BTC Sessions - Bitcoin Price Spikes | Markets Indifferent To 26 Million Jobless | Citadel 21 and Cypher Diaries EP048

Starting point is 00:00:10 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's up everyone? I'm Ben with the BTZ sessions and this is your daily session. Hodel their Bitcoin. Before we dive in, I just want to give a shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.io. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a few different things. They've got Bitcoin savings accounts where you can earn interest on your Bitcoin. They've got Bitcoin back loans was the first thing of theirs that I ever used. I was in a pinch. I wanted to get my hands on dollars, but I didn't want.

Starting point is 00:00:49 to sell my Bitcoin, thought it might be a bad time. So I was able to park my Bitcoin in a dedicated address. I could audit 24-7 and I got a Canadian dollar loan within 24 hours. And once I paid that back, I was able to get all of my Bitcoin back. In fact, the exact same UTXO. And then finally, they've got their B-2X offering and this is where you use the same loan mechanism to immediately buy more Bitcoin effectively doubling your Bitcoin on the spot. Now, if you want to check out any of that, there's a link in the show notes down below. And if you use that link, wherever it may be, whether it be YouTube or Twitter or wherever, there's a link somewhere down there.

Starting point is 00:01:26 If you use that link to obtain a Bitcoin back loan, they will give you $50 worth of Bitcoin for free. Secondly, this is Coinberry. This has been kind of my go-to place for stacking stats lately, especially the past few months here. I use it pretty regularly. Number one, it's just for Canadians. So apologies to anybody outside of Canada. Canadians do check it out. I really like the web interface and the app super smooth, super easy to use. And a few things really stand out to me with Coinberry. Number one, the speed of funding.

Starting point is 00:01:59 In my experience, I've only ever had to wait really around 20 minutes funding via e-transfer. I also really like that they have dollar cost averaging. So they've got this autopilot thing that you can toggle on. It allows you to set intervals and amounts for which to buy. So it takes all of that a motion out of buying so you're not buying at a bad time and it kind of all averages out over time and super convenient. They've got a really wicket deal where if you click the link down below after your first $50 purchase, you get 20 bucks for free, which is pretty solid. So be sure to check them out. With that, let's dive into the news. So we've seen quite a recovery from the Bitcoin price in terms of the massive sell-off that we see.

Starting point is 00:02:45 saw in early to mid-March. So just a quick look over there. So here's that dump that we saw in and around March 10th, 12th, where we went from in and around the almost $8,000 range all the way down to 4K, sub-4K on some like bit stamp. And now we're back up in and around the $7,500 range. So we've almost made all of that back, which is nice to see. Now, whether or not, it holds is another story, but still pretty nice to see. When we look in really close here, we actually whicked all the way up to damn near $7,800 earlier today and then came back down. We've pretty much been flat in and around this mid-7,500 range for most of the day. Now, where the hell will go from here? Honestly, does anybody really know? Not a clue, but we'll see if one of those

Starting point is 00:03:43 infamous Bart Patterns plays out and that's where you basically get the look of a Bart Simpson where it goes straight up, stays flat and then drops back down. Could be, I don't know, stranger things have happened, but a lot of people often look for the why of Bitcoin price, which is anybody's guess. But one thing we can be relatively sure that it's not now is tether. So one of these famous conspiracy theories around the cryptocurrency Pterosphere tends to be that tether is a massive Ponzi where they just print a ton of tether in order to buy up and pump the price of Bitcoin. Well, UC Berkeley did a study and it appears that is largely not the case. So I'll just read a little bit from this decrypt article I'm looking at.

Starting point is 00:04:34 So new research is attempting to put one of crypto's favorite conspiracy theories to rest. A new report penned for the Center for Economic Policy Realtzsche. research, CEPR, entitled Stable Coins Don't Inflate Cryptomarkets, takes a look at the degree to which aggregate stablecoin issuance drives the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. UC Berkeley Richard K. Lyons and UC Berkeley Finance Professor Ganesh Vinsh Vinsh Vindw. Oh, God. Viswanath Netraj analyzed market inflows for Tether and other stable coins from October 2017 to the present to search for an answer. And that answer, according to the research, is that there is zero correlation. Bottom line, we find no systematic evidence of stablecoin

Starting point is 00:05:25 issuance driving cryptocurrency prices. Now, what does it do? The report suggested that market participants are buying stable coins to one escape volatility or to two, arbitrage between issuers and secondary markets. So, I mean, I'm sure other studies will be done, but from this one, it looks very much like Tether is not a major impact on the price of Bitcoin. Moving on here, I did want to touch on this article at a market watch, and I mean, it's everywhere, obviously, but jobless claims in the States, another staggering number, 4.4 million in the past week. That brings the total up to 26 million Americans having lost their jobs in this whole pandemic crisis. Pretty staggering, and I'll just read a little bit here from MarketWatch.

