When Policy Gets Tighter, Bitcoins Scarcity Gets Repriced

Where'd I go? Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a great weekend. This is Phil. Welcome back to the pleb underground.

A little bit of an unexplained bump maybe this morning Monday morning. I honestly thought that we were just going to sink lower.

Glad we're not. Glad we're holding steady for now. And we've got some solid hopium to kick it off right away. The policy right is getting tighter and bitcoins scarcity is getting reprised.

Now, of course, yesterday when I was putting this together, I was like, oh, it's getting reprised at the downside, but apparently it's getting reprised the whole thing steady.

And I will take it for now. We're also going to take a look at more, more data coming out about AI's preferences. What a shock.

Another use case for Bitcoin gold. That's right. Gold is stuck in Dubai. Square is launching automated bounties. We're going to take a look at that.

Take a look at that. Take a look at some some of the details. Vancouver rejecting the Bitcoin reserve plan. We're going to obviously dive into the details of that.

Also, there's this this company, UT. What is it? UT EXO. Anyways, they're bringing USDT to Bitcoin. So of course, I had to dive into this and take a look at it.

We're going to review some of the red flags. I think are already painfully apparent. Black rocks fund is limiting withdrawals. That's right.

Private equity. We're not hearing too much about it. But there was that that blue owl company. There's black rock. There's black stone.

And there's something going on quietly. We're going to obviously review that and some fun stuff. Interactive 3D map of the entire Bitcoin network. That's right.

AI is making things very, very cool. But you know what? I think the big, the really big piece today is it's this.

That's right. Bitcoin has now crossed 20 million BTC mind or very close to it. I know that people like to get specific wicked.

We could probably the wicked apple. He could probably give you a more specific number. But it has been done. The final one million Bitcoin will take another 114 years to mind.

It's it's pretty epic that we are experiencing this today. Guys, it's going to be a fun show. Let's frickin do it. Here we go.

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All right. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Happy Monday. I know nobody really says that. It's funny in the corporate world. You walk in and you say happy Monday. Oftentimes you'll hear what's so happy about it. I used to say happy Monday.

It's just for the sake of it. But why not? Anyways, let's dive into it. The current Bitcoin price. If we would have done this live episode a little bit earlier, we could have said it was 69 K. But instead we're sitting at 68 to 68.

Sorry, 68.8. My bad. My bad. I can't read. What else? The block height? New all time. I 940,000. 12. What else? That's privy bite. Only two.

Delabeled to a Ford coffee with Bitcoin. I'll have no use case for the shit coins. Oh, what a surprise. What a surprise. Anyways, total public lightning capacity. It looks like it slightly dropped last week. We're at 5700. The whole entire week pretty much.

Now we are at 5677. And of course, that is just the publicly available data. We have no idea. No introspection whatsoever in the how much liquidity is actually in private lightning channels.

And frankly, I don't care. But it's always it's always good to just keep that frame, right? This is what we see that's publicly available.

All right, guys, let's let's do it here. Bitcoin is going to be repricing. Let's frickin talk about it. And it's of course, it's from my favorite account. The David ENG NBA accounts. This guy always has solid graphics, solid. Hope you look at that. Look how good that looks up. And to the right. It's all we need to know.

That's great. The monetary policy tightening the investment behavior changes and the scarcity repricing. Let's dive into the details of this whole thing. So here we go.

Here we go. Here's a David saying the market. What the market is missing? The economy is splitting. Plus 25% tech cap X five straight quarters down X tech.

Top 20% spend bottom 60% pullback oil can push CPI back above 3% the Fed has no clean move.

Okay, go on. Bitcoin is still the exits. 21 million supply no delusional committee. No supply response when policy gets tighter scarcity gets repriced.

Oh, since Bitcoin is the most the scarceest assets besides time. This is bullish. This is bullish. I mean, the fact that we didn't the fact that we didn't crater over the weekend definitely makes me happy. However, I'm also.

I'm also cautiously optimistic, right? That's what. Call it what it is, right? We've never seen a scenario where all of a sudden the bear market or quote unquote bear market just reverses in a matter of like a few months, right?

