Join me today for Episode 957 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- German Banking Giant Dives into BTC
- US States the Accept Bitcoin
- Sparrow Wallet Full Point Release
- First Maelstrom BTC Dev Grant
#Bitcoin #BitcoinAnd
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https://decrypt.co/250287/louisiana-isnt-the-only-us-state-to-accept-bitcoin-payments-here-are-the-others
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[00:00:00]
David Bennett:
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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 19th day of 9th month of 2024, and this is episode 957 of Bitcoin. And we've got to cover it. I know, you've seen it, you understand it, you get it, but we got to cover it because, well, I got a few things to say. Bitcoin Magazine Frank Korva writing Donald Trump makes a historic Bitcoin payment at Pubkey.
Today, history was made. History. History. The his in the history of histories, nothing like this has ever occurred because President Donald Trump became the 1st United States President to make a Bitcoin payment. Are we sure about that? The former President showed up at Pub Key, a bit coin themed bar located in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York to purchase some cheeseburgers on, you know, National Cheeseburger Day, which I had no freaking clue was occurring at the establishment, which was packed! Packed, I say, with Bitcoin enthusiasts there to welcome him. Hey, Don. How you doing here, pal? Quote, I think it's a great place, Trump said to Bitcoin Magazine about PubKey before urging the types of Bitcoin enthusiasts who frequent the bar to vote for him this November. Quote, you gotta get out and vote because if you vote, we cannot lose. We want to get everybody that agrees with you people. You people.
You people. And there's a lot of people to vote, he added. They've been treating you very badly at the SEC, and we're going to treat you very fairly. Ending yet another quote. Regarding the payment, Trump said it was easy to make, and that it went through quickly and beautifully. After making the transaction, Trump, escorted by one of the bar's owners, Thomas Pacia, introduced himself to all in attendance. Quote, this was one of the most important Bitcoin transactions of all time, said Pacia. President Trump came to PubKey to connect with the Bitcoin community, to show his support for the Bitcoin community, he added. We are all very excited that he was here. Okay. Doesn't doesn't okay, it we what did it say about this?
I saw more pictures of Donald Trump at the bar making this Bitcoin payment than I ever saw of anything else on any other social media platform. I'm serious. I'm not lying. Especially on Nostra it was like we just went ape shit over the fact that Donald Trump, not only did he make a Bitcoin payment, but he made it at PubKey, which is a Bitcoin bar. And I saw I saw several, you know, other headlines about this and they were calling Pubkey a crypto bar. It is not a crypto bar, it is a Bitcoin bar. And some people have corrected me or have tried to correct me on Noster saying that no, shitcoiners go there.
You can't, I mean unless you don't want to take people's money you're going to get no coiners, you're gonna get shitcoiners, you're gonna get bitcoiners, you're gonna get people that only think lightning exists. I don't know, whatever. I'm just saying that the owners of that bar are Bitcoiners. They're pretty solid Bitcoiners. As far as I know, they don't talk about Ethereum, they don't talk about Dogecoin. They're solid Bitcoiners. Okay? It is a Bitcoin bar. So that's my first bone of contention. My second bone of contention is that I can't tell if Trump actually made this transaction himself or he was just standing there looking at somebody make the transaction for him. If somebody can correct me on that and and give me definitive proof that he actually made the transaction with his own hands on his own phone, then I'm just I'm not all that convinced that Donald Trump actually made this. I'm not poo pooing the whole deal. I'm just saying we got to be really careful with these guys, these politicians, whether they're Trump or Kamala. It doesn't really matter to me anymore because they're all just pandering for my vote. They're pander bears.
It's like a zoo full of Washington DC is basically a pander bear zoo. If you want to go see the pander bears and watch the cute little cuddly fluffy little guys just, you know, play with their feet all day, then by God Almighty, go to the main grandstand that is the United States Congress and watch the fucking panda bears just play with their feet all day long. Because Trump is no different. He just wants your vote. I am convinced he does not really care all that much about Bitcoin itself. He doesn't really care. I'm very much convinced that this is in fact the case.
So just because he's at PubKey, just because he's making a Bitcoin payment, and whether or not he made it himself is still for me in contention, and whether or not he bought a nice tasty cheeseburger with his Bitcoin transaction is for me, is all beside the point. He's just pandering. Just keep it in mind. It doesn't mean that it's not important if you want it to be important. Hell, I even I think it's kind of an important deal. But I also have to temper that with the fact that he's a politician. He wants your vote. He understands that the Bitcoin segment is enough people that it's actually going to probably make a difference come November. And he's going to do everything that he can to get our vote. And it's gonna work. We're gonna vote for him. Because he's Kamala, she clearly is in the back seat, you know, the back pocket and the back seat, probably, of the bankers. And you know what happens in the back seat, Right? If you've ever, you know, if you were, ever in high school, you know what goes on in the back seat of the car. So, that said, be just please be careful. Okay? Just please don't get too terribly excited about all this.
The here's the other thing is that why PubKey? How did Donald Trump find out about PubKey? Was this another daily, David Bailey move, the guy from Bitcoin Magazine? I can't remember. I think he's like either owns it or he's the CEO. I don't know exactly. But he was kinda instrumental in getting Trump to go to the Bitcoin conference in Nashville and and give, you know, give his play with your Bitcoin speech. So I don't know how it is that he found out about PubKey because PubKey is kinda like it's not a well known bar. I mean, at least I didn't think it was. May maybe it is outside of Bitcoin circles. But in either event, I do think it's cool that he did this at Pubkey.
I think that that if if if I had to say, okay, which is the most important thing that we've got here? Is it the Bitcoin transaction? Is it the fact that he was talking to Bitcoiners? Is it the fact that he's pandering to Bitcoiners for their vote? Or is it the fact that he's buying a cheeseburger at a bar and that bar happens to be Pub Key? I'm picking the last. I don't I mean, the fact that he went to Pub Key itself is actually, I think, the most important part of that entire story. And everything else I take with a grain of salt. But this one, I kind of don't take this one with a grain of salt.
Commerce Bank to offer Bitcoin and Shitcoin1 trading through Crypto Finance. According to CoinDesk and written by Will Canney let's find out what's going on here. Crypto Finance, which is a subsidiary of Germany's largest stock exchange operator signed a deal with Commerce Bank to offer trading services to the lender's corporate clients just 2 weeks after reaching a similar agreement with Zurcher Canton Cantonal Bank in Switzerland. Commerce Bank, the country's 2nd largest bank by number of branches, will provide custody services, the company said in a press release on Thursday. The trading service offered by Deutsche Borse unit will be available to clients based in Germany and initially focus on trading in the 2 largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin.
Quote, our offering in digital assets enable our corporate clients to seize the opportunities presented by Bitcoin and Shitcoin number 1 for the very first time, said Gernot Koechner, head of capital markets for corporate clients at Commerce Bank, quote, our joint solution represents the highest level of security in the trading and custody of crypto assets, which is also a standard we also share with Deutsche Borse Group. Commerce Bank obtained a crypto custody license in Germany back in November of 2023, allowing the financial services firm to offer a wide range of services related to digital assets.
So Commerce Bank in Germany getting into the game. This is important because Commerce Bank, they said, you know, it's the largest bank by branches. That's not what's important. It's one of Germany's oldest and largest banks. It's one of the oldest and largest banks in the world. Whether by branch or assets under management, it doesn't really or or time time on target, it doesn't really matter. It's still one of the largest most well respected financial institutions in the world. This just reinforces yet one more time. This isn't going away.
And there are still people like you know, Peter Schiff and others. Oh, who's that? Roubini and a couple of other people. I can't remember that that idiot that won the Nobel Prize because he called the 2,008 thing. Anyway, that dude, all these guys for some reason still think that, you know, this isn't a thing. And I hate to say it, but guys it's it's actually kind of a kind of a thing now. Alright, let's move on. Louisiana. The bayou. Louisiana isn't the only US state to accept Bitcoin payments. Here are the others. This is out of decrypt, Adrian Zmudski is writing. The government of Louisiana has officially begun accepting cryptocurrency payments, making it the latest United States state to embrace digital currencies for state services.
Louisiana treasurer, John Fleming announced earlier this week that residents can now use a number of digital assets as payment for various state services. Residents can now pay using bitcoin. And this is what's interesting, the Bitcoin Lightning Network, as well as US dollar peg stablecoin USDC. The state said its first cryptocurrency payment has already been processed, which was a fine paid to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries via the Bitcoin Lightning Network. According to Fleming, this development resulted from the collaboration between the state, Beadpay and Local Integration Partners.
