BTC Sessions - PAYPAL CAVES: Will Now Allow Bitcoin Withdrawals ep176

Starting point is 00:00:23 Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Hope you're having a good Thursday. Hope you've had a good week. Got lots to talk about today. Lots of things going on. We've got some PayPal news.

Starting point is 00:00:42 We've got a few high net worth individuals that were previously skeptical of Bitcoin, now starting to dabble, looking to dive in. Yeah, lots of geopolitical stuff. We're going to touch on a whole bunch today. Now, as always, this, of course, is live. So a quick disclaimer from my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live.

Starting point is 00:01:05 Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. Can't wait to dive in with you guys. As always, please do hit like, subscribe, and share. Smash that like button. It'll get even more people in here watching live. Thanks for those that are in live.

Starting point is 00:01:23 And make sure you're hitting those comments up. As always, I am Ben with the BTC. sessions. This is your daily session. Now, before we hit the news, let's take a look at where we are in the markets at the moment. We are sitting at $38,966 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 2,566 Satoshi's. 89.14% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And in terms of fees, 66 sats per byte will get you into the next block. willing to wait around an hour, 25 sats per bite. So you're cutting yourself in half there. Not bad in terms of fees, actually, right now. There is going to be a mining difficulty

Starting point is 00:02:21 adjustment of around 15% to the negative side, which means that you'll be having blocks coming in quicker, which means more transactions getting through per second temporarily, which means you could have lower fees coming up. So if you're looking to move some things around, open some lightning channels. The coming days and this weekend may be a good time to do it. So keep your eyes open for that. Of course, shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden. where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services.

Starting point is 00:02:54 Of course, they have their Bitcoin back loans where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral to get a Canadian or US dollar loan. So if you're in a pinch like I have been in the past where you need to get your hands on dollars, but you don't want to sell your Bitcoin because that's taxable and you're worried about having a buyback in it, a higher price. This could be for you. Very easy. All you do, you deposit Bitcoin, you get dollars to your bank account within 24 hours,

Starting point is 00:03:17 and when you pay that back, you get back the same amount of SATs. Of course, they also have their Bitcoin and USDC savings accounts with interest rates of up to 12.5% annually paid monthly, and they've got their B2X offering. It uses the same loan mechanism to instantly buy more Bitcoin if you're feeling mega bullish. Check them out. Links are below. If you all up to click that link and use one of their loan products, they'll give you $25 for free. into your savings. Now, of course, I do live on Bitcoin. One of the things that helps me with

Starting point is 00:03:44 this is bit refill where I can use Bitcoin to purchase just about any gift card that my little heart desires in any country that you may happen to be in. I love this thing. Super easy to get things. Uber, Best Buy, Amazon, Home Depot, pretty much anything I'm looking for, gas cards, anything. And the other beautiful thing about this, I can pay on-chain or Lightning Network, and I earn Sats back as I shop. So if you want to check them out, links are down below in the description. And finally, if you're backing up any Bitcoin wallet, paper might not be the best choice for you.

Starting point is 00:04:20 That opens you up to fire damage, water damage, or just accidentally misplacing or throwing out the damn thing if somebody doesn't or isn't familiar with what it is and the importance of it. Getting it on solid steel on something like the billfottle over on privacyprose.io can give you that peace of mind and protect you from all of those things that I just mentioned. I've heard some horror stories in the past number of years. And honestly, having it on steel is a huge cyber relief for me.

Starting point is 00:04:47 This is how I back up my Bitcoin wallets. So be sure to check them out. Links are down below. And with that, let's jump into the news. Lots going on this week. Let's start with PayPal here. So PayPal is looking to begin allowing Bitcoin withdrawals. So in an announcement during CoinDesks Consensus Concentus,

Starting point is 00:05:05 conference on Wednesday. PayPal's head of cryptocurrency, Jose Fernandez, Deponte, said that the company will soon be letting its users send Bitcoin and other cryptos out of PayPal. PayPal plans to add support for third-party wallet transfers, which will allow the platform's users to move cryptocurrencies out of PayPal and into private wallets. This will also apply to Venmo users who will be able to withdraw cryptocurrency from the app and send it to other wallets or services. Soon, both Venmo and PayPal users will be able to send to each other. DePonte did not give further details about when PayPal and Venmo plan to integrate this feature. So this likely stems from the massive amount of demand for this feature.

