Texas Slim on nostr:

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
It is 09:09
Pacific Daylight Time.
It's the August
2025,
and this is episode eleven fifty two of Bitcoin
and
who who rugged Rogoff? Well, that's the title of
a Bitcoin magazine article that I will be reading you if you were wondering who this Rogoff guy is, we'll get some context. And then I guess they're all out there in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and that would be the the federal reserve guys, the governors. And one of them has said that there's, quote, nothing nothing scary about, quote, crypto.

(00:38):
And then Arthur Hayes is gonna be in the news today.
My question is always this. Why? Why?
Why? Why? Why?
When you get a billion dollars or several billion dollars worth of money,
whatever format it's in, you always start messing around with god's creation.

(00:58):
Arthur Hayes has joined the billionaires club.
He's gonna be messing around with god's creation. I I don't I don't get it. I I've never understood this at all.
Then Steak and Shake has
realized some pretty good benefits
by having people, their customers, in fact, pay them in Bitcoin,

(01:20):
and then Trump backed World Liberty coin is
their stable coin is in the news.
But
first
first,
let's let's let's hear from this jackass
out of The United Kingdom.
It's
it's for the children. This is the biggest step forward in child safety since the Internet was created. There is since Friday last week,

(01:46):
children and parents will notice the difference in the experience that children have.
Most children do not go looking for harmful and dangerous and pornographic content.
Most children actually have found that the content has come to find them. That's why we've acted so decisively
in this. And for everybody who's out there thinking of using VPNs, let me just say to you directly,

(02:09):
verifying your age keeps a child
safe,
keeps children safe in our country. So let's just not try and find a way around. Just prove your age, make the Internet safer for children, making it better make it a better experience for everyone. That's surely what we should aspire to in this country. Oh, shut up. Just honestly, man,

(02:30):
shut up.
This isn't for the children.
It's never ever been about the children. You guys, at this point, it's so transparent
what you're doing.
And what they are doing over in The UK is, honestly,
it looks to me like they never left the European Union.
It it is the most bizarre

(02:52):
spectacle I've ever seen at this point, watching these people
who fought so hard to get out of the European Union
continuously
do the exact same things that the European Union are doing.
And in this particular case, it's crapping on their citizenry by telling them a boldface lie.

(03:13):
It's not
and never was
and never will be
about
the children.
This gentleman from The UK is lying to you, and he was doing it on BBC, by the way. That's where the clip came from.
I don't even care who he is.
At this point he could even be Keir Starmer and I just can't even recognize him. It doesn't matter. They're all the same drone.

(03:38):
They're just clones of each other at this point.
So, no. You know what? If you're listening to me in The UK,
use a VPN.
Screw this guy.
Screw this guy.
At that last part is the one that got me the most.
If if you're thinking about using a VPN,
don't.

(03:59):
Just, you know, just verify your age.
That telegraphed
everything
I needed to know.
At this point, they have no control over VPNs.
That doesn't mean that they won't,
but at this point, they clearly
do not have any control whether or not somebody uses VPN or not. So they're making an appeal

(04:22):
to your for the children side.
And it's disgusting.
Everything about this is wrong, and if you are a United Kingdom citizen, it's your duty
to completely disobey this edict, this mandate, whatever the hell this this plea, this this appeal to your sensitive side for for the children.

(04:48):
Don't do it because you're just going to feed the beast.
Now let's let's do something completely different. We'll we'll come back to The UK,
I I promise.
But right now, I wanna talk about this Rogoff guy.
Bitcoin magazine,
Joaquin
Book,
is going to give us a little bit of context about who this Harvard economist is and why everybody

(05:11):
keeps clipping and and I'm guilty of it too.
I've completely screenshotted
one one of his tweets and it's because it's making the rounds.
Why? If you're if you've seen this Rogoff guy and you're you see this block of text on like a of a screenshotted tweet,
here's the scoop.
It's it's the t, man. It's the 911.

(05:34):
It's Kenneth Rogoff.
When he spoke,
the Bitcoin hornet's nest
came awake.
When the celebrated Harvard economist and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund yesterday
publicly confessed
that he was wrong on Bitcoin,

(05:54):
he didn't do so gracefully.
Instead, he doubled down. You you see, it wasn't it wasn't that his prediction
in 2018
of Bitcoin's imminent doom
and the bitcoin price to quickly collapse was wrong,
it

was (06:10):
Number one,
Trump crypto regulation was beneficial instead of the needed crackdown.
Number two,
bitcoin was embraced and shockingly
used by criminals. And
not not to be left behind, number three,
Trump brazenly

(06:30):
holds
hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies
seemingly without consequence.
He's a private citizen. He can he can hold that. I mean, is it a conflict of interest? Yeah. Kinda. But it doesn't matter. He he's a private citizen.
You don't you don't think he's a private citizen? He's not a he's not in the military.

