Join me today for Episode 886 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- Stop The Bickering, Please.
- More on HK BTC ETFs
- UFC's Moicano Speaks On Freedom Money
- Blackrock Gets Into BTC Education
- Runes Are The New CDO: Stay Away
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/hong-kong-bitcoin-etfs-to-trade-by-april-30th-reports
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-spot-bitcoin-etf-approval-draws-praise-caution-industry
https://decrypt.co/226622/ufc-fighter-moicano-mises-bitcoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/blackrock-releases-bitcoin-education-series
- 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://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/04/17/runes-casey-rodarmors-protocol-for-shtcoins-on-bitcoin-set-to-go-live-at-halving/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/opensats-lts-stuart-bowman-hzrd149/
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[00:00:00]
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Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Ant, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, casting, 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 two 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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 11:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's 17th day of April 2024.
Getting close to the halving. We're getting there. We're getting there. This is episode 886 of Bitcoin. And I have a question about the halving. If if the Bitcoin blockchain started, when it started in January, then how is it that we end up with halvings in April? Because that seems to be like a 6, you know, 4 month difference. So if anybody can answer that question for me, I I'd I'd appreciate it. It's not all that important, but it, you know, it it is interesting. I will give it that. It's definitely interesting. Alright. Leathermint.
Circle P is open for business. Today's Circle P vendor is Leathermint wallets, if you want a good wallet made out of leather and with really good stitching, by the way. I mean, just just by looking at this stuff. And I've got it up there in the stream for those that are going to join me on ZapStream or zap.stream. They got belts, they got signing device apparels, they've got clearly wallets, and they've also got passport holders. But I mean it's really artistically done. It's very, you know, really nice colored leather. It's real leather. It's very high quality leather. But again, what I marvel at is the stitching.
Why am I all about the stitching? Because if the stitching sucks your wallet falls apart and therefore you need to get a new wallet and we need people like Leathermint wallets out there that are actually building stuff to last. You know, buy blender today. It's dead in 6 months to a year. You know, the blender that my mom bought, if I could find it, it probably still works. It is probably 50, 60 years old. I don't know where the hell it went, but I guarantee you that Oster blender saw more battle damage than any Abrams tank ever saw. And that thing was running fine by the time that she died and we had to sell the house and I don't know where everything went. But this is quality.
Quality is supposed to last. So get sovereignty in style. Go to the leathermint.com. That's all one word. The leathermint dotcom. On Nostra, you can find them at Leathermint and on Deadbird's site you can find them at the leathermint. And if you tell them if you tell them that you heard it here on Bitcoin and and the circle p, they'll give you 10% off and then they will give me some sats from that sale. The coupon code and they gave me one, is bitcoinand. All one word. Again, for 10% off your Leathermint wallet that's probably gonna last longer than you do, Coupon code is Bitcoinand.
Alright, let's get into the news. Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs are going to start trading by April 30th according to reports. This has been a question in my mind. When the US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched, they immediately started trading. This is not the case with the Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs. Sometime between today April 30th, those suckers will come to life, even though they've already been approved. This is out of Bitcoin Magazine. Vivek Sin is writing. Hong Kong's highly anticipated spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds are slated to launch by the end of this month, according to various industry sources. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission approved several fund managers to offer the spot Bitcoin ETFs and following this, infrastructure provider for some of the approved fund managers, stated that the Bitcoin ETFs are aiming to go live as early as late April.
Marcus Thielen, founder of research firm 10x, also stated that the Bitcoin ETFs could start trading by April 30th. The launch timeline will depend on finalizing the details with regulators. Once listed, analysts predict the accessible funds could attract significant capital inflows. Singapore based Maxiport expects mainland Chinese investors to pour up to $25,000,000,000 into Hong Kong's bitcoin ETFs via the Southbound Stock Connect program. Thielen echoed this sentiment, stating that the ETFs could yield $25,000,000,000 if fully accessible to Chinese investors.
However, he noted that Chinese participation may take at least 6 months due to the evolving regulations. Nonetheless, the ETFs mark a milestone for Bitcoin adoption in Asia. They provide regulated exposure to Bitcoin, opening the asset to a broader range of investors. The fund's unique in kind redemption feature also makes them competitive globally. This allows swapping bitcoin directly for ETF shares, increasing efficiency. By approving the ETFs, Hong Kong cements its position as a rising Bitcoin hub. The city is moving swiftly to license Bitcoin companies and products amid growing demand. With Bitcoin's next halving just days away, and 2, in fact, the ETF launch timing is opportune.
Many predict the supply shock event will propel bitcoin to new highs, benefiting linked investment vehicles. If successful, Hong Kong's spot ETFs could prompt other Asian jurisdictions to follow suit. The domino effect would boost regional participation and maturity of the Bitcoin market. So we're looking at April 30. Sometime between now and April 30, those suckers go live. So what do you think will happen? I'm not sure exactly what's gonna happen, but the takeaway from this particular story is to remember that these ETFs are not like the spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States.
Because here in the United States, if you buy Bitcoin ETF shares, you have to use US dollars. If you want your Bitcoin out of that fund, you cannot take the Bitcoin. That Bitcoin is liquidated on the market and then you get US dollars and then if you want actual Bitcoin instead of US dollars, you got to go somewhere else and buy it with the US dollars. These spot Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong are in kind redemption. Completely different. I can buy shares directly with Bitcoin. When I take my Bitcoin or when I sell the shares, I take possession of the Bitcoin. Not renminbi, not yen, not euros, not dollars, but actual Bitcoin.
It is a this makes it, in my opinion, a completely different product. And I think it's a superior product. I think there's gonna be a lot of interest in in kind redemption versus the wholesale bullshit gating feature that we have with the United States version where you have to go in with US dollars and you have to come out with US dollars. So there's all of that. Now, not done with the Hong Kong Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETF approvals draw praise as well as caution from industry players. This is out of Cointelegraph written by Zhi Yuan Sun. The much anticipated approval of spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds in Hong Kong earlier this week represents a significant industry milestone for some experts. However, others warn that greater market forces such as persistent inflation and geopolitical risk could overshadow the bullish event. Quote, we're delighted to witness the historic moment of the launch of Asia's 1st Bitcoin spot ETFs and the world's 1st shitcoin number 1 spot ETF, said Olivia Wang, chief operating officer of Hong Kong based Hashkey Group in a statement, quote, this will serve as a significant milestone for traditional financial institutions in Hong Kong to enter the market and provide retail users with a more convenient purchasing gateway.
At the same time, Wang explained that unlike US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which were approved in January, Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs have several unique features, such as subscription and redemption both via fiat money and via Bitcoin and stablecoins themselves. In addition, Wang spoke highly of Hong Kong regulators approving a spot shitcoin number 1 ETF. I don't give a shit. Similarly, Patrick Pan, CEO and chairman of OSL Exchange, told Cointelegraph that Let's see. Oh, I'm sorry. I saw something shiny and I got distracted He explains that such a structure will result in uninterrupted trading flows and enhanced market liquidity.
I don't know about that. Unless they're going to trade 20 fourseven, there's going to be interruption on trading flows. Just saying. Crypto exchange eToro is also bullish on the prospects of Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs. Hong Kong would become the first Asian jurisdiction to have Bitcoin spot ETFs positioning itself as a rising crypto hub in Asia as well as potentially paving the way for other neighboring countries and jurisdictions to follow suit. Quote, more potential investors and integrations into the traditional financial system could bode well for the Bitcoin price. Sure it would However, eToro also noted after the Hong Kong ETF news that all eyes now rest on the Bitcoin halving event.
The question on every Bitcoin investor's mind right now is if we will see the price rally again to fresh all time highs given the immediate supply shock from the halving Or will the price fall even lower, with the halving becoming a sell the news event after the buildup similar to the Bitcoin spot ETF approval earlier this year? The exchange asked. Others are not so enthusiastic about the prospects of a Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETF quote, mainland China investors probably will not be eligible to buy Hong Kong listed spot Bitcoin ETFs as they are barred from buying virtual assets, commented Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Due to such demand constrictions, Balchunis predicts that Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs will only attract $1,000,000,000 within 2 years, far less than the approximately $50,000,000,000 currently managed by US spot Bitcoin ETFs. Meanwhile, Marcus Thielen, founder of Singaporean blockchain analytics firm 10x Research, said that the firm sold everything last night, just one day after Hong Kong spot ETFs were approved. Our growing concern is that risk assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies are teetering on the edge of a significant price correction, wrote Thielen adding, the primary trigger is the unexpected and persistent inflation, With the bond market now projecting less than 3 cuts and 10 year treasury yields surpassing 4.5%, we may have arrived at a crucial tipping point for all risk assets.
