Join me today for Episode 1122 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
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https://www.theblock.co/post/359607/tether-brain-computer-elon-musk-neuralink
https://atlas21.com/arizona-the-house-approves-the-creation-of-a-bitcoin-reserve-with-seized-funds/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/06/25/anthony-pomplianos-procap-btc-buys-128m-of-bitcoin-in-2nd-straight-day-of-purchases
https://cointelegraph.com/news/stablecoins-fail-money-bis-report
https://cointelegraph.com/news/korean-banks-to-launch-won-pegged-stablecoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/the-smarter-web-company-expands-bitcoin-holdings-with-15-2m-purchase
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Topics for today:
- Tether's Brain, Computer Interface
- Arizona House Passes BTC Bill
- Pomp Buys More Bitcoin
- BIS Terrified of Stablecoins
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https://decrypt.co/326892/polymarket-nails-nyc-democratic-mayoral-primary-upset-nears-1b-unicorn-valuationhttps://www.theblock.co/post/359607/tether-brain-computer-elon-musk-neuralink
https://atlas21.com/arizona-the-house-approves-the-creation-of-a-bitcoin-reserve-with-seized-funds/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/06/25/anthony-pomplianos-procap-btc-buys-128m-of-bitcoin-in-2nd-straight-day-of-purchases
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/stablecoins-fail-money-bis-report
https://cointelegraph.com/news/korean-banks-to-launch-won-pegged-stablecoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/the-smarter-web-company-expands-bitcoin-holdings-with-15-2m-purchase
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[00:00:02]
Unknown:
It is 09:04AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the June 2025, and this is episode one one two two of Bitcoin. And you following the NYC, Democratic mayoral primary? So is Polymarket. We'll get into that one. Paulo Ardoinos got some news about his brain computer interface, and I had forgotten that this was a thing. It's I still to this day just do not do not understand the direct interface of the the need or or the want or the desire to directly interface your neural wet work that is your brain with a computer. That, honestly, that just doesn't sound like it's it's part of God's plan. But Arizona has approved the creation of a Bitcoin reserve, even though that Hocham or Hochul or I can't remember her name. Hobbs, vetoed the last bill.
She didn't really want Bitcoin, but now they've got this other one, which has been kind of simmering in the background. We'll we'll talk about it. And then Anthony Pompliano is back in the news. Yes. We talked about him yesterday. This is different, kind of. And then met we'll talk a little bit about Meta Planet. They're doing something a little bit different. BIS says stablecoins will fail as money. Meanwhile, South Korea isn't listening to the BIS, like, at all. And we'll talk a little bit about the smarter web company. Probably gonna be a shorter show today. There's not a whole lot of stuff going on except for this this ridiculous mayoral candidacy going on in New York City, which has absolutely freaking exploded across everything.
I until yesterday, I didn't even know that there was a a mayor election in New York City that was coming up. I but now I do, and so does the rest of the world. Polymarket is right there predicting everything apparently because they've nailed the NYC Democratic mayoral primary upset, the betting nears one bill or I'm sorry. The company, not the betting. The company nears becoming a $1,000,000,000 unicorn company. It's kind of it it's almost like meteoric like, Tether was as it was coming up. Vince De Aquino's got it from Decrypt. New York City woke up Wednesday morning to a surprise.
Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic mayoral prime primary. And while pollsters initially dismissed the progressive candidate, punchers on blockchain based prediction platform Polymarket correctly called his victory ahead of the official confirmation. Before Tuesday's vote, conventional polls favored former governor Andrew Cuomo. And, honestly, why wouldn't you? The Cuomo's have been part of New York City for decades and decades and decades, and he got his ass handed to him. But sentiment among participants on Polymarket shifted rapidly towards mom Donnie after an Emerson College poll released Monday morning highlighted his strength in ranked choice voting scenarios.
Polymarket wasn't alone in responding to the Emerson poll. Kalshi, another prominent prediction market, reacted even faster, initially showing Cuomo with higher odds before sharply pivoting towards Mamdani in response to the poll. Kalshi, which does not utilize blockchain infrastructure, reacted to the Emerson College poll with a sharper and faster swing than Polymarket. On Kalshi, Andrew Cuomo's odds dropped from over 70% to 46% within hours of the poll's release while Mamdani surged from 27.2% to parity according to data on Kalshi, which show Cuomo at 73% as the poll went out.
By election morning, both platforms had converged on a near certain Mamdani victory ahead of the official confirmation. One of the biggest winners was a poly market user known as gay pride who wagered a $132,000 on Maumdani at 49.2% odds. That bet paid out approximately 280 no. $268,000 illustrating both the high stakes nature and earning potential. Oh my god. Earning potential of decentralized prediction markets. We're already pausing. First pause of the day. You're not earning anything from prediction markets. You're gambling.
Earning is different. Earning means that you go to work or if you're working for yourself, you build a product or whatever it is that you do, and then you verifiably sell that product for somebody who attaches a value to it. Then they give you that value, and then you give them what they have exchanged you for. This prediction market and gambling and making bets is not earning. Okay? Just please, for the love of God, don't think that you're gonna be like, you know, you're what's your job? I'm a day trader on poly market. Please, please, God, don't let this happen.
Continuing, PolyMarkets' success with forecasting, Mamdani's surprise victory has reignited interest in the predictive capabilities. Last year, it correctly predicted that Donald Trump would win the United States presidential election. PolyMarkets' latest win comes as the company closes in on a 200,000,000 funding round at a valuation that's just north of $1,000,000,000 according to separately sourced reports from Reuters and Bloomberg on Tuesday. The raise is reportedly being led by Founders Fund, the venture firm cofounded by Peter Thiel, known for early investments in Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI, as well as backing frontier projects like the Sentient and OpenAI initiative. The vote of confidence from institutional backers like Founders Fund signals growing acceptance of blockchain powered prediction platforms such as Polymarket.
Alex Soliero is the product lead for Myriad Markets, the prediction market platform owned by decrypt parent company, Dastan. He commented on the significance of Polymarket's achievement, but noted that Myriad did not run a market on this particular election. Quote, prediction markets, once again, show that they can break the news faster than media and predict elections better than polls and experts. We have entered a new era in how information is sourced, shared, and incentivized. Alright. So that's that that's the article, but this Peter Thiel backing, if you think about it, it makes complete sense that Peter Thiel would back something like Polymarket and prediction markets in general. Right?
Why? Palantir. You wanna talk about a raw source of data to drive prediction markets? Look no further than Palantir. You're talking about a an extremely wide net of data collection, and we all you know, I think everybody in my audience is going to agree this is not good. This is the kind of data collection that you don't want, and there's about jack shit we can do about it except to try to, you know, stay as far away from from human civilization as possible, and that's almost impossible. Unless you really do want the hermitage, which is fine. I I I have no problem with people wanting the hermitage.
But Palantir as a data gathering machine, and that's exactly what it is, it is the perfect feedstock for prediction markets. But we really do need to talk about what's going on with this guy in in New York. This is a guy that wants government owned grocery stores, Complete price controls on everything from rent to what you pay for a can of tomatoes. It's generally speaking, we we've seen this occur over the decades and it's never done anything but bring an immense amount of pain, yet New York City residents have voted overwhelmingly that this is what they want.
It'll be interesting to see exactly what he does and how this folds out, but for right now just remember prediction markets is not an income stream. Say it to yourself prediction markets is not an income stream. Let's get over to Paolo Ardoino. He says the Tether backed brain computer interface is much more advanced than Elon Musk's Neuralink. This is James Hunt from theblock.co. But before I begin, I posit the question. How in the hell does a stablecoin company get to the point where they can at least say in public that they have a brain computer chip interface that is more advanced than what Elon Musk has been working on for years, who is more plugged in to the technical side of that kind of life than Tether would be. Tether's plugged in to the economic side of stuff.
