Join me today for Episode 889 of Bitcoin And . . . is LIVE!
Topics for today:
- Chinese Mainland Will NOT Have BTC ETF Access
- UK Can Seize Crypto From Anyone They Want
- PCE Inflation Came in HOT!
- The FBI PSA Is Not a PSA
- Lightspark Debanked
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
Circle P:
https://primal.net/p/npub172mu27r5yny0nnmvgjqwhx055dmsesrrx7j0p5d3pxagfx6xgxfsv75p3q
nostr handle: @beisnerds
Twitter: @beisnerds
Product: Maple Syrup and Soaps
Articles:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/asias-microstrategy-metaplanet-buys-1-billion-bitcoin-yen
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-bitcoin-etfs-mainland-china
https://decrypt.co/228197/uk-police-national-crime-agency-gain-new-crypto-seizure-powers
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/26/bitcoin-stable-above-64k-while-etf-outflows-hit-200m/
https://www.barrons.com/livecoverage/march-pce-inflation-data-report-today
- https://www.cnbc.com/futures-and-commodities/
- https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
- https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com/
- https://mempool.space/
- https://fountain.fm/show/eK5XaSb3UaLRavU3lYrI
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/fbi-warns-americans-against-using-no-kyc-services/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/sparrow-wallet-v1-9-0/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/lightspark-gets-debanked-by-bill-com/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/paypal-proposes-scheme-to-selectively-mine-with-esg-compliant-miners/
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/sentrum-v0-1-8/
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[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 11 o'clock AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 26th day of April 2024. This is episode 889 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is open for business. That's right. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you who have goods and services that they want to sell for Bitcoin.
Even though that pisses the CIA, the United States Treasury Department, and the FBI straight off, as well as the SEC, the IMF, the World Bank, and all the rest of the assholes out there. So if you wanna piss them off even more, then go visit my friend, Beisnerds, at b e I s n e r d s. Set up a situation where you can buy his handmade maple syrup. That's right. He makes it by hand. He taps the trees by hand. He hauls the sap by hand. He boils the sap down and he puts it into bottles and then puts those bottles into a box and ships it to you for Bitcoin. Because if he's not selling it for Bitcoin, he ain't in the circle p. But he is selling it for Bitcoin. That's why Buys nerds is in the circle p. He's also known as maple trade.
Yeah. The the AKA. The also known as because apparently we're all going to have also known as monikers when it comes to dealing with the courts of the United States considering that they completely just unzipped their fly, hauled out their junk, and waved it at us basically saying that they hate each and every one of us. But if you wanna get clean from the crap that the United States government just showed you, be sure to also order some of Beisnard's sisters, Sarah's soaps. That's right. It's yeah, it's really good soap, by the way. It's handmade. It's beef tallow.
It's awesome. I've used it before. It's some of the best soap that I've ever used. Both are made by hand. Both the maple syrup as well as his sister's Sarah's soaps. So if you want to get sweet and get clean, bizonerds at b e I s n e r d s, both on Noster and on the old dead bird site. Now saying a lot of stuff about about the FBI. We've got takedowns. It's a shitty day. I get it. But if you cannot handle the bad news, then how are we supposed to deserve the good news? We've had good news We've had bad news This has all happened before This isn't new.
I think that the tenor of the discussion has changed since the whole well, since this entire thing with samurai has gone down, for some reason or another it's changed the tenor. Like, sure, we got bad news when tornado cash went down, Right? And, yeah, Tornado Cash was part of, you know, the Ethereum infrastructure. So but we were still we were still upset about that even though it was part of the Ethereum infrastructure. None of us really cared because we knew what it was. It's it's an attack on privacy. It's an attack on the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It's an attack on free free peoples across the globe whether they are under the umbrella of the Constitution of the United States or not. It doesn't matter. We all know what freedom smells like. We know what it looks like. You call a spade a spade, man. This is just the way this shit goes. But in either event, right, somehow or another people are clearly much more upset about the samurai takedown and the arrest of the founder and co founder and CEO and all that kind of stuff of that particular company. But we'll get into more of that later. But what I want to kind of leave you with before we get into the news
[00:04:45] Unknown:
is that all of this has happened before and all of this is going to happen again. But if we go back to the first part of that statement, all of this has happened before. We're all still here We weren't killed We weren't destroyed If we can survive all the stuff that we've survived before
[00:05:08] Unknown:
what on earth makes anybody think we cannot survive all that is going to come in the future? It's not like this has been hidden from us. It's not like we didn't know this was gonna happen because it's happened before it's going to continue to happen in the future. There will be worse times there will be better times. It's just it's the same. I don't think that it's doing us any good to have a solemn somber attitude about what's going on because why I don't even see this is what I don't understand.
[00:05:44] Unknown:
The samurai is just it's just another company
[00:05:48] Unknown:
and I mean it's sad that it happened and it shouldn't have happened and we should defend these guys like tooth and nail. Yes, absolutely. I hope COPPA gets all over this thing. But as far as attitudes and general malaise being transmitted across Noster and Twitter and some of the other, you know applications where we get to talk to each other I'm not certain that it's very helpful to be all sad and somber and blah blah blah Because that means that they're winning We cannot let these people win. We just can't But let's take a brief pit stop over in Asia where Asia's micro strategy, Meta Planet, has bought $1,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin as they pledged that they would. And that turns out to be about $6,250,000 worth of Bitcoin in United States dollars. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese company providing hotel related and other services, has indeed announced the purchase of $6,250,000 worth of Bitcoin.
The company, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, declared its intention to adopt Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve asset earlier this month on X. MetaPlan has stated its plan to buy 1,000,000,000 yen worth of Bitcoin as an initial commitment. The company's recent announcement on Dead Birdside revealed that they have fulfilled that commitment. This move closely mimics the strategy employed by MicroStrategy in the United States. MicroStrategy's Bitcoin purchases have led to a dramatic increase in its own share price. And following the announcement earlier this month, Meta Planet's stock price also saw a significant increase indicating investor confidence in the company's decision to invest in Bitcoin.
Jason from SORA Ventures referred to Meta Planet as Asia's first micro strategy highlighting the potential impact of this move on the Asian market. Meta Planet's Bitcoin investment offers Japanese investors a unique opportunity to gain exposure to Bitcoin without incurring an unrealized gains tax which can be as high as 55 percent yeah Joe Biden could only wish he could go that high Additionally, anyone with an account on the Tokyo Stock Exchange can now indirectly invest in Bitcoin through Meta Planet without facing the regulatory risks associated with direct purchases. This development is seen as a positive step for Bitcoin and its market in Asia as it demonstrates growing acceptance and adoption by traditional financial institutions and publicly listed companies Okay. So, oh, Yeager with 121 satoshis in the zap. Stream. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that.
Coffee. Sorry. I'm taking a little bit of a coffee break here. Okay. So Lyn Alden let me see if I can actually find it because this is a good place to to inject that. Give me just a sec here. No. I didn't want to do that. Hold on. Let me get to my other client. She had something she had something interesting to say and I had something interesting to say about what interesting things she had to say. So let me let me see if I can find it here in a second.
[00:09:22] Unknown:
It shouldn't be too long. Oh, for god's sakes. Hold on. Hold on. It's coming. Promise.
[00:09:35] Unknown:
I don't know why I didn't already have it up because I promised myself that I was gonna talk about this. Okay, here it is. Okay. So, Lynn Alden, earlier, earlier this year, in fact, about 3 months ago, said the following, and I think it's a good place talking about micro or Asia's micro strategy, meta planet, and all that kind of stuff that we just got over. I think it's a good idea to go over this again and and take a look at this. She says many Bitcoiners think establishment powers are now in, and the and they join you phase of the struggle I don't I think they're more entering the earlier and then they fight you phase or more specifically they are happy to join in on the price exposure like the ETFs but they are fighting against privacy especially, and self custody to some extent.
The struggle for financial privacy, custody, and overall self autonomy is just heating up. Remember this is 3 months ago. The gradual shift of critics from bitcoin is a useless speculative asset with no intrinsic value 2, bitcoin is so powerful that direct usage of it must be curtailed can be dangerous. And she's 100% correct. But this is what I have to say about that. So I write back and I say it will be their greed that will be their undoing. The establishment powers want the price exposure but will fight against the privacy but their greed bolsters the entire system the system being Bitcoin here while they support the Bitcoin network via their greed coders are going to continue to code They will code all the things that the FBI, United States Treasury, CIA, etc. Hate. But their greed aligns with the endemic incentives of Bitcoin.
At one point, the Feds will release a hard fork of Bitcoin but I will never run it. They will try arguing that any bitcoin code but theirs is illegal. Good luck. Bernstein v. United States was decided April 15, 1996 in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And that decision is this: Running code is protected by the First Amendment There is only one court that can reverse that. That's the Supreme Court, and they're not going to reverse that. It is a first amendment issue, and the Supreme Court is probably not ever going to hear an appeal of the 9th Circuit decision in 1996. They've already lost.
We've already won. So that's the end of what I had to say about Lynn Alden's note now There's there's something else about this that I want that I kind of want to get get into And that was something else that that I had said and if I can find it again, I will let you know what it was that I said
[00:12:52] Unknown:
I hate scrolling through this stuff. My God.
[00:12:58] Unknown:
Alright, so this is the whole thing. This is my crux of this biscuit. As long as we continue to play their game, you know, forming centralized companies around decentralized ideals, were playing into their hands. So the question becomes this, how can we reconfigure and I mean everything the way we think about it, the way we act, the way we talk, the way we interact with each other. How can we reconfigure all of that so that we have code that runs everywhere and those who maintain it get paid by it through its usage without the construction of LLCs, LLPs, s corp structures, etc.
What I mean by that is this. Samurai got taken down because they have offices or at least they have people that were under their real name and they had legal documents, legal structuring. They knew where to go find these people. What is it that we're doing wrong? And I think what it is is this. Now, this is coming from somebody who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, so I completely depend
[00:14:12] Unknown:
on the people who know how to do that. Why are we continuously playing their game? Their game is for us to file an LLP Their game is for us to file an s corp Their game is to have an EIN
[00:14:31] Unknown:
or a well, it's like a social security number for a business. They want your social security number when you file this paperwork. GitHub is completely owned by Microsoft at this point. We can't trust that shit. I just had a discussion with somebody who I well, not really a discussion. I just replied to to a tweet over a dead bird site earlier this morning from Bubba. And I like Bubba a lot. Truck driver. Salt of the earth kind of guy. He's like his opinion is get rid of all social media when I said, why are you not even trying Noster? What what is it costing you to figure out how this works a little bit of time?
Is your I mean if you spend like 4 or 5 hours trying to figure out noster what you gonna go to the poor house? No, you're not But my reply was this Nostr is not a social media platform. It is a decentralized communications platform.
[00:15:33] Unknown:
It's the communication part that's important.