Starting point is 00:06:22 The record surge of Americans applying for unemployment benefits is starting to recede, but another 4.4 million people filed new jobless claims last week to push the total above 26 million since the coronavirus pandemic leads siege to the U.S. economy a month and a half ago. The spike in unemployment has likely pushed the jobless rate to between 15 and 20 percent economists estimate. The only other time in American history when unemployment was that high was in the early stages of the Great Depression almost a century ago. In less than two months, the pandemic has eliminated all of the 23 million jobs created after the 2007 to 2009 Great Recession. Now, on the flip side of that, the stock markets remain more or less indifferent to this. No major drops, nothing.

Starting point is 00:07:20 I mean, the Dow did go up briefly for about 400 points today earlier, but then kind of lost all of that and came back out flat. But no major declines. And it seems to largely be from the spigots just being turned on. full force, the Fed is stopping at nothing to prevent these markets from dropping and so far have been succeeding. But I've got to say, like, you can only look somebody in the eye for so long and say that the economy is fine and we're fixing it when you have 15 to 20 percent employment, but the stock markets seem fine. The stocks and the markets here are clearly not representative of the actual economy anymore.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And I'm sure that most people are waking up and seeing that reality. Just because the Dow is recovering does not mean the economy is recovering. It means the people that still have any money left that are able to put it into these assets are making off like bandits. Whereas regular day-to-day people, your blue-collar workers that have nine to five, jobs or used to have nine to five jobs are still royally fucked and that twelve hundred dollar check that they got with a signature from trump dropping into their mailboxes is not really going to stem the blood flow very long that does very little and when you look at the amount

Starting point is 00:09:01 of money created out of nothing and the percentage that actually went to regular people versus the percentage that went to banks and corporate bailouts, it's pretty few and far between. It seems that the regular day-to-day person is getting breadcrumbs and poorly run corporations are getting massive handouts for their irresponsible behavior. So, you know, there isn't a way to opt out of all of this, and that's why I'm here.

Starting point is 00:09:32 Anyways, let's move on. Argentina's central. Bank is tinkering with Bitcoin smart contracts. This, another article from Decrypt. Now, I'm going to read what they're kind of aiming to do here, and then I'm going to kind of give my hot take on this afterwards. So the Central Bank of Argentina is jumping on board the blockchain train for a test run. I'm sure you already know what I think based on the first sentence here. But anyways, moving on, the Central Bank announced yesterday that is trialing a new payment system developed by Bitcoin startup Iovv Labs, formerly known as RSC, which is rootstock.

Starting point is 00:10:12 The system is a proof of concept for a permission, i.e. private blockchain network using rootstock technology, which itself makes use of Bitcoin's smart contracts designed to optimize the way the bank handles payments and claims. So skipping ahead a bit. The new rootstock-based proof of concept ensures a type of common framework that guarantees the interoperability of some individual systems maintained by banks, fintech companies, and private slash public operators. Through the implementation of Bitcoin smart contracts with rootstock technology, the central bank can track the status of each claim from its inception to its solution in real time. So a few things here. So rootstock was attack onto the Bitcoin network to enable

Starting point is 00:11:05 smart contracts, kind of like what Ethereum does without having to create a secondary network. Now, the issue that I have with some of this is, is, again, not even that it's private or permissioned, because for some companies that would like to leverage the security of the Bitcoin blockchain while still having proprietary control over their internal systems, perhaps that might be a good idea. My issue is trying to peg anything external from Bitcoin to the Bitcoin network. Just inherently, if you're pegging real world assets, tangible assets to a blockchain, you run into a number of issues.

Starting point is 00:11:50 Number one is bad info in, bad info out. So if you put lies or inaccuracies on a blockchain, namely the Bitcoin blockchain, then how do you amend those records if it's the wrong information? And how do you guarantee that the good information is actually going on to the blockchain? So once that information is there, when it comes to Bitcoin, it's more or less immutable. It's stuck that way. It's going to cost you a lot of money to even attempt to reverse anything. And by and large, we've seen that that pretty much cannot happen at this point.

Starting point is 00:12:28 other blockchains not so much but let's say you do get some bad information coming onto the blockchain how do you amend that if you can amend it then what's the point of having a blockchain in the first place so you kind of it's this double-edged sword where you can't guarantee good information going on to this public record and if you can guarantee good information going on to it or rather if you do get bad information going on to it, you can't amend it anyways. And if you could, it would nullify the whole point of using a blockchain in the first place. So I'm kind of skeptical of stuff like this. The one thing I will say is at least I don't even know if they're actually utilizing Bitcoin itself.

