Join me today for Episode 965 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
- Durov's Been Leaking IP's to Cops Since 2018
- Monero Delisting in Europe
- Aussie Cops Lie About Hardware Wallet Prowess
- Minibits, Nostur, and Jam Updates
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[00:00:00]
David Bennett:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 2nd day of Dumptober 2024.
And this is episode 965 of Bitcoin. And we're gonna talk about Durov. We are the the the dude from that does Telegram. He had a revelation that he laid on everybody, I think early this morning or very late last night. And no, it ain't it ain't good. It's it's not the kind of shit that you wanna hear about. But, I'm I think some people want me to possibly say something about Iran's attack on Israel, and I'm just not gonna go there. It's not it's not worth it's not worth our time. Other people know a hell of a lot more about what the hell is going on with Iran and Israel than I ever will. I just it sucks that it's happened.
Right? No matter what side of the fence you or I may sit on as to whether or not we're love of Israel or, you know, thinks that they, you know, got what was coming to them. It doesn't matter. But one thing that I do want to reiterate is that remember last week I told you in heckles for shekels that the shekel the 200 shekel note the printed note was going away in Israel and that they were going to move to a completely cashless society I think they had like a target of like the next few years. Right? And then all of a sudden this shit happens. How well do you think a digital economy is going to work when you are beset on all sides essentially by enemies?
Because that's that again, this does not matter what you think of Israel, whether pro Israel, neutral Israel, or anti Israel, it doesn't matter. The geopolitical nature of their location on the face of the globe is, in fact, beset on all sides by enemies of Israel. In fact, it's kind of like being the 1 kid in a class and everybody hates you and you're sitting in the middle of the class you're not on the front corner next to the door you're not on the front corner next to the window you're not in the back where no one can see you oh hell no you're right in the middle and everybody knows exactly where you're at Do you think that a digital economy is the best way to move forward in a situation where you could be attacked on all sides at once?
I don't know, man. That it just it bugs me that they had announced this this deletion of the 200 shekel note. And then, like, first of all, their announcement the timing of the announcement when all this stuff in the world before they get attacked is going on. Right we got we got the the elections coming up in the the November elections in the United States we've got Jerome Powell dropping the the fed funds rate by 50 bps we've got Japan raising their essentially their lending rate by quite a bit which gave a whole shock to the whole yen carry trade. Everything is on fire and Israel decides that, you know what, we're just gonna do away with cash altogether and we're gonna start with the 200 shekel note. We're gonna get rid of it. And then a week later, they're just getting their asses handed to them by a barrage of, like, I think it's, like, 200 ballistic missiles.
And they haven't responded yet, or at least as far as I know, I haven't heard anything about it this morning. But that's all I wanted to do was to reiterate the fact that, remember, they are doing away with cash in Israel at a time that they probably should not be doing that. That's all I'm gonna say about it. Let's get into the rest of the news. Bitcoin Magazine, this one coming to you from Nicholas Hoffman. He says, retail keeps selling Bitcoin to ETFs. Please don't sell your BTC to whales. For the past few weeks, I have been keeping up with hodl15capital on Twitter, who has done a tremendous job at posting some of the quickest incoming market data regarding the US spot bitcoin ETFs recently there have been 2 charts in particular that he has posted that have caught my eye 9 months ago the sec approved spot Bitcoin ETFs for trading. And since then, the ETFs have seen relatively huge inflows during 8 out of the 9 months.
And since their inception, these ETFs have seen inflows of 312,500 BTC while miners have only created 170,000 new Bitcoin. Quite a disparaging number there. These ETFs have been the fastest growing ETFs in the history of ETFs like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated with no real signs of slowing down especially as we head into a period of time that has been historically bullish for Bitcoin. I guess he's referring to DUMPTOBER. Yeah. Right. We shall see. Things have changed, ladies and gentlemen. The ETFs are gobbling up all of the available BTC, leaving many thinking, who could possibly be selling right now? And according to hodl 15 Capital, it appears to be small bitcoin holders selling directly into the hands of the ETFs and institutions.
We're seeing state pension funds, large institutions, wealthy investors, and other major players buy and hold shares of these ETFs. Even ETF issuers like BlackRock are buying shares of its own Bitcoin ETF for their other funds. Long story short, I'm seeing smart money pouring into this asset class. And while that's great for the price of BTC, it pains me to watch the small hodlers sell their Bitcoin directly to the institutions. Holding Bitcoin over the long term has proven to be one of the best ways to build wealth. This is a real chance for those interested in investing for their future who may not currently have proper savings to start building up wealth in a sovereign way by accumulating BTC and holding the keys to their coins.
Instead, these coins are being mostly locked up in the ETFs where those who buy them can only redeem their shares for US dollars and don't experience the benefits nor the attributes that make bitcoin so unique. Based on this data, I fear many of the smaller Bitcoin HODLers are letting a great opportunity to build wealth via holding BTC slip through their fingers. Also, by not buying Bitcoin directly and holding it in self custody as opposed to purchasing shares of the ETFs investors are missing out on what it truly means to own censorship resistant sovereign money Such a feeling often has the effect of making investors hold Bitcoin for the long term as opposed to selling in the short term based on fear. The smart money knows exactly what opportunity is here and they don't care too much about the freedom aspects of Bitcoin. They're just filling their bags in a vehicle that suits them better.
Cheap BTC does not last forever. Major players will continue scooping up huge swaths of shares of those ETFs as we hit a new all time high and beyond. If there's one thing I leave you with today: don't sell your Bitcoin to the corporations and hold your keys to your coins. This is a good reminder by Nicholas Hoffman here of what the hell's going on out there. And can I corroborate what is exactly going on when he says that he's, you know, with this HODL 15 Capital over there on Twitter? I don't know. I I this is the first I've ever heard of HODL 15 Capital, and that's h o d l, the numbers 15, capital on Twitter if you wanna go follow that. I'm I'm gonna go look at it to see what what it's saying. But no matter what who's saying what about it, it seems to me that this is the only explanation that there is.
And when you think about it, it kinda makes sense. I mean, it doesn't make sense to sell your Bitcoin unless you just absolutely have to. Otherwise, you're gonna end up dead or living under a bridge freezing to death later on. Then it makes sense to sell some, but not all. Just what you have to. But other than that, think about what's what's occurred. You got you got people that are creditors that are being repaid in Bitcoin both from Mt. Gox and the whole FTX and Alameda and BlockFi and all the rest of the scam artists that were out there and they all went bankrupt. These these creditors are starting to get their money back.
And I could see it being like, you know, if I was a Mt. Gox huddler that had been forced to self huddle for 10 years or whatever however long it's been, I would possibly consider selling a little bit. Because, hey, money. Right? We're still duped into believing that US dollars is actual wealth. Well, it's not. But tell that to Joe on the street. Joe is not going to buy that. You can tell him all about the wealth in extended families. He doesn't care. You can tell him all about the wealth of, you know, making yourself a better person and knowing how to do things like grow a lot of your own food. Joe doesn't care.
