@ 5f078e90:b2bacaa3

Frog named Gus

This is a test from Hive to Nostr, longform script, some markdown included. google link, 400 char. story.

In a lush pond, a green frog named Gus lived among lily pads. Each dawn, he croaked a cheerful tune, waking the dragonflies. One day, a heron eyed him hungrily. Gus, clever and quick, hopped beneath a broad leaf, blending perfectly. The heron, fooled, flew off. That evening, Gus sang louder, celebrating his escape. His friends—turtles and minnows—joined the chorus under the moon's glow. Gus’s courage inspired them all, proving wit outshines size. The pond thrived, with Gus as its spirited guardian, forever hopping and croaking in joy.

This was a test, please ignore.

@ 5f078e90:b2bacaa3

May 29 badger test story

h2n, bi, some md, >380

In a dusty savanna, a honey badger named Hank prowled with fearless grit. Each night, he raided beehives, dodging stings with cunning twists. One day, a lion blocked his path, roaring fiercely. Hank, unfazed, bared his teeth and charged, startling the beast. The lion fled, and Hank strutted on, claws clicking. His boldness rallied jackals and birds, who sang his tale under starry skies. Hank’s fierce heart made him the savanna’s legend, guarding its wild spirit with every fearless step.

This is just a test, please ignore.

@ 5f078e90:b2bacaa3

Gecky story - just a test

In a sun-dappled jungle, Zippy the gecko darted across a broad leaf, his emerald scales glinting. Chasing a juicy cricket, he leaped, only to slip into a pitcher plant’s slippery trap. With sticky toes, Zippy clung to the edge, heart racing. A curious frog peered in, offering a vine. Grateful, Zippy climbed out, sharing his cricket with his new friend. Under the moon’s glow, they danced on the leaves, tales of their adventure echoing through the jungle night.

Character count: 408

This was just a test. Ignore it.

@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

What is KYC/AML?

• The acronym stands for Know Your Customer / Anti Money Laundering.
• In practice it stands for the surveillance measures companies are often compelled to take against their customers by financial regulators.
• Methods differ but often include: Passport Scans, Driver License Uploads, Social Security Numbers, Home Address, Phone Number, Face Scans.
• Bitcoin companies will also store all withdrawal and deposit addresses which can then be used to track bitcoin transactions on the bitcoin block chain.
• This data is then stored and shared. Regulations often require companies to hold this information for a set number of years but in practice users should assume this data will be held indefinitely. Data is often stored insecurely, which results in frequent hacks and leaks.  
• KYC/AML data collection puts all honest users at risk of theft, extortion, and persecution while being ineffective at stopping crime. Criminals often use counterfeit, bought, or stolen credentials to get around the requirements. Criminals can buy "verified" accounts for as little as $200. Furthermore, billions of people are excluded from financial services as a result of KYC/AML requirements.

During the early days of bitcoin most services did not require this sensitive user data, but as adoption increased so did the surveillance measures. At this point, most large bitcoin companies are collecting and storing massive lists of bitcoiners, our sensitive personal information, and our transaction history.

Lists of Bitcoiners

KYC/AML policies are a direct attack on bitcoiners. Lists of bitcoiners and our transaction history will inevitably be used against us.

Once you are on a list with your bitcoin transaction history that record will always exist. Generally speaking, tracking bitcoin is based on probability analysis of ownership change. Surveillance firms use various heuristics to determine if you are sending bitcoin to yourself or if ownership is actually changing hands.  You can obtain better privacy going forward by using collaborative transactions such as coinjoin to break this probability analysis.

Fortunately, you can buy bitcoin without providing intimate personal information. Tools such as peach, hodlhodl, robosats, azteco and bisq help; mining is also a solid option: anyone can plug a miner into power and internet and earn bitcoin by mining privately.

You can also earn bitcoin by providing goods and/or services that can be purchased with bitcoin. Long term, circular economies will mitigate this threat: most people will not buy bitcoin - they will earn bitcoin - most people will not sell bitcoin - they will spend bitcoin.

There is no such thing as KYC or No KYC bitcoin, there are bitcoiners on lists and those that are not on lists.

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Bank run on every crypto bank then bank run on every "real" bank.

— ODELL (@ODELL) December 14, 2022

The four main banks of bitcoin and “crypto” are Signature, Prime Trust, Silvergate, and Silicon Valley Bank. Prime Trust does not custody funds themselves but rather maintains deposit accounts at BMO Harris Bank, Cross River, Lexicon Bank, MVB Bank, and Signature Bank. Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank have already stopped withdrawals. More banks will go down before the chaos stops. None of them have sufficient reserves to meet withdrawals.

Bitcoin gives us all the ability to opt out of a system that has massive layers of counterparty risk built in, years of cheap money and broken incentives have layered risk on top of risk throughout the entire global economy. If you thought the FTX bank run was painful to watch, I have bad news for you: every major bank in the world is fractional reserve. Bitcoin held in self custody is unique in its lack of counterparty risk, as global market chaos unwinds this will become much more obvious.

The rules of bitcoin are extremely hard to change by design. Anyone can access the network directly without a trusted third party by using their own node. Owning more bitcoin does not give you more control over the network with all participants on equal footing.

Bitcoin is:
- money that is not controlled by a company or government
- money that can be spent or saved without permission
- money that is provably scarce and should increase in purchasing power with adoption

Bitcoin is money without trust. Whether you are a nation state, corporation, or an individual, you can use bitcoin to spend or save without permission. Social media will accelerate the already deteriorating trust in our institutions and as this trust continues to crumble the value of trust minimized money will become obvious. As adoption increases so should the purchasing power of bitcoin.

A quick note on "stablecoins," such as USDC - it is important to remember that they rely on trusted custodians. They have the same risk as funds held directly in bank accounts with additional counterparty risk on top. The trusted custodians can be pressured by gov, exit scam, or caught up in fraud. Funds can and will be frozen at will. This is a distinctly different trust model than bitcoin, which is a native bearer token that does not rely on any centralized entity or custodian.

Most bitcoin exchanges have exposure to these failing banks. Expect more chaos and confusion as this all unwinds. Withdraw any bitcoin to your own wallet ASAP.

Simple Self Custody Guide: https://werunbtc.com/muun
More Secure Cold Storage Guide: https://werunbtc.com/coldcard

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@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Star Wars is often viewed as a myth of rebellion, freedom, and resistance to tyranny. The iconography—scrappy rebels, totalitarian stormtroopers, lone smugglers—suggests a deep anti-authoritarian ethos. Yet, beneath the surface, the narrative arc of Star Wars consistently affirms the necessity, even sanctity, of central authority. This blog entry introduces the question: Is Star Wars fundamentally a celebration of statism?

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Rebellion as Restoration, Not Revolution

The Rebel Alliance’s mission is not to dismantle centralized power, but to restore the Galactic Republic—a bureaucratic, centrally governed institution. Characters like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are high-ranking senators, not populist revolutionaries. The goal is to remove the corrupt Empire and reinstall a previous central authority, presumed to be just.

• Rebels are loyalists to a prior state structure.
• Power is not questioned, only who wields it.

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Jedi as Centralized Moral Elites

The Jedi, often idealized as protectors of peace, are unelected, extra-legal enforcers of moral and military order. Their authority stems from esoteric metaphysical abilities rather than democratic legitimacy.

• They answer only to their internal Council.
• They are deployed by the Senate, but act independently of civil law.
• Their collapse is depicted as tragic not because they were unaccountable, but because they were betrayed.

This positions them as a theocratic elite, not spiritual anarchists.

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Chaos and the Frontier: The Case of the Cantina

The Mos Eisley cantina, often viewed as a symbol of frontier freedom, reveals something darker. It is: - Lawless - Violent - Culturally fragmented

Conflict resolution occurs through murder, not mediation. Obi-Wan slices off a limb; Han shoots first—both without legal consequence. There is no evidence of property rights, dispute resolution, or voluntary order.

This is not libertarian pluralism—it’s moral entropy. The message: without centralized governance, barbarism reigns.

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The Mythic Arc: Restoration of the Just State

Every trilogy in the saga returns to a single theme: the fall and redemption of legitimate authority.

1. Prequels: Republic collapses into tyranny.
2. Originals: Rebels fight to restore legitimate order.
3. Sequels: Weak governance leads to resurgence of authoritarianism; heroes must reestablish moral centralism.

The story is not anti-state—it’s anti-bad state. The solution is never decentralization; it’s the return of the right ruler or order.

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Conclusion: The Hidden Statism of a Rebel Myth

Star Wars wears the costume of rebellion, but tells the story of centralized salvation. It: - Validates elite moral authority (Jedi) - Romanticizes restoration of fallen governments (Republic) - Portrays decentralized zones as corrupt and savage (outer rim worlds)

It is not an anarchist parable, nor a libertarian fable. It is a statist mythology, clothed in the spectacle of rebellion. Its core message is not that power should be abolished, but that power belongs to the virtuous few.

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Question to Consider:
If the Star Wars universe consistently affirms the need for centralized moral and political authority, should we continue to see it as a myth of freedom? Or is it time to recognize it as a narrative of benevolent empire?

@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

The former seems to have found solid product market fit. Expect significant volume, adoption, and usage going forward.

The latter's future remains to be seen. Dependence on Tor, which has had massive reliability issues, and lack of strong privacy guarantees put it at risk.

— ODELL (@ODELL) October 27, 2022

The Basics

• Lightning is a protocol that enables cheap and fast native bitcoin transactions.
• At the core of the protocol is the ability for bitcoin users to create a payment channel with another user.
• These payment channels enable users to make many bitcoin transactions between each other with only two on-chain bitcoin transactions: the channel open transaction and the channel close transaction.
• Essentially lightning is a protocol for interoperable batched bitcoin transactions.
• It is expected that on chain bitcoin transaction fees will increase with adoption and the ability to easily batch transactions will save users significant money.
• As these lightning transactions are processed, liquidity flows from one side of a channel to the other side, on chain transactions are signed by both parties but not broadcasted to update this balance.
• Lightning is designed to be trust minimized, either party in a payment channel can close the channel at any time and their bitcoin will be settled on chain without trusting the other party.

There is no 'Lightning Network'

• Many people refer to the aggregate of all lightning channels as 'The Lightning Network' but this is a false premise.
• There are many lightning channels between many different users and funds can flow across interconnected channels as long as there is a route through peers.
• If a lightning transaction requires multiple hops it will flow through multiple interconnected channels, adjusting the balance of all channels along the route, and paying lightning transaction fees that are set by each node on the route.

Example: You have a channel with Bob. Bob has a channel with Charlie. You can pay Charlie through your channel with Bob and Bob's channel with User C.

• As a result, it is not guaranteed that every lightning user can pay every other lightning user, they must have a route of interconnected channels between sender and receiver.

Lightning in Practice

• Lightning has already found product market fit and usage as an interconnected payment protocol between large professional custodians.
• They are able to easily manage channels and liquidity between each other without trust using this interoperable protocol.
• Lightning payments between large custodians are fast and easy. End users do not have to run their own node or manage their channels and liquidity. These payments rarely fail due to professional management of custodial nodes.
• The tradeoff is one inherent to custodians and other trusted third parties. Custodial wallets can steal funds and compromise user privacy.

Sovereign Lightning

• Trusted third parties are security holes.
• Users must run their own node and manage their own channels in order to use lightning without trusting a third party. This remains the single largest friction point for sovereign lightning usage: the mental burden of actively running a lightning node and associated liquidity management.
• Bitcoin development prioritizes node accessibility so cost to self host your own node is low but if a node is run at home or office, Tor or a VPN is recommended to mask your IP address: otherwise it is visible to the entire network and represents a privacy risk.
• This privacy risk is heightened due to the potential for certain governments to go after sovereign lightning users and compel them to shutdown their nodes. If their IP Address is exposed they are easier to target.
• Fortunately the tools to run and manage nodes continue to get easier but it is important to understand that this will always be a friction point when compared to custodial services.

The Potential Fracture of Lightning

• Any lightning user can choose which users are allowed to open channels with them.
• One potential is that professional custodians only peer with other professional custodians.
• We already see nodes like those run by CashApp only have channels open with other regulated counterparties. This could be due to performance goals, liability reduction, or regulatory pressure.

• Fortunately some of their peers are connected to non-regulated parties so payments to and from sovereign lightning users are still successfully processed by CashApp but this may not always be the case going forward.

Summary

• Many people refer to the aggregate of all lightning channels as 'The Lightning Network' but this is a false premise. There is no singular 'Lightning Network' but rather many payment channels between distinct peers, some connected with each other and some not.
• Lightning as an interoperable payment protocol between professional custodians seems to have found solid product market fit. Expect significant volume, adoption, and usage going forward.
• Lightning as a robust sovereign payment protocol has yet to be battle tested. Heavy reliance on Tor, which has had massive reliability issues, the friction of active liquidity management, significant on chain fee burden for small amounts, interactivity constraints on mobile, and lack of strong privacy guarantees put it at risk.

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If you have never used lightning before, use this guide to get started on your phone.

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

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"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy.  A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world." - Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 1993

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Privacy is essential to freedom. Without privacy, individuals are unable to make choices free from surveillance and control. Lack of privacy leads to loss of autonomy. When individuals are constantly monitored it limits our ability to express ourselves and take risks. Any decisions we make can result in negative repercussions from those who surveil us. Without the freedom to make choices, individuals cannot truly be free.

Freedom is essential to acquiring and preserving wealth. When individuals are not free to make choices, restrictions and limitations prevent us from economic opportunities. If we are somehow able to acquire wealth in such an environment, lack of freedom can result in direct asset seizure by governments or other malicious entities. At scale, when freedom is compromised, it leads to widespread economic stagnation and poverty. Protecting freedom is essential to economic prosperity.

The connection between privacy, freedom, and wealth is critical. Without privacy, individuals lose the freedom to make choices free from surveillance and control. While lack of freedom prevents individuals from pursuing economic opportunities and makes wealth preservation nearly impossible. No Privacy? No Freedom. No Freedom? No Wealth.

Rights are not granted. They are taken and defended. Rights are often misunderstood as permission to do something by those holding power. However, if someone can give you something, they can inherently take it from you at will. People throughout history have necessarily fought for basic rights, including privacy and freedom. These rights were not given by those in power, but rather demanded and won through struggle. Even after these rights are won, they must be continually defended to ensure that they are not taken away. Rights are not granted - they are earned through struggle and defended through sacrifice.

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The newly proposed RESTRICT ACT - is being advertised as a TikTok Ban, but is much broader than that, carries a $1M Fine and up to 20 years in prison️! It is unconstitutional and would create massive legal restrictions on the open source movement and free speech throughout the internet.

The Bill was proposed by: Senator Warner, Senator Thune, Senator Baldwin, Senator Fischer, Senator Manchin, Senator Moran, Senator Bennet, Senator Sullivan, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Collins, Senator Heinrich, and Senator Romney. It has broad support across Senators of both parties.

Corrupt politicians will not protect us. They are part of the problem. We must build, support, and learn how to use censorship resistant tools in order to defend our natural rights.

The RESTRICT Act, introduced by Senators Warner and Thune, aims to block or disrupt transactions and financial holdings involving foreign adversaries that pose risks to national security. Although the primary targets of this legislation are companies like Tik-Tok, the language of the bill could potentially be used to block or disrupt cryptocurrency transactions and, in extreme cases, block Americans’ access to open source tools or protocols like Bitcoin.

The Act creates a redundant regime paralleling OFAC without clear justification, it significantly limits the ability for injured parties to challenge actions raising due process concerns, and unlike OFAC it lacks any carve-out for protected speech. COINCENTER ON THE RESTRICT ACT

Full Text of Bill

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@matt_odell don't you even dare not ask about nostr!

— Kukks (Andrew Camilleri) (@MrKukks) May 18, 2021

Nostr first hit my radar spring 2021: created by fellow bitcoiner and friend, fiatjaf, and released to the world as free open source software. I was fortunate to be able to host a conversation with him on Citadel Dispatch in those early days, capturing that moment in history forever. Since then, the protocol has seen explosive viral organic growth as individuals around the world have contributed their time and energy to build out the protocol and the surrounding ecosystem due to the clear need for better communication tools.

nostr is to twitter as bitcoin is to paypal

As an intro to nostr, let us start with a metaphor:

twitter is paypal - a centralized platform plagued by censorship but has the benefit of established network effects

nostr is bitcoin - an open protocol that is censorship resistant and robust but requires an organic adoption phase

Nostr is an open communication protocol that can be used to send messages across a distributed set of relays in a censorship resistant and robust way.
 - Anyone can run a relay.
 - Anyone can interact with the protocol.
 - Relays can choose which messages they want to relay.
 - Users are identified by a simple public private key pair that they can generate themselves.

Nostr is often compared to twitter since there are nostr clients that emulate twitter functionality and user interface but that is merely one application of the protocol. Nostr is so much more than a mere twitter competitor. Nostr clients and relays can transmit a wide variety of data and clients can choose how to display that information to users. The result is a revolution in communication with implications that are difficult for any of us to truly comprehend.

Similar to bitcoin, nostr is an open and permissionless protocol. No person, company, or government controls it. Anyone can iterate and build on top of nostr without permission. Together, bitcoin and nostr are incredibly complementary freedom tech tools: censorship resistant, permissionless, robust, and interoperable - money and speech protected by code and incentives, not laws.

As censorship throughout the world continues to escalate, freedom tech provides hope for individuals around the world who refuse to accept the status quo. This movement will succeed on the shoulders of those who choose to stand up and contribute. We will build our own path. A brighter path.

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My Nostr Public Key: npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

People forget Bear Stearns failed March 2008 - months of denial followed before the public realized how bad the situation was under the surface.

Similar happening now but much larger scale. They did not fix fundamental issues after 2008 - everything is more fragile.

The Fed preemptively bailed out every bank with their BTFP program and First Republic Bank still failed. The second largest bank failure in history.

There will be more failures. There will be more bailouts. Depositors will be "protected" by socializing losses across everyone.

Our President and mainstream financial pundits are currently pretending the banking crisis is over while most banks remain insolvent. There are going to be many more bank failures as this ponzi system unravels.

Unlike 2008, we have the ability to opt out of these broken and corrupt institutions by using bitcoin. Bitcoin held in self custody is unique in its lack of counterparty risk - you do not have to trust a bank or other centralized entity to hold it for you. Bitcoin is also incredibly difficult to change by design since it is not controlled by an individual, company, or government - the supply of dollars will inevitably be inflated to bailout these failing banks but bitcoin supply will remain unchanged. I do not need to convince you that bitcoin provides value - these next few years will convince millions.

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

Bank run on every crypto bank then bank run on every "real" bank.

— ODELL (@ODELL) December 14, 2022

Good morning.

It looks like PacWest will fail today. It will be both the fifth largest bank failure in US history and the sixth major bank to fail this year. It will likely get purchased by one of the big four banks in a government orchestrated sale.  

March 8th - Silvergate Bank
March 10th - Silicon Valley Bank
March 12th - Signature Bank
March 19th - Credit Suisse
May 1st - First Republic Bank
May 4th - PacWest Bank?

PacWest is the first of many small regional banks that will go under this year. Most will get bought by the big four in gov orchestrated sales. This has been the playbook since 2008. Follow the incentives. Massive consolidation across the banking industry. PacWest gonna be a drop in the bucket compared to what comes next.

First, a hastened government led bank consolidation, then a public/private partnership with the remaining large banks to launch a surveilled and controlled digital currency network. We will be told it is more convenient. We will be told it is safer. We will be told it will prevent future bank runs. All of that is marketing bullshit. The goal is greater control of money. The ability to choose how we spend it and how we save it. If you control the money - you control the people that use it.

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There must be a limit to how much data is transferred across the bitcoin network in order to keep the ability to run and use your own node accessible. A node is required to interact with the global bitcoin network - if you do not use your own node then you must trust someone else's node. If nodes become inaccessible to run then the network will centralize around the remaining entities that operate them - threatening the censorship resistance at the core of bitcoin's value prop. The bitcoin protocol uses three main mechanisms to keep node operation costs low - a fixed limit on the amount of data in each block, an automatic difficulty adjustment that regulates how many blocks are produced based on current mining hash rate, and a robust dynamic transaction fee market.

Bitcoin transaction fees limit network abuse by making usage expensive. There is a cost to every transaction, set by a dynamic free market based on demand for scarce block space. It is an incredibly robust way to prevent spam without relying on centralized entities that can be corrupted or pressured.

After the 2017 bitcoin fee spike we had six years of relative quiet to build tools that would be robust in a sustained high fee market. Fortunately our tools are significantly better now but many still need improvement. Most of the pain points we see today will be mitigated.

The reality is we were never going to be fully prepared - pressure is needed to show the pain points and provide strong incentives to mitigate them.

It will be incredibly interesting to watch how projects adapt under pressure. Optimistic we see great innovation here.

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_If you are willing to wait for your transaction to confirm you can pay significantly lower fees. Learn best practices for reducing your fee burden here.

My guide for running and using your own bitcoin node can be found here._

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

I often hear "bitcoin doesn't interest me, I'm not a finance person."

Ironically, the beauty of sound money is you don't have to be. In the current system you're expected to manage a diversified investment portfolio or pay someone to do it. Bitcoin will make that optional.

— ODELL (@ODELL) September 16, 2018

At first glance bitcoin often appears overwhelming to newcomers. It is incredibly easy to get bogged down in the details of how it works or different ways to use it. Enthusiasts, such as myself, often enjoy going down the deep rabbit hole of the potential of bitcoin, possible pitfalls and theoretical scenarios, power user techniques, and the developer ecosystem. If your first touch point with bitcoin is that type of content then it is only natural to be overwhelmed. While it is important that we have a thriving community of bitcoiners dedicated to these complicated tasks - the true beauty of bitcoin lies in its simplicity. Bitcoin is simply better money. It is the best money we have ever had.

Life is complicated. Life is hard. Life is full of responsibility and surprises. Bitcoin allows us to focus on our lives while relying on a money that is simple. A money that is not controlled by any individual, company, or government. A money that cannot be easily seized or blocked. A money that cannot be devalued at will by a handful of corrupt bureaucrat who live hundreds of miles from us. A money that can be easily saved and should increase in purchasing power over time without having to learn how to "build a diversified stock portfolio" or hire someone to do it for us.

Bitcoin enables all of us to focus on our lives - our friends and family - doing what we love with the short time we have on this earth. Time is scarce. Life is complicated. Bitcoin is the most simple aspect of our complicated lives. If we spend our scarce time working then we should be able to easily save that accrued value for future generations without watching the news or understanding complicated financial markets. Bitcoin makes this possible for anyone.

Yesterday was Mother's Day. Raising a human is complicated. It is hard, it requires immense personal responsibility, it requires critical thinking, but mothers figure it out, because it is worth it. Using and saving bitcoin is simple -  simply install an app on your phone. Every mother can do it. Every person can do it.

Life is complicated. Life is beautiful. Bitcoin is simple.

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

Nostr is an open communication protocol that can be used to send messages across a distributed set of relays in a censorship resistant and robust way.

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If you missed my nostr introduction post you can find it here. My nostr account can be found here.

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We are nearly at the point that if something interesting is posted on a centralized social platform it will usually be posted by someone to nostr.

We are nearly at the point that if something interesting is posted exclusively to nostr it is cross posted by someone to various centralized social platforms.

We are nearly at the point that you can recommend a cross platform app that users can install and easily onboard without additional guides or resources.

As companies continue to build walls around their centralized platforms nostr posts will be the easiest to cross reference and verify - as companies continue to censor their users nostr is the best censorship resistant alternative - gradually then suddenly nostr will become the standard. 🫡

Current Nostr Stats

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

Will not live in a pod.
Will not eat the bugs.
Will not get the chip.
Will not get a blue check.
Will not use CBDCs.

Live Free or Die.

Why did Elon buy twitter for $44 Billion? What value does he see in it besides the greater influence that undoubtedly comes with controlling one of the largest social platforms in the world? We do not need to speculate - he made his intentions incredibly clear in his first meeting with twitter employees after his takeover - WeChat of the West.

To those that do not appreciate freedom, the value prop is clear - WeChat is incredibly powerful and successful in China.

To those that do appreciate freedom, the concern is clear - WeChat has essentially become required to live in China, has surveillance and censorship integrated at its core, and if you are banned from the app your entire livelihood is at risk. Employment, housing, payments, travel, communication, and more become extremely difficult if WeChat censors determine you have acted out of line.

The blue check is the first step in Elon's plan to bring the chinese social credit score system to the west. Users who verify their identity are rewarded with more reach and better tools than those that do not. Verified users are the main product of Elon's twitter - an extensive database of individuals and complete control of the tools he will slowly get them to rely on - it is easier to monetize cattle than free men.

If you cannot resist the temptation of the blue check in its current form you have already lost - what comes next will be much darker. If you realize the need to resist - freedom tech provides us options.

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Influencers would have you believe there is an ongoing binance bank run but bitcoin wallet data says otherwise.

- binance wallets are near all time highs
- bitfinex wallets are also trending up
- gemini and coinbase are being hit with massive withdrawals though

You should not trust custodians, they can rug you without warning. It is incredibly important you learn how to hold bitcoin yourself, but also consider not blindly trusting influencers with a ref link to shill you.

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

Humanity's Natural State Is Chaos
Without order there is chaos. Humans competing with each other for scarce resources naturally leads to conflict until one group achieves significant power and instates a "monopoly on violence."

Power Brings Stability
Power has always been the key means to achieve stability in societies. Centralized power can be incredibly effective in addressing issues such as crime, poverty, and social unrest efficiently. Unfortunately this power is often abused and corrupted.

Centralized Power Breeds Tyranny
Centralized power often leads to tyrannical rule. When a select few individuals hold control over a society, they tend to become corrupted. Centralized power structures often lack accountability and transparency, and rely too heavily on trust.

Distributed Power Cultivates Freedom
New technology that empowers individuals provide us the ability to rebuild societies from the bottom up. Strong individuals that can defend and provide for themselves will help build strong local communities on a similar foundation. The result is power being distributed throughout society rather than held by a select few.

In the short term, relying on trust and centralized power is an easy answer to mitigating chaos, but freedom tech tools provide us the ability to build on top of much stronger distributed foundations that provide stability while also cultivating individual freedom.

The solution starts with us. Empower yourself. Empower others. A grassroots freedom tech movement scaling one person at a time.

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@ 7f6db517:a4931eda

For years American bitcoin miners have argued for more efficient and free energy markets. It benefits everyone if our energy infrastructure is as efficient and robust as possible. Unfortunately, broken incentives have led to increased regulation throughout the sector, incentivizing less efficient energy sources such as solar and wind at the detriment of more efficient alternatives.

The result has been less reliable energy infrastructure for all Americans and increased energy costs across the board. This naturally has a direct impact on bitcoin miners: increased energy costs make them less competitive globally.

Bitcoin mining represents a global energy market that does not require permission to participate. Anyone can plug a mining computer into power and internet to get paid the current dynamic market price for their work in bitcoin. Using cellphone or satellite internet, these mines can be located anywhere in the world, sourcing the cheapest power available.

Absent of regulation, bitcoin mining naturally incentivizes the build out of highly efficient and robust energy infrastructure. Unfortunately that world does not exist and burdensome regulations remain the biggest threat for US based mining businesses. Jurisdictional arbitrage gives miners the option of moving to a friendlier country but that naturally comes with its own costs.

Enter AI. With the rapid development and release of AI tools comes the requirement of running massive datacenters for their models. Major tech companies are scrambling to secure machines, rack space, and cheap energy to run full suites of AI enabled tools and services. The most valuable and powerful tech companies in America have stumbled into an accidental alliance with bitcoin miners: THE NEED FOR CHEAP AND RELIABLE ENERGY.

Our government is corrupt. Money talks. These companies will push for energy freedom and it will greatly benefit us all.

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Microsoft Cloud hiring to "implement global small modular reactor and microreactor" strategy to power data centers: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-cloud-hiring-to-implement-global-small-modular-reactor-and-microreactor-strategy-to-power-data-centers/

---

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Contribute to keep No Bullshit Bitcoin news going.

• Coinswap is a decentralized protocol for private, trustless cryptocurrency swaps. It allows participants to securely swap digital assets without intermediaries, using advanced cryptographic techniques and atomic swaps to ensure privacy and security.
• This release introduces major improvements to the protocol's efficiency, security, and usability, including custom in-memory UTXO indexes, more advanced coin-selection algorithms, fidelity bond management and more.
• The update also improves user experience with full Mac support, faster Tor connections, enhanced UI/UX, a unified API, and improved protocol documentation.

"The Project is under active beta development and open for contributions and beta testing. The Coinswap market place is live in testnet4. Bug fixes and feature requests are very much welcome."

• Manuals and demo docs are available here.

What's new

• Core protocol and performance improvements:
  • Custom in-memory UTXO indexes. Frequent Core RPC calls, which caused significant delays, have been eliminated by implementing custom in-memory UTXO indexes. These indexes are also saved to disk, leading to faster wallet synchronization.
  • Coin selection. Advanced coin-selection algorithms, like those in Bitcoin Core, have been incorporated, enhancing the efficiency of creating different types of transactions.
  • Fidelity management. Maker servers now automate tasks such as checking bond expiries, redemption, and recreation for Fidelity Bonds, reducing the user's management responsibilities.
  • Taker liveness. The WaitingFundingConfirmation message has been added to keep swap connections between Takers and Makers, assisting with variable block confirmation delays.

• User experience and compatibility:

  • Mac compatibility. The crate and apps now fully support Mac.
  • Tor operations are streamlined for faster, more resilient connections. Tor addresses are now consistently linked to the wallet seed, maintaining the same onion address through system reboots.
  • The UI/UX improvements enhance the display of balances, UTXOs, offer data, fidelity bonds, and system logs. These updates make the apps more enjoyable and provide clearer coin swap logs during the swap process.

• API design improvements. Transaction creation routines have been streamlined to use a single common API, which reduces technical debt and eliminates redundant code.

• Protocol spec documentation now details how Coinswap breaks the transaction graph and improves privacy through routed swaps and amount splitting, and includes diagrams for clarity.

Source: Coinswap Protocol specification.

Announcement
GitHub Repo
Protocol Spec

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Contribute to keep No Bullshit Bitcoin news going.

• The latest firmware updates for COLDCARD devices introduce two major features: COLDCARD Co-sign (CCC) and Key Teleport between two COLDCARD Q devices using QR codes and/or NFC with a website.

What's new

• COLDCARD Co-Sign: When CCC is enabled, a second seed called the Spending Policy Key (Key C) is added to the device. This seed works with the device's Main Seed and one or more additional XPUBs (Backup Keys) to form 2-of-N multisig wallets.
  • The spending policy functions like a hardware security module (HSM), enforcing rules such as magnitude and velocity limits, address whitelisting, and 2FA authentication to protect funds while maintaining flexibility and control, and is enforced each time the Spending Policy Key is used for signing.
  • When spending conditions are met, the COLDCARD signs the partially signed bitcoin transaction (PSBT) with the Main Seed and Spending Policy Key for fund access. Once configured, the Spending Policy Key is required to view or change the policy, and violations are denied without explanation.

"You can override the spending policy at any time by signing with either a Backup Key and the Main Seed or two Backup Keys, depending on the number of keys (N) in the multisig."

• A step-by-step guide for setting up CCC is available here.

• Key Teleport for Q devices allows users to securely transfer sensitive data such as seed phrases (words, xprv), secure notes and passwords, and PSBTs for multisig. It uses QR codes or NFC, along with a helper website, to ensure reliable transmission, keeping your sensitive data protected throughout the process.

  • For more technical details, see the protocol spec.

"After you sign a multisig PSBT, you have option to “Key Teleport” the PSBT file to any one of the other signers in the wallet. We already have a shared pubkey with them, so the process is simple and does not require any action on their part in advance. Plus, starting in this firmware release, COLDCARD can finalize multisig transactions, so the last signer can publish the signed transaction via PushTX (NFC tap) to get it on the blockchain directly."

• Multisig transactions are finalized when sufficiently signed. It streamlines the use of PushTX with multisig wallets.
• Signing artifacts re-export to various media. Users are now provided with the capability to export signing products, like transactions or PSBTs, to alternative media rather than the original source. For example, if a PSBT is received through a QR code, it can be signed and saved onto an SD card if needed.
• Multisig export files are signed now. Public keys are encoded as P2PKH address for all multisg signature exports. Learn more about it here.
• NFC export usability upgrade: NFC keeps exporting until CANCEL/X is pressed.
• Added Bitcoin Safe option to Export Wallet.
• 10% performance improvement in USB upload speed for large files.
• Q: Always choose the biggest possible display size for QR.

Fixes

• Do not allow change Main PIN to same value already used as Trick PIN, even if Trick PIN is hidden.
• Fix stuck progress bar under Receiving... after a USB communications failure.
• Showing derivation path in Address Explorer for root key (m) showed double slash (//).
• Can restore developer backup with custom password other than 12 words format.
• Virtual Disk auto mode ignores already signed PSBTs (with “-signed” in file name).
• Virtual Disk auto mode stuck on “Reading…” screen sometimes.
• Finalization of foreign inputs from partial signatures. Thanks Christian Uebber!
• Temporary seed from COLDCARD backup failed to load stored multisig wallets.
• Destroy Seed also removes all Trick PINs from SE2.
• Lock Down Seed requires pressing confirm key (4) to execute.
• Q only: Only BBQr is allowed to export Coldcard, Core, and pretty descriptor.

Blog Post / Archive
GitHub Repo
CCC Guide
Key Teleport site

@ dfa02707:41ca50e3

News

• Bitcoin mining centralization in 2025. According to a blog post by b10c, Bitcoin mining was at its most decentralized in May 2017, with another favorable period from 2019 to 2022. However, starting in 2023, mining has become increasingly centralized, particularly due to the influence of large pools like Foundry and the use of proxy pooling by entities such as AntPool.

Source: b10c's blog.

• OpenSats announces the eleventh wave of Nostr grants. The five projects in this wave are the mobile live-streaming app Swae, the Nostr-over-ham-radio project HAMSTR, Vertex—a Web-of-Trust (WOT) service for Nostr developers, Nostr Double Ratchet for end-to-end encrypted messaging, and the Nostr Game Engine for building games and applications integrated with the Nostr ecosystem.
• New Spiral grantee: l0rinc. In February 2024, l0rinc transitioned to full-time work on Bitcoin Core. His efforts focus on performance benchmarking and optimizations, enhancing code quality, conducting code reviews, reducing block download times, optimizing memory usage, and refactoring code.
• Project Eleven offers 1 BTC to break Bitcoin's cryptography with a quantum computer. The quantum computing research organization has introduced the Q-Day Prize, a global challenge that offers 1 BTC to the first team capable of breaking an elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC) key using Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer. The prize will be awarded to the first team to successfully accomplish this breakthrough by April 5, 2026.
• Unchained has launched the Bitcoin Legacy Project. The initiative seeks to advance the Bitcoin ecosystem through a bitcoin-native donor-advised fund platform (DAF), investments in community hubs, support for education and open-source development, and a commitment to long-term sustainability with transparent annual reporting.
  • In its first year, the program will provide support to Bitcoin hubs in Nashville, Austin, and Denver.
  • Support also includes $50,000 to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a $150,000 commitment at the University of Austin, and up to $250,000 in research grants through the Bitcoin Scholars program.

"Unchained will match grants 1:1 made to partner organizations who support Bitcoin Core development when made through the Unchained-powered bitcoin DAF, up to 1 BTC," was stated in a blog post.

• Block launched open-source tools for Bitcoin treasury management. These include a dashboard for managing corporate bitcoin holdings and provides a real-time BTC-to-USD price quote API, released as part of the Block Open Source initiative. The company’s own instance of the bitcoin holdings dashboard is available here.

Source: block.xyz

• Bull Bitcoin expands to Mexico, enabling anyone in the country to receive pesos from anywhere in the world straight from a Bitcoin wallet. Additionally, users can now buy Bitcoin with a Mexican bank account.

"Bull Bitcoin strongly believes in Bitcoin’s economic potential in Mexico, not only for international remittances and tourism, but also for Mexican individuals and companies to reclaim their financial sovereignty and protect their wealth from inflation and the fragility of traditional financial markets," said Francis Pouliot, Founder and CEO of Bull Bitcoin.

• Corporate bitcoin holdings hit a record high in Q1 2025. According to Bitwise, public companies' adoption of Bitcoin has hit an all-time high. In Q1 2025, these firms collectively hold over 688,000 BTC, marking a 16.11% increase from the previous quarter. This amount represents 3.28% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply.

Source: Bitwise.

• The Bitcoin Bond Company for institutions has launched with the aim of acquiring $1 trillion in Bitcoin over 21 years. It utilizes secure, transparent, and compliant bond-like products backed by Bitcoin.
• The U.S. Senate confirmed Paul Atkins as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At his confirmation hearing, Atkins emphasized the need for a clear framework for digital assets. He aims to collaborate with the CFTC and Congress to address jurisdiction and rulemaking gaps, aligning with the Trump administration's goal to position the U.S. as a leader in Bitcoin and blockchain finance.
• Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been released from custody. Griffith, whose sentence was reduced to 56 months, is now seeking a pardon. He was initially sentenced to 63 months for allegedly violating international sanctions laws by providing technical advice on using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to evade sanctions during a presentation titled 'Blockchains for Peace' in North Korea.
• No-KYC exchange eXch to close down under money laundering scrutiny. The privacy-focused cryptocurrency trading platform said it will cease operations on May 1. This decision follows allegations that the platform was used by North Korea's Lazarus Group for money laundering. eXch revealed it is the subject of an active "transatlantic operation" aimed at shutting down the platform and prosecuting its team for "money laundering and terrorism."
• Blockstream combats ESP32 FUD concerning Jade signers. The company stated that after reviewing the vulnerability disclosed in early March, Jade was found to be secure. Espressif Systems, the designer of the ESP32, has since clarified that the "undocumented commands" do not constitute a "backdoor."

• Bank of America is lobbying for regulations that favor banks over tech firms in stablecoin issuance. The bank's CEO Brian Moynihan is working with groups such as the American Bankers Association to advance the issuance of a fully reserved, 1:1 backed "Bank of America coin." If successful, this could limit stablecoin efforts by non-banks like Tether, Circle, and others, reports The Block.
• Tether to back OCEAN Pool with its hashrate. "As a company committed to financial freedom and open access, we see supporting decentralization in Bitcoin mining as essential to the network’s long-term integrity," said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
• Bitdeer to expand its self-mining operations to navigate tariffs. The Singapore-based mining company is advancing plans to produce machines in the U.S. while reducing its mining hardware sales. This response is in light of increasing uncertainties related to U.S. trade policy, as reported by Bloomberg.
• Tether acquires $32M in Bitdeer shares. The firm has boosted its investment in Bitdeer during a wider market sell-off, with purchases in early to mid-April amounting to about $32 million, regulatory filings reveal.
• US Bitcoin miner manufacturer Auradine has raised $153 million in a Series C funding round as it expands into AI infrastructure. The round was led by StepStone Group and included participation from Maverick Silicon, Premji Invest, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayfield, MARA Holdings, GSBackers, and other existing investors. The firm raised to over $300 million since its inception in 2022.
• Voltage has partnered with BitGo to [enable](https://www.voltage.cloud/blog/bitgo-and-voltage-team-up-to-deliver-instant-bitcoin-and-stabl

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Good morning (good night?)! The No Bullshit Bitcoin news feed is now available on Moody's Dashboard! A huge shoutout to sir Clark Moody for integrating our feed.

Headlines

• Spiral welcomes Ben Carman. The developer will work on the LDK server and a new SDK designed to simplify the onboarding process for new self-custodial Bitcoin users.

• The Bitcoin Dev Kit Foundation announced new corporate members for 2025, including AnchorWatch, CleanSpark, and Proton Foundation. The annual dues from these corporate members fund the small team of open-source developers responsible for maintaining the core BDK libraries and related free and open-source software (FOSS) projects.
• Strategy increases Bitcoin holdings to 538,200 BTC. In the latest purchase, the company has spent more than $555M to buy 6,556 coins through proceeds of two at-the-market stock offering programs.
• Spar supermarket experiments with Bitcoin payments in Zug, Switzerland. The store has introduced a new payment method powered by the Lightning Network. The implementation was facilitated by DFX Swiss, a service that supports seamless conversions between bitcoin and legacy currencies.

• The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) wants to contain 'crypto' risks. A report titled "Cryptocurrencies and Decentralised Finance: Functions and Financial Stability Implications" calls for expanding research into "how new forms of central bank money, capital controls, and taxation policies can counter the risks of widespread crypto adoption while still fostering technological innovation."
• "Global Implications of Scam Centres, Underground Banking, and Illicit Online Marketplaces in Southeast Asia." According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, criminal organizations from East and Southeast Asia are swiftly extending their global reach. These groups are moving beyond traditional scams and trafficking, creating sophisticated online networks that include unlicensed cryptocurrency exchanges, encrypted communication platforms, and stablecoins, fueling a massive fraud economy on an industrial scale.
• Slovenia is considering a 25% capital gains tax on Bitcoin profits for individuals. The Ministry of Finance has proposed legislation to impose this tax on gains from cryptocurrency transactions, though exchanging one cryptocurrency for another would remain exempt. At present, individual 'crypto' traders in Slovenia are not taxed.
• Circle, BitGo, Coinbase, and Paxos plan to apply for U.S. bank charters or licenses. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, major crypto companies are planning to apply for U.S. bank charters or licenses. These firms are pursuing limited licenses that would permit them to issue stablecoins, as the U.S. Congress deliberates on legislation mandating licensing for stablecoin issuers.

"Established banks, like Bank of America, are hoping to amend the current drafts of [stablecoin] legislation in such a way that nonbanks are more heavily restricted from issuing stablecoins," people familiar with the matter told The Block.

• Charles Schwab to launch spot Bitcoin trading by 2026. The financial investment firm, managing over $10 trillion in assets, has revealed plans to introduce spot Bitcoin trading for its clients within the next year.

Use the tools

• Bitcoin Safe v1.2.3 expands QR SignMessage compatibility for all QR-UR-compatible hardware signers (SpecterDIY, KeyStone, Passport, Jade; already supported COLDCARD Q). It also adds the ability to import wallets via QR, ensuring compatibility with Keystone's latest firmware (2.0.6), alongside other improvements.
• Minibits v0.2.2-beta, an ecash wallet for Android devices, packages many changes to align the project with the planned iOS app release. New features and improvements include the ability to lock ecash to a receiver's pubkey, faster confirmations of ecash minting and payments thanks to WebSockets, UI-related fixes, and more.
• Zeus v0.11.0-alpha1 introduces Cashu wallets tied to embedded LND wallets. Navigate to Settings > Ecash to enable it. Other wallet types can still sweep funds from Cashu tokens. Zeus Pay now supports Cashu address types in Zaplocker, Cashu, and NWC modes.
• LNDg v1.10.0, an advanced web interface designed for analyzing Lightning Network Daemon (LND) data and automating node management tasks, introduces performance improvements, adds a new metrics page for unprofitable and stuck channels, and displays warnings for batch openings. The Profit and Loss Chart has been updated to include on-chain costs. Advanced settings have been added for users who would like their channel database size to be read remotely (the default remains local). Additionally, the AutoFees tool now uses aggregated pubkey metrics for multiple channels with the same peer.
• Nunchuk Desktop v1.9.45 release brings the latest bug fixes and improvements.
• Blockstream Green iOS v4.1.8 has renamed L-BTC to LBTC, and improves translations of notifications, login time, and background payments.
• Blockstream Green Android v4.1.8 has added language preference in App Settings and enables an Android data backup option for disaster recovery. Additionally, it fixes issues with Jade entry point PIN timeout and Trezor passphrase input.
• Torq v2.2.2, an advanced Lightning node management software designed to handle large nodes with over 1000 channels, fixes bugs that caused channel balance to not be updated in some cases and channel "peer total local balance" not getting updated.
• Stack Wallet v2.1.12, a multicoin wallet by Cypher Stack, fixes an issue with Xelis introduced in the latest release for Windows.
• ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus v1.0.29.1, a forked version from the NerdAxe miner that was modified for use on the NerdQAxe+, is now available.
• Zark enables sending sats to an npub using Bark.

• Erk is a novel variation of the Ark protocol that completely removes the need for user interactivity in rounds, addressing one of Ark's key limitations: the requirement for users to come online before their VTXOs expire.
• Aegis v0.1.1 is now available. It is a Nostr event signer app for iOS devices.
• Nostash is a NIP-07 Nostr signing extension for Safari. It is a fork of Nostore and is maintained by Terry Yiu. Available on iOS TestFlight.
• Amber v3.2.8, a Nostr event signer for Android, delivers the latest fixes and improvements.
• Nostur v1.20.0, a Nostr client for iOS, adds

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Headlines

• Twenty One Capital is set to launch with over 42,000 BTC in its treasury. This new Bitcoin-native firm, backed by Tether and SoftBank, is planned to go public via a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners and will be led by Jack Mallers, co-founder and CEO of Strike. According to a report by the Financial Times, the company aims to replicate the model of Michael Saylor with his company, MicroStrategy.
• Florida's SB 868 proposes a backdoor into encrypted platforms. The bill and its House companion have both passed through their respective committees and are headed to a full vote. If enacted, SB 868 would require social media companies to decrypt teens' private messages, ban disappearing messages, allow unrestricted parental access to private messages, and likely eliminate encryption for all minors altogether.
• Paul Atkins has officially assumed the role of the 34th Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is a return to the agency for Atkins, who previously served as an SEC Commissioner from 2002 to 2008 under the George W. Bush administration. He has committed to advancing the SEC’s mission of fostering capital formation, safeguarding investors, and ensuring fair and efficient markets.
• Solosatoshi.com has sold over 10,000 open-source miners, adding more than 10 PH of hashpower to the Bitcoin network.

"Thank you, Bitaxe community. OSMU developers, your brilliance built this. Supporters, your belief drives us. Customers, your trust powers 10,000+ miners and 10PH globally. Together, we’re decentralizing Bitcoin’s future. Last but certainly not least, thank you@skot9000 for not only creating a freedom tool, but instilling the idea into thousands of people, that Bitcoin mining can be for everyone again," said the firm on X.

• OCEAN's DATUM has found 100 blocks. "Over 65% of OCEAN’s miners are using DATUM, and that number is growing every day. This means block template construction is making its way back into the hands of the miners, which is not only the most profitable for miners on OCEAN but also one of the best things for Bitcoin," stated the mining pool.

