Brandon: Well, hello, hello everybody. Happy Friday and welcome to Good for Bitcoin, your weekly pulse on Bitcoin innovation. And Kate and I were just talking before the show. It has been a busy week for me. I was I was chatting actually on the phone with my mom the other day, and I was talking, and it feels like I have like five different jobs right now for various things that are going on in the ecosystem. you know, of course we've got good for Bitcoin every week. We've got VibeWatch that I've been working on. I have my work at SoFi that I've been doing, some personal stuff too. So yeah, it's been it's been kind of a crazy one. hopefully Kate will rejoin us in a minute. I can get started with some of our public company news as always. gotta start off with that. so first off, Strive, they bought 1110 BTC. They now hold 21,356 Bitcoin. we also saw Empery Digital. They sold 100 BTC and they have 1179 BTC left. and that's kind of it for Bitcoin buys and sells this week, which is pretty surprising. not not a lot in in one way or the other. So we'll see if if Kate is rejoining us here. Hello, Kate. Yes, I can hear you.
Kate: Literally as soon as you s I heard you say like, How's your week? My screen just went black and I was like, All right, here we go. I guess it's a metaphor for the week, yeah.
Brandon: Yep. Yep. That's is that like a metaphor for the week or yeah.
Kate: I mean week has been pretty good. It's like another chill week in Bitcoin for sure. Nothing like notable has happened. but we have a couple stories to get into. How has your week been?
Brandon: Yeah, well, we were talking before the show started. yeah, it's just been really busy on on my end. Lots of lots of spinning plates. but yeah, I agree. It's a kind of another week. It's been the same kind of vibe the past few weeks where just doesn't really seem like like Bitcoin despite Bitcoin's price going up, it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of Bitcoin news happening. we also have Bitcoin Asia is happening this week, I believe. So
Kate: Yeah, yep.
Brandon: Maybe we'll see some news come out of that. There's been maybe a little bit here and there, but nothing nothing too crazy there either. So yeah, everyone's
Kate: No, nothing major.
Brandon: still, I guess, just heads down building and they weren't ready maybe for this like little pop in Bitcoin's price to kind of capitalize on it. I don't know. But I was going through, I already went through the only two companies that bought Bitcoin this week. we can talk a little bit about some of the companies that are planning on buying Bitcoin this week, I guess. starting off with public company Alpha Modus, they announced the completion of a 3,170 Bitcoin pipe financing worth 254 million. so this BTC is not on their balance sheet yet. the company signed the securities purchase agreement on August 26th. just the other day, and is still advancing the deal. the agreement targets closing within 12 business days of signing. So I'd imagine that we will discuss them on maybe next week's show or the following week's show once they have actually made that purchase and bought Bitcoin. But a new company, I think entering the mix, which we always love to see.
Kate: Nice. And then we have a Singapore based public company, Genius Group. They announced their plan this week to buy eight hundred and twenty-seven million in Bitcoin over the next five years. So significant investment there.
Brandon: Yeah. Everyone's planning to buy Bitcoin. We got Capital B French company announced a twenty-one million euro capital raise to also buy more Bitcoin and no buys or sells from strategy this week. again, which is maybe a good thing because they've been selling Bitcoin more than they've been buying lately.
Kate: Yeah. you have here that they did buy back another hundred and thirty-six million of S T E R C and they added one point five nine billion to their USD reserve.
Brandon: Yeah, and that's crazy. One 1.59 B, that's billion with a B. that's a lot of that's a lot of money that they're like continuing to raise. And I was looking into it and it's like it's a little bit ironic, like as a Bitcoin company that really cares about like scarce assets and and money printing. all of these buys from them, because they're not selling Bitcoin, how are they funding it? Basically what they're doing is they are creating new MSTR shares and then selling them. at the market. It's like an ETM sale is what what that's called. So they're basically money printing and then people are are are buying it and then they're using the proceeds from that to to well not buy more Bitcoin, but to you know, kind of shore up their reserves, I guess, and and buy back more STRC. but it's it's kind of funny because shareholders, I guess, just don't seem to mind this. MSTR is up over forty percent just this month, which is pretty crazy rise in their stock price. and STRC is also like ninety-seven or ninety-eight dollars. so that's pretty much recovered as well. So it's pretty crazy that they've been able to raise so much money and just kind of write the ship after, you know, STRC especially crashing down to what was the lowest? It was like seventy seven dollars or something like that. yeah, pretty,
Kate: Yeah, I think so.
