Join me today for Episode 896 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- El Salvador Proves BTC Holdings; DCA's of 1 BTC
- Bank Exposure to BTC is Underwhelming
- Block's MDK Now in Beta
- Spiral Renews Summer of Bitcoin Grant
- Utreexo Ready For Testers
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
nostr handle: @beisnerds
Twitter: @beisnerds
Product: Maple Syrup and Soaps
1 qt. $27
3 qt. $68
1 half gal $45
2 half gal. $80
4 pt. $50
Articles:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/el-salvador-bitcoin-treasury-website
https://bitcoin.gob.sv/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/metaplanet-bitcoin-reserve-asset-117-btc
https://decrypt.co/230234/banking-giant-wells-fargo-reveals-investments-bitcoin-etfs
https://decrypt.co/230459/gamestop-trading-paused-nine-times-roaring-kitty-meme-rally
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/americas-largest-bank-jpmorgan-chase-discloses-spot-bitcoin-etf-holdings-sec-filing
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/blocks-mdk-heading-to-beta/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/spiral-renews-grant-for-summer-of-bitcoin/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/utreexod-v0-3-1/
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Twitter:
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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10 o'clock AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the what the oh, Monday 13th.
Bad day. Bad day. Monday 13th. Sort of like Friday 13th, only it's worse because it's a Monday. Right? Okay. Anyway, so it is 13th day of May 2024. This is episode, 896 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is open for business today. The Circle P vendor of the day is Bysnerds. That is at beisnerds, both on Noster as well as on Twitter. What does he sell? He sells maple syrup and it's maple syrup that he makes himself. You can get a quart for $27, 3 quarts for $68, a half gallon for 45, or a gallon for 80.4 pints for $50. His Noster, end pub will also be in the, in the show notes, so you can go right to it because I've actually got him linked.
He also sells he also sells his, sister Sarah's soaps. He has a sister. Her name is Sarah, and she makes soaps. She makes really good beef tallow based soaps. And these are the kind of handcrafted soaps. You see them at, like, farmers markets and stuff, and then you go, oh, it's all pretty. It's all great. And then you buy one, and it gets gross and nasty when it's been exposed to like high amounts of humidity that you get in your bathroom, right? It just melts away. Not this soap. It does not do that. This is one of the reasons why I always say if you're gonna buy some maple syrup from Bisonerds also get some of his sister Sarah's soaps.
I'm pretty sure that, Beisner still has some maple syrup left. It is getting late into the season. So be aware, if you want to try some of the best maple syrup that you've ever had in your entire life, you're gonna wanna probably move on this pretty quick and make damn sure that you tell them you heard it from me on the circle p. What's the circle p? It's where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you that have goods and services for sale in Bitcoin. If you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle P. Okay. That's just like, if you're just like, no, I just are gonna take Fiat only. Well, sorry for you. You may have a great product. You may be a pleb through and through, but the only way to kick start circular economies is things like Circle P, where people sell their goods and services for Bitcoin either through main chain transactions, lightning transactions.
Hell, even if you're doing e cash, I don't that's fine. I am not considering e cash as shitcoin at this point. I have no reason to as of yet, but we've seen what the governments are doing. They want to control things. They don't really want us to be able to be in control of our money. And so they're trying very desperately to make self custody an issue and and they want you to just have the ETF because that way you can't do any real damage with the Bitcoin as long as it's locked up in a custodian that is regulated as hard as somebody like BlackRock is regulated, right? So what's what's the only path forward?
To sell your goods and services in Bitcoin. That's why when you're supporting this show That's why when you're supporting this show the Bitcoin and podcast I want people to send satoshis. I want that that makes sense to me You're not going to send me shares of BlackRock's Ibit. Okay, that's not ever gonna happen. The only way that we can get around the regulatory environment that we see playing out and we it's not like this is a surprise, is to actually trade our goods and services for bitcoin directly. Not indirectly, but directly. Alright, so that's the spiel.
That's what I got. Let's get into the news. We're gonna start down south in El Salvador. El Salvador has launched the Bitcoin Treasury monitoring website. Zoltan Vardy has it for Cointelegraph. El Salvador has launched its own proof of reserves website featuring various tools for monitoring the country's Bitcoin holdings using on chain data. El Salvador's online Bitcoin treasury provides real time data on the nation's bitcoin reserves. Central American nation officially holds 5,748 BTC, which is currently worth approximately $360,000,000 with Bitcoin trading above the $62,700 mark as of 8:20 am UTC.
El Salvador has bought 7 BTC worth over $438,000 during the past week while adding a total of 31 BTC worth $1,94,000 over the past 30 days according to the website The purchase aligns with El Salvador's goal of adding 1 Bitcoin to its treasury daily. Remember when, Naive Bukele said that they were purchasing 1 Bitcoin a day, and we were all bitching and moaning, saying, well, we we don't know if you're actually doing that because we can't see it. Well it appears that they are and we'll get to the appearance here in a sec. Let's see. Oh, yeah. 1st country to adopt Bitcoin. Yes. We know that.
President Naid Bukele's decision received widespread criticism. Yes. We know that too. We know the the IMF and the World Bank are just beside themselves, and it gets even worse. Check this shit out. El Salvador has been dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin since 2021 With an average buying price of $43,097 per Bitcoin with BTC trading above 62,000 El Salvador has an unrealized profit of over $57,400,000 on its Bitcoin holdings, according to the naive Bukele portfolio tracker website. El Salvador's Bitcoin holdings could represent a significant lifeline for the nation. Now listen up, guys.
Popular venture capitalist Tim Draper told Cointelegraph that the country could soon become financially independent and pay off its loans to the International Monetary Fund if the Bitcoin price reaches $100,000 Many popular crypto analysts have suggested the BTC will surpass the $100,000 mark during the 2024 2025 bull cycle. Following the 2024 halving, Bitcoin could see a cycle top of above $150,000 according to a research report by Bitfinex analyst shared with Cointelegraph. Quote, using a straightforward regression model, we predict a 160% post halving price surge in the next 14 months, taking the price to between 150 $169,000 Bitcoin's price action will mainly depend on the institutional flows from the United States spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds, which turned positive after 3 consecutive weeks of net outflows.
The US Bitcoin ETFs amassed a total of $413,000,000 worth of net inflows in the past week, according to Dune Analytics. Alright. So let's go back to the most important part here. The fact that their Bitcoin holdings, if the price of Bitcoin if they if they stay on track with, the dollar the 1 Bitcoin per day, buying, like they said that they were gonna do, and the price goes to $100,000, Nayib Bukele would be able to extinguish the debt on the loans from the International Monetary Fund, which is not going to make them very happy. They want that loan alive. They do not want that loan extinguished because that's the only way that they can do the things that they do And what they do, in my opinion, is they're not out to help poor nations.
I I just I used to think that a long time ago. I no longer believe that in any way shape or form but that begs the question if the price of Bitcoin hits $100,000 do you think that Nayib Bukele will just liquidate everything just to extinguish that loan? I don't think so. But what would be very interesting is if he took that and let's say had a friendly company that would make him a loan using the Bitcoin as a collateral. And that the interest rate was lower than the interest rate he's getting from the IMF and then use that to pay back the IMF and what you've done is you've just exchanged the the Overlords the masters And the IMF being your master of your country, you don't want to have anything to do with that. But let's say it was, oh, I don't know, unchanged capital. Now don't go thinking that I've got some kind of inside baseball. I don't.