[00:15:36] Unknown:
This is how we build companies by communicating with each other and by communicating with the regulatory authorities by filing LLPs and LLCs What if we just say fuck that part of it and just communicate with each other? We never give our real names. Code is written completely by anonymous people and somehow or another written into that code take it take like it has somehow or another the way to funnel Satoshis through it either by zaps or micro payments or whatever and that the percentage taken from any activity you perform on any of these platforms going forward a percentage of that is taken or is hard coded in the code that no matter what happens or where if I give 10 satoshis to somebody that I like on some Platform X that the developers of that platform get 2% of that and I can't control that.
This is gonna have to be how this shit goes forward. Because as Lyn Alden correctly pointed out, people like MicroStrategy, people like Meta Planet, people like the, you know, Black Now, if Now, if we continue to be sad and somber and miserable going forward then they're going to win and they're going to have the Bitcoin and we'll be left with their shitty fiat. Is that the way that you want to roll? I don't want to roll that way. I think that's a shitty way to roll. Let's not do that. Okay? Let's try to let's try to be better and figure this shit out. Now, along in that alongside that theme, it ain't just the West.
Clearly, the east is in on this shit too. And we have this one from Helen Parks in Cointelegraph. Mainland China investors, it's confirmed. They will not be able to buy Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs. The upcoming launch of the Spot Bitcoin ETF spot ETF in Hong Kong will not open up the market for investors in mainland China according to Bloomberg data analyst, Jack Wang. Following Hong Kong's approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the 3 Chinese asset managers including China Asset Management, Harvest Global Investments, and Vocera set the spot crypto ETFs through their Hong Kong subsidiaries to open on April 30th.
Though the ETF issuers have close ties with Mainland China, they will not be able to provide Bitcoin exposure to investors in that jurisdiction, quote. Mainland Chinese citizens will not be able to participate in this, Wang said on April 24th 4th during a Bloomberg webinar devoted to the approval of the spot crypto ETFs. And he cited a statement from a Chinese state council issued September 2021 which indicated that any financial institution is not allowed to create accounts, transfer funds or provide clearing for any crypto related transactions. So even for the futures based crypto ETF listed in Hong Kong, the brokers will just directly reject the trade, Wang stated, adding that Chinese investors are not going to get in touch with this product at all, at least in the short term.
He also expressed confidence that the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong will have no positive impact on the regulatory environment in mainland China and will not open the crypto market to Chinese investors. Quote, I would say it's 100 percent not going to happen at least, the analyst said. According to Thomas Zhu, head of digital assets at Hong Kong based China Asset Management or China AMC, the legibility of mainland Chinese investors to acquire crypto ETFs in, I guess, they're saying eligibility, not legibility. It's supposed to be eligibility, guys. Editors, you guys need editors. The eligibility of mainland Chinese investors to acquire crypto ETFs in Hong Kong is dependent on the enactment of forthcoming regulatory modifications.
Quote, As for other products starting from 2014, the mainland and Hong Kong regulators made a concerted effort to establish mainland Hong Kong Stock Connect. With these trading links, mainland investors can directly trade eligible Hong Kong stocks and ETFs, Zhu told Cointelegraph. Amid growing optimism about the upcoming launch of the spot ETFs in Hong Kong, Bloomberg analyst James Safer pointed out that bitcoin ETFs in the United States have more assets than all ETFs in Hong Kong. Quote the US ETF market is almost $9,000,000,000,000 in assets That's trillion with a t. He actually writes that down in this. The entire Hong Kong ETF market is only around $50,000,000,000 Mainland China ETFs are around 325,000,000,000 We're talking literal orders of magnitude differences in size and impact, Seifert wrote on a dead bird post on April 12th.
So, yeah, that's something to be noted. However, Hong Kong as a financial powerhouse is not anything to be sneezed at. And it just may be that the ETFs as in size are so much smaller than the United States simply because they just don't have an appetite for it? I don't know. But it's the way that James Seifert or Seifert writes this, it seems to impart the implication that Hong Kong is a really kind of a financial backwater. It's not. And we don't know what this will ignite over there. However, what we're pretty damn sure of is that Chinese investors have been shut out. So China's scared.
The the the nations of NATO are terrified of it. Clearly India is terrified of it. Australia is terrified of it. It's it's just it we're watching the water or we're watching the tide go out and what we're about to witness is who's been swimming all this time naked. That's all this really is. It's a sea change in complete attitude. Lynn's right. Again, she's right because she said that there is a shift from this Bitcoin thing has no value and it's worthless to the attitude of it's so freaking dangerous that we're about to lose all of our power And if we don't do something about it now, and by the way, they're a little too late, then we're going to lose everything.
[00:22:41] Unknown:
The people that are swimming without britches are essentially slavers. They're economic slavers.
[00:22:49] Unknown:
They don't want you having anything. They want to have everything. Why? Because apparently psychopaths and sociopaths migrate to the top of the social stack It's sad, but it's true So we cannot continuously walk around with this these bad negative feelings about this whole samurai thing. Stop making companies around something that is not designed to have a company built around it.
[00:23:19] Unknown:
Maybe do that.
[00:23:22] Unknown:
Decryp.co, UK police National Crime Agency gained new crypto seizure powers. So these guys over there in the UK are terrified as well. This is out of decrypt, the UK, national crime agency. And their police have been granted greater powers to seize, freeze, and destroy crypto used by criminals. Well, that's all of us. So that's clear that they view us all as criminals. There's there's no distinction anymore. That shit left the building along with Elvis. Anyway, according to a press release from the UK government, the new powers which come into force today, today, means that police will no longer be required to make an arrest before seizing crypto from a suspect.
It's a civil asset forfeiture is what this shit is. Police will also be able to seize items such as written passwords or memory sticks that could be used to give information to help an investigation. Police officers will be able to transfer illicit crypto into wallets controlled by law enforcement and will also be empowered to destroy a crypto asset if required. Victims of crime will also be able to apply to have money belonging to them in a crypto account be released to them, and that will never happen. They will just keep it all to themselves. In a statement, UK home secretary James Cleverley said, criminals should never be able to benefit from breaking the law, which is why we are making it much easier for law enforcement to stay on top of a new and developing threat.
Cleverly pointed to crypto fundraising by terrorist organizations like Daish as justification for the new police powers. So they can they can just say, hey, there's there hey, the Houthi. Because of the Houthi, you get to lose all your shit because we think
[00:25:07] Unknown:
we think, and we don't have to prove. We don't even need a warrant for it. We think you're a criminal, and we're just gonna take your shit.
[00:25:14] Unknown:
This is the world we live in right now. The announcement also singled out the use of cryptocurrency and NFTs by drug dealers and fraudsters. Quote, criminals are increasingly using crypto assets to conceal and move the proceeds of crime. And as a means to defraud victims, said Adrian Searle, director of National Economic Crime Centre in the UK. Quote, these new powers are very welcome and will enhance law enforcement's ability to restrain, recover, and destroy crypto assets if required, end quote. The UK press release singled out privacy coins as not conducive to the public good. Most cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Shitcoin number 1 use a public ledger and also affords pseudo anonymity to users, although wallet addresses are anonymous.
Once linked to an individual's identity, for example, by know your customer procedures, every transaction made by that wallet can be identified and traced. By contrast, privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash use various technologies to shield potentially identifying information about transactions. In recent days, governments and law enforcement around the world, not just in the UK, have cracked down on crypto privacy projects. Earlier this week, US authorities arrested the founders of Bitcoin Mixer, Samurai Wallet, charging them with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Samurai Wallet did not have a mixer.
It's not a mixer. It's a Whirlpool. It's collaborative custody. It's not a mixer. Anyway and just yesterday, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money services businesses under US law. Michael Belcina, digital asset partner at law firm Piper Adleman, suggested that the FBI's warning was an attempt to warn consumers away from smart contract driven privacy tools such as samurai wallet and tornado cash, while Bankless cofounder Ryan Adams pointed to the fact that, quote, we're arresting privacy devs right now and calling them MSBs or money service, money service businesses.
[00:27:31] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:33] Unknown:
We're arresting privacy developers and calling them money service businesses. He's right. Again, I I warn you. This is all bad news. I'm literally out here just throwing out all this bad news to you. You're gonna have to be able to take it. It's gonna have to shed like water off a duck's back. If we're going to get through this It the the rainstorm cannot impact you. You've got to be able to walk through the wind If you can't handle the dips you you don't deserve the rips. If you can't handle the bad news then you don't deserve the good news.
Okay? So so this whole negativity shit that we're feeling over the last couple of days, get rid of it. It's not doing you or me any good whatsoever. Now where are we at? Okay. Let's lose that one. Inflation. So the the numbers came in. So let's do these particular numbers before we do the other numbers. Inflation has ticked up and this is according to Barron's. The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge confirmed stubborn price growth might be harder to tame than the central bank and markets previously expected. Here's what the March personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, price index showed.
2.7% year over year 0.3% month over month versus the expectations of 2.6 year over year and 0.3 month over month. So inflation is is is steaming ahead by at least 0.1 on those particular expectations. Now in the core, it was 2.8% plus that that's what we got. We got, what, positive 2.8% price rise year over year and 0.3 month over month versus expectations of 2.6.3 month over month. So we got 2.8. We were expecting 2.6. This is what's the effect? Well, we'll we'll we'll find out here in a second. The so called inflation wedge isn't going anywhere. With the release of the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge on Friday, investors and economists now have all the government metrics for March price growth.
Taken together, they show that inflation in housing and other service categories remains persistent and will not go away. The personal consumption expenditures price index was up 0.3% last month and 2.7% higher than it was a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday. In comparison, the headline and core consumer price indexes were were hotter in March, both up by 0.4% and rose 3.5% and 3.8% year over year, respectively, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on April 10th. What does it mean that they're they're not getting to it? Because it for whatever reason, they're just beating around the bush. It means that the Federal Reserve is not going to cut interest rates.
I told you this before, several months ago, and then a couple of months ago, and then last month, and then a couple of weeks ago, they're not going to do anything. And all these people that are running around saying
[00:31:02] Unknown:
the the the rates are coming, the rate the the fed rates are are, rate reductions are coming. No. They're not. No, they're not and now
[00:31:11] Unknown:
Here's what you're going to start hearing in the news over the next couple of weeks You might get a rate hike You might get a rate hike if anything they're not going to lower the federal rate, interest rate. They're not going to do it. Do not expect that. Do not make plans around that. Expect it to either stay flat or I got a 50% chance in my gut feeling that says they're going to raise rates by another, I don't know, 100 bay 100, I don't know. But they can't do by a 100. If they do it by any over, 25 basis points, they're gonna scare the living crap out of the entire world. So somewhere around 0.25% is what I think that they're that they might actually raise it if they do raise it. But they are not going to cut that shit.
