The Treasurys statements explore the potential forms and implementations of an American CBDC.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has released comments from Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang on the Next Steps to the Future of Money and Payments, addressing CBDCs and the approach the American government is taking to their potential implementation.

The original Treasury report released in September 2022 described the formation of a CBDC working group that would advance work on a CBDC. Liangs remarks confirmed the formation of that group.

One of the central tasks for the CBDC Working Group is to complement the Feds work by considering the implications of a U.S. CBDC for policy objectives for which a broader Administration perspective is helpful, Liang said. To give you a sense of how we are pursuing this work, I will describe our approach to thinking about CBDC options, the policy questions we are attempting to answer, and the kinds of recommendations we hope to develop.

Highlights from this description include a look at the potential forms that a CBDC could take, the potential for a separate retail and wholesale CBDC and the possible core features of the CBDC. Also discussed is the idea that a potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the United States by being intermediated, meaning that the private sector would offer accounts or digital wallets to facilitate the management of CBDC holdings and payments. In terms of technology, a retail CBDC might involve a different architecture compared to a CBDC that is intended solely for wholesale use.

In his piece for Bitcoin Magazine, Mark Goodwin described how Bitcoiners may have spent so much time looking for CBDCs, we missed the private-entity stablecoin monster right in front of our eyes.

The Treasurys released remarks suggest that a CBDC may well come on the backs of private entities, with major incentives to participate. The United States has gotten serious in regards to its consideration of a CBDC. And all this just as legislation has been introduced by Republican lawmakers that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC directly to anyone.

Although this bill may not have much of a chance of passing, notable is the specific angle of preventing a Federal CBDC, potentially leaving free those intermediated by private parties.

The remarks also described how a CBDC is one of many directi...

Two of the U.K.s largest banks have imposed further restrictions on their customers ability to acquire cryptocurrencies.

British banks have continued to crack down on their customers' cryptocurrency purchases. According to a Bloomberg report, Nationwide and HSBC are the latest U.K. banking giants to impose new limits on their customers cryptocurrency purchases via debit cards and end purchases with credit cards.

Nationwide is applying daily limits of 5,000 ($5,965) on debit-card purchases of cryptoassets, the building society informed customers on Wednesday, while its credit cards can no longer be used to buy crypto. HSBC said it barred customers from making crypto purchases via its credit cards from last month, reads the report. HSBC states that the decision is due to alleged financial risk to customers.

The report describes how Most of the major [U.K.] banks have also implemented exchange-specific restrictions, with the worlds largest crypto platform Binance Holdings Ltd. the most popular target.

Bitcoin Magazine covered the start of these moves from U.K. banks in tandem with increasing discussion of a U.K. CBDC. Alison Rose, CEO of NatWest Group, described how the bank had taken a pretty hard line on cryptocurrency due to the instability and volatility of the platforms and the risk of fraud, citing social media and technology platforms as the frauds primary source.

These new limitations on customers places U.K. citizens at a further disadvantage in regards to acquiring bitcoin. As such developments are taking place, it highlights the need for more decentralized, peer-to-peer exchanges that can facilitate no-KYC bitcoin transactions. 

Users from Liberia, Sierra Leone and more can now directly utilize their local currencies to buy and sell bitcoin through Binance P2P.

Cryptocurrency platform Binance has announced that its peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace will now support more African currencies, including Liberian dollar (LRD), Sierra Leonean leone (SLL), Gambian dalasi (GMD), Mauritanian ouguiya (MRO), and Cape Verdean escudo (CVE). 

Users in these regions can now transact with other users in their local currencies without a third party or intermediary. Users can also trade and post trade advertisements in the newly supported currencies or directly trade BTC with other users at zero fees.

Director for Binance in West and East Africa, Nadeem Anjarwalla, said, Binance has continued to remain committed to increasing the adoption and mainstream accessibility of crypto, and we are excited to be taking this step in making access to digital assets effortless for more Africans."

In addition, users who frequently receive cryptocurrencies, as well as LRD, SLL, GMD, MRO, and CVE, can now become merchants on Binance P2P. According to the press release, this will enable them to receive exclusive customer support, verified badges and access to advanced trading tools. Merchants also enjoy VIP discounts and zero fees on the platform. To apply, users can visit the Binance P2P website.

By providing access to broad financial tools while maintaining one of the lowest fees in the business, Binance aims to make crypto accessible to everyone in Africa and beyond.

Xapo is partnering with Lightspark to allow its customers to send bitcoin near-instantaneously to any vendor who accepts BTC over Lightning.

