BTC Sessions - US Marshals REKT Selling Early, $11K in sight, 40 German Banks Eye BTC Custody EP019

Starting point is 00:00:06 What's up everyone? Ben with the BTC Sessions here, and this is your daily session. Before we dive in, of course, I'd like to give a big shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.com. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different services. They've got Bitcoin savings accounts where you can earn interest on your Bitcoin, paid in Bitcoin. They've got Bitcoin-back loans where you can use your Bitcoin as collateral to obtain a Canadian or U.S. dollar loan. So if you're in a pinch and you need dollars, but you don't want to sell you. your Bitcoin because it might be a bad time, that could be a good option for you. And finally, they've got their B2X offering. I just started using this the other day. And with the price action,

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Starting point is 00:01:24 and they are instructed on the back of the card to download the paired app, at which point they can scratch and scan a code on the card, and it starts them a brand new Bitcoin wallet on their phone and then sends them an on-chain transaction for the face value of the card. I think these things are great. I've given to them to lots of friends and family and super idiot proof, excellent for onboarding new users. So be sure to check them out at risewallet.com. You can click on locations to see where you can pick one up. They are currently only in Canada, but keep an eye out because they are looking at expanding. And with that, let's dive into the news.

Starting point is 00:02:01 So we've seen the return of quite the volatility the last few days here over the weekend. We had a brief a little jaunt above $10,000, which was then rejected back down into the $9,800 range. Well, we're back up above $10K. There was a 30-minute reversal that had us climb about $400. Now, let me double check here. At the time recording this, we are sitting around $10,200. It has been into the $10,300, but we'll see what happens through the rest of the day. So where could we be headed from here?

Starting point is 00:02:40 Well, pretty good support around the 9,800 level, but namely we have some major resistance at around the $10,400 level. We haven't even really tested that yet. But if we get rejected down, then we could be retesting the $9,500 range. But on the upside, if with... a fair amount of volume we get above that $10,400 range. We could be looking at $10,900, and then there's further resistance up at 116 and 11900. That's actually also where there's an open CME gap, which Bitcoin is notorious for meeting those levels. So we'll see if we managed to get there. Now, this has, you know, there's a few things contributing to this, but also,

Starting point is 00:03:35 So it's caused a few things, namely one of them being Bitcoin Google searches are surging because of this price momentum. So over the past week, Bitcoin searches have surged by 33% on Google. So up quite a bit. Of course, this isn't the only time that Bitcoin searches on Google have surged. Of course, there was a peak in December of 2017 at the absolute top of the bull market. There was also a peak in June of 2019 just last year when we kind of searched to that 13K level. And so since the beginning of the year, searches on Google for Bitcoin have actually searched about 37% globally.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Of course, it's all relative. So when I say 33% in the past week, that's in relation to where it was before. but 37% from the beginning of the year is a pretty damn good number. Now, also, due to the price fluctuation, some interesting stuff here, James and Law put together a site some real-time trackers on how much U.S. Marshals have lost by selling Bitcoin too early. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about, U.S. marshals have regularly seized Bitcoin from people that are conducting illicit activities.

Starting point is 00:05:03 One of the first and most public instances of this was the Silk Road when they seized all those bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht. But they've since seized other bitcoins from other people that were selling drugs or doing other illicit things. Well, this real-time tracker has kept track of what they've actually sold, how many Bitcoin, how many U.S. dollars they've received for them. but the real-time value of all of the coins that they have sold. And so let's break this down here because, man, it's a doozy.

Starting point is 00:05:37 So essentially, 185,230 Bitcoin have been seized by U.S. Marshals. They've sold those over since 2014 for a total of $151,440,000. With the value of Bitcoin at around $10,000 right now, that makes, for $1.85 billion in total for all of those Bitcoin. So $185,000 Bitcoin means $1.85 billion total. So the potential gains that U.S. Marshals have lost by selling and not holding onto their Bitcoin, $1.7 billion. Basically the whole lot. Sure, they came out with $150 million, but $1.7 billion. from selling in the previous years. So what I'm curious about is if in the future,

Starting point is 00:06:35 U.S. Marshals will be more prone to hold on to any seized Bitcoin for an extended period of time. That, in my opinion, while also not great that they're seizing people's Bitcoin, would also be bullish because they're recognizing the value of Bitcoin. I've got to wonder if somebody at the U.S. Marshals is looking over at this track or being like, oh, God, what are we doing? Let's hold on to these. Let's put off this little auction because they've got more auction to come up in the coming months.

