BTC Sessions - Bitcoin SMASHES Through All Time High to $23,000!!! ep127

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Bitcoin has blown through all time highs to well over $23,000 - amid a wave of institutions moving into the space and buying up Bitcoin as a portion of their reserves. A number of firms have labelled this as a defensive move when it comes to the rampant money printing of the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world. SUPPORT THE SHOW: LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $25 free https://bit.ly/397rlLN Get Wasabi wallet for Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Cobo Vault: secure your Bitcoin! https://bit.ly/2GgMFlH BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/ Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 LIGHTNING tips: https://tippin.me/@BTCsessions Telegram channel: https://t.me/btc_sessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What is up everyone? Bitcoin over the past 24 hours has breached well above the previous all-time high of $20,000. We've been up as high as the, well, mid-to-high 23,000s in that range, which is crazy to see. But there's reasons why this is happening and we're seeing it all over the news throughout the week and even leading up through the year. Really, it's almost an inevitability at this point that this would have happened. So we're going to examine some of the stuff that's in the news this week that is contributing to these insane breaches of previous all-time highs.

I'm sure some of you that have been in around for a while are feeling a bit euphoric, but let's take a look at why. Anyways, guys, I am Ben with the BTC sessions, and this is your daily session. So looking here at the Bitbo.io dashboard, at the time of recording, we are sitting at $22,930-some-odd dollars per Bitcoin. A single U.S. dollar will now get you, wow, far less than 5,000 Satoshes. It will get you $4,360 Satoshes for $1. The sats are slipping through your hands, my friends. Get them while you can.

I feel like that number will drop further. 88.45% of all Bitcoin has been mined. That, again, that number is going to be hitting 90% by the end of next year. And in terms of fees, well, it's busy. There's some euphoria going on. People are moving sats around, moving Bitcoin around. So to get into the next block right now, 171 sats per byte, that's a lot. One hour, 121, 28 sats per byte.

Anything beyond a day, you could be okay with one. that's assuming that more transactions don't pile in. So don't bank on that metric. If you're looking to avoid some of those fees and have some day-to-day movement of funds, then take a look at Lightning Wallets. I've done videos on Breeze Wallet and Phoenix Wallet, both of which are super easy to onboard,

and you don't have to do any extra heavy lifting running nodes, stuff like that. It's all on your phone. So check those videos out back in the channel. But besides that, Before we get into the news, of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.io. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. Of course, they've got their Bitcoin back loans.

This is where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral to get a Canadian or US dollar loan. So if you're in a pinch and you need to get your hands on dollars, but you know, you don't want to sell your Bitcoin because that is taxable. And too, you're worried about having a buyback in at a higher price, especially with the explosion we've seen lately. This could be for you. They also have Bitcoin and USDC savings accounts with interest rates of up to 11.7% annually, paid monthly, and they've got their B2X offering, which uses the same loan mechanism to instantly buy more Bitcoin, effectively doubling your Bitcoin on the spot. So if you want to check out any of this, there's a link down below in the show notes. If you click that link and opt to get either of the loan products, they will plop $25 for free into your savings account. Up next we have the Kobo Vault, one of my favorite hardware wallets. I use it pretty regularly now, and I love it because it's 100% air-gapped.

That means that everything is done via QR code. You never plug it into an internet-connected device, and everything, as I said, via QR code that keeps your keys to your money safe and offline. It has a secure element. The firmware is open-source. By the way, I recommend switching to the Bitcoin-only firmware. And as far as support for different wallets and interoperability, it works with all my favorites, Bitcoin Core, Electrum,

Wasabi on Desktop, which is my go-to, and Blue Wallet on Mobile, which is my mobile go-to. So be sure to check them out. Link below, for reference, I'm using the Kobo Vault Pro with the fingerprint scanner and the rechargeable battery. Now, if you're new to the show, I live on Bitcoin.

