🎉 It's out a bit late so I could slip in the latest news, but a fresh This Week in Bitcoin is out, and I'd love it if you checked it out. I recap why the Bitcoin community declared war on Ripple/XPR this week, why I think Trump is walking into an economic trap and much more! On Fountain:

Fountain

This Week in Bitcoin • Strategic Ripple War • Listen on Fountain

Why many Bitcoiners went to war with Ripple/XRP this week, the Fed policy's impact on Bitcoin post-Q1, and why I think Trump is walking into an eco...

On the web: https://www.thisweekinbitcoin.show/episodepage/44

Nearly $1.5tn in stock market value wiped out today on the news of DeepSeek being cheap. And people say Bitcoin is risky. 🤣

The hits keep coming when the market is already down! 📰 JUST IN - Chinese DeepSeek AI launches multimodal "Janus-Pro-7B" model with image input and output. "This new model beats OpenAI's DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion across GenEval and DPG-Bench benchmarks." It's already posted, too:

deepseek-ai/Janus-Pro-7B · Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

And it's also under the MIT License. The market might be taking a beating on this news, but in the long term, this surely only increases competition, right? I'm already hearing talk of "AI's Sputnik Moment." Chances are, in my humble opinion, that in the long term, this only serves to pump the AI bubble harder and faster. What do you think?

Hey look a surprise Bitcoin sale! It's a blood bath out there today. As I post this: - NVIDIA shares dropping like a stone. Last down over 16%. (NVIDIA has erased more than -$600 BILLION of market cap today.) - Microsoft almost down 4% - Google almost 3% - Taiwan Semi Conductor down 14% - Oracle down almost 13% Not everyone is down tho... - META up 1.46% and Apple up 2.25% The only two in the bunch. Both of whom have focused on open source / local AI. It's all in reaction to DeepSeek exposing how much waste has been going into US AI projects. DeepSeek is ~96% CHEAPER than ChatGPT. - Cost of OpenAI o1: $60.00 per 1M output tokens - Cost of DeepSeek R1: $2.19 per 1M output tokens And, again DeepSeek R1 is MIT Licensed. Total panic at the tech companies and the wider market today. And they should be. I have been trying out DeepSeek R1, locally on my LAPTOP - and it works great. And fast. This is a win for open-source.

Ross Ulbricht's journey from Silk Road to a presidential pardon is one of the most legendary stories in Bitcoin's history. I'll dive into his arrest, the government's tactics, Ross thoughts from behind bars, and more. This episode is a celebration of Ross release, don't miss it! https://www.thisweekinbitcoin.show/episodepage/43

I am so thrilled about Ross's pardon. The promise was kept. If you don't have the background, or maybe you have a friend or SO who does not understand why everyone is so thrilled, this Reason video does a decent job as an introduction. The story is even wilder than they have time to explore, but I think it's a good starting point.

A hot new TWiB is out, lucky 42! 🎉 This might be my most bullish episode yet. Three big trends are coming together for Bitcoin, and I can't help but get excited. Check it out here: https://www.thisweekinbitcoin.show/episodepage/42

Last day on our anniversary trip, and I wanted to share how unique this spot was. Pretty cool to have a Mountain Range on one side, and the ocean on the other.

I just wrapped up recording this week's Self-Hosted, which will be out Friday. That means I'm done for the week early! My wife and I are taking our small car on a few-day road trip around the Olympic Peninsula to celebrate our upcoming anniversary. I have lived in Washington my whole life and have never really explored this beautiful area of the state. But it's been a while since I road-tripped in anything but the RV. It feels unsettling to leave all my stuff behind, and I don't know how you people do it! I gotta sleep in some strange bed? Weird! 😅 I can't bring my shitter with me? Crazy! But most of all, I won't have all my tech... I'm just bringing my Pixel, and I don't plan to use it for anything besides maps. I hope we have a lot of fun and get to recharge our batteries. If you're in the area and see a little black car zoom by, give us a 👋