Gibraltar-licensed private bank Xapo Bank has partnered with Lightspark, the startup spearheaded by former Facebook crypto lead David Marcus, to integrate the Lightning Network and enable near-instant bitcoin payments for its customers. 

Xapo Bank members can now make small purchases of up to $100 USD at any vendor that accepts Lightning payments, without high transaction fees and long blockchain confirmation waiting times. This integration will make Xapo Bank the first fully licensed private bank to offer Lightning payments.

The Lightning Network enables scalable payments at millions of transactions per second across the network, reducing the time-consuming and costly experiences often faced by users who pay for small transactions in bitcoin.

Seamus Rocca, CEO of Xapo Bank, said in regards to the partnership, "By integrating with the hyper-efficient Lightning Network, we are the first bank in the world to streamline this process and allow our members to pay for small purchases with Bitcoin without having to convert to USD first." Rocca added that Xapo Bank offers an annual interest rate of 4.1% on US dollars and will soon be offering up to 1% on Bitcoin, to be paid out daily.

"We're thrilled to enable the first bank on the Lightning Network to offer instant, cheap Bitcoin payments to its customers, said David Marcus, co-founder and CEO of Lightspark. Xapo has been one of our early closed beta partners, and we're delighted they chose Lightspark's enterprise-grade solution to reliably send and receive payments on the Lightning Network without all the complexity and operational overhead that typically comes with running a node on it."

Xapo Bank members can pay via the Lightning Network by holding bitcoin in the Xapo Bank App and scanning and paying an invoice at any merchant that accepts Lightning payments.

The network charges a small fee for each transaction, and Xapo Bank has set a fixed payment fee for 15 sats to protect members from executing transactions with high fees.

The Big Flip thesis has been gaining traction in the financial world and describes the markets misplaced belief in the path of inflation and policy rates.

The article below is a free full piece from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine PRO, Bitcoin Magazine's premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

The Big Flip

In this article, we break down a macro thesis that has been gaining an increasing amount of traction in the financial world. The Big Flip was first introduced by pseudonymous macro trader INArteCarloDoss, and is based on the markets apparent misplaced belief on the path of inflation and subsequently the path of policy rates. 

Link to embedded tweet.

To simplify the thesis, the Big Flip was built upon the assumption that an imminent recession in 2023 was wrong. Even though the rates market had fully priced in the belief that an impending recession was likely, the big flip and recession timeline may take longer to play out. In particular, this change in market expectations can be viewed through Fed fund futures and short-end rates in U.S. Treasuries.

In the second half of 2022, as the market consensus flipped from expecting entrenched inflation to disinflation and an eventual economic contraction in 2023, the rates market began to price in multiple rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, which served as a tailwind for equites due to this expectation of a lower discount rate.

In No Policy Pivot In Sight: "Higher For Longer" Rates On The Horizon, we wrote:

In our view, until there is meaningful deceleration in the 1-month and 3-month annualized readings for measures in the sticky bucket, Fed policy will remain sufficiently restrictive and could even tighten further.

While it is likely not in the interests of most passive market participants to dramatically alter the asset allocation of their portfolio based on the tone or expression of the Fed Chairman, we do believe that higher for longer is a tone that the Fed will continue to communicate with the market.

In that regard, its likely that those attempting to aggressively front-run the policy pivot may on...

Lightning node operators can connect to TBD and Blocks new Lightning infrastructure starting today.

TBD, a Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Jack Dorseys Block, has announced a new Lightning Network business called c=.

The purpose of the company is to provide infrastructure using bitcoin from Blocks treasury to make bitcoins Lightning Network more usable and reliable for developers, businesses (such as merchants that accept Lightning payments), and those businesses' end consumers, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

The release explains that the Lightning Network is still growing, and that transactions often fail due to liquidity shortfalls. In order to address that, c= will build infrastructure using the bitcoin it is committing to the network so that businesses and wallets can make their Lightning transactions more reliable and dependable.

Operating a node on the Lightning Network is all about connections; c= provides node operators whether bitcoin wallets, individuals, or other entities that want to use the Lightning Network with valuable connections to Lightning, describes the announcement. Through c=s LSP, any business or individual running a Lightning node can gain efficiencies and make their transactions via Lightning with minimal effort and investment without having to rely on an intermediary to custody their bitcoin.

For Lightning node operators, c= states that it will provide liquidity to enable transactions and collaborate with developers to provide more efficient routing and liquidity to node operators via APIs and services.