Starting point is 00:05:50 People I personally know that have been coming into the space that start wanting to dabble and purchase Bitcoin and they see it's available on PayPal. They make that purchase and they don't realize that they don't actually have full custody of at current time. They can't withdraw it. They can only hold it or sell it. They can't put it in a different wallet, nothing like that. So I imagine the demand from that, people requesting that type of feature and just interoperability being able to actually pay for things out of your PayPal wallet. It's important to have that accessibility there. So while I'm not a huge fan of PayPal in general or custody solutions where you leave Bitcoin with somebody like PayPal, I do give them a

Starting point is 00:06:36 nod for seeing what the market wants and giving it to them. So kudos to PayPal. I'm excited to see that rollout for both PayPal and Venmo. And we have heard rumblings about the same types of features from Robin Hood, though that has not yet been implemented. So hopefully this will just further prod them into doing that. Moving on here, these are some of the the high net worth individuals that seem to be dabbling a little bit more into Bitcoin here. Ray Dalio being one of them, this over on Coin Desk. So concerns about a looming global debt crisis have taken the world's top hedge fund manager from doubting Bitcoin to dabbling in it.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said the US dollar is on the verge of devaluation on a level last seen in 1971 and that China is threatening. the Greenback's role as the World Reserve currency. In such an environment, Bitcoin with its gold-like properties looks increasingly attractive as savings vehicles, said Dahlio, whose firm started 2021 with 101.9 billion in assets under management, making it the world's largest hedge fund. He said, quote, personally, I'd rather have Bitcoin than a bond. and this was in an hour-long interview with CoinDisc,

Starting point is 00:08:00 chief content officer Michael Casey. He does say that he currently has some Bitcoin, but he didn't quite elaborate on that. But either way, somebody that's been around the block starting to see value in Bitcoin, again, I don't reckon, I don't reckon we should elevate anybody at this point

Starting point is 00:08:20 to hero status. That's clearly not worked out in the past. but you know, kudos to Ray for starting to see the writing on the wall and understanding what's at play here. So yeah, great. And moving on from there, Carl Icon says he may get into cryptocurrencies in a big way. Now this one, I'm a little bit more skeptical of just given the way that he's been talking.

Starting point is 00:08:46 It seems like he's trying to launch a business as opposed to seeing the value here. So I'll read a little bit, you know, form your own opinion. but activist investor Carl Icon is interested in getting into cryptocurrency in a big way and may eventually put more than $1 billion into an alternative currency. While Icon hasn't bought any cryptocurrency yet, the billionaire investor said in a Bloomberg TV interview that he studies Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the crypto sector as a whole to determine where the opportunities are. Alternative currencies are gaining popularity as a natural manifestation of inflation in the economy,

Starting point is 00:09:22 he added. Any criticism around cryptocurrency having no underlying value is, quote, a little wrongheaded icon said. He said, well, what's the value of a dollar? The only value of the dollar is because you can use it to pay taxes. I'm looking at the whole business and how I might get involved in it. Then he also goes on to say he believes people are looking into alternative currencies because parts of the equities market are being traded at ridiculous prices. You refer not only to those, being driven up by so-called meme stocks, but also certain strategies being offered by money managers. He said, I don't think Reddit and Robin Hood and those guys are necessarily bad. I think they do serve a purpose.

Starting point is 00:10:03 Money is funneling back into companies. Some of these companies might be okay, but a number of them, the risk reward is absurd. So he sees kind of cracks in the existing system. He sees a reason for Bitcoin to exist in the irrationality that is the current markets. He doesn't seem to make the connection of the extreme money printing, at least in this article here anyways, but he does kind of allude to, well, you know, the value of the dollar is subjective and is based a lot on faith in the current system, which maybe doesn't deserve as much faith as it's currently getting. So, again, let's let's not celebrate too much, but at least, again, we've got somebody whose interest it is to preserve capital. recognizing some value in the space. So can't be too upset about that.