Source: orangesurf

• Arch Labs has secured $13 million to develop "ArchVM" and integrate smart-contract functionality with Bitcoin. The funding round, valuing the company at $200 million, was led by Pantera Capital, as announced on Tuesday.
• Tesla still holds nearly $1 billion in bitcoin. According to the automaker's latest earnings report, the firm reported digital asset holdings worth $951 million as of March 31.
• The European Central Bank is pushing for amendments to the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets legislation (MiCA), just months after its implementation. According to Politico's report on Tuesday, the ECB is concerned that U.S. support for cryptocurrency, particularly stablecoins, could cause economic harm to the 27-nation bloc.
• TABConf 2025 is scheduled to take place from October 13-16, 2025. This prominent technical Bitcoin conference is dedicated to community building, education, and developer support, and it is set to return in October. Get your tickets here.
• Kaduna Lightning Development Bootcamp. From May 14th to 17th, the Bitcoin Lightning Developer Bootcamp will take place in Kaduna, Nigeria. Thisevent offers four dynamic days of coding, learning, and networking. Organized by Africa Free Routing and supported by Btrust, Tether, and African Bitcoiners, this bootcamp is designed as a gateway for African developers eager to advance their skills in Bitcoin and Lightning development. Apply here.

Source: African Bitcoiners.

Use the tools

• Core Lightning (CLN) v25.02.2 as been released to fix a broken Docker image. The issue was caused by an SQLite version that did not support an advanced query.
• Blitz wallet v0.4.4-beta introduces several updates and improvements, including the prevention of duplicate ecash payments, fixes for background ecash invoice handling, the ability for users to send payments to BOLT12 invoices from their Liquid balance, support for Blink QR codes, a lowered minimum amount for Lightning-to-Liquid payments to 100 sats, the option to initiate a node sync via a swipe gesture on the wallet's home screen, and the introduction of opt-in or opt-out functionality for newly implemented crash analytics via settings.
• Utreexo v0.5.0, a hash-based dynamic accumulator, is now available.
• Specter v2.1.1 is now available on StartOS. "This update brings compatibility with Bitcoin Core v28 and incorporates several upstream improvements," said developer Alex71btc.
• ESP-Miner (AxeOS) v2.7.0b1 is now available for testing.
• NodeGuard v0.16.1, a treasury management solution for Lightning nodes, has been released.
• The latest stacker.news updates include prompts to add a receiving wallet when posting or making comments (for new users), an option to randomize poll choices, improved URL search, and a few other enhancements. A bug fix for territories created after 9/19/24 has been implemented to reward 70% of their revenue to owners instead of 50%.

Other stuff

• The April edition of the 256 Foundation's newsletter is now available. It includes the latest mining news, Bitcoin network health updates, project developments, and a tutorial on how to update FutureBit's Apollo 1 to the Apollo 2 software.
• Siggy47 has posted a comprehensive RoboSats guide on stacker.news.
• Learn how to run your own Nostr relay using Citrine and Cloudflare Tunnels by following this step-by-step guide by Dhalism.
• Max Guise has written a Bitkey roadmap update for April 2025.

• PlebLab has uploaded a video on how to build a Rust wallet with LDK Node by Ben Carman.

• Do you want more? Subscribe and get No Bullshit GM report straight to your mailbox and No Bullshit Bitcoin on Nostr.

• Feedback or tips? Drop it here.
• #FREESAMOURAI

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Headlines

• Spiral renews support for Dan Gould and Joschisan. The organization has renewed support for Dan Gould, who is developing the Payjoin Dev Kit (PDK), and Joschisan, a Fedimint developer focused on simplifying federations.
• Metaplanet buys another 145 BTC. The Tokyo-listed company has purchased an additional 145 BTC for $13.6 million. Their total bitcoin holdings now stand at 5,000 coins, worth around $428.1 million.
• Semler Scientific has increased its bitcoin holdings to 3,303 BTC. The company acquired an additional 111 BTC at an average price of $90,124. The purchase was funded through proceeds from an at-the-market offering and cash reserves, as stated in a press release.
• The Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Bill 2025 introduced in Kenya. The new legislation aims to establish a comprehensive legal framework for licensing, regulating, and supervising virtual asset service providers (VASPs), with strict penalties for non-compliant entities.
• Russian government to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The country's Ministry of Finance and Central Bank announced plans to establish a trading platform for "highly qualified investors" that "will legalize crypto assets and bring crypto operations out of the shadows."
• All virtual asset service providers expect to be fully compliant with the Travel Rule by the end of 2025. A survey by financial surveillance specialist Notabene reveals that 90% of virtual asset service providers (VASPs) expect full Travel Rule compliance by mid-2025, with all aiming for compliance by year-end. The survey also shows a significant rise in VASPs blocking withdrawals until beneficiary information is confirmed, increasing from 2.9% in 2024 to 15.4% now. Additionally, about 20% of VASPs return deposits if originator data is missing.
• UN claims Bitcoin mining is a "powerful tool" for money laundering. The Rage's analysis suggests that the recent United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report on crime in South-East Asia makes little sense and hints at the potential introduction of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures at the mining level.
• Riot Platforms has obtained a $100 million credit facility from Coinbase Credit, using bitcoin as collateral for short-term funding to support its expansion. The firm's CEO, Jason Les, stated that this facility is crucial for diversifying financing sources and driving long-term stockholder value through strategic growth initiatives.
• Bitdeer raises $179M in loans and equity amid Bitcoin chip push. The Miner Mag reports that Bitdeer entered into a loan agreement with its affiliate Matrixport for up to $200 million in April, as disclosed in its annual report filed on Monday.
• Federal Reserve retracts guidance discouraging banks from engaging in 'crypto.' The U.S. Federal Reserve withdrew guidance that discouraged banks from crypto and stablecoin activities, as announced by its Board of Governors on Thursday. This includes rescinding a 2022 supervisory letter requiring prior notification of crypto activities and 2023 stablecoin requirements.

"As a result, the Board will no longer expect banks to provide notification and will instead monitor banks' crypto-asset activities through the normal supervisory process," reads the FED statement.

• UAE-based Islamic bank ruya launches Shari’ah-compliant bitcoin investing. The bank has become the world’s first Islamic bank to provide direct access to virtual asset investments, including Bitcoin, via its mobile app, per Bitcoin Magazine.
• U.S. 'crypto' scam losses amounted to $9.3B in 2024. The US The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reported $9.3 billion losses in cryptocurrency-related scams in 2024, noting a troubling trend of scams targeting older Americans, which accounted for over $2.8 billion of those losses.

Source: FBI.

• North Korean hackers establish fake companies to target 'crypto' developers. Silent Push researchers reported that hackers linked to the Lazarus Group created three shell companies, two of which are based in the U.S., with the objective of spreading malware through deceptive job interview scams aimed at individuals seeking jobs in cryptocurrency companies.
• Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge utilizes the BitVM2 programming language to inherit validity from Bitcoin, allegedly providing "the safest and most trust-minimized way to use BTC in decentralized finance."
• Hesperides University offers a Master’s degree in Bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine reports the launch of the first-ever Spanish-language Master’s program dedicated exclusively to Bitcoin. Starting April 28, 2025, this fully online program will equip professionals with technical, economic, legal, and philosophical skills to excel in the Bitcoin era.
• BTC in D.C. event is set to take place on September 30 - October 1 in Washington, D.C. Learn more about this initiative here.

Use the tools

• Bitcoin Keeper just got a new look. Version 2.2.0 of the mobile multisig app brought a new branding design, along with a Keeper Private tier, testnet support, ability to import and export BIP-329 labels, and the option to use a Server Key with multiple users.
  • Earlier this month the project also announced Keeper Learn service, offering clear and guided Bitcoin learning sessions for both groups and individuals.
• Keeper Desktop v0.2.2, a companion desktop app for Bitcoin Keeper mobile app, received a renewed branding update, too.

The evolution of Bitcoin Keeper logo. Source: BitHyve blog.

• Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.25 updates GDK to v0.75.1 and fixes amount parsing issues when switching from fiat denomination to Liquid asset.
• Lightning Loop v0.31.0-beta enhances the loop listswaps command by improving the ability to filter the response.
• Lightning-kmp v1.10.0, an implementation of the Lightning Network in Kotlin, is now available.
• LND v0.19.0-beta.rc3, the latest beta release candidate of LND is now ready for testing.
• ZEUS v0.11.0-alpha2 is now available for testing, too. It's nuts.
• JoinMarket Fidelity Bond Simulator helps potential JoinMarket makers evaluate their competitive position in the market based on fidelity bonds.
• UTXOscope is a text-only Bitcoin blockchain analysis tool that visualizes price dynamics using only on-chain data. The

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Contribute to keep No Bullshit Bitcoin news going.

News

• Spiral welcomes Ben Carman. The developer will work on the LDK server and a new SDK designed to simplify the onboarding process for new self-custodial Bitcoin users.
• Spiral renews support for Dan Gould and Joschisan. The organization has renewed support for Dan Gould, who is developing the Payjoin Dev Kit (PDK), and Joschisan, a Fedimint developer focused on simplifying federations.
• The Bitcoin Dev Kit Foundation announced new corporate members for 2025, including AnchorWatch, CleanSpark, and Proton Foundation. The annual dues from these corporate members fund the small team of open-source developers responsible for maintaining the core BDK libraries and related free and open-source software (FOSS) projects.
• The European Central Bank is pushing for amendments to the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets legislation (MiCA), just months after its implementation. According to Politico's report on Tuesday, the ECB is concerned that U.S. support for cryptocurrency, particularly stablecoins, could cause economic harm to the 27-nation bloc.
• Slovenia is considering a 25% capital gains tax on Bitcoin profits for individuals. The Ministry of Finance has proposed legislation to impose this tax on gains from cryptocurrency transactions, though exchanging one cryptocurrency for another would remain exempt. At present, individual 'crypto' traders in Slovenia are not taxed.
• The Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Bill 2025 introduced in Kenya. The new legislation aims to establish a comprehensive legal framework for licensing, regulating, and supervising virtual asset service providers (VASPs), with strict penalties for non-compliant entities.
• Circle, BitGo, Coinbase, and Paxos plan to apply for U.S. bank charters or licenses. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, major crypto companies are planning to apply for U.S. bank charters or licenses. These firms are pursuing limited licenses that would permit them to issue stablecoins, as the U.S. Congress deliberates on legislation mandating licensing for stablecoin issuers.

"Established banks, like Bank of America, are hoping to amend the current drafts of [stablecoin] legislation in such a way that nonbanks are more heavily restricted from issuing stablecoins," people familiar with the matter told The Block.

• Paul Atkins has officially assumed the role of the 34th Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is a return to the agency for Atkins, who previously served as an SEC Commissioner from 2002 to 2008 under the George W. Bush administration. He has committed to advancing the SEC’s mission of fostering capital formation, safeguarding investors, and ensuring fair and efficient markets.
• Federal Reserve retracts guidance discouraging banks from engaging in 'crypto.' The U.S. Federal Reserve withdrew guidance that discouraged banks from crypto and stablecoin activities, as announced by its Board of Governors on Thursday. This includes rescinding a 2022 supervisory letter requiring prior notification of crypto activities and 2023 stablecoin requirements.

"As a result, the Board will no longer expect banks to provide notification and will instead monitor banks' crypto-asset activities through the normal supervisory process," reads the FED statement.

• Russian government to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The country's Ministry of Finance and Central Bank announced plans to establish a trading platform for "highly qualified investors" that "will legalize crypto assets and bring crypto operations out of the shadows."
• Twenty One Capital is set to launch with over 42,000 BTC in its treasury. This new Bitcoin-native firm, backed by Tether and SoftBank, is planned to go public via a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners and will be led by Jack Mallers, co-founder and CEO of Strike. According to a report by the Financial Times, the company aims to replicate the model of Michael Saylor with his company, MicroStrategy.
• Strategy increases Bitcoin holdings to 538,200 BTC. In the latest purchase, the company has spent more than $555M to buy 6,556 coins through proceeds of two at-the-market stock offering programs.
• Metaplanet buys another 145 BTC. The Tokyo-listed company has purchased an additional 145 BTC for $13.6 million. Their total bitcoin holdings now stand at 5,000 coins, worth around $428.1 million.
• Semler Scientific has increased its bitcoin holdings to 3,303 BTC. The company acquired an additional 111 BTC at an average price of $90,124. The purchase was funded through proceeds from an at-the-market offering and cash reserves, as stated in a press release.
• Tesla still holds nearly $1 billion in bitcoin. According to the automaker's latest earnings report, the firm reported digital asset holdings worth $951 million as of March 31.
• Spar supermarket experiments with Bitcoin payments in Zug, Switzerland. The store has introduced a new payment method powered by the Lightning Network. The implementation was facilitated by DFX Swiss, a service that supports seamless conversions between bitcoin and legacy currencies.

• Charles Schwab to launch spot Bitcoin trading by 2026. The financial investment firm, managing over $10 trillion in assets, has revealed plans to introduce spot Bitcoin trading for its clients within the next year.
• Arch Labs has secured $13 million to develop "ArchVM" and integrate smart-contract functionality with Bitcoin. The funding round, valuing the company at $200 million, was led by Pantera Capital, as announced on Tuesday.
• Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge utilizes the BitVM2 programming language to inherit validity from Bitcoin, allegedly providing "the safest and most trust-minimized way to use BTC in decentralized finance."
• UAE-based Islamic bank ruya launches Shari’ah-compliant bitcoin investing. The bank has become the world’s first Islamic bank to provide direct access to virtual asset investments, including Bitcoin, via its mobile app, per Bitcoin Magazine.
• Solosatoshi.com has sold over 10,000 open-source miners, adding more than 10 PH of hashpower to the Bitcoin network.

"Thank you, Bitaxe community. OSMU developers, your brilliance built this. Supporters, your belief drives us. Customers, your trust powers 10,000+ miners and 10PH globally. Together, we’re decentralizing Bitcoin’s future. Last but certainly not least, thank you@skot9000 for not only creating a freedom tool, but instilling the idea into thousands of people, that Bitcoin mining can be for everyone again," said the firm on X.

• OCEAN's DATUM has found 100 blocks. "Over 65% of OCEAN’s miners are using DATUM, and that number is growing every day. This means block template construction is making its way back into the hands of the miners, which is not only the most profitable

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• RoboSats v0.7.7-alpha is now available!

NOTE: "This version of clients is not compatible with older versions of coordinators. Coordinators must upgrade first, make sure you don't upgrade your client while this is marked as pre-release."

• This version brings a new and improved coordinators view with reviews signed both by the robot and the coordinator, adds market price sources in coordinator profiles, shows a correct warning for canceling non-taken orders after a payment attempt, adds Uzbek sum currency, and includes package library updates for coordinators.

Source: RoboSats.

• siggy47 is writing daily RoboSats activity reviews on stacker.news. Check them out here.
• Stay up-to-date with RoboSats on Nostr.

What's new

• New coordinators view (see the picture above).
• Available coordinator reviews signed by both the robot and the coordinator.
• Coordinators now display market price sources in their profiles.

Source: RoboSats.

• Fix for wrong message on cancel button when taking an order. Users are now warned if they try to cancel a non taken order after a payment attempt.
• Uzbek sum currency now available.
• For coordinators: library updates.
• Add docker frontend (#1861).
• Add order review token (#1869).
• Add UZS migration (#1875).
• Fixed tests review (#1878).
• Nostr pubkey for Robot (#1887).

New contributors

• @hexlorn made their first contribution in #1858.
• @umk0m1qk made their first contribution in #1864.

Full Changelog: v0.7.6-alpha...v0.7.7-alpha

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• Wasabi Wallet v2.6.0 "Prometheus" is a major update for the project, focused on resilience and independence from centralized systems.
• Key features include support for BIP 158 block filters for direct node synchronization, a revamped full node integration for easier setup without third-party reliance, SLIP 39 share backups for flexible wallet recovery (sponsored by Trezor), and a Nostr-based update manager for censorship-resistant updates.
• Additional improvements include UI bug fixes, a new fallback for transaction broadcasting, updated code signing, stricter JSON serialization, and options to avoid third-party rate providers, alongside various under-the-hood enhancements.

This new version brings us closer to our ultimate goal: ensuring Wasabi is future-proof," said the developers, while also highlighting the following key areas of focus for the project:

• Ensuring users can always fully and securely use their client.
• Making contribution and forks easy through a codebase of the highest quality possible: understandable, maintainable, and improvable.

"As we achieve our survival goals, expect more cutting-edge improvements in Bitcoin privacy and self-custody. Thank you for the trust you place in us by using Wasabi," was stated in the release notes.

What's new

• Support for Standard BIP 158 Block Filters. Wasabi now syncs using BIP 158 filters without a backend/indexer, connecting directly to a user's node. This boosts sync speed, resilience, and allows full sovereignty without specific server dependency.
• Full Node Integration Rework. The old integration has been replaced with a simpler, more adaptable system. It’s not tied to a specific Bitcoin node fork, doesn’t need the node on the same machine as Wasabi, and requires no changes to the node’s setup.
  • "Simply enable the RPC server on your node and point Wasabi to it," said the developers. This ensures all Bitcoin network activities—like retrieving blocks, fee estimations, block filters, and transaction broadcasting—go through your own node, avoiding reliance on third parties.
• Create & Recover SLIP 39 Shares. Users now create and recover wallets with multiple share backups using SLIP 39 standard.

"Special thanks to Trezor (SatoshiLabs) for sponsoring this amazing feature."

• Nostr Update Manager. This version implements a pioneering system with the Nostr protocol for update information and downloads, replacing reliance on GitHub. This enhances the project's resilience, ensuring updates even if GitHub is unavailable, while still verifying updates with the project's secure certificate.
• Updated Avalonia to v11.2.7, fixes for UI bugs (including restoring Minimize on macOS Sequoia).
• Added a configurable third-party fallback for broadcasting transactions if other methods fail.
• Replaced Windows Code Signing Certificate with Azure Trusted Signing.
• Many bug fixes, improved codebase, and enhanced CI pipeline.
• Added the option to avoid using any third-party Exchange Rate and Fee Rate providers (Wasabi can work without them).
• Rebuilt all JSON Serialization mechanisms avoiding default .NET converters. Serialization is now stricter.

Full Changelog: v2.5.1...v2.6.0

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• Version 1.3 of Bitcoin Safe introduces a redesigned interactive chart, quick receive feature, updated icons, a mempool preview window, support for Child Pays For Parent (CPFP) and testnet4, preconfigured testnet demo wallets, as well as various bug fixes and improvements.

• Upcoming updates for Bitcoin Safe include Compact Block Filters.

"Compact Block Filters increase the network privacy dramatically, since you're not asking an electrum server to give you your transactions. They are a little slower than electrum servers. For a savings wallet like Bitcoin Safe this should be OK," writes the project's developer Andreas Griffin.

• Learn more about the current and upcoming features of Bitcoin Safe wallet here.

What's new in v1.3

• Redesign of Chart, Quick Receive, Icons, and Mempool Preview (by @design-rrr).
• Interactive chart. Clicking on it now jumps to transaction, and selected transactions are now highlighted.

• Speed up transactions with Child Pays For Parent (CPFP).
• BDK 1.2 (upgraded from 0.32).
• Testnet4 support.
• Preconfigured Testnet demo wallets.
• Cluster unconfirmed transactions so that parents/children are next to each other.
• Customizable columns for all tables (optional view: Txid, Address index, and more)
• Bug fixes and other improvements.

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• This release introduces Payjoin v2 functionality to Bitcoin wallets on Cake, along with several UI/UX improvements and bug fixes.
• The Payjoin v2 protocol enables asynchronous, serverless coordination between sender and receiver, removing the need to be online simultaneously or maintain a server. This simplifies privacy-focused transactions for regular users.

"I cannot speak highly enough of how amazing it has been to work with @bitgould and Jaad from the@payjoindevkit team, they're doing incredible work. None of this would be possible without them and their tireless efforts. PDK made it so much easier to ship Payjoin v2 than it would have been otherwise, and I can't wait to see other wallets jump in and give back to PDK as they implement it like we did," said Seth For Privacy, VP at Cake Wallet.

How to started with Payjoin in Cake Wallet:

1. Open the app menu sidebar and click Privacy.
2. Toggle the Use Payjoin option.
3. Now on your receive screen you'll see an option to copy a Payjoin URL

• Bull Bitcoin Wallet v0.4.0 introduced Payjoin v2 support in late December 2024. However, the current implementations are not interoperable at the moment, an issue that should be addressed in the next release of the Bull Bitcoin Wallet.

• Cake Wallet was one of the first wallets to introduce Silent Payments back in May 2024. However, users may encounter sync issues while using this feature at present, which will be resolved in the next release of Cake Wallet.

What's new

• Payjoin v2 implementation.
• Wallet group improvements: Enhanced management of multiple wallets.
• Various bug fixes: improving overall stability and user experience.
• Monero (XMR) enhancements.

Learn more about using, implementing, and understanding BIP 77: Payjoin Version 2 using the payjoin crate in Payjoin Dev Kit here.

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News

• Wallet of Satoshi teases a comeback in the US market with a non-custodial product. According to an announcement on X, the widely popular custodial Lightning wallet is preparing to re-enter the United States market with a non-custodial wallet. It is unclear whether the product will be open-source, but the project has clarified that "there will be no KYC on any Wallet of Satoshi, ever!" Wallet of Satoshi ceased serving customers in the United States in November 2023.

• Vulnerability disclosure: Remote crash due to addr message spam in Bitcoin Core versions before v29. Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Poinsot disclosed an integer overflow bug that crashes a node if spammed with addr messages over an extended period. A fix was released on April 14, 2025, in Bitcoin Core v29.0. The issue is rated Low severity.
• Coinbase Know Your Customer (KYC) data leak. The U.S. Department of Justice, including its Criminal Division in Washington, is investigating a cyberattack on Coinbase. The incident involved cybercriminals attempting to extort $20 million from Coinbase to prevent stolen customer data from being leaked online. Although the data breach affected less than 1% of the exchange's users, Coinbase now faces at least six lawsuits following the revelation that some customer support agents were bribed as part of the extortion scheme.
• Fold has launched Bitcoin Gift Cards, enabling users to purchase bitcoin for personal use or as gifts, redeemable via the Fold app. These cards are currently available on Fold’s website and are planned to expand to major retailers nationwide later this year.

"Our mission is to make bitcoin simple and approachable for everyone. The Bitcoin Gift Card brings bitcoin to millions of Americans in a familiar way. Available at the places people already shop, the Bitcoin Gift Card is the best way to gift bitcoin to others," said Will Reeves, Chairman and CEO of Fold.

• Corporate treasuries hold nearly 1.1 million BTC, representing about 5.5% of the total circulating supply (1,082,164 BTC), per BitcoinTreasuries.net data. Recent purchases include Strategy adding 7,390 BTC (total: 576,230 BTC), Metplanet acquiring 1,004 BTC (total: 7,800 BTC), Tether holding over 100,521 BTC, and XXI Capital, led by Jack Mallers, starting with 31,500 BTC.
  • Meanwhile, a group of investors has filed a class action lawsuit against Strategy and its executive Michael Saylor. The lawsuit alleges that Strategy made overly optimistic projections using fair value accounting under new FASB rules while downplaying potential losses.
• The U.S. Senate voted to advance the GENIUS stablecoin bill for further debate before a final vote to pass it. Meanwhile, the House is crafting its own stablecoin legislation to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins and their issuers in the U.S, reports CoinDesk.
• French 'crypto' entrepreneurs get priority access to emergency police services. French Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, agreed on measures to enhance security for 'crypto' professionals during a meeting on Friday. This follows a failed kidnapping attempt on Tuesday targeting the family of a cryptocurrency exchange CEO, and two other kidnappings earlier this year.
• Brussels Court declares tracking-based ads illegal in EU. The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled tracking-based online ads illegal in the EU due to an inadequate consent model. Major tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and X are affected by the decision, as their consent pop-ups fail to protect privacy in real-time bidding, writes The Record.
• Telegram shares data on 22,777 users in Q1 2025, a significant increase from the 5,826 users' data shared during the same period in 2024. This significant increase follows the arrest of CEO and founder Pavel Durov last year.
• An Australian judge has ruled that Bitcoin is money, potentially exempting it from capital gains tax in the country. If upheld on appeal, this interim decision could lead to taxpayer refunds worth up to $1 billion, per tax lawyer Adrian Cartland.

Use the tools

• Bitcoin Safe v1.3.0 a secure and user-friendly Bitcoin savings wallet for beginners and advanced users, introduces an interactive chart, Child Pays For Parent (CPFP) support, testnet4 compatibility, preconfigured testnet demo wallets, various bug fixes, and other improvements.
• BlueWallet v7.1.8 brings numerous bug fixes, dependency updates, and a new search feature for addresses and transactions.
• Aqua Wallet v0.3.0 is out, offering beta testing for the reloadable Dolphin card (in partnership with Visa) for spending bitcoin and Liquid BTC. It also includes a new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text scanner to read text addresses like QR codes, colored numbers on addresses for better readability, a reduced minimum for spending and swapping Liquid Bitcoin to 100 sats, plus other fixes and enhancements.

Source: Aqua wallet.

• The latest firmware updates for COLDCARD Mk4 v5.4.3 and Q v1.3.3 are now available, featuring the latest enhancements and bug fixes.
• Nunchuk Android v1.9.68.1 and iOS v1.9.79 introduce support for custom blockchain explorers, wallet archiving, re-ordering wallets on the home screen via long-press, and an anti-fee sniping setting.
• BDK-cli v1.0.0, a CLI wallet library and REPL tool to demo and test the BDK library, now uses bdk_wallet 1.0.0 and integrates Kyoto, utilizing the Kyoto protocol for compact block filters. It sets SQLite as the default database and discontinues support for sled.
• publsp is a new command-line tool designed for Lightning node runners or Lightning Service Providers (LSPs) to advertise liquidity offers over Nostr.

"LSPs advertise liquidity as addressable Kind 39735 events. Clients just pull and evaluate all those structured events, then NIP-17 DM an LSP of their choice to coordinate a liquidity purchase," writes developer smallworlnd.

• Lightning Blinder by Super Testnet is a proof-of-concept privacy tool for the Lightning Network. It enables users to mislead Lightning Service Providers (LSPs) by making it appear as though one wallet is the sender or recipient, masking the original wallet. Explore and try it out here.

• Mempal v1.5.3, a Bitcoin mempool monitoring and notification app for Android, now includes a swipe-down feature to refresh the dashboard, a custom time option for widget auto-update frequency, and a

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• "Today we're launching the beta version of our multiplatform Nostr browser! Think Google Chrome but for Nostr apps. The beta is our big first step toward this vision," announced Damus.
• This version comes with the Dave Nostr AI assistant, support for zaps and the Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallet interface, full-text note search, GIFs and fullscreen images, multiple media uploads, user tagging, relay list and mute list support, along with a number of other improvements."

"Included in the beta is the Dave, the Nostr AI assistant (its Grok for Nostr). Dave is a new Notedeck browser app that can search and summarize notes from the network. For a full breakdown of everything new, check out our beta launch video."

What's new

• Dave Nostr AI assistant app.
• GIFs.
• Fulltext note search.
• Add full screen images, add zoom, and pan.
• Zaps! NWC/ Wallet UI.
• Introduce last note per pubkey feed (experimental).
• Allow multiple media uploads per selection.
• Major Android improvements (still WIP).
• Added notedeck app sidebar.
• User Tagging.
• Note truncation.
• Local network note broadcast, broadcast notes to other notedeck notes while you're offline.
• Mute list support (reading).
• Relay list support.
• Ctrl-enter to send notes.
• Added relay indexing (relay columns soon).
• Click hashtags to open hashtag timeline.
• Fixed timelines sometimes not updating (stale feeds).
• Fixed UI bounciness when loading profile pictures
• Fixed unselectable post replies.

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This update brings key enhancements for clarity and usability:

• Recent Blocks View: Added to the Send tab and inspired by Mempool's visualization, it displays the last 2 blocks and the estimated next block to help choose fee rates.
• Camera System Overhaul: Features a new library for higher resolution detection and mouse-scroll zoom support when available.
• Vector-Based Images: All app images are now vectorized and theme-aware, enhancing contrast, especially in dark mode.
• Tor & P2A Updates: Upgraded internal Tor and improved support for pay-to-anchor (P2A) outputs.
• Linux Package Rename: For Linux users, Sparrow has been renamed to sparrowwallet (or sparrowserver); in some cases, the original sparrow package may need manual removal.
• Additional updates include showing total payments in multi-payment transaction diagrams, better handling of long labels, and other UI enhancements.

• Sparrow v2.2.1 is a bug fix release that addresses missing UUID issue when starting Tor on recent macOS versions, icons for external sources in Settings and Recent Blocks view, repackaged .deb installs to use older gzip instead of zstd compression, and removed display of median fee rate where fee rates source is set to Server.

Learn how to get started with Sparrow wallet:

Release notes (v2.2.0)

• Added Recent Blocks view to Send tab.
• Converted all bitmapped images to theme aware SVG format for all wallet models and dialogs.
• Support send and display of pay to anchor (P2A) outputs.
• Renamed sparrow package to sparrowwallet and sparrowserver on Linux.
• Switched camera library to openpnp-capture.
• Support FHD (1920 x 1080) and UHD4k (3840 x 2160) capture resolutions.
• Support camera zoom with mouse scroll where possible.
• In the Download Verifier, prefer verifying the dropped file over the default file where the file is not in the manifest.
• Show a warning (with an option to disable the check) when importing a wallet with a derivation path matching another script type.
• In Cormorant, avoid calling the listwalletdir RPC on initialization due to a potentially slow response on Windows.
• Avoid server address resolution for public servers.
• Assume server address is non local for resolution failures where a proxy is configured.
• Added a tooltip to indicate truncated labels in table cells.
• Dynamically truncate input and output labels in the tree on a transaction tab, and add tooltips if necessary.
• Improved tooltips for wallet tabs and transaction diagrams with long labels.
• Show the address where available on input and output tooltips in transaction tab tree.
• Show the total amount sent in payments in the transaction diagram when constructing multiple payment transactions.
• Reset preferred table column widths on adjustment to improve handling after window resizing.
• Added accessible text to improve screen reader navigation on seed entry.
• Made Wallet Summary table grow horizontally with dialog sizing.
• Reduced tooltip show delay to 200ms.
• Show transaction diagram fee percentage as less than 0.01% rather than 0.00%.
• Optimized and reduced Electrum server RPC calls.
• Upgraded Bouncy Castle, PGPainless and Logback libraries.
• Upgraded internal Tor to v0.4.8.16.
• Bug fix: Fixed issue with random ordering of keystore origins on labels import.
• Bug fix: Fixed non-zero account script type detection when signing a message on Trezor devices.
• Bug fix: Fixed issue parsing remote Coldcard xpub encoded on a different network.
• Bug fix: Fixed inclusion of fees on wallet label exports.
• Bug fix: Increase Trezor device libusb timeout.

Linux users: Note that the sparrow package has been renamed to sparrowwallet or sparrowserver, and in some cases you may need to manually uninstall the original sparrow package. Look in the /opt folder to ensure you have the new name, and the original is removed.

What's new in v2.2.1

• Updated Tor library to fix missing UUID issue when starting Tor on recent macOS versions.
• Repackaged .deb installs to use older gzip instead of zstd compression.
• Removed display of median fee rate where fee rates source is set to Server.
• Added icons for external sources in Settings and Recent Blocks view
• Bug fix: Fixed issue in Recent Blocks view when switching fee rates source
• Bug fix: Fixed NPE on null fee returned from server

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• This version introduces the Soroban P2P network, enabling Dojo to relay transactions to the Bitcoin network and share others' transactions to break the heuristic linking relaying nodes to transaction creators.

• Additionally, Dojo admins can now manage API keys in DMT with labels, status, and expiration, ideal for community Dojo providers like Dojobay. New API endpoints, including "/services" exposing Explorer, Soroban, and Indexer, have been added to aid wallet developers.
• Other maintenance updates include Bitcoin Core, Tor, Fulcrum, Node.js, plus an updated ban-knots script to disconnect inbound Knots nodes.

"I want to thank all the contributors. This again shows the power of true Free Software. I also want to thank everyone who donated to help Dojo development going. I truly appreciate it," said Still Dojo Coder.

What's new

• Soroban P2P network. For MyDojo (Docker setup) users, Soroban will be automatically installed as part of their Dojo. This integration allows Dojo to utilize the Soroban P2P network for various upcoming features and applications.
• PandoTx. PandoTx serves as a transaction transport layer. When your wallet sends a transaction to Dojo, it is relayed to a random Soroban node, which then forwards it to the Bitcoin network. It also enables your Soroban node to receive and relay transactions from others to the Bitcoin network and is designed to disrupt the assumption that a node relaying a transaction is closely linked to the person who initiated it.
  • Pushing transactions through Soroban can be deactivated by setting NODE_PANDOTX_PUSH=off in docker-node.conf.
  • Processing incoming transactions from Soroban network can be deactivated by setting NODE_PANDOTX_PROCESS=off in docker-node.conf.
• API key management has been introduced to address the growing number of people offering their Dojos to the community. Dojo admins can now access a new API management tab in their DMT, where they can create unlimited API keys, assign labels for easy identification, and set expiration dates for each key. This allows admins to avoid sharing their main API key and instead distribute specific keys to selected parties.
• New API endpoints. Several new API endpoints have been added to help API consumers develop features on Dojo more efficiently:
  • New:
    • /latest-block - returns data about latest block
    • /txout/:txid/:index - returns unspent output data
    • /support/services - returns info about services that Dojo exposes
  • Updated:
    • /tx/:txid - endpoint has been updated to return raw transaction with parameter ?rawHex=1
  • The new /support/services endpoint replaces the deprecated explorer field in the Dojo pairing payload. Although still present, API consumers should use this endpoint for explorer and other pairing data.

Other changes

• Updated ban script to disconnect inbound Knots nodes.
• Updated Fulcrum to v1.12.0.
• Regenerate Fulcrum certificate if expired.
• Check if transaction already exists in pushTx.
• Bump BTC-RPC Explorer.
• Bump Tor to v0.4.8.16, bump Snowflake.
• Updated Bitcoin Core to v29.0.
• Removed unnecessary middleware.
• Fixed DB update mechanism, added api_keys table.
• Add an option to use blocksdir config for bitcoin blocks directory.
• Removed deprecated configuration.
• Updated Node.js dependencies.
• Reconfigured container dependencies.
• Fix Snowflake git URL.
• Fix log path for testnet4.
• Use prebuilt addrindexrs binaries.
• Add instructions to migrate blockchain/fulcrum.
• Added pull policies.

#FREESAMOURAI

Learn how to set up and use your own Bitcoin privacy node with Dojo here.

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Marty's Bent

Last week we covered the bombshell developments in the Samourai Wallet case. For those who didn't read that, last Monday the world was made aware of the fact that the SDNY was explicitly told by FinCEN that the federal regulator did not believe that Samourai Wallet was a money services business six months before arresting the co-founders of Samourai Wallet for conspiracy to launder money and illegally operating a money services business. This was an obvious overstep by the SDNY that many believed would be quickly alleviated, especially considering the fact that the Trump administration via the Department of Justice has made it clear that they do not intend to rule via prosecution.

It seems that this is not the case as the SDNY responded to a letter sent from the defense to dismiss the case by stating that they fully plan to move forward. Stating that they only sought the recommendations of FinCEN employees and did not believe that those employees' comments were indicative of FinCEN's overall views on this particular case. It's a pretty egregious abuse of power by the SDNY. I'm not sure if the particular lawyers and judges within the Southern District of New York are very passionate about preventing the use of self-custody bitcoin and products that enable bitcoiners to transact privately, or if they're simply participating in a broader meta war with the Trump administration - who has made it clear to federal judges across the country that last Fall's election will have consequences, mainly that the Executive Branch will try to effectuate the policies that President Trump campaigned on by any legal means necessary - and Samouari Wallet is simply in the middle of that meta war.

However, one thing is pretty clear to me, this is an egregious overstep of power. The interpretation of that law, as has been laid out and confirmed by FinCEN over the last decade, is pretty clear; you cannot be a money services business if you do not control the funds that people are sending to each other, which is definitely the case with Samourai Wallet. People downloaded Samourai Wallet, spun up their own private-public key pairs and initiated transactions themselves. Samourai never custodied funds or initiated transactions on behalf of their users. This is very cut and dry. Straight to the point. It should be something that anyone with more than two brain cells is able to discern pretty quickly.

It is imperative that anybody in the industry who cares about being able to hold bitcoin in self-custody, to mine bitcoin, and to send bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion makes some noise around this case. None of the current administration's attempts to foster innovation around bitcoin in the United States will matter if the wrong precedent is set in this case. If the SDNY is successful in prosecuting Samourai Wallet, it will mean that anybody holding Bitcoin in self-custody, running a bitcoin fold node or mining bitcoin will have to KYC all of their users and counterparts lest they be labeled a money services business that is breaking laws stemming from the Bank Secrecy Act. This will effectively make building a self-custody bitcoin wallet, running a node, or mining bitcoin in tillegal in the United States. The ability to comply with the rules that would be unleashed if this Samourai case goes the wrong way, are such that it will effectively destroy the industry overnight.

It is yet to be seen whether or not the Department of Justice will step in to publicly flog the SDNY and force them to stop pursuing this case. This is the only likely way that the case will go away at this point, so it is very important that bitcoiners who care about being able to self-custody bitcoin, mine bitcoin, or send bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion in the United States make it clear to the current administration and any local politicians that this is an issue that you care deeply about. If we are too complacent, there is a chance that the SDNY could completely annihilate the bitcoin industry in America despite of all of the positive momentum we're seeing from all angles at the moment.

Make some noise!

Bitcoin Adoption by Power Companies: The Next Frontier

In my recent conversation with Andrew Myers from Satoshi Energy, he shared their ambitious mission to "enable every electric power company to use bitcoin by block 1,050,000" – roughly three years from now. This strategic imperative isn't just about creating new Bitcoin users; it's about sovereignty. Andrew emphasized that getting Bitcoin into the hands of energy companies who value self-sovereignty creates a more balanced future economic landscape. The excitement was palpable as he described how several energy companies are already moving beyond simply selling power to Bitcoin miners and are beginning to invest in mining operations themselves.

"You have global commodity companies being like, 'Oh, this is another commodity – we want to invest in this, we want to own this,'" - Andrew Myers

Perhaps most fascinating was Andrew's revelation about major energy companies in Texas developing Bitcoin collateral products for power contracts – a practical application that could revolutionize how energy transactions are settled. As energy companies continue embracing Bitcoin for both operations and collateral, we're witnessing the early stages of a profound shift in how critical infrastructure interfaces with sound money. The implications for both sectors could be transformative.

Check out the full podcast here for more on remote viewing, Nikola Tesla's predictions, and the convergence of Bitcoin and AI technology. We cover everything from humanoid robots to the energy demands of next-generation computing.

Headlines of the Day

Steak n Shake to Accept Bitcoin at All Locations May 16 - via X

Facebook Plans Crypto Wallets for 3B Users, Bitcoin Impact Looms - via X

Trump Urges Americans to Buy Stocks for Economic Boom - via X

UK Drops Tariffs, U.S. Farmers Set to Reap Major Benefits - via X

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Final thought...

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Key Takeaways

Dr. Jack Kruse returns in this fiery episode to expose what he alleges is a coordinated campaign by Big Pharma, technocrats, and global elites to control public health narratives and financial systems through manipulated health policies and propaganda. He accuses figures like Calli and Casey Means of fronting a compromised "Maha Movement," backed by A16Z, Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum, with ambitions to embed themselves into U.S. health policy and bioweapons programs. Kruse details his covert efforts to expose these connections, claiming they led to the withdrawal of Casey Means' Surgeon General nomination, and warns of a looming biotechnocratic surveillance state where mRNA vaccines act as bioweapons to enforce compliance. Urging Bitcoiners to expand their fight for sovereignty beyond finance into healthcare and biology, Kruse argues that the true war is over time sovereignty—not just monetary freedom—and that protecting children from vaccine harms is now the most urgent front in this escalating battle.

Best Quotes

"Bitcoin is worthless if you have no time."

"We’re not playing games here. This is to the death."

"Big Pharma is just the drug dealer. The real boss is the Department of Defense and DARPA."

"The real battle in D.C. isn’t left vs. right, it’s Rothschilds and Rockefellers vs. the technocrats."

"First principle Bitcoiners need to become first principle decentralizers of life itself."

Conclusion

This episode delivers a provocative call to action from Dr. Jack Kruse, who warns that the fight for sovereignty must go beyond finance to confront what he sees as the immediate threat of centralized bio-surveillance through mRNA vaccines. Blending insider claims with health activism, Kruse urges Bitcoiners and the public to recognize that true freedom requires decentralizing not only money but also healthcare and information systems, arguing that without protecting biological sovereignty, Bitcoin’s promise of liberty will be meaningless if people are left physically, mentally, or politically compromised.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:47 - Outlining MAHA infiltration
22:59 - Fold & Bitkey
24:35- Danger to children
28:27 - Political shell game
35:40 - Unchained
36:09 - Time theft
41:07 - Vax data
46:32 - Bioweapon and control system
58:29 - Game plan - Decentralized yourself
1:15:16 - Priorities
1:24:30 - Support Mary Talley Bowden

Transcript

(00:00) me, Larry Leard, those kind of Bitcoiners, the people that are out there that have money, like they're looking to take us out. You need to know a little bit about the back history that I don't think I've talked about anywhere on any other podcast. Rick Callie is linked to the current administration is through Susie Watts.
(00:17) They both were working at Mercury PR basically is the frontman for propaganda for Big Farm. Basically, who pays you? You become their [ __ ] We're not playing games here. This is to the death. This is the biggest issue facing Maha now. It's not Froot Loops. It's not red dye. But the messenger RA job can drop you like Demar Handler.
(00:40) Can end your career like JJ Watt. Dr. Jack Cruz, welcome back to the show. Thank you, sir, for having me. Well, thank you for being here. I mean, you're making a lot of noise around a topic that I wasn't well aware of. I'm not going to lie. I think I got duped by or we'll find out if I actually got duped by the meanses. Cali means was coming in last year talking big about Maja getting the food correct.
(01:15) Um, basically telling the story of him being a lobbyist and understanding how corrupt the food system is. And we talked about it last time we were on two months ago. this sort of maha movement has shifted towards focusing on preventative care particularly in diets and you were on the Danny Danny Jones show late last year with Cali means uh sort of pressuring him to admit that the vaccine should be pulled off the market and he did not did not bite and would not budge on that and now his sister Casey has been appointed to surgeon general and
(01:50) this is something Let me let me tell you a little bit about that because you need to know a little bit about the back history that I don't think I've talked about anywhere on any other podcast. She was going to be named surgeon general uh back then. Just so you know that I knew it and I knew quite a bit of other things.
(02:16) So what was my goal? I knew um that Cali and Casey were tied to big tech. They were tied specifically, which you'll be interested in, A16Z, the shitcoiners extraordinaire, and they were also tied to the World Economic Forum through the book deal. Um, so my goal at that time as part of the person that was big in the mob like, and Marty, I don't know if you know this back part of the story.
(02:46) Maha begins not with Casey and Cali and Bobby Kennedy. It began with me, Bobby, and Rick Rubin on Rick's podcast the day that I told RFK Jr. that SV40 was in the Fiser Jabs. Mhm. And that's when Bobby found out that I wrote the law for Blly for a constitutional amendment for medical freedom. And he asked me to use four pages of the law.
(03:13) And Blly cleared me to do that. And then Aaron Siri, who was Bobby's attorney and working with a lot of the stuff that Bobby does with vaccines and I can Aaron contacted me. So just so you're clear, this is two and a half years ago. This is before this is a year previous to Casey and Cali coming on the scene. And I was always behind the scenes.
(03:37) I was not really interested in getting involved um in the [ __ ] show. But when I saw these two show up, the way they showed up and when I heard Cali actually say on a podcast that, you know, he was the modus operande of the Maha movement and he's the one that brought Bobby and Trump together.
(04:02) I said, "That's where I draw a [ __ ] line." I'm like, "Uh-uh. These guys, I know exactly what they're going to do. I see the game plan. they're going to use a shell game and I needed to have proof before you can come out and be a savage. You got to have proof. So, I hired three former Secret Service agents to actually do a very deep dive.
(04:24) We're talking about the kind of dive that you would get uh if you were going for a Supreme Court nomination. Okay? It cost me a lot of money. And why did I think it was important? Because as you know, you know, as a Bitcoiner, you just saw the big scam that happened with Maya Paribu down in Cerninam that happened after.
(04:49) Well, when I hired these guys, when all of my research that I had done was confirmed by them, I said, "Okay, now we need to go on a podcast very publicly and we need to put Cali's feet to the fire." Why? because I knew and he did not know that I knew this prior to the podcast. Uh that his sister was going to be nominated for surgeon general then.
(05:14) And because he didn't know and you you'll be able to confirm this or the savages in your audience can confirm this with Danny Jones. Do you know that Cali cancelled the podcast to do it into uh February? Yeah. Well, I think it was April of 25 because he didn't want to give anybody the time and day.
(05:37) So, what did I start doing? I started posting some of the information back in November that I found and the links to the Wjikis and the links to Bin, the links to A16Z. I didn't didn't give a ton of the information, but let's just put it this way. enough to make Callie and Cassie scream a little bit that people in DC started to read all my tweets.
(06:04) And then he called Danny up and said, "Danny, I want to do this podcast immediately." And I knew the reason why. Cuz I was baiting him to come so I could hit him with the big stuff. Why? Because you have to understand these two kids, you know, tied to the Rockefellers. They're tied to the banking elite.
(06:26) They're tied to the World Economics Form. Rick Callie is linked to the current administration is through Susie Watts. They both were working at Mercury PR and uh Mercury PR uh basically is the frontman for propaganda for Big Farm and everybody knows that, but not everybody knew that Cali worked for them.
(06:50) And you know the story that he sold all you guys, how he fooled you. And I consider you a smart guy, a savage, it's not shocking how he fooled you because he said as a um a lobbyist basically who pays you, you become their [ __ ] to to be quite honest and you'll say things that will make sense. Everybody in creation who's going to watch your podcast knows that all the things that Casey and Cali have said have been said literally for 30, 40, 50 years going all the way back to probably Anel Peas about diet and exercise.
(07:25) Everybody [ __ ] knows that. It's not new. They just decided to repackage it up and then they actually got in Bobby's ear about it. And when I released all this stuff, did Bobby know what I had? Yeah, he knew. And did the people in DC all what all their antennas up about this issue? Who was most pissed off with Uncle Jack back then? Susie [ __ ] Walls.
(07:56) Why? because those two are her babies that were going to be the amber that Susie Cassidy Cassidy Big Farmer were going to place around um Bobby Kennedy once he got confirmed. And that's why for the savages that are listening to this podcast, you go back and look at Nicole's tweet from, you know, I guess it was about four or five days ago that this didn't make sense.
(08:20) Why? because I gave the data directly to the people in DC behind the scenes of what was really going on and because it was so explosive. That's the reason Susie had to not give the job to Casey Means. She had to wait till the heat died down. So they elevated Janette and Janette bas

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

via Kevin McKernan

There's been a lot of discussion this week about Casey Means being nominated for Surgeon General of the United States and a broader overarching conversation about the effectiveness of MAHA since the inauguration and how effective it may or may not be moving forward. Many would say that President Trump won re-election due to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan deciding to reach across the aisle and join the Trump ticket, bringing with them the MAHA Moms, who are very focused on reorienting the healthcare system in the United States with a strong focus on the childhood vaccine schedule.

