Join me today for Episode 1053 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Cantor Fitzgerald and Bitcoin Financing
- CPI Numbers Show Inflation Cooling
- Bank of Russia Allows Big Boys to Bitcoin
- Rumble Buys Bitcoin, Metaplanet Buys More
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David Bennett:
It is 10:48AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is woah. Wow. It's the March already, 2025. And this is episode ten fifty three of Bitcoin. And we're just gonna jump right in. There's not gonna be any kind of preliminary what we're gonna talk about. We're just gonna talk about it because I got places to be and so do you. Cantor Fitzgerald is first up in the bucket list. Bitcoin Magazine written by Nick. Cantor Fitzgerald to expand Bitcoin financing amid United States policy shift. And if you didn't know, Cantor Fitzgerald is huge. They're very, very large. Lots of money under management.
Reflecting The United States' growing embrace of Bitcoin, investment bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, has announced partnerships with Anchorage Digital and Copper dot co to support its expanding global Bitcoin financing business. Anchor Digital and Copper will serve as collateral managers and custodians for Cantor Fitzgerald providing leverage to institutional investors holding Bitcoin. Anchorage Digital and Copper will use their industry leading security solutions to custody and safeguard client assets. Quote, we are thrilled to partner with Anchorage Digital and Copper whose industry leading security solutions will help us deliver best in class digital asset custody services for our clients, said Michael Cunningham, head of Bitcoin financing at Cantor Fitzgerald, quote, we are launching with 2,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, in initial financing and expect to substantially grow the operations over time.
With Cantor Fitzgerald's two billion dollar initial investment in Bitcoin financing, this partnership signals a major step in mainstream financial institutions embracing Bitcoin as a legitimate investment class. Nathan Macaulay, CEO and cofounder of Anchorage Digital added, quote, our partnership marks a major step towards or forward for the Bitcoin financing ecosystem. And I I I pausing here to say I keep emphasizing the word financing. This isn't about holding Bitcoin. This is about holding Bitcoin as part of financing.
Alright. So we're we're starting to get into the into the using Bitcoin as collateral. We've talked about it for years, and now Cantor Fitzgerald has figured it out and is moving forward appropriately. Anyway, it's built on the safety and security of federally regulated digital asset custody. And by combining the best of traditional finance with the best of crypto, we are expanding the horizon of what is possible for institutions in Bitcoin, end quote. Well, this partnership comes as Trump's administration continues to advance pro Bitcoin policies, including the creation of the, oh god, the strategic bitcoin reserve and reversing previous regulatory hostility under Joe Biden's administration.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently rescinded the staff accounting bulletin one twenty one, which had previously blocked banks from offering Bitcoin custody services. And following this, the office of the comptroller of the currency clarified that banks are indeed now permitted to engage in Bitcoin and crypto services, including asset custody. This shift helped pave the way for major financial institutions like Cantor Fitzgerald to expand into bitcoin services. Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald president, who now serves as The United States Secretary Of Commerce, has been instrumental in this shift.
Lutnick has been working closely with Trump on initiatives such as the strategic Bitcoin reserve, a key component in the administration's crypto strategy. Quote, institutional investors are increasingly looking to diversify their portfolios and identify secure routes into the digital asset market, said Amar Khushanad, CEO of Copper. This significant partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald will meet the growing demand for sophisticated financing solutions with Copper's leading and collateral management platform providing a complete toolkit for secure and strategic asset handling.
Okay. So what do we have here? We've got one of the largest companies with assets under management wholeheartedly embracing Bitcoin as a financing collateral or a collateral in which financing can occur on top of. It's it while it is, yes, this institution will be holding Bitcoin, and these companies will be doing the custody the third party custody services for Cantor Fitzgerald, Cantor Fitzgerald isn't all about just, hey. Let's put this stuff on our balance sheet. What Cantor Fitzgerald is doing is they're saying, we need this on our balance sheet because we need to be able to provide it as collateral for financing on other things. So now it's shifted from, hey, let's put it on our balance sheet because it's a great asset to have to this is the best asset to have, not only just to have it on the balance sheet, but that we can leverage against it and not in a futures contract situation.
Sort of like a, let's buy this building. Oh, well, what are we gonna use to collateralize the building? Well, we're going to use the Bitcoin that's on our balance sheet that is now being custodied third party, you know, in a third party manner by these other two companies, copper and whatever that other one was. What was the hell was it? Anchorage Digital. So now they're Cantor Fitzgerald and Howard Lutnick is opening using the the recension of SAB121, and they're taking it real like, taking the pig by the ears and just making it do what it wants. Again, it's another step that we have always talked about, but it's just now that we're starting to see it actually occur.
Okay. So on to Russia, where the Bank of Russia has proposed to allow crypto purchases but only by select investors, which means that even the Russian government hates their own plebs, Helen Partz, Cointelegraph. The Russian Central Bank is considering a three year experimental regime to authorize select Russian investors to trade cryptocurrencies. On March, the Bank of Russia announced a proposal to allow, quote, and literally, I can't believe they're saying the quiet part out loud, a limited circle of Russian investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, end quote.
In accordance with the instructions of the president of Russia, the Bank of Russia has sent proposals to the government for discussion on regulating investments in cryptocurrencies, the announcement stated, while proposing to legalize crypto trading for investors with at least $1,100,000 US in securities and deposits, the Bank of Russia also suggested introducing penalties for violations of the experimental regime. The central bank reiterated that other residents cannot settle payments using crypto. The ban on using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for payments in Russia was part of the country's very first crypto law, quote, on digital financial assets, end quote, which came into force in January of twenty twenty one. And in the new proposal, the central bank stated, quote, the Bank of Russia still does not consider cryptocurrency as a means of payment.
Therefore, it proposes to also introduce a ban on settlements between residents on transactions with cryptocurrency outside the experimental legal regime as well as establish liability for violating said ban, end quote. Despite banning residents from using crypto for payments in Russia, the Bank of Russia has been open about allowing cross border settlements in crypto since at least 2022. In December of twenty twenty four, Russian finance minister Anton Sulyanov confirmed that Russia had been actively experimenting with crypto in foreign trade in line with country the country's legislation, referring to another experimental legal regime, which was enforced in September of twenty twenty four.
The Bank of Russia's reasoning to introduce the new crypto program for limited investors only came from efforts to increase the transparency of the local cryptocurrency market. Yeah. Bullshit. I know why they did it, and I'll tell you here in a sec. According to the central bank, such a framework would introduce standards for crypto asset service providers in Russia and expand investment opportunities for experienced investors willing to take on increased risks. Quote, the Bank of Russia has repeatedly noted that private cryptocurrencies are not issued nor guaranteed by any jurisdiction based on mathematical algorithms and are subject to increased volatility, the authorities stated adding, therefore, investors, when deciding to invest in cryptocurrency, should be aware that they are taking on the risks of potential loss of their funds.
In the announcement, the central bank said that it also proposed to allow qualified companies to become participants in the experiment. For financial institutions that want to invest in cryptocurrency, the Bank of Russia will establish regulatory requirements taking into account the level and nature of the risks of such an asset, the authority said. By potentially allowing eligible Russian firms to invest in cryptocurrencies, the Bank of Russia may be paving the way for a Russian MicroStrategy or a company that would be committed to buying large amounts of BTC following the lead of Michael Saylor's strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy.
A number of companies worldwide, including Tesla, Meta Planet, Melius, have started purchasing BTC since Saylor's strategy purchased its first coins of in August of twenty twenty. Okay. So that's the end of the article. But that's not why they're doing this. They hate the plebs. Like any government hates hates their plebs. They just can't stand the thought of civilians having any kind of power differential whatsoever. Okay. So what I think is going on here is that the Central Bank of Russia in collusion with the president of Russia, that'd be Vladimir Putin, Putin on the ribs, they wanna make sure that they fill their bags first this time. Because what they're watching in The United States is the following.