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With that, let's dive into what's going on. There is so much. So much has been going on. This article here on Bloomberg.com, Bitcoin soars above $23,000 as more Wall Street firms pile in. And this is a lot of what we've been seeing kind of through the year, especially since around summer. We've been seeing these hints, and now people are being quite public about it. So Bitcoin breached $23,000 for the first time in his time.

history as more Wall Street names crowd into the world's largest digital currency up 220% this year. As momentum bills, analysts predict more gains ahead. It jumped more than 9% on Thursday touching a high of 23-256. Actually, this is a little bit dated because it did get up to 236, something like that, according to competent prices compiled by Bloomberg. Bitcoin and the wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index have more than triple. this year. Yeah, again, it's kind of industry-wide right now. So the rally in digital assets is polarizing opinion given Bitcoin's history of boom and bust. Proponents argue that the

cryptocurrency is muscling in on gold as a portfolio of diversifier amid dollar weakness and potential inflationary pressure. Others see speculative fervor that will inevitably lead to a bust akin to the meltdown three years ago as furious after a furious Bitcoin rally. Yet, there are signs that long-term investors like asset managers and family offices are playing more of a role this time around alongside trend-following quant funds.

Bitcoin scarcity combined with rampant money printing by the Federal Reserve means the digital token should eventually, could eventually climb to, and I won't spoil it here, but we have a lot of, lot of institutions that are coming in citing massive price targets that seem insane to the average viewer, but those that are kind of in the know and have been in Bitcoin for a while, they may not seem that out to lunch.

When they talk about the boom and bust cycles of Bitcoin, is it volatile? Absolutely. But there's a really great video. And I was just talking to this guy earlier today. But he put it out in, I think it was 2013. And the title of the video is called, you don't want to buy Bitcoin because it's going to crash. And basically, he goes through the price history of Bitcoin at the time. He's like, you know, this is one time Bitcoin went up to and he says a price.

But then it crashed down to whatever price point. And he says it over and over again each time with higher and higher prices. And so does Bitcoin crash? Absolutely. But historically, it has now always come back from every single price crash that it has ever had in its 12. of your history. And it's just, do you have low enough time preference to wait out those gradual returns to glory, I suppose? So if you're thinking long term, then yeah, you're fine. But if you're speculating with money that you can't afford to lose that you're going to need to use in the

near term, then of course, you're going to be very sensitive to those price swings. So I guess it's a matter of perspective and time preference. But in the same vein here on CoinDesk, this article, Mass Mutual, they just bought a ton of Bitcoin. This from J.P. Morgan, Mass Mutual's Bitcoin buy may presage a 600 billion institutional flood. So JP Morgan analysts have said that the recent Bitcoin purchases by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. are a sign. of growing mainstream acceptance for the cryptocurrency. The quote, Mass Mutual's Bitcoin purchases

represent another milestone in the Bitcoin adoption by institutional investors. One can see the potential demand that could arise over the coming years as other insurance companies and pension funds follow Mass Mutuals example.

Yeah, so on Thursday, the 169-year-old insurance firm. So this isn't some fly-by-night, you know, amateur Knight and Dixie, firm that just popped up. They've been around for 169 years. They announced Bitcoin purchases worth $100 million, as well as a $5 million equity stake in NYDIG, a financial services firm focused on Bitcoin with $2.3 billion in the asset under management. Yeah, it's crazy to see institutions like this jumping in. And they're not the only ones here from Reuters.

Reuters? Anyways, British fund firm Ruffer has 550 million British pounds in a Bitcoin bet. So British fund manager Ruffer Investment Management last month made a bet on Bitcoin now worth over 550 million pounds, which translates to $745 million U.S. dollars. A spokesman for the company told Reuters in one of the largest signals of rising institutional interest in the digital currency this year. The allocation by Ruffer, which manages 20.3 billion pounds or around $27.3 billion in assets. At end of November, on behalf of more than 6,500 investors globally, quote, acts as a hedge to some of the risks that we see in a fragile monetary system and distorted financial markets. This is the stuff that Bitcoiners have been trumpeting since the inception of Bitcoin.