Now let's run the rest of the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities Oil, West Texas Intermediate is up a third of a point to 83.84. Brent, North Sea is up a half a point to $89.50. Natural Gas, taking it in the balls. 1.16 percent of the downside. Gasoline is up a third to $2.76 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gold having a good day. Point 4 percent to the upside. Silver is down slightly. Platinum is up a quarter of a point. Copper is up almost a full point. Palladium is down well over 2 points this morning. Ag is mostly down. The biggest winner today is lumber, 0.66% to the upside.
The biggest loser today is gonna be, what, coffee? 2% to the downside. Live cattle is up a half point. Lean hogs are down 2 and a half. Feeder cattle are up 0.73%. Legacy equity markets, 0 point 5% rise for Dow. The S and P is up well over a full point. Nasdaq is up 1.63%, and the S and P mini is up 0.52. This is exactly what the regulators wanna see. They wanna see legacy markets boom. They wanna do everything they can to have everybody pour their money into this sad sack of shit. You got price to earning ratios at this point that are in the in the double digits across the board. Some of them as high as 100. So the price of their stock is a 100 times more than their earnings for a particular share. It's sick. When I was a kid, right? My dad was telling me any any P and E over 4, you don't want to have nothing to do with it. Now we are all in the double digits.
Somebody please try to find me a stock that has a single digit P and E and I will I will zap you a 100 sats. Why only a 100? It's not because I'm a cheapskate. It's just that I I'm like starting to to I'm starting to really appreciate having satoshis at this point. The price of Bitcoin is $63,970. That's 1.26 $1,000,000,000,000 of market cap. You can get 27.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,690,000 377.37 of. And the average fees per block, thank God, have actually fallen. We are now sub 1 Bitcoin on fees. We're at 0.69 BTC on average per block in fees.
Unspent capacity in Whirlpool in Samurai's Whirlpool is 10,150.77 BTC. So for the guys that are out there that had anything to do with Whirlpool Samurais Whirlpool, that's that's still in your possession. Right? Just, you know, if you wanna get it out, I you know, go ahead and get it out, but it's that hasn't been seized because the way that thing is built is the way things should be built. There's no control over it. We have to start writing and we start we need to actually start having somehow or another reconfigure the way we put to, you know, companies together where they're not legal entities. They're just a group of people that have a vision of the future and they want to throw in and chance it that they might not actually get the Lambo and the jet and the 12 houses in Spain and all that kind of shit and just want to do something good for humanity. I think that that's where we're at at this point.
I I really do. I think that that's where we're at. We're gonna all have, you know, maybe we all have to be monks And but for you know, I keep thinking about some of the people that I see, like, when you used to watch, like, I don't know, lifestyles of the rich and famous back in the eighties. I'm looking at this stuff going it at the time I was a kid, I'm like, dude, what I want. Now that I'm an adult, I'm like, that's a management nightmare. I want to take care of all that shit. I just want to I want a nice house. I want it on some land. I want some house with some chickens.
[00:36:30] Unknown:
You know that that's wealth. Big family, loving family, good food, healthy food, wealth. Alirejet, liability. Twelve houses in the south of France, liability.
[00:36:46] Unknown:
Have one house on a little bit of land. People will tell you, just own Bitcoin. Don't just rent everything. I don't wanna do that. I wanna be able to plant shit and not get yelled at by a landlord. Fuck that. I'd I'll take my chances on that part of it, but I'm not gonna own 12 of them. That's ridiculous. Alright? So that said, MNPL, what are what's going on in MNPL? We've got, god, how many blocks? 255 blocks carrying 204,000 unconfirmed transaction waiting to clear at surprisingly low priority rates. 38 satoshis per vbyte, high priority, low priority at 34 satoshis per vbyte, and anything under 9.3 is getting purged from mempools around the world.
Mempool.spaceforward/mining is showing 585 exahashes per second for the hash rate. A little bit low, but, everybody apparently is feeling a little down. But I'm not feeling down because I got boostograms from Seize This, which was the palindrome episode 888 of Bitcoin, and I got wise hodl with 12,121 sat says quote, like the stitching on the leather mint wallets, end quote. As the owner of 1, I can understand the excitement. Great show. Thank you, wise huddle. That's a hell of a boost right there. Wartime with 3333 says, don't think you'll need to worry about Bitcoin getting boring for a while.
Yeah. No shit. Bitguss with a 1000 says, boost. Colin b with a1000 says, I know hazard 149 personally. He goes to my local meetup. If you would like to connect with him, I'm sure he would be more than willing. If I can physically get out there, I wanna I wanna meet people face to face. I'm tired of being behind a Zoom or a mic. I want to get out there. Gotta get out there, brother. Arm sorry. Excuse me. Armstress with a 1,000 sats says nothing. Bitcoin Boaz with, 921 says hashtag all sats matter at allsatsmatter.com at 02zx with 888.
Oh, it's a show boost. Nice. Show show number boost. It'd be good if we could adjust sats per minute via web or desktop. I prefer my Nostra integration with Linux. Chillin fountain, on fountain, v 4 v, love. Thank you, brother. God's death with 888. Another show boost. Wow. Thank you, sir. LOL. Jack, I know you're not listening. I'm gonna start using this at work. No one's named Jack, but no one listens. LOL. CIC with a 3rd show boost. Show number boost 888. Congrats on your palindrome episode. Been listening and silently stacking without boosting or zapping. Always appreciate the value you bring. I appreciate that kick. Pies with 420. Seize this, mofo. Two middle fingers and 2 guns up. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. The bird with 200 says fire marshal Bill. Let me tell you something. Yeah. Fire Marshal Bill. That was it. That was it for me in living color.
The bird with 200 says in living color. Oh, when you could be funny without being canceled. Yeah. No shit, dude. Dubravco finishes us out with a 100. Says first 100 sat boost. Thank you all for boosting the show. And, you know, here's the ask again. I need you to support the show. Donations. Like flat out donations and big ones. You know, big sat streams, big boostograms. Find me on Noster, give the zap the living shit out of me. The show runs on you guys because the show was built for you guys. What the hell is going on today in Bitcoin? Oh, I don't know. I'll I'll pick up Bitcoin and he'll tell me. He'll he'll read it to me so that I can make my own decisions, but he will have commentary on the back end and quite possibly even in the middle of it like I do.
But I can't do any of this without you guys. So donations are helpful, but you know what else is helpful. And you were thinking that I'm gonna tell you about 5 star, ratings on Apple Podcasts. No, although you can do that too. It dawns on me that we're having a shitty time telling the rest of the world about everything that's new including podcasting 2.0. Get your friends. If you've already got a podcasting 2.0 enabled podcasting app like Fountain or Podverse or any of the other myriad ones that you can get, if you've already got one, then tell your friends that that's what they need to be using too.
Cause if we can get more people to do value for value or if we can get more people to actually have a podcasting app that's got a value for value toolset inside of it then they're definitely going to be a lot more apt to actually use it and promote the people the shows that they like through value for value boosting and streaming and all that kind of stuff, then if they don't. See, it's like the couple of people that I said about, oh, so, you know, they know that I'm a Bitcoiner. So they asked me questions sometime about, well, how do you buy it? And the first thing that I ask them is, you got Cash App? They're like, yeah. I'm like, you've, you've had the ability to buy Bitcoin for as long as you've had Cash App on your phone, unless you had Cash App on your phone longer than they were offering Bitcoin. But they freak out because all this time, they've got this toolset and they didn't even know that they had this toolset.
Same thing with podcasting 2.0. If they have a podcasting app that has the toolset that does the things that we talk about inside of it, they're gonna be much more prone to support the people that make the shows that they love to listen to than if they don't. So it's not just advertising the bitcoin you know not just marketing for me the bitcoin and podcast. It's not just about asking for donations for the show to keep this thing alive. It's not just about, hey. Give me a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts because that shit always works. It's about making sure that the rest of the ecosystem is marketed as well. Because it doesn't work without all of us shilling the living shit out of value for value and podcasting 2.0.
That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. The FBI issues a warning against using no KYC cryptocurrency money transmitting services. Now if you haven't seen it, I'm I would be surprised. But let's go through this. Right? This is part of the bad feelings that we've been having to deal with over the last couple of days. Nobullshitbitcoin.comornobsbitcoindot com in a move against what's deemed the best practices in Bitcoin security, the FBI issues a warning to Americans against using cryptocurrency services that are not registered as Money Service Businesses or MSBs or do not perform KYC surveillance on their users.
Yeah. Alright. Quote, the FBI warns Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money service businesses or MSBs according to the United States federal law and do not adhere to anti money laundering requirements, reads the public service announcement. Let's just actually read the full announcement from the FBI. Oh, the request is blocked. Uh-oh That's not cool. What the hell is going on with that? The request is blocked. Oh, dude. Check it out. Okay. For the guys over there in zap.stream, I'm gonna show you exactly what I'm seeing. Alright. So I've put it up in the screen so you guys should be able to see it now.
[00:44:48] Unknown:
This is the nobsbitcoin.com
[00:44:52] Unknown:
story on the FBI thing. Down here at the bottom it says full announcement. If I click that, I get this the request is blocked. Alright, so I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna go to the archive and see if that helps. Come on, archive. And there it is. Thank God for archive. Ph. Alright. I'll leave it up here so you guys can read along with me. Alert number I 042524 psa. April 25, 2024, alert on cryptocurrency money service businesses. This is a psa from the Federal Bureau of Dongles I mean, investigation. The FBI warns Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money service businesses. According to the United States federal law, and they give chapter and verse, I'm not gonna read it, and do not adhere to anti money laundering requirements. A few simple steps can prevent unintentional use of non compliant services.
For example, avoid cryptocurrency money transmitting services that do not collect know your customer information from customers when required. The FBI has recently conducted law enforcement operations against cryptocurrency services that were not licensed in accordance with federal law. People who use unlicensed cryptocurrency money transmitting services may encounter financial disruptions during law enforcement actions, especially if their cryptocurrency is intermingled with funds obtained through illegal means. Cryptocurrency money transmitting services that purposely break the law or knowingly facilitate illegal transactions will be investigated by law enforcement.
Using a service that does not comply with its legal obligations may put you at risk of losing access to funds after law enforcement operations target those businesses. So here's the tips to protect yourself. 1, before using a money transmitting service, check whether it is registered as an MSB with the United States Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN. FinCEN provides a website where anyone can check whether a company is registered. However, the inclusion of a business on the MSB registrant search webpage is not beware of financial services that do not ask for KYC information including name, date of birth, address, and ID before allowing you to send or receive money or cryptocurrency.
3, understand that just because an app can be found in an app store does not necessarily mean it is a legal service and is complying with federal requirements. 4, avoid using services that advertise themselves for illegal purposes. Freaking duh. 5, and finally, be cautious when using cryptocurrency services known to be used by criminals to launder their funds. And ending it all, it says the FBI request victims report fraudulent or suspicious activities to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov. I cannot I don't have the time to list all the infractions the United States government has committed against me. But should I go to ic3 dot gov and, you know, file a complaint against almost every government agency at this point?