End quote. Bitcoin has lost nearly 20% of its value since achieving its all time high of $73,750 apiece last month. On April 13th, the digital asset took a nosedive due to escalating tensions in the Middle East. Yes, we know we can see the great big red dildos. It wasn't a good day this morning either. I, you know, it looks to me that it's not just Bitcoin, and we'll we'll get to that when we do numbers. But I think people are flowing into the United States dollar because the dollar just refuses to do anything but get stronger. And that is one of the reasons why at the moment, at the moment Jerome Powell has no appetite at all whatsoever for reducing interest rates at the Federal Reserve. He's not gonna do it. Not anytime soon. And everybody keeps acting like they're all surprised about this, and I don't get it. I'm not even a freaking economist, and I I am completely unsurprised.
It makes complete sense to me that they're going to keep this shit up for the time being. Even though we all are screaming that a weaker US dollar means a better importing environment for the United States consumer. But right now I think the Federal Reserve basically doesn't care about that right now They've got other things that they're worried about. They are not going to reduce interest rates anytime soon. So it's back to the plebs to buy Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin because that's what we were doing before all this ETF nonsense hit in the first place. Like this dude UFC star Money Moi Cano urges fans to study Mises, as well as Bitcoin.
Out of decrypt, Andrew Thorvallis has it, the writings of Ludwig von Mises, the famed Austrian economist of the early 20th century and hero of the Bitcoin faithful, are surging in popularity following an endorsement from a popular MMA fighter. Renato Money Moicano became a top 10 UFC lightweight this weekend after his comeback win at UFC 300. Rather than call out his next opponent, the Brazilian fighter used his post fight interview to urge the crowd to read Mises books. If you care about your fucking country, read Ludwig von Mises and the 6 lessons of the Austrian Economic School motherfuckers.
End quote. Monocano, Moycano told the crowd aggressive, but it apparently struck a chord. Since that night, at least 26,000 copies of the 6 lessons have been downloaded as a free pdf from Amazon. Several other Mises books are also top rankers on the site's economic section. There have also been anecdotal accounts on Twitter from Moicano fans who say Mises book has been sold out at their local bookstores. The Austrian School of Economics advocates for a laissez faire approach to the economy, free markets, individualism, and a fixed money supply.
Many modern proponents of Mises and the Austrian school of thought such as economist and media personality, Peter Schiff, are fans of gold and advocate for a return to the gold standard for the United States dollar. Others, unlike Schiff, are also fans of Bitcoin since the digital currency has a fixed supply, can be freely owned by anyone, and is not managed by any central bank. After the fight, Moi Cano asked to receive his $300,000 fight finishing bonus in Bitcoin. Quote, I love Bitcoin. I love decentralization, Moi Cano said in an interview on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour on Monday.
Since learning about Austrian economics and Bitcoin, Moicano no longer keeps his money in a bank, he said, because the fiat currency in his account loses value to inflation over time, quote, it's not an investment. It could go up and down every time, he explained, but it's better than trusting a money that is backed by politicians and promises. If you don't have money to buy Bitcoin, try to learn about money and Bitcoin, end quote. Moy Cano on Monday campaigned for guest spot on the Show Me the Money podcast hosted by the Bitcoin Standard author and Austrian economist, Saifedean Ammis. The podcast host and author replied, with pleasure.
A day prior, former professor of psychology turned media personality, Jordan Peterson, who has himself hosted Safedine on his own podcast, called Moy Kano's post fight speech unspeakably great, end quote. Further quote, the deadly boxers have become profound economic philosophers. He tweeted at the time. Which is very interesting because you we always think about these guys, you know, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, we always think about athletes as just big dumb brutes. But they're not. And the reason that they're not, or at least they certainly aren't anymore, is because the way that athlete after athlete after athlete has been totally screwed out of 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars through various frauds, hucksters, grifters, and then in some cases their own ego because they want to pay people to have you know to hang around them so they can have an entourage.
But money management, they basically just keep giving their money to these money managers and they keep getting robbed blind. And now it appears that more and more professional and even amateur athletes are going I don't want that to happen to me. And they're actually having to learn how this shit works. And this is one of the arguments that Bitcoiners make. I don't wanna have to have a PhD in, you know, and be a professor of economics and have a Nobel laureate in economics so that I can figure out how not to lose all my money while I'm here on this planet. And yet, even we've made it easy with Bitcoin and yet The fascination that we are starting to get with what money is and how it works I think actually bodes well and I'm certainly not going to stop or tell anybody that they shouldn't learn more about economics God knows I have and I never thought I would give a shit about economics whatsoever. Now as far as education goes when it comes to Bitcoin and all this kind of stuff, we have an interesting entrant into the education space about Bitcoin.
And that name is BlackRock. I know it's weird. It's bizarre. But here it is. Huddlebod, good morning. I just saw you pop into the chat. Bitcoin Magazine, we got it here from Nick Hoffman. BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, with over $10,500,000,000,000 that's trillion with a t, in assets under management, has unveiled a series of educational content aimed at explaining bitcoin, the bitcoin having, and its implications along with insights into its approved spot Bitcoin ETF. Yeah, I know. It's an advertisement. But hey, what are you gonna do? Least they're trying. Quote, April is packed with rare events this year. With eyes set on the upcoming Bitcoin halving, a unique process that only happens every 4 years, said US head of thematic and active ETFs at BlackRock, Jay Jacobs. Quote, Tune in below to learn how this impacts bitcoin's value and for more about investing in bitcoin ETFs.
In a series of 4 videos available on BlackRock's official website, the asset manager discusses the fundamental aspects of Bitcoin as an investment, addressing common questions and concerns for investors looking to understand and navigate the Bitcoin landscape. Topics covered include the underlying technology of Bitcoin, its role in investment portfolios, keeping Bitcoin secure and the significance of events like the Bitcoin halving. And the first form of internet native money to gain widespread global adoption. Bitcoin allows for peer to peer transactions outside of central intermediaries like banks, BlackRock stated on its webpage.
Bet that's not making Jerome Powell very happy. Or Jamie Dimon. Whatever. With the recent approval of its Spot Bitcoin ETF, Ibit, BlackRock's educational initiative aims to take advantage of the increasing mainstream acceptance and interest in Bitcoin, emphasizing the importance of education and informed decision making for the new class of investors entering this market. The ETF offers exposure to Bitcoin's price movements without requiring direct ownership of the digital asset. BlackRock is doing exactly what I would have expected them to do. However, even I'm still surprised. Yes. Is it an advertisement for people to buy into their ETF?
Absolutely. Should I be happy about that? Probably not. However, it is education. Now, I have not looked at the videos. It's very possible that what they're saying in those videos is just patently wrong. I don't know if any of you guys have actually looked at these videos on BlackRock's webpage and they have gotten everything wrong or even something's wrong, please let me know. I mean, I I'm just uninterested in looking at yet more educational content. But I do think it's a positive that even BlackRock is going sitting back saying, look.
There's 2 things for me there's 2 things at work here. 1, they wanna sell their product. They they really do. That very clear to all of us. But they also realize something that I think is becoming more and more prominent in, oh, media in general is that advertisements are becoming more educational. Some, many of them not all, but in not most by any stretch of the imagination, but it's called content marketing. It's called content marketing, right? Like It's a way to have an advertisement that actually imparts some knowledge. It's content. It's not just a flashy, you know, they hire a Hollywood, you know, what am I trying to say? A camera crew and sound crew and an editor and and a producer and a director, and they, you know, they go out and they shoot Wall Street and make it look all gray and and, you know, noir, and it looks all rich, and you're gonna be rich just because you're sitting there watching the the commercial. This shit doesn't cut bread anymore.
It just doesn't cut any bread. What really cuts bread is people who are like, I'm watching this as an advertisement. However, I do not know that it's an advertisement. To me, it's content and hopefully the BlackRock content is high quality content And that they the people viewing it get something out of it. And then they're motivated to say, now that I understand this thing better, maybe I'll buy the product. See how this works? This content marketing thing has been going on for a very long time, clearly. But I think it's becoming more and more and more mainstream as we go along. Now what do you say we read some numbers?
CNBC Futures and Commodities. West Texas Intermediate is not doing well today. It's down 3% to $82.83 a barrel. Brent Norsee is down almost 3 points itself to $87.43. It has lost the $90 mark. So, natural gas isn't doing well either. It's down 1 a quarter percent. Gasoline is down 3 a quarter percent. Even shiny metal rocks are having kind of a bad day. Gold is down over half a point to $23.91.10. Silver is actually one of the only ones that's up. It's up a 3rd, and platinum is down over 2. Biggest winner today in ag is coffee, 4.66% to the upside.
