0:00It is 826 AM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the 20th day of March 2026, and this is episode 1282 of Bitcoin and Quantum. We've got the front end of the show. Quantum loaded this morning here on the Bitcoin end podcast with me, your host, David Bennett bringing you news about Bitcoin and macro from around the world and my God. It's it's like West Texas intermediate and Brent North Sea and Merbon crude oil prices are in lockstep with the price of Bitcoin. I can literally see the price of oil go up and then watch almost immediately the price of Bitcoin come down and then when the price of oil goes down a little bit all of this it's it's Bitcoin goes up and it's almost as if they are somehow or another there's like some kind of automated trading scheme going on between the two this morning. It's kind of kind of interesting to watch.

1:03I'll tell you that much. After the quantum stuff, Gemini's in a little bit of trouble with their investors. We'll get into that one and the super micro co-founder is in a shitload of trouble. Oh my God, $2.5 billion worth of trouble. Kentucky, well, Bitcoin Policy Institute seems to have uncovered some language in their Bitcoin bill that Kentucky is considering and saying that it could actually outlaw self-custody if the language isn't stripped or changed. We'll talk about it. North Carolina lawmakers are proposing a state Bitcoin reserve and then Morgan Stanley will round us out. But first let's just do quantum. Shall we? I mean everybody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about how it's going to kill Bitcoin and that is just right around the corner two weeks, two weeks probably and we'll have quantum computers capable of only going after Bitcoin, but absolutely

2:06nothing else in the world. That's protected by asymmetric cryptography, which is bullshit. If you've listened to the show for any length of time at all over the past year, I've said the same thing over and over and over again. I doubt seriously that Bitcoin is the first target of a quantum attack. Nuclear stockpiles or nuclear launch codes or the entire banking account system around the world. All of this is in jeopardy if somebody actually builds a competent quantum computer, but we get the Bitcoin fund from quantum and we get it too much. Well, there's a report out and Mike Zimmerman from Bitcoin magazine is going to tell us Bitcoin's quantum risk may be real, but the network is actually preparing and the report comes from Galaxy Digital's

3:07their latest report says that the risk that quantum computing could compromise Bitcoin is real, but so is the work underway to protect the network. The firm's research frames the issue as a long-term engineering and governance challenge rather than imminent crisis with developers already building tools that could reshape how the network secures trillions of dollars of value. In the center of the concern is a simple premise. Bitcoin relies on cryptographic signatures to prove ownership of coin. Those signatures based on elliptic curve cryptography are considered secure against classical computers, but a sufficiently advanced quantum machine could break that allowing the attacker to derive a private key from a public key and spend funds without authorization of the owner. The scenario has a name within the industry. It's called Q-Day. That's the moment

4:09a cryptographically relevant quantum computer becomes viable. The timeline remains uncertain. Estimates range from years to decades and no consensus exists among experts. The report stresses that uncertainty itself is the problem. Bitcoin's decentralized structure means upgrades take time, often measured in years, not months, still the risk is uneven. Most Bitcoin is not exposed today. While it's only revealed their public keys when funds are spent, meaning coin sitting untouched behind hashed addresses remains shielded. Vulnerability emerges in two main cases. Coins whose public keys are already visible on chain and coins in transit during a transaction. Galaxy sites estimates suggesting that millions of Bitcoin could fall into the first category, including funds tied to early network activity and long dormant wallets. These coins often

5:13associated with early adopters and even the pseudononymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto present a unique challenge. If quantum capabilities arrive before protective measures are deployed such holdings could become prime targets, the implications extend beyond individual losses. A sudden unlocking of dormant supply could ripple through markets placing pressure on price and by extension on mining incentives that underpin Bitcoin's security. The report frames this as a systemic risk, not just some technical flaw, yet the tone of the research is measured. Rather than signalling a alarm, it points to a growing body of work aimed at preparing the network. Among the most prominent proposals is a new transaction structure known as pay to Merkel route, which is outlined in the Bitcoin improvement proposal 360. Now I'm pausing to say that the next story that I've got up is a deeper dive into BIP 360, so just wait for it. Continuing on, the design removes a key

6:19exposure point by eliminating always visible public keys reducing the attack surface for long-term threats. Other ideas take a broader approach. One proposal, known as Hourglass, attempts to manage the fallout from vulnerable coins by limiting how quickly they can be spent in a worst-case scenario. The goal is not to prevent access but to slow it, giving markets time to absorb potential shocks. There is also movement toward new forms of cryptography, hash-based signature schemes such as Sphinx Plus have emerged as candidates for a post-quantum future. And these systems rely on mathematical assumptions different from those used today and are viewed by some researchers as a more conservative foundation. But the tradeoff is efficiency. Larger signatures could increase transaction sizes and strain network resources. In parallel, developers are exploring contingency