In 2022, when Square was renamed to Block, TBDs lead Mike Brock explained how TBDs mission is to bridge the old to the new We are building a new open-source company from the ground up focused on open protocols and open standards that all participants in the economy can benefit from. Since then, the company has explored Bitcoin-based decentralized web services in various capacities, including decentralized identifiers (DID), decentralized web nodes and more.

With this new entrance to Bitcoins second-layer scaling protocol, TBD will now have a major presence in Lightning infrastructure.

"The Lightning Network is the future of bitcoin transactions, but it's still new and it can be hard to get liquidity where you need it to send and receive your payments," said Nick Slaney, lead at c=. "Were excited to use the bitcoin in our treasury to grow the Lightning Network and our company in a mutually beneficial way," he told Bitcoin Magazine.

c= will be available for connection immediately for those seeking to operate a Lightning node and benefit from TBD and Blocks infrastructure. 

Bitcoins past performance can help you understand where its value is heading. Heres bitcoins price history delineated since its inception.

Introduction

How many times has bitcoin been declared dead? At least 463 times. And its never been because of its monetary system failing or its technical operation breaking down, but because of its price crashing.

Some may argue that those two things tech development and price actions are inherently connected, but thats not the case.

Price swings in bitcoin are mainly driven by its own halving cycles as well as macroeconomic events. Since it roared into life from humble beginnings, bitcoin has had a turbulent history. Its infamous volatility has resulted in multiple appreciations of 1,000% in value, only to later drop by as much as 80% or even 90% such as in 2014.

Every single time, though, it has bounced back, recovered its previous highs and gone on to set new ones. This resilience has proven some of the most seasoned investors wrong and won new supporters along the way.

In this article, we take you through bitcoins price history in detail, year after year, around the critical events that shaped it as an innovative monetary system.

Price History

Bitcoin was created in 2008 to challenge the existing system of centralized, credit-based money issued by bureaucrats and unstable banks. By trusting code instead of human vulnerabilities, bitcoin offered a way out of that debacle.

At first the new invention was nothing more than an experiment, but those who read the white paper and were knowledgeable of cryptography, money and finance, could already see it turning into something much bigger than a simple cryptographic toy.

For the first year, bitcoin didnt have a market price; it had no premine or any rounds of investment from big venture capital firms. Something changed in 2010 when it started to be traded for goods and services which would set it on the path toward todays innovative and alternative currency system a journey from $0 in 2009 to $68,000 in only 13 years.

Next, well explore how bitcoin grew from a tech plaything with lofty ambitions to a bona fide monetary asset thats continuing to deliver on its promise.

January 2009-December 2013

Bitcoins proof-of-concept was emphasized in the white paper published on October 31, 2008, by Satoshi Nakamoto. All through 2009, anyone could join the network by mining blocks of Bitcoin with their computers CPUs without much effort. All things considered, the price was still $0.

2009: Genes...

Bitcoin Ordinals have demonstrated a strong desire for collectibles on Bitcoin, but are they really the best solution for the future?

This is an opinion editorial by Olga Ukolova, the director of the board for the LNP/BP Standards Association.

Part One: I Just Love Art And Money, And I Collect Them Both

From reading up on Ordinals resources (the handbook, Ordinal theory overview, the BIP documentation), one can see there is a pretty straightforward idea behind the concept. An idea with classical numismatic roots: If I have a rare coin (and a satoshi is indeed a rare coin, as the supply is limited), then I want to store it for as long as possible, either for fun, for my personal collector pleasure and appreciation for the beauty of the coin, or for the purpose of passing it to future generations so that they can sell it at a higher price than I possibly ever could.

If we add the concept of inscriptions to this idea, then we fall even deeper down a fascinating, numismatic rabbit hole, as coins that are minted in an extremely rare supply often eventually experience a huge increase in value and can serve a great philosophical purpose.

As an example, we can see the history of the golden, double-eagle coin minted in 1933 in the U.S., which is currently worth $18.9 million, making it one of the most valuable collectibles in the world. At first, the concept of minting such a coin was proposed by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and was an extremely seductive opportunity for designer Augustus Saint-Gaudens who in 1905 wrote of the project, I have long wished to do what little I could to improve the shameful condition of our money, but now that I have the opportunity I approach it with fear and trembling.

Saint-Gaudens got down to business, but little did he know that the child of his noble intention would be killed by a person carrying the same name as the one who planted the seed of inspiration into his hands and mind. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the country off of the gold standard, making the 445,000 gold coins illegal to own and ordering that they be gathered and melted down.

For the double-eagle piece, everything had been perfect from the stan...

A new blog post from Jack Dorseys Block detailed the progress being made on the custodial Bitcoin wallet the company is working on.