Biggest loser is wheat, down just over 2 points. Live cattle is down a 5th of a point, and feeder cattle is down just over a tenth of a point. The Dow is up but only barely. I mean, it's barely up, man. Man. S and P is down a third. NASDAQ is down a point, and the S and P mini is well, it's kinda roughing it out at just about half a point to the downside. All of them are experienced this this is the correlation that Bitcoin has with legacy legacy markets. That's how old Bitcoin has become. Right? Stocks are kind of risky. Bitcoin's risky. Gold isn't having a good day.
Everybody's going into cash. Everybody and their dog is going into cash, which means what? That there's quite a few people that think that the markets in general are going to fall further and they want to have a solid cash position so that they can, what? Buy the blood in the street. That's the same thing that's always been going on. But yet, Bitcoin is kind of recovering off of its earlier lows today. It's back up to $61,640. That is a $1,210,000,000,000 market cap, 19,685,224 and a quarter BTC in circulation at this time. Hash rate has actually increased 630 exahashes per second as average over the past 2016 blocks.
Half of Bitcoin taken in fees on a per block basis. Yes, fees are are really up there right now. And the halving estimate is still for April 19, 2024. And the block space percentage for taking out the trash that is ordinals is 1.8%. And if you thought ordinals was finished, we've got news about ordinals coming up later so be aware about that. Mempool. What's going on with mempool? I don't know. Let's find out here. 223 blocks is carrying 208,000 unconfirmed transactions going at high priorities for a 100 and 23 satoshis per vbyte. Dude, that's well over $10.50 per transaction. That's a standard transaction.
Low priority is not much better. A 108 satoshis per vbyte. And anything under 6.71 is being purged from mempools around the world. And mempool.spaceforward/mining looks like 596.7 exahashes per second as of right now. Okay. From fungal arbitrage, that was, episode 880, what? 5 of Bitcoin and, I have the following boosts. TW cattle boosted 10,000 satoshis says great podcast and message. Thank you. I appreciate that. Axelrod with 5 k. Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks for this he said, s o o o d show. Sowed show? I don't know what that is. Love the ecology analogy and how it relates to sats. As the digital carbon units in the current age of digital trade, you may need to explain that. I have read entangled life probably on your advice. The Carbon book was also good, but Entangled Life is better. Thanks again. You're welcome.
Boosted or a bit step 21 with 2121 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Dubravco with 1650 says, I'll fungal your arbitrage. I love that mycorrhizal fungi can teach people how a market works if they are willing and ready to learn. Yeah. No kidding, man. 02ZX 404 says Bitcoin and mycelium are both fungible assets. Exactly. God's death with 337. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Big Gus with 200 boost breath. Henry gg or gqj with 200 says, this is why you never feed a plant phosphorus if you were trying to get it to associate with mycorrhizal fungi. It's like saturating the market, and the plant isn't interested in the trade.
When humans force feed plants with elements at the wrong part of the plant's lifecycle, is it any wonder? We tend towards wonky results which then invariably lead to pesticide use. Just think of all the people using 10 10 10 fertilizer thinking they are helping the plants. Yeah, that used to be me dude. Used to be me. I I never go to put fertilize, like synthetic fertilizers on any of my shit ever again. It because it doesn't need it if you have healthy soil and healthy soil means a high quality component of bacteria, a high quality component of fungi, and a high quality component of other larger critters, like little arthropods, earthworms, nematodes, all that stuff needs to be in the soil. And we keep killing it and we keep asking ourselves why is my shit not growing unless I put all this other stuff on? Well, because we've disrupted the soil cycle, but that's another show.
Mag Nussimo with a 100 says nothing. Stacy with a 100 says, thanks for a great show. Keep it up please. I will. Pies finishes us out with a 100 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. There's your weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. This is the ask. All those people that I just read the boostagrams from are supporting this show. I ask you to support this show as well. If I can get to a place where I don't feel deflated, you know, because some days that happens. You know, you beat your head against the wall for, you know, a couple of years and you're just wondering why other people just doing so much better than you are. Well, I mean, that's just it that is a human emotion that all of us have to deal with. But even if it's a wrong emotion to have, we still have it and it still has the same effect. It can be deflating.
We've seen some deflation in a lot of the Nostra developers who are they're under they're under the same pressures that we all are. We've got bills to pay and that's why I asked to donate to the Bitcoin and show. The more you donate the more I can the the better quality this show can attain. I can only do so much at what it is that I'm getting in on this show at this time. If you like the show and you want it to get better, I'm going to need some support. That's just the way this works. It's called the ask. I am asking you for your donations. Help me help you to help me make a better show.
One that is far beyond your imaginings. I appreciate it. Orange Mart with 2,100. Satoshi says good morning over here in zap.stream. Thank you, Orange Mart, for your support, especially at the time that I was just whining and crying and moaning about support. But it has to happen. It just has to happen. Okay. Remember how I was telling you at the first part of the show or well the first half of the show that ordinals kind of we wish they were done, but they're not only are they not done, but they're getting something else. Well, here it is. Runes.
Runes. KC Rod Armore's protocol for shit coins on Bitcoin is set to go live at the halving. Just when you thought maybe it was it gonna, you know, we weren't gonna have to deal with any more of this crap. Casey Rod armor, double down and release is going to release runes at the having. That's in, you know, 2 days. Oh great. Joy. What a what a wonderful gift that Casey Rodamore has given us. At this point, I don't like the guy. I cut him some serious serious slack when he dropped ordinals. That developer developing on Bitcoin. Okay, I get it.
But there's a lot of angry people out there. And honestly, this is just insult to injury. Is it going to hurt Bitcoin? No. Maybe in the short term, it'll be annoying like a rash, like you get poison oak or something like that. In the long run though, no, it's it's not going to really matter. Because if it had again, and this isn't really in defense of Casey because f that guy right now, I'm not happy with him. But if it wasn't him, it was going to be somebody else. This was going to happen because if a thing can be done by God, even though it probably shouldn't be done, it's going to end up being done. And it doesn't mean that it took it had to be Casey Rod Armour. It could have been anybody.
Hell, it could have even been Vitalik Buterin. I mean if it wasn't Casey it probably would be or at least somebody from the Ethereum team would do it. I don't know. I don't care. But here's what's going on. I'm not gonna read this whole story from CoinDesk, But let's get into what it is. So how do runes work? I'm telling you this so you understand what is coming, because it is coming. Runes builds on ordinals by using UTXOs unspent transaction outputs to generate transactions. UTXO is the term for the amounts of crypto left over after a transaction, similar to change remaining after a completing completing a purchase in cash. The new protocol extends the UTXO concept through the ability to hold a balance in any number of runes tokens.
A single rune can contain 10 units of rune a, a 100 units of rune b, and a 1000 units of rune c, and so on and so forth and so on with any UTXOs unspent by a transaction destroyed. That's right, destroyed. Users would therefore send a bunch of runes on different inputs which will be transferred to an op return to be burned. That is, unless they mark it with a runestone a pointer that specifies an alternative output rendering them non spendable, and thus ignored by Bitcoin core software. The network's software, in fact. A runestone could be used to create a new rune known as etching or mint or transfer existing runes Rod Armor sums up runes as a simple op return based protocol, as presented through around 2,000 lines of code.
The concept of not creating leftover UTXOs is a very simple strict improvement over BRC 20. Bitcoin entrepreneur Dan Held oh, god. Dan Held comes back wrote in a blog post earlier this month, quote Inscriptions have doubled the size of the UTXO set in just the past year and the majority of those are forever useless, he wrote. I do not know that's the end of what I wanna tell you about this Roone's book business. Let me a few words about Dan Held. There are so many people that got into Bitcoin and there was a lot of them that became influencers, that became very very well known, and they started making a lot of money. And then all of a sudden they started shit coining. This is never going to end.
If that small sentence, that single sentence from Dan makes me wonder if he's rethinking his shitcoin position. I hope so. I truly do. Because some of these people are they're, you know, well, they're influential for a reason. Some of these guys are really smart. Dan's not stupid. The problem that I have with all of these people is when they get greedy and they just don't care at all what it is that they're showing to the world. And then they'll like the you know, I still read some articles from Bitcoin Magazine yet Bitcoin Magazine CEO is one of magazine yet Bitcoin magazine CEO is one of the biggest proponents of ordinals.
And he will troll people at this point saying you've made me rich with ordinals. You keep on hating on ordinals and other the more you hate, the richer I'll get. That kinda attitude, honestly, is just so beneath humanity in general and I hate seeing it out of people that not more than 2 years ago swore up and down that Bitcoin magazine would always be about Bitcoin. And yet, knee deep into ordinals they went. And it's sad. Dan Held's no different. And I can't remember the name of the shit coin that he wanted to look into, but Robert you get Robert Breedlove and he's kind of there too.
