From Election Day drama to Market mania: Unpacking the recent surge in Bitcoin and stocks. Is this a hype cycle or something more? Let's follow the money and find out.
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- "Assets in the US spot bitcoin ETFs are now up to $84b
- Bitcoin mania taking over the stock market too as Coinbase and Microstrategy are both in Top 5 most traded stocks today
- Investing Bitcoin in Retirement Accounts
- Adopting Bitcoin - High-signal Bitcoin conference for builders
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- Goodstein: Bitcoin could become the next strategic reserve asset. - YouTube
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We're going to bring in medified CEO Frank Spicer and fascinating to see Bitcoin hit 82,000 or more. But how much more upside is there? You know, how much is this the, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news kind of story at the end of the day, especially when you're by the news. We were up, up, up. And then Trump got elected and they were up, up, up. But nothing's happened yet. Like everything else. OK, that's a good point. The news hasn't come yet. There's no new SEC chief yet. There is no new head of all these regulatory agencies outside of that. Music.
Frank, what do you think? Welcome in to episode 35 of This Week in Bitcoin. My name is Chris, and I'm reporting in a little early this week because, as you can tell from our intro clip, the folks are having a hard time explaining what's going on. Because the coin be pumping. The action we're seeing right now really kicked off over the weekend. While the legacy markets were closed, Bitcoin pumped and broke $86,000 Monday morning. And the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs reached $84 billion in total holding across the funds, which, incidentally, is two-thirds of the way to the gold ETF, what the gold ETF holds.
And the Bloomberg analyst, Eric B., he thought it would take like three to four years to get to the levels we're seeing almost right now with the Bitcoin ETFs. And that's on top of just the monster week they had last week. And then MicroStrategy, just a few hours ago, announced they bought another $2 billion worth of Bitcoin. So 27,200 coins. The well-known 725 billion dollar bernstein management company told their investors that they should add exposure to bitcoin quote as soon as possible and then you see the bitcoin adjacent mania taking over the stock market early this week as well with coinbase and microstrategy rallying and now in the top five most traded stocks right now.
Something that you only ever really see Tesla and NVIDIA in, which are also up today. El Salvador is $119 million in profit. And the media has gone super bullish. Just looking at MicroStrategy and thinking about, it's $50 billion now, but thinking about Michael Saylor and all along. What his viewpoint has been and how he wasn't shy at all about and he really he almost in real life has his laser eyes almost in real life but the stackers and the hodlers they must be at this point anyone who has been stacking or hodling is on top of the world oh absolutely microstrategy was the first mover in terms of adding bitcoin to their balance sheet and that's why this national crypto stockpile is so compelling so essentially the u.s government has 16 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin already on its balance sheet that it has amassed through these seizure operations.
But what Donald Trump is talking about doing is not only holding on to that, but he's also been talking to Senator Lummis and her team who put forth legislation to buy 1 million Bitcoin over the course of five years so that ultimately you get a supply of Bitcoin held by the U.S. Government that is tantamount to what we have in gold reserves, 5% of the total Bitcoin supply. So it's just, you're even seeing the U.S. government potentially leaning into this huddle strategies you were saying well either you're just really excited about your job or you're orange-pilled one or the other i i can tell how quickly you're talking how much you know about this so you eat it up she does seem to be pretty fired up about it so why why is it pumping right now is it just the trump trade is it because trump promised to buy a bunch of coins like cnbc just put out there well yeah probably in part yeah actually probably in part bitcoin is up 21 since Donald Trump won the election.
But I think it's actually much bigger than just Trump. It's really about the overall crypto market all of a sudden de-risking as a result of this election. And we are now seeing a very friendly U.S. Government. It's like a friendly U.S. government trade that we're seeing. Well, I think just taking a larger picture or a larger view of this picture, when we think about crypto and cryptocurrencies in the digital assets space, I think there is a good mixture of winners and losers. And I think a lot of the headlines are going to the spot market. But one of the things that everyone should appreciate is that the crypto industry is going to be met with an administration that is more crypto friendly, that's going to lead to lesser regulation or lesser hurdles that should lead to greater adoption of cryptocurrencies within our financial institution.
So I think in this space, you know, whomever the manager is having that active view to sort of decipher where regulatory headwinds and tailwinds might be as this industry continues to mature and become a larger part of the financial marketplace. So I think this is something that should be on everyone's radar. I know some of the spot market gets a lot of the headlines, but there's a lot of potential opportunity beneath the surface, particularly in that ecosystem supporting overall digital assets. Yeah, things like the Coinbase stock and MicroStrategy. Now, what he's kind of saying there is that the market is factoring in a new regulatory climate around cryptocurrency.
And as a result, crypto in general, not just Bitcoin, but crypto in general is going through another price discovery mode after such a major shift. So if you imagine something that was really murky and unknown now goes from, well, Gary Gensler is going out and it seems like the shit coins are going to get to pump. Investors are excited about that and they're going to be searching for the next correct market price for Bitcoin in this environment for a little bit. And yeah, of course, there is the Trump trade factor as well. Yeah. So, Scott, so much of this record surge in the crypto market comes down to four promises that Trump made to the industry. On day one, he says he'll fire SEC chair Gary Gensler.
That's very likely why you're seeing stocks embroiled in lawsuits with the regulator surging. Coinbase up around 20 percent today after ending last week 50 percent higher. Second thing here, the repeal of Saab 121, which is this niche accounting rule from the SEC that actually stands in the way of banks custodying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Trump also wants to launch a national crypto stockpile and take 16 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin that the government already holds and permanently take it out of supply. And finally, I've talked to several Bitcoin miners, the CEOs from these companies behind. They are having closed door meetings with Trump.
They say that he's promising heavy investment in the rapid build out of energy production and transmission infrastructure across the country. These mining stocks seem double digit percentage gains. That's a little bit of original reporting that she just added there. And that may be a factor in a bit of this is that Trump made the claim that he wants all the Bitcoin to be mined in America, which of course is impossible, but perhaps the sentiment is being well received. I postulated that we might see the market react negatively to Trump's plan around tariffs because there could be some second and third order effects there.
However, it seems like this is overall a market that trusts that Trump won't screw with the stock market too much. This is a clip that I'll play for you here because I just thought the analysis, I don't know if I agree with it 100%. I'd like you to hear it and tell me what you think. Joining us now, Jeremy Siegel, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and Chief Economist at Wisdom Tree. Jeremy, it's good to see you. I think we spoke to you recently. Reading some of your notes this morning, I think what I drew from these is that the markets are so important to Trump that the markets could preclude him from doing some of the more draconian things that he's talked about versus him doing the things first and then seeing how the markets react.
So you think that the markets could actually dictate Trump's policies? Absolutely, Joe. I mean, President Trump is the most pro-stock market president we have had in our history. He measured his success in his first term by how well the stock market did. So, you know, it seems to me very unlikely that he's going to implement policies that are going to be bad for the stock market. And in addition, the bond market, you know, we're beginning to talk about the bond vigilantes again. I thought what happened on Wednesday after we won, when those yields went up, was a shot across the bow saying, hey, you know, just watch out what you do. We're there.
And all the tax cuts you promised, we're very skeptical unless there's other structural changes that are going to happen. So both the bond market and the stock market are going to be really big constraints on, you know, many of Trump's programs. That said, I mean, you know, you know, because he's taken the House, Senate and presidency, I think an extension of his 2017 tax cuts looks pretty much like a slam dunk. But the expansion to all his other tax cuts is certainly going to be much more difficult. I'd be curious to know what you think out there listening. I don't know if I completely agree, but I do think the previous Trump administration was definitely impacted by the performance of the stock market. And it was a metric he paid close attention to.
And I could see that exact metric being the thing that kind of reels him in on some of the tariffs. Perhaps instead of 60 percent tariffs, you know, it's 10 percent tariffs and things like that. But I'd be curious to know if you think if that's a if that's a buffer there, if that's a good thing, if that's a check boosted and let me know. But there's other things besides just these new policies, the de-risking of crypto. Of course, there is a larger market that's looking for a safe hedge play. 55% of government spending now goes to unproductive areas such as the interest payment. And there is a just dramatic rapid increase in interest payments, and it has been just skyrocketing over the last three years.
Interest payments are now a share of federal revenue as a share of federal revenue have doubled since 2021. They've hit 17.9 percent in Q3 of 2024, which is the most since 1993. The reality is the government, the U.S. government needs lower rates. The market knows this, and they know that means that we're going to have, even though the market's ripping, the stock market's great, S&P's great, Bitcoin's great, real estate's doing fine, everything's ripping. No, not everything, but everything they pay attention to, and they're still lowering rates. Why? Because the government needs lower interest rates for their debt.