Starting point is 00:10:58 Now, there was a lot of controversy earlier this week when Michael Saylor tweeted out the following, well, in the act of tweeting out retweeting Elon Musk. So Musk had previously had concerns about the energy mix of Bitcoin mining. He cited some article about coal plants coming back online and the increased amount of energy being used to mine Bitcoin all the while not really focusing on where that energy is coming from and what it's replacing in terms of the Fiat monetary system. That said, Michael Saylor tweeted out, Yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting, and this was tweeted out on May 24th,

Starting point is 00:11:38 by the way, yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting between Elon Musk and the leading Bitcoin miners in North America. The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage, transparency, and accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide. And then the retweet from Musk was spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current and planned renewable usage and to ask miners worldwide to do so, potentially promising. And then Saylor went on and tagged a bunch of the people involved,

Starting point is 00:12:10 Argo blockchain, block cap, core scientific, galaxy digital, high blockchain, HUDAid mining, marathon, and riot blockchain were a number of those. So they have different energy-related goals. Now, there was a lot of pushback to this. I think the PTSD from the New York agreement in 2017. So those unfamiliar with that, basically a number of miners and a number of top companies and figureheads in the space got together behind closed doors and effectively said, hey, we're going to move forward and we're going to scale Bitcoin and we're going to do a hard fork and we're going to change how it works. and we're going to do all of these things to Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:12:49 without really getting the input or consent of individuals that are actually using Bitcoin because we're big and it shouldn't matter. That then turned into a pushback that ended in absolute failure on their part, which was wonderful to see. So had it gone forward, they would have gone forward with a non-compatible, non-backwards compatible upgrade, quote-unquote upgrade, it wasn't an upgrade, but a change to Bitcoin that effectively would force the entire network to change the software they're running,

Starting point is 00:13:27 and it would have displaced all of the current volunteer Bitcoin core developers and replaced them with a small team of a single developer. Thank God that didn't go through. And it also further proved Bitcoin's decentralization because people running nodes, running copy of the software said, we're not going to change to your software. And whatever you make out of this is going to be an alt-coin, and it won't be worth as much as Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:13:52 And they even had a fuchs market that showed that the coin, based on current value, would have been worth about a quarter of what Bitcoin actually was. So the market did its thing and forced these guys out. So there's a lot of worry that this tweet from Sailor and from Musk was creating, again, some sort of cabal of miners that would try

Starting point is 00:14:15 to exert different forces on the Bitcoin network. One of the worries is that there would be a push towards only mining with green energy, which would then force certain parts of

Starting point is 00:14:31 the network offline, or that they would only mine clean blocks and that the that you would basically have dirty and clean coins screwing with the fungibility of Bitcoin. However, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:47 I'm not a fan of closed door meetings. I think anybody can get together and talk about whatever the hell they want. But I also don't think that this will have a lick of fucking difference for anything. So here's a bit of why. So this was one of the people

Starting point is 00:15:04 from that council that were talking about it. So this individual, who was this? by the way. There we go. Peter Wall, CEO of Argo blockchain. He said,

Starting point is 00:15:17 we're not talking about Bitcoin code or block size or anything related to changing the nature of Bitcoin. We all love Bitcoin the way it is as a decentralized

Starting point is 00:15:25 permissionless system. He said further that discussions within the group so far I've been very clear that one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin and that fungibility

Starting point is 00:15:33 and essential properties of Bitcoin wouldn't be changed. Yeah. So anyways, there was pushback from this. Marty Bent from TFTC saying it's extremely concerning that this group of Bitcoiners wandered into this meeting

Starting point is 00:15:49 without any sense of self-awareness. Do they not recall the last time there was a closed-door meeting that involved industry stakeholders who attempted to speak on behalf of the entire industry? How did they think this would turn out? The hubris is astounding. Again, Peter Wall saying this isn't the start of OPEC, the group is a way to get together

