This week I dive into the misconceptions of "Bitcoin is only for the rich" or "Bitcoin is for the middle class". Bitcoin is for everyone - even with the current constraints. Let's discuss!!
February 4, 2024: $42,030
Block Height at Time of Recording
827,896
News and Links
Bitcoin Mining Regulation
Argentina Bitcoin Regulation Stopped
Argentina Removes Taxes on Bitcoin
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Website
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
I can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @[email protected]. Looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
Hey, Pleb Nation. Today is February 5th, and this is episode 156 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm your host, McIntosh. And today's episode ask if Bitcoin is only for the rich. Alright. I wanna go ahead and get into this. We'll do a very quick update. The market is very little changed, really. We're up a little bit, right now as I record, here at block number 828940. 828940. We are at a price of 42,811. I'm recording earlier than 6 PM Central when the weekly close happens. I do not know if it will make it back up to 43,000 before the weekly close. To be honest, I don't really care at this point because I've got, what I think what's a very important message, and I really wanna get this out while I have some time here.
So we're gonna kinda wing this today a little bit, and you'll understand why here shortly. Our mempool, while we're talking about these things, looking decent. We're down a little bit in total mempool usage, 1.44 gigabytes. That's down about 300 megabytes over the last few weeks. If I'm recalling correctly, we are at 23 sets per vbyte, actually, 24 for in terms of priority, transaction fees. So that's a buck 44 to send something on the main chain per vByte. So not terrible, not certainly as good as it's been. Really, just in terms of the overall market, I would just say, you know, I don't know. The longer we maintain this level, the more likely we are to go up, I would I would argue.
And we've been at 43,000 roughly for a while at this point. Kinda going all the way back to, Friday, January 12th, so almost a month. We took a we took a dip down, down to 38.7. So we went down, pulled right back up, And now we're just kinda puttering along. This 42.5 level has provided some very good, of support. You could literally just draw a line, which I already have on my chart. But from that time where it dropped down, that has provided the majority of the support. Actually, it almost looks like a head and shoulders upside down. Interesting.
I don't wanna read too much into that, especially at this time frame. I'm on the 3 hour time frame. Let me a 4 hour. Let me jump out to the daily. Well, you kinda have one there too. Well, we'll see how that plays out. Again, doesn't really matter here at at Satoshi's Plebs, of course. We promote DCA. We promote putting in, as what you're investing on a daily basis through something like the strike app. I mean, the strike app isn't ideal. I always say this. Of course, it's custodial, this, that, and the other, but The reality is it's easiest way to get money.
Fiat converted to to Bitcoin. So, There you go. Set that up on a daily basis, grind it out, and, accumulate those sats. Don't worry about the price. Price will go up. I would say that, we've talked about these ETFs quite a bit. It looks like the, grayscalebtf has finally ground. I wouldn't say to a halt, but the selling has stopped. Essentially, the the negative selling is is certainly being outweighed by the other ETFs. In fact, BlackRock has now accumulated, I think, $2,000,000,000 in Bitcoin since they started doing their ETF. How however many weeks ago that was, 2, 2 and a half, 3 weeks ago. Alright.
That's it. I'm gonna keep this short today. I wanna jump right into this topic. Super, super important. At least in my opinion, in my little world, my fantasy of Bitcoin. And I've discussed this off and on, but, of course, I believe that Bitcoin will be the global currency in the future. I do not know exactly when that take place, but I do believe that the different countries of the world, United States, the EU countries, Russia, China, all, you know, the BRICS nations, Africa, Latin America, all of these countries. And by the way, I do realize Latin America and Africa are not countries, but bear with me.
They will be settling in Bitcoin on the main chain. Bitcoin will be a global reserve. I also believe that Bitcoin certainly has the ability to be a currency within these countries, whether that's, Ethiopia or Ecuador or, the East Timors, I think that's a country. If I butchered that, I apologize. It doesn't matter. That country can use it as a currency replacing their, at this point, fiat based currency. There's not a single country left in the world that has a sound form of money. So why would they keep that in the long run? And ultimately, that forces them as I've talked about in the last few weeks into more of an Austrian, mode of economics simply because, you know, you can't print Coin.
And, therefore, I think we end up in a better place. Now all that being said, why is Macintosh in a little bit of a tizzy. Macintosh probably spends too much time on Twitter. I think y'all know that. I don't really care for Twitter, but I also find it a very useful source of information. But sometimes people say things on there that just as we say in the South of the United States, it really grinds my grits. Alright? And it always amazes me. These are people, in some cases, and I'm not gonna use names here, by the way. I'm not trying call anybody else out. I'm trying to explain in a way that will not work on Twitter why this is so important.
So there's been this meme floating around for the last couple of days, people talking about, well, Bitcoin's only for the wealthy. Bitcoin's only for the middle class. One person said Bitcoin was for the middle class because they need a savings investment type vehicle that, you know, the wealthy have access to things that middle class does not. They have access to funds, to ways of investing that just frankly the middle class by and large does not. On the other hand, the poor typically don't have access to anything. In fact, you can do study. There have been studies done of this, like, just literally just a bank.
In the poorest part of town, those banks are far less frequent than in the more affluent areas. And you might say, well, Macintosh, that's common sense. But the byproduct of that is if they're even wanting to save, it's very difficult for them to do that. Okay? So keep all this in mind as we move through this. So we've got people saying the rich people are they're not gonna invest in Bitcoin currently because they've got other things that they're doing, and it's doing great for the middle class and the poor people are priced out or whatever.
And then I saw this one 18 hours ago. Okay? So 24 hours ago yesterday. And it said Bitcoin is not for the poors, and I don't know why they said poors. I'm not sure what that really implies. But not to get too pedantic about this, but I don't even really like that word. For the, underprivileged, maybe would be a better word there for the lower class for for these very people that we're talking about. They don't even have as much access to a bank as probably you and I do. It's for people with wealth to save. So in other words, Bitcoin is not for the poor people. Bitcoin is not for the middle class. Bitcoin is for the wealthy. So glad you can stick us all in a category, first of all. That's terrific. And then there's this big sign, this meantime, hard to swallow pills.
Like, man, that's tough if you can't deal with that. Sorry. Not sorry. And then this was made in reference to somebody else who said, the last thing poor people need is a false sense of security with artificially low base layer fees. Let's stop right there for just a minute. So I'm not aware that Bitcoin has ever had artificially low base layer fees. It is a market. It is one of the freest markets that we have in the world. It's based on people buying an asset and that being bundled up in transactions that get mined, that then get distributed and so on and so forth. That's not artificial. There's nothing artificial about that. There never has been, But let just set that aside because now we're already giving this imagery that there's something manipulated or there has been in the past. I would put it that way. The last thing poor people need is a false sense of security with artificially low base layer fees. They will be priced out, if not now, then in the not too distant future.
