🧠Quote(s) of the week:
"Over the long term, most money is clearly going digital. The question is closed and permissioned (CBDCs) or open-source (Bitcoin and its competitors). So when you look forward a couple of decades, you need to err one way or the other. You can't realistically assume the status quo."
"And when you imagine this new field, you can go deep and high conviction, or you can imagine it passively in terms of probabilities. What percentage of any tech is closed vs open source? When we apply this question to "money", we're talking about a $100+ trillion market."
- Lyn Alden
Bitcoin news:🧡
To add a bit to Lyn Alden's quotes. Only two ways to coordinate society at scale: Cooperation or Coercion. Free markets or Force. BTC or CBDC.
"93% of central banks are engaged in some form of CBDC work. More than half of central banks are conducting concrete experiments or working on a CBDC pilot. It's never been more important to study Bitcoin and protect yourself."
➡️RFK Jr. Announces Bold Plan to Back ~1% of T-Bills With Bitcoin, End Bitcoin Taxes
RFK Jr.:
1) Fiat currency was created to fund wars
2) He would gradually begin "backing" the dollar with Bitcoin
3) He would exempt the conversion of Bitcoin to dollars from capital gains taxes.
My personal opinion. Be wary of politicians who promise to give you exactly what you want. Politicians are just politicians! Bitcoin doesn't need politicians, politicians need Bitcoin (and votes). Don't lose the plot. And stop larping! Stay humble & stack sats.
Great quote by Joe Carlasare: "Backing the dollar with Bitcoin is like trying to swap horse-drawn carriages with mechanical horses. —an impracticable and mismatched pairing. The new paradigm isn’t forced upon the old; it succeeds in it."
But if RFK Jr succeeds, this will effectively allow Bitcoin to be used as legal tender, and more nation-state adoption is coming.
➡️New research from MIT finds bitcoin mining helps the climate, lowers emissions, and balances the electrical grid.
On top of that the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has written a paper on the lightning network, “We find a significant association between LN adoption and reduced blockchain congestion, suggesting that the LN has helped improve the efficiency of Bitcoin as a means of payment.” source: https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/publications/working-paper/2022/wp-2219-the-lightning-network-turning-bitcoin-into-money
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Where are the Bitcoin mining energy FUDsupporters now? Somebody might want to give a call to Greenpeaceusa. They apparently have some research disabilities.
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➡️ "Somebody just moved over 1,000 Bitcoin ($30,000,000) after 11 years, without asking permission from anyone on the network. Try that with your bank account, fiat maxis."
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➡️Binance has integrated Bitcoin Lightning Network payments. Binance has completed the integration of Bitcoin on the Lightning Network and deposits and withdrawals are now open.
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➡️~ 69.1% of Bitcoin has not moved in over 1 year. That is a new all-time high. Scarcity is naturally occurring right before the 2024 halving.
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➡️ARKK's Cathie Wood: on Bitcoin "is an insurance policy against two things: the confiscation of wealth, either directly or by inflation, or in the deflation world, what is it a hedge against? It's a hedge against counterparty risk. We won't have an '08-'09 with Bitcoin"
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➡️Ranking of the most Bitcoin mined in June 2023 1) Marathon - 979 BTC 2) CleanSpark - 491 BTC 3) Riot - 460 BTC 4) Iris Energy - 428 BTC
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In general Bitcoin mining beta is as strong as ever. IRIS is up 491% RIOT is up 457% MARA is up 421% BITF is up 337% CLSK is up 246%. Both Bitcoin and Nvidia rose by less than public miners this year — 80% and 222% respectively. Let's see how this will play out after the halving.
➡️BlackRock, Fidelity, Wisdomtree, VanEck, and Invesco spot Bitcoin ETF applications will be added to the federal register tomorrow. - Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart The SEC could "approve en masse if they want."
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Institutions are coming to Bitcoin. Hate it or love it, it will happen.
Gradually, then suddenly. I love how game theory works.
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➡️Currency debasement leads to a new all-time high for Bitcoin in Turkey
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➡️First 14 years in Bitcoin Not a single fraudulent transaction has been confirmed, with a 99.988% network uptime.
