Latest / Simply Bitcoin / LEAKED: Binance HELPED This Middle Eastern GIANT Build a $7.7B Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?! | EP 1510

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LEAKED: Binance HELPED This Middle Eastern GIANT Build a $7.7B Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?! | EP 1510 · Simply Bitcoin

0:02
New reports have emerged claiming that the world's
0:05
largest Bitcoin exchange has been up to some very interesting
0:09
things. Fox News a few days ago, about
0:12
two days ago reported that Iran supposedly has over $7 billion
0:17
in a strategic Bitcoin reserve, meaning the mass estimating
0:22
that's over 100,000 Bitcoin that Iran currently holds would be
0:27
the third largest Bitcoin reserve from a government, a
0:31
nation state. And then yesterday we got a
0:34
report from the Wall Street Journal claiming that Iran was
0:36
moving billions of dollars through Binance to finance the
0:39
IRGC, which Binance denies. But remember at the same time,
0:45
let's not forget that Trump pardon CZ from Binance in
0:49
October 2025. So we're going to try and put
0:52
all of this together. Obviously, I'm going to start at
0:56
the beginning here, so I was going to do the show on this
0:59
yesterday, but then I saw the very extremely bullish clip from
1:03
Sailor. I'm like, let's get bullish
1:05
today. But this is very interesting.
1:07
Also remember in the context of all of this, we have seen
1:12
Bitcoin take center stage in the Strait of Hormuz.
1:16
I don't know, controversy opening is in closing.
1:20
Bitcoin has taken the center stage in geopolitics recently.
1:23
Maybe it's a smaller role here, but it is, it's been in the news
1:28
about it. So in the context of all of
1:30
that, again, we got this story from Fox News headline.
1:35
US targets Iran $7.7 billion crypto network tied to regime
1:41
operations. Tehran reportedly controls
1:44
roughly $7.7 billion in digital assets or Bitcoin and is
1:49
settling cargo ship insurance payments in Bitcoin, which we
1:52
covered last week. So here is where the story
1:55
starts. Fox Business's Duran or Darren
1:59
Botalko join Fox Business Stuart Varney to report on the Trump
2:06
administration's effort to track and freeze cryptocurrency linked
2:09
to Iran as the regime reportedly increases its use of Bitcoin
2:13
based transactions. Woah.
2:16
To help move money outside the traditional banking system.
2:19
Going further, Treasury Secretary Scott Besset, which
2:22
we've talked about this, said the Treasury Department has
2:24
frozen nearly $500 million in cryptocurrency connected to the
2:28
Iran regime, including $344 million last last month alone.
2:33
And this is where I think the big bombshell comes.
2:38
Citing new reports of an estimated $7.7 billion in
2:46
digital assets that Tehran controls.
2:48
Or Iran, or maybe the IRGC. So just in that story alone, let
2:56
me pull up the Bitcoin treasury number so you can see exactly
3:02
where that would stand. Now, obviously 7.7 billion, We
3:05
really don't know at what price. We'll guess like $77,000 is
3:10
probably a good estimate. Here is the list here.
3:14
Obviously the United States supposedly, again, actually
3:18
everything on this list in terms of nation States and how much
3:21
Bitcoin they'll hold, it's all alleged numbers, OK.
3:25
But based on all the information we have, we don't have an audit
3:29
on it. We don't know exactly if these
3:31
governments, actually there's probably only two governments
3:35
that we know for a fact of how much Bitcoin they hold, and
3:38
that's El Salvador and Bhutan. Everyone else is self reporting.
3:42
OK, but anyways the United States again allegedly holding
3:46
over 328,000 Bitcoin or 328,372. China, as far as we know, holds
3:54
190,000 Bitcoin. And then as this list stand, cuz
3:58
this hasn't been updated and again, this is estimated numbers
4:02
from Iran, The UK holds about 61,245 S again rounding here,
4:10
7.7 billion. That's a little over 100,000
4:14
coins. If this does come out to be fact
4:18
and it's not just speculation, apparently they use as, as this
4:23
report says here, using threat detection data, using a threat
4:29
detection data firm, it shows that Tehran controls roughly
4:33
$7.7 billion. So that's definitely going to
4:38
put them at #3 on world's biggest or world's government's
4:44
biggest Bitcoin holdings #3 right out the gate.
4:48
Which obviously, as we know, what we do know for a fact is
4:53
that Iran for a lot of years has been very, very Bitcoin, Bitcoin
4:59
focused. We know that they've been mining
5:00
Bitcoin. Obviously in more recent news,
5:03
we know that they've been seeking Bitcoin payments, making
5:07
Bitcoin products not like an ETF, but this Bitcoin backed
5:12
insurance payments. So we know they've been using
5:15
it. And obviously it makes perfect
5:17
sense because Bitcoin is permissionless censorship
5:21
resistance. The traditional sanctions,
5:25
vehicles or mechanisms that the United States has, they don't
5:29
really work in regards to Bitcoin, hence why I think this
5:33
conversation is starting to happen in the first place.
5:36
It kind of shows that yeah, maybe the way current finance
5:39
works probably needs to get updated and Bitcoin throws a
5:42
huge wrench in those plans. And then further from Iran's
5:46
perspective, they want to have a politically neutral money that
5:50
cannot be stopped. Like all the incentives work
5:53
out. As we always say, Bitcoin is for
5:55
enemies. If you are in a very attack
6:01
prone situation, if you are thinking adversarially and you
6:06
have people wanting to shut off your finances.
6:08
As we covered yesterday with the WikiLeaks story, obviously this
6:12
story has a little more weight in terms of emotional connection
6:16
to it. From most people's perspective,
6:19
they think Iran is, you know, a bad country, that they shouldn't
6:23
have any financial actions, that they shouldn't have weapons of
6:27
mass destruction, that they're the big bad boogeyman in the
6:30
world. Whatever your thoughts are on
6:32
that, it does go to show that, yeah, if you are in an
6:37
adversarial situation, you probably want to be holding
6:40
Bitcoin. Now, you could also talk about
6:44
the privacy aspect of this, the fact that they can probably
6:46
track it, at least a good estimate.
6:49
You know, that's why we had Lauren Rodriguez of Samurai.
6:53
There are still privacy concerns that we are working through in
6:57
the current moment, but obviously Bitcoin has taken the
7:02
mainstage here. So the big news coming out of
7:05
this Fox News article is that apparently Iran holds $7.7
7:10
billion of Bitcoin, or roughly somewhere north of 100,000
7:15
Bitcoin, putting them squarely at #3 on the largest government
7:20
holdings of Bitcoin. Now, again, most of these
7:24
numbers are alleged. We really don't know for a fact,
7:28
but this is, this is what the information is showing us.
7:31
So going further, of course, the report comes as Iran reportedly
7:35
launched a new digital insurance platform for cargo ships
7:38
operating through the Strait of Hormuz.
7:41
Now, that's probably the only reason for us even knowing how
7:46
much they actually hold is because they have basically put
7:50
Bitcoin in the center of their geopolitical plans, in the
7:54
center of their adversarial thinking.
7:56
They're like, yeah, well, you know, we're getting shut off.
7:59
We're getting attacked right now.
8:01
We obviously can't track transacting the dollars, but we
8:04
want to get money. And hence why they started to
8:07
look towards Bitcoin and we're seeing now because they did this
8:12
Bitcoin back insurance payments, the fees to go through the toll
8:17
of the Strait of Hormuz being paid in Bitcoin.
8:20
Now we're seeing that the reports are showing that they
8:24
have a lot of Bitcoin, which if you've been around for a while,
8:28
we know there's been a lot of rumors that Iran has had a
8:32
pretty big Bitcoin stash for a long time.