Data released by the IMF projects U.S. government spending is set to reach $13 trillion in 2029, which is about double where we're at right now. So it's probably going to be more than that. Let's be real. The U.S. government also posted its third largest budget deficit in history last month, reaching $1.8 trillion, which works out to be about 6.4% of GDP now. So we're at a total federal deficit of $35.9 trillion. We're just an inch away, one imperial inch away from $40 trillion. So that's the background macro factor that is at play that cannot be changed, that has been set in stone.
That is also low-key driving the demand for Bitcoin. Retail has still been asleep so far, mostly. We're now starting to see Google search traffic just begin to tick up pretty sharply around Bitcoin. One week ago, the Coinbase app globally was ranked 484 in the App Store. Today, in the Apple App Store, it's ranked 70th. So it's gone from 484 to 70th worldwide. Clearly, some interest is beginning to bubble up, but we're not quite there yet. In CoinDesk, Andy Baer points out, there's probably some signs we could still see some long-term runway here for the price.
Maybe be more realistic outcome. Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that we always have to remember about Bitcoin is those five percenters, right? The people who spend five percent of their investment time thinking about Bitcoin, that's much less than me. And maybe maybe maybe the rest of the viewers are in that category. Many of them just really haven't engaged yet. So I think part of the upward pressure is that adoption will continue. It'll be Bitcoin, of course, is a bigger breadth story. But that's one thing that other assets maybe that have capped momentum don't have.
There's so much momentum possibility based on just the sheer fact that adoption is still at an early stage. And also that the president mentions Bitcoin a lot, right? Or the president-elect mentions Bitcoin. Current president does mention Bitcoin a lot. But just that kind of repeating kind of chorus of this is something interesting, I think, will bring a lot of new people in. And we have a long way to go with a limited supply of Bitcoin. All right. I want to know, are you getting people asking you about Bitcoin now? Boosted and tell me. Still nothing? No bites? Or are people starting to ask?
And if they do ask, what is your policy on helping those folks? Do you give the solutions, things to try out? Or have you just noped out at this point? And I'm wondering, too, is anybody proactively orange pill in people at this point? Or is the audience gotten so cynical that you don't even talk to people about it unless they approach you first? As the price pumps, I've noticed a few more people are sending me messages these days asking me the best way to buy some Bitcoin. And I'm wondering if you're seeing the same thing or not.
We'll do a little kind of, you know, informal study of the audience, I suppose, because I suspect maybe some of you are seeing a bump up, which may and maybe that'll increase if the price continues to increase. Because historically Bitcoin's price as it increases has been. Music. All right, coming up, your boost, a great project update, some reflections on adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador, and a final clip of the week you will not want to miss. So before we get there, if you'd like to support the show while you're stacking sats with River, that's the company I recommend, which is a Bitcoin-only company that has proof of reserves, has a beautiful interface, and lets you withdraw over lightning and DCA at the amounts you want.
Yeah, that's River, and I have an affiliate link in the show notes. I think no matter what the price is, you should always be DCAing a little bit into Bitcoin, even if it's just five bucks a day or whatever it is. Go put that money in there over at River. I got a link in the show notes. You can stack sats and help the show stack sats at the same time. If you want to spend your sats, do it over the Lightning Network and use the Bitcoin company. Thebitcoincompany.com. Use the promo code Jupiter. You get bonus sats. The show gets bonus sats.
I have no official relationship with these companies. I just like and use them both and recommend them to you. and it's a great way while you're getting yourself. Music. Something to support the show. And we do have a nice batch of boosts to get into today. And Bite Bandit is our baller booster with a beautiful 115,000 sets. You'll have to let me know if you can hear in the background, there is somebody outside playing the bagpipes. So we have a little bit of bagpipe music going along in the background. You might be able to hear it. Bite Bitten writes, so Bite Bitten, this music's for you. I'm going to try boosting as I listen for a change on the Bitcoin price talk.
I'm going to give you the same answer I give about NixOS. If you think it's a big deal and deserves a spot in the episode, then I want to hear it. I listen and boost to the show because I value the things you think are important. If price is the big story and you think it belongs in the show, then bring it on. I appreciate that bite. Often my default is that perspective. But I know there are some topics that people don't love a lot of. And so, you know, I kind of try to meter it a little bit there. But I feel like the, actually I haven't even mentioned the price. I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't even mentioned the price of Bitcoin this episode.
I mentioned that where it's gotten to a few times, but I haven't mentioned what the current price is. You know, just not really the focus. It's more explaining why we're seeing the price action this episode. But when we get to the state of the network, I'll get to the price as I record. He goes on to say, I just remembered you asked last week what was some of the most important things. So I wanted to make sure I answered, but my stats were where my mouth is. I would love longer episodes. Truly, I cannot get enough of TWIB. You have the best Bitcoin content that is consistently high quality. I don't care how you do it. Every episode is a banger.
This show and Broken Money opened my eyes and changed my life for the better. I only know about Broken Money because you recommend episode one, I believe. If Twib was as long as the LUP member feed, I'd probably still be into it. More than anything, the point is I wanted to boost it across. Whatever you do, just please don't go shorter. What really is driven by the content, but message received. Also, thank you for sending some stats to our artist. Your support, along with others, put One Night from Daddy Nat at the top of the podcast index charts. So thank you very much for that. It was really nice to see that.
Because that song's been out for a minute. So it's nice to see it get to number one. Ready, one, take four, comes in with 30,000 sets. And you know what? I think there might be some Froot Loops in that drawer. Oh my God, this drawer is filled with Froot Loops. I thought so. I've been MIA for a while due to, you know, live stuff. So I'm catching up here with some value. Thanks for the great content, as always. Thank you, Ready. I was missing you. And it is nice to hear you and have you check in. I hope everything's going all right, and nice to have you back on board. Wine Eagle comes in with 25,000 sats. Just pump the brakes right there.
Oh, it's six boosts, buddy. It is six boosts. Let's hear it good, buddy. All right. So it's a bunch of no messages. There's no messages in there, but a bunch of boosts from Breeze. Thank you, Wine Eagle. It's nice to know you're still out there. After stirring the pot, it's good to hear from you. I appreciate that value. Mirror Mortals Podcast. It's been a long time since I've heard from them. Is in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats. Oh, I do think the price talk is, very briefly, around the fun meme numbers and whatnot. Kind of boring, useless for a bunch of us, though, because, you know what, our price is denominated in Australian dollars.
Do you actually call it dollars? Australian dollars? He goes on to say, oh, and I had a chat with Brian of London about Hive a couple of years ago, where he talks about the history in Takeover. Wouldn't you believe it? it involves Mr. Squeaky Clean, Justin's son. Really? Really? Okay, I'll have to dig that up. Thanks, mere mortals. And it's great to hear from you. Hope things are going well. Appreciate that. Grounded Grid comes in with 3,600 sats. I have a question about the actual size of the blockchain on disk. I'm putting together a Bitcoin node and I actually had to buy disk.
The blockchain is huge and seems to be growing every day. Do you ever see the storage space required becoming a cost-prohibitive barrier for the general public and hosting. Has anyone discussed this already? Grounded Grid, you're kind of getting at part of the core argument of the block size war. And when you increase the size of the block size, you make it harder and harder for folks to participate. And that was one of the arguments for keeping the block sizes smaller. Now, I know initially, especially when it's syncing, it seems massive. But you know, man, I've got like three nodes that I run.
And over time, the disk is, I'd say it's probably only increased by 100 gigs or so in the two years. Maybe 200. I haven't really followed it super closely. For all of them, I just allocated two terabytes. And I don't think any of them are over a terabyte yet. So it kind of depends on your perspective, right? Because it's a worldwide ledger for Bitcoin. So it's going to be pretty busy. It's going to have a lot of stuff in there. It's kind of amazing. It works like it does. But tell me what you're seeing. Maybe you got something unusual going on. I don't know. I don't know.
But appreciate the boost. Thank you very much. Listener Jeff comes in with 12,100 sats. Oh, this is Cajun spicy. Seeing the Bitcoin price spike always has me getting a little bit of FOMO. I've always thought, damn, I should have bought more. Yeah, well, man, that's the thing about Bitcoin. Realistically, I spent what was in my budget. The show has helped me bake or break, I'm sorry, from that kind of thinking as I understand money and what Bitcoin will do for me now in the long term. So thank you. If I don't want to exorbitate price spikes every news week, I don't want to, if the price doesn't get exorbitate and spike every news week, but I think it would be fun to have some of that reported in the show for historical reasons.
