Bitcoin Weekly News Roundup: August 23rd, 2023
Greetings and salutations my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is THE Bitcoin Podcast.
It’s Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023. At the time of recording, the Bitcoin block height is 804,556 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today’s episode is the weekly Bitcoin News Roundup. I’m going to go over the big stories of the week, run through a few rapid fire news, then zoom out and give you some perspective…
You can find all the links and accounts mentioned in this episode via the article version of this show, linked in the show notes, or by going to bitcoinpodcast.net/words
Before I get started on the news roundup, I wanted to let you know I’ve started recording Bitcoin Talk episodes of THE Bitcoin Podcast. You can watch these interviews at BitcoinPodcast.net, YouTube.com/@WalkerAmerica or @WalkerAmerica on Rumble…
And of course you can always listen to these episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Yesterday I released the first Bitcoin Talk with Jordan Schachtel, today I’m speaking with Jeff Booth, and next week I’ll be speaking with Preston Pysh.
Thanks to all of these guys for sharing their scarce time.
Without further ado, let’s get into the Bitcoin news roundup.
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Get Your Bitcoin Off Binance
In general, it’s a good practice to remove any Bitcoin you have on an exchange into self custody at regular intervals. Because until you hold that Bitcoin in self-custody, you don’t really have any Bitcoin; you just have an IOU for Bitcoin, and you hope that whatever exchange you used to purchase that Bitcoin actually has it when you go to withdraw.
People who had Bitcoin on FTX found this out the hard way, when it turned out the FTX did not in fact have the customers’ Bitcoin they claimed to have; they just had paper Bitcoin IOUs.
Something similar may be about to happen with Binance.
To be clear: I am not saying anything definitively, and I truly hope this is not the case. I hope that Binance has all their customers’ Bitcoin that they claim to have. I hope Binance is 100% solvent and the rumors of Binance selling customer Bitcoin and buying their own BNB token to prop up its price are just that – rumors.
There’s some weird stuff happening with their euro on and off ramps, and if Binance decides to freeze Bitcoin withdrawals, things could get very dicey. Bottom line: you don’t want to be stuck with paper Bitcoin on ANY exchange.
As a sidebar: I noticed that for some reason CZ follows little ol’ me on Twitter, so CZ if you’re listening to this, which you’re probably not, please do not sue me because I am simply speculating on the rumors of the alleged use of customer Bitcoin to prop up the price of BNB.
I’m not saying you should only get your Bitcoin off Binance; you should get your Bitcoin off of ANY exchange you are using. That’s just a good habit to get into, and a habit which solvent exchange operators should encourage!
I do not know what the truth is or how events will unfold. A shitload of people around the world use Binance, and Binance also just integrated the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which is pretty neat.
That being said, it is always a good idea to take your Bitcoin off of exchanges and into your own custody, regardless of who is operating that exchange.
The Bitcoin “Crash”
Last week, Bitcoin took a big ol’ dump from the mid 29,000s and got as low as the 25,000s. At the time of recording it’s bounced back up a bit, and is currently sitting around $26,500.
It’s tempting to look back retrospectively and try to attribute a rapid change in Bitcoin’s fiat price to any number of factors or individual events, but the reality is that Bitcoin is and has always been a volatile asset in the short term, when measured in fiat.
That’s why at the beginning of every show, I say “the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.”
Do I care about the fiat price of Bitcoin? Of course! Because that fiat exchange rate determines how many satoshis I get per U.S. dollar, the fiat currency I am paid in.
But the big picture is this: every fiat currency, every “alt” coin, every asset, will trend to zero relative to Bitcoin in the long term.
The Bitcoin Greed and Fear index is currently at 37, meaning FEAR. I like when the market is fearful, because that means I’ll be able to stack more sats per dollar this week than I did last week.
So don’t sweat the small stuff. We have a Bitcoin Halving next year. If you can’t handle Bitcoin at 25k you don’t deserve it at 100k, and that’s OK. You’ll be back.