(06:52):
If you're not a military in the military,
you are a civilian. That makes you a private civilian. I'm sorry, but that's that's the way it works. And the president is not in the military.
The the we've only had, like, I think, two presidents
in the history of of all the presidents that were active military or at least

(07:13):
wore a uniform. I mean, had either been in the military or was currently
you're I'm talking about, like, Eisenhower,
Ike. I like Ike.
You know? He was he was chief of staff.
It was I don't know.
Let's continue with this.
I
mean, talk about willful ignorance. Scooby Doo

(07:33):
called and wants his villains back, quote, I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for your meddling kids.
There's no other value to this thing. No other censorship resistance use case.
No life savings outside the shady bank option. No instant global payments over lightning.
Even in that 2018

(07:54):
CNBC
interview,
Harvard economist mister Rogoff
said regulation of the sector would lead to lower prices, not not a catalyst for higher ones as he now pretends.
This smells like a salty rationalization,
not a serious analysis.
Rogoff's excellent book,

(08:14):
This Time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, and especially the freely available data behind the research for dozens of countries over hundreds of years was a godsend during my university years.
I really did learn much from him.
When I finally met Rogoff in 2018
or so, it was a total kill your idols moment.

(08:36):
He had just released his unfathomably,
unfathomably
stupid book, The Curse of Cash,
about how we should ban cash because, you know, criminals.
And cash also makes monetary
policy transmission worse and negative interest rates more difficult to impose.

(08:57):
I was trying to explain to him the virtue of competitive
note issuance and monetary freedom. And to my shock,
he was sputtering nonsense about free banking and falsities about US banking history, let alone
the past monetary arrangements
of Canada, Scotland, or Sweden, of which he knew nothing.

(09:18):
The moment really struck me.
I was young and
not yet that disillusioned with elite knowledge and the much revered academic establishment, but I was speechless that a famous
Harvard professor
didn't know better.
What? The skills and cognitive
faculties and hard work that got you here have now been completely eroded?

(09:40):
It was around this time that I started saying the most important thing I learned at Oxford was that you can have a PhD
and still be an idiot.
It was a wake up call of astronaut meme proportions.
I was in the big leagues, the hallowed halls of wisdom, interacting with the big names, talking to the smartest and most celebrated economists and economic historians in my field. And it turned out

(10:06):
they were unread in all the things that matter. I remember a night at Oxford
when I had to explain to a well respected historian
how loans in one bank end up as deposits in another
thus multiplying
the money supply.
It's textbook stuff.
Elite university professors can be stupid?

(10:29):
Oh, yeah. Totally.
Bitcoin derangement syndrome, BDS, is a big bad monster that's taken many bright minds away from us well before my time.
Many fiat elites
became too enamored with their own egos, too stuck
in the status quo that, by the way, has benefited them enormously,

(10:50):
they often became blind to the errors of their past opinions.
The correct intellectual approach when reality behaves differently from what you expect it is to reassess your model. Maybe, just maybe, you got something wrong.
The reasonable reaction to the bitcoin price doing
13 x or 1220%

(11:11):
in the seven years since you loudly proclaimed its imminent death
is to change your mind. Maybe I missed something.
You ought to ask yourself, maybe there's something here that I couldn't see. Maybe, just maybe, there's true value in this worthless speculative
techno babbling disaster.
I have almost

(11:32):
lost all respect for legacy academics.
We definitely need new institutions of higher education.
Bitcoin is for anyone but not everyone
and people get bitcoin at the price they deserve and for all I care,
Rogoff can join the likes of Elizabeth Warren at the back of the line. Alright.

(11:52):
Well,
a well articulated
piece about this
Harvard academic, this Harvard economist, and and former IMF guy.
I didn't realize he also had worked at the IMF. It doesn't it doesn't matter.
He's right about academics,
except he's wrong about one thing.

(12:14):
When he says he has lost almost all of his respect for legacy academics,
he's he's one step away from completing the transition to where he actually needs to be.
I have no respect for higher education at this point. I have multiple degrees.
And when I got them, the

(12:35):
these these guys were were
the
my my professors were pretty cool, and they did know a lot.
But since then
since
then, academics at the high at the university and college levels have been so polluted by the subsidies of student loans, which are 100%
guaranteed by the government, not not to the loan holder.

(12:58):
No. No. No. I mean, they're they're
they're guaranteeing that that money will those checks will be written directly to the university.
If you didn't know, this is how it works.
I'm a student at Texas Tech University.
I go get a student loan.
Does the bank send me a check? No. No. They don't.
No. No. They don't. And and this this happens every semester,

(13:22):
by the way. If is for as long as as you're taking out new loans or adding to the loan that you've already got this happens every semester every spring every fall and and in some cases the two summer semesters or one summer semester depending on where you're going to school.
You do not get the check cut to you.
That

(13:43):
check goes directly to the institution that you're enrolled at. So in my case, Texas Tech University
would get the check from
the people making me the loan.
They pay all the fees, all the student fees, all the tuition, any what whatever it is. Like, if I'm in a dorm,
then they're gonna pay the housing fee. If I'm an out of state guy, then they're paying the out of state tuition fee. If I'm in state they're paying you get it. Right?