He stated that the initiative aims to modernize payment systems and reduce fraudulent transactions. Quote, in today's digital age, government systems must evolve and embrace new technologies. By introducing cryptocurrency as a payment option, we're not just innovating, we're providing our citizens with flexibility and freedom in interacting with state services. Put a tie on that government speak. Fleming emphasized that while the state accepts cryptocurrency as a payment method, the fund received will be converted into US dollars. That's not surprising. This approach protects the state from the volatility associated with cryptocurrencies and addresses previous concerns about accepting digital assets.
This isn't the first time Louisiana lawmakers have embraced cryptocurrencies. Republican state representative Mark Wright, who has been instrumental in promoting cryptocurrency adoption in Louisiana, expressed his support for the new payment options. Quote, I'm excited to see Louisiana further expanding its payment options, Wright said in, this week's press release. In May of 2022, Wright established a digital assets working group that concluded cryptocurrency would be an acceptable form of payment for the state. Wright has been a longtime advocate for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
In 2021, he led a Louisiana House Resolution commending the anonymous Bitcoin inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, for their contribution to economic security. Louisiana joins a growing list of states exploring the integration of cryptocurrency into government operations. For instance, in 2018, Ohio started accepting cryptocurrency for tax payments through its now defunct platform, ohiocrypto.com. Businesses could pay in 23 types or pay 23 types of taxes using Bitcoin, which was then converted to dollars via BitPay before reaching state coffers. But in 2019, the Ohio attorney general declared that the state treasurer lacked the authority to operate the program without proper approval from the board of deposits and had not followed required binding or bidding processes for payment processors.
And as a result, the initiative was shut down within a year, having been utilized by fewer than 10 companies. Also, 2018, the Seminole County Tax Office in Florida started accepting crypto payments through BitPay. The county tax collector was later found have used public funds to finance his own blockchain company and was indicted by the Justice Department. Shitcoiners go to shitcoin. It doesn't matter where they come from. That was not the last initiative of this kind in the state. No no no. In March of 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis promised that state agency would allow businesses to make tax payments in cryptocurrencies.
And this initiative aimed to promote Florida as a crypto friendly state and encourage innovation in financial technologies. The same year, Colorado announced that it would begin accepting tax payments in cryptocurrency requiring residents to, quote, have the entire value of your invoice in a single cryptocurrency in your PayPal cryptocurrencies hub, end quote. Building on the 2022 momentum, in June of 2024, representative Matt Gaetz introduced a bill that would permit Americans to settle their federal income tax obligations using Bitcoin. Gaetz stated that modernizing the tax system to include cryptocurrency payments would promote innovation, increase efficiency, and help maintain the United States leadership in technological advancement. In 2022, Utah also passed a bill allowing state government agencies to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments starting in 2023.
A 2022 Bloomberg listed Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, and Wyoming as legislatures that introduced similar proposals that never came into effect. While not directly accepting cryptocurrency payments, California has also shown interest interest in blockchain technology. In early 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles began utilizing blockchain as an unfalsifiable database for its records. What a bunch of morons. This move aimed to enhance the security and efficiency of record keeping within the state's motor vehicle registry, and I call bullshit.
The California DMV, that's the end of the article. So let's just let's go let's go into how this is bullshit. California DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, one of the largest state agencies of all the states inside the United States. You're talking about tens of thousands of employees across the state. Right? This is a huge operation. It is massive. You know what they didn't do? They did not install blockchain technology for unfalsifiable records. That's bullshit. And unless somebody shows me honest to God proof that that's what they did, then I don't believe it. Because here's what that would entail.
They'd have to stand up a blockchain. Then they'd have to train all of their people how to use a new interface even though they don't need to know about blockchain, they just need to enter in the data, right? Or maybe, maybe, just maybe they're taking the database and migrating it to blockchain. But that doesn't make sense because at one point or another new records on a day to day basis are going to be have to be entered into the blockchain. You do I mean, they're not going to change over their system and have to retrain tens of thousands of employees how to do this. That's why I'm calling bullshit.
They did not do this. I'll bet you my ass. There's not a single computer stood up that has any kind of time chain, blockchain, anything that even remotely looks or smells like it anywhere in the state of California for the DMV. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that it's fucking stupid. It's just dumb. The amount of cash we're talking about to stand it up, get it working, and then retrain all of your people to be able to enter information into a new interface is it's unacceptable at any state level. You're going to have auditors coming in going, why? What's wrong with this?
And no, we're not going to approve we're not going to allow this. Our recommendation to the state, whoever your bosses are at DMV, we're gonna recommend to that group of people that y'all are lame, moronic, idiotic, and it's just too bad you can't be replaced. But no, we're not going to recommend a blockchain for unfalsifiable data on your license plate. It's bullshit and it's time for us to stop believing this crap when we hear about it. Okay. Now, back at an all time high circulating supply, stable coins are becoming systemically important according to some dude named Bernstein.
I don't know. Maybe it's Ben. I want to read this one because I've told you a couple of times that even though I don't use stable coins, and I'm not exactly a fan of stable coins, because stable coins are what they are and the backing that they have, I e, the some of the largest buyers of United States Treasury bonds and bills that there are, then it's an important thing. You may not like it. I mean, it's like, I don't like the government. Is it important? Yeah. Why? Because it impacts my life. And this shit's gonna impact all of our lives, too. And this is out of the block. It is written by James Hunt. Blockchain based stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies like the dollar are reaching a level of systemic importance according to the analysts at research and brokerage firm, Bernstein. Oh, okay. So it's a company.
Stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle now comprise the 18th largest holders of US treasuries alongside sovereign nations just behind Saudi Arabia and just ahead of South Korea, Gautam, Chilgani, Mark Marcusapra and Saska Chindelaria wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. I guess it's an Indian company because I can't pronounce a single one of those things. USDT and USDC hold more than $125,000,000,000 in US treasuries combined according to the analyst. Stablecoin businesses remain highly profitable with float income from US treasuries retained retained by issuers, e. G. Tether made a profit of $5,200,000,000 in the first half of this year. Holy smokes.
On chain stablecoin monthly payment volume has tripled over the last 12 months to 1.4 $1,000,000,000,000 That's $1,000,000,000,000 with a t, the analyst noted with stablecoins accounting for around 50% of all on chain transaction volume. Monthly active users are touching new highs of around 22,000,000. And total stablecoin wallets with non zero balances currently end at 120,000,000. However, stablecoin usage has decoupled from crypto and stablecoins are increasingly being held for non crypto use cases. The stablecoin market is also continuing to see new entrants with PayPal and Paxos partnership to issue PiUSD, now approaching approximately $1,000,000,000 in circulation.
Ripple recently announced plans to issue a new shitcoin for cross border payments. And on Wednesday, reports suggested that Fintech firm Revolut was also looking to get into the stablecoin game. Other drivers of stablecoin growth include providing US dollar savings access for international users, propagating digital dollars beyond the US, acting as the primary base currency for trading in crypto and enabling users to earn yield on DeFi platforms, And offering the cheapest cross border payment rail able to transfer 1,000 of dollars at 1 to 2¢ fees, the analyst said.
Having previously peaked during the bear market of 2022 as crypto traders began cashing out some of their more volatile digital asset investments. Stablecoin circulating supply is now back at all time highs of nearly $180,000,000,000 according to the block's data dashboard. USDT remains the dominant stablecoin with a market cap of around $120,000,000,000 followed by Circle at $35,000,000,000 Tether's integration with global offshore exchanges and its cross border payments usage in non US markets continues to be the key driver, end quote. The Ethereum no. I'm not I don't even care. Fuck you. In a recent survey of crypto users by Visa, cattle Castle Island Ventures, Artemis and Brevin Howard Digital across Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, and India.
Some 50% of respondents said that they were holding stablecoins to trade crypto and NFTs. 47% said that they were using them to save money in US dollars. 43% for improved currency conversion rates. And 39% to earn yields. And always ask yourself, ladies and gentlemen, if it's going to provide a yield where does that yield come from that's an important question to ask nobody asked that question so ask that question to others and to yourselves continuing the results underscore that non crypto uses of stablecoins are a growing segment of the economy, the Bernstein analyst said. Among such use cases, currency conversion, paying for goods or services, and conducting cross border transactions are the most popular.