The plebs got the Bitcoin first. The United States has around 14% of the population or, let's say, between 1214% of the population actually hold some Bitcoin. Okay? And then after all, after we've gone through all the stuff that we've gone through, Trump gets up at Bitcoin $20.24 and says Bitcoin strategic reserve or strategic Bitcoin reserve, however you wanna put it. At that moment, the individual states of The United States started saying shit. They'd be caught in the middle between the citizenry that resides in their states and the federal government, and both of them have bags, but the states themselves do not have bags.
So the states are like, we gotta we've gotta fill our bags. And some states are going to be able to do it, and other states like Montana have decided to take themselves out behind the woodshed and blow their brains out so that the family wouldn't see. Okay. I'm just saying. The whole notion here in Russia is to make sure that the federal government of Russia fills their bags first, and then they want Russian companies to fill their bags. Because let's face it, it's an autocracy. It's a totalitarian regime. It's not really a democracy.
Yes. I'm going to use the word fascism, but I'm using the word fascism in the actual sense of the word where fascism is the collusion between private businesses and companies and whatever federal government of which jurisdiction they fall under to make damn sure that things go the way that they both want. They're both working with each other. Right? And, essentially, they wanna make sure that the cows in the field, I e, the citizenry of the company or the of the country is just that, just chattel and cattle. That they can milk. That they we're the only ones that are providing these services, and we're gonna make damn sure that you need these services.
Sure. You're gonna be able to work, and we're gonna pay you maybe like a pension. I don't know what they got going on in Russia for the retirees. But at one point or another, we're gonna get all that money back because me and the businesses are colluding with each other to make sure that the only way you can get what you need is through this collaboration between government and private businesses. And that's why the government wants to fill its bags and is letting companies fill their bags, and then the rich people of Russia be able to fill their bags. But as far as you plebs in Russia, yeah, your host. You don't get to do this.
Sad, man. Really sad. Be aware, a new Lazarus thing is on the horizon. That's that North Korean hacking group. Remember, that whole 1,400,000,000.0 or $1,500,000,000 hack of that Ethereum cold wallet that happened a couple of weeks ago, that was Lazarus. And it was done with this JavaScript injection. Well, apparently, Lazarus is at it again with a new batch of JavaScript packages with crypto stealing malware according to a report from researchers, luke edwards decrypt dot co. In a brand new attack, North Korea's Lazarus Group has been linked to six, count them, one, two, three, four, five, six, fresh malicious NPM packages.
Discovered by the socket research team, the latest attack tries to deploy backdoors to steal credentials. Lazarus is the infamous North Korean hacker group that's been linked to the recent one point four billion dollar Bybit hack, $41,000,000 hack of crypto casino stake, and the $27,000,000 hack of crypto exchange, CoinX, and countless others in the crypto industry. The group was initially linked to the $235,000,000 hack of India crypto exchange, Waresx, in July of twenty twenty four, but last month, the Delhi Police Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations Division arrested a Bengali man and seized three laptops in connection with that particular exploit.
But this new round of malware linked to Lazarus could also extract cryptocurrency data stealing sensitive data from Solana and Exodus crypto wallets. The attack works by targeting files in Google Chrome, Brave, and Firefox browsers, as well as keychain data on macOS specifically targeting developers who might unknowingly install the packages. Quote, attributing this attack definitively to Lazarus or a sophisticated copycat remains challenging as absolute attribution is inherently difficult, wrote Kirill Boichenko, threat intelligence analyst at socket security in a blog post. Quote, however, the tactics, techniques, and procedures observed in this NPM attack closely aligned with Lazarus' known operations extensively documented by researchers from Unit forty two, eCentire, Datadog, Phylum, and others since 2022.
The six packages that have been identified are IS buffer validator, UJ validator, Event handle package, Array empty validator, React event dependency, and Off validator. These work by using typosquatting with misspelled names to trick developers into installing them. According to Boychenko, the APT group created and maintained GitHub repositories for five of the malicious packages, lending an appearance of open source legitimacy and increasing the likelihood of the harmful code actually being integrated into developer workflows. The packages have been collectively downloaded over 330 times, and at the time of publishing, the socket team has petitioned for their removal, having reported the GitHub repositories and user accounts.
This type of technique has been used by by Lazarusen? Maybe that's a misspell of just Lazarus Group. Oh, it's Lazarus in the past, but they forgot the spacing. Sorry, guys. This type of technique has been used by Lazarus in the past with a Bybit exchange heist valued at the loss of around 1,400,000,000.0 in Ethereum, and about 20% of those stolen funds have become untraceable. No. It's more than that, guys. It's lots more than that. In a statement, Bybit CEO Ben Zhao said that 77% yeah. I went through this particular, data. The 77% are still traceable and 40% have gone dark or 20% have gone dark, all that. Yeah. It's all bullshit.
It's all been laundered. It's all been laundered. Ben is just trying to cover his own ass. But Boinchenko says that the group's tactic aligns with past campaigns leveraging multi stage payloads to maintain long term access, the cybersecurity experts note. So this these NPM packages are being used by developers. You think of them I don't know. I guess I can kind of think of them as, like, what happens if you are using a library for your programming project instead of building your own library. You just, I don't know, leverage some other library and you're, yeah, and you download the library. You put it as part of your your package with your program or whatever whatever it is that you've done. If the library that you downloaded is malicious and everything is like looking at that you're doing and all your users are doing on using your software, and it's all looking at an basically a compromised library, it's a real serious shit that can happen. And this is sort of the same thing.
This isn't me and you, the pleb you know, Joe Pleb on the street going to GitHub and just trying something out. This is like high like, I don't know. Think of, like, Casey Rod Armour, the guy that did the, all the oh, shit. What am I trying to say? Oh, god. What what is it? Those those shit. Hold on. Ordinals. My god. Ordinals. Ordinals and inscriptions. That's that's what we're talking about. When they say developers are using these NPM packages, they're talking about developers like Casey Rotimer. So when and he I don't think that he's done it. I I'm not. I'm just saying this is, like, this is at this level of developer, somebody who's created this thing called ordinals and inscriptions. And I don't think he's been compromised at all. I I don't like ordinals and inscriptions, but I'm pretty sure Casey knows what he's doing. Even if what he's doing isn't what I like, it doesn't really matter. I have no say in it. I'm just saying that if for whatever reason he was doing the same thing now and he, like, downloaded one of these NPMs and they were from the Lazarus group, then anybody who's got a wallet that's using the ordinals and that's doing stuff with the ordinals and descriptions, yeah, that wall is automatically compromised because the NPM package is operating in the background. That's why this you need to be very aware of this shit. Even if you're not a developer, be aware that when you download a wallet, maybe the first question that you should ask is, I wonder what NPM packages were used to make this wallet.
Alright? Be careful out there, guys. This this is not gonna stop it. It's gonna get worse. Onto the block and Brian McGlehan, who's writing this one, Bitcoin and United States stocks climb as the CPI inflation cools in February. And I've got some things to say about this. But this is what's going on. Bitcoin and US stocks increased in value on Wednesday after the consumer price index inflation rate for February came in lower than expected, providing a boost to risk assets amid ongoing economic uncertainty. I've gotta stop right there.
Because generally speaking, what normally occurs with risk assets is that risk assets can be bought a hell of a lot more easily if you can take loans to get the money to buy the risk asset with. Those loans, the interest rate on those loans, if they're too high, then you don't want risk assets. If they're low enough, then you're like, hell, yeah, man. Let me take all the loans I can get. Well, what are those interest rates dependent on? The Federal Reserve well, the Federal Reserve's funding rate, their yield, their their interest rate, which I can't remember what it is right now. I think it's, like, between 4.254.5% right now.
