets solicited pales in comparison to their United States counterparts where spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted nearly $4,000,000,000 in assets under management during their 1st week of debut and 4,500,000,000 in volume on January 12th alone according or, on the 1st day of trading on Wall Street. Quote, we tried to warn everyone to lower expectations regarding Hong Kong, commented Balchunas. That said, if you localize numbers, this was big.
For example, China AMC Bitcoin ETF took in 123,000,000 on day 1, which already ranks it 6th of 82 ETFs launched in past 3 years in Hong Kong and top 20 percent overall, he added. Meanwhile, Hasky wrote that Importantly, non Hong Kong nationals can subscribe for or purchase units of the ETFs if they meet local regulatory requirements such as passing customer due diligence. In addition, Hong Kong crypto ETFs allow investors to subscribe for ETF units directly using BTC and vice versa, which is not available for their United States counterparts. And according to an April 28 survey conducted by Hong Kong regulated exchange OSL, 76.9 percent of crypto knowledgeable respondents in the city planned to invest in the novel spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs.
This positive investor sentiment powerfully points to the growing acceptance and importance of digital assets in the region's economy, and Hong Kong is once again marking its place as the digital asset hub, commented OSL's Executive Director and Head of Regulatory Affairs Gary Tu. Despite the enthusiasm, Hong Kong crypto ETFs remain accessible only to the city's estimated 6,400,000 adult residents. Mainland Chinese investors, whose numbers are north of 1,000,000,000 are currently barred from accessing these ETFs until they possess a Hong Kong residence permit. So that's the story, and we're sticking to it. And looking at the numbers, you know, the first day, it looks to me like there was less than 4, you know, dollars 4,000,000,000 actually inflowing into the ETFs.
And I'm getting that from the block. I think it's the block.com. They have an entire section on the ETFs and what the flows and assets under management are like. And if you look at it, 200,000,000 compared to what they did drag in in the United States. It's actually Eric's right. It's kind of impressive considering that there's only 6 point 4,000,000 people living in Hong Kong as it is which you know I mean Mexico City is like 25,000,000 people. I'm actually surprised Hong Kong doesn't have that, you know, that many more residents than it already does. But be that as it may, it was still a pretty successful launch.
And then we immediately hit to the downside. You what are you gonna do? You know, it's like in it's like it it we're just gonna bounce around this this particular part of the price thing and Here's the here's the thing about the giant red dildo that happened again this morning Hats off and pour one out to the 58 k gang because they can't have it, in either direction. We shot up through 58 k within a blink of an eye and we went down through 58 k within a blink of an eye. I you know, Greg and and crew at the 58 k Club, I you know, I I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Now getting into some dirty business, coal. This $2,800,000,000 coal miner has been mining Bitcoin too. Decrypt Andrew Andrew Thorvallis, a coal mining company, has revealed that it has quietly been mining Bitcoin for over 3 years. Alliance Resource Partners listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the ticker ARLP disclosed the crypto initiative during its Q1 earnings call, quote, it was just an opportunity that we saw due to the fact that we've got excessive or excess power at our mining operations, said Kerry Marshall, senior vice president and CFO at Alliance. The search for a way to monetize those spare resources the firm to purchase Bitcoin mining equipment in 2020 and 2021 during one of the largest periods of price growth in Bitcoin's history. Today, Marshall said the Boulder, Colorado based company holds 425 BTC on its balance sheet worth $25,000,000 as of writing.
ARLP has a market cap of $2,800,000,000 which is up 6% over the last 5 trading days, although it's probably down today. The disclosure means Alliance has been involved with Bitcoin for roughly as long as MicroStrategy, the world's largest Bitcoin holder, which purchased its first BTC in August of 2020. Oh, and by the way, if you didn't know, Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy bought, like, another 214 Bitcoin. And then immediately we got the red dildo. It's just it amazes me how this works. It's almost like somebody has it out for Mike. I I don't know. Anyway, quote, we're not actually out there buying Bitcoin or anything of that nature.
We're mining the Bitcoin associated with the miners that we have, he clarified. Marshall's claims are supported by the firm's Q1 8 ks report filed with the SEC, which says it held $30,300,000 worth of digital assets on its balance sheet. Alliance's embrace of Bitcoin is one example of how BTC mining can benefit the energy industry at large, albeit via a nonrenewable source. I don't give a shit. Digital currency mining is locate is location agnostic and dynamic enough to be quickly curtailed when market conditions turn unfavorable, making it a flexible means of demand response. Quote, Alliance Resources' foray into mining as a logical step considering the process's ability to harness underutilized electricity and its economic advantages.
