Knots, Treasuries & Turmoil

Music. Welcome in to This Week in Bitcoin, episode 61.

My name is Chris, chrislas.com and jupiterbroadcasting.com. Well, this week, we really started to see Bitcoin not's adoption gain a lot of momentum. And with all the talk of price and Bitcoin treasury companies and daily supply limits and sovereign reserves, it's just absolutely fascinating to me that under the surface of Bitcoin, there is this massive shift taking place and this raging debate, while the Wall Street folks just happily try to ape into Bitcoin as fast as possible.

And when I started tracking Bitcoin Noughts usage on this show just a few weeks ago, it was around 4%. Well, today, as I record, it's nearly 12% and rising. There's somewhere, these are a little hard to measure, but there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,854 Bitcoin Noughts nodes, roughly 3,000 nodes out there, which means Bitcoin Noughts now powers nearly one in eight public nodes.

This is a big, big jump. And one of the things I said we should watch for the reaction from the Bitcoin core policy changes recently is Nots adoption. And boy, it is Nots. Nots is Nots. So I've been digging into the community dialogue, trying to get to the bottom of what this is really about. Why is there a sudden surge in Nots deployment? And honestly, some migration away from Bitcoin core too, although not all of it's a net loss to core.

And when looking around, I definitely found some common sentiment. One user on X said, quote, A lot of people like myself had wanted to run a node for years, but never made the time to actually start. Core threatening a significant portion of my net worth with their out-of-touch updates was the incentive I needed to start running my own node. This is where 900 plus users came from.

And I do think there's an element of this. There's new net users that are setting up a node for the first time because of these changes, and they're selecting Bitcoin knots. Start9, who makes one of the more popular node server platforms, says that, quote, Our numbers are off the charts. Based on customer inquiries and sales figure, I would be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised, they said, if the number of very real Noughts nodes doubles in the next one to two months. And then they add.

Start9 adds, the latest version of Bitcoin Noughts released on March 19th has over 4,000 downloads from our marketplace. Now, you've got to assume some testing and reinstalls due to mistakes. It wouldn't surprise if the large majority of newly observed knots nodes are running on start OS. Of course, there's Umbral as well. And they finish by saying, I think the knots node count is about to explode because 25% of the reachable nodes on the network runs start OS over Tor.

25% all day long. Start nine's been hearing, quote, core is out of touch, not listening to what node runners want. I'm switching to knots all day long. End quote. That is that is really something. I mean, Start9 saying we're seeing the momentum. We are seeing it. So if you're thinking about running Bitcoin Nots over Bitcoin Core or thinking about setting up your own first node, there's probably a few things you should know about.

Development for Nots actually generally takes place as part of Bitcoin Core and then is merged into Nots for each release. So this has some pros and cons because Knott's adds their own features on top of all of this. But it does mean there's a feature set that perhaps is a little more robust. And the number one thing that people seem to prefer is it helps you filter out, quote unquote, spam. Now, when you go researching Knott's, you're going to come across a couple of common complaints.

So I just want to address those right now. The number one concern I hear about Knott's is it has a small development team. You know, you'll hear things like Core has more eyes. And I feel like that's sort of a silly argument. Since Notts is based on Core, Notts is directly benefiting from the eyes that Core has. The real question is, does the team have the bandwidth and the skills to manage and review the feature sets they're adding on top of Core?

I think that's a valid question. Here's how they describe that process on GitHub. Quote, even if your poll request to Core is closed or if your feature is not suitable for Core, e.g. Because it builds on a feature not supported in Core, it may still be eligible for inclusion in Bitcoin Nots. In this case, a poll request may be opened by the Nots GitHub for review and consideration.

When accepted, you are expected to maintain the submitted branch of your own repository and will automatically be merged into new releases of Nots. So the question is, do they have the testing capacity? because obviously the maintainer is expected to test it, but probably can't just stop there. So they addressed the testing bottleneck and they say, quote, testing and code review is the bottleneck for development.

This is on the Bitcoin Knott's GitHub page. They continue, we get more pull requests than we can review and test on short notice. Please be patient and help out by testing other people's pull requests. And remember, this is a security critical project where any mistake might cost people lots of money.

I appreciate that sentiment. So they also then go on to strongly encourage automated testing where it's possible, unit testing, etc. Is it possible some of the more advanced features because of a smaller development team could have bugs? Yeah, I suppose so. But you also could just wait a week or two to update, see how the things go, and then do an update, right? This is not an unsolvable problem.