It'll save them a lot of trouble in sats the sooner they understand this, and that actually references another tweet. I told you this has kinda been going on for a while. I'm not gonna dig into that one. I think this kinda covers the idea. All that in context, and here's I I shouldn't have even have done this, but I did. I can't help myself sometimes. But I said I completely 100% reject your statement. Now this was the first statement. Bitcoin is not for the poors. If that's what it's for, it will never reach its full possibility. See, this person's argument is in essence, Bitcoin can be the global reserve currency of the world. Bitcoin can be something that rich people invest in, but the rest of the world can't have it.
They have to stay with this dirty, stupid fiat, and I'll keep this for myself because I doubt this person would include themselves in, quote, the poors. I'm not poor. I'm not rich. I certainly don't consider myself to be. Maybe compared to a lot of people in the world, they would consider me rich. But I'm not I I I work hard. I don't sit at home and, you know, twiddle my thumbs, which to me, if I wanted to do that and could do that, that is that is my definition of rich. I mean, you don't have to work. I do. If I stop working, I won't have a house after a few months, and, you know, life would be really bad.
So maybe we need to get our definitions of what rich is. And I don't know that that's what they really mean. I invest in Bitcoin on a on a daily basis in case of my miners as I've discussed. Before that, I was doing it through strike. And while I may have been doing that at a higher level then quote the poors. I certainly could have done that at a dollar a day. Well, Macintosh, if you only invest a dollar a day, well, you you're never gonna get rich. Well, that may or may not be true, but I'll tell you this. If I save a dollar a day in fiat, in dollar bills. And I take that down to my bank, and the bank doesn't charge me to deposit that, which they don't. So then I can put it in the bank. You know what? Over the last 2 years, I've lost 22% of my buying power here in the United States.
Now the official figures are less. It's like 11%, 10%, something like that, but it's less than that. It's more than that. Excuse me. Because the CPI numbers are cooked. We've talked about this time and time again. If you even go back to just the figures that they would have used In the 19 nineties, which wasn't that long ago, it was 20 something percent, which I think is a far more accurate figure. So so poor person, you can't buy Bitcoin, but you can take your dollar bill down to the bank every day or once a week, your $5 or $7. And you can stuff it in a savings bank, and we'll just rip you off for 22% just because we can.
Because as I've said time and time again on this show, the people who are the most affected by inflation are not the people who posted these answers on this Twitter thread, this nonsense, and I'm sorry, but it is. It's people who don't understand, Don't think I don't know. I I don't even know. I I shouldn't go into that, but I just don't understand it. But they're not having to save in fiat. But but but poor person, if you could possibly save in fiat, you just do that, and then we'll rip you off for 22%. Or let's go to somebody in Africa because we're not talking about the American poor. We're talking about the poor people in Africa or parts of Asia or parts of Latin America who, let's talk about Argentina.
Let's talk about Argentina. I don't I don't think this is too far out there. Argentina experiencing extreme inflation right now. And what do those people do? They try they did you know Argentina, outside of the United States, has more per person per capita or whatever the financial term is, per capita. More per capita or whatever the financial term is than anywhere else in the world savings in US dollars. Why? Because Argentina has a long, long history of high inflation. So they save in the current currency, US Global Reserve.
So even though some of those people outside of Argentina, outside of Buenos Aires are extremely poor, and they're getting pillaged by inflation and by currency devaluation. We're gonna tell them, no. You can't save in Bitcoin because these fees on the base layer are gonna be too high. You know what? Right now, they're really not that high. I can scrape together some money and buy some Bitcoin and pay, like, $3 to have it done if I have to. That's not going to kill me even if I'm an extremely poor person, and I go in once a month, and I make my buy. We also have multiple layer 2 technologies that help alleviate these fees.
Would there will be a day when no one will transact on the layer 1 network? And you need to get that through your head because it might cost $1,000 for a transaction. And it will only be when we're sending 1,000,000 of dollars from 1 nation to another or from one company to another. There will be very, very few reasons for individuals to operate on that layer when they can simply operate on lightning liquid or whatever it is that comes along, and I hope something better does or these improve significantly. Because these are not perfect solutions, but we're so early in this. We should not be making such concrete statements based on the current situation. Yes. There are times when if you're only saving $5 in Bitcoin. It doesn't make sense because the fees are so high, but there are ways around that.
So again, I 100% reject this idea that Bitcoin is either for the rich or for the middle class, and it's not for the poor. Bitcoin is just as much for the poor person as it as it is for you and I if you happen to fall hide that category. And in fact, I would argue that it's more for them because if I'm rich, I can buy real estate in the proper locations. And as fiat inflates, as the US dollar inflates, that real estate will inflate. I have other ways of benefiting. So just because I can buy it in Bitcoin does not mean that I should try and exclude others, and maybe they don't really mean to. I think these are frankly simply we get on Twitter and we just say things, and I that's maybe not the best way to do this.
I don't know, but if you really believe that we've just priced out poor people and they're just never gonna benefit from Bitcoin. That's a terrible place to be. It's terrible because there's just far more poor people in the world then there are rich people or middle class. So we're just gonna reject them, And we're gonna say, no. You can't have our Bitcoin. Why? Because there's only 21,000,000? You and I both know that's not true. There's 21 quadrillion satoshis. So it's certainly divisible enough that everyone could have one if there were a 100,000,000,000 people in the world, not 7 or 8, whatever we're at currently. That's not a problem. Well, the base okay. I think we can all be in agreement that there will be a time when the fees on the base layer will be very high.
Right now, because of these stupid ordinals, Macintosh, I can't believe you said that. Well, they are. I'd at least they are in my opinion. Now should we censor them? No. But it is because of that that the fees are as high as they are right now. Ordinals and tokens and whatever, JPEGs. That's why. But that's okay. Because you know what? That will press us to make these layer 2 technologies more solid, easier to use and so on sooner. So that when Bitcoin is that global reserve and when those base layer fees are extremely high. Consistently, we'll be prepared.
So I hope that makes sense. Where am I out of my time? 20 minutes in. I'm gonna wrap this up. I I just I had to get that off my chest because even if right now it is not possible oh, talked about Africa. By the way, these individuals who think that Bitcoin is is for rich people and middle class, while you sit and put on Twitter these fun little statements, do you know where the most innovation is coming from right now? Africa. Do you know that it's actually possible to send and receive Bitcoin at this point with a what do they call it? A feature phone? Not an iPhone or an Android, over cellular these low power cellular networks, like, ones that are very common in Africa. Do you know where that was developed in Africa?