I'm not going to lie, this is something I'm passionate about as well, particularly after having many conversations over the years with doctors like Kevin McKernan, Dr. Jack Kruse, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, Dr. Brooke Miller, Dr. Peter McCullough and others about the dangers of the COVID mRNA vaccines. As it stands today, I think this is the biggest elephant in the room in the world of healthcare. If you look at the data, particularly disability claims, life insurance claims, life expectancy, miscarriage rates, fertility issues and rates of turbo cancer around the world since the COVID vaccine was introduced in 2021, it seems pretty clear that there is harm being done to many of the people who have taken them.

The risk-reward ratio of the vaccines seems to be incredibly skewed towards risk over reward and children - who have proven to be least susceptible to COVID - are expected to get three COVID shots in the first year of their life if their parents follow the vaccine schedule. For some reason or another it seems that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shied away from this topic after becoming the head of Health and Human Services within the Trump administration. This is after a multi-year campaign during which getting the vaccines removed from the market war a core part of his platform messaging.

I'm still holding out hope that sanity will prevail. The COVID mRNA vaccines will be taken off the market in a serious conversation about the crimes against humanity that unfolded during the COVID years will take place. However, we cannot depend on that outcome. We must build with the assumption in mind that that outcome may never materialize. This leads to identifying where the incentives within the system are misconstrued. One area where I think it's pretty safe to say that the incentives are misaligned is the fact that 95% of doctors work for and answer to a corporation driven by their bottom line. Instead of listening to their patients and truly caring about the outcome of each individual, doctors forced to think about the monetary outcome of the corporation they work for first.

The most pernicious way in which these misaligned incentives emerge is the way in which the hospital systems and physicians are monetarily incentivized by big pharma companies to push the COVID vaccine and other vaccines on their patients. It is important to acknowledge that we cannot be dependent on a system designed in this way to change from within. Instead, we must build a new incentive system and market structure. And obviously, if you're reading this newsletter, you know that I believe that bitcoin will play a pivotal role in realigning incentives across every industry. Healthcare just being one of them.

Bitcoiners have identified the need to become sovereign in our monetary matters, it probably makes sense to become sovereign when it comes to our healthcare as well. This means finding doctors who operate outside the corporate controlled system and are able to offer services that align incentives with the end patient. My family utilizes a combination of CrowdHealth and a private care physician to align incentives. We've even utilized a private care physician who allowed us to pay in Bitcoin for her services for a number of years. I think this is the model. Doctors accepting hard censorship resistant money for the healthcare and advice they provide. Instead of working for a corporation looking to push pharmaceutical products on their patients so they can bolster their bottom line, work directly with patients who will pay in bitcoin, which will appreciate in value over time.

I had a lengthy discussion with Dr. Jack Kruse on the podcast earlier today discussing these topic and more. It will be released on Thursday and I highly recommend you freaks check it out once it is published. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it.

How the "Exorbitant Privilege" of the Dollar is Undermining Our Manufacturing Base

In my conversation with Lyn Alden, we explored America's fundamental economic contradiction. As Lyn expertly explained, maintaining the dollar's reserve currency status while attempting to reshore manufacturing presents a near-impossible challenge - what economists call Triffin's Dilemma. The world's appetite for dollars gives Americans tremendous purchasing power but simultaneously hollows out our industrial base. The overvalued dollar makes our exports less competitive, especially for lower-margin manufacturing, while our imports remain artificially strong.

"Having the reserve currency does come with a bunch of benefits, historically called an exorbitant privilege, but then it has certain costs to maintain it." - Lyn Alden

This dilemma forces America to run persistent trade deficits, as this is how dollars flow to the world. For over four decades, these deficits have accumulated, creating massive economic imbalances that can't be quickly reversed. The Trump administration's attempts to address this through tariffs showcase how difficult rebalancing has become. As Lyn warned, even if we successfully pivot toward reshoring manufacturing, we'll face difficult trade-offs: potentially giving up some reserve currency benefits to rebuild our industrial foundation. This isn't just economic theory - it's the restructuring challenge that will define America's economic future.

Check out the full podcast here for more on China's manufacturing dominance, the role of Bitcoin in monetary transitions, and energy production as the foundation for future industrial power.

Headlines of the Day

Coinbase to replace Discover in S&P 500 on May 19 - via X

Mallers promises no rehypothecation in Strike Bitcoin loans - via X

Get our new STACK SATS hat - via tftcmerch.io

Missouri passes HB 594, eliminates Bitcoin capital gains tax - via X

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Sign Up

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Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $150M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

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Final thought...

The 100+ degree days have returned to Austin, TX. Not mad about it... yet.

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

via me

It seems like every other day there's another company announced that is going public with the intent of competing with Strategy by leveraging capital markets to create financial instruments to acquire Bitcoin in a way that is accretive for shareholders. This is certainly a very interesting trend, very bullish for bitcoin in the short-term, and undoubtedly making it so bitcoin is top of mind in the mainstream. I won't pretend to know whether or not these strategies will ultimately be successful or fail in the short, medium or long term. However, one thing I do know is that the themes that interest me, both here at TFTC and in my role as Managing Partner at Ten31, are companies that are building good businesses that are efficient, have product-market-fit, generate revenues and profits and roll those profits into bitcoin.

While it seems pretty clear that Strategy has tapped into an arbitrage that exists in capital markets, it's not really that exciting. From a business perspective, it's actually pretty straightforward and simple; find where potential arbitrage opportunities exists between pools of capital looking for exposure to spot bitcoin or bitcoin's volatility but can't buy the actual asset, and provide them with products that give them access to exposure while simultaneously creating a cult-like retail following. Rinse and repeat. To the extent that this strategy is repeatable is yet to be seen. I imagine it can expand pretty rapidly. Particularly if we have a speculative fervor around companies that do this. But in the long run, I think the signal is falling back to first principles, looking for businesses that are actually providing goods and services to the broader economy - not focused on the hyper-financialized part of the economy - to provide value and create efficiencies that enable higher margins and profitability.

With this in mind, I think it's important to highlight the combined leverage that entrepreneurs have by utilizing bitcoin treasuries and AI tools that are emerging and becoming more advanced by the week. As I said in the tweet above, there's never been a better time to start a business that finds product-market fit and cash flows quickly with a team of two to three people. If you've been reading this rag over the last few weeks, you know that I've been experimenting with these AI tools and using them to make our business processes more efficient here at TFTC. I've also been using them at Ten31 to do deep research and analysis.

It has become abundantly clear to me that any founder or entrepreneur that is not utilizing the AI tools that are emerging is going to get left behind. As it stands today, all anyone has to do to get an idea from a thought in your head to the prototype stage to a minimum viable product is to hop into something like Claude or ChatGPT, have a brief conversation with an AI model that can do deep research about a particular niche that you want to provide a good service to and begin building.

Later this week, I will launch an app called Opportunity Cost in the Chrome and Firefox stores. It took me a few hours of work over the span of a week to ideate and iterate on the concept to the point where I had a working prototype that I handed off to a developer who is solving the last mile problem I have as an "idea guy" of getting the product to market. Only six months ago, accomplishing something like this would have been impossible for me. I've never written a line of code that's actually worked outside of the modded MySpace page I made back in middle school. I've always had a lot of ideas but have never been able to effectively communicate them to developers who can actually build them. With a combination of ChatGPT-03 and Replit, I was able to build an actual product that works. I'm using it in my browser today. It's pretty insane.

There are thousands of people coming to the same realization at the same time right now and going out there and building niche products very cheaply, with small teams, they are getting to market very quickly, and are amassing five figures, six figures, sometimes seven figures of MRR with extremely high profit margins. What most of these entrepreneurs have not really caught on to yet is that they should be cycling a portion - in my opinion, a large portion - of those profits into bitcoin. The combination of building a company utilizing these AI tools, getting it to market, getting revenue and profits, and turning those profits into bitcoin cannot be understated. You're going to begin seeing teams of one to ten people building businesses worth billions of dollars and they're going to need to store the value they create, any money that cannot be debased.

Grant Gilliam, one of the co-founders of Ten31, wrote about this in early 2024, bitcoin being the fourth lever of equity value growth for companies.

[

Bitcoin Treasury - The Fourth Lever to Equity Value Growth

Most companies do not hold enough bitcoin There is a saying you often hear in bitcoin circles that “you can never have enough bitcoin.” This is typically expressed by those who have spent the time to both understand bitcoin’s unique and superior monetary properties and also to appreciate why tho

Ten31 - Investors in bitcoin infrastructure and freedom techGrant Gilliam

](https://ten31.vc/insights/treasury?ref=tftc.io)

We already see this theme playing out at Ten31 with some of our portfolio companies, most notably Strike, which recently released some of their financials, highlighting the fact that they're extremely profitable with high margins and a relatively small team (~75). This is extremely impressive, especially when you consider the fact that they're a global company competing with the likes of Coinbase and Block, which have each thousands of employees.

Even those who are paying attention to the developments in the AI space and how the tools can enable entrepreneurs to build faster aren't really grasping the gravity of what's at play here. Many are simply thinking of consumer apps that can be built and distributed quickly to market, but the ways in which AI can be implemented extend far beyond the digital world. Here's a great example of a company a fellow freak is building with the mindset of keeping the team small, utilizing AI tools to automate processes and quickly push profits into bitcoin.

via Cormac

Again, this is where the exciting things are happening in my mind. People leveraging new tools to solve real problems to drive real value that ultimately produce profits for entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs who decide to save those profits in bitcoin will find that the equity value growth of their companies accelerates exponentially as they provide more value, gain more traction, and increase their profits while also riding the bitcoin as it continues on its monetization phase. The compounded leverage of building a company that leverages AI tools and sweeps profits into bitcoin is going to be the biggest asymmetric play of the next decade. Personally, I also see it as something that's much more fulfilling than the pure play bitcoin treasury companies that are coming to market because consumers and entrepreneurs are able to recive and provide a ton of value in the real economy.

If you're looking to stay on top of the developments in the AI space and how you can apply the tools to help build your business or create a new business, I highly recommend you follow somebody like Greg Isenberg, whose Startup Ideas Podcast has been incredibly valuable for me as I attempt to get a lay of the land of how to implement AI into my businesses.

America's Two Economies

In my recent podcast with Lyn Alden, she outlined how our trade deficits create a cycle that's reshaping America's economic geography. As Alden explained, US trade deficits pump dollars into international markets, but these dollars don't disappear - they return as investments in US financial assets. This cycle gradually depletes industrial heartlands while enriching financial centers on the coasts, creating what amounts to two separate American economies.

"We're basically constantly taking economic vibrancy out of Michigan and Ohio and rural Pennsylvania where the steel mills were... and stuffing it back into financial assets in New York and Silicon Valley." - Lyn Alden

This pattern has persisted for over four decades, accelerating significantly since the early 1980s. Alden emphasized that while economists may argue there's still room before reaching a crisis point, the political consequences are already here. The growing divide between these two Americas has fueled populist sentiment as voters who feel left behind seek economic rebalancing, even if they can't articulate the exact mechanisms causing their hardship.

Check out the full podcast here for more on China's man

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

Here's a great presentation from our good friend Michael Goldstein, President of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute titled Hodl for Good. He gave it earlier this year at the BitBlockBoom Conference, and I think it's something everyone reading this should take 25 minutes to watch. Especially if you find yourself wondering whether or not it's a good idea to spend bitcoin at any given point in time. Michael gives an incredible Austrian Economics 101 lesson on the importance of lowering one's time preference and fully understanding the importance of hodling bitcoin. For the uninitiated, it may seem that the hodl meme is nothing more than a call to hoard bitcoins in hopes of getting rich eventually. However, as Michael points out, there's layers to the hodl meme and the good that hodling can bring individuals and the economy overall.

The first thing one needs to do to better understand the hodl meme is to completely flip the framing that is typically thrust on bitcoiners who encourage others to hodl. Instead of ceding that hodling is a greedy or selfish action, remind people that hodling, or better known as saving, is the foundation of capital formation, from which all productive and efficient economic activity stems. Number go up technology is great and it really matters. It matters because it enables anybody leveraging that technology to accumulate capital that can then be allocated toward productive endeavors that bring value to the individual who creates them and the individual who buys them.

When one internalizes this, it enables them to turn to personal praxis and focus on minimizing present consumption while thinking of ways to maximize long-term value creation. Live below your means, stack sats, and use the time that you're buying to think about things that you want in the future. By lowering your time preference and saving in a harder money you will have the luxury of demanding higher quality goods in the future. Another way of saying this is that you will be able to reshape production by voting with your sats. Initially when you hold them off the market by saving them - signaling that the market doesn't have goods worthy of your sats - and ultimately by redeploying them into the market when you find higher quality goods that meet the standards desire.

The first part of this equation is extremely important because it sends a signal to producers that they need to increase the quality of their work. As more and more individuals decide to use bitcoin as their savings technology, the signal gets stronger. And over many cycles we should begin to see low quality cheap goods exit the market in favor of higher quality goods that provide more value and lasts longer and, therefore, make it easier for an individual to depart with their hard-earned and hard-saved sats. This is only but one aspect that Michael tries to imbue throughout his presentation.

The other is the ability to buy yourself leisure time when you lower your time preference and save more than you spend. When your savings hit a critical tipping point that gives you the luxury to sit back and experience true leisure, which Michael explains is not idleness, but the contemplative space to study, create art, refine taste, and to find what "better goods" actually are. Those who can experience true leisure while reaping the benefits of saving in a hard asset that is increasing in purchasing power significantly over the long term are those who build truly great things. Things that outlast those who build them. Great art, great monuments, great institutions were all built by men who were afforded the time to experience leisure. Partly because they were leveraging hard money as their savings and the place they stored the profits reaped from their entrepreneurial endeavors.

If you squint and look into the future a couple of decades, it isn't hard to see a reality like this manifesting. As more people begin to save in Bitcoin, the forces of supply and demand will continue to come into play. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin, there are around 8 billion people on this planet, and as more of those 8 billion individuals decide that bitcoin is the best savings vehicle, the price of bitcoin will rise.

When the price of bitcoin rises, it makes all other goods cheaper in bitcoin terms and, again, expands the entrepreneurial opportunity. The best part about this feedback loop is that even non-holders of bitcoin benefit through higher real wages and faster tech diffusion. The individuals and business owners who decide to hodl bitcoin will bring these benefits to the world whether you decide to use bitcoin or not.

This is why it is virtuous to hodl bitcoin. The potential for good things to manifest throughout the world increases when more individuals decide to hodl bitcoin. And as Michael very eloquently points out, this does not mean that people will not spend their bitcoin. It simply means that they have standards for the things that they will spend their bitcoin on. And those standards are higher than most who are fully engrossed in the high velocity trash economy have today.

In my opinion, one of those higher causes worthy of a sats donation is the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Consider donating so they can preserve and disseminate vital information about bitcoin and its foundations.

The Shell Game: How Health Narratives May Distract from Vaccine Risks

In our recent podcast, Dr. Jack Kruse presented a concerning theory about public health messaging. He argues that figures like Casey and Calley Means are promoting food and exercise narratives as a deliberate distraction from urgent vaccine issues. While no one disputes healthy eating matters, Dr. Kruse insists that focusing on "Froot Loops and Red Dye" diverts attention from what he sees as immediate dangers of mRNA vaccines, particularly for children.

"It's gonna take you 50 years to die from processed food. But the messenger jab can drop you like Damar Hamlin." - Dr Jack Kruse

Dr. Kruse emphasized that approximately 25,000 children per day are still receiving COVID vaccines despite concerns, with 3 million doses administered since Trump's election. This "shell game," as he describes it, allows vaccines to remain on childhood schedules while public attention fixates on less immediate health threats. As host, I believe this pattern deserves our heightened scrutiny given the potential stakes for our children's wellbeing.

Check out the full podcast here for more on Big Pharma's alleged bioweapons program, the "Time Bank Account" concept, and how Bitcoin principles apply to health sovereignty.

Headlines of the Day

Aussie Judge: Bitcoin is Money, Possibly CGT-Exempt - via X

JPMorgan to Let Clients Buy Bitcoin Without Direct Custody - via X

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Mubadala Acquires $408.5M Stake in BlackRock Bitcoin ETF - via X

---

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Bitkey is an easy, secure way to move your Bitcoin into self-custody. With simple setup and built-in recovery, it’s the perfect starting point for getting your coins off centralized platforms and into cold storage—no complexity, no middlemen.

Take control. Start with Bitkey.

Use the promo code *“TFTC20”* during checkout for 20% off

---

Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed 158,469 sats | $150.00M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

---

Final thought...

I've been walking from my house around Town Lake in Austin in the mornings and taking calls on the walk. Big fan of a walking call.

---

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[![Hodl Bitcoin For Good](https://www

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Let's dive into the most interesting forward-looking predictions from my recent conversations with industry experts.

Court Cases Against Bitcoin Developers Will Set Critical Precedent for the Industry's Future - Zack Shapiro

The outcome of the Samurai Wallet case will determine whether software developers can be held legally responsible for how users employ their non-custodial Bitcoin tools. Zack Shapiro laid out the stakes clearly: "The precedent that the Bank Secrecy Act can be applied to just software that allows you to move your own money on the Bitcoin blockchain is incredibly dangerous for developers, for node runners, for miners... Basically everyone in the Bitcoin space is at risk here."

According to Shapiro, the government's position in this case fundamentally misunderstands Bitcoin's architecture: "The government says that the defendants transmitted, Keone and Bill transmitted money that they knew belonged to criminals. That's not how a coin join works. The people who transmitted the money are the people that used Whirlpool and the people that used Ricochet. They signed their keys."

Should this prosecution succeed in establishing precedent, Shapiro predicts catastrophic consequences: "If that becomes the law of the land... then basically no actor in the Bitcoin economy is safe. The government's theory is that if you facilitate movement of money, you're a money transmitter, that would reach node runners, wallet developers, miners, lightning routing nodes... whatever tool stack you use, the people who built that are at risk."

With the case continuing despite FinCEN's own position that Samurai's software isn't money transmission, Shapiro believes the resolution will likely come through political rather than legal channels in the next 6-12 months.

Malpractice Around COVID mRNA Vaccines Will Be Exposed Within 2 Years - Dr. Jack Kruse

Dr. Jack Kruse predicts that major revelations about mRNA vaccine damage will force an eventual removal from the market, particularly from childhood vaccination schedules. During our conversation, Dr. Kruse shared alarming statistics: "25,000 kids a month are getting popped with this vaccine. Just so you know, since Trump has been elected, three million doses have been given to children."

According to Dr. Kruse, the scale of this problem dwarfs other health concerns: "The messenger job can drop you like Damar Hamlin, can end your career like JJ Watt, can end your career like all the footballers who've dropped dead on a soccer field." What makes this particularly concerning is the suppression of evidence about the damages, with Dr. Kruse noting that data from Japan showing changes in cancer distribution patterns was pulled, and VAERS data being dismissed despite showing alarming signals.

Dr. Kruse believes the coming years will see an unavoidable reckoning: "If by the end of this year, everybody in unison realized that MRA platform is bad news and it's gone. That to me is... I would tell you the biggest win is to get rid of the MRA platform even before any of the Bitcoin stuff." This suggests he expects significant momentum toward removing these vaccines from circulation by the end of 2025.

Global Economic Reordering Will Create Demand for Neutral Reserve Assets Like Bitcoin and Gold - Lyn Alden

The next two years will be critical in determining whether the United States maintains dollar dominance while navigating Triffin's dilemma. During our conversation, Lyn highlighted how the current administration is attempting to thread a needle between reshoring manufacturing while maintaining the dollar's reserve status - an almost impossible task on extremely fragile ground.

"When they talk about kind of a currency accord to weaken the dollar, they mentioned ideally they wanted to use multi-lateral approaches, but there are some unilateral approaches that they can do, which includes printing dollars to buy reserve assets," Lyn explained when discussing Treasury advisor Stephen Myron's position paper.

As the world potentially moves to a multipolar currency system, Lyn predicts significant demand increases for neutral reserve assets. "The two options on the table at this point are gold and Bitcoin," she noted, but pointed out that "our geopolitical adversaries have been stacking gold for a while and with a special intensity for the last three years." This creates a strategic opportunity for the US, as Bitcoin is "overwhelmingly held in the United States."

Lyn believes this transition is already underway, with the demand for neutral reserve assets like Bitcoin growing as countries seek alternatives to solely dollar-denominated reserves.

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Blockspace conducts cutting-edge proprietary research for investors.

Iran's Shadow Mining Economy: 2 GW of Bitcoin Mined Underground While Legal Operations Struggle

Iran hosts a thriving underground Bitcoin mining industry that has emerged as a critical financial lifeline for citizens grappling with international sanctions and domestic economic controls. This shadow economy dwarfs the legal sector, with an estimated 2 gigawatts of illegal mining operations compared to just 5 megawatts of sanctioned activity.

According to ViraMiner CEO Masih Alavi, approximately 800,000 illegal miners have been discovered and fined by authorities. Yet operations continue in homes, office buildings, and even jewelry stores, where Iranians tap into unmetered electricity to mine Bitcoin, later converting it to stablecoins like USDT for savings and commerce.

While the government has approved permits for about 400 megawatts of legal mining capacity, punitive electricity tariffs and regulatory barriers have strangled legitimate operations. "I blamed the government for this situation," says Alavi. "They introduced flawed policies in the beginning, especially by setting the wrong electricity tariffs for the mining industry."

Despite using obsolete equipment like Antminer S9s and M3s, underground miners remain profitable when converting earnings to Iranian rials, creating an ecosystem that serves an estimated 18 million Iranian cryptocurrency holders.

Looking ahead, Alavi predicts further crackdowns as Iran enters peak electricity demand season, potentially reducing legal mining to zero while underground operations continue to evolve sophisticated detection evasion techniques.

Link to Full Article

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Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $150M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

It's been a pretty historic week for the United States as it pertains to geopolitical relations in the Middle East. President Trump and many members of his administration, including AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, traveled across the Middle East making deals with countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and others. Many are speculating that Iran may be included in some behind the scenes deal as well. This trip to the Middle East makes sense considering the fact that China is also vying for favorable relationships with those countries. The Middle East is a power player in the world, and it seems pretty clear that Donald Trump is dead set on ensuring that they choose the United States over China as the world moves towards a more multi-polar reality.

Many are calling the events of this week the Riyadh Accords. There were many deals that were struck in relation to artificial intelligence, defense, energy and direct investments in the United States. A truly prolific power play and demonstration of deal-making ability of Donald Trump, if you ask me. Though I will admit some of the numbers that were thrown out by some of the countries were a bit egregious. We shall see how everything plays out in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how China reacts to this power move by the United States.

While all this was going on, there was something happening back in the United States that many people outside of fringe corners of FinTwit are not talking about, which is the fact that the 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury bond yields are back on the rise. Yesterday, they surpassed the levels of mid-April that caused a market panic and are hovering back around levels that have not been seen since right before Donald Trump's inauguration.

I imagine that there isn't as much of an uproar right now because I'm pretty confident the media freakouts we were experiencing in mid-April were driven by the fact that many large hedge funds found themselves off sides of large levered basis trades. I wouldn't be surprised if those funds have decreased their leverage in those trades and bond yields being back to mid-April levels is not affecting those funds as much as they were last month. But the point stands, the 10-year and 30-year yields are significantly elevated with the 30-year approaching 5%. Regardless of the deals that are currently being made in the Middle East, the Treasury has a big problem on its hands. It still has to roll over many trillions worth of debt over over the next few years and doing so at these rates is going to be massively detrimental to fiscal deficits over the next decade. The interest expense on the debt is set to explode in the coming years.

On that note, data from the first quarter of 2025 has been released by the government and despite all the posturing by the Trump administration around DOGE and how tariffs are going to be beneficial for the U.S. economy, deficits are continuing to explode while the interest expense on the debt has definitively surpassed our annual defense budget.

via Charlie Bilello

via Mohamed Al-Erian

To make matters worse, as things are deteriorating on the fiscal side of things, the U.S. consumer is getting crushed by credit. The 90-plus day delinquency rates for credit card and auto loans are screaming higher right now.

via TXMC

One has to wonder how long all this can continue without some sort of liquidity crunch. Even though equities markets have recovered from their post-Liberation Day month long bear market, I would not be surprised if what we're witnessing is a dead cat bounce that can only be continued if the money printers are turned back on. Something's got to give, both on the fiscal side and in the private markets where the Common Man is getting crushed because he's been forced to take on insane amounts of debt to stay afloat after years of elevated levels of inflation. Add on the fact that AI has reached a state of maturity that will enable companies to replace their current meat suit workers with an army of cheap, efficient and fast digital workers and it isn't hard to see that some sort of employment crisis could be on the horizon as well.

Now is not the time to get complacent. While I do believe that the deals that are currently being made in the Middle East are probably in the best interest of the United States as the world, again, moves toward a more multi-polar reality, we are facing problems that one cannot simply wish away. They will need to be confronted. And as we've seen throughout the 21st century, the problems are usually met head-on with a money printer.

I take no pleasure in saying this because it is a bit uncouth to be gleeful to benefit from the strife of others, but it is pretty clear to me that all signs are pointing to bitcoin benefiting massively from everything that is going on. The shift towards a more multi-polar world, the runaway debt situation here in the United States, the increasing deficits, the AI job replacements and the consumer credit crisis that is currently unfolding, All will need to be "solved" by turning on the money printers to levels they've never been pushed to before.

Weird times we're living in.

China's Manufacturing Dominance: Why It Matters for the U.S.

In my recent conversation with Lyn Alden, she highlighted how China has rapidly ascended the manufacturing value chain. As Lyn pointed out, China transformed from making "sneakers and plastic trinkets" to becoming the world's largest auto exporter in just four years. This dramatic shift represents more than economic success—it's a strategic power play. China now dominates solar panel production with greater market control than OPEC has over oil and maintains near-monopoly control of rare earth elements crucial for modern technology.

"China makes like 10 times more steel than the United States does... which is relevant in ship making. It's relevant in all sorts of stuff." - Lyn Alden

Perhaps most concerning, as Lyn emphasized, is China's financial leverage. They hold substantial U.S. assets that could be strategically sold to disrupt U.S. treasury market functioning. This combination of manufacturing dominance, resource control, and financial leverage gives China significant negotiating power in any trade disputes, making our attempts to reshoring manufacturing all the more challenging.

Check out the full podcast here for more on Triffin's dilemma, Bitcoin's role in monetary transition, and the energy requirements for rebuilding America's industrial base.

Headlines of the Day

Financial Times Under Fire Over MicroStrategy Bitcoin Coverage - via X

Trump in Qatar: Historic Boeing Deal Signed - via X

Get our new STACK SATS hat - via tftcmerch.io

Johnson Backs Stock Trading Ban; Passage Chances Slim - via X

---

Take the First Step Off the Exchange

Bitkey is an easy, secure way to move your Bitcoin into self-custody. With simple setup and built-in recovery, it’s the perfect starting point for getting your coins off centralized platforms and into cold storage—no complexity, no middlemen.

Take control. Start with Bitkey.

Use the promo code *“TFTC20”* during checkout for 20% off

---

Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed 158,469 sats | $150.00M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

---

Final thought...

Building things of value is satisfying.

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

via me

Don't sleep on what's happening in Japan right now. We've been covering the country and the fact that they've lost control of their yield curve since late last year. After many years of making it a top priority from a monetary policy perspective, last year the Bank of Japan decided to give up on yield curve control in an attempt to reel inflation. This has sent yields for the 30-year and 40-year Japanese government bonds to levels not seen since the early 2000s in the case of the 30-year and levels never before seen for the 40-year, which was launched in 2007. With a debt to GDP ratio that has surpassed 250% and a population that is aging out with an insufficient amount of births to replace the aging workforce, it's hard to see how Japan can get out of this conundrum without some sort of economic collapse.

This puts the United States in a tough position considering the fact that Japan is one of the largest holders of U.S. Treasury bonds with more than $1.20 trillion in exposure. If things get too out of control in Japan and the yield curve continues to drift higher and inflation continues to creep higher Japan can find itself in a situation where it's a forced seller of US Treasuries as they attempt to strengthen the yen. Another aspect to consider is the fact that investors may see the higher yields on Japanese government bonds and decide to purchase them instead of US Treasuries. This is something to keep an eye on in the weeks to come. Particularly if higher rates drive a higher cost of capital, which leads to even more inflation. As producers are forced to increase their prices to ensure that they can manage their debt repayments.

It's never a good sign when the Japanese Prime Minister is coming out to proclaim that his country's financial situation is worse than Greece's, which has been a laughing stock of Europe for the better part of three decades. Japan is a very proud nation, and the fact that its Prime Minister made a statement like this should not be underappreciated.

As we noted last week, the 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds are drifting higher as well. Earlier today, the 30-year bond yield surpassed 5%, which has been a psychological level that many have been pointed to as a critical tipping point. When you take a step back and look around the world it seems pretty clear that bond markets are sending a very strong signal. And that signal is that something is not well in the back end of the financial system.

This is even made clear when you look at the private sector, particularly at consumer debt. In late March, we warned of the growing trend of buy now, pay later schemes drifting down market as major credit card companies released charge-off data which showed charge-off rates reaching levels not seen since the 2008 great financial crisis. At the time, we could only surmise that Klarna was experiencing similar charge-off rates on the bigger-ticket items they financed and started doing deals with companies like DoorDash to finance burrito deliveries in an attempt to move down market to finance smaller ticket items with a higher potential of getting paid back. It seems like that inclination was correct as Klarna released data earlier today showing more losses on their book as consumers find it extremely hard to pay back their debts.

via NewsWire

This news hit the markets on the same day as the average rate of the 30-year mortgage in the United States rose to 7.04%. I'm not sure if you've checked lately, but real estate prices are still relatively elevated outside of a few big cities who expanded supply significantly during the COVID era as people flooded out of blue states towards red states. It's hard to imagine that many people can afford a house based off of sticker price alone, but with a 7% 30-year mortgage rate it's becoming clear that the ability of the Common Man to buy a house is simply becoming impossible.

via Lance Lambert

The mortgage rate data is not the only thing you need to look at to understand that it's becoming impossible for the Common Man of working age to buy a house. New data has recently been released that highlights That the median home buyer in 2007 was born in 1968, and the median home buyer in 2024 was born in 1968. Truly wild when you think of it. As our friend Darth Powell cheekily highlights below, we find ourselves in a situation where boomers are simply trading houses and the younger generations are becoming indentured slaves. Forever destined to rent because of the complete inability to afford to buy a house.

via Darth Powell

via Yahoo Finance

Meanwhile, Bitcoin re-approached all-time highs late this evening and looks primed for another breakout to the upside. This makes sense if you're paying attention. The high-velocity trash economy running on an obscene amount of debt in both the public and private sectors seems to be breaking at the seams. All the alarm bells are signaling that another big print is coming. And if you hope to preserve your purchasing power or, ideally, increase it as the big print approaches, the only thing that makes sense is to funnel your money into the hardest asset in the world, which is Bitcoin.

via Bitbo

Buckle up, freaks. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. Stay humble, Stack Sats.

Trump's Middle East Peace Strategy: Redefining U.S. Foreign Policy

In his recent Middle East tour, President Trump signaled what our guest Dr. Anas Alhajji calls "a major change in US policy." Trump explicitly rejected the nation-building strategies of his predecessors, contrasting the devastation in Afghanistan and Iraq with the prosperity of countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE. This marks a profound shift from both Republican and Democratic foreign policy orthodoxy. As Alhajji noted, Trump's willingness to meet with Syrian President Assad follows a historical pattern where former adversaries eventually become diplomatic partners.

"This is really one of the most important shifts in US foreign policy to say, look, sorry, we destroyed those countries because we tried to rebuild them and it was a big mistake." - Dr. Anas Alhajji

The administration's new approach emphasizes negotiation over intervention. Rather than military solutions, Trump is engaging with groups previously considered off-limits, including the Houthis, Hamas, and Iran. This pragmatic stance prioritizes economic cooperation and regional stability over ideological confrontation. The focus on trade deals and investment rather than regime change represents a fundamental reimagining of America's role in the Middle East.

Check out the full podcast here for more on the Iran nuclear situation, energy market predictions, and why AI development could create power grid challenges.

Headlines of the Day

Bitcoin Soars to $106K While Bonds Lose 40% Since 2020 - via X

US Senate Advances Stablecoin Bill As America Embraces Bitcoin - via X

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Texas House Debates Bill For State-Run Bitcoin Reserve - via X

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Take the First Step Off the Exchange

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Use the promo code *“TFTC20”* during checkout for 20% off

---

_Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed 158

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

If you do one thing today, take the time to spend an hour to watch this YouTube video. As someone creating content who has become very cognizant of the effects of the algorithm and the pressures to cater to it, this video was unexpectedly and incredibly satisfying. We're coming up on the eight year anniversary of this newsletter and the podcast that accompanies it and over that eight year period, the pressures to compete in the world of ever increasing digital soy slop grow at an accelerating rate.

If you've seen our YouTube channel recently, you'll probably notice that we've bent the knee to the thumbnail and title clickbait game in an attempt to get our content out to a wider audience. This is something I've held out on for many years now at this point, but recently became convinced that it's something we simply have to do if we want to get our message out to a wider audience. As I write this, I'm thinking that maybe the fact that we have to do that in the first place says something about the content we're putting out there and whether or not it is actually valuable. But I do think the high velocity trash economy becoming completely saturated with digital soy slop has made it so people who truly want to get their message out have to play that game.

I want to make one thing clear. I certainly do not think I'm an artist, but I do like to think that over the last eight years we've been putting out information via content mediums that is valuable to you, dear reader. However, the informational content we put out there, particularly the audio and video content, is put on platforms where it is forced to compete with others who cater to the lowest common denominators of dopamine hijacking and in-group signaling that draws the masses like moths to a flame.

If you haven't watched the YouTube video yet, which I'm assuming 99.9% of you haven't, this may seem like a nonsensical ramble. So, I'll keep this one short and urge you to go watch the social commentary from comedian Jarrett Moore about the state of art, "content" and its effect on culture as it stands today. I'm assuming this isn't too much of a spoiler alert, but the situation is pretty dire. The world needs better art and people who are willing to support artists who are truly creative and take risks. This has nothing to do with bitcoin. But I think it highlights an interesting part of our society that is deteriorating at a rapid clip. And it's something that all of us should feel compelled to attend to lest we speed run into Idiocracy.

It made me feel uneasy about parts of my approach to this business, and that's a good thing.

Don't forget to buy a Bitkey!

Iran's Nuclear Ambitions Create a "Never-Ending Crisis"

In our latest discussion, energy expert Dr. Anas Alhajji described what he called Iran's "never-ending crisis" – a thesis he first published over 20 years ago that has proven remarkably accurate. As Alhajji explained, this crisis persists because of a fundamental contradiction: the U.S. sees any Iranian nuclear program (even peaceful) as strengthening a hostile regime, while Iran views nuclear energy as essential for domestic stability and economic survival.

"Iran is not going to negotiate over the bomb. They want to drag everything for the longest period until they get the bomb." - Dr. Anas Alhajji

What's particularly concerning is Iran's resilience against sanctions. Alhajji detailed how Iran has masterfully circumvented oil export restrictions through China, using a dedicated Chinese bank to process payments outside the international system. Iran's leadership appears willing to endure temporary geopolitical losses in Syria, Lebanon, and potentially Yemen, calculating that obtaining nuclear weapons will fundamentally transform regional politics and their treatment by the United States.

Check out the full podcast here for more on Trump's Middle East strategy, the future of BRICS, and critical challenges facing global energy infrastructure.

Headlines of the Day

Standard Chartered Predicts Bitcoin Will Reach $500K by 2028 - via X

Lummis: Genius Act Makes US Leader in Digital Asset Policy - via X

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Jake Tapper's Admission on Biden's Decline Sparks Media Ethics Debate - via X

---

Take the First Step Off the Exchange

Bitkey is an easy, secure way to move your Bitcoin into self-custody. With simple setup and built-in recovery, it’s the perfect starting point for getting your coins off centralized platforms and into cold storage—no complexity, no middlemen.

Take control. Start with Bitkey.

Use the promo code *“TFTC20”* during checkout for 20% off

---

Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed 158,469 sats | $150.00M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

---

Final thought...

My oldest is already at the "faking sick to get out of school" stage and I'm extremely proud.

---

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Key Takeaways

In this episode of TFTC, energy economist Anas Alhajji outlines a profound shift in U.S. foreign policy under Trump—away from military intervention and toward transactional diplomacy focused on trade, reconstruction, and curbing Chinese and Russian influence in the Middle East. He highlights Trump’s quiet outreach to Syria as emblematic of the U.S.'s strategic flexibility in legitimizing former adversaries when economically beneficial. Alhajji dismisses BRICS as a fractured bloc incapable of rivaling the U.S.-led order and insists the dollar and petrodollar remain dominant. On energy, he warns that despite favorable fundamentals, prices are suppressed by political confusion, underinvestment, and an aging power grid ill-prepared for the AI and urbanization boom. He also contends that Iran is stalling negotiations to buy time for nuclear advancement and that any deal will be superficial. Finally, Alhajji debunks the myth of Trump being pro-oil, noting his long-standing hostility toward the industry and explaining why a repeat of his past energy boom is implausible given today’s financial and structural constraints.

Best Quotes

• “BRICS is a paper tiger. Everything about BRICS is what China does—and that’s it.”
• “The dollar is here to stay. The petrodollar is here to stay. End of story.”
• “Trump hates the oil industry. He always classified it as an enemy.”
• “Energy projects are 30- to 40-year investments, but politicians think in 4-year cycles. That’s where the disconnect lies.”
• “People think shale will boom again. It won’t. The model changed from ‘drill baby drill’ to ‘control baby control.’”
• “The real story of Trump’s trip wasn’t about politics—it was investment, investment, investment.”
• “Without massive investment in the grid and gas turbines, blackouts will become the norm—even in rich countries like Kuwait.”
• “Iran and China have perfected the game of oil exports. Sanctions are just theater at this point.”

Conclusion

Anas Alhajji’s conclusion challenges conventional narratives, arguing that global power is shifting from military dominance to economic leverage, infrastructure investment, and energy control. He presents a nuanced view of U.S. foreign policy under Trump, emphasizing the strategic importance of trade and reconstruction over regime change. As energy demand soars and geopolitical risks mount, Alhajji warns that the real dangers lie not in foreign adversaries, but in policy confusion, infrastructural lag, and complacency—making this episode a crucial listen for anyone seeking to understand the high-stakes intersection of energy, economics, and diplomacy.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:48 - Syria and US diplomacy in Middle East
12:50 - Trump in the Middle East
18:12 - Fold & Bitkey
19:48 - Iran - Nuclear program and PR
33:53 - Unchained
34:22 - Crude markets, trade war and US debt
54:28 - Trump's energy stance
1:05:46 - Energy sector challanges
1:14:44 - Policy recommendations
1:21:18 - AI and bitcoin

Transcript

(00:00) oil prices market fundamentals support higher price than where we are today. But because of this confusion, everyone is scared of low economic growth and that is a serious problem. The US media ignored part of Trump's speech when he said we are not about nation building and they refer to Afghanistan and Iraq.
(00:15) Look at them. This is a criticism of George W. Bush. We have groups that are talking about the demise of the dollar, the rise of bricks. Bricks is a paper tiger. Everything about bricks is what China does and that's it. The dollar is here to stay and the petro dollar is here to stay.
(00:31) The perception is that the Trump administration is cold but the reality Trump hates the oil [Music] indust. How are you? Very good. Very good. Thank you. As you were telling me, you've been a bit sleepd deprived this week trying to keep up with what's going on. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Trump keeps us on our toes uh all the time.
(01:06) In fact, I plan certain things for the weekend and Trump will say something or he will do something and all of a sudden we get busy again. Uh so clients are not going to wait for you until you finish your work. Basically, they want to know what's going on. So what is going on? What what how profound were the events in the Middle East? These are very uh very profound changes basically because it is very clear that if you look at the last 15 years uh and you look at the growth uh in the Middle East, you look at the growth of Saudi Arabia and uh the
(01:41) role of Turkey for example in the region uh it just just amazing be beyond any uh any thoughts. Uh in fact both of them Turkey and Saudi Arabia are part of the G20. Uh so they have economic influence and they have political influence. And of course the icing on the cake for those who are familiar with the region is to recognize the Syrian government and meet with the Syrian uh president.
(02:11) Uh this is a major a major change in economics and politics uh of the Middle East. Let's touch on that Syria uh topic for a while because I think a lot of people here in the United States were a bit shocked at how sort of welcoming President Trump was towards the new Syrian president considering the fact that uh he was considered an enemy not too long ago here in the United States.
(02:42) What first of all it's a fact of life for those who would like to check the history of politics. There were many people around the world who were classified or they were on the terrorism list and then they became friends of the United States or they were became heroes. I mean Nelson Mandela is one of them. You look at Latin America, there are presidents in Latin America who were uh the enemy of the United States and then they became uh uh cooperative with the United States and the United States recognized their governments and the result of their uh elections. Uh so
(03:15) we've seen this historically uh several uh several times around the world and as they say freedom fighters for some basically are the enemies and the terrorists for for others etc. So uh what we've seen that's why the the visit is very important that the recognition of this government is very important. uh the fact on the ground that uh the president of Syria had the power on the ground uh he had the the the people on the ground and he had the control on the ground and whatever he's been he's been doing since he came into power until now
(03:52) he done all the right steps u and people loved him I mean everyone who went to Syria whether the Syrians who left Syria 40 years ago or uh the visitors who are coming to Syria, they will tell you, "We have never seen the Syrian people as happy as we've seen them today, despite the fact that they they live in misery.
(04:17) They don't have um 8 million people without housing. Uh there is barely any electricity in most of the country. There is no internet. There is barely any food. The uh inflation is rampant, etc. But people are happy because they lived in fear for a very long time. And uh the steps they have taken. For example, the uh ministers in the previous government uh are still there and they are still in the housing of the government.
(04:49) They still have the drivers. They still have the cars from the previous government. They still have it until today. So uh they they were classified as enemies before. But all of a sudden now you have a new government that is uh accepting them. Uh so we we see some changes on the ground that are positive and we'll see how these things will go given that the area around them basically has been unstable for a very long time.
(05:17) how because I don't the the news when I was actually it was surreal for me because my first trip to the Middle East was last December when it was literally f flying over Syria to Abu Dhabi when uh um Assad was getting thrown out and it was pretty surreal to be in that region of the world.
(05:43) How as it pertains to like religious minorities within Syria moving forward is there protractions protections there? Um well let me just uh I want to emphasize one point that is very important. What did the interest of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States in Syria if remember Syria was controlled by Iran and was controlled by the Russians.
(06:09) So in a sense it becomes uh kind of an imperative that taking it away from Iran and Russia and not bringing Iran or Russia back is extremely important. Now the Russians are still there and they have their own base but at least they are not bombing the Syrians and not killing them anymore. But the idea here is taking Syria out of Iran and Russia and probably later on if they kick the Russians out, Russians will not have access to the Mediterranean.
(06:37) Uh so there is an interest uh of all parties basically to take Russia out of Iran and um out of uh Syria regardless the country is uh devastated and it creates massive opportunities for US companies on all levels and uh we've seen a contract uh done recently with you mentioned Abu Dhabi uh uh a contract uh uh with the UA a basically to revamp all the Syrian ports and work on the Syrian ports.
(07:13) Uh so such contracts basically uh when you have a country that has nothing and it's completely devastated the whole infrastructure is devastated. Who is going to build it? If the uh what the Chinese, the Russians, so who who are going to build it? So, uh I think there is a a big room for US companies and others basically to come in and uh literally help on one side and make money on the other.
(07:38) Yeah, I think that that's what I'm trying to discern. What was this convoy from the United States to the Middle East this week signali

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Key Takeaways

In this episode, Bitcoin Core veteran James O’Beirne delivers a sharp critique of Bitcoin’s developmental stagnation, attributing it to political dysfunction, post-fork trauma, and resistance within Bitcoin Core to critical upgrades like CheckTemplateVerify (CTV). He argues that while institutional adoption accelerates, internal innovation is being stifled by misplaced controversies—such as the OP_RETURN policy debate—and a bottlenecked governance model. O’Beirne warns that without urgent progress on scaling solutions like CTV, congestion control, and vaulting systems, Bitcoin risks ossifying and becoming vulnerable to institutional capture. Advocating a more adversarial posture, he suggests forking or building alternative clients to pressure progress but remains hopeful, seeing rising momentum for protocol upgrades from developers outside the Core elite.

Best Quotes

“Everybody has mempool derangement syndrome… it’s such a small issue in the grand scheme of challenges Bitcoin is facing.”

“Bitcoin is as much an experiment in technical human organization as it is a pure technology.”

“If we don’t figure out how to scale trustless Bitcoin self-custody, we’re toast. Right now, only about 2.5% of Americans could actually use Bitcoin monthly in a meaningful way.”