Younger demographics under 35 years of age increasingly hold a greater proportion of their assets in stables. They just say stables, according to the survey. With 35% of 18 to 24 year old respondents in the emerging markets holding more than 25% of their portfolio in stable coins compared to 17% in the 45 to 54 age bracket. The opportunity to earn a better yield is the most popular reason for choosing stablecoins over US dollar bank accounts among the younger generation followed by greater trust, more stable value, and less likely government intervention, the analyst said. So no matter who you are, you want yield and you want government out of your hair. Okay. The second part I can see. But again, it's more than critical that everybody, when they're faced with somebody saying that you're gonna earn a yield, you have to ask where does the yield come from?
Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities and everybody is rich! Holy shit! Lots of people, at least, okay, Around okay. We're coming up on 24 hours after the Federal Reserve announced a 50 basis point rate cut. The first cut in 4 years. And there was contention that it was gonna be a it was gonna be was it gonna be 25 points or was it gonna be 50? And a lot of people were saying if it was 50, it was gonna signal something bad happening in the markets and people were going to still remain risk off even though traditionally those kind of cuts make risky assets a lot more palatable because it's so much cheaper to buy them to rent the money to buy the asset.
Right? So so the contention was this. A lot of people said that when if we did 50 basis points we were going to see a a sell off in markets across the board From equities to Bitcoin to other risk assets, it was all gonna not all gonna go away. It was gonna have a big drop. Arthur Hayes was talking about it in the report that I, read you yesterday. Right? Arthur Hayes himself was saying, no no no. We're gonna see a dip. We're gonna see a great big old dip. You know, that's when you buy. Well, we're not seeing it. I'm seeing nothing but green everywhere. Oil. West Texas Intermediate is up over 2 points to 70239.
Brent Norsey is up 2 points to 70506. Natural gas is up 2 points to $2.32 per 1,000 cubic feet. And gasoline is up over 2.5 to $2.06 a gallon. Gold is up 2 thirds of a point to $26.14.40 Silver is up 2 and a third. Platinum is up 2. Copper is up 1.17%. Palladium is up almost 3 points. And the biggest winner today is cotton and ag. It's up 2 and 2 thirds of no, that's not it. Sugar is up 3.17%. And the loser today is wheat, 1.61 percent to the downside. Live cattle is up 3 quarters of a point. Lean hogs up 2 thirds of a point. Feeder cattle is up 1.2%.
The Dow is up over a point. The S and P is up almost, well, almost 1 3 quarter point. NASDAQ is up 2 3 quarter point. And the S and P Mini is up 1.5%. Everybody's doing well including Bitcoin, which is chilling out at $63,270. That's a 1.25 trillion dollar market cap. You can get 24.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,755,992.99 of. And average fees per block are up to 0.07 BTC on average in fees on a per block basis. And there are now 100 blocks in mempool.spaces. Mempool carrying 191,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Low priorities, you're gonna get in at 5.
And, woo, hashrate has fallen precipitously. 550 exahashes per second, well below the 742 exahashes per second that we saw as the all time hash rate high. Now from Powell the knife strikes, which is episode 956 of bitcoin. And I've got at 3762d3159. But he gave me 20,000 sats. And I got those, by the way, just in case you're wondering if some of these failed. Enthusiastic boost on the Wave Lake Mention loading up these decades of electronic projects and releasing there. And he gives a website, which I'm going to mention well, it's not a website. It's his it looks to be, this gentleman's name is Paul Birken.
Go to wavelake.com/paul-hyphen Birken. And it looks like he's got a fair he's got at least 10 tracks up here. And I'm not gonna play any of them right now, Paul. Only because I'm not set up to do that live while I'm recording. So I'm I'm it's not that I have anything against you, Paul. I just but thank you for the 20,000 sats. Wartime with 3,333 says, love your rants. Happy to be working on it together. Yeah. We are working on this together. God's death 537. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. Anonymous 5 100 says, Civilization moved from some fairly good monies to progressive credit creation.
Thanks for the news and making me laugh. Bitpunk.fm with 424 says: You just set the start time in the template. Wavelake calculates the duration. Oh, nice. Good luck with it. I was asking for something like this because I use castapod and I can insert the value time split. For completeness, there is another tool to generate the value time split called the split kit. Check out both and let us know how it works for you. Yeah, the split kit is out there. Just Google the split kit or DuckDuckGo. You might if you're using DuckDuckGo, you might actually want to say the Split Kit Podcasting 2.0. Pies to Pleb finishes us off with a 100 and says thank you sir, no thank you. And that's the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use Sparrow Wallet version 2.0.0. Slip 39 shares recovery, new hardware wallets, and more. Sparrow wallet version 2.00 is here. It introduces the ability to recover slip s l I p 39 shares, and I I don't know what those are. I'm sorry, but I don't. Support for TrezorSafe 5, Ledger Stacks, Ledger Flex, and an update to Java and JavaFX 22, among many other improvements. This is a huge update, by the way. Just I'm not gonna read through the list, but it's massive. But I can say this, quote, this major version release includes an upgrade to Java and Java FX 22.
And that means minimum system system requirements have been updated to the Mac OS 11 and the GTK 3. These upgrades fix issues on modern operating systems and prepare for future capabilities, said the developer quote, as part of the update. The Windows installer has been changed from dot exe to dotmsi, but otherwise the installation process is unchanged from previous versions. Other release highlights include support for the, TrezorSafe 5, the Stacks, the Ledger Flex hardware wallets. Besides, Sparrow now supports recovering slip 39 mnemonic shares to a hot wallet.
Other notable improvements include a saving include saving a file for air gapped message signing, adding any missing previous outputs to a loaded PSVT. That's a partially signed Bitcoin transaction. A number of warning dialogues to prevent user errors and performance improvements, said the developer. So if you are a Sparrow wallet user, version 2 just dropped and it's probably gonna be pretty good. Now the first Maelstrom Bitcoin developer grant has been awarded to rcrux. Arthur Hayes's Maelstrom family office granted its very first Bitcoin developer award to rcrux, enabling him to work full time on Bitcoin Core open source contributions.
Maelstrom, an investment fund managed by the family office of Arthur Hayes focused on digital assets, is pleased to announce that rcrux is the 1st recipient of the Maelstrom Bitcoin Grant Program to continue his research and development work, announced the firm. Rcrux is an experienced software engineer who started reviewing pull requests in March of 2024. He is also a recent graduate of Chaincode Labs FOSS program. The grant allows him to leave his job to focus solely on Bitcoin development. Quote, as a relatively new developer on Bitcoin Core, rcrux is a representation of that objective.
We look forward to identifying more grant candidates that will be instrumental in strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem, said Arthur Hayes. Quote, quitting my job as a software developer and focusing on open source Bitcoin development was a difficult decision for me. The financial support in the form of this grant from Maelstrom has made this possible. I'm excited to step into this role and eager to advance Bitcoin core development, said the developer. Alright. This brings up these grants because Huddl bot, as you know, got a grant, his second grant, yesterday or at least it was announced yesterday. I'm sure he probably knew about it before that. But, you know, Holobod's got a standing long term grant from OpenSats and now he's got one from the Human Rights Foundation.
And, you know, I I keep reading these grant, or these these grant awards. Right? Like, every time I see one I'm always going to read them because I think it's important. But it brings to light a certain thing at least for developers that live in the United States. Okay? If you're outside of the United States, this is this doesn't apply to you because all these systems are different. But what I want to get out of here is health care, right? Or health insurance. In the United States we've become addicted to essentially a subsidy of health care.
It didn't use to be this way. Health care was not all that expensive in the forties, fifties, and sixties. But somewhere around the mid seventies you start getting this thing called health insurance. And it essentially pays for a great depending on the program or depending on the insurance plan it pays you know could pay a great guts and feathers of an emergency room visit an operation, an MRI, doctor's visits, shit like that. As the years have worn on the health insurance aspect of employment has become a major consideration of whether or not you're going to work a certain job or you're going to work a different job at a different company.
A lot of that has to do with how good is the health insurance that you offer. But now, even then even now, there's there's people that are like, as long as I get health insurance, I don't give a shit where I go. I've got to have health insurance because the health in the United States is, generally speaking, declining because our food is essentially poisoned. I don't want to get this into a food food thing right now. Let's just stay with the health insurance thing. Because health insurance is a major major consideration in employment for the United States citizenry, When people take these grants like my good friend, Hogglebaugh, you know, and and might, you know, like let's just use him as an example. And I I'm not going to say that I know his exact circumstances.
I don't know if he's got health insurance. I don't know if he works for somebody else on the side. I'm not going to conjecture. Right? Because I don't know. And it's not fair to conjecture when you don't know about shit. All I know about hodlebot is he's got an open sats grant. Let's say that huddlebot has no other job and that he left his job because he's got this grant again I don't know but let's say he did that means he's got to leave the health insurance aspect behind Right? So now we've got a situation where, yeah, you're being supported, but the health insurance aspect is kind of left out in the wind to twist.