8:36
I, from what I can remember, I think this is like the the most
8:40
official notification of that being the case and how big it
8:43
actually is. And it's huge, OK, Like, it it,
8:47
it is huge. Anyways, going further, this is
8:51
where they're talking about, you know, the privacy aspects.
8:55
This is probably like the worst sentence in here.
8:57
But industry experts say cryptocurrency can still leave a
8:59
trail for investigators despite being viewed by some foreign
9:02
adversaries as a way to evade sanctions.
9:05
It basically says that law enforcement, the government
9:07
loves Bitcoin because if you transact in it, you and you
9:11
don't know how to protect your privacy.
9:13
You are able to leave a lot of bread crumbs, which I'm guessing
9:17
this is how they got that information in the 1st place.
9:20
Now to wrap this up, and this is where the Wall Street Journal
9:25
article that dropped this morning or sorry, yesterday
9:30
really starts to show that there is a thread working through this
9:35
at the very end of this report. Now when I was reading this
9:37
yesterday before I read and saw the Wall Street Journal article,
9:42
I did find it a little interesting that the end of this
9:44
article said this. Botello also reported that
9:48
industry insiders believe Washington could increase
9:51
pressure by threatening to cut off crypto exchanges from the
9:54
American banking system. Now, at the time when I saw this
9:58
article yesterday, and I was debating whether I should do the
10:02
show on this, and I was like, well, you know, there's not that
10:05
much to this story. We just found out that Iran has
10:09
a huge Bitcoin stash. But I remember reading this
10:12
yesterday. I'm like, the ending of this
10:14
article is very interesting. Now, obviously it's, it's not
10:18
even like a crazy sentence. It's, it's very benign, to be
10:21
honest. But then we saw this, which
10:25
starts to I think connect the dots here.
10:27
Here's the Wall Street Journal. Sorry guys and forgive me guys,
10:32
hold on. I am, I am still feeling a
10:36
little sick, so hopefully I'm over this by Monday.
10:39
But this is where the dots start to connect for me.
10:42
The Wall Street Journal posted yesterday at night, so I saw
10:46
this article in the morning and then at night, 9:13 PM
10:50
yesterday, we got this post from the Wall Street Journal, the
10:53
secret payment network that's funneling billions to Iran's
10:57
military and the sub headline Iran move billions through
11:01
Binance to fund regime continuing into this month.
11:05
And that's where you're like, wow, OK, now the dots are
11:08
starting to connect. Now the Wall Street Journal
11:11
article was behind a paywall, so I can't show that to you, but
11:15
here's a good breakdown of what it is saying.
11:18
So the scoop from the Wall Street Journal investigation
11:22
that Iran move billions through Binance to finance the IRGC,
11:26
with transaction continuing as recently as this month.
11:31
Now remember CZ from Binance, though he officially is not the
11:37
head of Binance, but from all our kind of understanding and
11:44
bread crumbs, to use the term of the Fox News article, he's still
11:48
basically the shadow CEO of Binance.
11:50
When you understand that like his wife is now the controlling
11:54
CEO of Binance. So CZ and from from everything
11:59
you can look at and see is still probably the head head figure,
12:03
the real CEO of Binance. OK, so he got pardoned in
12:07
October of 2025, literally the same month that we saw a Binance
12:12
glitch essentially cater the Bitcoin price and he got a
12:16
pardon from Trump. And now we're learning at least
12:19
from the Wall Street Journal. And even though they are a
12:22
paper, a record, you know, we we all know that there is a
12:26
political bias coming out of the Wall Street Journal, the
12:28
Washington Post, the New York Times, They are not favorable to
12:32
Bitcoin at all. So, you know, we are going to
12:34
take this with a grain of salt. But again, still considered a,
12:39
quote, paper of records. So the fact they're saying it
12:43
was still happening up until last month or this month.
12:49
And he got pardoned over six months ago or was that Yeah,
12:52
over six months ago. You're like, OK, things that are
12:56
starting to look a little fishy. So the numbers $850 million in
13:01
transactions through a single Binance account operated by
13:05
Iranian, quote, anti sanction operator Babak Zinjani over 2
13:10
years. Internal Binance compliance
13:12
reports flagged the account a dozen times and remained open
13:16
for 15 plus months after the first alert.
13:19
Crazy $107 million moved from Iran's Central Bank through
13:23
crypto wallets to Binance accounts in 2020.
13:25
Five, $260 million in direct transactions between Binance
13:29
accounts in Iranian terrorist financiers in 2024 and 2020.
13:33
Five $218 or $218,000,000 routed to an Iranian state financing
13:38
network VA wallet connected to Binance.
13:40
And $1.7 billion previously reported by the Wall Street
13:44
Journal moving through Binance to the same Iranian network.
13:47
Now CZ, of course pardoned by Trump in October after pleading
13:51
guilty to anti money laundering violations in 2020 23 and of
13:56
course Binance, A crucial backer of world liberty financial that
14:00
the Trump family owns and then as this tweet kind of summarizes
14:05
the same week Besin called on G7 to tighten Iran sanctions the
14:09
same week Iran's Hormuz safe platform collect Bitcoin transit
14:13
fees. The financial architecture of
14:15
the Iran war is running on the blockchain.
14:19
OK, so again, this is coming from the Wall Street Journal.
14:25
Now, I know for a lot of people this is official authoritative
14:31
news that, you know, they would, they wouldn't lie to us.
14:33
They wouldn't have a bias here. Now, Binance has obviously,
14:40
excuse me, clearly denied these allegations.
14:45
They said no, We, you know, we followed all the rules that this
14:49
is, this isn't happening now you know who is, who's saving face
14:55
from this perspective, who's who in this whole situation.
14:58
So, but what we do know out of all of this for a fact is 1.
15:05
Iran holds $7.7 billion in Bitcoin or quote digital assets,
15:10
which I would presume is Bitcoin because everything else
15:13
obviously isn't censorship resistant.
15:17
And two, that almost a billion dollars has flown through by
15:23
Nance linked to the Iranian regime.
15:28
Now, I'm not here to cast allegations obviously, but it is
15:32
very interesting when you go back to the Fox News article and
15:36
talking about this is going to put pressure on crypto exchanges
15:41
with American bank accounts. Now, obviously Binance is an
15:43
offshore exchange so they really don't have to deal with the US
15:48
banking system. But part of the Trump pardon was
15:53
an attempt to get Binance to be on shored into the US.
15:58
Now, my initial kind of thinking of this, obviously whenever you
16:03
cover stories like this, as I've talked about in the past, you do
16:08
have to have some sense of media literacy.
16:11
You have to understand what is the reason for these articles to
16:15
be released. Like what do they want you to
16:17
think in regards to reading these articles?
16:21
Now, that was where my initial thinking came from.
16:24
I was like, OK, well we got a report couple days ago from Fox
16:28
News saying that Iran holds a bunch of Bitcoin.
16:31
Then we got another article followed up on the Wall Street
16:34
Journal basically saying that Binance help them build this
16:39
huge Bitcoin strategic reserve and at the same time we know
16:45
that Trump pardon CZ here of Binance.
16:50
And so my initial thinking was obviously very adversarial, very
16:55
negative. I'm like, ah, dude, they're,
16:58
they're just starting to build the foundation to basically
17:01
start to paint Bitcoin as the boogeyman, which which I
17:04
basically covered. I, I, someone, someone tagged me
17:07
and said, like, what, what, what's the problem of Iran
17:14
embracing Bitcoin? Like how does this relate to
17:16
like the WikiLeaks story? And even though we've, we talked
17:20
about WikiLeaks and, and I, I, I, we've mentioned the parallels
17:25
here, the question was offered, or rather framed in a way that I
17:30
was implying that Iran embracing Bitcoin is going to be bad for
17:34
the decentralization of Bitcoin, that them embracing Bitcoin was
17:39
going to fundamentally hurt the Bitcoin network.