If I'm not mistaken, Fettimintz, maybe not the original idea, but certainly the blossom of it in Fedament, Fedament dot org. And I'm drawing a complete blank on the guy's name. I can see his face. I can it starts with a no. He's from Africa. Do you know where some of the most interesting Bitcoin mining is taking place these days? Africa. You know who's benefiting from that? The people in Africa. Many of them who do live on very little money per day, dollars per day, so to speak. And yet, now they've got electricity. Now they can begin to better themselves. And you know what? When the time comes, when they are able to save for their future, it won't be in US dollars.
It will be in Bitcoin. So be careful saying these things. It might not be possible in every situation and for every person to save in Bitcoin right now. And there may be people who currently cannot save in Bitcoin, but do not discount them. Do not wipe them out and say, no. You don't matter. Minimally, these people should ax have access to Bitcoin simply because it's a form of sound money. Well, Macintosh, it goes up and down in price. Yeah. Absolutely. It's called a 4 year cycle. We can talk about that if you'd like. But if you're saving for more than a couple of years, it becomes very predictable.
And we have seen in places like, El Zonte down in El Salvador, which is not these people are not rich. They would very much be considered poor, underprivileged, whatever you wanna call it. And yet they've built a fully operating, Bitcoin circular economy in that area. Have you done that? Maybe you're making a few transactions here and there. Are you using Bitcoin on a daily basis? I will give Jack Maurer's credit where credit is due. The dude is 100% off fiat. Are you off fiat? Could you do that? So let's hold back on our sweeping accusation not accusations. That's not the right word. And I wanna be sensitive.
People, again, people just post things on Twitter and don't put deep thought into this. But this irks me simply because this is something that is so important to me. It's one of look. I can save money in Bitcoin and move on and probably do better off than than, frankly than what I'm doing simply because I'm so concerned about this. Bitcoin is for everybody. If we can't make it for everybody, then we have failed. We have failed. There's a saying, rising tide lifts all ships. We need to raise everyone and teach those who do not know. You can save in Bitcoin. You can do it over the long term.
When you can get to the point where you have a longer term time horizon, there are people who literally they just can't save. But there's study after study. Look. I haven't even gotten into, like oh my goodness. Over in Sri Lanka? I got this book recently. I heard about this case study. It was actually in a management class I was in. They did this thing. This guy I'm gonna butcher all this. Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. I cannot remember which. I don't wanna go pull it right now. But regardless, they set up what has become the world's largest micro bank essentially.
People trading, not trading, borrowing very small loans. This program has been very successful, And it has helped many, many, many people out of poverty so that they're no longer Living day to day, hand to mouth, they can actually raise their time preference. And this is actually something I want to talk about on this show in the future because I would love to see this done in Bitcoin. As we build these circular economies around the world, Bitcoin Beach, at El Sante, Bitcoin jungle over in Costa Rica. There's stuff going on. I think it's Acacia, but I may be make mixing that up.
In Africa, as these different projects grow and mature, I would love to see some of these people who maybe they've got Bitcoin that they want to invest? It is certainly possible that we could do something like this and build these type institutions to help people instead of just saying, you can't. You can't use Bitcoin. Very successful. This program is still going, by the way. This program in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. I'm sorry. I do not remember which. Very, very successful. And you know who they targeted? Women, which I thought was fascinating.
And there's a lot of discussion about the whys and but that is what's worked for them. And I can see this type thing. The first loan was literally, like, $5 or it may have been less than that. It may have been 50¢. I don't I wish I had the figures right at my tip, but I wasn't planning on talking about that. I apologize. It was very, very minimal. It was something that probably any one of the listeners of this podcast could do. They could pull that money out of their pocket, and essentially, they're making a a loan to someone and to help that person out of poverty, to build a business and so on and so forth.
And we're all trapped in this kind of Wall Street mentality, and you gotta be rich. You gotta be whatever. I'm like, no. What about that? Those people are doing much, much better because of that program. What about well, I will stop here. I apologize. That's maybe a topic for a whole new episode. I would like to get into that at some point. I'm not at the point in my journey, my financial journey where I could, like, bankroll an entire project like that, but who knows? We'll see. Maybe one day, or maybe a group of people could come together. I don't know. Just something to think about. Just something to think about.
I hope that makes sense. I know I say that a lot, but I do hope that makes sense to you. Alright. Let's go ahead and jump into the supporters. We did have a good week with our support. I gotta bring up Telegram. You know, while I'm bringing this up, just a little bit of a note, a mining note. The mining people have been putting miners online left and right. The difficulty adjustment keeps going up and up and up. The hash rate keeps going up and up and up, which is good. I think it's very interesting that even though I very much consider us past the bear market and, you know, we're really into the start of the bull market. I mean, we're up almost 3 times since the bottom bottom at 15,000, 16,000 whatever it was.
And yet the minor prices have not really gone up. I just looking right now, Kaboomrax is ring the s 19 k Pros, I think, which are really nice miners, a 120 terahash. It's the one that I have the majority of at this point. And they're still only $2,000. That's kind of a steal. So that's pretty cool. Alright. Man, my little Mac, something's going on with this screen. This is driving me crazy. It's like blinking. Not good. Brand new monitor, at least almost new. Alright. I think this is it. Alright. We had episode 155, the separation of money and state. K n s v 22 on fountain boosted 100 sats, no message, and then turned around and boosted another 1,000 sats.
I do appreciate that, both with that same episode, it looks like. That's appreciate that a lot. Thank you very much. And then we had, let's see. Mare mortals boosted us. A row of ducks, 2222, episode 1 55, and Kyron said, 1 episode a week is fine. Probably preferable for me, to be honest, we all experienced the podcast winner, which it feels like it's been affecting v for v, value for value transfers as well. Keep it up. Thank you, Kyron. I appreciate that. Kyron's always a good vote of positivity when I'm feeling down sometimes, I appreciate that a lot, actually.
And, yeah. I do think I agree. I think it's probably gonna be a good choice. It certainly will be for maybe for my mental health at least at this point. Not saying I couldn't, but I think I end up for now having better quality, once a week, which hopefully will bring us more people, and then maybe we'll see at some point about carving out time for 2 a week. We'll see. I'm gonna have to get some help somehow to really go twice a week or a code host, which I've thought about off and on. I'd love to have somebody to kind of bounce things off with. I just don't know who would be able to put up with me. Let's be honest. And our friend from Portugal or the Netherlands, depending on where they're at, hypersensitive Osiris boosted a 1,000 sat, separation of money and state episode 155. One episode a week is fine. It's hard to keep up as a listener too. Love your work. Amazing episode.
