Circle P:

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
It is 09:01AM
Pacific Daylight Time. It is the September
2025,
and this is episode eleven
sixty three
of Bitcoin and a new clarity act draft is on the table. We'll we'll get to that in a whole lot more
here at the place where I bring you the news that you could use about Bitcoin and more.

(00:25):
Nasdaq,
they're looking for a rule change here. Looking for a rule change. Not gonna be pretty.
Don't worry. It's about something that's dumb anyway, but still not gonna be pretty.
Yes.
Strategy did buy more Bitcoin.
And then we've got a piece out of,
a outfit called Atlas twenty one

(00:48):
that talks about the possibility that that treasury companies
might be in trouble. I I don't know if they're talking about all treasury companies or just some of the treasury companies, but
we'll we'll get to it. And ordinals
ordinals is back in the news
and not not in the best way possible, but honestly, I I I think it's just a I think it's gonna end up being a paper tiger.

(01:14):
It it it locks in with this whole knots versus core fight that's going on,
which
I'm getting getting real bored with this. I'm getting really, really bored with this.
We've got what else is here oh yeah yeah solo mining is in the news
and the Bitcoin mining difficulty

(01:35):
miners just don't seem to give shit one about what the price is
Let's get into it. From Bitcoin Magazine,
Frank Korva,
our good buddy, starts us off with
new clarity act draft
could shield Bitcoin and crypto developers
from past
liability.

(01:56):
Not just liability in the present and in the future, but now past liability.
Let's get into it. On Friday,
the US Senate Banking Committee
released its latest draft of the Clarity Act, in which it proposes an amendment
to 18 US code nineteen sixty a

(02:17):
stipulates that only crypto developers or providers that quote knowingly
exercise control over currency, funds, or other value
that substitutes for currency
be treated as money transmitting
businesses.
What's more,
this amendment would not only protect Bitcoin and crypto developers in the wake of a bill with this language including

(02:41):
included in its passing,
but it would also protect said developers
retroactively.
A
little bit of a grandfather clause there.
In section five zero one
of section title five of the draft entitled Protecting Software Developers and Software Innovation,
it states that,

(03:02):
quote, this section
and the amendments
made by this section
shall apply to conduct
occurring before,
on, or after the date of enactment
of this act.
If this language
is included in a version of the bill that is enacted into law,

(03:22):
Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm,
who was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business last month, stands to benefit.
Storm has alluded to the notion that he plans to appeal the guilty verdict
as per reporting by Eleanor Tarrant.
If clarity becomes
law and the language regarding retroactive

(03:43):
developer protection is included in the draft of the bill that passes,
Storm's legal team should theoretically have no issue winning at the appellate level.
Unfortunately,
if Clarity passes with the retroactive
protections included, this will not help the samurai wallet developers
who accepted a plea deal
for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in July.

(04:07):
Hold on. Okay.
Frank doesn't really
talk about why the difference is. So here here's here's the difference. Why would it help Roman Storm
but not samurai wallet developers?
Roman Storm was found guilty.
The samurai wallet developers
took a plea.

(04:30):
They're not going to be included
in this retroactive
language because they made a deal.
Roman Storm
made no deal.
He was found guilty. So now
there's no question that if this act were to pass,
Roman Storm would most likely get out. I don't see if this act with retroactive language passes, I don't see any way that they would be able to keep Roman Storm behind bars.

(04:59):
However, the same is not going to be able
to extend itself to the samurai wallet developers sadly
because they took a plea deal.
I don't know man. This is like it's just the whole it's just a big mess.
Okay, so moving on.
This most recent draft of clarity also stipulates that developers

(05:20):
or providers of non controlling or non custodial crypto technology shall not be treated as money transmitting businesses
under 31
US Code fifty three thirty.
This would also be applied retroactively.
Non controlling developers are defined as those who create or work on distributed ledger services that in the regular course of operations

(05:42):
does not have the legal right of the unilateral and independent ability to control,
initiate upon demand,
or effectuate transactions involving digital assets to which users are entitled
without the approval, consent, or direction of any other third party.
The definition applies to developers of crypto services,
software, or hardware that helps customers facilitate the self custody

(06:06):
and safekeeping of digital assets.
Congress
is back in session as of 09/02/2025,
and the United States Senate Banking Committee plans to continue
to prioritize the Clarity Act after accepting input on the bill
from many members of the crypto industry. Quote, this legislative draft

(06:28):
reflects feedback from hundreds of stakeholders on a wide range of questions as part of the request for information
on the July discussion draft, a spokesperson from the senate banking committee told Bitcoin magazine,
quote, chairman Scott, senator Lummis, and their colleagues
will continue working in a bipartisan

(06:48):
way
to deliver a final product that will protect investors, foster innovation, and keep the future of digital finance
anchored in America.
No hearings regarding the bill are currently on the senate banking committee's calendar.
Why, why why not?
I you better get it on the calendar pretty quick before their calendar fills up, but, you know, whatever. It's good that they're going to include retroactive language in the bill. Will it pass? Who the hell knows? That's that's not for me to conjecture on. But at least somebody is thinking, you know, proactively here

(07:25):
because this is
I mean, if if this stands,
there is all manner of precedent that could start seeping into other aspects of non monetary
software development
liabilities, and you don't want that. You really don't want that. And then the question becomes,

(07:46):
well,
was any code developed with ChatGPT
or Claude
or any number of other AI companies,
are they liable?
I mean, do would they would they be found to be, like, have some kind of partial liability in the deployment of code
that
somehow or another either

(08:08):
acted as a money transmitting business
or under precedent,
like the Roman storm thing and the, and the the samurai wallet developer thing,
under precedent
seep into other industries where liability and partial liabilities could become a factor.
See, that
that has yet to be discovered because it's already it's already the case that

(08:31):
Chatt GPT has been in well, kind of indicted
at this point. There's a whole there's at least a at least one lawsuit from a family
because a 16 year old boy decided to off himself and it was very clear that ChatGPT
and the chat logs that were still on his computer,
ChatGPT was telling him that he should go kill himself.

