It’s Veterans Day and I kept it tight but packed. I open with China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center accusing the U.S. of being behind the 2020 LuBian mining pool hack, after DOJ filed what it calls the largest-ever forfeiture—127k+ BTC tied to Prince Group’s Chen Zhi now in U.S. custody. I walk through what Arkham surfaced, the timeline quirks, and why a direct, state-to-state Bitcoin theft accusation is a geopolitical first worth watching.
Then we head to Brazil, where the central bank finalized a sweeping crypto framework that licenses VASPs, classifies many crypto and stablecoin flows as foreign exchange, and imposes capital and reporting rules. I hit the industry pushback and what it means on the ground. From there, a lighter detour into the perennial “McRib effect” meme as McDonald’s revives the sandwich and crypto Twitter runs with correlations. I close with the big adoption beats: Square flipping on Bitcoin payments for millions of sellers (with a new merchant map inside Cash App) and SoFi becoming the first nationally chartered U.S. bank to offer retail crypto trading—plus fresh survey data showing institutions increasing digital asset exposure.
- Cointelegraph — China raises alarm over alleged US role in LuBian hack: https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-raises-alarm-united-states-lubian-127k-bitcoin-hack
- China National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) — official notice hub (example report page): https://www.cverc.org.cn/zxdt/report20250420.htm
- U.S. Department of Justice (EDNY) — Indictment of Prince Group’s Chen Zhi and related 127,271 BTC forfeiture filing: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/chairman-prince-group-indicted-operating-cambodian-forced-labor-scam-compounds-engaged
- Arkham Intelligence — Announcement and entity tracker for LuBian hack: https://info.arkm.com/announcements/arkham-uncovers
- CoinDesk — Brazil’s central bank sets crypto rules, capital bars and FX treatment: https://www.coindesk.com/tr/policy/2025/11/11/brazil-s-central-bank-sets-crypto-rules-establishes-up-to-usd7m-capital-bar-for-firms/
- Reuters — Brazil central bank tightens rules for virtual assets and stablecoin FX treatment: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-central-bank-tightens-rules-virtual-assets-cryptocurrency-2025-11-10/
- McDonald’s USA — McRib product page: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mcrib.html
- McRib Locator — community sightings map: https://mcriblocator.com/
- Square (Block) — Press release: Block to roll out bitcoin payments on Square: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/block-to-roll-out-bitcoin-payments-on-square
- Cointelegraph — Jack Dorsey’s Square opens 4M merchants to Bitcoin: https://cointelegraph.com/news/jack-dorsey-square-merchants-bitcoin
- BTC Map — open-source map of Bitcoin-accepting merchants: https://btcmap.org/
- SoFi — Business Wire press release: SoFi Bank becomes first nationally chartered bank to launch consumer crypto trading: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251111406660/en/SoFi-Bank-Becomes-the-First-and-Only-Nationally-Chartered-Bank-to-Launch-Crypto-Trading-for-Consumers
- Yahoo News — Full transcript of CBS 60 Minutes interview with President Trump (crypto remarks included): https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/read-full-transcript-60-minutes-003249668.html
- Medici Roasting (Austin) — referenced merchant where Square BTC payments were used: https://mediciroasting.com/
- Zaprite — Bitcoin and fiat payments platform (mentioned via Parker Lewis): https://zaprite.com/
- CitizenX — Company site (Katie Ananina cited as CMO): https://citizenx.com/about
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It is 09:44AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the eleventh day of the eleventh month of twenty twenty five, and this is episode 12 o eight of Bitcoin. And this is gonna be a short one. Simply, it's Veterans Day. My kids are home from school, so we're not gonna we're just gonna dispense with the pleasantries and get right into it because I got a couple of gems here, man, and we're gonna start it with this one from Helen Parts out of Cointelegraph. China has raised the alarm and has alleged The United States played a role in one of the largest Bitcoin hacks. If you didn't get that, China is accusing the United States government of hacking some Bitcoin.
It's we've entered a new phase. It let's just put it let's just put it like that. Okay. So Helen Parks from Cointelegraph goes on to say this, China's national cyber defense Agency has made big claims around the alleged role of The United States in the multibillion dollar hack of Lubian, once a major Chinese Bitcoin mining pool. The Chinese National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center or c VERC, a state backed cyber defense agency on Sunday published a technical analysis report on the 127,272 Bitcoin stolen in the Lubian hack.
Although that hack occurred back in December 2020, it remained largely unknown to the public until recently with Arkham reporting it happened well well, Arkham reported in August that it was the largest ever Bitcoin hack. The c Verk's analysis came weeks after The United States filed a civil forfeiture complaint for a 127,271 BTC worth around $14,500,000,000 in a criminal case against Prince Group founder, Xin Zhih, who reportedly owned the BTC held by Lubian before it was hacked. While formally filing to seize the $14,500,000,000, in mid October, the United States government had already been holding the assets in custody according to the indictment statement. Quote, those funds are presently in the custody of the United States government, the statement noted, adding that the complaint is the largest forfeiture action in the history of the Department of Justice.
The c verk highlighted that the US government has not disclosed in the indictment how it obtained access to the funds and claimed that The US has been in control of those assets for more than a year, citing ARCAM data. According to Arkham data, an address labeled lubian.comhacker wow. It's just being really upfront. Sent a 120,576 BTC, almost its entire holdings to an address labeled US government, Xinjiang seized funds in a single transaction on 07/05/2024. The c Verk said that the stolen Bitcoin on the Lubian hacker's address had remained dormant for nearly four years following the hack until the funds were fully taken over by the United States government last year. Seiverk said, the long dormancy of the stolen Bitcoin before The US seizure is clearly inconsistent with the nature of ordinary hackers who are eager to cash out and pursue profits.
It's more like a precise operation orchestrated by a state owned hacking organization. The said that Xi and his Prince Group repeatedly sent messages to the hacker address via Bitcoin transactions of roughly $23 each, pleading for the return of the stolen BTC and offering a reward, but received no response. The report adds a geopolitical dimension to one of the most mysterious crypto thefts in history. According to Arkham, the batch of Lubian derived Bitcoin holdings accounts for at least 39% of all of the 326.5 Bitcoin held in government associated addresses.
Nah. This is a typo because 326 Bitcoin is is a lot less than what we've been talking about here. So just it's it's a typo. Just we'll just deal with it. Held in US government associated addresses at the time of publication. The US president Donald Trump recently declared that The US is, quote, far ahead of China and everybody else in cryptocurrency adoption. Quote, China is getting into it in a very big way right now. He said in an interview with CBS News, sixty Minutes on or CBS News' it's hard to say that word. Sixty Minutes, the CBS News publication on November 2 there. I've I've I've been able to successfully get through this.
So the Chinese government is accusing the United States government of being behind the hack of the Lubian coins. That's what's going on here. Just directly. Not not kinda not like, oh, you know, we're we're gonna find some nice language so that we don't really no. No. They're just saying you guys stole that Bitcoin. This is a first. I I I've been I've been in this space since 2015. I've never heard one government accuse another government of stealing their Bitcoin. This is actually, it's kind of amazing. I cannot wait to see where this goes. But we've gotta go down south to Brazil right now with CoinDesk. And who's writing this one? Let's see here. It's, Francisco Rodriguez is writing about Brazil's central bank sets crypto rules and establishes up to $7,000,000 capital bar for firms. Let's find out what that means.
Brazil's central bank issued its most sweeping crypto regulation to date, creating a formal licensing regime for service providers and classifying a broad range of crypto activities as subject to foreign exchange and capital market rules. The framework introduces three resolutions and they define how crypto businesses must operate in South America's largest economy, how much capital they must hold, and how international crypto transactions will be treated under law. The rules take effect on February 2, and existing companies have nine months from then to comply.
