Episode 1201 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
Wine
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Twitter: https://x.com/BenJustman
Website: https://www.peonylanewine.com/bitcoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/tether-is-buying-bitcoins-revolution-how-devastating-will-the-consequences-be
https://cointelegraph.com/news/nakamoto-stock-collapses-95-after-563m-pipe-deals
https://www.coindesk.com/daybook-us/2025/10/30/market-stumbles-on-fed-caution-as-options-expiry-looms-crypto-daybook-americas
https://decrypt.co/346770/character-ai-halts-teen-chats-after-tragedies-its-the-right-thing-to-do
https://www.theblock.co/post/376915/elon-musk-spacex-moves-bitcoin-arkham
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/germany-proposes-national-bitcoin-reserve
https://atlas21.com/phoenix-wallet-introduces-taproot-channels/
Get You're Free Comfrey Owner's Manual Here:
https://www.bitcoinandshow.com/the-comfrey-owners-manual-is-here/
Topics for today:
- Nakmoto Inc. Collapses Into Black Hole
- Tether's Rarefied Atmosphere Choking BTC?
- The End of QT
- Germany Says, "Whoopsies!"
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Peony LaneWine
nostr: https://primal.net/BenJustman
Twitter: https://x.com/BenJustman
Website: https://www.peonylanewine.com/bitcoin
Today's Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitchat-second-ranked-app-jamaica-as-hurricane-strikeshttps://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/tether-is-buying-bitcoins-revolution-how-devastating-will-the-consequences-be
https://cointelegraph.com/news/nakamoto-stock-collapses-95-after-563m-pipe-deals
https://www.coindesk.com/daybook-us/2025/10/30/market-stumbles-on-fed-caution-as-options-expiry-looms-crypto-daybook-americas
https://decrypt.co/346770/character-ai-halts-teen-chats-after-tragedies-its-the-right-thing-to-do
https://www.theblock.co/post/376915/elon-musk-spacex-moves-bitcoin-arkham
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/germany-proposes-national-bitcoin-reserve
https://atlas21.com/phoenix-wallet-introduces-taproot-channels/
Get You're Free Comfrey Owner's Manual Here:
https://www.bitcoinandshow.com/the-comfrey-owners-manual-is-here/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:31AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the October 2025, and this is episode 12 o one of Bitcoin and Jamaica got pounded and BitChat is there. That's gonna be our first story of today. It's all the news you can use and more about Bitcoin and the rest of the happenings around the world with your host, me, David Bennett. Next up is gonna be Tether. There's a piece here from Bitcoin Magazine, which by the way is also gonna be in the news itself, just right after this. It's sort of like a critique on Tether buying Bitcoin. Is it good? Is is it bad? Is is the mere existence of Tether, you know, antithetical to Bitcoin? Because I think it's good to have both sides of the story.
People keep saying, don't worry about Tether. And even even I'm one of those people because I don't use it. I don't really care. But am I missing something? You never know. It it could be. And then we're gonna talk about Nakamoto Holdings, and that's where bitcoin magazine comes back into play but this one isn't written by bitcoin magazine itself it's actually written by coin telegraph then we're going to what the hell is what oh oh oh yes we've got to talk about the aftermath of Jerome Powell giving remarks about what the Fed's gonna do. Alright? Because it screwed everything up, and people are still confused as to why. And there's one there's one other thing that that, you know, I've seen that I didn't realize until, like, late yesterday after I did the show that he said that has impacted what the hell's going on. So we'll we'll clear that up so that you know why if we've if we've got a cut in the federal funds rate, which makes money cheaper, then as a risk asset, why didn't Bitcoin moon? Everybody is, like, grumbling and groaning about this.
There's actually a couple of good reasons. I gave you one yesterday, but there's another one on deck. Then character dot a I is in the news as well as Elon Musk. And then we're gonna revisit Germany. It's just you hate to see it. You you really do. You just hate to see somebody go, we might have made a massive mistake when we sold off all that Bitcoin at 53 or $63,000, whatever it was. You'll hear all about it. And then Phoenix Wallet is gonna be in there finishing us off. But BitChat hits number two on app charts in Jamaica as hurricane Melissa strikes Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph says Jamaicans have rushed to download Jack Dorsey's decentralized peer to peer messaging app, BitChat, as the fatal hurricane Melissa continues to rip through The Caribbean.
BitChat, which uses Bluetooth mesh networks for Internet free encrypted communications, is now the second most downloaded app on the Apple App Store and Google Play in Jamaica, offering a lifeline for 2,800,000 people as Internet coverage continues to falter in the region. BitChat only trails weather forecast platform, Zoom Earth, indicating that two of Jamaican's most basic needs right now are to know what the weather is and be able to communicate with one another. CNN reported on Wednesday that hurricane Melissa has killed over thirty people in The Caribbean, including at least 23 in Haiti. Oh god. Haiti gets wrecked again. While countless homes and businesses have been destroyed, Until recently, adoption of decentralized encrypted messaging apps has been driven by users leaving centralized communication platforms that may censor content or impose some other restrictions. However, BitChat has since become a critical solution for people in countries where Internet access has been disrupted, whether due to government interference or natural disasters such as this.
In September, BitChat downloads rose in Nepal over government corruption and the social media ban that blocked Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube and triggered widespread protests. Downloads also rose in Indonesia a week earlier amid their own protests. A similar incident occurred in Madagascar later that month amid protests over ongoing water and power cuts, and the European Union has also been mulling the controversial chat control law, which would eliminate encrypted messaging altogether, forcing apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal to allow regulators to screen messages before they are encrypted and sent.
It's like a peeping Tom, and they have a license to do it. This is sick. These people are freaking sick, man. The proposal, which aims to spot, of course, child abuse material, was moving closer toward passing in October before Germany expressed opposition to it, arguing that the scanning of private messages is unconstitutional. The vote has now been postponed with another vote set for early December. So BitChat is coming through again for people. And I think three honestly, I think three times a charm on this. I I think at this point, BitChat is firmly seated as a major tool to be used at least in natural disasters.
But now that that thing is on everybody's phone in Madagascar, Indonesia, Jamaica, probably in Haiti as well, then, you know, it's gonna be much easier for them to figure out later on that they can use it for other things. And like I said, I do believe that the third time is the charm. I think this is now a permanent app that most people are are at least aware of or have possibly at least heard of, and that's a good thing. It it really is. This could not be a good thing. Tether is buying Bitcoin's revolution. How devastating will the consequences be?
Bitcoin magazine unfurling a bit of hyperbole on that one by plain memo, which I've never heard of this author's name before, but I guess it's a NIM. That's okay. We're we all got NIMs. When the Genius Act became law on the 07/18/2025, the crypto industry celebrated it as the end of regulatory uncertainty. The act requires licensed stablecoin issuers to hold liquid reserves such as cash in US treasuries, publish monthly disclosures, and submit to federal or state supervision. At the same time, Congress shelved a federal central bank digital currency. Supporters saw it as a victory, but critics called it a quiet federalization of private money.
The United States no longer needs to issue its own digital dollar. It has simply delegated that function to private issuers operating under oversight. For Bitcoiners, whose movement was built around sound decentralized money, that shift should have triggered alarm bells. Pausing to say, it did. They're still ringing. And it's like a whole bunch of Bitcoiners are gonna do what? Call Palo or Doino and say, you know what? We changed our mind. Shut it down. I don't think these people understand how business works. And I'm not talking about the Bitcoiners. I'm talking about the people that are critiquing this whole thing. Shit's gonna happen.
It there's just nothing you can do about it. You don't have to like it, and you can rail against it. You can protest. You can do whatever the hell it is you wanna go do. But it was inevitable. I'm I'm surprised. The only thing that I'm surprised about is that it happened as fast as it did. But continuing on, the biggest beneficiary of this new framework is Tether Limited, whose USDT token dominates global stablecoin supply. In its second quarter twenty twenty five attestation, Tether Limited reported a net profit of approximately $5,000,000,000 in quarter two.
$5,000,000,000 in a single three month period. Oh my god. Total exposure to US treasuries exceeds a $127,000,000,000. Treasury bills and reverse repo holdings. Its balance sheet showed nearly 120,000,000,000 in treasuries, making Tether one of the world's largest private holders of US government debt. Custody of those assets rests with Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm led by Howard Lutnick. Lutnick has publicly defended the soundness of Tether's reserves, confirming Cantor's role as custodian while emphasizing that it holds no equity stake in the company.
The connection is now more delicate. Lutnik was later nominated for a senior White House economic position overseeing elements of trade and financial regulation. That appointment places a federal policymaker in proximity to one of the largest private holders of United States government debt and the key custodian for a company whose dollar backed token depends on the US treasuries for profit. The optics are uncomfortable. What began as a business relationship now blurs into a political conflict of interest embedding Tether in Wall Street's plumbing and within the political apparatus that governs it.