Less jargon. Nice talk on economics. I learned a lot. Thank you, hypersensitive stars. I appreciate that. I do. And then we also had a boost to 500 sat boost from the anonymous. So thank you, anonymous. And as normal, they do not send a message, but they're out there lurking, being anonymous. So there you go. I appreciate that. Look. I know this week was a little different. I know this content was a little different, but I do think that these kind of philosophical discussions are very, very important. If we do not understand why we're Bitcoin ing, then what's the point? If it's and I will say this.
There are a lot of people in Bitcoin who are just here for number go up. What I mean is, you know, 15 year time frame, we've seen Bitcoin go up how many times. I don't know. A lot. Right? And we fully expect that to continue, and I get that. But that is so scratching the surface of what's going on here with Bitcoin. And to be honest, even though I've certainly I've been in that camp. I get it. Once you move past that, it becomes so much more fulfilling. So if you are in that number, go up camp. I would encourage you to look a little deeper and say, what is this really for? What can it solve?
And let's be honest, a world that is crumbling. And that's what we see, and we see it every day on the Internet, on the news, wherever it is. Let me add up these numbers really quick. Got a total of 7,065 sats. So let's, appreciate that. And what did we say? 25,000 sats is what we're targeting. That Sound right? I'm gonna have to figure that out again for certain and jot it down so I remember. 100,000. Yeah. 25,000 a week. Right. 7065. So we're about a quarter of the way wet there. We'll get there. Appreciate that. Always good. You know, I get Frustrated as y'all know. I do get frustrated from time to time about this process, this journey.
But, honestly, if I go back and look at where we were, from the early days, we've certainly made a lot of progress. So I do sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate that. News. I've already mentioned what's going on with the ETFs. That was kind of one of the big bits of news. Of course, they're they're definitely a net positive at this point, which everybody expected this gray ill thing to happen, and it's exactly what's going on. People have been exiting that, some to other ETFs, and some just selling to, you know, to fiat, which that's fine.
But that all seems to be over. And essentially, from here, what we should be seeing is positive inflows into those ETFs. Bitcoin mining is now more eco friendly EverReach, you get 54.5 percent sustainable energy usage. I might need to make a complete episode about this, but one of the big things this week, As far as I can tell, essentially, by executive order or executive mandate or whatever you wanna call it from the president, they are Asking the Bitcoin miners, actually not asking. They're requiring at least the public miners to basically give them their stats. How many watts, kilowatts, whatever are you using?
Where is it located? All of this kind of stuff because of the boogeyman of Bitcoin using so much energy. But hey. Whatever. 54.5% sustainable energy. Oh, and by the way, in places like landfills where we're converting methane, which is one of the worst greenhouse pollutants in the world to energy. This is all gonna come to a head in the United States. Maybe this year, We will see. I don't think this has a ghost of a chance of lasting long term. It's such an overreach. But the reality is if they implement a ban, say, you can't mine Bitcoin here in the United States, then they'll move elsewhere. We saw this with China.
Down in Argentina, president Malay, scraps proposed Bitcoin law aimed at incentivizing citizens to declare their holdings. So another one, I think I noted this last week, but they have eliminated all taxes on Bitcoin. So mining, using it as currency, Saving it, capital all of that. It's all gone. Thought that was pretty cool. FEDIMENT, I mentioned this. So my understanding, if I'm not mistaken, phenomit comes out of a, a group of people there in Africa. So, again, you know, quote poor people. We're excited to announce today that Fedimint 0.2 has landed. This release is a huge milestone for FediVet as it is now a mostly feature complete Federated e cash system.
We've talked about this on the show, what it is. Development will be focused on backwards compatible improvements and debug fixes from now on. So I thought that was really cool. I reposted this. We asked the Bitcoin Honey Badger whether it's a bull market or a bear market. He told us to stay humble and stack stats. I thought that was pretty funny. BlackRock is actually $3,000,000,000 and that was on February 2nd. So it's now in the top 10% of all ETFs by assets in 3 weeks, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, there was the one about Argentina, all taxes on one.
I think Argentina may do very well. We will see. They're in for a world of pain this year. It's unfortunate. Alright. Very cool. That's it. I had some other things I I really wanted to talk about, but I thought this was super, super important. So I I apologize if I keep repeating that. If you're listening to that and saying, that's not really that important, I would ask you to think very carefully then about what Bitcoin is for. And maybe you come up to a different a conclusion. I would just be careful about not making some slap judgment, if that makes sense.
Alright. That's it. Oh, if you listen, if you share the podcast, if you share a clip, go to something like fountain. Fountain's probably the easiest way to do this. If you clip 1, 2, or 3 minutes, something like that, from an episode, it's 500 sats for the current episode. I'd probably extend that for a couple of weeks. I know some people are a little behind. If you go do an older episode, if you dig around in the archives, to speak, it'll be 300 sats. I will basically just comment on that clip and boost it. It's a way for you to make some treasure. It's a way to promote the show. So I appreciate that. That's one way to get some value from this show. Another way I hope is to gain knowledge.
So, of course, satoshisplebs podcast supports podcasting 2 point o. We've got so many awesome things going on over there. I don't talk about it because this isn't a podcasting 2.1 0 podcast, but it's it's hard not to at least some. But it's a value for value podcast as I talk about time and time again. I don't have ads. I don't have sponsorships, and The only thing I have is you supporting this podcast. People like hypersensitive as ours, boosting in, sending messages, asking questions from time to time, this kind of thing, but supporting the show. You can support this show by using one of these podcasting 2.0 apps, by using fountain or cast o matic or one of these podcasting 2 point o apps and streaming sets or boosting just like these people did that I talked about earlier.
It's a terrific way to get a hold of me. You can also send me messages on Twitter, and I'll get to that in just a minute. But you can just boost and say, hey, Macintosh. Great show. Hey, Macintosh. Bitcoin's only for rich people. Just please, since you're so rich, please make it a really big boost because it shouldn't matter to you since you're rich, clearly, since you're using BitClay. That's a that's a little joke there. Anyways, I don't care if you boost and say I suck or say it's a great show. I ask for feedback. I do that very specifically. If you don't like my sound, if you think that there's a way I can improve it, let me know.
I don't know. I do not have the perfect voice for broadcasting. I do realize that, but, but I am open for improvements. Anyways, I always read my boost on the air. I have nothing to hide, and that's terrific. So, anyways, just go to, podcast apps.com, and there's a whole list of apps out there. I use Fountain a lot. Just like I said, they're probably the easiest way at least at this point to get on board. I would also say, podcast guru. I've been using a lot these days and really love it. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I sure would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I'm a mastodon@[email protected].