Well, they have they did not drop I they did not drop the interest rate last meeting at of the Fed. Okay? And they're saying that they're not really gonna want to drop the interest rate until June, or at least that's what some of the pundits are saying. However, why would they drop the federal funding rate if inflation is starting to actually cool? Because that means to them and and and I know the the CPI is a lie. I get it, guys. I get it. But they're using that number as a real number, and that's what actually makes the effect. So let's go with that. If they think what they're doing is working, and they and it's working in spite of the fact that they did not drop the interest rate to make access to money easier, then why the hell would they want to drop the rate again?
What I'm saying is this is the reverse of what we normally see. Generally speaking, when we see, quote, unquote, good news for the markets, that means bad news for anybody who's expecting the federal funds rate to drop, making access to money easier. And therefore, risk assets are the first to say, well, we're not gonna be able to buy any more of this stuff, so people we gotta punch out. But we did not see that this time, and I don't know why. Let's see if the rest of this has some kind of information we can use to figure this out. The CPI rose 0.2 in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, bringing the annual inflation inflation rate to 2.8 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Well, this figure was below economist projections of 2.9% and marked a decline from January's zero point '5 percent monthly increase. The core CPI, which excludes volatility things like food and energy prices, also rose 0.2% month over month and 3.1 on an annual basis, and both of those are slightly below estimates. The softer than expected inflation data has fueled optimism that the Federal Reserve could pivot toward interest rate cuts sooner rather than later, bolstering both cryptocurrencies and traditional markets. Okay. Pausing again because I'm reading this as this optimism that the Fed lowers their rates so that they can say, okay. Well, what we've done has already worked. So therefore but that's not the way this shit has worked in the past. Something's different here. I swear to god. I'm not I am not hallucinating.
There's a different sentiment on the street. Let's see if there's anything else. Bitcoin jumped nearly 4% in the last twenty four hours. The rally follows a broader rebound across risk assets as investors digest the possibility of monetary easing. Quote, today's data adds to the case for rate cuts, and risk assets are rallying in response. Bitcoin has rebounded, retesting 85 k, while index index futures push higher. This dynamic suggests that if rate cuts materialize this year, it could unleash a flood of liquidity propelling equities and crypto higher.
Mina added that Bitcoin appears to be on the verge of breaking out of its stubborn sub $90,000 range with the potential to test 95 resistance before making a run to the highly anticipated $100,000 market one more time. US stock market or US equities rallied alongside Bitcoin with all three major indices posting strong gains early Wednesday. And they go through the numbers of Dow, but we'll do that later. Tuesday's market session had been volatile following Trump's announcement of higher tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel, which he later reversed. All three major indexes have closed lower the previous day.
Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE settling above 4.28% on Tuesday. Again, that last piece of data, this doesn't make sense to me because their their yield control they're they don't have control of the yield on the ten year treasury bond. That means that real rates in the in the economies of the world are pushing higher no matter what the Fed does. Yet we've got soft inflation data coming out. The the it is no wonder that the markets are as twitchy as they are. And every like I said yesterday, every time Trump Trump can't sneeze without a barn catching on fire and destroying the livelihoods of some farm family. I mean, that's that's sort of like what it is.
Everybody's they're just tweaking out, man. I can't turn on the lights in the room without a whole bunch of junkies just jumping up and freaking out and, like, you know, running out of the windows and falling to their desks because they're just tweaking. That's what I see, man. This whole market is just, it doesn't make it it never made sense, but it really doesn't make sense now. Maybe it's time we run the numbers. Futures and commodities. I got oil up 2.13 back to $67.65. Britain, North Sea is up almost two points to $70.90. Natural gas, however, taking a dump 7.3% to the downside, gasoline is up 2.1% to $2.15.
All of the shiny metal rocks are gleaming in the sky. It's like losing the sky with diamonds because gold is up point 75% to $29.42 and 80¢. Silver is up 1.79. Platinum up 1.8. Copper up 1.7. Palladium is up a half. Ag is, I guess, fully mixed today. Biggest winner is gonna be cotton, up 1.3%. Corn is down 2.23%. Live cattle, well, it's up point 84% today. Lean hogs moving sideways and feeder cattle are up just over a full point. The Dow still struggling today down point 2%. However, it's not as bad as the last three days. The S and P is up point 36%. Nasdaq is up point 83%, and the S and P Mini is down point 17%.
And Bitcoin is having its I don't know. It's struggling today as as is everything. It's like, everything is linked together right now because we got a bunch of tweaker heroin addicts that are freaking out at the slightest mouse part. 82,530 gives us a market capitalization of $1,640,000,000,000. We can only get 27.9 ounces of shiny metal rock with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,835,732.22 of. And average fees per block are stuck at 0.04 BTC. Taking it fees on a per block basis. It looks to be that there are 10 blocks, a measly 10 blocks carrying 12,800 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 3 Satoshis per v byte.
Mining. Wow. The hash rate has risen again. 835.4 x of hashes per second. So got plenty of security for the Bitcoin network even though that they the fees are low and there's blood in the streets all over the place. The miners just don't seem to want to capitulate yet. We'll we'll we'll see how this works. So from yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and entitled Oceans of Blood. I got Psyduck with five sixty four. Satoshi says Psyduck. Anonymous with four twenty says thank you, sir. No thank you. Yodl with 300 says nothing. God's death with 237 says thank you, sir. No thank you. And Pies is back again with a hundred says thank you, sir.
Hashtag forty h p w. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. And if you do use the news that I give you to use, consider donating to the show because this is the way this thing works, man. This is value for value driven podcast. Not working all that hard on trying to get sponsors because nobody likes listening to a whole bunch of commercials. But if you like what I do and if you are able to put this news that I give you at least a call, even if it just does nothing but calm your nerves so that you are, like, informed as to what's going on, then send me a huge boostogram. You can do that with any of the podcasting two point o enabled podcasting apps like Fountain Fountain app, and you can find them at fountain.fm.
That's my daily driver, and I love that app. I've been using it for years at this point. You can, like, write me a note and say boost, and it will say, how much do you wanna boost? And you say, I don't know, a million sats. Hey. You know? Here's to dreaming. And then you hit the boost button and it sends me a million sats, but it doesn't send it to a third party. It sends it directly to me. I run my own lightning node. That's the lightning node that gets all the sats. And if you can't do that, you can stream me satoshis. You can stream me, like, 10 a minute, a hundred thousand, 10 thousand. Hell, even if you you could even do a million satoshis per minute and listen to all my shows and then all of a sudden, I got enough money to take plane trips and go do stuff and go interview people at other places.
Donate to the show, dude. Seriously. Donate. Donate. Donate to the show. Now Rumble. There's been a rumor of Rumble actually getting into Bitcoin, and that's been going on for a while. Well, apparently, they finally disclosed that they do, in fact, own $17,000,000 worth of Bitcoin in their treasury, and they may make additional, quote, strategic purchases. This is Daniel Coon riding for the block. Alternative video streaming platform, Rumble, has acquired a hundred and 88 Bitcoin prior to the recent market sell off according to an announcement on Wednesday.
The Nasdaq listed company purchased about $17,100,000 worth of Bitcoin at an average price of $91,000 per coin. The video sharing platform and cloud service provider said that it views this move as part of a strategic expansion into crypto and a hedge against inflation. The Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovsky previously announced that the company would acquire up to $20,000,000 worth of Bitcoin. It announced its first round of buying on January on the day of president Trump's inauguration, though it did not disclose the total amount actually purchased. The firm may make additional Bitcoin purchases depending on market conditions and its cash needs.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fallen significantly, blah blah blah, quote, these I'm just gonna get all the way past where where they're giving us old news and get back into this Pavlovsky stuff. These holdings have the potential to serve as a valuable hedge against inflation and will not be subject to dilution like so many overprinted government issued currencies. We are proud to officially hold Bitcoin as we continue to grow and ingrain crypto into our company's DNA. That's an interesting that's an interesting word to use. Anyway, that was Pavlovsky. Is there anything else? Yes. In late December, the world's largest stable coin issuer, Tether, made a $775,000,000 strategic investment in the right leaning streaming platform, Rumble, with $250,000,000 of the funds to, quote, support growth initiatives.