But let's just for just conjecture here that there was something like Unchained Capital that had were sitting on a lot that could in fact sit on a lot of cash if they wanted to and then basically make the loan to El Salvador and then pay off the IMF. That would be an interesting turn of events because now what we would end up with is Bitcoin companies in the business of making loans to countries instead of World Bank and IMF and all the ghouls that we have to deal with on a daily basis. You wanna talk about pissing some people straight off, that would do it. But I still don't think that, no matter what they do, I don't think that that's the plan, but we'll we'll have to see.
But the other really important thing about this particular website that they're talking about, the quote unquote, Nayib Bukele Bitcoin Tracker, is that it looks to me actually, I I know it is. I can just tell. This is this is built on mempool. Space. It's not just them throwing up graphics and graphs and and well here I'll show for the guys over there in in zap. Stream. They can see this picture that or this website that I just threw up and it's the it's the URL is bitcoin.gob.sv, which I guess is like bitcoin.gov.youknowel Salvador. But it's bitcoin.gob.
Dot s v, Salvador, right? Okay, so all what I'm looking at is the mempool. Space interface except that it's been customized. Now, if I scroll all the way down to the bottom right down here and I'm gonna highlight it for the guys over there in zap. Stream, you can see that this is mempool.spaceversion3. 0.0hyphendev, dev. If I go to mempool.space, the regular one, let's let's actually, let me do that. Hold on. Mempool.space. Do and let get it up. And I scroll all the way down to it it's bottom. I have version 3.0.0 dev So the naive Bukele Bitcoin tracker is in fact not something that they're throwing together or at least what it seems to me it is a customized version of the mempool.space website that just looks at what's going on with their wallet as well as the the general blocks that are coming through for for the entire Bitcoin chain.
But if you look at the Bitcoin balance history graph, it's he's buying 1 Bitcoin every single day and this is gonna be really really hard to spoof It's not that it's impossible and it's not that in the back of my head, you know, that that, you know, I don't know. I I there in the back of my head, there's a a flag of caution to say don't just believe. However, it's very difficult for me to not look at this and say, I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what's going on with El Salvador's Bitcoin Treasury. It's powered by mempool.space that much is clear but it's customized.
So that begs the question would I be able to customize a webpage with mempool.space that looked at my own wallet? Or like if I had a company like let's say that let's say, I decide that the circle P is I spin it off and turn it into an actual company instead of something that I just do for the plebs out there, right? Would I be able to have the circle like had set up a wall for Circle P and then have a version of what Nayib Bukele has for the Circle P. I don't know. I've never seen this before. I think it's honestly, it's it's fascinating but be that as it may it does pretty much suggest that Nayib Bukele has the Bitcoin that he says he has. It says right here BTC holdings 5,749 BTC valued at just over 360,000,000 The 7 day change sees an addition of 8.00 BTC worth just over, yeah, just north of $500,000 and the 30 day change is 31 BTC worth 1.94 5 or $1,900,000 I mean, I don't think this can really be spoofed.
I mean, it can, but how much I mean, if if it just doesn't seem it doesn't seem laudable or, I mean, it doesn't seem plausible for me. So I think that naive Bukele is indeed buying 1 Bitcoin every single day and it looks to me like he's been doing it for a very long time So I'll just go ahead and leave this up so you can oh and he's also got a he's also one of these windows he has a feed to his, his own Twitter timeline, which I think is really neat. But it still has the transaction fees. It's got a graph of his balance history. It's got his Treasury transactions, but it's also got the recent blocks going by so it's like a it's like an amalgam of you know, a customized mempool dot space, but it still actually shows actual regular old fashioned mempool data, which I think is interesting. Now moving to the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese listed firm Meta Assets was no Meta Planet has added Bitcoin as a reserve asset now with 117 BTC. Now I told you about Meta Meta Planet before.
They were following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy, but they're over in Japan. Let's see what we can see here. This is out of Cointelegraph. Helen Parts is writing it. Publicly traded investment firm Meta Planet has added Bitcoin as a reserve asset in response to a continued decline in the Japanese yen. Meta Planet is making a strategic shift in its treasury management strategy, prioritizing Bitcoin first and Bitcoin only approach, the Tokyo based firm officially announced back on May 13th. Oh, wait. No. They're announcing this today, but they announced that they were gonna do this, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. Quote, this move is a direct response to sustained economic pressures in Japan, notably high government debt levels and prolonged periods of negative real interest rates as well as the consequently weak yen, the company stated.
The announcement doesn't specify how much Bitcoin is currently held or planned to be held in Meta Planet's Treasury. On May 10th, Meta Planet did disclose that it bought a total of 117.7 BTC worth $7,190,000 at the average price of around $65,000 per coin, Meta Planet's market value stands at around 3,500,000,000 yen or roughly $20,000,000 Okay. So let's just pause. They're talking about Meta Planet's market value, so that's the valuation of the entire company being $20,000,000 That's not a lot. That's a pretty small company. Yet almost half half of that is in Bitcoin.
That's impressive. That's somebody who's basically saying we either do this or we die. That's the feeling that I get. So let's continue. Meta Planet's Bitcoin adoption comes just a few weeks after the company initially disclosed its new Bitcoin focused strategy in early April, announcing the completion of its first Bitcoin purchase worth 6 point $5,000,000 The move fueled significant traction on social media and caused a sharp price increase of Meta Planet shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Listed under the numeric symbol 33.50, Meta Planet stock rallied just above 35 Japanese yen, about 0.22¢ from 20 Japanese yen, which was worth $0.13, hours after the firm announced its Bitcoin purchase back in April.
Before its strategic shift into Bitcoin, MetaPlanet primarily operated in the traditional investment scene. Founded in 1999. Wow, that's a long time ago. Meta Planet originally operated a hotel business, investment services, and as an investor relations consultancy. The news comes just a few days after Meta Planet appointed prominent market researcher Dylan LeClaire as director of its Bitcoin strategy. Quote, this is just the beginning, Meta Planet CEO Simon Gurevich wrote in a Twitter post on the company buying more Bitcoin on May 9th. The Japanese yen has reportedly been the worst performer in 2024 among major currencies against the US dollar, dropping to record lows in April last seen in 19 nineties.
According to local sources, the yen's drop in value over the past 3 years came mainly from the gap between domestic and foreign interest rates and a growing trade deficit. So there you go. What the mode the what was really eye opening was when they and I just learned this that they appointed Dylan LeClaire as the director of Bitcoin strategy. This is a Japanese company, and they are basically scooping up one of the youngest analysts in the Bitcoin space from the United States. I caution the United States regulators at this point, if you want brain drain to happen, you keep on doing what you're doing and people will leave. They will go work for other companies.
I think this this notion of, patriotism is being severely limited by the actions that the people that are in the positions of power in governments, not just in the United States, but in all countries, are seriously damaging the patriotism felt by the citizenry of those particular countries. And no longer is it that we would not just, you know, bail out and go to another country or work for another company that is not based in the United States. You want brain drain to happen? You keep right on doing what you're doing. Okay? So just you do that and we'll we'll all be fine. Now getting into banking.
This is out of Decrypt, Matt DeSalvo. Banking giant Wells Fargo has revealed investments in Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, my God. How much do they own? Let's find out. American banking giant Wells Fargo disclosed investments in multiple oh, this has gotta be good news. Right? Multiple Bitcoin ETFs on Friday per regulatory filing, making it the latest institution to get on board with the crypto based vehicles. Paperwork and that it also has exposure to Bitcoin Depot Incorporated, a Bitcoin ATM provider. Man, this is gonna be good, ain't it? The document shows that the bank has invested in ProShares Bitcoin strategy, which gives investors exposure to BTC futures contracts that bet on the future price of the asset.
