Join me today for Episode 1097 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
nostr Profile: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqswp94gnm4epqsgjkndl4lnd8krzdj5u4mzuppdtxksdymkty63g7gdurlfc
https://www.therage.co/sterlingov-defense-asks-doj-to-drop-charges-following-blanche-memo/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/northern-marianas-house-overrides-veto-passes-stablecoin-bill
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/16/ftx-to-pay-over-usd5b-to-creditors-as-bankrupt-exchange-gears-up-for-distribution
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/conference/nakamoto-bitcoin-2025-title-sponsor
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/abu-dhabis-sovereign-wealth-fund-reveals-408-million-investment-in-blackrocks-bitcoin-etf
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/ddc-enterprise-announces-bitcoin-reserve-strategy-targets-5000-btc-within-36-months
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-treasury-pivot-boosts-watchmaker-stock-60-percent
https://www.theblock.co/post/354583/brazils-meliuz-buys-274-btc
https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-student-loans-onchain-education-wave
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Topics for today:
- Steak 'n Shake Now Accepts BTC
- Bitcoin Fog Defense Cites Blanche Memo
- FTX Second Round Payouts Begin
- 4 Companies on Four Continents Begin BTC Reserve
Circle P:
Oshi: Artisan pecan butter, date bars and chocolates
Website: https://www.oshigood.us/productsnostr Profile: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqswp94gnm4epqsgjkndl4lnd8krzdj5u4mzuppdtxksdymkty63g7gdurlfc
Articles:
https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1923225678603784674https://www.therage.co/sterlingov-defense-asks-doj-to-drop-charges-following-blanche-memo/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/northern-marianas-house-overrides-veto-passes-stablecoin-bill
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/16/ftx-to-pay-over-usd5b-to-creditors-as-bankrupt-exchange-gears-up-for-distribution
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://www.bitcoinandshow.com/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/conference/nakamoto-bitcoin-2025-title-sponsor
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/abu-dhabis-sovereign-wealth-fund-reveals-408-million-investment-in-blackrocks-bitcoin-etf
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/ddc-enterprise-announces-bitcoin-reserve-strategy-targets-5000-btc-within-36-months
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-treasury-pivot-boosts-watchmaker-stock-60-percent
https://www.theblock.co/post/354583/brazils-meliuz-buys-274-btc
https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-student-loans-onchain-education-wave
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find the Bitcoin And Podcast on every podcast app here:
https://episodes.fm/1438789088
Find me on nostr
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6389be6491e7b693e9f368ece88fcd145f07c068d2c1bbae4247b9b5ef439d32 (Hex)
Twitter:
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Music by:
Flutey Funk Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 08:47AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the May 2025. This is episode ten ninety seven of Bitcoin and breaking, breaking, breaking. Jeez, man. Like, it was coming. They told us it was coming, and it is here. Today is the day, ladies and gentlemen. You can go get Steak and Shake with a Bitcoin Lightning wallet. This is just in. Fast food giant, Steak and Shake is now officially accepting Bitcoin Lightning Network payments. And that's from a Twitter post from Bitcoin Magazine. It's got a cute little video here showing a guy using the Zeus wallet at his neighborhood stake and shake. He's got a little there's a little kiosk there. It's a great big old pad.
It says credit only so that you can do all your ordering yourself because, you know, God forbid we have human interaction with each other anymore. So he's done his little order, and he's, like, scanning a a QR code after his order from Steak and Shake, and he's got a Zeus wallet out, and boom, the lightning bolt happens and my god almighty we're able to spend our Bitcoin at Steak and Shake. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I'm also not saying it's a good thing either. If you are gonna go to Steak and Shake today, and and I honestly, why not? Why why not go buy a burger and fries with your Zeus wallet or, you know, your get albie wallet or whatever lightning wallet that you choose to use?
Why not? Just make sure you replace the sats. Okay? Because a 33,000 satoshi charge for a burger and fries or whatever the hell this guy is paying, it could be it could be worth a Steak and Shake franchise in the future. Okay? So just please, please, please be aware. But there's no reason not to, you know, actually just figure out okay. You know what? I'm gonna spend $35 at Steak and Shake today. Hopefully, that will buy more than one meal. You never know these days. Go to Cash App. Go to, I don't know, Strike. However it is that you buy your Bitcoin.
Take $35 from your bank account, buy Bitcoin with it, and then go then go to stake and shake and do the deed because, again, why not? Bitcoin is supposed to be used as money. It's supposed to be used as a medium of exchange. It's supposed to also be a store of value. It's supposed to be a unit of account. It's supposed to be all the six or seven things, the pillars that money is. It's supposed to be all that. So why not use it? I've heard arguments on both sides of the fence. It's stupid to spend your Bitcoin. Okay. We'll put that aside.
You should spend your Bitcoin. Okay. Let's let's put that aside. Which way, western man? It's the meme where the roads go off into different directions. In this particular case, I think both of those directions are actually sunny, you know, and not rainy and not cloudy and not, you know, not that the usually, the meme has a split in the road and the guys, like, figured out where to go and one's dark and gloomy and the other one's bright and sunny with little Disney birds chirping and princesses bouncing around and shit like that. This one, both of the choices are actually sunny.
But if you are going to spend your Bitcoin, do yourself a favor and replace those satoshis that you spend. And also recognize because this is this is something that I don't think people realize about steak and shake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're deep frying their fries in beef tallow, and we all think that's great. Do you know how those fries are processed before the Steak and Shake franchises get them? They're already pre fried in canola oil. Did you know that? They're already slightly fried once. I don't know if that's for a shipping thing. I do know that fries, the really good crispy fries, they're usually fried twice unless you're McDonald's fries. And apparently, you can do it once. And if you're at the right place, their fries are actually pretty good, except that they're they're fried in in industrial sludge, and I would stay away from that shit. But when Steak and Shake says that it's a % beef tallow fried French fries, that's not entirely true because they've, at one point or another, already been processed in such a way as to include canola oil or even if it's not canola oil, vegetable oil. It's still freaking industrial sludge.
So don't get fooled into believing that you've that that they're making you think that they're gonna cut your potatoes fresh and they're gonna throw them into a % beef tallow and that's the end of it. That is not the end of it. Just please be aware. And honestly, I've eaten at a steak and shake a couple of times. It's okay. It's not terrible, but it's not something that I'm writing home about. Still though, why not? Go spend some Bitcoin. Just make sure you replace it. Now onto the bigger news story of the day, Lola Lites from therage.c0 has this one.
Sterling off defense asked the Department of Justice to drop charges following the Blanche memo. We knew it was coming, and it looks like it's here. I wonder what the DOJ will do. So the defense of the alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingoff has asked the Department of Justice to drop the charges against the dual Swedish Russian national following deputy attorney general Todd Blanche's memo to end regulation by prosecution. The government's prosecution of Sterlingoff, who was convicted for operating the early Bitcoin mixer Bitcoin Fog last year, excuse me, fits squarely within the types of victimless cryptocurrency regulation prosecutions that deputy attorney general Todd Blanch states DOJ will no longer pursue, the defense argues.
As highlighted in the letter, quote, no victims testified at mister Sterlingoff's trial or sentencing. No named victims were ever identified at any point by the government, there are no eyewitnesses to mister Sterlingov's alleged operation of the Bitcoin Fog Mixer and testified at trial because there were none. All the government's witnesses at trial were after the fact expert witnesses or investigators testifying to their review of transactions that occurred years before, except for two criminal users of Bitcoin Fog noting that Blanche had directed the DOJ to no longer prosecute mixer operations or operators for the actions of their end users.
The defense further highlights that the jury in Sterlingoff's case had been previously instructed to disregard whether the defendant had been aware of illicit activity on the service he was allegedly operated operating, noting that the Blanche memo prerequisites that mixer operators, if charged, violated regulations willfully. Roman Sterlingoff was convicted on all counts last year and is currently serving a one hundred and fifty month sentence in The United States, and the case goes to appeal June. Meanwhile, the DOJ concluded its evaluation of the charges against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and will not drop charges against the defendant, finding the prosecution in line with Blanche's instructions, highlighting that the Blanche memo has left enough leeway for prosecutors to continue prosecuting the developers of privacy services for the love of God. Okay. So Sterling off, there's no evidence whatsoever that Sterling off created Bitcoin fog.
He was a user of Bitcoin fog, and he was the one that was caught. But Bitcoin fog continues to operate just like like tornado cash continues to operate without the alleged producers of that code being able to service that code. So in the in the Tornado Cash case, we do know that those two developers did create Tornado Cash. That's not in question. It's just nice that Tornado Cash operates whether you like it or not. Bitcoin Fog is a completely separate case. So we've got three cases right now, essentially. We've got the samurai wallet case. We've got the tornado cash case, and we've got the Bitcoin Fog case. And the Bitcoin Fog case has kinda fallen through the cracks in our perception because so much time has been, you know, handed over to the tornado cash and the and the samurai wallet case, which is fine because those guys are getting reamed. They're getting railroaded.
They they were framed, your honor. They were framed, but we forget about we forget about Bitcoin fog. This this Roman Sterlingoff guy, talk about a fucking patsy. I mean, it's like they just said eeny meeny miny moe and just picked this dude. There is no evidence that he actually and he said he's like, I I didn't have anything to do with it. I just used the mixer. And they're saying that he operated it, he owns it, he wrote the code for it. There's no proof. There's no proof. They have no witnesses. They have no eyewitnesses to say, yeah. Well, I watched them code it up. Hell, I helped them debug it. Nobody. Nobody. Not a soul has been able to come forward and say, I corroborate the United States Department of Justice prosecutorial case against Roman Sterlingoff because I was there. I watched him do the deeds.
Nobody. Not a soul. And he's being shafted. Right? So it's what I find interesting is that it was Roman Sterlingoff's defense that brought up the Blanche memo before the, tornado before I think before the tornado cache guys because it's like we're as far as I know, we're still waiting to see what the defense is going to do with the Blanche memo or the the tornado cash defense is gonna do with the Blanche memo. Unless something unless there's something I've missed, we haven't heard anything from them as to whether or not they're going to pursue that particular lane of appeal. But as with all things, we're just gonna have to wait and see.