Nishit Sharma, founder at Bitcoin mining research firm, Blocksbridge, told Decrypt, quote, over time, we anticipate the emergence of more Bitcoin mining pilot projects initiated by other prominent energy firms, Sharma added. Alliance claimed that its miners are utilizing already paid for yet underutilized electricity load implying that the firm isn't burning any additional coal just to mine more BTC. However, some think alliances reveal could still be a bad look for Bitcoin, which has been criticized by non profits and regulators for polluting the environment. Yeah, we've got better things to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. CH4 Capital cofounder Daniel Batten said he is hesitant to jump to conclusions about the company until conducting further research but conceded that Alliance's involvement doesn't help the cause of pro Bitcoin environmentalist I suspect that nuance will be lost given the low standard of analysis on Bitcoin's environmental impact by GPUs and hold on hold on I'm gonna say that again I suspect that nuance will be lost given the low standard of analysis on Bitcoin's environmental impact by, in all capital letters, GPUS and many traditional media outlets to date, Batten told Decrypt. I'm not yet convinced that it would have been burnt off anyway. Okay. So we got a coal company that is getting into it, and it appears to me that they're just using the excess energy that as they burn coal to produce electricity is actually not being used by the grid. So they're just forking it over into some Bitcoin miners and have clearly done fairly well.
And it's it's interesting because I kinda thought we would see more oil companies, getting into this than, than a coal company. Because, you know, of I will admit, of all fossil fuels coal is probably the dirtiest and a lot of that has to do with sulfur dioxide not as much as the co2 thing everybody keeps freaking out about co2. God the sulfur dioxide associated with coal burning, that can be a problem if you don't have proper scrubbers. But what's worse is the coal mining. Coal mining is just it is dirty business, man. And it has got the it's got huge potential for environmental catastrophes downstream of any watershed that it happens to be sitting on simply because it's when you pull that much stuff out of the bowels of the earth and lay it on the ground it's going to get into the water and they're shitting coal you don't want to have nothing to do with. I wouldn't go bathe in a barrel of crude oil.
I certainly wouldn't want to pour it out on the ground. Well, coal's sorted the same way. And there's just sort of it's inevitable when you mine coal. It's going to cause some really bad shit to happen to the environment but at least at least they're not letting side. We're going to run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. What do we got over here? We've got oil is taking it on the chin today, and this has everything to do with that whole Gaza thing. 3.53 to the downside brings West Texas Intermediate to $79 Brent Norcia is down 3 and a third to 83 48. Natural gas is down 2 and a third to a dollar 94 per 1,000 cubic feet, and gasoline is down, wow, 3.8 percent to $2.58 a gallon.
Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gold is doing well. It is up a third of a point to $2309.80. Silver is up a quarter of a point. Platinum is up 2 thirds of a point, but copper is down a half as is palladium. Biggest winner in ag today is who's got it? Who's got it? It's gonna be corn. 0.78% to the upside. But chocolate is taking taking it on the chin again. Big big kick in the crotch. 14% to the downside. So I don't know what the hell is going on with chocolate. Maybe they cleared up that whole fungal mess that was going on. Live cattle is down a half. Lean hogs are down, wow, 1 3 quarters, and feeder cattle are down 1 a third.
The Dow is doing okay. It's up a quarter of a percent, but the S and P is down a quarter. The Nasdaq is down over half, and the S and P mini is down scant. And Bitcoin is down as well, as you might know. 57 $1,830 brings us to a $1,140,000,000,000 market cap. You can only get 25.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,692,499 0.24 of yeah. Let's see if you can do that with United States dollars, the supply of gold, or the supply of silver, or any of the rest of this bullshit. Right? Average fees per block are a third of a Bitcoin, and the unspent capacity in in Whirlpool is down to 9 1,928.59.
So it looks like Whirlpool is being drained. Even though I don't think you I don't think people that have their SATs in Whirlpool should be worried, simply because it it stands alone. It's just out there. It's not really controlled by anybody but the people that are actually using it. And not, I mean, using it, like, actually putting their Bitcoin into it. It just operates. So I really don't think a mad ass rush to the exits is is required, but you should keep your own counsel on what you wanna do. Blocks. How many are there? My god. 240.
