Why the AI craze has real staying power, NASA's sideways win, and the big stories setting up for the week. Then, the episode concludes with a discussion of the concerns surrounding Bitcoin's energy use and a cyberattack on a healthcare company.
https://www.weeklylaunch.rocks/episodepage/launch-07-ais-sideways-route-to-success
(00:16) Welcome to the Launch
(02:18) Coverage of the historic moon landing by a private US company
(06:21) Discussion of NVIDIA's surging sales and growth in the AI industry
(13:03) Analysis of the White House's concerns about Bitcoin's energy use
(30:37) Coverage of a cyberattack on a healthcare company
- Lander touches down for first U.S. moon landing since 1972 - YouTube
- Moon lander Odysseus is on its side but sending back signals - YouTube
- ‘Squawk on the Street’ crew react to Nvidia’s blowout quarter - YouTube
- How Nvidia Became Big Tech’s Dominant Force - YouTube
- Watcher.Guru on X: “JUST IN: 🇺🇸 White House says #Bitcoin mining puts significant strain on the power grid, Fox Business reports.” / X
- PricedInBitcoin21
- Miners’ bitcoin production dipped in January amid energy curtailment - Blockworks
- Demand Response And Curtailment Through Bitcoin Mining
- How Bitcoin mining stabilized the grid and saved Texans $18Billion
- Bitcoin Energy FUD Busting
- 3 Indy Institutes in just six months with research showing Bitcoin supports renewable transition
- Potential Reprieve for Bitcoin Miners With Upcoming Difficulty Adjustment
- Jason A. Williams on X: "This is so cool to watch. Warren Buffett lived long enough to see #Bitcoin pass his beloved Berkshire Hathaway. FaceBook (Meta) is about to get flipped. Then silver. 1.268T dollar market cap. Easy work.
- Magician says Democratic operative paid him to make fake Biden robocall - YouTube
- Potential ‘life and death scenarios’ as pharmacies still face disruptions after cyberattack - YouTube
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
Ignition sequence star. 654 321, 0. All engine running. Lift off. We have a lift off. Welcome back to The Launch, the 7th edition of this wacky combination of value for value music, community, and the news you need this week. And this time, we're talking about why the AI craze seems to have real staying power. NASA's sideways wind that we're all just going with, The big story is coming up and some FUD that's coming right down the pipe. We're gonna get the FUD buster out. But first, it's 4 AM forever by Curtis Drums. Nearly 55 years after Neil Armstrong took one small step from man, a private US company has taken one giant leap for mankind's future of space exploration.
CBS's Mark Strassman reports on today's historic moon landing. Tonight, the odyssey of Odysseus has ended on the moon. The first American made spacecraft kicking up lunar dust in more than a half century. Because our equipment is on the surface of the moon. Jubilant mission control of intuitive machines in Houston. The first commercial moon landing ever. The final descent from 18 miles above the lunar surface, a continuous engine burn for 10 minutes. By touchdown, Odysseus had slowed to 2 miles per hour. This is the assembly room. Intuitive cofounder Steve Altima showed us the historic moon lander up close last year in Houston. His company envisions a $100,000,000,000 lunar market. We're delivering scientific payloads, engineering demonstration payloads, but not the humans themselves. And you believe the moon is the next economic frontier? The moon is certainly that next step for space exploration.
Odysseus landed near the lunar south pole carrying less than £300 of cargo, including 6 instruments for NASA, an intuitive customer. The space agency hopes to have astronauts moonwalking there by the end of the decade. Some craters there never see light so cold they may contain ice, and water is critical to long term space exploration. NASA plans to basically hire these companies to send payloads to the moon like like you'd call an Uber or a Lyft. But these companies have to make it work first, and that's what we're seeing today. Well, I mean, mostly. Now there's one thing that your CBS Evening News with Nora O'Donnell left out, And that is this thing kinda crashed. It didn't exactly land. And he said they were jubilant there in mission control, but it was an awkward way they stated it. You see, it's working and it is a success. I'm not trying to take away from that. I'm actually very excited about it.
But there are some details about the landing that CBS left out. But if you go to local news closer to the, I don't know, people that care or maybe people that are closer to the industry, whatever it might be, I don't really know. Boosted and tell me why the local news sometimes gets these things better. They have the details for you. We now know, like, they lost signal with the lander for about 25 minutes when it was making its final descent to the moon. Now right now, teams are working to transfer data from the moon's surface back here to Earth, and they're doing that with a network of satellites scattered all throughout the world. And right now, we're all waiting for a picture from the surface of the moon. We're gonna have to wait a little bit longer. I do wanna get one new image up on your screen right now. This was just shared with us from NASA and Intuitive Machines about an hour ago in their first press conference since this historic mission. Nothing really I can relay to you. It oh, I guess she's gonna describe it to you. It is a very spherical photo, so it's hard to describe. I I I wish they wouldn't gotten the studio lights in the picture. Oh, I'm just kidding. Was the lander about 200 kilometers away from where it touched down on the south region of the moon. Scientists pointed out the craters and difficult terrain the robot had to navigate when it approached the moon. Intuitive Machines now says the lander is probably not upright and instead on its side.