You know, these guys are making money hand over fist and I don't I don't I don't have a problem with that aspect of it. It's just that we I don't like leading people into shit that I know is worthless and ordinals are worthless. Runes, honestly, it's like here it is. Let me let me read you back on get back to this sentence. The new protocol extends the UTXO concept through the ability to hold a balance in any number of runes tokens. A single rune can contain 10 units of rune a 100 units of rune b and a 1000 units of rune c and so on. Do you know what this sounds like to me? This sounds like a collateralized debt obligation.
What is a collateralized debt obligation? It was those things that were these synthetic derivatives in the real estate market that caused 2,008 crash to occur. Right? And what they were was the way it was explained and if you have not seen the movie The Big Short, I highly recommend everybody either read the book or if you want some really high quality entertainment, watch the movie. The Big Short you've got, I mean, I have to I've watched it at least 7 times and every time I understand something that I didn't understand before because the vagaries of what they did in the run up to 2,008 is almost mind bending.
And one of the things that most bit my mind that I it took 5 times through that movie to understand the CDO. If you didn't sell a mortgage backed security, an MBS, if you were unable to sell a portion of the MBS that you had synthesized to your customers and you have some left over, they didn't just burn it. They packaged it together with other unsold MBSs, and then they got a triple a rating on it. And then they sold that son of a bitch as another kind of security called a CDO. And it contained parts of MBS a and shares of MBS b and other shares of MBSC, and then they called it the CDO.
And then, I don't know, some names like Titan CDO. Okay? That's what this shit looks like to me. Run as far and as run as far away as fast as you can from ordinals. Run even faster from runes. That shit right there everything about ordinals was already dangerous to begin with because it's just bullshit. But this, this invites scrutiny from people at the SEC. That shit's a security. That shit's a security right there. This rooms business is gonna get people put in jail. Do not be one of them. Please, for the love of God. Now, cutting through all of this noise that is the OpenSats fight that's going on between several developers I guess and Matt Odell of of OpenSats as well as OpenSats itself.
We have another OpenSats long term support. It's a grant for Nostra developers, Stuart Bowman and Hazard 149 Open Sats, a non profit dedicated to supporting open source developers working on Bitcoin and related freedom technologies announced long term support for Nostra developer, Stuart Bowman, and hrzd 149. I just call it hazard 149. Quote, Stewart is the main developer and maintainer of satellite. Earth, a web based Nostra client and CDN server that is geared towards self sovereign communities as was stated in the blog post. Hazard 149 is the creator of nostrudel A fast web based Nostra client with tools to explore the Nostra protocol in-depth.
He is also the brains behind blossom or BLOBs Stored Simply on Media Servers, which aims to simplify the storage and organization of digital files in the Nostra network, said OpenSats Honored to be in such company, said Bowman on Nostra so grateful to OpenSats for the opportunity to work on Nostra full time. I could have never imagined this a year ago when I was working a normal desk job. The Nostra journey has truly been life changing, but we are not done yet. We have so much more left to do, so much more left to build and experiment with in Nostra, and I'm so excited that I'll be there to see it all and help out, said hazard 149 in a response. If you wanna see OpenSats continue supporting important open source software contributors, consider making a donation to the OpenSats Nostra Fund.
And there's a, obviously, OpenSats Nostra Fund is in blue and underlined, so it's a link and it goes to opensats.org/funds. Okay. Listen, guys. This business about these fights, and I'm not I mean, other than Matt O'Dell, I'm not gonna name any names because it's it's just neither here nor there. This is my 2¢ on the whole thing. I I do not have a grant from Open Sats. I've met Matt once, had a really lovely discussion with him in Dallas at the I think it was the 2nd ever bit block boom. It was during COVID, and we were getting in trouble because we refused to wear our masks and it was great. It was one of the it was the only Bitcoin conference I've ever been to and I loved every single second of it and if if I had been a smart son of a bitch about it, I would have not gone to any of the talks. I would have just hung out in the hallways and at the bar, but it is what it is. So that's the only interaction that I've ever had with Matt.
I think Matt's a good guy. And I think that what's going on here is not about Matt and it's not about the open source board of directors that make the decisions on where the grants go. This doesn't mean that I know what the hell is going on. This is my 2¢ given what I know, and I will be the 1st to admit that what I know is not much. But I got an opinion. And my opinion is that this type of fight is inevitable. These kinds of hurt feelings or people getting a little bit of, you know, maybe developers getting cold feet because they keep talking about, well, I mean, I don't want anybody telling me what to do. Okay. That's I understand that.
Absolutely. And and you should never not think that way. But I don't think that that's the I don't think that's the impetus here from OpenSats. I think what's going on is that OpenSats is trying to do everything they can to support those people that they support. The fact that Matt is also connected to 1031 doesn't mean that OpenSats is connected to 1031. It's just a connection between open, 1031, the v c arm that I that he's part of with with some other people and the fact that he's also part of OpenSats, that that in people's minds makes a connection.
But what Matt's been trying to say is that there's no connection between what 1031 does and what OpenSats does, and I tend to believe them. Now, here's the other thing that I think is going on that is not helping. Matt did not and some of there's a lot of us in Bitcoin that did not come out of venture capital. We didn't come out of high scale banking. We've never been to Hong Kong. We don't know what the hell's going on when it comes to this shit, but we're trying. And the more we try, the more and the more we're successful when we try, the more we find ourselves in what? Unfamiliar territory.
All everything I guarantee you that everything that is going on with the hurt feelings and the the possible, like, looking giving each other sideways glances and the evil eye. All of that shit can and would have been avoided had all the people that have been involved had 25 years of experience in venture capital, high scale banking, like working at Ernst and Young, people, you know, maybe with somebody from the ratings agencies. But while that would have alleviated all these potential pitfalls, what would it have done? It would have made open sats exactly what it was that everybody was afraid of.
It would have it would have never even changed. It would have come out of the gates swinging like VCs. There would have been no chance for anybody to say I get to keep all of my capital that if I for whatever reason this thing goes and people start paying me for it, these were grants without strings attached which means that there was no promise that you were going to fork over 10,000 shares when you opened up your company and started making, you know, and went public and did an IPO and did all the things, right?
That you were gonna have to, you know, deliver 10,000 shares over to back back over to open sats. But that's because the guys that are going into it have thankfully and I people think that this is a terrible thing but they went into it with a little bit of naivete. Good. Fucking good. We need a little bit of naivete because you know what naivete is? It's not being stupid. It's you want to have a different future. Why people call it naive is because they what they look at is an idealism that's slamming its head up against a granite wall that is reality. But where did that reality come from? That reality came from centuries of rich people fucking over poor people and not caring.
Sociopathic behavior that wall that idealism comes up against and is painted with the blood of every fucking entrepreneur ever that did not come out of the banking industry, that did not come out of the hard reality, right? The the ratings agencies working on Wall Street, the legacy financial monster. Those are the only people that did not bloody themselves upon the wall of hard reality. The people that did are naive. Some of them broke through the wall. They were able to get there. Others, their soulless bodies are at the foot of this building with their blood all over the wall.
It happens. What I'm asking here is as you look at these texts from developers, from Matt, from anybody else that has something to do with with, well, OpenSats Understand that none of the people in OpenSats have the 25 years of experience that it would have taken to, a, alleviate any potential pitfalls that we are finding ourselves in now with these discussions, And, b, would have made open sats completely different than what it actually is. Just keep an open mind. Understand the arguments that are being made by the developers that are here to help us into get into Freedom Tech.
And I am sympathetic. But I am also sympathetic to the guys over at OpenSats who are kinda eating a lot of shit for doing something that they thought was good. I'm not asking anybody to stop arguing, okay? But I am asking people that are listening to that argument to bear in mind that we are all still very naive. We're heading fast to that wall of reality And it's going to hurt. It hurts right now. Some of us are rubbing ourselves on it right now and the bricks are scraping flesh off. Some of us have yet to see the building or the wall, but we're going to get there. And when we do, we're all going to have to go through this bullshit.
So please, the the ask I make to you here is to be conscious of what's going on, but try not to draw conclusions of somebody or the other being evil. Everybody in this space is trying to do the right thing. It's generating noise as we rub up against each other. That noise is friction. That friction produces heat. It's the same thing you'll find in any natural environment. What we can do is to act as the lubricant that fixes the friction coefficient to reduce it and thereby reduce the amount of heat put off. That's all I'm asking. Okay?