Jack Dorseys Block has updated the Bitcoin community on the development of its self-custody Bitcoin wallet.

The goal, according to a blog post, is to build a self-custody bitcoin wallet designed to empower the next 100 million people to truly own and manage their money with bitcoin. First introduced in 2022, the product principles indicate Blocks desire to create a wallet that allows users to truly own and manage bitcoin in a way that makes self-custody more accessible than ever before.

Partners will seemingly be a major part of building the self-custody wallet. Through global and local partnerships with exchanges and on/off ramp partners, we provide customers with ways to access a smooth, transparent buy and sell experience, the blog post reads, ultimately helping them navigate between fiat and bitcoin financial systems, wherever they are in the world.

The post described the criteria for Block to partner with on and offramp firms highlighting global and regional reach and depth, product experience, price transparency, customer onboarding and trust and transparency.

Customer experience is also reiterated. Per an image shared in the blog post, users will seemingly be able to choose between different partners with transparent pricing, be prompted to sign in or continue as a guest, and then seamlessly receive their bitcoin into the self-custody wallet.

Beyond these details, the blog post elucidates on retail and distribution partners and payment partnerships., saying In order to reach customers globally, we will build partnerships with companies who already have an established distribution network and ability to help our customers pay for the wallet with the most relevant local payment methods.

In regards to effectively increasing bitcoins usage as a payment method, the post said that This could look like point of sale partnerships with seller and merchant services, payroll partnerships and many other types of partnerships.

The blog post concludes with a call for feedback, specifically asking for thoughts on if there are any criteria that should be adjusted, or if there are specific companies that Block should consider partnering with. 

Governments with the power to print money on a whim can avoid accountability and pursue corrupt agendas.

This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.

In the first two parts of this series, I wrote about the individual-level incentives and company-level incentives of fiat money. The individual-level incentives made personal lives have much higher time preferences through ubiquitous debt and lack of savings vehicles. The company-level incentives made communal life much more zombie-like and artificial through unnaturally-large companies that have replaced our families.

In this essay, I'm exploring the incentives at the nation-state level, where fiat money has perhaps its greatest effect. The power of fiat money gives governments the ability to become more authoritarian. Not only do we get a welfare/warfare state, but we also get a surveillance state, a police state and militaristic, corrupt tyrannies. The siren song of Marxism, of positivist law and an authoritarian vision are some of its rotten fruits. The unprecedented destructive power of governments in the last 100 years can be laid squarely at the feet of fiat money. Government authority and power have expanded more than the average American's waistline and the consequences have been just as deadly.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

The central control of money is an enormous prize, like the Infinity Gauntlet of Marvel fame, giving those in power the ability to steal the wealth of their nations at will. This isn't obvious at first because the mechanisms of central banking don't make this monetary power dynamic easy to understand. Central banking is thus very attractive to governments and pretty much all fiat money since the 20th century has been of this type.

The main beneficiary of this obscured ability to print is the government that can run deficits on its budget. This was not the de facto practice historically as taking on debt under sound money is very expensive. Free market interest rates usually hover around 5.6% or higher, depending on the economic circumstances and credit worthiness. Taking on debt under sound money generally means really having to tighten budgets or raising taxes later, neither of which are popular. There's an opportunity cost to spending that's inherent in sound money that more or less disappears under fiat money. The major budget battles in the past used to be about trade-offs of various budget items. Under fiat money, budget battles are about who will get to hand o...

A former college football player reflects on the lessons inherent in the sport and how they prepared him to become a Bitcoiner.

This is an opinion editorial by Conor Chepenik, a former college football player and Bitcoin pleb.

Being part of a team can provide valuable experiences that extend well beyond the sport or activity that called for its formation. For me, this was exemplified in college when a teammate introduced me to Bitcoin in 2017. Watching the documentary Banking On Bitcoin convinced me that decentralization is an important aspect of any financial system. Little did I know that this introduction would change my life.

After watching the documentary, I diversified my investment portfolio by purchasing various cryptocurrencies on Coinbase. Although I initially recognized the irony in using a third-party exchange to purchase a currency that eliminates the need for third parties, I failed to investigate further.

While exchanges that allow people to exchange fiat currency for bitcoin do have value, the true power of Bitcoin lies in its ability to provide financial autonomy to anyone. Individuals who take the initiative to spin up their own nodes and accumulate satoshis by selling their labor, goods or expertise, or those who mine Bitcoin using affordable energy, are the true pioneers of this peaceful revolution.

But it was not until I hung my football cleats up three years later that I started to understand the difference between bitcoin and every other token in the space. I was looking for something to fill the void left in my heart after my 11-year football career was over. Luckily, the Bitcoin rabbit hole was there to greet me.