We think we came down with, like I said, about 6 miles an hour this way Going down. And 2 miles an hour this way. Going sideways. And caught a foot in the surface and the and the land tipped over. And as the lander tipped over, perhaps, it might have actually landed on a rock, so it's not fully laying on the ground. And that's why the signal's weak. But I think some of the things that they needed to do, it can still do. Overall, it's very exciting. Odysseus is on the surface, having watched all of this live. It was sort of funny, though.
They were they were really kind of awkward about it. They didn't they didn't declare success because they they lost communication. And so when they said our equipment's on the surface, the the instead of everybody just, like, freaking out like they usually do and they start hugging and cheering, it was like a slow clap. It was like a, oh, okay. I think that's good. So, I don't know. It was and then, of course, a day or so later, the news came out that it was on its side. They they led with the fact that they've made it to the moon. I understand. They weren't they weren't the only thing that took off since we got together though.
Nvidia had a blowout result, which was pretty impressive considering the expectations were, well, as high as the moon. Let's begin though with NVIDIA surging on that blowout quarter. Sales more than tripled, driven by strong demand for AI chips. Guidance exceeds consensus. This is Jensen Huang on the call last night. This last year, we've seen generative AI really becoming a whole new application space, a whole new way of doing computing, a whole new industry is being formed, and that's driving our growth. We guide 1 quarter at a time, but fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth, calendar 24 to calendar 25 and beyond.
Biggest single day market cap move, Jim, beating Meta a few weeks ago. Yeah. It should be more up more. I think that what's happened is you I'll pause here. I think, the analysis was actually better over on Bloomberg, and this is David Kirkpatrick. And I thought he had a pretty decent take. Here we have a company that's really taking a role in the industry that is not dissimilar to the role that Facebook had in in those days of supercharged, you know, domination and growth. In fact, interestingly, I think, you know, just 2 weeks ago or so, Facebook gained more in one day than any company ever had when they went up a 197,000,000,000, which is hard to say and believe. Mhmm. They did that. I suspect that today, NVIDIA will go up more than that.
So we have these records being just shattered by these companies. It it it isn't the same. It's a chip company, but it's interesting. It's also still run by its founder. It's a company that that has its founder has had a long term view the entire time, which he is in extraordinary fashion, realizing after 30 years of methodical development, in a way that's not dissimilar from how Facebook was at the center of the change in global communications as the dominant company in social media. NVIDIA is now increasingly at the center of global, not just communications, but analysis and systems management and computation generally as the central company in the AI revolution in terms of at least Let me know what you think about that. You can boost in during the song and support the artist, or you can get in our live chat if you're listening live. This is Grips by Herbivore.
We're back on the other side with some FUD busting. Stand by. They've gone away. If you wanna have peace, you better prepare for war. I feel like those probably pretty pretty prophetic terms today. So this morning, as I sat down to record, the White House's sources have briefed Fox Business that they are concerned that the rising price in Bitcoin is significantly straining the US power grid. Now, this is predicated on the erroneous assumption that when the price goes up or the transaction goes up, the energy use goes up. That is actually factually incorrect. This report hasn't been posted anywhere yet.
Fox News covered it on the air this morning. I happened to be DVR ing the segment because I I grabbed clips for the launch. And so I jumped back and DVR ed it and played it and was able to record the audio for you. I don't have any way to link to it publicly, but, you can find other accounts of the report on social media. And we start now with, Fox Business's coverage of the White House raising alarm bells about Bitcoin's energy use. Well, guess what? Charlie Gasparino is here to tell us exactly what's happening in the crypto world, Charlie. Seems like we've come a long way from the collapse of FTX and all of that fraud. It's been on fire. I wish I could invest in some of this stuff, you know. I mean, I can't because I cover it. But, here's what we do know, and this is a kind of interesting sort of side story and it's a scoop. It's an exclusive for Fox Business that Fox Business has learned that the Biden administration is actually closely watching the surge in Bitcoin. They are very worried that the Bitcoin's rise is gonna have and and by the way, not just a rise, that's a pretty significant spike. It's gonna have a essentially put a lot of pressure on the power grid, the US power grid. Now why is that?
Again, that's them saying it. I'm not saying I agree with this because a lot of people in the crypto industry would disagree with this. But as you know, Bitcoin is mined. It's mined by computers essentially figuring out complex mathematical questions and problems and that those computers take up a lot of electricity. They put a big strain on the, on the power grid of the US. And right now, because we have so much inflow of retail investors putting money into Bitcoin ETFs, you know, all those exchange traded funds Mhmm. That just got approved by the SEC. The Bitcoin miners can't mine fast enough to meet that demand. Now this is silly for multiple reasons.
Number 1, when you're buying ETFs, you're not directly buying Bitcoin. So it's not like you're going to the miners buying their Bitcoin. These are getting sold over the counter. Miners are selling them. Everyone sells them all the time. The ETFs present a persistent buying opportunity. It it when you buy it when but what he said when retail goes and buys an ETF, you're essentially buying paper Bitcoin, friend. So they are working overtime to mine. You can't work overtime to mine. That's kind of silly. Very short term, you can.
