11 Years Later

Hello, this is Ross Ulgert. I'm calling you today from prison from a maximum.

Security federal penitentiary.

We don't have much time together today and I don't know if I'll get another

chance to talk to you like this.

I'll say as much as I can, but when it's time to go, I'll have to hang up and go back to my cell.

I have lost my freedom.

That's what I want to talk to you about today. I want you to understand what

it means to lose your freedom.

Music.

Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 43.

My name is Chris, chrislas.com, jupiterbroadcasting.com. And that,

that was the man himself.

That was the voice of Ross Albrecht, who has spent the last 11 years in jail

for running the infamous Silk Road.

And his story is so much more complex that can be put in just that intro sentence.

And as many of you know, Ross was an OG Bitcoiner.

And his story, staying alive, has depended on the communities around Ross and

his family carrying and keeping that torch alive.

And to really put the perspective and context to all of this story,

I want to start with a little bit of background.

I want to talk a little bit about who Ross was and why the community has fought

for Ross to be free for so long.

Ross was arrested at the age of 29. He's 40 now.

And ironically, his downfall began not by some top shot Department of Homeland

Security, not an FBI agent, but by a tax man.

On January 27th, 2011, a tax agent discovered a post on an online form,

and then they connected some dots to some other internal documentation across other agencies.

And that discovery by that tax agent on January 27th of 2011 ultimately led

to Ross's arrest in October of 2013.

On October 1st, 2013, federal agents entered a public library in San Francisco.

They arrested 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht ran the largest,

most sophisticated online market for illegal drugs in history.

He named it Silk Road, a reference to the ancient trade routes that connected

China to Europe beginning in the 2nd century BC.

Albrecht hoped to create his own modern-day marketplace, except his would sell

hardcore drugs and other illegal goods.

Over the two years and ten months that Silk Road operated, federal prosecutors

say it processed nearly $214 million in sales using Bitcoin.

The site operated on a hidden part of the internet called the Dark Web.

Prosecutors say a journal the FBI found on Ulbricht's computer stated he wanted

to create a website where people could buy anything anonymously with no trail

whatsoever that could lead back to them.

Unfortunately for Ulbricht, he did leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs that

ultimately took him down and his empire with it.

Albrecht was born on March 17, 1984, in Austin, Texas.

He was a Boy Scout, attaining the highest rank of Eagle Scout,

just like his dad had done.

He had a happy childhood, growing up an easygoing hipster but serious student

who scored 1,460 on his SATs within the 96th percentile and got a full ride

to the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied physics.

He then won another full scholarship, for a master's at Penn State in material

science and engineering. It was at Penn that he evolved into a hardcore libertarian,

a political philosophy that advocates individualism and minimal state involvement in people's lives.

He was a fan and follower of libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises,

who opposed government interference in the economy.

When then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney asked what is America's greatest

challenge, Ulbricht responded like this on his YouTube channel.

You know, but I think the most important thing is getting us out of the United Nations.

Albrecht wanted to create a world free from institutional or government control.

That mindset led him to create Silk Road in January 2011.

You couldn't type in a normal web address to get to Silk Road or use a normal

web browser. You needed software called Tor that works as a web browser.

Tor was developed by the U.S. Navy as a way of communicating privately over the internet.

It conceals the real IP address of computers on the network to hide the identity

of the user, and it can't be traced by the government.

Silk Road's address used a bunch of random numbers and letters that ended with .onion.

Ulbricht made the site by teaching himself how to code. When he needed more

help, he reached out on a Bitcoin community forum, writing, I'm looking for

the best and brightest IT pro in the Bitcoin community to be the lead developer

in a venture-backed Bitcoin startup company.

Anyone interested was to contact him via his email, rossulbricht at gmail.com.

Making his email public would later come back to haunt him.

He also got coding help from a buddy of his from undergrad, Richard Bates.

Albrecht had no choice but to eventually tell his friend what he was up to.

He also told his girlfriend, Julia V.

One day, he showed her the psychedelic mushrooms he was growing and selling

as a starter product on his new website.

Silk Road would eventually be a marketplace for all kinds of drugs.

Weed, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, heroin.

This fit Albrecht's libertarian mindset.

He believed that whatever someone decided to put in their body was their choice

and no one else's, least of all the government's.

What was not sold on the site was weapons or prostitution or things like that.

But that clip, it gives us a good basic overview of some of the early moments,

but it doesn't really tell you about the moment, the moment that I think about all the time.

Ross was working in the San Francisco library on his laptop.

And FBI agents at this point had been monitoring him for months and had taken

over two of his co-workers accounts on the Silk Road.

He had been chatting with them for a while and thought he was chatting with

his co-workers or whatever you want to call them.

And those agents posing talked Ross into looking at an admin issue on the Silk

Road website while they knew he was at the library.

So they had a brief exchange with him, told him about a problem that he needed

to look at, a message that had been flagged. And the moment he went into admin mode, they struck.

And it's a wild moment. And this clip from Reason, which I'll link the entire

clip in the show notes, paints a pretty vivid picture.

Ross's arrest on October 1st, 2013 at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco

Public Library was like a scene from an action movie.

He was downloading an interview with Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking

Bad. In another window, he was administering the Silk Road.

Undercover FBI agents staged a physical fight behind him.

When he turned his head to observe the commotion, an undercover agent snatched

his laptop before he could close

the cover, which would have encrypted the contents of its hard drive.

The FBI keeps a picture of the computer on display as a trophy from the hunt.

We have a link to that in the show notes, too.

Years of work to protect himself and his data, to prepare for protecting data

in case he had been, you know, seized by the authorities, completely undone.

Ross even had a key combo that he could press to immediately lock everything

down, but he just never had a chance to press it.

And you have to wonder at that moment what was going through his head.

He lurched for the laptop, but another FBI agent walked up behind him and gave

him a big bear hug and kept him in place.

You think he knew at that moment he was screwed? The trial began a year after that moment.

We had a bad feeling from the beginning that Vert was already in.

The dark web and drug trafficker and cybercrime.

These were major topics for the Jeff Sessions Justice Department.

And ultimately, Ross was indicted on seven various different drug charges.

He pleaded not guilty to all of them.

But he did create a website that helped people sell drugs. So why should we

free this man? You might be wondering.

Well, the reality is the case against Ross was never a solid one.

They never linked him to the DPR account who was doing some of the orders.

The U.S. government claims Ross always ran it, but others claim that's not true,

including Curtis Green, who came forward admitting that he ran the DPR account for a time.

The FBI even speculated, one of the agents involved, speculated that maybe Mark

Capels, you know, the Mt.

Gox guy, ran the DPR account for a bit. And interestingly enough,

someone even logged in to the DPR admin account after Ross had been arrested

during that processing time.

But something that never sat right with me is how they tried to smear Ross as

a murderer in an attempt to seal the deal.

Those who oppose freeing Ross say that he was also a contract killer.

