Full Transcript for Two Years Deep

being on the community side, you know, I had to come out and, ⁓ you know, announce it yesterday. some folks, you know, that were impacted that, you know, people probably know, but they haven't, you know, announced it yet. want to, you know, recognize those people as well. There was, was 14 others that were, that were and some really amazing people. So you know, they'll they'll I guess in due time, you know, come out maybe and I want to, you know, yeah, shout anybody out that doesn't want to be known, ⁓ But yeah, know, layoffs, layoffs are never fun. Very unexpected, I think, ⁓ for all of us, you you never expect to get laid off. But, you know, it is what it is. We we keep pushing forward. We keep building and Yeah, I don't know. I didn't want to prepare too much about it. I just wanted to like say my thoughts on it. you know, it's been a difficult week. But we do have a lot to talk about on the news side. You know, we're going to continue doing the show. We're not stopping at two years. You know, we're continuing onward. And we have some cool announcements that I can share. I'm going to share my screen ⁓ so we can show. Kate: Woo! Brandon: our brand new website, which is so cool, goodforbitcoin.com, now is no longer just directing to Spotify, is its own site, which is so, so cool. So goodforbitcoin.com, here it is. We are live streaming on the site right now. ⁓ So can just tell people to go to goodforbitcoin.com. ⁓ It's weird to see myself with a delay. But. ⁓ Kate: Yeah, it is a delay. Brandon: It's really cool. So when you go to goodforbitcoin.com, if we are live streaming, you will see that ⁓ we are live streaming and you can tune in, you can click to unmute. I won't do that now, but you can click to unmute. If we are not live streaming, it'll just show like whatever last episode that was streaming. You can scroll down and you can find all the links to all of our past shows and everything like that. ⁓ And yeah, our socials and all the different places that you can subscribe to the show. So ⁓ yeah, really excited that we have ⁓ like a central place now to send people to. ⁓ You know, having a little bit more free time myself to get the website finally up and running. So we're, ⁓ yeah, happy to have that. yeah, it's just a lot easier now to tell people to just go to goodforbickman.com to tune into the show. And if you're listening as well ⁓ on YouTube, ⁓ can engage with the live stream there and we should see. Kate: you Brandon: ⁓ We should see those incoming messages ⁓ while we are live streaming. go to YouTube, go to goodforbitcoin.com, send us some messages. And yeah, that's exciting. Kate: Super cool, I mean, you've done all of this website stuff, so this looks sick. Well done. ⁓ Yeah, huge upgrade. And I'm sure that there's gonna be some cool stuff that we can do with it because I know you're on your vibe code arc. Yeah. Yeah. Brandon: I am on the vibe coding arc that is, yeah, very true. Yeah, lots more to talk about there, but let's get into some of this news. We got a lot to talk about. Public company news, lots of people buying Bitcoin this week. Strategy, of course we have to talk about strategy, and this is not a typo. They bought 22,337 Bitcoin this week. 22,000 Bitcoin they now hold. Kate: do it. Brandon: 761,000 BTC, which is just crazy. Yeah. Kate: They are on a tear. Yeah. Then we have Strive. They bought 317 Bitcoin this week. They now hold 13,627.9. Brandon: the .9? Just like buy the extra .1. What's up guys? Let's get it together. Yeah. Kate: I don't know. I know. Gotta round that up. You can't just buy fractions of a bitcoin. You have to buy the whole thing. Brandon: Yeah, if you're a Bitcoin treasury company, I think that's correct. If you're a person, think that, you you can buy fractions of Bitcoins, okay. Also American Bitcoin Corporation, they bought 399 BTC. They now hold 6,899 BTC. Kate: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Yes, and they were very proud about this. They were saying that they passed Digital Galaxy Digital in their Bitcoin holdings. So now they're the 16th largest public Bitcoin company on Earth. On Earth. And then shout out to British public company B HODL. They bought one Bitcoin and now they hold a total of 163. Brandon: Earth. Okay. Have we talked about them before? can't remember, I don't remember B HODL. Kate: No, I don't think so. I don't think we have it. At first I thought it was capital B, but then see that we like have you capital B also bought some so they are different, but yeah. Brandon: Yeah. Interesting. Well, anyway, on the board 163 BTC. All right, Gemini, which they're like legal company name is Gemini Space Station Inc. I don't know when that happened. But yeah, so Gemini, the exchange Gemini, they disclosed a 617 Bitcoin purchase in their latest earnings report. They now hold 