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Iran Just Used Bitcoin To Break US Sanctions! (Here's What Nobody Told You) | Simply SatoSHE · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  I need you to understand something about the week that
• 0:02
  just happened. While most people were watching
• 0:05
  the stock market bleed and refreshing Bitcoin's price,
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  three things happened that will be talked about for years and I
• 0:12
  don't think any of them got the attention that they deserved.
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  A sanctioned nation just started charging Bitcoin to let oil
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  through the most important shipping lane in the world.
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  The most prestigious investment bank on Wall Street launched a
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  Bitcoin product and called it the best performing launch in
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  their entire history. And the Treasury Secretary of
• 0:32
  the United States and the sitting senator just joined
• 0:34
  forces to demand Congress pass Bitcoin legislation right now.
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  Three different layers of the global system, the geopolitical
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  layer, the institutional layer, the legislative layer, all in
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  the same week. If you've been waiting for a
• 0:49
  sign that Bitcoin has arrived, I'm not sure what more you need.
• 0:53
  Welcome back to Satoshi. Let's get into it.
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  Let's start with the story that I genuinely could not believe
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  when I first read it. Iran is now charging ships
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  $2,000,000 per vessel to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and they
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  want it paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine confirmed it
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  this week. Iran to accept Bitcoin for the
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  Strait of Hormuz transit as ceasefire takes hold.
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  And then the Wall Street Journal published their own piece.
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  Iran's $7.8 billion crypto economy finds a new way to grow
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  after ceasefire. Read Wall Street headline
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  carefully. Not during the conflict, after
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  the ceasefire. This isn't a wartime emergency
• 1:35
  measure. Bitcoin is how Iran's economy
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  grows permanently. Now let me give you the numbers
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  so that you understand the scale.
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  Pre crisis. Roughly 130 ships cross the
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  Strait of Hormuz every single day.
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  At $2,000,000 per ship, that's 3611 Bitcoin per day, 100 and
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  8333 Bitcoin per month, and 1,000,000 Bitcoin per year.
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  And here's the number that puts all of that into context.
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  The entire Bitcoin network only mines 450 Bitcoin per day.
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  Iran would be accumulating 8 times the entire monthly supply
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  of Bitcoin every single month from a toll booth at a shipping
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  lane. And when the ceasefire was
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  officially announced this week, Bitcoin pumped above $72,500.
• 2:27
  The market. It understood immediately what
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  this meant. Nick Zabo, one of the original
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  cypherpunks, He responded to the news with one sentence.
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  Iran is no longer effectively under sanctions.
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  Do try to keep up with events. He's right.
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  And that one line should send a chill down the spine of everyone
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  who thought sanctions were a permanent tool of control.
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  Here's what this actually means. For 15 years, Bitcoin censorship
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  resistance has been theoretical, a property that Bitcoiners
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  talked about but hadn't really tested on a geopolitical scale.
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  Iran just made it operational. A nation under some of the most
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  severe financial sanctions on earth found a way to monetize
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  control of a critical global checkpoint.
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  And the mechanism is a decentralized monetary network
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  that no government can freeze, no bank can block, and no
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  sanctions regime can stop. Bitcoin was built for this.
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  Satoshi designed it as a system that could move value without
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  permission, without banks, without the dollar systems veto
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  power. For years it was an idea, but
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  this week it became infrastructure.
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  And one more thing worth tracking here, Oil prices.
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  The Strait of Hormuz is the choke point for roughly 20% of
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  global oil supply. If ceasefire negotiations stall,
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  if Iran tightens the toll, or if more ships start paying in
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  Bitcoin instead of dollars, you'll see it in oil prices
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  before, or you see it anywhere else.
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  Oil is the Canary. Watch closely.
• 4:02
  Now, I want to be clear, I'm not here to endorse what Iran's
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  government does or how it operates politically.
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  That's none of my business. But the mechanics of what just
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  happened are undeniable. And the implications for every
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  sanctioned nation, every excluded economy, and every
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  person the global financial system has decided to cut off
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  those implications are enormous. Now let's come back stateside to
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  Wall Street because what just happened there this week was
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  equally historic, just in a very different way.
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  Morgan Stanley launched the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust
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  ticker MSBT on April 8th, 0.14% expense ratio, the lowest of any
• 4:48
  Bitcoin ETF on the market. On day one, MSBT pulled in $30
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  million, and by the end of the first trading session, it had
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  done $34 million in volume. Fortune reported that an analyst
• 5:02
  put it at the top 1% of ETF launches in history.
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  But here's the line that stopped me, Amy Olenberg, Morgan
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  Stanley's head of digital assets, told Bloomberg directly.
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  MSBT was the bank's best performing ETF launch.