Joe doesn't give a shit. Joe is never going to care. We can we can hope all we want that Joe will care one day and then it will be us that brings Joe to the watering trough and that Joe will bend his head and drink deeply of the knowledge that is in that trough but Joe's not going to do that. Joe's worried about paying bills. Joe's pissed off that he didn't have any of this bitcoin for 10 years. Joe's going to sell some. And this is not going to end anytime soon. October traditionally has been generally a very very much up month for Bitcoin. This is the 1st year that we have enough institutional interest in Bitcoin that it very well may not be the case. No, I'm not trying to suck the air out of your sales. I'm just saying if you're planning, if you're like allocating capital around the idea that this October is going to do what all the other Octobers have ever done you may very well get burnt.
Right? So just just be patient Do not assume that this October is going to be like all the rest of the Octobers Be careful understand that this is just part of risk management It's the easiest part of risk management You don't have to do calculations and throw together calculus tables and all that kind of crap. No. All you have to do is go, we're in a I recognize that we are in a in a different environment than where Bitcoin has been before. Therefore, we should probably act accordingly and maybe have a little bit more patience. You know, maybe be very much more careful with the way that we want to allocate capital in this quote unquote October month because things are different. That is the easiest way to perform your first steps in risk management is to just take a good long look at where we're at.
And now let's take a good long look at where Telegram's founder Durov has been Helen Partz, Cointelegraph. Well, it turns out, according to Durov, that Telegram has been disclosing user Internet or rather IPs since 2018. 2018. How long ago was that? That's 6 years that Telegram has been telling people who want to know what your IP address what your IP address is. According to founder and CEO Pavel Durov, a crypto or crypto friendly instant messenger Telegram has been disclosing IP addresses of criminals to authorities for 6 years.
He took to his Telegram channel today, October 2nd, to clarify his recent post about disclosures of IP addresses and phone numbers of accounts found to be involved in criminal activity. Quote, my previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works, But in reality, little has changed, Durov said in his most recent post. According to Durov, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses as well as phone numbers of criminals to authorities since 2018 in accordance with its privacy policies in most countries. And he wrote, quote, whenever we received a properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines, we would verify it and disclose the IP address and phone number of dangerous criminals.
This process had been in place long before last week. Durov cited data from Telegram's transparency bot which is designed to provide users with the number of process requests for data disclosures from authorities. For example, in Brazil, we disclosed data for 75 legal requests in the Q1 of 2024. 63 in Q2. 65 in Q3. In India, which is our largest market, we satisfied 2,461 legal requests in the Q1. 21.51 in q2, and 23.80 in q3, Durov said. Durov said that news from last week showed that Telegram has been streamlining and unifying its privacy policy across different countries. He stressed that Telegram's core principles haven't changed and that the company has always sought to comply with relevant local laws as long as they didn't go against our values of freedom and privacy, he added, quote, Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations.
We do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice, end quote. Durov's clarification on Telegram's data disclosure policies comes about a month after French authorities indicted the CEO on 6 charges related to illicit activity on the messenger app on August 28th. And after being released on a $5,500,000 bail on September 5th, Durov broke his silence on social media for the first time following his arrest, claiming that the charges were misguided. The Telegram CEO has since been actively updating users on the messenger's measures to combat illicit activity on the platform. So he's turned into a cop. That's what Pavel Durov has been turned into. He's turned into a cop. And all it took was a $5,500,000 bail, the threat of absconding with all of his wealth, and being arrested in France.
I guess that's that's how you take a freedom fighter and turn them into a little bitch. Look. I get it. It's not my company. I didn't build it. Therefore, I should not be as harsh on Pavel as I am. And you're right. I shouldn't be as harsh on him, but I can damn well be harsh on the people that put him in this position in the first place, the French authorities. But it ain't just France. England would have done this or the United States would have done this eventually. Hell, they probably all got in the room and said and drew straws as to who was actually going to do the arresting. And France got the short straw and said, okay. Next time he's over there in France, it's your job. You gotta go get him. But everybody in the west agreed, you gotta get this guy.
Okay. Threatened him with his wealth. Well, I went into the this whole thing with the episode called what is wealth? It is not what you think it is because Pavel's wealth is working against him. Your wealth should not work against you in life. It should work for you. And Pavel Durov's wealth is not working for him. That makes it a prison, and that makes it not actual wealth. So if you want to know more about that, go listen to what is wealth, the episode. I don't know the number of it, but it was sometime last week. Anyway, okay. So here's the thing other thing.
I can be mad at France all I want. I can be mad at Pavel all I want. Okay. Fine. Whatever. You're a nobody, Dave. Nobody cares about what you say. And that you you should not actually, you know, many people should not care about what I say. But I think you if you're not gonna care about anything that I say, do care at least listen to this last one. What defines a criminal? Because that's what Durov keeps saying here, is that, oh, well, you know, if they're criminals, you know, we'll give them the IP address and the phone number because, you know, they're criminals. Yeah, but who defines the criminality? What is a criminal?
Sure. Many of us will probably agree. Hey. If you're spreading child pornography on child on, Telegram, that you're you're a criminal. Not only you're a criminal, you should be buried head first or something like that. Whatever. I get it. I get it. If you are like using Telegram to organize the break ins of a whole bunch of people's houses so you can steal their shit, Yeah. You're a freaking criminal, man. But what if I'm just organizing a oh, God forbid. I'm gonna say it. A protest. Not that those don't do any good, but people still do it and people get in trouble for organizing protests even though they never work and they're never going to affect anything ever and never have, yet we still get duped into believing that they do. But let's say I'm organizing a protest.
Am I a criminal? Well, I become a criminal if somebody in authority says that I'm a criminal and then writes to Pavel Durov and says, we want this criminal's IP address and phone number. And Pavel says, well, you called him a criminal and it's come through proper communication lines that are relevant. Here you go. Not a not no fight whatsoever. So this usage of the word criminal is a red herring. It's whoever they ask for. Pavel's not going to do an investigation at the level of Telegram into these people and verify whether or not they are indeed engaged in active, you know, criminal activity. Sure. If you've you're you're spreading like, he knows that your IP address is spreading child porn on Telegram, that's an investigation that he can actually say it's coming from your IP address. It is child pornography.
We don't allow that shit. And we all agree that you should be buried in sand up to your neck and left in the sun to die. Okay. Fine. I get that. But the guy that's organizing the protest that will never do anything for anyone anywhere, how do you investigate that? How do you rectify that? I mean, even if Pavel says, well, you know, I don't think that guy's an actual criminal criminal, you know, but but I got a request through Pavel's own words, through relevant communication lines, so therefore, I'm going to give the IP address and phone number does this mean that I just think that Pavel is a douchebag no I don't because this has nothing to do with Pavel himself this is anybody who's been fooled into believing that the wealth they hold that works against them is actual wealth and they've got that wealth because they've built platforms that other people use to try to live their life or try to make other people's and their own lives better.
Maybe through protests, but I don't believe that shit for a second. I'm just saying it's gonna be Elon Musk. It's gonna be Larry Fink. It's gonna be Pawel Durov. It's gonna be any one of the Nostra client developers if one of these Nostra clients gets to be like completely mainstream. Right? I mean, take your pick as to which one might actually break out and become the most mainstream and and take over x or Twitter or whatever. What how do we know that the the owner of that client isn't going to be showered with this seeming wealth that isn't actual wealth? That it really is they're showering him with their own prison.
