Join me today for Episode 1054 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Trump Deal With Binance: Report
- LIBRA Coin Creator in Hiding
- More Cooling Inflation Talk
- Shinobi is Not Happy With Low Fees
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-family-had-talks-for-stake-in-binance-crypto-exchange-report
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/03/13/lawyer-requests-interpol-red-notice-for-libra-founder-hayden-davis-report
https://decrypt.co/309825/cboe-files-to-allow-in-kind-redemptions-for-invesco-galaxy-bitcoin-and-ethereum-etfs
Not much ammo left: https://www.theblock.co/post/346055/cooling-us-inflation-could-give-fed-wiggle-room-to-cut-rates-and-potentially-boost-risk-assets-analysts-say
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
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- https://geyser.fund/project/thebitcoinandpodcast
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/low-fees-are-a-symptom-of-deeper-problems
https://atlas21.com/the-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-is-for-businesses-not-for-states/
https://bitcoinnews.com/adoption/deutsche-borse-bitcoin-custody-clearstream/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:48AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the thirteenth day of the third month of twenty '20 '5, and this is episode ten fifty four, I believe, of Bitcoin. And we're gonna talk a little bit about this report that's come out about Donald Trump, well, the Trump family, talking with Binance, apparently. I don't know. I the first I've heard, So we'll we'll find out together. And then over here, we're gonna talk about a red notice, an Interpol red notice for that dude that cranked up that Libra coin for Argentina. I guess I guess he's in a little bit of hot water. I I guess they didn't like that.
And then the CBOE is gonna be in the news. And then from the block, I got Brian McGlehan, who's talking about, well, as I he's I think he's gonna be able to clear up some confusion that I might have been having yesterday about inflation and whether or not that's going to prompt the Federal Reserve to actually drop rates. I'm of the mind that they they they don't need to and that they won't, but there's a different take, and I wanna give you every take that I can actually find. And then we got Shinobi who's going to sound off about low fees. He's not a fan, if you can't imagine.
And then there's a couple of other stories here that I may or may not get to depending on time. So let's go ahead and crank it up. Helen Parks from Cointelegraph. The Trump family held talks with Binance for a stake in that crypto exchange according to a report. Oh, this is odd. Let's find out when this happened. Representatives of president Donald Trump's family have reportedly held talks with with Binance about acquiring a stake in the crypto exchange. Binance reached out to Trump's family representatives in 2024, so last year, offering to strike a deal as part of a plan to resume Binance.US operations in the country, The Wall Street Journal reported on March.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report mentioned that Binance's billionaire founder, Changpeng Zhao, who served four months in prison in The United States, has been pushing for the Trump administration to grant him a pardon. It is unclear what form the Trump family stake would take if the deal comes together or whether it would be contingent on a pardon, the report did say. According to The Wall Street Journal, a potential opportunity could be a scenario where Trump takes the stake in Binance or proceeds with the deal through World Liberty Financial, a Trump backed crypto venture.
Trump has emerged as the first US, quote, crypto president launching his official Trump meme coin days before returning to the White House on January. A similar meme coin subsequently came from Trump's wife, Melania. Yes. We get it. We know. CoinTelegraph approached Binance for a comment regarding the report. Additionally, Binance executives anticipated a potential legal resolution in the Securities and Exchange Commission's or the SEC, their civil case against Tron founder Justin Sun. Sun, who in November of twenty twenty four announced a $30,000,000 investment in Trump's, well, World Liberty Financial jointly asked a United States court to halt his case with the SEC in February of this year.
Neither Sun nor Binance representatives attended the first White House crypto summit on March. Minutes before the WSJ article was published at 1PM UTC, Trump took to Truth Social to slam the publication for allegedly reporting wrong information. Quote, the globalist Wall Street Journal has no idea what they are doing or saying. They are owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of, quote, screwing The United States Of America. Their Wall Street Journal thinking is antiquated and weak and a very and very bad, very bad for The United States Of America, but have no fear. We will win on everything. Egg prices are down. Oil is down. Interest rates are down, and tariff related money is pouring into The United States.
Quote, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, end quote. I believe that was Winston Churchill. I not quite sure. Anyway, while Trump was fast to address the WSJ report minutes before its publication, key Trump industry linked industry figures, including Musk and David Sacks, did not react to the news on social media. Changpeng Zhao subsequently did take to x or Twitter to deny the allocation allegations suggesting that the WSJ article is, quote, motivated as an attack on the president and cryptocurrency. Quote, fact, I have had no discussions of a Binance.US deal with, well, anyone, end quote, c z wrote.
Meanwhile, Binance CEO Richard Tang did not immediately respond to the report within the first hour of its publication. Instead, he took to Twitter on March to highlight his new interview with CNBC where he praised Trump as a catalyst for the, quote, global pro crypto shift. Tang then expressed confidence that the crypto industry is widely supporting Trump stating, quote, if you ask anybody in the crypto industry, people prefer the current administration compared to the last one. Yeah. You think? Still, some apparently have not been happy with all of Trump's crypto policies with many advocating for Bitcoin only US reserves. Yeah. We're we're gonna go into into that, and I that that's not important.
What's important here is that there is a Wall Street Journal report that is suggesting that Trump is in talks with Binance and that under the table deals are being worked out. Have no idea if it's true or not. But one thing that I do know for a fact is that it's very clear that the Trump family are all over cryptocurrency, and it's not ever going to be just Bitcoin. And I'm not talking about the reserve here. I'm talking about you you can expect multiple instances of shit out of that family. It just is what it is. If you love him and you think I'm slamming him, I'm not. I'm just stating the facts, man. In one way, it's good that we have a pro crypto not only president, but the rest of his family seem to be all over this thing.
But in clearly, in other ways, it's not good because it's shit coinary. So how that all this shakes out will is is yet to be seen. But these are pretty pretty powerful allegations because if true if true, it's just going to load up the enemies of this administration with enough ammunition to go on a basically a killing spree. Now as to whether or not it will, well, you know, be all that effective, again, remains to be seen. But, man, that's a some some leveling some serious allegations because this is pay to play allegations.
Getting rid of Justin Sun's SEC case, in the case of CZ, the possibility of a pardon. Not to mention, the overarching umbrella of all this is leading Binance.US back into the country to do business. And it all is part of this, quote, unquote, deal of taking a stake in Binance. And if true, like I said, if true, that is a that's a boatload of ammunition. We'll have to see. Okay. So let's get on to this one where lawyers have requested or a lawyer has requested an Interpol red notice for Libra founder Hayden Davis. Let's get into this one. Oh, by the way, it is written by Jamie Crawley from CoinDesk.
A lawyer in Argentina has requested an international arrest order for Hayden Davis, the founder of the meme coin Libra, Buenos Aires newspaper Pagina 12 reported on Thursday, attorney Georgio Dalban raised the procedural risk of US citizen Davis remaining at large and of his financial resources allowing him to stay in hiding. This is the first I've even heard this guy's name, much less the fact that he's actually in hiding. Whatever. The lawyer, therefore, requested that the international arrest of Davis be ordered and that an Interpol red notice be issued in order to locate and arrest him with a view to his extradition in a presentation to Argentine courts.
The Libra meme coin rose to $4,400,000,000 in market cap before plunging more than 95% last month. It had been promoted by Argentine president Javier Millet in a now deleted tweet. The president subsequently backtracked on his promotion of Libra saying that he had been unaware of the details of the project and that he, quote, decided not to continue spreading the word once he did become aware. Libra's crash is estimated to have caused losses of around $250,000,000 for its investors according to research by Nansen. Alright. So this is the first I've heard of a guy named Hayden Davis.
This is also the first I've heard that he's in hiding. Nobody knows where this guy is. If he's in hiding, chances are real good he knew this was a scam to begin with. So I don't think he's going to be able to say, I didn't know what I was doing. It was a meme coin. We were all having fun. No. See, this is this is why meme coins and shit coinery is bad. We keep continually finding out that the people behind these schemes are just thieves. There's there has never been an innocent launch of anything except, in my opinion, Doge.
And the only reason I say that is not because I'm a Doge lover, but because the way it came out. And the way it came out was that the people behind the Dogecoin hated Bitcoin so much that they said, look. It it wasn't just the fact that it was Bitcoin that they hated it. What they really hated was the idea of a digital currency, the promises that Bitcoin made. They thought it was stupid. They were like, look. Anybody can spin one of these things up. And that is a narrative that we still get to this day that somehow or another, just because I can spin up some coin that is going to destroy the value of some other coin. And that's we're walking we're we're watching Bitcoin walk all up and down every altcoins ass.