Then maybe put it in the show notes the weeks you don't talk about it. Huh, that's an interesting idea. Those of us who really want to know it could just look at the show notes for. That week. Or we have widgets on our phone already. Yeah, well put. But, yeah, I think the state of the network was kind of a nice compromise at the end just so we have it in there. So when we're looking back at these episodes, right? I mean, think about this now. If I had been doing this, now I almost regret it. Now that we're over 80K, I kind of wish when things were like at like 30, you know, I wish that I was putting that in the show because that was just a few months ago.
Oh, well, about a year ago, you know? So it already would feel kind of wild just if you started with episode one right now. It'd be kind of interesting to have that information. But I agree, you wouldn't want every show about it. My God, it wouldn't matter, be irrelevant. Thank you, PJ. Appreciate it. Vitar's back with a row of ducks. Man, I feel like I'm hearing from some folks that we haven't heard from from a long time, and that feels real good. He has nothing really to say other than he sends me a peace sign. Live long and prosper. Thank you, Patard. It's great to hear from you.
Mooder Knight's back. Also, another long-timer I haven't heard from him for a minute with 10,101 sats. Just pump the brakes right there. Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days. And he sent me in. Oh, right. For the binary boost. Let's give this a little. This was a little long. 0101100101 what does it mean it's just gibberish, see that's pretty good but it's a little long and the problem is with the bit you could cut it down the only reason the gag works is because bender sees the binary number in the mirror so it's a visual gig, too. So it's kind of tricky, you know, if you think about it. But that might almost work. That's now under consideration.
Thank you, Moon Knight. I still think we could do better for a binary boost sound effect if anybody has some suggestions. But that one's high up there on the list. Appreciate the boost, too. Orange Bill Lawyer's back. Orange Bill Lawyer 25 is back with $3,833. The traders love the vol. So I'm starting to use Fold for bill pay as well. What are your thoughts on going on a Bitcoin standard by putting at least a portion of your direct deposit into Bitcoin through Fold and then selling it when your bill comes due. Not sure if they have the best exchange rate, but they do offer zero trading fee.
Well, I like it until the selling part because every transaction you sell on Bitcoin, every Bitcoin you sell with Fold is going to be a KYC taxable event. So, you know, it kind of sucks because you're basically putting a premium after. It depends on your state, right? Here in Washington state, you can sell a certain amount of Bitcoin before you hit a capital gains threshold and then you got to start paying, like, I don't know. I don't know what it is, like 47% or whatever it is, 30% or whatever. You'd have to know what your local state law is on cap gains and when it kicks in to know if that would actually be a viable solution.
But I do think they offer great, great deals for buying Bitcoin. I'm going to investigate Morsky's. They're selling Bitcoin if that ever kind of comes up for me. But right now, I'm basically just using it to stack sats with bill pay. And when you use the debit card, you also get sats back. So that's the fold card. I'll put a link. I'll put my affiliate link in the show notes this week. Let me write that down because I think it's something to experiment with because I think as the price of Bitcoin gets higher, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to low-key earn sats because just like the Bitcoin fountain, which used to give like five Bitcoin away just for going to a web page, which I got once, these kind of sat back deals will eventually go away when Bitcoin gets too scarce and too expensive.
So you can do things like the fold card, and you can stack sats with transactions and bill pay. You can do things like Fountain FM, and you can earn sats while you listen, and you can get sats by people liking your comments. You could use sites like Stacker News. When you get involved there and you post good content and you interact with folks in a way that is beneficial to the community, people zap you. You could get on Noster and you could post great content on Noster and people will zap you. You could create a podcast. And if you make a great podcast, people will boost you. There are ways to kind of stack sats that are not like going to make you a millionaire.
But if you're in it for the long haul and you're patient and you believe in Bitcoin's potential long term, there are low key ways today to earn those sets. Gemini, I don't like them as much, but the Gemini exchange also offers a MasterCard or something. I think it is one of their options is sats back on your purchases. So if you have some large purchases that you need to put on a credit card, a Gemini credit card will give you sats back. The fold card is a debit card. So if you're doing debit transactions, you have to transfer money in there. You know, so what I've done is I've set up an automatic deposit from my regular bank account and it sends over the amount, well, actually twice a month, it sends over what I need to cover my bills.
And then all of my bills come out of my Fold account and then I get sats back for every bill that I pay. It's not a lot, you know, it could be like a $400 bill and I'll get like 1,800 sats, right, or 2,000 sats. But it's worth it to me because I'm sort of trying, I also use Fountain, I also use Stacker News, right? I'm trying to low key stack sats as I can because I can only throw so much fiat at Bitcoin and I'm getting less and less sats for it. So I'm trying to increase my overall yield of sats. And these are just ways of doing that. Or you could put out value for value music.
Orange Pill Lawyer also sent 500 sats to our artist last week. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Ace Ackerman's back with Aeroa Ducks. Here's a monthly review of. Oh, he says, you know, a monthly review of the Bitcoin price action could be adequate. Is this a rebuke of, I'm asking Ace, is this a rebuke of the state of the network at the end of the show? Do we not like that? Or are you saying just in general, like if I was just for price talk? I'd like to know. Because I think the state of the network, because it's only like, you know, 20, 30 seconds, seems like a pretty good compromise.
But perhaps these last two boosts are actually a rebuke. Discuss amongst yourselves. I'd like to know. How it comes, and thank you for the boost, how it comes in with 10,000 sats. It's over 9,000! Yeah. On Price Talk, I don't think we should shy away from it. I know some people follow it for the gains, but I follow it as a march of progress. If not the dollar price, then something else. Eggs, homes, oil, dollar just seems like the clearest point in history. I also think the SATs to dollar ratio is extremely interesting. I think that's a good one, too. But you're right. Oil, you know, price it in oil could be interesting. That's not a bad way to go.
Thanks, Halleck. Although I think oil is going to be going down. Energy, I think, in general, investments are going to probably take a bit of a hit if the U.S. is going to crank up the oil machine. Right? Like, I have zero plays outside of Bitcoin and Bitcoin-adjacent stuff, except I have a little tiny bit of a uranium ETF. Because I thought, you know, nukes, Bitcoin mining, AI, uranium, right? So like a couple of years ago, where I saw where things were going, I picked up a tiny bit of a uranium ETF. Ever since Trump won, that thing's down. So the only thing I've got that's up is Bitcoin. Should have just stuck with the Bitcoin. Gene Bean's back, and he's got 2,048 sats.
Hello, Gene Bean. Nice to see you, another long-timer. Do you have any experience with IRA based on Bitcoin? I was reading over at Investopedia, and I'd like to get your take. So not personally, but I do know that there are a couple of really good resources around this. Unchained Capital has some good stuff. SWAN has some good information around Bitcoin, IRAs. Rivermite 2, let me check real quick for you. Yes, they do. In fact, this is the one I've actually, now that I've seen this, I have read through this one before. I'm going to put a link to this one in the show notes for you, Gene.
This is a way that a lot of listeners go because I've asked before and they like this because of essentially the tax consequences that you can later on in life when you're ready to retire, from my understanding, from what's been explained to me. You can get access to your Bitcoin without having to take that capital gains that I was just talking about. Very, very interesting. So I will put a link to River's document on that. I think it's a great starting spot. And then also I think I read through Unchained like a year ago or so. So there's a couple of companies out there that are just set up to help you do that.
If that's your thing, it could always be a way to go. I don't know, man. I think for me, I want my Bitcoin available to be used as collateral. So I don't know if an IRA that would be possible. That's something I'd love people to chime in about. But thank you, GMB. Nice to hear from you. Thank you, everybody who boosted it. And that's our 2000 and above boost. That's kind of where my cutoff is just for runtime on the show. But I read and keep all of them. And a special shout out to everybody who streams sets. There were 44 of you this week together. You collectively stacked 43,362 sets just by streaming.
As you listen, when you bring that together with all of our boosters, we'll be right back. This is actually really not bad at all, especially considering it's an early show this week. The show stacked 265,909 sats. I'm pretty happy with that, considering we're out early. Thank you, everybody, for supporting the show. I work really hard on it, and the value we get back directly motivates me. I'll tell you what, on the weeks we don't have a very good week, I'm thinking, why did I work so hard? And on these weeks, I'm like, heck yeah, they appreciate it. They feel it. They get it. They're with me. And it does create a sense of community around a show as well.