Fiat Monetary Logic
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Jason Furman a few days ago titled “The Fed Should Carefully Aim for a Higher Inflation Target”
Quote: “If it can stick to stabilizing the economy now, then it could start thinking long term in 2025.”
This is ironic, because the essence of fiat monetary policy is to NEVER think long term.
Here’s the opening paragraph from the article:
“The Federal Reserve has appropriately focused on a single objective for a year and a half: getting inflation down. While the war isn’t won, and I fear the hardest battles may be ahead, it is necessary to think about what victory would entail. In the short run, the Fed should be aiming to stabilize inflation below 3%. If it can achieve this goal, then it should shift to a higher target range for inflation when it updates its overall strategy around 2025.”
On Twitter, Nobel Laureate fiat economist Paul “Fax Machine” Krugman had this to say:
“I agree with Jason Furman's call for a 3% inflation target — the rationale for 2% has been overtaken by a couple of decades' experience (and many of us have been saying this for a while).”
To the esteemed Mr. Krugman, I responded “Personally, I think we should make the inflation target 4.20% I challenge anyone to provide a good reason why 3% is better than 4.20%”
Now, my response was a joke, but also not a joke. The real joke is that arbitrary inflation rates are somehow arrived upon as a consensus for what is the “ideal” inflation.
I mean hell, why not 5% or 10% inflation target? The reality is that the 2% inflation target is just small enough where over the short term the average person doesn’t realize that the government and central bank are stealing from them. It’s a slow, gradual loss of purchasing power that is only noticeable in retrospect.
A 2 or 3% target inflation rate might not sound like a lot, and that’s the point. But here’s the reality:
At the current 2% inflation target over 20 years, you’ll have lost around 33% of your purchasing power.
At the proposed 3% inflation over 20 years, you’ll have lost around 45% of your purchasing power. This means that the stated goal of fiat economists proposing a 3% inflation target is to steal AT LEAST 45% of your purchasing power over the next 20 years.
But any normal person who buys food, fuel, or–heaven forbid–is trying to buy a house knows that the real rate of inflation–not the target rate–is much much higher than 2 or 3%...
If we have 5% inflation over 20 years, you’ll have lost around 62% of your purchasing power.
At 10% inflation over 20 years, you’ll have lost around 85% of your purchasing power.
At 15% inflation over 20 years, you’ll lose around 94% of your purchasing power.
If you want to learn more about the nature of monetary inflation and price changes, listen to my Bitcoin Out Loud episode reading Mises take on inflation.
The last thing I’ll say on the subject for today is this: Bitcoin also has an inflation rate, but unlike an arbitrary target rate imposed by PhD fiat economists and a real inflation rate that fluctuates widely at the whims of central bankers, Bitcoin’s inflation rate is predictable. It’s fixed. And the inflation rate of Bitcoin doesn’t increase. Instead, it exponentially decreases every four years when the amount of new Bitcoin issued per block is cut in half. The next halving is in April 2024, when the amount of new Bitcoin issued per block is cut in half from 6.25 to 3.125.
Tick tock, next block.
Rapid Fire News
Via Bitcoin Archive: Bitcoin Daily RSI is now the most oversold since the Covid Crash in March 2020.
Via BTC Times: Nodal Power Raises $13 Million in Seed Round To Boost Renewable Energy Initiatives.
Via Glassnode: Bitcoin Balance on Exchanges just reached a 5-year low of 2,269,235.253 BTC.
Via Bitcoin Magazine: A solo #Bitcoin miner with ~1PH of hash rate won a block reward worth 6.25 Bitcoin. A miner this small would only solve a solo block once every 7 years on average at this difficulty
Via Francis at Bull Bitcoin: Thanks to @BitcoinJungleCR and @BullBitcoin_ offramp integration for merchants which lets them easily convert their Bitcoin no-kyc, you can now buy pretty much anything with Bitcoin in Costa Rica via Market and More, an online shopping service.