But, oh man, dude, this is embarrassing. The exposure is small. The filing shows that Wells Fargo investment in GBTC amounts to $141,000 while its ProShares investments is under $1200 No, not $1,200,000,000 $1200 This is the kind of money that you might carry in your checking account sometimes. And the exposure to Bitcoin Depot? Yeah, that ATM company? $99 Why do you even report that? This is this is embarrassing. Back in February, a report claimed that Wells Fargo And They've repeatedly talked about investments in digital assets and back in 2019 even piloted its own shitcoin.
Okay. And then they get into a little bit of price analysis on on Bitcoin. Dude, so when that news first broke on Friday, it was after I had done the Friday show I saw it and I was immediately going, what the hell is this? Because the initial reports were saying that it was, that their exposure was a $141,000,000 And I can't remember who I it was like news BTC or some some outfit. I don't remember. Turns out, no, wasn't a $141,000,000 It was a 141,000. So wow. Not even not even worth it except that they do have exposure. And that's maybe they're just testing maybe I don't know. I don't know what that is because that seems like an accounting error but whatever because the big news of the day is right here Roaring Kitty comes roaring back to life GameStop trading paused 9 times as roaring kitty return drives a meme rally.
Matt DeSalvo for decrypt. Meme coins and tokens surged early Monday morning after an internet figure who inspired the 2021 Gamestop rally posted for the first time in years. Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty or Deep Fucking Value, who helped fuel the 2021 rally via Reddit post and livestreams posted to Twitter an image of a man leaning forward in a chair while holding a video game controller. It was his first tweet in 3 years. The post hints that meme stocks and cryptocurrencies may be due for a rally again or at least that's how traders are taking it. The price of GameStop shares more than doubled from the close of business Friday to the market's opening on Monday, and the surge in demand prompted Nasdaq to halt trading 9 times already this morning.
Fellow 2021 meme stock AMC, the movie theater chain, also jumped by 33% today, while adjacent stocks like Reddit and Robinhood are also gaming. Back in 2021, Roaring Kitty posted about gains that he'd made from buying shares in falling businesses like GameStop, which had been shorted by top investment firms. His post prompted people to join in, eventually leading to Wall Street chaos due to shares suddenly going up in value. The craze led to a surge in so called meme stocks, or shares in companies that became popular on Internet forums. Cryptocurrencies experienced a boom as a result too with top meme coins and tokens going up in value. They are now a key part of the crypto ecosystem and have surged this year as part of Bitcoin's rally And today, they're up even more Of the top meme coins by market cap Dogecoin is leading the charge. Woof woof. It's up nearly 6% trading hands for 15¢ a doge according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, other popular but small cap tokens like Ethereum based Pepe and Floki are both up over 8%. Who gives the the meme coin part is not is not the interesting part. It's the fact that you got you got Gil who's at it again coming out of retirement, I guess you can call it retirement, after 3 years of not posting a thing, posting a single picture of this dude sitting forward in a chair holding what I thought last night when I saw it was a TV remote control. But when you look at it, it's becomes kind of evident that it is a game controller. So my first initial thought when I saw the picture was that this has nothing to do with GameStop.
And I still, maybe, maybe I, you know, wrongly, maybe wrongly, I'm thinking that this doesn't really have anything to do with GameStop itself. I mean, in in a way, that play has already been kinda played out. Maybe. Like I said, I I reserve the right to be completely and utterly wrong. But what if he's looking at something else? What if in that 3 years, he sees something else? Now I'm not gonna attribute to him that he's some kind of master trader or an analyst to end all, you know, analysts. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that maybe he does see something that is not related at all to GameStop or AMC or any of the other shit that went on in 2021, which was absolutely insane.
What if this is about the dollar yen situation? What if this is about treasury bonds? What if this is about something more structural than GameStop because GameStop isn't structural not not to the world economy The trading value between the dollar and the the dollar and the yen is. And that's due to what? Treasury bonds, which is the underlying structure of the world markets whether you like it or not is the United States Treasury Bond. That's the underlying structure of everything. It shouldn't be. I don't agree with it. I don't like it. But that's what that that's what it is. You can't get away from it. So what if Roaring Kitty isn't roaring back into life because of GameStop but something may be actually important?
I don't know. We'll have to find out. But in the meantime, let's run the CNBC futures and commodities got West Texas Intermediate up 0.6 percent to $78.73. Brent, North Sea is up a third. Natural gas is up 4 and a half points to $2.35 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline is down to $2.50 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gull having a bad day. It is off 1.39% to $2,342 an ounce. Silver is off 0.16%. Platinum is up a third. Copper is up over 2 points and palladium is down 1.7%. We got live cattle is down 0.7 6%. Lean hogs are down 1 a quarter. And feeder cattle are down almost a quarter. The Dow is down a 5th of a point. The S and P is down point 06%. NASDAQ is up, 0.16%, and the S and P mini is up 0.05.
So it looks like there might be waiting for news over there on Wall Street. What news? I don't know, but I'm sure that something is about to drop. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a sideways trading day on a Monday. Clark Moody's Bitcoin is flashing 62,660 650. Let's see. So we get, yeah, it looks like our big green candles are being offset by some downward action today. $62,630, that is a $1,230,000,000,000 market cap. You can get 26.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,697,646 of.
And the average fees per block has dropped again to 0.17 BTC in fees on average for a per block basis. How many blocks are there, you ask? I don't know. Let's find out. 224 blocks currently carrying 181,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear with high priority rates of 14 satoshis per vbyte, low priorities are 12, and anything under 4a half are gonna be ejected from mempools around the world, which are operating at a hash rate of 587.2 exahashes per second. From Bitcoin and episode 895 entitled wealth of networks, I gotta got bupkis.
Except thank God for letter 6173 with 5,000 says number 1 booster of Bitcoin and of all time according to fountain. No shit. Damn letter. I had no idea. I challenge anyone to try and dethrone me. But remember, if you come for the king, you best not miss. Nice. He also comes back and he says he's replied to his own note says, although looking at it, the number is off. It shows 380,000 satoshis in all time boost, but my local number in fountain is 1,100,000 plus. Peter came back and replied and says my local number is 2,000,000 plus.
But it's definitely off. So there may be some issues going on with fountain. Joey, Christian Farmer, a 67 with 2,000 says nothing in Christian Farmer, a 67 with 2,000 says nothing in pies finishes us out. 100 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And, oh, look. Another bank is in Bitcoin. America's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, has disclosed spot Bitcoin ETF holdings according to an SEC filing. Oh, joy. Let's find out about this one. This is, from Bitcoin Magazine written by Nick Hoffman. JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in America has revealed exposure to spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds in a newly filed document.
The SEC filings by JPMorgan Chase provide specific insights into the bank's exposure to spot ETFs, bitcoin ETFs. The bank currently has exposure to spot bitcoin ETFs issued by some of the largest asset managers in the world BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and more. Though the amount of money allocated to each ETF seems a bit underwhelming oh gee who could have guessed Taking into consideration how much money other institutions are allocating to purchase Bitcoin and that's because JPM, Susquehanna and others are just market makers and or AEPs.
Their ownership isn't necessarily indicative of anything other than this is how many shares they had on threethirty one of 24, commented Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seifert, If you are making markets in these things, the number of shares held could swing heavily day to day. The 13 f filing data is simply a snapshot of long positions held on the date of 3/31. 13 f's don't show shorts or derivatives, so we don't even have a full look at their true exposure on 3 of 31 or, well, the 31st day of the 3rd month of 2024. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas also commented stating, quote, we'll probably see many of the big banks report some holdings in their role as market makers slash APs.