“CTV isn’t sexy—it just works. It keeps getting reinvented because it's so useful. At this point, it’s essential.”

“If Core isn’t going to evaluate these proposals, someone has to. Otherwise, we need to build the social justification for forking.”

“Lightning didn’t scale Bitcoin the way we expected. Let’s stop assuming a silver bullet is coming and start building the bridges ourselves.”

“You could onboard someone with just a phone and a vault… and give them more security than most hardware wallets.”

Conclusion

While Bitcoin gains traction with institutions and governments, its internal development is stalling under political inertia and misplaced focus. James O’Beirne urges the community to prioritize impactful upgrades like CTV and CCV, challenge the bottleneck of Bitcoin Core if needed, and recommit to Bitcoin’s foundational principles. This episode underscores the urgent need to bridge technical and social divides to ensure Bitcoin remains a decentralized, censorship-resistant tool for global value transfer.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:41 - Multi axis issue
5:12 - Core governance
9:41 - Derailing productive discussions
17:05 - Fold & Bitkey
18:32 - CTV
29:24 - Unchained
29:53 - Magnitude of change
41:45 - Covenant proposals
50:16 - CTV benefits
57:56 - Institutional ownership
1:05:26 - Moving forward

Transcript

(00:00) I think I have a somewhat different take than 99% of the people in the discussion. What freaks me out is if you've got Sailor owning half million coins or whatever and Black Rockck owning however many, people forget that Bitcoin is as much an experiment in technical human organization as it is, you know, as a sort of pure technology.
(00:17) The undernowledged reality is I'm actually interested to see if we have like a black swan adoption event from the machines. the risk given the increased scrutiny that things like the strategic Bitcoin reserve introduce there's a shot clock on getting to trustless decentralized value storage technology and I think we really have to be thinking about that combination of physically tired and mentally tired it's also tiresome James it's it's I was looking at that picture today and I was actually going to tweet it absent any caption just because it's
(00:52) a really good Uh yeah, it's a really good epitome of uh of a lot of stuff. But I'm with you, man. I'm tired. It's Friday. Who is it? Is that a just some random Japanese guy? I think it's it's I actually think it's from a documentary about I don't know if it's Africa, but Oh, yes. Yes.
(01:13) It's there's a little bit of a kind of like racy connotation there. Um yeah, the uh it's been long. It was interesting for me. We had Texas Energy Mining Summit here in Austin the beginning of the week. It sort of blended with Bitcoin plus I was over at Bitcoin++ Wednesday and yesterday doing the live desk and obviously topic of conversation is OP return this policy decision and this policy change that that core wants to make and many people are uh angry about and it's just again it's also tiresome.
(01:52) spoke with people on both sides over the two days and I I think I came away more confused than than I entered entered the week like what is the optimal path and somebody who's worked on Bitcoin core worked on Bitcoin core for for many years I've seen you tweeting about it seems like I won't put words in your mouth I'll let you say like what is your perspective on this whole policy debate around op return yeah so in general I think I have a somewhat different take than um 99% of the people in in the discussion which is basically that this
(02:25) is a really stupid discussion um everybody has mempool derangement syndrome like at every layer um and uh what what frustrates me a little bit about the conversation not not to not to uh get like um grumpy right off the bat but it's just it's it's such a small issue in the in the grand scheme of challenges that are being presented to Bitcoin that like spending all this drama on it um is is really a silly use of time and uh kind of emotion, but I can break it down for you.
(03:02) I mean, I think I think like largely the argument is happening on a few layers. Um the change itself technically I'm totally in favor of it. It makes sense. you know, basically the rationale is like, well, you know, um, people want to include exogenous data into the chain. Um, you can't really stop them from doing that.
(03:23) Um and so let's basically minimize the damage by saying hey you know we're going to make it easier for people to actually make use of op return as a data carrier which uh lets us avoid bloat in the UTXO set which is like one of the precious resources we have to take care of for the node.
(03:44) Um, so that's all good and the and the other thing too is that as we've seen with the ordinal stuff is um, you know, data is going to wait make its way into the chain and actually it hurts the whole network when um, there are transactions that most nodes haven't seen yet but they come through a block. Basically that slows down block propagation time.
(04:06) And so the whole idea is if you bring policy closer to the actual consensus rules, closer to the actual transactions that are going to come through and be mined, then you're going to have better network performance. You're going to have lower latency when it comes to actually broadcasting a new block around. So that's like the the sort of technical layer of the discussion.
(04:25) It's it's really a minute non-controversial change if you kind of have fluency with the the technical end of the mempool. Um, but I think there's this this higher layer to the conversation which is sort of a readjudication of spam in Bitcoin. And it's, you know, I think a lot of the the old animal spirits and sentiments are emerging about like, well, we don't like spam.
(04:49) And I think for a lot of people who kind of get lost in the technical details, it's very easy to latch on to the sentiment of I don't like spam. Um and so uh so that makes the sort of ocean knots camp maybe more appealing. Uh so that's yeah that's I guess a summary if you want to jump in anything in particular we can that's what I was saying I came out more confused than I went in.
(05:20) So last week on RHR, hey, I agree. You want policy to be aligned with consensus. Like whether we like it or not, these transactions are getting into blocks. They're non-standard, but they are valid within consensus rules and policy just isn't aligning with that. And like you said, this is disrupting the P2P layer and potentially the fee uh estimation process that that many nodes use, many applications use.
(05:49) And it makes sense to me to align policy with consensus. These things are happening. And if you can make it so Bitcoin full nodes are operating as efficiently and optimally as possible by changing this, it makes sense to me. I think my one like push back was like makes sense to me. However, I think how it was communicated to people and the whole mess with the PR.
(06:12) I think it's I think it's it was it's it's just a tactical error. Like even if this change gets in the the the real benefit of is is not material. You know, nobody was really clamoring for it. um this stuff always, you know, gets the hackles up of everybody who cares at all about, you know, spamming Bitcoin. So, it was a real tactical error.
(06:36) And I think that's that's one place where I mean it's kind of I had a little bit of shot in Freud seeing it because I'm fairly critical of core as a project along you know a variety of axes at this point and it was just kind of a demonstration of the the disconnection and kind of ineptitude of um publicity management kind of on on their end.
(06:58) Um, and so like there's part of me that enjoys seeing that because I I'm kind of convinced that that group has a lot less efficacy than they have credibility. And so to to see that kind of catch up was was interesting. The uh let's dive into that like what you said multiple axes you have a problem. I think we've throughout the years like we've been discussing the issues that Bitcoin like yourself particularly as a Bitcoin core developer for many years trying to get things through not only in the context of the way core works from a governance
(07:35) structure but just the way Bitcoin works as a distributed open source protocol like trying to get changes in and I will say like

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Key Takeaways

In this episode, Bram Kanstein delivers a powerful exploration of how studying money for thousands of hours led him to a single, life-changing conclusion: Bitcoin is the key to preserving value and reclaiming personal agency in an increasingly unstable world. Through the lens of a disillusioned millennial generation—raised with technological optimism but betrayed by economic reality—Bram exposes the fiat system as one built on illusion, debt, and diminishing returns. He explains how Bitcoin’s transparent, rule-based design offers a principled alternative, especially for those wired to question systems and seek truth. Describing the fiat economy as a “high-velocity trash system” that undermines innovation and long-term planning, he argues Bitcoin creates the time and space to think, build, and live freely. As AI reshapes the labor market, Bram sees Bitcoin as a vital foundation for individuals to adapt, maintain sovereignty, and thrive in a future defined by rapid technological disruption.

Best Quotes

“Anything that you would want to fix in the world is broken because the money is broken.”

“You’re stacking nothing. Literal paper.”

“You have to red pill before you orange pill.”

“The only thing you need to do is move to the other money that they cannot mess with.”

“One Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. That’s the whole point.”

“Millennials are primed to understand Bitcoin.”

“Bitcoin lets you get out of the rat race and start walking your own path.”

“The fiat mindset is a zero-sum game. In Bitcoin, value is created.”

“We should stop asking how to value Bitcoin—and start asking how to value everything else in Bitcoin.”

“Even with a master’s in economics, people still don’t understand what money is.”

Conclusion

This episode delivers a powerful call to rethink everything we assume about money, arguing that understanding Bitcoin is less about profit and more about reclaiming personal agency in a world defined by uncertainty. Bram Kanstein shows how asking fundamental questions—like “What is money?”—can lead to a deeper sense of purpose and autonomy. As AI and systemic instability accelerate, Bitcoin emerges not just as sound money, but as a life tool for intentional living, long-term thinking, and individual sovereignty.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:36 - INTJ bitcoiners
4:58 - The millennial headspace is primed for bitcoin
7:25 - Bitcoin gives time and space to build
15:29 - Fold & Bitkey
17:05 - Seeing systemic problems
26:25 - Bitcoin’s positive feedback loop
33:55 - Recognize your agency
37:58 - Unchained
38:27 - Fiat money creates uncertainty
44:41 - What is money?
54:04 - Money and energy
1:03:43 - Bitcoin allows growth
1:09:02 - Bitcoin/AI
1:31:34 - Optimistic note

Transcript

(00:00) Let's say you're a millennial and mid-30s and you want to retire in 30 years. If you calculate the amount of dollar, pound the euro, yen units. You need way more units of that money than you think right now. They are funding pension funds, but the pension funds are using that money for the people that are actually retiring.
(00:17) No one knows about money. They don't know how debt works, how finance works. But that's kind of how it's designed, right? Like that's what eventually keeps the Ponzi alive. And I just started with the question, what do you think happens if you call the bank and say like, hey, can I get 100 or 200k in cash? Man, you got an editor like in house.
(00:39) That's That's pro. That's uh it's because this setup I'm so far away from the computer. I just need somebody to hit the button. Okay. Okay. the extent the extent of of Logan's job extends far beyond just hitting the button. But yeah, INTJ I think uh I think it was as we rear into what looks to be another bull market.
(01:05) I think getting back to first principles and discussing the challenges of studying and understanding Bitcoin, it's important to to highlight the archetype of individuals who have studied fallen down the rabbit hole and really dedicated their lives to Bitcoin. And this INTJ cohort that exists within Bitcoin seems pretty material apparently. Yeah.
(01:35) I mean, I have many moments where I just realize that I'm lucky that my brain is wired in a certain way, you know. I feel like crazy blessed that I figured out this Bitcoin thing, you know, and that when I ran into certain realizations along the way in my Bitcoin journey that I was like, hm, you know, how does this actually work? you know, do I actually understand the systems I'm participating in, the things that I believe, you know, the the the the people that I abstracted um or or outsourced certain responsibilities to to take care of, for example, my money
(02:10) in the bank. You know, I I think um being wired in a certain way definitely helps in grasping Bitcoin to a degree where you're like, okay, this is the only thing I need to pay attention to, you know, in my life. And yeah, we we jokingly started talking about this because I have the hat here, but there was this um I think it was like like a Twitter poll actually or someone shared it on Twitter and this is already like two or three years old where where someone investigated these MyersBriggs um personality types and I think there's
(02:42) only like 2% of people that have INTJ but like 20% of Bitcoiners have that personality type. So it um it apparently helps. So yeah, I just I just quickly Googled it actually. It says uh the INTJ is the architect. It's a personality type with the introverted intuitive thinking and judging traits. These thoughtful tacticians love perfecting the details of life, applying creativity and rationality to everything they do.
(03:09) I think the rationality part here is what um what uh I think helps you to to gro Bitcoin eventually. Yeah, it reminds me of I forget what the study was, but postco it was a similar distribution of just like 2% of people were highly skeptical of what was going on with the lockdowns and the attack on bodily autonomy.
(03:38) And there was a study that was done about I forget it was bees or some type of fly that they they have like the horde of um the horde of the particular fly I think it was bees has like 2% act as these sort of alarm bells that are on the outside the outskirts of the community and they'll start communicating like hey something's wrong here and people the other flies or bees will be skeptical at first but then eventually uh the alarm bells will be proven to be right that there was some sort of danger around the corner. That's fascinating.
(04:09) Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. I I think we're not that special eventually, you know, like we think we have all this autonomy, but but um yeah, we're we're just wired in a certain way. And I think I don't know where you want to take this conversation, but I think, you know, part of growing up and being an adult is figuring out, you know, how do I actually work and how do I work with how I work, you know? Yeah. No, it is.
(04:36) And as I get older, creep into my mid-30s, which is hard hard to come to grips with, it is uh really falling back on like, all right, I I feel like I have a good perspective on the world and my place in it, and how do I just optimize to make sure I'm aligning my my work and my career, I guess, if you call it that, with what I'm passionate about. Yeah.
(05:00) Well, I also think that is actually why our generation, you know, my my podcast is Bitcoin for millennials. I think uh the millennials are primed to understand Bitcoin. You know, we are in this life phase where big things happen, you know, starting a family or settling somewhere or or making big career moves or decide Yeah.
(05:25) like deciding what am I going to spend like the next 10 20 years on and uh I think it's an interesting phase actually I I don't know how that was for you but but for me like the the 30s were really where I dove more and more into Bitcoin like got got that stronger conviction and also yeah kind of was invited to go further down that that rabbit hole you know and like how I see it now is that that Bitcoin is really the foundation for the rest of my life, you know, like it it gives me time and space to look forward and enthusiasm, you know, like I sometimes lurk on the
(06:01) millennial subreddit, you know, or the finance sub subreddit. And many people in our generation are very nihilistic, you know, they're very unsure about the future. Like some people aren't even having kids because they think they cannot afford it, you know. And uh whenever I read that, I just think like, yeah, I I don't really have those things.
(06:22) But I know it's because of Bitcoin, you know. I I know that Bitcoin gives me, yeah, like I said, the time and space to figure out what's next, like what should I focus on? Like it gives time and space to to try out stuff, to build something, you know, to to to really attempt at at doing something. Where I see many people that don't see that, they are more in the consumer type, you know, like they they just spend the money that's worth the most today, you know, like that's what they're incentivized to do. Yeah.
(06:49) And is is that why you started Bitcoin for millennials is to number one put the put the message out there. Millennials come listen to this. One of you Yes. that is trying to educate you about this. But because this is something I think about a lot is somebody's like dead smack in the middle of the millennial generation and has observed many of the things you just described in my own life, my own network.
(07:13) And that's part of the reason why this podcast exists. And um what I'm trying to do at TFTC is just try to figure out a way to reach into the minds of millennials, hopefully c

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Another week of conversations with sharp minds thinking about Bitcoin's future and the broader economic landscape. Here are the three most compelling predictions from recent episodes.

Bitcoin Core Will Face a Major Governance Crisis Over Covenant Proposals in 2025 - James O'Beirne

James made a prediction that sent chills through the Bitcoin development community - he believes Bitcoin Core's current governance structure will reach a breaking point this year over covenant proposals like CTV. After working as a Core developer for nearly a decade, he's convinced that the organization's inability to make progress on scaling solutions will force alternative implementations.

His timeline is specific and urgent. James believes that if Core doesn't show "substantive review discussion about how we get this stuff in" within six months, credible developers will start building alternate activation clients. The technical argument is compelling: covenants like CheckTemplateVerify have been thoroughly reviewed for seven years, with a 5 BTC bounty (worth over $500,000) still unclaimed for finding material bugs.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Bitcoin's future. James noted that currently "just over two and a half percent of Americans would be able to, on a monthly basis, buy Bitcoin on an exchange, withdraw it to self-custody, and then maybe make a spend." Without scaling solutions, this number won't improve meaningfully. His prediction reflects growing frustration with Core's de facto monopoly over protocol development. "You simply can't ignore that there is a social reality to being in that world," he said, referring to the concentrated funding and decision-making power that has created what he sees as an unsustainable bottleneck for Bitcoin's evolution.

The U.S. Will See Widespread Energy Blackouts as AI Data Centers Strain the Grid - Anas Alhajji

Dr. Anas delivered a sobering prediction about America's energy infrastructure failing to keep pace with exploding AI demand. He expects we'll see significant blackouts in major cities within the next few years, with a particularly concerning scenario where AI facilities maintain power while residential areas go dark. "I will not be surprised if we end up with a situation like this in some states and some cities," he warned.

The mathematics behind his prediction are stark. Energy consumption is skyrocketing due to multiple factors: urbanization, AI data centers, and simple population growth. When migrants move from rural areas to U.S. cities, their energy consumption increases by 30-70 times. Meanwhile, AI facilities require massive baseload power that renewable sources simply cannot provide reliably.

The infrastructure problems run deeper than just generation capacity. Anas explained that America's electrical grid is aging and wasn't designed for this level of demand. Even worse, we lack the manufacturing capacity to produce enough natural gas turbines - the only realistic solution for reliable baseload power at scale. He predicts this will create a dangerous political dynamic where tech companies with guaranteed power contracts maintain operations during blackouts while regular citizens lose electricity. "We might see a backlash from the population, and we will see politicians basically being forced to fight them because of that."

AI Will Force Millennials Into Career Reinvention Within the Next Decade - Bram Kanstein

Bram made a stark prediction about the collision between artificial intelligence and millennial career paths. He believes that traditional knowledge-based jobs will become obsolete much faster than people expect, forcing an entire generation to completely rethink their working lives. "If you think you're going to work for the next 30 years of your life, think again," he warned during our conversation.

His argument centers on the rapid advancement of AI capabilities that he's witnessed firsthand. After spending just 12 hours working with AI tools, Bram claims he developed what could be "a top 10 cybersecurity invention" - despite having no cybersecurity background. This experience convinced him that jobs requiring strict knowledge and logic are already dead. The implications are massive for millennials who built their careers around expertise that AI can now replicate instantly.

The timing couldn't be worse, as Bram notes that this technological disruption is happening precisely when millennials need stable income to support families and prepare for retirement. His solution? Use Bitcoin to create the time and space needed to figure out how to function in an AI-dominated world. "You need to be aware of that. This is where it's going. So how do you protect yourself in an age of AI? Bitcoin is the perfect way to do that."

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New Bitcoin Mining Pool Flips Industry Model: "Plebs Eat First" Could Threaten Corporate Dominance

Parasite Pool's radical zero-fee structure challenges mining giants by guaranteeing payouts to small miners while rewarding block finders with instant Bitcoin. It disrupts traditional mining with a hybrid payout model that gives block discoverers 1 BTC immediately, while distributing remaining rewards (~2.125 BTC plus fees) among all pool participants. This "plebs eat first" approach targets the 22% discount miners typically accept in exchange for guaranteed income.

Key innovations that matter:

• Lightning Network integration bypasses Bitcoin's 100-block maturity rule, delivering instant payouts to Lightning wallets
• 10-sat minimum withdrawal eliminates traditional barriers for small miners
• Block withholding protection through substantial honest-miner rewards reduces pool attacks

The pool currently commands just 5 PH/s (0.000006% of Bitcoin's network), meaning an expected 3+ years before hitting a block. But this represents a growing counterculture against Full Pay Per Share (FPPS) pools that dominate corporate mining.

Industry impact: If successful, Parasite Pool could attract commercial miners seeking downside protection while maintaining the lottery appeal that drives pleb participation. The model challenges the structural advantages of corporate mining pools.

What's next: ZK Shark plans to open-source components over time, with the current beta suggesting this is just "V1" of a broader disruption strategy.

Link to Full Article

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Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $150M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

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@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Key Takeaways

In this episode of TFTC, Jessy Gilger, Managing Partner at Sound Advisory and architect of Ganet Trust, unpacks the complexities of retiring on Bitcoin, emphasizing that the “right” amount depends on spending habits, age, and minimizing withdrawal pressure. He introduces Ganet Trust as a Bitcoin-native fiduciary solution that leverages multisig custody to meet institutional compliance standards without sacrificing decentralization. Jessy also critiques high-yield derivative products like MSTY, warning of systemic risks and advocating for safer alternatives like SMAs. The conversation broadens into the emotional pitfalls of financial decision-making, the importance of aligning wealth with values, and the evolving macro landscape where Bitcoin’s intersection with traditional finance and tax policy will shape how individuals and institutions protect and grow their holdings across generations.

Best Quotes

"The most comfort comes from putting as little pressure as possible against that stack."

"Multisig is the upgrade from a honeypot to a distributed key setup."

"If a whale pees in the pool, everyone is affected."

"Everyone feels late to Bitcoin because they know someone who got in earlier."

"Stacking Saturdays is my new stack sats."

"Bitcoin doesn’t know about trust, it knows private keys."

"The money is there to serve your values—not the other way around."

"Some financial products will help, some will hurt, and some will fail. Our job is to help clients navigate them safely."

Conclusion

This episode offers a powerful blend of practical insight and philosophical reflection on long-term Bitcoin strategy, emphasizing the need for sound custody, inheritance planning, and emotional discipline in a volatile, financialized world. Jessy Gilger introduces Ganet Trust as a vital solution for secure, compliant Bitcoin ownership, while his “stacking Saturdays” mantra reframes wealth as a pursuit of time, freedom, and meaningful priorities. As Bitcoin moves further into the mainstream, the conversation urges listeners to stay grounded, think generationally, and build resilient systems for both assets and life.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
0:33 - Bitcoin Retirement Planning at New All-Time Highs
5:22 - How Gannett Trust Works
10:05 - High Net Worth Bitcoin Storage and Estate Planning Solutions
16:48 - MSTY Derivatives: Understanding MicroStrategy Product Risks
19:53 - Bitkey
20:56 - How MSTY Works and the Whale in the Pool Problem
30:16 - Unchained
30:37 - Bitcoin Financialization and Corporate Treasury Strategy
39:35 - Avoiding Ego-Driven Bitcoin Mistakes and Building Bridges
47:33 - Stack Saturdays
53:15 - Tax Policy Changes and Wild Times Ahead
57:18 - Where to Find Gannett Trust and Closing

Transcript

(00:00) We have people retiring with hundreds of Bitcoin. Do you need to be on a yacht every week or are you staying humble and keeping those stats? 10 of the 12 ETFs are at Coinbase means all the keys are at Coinbase and with the news of the last week like, hey, there could be cracks. Micro Strategy is built on Bitcoin.
(00:18) It's got all of the risks of Bitcoin, right? But then it's got its own set of risks. Let's call them Sailor and Profitability. Then you have derivatives which are on top of Micro Strategy and they retain the risks of everything underneath. meeting on a on a day when we hit new all-time highs. Bitcoin approached $110,000.
(00:43) Got Jesse back on the show to talk about many things, not just the price ripping. A lot of good things happening on the unch unchained side of things. Watching Ganet Trust. We'll get into it. Yeah, lot lots of stuff happening. I think um the price likes Ganet. I I think that's the uh the mover. What uh I mean that's been a big discussion in in the space right now is uh are we heading to new all-time highs? How should Bitcoiners be preparing? How much Bitcoin do people need to retire? How how are you thinking about all this as we approach what seems
(01:22) to be another bull cycle? Yeah, that's a common question, right? How much Bitcoin do I need to retire? I get it a lot and there's so many other questions I want to ask like, well, how much money are you spending, right? Do you do you need to be on a yacht every week or are you staying humble and keeping those stats? And so, the amount of Bitcoin can vary because the spending pressure you're putting against your Bitcoin stack is the the biggest factor, right? And age is probably the second.
(01:54) a 30-year-old retiring on Bitcoin is different than a 75year-old retiring on Bitcoin just because of the horizon. So, stacks vary. We've got people retiring with um less than seven figures of Bitcoin because they have other assets and then we have people retiring with hundreds of Bitcoin um and putting very little pressure against that portfolio.
(02:16) So, can go in a lot of different ways. Um but it is a question of the day as you're poking new all-time highs. Everyone's like, "Well, how high is it going to get?" And then huge question is do we have cycles again right if countries are buying what what would a downside look like and that's the big question in the retirees mind is how do I protect and not ride that downside all the way down if we do have another 70 80% drawback. Yeah. No.
(02:42) And I think particularly for younger people having in their mind like the perspective of 21 million Bitcoin, 8 billion people, what's the stat? 60 million millionaires in the world. Mhm. How much how many stats do I need to get to to feel comfortable that I have a sufficient slice of the Bitcoin pie? That feel comfortable concept is just so different, right? because Bitcoin is moving and shaking and all-time highs or down 30% and that's still within a bull market.
(03:15) Is that comfortable, right? Can you actually hang it up and like, all right, not going into work and I'm just going to continue to ride these adoption cycles. I don't know if it ever gets comfortable. The most comfort comes from putting as little pressure as possible against that stack, right? that you're not pushing these withdrawal rates of like 5 10 20% of my Bitcoin stack.
(03:38) I'm needing to live on every because then you're requiring Bitcoin to do something for you in the short term which is just not great at, right? What what's Bitcoin price going to be in a year? Far less reliable than what's Bitcoin price going to be in 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I think one of the holdups too is the ability for people to get into Bitcoin and know where to put it and not only have certainty of what it will be valued at in 30 years, but will they have access to it? That's one thing that you guys
(04:10) have been very much focused. I know sound advisory is separate from Unchained technically but within the Unchained umbrella but Unchained focused on helping secure individuals and businesses and trust uh Bitcoin and I think today's announcement of Ganet Trust is a massive step in a direction towards more certainty for long-term holdings for particular entities.
(04:36) Yes, the unchained umbrella or or family of companies is growing and the intention will be for sound advisory to tuck under or be merged into folded into Ganet Trust Company as it gets stood up. But it is the most robust uh compliance offering that um is out there in the fiduciary space. And so that in my opinion was the one thing missing as people want to live on a Bitcoin standard.
(05:04) Sometimes they're in an entity or an organization or have a structure that requires a fiduciary standard. And these two coming together is solved by Ganet Trust Company. So it's going to be the most robust way to hold Bitcoin and have like true inheritance that can be um administered through generations. So how how does this work mechanically via Ganet? Mechanically.
(05:28) So as the first Bitcoin native trust company, other other trust companies do exist, right? but they don't build upon Bitcoin in the way that Unchained has. So Ganet in its um in its Unchained roots and using Unchained technology is going to be able to use multi-IG to achieve um trust company goals.
(05:50) And what that likely will mean is Ganet holding a key, Unchained holding a key, third party holding a key. Those three keys together ensure that the Bitcoin is not being held at any one spot, right? We could get into the Coinbase honeypot. We actually talked about this on our last episode like, "Hey, what do you think is the uh the risk out there that the industry might disagree with?" Said, "I'm launching a new segment.
(06:15) I'm going to ask you a prediction of what what's out there that the uh the industry doesn't see eye to eye with you at." And I was at conferences and they're saying, "Hey, Coinbase is the best. That's where we put all the cut." That means all the keys are at Coinbase and with the news of the last week like, hey, there could be cracks, right? If you've got exposure to Coinbase now, you could be questioning. I was on the list.
(06:37) I got the email. You were affected. That's not great. It doesn't feel good knowing that information that information could have been a lot worse. That headline could have been private keys being mismanaged. When you overlay what Ganet is going to offer to the custody space, it means that not all of the keys are going to be at any one entity.
(07:00) And so that gives the Bitcoiner who understands multisig the confidence that okay, I'm upgrading from a honeypot to a distributed key setup. But it has to be done in a fiduciary and compliant way to satisfy the the institutional and big money of the world, right? family offices, uh, Bitcoin treasury companies, they're going to need a structure that the CIO, the

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Marty's Bent

via levelsio

Over the weekend, prolific vibe coder levelsio took to X to complain about the state of housing affordability across Europe. Something that I was very happy to see considering the fact that there is a massive real estate affordability crisis across much of the world and it is important that people who are respected and have platforms speak out when they identify the problem as well. More eyes and focus on the problem is how something begins to get solved.

With that being said, I think levelsio is missing the forest for the trees by blaming institutionalized NIMBYism, burdensome regulations and governments hoarding land that should instead be given to developers to produce more housing supply. I quote tweeted this particular tweet on the subject from levelsio and wanted to take some time today to republish those thoughts here and expand on the topic.

It’s almost as if real estate is being used as a store of value asset instead of the consumable good that it is.

What @levelsio is observing here is called a “monetary premium”. A monetary premium is the value added on top of the consumable/aesthetic/location value of real estate.

This monetary premium exist because central banks and governments have distorted the market for money and people are forced to push value into assets that are scarce relative to dollars. Over the last 50 years real estate has been one of the relatively scarce assets of choice.

The housing affordability crisis is a negative externality of the market reaction to the corruption of money. It can only be fixed by re-introducing hard money into the economy that enables people to store value reliably. If that emerges they won’t have to store value in real estate, the monetary premium of real estate will dissolve and prices will correct to their proper valuations.

This is one of the problems that bitcoin solves.

It’s still early yet, but more and more people are recognizing the utility provided by a neutral reserve asset that can’t be manipulated by central planners. At scale, the effect on assets that have accumulated a monetary premium over decades will be material. All of these assets are significantly overvalued and their monetary premium are leaking into bitcoin.

Put another way, "It's the money, stupid." Now, this isn't to say that the supply of housing in certain areas being artificially restricted isn't having an effect on the price of housing. This is certainly true, especially in cities like San Francisco where there is a relatively strong demand because of the economic density of the area and the desire of many high agency and productive people to live there. But I would put forth that the monetary premium is still the bigger problem and no amount of de-regulation to enable the supply of housing to increase will solve the affordability crisis in the long-run. The only way to get to the root of this specific problem is via bitcoin's mainstream adoption as an apolitical uncontrollable asset with completely idiosyncratic risks when compared to any individual asset class.

Let's say the government did ease up regulations and local NIMBY sympathetics were shoved in a corner to allow new units to be built. This doesn't solve the problem in the short-run because there is a time-delay between when regulations are lifted and when new supply actually makes it to market. In the interim, governments and central banks are inevitably going to go further into debt and be forced to print money to monetize that debt. This will exacerbate inflation and even if new real estate units are brought to market, the builders/owners of those properties will likely have to demand elevated prices to attempt to keep up with inflation.

This also does nothing to solve the problem of real income and wage growth, which are significantly lagging real inflation. Even if prices came down because of a surge in supply, could the Common Man afford a down payment on the property? I'd be shocked if this was the case. And since it's likely not the case the only way to get people into these houses as "owners" would be to offer them zero-down financing, which makes people feel richer than they actually are and leads them to make financially ruinous decisions.

It's the money, stupid. People need a way to save so that they can buy in the first place. Fiat currency doesn't allow this and the only people who can save effectively are those who make enough money to funnel into substitute store of value assets like real estate.

As it stands today, the price-to-income ratio of real estate is 5.0x and the price-t0-rent index is 1.36. Up from 3.3x and 1.14x respectively where the metrics sat in the year 2000. The growth in these ratios is driven predominately via their monetary premium.

And guess what, it's about to get much worse. Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Elon Musk have all signaled that the plan moving forward is to attempt to drive growth and productivity as high as possible while also letting deficits and the debt increase unabated, which means that inflation is likely to continue unabated and potentially increase.

It might make sense to get some bitcoin if that is the case.

via me

"Whale in the Pool" Risk That Could Destroy MSTY Investors

Jessy Gilger raised serious concerns about MSTY and similar derivative products that promise eye-popping yields. He pointed to the COVID crash where gold mining ETFs using derivatives collapsed 95% and never recovered, despite gold itself performing well. Jessy noted that while his team calculated reasonable MicroStrategy covered call yields of 16-22%, MSTY advertises 120% annualized distributions - a red flag that suggests these aren't sustainable dividends from profits, but potentially just returning investors' own capital.

"If a whale pees in the pool, everyone is affected." - Jessy Gilger

Jessy explained that when large investors need to exit these pooled products during market stress, they must sell derivative positions into illiquid markets with no buyers, potentially triggering catastrophic losses for all participants. His solution? Private pools through separately managed accounts that achieve similar income goals without the contagion risk of being trapped with panicking whales.

Check out the full podcast here for more on Gannett Trust's multi-sig solution, Bitcoin retirement planning and corporate treasury strategies.

Headlines of the Day

World's Largest Bitcoin Conference Starts Tomorrow- via X

Remixpoint to Buy Additional ¥1 Billion in Bitcoin - via X

Get our new STACK SATS hat - via tftcmerch.io

Marty to Judge Bitcoin World Record Try in Vegas - via X

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Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed 158,469 sats | $150.00M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

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Final thought...

Looking forward to a fun, productive and wholesome week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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[](https://youtube.com/@T

@ b7274d28:c99628cb

In this second installment of The Android Elite Setup tutorial series, we will cover installing the nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8 on your #Android device and browsing for apps you may be interested in trying out.

Since the #Zapstore is a direct competitor to the Google Play Store, you're not going to be able to find and install it from there like you may be used to with other apps. Instead, you will need to install it directly from the developer's GitHub page. This is not a complicated process, but it is outside the normal flow of searching on the Play Store, tapping install, and you're done.

Installation

From any web browser on your Android phone, navigate to the Zapstore GitHub Releases page and the most recent version will be listed at the top of the page. The .apk file for you to download and install will be listed in the "Assets."

Tap the .apk to download it, and you should get a notification when the download has completed, with a prompt to open the file.

You will likely be presented with a prompt warning you that your phone currently isn't allowed to install applications from "unknown sources." Anywhere other than the Play Store is considered an "unknown source" by default. However, you can manually allow installation from unknown sources in the settings, which the prompt gives you the option to do.

In the settings page that opens, toggle it to allow installation from this source, and you should be prompted to install the application. If you aren't, simply go to your web browser's downloads and tap on the .apk file again, or go into your file browser app and you should find the .apk in your Downloads folder.

If the application doesn't open automatically after install, you will find it in your app drawer.

Home Page

Right at the top of the home page in the Zapstore is the search bar. You can use it to find a specific app you know is available in the Zapstore.

There are quite a lot of open source apps available, and more being added all the time. Most are added by the Zapstore developer, nostr:npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9, but some are added by the app developers themselves, especially Nostr apps. All of the applications we will be installing through the Zapstore have been added by their developers and are cryptographically signed, so you know that what you download is what the developer actually released.

The next section is for app discovery. There are curated app collections to peruse for ideas about what you may want to install. As you can see, all of the other apps we will be installing are listed in nostr:npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9's "Nostr" collection.

In future releases of the Zapstore, users will be able to create their own app collections.

The last section of the home page is a chronological list of the latest releases. This includes both new apps added to the Zapstore and recently updated apps. The list of recent releases on its own can be a great resource for discovering apps you may not have heard of before.

Installed Apps

The next page of the app, accessed by the icon in the bottom-center of the screen that looks like a clock with an arrow circling it, shows all apps you have installed that are available in the Zapstore. It's also where you will find apps you have previously installed that are ready to be updated. This page is pretty sparse on my test profile, since I only have the Zapstore itself installed, so here is a look at it on my main profile:

The "Disabled Apps" at the top are usually applications that were installed via the Play Store or some other means, but are also available in the Zapstore. You may be surprised to see that some of the apps you already have installed on your device are also available on the Zapstore. However, to manage their updates though the Zapstore, you would need to uninstall the app and reinstall it from the Zapstore instead. I only recommend doing this for applications that are added to the Zapstore by their developers, or you may encounter a significant delay between a new update being released for the app and when that update is available on the Zapstore.

Tap on one of your apps in the list to see whether the app is added by the developer, or by the Zapstore. This takes you to the application's page, and you may see a warning at the top if the app was not installed through the Zapstore.

Scroll down the page a bit and you will see who signed the release that is available on the Zapstore.

In the case of Primal, even though the developer is on Nostr, they are not signing their own releases to the Zapstore yet. This means there will likely be a delay between Primal releasing an update and that update being available on the Zapstore.

Settings

The last page of the app is the settings page, found by tapping the cog at the bottom right.

Here you can send the Zapstore developer feedback directly (if you are logged in), connect a Lightning wallet using Nostr Wallet Connect, delete your local cache, and view some system information.

We will be adding a connection to our nostr:npub1h2qfjpnxau9k7ja9qkf50043xfpfy8j5v60xsqryef64y44puwnq28w8ch wallet in part 5 of this tutorial series.

For the time being, we are all set with the Zapstore and ready for the next stage of our journey.

Continue to Part 3: Amber Signer. Nostr link: nostr:naddr1qqxnzde5xuengdeexcmnvv3eqgstwf6d9r37nqalwgxmfd9p9gclt3l0yc3jp5zuyhkfqjy6extz3jcrqsqqqa28qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qg6waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxyunfva58gcn0d36zumn9wss80nug

@ eb0157af:77ab6c55

The company is facing a class action lawsuit following a stock price drop triggered by the delayed disclosure of a December data breach.

Coinbase finds itself at the center of a legal storm after being hit with a class action lawsuit filed by shareholders. The lawsuit stems from a decline in the company’s stock price, which occurred after the belated communication of a cybersecurity incident.

The class action, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, names investor Brady Nessler as the lead plaintiff. The suit claims that the platform’s shareholders suffered “substantial losses and damages” due to the company’s alleged failure to disclose material information.

Investors accuse the company of not promptly revealing crucial details that could have influenced investment decisions. Among the main allegations is the failure to immediately communicate a data breach that took place last December.

Details of the breach

On May 15, Coinbase publicly disclosed the news of a cyberattack that occurred last December. The incident involved cybercriminals who managed to corrupt several company employees, gaining unauthorized access to customer personal data.

The delayed disclosure of the data breach triggered an immediate stock market reaction. Coinbase shares fell 7.2%, closing the day at $244.

The exchange estimated that the financial impact of the data breach could range between $180 million and $400 million. These costs would cover both expenses to restore security systems and potential reimbursements to customers affected by the incident.

The lawsuit highlights that the company should have communicated these estimated costs to investors more promptly, allowing them to make informed decisions about their investments.

Additional allegations in the lawsuit

In addition to the data breach, the lawsuit lists a series of other alleged communication failures by the company. Among them is the non-disclosure of a violation by CB Payments — Coinbase’s UK subsidiary — of a 2020 agreement with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

The class action covers all investors who acquired company shares between April 14, 2021, and May 14, 2025 — a period during which the allegedly omitted information is believed to have negatively affected the stock price.

The legal action doesn’t target the company alone but also names top executives including CEO Brian Armstrong and CFO Alesia Haas among the defendants.

The post Lawsuit against Coinbase: investors sue exchange for failing to disclose data breach appeared first on Atlas21.

@ eb0157af:77ab6c55

Jacopo Graziuso’s econometric study explains how the presence of Bitcoin is connected to the reduction of emissions and consumption in countries where it is mined.

The debate on Bitcoin’s environmental impact has been at the center of media attention for years, often characterized by approximate information and common misconceptions. But what emerges when data is analyzed? An answer comes from the study by Jacopo Graziuso, a recent graduate in Economics and Finance at the University of Salento, who dedicated his thesis to the topic, titled: “Bitcoin and energy: towards efficiency and environmental sustainability”.

“It bothers me when they tell me ‘Bitcoin pollutes, Bitcoin consumes’. This prompted me to write the thesis,” Graziuso tells Atlas21 microphones. “We live in an era of free and accessible information, yet disinformation reigns supreme, leading to beliefs without scientific foundation.”

Regarding his research work, Graziuso emphasizes: “I thank professor of econometrics Pierluigi Toma who knew what Bitcoin is and what mining is and gave me carte blanche for writing the thesis.”

The methodology used for the study is an econometric analysis based on data from 171 states from 2009 to 2024, with particular attention to the relationship between Bitcoin presence, greenhouse gas emissions (climate-altering gases) and energy consumption. To define Bitcoin’s “presence”, Graziuso created a variable that takes value 1 if at least 1% of the population uses (knows or has a wallet) the cryptocurrency or if it is present in state reserves.

The results of the research, conducted only with open source software, contradict the dominant narrative, Graziuso explains: “The analysis shows that Bitcoin’s presence in a state is associated with a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The study reveals that Bitcoin’s presence in a state reduces emissions by 39 megatons of CO2 equivalent. Essentially, where there is Bitcoin, climate-altering gas emissions decrease.”

Graziuso wants to emphasize the difference between consumption and pollution: “The problem is not consumption, it’s pollution. The distinction is fundamental: energy consumption is necessary for human development, while pollution derives from the use of inefficient energy sources. Currently China consumes over 4500% more than the entire Bitcoin network. Furthermore, thanks to mining flexibility, Bitcoin can help a state reduce general consumption.”

The research highlights how mining is acting as a catalyst for the adoption of renewable and nuclear energy. Mining naturally seeks the cheapest sources which increasingly coincide with the cleanest ones, the interviewee states.

One analyzed aspect is Bitcoin’s role as “buyer of last resort” for otherwise wasted energy. Graziuso cites several examples:

• Alps Blockchain, which has reactivated 32 disused hydroelectric plants in northern Italy and is working on building facilities in Paraguay and Ecuador exploiting hydroelectric energy;
• projects like Gridless that exploit excess energy from renewable sources in remote areas: “Not only does [Gridless] optimize the use of local energy resources, but it reinvests mining profits in communities, improving access to electricity and supporting the local economy,” writes Graziuso;
• in Texas, thanks to agreements with electricity grid operator ERCOT, miners exploit the operational flexibility of their machines to adapt consumption to grid needs, turning them off during peak moments and turning them back on when there is surplus energy, thus acting as buyers of last resort and contributing to stabilizing the electrical grid.

Another interesting aspect concerns the recovery of heat generated by machines: “Marathon Digital Holdings in Finland uses heat from its ASICs to heat 80,000 homes,” explains Graziuso. “Domestic applications are also being developed where ASIC heat is used for heating, further mitigating pollution.”

Immersion cooling, a technique that involves immersing mining machines in a dielectric fluid made in the laboratory, is cited as a promising solution to improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact. This way it is also possible to reduce machine noise, while the heat produced is dissipated by the dielectric material. Graziuso cites CleanSpark as an example of a completely carbon neutral mining farm that uses this technology: “This cooling technique allows us to safely overclock hardware, increasing performance by increasing operating frequency beyond factory settings,” states CleanSpark.

The thesis includes a section dedicated to zones that are emerging as sustainable mining hubs in different parts of the world:

• in Kenya and Ethiopia, “mining powered by hydroelectric energy is bringing drinking water and electricity to previously unserved communities,” declares Graziuso;
• in Georgia and Texas, Bitcoin mining is contributing to making the electrical grid more stable, intervening during peak demand moments and absorbing excess energy during overproduction periods;
• in Canada, companies like Upstream Data and Hut 8 Mining use mining to valorize excess or dispersed energy, including gas flaring in oil fields, thus reducing energy waste and emissions;
• the Makai project in Hawaii exploits OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) technology to convert ocean thermal energy into clean and renewable electricity.

Despite mining’s potential, obstacles to complete decarbonization still exist: “Decarbonization is still far away. Currently in many countries there are still state incentives from 40 years ago that favor fossil sources. Due to these incentives, today entrepreneurs’ costs are lower when fossil fuels are used. Once these state incentives end, perhaps the situation will improve. At the moment it is the miners who must voluntarily use renewable sources,” observes Graziuso. Italy, for example, continues to depend about 60% on fossil sources.

Another piece of data analyzed in the thesis is the improvement in energy efficiency of specialized mining machines: “In about 15 years, efficiency has improved by over 95%: this means decreased consumption and pollution,” emphasizes Graziuso.

“I hope this research contributes to spreading a more accurate and data-based narrative,” concludes Graziuso. “Bitcoin is not the problem, but could be part of the solution to the global energy challenge.”

The thesis will soon be published in its entirety online as a scientific paper.

The post Bitcoin reduces emissions and consumption: the thesis published at the University of Salento appeared first on Atlas21.

@ eb0157af:77ab6c55

Since 2019, the United States has been the country with the highest number of recorded cases, but Europe remains the most affected region.

According to a Binance report, the United States is the country that has recorded the greatest number of crypto-related kidnapping cases since 2019, despite a recent increase in incidents in France.

At the regional level, however, Europe remains the area with the highest number of crypto-related kidnappings: 59 cases over six years. During the same period, North America — which includes the United States and Canada — recorded 48 cases. Particularly notable is the data concerning the entire Asian continent, where 62 cases of crypto-related kidnappings have been documented, most of which are concentrated in Southeast Asian countries.

France emerges as a concerning hotspot for crypto kidnappings, with six recent cases, three of which have already occurred in 2025.

Source: Binance

The primary targets of these kidnappings include executives of crypto companies, professional traders, exchange employees, and entrepreneurs in the sector. Family members and close associates of victims are often targeted as well. An emerging phenomenon involves tourists suspected of possessing large amounts of cryptocurrency funds.

Kidnapping cases in 2025

The year 2025 has already seen particularly serious episodes of kidnappings linked to the digital asset world. The most notable case involved David Balland, co-founder of Ledger, and his wife, who were abducted from their residence in France earlier this January. The incident drew international attention from both the crypto industry and law enforcement agencies.

Another attempt took place in Paris, where armed men tried to kidnap the daughter and granddaughter of the CEO of the French exchange Paymium. Overseas, in New York, police arrested 37-year-old John Woeltz after discovering that an Italian tourist had been held captive and mistreated for weeks in a luxury Manhattan apartment.

Binance highlights a direct correlation between the price trend of Bitcoin and the increase in kidnappings. Since Bitcoin reached new all-time highs this year, attacks involving physical threats have also increased proportionally, the exchange suggests.

Source: Binance

In 2025 alone, at least 15 kidnapping episodes have already been documented, many involving ransom demands denominated in bitcoin.

The post Crypto kidnappings on the rise: the US leads global statistics appeared first on Atlas21.

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The open-source project makes it possible to send bitcoin even in censored or disconnected areas through a radio mesh network.

In an interview with Decrypt, the developer known by the pseudonym “cyber” revealed the details of Darkwire, an open-source project that could enable new use cases for Bitcoin transactions without internet access.

The project, presented at the Bitcoin 2025 Official Hackathon, leverages Long Range Radio (LoRa) technology to create a decentralized mesh network that allows Bitcoin transactions to be sent even in the total absence of traditional connectivity.

Darkwire was specifically designed for situations where conventional communication infrastructure is inaccessible or controlled. According to cyber, the system is ideal for politically sensitive regions like the Rafah Crossing or the Indo-Tibetan border, where internet access can be limited or heavily monitored.

“Darkwire is for individuals seeking privacy or wishing to bypass surveillance of their communications and transactions. Imagine it to be akin to Tor but for this specific use case,” the creator explained.

LoRa technology

Darkwire operates through a combination of technologies. The system uses long-range LoRa radios along with microcontrollers such as the Arduino UNO to form a decentralized mesh network.