Now I don't know where the hell the Marianas Island is, but Jesse Coughlin's gonna tell us all about how their stablecoin bill passes because their house override a veto. So we've got we've got our first veto override on a stablecoin bill. It's not in The United States, though. This is through CoinTelegraph. The Pacific oh, interesting. This is gonna have precedent for The US. The Pacific US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands has passed a bill allowing its small constituent island of Tinian to launch a stablecoin overriding an earlier veto by the territory's governor. The 20 member Northern Marianna Islands House voted 14 to two to override governor art was Arnold Plastios, his April 11 veto of the bill which allowed the Tinian local government to issue licenses to Internet casinos and includes a provision for the Tinian treasurer to issue, manage, and redeem a, quote, Tinian stable token.
The territory's nine member senate had revived the bill on May voting seven to one in a two thirds majority to override the veto, which then needed a two thirds majority in the house to pass. Originally, a four member Tinian delegation to the Marianas legislature had unanimously passed the bill to governor Palacios on March. It may put the Tinian government in the lead to be the first United States public entity to issue a stablecoin, which it must do before July if it is to beat the state of Wyoming government, which is aiming to issue a stablecoin by then. Tinian has just over 2,000 residents and a largely tourism based economy.
Its local government, the municipality of Tinian and Aguinon, I cannot pronounce that, is one of the four municipalities in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Island or Pacific Ocean north of Guam. Governor Palacios said in a letter that he vetoed the bill as it, quote, presents several several legal issues and may it may be unconstitutional. And it would regulate an activity that could not be clearly restricted to Tinian and that it lacked needed enforcement measures to counter illegal gambling. Gambling. I can't believe there's gambling going on here. The stablecoin is called the Marianas US dollar and will be backed by cash and, of course, United States treasury bills held in reserve by the Tinian Municipal Treasury according to statements shared with Cointelegraph in March.
The Tinian government chose local tech services firm, Marianas Rai Corporation, as the exclusive infrastructure provider for MUSD, which will be launched on the eCash blockchain, a network that rebranded from Bitcoin Cash ABC from 2021 and is a fork of Bitcoin Cash and a blockchain forked from Bitcoin. Pausing, I had completely forgot that Bitcoin Cash forked into Bitcoin Cash ABC as well as Satoshi's vision, that train wreck dumpster fire on wheels that was Craig Wright and Calvin Ayers mess. I completely forgot about Bitcoin Cash ABC. Interesting.
Interesting that it's still kicking. Anyway, a Marianas Rycorp spokesperson did not comment beyond telling Cointelegraph that the company would announce more on m USD May the nineteenth. Before the vote, house lawmakers heard from the public and discussed overturning governor Placios' veto before they vetoed it, though, with independent house floor leader, Marissa Flores, airing concerns on the bill. Marianas Rycorp cofounder and technology chief, Vin Armani. Oh oh my god. Is this is this the real Vin Armani? Hold on. I gotta pause here. Oh my god. It is. It's the Vin Armani. If you don't know who that is, you probably don't wanna know.
You I'm just gonna leave it there. If you if you know, you know. Let's move on. Chief technology officer Vin Armani, also cofounder of Marianas Rycorp, had urged lawmakers to undo the veto saying that the bill would attract billions of dollars of investment as well as tax revenue from the crypto industry without the government having to pitch in. Clyde Norita, a Marianas Rycorp director and local legal cannabis mogul, told the house that the local economy was dying out. Oh, lord have mercy. And the bill would allow businesses in the region without affecting our culture, without affecting our environment, and without affecting our immigration status. Yeah. For an island of 2,000 people, I'm sure all of that is, like, really, really important. Representative Flores, who voted against the override said, quote, every time we talk about casinos, there's always some kind of bitter pill to swallow, end quote.
You think? Wow. Quote, it is true. We are in dire need of money. But what I don't like is when we are desperate and we are now forced to make a decision because we are desperate once again. Every time we're desperate, it always seems that we come back to casinos. I don't like being pushed to a corner to make a decision based on fear, Flores said. Holy crap. What the hell is going on in that island? I I mean, do they got, like, a Godzilla roaming around that's scaring the piss out of everybody? Who knows? But others were more supportive of the measure with Republican representative Patrick San Nicolas, a Tinian delegation member who initially voted on the bill saying that it would help pull the region out of a deep economic crisis.
You got 2,000 people. How deep of an economic crisis are you fuckers in? Good lord. Have mercy. Quote, we need this legislation to unlock our potential. This bill does not depend on tourist or federal subsidies. It builds a digital industry generating revenue from a licensed jurisdiction. That's the end of the article, but holy crap, there is all manner of stuff that's probably wrong about this. The fact that Vin Armani is part of this entire situation right there is probably one of the reasons why this governor from Tinian vetoed this thing in the first place.
I I my gut feeling says that everything that's going on here is bad. It's probably I'm gonna say it. Because of the people involved, probably talking about some kind of chicanery. It may involve money laundering. I don't know. But a 2,000 person island north of Guam in the Pacific Ocean that is so fearful of their economic status and something about immigration that they need to build casinos, that, everything about this is wrong. Let's you know what? I'm I'm just gonna move on because the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you with goods and services to plebs just like you who want to buy, said goods and services with your Bitcoin because if you ain't selling it in Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p. Today, it's Oshie.
Go to Oshiegood, Oshie good US. That's Oshiegood.US And order yourself he's got let's see. He's people are buying this stuff left and right. So he's out right now, he's kinda out of some stuff. But he's got mint cookie huddle bars. And I've had the banana chocolate chip huddle bar. It is excellent. One of the main ingredients is dates, and it makes a really, really good stable base to build on. Because, like like, let's see what's in the mint cookie one, because that that's the one that I really wanted, but he was out. He's got him back. He's got a four pack.
On his website, it says, dates, pecan butter, dark chocolate chips, peanut flour, cacao powder, peppermint extract, cinnamon vanilla extract, and sea salt. Sounds delicious, and you can get a four pack of them for 23,000 sats. Dudes, if you are going, like, hiking on long walks, if you wanna keep an emergency, you know, nutrition pack somewhere in your car just in case, You need to pick one of these things up, man. These things are not only are they delicious, they are filling. They are meaty. They are beefy. I mean, my god almighty. I when I got mine, I was like, oh, look. It's a cute little bar. I'll I'll I'll tear through this in, you know, like, four four bites.
Not so. I took the first bite and I'm like, wow. There's a lot of stuff packed in here. So he does have one. He's got a pack of mint cookie hollow bars. You can get it for 23,000 sets. He also has this famous huddle butter. Now this is huddle butter, and it starts with local handpicked and sorted pecans straight from the Southeast United States. It's more nuanced than two hour Bitcoin podcast. This small batch craft delicacy can be can be enjoyed as a topping on anything edible or straight out of the reusable glass jar. Ingredients, pecans, maple syrup, sea salt flakes, cinnamon, and black pepper.
Black pepper. See, the guy has nuance. He understands he understands flavor profiles. It sounds weird. Black pepper in my peanut butter, if there's a little bit of it, it completely changes the flavor profile of the thing. Now this one, I have not had yet. However, I have kinda had it because he includes it in his Huddle bars as part of the ingredient list, but I haven't had it directly. But if you want to support your local pleb or your well, actually, your fellow pleb, then please please please go over to oshigood.us. When you go to the cart, put in Bitcoin and into the promotional code line.
You will not be getting a discount. This is only to help Oshi track where the sale came from because in the value for value advertising model that I'm trying to create, I do the advertisement for free upfront. I'm basically fronting the goods here. It's like you're you're you're high school dealer. I'll front you the bag. You gotta come up with the goods on the other side, though. So if you do buy and you tell him, hey, by putting Bitcoin and in the promotion code, he knows that, hey, the sale came from the podcast. I need to cut some Satoshis to David Bennett of the Bitcoin and podcast, and it will be up to him to determine what he feels the advertisement was worth if it worked.
Again, oshigood.us, oshi good U s. Go to oshi, 0 s h I g 0 0 d U s, and order yourself some huddle butter and some huddle bars. Onto bankruptcies. We forgot about it. I guarantee you probably haven't thought about this in a while, but it's coming this month. FTX to pay over $5,000,000,000 to creditors as the bankrupt estate gears up for distribution. And this is Sharra Malwa writing for CoinDesk. FTX creditors are set to receive over $5,000,000,000. That's billion with a b in distributions starting on May as part of the second phase of the bankrupt exchanges court approved recovery plan, the FTX recovery trust set on Thursday.
The estate will pay out to four classes of creditors with recoveries ranging from 54% to a 20% of their original claims. The amounts are based on US dollar value of customer holdings at the time of FTX's collapse in November of twenty twenty two. BitGo and Kraken, two custodians overseeing the distribution process, are expected to transfer funds to eligible claimants within one to three business days starting after May. The payout breakdown includes class five creditors or Alameda Research counterparties, lenders, and trading vendors who are set to receive between 5472% of their approved claims.
Small unsecured claimants are recovering about 61%. Meanwhile, intercompany claims involving FTX's various subsidiaries are being repaid at a 20%. Over 90% of all claims have entered the distribution pipeline, the repayment trust said, in its release. Okay. So there's going to be spin on this that says sell all your Bitcoin because the FTX stuff is coming. Dude, the FTX shit's been going on for a while. We just haven't reported on it. But I guarantee you, the people like reporters from like, that reporter that interviewed Sailor, you know, the chick that's worried about her teeth that, you know, apparently her teeth are worth billions and billions of dollars or not. Whatever. I can't remember what she said. But she dresses like a Chinese Communist Party member. But that aside, it she well, she does. She does. Go look at her picture. She's got that drab gray button up, and it's buttoned up all the way to her neck. And, no, she's not wearing a bow tie or a necktie or nothing.
I swear to God, it look I swear it looks like mouse a tongue. Anyway, whatever. That's beside the point. This shit's been rolling forever. She's gonna get a hold of it, and she's gonna say, oh, everybody like, Bitcoin's gonna die because $5,000,000,000 of Bitcoin are being redistributed. It's all I as far as we can tell, it's already been converted to cash, like, two years ago. Alright? So if if for whatever reason, you end up in the pool, the FUD pool deep end, just swim to the side and and get out before somebody lays a baby Ruth in there. And if you don't get the reference, then you're probably not from the eighties. Let's run the numbers.
Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up one and three quarters point to $62.69 a barrel. Brent, North Sea is up one and a half to $65.44. Natural gas doing its thing. It is down almost a full point to $3.33 per thousand, and gasoline is up a half point to $2.14 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks not having a good day. Gold is down one and a quarter to $31.85 and 8 dimes. Silver is down just over a point. Platinum is down almost a point. Copper is down well over a point. In fact, 2.16% to the downside, and palladium is down almost a full point. Ag is mostly in the red. All but chocolate is in the green, so it's our winner automatically, but quite a move.