7:20plans. One proposal introduces a commit and reveal process that could protect transactions even if a quantum breakthrough occurs before new cryptography is deployed. Another line of research looks at zero-knowledge proofs to allow users to verify ownership of funds without exposing sensitive data. Taken together, these efforts suggest a layered defense. No single fix solves the problem instead. The strategy resembles a toolkit with protections aimed at different stages of exposure in different levels of urgency. The harder question may not be technical. Bitcoin has no central authority to mandate changes every upgrade requires coordination among developers, miners, exchanges, and users. Past changes, including major upgrades like SegWit, SegWit, and Taproot, took years to activate and often sparked intense debate. Quantum preparedness could prove even more complex. Some proposals touch on sensitive issues, including weathercoins that fail to migrate,

8:26to safer formats should lose spendability. Such ideas raise philosophical questions about property rights and the social contract embedded in the network, but even so. The report points to a key difference from past conflicts. Quantum risk is external. It does not divide the community along economic lines, nor competing visions for Bitcoin's future. Instead, it presents a shared threat. Every participant, from long-term holders to infrastructure providers, has an incentive to maintain the network security. In the end, the report suggests that the outcome will hinge less on whether quantum computers arrive, and more on whether a decentralized network can coordinate in time. The answer, with much of Bitcoin's history, will emerge through slow consensus rather than sudden change. I'm going to say the most unpopular thing ever said.

9:31But I'm going to say something that is the usual thing that sparks people to get really pissed off. What if we just had a quantum prepared fork of Bitcoin ready to go? Nobody wants to hear it. Even in my own gut, I'm going, oh, God, a fork really, are you seriously going to say the sentence out loud? Yeah, I am. If for no other reason, then possibly just playing devil's advocate. Let's just say what if there's no way that we can come to a consensus on what we know today is actual Bitcoin. Not any of the forks, not any of that bullshit that came along after 2017, and everybody got all their panes in a twist, and Roger Verr got mad and took his ball and went home. If you don't remember what that is, I won't get into it here, but we've had many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many,

10:32many forks of Bitcoin, and they all suck. And the reason they all suck is that it was all internal divisions, camps, warring with each other, and economic divisions of greed and bullshitery. And it was just awful, and I don't want to ever see that again, but here we are with a 100% as the Galaxy Digital Report suggests 100% external threat. It's completely external. It affects all of us, and the chances of there being an economic rift because of it inside internal is a lot less than it was during the whole blocked size wars of 2016, 2017, and 18. Now, that said, bear with me. What if we cannot come to a consensus on the main chain of how we're going to change signatures, what kind of mathematics are to be used,

11:35how, what kind of transaction types, you know, what those things look like, and in the wings, somebody else, or a whole other group of people are just preparing Bitcoin as a quantum secured chain, completely different protocol, well, not a completely different protocol, but all the things that need to go in there and just build the fucking thing, and then right, you know, like continuously take snapshots of all the wallet addresses that is on chain, like they used to do during these, like all the forks, like I ended up with, I ended up with, I don't know, Bitcoin diamond at one point, which I didn't give a shit about, because it was like it went from like a thousand dollars to like 10 cents inside of 10 minutes, the minute that it launched, and I whipped you do, but it gave me the exact amount of Bitcoin

12:37that I had on that chain because they took a snapshot of the blockchain, of actual Bitcoin's blockchain, and everybody, like all the wallet addresses that were in the blockchain, which is like literally all of them, anybody, any of those addresses were basically mirrored, and whatever amount of Bitcoin was in those addresses, at the time the snapshot was taken, was mirrored over into whatever shit coin fork that they decided to do, but in this case, it'd be the exact same, sort of as a, as an emergency release valve, if nothing else, and I kind of suspect that that's probably going to happen at one point or another. Do I want it? No, is it a good thing? I don't, you know, that one, I don't know, I don't know if it's good or bad. I know one, I know one thing for sure, the second anybody's serious, like a serious Bitcoin developer, somebody who's been

13:41in the trenches for years and years and years with a well-known name, the second one of them actually says the words that I just said, hey, let's have a quantum resistant fork on a just in case basis, all hell is going to break loose. So let me be on record as being the first person to suggest, let's just do a whole complete, have a prepared fork with continual snapshots being taken, so that if the worst case scenario happens, we have, we have something else. I don't like it, I don't like the idea, but I get the feeling that it's going to happen whether I like it or not. Now remember what I was talking about, BIP 360. Okay, this is from Atlas 21. BTQ launches the first implementation to protect Bitcoin from quantum computers. That would be BIP or Bitcoin improvement proposal 360. BTQ technologies has announced the release of the first working