Well, clearly, that's stupid. The no. They're they don't care. They don't care. They're they're they're not gonna, like, investigate themselves. But here's the real point of me reading that entire thing. Do you think you'd know what a money transmitting service is? You know, most most of this audience is definitely going to know what that is. Or at least have a damn good shot at getting that correct that answer on the test right. What about normies? It's regular plebs. The bricklayer that came over from another country that's trying to lay bricks, feed his family. You know, I know a lot of people, you know, maybe in this audience as well don't like that, but let's just bear with me. Alright? These people don't know what a money transmitting service even fucking looks like.
This is this whole thing is registered as a public service announcement. But they are addressing a public that has no hope in hell of understanding the vocabulary used in said PSA What does that tell you? It tells me 2 things It's an either or
[00:49:41] Unknown:
1 they don't give a shit if you understand this or not, which is most likely the case.
[00:49:47] Unknown:
2, they are so inept that they have no way of translating legalese in something as esoteric as what the hell a money transmitting business even is. What does it look like? What are its hallmarks? How does it operate? You don't know any of this. If I told you, hey go to the nearest grocery store and go get me diapers. Any idiot knows what the fuck that is. Do you think any idiot can actually identify a money transmitting service? No. They can't. This is not a public service announcement. I don't know what this is, but it is not for public to consume.
This is for somebody else because I guarantee you 80% of the American public would not be able to identify if you were to throw them 10 names of companies and half of them were money transmitting businesses and the other half weren't, they would fail on at least 50% of correctly identifying the money transmitting services. Guarantee. They don't know what it looks like. I would not have known what this shit looked like had I not been in for in Bitcoin, and I've been here for so long that now, only now, do I can think that I'm very very confident in correctly identifying a money service business or a money transmitting service.
Almost nobody else in the world actually can do this. So this is not a public service announcement. Alright. So that I'm gonna get rid of that one and we'll move on to Sparrow Wallet. Well, they've removed their Whirlpool client and Soroban related features. So be aware that we are now seeing the ripple effects. This is no BS Bitcoin as well. In light of recent developments, Sparrow version 1.9.0 has been released, which removes the Whirlpool client and other Soroban related features. All wallets and accounts are still accessible, announced Sparrow Wallet.
[00:52:01] Unknown:
So they've removed the Whirlpool client. Again,
[00:52:05] Unknown:
ripple effects. That's what's going on. So just be aware. Lightspark gets debanked by bill.com. Again, that we we have been in the then they fight you phase for a while But I think it's just this week that it's really become evident what that means. Lightning infrastructure service provider, Light Spark, revealed it had issues with its fiat financial services provider, quote, cutting access to our legacy financial system for Bitcoin companies even for pedestrian fiat only services is still alive and well. On Tuesday, bill.com notified Lightspark that based on their processing bank's requirements, they couldn't serve us anymore.
Yesterday, our account was shut down, said LightSpark CEO David Marcus. Marcus then pointed out that the terms of service LightSpark was pointed to didn't even include services provided by the company, but it did not matter. Quote, whether your business is in crypto or not, you don't work with companies that have a patronizing approach to what's acceptable or not when your activity is a 100% legal and compliant. Fortunately, bill.com's business is commoditized and easily replaceable by better, more modern service providers, added Marcus.
So, yeah, so now here here we have the other side of the equation a private institution, a bank, has shut down access to LightSpark's banking or fiat banking infrastructure.
[00:53:53] Unknown:
So they gotta go find somebody else. Expect it to continue. It doesn't end here.
[00:54:00] Unknown:
It doesn't mean I was about to say and that's okay No, it's not okay because we got to fight this stuff tooth and nail But you cannot let it crush your heart. Can't let it crush your spirit You can't do it. That's how they win, dude. PayPal has proposed a scheme to selectively mine with ESG compliant miners. The paper propose proposes routing transactions to whitelisted quote green miners using low fees and a locked BTC reward in a multisig payout address. Paypal's blockchain research group in a strategic collaboration with Energy Web and DMG Blockchain Solutions presents an opportunity to accelerate the clean energy transition for Bitcoin mining as was stated in this announcement. And the solution involves identifying miners that use low emission energy sources, preferentially routing on chain transactions to those miners, and rewarding them using a one of n multisig script 2. Or for example, any one of the n number of miners can spend the coins, which is attached to the on chain transactions the paper explains.
Quote, green miners will be incentivized to mine these transactions since they will be the only ones eligible for the additional locked BTC reward as was stated in the blog post. That's just disgusting. The proposal suggests miners will be eligible to obtain green proofs for Bitcoin certification by achieving either a clean energy score or a grid impact score higher than 50. The details of how these scores are calculated can found here, and they give a link. I'm not gonna worry about going there. The proposed solution also aims to increase the likelihood of participating entities to route on chain transactions specifically to the whitelisted green miners.
PayPal's blockchain research group says that it has successfully tested the proposed solution with Bitcoin miner DMG Blockchain Solutions. And if you believe a single word of this rapacious bullshit, you need to go get a psychiatrist because you're clearly out of your mind and need institutionalization as fast as humanly possible. Everything about what was just said is what? Proof of stake. They they're they're finding this middle road between proof of work, actual proof of work, and proof of stake where they make it look like you're mining and there's a little bit of mining involved, but it's really about staking.
And the staking is this Being able to prove or at least bribe your way into this green mining certificate. It's all bullshit and everybody needs to run as fast as they possibly can away from this stuff, but it also brings to mind something that I have been remiss in doing this every show. If you're not running a Bitcoin full node, today is your day to start running a Bitcoin full node. You can use an old laptop. You can get a Raspberry Pi. Yeah. I know. There's a lot of people that hate them. But, hey, I've been running one for 2 3 years now, solidly. Works fine. And if you're just running Bitcoin Core, you're not actually doing any transactions with, like, a lightning network node, then you really don't need to worry about it. But what we really need to do is have more people who will not run code changes.
I'm not going to run the FBI's Bitcoin. I'm not going to be running PayPal's Bitcoin. I'm going to be able to flag a fuck you to all of these people on my node. I'm never going to stop running a node ever forever never never never never never. And if you're not running a Bitcoin node it's easy. You once you've got it up you just make sure that it's operating Make sure that it's updated, but also make sure that when you update that you're not updating to bullshit code like FBI Bitcoin or PayPal Bitcoin. Just keep that in mind. Now, Centrum. This is this is the one thing we're gonna read today that has almost nothing to do with the FBI or Whirlpool or samurai.
Centrum, daemon for monitoring watch only Bitcoin wallets Centrum is a daemon or some people call it daemon I don't whatever way you want to pronounce it is fine Centrum is the daemon that monitors the Bitcoin blockchain for transactions involving wallets and sends notifications in different configurable channels. Notifications can be received in many different channels including NTFY push, email, Telegram, Nostr, and arbitrary commands. Centrum now has arc or arch 64 builds in the gh release page for all node runners wanting to run it on a Raspberry Pi or similar. If you need builds on other platforms like Makos arm or free BSD, etcetera, just let me know and I'll add it to the release job pipeline.
And then there's a link to the GitHub repo. So you can just watch wallets with this thing and the and we've got lots of wallet watchers but this will actually send you a note or an email or something else. When a which I can only assume a particular event occurs or, you know, you've maybe just set it for at a particular time of day, send me an email because it would really suck if every 10 minutes you get an email that nothing has changed in this particular watch only wallet. But that's gonna do it for the morning roundup. Got a joke here. Dad says jokes.
What do you call a French guy being mauled by a lion? Claude. That should that should fix all of your little red wagons. If you were sad before you heard that joke, you better be laughing now. Everything's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay. I I my my heart goes out to the guys at samurai. They're being treated unfairly. But my heart went out to the guys behind tornado cash. They're not being treated fairly at this point, you know, we're really gonna have to rethink our relationship with our overseers. Do we want this to continue?
Do we really want to watch this all play out? I mean even if it's not Bitcoin It'll mean just like Bitcoin wasn't even involved in the trucker protest in Canada. They just shut down their bank accounts Because government and private industry are in bed together solidly. They're doing what each other tells them to do and that's called fascism. That's the the literal definition of fascism. I'm not I'm I am not one of those people that walk out and call everybody a fascist just because I disagree with them. There's an actual definition of fascism, and that's it. It's when private industry and government entities come together in in in an agreement to basically scrub each other's backs in the bathtub, and that's what's that's what's going on here.
Bitcoin was involved in the trucker protest, but only after their bank accounts got shut down. Right? For some of them, it made it worse because they were caught on tape receiving Bitcoin, and they got in in some other trouble. But it didn't matter. Even if Bitcoin wasn't involved, they still would have gotten their bank accounts shut down. You got the tornado cash guys going to prison. Now you got the the samurai guys that are being indicted. Yeah. Yeah. Do we do we ever let it stop? And how and and and through what mechanisms do we get it to stop? It's clear that these people are not listening to us. We tell them time and time and time again, stop doing this. This is this is at least in the United States, all of this shit is unconstitutional, yet they don't care.
But what by what mechanism do we remind them of their their duties to the American public, at least in the United States who can't speak for the rest of the world? What what do we have to do? What what mechanism is available to us? Courts? Well, that's notoriously a long term, you know, that's a a really, really you gotta have a low time preference for that kind of shit. And chances of it actually doing nothing but making a bunch of lawyers filthy rich on either side. Well, I take that back. The Copa guys are actually doing this for, like, a lot less money than they could get out on the street. Because these lawyers for COPA and some of the other guys that are working for, you know, Blockchain Policy Group and all those kinds, they're they're not getting paid what the lawyers for the United States government are getting paid. And those guys are not getting paid what they could get out on, you know, on Wall Street as a mergers and acquisition lawyer working for, you know, KPMG or something like that. Right?
We we we are truly the plebs. You sign on to this shit. It's like signing on to be a monk. And on for some of us that's okay. And for a lot of other people, it is not okay.
[01:03:48] Unknown:
As long as we're captured by what we think wealth is, nothing's going to change.
