hey everyone welcome to the coin stories news block I'm Natalie Brunell Bitcoin has officially hit six figures it soared past the 100K Mark for the very first time in history at around 10:00 Eastern Wednesday night and what a milestone congratulations to everyone who held through the bare market and the best part we are still just at the launching pad and we have a very long way to go all right with that this week fed share Jerome Powell called Bitcoin a competitor to Gold but not the US dollar U people use Bitcoin as a speculative asset
right it's it's like gold it's just like gold only it's virtual it's digital people are not using it as a form of payment uh or as a store of value it's highly volatile it's it's it's not a competitor for the dollar it's really a competitor for gold now obviously bitcoiners would disagree with many of those comments and point to the asset outperforming every other option as a store of value not to mention the Network's total transactions year-over-year continue to climb higher so people are definitely using Bitcoin but was what the most important Central Banker in
the world had to say when interviewed at the New York Times dealbook Summit now aside from commenting on bitcoin pal also said that the FED is able to be cautious about cutting interest rates because of the strength of the US economy the FED is expected to cut rates again later this month for the third time this year he also dismissed the idea of a shadow fed chare being installed When president-elect Donald Trump takes office that's a notion that came directly from Trump's pick for treasury secretary Scott bessen who suggested that Trump public name a successor
to Pal whose term as chair expires in early 2026 as soon as he takes office which would effectively create a shadow Fed chair but pal says he's not really worried about that more on Scott bessent in a moment but first this week we're getting more updates on who president Trump hopes to appoint to his administration and one position that Bitcoin Advocates have been laser focused on is who Trump will appoint to replace SEC chairman Gary gendler who announced that he'll be resigning in January this Wednesday we finally learned who Trump is nominating for the position
former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins Atkins was the first libertarian to serve as an SEC commissioner back in the 2000s and since then he has started his own consulting firm and recently served as the co-chair of the token Alliance which is an initiative designed to guide the industry and policy makers in navigating the token economy so given his background it sounds like Atkins supports free markets less regulation he's an advocate for the crypto industry and Innovation at large and that sounds prom ing right the only problem is well apparently Atkins might not even want the job
coindesk reported that Atkins was reluctant to leave his firm to fix the bloated mess of an agency that gendler will leave behind and so Atkins would first have to accept the appointment and then of course the Senate would need to approve it before he can begin his tenure this is obviously a developing story so we'll keep a close eye on it and as always update you if there are changes but back to Scott bessent last week another big position on Trump's team was filled when the market veteran was picked to be treasury secretary and and
the Bitcoin Community generally celebrated the news Bon appeared on Fox Business over the summer and this is what he had to say about Bitcoin you I I think that everything's on the table with with Bitcoin crypto is about freedom and the crypto economy is here to stay after the besset news broke the odds of trump creating a strategic Bitcoin Reserve in his first 100 days in office on prediction markets like poly Market jumped to new Highs but bessent will certainly have a lot on his plate when he takes office he's inheriting a government $36 trillion
in debt and Bloomberg reports that a massive 6.7 trillion of that needs to be refinanced next year at much higher interest rates now the risk here is that if bessent floods the market with more treasury bonds then yields could Spike higher which would be bad news for asset prices and Besson actually acknowledged this predicament way back in January saying that the greatest risk factor that would prevent Trump from creating an economic la la palooza if reelected would be a sudden rise in long-end rates on top of managing the mountain of debt bessent will also have
to figure out a way to implement Trump's other economic policies including tariffs now Trump recently made headlines when he threatened any country that's trying to create a new bricks currency and move away from the dollar with 100% tariffs a spokesman from the Kremlin responded to the threat saying that the US using economic force would backfire and actually further strengthen the trend of countries moving away from the dollar and we got a hint of this Dynamic from the mouth of Russian president Vladimir Putin himself when he spoke at an investment Forum on Wednesday and posed a
question to the audience who can ban Bitcoin nobody he went on to say that the development of new technologies like Bitcoin will continue because they reduce costs and increase reliability and this reminds me of a recent video from Black Rock which said that the firm is bullish on bitcoin specifically because of its use case as a global monetary alternative amid monetary and geopolitical uncertainty and these currency Wars between the bricks country in the US certainly fall in that category in the end more tariffs are symptoms of rising geopolitical and trade frictions which will likely only
serve to accelerate the adoption of a neutral apolitical monetary alternative like Bitcoin renowned analyst Luke groman came on coin stories this week and we talked about these Dynamics including the potential tariffs and the Bitcoin Reserve strategy no one can connect the dots quite like Luke so I highly recommend you give it a listen all right in a previous episode of the news block we mentioned how Michael sailor has been handpicked by Microsoft shareholders to pitch the board for 3 minutes on why they should buy Bitcoin and this week he released the presentation the board will
be seeing and it did not disappoint I don't know how he fits so many slides in three minutes but in it he explains how by adopting a Bitcoin strategy Microsoft could create between one and $4.9 trillion do in shareholder value depending on how heavily they lean into the strategy sailor was asked on CNBC how he expects the board to respond and this is what he had to say what do you expect um glazed eyes I don't have any illusions that Mega corporations are going to immediately Embrace Bitcoin but what I do think is it's going
to become part of the conversation and there are about 120 companies that are public that are starting to hold Bitcoin right now so Microsoft can either cling to the past and keep buying bonds or embrace the future and adopt Bitcoin as digital Capital but it might take them a little time to come around to it in the meantime Bitcoin standard companies like micro strategy and Mara continue to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets on Monday micro strategy bought another 15,400 Bitcoin for $1.5 billion in November alone micro strategy acquired a jaw-dropping 150,000 Bitcoin sailor tweeted
that at 96,000 per Bitcoin that means that micro strategy has stacked approximately $312 Million worth of bitcoin per day last month and Mara is doing its best trying to keep up on Monday it announced another $700 million convertible debt raise once again that was yielding zero and once again the offering was later upsized to $850 million so it seems that market demand for Bitcoin back bonds is pretty much insatiable right now all right finally this week we recently learned that the mayor of Vancouver Ken Sim has proposed plans to make Vancouver a Bitcoin city which
could possibly even lead to bitcoin being added to the city's balance sheet to learn more check out my recent interview with mayor Sim that was released this week he was orange pilled by none other than Jeff Booth and he calls Bitcoin the best invention in human history I certainly agree and we know that everyone who adopts Bitcoin early is positioning themselves to benefit the most from its adoption that's it for the news block powered by bit deer your weekly Bitcoin and economic news update I'm Natalie Brunell make sure you're subscribed to coin stories and join
our mailing list to get our free newsletter at the news block. substack docomo for educational and entertainment purposes only it should not be construed as investment advice until next time keep stacking