It honestly, to me, it doesn't make sense, and it's kinda scary when I see shit like this because did they do a good job? Is somebody who's gonna get this thing shoved in their brain going to turn into something that we just don't wanna see? I hope not, man. But of all the projects Tether has invested in over recent years, BlackRock Neurotech stands out as one of the favorites for CEO Paolo Ardoino. In the latest episode of the Block's Big Brain podcast, Ardoino said that the brain computer interface firm needed a name change soon to avoid confusion with the famous asset manager and Bitcoin ETF issuer BlackRock.
However, he claimed the firm is ready already ahead of Neuralink, the neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk, which develops brain computer interfaces designed to connect the human brain directly to computers, which I still think is a very bad idea. But one of the initial goals of such firms is to help treat neurological disorders such as paralysis and blindness by implanting a small device that can record and stimulate brain activity. In the long term, Musk envisions Neuralink could enable high bandwidth communication between humans and machines, potentially merging human cognition with artificial intelligence.
Tether's $200,000,000 strategic investment in BlackRock Neurotech in April of twenty twenty four made it the majority stakeholder in the firm founded in 2008 out of the University of Utah by scientist and BCI pioneers doctor Florian Solzbacher and Marcus Gerhardt. Using BlackRock's Neurotech technology, patients have operated robotic arms, maneuvered wheelchairs, sent messages, surfed the web, and even driven a car, all with just the power of their thoughts, Tether said at that time, quote, I think they are much more advanced than Neuralink in this moment, Ardoino said to the block. They have more than 40 patients already, and the next iteration of the brain chip is just insane.
Similar to Musk, Ardoino also envisions developing a type of brain operating system in the longer term, quote, what I want to do to compete in a different way than anyone else is to build an open source brain operating system so that I believe that in the future, in the next fifteen to thirty years, this will become the next smartphone. As if it wasn't bad enough already, quote, maybe we are in time to build that technology that is open source so so so that if I have to put it in myself, then I'm not going to be controlled by a tech giant. I'm a paranoid guy, so I just want to make sure that everyone is playing on an even playing field, end quote. Tether, whose team of less than 200 people generated a profit of $13,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, in 2024 and currently holds more than a 100,000 Bitcoin.
They have been aggressively deploying capital into a variety of projects beyond stablecoins in recent years across sectors, including artificial intelligence, telecommunications, data centers, energy infrastructure, and Bitcoin mining. So there we have the answer to my question as to how it is that they are being able to claim that they're ahead of Elon Musk. They've simply just invested into another competing company that's doing pretty much the same thing. But be that as it may, who is it on this team of 201 people because he's got a staff of 200, and I'll just say Paulo Ardoino is the two hundred and first.
Who on this staff is, like, basically rifling through all this data to find what to invest in, and how are they sure that they're investing in the proper thing. Alright. So still there's there's some questions that I have as to the extent to which the team over at Tether is extending their reach well beyond stable coins. And yet everywhere they touch, it has something to do with things like artificial telecommunications and data centers and energy infrastructure, Bitcoin mining. And if you wrap all that up plus, you know, brain computer interfacing and a couple of other things like agriculture, which they are also into, and I do believe that they are talking about real estate. It all becomes a nice, pretty centered package that I think would be considerable it it would I think people like Paulo Arduino would consider that the future of investment.
That those sectors is really what's going to take off and that they already have been taking off, but I think as we get tighter and tighter and tighter in economics and computers and telecommunications and energy infrastructure and economics in the form of Bitcoin, they all start squishing together. You start getting into this weird critical mass much like the compression of a uranium core of nuclear material to start a fission reaction. So it still is a little unnerving that somebody who started out building stable coin shit is now wanting to plug a open source brain interface into people.
One that I could do myself. What am I gonna do? Drill? Hey, I got a Stanley drill. I'll just drill this hole into my head and shove it on in there, and I'm sure everything will just be fine. Because I don't know how else you're going to get a brain computer interface unless you're just gonna wear, I don't know, a magnetic resonance imaging machine on your head all day long. And I I I don't know, man. Everything about this just gives me the willies. The amount of shit that can go wrong is gotta be a much longer list than the amount of stuff that would be fun to have because of something like this. From a risk reward standpoint, I don't think it's worth it.
But let's go on to Arizona where the house of representatives have approved the creation of a Bitcoin reserve with seized funds. Seize this, honkers. Atlas 21. On June, yesterday, the Arizona house of representatives gave the green light to bill h b third twenty three twenty four with 34 votes in favor of and 22 against. The measure, now awaiting final approval from governor Hobbs, oh, Hobbs, represents a new initiative in the state management of seized cryptocurrencies. You mean stolen. The bill has already been passed by the senate the previous week with 16 votes in favor and 14 against after suffering a setback during its final reading in the house, which was last May.
Twenty three twenty four grants the state treasurer the authority to establish the Bitcoin and digital asset reserve fund, a dedicated fund for overseeing digital assets obtained through criminal forfeiture. That's really actually all we really need to know about this, ladies and gentlemen. I don't like it because it's like, okay. Well, we don't wanna actually, you know, spend our our actual money buying the best asset on the face of the planet, but we don't mind holding the shit that we've stolen, and most likely they've stolen it from people that didn't deserve to have it stolen from. I'm sorry, man, but this criminal, civil asset forfeiture shit, it's gotta be met with the the with some kind of resistance at one point.
Otherwise, they're just gonna say, we're just gonna take your shit, man. Anyway, if you do have money, you might consider putting it into a Leathermint wallet from the leathermint.com. The circle p is open for business, and the pleb known as Leathermint makes handmade wallets, belts. Now he's actually making watch bands too, and I don't I think they're actually on sale at the leathermint.com. That's the leathermint.com. But right now, I wanna talk to you about this really cool looking wallet that he's come up with called Max.
It's orange and white. Mostly white though. You know how I normally say, hey. Don't wear swag. Don't don't let people know that you got the Bitcoin. This wallet is a way to celebrate your love for Bitcoin without letting a damn single person know that you have Bitcoin, and it's because of the color combination. This thing is solid white with Bitcoin orange orange, accents and the stitching the stitching, which is always what makes or breaks something like a wallet or a belt, is done in orange thread. It looks really cool. He calls it the Max because it's eccentric and bold. The wallet captures the flamboyant energy of Max Kizer himself.
Designed with a flare for the unconventional, it stands out with its vibrant personality, unapologetic style crafted from Safiano calfskin on the outside and supple goat skin on the inside. It's a wallet for those who embrace individuality and defy the ordinary just like Max Kizer. So it's fully lined and it's RFID shielded, which means that if you put in your if if you're still using credit cards or something with a magnetic strip and you don't want somebody to scan your ass with a little ass scanner that they have, The RFID shielding will protect you against that from anything that's in the wallet.
It's hand stitched. Again, this is some of the best stitching I've ever seen. It has eight card pockets and, of course, a bill compartment if you are still using dirty, nasty fiat. This thing is freaking gorgeous. It is absolutely gorgeous. So, if you decide to buy the Max wallet from the leathermint.com, please use the code Bitcoinand and get a let's see. Let me make sure that I've got a deal worked out with them. Get 10% off with coupon code bitcoin and at the leathermint.com. That's the leathermint.com. Leathermint is a pleb just like you and he makes gorgeous leather items by hand.
They will outlast you, and they will probably fight over it after you're dead. Let's get on to Anthony pump pump pump pump pump Pompliano. He's in the news again from CoinDesk. ProCap BTC, the Bitcoin native financial services firm led by entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, said that it bought 1,208 Bitcoin just one day after announcing a $385,000,000 purchase of the largest cryptocurrency yesterday. The company said it paid an average of a $105,977 for each token this time, pricing the transaction at $128,000,000 With this move, the company now holds a total of almost just shy of 5,000 bitcoin which recently reclaimed 108,000.