[01:03:54] Unknown:
The only way we can change anything is the perception of what wealth is. What's wealth to you? I've completely reversed what I think wealth is for me. But what what I mean, 7 years ago, what I thought wealth was is is 100% antithesis to what I know actual true wealth is today. Without that shift in mental modeling, then we have no hope but to travel down a road of allowing governments to do whatever the hell they wanna do. And they will continue to do whatever the hell they want to do unless they get some kind of pushback. And I mean when I mean some kind of pushback, I'm not talking about commenting on their open, you know, for open discussion some bill or some regulatory rule that they want to pass down. That's not pushback. That's that's basically I'm
[01:04:52] Unknown:
like my wife said, I'm sorry. I can't hear you with that dick in your mouth. I, you know, that's what that is. I
[01:05:02] Unknown:
I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you what the mechanism of change actually is where we can stop listening to what these people have to say and stop living our lives around the way they want us to live our lives. If you know, please tell me. I am all freaking ears. But until that day, I will see you on the other side. Have a good Friday y'all. Have an excellent weekend. Do not let this shit steep into your bones. It's that important. This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin and, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture, podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of 2 systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. Uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 11 o'clock AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 26th day of April 2024. This is episode 889 of Bitcoin, and the circle p is open for business. That's right. The circle p is where I bring plebs like you to plebs like you who have goods and services that they want to sell for Bitcoin.
Even though that pisses the CIA, the United States Treasury Department, and the FBI straight off, as well as the SEC, the IMF, the World Bank, and all the rest of the assholes out there. So if you wanna piss them off even more, then go visit my friend, Beisnerds, at b e I s n e r d s. Set up a situation where you can buy his handmade maple syrup. That's right. He makes it by hand. He taps the trees by hand. He hauls the sap by hand. He boils the sap down and he puts it into bottles and then puts those bottles into a box and ships it to you for Bitcoin. Because if he's not selling it for Bitcoin, he ain't in the circle p. But he is selling it for Bitcoin. That's why Buys nerds is in the circle p. He's also known as maple trade.
Yeah. The the AKA. The also known as because apparently we're all going to have also known as monikers when it comes to dealing with the courts of the United States considering that they completely just unzipped their fly, hauled out their junk, and waved it at us basically saying that they hate each and every one of us. But if you wanna get clean from the crap that the United States government just showed you, be sure to also order some of Beisnard's sisters, Sarah's soaps. That's right. It's yeah, it's really good soap, by the way. It's handmade. It's beef tallow.
It's awesome. I've used it before. It's some of the best soap that I've ever used. Both are made by hand. Both the maple syrup as well as his sister's Sarah's soaps. So if you want to get sweet and get clean, bizonerds at b e I s n e r d s, both on Noster and on the old dead bird site. Now saying a lot of stuff about about the FBI. We've got takedowns. It's a shitty day. I get it. But if you cannot handle the bad news, then how are we supposed to deserve the good news? We've had good news We've had bad news This has all happened before This isn't new.
I think that the tenor of the discussion has changed since the whole well, since this entire thing with samurai has gone down, for some reason or another it's changed the tenor. Like, sure, we got bad news when tornado cash went down, Right? And, yeah, Tornado Cash was part of, you know, the Ethereum infrastructure. So but we were still we were still upset about that even though it was part of the Ethereum infrastructure. None of us really cared because we knew what it was. It's it's an attack on privacy. It's an attack on the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It's an attack on free free peoples across the globe whether they are under the umbrella of the Constitution of the United States or not. It doesn't matter. We all know what freedom smells like. We know what it looks like. You call a spade a spade, man. This is just the way this shit goes. But in either event, right, somehow or another people are clearly much more upset about the samurai takedown and the arrest of the founder and co founder and CEO and all that kind of stuff of that particular company. But we'll get into more of that later. But what I want to kind of leave you with before we get into the news
[00:04:45] Unknown:
is that all of this has happened before and all of this is going to happen again. But if we go back to the first part of that statement, all of this has happened before. We're all still here We weren't killed We weren't destroyed If we can survive all the stuff that we've survived before
[00:05:08] Unknown:
what on earth makes anybody think we cannot survive all that is going to come in the future? It's not like this has been hidden from us. It's not like we didn't know this was gonna happen because it's happened before it's going to continue to happen in the future. There will be worse times there will be better times. It's just it's the same. I don't think that it's doing us any good to have a solemn somber attitude about what's going on because why I don't even see this is what I don't understand.
[00:05:44] Unknown:
The samurai is just it's just another company
[00:05:48] Unknown:
and I mean it's sad that it happened and it shouldn't have happened and we should defend these guys like tooth and nail. Yes, absolutely. I hope COPPA gets all over this thing. But as far as attitudes and general malaise being transmitted across Noster and Twitter and some of the other, you know applications where we get to talk to each other I'm not certain that it's very helpful to be all sad and somber and blah blah blah Because that means that they're winning We cannot let these people win. We just can't But let's take a brief pit stop over in Asia where Asia's micro strategy, Meta Planet, has bought $1,000,000,000 worth of Bitcoin as they pledged that they would. And that turns out to be about $6,250,000 worth of Bitcoin in United States dollars. Meta Planet, a publicly listed Japanese company providing hotel related and other services, has indeed announced the purchase of $6,250,000 worth of Bitcoin.
The company, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, declared its intention to adopt Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve asset earlier this month on X. MetaPlan has stated its plan to buy 1,000,000,000 yen worth of Bitcoin as an initial commitment. The company's recent announcement on Dead Birdside revealed that they have fulfilled that commitment. This move closely mimics the strategy employed by MicroStrategy in the United States. MicroStrategy's Bitcoin purchases have led to a dramatic increase in its own share price. And following the announcement earlier this month, Meta Planet's stock price also saw a significant increase indicating investor confidence in the company's decision to invest in Bitcoin.
Jason from SORA Ventures referred to Meta Planet as Asia's first micro strategy highlighting the potential impact of this move on the Asian market. Meta Planet's Bitcoin investment offers Japanese investors a unique opportunity to gain exposure to Bitcoin without incurring an unrealized gains tax which can be as high as 55 percent yeah Joe Biden could only wish he could go that high Additionally, anyone with an account on the Tokyo Stock Exchange can now indirectly invest in Bitcoin through Meta Planet without facing the regulatory risks associated with direct purchases. This development is seen as a positive step for Bitcoin and its market in Asia as it demonstrates growing acceptance and adoption by traditional financial institutions and publicly listed companies Okay. So, oh, Yeager with 121 satoshis in the zap. Stream. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that.
Coffee. Sorry. I'm taking a little bit of a coffee break here. Okay. So Lyn Alden let me see if I can actually find it because this is a good place to to inject that. Give me just a sec here. No. I didn't want to do that. Hold on. Let me get to my other client. She had something she had something interesting to say and I had something interesting to say about what interesting things she had to say. So let me let me see if I can find it here in a second.
[00:09:22] Unknown:
It shouldn't be too long. Oh, for god's sakes. Hold on. Hold on. It's coming. Promise.
[00:09:35] Unknown:
I don't know why I didn't already have it up because I promised myself that I was gonna talk about this. Okay, here it is. Okay. So, Lynn Alden, earlier, earlier this year, in fact, about 3 months ago, said the following, and I think it's a good place talking about micro or Asia's micro strategy, meta planet, and all that kind of stuff that we just got over. I think it's a good idea to go over this again and and take a look at this. She says many Bitcoiners think establishment powers are now in, and the and they join you phase of the struggle I don't I think they're more entering the earlier and then they fight you phase or more specifically they are happy to join in on the price exposure like the ETFs but they are fighting against privacy especially, and self custody to some extent.
The struggle for financial privacy, custody, and overall self autonomy is just heating up. Remember this is 3 months ago. The gradual shift of critics from bitcoin is a useless speculative asset with no intrinsic value 2, bitcoin is so powerful that direct usage of it must be curtailed can be dangerous. And she's 100% correct. But this is what I have to say about that. So I write back and I say it will be their greed that will be their undoing. The establishment powers want the price exposure but will fight against the privacy but their greed bolsters the entire system the system being Bitcoin here while they support the Bitcoin network via their greed coders are going to continue to code They will code all the things that the FBI, United States Treasury, CIA, etc. Hate. But their greed aligns with the endemic incentives of Bitcoin.
At one point, the Feds will release a hard fork of Bitcoin but I will never run it. They will try arguing that any bitcoin code but theirs is illegal. Good luck. Bernstein v. United States was decided April 15, 1996 in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And that decision is this: Running code is protected by the First Amendment There is only one court that can reverse that. That's the Supreme Court, and they're not going to reverse that. It is a first amendment issue, and the Supreme Court is probably not ever going to hear an appeal of the 9th Circuit decision in 1996. They've already lost.
We've already won. So that's the end of what I had to say about Lynn Alden's note now There's there's something else about this that I want that I kind of want to get get into And that was something else that that I had said and if I can find it again, I will let you know what it was that I said
[00:12:52] Unknown:
I hate scrolling through this stuff. My God.
[00:12:58] Unknown:
Alright, so this is the whole thing. This is my crux of this biscuit. As long as we continue to play their game, you know, forming centralized companies around decentralized ideals, were playing into their hands. So the question becomes this, how can we reconfigure and I mean everything the way we think about it, the way we act, the way we talk, the way we interact with each other. How can we reconfigure all of that so that we have code that runs everywhere and those who maintain it get paid by it through its usage without the construction of LLCs, LLPs, s corp structures, etc.
What I mean by that is this. Samurai got taken down because they have offices or at least they have people that were under their real name and they had legal documents, legal structuring. They knew where to go find these people. What is it that we're doing wrong? And I think what it is is this. Now, this is coming from somebody who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, so I completely depend
[00:14:12] Unknown:
on the people who know how to do that. Why are we continuously playing their game? Their game is for us to file an LLP Their game is for us to file an s corp Their game is to have an EIN
[00:14:31] Unknown:
or a well, it's like a social security number for a business. They want your social security number when you file this paperwork. GitHub is completely owned by Microsoft at this point. We can't trust that shit. I just had a discussion with somebody who I well, not really a discussion. I just replied to to a tweet over a dead bird site earlier this morning from Bubba. And I like Bubba a lot. Truck driver. Salt of the earth kind of guy. He's like his opinion is get rid of all social media when I said, why are you not even trying Noster? What what is it costing you to figure out how this works a little bit of time?
Is your I mean if you spend like 4 or 5 hours trying to figure out noster what you gonna go to the poor house? No, you're not But my reply was this Nostr is not a social media platform. It is a decentralized communications platform.
[00:15:33] Unknown:
It's the communication part that's important.
[00:15:36] Unknown:
This is how we build companies by communicating with each other and by communicating with the regulatory authorities by filing LLPs and LLCs What if we just say fuck that part of it and just communicate with each other? We never give our real names. Code is written completely by anonymous people and somehow or another written into that code take it take like it has somehow or another the way to funnel Satoshis through it either by zaps or micro payments or whatever and that the percentage taken from any activity you perform on any of these platforms going forward a percentage of that is taken or is hard coded in the code that no matter what happens or where if I give 10 satoshis to somebody that I like on some Platform X that the developers of that platform get 2% of that and I can't control that.
