Bitcoin: The Unlikely Ally of the Dollar System. What if Bitcoin pumps don’t kill the dollar but make it stronger? How stablecoins and T-bills could entrench the dollar’s dominance, Saylor’s Bitcoin pitch to Microsoft, and why ETF fears are overblown.
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- Finally my chart got attention. And now I feel is it too late for this fractal now that everyone knows about it
- Crypto Market, Gold Could Rise if World Seeks Dollar Alternatives Amid Trump Tariffs
Trump pushes for global dollar dominance, but also embraces bitcoin - Tom Lee Predicts S&P 500 To Reach 6,300, Bitcoin To Break $100K By Year-End, Says Trump's Tariffs Can Be Effective 'Negotiating Tools'
- US dollar and bitcoin advance spurred by Trump tariff expectations | Reuters
- How painful will Trump’s tariffs be for American businesses?
- Luke Gromen: Bitcoin as "The New Oil," Trump's Tariffs, and the Death of the Dollar-Centric System - YouTube
- Digital Assets and the Treasury Market presentation
- Saylor Buys 15,400 BTC
- Microsoft Bitcoin Strategy - A Presentation by Michael Saylor - YouTube
- James Lavish says Bitcoin is “0.2% right now, at 1% of the total global assets, Bitcoin's a $9 Trillion asset and worth about $450,000, at 3% is worth $1.3 Million per BTC”
- The Potential Relationship between Biomass, Biorefineries, and Bitcoin
- Renewable energy and cryptocurrency: A dual approach to economic viability and environmental sustainability: Heliyon
- Can bitcoin mining empower energy transition and fuel sustainable development goals in the US? - ScienceDirect
- Bhutan's national Bitcoin holdings reach one-third of its GDP, could Bitcoin become the new favorite reserve asset for countries worldwide? - ChainCatcher
- BlackRock’s spot ETF surpasses 500,000 bitcoin in assets under management
- Officials are halting Bitmain units at U.S. ports, industry firms report - Blockspace Media
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Unknown:
I'd also like to comment on, you know, this recent Trump tweet, if you would want to call it, about 100 percent tariffs on the BRIC countries if they start a new currency. I find that really curious because, really, I think the biggest threat to the dollar being used as a reserve currency is Bitcoin, which we all hear, you know, Trump is a big supporter of. So it seems a little bit strange to tell them don't produce an alternative reserve currency when really Bitcoin is, you know, being talked about by many countries in the world as their alternative currency, some of them getting rid of gold and going into Bitcoin.
So I'm a little curious on how that's going to play itself out once we hear all the details. Music. Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 38. My name is Chris. Save this episode. All right? Set it aside. put it on your file server, put it in your Dropbox, whatever it is, because this is one of those episodes that's going to cover a major shift in the Overton window years before we're likely to see it happen. I don't know, three, four years, maybe. It's hard to really say. I suppose, yeah, maybe, maybe. But we'll get there. Right now, everyone thinks that Bitcoin is going to destroy the dollar.
It's going to replace the reserve status of the dollar. It's going to become the new reserve currency of the world. Maybe one day, my friends. But I'll make the case not in our lifetime. I actually think Bitcoin is about to be used to entrench the dollar system for generations to come. Maybe not the dollar itself, but the dollar system. We're not there yet. But I think we could soon be there. And I'll explain how all of that might work soon. But before we get to there, let's start with Bitcoin itself. It's been a chop week, another chop week. And man, does market sentiment turn fast.
Everyone is so bearish and sad. You know, it's just really, it's funny because it reminds me, and maybe I mentioned this last week on the show, of exactly like what it felt at 20,000. You know, we bounced against $20,000 for so long. And then when Bitcoin did finally break through, it felt like it was unstoppable. But I was doing a little bit of digging around and I found some historical data that supports this. It turns out Bitcoin has dipped at the start of every month for the last six months, every single time before it bounces back. And often it gets a major move up after all of the labor market in the US comes out, all the labor market data comes out, which begins releasing at the beginning of the month. We just got some of it today.
It wasn't great. And then I think some of the last comes out on December 6th. And then typically Bitcoin starts to pick back up in momentum. So short term, we chop and we seem to have chopped at the beginning of every month for the last six months. But then when you look at that, you go, OK, that seems to be something that is just materialized. Once we see it, it generally stops repeating. Once people realize it's happening, it just sort of stops happening. So now that we know about it, it may not be a reoccurring trend, but it has been fascinating.
But looking, so that's short term, but looking at even just the midterm, I think things are still very bullish for Bitcoin. And it's not just me. It's a crystal ball rubber over there, Tom Lee, too. Yeah, I think some of this could be, there's a lot of folks who don't want Bitcoin over $100,000, and some of it may be the exchanges themselves are concerned because there is a pretty low supply of Bitcoin available over the counter. So you have a supply shortage, and if Bitcoin makes a move above $100,000, I think there'd be a big chase.
So I'm still confident Bitcoin's going to close much higher before year-end. Before year-end? Before year-end, yeah. So break $100,000 before the end of the year? Yeah, well above $100,000 before the year ends. It's just a matter of time. It's December 2nd. It's not that long, Tom. So it's going to do it in the next four weeks. Tom makes bold, short-term calls. You're nuts. And usually they come true on a roll. All right, Tom Lee, thank you. Yeah, that's why I play his clips, because usually he is right. So while we chop, a lot of talk about tariffs.
People are terrified about tariffs. You know, apparently it's become like this new favorite toy in international politics. It started with President Trump during the campaign and he's continued it now. It's just, all right, you're pissing me off, tariff. Pissing me off, tariff. Next thing you know, somebody's on the plane or somebody's on the phone call. You know, it's sort of like an economic equivalent of a chess move. You can really kind of protect your pawns, which would be your domestic industries, and, But if you're not careful, you could end up at a checkmate with higher prices for everyone, if you'll excuse my analogy.
So there is a tight line there, and that's why the market is, what's going to happen? Is this just the art of the deal? Or is this just what's going to happen? That's what the question is, right? And I'm personally not too worried about it. I'll get into why in a little bit. But I think there is a bigger question to be asked. You just heard it in the intro clip here. The biggest threat to the dollar, a lot of people think, is Bitcoin. Now, President Trump has made it very clear to the BRICS nations that if they develop their own currency for trade, he's going to apply a 100% tariff on them.
So how do you square this? Because Trump's also pro-Bitcoin. And Bitcoin's supposed to be a threat for the dollar. I'd also like to comment, you know, this recent Trump tweet, if you would want to call it, about 100% tariffs on the BRIC countries if they start a new currency. I find that really curious because really, I think the biggest threat to the dollar being used as a reserve currency is Bitcoin. Well, maybe Jeremy, maybe Mr. Siegel from the Wharton School of Finance or whatever. I think what he's missing is the stablecoin connection. When Bitcoin pumps, stablecoins pump.
And when stablecoins pump, they create demand for T-bills, which the U.S. Government likes quite a bit. Luke Grohman was on, I think it was Natalie Burnell's Coin Stories podcast, and he summed up some of this a little bit. I'll play just a couple of clips from that, and then I'll link to her entire podcast in the show notes. What I laid out for clients three weeks ago was sort of a thought process, is how I started to think about it. It changed the way I was thinking about this Bitcoin is the new oil comment from Trump, which is, if we go back in time to late 73, early 74, oil was rose in price by 400% from October 73 to April 74.
And there is an interview that was given on CNN International by the former Saudi oil minister, Sheikh Yimani, in 2010, in which he said there was a meeting of Bilderberg Group at this Swedish island in late 73, October 73. Henry Kissinger attended and said, look, the price of oil is going up 400 percent. Get on board. And it happened. And again, this is not my words. These are the words of the former Saudi oil minister on CNN 14 years ago. He highlighted that. And the point of the U.S. Doing that was essentially to make the oil market big enough to back U.S. Deficits, to basically recycle the flows back into U.S.
Debt to basically fix the U.S. fiscal problem post-Vietnam War and after we left the gold standard. It basically put us on an oil standard of sorts. So he's saying in this narrative that the U.S. Government recognized that they could use oil as a way to essentially back the dollar and create demand for the dollar. But they needed to develop the oil market and expand it first before it would be big enough and be liquid enough to achieve that. And I think he's making the analogy that that could be where Bitcoin is at today. And when I thought back to that interview by Sheikh Yimani, in light of the Treasury report, which was really the catalyst for the rethink, and then the Paul Ryan point, and then Trump's point in August where he said, hey, maybe we'll just pay off our debt with a little Bitcoin, which was a really odd comment.
I started to wonder if Bitcoin is the new oil, that it's not that it is Bitcoin is going to be inflated like oil was so that it will inflate stable coins so that stable coins will buy a lot more treasury. Basically, Bitcoin going much, much higher. This Treasury report showed that stablecoin demand for T-bills would soar. And I'll have a link to this in the show notes. They talk about it kind of being a modest amount of T-bill demand right now, but how they could see it really kind of blowing up because all the incentives to make that happen line up.
And often with money, it's just sort of like water that goes downhill. It just takes the easiest path possible. You know, whatever treats it the best, all the incentives to make that happen in each one of us kind of line up. We need a way to weaken the dollar while strengthening the dollar system. And you look at this and you go, gosh, this checks all the boxes. If we inflate the heck out of Bitcoin, you're going to increase stable coins. You're going to increase stable coin demand for T-bills. What that will do, because Bitcoin is a global asset, is it will draw in dollars from around the world into T-bills, into stable coins.
But at the same time, the dollar will be collapsing against Bitcoin. And it will be ultimately get Bitcoin high enough to be pretty inflationary. Right. People are going to be, you know, and stimulative. So that's what I think Trump may have meant by Bitcoin is the new oil. That's that's my sort of working hypothesis. I'm waiting and looking for something that would refute that thus far in the new administration. I'm not seeing anything. I'm not seeing anything other than sort of, OK, I think I'm on to something here. What do you think of this theory? That perhaps they're playing 4D chess with the Bitcoin strategy and the idea and why they're careful about the language.
It's a reserve, right? It's a strategic reserve, the Bitcoin strategic reserve. And why they'd be willing to convert gold into Bitcoin. It kind of adds up. Stable coins could be the best thing that happened to the U.S. government. It enables access to the U.S. dollar all around the world, where other countries are suffering inflation much worse, even in the best case scenario, generally worse than the United States. Not everywhere, but generally, especially in Western economies. It gives them access to the dollar in countries that maybe don't even have a relationship with the United States and a means to directly buy those dollars.
In most countries, there is the dollar price and then there's like the blue market dollar price. They have different names but often if you go through an official exchange the government there rips you off so this also like in all these countries it creates demands for stable coins i'm not a big i don't use stable coins really i have one particular use case for stable coins and i'll tell you about it later in the episode just one one particular use case and i don't i don't because i am here in the united states i don't really need it but people outside the states Hell yeah.
It creates demand for the dollar, which strengthens the dollar. And they do without even having to create a CBDC. It can be through these privatized companies that they have leverage over. So let's bring it back to tariffs, because I think people are really spooked about this. And I'm curious to know what you think of all this so far. But if you look at what Luke is saying here, the Bitcoin strategy will strengthen the dollar. Then you have the overall tariff strategy, which could really spook the market and, you know, definitely take some steam out of a bull run type situation.
But overall, I myself, I don't find it to be very concerning. Watch the way the financial say this tactfully. I don't know if you watch the way the financial media industry covers tariffs. I mean, how can you call him pro-business, according to these people? All right, so let's go back to Tom Lee over here at CNBC. I cut this up for you. When he's pro-tariffs, because you would just think, you know, if you watch the coverage of tariffs. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's a reminder that it's good to carry a big stick. And I think tariffs have proven to be a good negotiating tool.
I think we've seen some proactive actions by other countries. And in general, I don't think the new White House wants to pursue any policies that would hurt corporate profits. So I think ultimately whatever is accomplished is going to be pro-business. That's interesting. All right. I hope everybody's listening. I think Trump's biggest detractors are worried that he has no governor, that there's going to be no limiter on Trump, that there's nothing to stop Trump now. But I disagree. I think Trump has shown us before in his previous term and has already indicated it now that the markets are the biggest driver of Trump's behavior.
And so I think that's where Tom is right, is that these tariffs will be used for negotiation. But if things get too sideways and the market really starts to take a dump, I bet Trump capitulates. That would be my suspicion. Before we leave Tom Lee altogether, though, did you catch that little bomb in an earlier clip that he just dropped in there that nobody picked up? Nobody around the table picked it up. There's two other hosts plus old Joe there asking questions, and Tom Lee just drops this bomb? Logical level, I would imagine. Yeah, I think some of this could be, there's a lot of folks who don't want Bitcoin over $100,000, and some of it may be the exchanges themselves are concerned because there is a pretty low supply of Bitcoin available over the counter.
So you have a supply shortage, and if Bitcoin makes a move above $100,000, I think there'd be a big chase. So I'm still confident Bitcoin's going to... What does that mean? He's implying the exchanges are holding the price below $100,000. How would they do this? How could the exchanges do this? Is this by putting fake buy and sell orders in ahead of time and making it look like there's big buy and sell walls? How how is this accomplished? And why does nobody ask him? Bitcoin is is is like a huge part of BlackRock's ETF profile now and many others. And Tom Lee goes out there and says that the exchanges are manipulating the price and everybody just moves on. The hell's going on.