You can reach me by email at macintosh at satoshisdashplebs.com. And, of course, there's a website at satoshisdashplebs.com. Stay humble friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I will talk to you soon.
Hey, Pleb Nation. Today is February 5th, and this is episode 156 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm your host, McIntosh. And today's episode ask if Bitcoin is only for the rich. Alright. I wanna go ahead and get into this. We'll do a very quick update. The market is very little changed, really. We're up a little bit, right now as I record, here at block number 828940. 828940. We are at a price of 42,811. I'm recording earlier than 6 PM Central when the weekly close happens. I do not know if it will make it back up to 43,000 before the weekly close. To be honest, I don't really care at this point because I've got, what I think what's a very important message, and I really wanna get this out while I have some time here.
So we're gonna kinda wing this today a little bit, and you'll understand why here shortly. Our mempool, while we're talking about these things, looking decent. We're down a little bit in total mempool usage, 1.44 gigabytes. That's down about 300 megabytes over the last few weeks. If I'm recalling correctly, we are at 23 sets per vbyte, actually, 24 for in terms of priority, transaction fees. So that's a buck 44 to send something on the main chain per vByte. So not terrible, not certainly as good as it's been. Really, just in terms of the overall market, I would just say, you know, I don't know. The longer we maintain this level, the more likely we are to go up, I would I would argue.
And we've been at 43,000 roughly for a while at this point. Kinda going all the way back to, Friday, January 12th, so almost a month. We took a we took a dip down, down to 38.7. So we went down, pulled right back up, And now we're just kinda puttering along. This 42.5 level has provided some very good, of support. You could literally just draw a line, which I already have on my chart. But from that time where it dropped down, that has provided the majority of the support. Actually, it almost looks like a head and shoulders upside down. Interesting.
I don't wanna read too much into that, especially at this time frame. I'm on the 3 hour time frame. Let me a 4 hour. Let me jump out to the daily. Well, you kinda have one there too. Well, we'll see how that plays out. Again, doesn't really matter here at at Satoshi's Plebs, of course. We promote DCA. We promote putting in, as what you're investing on a daily basis through something like the strike app. I mean, the strike app isn't ideal. I always say this. Of course, it's custodial, this, that, and the other, but The reality is it's easiest way to get money.
Fiat converted to to Bitcoin. So, There you go. Set that up on a daily basis, grind it out, and, accumulate those sats. Don't worry about the price. Price will go up. I would say that, we've talked about these ETFs quite a bit. It looks like the, grayscalebtf has finally ground. I wouldn't say to a halt, but the selling has stopped. Essentially, the the negative selling is is certainly being outweighed by the other ETFs. In fact, BlackRock has now accumulated, I think, $2,000,000,000 in Bitcoin since they started doing their ETF. How however many weeks ago that was, 2, 2 and a half, 3 weeks ago. Alright.
That's it. I'm gonna keep this short today. I wanna jump right into this topic. Super, super important. At least in my opinion, in my little world, my fantasy of Bitcoin. And I've discussed this off and on, but, of course, I believe that Bitcoin will be the global currency in the future. I do not know exactly when that take place, but I do believe that the different countries of the world, United States, the EU countries, Russia, China, all, you know, the BRICS nations, Africa, Latin America, all of these countries. And by the way, I do realize Latin America and Africa are not countries, but bear with me.
They will be settling in Bitcoin on the main chain. Bitcoin will be a global reserve. I also believe that Bitcoin certainly has the ability to be a currency within these countries, whether that's, Ethiopia or Ecuador or, the East Timors, I think that's a country. If I butchered that, I apologize. It doesn't matter. That country can use it as a currency replacing their, at this point, fiat based currency. There's not a single country left in the world that has a sound form of money. So why would they keep that in the long run? And ultimately, that forces them as I've talked about in the last few weeks into more of an Austrian, mode of economics simply because, you know, you can't print Coin.
And, therefore, I think we end up in a better place. Now all that being said, why is Macintosh in a little bit of a tizzy. Macintosh probably spends too much time on Twitter. I think y'all know that. I don't really care for Twitter, but I also find it a very useful source of information. But sometimes people say things on there that just as we say in the South of the United States, it really grinds my grits. Alright? And it always amazes me. These are people, in some cases, and I'm not gonna use names here, by the way. I'm not trying call anybody else out. I'm trying to explain in a way that will not work on Twitter why this is so important.
So there's been this meme floating around for the last couple of days, people talking about, well, Bitcoin's only for the wealthy. Bitcoin's only for the middle class. One person said Bitcoin was for the middle class because they need a savings investment type vehicle that, you know, the wealthy have access to things that middle class does not. They have access to funds, to ways of investing that just frankly the middle class by and large does not. On the other hand, the poor typically don't have access to anything. In fact, you can do study. There have been studies done of this, like, just literally just a bank.
In the poorest part of town, those banks are far less frequent than in the more affluent areas. And you might say, well, Macintosh, that's common sense. But the byproduct of that is if they're even wanting to save, it's very difficult for them to do that. Okay? So keep all this in mind as we move through this. So we've got people saying the rich people are they're not gonna invest in Bitcoin currently because they've got other things that they're doing, and it's doing great for the middle class and the poor people are priced out or whatever.
And then I saw this one 18 hours ago. Okay? So 24 hours ago yesterday. And it said Bitcoin is not for the poors, and I don't know why they said poors. I'm not sure what that really implies. But not to get too pedantic about this, but I don't even really like that word. For the, underprivileged, maybe would be a better word there for the lower class for for these very people that we're talking about. They don't even have as much access to a bank as probably you and I do. It's for people with wealth to save. So in other words, Bitcoin is not for the poor people. Bitcoin is not for the middle class. Bitcoin is for the wealthy. So glad you can stick us all in a category, first of all. That's terrific. And then there's this big sign, this meantime, hard to swallow pills.
Like, man, that's tough if you can't deal with that. Sorry. Not sorry. And then this was made in reference to somebody else who said, the last thing poor people need is a false sense of security with artificially low base layer fees. Let's stop right there for just a minute. So I'm not aware that Bitcoin has ever had artificially low base layer fees. It is a market. It is one of the freest markets that we have in the world. It's based on people buying an asset and that being bundled up in transactions that get mined, that then get distributed and so on and so forth. That's not artificial. There's nothing artificial about that. There never has been, But let just set that aside because now we're already giving this imagery that there's something manipulated or there has been in the past. I would put it that way. The last thing poor people need is a false sense of security with artificially low base layer fees. They will be priced out, if not now, then in the not too distant future.