The regime marks Banco Central do Brazil's most comprehensive attempt yet to govern its fast growing but largely unregulated crypto sector. While the central bank has floated various proposals since 2019, progress has been halting due to institutional friction and industry resistance. The challenge was finding a way to unite innovation and security, Gilneu Vivan, the bank's director of regulation, said at a press conference according to local news outlet, Portal, do Bitcoin. The crypto market depends heavily on technology and has been very important or has very important obligations related to, of course, anti money laundering.
All of this requires guarantees that it will be well executed. Now that's a direct quote. Some of the bank's regulations, including capital requirements and time scale, came under attack from the crypto industry. Companies in the industry will need to hold a minimum of 10,800,000.0 reis or reais. I don't know. They're whatever the whatever however you pronounce, r e a I s. That's the name of the Brazilian dollar. It's about $2,000,000 in US money. Okay? So we're talking $22,000,000 USD. And and they have to hold that in capital, the bank said.
Depending on the type of business, some companies will need to hold at least 37,200,000.0 reais or whatever, and that's well above the 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 reas proposed during the public consultation phase. Yeah. Quite a bit more. 10 x more. Actually, what? 10 ten ten, like, 10 and a half x, man. This is re re this is, a a lot. They just jacked that number right on up there. It just shows that they don't care about public consultation. They'll just they'll tell the public they're gonna do one thing, and they don't they don't they don't care. They never intended to have it that low.
They were gonna make sure that they had a a whole bunch of money that they can seize. I guarantee you that's what this is. They wanna make sure that they've got a lot of money that they can seize for whatever reason. They don't wanna be playing around in the sandbox with 1 to 3,000,000 reais. They want 37,000,000. Alright? So here we go. Bernardo Sir, president of the Brazilian Association of Crypto Economy, called the framework positive and necessary, but criticized both the capital bar and the short window for achieving compliance, which he said would deter competition. Firms that fail to meet the compliance deadline, which includes providing capital levels, cybersecurity controls, customer due diligence practices, and risk assessments will be barred from operating altogether.
Foreign companies active in the country must establish a local entity and transfer operations under that structure. The rules establish a new type of business entity. Or virtual asset service provider, quite a mouthful, which must now be licensed by the central bank and are divided into three categories based on the services they offer. They are either intermediaries, custodians, or brokerages. The framework also brings several types of crypto transactions, including those involving stablecoins within Brazil's foreign exchange and cross border capital control regime. These include international payments with cryptocurrencies, transfers to and from self custody wallets, and crypto to fiat transactions.
Firms authorized to operate in Brazil's FX or foreign exchange markets, including VASPs, may conduct these transactions, but with restrictions that include a cap of a $100,000 US per transaction. Starting May 4, they will have to report these transactions monthly to the central bank with details, including client details, asset type, amount in reas, and links between counterparties. They wanna know everything, man. They wanna know where you live. They wanna know the other counterparty where they live. They wanna know how much it is just surveillance.
It's that we've just turned into the entire world through the apathy of the citizenry of the world has turned into a giant surveillance globe. It's our fault. It's our we we never pressed back on these people to the point that they are physically terrified to walk in the street. Until that happens, they will tell us precisely what we can and cannot do. I I I wish it was different, but the human psychology demands that fear is part of the way that you make your judgments. If you're if you are really not feeling safe around your citizenry, then that means that you will probably be doing everything that you can to do right by that citizenry so that you don't have to be terrified walking down the street in Brazil or Washington, DC or anywhere on the planet.
But until such time that these people do become terrified of the citizenry that they say they represent, then all bets are off, and they're going to do whatever the hell they want us to do. And that makes me feel dirty, which makes me thankful for SoapMiner over at soapminer.com. Get your 100% beef tallow soap over at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. He's got all manner of handmade 100% beef tallow based soap, cedarwood, pine tar, goat's milk, lemongrass, orange clove, lavender, tea tree. Oh, man. That's some good stuff right there. Peppermint, Earl Grey, redacted. He's got he's got body balms. He now has deodorants.
He's got all kinds of neat stuff, and he makes it all himself. And he sells it for Bitcoin because if you're not selling it to Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. This is the circle p. It is open for business. It's where I bring plebs with goods and services just like you to plebs just like you that want to buy, say, goods and services, but you're gonna be buying it in Bitcoin. And you could do that at soapminer.com. These bars of soap, by the way, last I got a family of four. I've got one bar of soap that's lasted almost two months. It's it's now it's now on its last legs. Finally. Finally.
But after two months, a $7.50 bar of soap, which, you know, hey. You're gonna be buying in Bitcoin, but he does put USD on his website, has lasted two months. I can't get that kind of performance out of out of anything that I can find at, at a regular grocery store or Walmart or anything like that. If you want performance with your soap, if you wanna make sure that it's clean, clean, clean soap, you're gonna go to soapminer.com, and then you're gonna use Bitcoin. And in the coupon code, you're gonna get 10% off of your entire purchase. Because when you do, it also lets SoapMiner know that I made a sale for him, and that's the way the CircleP works. There's no it's it's it's a digital handshake deal. There's no contracts. He doesn't pay me for advertising. I like his product.
I use his product. My entire family uses SoapMiner soaps. So I like giving people a spotlight when they can't afford to have their own advertising. That's what the Circle p was designed to do. So if I make a sale and he finds that that sale was worth his while, then he can get me back on the other side with SATS or not. There is no contract here. That's the way the Circle p works. There's probably much better models, but this will be the only place in the world that you find a value for value advertising model. It is the Circle P.
Alright. Moving on. Let's get to this one. I've I had one of these the other day because permanent marketing is a deal. You know, they don't it's not I've never really heard it said that way. But if you wanna know what permanent marketing is, it it is it is like Kleenex. Hand me a Kleenex. There are many facial tissues, and Kleenex is made by one company, yet many, many people will say, I need a Kleenex. That's permanent marketing. And usually, it happens accidentally. Right? It's like, give me a Coke. And then you give somebody an actual Coca Cola and they say, no. Well, actually, I wanted a Pepsi. Then you're like, why did you say why did you say Coke? It's like, you know, I don't know. It's it's like that.
Today, we're talking about McDonald's McRib. If you have not had one of these gut wrenching rockets, you know, fly through your intestinal system, boy, you are missing out on just how food chemistry can jack your ass up. From decrypt, Andrei Bogansky's got it. McDonald's executive stirs up Bitcoin crowd with the return of McRib. I don't even know how this works. We're gonna find out together. The price of Bitcoin rose on Monday as McDonald's prepared for the McRib's return in The United States mirroring momentum seen alongside the sandwich showing last year. For several years, the sandwich's availability has been informally linked to periods of strength for the leading digital asset by market cap as well as stock indices like the S and P five hundred.
The dynamic was referenced by McDonald's senior marketing director Guillermo Huynh, who said on x on Monday that the barbecue flavored fan favorite had recently found new meaning on the Internet within the trading and crypto communities. Okay. Whatever, dude. Quote. Some claim Bitcoin and S and P 500 tend to perform well after the McRib makes a comeback, particularly in twenty seventeen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, Guillermo said, quote, coincidentally, when the McRib returned to stores in December 2024, Bitcoin hit a new all time high.
Last year, the McRib returned as US President Donald Trump's reelection unleashed animal spirits in the crypto market, pushing Bitcoin above a 100,000 mark for the first time. This year, the sandwich returns as a forty day government shutdown shows signs of potentially ending leading to a rise in the price of Bitcoin and other top assets on Sunday. Now according to WHIN, McRib is set to return to restaurants nationwide starting on Tuesday, but it will only be available for a limited amount of time as it has been since Americans got their first taste of barbecue sauce, pickles, onions, and pork in 1981.