And it's something I think the podcasters don't think about. This is a young show, and there's already such a sense of community around it because of your support and because of your messages. If you'd like to boost the show, send a little value back our way. You can do it with a podcast app like Fountain FM or Podverse or Cast-O-Matic or many others listed at podcastapps.com. They're all part of the podcasting 2.0 revolution. So when you get one of those new apps, not only do you get to boost, but you also get chapters and a transcript for this show. We could do fancy things like I could insert images and links into the chapters when it's absolutely necessary. I don't do it often, but I do it from time to time.
And then additionally, if we ever have like a live event or anything like that, you don't have to worry about missing it because it'll be right there in your podcast app of choice. And of course, that boost button is there, too. And it's all an open source, open standard driven by a community of passionate people and developers using sats to move value across the network. Thank you, everybody who participates. Really, really appreciate it. And give yourself a nice round of applause, too. It's nice to hear from some of you long-timers out there. Thanks for checking in. Guys you guys okay i got some i got some stuff i want to talk about with adopting bitcoin.
Adopting bitcoin in el salvador is going on right now and i went to the conference last year el salvador being the first country to adopt bitcoin i just i wanted to go see it you know i just i just really wanted to go i wanted to see the state of bitcoin adoption were people really using it or was it all hype? And I wanted to see just the state of the country. I'd heard so much about Pichelli and the crime and the crackdown. I wanted to see how things really were. And I also wanted to go to a conference in a country like El Salvador. You know, like I've always gone in rich Western nations. What is a conference like in El Salvador? Well, it was amazing.
The pre-party that they had for the event folks because the Bitcoin dad and I hosted the open source track was absolutely fantastic. You know, they brought a crew out that was just cooking stuff over fire and just delicious. And then the actual conference itself was at a beautiful hotel, like anywhere in the West. Absolutely gorgeous. And I got to meet people who had no interest in Bitcoin because you travel around, you know, and everything's by Uber and stuff like that or whatever. And then you meet people that are just learning Bitcoin. And, you know, once they realized we knew Bitcoin, they had all kinds of questions for us.
I think the ones that impacted me the most is I met some El Salvadorians who their entire for the history of their entire family for generations now going back like 50 plus years. Never had any savings, never any life savings to their family's name. And now with Bitcoin, for the first time ever, they're actually saving money. But my personal biggest moment with Bitcoin in El Salvador was when I was buying breakfast one day of the conference. First of all, it was like a small breakfast, but it cost, I think, if I recall, exactly a row of ducks.
I think, if I recall, it was 2,222 sats. So that was pretty incredible. I was like, wow, breakfast for a row of ducks. Some booster just bought me breakfast. Thank you. But what was really neat about it is I paid from my self-hosted node that was back in Seattle to their self-hosted node in El Salvador all over Lightning, and it happened instantly. And that moment right there really won Lightning a lot of good favor with me, at least. I know there's been more and more like kind of anti-Lightning sentiment online. That moment where I used my self-hosted node and I paid to their self-hosted node and it all worked.
It made me realize that our solution, when we go to a point of sales type experience, it really does need to be better and faster than what Visa and MasterCard can offer today. And the reality is, Lightning does make that possible right now. And I mean, there's other things out there. I'm sure you could do with Fat of Mint or probably even Liquid. Well, maybe. But Lightning was so incredible. And the fact that all that worked was a pretty unique experience. So I miss being there this year. And I hope everybody's having a great time at Adopting Bitcoin. Music.
Well speaking of the lightning network it's time for some project updates and our first one is zeus wallet 0.9.2 and this was the wallet i was using in el salvador to do that transaction and now they have added improved bolt 12 support and improved external hardware wallet and signer support. I think one of the latest cold cards is now added in there. And so you can add a physical hardware wallet to the Zeus app on your Android device, which the Zeus app is capable of being an entire lightning node in your pocket if you need, or it can manage an existing node that you run somewhere else.
They are really, really pushing this app forward. And depending on how you use it, its simplicity can almost be deceiving. Zeus is the absolute star of the lightning on-chain world. You can go from full independent node to operating with something that's already existing, like an AlbiHub. So Zeus Wallet 0.9.2 is out. Also, RoboSats version 0.72 Alpha is out. And yes, it's an alpha, but there's something really neat in here that I think you should know about. If you're not familiar, RoboSats is a lightning-based solution to anonymously non-KYC buy Bitcoin and sell your Bitcoin.
And 072 Alpha lets users test the Noster global order books by enabling the option in the configuration tab. It's only available in the web version, but it'll be in the mobile app in upcoming releases. So you can use sort of the decentralized aspect of Noster with RoboSats to create a global order book. And to me, that is brilliant. They're also working on future implementations for payouts and claiming your sats using Nostra identities. It's really exciting stuff. And RoboSats gets a big plus one from the show here. And then last, oh, not quite last, almost last, Fountain, the Fountain podcast app.
Version 1.1.6 is now live for iOS and Android. And many, many bug fixes are in here. They're using a new audio API, which is going to save battery life. And there's been multiple performance upgrades throughout the app, and nested navigation has been added as well. It's a banger of a Fountain release. So if you haven't tried Fountain for a minute or you tried and bounced off, 1.1.6 is in here, and a lot of the bugs that JB members boosted in have been incorporated and fixed in this release. And now, last but not least, our Canadian listeners got something really special. The Bitcoin Well has added a pretty great feature. You can now buy Bitcoin directly over the Lightning Network into your Bitcoin Well account.
Cheaper transactions, faster, private. It's really slick. Basically, the core of it is faster transactions and lower fees. Bitcoinwell.com, I wish they had all of their feature set in the U.S. Because some of the stuff they offer is truly groundbreaking integration with Lightning from like all kinds of features that from in Canada that we just don't get access to here in the U.S. And they're adding this, and I'm hoping some of this comes over here. But if you're a Canadian listener and you're looking for a place to get your Bitcoin, it's looking like Bitcoin, well, is the place to do it.
And we'll have links to the update and the new lightning features in the show notes. Okay, so I'm going to play a clip of Barbara Goldstein, and you can just tell she's worth money from that name. She's a managing partner at R360. R360 is a firm that only takes clients that are worth multiple millions of dollars, right? We're talking the richest of the richest, not your 100Kers, not like your 10 millionaires, but like your multiple hundred millionaires. That's what their firm deals with. And she's specifically an envoy to the ultra-wealthy community. And it appears the ultra-wealthy community is preparing for Bitcoin with open arms.
On Trump's victory. And now let's find out what wealthy investors think with Barbara Goodstein, managing partner at R360, an ultra-wealthy community for centi-millionaires. Barbara, good morning. Great to have you here. So last time you were here, you wore red. You said it was by accident. This time you said it was on purpose. So is that a sign of what these centi-millionaires think about this election? Well, that is a sign that Trump won the election, and we think that there is a lot of big news coming. We had our market opportunities and risk meeting last week, and there's a lot of upside from this win. All right.
So these investors are excited about the win and obviously what it means going forward. One thing you say they're excited about is Bitcoin. So I mentioned to one of our earlier guests that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, it now has more assets under management than their gold ETF. Of course, we know gold is a safe haven. I know a lot of your investors, they hold gold as well. What's their sentiment when it comes to Bitcoin? And are they doing it directly or through ETF? We're very high on Bitcoin and we've been talking about Bitcoin for the past few years. We recommend doing it directly because you don't pay taxes if you're doing it directly. So that's a big difference.
But we think that Bitcoin could become the next strategic reserve asset. So the country now holds two hundred thirty two thousand Bitcoin. We think that Trump could bump that up to over a million. You heard her. She's high on Bitcoin. The whole market's high on Bitcoin. But why? Why? Besides just the fact that it could hold a million, she thinks it could actually develop into something very substantial. To over a million. So you think it would replace what gold was back in the day as like there's going to be a quote unquote Bitcoin Fort Knox essentially. Exactly. We think there's going to be it's not going to replace. It's going to augment.
So it will be incremental. Music. Let's take a look at the state of the network before we wrap up. It's an incredible one this week. As I record, the price of Bitcoin is $87,100. The price per sat is $1,148 to $1. That is a change since the last episode of 29.1% up. We're just currently 0.4% down from the all-time high. just below the all-time high. And we also appear to be reaching an all-time high of nodes on the network, at least recently. There are 19,572 reachable nodes on the network right now. The state of the Bitcoin network is very strong. Now, to wrap us up, I'm going to play a song that we first featured in episode 12 of This Week in Bitcoin.
But, you know, we had something really special happen. After last week's episode, you out there, you put One Night by Daddy Nat at the top of the podcast index charts, even though that song's been out for ages. That's just an amazing show of support for Value for Value music. And I thought maybe we could do that with another track. I'm about to re-feature a song that I played when it first came out, I think at the beginning of summer. I like it enough. I want to play it again and give it a little love, give it a little exposure. Thank you so much.