14:50implementation of Bitcoin improvement proposal 360. Now it's live on its dedicated test block chain, so we're kind of getting close to what I'm suggesting. For the first time, BIP 360 moves beyond theory and becomes an operational reality on the Bitcoin quantum test net version 0.3.0, a parallel blockchain designed to simulate Bitcoin's behavior in a post quantum scenario. The implementation introduces a transaction format called pay to Merkel route, which changes how transaction data is recorded on the blockchain. The defining feature is of P2MR is the elimination of public key exposure during certain transaction paths. This modification could prove decisive if quantum computers reach sufficient computational power to break current elliptic curve based cryptographic protections. BIP 360 represents the

15:50Bitcoin community's most significant step toward quantum resistance, and we've turned it from a proposal into running code said Oliver Rusey Newton CEO of BTQ technologies. According to BTQ, the P2MR format maintains full compatibility with scripting functionalities that underpin systems such as the lightning network as well as emerging frameworks like BitVM and ART. The architecture also removes the key path spin mechanism introduced with taproot which in a quantum attack scenario could expose public keys to critical vulnerabilities. The test net includes full wallet tooling that allows users to create fun sign and broadcast P2MR transactions into end making the upgrade testable under realistic conditions. The Bitcoin quantum test net currently has over 50 active miners and has processed more than 100,000 blocks. So it's kind of close this test net blockchain.

16:56It's kind of close to having a complete fork, but it's not. It's not what I'm suggesting at this point, although it wouldn't surprise me if this BIP 360 and BTQ gets taken to a full fork. I can see it happening and like I said, the minute that becomes suggested or it becomes even close to being a potential reality, you will see heads explode because everybody is going to automatically think we're right back in 2017 and nobody that it survived 2017 wants to ever see that shit again and honestly I can't blame us. It was horrible. It felt like getting kicked in the crotch over and over again by your best friends. That's exactly what it felt like 2017 was exactly like being the kid on the playground who thought they had friends and they ganged up on his ass and beat him to

17:57a pulp. And nobody wants to see that again. But this is an external threat. So it may be have a completely different flavor. If everybody internal basically starts saying we really need to bond together and become really, really, really good friends. Will that happen? Probably not. Will it happen to some degree? God, I hope so. I really do. But power is going to be another issue when it comes to quantum and this one surprised me and it's not about Bitcoin, but it does continue the quantum threat from decrypt.co. I got Jose Antonio Lans writing this one. First working quantum battery proves bigger really does mean faster. If you ever heard of a quantum battery, well you're going to hear about it now. The phone takes an hour to charge an electric vehicle takes all night

19:01the trade off more capacity, more waiting. It's so embedded in how batteries work. Nobody really questions it anymore. A team of Australian scientists just built something that breaks that rule entirely. Researchers at CSIRO Australia's National Science Agency together with teams from RMIT University and the University of Melbourne have unveiled the world's first working quantum battery prototype. This is an actual physical device that charges stores energy and discharges it using the rules of quantum physics instead of chemistry. Their findings were published Wednesday in Nature Light, Science, and Applications. Oh, by the way, let's pause. Nature Light is part of the nature journal. They're scientific journals and the two top scientific

20:01journals in the world is science and nature. Nature Light is an offshoot publication of nature. It is just as hard to get into nature light as nature itself or there's a couple of offshoots from science. These are hard to get in your papers into as peer-reviewed papers. It's probably the last place where you can actually say that peer-review might still work. The rest of them, not so sure, but getting into nature is a you got to have something. So these guys got into nature, so let's just give them the little golf clap. The prototype is a tiny layered wafer of organic materials like a nanoscopic sandwich that gets charged wirelessly by a laser pulse. That pulse lasts a femtosecond. One femtosecond is one

21:06quadrillionth of a second. The device charges in that window that holds its energy for nanoseconds about six orders of magnitude longer than it took to fill up. That gap sounds very unimpressive until you scale it. Quote, if we can charge a battery in one minute, it would stay charged for a couple of years. Lead researcher James Quatch explained, the physics already worked, the challenge now is extending how long the stored energy can last in a real world device. The genuinely strange part isn't the speed but the scaling behavior. Conventional batteries get slower to charge as they grow. More capacity means more time, but quantum batteries do the opposite. It's like ceramics, as they get hot, they shrink instead of expand. It's freaking bizarre behavior. But the more molecules packed into the device, the faster each one charges. Because at the quantum level, they don't act individually. They behave collectively, sharing the incoming energy in a single coordinated burst. The researchers

22:12call super absorption. Technically speaking, researchers say that the charging time drops as one over the square root of n, where n is the number of molecules. Double the battery, cut the charging time in nearly half and so on. Quote, our findings confirm a fundamental quantum effect that's completely counterintuitive. Quantum batteries charge faster as they get larger. Quatch told Melbourne University, quote, today's batteries don't function like that. This property had been predicted mathematically since 2013 and a partial version was demonstrated in 2022. What's new here is the complete cycle. The team figured out how to pull the stored energy back out as an electrical current, which no previous quantum battery experiment has managed. The device also runs at room temperature, a practical advantage over competing superconducting