(08:52):
And now those parents are suing,
was it OpenAI or whatever Sam Bankman or not Sam Altman fried
Sam Altman guy.
His company, I think it's OpenAI.
They're being sued because of it.
I mean and and if it's found that they do have liability, even though it's a civil suit and not a criminal case, at least as far as I can tell because the parents are suing and not the district attorney,

(09:22):
You'd find some you we might find some serious,
serious,
interesting situations arise
in
liability
and artificial intelligence when it comes to drafting code.
Who knows? That's pure conjecture on my part. We've got other fish to fry, and his name is Nasdaq.

(09:42):
The Nasdaq has asked the SEC for a rule change
to trade tokenized
stocks.
Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen. Your twenty four hour stock market is right over the horizon. You can see the sail masts
coming up over the ocean, and Helen Parts from Cointelegraph

(10:03):
is gonna tell us all about it.
NASDAQ,
the world's second largest stock exchange by market capitalization,
is seeking regulatory approval from The US securities regulator to list
tokenized
stocks.
Nasdaq filed a request Monday with the
US Securities and Exchange Commission asking for a rule change that would allow the company to list said prioritized

(10:27):
or
tokenized
stocks.
The exchange operator specifically asked to amend certain rules, including the definition
of a security,
to trade tokenized stocks under the same execution and documentation rules as traditional securities,
provided the tokenized versions are deemed equivalent.

(10:48):
According to a report by Bloomberg, Nasdaq's request for the SEC would go beyond a technical rule change as it relates
to the very foundations of how stocks are issued and settled.
One of the changes sought by Nasdaq is that tokenized assets should be clearly labeled to ensure that all participants, including those responsible for clearing and settlement, like the depository trust company,

(11:12):
properly process these trades. Quote,
a security may be traded in the Nasdaq market center in either traditional format, like a digital representation of ownership and rights, but without utilizing distributed ledger or blockchain technology,
or in tokenized form, a digital representation of ownership and rights which does utilize blockchain technology, the company stated in the filing.

(11:38):
Additionally,
NASDAQ
also said that tokenized assets would have the same priority in which the exchange executes that order as it does with traditional stocks and if approved.
US regulated exchanges,
including NASDAQ,
would be authorized to list tokenized shares on their platforms which could boost liquidity

(11:58):
for blockchain based versions of traditional securities.
It's gonna be like Chevron
or Royal Dutch Shell on the blockchain.
Yay.
In the filing,
Nasdaq emphasized the importance of putting tokenized securities under the purview of established securities markets players,

(12:19):
opposing it to listing on silo trading venues where investors would have no consolidated
sense of best market wide prices.
Quote, although tokenization
technology presents
novel capabilities by which to record evidence of securities ownership and transactions,
the trading of tokenized securities can, and it must occur largely as congress prescribed

(12:43):
when it enacted
the subsequently
amended
the act,
the company said,
adding, that is a terrible sentence, by the way, and it doesn't make sense, but I've
I can't read it any other way. That's literally what they said.
Anyway,
quote, such trading must occur in regulated markets, namely

(13:05):
national securities exchanges, alternative trading systems, and at FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority,
regulated broker dealers, end quote.
Nasdaq also advocated for tokenized securities to be traded within the context
of an interconnected
national market system.
Oh, interconnected

(13:26):
national market system. In addition
to pursuing or pushing regulators to bring tokenization
under the purview of established market players,
Nasdaq expressed concerns about the growing number of offerings providing exposure
to United States tokenized stocks in Europe.
Quote, a few trading platforms are purporting

(13:48):
to offer investors access to tokenized US equities, but they are not providing investors with actual shares in US companies.
Wow.
They added Nasdaq added, quote, instead,
they are providing investors
with digitally tradable rights
to traditional digital shares

(14:10):
that the platform
themselves
purchase and hold in their own accounts. These digital rights do not comprise the full extent of the rights to which owners of traditional digital shares are entitled,
including voting rights.
So
it's an IOU on a share
of stock.

(14:30):
This is ridiculous. Nasdaq's proposal came amid a growing trend for real world assets globally
with many platforms choosing to list
tokenized versions of US investment products like Tesla shares or exchange traded funds for users in jurisdictions like Europe.
Quote, the reality is
that users in The United States already have already

(14:53):
have relatively seamless access to traditional equities like stocks and ETFs
through well established brokerage platforms.
Alchemy pays Alona
Syslik
told CoinTelegraph
in June while commenting on the platform's partnership with back end's equity tokenization
platform called XStox.

(15:15):
Quote, our mission with this product
is to bridge the gap for users outside The US, especially in regions where direct access to such assets
has traditionally been limited
or unavailable,
the executive said.
So it's stocks on the blockchain, y'all. We had been you know, we went through a whole time of bananas on the blockchain, but

(15:36):
here's the thing. Stocks on the blockchain actually make a hell of a lot more sense than bananas or strawberries on the blockchain.
It's just not possible
to put the proof of anything about physical goods
like bananas. Like, they if you don't know, there was bananas on the blockchain was kind of a meme about five years ago. And it was around the time that it was it was blockchain,

(16:02):
not Bitcoin. You heard suits all over the world talking about how they were gonna tokenize everything.
And one of the one of the more
idiotic
manifestations of this idea was bananas on the blockchain. There was, like, a company, and I I don't
it may have actually been Chiquita. I'm not I'm not exactly sure if it wasn't, but it was some banana company who was say going to say or that was saying that they were going to put

(16:28):
the proof of origin
of where the bananas were picked
on the blockchain. And not only that,
when they were boxed,
when they were shipped,
when they arrived,
when they were distributed,
all kinds of other information about a banana crop were going to go on the blockchain. The problem is is that

(16:49):
you're simply trusting somebody to enter in
the correct information into, for lack of a better term, a transaction
that is coded or, I guess, hashed or something like that
to the particular product, like a a lot number, say, of of these Chiquita bananas
that came from, I don't know, Guatemala or something like that.