and it is mind-blowing to see these companies and major fund managers and institutions wake up and understand what's going on. I mean, these guys, they make a living playing in the traditional financial world, and they're seeing the red flags, and they're seeing Bitcoin as an opt-out. They're seeing this as a way to exit that system or at least hedge against the inefficiencies and potential downfall. of a system like it. Yeah, the allocation was made through a third-party manager and represents around 2.7% of Ruffler's total assets. Wow. And more, still more. Bitcoin Whale emerges with $1 billion, Alan Howard's backing. Okay, so again, from Yahoo Finance, I guess from Bloomberg by proxy, but anyways, here, a hedge fund specializing in volatility beds has emerged as one of the largest investors of Bitcoin after quietly buying more than 600 million in cryptocurrencies and

joining forces with Alan Howard, the co-founder of Brevin Howard Asset Management. Eric Peters, chief executive officer of One River Asset Management, said in an interview, he set up a new company to seize on the growing interest in cryptocurrencies among institutional investors. In addition to its initial purchases, One River Asset Management, One River, Asset Management, one river digital asset management rather, has commitments that it will bring its holdings of Bitcoin and Ether, anyway, is Bitcoin and Ether,

to about $1 billion as of early 2021? Crazy. And I want to circle back to what was in one of the first articles I was talking about, but this in a tweet here from Bloomberg TV. And there was a segment on Bloomberg where somebody from Guggenheim, another company that is now willing to place, and we've talked about this on the show, but they're looking at placing up to 10% of assets under management into Bitcoin. They said they could do that.

They're going through the approval process to do such. And they've now, they're almost cleared, but they began that process when Bitcoin was around $10,000. And they've since seen it explode up to $23,000 and beyond. And so he's saying in this interview, well, it's a little bit more difficult for us now that it's gone up, but we still see the value here. And he goes on to quote that in their opinion at Guggenheim, Bitcoin has a fair market value of $400,000 U.S. dollars. And the crazy thing about this to put in context in kind of what was happening at the time, at the time, the Federal Reserve, the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, was. going alive with a press conference on what the Federal Reserve in the U.S. was going to do for monetary policy

and how they were going to continue to buy up as much as they could pump as much capital into the system as needed until they saw significant changes and upside. He was going on for this press conference, and the people running the program actually postponed, cutting to the Fed's announcement so that they could hear more about Guggenheim and Scott Minard here talking about his $400,000 Bitcoin call. They ignored what was happening with the Fed so that they could talk more about Bitcoin. I don't know if there's a better metaphor

for the shift in mentality in the world right now that somebody says, we know that the Fed is going live right now. We know Jerome Powell is making a big announcement talking about the future of the U.S. dollar and how they're going to manage it right now. But let's talk a little bit more about Bitcoin first. We'll get to that later. Insanity.

And again, as I alluded to, what did the Fed say? And this is the Fed's own making, let's remember. The reason that Bitcoin was created was because of irresponsible central bank policy. So here we are. And again, Fed, this from the, from Blank. Bloomberg, Fed to maintain bond buys until substantial economy gains seen. So the Federal Reserve strengthened its commitment to support U.S. economy, promising to maintain its massive asset purchase program until it sees, quote, substantial further progress

in employment and inflation. They want that inflation. They want it to go up. They want the money that you've saved to be worth less so that you will spend it. at their final meeting of a tumultuous year, policymakers led by Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday, voted to maintain monthly bond purchases of at least, at least $120 billion and scrapped their previous pledge to keep buying over the coming months.

Yeah, they didn't announce changements for the composition of purchases, so on and so forth. And then when asked about what does. those targets were, he said, I can't give you an exact set of numbers. He pointed the economy might meet these conditions. The point at which it might meet those conditions was probably some ways off. So basically, he's saying, like, we're going to keep interest rates at next to nothing and we're going to keep printing money and buying up junk bonds until things turn around, until there's notable inflation. And even furthermore, I highlighted it down here, the Fed says it expects it will be appropriate to maintain this target range until labor market

conditions have reached levels consistent with the committee's assessment of maximum employment and this is the important part inflation has risen to 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time that's pretty vague language around inflation not only that but again we've talked about this plenty of times on the show but the way inflation is tracked through things like CPI, consumer price index, it gets rid of all of the important things that you buy day to day. So it doesn't count things like food and fuel and housing. All of those things that you really, really need. Yeah, that's not included in inflation, but it should be. Not only that, but it should be included in asset prices, because if you want to maintain your wealth, you need to take