(14:12):
Whatever's left over and there is always cash left over
that goes directly to me. After after all my college bills for that semester are paid I get a check cut directly from
the university.
So
this is why I call it a direct subsidy. A, because anybody can go get a student loan. It doesn't matter what your credit is. B, the United States government backs that loan 100%

(14:42):
by doing c,
sending a check from the United States government or, well, the the lending institution
directly to the institution that I'm enrolled at, and then I get money on the backside of that.
That's how it works.
And what's happened
is the administrative load and this is happening in health care. This is a mirror image of what's happening in health care In the university or college setting, higher education,

(15:10):
the subsidies have polluted
the university and college system so bad that we now have
much more administrative
load than we have
teaching and academic load. And I'm talking about the the the monetary payouts for salaries.
We're paying more
for secretaries and administrators

(15:30):
and whatever it is that you wanna call them, people that do not teach, that do not do research,
that do not, in almost any way, shape, form, or fashion,
directly support
the student.
We pay more for those people than we do for the people that actually teach them.
We have a higher payload or or or, payroll load

(15:53):
than the people that actually go into classrooms and teach students.
The people that actually go into a laboratory and discover shit. The people that actually write academic papers, the people that actually apply for grants and get money from somebody other than loan makers.
This
Joaquin,
I'm talking directly to you. Go ahead and take the last step.

(16:16):
You should have zero respect for academic institutions at this point, but you are 100% correct. We need a completely
new system of higher ed.
And I
think it'll be things like, what was the there's a college in Austin that started was started by a bunch of Bitcoiners and libertarians, and I can't remember the name of it. It's like,

(16:37):
Texas University at Austin, I believe, is the name.
The institutions like that, if if they do well and if they are able to, you know, deliver on their promises in the way that they're delivering on their promises,
then this will be a model of new
higher education.

(16:58):
The model of higher education that we need.
The model of higher education that quite frankly we deserve because
we do not deserve
what institutions of higher education have become. It's
freaking scary.
Which brings me to this story. Nothing scary about crypto according to federal reserve governor

(17:18):
Andrei Bogansky from decrypt.co.
Using cryptocurrencies to facilitate ordinary payments should be no more intimidating than swiping a debit card, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said on Tuesday.
Quote, there's nothing to be afraid of when thinking about using smart contracts, tokenization,
or, god forbid, distributed ledgers in everyday transactions, he said during a speech at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium

(17:44):
at Teton Village, Wyoming.
Okay. So they're in Wyoming. Whatever.
This is simply new technology.
Waller described stablecoins
as a continuation
of advancements in payments
pointing to the early days of physical cards that lacked magnetic strips or chips. Stablecoins have evolved from the original purpose,

(18:06):
he acknowledged, but, quote,
have the potential to improve retail and cross border payments while also making it easier to access The US Dollar globally. And that's the real reason right there.
Access to the United States dollar globally.
This
is what stablecoins
are being perverted into.

(18:26):
And I'm talking Tether and and USDC
specifically.
All the rest of the stablecoins
honestly could fall off a cliff and nobody would ever miss them. I'm telling you right now. Tether falls off a cliff and well there's a bunch of people that have problems,
but
this isn't about
enabling faster payments and like a digital credit credit card for you.

(18:50):
No. No. No. No. This is this is specifically
designed or not designed that the stablecoins were meant to do a thing.
The United States government is perverting that thing so that they can print
unlimited amounts of US dollars
and ship them somewhere other than The United States
to basically put inflation

(19:10):
on the backs of poor people
somewhere else.
It'll boomerang.
The chickens will come home to roost in The United States, but not immediately.
It is a boom to these guys.
Continuing, quote, as the stablecoin market matured, firms found that properties of stablecoins using distributed ledger technology, including twenty four seven availability,

(19:32):
fast transferability,
and their freely circulating nature could be attractive
for other use cases as well. Like what? Shipping unlimited cash? Okay. What? Waller,
who was appointed during US president Donald Trump's first term, told The Wall Street Journal last month that he would accept a role as Fed chair if he was asked.

(19:53):
He also dissented from the central bank's decision to hold rates set steady in July for a fifth straight meeting calling for a quarter percentage
point rate cut alongside governor Michelle Bowman.
On Tuesday, Bowman gave her own address
at the Wyoming confab saying, quote, you don't need a tech background to appreciate the opportunity that blockchain

(20:15):
provides to the financial system. Woo hoo. Alright. Waller
recognized on Wednesday
that some have been fearful or skeptical of innovation in the payment space, but he underscored that, quote, there is nothing scary about crypto transactions
just because they take place within the realm of decentralized finance. Oh my god.

