Down The Drain

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
It is 10:07AM
Pacific Daylight Time. It's the May
2025.
This is episode
11 o four of Bitcoin.
And Jack Dorsey's block
is going to integrate Bitcoin payments into Square.
Actually, they already have. I I guess they're kinda doing it on a limited basis,

(00:24):
and then gonna roll it out to all vendors. I can pretty quickly it seems.
But this,
this was this announcement was made yesterday at the Bitcoin conference twenty twenty five over there in
Las Vegas. So why don't we just start right there?
This is from Atlas twenty
one. Block, the firm led by Jack Dorsey that owns Square and Bitkey,

(00:49):
has officially announced the integration of Bitcoin payments
into the Square platform
with a full rollout planned for 2026,
ah, for all eligible merchants.
I don't don't really know why they're waiting so long. Okay? So I guess it's not gonna be as fast as I thought,
but it is going to happen.

(01:11):
So what is Square, by the way, just in case you did not know? It's a merchant platform.
So if I've got, like, a barbecue stand,
I can decide on many types of point of sale
solutions,
for lack of a better term, and Square is one of them. I could get a Square terminal and bay actually, what at this point, I just get an iPad

(01:35):
and I put the Square app on it, and all of a sudden, I've got a cash register. And if I wanna do it with an actual cash drawer, I gotta go get the cash drawer, but it would work with that. But, essentially, this is the way that you take
credit card payments and all kinds of different kinds of payments. And now
now it looks like they're doing lightning

(01:56):
and Bitcoin. So let's let's find out more because at the Bitcoin conference twenty twenty five in Las Vegas,
attendees had the chance to preview Satoshi payments
via Square
at BTC
Incorporated's
merchandise store. The technology
relies
on the Lightning Network. Yes. That makes good sense.

(02:19):
The second layer infrastructure enabling instant low cost Bitcoin transactions.
This approach
will allow merchants
to accept
Satoshi payments
through their existing Square hardware.
This continual use of Satoshi is concerning.
I I because
Jack is one of the guys that wants Satoshis to turn into

(02:42):
be renamed under BIP one seven seven Bitcoin.
I don't know, man. The whole thing is is there's no reason
to inject this amount of confusion. So let's just go ahead. The the implementation
plan
includes an initial launch
in the second half of twenty twenty five,
Pending necessary

(03:02):
regulatory
approvals,
the initiative represents a key pillar in the company's strategy to make Bitcoin more accessible for everyday transactions.
Miles Suter,
Bitcoin product lead at Block, stated, quote, Block has long been a champion of Bitcoin
focused on making it more accessible and usable in our everyday lives.

(03:23):
Rolling out a native Bitcoin experience to millions of sellers
brings us one step closer to that goal. When a coffee shop or a retail store can accept Bitcoin through Square,
small businesses get paid faster
and get to keep more of their revenue.
The announcement follows Dorsey's statement last month confirming that Block was working to integrate Bitcoin

(03:47):
as a payment option for both Bitkey
and Square. And alongside the announcement, Block also revealed that Bitkey
will introduce new privacy and security features in May, including a legacy recovery option available to all users. Well, that's not as important
as the fact that Square is going to be taking Bitcoin payments.

(04:09):
I don't know if the regulatory
approvals that apparently still need to actually be cleared are going to cause any problems.
I don't think Jack would have announced this if there wasn't a,
a well drawn road map on how to get from here
to there.
But if we go and we look at this chief operating officer,

(04:31):
what was his name?
Edward. Something Edward. It's a hold on. To see if help. No. Of course, I
clicked out of it. But people have been
spreading this video
of the chief operating officer of Steak and Shake,
Ed his last name is Edwards, I'm pretty sure,

(04:53):
on Twitter, he was talking at the Bitcoin conference, and he did so yesterday. And he was talking about Stake and Shake's implementation
of
Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network
on their terminals at all of their stores. And this is not just United States stores. It's all Steak and Shake. Apparently, they are have a few international stores, so that does make them global. And he was saying that

(05:16):
since the launch
of Steak and Shake
accepting Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network,
that they were responsible for, like, 1.5%
of all Bitcoin payments since then,
which is, like, something like one in 500 Lightning payments or something like that. But what he what he was saying was that

(05:37):
they saw an increase in revenue
in general
once they started taking Bitcoin,
and
they weren't paying anywhere close to the amount in fees as they were if they were taking
Visa, Mastercard, which they still do take Visa and Mastercard and all of your your general legacy credit card apps

(05:57):
or credit cards.
But
with for when they're looking crunching the numbers and seeing how much it cost them
to accept money via the legacy solutions
versus via Bitcoin solutions,
they're making way more money
on the Bitcoin solution. They are not giving over anywhere close to the amount of cash that they have to when they're taking legacy credit cards. This does not bode well for legacy credit cards. And if you go back and look at what Jack Dorsey is doing, how many Square merchants are there?

(06:31):
There's a lot of Square merchants.
Lots of people use square. It's been around forever,
and they are about to turn on a switch
that is going to allow
the it's not allowing the merchants
to say whether or not they take Bitcoin.
And this is this may actually end up being a matter of contention with some merchants.

(06:56):
Right?
They don't get a choice.
It's just gonna be on by default. I'm going to be able to walk up to any merchant and be able to pay in lightning
in bitcoin
via the lightning network at their terminal
whether or not they want to accept bitcoin or not
just because the functionality will be there.