those dollars and you're forced to effectively gamble with them by purchasing other assets because you're losing your purchasing power if you just hold the dollars. So you kind of, you have to have to have something else. You have to, up until now, you had to buy stock. You had to buy equities, but maybe not anymore with Bitcoin. Maybe you can just hold your currency. Um, anyways, yeah, again, this is the Fed's own doing. And they've, all of these asset managers have said such. They're like, listen, it's monetary policy. We can't hold dollars anymore. We've got to do something else. and we can't just hold bonds. Bonds are returning nothing. And the stock market is not offsetting that, which typically it might.

So now we've got to look elsewhere. And that elsewhere right now seems to be Bitcoin. Anyways, moving on, in the same realm, I guess in more of a regulatory realm, Senator-elect Lumis announced a senior staff with a focus on cryptocurrency. So this is in Wyoming here. U.S. Senator-elect Cynthia Lumis announced a list of hires to her senior staff Monday that includes some of the top names

in the state's burgeoning cryptocurrency sector, setting up the former Wyoming treasurer as a potential leader in the emerging policy area for the 117th United States Congress. So yeah, she's added, she's basically building up her team to be a powerhouse when it comes to the incoming regulations

in and around Bitcoin and I guess the sector at large. which is great. We now have a bitcoinser in the Senate that understands it have been around, has been around it. And again, she's trying to get it so that states and government agencies will look as Bitcoin as a wealth-preserving asset that can be held in treasuries, which right now we're seeing that happening with institutions. But can you imagine four or five years out when a lot of this is considered and they see what happens. with these institutions and governments start looking at this thing. In my opinion, again, the next kind of Bitcoin four-year epoch, that's what we're going to be seeing. We're going to be seeing insane prices based around governments starting to do this.

But hey, we'll see. We shall see. Interesting news here, Silk Road. So this was the infamous online dark net marketplace where you could get all kinds of unattainable goods. call them online. Well, the creator of that website was arrested and is currently serving a couple life sentences, but he may be up for pardon by Trump. So again, this is from Coindex.

Silk Road's Ross Ulbrett being considered for pardon by Trump. U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing whether he should give the jailed founder of the defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road, Ross Ulbert, a pardon. According to a report by the Daily Beast on Tuesday, the White House Counsel Office is reviewing Obrick's case and documents. The Daily Beast cites three sources familiar with a matter claiming the president has been reviewing cases ahead of his next round of pardons and commutations before January 20, 2021, which is the inauguration day for Biden. A final decision on Obrick's case has yet to be determined according to the report, but the notorious Silk Road, founder reportedly has influential backers within the president's inner circles pushing for a pardon, the report said, quote, I have documents forwarded to my contacts in the White House as

early as February, said activist Weldon Angelos, a former music producer and ex-federal prison inmate cited in the Daily Beast article. Weldon was quoted in the report as saying he had been contacted by Ulbrick's family and was hopeful that Trump would commute his sentence. in full, adding this case as perhaps more support than I've seen in any case of this kind. It would be wild. It would be so wild to see Ross Ulbricht actually pardoned. That would be insane. I support this because what did he do?

He created a website that was peer-to-peer where people could transact as they pleased. Now, whether or not you like the idea of people doing drugs and being able to access them, it is the individual's own body, I suppose. Also, there's the aspect of, you know, how much violence was prevented by getting this stuff off the streets and just having people online. Now, did it negatively affect some people? Well, sure, like addicts can be negative. negatively affected, but I sit in the camp where I like the approach of a place like Portugal, where they basically removed and made all drugs legal, and instead of funneling money into

putting addicts in prison, they funneled money into support programs to help get them clean. And the drop in crime and the, I guess the burden that was taken off of the system by trying to jail all of these people has been tremendous. And I think it's been quite good for Portugal to have done that. But again, it's up to interpretation. Nonetheless, very interesting that we may, may see Ulbric actually pardoned by Trump before he leaves office. Okay, a couple last things on the techie side. Cracken, one of the largest exchanges out there, they announced Lightning Integration. So Lightning Network, I was talking about it earlier. basically instant and nearly free transactions.