Starting point is 00:16:09 and discuss, we are all independent decentralized miners who have formed a voluntary group to influence the industry and each other. Again, the influence part, I think is what most people are kind of, eh, about. But regardless, let's talk about this. Let's talk about if they were able to exert pressure and say, we're only going to mine clean blocks. Well, first of all, the people involved in this group were all North American Bitcoin miners. They amount to about 10% of global hash rate. Very, very limited. So, you know, even if they were to not accept transactions and try to cut those

Starting point is 00:16:49 transactions out that do not have, that we're not mined in quote unquote green ways, well, you know, 90% of the hash rate is willing to pick up those transactions. So fungibility is not really screwed with there. And then also on a game theoretical perspective. So that means that they have to put extra measures in place to kind of find out if transactions were mined in a greenway or not. So that's a cost. And on top of that, if they started not accepting those types of transactions into their blocks as they're mining, other miners would then pick them up. And it may take up, you know, in terms of this, about 10% longer to get a transaction through.

Starting point is 00:17:33 But people that wanted to would just attach a higher fee, of which only, only the miners that weren't paying attention to this push would pick up, making them more profitable with less overhead because they're not even having to check compared to these quote unquote green miners. Effectively, the free market would do its own thing, right? One group would be way more profitable than the other and have less overhead and it would sort itself out. So again, was this a stupid move? Probably. Does it matter? probably not.

Starting point is 00:18:07 That's my hot take. Anyways, let's keep going here. On the same topic of kind of the green energy, all that kind of stuff, Hasma Cook put out a killer article called Bitcoin emits less than 5% of the legacy financial sectors carbon emissions. He goes through all of the emissions and the energy usage of the traditional finance system and then does a comparison. So he goes through all the data, talks about kind of the energy mix in a variety of different sectors, and basically goes through the industry, the facilities, the number of employees, the annual revenue, all that kind of stuff. And then puts together, also, sorry, square feet of facilities, he puts together all this information and he uses different models to kind of project, you know, what the impact of,

Starting point is 00:19:02 the traditional system is versus Bitcoin. And so basically what he gets to at the end is the emissions, when compared, Bitcoin is, it looks to be about a third, a little bit, a little bit less than a third. It's probably about 40% of that of gold. And in terms of the finance and insurance sector, which are tied together, it's not even close. Bitcoin is a fraction of what gets put out here.

Starting point is 00:19:38 So it says here that Bitcoin emits 61.2 million tons of CO2 or under 5% of the financial services industry. In the scheme of global carbon dioxide equivalent, it's only about 0.12%. And this is the issue when you get into trying to moralize, uses of energy. How questionable are every other use of energy? If you're going to shit on Bitcoin for using energy just at all,

Starting point is 00:20:11 then look at what it's trying to replace. It's trying to replace this corrupt system that can basically screw people out of their hard-earned money that disenfranchises the poorest amongst society and has proven that through its mechanisms, continues to grow the gap between the rich and the poor. So replacing that seems like a useful thing, at least in my opinion. Think of how trivial other things are. Television, that uses a hell of a lot of energy. Christmas lights, that uses a lot.

Starting point is 00:20:44 But you don't see people going and saying, throw your televisions, turn off your Christmas lights, because you're destroying the planet. So again, when you get into moralizing people's use of energy, you better be prepared to moralize your own uses of energy. energy. Anyways, highly recommend reading through this article. It is a doozy and he has previously talked about how bad for the environment gold mining is compared to Bitcoin, which was an excellent one as well. Moving down the line in the same realm, Iran has banned cryptocurrency

Starting point is 00:21:19 mining for four months amid power cuts. So Iran has banned energy intensive mining, such as Bitcoin mining for nearly four months. on Wednesday as the country faces major power blackouts in many cities. Said the ban on Bitcoin mining of cryptocurrencies is effectively immediately until September 22. Many had tagged on some 85% of current mining in Iran is unlicensed. So this leads me to wonder, how are you going to crack down on that if the mining is totally unlicensed and people are just doing it from wherever? You're going to have to find that and then shut it down.