Starting point is 00:07:04 They've still got some to sell off. So, yeah. Oh, it sucks to be U.S. Marshals. Anyways, let's move on here. Now, I want to bring up this in the context of price as well because there's always, when the price gets moving, there's a lot of predictions that come down the pipeline. Tom Lee has been, we'll just say, notoriously over bullish. He's got, he's had some notoriously bad calls, mostly on the bullish side.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Now, I'm obviously bullish on Bitcoin, but I think he just doesn't recognize any sort of timing. He seems to disavow anything to do with the having and doesn't seem to look historically very often at what has happened previously. So here he was talking about, now this is one of the few times that I don't hugely disagree with him. But yeah, I don't think that his timeline is correct. So in 2018, just for context, he said that Bitcoin was going to be $50,000 by the end of the year, I believe was his prediction. Obviously, that didn't pan out because we ended up bottoming out at the end of 2018, around $3,100.

Starting point is 00:08:25 So way off there. But what he did say here is they were talking about the Dow Jones, and the Dow Jones is trading around $29,000, just over $29,000. So it's a little shy of hitting that $30K mark. And he did say that he's not super confident that Bitcoin would hit $30,000 before the Dow, but he said, my guess would be the Dow will hit it first. but if I had to say what is first to hit 40,000, well, I would not pick the Dow, which I would echo that. I think this is one of the few times that I do agree with Tom Lee.

Starting point is 00:09:04 Now, he did say Bitcoin is going to reach $40,000 before the Dow Jones does, and he's eyeing a 200% price jump by August 2020. I don't think that necessarily is going to pan out. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we had a pump prior to the having in May and then a dump shortly thereafter. Just because that kind of mirrors what has happened in the previous having where we kind of pumped up prior and then, you know, buy the room or sell the news kind of thing. anyways on the opposite side of the prediction spectrum we have tone vase and he on his podcast was talking about that short term bitcoin he's expecting a reversal as low as $4,000 which again I don't think that's a good prediction either I kind of feel like I don't know tone seems to be overly overly cautious I mean I guess you can't

Starting point is 00:10:14 be too cautious. It's good to have some low numbers in your head so that you don't overreact if they do happen. But I don't think that $4,000 is in the card. It seems like we're kind of gone past. I would doubt that we even would see six. And to be honest, I think that we're in for some more upside before we see a dip. Regardless, yeah, we will see. I could be totally wrong here, but yeah, let's move on from price predictions here. So this story from CoinTelegraph here, 40 German banks are seeking regulatory green light to offer Bitcoin custody. So in Germany, they are essentially as of January 2020. This year, new legislation has permitted banks to extend their offerings beyond traditional securities such as stocks and bonds to include cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether,

Starting point is 00:11:12 NXRP. Anyways, they have been inundated with interest and applications to do so from, as I said, 40 different German banks. So the quote here to the reporters was, the market is growing faster than the federal ministry of finance has predicted. This is a blessing and a curse. The high demand shows that more and more firms accept blockchain technology, but can also be seen to be a result of the new legislation. We have been dealing intensively with the topic of crypto custody for a year and a half. The new regulation in the New Money Laundering Act is a good time to start practically. After all, we are a research institute.

Starting point is 00:11:59 We're not a research institute, but a commercial bank. So essentially, they are opening up the possibility of banks to actually custody Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets themselves, as opposed to relying on third parties to do it for them. Now, I would say this could be good and bad. Of course, number one rule is not your keys, not your coins. So if your coins are with somebody else with a custodian, there better be a damn good reason. One, if you're a professional trader and that's just what you do, then you kind of accept

Starting point is 00:12:38 that risk, I suppose. but when you're not trading, get them off the exchange. Two, if you're using some sort of a service where they need to be sat there or if you were in a pinch and you need to loan, like even with lead and something like that. Again, try to mitigate your risk. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So when I'm looking at this, the one thing that I'm not super fond of here is people defaulting to custody to Bitcoin. And they never actually touch it themselves. Now, I'm a realist and I know that this is just going to be a matter of fact for a good number of people.

Starting point is 00:13:16 A lot of people aren't going to want the responsibility of holding their own keys, but those people are putting themselves at risk. Now, when I look at the idea of 40 different German banks being allowed to custody cryptocurrency themselves, on one hand, it's a good thing because it mitigates wide-scale risk of everybody. because if a whole bunch of banks are relying on a single third party or a few third party companies to custody for them, then those are bigger honeypots. And so when it's spread out across multiple banks, a little bit better. On the other hand, these banks do not have a lot of experience in custody of cryptocurrency. And that's an issue because banks are very, very used to, basically getting a free pass when it comes to irresponsible behavior.