6.85% to the upside. Biggest loser today is coffee, two and a quarter to the downside. Live cattle, however, are up point 44%. Lean hogs are down a quarter of a percent, and feeder cattle are up three quarters of a percent. Pausing because we've got to say something about cattle prices. Cattle prices are at an all time high. You're talking about, like, I I saw something from Texas Slim last night, and he was, he was I don't know. I guess he was retweeting something about, the price of cattle at a sale barn. And one one heifer, one heifer, not a bull, not a breeding bull, but a heifer to breed cattle with going for $5,700.
And that may mean nothing to you. That's fine. Not too long ago, it would have meant nothing to me too. However, there were, like, five other cattle in that ring. And one of the comments on that video said, I remember not too long ago where I could have bought every cow in that ring for $5,700. That's how much cattle prices have risen. And what does this mean to you? Live cattle are what you're going to take after you finish them to the sale barn to sell for said $5,700 a cow. And as far as I know, that particular animal was not some kind of high priced wagyu. It was probably a very good breed, but it wasn't like some, like, woo hoo, you know, where god raising shit are coming down, you know, and making it glow like some kind of, you know, golden calf that the Jews are worshiping. Okay? It was not that.
It ain't a shit cow either, but $5,700 for a single animal. That single animal is what's gonna go to the sale barn or rather that's what's gonna go to the butcher, get slaughtered, and then end up as meat on your table. So beef prices are accelerating at the supermarket. And you may ask why. Because we have the lowest inventory of live cattle in The United States in the history of the cattle industry in The United States. And then you may ask why. Because we keep buying our meat from well, not China, but from Australia, Brazil, and a couple of other places.
Instead of producing beef here in The United States for consumption here in The United States, this beef that we do produce goes to China, goes to Japan, goes to really, really wealthy countries because we produce the best beef in the world. That's a fact. That's a fact. I'm not lying. This is not hubris. It's not hyperbole. It's a fact. The United States Beef Producer knows how to produce the best beef in the world. Brazilians are pretty good at it, but they're not anywhere close to as good as American beef produce producers. Yet the attacks on the cattle industry in The United States have sent family ranch after family ranch after family ranch into hell, and they are not surviving that trip. They are bailing out. They are selling their land. They're selling their animals. They're selling their ranch, and they're gonna go, I don't know, doctors, lawyers, and whatever that Willie Nelson said in the song, that's what your mama should that's what you should be.
The mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. I wish he had never written that song because people took him seriously. It's all yes. People, oh, it's a hard life. I you know what? I've met many ranchers, and you know what I don't see? I don't see their skull cracked in half. I I don't see them as being, you know, grizzly and mean and and, like, you know, great big, ugly, like, limb lost people. You know, they actually look pretty good to me. You know, they look like they're pretty happy. They look like they're doing you know, they they they've got their problems. It's not all, you know, it's not like all rainbows and freaking leprechauns jumping around, but they are dying.
We're we're not we are not stepping up to the plate. We're not going to buy their meat that some of these producers are are trying to vertically integrate into into marketing their own beef, and we're not buying it. We continuously go to Walmart to get our beef. We continuously go to Safeway to get our beef. We continuously go to Albertsons and HEB and and what and all that beef, it's not coming from The United States. That's the beef that's coming from Brazil and coming from Australia. Alright? So stop it. Support your local rancher and go out and shake your rancher's hand. Get to know them. Get to understand how they operate.
Just fucking take the time. We don't have time. Are you sure are you sure you don't have the time? Are you absolutely certain? Because I can almost guarantee you that most of us think we don't have the time. And then if we actually look at what we're doing, what we're spending on our our real time on, we can look at it and go, you know, that's probably pretty freaking stupid. Go out and shake your rangers hand. Dow futures are up a quarter. S and P is up a quarter. Nasdaq is up point 14%. S and P Mini is up just over a half point, and Bitcoin is chilling out. It's bouncing around, man, between a hundred and two and a 5,000. Right now, it seems to be at a hundred and 4,181 hundred and $60.
That is a $2,070,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 32.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,865,366 and a half of. And average fees per block are low, 0.04 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are eight blocks carrying 29,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 16 Satoshis per vByte. So we've got some pretty high fees at the moment. Just wait. I guarantee they'll they'll go back now. 12 satoshi is gonna get you in at low priorities. And hash rate is chilling out where it was yesterday at about 850.1 exahashes per second.
In twenty one hours, we have a upwards difficulty adjustment of 2.16%. Do with that what you will. Kindly reminder to go to bitcoinandshow.com. That's bitcoinandshow.com. That's my website. I'm working on it. I I'm working on it, but it would be nice to get a couple of more people to just, you know, slip your email in. It's free. It ain't gonna cost you nothing, and I'm never gonna give your email away to anybody under any circumstances for any reason whatsoever from what's more into the breach, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got Yodel. Holy shit. 10,000 satoshis.
I'm rich, bitch. Yodel, thank you. That was that is a hell of a boost. Very much appreciative or appreciated there. Progressively worse, coming in half as much at five k SATs. Dude, stay a while and listen. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Chill now with ten twenty four, says echo ep ten ninety six sliding into the schism. Risk protocol high. Game stopping micro strategy OPSEC status equals breached. Identities known, braced for further kidnap ransoms. Examples of human perception manipulated for broken money. Channel status equals closed. Dark market USDT billions access denied. Trigger event equals weaponized debt. Proxy war money launderer pivots laundering to shit coinery. I think I know who he's talking about. Entropy will accelerate until nothing remains. System end dot echo.
Chill now. Dude, I appreciate those. I I really do. I it's like, I get the feeling that you may be generating those with AI, but it's still kinda cool the way that you're actually presenting those. I I really enjoy them. Turkey with 500 says nothing. God's death February. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Pies with a hundred. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Digital euro to restore cash's role, says the European Central Bank. Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
This is Atlas twenty one dot com. The European Central Bank is moving forward with plans for a digital euro considering it crucial for maintaining European monetary sovereignty in the digital era. On May, Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB executive board, highlighted during the France payments forum how the use of physical cash is rapidly declining. With the surge in digital transactions and e commerce, the ECB believes a digital euro represents a crucial step to preserve the universal function of cash in a digitized form. According to the Eurotower I don't know what that is.
Eurotower? According to the Eurotower, the current European payment system has several vulnerabilities. About two thirds of card transactions in the Eurozone are processed by non European companies and as many as 13 euro area countries rely entirely on international payment networks for point of sale transactions. Even countries with national card systems must collaborate with international networks to enable cross border or online purchases. Players like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Alipay dominate digital payment solutions, often partnering with international networks to further expand their market presence.
The ECB has stressed that the digital euro will not replace cash, but will serve alongside it as, you know, legal tender, ensuring it is accepted wherever digital payments are available. One key feature, according to the central institution, will be offline functionality offering users privacy similar to that of cash payments and enabling transactions even without network connectivity. Beyond retail payments, the ECB is also advancing in the implementation of distributed ledger technologies and tokenization to facilitate wholesale financial transactions.
The ECB has announced it will soon provide tools to settle DLT based transactions using central bank money. Okay. It the the digital euro is coming. They are going to push this out whether people like it or not, and they're going to push out a broken system. There's two things about about what I said. When I say broken, I mean functionally broken, as in not going to work. I mean, it'll work somehow. Sometimes it'll work. It'll be fine. In other factors, it'll there will be bugs. It'll be because it's based off of software, and they are doing everything they can to shore up the European Union before the weaponization of the US dollar or, actually, it's gonna be the US dollar debt is the weapon. That's what we're weaponizing.
The US dollar is the that that's the marketing. But the true delivery system is going to be USDT. I've been saying this for a long time. They're going to push the e the ECB is going to push the digital euro so fast that they're not going to have a really good software base to be able to leverage from. It's going to be broken. The other way that it's going to be broken let's say this. Let's say that it's one it rolls out and it's a % functional with zero bugs. Bullshit. But let's say that's true. When they're talking about this, replace cash, the it will it's not gonna the digital euro will not replace cash, but it will serve alongside cash as legal tender.
Okay. First of all, they're going to do away with physical cash. Not at first, later on. But right now, they're, oh, no. Because you'll still be able to put cash in your wallet. You know? They'll still have those plastic bills that we use, and you can go to the florist or, you know, go get a steak and shake with your, you know, plastic money. You know? That's fine. No. That's gonna go away at one point or another. But here's the rub. It says here, according to the central institution, there will be offline functionality, which offers users privacy similar to that of cash payments. No. This is wrong.
And the reason it's wrong or a bold faced lie is because every other story about the ECB and what people in the well, not citizens, but the gov governing people, people of, quote, authority in these governments. They keep saying how they want to track everything because, you know, you're a terrorist. And you're you're obviously obviously engaged in child pornography as well as child sex trafficking. That's clear because all citizens that are not government employees are clearly, clearly fucking criminals all the time.
That's just the nature of a civilian. The the have you can you say the French Revolution? Can you say can you say those two words together in a sentence? Because that's how the citizenry of France was looked upon by the aristocracy right before the citizenry of France broke into the Bastille, into their armory, armed themselves with several thousand weapons, and then shop proceeded to chop the heads off of 10,000 aristocrats. I'm just saying this looks very, very familiar, but there has never been any tone out of any of the aristocracy of Europe that suggests that they want anything but full control of how you get your money, how you store your money, and how you use your money.
And they wanna know everything. Right? So this privacy statement here by the ECB makes absolutely no sense given their history of how they've treated any kind of money and how they are functionally falling further and further into this totalitarian authoritarian way of looking at you as just a mere cog in a wheel as part of their economy. That's all you are. You don't have a life. You don't have wants and needs. You don't have children that have wants and needs. You don't have plans for the future. You don't wanna build things. You just you just need to go to work and and and take digital euros and make sure that you don't spend any more than 300 of them at a time and make sure that you're okay knowing that they know exactly what you bought. And God forbid, if you bought more than five liters of wine that week, they might just say, you know what? We're not gonna give you health care anymore because we know that you drink wine a lot.
I you think I'm kidding? I'm I'm not. That shit's already happened in The United States, but we won't get into it. We're moving on to Nakamoto, you know, the company the company that was announced just, you know, a couple of weeks ago. Well, already, Nakamoto to headline Bitcoin $20.25 as the title sponsor. Mark Mason is writing this for Bitcoin Magazine. Just hold on. You you might be wondering why the hell are you gonna tell us about this? I will. Just under I've got a point here. I promise. I swear to god. I'll get to it. But first, Nakamoto Holdings Incorporated has been announced as the title sponsor, the main dude of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference, the world's largest gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts, uniting builders, leaders, and believers in in the world's most resilient monetary network put a tie on that suitspeak.