Been around for a long time. The correlation between McRib's reintroduction and Bitcoin gains may be savory for some time, but the trend is far from solid. In 2018 and 2022, the saucy sandwiches return preceded a steep decline in Bitcoin's price to $30.32 50 and 15,500, respectively. If the McRibs return is correlated with anything, it's likely related to a decline in bulk pork prices according to an informal study published in 2011 called a conspiracy of hogs. Within the crypto sphere, the significance of the McRibs return has been popularized by pseudonymous x user named intern bra who works at the Monad Blockchain team last year.
Inter bra or intern bra posited to decrypt that the sandwich only moves markets when it returns to The US as the McRib returned to restaurants in The UK for the first time in nearly a decade. Although the McRib was slated to return on Tuesday, there were already sightings of the sandwich across The US according to McRib Locator. Yes. McRib Locator. It's a website just so you can find McRibs. Simpsons did it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't watched the Simpsons enough. Because the sandwich's availability is not guaranteed, the website tells users to always call ahead.
Bitcoin changed hands at around 105,600 on Monday, and then they go into price action, which is we don't need. We'll get to that later. McRib, this thing is a gut rocket. If you eat one, prepare to understand that within the hour, it's probably going to feel like you just ate a sandwich filled with broken glass. We this thing should not actually be touched. Right? However, even in, you know, in moments of weakness, even me, who knows better because I've I've chewed on one of these things since 1981, and they've have only gotten worse. Can I could not help myself? And, yes, I saw it up here in Eastern Washington last week, and, yes, I literally ate the living crap out of one. So and my gut railed against me within the hour. I definitely knew better. I'm so ashamed. Yada yada yada. I don't care. I'll probably get another one before it's all said and done because, dude, McRib is the vest it is it's not vestige. What am I trying to say? It's the pinnacle of perma marketing.
It is the Kleenex that everybody knows. Even if even if you've never, you you know, eaten a McRib, you know you know the name. Right? So that's perma marketing, and we could all probably learn a lesson from it. Let's run the numbers. CNBC, futures and commodities. Yes. The markets are open today, except for the bond market. The United States bond market is closed for Veterans Day, but the rest of the markets are actually open. So we've got numbers here. Energy doing well. Brent Norsee up one and a half points to $65.00 8. West Texas Intermediate is also up one and a half to $61 flat.
Natural gas swinging for the fences above 4% to the upside, $4.51 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 2%. It just breached $2 a gallon by one penny for the first time in quite a while. And Murbaughn crude, everybody's favorite light sweet crude is 1.58% to the upside. That is $67.43 per barrel. Palladium is up 1.7%. Gold is down only slightly, but still at $41.20 and a dime. Platinum is up slightly. Silver is up point 7%. Copper is down point eight. Ag, oh, the biggest loser today. Wow. Chocolate taking it on the chin. 4.6% to the downside.
Biggest winner is gonna be rough rice, 1.8 to the upside. And then we've got live cattle, which is crawling sideways slightly in the green. Lean hogs up point 69%, and feeder cattle up just over one and a tenth point. The S and P is up point one eight. S, S and P the S and P let's do this again. S and P Mini is up point one nine. S and P is up point one two. The Nasdaq is down a third. The Dow is up almost a full point, probably because there looks like we may actually get out of this whole, government shutdown thing sometime this week. Who knows? Something a a bill, you know, that's been agreed on between Republicans and Democrats passed the senate last night, and it's chill I guess it's gonna be chilling out at the house. I I I pretty sure the house is not in session today because of Veterans Day. Who knows? Markets are open. Why not, you know, our paid representatives? But Bitcoin is chilling out at a 103,220.
That's a $2,060,000,000,000 market cap, and we can buy 25.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,947,216.79 of an average fees per block are low. 0.02 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are two, I don't know, 22, 23 blocks carrying 36,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear high priority rates of three sats per v buy. Low priorities are one, and we are still in Zeta Hash range for the hash rate. 1.08 Zeta Hash's per second is the security on the Bitcoin network right now. And if you don't know what that means, trust me, it's more security than you're ever gonna need in your entire life. Your Bitcoin is safe. My Bitcoin is safe.
Funds are safer. Alright. From rumble strips, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got nikaz eighteen with two ten says, live aloha, or he might actually be saying live aloha. Not sure. It's English is a funny language that way. Is there anybody oh, Pies with one twenty one. Thank you, Pies. I appreciate that. Is there anybody else? No. I think that's actually it. Pretty low on the donation side. So, if you guys have any, like, you know, spare Satoshis, you know, floating around, just throw some to your favorite podcaster. That's weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. We're gonna talk about Square again because like I told you yesterday, they opened up to their merchants the ability to accept Bitcoin. I touched on it, you know, through a couple of tweets, but here's the first story that I've seen. Stephen Kati is writing about it for Cointelegraph. Let's see if we can pick up some detail. Jack Dorsey Square has just opened up 4,000,000 merchants to Bitcoin. 4,000,000 merchants. Payment processor Square has launched its Bitcoin payment feature for sellers, allowing them to opt in and accept Bitcoin at checkout through its point of sale system.
Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Block, which owns Square, said in an ex post on Monday that with the new feature, merchants using Square can receive Bitcoin to Bitcoin, Bitcoin to fiat, fiat to Bitcoin, or fiat to fiat payments. At the same time, Jacob Simic, an account executive at Square, stated that Bitcoin payments are currently only available for in person purchases and point of sale terminals, but online and invoicing options are, quote, in the works and teased that updates would be coming soon. And he also reiterated that there will be no fees until 2027.
Previously, Block indicated fees would start at 1% once the period expires. In comparison, credit card processing fees typically range between 1.54%. Square teased its Bitcoin payments in October when it launched a conversion feature allowing sellers to convert a percentage of their daily card sales into Bitcoin, both of which are part of its payment and wallet solution, Square Bitcoin. The company had previously said it would roll out the service by 2026. More than 4,000,000 sellers use Square across eight countries, including The United States, France, United Kingdom, and Japan. Several x users have already reported using the Bitcoin payment feature.
Parker Lewis, the head of business development at Bitcoin and fiat payment platform, Zaprite, said, he has seen it operating, quote, with my own two eyes and bought coffee at Medici, a coffee roaster in Texas. Quote, great day for Medici, Square, and all the Square merchants going live with Bitcoin and Bitcoin in general. Bitcoiners, support your local Square merchants, he said. Katie Ananina, the chief marketing officer at tech platform CitizenX, reported she was the first person to pay using Bitcoin at Medici, the same coffee roaster. Quote, many of us tried to onboard merchants to accept Bitcoin. For so many years, it was painful, she said in another post. Quote, you literally had to orange peel the person behind the business to to the extent where they themselves became Bitcoiners and get on board.
Today's Square move is absolutely legendary and makes the entry point so much lower. Huge, end quote. A July YouGov survey found that 37% of 1,000 respondents in The US and UK view payments as a leading use case for crypto and artificial intelligence. Dorsey also shared a post from the head of product design at Block's peer to peer payment service Cash App announcing the launch of a map that shows all the merchants worldwide that accept Bitcoin. And I was telling you about that yesterday too. They were gonna launch it on Thursday, but, somebody over at Square decided, why wait? Let's just turn it on right now, and they did.
It's actually live in your Cash App. If you wanna go look for it, be my guest. It's not your it it's like I think it's like under the home screen, like, the little home button, and then it's like, use Bitcoin. And then underneath that, it's like find Bitcoin merchants or something something like that. It's not evident where the map is is what I'm trying to say. You gotta dig for it. Okay? And if you have problems, ask questions on Nostr, and I'm sure somebody will will lead you to it. That that's how I figured out where the hell it was. Anyway, quote, convince your local Square seller to turn on Bitcoin acceptance for zero fees on sales.