Music. Well, I hate to say it, I really actually kind of do. The big story in Bitcoin this week remains micro strategy. And the reason why I hate to say it is because I think, Any time you pump somebody up, a single individual like Michael Saylor, it just means they have further to fall one day. And, you know, your heroes turn into villains type situation. And I just sort of part of me sort of braces as the community just sort of apes all in on micro strategy. And as a Bitcoiner, one of the things that I like about Bitcoin is that there is no third party risk to any one individual.
And there is no Satoshi CEO who, if he dies, the entire strategy falls apart. Now, that said, I think Michael Saylor is probably a very healthy man. I think in the short term, he's really cooked something up pretty crazy. And MicroStrategy last week, or at least since we got together, acquired another 15,400 Bitcoin. They are trying to stack as much as possible before 100,000. They bought $1.5 billion at approximately $95,976 per coin. They now hold over 402,100 Bitcoin. They've spent a total of $23.4 billion on their Bitcoin strategy so far. He's stacking as fast as he possibly can.
And that's why CNBC loves to talk to him. We bought it about 42 times since August of 2020 to today. From August. And at this point, the strategy is to issue stock or convertible debt of MicroStrategy and use that to buy Bitcoin. We're a Bitcoin treasury company, so we're securitizing Bitcoin. We're providing high performance equity. We're also providing convertible bonds. We've provided other kinds of bonds in the past. But primarily our job is to bridge the traditional capital markets that want bonds or they want fixed income or they want equity or they want options.
And we plug that into the crypto economy and we use Bitcoin as the vehicle to do that. That, I thought, was one of his tightest and best explanations so far. You know what I mean? Just like this good, clear, this is what we're doing, this is why it's successful. However, of course, because these guys on CNBC, you'd think they don't understand traders' minds at all. The volatility conversation always comes up. Well, what about the volatility, Michael? What about the volatility can crash? and he addresses not only that but he seems to kind of leave him stunned for a moment with one of his zinger sailor analogies with microstrategy we're 10x the volatility s&p how much of it do you want to trade so bitcoin is unique in the history of the capital markets it's the first scarcity commodity outperforming the s&p more volatility s&p that you can put on your balance Volatility at some time is not always a good thing. I mean, it's great when something's going higher.
But do you don't think that there'll be a drop or a significant drop that comes along? Have we moved past that because of the regulatory changes that have taken place? I think it'll remain volatile because it's a 24-7, 365 global asset. You can panic sell it on Saturday night. You can enthusiastically buy it on Sunday morning. That's a feature. That's not a bug. You've lived through some of the swings. But do you think we won't see the downturns like we've seen in the past just because of the changes we've seen? I think it's going to surge through the roof, and then it's going to surge to 180 and crash to 140, and people will be freaking out about it again. But let me make this one analogy.
Volatility is like fire, and some people run away from the fire. But Henry Ford put the fire into a carriage via an engine, created an entire industry, and he gave humanity wings. They didn't know what to say. I just had to leave the silence in there for a moment because they just weren't. I guess so. Yeah. Is that what he's doing? Is that what he's doing? Now, Michael Saylor has become pretty well known for pitching to the Microsoft board about adopting Bitcoin. I've covered it here on the show. And his three minute presentation is out. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's sailor in board pitch mode, which is the most low-key sailor you're ever going to hear.
It's very odd. Not very good audio for the show. Sample for you here for a second, just so you get a taste of it. Microsoft can't afford to miss the next technology wave, and Bitcoin is that wave. Bitcoin represents the greatest digital transformation of the 21st century. It represents digital capital. The global wealth is distributed across assets that provide utility and others that preserve capital. Jerome Powell, as I'm recording today, just came out during an interview on CNBC and said that, quote, Bitcoin is a competitor with gold, not the U.S. dollar. You see, this is how they all see it. Micro strategy, the Treasury, Federal Reserve, apparently, the Federal Reserve chair, apparently.
They all see it as like this great asset that doesn't compete with the dollar. And I think that's probably very likely. I could see Bitcoin being in price discovery for the rest of my lifetime. There's really no precedent. I mean, Bitcoin's been on a 14-year price discovery journey, and it's been quite volatile. So what's to say that's the stopping time? I mean, look at gold. It's been on a price discovery journey for like 2,000 years. So I wonder if maybe they are right for the short term, at least. I'm curious what you think. If we could see Bitcoin, in a way, initially strengthen these companies and strengthen the US dollar system. What Saylor argues is pretty reasonable.
A lot of people are buying Microsoft stock because of the potential, the potential of AI, the potential of enterprise integration, the potential of the GitHub platform and developer tools. They're not really buying Microsoft because of what it has today or because of what assets it holds. Right now, Microsoft trades at 20 times forward expectations. So what you're, or I'll say it, 95% of the enterprise value of Microsoft is based on expectations is the best way to say it, right? And that means it has, it's very asset poor, it's expectation rich. Why don't you actually buy assets?
And instead of being 95% on expectations, be 50% on expectations, de-risk the company, grow the enterprise value and feed the digital economy of the future. What was the response? The shareholder meeting is December 10th. We'll find out. What do you expect? Glazed eyes. I don't have any illusions that mega corporations are going to immediately embrace Bitcoin. But what I do think is it's going to become part of the conversation. And there are about 120 companies that are public that are starting to hold Bitcoin right now. There are a lot of Bitcoin standard companies like Mara, like Simler, like Metaplanet, like, you know, Rumble is getting into the business.
And as they start to buy Bitcoin and issue fixed income securities and equity securities, you're going to see demand increase. Yeah, it would probably start with the smaller tech companies that are just naturally more volatile themselves. I think that makes sense. You know, I've seen it multiple times, but I think it was just as recently as three months ago, the former speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said that the solution to the U.S. Debt crisis is stablecoins and increasing T-bill demand there. The incentives are likely to line up and i i guess i wonder you know if if the u.s government figures this out its short term seems quite bullish and i don't really have the fears that some people have about oh they're going to control bitcoin they're going to force a fork.
I i think you're uh you're forgetting how brilliant satoshi was you know for the last 13 or 14 years this thing has been freely distributed to the plebs to the people through mining through proof of work and the vast vast majority of the bitcoin supply is held by those plebs it's held by those people and black rock can buy up you know four or five percent of the supply one day the u.s government could buy up four or five percent of the supply one day but that doesn't that you know what that doesn't even that doesn't even that's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what the hodlers have you know river of course i'm a big fan of river they have some visuals out around this.
And they also include the distribution to, I guess what I'm trying to say is they try to include the potential loss of Bitcoin. So they try to have a visualization they put out on December 3rd. I'll put a link in the show notes to this. And it tries to kind of, in one visual, try to show you the distribution of Bitcoin. And businesses hold about 836,000 Bitcoin right now. ETFs hold about 1.25 million in early December. Governments around the world, about 307,000. Of course, there's still about 1.2 million to be mined. And River estimates at least, you know, somewhere around almost 1.5 to 2 million Bitcoin lost.
And you have Satoshi's stash too, which is almost a million coin. 69.9% is held just among individuals. 14.69 million Bitcoin. ETFs hold 1.25 million. The people hold 14.7 million Bitcoin. So that's a pretty good buffer. You understand? That's a pretty good buffer. Satoshi was so brilliant, really very brilliant to think of this distribution mechanism. And then Wall Street laughed. They didn't take it seriously for too long to their detriment. And the fact that we are at the point where it's even being discussed as a way for Microsoft to de-risk themselves from essentially everybody betting on a promise, or that we're talking about how Bitcoin could be used as a strategy to strengthen the dollar system.
Or that the federal chair Jerome Powell is on stage saying that Bitcoin is a competitor to gold. Or in the Federal Reserve itself, in terms of the system, what do you think of that idea? I don't think that's how people think about it. I mean, it's so, you know, people use Bitcoin as a speculative asset, right? It's like gold. It's just like gold only. It's virtual. It's digital. People are not using it as a form of payment or as a store of value. It's highly volatile. It's not a competitor for the dollar. It's really a competitor for gold. You know, it's that's really how I think of it.
I love that in J-Pow's world, gold is a speculative asset, not the dollar, not the thing that loses value every single day and is always going down. But the thing that's always going up and has been always going up against the dollar. That's the speculative dangerous asset. But that even seemingly kind of, you know, crap sandwich there is a fundamental shift from it's nothing, it has no place in the marketplace, you know, that now, you know, it's as worthless as gold. OK. All right. Well, you know what? I'm going to take that from the Fed chair. So are you bullish for 2025? Boosting and tell me if you are, why are you bullish? Is it federal policy? Is it just the dynamics of the happening?
Is it the ETFs? Why are you bullish in 2025? And if you're not bullish, what should we be prepared for? What is it that we're not looking out for? What are we not seeing? What is the threat to Bitcoin in 2025? Boost that in as well. I have a low-hanging fruit example for you, just something I've kind of been chewing on. A Coinbase hack in 2025 would be disastrous. Not only would people just be out probably a lot of funds, although I'm told that Coinbase only holds a small portion online, but imagine the backlash. People will claim digital assets are too hard to custody.
Even Coinbase can't do it. You know, there'd be a lot of that. God only knows if there'd be some sort of, like, reaction in Congress. But I think it would dramatically halt the institutional momentum because so many of them are using Coinbase behind the scenes. I think it's a low risk, but it's an example of what I'm talking about here. Like what are the big risks in 2025 that we're not really paying attention to? Because so many of these macro narratives and conditions are coming together to be very bullish for Bitcoin. I think it's important we try to keep our eye on what could still get us. What could nip us?
What might be that black swan? Boost in. tell me why you're bullish or. Music. All right. Well, coming up on the show, your boost. I have three huge environmental studies that I want to share with you. Some big, big updates this week. And I did it once again. I have two more final clips of the week, State of the Network and more. But first, I want to talk about some ways you can stack sats and support the show. Buy your sats on river. It's the best, as far as I know, the best way to stack in the US. I have no official relationship with them, But I think they have a brilliant system. They're Bitcoin only.
They let you withdraw over Lightning. Beautiful interface for DCE. Nice web app and mobile apps available to you. That's River. They're great. They also let you give Bitcoin gift cards. When you go over to River and Stack Sats and use my link in the show notes, you support the show too. Another great option, if River hasn't worked for you or if you're in Canada, the Bitcoin well. They have amazing self-custody options, including Lightning support. And in Canada, they have stuff that I see nowhere else. That's the Bitcoin will. I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
I have an affiliate to them now. The Bitcoin company, if you're ready to spend your sats, thebitcoincompany.com, use the promo code JUPITER. You don't even have to create an account over there. You can log in with Lightning, send sats over Lightning quickly into a gift card, and just go. If you're ready to pay your bills and stack sats, that's what I use the fold card for. I'll have a link to that, as well as my link to Salt Lending. That's how I get access to my Bitcoin value without selling it. And I'll tell you more about that. And we're going to have a good conversation in the booth around that too.
So the links to all of that are at the top of the show notes. Music. And we do have some great boosts to get into, so strap it on because we're going to get into a good conversation this week. We're going to dive deep into the boost this week, as the Google machine might say. And our first boost comes from user 709936771. So I think you don't have your username set in Fountain, but you can absolutely boost me back or shoot me an email or something. and I will credit you because this is one hell of a baller boost. User 79 comes in with 500,000 sets. Hey, Rich Lobster! Hey.
Music. Rich Lobster! User 79, thank you so much. Like I said, small boost or something, or a message, hit me up on Noster, let me know. I'll credit you. They write, this episode will age well. Keep up the amazing work, Chris. Well, thank you for that amazing value. You just made the episode right there, sir. You'll probably help make this one of our best episodes of the year, and that means a tremendous amount to me. I've been putting a ton of work in recently. Thank you, User 79. I really appreciate that boost. Now, Wine Eagle also comes in with a very generous 75,000 sats.
I hoard that which your kind covet. Coming in hot with the booze. Wine Eagle writes, stay humble and stack those sats. Adjust for the podfather. Let's all brainstorm ways to get off of Hive. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, I'm not opposed to working towards stuff like that. But there's a little bit more urgent stuff, I think, that they have to address with Albie custodial services going away. And that solution works now. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to work away from it, but I don't think it's the top problem right now. He says, I do see the irony of boosting against Hive using, although the boosts don't use Hive.
Hive is really only used in just the notification that a new episode has come out. I'm still not convinced that these things need to be anything more than a privileged database. I think the idea around that was not to have a centralized database. So if the podcast index went down or that you couldn't censor through the index. The idea with Hive was to have it fully distributed in a way that left it uncensorable, and any podcast client or like a server running a Rust app or Go app that, you know, checks the chain could subscribe and pull the information out. You know, there's things out there like Nostra that offer similar things now, but that didn't exist a few years ago.
And I think the number one priority is to make the boosting onboarding and the actual boosting experience even better and easier and solve for the Albi custodial services going away for listeners. That's like, got to do that in the next couple of weeks kind of priority. And anything I can do to help them with those transitions, I hope I can do it. But thank you, Wine Eagle. Thank you very much. And I think it's still something to keep on the radar. Appreciate that boost. Derivision Dingus came in with 20,000 sats. Dingus, I'm looking up for all McDuck. That's almost a McDuck.
Says, excellent episode as usual. I think you hit the nail on the head about Bitcoin loans. Oh, yeah, we're going to be talking about Bitcoin loans a little bit. I believe it's going to be a massive market, he writes. I need one myself, actually. Last year, I had some cash set aside to buy a car and went to some dealerships. But right before I pulled the trigger, Uncle Sam hit my wife and I with a massive tax bill. Oh, I've been there. As soon as things usually get straightened out, that's when I get hit by these incredible tax bills. It's really hard to be a small business owner.