The event will take place May through the '20 ninth '20 '20 '5 at the Venetian Convention And Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. This landmark sponsorship, let keep that in mind. This is not just any kind of sponsorship, dudes. This is a landmark sponsorship. Follows Nakamoto's recent merger with KindlyMD Incorporated, a Utah based health care services provider, announced May 2025, which I covered for you here on the Bitcoin and podcast. The $710,000,000 transaction financed through 510,000,000 raised via private placement and public equity at $1.12 per share and another 200,000,000 in senior secured convertible notes maturing in 2028.
We'll create a publicly traded company focused on establishing a robust Bitcoin treasury strategy. Yes. Because that's the goods and services that I can sell to my customer by establishing a robust Bitcoin treasury strategy. Now here's the rub. Actually, we've already been through part of the rub. If you know who this company is if you don't know who this company is, you're about to find out. David Bailey, founder of BTC Incorporated, which is the owner of the very publication I'm reading from, and Nakamoto Holdings. So he's founder of both. David Bailey owns the owns Bitcoin Magazine, owns BTC Incorporated. Well, he doesn't own it, but he's the he's the founder of and CEO of he's the head honcho David Bailey. Right. Okay. So the Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin magazine, Nakamoto Holdings, which is the company we're talking about, and the conference, all that, all of it, is David Bailey.
So David Bailey, founder of BTC Inc and Nakamoto Holdings, is seeking to bring Bitcoin to the center of global capital markets. The Kindly MD leadership team will also attend Bitcoin twenty twenty five highlighting their commitment to this vision. Yeah. They better be there. Didn't buy you for nothing. The Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference will feature a keynote speech by Nakamoto's very own David Bailey on May following US vice president JD Vance on the main stage. Every time I hear main stage, all I can think of is a strip club in a strip mall. Hey. It's Dakota over there on the main stage.
Okay. Well, anyway, Bailey will also host an Twitter spaces event today, May, at 01:30PM Eastern Standard Time to discuss Nakamoto's vision and the conference. And it goes on to say, join thousands of Bitcoin enthusiasts in Las Vegas for three days of groundbaking. Just go okay. David Bailey is the CEO of Nakamoto Holdings. David Bailey is the leader of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference. David Bailey is the basically leader of Bitcoin magazine because that's owned by BTC Inc, of which David Bailey founded. And so Nakamoto Holdings, David Bailey's company, has been announced as the title sponsor of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference, which is David Bailey's baby.
Do you see do you see the do you see? I'm not saying that it's evil, and I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad. I'm just saying that you're sponsoring you you've you've formed this company, you've merged with this other company, which the and kindly MD's stock price dropped like like tank like 60% or something like I'll be conservative because I can't remember the number, 30%. Right? Somewhere around there. After that announcement was made that Nakamoto and and and Kindly MD was gonna merge, yeah, Kindly was already trading and its stock freaking didn't do well after that. Okay? And I don't know if they've I don't know if they've recovered or not. I don't care. My point is is that the optics are terrible.
From a public relations standpoint, you should not be doing this. Like, this is this is it's I don't know, man. It's like self incestuous sex somehow where you you just I don't think I have to explain it anymore. This looks bad. I don't know. I mean, I like I said, I don't think it's necessarily evil. I'm just saying the optics here are fucking terrible. Honestly, David, come on, man. I, you know, I'm pretty cheap in consulting. I could have told you not to do this. We could have figured out another way. We we really could have, but we're on to other fish that we need to fry because we need to rip through the latest on the Bitcoin treasury front because there's some heat coming from every corner of the globe.
This is a lightning round, by the way, because I got four companies that are announcing Bitcoin treasury stuff. So let's just do them all in a row real quick. Abu Dhabi just dropped some serious coin. Mubadala, yeah, that's the sovereign wealth fund for Abu Dhabi, revealed that it owns over $408,000,000 in BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF. That's 8,700,000.0 shares of iBit, making them a top institutional player. That's not some small fun dipping a toe in. That is a nation state player going heavy into Bitcoin through the front door. Well, through the side door. If it was the front door, then they'd be buying actual Bitcoin and holding it. But no. No. No. No. No. They got BlackRock doing it for them, so whatever. Now we move on to DDC enterprise.
They want 5,000 Bitcoin on their books. That is a China linked ecommerce firm. That's DDC enterprise. They've kicked off a thirty six month plan to accumulate 5,000 BTC. They just bought their first one hundred Bitcoin and plan to hit 500 Bitcoin by year's end. It's bold. It's deliberate. This is a shift. One of those, we're done with fiat moments dressed up in corporate speak, also known as suit speak. And then Bitcoin makes a luxury watch company, GoMoon. This is another one. This is the third one in the list. A little known Hong Kong watchmaker called Top Win just rebranded to Asia strategy.
Pausing to bemoan and and and and give my condolences to, you know, creativity and imagination. Are you shitting me Asia strategy? That's your that's the extent of your marketing plan is to is to be like strategy to the point that you name your company Asia strategy. Anyway, they've adopted a Bitcoin treasury model in partnership with something called Soar Ventures and get this, their stock jumped 60% after the announcement. That's what happens when you slap the word Bitcoin on a balance sheet in Asia, at least right now it is. And then finally, Miluz.
Brazil gets its first Bitcoin treasury company because Brazilian fintech Miluz has now bought 274 Bitcoin, becoming Latin America's First public company with Bitcoin on the books, and shareholders voted it in with near unanimous support. Again, shareholder vote, near unanimous support for putting Bitcoin on their books. So now we've got Latin America in the mix stacking hard and fast. That's four continents between those companies. There's four continents represented there. This isn't a sideshow anymore, ladies and gentlemen. It's it's it's the main stage. Again, it's like it's like throwing dollar bills at Dakota on the pole on the main stage. It's Bitcoin, though.
Ah, Animoca's Yatsu says that student loans can supercharge DeFi growth. We're ending the show with this dumpster fire right here. Because if you didn't think it could get worse in defi land, you're about to see just how wrong we all were. Ezra Rivera for Cointelegraph. Holy shit. Bringing student loans on chain would increase the total value locked in decentralized finance by more than four times, supercharging the industry according to Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, speaking at consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto. I mean, let's just say this.
Where would where else would you find such a bone headed idea as to put $3,000,000,000,000 of student debt into DeFi and say, see? We're good. Consensus. This is the kind of thinking that you get from consensus. I might bitch about David Bailey, but at least the Bitcoin conference is head and shoulders above this kind of crap, or at least it has been so far. Anyway, speaking at a consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto, Sui pointed to the 3,000,000,000,000, that's trillion with a t, dollar global student loan market. It's a market, and it's an untapped opportunity for the crypto industry.
He said moving in even 10% of that market on chain could significantly boost defi's growth. These people are insane. I live in an insane town, and I want out. I want I want out. I ugh. Quote, you basically more than quadruple total value locked in all of DeFi, he said, underscoring how the industry is still in its early stages, and I hope it stays that way. Sue said that web three based financial tools for the education sector could drive mass crypto adoption, especially among the young and the unbanked. Can't believe they didn't just add stupid there. Quote, the first unbanked are the kids because it's always about the children.
If a student receives a loan on chain and pays it back on chain, which is regulated better, faster, cheaper, they become onboarded for crypto for life. They're not paying back their regular loans off chain. What do you what do you think is gonna happen on chain? Jesus. Suey compared the situation to how PayPal and Venmo scaled by offering essential services to underserved users, he suggested that student loans could serve as crypto's entry into the mainstream. I'm sorry. I'm laughing so hard. I cannot help this. The executive also highlighted Animoca Brands recent investment in Pencil Finance, a startup providing crypto native student loans.
So he said that the project operates in The Philippines and Indonesia and plans to expand it to, god forbid, The United States. On April, Pencil Finance announced a $10,000,000 student line finance student loan financing initiative to provide cheaper blockchain backed loans. Sui previously said in an interview that the industry needs these positive sum use cases that everyone understands. He said students would be more pro crypto if they had more opportunities with crypto loans for their education. Sui also told the consensus retards that education is a natural use case for web three. He highlighted YouTube and TikTok platforms that are often used or rather often dismissed as entertainment applications.
Suey said these social media apps are now the largest informal learning platforms in the world. He said everything is tied to education and that web three could do something similar. Quote, education is actually fundamental, something we do all the time, he said. He suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure into educational experiences, web three could turn learning communities and reputational networks into capital assets forming the basis of new decentralized ecosystems. Oh my god. I cannot believe I actually read a sentence that somebody painstakingly stitched together that was nothing but a marketing sentence.
Every single word that people from that would go to consensus would want to hear is in that sentence. It's new. It's shiny. It's educational, and it promotes DeFi. Let's read it again. This is an important sentence in this piece. Sui suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure, number one, into educational experiences, number two, web three, number three, could turn learning communities, number four, and reputational networks, number five, into capital assets, number six, forming the basis of a new decentralized financial ecosystem, seven.
There are seven catch phrases in that one single sentence. It is a marketing coup de grace. Holy shit. And that's the last sentence of the entire piece. This is the kind of garbage that goes on at consensus. Who in their right mind suggests putting $3,000,000,000,000 of already outstanding student loans that are global, which are god only knows what kind of regulatory morass each one of the countries that make student loans because it's bad enough in The United States. What does a European student loan look like? What does an Asian student loan look like? What's tied to that shit? No. Let's just throw it all into DeFi and call it good. See, this is the this is how you get bored apes.
This is how you get Ethereum rocks NFTs. This is how you get ordinals and inscriptions, and this is how we are going to get whatever the hell falls out of the op return debacle. It's this kind of thinking. Because hairless apes have never learned how to act properly ever since we fell out of the fucking tree and found the first mushrooms growing on the ground which caused us to be able to form language and apparently the second thing we formed was the ability to scam each other out of our life savings. That apparently is the human nature here. It's sad, but that's all I can really see what's going on.
Thank god it's Friday. You guys, I I go go outside. Go barbecue. Right? It's barbecuing weather. Hell, even though it's 52 degrees up here in Eastern Washington State, I'm going to try to find something to grill because there's no barbecue up here. Have I mentioned that before? Did you know that there's no barbecue in Eastern Washington and Western Idaho that does not exist? Nope. No. There's no pork ribs. There's no beef ribs. There's no brisket. There's no pulled pork. There's no barbecue sauce. There's no cornbread. There's no fried okra.