23:12approaches from China and Spain that require cryogenic cooling. The immediate application is not your EV or something like that. The prototype's total capacity is measured in billions, billions, not billions, but billions of electron volts, enough to power nothing in the real world. Yet, but quantum computers are a different story. Those systems are already advancing faster than most expected and they have a specific energy problem. Their delicate quantum states demand power delivered coherently without the noise the conventional electronics introduce. A quantum battery charges and discharges using the same quantum language that those processors speak. Quote, quantum batteries could provide energy coherently with the minimum energy cost to the quantum computers. Professor Andrew White, who leads the quantum technology lab at the University of Queensland and was not involved in the research told the news digital.

24:16CSIRO is already seeking development partners, including EV manufacturers and deep tech investors to push the research forward. The theory has a decade head start on the hardware, the hardware just now caught up. And that's the end of that particular article. If you're getting fearful out there, don't. This is moving fast, but there's an entire group of people that really care about Bitcoin. If you think that just because there's a quantum battery and they're going to be able to plug it into a quantum computer and it's going to make everything hunky-dory, it's not going to work exactly like that. But the quantum research as a whole, not just quantum computers, but now we're talking about quantum batteries. And I'm sure that there's a whole handful of other quantum

25:16systems that are going to be able to put your name behind it here that's out there that's being worked on and it's going really, really, really fast. But there's a huge amount of people that actually care. And guess what? Guess what is also included? Other, there's miners in Bitcoin. There's us users in Bitcoin. There's now markets are involved in Bitcoin. There are, there's like the developers that have donated massive sections of their entire lives to this and they're probably not going to just give up the ghost. But now we're pulling in energy providers, electrical grids. Like was it in Texas? I can't remember the name of the main electrical grid in Texas right now, but it's sort of like a private concern. You know, these people have vested interest in making sure that Bitcoins also survive. So when you look at Bitcoin, it's sort of

26:23like a gravity well. At first it pulled in users. And then it pulled in all of a sudden now we start getting like major people investing their time and money into mining. And then all of a sudden there's like, you know, huge exchanges. All these all of these people have been like sort of coagulating around Bitcoin like it's a black hole. And we just keep getting sucked in. And the larger it gets, the more massive the black hole, the larger the extents of its ability to pull shit in. And it keeps pulling more stuff in. Right. So everything around Bitcoin is growing in my opinion, sort of at the same rate as quantum research. I don't think and I am not, I really am not getting gut punched by this whole quantum thing. In fact, if anybody should be concerned about quantum, it really shouldn't be the cryptography

27:30side of it. In other words, like like I said, Bitcoin, like thinking that quantum computers, like the first, like the first dead body is going to be Bitcoin is a ridiculous claim. It will be banks. It will, I mean, literally it will be banks. It might, they might also go after Bitcoin as well at all the shitcoins. Anything under cryptographic control, but that starts including stuff like governmental servers and their protections, you know, like like the like the entire internal revenue service cryptographically secured of all the like all us taxpayers have a an EIN with that, you know, like our accounts at the IRS. And we do have accounts at the IRS. If you did not know that, it's like it's sort of like a bank account. You didn't sign up for it. It was a sign to your ass. But yeah, you've got an account. That's cryptographically secured. And again, nuclear launch codes cryptographic.

28:34I mean, there's like the entire the entire web HTTPS. It's it's all gone. It's all gone. So there is a vested interest in making sure that quantum computing doesn't break all that shit. It's a lot larger of a of a body of concern than just us invested in Bitcoin. So I this is this is one of the reasons why I don't freak out about this quantum thing. But what I do freak out about is this quantum AI. Because that's coming. We already have the the the the the barest bones infrastructure of artificial intelligence, even though it's not really intelligent. But you start running that shit on quantum computing and you got a whole different monster and I don't know what that monster looks like. But it is probably not going to be all that great depending on who gets to use it and implement it first. But that's just to think about

29:38for another day. All this shit gives me an appetite. Sats for snacks. It's sats the number four snacks dot com. That's sats the number four snacks dot com. Get yourself some freeze-dried pine apple. Freeze-dried peaches. Freeze-dried organic mangoes. Freeze-dried strawberries. Freeze-dried bananas. Let's see. What else has he got here? Freeze. Oh, let's see. Yeah, that's it. And this stuff is really, really good. It's not dehydrated. It's freeze-dried. There is a difference and this is from our good friend Permanard. He is selling it for Bitcoin. He's in the circle P. The circle P is open for business. It's where I bring plebs just like you with goods and services to plebs just like you who want to buy those goods and services. But you will be buying it in Bitcoin because if you're not selling it in Bitcoin, you're not in the circle P. And Permanard, my good friend is definitely in the circle P. He sent me a care package of all of his stuff and I freaking love it. It's like you throw like one of these freeze-dried peaches in your mouth

