GM.

Welcome back to Bitcoin Therapy. We’re like jelly to your peanut butter sandwich. Without us, it just feels wrong.

First, happy Sunday to 1,801 of you reading today.

It feels like we’re at the ‘then they fight you’ stage. Strap yourself; we’re bringing the fire in this week’s email. 🔥

Here’s what we got for you this week:

• $27 Trillion TradFi money is coming to Bitcoin

• Prime Trust = Crime Trust

• Damus (wrongly) kicked out of App Store

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 45 seconds

TRADFI WANTS YOUR BITCOIN

The floodgates are about to open. Brace yourself - green dildos are coming.

In our last email, we wrote about how TradFi is taking over crypto. Well, it’s accelerating.

Here’s a complete list of financial behemoths entering the game:

• BlackRock

• Fidelity

• JP Morgan

• Morgan Stanley

• Goldman Sachs

• BNY Mellon

• Invesco

• Bank of America

In total, they manage $27 Trillion. That’s TRILLION with a capital T.

To put into perspective, Bitcoin’s market cap is ∼$600 billion - a drop compared to these TradFi giants.

Okay, I know you LOVE our napkin math, so here goes:

*whips out a calculator*

A mere 5% of this $27 Trillion going into Bitcoin would 3X the price

Yes. The answer is yes: we will finally get girlfriends if this happens.

But let’s get back to planet Earth for a second and look at some quick facts:

1. The world is de-dollarizing (a new global currency will be needed)

2. The hash rate is at ATH - (miners are as bullish as ever)

3. Halving is happening in 2024 (bitcoin price tends to 10x every halving, we wrote about it here)

4. Bitcoin supply on exchanges at an all-time-low (decreased sell pressure)

5. TradFi ❤️ Bitcoin

This is pure bull juice. I must step away and calm my body as I write this.

Alright, I’m back. There’s still one key player I haven’t mentioned yet.

You. The humble sat stacker.

You, the pleb that’s front-running the institutions.

Pat yourself on the back and get a cold brewski.

But be prepared. You will see a lot more rug pulls, lawsuits, and bankruptcies.

Bitcoin Therapy advice: hold your coins, run your full node, and go on frequent boating trips.

You’re gonna make it.

APPLE KICKS DAMUS OUT APP STORE

We’re at the ‘they fight you’ stage. What’s going on? Let me tell you, frens.

Apple is removing a decentralized Nostr client, ‘Damus,’ for allowing users to tip each other with Bitcoin payments without bank or government permission.

If you didn’t know, Apple takes a 30% cut from all sales of digital products.

Okay, fair enough. Their platform = their rules. Simple, right?

Except there’s one issue.

Apple decided to go full reetodd and claim that Damus is the middle man facilitating user payments AND selling services to its users.

So naturally, they expect a cut. A cut of something Damus doesn’t get.

What Apple doesn’t know (or want to know) is that:

• All content on Damus (and other Nostr clients) is 100% free

• The payments are peer-to-peer

• It’s open source

Damus doesn’t make any money from people zapping each other.

Does Apple care? No.

Mr Cook, pls. I know you’re reading this. Stop being regarded. Thanks! <3

Now we aren’t some old geezers here at Bitcoin Therapy, but we’re old enough the remember when Apple used to stand for something:

Apple in 2011: “Apple is about people who think ‘outside the box,’ people who want to use computers to change the world, to create things that make a difference.”

Apple in 2023: “Hey Damus, give us 30% of every zap, or we will ban you. Oh, you don’t take a cut? We know. We just don’t care, silly.

Apple knows exactly what they’re doing. They don’t like permissionless peer-to-peer payments. They don’t want you to be free.

Cope harder, Apple.

Bitcoin will make your App Store monopoly obsolete.

PRIME TRUST = CRIME TRUST

There is no boring week in Bitcoin. Every week, a crypto company goes bust. This week is no exception

Meet Prime Trust - the popular digital asset custodian many of your favorite bitcoin companies use.

Prime Trust has a simple math problem:

1. They owe their clients $155 million

2. They only have $71 million

The answer: REKT.

Essentially, 54% of PT’s customer assets are gone. Poof.

Mind you, PT was a regulated custodian. So how could this happen?

Well, the answer is pretty dumb: they lost access to their wallets in 2021. This means they have been insolvent for a few years now.

I wish they were as good at managing risk as hiding things from the public. Here are the juicy deets:

• PT goes through a management change in 2021. New management, who dis?

• What is the first thing the new management does? They lose access to some old wallets.

• And what do you do when you lose client funds? You try to hide by buying back the assets using other clients’ assets, of course

• New client deposits were used to pay back old clients. The good old Charles Ponzi playbook.

Now PT is short $84 million of customer funds.

This is a classic example of ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’. In PT’s case, their prize is bankruptcy, with many lawsuits as the cherry on top.

But wait, it gets better. PT’s largest holding is an illiquid sh*tcoin called AUDIO (at this point, I’m convinced there is some random sh*tcoin name generator)

There are two options, both of which are bad:

1. They hold aUdiO for their clients

2. They were so deep in a hole they decided to yolo all client funds into random small-cap altcoin to 100x it back in one trade.

Knowing what we know now about Prime Trust, the second option doesn’t seem that crazy.

Now that everyone and their dog are digging into Prime Trust, more dirty laundry has been uncovered. Here’s what we know so far:

• Owns over $80 million to its customers

• Used customer funds for FTX's political contributions

• Been operating in Texas without a money-transmitter license 

• Sued for fraud by an N9 (an investment firm)

Anyways, it's not going to be fun for PT’s clients. Messy Bankruptcies like this can take years to get funds back, if ever.

TLDR: Prime trust = crime trust

This is FTX-level fraud. SBF would be proud.

BTW, Prime Trust says "all systems operational" on their status page. I believe them. After all, their systems operate on light load since their wallets are empty.

Anyways, don’t trust third-party custodians, anon. Be like our boy Nick:

What I’ve been reading

The Bitcoin Breakdown - written by our futuristic friend Naiw.

What you get:

1. A quick overview of headlines

2. Summary of the best articles

3. Bitcoin guides and explainers

5 minutes of pure signal every Tuesday

Written by an actual alien 👽

This week in a meme

Slowly, then suddenly.

Job of the week

Johh Carvalho’s Synonym is looking for Mobile App Developer to join their forces.

They’re building multiple Bitcoin native products to advance the Bitcoin economy.

If I was a dev, this is what I would want to work on 👀

From the archive

That one time Satoshi told you to stop being a little bish and custody your Bitcoin.

Source: Trust me bro

That’s it for this one.

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See you next Sunday,

Bitcoin Therapy Team

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