Is This Thing On?

The Buildup

Last week a large Bitcoin Conference took place in Nashville. In an unprecedented turn of events Trump, RFK (maybe even Kamala?) would address the crowd. Before the conference started the air was pregnant with promises and predictions of what an historic event this would be. The hype was dialed all the way to 11

Clearing the Air

Trump's speech ash the Nashville Bitcoin Conference was unjustifiably late, rambling and long-winded, embarrassingly self-congratulatory, laughably disingenuous and alternated in its tone towards bitcoiners between genuine appreciation, transparent obsequiousness and snarky dismissal (his closing remark was 24-carat Trump).

The speech was loosely stitched around abundant name dropping, plentiful pats-in-the-back for His Trumpness and a small handful of very solid talking points (most of which he actually seemed to understand), with an aim at aggrandizing himself while pandering to bitcoiners —but without alienating the "Crypto" industry or the rest of his base. It was classic Trump. The cherry-on-top was RFK's far superior speech stealing most of Trump's thunder one day earlier.

Having gotten all that out of the way, it was a GREAT speech.

Allow me to quote myself from last week:

Let me make my stance clear: If the Republicans simply abide by what they've already promised to do, I'll be perfectly thrilled and call it super-bullish.

It was great because it was just enough to kick Bitcoin's game theory into next gear. I can say this because I just spent the last 5 minutes becoming a renowned expert on Game Theory, LFG.

What is Game Theory?

"the branch of mathematics concerned with the analysis of strategies for dealing with competitive situations where the outcome of a participant's choice of action depends critically on the actions of other participants."

Basically it models one party's behavior, based on what a second party does. Like a game of cards, your decisions will be a consequence of the cards you hold, the cards you see your opponents holding and (importantly) the cards you suspect / fear they might be holding.

Game Theory plays a role in different places for Bitcoin, Nakamoto Consensus is one of them: The interplay between users, node-runners and miners (often described as a "Mexican Standoff") creates necessary "tension" which gives stability and resiliency to the "structure" of the timechain.

The specific flavor of Game Theory we want to look at today is around Nation State adoption.

One of my favorite metaphors for this Bitcoin was dropped by Saifedean Ammous (back around 2018?) when he compared BTC adoption to the adoption of powder:

  A few nation states have already started to accumulate explicitly. El Salvador was, of course, the first to do it publicly and loudly. As a small and not particularly wealthy nation, the immediate impact was not very visible.

We later found out Bhutan started accumulating back at $5k, mining Bitcoin in stealth mode. The only reason it became public knowledge was that they were part of the lawsuits after the Celsius and BlockFi collapse (sadly, they didn't self-custody).

Today there are still few public BTC accumulation projects by nation states. The obvious question is who is currently accumulating in stealth mode?

Are there any signs of any of this actually happening, or is this just a bitcoiner wet dream?

Yeah, there are some signs:

Before the Speech

Before Trump gave his speech, there was already internal pressure building in the Democratic Party to switch to a pro-BTC stance.

Presidential Barbie nominee Kamala Harris, while (wisely) declining to attend the Bitcoin Conference, seems to be waving a white flag at the industry.

Kamala (in all certainty) has not put in the time to formulate a well-informed view on Bitcoin (neither has Donald, BTW) and given the current regime's outright hostility towards the industry she would not have received a warm welcome from Bitcoiners unless she had a freshly-freed Ross Ulbricht in one hand and sturdy knee-pads in the other.

Trump had a clear advantage over her, as he's already been gradually bending the knee (much credit to Bitcoin Magazine's David Bailey here) as he's been more exposed to pro-BTC viewpoints from people he trusts.

RFK is in the undisputed lead here —he has spent a full year in the BTC rabbit hole by now— and is unburdened (see what I did?) from having to actually keep any promises given his (let's be real) zero chances of winning. He set an incredibly high bar for what pro-BTC policy could look like by delivering a speech that was probably ghostwritten by Santa Claus himself.