30:44and it's like it's like double the peach flavor. It's fucking amazing. I love this stuff. satzforesnacks.com, that satzforesnacks.com. Use Bitcoin and you will get a 2.1% off discount with that coupon code Bitcoin and that satzforesnacks.com, satzforesnacks.com. Get yourself some freeze-dried fruit. And he also has comfrey salve. You got licks and some scrapes and bruises, cuts, you know, springs, like little stuff like that. This stuff is a perfect healing salve because comfrey is a magic plant. I love comfrey. And you can get it at satzforesnacks.com. Now Gemini is getting sued like big time sued. They've been hit with an investor lawsuit over their strategy shift. Stock slump as losses widen in layoffs mount. Oh no, Timmy Shin.

31:47From the block, Gemini has been hit with a class action lawsuit in New York, which accuses the company of misleading investors about its business strategy before and after its 2025 initial public offering as the firm stock tumbled amid a post IPO pivot. The complaint filed Wednesday in our at our good friend's house, the US District Court for the Southern District, New York, alleges that Gemini and executives, including Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, made false and incomplete statements in offering documents tied to its September 2025 IPO and subsequent disclosures. The suit seeks damages on behalf of investors who purchase shares during the IPO and through mid February of 2026. Gemini's stock debuted on the NASDAQ in September and closed at $32 on its first trading day. It is since fallen more than 80% to end Thursday at $6.1

32:47penny per share. According to the complaint, the Gemini's offering document portrayed the exchange as a growing crypto platform focused on expanding its monthly transacting user base and international footprint. Plaintiffs alleged the company failed to disclose that it was preparing for a significant strategic overhaul that would alter its complete business model. Oh no, and here is the pivot. You ready for it? In early February, Gemini unveiled a shift under its Gemini 2.0 strategy stating that it would prioritize a prediction market product. That is, I think, the main concern of this class action lawsuit. There's a lot of other stuff that they did before and after, but I think it's this one that really got their investors and their shareholders really pissed off because they're like, oh yeah, we were going to do all this and all that, but you know

33:49we're going to jump on the prediction market fad. And it's been a theme all week long. We started with automotive services pivoting to Bitcoin mining pivoting to AI, a whole bunch of other Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI, a whole bunch of AI pivot. But here, oh, and we've also, I think I've also told you about somebody else who is pivoting to prediction markets, but here we've got Gemini, which has been one of the largest exchanges in Bitcoin and has been around since almost the very beginning seems like and they want to pivot into a prediction market, completely dismissing what they said they were going to do, thinking, I guess that they weren't going to get sued? Oh well, shit happens, let's run the numbers. CMBC Futures and Commodities Energy is almost all in the green today. Brent North Sea is up

34:50a half point to $109.27 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate is up 1.4 to 97.5. Natural gas acting is a hedge today too and a third to the downside bringing the price to $3.9 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gasoline is up 2.72% to $3 and 21 cents a gallon merbon crude. Holy shit, spiking to 12.59%, $139.69, which makes sense considering that it's all in the sort of all in the United Arab Emirates is where the production of merbon crude is. So yeah, got a little bit of an issue with a straight of horror news. Shiny metal rocks not doing well. Pladeum down a point. Gold is also down a point, chilling out at $4,558.9. Platinum is up 0.7% and silver is down 2.5 to 69.40.

35:54Oh, that's got to hurt. Oh shit, copper down 1.85%. Ag is mostly in the red today. Biggest winner is coffee, 3.5% to the upside. Biggest loser is ref rice, 2% to the downside. Live cattle is up 0.9 lean hogs down a quarter. Feeder cattle up 1.11, a nice little row of sticks. Legacy indices not looking good today. S&P is down 0.8% and NASDAQ is down 1.1. The Dow is down a half point. That's about 290 to the downside. S&P mini is down 1.5 points. And Bitcoin is down to $69,980 gives us a $1.4 trillion market cap, but we're still able to get even more gold. 15.3 ounces of shiny amount of rocks can be had for our one Bitcoin of which there are 20 million 434.28 of average fees per block remain at 0.02 BTC, taking in fees on a

36:59per block basis. It's about 25 blocks carrying 27,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to clear at high priority rates of 3 sats per V by low priorities get you in a .6. cash rate holding at 939 exa hashes per second. I'm good with it. Okay, from Canadians, Canadian yesterday's episode of Bitcoin and I got Nick, oh shit, Nick dose with 10,601 sat says one bar of soap last your family one month and one bar of soap miners soap costs $7.50. Here's approximately $7.50 so you and your wife can have your own bar of soap and stop having to share with the kids. I need soap. I gotta have soap. Thank you, Nick. I appreciate that, man. Jay with 4,200 sat says thank you, sir. No, thank you. Oak Grove with 2,580 sat says legal lobster series six coming