He actually solicited the killings of as many as six people.

Offering $150,000 to a would-be hitman.

His mother said non-violent guy.

No, no. But when you look closer, things get murky.

Here's what we know. When building their case, prosecutors drew on chat logs

from a moment of crisis at the same time.

The site's top administrator, Curtis Green, had just been arrested.

It looked like he might have stolen about $350,000 worth of Bitcoin.

Nob, a participant on the Silk Road, was chatting with the site's top administrator,

who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

He told Nob that this will be the first time I've had to call on my muscle.

Do you want him beat up, shot, just paid a visit?

I'd like him beat up, then forced to send the Bitcoins he stole back.

Later that day, the Dread Pirate Roberts messaged Nob again.

Okay, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture?

He was on the inside for a while, and now that he's been arrested,

I'm afraid he'll give up info.

Nob sent the Dread Pirate Roberts a picture of what looked like Curtis Green

being tortured and killed.

I am pissed I had to kill him, but what's done is done.

It turns out that Knob was DEA agent Carl Force, one of two investigators on

the case who went to prison for embezzling Bitcoin during the investigation.

He had staged Green's murder. But maybe the dread pirate Roberts,

who was chatting with the corrupt undercover agent who set up a fake hit,

wasn't actually Ross Ulbricht.

After all, the name was inspired by the film The Princess Bride to describe

a character inhabited over and over through many generations.

I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts, he said. My name is Ryan.

I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts.

When the Dread Pirate Roberts gave an interview to Forbes two months before

Ulbricht's arrest, he insisted that he was not.

What inspired you to start the Silk Road? I didn't start the Silk Road. My predecessor did.

The Silk Road forums are full of comments from the Dread Pirate Roberts account.

Did you write those? The most I am willing to reveal is that I am not the first

administrator of Silk Road. The jury never saw this interview.

Everybody say, was there multiple DPRs? Absolutely there was. I was DPR once.

Curtis Green says to this day that he doesn't believe Ross is the one who put

out the hit and claims the undercover agent, Carl Force, a.k.a.

Knob, also had access to the Dread Pirate Roberts account.

And Carl Force and myself, as far as I know, were the only ones to have the login.

When I was supportive of Ross to my attorneys, they said, why were you supportive

of a guy that tried to kill you?

And I immediately snapped back and I said, how do you know that he tried to have me killed?

You're just going by what the government tells you. Federal prosecutors never

charged Ross for attempted murder,

but the federal judge who sentenced him to two life sentences plus 40 years

with no possibility of parole nonetheless referenced these episodes in her decision.

We'll come back to Carl Force, a.k.a. Knob, in a moment, who was the FBI agent.

But I want you to remember that Bitcoin was still new. The feds wanted to go

hard and make an example out of Ross. I think it was around $200 a coin when

Ross was arrested, and the FBI seized 144,000 Bitcoin from Ross.

And they made him out to be this drug kingpin who was ordering hits,

but he really had just built a marketplace.

Now, these two FBI agents involved, this was a cross-department effort to get

Ross, but these two FBI agents that were involved, they were dirty.

And so just as Ross's fate seemed sealed, false hope emerged because before

his trial was over, it came out that these FBI agents were no good and they'd

been accused of stealing and embezzling.

And the Washington Post says two federal agents are accused of stealing from

a criminal website they were investigating.

This morning, they face money laundering and wire fraud charges.

Chip Reid is in Washington with details from the indictment.

Chip, good morning. Well, good morning. In 2012 and 2013, two federal agents

were investigating the Silk Road website where users could buy and sell illegal

drugs using the web-based currency known as bitcoins.

But federal prosecutors now say those two agents were actually benefiting from

the very site they were trying to bring down, information that is threatening

to undermine one of the Department of Justice's most important cases.

Carl Force, a drug enforcement agent, and Sean Bridges, a member of the Secret

Service, were working undercover to unmask this man, Ross Albrecht.

The government suspected the clean-cut 30-year-old was Dread Pirate Roberts,

the creator and operator of Silk Road.

It's my belief, and this is kind of backed up by what Curtis Green said earlier,

anyone who had administrative login accounts, and there was a couple of them, could post as DPR.

It's sort of the admin account that they all could post from.

Force and Bridges used fake identities to communicate with Albrecht.

Force and Bridges being the FBI agents. That, federal prosecutors say,

was just the start of their deception.

It's truly, like, more complicated than any spy thriller I can think of.

Andy Greenberg, a senior writer for Wired, has been following the Silk Road

case. The simplest way to say this is that Carl Force was doubly undercover.

During his undercover investigation, Agent Force, a 15-year veteran of the DEA,

allegedly created several online personas, including French Maid.

In disguise, he allegedly sold Silk Road's founder, Ulbricht,

information about the government's investigation, offered to kill a Silk Road

employee, and then blackmailed Ulbricht.

He believed that he was kind of as immune from law enforcement as the person he was tracking.

His payment was in Bitcoin, which can be traded and exchanged anonymously,

or so they thought. If he was using his DEA computer to do these things,

that's probably not very smart.

In a series of complex transactions tracked by the government,

both agents allegedly moved Bitcoin into their personal accounts.

Prosecutors say Agent Bridges stole more than $800,000 worth.

They may have succumbed to that temptation of dirty money and the impunity of

anonymity, just as all of the users of Silk Road and its drug dealers were.

Albrecht has already been convicted of running Silk Road and is awaiting sentencing.

But his lawyer told us these new charges against the federal agents who are

investigating Silk Road are, quote, strong grounds for appeal.

And as we know, the DEA and Secret Service were already under the microscope

because of alleged misbehavior by other agents.

Now they have a new scandal to deal with. Gail?

Oh, boy. Thank you, Chip. It was so embarrassing because, as you heard,

it was one of their premier cases. And then there was corruption throughout.

So you'd think maybe that would have helped Ross, but those scandals had no impact on Ross's case.

He got two life sentences with no chance of parole.

Other drug trafficking cases like this, you know, you have five to six years, something like that.

I mean, some days, I don't know if some people even get jail time.

The FBI agents ended up roughly spending about two and a half years in prison.

Some of the top drug traffickers that were arrested on Silk Road were released years ago now.

Also moderators, anybody else who's kind of ancillarily involved,

they've all spent time in jail and been released.

And through all of it, all the trials and the rumors, the Bitcoin community

has really continued to share Ross's story.

And eight years into his incarceration, so I think this was 2021.

Ross had a chance to address the Bitcoin conference.

And it was a recorded phone call, so the audio is not great,

but the words are really powerful.

And I want to play a couple of moments. The entire call will be linked in the

show notes. It's about 25 minutes.

I'm just going to play a couple of moments for you. And one of them,

Russ talks about his time in jail. We all know the road to hell is paved with

good intentions, right?

And now here I am. I'm in hell.

I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.

Let me start by telling you about the hole. It goes by many names,

the shoe, segregation, the box, the For me, it's the hole.