(20:36):
Remember what Joaquin was saying about somebody who should know better completely missing the point?
They oh.
Oh. Oh my.
The payment doesn't take place within the realm of decentralized finance.
It is its own thing.
He's bringing decentralized finance in there in in this sentence for a reason. I I don't know why, but let's continue with the Genius Act's passage

(21:01):
created
a federal framework for stablecoin issuers, and Waller said that this could help US dollar peg tokens reach their, quote, full potential in The United States.
Although his comments were geared towards private sector innovation, Waller's remarks follows the debut of Wyoming stablecoin earlier this week.
Revenue generated from the token's reserve

(21:23):
is expected to go towards the state's
school
foundation fund. Oh, again, it's for the children. Oh, well, that makes everything just a okay. The Fed
has played a role in supporting payments technology by providing infrastructure for clearing and settlement to financial institutions.
That has been the use case since the central bank's earlier days,

(21:46):
Waller noted anyway. As stablecoins
became ingrained in the financial world, Waller said the Fed is conducting research on tokenization,
smart contracts, artificial intelligence
in payments.
Because who doesn't want artificial intelligence
in everything you do, including me giving you a 50¢ piece for a piece of gum.

(22:07):
Oh, my god. Artificial intelligence in payments?
That should scare the piss out of everybody.
Although conservatives have warned against the dangers of dollar peg token issued by the Fed,
Waller did not explicitly reference central bank digital currencies.
Quote, it is important to understand trends in payments technology

(22:28):
so we can continue to support private sector firms that leverage our infrastructures
as well as
understand whether emerging technologies
could provide opportunities to improve our existing platforms and services.
So there you go. There's your suit speak for the day.
I don't trust him. I don't trust any of these guys. I don't care that he called for a quarter point rate cut.

(22:52):
He knew he wasn't gonna get one anyway.
And and, honestly, quite honestly, after this week,
I mean, I I called it last week. I told you
Thursday and Friday of last week that this was gonna be a shitty week for price action, and I was absolutely 100% correct, man, because it's just the hits keep on coming.

(23:12):
We get bad housing. We get we we get the we got the FOMAC minutes. We
and every single time I got I had five
flagged
dates for this week, and we're not done yet. We've got a couple more days to go, and then we've got one more piece of news coming out at the first part of next week, and then we should be kind of free and clear for at least a little bit, hopefully, at least as far as United States fed federal reserve news and economic data news is concerned.

(23:43):
We can only hope.
But getting back to this Waller dude, it's not for the children and and and they don't care about the college. They just it's all bullshit.
They just want a mechanism
to be able to print
unlimited amounts of money
that don't technically or directly affect
at least in the short short short short term

(24:05):
The United States economy by driving inflation higher. They want to be able to print oodles of cash,
send it to Europe, destroy what's left of their economy first, and anybody else who gets in our way, which means Australia, New Zealand, anybody in the West, Italy,
North Africa,
UK,
over there in Israel and Palestine and Gaza and all that shit, Russia. We we will ship

(24:31):
these stablecoins
as we print debt instrumentation out of The United States until the world looks level,
and we might as well be dropping nuclear bombs on the rest of the economies of the world as we do it.
And that may be exactly why they wanna do it. Nobody gets out of this alive,
except maybe for Arthur Hayes, who has shifted his focus to longevity

(24:53):
after a Trump pardon
and invests
in stem cell venture.
Ah,
God's own kitchen.
Yes. This is where all the billionaires like to
congratulate each other on
being billionaires, I guess. Amin
Haqq Shonis has this one for Cointelegraph.
BitMex cofounder and Bitcoin billionaire,

(25:16):
Arthur Hayes, has taken
a board seat and a major stake in a stem cell company following his March president Donald his March pardon from president Donald Trump. And that wiped clean his conviction for bank secrecy act violations,
which would never happen for you or me because we're not billionaires. But Hayes, who built BitMEX into one of the largest derivatives platform before

(25:40):
it came under regulatory fire, has been a regular patient
at this particular stem cell firm's clinics in Mexico and Bangkok for over a year. He told Bloomberg,
quote,
I wanna live as long as possible
and as healthy as possible, Hayes said, noting that more countries are relaxing rules around the stem cell use case.