(07:18):
So this begs the question,
does that mean that Jack is gonna put the put an owner situation
on the merchant
to flip a switch where they can either save that Bitcoin
or immediately convert it into cash?
Or does it just automatically
convert to cash and the merchant just doesn't even see it happening?

(07:42):
Because one way is gonna be good for the merchants. Well, it's not gonna be good for the merchants if they just are only gonna be able to, you know, have to convert their Bitcoin into cash.
So
I would imagine that what's gonna happen is that Jack is going to roll it out so that, like, let's say that I go buy I'm at a farmer's market, and I have

(08:04):
I go to two merchants, and they both use Square,
and one hates Bitcoin
and, you know, they they just don't even give a shit. They never cared. They never gonna care. They're gonna have fun staying poor for the rest of their lives and they're gonna be fine. Okay? So just I walk up to that merchant and I pay in lightning
and the merchant doesn't even realize

(08:26):
it. Doesn't even know because it's like a button was just added to the screen and it says pay in lightning and the guy the merchant cannot get that off there. So I just hit pay in lightning, I get my QR code, I pay whatever the invoice says and boom I'm done.
I would imagine that what Jack did for that particular merchant is that by default,

(08:47):
without a merchant having to do anything whatsoever,
that that particular payment is instantly converted to fiat and goes wherever it is that the merchant actually wanted their payment to go in the first place when they first set Square
up. Now there's a second merchant, and he actually does give a shit
and says, I wanna actually keep that Bitcoin.

(09:09):
Maybe what Jack's done is put a switch for advanced users
in settings that says, do you want
to actually
convert your lightning payments to fiat immediately, or do you want them to go to a different place?
And by default, that is set to sell it for Fiat immediately so that all the merchants don't have to do anything about it at all. But if you want

(09:34):
to keep your lightning payments
or you want to only possibly
sell, like, half of the of of the payment and keep the other half, that there is a slider and a switch that the advanced user can actually do to get there.
We'll have to see because there's not a lot of details as to what's going on with,

(09:54):
Square accepting,
Bitcoin, but it's gonna happen.
And I have been wanting that to happen
for
at least a year. I've been I've been hounding Jack even though I know he's not actually listening to me, but I have been, like, writing back to him on Twitter and especially on Noster saying, when are you going to accept lightning on Square? And I actually want him to accept, like, like, I actually want him to put,

(10:20):
Cash App as a point of sale device too as to whether or not that happens.
We'll have to see. But meanwhile, GameStop
has finally bought Bitcoin.
They bought $513,000,000
worth of Bitcoin, and they announced that sometime this morning, I guess. We'll find out more from Vivek Sin from Bitcoin Magazine.

(10:41):
Video game retailer, GameStop, has purchased 4,710
Bitcoin
worth $513,000,000,
marking yet another major corporate entry into Bitcoin Treasury Holdings as the trend of companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets
accelerates.
The company announced the acquisition via on Twitter,
Wednesday,

(11:01):
but did not disclose specific details about when the purchases were made or the average price paid per coin. The move follows GameStop's March announcement to plans
of plans to pursue a Bitcoin treasury strategy,
which included a $1,300,000,000
convertible senior note offering to fund Bitcoin purchases.

(11:22):
GameStop's Bitcoin acquisition represents a strategic shift in corporate treasury management following the playbook established
by Michael Saylor.
The purchase comes amid a core a surge in corporate Bitcoin adoption with over fifty
fifty five o public companies announcing Bitcoin treasury programs in the first five months of this year alone.

(11:44):
The announcement pushed GameStop shares up 4.4%
in premarket trading
while Bitcoin traded near a 8,900.
The company reported 4,780,000,000.00
in cash and marketable securities as of February,
suggesting this Bitcoin investment represents
10.7%

(12:04):
of its liquid assets.
The move follows similar treasury diversification
strategies by other major corporations including,
they mentioned Tesla and then the recent announcement I gave you yesterday about Trump Media and Technology Group
and their plans on raising 2,500,000,000.0
for Bitcoin purchases.
So GameStop, you know, like, has finally entered the fray. They said they were going to. We kept egging them on saying, well, when? When are you gonna do it? They finally did it. Here's what I don't understand.

(12:37):
In about
forty minutes from now, Jerome Powell is going to get behind the podium and speak to the press about what's going on. He's giving basically, it's the FOMAC minutes.
So we know that they did not raise,
rates or they did not lower rates. They just decided to keep federal fund rates the exact same, which we're pretty much sure was gonna happen.

(13:00):
But now we get to hear sentences
as uttered by Jerome Powell, which will give the entire field of economic journalism
a field day with what's his intonation,
what is his vocabulary
choice, what is he wearing. Yes. They do that. What is he wearing?
And we'll get a better sense of what the FOMAC is actually thinking and the Federal Reserve thinking

(13:26):
when it comes to the economic numbers that have been coming out. So my question is this.
We always sell the news
and the news is about to drop in forty minutes from now. That would be Jerome Powell getting behind the podium. So my question is, it's not like GameStop did not know that the FOMAC minutes were coming out. It's not like they do not know what happens every time Jerome Powell stands behind a podium. You sell the news.