That is different from them buying for the exposure and thus less hypocritical in JPM's case. Props for catching this though, we still working on getting the filing on BBG. It just came out. Further quote, what is notable in my opinion is the sheer number of holders that each has so far. Ibit has 250 holders. That's bonkers for Q1 on market, Balchunas continued. Here's a comparison of the other ETFs launched the same week ish, kinda, as BTC ones and we still have like a week of 13Fs to roll in yet. And he highlights that Fidelity, Bitwise, Arc 21 shares, and Ishares have 136, 60, 42 and the aforementioned 250 holders.
The rest of them are really real there's not very many holders in the rest of these things like oh CCM Global Equity ETF has one holder Roundhill Bitcoin Strategy ETF has 1 holder. Yieldmax Universe and ETFs, 3 holders. I The next one up, Halamo CEF Incorporated, an arbiter ETF has 6 holders. Okay, so maybe that's the situation that's going on with Wells Fargo. We're not getting a full picture from their 13 f filing with the SEC. And we're Eryb Balchunas basically called it out right here as long as well as James Seyfert saying we really don't know what these things mean because these these things can swing on inter day trades and all you had was a snapshot of what was going on that one particular day. So we really don't know what the banks are holding but the fact that JPM or JPMorgan Chase is holding anything.
Makes me wonder if Jamie Dimon really hates Bitcoin as much as he says he does or if he really does whether or not he's chewing somebody's ass out because he they did what he told him not to do. I don't really care because we're gonna move over to block. They are looking for mining development kit beta testers. Block is looking for individual developers and developer teams who are interested in building novel Bitcoin mining applications with its mining development kit, beta hardware and software. You need to apply before July 15th this year. Again, if you want to be a tester for the mining development kit for block, you gotta get your data in before July 15, 2024.
Quote, we're excited to announce the launch of our mining Bitcoin or sorry, our mining development kit, MDK beta program. As we begin to allocate a limited number of our first beta kits, we invite interested developers to submit their applications. Each MDK unit will consist of 3 hashboards equipped with 105 nanometer bzm2asic chips and a controller board loaded with our custom firmware The system is expected to produce hash rates of up to 110 terahashes with energy efficiency ranging from 27 to 33 joules per terahash. I'm pausing to note that that is way less of an efficiency rating than the brand new s21 minuteers that, Bitmain released a couple of weeks ago.
I have I have yet to see any of those in the wild, so I don't know, but they were talking about 15 joules per terahash, which is insane amounts of efficiency. So anyway, it will also include an API for seamless integration with various existing miner management software solutions that should enhance the performance and usability of our hardware. Each hash board is equipped with an embedded controller to allow more flexibility in controlling the ASICs. All the components are compatible with commonly available market options such as chassis, PSU, fans and cables said block. Note that the MDK hardware is early prototype hardware using a third party mining chip.
Our eventual production mining system will use our own internally developed 3 nanometer mining chip which is expected to result in a much more performant system. Participants in the beta program will receive MDK hardware and software free of charge. Apply to MDK beta program here and they give a link. Is it easy? No. It's not an easy link to read, but it will be in the show notes because I put all of the links to the URLs, in the show notes for all of the stories that I read. So just go find the one, for no bs bitcoin.com about block and it will be there and you you can go sign up there.
Free. This is free, but you got to get your shit in before July 15, 2024 But you could get some mining hardware to play around with. Anyway, where are we at now? Oh, spirals. We're still kind of on block. Spiral has renewed the grant for the summer of Bitcoin initiative. Thank God. Summer of Bitcoin is a global online summer internship program focused on introducing university students to open source Bitcoin development and design. Quote, grant renewal, a major educational initiative that we've been supporting summer of Bitcoin since a voice from the nameless ruins behind our office made us choose between backing summer of Bitcoin or enduring a lifetime of all food having the texture of oysters.
Interns who go through the program contribute to Bitcoin projects of their choosing, with some even becoming mentees themselves. New projects are arriving all the time. Know an up and coming Bitcoin or looking for a start? Looking for one for yourself? Well, go to summer of bitcoin.org. That's summer of bitcoin.org. Summerofbitcoin.org. Thank you Spiral BTC for your continued support. That same voice had left us two choices. It was either enable university students to contribute to open source Bitcoin or endure a lifetime of cosmic banana peel calamities, says Summer of Bitcoin in response.
The humor has me riddled. I'm in stitches. Now final one up for today. Utreexodbeta is now available for general public testing. Utreexod is a full node Bitcoin implementation with support for utreex0 accumulators. It enables immediate node bootstrap by having the UTXO state hard coded into the codebase uses a tiny amount of memory and has a low disk input output. Quote, utreexod, a full node implementation with utreex0 accumulator support is now available for general testing by the public, announced Calvin Kim to the Bitcoin Dev mailing list. Quote, it's important to note that the code and protocol is not peer reviewed.
Using the node for production usage or for non negligible amounts of Bitcoin is not not not recommended. There will also be breaking changes requiring frequent updates as well. Utrixod is also based off of BTCD, a Bitcoin node implementation in Go. Because of this, there may be consensus incompatibilities either as a result of the BTCD bug or a Bitcoin Core bug. Also note that there are not many uTreeXO nodes on the network. It may take a while for the node to find a utreex0 node that it can sync off of. To help bootstrap the network, consider running an archival node or a bridge node, said the developer. Huge thanks to the Human Rights Foundation for funding my work for this release. Without the support, I wouldn't have been able to focus on u three x o, he added. And this is Calvin Kim again. Key features, the implementation of efficient u three x o accumulators with an improved deletion algorithm from the utreex0 paper.
Efficient peer to peer transaction relay with support for cashing Utreexo proofs for mempool transactions, quick sync to the tip of the blockchain with assume Utreexo, built in wallet support with BDK wallet, and Electrum personal server support for usage with other wallets. So uTrex0 is just an ability to get a new Bitcoin node off the ground quickly. It assumes that's what the assume UTreeXO is. It assumes that just a few blocks back are valid and then boom it gets those blocks you're off to the races. When I started up my brand new node on my start 9, it took about a day and a half, maybe like a full day because it was syncing the blockchain all the way back from the genesis block and revalidating every transaction in every block all the way up to the chain tip. And then and only then would the node actually start up and run where I could run a wallet or fire up a lightning network node? You're not firing up a lightning network node unless you have a Bitcoin full node that is running.
Running is different than it syncing. While it's syncing, it's not actually in runtime. It's in sync time. It's just getting the blocks and making sure everything is copacetic. Only after it does the entire blockchain which for depending on how beefy your internet connection and or processor is that determines how long it takes to get a node up and running. When I did my first node, it took 3 days to do the Bitcoin core node. And then I took I took my node down for, like, a couple of weeks. Actually, I think it was I think it was down for a good 6 weeks. And when I got back, I had to wait for at least a couple of hours for it to sync back to ChainTip.
With blocks and you can at least get the rest of your stuff set up. Electrum or Electris, you could do like a Bitcoin node or by or I mean a lightning network node, you could do a couple of other stuff. So There there you go, right? So if you want to kind of help these guys out you might want to consider testing. It is UTRIXOD, it is in beta, and it is available for general public testing. That's gonna do it for the morning roundup. Dad says jokes. My friend Jack claims he can communicate with vegetables. Turns out Jack and the beans talk. Alright. So, the bank news.
Basically underwhelming, but we still don't know exactly what they've got up their sleeves. Roaring Kitty, we're gonna have to actually see why he's back. I think the initial this whole initial the 9 stops of trading this morning on stuff like GameStop and AMC, I think that was basically a whole bunch of people who are making an assumption that Roaring Kitty is talking about GameStop again. I got a sneaky suspicion that he isn't. I totally can be wrong, but I'm looking for him to start saying something else. And I get the feeling given the experience that he had through 2020, 2021 that and the fact that he hasn't been back in 3 years that he may have been studying on something else. Because I really think the GameStop thing is kinda played out.