17:43
If that is what I was saying and seem to imply, that's not what I
17:48
meant. What I meant was that the media
17:50
backlash that we are going to see moving forward is probably
17:55
going to be very big. It's going to be very
17:59
coordinated. They are going to come after
18:02
every single one of us. They're going to make us try.
18:04
They're going to try to make us look worse than ever before
18:07
because Iran is using Bitcoin because, quote, the bad guys are
18:12
using Bitcoin. And again, if what seems to be
18:16
the case, the Republicans lose the midterms, the Democrats go
18:21
into, you know, the Democrats win here and then potentially
18:27
the Democrats win in 2028, which I think is more of a long shot
18:31
than them, you know, winning the midterms.
18:35
We're going to see a huge backlash.
18:37
They're gonna they're gonna come really hard on the Bitcoin, not
18:41
on the Bitcoin network, but they're going to, you know,
18:43
propagandize against Bitcoin extremely hard.
18:46
All the things that the Trump administration tried to do.
18:48
They're going to reverse 180. And we're probably going to be
18:54
in a situation where we get fought even harder than we did
18:57
before 2024, or rather, I guess 2025 when Trump was actually in
19:01
office. So I never meant to imply.
19:03
And if I did, and forgive me, you know, I, I kind of ramble
19:06
and talk really fast on the show and sometimes I'm not as
19:08
eloquent as I want to be. But what I meant to say was, and
19:13
I didn't mean to imply the opposite, that this isn't going
19:17
to affect Bitcoin, the network itself.
19:20
It's more about the media backlash that we've been kind of
19:24
seen foreshadowed throughout this whole process.
19:28
So that's where my initial thinking kind of went.
19:31
Now I'm trying to parse through the information of, okay, is
19:35
there fact to this? And what could be the reason for
19:39
the Wall Street Journal reporting on this?
19:41
I, I know why Fox News is reporting on it.
19:43
Obviously it's, you know, this, it's a big, it's a big, big
19:48
portion of what's going on in the Middle East currently.
19:51
And I don't know, yesterday we were getting rumors that like
19:54
the war is over, that negotiations were, you know,
19:58
final negotiations were happening.
19:59
I didn't see anything following up.
20:01
So maybe you guys can correct me in the chat, But I, I'm pretty
20:04
sure nothing has happened yet that we're still in some form of
20:09
ceasefire. I know some of the terms have
20:11
came through, but it seems like the Middle East.
20:15
Problem, situation, mission, operation, war, however you want
20:19
to name it, it's still unresolved.
20:22
But throughout this whole process, we've seen Bitcoin
20:24
definitely take take a role in it.
20:28
Bitcoin is in the macro picture. Bitcoin is a part of geopolitics
20:33
and that is very clear now from the Wall Street Journal's
20:39
perspective. Wondering why they are riding
20:45
this and you can frame it hit piece against Binance here.
20:49
What would be their reasons? And I think it has a lot to do
20:54
with the fact that Trump pardoned CZ.
20:56
Now, when I was thinking through what their angle would be like,
21:01
my initial thinking was like, are they going to try to say
21:04
that Trump is actually helping Iran through this even though
21:08
he's starting a war? Like, what would be their angle
21:12
here? And I think it would probably be
21:16
more on the lines of, oh, you know, Trump, Trump's an idiot.
21:20
He pardoned CZ from finance and Binance was helping the very
21:25
people that we are fighting in the Middle East.
21:28
I think that's probably where it is, but I don't know.
21:31
You guys can tell me what you think the angles are here.
21:34
But what we do know, again for a fact is, well, actually it's not
21:38
a fact. The speculation, what we do know
21:41
that seems to be the most present fact, prevalent fact is
21:46
that Iran has a huge Bitcoin reserve, over 100,000 coins.
21:52
Now obviously we do have to have them self report and I doubt
22:00
that they're going to self report that they hold over
22:02
100,000 coins, but we'll take that as a given here.
22:06
That would mean they have the third largest treasury in the
22:09
world. It really leans into Bitcoin is
22:13
for enemies. Bitcoin is unsanctionable,
22:16
unconfiscatable money, though, obviously if you've been
22:20
following along on this, the operation Epic fury, I believe
22:24
is the economic operation. If I'm remembering correctly.
22:27
I think that's the name has very clearly no, no, that was the
22:35
military. What?
22:36
What's the I'm blinking. It wasn't economic epic fury.
22:40
It was operation Epic something. I'm blinking.
22:48
Sorry guys, my brains hardly working today.
22:51
This this day was killing me. Operation.
22:57
I swear it was epic fury. But that is the main operation
23:01
anyways, whatever, you guys know what I'm talking about today.
23:05
You guys are going to have to give me be a little lenient on
23:07
me today, OK, a little lenient on me today because your boy is
23:11
kind of cooked. Your boy is kind of cooked, not
23:13
going to lie. But as we can tell, the US
23:22
Treasury has been very actively trying to stop the IRG CS
23:28
funding. We've seen that not only are we
23:32
watching a military operation happen in the Middle East, but
23:36
we are watching a financial attack happen at the same time,
23:42
which obviously is something that bit corners have been
23:46
talking about for a long time. In the modern world where we
23:48
live in, if you get cut off from the financial system, you're as
23:52
good as debt, you're as good as eliminated from doing anything
23:56
in the world. And now we're seeing that in
23:59
many respects, Bitcoin is taking the center role in fighting
24:05
economic sanctions and maybe keeping people, giving people
24:10
economic and political life lines.
24:14
And maybe you don't like that, but that is the role of Bitcoin.
24:20
Bitcoin is the money of enemies. Bitcoin is the money that you
24:24
need when you know either a government or an institution
24:30
tries to cut you off. We're seeing this play out on
24:34
the world stage. This is becoming, and I think in
24:37
hindsight will be one of those proof of concepts that maybe we
24:45
maybe a lot of people will not like.
24:46
Maybe this will turn a lot of people off of Bitcoin because
24:50
everyone still has this kind of like naive child is view that
24:53
like, oh, only good guys should be using money.
24:56
You know, only the good guys use the dollar and less you look at
25:01
the information and it's like, you know, criminals love the
25:03
dollar. So people, I think what's
25:06
interesting actually, I'm you know, I'm I'm talking out loud
25:09
right here. I'm thinking out loud here.
25:13
Don Gillingham today law. You know what is very
25:18
interesting here and and it's going to be a little little
25:20
ramble just because I'm I'm thinking of it right now.
25:24
What is very interesting is when it comes to money and finances,
25:29
like we all go dumb. Like we, we don't really think
25:33
through money. And maybe this is a cultural
25:35
thing where, you know, it's kind of rude to like talk about
25:38
money, talk about your wealth, at least in, in a lot of
25:41
cultures. But it's also interesting, like
25:45
our education about money and finances is probably at the
25:48
lowest it's ever been. And I think that's probably by
25:51
design. I I actually, it's not a
25:53
probably like I know for a fact that's by design, but it is
25:57
always so interesting that when you talk about money, people
26:01
just completely turn their brain off like, you know, only good
26:05
people should use money. And it's like, well, everyone
26:07
uses money. Do you believe that you should
26:10
be able to cut people off of their finance if you don't like
26:12
their political opinions or you, you know, they say something
26:15
mean to you, you think it's OK to cut them off the system.
26:18
Now, maybe this is just the, you know, the last semblance of
26:22
being a libertarian in me, a hardcore libertarian is like, I
26:26
believe everyone has the right to hold money.
26:28
And maybe that's a naive thought.
26:29
Maybe that's a theoretical thought that in practice
26:32
probably doesn't play out as we expect.