(13:53):
Why would you announce this
in front of that?
I it just baffles me with some of these people's
timing when they know full well they should wait for the day after Jerome Powell talks
to do anything.
But, you know,

(14:14):
that's probably why I don't work for a corporation.
I guess I'm just too dumb.
Like El Salvador, they're fucking stupid. Or at least according to the International Monetary Fund because
the IMF says that El El Salvador
is going to make efforts, and efforts is in quotations,

(14:34):
to stop Bitcoin buys with a hundred and $20,000,000
payments deal.
Tarang, Haitan,
FourCoin Telegraph.
The IMF said that it reached an agreement,
an agreement
with El Salvador to pay the country a hundred and $20,000,000

(14:55):
following an initial review of its $1,400,000,000
loan agreement, which was struck last year.
On May,
the IMF said that as part of the deal,
El Salvador will need to fulfill its prior obligations
around limiting further government involvement in Bitcoin,
and it will have to cease its involvement in the Chivo wallet by the July,

(15:19):
quote,
on Bitcoin.
Efforts will continue to ensure
that the total amount of Bitcoin held across all government owned wallets remains
unchanged
according to the IMF.
The planned payout
it sounds
payout. Yeah. Payola, brother.

(15:40):
Subject
to IMF
executive board approval as part of a larger $1,400,000,000
40 month loan deal struck in December, which saw El Salvador agree to, quote, confine its Bitcoin ambitions.
On March, the IMF reiterated
its stance that El Salvador should stop accumulating Bitcoin

(16:00):
and not pursue other Bitcoin related activities.
Despite
the IMF's request, El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele,
has stated that his government
will continue
continue to acquire
one BTC per day as part of the nation's Bitcoin treasury strategy.
Shortly after the IMF's May twenty seventh announcement,

(16:23):
El Salvador's Bitcoin office posted to Twitter
that the country had once again purchased more Bitcoin.
The country's official Bitcoin tracker now shows that El Salvador continues
with Bitcoin buying through the Bitcoin office, which has accumulated 30 BTC in the past thirty days.
Currently, El Salvador's Bitcoin reserve stands at 6,190.18

(16:47):
Bitcoin. Last week, Bukele took to social media platform Twitter to reveal that the nation's Bitcoin treasury is sitting at an unrealized profit of 386,000,000.
That's a 32%
gain on its total Bitcoin investment.
In April, Rodrigo Valdez, director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the IMF, said that the country is complying

(17:12):
with the IMF's performance criteria.
Author and intergovernmental
blockchain adviser, Andy Lian,
suggested that the country could maintain technical compliance
by purchasing Bitcoin through nongovernment
entities.
I don't I'm not sure if it's going to matter. A hundred and 20 doll a hundred and $20,000,000

(17:35):
payoff to stop buying Bitcoin
is a drop in the bucket
compared to the 132%
increase in the amount of money that that country has made on the books
just from its Bitcoin purchases alone.
So the question remains,
the same for me.
Is Naive Bukele just playing the IMF on the global stage and making them look like fools? Because he's not complying with the ambitions

(18:01):
of the IMF
to halt
El Salvador's purchase of Bitcoin.
And we all know what it means when
people buy Bitcoin. They're they're going for the exits just like
the
president or the chairman or whatever you wanna call. What's her face? Orange woman from the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde.

(18:24):
She once said in full public, if you give the public an escape valve economically,
they will use the escape valve,
and they didn't want that.
So here we are in El Salvador with Nai Bukele continuously
buying Bitcoin
and the IMF continuously
telling
El Salvador

(18:45):
that if they want to comply with the loan,
the the stipulations of the loan that they have with the IMF that El Salvador has gotta stop buying Bitcoin and they don't stop buying Bitcoin.
What the fuck is going on?
It
is it really going to be the case that this small ass Central American country

(19:08):
is going to make the International Monetary Fund look like fools on the global stage?
I hope so. I really do. Because it's like the only way to really pull the teeth from the monsters that are at our door
is by making them look like fools.
And right now,
it's the IMF that looks very, very foolish,

(19:31):
and I hope it continues to stay that way. God bless Nayib Bukele. Now
Trump's
cryptosar,
David Sachs,
has outlined a pathway to expand
United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, James Hunt. The block is gonna tell us more.
During a fireside chat with Gemini cofounders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

(19:55):
at Bitcoin twenty twenty five in Las Vegas on Tuesday,
David
Sachs outlined how The United States strategic Bitcoin reserve
could acquire more Bitcoin beyond the existing seized funds.
Quote, the executive order establishing the strategic Bitcoin reserve does allow the government to purchase more

(20:17):
if it can be done in the budget neutral way described specifically.
If either the commerce department or the treasury department can figure out how to fund it without adding to the debt,
then they are allowed to create those programs, David Sacks said.
The cryptos are specifically referenced
using surplus money from other government programs to fund such acquisitions.