(17:12):
It's impossible.
Gold, same way. Silver, same way. Papayas,
same way. Celery, nope. Yeah. None of this. You're
you can't digitize
this mass, this physical
mass that you can hold in your hands that that has weight. You cannot digitize that and put it on the blockchain.

(17:33):
However, with stocks, that becomes very much different.
That you can do.
You very much can do that. And it is coming,
and we are looking square in the face what will eventually become
twenty four hour, seven day a week
markets
on everything,

(17:54):
on all stocks, on all equities, on all derivatives, everything, everything, everything, everything will be traded
twenty four seven. And if you think people were destroying their health as being a derivatives trader now,
oh, Nelly, you ain't seen nothing yet.
And it will probably be the guys trading strategy stock

(18:14):
because strategy just bought another $217,000,000
more of Bitcoin
after the S and P five hundred
gave him the heave ho.
Yep. S and P five hundred said no
to strategy being listed
on
that. Oh, god. You know, everybody was gonna go, oh, yeah, man. They're gonna get listed. They're gonna get listed.

(18:36):
Nobody really knew if they were gonna get listed or not. I kinda thought they they would. I mean, they had all the they had all the chops, but I I think where Mike might have messed up
is that very last decision to go ahead and change that rule
that they weren't going to sell any more common stock
unless their m nav to Bitcoin
was 2.5

(18:58):
or above.
And then they came out like last week or the week before and said, you know what? We're we're just going to change that so that we can sell, you know, some more we're gonna print some more common stock, and we're gonna dilute our existing shareholders, and we're gonna buy more Bitcoin with it. I I actually think that that the s and p S and P probably looked at that and said, no.

(19:18):
We can't just have our the companies that are listed on our platform, we just can't have them change in, you know, internal rules that they set for themselves just a couple of months prior. Now I don't know if that's why, if or if that was taken into consideration
at all.
But if it had been me that was looking at like as an evaluator or somebody that was asking my opinion, I would be like, no, man, that's too unstable.

(19:44):
I,
I try not to wade into the whole Michael Saylor, you know, strategy
argument and whether or not he's a grifter or he works for the CIA. I don't care.
What I do care about is what I see. And when I see somebody who is, like, at the top of a company make a rule and then two to three months later break that rule,

(20:06):
I I don't look at that as something stable. But Vismaya v is writing this one for decrypt. Let's see what she has to say.
Michael Saylor's Strategy Incorporated announced on Monday
that it had acquired 1,955
Bitcoin for $217,400,000
at an average price of 111,196

(20:26):
per coin
days, just days after being passed over for s and p 500 inclusion.
The Virginia based company formerly known as MicroStrategy now holds
638,460
Bitcoin
worth approximately 71,500,000,000.0
at current prices maintaining its spot as the world's largest

(20:48):
public corporate Bitcoin holder.
The purchase came just days after strategy was snubbed, I tell you, snubbed
from the S and P 500 index despite strong results in the second quarter while Robinhood
took
that spot. Oh, I bet that's gonna cause some bad blood. With the stock jumping 7%

(21:09):
as strategy fell nearly 3%
in after hours trading on Friday.
QCP Capital noted in its latest report that Bitcoin's ability to maintain levels above a 110,000
despite strategy's
exclusion
from the S and P 500
demonstrates
resilience.
That's just

(21:30):
that's a really that's a really bad comparison,
but I I won't get into it. Bitcoin is trading at around a 112,000
gaining
point 9% in the past twenty four hours. Strategy's latest purchase has delivered a BTC yield
of 25.8%
year to date for 2025
for shareholders
according to a form eight k

(21:53):
filing. And the company funded Monday's purchase
through its at the market offering
programs
selling 591,606
common shares
for 205,000,000
in net proceeds,
as well as
preferred stock sales totaling

(22:14):
a measly 16,900,000.0
during the September
'2 through September 7 period. Gonna pause.
They sold 591,000
common
shares, which means that all the people that already owned those common shares
just got diluted

(22:34):
collectively
to the tune of $200,500,000.
And who knows if there's a multiple on that when you actually go and and do, you know, internal company analytics.
I'm just gonna say they all got dilute. They got robbed by 200
$200,500,000
collectively, the shareholders,
because of the rule change.

(22:55):
And I'm not talking about a Nasdaq rule change here. I'm talking about strategy's own internal rule
saying that they would not sell common shares unless the MNAV
on their Bitcoin
was at 2.5
or above.
And then just months later, like I just said, Saylor said, you know what? I changed my mind. And what did they do? They immediately diluted their shareholders by over $200,000,000

(23:20):
in value.
I don't think this is a good practice.
I do not think that Michael Saylor is making any friends
among his common stock shareholders.
Also to note,
he sold $200,000,000
worth of common shares
and only 16,900,000.0

(23:41):
of these preferred stock like Stride, Strike, Strife, and that other fourth one. I can't remember what it is. Doesn't matter.
It the 200,000,000
of common share sale dwarfs
the preferred stock sale.
We should keep we need to keep an eye on that. Continuing on the move
follows similar acquisitions

(24:03):
by other major corporate Bitcoin holders with Japan's Meta Planet announcing on Monday,
that would be today,
that it purchased a 136
Bitcoin for 15,200,000.0,
bringing its own total holdings to 20,136
Bitcoin.
And here's my favorite part of the story.
Meanwhile,

(24:23):
El Salvador marked the fourth anniversary of its now defunct Bitcoin legal tender law
by purchasing
21
Bitcoin
on Sunday,
continuing its daily Bitcoin accumulation
strategy. Quote, Bitcoin treasury companies have now accumulated over a million BTC,
and as they continue to buy and grow, it will provide a very strong buying base for the asset,

(24:46):
Pranav
Agarwal. I can't pronounce the name. Independent director of JetKing Infotrain
India,
the country's first listed Bitcoin treasury company previously told Decrypt.
Strategy stock closed today
at wait. Closed today? No. No. No. That's must be
must be this must have been a story done on Friday. Anyway, closed, I guess, on Friday at the end of the market at $335.87,

(25:13):
which was up 2.53%.
Let's get back to this El Salvador bid.
How come we still, at this point, do not know
what the hell's going on with El Salvador?
Are they
there's there's several questions here. One,
are they really buying the Bitcoin?
I I don't know. I mean, all all evidence seems to point that way that they are actually doing it, but transparency

(25:40):
is still
not as transparent as it needs to be.
Two,
I thought the the IMF
told the world that El Salvador had stopped buying Bitcoin
not once, not twice, but on many, many, many occasions.
Yet, we have no clarity
about that either.