Convince them to keep it as Bitcoin to help them better survive dollar debasement. So, yes, and that that was what I was telling people on the show yesterday. Every Square seller that you go to, if you see that there's a Square terminal and you're about to pay, then ask, do you have Bitcoin turned on? I I wanna pay you in Bitcoin today. Do you know about the fee? You know, that kind of thing. Because that, like, most of them, they may not know. They, I mean, they may have gotten a newsletter from Square. I guarantee you they did. Did they read it? Do they do they really read the newsletters from Square? No, dude. They just wanna sell their shit and get money for it. So they probably don't know. Right?
It's probably also not being talked about very much on mainstream media. That's where we come in. It's gonna be up to us to not only inform Square sellers that they can now take Bitcoin and that they can convert that directly into fiat if it makes them feel better, Or they can keep it if that makes them feel better. Or I can pay them in US dollars, and then they automatically get Bitcoin on the other end of it if that makes them feel better. Just become the instructor. Become the educational resource that anybody with a Square terminal is going to need to navigate into getting rid of 3% credit card fees.
Right? They'll probably thank you on the you know, a couple of weeks later. Anyway, so let's go and talk about SoFi making history as the very first United States national bank to let customers buy Bitcoin. Now I I I thought that we had a couple of banks that were already doing this in The United States, but according to Micah Zimmerman from Bitcoin Magazine, I am wrong. And I don't mind being wrong, but SoFi Technologies has now become the first nationally chartered bank in The United States to launch crypto services for their retail customers.
The company's new SoFi crypto platform allows members to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin directly within their bank account, and the rollout begins Tuesday with phased access expanding to all of SoFi's 12,600,000 customers by the 2025. Quote, today marks a pivotal moment when banking meets crypto in one app, said CEO Anthony Noto. Quote, it's critical to give our members a secure and regulated way to step into the future of money. Customers can also purchase Shitcoin 1 and Shitcoin 2 with more crypto rolling out in the future. Bad move for you guys. I'm sorry that that SoFi is is actually acting a little retarded, but, hey. You know?
It's not like we haven't seen this level of retardation before. The launch follows a dramatic reversal in US banking policy. After years of regulatory hesitation under Biden administration, the office of the comptroller of the currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation clarified earlier this year that nationally chartered banks can offer crypto custody, trading, and settlement services, quote. We wanted to be the one stop shop for all your financial service needs, and one of the holes that we've had for the last two years was in cryptocurrency. And Noto said on CNBC this morning, quote, the ability to buy, sell, and hold crypto, we were not allowed to do that as a bank. It was not permitted, end quote.
That change, part of a broader deregulatory wave under president Trump, has sparked new phases of institutional adoption. In May, the office of the comptroller of the currency's interpretive of letter gave banks the legal clarity they needed to handle crypto directly rather than through third party intermediaries, quote. SoFi went from not being able to offer crypto products as a bank to having the best license a company can have to deliver them, Noto told Reuters. Unlike fintech platforms or exchanges, SoFi operates under a full national bank charter, meaning its crypto services are subject to the same oversight and capital requirements as its checking, savings, and lending products.
That distinction could prove crucial. The bank says 60% of its members who already own crypto prefer trading through a licensed bank rather than a traditional exchange. Funds used for crypto purchases will flow directly from FDIC FDIC insured SoFi checking and savings accounts where deposits earn up to $2,000,000 in coverage. Quote, when you're not putting cash to work, it's sitting in an insured account that earns interest, not idle on an exchange, Noto said. The bank's ambitions go beyond buying and selling crypto. SoFi is developing a US dollar peg stablecoin, of course, and exploring crypto integrated lending and payment products, part of what it calls a full blockchain strategy to modernize financial infrastructure with major lenders like Charles Schwab and PNC reportedly preparing similar rollouts.
SoFi's move could accelerate the normalization of crypto inside The US banking system. So for all this time, I you know, for a long time, I've been wrong. I thought that there was at least one US bank that allowed you to already do this. I got it wrong. This last sentence actually makes, we should read it again. With major lenders like Charles Schwab and PNC reportedly preparing similar rollouts, which means they're gonna do the same thing as SoFi. Right? SoFi's move could accelerate the normalization of crypto inside The US banking system, and my comment on that is that it probably will. You know, at this point, Charles Schwab and PNC guys, you know, the the guys that don't care whether or not it's Veterans Day are probably on the phone to each other going, how how are we not first?
And you'll probably see them open up the floodgates here in the next couple of weeks. I I suspect that somebody like Charles Schwab will not wait till the end of the week before they make a similar announcement that, hey. We're we're we're turning it turning it on. And Charles Schwab is one of the largest retail people out there. Alright? So they're they are man on the street. They are like Joe the plumber kinda, you know, kind of service. Right? That that is what makes or breaks the the people at Charles Schwab is retail. Not institutional, but retail. The regular people. Right? So it's interesting that SoFi was first, but they are not going to be the last. And but what is last for today is institutional investors, 61% of them plan to increase their exposure to digital assets according to atlas21.com, According to a recent survey conducted by the Swiss banking group, Signum, more than 61% of global financial institutions plan to increase their exposure to digital assets in the coming months. The report, which surveyed 1,000 institutional investors worldwide, highlights that 55% are participants of participants maintain a bullish outlook short term. Lucas Schweiger, head of crypto ecosystem research at Signum, foresees the institutional investment market evolving toward greater maturity.
According to Schweiger, professional investors are seeking diversified exposure with long term growth expectations, adopting a more disciplined approach than in the past. Quote, the 2025 narrative is marked by more prudent risk management, pending regulatory decisions, and powerful demand catalysts amid fiscal and geopolitical pressures, said Schweiger, adding that investors are now better informed and that, quote, discipline has tempered exuberance, but not the conviction in the market's long term growth trajectory, end quote. Despite the October correction, institutional participation has reached record levels.
The growing number of crypto ETF filings points to expanding institutional demand. Currently, at least 16 crypto ETF applications are waiting approval delayed by, of course, The United States Government shutdown. More than 80% of surveyed institutions expressed interest in crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one, while 70% said that they would start investing or increasing their investments if such products offered staking rewards. According to Signum, the end of The United States government shutdown could lead to, quote, batch approvals of altcoin ETFs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
It's sad to see that there's going to be shit coinery in this mark in this market to the extent that to a further extent that we already have, but nothing was gonna stop that train either. The Shitcoiners are gonna Shitcoin. Shitcoins will always be with you. It's like Jesus talking to his disciples about the poor. The poor will always be with you. I will not be here very much longer. Yeah. That was that was sort of like what he was trying to say. He's like, we're not gonna worry about the poor right now, buddy. You better start listening to me because here in a couple of days, I I ain't gonna be here no more. That that's sort of what the that lesson was. But it's shitcoiners are always gonna be with you. There's always gonna be somebody who really believes that their shitcoin is the next Bitcoin.
What they don't understand is if that happened, if any any one of the shitcoins that are out there basically became larger than Bitcoin by clear and not only, like, clear distance, but by very certain and and and, like, you know, agreed upon metrics. Not just like, oh, dominant. Bitcoin dominance fell below 51% or something like that. That that's all bullshit. I'm talking about, like, market cap. You know, there's like I don't know. I could probably list off about five. But let's say that that Bitcoin gets blown past by shitcoin number one by, like, five or six metrics.