And that that person will gladly accept that prison because they think, because they've been told, that it's wealth. And it's not. When wealth works against your own best interests, it is not wealth. It is a prison. And speaking of, Monero dips 7% as Kraken says that it is delisting Monero for European customers. The reason I bring you shitcoin news right now is just so you know that Kraken is the same kind of thing as Pavel Durov. They are going to be told what to do and because the wealth that they think is wealth is wealth, they're going to do exactly what they're told. And privacy coin Monero is falling because of it, dropping nearly 7% over the last 24 hours after Kraken announced that it's delisting it in Europe.
Trading and deposits of all Monero markets will halt on October 31st for EEA clients. That's European Economic Area. And any open orders will be automatically closed. The deadline for withdrawing is December 31st. And the remaining balances after that date will be converted to Bitcoin at the market rate. Kraken explained that the exchange concluded that we have no choice but to delist Monero in its European Economic Area due to regulatory changes. We did not take this decision lightly. No, you didn't because they threatened your wealth and your freedom. The development follows Binance's February announcement that it would delist Monero and its finalization later that month.
The announcement follow, follows mounting pressure on privacy focused cryptocurrency solutions and in fact reports that privacy coins such as Monero, Zcash, and Horizon were at risk of delisting already circulating early January. The stories of which their delisting was already circulating in early January. In another case that has attracted the attention and ire of privacy activists are the legal repercussions faced by the developers behind decentralized cryptocurrency, Mixer Tornado Cash. Mixers differ from privacy coins since they anonymize assets with public transactions like Bitcoin.
Privacy coins like Monero instead ensure no third party can check the details of any transaction in the first place, eliminating the need for mixers in the first place I've heard stories this is me pausing I've heard stories from other people that this is not exactly true I've seen write ups that Monero transactions have been tracked I'm not a Monero user so I cannot talk about it any more intelligibly than to just sit here and tell you I've seen evidence that suggests that this is not the case that these transactions are traceable but I cannot prove that it happened so just understand that's part of risk management just understand that it's possible that it could have happened but I'm not sure moving on still trustless decentralized mixers and privacy coins have in common that they are permissionless systems outside the control of their creators that prevent oversight from anyone including governments Despite this lack of control, Tornado Cash developer, Alexei Pertsev, has been found guilty of money laundering by a Dutch court and given a 5 year 4 months long prison sentence.
Authorities find it concerning that the developers have programmed and deployed a smart contract based privacy solution on the shitcoin number 1 blockchain over which they have no control. In fact, despite the US Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioning Tornado Cash back in 2022, it still operates and receives more than $1,900,000,000 in the 1st 6 months of 2024. Yes. Because the guy that created it and operates it is in prison, and that's why it's still operating. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yep. He got host. Many view the ongoing lawsuit as legal precedent for prosecuting developers of privacy software for criminal abuse that they could not have prevented without compromising the system's security and privacy features, something that could have far reaching consequences beyond the crypto industry.
Okay. Again, we see the same thing happening over and over and over and over again. They are coming for the space, not just Bitcoin. They're coming for all of it. They're coming for Telegram. They're coming for Monero. They're coming for Kraken. They're coming for well, Coinbase. They'll I think they've knighted them as their golden child and naked mole rat will be showered with seeming wealth, but it's not really wealth, is it? You know? You know? We're talking about Brian, whatever his name is. Brian from Coinbase. He's been anointed by governments around the world. He's probably always going to be fairly safe, but he will have to do everything that the people that showered him with this wealth tells him to do because his wealth is not wealth. It is in fact a prison and he is now a slave.
But he's got a yacht and you don't, David. Yeah. He does have a yacht and I don't. I guess he's got a yacht. He's probably got 4 planes too. Twelve houses in the south of France. And if he doesn't do exactly what his masters tell him to do, it all goes away. Is that wealth? I don't think so, man. I don't think so. But Australia's Operation Kraken has seized over $6,000,000 in crypto after deciphering seed phrases from organized crime wallets, according to The Block and James Hunt. Australian Federal Police have seized 9,300,000 Australian dollars from the alleged mastermind behind Ghost.
Ghost was an encrypted messaging service used by organized crime groups to coordinate illegal activities like drug trafficking and money laundering, offering advanced encryption features and self or, message self destruction. The platform was brought down last month following a 2 year investigation coordinated by Europol and global law enforcement agencies, including the AFP, Australian Federal Police. The 32 year old man based in Narwe, a suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, was arrested September 17th as part of the AFP's ongoing operation Kraken, released the Kraken, and charged with 5 offenses including supporting a criminal organization.
The operation is not affiliated with well known crypto exchange, Kraken. Yeah. We guessed that, dude. The assets were seized after analytics specialists at the AFP Led Criminal Asset Confiscation Task Force deciphered the suspect's seed phrases from analyses of hardware wallet devices found at his home, the AFP said on Wednesday. Yeah. Right. I call bullshit. As a result, it gained access to the cryptocurrency and transferred it to secure storage, the AFP added. It is the second seizure of cryptocurrencies under operation Kraken after 2,000,000 Australian dollars or $1,400,000 in, US dollars, dollar reduce, in assets linked to a Western Australian crime syndicate were restrained by the CACT in August.
Crypto hardware wallets are generally safe for storing cryptocurrencies because they keep private keys offline reducing vulnerability and it's essential for accessing the wallet and recovering the funds quote the restraints of these assets shows the technical capabilities and powers that the AFP and our partners through the CACT are able to bring to bear on organized crime, said AFP acting commander Scott Raven. Whether you have tried to hide them in real estate, cryptocurrency, or cash, we will identify your ill gotten gains and take them away from you, leaving you with nothing. End quote.
The AFP's Operation Kraken initiative against organized crime has resulted in 46 arrests, 93 search warrants, and intervening in 50 threats to life or harm. Operation Kraken has seized 2,370,000,000 Australian dollars in cash and 11.9 Australian or 1,000,000 Australian dollars in other assets since 2022. Ah, it's stealing from your own people. The CACT, which includes the AFP, the Australian Taxation Office, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, AUSTRAC, and Australian Border Force said that it would seek to have the restrained assets forfeited to the Commonwealth managed by the Australian Financial Security Authority to benefit the country's crime prevention programs.
And I call bullshit straight up and down on all of this. The AFP, no more would be able to extract the seed phrase from a hardware wallet if a gun was being held to its head. I don't believe it. I don't trust them. I think it's FUD. I think this is a planted story. And just because the block picked it up doesn't mean that the block is at fault here. I'm just saying that the press release that was released by the Australian, you know, police force with the AFP I think it's bogus. I think it's a lie. I think they're doing it on purpose to make you scared to make you think that just because you have a hardware wallet that that it that your seed phrase can be extracted from it. Good luck.
Good luck. They did not also say what kind of hardware wallet it was. That leads me to believe that that's why this is FUD and it's complete 100% horse pucky. Right? Was it a ledger? Was it a cold card? Was it a BitBox 2? Was it what, you know, what was the hardware wallet? But they don't say. And I'm pretty sure if they had said in their press release that the block would have made sure that they wrote that. But they didn't because it was never said in the press release. At least that's that's what I'm getting out of this. This story is planted to make you scared, to make you think that your hardware wallet is unsafe because any idiot on some cop force in Australia is gonna be able to take it away from you.
Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Oil after spiking yesterday because, you know, Iran attacked Israel and Israel's probably going to destroy the small island off the coast of Iran that is, the majority of of their petroleum processing and shipping infrastructure. So it shot up to like 7 like West Texas Intermediate shot up to well past $71 I think it actually touched set back to 72. But today, it dropped back down yesterday, but today it's back up a half a point to $70.15 Brent Norsee is up 0.39% to 7385.
Natural gas is falling in line today. It is up 1 and a half percent to $2.93 per 1,000. Gasoline is up well over a half point to a buck 98 a gallon. Gold is the only shiny metal rock not having a good day. It is down, wow, 3 quarters of a point, but silver is up over a half. Platinum is up 1.6%. Copper is up 1 and a quarter, and palladium is up damn near 2. The biggest winner in ag today is gonna be wheat, 2.25 percent to the upside. The biggest loser is coffee, 2.93 to the downside. Live cattle up 1 and a quarter lean. Hogs up 2 and a half. Feeder cattle are up 1 and a half. The Dow is down a tenth of a point. The S and P is down a tenth of a point. The Nasdaq is up, but basically moving sideways. And the S and P Mini is a point 06, so down and basically moving sideways.
And after we had a brief, pump after yesterday's dump, we are back down to $61,530 on a Bitcoin. That is a $1,220,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 23 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,000,761,771.11 of. And average fees per block have dropped to 0.04 BTC in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are 90 blocks carrying a 160,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 4. Hash rate standing at 680.6 exahashes per second.
So do with that what you will. Now from, yay, institutional money. That was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and letter 6173 sent me 10 1,000 sats. Brother, thank you. He says, value for the value you provide. Blazer with 5,000 sats. Thank you. Yeah. It's t swift that had to re record. Keep up the good work. Oh, yeah. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift had to rerecord all of her stuff. I didn't really I didn't catch that right at first. I'm losing brain cells as we speak, guys. Losing brain cells. The, Pies to Pleb with 21100 says, I've been trying to put people who love music or make music onto Wave Lake for a while now.
Only 2 of them seem to show interest. And I have not had the chance to follow-up with them yet. All of this is bullish as fuck. Thank you, sir. L f g. No, thank you. Wartime with a 1000 says, It's off to jail we go. Blogging bitcoin with a 1,000. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. User 115-56842 with a 1,000 sats. Dude, thank you. Tower of Babel was a good analogy. Cheers. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that for the last 4 years. There's something about the Tower of Babel thing. I I one of these days I'm gonna write not an article I don't know what I'm gonna be calling it. Gotta write a piece about what actually happened at the Tower of Babel and how it can somehow or another be used to look at, you know, used as a frame to look at Bitcoin in, you know, because that's the only thing that I give a shit right now about, you know, other than my family is Bitcoin. So god's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that is it. That's the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Mini Bits version 0.1.9 beta has been released there are performance improvements and themes mini bits is a mobile e cash wallet with a focus on performance and usability available on Android only at least for now New mini bits wallet has been released. Announce the project and the update includes significant performance improvements for cryptographic operators, a redesigned main wallet screen, support for themes, e cache storage reliability and stability improvements and various bug fixes.
The upgrade involves a significant migration on the storage side. The first start may take much longer than usual. Do not kill the app until it finishes the process. Do not kill the app until it finishes. Be aware. If you see a zero balance on the first start after the upgrade, this is due to the migration process. Simply restart the app one more time and your balance should reappear. So what's new? 10 x faster recovery of funds. This version brings significant performance improvements for cryptographic operations as ManyBits now uses a native implementation of cryptographic functions instead of JavaScript.
Redesigned main wallet screen, it now comes with fiat exchange rates and nostril wallet connect limits overview. Nice. Theme support and brand new golden theme. Users can now switch themes in settings including a brand new golden theme that you can choose from. E cache storage reliability and stability improvements and other bug fixes. Many bits should now keep your local e cache in a much more resilient way and with significantly better performance for wallets containing large numbers of e cash notes, like in the thousands of e cash notes.
Bug fixes, critical fix was done for a balance thing. Balance is disappearing if the input to a send transaction contains an already spent proof. They fixed, support sending to lightning addresses from USD, EUR mints. The nostril wallet connection string now contains only a single relay for better better compatibility, various smaller fixes and UI tunings, and then upgraded to React Native version 0.75. So if you are a MiniBits wallet user, you might want to go check this out. I wish they'd have a version on iOS. Okay. On over to Nostur world where Nostur, you know, n o s t u r, version 1.16.0 has been released it integrates noster nests live streams and more fucking sweet bro alright let's see new update is now live on the app store Nostr Nest integration, live streams, and many more improvements announced Fabian.
Nostr Nest is an audio space for chatting, brainstorming, debating, jamming, micro conferences, and more. It's like XSpaces or Clubhouse for Nostr. So here's all the things that are new. We already mentioned the Nostr Nest integration. There's live video streams and chats. There's relay autopilot improvement VPN detection toggle. It only connects to additional relays if a VPN is detected. Relay connections stats improvement. Rewrite of feed loading. It's faster. Possible imposter label also added on new follower quoted posts.
Improved profile card rendering and animation. Improved quoted post and inline NADDR one rendering. Optimized profile gallery loading. Exclude reposts for new post notifier UI tweaks more compact less clutter full width images now go to screen edge reduced data usage for new follower notifications and many many bug fixes and other optimizations. So, Nostr on Apple I, iOS looks really good. The only thing that I haven't done is actually plug my actual real honest to god, insect in pub into that thing. I'm using a burner account for it, but that makes the because I don't have a lot of followers and I don't follow a lot of people with this other account, It's like, well, it it kind of makes the user experience not not all that good.
What I'm getting at here is that if somebody knows how to use an ex something external that I can play like is there any way to use, Albie the Albie wallet to be able to tell Nostr what my insect is like I do on my browser? If somebody knows how to do that, please let me know because I kinda want to start using Nostr. It looks really nice. It's really clean. It seems really fast. And, I mean, don't get me wrong. I love Domus, but I need to use a different client on iOS. I need to at least use one other client. So if you know how to let me get to do that because I just don't feel comfortable plugging my insect directly into a window where it says, hey, put your insect here. Alright. Final final one up for today, Jam version 0.3.0.
You can freeze, unfreeze, and review UTXOs before you send them. Jam, j a m, is a web interface for join market focusing on user friendliness and ease of use. It aims to provide sensible defaults and be easy to use for beginners while still having the features advanced, users expect. Says Jam version is version 3 is out or 0.3 is out. This release adds an easy way to quickly freeze unfreeze UTXOs, review eligible or selected UTXOs before you send them, and fixes a couple of other things. And that's pretty much it. The fixes include a time issue when creating a fidelity bond, validating a fix for validating the offer minimum size on the earn page, and various other UI improvements and bug fixes. Alright.
So that is episode 965. It's in the bag, brothers and sisters. So we are what are we at? We're at 6157827 on the price of Bitcoin. Honestly, we've got this entire week of the 1st week of October to get through all of the United States economic news. I would not look if I were you I would not look for October to occur anytime before that. I think people are gonna be holding on to their risk management. They're gonna be waiting. They're gonna be watching. But they are sure not going to pull a whole shitload of triggers on buying a bunch of stuff with USD liquidity until after those numbers are in.