The acquisition comes just two days after ProCrap whoops. Sorry, Paul. ProCrap. ProCrap BTC announced its intention to go public through a $1,000,000,000 business combination with Columbus Circle. The Bitcoin buying spree underlies ProCap's strategic commitment to steadily build up its stock of BTC by immediately deploying capital raised at signing. The firm has delivered instant instant Bitcoin exposure to equity investors, reinforcing its Bitcoin centric investment thesis. ProCap has I've done it again. ProCap. ProCap has said it views Bitcoin not just as an asset, but as a core financial benchmark, which it refers to as, quote, the new hurdle rate. So twice, big buys yesterday and another fairly large buy today, although it's about a third it's about a third as much. Still, though, a $128,000,000 just plopping down after you already bought 385,000,000 the day before.
Ain't nothing to sneeze at. So the question that I saw on the social medias earlier today is somebody asking the question, can we start asking what value these Bitcoin treasury companies actually produce? This is my question. What product and service are you offering that generates income, not yield? Income to you, the company. And then for the investors of those companies, there will be a yield generated by that revenue. But I'm not seeing any revenue generated by any one of these companies. Not yet, anyway. And I haven't seen any concrete plans to tell me how these companies plan to generate any revenue at all.
And honestly, ladies and gentlemen, that shit's disconcerting. But as usual, there's nothing that I can do about it, so I'm gonna run the numbers. Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up two points today after being hammered all the way down to $63 a barrel. We're at 65, 63. Brent Norsee is up almost two points to $68.36. Natural gas is down a point back down to three dollars and one half. Well, that'd be, like, you know, $3.50, per thousand cubic feet. And gasoline is up almost a half to peak just below $2.10 a gallon. Gold is up a quarter to $33.41.
Silver is up point 72%. Platinum is up one and a quarter. Copper is up two thirds, and palladium is up point 16%. Most of ag is in the red today. I got the biggest loser looking like it's gonna be rough rice down two and a third. Biggest winner is sugar. Nope. Biggest winner is cotton, point 9% to the upside. Live hogs are or live cattle is down a third. Lean hogs are up a third, and feeder cattle are down point 12%. The Dow is at in the red, point one six percent to the downside. S and P is crawling sideways slightly in the green. Nasdaq is up point 1% and the S and P Mini is down one half.
Bitcoin is chilling out at a $107,400. That is a 2,140,000,000,000 market cap. We can purchase 32.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,883,144.5 of. An average fees per block are kind of low, 0.04, taking in fees on a per block basis. Looks to be about eight blocks carrying 11,000 unconfirmed transactions, high priority rates costing 3 Satoshis per vbyte as is low priority rates. After yesterday's dip below 800 exahashes per second on the hash rate, we are back up but not by much. 805.3 exahashes per second and it looks like the reason was not The United States bombing Iranian mining infrastructure.
It's more likely it is this massive heat bubble probably due to global warming, the climate change, whatever. It's all over The United States, and we've got, like like, energy production is is maxing out. It's maxing the f out. So it may very well be that some of the costs that I've seen on a megawatt per hour basis, it's no wonder that some of the smaller miners are probably, I can't verify it, but are probably taking entire banks of mining offline. It's just too expensive to mine right now. That's most likely what the hell is going on with mining. Now, on to node wars redo. 1776 with sixty nine sixty nine dude says, thanks for continuing to bring us consistent balance coverage on Bitcoin news. Still my fave show. My AI friend agrees that not only is your show x, but it is y.
L l o l. Even if the core code changes, end change ends up being a bit of a nothing burger, I think a lot of users have been swayed to run knots by the elitist heavy handedness the core devs came across with shutting down discourse etcetera etcetera. That and Peter Todd's supersized ego and smug face. Anyway, here's some stats. Thank you for the great content. Yeah. Seventeen seventy six. CORE did not handle this public relation wise in any manner whatsoever that is even remotely conducive to not fucking it up. They really messed this up. They really show their arrogance. And, I mean, it's I'm not surprised that they didn't that they, you know, showed their ass and in so doing, you know, letting people on just how arrogant some of these people are.
But I I'm not I'm just not a core hater. I think that they screwed up big time with the way they handled all this, but I don't hate them. I just hope that at one point or another somebody gets savvy and starts asking themselves questions on how do we not alienate people? Anyway, anonymous was six oh, well, sorry. Not that same one. Mister Satstacker, that's what I'm looking for, with 5,000 says nothing. Progressively worse with a thousand says nothing. Thank God for Digital Pain Handler with a thousand that says power to the node runners, let's go bitcoin knots. Yodle with 511 says nothing. Turkey with 500 says nothing. Pulsar nine.
500 says thanks. It'll be interesting to see how this core versus nuts plays out. Thanks for keeping us informed. You're welcome, sir. Turkey with 500 says nothing. Pies with a 100 says thank you, sir. No thank you. And that is the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Meta Planet boosts Bitcoin strategy and pumps $5,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, into its United States subsidiary company, Alex Larry for Bitcoin News, Japanese investment firm, Meta Planet, has just injected $5,000,000,000 into its US subsidiary, Meta Planet Treasury Corporation, as part of its plan to grow its Bitcoin holdings and expand globally in the digital asset space.
The funds will be used to accelerate the company's $555,000,000 plan to buy up to 210,000 BTC by the end of twenty twenty seven, which is one percent of Bitcoin's total supply. Meta Planet has already made good progress recently increasing its holdings to 1,000 no. I'm sorry. 11,111 BTC worth over $1,100,000,000. Meta Planet's US arm, Meta Planet Treasury Corporation, launched this May 2025. It's based in Florida and is a key part of the company's strategy. Florida and Miami, in particular, have become pro Bitcoin havens and digital asset infrastructure is growing. By entering The US market, the company will benefit from deep capital markets, institutional infrastructure, and transparent regulation to buy and manage large amounts of Bitcoin.
The company will access both exchange and over the counter markets for large BTC purchases. This US expansion underscores our determination to establish a globally integrated treasury model, Meta Planet said in a statement, continuing, the company believes this approach will drive long term accretion to shareholder value, enhance treasury yield efficiency, and reinforce our positioning at the forefront of Bitcoin based capital market innovation, end quote, which said nothing. How are you going to make money? The $5,000,000,000 will be funded by exercising stock acquisition rights from previously issued convertible securities.
The funds will be used to or used exclusively for Bitcoin purchases with no change to the use of proceeds as previously disclosed. The 55 the $555,000,000 plan was announced on 06/06/2025 and outlines Meta Planet's path to becoming one of the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holders, and the company will buy 30,000 BTC by the end of twenty twenty five and 200 and 10,000 BTC over the next few years. This is not just a financial move, but a strategic one. AI wrote that. I can almost guarantee it. Because it's not just x, it's y. It's about building transparent, efficient, and global treasuries on Bitcoin.
Meta Planet stock has gone up over 1250% in the last six months, and part of that is due is due to their aggressive push into Bitcoin. But the recent announcement has caused short term volatility in the stock after hitting $15. The United States listed MTP LF shares dropped to $10.9 well, I'm sorry, $10.90. And the Tokyo listed shares dropped 5.38% closing at 1,547 Japanese yen. Despite the dip, institutional investors are showing strong interest. And Citigroup and Capital Group have both reportedly bought 3,000,000 shares of Meta Planet just this month. That's Citigroup and Capital Group, guys. Analysts see this as a sign of growing confidence in Bitcoin focused corporate strategies, and then they talk about the worries of all this bullshit and that the fact that there are 240 public companies now holding over 832,000 BTC.