The hole is the prison within the prison. I once spent four months straight in the hole.

Not easy for me to talk about, but I will.

The hole can make you or break you, and there was a time when it broke me.

It started with my mind racing out of control. I felt like the walls were pushing

in on me, like I just had to get out of that cell.

This lasted days. Then I started beating the walls and kicking the heavy metal door.

Something deep inside me cried out for freedom.

I couldn't accept where I was or what had happened to me.

But eventually I realized I had to get a grip. The stress was destroying me.

It may sound strange, but what saved me was gratitude.

But what could I be grateful for in that little cell?

Well, I had to start small.

I had air. I had air.

I had water that didn't make me sick.

Food came through the slot in the door every day.

I knew I wasn't forgotten. My family, I knew someday it would be over and my

family would still be there.

I forgave all the people involved in putting me in prison. I had to.

The anger I felt wasn't hurting them, but it was hurting me.

Ross also talked about the irony of creating Silk Road. The irony is that I

made Silk Road in the first place

because I thought I was furthering the things I cared about. Freedom.

Privacy. Equality. But by making Silk Road, I found out that place for those things don't exist.

I'm not alone. These prisons are full of people who don't deserve this.

We are mothers and fathers. We are sisters and brothers.

But we've been made into monsters in your eyes. We've been made less than human.

And next to all, there's Bitcoin. Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has been transforming our world at that very first block in the blockchain.

So let me tell you something.

We are just getting started. Imagine being such a passionate Bitcoiner, at least at the time.

Who knows now and watching just bits and pieces from the outside and just getting

little glimpses bitcoin made me feel like anything was possible bitcoin was open to everyone right,

i love so much about it it was like it leveled the playing field,

when the idea of bitcoin really clicked for me i got so excited i thought with

bitcoin i can try to do something that actually makes a difference.

And by the way, before I was put in prison, we didn't have all these different

cryptocurrencies and tokens and everything.

I missed all that.

So to me, it's all one thing, the forks, the new blockchains, all of it.

So when I say Bitcoin, I'm not making those distinctions.

To me, it may sound kind of corny, but to me, we're all one big family.

So I was excited back then, but I was also very impatient.

I saw what Bitcoin could do for freedom and equality, but I didn't take the

time to really understand it.

I didn't fully appreciate the principles it's based on.

Things like immutability and consensus And of course, de-sexualization.

I had so many big dreams for Bitcoin. And what's so beautiful is slowly,

those dreams are coming true. That's because of you.

You are making those dreams a reality. You are doing what I didn't have the patience for.

These last eight years now in prison.

Over and over, I've been so impressed with how far we've come.

So he's always had a soft spot in Bitcoiners' heart.

So when Trump stood in front of the Libertarian National Convention and made

his promise, Bitcoiners noticed.

If you vote for me on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.

And I don't think it was actually a lock because that overall presentation he

gave to the Libertarian Party didn't go well for Trump. And they didn't really

give any indication they were going to vote for him at all.

Now I think you should nominate me or at least vote for me and we should win together.

You heard those words nominate me or

vote vote for me because the libertarians want to vote for me and most of them

will and it's very important because not exactly a warm reception he did get

a better reception when he made the promise to bitcoiners at the bitcoin conference

And on Monday of this week,

Trump at noon took office and about 35 hours into Trump's second term,

he didn't just commute Ross's sentence, but he gave Ross a full pardon.

Now we're hearing from President Donald Trump issuing yet another pardon for

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht here.

I want to put this up, the Trump war room with the screen grab of the Truth Social post.

President Trump saying this, I just called the mother of Ross William Albrecht, he says Albright there,

to let her know that in honor of her and the libertarian movement,

which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full

and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross.

The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were

involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.

He was given two life sentences plus 40 years. Ridiculous. So...

Music.

Record there is a picture of ross presumably in the parking lot walking free

and it's an incredible feeling to have watched this journey and i'm so happy

for him and i hope he gets all the time and space he needs i'm sure there's

a lot to process and i hope he doesn't become a shit coiner because we certainly have enough of those.

Music.

Like the president of the united states well that was a fun one,

friday before the inauguration trump's team launched the trump coin build as a way to have fun,

i guess have fun spending money have fun pump and dumping i'm not quite sure

i i believe the trump team has something in the range of an 80% pre-mine on

this, which seems to be kind of the standard on these meme coins. What a deal.

And boy, you know, I think Bitcoin, my personal theory was that Bitcoin,

because we were going into the inauguration weekend, Martin Luther King Day

was Monday here in the States, federal holiday, the banks were closed.

Bitcoin went into Friday night pumping. The moment the Trump coin launched,

Bitcoin's pump stopped and all of the liquidity, I think that was in the crypto

market because the banks were closed at that point.

So there's only so much liquidity in there went into this stupid crap.

And so the Bitcoin pump sort of just stalled out and the Trump coin pumped like crazy.

And well, there's just a lot to process here. And I wasn't even sure where to

begin, but Lynn Alden was on what Bitcoin did.

And her thoughts pretty much put words into what I was trying to come up with.

If you look at the whole crypto industry side of it, I think meme coins are

kind of the final arc or it's like the nihilistic narrative.

So we had ICOs, then we had DeFi, NFTs, and then now it's just kind of like memes.

So a lot of the other projects were, you know, what a lot of them I think got

rightly criticized for is that compared to traditional venture,

founders and investors put capital into a project.

They work for years to make that project and their financial gains are tied

to whether or not that thing they built has some degree of success.

It either goes public with all the disclosures that are normally associated

with going public, or they get bought by another company, by professionals.

And what we see in the crypto space is after some fairly short lockup,

a lot of the early people, the insiders can get out wealthy,

regardless of whether or not that product has any long-term success,

and the vast majority don't.

MemeCoin just kind of cut to the chase. I mean, if there's one good thing that

can be said is they're just kind of transparent about that, that there's no product or service.

But it's kind of the nihilistic later stage narrative after the prior narratives were exhausted.

As for Trump launching one, yeah, that was surprising. And of course,

the scale is relevant because, you know, meme coins are not a very strong narrative for a cycle.

But I guess if you have a sitting president doing it, it adds fuel to that narrative for a period of time.

It's it's actually kind of in line they did trump steaks he's had what like

trump vodka trump university.

You know, the stock that they have, if you look at the market capitalization

compared to their actual operations, there's kind of like a meme premium to it in a way.

So it's really not in some sense that different than other things,

but it does open things like campaign finance law questions that,

you know, if you have a meme coin unlocking during your administration and you're selling it,

you know, that opens kind of all sorts of campaign finance and, you know, other issues.

So we'll see how how the different groups coordinate that.

I'm honestly really curious to know what you think, because Lynn's later point

there is the one that crossed my mind.

Seems like a real easy way to buy favor with the president of the United States.

It seems like a risk. I think Trump knows that.

I noticed he played it kind of coy in a presser recently when he was asked about

his meme coin and conflict of interest.