(26:00):
El Salvador
themselves
has not said a thing
at all about the IMF
telling the world that El Salvador has stopped buying Bitcoin.
They do tongue in cheek, like, they jab a little bit.
They make innuendo a little bit, but they don't have a strong statement as to

(26:21):
the like, I just want Boo Kelly to come out and make this statement
or or something like this.
We understand that the IMF is telling the world that El Salvador is no longer purchasing Bitcoin.
I can tell you with all my heart that that is
insanely untrue.
We are indeed buying Bitcoin. This is how much we're buying.

(26:42):
And the reason that
the reason that we think the IMF is telling you this is, I don't know, x y z. But we don't get these statements.
This entire relationship between Bitcoin, El Salvador, and the IMF is so murky
as to have me going,
until somebody makes a statement,

(27:03):
I don't know what to think about this.
I do know that I probably wanna do it with if I am gonna think about it, I'm gonna do it with a glass of wine from Peony Lane Vineyards.
Circle p is open for business. The circle p is where I bring plebs with goods and services
to other plebs just like you who might want to buy said goods and services with Bitcoin.

(27:23):
And you can buy your wine from Peony Lane Vineyards
with Bitcoin. Just go to peonylanewine.com.
That's peonylanewine.com,
pe0nylanewine.com.
And you can buy Bitcoin boxes. You can buy, like, the c box, which has four Malbecs, four Cabernet Sauvignons, and four Estate Pinot Noirs. Now chef Tommy on Noster

(27:51):
gave one of the most incredible reviews of that Estate Pinot Noir I've ever seen.
And
I I have a tendency to trust chefs when it comes to taste. Even though they're not tasting food, they're tasting wine, a chef knows. You're gonna you're gonna pair wine with food. And if chef Tommy is saying these things about Peony Lane's,

(28:13):
estate Pinot Noir,
you could probably take that to the bank. So go ahead. Go to peonylanewine.com.
Use the code Bitcoin. And in the coupon code box, you won't get a discount, but it will allow Ben Jessamine,
the purveyor of these fine wines, to understand that I was able to make him a sale. And it will be up to Ben
as to whether or not he wants to engage in value for value and cut me in on some of that sweet sweet Satoshi on those sales. Because, again, you you can buy it with Bitcoin. If you're not buy if you're not selling your goods and services in Bitcoin, you ain't in the circle p.

(28:49):
Now
Bitcoin treasury companies are in trouble.
NYDIG
forecasts
market turbulence, and this is out of atlas21.com.
According to an analysis by the New York Digital Investment Group, or NYDIG,
the Bitcoin Treasury Company sector
could face a particularly

(29:11):
turbulent
period in the coming months.
Greg Cipollaro,
NIDIG's global head of research, highlighted how the gap between the stock prices
and the net asset value, or the NAV, of major Bitcoin accumulating companies such as Meta Planet and Strategy continues to narrow

(29:31):
despite
the asset reaching new all time highs.
Cipollaro
noted that the causes for this compression
are multiple.
Investor anxiety
over upcoming
share unlocks that will increase market supply,
you can read that as dilution,
changes in corporate objectives by management teams, you can read that as Michael Saylor changing the rules that he set for himself not more than a quarter ago,

(29:58):
changes in corporate objectives by management teams, tangible increases in share issuance,
investor profit taking, and limited differentiation
across treasury strategies.
Read that one again.
There is limited differentiation
across treasury strategies.
Everybody is just doing what Michael Saylor's doing. There's no real

(30:21):
differentiation.
There's no everybody's just saying, we'll we'll we'll sell share we'll we'll take our cash, we'll buy Bitcoin. Then we'll say, okay. Now we've got this Bitcoin on our balance sheet. We're gonna make, we're gonna make up a new debt instrument, and we're gonna call it strike. And we're gonna sell that as a preferred stock with a coupon attached or something that makes it seem like, you know, really nice and nice and shiny, and the people will buy that and will buy more Bitcoin. And then now you've got a cycle.

(30:47):
Right?
The only only company that I know of, and I can't so it's a Bitcoin mining company. I talked about it either last week or at the end of the week before,
is a mining company that is able to mine Bitcoin
and use that Bitcoin as
essentially already on their balance sheet and then

(31:07):
actually
generate these
debt instruments
so that they can use that cash as they sell it to buy more Bitcoin. So they would have two inflows of Bitcoin. One from actual production of Bitcoin and two
from the, you know, taking Michael Saylor's playbook. That
is different than what Just Strategy or Meta Planet or twenty one or any of these other guys are doing.

(31:33):
So this market differentiator,
that's that's gonna come up because people want excitement in their lives, and they don't wanna do what they could do with 15 other different companies. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
According
to NYDIG's global head of research, a bumpy ride may be ahead for corporate treasuries
as many are awaiting managers or financing

(31:53):
deals or sorry, not managers, awaiting mergers
or financing deals to go public, which could trigger a substantial wave of sales from existing shareholders.
The expert emphasized
that many companies in the sector, including KindlyMD
and twenty one Capital,
are trading at prices equal to or below their recent fundraising values.

(32:14):
For Cipollaro, a drop in stock prices could accelerate sales once the shares become freely tradable.
When the shares of a treasury company trade below their NAV,
the most direct course of action would be a share buyback, Cipollaro said, a strategy aimed at boosting stock prices by reducing supply.