Starting point is 00:21:59 I don't know about that. Anyways, interesting stat, according to blockchain analytics firm, elliptic, around 4.5% of all Bitcoin mining takes place in Iran, allowing it to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from cryptocurrencies that can be used to lessen the impacts of U.S. sanctions. Pretty wild. Kind of cool to see. I'm again, like, I'm not a fan of authoritarian regimes in any sense,

Starting point is 00:22:28 but it's interesting to see how Bitcoin just works wherever you are. It cannot discriminate between quote unquote good and bad uses. It's just a, it's like air. Everybody has access to it. Mass murderers and saints, right? So you can't really stop that. Same with the internet. Everybody can hop on it.

Starting point is 00:22:55 Now, of course, there is the great firewall of China, and things like that. But Bitcoin is pretty open and at this point doesn't even require an internet connection. You can literally use Bitcoin via satellite or in some cases as shown by Rodolfo Novak from Coin Kite who created the cold card. He did it via shortwave radio blast through a snowstorm. So Bitcoin's pretty resilient. It's going to be pretty difficult to stop it. But hey, let's see how this Iran ban turns out, moving on. This I found funny. So this from CNBC, Bitcoin, quote, time to buy ad banned in the UK for being irresponsible.

Starting point is 00:23:38 So posters for cryptocurrency exchange service, Luno shown across the London Underground Network and on London buses this year, contained a cartoon image of a Bitcoin with the words, if you're seeing Bitcoin on the underground, it's time to buy. The advertising standards authority said the ads must not appear again in their current form and that they failed to highlight the risks. It has told Luno to ensure that its future marketing communications make sufficiently clear that the value of investment in Bitcoin was variable and could go down as well as up. I mean, fair, I suppose, yes, it can go down and up. Everything carries risk, obviously. Now, I will say that is it as risky as they make it out to be?

Starting point is 00:24:30 It's volatile, that's for sure. But historically, it really, like over long enough time frames, it really hasn't been super risky. I do, yeah, I get where they're coming from because idiots will ape into it, not knowing what it is, buy it because they see number go up, having not done a lick of research to understand why it's valuable. And then when they see the number go down, they will sell. Part of me, though, again, I'm kind of for the free market.

Starting point is 00:25:00 We've been babysat so long. And basically everything is bubble wrapped in the traditional economy, at least for many, many instances, that people don't know how to make financial decisions on their own anymore. They can't decipher what is, worth something and what is not. They don't know how to do that due diligence. And I think that's very much a symptom of that babying.

Starting point is 00:25:27 And so I don't know how we make that transition from people not understanding anything about money to people being able to make sound financial decisions for themselves. But somewhere in between that transition, there's a world of hurt coming for people that have not been educated and will basically the price of tuition will be bad decisions being made. So yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of on the fence with this one. Let me know what you think.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Do you think that they should have been forced to take down the ads or change them? Or do you think this is just fair game and people should figure shit out on their own? Moving on, this one's a short one. It's kind of funny. Anyways, Bobby Lee used to be with Bitcoin China or BTC China, which was exchange, mining pool and everything. Anyways, he's at consensus 2021. and he just found out that his new book, and he's from China,

Starting point is 00:26:21 he wrote a book called The Promise of Bitcoin. He found out that his book is banned from import into China into his home country. I don't know what else to say about that. Yeah, those are unfamiliar with Bobby Lee as well. His brother is Charlie Lee, who created Lightcoin. Anyways, banned from China. I haven't read the book. I don't know if it's any good.

Starting point is 00:26:46 Let's move on. Another great piece, Alex Gladstein. He's talking to it out of the park lately. He is with the Human Rights Foundation. He recently wrote another piece that I highlighted in the show. Anyways, I recommend you go back and check out all of his stuff. But his newest piece is called the humanitarian and environmental case for Bitcoin. So he did do a bit of a thread.

Starting point is 00:27:11 I'm going to read his thread, but I won't go through everything in it. Anyways, he said, could Bitcoin reduce middleman corruption in aid, bootstrap electrification via untapped renewables and help developing relations and dependency on foreign powers? He said, helping less fortunate is noble. Since the 1960s, more than $4 trillion has been sent from rich countries to poor countries and what is now a $200 billion foreign aid industry. But does humanitarianism, hence humanitarianism, sometimes help create the hard-churchase. it is supposed to solve. And he goes into some of AIDS major flaws and how we might fix them with Bitcoin by cutting out middlemen and corrupt governance that might siphon away value.