Do you intend to continue selling products that benefit yourself personally

while you're president?

Well, I don't know if it benefited. I don't know where it is.

I don't know much about it other than I launched it.

I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked it. Where is it today?

You made a lot of money, sir. How much?

Several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last several days.

Several billion? That's peanuts for these guys.

He's pointing to Sam Altman and others that were there about his AI initiative.

It's a bad look. It's a bad look for Trump, and it's a bad look for Bitcoin

right as it's getting so much legitimacy, and the crypto industry could be getting

a lot of legitimacy, and then this is the most illegitimate use of it.

I don't think the no-coiners in the financial world and in the real world can sort this out.

They were just starting to wrap their head around maybe Bitcoin is digital gold

and kind of getting that narrative.

And these things, they really do truly confuse them. I noticed your buddy Peter

Schiff on X and his podcast is making hay out of the fact that Pomp went on

CNBC and Pomp kind of struggled to differentiate Bitcoin and meme coins,

which guys like Schiff are like, see, see, see, there is no difference.

Well, I don't know about that. Here's Pomp's appearance on CNBC.

Let's talk more about all of this. Joining us now is Anthony Pompliano,

professional capital management founder, CEO, crypto guy, great guy,

and former last call guest. Anthony, well, good to see you back on.

What do you make of this Trump and Melania coin?

Yeah, guys, thanks so much for having me. Look, we can spend hours talking about

all the nuances and complexity here. I think on one hand, we shouldn't be surprised.

You know, there's been tons of celebrities and other large brands that have

launched these meme coins.

And so the president of the United States and Trump are two of the biggest brands

in the world. Yeah, but they're not public servants, right?

You know, it's one thing if T-Swift or Snoop Dogg does it. It seems like another

thing if the president of the United States does it.

Again, because there's a lot of conflict of interest there. On the other hand,

there's a lot of questions about what are they going to do?

Who's going to actually make this money? Are there conflicts of interest?

And so I think that both of those points are very valid.

But, you know, one of the things that I've heard online that I think actually

is inaccurate is there's tons of people who have been saying,

oh, look at the crazy crypto people.

Look at how insane they are to be putting their money into this thing.

And I just want to remind people that also in the traditional market,

the regular stock investors are valuing, you know, DJT at about $7 billion market

cap on $4 million of revenue.

And so maybe it's actually just Trump is an outlier and his companies or assets

or products or services that he's associated with tend to, you know,

overperform from a financial perspective more so than any one form factor,

whether it's a stock, a meme coin or anything else.

I would argue that the primary product for Donald Trump for the while now has been the Trump brand.

The Trump brand, you know, that's why they put it on the stakes.

That's why they put it on the buildings.

And so that's why they have things like this, I think.

They've always just sort of sold the brand. If you go search Trump coin or Trump

coins on Google right now, what you'll find is lots of actual physical gold

coins with Trump's head on them and whatnot.

Like there's been actual physical Trump coins for years. Again,

they're like, it's a, his, his, I think he even argued in court that,

The major like source of like collateral for like their for their business is the Trump brand.

Anthony, explain it for me real slow. Like I'm five.

What are these coins? What are they? Yeah, the best way that I could think about

this is if you think of Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire is a lot of a good business

and a little bit of a meme.

Right. If you think of Tesla, it's like 50 percent.

Anthony, I love you, but I'm going to stop you there. I don't want an analogy to Berkshire Hathaway.

I want to you can analogize it to Bitcoin if you want. And I sort of understand that.

No, she doesn't. And the point he was trying to make is what gives Microsoft stock value?

Why does Microsoft stock trade at such a massive multiplier over what they actually earn?

He's suggesting that part of it is the meme, the idea of Microsoft,

the hope of where Microsoft is going, because if the stock traded on their actual

revenue, it would be much lower. What are these coins?

Yeah, well, the reason why I start with Berkshire is because Tesla is the next

kind of in the step, right? Tesla's about 50% good company, 50% meme.

DJT is like 80 or 90% meme, you know, 10% good company.

And then the final form of this kind of transition is ultimately people just

launched the meme and there is no company, right?

And I think that this is actually a progression over the last 50 years or so.

But is it a protocol, Anthony?

I'm trying to understand, like, tell me from a technological point of view,

what are these? Remember the ICO boom?

And Trump himself was against that. This was back in like, I don't know,

2016, 2017, something like.

So this is where he really starts to fall down.

I don't know why he doesn't just say these are tokens issued on the Solana blockchain

and there can be as many of them as they ever want and there's an 80% pre-mine.

Like you could just start right there and just differentiate it between Bitcoin,

but he just doesn't do it. So, again, what is this? What are these?

Think of this as a branded coin that are all the same. So if you think about

trading cards, obviously there's baseball cards.

Then there are these kind of branded trading cards that were digital.

Trump actually has launched some of those and many other brands or companies

and celebrities have done them as well.

But now what we're seeing is people saying, well, you don't even need uniqueness

between the different coins.

It is just a asset that is put out there. Now, I should say that I'm not necessarily condoning this.

I didn't necessarily buy it. I don't hold either one of these tokens.

But I do think that it's important to pay attention to this because ultimately

what we're seeing is we're seeing the collision of the digital world with brands

and a new financialization. And so this financialization, obviously,

Bitcoin is kind of a digital version of gold.

We have seen now open source projects that have started to launch coins and

figure out a new way for them to monetize what otherwise was a non-monetizing activity.

And now what you're going to see is you're going to see brands and celebrities do the same thing.

The real question is, you know, what does the market ultimately think about the long term?

I don't know why you can't explain the difference between because they keep

they'll keep pressing him. If it is just a token that has no.

I don't want to play the whole thing. It's obnoxious. They keep asking him,

what's the difference between Bitcoin and a meme coin?

And I don't know why he can't get to it.

Also, like these celebrities, why

would you want a meme coin when the president says, oh, how am I doing?

I'm not really following it. It drops 40%.

Like if you're going to buy, like he talked about open source projects.

Well, if you're selling a coin for an open source project, there should be like

an equity stake or something there.

The whole thing is a mess. The Solana network is having trouble keeping up.

But mostly the bigger problem is the exchanges are having problems with their Solana nodes.

So I don't know. What do you think here?

Is Trump just leading the way in some sort of new industry and he's taking a

little early first mover risk?

It does seem like there is an attitude change. As of this recording,

there are 33 crypto ETFs proposed right now.

New, 33 new crypto ETFs. And they're loaded, loaded up with Sol,

XRP. They have, I don't know why anyone would ever do this, but they have ETFs

that mix Bitcoin and ETH. There's even a Doge ETF.

I mean, we're going crazy here. And on January 21st, the SEC announced it's

launching a, quote, crypto task force to develop clear regulations around the whole industry.

In fact, their task force, they claim to intend they're going to hold public

hearings, which if that's true, well, guess who's going to be watching to see

what they talk about? I'm going to keep my eye on that.