Games and sports provide a way for individuals to unwind, relieve stress, improve cognitive function and foster social connections. Without my favorite game, I was lost. Football helped me get an education at a solid university, it helped me make some of the best friends I still have today and it helped me stay in shape. Ive found going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole has done all of those things as well and then some. For example, Ive started learning how to code, Ive met tons of new friends online and in person, Ive become more religious, I started a family and even tried fasting after hearing about its benefits on a Bitcoin podcast.

Its weird to think that computer code can have such a profound and positive impact on individuals and civilization as a whole. So much of computer code today is set up to polarize and separate people into echo chambers. Bitcoin does the opposite. It connects complete strangers and allows them to barter and exchange value without any third party. The computer code is completely open source, meaning people from around the world can work on a decentralized financial system together. This is the key, b...

Mi Primer Bitcoins new diploma program is set to expand opportunities for learning about Bitcoin in high schools that adopt it.

Mi Primer Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education program based in El Salvador, has announced a new and improved diploma program in English. 

According to Dalia Platt, head of curriculum for Mi Primer Bitcoin, the aim is to change the way people learn about Bitcoin. The goal is to make the course interactive, fun, creative, accessible and easy to understand for all, using examples that can reach and impact every corner of the world.

The student workbook shared with Bitcoin Magazine shows topics ranging from What is Money? to Navigating Scarcity in a Growing Economy, and more.

According to Platt, the organization has seen exponential growth. We have educated more than 10,000 students this year, which is 25 times more than last year, she said. As the first Bitcoin nation, El Salvador has the unique opportunity to lead the way in Bitcoin education.

The program, first covered by Bitcoin Magazine in June 2022, launched with more than 35 high school students receiving their Bitcoin diplomas. Since then, the educational mission of Mi Primer Bitcoin has not changed. Platt describes how she Believes that our new Diploma Program has already played a significant role in achieving [leading Bitcoin education] and we are continually enhancing the course by incorporating the feedback we receive from current and past students as well as from the teachers.

Bitcoin education is an essential part of adoption throughout the world. Without proper knowledge both in relation to the current workings of the monetary systems of the world, and the new protocol that Bitcoin offers, one cannot properly make the decision to adopt Bitcoin. Only after learning about money as it is, and money as it could be, is the full potential of Bitcoin unveiled. Programs like Mi Primer Bitcoin offer this education and learning in order to unlock that potential. 

The developer has taken to Nostr to explain why any NFT project using his name does not have his authorization.

Prolific Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has publicly declared his disavowment of any Ordinal project associated with his name. 

In a post on the decentralized social media platform Nostr, Dashjr clarified his involvement in the projects, saying that I have not consented to the use of my code or my name for this purpose. Instead, 3rd parties are marketing my name and my code for their own monetary gain.

Dashjr also noted that the sellers of the NFTs have reached out to him in what he interprets as a bribe, writing that The public should also be aware that the seller and/or auction site offered me a donation of 90% of the auction proceeds should I choose to accept it. I feel this is a clear attempt to: (1) bribe me into silence; and/or (2) obtain my consent after the fact. I will not accept such payment at the expense of the public who are being misled. I will not accept any such donation.

The Core developer has previously expressed his dislike and frustration with the Ordinals project, calling it spam and an attack on Bitcoin.

Dashjr expressed his strong desire for the proceeds of the purchase to be refunded to the buyer. He concluded with a message addressing both his situation and what he feels may impact other figures in the Bitcoin space, saying I felt obligated to speak out, not just for myself, but for other Bitcoin devs who are being placed in similar situations. The amount of money we have been offered as donations for acquiescing to what is taking place is considerable. I do not condone it. I do not consent to the use of my name or code for this grift. I want the public to be aware of where I stand.

I want to do whatever I can do to limit the damage which will inevitably be caused by this confusing and misleading behavior.

The post may be a sign of necessary conversation in regards to rights and ownership of what is being uploaded to the Bitcoin blockchain via the Ordinals protocol.

The largest NFT creation firm will host their first Bitcoin Ordinals project, just as the network passes 200,000 inscriptions.

The creators of CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club have introduced their first Bitcoin Ordinals NFT collection.

According to a blog post by Yuga Labs, the collection, titled TwelveFold, is an Original and experimental 300-piece generative art collection inscribed onto satoshis that will live on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The pieces appear to be randomly generated bubble-like creations that explore the relationship between time, mathematics, and variability.