Nothing. It does not exist. And you know what else doesn't exist up here? Steak houses. You know what's funny about both of those? This is cattle country. There's a lot of ranching that goes on up here. There's a lot of really high quality meat that's being produced on some of the highest quality grass I've ever seen. And yet no barbecue, no steak houses. They just don't exist. The Mexican food up here is terrible. Somebody save me. This is it it's not fair. Do you know how long it's been since I've had decent barbecue that was not cooked by me?
And by the way, I don't have an offset smoker. I don't live in a place where I can really have one right now. I haven't been able to smoke a rack of ribs since I left Canyon, Texas. Help boost the show. Sign up for my geyser. Go to go to my Patreon. All that shit's in the in the show notes. If you wanna help a brother out, be able to get a plane ticket to go back to fucking Lubbock, Texas so I can get some decent barbecue, then I've got all the avenues for you to help this brother out, man, because it's all in the show notes. Boost.
Donate. Get me some barbecue. I don't care. I'll see you on the other side.
[01:01:59] Unknown:
This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 08:47AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the May 2025. This is episode ten ninety seven of Bitcoin and breaking, breaking, breaking. Jeez, man. Like, it was coming. They told us it was coming, and it is here. Today is the day, ladies and gentlemen. You can go get Steak and Shake with a Bitcoin Lightning wallet. This is just in. Fast food giant, Steak and Shake is now officially accepting Bitcoin Lightning Network payments. And that's from a Twitter post from Bitcoin Magazine. It's got a cute little video here showing a guy using the Zeus wallet at his neighborhood stake and shake. He's got a little there's a little kiosk there. It's a great big old pad.
It says credit only so that you can do all your ordering yourself because, you know, God forbid we have human interaction with each other anymore. So he's done his little order, and he's, like, scanning a a QR code after his order from Steak and Shake, and he's got a Zeus wallet out, and boom, the lightning bolt happens and my god almighty we're able to spend our Bitcoin at Steak and Shake. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I'm also not saying it's a good thing either. If you are gonna go to Steak and Shake today, and and I honestly, why not? Why why not go buy a burger and fries with your Zeus wallet or, you know, your get albie wallet or whatever lightning wallet that you choose to use?
Why not? Just make sure you replace the sats. Okay? Because a 33,000 satoshi charge for a burger and fries or whatever the hell this guy is paying, it could be it could be worth a Steak and Shake franchise in the future. Okay? So just please, please, please be aware. But there's no reason not to, you know, actually just figure out okay. You know what? I'm gonna spend $35 at Steak and Shake today. Hopefully, that will buy more than one meal. You never know these days. Go to Cash App. Go to, I don't know, Strike. However it is that you buy your Bitcoin.
Take $35 from your bank account, buy Bitcoin with it, and then go then go to stake and shake and do the deed because, again, why not? Bitcoin is supposed to be used as money. It's supposed to be used as a medium of exchange. It's supposed to also be a store of value. It's supposed to be a unit of account. It's supposed to be all the six or seven things, the pillars that money is. It's supposed to be all that. So why not use it? I've heard arguments on both sides of the fence. It's stupid to spend your Bitcoin. Okay. We'll put that aside.
You should spend your Bitcoin. Okay. Let's let's put that aside. Which way, western man? It's the meme where the roads go off into different directions. In this particular case, I think both of those directions are actually sunny, you know, and not rainy and not cloudy and not, you know, not that the usually, the meme has a split in the road and the guys, like, figured out where to go and one's dark and gloomy and the other one's bright and sunny with little Disney birds chirping and princesses bouncing around and shit like that. This one, both of the choices are actually sunny.
But if you are going to spend your Bitcoin, do yourself a favor and replace those satoshis that you spend. And also recognize because this is this is something that I don't think people realize about steak and shake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're deep frying their fries in beef tallow, and we all think that's great. Do you know how those fries are processed before the Steak and Shake franchises get them? They're already pre fried in canola oil. Did you know that? They're already slightly fried once. I don't know if that's for a shipping thing. I do know that fries, the really good crispy fries, they're usually fried twice unless you're McDonald's fries. And apparently, you can do it once. And if you're at the right place, their fries are actually pretty good, except that they're they're fried in in industrial sludge, and I would stay away from that shit. But when Steak and Shake says that it's a % beef tallow fried French fries, that's not entirely true because they've, at one point or another, already been processed in such a way as to include canola oil or even if it's not canola oil, vegetable oil. It's still freaking industrial sludge.
So don't get fooled into believing that you've that that they're making you think that they're gonna cut your potatoes fresh and they're gonna throw them into a % beef tallow and that's the end of it. That is not the end of it. Just please be aware. And honestly, I've eaten at a steak and shake a couple of times. It's okay. It's not terrible, but it's not something that I'm writing home about. Still though, why not? Go spend some Bitcoin. Just make sure you replace it. Now onto the bigger news story of the day, Lola Lites from therage.c0 has this one.
Sterling off defense asked the Department of Justice to drop charges following the Blanche memo. We knew it was coming, and it looks like it's here. I wonder what the DOJ will do. So the defense of the alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingoff has asked the Department of Justice to drop the charges against the dual Swedish Russian national following deputy attorney general Todd Blanche's memo to end regulation by prosecution. The government's prosecution of Sterlingoff, who was convicted for operating the early Bitcoin mixer Bitcoin Fog last year, excuse me, fits squarely within the types of victimless cryptocurrency regulation prosecutions that deputy attorney general Todd Blanch states DOJ will no longer pursue, the defense argues.
As highlighted in the letter, quote, no victims testified at mister Sterlingoff's trial or sentencing. No named victims were ever identified at any point by the government, there are no eyewitnesses to mister Sterlingov's alleged operation of the Bitcoin Fog Mixer and testified at trial because there were none. All the government's witnesses at trial were after the fact expert witnesses or investigators testifying to their review of transactions that occurred years before, except for two criminal users of Bitcoin Fog noting that Blanche had directed the DOJ to no longer prosecute mixer operations or operators for the actions of their end users.
The defense further highlights that the jury in Sterlingoff's case had been previously instructed to disregard whether the defendant had been aware of illicit activity on the service he was allegedly operated operating, noting that the Blanche memo prerequisites that mixer operators, if charged, violated regulations willfully. Roman Sterlingoff was convicted on all counts last year and is currently serving a one hundred and fifty month sentence in The United States, and the case goes to appeal June. Meanwhile, the DOJ concluded its evaluation of the charges against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and will not drop charges against the defendant, finding the prosecution in line with Blanche's instructions, highlighting that the Blanche memo has left enough leeway for prosecutors to continue prosecuting the developers of privacy services for the love of God. Okay. So Sterling off, there's no evidence whatsoever that Sterling off created Bitcoin fog.
He was a user of Bitcoin fog, and he was the one that was caught. But Bitcoin fog continues to operate just like like tornado cash continues to operate without the alleged producers of that code being able to service that code. So in the in the Tornado Cash case, we do know that those two developers did create Tornado Cash. That's not in question. It's just nice that Tornado Cash operates whether you like it or not. Bitcoin Fog is a completely separate case. So we've got three cases right now, essentially. We've got the samurai wallet case. We've got the tornado cash case, and we've got the Bitcoin Fog case. And the Bitcoin Fog case has kinda fallen through the cracks in our perception because so much time has been, you know, handed over to the tornado cash and the and the samurai wallet case, which is fine because those guys are getting reamed. They're getting railroaded.
They they were framed, your honor. They were framed, but we forget about we forget about Bitcoin fog. This this Roman Sterlingoff guy, talk about a fucking patsy. I mean, it's like they just said eeny meeny miny moe and just picked this dude. There is no evidence that he actually and he said he's like, I I didn't have anything to do with it. I just used the mixer. And they're saying that he operated it, he owns it, he wrote the code for it. There's no proof. There's no proof. They have no witnesses. They have no eyewitnesses to say, yeah. Well, I watched them code it up. Hell, I helped them debug it. Nobody. Nobody. Not a soul has been able to come forward and say, I corroborate the United States Department of Justice prosecutorial case against Roman Sterlingoff because I was there. I watched him do the deeds.
Nobody. Not a soul. And he's being shafted. Right? So it's what I find interesting is that it was Roman Sterlingoff's defense that brought up the Blanche memo before the, tornado before I think before the tornado cache guys because it's like we're as far as I know, we're still waiting to see what the defense is going to do with the Blanche memo or the the tornado cash defense is gonna do with the Blanche memo. Unless something unless there's something I've missed, we haven't heard anything from them as to whether or not they're going to pursue that particular lane of appeal. But as with all things, we're just gonna have to wait and see.
Now I don't know where the hell the Marianas Island is, but Jesse Coughlin's gonna tell us all about how their stablecoin bill passes because their house override a veto. So we've got we've got our first veto override on a stablecoin bill. It's not in The United States, though. This is through CoinTelegraph. The Pacific oh, interesting. This is gonna have precedent for The US. The Pacific US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands has passed a bill allowing its small constituent island of Tinian to launch a stablecoin overriding an earlier veto by the territory's governor. The 20 member Northern Marianna Islands House voted 14 to two to override governor art was Arnold Plastios, his April 11 veto of the bill which allowed the Tinian local government to issue licenses to Internet casinos and includes a provision for the Tinian treasurer to issue, manage, and redeem a, quote, Tinian stable token.
The territory's nine member senate had revived the bill on May voting seven to one in a two thirds majority to override the veto, which then needed a two thirds majority in the house to pass. Originally, a four member Tinian delegation to the Marianas legislature had unanimously passed the bill to governor Palacios on March. It may put the Tinian government in the lead to be the first United States public entity to issue a stablecoin, which it must do before July if it is to beat the state of Wyoming government, which is aiming to issue a stablecoin by then. Tinian has just over 2,000 residents and a largely tourism based economy.
Its local government, the municipality of Tinian and Aguinon, I cannot pronounce that, is one of the four municipalities in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Island or Pacific Ocean north of Guam. Governor Palacios said in a letter that he vetoed the bill as it, quote, presents several several legal issues and may it may be unconstitutional. And it would regulate an activity that could not be clearly restricted to Tinian and that it lacked needed enforcement measures to counter illegal gambling. Gambling. I can't believe there's gambling going on here. The stablecoin is called the Marianas US dollar and will be backed by cash and, of course, United States treasury bills held in reserve by the Tinian Municipal Treasury according to statements shared with Cointelegraph in March.