They're also claiming that they're going to work better with the Commodities

Future Trading Commission.

The CFTC is technically what currently oversees Bitcoin, I suppose, in the U.S.

But while we're talking about Trump, what about his executive actions around

crypto? Have we seen what we expected?

Now, we do have some developments from agencies working closely with digital assets.

SEC Commissioner Mark Ulleda has been named acting chair of the agency after

Gary Gensler's departure, and as we await the Senate's vote on Trump's pick

for Commissioner Paul Atkins.

Just today, Ulleda launched a crypto task force under the agency that's being

led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, who's seen as a longtime ally by the crypto industry.

The SEC says the task force will work with commission staff and the public to

set a regular regulatory path while remaining in bounds of the law.

Specifically, the agency says that includes helping the commission draw clear

regulatory lines and provide realistic paths to registration.

Okay. So we have seen some changing of the deck and some reprioritization at

the SEC. I mean, these are actually really big things.

Bitcoin pumped a little bit on that news. And it's rumored that perhaps soon

we're going to see some sort of repealing or some kind of change for SAB-121.

Which I talked about last week, that would probably be more significant,

at least in the immediate term, than a Bitcoin strategic reserve.

Yeah. So as you recall, the current problem is that now with SAB-121,

it requires banks to list cryptocurrencies

under their custody as a liability on their balance sheet.

No bank wants to do that, especially during a bear market. And so they haven't

been able to offer custody services.

And the reality is the banks are actually interested in doing this.

I wouldn't have thought so myself, but this is the CEO of Bank of America.

There's still 4,000 banks. So it's not like there's considered the disaggregious industries.

Let me ask you a separate question. And Becky's got one back in Washington,

but on crypto, we just had Brian Armstrong sitting in the seat that you were in.

And obviously there's a lot of excitement about crypto. The banking business

for the most part has stayed away from crypto.

Given President Trump's full-throated support for crypto, do you imagine Bank

of America is going to be full on in the crypto business if we have this conversation

12 months, 24 months from now?

I'd separate out this sort of crypto versus stable assets and digital movement

of money because we already move the vast, vast majority of our money digitally.

Yeah, oh yeah, Yeah, we're already experts at digital.

And, you know, when you issue a transfer from your bank, it often,

you know, we'll tell you it could take up to five days, but we sometimes get it done in three.

Our consumers do, our companies do. And so the question is, what's the business –.

Practice that you have to have to move another type of currency.

So if the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business

with, you will find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional

side of it, non-anonymous, transactional, verified, et cetera.

He's calling it a currency and he says they're going to come in hard on the transaction side.

I don't know how interested I am in Bank of America running a lightning note

or whatever the heck you... You know what? They're probably talking about an

Ethereum thing or something.

Or stable coins you know whatever it's whatever network that's going to run on.

But i think ultimately they're going to play around with that

stuff maybe enable transactions with stable coins something like that

on the back end but it'll be bitcoin where they make their money have to because

it's just another way our customers are going to the other thing we're talking

about was the possibility that bitcoin and some of these cryptocurrencies actually

are a threat to the u.s dollar scott bestens talked about needing the u.s dollar

to be super powerful yeah is it is it a threat i think there's a whole bunch

of dynamics about all the trade and all the consumption of the U.S.

Consumer and all the stuff that goes on. But I think we do need a strong U.S.

Dollar. We need a U.S. dollar reserve currency. It's good for our country.

But what I'm saying is if you go down the street here and you go in and buy

lunch, if you can pay with Visa, MasterCard, a debit card, Apple Pay,

etc., etc., this will just be another form of payment in an instantaneous cash transfer.

And so I think if it becomes regulatory okay, which it wasn't before,

and that's one of the issues, you'll see the banking system enter with it.

We have hundreds of patents on blockchain already.

We know how to enter the field. When you get to the investment side and the

Bitcoin stuff, that's really a separate question.

That's more on the investment side. From the transactional side,

I think you'll see the banking industry make moves.

So he's calling it a currency and he's talking about using it as a medium of

exchange. We'll see where this goes. I mean, those are...

Definitely a change in tone from the CEO of Bank of America.

So my question to you is, do you see any upside to Trump selling a Trump coin

for the crypto industry?

Does it bring new people in? I don't know. Is there some sort of positive narrative

to Trump having his own coin?

And what about my concern about buying favor with the president of the United

States by buying a bunch of his coin?

And I'd also just be curious what your reaction was to him launching his coin

in general. And, of course, to the news about Ross, which I'm extremely excited about.

Music.

Let me know. Boost in.

You can support the show just by doing what you do. If you want to DCA into

Bitcoin and you're in the States, River's a great way to go.

They have a great platform, beautiful UI, mobile app, web app,

and of course, proof of reserves.

The Bitcoin Well has an amazing self-custody feature.

The sats get sent directly to your wallet. You don't have to leave sats on their platform.

You start with self-custody. So if you're going for long-term storage and you

want to put it in your wallet, that's the Bitcoin Well. Bitcoinwell.com slash Jupiter.

Links are in the show notes. If you want to spend some of your Bitcoin via Lightning,

thebitcoincompany.com, promo code Jupiter, link in the show notes,

gift cards for hundreds of sites, everything you could possibly think of, from Fuel to Amazon.

They got gift cards you can go from Lightning to a gift card in seconds.

I stack sats by paying my bills with the Fold Card. I got a link to that.

Help out the show by clicking these links. And the Fold Card is a great company

in general. And then if you want to get access to your Bitcoin value without

selling, I've looked at all the alternatives and I think salt lending is one of the best right now.

You can use salt lending and support the show. Link in the show notes.

Music.

Came into the show wouldn't you know it some people supported episode 43 of this week in bitcoin,

and i don't know the script is pulling them up from all

over the place but we don't so i don't think we have i think what happened is

i don't have a baller booster this week so we'll start with orange pill lawyer

who came in with 2621 sats why you got to put numbers and letters together why

can't you just go yourself uh he says jamie diamond's motive is world domination You think?

He wants to control the world with JPM coin?

I don't know. Maybe. It could be it. Thank you for the boost.

Adversary 17, of course, is here with 16,000 sats.

You're doing a good job. And he says, great episode. Well. I am programmed in multiple techniques.

Thank you, adversaries. I appreciate it.

The tone wrecker is here with a big old duck, 4,444 sats. That's right.

Shout out to LNBeats.com. It's a great recommendation for value for value music. Yep.

LNbeats.com is one of the ways I find songs for this show. One of the ways. I have my tricks.

I won't reveal all of them in one boost. But if you want other recommendations,

boost in and I'll reveal my secrets.

Mr. Wes Payne comes in with a big old duck himself. Ah, fly.

Just some ducks for a balanced take and fantastic clips. Keep it coming.

Oh, and he also says, he sent another row of ducks to say, Core Lightning Gang unite.

I'm a new user, but it's quite resource efficient and supports Bolt 12.