(32:35):
Corporate Bitcoin treasuries have become the latest Wall Street trend. Yeah. It's a freaking fad at this point, raising billions of dollars over the past year.
The market has witnessed exponential growth in these companies, which have attracted significant capital by betting on Bitcoin's price growth as a corporate store of value.
Holdings of Bitcoin accumulating companies peaked this year at around

(32:57):
84
no. 80 840,000
Bitcoin, and strategy holds 76%
of that or 635
636,505
Bitcoin,
while the rest is distributed amongst 32
other companies.
So we have 33
companies. And if I remember right, 33 is a magic number.

(33:19):
So there you go. Now this get I wanna get back to, to this.
A substantial
wave of sales if some certain mergers or financing goes through. Who knows?
One and I what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna restate what I think is gonna happen. I I think strategy will be fine. I don't know that for sure, though.

(33:42):
If any I'm saying that from the standpoint of if anybody's got the best shot of survivability
of something really bad happening, it's probably strategy, but that doesn't make it so.
What I'm more concerned about is, like, about
20 there's about 25
of the 33
Bitcoin treasury companies

(34:02):
that,
honestly, I I don't think they're really interested. I think this is the this is a hail Mary
to save a dying company. Actually, in this case, like, 25 dying companies.
That shit could be enough to really suck, but
we don't know. It it was just pure conjecture at this point,
but what isn't is real numbers, and we're gonna run them right now.

(34:36):
West Texas Intermediate Oil is up 70 no. I'm sorry. Point 73%
to sixty two thirty one. Brent Norsey up point eight four to six six zero five. Natural gas up one and a half percent
back above 3 to $3.00 9
per thousand cubic feet. Gasoline is down almost a half to,
dollar and 95¢
a gallon. Murbaughn Crude, everybody's favorite. Crude oil,

(34:59):
light and sweet as it is, 1.37
to the upside,
$69.01.
Gold and all of its brethren are all in the green today.
$3,681
and 9 dimes after a point 7% increase for gold. Silver is up almost a full point.
Platinum is up a quarter. Copper is up almost a half. Palladium is up two and one

(35:23):
third.
Most of ag is in the green today too. The biggest loser is is chocolate, 3% to the downside. Biggest winner is coffee, which is 3% to the upside.
Live cattle is up a third. Lean hogs up point 17%.
Feeder cattle up point eight three.
Meanwhile, the Dow is in the red, but only slightly. It's basically moving sideways, 20 points to the downside.

(35:48):
S and P is up point 2%, Nasdaq is up point six, and the S and P Mini is down a third of a point. And Bitcoin is chilling out at a $112,340
a coin. That's a $2,240,000,000,000
market cap.
You can only purchase 30.8
ounces of shiny metal rocks with your one Bitcoin of which there are 19,917,785

(36:13):
and 1 half of.
Average fees per block are super low right now.
We had basically nothing in mempools around the world all weekend long. Now it's kinda filled up, but 0.02
BTC taken in fees
on a per block basis. There are 30 blocks,
carrying 80,000 unconfirmed transactions

(36:33):
around the world waiting to clear at high priority rates of 2 Satoshis per vByte.
You can get locked in at low priority for one.
980
exahashes,
so we are still way, way up there
as far as security for the Bitcoin network.
Now from,
let's see. Let's see. Okay. I've got a I got a couple of boosts here from people that are supporting the Bitcoin and podcast.

(37:00):
Paul Cernine 500 says fascinating episode. Keep up the good work. And that was from Cathedral
four.
I named it Life Raft. If you're not following the Cathedral series and you wanna know more about things like silvopasture
and like an ag an agricultural design science and stuff like that,
go check out the Cathedral
series. It's on my,

(37:22):
website bitcoinandshow.com.
That's bitcoinandshow.com.
Up on the top, you'll see a tab called
cathedral. You just hit that one and
get it going on.
Wartime with a 133 says, get deep down inside my text files, baby.
Seventeen seventy six with seventeen seventy six SAT says, fun episode, and this is from Black Hole Sun.

(37:46):
That was Friday's episode of Bitcoin and made me laugh out loud a couple of times on my way back from a distant worksite.
Sun's letter was hilarious.
And the ECB story gave me a real pimpy in my.
Have a good weekend, Dave. Yeah. I did, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. Evan from Black Hole Sun with one thousand eight hundred and eleven sets says another potential item for the weather report.

(38:10):
Knots nodes currently at 18.11%
as of this recording.
Don't have to take a side. Just reporting the facts. Appreciate the daily news.
Pies with one twenty one says thank you, sir. No thank you. Bitcoin Sandy, 5,000
sats. And that was from Black Hole Sun as well.
Bitcoin Sandy says always a great listen.

(38:31):
Jubjub with a thousand from Black Hole Sun says, tell your cat I said
freaking cat.
That seems to be it from the from the, boost.
Getting back to what Evan said about, knots nodes currently at 18.11%,
and he's right. You don't have to take a side.

(38:54):
What in fact,
what I'm doing after this episode is I'm going to get into one of, you know, a couple of my favorite Nostra clients,
and I'm now going to mute the words core
and knots
because I'm done.
I and, again, don't take it out on Evan. He's right. I mean, he's he's reporting he's just reporting the numbers. 18.11%

(39:15):
is I mean, you're talking about a fifth of the nodes almost being not nodes versus core nodes.
I'm I'm tired of the discussion.
I'm tired of the fight.
You know, I I went to Twitter this morning and all it was with was the was the
Coronados
and the Nazis
talking over each other and slandering each other and saying really vile shit to each other, and I'm just done. I went through this crap in 2017.

(39:43):
Somebody asked me, hey, is this
is this as bad as the fork wars
from 2017?
This this whole filter war thing? No. It's not.
It has the potential to get really bad, but
I just it's it's nothing.
This is nothing like the fork wars of twenty seventeen. So at least we got that going for us.

(40:04):
That's the weather report.
Welcome to part two, the news that you could use and whoop dee doo
as if we didn't just get finished talking about me mutant core

(40:25):
and not because of this ridiculous
filter war thing going on.
We've got this one, and this is this is just a special kind of graft, man.
This is a special kind of stupid.
It's nefarious.
I I think it's something completely different than what the headline says. I I I I'll get into that.