Starting point is 00:13:15 It seems like they're just taking the framework that root stock built to be on top of Bitcoin. and they're just utilizing those blueprints. I don't even think they're actually using Bitcoin in this case. If they were somehow pegging to it, at least they could kind of leverage some of the security of the system. But I don't even think they're fully doing that. So by and large, this seems to be a little bit of nothing. They're just kind of, the article seems to be banking on the fact that the Bitcoin name

Starting point is 00:13:50 or that this startup that was utilizing Bitcoin is now offering some of their technology infrastructure to the Argentinian central bank. And, you know, like, as if the central bank isn't going to just step back and be like, nah, we're not going to use this if it in any way impedes what they want to do. Anyways, let's move on here. I wanted to highlight a couple cool publications that I am very excited about that are relatively new. This one just the other day. Citadel 21, dropped by a number of fun people that I enjoy. Hodlanot has dropped this publication, and it's a collection of really just everything.

Starting point is 00:14:34 So you've got psychedelic Bart dropping 13 ways to level up as a bitcoiner. You've got a reputation article from Caro. You've got an aggregation of some Bitcoin-related music by a Luke Part. You've got tons of stuff. You got interviews. You've got open letters. There's a pretty good dear bitquiners from Gigi, who is a fantastic author, author of 21 lessons.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Articles on physical bitcoins, I really like this one about Citadel's by Bitcoin Katia. Fokfiat by Sweetoshi. Tons of fun. And some of them are just super short, little tidbits of information and opinions and others are more kind of in-depth analyses and articles and opinion pieces. So just this awesome eclectic mix of BitConners that I know and love. And I hope to contribute to this maybe for the next drop I would really love to. And if you think you have something cool to contribute, you can always

Starting point is 00:15:39 go to About and they have a contact form there. So yeah, I highly recommend that you check this out. really cool little nuggets of fun, just bitcoiner. Again, how do you describe this? You can't. And I think that's kind of the point. I think that's the point of Citadel 21 is that you just get to be weird here. And while I do appreciate some of the finer tunes, tidied up, polished stuff that has come out of the Bitcoin space, I also really do appreciate. the really fucking weird niche stuff that comes out and that's what this definitely falls into so kudos hoblonaut i really like this i really do like it so do check it out and in another kind of weird turn uh weird publication the cipher diaries i really do enjoy this uh this guy actually reached out

Starting point is 00:16:37 to me saying hey can do you mind if i give you a little mention as a as a little tidbit as a little Easter egg in one of the pieces of information here, which is kind of like the OPSEC section. See if you can find me. It's not like hidden or anything, but do check it out. So what this is, it's kind of like a storyline of somebody from 2028. So my story from the front lines of the 2028 Money Wars. And I'll just read the very

Starting point is 00:17:05 beginning here. There's no turning back, not after what happened. We won the battle, but our position is sacrificed. We need more OGs. It's It's our only hope. The war has just begun and we need to be ready. And this guy actually emailed me in full persona of this actual character saying that he needed to recruit me for the war and if it would be okay, if he referenced some of my materials for the money wars of 22. I was such a fun email.

Starting point is 00:17:38 Anyways, this was a couple weeks back. I've got this email, but I've been kind of reading through the chapters here. It's so much fun. So I do implore you, do go read these. I think you'll have a really good time. It's got some, you know, like some fun artwork and gifts going along with it. They're up to about eight chapters now, and there's a whole bunch of supplemental information that he provides here. So do check it out.

Starting point is 00:18:04 Yeah, awesome. I'll link to his Twitter profile as well. Anyways, with that, guys, I'm going to wrap up. Thank you so much for watching and or listening. If you're on YouTube, do hit like, subscribe, and share. But if you're also on YouTube, please do check out some of the other platforms I'm on. I am now on my Facebook page. I stream direct to Twitter.

Starting point is 00:18:23 I'm on D-Live. I'm on library. I'm on a whole bunch of different things. I'm also audio only via Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, all of that. So whatever your poison is, please do subscribe to one other place that you can find me. because you can't always rely on YouTube and I'm trying to push people to alternative platforms to take this in and that would be much appreciated.

Starting point is 00:18:50 Now, if you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors I mentioned down below. That was Ledden and Coinberry. They have some deals for you. Also check out with Sabby Wallet because that can help you with your Bitcoin privacy. And if you really liked what you saw and or heard, you can head over and drop me a Lightning Network tip

Starting point is 00:19:06 at my tippin.comme page. That's tippin.com me slash at BTC Sessions. And with that, I'm out. Have yourself a wonderful evening. And I will see you next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - Bitcoin Price Spikes | Markets Indifferent To 26 Million Jobless | Citadel 21 and Cypher Diaries EP048

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.