4619 BTC. And I don't think we have mentioned Gemini. Kate: I did not know that. Brandon: in the public company of space yet. So they're joining Coinbase and yeah, like Bitcoin purchases in their earnings which is cool. Kate: Sweet. like I said capital B, they bought eight Bitcoin ⁓ week and now they now hold 2,844 Brandon: And lastly, have DDC Enterprises. They bought 200 BTC. They now hold 2,383 BTC. And 200 BTC in a week is not bad for an Asian consumer packaged foods brand. So love see it. That's pretty cool that you have all these different types of companies that are buying Bitcoin. It's good stuff. Kate: Very cool. Brandon: yeah, you know, we already talked about it a little bit, but there's a lot of crypto layoffs this week So got mention that Algorand I guess laid off like 25 % of their staff you had crypto.com That laid off 12 % OP labs, I guess laid off about rolls Gemini laid off up to 30 % Bloomberg and I guess Masari had some leadership shakeup and cuts as well. So yeah, I mean, we talked about it right before we started the show. even before yesterday for me, it felt like we were entering like a bottom moment. ⁓ it's felt so quiet on socials. It's

felt just like quiet, like truly it feels like all of the tourists have left and now just left with the builders that are here and all the builders are vibe coding and not talking to each other and it's just quiet. And, ⁓ and kind of where we're at in the industry right now. So. Kate: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brandon: Yeah, just it feels like it's kind of a Yeah, we're in a dark moment, but it feels like the bottom is hopefully, you know upon us and hopefully up from here Kate: Yeah, I think that sums it up well. I think it's something that if you've working in the industry for a while, which I know you have, it's that you like, it becomes I guess, like you kind of get used to it and you almost like pick up a spidey sense of like, oof, something is not right. ⁓ So I think you're dead on with that. I also read on the timeline yesterday, I think that, you know how we were talking about block and they ⁓ Brandon: Mm-hmm. Kate: let of like, I don't know if it was 50 % of their workforce or they let go like a significant amount of people. I think part of that was a clerical error. they like let go of people that weren't actually supposed to be fired and they're like rehiring them back. ⁓ ⁓ But yeah, numbers all around. Yeah, it's the of the game. Brandon: Yes. Yep. ⁓ no! ⁓ that's awful. Ugh. Well, wow. Yeah, I guess Kraken also paused their IPO plans. We talked about them. It was back in I think. ⁓ said that they were going to be filing for an IPO. ⁓ they didn't come out and say that they have paused it, but sources were reporting that they are doing that. So yeah, everyone's kind of waiting ⁓ for the bull market to get here. everyone's just trying to keep it safe, ⁓ play it safe, guess, with everything that's going on. Kate: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's fair. All right. get into the next one. Then we have Square, who's going to auto enable Bitcoin payments for millions of sellers. So this one's pretty cool. Starting March 30th, the end of this month, it's going to mean that millions of businesses using Square could soon begin accepting Bitcoin by default rather than opting in manually. ⁓ and it looks like sellers will have the option to disable the feature or automatically convert Bitcoin to USD at the point of sale. Brandon: Yeah, that's pretty cool. guess they yeah, they like change something in their terms of service just saying that they're going to be flipping this on for all of like their merchants. So just by default now, it'll just be a thing. So yeah, come, you know, March 30th, come April 1st, it won't be an April Fool's joke. And, you know, you'll be able to pay with Bitcoin. Maybe you don't want to pay with Bitcoin. I personally like, I might do it for the novelty maybe of it. But like, you know, if you're paying with Bitcoin, you're Kate: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I understand. Brandon: selling bitcoins. Who wants to do that if you if you can avoid it? Kate: Well, anytime you can remove friction, it just increases adoption, I think, so... cool. Brandon: Yep,