(40:48):
But Braden Lindria brings us this raft of crap from Cointelegraph.
Ordinals developer
floats
forking Bitcoin
core
amid censorship
concerns.
Oh, really?
A Bitcoin ordinals developer has threatened
to fund the development, oh my god, of an open source fork of Bitcoin core

(41:12):
if core developers attempt
to censor ordinals,
runes, and other non financial
transactions
on the network.
I'm gonna pause right now to just go ahead and say, do it.
Do it.
Fork core.
We haven't had a good fork in a long time. And if you're gonna, you know, if you want a fork, fork your mother. That's

(41:38):
yeah.
This is ridiculous. The open letter on x from Leonidas,
host of the ordinal show, on Saturday
comes amid a war, a war, a hot war between members of the Bitcoin community as to whether Bitcoin node validators
should prioritize
peer to peer financial transactions

(41:58):
and censor
or at least ignore
large data transactions
such as pictures, videos, or documents
which critics claim to be spam.
Leonidas
or Leonidas
warned
of a dangerous precedent
and said that any tightening of policy rules or censorship of ordinals and ruins transactions would trigger

(42:21):
decisive action. Oh
oh oh oh my god. Decisive action. I I I I I I
love this. This is great. Quote, if necessary,
the dog army, d o g, I don't exact I guess that's like a digital ordinals
god. I whatever. The dog army

(42:42):
will fund the development
and maintenance of an open source fork of Bitcoin core that strips out nearly all policy rules
and that thousands of people will run to make it abundantly clear
that Bitcoin is and must always remain censorship
resistant.
He got his comments

(43:02):
followed remarks from Blockstream CEO, Adam Back, who is one of many Bitcoiners who believe these transactions are spam
and should have, quote, no place in the time chain, end quote.
Bitcoin knots,
an alternative to Bitcoin Core, has been growing in popularity
over the past year. It went from 70 or 67 nodes in March

(43:25):
2024
to over 4,380
today,
representing more than 18% of the network.
The rise has come ahead of Bitcoin Core's version three release scheduled for October 30,
which
will remove
the 80 byte limit on the opportune function

(43:45):
allowing for significantly
more
media
fill.
What? Filled filed? Wait. This is a weird sentence. Allowing for significantly more media filed
to be stored on chain.
The letter from Leonidas came from fears that they may overturn the update.

(44:06):
Those
those siding with Adam Back include
Ocean Mining creator, Luke Dash Junior, and Satoshi Action Fund CEO, Dennis Porter.
Leonidas argue that the Ordinals and Rune's ecosystem have contributed over $500,000,000
in transaction fees
to strengthen Bitcoin's security,
something which has become an increasing concern as the Bitcoin mining block subsidy continues to have every four or so years.

(44:32):
He added that he's spoken with Bitcoin miners representing over 50% of Bitcoin's hash rate and said that they would continue to accept any transaction provided the fees are competitive.
Relying on fees from ordinals transactions has proven to be tough, however, with activity showing clear seasonality.
On on August
31,

(44:53):
Bitcoin miners made just $3,060
from ordinals,
a tiny fraction of the daily record $9,990,000
that it raked in on 12/16/2023
according to Dune Analytics.
Even in 2025,
the strongest daily total hasn't even topped 1,000,000

(45:14):
suggesting ordinals aren't taking up as much block space as they used to. Yeah. Because essentially, ordinals are dead. And this
article is now over, but
I'm not done talking about it because this is all bullshit.
First of all, there is no credible evidence that Bitcoin Core
is thinking about

(45:34):
reneging on their promise to remove
that opportune,
size limit.
I have heard nothing
nothing out of Core or people arguing for Core
that they have any intention to say, wow, we're really scared of this knots thing.
Maybe we should rethink our stance on this opportune issue

(45:56):
and take it back down to 80
so that we filter out what we considered what Adam Back would consider to be spam.
There is no
credible
evidence that that is actually occurring. So, therefore,
my theory is
that this particular Leonidas guy
is using the rift

(46:18):
and is fear mongering.
He's just adding fuel to the fire.
I don't think that he has any intention of actually funding
a fork of Bitcoin Core. I think that his statement is 100%
b s.
I don't think he's serious.
I think he's trying to put
even more material

(46:40):
into the rift
that has grown
between certain camps of Bitcoin
developers
and to try to wedge that even further apart.
You see what I'm what I'm getting at is I I don't think he actually cares.
Ordinals and runes are spam.
Do they belong on the blockchain?

(47:01):
No. Not they don't. But because Bitcoin
because the Bitcoin protocol
allows it,
and by the way,
we've had ordinals
in some way, shape, form, or fashion
on Bitcoin
well before Taproot
and Taproot assets
and ordinals
and runes.

(47:21):
We we had rare Pepes
back in what was it? 02/2012,
2000 and maybe even well, maybe, like, I know that they were alive at least in 2015
because here in a couple of days, I will be celebrating my tenth year
down this rabbit hole. I've been in Bitcoin for ten years now come September 11. I know it's a weird date to start. That was actually my first Bitcoin purchase was on the anniversary

(47:47):
of of when they those idiots decided to do whatever they did in New York City. I'm just I but what I'm getting at here is that do does the protocol allow it?
If the protocol allows it, then
the the protocol allows it. I I don't have anything to say about it other than an opinion.
It is my opinion that ordinals are b s. It is my opinion

(48:09):
that runes kinda suck. It is my opinion that if you buy these things, you're wasting your money,
which is
kinda coming up next, in fact.
You're you're wasting your money.
Buying a pitcher
just because it's secured on the blockchain
is the same thing as saying, I know this banana came from Guatemala because

(48:32):
they put the banana on the blockchain. It it's all stupid.
I can right click and save
any NFT I want. I can right click and save any Ethereum rock that I want. I can right click and save
anything. If it if it renders on my screen, I can right click and save it, or I can take a screenshot of it. This