It'll save them a lot of trouble in sats the sooner they understand this, and that actually references another tweet. I told you this has kinda been going on for a while. I'm not gonna dig into that one. I think this kinda covers the idea. All that in context, and here's I I shouldn't have even have done this, but I did. I can't help myself sometimes. But I said I completely 100% reject your statement. Now this was the first statement. Bitcoin is not for the poors. If that's what it's for, it will never reach its full possibility. See, this person's argument is in essence, Bitcoin can be the global reserve currency of the world. Bitcoin can be something that rich people invest in, but the rest of the world can't have it.
They have to stay with this dirty, stupid fiat, and I'll keep this for myself because I doubt this person would include themselves in, quote, the poors. I'm not poor. I'm not rich. I certainly don't consider myself to be. Maybe compared to a lot of people in the world, they would consider me rich. But I'm not I I I work hard. I don't sit at home and, you know, twiddle my thumbs, which to me, if I wanted to do that and could do that, that is that is my definition of rich. I mean, you don't have to work. I do. If I stop working, I won't have a house after a few months, and, you know, life would be really bad.
So maybe we need to get our definitions of what rich is. And I don't know that that's what they really mean. I invest in Bitcoin on a on a daily basis in case of my miners as I've discussed. Before that, I was doing it through strike. And while I may have been doing that at a higher level then quote the poors. I certainly could have done that at a dollar a day. Well, Macintosh, if you only invest a dollar a day, well, you you're never gonna get rich. Well, that may or may not be true, but I'll tell you this. If I save a dollar a day in fiat, in dollar bills. And I take that down to my bank, and the bank doesn't charge me to deposit that, which they don't. So then I can put it in the bank. You know what? Over the last 2 years, I've lost 22% of my buying power here in the United States.
Now the official figures are less. It's like 11%, 10%, something like that, but it's less than that. It's more than that. Excuse me. Because the CPI numbers are cooked. We've talked about this time and time again. If you even go back to just the figures that they would have used In the 19 nineties, which wasn't that long ago, it was 20 something percent, which I think is a far more accurate figure. So so poor person, you can't buy Bitcoin, but you can take your dollar bill down to the bank every day or once a week, your $5 or $7. And you can stuff it in a savings bank, and we'll just rip you off for 22% just because we can.
Because as I've said time and time again on this show, the people who are the most affected by inflation are not the people who posted these answers on this Twitter thread, this nonsense, and I'm sorry, but it is. It's people who don't understand, Don't think I don't know. I I don't even know. I I shouldn't go into that, but I just don't understand it. But they're not having to save in fiat. But but but poor person, if you could possibly save in fiat, you just do that, and then we'll rip you off for 22%. Or let's go to somebody in Africa because we're not talking about the American poor. We're talking about the poor people in Africa or parts of Asia or parts of Latin America who, let's talk about Argentina.
Let's talk about Argentina. I don't I don't think this is too far out there. Argentina experiencing extreme inflation right now. And what do those people do? They try they did you know Argentina, outside of the United States, has more per person per capita or whatever the financial term is, per capita. More per capita or whatever the financial term is than anywhere else in the world savings in US dollars. Why? Because Argentina has a long, long history of high inflation. So they save in the current currency, US Global Reserve.
So even though some of those people outside of Argentina, outside of Buenos Aires are extremely poor, and they're getting pillaged by inflation and by currency devaluation. We're gonna tell them, no. You can't save in Bitcoin because these fees on the base layer are gonna be too high. You know what? Right now, they're really not that high. I can scrape together some money and buy some Bitcoin and pay, like, $3 to have it done if I have to. That's not going to kill me even if I'm an extremely poor person, and I go in once a month, and I make my buy. We also have multiple layer 2 technologies that help alleviate these fees.
Would there will be a day when no one will transact on the layer 1 network? And you need to get that through your head because it might cost $1,000 for a transaction. And it will only be when we're sending 1,000,000 of dollars from 1 nation to another or from one company to another. There will be very, very few reasons for individuals to operate on that layer when they can simply operate on lightning liquid or whatever it is that comes along, and I hope something better does or these improve significantly. Because these are not perfect solutions, but we're so early in this. We should not be making such concrete statements based on the current situation. Yes. There are times when if you're only saving $5 in Bitcoin. It doesn't make sense because the fees are so high, but there are ways around that.
So again, I 100% reject this idea that Bitcoin is either for the rich or for the middle class, and it's not for the poor. Bitcoin is just as much for the poor person as it as it is for you and I if you happen to fall hide that category. And in fact, I would argue that it's more for them because if I'm rich, I can buy real estate in the proper locations. And as fiat inflates, as the US dollar inflates, that real estate will inflate. I have other ways of benefiting. So just because I can buy it in Bitcoin does not mean that I should try and exclude others, and maybe they don't really mean to. I think these are frankly simply we get on Twitter and we just say things, and I that's maybe not the best way to do this.
I don't know, but if you really believe that we've just priced out poor people and they're just never gonna benefit from Bitcoin. That's a terrible place to be. It's terrible because there's just far more poor people in the world then there are rich people or middle class. So we're just gonna reject them, And we're gonna say, no. You can't have our Bitcoin. Why? Because there's only 21,000,000? You and I both know that's not true. There's 21 quadrillion satoshis. So it's certainly divisible enough that everyone could have one if there were a 100,000,000,000 people in the world, not 7 or 8, whatever we're at currently. That's not a problem. Well, the base okay. I think we can all be in agreement that there will be a time when the fees on the base layer will be very high.
Right now, because of these stupid ordinals, Macintosh, I can't believe you said that. Well, they are. I'd at least they are in my opinion. Now should we censor them? No. But it is because of that that the fees are as high as they are right now. Ordinals and tokens and whatever, JPEGs. That's why. But that's okay. Because you know what? That will press us to make these layer 2 technologies more solid, easier to use and so on sooner. So that when Bitcoin is that global reserve and when those base layer fees are extremely high. Consistently, we'll be prepared.
So I hope that makes sense. Where am I out of my time? 20 minutes in. I'm gonna wrap this up. I I just I had to get that off my chest because even if right now it is not possible oh, talked about Africa. By the way, these individuals who think that Bitcoin is is for rich people and middle class, while you sit and put on Twitter these fun little statements, do you know where the most innovation is coming from right now? Africa. Do you know that it's actually possible to send and receive Bitcoin at this point with a what do they call it? A feature phone? Not an iPhone or an Android, over cellular these low power cellular networks, like, ones that are very common in Africa. Do you know where that was developed in Africa?