Brandon: pretty nuts that they were able to accomplish that in such a short amount of time too. it was maybe like what, a month or two ago that they that that happened. So crazy stuff.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. And what we tend to see is like news.
Brandon: yeah. Getting into news. So first one is important, especially if you are running a lightning node. this is like very important for you. a critical vul vulnerability was discovered in Lightning Core. so basically anyone that is running a lightning node is urged to take their nodes offline. that doesn't mean necessarily shutting off your node, but taking them offline. this is I guess to prevent other nodes from force closing. channels with your node, which you know is just like time and money spent with fees to to force closed channels. So basically taking your node offline means that it's just like not transacting or it's like not in transaction mode, but it'll just like continue to keep up with like the network. not much is known about the exact vulnerability yet other than the fact that there is one. That I guess the vulnerability is under like a two-week embargo. So devs can kind of sort things out and get things patched, but if the solution is to take your nodes offline, I think it's pretty safe to assume that it could result in lost funds. So probably really, really important that you act on this as quickly as possible. And if you are running a lightning node, yeah, take take action on that because it doesn't sound good.
Kate: Yeah, I read somewhere that this was another like AI generated vulnerability. So I think it was like the Bitcoin Red team, the one that we had talked about in previous episodes. like Rob Hamilton. And they they've just been running like AI assisted audits across a bunch of Bitcoin repos. And I think that this is one that they found. so you know, it's it's kind of like a Like a double edged sword, like it's good that things like this are being found. It also makes it feel very fragile. but yeah, good advice.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I guess a good thing that nothing has been you know, knock on wood like on actual like L1 Bitcoin. but this is probably the closest that we've gotten to like an actual Bitcoin vulnerability if it's affecting Bitcoin Lightning. so scary stuff. I don't know if also they've
Kate: Yeah.
Brandon: meant I I guess they just haven't released a lot of info yet, but I'm I'm curious if like this is just a theoretical, you know, vulnerability or if it's been actually like exploited. I guess we'll have to see in a in a week or two once we find out more information on it.
Kate: Yeah. All right then. Then we get over to the coinbase side of things. they have released well I guess they released it a while ago, but their crypto b backed mortgage product is live nationwide, so you can hold your Bitcoin, buy a house. basically how this works is US borrowers can now use Bitcoin as collateral for a down payment without selling or taking margin calls. So you have to pledge your Bitcoin, which is I think two hundred and fifty percent of the down. Payment loan, which is a pretty sizable amount. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. Two point five L T V is pretty high.
Kate: And so you put that up as collateral, and then the structure is just a normal Fannie Mae conforming first mortgage, plus a second loan against second loan against the coins. There's no margin calls because the price, just because of price drops. So and your coins sit at Coinbase Prime. This is available for Coinbase One members, and you get a 1% rebate. at closing, which is capped at $10,000. and this I guess went live earlier this year, but this week was kind of like the nationwide wider rollout.
Brandon: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think yeah, like anybody now can maybe just log on and and get the process started. I think before it was maybe just like a closed beta or like an open beta. but yeah, we did announce this a few months ago, like the first one had gone through. but now it's just yeah, rolling out a little more more broadly. yeah.
Kate: Yeah. I guess it makes sense if like you use Coinbase for everything, you know, like everything is in one spot, but there are just like quite a few options at this point that I don't know. I guess what's good is that there's a lot of options depending on your risk tolerance, you know, how decentralized you want it to be, who you want to be holding the funds. But I guess if you're pretty loyal to Coinbase, like this is a cool product.