But Dogecoin was the only coin that came out in a way that was almost almost innocent because they were so angry that they were like they said, we're just gonna spin up a coin because we can, because we know how to do it, and they did it. And for a long time, Doge was fun. It wasn't fun that it was fun to have. It wasn't fun to trade. It was just that you had a stupid coin. But, alas, once Elon Musk got into the picture with Doge, all the innocence died, and now people think it actually has value. It never did. Alright? So just lay off with the meme coins and the altcoins.
It's all going to zero against Bitcoin anyway. So CBOE, Chicago Board of Exchange, has filed to allow in kind redemptions for Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one exchange traded funds. This is Vismea v from Decrypt. Cboe b z x exchange has filed a proposed rule change with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of Invesco Galaxy to allow for in kind creations and redemptions of shares for its Spot Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF. In kind redemptions and creations allow for the direct exchange of the underlying asset of the ETF for ETF shares, bypassing the need for cash.
This method eliminates the need for participants to sell the underlying crypto to create shares, reducing the bid ask ratio and avoid additional broker commissions. And the proposal, or published on Thursday morning, pushes the boundaries of crypto ETFs in The United States opening new avenue avenues for investors to tap into Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one without holding the asset physically. As the SEC reviews CBOE's proposed rule change, a public comment period has been opened allowing stakeholders to share their thoughts before a final decision is made. Authorized participants will be eligible to use the in kind transaction model, says the filing.
Individual investors will still be required to use the cash based model when purchasing or redeeming ETF shares. Can you guess what I think about that? First of all, you shouldn't be buying ETFs anyway. You can just buy the asset. That's what I recommend. However, there are some institutions they can't they can't do anything but buy ETFs, so that's why they exist in the first damn place. In either event, the fact that pleb investors like you and me are not allowed to take part of something that reduces our fees in trading this stuff means that we're the ones that bear the brunt of making the company that offers these investment vehicles money.
Because the the the large guys, they don't have to do it. They're they can just, like, go they don't have to sell for cash. Right? But you, you do. This shit is always designed to keep you poor. It's just just amazing that we just don't it's amazing that there's not torches and pitchforks out in the street on a daily basis, and I'm surprised it hasn't been that way for, like, the last fifteen years. This is just bullshit. They don't even care. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. Anyway, the Invesco Galaxy filing, well, it mirrors similar moves by major ETF providers including BlackRock, which has recently sought approval for in kind redemptions mechanisms themselves.
In a related tweet, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Safer pointed out in January that in kind creations and redemptions should help, quote, streamline the ETF markets. And get back past past this. It's a big old ad. Anyway, the analyst explained that fewer steps and parties would be involved in the process. While sharing an image BlackRock reportedly used in a November 2023 SCC meeting to advocate for in kind transactions for spot Bitcoin ETFs. Well, November of twenty twenty three was well before the launch of the actual ETFs. So interesting.
Quote, in my opinion, the ETFs should have been allowed to do this from the get go, but the Democratic SEC commissioners were against it, Saifert said. Last January, the SEC approved the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF, making history as one of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs to be listed on a US exchange. Following the approval of its Bitcoin counterpart, the SEC granted approval for the Invesco Galaxy Ethereum ETF in May of last year. Like the Bitcoin ETF, it holds Ethereum as the underlying asset and allows shares to be traded on a regulated exchange. Even so, both Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have faced challenges in recent days. Yes. We are all aware of of this of the the huge, huge price swings that we've been seeing because every time Trump says the word tariff, the markets just shit the bed, and today is no different.
But remember yesterday, I was having some difficulty understanding the logic behind whether or not we're gonna drop rates at the fed because we've got better inflation numbers. Let's see what Brian McGlian from the block has to say about it. He says, cooling US inflation could give the Fed wiggle room to cut rates and potentially boost risk assets, analysts say. Wednesday's cooler than expected US consumer price index inflation reading could offer the Federal Reserve more flexibility to lower interest rates potentially sparking a resurgence of risk on sentiment that may benefit Bitcoin, analysts say.
The Federal Open Market Committee has kept the federal funds rate steady within the target range of 4.25 to 4.5% since December of twenty twenty four. However, all eyes are now on the Fed's upcoming monetary policy decision scheduled for March. Guys, that's in a week. Monetary easing is generally favorable for risk assets as it boosts liquidity within the financial system. Lower interest rates also diminish the appeal of fixed income investments, prompting investors to seek higher returns in equities and further out the risk curve to digital assets just like Bitcoin. Wednesday's CPI release brought some relief to investors with core CPI for February rising a mere 0.2% month on month falling short of the expected point 3%.
Bitwise head of research in Europe, Andre Dragos, highlighted how the latest cooling inflation point could result in beneficial sentiment changes for risk assets. Quote, US CPI inflation decelerating gives the Fed more wiggle room to cut rates, which is probably the reason why Bitcoin has rallied on the release, Dragos said. Valentin Fournay, an analyst at BRN, echoed that sentiment, quote, this lower than expected inflation print strengthens the case for multiple rate cuts, not just one, but multiple rate cuts as investors now price in an 82% chance of three cuts by December, a major potential liquidity boost for risk assets including crypto.
Bifanex analyst also emphasized how the inflation cool down supports the case for rate cuts. Quote, the recent cooling of US inflation strengthens the case for potential Federal Reserve rate cuts. Trade war induced economic strain could further pressure the Fed to act sooner, improving liquidity conditions for risk assets just like Bitcoin. Lower interest rates generally support Bitcoin's price by making it a more attractive store of value compared to yield generating assets, they stated. However, despite the expectations of a positive market reaction, BIT Mining chief economist, doctor Yue Yang, warned that one favorable CPI print may not be enough to restore confidence.
CPI, this is a quote, CPI was bullish, signaling faster rate cuts. But crypto hasn't reacted very strongly as weeks of market fear require more than a single good print to regain confidence, Yang said. Yang also highlighted how the Trump administration's aggressive tariff policies exacerbate economic challenges, potentially forcing the Fed's hand, quote, the real issue is Trump's aggressive tariffs, which risk making inflation stickier while also crashing markets and triggering layoffs, particularly by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, Yang said, quote, this puts the Fed in a bind where high inflation from tariffs make rate cuts harder, but the potential for market crashes and job losses pressure the Fed to cut rates sooner, end quote.
Nevertheless, Yang cautioned that premature rate cuts could reignite inflation, see, this is what I think, Complicating future monetary policy, quote, until clearer signals emerge, fear and uncertainty will weigh on crypto market sentiment. Bifenex analysts noted that corrections within bull cycles are typical and may indicate a temporary shakeout rather than the onset of a prolonged bear market. Quote, the broader market, especially equities and bond yields, will dictate Bitcoin's trajectory If global liquidity conditions ease and institutional inflows persist, Bitcoin support at 72,000 to 75,000 could hold, potentially setting the stage for a resumed uptrend, they said.
Spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds recorded net inflows of $13,300,000 on Wednesday, breaking a five day streak of outflows according to data from Farside Investors. Notably, ARK Invest ETF saw strong inflows, hinting at institutional demand despite the recent market volatility. Quote, Bitcoin ETF flows have shown early signs of a turnaround with a net inflow on March breaking a five day streak of outflows with ARK Invest ETF seeing strong inflows suggesting institutional demand remaining intact despite the short term volatility. If inflows continue, it could indicate that fund managers are repositioning ahead of a more dovish Fed policy shift, said the Bitfinex analysts.
However, the analyst also cautioned that a single day of inflows does not necessarily signal a trend reversal but does suggest improving sentiment. Bitcoin traded flat early Thursday, holding above 83,000 with intraday swings between a low of 80,625 and a high of 84,302. Despite the steadiness, the largest digital asset by market capitalization has dropped 15% over the past month. Alright. So I at least I'm not the only one thinking that the Fed doesn't necessarily want to drop rates right now. If if it is the case that their present course of action is to in their eyes working, You and me both know it's not.
Inflation is out of freaking control everywhere. But, again, there's no denying the fact that they are going to use the CPI numbers, and they're gonna look at those, and they're gonna say, see where it's working. Our policies are working. Fine. Let's just get let's let's let that be a given. If it's if that's the case, if that's what they see, then I just I'm suggesting that they're not really chomping at the bit to lower rates just yet. Now back in, you know, a few weeks ago, I've done a couple of stories about this inflation thing and the Fed, and the suggestion is is that we were gonna have four rate cuts of point 25% each this year.