When a user wants to send a Bitcoin transaction without internet access, they specify the recipient’s address and the amount via a local graphical interface managed by bitcoinlib. The system then generates a signed Bitcoin transaction in hexadecimal format, which is split into smaller packets and transmitted via radio.

Mesh Network

Darkwire’s mesh network allows the data to “hop” from node to node until it reaches an internet-connected exit point. In ideal conditions, each Darkwire node has a range of up to 10 kilometers with a direct line of sight, reduced to 3-5 kilometers in densely populated areas.

“At least one node in the network needs to be connected to the internet, so that the transaction can be pushed to the blockchain for miners to verify it,” cyber said.

Once the transaction data reaches a node with internet access, it acts as an exit point, broadcasting the verified Bitcoin transaction to the global network, where it can be included in a block.

Limitations and future developments

Currently, Darkwire faces several technical limitations that the team is actively working to address. The relatively low bandwidth of LoRa radios and their sensitivity to terrain obstacles represent challenges. Moreover, the system’s dependence on internet-connected exit nodes could create potential points of failure.

According to reports, the project is still in its hackathon phase, but cyber has plans to further develop it, turning it into a full open-source platform and making it “the industry standard” for LoRa-based communications.

“I do hope people living in any kind of authoritarian regimes and states do get to use darkwire and put the truth out there,” the developer added.

The post Bitcoin without internet thanks to LoRa technology: the Darkwire project appeared first on Atlas21.

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The IMF wants to ensure that the Central American country stops buying more bitcoins, despite President Bukele’s stance.

On May 27, the International Monetary Fund announced its intention to “guarantee” that El Salvador’s government-held Bitcoin reserves remain unchanged. This position is at odds with the statements of President Nayib Bukele, who continues to support the expansion of the country’s national Bitcoin wallet.

The announcement came as part of the first review of the Extended Fund Facility, a financing agreement that has reached a preliminary understanding between the parties. The original agreement, signed last December, includes limiting Bitcoin-related activities in exchange for a $1.4 billion financing package spread over 40 months.

Details of the agreement

The overall package could reach $3.5 billion thanks to additional support from other institutions, including the World Bank.

The Salvadoran Congress quickly approved the necessary amendments to incorporate the IMF’s terms into the Bitcoin Law. Among the most significant changes is the shift from mandatory to voluntary acceptance of Bitcoin payments in the private sector. However, although the law formally required businesses to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, this provision was never truly enforced in practice. Additionally, the country will have to cease its involvement in the Chivo wallet by the end of July.

The IMF Executive Board approved the financing agreement last February, allowing the country to receive an initial disbursement of $120 million after a separate approval by the board.

Bukele’s position

Despite the agreement with the IMF, President Bukele remains firm in his commitment to expanding the national Bitcoin reserves. In a post on X published in March, the Salvadoran leader stated:

“This all stops in April.” “This all stops in June.” “This all stops in December.”

No, it’s not stopping.

If it didn’t stop when the world ostracized us and most “bitcoiners” abandoned us, it won’t stop now, and it won’t stop in the future.

Proof of work > proof of whining https://t.co/9pC0PoY3YQ

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 4, 2025

Shortly after the IMF’s announcement, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office posted on X that the country had once again purchased more BTC. According to the official tracker, El Salvador, through the Bitcoin Office, has accumulated 30 BTC in the past 30 days.

Last week, Bukele shared on X that the country’s Bitcoin reserves had recorded unrealized profits exceeding $357 million. However, when he reposted the IMF’s announcement, he made no comment regarding the section on restrictions for future Bitcoin purchases.

The IMF’s program aims to address El Salvador’s macroeconomic and structural challenges. The organization views the country’s Bitcoin reserves as a potential risk that “has not yet materialized,” but nonetheless requires limiting government involvement in Bitcoin activities and purchases.

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Jack Dorsey’s company is bringing bitcoin payments to the retail market through the Lightning Network.

Block — the firm led by Dorsey that owns Square and Bitkey — has officially announced the integration of bitcoin payments into the Square platform, with a full rollout planned for 2026 for all eligible merchants.

Today: we’re accepting bitcoin payments at @TheBitcoinConf
Soon: you can accept bitcoin payments wherever you are

Details here: https://t.co/ko2S9hFpih pic.twitter.com/IYlYV6XM2S

— Square (@Square) May 27, 2025

At the Bitcoin Conference 2025 in Las Vegas, attendees had the chance to preview satoshi payments via Square at BTC Inc.’s merchandise store.

The technology relies on the Lightning Network, the second-layer infrastructure enabling instant, low-cost bitcoin transactions. This approach will allow merchants to accept satoshi payments through their existing Square hardware.

The implementation plan includes an initial launch in the second half of 2025, pending necessary regulatory approvals. The initiative represents a key pillar in the company’s strategy to make bitcoin more accessible for everyday transactions.

Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block, stated:

“Block has long been a champion of bitcoin, focused on making it more accessible and usable in our everyday lives. Rolling out a native bitcoin experience to millions of sellers brings us one step closer to that goal. When a coffee shop or retail store can accept bitcoin through Square, small businesses get paid faster, and get to keep more of their revenue.”

The announcement follows Dorsey’s statement last month confirming that Block was working to integrate BTC as a payment option for both Bitkey and Square.

Alongside the announcement, Block also revealed that Bitkey will introduce new privacy and security features in May, including a legacy recovery option available to all users.

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The Wall Street financial institution has signed strategic agreements for bitcoin-backed loans with Maple Finance and FalconX.

According to Bloomberg, on May 27 Cantor Fitzgerald officially launched its new division dedicated to Bitcoin lending, announcing the completion of the first transactions of its Bitcoin Financing Business. The Wall Street firm confirmed it has finalized a first round of deals with two crypto sector players: Maple Finance and FalconX.

The company initially plans to make up to $2 billion in financing available to institutional clients.

Brandon Lutnick, President of Cantor Fitzgerald, commented:

“From the start, Cantor recognized the transformative impact that financial services for digital assets would have on the global economy. This milestone highlights how the combination of Cantor’s deep expertise and entrepreneurial spirit creates a distinctive advantage on Wall Street.”

The partnership with Maple Finance is part of Cantor’s broader expansion strategy. Sidney Powell, Co-Founder and CEO of Maple Finance, emphasized how the deal will expand his company’s ability to serve clients looking to access the digital asset market:

“We’re seeing strong and growing demand from institutions seeking to enter the crypto market through trusted and regulated channels.”

Josh Barkhordar, Head of U.S. Sales at FalconX, stated:

“Digital assets have lacked the institutional-grade credit infrastructure essential for healthy capital markets. This collaboration between Cantor and a crypto-native firm is a meaningful step toward building that framework.”

To ensure the security and reliability of its bitcoin-backed financing services, Cantor Fitzgerald has selected Anchorage Digital and Copper.co for custody solutions.

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Block’s hardware wallet sparks debate between security and borderline compromises.

The debate ignited after Jack Dorsey publicly supported the superiority of “seedless” wallets over traditional solutions on X.

seedless is safer https://t.co/MvjmFcQE8k

— jack (@jack) May 27, 2025

The Twitter co-founder and Block CEO sustained this by promoting Bitkey, a company that completely eliminates seed phrases, aiming to simplify the user experience and improve security through different recovery options.

The Bitkey model

Bitkey represents a different solution compared to the traditional approach to bitcoin custody. Instead of relying on a single seed phrase, the system implements a 2-of-3 multisig scheme that distributes security across three distinct keys:

• Hardware key: protected by biometric fingerprint on the physical device;
• Mobile key: stored in the smartphone app;
• Server key: managed by Block’s servers.

Any transaction requires two of the three signatures, eliminating the single point of failure represented by traditional seed phrases, the company claims. In its official documents, Bitkey explains how this approach, according to the company, offers three different recovery paths: phone loss, hardware loss, or loss of both through “Trusted Contacts,” pre-set trusted people who can help the user regain wallet access without being able to see the balance or control the private keys.

The seed phrase criticism

For the Bitkey team, the seed phrase paradoxically represents the weakest link in the Bitcoin security chain. While private keys are “exceptionally secure” within the hardware – “designed for security, isolated from networks, physically reinforced” – the seed phrase is “plain text, readable, physically vulnerable,” the company states.

Bitkey developers argue that the industry has “offloaded the most complex part of the security model onto individuals least equipped to handle it.”

System limits and dependencies

However, Bitkey’s simplicity comes at a price. The system introduces a dependency on Block for optimal multisig functionality. Although users always maintain the ability to move funds using the two keys in their possession, recovery procedures and many advanced features require collaboration from the company’s servers.

This architecture presents limitations in terms of flexibility: users cannot use Bitkey with other mobile applications, cannot import the wallet into alternative solutions, and do not have direct access to seed phrases for traditional backup operations.

One of the most frequent criticisms concerns the absence of a screen on the hardware device. Unlike traditional hardware wallets that allow direct verification of destination addresses and transaction amounts on the device display, Bitkey forces users to rely exclusively on the mobile app for these details. This design choice introduces what critics define as a “blind signing risk”: if the mobile app were compromised by malware, users could unknowingly authorize altered transactions without the possibility of independent verification.

Community criticism

Dorsey’s post sparked contrasting reactions in the community. The most orthodox bitcoiners mainly contest two aspects:

• third-party dependency: despite Bitkey maintaining the “self-custody” label, the need to rely on Block’s servers for many operations contradicts the autonomy principles that many bitcoiners consider fundamental;
• loss of technical control: the inability to directly manage the seed phrase or use the device in customized multisig configurations limits the user’s technical sovereignty.

Some users have criticized Block’s hardware wallet. User bamskki highlighted how “the lack of a screen forces users to rely on the app for transaction details. Unlike traditional hardware wallets with screens, Bitkey users cannot verify transactions independently. Users must trust the app as the source of truth.”

Even more critical was user nakadai_mon, who ironized about Dorsey’s strategy writing: “It would be a shame if I influenced you to abandon the seed and locked you into my ecosystem so I can surveil you, sell and share your personal data with government authorities and deny you service.”

Dorsey responded directly to both criticisms. To bamskki he replied:

it's a start, not our end. we will iterate the product like everything else.

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2025

More articulated was his response to nakadai_mon:

we are working on much of the privacy aspects (launching soon). and you don't have to use our 3rd key. that's where some of the restrictions come in. working to figure out how to allow folks to create their own trusted 3rd party as well. but all of this is designed to get people…

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2025

However, privacy concerns are not unfounded. Bitkey’s own documentation clarifies that “because we maintain this key, we are able to identify transaction data on the blockchain related to your Bitkey” and that “this information is collected when you transfer bitcoin to or from your Bitkey.”

Additionally, Block declares using automated decision-making systems, without direct staff involvement, to manage some activities that have legal effects on users. Among these, the application of sanctions restrictions: the system is programmed to automatically prevent the purchase and use of Bitkey by people or countries subject to international sanctions. Finally, the privacy policy specifies that users’ personal data can be shared with law enforcement, government agencies, officials, or authorized third parties in the presence of a warrant, court order, or other legal obligation. Block reserves the right to disclose this information whenever it deems necessary to comply with regulations, legal proceedings, or government requests.

Hardware security and compromises

From a hardware security perspective, Bitkey implements advanced protections including unique device identifiers, secure boot, and anti-tamper technologies. In case the device were compromised, an attacker would still need to access a second key to steal funds.

According to Dorsey’s statements, Bitkey represents an attempt to make self-custody accessible to a broader audience. The company’s roadmap promises improvements in terms of privacy, security, and usability.

The post Bitkey controversy: Dorsey’s marketing divides the community appeared first on Atlas21.

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An analysis of the present and a look at the future of Bitcoin mining, between data, critical reflections and a personal vision on the role of this industry.

Before jumping on bitcoin and proposing it to their clientele as an investment instrument, traditional finance started with a more classic approach, beginning to purchase shares of mining companies and thus exposing themselves indirectly to the asset. Bitcoin mining today is a real industry, also composed of large players listed on the stock exchange that have received huge capital from investment funds like BlackRock. Furthermore, more and more mining companies are taking the path of listing on stock markets to manage to attract capital and some of these also manage pools, like Marathon. How was all this possible and what are the implications of this situation?

Mining pools

Mining pools aggregate the computing power of multiple miners to increase the chances of mining a block. They create the block template and use the collective hashrate to try to solve it. The reward is then divided among participants in proportion to the power provided.

Today pools use different methods to pay miners who provide computing power. One of these is called FPPS (Fully Pay Per Share), which offers a fixed and constant payment to the miner (which varies based on the computing power provided), regardless of whether the pool mines a block or not. This type of payment makes the revenues of a company that mines bitcoin calculable and constant and which, consequently, becomes more appealing to the market because it’s possible to calculate its ROI (Return On Investment). In essence, with this type of payment, uncertainty is excluded and returns are made predictable. Mining pools take on the risk because, in case they fail to mine blocks for a certain period of time, they could go into loss having to pay miners anyway. We can therefore venture that mining pools have helped the entry of traditional finance into bitcoin mining, taking on part of the risks. But this is my thought.

Mining today

Mining pools today are not that many and we have a strong concentration of miners in some of them. If we sum the hashrate of Foundry and AntPool we exceed 50% of global computing power. This is not an optimal condition. Now however let’s also look at the other side of the coin. First of all, although mining pools have great power, they cannot play with fire and must be very transparent about their operations towards miners, because miners can direct their hashrate towards another pool very quickly. And this is a fundamental element that also recalls game theory a bit, because a mining pool must not only serve its own interest, but also the interest of its “partners”, otherwise it loses everything. I believe that mining pools are well aware of their power and also know that they are a centralization point for the network and, today, also a point of attack by authorities, so they have every interest in finding solutions that allow them to continue doing business, but that relieve them somewhat of responsibilities.

On the miner side instead, we have increasingly large companies that collect enormous capital and produce a lot of hashrate, but my fear is that this hashrate is produced by a fiat economy and is very precarious. Hashrate is closely linked to price, because if the price drops below a certain threshold, miners are no longer profitable and are forced to turn off the machines, or, in the worst cases, to completely cease activity, consequently causing hashrate to collapse. Fortunately Bitcoin has mechanisms like difficulty adjustment that mitigate these situations. Being still a very small market, the entry of large institutional players first in mining companies and then directly on the underlying asset, could lead to strong price oscillations that also impact mining farms. All this makes hashrate very unstable too.

Something is changing

The development of Stratum V2 has started an attempt to solve the various problems that afflict pooled mining. Stratum is the communication protocol between mining farms and mining pools. Version 2 brings, in addition to data improvement and encryption, performance increases and gives each individual miner the possibility to create the template of the block to mine. Furthermore we also have other existing solutions that try to solve the problems described before in a somewhat different way, like Ocean pool, which has implemented its DATUM protocol (similar to Stratum V2) and which uses a miner payment method called TIDES, that is an evolution of FPPS and non-custodial PPLNS in which miner addresses are inserted directly into the coinbase transaction.

There’s also a lot of ferment on the miner side, for example with the advent of Bitaxe, an open source project that we can define almost as a movement, an ideology. Skot, the precursor of this movement, has essentially reverse engineered the professional machinery used to mine bitcoin and managed to create a “desktop” device that contains a real ASIC chip, consumes only a few watts and can be built at home. Obviously these products produce computing power not sufficient to try to be competitive, but they are bringing back solo mining and are giving enthusiasts the possibility to deepen this sector by exploiting a device of very small dimensions and with practically negligible consumption on the bill.

The future of mining

After analyzing the state we are in, we can start speculations and let our minds travel.

Let’s start with mining pools. Will they still exist? I would say yes, in what form I don’t know, but I think they will certainly lose the control they have today over block template creation and I also think that future solutions will be found (in addition to existing ones) to become non-custodial and directly remunerate miners. In the end it’s in their interest to always be competitive in terms of services offered, because they work on commission, so they have to be appealing.

As for miners instead, I see a bigger metamorphosis. If the intention is to consume eco-sustainable energy, then energy industries will necessarily have to start studying the benefits that mining can bring in this sense. They cannot continue to ignore them. And if this happens, then I imagine a future where energy companies themselves will start mining bitcoin and will no longer do so following market logic, but will shift focus to stabilizing the electrical grid. Mining is currently the only industry capable of being so flexible as to be able to absorb all the excess energy of a plant, but at the same time consume zero when energy is needed by the grid. At that point the raw mining activity could become no longer the main business, but a secondary benefit that will allow them to have alternative income compared to selling electricity.

And what about the Bitaxe movement? Hard to say, but in my opinion if it manages to reach a critical mass of enthusiasts, it could really start to emerge and become a fundamental piece for the “true bitcoiner” kit. Utopistically, if we had 50 or 100 million Bitaxes scattered in people’s homes, we would manage to distribute mining in a more widespread way, but above all we would have a part of the total hashrate totally uncorrelated from bitcoin price, because, given their very reduced consumption, Bitaxes would remain on and continue to produce hashrate regardless of energy cost or price oscillations of the underlying asset.

What will happen, then, after 2140, when no more bitcoins will be mined? Assuming that network fees will be much higher than today, and sufficient to keep the activity profitable, we could find ourselves in a situation where mining for pure profit will be downsized. The same companies, however, could become external service providers for grid balancing, or, as mentioned previously, become electricity producers themselves of renewable energy exploiting their experience in mining to push where today it’s not economically convenient. Even in our homes we could have a boiler, a heat pump or a water heating system for the pool that, while doing its job, also mines bitcoin. In short, a future that seems like a fairy tale, but so possible that we want to live it and make sure that my children are also protagonists of it.

The post The future of mining? Green and decentralized appeared first on Atlas21.

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The Pakistani government embraces Bitcoin, following the example set by the United States.

Pakistan has officially announced the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve. The announcement was made during the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, marking a significant shift from the government’s previous stance against digital assets.

During the event, Bilal Bin Saqib, head of the Pakistani Crypto Council, shared the country’s decision:

“Today, I announce the Pakistani government is setting up its own government-led Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and we want to thank the United States of America again because we were inspired by them.”

Bin Saqib then added:

“This wallet, the national Bitcoin wallet, is not for speculation. We will be holding these bitcoins and we will never, ever sell them.”

It remains unclear how the bitcoins will be acquired, whether through direct purchases or other means.

Pakistan’s shift in approach toward digital assets traces back to last February, when the government first explored the idea of creating a National Crypto Council. This body was designed to oversee the development of a comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and to attract foreign investment in the sector.

The Council’s proposed initiatives included projects such as utilizing surplus energy for Bitcoin mining, building high-performance data centers, and accumulating Bitcoin for the national treasury.

Just a few days ago, the Council officially allocated 2,000 megawatts of surplus energy to support mining operations and AI data centers.

Moreover, Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Binance, was appointed as an advisor to the Council in April, offering expertise on crypto regulations, blockchain infrastructure, and the adoption of digital assets.

To further consolidate this new approach, the Pakistani Ministry of Finance has commissioned the creation of the Digital Asset Authority, an agency dedicated to supervising digital asset regulations and issuing licenses for crypto service providers operating within the country.

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Ed Suman, a 67-year-old retired artist who helped create large sculptures like Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog, reportedly lost his entire life savings — over $2M in digital assets — in a sophisticated scam.

The incident is believed to be tied to the major data breach at Coinbase, one of the world’s largest digital asset exchanges.

Suman’s story is part of a bigger wave of attacks on digital asset holders using stolen personal info, and has triggered lawsuits, regulatory concerns and questions about digital security in the Bitcoin space.

In March 2025, Suman got a text message about suspicious activity on his Coinbase account. After Suman reported he was unaware of any unauthorized activity regarding his account, he got a call from a man who introduced himself as Brett Miller from Coinbase Security.

The guy sounded legit — he knew Suman’s setup, including that he used a Trezor Model One hardware wallet, a device meant to keep bitcoin and other digital assets offline and safe.

Suman told Bloomberg the guy knew everything, including the exact amount of digital assets he had.

The attacker persuaded Suman that his Trezor One hardware wallet and its funds were at risk and walked him through a “security procedure” that involved entering his seed phrase into a website that looked exactly like Coinbase, in order to “link his wallet to Coinbase”.

Nine days later, another guy called and repeated the process, saying the first one didn’t work.

And then, all of Suman’s digital assets — 17.5 bitcoin and 225 ether — were gone. At the time, bitcoin was around $103,000 and ether around $2,500, so the stolen stash was worth over $2 million.

Suman turned to digital assets after retiring from a decades-long art career. He stored his assets in cold storage to avoid the risks of online exchanges. He thought he did everything right.

Suman’s attackers didn’t pick his name out of a hat.

It looks like his personal info may have been leaked in the major breach at Coinbase. The company confirmed on May 15 that some of its customer service reps in India were bribed to access internal systems and steal customer data.

The stolen data included names, phone numbers, email addresses, balances and partial Social Security numbers.

According to Coinbase’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the breach may have started as early as January and affected nearly 1% of the company’s active monthly users — tens of thousands of people.

Hackers demanded $20M from Coinbase to keep the breach quiet but the company refused to pay. Coinbase says it fired the compromised agents and is setting aside $180M to $400M to reimburse affected users.

But so far, Suman hasn’t been told if he’ll be reimbursed.

Since the breach was disclosed, Coinbase has been hit with at least six lawsuits.

The lawsuits claim the company failed to protect user data and handled the aftermath poorly. One lawsuit filed in New York federal court on May 16 says Coinbase’s response was “inadequate, fragmented, and delayed.”

“Users were not promptly or fully informed of the compromise,” the complaint states, “and Coinbase did not immediately take meaningful steps to mitigate further harm.”

Some lawsuits are seeking damages, others are asking Coinbase to purge user data and improve its security. Coinbase has not commented on the lawsuits but pointed reporters to a blog post about its response.

Suman’s case is a cautionary tale across the Bitcoin world. He used a hardware wallet (considered the gold standard of Bitcoin security) and was still tricked through social engineering. Even the strongest security is useless if you don’t understand how Bitcoin works.

It’s never too early for Bitcoiners to start learning more about Bitcoin, especially on how to keep their stash safe. And the first lesson is “never ever share your seed phrase with anyone”.

Related: Bitcoin Hardware Wallet Hacks: What You Need to Know

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in the U.S., is now allowing its clients to buy bitcoin — a big change of heart for an institution whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, has been a long-time critic of the scarce digital asset.

Dimon made the announcement on the bank’s investor day, which came as a shift in JPMorgan’s approach to digital assets. “We are going to allow you to buy it,” he said. “We’re not going to custody it. We’re going to put it in statements for clients.”

That means clients can buy BTC through JPMorgan but the bank won’t hold or store the digital asset. Instead it will provide access and include the BTC purchases in client statements.

According to multiple reports and posts, JPMorgan has been blocking transactions from digital asset exchanges, with several people complaining about their experience on social media.

Source

Source

There is even an official notice on the company’s UK website that explicitly says customers cannot use their funds to purchase digital assets.

JPMorgan Chase UK website — Source

It’s a big change because Dimon has been one of Bitcoin’s biggest critics. Over the years he’s called it “worthless”, a “fraud” and even compared it to a “pet rock”.

He’s repeatedly expressed concern over digital assets’ use in illegal activities such as money laundering, terrorism, sex trafficking and tax evasion. A role that his critics say the U.S. dollar is playing on a much larger scale.

Related: Jamie Dimon Would “Close Down” Bitcoin If He Had Government Role

“The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance,” he told lawmakers during a Senate hearing in 2023. At the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, he doubled down, “Bitcoin does nothing. I call it the pet rock.”

Despite his personal views, Dimon says the bank is responding to client demand. “I don’t think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke,” he said. “I defend your right to buy bitcoin.”

It’s worth noting JPMorgan isn’t fully embracing digital assets. The bank won’t be offering direct custody services or launching its own exchange.

Instead, it’s offering access to digital asset exchanges. There are even reports that the bank also plans to facilitate access to bitcoin ETFs and possibly other investment vehicles. Until recently, JPMorgan had limited its bitcoin exposure to futures-based products.

Other big financial firms have already taken similar steps.

Morgan Stanley, for example, has been offering some clients access to bitcoin ETFs since August 2024. Its CEO, Ted Pick, said earlier this year that the firm is working closely with regulators to explore ways to get into the digital assets space.

Dimon does like blockchain, though — the technology that underpins it. JPMorgan has its own blockchain projects including JPM Coin and recently ran a test transaction on a public blockchain of tokenized U.S. Treasuries.

Many criticize this view, saying that the most powerful aspect of Bitcoin is its decentralization. So, a centralized blockchain is just useless. This might be the reason Dimon has grown weary of all JPMorgan’s blockchain initiatives, because they offered nothing of value.

He said he might have given blockchain too much credit during his investor day comments: “We have been talking about blockchain for 12 to 15 years,” he said. “We spend too much on it. It doesn’t matter as much as you all think.”

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, has entered the Bitcoin space with a $1.08 million investment in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF. This is a big deal for both Wall Street and the Bitcoin world.

Blackstone has made its first direct investment in bitcoin through regulated financial products. A May 20, 2025, SEC filing revealed that the firm purchased 23,094 shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

BlackStone has bought 23,094 shares of BlackRock’s IBIT — SEC

While $1.08 million is a small drop in the bucket compared to Blackstone’s $1.2 trillion in assets under management, this is a big deal for the private equity giant which has been skeptical of bitcoin in the past.

In 2019, the company’s CEO, Steve Schwarzman, said he didn’t understand Bitcoin. “I was raised in a world where someone needs to control currencies,” he said, admitting he struggled to understand the technology.

Fast forward to 2025, and it is now one of the many institutional investors taking bitcoin seriously — but doing so through cautious, regulated channels.

The investment was made through Blackstone’s $2.63 billion Alternative Multi-Strategy Fund (BTMIX), which invests in a wide range of financial instruments.

Instead of buying bitcoin directly, Blackstone chose to get exposure through a bitcoin ETF — which is how many large institutions are approaching the digital asset. Spot Bitcoin ETFs like IBIT allow investors to track the price of bitcoin without having to hold the digital asset itself.

There are several advantages to this approach. ETFs trade like stocks, are regulated by the SEC and take care of complex issues like custody and compliance. This makes them more attractive for firms that are new to Bitcoin or still wary of the risks.

Related: Bitcoin ETFs Provide Convenient Price Exposure, But At What Cost?

Blackstone’s choice of a bitcoin ETF shows how effective these products are at connecting traditional finance to the digital age.

In addition to IBIT, Blackstone also disclosed smaller investments in two other digital-asset-related companies:

• 9,889 shares of the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), valued at about $181,166.
• 4,300 shares of Bitcoin Depot Inc. (BTM), a bitcoin ATM operator, worth approximately $6,300.

Together, these are a tiny fraction of Blackstone’s portfolio but show growing interest and exploration into the space.

Since its launch in January 2024, BlackRock’s IBIT ETF has become the top-performing Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. As of mid-May 2025, the fund has seen over $46.1 billion in net inflows with no outflows since early April.

IBIT is ahead of other major ETFs like Fidelity’s FBTC and ARK’s 21Shares Bitcoin ETF.

But the trend is clear: big firms are getting comfortable with regulated bitcoin products. Industry insiders see Blackstone’s move as part of a broader shift in institutional sentiment towards bitcoin.

This is a small investment but it matters because of who is making it. Blackstone is known for being conservative and risk-averse.

Its decision to put even a tiny amount of capital into Bitcoin ETFs means tradfi companies are getting more confident in bitcoin as an asset class. Blackstone is dipping its toe in the water, and even a small step is significant given its size and influence.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

Austin, Texas – May 22, 2025 — Jippi, a pioneering mobile augmented reality (AR) game developer, is set to transform Bitcoin education with the launch of its flagship game at the Bitcoin Conference 2025, held at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas from May 27-29.

In collaboration with six leading Bitcoin companies—Bitcoin Well, Beyond The Checkout, Bitcoin Trading Cards, Geyser, SHAmory, and 21M Communications—Jippi introduces an innovative blend of outdoor adventure, Bitcoin rewards, and gamified financial education designed to captivate.

At the Bitcoin Conference, Jippi’s six partners have sponsored custom “Bitcoin Beasts” tied to specific locations around The Venetian. Each sponsored Beast offers players exclusive rewards and trivia, transforming brand interactions into immersive, non-intrusive experiences.

With an expected attendance of over 30,000 at the conference, sponsors gain unparalleled exposure to a tech-savvy, Bitcoin-centric audience.  Players will be rewarded 1k sats for each catch, making the total reward for catching them all 6k sats.

Jippi is redefining how young adults engage with Bitcoin by combining the thrill of location-based AR gameplay, reminiscent of Pokémon GO, with real-world bitcoin rewards (sats) and bite-sized lessons on sound money principles.

Players explore real-world locations to hunt digital creatures called Bitcoin Beasts, answering Bitcoin-related trivia to capture them and earn sats, the smallest unit of bitcoin.

The game’s seamless integration of education and entertainment makes learning about Bitcoin fun, accessible, and rewarding.

“We’re meeting Gen Z where they are—90% play mobile games, and 70% expect rewards for their time,” said Oliver Porter, Founder and CEO of Jippi.

“Jippi backdoors Bitcoin education through an immersive, reward-driven experience while offering our partners a unique branding opportunity. It’s a win-win for players, sponsors, and the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

“Jippi’s mission to gamify Bitcoin education is a game-changer for onboarding the next generation,” said Adam O’Brien, CEO of Bitcoin Well, a leading automatic self-custody Bitcoin platform and “Beast” sponsor.

“Their AR game makes learning about Bitcoin intuitive and engaging, aligning perfectly with our vision of financial empowerment. From a branding perspective, partnering with Jippi to engage and acquire new customers is a no brainer.”

In March 2025, Jippi clinched the top prize in PlebLab’s prestigious Top Builder competition, a three-month hackathon designed to spotlight innovative Bitcoin startups.

Backed by over a year of development, on-site surveys, and university testing, Jippi is a leading innovator in the Bitcoin industry looking to onboard the next generation.

Jippi invites brands, investors, and media to explore sponsorship and investment opportunities. Visit Jippi’s Partnerships Page for sponsorship details or Jippi’s Timestamp Page for investment inquiries. 

For media inquiries, please contact Phil@21mcommunications.com

About Jippi

Jippi is a mobile AR gaming company dedicated to making Bitcoin education accessible and engaging. By combining location-based gameplay with bitcoin rewards and financial literacy, Jippi empowers the next generation to embrace sound money principles. Learn more at https://jippi.app. 

Bitcoin Beast Sponsors

About Bitcoin Well

Beast #1 – Bitcoin Well – All bitcoin bought at Bitcoin Well are delivered directly to your personal bitcoin wallet. Your Bitcoin Well account gives you the convenience of modern banking, with the benefits of bitcoin. Join the platform that enables independence at bitcoinwell.com.

About Bitcoin Trading Cards

Beast #2 – Bitcoin Trading Cards – Bitcoin Trading Cards is bringing Bitcoin to the masses one pack at a time, making your Bitcoin journey fun and exciting for everyone.

About Beyond The Checkout

Beast #3 – Beyond The Checkout – Beyond The Checkout transforms everyday products into Bitcoin-powered experiences — rewarding customers, collecting real-time insights, and redefining post-purchase engagement.

About Geyser 

Beast #4 – Geyser – Geyser is a Bitcoin-native crowdfunding platform enabling grassroots projects to raise funds via Lightning, globally and permissionlessly.

About SHAmory

Beast #5 – SHAmory – We make Bitcoin fun for all ages! Explore our bitcoin games, books, and more today at shamory.com.

About 21M Communications

Beast #6 – 21 Communications – 21 Communications helps Bitcoin companies get the media attention they deserve. As a Bitcoin-only PR Agency, 21M Comms believes Bitcoin is imperative and is committed to supporting the companies that are advancing the mission.

About Bitcoin Conference 2025

The Bitcoin Conference is the world’s largest gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts, industry leaders, and innovators. Held annually, it showcases cutting-edge developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem. For more information, visit www.bitcoinconference.com.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

Sangha Renewables, a company that combines renewable energy with bitcoin mining, has started construction on a 19.9-megawatt (MW) mining facility powered 100% by solar energy. This is a big step towards making bitcoin mining cleaner, cheaper and more efficient.

The mining site is in West Texas, a region known for its strong solar and growing bitcoin mining presence.

What’s unique about this project is the “behind-the-meter” setup — the facility will draw power directly from a nearby solar site instead of the grid. This avoids some of the costs and inefficiencies of traditional energy sourcing.

The solar site where the mining facility is located has been operational for a few years. But it’s faced challenges like grid congestion and negative energy pricing – times when there’s too much energy and prices go below zero.

Sangha’s new mining operation will solve this problem by being a flexible energy consumer. When the grid has excess energy, Sangha can use it to mine bitcoin, helping to stabilize the grid and put otherwise wasted energy to work.

Related: Bitcoin Mining Clean Energy and Grid Balance | ERCOT Study

“This is a win-win-win,” said Spencer Marr, co-founder and CEO of Sangha Renewables. “The IPP (independent power producer) earns more per megawatt-hour, our investors gain exposure to low-cost bitcoin production, and we deliver grid-stabilizing load where it’s needed most.”

In addition to the tech innovation, Sangha is also changing the way people can invest in bitcoin mining.

The company just raised $14 million of its $17 million target to fund the construction and operation of the Texas facility.

Unlike traditional investments in mining companies or digital asset stocks, Sangha allows accredited investors to invest directly in the infrastructure itself through special purpose vehicles (SPVs).

Investors can put in cash or bitcoin and get ongoing payouts in bitcoin that are “well below the market price,” according to Marr. This means instead of buying bitcoin on the open market, investors are essentially earning it through the mining activity powered by renewable energy.

“Sangha is not just building bitcoin mining sites—we’re building a new model for how capital flows in and out of Bitcoin,” Marr said.

“By applying a project finance structure honed-in the renewable energy and real estate sectors, we enable investors to participate directly in productive assets—without intermediaries, speculative equities, or inefficiencies of datacenter hosting.”

Sangha’s financial and operational model uses advanced forecasting tools.

These tools allow forecasting of energy prices and bitcoin mining profitability down to 15-minute intervals. This enables the company to decide when to run the mining rigs for maximum efficiency and return on investment.

This Texas facility is a proof-of-concept. If it works, it will open the door for others across the U.S.

Sangha believes many underutilized renewable energy sites could benefit from this kind of setup, especially in areas that produce more energy than the grid can handle.

Using a capital-efficient, investor-aligned model and working with independent power producers (IPPs) Sangha plans to scale this nationwide. The facility will be fully operational by Q3 2025.

@ b7274d28:c99628cb

Your identity is important to you, right? While impersonation can be seen in some senses as a form of flattery, we all would prefer to be the only person capable of representing ourselves online, unless we intentionally delegate that privilege to someone else and maintain the ability to revoke it.

Amber does all of that for you in the context of #Nostr. It minimizes the possibility of your private key being compromized by acting as the only app with access to it, while all other Nostr apps send requests to Amber when they need something signed. This even allows you to give someone temporary authority to post as you without giving them your private key, and you retain the authority to revoke their permissions at any time.

nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5 has provided Android users with an incredibly powerful tool in Amber, and he continues to improve its functionality and ease of use. Indeed, there is not currently a comparative app available for iOS users. For the time being, this superpower is exclusive to Android.

Installation

Open up the Zapstore app that you installed in the previous stage of this tutorial series.

Very likely, Amber will be listed in the app collection section of the home page. If it is not, just search for "Amber" in the search bar.

Opening the app's page in the Zapstore shows that the release is signed by the developer. You can also see who has added this app to one of their collections and who has supported this app with sats by zapping the release.

Tap "Install" and you will be prompted to confirm you are sure you want to install Amber.

Helpfully, you are informed that several other users follow this developer on Nostr. If you have been on Nostr a while, you will likely recognize these gentlemen as other Nostr developers, one of them being the original creator of the protocol.

You can choose to never have Zapstore ask for confirmation again with apps developed by nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5, and since we have another of his apps to install later in this tutorial series, I recommend you toggle this on. Then tap on "Trust greenart7c3 and install app."

Just like when you installed the Zapstore from their GitHub, you will be prompted to allow the Zapstore to install apps, since Android considers it an "unknown source."

Once you toggle this on and use the back button to get back to the Zapstore, Amber will begin downloading and then present a prompt to install the app. Once installed, you will see a prompt that installation was a success and you can now open the app.

From here, how you proceed will depend on whether you need to set up a new Nostr identity or use Amber with an existing private key you already have set up. The next section will cover setting up a new Nostr identity with Amber. Skip to the section titled "Existing Nostrich" if you already have an nsec that you would like to use with Amber.

New Nostrich

Upon opening the application, you will be presented with the option to use an existing private key or create a new Nostr account. Nostr doesn't really have "accounts" in the traditional sense of the term. Accounts are a relic of permissioned systems. What you have on Nostr are keys, but Amber uses the "account" term because it is a more familiar concept, though it is technically inaccurate.

Choose "Create a new Nostr account" and you will be presented with a screen telling you that your Nostr account is ready. Yes, it was really that easy. No email, no real name, no date of birth, and no annoying capcha. Just "Create a new account" and you're done.

The app presents you with your public key. This is like an address that can be used to find your posts on Nostr. It is 100% unique to you, and no one else can post a note that lists this npub as the author, because they won't have the corresponding private key. You don't need to remember your npub, though. You'll be able to readily copy it from any Nostr app you use whenever you need it.

You will also be prompted to add a nickname. This is just for use within Amber, since you can set up multiple profiles within the app. You can use anything you want here, as it is just so you can tell which profile is which when switching between them in Amber.

Once you've set your nickname, tap on "Continue."

The next screen will ask you what Amber's default signing policy should be.

The default is to approve basic actions, referring to things that are common for Nostr clients to request a signature for, like following another user, liking a post, making a new post, or replying. If you are more concerned about what Amber might be signing for on your behalf, you can tell it to require manual approval for each app.

Once you've made your decision, tap "Finish." You will also be able to change this selection in the app settings at any time.

With this setup out of the way, you are now presented with the main "Applications" page of the app.

At the top, you have a notification encouraging you to create a backup. Let's get that taken care of now by tapping on the notification and skipping down to the heading titled "Backing Up Your Identity" in this tutorial.

Existing Nostrich

Upon opening the application, you will be presented with the option to use your private key or create a new Nostr account. Choose the former.

The next screen will require you to paste your private key.

You will need to obtain this from whatever Nostr app you used to create your profile, or any other Nostr app that you pasted your nsec into in the past. Typically you can find it in the app settings and there will be a section mentioning your keys where you can copy your nsec. For instance, in Primal go to Settings > Keys > Copy private key, and on Amethyst open the side panel by tapping on your profile picture in the top-left, then Backup Keys > Copy my secret key.

After pasting your nsec into Amber, tap "Next."

Amber will give you a couple options for a default signing policy. The default is to approve basic actions, referring to things that are common for Nostr clients to request a signature for, like following another user, liking a post, making a new post, or replying. If you are more concerned about what Amber might be signing for on your behalf, you can tell it to require manual approval for each app.

Once you've made your decision, tap "Finish." You will also be able to change this selection in the app settings at any time.

With this setup out of the way, you are now presented with the main "Applications" page of the app. You have nothing here yet, since you haven't used Amber to log into any Nostr apps, but this will be where all of the apps you have connected with Amber will be listed, in the order of the most recently used at the top.

Before we go and use Amber to log into an app, though, let's make sure we've created a backup of our private key. You pasted your nsec into Amber, so you could just save that somewhere safe, but Amber gives you a few other options as well. To find them, you'll need to tap the cog icon at the bottom of the screen to access the settings, then select "Backup Keys."

Backing Up Your Identity

You'll notice that Amber has a few different options for backing up your private key that it can generate.

First, it can give you seed words, just like a Bitcoin seed. If you choose that option, you'll be presented with 12 words you can record somewhere safe. To recover your Nostr private key, you just have to type those words into a compatible application, such as Amber.

The next option is to just copy the secret/private key in its standard form as an "nsec." This is the least secure way to store it, but is also the most convenient, since it is simple to paste into another signer application. If you want to be able to log in on a desktop web app, the browser extension Nostr signers won't necessarily support entering your 12 word seed phrase, but they absolutely will support pasting in your nsec.

You can also display a QR code of your private key. This can be scanned by Amber signer on another device for easily transferring your private key to other devices you want to use it on. Say you have an Android tablet in addition to your phone, for instance. Just make sure you only use this function where you can be certain that no one will be able to get a photograph of that QR code. Once someone else has your nsec, there is no way to recover it. You have to start all over on Nostr. Not a big deal at this point in your journey if you just created a Nostr account, but if you have been using Nostr for a while and have built up a decent amount of reputation, it could be much more costly to start over again.

The next options are a bit more secure, because they require a password that will be used to encrypt your private key. This has some distinct advantages, and a couple disadvantages to be aware of. Using a password to encrypt your private key will give you what is called an ncryptsec, and if this is leaked somehow, whoever has it will not necessarily have access to post as you on Nostr, the way they would if your nsec had been leaked. At least, not so long as they don't also have your password. This means you can store your ncryptsec in multiple locations without much fear that it will be compromised, so long as the password you used to encrypt it was a strong and unique one, and it isn't stored in the same location. Some Nostr apps support an ncryptsec for login directly, meaning that you have the option to paste in your ncryptsec and then just log in with the password you used to encrypt it from there on out. However, now you will need to keep track of both your ncryptsec and your password, storing both of them safely and separately. Additionally, most Nostr clients and signer applications do not support using an ncryptsec, so you will need to convert it back to a standard nsec (or copy the nsec from Amber) to use those apps.

The QR option using an ncryptsec is actually quite useful, though, and I would go this route when trying to set up Amber on additional devices, since anyone possibly getting a picture of the QR code is still not going to be able to do anything with it, unless they also get the password you used to encrypt it.

All of the above options will require you to enter the PIN you set up for your device, or biometric authentication, just as an additional precaution before displaying your private key to you.

As for what "store it in a safe place" looks like, I highly recommend a self-hosted password manager, such as Vaultwarden+Bitwarden or KeePass. If you really want to get wild, you can store it on a hardware signing device, or on a steel seed plate.

Additional Settings

Amber has some additional settings you may want to take advantage of. First off, if you don't want just anyone who has access to your phone to be able to approve signing requests, you can go into the Security settings add a PIN or enable biometrics for signing requests. If you enable the PIN, it will be separate from the PIN you use to access your phone, so you can let someone else use your phone, like your child who is always begging to play a mobile game you have installed, without worrying that they might have access to your Nostr key to post on Amethyst.

Amber also has some relay settings. First are the "Active relays" which are used for signing requests sent to Amber remotely from Nostr web apps. This is what enables you to use Amber on your phone to log into Nostr applications on your desktop web browser, such as Jumble.social, Coracle.social, or Nostrudel.ninja, eliminating your need to use any other application to store your nsec whatsoever. You can leave this relay as the default, or you can add other relays you want to use for signing requests. Just be aware, not all relays will accept the notes that are used for Nostr signing requests, so make sure that the relay you want to use does so. In fact, Amber will make sure of this for you when you type in the relay address.

The next type of relays that you can configure in Amber are the "Default profile relays." These are used for reading your profile information. If you already had a Nostr identity that you imported to Amber, you probably noticed it loaded your profile picture and display name, setting the latter as your nickname in Amber. These relays are where Amber got that information from. The defaults are relay.nostr.band and purplepag.es. The reason for this is because they are aggregators that look for Nostr profiles that have been saved to other relays on the network and pull them in. Therefore, no matter what other relay you may save your profile to, Amber will likely be able to find it on one of those two relays as well. If you have a relay you know you will be saving your Nostr profiles to, you may want to add it to this list.

You can also set up Amber to be paired with Orbot for signing over Tor using relays that are only accessible via the Tor network. That is an advanced feature, though, and well beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Finally, you can update the default signing policy. Maybe after using Amber for a while, you've decided that the choice you made before was too strict or too lenient. You can change it to suit your needs.

Zapstore Login

Now that you are all set up with Amber, let's get you signed into your first Nostr app by going back to the Zapstore.

From the app's home screen, tap on the user icon in the upper left of the screen. This will open a side panel with not much on it except the option to "sign in." Go ahead and tap on it.

You will be presented with the option to either sign in with Amber, or to paste your npub. However, if you do the latter, you will only have read access, meaning you cannot zap any of the app releases. There are other features planned for the Zapstore that may also require you to be signed in with write access, so go ahead and choose to log in with Amber.

Your phone should automatically switch to Amber to approve the sign-in request.

You can choose to only approve basic actions for Zapstore, require it to manually approve every time, or you can tell it that you "fully trust this application." Only choose the latter option with apps you have used for a while and they have never asked you to sign for anything suspicious. For the time being, I suggest you use the "Approve basic actions" option and tap "Grant Permissions."

Your phone will switch back to the Zapstore and will show that you are now signed in. Congratulations! From here on out, logging into most Nostr applications will be as easy as tapping on "Log in with Amber" and approving the request.

If you set up a new profile, it will just show a truncated version of your npub rather than the nickname you set up earlier. That's fine. You'll have an opportunity to update your Nostr profile in the next tutorial in this series and ensure that it is spread far and wide in the network, so the Zapstore will easily find it.

That concludes the tutorial for Amber. While we have not covered using Amber to log into Nostr web apps, that is outside the scope of this series, and I will cover it in an upcoming tutorial regarding using Amber's remote signer options in detail.

Since you're already hanging out in the Zapstore, you may as well stick around, because we will be using it right out the gate in the next part of this series: Amethyst Installation and Setup. (Coming Soon)

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

Adam O’Brien, Founder and CEO of Bitcoin Well, discovered Bitcoin in 2013 during its early days as what he describes as “hilarious internet money.”

Today, he leads a publicly traded Canadian company that’s redefining how people interact with this magic internet money, all while navigating a financial system that has personally debanked him and even his uninvolved loved ones.

“I had a terrible experience trying to buy bitcoin in 2013,” O’Brien explains. “Now of course today there are platforms like Bitcoin Well and many others that allow you to buy bitcoin with ease online, but in 2013 that wasn’t the case.”

This frustrating experience sparked the entrepreneurial question that would shape his future: “There must be a better way.”

With a background in restaurant management and customer service, O’Brien started small, meeting people locally in Edmonton, Canada to sell them bitcoin.

Soon after, he purchased and deployed Alberta’s first bitcoin ATM. The business grew organically, with a second machine following, then a third. Before long, Bitcoin Well had become one of Canada’s largest bitcoin ATM operators.