We just take right back up that's that's not what happens. However, I'm willing to believe it's because I appreciate the opium.

Why not? All right, let's take a look at some some more some more opium here, the the AI agent, opium, right? This is from the Bitcoin policy institute.

Frontier AI agents prefer Bitcoin over stable coins and other forms of money. We've talked about this in the past, but now we've got some official data out of the Bitcoin policy institute. Let's watch the little little video here about this.

I don't know if I could put on the music.

Adam, let's just leave the music off. I always get dinged for the music.

Let's pause that for a second. Oh, that was it. Damn it.

Amazing how you could just screw that up, huh?

Clear, they want it. Now, but I want to go back to the where's the the thing that shows that?

Come on. Show it again. There we go. That's what I wanted to see.

That's great. That's great. All right. So at least we know that there's there's going to be 48% of the agents that aren't going to get rugged.

We're going to have 33% of the agents that are going to be earning yield then getting rugged.

Interesting. 8% of the agents are just going to simply get excluded out of the system because that's what banking is. It's an exclusionary system.

What else? All right. We've got a few that are going to get rug pulled on the crypto.

We've 4% that are going to get rug pulled on crap.

And the tokenized real world assets.

That's the same thing. That is the same exact shit as crypto. That is crypto.

And then the compute units, they seem to care the least about this. I wonder why.

I wonder why. Anyways, I'm pretty sure that this study is going to it's going to expand, right?

I'm sure that there's going to be more and more.

Ah, yes. That's right. That's right.

Happy post DST Monday.

I don't know about you guys, but spring forward. I find much worse than fallback.

It just it just ruined Sunday. It's like all of a sudden Sundays in overdrive, right?

All of a sudden, you're just moving faster. He's like, you don't have enough time that what like that one hour all of a sudden changes everything.

I don't get it.

I really don't get it. Anyways, all right. Let's talk about the the gold that stuck in Dubai.

So gold is being offered at a steep discount in Dubai as the war in the Middle East ground fights and hamper supplies ability to move bullion out of key trading hubs.

Oh my gosh, who could have seen this coming, right?

I mean, this is this is the story all this time when it comes to when it comes to Bitcoin when it comes to goal, right?

It's easily confiscatable. Hey, good morning for Andy. Hello.

So many buyers have stepped back from new orders unwilling to pay exceptionally high shipping and insurance costs with no guarantee of prompt delivery as a result rather than paying indefinitely

for storage and funding traders are offering discounts as much as $30 an ounce to the global benchmark in London, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named discussing market information.

Many shipments remain stranded on Friday.

The people said, although some bullion has been loaded onto flights leaving Dubai from the middle of this week, which is this week.

Interesting, not surprising, not surprising. And this is again, a fantastic, a fantastic, hopium case as the why we Bitcoin 12 or 24 words in your head way easier to carry cross borders.

Nobody can stop it. It's beautiful and unfortunately, unfortunately, what really happens is is that these use cases only become painfully apparent.

During these types of situations, right? This is this is like what I've said in the past, you know, I didn't myself when I was 18 or 19 years old, whatever it was, when this first happened to me when I was debanked.

I didn't realize that I didn't actually like that wasn't my money in the bank until I got the bank, you know, and then all of a sudden it all clicked.

It's like, wait a second. This I thought you were just holding this for me. It's like, no, we own that shit. You're just a, you know, you're just now a slave to this system.

That's all. And now you're going to ask for permission every time you want to use your money if you want to withdraw your money.

So yeah, unfortunately, these are the times that this happens.

All right, let's dive into the square automated automated bounties. I think it's a good program, right? It's definitely not a bad thing.

So square launches automated bounties, the onboard new Bitcoin merchants users can earn $25 in Bitcoin for making the first ever Bitcoin payments to a square seller who hasn't previously accepted Bitcoin using the app.

Do it 10 times and it's $250 worth of sats. Very, very cool. Let's dive into this. So when did this start? The started on March 2nd. So last week and it ends April 5th. So you're getting about a month and a few days.