The Tinian government chose local tech services firm, Marianas Rai Corporation, as the exclusive infrastructure provider for MUSD, which will be launched on the eCash blockchain, a network that rebranded from Bitcoin Cash ABC from 2021 and is a fork of Bitcoin Cash and a blockchain forked from Bitcoin. Pausing, I had completely forgot that Bitcoin Cash forked into Bitcoin Cash ABC as well as Satoshi's vision, that train wreck dumpster fire on wheels that was Craig Wright and Calvin Ayers mess. I completely forgot about Bitcoin Cash ABC. Interesting.
Interesting that it's still kicking. Anyway, a Marianas Rycorp spokesperson did not comment beyond telling Cointelegraph that the company would announce more on m USD May the nineteenth. Before the vote, house lawmakers heard from the public and discussed overturning governor Placios' veto before they vetoed it, though, with independent house floor leader, Marissa Flores, airing concerns on the bill. Marianas Rycorp cofounder and technology chief, Vin Armani. Oh oh my god. Is this is this the real Vin Armani? Hold on. I gotta pause here. Oh my god. It is. It's the Vin Armani. If you don't know who that is, you probably don't wanna know.
You I'm just gonna leave it there. If you if you know, you know. Let's move on. Chief technology officer Vin Armani, also cofounder of Marianas Rycorp, had urged lawmakers to undo the veto saying that the bill would attract billions of dollars of investment as well as tax revenue from the crypto industry without the government having to pitch in. Clyde Norita, a Marianas Rycorp director and local legal cannabis mogul, told the house that the local economy was dying out. Oh, lord have mercy. And the bill would allow businesses in the region without affecting our culture, without affecting our environment, and without affecting our immigration status. Yeah. For an island of 2,000 people, I'm sure all of that is, like, really, really important. Representative Flores, who voted against the override said, quote, every time we talk about casinos, there's always some kind of bitter pill to swallow, end quote.
You think? Wow. Quote, it is true. We are in dire need of money. But what I don't like is when we are desperate and we are now forced to make a decision because we are desperate once again. Every time we're desperate, it always seems that we come back to casinos. I don't like being pushed to a corner to make a decision based on fear, Flores said. Holy crap. What the hell is going on in that island? I I mean, do they got, like, a Godzilla roaming around that's scaring the piss out of everybody? Who knows? But others were more supportive of the measure with Republican representative Patrick San Nicolas, a Tinian delegation member who initially voted on the bill saying that it would help pull the region out of a deep economic crisis.
You got 2,000 people. How deep of an economic crisis are you fuckers in? Good lord. Have mercy. Quote, we need this legislation to unlock our potential. This bill does not depend on tourist or federal subsidies. It builds a digital industry generating revenue from a licensed jurisdiction. That's the end of the article, but holy crap, there is all manner of stuff that's probably wrong about this. The fact that Vin Armani is part of this entire situation right there is probably one of the reasons why this governor from Tinian vetoed this thing in the first place.
I I my gut feeling says that everything that's going on here is bad. It's probably I'm gonna say it. Because of the people involved, probably talking about some kind of chicanery. It may involve money laundering. I don't know. But a 2,000 person island north of Guam in the Pacific Ocean that is so fearful of their economic status and something about immigration that they need to build casinos, that, everything about this is wrong. Let's you know what? I'm I'm just gonna move on because the circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you with goods and services to plebs just like you who want to buy, said goods and services with your Bitcoin because if you ain't selling it in Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p. Today, it's Oshie.
Go to Oshiegood, Oshie good US. That's Oshiegood.US And order yourself he's got let's see. He's people are buying this stuff left and right. So he's out right now, he's kinda out of some stuff. But he's got mint cookie huddle bars. And I've had the banana chocolate chip huddle bar. It is excellent. One of the main ingredients is dates, and it makes a really, really good stable base to build on. Because, like like, let's see what's in the mint cookie one, because that that's the one that I really wanted, but he was out. He's got him back. He's got a four pack.
On his website, it says, dates, pecan butter, dark chocolate chips, peanut flour, cacao powder, peppermint extract, cinnamon vanilla extract, and sea salt. Sounds delicious, and you can get a four pack of them for 23,000 sats. Dudes, if you are going, like, hiking on long walks, if you wanna keep an emergency, you know, nutrition pack somewhere in your car just in case, You need to pick one of these things up, man. These things are not only are they delicious, they are filling. They are meaty. They are beefy. I mean, my god almighty. I when I got mine, I was like, oh, look. It's a cute little bar. I'll I'll I'll tear through this in, you know, like, four four bites.
Not so. I took the first bite and I'm like, wow. There's a lot of stuff packed in here. So he does have one. He's got a pack of mint cookie hollow bars. You can get it for 23,000 sets. He also has this famous huddle butter. Now this is huddle butter, and it starts with local handpicked and sorted pecans straight from the Southeast United States. It's more nuanced than two hour Bitcoin podcast. This small batch craft delicacy can be can be enjoyed as a topping on anything edible or straight out of the reusable glass jar. Ingredients, pecans, maple syrup, sea salt flakes, cinnamon, and black pepper.
Black pepper. See, the guy has nuance. He understands he understands flavor profiles. It sounds weird. Black pepper in my peanut butter, if there's a little bit of it, it completely changes the flavor profile of the thing. Now this one, I have not had yet. However, I have kinda had it because he includes it in his Huddle bars as part of the ingredient list, but I haven't had it directly. But if you want to support your local pleb or your well, actually, your fellow pleb, then please please please go over to oshigood.us. When you go to the cart, put in Bitcoin and into the promotional code line.
You will not be getting a discount. This is only to help Oshi track where the sale came from because in the value for value advertising model that I'm trying to create, I do the advertisement for free upfront. I'm basically fronting the goods here. It's like you're you're you're high school dealer. I'll front you the bag. You gotta come up with the goods on the other side, though. So if you do buy and you tell him, hey, by putting Bitcoin and in the promotion code, he knows that, hey, the sale came from the podcast. I need to cut some Satoshis to David Bennett of the Bitcoin and podcast, and it will be up to him to determine what he feels the advertisement was worth if it worked.
Again, oshigood.us, oshi good U s. Go to oshi, 0 s h I g 0 0 d U s, and order yourself some huddle butter and some huddle bars. Onto bankruptcies. We forgot about it. I guarantee you probably haven't thought about this in a while, but it's coming this month. FTX to pay over $5,000,000,000 to creditors as the bankrupt estate gears up for distribution. And this is Sharra Malwa writing for CoinDesk. FTX creditors are set to receive over $5,000,000,000. That's billion with a b in distributions starting on May as part of the second phase of the bankrupt exchanges court approved recovery plan, the FTX recovery trust set on Thursday.
The estate will pay out to four classes of creditors with recoveries ranging from 54% to a 20% of their original claims. The amounts are based on US dollar value of customer holdings at the time of FTX's collapse in November of twenty twenty two. BitGo and Kraken, two custodians overseeing the distribution process, are expected to transfer funds to eligible claimants within one to three business days starting after May. The payout breakdown includes class five creditors or Alameda Research counterparties, lenders, and trading vendors who are set to receive between 5472% of their approved claims.
Small unsecured claimants are recovering about 61%. Meanwhile, intercompany claims involving FTX's various subsidiaries are being repaid at a 20%. Over 90% of all claims have entered the distribution pipeline, the repayment trust said, in its release. Okay. So there's going to be spin on this that says sell all your Bitcoin because the FTX stuff is coming. Dude, the FTX shit's been going on for a while. We just haven't reported on it. But I guarantee you, the people like reporters from like, that reporter that interviewed Sailor, you know, the chick that's worried about her teeth that, you know, apparently her teeth are worth billions and billions of dollars or not. Whatever. I can't remember what she said. But she dresses like a Chinese Communist Party member. But that aside, it she well, she does. She does. Go look at her picture. She's got that drab gray button up, and it's buttoned up all the way to her neck. And, no, she's not wearing a bow tie or a necktie or nothing.
I swear to God, it look I swear it looks like mouse a tongue. Anyway, whatever. That's beside the point. This shit's been rolling forever. She's gonna get a hold of it, and she's gonna say, oh, everybody like, Bitcoin's gonna die because $5,000,000,000 of Bitcoin are being redistributed. It's all I as far as we can tell, it's already been converted to cash, like, two years ago. Alright? So if if for whatever reason, you end up in the pool, the FUD pool deep end, just swim to the side and and get out before somebody lays a baby Ruth in there. And if you don't get the reference, then you're probably not from the eighties. Let's run the numbers.
Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil is up one and three quarters point to $62.69 a barrel. Brent, North Sea is up one and a half to $65.44. Natural gas doing its thing. It is down almost a full point to $3.33 per thousand, and gasoline is up a half point to $2.14 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks not having a good day. Gold is down one and a quarter to $31.85 and 8 dimes. Silver is down just over a point. Platinum is down almost a point. Copper is down well over a point. In fact, 2.16% to the downside, and palladium is down almost a full point. Ag is mostly in the red. All but chocolate is in the green, so it's our winner automatically, but quite a move.
6.85% to the upside. Biggest loser today is coffee, two and a quarter to the downside. Live cattle, however, are up point 44%. Lean hogs are down a quarter of a percent, and feeder cattle are up three quarters of a percent. Pausing because we've got to say something about cattle prices. Cattle prices are at an all time high. You're talking about, like, I I saw something from Texas Slim last night, and he was, he was I don't know. I guess he was retweeting something about, the price of cattle at a sale barn. And one one heifer, one heifer, not a bull, not a breeding bull, but a heifer to breed cattle with going for $5,700.
And that may mean nothing to you. That's fine. Not too long ago, it would have meant nothing to me too. However, there were, like, five other cattle in that ring. And one of the comments on that video said, I remember not too long ago where I could have bought every cow in that ring for $5,700. That's how much cattle prices have risen. And what does this mean to you? Live cattle are what you're going to take after you finish them to the sale barn to sell for said $5,700 a cow. And as far as I know, that particular animal was not some kind of high priced wagyu. It was probably a very good breed, but it wasn't like some, like, woo hoo, you know, where god raising shit are coming down, you know, and making it glow like some kind of, you know, golden calf that the Jews are worshiping. Okay? It was not that.