Starting point is 00:14:10 If they do something, they lose a ton of money. What happens? They get bailed out by the central bank. Well, in this case, that is not possible because something like Bitcoin is a finite digital asset. It is scarce, and you can't just print more into existence if one of these banks or a lot of them end up screwing up. So in the end, myself, I'm holding.

Starting point is 00:14:34 the vast majority of my own coins very, very carefully. And so I guess you could look at it as if you're custody your own coins well and they're secure and one of these banks gets toppled and loses a bunch of coins that are in custody, you could think of it as a donation of sorts in that if something goes wrong and they actually lose them, then it's kind of a donation to you in the form of further scarcity. But odds are it'll be somebody actually toppling the bank and then selling them somewhere on the open market. So, uh, yeah, I don't know. Fun, fun, as things, uh, get mainstreamed here, uh, the, the original bitcoins and people that want to hold their own keys are going to be, uh, less predominant. So if you're already in this

Starting point is 00:15:27 boat, then congrats to you. Uh, and I would say keep going down that path because, um, you know, constantly having all of your coins in custody is the antithesis to what this stuff is for. And one more thing I wanted to touch on, and I enjoy this. Again, as I was saying the other day, I don't like talking about Craig Wright and Bitcoin SV, but at the same time I do, because it's kind of a fun train wreck to point to. This is just like a random, funny thing that came up, and it's about William Shatner. If you're not, if you don't realize that the original Captain Kirk is into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? Well, he is. And it came out that he also thinks that Craig Wright is totally full of shit. So it brought, he got into a conversation on Twitter with some people and he was

Starting point is 00:16:21 talking about Satoshi or rather Craig Wright here. He said, ask yourself, why would someone claim to be Satoshi and offer zero proof either put up or shut up, right? And he's referring to the fact that Craig Wright has failed time and again to prove in any substantive matter that he is actually in any substantive manner that he actually is Satoshi. He claimed to sign with one of the original keys that would have belonged to Satoshi, but that was debunked and more or less he just copied an old signature and provided it as his own. It'd be like the equivalent of having a signed contract that is old and tearing off the last. page with the signature and attaching it to something else. That's basically what he did.

Starting point is 00:17:09 And then he further went on to say, why can't he prove it? From what I've read is that there's some mysterious bonded courier would deliver the keys, which honestly is a scene right out of Back to the Future. If he is, he should be able to prove it. This is like the modern day search for Anastasia. So he's referring there to the Tulip Trust. which is supposed to contain about a million Bitcoin that were mined very early on, supposedly by Craig Wright and a guy who is now deceased named David Climmon. And basically Craig Wright keeps on putting off, showing anything to the court. And he just has this string of excuses as to why it's not happening.

Starting point is 00:17:57 The latest was that there's supposed to be a bonded courier that was arriving in January to bestow the keys of. upon him. Well, then he, apparently what actually was given to him was just a list of addresses with no keys attached that just show Bitcoin sitting there. But he also tried to, he's sealing the documents so that it can't be viewed outside of court. But the real reason behind that is likely because those addresses provided belong to other people that can then sign messages and debunk that he owns any of those Bitcoin. So anyways, the clown show continues, and William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, is having none of it. With that, I'm going to wrap up, you guys.

Starting point is 00:18:45 Thank you very much for watching and or listening. If you are on YouTube, then please do hit like, subscribe, and share. And if you're listening via the podcast, then please do share it via your social media. It's always great to get new watchers and listeners to the show. If you want to help out the show in another way, you can hit up any of the sponsors in the links down below. Those were Ledin and Rise Wallet and also check out with Saobu Wallet, which is great for your Bitcoin privacy. And you can download that to desktop. And finally, you can check out NordVPN.

Starting point is 00:19:16 This is a program I use regularly on my computer and my phone. It hides your IP address. It encrypts your browsing data. And it has some other added benefits like unlocking Geoblock content. So if you want to check that out, there's a link down below where you get a deal for 7. 70, yes, 70% off, and a free month at the same time ends up being about three bucks and 49 cents a month. Pretty damn good. And with that, I am out, you guys. Have a wonderful evening and I will see you next time for your daily session.

BTC Sessions - US Marshals REKT Selling Early, $11K in sight, 40 German Banks Eye BTC Custody EP019

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