Brandon: Pretty it's pretty interesting, like no margin calls just because the price drops. It kind of just sounds like they the you know the risk model that they're using, like that's why it's 250%, right? Because if you're if if Bitcoin does go down, you know, by the price goes down like 50%, they're factoring that into you know, to to their whatever their models that they're using to to calculate risk when they're when they're giving you that loan. So pretty interesting, like especially when you think about. Mortgages, they tend to be like fifteen years or thirty year loans. the price of Bitcoin in fifteen years or thirty years, who knows what it's gonna be. It's probably gonna be more than it is now. just based on based on history. So, you know, you you become a forced holder, I guess, for for that long until you pay your mortgage off. But maybe that's a good thing. Yeah. next up, so Pakistan has gotten clarity before the US. Pakistan has released a full licensing framework for crypto exchanges, custody, lending, derivatives, and other virtual asset service providers. License firms will also face requirements covering conduct, prudential standards, technology, and anti-mundry money laundering, and counterterrorist financing compliance. existing virtual asset service providers must apply for this no objection certificate. By the 5th of September, which is very soon, or they have to stop and cease operations. the regime also introduces safeguards requiring licensed providers to keep customer assets separate from their own and prohibiting the lending or pledging of customer holdings without written consent. licensed providers will also gain access to Pakistan's formal banking system, including segregated client money accounts. So seems pretty comprehensive. they're getting I mean fully on board with with crypto infrastructure exchanges, all sorts of things. They they're they're called VASPs virtual asset service providers in the country. So pretty pretty cool to see. Hopefully we get some more of that in the US soon. as we wait for clarity.
Kate: Okay, I would use it we are more clarity. No, this is cool for Pakistan. Nice.
Brandon: Yeah. I wonder if Manib had any part of that 'cause I know he's made some visits there. Yeah.
Kate: I'm sure he has, yeah. Like he was part of the blockchain I forget what it was called, but part of their blockchain council. Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, some some consortium over there. I remember he he posted some things about that a while ago.
Kate: Awesome. you wanna tell us about this next one? Has Bitcoin been quantum resistant this whole time?
Brandon: Yeah, so we we actually asked this exact question back in April, which is also really crazy to think. I I I feel like we were just recently talking about this, and it's already been however many months since April. It's pretty wild.
Kate: I know.
Brandon: basically just as a refresher, so Starquare chief product officer Avihu Levi Levi has published a white paper, had published a white paper that makes Bitcoin transactions resistant to quantum attack. the downsides are that these transactions are non-standard, meaning most miners won't accept them and they cost about $150 per transaction. but they would work now. Like you could submit a transaction today on the blockchain and get it on, you know, on a Bitcoin block today on mainnet. so just this week, Starkware engineer Tomer Jalati, he continued that work. well, since that white paper was released. So it's been a few months now. to kind of reach the final str stretch of a working transaction. And then this week at Bitcoin Asia, they shared the news that they have submitted it through Marathon's slipstream service and it had been mined on mainnet. I have a just a quick clip here. It's like a one-minute clip that we can watch of them on stage talking about it. Yeah, so a lot of important points there. I think there's a good clip that kind of summarizes it pretty well. But yeah, it is like an active thing. So like you as a Bitcoin holder would have to essentially like lock your bitcoins into this using this type of transaction. so you could, you know, make your own Bitcoin safe. but for things like Satoshi's coins, for example, it doesn't doesn't, you know, affect Satoshi's coins. So somebody could still, you know, get a hold of those or you know, any number of coins, like they said in the clip that are kind of out of circulation, but still, you know, obviously so they're still on the blockchain. you know, something could happen to those. So yeah, it's not a solution for for quantum. but it is it's a solution for your own personal Bitcoin custody, I guess. if we do have some crazy quantum event and need to like act quickly to, you know, to secure that Bitcoin.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess like it's nice that there's at least a solution that doesn't require hard work. so not
Brandon: Yeah. Yep.
Kate: long term thinking but at least at least there's something. So yeah, I guess that's a good takeaway.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. I think I we haven't really talked about quantum in a few weeks. I think the last estimate that I had was like twenty twenty nine was like kind of like the day that you should or the year that you should have kind of like ducks in a row, which that's not not too far away. As we were just talking about how it's crazy that it's, you know, been months since April already when we just talked about that.
Kate: Yeah. No, this Until then you just have to survive cold card and lightning and all the other fragilities.
Brandon: Yeah. Maybe just take maybe just take out a mortgage and and chill. Let Coinbase deal with it. some quick headlines. Yeah, to
Kate: Yeah. yeah.
Brandon: wrap out the week. You can take the first one.
Kate: Cool. We have Wall Street Journal was reporting that JP Morgan is considering launching their very own stable coin. who knows? They're betting big.