(26:05):
Oh, Jesus.
Now this probably is for the children, like, you know, harvesting. I know it's disgusting, but
where else you you you
I'm telling you, man. You you don't
stem cells are great. And if we could get them in some a couple of different fashions, you know, it would be it I I don't have a problem with it,

(26:27):
but they're come kinda coming from fetuses.
I know. It's
but that's that's the most
that's the most totipotent,
cell that you can get your hands on is fetal
stem cells.
That's
I I know it's disgusting, but in March, Trump pardoned four former BitMex executives, including Hayes, Benjamin Dalo, Gregory Dwyer, and Samuel Reed, who had plead guilty to bank secrecy act violations

(26:57):
tied to very weak anti money laundering controls at the chain
or at at the exchange rather. Hayes
has bet on longevity,
and it comes as crypto titans increasingly funnel wealth into the sector.
In 2021,
Vitalik Buterin contributed $25,000,000
in Shiba Inu tokens to the Future of Life Institute

(27:20):
and over $350,000
to the
SENS
Research Foundation to, quote, reimagine aging.
All of these people are psychotic.
See, this is what happens when you don't believe in God.
You you're terrified
of the of death when all it is is you walking through a door. Think of it like this.

(27:42):
You got, like, you've you've got a toddler
and you go, okay, son. It's time to it's time to figure out how to get into an elevator and go to a different floor in this hotel. And,
no,
doesn't want to walk through that door.
But you know what's on the other end. You know it's safe. You know it's gonna be okay.
Maybe you yourself may have a little fear about getting into that elevator because, I don't know, maybe you're scared the cable will snap, but you know better.

(28:09):
Deep down, you know better because
you've been here.
Toddler has it.
So
when I look at these tech billionaires,
all I see are fucking children
who don't understand the way the universe works.
No, you don't blink out of existence.
Why do I say that?
Because you can't destroy energy.

(28:30):
Whether it's patterned energy,
unpatterned energy,
energy,
by the laws of thermodynamics,
cannot
be destroyed.
And if you think that your consciousness
or patterned energy just blinks out of existence the moment that they put you into a six foot hole,
you're you don't understand how the universe works.

(28:53):
And clearly, neither does Arthur Hayes.
Because he has called life extension a cause worth fighting for, framing it in a way to end the generational loss caused by aging.
Quote,
just just even the process of aging turning into something that just becomes reversible and it being a regular thing for people to live one and a half, two centuries, and then go even further from there, Buterin said, anyway, former Coinbase executive

(29:21):
Balaji
Srinvinson. I never can't pronounce his name, who also cofounded Council, a genomics
startup focused on affordable genetic testing for reproductive
health and disease screening.
Meanwhile,
see Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong cofounded
another genetic startup called New Limit which raised $130,000,000

(29:44):
this year.
Hayes has also remained
active in crypto's financial frontier. His family office, Maelstrom, has backed digital asset treasury companies, publicly traded firms stockpiling tokens on their balance sheet. And last year, Hayes' Maelstrom
Fund
also launched
a Bitcoin grant program offering $50,000

(30:04):
to $150,000
annually
with up to a quarter million dollars per developer
to support
open source work to to strengthen Bitcoin scalability,
resilience, privacy, and censorship
resistance.
They're all there
it happens to every billionaire that, like, Gates
has no background

(30:26):
whatsoever in in biology, yet he wants to be a virologist.
He's talking about vaccinations and vaccines and
which means that you should know probably something about how viruses work. I know more about how viruses fucking work than Bill Gates does because I have the background.
I I sat in virology class with PhDs,

(30:50):
and they told us about how these things actually work. Gates
didn't.
You know? I mean, he's a billionaire, and all of a sudden he he's now responsible
for vaccinating the world's children? Nah, man. There's something else going on. And then you got Vitalik Buterin. You got Arthur Hayes.
You got all these all these people, whether they're in Bitcoin or out of Bitcoin, but all these tech billionaires,

(31:14):
for some reason, they gravitate
when they've got I guess it's because when you have nothing better to do with the rest of your life,
you try to figure out how to be more bored with it
by by messing around in God's kitchen?
I don't know, man.
That's probably not going to end up being very good for anybody. Let's run the numbers.

(31:45):
Futures and commodities. West Texas Intermediate Oil cracking almost a full point to the upside this morning, $63.34
per barrel, and Brent Norsey is up almost a full point itself to $67.50.
Natural gas is up two and three quarters of a point, and gasoline is up, well, one and a quarter point to $2.15

(32:08):
a gallon.
Metals are pretty much mixed today. Gold is drifting down into the red, 0.12%
to the downside. Silver is up in the green, point 8%.
Platinum up one and a third. Copper is up point 17%.
Palladium in the red by two thirds of a point.
Ag is fully mixed this morning. Biggest winner is gonna be corn. No. It's not. It's coffee at 3.11

(32:32):
to the upside.
Biggest loser is chocolate.
The other dark meat, 2.16%
to the downside. Meanwhile, live cattle down
a tenth of a point. Lean lean hogs down a quarter of a point, and feeder cattle are also down a tenth of a point.
I guess people in legacy finance are not having a good day either because the Dow is down almost a half point as is the Nasdaq,

(32:56):
as is the S and P, and the S and P Mini is down itself
one quarter of one point. I'm looking at a $112,600
that brings us to
a $2,240,000,000,000
market cap for Bitcoin. You can only purchase 33.7
ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one bitcoin of which there are 19,909,310.19

(33:21):
of an average fees per block are low
0.02
btc taking in fees on a per block basis
There's like 35
blocks this morning
carrying a 135,000
unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of three satoshis per v buy low priority is going to get you in at one

(33:41):
And then, we've dropped in hash rate but only by a little bit nine
twenty seven exahashes
per second is where we stand
right now. And
from tether coming right for us
I've got activity
from
Pies with a 121
sat says thank you sir, no thank you.