Do you remember when Rodolfo Novak first put out bitcoin treasuries.com? I do. And there was eight companies on it, and then there were nine. And then a couple of days later, there were 10. And then I turned around after a weekend, and there were 15. And now we're at 240 public companies on that list. He's not gonna be able to keep up with it much longer. I can almost guarantee it. But let's get over to the Burger Meister Meister Burger guy, you know, the big fat man that is Augustin Karstens at the BIS who says stablecoins fail as money and calls for strict limits on their role.
I think the BIS may be, you know, being shown their hat. Just saying. Ammon Haskwan is for CoinTelegraph. A new report from the Bank of International Settlements challenged the notion that stablecoins can serve as money in a modern financial system. According to the BIS annual economic report 2025, stablecoins fail the fundamental tests of singleness, elasticity, and integrity. Three critical criteria that define effective monetary instruments. Yeah. According to fucking who, dude? The BIS describes stablecoins as digital bearer instruments that resemble financial assets more than they do actual money. Quote, stablecoins perform poorly when assessed against the three tests for serving as the mainstay of the monetary system, the report said.
Unlike central bank backed money, which is accepted at par and requires no background checks, private entities issue stablecoins and often trade at fluctuating rates. This undermines the core principle of money singleness, the report claimed. Oh my god. The the horror. Elasticity, the second test, is crucial for absorbing shocks and meeting large value payment demands, BIS said in the report. It pointed out that any additional supply of stablecoins thus requires full upfront payment by its holders likening it to a strict cash in advance setup that contrast with the flexibility of modern banking systems where central banks provide liquidity on an as needed basis.
The third and perhaps most damning failure lies in the area of integrity. The report claimed that stablecoin's design, especially those transacted via unhosted wallets on public blockchains, makes them prone to financial crime. Stablecoins have significant shortcomings when it comes to promoting the integrity of the monetary system, the BIS noted, emphasizing their vulnerability to money laundering, sanctions, evasion, and, of course, the ever present terrorist financing. But what about children? Guess they decided not to wrap it in children today. But while acknowledging the continued demand for stablecoins due to features like cross border accessibility and lower transaction costs, the BIS argued that they should only play a limited yet well regulated role.
Society can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money. Oh, my God. Holy shit. I gotta read that one again. Society can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money, the report cautioned, quote, bold action by central banks and other public authorities can push the financial system along the right path in partnership with the financial sector. Circle, the company behind USDC, saw its stock drop more than 15% on Tuesday after the BIS report hitting $222. Circle shares had reached an all time high of $299 on Monday.
Despite its hard take on stablecoins, the BIS report praised tokenization as a transformative innovation for the next generation monetary and financial system. It said tokenization builds on the current financial system rather than replacing it. Some in the crypto community said it's no surprise that the BIS paper was generally negative on stablecoins given that it is a regulatory body owned by global central banks. Quote, the BIS is hysterical in its opposition to crypto, Jim Walker, chief economist at Althea Capital wrote, quote, the first criterion backed by a central bank should make it a laughing stock given the historical failures of those institutions around the world. Yeah. No shit. That's why I'm freaking out about this sentence.
We can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money. That's what the BIS deals in. That's what the Federal Reserve deals in. That's what the Central Bank of your the European Central Bank does, all of the central banks. And there's this this little this too little too late attitude of this statement to of the BIS just pretty much reinforces what I've always suspected that they literally do not give a shit. They're going to do what they do. They don't care about you and they never have and they never really will. And they're really not going to try to change anything because they they work themselves into a hole that is just too damn deep and it's so deep in fact that sunlight isn't penetrating down to where these demons dwell.
That said, it's no wonder that they're hysterical, but it's not because of the it's not because of what, Jim Walker said. It's the the historical failures of these institutions is not why they're hysterical in the opposition to stable coins. It's their loss of power. Because it's like it's that's one of the things about private concerns is that that competition between different private concerns that are trying to bring anything to market necessarily limits the amount of communication and coordination those entities have with each other because they're trying to compete with each other. But you get the gaggle of demons that we've got in the West that essentially rules the world in an in an oligarchy because that's what it is at this point. They have extreme communication and extreme coordinate coordination line you know, they they're extremely coordinated.
I'm sorry. It's like I woke up today and I've I felt hungover. It's really weird because I didn't have a drop of alcohol to drink at all anytime at all yesterday, and somehow or another, it's hard to get my brain to think. But you see what I'm saying? They Circle is not going to have the kind of relationship with Tether that is going to make just a few people, give them the ability to easily control massive amounts of people, they're going to compete against each other. So they're more in line with what the customer wants than the BIS is because their customers are other central banks and their customers are governments and massive corporations.
So they don't that's an element of control. I don't think any of these people are prepared to even remotely conceive of losing. They're going to fight. And when their claws eventually come out to full length and they start swinging harder than they're already swinging now, you'll know exactly exactly just how hysterical they can be. But South Korea does not listening to the BIS because South Korean banks plan a won pegged stablecoin launch by next year. Ezra Raguera has it for CoinTelegraph. Eight, eight, count them, eight major South Korean banks will team up to launch a stablecoin pegged to the country's won currency, marking a significant step towards digital asset adoption.
According to an Econoville report, the project involves institutions including KB Kookmin, Shinjin oh, I can't pronounce any of these names. Shin Shinhan Woori, Nangip corporate, Sip City Korea, and SC First Bank. Oh my god. The collaboration aims to combat increased dollar dominance due to the rise of dollar peg stable coins and data from the real world asset tokenization tracker, rwa.xyz, shows that stablecoins have a market capitalization of well over $239,000,000,000. The data also shows that 99% of the stablecoins issued are pegged to The US Dollar. That's 99% pegged to the dollar, and they wanna do one for the won.
Anyway, with the project, the banks aim to put South Korea in a position to compete in the global digital finance market. The project is reportedly expected to materialize in late twenty twenty five and early twenty twenty six. And according to Economille, this project is the first big move from traditional banks to enter the digital asset space. The blockchain focused non profit Open Blockchain and the Decentralized Identity Association expressed support for the project. It will also be supported by the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute.
The report also noted that the stablecoin will adopt a trust based model or a one to one deposit token scheme which is still subject to regulatory approval. The stablecoin initiative aligns with a broader legislative push to build a clear regulatory structure for digital assets in South Korea. On June, South Korea's ruling party proposed the Digital Asset Basic Act to allow stablecoin issuance and boost the growth of crypto markets in the country. Following the development, Bank of Korea governor, Ri Chang Yong, expressed concerns that creating the stablecoin, mhmm, could make it easier for holders to exchange the currency for the dollar.
The official said that this could hurt the currency, I guess, the yuan, making it difficult for the central bank to manage. However, the country's central bank head said he wasn't issuing, or he wasn't against issuing a WonPeg stablecoin. Meanwhile, the Bank of Korea deputy governor Ryu Sang dae later said the rollout of WonPeg stablecoins should be gradual. The official said that banks should be the first entities to issue them to ensure a safety net. They are terrified of losing control. They are terrified of losing control. They are terrified of losing control, and they are going to lose control of this shit. It's good that that South Korea is gonna do this in direct opposition to what that fat piece of shit at the BIS has to say about it. They're all going to lose control, but you can see you can even see it here with this Bank of Korea governor.
He's expressing concerns, and this other deputy governor from the same bank, well, he's saying that the rollout should be gradual and that only banks should be able to issue them. I mean, it's very, very clear that these guys have had their boots on the throats of humanity for so long they don't even know how to function thinking about the possibility that they might not be able to do that any longer. It can't come too soon. Okay, finally, from Bitcoin magazine, the smarter web company has expanded its Bitcoin holdings with yet another £15,200,000 sterling purchase of Bitcoin.