That's my gut feeling. I'm gonna live by it. I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 2nd day of Dumptober 2024.
And this is episode 965 of Bitcoin. And we're gonna talk about Durov. We are the the the dude from that does Telegram. He had a revelation that he laid on everybody, I think early this morning or very late last night. And no, it ain't it ain't good. It's it's not the kind of shit that you wanna hear about. But, I'm I think some people want me to possibly say something about Iran's attack on Israel, and I'm just not gonna go there. It's not it's not worth it's not worth our time. Other people know a hell of a lot more about what the hell is going on with Iran and Israel than I ever will. I just it sucks that it's happened.
Right? No matter what side of the fence you or I may sit on as to whether or not we're love of Israel or, you know, thinks that they, you know, got what was coming to them. It doesn't matter. But one thing that I do want to reiterate is that remember last week I told you in heckles for shekels that the shekel the 200 shekel note the printed note was going away in Israel and that they were going to move to a completely cashless society I think they had like a target of like the next few years. Right? And then all of a sudden this shit happens. How well do you think a digital economy is going to work when you are beset on all sides essentially by enemies?
Because that's that again, this does not matter what you think of Israel, whether pro Israel, neutral Israel, or anti Israel, it doesn't matter. The geopolitical nature of their location on the face of the globe is, in fact, beset on all sides by enemies of Israel. In fact, it's kind of like being the 1 kid in a class and everybody hates you and you're sitting in the middle of the class you're not on the front corner next to the door you're not on the front corner next to the window you're not in the back where no one can see you oh hell no you're right in the middle and everybody knows exactly where you're at Do you think that a digital economy is the best way to move forward in a situation where you could be attacked on all sides at once?
I don't know, man. That it just it bugs me that they had announced this this deletion of the 200 shekel note. And then, like, first of all, their announcement the timing of the announcement when all this stuff in the world before they get attacked is going on. Right we got we got the the elections coming up in the the November elections in the United States we've got Jerome Powell dropping the the fed funds rate by 50 bps we've got Japan raising their essentially their lending rate by quite a bit which gave a whole shock to the whole yen carry trade. Everything is on fire and Israel decides that, you know what, we're just gonna do away with cash altogether and we're gonna start with the 200 shekel note. We're gonna get rid of it. And then a week later, they're just getting their asses handed to them by a barrage of, like, I think it's, like, 200 ballistic missiles.
And they haven't responded yet, or at least as far as I know, I haven't heard anything about it this morning. But that's all I wanted to do was to reiterate the fact that, remember, they are doing away with cash in Israel at a time that they probably should not be doing that. That's all I'm gonna say about it. Let's get into the rest of the news. Bitcoin Magazine, this one coming to you from Nicholas Hoffman. He says, retail keeps selling Bitcoin to ETFs. Please don't sell your BTC to whales. For the past few weeks, I have been keeping up with hodl15capital on Twitter, who has done a tremendous job at posting some of the quickest incoming market data regarding the US spot bitcoin ETFs recently there have been 2 charts in particular that he has posted that have caught my eye 9 months ago the sec approved spot Bitcoin ETFs for trading. And since then, the ETFs have seen relatively huge inflows during 8 out of the 9 months.
And since their inception, these ETFs have seen inflows of 312,500 BTC while miners have only created 170,000 new Bitcoin. Quite a disparaging number there. These ETFs have been the fastest growing ETFs in the history of ETFs like BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated with no real signs of slowing down especially as we head into a period of time that has been historically bullish for Bitcoin. I guess he's referring to DUMPTOBER. Yeah. Right. We shall see. Things have changed, ladies and gentlemen. The ETFs are gobbling up all of the available BTC, leaving many thinking, who could possibly be selling right now? And according to hodl 15 Capital, it appears to be small bitcoin holders selling directly into the hands of the ETFs and institutions.
We're seeing state pension funds, large institutions, wealthy investors, and other major players buy and hold shares of these ETFs. Even ETF issuers like BlackRock are buying shares of its own Bitcoin ETF for their other funds. Long story short, I'm seeing smart money pouring into this asset class. And while that's great for the price of BTC, it pains me to watch the small hodlers sell their Bitcoin directly to the institutions. Holding Bitcoin over the long term has proven to be one of the best ways to build wealth. This is a real chance for those interested in investing for their future who may not currently have proper savings to start building up wealth in a sovereign way by accumulating BTC and holding the keys to their coins.
Instead, these coins are being mostly locked up in the ETFs where those who buy them can only redeem their shares for US dollars and don't experience the benefits nor the attributes that make bitcoin so unique. Based on this data, I fear many of the smaller Bitcoin HODLers are letting a great opportunity to build wealth via holding BTC slip through their fingers. Also, by not buying Bitcoin directly and holding it in self custody as opposed to purchasing shares of the ETFs investors are missing out on what it truly means to own censorship resistant sovereign money Such a feeling often has the effect of making investors hold Bitcoin for the long term as opposed to selling in the short term based on fear. The smart money knows exactly what opportunity is here and they don't care too much about the freedom aspects of Bitcoin. They're just filling their bags in a vehicle that suits them better.
Cheap BTC does not last forever. Major players will continue scooping up huge swaths of shares of those ETFs as we hit a new all time high and beyond. If there's one thing I leave you with today: don't sell your Bitcoin to the corporations and hold your keys to your coins. This is a good reminder by Nicholas Hoffman here of what the hell's going on out there. And can I corroborate what is exactly going on when he says that he's, you know, with this HODL 15 Capital over there on Twitter? I don't know. I I this is the first I've ever heard of HODL 15 Capital, and that's h o d l, the numbers 15, capital on Twitter if you wanna go follow that. I'm I'm gonna go look at it to see what what it's saying. But no matter what who's saying what about it, it seems to me that this is the only explanation that there is.
And when you think about it, it kinda makes sense. I mean, it doesn't make sense to sell your Bitcoin unless you just absolutely have to. Otherwise, you're gonna end up dead or living under a bridge freezing to death later on. Then it makes sense to sell some, but not all. Just what you have to. But other than that, think about what's what's occurred. You got you got people that are creditors that are being repaid in Bitcoin both from Mt. Gox and the whole FTX and Alameda and BlockFi and all the rest of the scam artists that were out there and they all went bankrupt. These these creditors are starting to get their money back.
And I could see it being like, you know, if I was a Mt. Gox huddler that had been forced to self huddle for 10 years or whatever however long it's been, I would possibly consider selling a little bit. Because, hey, money. Right? We're still duped into believing that US dollars is actual wealth. Well, it's not. But tell that to Joe on the street. Joe is not going to buy that. You can tell him all about the wealth in extended families. He doesn't care. You can tell him all about the wealth of, you know, making yourself a better person and knowing how to do things like grow a lot of your own food. Joe doesn't care.
Joe doesn't give a shit. Joe is never going to care. We can we can hope all we want that Joe will care one day and then it will be us that brings Joe to the watering trough and that Joe will bend his head and drink deeply of the knowledge that is in that trough but Joe's not going to do that. Joe's worried about paying bills. Joe's pissed off that he didn't have any of this bitcoin for 10 years. Joe's going to sell some. And this is not going to end anytime soon. October traditionally has been generally a very very much up month for Bitcoin. This is the 1st year that we have enough institutional interest in Bitcoin that it very well may not be the case. No, I'm not trying to suck the air out of your sales. I'm just saying if you're planning, if you're like allocating capital around the idea that this October is going to do what all the other Octobers have ever done you may very well get burnt.