So that soaked up all the cash, of course. It was our first full year of living and working in Washington. And I guess my wife wasn't paying enough in taxes out of her paycheck. It wiped out my whole car fund. Luckily, I was listening to This Week in Bitcoin and stacking sets, so it didn't hurt as bad as it could have, but now I need one of those Bitcoin loans and I'm highly interested in the subject either way, so thanks for covering these important topics. Yeah, I think a lot of us are going to be looking at, hey, I stacked this. Even if you stacked at $50,000, right? Not to mention some people were stacking at $200.
You want to get access to some of that value without selling. It is a risky thing, though. We're going to keep talking about that. Bobbypin came in with 10,000 sats. Hey, that's just over 9,000. It's over 9,000! I am programmed in multiple techniques. It took about three years of listening to you before I switched to Arch, about seven years before I really bought into Bitcoin, and now I'm excited to switch to Nix in 2028 and kick myself for not trying it sooner. All right. I like that you're honest with yourself about that. Thanks for all you've done. Keep at it. Thanks, Bobby Penn. That's really funny.
It's good to hear from you too. One dull geek comes in with a row of sats. Oh, look at them go. I'm not sure I understand the risk profile of a Bitcoin-backed loan. If I collateralize at 2x my loan value, I think I risk losing all that 2x Bitcoin, where selling Bitcoin risks only 1x. Straight. Great. So I think you're, okay, so to explain this in another way so people are following, say you wanted to get $5,000 of a Bitcoin loan to go, you know, to fix something or whatever. They would want generally, although this depends on the platform, but generally they want half or more in collateral.
So you put in $10,000 in Bitcoin, you get a $5,000 USD loan. So you want a $20,000 Bitcoin loan, then you got to put in $40,000 of Bitcoin. and I. When the price drops, they will margin call you to cover the difference there if you go below a threshold of collateralization. So that's where you will sell. And the downside there will be you'll sell at a slightly cheaper price than you might have sold at the top of the market. But you also might not have to sell at all. Of course, selling Bitcoin also risks the loss to the upside. I have essentially shorting Bitcoin, he writes, which could be a bigger than 2x risk. No kidding.
I think it's very likely a bigger than 2x risk. I think the timing might be important to make the loan work. Drawing the loan at the top for a typical 50% or 80% dip would be pretty bad, whereas drawing at the bottom would be awesome. I feel pretty comfortable with my intelligence level, but I've never really felt really great about predicting things like that. I agree. I generally don't either. However, just because of everything I had been following on the show and everything I've been telling you guys, it's going to rip after the election.
I just sort of, I think we got the loan, you know, just a little bit before the election because I figured that's when it would pump and then I could probably suffer a pretty big drawdown. I think with the loan I'm experimenting with right now, I don't get a margin call until Bitcoin drops to 35,000. So that's, I feel pretty good about, right? But you're right, I had to time that. But that's kind of, I mean, I'm not, this is not financial advice and I don't know really S about F, but you can listen and work out what I might be onto, what I might not be onto and kind of help build out your decision-making here. That's what I used.
The same data I bring to you on the show is the data I used to decide when to take my loan out. So it is possible, but it's risky. But I feel like, and I know this is, and I think the thing I'm trying to communicate is I feel like it's less risky than selling your Bitcoin. It's less risky than selling your Bitcoin. Yes, you might end up selling it. Yes, you might have to sell at a price you don't want to sell it at. But you might also avoid ever having to sell it. And then you get access to the gains forever. So that's where I think like I'm wondering if that thought process checks out great boost thank you very much one dull geek not a dull question at all Joe Emili comes in with 11,101.
That's not possible nothing can do that well he just did he just did and he just sends a number one, You know what? Number one right back at you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that boost. Some dude comes in with 10,101 sats. You's a boost. That's not a Jar Jar boost. My bad. Here, you get another one just for that. Sometimes my genius is, it's almost frightening. I know. I'm not happy with the swan fees, but River is not available in my state. I want a service that supports DCA and auto withdrawal, and I don't want a service that requires a phone. Any ideas? Well, some dude. I think you should definitely check out Bitcoin.
Well, that's one of the reasons I added them to my affiliate list. I've been watching them for a while. I think they're a pretty solid company. I have some good news about them later in the show. Also factored into my decision. And you don't need a phone app. I think that's what you mean. I don't know. They're probably going to KYC you, right? Because any of these companies do. But I don't think they require you use a phone app. And they encourage you when you purchase the Bitcoin to immediately withdraw it to an external wallet.
In fact, I think that's how the workflow, I don't even know, I mean, maybe there's a way to store, maybe you can build a wallet, but the workflow that I have on there is when you purchase, it goes immediately to an external wallet address. And there's a lot of ways you can do it. I have a Lightning address in there too. It'll take an LNURL compatible Lightning address, which is really sweet. And then the features set from there just goes even crazier up in Canada. But check out the Bitcoin wheel. Tell me what you think. Some dude, and I'd really like some feedback on that.
Now, Mug Daddy comes in with a real Jar Jar boost, 5,000 sats. You're so boost. I made my wife listen to that Trudeau clip like three times. That's hilarious. Yes, I love it. I know. And he was so just cocksure of himself, too. Oh, Trudeau. I don't know if you saw that. Did you see the picture of him going around dinner at Trump? And first of all, there's like a kid photobombing it making a crazy face in the background. And then somebody photoshopped Trudeau's face out and put one of those South Park Canadian characters where their whole head just moves. Guess simple things please me i suppose anyways thank you very much for the boost and i'm i got i really like that you've played that for your wife a few times appreciate that thanks mug daddy north hodl comes in with 2 121 sats okay you need the whole audience on board with moscow time it's sats per dollar so 99.99 is 100k in value okay all right and then he sends me a link so I can edificate myself, I'm assuming.
A link to Weapon X, as a matter of fact, where it's just a picture of Elon. I don't know what that's about. No, actually, it's an explanation of the term Moscow time, which became notable during a video call with Jack Dorsey, where he had a block clock showing 1952. Instead of thinking $1 equaled 1952 sats, people started speculating if he was in a different time zone because he, coincidentally, was in that time. It was 1952 in Moscow at that exact moment. That's a deep ref, man. Thanks for bringing me up to speed. That was a meme I was not familiar with. Appreciate the edimication, North, and thanks for the boost.
BitCryptics here with 2,048 sats. BTC-backed loans for the win. I used your salt code. Thanks for sharing and add it to my referral co-chairing platform at rcx.bitcryptic.com. Well, are you asking? Absolutely, add it. Thank you. And thank you for using, yeah, I decided after the episode, yeah, I was going to do it. And I'll tell you why. Salt has two features, which I've never had to use, so I cannot actually vouch for them yet. But I read through all their documentation and they list them as current features. Number one, actually, so this isn't a feature, but it's something that they confirmed, their CEO confirmed.
They're a Bitcoin company now they were, you know an everything coin company and they even had their own token for a bit the SALT token, now they still have to support that for historical reasons but they're really walking all that back and they're completely focusing on Bitcoin, that's why I started monitoring them about a year ago and that's usually my strat is I'll start watching and I'll follow them really closely, I'll try out the platform and then I'll watch all the news and then if they don't screw up for a while Well, you know, then I'll actually like create an actual account and actually start using it.
And then if that goes okay, I'll start talking about it. That's where I'm at with salt right now. And the other thing that gave me some confidence, and I think this is an interesting feature, is, and this is my one use case for stable coins. If you hold stable coins on their platform, they will liquidate that before they liquidate your Bitcoin. So you can have, you know, you do you, but you can have $1,000 in stablecoins on the SALT platform. And if they need to do a margin call, they will liquidate your stablecoins before they touch your Bitcoin stash.
Also have a feature and I do have that. I'm using that feature. So I have like a buffer there if there's a margin call. The other thing they've done that I've never witnessed because I haven't had this problem is if Bitcoin is crashing and it is about to wipe out, they have an auto convert to stablecoin feature. So they'll convert your holdings to stablecoins and hold them at that value. Keep them there. And then they let you swap back into Bitcoin once the price starts coming back up. And that's another way they can protect from having to do a big margin call. I don't know of any other platform that does that. And that's a pretty neat feature. Thankfully, I've never had to try it.
But it does give me some confidence between being able to hold some stable coins. So unfortunately, it's only Ethereum network stable coins. If I could give them any feedback, it would be like, I don't know, like Liquid would be better, Tether on Liquid. So I'm doing USDC over the Ethereum network. So, you know, the gas fees are ridiculous. So you do like one large chunk transfer and just put it on the wallet over there and then you've got that margin buffer that's my strat we'll see how it goes and bit cryptic thank you very much for using the salt code or and link in the show notes i really appreciate it hey patar's back and he's here with a space balls boost so the combination is one two three four five hello mr patar says the concern with bitcoin backed loans is should the value of your collateral drop beyond a certain point, which Bitcoin is famous for doing, the bank may liquidate the collateral at a price which is much, much lower than that you just sold at the cycle top and paid the capital gains tax.
Yes, I believe that is the big risk right there. And I think my solution to that is that stablecoin buffer I just talked about, but also the risk. The reverse risk of if I sold my Bitcoin today, well, OK, let me back up. If I sold the Bitcoin to cover all the car repairs we had to do when it was at $57,000, just days later, I would have missed out on a 30% gain. And that's at this point in time right now in Bitcoin's history, you know, coming up on 10 months after the happening, ETFs gobbling up, everybody aping into the micro strategy, Bitcoin treasury, strat, nation states talking about building reserves, Fed lowering rates, other Western banks lowering rates, M2 supply going up.
Kind of seems like the right time to bet on something like this. But you're right i think that's is the risk is that it really crashes and they liquidate you real quick at a price that's redonk the reality is they give you like 24 48 hours to address the margin call well if bitcoin dipped 80 it's probably going to be up 30 40 within 48 hours 24 hours i mean my god how how hard would most of us ape in if bitcoin got down to around $10,000 or even $30,000. I'd turn that DCA up to 11, buddy, pump that thing right back up. I think we all would. So the risk is definitely there that you may end up having to sell your Bitcoin at a lower price than you would have if you just sold it and took the Gapal gains hit.
But I think there's a higher risk that you'll miss out on gains, especially in 2024 and 2025. I don't know if that's always the case, though. So perhaps you have to be a little flexible with the strategy. There's times to be Bitcoin-backed loan on, and there's times to be Bitcoin-backed loan off. And then as we get into the future, it just makes sense to stack more sats. So that way you have more collateral, you have more leverage, you can take more optionality as you need it. If you just go all in on the ETFs, you don't really have that. You're stuck to that ecosystem, at least.
Thanks, Patar. Really good to hear from you. Ace Ackerman's here with AeroaDucks. Hello, Ace. Keep the portion of your Bitcoin stash and incrementally sell into a likely blow-off top. Then you'll have some profits to buy again at the bottom before the next halving. Wait for Bitcoin lending industry to mature before taking out large loans on your Bitcoin. Do you do that, Ace? Anybody do that? Does anybody, you know, layer out as Bitcoin goes up? I have a hard time just ever selling any of my Bitcoin. That's my problem. I feel like there's always a bigger risk that I won't be able to get that same amount of stash back.
But there is that part of my brain is like, man, if you just did this strategically, you know, if Bitcoin's at 98,000 and let's say it pumps up to 112 and then comes down to 72 and you sell it like around 100 and then you bought back in around That'd be great, but you just don't know if it's going to happen, my friend. I couldn't do it. I just stack those sats. Stay humble. That's what I do. I wish I was savvy enough to do the trading like that. I really do. I mean, if I was that savvy, I'd probably get into some sort of inverse ETF situation and really burn myself out.
All right. Well, thanks, Ace. User 80 comes in with a row of ducks. Just discovered your stuff. We'll keep listening. Well, thank you. Nice to hear from you. Thanks for checking in right away. And if you get that username set in Fountain, boost back in and give me a shout out. Holder comes in with 4,747 sats. B-O-O-S-T. Greetings from Iceland. Wow. Well, that's awesome. Hello out there, Iceland. We just had parliamentary elections with 11 different parties, none of which even mentioned Bitcoin. We are still so early. Banks are Ponzi schemes run by morons. We are so early. I know that's a meme, but I got a clip I'm going to play, one of my final clips of the week, that puts that into perspective.
It's not just a meme, it's a reality. That kind of insight also puts it into perspective, Holder, so thank you. Or Hodler. But wait until the clip at the end of the episode. It's really going to put it into perspective, too. Nakamado 6102 comes in with 2,101 sats. Nope, 2,100 sats. There you go. Thoughts on the BitKey wallet, which is made by Block, right? Jack Dorsey's company. I have been interested in BitKey. It does seem like a potential hardware wallet that normies could use. There's a lot of reliance on a mobile device and in the iCloud ecosystem on iCloud and the Google system on Google Drive.
It does encrypt before it uploads to either one of those services, but that's there. I have decided to buy one for a family member who has a modest little stash and I'll be seeing them over the holiday and I'm going to help them set it up and then I'm going to observe and I'm going to see how it works for them and I'm going to see what happens when they have to switch phones. If they lose their phone, if they lose the wallet, I'll just kind of watch. And then I will develop a bit more of an opinion on BitKey then. I got it for a great deal. It was just added to Amazon right before Black Friday. I think it was like $80.