26:36
But I believe in rights, you know, equal rights.
26:39
I believe in free speech for everyone, even people I don't
26:42
like saying things I don't like. I believe in the fact that
26:45
people should have the right to use money and transact in a
26:50
society, even if I don't like them.
26:51
Now, obviously you can, you can straw man that.
26:55
And you could say like, well, what about this bad case?
26:57
And what about that bad case? And it's just like a blanket,
27:00
blanket idea. It's like, well, you know, we
27:03
all have rights and, yeah, if you do something bad in society,
27:08
then you do violate those rights.
27:09
But just saying mean words to me doesn't really mean in my mind
27:15
that I should take away your rights.
27:17
But again, maybe that's like the libertarian, you know, liberty,
27:21
freedom, equality for all. But I don't know.
27:25
Anyways, I was just kind of thinking, thinking out loud
27:29
here. What's huckster's rule anyways,
27:34
guys, I I am going to the most hated beat Bitcoin rally in
27:38
history is coming. I honestly I kind of agree with
27:41
that. I actually I really hope that
27:45
that is the case and Ralph, I think this is a good good point.
27:48
This just accelerates US buying Bitcoin.
27:50
Honestly, that that is one of the things that I was kind of
27:54
thinking again, what have we seen since the US announced that
27:57
they wanted to buy Bitcoin? Or rather, I mean, they never
28:00
said buy Bitcoin, but announced A strategic Bitcoin reserve.
28:04
Is that now we've seen every other country basically take
28:10
that statement seriously. And if we don't get our act
28:15
together in the US and we are the ones that started the
28:17
dominoes to fall and other countries actively start buying
28:21
Bitcoin or accumulating Bitcoin. Allah, what we are seeing from
28:25
this Fox News report that Iran now has over 100,000 coins.
28:30
Like bro, that's going to be a, a generational fumble to say the
28:35
least, and absolutely generational fumble.
28:37
Now there was a new bill that was dropped yesterday.
28:41
It was the ARMAI, forget what it stands for, but it was a
28:45
reintroduction of Nick Begich's bill.
28:48
Let me, I'll pull that up real quick for you guys where it,
28:53
it's basically the Bitcoin Act again, just under a new name.
28:58
So here's a tweet. Congressman Nick Begich.
29:01
America's Reserves balances sheet is a critical component of
29:04
our nation's insurance policy, bolstering our currency and
29:07
providing assurance during times of uncertainty.
29:10
Over time, the prevailing sentiment as to what constitutes
29:13
A durable store of value can shift, and as such, it is
29:15
important for us to recognize this fact and provide the
29:17
flexibility needed to broaden America's portfolio of Reserves.
29:21
Act. So the American Reserve
29:23
Modernization Act, or the ARMA ensures digital assets in the
29:28
possession of the federal government will be consolidated
29:30
across government and protected as a reserve asset for future
29:34
generations, protecting these assets from the whims of
29:36
Congress or future administration.
29:38
So he is reintroducing, I believe this is basically a, you
29:44
know, a, a rebranding of the Bitcoin act where they acquire a
29:49
million Bitcoin over five years and they hold it for 20.
29:53
Now what is interesting though, is that apparently 21 Co
29:59
sponsors fitting right, 21 Co sponsors for today's bipartisan
30:04
reintroduction. Oh, sorry, guys, forgive me,
30:08
forgive me, I I didn't show you guys.
30:09
So 21 original Co sponsors for today's bipartisan here's here's
30:15
that. So I'm pretty sure this is
30:18
basically a rebrand of the Bitcoin Act, which is buy a
30:22
million Bitcoin over five years, hold it for 20 years.
30:25
But apparently now there's 21 bipartisan Co sponsors.
30:28
So as this was saying, if they are getting their, you know,
30:37
their stuff together here, it would 100% or rather should 100%
30:43
accelerate the US buying Bitcoin.
30:45
Now obviously they have put in that self limitation of budget
30:50
neutral because they don't want to use taxpayer dollars to buy
30:55
Bitcoin. So that's obviously less the
30:59
self limiting form of this. But Rep will not lose midterms.
31:03
Where did you get that evidence? It's, it's not necessarily an
31:07
evidence. It's just Trump has like the
31:09
lowest rating, like lower ratings than George Bush after
31:13
losing, you know, 2 wars. Like his ratings are pretty bad.
31:17
Collectively, they're still high amongst the kind of boomer MAGA
31:21
perspective. But this this Iran war is very
31:25
unfavorable. And so the kind of trajectory is
31:30
that the Republicans, or rather the speculation is that the
31:33
Republicans might not win the midterms.
31:35
They might actually lose the midterms.
31:36
And there's actually, you know, very big historical precedent
31:40
that usually, whatever the president's ruling party is in
31:45
the midterm following, they usually goes to the opposite
31:50
side. Now, I am a, you know, political
31:52
noob here, but from all the sentiment I'm getting, it seems
31:55
like the Dems might win the midterms.
31:58
Now, obviously, that is still up for debate, but since the Iran
32:02
war, it's been very unfavorable and people are not that happy
32:06
about it. But anyways, yeah, yeah, dude,
32:13
apparently we all forgot this lesson after middle school.
32:16
ANYWAYS, going further for the rest of the show, I'm going to
32:21
play I, I don't know if you guys saw that, that Mark Cuban clip
32:24
that was going around. Apparently he's saying Bitcoin
32:28
has lost a plot. I think Mark Cuban's lost a
32:31
plot. I, I think we've talked about
32:33
Mark Cuban on the show so much and I know we always do this and
32:36
you guys always say like, who cares what this guy says about
32:38
Bitcoin? When we usually play stuff like
32:40
this, it's really because it's not just about the person.
32:43
It's about like this is probably what a lot of people think and
32:47
therefore our job is bitcoiners just to kind of play this and
32:50
then give us give our perspective on it.
32:52
Now, obviously I'm probably not the best spokesperson for this,
32:56
but hey, whatever I'm here, I'm the I look, I'm the one doing it
33:01
all right. If you think I suck, man, make a
33:05
show, send me the link and I will watch it.
33:07
But we're we're the only ones doing it.
33:10
OK, and then in the news, guys, dude, there's a crazy, crazy
33:17
wait, yeah, that is a crazy shit coin story guys.
33:21
And reading this story, it just it goes to show why we're
33:27
Bitcoiners in the 1st place. Like This is why you don't shit
33:31
coin. It's absolutely insane.
33:33
And then to wrap up the show, it's Bitcoin Pizza day, guys.
33:37
So, you know, a little cultural moment here.
33:39
It's a holiday for us Bitcoiners.
33:41
So that's today's layout of the show.
33:43
Quick commercial break and I'll be right back.
33:48
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36:01
All right, the current Bitcoin price is hold on man, what a
36:07
rough what a rough Friday. I'm so dude, thank God it's
36:10
Friday today to tell you the truth.
36:13
All right, the current Bitcoin price is 76,920.
36:18
The discount from all time high is 39%.
36:21
The market cap is currently holding at $1.54 trillion and
36:27
the block height is 950,543. OK, so look, wow, I am a fan of
36:38
the Dallas Mavericks. I'm not the biggest fan of Mark
36:43
Cuban, though. I from what I remember, I'm not
36:45
the biggest sports guy, but I think he, I think he sold a big,
36:49
big share of the Mavs. But, you know, even though I do
36:53
like him a little bit because I like The Mavericks, you know, I
36:57
was living in Texas for a little while, fell in love with The
37:00
Mavericks, even though I don't really care about basketball
37:03
that much. But hey, that it was, you know,
37:05
that if I have a basketball team, it's the Mavs.