Trump's Moon Speech

But before we take a closer look at RFKs speech, I'd like to come back to Trump's piece for a moment and look at what was said, beyond the fluff:

• Acknowledged the spirit of the Bitcoin community as "the kind of spirit that built America" and expressed respect and admiration for the community.
• He gave props to the rise of BTC from nothing to being on the cusp of surpassing the market cap of Silver and "one day, probably Gold".
• Acknowledged the fact most still don't understand BTC and hinted at the explosive possibilities once they figure it out.
• Recognized Bitcoin not just its technology but the talent, spirit of cooperation and genius of (some, not all, many) bitcoiners.
• He's determined to not allow another country to dominate the future and that includes BTC
• He emphasized the absolute need for abundant energy (which is very positive and contrasts with RFK's green-tainted stance)
• Make USA the home of world's cheapest energy and a mining powerhouse
• Promised to end Warren's crypto-crusade and fire Gensler (crowd roared)
• End to Chokepoint 2.0
• Block any initiatives for a CBDC and always defend the right to self-custody.
• Form a pro-crypto council to draft clear new crypto-rules
• Holding all current and future government owned / seized stolen BTC as a strategic stockpile, never to be sold.
• Support USD stablecoin(s) and BTC savings
• Recognized the perils of inflation (and blamed it completely on Biden, lolz) and gave props to bitcoiners for being quick to recognize it
• Commute Ross Ulbricht's prison sentence to time served
• Commit to a pro-tech, pro-innovation and pro-BTC stance
• Stated he no longer believes Bitcoin is a threat to the dollar.
• Prevent US Government from "cardinal sin" of selling any BTC in its possession now or in the future, establishing a Strategic National BTC Stockpile.
• "Bitcoin stands for freedom, sovereignty, and independence from government coercion and control."

And look at his send-off, I mean the man really has a gift.

Let me pause here. This was outrageously positive.

The Trump Dump

The feed I was using to watch the stream froze while we were still waiting for Trump to go onstage. It took me a few minutes to find a different one that worked. By the time I did the speech was already under way.

I decided to rewind to the start and watch the whole thing from the beginning, so I was watching the speech with a a 3-5 lag behind reality.

My price feed was live though. So when I saw the price starting to take a steep dive I wondered what Donnie had said that had so upset the price. As the speech progressed I concluded it wasn't anything he'd said, it was about what he hadn't said:

Maybe RFK had set the bar so high, that Trump's speech was a letdown in comparison. That or a wealthy lib-coiner was throwing a fit and sending a message by tossing his toys out of the crib.

To the bros complaining about him praising "crypto" or about him not doing his homework yet or not going as hard as RFK did, I'd respectfully say: grow the f*k up. This is reality, politics are part of it.

What you want from a government is for it not to be hostile towards your interests and property. The moment government "tries to help" things usually take a sharp turn for the worse.

I'm not saying a Trump presidency would be unicorns and rainbows for Bitcoiners, plenty was left unsaid about privacy, taxes, criminalization, surveillance, KYC, the "Bitcoin Dollar" —a big topic for a future conversation— and other critical matters.

But Trump is proposing a friendly environment, protecting the rights of Bitcoiners and the industry. Will he follow through? who knows. Politics is a nasty and corrupt circus which we should always view with distrust, I can't possibly put it better than Erik Cason:

Still, an important line in the sand has been drawn —publicly on a global stage— by the potential leader of a leading superpower, radically changing the light in which Bitcoin is framed. That's a damned good start.

The Overton window is shifting, Trump would not be a lone voice supporting Bitcoin in the US government.

RFK's Moon and the Stars Speech

I definitely recommend you watch the speech, it was a solid piece of oratory from a candidate who has taken the time to understand Bitcoiner values, shares many of them and made a serious effort to win Bitcoiners over.