The other big concern that I see out there, By default, Bitcoin Nots is configured to automatically shut down the node after two years of running without an update. So if you don't update your Bitcoin Nots node for two years, it has a timer in there to shut down. And this is a bit controversial, and it'll give you a message in the air log saying you need to update your Bitcoin Nots installation.

But the intent is to encourage node operators to stay current with security and consensus critical updates and probably reduce the threats to the Bitcoin network. Now, you can override this default behavior, but please don't run software that old on the public Internet. Just don't do that. So there's probably the two big concerns I see about Nots, and I don't really consider either one of those to be huge issues. Of course, you should always watch and see how things go.

And it is fairly straightforward to move between Core and Nots. Bitcoin Nots uses the same data directory as Bitcoin Core. When you launch Bitcoin Nots, it will detect your existing blockchain data and configuration files so you don't have to re-download the blockchain. And if you're using Umbral or Start9, there's already guides out there. If you're doing Bitcoin Core some other way, well, there's kind of like a rough overview. You want to back up your data. You want to stop Bitcoin Core.

You want to install Bitcoin Nots, configure it to reuse your existing data directory, and then start Bitcoin Nots up and check on things. And that's kind of how you try out Bitcoin Nots and see if you like. It's actually pretty easy to switch back as well if for some reason it doesn't work for you. So my question to you is, have you or are you switching to Bitcoin Nots? Why or why not? Let me know. Boost in. I'd like to know if you're switching or not and what your reason is.

I have yet to switch, but I think I'm on the going to switch train.

Well, it seems every week a new Bitcoin treasury strategy is announced by some company. A few days ago, the blockchain group became Europe's first Bitcoin treasury group, and they announced it at Bitcoin 2025, I believe. Hello, everyone. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you, Bitcoin for Corporations, and thank you, Strategy, for leading the Bitcoin movement for corporates around the world.

I am Alexandre Lézé, Deputy CEO and Director of Bitcoin Strategy at The Blockchain Group, Europe's first Bitcoin treasury company listed on Neuronex Growth Paris, ticker ALTBG. We have now 800 plus Bitcoin on the balance sheet, And we just announced yesterday a new raise of more than 500 BTC to raise our Bitcoin holdings to more than 1,400 BTC, placing us in the top 30 and close to 20 Bitcoin treasury companies around the globe. So Europe's first Bitcoin treasury company is the Blockchain Group.

And you heard it right there. He credits the Saylor playbook. But the Saylor playbook, in my opinion, has gotten so complicated, it's hard to even make heads or tails of what he's actually talking about anymore. He was just on CNBC this week. And tell me if you can make sense of this. I certainly have a hard time. MicroStrategy, now known as strategy, expects to raise nearly a billion dollars from the IPO of preferred stock that pays a 10% yield.

The company plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including buying more Bitcoin. Joining us now is Michael Saylor, Strategy Executive Chairman. You've described some of these moves, these financial moves before to us, Michael. Is this more of the same, or is there anything unique or different about this round today? You know, what's exciting here is we've done three IPOs of preferred stocks in the past six months.

Strike was our first convertible preferred, and that was up 29% while all the other preferreds were down 6%. Strife was a fixed preferred, paying 10% fixed yield at par. That's up 22% versus all the other preferreds down 4.5%. So Stride was the third of those preferreds. And what's going on here is we are offering fixed U.S. Dollar yield, and we're swapping it into BTC yield, which is what our equity investors want.

The big breakthrough is that in the preferred market, the capital never comes due. There's no refinance risk. We're basically offering a perpetual U.S. Dollar yield forever. We're getting the capital forever. And so by matching a very long-duration instrument on the liability side with a long-duration asset, we're creating, in essence, an indestructible balance sheet.

And these preferreds are a very scalable, extremely low-risk way to generate leverage to drive a very large premium into the MSTR stock. So it's a win for the fixed income investors because they're getting a yield 400 basis points more than typical preferred stocks or junk bonds would yield. And it's a big win for our equity investors because they want more Bitcoin. And this is a way to get leverage without worrying about any kind of bond coming due.