Then that dropped to three, and then it dropped to two, and then people were hoping they were praying to God that they would get at least one. And that pretty much held. Now analysts are looking at three rate cuts. So we're going back up. They were going back up here into the percentage that the Fed actually will, you know, cut rate substantially. And if so, then, yeah, it's free money. Well, not free money, but cheap money or cheaper money, and then people go out and they they wanna get more riskier on the on the long end of the curve. But that said, knowing what Jerome Powell or has done in the past, I don't I don't think he's really chomping at the bit to do this. Plus, we're at 4.25 to 4.5% right now.
That is not a lot of ammunition the Fed has in case shit goes sideways or go south. You I mean, like, in the eighties when rates were, like, 17%. You know, that was Volcker. That was the Volcker decision under Reagan. He just cranked that son of a bitch up, and they had a lot of room, And it kept coming down and down and down and down and down. That's why you had forty years of a bond market bull run, and that shit's over or that shit ended with COVID. COVID was the death of the bond market or at least the bond market where people were just making money hand over fist for, like, four freaking decades. Now we're back up to 4.25 to 4.5.
We can start dropping. We've got some room, but we don't have the kind of room that we have from the eighties. It's it's a it's a different deal altogether, and we'll just have to wait and see, man. Let's read the sorry. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities, it looks like the Dow has dropped 400 points because, yeah, Trump opened his mouth and the word that came out was, you guessed it, tariffs. And it's screwing up oil. West Texas Intermediate has fallen 1.26% to $66 and 83 or and 83¢. And that was after it was starting to, like, recover a little bit yesterday and the day before, but no. No. No. No. Brent Norsee is also down a full point to $70.02 20¢ a barrel.
Natural gas doing its thing. It's going the opposite direction, up 1.44% to $4.14. Gasoline is down almost a half to $2.14. Shiny metal rocks are having a rally. Gold almost touching $3,000 with a one and a half percent rise in price. Silver is up 2.6% to $34.62. Platinum is up a half. Copper is up 1.2. Palladium up 1.2 as well. Ag futures basically mixed today. Biggest winner is wheat, 1.58% to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate, 2.53 to the downside. Over in livestock land, live cattle are up point 71%. Lean hogs are up point one two. Feeder cattle up point five three. And here comes your your equities index indexes.
Sorry. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, so I'm I'm I'm hanging on by a thread here, ladies and gentlemen. The Dow is down over a point with a drop of 452 to bring the Dow underneath 41,000 for the first time in a while, 40,930. S and P is down 1.18%. Nasdaq is down 1.6%, and the S and P Mini is down 1.3%. And, well, you know, I mean, Bitcoin's having struggles today too. $80,990 brings us down to a $1,610,000,000,000 market cap, and we can straight up buy 27 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,836,166 of, and average fees per block are low.
0.03 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis, and there are all of, what, I don't know, 12, yeah, 12 blocks carrying 27,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priorities are gonna get you in at 4 Satoshis per vByte. And let's go over here to mining and see what we're doing over here. We're holding at the hash rate of well above 800 exahashes per second. So still, there's no real minor capitulation when it comes to their equipment. They're not shutting them down. What do they know that we don't know? I don't know. But from Rise Lazarus, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Bitcoin arborist who has written me a very long note.
Maybe he's going to praise my my my my tenacity. Maybe he'll say good job, man, because he gave me 21,000 satoshis. It's a hell of a bump. Let's see what he has to say. You are a gentleman and a scholar. Ah, see, that's nice. However, uh-oh, we need to be united on the same team when it comes to dealing with these narratives. Part of that is the pronunciation of these names. You have been on Daniel Prince's show and you did a great job. Oh, thank you. And he had allowed you to give your position and recognize you as an old school Bitcoiner. However, you keep saying and pronouncing these old school Bitcoiners names incorrectly.
Oh my god. Which lends you less credence, and that's frustrating. You have said Samson Moe's name incorrectly multiple times in the past. It's pronounced Mao, the same as Mao Zedong. You are now saying Dom Bey's name, but you are mispronouncing it. It is pronounced just like The Bey, I. E. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. Please don't take this the wrong way. It's simply the case that these warriors deserve their names pronounced correctly. Just as I would pronounce your name correctly because you are right there on the same battlefront. This boost is coming from Bitcoin arborist who is a who is a fucking stupid to even tell if that is evident as the person posting it because all I see is a bunch of public key numbers up top despite my efforts to try to figure out how I can post with a recognizable name like Bitcoin arborist.
Keep up the good work. Cellulose and lignin are analogous to the fixed 21,000,000 and the difficulty adjustment. Together, these make up the strengthening wood laid down by stems under load forces that allow the best of these stems to remain standing. Standing under forces that nature, which is an unpredictable and unforgiving force just fucking unloads. The stronger the load force, the more dense the strengthening wood that is laid down. Nature's fucking difficulty adjustment in the world of trees. Thanks for all you do. That I love that.
Nature's difficulty adjustment. I'm gonna have to go back and read that a lot because I like that analogy. And I also appreciate him coming and calling me out about mispronouncing people's names. Dude, I do that shit all the time, and I understand it. And I appreciate the pronunciation of mister bae instead of bye. I get that. However, Samson Moe's name is pronounced Moe. It is some people pronounce it Mao, it is not, and I know that for a fact. I've talked with Samson Mo. I do know how he pronounces his last name. It is Mo, not Mao. So it it's okay. He doesn't care.
He doesn't get pissed when people mispronounce his last name. People mispronounce my last name too. I don't I don't I don't get my my panties in a twist about it. However, that's why I will continue to pronounce Samson's last name Moe because I know for a fact that that's how you actually pronounce it. Let's go on to 16,000 Satoshis from o b says zap this man, people. Hold on. Okay. Satirical skeptic with 1,190 sats says value for value. Thank you, sir. Justin with a thousand says, I think he pronounces his name Dombey for your information. Thank you, Justin. I appreciate that.
Proof of Pleb with 500 says you earned these SATs like a mother effer. Anonymous with 500 says, if so weird, past zaps show up as that. Handle shows to me. If so, no worries. It's for you, not me. Anonymous with another 500 says, does this show as anonymous? Yes. It does. It's this particular one of four hours ago from 09:21AM Pacific Daylight Time is indeed showing as anonymous. Yodl with 444 says value for value. Wartime with three thirty three says cheers. God's death with two thirty seven says thank you, sir. No thank you. And he does it again with a thank you, sir. No thank you. Perma nerd with two thirty four says boost this man some sats and pies at the end. A hundred sats. Thank you, sir. No thank you. That's the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Low fees are a symptom of a deeper problem according to Shinobi writing out of Bitcoin magazine. People tend to celebrate periods of low fee rates. It's time to clean house, consolidate any UTXOs that you need to, open or close any lightning channels you've been waiting on, and, you know, inscribe some stupid eight bit JPEG into the blockchain. They're perceived as a positive time. They are not. We have seen explosive price appreciation the last few months finally hitting the $100,000 benchmark that everyone took for granted as preordained during the last market cycle.
That's not normal. The picture on the left is the average fee rate each day since 2017. The picture on the right is the average price each day since 2017. When the price is pumping, when it was highly volatile, historically, we have seen fee rates spike accordingly. Generally matching the growth and peaking when the price did. The people actually buying and selling transacted on chain, people took custody of their own coins when they bought them. This last leg up to over a hundred thousand dollars does not seem to at all have had the same proportional effect on fee rates that even moves earlier in this cycle have.
Now if you actually did look at both of those charts, I'm sure many people are going, what if this cycle is at the end? Well, it's possible, But let's say it's not for a second. What else could this be indicating? That the participants that are driving the market are changing. A group of people who used to be dominated by individuals who self custodied who managed their counterparty risk by removing gains from exchanges, who generated time sensitive on chain activity, are transforming into a group of people simply passing around ETF shares that have no need for settling anything on chain.
That is not a good thing. Bitcoin's very nature is defined by the users who interact with the protocol directly, Those who have private keys to authorize transactions generating revenue for minors, those who are sent to funds and verify transactions against consensus rules with software. Both of those things being removed from the hands of users and placed behind the veil of custodians puts the very stability of Bitcoin's nature at risk. This is a serious existential issue that has to be solved. The entire stability of consensus around a specific set of rules is premised on the assumption that there are enough independent actors with separate interests that diverge but align on a value gained from using that set of rules.