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  I have to tell you in terms of the pickup we saw yesterday, the
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  first day of trading, our best first day of trading for any of
• 5:26
  our ETFs since we've started the ETF product line a couple years
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  ago. So I think that speaks to the
• 5:32
  demand that's still out there for the Bitcoin ETF.
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  Almost 1.7 million shares traded yesterday.
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  And at 12:00 today, we are already having another good day
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  today. As you said, there's a it's a
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  nice, it's a nice week in the market, a nice day in the market
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  for some pickup in Bitcoin and the markets to help us out
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  they're. Not the best Bitcoin ETF launch.
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  The best ETF launch, full stop, in the entire history of one of
• 5:58
  the most powerful financial institutions on earth.
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  Think about what Morgan Stanley is for a second.
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  This is not a crypto startup. This is not a venture fund
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  making a speculative bet. Morgan Stanley manages trillions
• 6:13
  of dollars in client assets. They have been in business since
• 6:16
  19, 35. Their clients include sovereign
• 6:20
  wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, and some of the
• 6:23
  wealthiest individuals on earth. And their clients are so hungry
• 6:28
  for Bitcoin exposure that the product launched is the best
• 6:32
  thing that the bank has ever released.
• 6:35
  This is what institutional demand actually looks like.
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  Not BlackRock filing a form, not a press release.
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  A product launch that breaks every record that the bank has.
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  Most prestigious firm just told you through the market, which
• 6:52
  doesn't lie. Exactly what it thinks about
• 6:55
  Bitcoin and when the biggest names on Bitcoin are launching
• 6:59
  Bitcoin products, the question is whether your Bitcoin is
• 7:02
  actually in your control or sitting on someone else's
• 7:05
  platform. That's where the Bitcoin way
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• 7:23
  bitcoinway.com/simply Tell them Satoshi sent you.
• 7:28
  And then there's Washington Senator Cynthia Loomis.
• 7:32
  The Bitcoin senator, one of the most consistent advocates in
• 7:36
  Congress, posted something this week that I think is going to be
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  one of the most important political moments in Bitcoins
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  regulatory history. She quoted Treasury Secretary
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  Scott Besant directly. Now is the time to act.
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  We have the administration, the momentum, and we've made
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  bipartisan progress. Congress must pass the Clarity
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  Act now. The Clarity Act is the most
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  comprehensive piece of Bitcoin and digital asset legislation
• 8:03
  ever attempted in the United States.
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  It would formally define what Bitcoin is under law, clarify
• 8:09
  which regulator has jurisdiction, and give the
• 8:12
  industry the legal certainty it has been waiting for for years.
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  The Treasury Secretary and a sitting Bitcoin senator are
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  publicly demanding it gets passed this week.
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  But here's where it gets complicated.
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  And there's a few reasons. So try to keep up.
• 8:27
  Representative French Hill, who chairs the House Financial
• 8:31
  Services Committee, told reporters the timeline might
• 8:34
  slip into next year. There's a sticking point in the
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  Senate over stable coin yield provisions.
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  The reconciliation process with the House isn't resolved.
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  So we have Besson and Loomis saying now and French Hill
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  saying maybe next year. But The thing is, we might not
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  have next year because we have no idea what is going to happen
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  in the midterms. First of all, senators, the
• 8:59
  alumnus is not running for reelection.
• 9:01
  And frankly, Trump has kind of been throwing the Republican
• 9:06
  Party in the gutter. And we're not sure if Democrats
• 9:10
  will back this bill up. So in my opinion, we're kind of
• 9:14
  playing with fire there. But that tension is worth
• 9:17
  watching because if the Clarity Act does pass, it changes the
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  entire landscape for Bitcoin in America.
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  Institutions that have been waiting on the sidelines get
• 9:26
  greenlit. Capital that has been sitting in
• 9:28
  limbo gets deployed, and the regulatory uncertainty that has
• 9:32
  suppressed Bitcoin adoption for years disappears.
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  And if it doesn't pass, the window closes.
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  And again, with an election cycle coming, another delay
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  could mean years. The momentum is real.
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  The opposition is also real. So this one isn't over.
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  So now let me zoom all the way out for a second.
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  Three stories, three different layers of the global system, all
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  in the same week. At the geopolitical layer, a
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  sanctioned nation is using Bitcoin as a mechanism to
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  monetize the world's most critical oil shipping lane.
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  That's Bitcoin functioning as a parallel financial system, not
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  in theory, but in practice at scale.