Again, totally could be wrong. But it would be interesting if Roaring Kitty is seeing something more structural and is gonna play that one off Because it's all a game whether it's gay. I mean, I don't think the game controller meant Gamestop. I think it means he's about to game something else. So be on the lookout for that shit going on, 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.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 10 o'clock AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the what the oh, Monday 13th.
Bad day. Bad day. Monday 13th. Sort of like Friday 13th, only it's worse because it's a Monday. Right? Okay. Anyway, so it is 13th day of May 2024. This is episode, 896 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is open for business today. The Circle P vendor of the day is Bysnerds. That is at beisnerds, both on Noster as well as on Twitter. What does he sell? He sells maple syrup and it's maple syrup that he makes himself. You can get a quart for $27, 3 quarts for $68, a half gallon for 45, or a gallon for 80.4 pints for $50. His Noster, end pub will also be in the, in the show notes, so you can go right to it because I've actually got him linked.
He also sells he also sells his, sister Sarah's soaps. He has a sister. Her name is Sarah, and she makes soaps. She makes really good beef tallow based soaps. And these are the kind of handcrafted soaps. You see them at, like, farmers markets and stuff, and then you go, oh, it's all pretty. It's all great. And then you buy one, and it gets gross and nasty when it's been exposed to like high amounts of humidity that you get in your bathroom, right? It just melts away. Not this soap. It does not do that. This is one of the reasons why I always say if you're gonna buy some maple syrup from Bisonerds also get some of his sister Sarah's soaps.
I'm pretty sure that, Beisner still has some maple syrup left. It is getting late into the season. So be aware, if you want to try some of the best maple syrup that you've ever had in your entire life, you're gonna wanna probably move on this pretty quick and make damn sure that you tell them you heard it from me on the circle p. What's the circle p? It's where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you that have goods and services for sale in Bitcoin. If you're not selling it for Bitcoin, you're not in the circle P. Okay. That's just like, if you're just like, no, I just are gonna take Fiat only. Well, sorry for you. You may have a great product. You may be a pleb through and through, but the only way to kick start circular economies is things like Circle P, where people sell their goods and services for Bitcoin either through main chain transactions, lightning transactions.
Hell, even if you're doing e cash, I don't that's fine. I am not considering e cash as shitcoin at this point. I have no reason to as of yet, but we've seen what the governments are doing. They want to control things. They don't really want us to be able to be in control of our money. And so they're trying very desperately to make self custody an issue and and they want you to just have the ETF because that way you can't do any real damage with the Bitcoin as long as it's locked up in a custodian that is regulated as hard as somebody like BlackRock is regulated, right? So what's what's the only path forward?
To sell your goods and services in Bitcoin. That's why when you're supporting this show That's why when you're supporting this show the Bitcoin and podcast I want people to send satoshis. I want that that makes sense to me You're not going to send me shares of BlackRock's Ibit. Okay, that's not ever gonna happen. The only way that we can get around the regulatory environment that we see playing out and we it's not like this is a surprise, is to actually trade our goods and services for bitcoin directly. Not indirectly, but directly. Alright, so that's the spiel.
That's what I got. Let's get into the news. We're gonna start down south in El Salvador. El Salvador has launched the Bitcoin Treasury monitoring website. Zoltan Vardy has it for Cointelegraph. El Salvador has launched its own proof of reserves website featuring various tools for monitoring the country's Bitcoin holdings using on chain data. El Salvador's online Bitcoin treasury provides real time data on the nation's bitcoin reserves. Central American nation officially holds 5,748 BTC, which is currently worth approximately $360,000,000 with Bitcoin trading above the $62,700 mark as of 8:20 am UTC.
El Salvador has bought 7 BTC worth over $438,000 during the past week while adding a total of 31 BTC worth $1,94,000 over the past 30 days according to the website The purchase aligns with El Salvador's goal of adding 1 Bitcoin to its treasury daily. Remember when, Naive Bukele said that they were purchasing 1 Bitcoin a day, and we were all bitching and moaning, saying, well, we we don't know if you're actually doing that because we can't see it. Well it appears that they are and we'll get to the appearance here in a sec. Let's see. Oh, yeah. 1st country to adopt Bitcoin. Yes. We know that.
President Naid Bukele's decision received widespread criticism. Yes. We know that too. We know the the IMF and the World Bank are just beside themselves, and it gets even worse. Check this shit out. El Salvador has been dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin since 2021 With an average buying price of $43,097 per Bitcoin with BTC trading above 62,000 El Salvador has an unrealized profit of over $57,400,000 on its Bitcoin holdings, according to the naive Bukele portfolio tracker website. El Salvador's Bitcoin holdings could represent a significant lifeline for the nation. Now listen up, guys.
Popular venture capitalist Tim Draper told Cointelegraph that the country could soon become financially independent and pay off its loans to the International Monetary Fund if the Bitcoin price reaches $100,000 Many popular crypto analysts have suggested the BTC will surpass the $100,000 mark during the 2024 2025 bull cycle. Following the 2024 halving, Bitcoin could see a cycle top of above $150,000 according to a research report by Bitfinex analyst shared with Cointelegraph. Quote, using a straightforward regression model, we predict a 160% post halving price surge in the next 14 months, taking the price to between 150 $169,000 Bitcoin's price action will mainly depend on the institutional flows from the United States spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds, which turned positive after 3 consecutive weeks of net outflows.
The US Bitcoin ETFs amassed a total of $413,000,000 worth of net inflows in the past week, according to Dune Analytics. Alright. So let's go back to the most important part here. The fact that their Bitcoin holdings, if the price of Bitcoin if they if they stay on track with, the dollar the 1 Bitcoin per day, buying, like they said that they were gonna do, and the price goes to $100,000, Nayib Bukele would be able to extinguish the debt on the loans from the International Monetary Fund, which is not going to make them very happy. They want that loan alive. They do not want that loan extinguished because that's the only way that they can do the things that they do And what they do, in my opinion, is they're not out to help poor nations.
I I just I used to think that a long time ago. I no longer believe that in any way shape or form but that begs the question if the price of Bitcoin hits $100,000 do you think that Nayib Bukele will just liquidate everything just to extinguish that loan? I don't think so. But what would be very interesting is if he took that and let's say had a friendly company that would make him a loan using the Bitcoin as a collateral. And that the interest rate was lower than the interest rate he's getting from the IMF and then use that to pay back the IMF and what you've done is you've just exchanged the the Overlords the masters And the IMF being your master of your country, you don't want to have anything to do with that. But let's say it was, oh, I don't know, unchanged capital. Now don't go thinking that I've got some kind of inside baseball. I don't.
But let's just for just conjecture here that there was something like Unchained Capital that had were sitting on a lot that could in fact sit on a lot of cash if they wanted to and then basically make the loan to El Salvador and then pay off the IMF. That would be an interesting turn of events because now what we would end up with is Bitcoin companies in the business of making loans to countries instead of World Bank and IMF and all the ghouls that we have to deal with on a daily basis. You wanna talk about pissing some people straight off, that would do it. But I still don't think that, no matter what they do, I don't think that that's the plan, but we'll we'll have to see.
But the other really important thing about this particular website that they're talking about, the quote unquote, Nayib Bukele Bitcoin Tracker, is that it looks to me actually, I I know it is. I can just tell. This is this is built on mempool. Space. It's not just them throwing up graphics and graphs and and well here I'll show for the guys over there in in zap. Stream. They can see this picture that or this website that I just threw up and it's the it's the URL is bitcoin.gob.sv, which I guess is like bitcoin.gov.youknowel Salvador. But it's bitcoin.gob.