37:06
All right, So I'm conflicted on this one, but we got a recent
37:12
clip of Mark Cuban, and Mark Cuban has like a very
37:16
interesting story in regards to Bitcoin.
37:19
You know, for a while he was one of Bitcoin's biggest hater, and
37:23
then it seemed like in 2024 at 100K, he came out as like a
37:27
bull. And now we're in a bear market
37:31
and he's saying the most idiotic things about Bitcoin.
37:34
Now, am I surprised? You know what?
37:36
What is interesting here is obvious.
37:40
Like he's a billionaire and I'm not anywhere close to being a
37:44
billionaire, right? I'm just a bitcoiner and I look
37:47
at the stuff he says in regards to Bitcoin and man, it just,
37:54
it's ridiculous, OK, But hey, he's a billionaire.
37:57
So his words, you know, carry a little more weight than someone
38:00
with 42 IQ on YouTube. But anyway, I'm just going to
38:03
play the clip for you and then I'll I'll bring up a little bit
38:06
of receipts of things he's said in the past.
38:08
So here's the first one. Actually, here's the one from
38:11
yesterday that was going viral. And this might get some people
38:15
upset. I think Bitcoin has lost the
38:17
plot. And when I started buying
38:20
Bitcoin and I've sold all of it, except not all of it, most of
38:24
it, it was because when all the shit hit the fan with the Iran
38:30
war and you know, Bitcoin was always the best alternative to
38:34
Fiat currency losing its value. And I always thought it was a
38:38
better version of gold than gold.
38:40
Well, gold just blew up and went, you know, the $5000
38:43
Bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar
38:46
dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up, you know, because if
38:49
it's priced in dollars, it was cheaper.
38:51
So anybody from around the world could go pay in.
38:53
And it just didn't do that. Not such a hedge.
38:55
No, it's not, not the hedge that I expected to be.
38:58
And that was really disappointing.
39:00
And so I'd, I'd say I'm more disappointed in Bitcoin, not as
39:03
disappointed in Ethereum and the rest, you know, the, the token
39:08
stuff, the meme coins garbage. Yeah luck, luck.
39:17
All right, I know I'm like, you know, Bitcoin absolutist over
39:21
here, I'm a Bitcoin maxi, but bro, if you say bitcoins lost a
39:27
plot and then you end your rant with I'm more bullish on
39:34
Ethereum and tokenizing all the things like NFTS or whatever
39:37
garbage is like bro, what are we talking about?
39:41
Like what are you talking about now?
39:43
Obviously I I, I'm I gotta troll it.
39:45
You guys know me. I if you if you know me in real
39:50
life, I I everything I do is a troll.
39:52
I, you know, I joke about everything and then I, I have to
39:55
be like, look seriously. All right, serious take my
40:00
serious take on this is. The framing here is Bitcoin lost
40:05
the plot. It's not a good hedge.
40:07
And it what's interesting in his statement is he's hinging, at
40:12
least from what it sounds like, he's hinging his view on how
40:16
Bitcoin has performed since the war.
40:19
And that was what, end of February?
40:23
If you look at the numbers, Bitcoin has been performing the
40:25
best since the war started. But then he goes in and he says,
40:30
well, in 2025, Bitcoin gold went to $5000 and Bitcoin, you know,
40:36
only went to 1:26. And you're like, OK, so like
40:39
what? What is the time frame that
40:41
we're talking about here? Are you talking about Bitcoin
40:43
underperforming gold in 2025? Or are we talking about how
40:47
Bitcoin has reacted since the war this year in 2026, in
40:51
February? Because those are two totally
40:54
different time frames. And like, yeah, I, I agree with
40:57
the Bitcoin underperforming in 2025 against gold, Like gold
41:01
went parabolic and we were sitting here like, OK, it's
41:03
going to be Bitcoin's turn soon. It's got to be Bitcoin's turn
41:06
soon. And it, it didn't play out.
41:08
But as I've been covering on the show, Bitcoin has been extremely
41:14
resilient since the start of the war, which has very clearly
41:17
surprised me. I thought Bitcoin was going to
41:20
dump even more when this war started.
41:21
In fact, I kind of looked at it this morning.
41:24
Bitcoin is still outperforming everything else even with this
41:27
pull back. It's still outperforming the S&P
41:29
500. It's still outperforming gold.
41:32
So like what? Which time frame are we talking
41:34
about like that? That statement sounds
41:35
intelligent until you actually look at the numbers.
41:37
Bitcoin is the best performing thing since the war started, or
41:41
at least the second part of the war.
41:43
You know, I didn't I didn't really go back to the 12 day war
41:47
of last year. I just kind of looked at this
41:50
year from the start of the war and Bitcoin is still
41:52
outperforming. Maybe it's not by that much.
41:53
Yeah, Bitcoin isn't exploding right now, but it's it's the
41:57
best performing thing since the war started.
41:59
So that statement in itself is like, what are you talking
42:03
about? And then you're going to show
42:05
Ethereum and all the other hot garbage.
42:07
Like, bro, what are we talking about here?
42:09
Like this makes no sense. But you know, I do have one
42:13
classic. If you've been around for a
42:14
while, a modern classic is, you know, five years ago, Mark Cuban
42:19
doing the Bitcoin has no real intrinsic value.
42:23
I'd rather have bananas. I can eat bananas.
42:25
Like you don't need Bitcoin. You can create a blockchain on
42:29
your own now. So like, I'd rather have Bitcoin
42:31
than bananas. Like what are we talking about,
42:33
dude? Like, you know, I, I hate to say
42:37
this because he's got more money than me and and he's, you know,
42:41
he's got way more influence than me, but sometimes it really puts
42:47
a wrench in the idea that the smartest people are the richest
42:50
people. You know what I'm saying?
42:53
And I'm not doing any myself any favors here.
42:55
OK, I'm just, I'm a I'm a YouTube and I'm just talking
42:59
shit. All right.
43:00
But I do want to play you one more video.
43:03
It is Friday, so we'll have a little fun.
43:05
Here it is. It's a holiday Bitcoin pizza
43:07
day. So how about this edit by Alexis
43:12
Nakamoto with Mark Cuban and it is mashed together with Michael
43:19
Saylor. So we have a 2024 take of Mark
43:24
Cuban at 100K. We have his new 2026 take on
43:28
Bitcoin at, you know, 70K. We'll we'll go 60K.
43:32
And then we have sailors, you know, Evergreen take on what is
43:37
going on. This is a great, great clip.
43:40
Bitcoin is become a store value. It's, you know, marketed that
43:44
way and has been marketed for the last, you know, 15 years or
43:48
whatever it is. And it's gotten to a point of
43:50
acceptance just like way, way, way back when gold got to a
43:54
point of acceptance as an alternative for legal currency
43:57
or is a foundation behind legal currency.
43:59
So right now the price is near $100,000.
44:02
That means a lot more people are buying it than selling it.
44:05
You're not going to carry around that bar of gold, but you can
44:07
carry around, you know, your phone as an example that has
44:11
Bitcoin on it. And if you need to, to transfer
44:14
value to somebody else, it's easier to do it right now,
44:17
particularly if you're 21 with Bitcoin than it is with gold.
44:21
This might get some people upset.
44:23
I think Bitcoin has lost the plot.
44:26
And when I started buying Bitcoin and I've sold all of it,
44:30
except not all of it, most of it, it was because when all the
44:34
shit hit the fan with the Iran war and you know, Bitcoin was
44:39
always the best alternative to Fiat currency losing its value.
44:44
And I always thought it was a better version of gold.
44:46
If you're just selling it in order to trade into another
44:50
financial asset, right, that's you're a fool.
44:53
Selling that to buy something which is, which has got more
44:58
exposure to Fiat debasement or to complexity or, or or other
45:03
types of risk or shorter term is kind of just, you know, you had
45:08
the thing solved and you unsolved the thing.