Brandon: You can't beat join
Kate: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: Yeah, that's super interesting. yeah, it'd be cool to have another bank on board. SoFi has one. I guess that'll be the the bias that I that I say there. So SoFi was the first bank to have their own stable coin through SoFi D. But
Kate: Nice.
Brandon: yeah. We everybody should have stable coins, I guess. Makes sense.
Kate: You get your own stable coin, you get your own stable coin. Everybody can see
Brandon: It's pretty cool because like well, at least like the way that that SoFi does it is like it I mean it's on chain, right? It's a stable coin. So like you can you can withdraw, you can deposit. and then like once it's on like SoFi's platform, you can do, you know, SoFi banking things with it. But if you just want to like hold it, like self custody, you can do that too. So kind of just gives you like a little bit of the best of both worlds in terms of like C Fi and D Fi, which is pretty interesting.
Kate: Nice. Awesome.
Brandon: next up, HashKey Cloud, Asia's number one staking provider, was announced this week as another institution participating in Bitcoin staking on stacks. So another another big institution getting on board.
Kate: Yeah, huge. Huge, yeah, I think so Maniba's in Hong Kong this week and made the announcement at the Hoshke event, which was pretty cool. but they're yeah, they are huge. They have some big numbers. they operate across a lot of networks, they have like over a billion users around the world. and a lot of money staked with them, so that's a pretty pretty big win for stocks. And for them too.
Brandon: Yeah.
Kate: you know, obviously it's like a it's just like a perfect fit kind of partnership. Yeah.
Brandon: I think what's what's cool about this one compared to like the the Nakamoto one is like when Stacks talks about institutions are getting on board, that doesn't mean that there's just like some rich, you know, institution that is just like putting their Bitcoin in and like making more money. That means that there's institutions that are, you know, maybe building services that are passing on this staking yield on, you know, to their customers. that's a big one, right? So
Kate: Exactly. Yeah. Yep.
Brandon: You know, this this is just a one example of that. But you can imagine in the future like exchanges, like other, you know, all sorts of other providers offering similar services. So that's pretty cool.
Kate: Yeah, exactly. Even just like, you know, apps that have are like that have their customers Bitcoin on there. Just like there's so many there's so many opportunities that will eventually, you know, people will want yield. like you said, it's not just like a one person with a lot of money. It's like there's just so many services that are continuously getting developed. So it'd be cool.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. It's also cool because because they are like a staking provider, all of their customers or all of their users, they already know what staking is. They already participate in staking. They probably also already have Bitcoin. so it's just like a perfect fit for for somebody like them.
Kate: Yep. They get it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. and then we have our last one, this is coming from Galaxy Digital. They were reporting that last week Bitcoin's rise was the single largest weekly gain by dollar amount in Bitcoin's history. Which
Brandon: Pretty impressive.
Kate: it's very impressive and you don't realize it. Like I wouldn't have thought that, but it's crazy.
Brandon: Yeah. It is kind of funny. I was thinking about it the other day, just like it it's just based on like how long you've been, you know, in Bitcoin. that even though it was like such a big rise, like for for me, it's probably for you too, like it it was it was like I guess big, but it didn't feel like a monumental thing, right? but if you had gotten into
Kate: Not at all.
Brandon: Bitcoin like a year ago, my god, that it just must have been Incredible like to watch to watch that happen. So
Kate: Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Brandon: it's super interesting that yeah, that Bitcoin just has that effect where eventually you're just like, Yeah, it just it went up. Of course it did. Like whatever. Yeah.
Kate: Yeah, just get numb to it. Especially like in the f usually the fall is usually not a huge time for Bitcoin to today have an appreciation in price, so I guess we're still summer, but I'm
Brandon: true yeah that's true yeah is so do you think it's a fake out or are we are we up from here up only all right let's go cool well i think that wraps it up for the week kind of another
Kate: We're up. We're only up. Let's go. It's fine. Yeah, they're upset too. Yeah.
Brandon: somewhat slower week in bitcoin news but you know we we can't control the news we just talk about it right so thank you everybody for tuning in if you are listening
Kate: There you go. No hound, we could definitely do that. They have the vote back to us. It's
Brandon: Give us a review, give us a comment. let us know that you're listening. We know we have listeners out there, but we never we don't hear from you that often. So that's
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Brandon: that's my ask as we go into the weekend is give us a comment. let us know where you're listening from, or I don't know. We want
Kate: Yeah.