It ain't a shit cow either, but $5,700 for a single animal. That single animal is what's gonna go to the sale barn or rather that's what's gonna go to the butcher, get slaughtered, and then end up as meat on your table. So beef prices are accelerating at the supermarket. And you may ask why. Because we have the lowest inventory of live cattle in The United States in the history of the cattle industry in The United States. And then you may ask why. Because we keep buying our meat from well, not China, but from Australia, Brazil, and a couple of other places.
Instead of producing beef here in The United States for consumption here in The United States, this beef that we do produce goes to China, goes to Japan, goes to really, really wealthy countries because we produce the best beef in the world. That's a fact. That's a fact. I'm not lying. This is not hubris. It's not hyperbole. It's a fact. The United States Beef Producer knows how to produce the best beef in the world. Brazilians are pretty good at it, but they're not anywhere close to as good as American beef produce producers. Yet the attacks on the cattle industry in The United States have sent family ranch after family ranch after family ranch into hell, and they are not surviving that trip. They are bailing out. They are selling their land. They're selling their animals. They're selling their ranch, and they're gonna go, I don't know, doctors, lawyers, and whatever that Willie Nelson said in the song, that's what your mama should that's what you should be.
The mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. I wish he had never written that song because people took him seriously. It's all yes. People, oh, it's a hard life. I you know what? I've met many ranchers, and you know what I don't see? I don't see their skull cracked in half. I I don't see them as being, you know, grizzly and mean and and, like, you know, great big, ugly, like, limb lost people. You know, they actually look pretty good to me. You know, they look like they're pretty happy. They look like they're doing you know, they they they've got their problems. It's not all, you know, it's not like all rainbows and freaking leprechauns jumping around, but they are dying.
We're we're not we are not stepping up to the plate. We're not going to buy their meat that some of these producers are are trying to vertically integrate into into marketing their own beef, and we're not buying it. We continuously go to Walmart to get our beef. We continuously go to Safeway to get our beef. We continuously go to Albertsons and HEB and and what and all that beef, it's not coming from The United States. That's the beef that's coming from Brazil and coming from Australia. Alright? So stop it. Support your local rancher and go out and shake your rancher's hand. Get to know them. Get to understand how they operate.
Just fucking take the time. We don't have time. Are you sure are you sure you don't have the time? Are you absolutely certain? Because I can almost guarantee you that most of us think we don't have the time. And then if we actually look at what we're doing, what we're spending on our our real time on, we can look at it and go, you know, that's probably pretty freaking stupid. Go out and shake your rangers hand. Dow futures are up a quarter. S and P is up a quarter. Nasdaq is up point 14%. S and P Mini is up just over a half point, and Bitcoin is chilling out. It's bouncing around, man, between a hundred and two and a 5,000. Right now, it seems to be at a hundred and 4,181 hundred and $60.
That is a $2,070,000,000,000 market cap. We can get 32.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with our one Bitcoin of which there are 19,865,366 and a half of. And average fees per block are low, 0.04 BTC taken in fees on a per block basis. There are eight blocks carrying 29,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 16 Satoshis per vByte. So we've got some pretty high fees at the moment. Just wait. I guarantee they'll they'll go back now. 12 satoshi is gonna get you in at low priorities. And hash rate is chilling out where it was yesterday at about 850.1 exahashes per second.
In twenty one hours, we have a upwards difficulty adjustment of 2.16%. Do with that what you will. Kindly reminder to go to bitcoinandshow.com. That's bitcoinandshow.com. That's my website. I'm working on it. I I'm working on it, but it would be nice to get a couple of more people to just, you know, slip your email in. It's free. It ain't gonna cost you nothing, and I'm never gonna give your email away to anybody under any circumstances for any reason whatsoever from what's more into the breach, yesterday's episode of Bitcoin, and I've got Yodel. Holy shit. 10,000 satoshis.
I'm rich, bitch. Yodel, thank you. That was that is a hell of a boost. Very much appreciative or appreciated there. Progressively worse, coming in half as much at five k SATs. Dude, stay a while and listen. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Chill now with ten twenty four, says echo ep ten ninety six sliding into the schism. Risk protocol high. Game stopping micro strategy OPSEC status equals breached. Identities known, braced for further kidnap ransoms. Examples of human perception manipulated for broken money. Channel status equals closed. Dark market USDT billions access denied. Trigger event equals weaponized debt. Proxy war money launderer pivots laundering to shit coinery. I think I know who he's talking about. Entropy will accelerate until nothing remains. System end dot echo.
Chill now. Dude, I appreciate those. I I really do. I it's like, I get the feeling that you may be generating those with AI, but it's still kinda cool the way that you're actually presenting those. I I really enjoy them. Turkey with 500 says nothing. God's death February. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And Pies with a hundred. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Digital euro to restore cash's role, says the European Central Bank. Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
This is Atlas twenty one dot com. The European Central Bank is moving forward with plans for a digital euro considering it crucial for maintaining European monetary sovereignty in the digital era. On May, Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB executive board, highlighted during the France payments forum how the use of physical cash is rapidly declining. With the surge in digital transactions and e commerce, the ECB believes a digital euro represents a crucial step to preserve the universal function of cash in a digitized form. According to the Eurotower I don't know what that is.
Eurotower? According to the Eurotower, the current European payment system has several vulnerabilities. About two thirds of card transactions in the Eurozone are processed by non European companies and as many as 13 euro area countries rely entirely on international payment networks for point of sale transactions. Even countries with national card systems must collaborate with international networks to enable cross border or online purchases. Players like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Alipay dominate digital payment solutions, often partnering with international networks to further expand their market presence.
The ECB has stressed that the digital euro will not replace cash, but will serve alongside it as, you know, legal tender, ensuring it is accepted wherever digital payments are available. One key feature, according to the central institution, will be offline functionality offering users privacy similar to that of cash payments and enabling transactions even without network connectivity. Beyond retail payments, the ECB is also advancing in the implementation of distributed ledger technologies and tokenization to facilitate wholesale financial transactions.
The ECB has announced it will soon provide tools to settle DLT based transactions using central bank money. Okay. It the the digital euro is coming. They are going to push this out whether people like it or not, and they're going to push out a broken system. There's two things about about what I said. When I say broken, I mean functionally broken, as in not going to work. I mean, it'll work somehow. Sometimes it'll work. It'll be fine. In other factors, it'll there will be bugs. It'll be because it's based off of software, and they are doing everything they can to shore up the European Union before the weaponization of the US dollar or, actually, it's gonna be the US dollar debt is the weapon. That's what we're weaponizing.
The US dollar is the that that's the marketing. But the true delivery system is going to be USDT. I've been saying this for a long time. They're going to push the e the ECB is going to push the digital euro so fast that they're not going to have a really good software base to be able to leverage from. It's going to be broken. The other way that it's going to be broken let's say this. Let's say that it's one it rolls out and it's a % functional with zero bugs. Bullshit. But let's say that's true. When they're talking about this, replace cash, the it will it's not gonna the digital euro will not replace cash, but it will serve alongside cash as legal tender.
Okay. First of all, they're going to do away with physical cash. Not at first, later on. But right now, they're, oh, no. Because you'll still be able to put cash in your wallet. You know? They'll still have those plastic bills that we use, and you can go to the florist or, you know, go get a steak and shake with your, you know, plastic money. You know? That's fine. No. That's gonna go away at one point or another. But here's the rub. It says here, according to the central institution, there will be offline functionality, which offers users privacy similar to that of cash payments. No. This is wrong.
And the reason it's wrong or a bold faced lie is because every other story about the ECB and what people in the well, not citizens, but the gov governing people, people of, quote, authority in these governments. They keep saying how they want to track everything because, you know, you're a terrorist. And you're you're obviously obviously engaged in child pornography as well as child sex trafficking. That's clear because all citizens that are not government employees are clearly, clearly fucking criminals all the time.
That's just the nature of a civilian. The the have you can you say the French Revolution? Can you say can you say those two words together in a sentence? Because that's how the citizenry of France was looked upon by the aristocracy right before the citizenry of France broke into the Bastille, into their armory, armed themselves with several thousand weapons, and then shop proceeded to chop the heads off of 10,000 aristocrats. I'm just saying this looks very, very familiar, but there has never been any tone out of any of the aristocracy of Europe that suggests that they want anything but full control of how you get your money, how you store your money, and how you use your money.
And they wanna know everything. Right? So this privacy statement here by the ECB makes absolutely no sense given their history of how they've treated any kind of money and how they are functionally falling further and further into this totalitarian authoritarian way of looking at you as just a mere cog in a wheel as part of their economy. That's all you are. You don't have a life. You don't have wants and needs. You don't have children that have wants and needs. You don't have plans for the future. You don't wanna build things. You just you just need to go to work and and and take digital euros and make sure that you don't spend any more than 300 of them at a time and make sure that you're okay knowing that they know exactly what you bought. And God forbid, if you bought more than five liters of wine that week, they might just say, you know what? We're not gonna give you health care anymore because we know that you drink wine a lot.
I you think I'm kidding? I'm I'm not. That shit's already happened in The United States, but we won't get into it. We're moving on to Nakamoto, you know, the company the company that was announced just, you know, a couple of weeks ago. Well, already, Nakamoto to headline Bitcoin $20.25 as the title sponsor. Mark Mason is writing this for Bitcoin Magazine. Just hold on. You you might be wondering why the hell are you gonna tell us about this? I will. Just under I've got a point here. I promise. I swear to god. I'll get to it. But first, Nakamoto Holdings Incorporated has been announced as the title sponsor, the main dude of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference, the world's largest gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts, uniting builders, leaders, and believers in in the world's most resilient monetary network put a tie on that suitspeak.
The event will take place May through the '20 ninth '20 '20 '5 at the Venetian Convention And Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. This landmark sponsorship, let keep that in mind. This is not just any kind of sponsorship, dudes. This is a landmark sponsorship. Follows Nakamoto's recent merger with KindlyMD Incorporated, a Utah based health care services provider, announced May 2025, which I covered for you here on the Bitcoin and podcast. The $710,000,000 transaction financed through 510,000,000 raised via private placement and public equity at $1.12 per share and another 200,000,000 in senior secured convertible notes maturing in 2028.
We'll create a publicly traded company focused on establishing a robust Bitcoin treasury strategy. Yes. Because that's the goods and services that I can sell to my customer by establishing a robust Bitcoin treasury strategy. Now here's the rub. Actually, we've already been through part of the rub. If you know who this company is if you don't know who this company is, you're about to find out. David Bailey, founder of BTC Incorporated, which is the owner of the very publication I'm reading from, and Nakamoto Holdings. So he's founder of both. David Bailey owns the owns Bitcoin Magazine, owns BTC Incorporated. Well, he doesn't own it, but he's the he's the founder of and CEO of he's the head honcho David Bailey. Right. Okay. So the Bitcoin conference, Bitcoin magazine, Nakamoto Holdings, which is the company we're talking about, and the conference, all that, all of it, is David Bailey.