Dot s v, Salvador, right? Okay, so all what I'm looking at is the mempool. Space interface except that it's been customized. Now, if I scroll all the way down to the bottom right down here and I'm gonna highlight it for the guys over there in zap. Stream, you can see that this is mempool.spaceversion3. 0.0hyphendev, dev. If I go to mempool.space, the regular one, let's let's actually, let me do that. Hold on. Mempool.space. Do and let get it up. And I scroll all the way down to it it's bottom. I have version 3.0.0 dev So the naive Bukele Bitcoin tracker is in fact not something that they're throwing together or at least what it seems to me it is a customized version of the mempool.space website that just looks at what's going on with their wallet as well as the the general blocks that are coming through for for the entire Bitcoin chain.
But if you look at the Bitcoin balance history graph, it's he's buying 1 Bitcoin every single day and this is gonna be really really hard to spoof It's not that it's impossible and it's not that in the back of my head, you know, that that, you know, I don't know. I I there in the back of my head, there's a a flag of caution to say don't just believe. However, it's very difficult for me to not look at this and say, I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what's going on with El Salvador's Bitcoin Treasury. It's powered by mempool.space that much is clear but it's customized.
So that begs the question would I be able to customize a webpage with mempool.space that looked at my own wallet? Or like if I had a company like let's say that let's say, I decide that the circle P is I spin it off and turn it into an actual company instead of something that I just do for the plebs out there, right? Would I be able to have the circle like had set up a wall for Circle P and then have a version of what Nayib Bukele has for the Circle P. I don't know. I've never seen this before. I think it's honestly, it's it's fascinating but be that as it may it does pretty much suggest that Nayib Bukele has the Bitcoin that he says he has. It says right here BTC holdings 5,749 BTC valued at just over 360,000,000 The 7 day change sees an addition of 8.00 BTC worth just over, yeah, just north of $500,000 and the 30 day change is 31 BTC worth 1.94 5 or $1,900,000 I mean, I don't think this can really be spoofed.
I mean, it can, but how much I mean, if if it just doesn't seem it doesn't seem laudable or, I mean, it doesn't seem plausible for me. So I think that naive Bukele is indeed buying 1 Bitcoin every single day and it looks to me like he's been doing it for a very long time So I'll just go ahead and leave this up so you can oh and he's also got a he's also one of these windows he has a feed to his, his own Twitter timeline, which I think is really neat. But it still has the transaction fees. It's got a graph of his balance history. It's got his Treasury transactions, but it's also got the recent blocks going by so it's like a it's like an amalgam of you know, a customized mempool dot space, but it still actually shows actual regular old fashioned mempool data, which I think is interesting. Now moving to the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese listed firm Meta Assets was no Meta Planet has added Bitcoin as a reserve asset now with 117 BTC. Now I told you about Meta Meta Planet before.
They were following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy, but they're over in Japan. Let's see what we can see here. This is out of Cointelegraph. Helen Parts is writing it. Publicly traded investment firm Meta Planet has added Bitcoin as a reserve asset in response to a continued decline in the Japanese yen. Meta Planet is making a strategic shift in its treasury management strategy, prioritizing Bitcoin first and Bitcoin only approach, the Tokyo based firm officially announced back on May 13th. Oh, wait. No. They're announcing this today, but they announced that they were gonna do this, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. Quote, this move is a direct response to sustained economic pressures in Japan, notably high government debt levels and prolonged periods of negative real interest rates as well as the consequently weak yen, the company stated.
The announcement doesn't specify how much Bitcoin is currently held or planned to be held in Meta Planet's Treasury. On May 10th, Meta Planet did disclose that it bought a total of 117.7 BTC worth $7,190,000 at the average price of around $65,000 per coin, Meta Planet's market value stands at around 3,500,000,000 yen or roughly $20,000,000 Okay. So let's just pause. They're talking about Meta Planet's market value, so that's the valuation of the entire company being $20,000,000 That's not a lot. That's a pretty small company. Yet almost half half of that is in Bitcoin.
That's impressive. That's somebody who's basically saying we either do this or we die. That's the feeling that I get. So let's continue. Meta Planet's Bitcoin adoption comes just a few weeks after the company initially disclosed its new Bitcoin focused strategy in early April, announcing the completion of its first Bitcoin purchase worth 6 point $5,000,000 The move fueled significant traction on social media and caused a sharp price increase of Meta Planet shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Listed under the numeric symbol 33.50, Meta Planet stock rallied just above 35 Japanese yen, about 0.22¢ from 20 Japanese yen, which was worth $0.13, hours after the firm announced its Bitcoin purchase back in April.
Before its strategic shift into Bitcoin, MetaPlanet primarily operated in the traditional investment scene. Founded in 1999. Wow, that's a long time ago. Meta Planet originally operated a hotel business, investment services, and as an investor relations consultancy. The news comes just a few days after Meta Planet appointed prominent market researcher Dylan LeClaire as director of its Bitcoin strategy. Quote, this is just the beginning, Meta Planet CEO Simon Gurevich wrote in a Twitter post on the company buying more Bitcoin on May 9th. The Japanese yen has reportedly been the worst performer in 2024 among major currencies against the US dollar, dropping to record lows in April last seen in 19 nineties.
According to local sources, the yen's drop in value over the past 3 years came mainly from the gap between domestic and foreign interest rates and a growing trade deficit. So there you go. What the mode the what was really eye opening was when they and I just learned this that they appointed Dylan LeClaire as the director of Bitcoin strategy. This is a Japanese company, and they are basically scooping up one of the youngest analysts in the Bitcoin space from the United States. I caution the United States regulators at this point, if you want brain drain to happen, you keep on doing what you're doing and people will leave. They will go work for other companies.
I think this this notion of, patriotism is being severely limited by the actions that the people that are in the positions of power in governments, not just in the United States, but in all countries, are seriously damaging the patriotism felt by the citizenry of those particular countries. And no longer is it that we would not just, you know, bail out and go to another country or work for another company that is not based in the United States. You want brain drain to happen? You keep right on doing what you're doing. Okay? So just you do that and we'll we'll all be fine. Now getting into banking.
This is out of Decrypt, Matt DeSalvo. Banking giant Wells Fargo has revealed investments in Bitcoin ETFs. Oh, my God. How much do they own? Let's find out. American banking giant Wells Fargo disclosed investments in multiple oh, this has gotta be good news. Right? Multiple Bitcoin ETFs on Friday per regulatory filing, making it the latest institution to get on board with the crypto based vehicles. Paperwork and that it also has exposure to Bitcoin Depot Incorporated, a Bitcoin ATM provider. Man, this is gonna be good, ain't it? The document shows that the bank has invested in ProShares Bitcoin strategy, which gives investors exposure to BTC futures contracts that bet on the future price of the asset.
But, oh man, dude, this is embarrassing. The exposure is small. The filing shows that Wells Fargo investment in GBTC amounts to $141,000 while its ProShares investments is under $1200 No, not $1,200,000,000 $1200 This is the kind of money that you might carry in your checking account sometimes. And the exposure to Bitcoin Depot? Yeah, that ATM company? $99 Why do you even report that? This is this is embarrassing. Back in February, a report claimed that Wells Fargo And They've repeatedly talked about investments in digital assets and back in 2019 even piloted its own shitcoin.