If I'm not mistaken, Fettimintz, maybe not the original idea, but certainly the blossom of it in Fedament, Fedament dot org. And I'm drawing a complete blank on the guy's name. I can see his face. I can it starts with a no. He's from Africa. Do you know where some of the most interesting Bitcoin mining is taking place these days? Africa. You know who's benefiting from that? The people in Africa. Many of them who do live on very little money per day, dollars per day, so to speak. And yet, now they've got electricity. Now they can begin to better themselves. And you know what? When the time comes, when they are able to save for their future, it won't be in US dollars.
It will be in Bitcoin. So be careful saying these things. It might not be possible in every situation and for every person to save in Bitcoin right now. And there may be people who currently cannot save in Bitcoin, but do not discount them. Do not wipe them out and say, no. You don't matter. Minimally, these people should ax have access to Bitcoin simply because it's a form of sound money. Well, Macintosh, it goes up and down in price. Yeah. Absolutely. It's called a 4 year cycle. We can talk about that if you'd like. But if you're saving for more than a couple of years, it becomes very predictable.
And we have seen in places like, El Zonte down in El Salvador, which is not these people are not rich. They would very much be considered poor, underprivileged, whatever you wanna call it. And yet they've built a fully operating, Bitcoin circular economy in that area. Have you done that? Maybe you're making a few transactions here and there. Are you using Bitcoin on a daily basis? I will give Jack Maurer's credit where credit is due. The dude is 100% off fiat. Are you off fiat? Could you do that? So let's hold back on our sweeping accusation not accusations. That's not the right word. And I wanna be sensitive.
People, again, people just post things on Twitter and don't put deep thought into this. But this irks me simply because this is something that is so important to me. It's one of look. I can save money in Bitcoin and move on and probably do better off than than, frankly than what I'm doing simply because I'm so concerned about this. Bitcoin is for everybody. If we can't make it for everybody, then we have failed. We have failed. There's a saying, rising tide lifts all ships. We need to raise everyone and teach those who do not know. You can save in Bitcoin. You can do it over the long term.
When you can get to the point where you have a longer term time horizon, there are people who literally they just can't save. But there's study after study. Look. I haven't even gotten into, like oh my goodness. Over in Sri Lanka? I got this book recently. I heard about this case study. It was actually in a management class I was in. They did this thing. This guy I'm gonna butcher all this. Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. I cannot remember which. I don't wanna go pull it right now. But regardless, they set up what has become the world's largest micro bank essentially.
People trading, not trading, borrowing very small loans. This program has been very successful, And it has helped many, many, many people out of poverty so that they're no longer Living day to day, hand to mouth, they can actually raise their time preference. And this is actually something I want to talk about on this show in the future because I would love to see this done in Bitcoin. As we build these circular economies around the world, Bitcoin Beach, at El Sante, Bitcoin jungle over in Costa Rica. There's stuff going on. I think it's Acacia, but I may be make mixing that up.
In Africa, as these different projects grow and mature, I would love to see some of these people who maybe they've got Bitcoin that they want to invest? It is certainly possible that we could do something like this and build these type institutions to help people instead of just saying, you can't. You can't use Bitcoin. Very successful. This program is still going, by the way. This program in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. I'm sorry. I do not remember which. Very, very successful. And you know who they targeted? Women, which I thought was fascinating.
And there's a lot of discussion about the whys and but that is what's worked for them. And I can see this type thing. The first loan was literally, like, $5 or it may have been less than that. It may have been 50¢. I don't I wish I had the figures right at my tip, but I wasn't planning on talking about that. I apologize. It was very, very minimal. It was something that probably any one of the listeners of this podcast could do. They could pull that money out of their pocket, and essentially, they're making a a loan to someone and to help that person out of poverty, to build a business and so on and so forth.
And we're all trapped in this kind of Wall Street mentality, and you gotta be rich. You gotta be whatever. I'm like, no. What about that? Those people are doing much, much better because of that program. What about well, I will stop here. I apologize. That's maybe a topic for a whole new episode. I would like to get into that at some point. I'm not at the point in my journey, my financial journey where I could, like, bankroll an entire project like that, but who knows? We'll see. Maybe one day, or maybe a group of people could come together. I don't know. Just something to think about. Just something to think about.
I hope that makes sense. I know I say that a lot, but I do hope that makes sense to you. Alright. Let's go ahead and jump into the supporters. We did have a good week with our support. I gotta bring up Telegram. You know, while I'm bringing this up, just a little bit of a note, a mining note. The mining people have been putting miners online left and right. The difficulty adjustment keeps going up and up and up. The hash rate keeps going up and up and up, which is good. I think it's very interesting that even though I very much consider us past the bear market and, you know, we're really into the start of the bull market. I mean, we're up almost 3 times since the bottom bottom at 15,000, 16,000 whatever it was.
And yet the minor prices have not really gone up. I just looking right now, Kaboomrax is ring the s 19 k Pros, I think, which are really nice miners, a 120 terahash. It's the one that I have the majority of at this point. And they're still only $2,000. That's kind of a steal. So that's pretty cool. Alright. Man, my little Mac, something's going on with this screen. This is driving me crazy. It's like blinking. Not good. Brand new monitor, at least almost new. Alright. I think this is it. Alright. We had episode 155, the separation of money and state. K n s v 22 on fountain boosted 100 sats, no message, and then turned around and boosted another 1,000 sats.
I do appreciate that, both with that same episode, it looks like. That's appreciate that a lot. Thank you very much. And then we had, let's see. Mare mortals boosted us. A row of ducks, 2222, episode 1 55, and Kyron said, 1 episode a week is fine. Probably preferable for me, to be honest, we all experienced the podcast winner, which it feels like it's been affecting v for v, value for value transfers as well. Keep it up. Thank you, Kyron. I appreciate that. Kyron's always a good vote of positivity when I'm feeling down sometimes, I appreciate that a lot, actually.
And, yeah. I do think I agree. I think it's probably gonna be a good choice. It certainly will be for maybe for my mental health at least at this point. Not saying I couldn't, but I think I end up for now having better quality, once a week, which hopefully will bring us more people, and then maybe we'll see at some point about carving out time for 2 a week. We'll see. I'm gonna have to get some help somehow to really go twice a week or a code host, which I've thought about off and on. I'd love to have somebody to kind of bounce things off with. I just don't know who would be able to put up with me. Let's be honest. And our friend from Portugal or the Netherlands, depending on where they're at, hypersensitive Osiris boosted a 1,000 sat, separation of money and state episode 155. One episode a week is fine. It's hard to keep up as a listener too. Love your work. Amazing episode.