But if we look at the data right now, we actually see that the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is about to go downward. Because over the winter, the Bitcoin network has curtailed usage in response to demand programs. And when they curtail usage, the mining rate, the usage goes down. The energy usage actually goes down, and the difficulty gets adjusted downward. It's a it's like, if if Bitcoin miners were going crazy right now and using up all the energy, then the difficulty adjustment that's coming in 2 days would be difficult adjustment upwards. The Bitcoin network would adjust upwards to make it more difficult to mine because everybody's working overtime as he just said.
But in the re but in reality and I'll I have sources all of this in the show notes. Copious sources. In January, we have documentation The Bitcoin miners curtailed their usage of energy in demand response program participation. They they buy bulk energy, and then when the grid needs it back, the Bitcoin miners shut down. And when they shut down, the grid gets that energy back, and it's available now for, like, whatever needs it. Heaters or air conditioners or EVs or whatever it is. This just happened just in January.
We don't have the data yet for February, but Marathon and other miners took their mining operation offline as part of a demand response program. This provides reliable consumption for the grid. So when the consumer, whoever it is, if it's ACs or if it's EVs or if it's heaters, when when that when that peak demand goes away, then the Bitcoin miners can resume. And what they do is they offer a steady demand response to the grid operator, which allows them to price their infrastructure appropriately and build it out as they need. Marathon Digital, their production for January was cut by 42%.
That's just one Bitcoin miner that's and there's 1,000 that are participating in these programs, not just in the US. So the idea that this is like an existential crisis right now is sort of silly. The price has nothing to do with energy consumption. Bitcoin network right now would use the same amount of energy with one transaction as it does with a 1000000 transactions. What goes up is the cost of the transaction. The fees go up when the when the blockchain gets busy, not the energy use. Now a long term yeah. You could make the argument long term. It it draws more people in. More people get interested. Although mining is the hardest industry ever, and it's about to get even harder in April.
Because of the halvening, production's gonna get cut in half. We're gonna see businesses fail. We're gonna see mining businesses fail. So, ironically, the Biden administration is making this case about this being an existential crisis 2 days before the Bitcoin network is about to lower difficulty level because there's been so much curtailment this winter, because energy usage is down, ironically. And they're doing it just before April 20 ish or whatever it's gonna be, right before the happening, where production gets cut in half and a bunch of miners are gonna go out of business. So there's a lot of irony to this to say nothing, and I would I would really challenge you to go look at the links that I have in the show notes.
They say nothing about the substantial evidence we have that the participation in these demand response programs is making it profitable to invest in renewables. Additionally, we have I don't again, I have links to the show notes. When Bitcoin mining does use curtailment, their emissions are largely their emissions impact is mitigated. And, additionally, on top of all of that and on top of all of that, we have this incredible growth in the methane off gas collecting where Bitcoin is actually capturing methane and using that at a 99, 98% efficiency rate instead of just going out into the atmosphere. And it's not me saying that. It's 3 different research papers that have come out in the last 6 months from around the world that say this. And I'll link to that in the show notes.
Here's here's, I think, the head head the takeaway headline. And this is also available in video, by the way, up on jupyter.tube. The KPMG report says that Bitcoin supports the ESG imperative. It facilitates renewable transition. It balances grids. It can reduce methane, and this is the one I think really matters because methane is a very significant greenhouse gas. Quote, Bitcoin miners are identifying new and creative ways to source their power, which also resulted in the reduction of methane that enters the atmosphere. Furthermore, Cruise's energy ability to reduce emissions through their use of gas flaring was recently highlighted in the video produced by the World Economic Forum.
In closing, Bitcoin appears to provide a number of benefits across the ESG framework. That's KPMG folks that posted atkpmg.com. That's one of 3 institutes in the last 6 months that's come out with reports. IRM has done the same, and Tekila has done the same just as recently as last month. And but today, it's an emergency. The price is going up as they as they try to create more Bitcoin. But that's, again, not quite how it works. Hash rate generally is up before price. Actually, it's the reverse. Hash rate goes up, the cost of production goes up, supply goes down, then the cost of Bitcoin goes up. So he actually has it reversed. But as they're doing that, what the Biden administration is worried about, and I'm getting this from people in the crypto industry who are getting emails and letters from the Biden administration. My my producer, Ellie Terron, has been doing a lot of reporting on this, is that the Biden administration is really worried that it's gonna put a strain on the on the on the power grid if this thing if this keeps going. Now, is this a real worry, you know, a sort of theoretical worry? And it, you know, depends on who you talk to. People in the crypto industry tell me it's purely theoretical, that there's more than enough electricity to go around.
You know, it's it's just not gonna have that impact. But I could tell you, the Biden administration is taking sort of steps to basically rein in crypto mining. I I know they've been sending letters out. They're asking crypto miners to turn over information. So stuff is going on, at the White House regarding this. They are worried about now I can't tell you that Joe Biden is sitting there tracking the pie, the the price of Bitcoin. But his people in his in in the energy department, people in the treasury department clearly are, and they're they and that that whole that whole notion of whether it's environmentally safe to keep producing Bitcoin, whether it taxes, the electrical grid is something that they are paying close attention to, and you could almost bet that they're gonna they're they're gonna ramp up some sort of regulatory regime Yeah. On this at some point. So keep an eye on this. I know what's going on. It's behind the scenes and back to you, Ashley.