The company previously raised funds in 2021 at a $500,000,000 valuation, including commitments from Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, and vice president JD Vance. Uh-oh. That could that could come back to bite. It's well, I mean, the conflict of interest. I'm just I'm just saying. I see conflicts of interest everywhere. They're they're generally speaking, they're not good even if we like both JD Vance and Bitcoin and Rumble. That's not what I'm getting at. It's I'm I'm not I don't have a problem with it. I'm just saying it's a conflict of interest and that shit can come back and bite you in the butt. Anyway, earlier this year, Rumble entered into a cloud service agreement with the government of El Salvador, where Tether is setting up a headquarters.
Rumble's cloud service business hosts Trump's majority owned social application, Truth Social, and Rumble account or accounts approximately 70,000,000 monthly active users and has posted net losses for the first three quarters of twenty twenty four, the last quarter it reported financial results. RRUM, the ticker symbol, is up over 3% to $8.10 on the day. The stock is down about 33% year over year. So rumble on deck fully now. What about Cali? Oh, California. Well, this is it this is interesting. This is out of Bitcoin magazine. Vivec Syn Bitcoin is writing actually, I have just no. It's Vivec Syn.
But somehow or another, it says Vivec Syn Bitcoin. Maybe he changed his name legally. Who knows? Anyway, California legislators has endorsed a Bitcoiner for the 500,000,000,000 pension board of directors. What the hell? California legislators have endorsed Bitcoin nonprofit founder, Dom Bai, b e I, in his campaign for a seat on the board of the California Public Employees Retirement System. CalPERS, that's the name of the California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS oversees a massive 500,000,000,000, that's half a trillion dollar pension fund serving over 2,000,000 public sector retirees. And if elected, he would be the first openly pro Bitcoin voice on the 13 member board.
Bai is a sixteen year veteran firefighter who founded Proof of Workforce, a nonprofit providing Bitcoin education to workers, unions, and pension funds, he previously served on Santa Monica's Pension Advisory Board and played a key role in the city's firefighter union, becoming one of the first to actually hold Bitcoin. Through his outreach work, he has assisted multiple unions, associations, and pensions in the exploration and adoption of Bitcoin strategies, and this includes spearheading education efforts for the Wisconsin retirement system. He said, quote, now more than ever, pension participants and stakeholders need to engage with their pension funds.
I'm running for the CalPERS board of trustees with the goal of being a conduit for engagement and transparency while advocating for the long term health and success of the nation's largest pension fund, end quote. He has received endorsements from a wide range of supporters, including state senator Ben Allen, Tony Vasquez, and the California Board of Equalization, Santa Monica Mayor, Lana Negrete, Vancouver Mayor, Ken Sim, President of the Santa Monica Firefighters Local eleven o nine, Garrett Childers, and others.
CalPERS faces growing headwinds with its traditional sixty forty portfolio allocation, struggling amid inflation and rising interest rates. With ballots going out in late August, BUY's bitcoin credentials could resonate with California's public workforce seeking new strategies to shore up their retirement security. His campaign website accepts donations in both fiat and Bitcoin. So having a Bitcoiner be recommended for a board of directors of a $500,000,000,000 pension fund for a state is kind of a big deal. He may not win. He may not get to sit on the board, but the fact that he's got so many people, you know, saying, rah rah, let let LFG, brother, is a good sign.
Now moving over to Meta Planet where the Japanese hotel company has acquired a hundred and 62 Bitcoin for $13,500,000 at an average price of 83,123 per Bitcoin, achieving a year to date Bitcoin yield of 53.2%. Dude, Meta Planet bought the dip. They bought the dip. They bought the dip freaking hard. The BTC yield represents the percentage change of the ratio of Bitcoin holdings to fully diluted shares outstanding over a given period. And as of March 12, Meta Planet holds 3,050 BTC valued at 253,700,000.0 with an average acquisition price of 83,180 per Bitcoin.
Additionally, the company has issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen bonds. Well, third, let's say let's just call it USD. 13 point 5 million USD in zero interest ordinary bonds to fund further Bitcoin acquisitions. At the time of writing, Meta Planet shares were trading at 3,630 yen, which is down almost 50% from its all time high in February. And by the way, that was CoinDesk's James Van Stratten writing. Coinbase has received the green light to offer crypto trading in India. Now this is a bigger deal than you might think. Why? Is it because I all of a sudden love Coinbase? No. I hate them. Can't stay in that company.
It's the it's the India thing that that is piquing my interest here because India has been flip flopping on whether Bitcoin is legal or not for years, like, at least seven years. I mean, they the the at one point or another, they hated Bitcoin, and then they love Bitcoin, and then they hated it again, and then they're going, okay. Well, maybe it's okay. And then they said, no. It's not okay. It just goes on and on and on with this country. But love them or hate them, Coinbase is huge. This is a big deal. I don't think India is gonna renege on this deal. We'll have to find out. Maybe Liz Napolitano from Decrypt will tell us more about it.
Coinbase has secured approval to offer digital asset trading in India, bringing it a step closer to reentering one of the world's largest crypto markets. The exchange is aiming to launch crypto trading services in India later this year. Coinbase first planted roots in India back in 2022, but it withdrew from the market a year later due to the regulatory hurdles. Quote, India's Developer community and entrepreneurial energy are unmatched, Coinbase regional managing director for APAC, John O'Loghlan, said in a statement. Coinbase's latest attempt to compete in the Indian market comes as local regulators and policymakers reevaluate more restrictive attitudes towards digital assets amid a broader pro crypto shift in The United States and other corners of the world. Yeah. India doesn't wanna be left out.
India boasts the world's highest rate of grassroots crypto adoption with a strong decentralized finance scene according to a 2024 Chainalysis report. But until now, the country's tight crypto regulations have kept many large industry players on the sidelines of its booming market. With local decision makers' stances on digital assets poised to change, India is now, quote, one of the most exciting market opportunities in the world, o'Loghlan said Tuesday in a statement. The executive added, wait. Oh, there it is. The executive added that India is a major hub for on chain development and increasing areas of focus for Coinbase, which launched its shitcoin 1 based layer two in 2023.
India has amassed the highest concentration of talent in the on chain space with 12% of all global developers residing in the country as of 2023. It's that local talent Coinbase is aiming to woo by putting down roots in India, O'Loghlan said, quote, by expanding access to our trusted platform and tools such as Base, we aim to empower a new generation of builders to stay home, innovate locally, and scale globally. So the suit speak tagline is still alive of innovate locally and scale globally. Whatever, dude. It's Coinbase. Their Coinbase is gonna Coinbase. Ain't a damn thing we can do about it. But the fact that India is like, maybe the the this whole strategic Bitcoin reserve thing in The United States has finally broken the back of one of the largest flip floppers on whether or not Bitcoin is going to be legal.
Maybe that finally maybe it finally broke their back. Who knows? I mean, next month, India could say, you know what? We changed our minds. Screw you guys. We're going home. I I I cannot tell you how many times I've had the report of India taking itself out behind the woodshed and blow their own brains out every single time that they made crypto illegal or Bitcoin that they didn't like or something that somebody couldn't have or whatever it was. They're constantly constantly pulling the trigger while the gun was aimed squarely at their temples. It's ridiculous. And I kind of expect that at one point or another we're gonna hear how they flip flop again, but this would be the last time because either one of two things will happen to India.
They will lose their footing on the at the global scale because they just refused to move into the future, Or they flip flop for the very last time and say, you know what? We we relent. We're saying uncle. We're on the mat. The five hundred pound wrestler is on top of us. We can't even breathe at this point. Okay. Uncle, uncle, uncle. I don't know. Who knows what's gonna happen? Alright. So that is the last story of the day. You guys go out, be good to each other, be good to your children, be good to your spouses, and be good to yourselves. I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 10:48AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is woah. Wow. It's the March already, 2025. And this is episode ten fifty three of Bitcoin. And we're just gonna jump right in. There's not gonna be any kind of preliminary what we're gonna talk about. We're just gonna talk about it because I got places to be and so do you. Cantor Fitzgerald is first up in the bucket list. Bitcoin Magazine written by Nick. Cantor Fitzgerald to expand Bitcoin financing amid United States policy shift. And if you didn't know, Cantor Fitzgerald is huge. They're very, very large. Lots of money under management.