45:11
The conclusion you come to us. They just don't understand it.
45:14
They, they don't, they literally don't understand what they're
45:17
doing and they don't understand what it is.
45:20
As soon as you understand what it is, you're just going to
45:22
sweep all your excess monetary energy, your you know, your
45:26
savings account into this and huddle forever.
45:33
Yeah, it's so much better when it's a billionaire rebuffing a
45:36
billionaire. That shit just slapped way
45:39
harder. Oh man.
45:41
Hey, shouts out here. Let me let me show you guys this
45:44
Twitter account cuz shouts out to this guy.
45:47
It's almost like a meme Friday right.
45:48
That was kind of a meme. Alexis Nakamoto on Twitter.
45:54
Great. That was a great edit Needs a
45:56
little more love, but man need need we say more?
46:01
Need we say more All right, another commercial break and
46:03
then we're going to go literally what might be the most insane
46:07
shit coin story I've heard in a long time.
46:09
It's really like a throwback in in the old days we used to do
46:12
the you know, the fail at the end where we would recover shit
46:16
coin fails. Man, this one is absolutely
46:20
insane. Like it if this wasn't an
46:24
official report coming out from the FBI like you wouldn't
46:29
believe this, OK, You would not believe what this is.
46:33
It's insane. Another another data point on
46:37
why just Bitcoin never shit coin not even once.
46:42
OK, so I'll be right back. I want to give a shout out to
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48:37
out guys. This is when you're like, This
48:42
is why we're bitcoiners. OK, so here's on the justice.gov
48:49
from the United States Attorney's Office, District of
48:52
Massachusetts. So check out this.
48:55
Here's the headline. 18 individuals and entities charge
48:58
an international operation targeting widespread fraud and
49:02
manipulation in the cryptocurrency markets.
49:04
First ever criminal charges against financial services firm
49:07
for market manipulation and wash trading in the cryptocurrency
49:10
industry. So you know, you read this
49:15
headline, you're like, OK, cool. You know, like whatever you got
49:18
some fraudsters and some wash traders like yeah, we know
49:21
that's happening in the shit coin space.
49:23
Like cool. Finally, you guys are doing your
49:25
job Well, check out this this tweet here, which really brought
49:29
my attention to this Evan Lutheran.
49:33
He goes the FBI created a fake cryptocurrency, listed it on uni
49:38
swap, hired market makers to pump it, then arrested everyone
49:42
who said yes This is the craziest law enforcement
49:46
operation in crypto history. Oh man.
49:49
So the FBI bill an actual ERC 20 token on Ethereum called next
49:54
fund AIA 100 billion tokens a lot a professional website white
49:58
papers promising quote passive income through AI powered
50:01
investing. It looked exactly like every
50:04
other shit coin project. Because that was the point.
50:08
Then undercover agents point posted as the founding team then
50:12
reached out to professional market making firms and said,
50:14
quote we need you to fake our trading volume.
50:17
And every single firm said yes. Here's what they recorded.
50:21
Got bit a firm run by a 26 year old Russian who publicly bragged
50:25
in 2019 that he built a business faking trading volume.
50:29
His team kept internal spreadsheets with columns
50:32
literally labeled fake volume verse Market Volume.
50:36
And then when asked how fast they can pump next fund AI
50:38
volume to 1,000,000 per day, they said six hours and it will
50:42
cost you about 200 bucks, $200 to fake $1 million in trade in
50:47
daily trading volume. My trade run by a guy who called
50:51
himself the mastermind. He explained the exact
50:54
psychology of the scam on camera quote.
50:57
We make the chart look like a really nice roller coaster ride.
51:00
That's where people jump in. We have to make them lose money
51:04
in order to make profits. He sat down a recorded FBI video
51:09
call. Oh man, shit coiners are so
51:12
dumb. This is why never shit coin
51:14
children all right. CLS Global, a Dubai based firm.
51:18
Their bots generated 98% of net funds AI total trading volume.
51:22
When the FBI asked if they could sink fake volume spikes with
51:25
fake news announcement, they said absolutely.
51:29
ZM quat bots executing 10 to 20 trades per minute through dozens
51:33
of wallets to look organic. All of them knew it was fraud,
51:37
all of them did it anyway, and all of it was recorded.
51:43
And the clients are even worse. Say Tama, a meme coin that hit
51:47
$7.5 billion market cap. The founders coordinated buys
51:51
through private Telegram chat, sent pump it memes while
51:54
manipulating the price, then dumped on retail investors. 7.5
51:59
billion built entirely on fake volume.
52:02
Every penny of real money came from retail investors who
52:04
thought the momentum was organic.
52:06
Man, dude, hold on. Put a put a bit in it.
52:09
And dude, it's reminding me of the 2017 days when I found
52:15
Bitcoin and you know, had a a short stint of shit coining And
52:21
we, we literally were like we were doing it seriously.
52:24
But me and a couple of friends would joke about it now like you
52:29
could literally throw money at anything in those days in the
52:32
whole, you know, shit coin bull market of 2017.
52:37
And the one thing that you would literally do is you, you like
52:40
find a new shit coin. And if they had a good website,
52:43
you're like, yo, this, this shit's going to pump so hard.
52:46
And now, you know, after being burned and putting my head on
52:50
the stove and realizing that all of the market, all of the shit
52:54
coin markets are literally exactly what this thread is is
52:58
showing you in hindsight, it is actually kind of crazy.
53:02
Just like how dumb I was when I first started and and how
53:05
obvious it is now. And hence why we are Bitcoin
53:09
maxes and hence why we say dude never shit coin once because
53:13
this is literally every single shit coin.
53:15
OK, this is all of them. OK, anyways, where was I?
53:21
Where was I-1 founder left side Tama and started robo enu used
53:25
got bid again, another launch VZZN same playbook.
53:28
Then Lillian. Lillian finance founder claimed
53:31
to be a defense contractor who addressed Congress marketed the
53:35
token as funding Children's Hospital bro that's so bad.
53:39
Pocketed everything when the FBI shut it down they seized 2125
53:43
million in one day and 18 people indicted across the USUK and
53:46
Portugal. The CL gap it was arrested in
53:49
Portugal and extradited sentenced to 8 months plus $23
53:52
million forfeiture. But here's the part that broke
53:55
my brain. Real people bought Next Fund AI.
53:58
The FBI fake token with 0 utility, 0 real developers
54:03
created solely to catch criminals attracted real retail
54:07
investors because the fake volume made the chart look
54:10
bullish. When the FBI pulled the
54:12
liquidity to end the operation. Real people lost money on a
54:17
government issued shit shake on the FBI.
54:21
Had to set up a restitution portal to pay them back.
54:24
And it gets worse. Within 24 hours of the DOJ
54:28
announcing the sting, someone cloned the FBI exact smart
54:31
contract, launched A copycat token, rode the viral momentum,
54:35
and made $127.00 in a single day.
54:37
Insane dude. Using the exact same
54:39
manipulation tactics the FBI just erased arrested eighteen
54:43
people for. Then in 2026 the FBI did it
54:48
again, a new token called Lexobit. 10 more arrests,
54:52
including operators extradited from Singapore.
54:55
IRS forensics show that in one firm's trading 1209 out of 1221
55:02
consecutive transactions went straight back to wallets.
55:04
The firm control with 99% circular.
55:07
The FBI proved what everyone in crypto suspected.
55:11
The volume is fake. The charts are painted, the
55:13
momentum is manufactured and every time you buy a token
55:17
because the chart looks bullish, you might be the exit liquidity.