And I'm not I'm not suggesting that people stop taking these grants and that this is a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think we need to get off of health insurance or at least at some kind of different model. And there is oh, god. Hold on. I'm gonna have to look for this. I can't remember the name of the health the bitcoin health insurance company. Hold up. I gotta pause. Okay. I found it. It's crowd health. I'm sorry to the guys at crowd health. My apologies for not remembering your name right off the bat. But, crowd health, all one word, joincrowdhealth.com.
That's joincrowdhealth.com. Joincrowdhealth is all one word. Alright, so it's bitcoiners paying large healthcare bills without insurance bypass corporate and government control over your healthcare rely on the Bitcoin community for financial support. Okay, guys. This is this is one of the more interesting aspects of where we are in the Bitcoin journey, than some of the other ones, okay? Because we've got real companies here that are Bitcoin only companies that are providing the trying to figure out a way to provide the same goods and services that the legacy system provides but is Bitcoin centric.
Now crowd health as far as I can tell isn't exactly isn't exactly health insurance but they you it okay here I'll give you this blurb How crowd health works. Crowd health is not an insurance company, but a platform and community that empowers you with a crowdfunding tool and a wealth of resources to efficiently manage your health care costs. Now, from what I've heard, there are many many people who are part of crowd health that have gotten their medical bills paid for because the crowd health platform crowdfunds all the members and their needs. So you're paying a premium and that premium is basically going to help pay other people's needs when they're in need. And then their premiums help you out when you're in need. And from what I understand, it works fairly well. Does it work as well as Blue Cross Blue Shield? Oh, hell. I don't know.
Okay? I I need to interview the guys over at Crowd Health and see and dig into this more. But here's what I'm getting at. What if, and this is my business development side coming out again, what if we could hook up CrowdHealth to the Maelstrom granting agency, which is that Arthur Hayes family office. Okay? Hook them up with them. Hook CrowdHealth up with OpenSats. Hook CrowdHealth up with the Human Rights Foundation. And all 3 of these grants, maybe in the future, they could come with that crowd health sort of says, okay, look, we want to be part of the granting, but we don't want to grant money. We're going to grant our service as part of the Open Sats long term, grant.
As part of the Human Rights Foundation long term grant. As part of Arthur Hayes Maelstrom's long term grant. That it comes with a subscription to crowd health. Would that make it easier? Or would that make it would that make it even easier for people to leave their jobs and do this full time because they've got the grant to do it if they had health insurance on the side or does it start to resemble more like we're trying to rebuild what the legacy system has? And if it's the second part, if you start to say no, it's the second part, we don't need to be doing that, then what what can we build?
What do we have to do? Because health care is an issue. If you break your leg that has nothing to do at all with the fact that you eat Twinkies all day. Well, maybe it does. But if you get hit by a car and you eat nothing but meat and you break your femur, that ain't exactly an inexpensive operation to fix that bone, get it set, get it pinned if it needs it, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's not inexpensive. How how what do we do? And we can't say, well, we've got to force the doctors to stop taking them, you know, that much money. It has nothing to do with the doctors okay it's a much larger problem so if you guys have like you know ideas about this why it would work why it doesn't work something else that we could do, please let me know. Do it through a boostagram, by the way, so that, you know, give me a little bit of satoshis on the side. Okay. Getting on to it. Keeper desktop version 0.1.1 cross platform support.
Keeper Desktop is a secure cross platform desktop app for using hardware wallets with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app available on Windows, Mac and Linux. We're excited to announce the initial release of Keeper Desktop. Keeper Desktop is a companion desktop app that allows you to securely use hardware wallets with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app. The new app was built to work with USB connected hardware wallets like Ledger, Trezor, and BitBox 2 and allow Keeper to take advantage of the full range of their capabilities providing seamless user experience for using hardware wallets with the Keeper mobile app, said developer Ben Kaufman. Oh, one of the Bins.
Keeper Bitcoin Keeper Mobile version 1.2.15 has also been released. And it comes with the ability to use canary wallet for the recovery key, flexibility to delete vaults while having sats in them, and UX improvements. I wonder what happens if you delete a vault with sats in them. Do they just burn? What happens to that? That's interesting. Okay. So anyway, here's 3 of the key features. Use with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app to add a device, perform health checks, verify addresses, and sign transactions. That's kinda cool. Integration with Ledger, Trezor, and BitBox 2 hardware wallets. And cross platform support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. So there you go. That actually sounds kinda interesting, honestly. Now last up, Liana version 7.0.
Liana Connect, Electrum Support and more. Liana is a Bitcoin wallet that uses miniscript and output oh sorry miniscript output descriptors with extensive use of relative time locks. It features a time locked recovery path for all your coins and can be used for inheritance, decaying multisig, and generally safe for backups. It's available on Windows Mac and Linux. Liana 7 is out. Thanks to everyone who tested the release candidate last weekend. Version 7 of Liana focuses on enhancing the user experience especially in wall wallet setup. It introduces Electrum support for self sovereign use and Liana Connect for easy bootstrapping.
Additionally, it now works with new signing devices, implements fee sniping protection, and delivers a variety of other user requested features and fixes. So I see I'm gonna tap read integration Hold on, just looking to do this landing page, stacks. Let's see. Okay. I've never heard of Liana before, but one of the reasons that I wanted to bring this to you, even though I've never heard of it before, was this one phrase: decaying multisigs. Right? So it said it features a time locked recovery path for all your coins and can be used for inheritance, decaying multisigs, and generally safer backups.
I'm going to venture to guess that a decaying multisig is something like let's say I set up a 2 of 3 multisig in Liana. I set it to decay. And that it decays down to a single multisig. Or rather, a single signature. I don't know if that's what it means. But it's an interesting notion to say, okay, look, That would be good if I'm right, that would be good in the following case. A trust fund for your children. You set it up in case you die and your your life insurance policy goes into it. Any of your savings goes into it. Sale of your house goes into the trust fund for your kids. But you don't want your kids to do something stupid like develop a heroin addiction or buy a fucking Lamborghini. So what you do is you lock it up in a multisig Where your kid's got a multi, you know, one of the addresses, your lawyer that survives you, or the law firm that you select that survives you, they have another part of that key. And then, I don't know, a key that's in a time vault somewhere in Scandinavia.
But you need 2 of those 3 keys to do it. Until they're of the age, let's say, 40. That That means that they've had more than enough time to get married, have their own kids, make their own way, do their own shit, and they're going to get a hold of your inheritance, but they're gonna do it after they've already secured themselves. So they don't they're not gonna have the the impotence to to develop a heroin addiction or buy a Lamborghini. Right? Or otherwise squander what you leave them. You you but you can't be sure you cannot be sure that everything is gonna be like that. Maybe the law firm, you know, right, folds, goes bankrupt.
And they don't really keep their end of the bargain after you're dead and make sure that somehow or another they pass off their version of the key to another law firm at like you asked. So that key's lost, right? And then in the vault in Scandinavia, let's say the coke head in Ukraine gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to nuke the entire country because he's insane. Right? That man is insane. And Putin ain't exactly, you know, he's not as insane as the the Zelensky guy, but Zelensky is insane. So let's say he completely loses shit and nukes the entire country of Scandinavia and that safe with that particular key inside of it melts down. It it's destroyed.
And let's say this happens the year after your death and your kid is 16 years old. You have you're dead. You don't know unless you're looking down from heaven and and God allows that kind of thing. I don't know. Let's just say he doesn't and you're never going to know that your final wishes a year after your death, there's no way that it can hold up. But, but, but, you set up this particular key as a decaying multisig. And if I'm right, you set it up to where the only signature needed after, you know, the year 2037 or whatever it happens to be is the one key that you gave your kid and your kid was not an idiot and backed it up, or you were able to back it up yourself and gave him a map to where the backups of the key is, whatever.
That key becomes after the decay of the multisig, that key becomes the only key needed to unlock that wallet. If I'm right, this is a pretty slick way to go about this kind of shit. If I'm wrong and you know how I'm wrong, as always, please let me know how the hell I'm wrong. Because I don't like being wrong and thinking that I'm right because that's a that's a kind of arrogance that is only for stupid people. Alright. So we are done with the show. That is everything that I wanted to bring you today. There's really not much else to say. It is Thursday. I hope you have a wonderful day. Tomorrow, we get to look forward to the weekend. On Saturday, I will be listening to the Texas Tech game on the radio.