38:01tomorrow. The Eurea and 5. Oh, $5 wrench attack must be further addressed today further in Patreon. Hold on for a second. Had to spend over there to Patreon to just check on something, but I don't have anything from Oak Grove over there yet. Anonymous with $11.22 says Ola, you know, well hello to you, sir. Jub-jub with a thousand says not minding the extra sats for my DC a Jason high with 500 says I tried boosting the show several times recently, but somehow it didn't work. I'll try again now. It worked now. So you know, at least she got that one through and here's here's the thing. It's so it's it's okay if you try and it fails. It doesn't mean anything bad about lightning network. It just it is what it is, man. In fact, if you really think about it, I'm surprised that the internet works at all that that telecommunications work at all

39:03that cell phones work that anything actually works at all. It's it's like fucking magic all the time. Permanard with two tin says like a baby seal. Nick does with 174 says cheers cheers. Nostriging with 100 says you're amazing. Thank you for all that you do, sir. Thank you, Nostriging. I appreciate the sentiments. That's the weather report. Welcome to part two of the news that you can use where FTX is going to pay 2.2 billion dollars to creditors at the end of the month March 31st. This is by Ayesha Aziz from coinmarketcap.com. The FTX recovery trust announced Wednesday that it will distribute approximately 2.2 billion dollars to creditors on March 31st. The payout is the fourth payout under the exchanges chapter 11 reorganization

40:11plan. Creditors who completed onboarding will receive funds within one to three business days. Payments will arrive through Bitgo Kraken or pay a near. All distributions will be made in United States dollars with recipients then choosing between Fiat or crypto. Recovery rates differ by claim class. And once it goes out, the trust will have paid approximately 10 billion dollars since total repayments began. The first distribution was 1.2 billion in February of 2025. A second round of 5 billion followed in May of that year. And a third payout totaled 1.6 billion in September of the same year. That's all we really need to say about this because here's the thing. Every time the FTX recovery trust makes a payment, it sends ripples through the Bitcoin and rest of the, you know, the cryptoverse if that's what you want to call it. And prices go down

41:14because oh my god, they're going to get a hold of this Bitcoin and they're immediately going to sell it. Dude, that shit was sold. It's already sold. They're getting it in dollars. They can choose to have those dollars converted into crypto. But that's simply them just buying Bitcoin. Right. All of the assets of FTX and that entire bankruptcy has been was sold a long time ago. It was already converted into dollars. Okay. So everybody calm down. But there will be news. It will be fun. Be prepared for it. And just let it be a duck. Like like water off of the backs. Ducks back. Okay. So everybody calm down. Unless you're this guy who's probably not calm at all. Super micro co-founder arrested over alleged 2.5 billion AI chip smuggling scheme. As if you weren't rich

42:22enough. Are you shitting me? It's like super micro with some kind of shit company. I mean, if you're one of the co-founders from super micro, if you don't have enough money, then you've got serious problems. What the hell happened? This is out of coin telegraph. US authorities say that the co-founder of super micro computer has been charged and arrested over an alleged multi-billion dollar scheme to smuggle advanced artificial intelligence chips from the United States to China. The Justice Department said in a statement on Thursday that it had unsealed an indictment charging Yee Shan Wally Leo. I can't pronounce this name. Let's just call it Wally. As well as super micro sales executives and there's like one, two. There's two others and I cannot pronounce these names. I'm sorry. But prosecutors said that the trio violated US export

43:26control laws by conspiring to sell billions of dollars worth of servers integrating sensitive controlled graphics processing units to buyers in China. Super micro, which was not charged, is a 18.5 billion dollar California-based tech company specializing in high-performance server and data center hardware for large-scale companies such as IBM. Its infrastructure partners include firms like Nvidia and Google. The Justice Department said that the alleged scheme involved the trio using a range of concealment techniques to hide the sale of around 2.5 billion dollars worth of servers to a company in China across the years, 2024 and 2025, with 510 million dollars worth of sales occurring between April and May of 2025 alone. Quote these defendants allegedly fabricated documents staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories and used a pass through

44:26company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list said James Barnacle. Oh, sorry. I shouldn't laugh at somebody's name, but dude, James Barnacle, Jr., no less, FBI assistant director in charge of the New York field office said, Liu and Sun, one of the other guys, have been arrested and will stand before a judge in the northern district of California. Meanwhile, the Justice Department said that Chang, a Taiwanese citizen based outside the United States remains effugitive. In a statement shared with coin telegraph, super microdistance itself from the trio and labeled the allegations as what a contravention of the company's policies and compliance controls. Quote the company has been cooperating fully with the government's investigation and will continue to do so. Super micro has not been named as a defendant in the indictment according to a company