I mean, if you understood that, please boost in and educate me because I think I caught like 40% of that and some of it sounds impossible. But the basic play that he's created, the original basic play, is definitely getting replicated over and over. I said on the show, I suspected it would take off, but my goodness, check this out. This is just new corporate Bitcoin treasury buys this week. MicroStrategy bought 10,100 Bitcoin.

MetaPlanet bought 1,112 Bitcoin. The blockchain group, who we just mentioned, bought 182 Bitcoin. Prenetics bought 20 million of Bitcoin. Don't know exactly how many. ANAP bought 31.2 Bitcoin, and LQWD bought 5 Bitcoin. And that's just at the time of recording this week, which is Wednesday, midweek. However, the wildest Bitcoin treasury idea floated this week had to be from chief altcoiner, the Cardano guy, Charlie, and his big wild idea for creating a Cardano Bitcoin treasury.

I do believe that it will not materially impact Cardano by doing a conversion of 5% to 10% of the treasury into stable assets and assets like Bitcoin. And in doing this, we can create a yield and that yield on an annual basis can be used to purchase ADA and over time replenish the treasuring.

And if this program is successful, then we can actually continue that strategy on an annualized basis and over a period of five to 10 years, potentially grow to a billion dollar plus stable coin treasury and Bitcoin treasury to augment and enhance the ADA value in the treasury that we have. Yeah, guys, you see, we're going to buy Bitcoin and we're going to start stashing our profits in Bitcoin so that way we can make ADA, which is the Cordano token, more successful.

Really, it's all for ADA. Billion dollar plus stablecoin treasury and Bitcoin treasury to augment and enhance the ADA value in the treasury that we have. This sets us up for great returns and for a pretty stable floor for the ecosystem as a whole like you would want in any good sovereign wealth fund. Yeah, why can't you do it with ADA directly there, Charlie?

It's just the wildest one to me. But all this exuberant buying, all these companies creating debt out of, you know, whatever they can possibly get their hands on, has many Bitcoiners worried this week. Concerns that, well, what are these companies going to do with their stash of Bitcoin if there's some sort of 30% or more correction in the future? An issue that Safe brought up recently when he was on Natalie Brunel's show at Bitcoin 2025.

What do you think about the corporate treasuries? I mean, because there's so many popping up and I'm a little worried about the next bear market because I don't think that all of them can survive and maybe some might take on too much leverage and that could be worrisome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all the leverage is building up just in time for the top and the bust.

I mean, I just hope my message out there to everybody who's into this business is Bitcoin has done negative 70 and negative 80% before, and it can do it again. If your business model can't handle a negative 80% Bitcoin drawdown. Rework your business model right now. And you recall last week you heard Saylor saying winter is canceled, as in there isn't going to be a dip. This has Bitcoin's concern. It has safe concern.

And I tuned in to Stephen Lubbocka, who was of Swan fame, but he just recently accepted a job at the Nakamoto Group who was backed by the Bitcoin magazine. And Stephen's going to be running their Bitcoin corporate treasury because, yes, the Bitcoin magazine has one now. And this is their view on what these companies are actually doing. And I thought this was good insight because this is a guy on the ground.

And they say things like, you know, you need to really look for people taking really short term debt, like one year short term debt to buy Bitcoin. That's a red flag. A lot of these companies, they're taking four to 10 year loans. And the play is that Bitcoin will increase in value over that four year period. We'll see. But as to what these companies functionally do, I thought this was actually a pretty good description and worth playing on the show.

I'll link to the full conversation in the show notes. We were talking about these companies and what they're doing and should they exist? Why will they exist? And people talk about them not having a business model, right? Like this core business. But I could even push back on that, right? What these companies do is search for the opportunities to arbitrage the fiat system against the Bitcoin system. And so you will continue to... The capital market landscape is truly a landscape.

There's all these little things that no one thinks about. There's pockets of debt. There's inefficiencies. There's international markets. There's arbitrages. There's all these things. And a Bitcoin treasury company is a company that can leverage a unique position as both a public entity and maybe specifically another factor to basically find the cheapest cost of capital and buy Bitcoin. And as long as Bitcoin appreciates more than their cost of capital,

it is accretive for shareholders. It adds value for shareholders. That is a business. In the same way, a miner looks for the cheapest cost of energy and then uses that energy to mine Bitcoin. One is mining capital markets. The other is mining energy. And that is a real substantial business. In the same way, if you had a like an arbitrage hedge fund or something, you could buy something in South Korea and sell it in the United States for 10 percent more.