This is gonna have to be how this shit goes forward. Because as Lyn Alden correctly pointed out, people like MicroStrategy, people like Meta Planet, people like the, you know, Black Now, if Now, if we continue to be sad and somber and miserable going forward then they're going to win and they're going to have the Bitcoin and we'll be left with their shitty fiat. Is that the way that you want to roll? I don't want to roll that way. I think that's a shitty way to roll. Let's not do that. Okay? Let's try to let's try to be better and figure this shit out. Now, along in that alongside that theme, it ain't just the West.
Clearly, the east is in on this shit too. And we have this one from Helen Parks in Cointelegraph. Mainland China investors, it's confirmed. They will not be able to buy Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs. The upcoming launch of the Spot Bitcoin ETF spot ETF in Hong Kong will not open up the market for investors in mainland China according to Bloomberg data analyst, Jack Wang. Following Hong Kong's approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the 3 Chinese asset managers including China Asset Management, Harvest Global Investments, and Vocera set the spot crypto ETFs through their Hong Kong subsidiaries to open on April 30th.
Though the ETF issuers have close ties with Mainland China, they will not be able to provide Bitcoin exposure to investors in that jurisdiction, quote. Mainland Chinese citizens will not be able to participate in this, Wang said on April 24th 4th during a Bloomberg webinar devoted to the approval of the spot crypto ETFs. And he cited a statement from a Chinese state council issued September 2021 which indicated that any financial institution is not allowed to create accounts, transfer funds or provide clearing for any crypto related transactions. So even for the futures based crypto ETF listed in Hong Kong, the brokers will just directly reject the trade, Wang stated, adding that Chinese investors are not going to get in touch with this product at all, at least in the short term.
He also expressed confidence that the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong will have no positive impact on the regulatory environment in mainland China and will not open the crypto market to Chinese investors. Quote, I would say it's 100 percent not going to happen at least, the analyst said. According to Thomas Zhu, head of digital assets at Hong Kong based China Asset Management or China AMC, the legibility of mainland Chinese investors to acquire crypto ETFs in, I guess, they're saying eligibility, not legibility. It's supposed to be eligibility, guys. Editors, you guys need editors. The eligibility of mainland Chinese investors to acquire crypto ETFs in Hong Kong is dependent on the enactment of forthcoming regulatory modifications.
Quote, As for other products starting from 2014, the mainland and Hong Kong regulators made a concerted effort to establish mainland Hong Kong Stock Connect. With these trading links, mainland investors can directly trade eligible Hong Kong stocks and ETFs, Zhu told Cointelegraph. Amid growing optimism about the upcoming launch of the spot ETFs in Hong Kong, Bloomberg analyst James Safer pointed out that bitcoin ETFs in the United States have more assets than all ETFs in Hong Kong. Quote the US ETF market is almost $9,000,000,000,000 in assets That's trillion with a t. He actually writes that down in this. The entire Hong Kong ETF market is only around $50,000,000,000 Mainland China ETFs are around 325,000,000,000 We're talking literal orders of magnitude differences in size and impact, Seifert wrote on a dead bird post on April 12th.
So, yeah, that's something to be noted. However, Hong Kong as a financial powerhouse is not anything to be sneezed at. And it just may be that the ETFs as in size are so much smaller than the United States simply because they just don't have an appetite for it? I don't know. But it's the way that James Seifert or Seifert writes this, it seems to impart the implication that Hong Kong is a really kind of a financial backwater. It's not. And we don't know what this will ignite over there. However, what we're pretty damn sure of is that Chinese investors have been shut out. So China's scared.
The the the nations of NATO are terrified of it. Clearly India is terrified of it. Australia is terrified of it. It's it's just it we're watching the water or we're watching the tide go out and what we're about to witness is who's been swimming all this time naked. That's all this really is. It's a sea change in complete attitude. Lynn's right. Again, she's right because she said that there is a shift from this Bitcoin thing has no value and it's worthless to the attitude of it's so freaking dangerous that we're about to lose all of our power And if we don't do something about it now, and by the way, they're a little too late, then we're going to lose everything.
[00:22:41] Unknown:
The people that are swimming without britches are essentially slavers. They're economic slavers.
[00:22:49] Unknown:
They don't want you having anything. They want to have everything. Why? Because apparently psychopaths and sociopaths migrate to the top of the social stack It's sad, but it's true So we cannot continuously walk around with this these bad negative feelings about this whole samurai thing. Stop making companies around something that is not designed to have a company built around it.
[00:23:19] Unknown:
Maybe do that.
[00:23:22] Unknown:
Decryp.co, UK police National Crime Agency gained new crypto seizure powers. So these guys over there in the UK are terrified as well. This is out of decrypt, the UK, national crime agency. And their police have been granted greater powers to seize, freeze, and destroy crypto used by criminals. Well, that's all of us. So that's clear that they view us all as criminals. There's there's no distinction anymore. That shit left the building along with Elvis. Anyway, according to a press release from the UK government, the new powers which come into force today, today, means that police will no longer be required to make an arrest before seizing crypto from a suspect.
It's a civil asset forfeiture is what this shit is. Police will also be able to seize items such as written passwords or memory sticks that could be used to give information to help an investigation. Police officers will be able to transfer illicit crypto into wallets controlled by law enforcement and will also be empowered to destroy a crypto asset if required. Victims of crime will also be able to apply to have money belonging to them in a crypto account be released to them, and that will never happen. They will just keep it all to themselves. In a statement, UK home secretary James Cleverley said, criminals should never be able to benefit from breaking the law, which is why we are making it much easier for law enforcement to stay on top of a new and developing threat.
Cleverly pointed to crypto fundraising by terrorist organizations like Daish as justification for the new police powers. So they can they can just say, hey, there's there hey, the Houthi. Because of the Houthi, you get to lose all your shit because we think
[00:25:07] Unknown:
we think, and we don't have to prove. We don't even need a warrant for it. We think you're a criminal, and we're just gonna take your shit.
[00:25:14] Unknown:
This is the world we live in right now. The announcement also singled out the use of cryptocurrency and NFTs by drug dealers and fraudsters. Quote, criminals are increasingly using crypto assets to conceal and move the proceeds of crime. And as a means to defraud victims, said Adrian Searle, director of National Economic Crime Centre in the UK. Quote, these new powers are very welcome and will enhance law enforcement's ability to restrain, recover, and destroy crypto assets if required, end quote. The UK press release singled out privacy coins as not conducive to the public good. Most cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Shitcoin number 1 use a public ledger and also affords pseudo anonymity to users, although wallet addresses are anonymous.
Once linked to an individual's identity, for example, by know your customer procedures, every transaction made by that wallet can be identified and traced. By contrast, privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash use various technologies to shield potentially identifying information about transactions. In recent days, governments and law enforcement around the world, not just in the UK, have cracked down on crypto privacy projects. Earlier this week, US authorities arrested the founders of Bitcoin Mixer, Samurai Wallet, charging them with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Samurai Wallet did not have a mixer.
It's not a mixer. It's a Whirlpool. It's collaborative custody. It's not a mixer. Anyway and just yesterday, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money services businesses under US law. Michael Belcina, digital asset partner at law firm Piper Adleman, suggested that the FBI's warning was an attempt to warn consumers away from smart contract driven privacy tools such as samurai wallet and tornado cash, while Bankless cofounder Ryan Adams pointed to the fact that, quote, we're arresting privacy devs right now and calling them MSBs or money service, money service businesses.
[00:27:31] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:33] Unknown:
We're arresting privacy developers and calling them money service businesses. He's right. Again, I I warn you. This is all bad news. I'm literally out here just throwing out all this bad news to you. You're gonna have to be able to take it. It's gonna have to shed like water off a duck's back. If we're going to get through this It the the rainstorm cannot impact you. You've got to be able to walk through the wind If you can't handle the dips you you don't deserve the rips. If you can't handle the bad news then you don't deserve the good news.
Okay? So so this whole negativity shit that we're feeling over the last couple of days, get rid of it. It's not doing you or me any good whatsoever. Now where are we at? Okay. Let's lose that one. Inflation. So the the numbers came in. So let's do these particular numbers before we do the other numbers. Inflation has ticked up and this is according to Barron's. The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge confirmed stubborn price growth might be harder to tame than the central bank and markets previously expected. Here's what the March personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, price index showed.
2.7% year over year 0.3% month over month versus the expectations of 2.6 year over year and 0.3 month over month. So inflation is is is steaming ahead by at least 0.1 on those particular expectations. Now in the core, it was 2.8% plus that that's what we got. We got, what, positive 2.8% price rise year over year and 0.3 month over month versus expectations of 2.6.3 month over month. So we got 2.8. We were expecting 2.6. This is what's the effect? Well, we'll we'll we'll find out here in a second. The so called inflation wedge isn't going anywhere. With the release of the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge on Friday, investors and economists now have all the government metrics for March price growth.
Taken together, they show that inflation in housing and other service categories remains persistent and will not go away. The personal consumption expenditures price index was up 0.3% last month and 2.7% higher than it was a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday. In comparison, the headline and core consumer price indexes were were hotter in March, both up by 0.4% and rose 3.5% and 3.8% year over year, respectively, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on April 10th. What does it mean that they're they're not getting to it? Because it for whatever reason, they're just beating around the bush. It means that the Federal Reserve is not going to cut interest rates.
I told you this before, several months ago, and then a couple of months ago, and then last month, and then a couple of weeks ago, they're not going to do anything. And all these people that are running around saying
[00:31:02] Unknown:
the the the rates are coming, the rate the the fed rates are are, rate reductions are coming. No. They're not. No, they're not and now
[00:31:11] Unknown:
Here's what you're going to start hearing in the news over the next couple of weeks You might get a rate hike You might get a rate hike if anything they're not going to lower the federal rate, interest rate. They're not going to do it. Do not expect that. Do not make plans around that. Expect it to either stay flat or I got a 50% chance in my gut feeling that says they're going to raise rates by another, I don't know, 100 bay 100, I don't know. But they can't do by a 100. If they do it by any over, 25 basis points, they're gonna scare the living crap out of the entire world. So somewhere around 0.25% is what I think that they're that they might actually raise it if they do raise it. But they are not going to cut that shit.
Now let's run the rest of the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities Oil, West Texas Intermediate is up a third of a point to 83.84. Brent, North Sea is up a half a point to $89.50. Natural Gas, taking it in the balls. 1.16 percent of the downside. Gasoline is up a third to $2.76 a gallon. Shiny metal rocks are mixed. Gold having a good day. Point 4 percent to the upside. Silver is down slightly. Platinum is up a quarter of a point. Copper is up almost a full point. Palladium is down well over 2 points this morning. Ag is mostly down. The biggest winner today is lumber, 0.66% to the upside.