Starting point is 00:27:56 And also by funding or giving reason to fund projects like Bitcoin mining. And in the article he talks about in the Congo, this as an example, but funding Bitcoin mining infrastructure in and around power grids that never would have been built in the first place because it takes time to connect those power grids and the money needed to upkeep that is too much. Whereas if you have Bitcoin mining to offset those costs initially and then ramp down that Bitcoin mining as more people actually have demand for those power as the grid gets built out, you could actually create a sustainable early on kind of startup amongst a lot of these, you know, lower income nations.

Starting point is 00:28:46 So I find that very interesting. Anyways, I'm not going to dive too deep into it. It is a lengthy post, but well worth the read. Check it out. It is over on Bitcoin magazine. The link down below. A couple last things here. Article on root stock.

Starting point is 00:29:01 If you're unfamiliar, we have, of course, layers on top of Bitcoin or sidechains of Bitcoin. We have the Lightning Network, which I've covered. I've done videos on how to use it passively as well as how to get into the weeds of using an actual Bitcoin and Lightning Network node and setting up all your channels. Very cool. Recommend you go back if you want to dive deep down the rabbit hole of Lightning Network.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Check those out. There's also the Liquid Network, which is a side chain of Bitcoin. It does have trust tradeoffs involved, but allows a lot of cool features like confidential transactions, faster blocks, different assets issued on that side chain, all pegged to Bitcoin. Yeah, pretty interesting, easy to use. I've done a bunch of videos on that as well.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Well, one that I haven't played with yet is rootstock, which is another side chain of Bitcoin. So this article kind of details about what it is. Effectively, it's completely compatible. It's basically meant to displace a lot of the crap that's happening on Ethereum. Anything that is useful on Ethereum can be easily ported to root stock as a side chain of Bitcoin, which means you don't have to use a totally separate currency like the ETH token as fuel for these types of things. You can literally just use Bitcoin, use SATs as the fuel for these types of smart contracts. Now, I'm not going to speak to the viability of different things built on root stock because lots of different things could be done there.

Starting point is 00:30:32 Some of the defy stuff I think is pretty fiat, for lack of a better term. It seems like a lot of people on DeFi on Ethereum and other platforms have just figured out the cluster fuck of traditional finance and ported it onto a cryptocurrency. But nonetheless, it's interesting because rootstock has actually been growing quite a bit this year. So there are some stats here. They talk about the amount of Bitcoin pegged to various parts of these layers. So right now, there is 2,913 Bitcoin pegged within the liquid side chain. There is 1,638 pegged within rootstock side chain and a total of around 1,291 Bitcoin in public lightning network nodes. Now, the lightning one may not be reflective because you can have private lightning channels.

Starting point is 00:31:32 And so they even go in and say here, it should be noted that the real, amount of Bitcoin held on lightning channels difficult to estimate. Past estimates have indicated as much as 41% of Bitcoin held on lightning channels could be in private channels. So, you know, take that nearly 1,300 Bitcoin number with a grain of salt because it could be far higher than that. Anyways, what's interesting here is the growth of funds going into root stock as of this year. So the majority of Lightning Network growth occurred in 2019.

Starting point is 00:32:05 the majority of liquid growth occurred in 2020, and most of rootstock's growth has been this year in 2021. In March of this year, less than 600 Bitcoin were pegged to rootstock, and over the past couple of months, over 1,000 have been added into this side chain. During this time, liquid has only grown by about 20 Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:32:30 and lightning has only increased by around 120 Bitcoin. So it's more the pace at, which it's growing. Again, this could be short term, but interesting nonetheless, I'm all for different layers like this showing up. I think we're going to see lots of different use cases and side chains pop up. The reason I'm excited for this is it basically shows you don't really need totally different currencies to achieve these things. You can just make side chains on Bitcoin and not have to deal with less liquid currencies. So yeah. I don't know. What do you guys think about rootstock?