yeah, it is, doesn't talk about it too much, but is also powered by Lightning, so this is also pretty cool Lightning adoption as ⁓ So this one was pretty cool. I feel like it flew under the radar ⁓ this week. ⁓ is really news. So the SEC and the CFTC, they issued a joint interpretation clarifying how federal security laws apply to crypto assets. Kate: Very, very cool. Brandon: are saying, and it sounds like it to me, it's the biggest regulatory clarity drop that the industry has seen. So they are saying what is and what is not a security. So some examples, commodities are not securities. are assets whose comes from how a crypto system functions, not from someone else's management efforts such as BTC, know, Bitcoin. just how Bitcoin, the network functions is with BTC, the asset. This is really cool because I think there's been some back and forth on this in the past that we've seen. Digital collectibles also not securities, so that includes NFTs, art, music, trading cards, items, memes, like that. Those are all not securities. Digital tools are not securities. These are like tokens, maybe act as memberships, like token gating, tickets, credentials, things that. Any... ⁓ stablecoins that are under the Genius Act also are not securities, I think we kind of knew already, cool to have that, you know, really secured. And also securities are securities. And these are traditional financial instruments that are represented on chain. We have more to talk about there in a couple bullet points from now, but one SEC report also specifically called out these tokens as not being securities. That includes Aptos, Avalanche, Bitcoin, Cash, Cardano, Chainlink, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Hedera, Litecoin, Shiba Inu, Solana, Stellar, Tezos, and XRP. Army was going crazy this week, I think, with that news. yeah, really pretty crazy to see that level clarity ⁓ come from. Kate: Hahaha! detail. Yeah. Brandon: from SEC and the CFTC. And I think for Stacks specifically, they also called out things like bridging tokens as well. Like if you bridge a token, that doesn't count as like being a security. stuff like SPTC is ⁓ safe in STX is sort that fits within that digital commodity, right? Cause you need STX to as like gas tokens chain, stuff like that. So good for Stacks, I think overall with this ⁓ clarity, but yeah. Pretty interesting to see, I think some specific ones like XRP and Solana also be specifically out as not securities. Kate: Yeah, I'm sure that they're pretty happy to have like a lot of this legal risks sort of removed. Very cool. Well, on with the regulatory stuff, ⁓ I've some stuff on the timeline really around the Clarity Act. I know that there was some pausing of it. We talked about it last week, but the House reporters are even saying that the Senate is 99 % done with the Clarity Act and stable coin ⁓ and I've seen Senator Loomis, Cynthia Loomis, very bullish on the timeline, basically saying we're so close. We're going to get this thing done by the end of the year. Come or high water. and I honestly feel like the more kind of like media pressure that's put on this, the more like the Senate feels they need to act on it. so yeah, I don't know if it passes, ⁓ you know, with next quarter, I would expect a huge acceleration and institutional adoption and inflowing. Yeah, last week we talked about one the reasons why it was stalling is actually banks because they want protect themselves in having customers remove their because want to earn interest on their savings. And so they really want to themselves in this. So we'll see. Brandon: Yeah, pretty cool. know I like as people have been going back and forth on, this this act getting closer and closer to potentially being passed. And there was like some people that were saying like no bill is better than this bill. And there, you know, there was a lot of back and forth. But I think now I don't know if it's just like cope from some of the people. But I think now ⁓ I think the feeling is like, let's at least get something out there. You know, revisions can always be, you know, made ⁓ part of like future legislation. But Kate: Mm. Yeah. Brandon: you know, let's least get this because we're running out of time for any kind of bill like this to, you know, to especially with the primaries coming up, like, like you've talked about. So, yeah, we'll, we'll see 99%. That sounds, I like those odds. see what happens. Okay, ⁓ talked about it. ⁓ a little bit earlier, but this is interesting. So the SEC has approved a NASDAQ rule, NASDAQ rule change that allows for tokenized trading. Basically, that means that ⁓ like stocks can now traded on blockchain rails. In similar news, you also saw the S &P Dow Jones indices and trade.xyz have joined forces to launch the first SMP 500 perpetual futures contract, which is now available exclusively on hyper liquid super interesting, you know, compared to just trading like traditional stocks, you know, which usually are, you know, you have limited trading windows. So something like this, the SMP 500 perp, it's now available to trade. They say 24 three 65, just like crypto, right? Anchored by the official data required for deep liquidity and institutional confidence at scale. So Kate: Mm-hmm. Brandon: Yeah, pretty cool stuff that just seeing, you know, just again, this blend of, you know, institutions coming in, you know, TradFi embracing crypto concepts like being able to trade 24 seven and trying bring some of that into, you know, the traditional markets. Kate: This, am not a big trader myself, but I have never really understood like the closing of the stock market. Like I feel like this makes so much sense to have like a market that is just open all the time. I don't know if you're much of a trader actually, but yeah, just like the opening and closing of the markets, like it just seems like blockchain makes so much sense in this use case. Brandon: totally does. Yeah, I agree. I also am not much of a trader. Also, I feel like just being