It also has some great plugins, less ecosystem support, however.

On the Bolt 12, I know some people commented about the lightning wall issues with Bitcoin Well.

It turns out the Bitcoin Well is a Bolt 12 shop, which has also meant there

is more limited support here in the States. But Bolt 12 is so awesome.

I've talked about it a little on the show. If you search around on the show

notes page, I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe you'll find it. Thank you, Wes. Clarkin comes in with 11,000 sats.

Send 1,000 sats to the artist saying pretty good song. And then another 10,000

sats because, well, he meant to boost more.

He's a good guy. He's a real good guy. No, he's a great guy.

Well, thank you, Clarkin. Appreciate it very much.

Hey, I'll be 1984's here with 4,200 sats. Well, I'll be dipped.

42 seems like the perfect episode to boost for the first time using sats sent

from my self-hosted. I'll be hub.

Right on. Yeah. Love it. I love seeing all the reports of this.

He says, I have it on Start9, and I have it connected to my fountain wall.

Sorry I've been away. I've been able to boost, but Start9 has a sale going,

and I was stacking every day I go to take advantage of it, and then I ran into

some technical difficulties during the setup.

Let's be honest. Mostly between the keyboard and the chair, though.

Good to be back and self-sovereign. And in honor of episode 42,

don't forget your towel.

Absolutely. Coming in hot with the boost. Thank you, Oppie.

I really appreciate that and congratulations really

i don't know i just feel so much pride that

my i got so many people in my audience that are willing to

run their own nodes like i mean it's a good group out

there you know and i'm no shame on your game if

you're not running your own node but i do encourage you to play around if

you get a weekend it'll just bring your appreciation for bitcoin up

to a whole other level user 22 comes in with

4 242 sats well that's very good

buddy oh dang i was happy to hear your new episodes out but my first ever boost

on fountain that i shot over you didn't have my name in the show so it's probably

too late you get another boost from me yeah you know it's tricky you got to

go in there and get your profile set up user 22 you got to go in there and get

your profile set up because otherwise you don't get your credit,

but i do really appreciate the support i mean at the end of the day you are

keeping the show going thank you very much one doll geek comes in with 5 555

cents this is the way absolutely.

Please do leave in the extra explanations.

Okay, I did leave in one in this episode. I don't know if anybody caught which

one it was, but there was one additional verbose spot in a clip that I normally

would cut, and I left it because it gave additional info.

It says, the podcast has quickly become the first one on my playlist because

I love the detailed explanations that you give. More of that. Well.

You got it, buddy. And I will continue. Thank you for the boost.

User 952. Uh-oh, it's another one where they didn't get their username set.

Danger zone. That's a danger zone. They came in with 6,001 sats. Danger zone.

I had to clip this from my friend who still says Bitcoin is the only use for

drugs and illegal activity. Oh, user, go back a few weeks. I have all the data.

It's in the show notes, too. You can just get the links. You don't have to listen

to the whole episode, but you can if you want.

And then he sent in another 5,000 sats. User boost. Which is a Jar Jar boost

because he felt like he needed to send a little more value. Thank you very much.

Chutoy came in with 5,000 sats. You said boost. Why do you prefer River over Strike?

Oh, it's a good question, Chutoy. I don't know if I have a preference.

I will say that I like that River has a really good web interface.

And, you know, when I'm sitting down and doing my Bitcoin stuff,

I do like to do it on a desktop.

And I don't like my entire experience to my sats being relegated to a mobile

device that is tied to a platform vendor that is tied to an app store.

So I like Strike a lot. I'm a big fan of Jack's. I think he's done good work

for the Bitcoin community and for Lightning adoption and for Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.

So I give him massive props for that. And I think he's got a good company, super focused.

I think it's a small company, but it's super focused on delivering financial

services to Bitcoin users on the Lightning network.

So Strike's a really good app. But River seems hyper-focused on securing your

Bitcoin and stacking, and they have that 3.8% APY or whatever it is for your cash and sats.

They have a lot of features that I think are great for, like, smash buys and DCAing.

But if you're just DCAing on Strike and then, you know, sending it out of there

every, you know, whenever, I really don't think there's any disadvantage there.

I don't know if there's a way to support the show through Strike.

Oh, they have an affiliate program, but it's like I get sats without a fee.

But they already have pretty low fees. So I guess there's that,

too. Rivers is a great company, and you can support the show that way.

But I like Strike a lot, too, and have no hesitations recommending Strike to you or the audience.

Gene Bean, thank you for the boost. Gene Bean's here with the big old duck.

Ah, fuck! Yeah, it's two rows of ducks.

With regard to the nuclear power, I like the carbon-free aspect,

but I'm concerned about the lack of ability to deal with the spent material

from the power generation.

As far as I know, the only options today are to hide it deep underground or

some holding pond, both of which can and have leaked into water supplies.

You know, Gene, I agree. We have a famous site here in Washington that stores

the waste. So very familiar with the stories.

The one thing that I constantly think about, and I really genuinely am asking

here, guys, how does the U.S.

Military deal with this? because they've been doing nukes and subs underwater

that are being managed by kids, right?

They're training people that are joining the military at 19 years old.

And by their mid-20s, they're running reactors and submarines.

And as far as I know, there's never been a major incident. And they're active today.

They're small, they're portable, and they must do something with the waste and

something that's been successful.

So why is this technology not available to the rest of us? And what are they

doing? And can we learn from that?

Because they have about a 50-year track record so far that seems to be pretty solid.

So I'm just always curious about that. If anybody has any context or information,

please share. Gene Bean continues with another Rodex.

I'm setting up RazzBlitz for a full node plus an L&D-backed AlbiHub,

and I came across a suggestion in their docs to utilize CoinJoin tools for privacy.

And that got me wondering, what are your thoughts on that topic?

For reference, the docs are linked here at bitcoin-only.com slash privacy.

Well, that's an option. It's a little old and it's expensive.

I think you should look, if you want to look into that kind of thing,

I think a CoinJam, and you can run this on your RazBlitz yourself, the Jam software.

And then also I think I would love to know, I don't know myself,

I would love to know a technical privacy comparison between something like a CoinJam and Liquid.

Because liquid seems like a great option because it breaks the tracking and

then you peg right back out or something like that.

And it's much cheaper. But perhaps I'm missing something.

To be honest with you, it's not an area I've investigated super heavily.

I've played around with it a lot over the years. If you were to add it all up, I've done it a lot.

But it's been a while. And I think I've come to a point where if I can't spend

my Bitcoin in 10 years, we've got bigger problems. And if it's,

you know, so also I think these technologies will be approved upon as well.

I think that some of the stuff we're using today, there'll be better options in the future.

Gene, let me know what you think. And great. Glad to hear you're setting up

the Razzblitz node. Really would love to know how that works out and your thoughts on it overall.

Nakamoto 6102 comes in with 4,000 sats. The traders love the vol.

Says thanks for the value. Well, thank you for the boost.