TwelveFold is a base 12 art system localized around a 12x12 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain, the blog post reads. The collection includes highly-rendered 3D elements as well as hand-drawn features which serve as an homage to the ordinal inscriptions currently done by hand.

Yuga Labs quickly ascended to the top of the NFT market due to the success and massive popularity of their flagship projects. A March 2022 seed round at the height of the NFT craze placed the value of the company at $4 billion.

All of these choices are a departure from whats expected from Yuga, the blog post reads. But, you know. Fuck doing expected things.

Yuga Labs entry into the Bitcoin marketplace could potentially indicate a new perception of Ordinals as a platform for the highest levels of NFT creation. The ability for NFTs to inherit the attributes of Bitcoin have brought them from the realm of third parties and centralized databases to the immutable, decentralized realm of Bitcoin.

Ordinals and inscriptions brought NFTs to Bitcoin, allowing content, such as images, videos and HTML to be included in a Bitcoin transaction and assigned to an individual satoshi. More than 100,000 collectibles were inscribed within the first three weeks of Ordinals being introduced. Now, Bitcoin full nodes host more than 200,000 inscriptions, a testament to the popularity of adding images to Bitcoin. 

After realizing that taking out a home loan meant his property was never really his, a military member sold his house to buy bitcoin instead.

This is an opinion editorial by Mickey Koss, a West Point graduate with a degree in economics. He spent four years in the infantry before transitioning to the Finance Corps.

I actually started this article nearly a year ago and had abandoned it, until the idea was reinvigorated through a Twitter Spaces with Toxic Happy Hour. When hearing @publordhodl speak about wealth taxes there, the implications suddenly slapped me across the face:

Wealth taxes and property taxes mean that you never truly own anything. Ever. Maybe thats the point.

You Already Own Nothing, You Just Dont Know It Yet

Back in 2018, my wife and I decided to leverage our VA home loan benefit to purchase a home at our new duty station. The home was in a nice pocket of a low-income area, so the price would allow us to rent the home after leaving to try and build some wealth and cash flow.

Fast forward two years: We were met with an unconscionable black swan event, and Im not talking about COVID-19. The event Im alluding to were the eviction moratoriums that were passed hastily during that period.

Through luck and happenstance, our tenant remained in place and kept paying rent, but had they stopped, it could have meant financial disaster. The message was clear and the precedent was set: I no longer had rights to my own property. We worked diligently to sell the home, eventually offloading it through an off-market deal to another investor, and we used the proceeds to buy that beautiful, glorious bitcoin price dip in 2021.

Came For The PGU, Stayed For The FGU

Like many in the military and the middle class alike, home ownership is an essential piece to building long-term wealth for me. For military folks especially, the frequent moves makes this difficult to do without choosing properties that can be rented out after you move.

I see the risks, however, as having increased exponentially after what happened in 2020. I dont think its a viable strategy anymore.

Furthermore, even if we were to pay off properties and own them outright, we would still owe taxes every year, and whats to stop another rent moratorium from going into effect? Or worse, a wealth tax? It really got me...

The Bitcoin Policy Institute will host conversations dedicated to exploring Bitcoin at this invite-only event.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank dedicated to Bitcoin research, activism and education, has announced the Bitcoin Policy Summit taking place April 26, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

The summits website describes the event as a one-day, invite-only policy conference exploring Bitcoin as a strategic opportunity for the United States.

Speakers in attendance come from a variety of professional and political backgrounds. Headliners include U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), House Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), Krebs Stamos Director of Intelligence and BPI Fellow Matthew Pines, the Human Rights Foundations CSO Alex Gladstein and many other well-known figures.

Several different panels are listed on the agenda, ranging from topics fro "What Makes Bitcoin Unique Among Cryptocurrencies, and How Bitcoin Protects Human Rights," to "Bitcoin and Public Policy: Legislation and Regulation and "Bitcoin Mining: Separating Fact From Fiction.

There are also networking opportunities available for those in attendance, with allotted times for coffee, happy hour and heavy hor d'oeuvres.

Bitcoin Policy Institute describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit think researching the impacts of Bitcoin and other emerging monetary networks BPI provides educational resources to policymakers while empowering Fellows from all over the country to conduct original academic research on cryptocurrency and tech-related issues.

Invitations for the event, to be hosted at the National Press Club Ballroom, can be requested here.

Most Americans would like to see their monetary system change, according to a study conducted on behalf of Coinbase.

A study conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of Coinbase examined the perceptions of the global financial system and how U.S. adults and cryptocurrency investors view the future of the cryptocurrency market. It found that Americans believe the current financial system needs to be updated, and there is optimism about owning bitcoin as we head into the future.