240. 240 blocks are carrying about 200,000 transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 23 satoshis per vbyte. That's about a buck 87 for a regular transaction. And low priorities at 20 satoshis per vbyte. Everything under 5.6 satoshis per vbyte are being purged from impulse around the world. And hash rate is holding at 562 exahashes per second. Now, before we get into the boostograms the ask is this to support Bitcoin and the podcast support me, your podcaster I bring you news as much as I can. I try to do it in a way that, you know, doesn't make people sad or or doesn't, you know, I don't know. I try to keep the hopium at a minimum as well and just give you a neutral view of what's going on in Bitcoin. And if you think that what I do is valuable, then please send boostograms up your satoshis per minute when you're streaming to podcast apps and you know boost me over there on nostril because honestly it's the only real way that I just I mean I love the circle p and I love the people that are in the circle p. I simply bring them to you as advertisers because they don't have the money to advertise.
They don't have support if I can give them support. That's why I bring them to you. So I'm asking for your support and for all of those people that are not using a podcasting 2.0 app, which is how you give me boostograms. It's how you support the show through streaming satoshis. I have for you podcastindex.org/apps. You can also go to new podcast or search Google for new podcast apps with an s on the end, because when this whenever I do that and I actually go to the website, it resolves to podcast index.org, and I never remember what the hell the actual URL is.
But this on podcast index.orgforward/apps, you'll find a list of in this case, I'm gonna read you the list of Android and iOS podcast apps that you can use and you'll get chapters you'll get like some of them have like transcripts I I transcribe all of these episodes now. So since I provide a transcript when I'm uploading to my host podhome. Fm, that transcript generally speaking will go through to the other podcast apps like True Fans. True Fans is podcast 2.0. So is Podverse. Podcast Guru. Fountain App, which is my daily driver. Disctopia, Medicast, Pocket Casts, Breeze, Sphinx dot chat, Podvine, Moonbeam, Zion, Overhaul FM, Play Playa pod, satoshis.
Stream, and speaker from Iheart. Anyway, so all of those like True Fans and Podverse, you can use to boost, you can use to stream me satoshis you can use these things to support the show but moreover It's podcasting 2.0 The rest the legacy podcast apps at this point, I can't even look at them. They don't do anything. They don't give me chapters. They don't give me artwork. Well, I think Apple Podcasts does now, finally. But podcasting 2.0 has been doing these things forever. There's many features in podcasting 2.0 and if you're not using one of the new apps, you're really missing out. Tell your friends about it too. Let's see if we can get everybody to move over to where people can support the people that they want to listen to directly instead of having them depend on pennies falling from heaven from people like Spotify because that's just bullshit. Now from Country Non Grata, which was episode 890 of Bitcoin and Richard Grieser boosted me 5,000 sats and says David where did you go to journalism school?
You know, I never actually went I guess I forgot Richard Grieser Richard Grieser that name sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, That's Dick Greezer. Oh, and if I if I had my mind about me, I would tell you what it, it's, not no bullshit Bitcoin. It's one of the publications that is like, it's like a satire and you find them on Nostr. Damn it, Dick. Do me a favor. If you're listening, make sure that you, that you lambast me on Noster so that I will get the name straight and never forget it again. I've read I've read pieces on the Bitcoin and podcast from them on at least a couple of occasions.
It's it's a great piece and I I wanna promote them as well. Bubba with 2112, that's a full rush boost, says, ditch the CB 15 years ago. The satellites and tracking software are in full force. They know where I am every minute of every day because the whole world has gone insane. Communication is a tower of babble. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. There's no way that I'm going to argue with my friend Bubba. Although I honestly am freaked out that he ditched his CB radio 15 years ago. That's a kind of a critical piece of equipment, but he knows his business more than I do. So I'm not gonna say anything more. The bird with a thousand says USA, USA, USA, Freeest nation on earth. The tagline that used to make make it seem great are no longer Hashtag allsats matter at allsatsmatter.com with a100 and Hashtag all sats matter at allsatsmatter.com with a 121 satoshis. Thank you, brother. Kenneth Lloyd with 500 says nothing. Pies with 420. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. God's death with 337 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And the bird with 200.
So does that mean I get my taxes back that I may have paid since it's no longer property, but currency? I don't know. We could all wish about that. Alright. That's it for the weather report. It's part 2 of the news that you can use. Yes. It is. It certainly is indeed. Hold on for a sec. I gotta get my I gotta get my my guys back. There we go. Okay. For the guys over in zap.stream, Tom Finnegan, thank you for being here and everything. Satoshi, Hey, man. LFG yourself, pal. Alright. Coinbase starts rolling out Lightning Network support in partnership with Lightspark.