We don't want anybody coming out of this on the other side being so pissed off at each other that they never talk to each other because if we stop talking to each other, all potential goes out the window. Okay. Rant over. I have nothing else to say except that if you like what it is that I do, please support the show. Do that with donations, boostograms. You can go to patreon.comforward/bitcoinandpodcast and give me fiat. I've got it set up where it'll take fiat. I will convert that fiat into Bitcoin, but if that's the way that you wanna do it, all I'm asking is that you do do it.
Donate, support the show, help me make a more superior product for you. 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.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Ant, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, casting, 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 two 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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 11:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's 17th day of April 2024.
Getting close to the halving. We're getting there. We're getting there. This is episode 886 of Bitcoin. And I have a question about the halving. If if the Bitcoin blockchain started, when it started in January, then how is it that we end up with halvings in April? Because that seems to be like a 6, you know, 4 month difference. So if anybody can answer that question for me, I I'd I'd appreciate it. It's not all that important, but it, you know, it it is interesting. I will give it that. It's definitely interesting. Alright. Leathermint.
Circle P is open for business. Today's Circle P vendor is Leathermint wallets, if you want a good wallet made out of leather and with really good stitching, by the way. I mean, just just by looking at this stuff. And I've got it up there in the stream for those that are going to join me on ZapStream or zap.stream. They got belts, they got signing device apparels, they've got clearly wallets, and they've also got passport holders. But I mean it's really artistically done. It's very, you know, really nice colored leather. It's real leather. It's very high quality leather. But again, what I marvel at is the stitching.
Why am I all about the stitching? Because if the stitching sucks your wallet falls apart and therefore you need to get a new wallet and we need people like Leathermint wallets out there that are actually building stuff to last. You know, buy blender today. It's dead in 6 months to a year. You know, the blender that my mom bought, if I could find it, it probably still works. It is probably 50, 60 years old. I don't know where the hell it went, but I guarantee you that Oster blender saw more battle damage than any Abrams tank ever saw. And that thing was running fine by the time that she died and we had to sell the house and I don't know where everything went. But this is quality.
Quality is supposed to last. So get sovereignty in style. Go to the leathermint.com. That's all one word. The leathermint dotcom. On Nostra, you can find them at Leathermint and on Deadbird's site you can find them at the leathermint. And if you tell them if you tell them that you heard it here on Bitcoin and and the circle p, they'll give you 10% off and then they will give me some sats from that sale. The coupon code and they gave me one, is bitcoinand. All one word. Again, for 10% off your Leathermint wallet that's probably gonna last longer than you do, Coupon code is Bitcoinand.
Alright, let's get into the news. Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs are going to start trading by April 30th according to reports. This has been a question in my mind. When the US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched, they immediately started trading. This is not the case with the Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs. Sometime between today April 30th, those suckers will come to life, even though they've already been approved. This is out of Bitcoin Magazine. Vivek Sin is writing. Hong Kong's highly anticipated spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds are slated to launch by the end of this month, according to various industry sources. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission approved several fund managers to offer the spot Bitcoin ETFs and following this, infrastructure provider for some of the approved fund managers, stated that the Bitcoin ETFs are aiming to go live as early as late April.
Marcus Thielen, founder of research firm 10x, also stated that the Bitcoin ETFs could start trading by April 30th. The launch timeline will depend on finalizing the details with regulators. Once listed, analysts predict the accessible funds could attract significant capital inflows. Singapore based Maxiport expects mainland Chinese investors to pour up to $25,000,000,000 into Hong Kong's bitcoin ETFs via the Southbound Stock Connect program. Thielen echoed this sentiment, stating that the ETFs could yield $25,000,000,000 if fully accessible to Chinese investors.
However, he noted that Chinese participation may take at least 6 months due to the evolving regulations. Nonetheless, the ETFs mark a milestone for Bitcoin adoption in Asia. They provide regulated exposure to Bitcoin, opening the asset to a broader range of investors. The fund's unique in kind redemption feature also makes them competitive globally. This allows swapping bitcoin directly for ETF shares, increasing efficiency. By approving the ETFs, Hong Kong cements its position as a rising Bitcoin hub. The city is moving swiftly to license Bitcoin companies and products amid growing demand. With Bitcoin's next halving just days away, and 2, in fact, the ETF launch timing is opportune.
Many predict the supply shock event will propel bitcoin to new highs, benefiting linked investment vehicles. If successful, Hong Kong's spot ETFs could prompt other Asian jurisdictions to follow suit. The domino effect would boost regional participation and maturity of the Bitcoin market. So we're looking at April 30. Sometime between now and April 30, those suckers go live. So what do you think will happen? I'm not sure exactly what's gonna happen, but the takeaway from this particular story is to remember that these ETFs are not like the spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States.
Because here in the United States, if you buy Bitcoin ETF shares, you have to use US dollars. If you want your Bitcoin out of that fund, you cannot take the Bitcoin. That Bitcoin is liquidated on the market and then you get US dollars and then if you want actual Bitcoin instead of US dollars, you got to go somewhere else and buy it with the US dollars. These spot Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong are in kind redemption. Completely different. I can buy shares directly with Bitcoin. When I take my Bitcoin or when I sell the shares, I take possession of the Bitcoin. Not renminbi, not yen, not euros, not dollars, but actual Bitcoin.
It is a this makes it, in my opinion, a completely different product. And I think it's a superior product. I think there's gonna be a lot of interest in in kind redemption versus the wholesale bullshit gating feature that we have with the United States version where you have to go in with US dollars and you have to come out with US dollars. So there's all of that. Now, not done with the Hong Kong Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETF approvals draw praise as well as caution from industry players. This is out of Cointelegraph written by Zhi Yuan Sun. The much anticipated approval of spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds in Hong Kong earlier this week represents a significant industry milestone for some experts. However, others warn that greater market forces such as persistent inflation and geopolitical risk could overshadow the bullish event. Quote, we're delighted to witness the historic moment of the launch of Asia's 1st Bitcoin spot ETFs and the world's 1st shitcoin number 1 spot ETF, said Olivia Wang, chief operating officer of Hong Kong based Hashkey Group in a statement, quote, this will serve as a significant milestone for traditional financial institutions in Hong Kong to enter the market and provide retail users with a more convenient purchasing gateway.
At the same time, Wang explained that unlike US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which were approved in January, Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs have several unique features, such as subscription and redemption both via fiat money and via Bitcoin and stablecoins themselves. In addition, Wang spoke highly of Hong Kong regulators approving a spot shitcoin number 1 ETF. I don't give a shit. Similarly, Patrick Pan, CEO and chairman of OSL Exchange, told Cointelegraph that Let's see. Oh, I'm sorry. I saw something shiny and I got distracted He explains that such a structure will result in uninterrupted trading flows and enhanced market liquidity.
I don't know about that. Unless they're going to trade 20 fourseven, there's going to be interruption on trading flows. Just saying. Crypto exchange eToro is also bullish on the prospects of Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs. Hong Kong would become the first Asian jurisdiction to have Bitcoin spot ETFs positioning itself as a rising crypto hub in Asia as well as potentially paving the way for other neighboring countries and jurisdictions to follow suit. Quote, more potential investors and integrations into the traditional financial system could bode well for the Bitcoin price. Sure it would However, eToro also noted after the Hong Kong ETF news that all eyes now rest on the Bitcoin halving event.
The question on every Bitcoin investor's mind right now is if we will see the price rally again to fresh all time highs given the immediate supply shock from the halving Or will the price fall even lower, with the halving becoming a sell the news event after the buildup similar to the Bitcoin spot ETF approval earlier this year? The exchange asked. Others are not so enthusiastic about the prospects of a Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETF quote, mainland China investors probably will not be eligible to buy Hong Kong listed spot Bitcoin ETFs as they are barred from buying virtual assets, commented Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Due to such demand constrictions, Balchunis predicts that Hong Kong spot Bitcoin ETFs will only attract $1,000,000,000 within 2 years, far less than the approximately $50,000,000,000 currently managed by US spot Bitcoin ETFs. Meanwhile, Marcus Thielen, founder of Singaporean blockchain analytics firm 10x Research, said that the firm sold everything last night, just one day after Hong Kong spot ETFs were approved. Our growing concern is that risk assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies are teetering on the edge of a significant price correction, wrote Thielen adding, the primary trigger is the unexpected and persistent inflation, With the bond market now projecting less than 3 cuts and 10 year treasury yields surpassing 4.5%, we may have arrived at a crucial tipping point for all risk assets.