The biggest loser today is gonna be, what, coffee? 2% to the downside. Live cattle is up a half point. Lean hogs are down 2 and a half. Feeder cattle are up 0.73%. Legacy equity markets, 0 point 5% rise for Dow. The S and P is up well over a full point. Nasdaq is up 1.63%, and the S and P mini is up 0.52. This is exactly what the regulators wanna see. They wanna see legacy markets boom. They wanna do everything they can to have everybody pour their money into this sad sack of shit. You got price to earning ratios at this point that are in the in the double digits across the board. Some of them as high as 100. So the price of their stock is a 100 times more than their earnings for a particular share. It's sick. When I was a kid, right? My dad was telling me any any P and E over 4, you don't want to have nothing to do with it. Now we are all in the double digits.
Somebody please try to find me a stock that has a single digit P and E and I will I will zap you a 100 sats. Why only a 100? It's not because I'm a cheapskate. It's just that I I'm like starting to to I'm starting to really appreciate having satoshis at this point. The price of Bitcoin is $63,970. That's 1.26 $1,000,000,000,000 of market cap. You can get 27.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,690,000 377.37 of. And the average fees per block, thank God, have actually fallen. We are now sub 1 Bitcoin on fees. We're at 0.69 BTC on average per block in fees.
Unspent capacity in Whirlpool in Samurai's Whirlpool is 10,150.77 BTC. So for the guys that are out there that had anything to do with Whirlpool Samurais Whirlpool, that's that's still in your possession. Right? Just, you know, if you wanna get it out, I you know, go ahead and get it out, but it's that hasn't been seized because the way that thing is built is the way things should be built. There's no control over it. We have to start writing and we start we need to actually start having somehow or another reconfigure the way we put to, you know, companies together where they're not legal entities. They're just a group of people that have a vision of the future and they want to throw in and chance it that they might not actually get the Lambo and the jet and the 12 houses in Spain and all that kind of shit and just want to do something good for humanity. I think that that's where we're at at this point.
I I really do. I think that that's where we're at. We're gonna all have, you know, maybe we all have to be monks And but for you know, I keep thinking about some of the people that I see, like, when you used to watch, like, I don't know, lifestyles of the rich and famous back in the eighties. I'm looking at this stuff going it at the time I was a kid, I'm like, dude, what I want. Now that I'm an adult, I'm like, that's a management nightmare. I want to take care of all that shit. I just want to I want a nice house. I want it on some land. I want some house with some chickens.
[00:36:30] Unknown:
You know that that's wealth. Big family, loving family, good food, healthy food, wealth. Alirejet, liability. Twelve houses in the south of France, liability.
[00:36:46] Unknown:
Have one house on a little bit of land. People will tell you, just own Bitcoin. Don't just rent everything. I don't wanna do that. I wanna be able to plant shit and not get yelled at by a landlord. Fuck that. I'd I'll take my chances on that part of it, but I'm not gonna own 12 of them. That's ridiculous. Alright? So that said, MNPL, what are what's going on in MNPL? We've got, god, how many blocks? 255 blocks carrying 204,000 unconfirmed transaction waiting to clear at surprisingly low priority rates. 38 satoshis per vbyte, high priority, low priority at 34 satoshis per vbyte, and anything under 9.3 is getting purged from mempools around the world.
Mempool.spaceforward/mining is showing 585 exahashes per second for the hash rate. A little bit low, but, everybody apparently is feeling a little down. But I'm not feeling down because I got boostograms from Seize This, which was the palindrome episode 888 of Bitcoin, and I got wise hodl with 12,121 sat says quote, like the stitching on the leather mint wallets, end quote. As the owner of 1, I can understand the excitement. Great show. Thank you, wise huddle. That's a hell of a boost right there. Wartime with 3333 says, don't think you'll need to worry about Bitcoin getting boring for a while.
Yeah. No shit. Bitguss with a 1000 says, boost. Colin b with a1000 says, I know hazard 149 personally. He goes to my local meetup. If you would like to connect with him, I'm sure he would be more than willing. If I can physically get out there, I wanna I wanna meet people face to face. I'm tired of being behind a Zoom or a mic. I want to get out there. Gotta get out there, brother. Arm sorry. Excuse me. Armstress with a 1,000 sats says nothing. Bitcoin Boaz with, 921 says hashtag all sats matter at allsatsmatter.com at 02zx with 888.
Oh, it's a show boost. Nice. Show show number boost. It'd be good if we could adjust sats per minute via web or desktop. I prefer my Nostra integration with Linux. Chillin fountain, on fountain, v 4 v, love. Thank you, brother. God's death with 888. Another show boost. Wow. Thank you, sir. LOL. Jack, I know you're not listening. I'm gonna start using this at work. No one's named Jack, but no one listens. LOL. CIC with a 3rd show boost. Show number boost 888. Congrats on your palindrome episode. Been listening and silently stacking without boosting or zapping. Always appreciate the value you bring. I appreciate that kick. Pies with 420. Seize this, mofo. Two middle fingers and 2 guns up. Thank you, sir. No. Thank you. The bird with 200 says fire marshal Bill. Let me tell you something. Yeah. Fire Marshal Bill. That was it. That was it for me in living color.
The bird with 200 says in living color. Oh, when you could be funny without being canceled. Yeah. No shit, dude. Dubravco finishes us out with a 100. Says first 100 sat boost. Thank you all for boosting the show. And, you know, here's the ask again. I need you to support the show. Donations. Like flat out donations and big ones. You know, big sat streams, big boostograms. Find me on Noster, give the zap the living shit out of me. The show runs on you guys because the show was built for you guys. What the hell is going on today in Bitcoin? Oh, I don't know. I'll I'll pick up Bitcoin and he'll tell me. He'll he'll read it to me so that I can make my own decisions, but he will have commentary on the back end and quite possibly even in the middle of it like I do.
But I can't do any of this without you guys. So donations are helpful, but you know what else is helpful. And you were thinking that I'm gonna tell you about 5 star, ratings on Apple Podcasts. No, although you can do that too. It dawns on me that we're having a shitty time telling the rest of the world about everything that's new including podcasting 2.0. Get your friends. If you've already got a podcasting 2.0 enabled podcasting app like Fountain or Podverse or any of the other myriad ones that you can get, if you've already got one, then tell your friends that that's what they need to be using too.
Cause if we can get more people to do value for value or if we can get more people to actually have a podcasting app that's got a value for value toolset inside of it then they're definitely going to be a lot more apt to actually use it and promote the people the shows that they like through value for value boosting and streaming and all that kind of stuff, then if they don't. See, it's like the couple of people that I said about, oh, so, you know, they know that I'm a Bitcoiner. So they asked me questions sometime about, well, how do you buy it? And the first thing that I ask them is, you got Cash App? They're like, yeah. I'm like, you've, you've had the ability to buy Bitcoin for as long as you've had Cash App on your phone, unless you had Cash App on your phone longer than they were offering Bitcoin. But they freak out because all this time, they've got this toolset and they didn't even know that they had this toolset.
Same thing with podcasting 2.0. If they have a podcasting app that has the toolset that does the things that we talk about inside of it, they're gonna be much more prone to support the people that make the shows that they love to listen to than if they don't. So it's not just advertising the bitcoin you know not just marketing for me the bitcoin and podcast. It's not just about asking for donations for the show to keep this thing alive. It's not just about, hey. Give me a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts because that shit always works. It's about making sure that the rest of the ecosystem is marketed as well. Because it doesn't work without all of us shilling the living shit out of value for value and podcasting 2.0.
That's the weather report. Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use. The FBI issues a warning against using no KYC cryptocurrency money transmitting services. Now if you haven't seen it, I'm I would be surprised. But let's go through this. Right? This is part of the bad feelings that we've been having to deal with over the last couple of days. Nobullshitbitcoin.comornobsbitcoindot com in a move against what's deemed the best practices in Bitcoin security, the FBI issues a warning to Americans against using cryptocurrency services that are not registered as Money Service Businesses or MSBs or do not perform KYC surveillance on their users.
Yeah. Alright. Quote, the FBI warns Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money service businesses or MSBs according to the United States federal law and do not adhere to anti money laundering requirements, reads the public service announcement. Let's just actually read the full announcement from the FBI. Oh, the request is blocked. Uh-oh That's not cool. What the hell is going on with that? The request is blocked. Oh, dude. Check it out. Okay. For the guys over there in zap.stream, I'm gonna show you exactly what I'm seeing. Alright. So I've put it up in the screen so you guys should be able to see it now.
[00:44:48] Unknown:
This is the nobsbitcoin.com
[00:44:52] Unknown:
story on the FBI thing. Down here at the bottom it says full announcement. If I click that, I get this the request is blocked. Alright, so I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna go to the archive and see if that helps. Come on, archive. And there it is. Thank God for archive. Ph. Alright. I'll leave it up here so you guys can read along with me. Alert number I 042524 psa. April 25, 2024, alert on cryptocurrency money service businesses. This is a psa from the Federal Bureau of Dongles I mean, investigation. The FBI warns Americans against using cryptocurrency money transmitting services that are not registered as money service businesses. According to the United States federal law, and they give chapter and verse, I'm not gonna read it, and do not adhere to anti money laundering requirements. A few simple steps can prevent unintentional use of non compliant services.
For example, avoid cryptocurrency money transmitting services that do not collect know your customer information from customers when required. The FBI has recently conducted law enforcement operations against cryptocurrency services that were not licensed in accordance with federal law. People who use unlicensed cryptocurrency money transmitting services may encounter financial disruptions during law enforcement actions, especially if their cryptocurrency is intermingled with funds obtained through illegal means. Cryptocurrency money transmitting services that purposely break the law or knowingly facilitate illegal transactions will be investigated by law enforcement.
Using a service that does not comply with its legal obligations may put you at risk of losing access to funds after law enforcement operations target those businesses. So here's the tips to protect yourself. 1, before using a money transmitting service, check whether it is registered as an MSB with the United States Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN. FinCEN provides a website where anyone can check whether a company is registered. However, the inclusion of a business on the MSB registrant search webpage is not beware of financial services that do not ask for KYC information including name, date of birth, address, and ID before allowing you to send or receive money or cryptocurrency.
3, understand that just because an app can be found in an app store does not necessarily mean it is a legal service and is complying with federal requirements. 4, avoid using services that advertise themselves for illegal purposes. Freaking duh. 5, and finally, be cautious when using cryptocurrency services known to be used by criminals to launder their funds. And ending it all, it says the FBI request victims report fraudulent or suspicious activities to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov. I cannot I don't have the time to list all the infractions the United States government has committed against me. But should I go to ic3 dot gov and, you know, file a complaint against almost every government agency at this point?
Well, clearly, that's stupid. The no. They're they don't care. They don't care. They're they're they're not gonna, like, investigate themselves. But here's the real point of me reading that entire thing. Do you think you'd know what a money transmitting service is? You know, most most of this audience is definitely going to know what that is. Or at least have a damn good shot at getting that correct that answer on the test right. What about normies? It's regular plebs. The bricklayer that came over from another country that's trying to lay bricks, feed his family. You know, I know a lot of people, you know, maybe in this audience as well don't like that, but let's just bear with me. Alright? These people don't know what a money transmitting service even fucking looks like.