Here's a quick a look the highlights:

• Direct the DOJ and the US Marshals to transfer the approx. 200K Bitcoin held by the US government to the US Treasury, to be held as a strategic asset”
• Direct the US Treasury to purchase 550 BTC daily to build a reserve of at least 4 million BTC (reaching a similar ownership proportion of total supply as current gold ownership)
• Direct the US Treasury to purchase 550 Bitcoin daily until the US has built a reserve of at least 4 million Bitcoin”
• Directing the IRS to issue public guidelines that all transactions between Bitcoin and the US Dollar are unreportable transactions. And, by extension, non-taxable
• Direct the IRS to treat Bitcoin as an eligible asset for 1031 exchange into real property
• Pardoning Ross Ulbricht, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange
• Mentioned the largest portion of his wealth is in BTC
• "Bitcoin is the currency of freedom, of liberty, of hope. It restores self-sovereignty back to the individual… I have an orange heart"

The idea of making BTC transactions unreportable and non-taxable is, of course, very based and would make any bitcoiner salivate. But while RFK's plan would deliver a Godzilla-like pump, but it's not going to happen.

And as great as this would be for our bags, but I'm not done stacking yet and I'd rather not compete with the owner of the infinite money printer, thank you.

Something about RFK's proposal reminded me of Saylor saying too much acceleration would rip the wings off an airplane.

The simple reality is Bitcoin is an idea whose time has come. There will be a few who'll recognize it now and many who'll be eventually dragged by gravity into the Bitcoin era, kicking and screaming —kind of like when the web was new.

Bitcoin adoption is not really optional.

Beyond Speeches

Two different state pension funds (Jersey City and Michigan) announced they were adding BTC to their portfolios

The University of Wyoming has established a Bitcoin Research Institute aiming to " produce high-quality peer-reviewed publications about bitcoin from all academic disciplines."

80+ year-old financial service firm, Cantor Fitzgerald is launching a BTC-backed lending product and backing it with $2 billion. The idea is you can borrow against your BTC instead of having to sell it.

It's not just US politicians trying to attract Bitcoiners.

some iconic luxury brands are also jumping back onboard

The Easter Egg

After Trump speech Senator Cynthia Lummis announced she is proposing a Bitcoin Reserve Bill and called this it "our Louisiana Purchase Moment".

The reserve would start with the 200,000 BTC and store it in a geographically diversified network of custodians and convert excess reserves at the 12 Federal Reserve Banks into BTC over the course of 5 years, with a goal of amassing 1M BTC . This BTC is to be held for a minimum of 20 years and would be earmarked for the sole purpose of reducing US debt.

Back in Fiatstan

The stock market

It's worth remembering the global debt problems are not going away any time soon. These issues will have to be addressed at some point but most of the mainstream opinion on the economy is reminiscent of their recent opinion of president Biden's mental fitness: utter denial.

What are they doing about it?

Planning to spend much moar for an ill-conceived "energy transition" that is not needed and not going to happen (the why's on this are a deep rabbit hole).

This is beyond unhealthy.

China and Canada have already started cutting rates

Price News

The Mt Fox saga is drawing to a conclusion with payouts being distributed to creditors. This has

Flying Over Dystopistan

In Dystopystan, search engine's "auto-complete" is oddly missing a recent assassination attempt, will this still be true by the time you read this?

Price News

Bitcoin Surfing

Last week BTC jumped off The Board ($64k) and seems to be trying to hang on to the $69k level. Water level support ($62.5) has been rising fast to catch up.

Dip Fishing

After quickly wicking below $65k BTC has managed to remain above it, even through the short-lived Trump Dump. Currently banging its head against the $69k resistance. Like I said last week I see $56k as a hard floor. You could try to be cute and fish for dips between $62.5 - $65k, but the current price is close enough that I wouldn't hold my breath.

Calm Chart

July remains green, I'd expect it to remain that way given last week's positive developments.