And it seems like a pretty nice little package, especially for people that are very mobile-focused and a lot of the people in my family are. So that's kind of my thoughts on it right now, Nakamoto. But I find it to be very limiting compared to a cold card, right? You can't have multiple bitkeys. For example, you can only have one bitkey per app per phone. So if you wanted to have a business stash and a personal stash, you'd have to have two separate mobile devices, two separate apps, two separate bitkeys. There's not really any kind of multi-wallet functionality there and then there's not like as far as i know the ability to do like a watch wallet so you couldn't have a corporate wallet that's the main wallet and then you have people that have the ability to monitor transactions, or that's also that's also handy with parents and kids so i just don't think it has that kind of stuff which is really easy to set up in a sparrow cold card environment but then again Again, this is pointed squarely at people who would find Sparrow to be overwhelming and cold card to be scary.
And for those people, I think it's a really good option. Or for people that just want a little bit extra polish on the experience, I think it could be really valuable to know judgment on their technical skills. Some people just like a really smooth experience. So I'm going to help them set it up over Christmas, and then I'll check in with them over time. And I'll follow up on the Biki Nakamoto. You just had great timing because I just bought that for them as a Christmas gift. All right. That brings us to the end of all the boosts at the 2000 cutoff. Thank you, everybody who does boost in. I really appreciate it.
And I read all of them and save all of them, even the ones below the 2000 sat cutoff. But we do that for time. Now, let's sum it all up because I think this was a great week. We had 47 of you stream sats as you listen. That is awesome. Thank you, everybody. And collectively, you sat streamers stacked 65,981 sats. So when you combine that with the 20 folks who boosted in, the show this week, I think one of its best weeks in a while, stacked a grand total of 728,794 SAFs. Music. That's really a big thank you to user 79 who sent that very generous 500 000 sap boost here you know as a podcast network we're just quietly shifting to a bitcoin standard and we're not selling debt we don't have to have a public company that issues stock to do it we do it by creating content that our listeners love and want to support directly and then we take that and we're building a bitcoin treasury.
So that way in the future, the network can be self-sustaining and not rely on advertising, only, only our audience, but without having to constantly beg or having to run, you know, like pledge months where we do nothing but pledge like they do on my local PBS station. Instead, we make good content, you reward good content. It's value for value. And we'll stack those sets And we will build a podcast network that will endure and remain independent and only accountable to its audience. It's a beautiful thing. And I really appreciate your support. Thank you, everybody, this week who made it a banger.
If you'd like to boost the show, just get Fountain FM or get a new podcast app at podcastapps.com. Fountain FM and Strike are like a killer combo, and they make it really easy to get started to strike in your area. But really anything that's on the Lightning Network, like Bitcoin Well or River, you can top up Strike with that. Additionally, there's a whole bunch of other apps out there, including options that are completely self-hosted. And you might just want to go that route too. Check them out at PodcastApps.com. Music.
Well, we have some really, really great news for Bitcoin in the environmentalism area. Three different studies have come out recently that show incredible results. A new paper shows that Bitcoin mining helps accelerate the UN's sustainable development goals and helps make uneconomical biorefineries profitable. The key findings say, quote, contrary to current public opinion, Bitcoin has the potential to positively contribute and even accelerate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Over time, the integration of Bitcoin mining in biorefineries could transform the financial dynamics of the bio-based products market, making them more affordable and accessible whilst pushing towards sustainable development in energy transitions.
And then another peer-reviewed study came out with evidence that when a solar farm uses Bitcoin mining, they achieve ROI on their solar investment twice as fast. I'll link to this in the show notes, peer-reviewed study, a dual approach to economic viability and environmental study is its name. And there is so much in this report. I'll tell you just the very tippity-top key findings. A 50 megawatt solar farm. Without Bitcoin mining, it takes 8.1 years to get a return on investment. So that's like, you don't want your solar panels to break down. You don't want to have issues like a big hailstorm or equipment failure, because that just extends that ROI time window.
But without Bitcoin mining, 8.1 years to get a return on investment. With Bitcoin mining, 3.7 years, 3.7 years. It's research that's built on a lot of earlier research, which showed that Bitcoin money makes renewable operations more profitable, which then supports climate action and the renewable transition because these profits were then, the study shows this, the profits were reinvested into building more renewable capacity. They also looked at proof-of-stake coins. You don't get those benefits because they don't have the energy use.
The data is just amazing on this one. And it shows you how Bitcoin's energy use can be a massive positive for building out renewable infrastructure. And then last, another peer-reviewed paper shows that Bitcoin mining is profitable in 96% of renewable installations. And that these profits are already, already contributing to the energy transition. Link again in the show notes. Again, peer-reviewed study. Bitcoin mining is profitable in 80 out of 83 renewable energy installations. That's huge. And the profits from this mining in power and energy transition in the US. The paper was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, which I guess has a major impact factor of 9.7 in this industry. I don't even know.
Here's the other thing. It's not just an outlier. It's the 13th of the last 15 articles on Bitcoin and energy that showed Bitcoin has significant environmental benefits. A wave building here. The exact 180 is happening with Bitcoin and the environmental story. And it's not just here in the United States. It's all over the world, like in Bhutan. Now moving to Asia, Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom known for prioritizing happiness over wealth, has quietly emerged as a major player in the cryptocurrency world. With $780 million worth of Bitcoin, which is nearly a third of its GDP, Bhutan has become the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin.
Now what's fueling the country's ambitions to become a leader in green crypto mining? Here's our report with answers. I think it's just fascinating. We can stop there. I think it's just, it's incredible to see that these different studies that show that it's not just good, but it's great for the renewable energy transition. And the people that push back on environmental grounds just don't know what they're talking about. And Patan's national Bitcoin holdings now reach one third of its GDP. And it's doing that by renewing it with, by mining it with renewable energy, I should say. I should say, but I can often barely say.
Music. All right, some updates to get into this week. There's a lot going on. And one of the big ones is BlackRock, IBIT. Their SPA ETF surpassed 500,000 Bitcoin in assets under management. It's huge. This is a massive thing. And I wanted to play a little audio around this because this analyst for CNBC who focuses on ETFs, He predicts that 2025 for Bitcoin isn't going to be about on-chain. Don't worry about your fees because none of the actions happen on-chain. The action is going to be in the ETFs for 2025. They're viable. What we've seen, though, is the institutionalization of Bitcoin as its own asset that is unique and disparate from crypto.
Bitcoin by itself is not Ethereum and Solana or any of these other things. Bitcoin is unique. As such, I think what we're going to see in 2024, 2025 is the dynamic of Bitcoin, what it's worth, how it's trading, how volatile it is, is going to actually start being driven by exchange traded products and less by on-chain people trading crypto. We've already seen that. The volumes in Ibit are phenomenal. I mean, I don't know what they are off the top of my head, But I would not be surprised if there are days in which the complex of Bitcoin ETFs trades more notional than trades on chain directly.
The volumes are insane. Really? Because of that, you have to expect more price discovery is going to move. You're talking about the volumes now, not assets in demand. I'm talking about the volumes, just the amount trading with the options running. I mean, I just talk. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. With the options on Ibit now trading, that cracks open the asset class to all sorts of investment strategies that were basically impossible. Has volumes increased? By the way, folks, in case you don't know, the options on IBIT were trading just recently, what, two weeks ago? Yeah, just a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, and they were very successful. Does options trading generally lead to more trading of the underlying? Absolutely, because people need to hedge out that delta. They need to hedge out the underlying security. The options dealers don't want to be long or short anything, so they're always going to be using the underlying as a way to get out or into those positions. IBIT's already extraordinarily liquid. They don't need to go to another asset class. They don't need to go on chain to get that exposure. Yeah, I wonder if this doesn't also cessate some people's shitcoin trading a little bit.
I don't know if this is going to be a wide phenomenon, but I do think some Bitcoiners... Drawn into stacking ETF Bitcoin instead of actual Bitcoin. Because I sat down one evening and just looked at all of the math of it, and some of it does work out. And BlackRock's rep kind of puts it into words, I suppose. He didn't do a great job, but he tries. They're Bitcoin. We've had a tremendous amount of volume. I think part of it is a lot of people can really customize their risk, their income, their upside potential with these options. So if you think about people who maybe have made a lot of money in Bitcoin, they want to maybe protect some of those gains.
People who are holding a lot of Bitcoin and not drawing any income from it. Maybe they want to sell covered coals on top of that to generate some income with that Bitcoin. So it just expands the ways that people can own this asset and have it play a role in their portfolio. So the options are being well received. The Bitcoin ETFs continue to pump like crazy. Officials are halting Bitmain units at U.S. ports, at least according to Blockspace Media. Officials have been halting the Antminer ASIC imports. Bitminer's latest Antminer S21 and T21 ASIC miner shipments are being held by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection at various ports nationwide, including San Francisco and Detroit, following a request from the Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC. Seven U.S.-based Bitcoin mining companies reported that these delays have persisted for up to two months. Notably, other ASIC manufacturers like Microbit and Canon are not targeted. No BS Bitcoin is following that story albi with benefits introducing albi benefits it's a perk for those of us who have albi hub cloud subscriptions of course you get automated backups but also they're introducing a personalized lightning address so you're at get your username at gil your username at get albi.com which is actually.
Time I think I've ever said that out loud, it's kind of hard to say. You can change it however you want, so maybe I will, because apparently it's tough. They're also offering priority support, dedicated onboarding sessions, special Discord channels, and other Albi benefits, such as access to deals with vendors such as SeedStore and others. It's a nice way to try to bring a little more value to that AlbiHub cloud subscription. Of course, you can run AlbiHub on your own node and pay no subscription, But if you don't want to have to run a node or run the hardware, you can use AlbiHub Cloud.
Speaking of Albi, the Go app, the AlbiGo app, which if you have AlbiHub you need to be using, has been updated. 1.7.2 now has LNURL withdrawal support. This is huge. Very, very grateful to see that. Also, Boostagram info in the transaction details. So if you're a podcaster getting Boostagrams, you can now read them in the AlbiGo app. enhanced QR code readability, a bunch of other stuff too. Improvements in LNURL redirects, validation of various amounts, onboarding, scrolling is even improved. Address book stuff a lot is improved there. And the Bitcoin Well. I told you there'd be some news for the Bitcoin Well.
And one of the things that made me decide to become an affiliate, they are killing it. The Canadian publicly traded company, Bitcoin Well Inc., has officially adopted a treasury strategy with Bitcoin. and they are raising $2 million to buy more Bitcoin. They've already purchased 7.53 Bitcoin at an average Canadian dollar cost of $137,551 per coin. It's weird to talk about $137,000 Bitcoin prices, but that's what it is up in Canada. The Bitcoin well plans to keep adding Bitcoin to their corporate treasury, including using convertible debt offerings and stacking them sats.
And I say good on them. They're a great company, and they should be taking advantage of an asset like Bitcoin. We'll have a link to the affiliate. Music. I've got two final clips of the week again. I know. I just think they go well together, you know, and it's like I want to play them back to back. They were from different places, but yet they go well together. The first one is James Lavish gives us some perspective on how far Bitcoin has to grow financially. We say we are early. Well, he's got some of the numbers that really sort of puts it into perspective.
There are $900 trillion of global assets, investable assets. Bitcoin is currently 1.7 trillion of those, which is 0.02% of total assets. It's one-tenth the size of gold. So it has a long way to go here. But at $90,000, it's still only 0.2% of the entire investment universe. Now, remember, it's one-tenth the size of gold, but gold's been around for thousands of years. Bitcoin's been around for 15. This is tremendous momentum, but a huge amount of space here for it to start taking some allocations from those other areas. Where will it take allocations from? Well, the obvious one is gold.
Second obvious one is equities. The third obvious one is bonds. And then the fourth obvious one is real estate. So it's going to kind of go in that order in my mind that investors are going to start realizing that, oh, this is digital gold. Oh, I should, instead of having my money in just equities and bonds, I should have some in Bitcoin. Oh, instead of having all of my money in real estate, and instead of looking for real estate investment opportunities, forget about your home, I should buy some Bitcoin instead. Why? Because it's liquid. It's trustworthy.
It has a tremendous rate of return over the course of just four years. Every single four-year period, it has a rate of return. So that's another thing. And then just doing quick math on it, it's 0.2% right now. At 1% of the total global assets, Bitcoin's a $9 trillion asset and worth about $450,000 per coin. At 3%, it's worth $1.3 million per coin. So we have a long way to go. I don't know when we get to that million-dollar level. I expect it to be in the next seven years or so. Wild. Even 1%, 2%, 3%, it would just be beyond our wildest dreams. And when you hear about this and you hear about how institutional adoption and nation-state adoption is necessary, it's natural for people, especially people not familiar with Bitcoin's distribution, to get worried.
Well, you can play this clip for them over and over again. So as this adoption takes place and has capped the $21 million, I think it's going to continue to grow as a reserve for the individual. And the first big group of shareholders actually in Apple were not institutions. It was the retail person that had a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch, bought an iPad, and turned around and said, I like it so much, I bought the stock. Now the top 10 shareholders show up as being institutional names, like Warren Buffett having a big position. But before then, it was predominantly retail. That's what's been driving the adoption process of Bitcoin.
Music. Well, it's time to take a look at the state of the network. As we record, Bitcoin is sitting at $98,320. It pumped hard today. Wow. I think when I woke up, we were around 94, 95. I don't know. Still, though, 1.4 off, 1.4% off, 1.3% off now of our all-time high. Sats per dollar is incredible. 1,016 sats per dollar. Amazing to watch that tick down. It's my favorite stat right there. Sats per dollar, 1,016. There are, presently, 20,909 nodes reachable on the network, an all-time high since we've been watching. That is great to see. Our all-time high date was November 22nd, 2024, at $99,740.