The survey found that 80% of Americans say the global financial system unfairly favors powerful interests. In addition, 67% said that the financial system needs a major overhaul. Interestingly, younger Americans are most likely to favor cryptocurrency and view it as a worthwhile asset for the future.

With the various challenges presented over the last couple of decades, including the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent economic fallout, unsurprisingly, Among U.S. adults, the top word associations with the global financial system are expensive (34%), unfair (30%), and confusing (30%).

20% of Americans own cryptocurrency, which has remained consistent each quarter since January 2022, the survey states. Despite the downturn in the broader cryptocurrency market as a result of various bankruptcies and failures in 2022, Americans consistently express interest in owning digital assets. Another interesting note is that current investors who already hold digital assets still hold a favorable view, with 84% likely to buy cryptocurrency over the next 12 months.

Many Bitcoiners have demonstrated...

Six insightful data sets underscore the rapid rise of interest in Bitcoin inscriptions, demonstrating their undeniable impact.

Inscribing bits of data onto the Bitcoin blockchain through Ordinals has captured the attention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts inside and beyond Bitcoin since the start of 2023.

Whether or not Bitcoin should be used for this NFT-like activity is a hotly-contested issue and the data coming from the effects of this mini Bitcoin collectives craze is intriguing. Inscriptions could be a short-lived fad, but several early data sets from the first weeks of inscription activity show tremendous interest in this new use case for the Bitcoin network. Diving in, this article provides an overview of six sets of data from the inscription mania.

Overview Of Bitcoin Inscriptions Data

The amounts and weights of pending transactions in Bitcoin mempools around the world are a clear signal of how popular inscription transactions have been to Bitcoin users amid the ongoing mini-craze over Bitcoin NFTs. Throughout most of the current bear market cycle, pending transaction levels in Bitcoin mempools have stayed fairly low, especially when compared to the height of both the 2017 and 2021 bull markets. In fact, a Twitter bot called Mempool Alert tweets every time its mempool empties, and the tweets were posted on a consistent basis for months throughout 2022.

The mempool pending transactions visual below shows the total weight of unconfirmed transactions throughout most of February 2023. The surge in pending transactions directly correlates to the inscriptions craze, which has somewhat subsided toward the end of February.

Inscription transactions are notoriously large, and the block sizes that have come from the inscription craze prove it. For years, the sizes of Bitcoin blocks hovered just below 1.5 megabytes (MB) as the line chart below illustrates. But the vertical increase in block sizes on the far right side of the chart is due entirely to Bitcoin inscriptions.

With these Bitcoin NFTs becoming popular, blocks started being produced between 2 MB and 2.5 MB on average. Several blocks flirted with the 4 MB limit, including the giant Taproot Wizard block mined by Luxor in collaboration with Udi Wertheimer and others.

Bitcoin multisig wallets are a great security solution to help you keep your Bitcoin secure, private and as accessible as your require at all times

What are the best multisig wallets to store bitcoin

Your Bitcoin wallet is the access to your digital funds and should be kept secure and private at all times. Online threats like malware programs, hacks and phishing attacks are always lurking behind the screen, and so is the risk of losing your own private keys, which could lead to losing your funds with no way to recover them.

If this sounds too brutal, you should realize that the highlighted risks are real and people have lost money due to dramatic accidents. Such accidents may include leaving bitcoin in centralized exchanges that have gone bankrupt like the recent FTX or vanished to potential rug pulls, like the Canadian exchange Quadriga.

Bitcoin multisig wallets come to the rescue and represent a great security aid in a self-custody practice. Multisig wallets have existed in Bitcoin since 2012. More recently, they have acquired a stronger position in securing the digital asset with cutting-edge technology suitable for less tech-savvy bitcoiners.

In recent years weve seen DIY wallets emerging for extra security. With DIY devices, you can buy your own components and build your own device that leaves no trace and securely generates private keys. Such an approach also benefits users from countries where conventional hardware wallets are not allowed to be sold or have poor delivery services and are optimal for low-cost solutions.

For the purpose of this article, we have structured the content into two distinct sections:

1. Collaborative custody wallets: whereby you use a third party to manage one of your private keys.
2. Self-custody wallets: whereby you alone manage the distribution of the private keys.

Best Collaborative Multisig Wallets

In a collaborative multisig wallet, which is likely to offer 2-out-of-3 key management, you will likely have control over one private key. At the same time, the third party an exchange or a custodial company holds the second private key online and the third key offline in cold storage.

The advantage of such a solution is convenience and reliance on customer service to assist with managing the private keys if anything happens. This occurs at the expense of privacy because companies may require KYC procedures to allow customers to use their services. Another disadvanta...