Paranoid Coder's here with 2,100 sats.

And he says, honestly, I believe that J.P. Morgan is still spouting the same

FUD so that they can eventually offer a Bitcoin-based alternative,

probably on their own internal blockchain that will operate like a centralized layer, too.

That solves the issues he complains about. It'll be faster. It'll be cheaper.

And we won't allow the criminals. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. They got a great

track record of that, right?

You know, Paranoid, I wonder if it isn't going to be lots of,

like, we're going to go through right now.

We live in this era where just any Joe goes and creates a meme coin or any Sally

goes and creates a new blockchain that can be forked off of something else.

And those are kind of dying out. This does seem like the meme coins might be

sort of like end stage, final stage of the narratives around these stupid coins.

But then there's going to be a whole other round of the banks.

And they're going to do it all over again, just with more official names and

more official marketing and longer cycles, I imagine.

I don't know. I hope I'm wrong, though. Let me know what you think.

Oh, here we go. Mug Daddy's here with 10,000 sats. Heck, yes.

Well, I'll be dipped. Thank you very much.

Pretty certain it's pronounced plaid. Yeah, I think you're right.

I was talking about played, like you got played.

But the intro clip was glorious. It's probably the best bang for the bucks podcast

around. Well, sats. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Mug Daddy. Appreciate the boost. Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks.

2,222 sats. The overly maligned Gary Gensler's dragging of his feet on crypto

policy may have been a net positive for Bitcoin, allowing the network to get

stronger before institutional adoption.

His 2018 MIT course on Bitcoin and blockchain is pretty good quality.

Did you know he has a twin?

Yes, I did. I forgot, but I did know that. It's so weird.

Okay, well, let's look what happened. The Friday Gary's out of office,

Trump launches a meme coin.

I mean, I don't know. Would he have done that? Could he have done that in the

former SEC regime? I don't know. I don't think so.

Gary's always been very clear that he doesn't think Bitcoin is a problem,

even in his exit interview on CNBC.

He holds Bitcoin apart from all other crypto.

I do wonder if Gary had another four years, if Bitcoin would be the last man standing.

And now I think we're going to have a, well, golden era for shit coins is what

I think is going to happen.

And a lot of people are going to get burned and it's not going to look good.

And it's going to be our job to make sure people understand it's not Bitcoin.

It's something else. I think that's going to be critical.

And people need to understand the scarcity and the fact that the pre-mines mean

that these teams make so much money. That's a big one.

Thank you for the boost. Got me thinking. Got me going on that one, Ace.

Spectrus is here with 15,500 sats. That matrix is worth a thousand dilithium crystals.

I bet that's our baller boost for this week. Spectrus writes,

Well, I just finished up Lynn Alden's Broken Money audiobook,

and whoa, this fills in so many gaps in my understanding.

Yes. You know what? You get a bell and an applause.

I'm going to say it for the 100th time on the show. If you haven't read,

if you have not yet read Broken Money, Broken Money by Lynn Alden, I really do suggest it.

Audiobook form, whatever. In Deadtree, I don't care.

Next up, standing up my own Bitcoin node, he writes, in addition to an Albi

hub. Heck, yes, buddy, go for it.

Also, I've got to figure out how to pass my lightning channels through Tailscale

to my VPS for more channels out there so they're more reachable.

Yeah, and he asks, do you have a link to your Nix config? I don't think we have

it public, because we never went through and made sure it was safe to do so.

But it is something I'd be down for. I have to think about when we would even have time to do that.

We have a VPS and there's a lot of ways you can do it you just need the ability

to route the traffic to your tail scale interface so if you think about that,

that could really just be like NF tables or maybe Nginx but NF tables is just

routing traffic on the lightning node ports over your tail net to the IP of your node,

that's the high level of what we achieve there what we accomplish is the lightning

node is on a private LAN on a residential line not exposed publicly there and

the VPS acts as the public front for the node.

Hope that helps. Never tell me the odds. And our last boost comes from Nyko the Geek.

I hope I get that right. With 5,000 sats. And you know what that is.

That's a Jar Jar boost. It's a boost.

Until I figure out how to boost in with the Trump coin, I guess these sats will have to do.

Well done, sir. Well done. You know what? You can keep a Trump coin.

Thank you very much for the boost. Thank you, everybody who boosted in.

It's not a crazy week, but we had a solid showing in boosts and a bunch of you

under the 2,000-sat cutoff, too, so thank you very much.

We had 28 boosters in total and 42 streamers.

You streamers collectively stacked 80,861 sats for the show.

Thank you very much. and combined with the boosters, the 28 of you who boosted

in, the show's total this week's a little light, especially for the hours put

in, let me tell you, good body, whoo dog!

But we stacked 192,786 sats.

Just don't break that down to an hourly wage. But very much appreciated,

great messages, and I always appreciate the regulars who continue to step up and support the show.

If you'd like to try it out, you can try Strike.

Makes it really easy, or something like River or Bitcoin Well,

and then you need an app to boost, something like the Fountain app.

We'll have lots of options over at podcastapps.com from self-hosted to totally hosted.

It just kind of depends on, you know, whatever your groove is,

brother or sister, but they're all listed over there at podcastapps.com.

And thank you everybody who did support episode 43 of this week in Bitcoin.

It is a value for value show. There is no corporate sponsor.

In fact, it probably doesn't even make a lot of sense from time to time from

business week, especially weeks when I'm crazy busy like this week.

But I gosh darn love you guys. I love the Bitcoin community.

And I'm so damn excited Ross is out.

And I just really appreciate those of you who do step up and support. Music.

Music.

Ryan Dehurst over at the Digital Assets Research Institute released a banger

of a paper, how Bitcoin mining stabilized the grid and saved Texans 18 billion dollars. Yes, billion.

And also earned the ire of Berkshire Hathaway.

It's an interesting story. It's the overall story. It's one you know before.

Bitcoin mining came in and stabilized the Texas grid by quickly adjusting power

consumptions and replacing the need for these expensive gas peaker plants they'd used before.

That saved Texans about $18 billion just by avoiding the peaker plant investments

that were proposed by Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

The results are that Bitcoin mining offers lower emissions and also helped integrate

more renewable energy than they had originally planned.

That got Berkshire Hathaway very angry, and they lobbied against Bitcoin mining,

and they tried to influence political figures like the lieutenant governor,

Dan Patrick, who I've mentioned before.

Berkshire Energy has continued lobbying also, facing resistance,

though, from both the Bitcoin mining companies and also officials at Texas' ERCOT.

They think it's a great thing.

And now it's kind of coming out how connected this Lieutenant Governor Don Patrick

is connected to Berkshire.

And it seems like a real win of a paper.

It shows how ERCOT's strategy now is to include Bitcoin mining and it's prevented

blackouts during extreme weather events that have happened since that horrible

storm they had a few years ago.

They say it's revolutionized their grid down there. It's offered scalable,

cost-effective, and environmentally friendly alternative to gas peaker plants.