So we're almost there, 12 days since then. Bitcoin network churns and hashes right along. Difficulty is up. Nodes are up. Price is just 1% off all-time high. Yep. State of the network is very strong. Thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode of This Week in Bitcoin. I'll have links to what I talked about at thisweekinbitcoin.show. This was episode 38. Boost it and tell me what you'd like to hear on the show if I missed something or if you've got a different take on what I talked about. And remember, I want to know what you're bullish for in 2025.
And if you're not bullish, what are you seeing that we're not seeing? What's that big threat lurking out there? Also, please consider sharing the show with somebody who's Bitcoin curious. Maybe help them stay on the Bitcoin path and not wind up playing with Salooner or something like that. Just send them my way. Oh, also, thank you everybody who's been boosting the artist. We did it again. Again, Be The Wheel was number one on the value for value charts last week after the episode came out. So that's really awesome. I have another value for value track for you. When you boost during the music, 90% of the sats go to the artist.
Thank you so much for joining me. I leave you with. Music.
I'd also like to comment on, you know, this recent Trump tweet, if you would want to call it, about 100 percent tariffs on the BRIC countries if they start a new currency. I find that really curious because, really, I think the biggest threat to the dollar being used as a reserve currency is Bitcoin, which we all hear, you know, Trump is a big supporter of. So it seems a little bit strange to tell them don't produce an alternative reserve currency when really Bitcoin is, you know, being talked about by many countries in the world as their alternative currency, some of them getting rid of gold and going into Bitcoin.
So I'm a little curious on how that's going to play itself out once we hear all the details. Music. Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 38. My name is Chris. Save this episode. All right? Set it aside. put it on your file server, put it in your Dropbox, whatever it is, because this is one of those episodes that's going to cover a major shift in the Overton window years before we're likely to see it happen. I don't know, three, four years, maybe. It's hard to really say. I suppose, yeah, maybe, maybe. But we'll get there. Right now, everyone thinks that Bitcoin is going to destroy the dollar.
It's going to replace the reserve status of the dollar. It's going to become the new reserve currency of the world. Maybe one day, my friends. But I'll make the case not in our lifetime. I actually think Bitcoin is about to be used to entrench the dollar system for generations to come. Maybe not the dollar itself, but the dollar system. We're not there yet. But I think we could soon be there. And I'll explain how all of that might work soon. But before we get to there, let's start with Bitcoin itself. It's been a chop week, another chop week. And man, does market sentiment turn fast.
Everyone is so bearish and sad. You know, it's just really, it's funny because it reminds me, and maybe I mentioned this last week on the show, of exactly like what it felt at 20,000. You know, we bounced against $20,000 for so long. And then when Bitcoin did finally break through, it felt like it was unstoppable. But I was doing a little bit of digging around and I found some historical data that supports this. It turns out Bitcoin has dipped at the start of every month for the last six months, every single time before it bounces back. And often it gets a major move up after all of the labor market in the US comes out, all the labor market data comes out, which begins releasing at the beginning of the month. We just got some of it today.
It wasn't great. And then I think some of the last comes out on December 6th. And then typically Bitcoin starts to pick back up in momentum. So short term, we chop and we seem to have chopped at the beginning of every month for the last six months. But then when you look at that, you go, OK, that seems to be something that is just materialized. Once we see it, it generally stops repeating. Once people realize it's happening, it just sort of stops happening. So now that we know about it, it may not be a reoccurring trend, but it has been fascinating.
But looking, so that's short term, but looking at even just the midterm, I think things are still very bullish for Bitcoin. And it's not just me. It's a crystal ball rubber over there, Tom Lee, too. Yeah, I think some of this could be, there's a lot of folks who don't want Bitcoin over $100,000, and some of it may be the exchanges themselves are concerned because there is a pretty low supply of Bitcoin available over the counter. So you have a supply shortage, and if Bitcoin makes a move above $100,000, I think there'd be a big chase.
So I'm still confident Bitcoin's going to close much higher before year-end. Before year-end? Before year-end, yeah. So break $100,000 before the end of the year? Yeah, well above $100,000 before the year ends. It's just a matter of time. It's December 2nd. It's not that long, Tom. So it's going to do it in the next four weeks. Tom makes bold, short-term calls. You're nuts. And usually they come true on a roll. All right, Tom Lee, thank you. Yeah, that's why I play his clips, because usually he is right. So while we chop, a lot of talk about tariffs.
People are terrified about tariffs. You know, apparently it's become like this new favorite toy in international politics. It started with President Trump during the campaign and he's continued it now. It's just, all right, you're pissing me off, tariff. Pissing me off, tariff. Next thing you know, somebody's on the plane or somebody's on the phone call. You know, it's sort of like an economic equivalent of a chess move. You can really kind of protect your pawns, which would be your domestic industries, and, But if you're not careful, you could end up at a checkmate with higher prices for everyone, if you'll excuse my analogy.
So there is a tight line there, and that's why the market is, what's going to happen? Is this just the art of the deal? Or is this just what's going to happen? That's what the question is, right? And I'm personally not too worried about it. I'll get into why in a little bit. But I think there is a bigger question to be asked. You just heard it in the intro clip here. The biggest threat to the dollar, a lot of people think, is Bitcoin. Now, President Trump has made it very clear to the BRICS nations that if they develop their own currency for trade, he's going to apply a 100% tariff on them.
So how do you square this? Because Trump's also pro-Bitcoin. And Bitcoin's supposed to be a threat for the dollar. I'd also like to comment, you know, this recent Trump tweet, if you would want to call it, about 100% tariffs on the BRIC countries if they start a new currency. I find that really curious because really, I think the biggest threat to the dollar being used as a reserve currency is Bitcoin. Well, maybe Jeremy, maybe Mr. Siegel from the Wharton School of Finance or whatever. I think what he's missing is the stablecoin connection. When Bitcoin pumps, stablecoins pump.
And when stablecoins pump, they create demand for T-bills, which the U.S. Government likes quite a bit. Luke Grohman was on, I think it was Natalie Burnell's Coin Stories podcast, and he summed up some of this a little bit. I'll play just a couple of clips from that, and then I'll link to her entire podcast in the show notes. What I laid out for clients three weeks ago was sort of a thought process, is how I started to think about it. It changed the way I was thinking about this Bitcoin is the new oil comment from Trump, which is, if we go back in time to late 73, early 74, oil was rose in price by 400% from October 73 to April 74.
And there is an interview that was given on CNN International by the former Saudi oil minister, Sheikh Yimani, in 2010, in which he said there was a meeting of Bilderberg Group at this Swedish island in late 73, October 73. Henry Kissinger attended and said, look, the price of oil is going up 400 percent. Get on board. And it happened. And again, this is not my words. These are the words of the former Saudi oil minister on CNN 14 years ago. He highlighted that. And the point of the U.S. Doing that was essentially to make the oil market big enough to back U.S. Deficits, to basically recycle the flows back into U.S.
Debt to basically fix the U.S. fiscal problem post-Vietnam War and after we left the gold standard. It basically put us on an oil standard of sorts. So he's saying in this narrative that the U.S. Government recognized that they could use oil as a way to essentially back the dollar and create demand for the dollar. But they needed to develop the oil market and expand it first before it would be big enough and be liquid enough to achieve that. And I think he's making the analogy that that could be where Bitcoin is at today. And when I thought back to that interview by Sheikh Yimani, in light of the Treasury report, which was really the catalyst for the rethink, and then the Paul Ryan point, and then Trump's point in August where he said, hey, maybe we'll just pay off our debt with a little Bitcoin, which was a really odd comment.
I started to wonder if Bitcoin is the new oil, that it's not that it is Bitcoin is going to be inflated like oil was so that it will inflate stable coins so that stable coins will buy a lot more treasury. Basically, Bitcoin going much, much higher. This Treasury report showed that stablecoin demand for T-bills would soar. And I'll have a link to this in the show notes. They talk about it kind of being a modest amount of T-bill demand right now, but how they could see it really kind of blowing up because all the incentives to make that happen line up.
And often with money, it's just sort of like water that goes downhill. It just takes the easiest path possible. You know, whatever treats it the best, all the incentives to make that happen in each one of us kind of line up. We need a way to weaken the dollar while strengthening the dollar system. And you look at this and you go, gosh, this checks all the boxes. If we inflate the heck out of Bitcoin, you're going to increase stable coins. You're going to increase stable coin demand for T-bills. What that will do, because Bitcoin is a global asset, is it will draw in dollars from around the world into T-bills, into stable coins.
But at the same time, the dollar will be collapsing against Bitcoin. And it will be ultimately get Bitcoin high enough to be pretty inflationary. Right. People are going to be, you know, and stimulative. So that's what I think Trump may have meant by Bitcoin is the new oil. That's that's my sort of working hypothesis. I'm waiting and looking for something that would refute that thus far in the new administration. I'm not seeing anything. I'm not seeing anything other than sort of, OK, I think I'm on to something here. What do you think of this theory? That perhaps they're playing 4D chess with the Bitcoin strategy and the idea and why they're careful about the language.
It's a reserve, right? It's a strategic reserve, the Bitcoin strategic reserve. And why they'd be willing to convert gold into Bitcoin. It kind of adds up. Stable coins could be the best thing that happened to the U.S. government. It enables access to the U.S. dollar all around the world, where other countries are suffering inflation much worse, even in the best case scenario, generally worse than the United States. Not everywhere, but generally, especially in Western economies. It gives them access to the dollar in countries that maybe don't even have a relationship with the United States and a means to directly buy those dollars.
In most countries, there is the dollar price and then there's like the blue market dollar price. They have different names but often if you go through an official exchange the government there rips you off so this also like in all these countries it creates demands for stable coins i'm not a big i don't use stable coins really i have one particular use case for stable coins and i'll tell you about it later in the episode just one one particular use case and i don't i don't because i am here in the united states i don't really need it but people outside the states Hell yeah.
It creates demand for the dollar, which strengthens the dollar. And they do without even having to create a CBDC. It can be through these privatized companies that they have leverage over. So let's bring it back to tariffs, because I think people are really spooked about this. And I'm curious to know what you think of all this so far. But if you look at what Luke is saying here, the Bitcoin strategy will strengthen the dollar. Then you have the overall tariff strategy, which could really spook the market and, you know, definitely take some steam out of a bull run type situation.
But overall, I myself, I don't find it to be very concerning. Watch the way the financial say this tactfully. I don't know if you watch the way the financial media industry covers tariffs. I mean, how can you call him pro-business, according to these people? All right, so let's go back to Tom Lee over here at CNBC. I cut this up for you. When he's pro-tariffs, because you would just think, you know, if you watch the coverage of tariffs. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's a reminder that it's good to carry a big stick. And I think tariffs have proven to be a good negotiating tool.
I think we've seen some proactive actions by other countries. And in general, I don't think the new White House wants to pursue any policies that would hurt corporate profits. So I think ultimately whatever is accomplished is going to be pro-business. That's interesting. All right. I hope everybody's listening. I think Trump's biggest detractors are worried that he has no governor, that there's going to be no limiter on Trump, that there's nothing to stop Trump now. But I disagree. I think Trump has shown us before in his previous term and has already indicated it now that the markets are the biggest driver of Trump's behavior.
And so I think that's where Tom is right, is that these tariffs will be used for negotiation. But if things get too sideways and the market really starts to take a dump, I bet Trump capitulates. That would be my suspicion. Before we leave Tom Lee altogether, though, did you catch that little bomb in an earlier clip that he just dropped in there that nobody picked up? Nobody around the table picked it up. There's two other hosts plus old Joe there asking questions, and Tom Lee just drops this bomb? Logical level, I would imagine. Yeah, I think some of this could be, there's a lot of folks who don't want Bitcoin over $100,000, and some of it may be the exchanges themselves are concerned because there is a pretty low supply of Bitcoin available over the counter.
So you have a supply shortage, and if Bitcoin makes a move above $100,000, I think there'd be a big chase. So I'm still confident Bitcoin's going to... What does that mean? He's implying the exchanges are holding the price below $100,000. How would they do this? How could the exchanges do this? Is this by putting fake buy and sell orders in ahead of time and making it look like there's big buy and sell walls? How how is this accomplished? And why does nobody ask him? Bitcoin is is is like a huge part of BlackRock's ETF profile now and many others. And Tom Lee goes out there and says that the exchanges are manipulating the price and everybody just moves on. The hell's going on.
Music. Well, I hate to say it, I really actually kind of do. The big story in Bitcoin this week remains micro strategy. And the reason why I hate to say it is because I think, Any time you pump somebody up, a single individual like Michael Saylor, it just means they have further to fall one day. And, you know, your heroes turn into villains type situation. And I just sort of part of me sort of braces as the community just sort of apes all in on micro strategy. And as a Bitcoiner, one of the things that I like about Bitcoin is that there is no third party risk to any one individual.
And there is no Satoshi CEO who, if he dies, the entire strategy falls apart. Now, that said, I think Michael Saylor is probably a very healthy man. I think in the short term, he's really cooked something up pretty crazy. And MicroStrategy last week, or at least since we got together, acquired another 15,400 Bitcoin. They are trying to stack as much as possible before 100,000. They bought $1.5 billion at approximately $95,976 per coin. They now hold over 402,100 Bitcoin. They've spent a total of $23.4 billion on their Bitcoin strategy so far. He's stacking as fast as he possibly can.
And that's why CNBC loves to talk to him. We bought it about 42 times since August of 2020 to today. From August. And at this point, the strategy is to issue stock or convertible debt of MicroStrategy and use that to buy Bitcoin. We're a Bitcoin treasury company, so we're securitizing Bitcoin. We're providing high performance equity. We're also providing convertible bonds. We've provided other kinds of bonds in the past. But primarily our job is to bridge the traditional capital markets that want bonds or they want fixed income or they want equity or they want options.
