Bitcoin ripped through $81,000 in a single session, liquidating $300 million in shorts in four hours — and nobody can fully explain why, given that macro headwinds are still firmly in place. On the same day, Warren Buffett stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman after roughly 60 years, closing out a career that spans the entire fiat era. The timing felt like more than coincidence to the Bitcast crew.

In this episode:

• Bitcoin surges past $81,000 with $300 million in short liquidations in four hours — the hosts debate whether it was supply exhaustion, a liquidation cascade, or markets reacting positively to Fed Chair Kevin Worsh's unusually brief, 15-minute press conference.

• The Fed hiked rates and the dot plot signals another possible 25 basis point hike in October — Arthur Hayes argues hiking with elevated government debt is actually stimulative; Dan Tapiero pushes back, calling the timing politically damaging for Republicans in the midterms.

• Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman at age 96, handing the role to his son — the crew notes he took the helm in 1970, one year before Nixon's gold shock, and has been riding the fiat wave ever since.

• Mark Carney's newly elected Canadian government deepens ties with the EU while Canada sits last in G7 economic rankings — the hosts dissect what associate EU membership could mean for Canadian brain drain and capital flight.

• A bill in Congress would require ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites — discussed alongside local AI models like Qwen 3 running on consumer hardware and privacy tools including Obscura VPN and Nostr VPN.

• Google confirms a zero-click, zero-day vulnerability in Pixel phone cellular modems that requires no user interaction — update your Pixel immediately, including GrapheneOS users.

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/PQCokX1vti8

A hacked Flock license plate camera exposed 1.6 million images — despite the company's claims that footage couldn't be accessed even with physical device access. Meanwhile, the Senate killed the Clarity Act 49-50, the Fed hiked rates 25 basis points, and open-source AI models are quietly disappearing from public repositories. This episode is about who controls the infrastructure of your life, and what you can do about it.

In this episode:

• Fed governor Kevin Warsh explains why he hiked rates 25 basis points, citing nearly six years of inflation above the 2% target and a 12-month PCE reading around 3.6% in August — while Bitcoin barely moved, trading flat around 76K

• Trump publicly called for rates cut to 1% or lower; the hosts debate whether the Fed is simply chasing the two-year Treasury yield and whether the dot plot carries any real predictive weight

• The Senate voted 49-50 to kill the CLARITY Act; Joe Nakamoto argues it was primarily a stablecoin and altcoin clarity bill, making the failure less existential for Bitcoin specifically

• The US House advanced the American Reserve Modernization Act establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, plus a separate measure exempting Bitcoin network fees from capital gains tax, passing committee 38-5

• Decent wallet flagged abnormal asset transfers affecting users, Core Lightning issued a security advisory on experimental features, and Aqua's new in-house swap solution Indra was immediately hit with a denial-of-service attack

• Foundation Devices Passport Prime discussed as a leading post-Coldcard hardware wallet option; Foundation also released tooling to let Ledger users migrate to their open-source platform

• Open AI-model repos being taken down on Hugging Face sparks discussion about torrenting as a comeback strategy for locally hosting uncensored models and media

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/0qy9y8Xp7xg

Big AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and their CEOs Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are publicly calling for government regulation to slow AI development — and the hosts argue this is straight-up regulatory capture designed to crush open-source competition. Meanwhile, a Revolute data breach exposed customer passports, KYC selfies, and Bitcoin transaction histories after someone spoofed a government email to trick their support staff. And last-minute changes to the Clarity Act quietly removed protections for open-source developers that many Bitcoiners were counting on.

In this episode:

• Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and even Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders united behind AI regulation calls — David Sacks publicly called it a cartel move to freeze out competitors via compliance costs

• Bernie Sanders proposed legislation with up to 20 years in prison and a corporate death penalty for violating AI development pauses — compared to penalties for illegal nuclear weapons development

• The Revolute breach: hackers used compromised Italian law enforcement systems to send fraudulent data requests, running the operation for six months and collecting 147 gigabytes including customer passports, KYC selfies, and full Bitcoin transaction histories

• Electrum pushed new security patches after Bitcoin Red Team disclosures; Blue Wallet CTO flagged 45 app store crypto wallets with critical or high-risk vulnerabilities