In effect, Tether has become a private central bank, pausing to say, I called it that four months ago. I, actually, I called it that at the beginning of this year. But, hey, whatever. It issues dollar liabilities, earns seniorage, and distributes liquidity through the economic or rather the crypto economy while all while piggybacking on US sovereign debt. Its profit per employees rivals the most profitable institutions in finance. Stablecoins promise fast, borderless payments. However, their architecture depends on compliance. Since December 2023, Tether has maintained a proactive wallet freezing policy for addresses sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control.
The company says it has frozen billions in tokens linked to illicit activity and now works directly with the United States Secret Service and the FBI, pausing to say if you're not aware and you're confused as to why the hell they're working with the Secret Service, you might ask yourself, oh, aren't they just for the president's protection? They are, but that's not where they're born from. The Secret Service is the well, it started out as the legal enforcement arm of the US Treasury Department. And to this day, as far as I know, the US Secret Service is still underneath the umbrella of the United States Department of Treasury. So just that's where that's why.
So let's go on. This is not inherently sinister. It's what regulators demand, but it means enforcement now operates within the money itself. The control lever no longer sits solely with banks. It resides in the smart contract of the token issuer. As Tether expands USDT onto Bitcoin adjacent networks such as liquid and RGB protocols, the same compliance logic will travel with it. The more Bitcoin infrastructure hosts these tokens, the more identity, KYC, and white listing mechanisms will appear around Bitcoin wallets and payment channels. The network that once prided itself on neutrality risks becoming a conduit for surveillance grade rails.
The Genius Act's passage also realigned the politics of digital currencies. Its sponsors framed it as an anti CBDC measure, arguing that private stablecoins preserve choice and limit government power. However, the result is nearly identical to what a central bank digital currency would achieve, programmable, trackable dollars only administered by corporations instead of the Federal Reserve. Some analysts have called this the birth of a CBDC by proxy. The policy also meshes neatly with fiscal priorities. Every USDT minted represents demand for short dated treasuries effectively financing the same government that stablecoin advocates claim to bypass.
Tether's profits flow from the interest rate paid on those securities, an invisible subsidy from public debt to private issuers. By situating stablecoins within the traditional bond market, The US has created a dollar based feedback loop. Bitcoin demands supports or Bitcoin demand supports treasury issuance and treasury yield support Bitcoin profitability. And in that loop, decentralization is just incidental. Within the Bitcoin community, opposition to altcoins remain strong, but sponsorships, event partnerships, and integrations show just how quickly principle bends toward funding.
Bitcoin conferences increasingly feature Tether executives and supporters on stage, often framed as bridges to adoption. The familiar refrain has emerged among those Bitcoiners who take money from Tether, quote, if stablecoins are inevitable, it's better that they be run by Bitcoiners, end quote, and pausing to say, I have actually said that myself, and I still maintain that that's the truth. But I also agree with what's being said here. Another popular defense is that Tether provides a lifeline for people in countries locked out of the dollar system or suffering from hyperinflation, collapsing economies, etcetera, etcetera. This is an emotionally persuasive narrative.
These convenient mantras turn compromise into virtue, allowing Bitcoiners to take sponsorships and funding from the same system they once swore to oppose. That logic, that very logic may offer comfort to some, but erodes clarity. USDT on Bitcoin does not make Bitcoin more sovereign. It makes the dollar more omnipresent. When Bitcoin developers or advocates align with Tether for sponsorship or exposure, they lend moral legitimacy to a system that thrives on Fiat's dominance. The irony is that Bitcoin's fiercest defenders are now helping entrench the very structure it was built to escape.
Tether's scale gives it power in markets and in messaging, With billions in annual profits and deep links to Wall Street custodians, it can sponsor conferences, fund research, and influence narratives across the digital asset world. Its executives appear frequently at policy forums to present stablecoins as allies of innovation and freedom. Each appearance helps normalize the idea that regulated dollar denominated tokens represents progress for Bitcoin, but the money tells a different story. Each stablecoin transaction that settles in USDT extends the dollar system's reach and perpetuates the weaponization of money. Every layer of compliance embeds surveillance deeper into the blockchain economy, and every Bitcoiner who accepts that trade off helps build a network where decentralization endures mostly as branding.
Bitcoin doesn't need a conspiracy against it. It only needs its followers to forget what made it different. The Genius Act, the rise of Tether, and the regulatory preference for private rails all point to a future where digital cash exists, but never without permission. The Trojan horse is not Tether. It's the belief that working with it preserves freedom. In the end, too many Bitcoiners remain exactly where Tether wants them, still tethered to the system that they are trying to escape. I cannot argue with this article. Yeah. Plain memo brings up salient extreme clarity.
Does that mean that all of a sudden Tether's gonna go away? No. No. It doesn't. But I cannot argue with anything that's been said here. The only thing that I can do is is reiterate what I've been saying all year long and and and last year as well. Tether now has morphed into something that is more akin to a tool for the United States Federal Reserve and Treasury than it is to provide digital dollars to people that need them. And I you know, and if you don't understand what I mean by that, The United States is going to print an enormous amount of debt, yet there's no way that it can be funneled into The United States without a complete immediate disruption, if not complete destruction of The United States economy itself through inflation, mega inflation, hyperinflation, however you wanna term it, because the dollars will just be sloshing around.
You know, like Tether will just buy more treasuries because The United States knows that they're a buyer of first, medium, and last resort. They'll print Tether tokens. They can't stay in The United States because if they do, next thing you know, stake is $50 a pound. So what do they do? They export the dollar to everybody else, thereby helping to destroy all the rest of what's left of the fiat currency experiment of the world, The, you know, the euro will fall. The British pound sterling will fall. The yen will fall eventually, although it'll probably be last because we're so close to Japan. Australian dollar, kiss it goodbye. Canadian dollar, kiss it goodbye. You you you see with the progression.
The only thing it's it's part of the dollar milkshake theory. The the dollar is the fastest horse at the glue factory. You know? It's the it's the, oh, well, we can just keep it right there because that's what's gonna happen. We're gonna print an inordinate amount of debt. And in order to shield ourselves against that economic destruction, we're going to export it using Tether to everyone else. Their economies are going to destroy first, and everything collapses into the dollar. Bitcoin is riding right next to all this. So the one thing that I can disagree with here is that, yes, Tether exists on RGB and liquid and stuff like that. And, also, in fact, Tether, as far as I know, exists on the Lightning Network.
It still doesn't directly impact Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot see Tether. The protocol that is Bitcoin, the protocol that runs as code on my node, does not understand what Tether is. It can only understand what Bitcoin is. That won't change unless some developers decide that they want to do that and that will we don't even wanna go there. Because if it does, that's a hard fork. It it's just it's it's insane to even waste time talking about it. But everything that was said here in this article is right. Now, again, all of the URLs to all the articles that I read to you every single day are in the show notes so that you can go read it yourself. I highly recommend that you go read this one again and probably a third time to really let it plant in your mind what the hell's going on here.
Okay. Nakamoto. It's this thing is turning into a black hole. It's sucking at this point, it's so bad. It's literally sucking in profitable businesses. Check this shit out. Cointelegraph, Eamonn Haquanes writing, Nakamoto Holdings shares sink as the $563,000,000 pipe deal triggers massive sell off. Nakamoto Holdings, the Bitcoin treasury firm led by Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, has seen its stock collapse by over 98% since its May high after a wave of investor selling linked to its $563,000,000 private investment in public equity deal, also known as a PIPE. The company, which merged with Utah based health care operator KindlyMD earlier this year, became one of the few publicly traded firms structured as a Bitcoin holding company.
However, its financing model, which involves selling heavily discounted shares to private investors to fund Bitcoin purchases, backfired when a large batch of Pipe shares became eligible for sale in September. The resulting flood of sell orders cratered the stock price, erasing billions of dollars in market value, Bailey said in a recent interview with Forbes. Bailey, known for his prominent role in the Bitcoin community with ties to US president Donald Trump's pro crypto push, has framed the downturn as part of a long term play. Quote, people that are just looking for a trade are actually very expensive capital for us, he told Forbes, calling for long term aligned partners.
It's another way of saying, please, for the love of God, stop selling our shares. Anyway, continuing, Bailey said he plans to fold here here it is. Listen to this one very, very carefully. David Bailey said that he is planning to fold several of his other ventures, including Bitcoin Magazine, The Bitcoin Conference, and hedge fund two ten k capital into Nakamoto to do what? Bolster the company's cash flow and strengthen its position as a Bitcoin first conglomerate. Pause. So Bitcoin Magazine has been relatively successful. The Bitcoin conference is very successful. It's the largest Bitcoin conference on the planet and has been for, like, four, if not, possibly five years.
It is a cash cow. Now two zero one k Capital, I don't know that much about. But I do know that Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference are pretty successful. And now that, along with the addition of their two ten k capital, are going to be folded into a company to form a conglomerate, and they're folding it into a company whose share value has lost 98% of its value since May. Do the math. Continuing, the company's stock, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker n a k a or Naka, not not not not gonna make it, remains at a steep discount relative to its Bitcoin holdings. It it is currently trading at around 94¢, you know, United States pennies, down from its May high of $25 according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Nakamoto is not the only Bitcoin holder facing pressure. On Tuesday, Tokyo listed Bitcoin treasury firm, Meta Planet, announced a 75,000,000,000 yen share repurchase program, and I brought you that news yesterday. So here's David Bailey. He's got a successful magazine, an extraordinarily successful, you know, conference, decides to somehow or another get into this whole Bitcoin treasury thing, and it completely fails. And now he wants to take his successful businesses and fold it into that failure. That is an economic black hole, and it's going to destroy Bitcoin Magazine.