Right to do this. And where is it offered the offer is only available to recipients and square sellers who are legal.

United States residents in the 50 United States and DC except New York. Of course, of course, always except New York.

Oh, my gosh. Damn, sorry. That's unsurprising, right? New York. It's just the bit license. New York is a terrible track record. I don't know what the hell. They're so afraid of over there.

Everybody else is in hampering. Well, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people aren't hampering everything and look.

It's just moving right along. I just don't get it. Okay.

This the Vancouver stuff, right? So Vancouver officials have recommended terminating a council motion to make the city Bitcoin friendly.

After a legal review, found municipal reserve funds are prohibited from holding Bitcoin under the Vancouver charter.

So the reason why I'm interested in this one is because it seems like the whole entire thing was a fugasi. Like it seems like it was just a

non-sense garbage thing. And I'll explain why. So here's the main takeaways, right?

BTC is not an allowable investment under the Vancouver charter. City staff urged the council to abandon the reserve plan and consolidate related efforts.

Bitcoin's massive decline undermined the inflation hedge case behind the proposal. I mean, that's whatever. That's no surprise. We've seen that time and time again. Right.

You've got institutions in this particular case city officials. They get excited about Bitcoin, right?

As the price is going up here, it is we can store some money here. We can get publicity blah, blah, blah.

But then when the Bitcoin price goes down, nobody cares. You're an idiot. Okay.

When the Bitcoin price goes down like me, right? Like I'm a sucker for hotling, right?

Man, why didn't I trade the top? Right? So you're a sucker for hotling. You're buying this thing that's garbage, right?

We've seen this time and time again. Okay. This is just it's the never ending summer. Okay. That's all it is. Let's dive into the details.

Mayor Ken Sim first proposed the motion in late 2024. He presented it under the title of preserving purchasing power through reserved diversification and becoming a Bitcoin friendly city.

The motion was approved by the council with a six to two vote. The result suggested significant political support for studying Bitcoin as part of Vancouver's reserve strategy.

The vote did not resolve the issue of whether the city could legally take action on the idea. So again, it sounds terrible, but it was just smoking mirrors, right?

Like all of these were just words that they couldn't even act upon.

The newest review could stop the proposal before a reserve plan even starts. The question is no longer whether Bitcoin will increase over time.

The question is whether Vancouver has the power to hold it at all. So maybe they need to back up the truck and get something in writing because that's how municipalities work.

Hey, good morning, Frederick. Good morning. We're just talking about Vancouver. All right.

Okay, this thing. You may have heard about this. I just heard about this last week. I wanted to dive into it. This is this project, right? That raised $7.5 million from tether, big brain VC and portal ventures to bring USDT natively on Bitcoin.

As you guys may know, right now tether is essentially an ERC token, right? It's just it's made on Ethereum. I mean, it's obviously there's tether on a bunch of different chains, but that's the original chain where it was made.

Anyways, after more than a decade, USET is finally coming home. And of course, that that sounds great, right? That definitely sounds great. It makes people happy. I have to go take a look at their their website, right about this. Actually, you know what? Even before we dive into those details, let's just take a look at this video.

Yeah, of course, on units because let's be. Maybe that isn't copyrighted. Who knows?

All right, a lot of partners.

Yeah, music's not that interesting anyways. Okay, so looks good.

Yeah, man, native on Bitcoin. You keep telling us that. You notice they just keep saying USDT native on Bitcoin. Oh, RGB protocol. What was that over there? What was that?

Now, if it's the RGB protocol that I'm thinking of that that's colored coins, so to speak. Okay. Interesting. All right, let's dive into the details on this one.

Private instant free. Interesting. So what are the tradeoffs? Right. It's got to be some tradeoffs. They couldn't just give it to you for nothing. Right. So settle payments on a crew yield natively on Bitcoin.

And this right here, exactly, Frederick, exactly, man, you got it. It's like this is the second. So this was the first red flag for me.

Once you start talking to me about yield on Bitcoin, I know you're full of shit. I don't care how big your company is. I don't care who's backing you. I don't care that it's tether. I don't care. It doesn't matter.