Starting point is 00:33:08 There are some kind of Rube Goldberg-esque qualities to certain things that can be built there. But hey, I don't know. We'll see how it plays out. Moving on, last couple of things here. Arc Invest buys nearly $20 million worth of Bitcoin. This was just the other day. Kathy Woods' Arc Investment Management has reportedly purchased $19,872,939,000 for the Bitcoin. That is very specific. Recent price dips in Bitcoin had given many investors the chance to accumulate Bitcoin at a relatively low price.

Starting point is 00:33:43 For instance, asset management company, ARC, led by Kathy Wood, snapped up around $20 million. According to the filing with the SEC, Arc Invest a hedge fund focusing on innovative development has purchased X amount, so and so forth. Now, Wood has been a longtime believer in the value of Bitcoin recently saying that the assets $1 trillion market cap is nothing. compared to where it ultimately will be. And if you're wondering about her targets there recently, she said she thinks it's going to go to half a million dollars. I don't argue with her here. That's timing, I don't know, eventually, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:34:26 I'm curious to see the trajectory of this year's market. You know, we did have the big drawdown. We were at 64, $64.5,000. We dropped to 29 at one point, and now we're up closer to 40. So these kind of pullbacks, although maybe not quite as much, are pretty typical of a bull market where it has a massive pullback and then gradually climbs back up before rocketing past. We will see if this happens again.

Starting point is 00:34:53 It's starting to look a little bit more reminiscent of 2013 rather than 2017, given the size of the pullback we just saw, which could indicate a crazy latter half of the year. I don't know. Maybe Kathy Wood will be dead on. We'll find out. But outside of that, something I'm super bullish on, something very exciting, is taproot activation. It is basically a shoe-in at this point. We have seen mining signal well beyond the threshold necessary.

Starting point is 00:35:24 Taproot is basically a backwards compatible soft fork added to Bitcoin, which will help with smart contracting stuff, which will help with trends. transaction size and blockchain bloat. Basically, all the sudden things like coin joins are much more affordable. Transaction batching becomes more affordable. All around, excellent thing to incorporate into Bitcoin. Basically, the way it's going to lock in is if 90% of miners signal they are ready for it over a two-week retargeting period.

Starting point is 00:36:00 Now, this particular two-week retargeting period, which comes to an end relatively soon, in about a day, it's not going to lock in. But the important part is very early on. You can see it was a pretty mixed bag. There weren't a lot of miners signaling or like, you know, 50, 60%. But now there's a lot of green blocks coming out of this. Very few red. In fact, if we click over to mining pools on taproot.watch, we can see that 97.23% of all hash rate is signaling readiness for taproot.

Starting point is 00:36:34 So barring any shenanigans, we are well above the threshold for locking in taproot over the next two weeks signaling period, which means in about 15, 16 days, we may be locked in for taproot, which would then deploy in November. So exciting, awesome. Can't wait for that to happen. Anyways, guys, that's it. That's it for me. Thank you for being here. As always, like, subscribe, share, all those things helps so much. they get more people watching this.

Starting point is 00:37:05 We got like 300 people watching live for a new show. I'm pretty happy with that. So thanks for you guys, the comments. Obviously, I can't be responding to comments when it's just me on my lonesome. But I do have an episode of Why Are We Bullish tomorrow? Same bat time, same bat channel. I'm going to be right here. I've actually got the entire team from Leden coming on.

Starting point is 00:37:25 Those guys, especially Maricio, with his unique insight, hailing from Venezuela and the value of Bitcoin that he understood coming out of there. Um, dudes a legend. So be sure to come on and, uh, watch that episode tomorrow. Of course, if you want to help with the show in another way, you can hit up the sponsors that I mentioned, including the lead and takeover tomorrow. Those guys are linked down below along with bit refill in Bill Fottle over at privacypros.io. And if you really liked what you saw, you can drop me a lightning network tip at my tipin. dot me page that is t i p p p i n dot me slash at b tc sessions with that i'm out have yourselves a

Starting point is 00:38:04 wonderful day or evening wherever you may be see you guys next time for your daily session

BTC Sessions - PAYPAL CAVES: Will Now Allow Bitcoin Withdrawals ep176

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