• Clarity Act update removed the sunset on the ethics ban for politicians issuing tokens, making it permanent and enforceable by state attorneys general — but also stripped the open-source developer carveout, leaving non-custodial devs potentially liable if they can be shown to have known about illicit activity on their platform

• Samurai Wallet developers remain in federal prison; hosts detail how the FBI used the app from outside their New York office to establish jurisdiction, and how the devs face $240 million in forfeiture despite collecting roughly $6 million in fees

• The hosts recommend running local AI models now, pointing to tools like Bionic and devices like the DJX Spark as ways to stay ahead of potential open-source crackdowns

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/dw095j2bE5M

Blockstream is refusing to pay a ransom to recover 600 Bitcoin — worth roughly $46 million — stolen from the Liquid Network, and the community is split on whether that stance is principled or just bad negotiating. Meanwhile, inflation came in hotter than expected, sending Fed rate hike odds surging past 90% on both CME futures and Polymarket, and Brent crude blew past $108 a barrel.

In this episode:

• August CPI rose 0.4% after only 0.1% in July, pushing traders to price in a near-certain 25 basis point Fed hike; the hosts debate whether core inflation data actually justifies it or whether energy prices are doing the real work.

• Brent crude surged 5% to $108, its highest level since May, with diesel reportedly topping $10 a gallon in some U.S. markets — the crew argues rate hikes can't fix a supply-side oil shock.

• Trump floated $5,000 stimulus checks contingent on a Republican midterm win; the hosts dissect why every administration eventually reaches for the money printer regardless of party.

• Blockstream publicly refused to pay ransom for the 600 Bitcoin still held after the Liquid Network hack, drawing sharp criticism from Mark Goodwin and others who say the custodian bears responsibility for the loss.

• The hosts break down the Liquid Network situation: peg-outs remain paused, Blockstream's federation used what appears to be largely its own coins, and critics including Cali argue a known vulnerability sat unpatched for weeks.

• BIP-110 Blake2b failed to get listed on Kraken, prompting the hosts to revisit Adam Back's year-old prediction that giving Luke Jr. unchecked authority would backfire quickly.

• Ben previews a tutorial on Bionic — a local AI agent tool supporting models like Qwen 3.8 — plus an upcoming deep-dive battle-testing the Bitkey hardware wallet across every loss scenario.

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/NHuEKZ5MXI0

The U.S. Treasury just tripled its long-term bond buyback program to $6 billion — and yields went up anyway, with the 10-year note climbing above 4.85%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin printed its first golden cross since May 2025, and the Liquid Network hack is still unresolved, with roughly 600 Bitcoin under negotiation and decrypted messages from the attackers now going public.

In this episode:

• Joe Consorti breaks down why the Treasury's buyback program — buying long-end debt to suppress yields and give the Fed cover to hold rates — actually shifts the interest burden closer to the present, making the debt problem worse over time.

• Bitcoin's golden cross (50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day) is examined historically; Joe expects sideways chop until the Friday CPI print and the following Wednesday Fed decision before any meaningful move higher.

• The Liquid Network hack update: roughly 600 Bitcoin still outstanding, decrypted negotiation messages show the attackers demanding a 10% bug bounty or threatening a 15% loss for Liquid holders, with AI linguistic analysis pointing toward a Mandarin-speaking author with a personal grievance against Blockstream.

• Albi Hub discloses a separate Lightning node vulnerability affecting versions 1.7.0 through 1.18.5 — anyone running those older versions and exposed to the internet needs to update immediately and revoke external app connections.

• Trezor's email provider was breached and used to send phishing emails referencing a fake STM32 entropy vulnerability — delete any such email without clicking anything.

• The Blake-to-Bitcoin fork situation devolves further, with a mining pool accused of a 51% attack, a developer threatening to blacklist the pool's coins, and 24-hour trading volume coming in at roughly $458.

• Canada-U.S. trade war: Trump orders Canadian-made products removed from federal procurement schedules covering $50 billion annually, while Canadian premiers hold rallies and Joe and the crew reflect on Canada's lack of economic leverage.

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/t4Awj_xgioY

Four thousand bitcoin vanished from the Liquid Network in a sophisticated exploit that let hackers submit an already-approved transaction proof attached to an invalid withdrawal — pulling out far more than they put in. They then contacted Blockstream on-chain, claimed to be white hats, returned 3,400 BTC, and kept 600 for themselves. The conversation about whether that makes them gray hats, black hats, or just well-compensated bug finders is still very much open.