(34:02):
Regilecki.
Regilecki.
Regilecki.
Yeah. Regilecki.
A thousand sats, says Regolecki.
Turkey with 500 says nothing. Psyduck with 748
says,
sidewalk.
Jason High with five hundred says, thank you for your service. I appreciate that. Progressively worse with five fifty five says, let's see if this works now. I had to reinstall Fountain. The last week or so, all my boost have been throwing an error message, and my in pub has been unreadable.

(34:31):
Thank you once again.
Progressively worse. Well, it seems to have worked because I can see you, and I see the sats too. Thank you for those. Yodel with five twelve says, good call on the week being rough for price. Yeah. I know. I wish I was wrong, but, hey, it is what it is.
Progressively worse with another 555 says, thank you. No. Thank you. Paul Cernine with five hundred says, thanks for another insightful episode.

(34:55):
Devil's Postpile
wakes some memories.
Other people know it as Devil's Tower. He's talking about the,
the cover art for that episode. God's Death with 237 says, thank you, sir. No. Thank you. And that's the weather report.

(35:19):
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Texas Slim is on Noster, finally.
Not not sure how active you may find him, but he is definitely on Noster.
He got in contact with me through DMs and sent me, sent me his in pub, which I then went to,
Primal to go look up.

(35:39):
And Primal on my computer is almost unusable. And I don't know if that's Primal's fault or the fact that my browser is out of date,
but
I'm having to use something called jumble.social.
So
if you don't know who Texas Slim is,
this is a guy that I've been friends with for quite a while now ever since I moved to to, Canyon,

(36:02):
Texas from Lubbock, Texas.
I hooked up with Texas Slim, and he has
he he kinda got known in the Bitcoin space for the beef initiative, and that came directly out of
an article he wrote called the harvest of deception.
And he talks about the food
and the food in The United States,

(36:23):
the food industry in The United States, and he talks about he went on a
very long harvest.
Like, he he literally farmed himself out and said, hey. I'll I'll I'll do freelance work or contract
contractor work, and I'll go out on the road, and we'll do all these harvest and harvest seasons. And he saw kind of firsthand just how bad the food situation is in The United States,

(36:45):
and that sort of launched him. But I I had been trying to get him on Nostra for a long, long time, and he's finally done so.
So
I'm going to have a jumble dot social
which is a nostril client and if you're not using jumble dot social you should at least check it out. It's lightweight, it's very responsive.

(37:05):
I like the layout
jumble.social,
that's jumble.social.
I will have
Texas Slims,
in pub
in the show notes. And so all you'll have to do is click it, go to jumble.social.
If you have a way to log in using your nostril,
do so. Otherwise,
you can just copy the in pub portion of that URL

(37:28):
and take it to whatever
whatever nostril client you want to take it to. Pop it in the search, and you'll end up finding Texas Slim. Highly recommended,
in pub to follow there. So I just wanted to make sure that you guys knew that Texas Slim is
now present on Noster.
Steak and Shake, well, they've cut their payment fees by 50% with Bitcoin.

(37:53):
So we got some new numbers coming out of
our favorite burger joint, and it's written by James from lightning.news.
Steak and Shake said
that it realized a 50%
reduction in payment fees compared to traditional credit cards.
Founded in 1934,
the classic American burger restaurant embraced Bitcoin payments earlier this year across its United States and European company operated restaurants.

(38:20):
This initiative is one of the clearest examples of Bitcoin moving beyond speculative
investment into practical use as a retail payment method.
With card processing fees continuing to climb, and they are, merchants in The US paid a $172,000,000,000
in 2023

(38:41):
all by itself.
That's what they paid in payment fees.
Holy shit.
Retailers are always, always, always looking for ways to improve efficiency. Steak and Shake's experience confirms Bitcoin's acceptance
translates into tangible savings. The company reported
up to 50%
reduction in payment fees compared to traditional credit cards. And in retail sectors where net profit margins typically range from two to 5%,

(39:10):
having payment costs, like cut them in half, can significantly
enhance profitability or fund reinvestment
in quality technology or customer experience. But cost is only part of the story.
Bitcoin transactions settle faster and are immune to chargebacks
offering operational benefits

(39:30):
for payment operations teams. This means fewer disputes,
lower fraud risk, and more reliable cash flow.
Advantages that can reduce overhead and administrative burden.
Perhaps
most compelling
for from a revenue growth perspective that is, is how bitcoin acceptance
has influenced customer behavior.