The smarter web company, a web design development and online marketing service provider has announced yet another Bitcoin purchase acquiring a 196.9 more Bitcoin for £15,185,000 sterling as part of its ten year treasury strategy. The London listed technology company paid an average price of about a 103,290 US dollars per Bitcoin for the acquisition. The purchase brings the Smartweb company's total Bitcoin holdings to 543.52 Bitcoin representing a total investment of £42,388,000 sterling at an average price of a $104,450 per Bitcoin. So there you go. Smarter Web Company finishes finishes us out on the day, this day, this Wednesday, June 2025, and 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 09:04AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the June 2025, and this is episode one one two two of Bitcoin. And you following the NYC, Democratic mayoral primary? So is Polymarket. We'll get into that one. Paulo Ardoinos got some news about his brain computer interface, and I had forgotten that this was a thing. It's I still to this day just do not do not understand the direct interface of the the need or or the want or the desire to directly interface your neural wet work that is your brain with a computer. That, honestly, that just doesn't sound like it's it's part of God's plan. But Arizona has approved the creation of a Bitcoin reserve, even though that Hocham or Hochul or I can't remember her name. Hobbs, vetoed the last bill.
She didn't really want Bitcoin, but now they've got this other one, which has been kind of simmering in the background. We'll we'll talk about it. And then Anthony Pompliano is back in the news. Yes. We talked about him yesterday. This is different, kind of. And then met we'll talk a little bit about Meta Planet. They're doing something a little bit different. BIS says stablecoins will fail as money. Meanwhile, South Korea isn't listening to the BIS, like, at all. And we'll talk a little bit about the smarter web company. Probably gonna be a shorter show today. There's not a whole lot of stuff going on except for this this ridiculous mayoral candidacy going on in New York City, which has absolutely freaking exploded across everything.
I until yesterday, I didn't even know that there was a a mayor election in New York City that was coming up. I but now I do, and so does the rest of the world. Polymarket is right there predicting everything apparently because they've nailed the NYC Democratic mayoral primary upset, the betting nears one bill or I'm sorry. The company, not the betting. The company nears becoming a $1,000,000,000 unicorn company. It's kind of it it's almost like meteoric like, Tether was as it was coming up. Vince De Aquino's got it from Decrypt. New York City woke up Wednesday morning to a surprise.
Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic mayoral prime primary. And while pollsters initially dismissed the progressive candidate, punchers on blockchain based prediction platform Polymarket correctly called his victory ahead of the official confirmation. Before Tuesday's vote, conventional polls favored former governor Andrew Cuomo. And, honestly, why wouldn't you? The Cuomo's have been part of New York City for decades and decades and decades, and he got his ass handed to him. But sentiment among participants on Polymarket shifted rapidly towards mom Donnie after an Emerson College poll released Monday morning highlighted his strength in ranked choice voting scenarios.
Polymarket wasn't alone in responding to the Emerson poll. Kalshi, another prominent prediction market, reacted even faster, initially showing Cuomo with higher odds before sharply pivoting towards Mamdani in response to the poll. Kalshi, which does not utilize blockchain infrastructure, reacted to the Emerson College poll with a sharper and faster swing than Polymarket. On Kalshi, Andrew Cuomo's odds dropped from over 70% to 46% within hours of the poll's release while Mamdani surged from 27.2% to parity according to data on Kalshi, which show Cuomo at 73% as the poll went out.
By election morning, both platforms had converged on a near certain Mamdani victory ahead of the official confirmation. One of the biggest winners was a poly market user known as gay pride who wagered a $132,000 on Maumdani at 49.2% odds. That bet paid out approximately 280 no. $268,000 illustrating both the high stakes nature and earning potential. Oh my god. Earning potential of decentralized prediction markets. We're already pausing. First pause of the day. You're not earning anything from prediction markets. You're gambling.
Earning is different. Earning means that you go to work or if you're working for yourself, you build a product or whatever it is that you do, and then you verifiably sell that product for somebody who attaches a value to it. Then they give you that value, and then you give them what they have exchanged you for. This prediction market and gambling and making bets is not earning. Okay? Just please, for the love of God, don't think that you're gonna be like, you know, you're what's your job? I'm a day trader on poly market. Please, please, God, don't let this happen.
Continuing, PolyMarkets' success with forecasting, Mamdani's surprise victory has reignited interest in the predictive capabilities. Last year, it correctly predicted that Donald Trump would win the United States presidential election. PolyMarkets' latest win comes as the company closes in on a 200,000,000 funding round at a valuation that's just north of $1,000,000,000 according to separately sourced reports from Reuters and Bloomberg on Tuesday. The raise is reportedly being led by Founders Fund, the venture firm cofounded by Peter Thiel, known for early investments in Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI, as well as backing frontier projects like the Sentient and OpenAI initiative. The vote of confidence from institutional backers like Founders Fund signals growing acceptance of blockchain powered prediction platforms such as Polymarket.
Alex Soliero is the product lead for Myriad Markets, the prediction market platform owned by decrypt parent company, Dastan. He commented on the significance of Polymarket's achievement, but noted that Myriad did not run a market on this particular election. Quote, prediction markets, once again, show that they can break the news faster than media and predict elections better than polls and experts. We have entered a new era in how information is sourced, shared, and incentivized. Alright. So that's that that's the article, but this Peter Thiel backing, if you think about it, it makes complete sense that Peter Thiel would back something like Polymarket and prediction markets in general. Right?
Why? Palantir. You wanna talk about a raw source of data to drive prediction markets? Look no further than Palantir. You're talking about a an extremely wide net of data collection, and we all you know, I think everybody in my audience is going to agree this is not good. This is the kind of data collection that you don't want, and there's about jack shit we can do about it except to try to, you know, stay as far away from from human civilization as possible, and that's almost impossible. Unless you really do want the hermitage, which is fine. I I I have no problem with people wanting the hermitage.
But Palantir as a data gathering machine, and that's exactly what it is, it is the perfect feedstock for prediction markets. But we really do need to talk about what's going on with this guy in in New York. This is a guy that wants government owned grocery stores, Complete price controls on everything from rent to what you pay for a can of tomatoes. It's generally speaking, we we've seen this occur over the decades and it's never done anything but bring an immense amount of pain, yet New York City residents have voted overwhelmingly that this is what they want.
It'll be interesting to see exactly what he does and how this folds out, but for right now just remember prediction markets is not an income stream. Say it to yourself prediction markets is not an income stream. Let's get over to Paolo Ardoino. He says the Tether backed brain computer interface is much more advanced than Elon Musk's Neuralink. This is James Hunt from theblock.co. But before I begin, I posit the question. How in the hell does a stablecoin company get to the point where they can at least say in public that they have a brain computer chip interface that is more advanced than what Elon Musk has been working on for years, who is more plugged in to the technical side of that kind of life than Tether would be. Tether's plugged in to the economic side of stuff.
It honestly, to me, it doesn't make sense, and it's kinda scary when I see shit like this because did they do a good job? Is somebody who's gonna get this thing shoved in their brain going to turn into something that we just don't wanna see? I hope not, man. But of all the projects Tether has invested in over recent years, BlackRock Neurotech stands out as one of the favorites for CEO Paolo Ardoino. In the latest episode of the Block's Big Brain podcast, Ardoino said that the brain computer interface firm needed a name change soon to avoid confusion with the famous asset manager and Bitcoin ETF issuer BlackRock.
However, he claimed the firm is ready already ahead of Neuralink, the neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk, which develops brain computer interfaces designed to connect the human brain directly to computers, which I still think is a very bad idea. But one of the initial goals of such firms is to help treat neurological disorders such as paralysis and blindness by implanting a small device that can record and stimulate brain activity. In the long term, Musk envisions Neuralink could enable high bandwidth communication between humans and machines, potentially merging human cognition with artificial intelligence.