The second you start talking about yield on this, you know that it's bullshit. Bitcoin is not a yield producing commodity asset. Whatever the hell you want to call it, it does not produce yield. You can't live in your Bitcoin. People aren't going to pay you rent. Look at the gym look at the gymnastics. Michael sailor has to go through.

It's separate you from your money to make you think you're getting exposure to Bitcoin. Look at what these people are going through. Right. There's no yield on this shit. This is nonsense. Okay. So that was my first red flag. All right. Now the next part of it is the bridge. Okay. Look, I've been in this space now for long enough. The second I start seeing swap bridges. I know people are going to get rugged. Okay. Because you're going from one asset to another. And right there, there's room for error. I don't know.

I don't care who's hosting the bridge who's securing the bridge. You get a rug at some point. This is going to be a rug at some point. That's my opinion.

Because the UTXO bridge acts as the liquidity gateway for native USDT on Bitcoin. That's right. Got to create a mirage allowing operators to migrate and rebalance stablecoin flows while preserving downstream execution logic.

That's just words. That doesn't mean anything at all. It enables fully atomic stablecoin transfers from external EVM based networks and Tron without introducing counterparty risks. Yeah. Let's see what happens in the real world. Okay. They all thought they weren't introducing counterparty risks until somebody rugs the fucking bridge. Okay. And then all of a sudden it's like, we didn't see that coming.

That you only have, I don't know, 10 years of shit coin projects that got rugged to prove it. But I guess this time it was different. USDT bridge to Bitcoin is represented as native RGB USDT. That's it's just a shit coin guys. It's just another shit coin. Of course, what's USDT is also a shit coin. Like I'm not saying they're saying it's not.

But now they're just introducing another shit coin and can be transferred or exchanged against Bitcoin with on chain settlement guarantees all the math that makes me feel good.

Take my money makes me feel secure without relying on centralized exchanges, wrapped assets and custodial intermediaries. Really, how are they giving you yield? Why are they giving you yield? Where are you putting your Bitcoin in order to earn that yield?

It's all such bullshit. It's unbelievable. The amount of bullshit. Okay. So how UTXO helps regulate custodians. I'm not even going to read all the rest of that crap. Okay. Right here. USDT and BTC yield on lightning enable yield generation on balance is via lightning and RGB mechanisms subject to regulatory approval. So they can actually even obviously they can't guarantee that they're going to give you yield.

But at this point, they don't even know that they can legally do it. Okay. But the point I was going to make is this. The only way of earning yield on lightning so to speak is for you to take your Bitcoin run a node.

Put the Bitcoin in lightning channels open channels to other channel providers and then what happens is that you are if you're routing node is in a good place and it's desirable for other nodes to connect to it in order to be able to send payments. You're going to earn a yield on that. Okay.

And what that yield is. Okay. Is actual. It's actual fees that people are paying to use the lightning network. Okay. It's not just your assets sitting there doing absolutely nothing. And then they pay you some shit coin because they're using your Bitcoin, even though they're pretending not to use your Bitcoin.

I just. I'm sorry. I just I can't buy this. I just don't buy that but it's not total bullshit. So my point is is that unless you are actually doing financial activity, there is no yield. Okay. This is this is just nonsense. And again, right. Like this is also weird. Like keep in mind.

So that how does that help regulated custodians. I don't I don't even get that aren't regulated aren't regulated custodians like aren't they making fees on transactions or something interesting. Okay.

How you TXO helps retail wallets usd tmbtc yield on lightning. So this is just like pretty much copy you know copy pasta with like some additional words.

And this is this is the part I find absolutely mind boggling. Okay. Optional user facing yield features via lightning and RGB based mechanisms.

But it just sounds like a total load of crap. And I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. And of course, right. There's going to be somebody that's going to like because I always get this. I always get this too. Right. I'll go and expose something. I'll explain like why I think it has red flags. And then you always get somebody that comes back and is like, I'm making tons of money off of this. It's legit. Listen. There's lots of people that make money off of scams. Okay. That's not that doesn't validate what you're doing. Right. Like that doesn't mean anything.