So David Bailey, founder of BTC Inc and Nakamoto Holdings, is seeking to bring Bitcoin to the center of global capital markets. The Kindly MD leadership team will also attend Bitcoin twenty twenty five highlighting their commitment to this vision. Yeah. They better be there. Didn't buy you for nothing. The Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference will feature a keynote speech by Nakamoto's very own David Bailey on May following US vice president JD Vance on the main stage. Every time I hear main stage, all I can think of is a strip club in a strip mall. Hey. It's Dakota over there on the main stage.
Okay. Well, anyway, Bailey will also host an Twitter spaces event today, May, at 01:30PM Eastern Standard Time to discuss Nakamoto's vision and the conference. And it goes on to say, join thousands of Bitcoin enthusiasts in Las Vegas for three days of groundbaking. Just go okay. David Bailey is the CEO of Nakamoto Holdings. David Bailey is the leader of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference. David Bailey is the basically leader of Bitcoin magazine because that's owned by BTC Inc, of which David Bailey founded. And so Nakamoto Holdings, David Bailey's company, has been announced as the title sponsor of the Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference, which is David Bailey's baby.
Do you see do you see the do you see? I'm not saying that it's evil, and I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad. I'm just saying that you're sponsoring you you've you've formed this company, you've merged with this other company, which the and kindly MD's stock price dropped like like tank like 60% or something like I'll be conservative because I can't remember the number, 30%. Right? Somewhere around there. After that announcement was made that Nakamoto and and and Kindly MD was gonna merge, yeah, Kindly was already trading and its stock freaking didn't do well after that. Okay? And I don't know if they've I don't know if they've recovered or not. I don't care. My point is is that the optics are terrible.
From a public relations standpoint, you should not be doing this. Like, this is this is it's I don't know, man. It's like self incestuous sex somehow where you you just I don't think I have to explain it anymore. This looks bad. I don't know. I mean, I like I said, I don't think it's necessarily evil. I'm just saying the optics here are fucking terrible. Honestly, David, come on, man. I, you know, I'm pretty cheap in consulting. I could have told you not to do this. We could have figured out another way. We we really could have, but we're on to other fish that we need to fry because we need to rip through the latest on the Bitcoin treasury front because there's some heat coming from every corner of the globe.
This is a lightning round, by the way, because I got four companies that are announcing Bitcoin treasury stuff. So let's just do them all in a row real quick. Abu Dhabi just dropped some serious coin. Mubadala, yeah, that's the sovereign wealth fund for Abu Dhabi, revealed that it owns over $408,000,000 in BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF. That's 8,700,000.0 shares of iBit, making them a top institutional player. That's not some small fun dipping a toe in. That is a nation state player going heavy into Bitcoin through the front door. Well, through the side door. If it was the front door, then they'd be buying actual Bitcoin and holding it. But no. No. No. No. No. They got BlackRock doing it for them, so whatever. Now we move on to DDC enterprise.
They want 5,000 Bitcoin on their books. That is a China linked ecommerce firm. That's DDC enterprise. They've kicked off a thirty six month plan to accumulate 5,000 BTC. They just bought their first one hundred Bitcoin and plan to hit 500 Bitcoin by year's end. It's bold. It's deliberate. This is a shift. One of those, we're done with fiat moments dressed up in corporate speak, also known as suit speak. And then Bitcoin makes a luxury watch company, GoMoon. This is another one. This is the third one in the list. A little known Hong Kong watchmaker called Top Win just rebranded to Asia strategy.
Pausing to bemoan and and and and give my condolences to, you know, creativity and imagination. Are you shitting me Asia strategy? That's your that's the extent of your marketing plan is to is to be like strategy to the point that you name your company Asia strategy. Anyway, they've adopted a Bitcoin treasury model in partnership with something called Soar Ventures and get this, their stock jumped 60% after the announcement. That's what happens when you slap the word Bitcoin on a balance sheet in Asia, at least right now it is. And then finally, Miluz.
Brazil gets its first Bitcoin treasury company because Brazilian fintech Miluz has now bought 274 Bitcoin, becoming Latin America's First public company with Bitcoin on the books, and shareholders voted it in with near unanimous support. Again, shareholder vote, near unanimous support for putting Bitcoin on their books. So now we've got Latin America in the mix stacking hard and fast. That's four continents between those companies. There's four continents represented there. This isn't a sideshow anymore, ladies and gentlemen. It's it's it's the main stage. Again, it's like it's like throwing dollar bills at Dakota on the pole on the main stage. It's Bitcoin, though.
Ah, Animoca's Yatsu says that student loans can supercharge DeFi growth. We're ending the show with this dumpster fire right here. Because if you didn't think it could get worse in defi land, you're about to see just how wrong we all were. Ezra Rivera for Cointelegraph. Holy shit. Bringing student loans on chain would increase the total value locked in decentralized finance by more than four times, supercharging the industry according to Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, speaking at consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto. I mean, let's just say this.
Where would where else would you find such a bone headed idea as to put $3,000,000,000,000 of student debt into DeFi and say, see? We're good. Consensus. This is the kind of thinking that you get from consensus. I might bitch about David Bailey, but at least the Bitcoin conference is head and shoulders above this kind of crap, or at least it has been so far. Anyway, speaking at a consensus twenty twenty five in Toronto, Sui pointed to the 3,000,000,000,000, that's trillion with a t, dollar global student loan market. It's a market, and it's an untapped opportunity for the crypto industry.
He said moving in even 10% of that market on chain could significantly boost defi's growth. These people are insane. I live in an insane town, and I want out. I want I want out. I ugh. Quote, you basically more than quadruple total value locked in all of DeFi, he said, underscoring how the industry is still in its early stages, and I hope it stays that way. Sue said that web three based financial tools for the education sector could drive mass crypto adoption, especially among the young and the unbanked. Can't believe they didn't just add stupid there. Quote, the first unbanked are the kids because it's always about the children.
If a student receives a loan on chain and pays it back on chain, which is regulated better, faster, cheaper, they become onboarded for crypto for life. They're not paying back their regular loans off chain. What do you what do you think is gonna happen on chain? Jesus. Suey compared the situation to how PayPal and Venmo scaled by offering essential services to underserved users, he suggested that student loans could serve as crypto's entry into the mainstream. I'm sorry. I'm laughing so hard. I cannot help this. The executive also highlighted Animoca Brands recent investment in Pencil Finance, a startup providing crypto native student loans.
So he said that the project operates in The Philippines and Indonesia and plans to expand it to, god forbid, The United States. On April, Pencil Finance announced a $10,000,000 student line finance student loan financing initiative to provide cheaper blockchain backed loans. Sui previously said in an interview that the industry needs these positive sum use cases that everyone understands. He said students would be more pro crypto if they had more opportunities with crypto loans for their education. Sui also told the consensus retards that education is a natural use case for web three. He highlighted YouTube and TikTok platforms that are often used or rather often dismissed as entertainment applications.
Suey said these social media apps are now the largest informal learning platforms in the world. He said everything is tied to education and that web three could do something similar. Quote, education is actually fundamental, something we do all the time, he said. He suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure into educational experiences, web three could turn learning communities and reputational networks into capital assets forming the basis of new decentralized ecosystems. Oh my god. I cannot believe I actually read a sentence that somebody painstakingly stitched together that was nothing but a marketing sentence.
Every single word that people from that would go to consensus would want to hear is in that sentence. It's new. It's shiny. It's educational, and it promotes DeFi. Let's read it again. This is an important sentence in this piece. Sui suggested that by integrating financial infrastructure, number one, into educational experiences, number two, web three, number three, could turn learning communities, number four, and reputational networks, number five, into capital assets, number six, forming the basis of a new decentralized financial ecosystem, seven.
There are seven catch phrases in that one single sentence. It is a marketing coup de grace. Holy shit. And that's the last sentence of the entire piece. This is the kind of garbage that goes on at consensus. Who in their right mind suggests putting $3,000,000,000,000 of already outstanding student loans that are global, which are god only knows what kind of regulatory morass each one of the countries that make student loans because it's bad enough in The United States. What does a European student loan look like? What does an Asian student loan look like? What's tied to that shit? No. Let's just throw it all into DeFi and call it good. See, this is the this is how you get bored apes.
This is how you get Ethereum rocks NFTs. This is how you get ordinals and inscriptions, and this is how we are going to get whatever the hell falls out of the op return debacle. It's this kind of thinking. Because hairless apes have never learned how to act properly ever since we fell out of the fucking tree and found the first mushrooms growing on the ground which caused us to be able to form language and apparently the second thing we formed was the ability to scam each other out of our life savings. That apparently is the human nature here. It's sad, but that's all I can really see what's going on.
Thank god it's Friday. You guys, I I go go outside. Go barbecue. Right? It's barbecuing weather. Hell, even though it's 52 degrees up here in Eastern Washington State, I'm going to try to find something to grill because there's no barbecue up here. Have I mentioned that before? Did you know that there's no barbecue in Eastern Washington and Western Idaho that does not exist? Nope. No. There's no pork ribs. There's no beef ribs. There's no brisket. There's no pulled pork. There's no barbecue sauce. There's no cornbread. There's no fried okra.
Nothing. It does not exist. And you know what else doesn't exist up here? Steak houses. You know what's funny about both of those? This is cattle country. There's a lot of ranching that goes on up here. There's a lot of really high quality meat that's being produced on some of the highest quality grass I've ever seen. And yet no barbecue, no steak houses. They just don't exist. The Mexican food up here is terrible. Somebody save me. This is it it's not fair. Do you know how long it's been since I've had decent barbecue that was not cooked by me?
And by the way, I don't have an offset smoker. I don't live in a place where I can really have one right now. I haven't been able to smoke a rack of ribs since I left Canyon, Texas. Help boost the show. Sign up for my geyser. Go to go to my Patreon. All that shit's in the in the show notes. If you wanna help a brother out, be able to get a plane ticket to go back to fucking Lubbock, Texas so I can get some decent barbecue, then I've got all the avenues for you to help this brother out, man, because it's all in the show notes. Boost.
Donate. Get me some barbecue. I don't care. I'll see you on the other side.
[01:01:59] Unknown:
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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