Crazy times we live in right now. Gotta worry about everything, including Bitcoin mining. We say that every day, every week. By the way, the lights the lights are starting to flicker. By the way, the lights are starting to flicker in here. They're going dim. There's a lot of bitcoin. I think it's, aren't aren't they having a great time? I think there's a an irony that the Bitcoin mining industry is desperate desperate to to be as green and renewable as possible. They the the Biden administration essentially has a partner here, and they don't see it.
They just don't see it. Again, go look at the links in the show notes. Several studies show that you can make renewables profitable. And the other thing that I think is brilliant about it is it's without government subsidies. All of this has been done without government subsidies. It's just market dynamics actually moving in the direction that benefits everyone. But, I know it sounds crazy. I think what they're really worried about, and this also be linked in the show notes, is that, the United States dollar is down against Bitcoin 93.36% in the last 5 years.
The euro, also 93.67, Singapore dollar, 93.34, the Australian dollar, 93.92, the British pound, 9 93.68 down against negative. I'm sorry. Negative compared to the Bitcoin. Even even oil. Oil is down 91% to Bitcoin. The S and P 500 is 87.96% negative to Bitcoin. Maybe maybe that's what they're concerned about a little bit. Bitcoin. Now, worth more than Berkshire Hathaway. Just slightly I mean, just barely under meta if the price trend continues this week. Bitcoin will become worth more than meta just under silver, and silver is very close in its sights.
That might be what they're worried about. The day that Bitcoin hits the top 10, the Biden administration starts leaking that they're concerned about Bitcoin's energy use even though at the very moment, actually, all our data suggests the Bitcoin energy use is actually down a little bit. Again, in 2 days, the difficulty is adjusting downward by nearly 3%. The ETFs don't really actually put very much activity on chain. There is buying activity, but on chain fees are actually at the lowest they've been in a year right now. On chain fees are down because usage at the ETF layer doesn't happen on chain.
It happens in the banks. It's paper Bitcoin. In January, we have we have documented evidence that Marathon Mining curtailed by almost 50%, making that energy available in the grid again. So that way consumers could run heaters or whatever they needed to do. And then when the cold snaps over, there's a happy customer there to buy that power to keep the industry investing in the capacity. It's actually really great. It's perhaps one of the best things if we truly want to move to a renewable grid and improve transmission. And in areas where we have energy we can't capture, Bitcoin mining has a purpose there like methane off gassing.
So the Biden administration's really off the target on this one, unfortunately. Maybe not too surprisingly, but definitely, unfortunately. I have a lot of links in the show notes on this one. I don't normally do that for the launch, but I think it's I I think it's worth you investigating because when I tell you that Bitcoin could be good for the grid and good for renewable energy, you're probably thinking, what? And And I think the number one thing you should take away is that the Bitcoin network doesn't use more or less power based on the amount of transactions or the price.
That's just simply not how it works. Fees go up on the network, but it just means things take longer. You know? If you got a low if you got, like, a low if you pay a low fee to get a transaction through when the when the blockchain's busy, you're gonna be waiting a little bit longer. But right now, fees are low. Difficulties adjusting downward. This is just literally not a problem. And the price is going crazy. Alright. Let's take a break. It's womp, womp, womp by Curtis Drums. And then we have a cybersecurity story on the other end. 1 week after a cyber attack hit the nation's largest health insurer, thousands of pharmacies are still facing disruptions, fulfilling prescription drug orders. When you potentially get into life and death scenarios where patients can't gain health care or, in this case, patients can't gain, access to prescription medication.
The attack crippled Change Healthcare's digital network, which is a part of UnitedHealthcare. The company says it took immediate action to prevent further impact. Pharmacies use Change's network to verify insurance coverage. Okay. So we have established here life saving medication, absolutely mission critical service. People need this to survive. And if you have a very expensive medication, you might be stuck in a position where you have to pay cash. Oh, so even if you need some life saving medication or you just want your Ozempic, you're not gonna be able to get it without having to pay for it because their systems are down, inconveniencing no doubt 1,000. In order to get it, at least temporarily.
Times are hard these days and something like that, I mean, I'm sure that would impact a family. Initial reports said a foreign actor could be to blame for the cyber attack. Uh-huh. But Reuters now reports the infamous ransomware gang, Black Cat, may be responsible. Ransomware. Ransomware. If I had any kind of ability to pass any kind of law, it would be simple. If you are in a mission critical industry and ransomware takes you out, you're over. You're done. You've lost you've lost your license. Ransomware in 2024 should not be a problem in mission critical instances. Average users here and there, sure.
But it, a, means that you don't have appropriate network, controls and security. That's gotta be the first thing. You don't have appropriate permissions on your file shares, so people are able to crawl extremely important information and applications with probably, I would assume, average user permissions or even even if they had administrative permissions, they crawled everything and encrypted it. Because ransomware is just a script that runs with whatever user privileges that run it, and it crawls as much of the file systems as it can, and it encrypts it. And you stop that with proper permissions and proper user controls.