Less jargon. Nice talk on economics. I learned a lot. Thank you, hypersensitive stars. I appreciate that. I do. And then we also had a boost to 500 sat boost from the anonymous. So thank you, anonymous. And as normal, they do not send a message, but they're out there lurking, being anonymous. So there you go. I appreciate that. Look. I know this week was a little different. I know this content was a little different, but I do think that these kind of philosophical discussions are very, very important. If we do not understand why we're Bitcoin ing, then what's the point? If it's and I will say this.
There are a lot of people in Bitcoin who are just here for number go up. What I mean is, you know, 15 year time frame, we've seen Bitcoin go up how many times. I don't know. A lot. Right? And we fully expect that to continue, and I get that. But that is so scratching the surface of what's going on here with Bitcoin. And to be honest, even though I've certainly I've been in that camp. I get it. Once you move past that, it becomes so much more fulfilling. So if you are in that number, go up camp. I would encourage you to look a little deeper and say, what is this really for? What can it solve?
And let's be honest, a world that is crumbling. And that's what we see, and we see it every day on the Internet, on the news, wherever it is. Let me add up these numbers really quick. Got a total of 7,065 sats. So let's, appreciate that. And what did we say? 25,000 sats is what we're targeting. That Sound right? I'm gonna have to figure that out again for certain and jot it down so I remember. 100,000. Yeah. 25,000 a week. Right. 7065. So we're about a quarter of the way wet there. We'll get there. Appreciate that. Always good. You know, I get Frustrated as y'all know. I do get frustrated from time to time about this process, this journey.
But, honestly, if I go back and look at where we were, from the early days, we've certainly made a lot of progress. So I do sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate that. News. I've already mentioned what's going on with the ETFs. That was kind of one of the big bits of news. Of course, they're they're definitely a net positive at this point, which everybody expected this gray ill thing to happen, and it's exactly what's going on. People have been exiting that, some to other ETFs, and some just selling to, you know, to fiat, which that's fine.
But that all seems to be over. And essentially, from here, what we should be seeing is positive inflows into those ETFs. Bitcoin mining is now more eco friendly EverReach, you get 54.5 percent sustainable energy usage. I might need to make a complete episode about this, but one of the big things this week, As far as I can tell, essentially, by executive order or executive mandate or whatever you wanna call it from the president, they are Asking the Bitcoin miners, actually not asking. They're requiring at least the public miners to basically give them their stats. How many watts, kilowatts, whatever are you using?
Where is it located? All of this kind of stuff because of the boogeyman of Bitcoin using so much energy. But hey. Whatever. 54.5% sustainable energy. Oh, and by the way, in places like landfills where we're converting methane, which is one of the worst greenhouse pollutants in the world to energy. This is all gonna come to a head in the United States. Maybe this year, We will see. I don't think this has a ghost of a chance of lasting long term. It's such an overreach. But the reality is if they implement a ban, say, you can't mine Bitcoin here in the United States, then they'll move elsewhere. We saw this with China.
Down in Argentina, president Malay, scraps proposed Bitcoin law aimed at incentivizing citizens to declare their holdings. So another one, I think I noted this last week, but they have eliminated all taxes on Bitcoin. So mining, using it as currency, Saving it, capital all of that. It's all gone. Thought that was pretty cool. FEDIMENT, I mentioned this. So my understanding, if I'm not mistaken, phenomit comes out of a, a group of people there in Africa. So, again, you know, quote poor people. We're excited to announce today that Fedimint 0.2 has landed. This release is a huge milestone for FediVet as it is now a mostly feature complete Federated e cash system.
We've talked about this on the show, what it is. Development will be focused on backwards compatible improvements and debug fixes from now on. So I thought that was really cool. I reposted this. We asked the Bitcoin Honey Badger whether it's a bull market or a bear market. He told us to stay humble and stack stats. I thought that was pretty funny. BlackRock is actually $3,000,000,000 and that was on February 2nd. So it's now in the top 10% of all ETFs by assets in 3 weeks, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, there was the one about Argentina, all taxes on one.
I think Argentina may do very well. We will see. They're in for a world of pain this year. It's unfortunate. Alright. Very cool. That's it. I had some other things I I really wanted to talk about, but I thought this was super, super important. So I I apologize if I keep repeating that. If you're listening to that and saying, that's not really that important, I would ask you to think very carefully then about what Bitcoin is for. And maybe you come up to a different a conclusion. I would just be careful about not making some slap judgment, if that makes sense.
Alright. That's it. Oh, if you listen, if you share the podcast, if you share a clip, go to something like fountain. Fountain's probably the easiest way to do this. If you clip 1, 2, or 3 minutes, something like that, from an episode, it's 500 sats for the current episode. I'd probably extend that for a couple of weeks. I know some people are a little behind. If you go do an older episode, if you dig around in the archives, to speak, it'll be 300 sats. I will basically just comment on that clip and boost it. It's a way for you to make some treasure. It's a way to promote the show. So I appreciate that. That's one way to get some value from this show. Another way I hope is to gain knowledge.
So, of course, satoshisplebs podcast supports podcasting 2 point o. We've got so many awesome things going on over there. I don't talk about it because this isn't a podcasting 2.1 0 podcast, but it's it's hard not to at least some. But it's a value for value podcast as I talk about time and time again. I don't have ads. I don't have sponsorships, and The only thing I have is you supporting this podcast. People like hypersensitive as ours, boosting in, sending messages, asking questions from time to time, this kind of thing, but supporting the show. You can support this show by using one of these podcasting 2.0 apps, by using fountain or cast o matic or one of these podcasting 2 point o apps and streaming sets or boosting just like these people did that I talked about earlier.
It's a terrific way to get a hold of me. You can also send me messages on Twitter, and I'll get to that in just a minute. But you can just boost and say, hey, Macintosh. Great show. Hey, Macintosh. Bitcoin's only for rich people. Just please, since you're so rich, please make it a really big boost because it shouldn't matter to you since you're rich, clearly, since you're using BitClay. That's a that's a little joke there. Anyways, I don't care if you boost and say I suck or say it's a great show. I ask for feedback. I do that very specifically. If you don't like my sound, if you think that there's a way I can improve it, let me know.
I don't know. I do not have the perfect voice for broadcasting. I do realize that, but, but I am open for improvements. Anyways, I always read my boost on the air. I have nothing to hide, and that's terrific. So, anyways, just go to, podcast apps.com, and there's a whole list of apps out there. I use Fountain a lot. Just like I said, they're probably the easiest way at least at this point to get on board. I would also say, podcast guru. I've been using a lot these days and really love it. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I sure would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I'm a mastodon@[email protected].
You can reach me by email at macintosh at satoshisdashplebs.com. And, of course, there's a website at satoshisdashplebs.com. Stay humble friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I will talk to you soon.