This is this whole thing is registered as a public service announcement. But they are addressing a public that has no hope in hell of understanding the vocabulary used in said PSA What does that tell you? It tells me 2 things It's an either or
[00:49:41] Unknown:
1 they don't give a shit if you understand this or not, which is most likely the case.
[00:49:47] Unknown:
2, they are so inept that they have no way of translating legalese in something as esoteric as what the hell a money transmitting business even is. What does it look like? What are its hallmarks? How does it operate? You don't know any of this. If I told you, hey go to the nearest grocery store and go get me diapers. Any idiot knows what the fuck that is. Do you think any idiot can actually identify a money transmitting service? No. They can't. This is not a public service announcement. I don't know what this is, but it is not for public to consume.
This is for somebody else because I guarantee you 80% of the American public would not be able to identify if you were to throw them 10 names of companies and half of them were money transmitting businesses and the other half weren't, they would fail on at least 50% of correctly identifying the money transmitting services. Guarantee. They don't know what it looks like. I would not have known what this shit looked like had I not been in for in Bitcoin, and I've been here for so long that now, only now, do I can think that I'm very very confident in correctly identifying a money service business or a money transmitting service.
Almost nobody else in the world actually can do this. So this is not a public service announcement. Alright. So that I'm gonna get rid of that one and we'll move on to Sparrow Wallet. Well, they've removed their Whirlpool client and Soroban related features. So be aware that we are now seeing the ripple effects. This is no BS Bitcoin as well. In light of recent developments, Sparrow version 1.9.0 has been released, which removes the Whirlpool client and other Soroban related features. All wallets and accounts are still accessible, announced Sparrow Wallet.
[00:52:01] Unknown:
So they've removed the Whirlpool client. Again,
[00:52:05] Unknown:
ripple effects. That's what's going on. So just be aware. Lightspark gets debanked by bill.com. Again, that we we have been in the then they fight you phase for a while But I think it's just this week that it's really become evident what that means. Lightning infrastructure service provider, Light Spark, revealed it had issues with its fiat financial services provider, quote, cutting access to our legacy financial system for Bitcoin companies even for pedestrian fiat only services is still alive and well. On Tuesday, bill.com notified Lightspark that based on their processing bank's requirements, they couldn't serve us anymore.
Yesterday, our account was shut down, said LightSpark CEO David Marcus. Marcus then pointed out that the terms of service LightSpark was pointed to didn't even include services provided by the company, but it did not matter. Quote, whether your business is in crypto or not, you don't work with companies that have a patronizing approach to what's acceptable or not when your activity is a 100% legal and compliant. Fortunately, bill.com's business is commoditized and easily replaceable by better, more modern service providers, added Marcus.
So, yeah, so now here here we have the other side of the equation a private institution, a bank, has shut down access to LightSpark's banking or fiat banking infrastructure.
[00:53:53] Unknown:
So they gotta go find somebody else. Expect it to continue. It doesn't end here.
[00:54:00] Unknown:
It doesn't mean I was about to say and that's okay No, it's not okay because we got to fight this stuff tooth and nail But you cannot let it crush your heart. Can't let it crush your spirit You can't do it. That's how they win, dude. PayPal has proposed a scheme to selectively mine with ESG compliant miners. The paper propose proposes routing transactions to whitelisted quote green miners using low fees and a locked BTC reward in a multisig payout address. Paypal's blockchain research group in a strategic collaboration with Energy Web and DMG Blockchain Solutions presents an opportunity to accelerate the clean energy transition for Bitcoin mining as was stated in this announcement. And the solution involves identifying miners that use low emission energy sources, preferentially routing on chain transactions to those miners, and rewarding them using a one of n multisig script 2. Or for example, any one of the n number of miners can spend the coins, which is attached to the on chain transactions the paper explains.
Quote, green miners will be incentivized to mine these transactions since they will be the only ones eligible for the additional locked BTC reward as was stated in the blog post. That's just disgusting. The proposal suggests miners will be eligible to obtain green proofs for Bitcoin certification by achieving either a clean energy score or a grid impact score higher than 50. The details of how these scores are calculated can found here, and they give a link. I'm not gonna worry about going there. The proposed solution also aims to increase the likelihood of participating entities to route on chain transactions specifically to the whitelisted green miners.
PayPal's blockchain research group says that it has successfully tested the proposed solution with Bitcoin miner DMG Blockchain Solutions. And if you believe a single word of this rapacious bullshit, you need to go get a psychiatrist because you're clearly out of your mind and need institutionalization as fast as humanly possible. Everything about what was just said is what? Proof of stake. They they're they're finding this middle road between proof of work, actual proof of work, and proof of stake where they make it look like you're mining and there's a little bit of mining involved, but it's really about staking.
And the staking is this Being able to prove or at least bribe your way into this green mining certificate. It's all bullshit and everybody needs to run as fast as they possibly can away from this stuff, but it also brings to mind something that I have been remiss in doing this every show. If you're not running a Bitcoin full node, today is your day to start running a Bitcoin full node. You can use an old laptop. You can get a Raspberry Pi. Yeah. I know. There's a lot of people that hate them. But, hey, I've been running one for 2 3 years now, solidly. Works fine. And if you're just running Bitcoin Core, you're not actually doing any transactions with, like, a lightning network node, then you really don't need to worry about it. But what we really need to do is have more people who will not run code changes.
I'm not going to run the FBI's Bitcoin. I'm not going to be running PayPal's Bitcoin. I'm going to be able to flag a fuck you to all of these people on my node. I'm never going to stop running a node ever forever never never never never never. And if you're not running a Bitcoin node it's easy. You once you've got it up you just make sure that it's operating Make sure that it's updated, but also make sure that when you update that you're not updating to bullshit code like FBI Bitcoin or PayPal Bitcoin. Just keep that in mind. Now, Centrum. This is this is the one thing we're gonna read today that has almost nothing to do with the FBI or Whirlpool or samurai.
Centrum, daemon for monitoring watch only Bitcoin wallets Centrum is a daemon or some people call it daemon I don't whatever way you want to pronounce it is fine Centrum is the daemon that monitors the Bitcoin blockchain for transactions involving wallets and sends notifications in different configurable channels. Notifications can be received in many different channels including NTFY push, email, Telegram, Nostr, and arbitrary commands. Centrum now has arc or arch 64 builds in the gh release page for all node runners wanting to run it on a Raspberry Pi or similar. If you need builds on other platforms like Makos arm or free BSD, etcetera, just let me know and I'll add it to the release job pipeline.
And then there's a link to the GitHub repo. So you can just watch wallets with this thing and the and we've got lots of wallet watchers but this will actually send you a note or an email or something else. When a which I can only assume a particular event occurs or, you know, you've maybe just set it for at a particular time of day, send me an email because it would really suck if every 10 minutes you get an email that nothing has changed in this particular watch only wallet. But that's gonna do it for the morning roundup. Got a joke here. Dad says jokes.
What do you call a French guy being mauled by a lion? Claude. That should that should fix all of your little red wagons. If you were sad before you heard that joke, you better be laughing now. Everything's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay. I I my my heart goes out to the guys at samurai. They're being treated unfairly. But my heart went out to the guys behind tornado cash. They're not being treated fairly at this point, you know, we're really gonna have to rethink our relationship with our overseers. Do we want this to continue?
Do we really want to watch this all play out? I mean even if it's not Bitcoin It'll mean just like Bitcoin wasn't even involved in the trucker protest in Canada. They just shut down their bank accounts Because government and private industry are in bed together solidly. They're doing what each other tells them to do and that's called fascism. That's the the literal definition of fascism. I'm not I'm I am not one of those people that walk out and call everybody a fascist just because I disagree with them. There's an actual definition of fascism, and that's it. It's when private industry and government entities come together in in in an agreement to basically scrub each other's backs in the bathtub, and that's what's that's what's going on here.
Bitcoin was involved in the trucker protest, but only after their bank accounts got shut down. Right? For some of them, it made it worse because they were caught on tape receiving Bitcoin, and they got in in some other trouble. But it didn't matter. Even if Bitcoin wasn't involved, they still would have gotten their bank accounts shut down. You got the tornado cash guys going to prison. Now you got the the samurai guys that are being indicted. Yeah. Yeah. Do we do we ever let it stop? And how and and and through what mechanisms do we get it to stop? It's clear that these people are not listening to us. We tell them time and time and time again, stop doing this. This is this is at least in the United States, all of this shit is unconstitutional, yet they don't care.
But what by what mechanism do we remind them of their their duties to the American public, at least in the United States who can't speak for the rest of the world? What what do we have to do? What what mechanism is available to us? Courts? Well, that's notoriously a long term, you know, that's a a really, really you gotta have a low time preference for that kind of shit. And chances of it actually doing nothing but making a bunch of lawyers filthy rich on either side. Well, I take that back. The Copa guys are actually doing this for, like, a lot less money than they could get out on the street. Because these lawyers for COPA and some of the other guys that are working for, you know, Blockchain Policy Group and all those kinds, they're they're not getting paid what the lawyers for the United States government are getting paid. And those guys are not getting paid what they could get out on, you know, on Wall Street as a mergers and acquisition lawyer working for, you know, KPMG or something like that. Right?
We we we are truly the plebs. You sign on to this shit. It's like signing on to be a monk. And on for some of us that's okay. And for a lot of other people, it is not okay.
[01:03:48] Unknown:
As long as we're captured by what we think wealth is, nothing's going to change.
[01:03:54] Unknown:
The only way we can change anything is the perception of what wealth is. What's wealth to you? I've completely reversed what I think wealth is for me. But what what I mean, 7 years ago, what I thought wealth was is is 100% antithesis to what I know actual true wealth is today. Without that shift in mental modeling, then we have no hope but to travel down a road of allowing governments to do whatever the hell they wanna do. And they will continue to do whatever the hell they want to do unless they get some kind of pushback. And I mean when I mean some kind of pushback, I'm not talking about commenting on their open, you know, for open discussion some bill or some regulatory rule that they want to pass down. That's not pushback. That's that's basically I'm
[01:04:52] Unknown:
like my wife said, I'm sorry. I can't hear you with that dick in your mouth. I, you know, that's what that is. I
[01:05:02] Unknown:
I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you what the mechanism of change actually is where we can stop listening to what these people have to say and stop living our lives around the way they want us to live our lives. If you know, please tell me. I am all freaking ears. But until that day, I will see you on the other side. Have a good Friday y'all. Have an excellent weekend. Do not let this shit steep into your bones. It's that important. 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.
Running a Bitcoin Full Node
Discussion on Fascism and Government-Private Industry Relations
Perception of Wealth and Government Actions
Seeking Mechanisms for Change