And we plug that into the crypto economy and we use Bitcoin as the vehicle to do that. That, I thought, was one of his tightest and best explanations so far. You know what I mean? Just like this good, clear, this is what we're doing, this is why it's successful. However, of course, because these guys on CNBC, you'd think they don't understand traders' minds at all. The volatility conversation always comes up. Well, what about the volatility, Michael? What about the volatility can crash? and he addresses not only that but he seems to kind of leave him stunned for a moment with one of his zinger sailor analogies with microstrategy we're 10x the volatility s&p how much of it do you want to trade so bitcoin is unique in the history of the capital markets it's the first scarcity commodity outperforming the s&p more volatility s&p that you can put on your balance Volatility at some time is not always a good thing. I mean, it's great when something's going higher.
But do you don't think that there'll be a drop or a significant drop that comes along? Have we moved past that because of the regulatory changes that have taken place? I think it'll remain volatile because it's a 24-7, 365 global asset. You can panic sell it on Saturday night. You can enthusiastically buy it on Sunday morning. That's a feature. That's not a bug. You've lived through some of the swings. But do you think we won't see the downturns like we've seen in the past just because of the changes we've seen? I think it's going to surge through the roof, and then it's going to surge to 180 and crash to 140, and people will be freaking out about it again. But let me make this one analogy.
Volatility is like fire, and some people run away from the fire. But Henry Ford put the fire into a carriage via an engine, created an entire industry, and he gave humanity wings. They didn't know what to say. I just had to leave the silence in there for a moment because they just weren't. I guess so. Yeah. Is that what he's doing? Is that what he's doing? Now, Michael Saylor has become pretty well known for pitching to the Microsoft board about adopting Bitcoin. I've covered it here on the show. And his three minute presentation is out. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's sailor in board pitch mode, which is the most low-key sailor you're ever going to hear.
It's very odd. Not very good audio for the show. Sample for you here for a second, just so you get a taste of it. Microsoft can't afford to miss the next technology wave, and Bitcoin is that wave. Bitcoin represents the greatest digital transformation of the 21st century. It represents digital capital. The global wealth is distributed across assets that provide utility and others that preserve capital. Jerome Powell, as I'm recording today, just came out during an interview on CNBC and said that, quote, Bitcoin is a competitor with gold, not the U.S. dollar. You see, this is how they all see it. Micro strategy, the Treasury, Federal Reserve, apparently, the Federal Reserve chair, apparently.
They all see it as like this great asset that doesn't compete with the dollar. And I think that's probably very likely. I could see Bitcoin being in price discovery for the rest of my lifetime. There's really no precedent. I mean, Bitcoin's been on a 14-year price discovery journey, and it's been quite volatile. So what's to say that's the stopping time? I mean, look at gold. It's been on a price discovery journey for like 2,000 years. So I wonder if maybe they are right for the short term, at least. I'm curious what you think. If we could see Bitcoin, in a way, initially strengthen these companies and strengthen the US dollar system. What Saylor argues is pretty reasonable.
A lot of people are buying Microsoft stock because of the potential, the potential of AI, the potential of enterprise integration, the potential of the GitHub platform and developer tools. They're not really buying Microsoft because of what it has today or because of what assets it holds. Right now, Microsoft trades at 20 times forward expectations. So what you're, or I'll say it, 95% of the enterprise value of Microsoft is based on expectations is the best way to say it, right? And that means it has, it's very asset poor, it's expectation rich. Why don't you actually buy assets?
And instead of being 95% on expectations, be 50% on expectations, de-risk the company, grow the enterprise value and feed the digital economy of the future. What was the response? The shareholder meeting is December 10th. We'll find out. What do you expect? Glazed eyes. I don't have any illusions that mega corporations are going to immediately embrace Bitcoin. But what I do think is it's going to become part of the conversation. And there are about 120 companies that are public that are starting to hold Bitcoin right now. There are a lot of Bitcoin standard companies like Mara, like Simler, like Metaplanet, like, you know, Rumble is getting into the business.
And as they start to buy Bitcoin and issue fixed income securities and equity securities, you're going to see demand increase. Yeah, it would probably start with the smaller tech companies that are just naturally more volatile themselves. I think that makes sense. You know, I've seen it multiple times, but I think it was just as recently as three months ago, the former speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said that the solution to the U.S. Debt crisis is stablecoins and increasing T-bill demand there. The incentives are likely to line up and i i guess i wonder you know if if the u.s government figures this out its short term seems quite bullish and i don't really have the fears that some people have about oh they're going to control bitcoin they're going to force a fork.
I i think you're uh you're forgetting how brilliant satoshi was you know for the last 13 or 14 years this thing has been freely distributed to the plebs to the people through mining through proof of work and the vast vast majority of the bitcoin supply is held by those plebs it's held by those people and black rock can buy up you know four or five percent of the supply one day the u.s government could buy up four or five percent of the supply one day but that doesn't that you know what that doesn't even that doesn't even that's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what the hodlers have you know river of course i'm a big fan of river they have some visuals out around this.
And they also include the distribution to, I guess what I'm trying to say is they try to include the potential loss of Bitcoin. So they try to have a visualization they put out on December 3rd. I'll put a link in the show notes to this. And it tries to kind of, in one visual, try to show you the distribution of Bitcoin. And businesses hold about 836,000 Bitcoin right now. ETFs hold about 1.25 million in early December. Governments around the world, about 307,000. Of course, there's still about 1.2 million to be mined. And River estimates at least, you know, somewhere around almost 1.5 to 2 million Bitcoin lost.
And you have Satoshi's stash too, which is almost a million coin. 69.9% is held just among individuals. 14.69 million Bitcoin. ETFs hold 1.25 million. The people hold 14.7 million Bitcoin. So that's a pretty good buffer. You understand? That's a pretty good buffer. Satoshi was so brilliant, really very brilliant to think of this distribution mechanism. And then Wall Street laughed. They didn't take it seriously for too long to their detriment. And the fact that we are at the point where it's even being discussed as a way for Microsoft to de-risk themselves from essentially everybody betting on a promise, or that we're talking about how Bitcoin could be used as a strategy to strengthen the dollar system.
Or that the federal chair Jerome Powell is on stage saying that Bitcoin is a competitor to gold. Or in the Federal Reserve itself, in terms of the system, what do you think of that idea? I don't think that's how people think about it. I mean, it's so, you know, people use Bitcoin as a speculative asset, right? It's like gold. It's just like gold only. It's virtual. It's digital. People are not using it as a form of payment or as a store of value. It's highly volatile. It's not a competitor for the dollar. It's really a competitor for gold. You know, it's that's really how I think of it.
I love that in J-Pow's world, gold is a speculative asset, not the dollar, not the thing that loses value every single day and is always going down. But the thing that's always going up and has been always going up against the dollar. That's the speculative dangerous asset. But that even seemingly kind of, you know, crap sandwich there is a fundamental shift from it's nothing, it has no place in the marketplace, you know, that now, you know, it's as worthless as gold. OK. All right. Well, you know what? I'm going to take that from the Fed chair. So are you bullish for 2025? Boosting and tell me if you are, why are you bullish? Is it federal policy? Is it just the dynamics of the happening?
Is it the ETFs? Why are you bullish in 2025? And if you're not bullish, what should we be prepared for? What is it that we're not looking out for? What are we not seeing? What is the threat to Bitcoin in 2025? Boost that in as well. I have a low-hanging fruit example for you, just something I've kind of been chewing on. A Coinbase hack in 2025 would be disastrous. Not only would people just be out probably a lot of funds, although I'm told that Coinbase only holds a small portion online, but imagine the backlash. People will claim digital assets are too hard to custody.
Even Coinbase can't do it. You know, there'd be a lot of that. God only knows if there'd be some sort of, like, reaction in Congress. But I think it would dramatically halt the institutional momentum because so many of them are using Coinbase behind the scenes. I think it's a low risk, but it's an example of what I'm talking about here. Like what are the big risks in 2025 that we're not really paying attention to? Because so many of these macro narratives and conditions are coming together to be very bullish for Bitcoin. I think it's important we try to keep our eye on what could still get us. What could nip us?
What might be that black swan? Boost in. tell me why you're bullish or. Music. All right. Well, coming up on the show, your boost. I have three huge environmental studies that I want to share with you. Some big, big updates this week. And I did it once again. I have two more final clips of the week, State of the Network and more. But first, I want to talk about some ways you can stack sats and support the show. Buy your sats on river. It's the best, as far as I know, the best way to stack in the US. I have no official relationship with them, But I think they have a brilliant system. They're Bitcoin only.
They let you withdraw over Lightning. Beautiful interface for DCE. Nice web app and mobile apps available to you. That's River. They're great. They also let you give Bitcoin gift cards. When you go over to River and Stack Sats and use my link in the show notes, you support the show too. Another great option, if River hasn't worked for you or if you're in Canada, the Bitcoin well. They have amazing self-custody options, including Lightning support. And in Canada, they have stuff that I see nowhere else. That's the Bitcoin will. I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
I have an affiliate to them now. The Bitcoin company, if you're ready to spend your sats, thebitcoincompany.com, use the promo code JUPITER. You don't even have to create an account over there. You can log in with Lightning, send sats over Lightning quickly into a gift card, and just go. If you're ready to pay your bills and stack sats, that's what I use the fold card for. I'll have a link to that, as well as my link to Salt Lending. That's how I get access to my Bitcoin value without selling it. And I'll tell you more about that. And we're going to have a good conversation in the booth around that too.
So the links to all of that are at the top of the show notes. Music. And we do have some great boosts to get into, so strap it on because we're going to get into a good conversation this week. We're going to dive deep into the boost this week, as the Google machine might say. And our first boost comes from user 709936771. So I think you don't have your username set in Fountain, but you can absolutely boost me back or shoot me an email or something. and I will credit you because this is one hell of a baller boost. User 79 comes in with 500,000 sets. Hey, Rich Lobster! Hey.
Music. Rich Lobster! User 79, thank you so much. Like I said, small boost or something, or a message, hit me up on Noster, let me know. I'll credit you. They write, this episode will age well. Keep up the amazing work, Chris. Well, thank you for that amazing value. You just made the episode right there, sir. You'll probably help make this one of our best episodes of the year, and that means a tremendous amount to me. I've been putting a ton of work in recently. Thank you, User 79. I really appreciate that boost. Now, Wine Eagle also comes in with a very generous 75,000 sats.
I hoard that which your kind covet. Coming in hot with the booze. Wine Eagle writes, stay humble and stack those sats. Adjust for the podfather. Let's all brainstorm ways to get off of Hive. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, I'm not opposed to working towards stuff like that. But there's a little bit more urgent stuff, I think, that they have to address with Albie custodial services going away. And that solution works now. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to work away from it, but I don't think it's the top problem right now. He says, I do see the irony of boosting against Hive using, although the boosts don't use Hive.
Hive is really only used in just the notification that a new episode has come out. I'm still not convinced that these things need to be anything more than a privileged database. I think the idea around that was not to have a centralized database. So if the podcast index went down or that you couldn't censor through the index. The idea with Hive was to have it fully distributed in a way that left it uncensorable, and any podcast client or like a server running a Rust app or Go app that, you know, checks the chain could subscribe and pull the information out. You know, there's things out there like Nostra that offer similar things now, but that didn't exist a few years ago.
And I think the number one priority is to make the boosting onboarding and the actual boosting experience even better and easier and solve for the Albi custodial services going away for listeners. That's like, got to do that in the next couple of weeks kind of priority. And anything I can do to help them with those transitions, I hope I can do it. But thank you, Wine Eagle. Thank you very much. And I think it's still something to keep on the radar. Appreciate that boost. Derivision Dingus came in with 20,000 sats. Dingus, I'm looking up for all McDuck. That's almost a McDuck.
Says, excellent episode as usual. I think you hit the nail on the head about Bitcoin loans. Oh, yeah, we're going to be talking about Bitcoin loans a little bit. I believe it's going to be a massive market, he writes. I need one myself, actually. Last year, I had some cash set aside to buy a car and went to some dealerships. But right before I pulled the trigger, Uncle Sam hit my wife and I with a massive tax bill. Oh, I've been there. As soon as things usually get straightened out, that's when I get hit by these incredible tax bills. It's really hard to be a small business owner.
So that soaked up all the cash, of course. It was our first full year of living and working in Washington. And I guess my wife wasn't paying enough in taxes out of her paycheck. It wiped out my whole car fund. Luckily, I was listening to This Week in Bitcoin and stacking sets, so it didn't hurt as bad as it could have, but now I need one of those Bitcoin loans and I'm highly interested in the subject either way, so thanks for covering these important topics. Yeah, I think a lot of us are going to be looking at, hey, I stacked this. Even if you stacked at $50,000, right? Not to mention some people were stacking at $200.
You want to get access to some of that value without selling. It is a risky thing, though. We're going to keep talking about that. Bobbypin came in with 10,000 sats. Hey, that's just over 9,000. It's over 9,000! I am programmed in multiple techniques. It took about three years of listening to you before I switched to Arch, about seven years before I really bought into Bitcoin, and now I'm excited to switch to Nix in 2028 and kick myself for not trying it sooner. All right. I like that you're honest with yourself about that. Thanks for all you've done. Keep at it. Thanks, Bobby Penn. That's really funny.