Music.
We're going to bring in medified CEO Frank Spicer and fascinating to see Bitcoin hit 82,000 or more. But how much more upside is there? You know, how much is this the, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news kind of story at the end of the day, especially when you're by the news. We were up, up, up. And then Trump got elected and they were up, up, up. But nothing's happened yet. Like everything else. OK, that's a good point. The news hasn't come yet. There's no new SEC chief yet. There is no new head of all these regulatory agencies outside of that. Music.
Frank, what do you think? Welcome in to episode 35 of This Week in Bitcoin. My name is Chris, and I'm reporting in a little early this week because, as you can tell from our intro clip, the folks are having a hard time explaining what's going on. Because the coin be pumping. The action we're seeing right now really kicked off over the weekend. While the legacy markets were closed, Bitcoin pumped and broke $86,000 Monday morning. And the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs reached $84 billion in total holding across the funds, which, incidentally, is two-thirds of the way to the gold ETF, what the gold ETF holds.
And the Bloomberg analyst, Eric B., he thought it would take like three to four years to get to the levels we're seeing almost right now with the Bitcoin ETFs. And that's on top of just the monster week they had last week. And then MicroStrategy, just a few hours ago, announced they bought another $2 billion worth of Bitcoin. So 27,200 coins. The well-known 725 billion dollar bernstein management company told their investors that they should add exposure to bitcoin quote as soon as possible and then you see the bitcoin adjacent mania taking over the stock market early this week as well with coinbase and microstrategy rallying and now in the top five most traded stocks right now.
Something that you only ever really see Tesla and NVIDIA in, which are also up today. El Salvador is $119 million in profit. And the media has gone super bullish. Just looking at MicroStrategy and thinking about, it's $50 billion now, but thinking about Michael Saylor and all along. What his viewpoint has been and how he wasn't shy at all about and he really he almost in real life has his laser eyes almost in real life but the stackers and the hodlers they must be at this point anyone who has been stacking or hodling is on top of the world oh absolutely microstrategy was the first mover in terms of adding bitcoin to their balance sheet and that's why this national crypto stockpile is so compelling so essentially the u.s government has 16 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin already on its balance sheet that it has amassed through these seizure operations.
But what Donald Trump is talking about doing is not only holding on to that, but he's also been talking to Senator Lummis and her team who put forth legislation to buy 1 million Bitcoin over the course of five years so that ultimately you get a supply of Bitcoin held by the U.S. Government that is tantamount to what we have in gold reserves, 5% of the total Bitcoin supply. So it's just, you're even seeing the U.S. government potentially leaning into this huddle strategies you were saying well either you're just really excited about your job or you're orange-pilled one or the other i i can tell how quickly you're talking how much you know about this so you eat it up she does seem to be pretty fired up about it so why why is it pumping right now is it just the trump trade is it because trump promised to buy a bunch of coins like cnbc just put out there well yeah probably in part yeah actually probably in part bitcoin is up 21 since Donald Trump won the election.
But I think it's actually much bigger than just Trump. It's really about the overall crypto market all of a sudden de-risking as a result of this election. And we are now seeing a very friendly U.S. Government. It's like a friendly U.S. government trade that we're seeing. Well, I think just taking a larger picture or a larger view of this picture, when we think about crypto and cryptocurrencies in the digital assets space, I think there is a good mixture of winners and losers. And I think a lot of the headlines are going to the spot market. But one of the things that everyone should appreciate is that the crypto industry is going to be met with an administration that is more crypto friendly, that's going to lead to lesser regulation or lesser hurdles that should lead to greater adoption of cryptocurrencies within our financial institution.
So I think in this space, you know, whomever the manager is having that active view to sort of decipher where regulatory headwinds and tailwinds might be as this industry continues to mature and become a larger part of the financial marketplace. So I think this is something that should be on everyone's radar. I know some of the spot market gets a lot of the headlines, but there's a lot of potential opportunity beneath the surface, particularly in that ecosystem supporting overall digital assets. Yeah, things like the Coinbase stock and MicroStrategy. Now, what he's kind of saying there is that the market is factoring in a new regulatory climate around cryptocurrency.
And as a result, crypto in general, not just Bitcoin, but crypto in general is going through another price discovery mode after such a major shift. So if you imagine something that was really murky and unknown now goes from, well, Gary Gensler is going out and it seems like the shit coins are going to get to pump. Investors are excited about that and they're going to be searching for the next correct market price for Bitcoin in this environment for a little bit. And yeah, of course, there is the Trump trade factor as well. Yeah. So, Scott, so much of this record surge in the crypto market comes down to four promises that Trump made to the industry. On day one, he says he'll fire SEC chair Gary Gensler.
That's very likely why you're seeing stocks embroiled in lawsuits with the regulator surging. Coinbase up around 20 percent today after ending last week 50 percent higher. Second thing here, the repeal of Saab 121, which is this niche accounting rule from the SEC that actually stands in the way of banks custodying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Trump also wants to launch a national crypto stockpile and take 16 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin that the government already holds and permanently take it out of supply. And finally, I've talked to several Bitcoin miners, the CEOs from these companies behind. They are having closed door meetings with Trump.
They say that he's promising heavy investment in the rapid build out of energy production and transmission infrastructure across the country. These mining stocks seem double digit percentage gains. That's a little bit of original reporting that she just added there. And that may be a factor in a bit of this is that Trump made the claim that he wants all the Bitcoin to be mined in America, which of course is impossible, but perhaps the sentiment is being well received. I postulated that we might see the market react negatively to Trump's plan around tariffs because there could be some second and third order effects there.
However, it seems like this is overall a market that trusts that Trump won't screw with the stock market too much. This is a clip that I'll play for you here because I just thought the analysis, I don't know if I agree with it 100%. I'd like you to hear it and tell me what you think. Joining us now, Jeremy Siegel, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and Chief Economist at Wisdom Tree. Jeremy, it's good to see you. I think we spoke to you recently. Reading some of your notes this morning, I think what I drew from these is that the markets are so important to Trump that the markets could preclude him from doing some of the more draconian things that he's talked about versus him doing the things first and then seeing how the markets react.
So you think that the markets could actually dictate Trump's policies? Absolutely, Joe. I mean, President Trump is the most pro-stock market president we have had in our history. He measured his success in his first term by how well the stock market did. So, you know, it seems to me very unlikely that he's going to implement policies that are going to be bad for the stock market. And in addition, the bond market, you know, we're beginning to talk about the bond vigilantes again. I thought what happened on Wednesday after we won, when those yields went up, was a shot across the bow saying, hey, you know, just watch out what you do. We're there.
And all the tax cuts you promised, we're very skeptical unless there's other structural changes that are going to happen. So both the bond market and the stock market are going to be really big constraints on, you know, many of Trump's programs. That said, I mean, you know, you know, because he's taken the House, Senate and presidency, I think an extension of his 2017 tax cuts looks pretty much like a slam dunk. But the expansion to all his other tax cuts is certainly going to be much more difficult. I'd be curious to know what you think out there listening. I don't know if I completely agree, but I do think the previous Trump administration was definitely impacted by the performance of the stock market. And it was a metric he paid close attention to.
And I could see that exact metric being the thing that kind of reels him in on some of the tariffs. Perhaps instead of 60 percent tariffs, you know, it's 10 percent tariffs and things like that. But I'd be curious to know if you think if that's a if that's a buffer there, if that's a good thing, if that's a check boosted and let me know. But there's other things besides just these new policies, the de-risking of crypto. Of course, there is a larger market that's looking for a safe hedge play. 55% of government spending now goes to unproductive areas such as the interest payment. And there is a just dramatic rapid increase in interest payments, and it has been just skyrocketing over the last three years.
Interest payments are now a share of federal revenue as a share of federal revenue have doubled since 2021. They've hit 17.9 percent in Q3 of 2024, which is the most since 1993. The reality is the government, the U.S. government needs lower rates. The market knows this, and they know that means that we're going to have, even though the market's ripping, the stock market's great, S&P's great, Bitcoin's great, real estate's doing fine, everything's ripping. No, not everything, but everything they pay attention to, and they're still lowering rates. Why? Because the government needs lower interest rates for their debt.
Data released by the IMF projects U.S. government spending is set to reach $13 trillion in 2029, which is about double where we're at right now. So it's probably going to be more than that. Let's be real. The U.S. government also posted its third largest budget deficit in history last month, reaching $1.8 trillion, which works out to be about 6.4% of GDP now. So we're at a total federal deficit of $35.9 trillion. We're just an inch away, one imperial inch away from $40 trillion. So that's the background macro factor that is at play that cannot be changed, that has been set in stone.