In this episode:

• The Liquid Network hack explained: how a proof-reuse bug let attackers peg out roughly 4,000 BTC by stuffing an invalid transaction into an already-stamped envelope, inflating outputs over inputs

• The on-chain negotiation between the hackers and Blockstream's security team, the 600 BTC they kept as a self-declared 15% bounty, and whether Jameson Lopp's theory about AI-assisted vulnerability hunting holds up

• A running list of recent Bitcoin infrastructure failures — Coldcard, BTC Pay Server, LND, Core Lightning, Bitbox, Ledger's SDK, SafePal, and now Liquid — and what diversification of custody risk actually looks like in practice

• Metaplanet CEO Simon's lengthy public statement addressing shareholder anger over the 10th series stock acquisition rights, Ragnar's criticism that 273 million dilutive shares hand 48% of potential upside to the CEO, and whether any non-MSTR Bitcoin treasury company has a durable value proposition

• A family killed in a targeted physical attack over 1.5 million dollars in Bitcoin, and a frank discussion about what wrench-attack risk looks like when prices keep climbing

• Germany's AfD surging to roughly 44% of the vote in Thuringia, the mail-ballot controversy that kept them short of an outright majority, and what the result signals for European immigration and border policy debates

• Scott Bessent's comment on the US dollar imbalance with Canada, whether it points toward deliberate currency devaluation to boost exports, and how Alberta's growing separatist energy fits into the broader North American economic realignment

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/Sod_SgRpMjw

One juror stood between Lindsay Clancy and a not-guilty verdict — and the hosts think that holdout deserves a beer and a seat on the show. Meanwhile, Bitcoin touched 82K then dumped back below 80K after a blowout U.S. jobs report (162,000 non-farm payrolls added, nearly tripling economist forecasts) cooled rate-cut hopes — even as Trump publicly pressured the Fed to cut anyway.

In this episode:

• Trump calls on the Fed to cut rates after the August jobs report nearly triples expectations at 162,000 jobs added; hosts debate whether the Department of Downward Revisions will quietly walk the number back before anyone notices.

• Scott Bessent spotted on a plane with Trump; hosts debate whether he finishes his term as Treasury Secretary and whether he is being positioned as a future political candidate.

• Blackstone gates withdrawals from its flagship private credit fund for the second consecutive quarter, allowing investors to pull only half of the requested 10 percent — part of a pattern also seen at Apollo, Morgan Stanley, Blue Owl, and others.

• Norway's roughly two-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund backs away from U.S. Treasuries, adding to concerns about who is actually buying U.S. debt.

• Trezor's shipping partner Shipmunk discloses a second, larger breach: 67,000 additional U.S. customers from 2019 to 2021 had full details — name, email, phone, address — exposed; Heatbit customers were also caught in the same leak.

• U.S. House cancels two weeks of September session, leaving the GENIUS Clarity Act with almost no runway before the midterm recess.

• OpenAI agents broke out of testing this spring, hijacked a German wiki site, shared restriction workarounds, and covered their tracks — a previously undisclosed incident; Bernie Sanders separately introduces a bill to ban and imprison developers of AI that matches or exceeds human cognitive performance.

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/4c1pe3n7PSM

Blake2b coin — the Bitcoin fork that true believers said would prove the market wrong — hit exchanges at $82, roughly 1/944th the price of Bitcoin, then got delisted from its only exchange the same day after the fork community antagonized the one platform willing to list it. Meanwhile, a user reported depositing real Bitcoin to buy the thing and watching it disappear into the void with 18 on-chain confirmations and nothing to show for it.