That's a business, right? They might not make an iPhone, but like you have a real thing there. And that's what we're dealing with here. All right. So what do you think? Do you think we're going to see some of these Bitcoin treasury strategy companies that are just buying Bitcoin? Are we going to see them dump coins on the market during the next dip? Or is this a savvy, more structured, more informed borrower that they're taking money from? That's one argument I've heard.

I'd love to know your thoughts. Boost it and tell me if you're worried about these treasury companies and if you think some of them are going to be dumping on the market. Seems likely, although they tell you they won't be. Music.

Well, you've probably noticed there's a lot more talk about stablecoins recently. There's a simple reason. It's because legislation is working its way through the Senate and the U.S. House to regulate stablecoins. And it's happening right now. And our Bitcoin senator, Lummis, was very excited when it looked like the new Genius Act was a lock. She took to the floor to just thank everybody.

Today is a day i've been working towards for over four months after months of intense negotiations we are minutes away from passing the genius act senator bill haggerty's legislation that will be a first step towards modernizing the american payment system and integrating digital assets into the U.S. Economy in a responsible way. Of course, the devil is always in the details. And there's also a House bill as well. So it's a bit of a stablecoin bill showdown right now.

The crypto industry getting a major legislative win after the Senate passed the Genius Act last night. Mackenzie Segalis is here at Post 9 and can give us some of the details. Mackenzie. Hey, good morning, David. You've got Bitcoin down 4% over the past week, now trading just below $105,000. Ether has lost nearly 10% in that same stretch.

The drop comes as ETF inflows cool. The dollar gains strength and traders await today's Fed decision on interest rates, all of which are adding pressure to those risk assets. But the weakness in crypto prices comes just as the industry locks in its biggest legislative win yet. You've got the Senate passing the Genius Act, the first federal framework for stablecoins. It allows private companies to issue their own digital dollars with the government's blessing, but only under strict guardrails.

Full reserve backing, monthly audits, and robust anti-money laundering checks. Now lawmakers say it protects consumers while reinforcing the dominance of the U.S. dollar. The bill now moves to the House, which has its own version dubbed the Stable Act. Both bills banned yield bearing consumer stable coins. So that's a key bit. Both bills. Ban yield-bearing stablecoins, which was going to be a bonanza. I wonder if we'll see that rolled back down the road.

So you got the Genius Act from the Senate, and you got the Stable Act from the House. And they have to reconcile these two bills, and there is some differences. But they diverge on who gets to regulate them. Now, reconciling the two could take months, especially as House Republicans weigh attaching a broader market structure package. Meanwhile, Wall Street and big tech are already making moves. You've got Amazon and Walmart reportedly looking at stablecoin-style payments

and JP Morgan. Yeah, Walmart coin, everybody. Are you looking forward to an Amazon coin and a Walmart coin? I mean, there's just going to be an explosion of them. Now, you could argue that we already have things like Robux and Microsoft points, and a lot of these places already have their own currency that is locked in their ecosystem. This could be a net win for consumers if these are blockchain-based and you

could swap between. So if I had Walmart coin and instead I wanted to go spend it on Amazon coin, I could do a swap for a low fee or something like that, but it sounds obnoxious. And it sounds like gift cards turned up to 11. Everything I don't like turned up to 11. Saying that it plans to roll out a deposit token called JPMD. While not technically a stable coin, it offers similar features for institutions, including 24-7 settlement and interest, all within the traditional banking system.

Guys? What's the difference between the Genius Act and the Stable Act, which has also been in the house? And I don't know, they might not have to reconcile those two. One of the big things comes down to authority. So Treasury gets a lot of broad authority over the stablecoin market with the Genius Act. So that'd be your buddy Scott Besant. He would essentially be the stablecoin king.

And see, we've got Scott Besant weighing in last week, saying that if this goes through within the next few years, the stablecoin market's going to nearly 8x up to $2 trillion. And then on the other side, the House kind of spreads out that authority among the OCC, the Fed and other regulators. There are also different specifics, different nuances within what foreign issuers are able to do, which is really crucial because Tether, of course, foreign issuer of a U.S.