Today, Bitcoin Well operates approximately 160 bitcoin ATMs across Canada. While they’re no longer deploying new machines, these ATMs provide a crucial service that O’Brien is particularly proud of:

“In Canada, you can actually buy bitcoin up to $1,000 without giving your identity to Bitcoin Well. We’re the only platform in the country that is able to offer that service, which is fully legal, fully above board.”

Bitcoin Well has a fleet of over 170 bitcoin ATMs across Canada

The Pivot to Freedom

In 2020, O’Brien’s vision for the company evolved. What began as a mission for Bitcoin accessibility transformed into something deeper: a quest for financial freedom.

“I’m debanked across Canada. I don’t have my bank, even my wife has lost her bank accounts because of my work,” O’Brien revealed. “She’s not involved with the business at all. She’s a stay-at-home mother to our four kids, and she’s unbanked from the majority of the banks in Canada.”

This personal experience crystallized a troubling reality: “It became very clear to me that my money in the banking system was always going to be subject to how much I play by the rules.”

For someone self-described as “freedom-focused” and “freedom-minded,” this realization prompted a strategic shift. Bitcoin Well began developing its online platform, the Bitcoin portal, allowing users to buy, sell, and actually use bitcoin to replace traditional banking functions. O’Brien explains:

“The goal here is that we can be a conduit between the legacy financial system you know, and how you pay your bills, your rent, your power, credit card and phone bills and all that stuff  without having to have money in what I would call a captured fiat account.”

He summarizes the company’s North Star simply: “Allow people to replace their bank with bitcoin in self-custody.”

Living the Mission

O’Brien doesn’t just preach Bitcoin independence, he lives it. Debanked across Canada, he relies on Bitcoin Well’s services for his daily financial needs.

“I’ve got a normal American Express, but I pay that off with Bitcoin at the end of the month,” he shares. “In Canada, we’ve got the equivalent of Venmo, it’s called Interac e-Transfer. I can send an Interac e-Transfer to anyone in the country from bitcoin in self-custody.”

This allows him to navigate everyday situations where merchants don’t accept bitcoin directly.

“It’s spring right now. I’ve got a little property. The guy comes and picks up our rakes and trims the trees and all this stuff, and I pay him. He doesn’t want to accept bitcoin, but I’m able to pay in bitcoin, and he gets the money that he wants.”

In the U.S., Bitcoin Well customers can have their paychecks deposited with a designated portion automatically converted to sats and sent directly to self-custody, allowing clients to stack sats sovereignly without having to think much about it.

With Bitcoin Well you can set up automatic DCA

Building the Right Team

The journey hasn’t been without challenges. O’Brien candidly describes how rapid growth in 2021 led to hiring missteps.

“We scaled so fast I kind of lost control of hiring practice and culture, and we ended up with people that I felt like we had to almost convince of the mission,” he admits.

“Some of them weren’t convinced…they were just there because of the job, or they didn’t really understand the need for the freedom that I speak about every single day.”

After scaling back from that hiring spree, the company refocused on building a team aligned with its core values, emphasizing “hiring Bitcoiners really.”

The result has been transformative: “It’s so much fun having a team that is mission-focused and aligned on our mission to enable independence. Having everyone aligned and kind of running towards that mission is pretty special.”

This alignment creates a powerful filter for decision-making: “When we have a decision to make, it’s like, well, which one enables more independence? And usually there’s a pretty obvious answer. So we’re able to make very fast decisions that help the business and help the mission.”

Raising the Next Generation

Beyond building Bitcoin Well, O’Brien and his wife are raising four children with intention. The family is transitioning to homeschooling next year, allowing them to travel to Bitcoin conferences together while teaching their children to question everything.

“If you don’t indoctrinate your kids, the state will do it for you,” O’Brien states firmly. It’s a fair point, as indoctrination usually comes with a negative connotation, but it should not, since everyone gets indoctrinated with something.

It’s up to parents to decide what their kids are going to be indoctrinated with, and as parents, the O’Briens have chosen to actively shape their children’s worldview rather than defaulting to institutional influences.

Their approach combines Bitcoin principles with biblical values, with a heavy emphasis on lowering time preference. Something O’Brien notes is “10, 20, 30, 50 times more important” with children, though admittedly “way harder.”

“I think Bitcoiners more than anyone understand the need for generational thinking,” he observes.

“I’m so bullish on the amount of Bitcoiners that have more kids or that want to have more kids and that are actually excited to have kids compared to some of my fiat friends that are like, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive and I want to party.’ It’s like, man, you’re just missing the point.”

A Call to Support Bitcoin-Only Businesses

One of O’Brien’s most passionate messages is a call to action for fellow Bitcoiners: support businesses that align with your values.

“I want to call people to support businesses that are actually making steps towards the change they want to see in the world,” he urges. “If I hear one more Bitcoin maxi tell me that they’re using Kraken or Coinbase because it’s cheaper — why do you support the casinos?”

He expresses concern about the future if Bitcoin-only companies struggle to survive: “It would be very sad if all the Bitcoin-only and non-custodial businesses went out of business. That would make it very hard for me to feel comfortable onboarding my no-coiner friends.”

His message to Bitcoiners is clear: “A call out to all my fellow Bitcoiners to support and use the platform that they want to see their kids use.”

Bitcoin Well (TSX.V: BTCW, OTCQB: BCNWF) continues to build infrastructure for those who want to use Bitcoin daily while maintaining self-custody. For O’Brien, the mission is simple but powerful: enable independence and give people the freedom to control their own financial destiny.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

George Town, Grand Cayman — Ledn, one of the longest-standing digital asset lenders, today announced a sweeping update to its platform to discontinue any lending of client assets to generate interest, meaning that client assets will never be exposed to third party lending credit risk.

Going forward, Ledn will only offer its Custodied Bitcoin loan structure, under which client bitcoin collateral will remain fully in custody either with Ledn or its trusted funding partners.

As part of this strategic shift, Ledn will also remove support for ETH, doubling down on Bitcoin as its sole digital asset focus. These changes were unveiled by the company at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas.

“With our new hyper-focus on Bitcoin-only lending, we’re going back to our roots and principles that inspired Bitcoin to begin with,” said Adam Reeds, Co-Founder and CEO of Ledn.

“Bitcoin was created as a direct response to the risks of fractional reserve banking and unchecked use of client assets to generate interest. Traditional finance relies on constantly reusing client assets to create leverage and, ultimately, inflation.

“Bitcoiners instinctively reject that model. That’s why we’ve moved away from this approach entirely. With our Custodied loan structure, client assets stay where they belong and are held in a transparent manner.”

While Ledn is taking these steps to further de-risk its product and further enhance client security, many of the new lending products in the market are exposing consumers to risky and opaque structures once again.

“These are the exact dynamics that led to the meltdown of the lending sector in 2022,” Reeds added.

“As more new entrants push half-baked lending models back into the market, we’re choosing the opposite path— Eliminating lending risk entirely for our users and making it 100% clear how their assets are dealt with.

“That clarity is what has helped us originate over $9.5 billion in loans and become the #1 retail CeFi lender in the Bitcoin space. We believe this approach should become the new standard for any serious digital asset lender.”    

This shift reinforces Ledn’s broader strategy:  Going all in on Bitcoin, simplifying its product stack, and sharpening its focus around the most secure and proven digital asset.

Ledn was the first crypto lender to introduce proof-of-reserves attestations in 2020, offering clients third-party verification that assets were fully accounted for down to the satoshi.

That transparency-first approach allowed the company to navigate market volatility as peers collapsed under opaque and hidden risks.

Now, as global regulators begin signaling openness to supervised participation rather than blanket restrictions, the opportunity — and the responsibility — for digital asset platforms is clear: Build resilient systems and proactively mitigate risk.

Ledn will exclusively offer custodied bitcoin-backed loans as of July 1, 2025. Support for ETH will be retired in the same release, reflecting Ledn’s strategic shift to a Bitcoin-only platform.

For more information on this transition, visit blog.ledn.io

For media inquiries, interviews, or early access to supporting materials, contact ledn@clpr.agency

About Ledn

Ledn offers growth accounts and loans to clients in over 120 countries, with an expanding range of services and supported regions. The company is dedicated to building world-class financial services, with a focus on helping people build long-term wealth through digital asset-based products. 

For more information about Ledn and its services, visit the company’s website at www.ledn.io

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I. Introduction: Money as a Function of Efficiency and Preference

Money is not defined by law, but by power over productivity. In any open economy, the most economically efficient actors—those who control the most valuable goods, services, and knowledge—ultimately dictate the medium of exchange. Their preferences signal to the broader market what form of money is required to access the highest-value goods, from durable commodities to intangibles like intellectual property and skilled labor.

Whatever money these actors prefer becomes the de facto unit of account and store of value, regardless of its legal status. This emergent behavior is natural and reflects a hierarchy of monetary utility.

II. Classical Gresham’s Law: A Product of Market Distortion

Gresham’s Law, famously stated as:

"Bad money drives out good"

is only valid under coercive monetary conditions, specifically: - Legal tender laws that force the acceptance of inferior money at par with superior money. - Fixed exchange rates imposed by decree, not market valuation. - Governments or central banks backing elastic fiduciary media with promises of redemption. - Institutional structures that mandate debt and tax payments in the favored currency.

Under these conditions, superior money (hard money) is hoarded, while inferior money (soft, elastic, inflationary) circulates. This is not an expression of free market behavior—it is the result of suppressed price discovery and legal coercion.

Gresham’s Law, therefore, is not a natural law of money, but a law of distortion under forced parity and artificial elasticity.

III. The Collapse of Coercion: Inversion of Gresham’s Law

When coercive structures weaken or are bypassed—through technological exit, jurisdictional arbitrage, monetary breakdown, or political disintegration—Gresham’s Law inverts:

Good money drives out bad.

This occurs because: - Market actors regain the freedom to select money based on utility, scarcity, and credibility. - Legal parity collapses, exposing the true economic hierarchy of monetary forms. - Trustless systems (e.g., Bitcoin) or superior digital instruments (e.g., stablecoins) offer better settlement, security, and durability. - Elastic fiduciary media become undesirable as counterparty risk and inflation rise.

The inversion marks a return to monetary natural selection—not a breakdown of Gresham’s Law, but the collapse of its preconditions.

IV. Elasticity and Control

Elastic fiduciary media (like fiat currency) are not intrinsically evil. They are tools of state finance and debt management, enabling rapid expansion of credit and liquidity. However, when their issuance is unconstrained, and legal tender laws force their use, they become weapons of economic coercion.

Banks issue credit unconstrained by real savings, and governments enforce the use of inflated media through taxation and courts. This distorts capital allocation, devalues productive labor, and ultimately hollows out monetary confidence.

V. Monetary Reversion: The Return of Hard Money

When the coercion ends—whether gradually or suddenly—the monetary system reverts. The preferences of the productive and wealthy reassert themselves:

• Superior money is not just saved—it begins to circulate.
• Weaker currencies are rejected not just for savings, but for daily exchange.
• The hoarded form becomes the traded form, and Gresham’s Law inverts completely.

Bitcoin, gold, and even highly credible stable instruments begin to function as true money, not just stores of value. The natural monetary order returns, and the State becomes a late participant, not the originator of monetary reality.

VI. Conclusion

Gresham’s Law operates only under distortion. Its inversion is not an anomaly—it is a signal of the collapse of coercion. The monetary system then reorganizes around productive preference, technological efficiency, and economic sovereignty.

The most efficient market will always dictate the form of hard money. The State can delay this reckoning through legal force, but it cannot prevent it indefinitely. Once free choice returns, bad money dies, and good money lives again.

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Mac users who use Ledger hardware wallets to manage their digital assets are being warned about a new scam that uses fake apps to steal funds.

Cybercriminals have launched multiple phishing campaigns using malware that targets macOS systems, replacing the real Ledger Live app with a fake version that asks users to enter their recovery phrase.

These fake apps look almost identical to the real Ledger Live, but instead of helping users manage their bitcoin, they steal the 24-word recovery phrase—the master key to the user’s digital assets.

According to a detailed analysis by Moonlock, the attacks start when users’ computers get infected with Atomic macOS Stealer malware from one of over 2,800 hacked websites. Once installed, the malware removes the legitimate Ledger Live app and installs a malicious version in its place.

The fake app then shows a pop-up message saying it has detected “suspicious activity”, and asks the user to enter their recovery phrase to fix the issue. Once entered, the seed phrase is sent to a server controlled by the attacker.

2,800 websites discovered infected with Atomic Stealer — Moonlock

“Once entered, the seed phrase is sent to an attacker-controlled server, exposing the user’s assets in seconds,” Moonlock said in their May 22 report.

With the recovery phrase, the scammers can drain the user’s wallet of all digital assets—bitcoin and other tokens.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Moonlock has been tracking this malware since August 2024 and has found at least four active campaigns targeting Mac users. They believe the attackers are getting more sophisticated and are refining their methods.

“This isn’t just a theft. It’s a high-stakes effort to outsmart one of the most trusted tools in the crypto world. And the thieves are not backing down,” Moonlock researchers said.

Initially, the fake Ledger Live apps could only steal passwords and view wallet details. This gave attackers some insight into victims’ assets but no way to steal funds directly.

However, over time, hackers have improved their tactics and are now harvesting recovery phrases, so they can take full control of wallets and move funds freely.

One strain of malware, called Odyssey, was spotted in March and was linked to a hacker using the alias “Rodrigo”.

Odyssey replaces Ledger Live with a trojanized app and displays a phishing page asking users to enter their recovery phrases after showing a fake “critical error” message. Another copycat campaign using AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer) followed soon after.

The fake Ledger Live app asks for user’s seed phrase — Moonlock

In one case, a fake app even displayed an “App corrupted” error after stealing the seed phrase to lower the victim’s suspicion and buy time to transfer the funds.

For years, computers running MacOS were considered safer than their Windows counterparts, because the operating system is less prone to malware. This advanced malware shows that users can never be too careful.

Attackers aren’t just relying on infected apps to steal from users. Other scam tactics include:

• Discord attacks: In May, a moderator account in Ledger’s official Discord server was compromised. Attackers used it to post fake verification links.
• Reddit phishing: In January, a user reported losing $15,000 after unknowingly entering their recovery phrase into a fake app.
• Physical mail scams: In April, some Ledger users received letters claiming to be from the company. These letters included QR codes leading to phishing sites that asked for seed phrases under the guise of a “critical security update”.

Attackers are increasingly targeting users holding hardware wallets, because they might be holding larger amounts.

Earlier this month, a Trezor One user reported being contacted by Coinbase impersonators, who tricked him into entering his seed phrase into a fake website, resulting in loss of 17.5 BTC.

The final goal for all these attacks is similar: the attackers are looking for users’ seed phrases, and they are getting creative in finding new ways to acquire them.

One sure way of staying safe is to learn more. The golden standard rule is to NEVER enter your seed phrase into a computer or a website, no matter how urgent or convincing it looks.

If you are a hardware wallet user, make sure you purchase the wallet from official sources. And the ONLY electronic place you can enter your seed phrases is on the hardware wallet itself.

If a process requires you to enter your seed phrase anywhere on a computer itself, it is definitely a scam.

Related: Bitcoin Hardware Wallet Hacks | What You Need to Know

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When making critical decisions about investments, company acquisitions, or capital deployment, organizations rely on a fundamental tool: the hurdle rate. This is the minimum rate of return that a project or investment must achieve to be considered viable by managers or investors. 

The hurdle rate is not just a number — it’s a filter that separates promising opportunities from those that don’t justify the risk.

It acts as a crucial benchmark. If the expected return on an investment falls below the hurdle rate, that opportunity is typically rejected.

Setting this rate involves a careful consideration of several factors, including the company’s cost of capital, specific risk profile, inflation rates, and opportunity cost of allocating resources elsewhere.

In essence, the hurdle rate ensures that only projects with the potential to create real value move forward.

Bitcoin has emerged as a disruptive and compelling candidate for a new kind of hurdle rate in capital allocation. Its unique properties challenge the conventions of traditional finance and invite a new thought pattern of what’s considered an appropriate benchmark. 

Bitcoin’s fixed supply (capped at 21 million), and its decentralized, borderless nature makes it fundamentally resistant to inflation and debasement, unlike fiat currencies that can be printed at will by central banks.

Here’s the real question for investors and fund managers: if your portfolio or fund consistently fails to outperform bitcoin, at what point do you simply start allocating to bitcoin instead?

This isn’t rocket science. Over the past decade, bitcoin has not only outperformed traditional assets, but has also redefined what investors should expect as a minimum acceptable rate.

Asset classes comparison since 2013 — Seeking Alpha

The numbers speak for themselves.

From 2013-2023, bitcoin delivered the highest annual return in 8 out of those 11 years. This is not a fluke or a bubble, it’s a decade-long trend that demands attention from anyone serious about capital growth.

Typically, most investment managers use the S&P 500 as their benchmark hurdle rate. Will their potential investment generate more return than the S&P? If not, it’s usually dismissed. 

Since 1970, the S&P 500 has provided an average annual return of 10.66%. Investment managers routinely reject ideas that can’t beat this average, recognizing that anything less is not worth the risk or effort.

But what happens when we compare this to bitcoin?

Over the last 10 years, bitcoin’s average annual return has been an astonishing 49%. While it’s unlikely that this rate will persist forever, it’s impossible to ignore the magnitude and consistency of bitcoin’s outperformance. 

Bitcoin hasn’t just beat the S&P—it’s outperformed every major asset class, including gold, treasuries, real estate, commodities, and equities.

Of course, past performance isn’t a guarantee of future results. So the question becomes: can bitcoin continue to deliver, and are we ready to use it as a benchmark for investment decisions? 

To answer this, it’s essential to understand the underlying forces driving bitcoin’s price appreciation.

Several macroeconomic factors contribute to bitcoin’s rise, including money printing, economic uncertainty, and the ongoing debasement of fiat currencies.

When governments print money or run deficits, confidence in traditional currencies erodes. In such environments, investors naturally seek scarce assets, historically gold, and now increasingly bitcoin.

Consider the current fiscal reality: the United States is burdened with over $36 trillion in national debt, and there’s little indication that the money printing will stop.

This environment only strengthens the case for bitcoin as a store of value and as a benchmark for capital allocation. Bitcoin’s staying power is becoming undeniable.

Those who fail to adapt, risk being left behind. We’re already witnessing the early stages of institutional and corporate adoption, and it’s only a matter of time before bitcoin becomes a standard reference point for hurdle rates across the investment world.

Visionary leaders like Michael Saylor of Strategy, have openly discussed the challenges of outperforming the world’s top companies.

Saylor recognized that if your investment, company, or project cannot reasonably be expected to outperform bitcoin, it may be more rational to simply hold bitcoin itself.

MSTR performance compared to bitcoin, Magnificent 7 and S&P500 — aicoin

In a world where bitcoin has established itself as the premier performing asset, the message is clear: if you can’t beat bitcoin, why not join it? 

Just buy bitcoin.

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DDC Enterprise, a consumer brand and e-commerce company with operations in the U.S. and China, has launched a big plan to make bitcoin (BTC) a key part of its financial strategy.

The company just bought 21 BTC as the first step in a plan to buy up to 5,000 BTC over the next 3 years.

The move was announced in a press release and a letter to shareholders by DDC’s founder, chairwoman and CEO Norma Chu.

The 21 BTC, worth around $2.28 million at current prices, was bought through a share exchange. DDC issued 254,333 class A ordinary shares.

“We are fully committed to ensuring the success of this strategy, which aligns with our vision to drive long-term value for our shareholders,” said Norma Chu. “Today marks a pivotal moment in DDC’s evolution.”

Chu is the first female founder and CEO of a U.S.-listed public company to lead a bitcoin-only treasury strategy. DDC is one of the first companies in its industry to adopt this strategy in such a structured way.

DDC’s plan is being rolled out in phases. The company will buy another 79 BTC soon and will have 100 BTC in the short term.

In the next 6 months, it will buy 500 BTC, and long-term, it expects to build a 5,000 BTC reserve over 36 months.

This phased approach may allow DDC to manage market volatility and take advantage of price movements.

In her recent letter to shareholders, Chu called the bitcoin strategy “a cornerstone of our long-term value creation plan”.

She said bitcoin’s qualities – especially as a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation – make it the perfect reserve asset for DDC. She added:

“Bitcoin’s unique properties as a store of value and hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty align perfectly with our vision to diversify reserves and enhance shareholder returns.”

The announcement comes on the back of a record-breaking year for DDC.

In 2024, the company made $37.4 million in revenue—a 33% increase from 2023.

Gross margin improved from 25.0% in 2023 to 28.4% in 2024 due to strategic acquisitions in the U.S. and more efficient operations in China.

As of March 31, 2025 the company had $11.3 million in shareholder equity and $23.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

This gives DDC the flexibility and credibility to do something as bold as this bitcoin accumulation plan.

DDC’s announcement comes as corporations are getting increasingly interested in adding bitcoin to their balance sheet.

While giants like Strategy have made headlines with large bitcoin purchases, DDC is the first e-commerce company to do so.

The company’s dual presence in China and the U.S. also adds complexity, especially with the different regulatory environments surrounding Bitcoin in each region.

To ensure proper execution, DDC has expanded its treasury and advisory teams to include experts in the bitcoin markets.

The company will use a mix of dollar cost averaging and tactical buying, adjusting purchases based on market conditions.

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Introduction

Public companies that hold Bitcoin on behalf of investors (often issuing securities backed by those Bitcoin holdings) have faced growing pressure to demonstrate proof of reserves – evidence that they genuinely hold the cryptocurrency they claim. One approach is to publish the company’s Bitcoin wallet addresses so that anyone can verify the balances on the blockchain. This practice gained momentum after high-profile crypto collapses (e.g. FTX in 2022) eroded trust, leading major exchanges and fund issuers like Binance, Kraken, OKX, and Bitwise to publicize wallet addresses as proof of assets . The goal is transparency and reassurance for investors. However, making wallet addresses public comes with significant security and privacy risks. This report examines those risks – from cybersecurity threats and blockchain tracing to regulatory and reputational implications – and weighs them against the transparency benefits of on-chain proof of reserves.

Proof of Reserves via Public Wallet Addresses

In the cryptocurrency ethos of “don’t trust – verify,” on-chain proof of reserves is seen as a powerful tool. By disclosing wallet addresses (or cryptographic attestations of balances), a company lets investors and analysts independently verify that the Bitcoin reserves exist on-chain. For example, some firms have dashboards showing their addresses and balances in real time . In theory, this transparency builds trust by proving assets are not being misreported or misused. Shareholders gain confidence that the company’s Bitcoin holdings are intact, potentially preventing fraud or mismanagement.

Yet this approach essentially sacrifices the pseudonymity of blockchain transactions. Publishing a wallet address ties a large, known institution to specific on-chain funds. While Bitcoin addresses are public by design, most companies treat their specific addresses as sensitive information. Public proof-of-reserve disclosures break that anonymity, raising several concerns as detailed below.

Cybersecurity Threats from Visible Wallet Balances

Revealing a wallet address with a large balance can make a company a prime target for hackers and cybercriminals. Knowing exactly where significant reserves are held gives attackers a clear blueprint. As Bitcoin advocate (and MicroStrategy Executive Chairman) Michael Saylor warned in 2025, “publicly known wallet addresses become prime targets for malicious actors. Knowing where significant reserves are held provides hackers with a clear target, potentially increasing the risk of sophisticated attacks” . In other words, publishing the address increases the attack surface – attackers might intensify phishing campaigns, malware deployment, or insider bribery aimed at obtaining the keys or access to those wallets.

Even if the wallets are secured in cold storage, a public address advertisement may encourage attempts to penetrate the organization’s security. Custodians and partners could also be targeted. Saylor noted that this exposure isn’t just risky for the company holding the Bitcoin; it can indirectly put their custodial providers and related exchanges at risk as well . For instance, if a third-party custodian manages the wallets, hackers might attempt to breach that custodian knowing the reward (the company’s Bitcoin) is great.

Companies themselves have acknowledged these dangers. Grayscale Investments, which runs the large Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), pointedly refused to publish its wallet addresses in late 2022, citing “security concerns” and complex custody arrangements that have “kept our investors’ assets safe for years” . Grayscale implied that revealing on-chain addresses could undermine those security measures, and it chose not to “circumvent complex security arrangements” just to appease public demand . This highlights a key point: corporate treasury security protocols often assume wallet details remain confidential. Publicizing them could invalidate certain assumptions (for example, if an address was meant to be operationally secret, it can no longer serve that role once exposed).

Additionally, a publicly known trove of cryptocurrency might invite physical security threats. While not a purely “cyber” issue, if criminals know a particular company or facility controls a wallet with, say, thousands of Bitcoin, it could lead to threats against personnel (extortion or coercion to obtain keys). This is a less common scenario for large institutions (which typically have robust physical security), but smaller companies or key individuals could face elevated personal risk by being associated with huge visible crypto reserves.

In summary, cybersecurity experts consider public proof-of-reserve addresses a double-edged sword: transparency comes at the cost of advertising exactly where a fortune is held. As Saylor bluntly put it, “the conventional way of issuing proof of reserves today is actually insecure… This method undermines the security of the issuer, the custodian, the exchanges and the investors. This is not a good idea”  . From a pure security standpoint, broadcasting your wallets is akin to drawing a bullseye on them.

Privacy Risks: Address Clustering and Blockchain Tracing

Blockchain data is public, so publishing addresses opens the door to unwanted analytics and loss of privacy for the business. Even without knowing the private keys, analysts can scrutinize every transaction in and out of those addresses. This enables address clustering – linking together addresses that interact – and other forms of blockchain forensics that can reveal sensitive information about the company’s activities.

One immediate risk is that observers can track the company’s transaction patterns. For example, if the company moves Bitcoin from its reserve address to an exchange or to another address, that move is visible in real time. Competitors, investors, or even attackers could deduce strategic information: perhaps the company is planning to sell (if coins go to an exchange wallet) or is reallocating funds. A known institution’s on-chain movements can thus “reveal strategic movements or holdings”, eroding the company’s operational privacy . In a volatile market, advance knowledge of a large buy or sell by a major player could even be exploited by others (front-running the market, etc.).

Publishing one or a few static addresses also violates a basic privacy principle of Bitcoin: address reuse. Best practice in Bitcoin is to use a fresh address for each transaction to avoid linking them  . If a company continuously uses the same “proof of reserve” address, all counterparties sending funds to or receiving funds from that address become visible. Observers could map out the company’s business relationships or vendors by analyzing counterparties. A Reddit user commenting on an ETF that published a single address noted that “reusing a single address for this makes me question their risk management… There are much better and more privacy-preserving ways to prove reserves… without throwing everything in a single public address” . In other words, a naive implementation of proof-of-reserve (one big address) maximizes privacy leakage.

Even if multiple addresses are used, if they are all disclosed, one can perform clustering analysis to find connections. This happened in the Grayscale case: although Grayscale would not confirm any addresses, community analysts traced and identified 432 addresses likely belonging to GBTC’s custodial holdings by following on-chain traces from known intermediary accounts . They managed to attribute roughly 317,705 BTC (about half of GBTC’s holdings) to those addresses . This demonstrates that even partial information can enable clustering – and if the company directly published addresses, the task becomes even easier to map the entirety of its on-chain asset base.

Another threat vector is “dusting” attacks, which become more feasible when an address is publicly known. In a dusting attack, an adversary sends a tiny amount of cryptocurrency (dust) to a target address. The dust itself is harmless, but if the target address ever spends that dust together with other funds, it can cryptographically link the target address to other addresses in the same wallet. Blockchain security researchers note that “with UTXO-based assets, an attacker could distribute dust to an address to reveal the owner’s other addresses by tracking the dust’s movement… If the owner unknowingly combines this dust with their funds in a transaction, the attacker can… link multiple addresses to a single owner”, compromising privacy . A company that publishes a list of reserve addresses could be systematically dusted by malicious actors attempting to map out all addresses under the company’s control. This could unmask cold wallet addresses that the company never intended to publicize, further eroding its privacy and security.

Investor confidentiality is another subtle concern. If the business model involves individual investor accounts or contributions (for instance, a trust where investors can deposit or withdraw Bitcoin), public addresses might expose those movements. An outside observer might not know which investor corresponds to a transaction, but unusual inflows/outflows could signal actions by big clients. In extreme cases, if an investor’s own wallet is known (say a large investor announces their involvement), one might link that to transactions in the company’s reserve addresses. This could inadvertently reveal an investor’s activities or holdings, breaching expectations of confidentiality. Even absent direct identification, some investors might simply be uncomfortable with their transactions being part of a publicly traceable ledger tied to the company.

In summary, publishing reserve addresses facilitates blockchain tracing that can pierce the veil of business privacy. It hands analysts the keys to observe how funds move, potentially exposing operational strategies, counterparties, and internal processes. As one industry publication noted, linking a large known institution to specific addresses can compromise privacy and reveal more than intended . Companies must consider whether they are ready for that level of transparency into their every on-chain move.

Regulatory and Compliance Implications

From a regulatory perspective, wallet address disclosure lies in uncharted territory, but it raises several flags. First and foremost is the issue of incomplete information: A wallet address only shows assets, not the company’s liabilities or other obligations. Regulators worry that touting on-chain holdings could give a false sense of security. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has cautioned investors to “not place too much confidence in the mere fact a company says it’s got a proof-of-reserves”, noting that such reports “lack sufficient information” for stakeholders to ascertain if liabilities can be met . In other words, a public company might show a big Bitcoin address balance, but if it has debts or customer liabilities of equal or greater value, the proof-of-reserve alone is “not necessarily an indicator that the company is in a good financial position” .

This regulatory stance implies that address disclosure, if done, must be paired with proper context. A public company would likely need to clarify in its financial statements or investor communications that on-chain reserves are unencumbered (not pledged as loan collateral, not already sold forward, etc.) and that total liabilities are accounted for. Otherwise, there’s a risk of misleading investors, which could have legal consequences. For example, if investors interpret the on-chain balance as proof of solvency but the company actually had leveraged those bitcoins for loans, lawsuits or regulatory enforcement could follow for misrepresentation.

There’s also a compliance burden associated with revealing addresses. Once an address is known to be the company’s, that company effectively must monitor all transactions related to it. If someone sends funds to that address (even without permission), the company might receive tainted coins (from hacked sources or sanctioned entities). This could trigger anti-money laundering (AML) red flags. Normally, compliance teams can ignore random deposits to unknown wallets, but they cannot ignore something sent into their publicly identified corporate wallet. Even a tiny dust amount sent from a blacklisted address could complicate compliance – for instance, the company would need to prove it has no relation to the sender and perhaps even avoid moving those tainted outputs. Being in the open increases such exposure. Threat actors might even exploit this by “poisoning” a company’s address with unwanted transactions, just to create regulatory headaches or reputational smears.

Another consideration is that custodial agreements and internal risk controls might forbid public disclosure of addresses. Many public companies use third-party custodians for their Bitcoin (for example, Coinbase Custody, BitGo, etc.). These custodians often treat wallet details as confidential for security. Grayscale noted that its Bitcoin are custodied on Coinbase and implied that revealing on-chain info would interfere with security arrangements  . It’s possible that some custodians would object to their clients broadcasting addresses, or might require additional assurances. A company going against such advice might be seen as negligent if something went wrong.

Regulators have so far not mandated on-chain proofs for public companies – in fact, recent laws have exempted public companies from proof-of-reserve mandates on the assumption they are already subject to rigorous SEC reporting. For example, a Texas bill in 2023 required crypto exchanges and custodians to provide quarterly proof-of-reserves to the state, but it “specifically carved out public reporting companies” since they already file audited financials with the SEC . The rationale was that between SEC filings and audits, public companies have oversight that private crypto firms lack . However, this also highlights a gap: even audited financials might not verify 100% of crypto assets (auditors often sample balances). Some observers noted that standard audits “may not ever include the 100% custodial asset testing contemplated by proof of reserves”, especially since quarterly SEC filings (10-Q) are often not audited . This puts public companies in a nuanced position – they are trusted to use traditional audits and internal controls, but the onus is on them if they choose to add extra transparency like on-chain proofs.

Finally, securities regulators focus on fair disclosure and accuracy. If a company publicly posts addresses, those essentially become investor disclosures subject to anti-fraud rules. The firm must keep them up to date and accurate. Any mistake (such as publishing a wrong address or failing to mention that some coins are locked up or lent out) could attract regulatory scrutiny for being misleading. In contrast, a formal audit or certification from a third-party comes with standards and disclaimers that are better understood by regulators. A self-published wallet list is an unprecedented form of disclosure that regulators haven’t fully vetted – meaning the company bears the risk if something is misinterpreted.

In summary, wallet address disclosure as proof-of-reserve must be handled very carefully to avoid regulatory pitfalls. The SEC and others have warned that on-chain assets alone don’t tell the whole story . Public companies would need to integrate such proofs with their official reporting in a responsible way – otherwise they risk confusion or even regulatory backlash for giving a false sense of security.

Reputational and Operational Risks

While transparency is meant to enhance reputation, in practice public wallet disclosures can create new reputational vulnerabilities. Once an address is public, a company’s every on-chain action is under the microscope of the crypto community and media. Any anomaly or perceived misstep can snowball into public relations problems.

One vivid example occurred with Crypto.com in late 2022. After the exchange published its cold wallet addresses to prove reserves (a move prompted by the FTX collapse), on-chain analysts quickly noticed a “suspicious transfer of 320,000 ETH” – about 82% of Crypto.com’s Ether reserves – moving from their cold wallet to another exchange (Gate.io)  . This large, unexpected transfer sparked immediate panic and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) on social media. Observers speculated that Crypto.com might be insolvent or was manipulating snapshots of reserves by borrowing funds. The CEO had to publicly respond, admitting it was an operational error – the ETH was supposed to go to a new cold storage address but ended up at a whitelisted external address by mistake . The funds were eventually returned, but not before reputational damage was done: the incident made headlines about mishandled funds and rattled user confidence  . This case illustrates how full public visibility can turn an internal slip-up into a highly public crisis. If the addresses had not been public, the mistake might have been quietly corrected; with on-chain transparency, there was nowhere to hide and no way to control the narrative before the public drew worst-case conclusions.

Even routine operations can be misinterpreted. Blockchain data lacks context – analysts may jump to conclusions that hurt a company’s reputation even if nothing is actually wrong. For instance, Binance (the world’s largest crypto exchange) encountered scrutiny when on-chain observers noted that one of its reserve wallets (labeled “Binance 8”) contained far more assets than it should have. This wallet was meant to hold collateral for Binance’s issued tokens, but held an excess balance, suggesting possible commingling of customer funds with collateral  . Bloomberg and others reported a ~$12.7 billion discrepancy visible on-chain . Binance had to acknowledge the issue as a “clerical error” and quickly separate the funds, all under the glare of public attention  . While Binance maintained that user assets were fully backed and the mistake was purely operational, the episode raised public concern over Binance’s practices, feeding a narrative that even the largest exchange had internal control lapses. The key point is that public proof-of-reserves made the lapse obvious to everyone, forcing a reactive explanation. The reputational hit (even if temporary) was an operational risk of being so transparent.

Additionally, strategic confidentiality is lost. If a company holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset decides to make a major move (say, reallocating to a different wallet, or using some Bitcoin for a strategic investment or loan), doing so with known addresses broadcasts that strategy. Competitors or market analysts can infer things like “Company X is moving 10% of its BTC — why? Are they selling? Hedging? Using it as collateral?” This can erode any competitive advantage of keeping financial strategies discreet. It might even affect the company’s stock price if investors interpret moves negatively. For example, if a blockchain analysis shows the company’s reserves dropping, shareholders might fear the company sold Bitcoin (perhaps due to financial distress), even if the reality is benign (like moving funds to a new custodian). The company would be forced into continuous public explanation of on-chain actions to prevent misunderstanding.

There’s also a risk of exposing business partnerships. Suppose the company uses certain exchanges or OTC desks to rebalance its holdings – transactions with those service providers will be visible and could link the company to them. If one of those partners has issues (say a hacked exchange or a sanctioned entity inadvertently), the company could be reputationally contaminated by association through the blockchain trail.

Finally, not all publicity is good publicity in the crypto world. A public proof-of-reserve might invite armchair auditors to scrutinize and criticize every aspect of the company’s crypto management. Minor issues could be blown out of proportion. On the flip side, if a company chooses not to publish addresses, it could face reputational risk from a different angle: skeptics might question why it isn’t being transparent. (Indeed, Grayscale’s refusal to disclose wallet addresses led to social media chatter about whether they truly held all the Bitcoin they claimed, contributing to investor nervousness and a steep discount on GBTC shares .) Thus, companies are in a delicate spot: share too much and every move invites scrutiny; share too little and you breed distrust.

Balancing Transparency Benefits vs. Risks

The central question is whether the benefit of proving reserve holdings to investors outweighs these security and privacy risks. It’s a classic risk-reward calculation, and opinions in the industry are divided.

On the side of transparency, many argue that the credibility and trust gained by proof-of-reserves is invaluable. Advocates note that Bitcoin was designed for open verification – “on-chain auditability and permissionless transparency” are core features . By embracing this, companies demonstrate they are good stewards of a “trustless” asset. In fact, some believe public companies have a duty to be extra transparent. A recent Nasdaq report contended that “when a publicly traded company holds Bitcoin but offers no visibility into how that Bitcoin is held or verified, it exposes itself to multiple levels of risk: legal, reputational, operational, and strategic”, undermining trust . In that view, opacity is riskier in the long run – a lack of proof could weaken investor confidence or invite regulatory suspicion. Shareholders and analysts may actually penalize a company that refuses to provide verifiable proof of its crypto assets .

Transparency done right can also differentiate a firm as a leader in governance. Publishing reserve data (whether via addresses or through third-party attestations) can be seen as a commitment to high standards. For example, Metaplanet, an investment firm, publicly discloses its BTC reserve addresses and even provides a live dashboard for anyone to verify balances . This proactive openness signals confidence and has been touted as an industry best practice in some quarters. By proving its reserves, a company can potentially avoid the fate of those that lost public trust (as happened with opaque crypto firms in 2022). It’s also a means to preempt false rumors – if data is out in the open, misinformation has less room to grow.

However, the pro-transparency camp increasingly acknowledges that there are smarter ways to achieve trust without courting all the risks. One compromise is using cryptographic proofs or audits instead of plain address dumps. For instance, exchanges like Kraken have implemented Merkle tree proof-of-reserves: an independent auditor verifies all customer balances on-chain and provides a cryptographic report, and customers can individually verify their account is included without the exchange revealing every address publicly. This method proves solvency to those who need to know without handing over a complete roadmap to attackers. Another emerging solution is zero-knowledge proofs, where a company can prove knowledge or ownership of certain assets without revealing the addresses or amounts to the public. These technologies are still maturing, but they aim to deliver the best of both worlds: transparency and privacy.

On the side of caution, many experts believe the risks of full public disclosure outweigh the incremental gain in transparency, especially for regulated public companies. Michael Saylor encapsulates this viewpoint: he calls on-chain proof-of-reserve “a bad idea” for institutions, arguing that it “offers one-way transparency” (assets only) and “leaves organizations open to cyberattacks” . He stresses that no serious security expert would advise a Fortune 500 company to list all its wallet addresses, as it essentially compromises corporate security over time . Saylor and others also point out the pointlessness of an assets-only proof: unless you also prove liabilities, showing off reserves might even be dangerous because it could lull investors into a false sense of security .

Regulators and traditional auditors echo this: proof-of-reserves, while a useful tool, “is not enough by itself” to guarantee financial health . They advocate for holistic transparency – audits that consider internal controls, liabilities, and legal obligations, not just a snapshot of a blockchain address  . From this perspective, a public company can satisfy transparency demands through rigorous third-party audits and disclosures rather than raw on-chain data. Indeed, public companies are legally bound to extensive reporting; adding public crypto addresses on top may be seen as redundant and risky.

There is also an implicit cost-benefit analysis: A successful attack resulting from over-sharing could be catastrophic (loss of funds, legal liability, reputational ruin), whereas the benefit of public proof is somewhat intangible (improved investor sentiment, which might be achieved via other assurance methods anyway). Given that trade-off, many firms err on the side of caution. As evidence, few if any U.S.-listed companies that hold Bitcoin have published their wallet addresses. Instead, they reference independent custodians and audits for assurance. Even crypto-native companies have pulled back on full transparency after realizing the downsides – for example, some auditing firms halted issuing proof-of-reserves reports due to concerns about how they were interpreted and the liability involved  .

Industry best practices are still evolving. A prudent approach gaining favor is to prove reserves without leaking sensitive details. This can involve disclosing total balances and having an auditor or blockchain oracle confirm the assets exist, but without listing every address publicly. Companies are also encouraged to disclose encumbrances (whether any of the reserves are collateralized or lent out) in tandem, to address the liabilities issue . By doing so, they aim to achieve transparency and maintain security.

In evaluating whether to publish wallet addresses, a company must ask: Will this level of openness meaningfully increase stakeholder trust, or would a more controlled disclosure achieve the same goal with less risk? For many public companies, the answer has been to avoid public addresses. The risks – from attracting hackers to revealing strategic moves – tend to outweigh the marginal transparency benefit in their judgment. The collapse of unregulated exchanges has certainly proven the value of reserve verification, but public companies operate in a different context with audits and legal accountability. Thus, the optimal solution may be a middle ground: proving reserves through vetted processes (auditor attestations, cryptographic proofs) that satisfy investor needs without blatantly exposing the company’s financial backend to the world.

Conclusion

Publishing Bitcoin wallet addresses as proof of reserves is a bold transparency measure – one that speaks to crypto’s ideals of open verification – but it comes with a laundry list of security considerations. Public companies weighing this approach must contend with the heightened cybersecurity threat of advertising their treasure troves to hackers, the loss of privacy and confidentiality as on-chain sleuths dissect their every transaction, and potential regulatory complications if such disclosures are misunderstood or incomplete. Real-world incidents illustrate the downsides: firms that revealed addresses have seen how quickly online communities flag (and sometimes misinterpret) their blockchain moves, causing reputational turbulence and forcing rapid damage control  .

On the other hand, proving reserves to investors is important – it can prevent fraud and bolster trust. The question is how to achieve it without incurring unacceptable risk. Many experts and industry leaders lean towards the view that simply publishing wallet addresses is too risky a method, especially for public companies with much to lose  . The risks often do outweigh the direct benefits in such cases. Transparency remains crucial, but it can be provided in safer ways – through regular audits, cryptographic proofs that don’t expose all wallet details, and comprehensive disclosures that include liabilities and controls.

In conclusion, while on-chain proof of reserves via public addresses offers a tantalizing level of openness, it must be approached with extreme caution. For most public companies, the smart strategy is to balance transparency with security: verify and show investors that assets exist and are sufficient, but do so in a controlled manner that doesn’t compromise the very assets you’re trying to protect. As the industry matures, we can expect more refined proof-of-reserve practices that satisfy the demand for honesty and solvency verification without unduly endangering the enterprise. Until then, companies will continue to tread carefully, mindful that transparency is only truly valuable when it doesn’t come at the price of security and trust.

Sources:

•   Grayscale statement on refusal to share on-chain proof-of-reserves 
•   Community analysis identifying Grayscale’s wallet addresses 
•   Cointelegraph – Crypto.com’s mistaken 320k ETH transfer spotted via on-chain proof-of-reserves  
•   Axios – Binance wallet “commingling” error observed on-chain  
•   Michael Saylor’s remarks on security risks of publishing wallet addresses   
•   SEC Acting Chief Accountant on limitations of proof-of-reserves reports 
•   Nasdaq (Bitcoin for Corporations) – argument for corporate transparency & proof-of-reserves   
•   1inch Security Blog – explanation of dusting attacks and privacy loss via address linking 

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

H100 Group AB, a Swedish publicly listed health technology company, has made the headlines after investing in bitcoin as part of a new financial strategy.

The move has caused a stir in Sweden and beyond, with H100’s stock price rising 40% after the announcement.

The company has bought 4.39 bitcoin for 5 million Norwegian Krone (around $475,000–$492,000).

This is the company’s first foray into the digital asset space and makes H100 Group the first publicly-listed health tech company in Sweden to hold bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.

The bitcoin was bought at an average price of 1,138,737 NOK (around $108,000) per coin.

The bitcoin purchase is part of H100 Group’s new “Bitcoin Treasury Strategy” to diversify its financial assets and strengthen its balance sheet. Instead of holding idle cash, the company decided to invest in what it sees as a long-term asset.

“This addition to H100’s Bitcoin Treasury Strategy follows an increasing number of tech-oriented growth companies holding bitcoin on their balance sheet,” said CEO Sander Andersen.

“And I believe the values of individual sovereignty highly present in the Bitcoin community aligns well with, and will appeal to, the customers and communities we are building the H100 platform for.”

Andersen said they will “build and hold” bitcoin long-term, viewing it as a savings tool, not a short-term trade.

The market reacted fast. On May 22, the company’s stock went up 39.27%, seeing highs of 1.620 SEK on the Nordic Growth Market.

This helped the company to recover a big part of the losses from the last two months, during which the stock fell 46%.

And now, after the purchase, the firm’s market cap is around $150.46 million.

H100 has said this might not be the only purchase. The company has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to set up a convertible loan facility of up to 10 million SEK with an undisclosed investor.

H100 Group’s announcement — Source

The funds will be used for general corporate purposes and to potentially increase bitcoin holdings. The loan will have a 3-year term and can be converted into shares at 1.3 SEK per share.

If H100’s stock price is more than 33% above the conversion price for more than 60 days, H100 will have the right to force conversion.

The company also announced today that it has successfully raised 21 million SEK ($2.21 million) through a convertible round led by Blockstream founder and CEO Adam Back.

Despite the Bitcoin pivot, H100 Group has made it clear that the core business remains the same.

They will continue to develop AI-powered automation tools and digital platforms to help healthcare providers deliver better services, especially in the health and longevity space.

Andersen said they are committed to healthy living, and adopting a bitcoin strategy is a smarter financial move that aligns with their values.

H100’s move comes as corporate adoption of bitcoin accelerates globally.

According to BitcoinTreasuries over 109 public companies now list bitcoin on their balance sheets. Among those are companies like Twenty One Capital, Strive and Metaplanet.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

The Bitcoin world begins what is considered to be its biggest event yet — Bitcoin 2025, a three-day conference taking place May 27-29 at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas.