Somehow or another, Bitcoin conference is never gonna be the same because what what will probably happen is that it will be sold as a property to shitcoiners because they have more money. Not because their shitcoins are doing well. It's because they're shitcoiners, and they have no problems going out and getting venture capital capital and lying to the people giving them that money. That's what's gonna have Bitcoin conference. Kiss it goodbye. Bitcoin Magazine probably will be sold back to the shitcoiners that owned it before David Bailey bought it. This is a complete and utter destruction of two, two institutions.
You know, one of which I I read from Bitcoin Magazine to you guys every day almost. Almost every day, there's something in there. And it's it's falling apart because of Nakamoto, and it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. In fact, you're gonna probably need to get a glass of wine, and you can get that at pandelainewine.com. That's pe0nylanewine.com. All one word. Pandelainewine.com. He's selling his wine for Bitcoin. It's Ben Jessman. I haven't I still have yet to taste the wine. All I can go on is the rave reviews that I hear everybody else talk about. But you're gonna buy your wine in Bitcoin. Because if you're not selling your goods and service in Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. It's where I bring plebs with goods and services that are just like you to plebs just like you that want to buy those goods and services.
And And you're gonna be buying it in Bitcoin. All the vendors in the circle p, just like pandelainewine.com is, take Bitcoin for their goods and services. So go try it today. Pandelainewine.com. Use the coupon code Bitcoin and. You don't you don't get a you don't get a a discount. Right? But it does let Ben know that I made a sale for him. And in the advertising or the value for value advertising model that is the Circle p, Ben will be able to determine whether or not that sale was worth something for him and how much it was worth if he does, and then he will get me on the backside with Satoshis. It's the way it works here at the Circle p. Alright. Moving on to this one from CoinDesk entitled where the hell is it? Oh my god. No. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? It was here somewhere.
God. There there the market stumbles on Fed caution as options expiry looms. This is out of CoinDesk. Not gonna read the entire thing, but enough of it so you'll know what's going on. The crypto market is struggling to find stable ground after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell speaking after the central bank cut the interest rate by 25 basis points suggested another reduction in December is not guaranteed. Okay. I told you about that yesterday. That was one of the reasons why we didn't see the price of Bitcoin go straight to the moon. Right? And it's also one of the reasons why we're having issues still, you know, all afternoon long yesterday, all the way up last night through last night and up through this morning, but there's something else. While Wednesday's reduction was expected, Powell's hesitancy about further easing sparked a pullback in risk assets.
The move came even as Donald Trump signaled trade tensions with China are easing. The turbulence led to more than $820,000,000 of crypto market liquidations over the last twenty four hours. Equities in equity indices saw slight drops and gold is struggling to remain above the $4,000 mark. Still, the central bank also announced, Nahir, this is it. This is extremely important. This is the second part of what I did not tell you yesterday because I didn't know it yet. But the central bank also announced that it would end its balance sheet runoff by December 1, a move that could add liquidity to financial markets to Spanish bank Spanish bank Bankinter is the name of it. I've never heard of that before. To Spanish bank, Bankinter, what's stopping traditional asset prices from rising is a case of, quote, altitude sickness. Quote, this the next forty eight hours should be spent digesting the immense flow of information, particularly corporate earnings and central bank news, the bank's analysts wrote in a note, quote, the underlying tendency is to react quite positively with the only constraint being the altitude sickness from fresh new highs, end quote.
Lofty heights are not a problem for crypto given Bitcoin is trading some 13% of below its all time high that it hit last month, or, yeah, less than a month ago. And to QCP Capital, it's a result of muted enthusiasm, quote, the October 10 flash crash left both retail and institutional players cautious, and order book liquidity has yet to recover. Meanwhile, digital asset treasuries are adding to sell pressure as many are now trading below an MNAV of one. These discounts could see more DATs, or digital asset treasuries, buy back shares with funds that may come through asset sales.
Ether treasury firm, Ethzilla, made headlines earlier this week for doing exactly that, selling $40,000,000 in ETH to repurchase shares at a discount to its NAV. Meanwhile, Friday's $13,000,000,000 options expiry is adding more pressure to crypto prices. According to Derabit data, market makers are exposed to negative gamma at strike prices between a 100 and 100 and $11,000. So that's the third piece that's going on here even though I I did mention that that options expiry was in was incoming, and there's always a problem there. So it's like the perfect storm. We're coming off the flash crash. We got Jerome Powell giving us what we want, but not giving us everything we want. And then we've got news that the trade talks with China are going well at the same time that the Federal Reserve is or was it reserve or treasury? I can't remember which. Hold on. Let's go back here.
It's in here somewhere. I'm almost there. I promise. I swear to god. Swear to god. Yeah. The Federal Reserve announced that it would end its balance sheet runoff by December 1. It's basically, this is the end of quantitative tightening. So that's actually good news for risk assets, and yet we still have downward pressure on the price of Bitcoin, gold, and anything that could be considered risk. And for Bitcoin, this added pressure of options expiry coming due, I guess, tomorrow is not helping. It's like a perfect storm. It's like the the hurricane that just ripped through Jamaica. It's just happened to coincide all at once. But it's not like we haven't seen shit like this before. So just hold on to your asses and buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities, Brent. Crude is up point 12% to 65 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate is up point 12% as well to $60.55 a barrel. Natural gas, 2.12 to the upside. That's, $3.89 per thousand. Gasoline is up almost a half to a buck 98 a gallon, and Murbaughn crude is the only thing in the red today. It is down a full point to $65.8 a barrel. Shiny metal rocks are doing okay today. Palladium is up almost two points. Gold is up almost a half. It's at $40.20 and 80¢. $40.20. Platinum, up a third. Silver, up 1.5, but copper is down three and a quarter points. Almost everything in ag is in the red today.
The biggest winner is rough rice. It's in the green 1.74 to the upside. The biggest loser today is gonna be wheat one and a half to the downside. The live cat livestock's doing okay today. Live cattle is up a half, lean hogs up a fifth of a point, and feeder cattle up 1.12. The S and P is in the red by half a point, and the Nasdaq is down by a full point. The Dow is the only thing in the green. It's up a half point, and S and P Mini is just essentially moving sideways, only slightly in the red. We're chilling out at a $107,980. That's a $2,150,000,000,000 market cap. We can only get 27 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,941,901.16 of. An average fees per block are low, 0.02 BTC taken on a per block basis. There's about 35 blocks carrying a 108,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear.
High priority rates cost three. Low priority rates also cost 3 Satoshis per Bitcoin. And we're still chilling out at a 112 no. 112. 1.12 ZetaHashes per second. So we're still in in ZetaHash territory on the security of the network. Definitely nothing to be scared of there. From Federated Guardians, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got Jay with 2,100. He says, happy 1,200. The whole Fediment thing sounds awesome. I wonder if you can make federations with a present guardian if you want to know who they are. No way to know, man.
I don't know. Like, I literally do not know the answer to that question. I wish I did, but my gut feeling says no. D k black sheep with 1,200 says, grats. Yeah. You're welcome, dude. Tulips with 1,200 says, tulips. Episode 1,200. 1,200 sats then. Congratulations, and thank you, sir. I value your work more than that, but I am poor as hell. This AI thing is very real. I am trying to automate myself as we speak in a self sovereign way, you know, like hard mode. Unsolicited AI dildos, however, are going to pop. And just like people hired during the pandemic will be shown the door, AI is the perfect scapegoat. Amazon, 14,000.
Microsoft, 15,000. UPS, 48,000. Target, 2,600. Federal government, 4,200. Other, Meta, Starbucks, Paramount, and Hewlett Packard. I was one of those earlier last year, and that is how you, find out that stability is just tulips, and it is going to zero. I love tulips. He's so much fun to read. Richard Dick Whitman with 200 says, why no n g u? Well, I just told you. God's death with 1,200 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with one twenty one says, congrats on 1,200 shows, my bro. I appreciate that. Oh, and here's chef Tommy with 2,000 sat says, here's to 1,200. Thanks for the news. I use keep up the great work. I appreciate that, chef.
Here and gone here and gone is a 100. I compare CZ's pardon to the government taking on Nazi scientists. Not pulling any punches there. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Vismaya v from decrypt is writing this one. Character.ai halts teen chats after tragedies. Quote, it's the right thing to do, end quote. A little bit of Obama there. Character.ai will ban teenagers from chatting with AI companions by November 25, ending a core feature of the platform after facing mounting lawsuits, regulatory pressures, and criticism over teenage deaths linked to its chatbots.