Reflecting The United States' growing embrace of Bitcoin, investment bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, has announced partnerships with Anchorage Digital and Copper dot co to support its expanding global Bitcoin financing business. Anchor Digital and Copper will serve as collateral managers and custodians for Cantor Fitzgerald providing leverage to institutional investors holding Bitcoin. Anchorage Digital and Copper will use their industry leading security solutions to custody and safeguard client assets. Quote, we are thrilled to partner with Anchorage Digital and Copper whose industry leading security solutions will help us deliver best in class digital asset custody services for our clients, said Michael Cunningham, head of Bitcoin financing at Cantor Fitzgerald, quote, we are launching with 2,000,000,000, that's billion with a b, in initial financing and expect to substantially grow the operations over time.
With Cantor Fitzgerald's two billion dollar initial investment in Bitcoin financing, this partnership signals a major step in mainstream financial institutions embracing Bitcoin as a legitimate investment class. Nathan Macaulay, CEO and cofounder of Anchorage Digital added, quote, our partnership marks a major step towards or forward for the Bitcoin financing ecosystem. And I I I pausing here to say I keep emphasizing the word financing. This isn't about holding Bitcoin. This is about holding Bitcoin as part of financing.
Alright. So we're we're starting to get into the into the using Bitcoin as collateral. We've talked about it for years, and now Cantor Fitzgerald has figured it out and is moving forward appropriately. Anyway, it's built on the safety and security of federally regulated digital asset custody. And by combining the best of traditional finance with the best of crypto, we are expanding the horizon of what is possible for institutions in Bitcoin, end quote. Well, this partnership comes as Trump's administration continues to advance pro Bitcoin policies, including the creation of the, oh god, the strategic bitcoin reserve and reversing previous regulatory hostility under Joe Biden's administration.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently rescinded the staff accounting bulletin one twenty one, which had previously blocked banks from offering Bitcoin custody services. And following this, the office of the comptroller of the currency clarified that banks are indeed now permitted to engage in Bitcoin and crypto services, including asset custody. This shift helped pave the way for major financial institutions like Cantor Fitzgerald to expand into bitcoin services. Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald president, who now serves as The United States Secretary Of Commerce, has been instrumental in this shift.
Lutnick has been working closely with Trump on initiatives such as the strategic Bitcoin reserve, a key component in the administration's crypto strategy. Quote, institutional investors are increasingly looking to diversify their portfolios and identify secure routes into the digital asset market, said Amar Khushanad, CEO of Copper. This significant partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald will meet the growing demand for sophisticated financing solutions with Copper's leading and collateral management platform providing a complete toolkit for secure and strategic asset handling.
Okay. So what do we have here? We've got one of the largest companies with assets under management wholeheartedly embracing Bitcoin as a financing collateral or a collateral in which financing can occur on top of. It's it while it is, yes, this institution will be holding Bitcoin, and these companies will be doing the custody the third party custody services for Cantor Fitzgerald, Cantor Fitzgerald isn't all about just, hey. Let's put this stuff on our balance sheet. What Cantor Fitzgerald is doing is they're saying, we need this on our balance sheet because we need to be able to provide it as collateral for financing on other things. So now it's shifted from, hey, let's put it on our balance sheet because it's a great asset to have to this is the best asset to have, not only just to have it on the balance sheet, but that we can leverage against it and not in a futures contract situation.
Sort of like a, let's buy this building. Oh, well, what are we gonna use to collateralize the building? Well, we're going to use the Bitcoin that's on our balance sheet that is now being custodied third party, you know, in a third party manner by these other two companies, copper and whatever that other one was. What was the hell was it? Anchorage Digital. So now they're Cantor Fitzgerald and Howard Lutnick is opening using the the recension of SAB121, and they're taking it real like, taking the pig by the ears and just making it do what it wants. Again, it's another step that we have always talked about, but it's just now that we're starting to see it actually occur.
Okay. So on to Russia, where the Bank of Russia has proposed to allow crypto purchases but only by select investors, which means that even the Russian government hates their own plebs, Helen Partz, Cointelegraph. The Russian Central Bank is considering a three year experimental regime to authorize select Russian investors to trade cryptocurrencies. On March, the Bank of Russia announced a proposal to allow, quote, and literally, I can't believe they're saying the quiet part out loud, a limited circle of Russian investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, end quote.
In accordance with the instructions of the president of Russia, the Bank of Russia has sent proposals to the government for discussion on regulating investments in cryptocurrencies, the announcement stated, while proposing to legalize crypto trading for investors with at least $1,100,000 US in securities and deposits, the Bank of Russia also suggested introducing penalties for violations of the experimental regime. The central bank reiterated that other residents cannot settle payments using crypto. The ban on using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for payments in Russia was part of the country's very first crypto law, quote, on digital financial assets, end quote, which came into force in January of twenty twenty one. And in the new proposal, the central bank stated, quote, the Bank of Russia still does not consider cryptocurrency as a means of payment.
Therefore, it proposes to also introduce a ban on settlements between residents on transactions with cryptocurrency outside the experimental legal regime as well as establish liability for violating said ban, end quote. Despite banning residents from using crypto for payments in Russia, the Bank of Russia has been open about allowing cross border settlements in crypto since at least 2022. In December of twenty twenty four, Russian finance minister Anton Sulyanov confirmed that Russia had been actively experimenting with crypto in foreign trade in line with country the country's legislation, referring to another experimental legal regime, which was enforced in September of twenty twenty four.
The Bank of Russia's reasoning to introduce the new crypto program for limited investors only came from efforts to increase the transparency of the local cryptocurrency market. Yeah. Bullshit. I know why they did it, and I'll tell you here in a sec. According to the central bank, such a framework would introduce standards for crypto asset service providers in Russia and expand investment opportunities for experienced investors willing to take on increased risks. Quote, the Bank of Russia has repeatedly noted that private cryptocurrencies are not issued nor guaranteed by any jurisdiction based on mathematical algorithms and are subject to increased volatility, the authorities stated adding, therefore, investors, when deciding to invest in cryptocurrency, should be aware that they are taking on the risks of potential loss of their funds.
In the announcement, the central bank said that it also proposed to allow qualified companies to become participants in the experiment. For financial institutions that want to invest in cryptocurrency, the Bank of Russia will establish regulatory requirements taking into account the level and nature of the risks of such an asset, the authority said. By potentially allowing eligible Russian firms to invest in cryptocurrencies, the Bank of Russia may be paving the way for a Russian MicroStrategy or a company that would be committed to buying large amounts of BTC following the lead of Michael Saylor's strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy.
A number of companies worldwide, including Tesla, Meta Planet, Melius, have started purchasing BTC since Saylor's strategy purchased its first coins of in August of twenty twenty. Okay. So that's the end of the article. But that's not why they're doing this. They hate the plebs. Like any government hates hates their plebs. They just can't stand the thought of civilians having any kind of power differential whatsoever. Okay. So what I think is going on here is that the Central Bank of Russia in collusion with the president of Russia, that'd be Vladimir Putin, Putin on the ribs, they wanna make sure that they fill their bags first this time. Because what they're watching in The United States is the following.
The plebs got the Bitcoin first. The United States has around 14% of the population or, let's say, between 1214% of the population actually hold some Bitcoin. Okay? And then after all, after we've gone through all the stuff that we've gone through, Trump gets up at Bitcoin $20.24 and says Bitcoin strategic reserve or strategic Bitcoin reserve, however you wanna put it. At that moment, the individual states of The United States started saying shit. They'd be caught in the middle between the citizenry that resides in their states and the federal government, and both of them have bags, but the states themselves do not have bags.