Tether's $200,000,000 strategic investment in BlackRock Neurotech in April of twenty twenty four made it the majority stakeholder in the firm founded in 2008 out of the University of Utah by scientist and BCI pioneers doctor Florian Solzbacher and Marcus Gerhardt. Using BlackRock's Neurotech technology, patients have operated robotic arms, maneuvered wheelchairs, sent messages, surfed the web, and even driven a car, all with just the power of their thoughts, Tether said at that time, quote, I think they are much more advanced than Neuralink in this moment, Ardoino said to the block. They have more than 40 patients already, and the next iteration of the brain chip is just insane.
Similar to Musk, Ardoino also envisions developing a type of brain operating system in the longer term, quote, what I want to do to compete in a different way than anyone else is to build an open source brain operating system so that I believe that in the future, in the next fifteen to thirty years, this will become the next smartphone. As if it wasn't bad enough already, quote, maybe we are in time to build that technology that is open source so so so that if I have to put it in myself, then I'm not going to be controlled by a tech giant. I'm a paranoid guy, so I just want to make sure that everyone is playing on an even playing field, end quote. Tether, whose team of less than 200 people generated a profit of $13,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, in 2024 and currently holds more than a 100,000 Bitcoin.
They have been aggressively deploying capital into a variety of projects beyond stablecoins in recent years across sectors, including artificial intelligence, telecommunications, data centers, energy infrastructure, and Bitcoin mining. So there we have the answer to my question as to how it is that they are being able to claim that they're ahead of Elon Musk. They've simply just invested into another competing company that's doing pretty much the same thing. But be that as it may, who is it on this team of 201 people because he's got a staff of 200, and I'll just say Paulo Ardoino is the two hundred and first.
Who on this staff is, like, basically rifling through all this data to find what to invest in, and how are they sure that they're investing in the proper thing. Alright. So still there's there's some questions that I have as to the extent to which the team over at Tether is extending their reach well beyond stable coins. And yet everywhere they touch, it has something to do with things like artificial telecommunications and data centers and energy infrastructure, Bitcoin mining. And if you wrap all that up plus, you know, brain computer interfacing and a couple of other things like agriculture, which they are also into, and I do believe that they are talking about real estate. It all becomes a nice, pretty centered package that I think would be considerable it it would I think people like Paulo Arduino would consider that the future of investment.
That those sectors is really what's going to take off and that they already have been taking off, but I think as we get tighter and tighter and tighter in economics and computers and telecommunications and energy infrastructure and economics in the form of Bitcoin, they all start squishing together. You start getting into this weird critical mass much like the compression of a uranium core of nuclear material to start a fission reaction. So it still is a little unnerving that somebody who started out building stable coin shit is now wanting to plug a open source brain interface into people.
One that I could do myself. What am I gonna do? Drill? Hey, I got a Stanley drill. I'll just drill this hole into my head and shove it on in there, and I'm sure everything will just be fine. Because I don't know how else you're going to get a brain computer interface unless you're just gonna wear, I don't know, a magnetic resonance imaging machine on your head all day long. And I I I don't know, man. Everything about this just gives me the willies. The amount of shit that can go wrong is gotta be a much longer list than the amount of stuff that would be fun to have because of something like this. From a risk reward standpoint, I don't think it's worth it.
But let's go on to Arizona where the house of representatives have approved the creation of a Bitcoin reserve with seized funds. Seize this, honkers. Atlas 21. On June, yesterday, the Arizona house of representatives gave the green light to bill h b third twenty three twenty four with 34 votes in favor of and 22 against. The measure, now awaiting final approval from governor Hobbs, oh, Hobbs, represents a new initiative in the state management of seized cryptocurrencies. You mean stolen. The bill has already been passed by the senate the previous week with 16 votes in favor and 14 against after suffering a setback during its final reading in the house, which was last May.
Twenty three twenty four grants the state treasurer the authority to establish the Bitcoin and digital asset reserve fund, a dedicated fund for overseeing digital assets obtained through criminal forfeiture. That's really actually all we really need to know about this, ladies and gentlemen. I don't like it because it's like, okay. Well, we don't wanna actually, you know, spend our our actual money buying the best asset on the face of the planet, but we don't mind holding the shit that we've stolen, and most likely they've stolen it from people that didn't deserve to have it stolen from. I'm sorry, man, but this criminal, civil asset forfeiture shit, it's gotta be met with the the with some kind of resistance at one point.
Otherwise, they're just gonna say, we're just gonna take your shit, man. Anyway, if you do have money, you might consider putting it into a Leathermint wallet from the leathermint.com. The circle p is open for business, and the pleb known as Leathermint makes handmade wallets, belts. Now he's actually making watch bands too, and I don't I think they're actually on sale at the leathermint.com. That's the leathermint.com. But right now, I wanna talk to you about this really cool looking wallet that he's come up with called Max.
It's orange and white. Mostly white though. You know how I normally say, hey. Don't wear swag. Don't don't let people know that you got the Bitcoin. This wallet is a way to celebrate your love for Bitcoin without letting a damn single person know that you have Bitcoin, and it's because of the color combination. This thing is solid white with Bitcoin orange orange, accents and the stitching the stitching, which is always what makes or breaks something like a wallet or a belt, is done in orange thread. It looks really cool. He calls it the Max because it's eccentric and bold. The wallet captures the flamboyant energy of Max Kizer himself.
Designed with a flare for the unconventional, it stands out with its vibrant personality, unapologetic style crafted from Safiano calfskin on the outside and supple goat skin on the inside. It's a wallet for those who embrace individuality and defy the ordinary just like Max Kizer. So it's fully lined and it's RFID shielded, which means that if you put in your if if you're still using credit cards or something with a magnetic strip and you don't want somebody to scan your ass with a little ass scanner that they have, The RFID shielding will protect you against that from anything that's in the wallet.
It's hand stitched. Again, this is some of the best stitching I've ever seen. It has eight card pockets and, of course, a bill compartment if you are still using dirty, nasty fiat. This thing is freaking gorgeous. It is absolutely gorgeous. So, if you decide to buy the Max wallet from the leathermint.com, please use the code Bitcoinand and get a let's see. Let me make sure that I've got a deal worked out with them. Get 10% off with coupon code bitcoin and at the leathermint.com. That's the leathermint.com. Leathermint is a pleb just like you and he makes gorgeous leather items by hand.
They will outlast you, and they will probably fight over it after you're dead. Let's get on to Anthony pump pump pump pump pump Pompliano. He's in the news again from CoinDesk. ProCap BTC, the Bitcoin native financial services firm led by entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, said that it bought 1,208 Bitcoin just one day after announcing a $385,000,000 purchase of the largest cryptocurrency yesterday. The company said it paid an average of a $105,977 for each token this time, pricing the transaction at $128,000,000 With this move, the company now holds a total of almost just shy of 5,000 bitcoin which recently reclaimed 108,000.
The acquisition comes just two days after ProCrap whoops. Sorry, Paul. ProCrap. ProCrap BTC announced its intention to go public through a $1,000,000,000 business combination with Columbus Circle. The Bitcoin buying spree underlies ProCap's strategic commitment to steadily build up its stock of BTC by immediately deploying capital raised at signing. The firm has delivered instant instant Bitcoin exposure to equity investors, reinforcing its Bitcoin centric investment thesis. ProCap has I've done it again. ProCap. ProCap has said it views Bitcoin not just as an asset, but as a core financial benchmark, which it refers to as, quote, the new hurdle rate. So twice, big buys yesterday and another fairly large buy today, although it's about a third it's about a third as much. Still, though, a $128,000,000 just plopping down after you already bought 385,000,000 the day before.