End quote. Bitcoin has lost nearly 20% of its value since achieving its all time high of $73,750 apiece last month. On April 13th, the digital asset took a nosedive due to escalating tensions in the Middle East. Yes, we know we can see the great big red dildos. It wasn't a good day this morning either. I, you know, it looks to me that it's not just Bitcoin, and we'll we'll get to that when we do numbers. But I think people are flowing into the United States dollar because the dollar just refuses to do anything but get stronger. And that is one of the reasons why at the moment, at the moment Jerome Powell has no appetite at all whatsoever for reducing interest rates at the Federal Reserve. He's not gonna do it. Not anytime soon. And everybody keeps acting like they're all surprised about this, and I don't get it. I'm not even a freaking economist, and I I am completely unsurprised.
It makes complete sense to me that they're going to keep this shit up for the time being. Even though we all are screaming that a weaker US dollar means a better importing environment for the United States consumer. But right now I think the Federal Reserve basically doesn't care about that right now They've got other things that they're worried about. They are not going to reduce interest rates anytime soon. So it's back to the plebs to buy Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin because that's what we were doing before all this ETF nonsense hit in the first place. Like this dude UFC star Money Moi Cano urges fans to study Mises, as well as Bitcoin.
Out of decrypt, Andrew Thorvallis has it, the writings of Ludwig von Mises, the famed Austrian economist of the early 20th century and hero of the Bitcoin faithful, are surging in popularity following an endorsement from a popular MMA fighter. Renato Money Moicano became a top 10 UFC lightweight this weekend after his comeback win at UFC 300. Rather than call out his next opponent, the Brazilian fighter used his post fight interview to urge the crowd to read Mises books. If you care about your fucking country, read Ludwig von Mises and the 6 lessons of the Austrian Economic School motherfuckers.
End quote. Monocano, Moycano told the crowd aggressive, but it apparently struck a chord. Since that night, at least 26,000 copies of the 6 lessons have been downloaded as a free pdf from Amazon. Several other Mises books are also top rankers on the site's economic section. There have also been anecdotal accounts on Twitter from Moicano fans who say Mises book has been sold out at their local bookstores. The Austrian School of Economics advocates for a laissez faire approach to the economy, free markets, individualism, and a fixed money supply.
Many modern proponents of Mises and the Austrian school of thought such as economist and media personality, Peter Schiff, are fans of gold and advocate for a return to the gold standard for the United States dollar. Others, unlike Schiff, are also fans of Bitcoin since the digital currency has a fixed supply, can be freely owned by anyone, and is not managed by any central bank. After the fight, Moi Cano asked to receive his $300,000 fight finishing bonus in Bitcoin. Quote, I love Bitcoin. I love decentralization, Moi Cano said in an interview on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour on Monday.
Since learning about Austrian economics and Bitcoin, Moicano no longer keeps his money in a bank, he said, because the fiat currency in his account loses value to inflation over time, quote, it's not an investment. It could go up and down every time, he explained, but it's better than trusting a money that is backed by politicians and promises. If you don't have money to buy Bitcoin, try to learn about money and Bitcoin, end quote. Moy Cano on Monday campaigned for guest spot on the Show Me the Money podcast hosted by the Bitcoin Standard author and Austrian economist, Saifedean Ammis. The podcast host and author replied, with pleasure.
A day prior, former professor of psychology turned media personality, Jordan Peterson, who has himself hosted Safedine on his own podcast, called Moy Kano's post fight speech unspeakably great, end quote. Further quote, the deadly boxers have become profound economic philosophers. He tweeted at the time. Which is very interesting because you we always think about these guys, you know, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, we always think about athletes as just big dumb brutes. But they're not. And the reason that they're not, or at least they certainly aren't anymore, is because the way that athlete after athlete after athlete has been totally screwed out of 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars through various frauds, hucksters, grifters, and then in some cases their own ego because they want to pay people to have you know to hang around them so they can have an entourage.
But money management, they basically just keep giving their money to these money managers and they keep getting robbed blind. And now it appears that more and more professional and even amateur athletes are going I don't want that to happen to me. And they're actually having to learn how this shit works. And this is one of the arguments that Bitcoiners make. I don't wanna have to have a PhD in, you know, and be a professor of economics and have a Nobel laureate in economics so that I can figure out how not to lose all my money while I'm here on this planet. And yet, even we've made it easy with Bitcoin and yet The fascination that we are starting to get with what money is and how it works I think actually bodes well and I'm certainly not going to stop or tell anybody that they shouldn't learn more about economics God knows I have and I never thought I would give a shit about economics whatsoever. Now as far as education goes when it comes to Bitcoin and all this kind of stuff, we have an interesting entrant into the education space about Bitcoin.
And that name is BlackRock. I know it's weird. It's bizarre. But here it is. Huddlebod, good morning. I just saw you pop into the chat. Bitcoin Magazine, we got it here from Nick Hoffman. BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, with over $10,500,000,000,000 that's trillion with a t, in assets under management, has unveiled a series of educational content aimed at explaining bitcoin, the bitcoin having, and its implications along with insights into its approved spot Bitcoin ETF. Yeah, I know. It's an advertisement. But hey, what are you gonna do? Least they're trying. Quote, April is packed with rare events this year. With eyes set on the upcoming Bitcoin halving, a unique process that only happens every 4 years, said US head of thematic and active ETFs at BlackRock, Jay Jacobs. Quote, Tune in below to learn how this impacts bitcoin's value and for more about investing in bitcoin ETFs.
In a series of 4 videos available on BlackRock's official website, the asset manager discusses the fundamental aspects of Bitcoin as an investment, addressing common questions and concerns for investors looking to understand and navigate the Bitcoin landscape. Topics covered include the underlying technology of Bitcoin, its role in investment portfolios, keeping Bitcoin secure and the significance of events like the Bitcoin halving. And the first form of internet native money to gain widespread global adoption. Bitcoin allows for peer to peer transactions outside of central intermediaries like banks, BlackRock stated on its webpage.
Bet that's not making Jerome Powell very happy. Or Jamie Dimon. Whatever. With the recent approval of its Spot Bitcoin ETF, Ibit, BlackRock's educational initiative aims to take advantage of the increasing mainstream acceptance and interest in Bitcoin, emphasizing the importance of education and informed decision making for the new class of investors entering this market. The ETF offers exposure to Bitcoin's price movements without requiring direct ownership of the digital asset. BlackRock is doing exactly what I would have expected them to do. However, even I'm still surprised. Yes. Is it an advertisement for people to buy into their ETF?
Absolutely. Should I be happy about that? Probably not. However, it is education. Now, I have not looked at the videos. It's very possible that what they're saying in those videos is just patently wrong. I don't know if any of you guys have actually looked at these videos on BlackRock's webpage and they have gotten everything wrong or even something's wrong, please let me know. I mean, I I'm just uninterested in looking at yet more educational content. But I do think it's a positive that even BlackRock is going sitting back saying, look.
There's 2 things for me there's 2 things at work here. 1, they wanna sell their product. They they really do. That very clear to all of us. But they also realize something that I think is becoming more and more prominent in, oh, media in general is that advertisements are becoming more educational. Some, many of them not all, but in not most by any stretch of the imagination, but it's called content marketing. It's called content marketing, right? Like It's a way to have an advertisement that actually imparts some knowledge. It's content. It's not just a flashy, you know, they hire a Hollywood, you know, what am I trying to say? A camera crew and sound crew and an editor and and a producer and a director, and they, you know, they go out and they shoot Wall Street and make it look all gray and and, you know, noir, and it looks all rich, and you're gonna be rich just because you're sitting there watching the the commercial. This shit doesn't cut bread anymore.
It just doesn't cut any bread. What really cuts bread is people who are like, I'm watching this as an advertisement. However, I do not know that it's an advertisement. To me, it's content and hopefully the BlackRock content is high quality content And that they the people viewing it get something out of it. And then they're motivated to say, now that I understand this thing better, maybe I'll buy the product. See how this works? This content marketing thing has been going on for a very long time, clearly. But I think it's becoming more and more and more mainstream as we go along. Now what do you say we read some numbers?
CNBC Futures and Commodities. West Texas Intermediate is not doing well today. It's down 3% to $82.83 a barrel. Brent Norsee is down almost 3 points itself to $87.43. It has lost the $90 mark. So, natural gas isn't doing well either. It's down 1 a quarter percent. Gasoline is down 3 a quarter percent. Even shiny metal rocks are having kind of a bad day. Gold is down over half a point to $23.91.10. Silver is actually one of the only ones that's up. It's up a 3rd, and platinum is down over 2. Biggest winner today in ag is coffee, 4.66% to the upside.
Biggest loser is wheat, down just over 2 points. Live cattle is down a 5th of a point, and feeder cattle is down just over a tenth of a point. The Dow is up but only barely. I mean, it's barely up, man. Man. S and P is down a third. NASDAQ is down a point, and the S and P mini is well, it's kinda roughing it out at just about half a point to the downside. All of them are experienced this this is the correlation that Bitcoin has with legacy legacy markets. That's how old Bitcoin has become. Right? Stocks are kind of risky. Bitcoin's risky. Gold isn't having a good day.