Brandon: to hear from you. but yeah, go catch all of our episodes on goodforbitcoin.com.
Kate: Yeah, so in the in regard to
Brandon: We stream live every Friday at two p.m. Eastern on YouTube and on X and on the website, of course. So yeah, thank you everybody for tuning in. We will see you next week and have a good weekend.
Kate: Awesome. See you guys. Bye.
Kate: Literally as soon as you s I heard you say like, How's your week? My screen just went black and I was like, All right, here we go. I guess it's a metaphor for the week, yeah.
Brandon: Yep. Yep. That's is that like a metaphor for the week or yeah.
Kate: I mean week has been pretty good. It's like another chill week in Bitcoin for sure. Nothing like notable has happened. but we have a couple stories to get into. How has your week been?
Brandon: Yeah, well, we were talking before the show started. yeah, it's just been really busy on on my end. Lots of lots of spinning plates. but yeah, I agree. It's a kind of another week. It's been the same kind of vibe the past few weeks where just doesn't really seem like like Bitcoin despite Bitcoin's price going up, it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of Bitcoin news happening. we also have Bitcoin Asia is happening this week, I believe. So
Kate: Yeah, yep.
Brandon: Maybe we'll see some news come out of that. There's been maybe a little bit here and there, but nothing nothing too crazy there either. So yeah, everyone's
Kate: No, nothing major.
Brandon: still, I guess, just heads down building and they weren't ready maybe for this like little pop in Bitcoin's price to kind of capitalize on it. I don't know. But I was going through, I already went through the only two companies that bought Bitcoin this week. we can talk a little bit about some of the companies that are planning on buying Bitcoin this week, I guess. starting off with public company Alpha Modus, they announced the completion of a 3,170 Bitcoin pipe financing worth 254 million. so this BTC is not on their balance sheet yet. the company signed the securities purchase agreement on August 26th. just the other day, and is still advancing the deal. the agreement targets closing within 12 business days of signing. So I'd imagine that we will discuss them on maybe next week's show or the following week's show once they have actually made that purchase and bought Bitcoin. But a new company, I think entering the mix, which we always love to see.
Kate: Nice. And then we have a Singapore based public company, Genius Group. They announced their plan this week to buy eight hundred and twenty-seven million in Bitcoin over the next five years. So significant investment there.
Brandon: Yeah. Everyone's planning to buy Bitcoin. We got Capital B French company announced a twenty-one million euro capital raise to also buy more Bitcoin and no buys or sells from strategy this week. again, which is maybe a good thing because they've been selling Bitcoin more than they've been buying lately.
Kate: Yeah. you have here that they did buy back another hundred and thirty-six million of S T E R C and they added one point five nine billion to their USD reserve.
Brandon: Yeah, and that's crazy. One 1.59 B, that's billion with a B. that's a lot of that's a lot of money that they're like continuing to raise. And I was looking into it and it's like it's a little bit ironic, like as a Bitcoin company that really cares about like scarce assets and and money printing. all of these buys from them, because they're not selling Bitcoin, how are they funding it? Basically what they're doing is they are creating new MSTR shares and then selling them. at the market. It's like an ETM sale is what what that's called. So they're basically money printing and then people are are are buying it and then they're using the proceeds from that to to well not buy more Bitcoin, but to you know, kind of shore up their reserves, I guess, and and buy back more STRC. but it's it's kind of funny because shareholders, I guess, just don't seem to mind this. MSTR is up over forty percent just this month, which is pretty crazy rise in their stock price. and STRC is also like ninety-seven or ninety-eight dollars. so that's pretty much recovered as well. So it's pretty crazy that they've been able to raise so much money and just kind of write the ship after, you know, STRC especially crashing down to what was the lowest? It was like seventy seven dollars or something like that. yeah, pretty,
Kate: Yeah, I think so.
Brandon: pretty nuts that they were able to accomplish that in such a short amount of time too. it was maybe like what, a month or two ago that they that that happened. So crazy stuff.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. And what we tend to see is like news.