Ain't nothing to sneeze at. So the question that I saw on the social medias earlier today is somebody asking the question, can we start asking what value these Bitcoin treasury companies actually produce? This is my question. What product and service are you offering that generates income, not yield? Income to you, the company. And then for the investors of those companies, there will be a yield generated by that revenue. But I'm not seeing any revenue generated by any one of these companies. Not yet, anyway. And I haven't seen any concrete plans to tell me how these companies plan to generate any revenue at all.
And honestly, ladies and gentlemen, that shit's disconcerting. But as usual, there's nothing that I can do about it, so I'm gonna run the numbers. Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up two points today after being hammered all the way down to $63 a barrel. We're at 65, 63. Brent Norsee is up almost two points to $68.36. Natural gas is down a point back down to three dollars and one half. Well, that'd be, like, you know, $3.50, per thousand cubic feet. And gasoline is up almost a half to peak just below $2.10 a gallon. Gold is up a quarter to $33.41.
Silver is up point 72%. Platinum is up one and a quarter. Copper is up two thirds, and palladium is up point 16%. Most of ag is in the red today. I got the biggest loser looking like it's gonna be rough rice down two and a third. Biggest winner is sugar. Nope. Biggest winner is cotton, point 9% to the upside. Live hogs are or live cattle is down a third. Lean hogs are up a third, and feeder cattle are down point 12%. The Dow is at in the red, point one six percent to the downside. S and P is crawling sideways slightly in the green. Nasdaq is up point 1% and the S and P Mini is down one half.
Bitcoin is chilling out at a $107,400. That is a 2,140,000,000,000 market cap. We can purchase 32.1 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,883,144.5 of. An average fees per block are kind of low, 0.04, taking in fees on a per block basis. Looks to be about eight blocks carrying 11,000 unconfirmed transactions, high priority rates costing 3 Satoshis per vbyte as is low priority rates. After yesterday's dip below 800 exahashes per second on the hash rate, we are back up but not by much. 805.3 exahashes per second and it looks like the reason was not The United States bombing Iranian mining infrastructure.
It's more likely it is this massive heat bubble probably due to global warming, the climate change, whatever. It's all over The United States, and we've got, like like, energy production is is maxing out. It's maxing the f out. So it may very well be that some of the costs that I've seen on a megawatt per hour basis, it's no wonder that some of the smaller miners are probably, I can't verify it, but are probably taking entire banks of mining offline. It's just too expensive to mine right now. That's most likely what the hell is going on with mining. Now, on to node wars redo. 1776 with sixty nine sixty nine dude says, thanks for continuing to bring us consistent balance coverage on Bitcoin news. Still my fave show. My AI friend agrees that not only is your show x, but it is y.
L l o l. Even if the core code changes, end change ends up being a bit of a nothing burger, I think a lot of users have been swayed to run knots by the elitist heavy handedness the core devs came across with shutting down discourse etcetera etcetera. That and Peter Todd's supersized ego and smug face. Anyway, here's some stats. Thank you for the great content. Yeah. Seventeen seventy six. CORE did not handle this public relation wise in any manner whatsoever that is even remotely conducive to not fucking it up. They really messed this up. They really show their arrogance. And, I mean, it's I'm not surprised that they didn't that they, you know, showed their ass and in so doing, you know, letting people on just how arrogant some of these people are.
But I I'm not I'm just not a core hater. I think that they screwed up big time with the way they handled all this, but I don't hate them. I just hope that at one point or another somebody gets savvy and starts asking themselves questions on how do we not alienate people? Anyway, anonymous was six oh, well, sorry. Not that same one. Mister Satstacker, that's what I'm looking for, with 5,000 says nothing. Progressively worse with a thousand says nothing. Thank God for Digital Pain Handler with a thousand that says power to the node runners, let's go bitcoin knots. Yodle with 511 says nothing. Turkey with 500 says nothing. Pulsar nine.
500 says thanks. It'll be interesting to see how this core versus nuts plays out. Thanks for keeping us informed. You're welcome, sir. Turkey with 500 says nothing. Pies with a 100 says thank you, sir. No thank you. And that is the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Meta Planet boosts Bitcoin strategy and pumps $5,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, into its United States subsidiary company, Alex Larry for Bitcoin News, Japanese investment firm, Meta Planet, has just injected $5,000,000,000 into its US subsidiary, Meta Planet Treasury Corporation, as part of its plan to grow its Bitcoin holdings and expand globally in the digital asset space.
The funds will be used to accelerate the company's $555,000,000 plan to buy up to 210,000 BTC by the end of twenty twenty seven, which is one percent of Bitcoin's total supply. Meta Planet has already made good progress recently increasing its holdings to 1,000 no. I'm sorry. 11,111 BTC worth over $1,100,000,000. Meta Planet's US arm, Meta Planet Treasury Corporation, launched this May 2025. It's based in Florida and is a key part of the company's strategy. Florida and Miami, in particular, have become pro Bitcoin havens and digital asset infrastructure is growing. By entering The US market, the company will benefit from deep capital markets, institutional infrastructure, and transparent regulation to buy and manage large amounts of Bitcoin.
The company will access both exchange and over the counter markets for large BTC purchases. This US expansion underscores our determination to establish a globally integrated treasury model, Meta Planet said in a statement, continuing, the company believes this approach will drive long term accretion to shareholder value, enhance treasury yield efficiency, and reinforce our positioning at the forefront of Bitcoin based capital market innovation, end quote, which said nothing. How are you going to make money? The $5,000,000,000 will be funded by exercising stock acquisition rights from previously issued convertible securities.
The funds will be used to or used exclusively for Bitcoin purchases with no change to the use of proceeds as previously disclosed. The 55 the $555,000,000 plan was announced on 06/06/2025 and outlines Meta Planet's path to becoming one of the world's largest corporate Bitcoin holders, and the company will buy 30,000 BTC by the end of twenty twenty five and 200 and 10,000 BTC over the next few years. This is not just a financial move, but a strategic one. AI wrote that. I can almost guarantee it. Because it's not just x, it's y. It's about building transparent, efficient, and global treasuries on Bitcoin.
Meta Planet stock has gone up over 1250% in the last six months, and part of that is due is due to their aggressive push into Bitcoin. But the recent announcement has caused short term volatility in the stock after hitting $15. The United States listed MTP LF shares dropped to $10.9 well, I'm sorry, $10.90. And the Tokyo listed shares dropped 5.38% closing at 1,547 Japanese yen. Despite the dip, institutional investors are showing strong interest. And Citigroup and Capital Group have both reportedly bought 3,000,000 shares of Meta Planet just this month. That's Citigroup and Capital Group, guys. Analysts see this as a sign of growing confidence in Bitcoin focused corporate strategies, and then they talk about the worries of all this bullshit and that the fact that there are 240 public companies now holding over 832,000 BTC.
Do you remember when Rodolfo Novak first put out bitcoin treasuries.com? I do. And there was eight companies on it, and then there were nine. And then a couple of days later, there were 10. And then I turned around after a weekend, and there were 15. And now we're at 240 public companies on that list. He's not gonna be able to keep up with it much longer. I can almost guarantee it. But let's get over to the Burger Meister Meister Burger guy, you know, the big fat man that is Augustin Karstens at the BIS who says stablecoins fail as money and calls for strict limits on their role.
I think the BIS may be, you know, being shown their hat. Just saying. Ammon Haskwan is for CoinTelegraph. A new report from the Bank of International Settlements challenged the notion that stablecoins can serve as money in a modern financial system. According to the BIS annual economic report 2025, stablecoins fail the fundamental tests of singleness, elasticity, and integrity. Three critical criteria that define effective monetary instruments. Yeah. According to fucking who, dude? The BIS describes stablecoins as digital bearer instruments that resemble financial assets more than they do actual money. Quote, stablecoins perform poorly when assessed against the three tests for serving as the mainstay of the monetary system, the report said.