It's good to hear from you too. One dull geek comes in with a row of sats. Oh, look at them go. I'm not sure I understand the risk profile of a Bitcoin-backed loan. If I collateralize at 2x my loan value, I think I risk losing all that 2x Bitcoin, where selling Bitcoin risks only 1x. Straight. Great. So I think you're, okay, so to explain this in another way so people are following, say you wanted to get $5,000 of a Bitcoin loan to go, you know, to fix something or whatever. They would want generally, although this depends on the platform, but generally they want half or more in collateral.
So you put in $10,000 in Bitcoin, you get a $5,000 USD loan. So you want a $20,000 Bitcoin loan, then you got to put in $40,000 of Bitcoin. and I. When the price drops, they will margin call you to cover the difference there if you go below a threshold of collateralization. So that's where you will sell. And the downside there will be you'll sell at a slightly cheaper price than you might have sold at the top of the market. But you also might not have to sell at all. Of course, selling Bitcoin also risks the loss to the upside. I have essentially shorting Bitcoin, he writes, which could be a bigger than 2x risk. No kidding.
I think it's very likely a bigger than 2x risk. I think the timing might be important to make the loan work. Drawing the loan at the top for a typical 50% or 80% dip would be pretty bad, whereas drawing at the bottom would be awesome. I feel pretty comfortable with my intelligence level, but I've never really felt really great about predicting things like that. I agree. I generally don't either. However, just because of everything I had been following on the show and everything I've been telling you guys, it's going to rip after the election.
I just sort of, I think we got the loan, you know, just a little bit before the election because I figured that's when it would pump and then I could probably suffer a pretty big drawdown. I think with the loan I'm experimenting with right now, I don't get a margin call until Bitcoin drops to 35,000. So that's, I feel pretty good about, right? But you're right, I had to time that. But that's kind of, I mean, I'm not, this is not financial advice and I don't know really S about F, but you can listen and work out what I might be onto, what I might not be onto and kind of help build out your decision-making here. That's what I used.
The same data I bring to you on the show is the data I used to decide when to take my loan out. So it is possible, but it's risky. But I feel like, and I know this is, and I think the thing I'm trying to communicate is I feel like it's less risky than selling your Bitcoin. It's less risky than selling your Bitcoin. Yes, you might end up selling it. Yes, you might have to sell at a price you don't want to sell it at. But you might also avoid ever having to sell it. And then you get access to the gains forever. So that's where I think like I'm wondering if that thought process checks out great boost thank you very much one dull geek not a dull question at all Joe Emili comes in with 11,101.
That's not possible nothing can do that well he just did he just did and he just sends a number one, You know what? Number one right back at you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that boost. Some dude comes in with 10,101 sats. You's a boost. That's not a Jar Jar boost. My bad. Here, you get another one just for that. Sometimes my genius is, it's almost frightening. I know. I'm not happy with the swan fees, but River is not available in my state. I want a service that supports DCA and auto withdrawal, and I don't want a service that requires a phone. Any ideas? Well, some dude. I think you should definitely check out Bitcoin.
Well, that's one of the reasons I added them to my affiliate list. I've been watching them for a while. I think they're a pretty solid company. I have some good news about them later in the show. Also factored into my decision. And you don't need a phone app. I think that's what you mean. I don't know. They're probably going to KYC you, right? Because any of these companies do. But I don't think they require you use a phone app. And they encourage you when you purchase the Bitcoin to immediately withdraw it to an external wallet.
In fact, I think that's how the workflow, I don't even know, I mean, maybe there's a way to store, maybe you can build a wallet, but the workflow that I have on there is when you purchase, it goes immediately to an external wallet address. And there's a lot of ways you can do it. I have a Lightning address in there too. It'll take an LNURL compatible Lightning address, which is really sweet. And then the features set from there just goes even crazier up in Canada. But check out the Bitcoin wheel. Tell me what you think. Some dude, and I'd really like some feedback on that.
Now, Mug Daddy comes in with a real Jar Jar boost, 5,000 sats. You're so boost. I made my wife listen to that Trudeau clip like three times. That's hilarious. Yes, I love it. I know. And he was so just cocksure of himself, too. Oh, Trudeau. I don't know if you saw that. Did you see the picture of him going around dinner at Trump? And first of all, there's like a kid photobombing it making a crazy face in the background. And then somebody photoshopped Trudeau's face out and put one of those South Park Canadian characters where their whole head just moves. Guess simple things please me i suppose anyways thank you very much for the boost and i'm i got i really like that you've played that for your wife a few times appreciate that thanks mug daddy north hodl comes in with 2 121 sats okay you need the whole audience on board with moscow time it's sats per dollar so 99.99 is 100k in value okay all right and then he sends me a link so I can edificate myself, I'm assuming.
A link to Weapon X, as a matter of fact, where it's just a picture of Elon. I don't know what that's about. No, actually, it's an explanation of the term Moscow time, which became notable during a video call with Jack Dorsey, where he had a block clock showing 1952. Instead of thinking $1 equaled 1952 sats, people started speculating if he was in a different time zone because he, coincidentally, was in that time. It was 1952 in Moscow at that exact moment. That's a deep ref, man. Thanks for bringing me up to speed. That was a meme I was not familiar with. Appreciate the edimication, North, and thanks for the boost.
BitCryptics here with 2,048 sats. BTC-backed loans for the win. I used your salt code. Thanks for sharing and add it to my referral co-chairing platform at rcx.bitcryptic.com. Well, are you asking? Absolutely, add it. Thank you. And thank you for using, yeah, I decided after the episode, yeah, I was going to do it. And I'll tell you why. Salt has two features, which I've never had to use, so I cannot actually vouch for them yet. But I read through all their documentation and they list them as current features. Number one, actually, so this isn't a feature, but it's something that they confirmed, their CEO confirmed.
They're a Bitcoin company now they were, you know an everything coin company and they even had their own token for a bit the SALT token, now they still have to support that for historical reasons but they're really walking all that back and they're completely focusing on Bitcoin, that's why I started monitoring them about a year ago and that's usually my strat is I'll start watching and I'll follow them really closely, I'll try out the platform and then I'll watch all the news and then if they don't screw up for a while Well, you know, then I'll actually like create an actual account and actually start using it.
And then if that goes okay, I'll start talking about it. That's where I'm at with salt right now. And the other thing that gave me some confidence, and I think this is an interesting feature, is, and this is my one use case for stable coins. If you hold stable coins on their platform, they will liquidate that before they liquidate your Bitcoin. So you can have, you know, you do you, but you can have $1,000 in stablecoins on the SALT platform. And if they need to do a margin call, they will liquidate your stablecoins before they touch your Bitcoin stash.
Also have a feature and I do have that. I'm using that feature. So I have like a buffer there if there's a margin call. The other thing they've done that I've never witnessed because I haven't had this problem is if Bitcoin is crashing and it is about to wipe out, they have an auto convert to stablecoin feature. So they'll convert your holdings to stablecoins and hold them at that value. Keep them there. And then they let you swap back into Bitcoin once the price starts coming back up. And that's another way they can protect from having to do a big margin call. I don't know of any other platform that does that. And that's a pretty neat feature. Thankfully, I've never had to try it.
But it does give me some confidence between being able to hold some stable coins. So unfortunately, it's only Ethereum network stable coins. If I could give them any feedback, it would be like, I don't know, like Liquid would be better, Tether on Liquid. So I'm doing USDC over the Ethereum network. So, you know, the gas fees are ridiculous. So you do like one large chunk transfer and just put it on the wallet over there and then you've got that margin buffer that's my strat we'll see how it goes and bit cryptic thank you very much for using the salt code or and link in the show notes i really appreciate it hey patar's back and he's here with a space balls boost so the combination is one two three four five hello mr patar says the concern with bitcoin backed loans is should the value of your collateral drop beyond a certain point, which Bitcoin is famous for doing, the bank may liquidate the collateral at a price which is much, much lower than that you just sold at the cycle top and paid the capital gains tax.
Yes, I believe that is the big risk right there. And I think my solution to that is that stablecoin buffer I just talked about, but also the risk. The reverse risk of if I sold my Bitcoin today, well, OK, let me back up. If I sold the Bitcoin to cover all the car repairs we had to do when it was at $57,000, just days later, I would have missed out on a 30% gain. And that's at this point in time right now in Bitcoin's history, you know, coming up on 10 months after the happening, ETFs gobbling up, everybody aping into the micro strategy, Bitcoin treasury, strat, nation states talking about building reserves, Fed lowering rates, other Western banks lowering rates, M2 supply going up.
Kind of seems like the right time to bet on something like this. But you're right i think that's is the risk is that it really crashes and they liquidate you real quick at a price that's redonk the reality is they give you like 24 48 hours to address the margin call well if bitcoin dipped 80 it's probably going to be up 30 40 within 48 hours 24 hours i mean my god how how hard would most of us ape in if bitcoin got down to around $10,000 or even $30,000. I'd turn that DCA up to 11, buddy, pump that thing right back up. I think we all would. So the risk is definitely there that you may end up having to sell your Bitcoin at a lower price than you would have if you just sold it and took the Gapal gains hit.
But I think there's a higher risk that you'll miss out on gains, especially in 2024 and 2025. I don't know if that's always the case, though. So perhaps you have to be a little flexible with the strategy. There's times to be Bitcoin-backed loan on, and there's times to be Bitcoin-backed loan off. And then as we get into the future, it just makes sense to stack more sats. So that way you have more collateral, you have more leverage, you can take more optionality as you need it. If you just go all in on the ETFs, you don't really have that. You're stuck to that ecosystem, at least.
Thanks, Patar. Really good to hear from you. Ace Ackerman's here with AeroaDucks. Hello, Ace. Keep the portion of your Bitcoin stash and incrementally sell into a likely blow-off top. Then you'll have some profits to buy again at the bottom before the next halving. Wait for Bitcoin lending industry to mature before taking out large loans on your Bitcoin. Do you do that, Ace? Anybody do that? Does anybody, you know, layer out as Bitcoin goes up? I have a hard time just ever selling any of my Bitcoin. That's my problem. I feel like there's always a bigger risk that I won't be able to get that same amount of stash back.
But there is that part of my brain is like, man, if you just did this strategically, you know, if Bitcoin's at 98,000 and let's say it pumps up to 112 and then comes down to 72 and you sell it like around 100 and then you bought back in around That'd be great, but you just don't know if it's going to happen, my friend. I couldn't do it. I just stack those sats. Stay humble. That's what I do. I wish I was savvy enough to do the trading like that. I really do. I mean, if I was that savvy, I'd probably get into some sort of inverse ETF situation and really burn myself out.
All right. Well, thanks, Ace. User 80 comes in with a row of ducks. Just discovered your stuff. We'll keep listening. Well, thank you. Nice to hear from you. Thanks for checking in right away. And if you get that username set in Fountain, boost back in and give me a shout out. Holder comes in with 4,747 sats. B-O-O-S-T. Greetings from Iceland. Wow. Well, that's awesome. Hello out there, Iceland. We just had parliamentary elections with 11 different parties, none of which even mentioned Bitcoin. We are still so early. Banks are Ponzi schemes run by morons. We are so early. I know that's a meme, but I got a clip I'm going to play, one of my final clips of the week, that puts that into perspective.
It's not just a meme, it's a reality. That kind of insight also puts it into perspective, Holder, so thank you. Or Hodler. But wait until the clip at the end of the episode. It's really going to put it into perspective, too. Nakamado 6102 comes in with 2,101 sats. Nope, 2,100 sats. There you go. Thoughts on the BitKey wallet, which is made by Block, right? Jack Dorsey's company. I have been interested in BitKey. It does seem like a potential hardware wallet that normies could use. There's a lot of reliance on a mobile device and in the iCloud ecosystem on iCloud and the Google system on Google Drive.
It does encrypt before it uploads to either one of those services, but that's there. I have decided to buy one for a family member who has a modest little stash and I'll be seeing them over the holiday and I'm going to help them set it up and then I'm going to observe and I'm going to see how it works for them and I'm going to see what happens when they have to switch phones. If they lose their phone, if they lose the wallet, I'll just kind of watch. And then I will develop a bit more of an opinion on BitKey then. I got it for a great deal. It was just added to Amazon right before Black Friday. I think it was like $80.
And it seems like a pretty nice little package, especially for people that are very mobile-focused and a lot of the people in my family are. So that's kind of my thoughts on it right now, Nakamoto. But I find it to be very limiting compared to a cold card, right? You can't have multiple bitkeys. For example, you can only have one bitkey per app per phone. So if you wanted to have a business stash and a personal stash, you'd have to have two separate mobile devices, two separate apps, two separate bitkeys. There's not really any kind of multi-wallet functionality there and then there's not like as far as i know the ability to do like a watch wallet so you couldn't have a corporate wallet that's the main wallet and then you have people that have the ability to monitor transactions, or that's also that's also handy with parents and kids so i just don't think it has that kind of stuff which is really easy to set up in a sparrow cold card environment but then again Again, this is pointed squarely at people who would find Sparrow to be overwhelming and cold card to be scary.
And for those people, I think it's a really good option. Or for people that just want a little bit extra polish on the experience, I think it could be really valuable to know judgment on their technical skills. Some people just like a really smooth experience. So I'm going to help them set it up over Christmas, and then I'll check in with them over time. And I'll follow up on the Biki Nakamoto. You just had great timing because I just bought that for them as a Christmas gift. All right. That brings us to the end of all the boosts at the 2000 cutoff. Thank you, everybody who does boost in. I really appreciate it.