Everybody's going into cash. Everybody and their dog is going into cash, which means what? That there's quite a few people that think that the markets in general are going to fall further and they want to have a solid cash position so that they can, what? Buy the blood in the street. That's the same thing that's always been going on. But yet, Bitcoin is kind of recovering off of its earlier lows today. It's back up to $61,640. That is a $1,210,000,000,000 market cap, 19,685,224 and a quarter BTC in circulation at this time. Hash rate has actually increased 630 exahashes per second as average over the past 2016 blocks.
Half of Bitcoin taken in fees on a per block basis. Yes, fees are are really up there right now. And the halving estimate is still for April 19, 2024. And the block space percentage for taking out the trash that is ordinals is 1.8%. And if you thought ordinals was finished, we've got news about ordinals coming up later so be aware about that. Mempool. What's going on with mempool? I don't know. Let's find out here. 223 blocks is carrying 208,000 unconfirmed transactions going at high priorities for a 100 and 23 satoshis per vbyte. Dude, that's well over $10.50 per transaction. That's a standard transaction.
Low priority is not much better. A 108 satoshis per vbyte. And anything under 6.71 is being purged from mempools around the world. And mempool.spaceforward/mining looks like 596.7 exahashes per second as of right now. Okay. From fungal arbitrage, that was, episode 880, what? 5 of Bitcoin and, I have the following boosts. TW cattle boosted 10,000 satoshis says great podcast and message. Thank you. I appreciate that. Axelrod with 5 k. Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks for this he said, s o o o d show. Sowed show? I don't know what that is. Love the ecology analogy and how it relates to sats. As the digital carbon units in the current age of digital trade, you may need to explain that. I have read entangled life probably on your advice. The Carbon book was also good, but Entangled Life is better. Thanks again. You're welcome.
Boosted or a bit step 21 with 2121 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Dubravco with 1650 says, I'll fungal your arbitrage. I love that mycorrhizal fungi can teach people how a market works if they are willing and ready to learn. Yeah. No kidding, man. 02ZX 404 says Bitcoin and mycelium are both fungible assets. Exactly. God's death with 337. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. Big Gus with 200 boost breath. Henry gg or gqj with 200 says, this is why you never feed a plant phosphorus if you were trying to get it to associate with mycorrhizal fungi. It's like saturating the market, and the plant isn't interested in the trade.
When humans force feed plants with elements at the wrong part of the plant's lifecycle, is it any wonder? We tend towards wonky results which then invariably lead to pesticide use. Just think of all the people using 10 10 10 fertilizer thinking they are helping the plants. Yeah, that used to be me dude. Used to be me. I I never go to put fertilize, like synthetic fertilizers on any of my shit ever again. It because it doesn't need it if you have healthy soil and healthy soil means a high quality component of bacteria, a high quality component of fungi, and a high quality component of other larger critters, like little arthropods, earthworms, nematodes, all that stuff needs to be in the soil. And we keep killing it and we keep asking ourselves why is my shit not growing unless I put all this other stuff on? Well, because we've disrupted the soil cycle, but that's another show.
Mag Nussimo with a 100 says nothing. Stacy with a 100 says, thanks for a great show. Keep it up please. I will. Pies finishes us out with a 100 sats. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. There's your weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. This is the ask. All those people that I just read the boostagrams from are supporting this show. I ask you to support this show as well. If I can get to a place where I don't feel deflated, you know, because some days that happens. You know, you beat your head against the wall for, you know, a couple of years and you're just wondering why other people just doing so much better than you are. Well, I mean, that's just it that is a human emotion that all of us have to deal with. But even if it's a wrong emotion to have, we still have it and it still has the same effect. It can be deflating.
We've seen some deflation in a lot of the Nostra developers who are they're under they're under the same pressures that we all are. We've got bills to pay and that's why I asked to donate to the Bitcoin and show. The more you donate the more I can the the better quality this show can attain. I can only do so much at what it is that I'm getting in on this show at this time. If you like the show and you want it to get better, I'm going to need some support. That's just the way this works. It's called the ask. I am asking you for your donations. Help me help you to help me make a better show.
One that is far beyond your imaginings. I appreciate it. Orange Mart with 2,100. Satoshi says good morning over here in zap.stream. Thank you, Orange Mart, for your support, especially at the time that I was just whining and crying and moaning about support. But it has to happen. It just has to happen. Okay. Remember how I was telling you at the first part of the show or well the first half of the show that ordinals kind of we wish they were done, but they're not only are they not done, but they're getting something else. Well, here it is. Runes.
Runes. KC Rod Armore's protocol for shit coins on Bitcoin is set to go live at the halving. Just when you thought maybe it was it gonna, you know, we weren't gonna have to deal with any more of this crap. Casey Rod armor, double down and release is going to release runes at the having. That's in, you know, 2 days. Oh great. Joy. What a what a wonderful gift that Casey Rodamore has given us. At this point, I don't like the guy. I cut him some serious serious slack when he dropped ordinals. That developer developing on Bitcoin. Okay, I get it.
But there's a lot of angry people out there. And honestly, this is just insult to injury. Is it going to hurt Bitcoin? No. Maybe in the short term, it'll be annoying like a rash, like you get poison oak or something like that. In the long run though, no, it's it's not going to really matter. Because if it had again, and this isn't really in defense of Casey because f that guy right now, I'm not happy with him. But if it wasn't him, it was going to be somebody else. This was going to happen because if a thing can be done by God, even though it probably shouldn't be done, it's going to end up being done. And it doesn't mean that it took it had to be Casey Rod Armour. It could have been anybody.
Hell, it could have even been Vitalik Buterin. I mean if it wasn't Casey it probably would be or at least somebody from the Ethereum team would do it. I don't know. I don't care. But here's what's going on. I'm not gonna read this whole story from CoinDesk, But let's get into what it is. So how do runes work? I'm telling you this so you understand what is coming, because it is coming. Runes builds on ordinals by using UTXOs unspent transaction outputs to generate transactions. UTXO is the term for the amounts of crypto left over after a transaction, similar to change remaining after a completing completing a purchase in cash. The new protocol extends the UTXO concept through the ability to hold a balance in any number of runes tokens.
A single rune can contain 10 units of rune a, a 100 units of rune b, and a 1000 units of rune c, and so on and so forth and so on with any UTXOs unspent by a transaction destroyed. That's right, destroyed. Users would therefore send a bunch of runes on different inputs which will be transferred to an op return to be burned. That is, unless they mark it with a runestone a pointer that specifies an alternative output rendering them non spendable, and thus ignored by Bitcoin core software. The network's software, in fact. A runestone could be used to create a new rune known as etching or mint or transfer existing runes Rod Armor sums up runes as a simple op return based protocol, as presented through around 2,000 lines of code.
The concept of not creating leftover UTXOs is a very simple strict improvement over BRC 20. Bitcoin entrepreneur Dan Held oh, god. Dan Held comes back wrote in a blog post earlier this month, quote Inscriptions have doubled the size of the UTXO set in just the past year and the majority of those are forever useless, he wrote. I do not know that's the end of what I wanna tell you about this Roone's book business. Let me a few words about Dan Held. There are so many people that got into Bitcoin and there was a lot of them that became influencers, that became very very well known, and they started making a lot of money. And then all of a sudden they started shit coining. This is never going to end.
If that small sentence, that single sentence from Dan makes me wonder if he's rethinking his shitcoin position. I hope so. I truly do. Because some of these people are they're, you know, well, they're influential for a reason. Some of these guys are really smart. Dan's not stupid. The problem that I have with all of these people is when they get greedy and they just don't care at all what it is that they're showing to the world. And then they'll like the you know, I still read some articles from Bitcoin Magazine yet Bitcoin Magazine CEO is one of magazine yet Bitcoin magazine CEO is one of the biggest proponents of ordinals.
And he will troll people at this point saying you've made me rich with ordinals. You keep on hating on ordinals and other the more you hate, the richer I'll get. That kinda attitude, honestly, is just so beneath humanity in general and I hate seeing it out of people that not more than 2 years ago swore up and down that Bitcoin magazine would always be about Bitcoin. And yet, knee deep into ordinals they went. And it's sad. Dan Held's no different. And I can't remember the name of the shit coin that he wanted to look into, but Robert you get Robert Breedlove and he's kind of there too.