And then you fix it with backups. Backups. So if you can't recover, then you did it wrong. If you're in a mission critical industry that gives life saving medication to patients, image your workstations, back up your data, have hot standbys, do whatever it takes. This is a 100% preventable and solvable problem. Isolate your users. Don't give them permission to everything. Make sure people aren't running as administrators and take proper backups. You've solved the ransomware problem. Why are they so concerning? So Blackout is the same organization that took down MGM and Caesars Entertainment.
That was very, very damaging to those organizations. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting health care systems. Earlier this month, a cyberattack on a Chicago hospital shut down phones and computers. With this latest attack, a pharmacy near Pittsburgh is using the honor system, giving patients their beds now and billing insurance later. That's some also risky is you're gonna process a claim and are you whenever the insurance is back up and running, are we actually going to get paid what we should get paid for that prescription? Large pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS are reporting only a limited impact from this attack, but it's the smaller pharmacies that have been most affected. Many have switched to paper processing, which is causing delays and bad news.
How is that easier than just getting good backups? Alright. Okay. Alright. Somebody save me. Explain it to me. This is Unlucky by Cravan. Silly me. Thinking it was under control, silly me. Can't kill time with you no more. Makes me
Ignition sequence star. 654 321, 0. All engine running. Lift off. We have a lift off. Welcome back to The Launch, the 7th edition of this wacky combination of value for value music, community, and the news you need this week. And this time, we're talking about why the AI craze seems to have real staying power. NASA's sideways wind that we're all just going with, The big story is coming up and some FUD that's coming right down the pipe. We're gonna get the FUD buster out. But first, it's 4 AM forever by Curtis Drums. Nearly 55 years after Neil Armstrong took one small step from man, a private US company has taken one giant leap for mankind's future of space exploration.
CBS's Mark Strassman reports on today's historic moon landing. Tonight, the odyssey of Odysseus has ended on the moon. The first American made spacecraft kicking up lunar dust in more than a half century. Because our equipment is on the surface of the moon. Jubilant mission control of intuitive machines in Houston. The first commercial moon landing ever. The final descent from 18 miles above the lunar surface, a continuous engine burn for 10 minutes. By touchdown, Odysseus had slowed to 2 miles per hour. This is the assembly room. Intuitive cofounder Steve Altima showed us the historic moon lander up close last year in Houston. His company envisions a $100,000,000,000 lunar market. We're delivering scientific payloads, engineering demonstration payloads, but not the humans themselves. And you believe the moon is the next economic frontier? The moon is certainly that next step for space exploration.
Odysseus landed near the lunar south pole carrying less than £300 of cargo, including 6 instruments for NASA, an intuitive customer. The space agency hopes to have astronauts moonwalking there by the end of the decade. Some craters there never see light so cold they may contain ice, and water is critical to long term space exploration. NASA plans to basically hire these companies to send payloads to the moon like like you'd call an Uber or a Lyft. But these companies have to make it work first, and that's what we're seeing today. Well, I mean, mostly. Now there's one thing that your CBS Evening News with Nora O'Donnell left out, And that is this thing kinda crashed. It didn't exactly land. And he said they were jubilant there in mission control, but it was an awkward way they stated it. You see, it's working and it is a success. I'm not trying to take away from that. I'm actually very excited about it.
But there are some details about the landing that CBS left out. But if you go to local news closer to the, I don't know, people that care or maybe people that are closer to the industry, whatever it might be, I don't really know. Boosted and tell me why the local news sometimes gets these things better. They have the details for you. We now know, like, they lost signal with the lander for about 25 minutes when it was making its final descent to the moon. Now right now, teams are working to transfer data from the moon's surface back here to Earth, and they're doing that with a network of satellites scattered all throughout the world. And right now, we're all waiting for a picture from the surface of the moon. We're gonna have to wait a little bit longer. I do wanna get one new image up on your screen right now. This was just shared with us from NASA and Intuitive Machines about an hour ago in their first press conference since this historic mission. Nothing really I can relay to you. It oh, I guess she's gonna describe it to you. It is a very spherical photo, so it's hard to describe. I I I wish they wouldn't gotten the studio lights in the picture. Oh, I'm just kidding. Was the lander about 200 kilometers away from where it touched down on the south region of the moon. Scientists pointed out the craters and difficult terrain the robot had to navigate when it approached the moon. Intuitive Machines now says the lander is probably not upright and instead on its side.
We think we came down with, like I said, about 6 miles an hour this way Going down. And 2 miles an hour this way. Going sideways. And caught a foot in the surface and the and the land tipped over. And as the lander tipped over, perhaps, it might have actually landed on a rock, so it's not fully laying on the ground. And that's why the signal's weak. But I think some of the things that they needed to do, it can still do. Overall, it's very exciting. Odysseus is on the surface, having watched all of this live. It was sort of funny, though.
They were they were really kind of awkward about it. They didn't they didn't declare success because they they lost communication. And so when they said our equipment's on the surface, the the instead of everybody just, like, freaking out like they usually do and they start hugging and cheering, it was like a slow clap. It was like a, oh, okay. I think that's good. So, I don't know. It was and then, of course, a day or so later, the news came out that it was on its side. They they led with the fact that they've made it to the moon. I understand. They weren't they weren't the only thing that took off since we got together though.