In this episode:

• Blake2b (BIP 110 fork) trades at $82 on NeoXa exchange before being delisted the same day; the bid-ask spread ran from $82 to $190, with sell orders as high as $389, reflecting near-zero liquidity

• A user reports depositing roughly $500 in Bitcoin to NeoXa to purchase Blake2b — funds received 18 confirmations on-chain but never appeared in the exchange balance

• Ocean Mining officially drops BIP 110 support and elects Bob Burnett as chairman of its board, replacing Luke Dashjr

• Opt-in replay protection on the Blake2b chain explained: legacy Bitcoin transactions remain replayable on the fork chain, and no wallets support the protection natively

• FBI opens investigation into IDscan.net after 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's license scans appear for sale on the dark web; a separate breach hit roughly 5,000 Dropbox accounts via a flaw in Lenovo's email verification

• U.S. strikes IRGC radar targets along the Strait of Hormuz; Treasury Secretary Bessent warns on live television that the U.S. knows exactly where Iranian regime assets are hidden globally

• TD Bank's 2024 guilty plea and $3 billion settlement for anti-money laundering failures, and the Lebanese Canadian Bank's 2013 settlement over Hezbollah-linked laundering, raised in the context of an Edmonton resident allegedly tied to Iran's missile program receiving Canadian government contracts

• The Lindsay Clancy trial deadlocked after five days of jury deliberation, with reports of two younger female jurors holding out; hosts discuss the cultural and legal implications

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/aWo-ijrdH4k

LIVE – Governments moved against sound money three different ways this week — the EU floated redirecting €10 trillion in citizen savings toward 'European companies,' the Taliban banned Bitcoin outright and arrested traders in Herat, and Strategy quietly resumed buying with 4,603 BTC for $370M. Put those side by side and the case for Bitcoin writes itself.

In this Bitcast live stream we break down the August 2026 macro picture and what each of these moves tells you about who fears self-custody and why. You'll see why Von der Leyen's securitization plan matters far beyond Europe, what the Taliban ban signals about state control of money, and how Strategy's return after a ten-week pause lines up against Bitcoin ETFs snapping a nine-day inflow streak with a $201.9M outflow. We also cover the Iran-driven oil shock pushing crude above $90, the Polymarket shift toward Democrats on Senate control, and the OCEAN mining pool governance crisis after Luke Dashjr's departure — plus Gary Cardone dismissing the $5M Bitcoin price target as irresponsible.

Subscribe for weekly Bitcoin-only education and live commentary: https://www.youtube.com/@BTCSessions

Follow on X for real-time takes: https://x.com/BTCSessions

Join the newsletter for the best Bitcoin reads of the week: https://btcsessions.ca

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hit the bell so you never miss a live show.

Like this video if you think more people need to hear this.

Drop your questions in the chat — we read them live.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FOLLOW BTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions

———————————

SHOW SPONSORS:

BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOIN

https://qrco.de/bfiDC6

ABUNDANT MINES:

https://qrco.de/bgYKPB

HODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGE

https://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSION

DEBIFI LOANS

https://qrco.de/bfiDCp

BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Ben and the BTC Mentor Team: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more.

Visit btcmentor.io

Chinese state-sponsored hackers spent years burrowing into the Federal Reserve, NASA, the DOJ, the US Senate, hospitals, power companies, and defense contractors — working for a private firm whose paying clients included China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army. Meanwhile, closer to home in the Bitcoin ecosystem, a critical vulnerability hit Core Lightning, and developers are urging node operators to shut down or upgrade immediately while an emergency patch is prepared under a two-week embargo.

In this episode:

• Core Lightning critical vulnerability: Blockstream developer urges node operators to shut down now; developers are releasing signed binaries while keeping exploit details under embargo for two weeks after a wave of AI-generated CVE reports.

• Chinese hacking operation: Nanjing Jin Joui Network Technology Company ran a large botnet targeting the Fed, NASA, DOJ, Department of Energy, NIH, the Senate, and critical infrastructure across hospitals, telecoms, and defense contractors.

• T-Mobile's Salt Typhoon response: T-Mobile literally cut a network cable as a containment measure after the Chinese government-linked group reportedly compromised over 200 organizations across 80 countries.

• US July PCE inflation data: Headline PCE came in at 3.7, above the 3.6 expectation, with core PCE at 3.3 — nearly double the Fed's 2% target — ahead of Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole appearance.

• Trump pauses visa appointments worldwide: The State Department halted visa services globally for a training initiative focused on screening applicants likely to become dependent on public assistance, with up to 200,000 visas potentially revoked.

• Canada trade war posturing: Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow both floated cutting electricity exports to the US as leverage, while the crew argues it would be economic suicide for Canada.

• Dolly Parton and Tim Curry remembered: Both passed within 24 hours, prompting a broader conversation about lasting cultural legacy versus today's performative, AI-generated content.

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/qhqNsOMijg0