The smaller the group of independent actors and the larger the group of people quote using Bitcoin through these actors as intermediaries, the more practical it is for them to coordinate to fundamentally change them, and the more likely it is that their interest as a group will diverge in sync from the interest of the larger group of secondary users. If things continue trending in this direction, Bitcoin very well could end up embodying nothing that those of us here today hope it can. This problem is both a technical one in terms of scaling Bitcoin in a way that allows users to independently have control of their funds on chain, even if only through worst case recourse, but it is also a problem of incentive and risk management.
The system must not only scale, but it has to be able to provide ways to mitigate the risks of self custody to the degree that people are used to from the traditional financial world, and many of them actually need that. This isn't just a situation of, quote, do the same thing I do because it's the only correct way. This is something that has implications for the foundational properties of Bitcoin itself in the long term. He's got a point. He's got a good point too. And this is something that I've been wondering about for, you know, for a while. But after reading this particular article, it dawned on me that this is an attack vector.
It's straight up well, okay. It is a potential attack vector. Right? It is not a realized attack vector unless it becomes clear that the ETFs for Bitcoin were had nothing to do with making people wealthy and and and getting them to head hedge against inflation and all all that shit, that it is always about controlling the price to drive the masses into markets that the people at the top, the, quote, unquote, elite, they want you to be driven to the place where they want to drive you. So in in what I'm talking about here is, like, if a gargantuan amount of Bitcoin ends up in sell in in non self custodial issues like ETFs, and then fees drop, well, that affects miners. Because remember, I'm still freaking out well, not freaking out, but I'm still, like, wondering the fact that we still have 836 exahashes going on for the for the hash rate. I'm still expecting a drop to 700.
That would mean to me, that would mean minor capitulation as far as equipment and energy contracts are concerned. Well, that if if that all happens because we're not using Bitcoin on chain, instead we're just letting BlackRock hold it and we're not actually doing anything with it, then fees drop. And if they've if for whatever reason, this is actually what's going on, and it very well may be very well may be, then, well, we've got a problem. But we've got a bigger problem if we're actually right that we have a problem. And what I mean by that is there if you've been around this space for as long as I have, you've heard several people say, hey. Look. If that shit happens, the Bitcoin deserve to die.
But you also hear things like Bitcoin is for enemies. You can't control who does what with Bitcoin. Which one do you think I cottoned two more? The second one. Bitcoin is for enemies. And this the first one actually falls behind. What what I mean by that is that Bitcoin is for enemies. If the enemy can figure out a way to destroy Bitcoin, then Bitcoin would need it to be destroyed in the first place. And nobody wants to hear this shit. I get it, but it's a fact. And there's nothing I can do about it, there's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing I would want to do about it. I don't think we've been here before. This is what I'm getting at. We've been in this situation many, many times before, not just with low fee rates, not just with an attack vector, not just with talking about quote unquote attack surface area, all of that. We've been I've been through it so many times.
Every single cycle, Bitcoin's going to die because x or y or z, and then it doesn't. And I don't know what else to tell people. Right now, we're seeing a huge problem because we've got twin things going on. Shinobi's right. We've got way too much Bitcoin in somebody else's custody, and they're not do actually doing with it and fees are dropping and it's gonna cause problems at the on the mining front. He's not wrong. But we also have orange man saying the word tariff every other day, and he's tanking markets as he goes, which I actually find being very odd because until he stabilizes and actually does a thing, because a lot of these tariffs aren't even in effect.
A couple of them are, but most of them are they're either delayed or they're being revised or whatever, but they're they're not act unlike well, he said that his tweet his tweet said, hey. We're making money hand over fist off these tariffs. Which ones? Because not almost none of them are actually in effect yet. Right? So you've got we've got twin pressure points that are are jacking up not just Bitcoin, but oil, commodities, the so, like, agricultural futures, not to mention the the equities indices, they're all just they're all jacked. Nobody knows what to do.
Nobody knows what to do. So what I'm going to default to is what I always have in the past. I'm not gonna worry about it. If they figured out a way to kill Bitcoin, then Bitcoin probably needs to die. But they tried to do this with gold, and gold isn't dead. And they've been trying to fuck with gold for decades and decades and decades. Ask Peter Schiff. Because say what you want about Peter Schiff, the man knows what he's talking about when it comes to price manipulation on gold. He is not lying about that. And yet, here we are with gold, like, you know, touching $3,000 yet one more time.
The pressure of the markets is going to determine whether or not the tools that have been used and put in place to destroy people's wealth actually work. So I'm not going to worry all that much about it. Okay? Now let's see. Where are we at? I don't wanna do this one. Yeah. That's gonna be too long for this one. Let's move to Bitcoin news. This one written by Alex Larry. Deutsche Borse to launch Bitcoin custody for institutional investors. Oh, see, Shinobi is not gonna like this. Deutsche Borse Group is entering the digital asset space by introducing a new custody and settlement service for Bitcoin and Shitcoin 1. Through its post trade unit, ClearStream, the company will offer institutional investors a secure and regulated way to store and manage digital assets. ClearStream, a part of Deutsche Borse, will launch the service in April of this year. So coming up here pretty quick.
The new service will initially support Bitcoin and Shitcoin 1, the two largest digital assets by market cap. It's designed for institutional clients, so over 2,500 financial institutions can access Bitcoin custody and settlement via their existing Clearstream banking SA accounts. Jens Hockmeister sorry, Hockmeister, head of issuer service and new digital markets at Clearstream said, quote, offering crypto custody is the next step on Clearstream's journey to digitize financial markets. The institutional grade regulatory complement solution gives clients easy and quick access to new asset clients or classes while using the best of our established post trading systems, end quote.
To ensure security and compliance, Deutsche Borse will use its majority owned subsidiary, Crypto Finance, as the sub custodian. Crypto Finance, which is based in Switzerland, is a regulated entity that has already received approval under Europe's markets in crypto assets regulation, also known as MICA. This allows the company to operate in the European Union and comply with strict regulations. Stijn Van der Sraten, CEO of Crypto Finance, said, quote, this offering puts Deutsche Borse Group in a unique position in the digital assets industry. We are not only covering native services via direct interface, but also traditional rails that are implemented with most financial market participants.
That sounds to me like a very bad translation from whatever his native language is. While custody and settlement will be the initial focus, Clearstream has bigger plans. Yes. Over time, the company will add staking, oh god, lending and brokerage to its digital asset services. Hochmeister confirmed this saying, quote, with this, we are creating a one step shop around custody, brokerage, and settlement. He also mentioned the potential future addition of stablecoins and tokenized securities. This comes at a time when institutions are showing increasing interest in Bitcoin, especially after MICA regulations were implemented.
The European Union's MICA framework, which came into effect in late twenty twenty four, creates a clear regulatory environment for digital assets, and now traditional financial institutions are more confident to explore Bitcoin services. Van der Straaten said that international banking clients have been asking for Bitcoin support since Micah was introduced. Quote, there's a very high demand for crypto support from international banking clients, he said. Many financial institutions have spent millions of euros building in house digital asset capabilities, but Clearstream's new service might be more cost effective of a solution.
Deutsche Borse isn't the only big financial institution expanding into digital assets in Bitcoin. Borst Stuttgart Digital, a competitor in Germany, became the country's first fully licensed digital asset service provider under Micah earlier this year, and banks like BBVA in Spain have also started offering Bitcoin trading for retail clients. In The US, the institutional adoption of Bitcoin is accelerating. Big banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are increasing their exposure to Bitcoin ETFs, a sign of broader acceptance of Bitcoin in traditional finance. With over €21,000,000,000,000 in assets under custody, Clearstream is one of the world's largest post trade service providers.
Its entry into Bitcoin custody is a big moment for traditional finance. €21,000,000,000,000 seems a little high. I'm not sure about that number, but even if it's at 10 or €12,000,000,000,000, Clearstream is just and Deutsche Borse, this is not something to sneeze at. And, again, just to remind you, we came off that story written by Shinobi and and his concerns, and he's not out of bounds being concerned. This doesn't this while this doesn't help, I'm still I'm still well, I'm concerned too, but I'm still, like, I'm not all that worried because I've been here before and I'm going to be here again.