Nvidia had a blowout result, which was pretty impressive considering the expectations were, well, as high as the moon. Let's begin though with NVIDIA surging on that blowout quarter. Sales more than tripled, driven by strong demand for AI chips. Guidance exceeds consensus. This is Jensen Huang on the call last night. This last year, we've seen generative AI really becoming a whole new application space, a whole new way of doing computing, a whole new industry is being formed, and that's driving our growth. We guide 1 quarter at a time, but fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth, calendar 24 to calendar 25 and beyond.
Biggest single day market cap move, Jim, beating Meta a few weeks ago. Yeah. It should be more up more. I think that what's happened is you I'll pause here. I think, the analysis was actually better over on Bloomberg, and this is David Kirkpatrick. And I thought he had a pretty decent take. Here we have a company that's really taking a role in the industry that is not dissimilar to the role that Facebook had in in those days of supercharged, you know, domination and growth. In fact, interestingly, I think, you know, just 2 weeks ago or so, Facebook gained more in one day than any company ever had when they went up a 197,000,000,000, which is hard to say and believe. Mhmm. They did that. I suspect that today, NVIDIA will go up more than that.
So we have these records being just shattered by these companies. It it it isn't the same. It's a chip company, but it's interesting. It's also still run by its founder. It's a company that that has its founder has had a long term view the entire time, which he is in extraordinary fashion, realizing after 30 years of methodical development, in a way that's not dissimilar from how Facebook was at the center of the change in global communications as the dominant company in social media. NVIDIA is now increasingly at the center of global, not just communications, but analysis and systems management and computation generally as the central company in the AI revolution in terms of at least Let me know what you think about that. You can boost in during the song and support the artist, or you can get in our live chat if you're listening live. This is Grips by Herbivore.
We're back on the other side with some FUD busting. Stand by. They've gone away. If you wanna have peace, you better prepare for war. I feel like those probably pretty pretty prophetic terms today. So this morning, as I sat down to record, the White House's sources have briefed Fox Business that they are concerned that the rising price in Bitcoin is significantly straining the US power grid. Now, this is predicated on the erroneous assumption that when the price goes up or the transaction goes up, the energy use goes up. That is actually factually incorrect. This report hasn't been posted anywhere yet.
Fox News covered it on the air this morning. I happened to be DVR ing the segment because I I grabbed clips for the launch. And so I jumped back and DVR ed it and played it and was able to record the audio for you. I don't have any way to link to it publicly, but, you can find other accounts of the report on social media. And we start now with, Fox Business's coverage of the White House raising alarm bells about Bitcoin's energy use. Well, guess what? Charlie Gasparino is here to tell us exactly what's happening in the crypto world, Charlie. Seems like we've come a long way from the collapse of FTX and all of that fraud. It's been on fire. I wish I could invest in some of this stuff, you know. I mean, I can't because I cover it. But, here's what we do know, and this is a kind of interesting sort of side story and it's a scoop. It's an exclusive for Fox Business that Fox Business has learned that the Biden administration is actually closely watching the surge in Bitcoin. They are very worried that the Bitcoin's rise is gonna have and and by the way, not just a rise, that's a pretty significant spike. It's gonna have a essentially put a lot of pressure on the power grid, the US power grid. Now why is that?
Again, that's them saying it. I'm not saying I agree with this because a lot of people in the crypto industry would disagree with this. But as you know, Bitcoin is mined. It's mined by computers essentially figuring out complex mathematical questions and problems and that those computers take up a lot of electricity. They put a big strain on the, on the power grid of the US. And right now, because we have so much inflow of retail investors putting money into Bitcoin ETFs, you know, all those exchange traded funds Mhmm. That just got approved by the SEC. The Bitcoin miners can't mine fast enough to meet that demand. Now this is silly for multiple reasons.
Number 1, when you're buying ETFs, you're not directly buying Bitcoin. So it's not like you're going to the miners buying their Bitcoin. These are getting sold over the counter. Miners are selling them. Everyone sells them all the time. The ETFs present a persistent buying opportunity. It it when you buy it when but what he said when retail goes and buys an ETF, you're essentially buying paper Bitcoin, friend. So they are working overtime to mine. You can't work overtime to mine. That's kind of silly. Very short term, you can.
But if we look at the data right now, we actually see that the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is about to go downward. Because over the winter, the Bitcoin network has curtailed usage in response to demand programs. And when they curtail usage, the mining rate, the usage goes down. The energy usage actually goes down, and the difficulty gets adjusted downward. It's a it's like, if if Bitcoin miners were going crazy right now and using up all the energy, then the difficulty adjustment that's coming in 2 days would be difficult adjustment upwards. The Bitcoin network would adjust upwards to make it more difficult to mine because everybody's working overtime as he just said.
But in the re but in reality and I'll I have sources all of this in the show notes. Copious sources. In January, we have documentation The Bitcoin miners curtailed their usage of energy in demand response program participation. They they buy bulk energy, and then when the grid needs it back, the Bitcoin miners shut down. And when they shut down, the grid gets that energy back, and it's available now for, like, whatever needs it. Heaters or air conditioners or EVs or whatever it is. This just happened just in January.