Dollar-peg stablecoin accounts for more than 60 percent of this market. OK, well, let's see how it progresses in the House next. Mackenzie, thank you for the rundown. So whatever they come up with, they better figure out how to include Tether. And it seems to me that if the underlying goal is to further the dominance of the dollar, you probably want it under the chief dollar salesman, which is the Treasury Secretary. He is the chief dollar salesman for the United.

States, that and the president of the United States, of course. Music.

Well, still coming up on the show, your boost, a series of final clips this week that I just couldn't resist, a few smaller stories that I'm tracking this week, and a lot more. So I want to say, if you like the show, you want to support the show, you can just do it by doing what you already do. If you're buying sats on River, the best way to stack sats in the U.S., you just use our link in the show notes. Use that link, and the show gets a little kickback, and I put that right towards the show.

The Bitcoin Well, if you're ready to spend some of your Bitcoin, if you want to buy some Bitcoin, you use Lightning, and you want to go right from self-custody, the Bitcoin Well makes that possible. They're also available in Canada, which is really great. Use them both. Love them. Now, another company I use is the Bitcoin Company. You can spend your sats via Lightning to gift cards instantly and log in via Lightning, so you don't even have to create an account.

The Fold Card is probably the MVP of our community. Pay bills and stack sats. They have a debit card. It's pretty great. And last but not least, when I need access to my Bitcoin value without selling it, Salt Lending is where I turn. I'll have links to all of those in the show notes, and you can support the show by doing what you do. And we did get some boosts this week. seven boosts to go. Oh, he's very grateful for that. And Satsquanch is our baller booster this week

with 75,000 sats. Hey, rich lobster! Coming in hot with the boost. This boost is from the boys at the secret Monday evening Thousand Oaks meetup. We're loving your show, man. Never stop stacking. Oh, I gotta make it out. It's a secret meetup, but I think I know just where to go. Thank you to the Thousand Oaks meetup crew. Always nice to hear from you. I've been wondering about how you're all doing. Nice to get the check-in. And thanks, you Satsquanch, for being the messenger.

Someone, and you are our baller, too. Thank you for that. Someone, just someone, I don't know who, someone came in with, that's their username, 50,000 sats. Woo! Thank you, sir. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too. Love your show. Still annoyed by Antenapod not having Boost and Fountain being closed source. Could you treat Nostra's apps like Boost? The only problem, someone, is they don't come in as metadata that we can collect.

And one of the real breakthroughs with the boosts is we could do 30 boosts in a show, and then I could do one or two emails, just the overhead of collecting and going through email and replying versus the boosts that come in over lightning, and then Wes has built as a system to automatically sort per show, per episode, and then format them in Markdown, and we put them in the notes, and they're ready to go.

It's powerful stuff, but I have been trying to think about how to incorporate Nostra support into the show because sometimes I announce the shows out and folks zap me on Nostra and I feel like they deserve a shout out too. So it's something on my radar. I just don't really have a solution for yet, someone. And thank you for that great boost. I hoard that which your kind covets. Not sure is here with 5,000 sats. Yep, that stands up to scrutiny.

I'm just here for the bromance between you and the podfather. Also, what is in that drawer? I think you know. I think you know. Oh my God, this drawer is filled with broloads. Yeah, the podfather really broke the bank on the baller boosts. I've still been thinking about that. Thank you, Not Sure. Good to hear from you. And you're right. I'm all for the bromance. Jordan Bravo's here with 5,000 sats. I've attended the last three tab comps in Atlanta, and I will indeed be there

again. I would be happy to report on it. Yes, please. Yes, please. Tab comp is one on my radar. It's just such a massive expense. Plus, I've got three kids and I run a business. So for me to go to an event, I really got to try to make sure it's going to inform the shows. So please do report on from TabConf in Atlanta. Thank you, Jordan Bravo. I really appreciate that offer. Gene Bean's back with a row of ducks.

What's most important to me in Bitcoin is that it retains its function as a store of value and that has a healthy decentralized network. Nailed it, Gene. Nailed it. I agree. Store of value. Do I need to buy my coffee and pizza with Bitcoin? No. I'd like to be able to buy a house, maybe a car. You know, really large ticket items when Bitcoin's worth millions of dollars. Perhaps I'd love to be able to just go direct.