See, this is this is the issue. We are constantly here. We're constantly terrified that human beings are not supposed to be terrified all the fucking time, guys. We're all I mean, yes. We're also not supposed to be working stupid jobs that don't do anything for people that have no vision. Okay. That's fine. But when we look at the human condition right now, I don't know what we've done to ourselves. We should have stayed up in the trees. We should have stayed up in the trees. Okay. Me and my wife are gonna go work out. We're gonna go to the gym. We're gonna go have fun. She's on her spring break. So we're gonna lift, and we're gonna do some squats, and we're gonna do some cardio, and it's gonna be great. And if I don't die, I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 08:48AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the thirteenth day of the third month of twenty '20 '5, and this is episode ten fifty four, I believe, of Bitcoin. And we're gonna talk a little bit about this report that's come out about Donald Trump, well, the Trump family, talking with Binance, apparently. I don't know. I the first I've heard, So we'll we'll find out together. And then over here, we're gonna talk about a red notice, an Interpol red notice for that dude that cranked up that Libra coin for Argentina. I guess I guess he's in a little bit of hot water. I I guess they didn't like that.
And then the CBOE is gonna be in the news. And then from the block, I got Brian McGlehan, who's talking about, well, as I he's I think he's gonna be able to clear up some confusion that I might have been having yesterday about inflation and whether or not that's going to prompt the Federal Reserve to actually drop rates. I'm of the mind that they they they don't need to and that they won't, but there's a different take, and I wanna give you every take that I can actually find. And then we got Shinobi who's going to sound off about low fees. He's not a fan, if you can't imagine.
And then there's a couple of other stories here that I may or may not get to depending on time. So let's go ahead and crank it up. Helen Parks from Cointelegraph. The Trump family held talks with Binance for a stake in that crypto exchange according to a report. Oh, this is odd. Let's find out when this happened. Representatives of president Donald Trump's family have reportedly held talks with with Binance about acquiring a stake in the crypto exchange. Binance reached out to Trump's family representatives in 2024, so last year, offering to strike a deal as part of a plan to resume Binance.US operations in the country, The Wall Street Journal reported on March.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report mentioned that Binance's billionaire founder, Changpeng Zhao, who served four months in prison in The United States, has been pushing for the Trump administration to grant him a pardon. It is unclear what form the Trump family stake would take if the deal comes together or whether it would be contingent on a pardon, the report did say. According to The Wall Street Journal, a potential opportunity could be a scenario where Trump takes the stake in Binance or proceeds with the deal through World Liberty Financial, a Trump backed crypto venture.
Trump has emerged as the first US, quote, crypto president launching his official Trump meme coin days before returning to the White House on January. A similar meme coin subsequently came from Trump's wife, Melania. Yes. We get it. We know. CoinTelegraph approached Binance for a comment regarding the report. Additionally, Binance executives anticipated a potential legal resolution in the Securities and Exchange Commission's or the SEC, their civil case against Tron founder Justin Sun. Sun, who in November of twenty twenty four announced a $30,000,000 investment in Trump's, well, World Liberty Financial jointly asked a United States court to halt his case with the SEC in February of this year.
Neither Sun nor Binance representatives attended the first White House crypto summit on March. Minutes before the WSJ article was published at 1PM UTC, Trump took to Truth Social to slam the publication for allegedly reporting wrong information. Quote, the globalist Wall Street Journal has no idea what they are doing or saying. They are owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of, quote, screwing The United States Of America. Their Wall Street Journal thinking is antiquated and weak and a very and very bad, very bad for The United States Of America, but have no fear. We will win on everything. Egg prices are down. Oil is down. Interest rates are down, and tariff related money is pouring into The United States.
Quote, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, end quote. I believe that was Winston Churchill. I not quite sure. Anyway, while Trump was fast to address the WSJ report minutes before its publication, key Trump industry linked industry figures, including Musk and David Sacks, did not react to the news on social media. Changpeng Zhao subsequently did take to x or Twitter to deny the allocation allegations suggesting that the WSJ article is, quote, motivated as an attack on the president and cryptocurrency. Quote, fact, I have had no discussions of a Binance.US deal with, well, anyone, end quote, c z wrote.
Meanwhile, Binance CEO Richard Tang did not immediately respond to the report within the first hour of its publication. Instead, he took to Twitter on March to highlight his new interview with CNBC where he praised Trump as a catalyst for the, quote, global pro crypto shift. Tang then expressed confidence that the crypto industry is widely supporting Trump stating, quote, if you ask anybody in the crypto industry, people prefer the current administration compared to the last one. Yeah. You think? Still, some apparently have not been happy with all of Trump's crypto policies with many advocating for Bitcoin only US reserves. Yeah. We're we're gonna go into into that, and I that that's not important.
What's important here is that there is a Wall Street Journal report that is suggesting that Trump is in talks with Binance and that under the table deals are being worked out. Have no idea if it's true or not. But one thing that I do know for a fact is that it's very clear that the Trump family are all over cryptocurrency, and it's not ever going to be just Bitcoin. And I'm not talking about the reserve here. I'm talking about you you can expect multiple instances of shit out of that family. It just is what it is. If you love him and you think I'm slamming him, I'm not. I'm just stating the facts, man. In one way, it's good that we have a pro crypto not only president, but the rest of his family seem to be all over this thing.
But in clearly, in other ways, it's not good because it's shit coinary. So how that all this shakes out will is is yet to be seen. But these are pretty pretty powerful allegations because if true if true, it's just going to load up the enemies of this administration with enough ammunition to go on a basically a killing spree. Now as to whether or not it will, well, you know, be all that effective, again, remains to be seen. But, man, that's a some some leveling some serious allegations because this is pay to play allegations.
Getting rid of Justin Sun's SEC case, in the case of CZ, the possibility of a pardon. Not to mention, the overarching umbrella of all this is leading Binance.US back into the country to do business. And it all is part of this, quote, unquote, deal of taking a stake in Binance. And if true, like I said, if true, that is a that's a boatload of ammunition. We'll have to see. Okay. So let's get on to this one where lawyers have requested or a lawyer has requested an Interpol red notice for Libra founder Hayden Davis. Let's get into this one. Oh, by the way, it is written by Jamie Crawley from CoinDesk.
A lawyer in Argentina has requested an international arrest order for Hayden Davis, the founder of the meme coin Libra, Buenos Aires newspaper Pagina 12 reported on Thursday, attorney Georgio Dalban raised the procedural risk of US citizen Davis remaining at large and of his financial resources allowing him to stay in hiding. This is the first I've even heard this guy's name, much less the fact that he's actually in hiding. Whatever. The lawyer, therefore, requested that the international arrest of Davis be ordered and that an Interpol red notice be issued in order to locate and arrest him with a view to his extradition in a presentation to Argentine courts.
The Libra meme coin rose to $4,400,000,000 in market cap before plunging more than 95% last month. It had been promoted by Argentine president Javier Millet in a now deleted tweet. The president subsequently backtracked on his promotion of Libra saying that he had been unaware of the details of the project and that he, quote, decided not to continue spreading the word once he did become aware. Libra's crash is estimated to have caused losses of around $250,000,000 for its investors according to research by Nansen. Alright. So this is the first I've heard of a guy named Hayden Davis.
This is also the first I've heard that he's in hiding. Nobody knows where this guy is. If he's in hiding, chances are real good he knew this was a scam to begin with. So I don't think he's going to be able to say, I didn't know what I was doing. It was a meme coin. We were all having fun. No. See, this is this is why meme coins and shit coinery is bad. We keep continually finding out that the people behind these schemes are just thieves. There's there has never been an innocent launch of anything except, in my opinion, Doge.
And the only reason I say that is not because I'm a Doge lover, but because the way it came out. And the way it came out was that the people behind the Dogecoin hated Bitcoin so much that they said, look. It it wasn't just the fact that it was Bitcoin that they hated it. What they really hated was the idea of a digital currency, the promises that Bitcoin made. They thought it was stupid. They were like, look. Anybody can spin one of these things up. And that is a narrative that we still get to this day that somehow or another, just because I can spin up some coin that is going to destroy the value of some other coin. And that's we're walking we're we're watching Bitcoin walk all up and down every altcoins ass.
But Dogecoin was the only coin that came out in a way that was almost almost innocent because they were so angry that they were like they said, we're just gonna spin up a coin because we can, because we know how to do it, and they did it. And for a long time, Doge was fun. It wasn't fun that it was fun to have. It wasn't fun to trade. It was just that you had a stupid coin. But, alas, once Elon Musk got into the picture with Doge, all the innocence died, and now people think it actually has value. It never did. Alright? So just lay off with the meme coins and the altcoins.