That is also low-key driving the demand for Bitcoin. Retail has still been asleep so far, mostly. We're now starting to see Google search traffic just begin to tick up pretty sharply around Bitcoin. One week ago, the Coinbase app globally was ranked 484 in the App Store. Today, in the Apple App Store, it's ranked 70th. So it's gone from 484 to 70th worldwide. Clearly, some interest is beginning to bubble up, but we're not quite there yet. In CoinDesk, Andy Baer points out, there's probably some signs we could still see some long-term runway here for the price.
Maybe be more realistic outcome. Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that we always have to remember about Bitcoin is those five percenters, right? The people who spend five percent of their investment time thinking about Bitcoin, that's much less than me. And maybe maybe maybe the rest of the viewers are in that category. Many of them just really haven't engaged yet. So I think part of the upward pressure is that adoption will continue. It'll be Bitcoin, of course, is a bigger breadth story. But that's one thing that other assets maybe that have capped momentum don't have.
There's so much momentum possibility based on just the sheer fact that adoption is still at an early stage. And also that the president mentions Bitcoin a lot, right? Or the president-elect mentions Bitcoin. Current president does mention Bitcoin a lot. But just that kind of repeating kind of chorus of this is something interesting, I think, will bring a lot of new people in. And we have a long way to go with a limited supply of Bitcoin. All right. I want to know, are you getting people asking you about Bitcoin now? Boosted and tell me. Still nothing? No bites? Or are people starting to ask?
And if they do ask, what is your policy on helping those folks? Do you give the solutions, things to try out? Or have you just noped out at this point? And I'm wondering, too, is anybody proactively orange pill in people at this point? Or is the audience gotten so cynical that you don't even talk to people about it unless they approach you first? As the price pumps, I've noticed a few more people are sending me messages these days asking me the best way to buy some Bitcoin. And I'm wondering if you're seeing the same thing or not.
We'll do a little kind of, you know, informal study of the audience, I suppose, because I suspect maybe some of you are seeing a bump up, which may and maybe that'll increase if the price continues to increase. Because historically Bitcoin's price as it increases has been. Music. All right, coming up, your boost, a great project update, some reflections on adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador, and a final clip of the week you will not want to miss. So before we get there, if you'd like to support the show while you're stacking sats with River, that's the company I recommend, which is a Bitcoin-only company that has proof of reserves, has a beautiful interface, and lets you withdraw over lightning and DCA at the amounts you want.
Yeah, that's River, and I have an affiliate link in the show notes. I think no matter what the price is, you should always be DCAing a little bit into Bitcoin, even if it's just five bucks a day or whatever it is. Go put that money in there over at River. I got a link in the show notes. You can stack sats and help the show stack sats at the same time. If you want to spend your sats, do it over the Lightning Network and use the Bitcoin company. Thebitcoincompany.com. Use the promo code Jupiter. You get bonus sats. The show gets bonus sats.
I have no official relationship with these companies. I just like and use them both and recommend them to you. and it's a great way while you're getting yourself. Music. Something to support the show. And we do have a nice batch of boosts to get into today. And Bite Bandit is our baller booster with a beautiful 115,000 sets. You'll have to let me know if you can hear in the background, there is somebody outside playing the bagpipes. So we have a little bit of bagpipe music going along in the background. You might be able to hear it. Bite Bitten writes, so Bite Bitten, this music's for you. I'm going to try boosting as I listen for a change on the Bitcoin price talk.
I'm going to give you the same answer I give about NixOS. If you think it's a big deal and deserves a spot in the episode, then I want to hear it. I listen and boost to the show because I value the things you think are important. If price is the big story and you think it belongs in the show, then bring it on. I appreciate that bite. Often my default is that perspective. But I know there are some topics that people don't love a lot of. And so, you know, I kind of try to meter it a little bit there. But I feel like the, actually I haven't even mentioned the price. I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't even mentioned the price of Bitcoin this episode.
I mentioned that where it's gotten to a few times, but I haven't mentioned what the current price is. You know, just not really the focus. It's more explaining why we're seeing the price action this episode. But when we get to the state of the network, I'll get to the price as I record. He goes on to say, I just remembered you asked last week what was some of the most important things. So I wanted to make sure I answered, but my stats were where my mouth is. I would love longer episodes. Truly, I cannot get enough of TWIB. You have the best Bitcoin content that is consistently high quality. I don't care how you do it. Every episode is a banger.
This show and Broken Money opened my eyes and changed my life for the better. I only know about Broken Money because you recommend episode one, I believe. If Twib was as long as the LUP member feed, I'd probably still be into it. More than anything, the point is I wanted to boost it across. Whatever you do, just please don't go shorter. What really is driven by the content, but message received. Also, thank you for sending some stats to our artist. Your support, along with others, put One Night from Daddy Nat at the top of the podcast index charts. So thank you very much for that. It was really nice to see that.
Because that song's been out for a minute. So it's nice to see it get to number one. Ready, one, take four, comes in with 30,000 sets. And you know what? I think there might be some Froot Loops in that drawer. Oh my God, this drawer is filled with Froot Loops. I thought so. I've been MIA for a while due to, you know, live stuff. So I'm catching up here with some value. Thanks for the great content, as always. Thank you, Ready. I was missing you. And it is nice to hear you and have you check in. I hope everything's going all right, and nice to have you back on board. Wine Eagle comes in with 25,000 sats. Just pump the brakes right there.
Oh, it's six boosts, buddy. It is six boosts. Let's hear it good, buddy. All right. So it's a bunch of no messages. There's no messages in there, but a bunch of boosts from Breeze. Thank you, Wine Eagle. It's nice to know you're still out there. After stirring the pot, it's good to hear from you. I appreciate that value. Mirror Mortals Podcast. It's been a long time since I've heard from them. Is in with a row of ducks, 2,222 sats. Oh, I do think the price talk is, very briefly, around the fun meme numbers and whatnot. Kind of boring, useless for a bunch of us, though, because, you know what, our price is denominated in Australian dollars.
Do you actually call it dollars? Australian dollars? He goes on to say, oh, and I had a chat with Brian of London about Hive a couple of years ago, where he talks about the history in Takeover. Wouldn't you believe it? it involves Mr. Squeaky Clean, Justin's son. Really? Really? Okay, I'll have to dig that up. Thanks, mere mortals. And it's great to hear from you. Hope things are going well. Appreciate that. Grounded Grid comes in with 3,600 sats. I have a question about the actual size of the blockchain on disk. I'm putting together a Bitcoin node and I actually had to buy disk.
The blockchain is huge and seems to be growing every day. Do you ever see the storage space required becoming a cost-prohibitive barrier for the general public and hosting. Has anyone discussed this already? Grounded Grid, you're kind of getting at part of the core argument of the block size war. And when you increase the size of the block size, you make it harder and harder for folks to participate. And that was one of the arguments for keeping the block sizes smaller. Now, I know initially, especially when it's syncing, it seems massive. But you know, man, I've got like three nodes that I run.
And over time, the disk is, I'd say it's probably only increased by 100 gigs or so in the two years. Maybe 200. I haven't really followed it super closely. For all of them, I just allocated two terabytes. And I don't think any of them are over a terabyte yet. So it kind of depends on your perspective, right? Because it's a worldwide ledger for Bitcoin. So it's going to be pretty busy. It's going to have a lot of stuff in there. It's kind of amazing. It works like it does. But tell me what you're seeing. Maybe you got something unusual going on. I don't know. I don't know.
But appreciate the boost. Thank you very much. Listener Jeff comes in with 12,100 sats. Oh, this is Cajun spicy. Seeing the Bitcoin price spike always has me getting a little bit of FOMO. I've always thought, damn, I should have bought more. Yeah, well, man, that's the thing about Bitcoin. Realistically, I spent what was in my budget. The show has helped me bake or break, I'm sorry, from that kind of thinking as I understand money and what Bitcoin will do for me now in the long term. So thank you. If I don't want to exorbitate price spikes every news week, I don't want to, if the price doesn't get exorbitate and spike every news week, but I think it would be fun to have some of that reported in the show for historical reasons.
Then maybe put it in the show notes the weeks you don't talk about it. Huh, that's an interesting idea. Those of us who really want to know it could just look at the show notes for. That week. Or we have widgets on our phone already. Yeah, well put. But, yeah, I think the state of the network was kind of a nice compromise at the end just so we have it in there. So when we're looking back at these episodes, right? I mean, think about this now. If I had been doing this, now I almost regret it. Now that we're over 80K, I kind of wish when things were like at like 30, you know, I wish that I was putting that in the show because that was just a few months ago.