It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin 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. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems. It is 8:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It's the 19th day of 9th month of 2024, and this is episode 957 of Bitcoin. And we've got to cover it. I know, you've seen it, you understand it, you get it, but we got to cover it because, well, I got a few things to say. Bitcoin Magazine Frank Korva writing Donald Trump makes a historic Bitcoin payment at Pubkey.
Today, history was made. History. History. The his in the history of histories, nothing like this has ever occurred because President Donald Trump became the 1st United States President to make a Bitcoin payment. Are we sure about that? The former President showed up at Pub Key, a bit coin themed bar located in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York to purchase some cheeseburgers on, you know, National Cheeseburger Day, which I had no freaking clue was occurring at the establishment, which was packed! Packed, I say, with Bitcoin enthusiasts there to welcome him. Hey, Don. How you doing here, pal? Quote, I think it's a great place, Trump said to Bitcoin Magazine about PubKey before urging the types of Bitcoin enthusiasts who frequent the bar to vote for him this November. Quote, you gotta get out and vote because if you vote, we cannot lose. We want to get everybody that agrees with you people. You people.
You people. And there's a lot of people to vote, he added. They've been treating you very badly at the SEC, and we're going to treat you very fairly. Ending yet another quote. Regarding the payment, Trump said it was easy to make, and that it went through quickly and beautifully. After making the transaction, Trump, escorted by one of the bar's owners, Thomas Pacia, introduced himself to all in attendance. Quote, this was one of the most important Bitcoin transactions of all time, said Pacia. President Trump came to PubKey to connect with the Bitcoin community, to show his support for the Bitcoin community, he added. We are all very excited that he was here. Okay. Doesn't doesn't okay, it we what did it say about this?
I saw more pictures of Donald Trump at the bar making this Bitcoin payment than I ever saw of anything else on any other social media platform. I'm serious. I'm not lying. Especially on Nostra it was like we just went ape shit over the fact that Donald Trump, not only did he make a Bitcoin payment, but he made it at PubKey, which is a Bitcoin bar. And I saw I saw several, you know, other headlines about this and they were calling Pubkey a crypto bar. It is not a crypto bar, it is a Bitcoin bar. And some people have corrected me or have tried to correct me on Noster saying that no, shitcoiners go there.
You can't, I mean unless you don't want to take people's money you're going to get no coiners, you're gonna get shitcoiners, you're gonna get bitcoiners, you're gonna get people that only think lightning exists. I don't know, whatever. I'm just saying that the owners of that bar are Bitcoiners. They're pretty solid Bitcoiners. As far as I know, they don't talk about Ethereum, they don't talk about Dogecoin. They're solid Bitcoiners. Okay? It is a Bitcoin bar. So that's my first bone of contention. My second bone of contention is that I can't tell if Trump actually made this transaction himself or he was just standing there looking at somebody make the transaction for him. If somebody can correct me on that and and give me definitive proof that he actually made the transaction with his own hands on his own phone, then I'm just I'm not all that convinced that Donald Trump actually made this. I'm not poo pooing the whole deal. I'm just saying we got to be really careful with these guys, these politicians, whether they're Trump or Kamala. It doesn't really matter to me anymore because they're all just pandering for my vote. They're pander bears.
It's like a zoo full of Washington DC is basically a pander bear zoo. If you want to go see the pander bears and watch the cute little cuddly fluffy little guys just, you know, play with their feet all day, then by God Almighty, go to the main grandstand that is the United States Congress and watch the fucking panda bears just play with their feet all day long. Because Trump is no different. He just wants your vote. I am convinced he does not really care all that much about Bitcoin itself. He doesn't really care. I'm very much convinced that this is in fact the case.
So just because he's at PubKey, just because he's making a Bitcoin payment, and whether or not he made it himself is still for me in contention, and whether or not he bought a nice tasty cheeseburger with his Bitcoin transaction is for me, is all beside the point. He's just pandering. Just keep it in mind. It doesn't mean that it's not important if you want it to be important. Hell, I even I think it's kind of an important deal. But I also have to temper that with the fact that he's a politician. He wants your vote. He understands that the Bitcoin segment is enough people that it's actually going to probably make a difference come November. And he's going to do everything that he can to get our vote. And it's gonna work. We're gonna vote for him. Because he's Kamala, she clearly is in the back seat, you know, the back pocket and the back seat, probably, of the bankers. And you know what happens in the back seat, Right? If you've ever, you know, if you were, ever in high school, you know what goes on in the back seat of the car. So, that said, be just please be careful. Okay? Just please don't get too terribly excited about all this.
The here's the other thing is that why PubKey? How did Donald Trump find out about PubKey? Was this another daily, David Bailey move, the guy from Bitcoin Magazine? I can't remember. I think he's like either owns it or he's the CEO. I don't know exactly. But he was kinda instrumental in getting Trump to go to the Bitcoin conference in Nashville and and give, you know, give his play with your Bitcoin speech. So I don't know how it is that he found out about PubKey because PubKey is kinda like it's not a well known bar. I mean, at least I didn't think it was. May maybe it is outside of Bitcoin circles. But in either event, I do think it's cool that he did this at Pubkey.
I think that that if if if I had to say, okay, which is the most important thing that we've got here? Is it the Bitcoin transaction? Is it the fact that he was talking to Bitcoiners? Is it the fact that he's pandering to Bitcoiners for their vote? Or is it the fact that he's buying a cheeseburger at a bar and that bar happens to be Pub Key? I'm picking the last. I don't I mean, the fact that he went to Pub Key itself is actually, I think, the most important part of that entire story. And everything else I take with a grain of salt. But this one, I kind of don't take this one with a grain of salt.
Commerce Bank to offer Bitcoin and Shitcoin1 trading through Crypto Finance. According to CoinDesk and written by Will Canney let's find out what's going on here. Crypto Finance, which is a subsidiary of Germany's largest stock exchange operator signed a deal with Commerce Bank to offer trading services to the lender's corporate clients just 2 weeks after reaching a similar agreement with Zurcher Canton Cantonal Bank in Switzerland. Commerce Bank, the country's 2nd largest bank by number of branches, will provide custody services, the company said in a press release on Thursday. The trading service offered by Deutsche Borse unit will be available to clients based in Germany and initially focus on trading in the 2 largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin.
Quote, our offering in digital assets enable our corporate clients to seize the opportunities presented by Bitcoin and Shitcoin number 1 for the very first time, said Gernot Koechner, head of capital markets for corporate clients at Commerce Bank, quote, our joint solution represents the highest level of security in the trading and custody of crypto assets, which is also a standard we also share with Deutsche Borse Group. Commerce Bank obtained a crypto custody license in Germany back in November of 2023, allowing the financial services firm to offer a wide range of services related to digital assets.
So Commerce Bank in Germany getting into the game. This is important because Commerce Bank, they said, you know, it's the largest bank by branches. That's not what's important. It's one of Germany's oldest and largest banks. It's one of the oldest and largest banks in the world. Whether by branch or assets under management, it doesn't really or or time time on target, it doesn't really matter. It's still one of the largest most well respected financial institutions in the world. This just reinforces yet one more time. This isn't going away.
And there are still people like you know, Peter Schiff and others. Oh, who's that? Roubini and a couple of other people. I can't remember that that idiot that won the Nobel Prize because he called the 2,008 thing. Anyway, that dude, all these guys for some reason still think that, you know, this isn't a thing. And I hate to say it, but guys it's it's actually kind of a kind of a thing now. Alright, let's move on. Louisiana. The bayou. Louisiana isn't the only US state to accept Bitcoin payments. Here are the others. This is out of decrypt, Adrian Zmudski is writing. The government of Louisiana has officially begun accepting cryptocurrency payments, making it the latest United States state to embrace digital currencies for state services.
Louisiana treasurer, John Fleming announced earlier this week that residents can now use a number of digital assets as payment for various state services. Residents can now pay using bitcoin. And this is what's interesting, the Bitcoin Lightning Network, as well as US dollar peg stablecoin USDC. The state said its first cryptocurrency payment has already been processed, which was a fine paid to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries via the Bitcoin Lightning Network. According to Fleming, this development resulted from the collaboration between the state, Beadpay and Local Integration Partners.
He stated that the initiative aims to modernize payment systems and reduce fraudulent transactions. Quote, in today's digital age, government systems must evolve and embrace new technologies. By introducing cryptocurrency as a payment option, we're not just innovating, we're providing our citizens with flexibility and freedom in interacting with state services. Put a tie on that government speak. Fleming emphasized that while the state accepts cryptocurrency as a payment method, the fund received will be converted into US dollars. That's not surprising. This approach protects the state from the volatility associated with cryptocurrencies and addresses previous concerns about accepting digital assets.