It's clearly in the lead. It's not just you kinda think it is. No. It's clearly in the lead. The entire the entire crypto economy collapses. Why? Because within what's next? You can't you can't hold anything. You literally cannot just save your money yet one more time Because then, shitcoin number one will be supplanted, and then that one will be supplanted, and then that one will be supplanted. The only way, the amazingly enough, the only way these people, the shitcoiners, have one hope in hell of saving any kind of money in their shitcoin is if their shitcoin never beats Bitcoin.
It's it's counterintuitive, but that's really the way this works. We can't have that because then nobody can trust anything, and people want to be able to feel secure in at least one damn thing in their life. So, anyway, it's it is Veterans Day. This is a much shorter show than normal. I just I just couldn't leave you guys out in the wind to twist, so do your barbecue. You know, barbecue one for me. I did a brisket the other day. Turned out really damn well. I still miss my offset smoker, but honestly, you know, Traeger wood pellet grill in a pinch actually makes performs pretty well for something like a brisket.
Ribs, not so much because they're a bit of a thinner piece of meat and that convection action of the Traeger or wood pellet grills because it's, you know, there's a fan involved, so it's clearly moving air, has a tendency to dry ribs out. It doesn't do very well for ribs, not like an offset smoker does. Anyway, you know, I I'll I'll take what I can get. The brisket did turn out well. I hope yours does also, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 09:44AM Pacific Standard Time. It's the eleventh day of the eleventh month of twenty twenty five, and this is episode 12 o eight of Bitcoin. And this is gonna be a short one. Simply, it's Veterans Day. My kids are home from school, so we're not gonna we're just gonna dispense with the pleasantries and get right into it because I got a couple of gems here, man, and we're gonna start it with this one from Helen Parts out of Cointelegraph. China has raised the alarm and has alleged The United States played a role in one of the largest Bitcoin hacks. If you didn't get that, China is accusing the United States government of hacking some Bitcoin.
It's we've entered a new phase. It let's just put it let's just put it like that. Okay. So Helen Parks from Cointelegraph goes on to say this, China's national cyber defense Agency has made big claims around the alleged role of The United States in the multibillion dollar hack of Lubian, once a major Chinese Bitcoin mining pool. The Chinese National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center or c VERC, a state backed cyber defense agency on Sunday published a technical analysis report on the 127,272 Bitcoin stolen in the Lubian hack.
Although that hack occurred back in December 2020, it remained largely unknown to the public until recently with Arkham reporting it happened well well, Arkham reported in August that it was the largest ever Bitcoin hack. The c Verk's analysis came weeks after The United States filed a civil forfeiture complaint for a 127,271 BTC worth around $14,500,000,000 in a criminal case against Prince Group founder, Xin Zhih, who reportedly owned the BTC held by Lubian before it was hacked. While formally filing to seize the $14,500,000,000, in mid October, the United States government had already been holding the assets in custody according to the indictment statement. Quote, those funds are presently in the custody of the United States government, the statement noted, adding that the complaint is the largest forfeiture action in the history of the Department of Justice.
The c verk highlighted that the US government has not disclosed in the indictment how it obtained access to the funds and claimed that The US has been in control of those assets for more than a year, citing ARCAM data. According to Arkham data, an address labeled lubian.comhacker wow. It's just being really upfront. Sent a 120,576 BTC, almost its entire holdings to an address labeled US government, Xinjiang seized funds in a single transaction on 07/05/2024. The c Verk said that the stolen Bitcoin on the Lubian hacker's address had remained dormant for nearly four years following the hack until the funds were fully taken over by the United States government last year. Seiverk said, the long dormancy of the stolen Bitcoin before The US seizure is clearly inconsistent with the nature of ordinary hackers who are eager to cash out and pursue profits.
It's more like a precise operation orchestrated by a state owned hacking organization. The said that Xi and his Prince Group repeatedly sent messages to the hacker address via Bitcoin transactions of roughly $23 each, pleading for the return of the stolen BTC and offering a reward, but received no response. The report adds a geopolitical dimension to one of the most mysterious crypto thefts in history. According to Arkham, the batch of Lubian derived Bitcoin holdings accounts for at least 39% of all of the 326.5 Bitcoin held in government associated addresses.
Nah. This is a typo because 326 Bitcoin is is a lot less than what we've been talking about here. So just it's it's a typo. Just we'll just deal with it. Held in US government associated addresses at the time of publication. The US president Donald Trump recently declared that The US is, quote, far ahead of China and everybody else in cryptocurrency adoption. Quote, China is getting into it in a very big way right now. He said in an interview with CBS News, sixty Minutes on or CBS News' it's hard to say that word. Sixty Minutes, the CBS News publication on November 2 there. I've I've I've been able to successfully get through this.
So the Chinese government is accusing the United States government of being behind the hack of the Lubian coins. That's what's going on here. Just directly. Not not kinda not like, oh, you know, we're we're gonna find some nice language so that we don't really no. No. They're just saying you guys stole that Bitcoin. This is a first. I I I've been I've been in this space since 2015. I've never heard one government accuse another government of stealing their Bitcoin. This is actually, it's kind of amazing. I cannot wait to see where this goes. But we've gotta go down south to Brazil right now with CoinDesk. And who's writing this one? Let's see here. It's, Francisco Rodriguez is writing about Brazil's central bank sets crypto rules and establishes up to $7,000,000 capital bar for firms. Let's find out what that means.
Brazil's central bank issued its most sweeping crypto regulation to date, creating a formal licensing regime for service providers and classifying a broad range of crypto activities as subject to foreign exchange and capital market rules. The framework introduces three resolutions and they define how crypto businesses must operate in South America's largest economy, how much capital they must hold, and how international crypto transactions will be treated under law. The rules take effect on February 2, and existing companies have nine months from then to comply.
The regime marks Banco Central do Brazil's most comprehensive attempt yet to govern its fast growing but largely unregulated crypto sector. While the central bank has floated various proposals since 2019, progress has been halting due to institutional friction and industry resistance. The challenge was finding a way to unite innovation and security, Gilneu Vivan, the bank's director of regulation, said at a press conference according to local news outlet, Portal, do Bitcoin. The crypto market depends heavily on technology and has been very important or has very important obligations related to, of course, anti money laundering.
All of this requires guarantees that it will be well executed. Now that's a direct quote. Some of the bank's regulations, including capital requirements and time scale, came under attack from the crypto industry. Companies in the industry will need to hold a minimum of 10,800,000.0 reis or reais. I don't know. They're whatever the whatever however you pronounce, r e a I s. That's the name of the Brazilian dollar. It's about $2,000,000 in US money. Okay? So we're talking $22,000,000 USD. And and they have to hold that in capital, the bank said.
Depending on the type of business, some companies will need to hold at least 37,200,000.0 reais or whatever, and that's well above the 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 reas proposed during the public consultation phase. Yeah. Quite a bit more. 10 x more. Actually, what? 10 ten ten, like, 10 and a half x, man. This is re re this is, a a lot. They just jacked that number right on up there. It just shows that they don't care about public consultation. They'll just they'll tell the public they're gonna do one thing, and they don't they don't they don't care. They never intended to have it that low.
They were gonna make sure that they had a a whole bunch of money that they can seize. I guarantee you that's what this is. They wanna make sure that they've got a lot of money that they can seize for whatever reason. They don't wanna be playing around in the sandbox with 1 to 3,000,000 reais. They want 37,000,000. Alright? So here we go. Bernardo Sir, president of the Brazilian Association of Crypto Economy, called the framework positive and necessary, but criticized both the capital bar and the short window for achieving compliance, which he said would deter competition. Firms that fail to meet the compliance deadline, which includes providing capital levels, cybersecurity controls, customer due diligence practices, and risk assessments will be barred from operating altogether.