Oh, well, about a year ago, you know? So it already would feel kind of wild just if you started with episode one right now. It'd be kind of interesting to have that information. But I agree, you wouldn't want every show about it. My God, it wouldn't matter, be irrelevant. Thank you, PJ. Appreciate it. Vitar's back with a row of ducks. Man, I feel like I'm hearing from some folks that we haven't heard from from a long time, and that feels real good. He has nothing really to say other than he sends me a peace sign. Live long and prosper. Thank you, Patard. It's great to hear from you.
Mooder Knight's back. Also, another long-timer I haven't heard from him for a minute with 10,101 sats. Just pump the brakes right there. Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days. And he sent me in. Oh, right. For the binary boost. Let's give this a little. This was a little long. 0101100101 what does it mean it's just gibberish, see that's pretty good but it's a little long and the problem is with the bit you could cut it down the only reason the gag works is because bender sees the binary number in the mirror so it's a visual gig, too. So it's kind of tricky, you know, if you think about it. But that might almost work. That's now under consideration.
Thank you, Moon Knight. I still think we could do better for a binary boost sound effect if anybody has some suggestions. But that one's high up there on the list. Appreciate the boost, too. Orange Bill Lawyer's back. Orange Bill Lawyer 25 is back with $3,833. The traders love the vol. So I'm starting to use Fold for bill pay as well. What are your thoughts on going on a Bitcoin standard by putting at least a portion of your direct deposit into Bitcoin through Fold and then selling it when your bill comes due. Not sure if they have the best exchange rate, but they do offer zero trading fee.
Well, I like it until the selling part because every transaction you sell on Bitcoin, every Bitcoin you sell with Fold is going to be a KYC taxable event. So, you know, it kind of sucks because you're basically putting a premium after. It depends on your state, right? Here in Washington state, you can sell a certain amount of Bitcoin before you hit a capital gains threshold and then you got to start paying, like, I don't know. I don't know what it is, like 47% or whatever it is, 30% or whatever. You'd have to know what your local state law is on cap gains and when it kicks in to know if that would actually be a viable solution.
But I do think they offer great, great deals for buying Bitcoin. I'm going to investigate Morsky's. They're selling Bitcoin if that ever kind of comes up for me. But right now, I'm basically just using it to stack sats with bill pay. And when you use the debit card, you also get sats back. So that's the fold card. I'll put a link. I'll put my affiliate link in the show notes this week. Let me write that down because I think it's something to experiment with because I think as the price of Bitcoin gets higher, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to low-key earn sats because just like the Bitcoin fountain, which used to give like five Bitcoin away just for going to a web page, which I got once, these kind of sat back deals will eventually go away when Bitcoin gets too scarce and too expensive.
So you can do things like the fold card, and you can stack sats with transactions and bill pay. You can do things like Fountain FM, and you can earn sats while you listen, and you can get sats by people liking your comments. You could use sites like Stacker News. When you get involved there and you post good content and you interact with folks in a way that is beneficial to the community, people zap you. You could get on Noster and you could post great content on Noster and people will zap you. You could create a podcast. And if you make a great podcast, people will boost you. There are ways to kind of stack sats that are not like going to make you a millionaire.
But if you're in it for the long haul and you're patient and you believe in Bitcoin's potential long term, there are low key ways today to earn those sets. Gemini, I don't like them as much, but the Gemini exchange also offers a MasterCard or something. I think it is one of their options is sats back on your purchases. So if you have some large purchases that you need to put on a credit card, a Gemini credit card will give you sats back. The fold card is a debit card. So if you're doing debit transactions, you have to transfer money in there. You know, so what I've done is I've set up an automatic deposit from my regular bank account and it sends over the amount, well, actually twice a month, it sends over what I need to cover my bills.
And then all of my bills come out of my Fold account and then I get sats back for every bill that I pay. It's not a lot, you know, it could be like a $400 bill and I'll get like 1,800 sats, right, or 2,000 sats. But it's worth it to me because I'm sort of trying, I also use Fountain, I also use Stacker News, right? I'm trying to low key stack sats as I can because I can only throw so much fiat at Bitcoin and I'm getting less and less sats for it. So I'm trying to increase my overall yield of sats. And these are just ways of doing that. Or you could put out value for value music.
Orange Pill Lawyer also sent 500 sats to our artist last week. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Ace Ackerman's back with Aeroa Ducks. Here's a monthly review of. Oh, he says, you know, a monthly review of the Bitcoin price action could be adequate. Is this a rebuke of, I'm asking Ace, is this a rebuke of the state of the network at the end of the show? Do we not like that? Or are you saying just in general, like if I was just for price talk? I'd like to know. Because I think the state of the network, because it's only like, you know, 20, 30 seconds, seems like a pretty good compromise.
But perhaps these last two boosts are actually a rebuke. Discuss amongst yourselves. I'd like to know. How it comes, and thank you for the boost, how it comes in with 10,000 sats. It's over 9,000! Yeah. On Price Talk, I don't think we should shy away from it. I know some people follow it for the gains, but I follow it as a march of progress. If not the dollar price, then something else. Eggs, homes, oil, dollar just seems like the clearest point in history. I also think the SATs to dollar ratio is extremely interesting. I think that's a good one, too. But you're right. Oil, you know, price it in oil could be interesting. That's not a bad way to go.
Thanks, Halleck. Although I think oil is going to be going down. Energy, I think, in general, investments are going to probably take a bit of a hit if the U.S. is going to crank up the oil machine. Right? Like, I have zero plays outside of Bitcoin and Bitcoin-adjacent stuff, except I have a little tiny bit of a uranium ETF. Because I thought, you know, nukes, Bitcoin mining, AI, uranium, right? So like a couple of years ago, where I saw where things were going, I picked up a tiny bit of a uranium ETF. Ever since Trump won, that thing's down. So the only thing I've got that's up is Bitcoin. Should have just stuck with the Bitcoin. Gene Bean's back, and he's got 2,048 sats.
Hello, Gene Bean. Nice to see you, another long-timer. Do you have any experience with IRA based on Bitcoin? I was reading over at Investopedia, and I'd like to get your take. So not personally, but I do know that there are a couple of really good resources around this. Unchained Capital has some good stuff. SWAN has some good information around Bitcoin, IRAs. Rivermite 2, let me check real quick for you. Yes, they do. In fact, this is the one I've actually, now that I've seen this, I have read through this one before. I'm going to put a link to this one in the show notes for you, Gene.
This is a way that a lot of listeners go because I've asked before and they like this because of essentially the tax consequences that you can later on in life when you're ready to retire, from my understanding, from what's been explained to me. You can get access to your Bitcoin without having to take that capital gains that I was just talking about. Very, very interesting. So I will put a link to River's document on that. I think it's a great starting spot. And then also I think I read through Unchained like a year ago or so. So there's a couple of companies out there that are just set up to help you do that.
If that's your thing, it could always be a way to go. I don't know, man. I think for me, I want my Bitcoin available to be used as collateral. So I don't know if an IRA that would be possible. That's something I'd love people to chime in about. But thank you, GMB. Nice to hear from you. Thank you, everybody who boosted it. And that's our 2000 and above boost. That's kind of where my cutoff is just for runtime on the show. But I read and keep all of them. And a special shout out to everybody who streams sets. There were 44 of you this week together. You collectively stacked 43,362 sets just by streaming.
As you listen, when you bring that together with all of our boosters, we'll be right back. This is actually really not bad at all, especially considering it's an early show this week. The show stacked 265,909 sats. I'm pretty happy with that, considering we're out early. Thank you, everybody, for supporting the show. I work really hard on it, and the value we get back directly motivates me. I'll tell you what, on the weeks we don't have a very good week, I'm thinking, why did I work so hard? And on these weeks, I'm like, heck yeah, they appreciate it. They feel it. They get it. They're with me. And it does create a sense of community around a show as well.
And it's something I think the podcasters don't think about. This is a young show, and there's already such a sense of community around it because of your support and because of your messages. If you'd like to boost the show, send a little value back our way. You can do it with a podcast app like Fountain FM or Podverse or Cast-O-Matic or many others listed at podcastapps.com. They're all part of the podcasting 2.0 revolution. So when you get one of those new apps, not only do you get to boost, but you also get chapters and a transcript for this show. We could do fancy things like I could insert images and links into the chapters when it's absolutely necessary. I don't do it often, but I do it from time to time.
