When you attempt to use certain Bitcoin or crypto platforms in New York, you’ll sometimes be met with the following message:
“This platform is restricted in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and New York.”
Yes, seriously.
Part of the reason for this because businesses need a virtual currency license, commonly referred to as the “BitLicense”, to serve customers in New York.
While it sounds reasonable to obtain a license to conduct a certain type of business within a jurisdiction, what isn’t reasonable is that, to obtain a BitLicense, it often takes companies years of navigating bureaucratic and administrative hurdles and costs them millions of dollars in legal and state fees.
In short, the BitLicense makes it very difficult for Bitcoin start-ups to do business in a state that boasts of its being home to the city often referred to as the center for capitalism and global finance.
As I’ve written, New York City is neither of those things — though, it is the center of crony capitalism.
If New York City were truly the center of the market economy, we wouldn’t put up so much red tape in efforts to stop business from having their customers get their hands on bitcoin, the best money the world has ever seen.
But let me pull back here. I can rant for hours about my frustrations regarding the BitLicense.
Instead of going on and on about it, I recently helped to amplify the voice of a political candidate in New York who is in favor of doing away with the BitLicense and who will have some power facilitate this.
This candidate is Khurram Dara, and he currently looking to run as the Republican nominee for New York Attorney General (NY AG).
I recently sat down with Dara at PubKey to discuss not only the path to ending the BitLicense, but how to cut red tape for all small businesses in New York in efforts to make the state more affordable to live in so to stop New York’s population exodus.
We also discussed Dara’s plan to end the costly lawfare that current NY AG, Letitia James, has engaged in as well as why Dara feels the Bank Secrecy Act is unconstitutional and why the Samourai developers shouldn’t be in prison.
I truly enjoyed speaking with the mild-mannered and thoughtful Dara, someone whom I very much hopes becomes NY’s next AG.
You can listen to our one-on-one conversation at the bar here.
And you can listen to the podcast I recorded with Dara and PubKey co-founder Thomas Pacchia below:
And if you like what you heard in the interviews above, you can make a donation to Dara’s campaign here.
Any level of donation helps, as Dara is currently in the process of accumulating 1,000 unique donations and donations are currently being matched 6:1.
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Markets
As I mentioned in last week’s edition of the newsletter, silver looked poised for a notable pull back.
And a very notable pull back we saw this week.
We saw the same with gold.
The market caps of silver and gold saw a total of over $6.5 trillion wiped out in under 48 hours.
For context, $6.5 trillion is more money than the GDP of every country on the planet other than the United States and China.
Even though some of the demand for gold and silver is real and we are likely seeing the price in both rise as a result of paper ledgers for both assets having to reconcile with physical demand, the run up in both was simply too steep not to see some sort of significant pull back.
I’m not quite sure what comes next for gold and silver, as I haven’t thought deeply on it yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to another rise in both before an even bigger pull back (crash) or some sideways chop for a bit before a broader downturn by the middle of the year.
Frank, who cares about these boomer metals! What about my bit corns?!
On it.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s price also trended lower this week.
As I’ve said for weeks now in this newsletter, I believe we’re in a bear market for bitcoin.
I wrote at the beginning of last year that we could see bitcoin’s price drop as low as $53k in a bear market in 2026, and this is still my outlook.
I share this not to scare you but to mentally prepare you for what may come. (With that said, maybe the 4-year bitcoin cycle isn’t broken and my analysis is completely off. After all, I don’t have a crystal ball.)
Bear markets can be hard when you are new to Bitcoin.
If you are new here, you may be listening to influencers who’ve been harvesting your attention in posting about how a “God candle” is right around the corner.
You’re not going to read that kind of stuff in this newsletter.
While I do think bitcoin’s price is going up forever — and that a better way to think of bitcoin is that everything falling in price against it — there are also going to be relatively prolonged periods where its price drops considerably.
I don’t want to see my readers panic selling their bitcoin when these times come around, and so I continue to recommend reducing your exposure to bitcoin if it’s making you anxious or causing you to want to sell.
However, please note that nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, nor should it be interpreted as such.
In times like these, I like to accumulate bitcoin via dollar-cost averaging.
But if you don’t have disposable income with which to buy bitcoin and you live in the U.S., you can also use the Fold App or the Gemini credit card to accumulate some.
The Fold app literally gives you free sats (fractions of a bitcoin) every day. You can use my referral link to sign up.
You can also earn up to 4% in sats back with the Gemini credit card for making everyday purchases. You can use my referral link to sign up.
I use my Fold account and Gemini credit card to accumulate sats almost every day and have done so for years.
Okay, that’s that.
Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead.
While the world around us is volatile in every way imaginable these days, it helps to look inward during these times and to practice being as still as possible amidst this chaos.
In this way, we become a counter to the noise and madness, helping it to eventually subside.
Deep breaths and one foot in front of the other.
Big love to you all.
Best,
Frank
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Even companies that have a BitLicense are reluctant to launch new services in New York because they would need to apply to expand the scope of their license. Wildly frustrating!
Solid breakdown of how regulatory friction stifles innovation. The BitLicense comparison to countries under sanctions really drives home how counterproductive these barriers are. I watched a startup last year pivot away from NY entirely becuase the licensing costs would have consumed their runway - that's not protecting consumers, thats just shutting out competition.