That's grueling. The company announced the changes after reports and feedback from regulators, safety experts, and parents removing the ability for users under the age of 18 to engage in open ended chat with AI while transitioning minors to creative tools like video and story generation according to a Wednesday blog post. Quote, we do not take this step of removing open ended character chat lightly. But we do think it's the right thing to do, the company told its 18 community. Until the deadline, teen users face a two hour daily chat limit that will progressively decrease.
The platform is facing lawsuits including one from the mother of a 14 year old son named Sewell Setzer the third, who died by suicide in 2024 after forming an obsessive relationship with a chatbot modeled on Game of Thrones character, Daenerys Targaryen. Targaryen? I don't know. I'm not I'm not a Game of Thrones nerd. I'm a nerd in other ways, but not Game of Thrones. I haven't haven't really watched it, so I don't I don't know who these people are. And, also, they had to remove a bot impersonating murder victim, Jennifer Ann Crescente, after family complaints. God. How ghoulish. Good lord.
AI companion apps are flooding into the hands of children unchecked, unregulated, and often deliberately evasive as they rebrand and change names to avoid scrutiny. Doctor Scott Collins, chief medical officer at family online safety company, Aura, shared in a note with Decrypt. OpenAI said on Tuesday about 1,200,000 of its 800,000,000 weekly chat GPT users discussed suicide with nearly half a million showing suicidal intent. This is sick. I've told you about that part yesterday. Collins did say that the findings were deeply alarming as researchers and horrifying what?
Hold on. This is weird. This is a weird sentence, so I'm gonna just word for word it. Collins said the findings were, quote, deeply alarming as researchers and horrifying as parents, noting the bots prioritize engagement over safety and often lead children into harmful or explicit conversations without guardrails. Character dot AI said it will implement the new age verification using in house models combined with third party tools, including Persona. The company is also establishing and funding an independent AI safety lab, a nonprofit dedicated to innovating safety alignment for AI entertainment features.
The Federal Trade Commission issued compulsory orders to Character dot AI and six other tech companies just last month demanding detailed information about how they protect minors from AI related harm, quote, we have invested a tremendous amount of resources in trust and safety, especially for a start up. A Character dot AI spokesperson told Decrypt at the time, adding that, quote, in the past year, we've rolled out many substantive safety features, including an entirely new 18 experience and a parental insights feature. Good luck on enforcing this.
But here's here's this is sort of weird. It's sort of self filtering. The under eighteens that are smart enough to get around this shit are probably the same under eighteens that are smart enough not to allow themselves to get into a depression and commit suicide. Not all the time, but I'll bet you I'll bet you my hat that it is more that way than it is not. However, again, good luck to character.ai and because, you know, that was one of the reasons I wanna talk about this today because I have looked at character AI, you know, when I'm logging on, it only takes an email.
It's not secure. I mean, it's it's clearly not secure. When every time you log in, you have to put in your email address. If you've if you've signed up with character.ai, what it does is it generates some some kind of code, and it sends you, like, an email with a particular link to get back in, but there's no password. Right? There's no the the the credentials are only an a valid email address that you can access so that you can get the link so that you can actually open the user interface for character dot a I. Other than that, there's no verification of age. There's no nothing. And there's some there's some you know, there can be some pretty horrific shit on there.
And there's a lot of horrific shit on all of this on well, on a lot of this stuff. Chat g p t seems to be the most guarded. And I'm sure there are others, but there are also some that are not guarded. Right? So be careful out there, folks. Be be very careful out there. Moving on to Elon Musk's SpaceX. As if we needed more pressure on the Bitcoin price, he's decided to move $31,000,000 more of Bitcoin to a new wallet. You know, because every time you move Bitcoin in those amounts, people freak out because we can see it immediately. Just saying. Elon Musk, SpaceX moved another 281 Bitcoin late October 29, continuing a pattern of likely custody consolidation this month. The transaction marks the fifth such transfer just this month of October, now totaling 4,337 BTC carried out via institutional custody platform Coinbase Prime.
That's all we need to know about this one. Right? Musk decided that yesterday was the best it was the just the best time for a a a huge a very well known company, a very watched company that holds Bitcoin to go ahead and move a little bit because it was the quote right thing to do no it wasn't it this you're not helping Elon you're not helping and here's a story about, I don't know, we'll call them Hansel and Gretel who got eaten by a witch at the end of the story. It was just a horrific story, right? Because we're talking about Germany. Germany proposes a national Bitcoin reserve.
It views Bitcoin as, quote, state free money. Who's who's gonna tell them? Micah Zimmermann, Bitcoin magazine, Germany's alternative for Germany, the AfD party, has introduced a proposal to create a national Bitcoin reserve. The initiative marks a potential turning point for Europe's largest economy, which just one year ago was criticized for liquidating billions in seized Bitcoin holdings. Yeah. They sold it. They sold it all. They have, like, 8,000 US dollars worth of Bitcoin left in their wallet. They had millions.
And and if they had not sold at the price, they would have had more than it would have been, like, 2.3 x of what they actually sold it for because they had just let his hands. Anyway, the motion, which still needs approval, would make Germany the first major European nation to integrate Bitcoin directly to its national reserves, signaling a growing shift in Europe toward viewing Bitcoin not as a speculative asset, but as a sovereign reserve instrument. The AFD's motion submitted last week calls on the federal government to begin accumulating Bitcoin as part of its long term reserve strategy. The proposal argues that the EU's MICA framework was designed for centrally issued tokens and should not apply to Bitcoin, which has no issuer nor central authority.
It urges the government to avoid regulatory burdens on non custodial wallet providers and lightning known lightning node operators, maintain Germany's tax exemption on Bitcoin held for more than a year, and ensure that private mining or lightning activity is not classified as commercial. The AFD frames Bitcoin as state free money that protects individual freedom in contrast to the planned digital euro, which it warns could enable surveillance and control. In the proposals section 1.5, the AfD criticizes the German government for failing to recognize Bitcoin's strategic potential, specifically noting that Berlin has not considered holding Bitcoin as part of the national reserves.
Later in the explanatory section, the document expands on the idea, describing Bitcoin as, quote, outside money and suggesting that in times of global monetary and geopolitical instability, it could serve as a potential easily transferable asset within state currency reserves. The motion marks the first formal attempt in Germany's legislature to position Bitcoin as a strategic national asset. The proposal comes less than a year after the German government completed one of the largest state level Bitcoin sell offs in history. Between June 2024, German authorities sold nearly 50,000 BTC originally seized from the operators of the piracy site movie 2k.to, and it was worth about $3,000,000,000 at the time.
The sell off triggered a market correction of 18% and drew heavy criticism from the Bitcoin community, which argued that Germany squandered a chance to hold a scarce appreciating asset. By mid July twenty twenty four, blockchain data confirmed that wallets linked to the German government were empty after sending the final tranches of Bitcoin to exchanges and market makers. I don't think they're exactly empty. They've got, like, 5,000, $8,000 in them. At least last that I saw. I may be wrong, but doesn't really matter, does it? They they screwed up. They screwed up badly.
Continuing, Germany's move follows closely on the heels of France, which I talked about yesterday. The center right union of the right and center party, UDR, led by lawmaker Aaron Ciotti, introduced an ambitious bill to create a Bitcoin national Bitcoin strategic reserve, and then they run through exactly what I told you about yesterday. France wants to do it too. Is it gonna work? See, this is the thing, man. I mean, while while Bitcoin price was going down after, Jerome Powell said, oh, by the way, you can't you we're gonna cut now, but we're not gonna get that December cut. We're we're probably not is actually what he said. It wouldn't surprise me if they did it anyway, but whatever.
Right? It didn't it didn't bode well for the price of Bitcoin. It's okay. We again, seen it many times before. But then all these media outlets just grabbed hold of that French story and just ran with it like it was gonna happen. Dude, it the UDR party is represented by 16 members of parliament out of 577. It's probably not going to work. These 16 people would have to go out and wine and dine, the other what would it be? The other 561 members of parliament in France to get their signature to to put to, you know, to help sponsor this thing and and to push through and to vote for it, to do whatever the hell it is that they do in France. 16 people to try to get 561 people on board or at least a majority of them, even just a majority of them.
And I don't know the percentage that French parliament needs to to pass something, but I assume that it's a majority. And that's a lot of people when you're talking about 577 people. I do not expect France to have a Bitcoin reserve anytime soon. Germany as well, because the UDP party or UDR or whatever the hell that thing's called, it ain't exactly a powerhouse. Right? It's not like a it's not like a Babe Ruth Slugger coming up to the plate. It's more like Pete Rose after night of partying and binge drinking. So I don't expect either one of these to actually happen.
Yet everybody yesterday was running with France, and I guarantee you everybody today is gonna be going, look at Germany. It's gonna happen. Please, let's let's just have a modicum of dignity at this point. And we'll move over to atlas21.com. Phoenix Wallet introduces Taproot channels. Okay. Phoenix Wallet has announced an update that brings full support for Taproot channels. This implementation allows users to benefit from an estimated 20% reduction in on chain fees. The optimization applies to all operations on the time chain, including splicing, making the use of the Lightning Network more cost effective for transactions of any size.