(20:42):
Analysts at k thirty three previously noted that potential budget neutral strategies could include
United States Treasury Exchange Stabilization
Fund surpluses,
selling special drawing rights issued by the International Monetary Fund,
or
gold certificate revaluation.
That means taking

(21:03):
gold from the $35 an ounce that it sits at right now and marking it to market
at $3,200
or wherever gold is right now. Quote,
if we can convince Howard Lutnick
or Scott Besant to buy some
and they can figure out how to fund it without new tax or without adding to the debt, then we could potentially acquire more Bitcoin, David Sacks added. In a Tuesday report, k thirty three head of research, Vettel

(21:32):
Lund, highlighted
that the sixty day deadline
for the treasury evaluation of the strategic Bitcoin reserve passed on May
with no information shared yet, at least publicly,
with traders paying particular attention to the potential announcements this week amid the flagship Bitcoin conference, quote, I can't promise anything,

(21:53):
but there is a pathway a pathway to doing that.
The question is just can we get either the treasury department or the commerce department to get excited about it? Because if they do and they can figure out how to fund it,
they actually do have presidential
author authorization
at the ready, end quote. That is David Sacks saying that again. So

(22:21):
I don't know, man.
I don't know. I I they keep saying that they can't, you know, do a tax and they can't add to the debt to buy Bitcoin,
but there are other avenues to be able to purchase that Bitcoin because there are other pools of cash hanging out.
The minute that The United States actually pulls the trigger on that changes the entire landscape yet one more time.

(22:45):
And honestly, I'm not holding my breath, at least not in the short term,
But it's gonna become it's gonna become increasingly difficult for anybody, whether you're a private institution or a public government or whatever,
to lay your hands on more Bitcoin because these private companies are just snapping it up hand over fist.

(23:06):
Now I'm gonna move on
because nobody is talking about this.
I,
you know, I scan Nostr in the morning. I scan, you know, Twitter in the morning and a few other places,
and I hear a lot about the Bitcoin conference. I hear a lot about David Sacks going on. Heard a lot about, you know, the steak and shake COO guy. Heard a lot about, you know, like the this Trump stuff going on. I mean, all the stuff that I brought you this morning has all you know, is all over the place. Then that's one of the reasons why I bring it to you so you can, like, get a better sense of what's going on. But this one

(23:42):
this one, I haven't even seen
in any outlet except on the block.co.
This one is written by Sarah Wynne, and I think it's gonna be very, very interesting.
United States labor department
has reversed course on crypto in four zero one k plans

(24:02):
and accuses Biden administration of placing
their thumb on the scale.
The US Department of Labor has reversed earlier guidance discouraging
retirement managers
from considering cryptocurrency as an investment option in four zero one k plans. Let me read it again because you probably
you were looking at, I don't know, a black cat caught crossing your path and you got freaked out.

(24:27):
This is important.
The Department of Labor,
the United States Department of Labor has reversed their guidance,
which earlier discouraged retirement
managers.
So anybody that was managing retirement accounts for, you know, your HR department,
your university,
the company you work at, United States government, anybody who has anything to do

(24:54):
with the management of four zero one k's at your institution, whether public or private,
they have, up until today,
been discouraged
from allowing cryptocurrency as an investment option.
That changed today
because the US Department of Labor reversed
that guidance.
The agency

(25:14):
tasked with protecting workers and retirees released guidance in 2022
that encouraged managers to exercise extreme care
before adding crypto to their investment strategies. But now
US Secretary Of Labor, Lori Chavez
De Reamer,
said investment decisions should be made by fiduciaries,
not DC Bureaucrats. Quote, the Biden administration's Department of Labor

(25:38):
made a
choice to put their thumb on the scale.
We're rolling back this overreach and making it clear that investment decisions should be made by the fiduciaries
and not DC Bureaucrats,
Chavez Duremer said.
In the Labor Department's twenty twenty two guidance,
the agency raised concerns around the idea that crypto can produce outsized returns

(26:00):
and cautioned that it could cloud investors' judgment
and attract
inexpert
investors. Oh my god. God forbid that you I mean,
the the whole expert or
or expert investors
is a term I just cannot stand. It means that, like, unless somehow or another you went to investment school,

(26:21):
you're just incapable of making any decisions whatsoever
about what investments you wanna make. It's disgusting, honestly. But other agencies
have taken a similar approach to crypto.
In March, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reversed its standards
that require
financial institutions to notify the agency before engaging in crypto related activities.

(26:45):
And later, the Federal Reserve
retracted guidance discouraging banks from participating in crypto.
All the locks are off the doors.
That's what's going on here. All the locks are off the doors.
All the stop signs have been taken down. All the traffic lights are now green.
It
it's just a matter of time. Now think it like here here's what people are gonna think. Oh, well, then if if this is the case, then it's going going to be an immediate

(27:15):
buying frenzy.
No. It's
not. How long did it take Saylor's webinar
for chief financial officers
of
the corporate 500
class in The United States and the rest of the world to start buying Bitcoin
after that webinar. It took two years.
It took two years.

(27:36):
That's how long it took
for the first company
outside of strategy
to start a Bitcoin treasury.
Two years.
We have three major agencies that have completely reversed direction
on their guidance
to whoever it is they are advising
about Bitcoin in retirement accounts,

(27:58):
Bitcoin being handled by banks,
blah blah blah. And yet everybody's going, oh, well, that means by tomorrow, we're all gonna be rich.
Two
years. It's gonna take
two years.
Let's run the numbers.

(28:22):
Futures and commodities, oil doing better today, 1.81%
to the upside,
back up to just below $62
a barrel. Brent, North Sea up one and a half to $65.00 3. Natural gas
down over five and a half points to $3.20
per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline is up 1.12.