Coinbase has finally introduced the lightning network to its customers fulfilling a promise made by Brian Armstrong last year, April of, you know, last year. It took them a year to get lightning online. It's just disgusting. Anyway, starting today, support for the Lightning network via LightSpark will begin rolling out. Bitcoin is one of the most important assets in crypto. And since our inception, we've continued to support the Bitcoin ecosystem through our exchange and numerous investments. Yeah. For god's sakes. Let's see if there's anything else of importance here. We're thrilled to be part of this journey to bring lightning to 100 of millions of people in over a 100 countries.
Big milestone for the entire network and for Bitcoin. Let's go, David Marcus, CEO and co founder of Lightspark said on X. Yes. That's right. I will agree with that. Coinbase's Lightning Network integration is not available in all regions, however. The cost comparison between the Lightning Network and the traditional Bitcoin network does not apply to all transfers, was clarified in a blog post. Okay. So just take it to take that last one to mean the following. You're not guaranteed that they're going to select lightning for you as your apparent network of, the your your, wanted network of transaction.
I don't use Coinbase, so I don't know how this is integrated. Alright? I haven't used Coinbase in years since, like, 20 16 or 2017 or something like that. After 2017, I I definitely know. I I just stopped using them. So I don't know how they're integrating. I can't imagine them not allowing you to select whether you want to do a lightning transaction or a main chain transaction. If anybody has, like, credible information on exactly how they're implementing this, please let me know. Now my node version 0.3.28 has been released.
MyNode is the software that I use on my Raspberry Pi to run a Bitcoin full node as well as my Lightning Network node. I have really enjoyed my node. I've been using them for I think I'm on my 4th year or 5th year of running a full node on yeah. It's probably 4 years. Let's we'll go with 4. I'll be conservative, and I'll say 4 years on the same Raspberry Pi. I've had no problems with neither the software nor my Raspberry Pi unit. However, very soon I think I'm going to switch over to a start 9 unit simply because I'm starting to get a little worried about the fact that my Raspberry Pi has been operating this long without a hitch.
And a backup is, you know, probably called for at this point. Anyway, my node is a free and open source Bitcoin and lightning node and management interface optimized for uptime, reliability, and ease of use. And they are completely correct about all that. It is very easy to use. So what's new in this release? They're upgrading Bitcoin to version 26.1 They're upgrading LND to 0.17.4 Upgrade lnbits to 0.12.5. Upgrade loop to version 28.1. They're they've resolved an issue with dev, DB and back port updates. They've removed Dojo and Whirlpool from the marketplace. Of course, they did because they don't want to be swept up into this bullshit either.
Yeah. So that's it. They're they've upgraded their own software and they are offering other software as well. Anyway, so the issue that they took Dojo and Whirlpool down shouldn't surprise anybody because they're coming after all of us. Whether you're in Bitcoin or not. See, this what this is what I don't think people understand. Oh, if you're not in Bitcoin, you're safe. Bullshit. Nobody is safe with this crew of miscreants running the world. None of these people need to be sharing air with us at this point. They don't provide they don't bring anything to the table except misery and destruction wholesale physical destruction of property and people.
They don't do anything. They they have horrible money spending, you know, habits. They spend their money on the wrong things namely death and destruction. They steal money from everybody they can. They engage in some of the most ludicrous behavior I've ever seen. None of these people need to be on this planet at this point. And yet, we have to deal with them. And apparently, it seems to me, we're going to put up with this behavior for a lot longer than I ever thought possible before in my entire existence. It's sad, but it's true. Now one of these days, we will hit a breaking point with humanity and humanity will just fight back against the lizard people. I don't know. But before that, Binance founder CZ has to spend 4 months in prison.
They gave him months. I actually saw a headline where it said, Binance founder sentenced to months in prison. Not 4 months. It just said months. Like, years. And all of a sudden all I could think of is that the meme where it's like, there are dozens of us. 4 months. My god. Binance founder CZ was sentenced to 4 months in prison for breaking anti money laundering laws at the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. He received a significantly reduced sentence, to of 4 months from a Seattle federal court much less than the 3 year term federal prosecutors were pursuing, quote, there's no evidence that the defendant was ever informed of illegal activity at Binance.
Even I call bullshit. The court finds the defendant has accepted responsibility. Everything I see about you and your characteristics are of a mitigating nature, the judge said to Zao before handing down the sentence. What the hell is that? I think the first step in taking responsibility is to fully recognize the mistakes. Here, I failed to fully set up a KYC program. I also recognize the importance of having robust KYC AML programs. That is why I directed Binance to cooperate with the United States investigation, Zhou said before hearing the judge's decision.