Right? So just just be patient Do not assume that this October is going to be like all the rest of the Octobers Be careful understand that this is just part of risk management It's the easiest part of risk management You don't have to do calculations and throw together calculus tables and all that kind of crap. No. All you have to do is go, we're in a I recognize that we are in a in a different environment than where Bitcoin has been before. Therefore, we should probably act accordingly and maybe have a little bit more patience. You know, maybe be very much more careful with the way that we want to allocate capital in this quote unquote October month because things are different. That is the easiest way to perform your first steps in risk management is to just take a good long look at where we're at.
And now let's take a good long look at where Telegram's founder Durov has been Helen Partz, Cointelegraph. Well, it turns out, according to Durov, that Telegram has been disclosing user Internet or rather IPs since 2018. 2018. How long ago was that? That's 6 years that Telegram has been telling people who want to know what your IP address what your IP address is. According to founder and CEO Pavel Durov, a crypto or crypto friendly instant messenger Telegram has been disclosing IP addresses of criminals to authorities for 6 years.
He took to his Telegram channel today, October 2nd, to clarify his recent post about disclosures of IP addresses and phone numbers of accounts found to be involved in criminal activity. Quote, my previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works, But in reality, little has changed, Durov said in his most recent post. According to Durov, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses as well as phone numbers of criminals to authorities since 2018 in accordance with its privacy policies in most countries. And he wrote, quote, whenever we received a properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines, we would verify it and disclose the IP address and phone number of dangerous criminals.
This process had been in place long before last week. Durov cited data from Telegram's transparency bot which is designed to provide users with the number of process requests for data disclosures from authorities. For example, in Brazil, we disclosed data for 75 legal requests in the Q1 of 2024. 63 in Q2. 65 in Q3. In India, which is our largest market, we satisfied 2,461 legal requests in the Q1. 21.51 in q2, and 23.80 in q3, Durov said. Durov said that news from last week showed that Telegram has been streamlining and unifying its privacy policy across different countries. He stressed that Telegram's core principles haven't changed and that the company has always sought to comply with relevant local laws as long as they didn't go against our values of freedom and privacy, he added, quote, Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations.
We do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice, end quote. Durov's clarification on Telegram's data disclosure policies comes about a month after French authorities indicted the CEO on 6 charges related to illicit activity on the messenger app on August 28th. And after being released on a $5,500,000 bail on September 5th, Durov broke his silence on social media for the first time following his arrest, claiming that the charges were misguided. The Telegram CEO has since been actively updating users on the messenger's measures to combat illicit activity on the platform. So he's turned into a cop. That's what Pavel Durov has been turned into. He's turned into a cop. And all it took was a $5,500,000 bail, the threat of absconding with all of his wealth, and being arrested in France.
I guess that's that's how you take a freedom fighter and turn them into a little bitch. Look. I get it. It's not my company. I didn't build it. Therefore, I should not be as harsh on Pavel as I am. And you're right. I shouldn't be as harsh on him, but I can damn well be harsh on the people that put him in this position in the first place, the French authorities. But it ain't just France. England would have done this or the United States would have done this eventually. Hell, they probably all got in the room and said and drew straws as to who was actually going to do the arresting. And France got the short straw and said, okay. Next time he's over there in France, it's your job. You gotta go get him. But everybody in the west agreed, you gotta get this guy.
Okay. Threatened him with his wealth. Well, I went into the this whole thing with the episode called what is wealth? It is not what you think it is because Pavel's wealth is working against him. Your wealth should not work against you in life. It should work for you. And Pavel Durov's wealth is not working for him. That makes it a prison, and that makes it not actual wealth. So if you want to know more about that, go listen to what is wealth, the episode. I don't know the number of it, but it was sometime last week. Anyway, okay. So here's the thing other thing.
I can be mad at France all I want. I can be mad at Pavel all I want. Okay. Fine. Whatever. You're a nobody, Dave. Nobody cares about what you say. And that you you should not actually, you know, many people should not care about what I say. But I think you if you're not gonna care about anything that I say, do care at least listen to this last one. What defines a criminal? Because that's what Durov keeps saying here, is that, oh, well, you know, if they're criminals, you know, we'll give them the IP address and the phone number because, you know, they're criminals. Yeah, but who defines the criminality? What is a criminal?
Sure. Many of us will probably agree. Hey. If you're spreading child pornography on child on, Telegram, that you're you're a criminal. Not only you're a criminal, you should be buried head first or something like that. Whatever. I get it. I get it. If you are like using Telegram to organize the break ins of a whole bunch of people's houses so you can steal their shit, Yeah. You're a freaking criminal, man. But what if I'm just organizing a oh, God forbid. I'm gonna say it. A protest. Not that those don't do any good, but people still do it and people get in trouble for organizing protests even though they never work and they're never going to affect anything ever and never have, yet we still get duped into believing that they do. But let's say I'm organizing a protest.
Am I a criminal? Well, I become a criminal if somebody in authority says that I'm a criminal and then writes to Pavel Durov and says, we want this criminal's IP address and phone number. And Pavel says, well, you called him a criminal and it's come through proper communication lines that are relevant. Here you go. Not a not no fight whatsoever. So this usage of the word criminal is a red herring. It's whoever they ask for. Pavel's not going to do an investigation at the level of Telegram into these people and verify whether or not they are indeed engaged in active, you know, criminal activity. Sure. If you've you're you're spreading like, he knows that your IP address is spreading child porn on Telegram, that's an investigation that he can actually say it's coming from your IP address. It is child pornography.
We don't allow that shit. And we all agree that you should be buried in sand up to your neck and left in the sun to die. Okay. Fine. I get that. But the guy that's organizing the protest that will never do anything for anyone anywhere, how do you investigate that? How do you rectify that? I mean, even if Pavel says, well, you know, I don't think that guy's an actual criminal criminal, you know, but but I got a request through Pavel's own words, through relevant communication lines, so therefore, I'm going to give the IP address and phone number does this mean that I just think that Pavel is a douchebag no I don't because this has nothing to do with Pavel himself this is anybody who's been fooled into believing that the wealth they hold that works against them is actual wealth and they've got that wealth because they've built platforms that other people use to try to live their life or try to make other people's and their own lives better.
Maybe through protests, but I don't believe that shit for a second. I'm just saying it's gonna be Elon Musk. It's gonna be Larry Fink. It's gonna be Pawel Durov. It's gonna be any one of the Nostra client developers if one of these Nostra clients gets to be like completely mainstream. Right? I mean, take your pick as to which one might actually break out and become the most mainstream and and take over x or Twitter or whatever. What how do we know that the the owner of that client isn't going to be showered with this seeming wealth that isn't actual wealth? That it really is they're showering him with their own prison.
And that that person will gladly accept that prison because they think, because they've been told, that it's wealth. And it's not. When wealth works against your own best interests, it is not wealth. It is a prison. And speaking of, Monero dips 7% as Kraken says that it is delisting Monero for European customers. The reason I bring you shitcoin news right now is just so you know that Kraken is the same kind of thing as Pavel Durov. They are going to be told what to do and because the wealth that they think is wealth is wealth, they're going to do exactly what they're told. And privacy coin Monero is falling because of it, dropping nearly 7% over the last 24 hours after Kraken announced that it's delisting it in Europe.