(28:42):
We're gonna get ready for the busy summer driving season,
$2.09
a gallon. All of your shiny metal rocks are doing poorly today. Gold down point 12%
to $32.96
and 3 dimes.
Silver is down a half. Platinum is down point one seven. Copper down one and a quarter. Palladium down one and a half. Most of Ag is in the red today.

(29:06):
Biggest winner is rough rice, 1.2%.
Biggest loser is gonna be corn,
1.75%
to the downside.
Live cattle is down a third, lean hogs are up two thirds,
and feeder cattle are down three quarters of a point.
The Dow is down a quarter of a point. S and P is down point one six, but the Nasdaq is in the green but crab walking sideways.

(29:31):
S and P Mini is down point 75%.
Bitcoin having some pressure put on it as well today. We're back now to a hundred and $7,460.
That is a $2,140,000,000,000
market cap. You can only get 32.2
ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,870,932.10

(29:55):
of, and average fees per block are slightly elevated, 0.05
BTC taken in fees on a per block basis.
There are seven blocks carrying 18,000
unconfirmed transactions
waiting to clear at high priority rates of seven.
Satoshis per v byte low priority is gonna get you in at six.
Hash rate is chilling out at 903.

(30:18):
No. No. No. I'm sorry. 900.3
exahashes per second, so do with that what you will.
A brief reminder to donate to The Bitcoin and podcast,
bitcoin and show dot com. That's bitcoinandshow.com.
Sign up. Give me your email. I promise I will not give your email to anyone, and the only emails that I will send you is anything that I actually publish to that website.

(30:45):
From yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and named
Grotcoin
season,
I've got FOMO chronic with a thousand and one that says parenthesis period parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis
parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis parenthesis.
Good lord, FOMO chronic. Why why are you doing this to me? Psyduck with seven zero six.

(31:08):
Psyduck.
Yodel with five 40 says, I have nothing good to say. Sorry.
Turkey with 500 says, nothing.
Thank you, sir, with 500 says, keep on calling BS, brother. Love it. God's death with 237
says, thank you, sir. No thank you.
And Pies with a hundred says, thank you, sir.
You're a gentleman and a scholar. I appreciate that, sir.

(31:31):
That's the weather report.
Welcome to part two of the news that you can use. Telegram
has signed a $300,000,000
deal with Elon Musk's

(31:52):
XAI
to integrate Grok into its messaging app. And TON, the native token for Telegram, is up 16%
because of it, at least, I guess. Now Oliver Knight is writing this one for CoinDesk.
Instant messaging app Telegram,
yes, Telegram,

(32:12):
has signed a deal with Elon Musk's XAI
to integrate the Grok AI service
inside of
Telegram.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed on Twitter
that the two companies
have agreed to a one year partnership that would see Telegram

(32:32):
receive $300,000,000
in cash and equity
from XAI
in addition
to 50%
of any revenue made from XAI subscriptions
sold
via Telegram.
Jesus. This sounds bad.
Together, we win, Durov wrote.

(32:54):
The deal comes as Telegram looks to raise $1,500,000,000
via a bond offering that is being backed by the likes of BlackRock,
Mubadala
Mubadala,
and Citadel.
The proceeds of the raise will then be used to repurchase debt from Telegram's earlier bond issuance of 2021.

(33:17):
How's this not a Ponzi scheme?
You're you're buying you're you're literally selling new shit to pay off old shit.
How's this not upon whatever. Whatever. The messaging giant
does have 1,000,000,000,
that's billion with a b, customers, and reported a $540,000,000
profit on $1,400,000,000

(33:40):
in revenue in 2024.
The TON token, the native token of the TON network
that was developed by Telegram is now up 18.5%
over the past twenty four hours after starting to surge
two
hours before the announcement was made. Oh, jeez. Some insider trading there. The move continued after the announcement rising from $3.28

(34:04):
per ton
and
going to $3.55.
Okay. So that's not all that we have
about this. And I know that I'm not really supposed to
talk about shit coinery, but I I kinda can't
I kinda just
can't stop.

(34:24):
Hold on here. There's I have something. I wanna make sure that I've got it set up.
Okay. Here we go.
So moving over to Cointelegraph.
TON Foundation
hires a former Visa executive to lead the payment strategy.
Ammon Hasquinas has it for Cointelegraph.

(34:48):
The Open Network Foundation,
TON Foundation,
appointed former Visa
executive, Nicola Pelt Plectus
as its new vice president of payments.
Well, Plectus will be responsible for shaping and executing TON's payment infrastructure strategy, the company said, and he is tasked with expanding the network's capabilities,

(35:09):
managing financial partnerships,
and ensuring compliance across jurisdictions
as the foundation
scales services for over 1,000,000,000 Telegram users. Quote,
Joining TON Foundation represents an incredible opportunity
to shape the future of payments on a truly global scale.
He said,

(35:30):
Plecus will lead the push
to build a payments architecture that is both globally
interoperable
and robust enough to handle increasing demand for developers,
enterprises,
and end users as per the announcement. Plecus brings a track record
from his time at Visa where he played a central role in crypto related initiatives

(35:51):
including product development and commercialization.
He helped streamline on ramp performance across multiple markets and developed Visa's
digital currency engagement model for European clients.
He also contributed to numerous fintech
and crypto issuance projects and frequently
spoke on
Visa's behalf

(36:12):
at major industry events.
TON Foundation CEO Max Crown noted that payments are a core pillar of TON's roadmap, quote, with deep industry expertise
and a clear vision for scaling payment infrastructure,
Nikola brings the experience and leadership we need to accelerate TON's
global growth.