on the West Coast, it's like really hard, like the trading window for me is like even shorter. It feels like you know, because the markets maybe open up at like, I don't know, maybe it's like 5am my time or something, which ⁓ obviously not awake at that time. And then it closes early, you know, of East Coast hours. So yeah, that trading window is even smaller for somebody like me the West Coast. So Kate: Yeah, yeah. Brandon: Yeah, we love to see love to see it. ⁓ I thought this was really cool. Yeah, this is really cool. Lots of infrastructure. Look, that's lots of building, right? are building. Yeah, so really cool news from Bolts, which is non custodial Bitcoin Lightning Bridge. They have introduced swaps, ⁓ which allow you move from USDT on Ethereum and L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism into BTC on Lightning. Kate: to see it. And then we have another infrastructure. Yeah, yeah, I gonna say there's a lot of infrastructure plays this week. Brandon: with no KYC. So Bolts is powered by Atomic Swaps. ⁓ people just become liquidity providers and yeah, it's no KYC, which is really cool. If you're a Stacks OG, you may remember LN Swap, which was Trust Machines product, super OG Stacks project. They offered Atomic Swaps BTC and SCX back in the day. This long before SBTC was thing and Allen swap was a fork of bolts, so cool to see ⁓ bolts continuing to innovate there. Kate: ⁓ that is super cool. All right, well, we have some quick headlines to finish us off. I can start with the one that I added. It's about Morgan Stanley. They filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF. their ticker is going to be MSBT. It's going to trade on the New York Exchange ARCA. I actually don't know what that is. I should look that up. But it's the first major US bank to file for their own spot Bitcoin ETF. which is pretty huge. manage 1.2 trillion in assets they were sort of one of the first sort of institutions that were allowing their financial advisors to pitch Bitcoin ETFs to their clients. And now they want their own product. And even before that, they were telling people that was Bitcoin was rat poison or something like that. ⁓ evolution. ⁓ Brandon: That's right, capitulated eventually. ⁓ Cool stuff. North Carolina, I saw this week, they introduced Senate Bill 327, which is titled the North Carolina Bitcoin Reserve and Investment Act. Read through the bill a little bit briefly, kind of just seems pretty standard kind of based on the other Bitcoin Reserve state bills that we've but just great to see continued momentum there at the state level. I feel like we don't talk about progress happening at states quite as much as we used to Maybe about a year ago, but just cool to see some some progress there Kate: Mm-hmm. All right, and then the last one is about Phantom. The SEC, they issued a no action letter to Phantom Wallet saying they're not going to pursue enforcement if the self custody wallet provider facilitates user trading ⁓ through intermediaries without registering as an introducing broker. So. Brandon: Pretty cool. Yeah, people were saying that this was kind of like the first of its kind, sort of ruling like somebody like a Phantom wallet. ⁓ So yeah, you're if you're, buying buying things Phantom, Phantom is not the broker themselves. They're just kind of acting as the middle man, the middle kind of software layer between you and you know, the the the trading venues that are out there like Jupiter and other other places. So yeah, pretty cool. You know, good for Phantom that they don't have to, you know. Kate: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Brandon: be succumbed to all that regulatory headaches of ⁓ to be a broker themselves. ⁓ Kate: Yeah, yeah, definitely validates the self-custody model and wallets that provide that service. Brandon: Yeah. Well, I think that covers it. not have it on my bingo card to cry during ⁓ our show today. ⁓ yeah, we will we will see you all next week. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank for tuning in week after week after week. It's really cool, you know, to celebrate two years of the show and and to keep doing it with you, Kate. ⁓ And yeah. Kate: Me either. He got me there. Brandon: We will see you next week. Have a good weekend, everybody. Kate: Bye guys, thank you.