And it's challenging and entrenched energy interests. Isn't that something?

You know, they hate that. And I love to see it.

Also, we had a result from the U.S. District Court. They ruled against tornado

cash sanctions. The U.S.

District Court in Western District of Texas has ordered the U.S.

Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Controls, that's OFAC, to remove the addresses

associated with tornado cash from its specially designated national and blocked persons list.

In other words, the tornado cash addresses are being removed from the sanctions

list, following an appeals court ruling in the Treasury Department that they

had exceeded its authority by sanctioning the crypto mixer in the first place.

This does not yet to appear to affect the legal battles facing the two Tornado

Cash developers, however.

And then lastly, oh, not quite lastly. Well, almost lastly.

Lastly, Eve, there is an Australian couple that is selling their block of land,

and they're doing it for Bitcoin. And I just wonder if this isn't going to be a new trend.

A tech-loving couple is trying a new way to sell their property without using

a real estate agent or a lender.

They've listed the block of land with Bitcoin as the currency of choice and

unlike traditional sales, the transaction would bypass the banks.

Ballarat was founded on the wealth of the gold rush.

Now these vendors are hoping to strike it rich, accepting Bitcoin for the sale of their block.

Cut out the middleman, cut out the real estate agent and yeah,

we'll see what happens from there.

By allowing this sale through the use of Bitcoin, you know, we're hoping to

generate some interest beyond Australia.

Melissa Bauer and Trudy Purcell purchased the property in 2021.

It was an old miner's cottage which needed a lot of work, but materials and

labour costs were too high.

Our original plans were to renovate it and to turn it into something magnificent,

but that didn't eventuate.

By using Bitcoin, it also removes the need for traditional banks.

Inflation's sky high, interest rates are high. Why not use something like this

where you cut out the middleman, transactions are quick, secure.

A first for Ballarat, but using Bitcoin to purchase real estate isn't as uncommon

as you might think, with agencies now offering cryptocurrency loans around the world.

We're seeing a lot of traction is that those that have been accumulating Bitcoin

or buying Bitcoin in the past with a price appreciation, they're using that

to then borrow against it, to then buy and get into the property market.

It's very early days, but I think if you can get on the front foot,

you're going to give yourself an advantage.

Melina Saras, 7 News.

There you go, huh? It's a new trend.

Sell your land for Bitcoin. And you notice inflation got name-dropped in there

too, which, I don't know, just made me smile.

Okay, and here's the last community sort of update news thing that's just sort of buzzing out there.

And shout-out to No BS Bitcoin for rounding this up.

These are some of the latest corporate Bitcoin purchases. They've just gone

beyond my ability to track personally.

The big one here, MicroStrategy, has acquired since the last episode 11,000

more Bitcoin for $1.1 billion and now holds 461,000 Bitcoin,

which they have acquired for a total of $29.3 billion.

The Genius Group increased their Bitcoin treasury to 420 Bitcoin by purchasing

an additional $5 million worth of Bitcoin.

The Curl Technology Group announced 8 million Bitcoin purchases,

increasing their total holdings now to 510 coins.

Critical Metals Corporation announced a Bitcoin treasury strategy,

stating that it plans to acquire up to $500 million worth of Bitcoin.

And the last one on their list for this week, Rumble has reportedly made its

first Bitcoin purchase as part of a 20 million Bitcoin treasury strategy.

I also saw that yesterday El Salvador announced that they've stacked yet another 11 Bitcoin.

How about that, huh? Okay, now I have just two clips for the final clips of

the week, if you will. So nothing like life changing, but very bullish.

And I've been feeling pretty excited recently. The first one is your good buddy,

the CEO of BlackRock, who you hobnob with all the time, I'm sure.

He's hobnobbing and he got talking about Bitcoin.

And Larry's got this whole thing now because he tried Bitcoin as hope and he

got pushback because then, you know, that's a bad message.

So now he's going with, well, Bitcoin's for if you're afraid of these things

that are obviously happening. And it's an interesting kind of spin.

You if you're frightened of your debasement of your your your currency or you're

frightened of your economic or political stability of your country.

You can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin that will overcome those local fears.

And so I'm a big believer in the utilization of that as an instrument.

And so if that becomes true and you see that it could be a proper hedge against

maybe hope security or equities, The question is,

could you see a 2% or 5% allocation?

I was with a sovereign wealth fund during this week, and that was the conversation.

Should we have a 2% allocation? Should we have a 5% allocation?

If everybody adopted that conversation, it would be $500,000,

$600,000, $700,000 per Bitcoin.

I'm not promoting it, by the way. No. That is not my promotion.

No, but if you think it's going to go to $700,000, by the way,

I have an ETF that's called IBIN. You can buy some IBIN.

$700,000 a coin is what Larry's saying. Maybe he isn't bullish enough,

though, because your other good buddy, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase,

was hobnobbing at Davos.

And he thinks that Larry is underestimating Bitcoin's potential.

Well, we have seen just incredible growth, and I think it hit an all-time high

yesterday, so we feel very good about that. But I think over time,

we'll see Bitcoin get into the millions, multiple millions of price range.

I mean, it's being adopted by more and more institutional customers.

The ETFs brought in a huge amount of inflow. If we get clear legislation passed

in the U.S., that would be a big milestone.

Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, if the U.S. took that path, probably the rest of the G20 would follow.

In fact, you know, I've discussed with a number of finance ministers here in

Switzerland from different countries around the world. Just the idea of a strategic

Bitcoin reserve, they're getting more interested in it now because the US is looking into it.

So I think Bitcoin has a long way to go. It's gonna be the new gold standard out there.

And crypto is really much bigger than that too. It's about payments.

Music.

Let's take a look at the state of the network. As I wrap up,

the block height is 880,386.

That's a great one. 880, 386.

The price is currently 104,660 US dollars.

That is my favorite metric, 955 sats per dollar. We are below 1,000 sats per dollar.

We are down just 4% from our all-time high, which was two days ago.

The all-time high was $109,160, which was on January 19th, 2025,

like I said, two days ago as I record.

Wow. There's a lot going on. And last but not least, reachable nodes, $21,595.

Bitcoin Network, doing real good.

Music.

Now links to what i talked about are at this week in bitcoin.show this was episode

43 i'd love to have you boost in and support the show with any thoughts on anything

i talked about or also what i missed what were you hoping i'd talk about love

to hear that too i also always appreciate if you share it with a friend.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement in the podcasting world. Trust me.

Ain't nobody going to listen to a show this long unless you recommend it to

them. Maybe if they're really Bitcoin curious and that's you,

if that's you out there, I really appreciate you.

Now I'm going to wrap it up with a value for value track like I always do.

And I want to say a big thank you, everybody.

You put last week's track at number one on the podcast index charts.

21 million reached the top thanks to your support.

So when you boost in during the song, 95% of the sats will go to the artist.

And this week, I'm featuring Henry.

Music.