45:29spokesperson. Super micro's stock had initially gained during regular trading hours on Thursday, following the Justice Department's announcement, however, the stock has dropped 13.25% to $26.71 since and after I was trading. And I guess this was yesterday or something. I don't know. But here's what I'm thinking. Is it possible that the co-founder of super micro is a Chinese operative? Because we've got a sort of a ban on AI chips going over being able to be sold to China. And that's been in place for quite a while. So is it possible that this guy didn't spend all his money on stupid shit and still has is still filthy rich but somehow or another is some kind of Chinese agent or just you know thinks that that his homeland is being done dirty by the United States and said screw it. I'll get my country people their AI chips.

46:36It's honestly it's the only thing that makes sense because the dude had to be filthy freaking rich to begin with. It's not like you need that much more money. So I I'm thinking that it has more to do with him being a good China man or or he's he's under duress by China. Like maybe they who knows who you know there's no way to tell but it just doesn't make sense that somebody at the top of a company as big as super micro they've been around for decades. Man they were making some seriously hot gaming computers back in the 90s and shit. I mean or I mean well the mother boards and what not like that they weren't building full rigs. You sort of had to build them yourself but still still he's not hurting for money. So the question becomes why did he do it? Or or this is something to do with the the ongoing pressure that the United States seems to be

47:44putting on China because one of the people that are hurting about with high oil prices and the fact that Iran is in the middle of all this is China because they get up like a fifth of their oil from Iran or Iran however you pronounce it. I don't know. I don't know it's it's just it's so bizarre to see somebody who would clearly not need the money to risk their freedom like this. It's it's bizarre but then again so is Kentucky. Move back over to the United States where Kentucky Senate has been urged to strip hardware wallet provision from their crypto bill vis my v from decrypt.co a last minute amendment requiring hardware wallet providers to help reset user credentials tucked into Kentucky sweeping crypto ATM bill is facing mounting backlash with experts saying it is a fundamental misunderstanding of how crypto infrastructure works. Section 33 of House Bill 380

48:51added as a last minute floor amendment during House debate would require hardware wallet providers to furnish customers with a mechanism to reset any password pin seed phrase or other similar information needed to access a wallet. Oh wow. Whoa. BPI is sending a letter to the Kentucky Senate informing them of the harmfulness of this language the group wrote on X hardware wallets are physical devices that store crypto private keys offline and ensure only the user not even the manufacturer can access or recover them quote this is likely far more indicative of a misunderstanding than a deliberate attempt at control Joe Chicolo founder and president of bit AML told decrypt quote policy makers often struggle with the concept of self-custody there is no central authority capable of resetting access credentials unlike traditional systems where recovery is standard said at

49:53Cicolo BPI described the mandate as technologically impossible for non custodial wallets noting that requiring a backdoor undermines Bitcoin's fundamental security model and pushes users towards centralized custodians that are more vulnerable to hacks and failures quote Kentucky is suddenly about to ban self-custody tell your friends Connor Brown managing director at BPI wrote on X quote record requiring hardware wallet providers to recover or reset credentials would effectively force them to redesign their products in a way that undermines self-custody or exit the market altogether most non custodial wallet providers would likely choose not to operate in Kentucky rather than compromise their core security model Chicolo added warning of reduced consumer choice and diminished privacy protections quote the very consumers the bill aims to protect would lose access to one of the safest ways to store digital assets he said on a or on safer paths

50:59forward Chicolo noted social recovery mechanisms or multi signature setups can reduce risk without introducing centralized control adding that the best protection is ensuring users understand both the benefits and the responsibilities of self-custody he also backed BPI's moves saying education is critical and that when proposal stem from a knowledge gap direct engagement with policy makers is the most effective path forward noting it directly impacts consumers who value financial autonomy and security hb380 was introduced in the house on January the 14th reported favorably out of the banking and issue insurance committee on marks the fourth and then passed the full chamber 85 to zero vote on marks the 13th holy shit there wasn't one to center damn it's actually pretty impressive the underlying bill regulates virtual currency kiosk operators establishes

52:01licensing requirements yada yada yada the bill arrived in the senate on monday and was then referred to the committee on committees ladies and gentlemen your Kentucky government at work Kentucky's move follows a broader crackdown on crypto kiosk with Connecticut halting Bitcoin Depot for compliance failures and Minnesota considering an outright ban on all crypto ATMs and I've brought you both those pieces of news in the past so yeah I don't think they're really trying to to screw people I think I think BPI is correct they just don't they don't understand this they don't get it and that's one of the reasons why we keep saying that education is key these people don't know what they don't know they do know what they do know and they're misapplying it to what they think Bitcoin is and that's that's an ongoing issue and it's been going on forever now let's move on over to north carolina where their law makers propose