Foreign companies active in the country must establish a local entity and transfer operations under that structure. The rules establish a new type of business entity. Or virtual asset service provider, quite a mouthful, which must now be licensed by the central bank and are divided into three categories based on the services they offer. They are either intermediaries, custodians, or brokerages. The framework also brings several types of crypto transactions, including those involving stablecoins within Brazil's foreign exchange and cross border capital control regime. These include international payments with cryptocurrencies, transfers to and from self custody wallets, and crypto to fiat transactions.
Firms authorized to operate in Brazil's FX or foreign exchange markets, including VASPs, may conduct these transactions, but with restrictions that include a cap of a $100,000 US per transaction. Starting May 4, they will have to report these transactions monthly to the central bank with details, including client details, asset type, amount in reas, and links between counterparties. They wanna know everything, man. They wanna know where you live. They wanna know the other counterparty where they live. They wanna know how much it is just surveillance.
It's that we've just turned into the entire world through the apathy of the citizenry of the world has turned into a giant surveillance globe. It's our fault. It's our we we never pressed back on these people to the point that they are physically terrified to walk in the street. Until that happens, they will tell us precisely what we can and cannot do. I I I wish it was different, but the human psychology demands that fear is part of the way that you make your judgments. If you're if you are really not feeling safe around your citizenry, then that means that you will probably be doing everything that you can to do right by that citizenry so that you don't have to be terrified walking down the street in Brazil or Washington, DC or anywhere on the planet.
But until such time that these people do become terrified of the citizenry that they say they represent, then all bets are off, and they're going to do whatever the hell they want us to do. And that makes me feel dirty, which makes me thankful for SoapMiner over at soapminer.com. Get your 100% beef tallow soap over at soapminer.com. That's soapminer.com. He's got all manner of handmade 100% beef tallow based soap, cedarwood, pine tar, goat's milk, lemongrass, orange clove, lavender, tea tree. Oh, man. That's some good stuff right there. Peppermint, Earl Grey, redacted. He's got he's got body balms. He now has deodorants.
He's got all kinds of neat stuff, and he makes it all himself. And he sells it for Bitcoin because if you're not selling it to Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. This is the circle p. It is open for business. It's where I bring plebs with goods and services just like you to plebs just like you that want to buy, say, goods and services, but you're gonna be buying it in Bitcoin. And you could do that at soapminer.com. These bars of soap, by the way, last I got a family of four. I've got one bar of soap that's lasted almost two months. It's it's now it's now on its last legs. Finally. Finally.
But after two months, a $7.50 bar of soap, which, you know, hey. You're gonna be buying in Bitcoin, but he does put USD on his website, has lasted two months. I can't get that kind of performance out of out of anything that I can find at, at a regular grocery store or Walmart or anything like that. If you want performance with your soap, if you wanna make sure that it's clean, clean, clean soap, you're gonna go to soapminer.com, and then you're gonna use Bitcoin. And in the coupon code, you're gonna get 10% off of your entire purchase. Because when you do, it also lets SoapMiner know that I made a sale for him, and that's the way the CircleP works. There's no it's it's it's a digital handshake deal. There's no contracts. He doesn't pay me for advertising. I like his product.
I use his product. My entire family uses SoapMiner soaps. So I like giving people a spotlight when they can't afford to have their own advertising. That's what the Circle p was designed to do. So if I make a sale and he finds that that sale was worth his while, then he can get me back on the other side with SATS or not. There is no contract here. That's the way the Circle p works. There's probably much better models, but this will be the only place in the world that you find a value for value advertising model. It is the Circle P.
Alright. Moving on. Let's get to this one. I've I had one of these the other day because permanent marketing is a deal. You know, they don't it's not I've never really heard it said that way. But if you wanna know what permanent marketing is, it it is it is like Kleenex. Hand me a Kleenex. There are many facial tissues, and Kleenex is made by one company, yet many, many people will say, I need a Kleenex. That's permanent marketing. And usually, it happens accidentally. Right? It's like, give me a Coke. And then you give somebody an actual Coca Cola and they say, no. Well, actually, I wanted a Pepsi. Then you're like, why did you say why did you say Coke? It's like, you know, I don't know. It's it's like that.
Today, we're talking about McDonald's McRib. If you have not had one of these gut wrenching rockets, you know, fly through your intestinal system, boy, you are missing out on just how food chemistry can jack your ass up. From decrypt, Andrei Bogansky's got it. McDonald's executive stirs up Bitcoin crowd with the return of McRib. I don't even know how this works. We're gonna find out together. The price of Bitcoin rose on Monday as McDonald's prepared for the McRib's return in The United States mirroring momentum seen alongside the sandwich showing last year. For several years, the sandwich's availability has been informally linked to periods of strength for the leading digital asset by market cap as well as stock indices like the S and P five hundred.
The dynamic was referenced by McDonald's senior marketing director Guillermo Huynh, who said on x on Monday that the barbecue flavored fan favorite had recently found new meaning on the Internet within the trading and crypto communities. Okay. Whatever, dude. Quote. Some claim Bitcoin and S and P 500 tend to perform well after the McRib makes a comeback, particularly in twenty seventeen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, Guillermo said, quote, coincidentally, when the McRib returned to stores in December 2024, Bitcoin hit a new all time high.
Last year, the McRib returned as US President Donald Trump's reelection unleashed animal spirits in the crypto market, pushing Bitcoin above a 100,000 mark for the first time. This year, the sandwich returns as a forty day government shutdown shows signs of potentially ending leading to a rise in the price of Bitcoin and other top assets on Sunday. Now according to WHIN, McRib is set to return to restaurants nationwide starting on Tuesday, but it will only be available for a limited amount of time as it has been since Americans got their first taste of barbecue sauce, pickles, onions, and pork in 1981.
Been around for a long time. The correlation between McRib's reintroduction and Bitcoin gains may be savory for some time, but the trend is far from solid. In 2018 and 2022, the saucy sandwiches return preceded a steep decline in Bitcoin's price to $30.32 50 and 15,500, respectively. If the McRibs return is correlated with anything, it's likely related to a decline in bulk pork prices according to an informal study published in 2011 called a conspiracy of hogs. Within the crypto sphere, the significance of the McRibs return has been popularized by pseudonymous x user named intern bra who works at the Monad Blockchain team last year.
Inter bra or intern bra posited to decrypt that the sandwich only moves markets when it returns to The US as the McRib returned to restaurants in The UK for the first time in nearly a decade. Although the McRib was slated to return on Tuesday, there were already sightings of the sandwich across The US according to McRib Locator. Yes. McRib Locator. It's a website just so you can find McRibs. Simpsons did it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't watched the Simpsons enough. Because the sandwich's availability is not guaranteed, the website tells users to always call ahead.
Bitcoin changed hands at around 105,600 on Monday, and then they go into price action, which is we don't need. We'll get to that later. McRib, this thing is a gut rocket. If you eat one, prepare to understand that within the hour, it's probably going to feel like you just ate a sandwich filled with broken glass. We this thing should not actually be touched. Right? However, even in, you know, in moments of weakness, even me, who knows better because I've I've chewed on one of these things since 1981, and they've have only gotten worse. Can I could not help myself? And, yes, I saw it up here in Eastern Washington last week, and, yes, I literally ate the living crap out of one. So and my gut railed against me within the hour. I definitely knew better. I'm so ashamed. Yada yada yada. I don't care. I'll probably get another one before it's all said and done because, dude, McRib is the vest it is it's not vestige. What am I trying to say? It's the pinnacle of perma marketing.
It is the Kleenex that everybody knows. Even if even if you've never, you you know, eaten a McRib, you know you know the name. Right? So that's perma marketing, and we could all probably learn a lesson from it. Let's run the numbers. CNBC, futures and commodities. Yes. The markets are open today, except for the bond market. The United States bond market is closed for Veterans Day, but the rest of the markets are actually open. So we've got numbers here. Energy doing well. Brent Norsee up one and a half points to $65.00 8. West Texas Intermediate is also up one and a half to $61 flat.