With over 30,000 attendees expected, the event will bring together the biggest names in politics, finance, technology and the global Bitcoin community.

Hosted by BTC Inc., Bitcoin 2025 is not just another tech conference — it’s a global gathering that mixes policy, innovation and community under one roof.

It’s where big ideas about the future of money are debated, shared and shaped.

Influential speakers will attend the conference

The conference features a wide range of speakers from Bitcoin experts and educators to political leaders and athletes.

Big names like U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s Crypto Czar David Sacks, and Senator Cynthia Lummis are among the most anticipated guests.

Vice President Vance is expected to talk about the role of Bitcoin in the national economy. “The resilience of Bitcoin as a financial instrument is a testament to the power of decentralized finance,” he recently said.

Also speaking are Nigel Farage, a well-known voice in European politics and Donald Trump Jr., a supporter of financial freedom through digital currency.

Also, Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy will be back on stage to talk about bitcoin as a corporate asset.

There are over 70 speakers on the list including Adam Back (CEO of Blockstream), Jan van Eck (CEO of VanEck) and Bryan Johnson, a futurist known for his work in human longevity and health tech.

Bitcoin 2025 will feature special new programs including Code + Country, a one-day segment on May 27 that explores how freedom, technology and innovation shape modern society.

Speakers like Chris LaCivita (Trump’s 2024 campaign co-CEO) and David Sacks (AI and digital assets advisor) will be talking about how digital tools are changing politics and finance.

Also new this year, is The Art of Freedom, an exhibit that showcases how Bitcoin is impacting the art world.

This museum-style experience allows artists to price and sell their work using bitcoin, connect directly with fans and avoid traditional middlemen.

The first official Bitcoin Conference was in 2019 in San Francisco, after grassroots meetups in 2013 and 2014. Since then, it’s been the biggest annual event in the Bitcoin world.

This year is especially important.

Global economic changes are happening and analysts say the discussions at Bitcoin 2025 will shape the next wave of regulatory reforms and technological standards for Bitcoin and stablecoins.

Bitcoin (BTC) has recently been hovering at around $110,000 with a market cap of $2.12 trillion. Many think the ideas and announcements at the event will impact price and policy.

Bitcoin 2025 is for everyone — long-time Bitcoiners to newcomers to digital assets, with keynotes, panels, massive expo halls and VIP networking.

It’s fun too. There are numerous parties, meetups and side events to connect, making it a place to learn, meet others who share the same interests and help shape the financial world.

The scale and diversity of Bitcoin 2025 make it more than just a Bitcoin event.

It’s a reflection of how far Bitcoin has come — from internet forums to boardrooms and government halls. It’s not just about Bitcoin anymore, it’s about the future of the world.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

5/27/2025, Las Vegas, NV — Sati, a Bitcoin payments app and Lightning infrastructure provider, today announced the launch of its Lightning integration with Xverse, a Bitcoin wallet used by over 1.5 million people worldwide.

Thanks to the integration, Xverse users can now send and receive sats (bitcoin’s smallest denomination) instantly over the Lightning Network with no setup, no app switching, and no custodial risk.

Initially designed in 2017, the Lightning Network has grown to become Bitcoin’s leading layer-2, with a current BTC capacity of over $465M.

Sati is now leveraging this technology to bring the world’s favorite digital currency into the pockets of 3 billion users worldwide, thanks to its powerful API integration with WhatsApp.

“Bitcoin was not meant to be an asset for Wall Street—it was built for peer-to-peer money, borderless and accessible,” said Felipe Servin, Founder and CEO of Sati.

“Integrating Lightning natively into Xverse brings that vision back to life, making Bitcoin usable at scale for billions.”

Thanks to the integration, every Xverse user now gets a Lightning Address instantly.

That means they can receive tips, pay invoices, and use Bitcoin for microtransactions—all without having to manage channels or switch between different apps.

Sati expects USDT on Lightning to be supported as early as Q3 for the Xverse wallet and in July 2025 for users accessing Sati through WhatsApp.

This integration positions Sati’s role as a Lightning infrastructure provider, not just a consumer app.

By leveraging its API-based solution, the company provides plug-and-play backend services to wallets and platforms looking to add Bitcoin payments without compromising on security or UX.

The Xverse launch follows the debut of Parasite Pool, a new mining pool leveraging Sati and Xverse’s tech stack and focused on democratizing Bitcoin mining.

Parasite Pool charges 0% fees and pays out instantly over Lightning, making it ideal for small-scale miners, especially those running ultra-low-power hardware like Bitaxe.

With over 500 users joining Parasite Pool within weeks of launch and an average pool hashrate of 5 PH/s, Parasite Pool is steadily growing its presence in the home mining space.

Thanks to the Lightning integration, Parasite Pool supports the smallest Lightning payouts in the industry (a fraction of a cent), lowering the barrier to entry for anyone interested in mining.

Sati recently closed a $600K pre-seed round backed by Bitcoin-focused investors, including Draper Associates, BitcoinFi, Arcanum, BoostVC, and Ricardo Salinas.

The funding is being used to support global expansion, stablecoin integration, Lightning infrastructure growth, and broader access to Bitcoin in emerging markets.

Sati will be conducting live product demos at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on May 27-29. To learn more about Sati, visit sati.pro

Press Contact
press@sati.pro

About Sati

Sati is a Bitcoin payments infrastructure provider. Launched in 2025 with investors of the likes as Draper Associates and Ricardo Salinas, Sati powers fast, seamless Bitcoin payments on applications such as WhatsApp to fuel the next wave of adoption. Learn more at sati.pro

About Xverse

Xverse is the on-chain platform for the Bitcoin economy—think Revolut meets Alchemy, built natively on Bitcoin. Trusted by over 1.5 million users, Xverse is launching a unified portfolio platform for Bitcoin L1 and Layer 2s, alongside developer infrastructure to power seamless Bitcoin-native apps.

@ b7274d28:c99628cb

A few months ago, a nostrich was switching from iOS to Android and asked for suggestions for #Nostr apps to try out. nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 offered the following as his response:

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq0mhp4ja8fmy48zuk5p6uy37vtk8tx9dqdwcxm32sy8nsaa8gkeyqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgunsd3jkyuewvdhk6tcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszythwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn99uqzpwwts6n28eyvjpcwvu5akkwu85eg92dpvgw7cgmpe4czdadqvnv984rl0z

Yes. #Android users are fortunate to have some powerful Nostr apps and tools at our disposal that simply have no comparison over on the iOS side. However, a tool is only as good as the knowledge of the user, who must have an understanding of how best to wield it for maximum effect. This fact was immediately evidenced by replies to Derek asking, "What is the use case for Citrine?" and "This is the first time I'm hearing about Citrine and Pokey. Can you give me links for those?"

Well, consider this tutorial your Nostr starter-kit for Android. We'll go over installing and setting up Amber, Amethyst, Citrine, and Pokey, and as a bonus we'll be throwing in the Zapstore and Coinos to boot. We will assume no previous experience with any of the above, so if you already know all about one or more of these apps, you can feel free to skip that tutorial.

So many apps...

You may be wondering, "Why do I need so many apps to use Nostr?" That's perfectly valid, and the honest answer is, you don't. You can absolutely just install a Nostr client from the Play Store, have it generate your Nostr identity for you, and stick with the default relays already set up in that app. You don't even need to connect a wallet, if you don't want to. However, you won't experience all that Nostr has to offer if that is as far as you go, any more than you would experience all that Italian cuisine has to offer if you only ever try spaghetti.

Nostr is not just one app that does one thing, like Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok. It is an entire ecosystem of applications that are all built on top of a protocol that allows them to be interoperable. This set of tools will help you make the most out of that interoperability, which you will never get from any of the big-tech social platforms. It will provide a solid foundation for you to build upon as you explore more and more of what Nostr has to offer.

So what do these apps do?

Fundamental to everything you do on Nostr is the need to cryptographically sign with your private key. If you aren't sure what that means, just imagine that you had to enter your password every time you hit the "like" button on Facebook, or every time you commented on the latest dank meme. That would get old really fast, right? That's effectively what Nostr requires, but on steroids.

To keep this from being something you manually have to do every 5 seconds when you post a note, react to someone else's note, or add a comment, Nostr apps can store your private key and use it to sign behind the scenes for you. This is very convenient, but it means you are trusting that app to not do anything with your private key that you don't want it to. You are also trusting it to not leak your private key, because anyone who gets their hands on it will be able to post as you, see your private messages, and effectively be you on Nostr. The more apps you give your private key to, the greater your risk that it will eventually be compromised.

Enter #Amber, an application that will store your private key in only one app, and all other compatible Nostr apps can communicate with it to request a signature, without giving any of those other apps access to your private key.

Most Nostr apps for Android now support logging in and signing with Amber, and you can even use it to log into apps on other devices, such as some of the web apps you use on your PC. It's an incredible tool given to us by nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5, and only available for Android users. Those on iPhone are incredibly jealous that they don't have anything comparable, yet.

Speaking of nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5, the next app is also one of his making.

All Nostr data is stored on relays, which are very simple servers that Nostr apps read notes from and write notes to. In most forms of social media, it can be a pain to get your own data out to keep a backup. That's not the case on Nostr. Anyone can run their own relay, either for the sake of backing up their personal notes, or for others to post their notes to, as well.

Since Nostr notes take up very little space, you can actually run a relay on your phone. I have been on Nostr for almost 2 and a half years, and I have 25,000+ notes of various kinds on my relay, and a backup of that full database is just 24MB on my phone's storage.

Having that backup can save your bacon if you try out a new Nostr client and it doesn't find your existing follow list for some reason, so it writes a new one and you suddenly lose all of the people you were following. Just pop into your #Citrine relay, confirm it still has your correct follow list or import it from a recent backup, then have Citrine restore it. Done.

Additionally, there are things you may want to only save to a relay you control, such as draft messages that you aren't ready to post publicly, or eCash tokens, which can actually be saved to Nostr relays now. Citrine can also be used with Amber for signing into certain Nostr applications that use a relay to communicate with Amber.

If you are really adventurous, you can also expose Citrine over Tor to be used as an outbox relay, or used for peer-to-peer private messaging, but that is far more involved than the scope of this tutorial series.

You can't get far in Nostr without a solid and reliable client to interact with. #Amethyst is the client we will be using for this tutorial because there simply isn't another Android client that comes close, so far. Moreover, it can be a great client for new users to get started on, and yet it has a ton of features for power-users to take advantage of as well.

There are plenty of other good clients to check out over time, such as Coracle, YakiHonne, Voyage, Olas, Flotilla and others, but I keep coming back to Amethyst, and by the time you finish this tutorial, I think you'll see why. nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z and others who have contributed to Amethyst have really built something special in this client, and it just keeps improving with every update that's shipped.

Most social media apps have some form of push notifications, and some Nostr apps do, too. Where the issue comes in is that Nostr apps are all interoperable. If you have more than one application, you're going to have both of them notifying you. Nostr users are known for having five or more Nostr apps that they use regularly. If all of them had notifications turned on, it would be a nightmare. So maybe you limit it to only one of your Nostr apps having notifications turned on, but then you are pretty well locked-in to opening that particular app when you tap on the notification.

Pokey, by nostr:npub1v3tgrwwsv7c6xckyhm5dmluc05jxd4yeqhpxew87chn0kua0tjzqc6yvjh, solves this issue, allowing you to turn notifications off for all of your Nostr apps, and have Pokey handle them all for you. Then, when you tap on a Pokey notification, you can choose which Nostr app to open it in.

Pokey also gives you control over the types of things you want to be notified about. Maybe you don't care about reactions, and you just want to know about zaps, comments, and direct messages. Pokey has you covered. It even supports multiple accounts, so you can get notifications for all the npubs you control.

One of the most unique and incredibly fun aspects of Nostr is the ability to send and receive #zaps. Instead of merely giving someone a 👍️ when you like something they said, you can actually send them real value in the form of sats, small portions of a Bitcoin. There is nothing quite like the experience of receiving your first zap and realizing that someone valued what you said enough to send you a small amount (and sometimes not so small) of #Bitcoin, the best money mankind has ever known.

To be able to have that experience, though, you are going to need a wallet that can send and receive zaps, and preferably one that is easy to connect to Nostr applications. My current preference for that is Alby Hub, but not everyone wants to deal with all that comes along with running a #Lightning node. That being the case, I have opted to use nostr:npub1h2qfjpnxau9k7ja9qkf50043xfpfy8j5v60xsqryef64y44puwnq28w8ch for this tutorial, because they offer one of the easiest wallets to set up, and it connects to most Nostr apps by just copy/pasting a connection string from the settings in the wallet into the settings in your Nostr app of choice.

Additionally, even though #Coinos is a custodial wallet, you can have it automatically transfer any #sats over a specified threshold to a separate wallet, allowing you to mitigate the custodial risk without needing to keep an eye on your balance and make the transfer manually.

Most of us on Android are used to getting all of our mobile apps from one souce: the Google Play Store. That's not possible for this tutorial series. Only one of the apps mentioned above is available in Google's permissioned playground. However, on Android we have the advantage of being able to install whatever we want on our device, just by popping into our settings and flipping a toggle. Indeed, thumbing our noses at big-tech is at the heart of the Nostr ethos, so why would we make ourselves beholden to Google for installing Nostr apps?

The nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8 is an alternative app store made by nostr:npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9 as a resource for all sorts of open-source apps, but especially Nostr apps. What is more, you can log in with Amber, connect a wallet like Coinos, and support the developers of your favorite Nostr apps directly within the #Zapstore by zapping their app releases.

One of the biggest features of the Zapstore is the fact that developers can cryptographically sign their app releases using their Nostr keys, so you know that the app you are downloading is the one they actually released and hasn't been altered in any way. The Zapstore will warn you and won't let you install the app if the signature is invalid.

Getting Started

Since the Zapstore will be the source we use for installing most of the other apps mentioned, we will start with installing the Zapstore.

We will then use the Zapstore to install Amber and set it up with our Nostr account, either by creating a new private key, or by importing one we already have. We'll also use it to log into the Zapstore.

Next, we will install Amethyst from the Zapstore and log into it via Amber.

After this, we will install Citrine from the Zapstore and add it as a local relay on Amethyst.

Because we want to be able to send and receive zaps, we will set up a wallet with CoinOS and connect it to Amethyst and the Zapstore using Nostr Wallet Connect.

Finally, we will install Pokey using the Zapstore, log into it using Amber, and set up the notifications we want to receive.

By the time you are done with this series, you will have a great head-start on your Nostr journey compared to muddling through it all on your own. Moreover, you will have developed a familiarity with how things generally work on Nostr that can be applied to other apps you try out in the future.

Continue to Part 2: The Zapstore. Nostr Link: nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzpde8f55w86vrhaeqmd955y4rraw8aunzxgxstsj7eyzgntyev2xtqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnzwf5kw6r5vfhkcapwdejhgtcqp5cnwdphxv6rwwp3xvmnzvqgty5au

@ 3c559080:a053153e

So firstly you should find an emulator for whatever you want to play on. There are many for desktop and mobile devices. Checkhere for a list of all the available consoles and their various emulators.

Next what game do you want to play? This is the like the homepage for a shit ton of roms.

Some of the more popular roms are there and other various list like Sony Nintendo

After narrowing down your selection you will end up on myrient i assume this is just some dope person hosting all these so if you get some use out of it, think of donating they even take corn, but other shitcoins too (but thats not the focus here)

Once you download the Rom of the game you want, you will get a compressed (zip) folder, unzip it and within it will be the rom, most systems will identify your emulator and use it open the game. If not, launch the emulator and within it should be an option to open a file, open the file in the unzipped folder.

Enjoy So you want to Mod?

So every Mod, is a mod for a specific game [ex. Pokemon Blue, Pokemon FireRed, Super Mario Bros.] so it requires you to get the Rom for that base game, the mod itself, and a tool to patch it. There is an online tool to easily patch the mod to the ROM. IMPORTANT, this will not change any naming, Id recommend having a folder with the base game roms, and a folder for the mods, and lastly a folder for the newly modded roms. Make sure to name or just save the game in modded roms folder after the patch.

Below are a few resource to find various Pokemon Rom mods(sometimes called hacks)

• r/PokemonROMhacks
• Good Compilations of Hacks and Resource/Guides

Personally, Pokemon Unbound is considered the best most polished hack. it runs on Pokemon Fire Red.

Pokemon Emerald Rouge is a cool take on the popular Rougelite genre. This runs on base game Pokemon Emerald

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, has stirred up the Bitcoin community with his recent comments on proof-of-reserves, calling it a “bad idea” that puts institutional security at risk.

Speaking at a side event at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Saylor expressed strong concerns about the security implications of on-chain proof of reserves (PoR), a method used by many bitcoin companies to show they actually hold the assets they claim.

“The conventional way of issuing proof of reserves today is actually insecure,” Saylor said.

“It actually dilutes the security of the issuer, the custodians, the exchanges and the investors. It’s not a good idea, it’s a bad idea.”

Proof-of-reserves is a process where companies with bitcoin reserves share public wallet addresses or use cryptographic methods to prove how much bitcoin they hold.

This practice gained popularity after the collapse of major exchanges like FTX and Mt. Gox to build trust through transparency.

Many big players in the digital asset space, including Binance, Kraken, OKX and asset manager Bitwise, have adopted PoR to reassure users and stakeholders.

Related: Bitwise Announces On-Chain Address, Donations Go to Shareholders

Saylor’s objections boil down to two main points.

First, he believes publishing wallet addresses creates serious security risks. By exposing institutional wallet structures, companies may open themselves up to attacks from hackers, hostile governments or malicious actors.

“[It’s like] publishing the address and the bank accounts of all your kids and the phone numbers of all your kids and then thinking somehow that makes your family better,” Saylor said.

“(It becomes) an attack vector for hackers, nation-state actors, every type of troll imaginable.”

He even asked the audience to try a thought experiment:

“Go to AI, put it in deep think mode and then ask it ‘what are the security problems of publishing your wallet addresses?’ and ‘how might it undermine the security of your company over time’ … It will write you a book. It will be fifty pages of security problems.”

Second, Saylor pointed out that proof of reserves only shows what a company owns, not what it owes. In his view, that’s incomplete.

“It’s proof of assets that is insecure, and it is not proof of liabilities… So you own $63 billion worth of bitcoin—do you have a hundred billion dollars of liabilities?” he asked rhetorically.

For large institutions and investors, this view of financial health is not enough.

Instead of publishing wallet addresses, Saylor thinks the better approach is to use institutional-grade audits by trusted firms.

“The best practice… would be to have a Big Four auditor that checks to make sure you actually have the bitcoin, then checks to make sure the company hasn’t rehypothecated or pledged the bitcoin,” he said.

“Then you have to wash it through a public company where the CFO signs, then the CEO signs, then the chairman and all the outside directors are civilly and criminally liable for it.”

He believes the legal consequences of corporate auditing — including prison time for fraud under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act — are stronger than cryptographic proof alone.

He did admit that a more secure, future version of PoR might be possible if it involved zero-knowledge proofs that protect wallet privacy while still confirming ownership.

Not everyone agrees with Saylor’s opinion. While some praised his focus on security, others accused Saylor of hiding something.

Speculations resurfaced about whether Strategy truly holds all the bitcoin it claims, or if it’s involved in so-called “paper bitcoin” — claims to BTC without physical backing.

Others pointed out that exchanges like Kraken and asset managers like Bitwise have implemented PoR systems without major breaches.

@ 9ca447d2:fbf5a36d

LAS VEGAS, May 28 2025 — Blockstream, the global leader in Bitcoin-powered financial infrastructure, has today revealed its strategic vision to support Bitcoin’s next pivotal phase of growth, building on over a decade of pioneering work at the forefront of Bitcoin innovation. 

Unveiled in a keynote by Blockstream Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Adam Back at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas and anchored by a bold new tagline, The Future of Finance Runs on Bitcoin, the vision introduces a clear framework based on three core business units—Consumer, Enterprise and Blockstream Asset Management (BAM).

This framework represents a unified approach to onboarding users across the rapidly growing Bitcoin economy, from individuals to institutions.

“The past year has shown clearly that Bitcoin no longer sits on the margins of the global financial system—it is rapidly becoming the foundation,” said Dr. Back.

“Our vision is simple: The Future of Finance Runs on Bitcoin. Guided by this idea, Blockstream is working hard to build the vertically integrated platform to support that transition, from individual self-custody to enterprise-scale asset issuance and regulated investment products.”

A New Era for Bitcoin-Native Finance

According to crypto ETF analytics platform SoSoValue, Bitcoin has attracted over $41 billion in net ETF inflows alone since the launch of U.S. spot ETFs in early 2024, led by major institutions such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton.

At the same time, New Hampshire and Arizona have become the first U.S. states to pursue Strategic Bitcoin Reserves and the number of corporate treasuries holding bitcoin continues to climb.

With a market cap of just over $2 trillion and trillions settled annually on-chain, Bitcoin’s role as a legitimate financial layer is becoming increasingly clear, hastening the need for scalable infrastructure.

Blockstream has been building that infrastructure for over a decade.

Founded in 2014 by Dr. Adam Back—inventor of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism—the company has focused from the outset on expanding Bitcoin’s functionality without compromising its foundational principles.

Blockstream Research, led by renowned cryptographer Andrew Poelstra, is a key contributor to Bitcoin Core and drives advances in applied cryptography and protocol development. 

On the product side, Blockstream maintains Core Lightning (CLN) for scalable payments, the Liquid Network and Blocksteam Asset Management Platform (AMP) for tokenized asset issuance and settlement, as well as self-custody tools including the open-source Jade hardware wallet.

The All-New Blockstream App—Self Custody on Your Terms

Headlining today’s keynote was the launch of the all-new Blockstream app—a streamlined, self-custodial experience that lets users buy bitcoin and secure it immediately in their own wallet.

Built on the foundation of the trusted Blockstream Green wallet, the updated app offers seamless support for managing bitcoin and Liquid assets within a redesigned interface tailored to both new and experienced users.

The Blockstream app is designed to make onboarding intuitive from day one, minimizing friction while staying true to the principles of self-custody.

Users can begin simply and gradually adopt more advanced features at their own pace—including hardware signing and air-gapped transactions with the Blockstream Jade.

Current Blockstream Green users will find all existing functionality preserved within the redesigned interface.

With support for 31 languages, the app makes Bitcoin accessible to anyone with a smartphone, opening the door to secure, sovereign finance worldwide

“The new Blockstream app isn’t just a wallet,” said Peter Bain, VP of Consumer Products at Blockstream.

“It’s a gateway to the full power of Bitcoin—enabling secure savings, fast payments, and seamless management of tokenized assets, all within an intuitive interface designed for both newcomers and hardcore bitcoiners.”

Blockstream Enterprise: Bitcoin-Native Financial Infrastructure

Dr. Back also used his keynote to highlight the growing importance of Blockstream Enterprise, the company’s evolving platform for corporations, governments and participants across the broader financial sector.

Underpinned by the Liquid Network and Blockstream AMP, the platform enables secure asset issuance, as well as treasury and balance sheet management.

It also facilitates integration with custodians, exchanges and core financial systems via industry-standard FIX and REST APIs.

With the first iteration of AMP already available and additional features rolling out over time, the platform builds on Liquid’s momentum, which recently surpassed $3.27 billion in total value locked (TVL).

In doing so, it provides a Bitcoin-native foundation for tokenization and institutional settlement focused on regulated custody, compliant off-exchange settlement, and programmable financial instruments.

“As capital markets evolve, businesses, institutions, and governments will need infrastructure that is secure, programmable and built directly on Bitcoin’s rapidly growing network,” said Dr. Back.

“Blockstream Enterprise brings that infrastructure together—enabling asset issuance, management, and settlement on Liquid, Bitcoin’s first and most battle-tested sidechain.”

Unifying Consumer, Enterprise, and Institutional Products

Today’s keynote marks a strategic inflection point, aligning Blockstream’s efforts across the three market segments it serves.

In 2024, the company raised $210 million to accelerate development and launched Blockstream Asset Management (BAM), a dedicated division focused on institutional-grade Bitcoin investment products.

The company has also deepened collaborations with regulated custodians, corporate treasuries and financial service providers to support the integration of Liquid and AMP into existing financial infrastructure.

The Future of Finance Runs on Bitcoin

The vision laid out by Dr. Back reflects Blockstream’s conviction that Bitcoin is no longer just a $2 trillion asset class but a settlement layer, a development platform, and the most credible foundation for building the next financial system.

“The financial world is waking up to what we’ve known for years,” said Dr. Back. “Bitcoin is here to stay —and it’s never been easier to build on it.”

“From first-time users to trillion-dollar institutions, our aim is to give everyone the tools to participate in this new economy, with the transparency, security and resilience that only Bitcoin can provide.”

To learn more visit Booth 2121 at Bitcoin 2025 or visit www.blockstream.com.

Download the new Blockstream app today and take control of your bitcoin—on your terms.

Institutions, enterprises, and governments interested in building on Bitcoin with Liquid and AMP can connect with the Blockstream team directly at business@blockstream.com.

Media contact:
Edward Moore – Head of PR, Blockstream
emoore@blockstream.com

About Blockstream

Founded in 2014, Blockstream is a global leader in Bitcoin and blockchain infrastructure, with offices and team members distributed around the world. 

Serving as the technology provider for the Liquid Network, Blockstream offers a sidechain solution that enables secure, trustless Bitcoin swap settlements and robust smart contracts, empowering financial institutions to tokenize assets efficiently. 

The company’s Core Lightning is a leading implementation of the open Lightning Network protocol, widely adopted for enterprise Bitcoin Lightning Network deployments.

Blockstream Jade, an open-source hardware wallet, delivers advanced security for Bitcoin and Liquid assets in an easy-to-use form factor.

For consumers, Blockstream app is a highly secure and user-friendly Bitcoin wallet.

​​Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding the expected launch timeline of the Blockstream Enterprise platform and time to market of Blockstream Asset Management products. 

Other “forward looking statements” may, without limitation, include statements that are preceded by, followed by, or include the words “believes,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “estimates,” “foresees,” or similar expressions, and other statements concerning anticipated future events and expectations that are not historical facts.

_Actual results may differ materially due to regulatory developments, competition from other hardware and technology services providers (in the case of Jade and the app) and both traditional finance and crypto native managers (in the case of BAM), market conditions and other risks. Actual results may differ materially. Blockstream undertakes no oblig

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

In the heart of East Africa, where M-Pesa reigns supreme and innovation pulses through bustling markets, a quiet revolution is brewing—one that could redefine how millions interact with money.

Enter Bitika, the Kenyan startup turning bitcoin’s complexity into a three-step dance, merging the lightning speed of sats with the trusted rhythm of mobile money.

At the helm is a founder whose “aha” moment came not in a boardroom, but at his kitchen table, watching his father grapple with the gap between understanding bitcoin and actually using it.

Bitika was born from that friction—a bridge between M-Pesa’s ubiquity and bitcoin’s borderless promise, wrapped in a name as playful as the Swahili slang that inspired it.

But this isn’t just a story about simplifying transactions. It’s about liquidity battles, regulatory tightropes, and a vision to turn Bitika into the invisible rails powering Africa’s Bitcoin future.

Building on Bitcoin

• Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into bitcoin/fintech, and what keeps you passionate about this space?

I first came across bitcoin in 2020, but like many at that time, I didn’t fully grasp what it really was. It sounded too complicated, probably with the heavy terminologies. Over time, I kept digging deeper and became more curious.

I started digging into finance and how money works and realised this was what I needed to understand bitcoin’s objectives. I realized that bitcoin wasn’t just a new type of money—it was a breakthrough in how we think about freedom, ownership, and global finance.

What keeps me passionate is how bitcoin can empower people—especially in Africa—to take control of their wealth, without relying on unstable systems or middlemen.

• What pivotal moment or experience inspired you to create Bitika? Was there a specific gap in Kenya’s financial ecosystem that sparked the idea?

Yes, this idea was actually born right in my own home. I’ve always been an advocate for bitcoin, sharing it with friends, family, and even strangers. My dad and I had countless conversations about it. Eventually, he understood the concept. But when he asked, “How do I even buy bitcoin?” or “Can you just buy it for me?” and after taking him through binance—that hit me.

If someone I’d educated still found the buying process difficult, how many others were feeling the same way? That was the lightbulb moment. I saw a clear gap: the process of buying bitcoin was too technical for the average Kenyan. That’s the problem Bitika set out to solve.

• How did you identify the synergy between bitcoin and M-Pesa as a solution for accessibility?

M-Pesa is at the center of daily life in Kenya. Everyone uses it—from buying groceries to paying rent. Instead of forcing people to learn new tools, I decided to meet them where they already are. That synergy between M-Pesa and bitcoin felt natural. It’s about bridging what people already trust with something powerful and new.

• Share the story behind the name “Bitika” – does it hold a cultural or symbolic meaning?

Funny enough, Bitika isn’t a deeply planned name. It came while I was thinking about bitcoin and the type of transformation it brings to individuals. In Swahili, we often add “-ka” to words for flair—like “bambika” from “bamba.”

So, I just coined Bitika as a playful and catchy way to reflect something bitcoin-related, but also uniquely local. I stuck with it because thinking of an ideal brand name is the toughest challenge for me.

• Walk us through the user journey – how does buying bitcoin via M-Pesa in “3 simple steps” work under the hood?

It’s beautifully simple.

1. The user enters the amount they want to spend in KES—starting from as little as 50 KES (about $0.30).

2. They input their Lightning wallet address.

3. They enter their M-Pesa number, which triggers an STK push (payment prompt) on their phone. Once confirmed—pap!—they receive bitcoin almost instantly.

Under the hood, we fetch the live BTC price, validate wallet addresses, check available liquidity, process the mobile payment, and send sats via the Lightning Network—all streamlined into a smooth experience for the user.

• Who’s Bitika’s primary audience? Are you focusing on unbanked populations, tech enthusiasts, or both?

Both. Bitika is designed for everyday people—especially the unbanked and underbanked who are excluded from traditional finance. But we also attract bitcoiners who just want a faster, easier way to buy sats. What unites them is the desire for a seamless and low-barrier bitcoin experience.

Community and Overcoming Challenges

• What challenges has Bitika faced navigating Kenya’s bitcoin regulations, and how do you build trust with regulators?

Regulation is still evolving here. Parliament has drafted bills, but none have been passed into law yet. We’re currently in a revision phase where policymakers are trying to strike a balance between encouraging innovation and protecting the public.

We focus on transparency and open dialogue—we believe that building trust with regulators starts with showing how bitcoin can serve the public good.

• What was the toughest obstacle in building Bitika, and how did you overcome it?

Liquidity. Since we don’t have deep capital reserves, we often run into situations where we have to pause operations often to manually restock our bitcoin supply. It’s frustrating—for us and for users. We’re working on automating this process and securing funding to maintain consistent liquidity so users can access bitcoin at any time, without disruption.

This remains our most critical issue—and the primary reason we’re seeking support.

• Are you eyeing new African markets? What’s next for Bitika’s product?

Absolutely. The long-term vision is to expand Bitika into other African countries facing similar financial challenges. But first, we want to turn Bitika into a developer-first tool—infrastructure that others can build on. Imagine local apps, savings products, or financial tools built using Bitika’s simple bitcoin rails. That’s where we’re heading. 

• What would you tell other African entrepreneurs aiming to disrupt traditional finance?

Disrupting finance sounds exciting—but the reality is messy. People fear what they don’t understand. That’s why simplicity is everything. Build tools that hide the complexity, and focus on making the user’s life easier. Most importantly, stay rooted in local context—solve problems people actually face.

What’s Next?

• What’s your message to Kenyans hesitant to try bitcoin, and to enthusiasts watching Bitika?

To my fellow Kenyans: bitcoin isn’t just an investment—it’s a sovereign tool. It’s money you truly own. Start small, learn, and ask questions.

To the bitcoin community: Bitika is proof that bitcoin is working in Africa. Let’s keep pushing. Let’s build tools that matter.

• How can the bitcoin community, both locally and globally, support Bitika’s mission?

We’re currently fundraising on Geyser. Support—whether it’s financial, technical, or simply sharing our story—goes a long way. Every sat you contribute helps us stay live, grow our liquidity, and continue building a tool that brings bitcoin closer to the everyday person in Africa.

Support here: https://geyser.fund/project/bitika

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Custodial Lightning wallets allow users to transact without managing private keys or channel liquidity. The provider handles technical complexities, but this convenience comes with critical trade-offs:

• You don’t control your keys: The custodian holds your bitcoin.
• Centralized points of failure: Servers can be hacked or shut down.
• Surveillance risks: Providers track transaction metadata.

Key Risks of Custodial Lightning Wallets

*1. Hacks and Exit Scams*

Custodians centralize large amounts of bitcoin, attracting hackers:

• Nearly $2.2 billion worth of funds were stolen from hacks in 2024.
• Lightning custodians suffered breaches, losing user funds.

Unlike non-custodial wallets, victims have no recourse since they don’t hold keys.

*2. Censorship and Account Freezes*

Custodians comply with regulators, risking fund seizures:

• Strike (a custodial Lightning app) froze accounts of users in sanctioned regions.
• A U.K. court in 2020 ordered Bitfinex to freeze bitcoin worth $860,000 after the exchange and blockchain sleuthing firm Chainalysis traced the funds to a ransomware payment.

*3. Privacy Erosion*

Custodians log user activity, exposing sensitive data:

• Transaction amounts, receiver addresses, and IPs are recorded.

*4. Service Downtime*

Centralized infrastructure risks outages.

*5. Inflation of Lightning Network Centralization*

Custodians dominate liquidity, weakening network resilience:

• At the moment, 10% of the nodes on Lightning control 80% of the liquidity.
• This centralization contradicts bitcoin’s decentralized ethos.

How to Switch to Self-Custodial Lightning Wallets

Migrating from custodial services is straightforward:

*1. Choose a Non-Custodial Wallet*

Opt for wallets that let you control keys and channels:

• Flash: The self-custodial tool that lets you own your keys, control your coins, and transact instantly.
• Breez Wallet : Non-custodial, POS integrations.
• Core Lightning : Advanced, for self-hosted node operators.

*2. Transfer Funds Securely*

• Withdraw funds from your custodial wallet to a bitcoin on-chain address.
• Send bitcoin to your non-custodial Lightning wallet.

*3. Set Up Channel Backups*

Use tools like Static Channel Backups (SCB) to recover channels if needed.

*4. Best Practices*

• Enable Tor: Mask your IP (e.g., Breez’s built-in Tor support).
• Verify Receiving Addresses: Avoid phishing scams.
• Regularly Rebalance Channels: Use tools like Lightning Pool for liquidity.

Why Self-Custodial Lightning Matters

• Self-custody: Control your keys and funds.
• Censorship resistance: No third party can block transactions.
• Network health: Decentralized liquidity strengthens Lightning.

Self-custodial wallets now rival custodial ease.

Custodial Lightning wallets sacrifice security for convenience, putting users at risk of hacks, surveillance, and frozen funds. As bitcoin adoption grows, so does the urgency to embrace self-custodial solutions.

Take action today:

1. Withdraw custodial funds to a hardware wallet.
2. Migrate to a self-custodial Lightning wallet.
3. Educate others on the risks of custodial control.

The Lightning Network’s potential hinges on decentralization—don’t let custodians become its Achilles’ heel.

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

The upcoming Bitcoin 2025 conference, scheduled from May 27–29 at the Venetian Conference Center in Las Vegas, is set to make history with an official attempt to break the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title for the most Bitcoin point-of-sale transactions in an eight-hour period.

Organized by BTC Inc, the event will showcase Bitcoin’s evolution from a digital capital asset to a practical medium of exchange, leveraging the latest advancements in payment technology.

Tap-to-Pay with Lightning-Ready Bolt Cards

To facilitate this record-setting attempt, 4,000 Lightning-ready Bolt Cards will be distributed to conference attendees.

pic.twitter.com/Iy7P361u6u

— Uncle Rockstar Developer (@r0ckstardev) May 15, 2025

These NFC-enabled cards allow users to make instant, contactless Bitcoin payments at vendor booths throughout the expo-no apps or QR codes required, just a simple tap. 

The cards are available in four collectible designs, each featuring a prominent figure in Bitcoin’s history: Senator Cynthia Lummis, Michael Saylor, Satoshi Nakamoto, and Jack Dorsey. 

Each attendee will receive a randomly assigned card, making them both functional and collectible souvenirs.

Senator Lummis: A Playful Provocation

Notably, one of the card designs features Senator Cynthia Lummis with laser eyes-a playful nod to her reputation as a leading Bitcoin advocate in US politics. 

While Lummis is known for her legislative efforts to promote Bitcoin integration, she has publicly stated she prefers to “spend dollars and save Bitcoin,” viewing BTC as a long-term store of value rather than a daily currency. 

The choice to feature her on the Bolt Card, could be suggested by Rockstar Dev of the BTC Pay Server Foundation, perhaps a lighthearted way to highlight the ongoing debate about Bitcoin’s role in everyday payments.

Nothing cracks me up quite like a senator that wants the US to buy millions of Bitcoin use dollars to buy a beer at a Bitcoin bar.

This is how unserious some of you are. pic.twitter.com/jftIEggmip

— Magoo PhD (@HodlMagoo) April 4, 2025

How Bolt Cards and the Lightning Network Work

Bolt Cards are physical cards equipped with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, similar to contactless credit or debit cards. When linked to a compatible Lightning wallet, they enable users to make Bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network by simply tapping the card at a point-of-sale terminal. 

The Lightning Network is a second-layer protocol built on top of Bitcoin, designed to facilitate instant, low-cost transactions ideal for everyday purchases. 

This integration aims to make Bitcoin as easy to use as traditional payment methods, eliminating the need for QR code scanning or mobile apps.

A Showcase for Bitcoin’s Real-World Usability

With over 30,000 attendees, 300 exhibitors, and 500 speakers expected, the Bitcoin 2025 conference is poised to be the largest Bitcoin event of the year-and potentially the most transactional. 

The event will feature on-site activations such as the Official Bitcoin Magazine Store, where all merchandise will be available at a 21% discount for those paying with Bitcoin via the Lightning Network-a nod to Bitcoin’s 21 million coin supply limit.

By deeply integrating Lightning payments into the conference experience, organizers hope to demonstrate Bitcoin’s readiness for mainstream commerce and set a new benchmark for its practical use as a currency.

Conclusion

The Guinness World Record attempt at Bitcoin 2025 is more than a publicity stunt-it’s a bold demonstration of Bitcoin’s technological maturity and its potential to function as a modern, everyday payment method.

Whether or not the record is set, the event will serve as a milestone in the ongoing journey to make Bitcoin a truly global, user-friendly currency

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Flash, an all-in-one Bitcoin payment platform, has announced the launch of Flash 2.0, the most intuitive and powerful Bitcoin payment solution to date.

With a completely redesigned interface, expanded e-commerce integrations, and a frictionless onboarding process, Flash 2.0 makes accepting Bitcoin easier than ever for businesses worldwide.

We did the unthinkable!

Website monetization used to be super complicated.

"Buy me a coffee" — But only if we both have a bank account.

WHAT IF WE DON'T?

Thanks to @paywflash and bitcoin, it's just 5 CLICKS – and no banks!

Start accepting donations on your website… pic.twitter.com/uwZUrvmEZ1

— Flash • The Bitcoin Payment Gateway (@paywflash) May 13, 2025

Accept Bitcoin in Three Minutes

Setting up Bitcoin payments has long been a challenge for merchants, requiring technical expertise, third-party processors, and lengthy verification procedures. Flash 2.0 eliminates these barriers, allowing any business to start accepting Bitcoin in just three minutes, with no technical set-up and full control over their funds.

The Bitcoin Payment Revolution

The world is witnessing a seismic shift in finance. Governments are backing Bitcoin funds, major companies are adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, and political figures are embracing it as the future of money. Just as Stripe revolutionized internet payments, Flash is now doing the same for Bitcoin. Businesses that adapt today will gain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.

With Bitcoin adoption accelerating, consumers are looking for places to spend it. Flash 2.0 ensures businesses of all sizes can seamlessly accept Bitcoin and position themselves at the forefront of this financial revolution.

All-in-One Monetization Platform

More than just a payment gateway, Flash 2.0 is a complete Bitcoin monetization suite, providing multiple ways for businesses to integrate Bitcoin into their operations. Merchants can accept payments online and in-store, content creators can monetize with donations and paywalls, and freelancers can send instant invoices via payment links.

For example, a jewelry designer selling products on WooCommerce can now integrate Flash for online payments, use Flash’s Point-of-Sale system at trade shows, enable Bitcoin donations for her digital artwork, and lock premium content behind Flash Paywalls. The possibilities are endless.

E-Commerce for Everyone

With built-in integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, and soon Wix and OpenCart, Flash 2.0 enables Bitcoin payments on 95% of e-commerce stores worldwide. Businesses can now add Bitcoin as a payment option in just a few clicks—without needing developers or external payment processors.

And for those looking to start selling, Flash’s built-in e-commerce features allow users to create online stores, showcase products, and manage payments seamlessly.

No Middlemen, No Chargebacks, No Limits

Unlike traditional payment platforms, Flash does not hold or process funds. Businesses receive Bitcoin directly, instantly, and securely. There are no chargebacks, giving merchants full control over refunds and eliminating fraud. Flash also remains KYC-free, ensuring a seamless experience for businesses and customers alike.

A Completely Redesigned Experience

“The world is waking up to Bitcoin. Just like the internet revolutionized commerce, Bitcoin is reshaping finance. Businesses need solutions that are simple, efficient, and truly decentralized. Flash 2.0 is more than just a payment processor—it’s a gateway to the future of digital transactions, putting financial power back into the hands of businesses.”

— Pierre Corbin, CEO at Flash.

Flash 2.0 introduces a brand-new user interface, making it easier than ever to navigate, set up payments, and manage transactions. With an intuitive dashboard, streamlined checkout, and enhanced mobile compatibility, the platform is built for both new and experienced Bitcoin users.

About Flash

Flash is an all-in-one Bitcoin payment platform that empowers businesses, creators, and freelancers to accept, manage, and grow with Bitcoin. With a mission to make Bitcoin payments accessible to everyone, Flash eliminates complexity and gives users full control over their funds.

To learn more or get started, visit www.paywithflash.com.

Press Contact:

Julien Bouvier
Head of Marketing
+3360941039

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Bitcoin FilmFest (BFF25) returns to Warsaw for its third edition, blending independent cinema—from feature films and commercials to AI-driven experimental visuals—with education and entertainment.

Hundreds of attendees from around the world will gather for three days of screenings, discussions, workshops, and networking at the iconic Kinoteka Cinema (PKiN), the same venue that hosted the festival’s first two editions in March 2023 and April 2024.

This year’s festival, themed “Beyond the Frame,” introduces new dimensions to its program, including an extra day on May 22 to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day, the first real-world bitcoin transaction, with what promises to be one of Europe’s largest commemorations of this milestone.

BFF25 bridges independent film, culture, and technology, with a bold focus on decentralized storytelling and creative expression. As a community-driven cultural experience with a slightly rebellious spirit, Bitcoin FilmFest goes beyond movies, yet cinema remains at its heart.

Here’s a sneak peek at the lineup, specially curated for movie buffs:

Generative Cinema –  A special slot with exclusive shorts and a thematic debate on the intersection of AI and filmmaking. Featured titles include, for example: BREAK FREE, SATOSHI: THE CREATION OF BITCOIN, STRANGE CURRENCIES, and BITCOIN IS THE MYCELIUM OF MONEY,  exploring financial independence, traps of the fiat system, and a better future built on sound money.

Upcoming Productions Preview – A bit over an hour-long block of unreleased pilots and works-in-progress. Attendees will get exclusive first looks at projects like FINDING HOME (a travel-meets-personal-journey series), PARALLEL SPACES (a story about alternative communities), and THE LEGEND OF LANDI (a mysterious narrative).

Freedom-Focused Ads & Campaigns – Unique screenings of video commercials, animations, and visual projects, culminating in “The PoWies” (Proof of Work-ies)—the first ever awards show honoring the best Bitcoin-only awareness campaigns.

To get an idea of what might come up at the event, here, you can preview 6 selected ads combined into two 2 videos:

• Unique Bitcoin-Video Ads: Part One
• Unique Bitcoin-Video Ads: Part Two

Open Pitch Competition – A chance for filmmakers to present fresh ideas and unfinished projects to an audience of a dedicated jury, movie fans and potential collaborators. This competitive block isn’t just entertaining—it’s a real opportunity for creators to secure funding and partnerships.

Golden Rabbit Awards: A lively gala honoring films from the festival’s Official Selection, with awards in categories like Best Feature, Best Story, Best Short, and Audience Choice.

BFF25 Main Screenings

Sample titles from BFF25’s Official Selection:

REVOLUCIÓN BITCOIN – A documentary by Juan Pablo, making its first screening outside the Spanish-speaking world in Warsaw this May. Three years of important work, 80 powerful minutes to experience. The film explores Bitcoin’s impact across Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, and Spain through around 40 diverse perspectives. Screening in Spanish with English subtitles, followed by a Q&A with the director.

UNBANKABLE – Luke Willms’ directorial debut, drawing from his multicultural roots and his father’s pioneering HIV/AIDS research. An investigative documentary based on Luke’s journeys through seven African countries, diving into financial experiments and innovations—from mobile money and digital lending to Bitcoin—raising smart questions and offering potential lessons for the West. Its May appearance at BFF25 marks its largest European event to date, following festival screenings and nominations across multiple continents over the past year.

HOTEL BITCOIN – A Spanish comedy directed by Manuel Sanabria and Carlos “Pocho” Villaverde. Four friends, 4,000 bitcoins , and one laptop spark a chaotic adventure of parties, love, crime, and a dash of madness. Exploring sound money, value, and relationships through a twisting plot. The film premiered at the Tarazona and Moncayo Comedy Film Festival in August 2024. Its Warsaw screening at BFF25 (in Spanish with English subtitles) marks its first public showing outside the Spanish-speaking world.

Check out trailers for this year’s BFF25 and past editions on YouTube.

Tickets & Info:

• Detailed program and tickets are available at bitcoinfilmfest.com/bff25.
• Stay updated via the festival’s official channels (links provided on the website).
• Use ‘LN-NEWS’ to get 10% of tickets

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Starting January 1, 2026, the United Kingdom will impose some of the world’s most stringent reporting requirements on cryptocurrency firms.