Unlike central bank backed money, which is accepted at par and requires no background checks, private entities issue stablecoins and often trade at fluctuating rates. This undermines the core principle of money singleness, the report claimed. Oh my god. The the horror. Elasticity, the second test, is crucial for absorbing shocks and meeting large value payment demands, BIS said in the report. It pointed out that any additional supply of stablecoins thus requires full upfront payment by its holders likening it to a strict cash in advance setup that contrast with the flexibility of modern banking systems where central banks provide liquidity on an as needed basis.
The third and perhaps most damning failure lies in the area of integrity. The report claimed that stablecoin's design, especially those transacted via unhosted wallets on public blockchains, makes them prone to financial crime. Stablecoins have significant shortcomings when it comes to promoting the integrity of the monetary system, the BIS noted, emphasizing their vulnerability to money laundering, sanctions, evasion, and, of course, the ever present terrorist financing. But what about children? Guess they decided not to wrap it in children today. But while acknowledging the continued demand for stablecoins due to features like cross border accessibility and lower transaction costs, the BIS argued that they should only play a limited yet well regulated role.
Society can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money. Oh, my God. Holy shit. I gotta read that one again. Society can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money, the report cautioned, quote, bold action by central banks and other public authorities can push the financial system along the right path in partnership with the financial sector. Circle, the company behind USDC, saw its stock drop more than 15% on Tuesday after the BIS report hitting $222. Circle shares had reached an all time high of $299 on Monday.
Despite its hard take on stablecoins, the BIS report praised tokenization as a transformative innovation for the next generation monetary and financial system. It said tokenization builds on the current financial system rather than replacing it. Some in the crypto community said it's no surprise that the BIS paper was generally negative on stablecoins given that it is a regulatory body owned by global central banks. Quote, the BIS is hysterical in its opposition to crypto, Jim Walker, chief economist at Althea Capital wrote, quote, the first criterion backed by a central bank should make it a laughing stock given the historical failures of those institutions around the world. Yeah. No shit. That's why I'm freaking out about this sentence.
We can relearn the historical lessons about the limitations of unsound money. That's what the BIS deals in. That's what the Federal Reserve deals in. That's what the Central Bank of your the European Central Bank does, all of the central banks. And there's this this little this too little too late attitude of this statement to of the BIS just pretty much reinforces what I've always suspected that they literally do not give a shit. They're going to do what they do. They don't care about you and they never have and they never really will. And they're really not going to try to change anything because they they work themselves into a hole that is just too damn deep and it's so deep in fact that sunlight isn't penetrating down to where these demons dwell.
That said, it's no wonder that they're hysterical, but it's not because of the it's not because of what, Jim Walker said. It's the the historical failures of these institutions is not why they're hysterical in the opposition to stable coins. It's their loss of power. Because it's like it's that's one of the things about private concerns is that that competition between different private concerns that are trying to bring anything to market necessarily limits the amount of communication and coordination those entities have with each other because they're trying to compete with each other. But you get the gaggle of demons that we've got in the West that essentially rules the world in an in an oligarchy because that's what it is at this point. They have extreme communication and extreme coordinate coordination line you know, they they're extremely coordinated.
I'm sorry. It's like I woke up today and I've I felt hungover. It's really weird because I didn't have a drop of alcohol to drink at all anytime at all yesterday, and somehow or another, it's hard to get my brain to think. But you see what I'm saying? They Circle is not going to have the kind of relationship with Tether that is going to make just a few people, give them the ability to easily control massive amounts of people, they're going to compete against each other. So they're more in line with what the customer wants than the BIS is because their customers are other central banks and their customers are governments and massive corporations.
So they don't that's an element of control. I don't think any of these people are prepared to even remotely conceive of losing. They're going to fight. And when their claws eventually come out to full length and they start swinging harder than they're already swinging now, you'll know exactly exactly just how hysterical they can be. But South Korea does not listening to the BIS because South Korean banks plan a won pegged stablecoin launch by next year. Ezra Raguera has it for CoinTelegraph. Eight, eight, count them, eight major South Korean banks will team up to launch a stablecoin pegged to the country's won currency, marking a significant step towards digital asset adoption.
According to an Econoville report, the project involves institutions including KB Kookmin, Shinjin oh, I can't pronounce any of these names. Shin Shinhan Woori, Nangip corporate, Sip City Korea, and SC First Bank. Oh my god. The collaboration aims to combat increased dollar dominance due to the rise of dollar peg stable coins and data from the real world asset tokenization tracker, rwa.xyz, shows that stablecoins have a market capitalization of well over $239,000,000,000. The data also shows that 99% of the stablecoins issued are pegged to The US Dollar. That's 99% pegged to the dollar, and they wanna do one for the won.
Anyway, with the project, the banks aim to put South Korea in a position to compete in the global digital finance market. The project is reportedly expected to materialize in late twenty twenty five and early twenty twenty six. And according to Economille, this project is the first big move from traditional banks to enter the digital asset space. The blockchain focused non profit Open Blockchain and the Decentralized Identity Association expressed support for the project. It will also be supported by the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute.
The report also noted that the stablecoin will adopt a trust based model or a one to one deposit token scheme which is still subject to regulatory approval. The stablecoin initiative aligns with a broader legislative push to build a clear regulatory structure for digital assets in South Korea. On June, South Korea's ruling party proposed the Digital Asset Basic Act to allow stablecoin issuance and boost the growth of crypto markets in the country. Following the development, Bank of Korea governor, Ri Chang Yong, expressed concerns that creating the stablecoin, mhmm, could make it easier for holders to exchange the currency for the dollar.
The official said that this could hurt the currency, I guess, the yuan, making it difficult for the central bank to manage. However, the country's central bank head said he wasn't issuing, or he wasn't against issuing a WonPeg stablecoin. Meanwhile, the Bank of Korea deputy governor Ryu Sang dae later said the rollout of WonPeg stablecoins should be gradual. The official said that banks should be the first entities to issue them to ensure a safety net. They are terrified of losing control. They are terrified of losing control. They are terrified of losing control, and they are going to lose control of this shit. It's good that that South Korea is gonna do this in direct opposition to what that fat piece of shit at the BIS has to say about it. They're all going to lose control, but you can see you can even see it here with this Bank of Korea governor.
He's expressing concerns, and this other deputy governor from the same bank, well, he's saying that the rollout should be gradual and that only banks should be able to issue them. I mean, it's very, very clear that these guys have had their boots on the throats of humanity for so long they don't even know how to function thinking about the possibility that they might not be able to do that any longer. It can't come too soon. Okay, finally, from Bitcoin magazine, the smarter web company has expanded its Bitcoin holdings with yet another £15,200,000 sterling purchase of Bitcoin.
The smarter web company, a web design development and online marketing service provider has announced yet another Bitcoin purchase acquiring a 196.9 more Bitcoin for £15,185,000 sterling as part of its ten year treasury strategy. The London listed technology company paid an average price of about a 103,290 US dollars per Bitcoin for the acquisition. The purchase brings the Smartweb company's total Bitcoin holdings to 543.52 Bitcoin representing a total investment of £42,388,000 sterling at an average price of a $104,450 per Bitcoin. So there you go. Smarter Web Company finishes finishes us out on the day, this day, this Wednesday, June 2025, and 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.
Introduction and Episode Overview
Paolo Ardoino's Brain-Computer Interface News
Arizona's Bitcoin Reserve Initiative
Peter Thiel's Investment in Prediction Markets