Okay. And then they get into a little bit of price analysis on on Bitcoin. Dude, so when that news first broke on Friday, it was after I had done the Friday show I saw it and I was immediately going, what the hell is this? Because the initial reports were saying that it was, that their exposure was a $141,000,000 And I can't remember who I it was like news BTC or some some outfit. I don't remember. Turns out, no, wasn't a $141,000,000 It was a 141,000. So wow. Not even not even worth it except that they do have exposure. And that's maybe they're just testing maybe I don't know. I don't know what that is because that seems like an accounting error but whatever because the big news of the day is right here Roaring Kitty comes roaring back to life GameStop trading paused 9 times as roaring kitty return drives a meme rally.
Matt DeSalvo for decrypt. Meme coins and tokens surged early Monday morning after an internet figure who inspired the 2021 Gamestop rally posted for the first time in years. Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty or Deep Fucking Value, who helped fuel the 2021 rally via Reddit post and livestreams posted to Twitter an image of a man leaning forward in a chair while holding a video game controller. It was his first tweet in 3 years. The post hints that meme stocks and cryptocurrencies may be due for a rally again or at least that's how traders are taking it. The price of GameStop shares more than doubled from the close of business Friday to the market's opening on Monday, and the surge in demand prompted Nasdaq to halt trading 9 times already this morning.
Fellow 2021 meme stock AMC, the movie theater chain, also jumped by 33% today, while adjacent stocks like Reddit and Robinhood are also gaming. Back in 2021, Roaring Kitty posted about gains that he'd made from buying shares in falling businesses like GameStop, which had been shorted by top investment firms. His post prompted people to join in, eventually leading to Wall Street chaos due to shares suddenly going up in value. The craze led to a surge in so called meme stocks, or shares in companies that became popular on Internet forums. Cryptocurrencies experienced a boom as a result too with top meme coins and tokens going up in value. They are now a key part of the crypto ecosystem and have surged this year as part of Bitcoin's rally And today, they're up even more Of the top meme coins by market cap Dogecoin is leading the charge. Woof woof. It's up nearly 6% trading hands for 15¢ a doge according to CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, other popular but small cap tokens like Ethereum based Pepe and Floki are both up over 8%. Who gives the the meme coin part is not is not the interesting part. It's the fact that you got you got Gil who's at it again coming out of retirement, I guess you can call it retirement, after 3 years of not posting a thing, posting a single picture of this dude sitting forward in a chair holding what I thought last night when I saw it was a TV remote control. But when you look at it, it's becomes kind of evident that it is a game controller. So my first initial thought when I saw the picture was that this has nothing to do with GameStop.
And I still, maybe, maybe I, you know, wrongly, maybe wrongly, I'm thinking that this doesn't really have anything to do with GameStop itself. I mean, in in a way, that play has already been kinda played out. Maybe. Like I said, I I reserve the right to be completely and utterly wrong. But what if he's looking at something else? What if in that 3 years, he sees something else? Now I'm not gonna attribute to him that he's some kind of master trader or an analyst to end all, you know, analysts. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that maybe he does see something that is not related at all to GameStop or AMC or any of the other shit that went on in 2021, which was absolutely insane.
What if this is about the dollar yen situation? What if this is about treasury bonds? What if this is about something more structural than GameStop because GameStop isn't structural not not to the world economy The trading value between the dollar and the the dollar and the yen is. And that's due to what? Treasury bonds, which is the underlying structure of the world markets whether you like it or not is the United States Treasury Bond. That's the underlying structure of everything. It shouldn't be. I don't agree with it. I don't like it. But that's what that that's what it is. You can't get away from it. So what if Roaring Kitty isn't roaring back into life because of GameStop but something may be actually important?
I don't know. We'll have to find out. But in the meantime, let's run the CNBC futures and commodities got West Texas Intermediate up 0.6 percent to $78.73. Brent, North Sea is up a third. Natural gas is up 4 and a half points to $2.35 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline is down to $2.50 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gull having a bad day. It is off 1.39% to $2,342 an ounce. Silver is off 0.16%. Platinum is up a third. Copper is up over 2 points and palladium is down 1.7%. We got live cattle is down 0.7 6%. Lean hogs are down 1 a quarter. And feeder cattle are down almost a quarter. The Dow is down a 5th of a point. The S and P is down point 06%. NASDAQ is up, 0.16%, and the S and P mini is up 0.05.
So it looks like there might be waiting for news over there on Wall Street. What news? I don't know, but I'm sure that something is about to drop. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a sideways trading day on a Monday. Clark Moody's Bitcoin is flashing 62,660 650. Let's see. So we get, yeah, it looks like our big green candles are being offset by some downward action today. $62,630, that is a $1,230,000,000,000 market cap. You can get 26.9 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,697,646 of.
And the average fees per block has dropped again to 0.17 BTC in fees on average for a per block basis. How many blocks are there, you ask? I don't know. Let's find out. 224 blocks currently carrying 181,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear with high priority rates of 14 satoshis per vbyte, low priorities are 12, and anything under 4a half are gonna be ejected from mempools around the world, which are operating at a hash rate of 587.2 exahashes per second. From Bitcoin and episode 895 entitled wealth of networks, I gotta got bupkis.
Except thank God for letter 6173 with 5,000 says number 1 booster of Bitcoin and of all time according to fountain. No shit. Damn letter. I had no idea. I challenge anyone to try and dethrone me. But remember, if you come for the king, you best not miss. Nice. He also comes back and he says he's replied to his own note says, although looking at it, the number is off. It shows 380,000 satoshis in all time boost, but my local number in fountain is 1,100,000 plus. Peter came back and replied and says my local number is 2,000,000 plus.
But it's definitely off. So there may be some issues going on with fountain. Joey, Christian Farmer, a 67 with 2,000 says nothing in Christian Farmer, a 67 with 2,000 says nothing in pies finishes us out. 100 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's gonna do it for the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news you can use. And, oh, look. Another bank is in Bitcoin. America's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, has disclosed spot Bitcoin ETF holdings according to an SEC filing. Oh, joy. Let's find out about this one. This is, from Bitcoin Magazine written by Nick Hoffman. JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in America has revealed exposure to spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds in a newly filed document.
The SEC filings by JPMorgan Chase provide specific insights into the bank's exposure to spot ETFs, bitcoin ETFs. The bank currently has exposure to spot bitcoin ETFs issued by some of the largest asset managers in the world BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and more. Though the amount of money allocated to each ETF seems a bit underwhelming oh gee who could have guessed Taking into consideration how much money other institutions are allocating to purchase Bitcoin and that's because JPM, Susquehanna and others are just market makers and or AEPs.
Their ownership isn't necessarily indicative of anything other than this is how many shares they had on threethirty one of 24, commented Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seifert, If you are making markets in these things, the number of shares held could swing heavily day to day. The 13 f filing data is simply a snapshot of long positions held on the date of 3/31. 13 f's don't show shorts or derivatives, so we don't even have a full look at their true exposure on 3 of 31 or, well, the 31st day of the 3rd month of 2024. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas also commented stating, quote, we'll probably see many of the big banks report some holdings in their role as market makers slash APs.
That is different from them buying for the exposure and thus less hypocritical in JPM's case. Props for catching this though, we still working on getting the filing on BBG. It just came out. Further quote, what is notable in my opinion is the sheer number of holders that each has so far. Ibit has 250 holders. That's bonkers for Q1 on market, Balchunas continued. Here's a comparison of the other ETFs launched the same week ish, kinda, as BTC ones and we still have like a week of 13Fs to roll in yet. And he highlights that Fidelity, Bitwise, Arc 21 shares, and Ishares have 136, 60, 42 and the aforementioned 250 holders.