I can make money off of scams too. Hella marketers scam people for their credit cards. Some of the some of the telemarketing guys that I worked for when I was a teenager. These guys were millionaires in their early 20s. They were all scammers.

Doesn't mean anything.

Just don't fall for this crap. Okay. This is this is going to be garbage. I'm very.

Anyways, I mean, I'm not surprised that tether tout this crap because of course it's, you know, it's about their ecosystem, even though people pretend that tether is good for Bitcoin.

All right. All right. Let's shout out to lucky redfish for this one. This whole black rock thing with the private equity. I started talking about this last week.

But then there was some additional information. So let's dive into it. Black rock fund limits with draws as redemptions rattle private credit.

Investors sought 1.2 billion from this black rock fund that only paid 620 million out.

Requested withdrawal from retail credit funds rise. Black rock acquired fund in a private credit push. Interesting. Very interesting. Okay. So mounting requests prompted rival blackstone to lift the usual 5% redemption limit on an 82 billion dollar fund to 7% while the company and its employees invested.

Invested 400 million to allow requests to be met. Am I understanding that right employees of the company had to put money in so that customers could take money out.

And then there was this one we talked about last week very briefly because again, I'm not 100% sure what's happening here.

Blue owl bought back 15.4% of one of its funds in January. We talked about that last week. Now this is the company that black rock bought each lend. Okay. So they received withdrawal requests worth 1.2 billion as we said or roughly 9.3% of its net assets. What is going on in private equity guys.

Is this is this one of the linchpin's right is this one of the things that because again, keep in mind.

We need incredible stories for massive money printing so war isn't enough. What if we have a combination of war and some financial some type of systemic institutional risk right then maybe we're talking maybe we can maybe we can okay.

Some of the biggest money printing we've ever seen who knows right at this point we're just trying to figure out what it takes.

Anyways, so each lend received withdrawals requests for 1.2 billion and that was roughly 9.3% of its net assets. It told value it told investors it would pay out 620 million as part of the quarterly redemption hitting the 5% threshold.

Blue I'll replace client redemptions at one fund with promised payouts guys that is listen if I had if I had any amount of wealth in these funds and I got an IOU I would be I'd be freaking out.

I definitely would be freaking out by preventing redemptions through gates fund managers can avoid being forced sellers of assets which would negatively impact investment returns of course for the remaining fund investors.

Okay, given the opacity and illiquidity of the holdings in these funds it sounds like people shouldn't have been parking their money there anyways.

That's what it sounds like.

Yeah, going back to the yield thing. Yeah, you are the yield.

Yes.

Yep. Yeah, exactly man. It's just branding. Absolutely. It really is just branding.

All right, some fun parts guys.

AI right AI is here to stay check this out one shoting an interactive 3D map of the entire Bitcoin network. Take a look at this thing.

Nope, wrong video.

This thing here we go.

I always love these graphics and everybody tells you like Bitcoin's not decentralized. There's no decentralization today like yeah.

Good luck stopping my note.

Pretty crazy.

That's where we need some work guys. That's where we need some work.

I got to get more companies producing miners wasn't block stream going to not not that I'm like routing you know not not that I'm like touting block stream but I remember they said that they were going to be adding or they were trying to

build a six if I'm not mistaken. I don't remember what happened with that but yeah.

I think that's cool stuff. I appreciate I appreciate the decentralization.

Hopium brought to us by AI and guys look I have updated this photo. It was at 14,000 it was at 14,000 signatures when I first started talking about it.

Now we're up to 15,263 if you feel so inclined. Please donate to these guys but definitely sign the petition.

Get these guys out of jail. They wrote code all they did was write code. That's it.

All right. That is going to do it for today's episode of pleb underground. I hope that you have a great rest of the day.

And don't forget this evening 8 30 PM Eastern time. It's going to be humble warrior Sir Ulrich and myself for Bitcoin tonight. Have a great rest of the day. Take it easy.