But honestly, I don't really see myself selling the Bitcoin so much as using as collateral in those situations. So decentralization and the store of value are just totally, totally top of the list. Thank you, Gene Bean. Super solid high signal boost. Appreciate it. OBL918 is here with 6,100 sats. 6,100 for 61. One, since Jack Dorsey gets to rename Bitcoin denominations, I'm going to call this a 61 centi stat. Okay.

All right. Also, this week's irony. Core merges a highly controversial change, blowing up the op return limit despite all the knacks and contention, with no time for consensus either way to form. Then they say this is so that the people will stop using Taproot and Segwit to exploit inscriptions and other abuses of the witness data. Do they merge the fix for the inscriptions exploit? No, because that PR is, quote, too controversial.

Am I supposed to believe they actually think that people abusing the 75% discounted witness data for their, quote, fun projects are suddenly going to start paying more for Opperturn instead? Really, guys? Yeah. That is the realization I came to last week as well. Like, they're just going to continue to abuse it. The justification for, you know, dropping the Opperturn limit was, oh, then they'll use the proper method for all this crap. But the proper method is more expensive.

And if you don't close the other hole, they're just going to keep doing it the way they've always done it anyways. It doesn't really change anything. It just doesn't make sense. And OBL, you put it nice and succinctly. Thank you very much for that. Eric Pease here with 3,000 sats. Everything's under control. 3,333 sats, I should say. The Ethereum world emphasizes client diversity to prevent anyone implementation from having a majority market share.

They learned the hard way in 2021 when a security flaw in GETH, I think that's how you say it, G-E-T-H, forced them to do a hard fork to fix it. I wonder why Bitcoin doesn't have a similar focus. It doesn't seem great for security to have 90% of the nodes running the same Bitcoin implementation.

It's really just market demanded forces. There really hasn't been an incentive to do something different because Bitcoin Core has been fairly uncontroversial for the most part, with a few things here and there over the years. But I think we're seeing the adoption of knots as a market response. Client diversity, I'd say Bitcoin actually has an extensive client diversity.

I mean, if you look at all the wallets out there, and from hardware wallets to software wallets and apps on phones, I mean, it's amazing. It's really the back-end node server software, and that would be the A, B comparison I think I would make, Eric. But I do like the comment. Thanks for the provocative boost and thought. I always like to think. Thanks, Eric. Hello there is back with a row of ducks. I think you're back, right? Either way, I appreciate it. He says, take that. I did.

Kongaroo Paradox is here with 5,000 sats. I like you. You're a hot ticket. No message, just the value. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Ace Ackerman's here with a row of ducks. And he just says boost. Boost. Cardboard Warrior's here with 5,000 sats. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too. And he says it's a mac and cheese boost. You got it. Mac and cheese coming your way. Magnolia Mayhem's here with 2,311 sets.

And he's not a trader, but he loves the vol. The traders love the vol. Yeah, I do too. I do too. That's how you know you've been in Bitcoin a long time, when you just enjoy the vol. Thank you, Magnolia. Good to hear from you. Scuffed is here with 5,000 Sats. You make me want to be a better man. I loved last week's segment about the Bitcoiners in Africa. It really helps bring it all down to earth and reminds us what we're doing this for.

Perhaps these success stories could be a regular segment. Maybe call it Bitcoin IRL. Oh, I like the segment name idea. I'm definitely looking for more of those. The tricky thing is I try to find ones with audio when I can just because it makes an even better experience in the show. But I've expanded my search to also print and print versions. So Bitcoin IRL, if I remember that name, may be a thing in the future. Thanks, Guft. Appreciate that. Thank you, everybody who boosts in.

That's all the boosts above the 2000sat cutoff, though we had a bunch under the 2000sat cutoff, which I read and I do keep in my show doc forever as well. So we also had 47 of you stream those sats as you listened. Check this out. You sat streamers, you stacked 78,690 sats.

That's a serious lift That's bigger than the baller boost this week You guys, well done Then when you combine that with our boost messages We stacked a total of 252,128 sats You're the best of love, Nothing's gonna ever keep you down You're the best of love Nothing's gonna ever keep you down You're the best of love Nothing's gonna ever keep you down. Thank you, everybody, who supports the show with a boost. This is a value for value podcast, and that means I put the content out there for free.

If it helps you, if you get some value from it, then you send back a boost. And, of course, I love the messages, too. It's my absolute favorite part of the show. So thank you, everybody. Fountain FM tends to be the easiest way to do it just because they self-host everything for you. But you can go down the route of your own node, your own lightning node, and your own app. Or you can go something simple like Breeze, B-R-E-E-Z, which is like a node in an app, and you can boost from it as well.