Natural gas swinging for the fences above 4% to the upside, $4.51 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 2%. It just breached $2 a gallon by one penny for the first time in quite a while. And Murbaughn crude, everybody's favorite light sweet crude is 1.58% to the upside. That is $67.43 per barrel. Palladium is up 1.7%. Gold is down only slightly, but still at $41.20 and a dime. Platinum is up slightly. Silver is up point 7%. Copper is down point eight. Ag, oh, the biggest loser today. Wow. Chocolate taking it on the chin. 4.6% to the downside.
Biggest winner is gonna be rough rice, 1.8 to the upside. And then we've got live cattle, which is crawling sideways slightly in the green. Lean hogs up point 69%, and feeder cattle up just over one and a tenth point. The S and P is up point one eight. S, S and P the S and P let's do this again. S and P Mini is up point one nine. S and P is up point one two. The Nasdaq is down a third. The Dow is up almost a full point, probably because there looks like we may actually get out of this whole, government shutdown thing sometime this week. Who knows? Something a a bill, you know, that's been agreed on between Republicans and Democrats passed the senate last night, and it's chill I guess it's gonna be chilling out at the house. I I I pretty sure the house is not in session today because of Veterans Day. Who knows? Markets are open. Why not, you know, our paid representatives? But Bitcoin is chilling out at a 103,220.
That's a $2,060,000,000,000 market cap, and we can buy 25.2 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,947,216.79 of an average fees per block are low. 0.02 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are two, I don't know, 22, 23 blocks carrying 36,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear high priority rates of three sats per v buy. Low priorities are one, and we are still in Zeta Hash range for the hash rate. 1.08 Zeta Hash's per second is the security on the Bitcoin network right now. And if you don't know what that means, trust me, it's more security than you're ever gonna need in your entire life. Your Bitcoin is safe. My Bitcoin is safe.
Funds are safer. Alright. From rumble strips, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got nikaz eighteen with two ten says, live aloha, or he might actually be saying live aloha. Not sure. It's English is a funny language that way. Is there anybody oh, Pies with one twenty one. Thank you, Pies. I appreciate that. Is there anybody else? No. I think that's actually it. Pretty low on the donation side. So, if you guys have any, like, you know, spare Satoshis, you know, floating around, just throw some to your favorite podcaster. That's weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. We're gonna talk about Square again because like I told you yesterday, they opened up to their merchants the ability to accept Bitcoin. I touched on it, you know, through a couple of tweets, but here's the first story that I've seen. Stephen Kati is writing about it for Cointelegraph. Let's see if we can pick up some detail. Jack Dorsey Square has just opened up 4,000,000 merchants to Bitcoin. 4,000,000 merchants. Payment processor Square has launched its Bitcoin payment feature for sellers, allowing them to opt in and accept Bitcoin at checkout through its point of sale system.
Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Block, which owns Square, said in an ex post on Monday that with the new feature, merchants using Square can receive Bitcoin to Bitcoin, Bitcoin to fiat, fiat to Bitcoin, or fiat to fiat payments. At the same time, Jacob Simic, an account executive at Square, stated that Bitcoin payments are currently only available for in person purchases and point of sale terminals, but online and invoicing options are, quote, in the works and teased that updates would be coming soon. And he also reiterated that there will be no fees until 2027.
Previously, Block indicated fees would start at 1% once the period expires. In comparison, credit card processing fees typically range between 1.54%. Square teased its Bitcoin payments in October when it launched a conversion feature allowing sellers to convert a percentage of their daily card sales into Bitcoin, both of which are part of its payment and wallet solution, Square Bitcoin. The company had previously said it would roll out the service by 2026. More than 4,000,000 sellers use Square across eight countries, including The United States, France, United Kingdom, and Japan. Several x users have already reported using the Bitcoin payment feature.
Parker Lewis, the head of business development at Bitcoin and fiat payment platform, Zaprite, said, he has seen it operating, quote, with my own two eyes and bought coffee at Medici, a coffee roaster in Texas. Quote, great day for Medici, Square, and all the Square merchants going live with Bitcoin and Bitcoin in general. Bitcoiners, support your local Square merchants, he said. Katie Ananina, the chief marketing officer at tech platform CitizenX, reported she was the first person to pay using Bitcoin at Medici, the same coffee roaster. Quote, many of us tried to onboard merchants to accept Bitcoin. For so many years, it was painful, she said in another post. Quote, you literally had to orange peel the person behind the business to to the extent where they themselves became Bitcoiners and get on board.
Today's Square move is absolutely legendary and makes the entry point so much lower. Huge, end quote. A July YouGov survey found that 37% of 1,000 respondents in The US and UK view payments as a leading use case for crypto and artificial intelligence. Dorsey also shared a post from the head of product design at Block's peer to peer payment service Cash App announcing the launch of a map that shows all the merchants worldwide that accept Bitcoin. And I was telling you about that yesterday too. They were gonna launch it on Thursday, but, somebody over at Square decided, why wait? Let's just turn it on right now, and they did.
It's actually live in your Cash App. If you wanna go look for it, be my guest. It's not your it it's like I think it's like under the home screen, like, the little home button, and then it's like, use Bitcoin. And then underneath that, it's like find Bitcoin merchants or something something like that. It's not evident where the map is is what I'm trying to say. You gotta dig for it. Okay? And if you have problems, ask questions on Nostr, and I'm sure somebody will will lead you to it. That that's how I figured out where the hell it was. Anyway, quote, convince your local Square seller to turn on Bitcoin acceptance for zero fees on sales.
Convince them to keep it as Bitcoin to help them better survive dollar debasement. So, yes, and that that was what I was telling people on the show yesterday. Every Square seller that you go to, if you see that there's a Square terminal and you're about to pay, then ask, do you have Bitcoin turned on? I I wanna pay you in Bitcoin today. Do you know about the fee? You know, that kind of thing. Because that, like, most of them, they may not know. They, I mean, they may have gotten a newsletter from Square. I guarantee you they did. Did they read it? Do they do they really read the newsletters from Square? No, dude. They just wanna sell their shit and get money for it. So they probably don't know. Right?
It's probably also not being talked about very much on mainstream media. That's where we come in. It's gonna be up to us to not only inform Square sellers that they can now take Bitcoin and that they can convert that directly into fiat if it makes them feel better, Or they can keep it if that makes them feel better. Or I can pay them in US dollars, and then they automatically get Bitcoin on the other end of it if that makes them feel better. Just become the instructor. Become the educational resource that anybody with a Square terminal is going to need to navigate into getting rid of 3% credit card fees.
Right? They'll probably thank you on the you know, a couple of weeks later. Anyway, so let's go and talk about SoFi making history as the very first United States national bank to let customers buy Bitcoin. Now I I I thought that we had a couple of banks that were already doing this in The United States, but according to Micah Zimmerman from Bitcoin Magazine, I am wrong. And I don't mind being wrong, but SoFi Technologies has now become the first nationally chartered bank in The United States to launch crypto services for their retail customers.
The company's new SoFi crypto platform allows members to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin directly within their bank account, and the rollout begins Tuesday with phased access expanding to all of SoFi's 12,600,000 customers by the 2025. Quote, today marks a pivotal moment when banking meets crypto in one app, said CEO Anthony Noto. Quote, it's critical to give our members a secure and regulated way to step into the future of money. Customers can also purchase Shitcoin 1 and Shitcoin 2 with more crypto rolling out in the future. Bad move for you guys. I'm sorry that that SoFi is is actually acting a little retarded, but, hey. You know?