Via the Bitcoin Therapist: MicroStrategy struggled for 20 years to grow their market cap above $2B. Then they adopted a #Bitcoin standard. Within 6 months their market cap was nearly $10B and after 3 years it rests at $4.6B. Imagine when other companies figure out that Bitcoin is a cheat code.
Via BTC Times: BitGo Secures $100 Million in Series C Funding Now at $1.75 Billion Valuation.
Via Pete Rizzo: Exactly 15 years ago (yesterday), Adam Back reviewed a 1st draft of the #Bitcoin white paper in an email sent to him by Satoshi Nakamoto. He is still working on $BTC today.
Via Glassnode: The Bitcoin Percent Supply Last Active 5+ Years ago just reached an ATH of 29.349%.
Via BTC Times: Unchained, a leading financial services company focused on Bitcoin, witnessed a 170% rise in Bitcoin-backed loans between the first and second quarters of 2023.
Via Wicked Smart Bitcoin: It’s been 651 days since the all time high. How long are you willing to HODL your #Bitcoin?
This was published on Monday so it’s now been 653 days.
And to finish up the rapid fire news, another one via Wicked Smart Bitcoin: Those who started daily dollar cost averaging #Bitcoin at the all-time-high are once again in profit. Fiat maxis in disbelief.
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Zoom Out
To wrap up today’s show, let’s zoom out and give a little perspective…
I know it’s hard to see the fiat price of Bitcoin go down, especially if you’re new to Bitcoin. And if you don’t own any Bitcoin, maybe the price fluctuations are enough to scare you away. I’m not here to tell you what to do with your money because, frankly, I don’t care what you do. But I do believe in educating others about Bitcoin and sharing my own experience so they can make their own decisions.
So I’ll say this: regardless of fiat price, it is always a good time to buy Bitcoin.
Personally, I didn’t start buying Bitcoin until I nibbled a little in December 2019, and then more aggressively in 2020 as lockdowns started, stimulus checks rolled out, and I realized our monetary system was seriously fucked up. That’s when I finally went headfirst into the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole.
I don’t have a pile of cash sitting around, so I bought a few sats whenever I could. I bought Bitcoin all the way up to the top at $69,000, and all the way down to the most recent bottom around $16,000. I bought Bitcoin yesterday, and I’ll buy Bitcoin today and tomorrow, too.
I tell you this so you can understand that I’m not some “Bitcoin OG” who’s sitting on a massive stack of Bitcoin from years ago, trying to preach to you about Bitcoin while already being set for life…
I work a fiat job, and I use Bitcoin as my savings account. I use Bitcoin to save the value of my time and energy. To save the value of my hard work.
The best way I know to do this is to buy a little bit of Bitcoin frequently and consistently. To dollar cost average and stack sats.
I dollar cost average into Bitcoin because I don’t know what the fiat price of Bitcoin is going to be later today or tomorrow or next week or next month. So I convert dollars to sats a few times a week. If the fiat price of Bitcoin takes a dip, I take the opportunity to get some extra sats for my dollars.
I’m a simple man. I’m not a trader, and I’m not some gigabrained investor. I’m just a pleb who works hard and saves in Bitcoin.
Why do I save in Bitcoin? Because I know with certainty that over the long term, Bitcoin is the best option to store the value of my time and energy.
It’s absolutely scarce, the monetary policy is predictable, and the inflation rate of new Bitcoin will exponentially decrease with every four year halving until the year 2140, where no new Bitcoin will ever be created again.
I save in Bitcoin because the world is fucking uncertain, and I like having the knowledge that no matter what happens in the fiat world, the value of the Bitcoin I save can be measured as a fraction of the absolutely finite 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist.
My name is Walker, and I’m a Bitcoiner.
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And that’s a wrap on this week’s Bitcoin News Roundup.
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Bitcoin is scarce – there will only ever be 21 million–but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.