Thank you, everybody. And I appreciate it. Moving on.

A couple of smaller stories I've been tracking this week. The U.S. State of Ohio became the first state to pass Bitcoin capital gains tax exemption for purchases under $200. House Bill 116 establishes the nation's first aminimus rule for digital assets exempting state capital gains taxes on transactions involving Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for purchases up to $200 with the threshold indexed to inflation.

This is interesting because it's kind of an admission that tax policy is one of the biggest barriers to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies getting used in smaller day-to-day transactions. And House Bill 116 goes beyond just tax exemptions. It also protects custody rights for digital asset holders, safeguards cryptocurrency mining operations, and allows the Ohio State retirement systems to explore potential investments in digital assets.

Very positive. Now, it's not passed yet. What comes next is the bill has cleared the House Technology and Innovation Committee. So it still requires approval from the full Ohio House of Representatives, the state senate, and a governor's signature to become law. So some big steps that still has to go through. But there does seem to be a pretty big support for this.

They say in the article that I'll have linked in the show notes, there's, quote, unanimous committee consent and bipartisan backing for the legislation. It appears to have, quote, strong momentum. So perhaps we will see this pass. This is something I could definitely get behind. You know, and then just up it over the years. Fold, yeah, the people with the card and the sats back and all that, they have secured 250 million in equity purchases intended to expand their Bitcoin treasury. Holdings.

They write, the first publicly traded Bitcoin financial services company today announced that it has entered into an agreement for a $250 million equity purchase facility with the net proceeds primarily intended to be used to acquire additional Bitcoin for Fold's corporate strategy. How about that? How about that? So Fold is one of the many companies that are building Bitcoin strategies.

And depending on the trajectory of Bitcoin, one has to wonder if it won't just become sort of standard practice for many companies to have a little bitcoin on the balance sheet and then you have to ask yourself if that does become standard practice, doesn't it seem likely that some larger corporation that wants to get in on the Bitcoin game became late?

Now, I'm not saying it's going to be Microsoft or Amazon, but they both, and Meta, but all three of them recently had opportunities to present their board with the idea of buying Bitcoin and they shot it down. Now, say four or five years goes by and Bitcoin continues to explode in value and these Bitcoin treasury companies are just pumping in value and we have ourselves some sort of dip and they are scrambling.

It would not surprise me if in that moment, In a moment of weakness, if an Amazon or a Microsoft or, I don't know, some bank or some, you know, weapons company, I don't even know the name of, but has a bunch of money on the balance sheet comes along and buys one of these Bitcoin treasury companies, probably not strategy. They're so far ahead. They have so much Bitcoin. They're going to be buying people.

But, you know, one of these smaller ones that's getting set up now is probably to probably not fold. But one of these other ones is going to get snapped up by some larger conglomerate and then just all of a sudden have a bunch of Bitcoin. And I think that's going to be one of the eventual outcomes of these treasury companies is they will facilitate the bag expansion of a much, much larger company. That would be my guess, at least.

I got a problem. I know it's supposed to be final clip of the week. And I did two clips like for the last two weeks. And this week I am doing three clips for the final clip of the week. I got a problem. I just, I want to play them all. And I want to play this one. It's been going around social media. I've seen it on Noster. I've seen it on X. I suspect Altcoin Daily was the first to share this video, but I honestly don't know.

I just saw it everywhere because it really, it really touches on a nerve for me. And I think it touches on a nerve for a lot of Bitcoiners. That is, if you've been following Bitcoin for a while, through a cycle or two, or perhaps you've been here since the first cycle, you have been told you're stupid, you're making a mistake, you're throwing your money away from people that are just so supremely arrogant and confident about it. And one of the things we have to build up is a thick skin.

We have to build up an immune system to this constant bickering and this constant belittling. And in 2008, when Bitcoin was experiencing a crash to around $6,000, a comedian went on TV and just decided to rib the crap out of Bitcoiners over it. The only thing that should double that quickly is the value of Bitcoin. Just kidding. That was a garbage investment and you're an idiot. Bitcoin is just beanie babies for tech bros.