Brandon: yeah. Getting into news. So first one is important, especially if you are running a lightning node. this is like very important for you. a critical vul vulnerability was discovered in Lightning Core. so basically anyone that is running a lightning node is urged to take their nodes offline. that doesn't mean necessarily shutting off your node, but taking them offline. this is I guess to prevent other nodes from force closing. channels with your node, which you know is just like time and money spent with fees to to force closed channels. So basically taking your node offline means that it's just like not transacting or it's like not in transaction mode, but it'll just like continue to keep up with like the network. not much is known about the exact vulnerability yet other than the fact that there is one. That I guess the vulnerability is under like a two-week embargo. So devs can kind of sort things out and get things patched, but if the solution is to take your nodes offline, I think it's pretty safe to assume that it could result in lost funds. So probably really, really important that you act on this as quickly as possible. And if you are running a lightning node, yeah, take take action on that because it doesn't sound good.
Kate: Yeah, I read somewhere that this was another like AI generated vulnerability. So I think it was like the Bitcoin Red team, the one that we had talked about in previous episodes. like Rob Hamilton. And they they've just been running like AI assisted audits across a bunch of Bitcoin repos. And I think that this is one that they found. so you know, it's it's kind of like a Like a double edged sword, like it's good that things like this are being found. It also makes it feel very fragile. but yeah, good advice.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I guess a good thing that nothing has been you know, knock on wood like on actual like L1 Bitcoin. but this is probably the closest that we've gotten to like an actual Bitcoin vulnerability if it's affecting Bitcoin Lightning. so scary stuff. I don't know if also they've
Kate: Yeah.
Brandon: meant I I guess they just haven't released a lot of info yet, but I'm I'm curious if like this is just a theoretical, you know, vulnerability or if it's been actually like exploited. I guess we'll have to see in a in a week or two once we find out more information on it.
Kate: Yeah. All right then. Then we get over to the coinbase side of things. they have released well I guess they released it a while ago, but their crypto b backed mortgage product is live nationwide, so you can hold your Bitcoin, buy a house. basically how this works is US borrowers can now use Bitcoin as collateral for a down payment without selling or taking margin calls. So you have to pledge your Bitcoin, which is I think two hundred and fifty percent of the down. Payment loan, which is a pretty sizable amount. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. Two point five L T V is pretty high.
Kate: And so you put that up as collateral, and then the structure is just a normal Fannie Mae conforming first mortgage, plus a second loan against second loan against the coins. There's no margin calls because the price, just because of price drops. So and your coins sit at Coinbase Prime. This is available for Coinbase One members, and you get a 1% rebate. at closing, which is capped at $10,000. and this I guess went live earlier this year, but this week was kind of like the nationwide wider rollout.
Brandon: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think yeah, like anybody now can maybe just log on and and get the process started. I think before it was maybe just like a closed beta or like an open beta. but yeah, we did announce this a few months ago, like the first one had gone through. but now it's just yeah, rolling out a little more more broadly. yeah.
Kate: Yeah. I guess it makes sense if like you use Coinbase for everything, you know, like everything is in one spot, but there are just like quite a few options at this point that I don't know. I guess what's good is that there's a lot of options depending on your risk tolerance, you know, how decentralized you want it to be, who you want to be holding the funds. But I guess if you're pretty loyal to Coinbase, like this is a cool product.
Brandon: Pretty it's pretty interesting, like no margin calls just because the price drops. It kind of just sounds like they the you know the risk model that they're using, like that's why it's 250%, right? Because if you're if if Bitcoin does go down, you know, by the price goes down like 50%, they're factoring that into you know, to to their whatever their models that they're using to to calculate risk when they're when they're giving you that loan. So pretty interesting, like especially when you think about. Mortgages, they tend to be like fifteen years or thirty year loans. the price of Bitcoin in fifteen years or thirty years, who knows what it's gonna be. It's probably gonna be more than it is now. just based on based on history. So, you know, you you become a forced holder, I guess, for for that long until you pay your mortgage off. But maybe that's a good thing. Yeah. next up, so Pakistan has gotten clarity before the US. Pakistan has released a full licensing framework for crypto exchanges, custody, lending, derivatives, and other virtual asset service providers. License firms will also face requirements covering conduct, prudential standards, technology, and anti-mundry money laundering, and counterterrorist financing compliance. existing virtual asset service providers must apply for this no objection certificate. By the 5th of September, which is very soon, or they have to stop and cease operations. the regime also introduces safeguards requiring licensed providers to keep customer assets separate from their own and prohibiting the lending or pledging of customer holdings without written consent. licensed providers will also gain access to Pakistan's formal banking system, including segregated client money accounts. So seems pretty comprehensive. they're getting I mean fully on board with with crypto infrastructure exchanges, all sorts of things. They they're they're called VASPs virtual asset service providers in the country. So pretty pretty cool to see. Hopefully we get some more of that in the US soon. as we wait for clarity.
