Should a Bitcoin publication run a desk that trades ordinals? That question took up most of the Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, March 25, 2024, a ten-minute studio episode the host promised to get through quickly. He had a little over half a dozen stories open across 13 browser tabs, and he spent the longest stretch on a week of arguments about Bitcoin Magazine. The rest of the show covered a Greenpeace USA report, a chart on money supply and wealth, a new hardware wallet called Bitkey, a price target from Cathie Wood, and a flaw in Apple's M-series chips.
As on every episode, he reminded viewers that nothing he said was financial advice and that the show is for education and entertainment. He also pointed them to tickets for Mining Disrupt 2024 in Miami, Florida, which opened on June 24.
The numbers on the screen
The show opened on the network's numbers. Bitcoin stood at $65,625 on the host's screen, which meant one US dollar bought 1,522 sats. The network was under 4,000 blocks from the halving, then expected on April 20 at 6:43 a.m. The next difficulty adjustment was a small step up, a sign that blocks were arriving about two seconds faster than the ten-minute target.
Time as value
Before the news, he answered a meme. In the classic Anakin and Padme format, Anakin tells Padme she needs Bitcoin because it is the best store of value, and Padme asks what a store of value is and why she needs one. The host took the question seriously. Most people he has talked with value their time, he said. They trade it for work, are paid in money, and spend that money on rent, food and the rest of life.
I think of time as value
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 1:13
The problem, in his telling, is that the money people are paid in does not hold that value well. Some things store it better than others: a home can do a fair job, and gold has done a decent one for a very long time. His answer to Padme was that Bitcoin is now the best way to turn time into something that keeps it.
A JPEG for one Bitcoin
The first piece of drama involved an artist and David Bailey, whom the host connected to Bitcoin Magazine without being sure of his exact role. Bailey had praised one of the artist's pieces and asked whether all of his work was on his shop. The artist offered to sell him a JPEG for one Bitcoin, and Bailey accepted the next day. The artist then posted a video turning the deal down: his work would not be digitized, he said, and as much as one Bitcoin would help him, he would not sell a piece so that it could be flipped to another buyer.
That set off a wider row about Bitcoin Magazine. Matthew Kratter of Bitcoin University warned people not to purity test too hard, but pointed out that the magazine's financial disclosures showed it owned ether. Francis Pouliot of Bull Bitcoin, a Canadian exchange, wrote that he had only just learned the magazine ran an over-the-counter desk for ordinals, where buyers trade inscriptions and rare sats. Several people also pointed to Karma, billed as the largest fungible token airdrop in Bitcoin's history.
The host's view of Karma was blunt: people are free to gamble, at a casino or on March Madness brackets, but he saw the token as gambling dressed up as Bitcoin. He was more torn on the coverage question. Ordinals exist on Bitcoin whether people like them or not, he said, and a publication about Bitcoin will report things its readers dislike.
ordinals are a part of Bitcoin and as a publication as a place that talks about things related to bitcoin they're going to mention things that you might not like
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 3:33
He tested that with an analogy about a trade magazine reporting on how criminals misuse shipping containers. Coverage might help the public spot the problem, he said, but it might also teach the people behind it how to hide. Running a trading desk, in his view, went past coverage. He concluded that a magazine run by committed bitcoiners should stay out of that business entirely.
Greenpeace gets a community note
The next story was a Greenpeace USA post promoting what it called an explosive new report on ties between the fossil fuel industry, climate deniers and a lobbying network that, it said, was using Bitcoin mining to keep coal and gas plants running. Users on X added a community note to the post. The note said Greenpeace USA had been paid 5 million by Ripple's creator to go after Bitcoin. The host did not hide his contempt for the report.
Money supply and the top 0.1%
He then admitted that most of the charts people share in Bitcoin circles go over his head, before showing one that did not. It came from Brady Swenson of Citizen Bitcoin and set two lines side by side: the net worth held by the top 0.1% of Americans, and M2, the Federal Reserve's estimate of the money supply. M2 counts cash on hand plus money in checking and savings accounts and short-term vehicles such as certificates of deposit, and it grows with every stimulus package, every new spending bill and every round of money printing. The two lines moved almost together.
His reading was that the people closest to the money benefit first and most, while everyone else sees little of it.
this is what we have been talking about people in the Bitcoin space for years this is the problem with money
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 6:16
Bitkey and keys you can't lose
The host said he did not yet know much about Bitkey, a new hardware wallet with no screen that he called relatively affordable, and that he was tempted to buy one to see how it works. What caught his attention was praise from Matt Odell, whom he described as one of the most privacy-focused people in Bitcoin. In a clip the host played, Odell compared Bitkey to the ease of buying an ETF at Charles Schwab, but with self-custody: a slick mobile setup, a heavy device, and recovery without a seed phrase. Bitkey uses collaborative custody, so a user can lose the device, the phone, or both and still recover the coins. The host repeated Odell's line that you could try to lose your generational wealth and probably still have it, and gave the easier setup a big thumbs up.
Cathie Wood's $3.8 million
He also noted that Cathie Wood had raised her Bitcoin price target from $1.5 million to $3.8 million, which he understood to be a 2030 projection. He read her reasoning: if institutional investors put a little more than 5% of their portfolios into Bitcoin, as she expects them to, that by itself would add 2.3 million to her projection.
Keys off the computer
The last item was a reported vulnerability in Apple's M-series chips that may expose cryptocurrency private keys. The flaw cannot be patched because it is part of the chip's design. The host said he did not know how likely an attack was, but any chance that keys saved on a computer could be extracted was reason enough.
do not keep your keys on your digital devices
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 9:39
When this episode was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $66,832. On October 26, 2026 it was $80,236. The episode made no forecast of its own; the price target it discussed was Cathie Wood's.