The economic advantage of Taproot channels translates into tangible savings for users who frequently perform on chain operations. Further progress has also been made on the privacy front. And thanks to Taproot channels, the wallet's on chain footprint becomes indistinguishable from that of a standard pay to Taproot wallet as long as the channel isn't forced closed. Version 2.7 o for Android and iOS introduces another new feature, multi wallet support. Each wallet has its own independent seed phrase, allowing users to manage separate funds for different purposes directly within the app. That's a a nice feature, man. Phoenix Wallet has designed a seamless migration system for existing users. The transition to the new Taproot channels will occur automatically with the next on chain transaction, whether incoming or outgoing, without requiring any manual action from the user.
The development team has already announced its next goals, implementing version three transactions I'm sorry, v three transactions and zero fee commit transactions. The update is available now for both Android and iOS as well as for Phoenix d servers. So Taproot channels, I I wish I could tell you all about them. I I don't. It's just above my pay grade for for what's going on with Taproot, but it seems like a good addition. And that's it for the day, ladies and gentlemen. We are fifty four minutes in, and it is time to end the show. 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.
It is 08:31AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the October 2025, and this is episode 12 o one of Bitcoin and Jamaica got pounded and BitChat is there. That's gonna be our first story of today. It's all the news you can use and more about Bitcoin and the rest of the happenings around the world with your host, me, David Bennett. Next up is gonna be Tether. There's a piece here from Bitcoin Magazine, which by the way is also gonna be in the news itself, just right after this. It's sort of like a critique on Tether buying Bitcoin. Is it good? Is is it bad? Is is the mere existence of Tether, you know, antithetical to Bitcoin? Because I think it's good to have both sides of the story.
People keep saying, don't worry about Tether. And even even I'm one of those people because I don't use it. I don't really care. But am I missing something? You never know. It it could be. And then we're gonna talk about Nakamoto Holdings, and that's where bitcoin magazine comes back into play but this one isn't written by bitcoin magazine itself it's actually written by coin telegraph then we're going to what the hell is what oh oh oh yes we've got to talk about the aftermath of Jerome Powell giving remarks about what the Fed's gonna do. Alright? Because it screwed everything up, and people are still confused as to why. And there's one there's one other thing that that, you know, I've seen that I didn't realize until, like, late yesterday after I did the show that he said that has impacted what the hell's going on. So we'll we'll clear that up so that you know why if we've if we've got a cut in the federal funds rate, which makes money cheaper, then as a risk asset, why didn't Bitcoin moon? Everybody is, like, grumbling and groaning about this.
There's actually a couple of good reasons. I gave you one yesterday, but there's another one on deck. Then character dot a I is in the news as well as Elon Musk. And then we're gonna revisit Germany. It's just you hate to see it. You you really do. You just hate to see somebody go, we might have made a massive mistake when we sold off all that Bitcoin at 53 or $63,000, whatever it was. You'll hear all about it. And then Phoenix Wallet is gonna be in there finishing us off. But BitChat hits number two on app charts in Jamaica as hurricane Melissa strikes Braden Lindria from Cointelegraph says Jamaicans have rushed to download Jack Dorsey's decentralized peer to peer messaging app, BitChat, as the fatal hurricane Melissa continues to rip through The Caribbean.
BitChat, which uses Bluetooth mesh networks for Internet free encrypted communications, is now the second most downloaded app on the Apple App Store and Google Play in Jamaica, offering a lifeline for 2,800,000 people as Internet coverage continues to falter in the region. BitChat only trails weather forecast platform, Zoom Earth, indicating that two of Jamaican's most basic needs right now are to know what the weather is and be able to communicate with one another. CNN reported on Wednesday that hurricane Melissa has killed over thirty people in The Caribbean, including at least 23 in Haiti. Oh god. Haiti gets wrecked again. While countless homes and businesses have been destroyed, Until recently, adoption of decentralized encrypted messaging apps has been driven by users leaving centralized communication platforms that may censor content or impose some other restrictions. However, BitChat has since become a critical solution for people in countries where Internet access has been disrupted, whether due to government interference or natural disasters such as this.
In September, BitChat downloads rose in Nepal over government corruption and the social media ban that blocked Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube and triggered widespread protests. Downloads also rose in Indonesia a week earlier amid their own protests. A similar incident occurred in Madagascar later that month amid protests over ongoing water and power cuts, and the European Union has also been mulling the controversial chat control law, which would eliminate encrypted messaging altogether, forcing apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal to allow regulators to screen messages before they are encrypted and sent.
It's like a peeping Tom, and they have a license to do it. This is sick. These people are freaking sick, man. The proposal, which aims to spot, of course, child abuse material, was moving closer toward passing in October before Germany expressed opposition to it, arguing that the scanning of private messages is unconstitutional. The vote has now been postponed with another vote set for early December. So BitChat is coming through again for people. And I think three honestly, I think three times a charm on this. I I think at this point, BitChat is firmly seated as a major tool to be used at least in natural disasters.
But now that that thing is on everybody's phone in Madagascar, Indonesia, Jamaica, probably in Haiti as well, then, you know, it's gonna be much easier for them to figure out later on that they can use it for other things. And like I said, I do believe that the third time is the charm. I think this is now a permanent app that most people are are at least aware of or have possibly at least heard of, and that's a good thing. It it really is. This could not be a good thing. Tether is buying Bitcoin's revolution. How devastating will the consequences be?
Bitcoin magazine unfurling a bit of hyperbole on that one by plain memo, which I've never heard of this author's name before, but I guess it's a NIM. That's okay. We're we all got NIMs. When the Genius Act became law on the 07/18/2025, the crypto industry celebrated it as the end of regulatory uncertainty. The act requires licensed stablecoin issuers to hold liquid reserves such as cash in US treasuries, publish monthly disclosures, and submit to federal or state supervision. At the same time, Congress shelved a federal central bank digital currency. Supporters saw it as a victory, but critics called it a quiet federalization of private money.
The United States no longer needs to issue its own digital dollar. It has simply delegated that function to private issuers operating under oversight. For Bitcoiners, whose movement was built around sound decentralized money, that shift should have triggered alarm bells. Pausing to say, it did. They're still ringing. And it's like a whole bunch of Bitcoiners are gonna do what? Call Palo or Doino and say, you know what? We changed our mind. Shut it down. I don't think these people understand how business works. And I'm not talking about the Bitcoiners. I'm talking about the people that are critiquing this whole thing. Shit's gonna happen.
It there's just nothing you can do about it. You don't have to like it, and you can rail against it. You can protest. You can do whatever the hell it is you wanna go do. But it was inevitable. I'm I'm surprised. The only thing that I'm surprised about is that it happened as fast as it did. But continuing on, the biggest beneficiary of this new framework is Tether Limited, whose USDT token dominates global stablecoin supply. In its second quarter twenty twenty five attestation, Tether Limited reported a net profit of approximately $5,000,000,000 in quarter two.
$5,000,000,000 in a single three month period. Oh my god. Total exposure to US treasuries exceeds a $127,000,000,000. Treasury bills and reverse repo holdings. Its balance sheet showed nearly 120,000,000,000 in treasuries, making Tether one of the world's largest private holders of US government debt. Custody of those assets rests with Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm led by Howard Lutnick. Lutnick has publicly defended the soundness of Tether's reserves, confirming Cantor's role as custodian while emphasizing that it holds no equity stake in the company.
The connection is now more delicate. Lutnik was later nominated for a senior White House economic position overseeing elements of trade and financial regulation. That appointment places a federal policymaker in proximity to one of the largest private holders of United States government debt and the key custodian for a company whose dollar backed token depends on the US treasuries for profit. The optics are uncomfortable. What began as a business relationship now blurs into a political conflict of interest embedding Tether in Wall Street's plumbing and within the political apparatus that governs it.
In effect, Tether has become a private central bank, pausing to say, I called it that four months ago. I, actually, I called it that at the beginning of this year. But, hey, whatever. It issues dollar liabilities, earns seniorage, and distributes liquidity through the economic or rather the crypto economy while all while piggybacking on US sovereign debt. Its profit per employees rivals the most profitable institutions in finance. Stablecoins promise fast, borderless payments. However, their architecture depends on compliance. Since December 2023, Tether has maintained a proactive wallet freezing policy for addresses sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Asset Control.
The company says it has frozen billions in tokens linked to illicit activity and now works directly with the United States Secret Service and the FBI, pausing to say if you're not aware and you're confused as to why the hell they're working with the Secret Service, you might ask yourself, oh, aren't they just for the president's protection? They are, but that's not where they're born from. The Secret Service is the well, it started out as the legal enforcement arm of the US Treasury Department. And to this day, as far as I know, the US Secret Service is still underneath the umbrella of the United States Department of Treasury. So just that's where that's why.
So let's go on. This is not inherently sinister. It's what regulators demand, but it means enforcement now operates within the money itself. The control lever no longer sits solely with banks. It resides in the smart contract of the token issuer. As Tether expands USDT onto Bitcoin adjacent networks such as liquid and RGB protocols, the same compliance logic will travel with it. The more Bitcoin infrastructure hosts these tokens, the more identity, KYC, and white listing mechanisms will appear around Bitcoin wallets and payment channels. The network that once prided itself on neutrality risks becoming a conduit for surveillance grade rails.