It's all going to zero against Bitcoin anyway. So CBOE, Chicago Board of Exchange, has filed to allow in kind redemptions for Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one exchange traded funds. This is Vismea v from Decrypt. Cboe b z x exchange has filed a proposed rule change with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of Invesco Galaxy to allow for in kind creations and redemptions of shares for its Spot Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF. In kind redemptions and creations allow for the direct exchange of the underlying asset of the ETF for ETF shares, bypassing the need for cash.
This method eliminates the need for participants to sell the underlying crypto to create shares, reducing the bid ask ratio and avoid additional broker commissions. And the proposal, or published on Thursday morning, pushes the boundaries of crypto ETFs in The United States opening new avenue avenues for investors to tap into Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one without holding the asset physically. As the SEC reviews CBOE's proposed rule change, a public comment period has been opened allowing stakeholders to share their thoughts before a final decision is made. Authorized participants will be eligible to use the in kind transaction model, says the filing.
Individual investors will still be required to use the cash based model when purchasing or redeeming ETF shares. Can you guess what I think about that? First of all, you shouldn't be buying ETFs anyway. You can just buy the asset. That's what I recommend. However, there are some institutions they can't they can't do anything but buy ETFs, so that's why they exist in the first damn place. In either event, the fact that pleb investors like you and me are not allowed to take part of something that reduces our fees in trading this stuff means that we're the ones that bear the brunt of making the company that offers these investment vehicles money.
Because the the the large guys, they don't have to do it. They're they can just, like, go they don't have to sell for cash. Right? But you, you do. This shit is always designed to keep you poor. It's just just amazing that we just don't it's amazing that there's not torches and pitchforks out in the street on a daily basis, and I'm surprised it hasn't been that way for, like, the last fifteen years. This is just bullshit. They don't even care. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. Anyway, the Invesco Galaxy filing, well, it mirrors similar moves by major ETF providers including BlackRock, which has recently sought approval for in kind redemptions mechanisms themselves.
In a related tweet, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Safer pointed out in January that in kind creations and redemptions should help, quote, streamline the ETF markets. And get back past past this. It's a big old ad. Anyway, the analyst explained that fewer steps and parties would be involved in the process. While sharing an image BlackRock reportedly used in a November 2023 SCC meeting to advocate for in kind transactions for spot Bitcoin ETFs. Well, November of twenty twenty three was well before the launch of the actual ETFs. So interesting.
Quote, in my opinion, the ETFs should have been allowed to do this from the get go, but the Democratic SEC commissioners were against it, Saifert said. Last January, the SEC approved the Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF, making history as one of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs to be listed on a US exchange. Following the approval of its Bitcoin counterpart, the SEC granted approval for the Invesco Galaxy Ethereum ETF in May of last year. Like the Bitcoin ETF, it holds Ethereum as the underlying asset and allows shares to be traded on a regulated exchange. Even so, both Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have faced challenges in recent days. Yes. We are all aware of of this of the the huge, huge price swings that we've been seeing because every time Trump says the word tariff, the markets just shit the bed, and today is no different.
But remember yesterday, I was having some difficulty understanding the logic behind whether or not we're gonna drop rates at the fed because we've got better inflation numbers. Let's see what Brian McGlian from the block has to say about it. He says, cooling US inflation could give the Fed wiggle room to cut rates and potentially boost risk assets, analysts say. Wednesday's cooler than expected US consumer price index inflation reading could offer the Federal Reserve more flexibility to lower interest rates potentially sparking a resurgence of risk on sentiment that may benefit Bitcoin, analysts say.
The Federal Open Market Committee has kept the federal funds rate steady within the target range of 4.25 to 4.5% since December of twenty twenty four. However, all eyes are now on the Fed's upcoming monetary policy decision scheduled for March. Guys, that's in a week. Monetary easing is generally favorable for risk assets as it boosts liquidity within the financial system. Lower interest rates also diminish the appeal of fixed income investments, prompting investors to seek higher returns in equities and further out the risk curve to digital assets just like Bitcoin. Wednesday's CPI release brought some relief to investors with core CPI for February rising a mere 0.2% month on month falling short of the expected point 3%.
Bitwise head of research in Europe, Andre Dragos, highlighted how the latest cooling inflation point could result in beneficial sentiment changes for risk assets. Quote, US CPI inflation decelerating gives the Fed more wiggle room to cut rates, which is probably the reason why Bitcoin has rallied on the release, Dragos said. Valentin Fournay, an analyst at BRN, echoed that sentiment, quote, this lower than expected inflation print strengthens the case for multiple rate cuts, not just one, but multiple rate cuts as investors now price in an 82% chance of three cuts by December, a major potential liquidity boost for risk assets including crypto.
Bifanex analyst also emphasized how the inflation cool down supports the case for rate cuts. Quote, the recent cooling of US inflation strengthens the case for potential Federal Reserve rate cuts. Trade war induced economic strain could further pressure the Fed to act sooner, improving liquidity conditions for risk assets just like Bitcoin. Lower interest rates generally support Bitcoin's price by making it a more attractive store of value compared to yield generating assets, they stated. However, despite the expectations of a positive market reaction, BIT Mining chief economist, doctor Yue Yang, warned that one favorable CPI print may not be enough to restore confidence.
CPI, this is a quote, CPI was bullish, signaling faster rate cuts. But crypto hasn't reacted very strongly as weeks of market fear require more than a single good print to regain confidence, Yang said. Yang also highlighted how the Trump administration's aggressive tariff policies exacerbate economic challenges, potentially forcing the Fed's hand, quote, the real issue is Trump's aggressive tariffs, which risk making inflation stickier while also crashing markets and triggering layoffs, particularly by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, Yang said, quote, this puts the Fed in a bind where high inflation from tariffs make rate cuts harder, but the potential for market crashes and job losses pressure the Fed to cut rates sooner, end quote.
Nevertheless, Yang cautioned that premature rate cuts could reignite inflation, see, this is what I think, Complicating future monetary policy, quote, until clearer signals emerge, fear and uncertainty will weigh on crypto market sentiment. Bifenex analysts noted that corrections within bull cycles are typical and may indicate a temporary shakeout rather than the onset of a prolonged bear market. Quote, the broader market, especially equities and bond yields, will dictate Bitcoin's trajectory If global liquidity conditions ease and institutional inflows persist, Bitcoin support at 72,000 to 75,000 could hold, potentially setting the stage for a resumed uptrend, they said.
Spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds recorded net inflows of $13,300,000 on Wednesday, breaking a five day streak of outflows according to data from Farside Investors. Notably, ARK Invest ETF saw strong inflows, hinting at institutional demand despite the recent market volatility. Quote, Bitcoin ETF flows have shown early signs of a turnaround with a net inflow on March breaking a five day streak of outflows with ARK Invest ETF seeing strong inflows suggesting institutional demand remaining intact despite the short term volatility. If inflows continue, it could indicate that fund managers are repositioning ahead of a more dovish Fed policy shift, said the Bitfinex analysts.
However, the analyst also cautioned that a single day of inflows does not necessarily signal a trend reversal but does suggest improving sentiment. Bitcoin traded flat early Thursday, holding above 83,000 with intraday swings between a low of 80,625 and a high of 84,302. Despite the steadiness, the largest digital asset by market capitalization has dropped 15% over the past month. Alright. So I at least I'm not the only one thinking that the Fed doesn't necessarily want to drop rates right now. If if it is the case that their present course of action is to in their eyes working, You and me both know it's not.
Inflation is out of freaking control everywhere. But, again, there's no denying the fact that they are going to use the CPI numbers, and they're gonna look at those, and they're gonna say, see where it's working. Our policies are working. Fine. Let's just get let's let's let that be a given. If it's if that's the case, if that's what they see, then I just I'm suggesting that they're not really chomping at the bit to lower rates just yet. Now back in, you know, a few weeks ago, I've done a couple of stories about this inflation thing and the Fed, and the suggestion is is that we were gonna have four rate cuts of point 25% each this year.
Then that dropped to three, and then it dropped to two, and then people were hoping they were praying to God that they would get at least one. And that pretty much held. Now analysts are looking at three rate cuts. So we're going back up. They were going back up here into the percentage that the Fed actually will, you know, cut rate substantially. And if so, then, yeah, it's free money. Well, not free money, but cheap money or cheaper money, and then people go out and they they wanna get more riskier on the on the long end of the curve. But that said, knowing what Jerome Powell or has done in the past, I don't I don't think he's really chomping at the bit to do this. Plus, we're at 4.25 to 4.5% right now.