(39:52):
On the day of launch, stake and shake accounted for two no. I'm sorry. 0.2%
of all global transactions.
Point 2%
of all
global Bitcoin transactions.
Following the rollout, the company observed a sustained
spike in customer traffic reflecting that Bitcoin acceptance meets emerging customer expectations

(40:16):
especially among younger
demographics.
This dynamic underscores
an important consideration for retail payment strategists, enabling Bitcoin payments as both a facility
upgrade
and a customer acquisition strategy focused on engaging tech savvy,
high value segments increasingly comfortable with bitcoin and lightning payments.

(40:37):
Stake and Shake's decision to place bitcoin on equal footing with cash and credit cards signals a shift.
By normalizing Bitcoin payments as a standard option,
the company has positioned itself as a future forward brand
willing to adopt emerging technologies
pragmatically
rather than as just a marketing afterthought.

(40:57):
This approach is instructive for enterprises
weighing digital payment innovation.
Bitcoin is no longer a fringe payment experiment but a legitimate component of an omnichannel payment strategy
capable of enhancing
brand quality and competitive positioning.
Broader market data reinforces the significance of Stake and Shake's move.

(41:19):
Crypto payment volume surpassed $1,300,000,000,000
in 2024
with projections suggesting retail crypto transactions could exceed 4,500,000,000,000.0
annually
by the year 02/1930.
Meanwhile, surveys show 75%
of US retailers
aim to accept crypto or stablecoins within the next two years reflecting mainstream momentum.

(41:43):
For CFOs,
CROs,
and CTOs
as well as payment strategists in retail,
Steak and Shake's payments
or rather Steak and Shake presents a real world benchmark. They got cost efficiency.
They have operational streamlining.
They have customer engagement. And they have brand modernization.

(42:03):
As enterprise retail continues to digitize payments and diversify rails,
the Steak and Shake example bolsters the amount or the argument
for Bitcoin's maturity as a commerce medium.
So there there you go.
This shit worked for stake and shake. It is continuing to work. They have sustained
bitcoin payments.

(42:25):
That's kind of like the most important part there by the way.
Just remember
that very soon
Jack Dorsey,
his company Square,
which is
I that's Cash App.
The Square
company has Cash App. It's the umbrella company for Jack and its payments and and and banking and finance rails and all that stuff. That's all under Square. And Square is planning on rolling out Bitcoin payments directly in app

(42:55):
for Cash App, which means everybody that's got Cash App,
whether you've got it on your phone for personal use
or you're a retail
place and you're using Cash App, you're going to be able to take Bitcoin payments if you so choose.
It'll be a choice. You won't I mean, you can either say I want to enable it or you keep it disabled.

(43:17):
If you enable it, it doesn't mean that you can't take cash or that you can't or that Cash App won't be able to process credit cards. You'll you'll be able to do whatever the hell it is that you already do with Cash App, but that's coming soon. So think of all the retail guys out there
that have Cash App and they like in this. A lot of them are small businesses, by the way.

(43:37):
You know, like Walmart doesn't use Cash App. They don't need to. They've got their own they've got their own payment thing.
But if you go to a farmer's market, you might want to look around at just how many
square symbols
the the symbol or the the branding for the company square. You might want to look at how many people are using cash app at farmers markets

(43:58):
and and really really small retail
environments.
It's more than you think. It's a lot more than you think.
Let's
now that I've gotten over my
UK rant, let's let's let's charge that song bitch back up. The UK
needs to hear from Bitcoin supporters,
and this app sends your

(44:18):
member of parliament
a message in just one click.
This is Frank Korva from bitcoin magazine.
Bitcoin policy UK
believes that United Kingdom citizens need to speak up if the British government is going to get policy and regulation around Bitcoin right.
Yeah. Good luck, dude. Hence,

(44:40):
excuse me, they've launched an easy to use app that helps Brits send a letter
to their member of parliament to advocate for Bitcoin and Bitcoin adjacent topics.
Quote, we've built the app to make it simple for anyone to connect with their MP and push for clear, sensible Bitcoin policy,
said Bitcoin Policy UK cofounder

(45:02):
Susie Violet Ward. The UK has largely ignored Bitcoin
and poor regulation and tax policies have shifted growth and innovation while driving businesses out of the country.
It's time to change that, she added.
Users begin
by inputting their full name, email address, and postcode.
Note that the app doesn't require your address or phone number as it was designed by a privacy conscious Bitcoiner and new member of the Bitcoin policy UK team named Sammy Shams.