This isn't the first time Louisiana lawmakers have embraced cryptocurrencies. Republican state representative Mark Wright, who has been instrumental in promoting cryptocurrency adoption in Louisiana, expressed his support for the new payment options. Quote, I'm excited to see Louisiana further expanding its payment options, Wright said in, this week's press release. In May of 2022, Wright established a digital assets working group that concluded cryptocurrency would be an acceptable form of payment for the state. Wright has been a longtime advocate for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
In 2021, he led a Louisiana House Resolution commending the anonymous Bitcoin inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, for their contribution to economic security. Louisiana joins a growing list of states exploring the integration of cryptocurrency into government operations. For instance, in 2018, Ohio started accepting cryptocurrency for tax payments through its now defunct platform, ohiocrypto.com. Businesses could pay in 23 types or pay 23 types of taxes using Bitcoin, which was then converted to dollars via BitPay before reaching state coffers. But in 2019, the Ohio attorney general declared that the state treasurer lacked the authority to operate the program without proper approval from the board of deposits and had not followed required binding or bidding processes for payment processors.
And as a result, the initiative was shut down within a year, having been utilized by fewer than 10 companies. Also, 2018, the Seminole County Tax Office in Florida started accepting crypto payments through BitPay. The county tax collector was later found have used public funds to finance his own blockchain company and was indicted by the Justice Department. Shitcoiners go to shitcoin. It doesn't matter where they come from. That was not the last initiative of this kind in the state. No no no. In March of 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis promised that state agency would allow businesses to make tax payments in cryptocurrencies.
And this initiative aimed to promote Florida as a crypto friendly state and encourage innovation in financial technologies. The same year, Colorado announced that it would begin accepting tax payments in cryptocurrency requiring residents to, quote, have the entire value of your invoice in a single cryptocurrency in your PayPal cryptocurrencies hub, end quote. Building on the 2022 momentum, in June of 2024, representative Matt Gaetz introduced a bill that would permit Americans to settle their federal income tax obligations using Bitcoin. Gaetz stated that modernizing the tax system to include cryptocurrency payments would promote innovation, increase efficiency, and help maintain the United States leadership in technological advancement. In 2022, Utah also passed a bill allowing state government agencies to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments starting in 2023.
A 2022 Bloomberg listed Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, and Wyoming as legislatures that introduced similar proposals that never came into effect. While not directly accepting cryptocurrency payments, California has also shown interest interest in blockchain technology. In early 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles began utilizing blockchain as an unfalsifiable database for its records. What a bunch of morons. This move aimed to enhance the security and efficiency of record keeping within the state's motor vehicle registry, and I call bullshit.
The California DMV, that's the end of the article. So let's just let's go let's go into how this is bullshit. California DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, one of the largest state agencies of all the states inside the United States. You're talking about tens of thousands of employees across the state. Right? This is a huge operation. It is massive. You know what they didn't do? They did not install blockchain technology for unfalsifiable records. That's bullshit. And unless somebody shows me honest to God proof that that's what they did, then I don't believe it. Because here's what that would entail.
They'd have to stand up a blockchain. Then they'd have to train all of their people how to use a new interface even though they don't need to know about blockchain, they just need to enter in the data, right? Or maybe, maybe, just maybe they're taking the database and migrating it to blockchain. But that doesn't make sense because at one point or another new records on a day to day basis are going to be have to be entered into the blockchain. You do I mean, they're not going to change over their system and have to retrain tens of thousands of employees how to do this. That's why I'm calling bullshit.
They did not do this. I'll bet you my ass. There's not a single computer stood up that has any kind of time chain, blockchain, anything that even remotely looks or smells like it anywhere in the state of California for the DMV. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that it's fucking stupid. It's just dumb. The amount of cash we're talking about to stand it up, get it working, and then retrain all of your people to be able to enter information into a new interface is it's unacceptable at any state level. You're going to have auditors coming in going, why? What's wrong with this?
And no, we're not going to approve we're not going to allow this. Our recommendation to the state, whoever your bosses are at DMV, we're gonna recommend to that group of people that y'all are lame, moronic, idiotic, and it's just too bad you can't be replaced. But no, we're not going to recommend a blockchain for unfalsifiable data on your license plate. It's bullshit and it's time for us to stop believing this crap when we hear about it. Okay. Now, back at an all time high circulating supply, stable coins are becoming systemically important according to some dude named Bernstein.
I don't know. Maybe it's Ben. I want to read this one because I've told you a couple of times that even though I don't use stable coins, and I'm not exactly a fan of stable coins, because stable coins are what they are and the backing that they have, I e, the some of the largest buyers of United States Treasury bonds and bills that there are, then it's an important thing. You may not like it. I mean, it's like, I don't like the government. Is it important? Yeah. Why? Because it impacts my life. And this shit's gonna impact all of our lives, too. And this is out of the block. It is written by James Hunt. Blockchain based stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies like the dollar are reaching a level of systemic importance according to the analysts at research and brokerage firm, Bernstein. Oh, okay. So it's a company.
Stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle now comprise the 18th largest holders of US treasuries alongside sovereign nations just behind Saudi Arabia and just ahead of South Korea, Gautam, Chilgani, Mark Marcusapra and Saska Chindelaria wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. I guess it's an Indian company because I can't pronounce a single one of those things. USDT and USDC hold more than $125,000,000,000 in US treasuries combined according to the analyst. Stablecoin businesses remain highly profitable with float income from US treasuries retained retained by issuers, e. G. Tether made a profit of $5,200,000,000 in the first half of this year. Holy smokes.
On chain stablecoin monthly payment volume has tripled over the last 12 months to 1.4 $1,000,000,000,000 That's $1,000,000,000,000 with a t, the analyst noted with stablecoins accounting for around 50% of all on chain transaction volume. Monthly active users are touching new highs of around 22,000,000. And total stablecoin wallets with non zero balances currently end at 120,000,000. However, stablecoin usage has decoupled from crypto and stablecoins are increasingly being held for non crypto use cases. The stablecoin market is also continuing to see new entrants with PayPal and Paxos partnership to issue PiUSD, now approaching approximately $1,000,000,000 in circulation.
Ripple recently announced plans to issue a new shitcoin for cross border payments. And on Wednesday, reports suggested that Fintech firm Revolut was also looking to get into the stablecoin game. Other drivers of stablecoin growth include providing US dollar savings access for international users, propagating digital dollars beyond the US, acting as the primary base currency for trading in crypto and enabling users to earn yield on DeFi platforms, And offering the cheapest cross border payment rail able to transfer 1,000 of dollars at 1 to 2¢ fees, the analyst said.
Having previously peaked during the bear market of 2022 as crypto traders began cashing out some of their more volatile digital asset investments. Stablecoin circulating supply is now back at all time highs of nearly $180,000,000,000 according to the block's data dashboard. USDT remains the dominant stablecoin with a market cap of around $120,000,000,000 followed by Circle at $35,000,000,000 Tether's integration with global offshore exchanges and its cross border payments usage in non US markets continues to be the key driver, end quote. The Ethereum no. I'm not I don't even care. Fuck you. In a recent survey of crypto users by Visa, cattle Castle Island Ventures, Artemis and Brevin Howard Digital across Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, and India.
Some 50% of respondents said that they were holding stablecoins to trade crypto and NFTs. 47% said that they were using them to save money in US dollars. 43% for improved currency conversion rates. And 39% to earn yields. And always ask yourself, ladies and gentlemen, if it's going to provide a yield where does that yield come from that's an important question to ask nobody asked that question so ask that question to others and to yourselves continuing the results underscore that non crypto uses of stablecoins are a growing segment of the economy, the Bernstein analyst said. Among such use cases, currency conversion, paying for goods or services, and conducting cross border transactions are the most popular.
Younger demographics under 35 years of age increasingly hold a greater proportion of their assets in stables. They just say stables, according to the survey. With 35% of 18 to 24 year old respondents in the emerging markets holding more than 25% of their portfolio in stable coins compared to 17% in the 45 to 54 age bracket. The opportunity to earn a better yield is the most popular reason for choosing stablecoins over US dollar bank accounts among the younger generation followed by greater trust, more stable value, and less likely government intervention, the analyst said. So no matter who you are, you want yield and you want government out of your hair. Okay. The second part I can see. But again, it's more than critical that everybody, when they're faced with somebody saying that you're gonna earn a yield, you have to ask where does the yield come from?