It's not like we haven't seen this level of retardation before. The launch follows a dramatic reversal in US banking policy. After years of regulatory hesitation under Biden administration, the office of the comptroller of the currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation clarified earlier this year that nationally chartered banks can offer crypto custody, trading, and settlement services, quote. We wanted to be the one stop shop for all your financial service needs, and one of the holes that we've had for the last two years was in cryptocurrency. And Noto said on CNBC this morning, quote, the ability to buy, sell, and hold crypto, we were not allowed to do that as a bank. It was not permitted, end quote.
That change, part of a broader deregulatory wave under president Trump, has sparked new phases of institutional adoption. In May, the office of the comptroller of the currency's interpretive of letter gave banks the legal clarity they needed to handle crypto directly rather than through third party intermediaries, quote. SoFi went from not being able to offer crypto products as a bank to having the best license a company can have to deliver them, Noto told Reuters. Unlike fintech platforms or exchanges, SoFi operates under a full national bank charter, meaning its crypto services are subject to the same oversight and capital requirements as its checking, savings, and lending products.
That distinction could prove crucial. The bank says 60% of its members who already own crypto prefer trading through a licensed bank rather than a traditional exchange. Funds used for crypto purchases will flow directly from FDIC FDIC insured SoFi checking and savings accounts where deposits earn up to $2,000,000 in coverage. Quote, when you're not putting cash to work, it's sitting in an insured account that earns interest, not idle on an exchange, Noto said. The bank's ambitions go beyond buying and selling crypto. SoFi is developing a US dollar peg stablecoin, of course, and exploring crypto integrated lending and payment products, part of what it calls a full blockchain strategy to modernize financial infrastructure with major lenders like Charles Schwab and PNC reportedly preparing similar rollouts.
SoFi's move could accelerate the normalization of crypto inside The US banking system. So for all this time, I you know, for a long time, I've been wrong. I thought that there was at least one US bank that allowed you to already do this. I got it wrong. This last sentence actually makes, we should read it again. With major lenders like Charles Schwab and PNC reportedly preparing similar rollouts, which means they're gonna do the same thing as SoFi. Right? SoFi's move could accelerate the normalization of crypto inside The US banking system, and my comment on that is that it probably will. You know, at this point, Charles Schwab and PNC guys, you know, the the guys that don't care whether or not it's Veterans Day are probably on the phone to each other going, how how are we not first?
And you'll probably see them open up the floodgates here in the next couple of weeks. I I suspect that somebody like Charles Schwab will not wait till the end of the week before they make a similar announcement that, hey. We're we're we're turning it turning it on. And Charles Schwab is one of the largest retail people out there. Alright? So they're they are man on the street. They are like Joe the plumber kinda, you know, kind of service. Right? That that is what makes or breaks the the people at Charles Schwab is retail. Not institutional, but retail. The regular people. Right? So it's interesting that SoFi was first, but they are not going to be the last. And but what is last for today is institutional investors, 61% of them plan to increase their exposure to digital assets according to atlas21.com, According to a recent survey conducted by the Swiss banking group, Signum, more than 61% of global financial institutions plan to increase their exposure to digital assets in the coming months. The report, which surveyed 1,000 institutional investors worldwide, highlights that 55% are participants of participants maintain a bullish outlook short term. Lucas Schweiger, head of crypto ecosystem research at Signum, foresees the institutional investment market evolving toward greater maturity.
According to Schweiger, professional investors are seeking diversified exposure with long term growth expectations, adopting a more disciplined approach than in the past. Quote, the 2025 narrative is marked by more prudent risk management, pending regulatory decisions, and powerful demand catalysts amid fiscal and geopolitical pressures, said Schweiger, adding that investors are now better informed and that, quote, discipline has tempered exuberance, but not the conviction in the market's long term growth trajectory, end quote. Despite the October correction, institutional participation has reached record levels.
The growing number of crypto ETF filings points to expanding institutional demand. Currently, at least 16 crypto ETF applications are waiting approval delayed by, of course, The United States Government shutdown. More than 80% of surveyed institutions expressed interest in crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Shitcoin number one, while 70% said that they would start investing or increasing their investments if such products offered staking rewards. According to Signum, the end of The United States government shutdown could lead to, quote, batch approvals of altcoin ETFs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
It's sad to see that there's going to be shit coinery in this mark in this market to the extent that to a further extent that we already have, but nothing was gonna stop that train either. The Shitcoiners are gonna Shitcoin. Shitcoins will always be with you. It's like Jesus talking to his disciples about the poor. The poor will always be with you. I will not be here very much longer. Yeah. That was that was sort of like what he was trying to say. He's like, we're not gonna worry about the poor right now, buddy. You better start listening to me because here in a couple of days, I I ain't gonna be here no more. That that's sort of what the that lesson was. But it's shitcoiners are always gonna be with you. There's always gonna be somebody who really believes that their shitcoin is the next Bitcoin.
What they don't understand is if that happened, if any any one of the shitcoins that are out there basically became larger than Bitcoin by clear and not only, like, clear distance, but by very certain and and and, like, you know, agreed upon metrics. Not just like, oh, dominant. Bitcoin dominance fell below 51% or something like that. That that's all bullshit. I'm talking about, like, market cap. You know, there's like I don't know. I could probably list off about five. But let's say that that Bitcoin gets blown past by shitcoin number one by, like, five or six metrics.
It's clearly in the lead. It's not just you kinda think it is. No. It's clearly in the lead. The entire the entire crypto economy collapses. Why? Because within what's next? You can't you can't hold anything. You literally cannot just save your money yet one more time Because then, shitcoin number one will be supplanted, and then that one will be supplanted, and then that one will be supplanted. The only way, the amazingly enough, the only way these people, the shitcoiners, have one hope in hell of saving any kind of money in their shitcoin is if their shitcoin never beats Bitcoin.
It's it's counterintuitive, but that's really the way this works. We can't have that because then nobody can trust anything, and people want to be able to feel secure in at least one damn thing in their life. So, anyway, it's it is Veterans Day. This is a much shorter show than normal. I just I just couldn't leave you guys out in the wind to twist, so do your barbecue. You know, barbecue one for me. I did a brisket the other day. Turned out really damn well. I still miss my offset smoker, but honestly, you know, Traeger wood pellet grill in a pinch actually makes performs pretty well for something like a brisket.
Ribs, not so much because they're a bit of a thinner piece of meat and that convection action of the Traeger or wood pellet grills because it's, you know, there's a fan involved, so it's clearly moving air, has a tendency to dry ribs out. It doesn't do very well for ribs, not like an offset smoker does. Anyway, you know, I I'll I'll take what I can get. The brisket did turn out well. I hope yours does also, and I will see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin, and and I am your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Veterans Day intro and todays agenda
China alleges US role in the Lubian Bitcoin hack
US forfeiture action and custody of hacked BTC questioned
Host reaction: first government-on-government Bitcoin theft accusation
Brazils central bank unveils sweeping crypto rules
Capital requirements, compliance window, and industry pushback
Defining VASPs and new FX controls on crypto flows
Surveillance concerns and civil liberties commentary
Perma marketing concept and the McRib-Bitcoin correlation meme
Market check: energy, commodities, and equities snapshot
Bitcoin network stats: price, fees, mempool, hashrate
Listener boosts and donation callout
Square opens Bitcoin payments to 4 million merchants
How to find Bitcoin-accepting sellers and educate merchants
SoFi becomes first US national bank to offer retail crypto
Whats next: incumbents likely to follow SoFi
Institutions: 61% plan to increase digital asset exposure
On shitcoins, market dominance, and store-of-value stability
Closing thoughts and brisket talk