And then additionally, if we ever have like a live event or anything like that, you don't have to worry about missing it because it'll be right there in your podcast app of choice. And of course, that boost button is there, too. And it's all an open source, open standard driven by a community of passionate people and developers using sats to move value across the network. Thank you, everybody who participates. Really, really appreciate it. And give yourself a nice round of applause, too. It's nice to hear from some of you long-timers out there. Thanks for checking in. Guys you guys okay i got some i got some stuff i want to talk about with adopting bitcoin.
Adopting bitcoin in el salvador is going on right now and i went to the conference last year el salvador being the first country to adopt bitcoin i just i wanted to go see it you know i just i just really wanted to go i wanted to see the state of bitcoin adoption were people really using it or was it all hype? And I wanted to see just the state of the country. I'd heard so much about Pichelli and the crime and the crackdown. I wanted to see how things really were. And I also wanted to go to a conference in a country like El Salvador. You know, like I've always gone in rich Western nations. What is a conference like in El Salvador? Well, it was amazing.
The pre-party that they had for the event folks because the Bitcoin dad and I hosted the open source track was absolutely fantastic. You know, they brought a crew out that was just cooking stuff over fire and just delicious. And then the actual conference itself was at a beautiful hotel, like anywhere in the West. Absolutely gorgeous. And I got to meet people who had no interest in Bitcoin because you travel around, you know, and everything's by Uber and stuff like that or whatever. And then you meet people that are just learning Bitcoin. And, you know, once they realized we knew Bitcoin, they had all kinds of questions for us.
I think the ones that impacted me the most is I met some El Salvadorians who their entire for the history of their entire family for generations now going back like 50 plus years. Never had any savings, never any life savings to their family's name. And now with Bitcoin, for the first time ever, they're actually saving money. But my personal biggest moment with Bitcoin in El Salvador was when I was buying breakfast one day of the conference. First of all, it was like a small breakfast, but it cost, I think, if I recall, exactly a row of ducks.
I think, if I recall, it was 2,222 sats. So that was pretty incredible. I was like, wow, breakfast for a row of ducks. Some booster just bought me breakfast. Thank you. But what was really neat about it is I paid from my self-hosted node that was back in Seattle to their self-hosted node in El Salvador all over Lightning, and it happened instantly. And that moment right there really won Lightning a lot of good favor with me, at least. I know there's been more and more like kind of anti-Lightning sentiment online. That moment where I used my self-hosted node and I paid to their self-hosted node and it all worked.
It made me realize that our solution, when we go to a point of sales type experience, it really does need to be better and faster than what Visa and MasterCard can offer today. And the reality is, Lightning does make that possible right now. And I mean, there's other things out there. I'm sure you could do with Fat of Mint or probably even Liquid. Well, maybe. But Lightning was so incredible. And the fact that all that worked was a pretty unique experience. So I miss being there this year. And I hope everybody's having a great time at Adopting Bitcoin. Music.
Well speaking of the lightning network it's time for some project updates and our first one is zeus wallet 0.9.2 and this was the wallet i was using in el salvador to do that transaction and now they have added improved bolt 12 support and improved external hardware wallet and signer support. I think one of the latest cold cards is now added in there. And so you can add a physical hardware wallet to the Zeus app on your Android device, which the Zeus app is capable of being an entire lightning node in your pocket if you need, or it can manage an existing node that you run somewhere else.
They are really, really pushing this app forward. And depending on how you use it, its simplicity can almost be deceiving. Zeus is the absolute star of the lightning on-chain world. You can go from full independent node to operating with something that's already existing, like an AlbiHub. So Zeus Wallet 0.9.2 is out. Also, RoboSats version 0.72 Alpha is out. And yes, it's an alpha, but there's something really neat in here that I think you should know about. If you're not familiar, RoboSats is a lightning-based solution to anonymously non-KYC buy Bitcoin and sell your Bitcoin.
And 072 Alpha lets users test the Noster global order books by enabling the option in the configuration tab. It's only available in the web version, but it'll be in the mobile app in upcoming releases. So you can use sort of the decentralized aspect of Noster with RoboSats to create a global order book. And to me, that is brilliant. They're also working on future implementations for payouts and claiming your sats using Nostra identities. It's really exciting stuff. And RoboSats gets a big plus one from the show here. And then last, oh, not quite last, almost last, Fountain, the Fountain podcast app.
Version 1.1.6 is now live for iOS and Android. And many, many bug fixes are in here. They're using a new audio API, which is going to save battery life. And there's been multiple performance upgrades throughout the app, and nested navigation has been added as well. It's a banger of a Fountain release. So if you haven't tried Fountain for a minute or you tried and bounced off, 1.1.6 is in here, and a lot of the bugs that JB members boosted in have been incorporated and fixed in this release. And now, last but not least, our Canadian listeners got something really special. The Bitcoin Well has added a pretty great feature. You can now buy Bitcoin directly over the Lightning Network into your Bitcoin Well account.
Cheaper transactions, faster, private. It's really slick. Basically, the core of it is faster transactions and lower fees. Bitcoinwell.com, I wish they had all of their feature set in the U.S. Because some of the stuff they offer is truly groundbreaking integration with Lightning from like all kinds of features that from in Canada that we just don't get access to here in the U.S. And they're adding this, and I'm hoping some of this comes over here. But if you're a Canadian listener and you're looking for a place to get your Bitcoin, it's looking like Bitcoin, well, is the place to do it.
And we'll have links to the update and the new lightning features in the show notes. Okay, so I'm going to play a clip of Barbara Goldstein, and you can just tell she's worth money from that name. She's a managing partner at R360. R360 is a firm that only takes clients that are worth multiple millions of dollars, right? We're talking the richest of the richest, not your 100Kers, not like your 10 millionaires, but like your multiple hundred millionaires. That's what their firm deals with. And she's specifically an envoy to the ultra-wealthy community. And it appears the ultra-wealthy community is preparing for Bitcoin with open arms.
On Trump's victory. And now let's find out what wealthy investors think with Barbara Goodstein, managing partner at R360, an ultra-wealthy community for centi-millionaires. Barbara, good morning. Great to have you here. So last time you were here, you wore red. You said it was by accident. This time you said it was on purpose. So is that a sign of what these centi-millionaires think about this election? Well, that is a sign that Trump won the election, and we think that there is a lot of big news coming. We had our market opportunities and risk meeting last week, and there's a lot of upside from this win. All right.
So these investors are excited about the win and obviously what it means going forward. One thing you say they're excited about is Bitcoin. So I mentioned to one of our earlier guests that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, it now has more assets under management than their gold ETF. Of course, we know gold is a safe haven. I know a lot of your investors, they hold gold as well. What's their sentiment when it comes to Bitcoin? And are they doing it directly or through ETF? We're very high on Bitcoin and we've been talking about Bitcoin for the past few years. We recommend doing it directly because you don't pay taxes if you're doing it directly. So that's a big difference.
But we think that Bitcoin could become the next strategic reserve asset. So the country now holds two hundred thirty two thousand Bitcoin. We think that Trump could bump that up to over a million. You heard her. She's high on Bitcoin. The whole market's high on Bitcoin. But why? Why? Besides just the fact that it could hold a million, she thinks it could actually develop into something very substantial. To over a million. So you think it would replace what gold was back in the day as like there's going to be a quote unquote Bitcoin Fort Knox essentially. Exactly. We think there's going to be it's not going to replace. It's going to augment.
So it will be incremental. Music. Let's take a look at the state of the network before we wrap up. It's an incredible one this week. As I record, the price of Bitcoin is $87,100. The price per sat is $1,148 to $1. That is a change since the last episode of 29.1% up. We're just currently 0.4% down from the all-time high. just below the all-time high. And we also appear to be reaching an all-time high of nodes on the network, at least recently. There are 19,572 reachable nodes on the network right now. The state of the Bitcoin network is very strong. Now, to wrap us up, I'm going to play a song that we first featured in episode 12 of This Week in Bitcoin.
But, you know, we had something really special happen. After last week's episode, you out there, you put One Night by Daddy Nat at the top of the podcast index charts, even though that song's been out for ages. That's just an amazing show of support for Value for Value music. And I thought maybe we could do that with another track. I'm about to re-feature a song that I played when it first came out, I think at the beginning of summer. I like it enough. I want to play it again and give it a little love, give it a little exposure. Thank you so much.
Music.
Welcome into 35 - HOWS YOUR WEEK?
Bitcoin Surges and Market Reactions
Looking Forward
Boosts and Listener Engagement
Bitcoin Adoption in El Salvador
Project Updates and Innovations
Insights from Wealthy Investors
State of the Network and Conclusion