Look, man, every person I went to high school with was like, yo, Bitcoin is going to change your life. BTC, get on it right now. And I'm like, Tommy Wilson, you work at OfficeMax. What the fuck are you talking about? Oh, by the way, by the way, hey, internet comments, it's trading at 6.5K. Go fuck yourself. Look. Oh, yeah, sorry about the language. 6.5K. I mean, that guy looks like an idiot now. Of course, where is he at? I don't even know his name.

He's nowhere. But this is how, in the moment, they will pile on. And you have to build a thick skin. And, you know, it's funny. He says in there that all his high school buddies were telling him, maybe you should have listened. Maybe you should have listened, you arrogant jerk. So something a little more positive. $110 billion investment company, VanEck, has been doing some research. And this is their CEO. and he's got the stats on the amount of gold versus Bitcoin that people hold in the U.S.

And I bet it's not what you think. Another money manager did a study. 37 million Americans own exposure to gold. 37 million. Guess how many own exposure to Bitcoin? It's got to be a fraction.

No, 50. No, even more. 50 million Americans through their research, which I thought that makes a lot of sense to me because i think people look at both as a store of value and over the last couple of years a lot of the hot money because of the appreciation has gone into bitcoin it's easier to buy too you know you can go buy ten dollars worth you can go buy five dollars with you can go buy a grand you can buy 10 grand like you can go buy 50 grand you know

like it's you can do it on your phone in 10 seconds you got a little extra money put it into bitcoin it's not a big deal and people you do that enough over the years and pretty soon your bitcoin value holdings especially as bitcoin, goes up in value, it becomes worth a lot more than your gold.

But it's great to see folks like VanEck seeing it. Speaking of the mainstream finally seeing it, Eric B. From Bloomberg, he's been one of the ETF analysts that has really been on top of the Bitcoin ETF since before it launched. And he shares the moment that made him go from skeptic of Bitcoin to realize there's something really here. And this little nugget that he shares holds true for all kinds of assets through history.

Two things about bitcoin caught my interest before i cared one is it just seemed to piss all the right people off i shouldn't name names but like someone like paul krugman just the fact that he was so upset about it i was like must something must be good about it you know i like that he's upset about it just being honest like if you're uptight it just bothers you for some reason and i that's a good thing the second thing is it came back from these basically near-death experiences over and over.

There was multiple times where I was like, oh, okay, fine. It's gone now. And it came back and back. And then when you study other things that have come back from like 50% drawdowns multiple times, you realize it's all the best stocks on planet earth. It's Amazon, it's Microsoft, it's Berkshire. Only stud things come back three or four times. And that's why I was like, I gave it respect. Music. Before I get out of here, the Bitcoin price, as I record, is at 104,440 US dollars.

That means the sats per dollar is 957 sats to one US dollar. Our all-time high was 111,980 US dollars. We're down 6.7 percent. That was May 22nd, which was 27 days ago. But you know what I want to look at? I want to look at the node stats. So switching to the node stats for a moment. Bitcoin Noughts clocking in right now at 12.0%, according to Clark Moody. I've seen other estimates around that range as well.

Bitcoin Core 28.1, sitting at 19%, and Core 29.0, which is the newer version, right before 30, obviously, sitting at 12.9. So the latest version of Core and the latest version of Noughts, they're very close, very close in market size. Isn't that something? Currently, 21,892 reachable nodes on the network. 14,000 of those are behind Tor. Let's get that up. And we wrap up at Blockheight 901-806. Music. Heads up about the schedule. I'm planning a summer road trip with the family.

So if all goes as planned right now, I'll be off the week of my July 2nd episode. So we should have one more episode before my summer road trip. Links to what I talked about today are thisweekinbitcoin.show. My goal with this here show is to not get distracted by the emotions around what's happening, but focus on the signal. So let me know how I did with a boost and boosting with what you'd like to see from the show.

But if you made it this far, if you think one day Bitcoin is going to make you crazy rich, which we all hope, right? Will you keep working? Say it does it within your working lifetime. Will you quit your job or will you keep working? Boost it and tell me as well. I find that to be a fascinating question. One I ask for myself, too. And I'm going to wrap, as always, with a value-for-value track. So if you boost in or stream during this music, 95% of your sats go to the artist and their team.

It's pretty awesome. They love it. And it's a way to support independent music with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. I mean, how awesome is that? And this week, I'm wrapping up with Nameless by Hurling Pixels. I'll see you next week. Music.