(48:54):
entire idea
is
a colossal
waste of time,
but they're allowed on the blockchain. They're allowed in the Bitcoin protocol.
I got nothing but opinion,
which seems to be what it nobody else has anything but opinion,
and it's causing problems. I'm I'm that's why I'm muting this whole thing. I'm done with it. I'm

(49:18):
Solana has its
own problems.
And this isn't gonna be an article. I just I caught this over on x or Twitter or what dead bird or whatever you wanna call it over the weekend and posted it to Noster immediately.
And it's from, I don't know, Camel, c a m o l n f t guy over there on on Twitter says,

(49:41):
Solana is literally running out of memory.
Every token launched
takes up space on chain.
With all the validators
running, the network is able to survive for now.
As more tokens are launched, which is about 12,000,000 a day,
where is that data stored?
Users are not using Soul Incinerator

(50:04):
fast enough, hence, they're not they're they're not burning the tokens. Right? Hence, recent network issues and price decreases.
The only solution is removing some of that data. Either the foundation will have to physically delete it or Solana risk total collapse.
Insane to think about.
You should've just listened to us.

(50:27):
You literally should've just listened to us instead of pointing your finger at laughing at Bitcoin maximalist for telling you that your
Solana chain is just is is
a pure pipe dream
and is bullshit,
this is why.
You should have listened to us
because all these here's what's happening. All these people, they come to Salon and they're like, hey, man. I can spin up my own I can spin up my own coin, and

(50:52):
millions are being spun up.
And then the developer gets, you know, tired of the project or, I don't know, it didn't get as much market cap as they thought. They didn't they didn't have as many rubes
to steal money from.
And so they just walked away.
They're just walking away, and they're leaving their BS project on Solana, and it's taking up space.

(51:15):
Now here's the here here's one of the fascinating things about this passage that Camel said.
The only solution is removing
some of that data.
Is is that possible?
Can you remove the data from Solana blockchain? Because if you can remove
any
data from the so called blockchain,
then it is completely

(51:37):
mutable.
Right? You can change anything you want. You can delete any data that you want.
He says either the foundation will have to physically delete
it or Solana risks total collapse.
Physically
deleting
data from Bitcoin is impossible.
But clearly, it is very possible

(51:58):
for Solana or at least in this particular person's mind it is, and I don't know who Camel is. Got a blue check, though, so I guess he's okay. Whatever. It it doesn't matter.
But then I saw then I saw another
another post on Twitter, and it was a guy explaining a story about him buying one of those,

(52:19):
Bored Ape Yacht Club
NFTs back in the day. I don't know if you're if you're new to Bitcoin, you may not have known, but these these are the non fungible token things that that I was talking about earlier. I can right click and save them.
He bought a Bored
Ape or
Bored Ape Yacht Club
Ape

(52:39):
for I think it was 200 and was it $257,000?
He finally sold it
for $37,000,
basically
eating, you know, $22,020,000
dollars. I mean, it's just gone, just evaporated.
Yeah. His wealth was transferred to the bored ape ape yacht club crew

(53:03):
who have, as far as I know, have yet to be indicted on anything.
And he was bemoaning the loss of his ape,
but he also remember he also started going into how stupid he was.
He is realizing only now
that this was stupid.
We tried to tell people

(53:23):
on several occasions that all this was just dumb and nobody listened to us. We were called foolish. We were called Luddites. We were called Bitcoin maximalists.
We were called every name that you could possibly come up with, and yet one thing is always true.
We were right.
They were wrong.

(53:44):
Sorry for you.
They were unlucky. But this guy is lucky because a lucky solo Bitcoin miner
beats
one in one hundred year odds to win a $350,000
block reward. Ladies and gentlemen, it has happened again. James Hunt from theblock.co.
A solo Bitcoin miner beat

(54:05):
monumental
odds to solve a block and take home the full subsidy
and transaction fee rewarded on Sunday.
The miner collected a total of 3.129
BTC
worth $347,980
for mining block ninety one three
five ninety three using solo Bitcoin mining software from c k pool according to the Bitcoin explorer mempool.

(54:32):
This comprised 3.125
in block subsidy rewards
and a mere $471
in transaction fees. Quote, congratulations
to miner b c one q and a whole bunch of numbers and letters for solving the three hundred and seventh the
three hundred and seventh solo block at solo.ckpool.org

(54:56):
with only
200 terahashes.
That hash rate is equivalent to just one
twenty twenty four
Bitmain Antminer s 21 air cooled mining machine, for example.
The solo miner's hash power represents
0.00002%
of the Bitcoin
network's total estimated hash rate of 1.04

(55:19):
Zeta hashes on September 8 per mempool data. And for comparison, leading public Bitcoin miners Mara and Eiran, manage a hash rate of approximately 59.4
exahashes and 50 exahashes per second respectively
according to the latest documentations.
So
there you go. Yeah. I mean, three hundred and seven

(55:41):
Three hundred and seven solo blocks.
People keep saying it's impossible to mine a block all by yourself. Well, not for 307
instances of it happening.
So maybe the BitX isn't quite such a well, it I've heard people call it a scam. I don't know why you would call it a scam. I know what I was buying.

(56:03):
When I bought when I bought my my little miner, it was more about learning how to, you know, I don't know, change mempool or mempools,
how to run you know, get it to to attach to my own node,
have my own wallet attached to whatever, you know, mining pool that I want to attach to or or or just go flat solo. It it it it as long as I've got

(56:24):
a a Bitcoin address that is that the miners linked to to drop a subsidy. And if I were to win a block, then it's I can mine solo.
And yet I saw a lot of people
talk about bit acts like it was just this giant scam. No, it's not. They they actually sell you what they tell you they're going to sell you. They sell you a little minor
with

(56:44):
not a whole lot of horsepower.
And yet some people,
you know, get have won a block off of a bid ax.
This guy, you know, won a block off of something, you know, much larger than a bid ax. But still,
solo mining,
it seems to work.
You know, I'm just saying.