You know, these guys are making money hand over fist and I don't I don't I don't have a problem with that aspect of it. It's just that we I don't like leading people into shit that I know is worthless and ordinals are worthless. Runes, honestly, it's like here it is. Let me let me read you back on get back to this sentence. The new protocol extends the UTXO concept through the ability to hold a balance in any number of runes tokens. A single rune can contain 10 units of rune a 100 units of rune b and a 1000 units of rune c and so on. Do you know what this sounds like to me? This sounds like a collateralized debt obligation.
What is a collateralized debt obligation? It was those things that were these synthetic derivatives in the real estate market that caused 2,008 crash to occur. Right? And what they were was the way it was explained and if you have not seen the movie The Big Short, I highly recommend everybody either read the book or if you want some really high quality entertainment, watch the movie. The Big Short you've got, I mean, I have to I've watched it at least 7 times and every time I understand something that I didn't understand before because the vagaries of what they did in the run up to 2,008 is almost mind bending.
And one of the things that most bit my mind that I it took 5 times through that movie to understand the CDO. If you didn't sell a mortgage backed security, an MBS, if you were unable to sell a portion of the MBS that you had synthesized to your customers and you have some left over, they didn't just burn it. They packaged it together with other unsold MBSs, and then they got a triple a rating on it. And then they sold that son of a bitch as another kind of security called a CDO. And it contained parts of MBS a and shares of MBS b and other shares of MBSC, and then they called it the CDO.
And then, I don't know, some names like Titan CDO. Okay? That's what this shit looks like to me. Run as far and as run as far away as fast as you can from ordinals. Run even faster from runes. That shit right there everything about ordinals was already dangerous to begin with because it's just bullshit. But this, this invites scrutiny from people at the SEC. That shit's a security. That shit's a security right there. This rooms business is gonna get people put in jail. Do not be one of them. Please, for the love of God. Now, cutting through all of this noise that is the OpenSats fight that's going on between several developers I guess and Matt Odell of of OpenSats as well as OpenSats itself.
We have another OpenSats long term support. It's a grant for Nostra developers, Stuart Bowman and Hazard 149 Open Sats, a non profit dedicated to supporting open source developers working on Bitcoin and related freedom technologies announced long term support for Nostra developer, Stuart Bowman, and hrzd 149. I just call it hazard 149. Quote, Stewart is the main developer and maintainer of satellite. Earth, a web based Nostra client and CDN server that is geared towards self sovereign communities as was stated in the blog post. Hazard 149 is the creator of nostrudel A fast web based Nostra client with tools to explore the Nostra protocol in-depth.
He is also the brains behind blossom or BLOBs Stored Simply on Media Servers, which aims to simplify the storage and organization of digital files in the Nostra network, said OpenSats Honored to be in such company, said Bowman on Nostra so grateful to OpenSats for the opportunity to work on Nostra full time. I could have never imagined this a year ago when I was working a normal desk job. The Nostra journey has truly been life changing, but we are not done yet. We have so much more left to do, so much more left to build and experiment with in Nostra, and I'm so excited that I'll be there to see it all and help out, said hazard 149 in a response. If you wanna see OpenSats continue supporting important open source software contributors, consider making a donation to the OpenSats Nostra Fund.
And there's a, obviously, OpenSats Nostra Fund is in blue and underlined, so it's a link and it goes to opensats.org/funds. Okay. Listen, guys. This business about these fights, and I'm not I mean, other than Matt O'Dell, I'm not gonna name any names because it's it's just neither here nor there. This is my 2¢ on the whole thing. I I do not have a grant from Open Sats. I've met Matt once, had a really lovely discussion with him in Dallas at the I think it was the 2nd ever bit block boom. It was during COVID, and we were getting in trouble because we refused to wear our masks and it was great. It was one of the it was the only Bitcoin conference I've ever been to and I loved every single second of it and if if I had been a smart son of a bitch about it, I would have not gone to any of the talks. I would have just hung out in the hallways and at the bar, but it is what it is. So that's the only interaction that I've ever had with Matt.
I think Matt's a good guy. And I think that what's going on here is not about Matt and it's not about the open source board of directors that make the decisions on where the grants go. This doesn't mean that I know what the hell is going on. This is my 2¢ given what I know, and I will be the 1st to admit that what I know is not much. But I got an opinion. And my opinion is that this type of fight is inevitable. These kinds of hurt feelings or people getting a little bit of, you know, maybe developers getting cold feet because they keep talking about, well, I mean, I don't want anybody telling me what to do. Okay. That's I understand that.
Absolutely. And and you should never not think that way. But I don't think that that's the I don't think that's the impetus here from OpenSats. I think what's going on is that OpenSats is trying to do everything they can to support those people that they support. The fact that Matt is also connected to 1031 doesn't mean that OpenSats is connected to 1031. It's just a connection between open, 1031, the v c arm that I that he's part of with with some other people and the fact that he's also part of OpenSats, that that in people's minds makes a connection.
But what Matt's been trying to say is that there's no connection between what 1031 does and what OpenSats does, and I tend to believe them. Now, here's the other thing that I think is going on that is not helping. Matt did not and some of there's a lot of us in Bitcoin that did not come out of venture capital. We didn't come out of high scale banking. We've never been to Hong Kong. We don't know what the hell's going on when it comes to this shit, but we're trying. And the more we try, the more and the more we're successful when we try, the more we find ourselves in what? Unfamiliar territory.
All everything I guarantee you that everything that is going on with the hurt feelings and the the possible, like, looking giving each other sideways glances and the evil eye. All of that shit can and would have been avoided had all the people that have been involved had 25 years of experience in venture capital, high scale banking, like working at Ernst and Young, people, you know, maybe with somebody from the ratings agencies. But while that would have alleviated all these potential pitfalls, what would it have done? It would have made open sats exactly what it was that everybody was afraid of.
It would have it would have never even changed. It would have come out of the gates swinging like VCs. There would have been no chance for anybody to say I get to keep all of my capital that if I for whatever reason this thing goes and people start paying me for it, these were grants without strings attached which means that there was no promise that you were going to fork over 10,000 shares when you opened up your company and started making, you know, and went public and did an IPO and did all the things, right?
That you were gonna have to, you know, deliver 10,000 shares over to back back over to open sats. But that's because the guys that are going into it have thankfully and I people think that this is a terrible thing but they went into it with a little bit of naivete. Good. Fucking good. We need a little bit of naivete because you know what naivete is? It's not being stupid. It's you want to have a different future. Why people call it naive is because they what they look at is an idealism that's slamming its head up against a granite wall that is reality. But where did that reality come from? That reality came from centuries of rich people fucking over poor people and not caring.
Sociopathic behavior that wall that idealism comes up against and is painted with the blood of every fucking entrepreneur ever that did not come out of the banking industry, that did not come out of the hard reality, right? The the ratings agencies working on Wall Street, the legacy financial monster. Those are the only people that did not bloody themselves upon the wall of hard reality. The people that did are naive. Some of them broke through the wall. They were able to get there. Others, their soulless bodies are at the foot of this building with their blood all over the wall.
It happens. What I'm asking here is as you look at these texts from developers, from Matt, from anybody else that has something to do with with, well, OpenSats Understand that none of the people in OpenSats have the 25 years of experience that it would have taken to, a, alleviate any potential pitfalls that we are finding ourselves in now with these discussions, And, b, would have made open sats completely different than what it actually is. Just keep an open mind. Understand the arguments that are being made by the developers that are here to help us into get into Freedom Tech.
And I am sympathetic. But I am also sympathetic to the guys over at OpenSats who are kinda eating a lot of shit for doing something that they thought was good. I'm not asking anybody to stop arguing, okay? But I am asking people that are listening to that argument to bear in mind that we are all still very naive. We're heading fast to that wall of reality And it's going to hurt. It hurts right now. Some of us are rubbing ourselves on it right now and the bricks are scraping flesh off. Some of us have yet to see the building or the wall, but we're going to get there. And when we do, we're all going to have to go through this bullshit.
So please, the the ask I make to you here is to be conscious of what's going on, but try not to draw conclusions of somebody or the other being evil. Everybody in this space is trying to do the right thing. It's generating noise as we rub up against each other. That noise is friction. That friction produces heat. It's the same thing you'll find in any natural environment. What we can do is to act as the lubricant that fixes the friction coefficient to reduce it and thereby reduce the amount of heat put off. That's all I'm asking. Okay?
We don't want anybody coming out of this on the other side being so pissed off at each other that they never talk to each other because if we stop talking to each other, all potential goes out the window. Okay. Rant over. I have nothing else to say except that if you like what it is that I do, please support the show. Do that with donations, boostograms. You can go to patreon.comforward/bitcoinandpodcast and give me fiat. I've got it set up where it'll take fiat. I will convert that fiat into Bitcoin, but if that's the way that you wanna do it, all I'm asking is that you do do it.
Donate, support the show, help me make a more superior product for you. 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.
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