(45:34):
Then they select from one of the following four issues that's most important to them, CBDC
opposition,
classification of Bitcoin by the FCA, Bitcoin tax treatment, and finally strategic Bitcoin reserve. And after that,
the app will generate a ready made letter, I'm pretty sure this is all AI driven,

(45:55):
tailored to the user's chosen issue, and the app will give you the option to send it to your MP from the app, or you can download it, print it, and send it yourself if that's what you wanna do. Members of Bitcoin policy UK have been hard at work within the halls of power attempting to educate MPs
and other members of government

(46:15):
about Bitcoin and why it's essential that The UK embraces it. But they can't do this work alone. They need British Bitcoin enthusiasts to speak up to buoy their efforts. Decisions being made in Westminster right now
will shape the future of Bitcoin in The UK, said
Bitcoin policy UK team in a press release. The future of Bitcoin in The UK depends on all of us.

(46:38):
Well, right now, it looks like The UK is more wrapped up in saving all the children
from
being
flooded with pornography.
Because, yes, chill like like the the the person
at the head of the, the show today said that that children don't go look for porn.
Yeah.

(46:58):
Right.
Oh, god.
It doesn't matter.
This isn't, again, this isn't about the children. It's it's about getting you
to facial
scan
your your face because that's it's not just say okay well fine I'm 32 years old no no no no that's not how this works anymore you used to be able to do that but no no not anymore You got to use your phone because they clearly don't give a shit for people that don't have a smartphone.

(47:24):
You're you're gonna have to verify your age by scanning your face.
That's that's what this is all about.
So as far as the Bitcoin policy in The UK or this the UK Bitcoin policy team is is concerned,
I'm I'm happy that they're doing this,
but they are being
their noise that they're trying to make is being completely drowned out by the absolute

(47:49):
idiocy
that the UK government is found themselves embroiled in. Do you know like Jeremy Clarkson of Clarkson Farms? And if you're not watching Clarkson Farm or Clarkson's Farm, you need to.
I love that show. Jeremy Clarkson is one of the guys from oh, does what? Now I've lost the name of the show that he got famous on.

(48:09):
Top Gear
drove very, very fast cars, like, all the time. Very, very expensive supercars. And they him and his buddies would talk about it. And he got a boatload of money for doing that show for, like, I don't know, twenty five years or however long that thing went. And he bought a farm in the in well, actually, he didn't buy he didn't buy a farm. He just took over his family's farm

(48:30):
because he wanted to become a farmer.
And now he tweeted out, it was either yesterday or the day before,
that there's a new UK law that is
basically
if it gets passed,
there's a very real and present danger
that farmland
could simply be taken from the farmer

(48:52):
without their permission
and given to the what's called the councils.
Now the council in The UK,
it's sort of like
like in The United States, we have county commissioners.
You know? Well, you can think of it like that, except in The United States, the county commissioners can't steal your land.

(49:13):
They they do other nasty shit, but it's not like this
where the city council or the county county council or or commissioners or whatever
where they just take your land.
So
so Frank if you're listening to me the the Bitcoin policy UK group they're gonna have to make a lot more noise than this

(49:35):
Because what UK is going through right now, they
are they are edging right
next.
They're snuggling up to civil war in a way that I don't think anybody in The UK really
understands.
They are they are a
fucking nose hair away
from all hell breaking loose.

(49:56):
It is one insult on the on the British people after another after another after another. And at one point or another, these
these good people that have been very, very patient and very, very polite with their own government,
they're not going to be so polite and they're not going to be so patient.
But in the meantime, for anything with Bitcoin to have any kind of positive momentum

(50:19):
is gonna have to be heard.
And right now I can guarantee you the bitcoin policy UK team is
not being heard like at all.
So if you are in The UK,
if you want to find out where this app is, go to the URL. It's in the show notes of this story for Bitcoin Magazine.

(50:41):
Click it, and you will be able to find it for yourself.
Then get the app and do what it says so that you can at least have a fighting chance to make enough noise that bitcoin actually gets heard
above the den
of the clown show
that's going on inside of the circus tent wrapped around by a dumpster fire.

(51:02):
It's just
fucking ridiculous. Okay. So
Trump backed World Liberty stable coin has been added to the Coinbase roadmap.
Possible listing coming. Okay. Let's
let's just kind of pause here for a second.
I saw that coinbase

(51:22):
has listed something called I think it's called worthless coin.
Somebody spun up a shit coin. It's got enough of a market cap that is being listed
by Coinbase, but its name is something like either nothing coin or worthless coin or something like that, and it's been listed.
So, honestly,

(51:42):
for my 2¢,
I don't really give a shit that Trump backed World Liberty stablecoin is being added to the Coinbase roadmap.
And I'm not going to cover it because
Coinbase
would list a pile of dog crap
if they could.
So let's you know what? Let's just end it right here.

(52:06):
Give you back your day. I will see you on the other side.
This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.
Have a great day.

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