Trading and deposits of all Monero markets will halt on October 31st for EEA clients. That's European Economic Area. And any open orders will be automatically closed. The deadline for withdrawing is December 31st. And the remaining balances after that date will be converted to Bitcoin at the market rate. Kraken explained that the exchange concluded that we have no choice but to delist Monero in its European Economic Area due to regulatory changes. We did not take this decision lightly. No, you didn't because they threatened your wealth and your freedom. The development follows Binance's February announcement that it would delist Monero and its finalization later that month.
The announcement follow, follows mounting pressure on privacy focused cryptocurrency solutions and in fact reports that privacy coins such as Monero, Zcash, and Horizon were at risk of delisting already circulating early January. The stories of which their delisting was already circulating in early January. In another case that has attracted the attention and ire of privacy activists are the legal repercussions faced by the developers behind decentralized cryptocurrency, Mixer Tornado Cash. Mixers differ from privacy coins since they anonymize assets with public transactions like Bitcoin.
Privacy coins like Monero instead ensure no third party can check the details of any transaction in the first place, eliminating the need for mixers in the first place I've heard stories this is me pausing I've heard stories from other people that this is not exactly true I've seen write ups that Monero transactions have been tracked I'm not a Monero user so I cannot talk about it any more intelligibly than to just sit here and tell you I've seen evidence that suggests that this is not the case that these transactions are traceable but I cannot prove that it happened so just understand that's part of risk management just understand that it's possible that it could have happened but I'm not sure moving on still trustless decentralized mixers and privacy coins have in common that they are permissionless systems outside the control of their creators that prevent oversight from anyone including governments Despite this lack of control, Tornado Cash developer, Alexei Pertsev, has been found guilty of money laundering by a Dutch court and given a 5 year 4 months long prison sentence.
Authorities find it concerning that the developers have programmed and deployed a smart contract based privacy solution on the shitcoin number 1 blockchain over which they have no control. In fact, despite the US Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctioning Tornado Cash back in 2022, it still operates and receives more than $1,900,000,000 in the 1st 6 months of 2024. Yes. Because the guy that created it and operates it is in prison, and that's why it's still operating. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yep. He got host. Many view the ongoing lawsuit as legal precedent for prosecuting developers of privacy software for criminal abuse that they could not have prevented without compromising the system's security and privacy features, something that could have far reaching consequences beyond the crypto industry.
Okay. Again, we see the same thing happening over and over and over and over again. They are coming for the space, not just Bitcoin. They're coming for all of it. They're coming for Telegram. They're coming for Monero. They're coming for Kraken. They're coming for well, Coinbase. They'll I think they've knighted them as their golden child and naked mole rat will be showered with seeming wealth, but it's not really wealth, is it? You know? You know? We're talking about Brian, whatever his name is. Brian from Coinbase. He's been anointed by governments around the world. He's probably always going to be fairly safe, but he will have to do everything that the people that showered him with this wealth tells him to do because his wealth is not wealth. It is in fact a prison and he is now a slave.
But he's got a yacht and you don't, David. Yeah. He does have a yacht and I don't. I guess he's got a yacht. He's probably got 4 planes too. Twelve houses in the south of France. And if he doesn't do exactly what his masters tell him to do, it all goes away. Is that wealth? I don't think so, man. I don't think so. But Australia's Operation Kraken has seized over $6,000,000 in crypto after deciphering seed phrases from organized crime wallets, according to The Block and James Hunt. Australian Federal Police have seized 9,300,000 Australian dollars from the alleged mastermind behind Ghost.
Ghost was an encrypted messaging service used by organized crime groups to coordinate illegal activities like drug trafficking and money laundering, offering advanced encryption features and self or, message self destruction. The platform was brought down last month following a 2 year investigation coordinated by Europol and global law enforcement agencies, including the AFP, Australian Federal Police. The 32 year old man based in Narwe, a suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, was arrested September 17th as part of the AFP's ongoing operation Kraken, released the Kraken, and charged with 5 offenses including supporting a criminal organization.
The operation is not affiliated with well known crypto exchange, Kraken. Yeah. We guessed that, dude. The assets were seized after analytics specialists at the AFP Led Criminal Asset Confiscation Task Force deciphered the suspect's seed phrases from analyses of hardware wallet devices found at his home, the AFP said on Wednesday. Yeah. Right. I call bullshit. As a result, it gained access to the cryptocurrency and transferred it to secure storage, the AFP added. It is the second seizure of cryptocurrencies under operation Kraken after 2,000,000 Australian dollars or $1,400,000 in, US dollars, dollar reduce, in assets linked to a Western Australian crime syndicate were restrained by the CACT in August.
Crypto hardware wallets are generally safe for storing cryptocurrencies because they keep private keys offline reducing vulnerability and it's essential for accessing the wallet and recovering the funds quote the restraints of these assets shows the technical capabilities and powers that the AFP and our partners through the CACT are able to bring to bear on organized crime, said AFP acting commander Scott Raven. Whether you have tried to hide them in real estate, cryptocurrency, or cash, we will identify your ill gotten gains and take them away from you, leaving you with nothing. End quote.
The AFP's Operation Kraken initiative against organized crime has resulted in 46 arrests, 93 search warrants, and intervening in 50 threats to life or harm. Operation Kraken has seized 2,370,000,000 Australian dollars in cash and 11.9 Australian or 1,000,000 Australian dollars in other assets since 2022. Ah, it's stealing from your own people. The CACT, which includes the AFP, the Australian Taxation Office, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, AUSTRAC, and Australian Border Force said that it would seek to have the restrained assets forfeited to the Commonwealth managed by the Australian Financial Security Authority to benefit the country's crime prevention programs.
And I call bullshit straight up and down on all of this. The AFP, no more would be able to extract the seed phrase from a hardware wallet if a gun was being held to its head. I don't believe it. I don't trust them. I think it's FUD. I think this is a planted story. And just because the block picked it up doesn't mean that the block is at fault here. I'm just saying that the press release that was released by the Australian, you know, police force with the AFP I think it's bogus. I think it's a lie. I think they're doing it on purpose to make you scared to make you think that just because you have a hardware wallet that that it that your seed phrase can be extracted from it. Good luck.
Good luck. They did not also say what kind of hardware wallet it was. That leads me to believe that that's why this is FUD and it's complete 100% horse pucky. Right? Was it a ledger? Was it a cold card? Was it a BitBox 2? Was it what, you know, what was the hardware wallet? But they don't say. And I'm pretty sure if they had said in their press release that the block would have made sure that they wrote that. But they didn't because it was never said in the press release. At least that's that's what I'm getting out of this. This story is planted to make you scared, to make you think that your hardware wallet is unsafe because any idiot on some cop force in Australia is gonna be able to take it away from you.
Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities. Oil after spiking yesterday because, you know, Iran attacked Israel and Israel's probably going to destroy the small island off the coast of Iran that is, the majority of of their petroleum processing and shipping infrastructure. So it shot up to like 7 like West Texas Intermediate shot up to well past $71 I think it actually touched set back to 72. But today, it dropped back down yesterday, but today it's back up a half a point to $70.15 Brent Norsee is up 0.39% to 7385.
