Blockspace: The Fed vs. Iran vs. BTC, Layoffs Sweep Crypto, Strategy’s $44 Billion Stock Offering

·58 min·5 clips

Trump's tweet about Iran peace talks roils markets, sending Bitcoin back above $70,000.

The episode begins with hosts discussing weekend news, focusing on Trump's tweet about progress in Iran peace talks, which caused market volatility and a Bitcoin price surge above $70,000. They contrast this with gold's sharp decline, noting it dropped 10% in a week. The conversation shifts to Federal Reserve hawkishness, with a CoinShares analyst attributing weaker Bitcoin ETF inflows to the Fed's stance rather than the Iran conflict, though hosts argue the war drives inflation fears. Ryan Gentry joins as a guest to explain machine payments, detailing the HTTP 402 'payment required' error code and protocols like L402, X402, and MPP for AI agents. He discusses the potential for machines to use Bitcoin and stablecoins on Lightning for payments. The hosts then cover crypto industry layoffs, citing companies like Block, Algorand, and Gemini cutting jobs due to AI automation and weak market conditions. They analyze MicroStrategy's filing for $44 billion in stock offerings to fund Bitcoin purchases, noting it's on pace for a record buying quarter. The episode concludes with a discussion of Marathon's new AI inference platform, Mara Cloud, which offers open-source models but at higher prices than competitors, raising questions about its strategy. Throughout, hosts provide market updates, including oil price surges and bond market volatility, and promote upcoming events like the Up Next conference.

As heard by us

A fast crypto desk conversation that keeps the payment-standard fight and its uncertainty in view.

Blockspace Live frames a noisy crypto morning around machine payments and keeps the focus on what is moving now: Bitcoin payments, Lightning, and the push to make machine payments work inside an AI-heavy market.

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Why you'd press play

You get a live look at the week's crypto and AI churn, then the machine-payments debate starts pulling the rest of the episode into view.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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