55:21
Oh man, dude, man, man, guys, it's it's insane, man, it's it's
55:36
truly truly insane. FBI creates a shit calling to
55:42
catch criminals. They catch some criminals, but
55:46
at the same time, real people lose money because they charge
55:50
bullish because the scammers did their job to make the chart look
55:53
bullish and it worked so good the first time they did it
55:57
again. Now, obviously, like the real
56:03
take away here is like This is why we always say, you know,
56:07
like I'll step back about I I've had a lot of friends and
56:11
obviously like it's my job everyday to talk about Bitcoin,
56:14
to be bullish Bitcoin, to make Bitcoin propaganda.
56:18
And in the early days of me becoming a Bitcoiner, I would do
56:22
the hardest show to my friends. I'm like, no, you don't get it.
56:26
You need a you need to buy Bitcoin now, you know, 21
56:28
million like and the Fed and you know, like it's going up
56:31
forever. You know, I would do all of
56:33
those things and I did that for, I don't even know, man, like 7-8
56:39
years, right? And now where I currently am.
56:44
Oh, and then at the time when I would do that, you know, my
56:46
friends would be like, well, but what about this shit?
56:48
Can I be like, no, you're an idiot.
56:50
You just just buy Bitcoin like you're going to get scammed.
56:55
And now like, you know, I talked to a friend and I'm I'm less
56:58
like push you out. I'm like, no, I like just buy
57:00
Bitcoin. Bitcoin's the only thing you do.
57:02
And then they'll be like, oh, what about this shit coin?
57:04
I'm like, look, you might make some money.
57:06
You'll probably lose money. I would just buy Bitcoin.
57:09
But like, do what you want to do with your money.
57:11
I'm not going to tell you like I'm not going to fight you If
57:13
you, if you want to go buy fucking ether, Like if Mark
57:17
Cuban wants to buy Etherium, it's like cool, man, like fine,
57:22
have fun. Go gamble in the casino.
57:24
You know, everyone loves to gamble a little bit.
57:27
You know, a ripple tard comes up.
57:28
It's like XR PS the future, bro, they just partner with the bank
57:31
bro. It's going to dethrone Bitcoin.
57:32
It's like cool story bro, like whatever.
57:35
I I don't have time to argue with you.
57:38
But now we have so much data. There is so many cases that are
57:44
just like this that just constantly prove our point that
57:48
the only real thing in this space is Bitcoin and the entire
57:54
crypto market and further, the entire quote digital asset
57:58
market is just one giant grist. It's just one giant scam and
58:05
it's all hot garbage. None of it is real.
58:09
It is all trash. The only thing in this space
58:12
that is real is Bitcoin. Everything else is trash.
58:19
Everything else is literally what this thread just completely
58:23
laid out the playbook for. That's how they all work.
58:27
We all know this. Do we all know this to be true?
58:31
But even when you say that to someone, they do know.
58:33
But my shit coin is special. My shit coin is different.
58:37
My shit coin has, you know, whatever the attributes that are
58:41
really going to be the next Bitcoin bro.
58:43
And you're just like, we are really, really living in an
58:49
eternal September like we are. We really don't learn at all.
58:54
Like we really, we really just love to hurt ourselves.
59:02
It's just crazy that we can constantly show this.
59:05
And also low key kind of crazy that it's like an official
59:09
government agency out of here creating shit coin scams.
59:12
But like, hey, we're doing it to catch the criminals.
59:16
Just buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, take it into self custody.
59:20
And I mean, look, I'm sure people can use the same kind of,
59:24
well, what that they're probably doing the same thing to Bitcoin
59:27
bro. And it's like, yeah, there is
59:28
probably some firms trying to watch trade Bitcoin.
59:31
There are some firms that are trying to manipulate the price.
59:34
But as we know, Bitcoin is a global market and enough, enough
59:38
of us actually hold Bitcoin. We actually know what Bitcoin
59:41
is, that eventually all that stuff really doesn't matter, you
59:47
know? Do you think that all markets
59:49
aren't manipulated? You think that where people can
59:52
make money, they don't try to bend the rules a little bit?
59:55
That's just how it goes. That's just human nature.
59:57
But the beauty of Bitcoin is because of the way that it's set
1:00:02
up, it's able to box in human greed.
1:00:09
Like, yeah, you can be super greedy, you know, you can re
1:00:11
hypothecate your Bitcoin holdings, but at A at a certain
1:00:14
point, like the music's going to stop and the market's going to
1:00:18
find out whether you actually do or do not hold the Bitcoin.
1:00:22
We all saw this happen with FTX. We are still dealing with the
1:00:25
FTX saga. But that's the beauty of
1:00:28
Bitcoin. We know what it is.
1:00:32
Bitcoin is the only thing that is real in the entire quote
1:00:36
digital assets market. Now you can I guess talk about,
1:00:39
you know, the paper derivatives and ETF and like Bitcoin
1:00:45
treasury balance or Bitcoin treasury plays.
1:00:50
Now are they is necessarily shit coins?
1:00:53
I mean, by strict definitions, no, but it's not spot Bitcoin.
1:01:05
My shit coin is special. Yeah, bro.
1:01:08
Yours is yours is the special one, man.
1:01:11
Yeah, bro. You got it.
1:01:14
You got it, man. Yours is yours is special, bro.
1:01:19
Yeah. I like this.
1:01:19
Bitcoin teaches different lessons of different people
1:01:22
along every part of the Bitcoin journey. 100 percent, 100%.
1:01:27
But man, I OK, look, I'm going to stop talking about this, but
1:01:31
I thought that story was insane. Like I'm like, bro, what?
1:01:37
One, just the setup is crazy. 2 the the outcome is crazy and
1:01:46
three, just, you know, the, the blueprint for how shit coin
1:01:50
works is, you know, there is a lesson in there.
1:01:52
There is a lesson in there. OK guys, so it's Friday.
1:01:56
It's a holiday. We're going to I'll, I'll recap
1:01:59
what the holiday is. And then I, I do have a couple
1:02:01
of funnies here. OK, I got a couple of funnies
1:02:04
here. Yeah, I'll be right back.
1:02:09
I want to give a shout out to our partner Hive Digital
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All righty then guys. So a happy Bitcoin pizza day.
1:03:54
It's a holiday happy Bitcoin pizza day.
1:03:57
So if you are so inclined, maybe get yourself a slice of pizza
1:04:02
today for lunch. You know, it's, it's well under
1:04:06
that $28.00, you know, $28.00 lunch.
1:04:10
I don't know what a slice of pizza goes for nowadays, but I
1:04:13
don't know, 5 bucks, something like that, maybe less, I don't
1:04:16
know. But it's a holiday Bitcoin pizza
1:04:18
day. There's a lot of holidays in
1:04:20
Bitcoin. All right, There's a lot of
1:04:22
monumental moments. And of all of them, well, I was
1:04:29
going to say this one might be the most important.
1:04:32
It's up there. It's up there for one of the
1:04:34
best 1. So if you're newer to Bitcoin
1:04:36
and maybe this is your first pizza day and you want to go get
1:04:39
some pizza to celebrate, well, on this day 16 years ago, Lazlo,
1:04:45
I don't I dude, I Hynix purchased 2 pizzas for 10,000
1:04:51
Bitcoin. What's 10,000 at today's price?
1:04:55
Is that like $770 million or something?
1:04:59
Oh yeah, here we go. 775 mil. Damn.
1:05:02
OK, but this is the first recorded Bitcoin payment in
1:05:06
history. And of course, turn the
1:05:09
theoretical computer experiment into money with real tangible
1:05:13
value. That's always one of the biggest
1:05:16
contentions in Bitcoin. It's like, oh, well, if it's
1:05:18
money, how come I can't buy anything with it?
1:05:20
Well, you know, 16 years ago on this day, it was proven that in
1:05:25
fact it is money. Now for many people, they
1:05:29
probably don't understand kind of how the story happened.