That is not a lot of ammunition the Fed has in case shit goes sideways or go south. You I mean, like, in the eighties when rates were, like, 17%. You know, that was Volcker. That was the Volcker decision under Reagan. He just cranked that son of a bitch up, and they had a lot of room, And it kept coming down and down and down and down and down. That's why you had forty years of a bond market bull run, and that shit's over or that shit ended with COVID. COVID was the death of the bond market or at least the bond market where people were just making money hand over fist for, like, four freaking decades. Now we're back up to 4.25 to 4.5.
We can start dropping. We've got some room, but we don't have the kind of room that we have from the eighties. It's it's a it's a different deal altogether, and we'll just have to wait and see, man. Let's read the sorry. Let's run the numbers. Futures and commodities, it looks like the Dow has dropped 400 points because, yeah, Trump opened his mouth and the word that came out was, you guessed it, tariffs. And it's screwing up oil. West Texas Intermediate has fallen 1.26% to $66 and 83 or and 83¢. And that was after it was starting to, like, recover a little bit yesterday and the day before, but no. No. No. No. Brent Norsee is also down a full point to $70.02 20¢ a barrel.
Natural gas doing its thing. It's going the opposite direction, up 1.44% to $4.14. Gasoline is down almost a half to $2.14. Shiny metal rocks are having a rally. Gold almost touching $3,000 with a one and a half percent rise in price. Silver is up 2.6% to $34.62. Platinum is up a half. Copper is up 1.2. Palladium up 1.2 as well. Ag futures basically mixed today. Biggest winner is wheat, 1.58% to the upside. Biggest loser is chocolate, 2.53 to the downside. Over in livestock land, live cattle are up point 71%. Lean hogs are up point one two. Feeder cattle up point five three. And here comes your your equities index indexes.
Sorry. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, so I'm I'm I'm hanging on by a thread here, ladies and gentlemen. The Dow is down over a point with a drop of 452 to bring the Dow underneath 41,000 for the first time in a while, 40,930. S and P is down 1.18%. Nasdaq is down 1.6%, and the S and P Mini is down 1.3%. And, well, you know, I mean, Bitcoin's having struggles today too. $80,990 brings us down to a $1,610,000,000,000 market cap, and we can straight up buy 27 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,836,166 of, and average fees per block are low.
0.03 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis, and there are all of, what, I don't know, 12, yeah, 12 blocks carrying 27,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 5 Satoshis per vByte. Low priorities are gonna get you in at 4 Satoshis per vByte. And let's go over here to mining and see what we're doing over here. We're holding at the hash rate of well above 800 exahashes per second. So still, there's no real minor capitulation when it comes to their equipment. They're not shutting them down. What do they know that we don't know? I don't know. But from Rise Lazarus, which was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I got Bitcoin arborist who has written me a very long note.
Maybe he's going to praise my my my my tenacity. Maybe he'll say good job, man, because he gave me 21,000 satoshis. It's a hell of a bump. Let's see what he has to say. You are a gentleman and a scholar. Ah, see, that's nice. However, uh-oh, we need to be united on the same team when it comes to dealing with these narratives. Part of that is the pronunciation of these names. You have been on Daniel Prince's show and you did a great job. Oh, thank you. And he had allowed you to give your position and recognize you as an old school Bitcoiner. However, you keep saying and pronouncing these old school Bitcoiners names incorrectly.
Oh my god. Which lends you less credence, and that's frustrating. You have said Samson Moe's name incorrectly multiple times in the past. It's pronounced Mao, the same as Mao Zedong. You are now saying Dom Bey's name, but you are mispronouncing it. It is pronounced just like The Bey, I. E. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. Please don't take this the wrong way. It's simply the case that these warriors deserve their names pronounced correctly. Just as I would pronounce your name correctly because you are right there on the same battlefront. This boost is coming from Bitcoin arborist who is a who is a fucking stupid to even tell if that is evident as the person posting it because all I see is a bunch of public key numbers up top despite my efforts to try to figure out how I can post with a recognizable name like Bitcoin arborist.
Keep up the good work. Cellulose and lignin are analogous to the fixed 21,000,000 and the difficulty adjustment. Together, these make up the strengthening wood laid down by stems under load forces that allow the best of these stems to remain standing. Standing under forces that nature, which is an unpredictable and unforgiving force just fucking unloads. The stronger the load force, the more dense the strengthening wood that is laid down. Nature's fucking difficulty adjustment in the world of trees. Thanks for all you do. That I love that.
Nature's difficulty adjustment. I'm gonna have to go back and read that a lot because I like that analogy. And I also appreciate him coming and calling me out about mispronouncing people's names. Dude, I do that shit all the time, and I understand it. And I appreciate the pronunciation of mister bae instead of bye. I get that. However, Samson Moe's name is pronounced Moe. It is some people pronounce it Mao, it is not, and I know that for a fact. I've talked with Samson Mo. I do know how he pronounces his last name. It is Mo, not Mao. So it it's okay. He doesn't care.
He doesn't get pissed when people mispronounce his last name. People mispronounce my last name too. I don't I don't I don't get my my panties in a twist about it. However, that's why I will continue to pronounce Samson's last name Moe because I know for a fact that that's how you actually pronounce it. Let's go on to 16,000 Satoshis from o b says zap this man, people. Hold on. Okay. Satirical skeptic with 1,190 sats says value for value. Thank you, sir. Justin with a thousand says, I think he pronounces his name Dombey for your information. Thank you, Justin. I appreciate that.
Proof of Pleb with 500 says you earned these SATs like a mother effer. Anonymous with 500 says, if so weird, past zaps show up as that. Handle shows to me. If so, no worries. It's for you, not me. Anonymous with another 500 says, does this show as anonymous? Yes. It does. It's this particular one of four hours ago from 09:21AM Pacific Daylight Time is indeed showing as anonymous. Yodl with 444 says value for value. Wartime with three thirty three says cheers. God's death with two thirty seven says thank you, sir. No thank you. And he does it again with a thank you, sir. No thank you. Perma nerd with two thirty four says boost this man some sats and pies at the end. A hundred sats. Thank you, sir. No thank you. That's the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news you can use. Low fees are a symptom of a deeper problem according to Shinobi writing out of Bitcoin magazine. People tend to celebrate periods of low fee rates. It's time to clean house, consolidate any UTXOs that you need to, open or close any lightning channels you've been waiting on, and, you know, inscribe some stupid eight bit JPEG into the blockchain. They're perceived as a positive time. They are not. We have seen explosive price appreciation the last few months finally hitting the $100,000 benchmark that everyone took for granted as preordained during the last market cycle.
That's not normal. The picture on the left is the average fee rate each day since 2017. The picture on the right is the average price each day since 2017. When the price is pumping, when it was highly volatile, historically, we have seen fee rates spike accordingly. Generally matching the growth and peaking when the price did. The people actually buying and selling transacted on chain, people took custody of their own coins when they bought them. This last leg up to over a hundred thousand dollars does not seem to at all have had the same proportional effect on fee rates that even moves earlier in this cycle have.
Now if you actually did look at both of those charts, I'm sure many people are going, what if this cycle is at the end? Well, it's possible, But let's say it's not for a second. What else could this be indicating? That the participants that are driving the market are changing. A group of people who used to be dominated by individuals who self custodied who managed their counterparty risk by removing gains from exchanges, who generated time sensitive on chain activity, are transforming into a group of people simply passing around ETF shares that have no need for settling anything on chain.
That is not a good thing. Bitcoin's very nature is defined by the users who interact with the protocol directly, Those who have private keys to authorize transactions generating revenue for minors, those who are sent to funds and verify transactions against consensus rules with software. Both of those things being removed from the hands of users and placed behind the veil of custodians puts the very stability of Bitcoin's nature at risk. This is a serious existential issue that has to be solved. The entire stability of consensus around a specific set of rules is premised on the assumption that there are enough independent actors with separate interests that diverge but align on a value gained from using that set of rules.
The smaller the group of independent actors and the larger the group of people quote using Bitcoin through these actors as intermediaries, the more practical it is for them to coordinate to fundamentally change them, and the more likely it is that their interest as a group will diverge in sync from the interest of the larger group of secondary users. If things continue trending in this direction, Bitcoin very well could end up embodying nothing that those of us here today hope it can. This problem is both a technical one in terms of scaling Bitcoin in a way that allows users to independently have control of their funds on chain, even if only through worst case recourse, but it is also a problem of incentive and risk management.