53:05a state Bitcoin reserve Micah Zimmerman Bitcoin magazine senate bill three two three two seven titled the north carolina bitcoin reserve and investment act would allow the office of the state treasure to allocate up to 10 percent of public funds into Bitcoin as part of the state's long-term financial strategy the bill is sponsored by senators johnson and over cash passed its first senate reading and was referred to the rules and operations committee its stated goals include establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve promoting Bitcoin as a financial innovation and positioning north carolina as a leader in state level crypto adoption under the proposal the treasurer would manage the reserve using cold storage wallets with multi signature authentication a new department within the treasurer's office would take custody of the assets ensuring state control the bill also calls for a bitcoin economic advisory board composed of industry experts to provide guidance and monthly

54:07audits to verify reserve balances so north carolina coming along for the ride good to see good to see we'll we'll see how far they actually get and leading up to the end of the show we've got this one Morgan Stanley Bitcoin trust to trade as msbt on the new york stock exchange arca and this is Micah Zimmerman Bitcoin magazine Morgan Stanley has confirmed that it's proposed spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund will trade under the ticker msbt on arca according to an updated filing with the sec the filing outlines the structure of the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin trust which is a passive investment vehicle designed to track the spot price of Bitcoin through direct holdings shares of the trust will reflect the value of Bitcoin held in custody offering exposure through brokerage accounts without requiring direct ownership of the asset the trust plans

55:11to seed the fund by issuing 50,000 shares expected to raise about one million dollars in initial proceeds the ticker msbt places the product alongside other spot Bitcoin ETFs that launched following regulatory approvals back in 2024 so Morgan Stanley's just a bit late damn just a bit late Morgan Stanley also appointed coin based custody trust company god dang it as the primary Bitcoin custodian did expanding the honey potnest that is coin base here we have Morgan Stanley not figuring out that there's other custody guys out there everybody is selecting coin base for their custodian custodian ship and it's kind of stupid at this point it's just done I mean it was like you're you're just adding fuel to the fire just whatever the firm will safeguard the digital assets and facilitate transfers tied to share creation and redemption just like all the

56:13rest of them then there's BNY melon who will serve multiple roles including administrator transfer agent and cash custodian the structure follows a model used across the spot Bitcoin ETF market a portion of the funds holdings may move into trading wallets during periods of share creation or redemption when authorized participants exchanged cash for Bitcoin or redeem shares for the underlying asset the filing states that custody issue oh sorry the filing states that custody insurance is in place but shared across multiple clients and may not cover all losses okay sounds like shitty insurance to me similar disclosures appear in other ETF filings reflecting standard industry practices asset managers expand into direct Bitcoin exposure key details remain undisclosed though including the management fee and its expense ratio

57:15these figures often play a role in investor demand particularly in a market where fee competition among issuers has intensified Morgan Stanley first filed for the Bitcoin trust in January the latest update confirms operational details and brings the product closer to launch pending effectiveness of the registration statement and final regulatory approval the move marks a deeper push by the bank into digital assets Morgan Stanley has signaled plans to expand beyond ETFs with efforts underway to integrate crypto trading into its e-trade platform the firm has also explored custody lending and of course yield related services tied to digital assets at strategy world digital asset strategy head Amy Oldenburg described further expansion as part of the firm's roadmap pointing to client demand for integrated crypto services she said the bank intends to develop a fully integrated custody and exchange platform

58:16this is a natural progression the executive said we can't just primarily rent the technology to do this people expect Morgan Stanley they trust our brand to be a no fail i just an odd that's that is just an odd statement for for her to make it's just odd so here we go Morgan Stanley the latest player to the game and one of the biggest names in retail that there is at this point i'm not even going to say you're too late they're they're bringing a lot of fire power when it comes to their client list but dude really it took you this long you should have been prepping this shit alongside black rock wow and i wonder who i wonder if anybody's head has rolled because it's just taking them this long to get their shit together because i mean all you know honestly even with their clientele fire power they are very very late to the game very late to the

59:23game so it's going to be interesting to see how this particular e bitcoin ETF performs given the field of competition that at this point is now considered seasoned oh well it'll be fun all right that's it for all the news that you can use for this week here on the bitcoin and podcasts with me your host David Bennett i do hope that you have a wonderful weekend don't expect the Iran war to end anytime soon and gas prices are skyrocketing so just understand that apparently this is a small price to pay i've been told this is a small price to pay for the freedoms that we enjoy and the minute that somebody tells me i'm free to not engage with the IRS or any of this other bullshit you let me know because i i can't actually see it but i will see you on the other side this has been bitcoin and and i'm your host David Bennett i hope you enjoyed today's

1:00:28episode and hope to see you again real soon have a great day