So the states are like, we gotta we've gotta fill our bags. And some states are going to be able to do it, and other states like Montana have decided to take themselves out behind the woodshed and blow their brains out so that the family wouldn't see. Okay. I'm just saying. The whole notion here in Russia is to make sure that the federal government of Russia fills their bags first, and then they want Russian companies to fill their bags. Because let's face it, it's an autocracy. It's a totalitarian regime. It's not really a democracy.
Yes. I'm going to use the word fascism, but I'm using the word fascism in the actual sense of the word where fascism is the collusion between private businesses and companies and whatever federal government of which jurisdiction they fall under to make damn sure that things go the way that they both want. They're both working with each other. Right? And, essentially, they wanna make sure that the cows in the field, I e, the citizenry of the company or the of the country is just that, just chattel and cattle. That they can milk. That they we're the only ones that are providing these services, and we're gonna make damn sure that you need these services.
Sure. You're gonna be able to work, and we're gonna pay you maybe like a pension. I don't know what they got going on in Russia for the retirees. But at one point or another, we're gonna get all that money back because me and the businesses are colluding with each other to make sure that the only way you can get what you need is through this collaboration between government and private businesses. And that's why the government wants to fill its bags and is letting companies fill their bags, and then the rich people of Russia be able to fill their bags. But as far as you plebs in Russia, yeah, your host. You don't get to do this.
Sad, man. Really sad. Be aware, a new Lazarus thing is on the horizon. That's that North Korean hacking group. Remember, that whole 1,400,000,000.0 or $1,500,000,000 hack of that Ethereum cold wallet that happened a couple of weeks ago, that was Lazarus. And it was done with this JavaScript injection. Well, apparently, Lazarus is at it again with a new batch of JavaScript packages with crypto stealing malware according to a report from researchers, luke edwards decrypt dot co. In a brand new attack, North Korea's Lazarus Group has been linked to six, count them, one, two, three, four, five, six, fresh malicious NPM packages.
Discovered by the socket research team, the latest attack tries to deploy backdoors to steal credentials. Lazarus is the infamous North Korean hacker group that's been linked to the recent one point four billion dollar Bybit hack, $41,000,000 hack of crypto casino stake, and the $27,000,000 hack of crypto exchange, CoinX, and countless others in the crypto industry. The group was initially linked to the $235,000,000 hack of India crypto exchange, Waresx, in July of twenty twenty four, but last month, the Delhi Police Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations Division arrested a Bengali man and seized three laptops in connection with that particular exploit.
But this new round of malware linked to Lazarus could also extract cryptocurrency data stealing sensitive data from Solana and Exodus crypto wallets. The attack works by targeting files in Google Chrome, Brave, and Firefox browsers, as well as keychain data on macOS specifically targeting developers who might unknowingly install the packages. Quote, attributing this attack definitively to Lazarus or a sophisticated copycat remains challenging as absolute attribution is inherently difficult, wrote Kirill Boichenko, threat intelligence analyst at socket security in a blog post. Quote, however, the tactics, techniques, and procedures observed in this NPM attack closely aligned with Lazarus' known operations extensively documented by researchers from Unit forty two, eCentire, Datadog, Phylum, and others since 2022.
The six packages that have been identified are IS buffer validator, UJ validator, Event handle package, Array empty validator, React event dependency, and Off validator. These work by using typosquatting with misspelled names to trick developers into installing them. According to Boychenko, the APT group created and maintained GitHub repositories for five of the malicious packages, lending an appearance of open source legitimacy and increasing the likelihood of the harmful code actually being integrated into developer workflows. The packages have been collectively downloaded over 330 times, and at the time of publishing, the socket team has petitioned for their removal, having reported the GitHub repositories and user accounts.
This type of technique has been used by by Lazarusen? Maybe that's a misspell of just Lazarus Group. Oh, it's Lazarus in the past, but they forgot the spacing. Sorry, guys. This type of technique has been used by Lazarus in the past with a Bybit exchange heist valued at the loss of around 1,400,000,000.0 in Ethereum, and about 20% of those stolen funds have become untraceable. No. It's more than that, guys. It's lots more than that. In a statement, Bybit CEO Ben Zhao said that 77% yeah. I went through this particular, data. The 77% are still traceable and 40% have gone dark or 20% have gone dark, all that. Yeah. It's all bullshit.
It's all been laundered. It's all been laundered. Ben is just trying to cover his own ass. But Boinchenko says that the group's tactic aligns with past campaigns leveraging multi stage payloads to maintain long term access, the cybersecurity experts note. So this these NPM packages are being used by developers. You think of them I don't know. I guess I can kind of think of them as, like, what happens if you are using a library for your programming project instead of building your own library. You just, I don't know, leverage some other library and you're, yeah, and you download the library. You put it as part of your your package with your program or whatever whatever it is that you've done. If the library that you downloaded is malicious and everything is like looking at that you're doing and all your users are doing on using your software, and it's all looking at an basically a compromised library, it's a real serious shit that can happen. And this is sort of the same thing.
This isn't me and you, the pleb you know, Joe Pleb on the street going to GitHub and just trying something out. This is like high like, I don't know. Think of, like, Casey Rod Armour, the guy that did the, all the oh, shit. What am I trying to say? Oh, god. What what is it? Those those shit. Hold on. Ordinals. My god. Ordinals. Ordinals and inscriptions. That's that's what we're talking about. When they say developers are using these NPM packages, they're talking about developers like Casey Rotimer. So when and he I don't think that he's done it. I I'm not. I'm just saying this is, like, this is at this level of developer, somebody who's created this thing called ordinals and inscriptions. And I don't think he's been compromised at all. I I don't like ordinals and inscriptions, but I'm pretty sure Casey knows what he's doing. Even if what he's doing isn't what I like, it doesn't really matter. I have no say in it. I'm just saying that if for whatever reason he was doing the same thing now and he, like, downloaded one of these NPMs and they were from the Lazarus group, then anybody who's got a wallet that's using the ordinals and that's doing stuff with the ordinals and descriptions, yeah, that wall is automatically compromised because the NPM package is operating in the background. That's why this you need to be very aware of this shit. Even if you're not a developer, be aware that when you download a wallet, maybe the first question that you should ask is, I wonder what NPM packages were used to make this wallet.
Alright? Be careful out there, guys. This this is not gonna stop it. It's gonna get worse. Onto the block and Brian McGlehan, who's writing this one, Bitcoin and United States stocks climb as the CPI inflation cools in February. And I've got some things to say about this. But this is what's going on. Bitcoin and US stocks increased in value on Wednesday after the consumer price index inflation rate for February came in lower than expected, providing a boost to risk assets amid ongoing economic uncertainty. I've gotta stop right there.
Because generally speaking, what normally occurs with risk assets is that risk assets can be bought a hell of a lot more easily if you can take loans to get the money to buy the risk asset with. Those loans, the interest rate on those loans, if they're too high, then you don't want risk assets. If they're low enough, then you're like, hell, yeah, man. Let me take all the loans I can get. Well, what are those interest rates dependent on? The Federal Reserve well, the Federal Reserve's funding rate, their yield, their their interest rate, which I can't remember what it is right now. I think it's, like, between 4.254.5% right now.
Well, they have they did not drop I they did not drop the interest rate last meeting at of the Fed. Okay? And they're saying that they're not really gonna want to drop the interest rate until June, or at least that's what some of the pundits are saying. However, why would they drop the federal funding rate if inflation is starting to actually cool? Because that means to them and and and I know the the CPI is a lie. I get it, guys. I get it. But they're using that number as a real number, and that's what actually makes the effect. So let's go with that. If they think what they're doing is working, and they and it's working in spite of the fact that they did not drop the interest rate to make access to money easier, then why the hell would they want to drop the rate again?