Let's run the numbers. CNBC Futures and Commodities and everybody is rich! Holy shit! Lots of people, at least, okay, Around okay. We're coming up on 24 hours after the Federal Reserve announced a 50 basis point rate cut. The first cut in 4 years. And there was contention that it was gonna be a it was gonna be was it gonna be 25 points or was it gonna be 50? And a lot of people were saying if it was 50, it was gonna signal something bad happening in the markets and people were going to still remain risk off even though traditionally those kind of cuts make risky assets a lot more palatable because it's so much cheaper to buy them to rent the money to buy the asset.
Right? So so the contention was this. A lot of people said that when if we did 50 basis points we were going to see a a sell off in markets across the board From equities to Bitcoin to other risk assets, it was all gonna not all gonna go away. It was gonna have a big drop. Arthur Hayes was talking about it in the report that I, read you yesterday. Right? Arthur Hayes himself was saying, no no no. We're gonna see a dip. We're gonna see a great big old dip. You know, that's when you buy. Well, we're not seeing it. I'm seeing nothing but green everywhere. Oil. West Texas Intermediate is up over 2 points to 70239.
Brent Norsey is up 2 points to 70506. Natural gas is up 2 points to $2.32 per 1,000 cubic feet. And gasoline is up over 2.5 to $2.06 a gallon. Gold is up 2 thirds of a point to $26.14.40 Silver is up 2 and a third. Platinum is up 2. Copper is up 1.17%. Palladium is up almost 3 points. And the biggest winner today is cotton and ag. It's up 2 and 2 thirds of no, that's not it. Sugar is up 3.17%. And the loser today is wheat, 1.61 percent to the downside. Live cattle is up 3 quarters of a point. Lean hogs up 2 thirds of a point. Feeder cattle is up 1.2%.
The Dow is up over a point. The S and P is up almost, well, almost 1 3 quarter point. NASDAQ is up 2 3 quarter point. And the S and P Mini is up 1.5%. Everybody's doing well including Bitcoin, which is chilling out at $63,270. That's a 1.25 trillion dollar market cap. You can get 24.4 ounces of shiny metal rocks with your 1 Bitcoin, of which there are 19,755,992.99 of. And average fees per block are up to 0.07 BTC on average in fees on a per block basis. And there are now 100 blocks in mempool.spaces. Mempool carrying 191,000 unconfirmed transactions, waiting to clear at high priority rates of 6 satoshis per vbyte. Low priorities, you're gonna get in at 5.
And, woo, hashrate has fallen precipitously. 550 exahashes per second, well below the 742 exahashes per second that we saw as the all time hash rate high. Now from Powell the knife strikes, which is episode 956 of bitcoin. And I've got at 3762d3159. But he gave me 20,000 sats. And I got those, by the way, just in case you're wondering if some of these failed. Enthusiastic boost on the Wave Lake Mention loading up these decades of electronic projects and releasing there. And he gives a website, which I'm going to mention well, it's not a website. It's his it looks to be, this gentleman's name is Paul Birken.
Go to wavelake.com/paul-hyphen Birken. And it looks like he's got a fair he's got at least 10 tracks up here. And I'm not gonna play any of them right now, Paul. Only because I'm not set up to do that live while I'm recording. So I'm I'm it's not that I have anything against you, Paul. I just but thank you for the 20,000 sats. Wartime with 3,333 says, love your rants. Happy to be working on it together. Yeah. We are working on this together. God's death 537. Thank you, sir. No, thank you. Anonymous 5 100 says, Civilization moved from some fairly good monies to progressive credit creation.
Thanks for the news and making me laugh. Bitpunk.fm with 424 says: You just set the start time in the template. Wavelake calculates the duration. Oh, nice. Good luck with it. I was asking for something like this because I use castapod and I can insert the value time split. For completeness, there is another tool to generate the value time split called the split kit. Check out both and let us know how it works for you. Yeah, the split kit is out there. Just Google the split kit or DuckDuckGo. You might if you're using DuckDuckGo, you might actually want to say the Split Kit Podcasting 2.0. Pies to Pleb finishes us off with a 100 and says thank you sir, no thank you. And that's the weather report.
Welcome to part 2 of the news that you can use Sparrow Wallet version 2.0.0. Slip 39 shares recovery, new hardware wallets, and more. Sparrow wallet version 2.00 is here. It introduces the ability to recover slip s l I p 39 shares, and I I don't know what those are. I'm sorry, but I don't. Support for TrezorSafe 5, Ledger Stacks, Ledger Flex, and an update to Java and JavaFX 22, among many other improvements. This is a huge update, by the way. Just I'm not gonna read through the list, but it's massive. But I can say this, quote, this major version release includes an upgrade to Java and Java FX 22.
And that means minimum system system requirements have been updated to the Mac OS 11 and the GTK 3. These upgrades fix issues on modern operating systems and prepare for future capabilities, said the developer quote, as part of the update. The Windows installer has been changed from dot exe to dotmsi, but otherwise the installation process is unchanged from previous versions. Other release highlights include support for the, TrezorSafe 5, the Stacks, the Ledger Flex hardware wallets. Besides, Sparrow now supports recovering slip 39 mnemonic shares to a hot wallet.
Other notable improvements include a saving include saving a file for air gapped message signing, adding any missing previous outputs to a loaded PSVT. That's a partially signed Bitcoin transaction. A number of warning dialogues to prevent user errors and performance improvements, said the developer. So if you are a Sparrow wallet user, version 2 just dropped and it's probably gonna be pretty good. Now the first Maelstrom Bitcoin developer grant has been awarded to rcrux. Arthur Hayes's Maelstrom family office granted its very first Bitcoin developer award to rcrux, enabling him to work full time on Bitcoin Core open source contributions.
Maelstrom, an investment fund managed by the family office of Arthur Hayes focused on digital assets, is pleased to announce that rcrux is the 1st recipient of the Maelstrom Bitcoin Grant Program to continue his research and development work, announced the firm. Rcrux is an experienced software engineer who started reviewing pull requests in March of 2024. He is also a recent graduate of Chaincode Labs FOSS program. The grant allows him to leave his job to focus solely on Bitcoin development. Quote, as a relatively new developer on Bitcoin Core, rcrux is a representation of that objective.
We look forward to identifying more grant candidates that will be instrumental in strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem, said Arthur Hayes. Quote, quitting my job as a software developer and focusing on open source Bitcoin development was a difficult decision for me. The financial support in the form of this grant from Maelstrom has made this possible. I'm excited to step into this role and eager to advance Bitcoin core development, said the developer. Alright. This brings up these grants because Huddl bot, as you know, got a grant, his second grant, yesterday or at least it was announced yesterday. I'm sure he probably knew about it before that. But, you know, Holobod's got a standing long term grant from OpenSats and now he's got one from the Human Rights Foundation.
And, you know, I I keep reading these grant, or these these grant awards. Right? Like, every time I see one I'm always going to read them because I think it's important. But it brings to light a certain thing at least for developers that live in the United States. Okay? If you're outside of the United States, this is this doesn't apply to you because all these systems are different. But what I want to get out of here is health care, right? Or health insurance. In the United States we've become addicted to essentially a subsidy of health care.
It didn't use to be this way. Health care was not all that expensive in the forties, fifties, and sixties. But somewhere around the mid seventies you start getting this thing called health insurance. And it essentially pays for a great depending on the program or depending on the insurance plan it pays you know could pay a great guts and feathers of an emergency room visit an operation, an MRI, doctor's visits, shit like that. As the years have worn on the health insurance aspect of employment has become a major consideration of whether or not you're going to work a certain job or you're going to work a different job at a different company.
A lot of that has to do with how good is the health insurance that you offer. But now, even then even now, there's there's people that are like, as long as I get health insurance, I don't give a shit where I go. I've got to have health insurance because the health in the United States is, generally speaking, declining because our food is essentially poisoned. I don't want to get this into a food food thing right now. Let's just stay with the health insurance thing. Because health insurance is a major major consideration in employment for the United States citizenry, When people take these grants like my good friend, Hogglebaugh, you know, and and might, you know, like let's just use him as an example. And I I'm not going to say that I know his exact circumstances.
I don't know if he's got health insurance. I don't know if he works for somebody else on the side. I'm not going to conjecture. Right? Because I don't know. And it's not fair to conjecture when you don't know about shit. All I know about hodlebot is he's got an open sats grant. Let's say that huddlebot has no other job and that he left his job because he's got this grant again I don't know but let's say he did that means he's got to leave the health insurance aspect behind Right? So now we've got a situation where, yeah, you're being supported, but the health insurance aspect is kind of left out in the wind to twist.