The Genius Act's passage also realigned the politics of digital currencies. Its sponsors framed it as an anti CBDC measure, arguing that private stablecoins preserve choice and limit government power. However, the result is nearly identical to what a central bank digital currency would achieve, programmable, trackable dollars only administered by corporations instead of the Federal Reserve. Some analysts have called this the birth of a CBDC by proxy. The policy also meshes neatly with fiscal priorities. Every USDT minted represents demand for short dated treasuries effectively financing the same government that stablecoin advocates claim to bypass.
Tether's profits flow from the interest rate paid on those securities, an invisible subsidy from public debt to private issuers. By situating stablecoins within the traditional bond market, The US has created a dollar based feedback loop. Bitcoin demands supports or Bitcoin demand supports treasury issuance and treasury yield support Bitcoin profitability. And in that loop, decentralization is just incidental. Within the Bitcoin community, opposition to altcoins remain strong, but sponsorships, event partnerships, and integrations show just how quickly principle bends toward funding.
Bitcoin conferences increasingly feature Tether executives and supporters on stage, often framed as bridges to adoption. The familiar refrain has emerged among those Bitcoiners who take money from Tether, quote, if stablecoins are inevitable, it's better that they be run by Bitcoiners, end quote, and pausing to say, I have actually said that myself, and I still maintain that that's the truth. But I also agree with what's being said here. Another popular defense is that Tether provides a lifeline for people in countries locked out of the dollar system or suffering from hyperinflation, collapsing economies, etcetera, etcetera. This is an emotionally persuasive narrative.
These convenient mantras turn compromise into virtue, allowing Bitcoiners to take sponsorships and funding from the same system they once swore to oppose. That logic, that very logic may offer comfort to some, but erodes clarity. USDT on Bitcoin does not make Bitcoin more sovereign. It makes the dollar more omnipresent. When Bitcoin developers or advocates align with Tether for sponsorship or exposure, they lend moral legitimacy to a system that thrives on Fiat's dominance. The irony is that Bitcoin's fiercest defenders are now helping entrench the very structure it was built to escape.
Tether's scale gives it power in markets and in messaging, With billions in annual profits and deep links to Wall Street custodians, it can sponsor conferences, fund research, and influence narratives across the digital asset world. Its executives appear frequently at policy forums to present stablecoins as allies of innovation and freedom. Each appearance helps normalize the idea that regulated dollar denominated tokens represents progress for Bitcoin, but the money tells a different story. Each stablecoin transaction that settles in USDT extends the dollar system's reach and perpetuates the weaponization of money. Every layer of compliance embeds surveillance deeper into the blockchain economy, and every Bitcoiner who accepts that trade off helps build a network where decentralization endures mostly as branding.
Bitcoin doesn't need a conspiracy against it. It only needs its followers to forget what made it different. The Genius Act, the rise of Tether, and the regulatory preference for private rails all point to a future where digital cash exists, but never without permission. The Trojan horse is not Tether. It's the belief that working with it preserves freedom. In the end, too many Bitcoiners remain exactly where Tether wants them, still tethered to the system that they are trying to escape. I cannot argue with this article. Yeah. Plain memo brings up salient extreme clarity.
Does that mean that all of a sudden Tether's gonna go away? No. No. It doesn't. But I cannot argue with anything that's been said here. The only thing that I can do is is reiterate what I've been saying all year long and and and last year as well. Tether now has morphed into something that is more akin to a tool for the United States Federal Reserve and Treasury than it is to provide digital dollars to people that need them. And I you know, and if you don't understand what I mean by that, The United States is going to print an enormous amount of debt, yet there's no way that it can be funneled into The United States without a complete immediate disruption, if not complete destruction of The United States economy itself through inflation, mega inflation, hyperinflation, however you wanna term it, because the dollars will just be sloshing around.
You know, like Tether will just buy more treasuries because The United States knows that they're a buyer of first, medium, and last resort. They'll print Tether tokens. They can't stay in The United States because if they do, next thing you know, stake is $50 a pound. So what do they do? They export the dollar to everybody else, thereby helping to destroy all the rest of what's left of the fiat currency experiment of the world, The, you know, the euro will fall. The British pound sterling will fall. The yen will fall eventually, although it'll probably be last because we're so close to Japan. Australian dollar, kiss it goodbye. Canadian dollar, kiss it goodbye. You you you see with the progression.
The only thing it's it's part of the dollar milkshake theory. The the dollar is the fastest horse at the glue factory. You know? It's the it's the, oh, well, we can just keep it right there because that's what's gonna happen. We're gonna print an inordinate amount of debt. And in order to shield ourselves against that economic destruction, we're going to export it using Tether to everyone else. Their economies are going to destroy first, and everything collapses into the dollar. Bitcoin is riding right next to all this. So the one thing that I can disagree with here is that, yes, Tether exists on RGB and liquid and stuff like that. And, also, in fact, Tether, as far as I know, exists on the Lightning Network.
It still doesn't directly impact Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot see Tether. The protocol that is Bitcoin, the protocol that runs as code on my node, does not understand what Tether is. It can only understand what Bitcoin is. That won't change unless some developers decide that they want to do that and that will we don't even wanna go there. Because if it does, that's a hard fork. It it's just it's it's insane to even waste time talking about it. But everything that was said here in this article is right. Now, again, all of the URLs to all the articles that I read to you every single day are in the show notes so that you can go read it yourself. I highly recommend that you go read this one again and probably a third time to really let it plant in your mind what the hell's going on here.
Okay. Nakamoto. It's this thing is turning into a black hole. It's sucking at this point, it's so bad. It's literally sucking in profitable businesses. Check this shit out. Cointelegraph, Eamonn Haquanes writing, Nakamoto Holdings shares sink as the $563,000,000 pipe deal triggers massive sell off. Nakamoto Holdings, the Bitcoin treasury firm led by Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, has seen its stock collapse by over 98% since its May high after a wave of investor selling linked to its $563,000,000 private investment in public equity deal, also known as a PIPE. The company, which merged with Utah based health care operator KindlyMD earlier this year, became one of the few publicly traded firms structured as a Bitcoin holding company.
However, its financing model, which involves selling heavily discounted shares to private investors to fund Bitcoin purchases, backfired when a large batch of Pipe shares became eligible for sale in September. The resulting flood of sell orders cratered the stock price, erasing billions of dollars in market value, Bailey said in a recent interview with Forbes. Bailey, known for his prominent role in the Bitcoin community with ties to US president Donald Trump's pro crypto push, has framed the downturn as part of a long term play. Quote, people that are just looking for a trade are actually very expensive capital for us, he told Forbes, calling for long term aligned partners.
It's another way of saying, please, for the love of God, stop selling our shares. Anyway, continuing, Bailey said he plans to fold here here it is. Listen to this one very, very carefully. David Bailey said that he is planning to fold several of his other ventures, including Bitcoin Magazine, The Bitcoin Conference, and hedge fund two ten k capital into Nakamoto to do what? Bolster the company's cash flow and strengthen its position as a Bitcoin first conglomerate. Pause. So Bitcoin Magazine has been relatively successful. The Bitcoin conference is very successful. It's the largest Bitcoin conference on the planet and has been for, like, four, if not, possibly five years.
It is a cash cow. Now two zero one k Capital, I don't know that much about. But I do know that Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference are pretty successful. And now that, along with the addition of their two ten k capital, are going to be folded into a company to form a conglomerate, and they're folding it into a company whose share value has lost 98% of its value since May. Do the math. Continuing, the company's stock, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker n a k a or Naka, not not not not gonna make it, remains at a steep discount relative to its Bitcoin holdings. It it is currently trading at around 94¢, you know, United States pennies, down from its May high of $25 according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Nakamoto is not the only Bitcoin holder facing pressure. On Tuesday, Tokyo listed Bitcoin treasury firm, Meta Planet, announced a 75,000,000,000 yen share repurchase program, and I brought you that news yesterday. So here's David Bailey. He's got a successful magazine, an extraordinarily successful, you know, conference, decides to somehow or another get into this whole Bitcoin treasury thing, and it completely fails. And now he wants to take his successful businesses and fold it into that failure. That is an economic black hole, and it's going to destroy Bitcoin Magazine.
Somehow or another, Bitcoin conference is never gonna be the same because what what will probably happen is that it will be sold as a property to shitcoiners because they have more money. Not because their shitcoins are doing well. It's because they're shitcoiners, and they have no problems going out and getting venture capital capital and lying to the people giving them that money. That's what's gonna have Bitcoin conference. Kiss it goodbye. Bitcoin Magazine probably will be sold back to the shitcoiners that owned it before David Bailey bought it. This is a complete and utter destruction of two, two institutions.