What I'm saying is this is the reverse of what we normally see. Generally speaking, when we see, quote, unquote, good news for the markets, that means bad news for anybody who's expecting the federal funds rate to drop, making access to money easier. And therefore, risk assets are the first to say, well, we're not gonna be able to buy any more of this stuff, so people we gotta punch out. But we did not see that this time, and I don't know why. Let's see if the rest of this has some kind of information we can use to figure this out. The CPI rose 0.2 in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, bringing the annual inflation inflation rate to 2.8 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Well, this figure was below economist projections of 2.9% and marked a decline from January's zero point '5 percent monthly increase. The core CPI, which excludes volatility things like food and energy prices, also rose 0.2% month over month and 3.1 on an annual basis, and both of those are slightly below estimates. The softer than expected inflation data has fueled optimism that the Federal Reserve could pivot toward interest rate cuts sooner rather than later, bolstering both cryptocurrencies and traditional markets. Okay. Pausing again because I'm reading this as this optimism that the Fed lowers their rates so that they can say, okay. Well, what we've done has already worked. So therefore but that's not the way this shit has worked in the past. Something's different here. I swear to god. I'm not I am not hallucinating.
There's a different sentiment on the street. Let's see if there's anything else. Bitcoin jumped nearly 4% in the last twenty four hours. The rally follows a broader rebound across risk assets as investors digest the possibility of monetary easing. Quote, today's data adds to the case for rate cuts, and risk assets are rallying in response. Bitcoin has rebounded, retesting 85 k, while index index futures push higher. This dynamic suggests that if rate cuts materialize this year, it could unleash a flood of liquidity propelling equities and crypto higher.
Mina added that Bitcoin appears to be on the verge of breaking out of its stubborn sub $90,000 range with the potential to test 95 resistance before making a run to the highly anticipated $100,000 market one more time. US stock market or US equities rallied alongside Bitcoin with all three major indices posting strong gains early Wednesday. And they go through the numbers of Dow, but we'll do that later. Tuesday's market session had been volatile following Trump's announcement of higher tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel, which he later reversed. All three major indexes have closed lower the previous day.
Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE settling above 4.28% on Tuesday. Again, that last piece of data, this doesn't make sense to me because their their yield control they're they don't have control of the yield on the ten year treasury bond. That means that real rates in the in the economies of the world are pushing higher no matter what the Fed does. Yet we've got soft inflation data coming out. The the it is no wonder that the markets are as twitchy as they are. And every like I said yesterday, every time Trump Trump can't sneeze without a barn catching on fire and destroying the livelihoods of some farm family. I mean, that's that's sort of like what it is.
Everybody's they're just tweaking out, man. I can't turn on the lights in the room without a whole bunch of junkies just jumping up and freaking out and, like, you know, running out of the windows and falling to their desks because they're just tweaking. That's what I see, man. This whole market is just, it doesn't make it it never made sense, but it really doesn't make sense now. Maybe it's time we run the numbers. Futures and commodities. I got oil up 2.13 back to $67.65. Britain, North Sea is up almost two points to $70.90. Natural gas, however, taking a dump 7.3% to the downside, gasoline is up 2.1% to $2.15.
All of the shiny metal rocks are gleaming in the sky. It's like losing the sky with diamonds because gold is up point 75% to $29.42 and 80¢. Silver is up 1.79. Platinum up 1.8. Copper up 1.7. Palladium is up a half. Ag is, I guess, fully mixed today. Biggest winner is gonna be cotton, up 1.3%. Corn is down 2.23%. Live cattle, well, it's up point 84% today. Lean hogs moving sideways and feeder cattle are up just over a full point. The Dow still struggling today down point 2%. However, it's not as bad as the last three days. The S and P is up point 36%. Nasdaq is up point 83%, and the S and P Mini is down point 17%.
And Bitcoin is having its I don't know. It's struggling today as as is everything. It's like, everything is linked together right now because we got a bunch of tweaker heroin addicts that are freaking out at the slightest mouse part. 82,530 gives us a market capitalization of $1,640,000,000,000. We can only get 27.9 ounces of shiny metal rock with our one Bitcoin, of which there are 19,835,732.22 of. And average fees per block are stuck at 0.04 BTC. Taking it fees on a per block basis. It looks to be that there are 10 blocks, a measly 10 blocks carrying 12,800 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at 3 Satoshis per v byte. Low priority is gonna get you in at 3 Satoshis per v byte.
Mining. Wow. The hash rate has risen again. 835.4 x of hashes per second. So got plenty of security for the Bitcoin network even though that they the fees are low and there's blood in the streets all over the place. The miners just don't seem to want to capitulate yet. We'll we'll we'll see how this works. So from yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and entitled Oceans of Blood. I got Psyduck with five sixty four. Satoshi says Psyduck. Anonymous with four twenty says thank you, sir. No thank you. Yodl with 300 says nothing. God's death with 237 says thank you, sir. No thank you. And Pies is back again with a hundred says thank you, sir.
Hashtag forty h p w. And that's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news you can use. And if you do use the news that I give you to use, consider donating to the show because this is the way this thing works, man. This is value for value driven podcast. Not working all that hard on trying to get sponsors because nobody likes listening to a whole bunch of commercials. But if you like what I do and if you are able to put this news that I give you at least a call, even if it just does nothing but calm your nerves so that you are, like, informed as to what's going on, then send me a huge boostogram. You can do that with any of the podcasting two point o enabled podcasting apps like Fountain Fountain app, and you can find them at fountain.fm.
That's my daily driver, and I love that app. I've been using it for years at this point. You can, like, write me a note and say boost, and it will say, how much do you wanna boost? And you say, I don't know, a million sats. Hey. You know? Here's to dreaming. And then you hit the boost button and it sends me a million sats, but it doesn't send it to a third party. It sends it directly to me. I run my own lightning node. That's the lightning node that gets all the sats. And if you can't do that, you can stream me satoshis. You can stream me, like, 10 a minute, a hundred thousand, 10 thousand. Hell, even if you you could even do a million satoshis per minute and listen to all my shows and then all of a sudden, I got enough money to take plane trips and go do stuff and go interview people at other places.
Donate to the show, dude. Seriously. Donate. Donate. Donate to the show. Now Rumble. There's been a rumor of Rumble actually getting into Bitcoin, and that's been going on for a while. Well, apparently, they finally disclosed that they do, in fact, own $17,000,000 worth of Bitcoin in their treasury, and they may make additional, quote, strategic purchases. This is Daniel Coon riding for the block. Alternative video streaming platform, Rumble, has acquired a hundred and 88 Bitcoin prior to the recent market sell off according to an announcement on Wednesday.
The Nasdaq listed company purchased about $17,100,000 worth of Bitcoin at an average price of $91,000 per coin. The video sharing platform and cloud service provider said that it views this move as part of a strategic expansion into crypto and a hedge against inflation. The Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovsky previously announced that the company would acquire up to $20,000,000 worth of Bitcoin. It announced its first round of buying on January on the day of president Trump's inauguration, though it did not disclose the total amount actually purchased. The firm may make additional Bitcoin purchases depending on market conditions and its cash needs.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fallen significantly, blah blah blah, quote, these I'm just gonna get all the way past where where they're giving us old news and get back into this Pavlovsky stuff. These holdings have the potential to serve as a valuable hedge against inflation and will not be subject to dilution like so many overprinted government issued currencies. We are proud to officially hold Bitcoin as we continue to grow and ingrain crypto into our company's DNA. That's an interesting that's an interesting word to use. Anyway, that was Pavlovsky. Is there anything else? Yes. In late December, the world's largest stable coin issuer, Tether, made a $775,000,000 strategic investment in the right leaning streaming platform, Rumble, with $250,000,000 of the funds to, quote, support growth initiatives.