And I'm not I'm not suggesting that people stop taking these grants and that this is a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think we need to get off of health insurance or at least at some kind of different model. And there is oh, god. Hold on. I'm gonna have to look for this. I can't remember the name of the health the bitcoin health insurance company. Hold up. I gotta pause. Okay. I found it. It's crowd health. I'm sorry to the guys at crowd health. My apologies for not remembering your name right off the bat. But, crowd health, all one word, joincrowdhealth.com.
That's joincrowdhealth.com. Joincrowdhealth is all one word. Alright, so it's bitcoiners paying large healthcare bills without insurance bypass corporate and government control over your healthcare rely on the Bitcoin community for financial support. Okay, guys. This is this is one of the more interesting aspects of where we are in the Bitcoin journey, than some of the other ones, okay? Because we've got real companies here that are Bitcoin only companies that are providing the trying to figure out a way to provide the same goods and services that the legacy system provides but is Bitcoin centric.
Now crowd health as far as I can tell isn't exactly isn't exactly health insurance but they you it okay here I'll give you this blurb How crowd health works. Crowd health is not an insurance company, but a platform and community that empowers you with a crowdfunding tool and a wealth of resources to efficiently manage your health care costs. Now, from what I've heard, there are many many people who are part of crowd health that have gotten their medical bills paid for because the crowd health platform crowdfunds all the members and their needs. So you're paying a premium and that premium is basically going to help pay other people's needs when they're in need. And then their premiums help you out when you're in need. And from what I understand, it works fairly well. Does it work as well as Blue Cross Blue Shield? Oh, hell. I don't know.
Okay? I I need to interview the guys over at Crowd Health and see and dig into this more. But here's what I'm getting at. What if, and this is my business development side coming out again, what if we could hook up CrowdHealth to the Maelstrom granting agency, which is that Arthur Hayes family office. Okay? Hook them up with them. Hook CrowdHealth up with OpenSats. Hook CrowdHealth up with the Human Rights Foundation. And all 3 of these grants, maybe in the future, they could come with that crowd health sort of says, okay, look, we want to be part of the granting, but we don't want to grant money. We're going to grant our service as part of the Open Sats long term, grant.
As part of the Human Rights Foundation long term grant. As part of Arthur Hayes Maelstrom's long term grant. That it comes with a subscription to crowd health. Would that make it easier? Or would that make it would that make it even easier for people to leave their jobs and do this full time because they've got the grant to do it if they had health insurance on the side or does it start to resemble more like we're trying to rebuild what the legacy system has? And if it's the second part, if you start to say no, it's the second part, we don't need to be doing that, then what what can we build?
What do we have to do? Because health care is an issue. If you break your leg that has nothing to do at all with the fact that you eat Twinkies all day. Well, maybe it does. But if you get hit by a car and you eat nothing but meat and you break your femur, that ain't exactly an inexpensive operation to fix that bone, get it set, get it pinned if it needs it, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's not inexpensive. How how what do we do? And we can't say, well, we've got to force the doctors to stop taking them, you know, that much money. It has nothing to do with the doctors okay it's a much larger problem so if you guys have like you know ideas about this why it would work why it doesn't work something else that we could do, please let me know. Do it through a boostagram, by the way, so that, you know, give me a little bit of satoshis on the side. Okay. Getting on to it. Keeper desktop version 0.1.1 cross platform support.
Keeper Desktop is a secure cross platform desktop app for using hardware wallets with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app available on Windows, Mac and Linux. We're excited to announce the initial release of Keeper Desktop. Keeper Desktop is a companion desktop app that allows you to securely use hardware wallets with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app. The new app was built to work with USB connected hardware wallets like Ledger, Trezor, and BitBox 2 and allow Keeper to take advantage of the full range of their capabilities providing seamless user experience for using hardware wallets with the Keeper mobile app, said developer Ben Kaufman. Oh, one of the Bins.
Keeper Bitcoin Keeper Mobile version 1.2.15 has also been released. And it comes with the ability to use canary wallet for the recovery key, flexibility to delete vaults while having sats in them, and UX improvements. I wonder what happens if you delete a vault with sats in them. Do they just burn? What happens to that? That's interesting. Okay. So anyway, here's 3 of the key features. Use with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app to add a device, perform health checks, verify addresses, and sign transactions. That's kinda cool. Integration with Ledger, Trezor, and BitBox 2 hardware wallets. And cross platform support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. So there you go. That actually sounds kinda interesting, honestly. Now last up, Liana version 7.0.
Liana Connect, Electrum Support and more. Liana is a Bitcoin wallet that uses miniscript and output oh sorry miniscript output descriptors with extensive use of relative time locks. It features a time locked recovery path for all your coins and can be used for inheritance, decaying multisig, and generally safe for backups. It's available on Windows Mac and Linux. Liana 7 is out. Thanks to everyone who tested the release candidate last weekend. Version 7 of Liana focuses on enhancing the user experience especially in wall wallet setup. It introduces Electrum support for self sovereign use and Liana Connect for easy bootstrapping.
Additionally, it now works with new signing devices, implements fee sniping protection, and delivers a variety of other user requested features and fixes. So I see I'm gonna tap read integration Hold on, just looking to do this landing page, stacks. Let's see. Okay. I've never heard of Liana before, but one of the reasons that I wanted to bring this to you, even though I've never heard of it before, was this one phrase: decaying multisigs. Right? So it said it features a time locked recovery path for all your coins and can be used for inheritance, decaying multisigs, and generally safer backups.
I'm going to venture to guess that a decaying multisig is something like let's say I set up a 2 of 3 multisig in Liana. I set it to decay. And that it decays down to a single multisig. Or rather, a single signature. I don't know if that's what it means. But it's an interesting notion to say, okay, look, That would be good if I'm right, that would be good in the following case. A trust fund for your children. You set it up in case you die and your your life insurance policy goes into it. Any of your savings goes into it. Sale of your house goes into the trust fund for your kids. But you don't want your kids to do something stupid like develop a heroin addiction or buy a fucking Lamborghini. So what you do is you lock it up in a multisig Where your kid's got a multi, you know, one of the addresses, your lawyer that survives you, or the law firm that you select that survives you, they have another part of that key. And then, I don't know, a key that's in a time vault somewhere in Scandinavia.
But you need 2 of those 3 keys to do it. Until they're of the age, let's say, 40. That That means that they've had more than enough time to get married, have their own kids, make their own way, do their own shit, and they're going to get a hold of your inheritance, but they're gonna do it after they've already secured themselves. So they don't they're not gonna have the the impotence to to develop a heroin addiction or buy a Lamborghini. Right? Or otherwise squander what you leave them. You you but you can't be sure you cannot be sure that everything is gonna be like that. Maybe the law firm, you know, right, folds, goes bankrupt.
And they don't really keep their end of the bargain after you're dead and make sure that somehow or another they pass off their version of the key to another law firm at like you asked. So that key's lost, right? And then in the vault in Scandinavia, let's say the coke head in Ukraine gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to nuke the entire country because he's insane. Right? That man is insane. And Putin ain't exactly, you know, he's not as insane as the the Zelensky guy, but Zelensky is insane. So let's say he completely loses shit and nukes the entire country of Scandinavia and that safe with that particular key inside of it melts down. It it's destroyed.
And let's say this happens the year after your death and your kid is 16 years old. You have you're dead. You don't know unless you're looking down from heaven and and God allows that kind of thing. I don't know. Let's just say he doesn't and you're never going to know that your final wishes a year after your death, there's no way that it can hold up. But, but, but, you set up this particular key as a decaying multisig. And if I'm right, you set it up to where the only signature needed after, you know, the year 2037 or whatever it happens to be is the one key that you gave your kid and your kid was not an idiot and backed it up, or you were able to back it up yourself and gave him a map to where the backups of the key is, whatever.
That key becomes after the decay of the multisig, that key becomes the only key needed to unlock that wallet. If I'm right, this is a pretty slick way to go about this kind of shit. If I'm wrong and you know how I'm wrong, as always, please let me know how the hell I'm wrong. Because I don't like being wrong and thinking that I'm right because that's a that's a kind of arrogance that is only for stupid people. Alright. So we are done with the show. That is everything that I wanted to bring you today. There's really not much else to say. It is Thursday. I hope you have a wonderful day. Tomorrow, we get to look forward to the weekend. On Saturday, I will be listening to the Texas Tech game on the radio.
It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great, and I'll see you on the other side. This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
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