(57:05):
Speaking of Bitcoin mining, the difficulty
has hit a new high as fees shrink
to record lows. Oh my god. It's a bitcoin mining spiral. It's the death spiral. It's all about us.
Alex Larry from bitcoin news dot com says,
bitcoin's mining industry

(57:25):
is still at a tough spot and profitability is taking yet another hit.
The network's mining difficulty
has reached new all time highs even as the hash rate briefly touched one Zeta hash before retreating.
Miners are facing a tough situation.
Mining costs are up and fees are sitting at record lows, while competition is at an all time high.

(57:47):
That raises real concerns about how profitable mining still is and what lies ahead
for Bitcoin mining as a whole. Pausing to say one word,
decentralization.
That's
and or commoditization
of mining equipment.
Hot tubs,
water heaters,
home heating,

(58:07):
heating of greenhouses,
you name it, buddy. Bitcoin mining ain't going nowhere.
And when and when it when the inevitable happens and you start seeing Bitcoin miners convert fully into
AI,
the the death of Bitcoin stories will start piling up. Bitcoin obituaries.com

(58:28):
or whatever that website is will start adding more Bitcoin obituary stories to its site. I haven't had one added in quite a while.
It'll it'll happen at one point or another. There will be major auctions of all this mining equipment,
and people will start buying it. And and I it's gonna start heating homes.
This is going to happen.

(58:49):
You're going to see Bitcoin mining go from these huge centralized hubs
into three or four miners at somebody's house that's using to heat their house in the winter
or heat their hot tub outside in the summer.
That's what's going to happen. But continuing in simple terms, mining difficulty
tells us how much compute power is required to mine Bitcoin, and it adjusts

(59:11):
every two weeks to keep block times at around ten minutes.
The latest adjustment saw difficulty rise
to about 5% or rise
rise about 5%
to around a 136,000,000,000,000,
which is the highest it's ever been.
Just before the adjustment, Bitcoin's hash rate, the combined compute power securing the network, hit one zeta hash per second, a milestone itself that shows the scale of modern mining.

(59:38):
But the party was short lived.
After peaking, hash rate dropped to around 961
exahashes
per second and block time stretched to over eleven minutes. This ebb and flow is actually part of Bitcoin's built in self correcting mechanism
that balances block production with network security.
On the surface, a high hash rate means strength. The network is, you know, harder to attack and more secure.

(01:00:04):
But the distribution
of that hash rate is
sparking debate.
Mining pools, which allow thousands of smaller miles miners to combine forces, are the backbone of the industry, but they also raise
concerns about centralization.
As of yesterday, Foundry USA controlled
29.92%

(01:00:25):
of hash rate. Antpool,
17.83%.
ViaBTC,
12.49%.
And together,
those three control more than 60%
of the network's hash power.
Analyst Jacob King said on x that this concentration
means
a 51%
attack is possible.

(01:00:45):
Others are more sanguine. Rich Rines, a core DAO contributor,
said while centralization is valid
concern in theory,
in practice, the industry is more robust.
Mining is mobile, and if one pool turns malicious,
others could quickly move resources elsewhere. Quote, all of these forces act to push back against

(01:01:06):
long term dominance by any single actor, Rines said.
Record high difficulty isn't just a technical milestone.
It's got real world consequences for miners.
In past bull runs, high Bitcoin prices meant big profits for mining companies, but today,
not today, it's more complicated.
Even with Bitcoin above a $110,000,

(01:01:28):
miners, they just aren't seeing the windfalls of 2017
and 2021.
Halved block rewards amid rising cost and relentless competition are the main reasons.
According to analysts, transaction fees,
which are used as a source of income, have been low since 2022. And now, they've reached their lowest levels in over a decade.

(01:01:49):
That leaves block rewards as the only reliable revenue source, and miners have to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware
just to stay competitive.
That's the end of the article. Again, I reiterate my prediction that we're going to see mass commoditization
of the Bitcoin
mining

(01:02:09):
ASIC chips
into things like
heating industrial spaces,
heating homes,
heating greenhouses,
heating hot tubs. Hell, I could I could run an aquaponics system and use that that mining heat to to heat the water to make sure that the fish don't freeze in the wintertime.
If if aquaponics is

(01:02:30):
marrying fish and using the the fish poop and waste in the water
to,
send nutrition to to plants that are that are sort of in that same water. It's actually kind of fascinating. It's one of the things that got me into regen agriculture
and permaculture,
which led me directly to Bitcoin.
And, wow, what a what a road it's been in in the last

(01:02:53):
ten to fifteen years because I was really, really looking at possibly opening up an aquaponics thing,
you know, for, like, selling selling
lettuce and whatnot like that and growing it in an aquaponics
kind of style thing about three or four years before I found out about Bitcoin.
And now I'm doing things like I I've got that whole cathedral,

(01:03:16):
series about
regenerative agriculture silvopasture.
I'm coming I'm coming sort of getting back to my roots,
but I'm carrying with it all the stuff that I've learned about from Bitcoin. It's it's been
it's been an interesting ten years. I will I will say that. And for almost eight of them, I have been bringing you The Bitcoin and Show

(01:03:40):
almost every day, Monday through Friday. When I first started the podcast, I was only doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday and decided to start doing it every single day,
and I really haven't looked back. So if you
if you enjoy the show,
if you want to help support the show,
help support me do what I do,
you know, sort of takes take some of the anxiety off me for doing this every day, then

(01:04:07):
throw me some fat heavy zaps over on fountain or any of the podcasting two point o
applications that support streaming sats or boostograms
or you can throw me some fat zaps over there on nostr.
You know, I mean, I've got I've got a I've got a a geyser account. I've got a let's see what I get a patreon account.

(01:04:30):
You can get you can if you really wanna support the show,
you buy an annual subscription to my website, bitcoinandshow.com.
That's bitcoinandshow.com.
It's $50, man. I do this five times a day all year long,
but for the most part,
I'm here sitting right next to you as your copilot

(01:04:51):
as you're going to work, coming home from work,
hanging around the garden,
washing dishes.
I'm in your ear, man. I'm in your
ear. Throw me some sats.
Throw me some sats. I'll 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.

(01:05:14):
Have
a
great
day.

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