Kate: Okay, I would use it we are more clarity. No, this is cool for Pakistan. Nice.
Brandon: Yeah. I wonder if Manib had any part of that 'cause I know he's made some visits there. Yeah.
Kate: I'm sure he has, yeah. Like he was part of the blockchain I forget what it was called, but part of their blockchain council. Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, some some consortium over there. I remember he he posted some things about that a while ago.
Kate: Awesome. you wanna tell us about this next one? Has Bitcoin been quantum resistant this whole time?
Brandon: Yeah, so we we actually asked this exact question back in April, which is also really crazy to think. I I I feel like we were just recently talking about this, and it's already been however many months since April. It's pretty wild.
Kate: I know.
Brandon: basically just as a refresher, so Starquare chief product officer Avihu Levi Levi has published a white paper, had published a white paper that makes Bitcoin transactions resistant to quantum attack. the downsides are that these transactions are non-standard, meaning most miners won't accept them and they cost about $150 per transaction. but they would work now. Like you could submit a transaction today on the blockchain and get it on, you know, on a Bitcoin block today on mainnet. so just this week, Starkware engineer Tomer Jalati, he continued that work. well, since that white paper was released. So it's been a few months now. to kind of reach the final str stretch of a working transaction. And then this week at Bitcoin Asia, they shared the news that they have submitted it through Marathon's slipstream service and it had been mined on mainnet. I have a just a quick clip here. It's like a one-minute clip that we can watch of them on stage talking about it. Yeah, so a lot of important points there. I think there's a good clip that kind of summarizes it pretty well. But yeah, it is like an active thing. So like you as a Bitcoin holder would have to essentially like lock your bitcoins into this using this type of transaction. so you could, you know, make your own Bitcoin safe. but for things like Satoshi's coins, for example, it doesn't doesn't, you know, affect Satoshi's coins. So somebody could still, you know, get a hold of those or you know, any number of coins, like they said in the clip that are kind of out of circulation, but still, you know, obviously so they're still on the blockchain. you know, something could happen to those. So yeah, it's not a solution for for quantum. but it is it's a solution for your own personal Bitcoin custody, I guess. if we do have some crazy quantum event and need to like act quickly to, you know, to secure that Bitcoin.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess like it's nice that there's at least a solution that doesn't require hard work. so not
Brandon: Yeah. Yep.
Kate: long term thinking but at least at least there's something. So yeah, I guess that's a good takeaway.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. I think I we haven't really talked about quantum in a few weeks. I think the last estimate that I had was like twenty twenty nine was like kind of like the day that you should or the year that you should have kind of like ducks in a row, which that's not not too far away. As we were just talking about how it's crazy that it's, you know, been months since April already when we just talked about that.
Kate: Yeah. No, this Until then you just have to survive cold card and lightning and all the other fragilities.
Brandon: Yeah. Maybe just take maybe just take out a mortgage and and chill. Let Coinbase deal with it. some quick headlines. Yeah, to
Kate: Yeah. yeah.
Brandon: wrap out the week. You can take the first one.
Kate: Cool. We have Wall Street Journal was reporting that JP Morgan is considering launching their very own stable coin. who knows? They're betting big.
Brandon: You can't beat join
Kate: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: Yeah, that's super interesting. yeah, it'd be cool to have another bank on board. SoFi has one. I guess that'll be the the bias that I that I say there. So SoFi was the first bank to have their own stable coin through SoFi D. But
Kate: Nice.
Brandon: yeah. We everybody should have stable coins, I guess. Makes sense.