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  Right now, at the institutional layer, Morgan Stanley, one of
• 10:22
  the oldest and most respected financial institutions on earth,
• 10:26
  just launched what they're calling the best product in
• 10:30
  their history. Their clients wanted Bitcoin so
• 10:33
  badly that a 91 year old bank broke every record it had ever
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  set to give it to them. At the legislative layer, the
• 10:41
  Treasury Secretary of the United States and a Bitcoin senator are
• 10:44
  publicly demanding Congress pass the most significant Bitcoin
• 10:48
  legislation ever written, and they're calling it urgent.
• 10:52
  This is what adoption actually looks like.
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  Not the price going up, although it did go up.
• 10:57
  Not a tweet going viral, although many tweets went viral
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  this week. My point is the actual
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  infrastructure of global finance, geopolitical,
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  institutional, regulatory, bending the knee towards Bitcoin
• 11:13
  simultaneously. I've been in the space long
• 11:15
  enough to have heard this is the year about 10 million times.
• 11:19
  But I want to be honest with you, this week it felt
• 11:22
  different. This week it felt like this
• 11:25
  might actually be the year. Not because the price did
• 11:28
  something, which it did, but because the three stories this
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  week happened at levels of the system that have never moved
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  before. Iran doesn't care about the four
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  year cycle. Morgan Stanley doesn't care
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  about the four year cycle. Scott Besson doesn't care about
• 11:45
  the four year cycle. Well, not this one anyway.
• 11:48
  He cares about the political four year cycle.
• 11:50
  But again, I digress. They care about whether Bitcoin
• 11:53
  works. And this week at every layer,
• 11:57
  the answer was yes and if this week convinced you that it's
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• 12:37
  So here are some quick hits for what's coming. 5 things I'm
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  watching 1. The price, duh.
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  Bitcoin hit $72,500 on the ceasefire announcement and has
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  been holding strong. The Sailor thesis that the four
• 12:50
  year cycle is dead and the price is now driven by capital flow
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  gets tested every week. So watch how Bitcoin responds to
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  the next macro event. A sustained break above 75,000
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  would be significant #2 the Strait of Hormuz.
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  The ceasefire is 45 days. Watch whether Iran's Bitcoin
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  toll infrastructure stays in place as negotiations continue
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  or whether quietly becomes permanent.
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  The Wall Street Journal called it a new way for Iran's economy
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  to grow. If that framing sticks, this is
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  it's no longer a conflict story, it's a monetary system story.
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  And the number to watch alongside it is oil.
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  The Street carries about 20% of the global oil supply.
• 13:36
  Any escalation, any renegotiation of the toll, any
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  breakdown in ceasefire talks, and you'll see it in the oil
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  price first. Oil spikes.
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  Bitcoin is likely to follow, so keep an eye on both of them #3
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  Morgan Stanley ETF inflows Week 2 tells you everything.
• 13:56
  Day one numbers for MSBT were record-breaking, but
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  institutional products live or die on sustained inflows.
• 14:04
  If the second week matches the 1st, every other Wall Street
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  firm that's been sitting on the fences starts to move.
• 14:10
  Watch the Bloomberg ETF flow data for that one.
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  Number four, the Clarity Act Lummus and Besson are pushing
• 14:18
  hard. French Hill is pumping the
• 14:20
  brakes. The stable coin yield sticking
• 14:22
  point needs to get resolved before this moves to a floor
• 14:26
  vote. So if you see a bipartisan
• 14:28
  agreement on that specific issue announced, that's a signal that
• 14:32
  the bill is actually moving. And #5 and this was one that I
• 14:36
  know no Bitcoiner wants to talk about, but we must is tax day,
• 14:40
  April 15th is right around the corner.
• 14:43
  And if you hold Bitcoin, you already know what that that
• 14:45
  means. Every sale, every swap, every
• 14:48
  transaction is a potential taxable event.
• 14:51
  If you haven't figured out your Bitcoin taxes yet, this is your
• 14:54
  last week to get ahead of it. Which brings me to something
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  I want to leave you with one thought.
• 15:42
  Nick Zabo said Iran is no longer effectively under sanctions.
• 15:46
  Amy Oldenburg says Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin ETF was Morgan
• 15:50
  Stanley's best launch ever. Scott Besson said now is the
• 15:55
  time to act. Three different people, three
• 15:57
  different corners of the world, all pointing at Bitcoin in the
• 16:01
  same week. The question isn't whether
• 16:02
  Bitcoin is arriving anymore. The question is whether you're
• 16:06
  ready when it does. Thanks for watching Simply
• 16:09
  Bitcoins Satoshi. Don't forget to smash the like
• 16:12
  button. Share the show with your
• 16:13
  friends. Drop a comment below because I
• 16:15
  read them all. Follow me on X at Internet
• 16:18
  Sophie. And as always, stack, Slay and
• 16:21
  stay bullish, baby.