(36:33):
Okay.
So we have two things here going on with Telegram.
Telegram is going to integrate Grok and get paid for it.
They're not paying xAI.
XAI
and Elon Musk is paying Telegram
to drop Grok
into Telegram.
They're paying them $300,000,000

(36:55):
and 50%
of any
revenue
made from
subscription sales for x.
Okay.
What does that mean?
Well,
the Trojan horse just got inside of Telegram. Now Telegram has been kind of on the ropes.

(37:17):
I hate it.
And but the thing is is that I don't hate it because it's evil or or that Pavel Durov is some kind of, you know, douchebag.
That nothing
to do with it. I just don't like the interface.
I I mean, I just I can't do it. Right? It just the whole interface doesn't make sense to me, but be that as it may,

(37:38):
it has had some
security issues and people have been saying that it's, you know, Telegram is decentralized.
Well, no. It's not.
Oh well it's uncensorable
yeah
yes it is it's it's it's very it's very not uncensorable
I I've seen people say that they've gotten booted off of Telegram

(37:58):
I've seen people say that their messages disappear
I I've heard all kinds of stories about the fact that Telegram is not
uncensorable,
it very much is censorable.
Right? And now we're going to drop Grok
AI right into it
for $300,000,000.
It's not just about chatbots, dude.

(38:20):
It's
it Musk is gaining
unprecedented
access
to one of the largest encrypted messaging platforms in the world. Hate it as I much, and I can't stand Telegram.
1,000,000,000
people probably aren't wrong.
There's probably a reason that they like it.
I am probably the one that's wrong, but I I it doesn't matter. I'm not gonna use Telegram, but it doesn't make it it doesn't make me right and 1,000,000,000 people wrong.

(38:48):
1,000,000,000
people are on that platform,
and Musk just dropped Grok right into the fucking middle of it. What do you think he's gonna do?
It's going to have Grok's gonna be able to get con contextual
understanding
across a billion chats.
Mass behavioral

(39:10):
data scraping, guys.
Is you're feeding a powerful because grok is is pretty powerful. It's a pretty powerful l l m. It's just going to be trained on, you know, an entire
1,000,000,000
people.
That's
$300,000,000
for that.
Musk is getting away

(39:30):
cheap.
Cheap.
And then on the other side of this entire thing, we've got BlackRock,
Citadel,
and Mubadala
raising
capital
for Telegram
in a bond sale that actually smells more like a Ponzi scheme than anything else. And then Tawn

(39:54):
Ton,
you see how this all kind of all fits together and not in a good way.
If I were you,
if you're considering
the possibility of getting off a Telegram and going somewhere else,
go to Noster.
Just do it. It's not hard. And I'll tell you what will make it really, really easy for you is

(40:20):
in sorry. Excuse me. Nstart.me.
N s t a r t Me.
N start Me. Go to nstart.me.
Very easy to remember. It will walk you through
step by step
getting on to Nostr. It will explain
why you're doing what you're doing and it will give you all the buttons you need to complete the tasks without going anywhere else. You can do it right there on end start dot me.

(40:50):
And then go to following dot space, and you can find entire packages of people that are interested in the shit you're interested in
to follow all at once with one single button. You can, like, 45 members of, I don't know,
Ukrainian Bitcoiners that love Nasr, and they're all in a group, and you just hit one button and you can follow them all immediately.

(41:15):
Now is the best time to get on Nostr.
Right? Get off a Telegram. It's not doing you any good.
Get away from that thing and get on to Nostr with nstart.me.
That's nstart.me.
It'll take you right through every step that you gotta go through. Now

(41:36):
let's get back into
Meta Planet
because they are not done.
They have issued $50,000,000
of new debt
to buy more Bitcoin according to Ezra Rivera
from Cointelegraph.
Japanese investment company, Meta Planet,

(41:56):
is raising $50,000,000
through a private placement
of zero interest bonds
as part of its strategy to increase Bitcoin exposure.
In a May 28 announcement, the company said that it was raising $50,000,000
through bonds,
zero interest bonds,
and the bonds are issued

(42:17):
in 1,250,000
denominations
and carries zero interest.
Investors will not receive regular payments
with any potential profit expected to come from the bond's redemption
value.
Honestly, it sounds like a really
shitty investment.
If I'm the bond holder, if I'm buying a bond and I'm having to pony up 1,250,000,

(42:44):
I get no interest.
I get no regular payments,
and I have no
expectation
of any potential profit to come from the bonds.
Now who who who do you suspect might be buying these bonds? You think it's just, you know,
a whole bunch of retail guys? Well, no. No.

(43:07):
It's not people like me or you. We're we're not expert investors.
So what?
Funds?
Hedge funds, maybe?
Well,
yeah. How many? How many hedge funds would be buying these bonds?
And and why?
Well, because they're gonna, you know, they're gonna this company is gonna be indebted to these guys giving them their debt, you know, basically buying their debt instrumentation

(43:31):
because these guys are gonna hold it hold a lot of Bitcoin.
That that that's the old I mean, that that's why you take this shit with no interest.
That that's why you have no expectation of any kind of profit from the bond itself.
It's what the bond enables you to have exposure to and that's Bitcoin. So you would expect
that, okay, that makes sense. I guess, you know, some hedge funds would definitely get into that game.