We don't have the data yet for February, but Marathon and other miners took their mining operation offline as part of a demand response program. This provides reliable consumption for the grid. So when the consumer, whoever it is, if it's ACs or if it's EVs or if it's heaters, when when that when that peak demand goes away, then the Bitcoin miners can resume. And what they do is they offer a steady demand response to the grid operator, which allows them to price their infrastructure appropriately and build it out as they need. Marathon Digital, their production for January was cut by 42%.
That's just one Bitcoin miner that's and there's 1,000 that are participating in these programs, not just in the US. So the idea that this is like an existential crisis right now is sort of silly. The price has nothing to do with energy consumption. Bitcoin network right now would use the same amount of energy with one transaction as it does with a 1000000 transactions. What goes up is the cost of the transaction. The fees go up when the when the blockchain gets busy, not the energy use. Now a long term yeah. You could make the argument long term. It it draws more people in. More people get interested. Although mining is the hardest industry ever, and it's about to get even harder in April.
Because of the halvening, production's gonna get cut in half. We're gonna see businesses fail. We're gonna see mining businesses fail. So, ironically, the Biden administration is making this case about this being an existential crisis 2 days before the Bitcoin network is about to lower difficulty level because there's been so much curtailment this winter, because energy usage is down, ironically. And they're doing it just before April 20 ish or whatever it's gonna be, right before the happening, where production gets cut in half and a bunch of miners are gonna go out of business. So there's a lot of irony to this to say nothing, and I would I would really challenge you to go look at the links that I have in the show notes.
They say nothing about the substantial evidence we have that the participation in these demand response programs is making it profitable to invest in renewables. Additionally, we have I don't again, I have links to the show notes. When Bitcoin mining does use curtailment, their emissions are largely their emissions impact is mitigated. And, additionally, on top of all of that and on top of all of that, we have this incredible growth in the methane off gas collecting where Bitcoin is actually capturing methane and using that at a 99, 98% efficiency rate instead of just going out into the atmosphere. And it's not me saying that. It's 3 different research papers that have come out in the last 6 months from around the world that say this. And I'll link to that in the show notes.
Here's here's, I think, the head head the takeaway headline. And this is also available in video, by the way, up on jupyter.tube. The KPMG report says that Bitcoin supports the ESG imperative. It facilitates renewable transition. It balances grids. It can reduce methane, and this is the one I think really matters because methane is a very significant greenhouse gas. Quote, Bitcoin miners are identifying new and creative ways to source their power, which also resulted in the reduction of methane that enters the atmosphere. Furthermore, Cruise's energy ability to reduce emissions through their use of gas flaring was recently highlighted in the video produced by the World Economic Forum.
In closing, Bitcoin appears to provide a number of benefits across the ESG framework. That's KPMG folks that posted atkpmg.com. That's one of 3 institutes in the last 6 months that's come out with reports. IRM has done the same, and Tekila has done the same just as recently as last month. And but today, it's an emergency. The price is going up as they as they try to create more Bitcoin. But that's, again, not quite how it works. Hash rate generally is up before price. Actually, it's the reverse. Hash rate goes up, the cost of production goes up, supply goes down, then the cost of Bitcoin goes up. So he actually has it reversed. But as they're doing that, what the Biden administration is worried about, and I'm getting this from people in the crypto industry who are getting emails and letters from the Biden administration. My my producer, Ellie Terron, has been doing a lot of reporting on this, is that the Biden administration is really worried that it's gonna put a strain on the on the on the power grid if this thing if this keeps going. Now, is this a real worry, you know, a sort of theoretical worry? And it, you know, depends on who you talk to. People in the crypto industry tell me it's purely theoretical, that there's more than enough electricity to go around.
You know, it's it's just not gonna have that impact. But I could tell you, the Biden administration is taking sort of steps to basically rein in crypto mining. I I know they've been sending letters out. They're asking crypto miners to turn over information. So stuff is going on, at the White House regarding this. They are worried about now I can't tell you that Joe Biden is sitting there tracking the pie, the the price of Bitcoin. But his people in his in in the energy department, people in the treasury department clearly are, and they're they and that that whole that whole notion of whether it's environmentally safe to keep producing Bitcoin, whether it taxes, the electrical grid is something that they are paying close attention to, and you could almost bet that they're gonna they're they're gonna ramp up some sort of regulatory regime Yeah. On this at some point. So keep an eye on this. I know what's going on. It's behind the scenes and back to you, Ashley.
Crazy times we live in right now. Gotta worry about everything, including Bitcoin mining. We say that every day, every week. By the way, the lights the lights are starting to flicker. By the way, the lights are starting to flicker in here. They're going dim. There's a lot of bitcoin. I think it's, aren't aren't they having a great time? I think there's a an irony that the Bitcoin mining industry is desperate desperate to to be as green and renewable as possible. They the the Biden administration essentially has a partner here, and they don't see it.
They just don't see it. Again, go look at the links in the show notes. Several studies show that you can make renewables profitable. And the other thing that I think is brilliant about it is it's without government subsidies. All of this has been done without government subsidies. It's just market dynamics actually moving in the direction that benefits everyone. But, I know it sounds crazy. I think what they're really worried about, and this also be linked in the show notes, is that, the United States dollar is down against Bitcoin 93.36% in the last 5 years.