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💸Traditional Finance / Macro:
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👉🏽 "BlackRock names Saudi Aramco CEO to board… Aramco is the largest oil/energy company in the world… this is after BlackRock’s decade-long ESG crusade. This is very similar to calling Bitcoin an index of money laundering and then filing for a Bitcoin ETF. Do you get it yet?" - Gabor Gurbacs
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Further to this, US media (Forbes in particular) suddenly put out more pro-Bitcoin pieces.
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🏦Banks:
👉🏽"FEDNow and a potential US CBDC will modernize the US financial system without the irrational exuberance brought by 'crypto' assets." - 2023 Economic Report of the President
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On the 20th of July at 3 am EST, the FedNow transaction network is live paving the way for real-time CBDC payments. 41 banks & 15 service providers are certified to use the settlement service, including community banks & large lenders like JPMorgan Chase.
👉🏽"The Fed has drained 1/4 of the USD liquidity added during QE. TLDR; the asset value that banks use to write loans, extend credit, and fund themselves has fallen 25% How much further can it go before "something breaks" i.e. economic growth collapses?"
I think that is a valid question by Joe. Remember the US sovereign debt crisis is beginning - Interest payments on the national debt are now $928 billion - Nearly half of the national debt will be replaced with higher interest rates in the next 2 years. I am not convinced that the government can keep up with the interest payments on its debt without more QE.
🌎Macro/Geopolitics:
👉🏽In last week's Weekly Recap I mentioned that the federal deficit was nearly $ 1 TRILLION in only 6 months. During the week we got notified that "so far, in the fiscal year 2023, the US government has a total deficit of $1.393 TRILLION. In June 2023 alone, the deficit was $228 billion, up from just $88 billion in June 2022. On average, the US deficit has risen by ~$155 billion per MONTH in FY2023. At the current rate, total US debt would rise by $18.5 TRILLION in 10 years."
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We all know that these deficits are going to be monetized and that these deficits will be added to the already shocking US National Debt.
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Put your wealth in one store of value. The one backed by the most desired commodity. The long-term play is to buy Bitcoin as the government continues to devalue the dollar/euro...fiat.
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Mises said it best. this ends one way... The crack-up boom and the death of the monetary unit.
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"The Dollar is the emperor walking down the street naked."
There is nothing supporting the Dollar, besides a control mechanism by the government. But it's not backed by anything...And the math is pretty unassailable. It's a nasty vicious circle we are in and it's been created because the FED and the ECB (Central banks in general) kept putting coins in the fuse box. Rather than allow us to take a recession, allow interest rates to rise like they naturally would. They have done everything the opposite. They kept their foot on the pedal and keep the market growing. Keep the money flowing, keep the wall street bubble going, enrich themselves, enrich the billionaires.
They, the government, broke the social contract in 2008 with all the bailouts, and of the bailout ashes, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced to us sound money...Bitcoin
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👉🏽M2 money supply (rate of change) is contracting at the deepest level EVER seen. Now you know why your JPEGS are worthless!
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Anyway if we really look under the hood we will find that the M2 money supply is still $2T above pre-pandemic levels. M2’s decline follows a record-setting increase following the pandemic of $6.3T (or a 41% increase in the span of 2.5 years). Some normalization is expected, the only thing that almost nobody knows: what will be the "side effects"?
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👉🏽Great tweet by Tsartoshi: "If we adjust the SP500 growth with money printing it performed a whopping +4% in two decades... All the technological advantages humans made, the proceed just get wired to the money-printing rulers."
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On the same day, Luke Broyles stated: "From 1980 to 2023 the S&P 500 increased 32x. (140 to 4,500) Do you know what else increased 32x from 1980 to 2023? The US national debt. ($1T to $32T)"
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To make it even worse, Jeroen Blokland, "Global debt equals more than twice the size of the global economy. In addition, whenever there are debt payments issues, the 'solution' always involves (MORE) debt."
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We all know this entire thing is just fueled by debt. It took me some time to realize this. Fiat steals your energy. Bitcoin gives it back.
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👉🏽 "CPI inflation is now 228 bps below the Fed's main policy interest rate. The tightest monetary policy relative to consumer prices since 2007."
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👉🏽While the US is cheering about inflation reaching 2.9%, the rest of the world isn't so lucky. 144 countries have inflation above 5%, & the global average is 13.9%.
Credit: I have used multiple sources!
My savings account: Bitcoin
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Get your Bitcoin out of exchanges. Save them on a hardware wallet, run your own node... be your own bank. Not your keys, not your coins. It's that simple.
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