1:05:32
You know, Laszlo put it on the Bitcoin Talk forum and he
1:05:35
basically said that you can say I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a
1:05:38
couple of pizzas, like maybe two large pizzas so I can have some
1:05:43
leftover. And basically he said like,
1:05:46
look, obviously he didn't pay the pizza company for the pizzas
1:05:54
directly with the Bitcoin. But as you can see here guys, I
1:05:58
just think it would be interesting if I could say that
1:05:59
I paid for a pizza in bitcoins. That was the following day.
1:06:04
And then you can see here on May 22nd of 2010 says I just want to
1:06:09
report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for
1:06:13
pizza. And here's the pizza with his
1:06:16
family I had never seen. Is that AI?
1:06:23
Don't know what's on that paper. Anyways, got some Papa John's
1:06:33
looks like it's a cheese. And is that like olives?
1:06:38
One with olives? Don't like olives on my pizza.
1:06:42
But anyways, first successful Bitcoin payment in the world.
1:06:51
Now, what is probably more interesting here is that, you
1:06:56
know, Laszlo paid someone 10,000 Bitcoin and then they sent the
1:07:03
pizza to his house. So, yeah, there's kind of like a
1:07:06
middle man. But we usually on this day we
1:07:11
celebrate Lazlo, right for spending 10,000 Bitcoin for two
1:07:16
large pizzas now worth $775 million.
1:07:21
But a few years ago one of my friends noted that like the real
1:07:24
hero here is the guy that wanted the Bitcoin and received the
1:07:29
Bitcoin. Now I do have a tweet on this,
1:07:31
but I don't know if I really want to dox him, but I'll say
1:07:36
his first name. So we always give Laszlo the
1:07:40
credit and, and credit where credit is due, obviously.
1:07:44
Absolute legend. I'm sure.
1:07:46
Now he looks back at those Pete, those bitcoins, he's like, man,
1:07:49
yeah, I wish I had them. But let's just all say that I
1:07:52
don't think Laszlo is hurting for lack of Bitcoin.
1:07:56
OK? But the real problem, I mean,
1:07:59
Laszlo's a hero in this whole thing, but the unsung hero of
1:08:03
this whole thing is the guy that received the 10,000 Bitcoin and
1:08:08
bought the pizza because it proved 2 things here.
1:08:12
One, that you can use Bitcoin to get real world things, you know,
1:08:16
the first Bitcoin payment in the world.
1:08:18
But two, that people would want Bitcoin.
1:08:21
He's like, yeah, I will spend my dollars for this pizza because I
1:08:26
want to receive the 10,000 Bitcoin.
1:08:29
Now again, in a market, it's not just the person that wants to
1:08:35
sell the thing, you know, or, or the person that wants to buy the
1:08:38
thing. It's also the person that wants
1:08:40
to sell the thing with that money.
1:08:44
It's hey, I have this money, I want to buy your product.
1:08:48
And then the person being like, yeah, I want your money and I
1:08:51
will sell you this thing for that money.
1:08:54
It takes 2 to tango. OK?
1:08:56
It takes 2 to tango. Obviously, in hindsight, he
1:09:02
realized how big of a moment this is from all accounts.
1:09:05
He didn't even think about too much.
1:09:07
He's just like, yeah, whatever. I want that, that, that Bitcoin
1:09:11
and yeah, if all I got to do is send, you know, a couple of
1:09:15
pizzas to Laszlo to get 10,000 Bitcoin.
1:09:19
Awesome now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:09:24
This is true. This is true.
1:09:27
He started, wasn't he like the inventor of GPU mining like that
1:09:33
10,000 at the time probably wasn't a lot and in hindsight,
1:09:38
he's probably doing pretty good. All right, but it's not just
1:09:43
Laszlo for technically selling the Bitcoin for dollars or, you
1:09:47
know, buying something, buying the pizzas in this story.
1:09:53
It's the guy that received the Bitcoin that's probably the real
1:09:57
MVP. And now who knows what he did
1:09:59
with that Bitcoin. I'm sure maybe he sold it.
1:10:02
You know, it literally had like no price 2010 then and who
1:10:07
knows? He probably sold it along the
1:10:08
way. But if he was able to hold that
1:10:10
Bitcoin, that would have been a good run.
1:10:14
You know, 0 to $775,000,000 in today's price.
1:10:19
Great run, great run. But I said I had a funny and you
1:10:24
guys know if you've been around for a while, how much I'd love
1:10:27
the Bugle. The boys over at the Bugle, they
1:10:30
make me laugh. Well, shout out to Rich Richard
1:10:34
Greaser. I saw this tweet right before I
1:10:37
went live and I'm like, yo, I gotta add this, I gotta add this
1:10:40
for Bitcoin pizza day. And he goes Bitcoin pizza day.
1:10:42
Maybe one of the hardest days for plebs to navigate.
1:10:46
It breaks so many purity tests. One it involves selling Bitcoin
1:10:50
for shit coins AKA a pizza. 2 it involves carbs and seed oils. 3
1:10:57
it involves celebrating shit clinic.
1:11:00
Happy Bitcoin pizza day to those who want to enjoy life despite
1:11:05
all the purity tests. Oh man I love that.
1:11:12
That was a good one Made me laugh.
1:11:14
Made me laugh. All right, guys.
1:11:20
Well, that's all I got for you, man.
1:11:22
I am AI know it's a little shorter show than usual, but I'm
1:11:27
struggling over here. I can barely think today.
1:11:30
I I think I'm getting over this cold.
1:11:33
I actually felt better this morning than I thought I was
1:11:37
going to, but as you can tell, my voice is a little weird.
1:11:41
I am. My brain's barely working right
1:11:43
now. I'm going to go take a nap, eat
1:11:46
some food, recover over the weekend.
1:11:48
Hopefully I don't have the hentai virus or whatever it's
1:11:53
called and I'm good on Monday. Wait, sorry, it's the hentai
1:11:59
virus. Anyways, update, update.
1:12:06
Huge breaking, big update. No, it's not.
1:12:11
I did talk to Luke and I think we're going to get him on.
1:12:13
Actually, let me double check my schedule.
1:12:16
I'm going to do this live. I should have.
1:12:18
I should have probably done this this morning when I told him.
1:12:22
Let me see, Do I have anyone on Monday?
1:12:27
OK, no. All right.
1:12:30
So update, update, update. Yeah, I know, I know.
1:12:35
I'm just trolling. I'm, I'm just trolling, dude.
1:12:38
I don't, I don't actually think I have, I don't actually even
1:12:41
believe in it. OK?
1:12:42
I'm just trolling. But yeah.
1:12:45
So Luke on Monday, I don't know if he's going to show up for the
1:12:48
whole part of the show, but we're we're going to give you a,
1:12:52
you know, if you if you really, if you've been thinking that
1:12:54
maybe I've been bearish, you know, you're sick of Nico being
1:12:59
a bear. I'm going to bring my Australian
1:13:02
friend on the show on Monday and we're going to get so stupidly
1:13:05
bullish. You guys are going to think we
1:13:07
are idiots. I've already heard the the kind
1:13:10
of short spiel of this Monday. Hope I'm coming in strong.
1:13:17
I'm bringing Luke on. We're going to get stupidly
1:13:20
bullish. OK, we're going to get bull
1:13:22
tarted on Monday. All right, anyways, guys, have a
1:13:27
good weekend. I hope you guys don't get sick
1:13:30
like I did. I hope you guys have a good
1:13:33
weekend. Eat some pizza later, stack some
1:13:37
Bitcoin. This is the way.
1:13:40
I'll catch you guys on Monday. Peace out.
1:13:43
Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
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Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable financial
1:13:50
independence.