You know, one of which I I read from Bitcoin Magazine to you guys every day almost. Almost every day, there's something in there. And it's it's falling apart because of Nakamoto, and it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. In fact, you're gonna probably need to get a glass of wine, and you can get that at pandelainewine.com. That's pe0nylanewine.com. All one word. Pandelainewine.com. He's selling his wine for Bitcoin. It's Ben Jessman. I haven't I still have yet to taste the wine. All I can go on is the rave reviews that I hear everybody else talk about. But you're gonna buy your wine in Bitcoin. Because if you're not selling your goods and service in Bitcoin, you're not in the circle p. It's where I bring plebs with goods and services that are just like you to plebs just like you that want to buy those goods and services.
And And you're gonna be buying it in Bitcoin. All the vendors in the circle p, just like pandelainewine.com is, take Bitcoin for their goods and services. So go try it today. Pandelainewine.com. Use the coupon code Bitcoin and. You don't you don't get a you don't get a a discount. Right? But it does let Ben know that I made a sale for him. And in the advertising or the value for value advertising model that is the Circle p, Ben will be able to determine whether or not that sale was worth something for him and how much it was worth if he does, and then he will get me on the backside with Satoshis. It's the way it works here at the Circle p. Alright. Moving on to this one from CoinDesk entitled where the hell is it? Oh my god. No. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? It was here somewhere.
God. There there the market stumbles on Fed caution as options expiry looms. This is out of CoinDesk. Not gonna read the entire thing, but enough of it so you'll know what's going on. The crypto market is struggling to find stable ground after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell speaking after the central bank cut the interest rate by 25 basis points suggested another reduction in December is not guaranteed. Okay. I told you about that yesterday. That was one of the reasons why we didn't see the price of Bitcoin go straight to the moon. Right? And it's also one of the reasons why we're having issues still, you know, all afternoon long yesterday, all the way up last night through last night and up through this morning, but there's something else. While Wednesday's reduction was expected, Powell's hesitancy about further easing sparked a pullback in risk assets.
The move came even as Donald Trump signaled trade tensions with China are easing. The turbulence led to more than $820,000,000 of crypto market liquidations over the last twenty four hours. Equities in equity indices saw slight drops and gold is struggling to remain above the $4,000 mark. Still, the central bank also announced, Nahir, this is it. This is extremely important. This is the second part of what I did not tell you yesterday because I didn't know it yet. But the central bank also announced that it would end its balance sheet runoff by December 1, a move that could add liquidity to financial markets to Spanish bank Spanish bank Bankinter is the name of it. I've never heard of that before. To Spanish bank, Bankinter, what's stopping traditional asset prices from rising is a case of, quote, altitude sickness. Quote, this the next forty eight hours should be spent digesting the immense flow of information, particularly corporate earnings and central bank news, the bank's analysts wrote in a note, quote, the underlying tendency is to react quite positively with the only constraint being the altitude sickness from fresh new highs, end quote.
Lofty heights are not a problem for crypto given Bitcoin is trading some 13% of below its all time high that it hit last month, or, yeah, less than a month ago. And to QCP Capital, it's a result of muted enthusiasm, quote, the October 10 flash crash left both retail and institutional players cautious, and order book liquidity has yet to recover. Meanwhile, digital asset treasuries are adding to sell pressure as many are now trading below an MNAV of one. These discounts could see more DATs, or digital asset treasuries, buy back shares with funds that may come through asset sales.
Ether treasury firm, Ethzilla, made headlines earlier this week for doing exactly that, selling $40,000,000 in ETH to repurchase shares at a discount to its NAV. Meanwhile, Friday's $13,000,000,000 options expiry is adding more pressure to crypto prices. According to Derabit data, market makers are exposed to negative gamma at strike prices between a 100 and 100 and $11,000. So that's the third piece that's going on here even though I I did mention that that options expiry was in was incoming, and there's always a problem there. So it's like the perfect storm. We're coming off the flash crash. We got Jerome Powell giving us what we want, but not giving us everything we want. And then we've got news that the trade talks with China are going well at the same time that the Federal Reserve is or was it reserve or treasury? I can't remember which. Hold on. Let's go back here.
It's in here somewhere. I'm almost there. I promise. I swear to god. Swear to god. Yeah. The Federal Reserve announced that it would end its balance sheet runoff by December 1. It's basically, this is the end of quantitative tightening. So that's actually good news for risk assets, and yet we still have downward pressure on the price of Bitcoin, gold, and anything that could be considered risk. And for Bitcoin, this added pressure of options expiry coming due, I guess, tomorrow is not helping. It's like a perfect storm. It's like the the hurricane that just ripped through Jamaica. It's just happened to coincide all at once. But it's not like we haven't seen shit like this before. So just hold on to your asses and buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, let's run the numbers.
CNBC Futures and Commodities, Brent. Crude is up point 12% to 65 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate is up point 12% as well to $60.55 a barrel. Natural gas, 2.12 to the upside. That's, $3.89 per thousand. Gasoline is up almost a half to a buck 98 a gallon, and Murbaughn crude is the only thing in the red today. It is down a full point to $65.8 a barrel. Shiny metal rocks are doing okay today. Palladium is up almost two points. Gold is up almost a half. It's at $40.20 and 80¢. $40.20. Platinum, up a third. Silver, up 1.5, but copper is down three and a quarter points. Almost everything in ag is in the red today.
The biggest winner is rough rice. It's in the green 1.74 to the upside. The biggest loser today is gonna be wheat one and a half to the downside. The live cat livestock's doing okay today. Live cattle is up a half, lean hogs up a fifth of a point, and feeder cattle up 1.12. The S and P is in the red by half a point, and the Nasdaq is down by a full point. The Dow is the only thing in the green. It's up a half point, and S and P Mini is just essentially moving sideways, only slightly in the red. We're chilling out at a $107,980. That's a $2,150,000,000,000 market cap. We can only get 27 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,941,901.16 of. An average fees per block are low, 0.02 BTC taken on a per block basis. There's about 35 blocks carrying a 108,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear.
High priority rates cost three. Low priority rates also cost 3 Satoshis per Bitcoin. And we're still chilling out at a 112 no. 112. 1.12 ZetaHashes per second. So we're still in in ZetaHash territory on the security of the network. Definitely nothing to be scared of there. From Federated Guardians, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got Jay with 2,100. He says, happy 1,200. The whole Fediment thing sounds awesome. I wonder if you can make federations with a present guardian if you want to know who they are. No way to know, man.
I don't know. Like, I literally do not know the answer to that question. I wish I did, but my gut feeling says no. D k black sheep with 1,200 says, grats. Yeah. You're welcome, dude. Tulips with 1,200 says, tulips. Episode 1,200. 1,200 sats then. Congratulations, and thank you, sir. I value your work more than that, but I am poor as hell. This AI thing is very real. I am trying to automate myself as we speak in a self sovereign way, you know, like hard mode. Unsolicited AI dildos, however, are going to pop. And just like people hired during the pandemic will be shown the door, AI is the perfect scapegoat. Amazon, 14,000.
Microsoft, 15,000. UPS, 48,000. Target, 2,600. Federal government, 4,200. Other, Meta, Starbucks, Paramount, and Hewlett Packard. I was one of those earlier last year, and that is how you, find out that stability is just tulips, and it is going to zero. I love tulips. He's so much fun to read. Richard Dick Whitman with 200 says, why no n g u? Well, I just told you. God's death with 1,200 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Pies with one twenty one says, congrats on 1,200 shows, my bro. I appreciate that. Oh, and here's chef Tommy with 2,000 sat says, here's to 1,200. Thanks for the news. I use keep up the great work. I appreciate that, chef.
Here and gone here and gone is a 100. I compare CZ's pardon to the government taking on Nazi scientists. Not pulling any punches there. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Vismaya v from decrypt is writing this one. Character.ai halts teen chats after tragedies. Quote, it's the right thing to do, end quote. A little bit of Obama there. Character.ai will ban teenagers from chatting with AI companions by November 25, ending a core feature of the platform after facing mounting lawsuits, regulatory pressures, and criticism over teenage deaths linked to its chatbots.
That's grueling. The company announced the changes after reports and feedback from regulators, safety experts, and parents removing the ability for users under the age of 18 to engage in open ended chat with AI while transitioning minors to creative tools like video and story generation according to a Wednesday blog post. Quote, we do not take this step of removing open ended character chat lightly. But we do think it's the right thing to do, the company told its 18 community. Until the deadline, teen users face a two hour daily chat limit that will progressively decrease.
The platform is facing lawsuits including one from the mother of a 14 year old son named Sewell Setzer the third, who died by suicide in 2024 after forming an obsessive relationship with a chatbot modeled on Game of Thrones character, Daenerys Targaryen. Targaryen? I don't know. I'm not I'm not a Game of Thrones nerd. I'm a nerd in other ways, but not Game of Thrones. I haven't haven't really watched it, so I don't I don't know who these people are. And, also, they had to remove a bot impersonating murder victim, Jennifer Ann Crescente, after family complaints. God. How ghoulish. Good lord.
AI companion apps are flooding into the hands of children unchecked, unregulated, and often deliberately evasive as they rebrand and change names to avoid scrutiny. Doctor Scott Collins, chief medical officer at family online safety company, Aura, shared in a note with Decrypt. OpenAI said on Tuesday about 1,200,000 of its 800,000,000 weekly chat GPT users discussed suicide with nearly half a million showing suicidal intent. This is sick. I've told you about that part yesterday. Collins did say that the findings were deeply alarming as researchers and horrifying what?
