Bitcoin transaction fees have collapsed to near-zero levels despite BTC hitting new highs. Will Owens from Galaxy Digital breaks down the data showing "free blocks" and what this means for miners and the network's long-term sustainability.
Will Owens from Galaxy Digital joins us to talk about Bitcoin's shocking transaction fee collapse. Despite BTC ripping to new all-time highs, fees have fallen to historic lows with "free blocks" becoming common. We dive deep into the data showing how custodial adoption and speculative activity moving to other chains is creating a miner revenue crisis.
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**NOTES:**
• Bitcoin fees at all-time lows despite $120K price
• "Free blocks" with 1 sat/vB fees now common
• Miners losing 15-20% potential revenue from fees
• 1.5M Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum attacks
• Hash price hit $35/TH all-time low recently
• Coinbase custodies over 1 million Bitcoin
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:05 Are fees important?
09:09 Free Block
10:37 Do miners care?
13:24 OP_RETURN
18:38 OP_RETURN & Bitcoin Core
21:34 Wallet type
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ICE now has the biggest budget of any law enforcement agency in America.
“ICE and Customs and Border Protection have long been the most rogue, kind of renegade and certainly pro-Trump police agencies in the federal government,” explained Radley Balko, a journalist who’s covered policing for decades. “What I think we are seeing right now is Trump is attempting to build his own paramilitary force. They want people whose first, ultimate loyalty in this job is going to be to the president.”
Balko is the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” And he’s been tracking the changes at ICE and the Trump administration’s escalating law-and-order tactics on his excellent newsletter, The Watch.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Will Peischel. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Aman Sahota, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
President Trump’s 7th cabinet meeting brings a bevy of updates from Russia to the Fed.
Democrats and Legacy Media officials claim Trump’s crime policies, economic policies, and every other kind of policies are built on hating black people, leading to a potential midterm crisis.
Starting in the late 1970s and lasting for seventeen years, a series of bombings terrorized the American public.
Primarily targeting technology companies and universities, these attacks befuddled law enforcement officials for almost two decades. The bomber became one of the most wanted criminals in the history of American law enforcement.
When he was finally caught, the perpetrator wasn’t quite who anyone expected.
Learn about the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and his reign of terror on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
On today’s episode, host Candice Lim tells Kate Lindsay about two recent BookTok conventions that went off the rails. While the first convention become known as the “Fyre Fest” of BookTok, the other faced troubling allegations of sexual assault against an employee. Is BookTok or social media to blame for how often attempts to bring a fandom together end up shattering the community apart?
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This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.
Native American History of Washington, DC(History Press, 2023) by Dr. Armand Lione is a comprehensive recounting at the overlooked history of the Indigenous people who lived in the area for many years before the arrival of colonists. The book, dedicated to increasing public awareness of this history, aims to fill the historical gap that has long been ignored in the nation's capital. Lione, a toxicologist and historian, began his research after being inspired by the public acknowledgment of Indigenous people in Melbourne, Australia.
The book's central argument is that the history of Native Americans in Washington, DC, has been essentially "overlooked" or "erased from public view". Lione's research debunks the common "myth of a swamp," which suggests the land was empty before the capital was founded. Instead, he presents extensive evidence of a rich Native presence, focusing on the Anacostan people of the Piscataway tribe.
The author meticulously documents numerous archaeological sites and artifacts found throughout the city. These findings prove that the land was inhabited for centuries. Highlights include:
The Native Village Near the Capitol: The book details the findings of archaeologist Samuel Vincent Proudfit, who in the 1880s identified a Native village site just five blocks from the U.S. Capitol, on land that became Garfield Park and the Daniel Carroll estate.
The White House Grounds: In the 1970s, construction for a new swimming pool on the White House grounds uncovered seventeen Native American artifacts, including quartzite points and pottery fragments.
A High-Status Burial in Foggy Bottom: Archaeological digs for a new highway ramp in 1997 revealed three significant Native sites, including a burial pit with the cremated remains and grave goods of a high-status woman from about 1,200 years ago. This is described as "The most significant prehistoric discovery in the city of Washington".
Anacostia-Bolling Military Base: Lione pinpoints the Anacostan chief's village and a Native burial ground to the area that is now the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. In 1936, two ossuaries (common burial sites) containing the remains of about 130 individuals were found during airfield expansion.
Native Quarries in Northwest DC: The book details two major Native quarries in northwest DC: the Piney Branch Quartzite Quarry and the Rose Hill Soapstone Quarry, where Native Americans worked stone for tools and pots for thousands of years.
Lione also explores the historical record of the Anacostans, explaining how their name was derived from a linguistic mistake by English settlers and how the tribe was a hub of traders. The book introduces Henry Fleete, a young English settler who lived with the Anacostans for five years in the 1620s and returned with fluency in their language, later becoming a successful trader.
In the epilogue, Lione asks why this rich history has been overlooked. He suggests that a mix of indifference, an underlying shame about colonial history, and a lack of public markers are to blame. The author advocates for actionable steps, such as using Native land acknowledgments, teaching this history in schools, and supporting local Piscataway tribes through donations and land trusts. He created the DC Native History Project to bring this history to public attention and has seen small victories, such as a land acknowledgment at the DC Public Library and the Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling updating its history to include the Anacostan presence. Lione concludes with a call to action for readers to help ensure this history is no longer forgotten.
A revelatory exploration of how a “theory of everything” depends upon our understanding of the human mind. The whole goal of physics is to explain what we observe. For centuries, physicists believed that observations yielded faithful representations of what is out there. But when they began to study the subatomic realm, they found that observation often interferes with what is being observed—that the act of seeing changes what we see. The same is true of cosmology: our view of the universe is inevitably distorted by observation bias. And so whether they’re studying subatomic particles or galaxies, physicists must first explain consciousness—and for that they must turn to neuroscientists and philosophers of mind. Neuroscientists have painstakingly built up an understanding of the structure of the brain. Could this help physicists understand the levels of self-organization they observe in other systems? These same physicists, meanwhile, are trying to explain how particles organize themselves into the objects around us. Could their discoveries help explain how neurons produce our conscious experience? Exploring these questions and more in Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe (Picador, 2024), George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence. Combining vivid descriptive writing with portraits of scientists working on the cutting edge, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation shows how theories of everything depend on theories of mind—and how they might be one and the same.
What to know about what could be the biggest Social Security leak ever—all at the hands of the federal government.
Also, the fake active-shooter warnings that have caused real panic at American universities this week.
Plus: we’re talking about a dramatic display of nature that played out over Arizona, how Cracker Barrel changed its logo again, and—could this be America’s version of the royal wedding? We’ll tell you about Taylor Swift’s engagement.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
Join us every Mon-Fri for more daily news roundups!