The euro, also 93.67, Singapore dollar, 93.34, the Australian dollar, 93.92, the British pound, 9 93.68 down against negative. I'm sorry. Negative compared to the Bitcoin. Even even oil. Oil is down 91% to Bitcoin. The S and P 500 is 87.96% negative to Bitcoin. Maybe maybe that's what they're concerned about a little bit. Bitcoin. Now, worth more than Berkshire Hathaway. Just slightly I mean, just barely under meta if the price trend continues this week. Bitcoin will become worth more than meta just under silver, and silver is very close in its sights.
That might be what they're worried about. The day that Bitcoin hits the top 10, the Biden administration starts leaking that they're concerned about Bitcoin's energy use even though at the very moment, actually, all our data suggests the Bitcoin energy use is actually down a little bit. Again, in 2 days, the difficulty is adjusting downward by nearly 3%. The ETFs don't really actually put very much activity on chain. There is buying activity, but on chain fees are actually at the lowest they've been in a year right now. On chain fees are down because usage at the ETF layer doesn't happen on chain.
It happens in the banks. It's paper Bitcoin. In January, we have we have documented evidence that Marathon Mining curtailed by almost 50%, making that energy available in the grid again. So that way consumers could run heaters or whatever they needed to do. And then when the cold snaps over, there's a happy customer there to buy that power to keep the industry investing in the capacity. It's actually really great. It's perhaps one of the best things if we truly want to move to a renewable grid and improve transmission. And in areas where we have energy we can't capture, Bitcoin mining has a purpose there like methane off gassing.
So the Biden administration's really off the target on this one, unfortunately. Maybe not too surprisingly, but definitely, unfortunately. I have a lot of links in the show notes on this one. I don't normally do that for the launch, but I think it's I I think it's worth you investigating because when I tell you that Bitcoin could be good for the grid and good for renewable energy, you're probably thinking, what? And And I think the number one thing you should take away is that the Bitcoin network doesn't use more or less power based on the amount of transactions or the price.
That's just simply not how it works. Fees go up on the network, but it just means things take longer. You know? If you got a low if you got, like, a low if you pay a low fee to get a transaction through when the when the blockchain's busy, you're gonna be waiting a little bit longer. But right now, fees are low. Difficulties adjusting downward. This is just literally not a problem. And the price is going crazy. Alright. Let's take a break. It's womp, womp, womp by Curtis Drums. And then we have a cybersecurity story on the other end. 1 week after a cyber attack hit the nation's largest health insurer, thousands of pharmacies are still facing disruptions, fulfilling prescription drug orders. When you potentially get into life and death scenarios where patients can't gain health care or, in this case, patients can't gain, access to prescription medication.
The attack crippled Change Healthcare's digital network, which is a part of UnitedHealthcare. The company says it took immediate action to prevent further impact. Pharmacies use Change's network to verify insurance coverage. Okay. So we have established here life saving medication, absolutely mission critical service. People need this to survive. And if you have a very expensive medication, you might be stuck in a position where you have to pay cash. Oh, so even if you need some life saving medication or you just want your Ozempic, you're not gonna be able to get it without having to pay for it because their systems are down, inconveniencing no doubt 1,000. In order to get it, at least temporarily.
Times are hard these days and something like that, I mean, I'm sure that would impact a family. Initial reports said a foreign actor could be to blame for the cyber attack. Uh-huh. But Reuters now reports the infamous ransomware gang, Black Cat, may be responsible. Ransomware. Ransomware. If I had any kind of ability to pass any kind of law, it would be simple. If you are in a mission critical industry and ransomware takes you out, you're over. You're done. You've lost you've lost your license. Ransomware in 2024 should not be a problem in mission critical instances. Average users here and there, sure.
But it, a, means that you don't have appropriate network, controls and security. That's gotta be the first thing. You don't have appropriate permissions on your file shares, so people are able to crawl extremely important information and applications with probably, I would assume, average user permissions or even even if they had administrative permissions, they crawled everything and encrypted it. Because ransomware is just a script that runs with whatever user privileges that run it, and it crawls as much of the file systems as it can, and it encrypts it. And you stop that with proper permissions and proper user controls.
And then you fix it with backups. Backups. So if you can't recover, then you did it wrong. If you're in a mission critical industry that gives life saving medication to patients, image your workstations, back up your data, have hot standbys, do whatever it takes. This is a 100% preventable and solvable problem. Isolate your users. Don't give them permission to everything. Make sure people aren't running as administrators and take proper backups. You've solved the ransomware problem. Why are they so concerning? So Blackout is the same organization that took down MGM and Caesars Entertainment.
That was very, very damaging to those organizations. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting health care systems. Earlier this month, a cyberattack on a Chicago hospital shut down phones and computers. With this latest attack, a pharmacy near Pittsburgh is using the honor system, giving patients their beds now and billing insurance later. That's some also risky is you're gonna process a claim and are you whenever the insurance is back up and running, are we actually going to get paid what we should get paid for that prescription? Large pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS are reporting only a limited impact from this attack, but it's the smaller pharmacies that have been most affected. Many have switched to paper processing, which is causing delays and bad news.
How is that easier than just getting good backups? Alright. Okay. Alright. Somebody save me. Explain it to me. This is Unlucky by Cravan. Silly me. Thinking it was under control, silly me. Can't kill time with you no more. Makes me
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