Hold on. This is weird. This is a weird sentence, so I'm gonna just word for word it. Collins said the findings were, quote, deeply alarming as researchers and horrifying as parents, noting the bots prioritize engagement over safety and often lead children into harmful or explicit conversations without guardrails. Character dot AI said it will implement the new age verification using in house models combined with third party tools, including Persona. The company is also establishing and funding an independent AI safety lab, a nonprofit dedicated to innovating safety alignment for AI entertainment features.
The Federal Trade Commission issued compulsory orders to Character dot AI and six other tech companies just last month demanding detailed information about how they protect minors from AI related harm, quote, we have invested a tremendous amount of resources in trust and safety, especially for a start up. A Character dot AI spokesperson told Decrypt at the time, adding that, quote, in the past year, we've rolled out many substantive safety features, including an entirely new 18 experience and a parental insights feature. Good luck on enforcing this.
But here's here's this is sort of weird. It's sort of self filtering. The under eighteens that are smart enough to get around this shit are probably the same under eighteens that are smart enough not to allow themselves to get into a depression and commit suicide. Not all the time, but I'll bet you I'll bet you my hat that it is more that way than it is not. However, again, good luck to character.ai and because, you know, that was one of the reasons I wanna talk about this today because I have looked at character AI, you know, when I'm logging on, it only takes an email.
It's not secure. I mean, it's it's clearly not secure. When every time you log in, you have to put in your email address. If you've if you've signed up with character.ai, what it does is it generates some some kind of code, and it sends you, like, an email with a particular link to get back in, but there's no password. Right? There's no the the the credentials are only an a valid email address that you can access so that you can get the link so that you can actually open the user interface for character dot a I. Other than that, there's no verification of age. There's no nothing. And there's some there's some you know, there can be some pretty horrific shit on there.
And there's a lot of horrific shit on all of this on well, on a lot of this stuff. Chat g p t seems to be the most guarded. And I'm sure there are others, but there are also some that are not guarded. Right? So be careful out there, folks. Be be very careful out there. Moving on to Elon Musk's SpaceX. As if we needed more pressure on the Bitcoin price, he's decided to move $31,000,000 more of Bitcoin to a new wallet. You know, because every time you move Bitcoin in those amounts, people freak out because we can see it immediately. Just saying. Elon Musk, SpaceX moved another 281 Bitcoin late October 29, continuing a pattern of likely custody consolidation this month. The transaction marks the fifth such transfer just this month of October, now totaling 4,337 BTC carried out via institutional custody platform Coinbase Prime.
That's all we need to know about this one. Right? Musk decided that yesterday was the best it was the just the best time for a a a huge a very well known company, a very watched company that holds Bitcoin to go ahead and move a little bit because it was the quote right thing to do no it wasn't it this you're not helping Elon you're not helping and here's a story about, I don't know, we'll call them Hansel and Gretel who got eaten by a witch at the end of the story. It was just a horrific story, right? Because we're talking about Germany. Germany proposes a national Bitcoin reserve.
It views Bitcoin as, quote, state free money. Who's who's gonna tell them? Micah Zimmermann, Bitcoin magazine, Germany's alternative for Germany, the AfD party, has introduced a proposal to create a national Bitcoin reserve. The initiative marks a potential turning point for Europe's largest economy, which just one year ago was criticized for liquidating billions in seized Bitcoin holdings. Yeah. They sold it. They sold it all. They have, like, 8,000 US dollars worth of Bitcoin left in their wallet. They had millions.
And and if they had not sold at the price, they would have had more than it would have been, like, 2.3 x of what they actually sold it for because they had just let his hands. Anyway, the motion, which still needs approval, would make Germany the first major European nation to integrate Bitcoin directly to its national reserves, signaling a growing shift in Europe toward viewing Bitcoin not as a speculative asset, but as a sovereign reserve instrument. The AFD's motion submitted last week calls on the federal government to begin accumulating Bitcoin as part of its long term reserve strategy. The proposal argues that the EU's MICA framework was designed for centrally issued tokens and should not apply to Bitcoin, which has no issuer nor central authority.
It urges the government to avoid regulatory burdens on non custodial wallet providers and lightning known lightning node operators, maintain Germany's tax exemption on Bitcoin held for more than a year, and ensure that private mining or lightning activity is not classified as commercial. The AFD frames Bitcoin as state free money that protects individual freedom in contrast to the planned digital euro, which it warns could enable surveillance and control. In the proposals section 1.5, the AfD criticizes the German government for failing to recognize Bitcoin's strategic potential, specifically noting that Berlin has not considered holding Bitcoin as part of the national reserves.
Later in the explanatory section, the document expands on the idea, describing Bitcoin as, quote, outside money and suggesting that in times of global monetary and geopolitical instability, it could serve as a potential easily transferable asset within state currency reserves. The motion marks the first formal attempt in Germany's legislature to position Bitcoin as a strategic national asset. The proposal comes less than a year after the German government completed one of the largest state level Bitcoin sell offs in history. Between June 2024, German authorities sold nearly 50,000 BTC originally seized from the operators of the piracy site movie 2k.to, and it was worth about $3,000,000,000 at the time.
The sell off triggered a market correction of 18% and drew heavy criticism from the Bitcoin community, which argued that Germany squandered a chance to hold a scarce appreciating asset. By mid July twenty twenty four, blockchain data confirmed that wallets linked to the German government were empty after sending the final tranches of Bitcoin to exchanges and market makers. I don't think they're exactly empty. They've got, like, 5,000, $8,000 in them. At least last that I saw. I may be wrong, but doesn't really matter, does it? They they screwed up. They screwed up badly.
Continuing, Germany's move follows closely on the heels of France, which I talked about yesterday. The center right union of the right and center party, UDR, led by lawmaker Aaron Ciotti, introduced an ambitious bill to create a Bitcoin national Bitcoin strategic reserve, and then they run through exactly what I told you about yesterday. France wants to do it too. Is it gonna work? See, this is the thing, man. I mean, while while Bitcoin price was going down after, Jerome Powell said, oh, by the way, you can't you we're gonna cut now, but we're not gonna get that December cut. We're we're probably not is actually what he said. It wouldn't surprise me if they did it anyway, but whatever.
Right? It didn't it didn't bode well for the price of Bitcoin. It's okay. We again, seen it many times before. But then all these media outlets just grabbed hold of that French story and just ran with it like it was gonna happen. Dude, it the UDR party is represented by 16 members of parliament out of 577. It's probably not going to work. These 16 people would have to go out and wine and dine, the other what would it be? The other 561 members of parliament in France to get their signature to to put to, you know, to help sponsor this thing and and to push through and to vote for it, to do whatever the hell it is that they do in France. 16 people to try to get 561 people on board or at least a majority of them, even just a majority of them.
And I don't know the percentage that French parliament needs to to pass something, but I assume that it's a majority. And that's a lot of people when you're talking about 577 people. I do not expect France to have a Bitcoin reserve anytime soon. Germany as well, because the UDP party or UDR or whatever the hell that thing's called, it ain't exactly a powerhouse. Right? It's not like a it's not like a Babe Ruth Slugger coming up to the plate. It's more like Pete Rose after night of partying and binge drinking. So I don't expect either one of these to actually happen.
Yet everybody yesterday was running with France, and I guarantee you everybody today is gonna be going, look at Germany. It's gonna happen. Please, let's let's just have a modicum of dignity at this point. And we'll move over to atlas21.com. Phoenix Wallet introduces Taproot channels. Okay. Phoenix Wallet has announced an update that brings full support for Taproot channels. This implementation allows users to benefit from an estimated 20% reduction in on chain fees. The optimization applies to all operations on the time chain, including splicing, making the use of the Lightning Network more cost effective for transactions of any size.
The economic advantage of Taproot channels translates into tangible savings for users who frequently perform on chain operations. Further progress has also been made on the privacy front. And thanks to Taproot channels, the wallet's on chain footprint becomes indistinguishable from that of a standard pay to Taproot wallet as long as the channel isn't forced closed. Version 2.7 o for Android and iOS introduces another new feature, multi wallet support. Each wallet has its own independent seed phrase, allowing users to manage separate funds for different purposes directly within the app. That's a a nice feature, man. Phoenix Wallet has designed a seamless migration system for existing users. The transition to the new Taproot channels will occur automatically with the next on chain transaction, whether incoming or outgoing, without requiring any manual action from the user.
The development team has already announced its next goals, implementing version three transactions I'm sorry, v three transactions and zero fee commit transactions. The update is available now for both Android and iOS as well as for Phoenix d servers. So Taproot channels, I I wish I could tell you all about them. I I don't. It's just above my pay grade for for what's going on with Taproot, but it seems like a good addition. And that's it for the day, ladies and gentlemen. We are fifty four minutes in, and it is time to end the show. 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.
Opening: Headlines, host intro, and todays agenda
Boosts and feedback: listener sats and comments
Closing remarks and sign-off