The rest of them are really real there's not very many holders in the rest of these things like oh CCM Global Equity ETF has one holder Roundhill Bitcoin Strategy ETF has 1 holder. Yieldmax Universe and ETFs, 3 holders. I The next one up, Halamo CEF Incorporated, an arbiter ETF has 6 holders. Okay, so maybe that's the situation that's going on with Wells Fargo. We're not getting a full picture from their 13 f filing with the SEC. And we're Eryb Balchunas basically called it out right here as long as well as James Seyfert saying we really don't know what these things mean because these these things can swing on inter day trades and all you had was a snapshot of what was going on that one particular day. So we really don't know what the banks are holding but the fact that JPM or JPMorgan Chase is holding anything.
Makes me wonder if Jamie Dimon really hates Bitcoin as much as he says he does or if he really does whether or not he's chewing somebody's ass out because he they did what he told him not to do. I don't really care because we're gonna move over to block. They are looking for mining development kit beta testers. Block is looking for individual developers and developer teams who are interested in building novel Bitcoin mining applications with its mining development kit, beta hardware and software. You need to apply before July 15th this year. Again, if you want to be a tester for the mining development kit for block, you gotta get your data in before July 15, 2024.
Quote, we're excited to announce the launch of our mining Bitcoin or sorry, our mining development kit, MDK beta program. As we begin to allocate a limited number of our first beta kits, we invite interested developers to submit their applications. Each MDK unit will consist of 3 hashboards equipped with 105 nanometer bzm2asic chips and a controller board loaded with our custom firmware The system is expected to produce hash rates of up to 110 terahashes with energy efficiency ranging from 27 to 33 joules per terahash. I'm pausing to note that that is way less of an efficiency rating than the brand new s21 minuteers that, Bitmain released a couple of weeks ago.
I have I have yet to see any of those in the wild, so I don't know, but they were talking about 15 joules per terahash, which is insane amounts of efficiency. So anyway, it will also include an API for seamless integration with various existing miner management software solutions that should enhance the performance and usability of our hardware. Each hash board is equipped with an embedded controller to allow more flexibility in controlling the ASICs. All the components are compatible with commonly available market options such as chassis, PSU, fans and cables said block. Note that the MDK hardware is early prototype hardware using a third party mining chip.
Our eventual production mining system will use our own internally developed 3 nanometer mining chip which is expected to result in a much more performant system. Participants in the beta program will receive MDK hardware and software free of charge. Apply to MDK beta program here and they give a link. Is it easy? No. It's not an easy link to read, but it will be in the show notes because I put all of the links to the URLs, in the show notes for all of the stories that I read. So just go find the one, for no bs bitcoin.com about block and it will be there and you you can go sign up there.
Free. This is free, but you got to get your shit in before July 15, 2024 But you could get some mining hardware to play around with. Anyway, where are we at now? Oh, spirals. We're still kind of on block. Spiral has renewed the grant for the summer of Bitcoin initiative. Thank God. Summer of Bitcoin is a global online summer internship program focused on introducing university students to open source Bitcoin development and design. Quote, grant renewal, a major educational initiative that we've been supporting summer of Bitcoin since a voice from the nameless ruins behind our office made us choose between backing summer of Bitcoin or enduring a lifetime of all food having the texture of oysters.
Interns who go through the program contribute to Bitcoin projects of their choosing, with some even becoming mentees themselves. New projects are arriving all the time. Know an up and coming Bitcoin or looking for a start? Looking for one for yourself? Well, go to summer of bitcoin.org. That's summer of bitcoin.org. Summerofbitcoin.org. Thank you Spiral BTC for your continued support. That same voice had left us two choices. It was either enable university students to contribute to open source Bitcoin or endure a lifetime of cosmic banana peel calamities, says Summer of Bitcoin in response.
The humor has me riddled. I'm in stitches. Now final one up for today. Utreexodbeta is now available for general public testing. Utreexod is a full node Bitcoin implementation with support for utreex0 accumulators. It enables immediate node bootstrap by having the UTXO state hard coded into the codebase uses a tiny amount of memory and has a low disk input output. Quote, utreexod, a full node implementation with utreex0 accumulator support is now available for general testing by the public, announced Calvin Kim to the Bitcoin Dev mailing list. Quote, it's important to note that the code and protocol is not peer reviewed.
Using the node for production usage or for non negligible amounts of Bitcoin is not not not recommended. There will also be breaking changes requiring frequent updates as well. Utrixod is also based off of BTCD, a Bitcoin node implementation in Go. Because of this, there may be consensus incompatibilities either as a result of the BTCD bug or a Bitcoin Core bug. Also note that there are not many uTreeXO nodes on the network. It may take a while for the node to find a utreex0 node that it can sync off of. To help bootstrap the network, consider running an archival node or a bridge node, said the developer. Huge thanks to the Human Rights Foundation for funding my work for this release. Without the support, I wouldn't have been able to focus on u three x o, he added. And this is Calvin Kim again. Key features, the implementation of efficient u three x o accumulators with an improved deletion algorithm from the utreex0 paper.
Efficient peer to peer transaction relay with support for cashing Utreexo proofs for mempool transactions, quick sync to the tip of the blockchain with assume Utreexo, built in wallet support with BDK wallet, and Electrum personal server support for usage with other wallets. So uTrex0 is just an ability to get a new Bitcoin node off the ground quickly. It assumes that's what the assume UTreeXO is. It assumes that just a few blocks back are valid and then boom it gets those blocks you're off to the races. When I started up my brand new node on my start 9, it took about a day and a half, maybe like a full day because it was syncing the blockchain all the way back from the genesis block and revalidating every transaction in every block all the way up to the chain tip. And then and only then would the node actually start up and run where I could run a wallet or fire up a lightning network node? You're not firing up a lightning network node unless you have a Bitcoin full node that is running.
Running is different than it syncing. While it's syncing, it's not actually in runtime. It's in sync time. It's just getting the blocks and making sure everything is copacetic. Only after it does the entire blockchain which for depending on how beefy your internet connection and or processor is that determines how long it takes to get a node up and running. When I did my first node, it took 3 days to do the Bitcoin core node. And then I took I took my node down for, like, a couple of weeks. Actually, I think it was I think it was down for a good 6 weeks. And when I got back, I had to wait for at least a couple of hours for it to sync back to ChainTip.
With blocks and you can at least get the rest of your stuff set up. Electrum or Electris, you could do like a Bitcoin node or by or I mean a lightning network node, you could do a couple of other stuff. So There there you go, right? So if you want to kind of help these guys out you might want to consider testing. It is UTRIXOD, it is in beta, and it is available for general public testing. That's gonna do it for the morning roundup. Dad says jokes. My friend Jack claims he can communicate with vegetables. Turns out Jack and the beans talk. Alright. So, the bank news.
Basically underwhelming, but we still don't know exactly what they've got up their sleeves. Roaring Kitty, we're gonna have to actually see why he's back. I think the initial this whole initial the 9 stops of trading this morning on stuff like GameStop and AMC, I think that was basically a whole bunch of people who are making an assumption that Roaring Kitty is talking about GameStop again. I got a sneaky suspicion that he isn't. I totally can be wrong, but I'm looking for him to start saying something else. And I get the feeling given the experience that he had through 2020, 2021 that and the fact that he hasn't been back in 3 years that he may have been studying on something else. Because I really think the GameStop thing is kinda played out.
Again, totally could be wrong. But it would be interesting if Roaring Kitty is seeing something more structural and is gonna play that one off Because it's all a game whether it's gay. I mean, I don't think the game controller meant Gamestop. I think it means he's about to game something else. So be on the lookout for that shit going on, 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.