(43:54):
No.
Only one.
There can be
only
one, and it's not BlackRock.
It's Evofund
out of the Cayman Islands.
Yes. Evofund,
a Cayman Islands based investment firm,
will be the sole
bondholder.

(44:15):
That means they're buying all $50,000,000
worth of these bonds. There's nobody else that's going to have these bonds. Only Evo Fund out of The Caymans,
do with that what you will,
only those guys
is going to have these bonds. The investment company has been Meta Planet's primary backer for its Bitcoin acquisition

(44:36):
subscribing to multiple rounds of MetaPlanet's
zero interest bonds, providing capital for its Bitcoin buys.
The bonds are unsecured.
They're not secured by anything,
and they're also not guaranteed
with neither a bond administrator
nor collateral.
Jesus. This sounds worse and worse of the more I read. This reflects the high degree of trust between the two companies. It also shows confidence in BTC's long term outlook as Meta Planet continues to increase its holdings.

(45:08):
Well, Meta Planet said that it expects the issuance to have minimal impact on its 2025
financial results,
though it will disclose further developments, you know, if needed.
Meta Planet's push into Bitcoin highlights a growing trend among companies seeking alternatives
to fiat based treasury strategies,
and then they go into a whole bunch of other companies that are doing the same shit.

(45:31):
Right? So
there you go.
Meta Planet,
fifty million
more dollars of zero interest bonds that are going to be bought by the same people that buy all the rest of their debt instrumentation.
And
I'm not exactly pooh poohing it, but we should we should be

(45:53):
not that it's gonna matter, but we should be concerned.
This doesn't feel right. It's starting to feel worse and worse.
And I'm no. I'm not calling for
mass destruction or of anything. I don't think that, you know, Bitcoin is is going to be, you know,
deep six out of any of this.
But I just don't see this as actually being all that healthy.

(46:15):
I see this as a one-sided
play
that nobody knows how else to be anywhere close to creative.
I mean, the only person in this entire class
of companies that have been creative is Michael Saylor
because he started the whole thing.
He was creative with his treasury,

(46:36):
and nobody else has any differentials,
ideas as to how to actually engage with Bitcoin
and leverage their treasury,
but they they don't. They they have no new fresh ideas. It's all, we'll just issue debt.
We'll just issue debt. The the United States government issues debt. The Federal Reserve prints money to buy that debt. It inflates all of our shit away. That's at the governmental scale. Now take all that shit and talk about it from a private company's scale

(47:06):
where they just they issue their own debt,
and we, retail,
somehow or another pay for it.
Either either through the fact that, like, let's say, h and r block and not let's okay. Evofund is a Cayman
Island based investment fund.
They've got clients.
Those clients at one point or another, they're the ones that are footing the ultimate bill

(47:30):
for these zero interest,
no profit guarantee,
debt instrumentation
bonds out of Meta Planet.
They're the ones that actually pony up the cash for it.
So
how is this any different?
I mean, I I know that it's fundamentally, there there is clearly some difference because

(47:51):
the money that is existing
in retail is the money that retail has, and retail themselves
cannot print more of it,
which is definitely unlike the United States government. However, we are still dealing with just debt instrumentation.
Nothing new has happened under the sun. And like I said, the only love them or hate them, the only person that has shown

(48:14):
the least bit of creativity
in this space when it comes to corporate treasuries
is Michael Saylor himself.
I find that rather odd.
Let's move on to something called
CalBolt.
Yes. Cal but like moo. Moo, burgers and burgers and fries. CalBolt

(48:34):
announces their mission to make Bitcoin familiar
to everybody.
I've never heard of CowBolt before
until now, and it's written by Oscar Zarraga,
Ziranga
Perez from Bitcoin Magazine today at the Bitcoin conference in Vegas.
CalBolt,
which is an app that lets you split expense payments and settle in Bitcoin,

(48:59):
will launch their mission,
turn peer to peer payments into a Bitcoin on ramp starting with family and friends.
CalBolt
will let their clients
split costs
and settle instantly using Bitcoin and
USDT,
otherwise known as the stablecoin Tether, with no middlemen,

(49:20):
no bank friction,
and with self custody.
They will try to convert everyday transactions into Bitcoin adoption, quote,
we believe the most powerful on ramp to Bitcoin isn't an exchange.
It's people, said the cofounder of Cal bolt, Daniel Ekstrom.
Quote, that's why we built Cal bolt for friends, not hedge funds.

(49:46):
Anti suit speak, in my opinion, is just as bad as suit speak. Okay.
What CowBolt brings to the table?
Split and settle.
No. I don't know what that means. And if you're confused, it's okay. It means that whoever's writing this is not really on the ball with explanations
because I don't really know
what split

(50:07):
expense
payments are. I mean, I mean, are we splitting lunch? Is that what it means?
I
why don't you just say that? Like, split card payments at your favorite restaurant.
Whatever. Anyway,
it does say keep your keys.
It's fast and trusted.
I'm not sure how that works here. Works across borders.