If you're finding that moving money around on the Bitcoin main net is a little cumbersome and a little too expensive, especially if you're trying to do smaller transactions, lightning just kind of makes sense. And again, I do recommend you check out Breeze wallet or Phoenix wallet. I've done videos on both of them. But Cracken announces lightning integration. So today, Cracken announced forthcoming features designed to bring the benefits of Bitcoin's Lightning Network to its global exchange in the first half.

half of 2021. Pierre Richard, Bitcoin strategist at Cracken, sat down with Bitcoin Magazine for an exclusive interview regarding Cracken's intentions to implement Lightning in 2021. He said, quote, Cracken is growing a lot. We are hiring a lot. We're also looking to take on new technological challenges and also creating new features that are going to create value for our users. One of those is that we are announcing today that we will be launching support for Lightning in the first half of 2021. Now, again, he's talking about sometimes when you're depositing Bitcoin onto exchange, like right now, Cracken requires three confirmations, which can be 30 minutes or more.

And again, in terms of withdrawals, oftentimes they can be like $10 because you never know what the network fees are going to be. Like today, fees are high. So those $10 withdrawal fees kind of make sense because the exchanges cover. their own butts so they don't get raked over the coals. He said in both cases, we're talking about orders of magnitude improvement, both on speed and efficiency of transfer of Bitcoin, and Cracken thinks this is going to open up a lot of really cool use cases. I'm super happy to see Cracken integrate lightning right now. Again, I think part of the issue that drives people into using and purchasing

and thinking that they see value in a lot of alt coins is, oh, well, they're faster and cheaper. Well, yeah, but if their value, if the store of value behind them versus Bitcoin is disintegrating over time, well, I mean, it's like a hot potato. But with Bitcoin and then Lightning Network, if you're using both, you're getting the best of both worlds. You can do those fast and cheap transactions. You can still have your wealth saved and not whittled away over time in terms of Bitcoin, in terms of stats. So, yeah, I can't wait to see more exchanges start to jump on this. and kudos to Krakken for being, I believe, the first major exchange, one of the first anyways.

I know that there are one or two that have done it, but I hope to see lots more of this in the future. And one last thing I wanted to touch on here, Blue Wallet. I already mentioned that this is my go-to wallet on mobile, but they just launched multi-sig volts. If you don't know what multi-sig is, basically it allows you to create what it sounds like, a digital vault online, that requires multiple keys to open it.

So you could have an instance where you create this digital vault that stores your Bitcoin and you create three keys that go with it. And that could be like the blue wallet itself on your phone. And then maybe a couple devices like a COBOLVALT and a cold card. And I experimented with this. Literally the moment came out. I put it together in about 10 minutes and was able to send in and out a transaction and have it fully ready to go.

It's pretty awesome. I've got to say. And it's the security on multi-sig is orders of magnitude better than just a single key. Now, there are complications around that. It's not, there's still a learning curve around it, but very excited to see this rollout. And that is going to be my tutorial on Monday.

That's what I'm going to be working on. So keep an eye out for that on Monday. I can't wait to do this one because, yeah, man, multi-sig vaults on my mobile phone. What a time to be alive, guys. It's crazy. Anyways, I'm going to wrap up there. Thank you guys so much for watching and or listening.

If you're here on YouTube, please do hit, like, subscribe, and share. All of those things really, really do help. And the more you do them, the more this bumps content like this in front of more eyeballs and gets people watching. So, yeah, it always helps. If you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors I mentioned before down below. Leden, Cobo, Bit Refill, and Privacy Pros, aka the Bill Fottle. All of those are down below.

And finally, if you really liked what you saw, you can always hit me up with a Bitcoin Lightning Network tip. Seems to be the theme of the day, lightning network. At my tippin.me page, that is t-I-P-P-I-N dot me slash at BTC sessions. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day, a wonderful evening, wherever you may be. And I will see you next time for your daily sales.

session. Bye guys.