The system must not only scale, but it has to be able to provide ways to mitigate the risks of self custody to the degree that people are used to from the traditional financial world, and many of them actually need that. This isn't just a situation of, quote, do the same thing I do because it's the only correct way. This is something that has implications for the foundational properties of Bitcoin itself in the long term. He's got a point. He's got a good point too. And this is something that I've been wondering about for, you know, for a while. But after reading this particular article, it dawned on me that this is an attack vector.
It's straight up well, okay. It is a potential attack vector. Right? It is not a realized attack vector unless it becomes clear that the ETFs for Bitcoin were had nothing to do with making people wealthy and and and getting them to head hedge against inflation and all all that shit, that it is always about controlling the price to drive the masses into markets that the people at the top, the, quote, unquote, elite, they want you to be driven to the place where they want to drive you. So in in what I'm talking about here is, like, if a gargantuan amount of Bitcoin ends up in sell in in non self custodial issues like ETFs, and then fees drop, well, that affects miners. Because remember, I'm still freaking out well, not freaking out, but I'm still, like, wondering the fact that we still have 836 exahashes going on for the for the hash rate. I'm still expecting a drop to 700.
That would mean to me, that would mean minor capitulation as far as equipment and energy contracts are concerned. Well, that if if that all happens because we're not using Bitcoin on chain, instead we're just letting BlackRock hold it and we're not actually doing anything with it, then fees drop. And if they've if for whatever reason, this is actually what's going on, and it very well may be very well may be, then, well, we've got a problem. But we've got a bigger problem if we're actually right that we have a problem. And what I mean by that is there if you've been around this space for as long as I have, you've heard several people say, hey. Look. If that shit happens, the Bitcoin deserve to die.
But you also hear things like Bitcoin is for enemies. You can't control who does what with Bitcoin. Which one do you think I cottoned two more? The second one. Bitcoin is for enemies. And this the first one actually falls behind. What what I mean by that is that Bitcoin is for enemies. If the enemy can figure out a way to destroy Bitcoin, then Bitcoin would need it to be destroyed in the first place. And nobody wants to hear this shit. I get it, but it's a fact. And there's nothing I can do about it, there's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing I would want to do about it. I don't think we've been here before. This is what I'm getting at. We've been in this situation many, many times before, not just with low fee rates, not just with an attack vector, not just with talking about quote unquote attack surface area, all of that. We've been I've been through it so many times.
Every single cycle, Bitcoin's going to die because x or y or z, and then it doesn't. And I don't know what else to tell people. Right now, we're seeing a huge problem because we've got twin things going on. Shinobi's right. We've got way too much Bitcoin in somebody else's custody, and they're not do actually doing with it and fees are dropping and it's gonna cause problems at the on the mining front. He's not wrong. But we also have orange man saying the word tariff every other day, and he's tanking markets as he goes, which I actually find being very odd because until he stabilizes and actually does a thing, because a lot of these tariffs aren't even in effect.
A couple of them are, but most of them are they're either delayed or they're being revised or whatever, but they're they're not act unlike well, he said that his tweet his tweet said, hey. We're making money hand over fist off these tariffs. Which ones? Because not almost none of them are actually in effect yet. Right? So you've got we've got twin pressure points that are are jacking up not just Bitcoin, but oil, commodities, the so, like, agricultural futures, not to mention the the equities indices, they're all just they're all jacked. Nobody knows what to do.
Nobody knows what to do. So what I'm going to default to is what I always have in the past. I'm not gonna worry about it. If they figured out a way to kill Bitcoin, then Bitcoin probably needs to die. But they tried to do this with gold, and gold isn't dead. And they've been trying to fuck with gold for decades and decades and decades. Ask Peter Schiff. Because say what you want about Peter Schiff, the man knows what he's talking about when it comes to price manipulation on gold. He is not lying about that. And yet, here we are with gold, like, you know, touching $3,000 yet one more time.
The pressure of the markets is going to determine whether or not the tools that have been used and put in place to destroy people's wealth actually work. So I'm not going to worry all that much about it. Okay? Now let's see. Where are we at? I don't wanna do this one. Yeah. That's gonna be too long for this one. Let's move to Bitcoin news. This one written by Alex Larry. Deutsche Borse to launch Bitcoin custody for institutional investors. Oh, see, Shinobi is not gonna like this. Deutsche Borse Group is entering the digital asset space by introducing a new custody and settlement service for Bitcoin and Shitcoin 1. Through its post trade unit, ClearStream, the company will offer institutional investors a secure and regulated way to store and manage digital assets. ClearStream, a part of Deutsche Borse, will launch the service in April of this year. So coming up here pretty quick.
The new service will initially support Bitcoin and Shitcoin 1, the two largest digital assets by market cap. It's designed for institutional clients, so over 2,500 financial institutions can access Bitcoin custody and settlement via their existing Clearstream banking SA accounts. Jens Hockmeister sorry, Hockmeister, head of issuer service and new digital markets at Clearstream said, quote, offering crypto custody is the next step on Clearstream's journey to digitize financial markets. The institutional grade regulatory complement solution gives clients easy and quick access to new asset clients or classes while using the best of our established post trading systems, end quote.
To ensure security and compliance, Deutsche Borse will use its majority owned subsidiary, Crypto Finance, as the sub custodian. Crypto Finance, which is based in Switzerland, is a regulated entity that has already received approval under Europe's markets in crypto assets regulation, also known as MICA. This allows the company to operate in the European Union and comply with strict regulations. Stijn Van der Sraten, CEO of Crypto Finance, said, quote, this offering puts Deutsche Borse Group in a unique position in the digital assets industry. We are not only covering native services via direct interface, but also traditional rails that are implemented with most financial market participants.
That sounds to me like a very bad translation from whatever his native language is. While custody and settlement will be the initial focus, Clearstream has bigger plans. Yes. Over time, the company will add staking, oh god, lending and brokerage to its digital asset services. Hochmeister confirmed this saying, quote, with this, we are creating a one step shop around custody, brokerage, and settlement. He also mentioned the potential future addition of stablecoins and tokenized securities. This comes at a time when institutions are showing increasing interest in Bitcoin, especially after MICA regulations were implemented.
The European Union's MICA framework, which came into effect in late twenty twenty four, creates a clear regulatory environment for digital assets, and now traditional financial institutions are more confident to explore Bitcoin services. Van der Straaten said that international banking clients have been asking for Bitcoin support since Micah was introduced. Quote, there's a very high demand for crypto support from international banking clients, he said. Many financial institutions have spent millions of euros building in house digital asset capabilities, but Clearstream's new service might be more cost effective of a solution.
Deutsche Borse isn't the only big financial institution expanding into digital assets in Bitcoin. Borst Stuttgart Digital, a competitor in Germany, became the country's first fully licensed digital asset service provider under Micah earlier this year, and banks like BBVA in Spain have also started offering Bitcoin trading for retail clients. In The US, the institutional adoption of Bitcoin is accelerating. Big banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are increasing their exposure to Bitcoin ETFs, a sign of broader acceptance of Bitcoin in traditional finance. With over €21,000,000,000,000 in assets under custody, Clearstream is one of the world's largest post trade service providers.
Its entry into Bitcoin custody is a big moment for traditional finance. €21,000,000,000,000 seems a little high. I'm not sure about that number, but even if it's at 10 or €12,000,000,000,000, Clearstream is just and Deutsche Borse, this is not something to sneeze at. And, again, just to remind you, we came off that story written by Shinobi and and his concerns, and he's not out of bounds being concerned. This doesn't this while this doesn't help, I'm still I'm still well, I'm concerned too, but I'm still, like, I'm not all that worried because I've been here before and I'm going to be here again.
See, this is this is the issue. We are constantly here. We're constantly terrified that human beings are not supposed to be terrified all the fucking time, guys. We're all I mean, yes. We're also not supposed to be working stupid jobs that don't do anything for people that have no vision. Okay. That's fine. But when we look at the human condition right now, I don't know what we've done to ourselves. We should have stayed up in the trees. We should have stayed up in the trees. Okay. Me and my wife are gonna go work out. We're gonna go to the gym. We're gonna go have fun. She's on her spring break. So we're gonna lift, and we're gonna do some squats, and we're gonna do some cardio, and it's gonna be great. And if I don't die, I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
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