Kate: You get your own stable coin, you get your own stable coin. Everybody can see
Brandon: It's pretty cool because like well, at least like the way that that SoFi does it is like it I mean it's on chain, right? It's a stable coin. So like you can you can withdraw, you can deposit. and then like once it's on like SoFi's platform, you can do, you know, SoFi banking things with it. But if you just want to like hold it, like self custody, you can do that too. So kind of just gives you like a little bit of the best of both worlds in terms of like C Fi and D Fi, which is pretty interesting.
Kate: Nice. Awesome.
Brandon: next up, HashKey Cloud, Asia's number one staking provider, was announced this week as another institution participating in Bitcoin staking on stacks. So another another big institution getting on board.
Kate: Yeah, huge. Huge, yeah, I think so Maniba's in Hong Kong this week and made the announcement at the Hoshke event, which was pretty cool. but they're yeah, they are huge. They have some big numbers. they operate across a lot of networks, they have like over a billion users around the world. and a lot of money staked with them, so that's a pretty pretty big win for stocks. And for them too.
Brandon: Yeah.
Kate: you know, obviously it's like a it's just like a perfect fit kind of partnership. Yeah.
Brandon: I think what's what's cool about this one compared to like the the Nakamoto one is like when Stacks talks about institutions are getting on board, that doesn't mean that there's just like some rich, you know, institution that is just like putting their Bitcoin in and like making more money. That means that there's institutions that are, you know, maybe building services that are passing on this staking yield on, you know, to their customers. that's a big one, right? So
Kate: Exactly. Yeah. Yep.
Brandon: You know, this this is just a one example of that. But you can imagine in the future like exchanges, like other, you know, all sorts of other providers offering similar services. So that's pretty cool.
Kate: Yeah, exactly. Even just like, you know, apps that have are like that have their customers Bitcoin on there. Just like there's so many there's so many opportunities that will eventually, you know, people will want yield. like you said, it's not just like a one person with a lot of money. It's like there's just so many services that are continuously getting developed. So it'd be cool.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. It's also cool because because they are like a staking provider, all of their customers or all of their users, they already know what staking is. They already participate in staking. They probably also already have Bitcoin. so it's just like a perfect fit for for somebody like them.
Kate: Yep. They get it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. and then we have our last one, this is coming from Galaxy Digital. They were reporting that last week Bitcoin's rise was the single largest weekly gain by dollar amount in Bitcoin's history. Which
Brandon: Pretty impressive.
Kate: it's very impressive and you don't realize it. Like I wouldn't have thought that, but it's crazy.
Brandon: Yeah. It is kind of funny. I was thinking about it the other day, just like it it's just based on like how long you've been, you know, in Bitcoin. that even though it was like such a big rise, like for for me, it's probably for you too, like it it was it was like I guess big, but it didn't feel like a monumental thing, right? but if you had gotten into
Kate: Not at all.
Brandon: Bitcoin like a year ago, my god, that it just must have been Incredible like to watch to watch that happen. So
Kate: Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Brandon: it's super interesting that yeah, that Bitcoin just has that effect where eventually you're just like, Yeah, it just it went up. Of course it did. Like whatever. Yeah.
Kate: Yeah, just get numb to it. Especially like in the f usually the fall is usually not a huge time for Bitcoin to today have an appreciation in price, so I guess we're still summer, but I'm
Brandon: true yeah that's true yeah is so do you think it's a fake out or are we are we up from here up only all right let's go cool well i think that wraps it up for the week kind of another
Kate: We're up. We're only up. Let's go. It's fine. Yeah, they're upset too. Yeah.
Brandon: somewhat slower week in bitcoin news but you know we we can't control the news we just talk about it right so thank you everybody for tuning in if you are listening
Kate: There you go. No hound, we could definitely do that. They have the vote back to us. It's
Brandon: Give us a review, give us a comment. let us know that you're listening. We know we have listeners out there, but we never we don't hear from you that often. So that's
Kate: Mm-hmm.
Brandon: that's my ask as we go into the weekend is give us a comment. let us know where you're listening from, or I don't know. We want
Kate: Yeah.
Brandon: to hear from you. but yeah, go catch all of our episodes on goodforbitcoin.com.
Kate: Yeah, so in the in regard to
Brandon: We stream live every Friday at two p.m. Eastern on YouTube and on X and on the website, of course. So yeah, thank you everybody for tuning in. We will see you next week and have a good weekend.
Kate: Awesome. See you guys. Bye.