The company previously raised funds in 2021 at a $500,000,000 valuation, including commitments from Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, and vice president JD Vance. Uh-oh. That could that could come back to bite. It's well, I mean, the conflict of interest. I'm just I'm just saying. I see conflicts of interest everywhere. They're they're generally speaking, they're not good even if we like both JD Vance and Bitcoin and Rumble. That's not what I'm getting at. It's I'm I'm not I don't have a problem with it. I'm just saying it's a conflict of interest and that shit can come back and bite you in the butt. Anyway, earlier this year, Rumble entered into a cloud service agreement with the government of El Salvador, where Tether is setting up a headquarters.
Rumble's cloud service business hosts Trump's majority owned social application, Truth Social, and Rumble account or accounts approximately 70,000,000 monthly active users and has posted net losses for the first three quarters of twenty twenty four, the last quarter it reported financial results. RRUM, the ticker symbol, is up over 3% to $8.10 on the day. The stock is down about 33% year over year. So rumble on deck fully now. What about Cali? Oh, California. Well, this is it this is interesting. This is out of Bitcoin magazine. Vivec Syn Bitcoin is writing actually, I have just no. It's Vivec Syn.
But somehow or another, it says Vivec Syn Bitcoin. Maybe he changed his name legally. Who knows? Anyway, California legislators has endorsed a Bitcoiner for the 500,000,000,000 pension board of directors. What the hell? California legislators have endorsed Bitcoin nonprofit founder, Dom Bai, b e I, in his campaign for a seat on the board of the California Public Employees Retirement System. CalPERS, that's the name of the California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS oversees a massive 500,000,000,000, that's half a trillion dollar pension fund serving over 2,000,000 public sector retirees. And if elected, he would be the first openly pro Bitcoin voice on the 13 member board.
Bai is a sixteen year veteran firefighter who founded Proof of Workforce, a nonprofit providing Bitcoin education to workers, unions, and pension funds, he previously served on Santa Monica's Pension Advisory Board and played a key role in the city's firefighter union, becoming one of the first to actually hold Bitcoin. Through his outreach work, he has assisted multiple unions, associations, and pensions in the exploration and adoption of Bitcoin strategies, and this includes spearheading education efforts for the Wisconsin retirement system. He said, quote, now more than ever, pension participants and stakeholders need to engage with their pension funds.
I'm running for the CalPERS board of trustees with the goal of being a conduit for engagement and transparency while advocating for the long term health and success of the nation's largest pension fund, end quote. He has received endorsements from a wide range of supporters, including state senator Ben Allen, Tony Vasquez, and the California Board of Equalization, Santa Monica Mayor, Lana Negrete, Vancouver Mayor, Ken Sim, President of the Santa Monica Firefighters Local eleven o nine, Garrett Childers, and others.
CalPERS faces growing headwinds with its traditional sixty forty portfolio allocation, struggling amid inflation and rising interest rates. With ballots going out in late August, BUY's bitcoin credentials could resonate with California's public workforce seeking new strategies to shore up their retirement security. His campaign website accepts donations in both fiat and Bitcoin. So having a Bitcoiner be recommended for a board of directors of a $500,000,000,000 pension fund for a state is kind of a big deal. He may not win. He may not get to sit on the board, but the fact that he's got so many people, you know, saying, rah rah, let let LFG, brother, is a good sign.
Now moving over to Meta Planet where the Japanese hotel company has acquired a hundred and 62 Bitcoin for $13,500,000 at an average price of 83,123 per Bitcoin, achieving a year to date Bitcoin yield of 53.2%. Dude, Meta Planet bought the dip. They bought the dip. They bought the dip freaking hard. The BTC yield represents the percentage change of the ratio of Bitcoin holdings to fully diluted shares outstanding over a given period. And as of March 12, Meta Planet holds 3,050 BTC valued at 253,700,000.0 with an average acquisition price of 83,180 per Bitcoin.
Additionally, the company has issued 2,000,000,000 Japanese yen bonds. Well, third, let's say let's just call it USD. 13 point 5 million USD in zero interest ordinary bonds to fund further Bitcoin acquisitions. At the time of writing, Meta Planet shares were trading at 3,630 yen, which is down almost 50% from its all time high in February. And by the way, that was CoinDesk's James Van Stratten writing. Coinbase has received the green light to offer crypto trading in India. Now this is a bigger deal than you might think. Why? Is it because I all of a sudden love Coinbase? No. I hate them. Can't stay in that company.
It's the it's the India thing that that is piquing my interest here because India has been flip flopping on whether Bitcoin is legal or not for years, like, at least seven years. I mean, they the the at one point or another, they hated Bitcoin, and then they love Bitcoin, and then they hated it again, and then they're going, okay. Well, maybe it's okay. And then they said, no. It's not okay. It just goes on and on and on with this country. But love them or hate them, Coinbase is huge. This is a big deal. I don't think India is gonna renege on this deal. We'll have to find out. Maybe Liz Napolitano from Decrypt will tell us more about it.
Coinbase has secured approval to offer digital asset trading in India, bringing it a step closer to reentering one of the world's largest crypto markets. The exchange is aiming to launch crypto trading services in India later this year. Coinbase first planted roots in India back in 2022, but it withdrew from the market a year later due to the regulatory hurdles. Quote, India's Developer community and entrepreneurial energy are unmatched, Coinbase regional managing director for APAC, John O'Loghlan, said in a statement. Coinbase's latest attempt to compete in the Indian market comes as local regulators and policymakers reevaluate more restrictive attitudes towards digital assets amid a broader pro crypto shift in The United States and other corners of the world. Yeah. India doesn't wanna be left out.
India boasts the world's highest rate of grassroots crypto adoption with a strong decentralized finance scene according to a 2024 Chainalysis report. But until now, the country's tight crypto regulations have kept many large industry players on the sidelines of its booming market. With local decision makers' stances on digital assets poised to change, India is now, quote, one of the most exciting market opportunities in the world, o'Loghlan said Tuesday in a statement. The executive added, wait. Oh, there it is. The executive added that India is a major hub for on chain development and increasing areas of focus for Coinbase, which launched its shitcoin 1 based layer two in 2023.
India has amassed the highest concentration of talent in the on chain space with 12% of all global developers residing in the country as of 2023. It's that local talent Coinbase is aiming to woo by putting down roots in India, O'Loghlan said, quote, by expanding access to our trusted platform and tools such as Base, we aim to empower a new generation of builders to stay home, innovate locally, and scale globally. So the suit speak tagline is still alive of innovate locally and scale globally. Whatever, dude. It's Coinbase. Their Coinbase is gonna Coinbase. Ain't a damn thing we can do about it. But the fact that India is like, maybe the the this whole strategic Bitcoin reserve thing in The United States has finally broken the back of one of the largest flip floppers on whether or not Bitcoin is going to be legal.
Maybe that finally maybe it finally broke their back. Who knows? I mean, next month, India could say, you know what? We changed our minds. Screw you guys. We're going home. I I I cannot tell you how many times I've had the report of India taking itself out behind the woodshed and blow their own brains out every single time that they made crypto illegal or Bitcoin that they didn't like or something that somebody couldn't have or whatever it was. They're constantly constantly pulling the trigger while the gun was aimed squarely at their temples. It's ridiculous. And I kind of expect that at one point or another we're gonna hear how they flip flop again, but this would be the last time because either one of two things will happen to India.
They will lose their footing on the at the global scale because they just refused to move into the future, Or they flip flop for the very last time and say, you know what? We we relent. We're saying uncle. We're on the mat. The five hundred pound wrestler is on top of us. We can't even breathe at this point. Okay. Uncle, uncle, uncle. I don't know. Who knows what's gonna happen? Alright. So that is the last story of the day. You guys go out, be good to each other, be good to your children, be good to your spouses, and be good to yourselves. I'll see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Episode Overview
US Policy Shifts and Bitcoin Embrace
Government and Corporate Crypto Strategies
Futures, Commodities, and Market Analysis
Value for Value and Listener Support