(50:30):
Okay. Great. The app is already being used for remittances,
group travel, and day to day payments.
It's designed to be like a modern fintech app and will be will be. It's not available yet, but will be available for iOS and Android,
quote, and this is where it gets a little bit more interesting.
Building Airbnb

(50:51):
taught me that when design is simple and gets out of the way, people do amazing
things,
stated the ex creative director at Airbnb
and cofounder
of CowBolt,
Tony Hogvist,
quote, that's the point here too. Not to store Bitcoin in an ETF,

(51:11):
but to use it between people, effortlessly,
among teams,
friends,
families,
every day,
end quote.
So I apologize
for the brevity of this particular announcement.
It's just that the guy that helped and helped build and cofounder of
Airbnb

(51:32):
is building this, and that's why I wanted to direct your attention to it.
I still don't know exactly what they mean by split expense.
I think it's splitting lunch.
I think it's able to combine payments at Office Depot,
you know, from two different people, from two different wallets.

(51:52):
Right?
But other than that,
the real important thing here is that it's coming out of the guy that cofounded Airbnb,
and you can't you can't argue against success.
So the cofounder of Airbnb is a Bitcoiner,
and he wants self custody
and he wants to be able to for friends and family and regular folk to use Bitcoin as actual money.

(52:16):
In my opinion, this is good news.
And let's move on to the last part of the show where I have
come to start talking about your personal security
when it comes to being a Bitcoiner.
Jason Nelson is writing this one for decrypt.
Third arrest
made in high profile kidnapping of Bitcoin investor in New York.

(52:40):
This is again out of decrypt. A third person was arrested in New York on Tuesday as part of a weeks long manhunt
to apprehend
those responsible for the violent kidnapping plot of a Bitcoin investor.
William DuPlessis,
along with John Willets,
has been charged with abducting an unnamed

(53:02):
28 year old Italian businessman,
holding him captive in an upscale Manhattan apartment for two weeks.
The pair allegedly
tortured
tortured
the businessman
with electric shocks
and physical beatings as well as threats with a firearm
in an attempt to obtain access to the victim's Bitcoin holdings.

(53:25):
DuPlessis
is charged with assault in the second degree,
kidnapping in the first degree, unlawful imprisonment first degree, and criminal possession of a firearm
according
to an NYPD spokesperson.
Beatrice Folci,
who police noticed worked as Woolitz's assistant,
was also arrested on Friday and charged with first degree kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment,

(53:50):
but was released after the Manhattan DA
declined to prosecute pending further investigation.
Authorities have not said whether DuPlessis has legal representation
or if the kidnappings is linked to a broader criminal network.
The New York Bitcoin kidnapping case is part of a growing trend
of crypto related violent crimes as criminals

(54:13):
increasingly
target digital asset holders for abduction,
extortion, and assault.
On Tuesday, French police arrested 12 suspects,
12,
in connection with two crypto related kidnappings in Paris earlier this month.
In January,
the Ledger cofounder David Ballon was abducted along with his wife, yada yada yada. After his arrest,

(54:37):
I'm I'm skipping ahead because they just rehash all the rest of the the stuff.
On Saturday,
John Wolitz, thirty three, was arrested in in New York
after the alleged kidnapping victim escaped from a luxury townhouse in Manhattan
where he was held captive for two weeks. And at the time, prosecutors said Walitz claimed another male had participated in the kidnapping.

(55:01):
After his arrest, Walitz was charged with kidnapping assault, unlawful imprisonment, and weapons possession, and was ordered to be held without bail.
Now if he's convicted on all charges in New York, duplies and waltz
could face a minimum of fifteen years to life
in federal prison.
Don't let this be you. Don't kidnap people and don't allow yourself to be kidnapped.

(55:26):
Don't wear Bitcoin swag.
If you're at a conference of any thing even remotely
tangentially
related to Bitcoin, be careful who you're with, who you're talking to, who you let into your hotel room. Do not let a single person into your hotel room.
Don't let five people that you don't know into your hotel room.

(55:47):
Right? That is that is a major that has always been a major
point of people getting into trouble is getting a little hammered,
talking to somebody at the bar, thinks they're okay, and says, hey, you want to go see my kid's picture? I don't whatever it is.
You know, or or you say something about something that that's really interesting and that you've got it on you, but it's in your hotel room and the guy or the gal on the other side says, hey. Hey. I wanna go see it. Let's here. I'll tell you what. We've been drinking for a while. You can trust me. We'll go up to your room and then boom, man. That's when you're fucked. So just

(56:21):
be careful,
especially if you're at conferences.
Don't get inebriated.
Don't don't don't allow yourself to get out of control, and make sure that you're with people that you know.
And if you meet somebody for the first time at a conference
and you don't know that you like you've like, if it's Gigi or, like, you know, you've never met Matt O'Dell or one of the other people in the in the in the crowd, but you know who they are and you know what they look like, that's one thing. But if you're just meeting somebody that you don't know from Adam, you've never read anything that they've written, you've never heard their podcast, you never heard them as a guest on a podcast, they're just there, and you don't know who the fuck they are, then just make an assumption

(57:03):
for your own safety in the back of your mind that this person may not be the best person to be hanging out with. Alright? It's up to you to keep yourself safe.
Do that, and that way I'll be able to 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.

(57:25):
Have a great day.

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