Natural gas is falling in line today. It is up 1 and a half percent to $2.93 per 1,000. Gasoline is up well over a half point to a buck 98 a gallon. Gold is the only shiny metal rock not having a good day. It is down, wow, 3 quarters of a point, but silver is up over a half. Platinum is up 1.6%. Copper is up 1 and a quarter, and palladium is up damn near 2. The biggest winner in ag today is gonna be wheat, 2.25 percent to the upside. The biggest loser is coffee, 2.93 to the downside. Live cattle up 1 and a quarter lean. Hogs up 2 and a half. Feeder cattle are up 1 and a half. The Dow is down a tenth of a point. The S and P is down a tenth of a point. The Nasdaq is up, but basically moving sideways. And the S and P Mini is a point 06, so down and basically moving sideways.
And after we had a brief, pump after yesterday's dump, we are back down to $61,530 on a Bitcoin. That is a $1,220,000,000,000 market cap, and we can only get 23 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our 1 bitcoin of which there are 19,000,761,771.11 of. And average fees per block have dropped to 0.04 BTC in fees on average on a per block basis. And there are 90 blocks carrying a 160,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 4. Hash rate standing at 680.6 exahashes per second.
So do with that what you will. Now from, yay, institutional money. That was yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and letter 6173 sent me 10 1,000 sats. Brother, thank you. He says, value for the value you provide. Blazer with 5,000 sats. Thank you. Yeah. It's t swift that had to re record. Keep up the good work. Oh, yeah. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift had to rerecord all of her stuff. I didn't really I didn't catch that right at first. I'm losing brain cells as we speak, guys. Losing brain cells. The, Pies to Pleb with 21100 says, I've been trying to put people who love music or make music onto Wave Lake for a while now.
Only 2 of them seem to show interest. And I have not had the chance to follow-up with them yet. All of this is bullish as fuck. Thank you, sir. L f g. No, thank you. Wartime with a 1000 says, It's off to jail we go. Blogging bitcoin with a 1,000. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. User 115-56842 with a 1,000 sats. Dude, thank you. Tower of Babel was a good analogy. Cheers. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that for the last 4 years. There's something about the Tower of Babel thing. I I one of these days I'm gonna write not an article I don't know what I'm gonna be calling it. Gotta write a piece about what actually happened at the Tower of Babel and how it can somehow or another be used to look at, you know, used as a frame to look at Bitcoin in, you know, because that's the only thing that I give a shit right now about, you know, other than my family is Bitcoin. So god's death with 537 says thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that is it. That's the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. Mini Bits version 0.1.9 beta has been released there are performance improvements and themes mini bits is a mobile e cash wallet with a focus on performance and usability available on Android only at least for now New mini bits wallet has been released. Announce the project and the update includes significant performance improvements for cryptographic operators, a redesigned main wallet screen, support for themes, e cache storage reliability and stability improvements and various bug fixes.
The upgrade involves a significant migration on the storage side. The first start may take much longer than usual. Do not kill the app until it finishes the process. Do not kill the app until it finishes. Be aware. If you see a zero balance on the first start after the upgrade, this is due to the migration process. Simply restart the app one more time and your balance should reappear. So what's new? 10 x faster recovery of funds. This version brings significant performance improvements for cryptographic operations as ManyBits now uses a native implementation of cryptographic functions instead of JavaScript.
Redesigned main wallet screen, it now comes with fiat exchange rates and nostril wallet connect limits overview. Nice. Theme support and brand new golden theme. Users can now switch themes in settings including a brand new golden theme that you can choose from. E cache storage reliability and stability improvements and other bug fixes. Many bits should now keep your local e cache in a much more resilient way and with significantly better performance for wallets containing large numbers of e cash notes, like in the thousands of e cash notes.
Bug fixes, critical fix was done for a balance thing. Balance is disappearing if the input to a send transaction contains an already spent proof. They fixed, support sending to lightning addresses from USD, EUR mints. The nostril wallet connection string now contains only a single relay for better better compatibility, various smaller fixes and UI tunings, and then upgraded to React Native version 0.75. So if you are a MiniBits wallet user, you might want to go check this out. I wish they'd have a version on iOS. Okay. On over to Nostur world where Nostur, you know, n o s t u r, version 1.16.0 has been released it integrates noster nests live streams and more fucking sweet bro alright let's see new update is now live on the app store Nostr Nest integration, live streams, and many more improvements announced Fabian.
Nostr Nest is an audio space for chatting, brainstorming, debating, jamming, micro conferences, and more. It's like XSpaces or Clubhouse for Nostr. So here's all the things that are new. We already mentioned the Nostr Nest integration. There's live video streams and chats. There's relay autopilot improvement VPN detection toggle. It only connects to additional relays if a VPN is detected. Relay connections stats improvement. Rewrite of feed loading. It's faster. Possible imposter label also added on new follower quoted posts.
Improved profile card rendering and animation. Improved quoted post and inline NADDR one rendering. Optimized profile gallery loading. Exclude reposts for new post notifier UI tweaks more compact less clutter full width images now go to screen edge reduced data usage for new follower notifications and many many bug fixes and other optimizations. So, Nostr on Apple I, iOS looks really good. The only thing that I haven't done is actually plug my actual real honest to god, insect in pub into that thing. I'm using a burner account for it, but that makes the because I don't have a lot of followers and I don't follow a lot of people with this other account, It's like, well, it it kind of makes the user experience not not all that good.
What I'm getting at here is that if somebody knows how to use an ex something external that I can play like is there any way to use, Albie the Albie wallet to be able to tell Nostr what my insect is like I do on my browser? If somebody knows how to do that, please let me know because I kinda want to start using Nostr. It looks really nice. It's really clean. It seems really fast. And, I mean, don't get me wrong. I love Domus, but I need to use a different client on iOS. I need to at least use one other client. So if you know how to let me get to do that because I just don't feel comfortable plugging my insect directly into a window where it says, hey, put your insect here. Alright. Final final one up for today, Jam version 0.3.0.
You can freeze, unfreeze, and review UTXOs before you send them. Jam, j a m, is a web interface for join market focusing on user friendliness and ease of use. It aims to provide sensible defaults and be easy to use for beginners while still having the features advanced, users expect. Says Jam version is version 3 is out or 0.3 is out. This release adds an easy way to quickly freeze unfreeze UTXOs, review eligible or selected UTXOs before you send them, and fixes a couple of other things. And that's pretty much it. The fixes include a time issue when creating a fidelity bond, validating a fix for validating the offer minimum size on the earn page, and various other UI improvements and bug fixes. Alright.
So that is episode 965. It's in the bag, brothers and sisters. So we are what are we at? We're at 6157827 on the price of Bitcoin. Honestly, we've got this entire week of the 1st week of October to get through all of the United States economic news. I would not look if I were you I would not look for October to occur anytime before that. I think people are gonna be holding on to their risk management. They're gonna be waiting. They're gonna be watching. But they are sure not going to pull a whole shitload of triggers on buying a bunch of stuff with USD liquidity until after those numbers are in.
That's my gut feeling. I'm gonna live by it. 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.
Durov's Revelation and Geopolitical Commentary