And I read all of them and save all of them, even the ones below the 2000 sat cutoff. But we do that for time. Now, let's sum it all up because I think this was a great week. We had 47 of you stream sats as you listen. That is awesome. Thank you, everybody. And collectively, you sat streamers stacked 65,981 sats. So when you combine that with the 20 folks who boosted in, the show this week, I think one of its best weeks in a while, stacked a grand total of 728,794 SAFs. Music. That's really a big thank you to user 79 who sent that very generous 500 000 sap boost here you know as a podcast network we're just quietly shifting to a bitcoin standard and we're not selling debt we don't have to have a public company that issues stock to do it we do it by creating content that our listeners love and want to support directly and then we take that and we're building a bitcoin treasury.
So that way in the future, the network can be self-sustaining and not rely on advertising, only, only our audience, but without having to constantly beg or having to run, you know, like pledge months where we do nothing but pledge like they do on my local PBS station. Instead, we make good content, you reward good content. It's value for value. And we'll stack those sets And we will build a podcast network that will endure and remain independent and only accountable to its audience. It's a beautiful thing. And I really appreciate your support. Thank you, everybody, this week who made it a banger.
If you'd like to boost the show, just get Fountain FM or get a new podcast app at podcastapps.com. Fountain FM and Strike are like a killer combo, and they make it really easy to get started to strike in your area. But really anything that's on the Lightning Network, like Bitcoin Well or River, you can top up Strike with that. Additionally, there's a whole bunch of other apps out there, including options that are completely self-hosted. And you might just want to go that route too. Check them out at PodcastApps.com. Music.
Well, we have some really, really great news for Bitcoin in the environmentalism area. Three different studies have come out recently that show incredible results. A new paper shows that Bitcoin mining helps accelerate the UN's sustainable development goals and helps make uneconomical biorefineries profitable. The key findings say, quote, contrary to current public opinion, Bitcoin has the potential to positively contribute and even accelerate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Over time, the integration of Bitcoin mining in biorefineries could transform the financial dynamics of the bio-based products market, making them more affordable and accessible whilst pushing towards sustainable development in energy transitions.
And then another peer-reviewed study came out with evidence that when a solar farm uses Bitcoin mining, they achieve ROI on their solar investment twice as fast. I'll link to this in the show notes, peer-reviewed study, a dual approach to economic viability and environmental study is its name. And there is so much in this report. I'll tell you just the very tippity-top key findings. A 50 megawatt solar farm. Without Bitcoin mining, it takes 8.1 years to get a return on investment. So that's like, you don't want your solar panels to break down. You don't want to have issues like a big hailstorm or equipment failure, because that just extends that ROI time window.
But without Bitcoin mining, 8.1 years to get a return on investment. With Bitcoin mining, 3.7 years, 3.7 years. It's research that's built on a lot of earlier research, which showed that Bitcoin money makes renewable operations more profitable, which then supports climate action and the renewable transition because these profits were then, the study shows this, the profits were reinvested into building more renewable capacity. They also looked at proof-of-stake coins. You don't get those benefits because they don't have the energy use.
The data is just amazing on this one. And it shows you how Bitcoin's energy use can be a massive positive for building out renewable infrastructure. And then last, another peer-reviewed paper shows that Bitcoin mining is profitable in 96% of renewable installations. And that these profits are already, already contributing to the energy transition. Link again in the show notes. Again, peer-reviewed study. Bitcoin mining is profitable in 80 out of 83 renewable energy installations. That's huge. And the profits from this mining in power and energy transition in the US. The paper was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, which I guess has a major impact factor of 9.7 in this industry. I don't even know.
Here's the other thing. It's not just an outlier. It's the 13th of the last 15 articles on Bitcoin and energy that showed Bitcoin has significant environmental benefits. A wave building here. The exact 180 is happening with Bitcoin and the environmental story. And it's not just here in the United States. It's all over the world, like in Bhutan. Now moving to Asia, Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom known for prioritizing happiness over wealth, has quietly emerged as a major player in the cryptocurrency world. With $780 million worth of Bitcoin, which is nearly a third of its GDP, Bhutan has become the fourth largest government holder of Bitcoin.
Now what's fueling the country's ambitions to become a leader in green crypto mining? Here's our report with answers. I think it's just fascinating. We can stop there. I think it's just, it's incredible to see that these different studies that show that it's not just good, but it's great for the renewable energy transition. And the people that push back on environmental grounds just don't know what they're talking about. And Patan's national Bitcoin holdings now reach one third of its GDP. And it's doing that by renewing it with, by mining it with renewable energy, I should say. I should say, but I can often barely say.
Music. All right, some updates to get into this week. There's a lot going on. And one of the big ones is BlackRock, IBIT. Their SPA ETF surpassed 500,000 Bitcoin in assets under management. It's huge. This is a massive thing. And I wanted to play a little audio around this because this analyst for CNBC who focuses on ETFs, He predicts that 2025 for Bitcoin isn't going to be about on-chain. Don't worry about your fees because none of the actions happen on-chain. The action is going to be in the ETFs for 2025. They're viable. What we've seen, though, is the institutionalization of Bitcoin as its own asset that is unique and disparate from crypto.
Bitcoin by itself is not Ethereum and Solana or any of these other things. Bitcoin is unique. As such, I think what we're going to see in 2024, 2025 is the dynamic of Bitcoin, what it's worth, how it's trading, how volatile it is, is going to actually start being driven by exchange traded products and less by on-chain people trading crypto. We've already seen that. The volumes in Ibit are phenomenal. I mean, I don't know what they are off the top of my head, But I would not be surprised if there are days in which the complex of Bitcoin ETFs trades more notional than trades on chain directly.
The volumes are insane. Really? Because of that, you have to expect more price discovery is going to move. You're talking about the volumes now, not assets in demand. I'm talking about the volumes, just the amount trading with the options running. I mean, I just talk. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. With the options on Ibit now trading, that cracks open the asset class to all sorts of investment strategies that were basically impossible. Has volumes increased? By the way, folks, in case you don't know, the options on IBIT were trading just recently, what, two weeks ago? Yeah, just a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, and they were very successful. Does options trading generally lead to more trading of the underlying? Absolutely, because people need to hedge out that delta. They need to hedge out the underlying security. The options dealers don't want to be long or short anything, so they're always going to be using the underlying as a way to get out or into those positions. IBIT's already extraordinarily liquid. They don't need to go to another asset class. They don't need to go on chain to get that exposure. Yeah, I wonder if this doesn't also cessate some people's shitcoin trading a little bit.
I don't know if this is going to be a wide phenomenon, but I do think some Bitcoiners... Drawn into stacking ETF Bitcoin instead of actual Bitcoin. Because I sat down one evening and just looked at all of the math of it, and some of it does work out. And BlackRock's rep kind of puts it into words, I suppose. He didn't do a great job, but he tries. They're Bitcoin. We've had a tremendous amount of volume. I think part of it is a lot of people can really customize their risk, their income, their upside potential with these options. So if you think about people who maybe have made a lot of money in Bitcoin, they want to maybe protect some of those gains.
People who are holding a lot of Bitcoin and not drawing any income from it. Maybe they want to sell covered coals on top of that to generate some income with that Bitcoin. So it just expands the ways that people can own this asset and have it play a role in their portfolio. So the options are being well received. The Bitcoin ETFs continue to pump like crazy. Officials are halting Bitmain units at U.S. ports, at least according to Blockspace Media. Officials have been halting the Antminer ASIC imports. Bitminer's latest Antminer S21 and T21 ASIC miner shipments are being held by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection at various ports nationwide, including San Francisco and Detroit, following a request from the Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC. Seven U.S.-based Bitcoin mining companies reported that these delays have persisted for up to two months. Notably, other ASIC manufacturers like Microbit and Canon are not targeted. No BS Bitcoin is following that story albi with benefits introducing albi benefits it's a perk for those of us who have albi hub cloud subscriptions of course you get automated backups but also they're introducing a personalized lightning address so you're at get your username at gil your username at get albi.com which is actually.
Time I think I've ever said that out loud, it's kind of hard to say. You can change it however you want, so maybe I will, because apparently it's tough. They're also offering priority support, dedicated onboarding sessions, special Discord channels, and other Albi benefits, such as access to deals with vendors such as SeedStore and others. It's a nice way to try to bring a little more value to that AlbiHub cloud subscription. Of course, you can run AlbiHub on your own node and pay no subscription, But if you don't want to have to run a node or run the hardware, you can use AlbiHub Cloud.
Speaking of Albi, the Go app, the AlbiGo app, which if you have AlbiHub you need to be using, has been updated. 1.7.2 now has LNURL withdrawal support. This is huge. Very, very grateful to see that. Also, Boostagram info in the transaction details. So if you're a podcaster getting Boostagrams, you can now read them in the AlbiGo app. enhanced QR code readability, a bunch of other stuff too. Improvements in LNURL redirects, validation of various amounts, onboarding, scrolling is even improved. Address book stuff a lot is improved there. And the Bitcoin Well. I told you there'd be some news for the Bitcoin Well.
And one of the things that made me decide to become an affiliate, they are killing it. The Canadian publicly traded company, Bitcoin Well Inc., has officially adopted a treasury strategy with Bitcoin. and they are raising $2 million to buy more Bitcoin. They've already purchased 7.53 Bitcoin at an average Canadian dollar cost of $137,551 per coin. It's weird to talk about $137,000 Bitcoin prices, but that's what it is up in Canada. The Bitcoin well plans to keep adding Bitcoin to their corporate treasury, including using convertible debt offerings and stacking them sats.
And I say good on them. They're a great company, and they should be taking advantage of an asset like Bitcoin. We'll have a link to the affiliate. Music. I've got two final clips of the week again. I know. I just think they go well together, you know, and it's like I want to play them back to back. They were from different places, but yet they go well together. The first one is James Lavish gives us some perspective on how far Bitcoin has to grow financially. We say we are early. Well, he's got some of the numbers that really sort of puts it into perspective.
There are $900 trillion of global assets, investable assets. Bitcoin is currently 1.7 trillion of those, which is 0.02% of total assets. It's one-tenth the size of gold. So it has a long way to go here. But at $90,000, it's still only 0.2% of the entire investment universe. Now, remember, it's one-tenth the size of gold, but gold's been around for thousands of years. Bitcoin's been around for 15. This is tremendous momentum, but a huge amount of space here for it to start taking some allocations from those other areas. Where will it take allocations from? Well, the obvious one is gold.
Second obvious one is equities. The third obvious one is bonds. And then the fourth obvious one is real estate. So it's going to kind of go in that order in my mind that investors are going to start realizing that, oh, this is digital gold. Oh, I should, instead of having my money in just equities and bonds, I should have some in Bitcoin. Oh, instead of having all of my money in real estate, and instead of looking for real estate investment opportunities, forget about your home, I should buy some Bitcoin instead. Why? Because it's liquid. It's trustworthy.
It has a tremendous rate of return over the course of just four years. Every single four-year period, it has a rate of return. So that's another thing. And then just doing quick math on it, it's 0.2% right now. At 1% of the total global assets, Bitcoin's a $9 trillion asset and worth about $450,000 per coin. At 3%, it's worth $1.3 million per coin. So we have a long way to go. I don't know when we get to that million-dollar level. I expect it to be in the next seven years or so. Wild. Even 1%, 2%, 3%, it would just be beyond our wildest dreams. And when you hear about this and you hear about how institutional adoption and nation-state adoption is necessary, it's natural for people, especially people not familiar with Bitcoin's distribution, to get worried.
Well, you can play this clip for them over and over again. So as this adoption takes place and has capped the $21 million, I think it's going to continue to grow as a reserve for the individual. And the first big group of shareholders actually in Apple were not institutions. It was the retail person that had a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch, bought an iPad, and turned around and said, I like it so much, I bought the stock. Now the top 10 shareholders show up as being institutional names, like Warren Buffett having a big position. But before then, it was predominantly retail. That's what's been driving the adoption process of Bitcoin.
Music. Well, it's time to take a look at the state of the network. As we record, Bitcoin is sitting at $98,320. It pumped hard today. Wow. I think when I woke up, we were around 94, 95. I don't know. Still, though, 1.4 off, 1.4% off, 1.3% off now of our all-time high. Sats per dollar is incredible. 1,016 sats per dollar. Amazing to watch that tick down. It's my favorite stat right there. Sats per dollar, 1,016. There are, presently, 20,909 nodes reachable on the network, an all-time high since we've been watching. That is great to see. Our all-time high date was November 22nd, 2024, at $99,740.
So we're almost there, 12 days since then. Bitcoin network churns and hashes right along. Difficulty is up. Nodes are up. Price is just 1% off all-time high. Yep. State of the network is very strong. Thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode of This Week in Bitcoin. I'll have links to what I talked about at thisweekinbitcoin.show. This was episode 38. Boost it and tell me what you'd like to hear on the show if I missed something or if you've got a different take on what I talked about. And remember, I want to know what you're bullish for in 2025.
And if you're not bullish, what are you seeing that we're not seeing? What's that big threat lurking out there? Also, please consider sharing the show with somebody who's Bitcoin curious. Maybe help them stay on the Bitcoin path and not wind up playing with Salooner or something like that. Just send them my way. Oh, also, thank you everybody who's been boosting the artist. We did it again. Again, Be The Wheel was number one on the value for value charts last week after the episode came out. So that's really awesome. I have another value for value track for you. When you boost during the music, 90% of the sats go to the artist.
Thank you so much for joining me. I leave you with. Music.
Welcome Into 38!
Bitcoin's Potential and Tariff Concerns
Bitcoin In the Chop
MicroStrategy's Bitcoin Strategy
Bitcoin Loans and Financial Risks
Bitcoin's Environmental Impact Studies
The Future of Bitcoin and ETFs