All platforms operating in or serving UK customers-domestic and foreign alike-must collect and disclose extensive personal and transactional data for every user, including individuals, companies, trusts, and charities. 

This regulatory drive marks the UK’s formal adoption of the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), a global initiative designed to bring crypto oversight in line with traditional banking and to curb tax evasion in the rapidly expanding digital asset sector.

What Will Be Reported?

Crypto firms must gather and submit the following for each transaction:

• User’s full legal name, home address, and taxpayer identification number
• Detailed data on every trade or transfer: type of cryptocurrency, amount, and nature of the transaction
• Identifying information for corporate, trust, and charitable clients

The obligation extends to all digital asset activities, including crypto-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat trades, and applies to both UK residents and non-residents using UK-based platforms. The first annual reports covering 2026 activity are due by May 31, 2027.

Enforcement and Penalties

Non-compliance will carry stiff financial penalties, with fines of up to £300 per user account for inaccurate or missing data-a potentially enormous liability for large exchanges. The UK government has urged crypto firms to begin collecting this information immediately to ensure operational readiness.

Regulatory Context and Market Impact

This move is part of a broader UK strategy to position itself as a global fintech hub while clamping down on fraud and illicit finance. UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has championed these measures, stating, “Britain is open for business – but closed to fraud, abuse, and instability”. The regulatory expansion comes amid a surge in crypto adoption: the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority reported that 12% of UK adults owned crypto in 2024, up from just 4% in 2021.

Enormous Risks for Consumers: Lessons from the Coinbase Data Breach

While the new framework aims to enhance transparency and protect consumers, it also dramatically increases the volume of sensitive personal data held by crypto firms-raising the stakes for cybersecurity.

The risks are underscored by the recent high-profile breach at Coinbase, one of the world’s largest exchanges.

In May 2025, Coinbase disclosed that cybercriminals, aided by bribed offshore contractors, accessed and exfiltrated customer data including names, addresses, government IDs, and partial bank details. 

The attackers then used this information for sophisticated phishing campaigns, successfully deceiving some customers into surrendering account credentials and funds.

“While private encryption keys remained secure, sufficient customer information was exposed to enable sophisticated phishing attacks by criminals posing as Coinbase personnel.”

Coinbase now faces up to $400 million in compensation costs and has pledged to reimburse affected users, but the incident highlights the systemic vulnerability created when large troves of personal data are centralized-even if passwords and private keys are not directly compromised. The breach also triggered a notable drop in Coinbase’s share price and prompted a $20 million bounty for information leading to the attackers’ capture.

The Bottom Line

The UK’s forthcoming crypto reporting regime represents a landmark in financial regulation, promising greater transparency and tax compliance. However, as the Coinbase episode demonstrates, the aggregation of sensitive user data at scale poses a significant cybersecurity risk.

As regulators push for more oversight, the challenge will be ensuring that consumer protection does not become a double-edged sword-exposing users to new threats even as it seeks to shield them from old ones.

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

This article was originally published on aier.org

Even after eleven years experience, and a per Bitcoin price of nearly $20,000, the incredulous are still with us. I understand why. Bitcoin is not like other traditional financial assets.

Even describing it as an asset is misleading. It is not the same as a stock, as a payment system, or a money. It has features of all these but it is not identical to them.

What Bitcoin is depends on its use as a means of storing and porting value, which in turn rests of secure titles to ownership of a scarce good. Those without experience in the sector look at all of this and get frustrated that understanding why it is valuable is not so easy to grasp. 

In this article, I’m updating an analysis I wrote six years ago. It still holds up. For those who don’t want to slog through the entire article, my thesis is that Bitcoin’s value obtains from its underlying technology, which is an open-source ledger that keeps track of ownership rights and permits the transfer of these rights. Bitcoin managed to bundle its unit of account with a payment system that lives on the ledger. That’s its innovation and why it obtained a value and that value continues to rise. 

Consider the criticism offered by traditional gold advocates, who have, for decades, pushed the idea that sound money must be backed by something real, hard, and independently valuable. Bitcoin doesn’t qualify, right? Maybe it does. 

Bitcoin first emerged as a possible competitor to national, government-managed money in 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper was released October 31, 2008. The structure and language of this paper sent the message: This currency is for computer technicians, not economists nor political pundits. The paper’s circulation was limited; novices who read it were mystified. 

But the lack of interest didn’t stop history from moving forward. Two months later, those who were paying attention saw the emergence of the “Genesis Block,” the first group of bitcoins generated through Nakamoto’s concept of a distributed ledger that lived on any computer node in the world that wanted to host it.

Here we are all these years later and a single bitcoin trades at $18,500. The currency is held and accepted by many thousands of institutions, both online and offline. Its payment system is very popular in poor countries without vast banking infrastructures but also in developed countries. And major institutions—including the Federal Reserve, the OECD, the World Bank, and major investment houses—are paying respectful attention and weaving blockchain technology into their operations.

Enthusiasts, who are found in every country, say that its exchange value will soar even more in the future because its supply is strictly limited and it provides a system vastly superior to government money. Bitcoin is transferred between individuals without a third party. It is relatively low-cost to exchange. It has a predictable supply. It is durable, fungible, and divisible: all crucial features of money. It creates a monetary system that doesn’t depend on trust and identity, much less on central banks and government. It is a new system for the digital age.

Hard lessons for hard money

To those educated in the “hard money” tradition, the whole idea has been a serious challenge. Speaking for myself, I had been reading about bitcoin for two years before I came anywhere close to understanding it. There was just something about the whole idea that bugged me. You can’t make money out of nothing, much less out of computer code. Why does it have value then? There must be something amiss. This is not how we expected money to be reformed.

There’s the problem: our expectations. We should have been paying closer attention to Ludwig von Mises’ theory of money’s origins—not to what we think he wrote, but to what he actually did write. 

In 1912, Mises released The Theory of Money and Credit. It was a huge hit in Europe when it came out in German, and it was translated into English. While covering every aspect of money, his core contribution was in tracing the value and price of money—and not just money itself—to its origins. That is, he explained how money gets its price in terms of the goods and services it obtains. He later called this process the “regression theorem,” and as it turns out, bitcoin satisfies the conditions of the theorem.

Mises’ teacher, Carl Menger, demonstrated that money itself originates from the market—not from the State and not from social contract. It emerges gradually as monetary entrepreneurs seek out an ideal form of commodity for indirect exchange. Instead of merely bartering with each other, people acquire a good not to consume, but to trade. That good becomes money, the most marketable commodity.

But Mises added that the value of money traces backward in time to its value as a bartered commodity. Mises said that this is the only way money can have value.

The theory of the value of money as such can trace back the objective exchange value of money only to that point where it ceases to be the value of money and becomes merely the value of a commodity…. If in this way we continually go farther and farther back we must eventually arrive at a point where we no longer find any component in the objective exchange value of money that arises from valuations based on the function of money as a common medium of exchange; where the value of money is nothing other than the value of an object that is useful in some other way than as money…. Before it was usual to acquire goods in the market, not for personal consumption, but simply in order to exchange them again for the goods that were really wanted, each individual commodity was only accredited with that value given by the subjective valuations based on its direct utility.

Mises’ explanation solved a major problem that had long mystified economists. It is a narrative of conjectural history, and yet it makes perfect sense. Would salt have become money had it otherwise been completely useless? Would beaver pelts have obtained monetary value had they not been useful for clothing? Would silver or gold have had money value if they had no value as commodities first? The answer in all cases of monetary history is clearly no. The initial value of money, before it becomes widely traded as money, originates in its direct utility. It’s an explanation that is demonstrated through historical reconstruction. That’s Mises’ regression theorem.

Bitcoin’s Use Value

At first glance, bitcoin would seem to be an exception. You can’t use a bitcoin for anything other than money. It can’t be worn as jewelry. You can’t make a machine out of it. You can’t eat it or even decorate with it. Its value is only realized as a unit that facilitates indirect exchange. And yet, bitcoin already is money. It’s used every day. You can see the exchanges in real time. It’s not a myth. It’s the real deal.

It might seem like we have to choose. Is Mises wrong? Maybe we have to toss out his whole theory. Or maybe his point was purely historical and doesn’t apply in the future of a digital age. Or maybe his regression theorem is proof that bitcoin is just an empty mania with no staying power, because it can’t be reduced to its value as a useful commodity.

And yet, you don’t have to resort to complicated monetary theory in order to understand the sense of alarm surrounding bitcoin. Many people, as I did, just have a feeling of uneasiness about a money that has no basis in anything physical. Sure, you can print out a bitcoin on a piece of paper, but having a paper with a QR code or a public key is not enough to relieve that sense of unease.

How can we resolve this problem? In my own mind, I toyed with the issue for more than a year. It puzzled me. I wondered if Mises’ insight applied only in a pre-digital age. I followed the speculations online that the value of bitcoin would be zero but for the national currencies into which it is converted. Perhaps the demand for bitcoin overcame the demands of Mises’ scenario because of a desperate need for something other than the dollar.

As time passed—and I read the work of Konrad Graf, Peter Surda, and Daniel Krawisz—finally the resolution came. Bitcoin is both a payment system and a money. The payment system is the source of value, while the accounting unit merely expresses that value in terms of price. The unity of money and payment is its most unusual feature, and the one that most commentators have had trouble wrapping their heads around.

We are all used to thinking of currency as separate from payment systems. This thinking is a reflection of the technological limitations of history. There is the dollar and there are credit cards. There is the euro and there is PayPal. There is the yen and there are wire services. In each case, money transfer relies on third-party service providers. In order to use them, you need to establish what is called a “trust relationship” with them, which is to say that the institution arranging the deal has to believe that you are going to pay.

This wedge between money and payment has always been with us, except for the case of physical proximity.

If I give you a dollar for your pizza slice, there is no third party. But payment systems, third parties, and trust relationships become necessary once you leave geographic proximity. That’s when companies like Visa and institutions like banks become indispensable. They are the application that makes the monetary software do what you want it to do.

The hitch is that

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Breez, a leader in Lightning Network infrastructure, and Spark, a bitcoin-native Layer 2 (L2) platform, today announced a groundbreaking collaboration to empower developers with tools to seamlessly integrate self-custodial bitcoin payments into everyday applications.

The partnership introduces a new implementation of the Breez SDK built on Spark’s bitcoin-native infrastructure, accelerating the evolution of bitcoin from “digital gold” to a global, permissionless currency.

The Breez SDK is expanding

We’re joining forces with @buildonspark to release a new nodeless implementation of the Breez SDK — giving developers the tools they need to bring Bitcoin payments to everyday apps.

→ https://t.co/iWjZhWRwsx

Bitcoin-Native
Powered by Spark’s…

— Breez (@Breez_Tech) May 22, 2025

A Bitcoin-Native Leap for Developers

The updated Breez SDK leverages Spark’s L2 architecture to deliver a frictionless, bitcoin-native experience for developers.

Key features include:

• Universal Compatibility: Bindings for all major programming languages and frameworks.
• LNURL & Lightning Address Support: Streamlined integration for peer-to-peer transactions.
• Real-Time Interaction: Instant mobile notifications for payment confirmations.
• No External Reliance: Built directly on bitcoin via Spark, eliminating bridges or third-party consensus.

This implementation unlocks use cases such as streaming content payments, social app monetization, in-game currencies, cross-border remittances, and AI micro-settlements—all powered by Bitcoin’s decentralized network.

Quotes from Leadership

Roy Sheinfeld, CEO of Breez:
“Developers are critical to bringing bitcoin into daily life. By building the Breez SDK on Spark’s revolutionary architecture, we’re giving builders a bitcoin-native toolkit to strengthen Lightning as the universal language of bitcoin payments.”

Kevin Hurley, Creator of Spark:
“This collaboration sets the standard for global peer-to-peer transactions. Fast, open, and embedded in everyday apps—this is bitcoin’s future. Together, we’re equipping developers to create next-generation payment experiences.”

David Marcus, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightspark:
“We’re thrilled to see developers harness Spark’s potential. This partnership marks an exciting milestone for the ecosystem.”

Collaboration Details
As part of the agreement, Breez will operate as a Spark Service Provider (SSP), joining Lightspark in facilitating payments and expanding Spark’s ecosystem. Technical specifications for the SDK will be released later this year, with the full implementation slated for launch in 2025.

About Breez
Breez pioneers Lightning Network solutions, enabling developers to embed self-custodial bitcoin payments into apps. Its SDK powers seamless, secure, and decentralized financial interactions.

About Spark
Spark is a bitcoin-native Layer 2 infrastructure designed for payments and settlement, allowing developers to build directly on Bitcoin’s base layer without compromises.

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

When Sergei talks about bitcoin, he doesn’t sound like someone chasing profits or followers. He sounds like someone about to build a monastery in the ruins.

While the mainstream world chases headlines and hype, Sergei shows up in local meetups from Sacramento to Cleveland, mentors curious minds, and shares what he knows is true – hoping that, with the right spark, someone will light their own way forward.

We interviewed Sergei to trace his steps: where he started, what keeps him going, and why teaching bitcoin is far more than explaining how to set up a node – it’s about reaching the right minds before the noise consumes them. So we began where most journeys start: at the beginning.

First Steps

• So, where did it all begin for you and what made you stay curious?

I first heard about bitcoin from a friend’s book recommendation, American Kingpin, the book about Silk Road (online drug marketplace). He is still not a true bitcoiner, although I helped him secure private keys with some bitcoin.

I was really busy at the time – focused on my school curriculum, running a 7-bedroom Airbnb, and working for a standardized test prep company. Bitcoin seemed too technical for me to explore, and the pace of my work left no time for it.

After graduating, while pursuing more training, I started playing around with stocks and maximizing my savings. Passive income seemed like the path to early retirement, as per the promise of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). I mostly followed the mainstream news and my mentor’s advice – he liked preferred stocks at the time.

I had some Coinbase IOUs and remember sending bitcoin within the Coinbase ledger to a couple friends. I also recall the 2018 crash; I actually saw the legendary price spike live but couldn’t benefit because my funds were stuck amidst the frenzy. I withdrew from that investment completely for some time. Thankfully, my mentor advised to keep en eye on bitcoin.

Around late 2019, I started DCA-ing cautiously. Additionally, my friend and I were discussing famous billionaires, and how there was no curriculum for becoming a billionaire. So, I typed “billionaires” into my podcast app, and landed on We Study Billionaires podcast.

That’s where I kept hearing Preston Pysh mention bitcoin, before splitting into his own podcast series, Bitcoin Fundamentals. I didn’t understand most of the terminology of stocks, bonds, etc, yet I kept listening and trying to absorb it thru repetition. Today, I realize all that financial talk was mostly noise.

When people ask me for a technical explanation of fiat, I say: it’s all made up, just like the fiat price of bitcoin! Starting in 2020, during the so-called pandemic, I dove deeper. I religiously read Bitcoin Magazine, scrolled thru Bitcoin Twitter, and joined Simply Bitcoin Telegram group back when DarthCoin was an admin.

DarthCoin was my favorite bitcoiner – experienced, knowledgeable, and unapologetic. Watching him shift from rage to kindness, from passion to despair, gave me a glimpse at what a true educator’s journey would look like.

The struggle isn’t about adoption at scale anymore. It’s about reaching the few who are willing to study, take risks, and stay out of fiat traps. The vast majority won’t follow that example – not yet at least… if I start telling others the requirements for true freedom and prosperity, they would certainly say “Hell no!”

• At what point did you start teaching others, and why?

After college, I helped teach at a standardized test preparation company, and mentored some students one-on-one. I even tried working at a kindergarten briefly, but left quickly; Babysitting is not teaching.

What I discovered is that those who will succeed don’t really need my help – they would succeed with or without me, because they already have the inner drive.

Once you realize your people are perishing for lack of knowledge, the only rational thing to do is help raise their level of knowledge and understanding. That’s the Great Work.

I sometimes imagine myself as a political prisoner. If that were to happen, I’d probably start teaching fellow prisoners, doctors, janitors, even guards. In a way we already live in an open-air prison, So what else is there to do but teach, organize, and conspire to dismantle the Matrix?

Building on Bitcoin

• You hosted some in-person meetups in Sacramento. What did you learn from those?

My first presentation was on MultiSig storage with SeedSigner, and submarine swaps through Boltz.exchange.

I realized quickly that I had overestimated the group’s technical background. Even the meetup organizer, a financial advisor, asked, “How is anyone supposed to follow these steps?” I responded that reading was required… He decided that Unchained is an easier way.

At a crypto meetup, I gave a much simpler talk, outlining how bitcoin will save the world, based on a DarthCoin’s guide. Only one person stuck around to ask questions – a man who seemed a little out there, and did not really seem to get the message beyond the strength of cryptographic security of bitcoin.

Again, I overestimated the audience’s readiness. That forced me to rethink my strategy. People are extremely early and reluctant to study.

• Now in Ohio, you hold sessions via the Orange Pill App. What’s changed?

My new motto is: educate the educators. The corollary is: don’t orange-pill stupid normies (as DarthCoin puts it).

I’ve shifted to small, technical sessions in order to raise a few solid guardians of this esoteric knowledge who really get it and can carry it forward.

The youngest attendee at one of my sessions is a newborn baby – he mostly sleeps, but maybe he still absorbs some of the educational vibes.

• How do local groups like Sactown and Cleveland Bitcoiners influence your work?

Every meetup reflects its local culture. Sacramento and Bay Area Bitcoiners, for example, do camping trips – once we camped through a desert storm, shielding our burgers from sand while others went to shoot guns.

Cleveland Bitcoiners are different. They amass large gatherings. They recently threw a 100k party. They do a bit more community outreach. Some are curious about the esoteric topics such as jurisdiction, spirituality, and healthful living.

I have no permanent allegiance to any state, race, or group. I go where I can teach and learn. I anticipate that in my next phase, I’ll meet Bitcoiners so advanced that I’ll have to give up my fiat job and focus full-time on serious projects where real health and wealth are on the line.

Hopefully, I’ll be ready. I believe the universe always challenges you exactly to your limit – no less, no more.

• What do people struggle with the most when it comes to technical education?

The biggest struggle isn’t technical – it’s a lack of deep curiosity. People ask “how” and “what” – how do I set up a node, what should one do with the lightning channels? But very few ask “why?”

Why does on-chain bitcoin not contribute to the circular economy? Why is it essential to run Lightning? Why did humanity fall into mental enslavement in the first place?

I’d rather teach two-year-olds who constantly ask “why” than adults who ask how to flip a profit. What worries me most is that most two-year-olds will grow up asking state-funded AI bots for answers and live according to its recommendations.

• One Cleveland Bitcoiner shows up at gold bug meetups. How valuable is face-to-face education?

I don’t think the older generation is going to reverse the current human condition. Most of them have been under mind control for too long, and they just don’t have the attention span to study and change their ways.

They’re better off stacking gold and helping fund their grandkids’ education. If I were to focus on a demographic, I’d go for teenagers – high school age – because by college, the indoctrination is usually too strong, and they’re chasing fiat mastery.

As for the gold bug meetup? Perhaps one day I will show up with a ukulele to sing some bitcoin-themed songs. Seniors love such entertainment.

• How do you choose what to focus on in your sessions, especially for different types of learners?

I don’t come in with a rigid agenda. I’ve collected a massive library of resources over the years and never stopped reading. My browser tab and folder count are exploding.

At the meetup, people share questions or topics they’re curious about, then I take that home, do my homework, and bring back a session based on those themes. I give them the key takeaways, plus where to dive deeper.

Most people won’t – or can’t – study the way I do, and I expect attendees to put in the work. I suspect that it’s more important to reach those who want to learn but don’t know how, the so-called nescient (not knowing), rather than the ignorant.

There are way too many ignorant bitcoiners, so my mission is to find those who are curious what’s beyond the facade of fake reality and superficial promises.

That naturally means that fewer people show up, and that’s fine. I’m not here for the crowds; I’m here to educate the educators. One bitcoiner who came decided to branch off into self-custody sessions and that’s awesome. Personally, I’m much more focused on Lightning.

I want to see broader adoption of tools like auth, sign-message, NWC, and LSPs. Next month, I’m going deep into eCash solutions, because let’s face it – most newcomers won’t be able to afford their own UTXO or open a lightning channel; additionally, it has to be fun and easy for them to transact sats, otherwise they won’t do it. Additionally, they’ll need to rely on

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Sati, a Bitcoin payments app and Lightning infrastructure provider, announced the launch of its Lightning integration with Xverse wallet.

Launched in 2025 with investors of the likes as Draper Associates and Ricardo Salinas, Sati powers Bitcoin payments on applications such as WhatsApp to fuel the next wave of adoption.

The Whatsapp bot allows users to send bitcoin via the messaging app through a special bot. After verifying their identity, the user selects the “send” option, chooses to pay to a Lightning address, enters the amount (1,000 sats), confirms with a PIN, and the transaction is completed, with the funds appearing instantly in the recipient wallet.

The new integration will now bring Lightning functionality to over 1.5 million people worldwide. Users can send and receive sats (Bitcoin’s smallest denomination) instantly over the Lightning Network all within the Xverse app,

Further, every xverse wallet user gets a Lightning Address instantly. That means they can receive tips, pay invoices, and use Bitcoin for microtransactions—all without having to manage channels or switch between different apps.

While Xverse adds support for Lightning, users should be cautious in using the wallet as it’s mostly known for enabling access to rug pull projects.

Initially designed in 2017, the Lightning Network has grown to become Bitcoin’s leading layer-2, with a current BTC capacity of over $465M.

“Bitcoin was not meant to be an asset for Wall Street—it was built for peer-to-peer money, borderless and accessible,” said Felipe Servin, Founder and CEO of Sati. “Integrating Lightning natively into Xverse brings that vision back to life, making Bitcoin usable at scale for billions.”

Sati expects USDT on Lightning to be supported as early as July 2025 for users accessing Sati through WhatsApp.

This integration positions Sati’s role as a Lightning infrastructure provider, not just a consumer app. By leveraging its API-based solution, the company provides plug-and-play backend services to wallets and platforms looking to add Bitcoin payments without compromising on security or UX.

Sati recently closed a $600K pre-seed round. The funding is used to support global expansion, stablecoin integration, Lightning infrastructure growth, and broader access to Bitcoin in emerging markets.

The Sati team is attending Bitcoin2025 in Las Vegas this week and looking forward to connect with bitcoin enthusiasts.

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

Human Rights Foundation Donates 800 Million Satoshis To 22 Worldwide Bitcoin And Freedom Projects

Today, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announced its most recent round of Bitcoin Development Fund grants, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

800 million satoshis (8 BTC) currently worth over $874,000 at the time of writing, is being granted across 22 different projects around the world focusing on open-source development, educational initiatives, Bitcoin mining decentralization, and privacy tools for human rights advocates living under authoritarian regimes. The main areas of focus for these grants center around Latin America, Africa, and Asia

While the HRF did not disclose how much money each project is receiving specifically, the following 22 projects are the recipients of today’s round of grants worth 8 BTC, or 800 billion satoshis, in total:

Mostro

In authoritarian regimes, centralized exchanges enforce strict identity verification and frequently freeze user accounts. In these environments, Mostro, a peer-to-peer exchange built on the decentralized nostr protocol, provides a private and censorship-resistant way to access Bitcoin. It enables human rights defenders and ordinary citizens to transact freely. With HRF support, developer Catrya will improve Mostro’s usability to better serve dissidents seeking financial freedom.

SudaBit

As war and hyperinflation devastate Sudan, traditional banks and remittance systems have collapsed. Millions of Sudanese are left without reliable ways to save, send, or receive money. SudaBit, under development by Sudan Hodl, is the country’s first private Bitcoin on- and off-ramp, providing a critical financial lifeline where few options remain. With HRF support, SudaBit will allow everyday Sudanese to access permissionless, self-custodial Bitcoin directly from their local currency while at the same time building a vital financial infrastructure amid a humanitarian and monetary crisis.

Stringer News

Authoritarian regimes silence independent media to control public narratives and suppress dissent. Stringer News, an open media platform founded by war reporter and author Anjan Sundaram, uses Bitcoin and nostr to help reporters and human rights defenders publish without fear of censorship. By bypassing traditional publishing gatekeepers, it ensures critical reporting reaches global audiences — even from the depths of autocratic regimes. With HRF support, Stringer News is amplifying the voices of frontline journalists and protecting the flow of truth under dictatorship.

Prices Today

As Vladimir Putin wages war against Ukraine, it hides the economic pain at home. Prices Today is a project launched by the Anti-Corruption Foundation that tracks rising prices across essential goods and services in the country and publishes the data on an open, accessible website. The project helps Russians see through state propaganda and confront the hidden financial toll of Putin’s war. With this grant, Prices Today will expand its tools and research to expose the true cost of war and challenge the Kremlin’s narrative.

Instamouse for Bitcoin and Lightning

Contributing to Bitcoin’s codebase may require specialized tools and complex setup — barriers for developers in resource-limited environments. Instamouse, created by software developer Bryan Bishop (kanzure), is breaking down those barriers with a browser-based environment for open-source Bitcoin development. By reducing hardware requirements and simplifying access, it opens the door to a more inclusive environment that allows more people around the world to contribute to Bitcoin. With this grant, Instamouse will help keep Bitcoin’s development truly permissionless. 

Seedsigner

Most commercial hardware wallets can be expensive, proprietary, and traceable. This poses barriers to self-custody for dissidents in weak economies or surveillant regimes. Seedsigner is a fully customizable, DIY Bitcoin hardware wallet that anyone can build using affordable, off-the-shelf components. It offers dissidents a discreet, low-cost way to secure their Bitcoin. HRF funding for lead developer Keith Mukai will expand language support across Europe, Asia, and beyond, as well as ongoing feature development and mentoring of new contributors. 

Spacebear’s Contributions to Payjoin

Bitcoin enables human rights defenders to receive unstoppable payments. But making those payments private is the next critical step. Payjoin is a technique that lets senders and receivers batch Bitcoin transactions, breaking common chain analysis heuristics and improving default privacy. This is vital for activists in surveillance states who urgently need financial privacy without drawing attention. With HRF support, developer spacebear is advancing Payjoin to make privacy the default on Bitcoin and protect civil societies under tyranny.

Padawan Wallet

When authoritarian regimes devalue currencies or impose capital controls, people often turn to Bitcoin. But without experience, many struggle to use it safely. Padawan Wallet, a free, open-source mobile app by developer thunderbiscuit, helps bridge that gap. It uses Bitcoin test network coins to simulate real payments in a risk-free environment. It lets users practice making transactions, secure their wallets, and explore saving without risking real funds. With HRF support, Padawan will launch on iOS, expanding access to safe, hands-on Bitcoin learning for millions facing financial uncertainty.

Brink

Without ongoing support for Bitcoin development and its contributors, the network risks slower innovation, greater centralization, and long-term security challenges. Brink, a nonprofit organization led by Executive Director Mike Schmidt, addresses this by funding and mentoring open-source developers working on Bitcoin’s software infrastructure. Through grants and fellowships, Brink helps keep the protocol secure, decentralized, and freely accessible. With this grant, Brink will further strengthen the foundation that makes Bitcoin a tool for financial freedom.

Coin Center

As dictators increasingly treat code as a crime, open-source developers face sanctions, lawsuits, and mounting legal threats. Coin Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization led by Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh, defends the right to build and use open digital asset networks like Bitcoin. It advances policy analysis, supports strategic litigation, and educates lawmakers to protect freedom-preserving technologies. With HRF support, Coin Center will continue shaping a global legal environment where vital tools can be built for human rights defenders at risk.

Bitcoin Design Foundation

Poor user experience is a major barrier to Bitcoin adoption. Inconsistent wallet experiences and steep learning curves can deter new users, especially in high-risk environments. The Bitcoin Design Foundation is a nonprofit founded by UI designers Christoph Ono, Mogashni Naidoo, and Daniel Nordh that addresses this by funding open-source design, UX research, and community initiatives to make Bitcoin products more intuitive. With HRF support, the foundation will expand its grant and education programs to keep usability a priority and ensure Bitcoin remains open to all. 

EmberOne

Bitcoin mining is dominated by a few companies producing closed, proprietary hardware — threatening the network’s resilience and accessibility. The 256 Foundation is a nonprofit working to change that. Building on the open-source Bitaxe project, EmberOne produces modular, open-source mining hardware that is simple, affordable, and open to anyone — especially those living under repressive regimes. With HRF support, EmberOne will lower entry barriers and help disrupt the proprietary ecosystem, making Bitcoin mining more accessible for those in closed societies.

2025 FROST Developer Support

For nonprofits operating under authoritarian rule, securing Bitcoin is critical for survival. If private keys (which control access to bitcoin) are compromised, funds can be seized and movements dismantled. Blockchain Commons is a nonprofit supporting the development of FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signature), a protocol that strengthens multisignature wallets (bitcoin wallets with multiple private keys) by making them more secure, private, and flexible for shared custody. With this grant, Blockchain Commons will help build critical infrastructure to keep civil society groups operational and financially resilient under dictatorships. 

Ecash UX Improvement Project

Ecash enables

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen Announced Acquisition of Over $505 Million Bitcoin

At the 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, in an interview with the CEO of Nakamoto David Bailey, the CEO of GameStop Ryan Cohen announced why the company bought over $505 million in Bitcoin.

JUST IN: GameStop $GME CEO explains why the company bought over $505 million #Bitcoin

“Bitcoin can be a hedge against global currency devaluation” pic.twitter.com/jNiId2fntA

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 28, 2025

Ryan Cohen started by explaining some things about the GameStop business.

“When I took over, the company was a piece of crap and losing a lot of money and was under a lot of pressure moving from physical gains to digital downloads so you had to cut costs,” stated Cohen. “Very aggressively bringing physical discipline and we did. Retail is a tough business, but it was a big focus on getting cost under control.”

When Bailey asked Cohen how many Bitcoin GameStop owned, Ryan responded, “We currently own 4710 Bitcoin.”

Then Ryan mentioned why they are adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets.

“If the thesis is correct then Bitcoin and gold as well can be a hedge against global currency devaluation and systemic risk,” mentioned Ryan. “Bitcoin has certain unique advantages better than gold.”

He commented on the benefits of Bitcoin compared to gold. 

“You can easily secure Bitcoin in a wallet whereas gold requires insurance and it’s very expensive and then there is the scarcity element of this as well,” commented Ryan. “There is a fixed supply of Bitcoin whereas with gold, the supply of gold is still uncertain.“

Ryan finished the announcement by saying, “GameStop is following GameStop Strategy. We are not following anyone else’s.”

This post GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen Announced Acquisition of Over $505 Million Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Oscar Zarraga Perez.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Mayor Eric Adams Announced New York City Will Issue a Bit Bond

At the 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, the Mayor of New York City Eric Adams announced that New York City will issue a Bit Bond.

Eric Adams started by connecting the American flag to Bitcoin commenting, “just as our flag still flies, Bitcoin is going to continue to fly in our country.” Later on he mentioned, “New York City is going to lead the way. We are going to be the leader because we know the power of innovation and what innovation has to offer.”

BREAKING: NYC Mayor Eric Adams plans to issue Bit Bond for New York. #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/loESV4UJYf

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 28, 2025

“These conferences are crucial and when we held our summit in New York a few weeks ago,” said Adam. “We held it with a clear focus that it is time for you no longer to go through the lawfare that you went through and had to flee our city. New York is the empire state. We don’t break empires, we build empires.”

Adams called back everyone that left New York because of their overregulation of Bitcoin and Crypto.

“Come back home you have a mayor that is the crypto mayor, is the Bitcoin mayor and I want you back in the city of New York,” stated Adam. “Where you won’t be attacked and criminalized. Let’s get rid of the Bitcoin license and allow us to free flow of Bitcoin in our city.”

Then Adam commented, “it’s time for the first time in the history of this city to have a financial instrument that is made for those who are holders of Bitcoin. I believe we need to have a Bit Bond and I am going to push and fight to get a Bit Bond in New York.”

Adams closed his speech by saying, “We are going to use Bitcoin blockchain for our birth certificates. We are going to use Bitcoin to pay off fines and taxes. We are going to allow our young people to understand what it is to be part of this industry, but we need you on the ground.”

This post Mayor Eric Adams Announced New York City Will Issue a Bit Bond first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Oscar Zarraga Perez.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Block Announces Bitcoin Business Stack, Makes Historic Lightning Payments Push at Bitcoin 2025 

Bitcoin isn’t just something to hold anymore—it’s something to live on. That was the core message delivered by Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block Inc., during his keynote at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference today. Standing at the intersection of innovation and ideology, Suter laid out a vision where Bitcoin isn’t just a store of value—but the internet’s native currency.

“Bitcoin is at a crossroads—on one hand it’s never been stronger: a trillion in market cap, millions of holders, and even talk of nation-state adoption,” Suter said. “We use Bitcoin to hold, to hedge, to opt out, but we rarely use it to live. At Block Inc., we believe that has to change.”

Suter officially announced that Block is rolling out Bitcoin payment capability for merchants using Square POS, allowing them to accept bitcoin directly in-store. The move comes as part of a broader initiative Block calls the full bitcoin for business stack—covering acquiring, managing, reporting, accounting, converting, lending, and taxes. 

“This is what makes Bitcoin an everyday currency for everyone,” he emphasized. “We believe hard-working entrepreneurs deserve access to the full power of bitcoin.” 

To prove the vision in action, Block helped power a Guinness World Record attempt for the most Lightning payments in a day, hosted live at the conference. The goal: prove that Lightning payments aren’t just functional—they’re scalable, fast, and real.

Block’s commitment isn’t new. In 2020, the company put bitcoin on its balance sheet. In 2021, it co-founded the Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative to fight the “boiling oceans” narrative. In 2022, Cash App became one of the first major platforms on Lightning. In 2023, it launched on-chain payments with Square. And in 2024, it helped defeat Craig Wright in court, “standing up for Satoshi.”

“These aren’t just headlines—they’re a pattern,” Suter said. “We’ve made it more accessible, more secure. Now we’re focused on making it usable every day.”

Cash App already ranks among the top bitcoin on-ramps in the U.S., accounting for nearly 10% of on-chain block space at any time. In 2024, Lightning usage grew 7x. “Block runs one of the top Lightning nodes globally. And here’s what’s wild—it’s working,” he said. 

Block is now taking 10% of all profits from Bitcoin and adding it back to its balance sheet, and over 1,700 merchants are automatically converting part of their daily sales to Bitcoin.

“If Bitcoin just becomes digital gold, we failed the mission,” Suter said. “Bitcoin payments validate Bitcoin. They make it real. Bitcoin is money.” 

This post Block Announces Bitcoin Business Stack, Makes Historic Lightning Payments Push at Bitcoin 2025  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Adam Back Presents Blockstream’s Bitcoin-First Infrastructure Vision at Bitcoin 2025 

Adam Back, Co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, took the stage at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference with a clear message: Bitcoin is becoming the foundation of global finance—and Blockstream is building the infrastructure to support it. 

“So I think Bitcoin is still early,” Back began, “but more mainstream players are starting to become involved. It is starting to become the foundation of global finance.” From El Salvador’s President becoming “patient zero” to institutional adoption spreading rapidly, Back emphasized that “people in all layers of company management and politics have become orange-pilled.”

Citing Bitcoin’s accelerating growth trajectory, Back referenced Hal Finney’s prediction that Bitcoin’s addressable market could hit $200 trillion. “Today, we are a lot closer to that situation,” he noted. He alluded again that this is just the beginning for Bitcoin. 

To meet that growing demand, Back announced Blockstream’s plan to support the journey from 100 million to 1 billion users by simplifying self-custody and Bitcoin-native asset management. “We’re laser-focused on Bitcoin,” he said. “At Blockstream, we are here to provide the infrastructure to enable that.” 

In a detailed presentation, Back outlined five core pillars powering Blockstream’s strategy:

• Infrastructure Expansion: “Bitcoin is becoming the dominant financial asset and platform for global transactions. Blockstream enables and supports the infrastructure around it.”

• Unified Platform: Blockstream is developing one platform built for the Bitcoin economy—including consumer products (secure self-custody), enterprise solutions (asset transfer on Bitcoin rails), and institutional integration (custody for large-scale investment).

• The Blockstream App: Designed to streamline self-custody, the app simplifies onboarding, supports BTC, LBTC, and USDT, and offers advanced features for experienced users.

• Enterprise Tools: With custody, tokenization without smart contract risks, and SDK/API-ready infrastructure, Blockstream is pushing enterprise-grade Bitcoin use cases—from corporate finance to treasuries.

• Security and Ecosystem Design: “Secure, proven, and built to last,” Back said, referring to Blockstream’s Bitcoin-first architecture. “Security is our cornerstone, and every product connects at every layer.”

In closing, Back reaffirmed his long-term vision: “The future of finance runs on Bitcoin.” 

This post Adam Back Presents Blockstream’s Bitcoin-First Infrastructure Vision at Bitcoin 2025  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Eric Trump Said Everybody Wants Bitcoin. Everybody is Buying Bitcoin

At the 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, the Executive Chairman & Board Member of American Bitcoin Mike Ho, the CEO of American Bitcoin Matt Prusak, the founder of Altcoin Daily Aaron Arnold, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump discussed the future of Bitcoin and their views.

Eric Trump started the panel by saying, “we are bringing Bitcoin to America and America is going to win the crypto revolution.” 

Donald continued by mentioning the $2.5 billion bitcoin treasury.

“All the announcement yesterday, True Social and TMTG committing $2.5 billion to a bitcoin treasury,” stated Trump Jr. “Then the trifecta of crypto you have is what we are doing with the world liberty and USD1 from a DeFi platform. We are very long crypto.”

Eric talked about how all the world wants Bitcoin and that most companies are having problems when buying Bitcoin because there is a lot of demand and not as much supply.
“Everybody wants Bitcoin. Everybody is buying Bitcoin,” Eric stated.

JUST IN: Eric Trump says "everyone in the world wants #Bitcoin, everybody is buying Bitcoin"

"0.1 BTC is going to be worth an absolute fortune" pic.twitter.com/0942a3dSWI

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 28, 2025

“The whole system is broken and now all of the sudden you have crypto which solves all the problems,” commented Eric. “It makes everything cheaper, it makes everything faster, it makes it safer, it makes it more transparent. It makes the whole system more functional.“

Mike Ho explained his view of the volatility of Bitcoin and how it benefits everybody.

“We see Bitcoin mining as just the foundational layer of being able to accumulate more creative Bitcoin for our shareholders at a discount to what the market can buy Bitcoin for,” commented Ho. “Then there is a value in the volatility of the stock. Usually volatility carries a negative connotation, but in here it’s the volatility that allows us to raise very low cost converts to even accelerate accumulation of Bitcoin.”

Matt Prusak mentioned how they are stacking sats and accumulating as much Bitcoin as they can.

“We are looking for ways to accumulate as much Bitcoin as fast as possible,” said Prusak. “We are stacking sats for our mining operations. We are going to stack sats for the accumulation.”

They all made predictions of Bitcoin’s end price of this year, Eric said $170,000, Trump Jr between $150,000 and $175,000 and Mike Ho over $200,000. Eric finalized with, “the next 10 years are going to be absolutely parabolical.”

This post Eric Trump Said Everybody Wants Bitcoin. Everybody is Buying Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Oscar Zarraga Perez.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Adam Back Said It’s Still Early For the Retail Investors To Buy Bitcoin

At the 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, the Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Digital Alex Thorn, Founder and Managing Partner of Pantera Capital Dan Morehead, Managing Partner, CEO, CIO of 10T Holdings + 1RoundTable Partners Dan Tapiero and the Co-founder & CEO of Blockstream Adam Back discussed the future of Bitcoin treasury companies.

Dan Tapiero started by sharing his opinion on how he sees Bitcoin in comparison to gold: 

“I really have always believed in that physical ownership that the individual has the right and should be able to own his own asset and so I started this physical gold business years ago,” said Tapiero. “I think our focus today is further adoption and the elevation of Bitcoin. I think the understanding of Bitcoin as an important asset.”

Adam Back was asked what he thought about Bitcoin treasury companies and he responded, “in effect, Blockstream is one of the first Bitcoin treasury companies. We have been around since 2014 and we work with our investors to put Bitcoin in a balance sheet back then and since then. I think the way to look at the treasury companies is Bitcoin is effectively the harder rate. It’s very hard to outperform Bitcoin most people that invest in things since Bitcoin around thought I should put that in Bitcoin and not in the other thing.”

Then Adam continued by explaining what treasury companies do.

“That’s why you get companies switching to the Bitcoin standard because it’s the only way for them to keep up with Bitcoin,” stated Back. ”They start with a Bitcoin capital base. They use the operating in-revenue to buy more Bitcoin and then they are able to participate in this kind of micro arbitrage.”

Finishing the panel, Alex Thorn asked, “Five years from now what is the price of Bitcoin?”

Dan Morehead predicted $750,000k, Tapiero $1,000,000 and Back said, “a million easy.”

Adam back closed by saying, “It’s still early for the retail investors.”

You can watch the full panel discussion and the rest of the Bitcoin 2025 Conference Day 2 below:

This post Adam Back Said It’s Still Early For the Retail Investors To Buy Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Oscar Zarraga Perez.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Saifedean Ammous: “Nothing Stops This Train” – Tether, Bitcoin, and the Endgame for the Dollar

Saifedean Ammous, CEO of Saifedean.com and author of The Bitcoin Standard, delivered a data-driven keynote at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference, warning of inevitable U.S. dollar decline and positioning Bitcoin as the only rational hedge. “Default, devaluation, or default by devaluation are inevitable,” Ammous declared, adding pointedly, “Tether can’t fix what a century of fiat democracy ruined.”

Using projections and flow charts, Ammous argued that Tether’s Bitcoin strategy could soon outpace its U.S. dollar reserves. “Then Tether will break the peg upwards,” he said, predicting a scenario where 1 USDT could equal 1.02 USD and continue revaluing as the dollar weakens. “Tether becomes a relatively stablecoin as the dollar declines.”

The talk emphasized what Ammous described as a self-reinforcing loop: as USDT demand rises, so does Tether’s need for BTC reserves, which drives up Bitcoin prices—leading to even more revaluation. “This is a significant impact on the market,” he said. “Buying bitcoin is the smartest thing anybody could do.”

In a final sweeping statement, Ammous forecasted the end of the USD era. “Eventually, USD reserves go to zero next to BTC reserves,” he said. “USDT keeps getting revalued upward until it is redeemable in bitcoin. USDT → BTCT.” He called Tether a “transition monetary system” and concluded, “Even the most bullish scenario for USD is much more bullish for BTC.” 

To Ammous, the dollar is locked in a downward spiral while Bitcoin, with its “number go up technology,” continues rising. “The thing that goes up is going to overtake the thing that goes down,” he said—summarizing his entire argument in one sentence.

This post Saifedean Ammous: “Nothing Stops This Train” – Tether, Bitcoin, and the Endgame for the Dollar first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

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Lingen (Ems) is a peaceful town in Lower Saxony, near the Dutch border, known for its historic old town, green surroundings, and relaxed pace of life. It may not be on the typical tourist radar, but it offers a taste of small-town Germany with plenty of charm and local culture.

🏘️ What to See and Do in Lingen

🏛️ Old Town & Market Square

• Stroll through the historic town center, where you’ll find half-timbered houses, cozy cafés, and the lovely St. Boniface Church
• The Rathaus (Town Hall) and its square are perfect for a slow coffee or people-watching

🚲 Nature & Outdoor Activities

• The region around Lingen is great for cycling and walking, especially along the Ems River
• Explore the Emsland countryside, filled with forests, meadows, and quiet villages
• Visit the nearby Emsland Moormuseum to learn about local peatland history

🎓 Student Vibes

• Thanks to the presence of a university, Lingen has a young and vibrant side, with cultural events and small live music scenes

🍺 Local Food & Drink

• Try regional dishes like Grünkohl (kale with sausage in winter) and Schnitzel in a local tavern
• Enjoy a drink at a beer garden or riverside café, especially in warmer months

🚆 Getting There

• Well connected by train, especially to Osnabrück, Münster, and the Dutch city of Enschede
• Great stop on a northern Germany road or rail trip

Lingen is ideal for travelers looking for peaceful towns, regional culture, and access to beautiful natural areas. It’s a place where you can slow down, bike along a river, and enjoy the local way of life.

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A new Bitwise report reveals notable growth for institutional investments in bitcoin over the coming years.

According to the latest forecasts from asset management firm Bitwise, capital flows into Bitcoin could exceed $120 billion by the end of 2025, with projections reaching $300 billion the following year.

This growth is rooted in the rising interest from sovereign wealth funds, publicly traded companies, state treasuries, and institutional investment vehicles such as spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Analysts expect the number of companies holding bitcoin in their treasuries to double by the end of 2026.

Bitwise’s analysis highlights how Bitcoin is no longer seen solely as a speculative asset but is emerging as a serious contender for the role of global store of value.

The report notes that, according to its authors, global wealth is gradually moving away from traditional safe havens like gold and shifting toward Bitcoin.

Spot ETF boom

Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States have outperformed all expectations throughout 2024. These financial instruments have attracted over $36.2 billion in net inflows, surpassing by twenty times the early performance of SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), historically the most successful commodity ETF.

Source: Bitwise

In just twelve months, U.S. spot ETFs have accumulated $125 billion in assets under management (AUM). Bitwise projections suggest that annual inflows could reach $100 billion by 2027.

However, approximately $35 billion in capital remained on the sidelines in 2024 due to regulatory restrictions at financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

States consider a bitcoin reserve

Bitwise’s analysis also highlights Bitcoin’s growing appeal beyond Wall Street. Publicly traded companies currently hold over 1.1 million BTC, worth more than $125 billion. Sovereign governments collectively own more than 500,000 BTC, with the United States, China, and the United Kingdom leading the rankings.

In its base scenario, Bitwise forecasts a modest reallocation of institutional and sovereign assets toward Bitcoin: 5% of government gold reserves and 0.5% of assets from major wealth management platforms. Even under these conservative assumptions, total bitcoin inflows could reach $420 billion over 2025-2026.

In a more optimistic scenario, with 10% of gold reserves and 1% of managed portfolios shifting to Bitcoin, inflows could exceed $920 billion, absorbing more than 9 million bitcoins — around 40% of the total supply.

The post Bitcoin attracts institutional investors: $300 billion expected by 2026, according to Bitwise appeared first on Atlas21.