In November, Zhou pleaded guilty to failing to implement anti anti money laundering measures at Binance. He also resigned as Binance CEO and committed to a $4,300,000,000 payment to settle related allegations. So he basically bought off that 3 years time. Honestly, 4,300,000,000 might have been worth the 3 years cool in your heels writing a book in federal prison. I don't know. Nobody wants to go to to the penitentiary, but $4,300,000,000? Holy smokes, dude. That that that's a lot of bread. Okay. So let's end it with the samurai wallet cofounder, Keon Rodriguez pleading not guilty, and he has been released on a $1,000,000 bond, which means that he had to put up a $100,000 in cash to get out. That's the way it works in the United States, 10%.
10% of what whatever it is that your, your bail is set out, that's what you gotta bond out for. He pleaded not guilty to 2 criminal charges tied to creating and marketing the privacy focused Bitcoin wallet and coin join tools in the Manhattan courtroom on Monday. Rodriguez was initially arrested at approximately 6 AM at his home in Harmony, Pennsylvania on April 24th. A Pennsylvania judge subsequently released him on a $25,000 bond and ordered him to appear before a magistrate judge in the Southern District of New York on Monday morning. Today, the judge agreed to release Rodriguez on a $1,000,000 bond accepting the conditions outlined in a bail package that both federal prosecutors and Rodriguez's lawyers agreed upon.
Other than traveling to and from court proceedings, he will remain at home and will be monitored by location tracking technology, which means an ankle bracelet. His next hearing will be in Manhattan, May 14th at 2 PM in front of district judge Richard Berman. And that's pretty much what I I'm the only thing that I'm surprised about is the bond was set at only $1,000,000. I'm surprised that he didn't get 500 or, $5,000,000 or something like that. Okay. So where are we at on the 4th halving wallet, which is the name of it? There are no new bids and the auction ends in one day and 40 minutes and 50 seconds. That's called the 4th having wallet.
It is at scarce.cityforward/auctionsforward/the4thhavingwallet and put hyphens in between each individual word and you'll get to it. Otherwise, you can just use scarce dot city's search function. And if you've never heard of scarce dot city, it's because they've just I don't know why. They I guess it's because they are really only talking about scarce dot city, and themselves over on Twitter. And since I spend almost no time on Twitter and almost all of my time essentially on Noster and they don't seem to really grok Noster yet, they're not marketing. I I just don't think that they're marketing themselves well. I reported on, scarce dot city when it first came out a couple of years ago. I was still living in Canyon, Texas when they first hit the the newswires and and, you know, made the announcement that they were gonna have an auction house. But if you don't know what scarce dot city is, just go. And you'll figure it out but the short the short end of the story is this you can auction goods like a used amplifier Like I've got a really pretty Mesa Boogie Mark 3 that I'm thinking seriously about getting fixed. It's got a bad capacitor in it.
Get it fixed and get it up on scarce dot city because they I can sell it for Bitcoin. That's the whole point. We want circular economies. We've gotta do things like scarce dot city. We've gotta do things like circle p. We've gotta be we've gotta be willing to support our podcasters directly instead of depending on centralized platforms who can take them away from us at any given time through their advertising dollars. Because that's what's gone on as we've centralized all this stuff to these huge companies and those companies are not doing well with advertising.
The advertising model got to the point where it depended on tens and 100 and maybe 100 of 1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 of dollars flowing out of VC firms to continuously give them free money. And so advertising and the way that advertising worked and the clicks per minute and all the CPMs and all the other stuff that all podcasters and musicians and Spotify and Apple Podcasts used as metrics turns out it was all a lie and it wasn't really a lie as much as it was just nobody really knew what the hell was going on why because fiat money was flooding the system and as we know fiat money is nothing, but noise it suppresses the truth because nobody can see through the you know meters and meters of bullshit that fiat actually is, and it's polluted everything.
So, again, support the people directly that produce the content you think is valuable for you to consume. That's the way that we get Bitcoin circular economies. It's not the way is is it won't so Bitcoin circular economies have to happen in multiple places and start growing outwards. So it can't be just once, oh, it began because we were supporting our podcasters. No. That's not the way this works. It has to begin there. It has to begin at point of sale units. It has to begin at, like, 5 other places. And at one point or another when the two areas of growth on 2 of these different places where Bitcoin circular economies when they start to overlap with each other other wow that's when you'll see some real fireworks but we're not there yet It's gonna take you. It's gonna take me. It's gonna take all of us.
With that said, I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Launch of Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong
Market analysis
Discussion on the importance of supporting podcasters directly through streaming satoshis and using Podcasting 2.0 apps.