Merchants using BTCPay Server will now be able to protect their privacy using Wasabi Wallets CoinJoin coordination protocol.

Bitcoin payment processing software BTCPay Server has added a CoinJoin plugin for its merchants, allowing them to retain privacy while managing their stores. Stores that activate the Wasabi Wallet-based WabiSabi CoinJoin coordination protocol will be able to automatically CoinJoin all of the bitcoin they receive.

A CoinJoin is when two or more people combine their transactions into one transaction, in such a way that it is unclear who owns which coin after the transaction.

The plugin, developed by Andrew Camilleri, also offers a payment batching in CoinJoin feature, allowing users to pay addresses directly within a CoinJoin transaction. This will save block space and enhance privacy compared to making a payment in two steps, states the press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

The BTCPay Server plugin also includes a coin selection interface that lets merchants spend their coins based on their gained anonymity scores. By using the WabiSabi CoinJoin protocol, merchants can perform arbitrary amount CoinJoins rather than fixed denomination CoinJoins, reducing the amount of non-private change users receive and making payments inside the CoinJoin possible.

"BTCPay Server is the most sophisticated merchant payment processing software for bitcoin. It only made sense that it would include an optional CoinJoin plugin with the most sophisticated privacy-enhancing tool for Bitcoin," said Max Hillebrand, Wasabi Wallet contributor and CEO at zkSNACKs. Users can access a dashboard to assess the level of privacy of their wallets and the details on the current CoinJoin transaction they are participating in, and gain additional insights and control with coin selection in and out of CoinJoin transactions.

All BTCPay Server merchants can now utilize the new CoinJoin feature. They can choose to CoinJoin for a fee with a coordinator provided by zkSNACKs, and all BTCPay Server admins can spin up their own CoinJoin coordinators using their own terms, built upon Wasabi Wallets WabiSabi CoinJoin protocol. If users run their own coordinator, the BTCPay Server Plugin also offers an optional revenue-sharing feature that donates a percentage of proceeds to the HRF and OpenSats foundations.

To date, much of the academic research on Bitcoin has lacked high-quality data and rigorous review. Its time to fix that.

This is an opinion editorial by Rupert Matthews, a lecturer at the Nottingham Business School.

Even though the Bitcoin network is open source and accessible to anyone with an internet connection, the Bitcoin community can at times be viewed as closed to new ideas, with many stories of people excluded as a result of promoting and supporting non-Bitcoin activities.

At the same time, the benefits of Bitcoin are immediately apparent to those within the community, who also need to support the sharing of information on Bitcoin to no-coiners in order to support wider adoption. Unfortunately, broader perceptions of Bitcoin in the media and the old guard of Wall Street have meant that the education process can be an uphill battle that must first dispel mistruths before actual education can begin.

Please remember, even one of our most ardent supporters was once a no-coiner too:

It is also worth remembering, no-coiners cannot all be Michael Saylors, and are not all lucky enough to have close personal friends (thanks Eric Weiss) willing to take the time to clearly explain the concept to us, or the personal motivation to spend thousands of hours educating ourselves. We likely needed several touch points, combined with some base understanding to create the mental curiosity to ask: What is money? And where does money come from?

Saifedean Ammous works are some of the best, most widely-referenced sources for answering these questions, but people still need to be willing to read the 274 pages of The Bitcoin Standard to access them.

The problem is then, not only whether we have the voices to promote education, but also whether we have enough voices to both compete against those selling their assets of choice from Wall Street, but also against uninformed journalists (who are often unable to own the assets they report on), and are greater in number or have wider audiences.

Unfortunately, the sources of conflicted views of Bitcoin dont end with Wall Street speculators and journalists. Nic Carter, in his critical review of the recent White House...

Users will now be able to use the payment service to instantly support content sources using Bitcoin without registering an account.

Mash, a monetization service powered by Bitcoins Lightning Network, has announced that people will no longer have to create an account on the service in order to utilize it.

According to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, Weve extended a large number of our widgets to allow users to donate and spend without creating an account on Mash. You have the additional option to scan and contribute with another lightning wallet for a donation, to purchase something and more. You can use any lightning powered wallet including CashApp, Strike, Breeze and Zebedee.

Anyone can now go to sites that have Mash integrated and utilize the feature, by selecting "pay with another lightning wallet," scanning with a Lightning wallet, and then confirming the transaction.

The feature has also been extended to the Mash button so that you can donate easily without being logged in.

There are multiple options immediately available, including a regular Lightning invoice, LN-URL QR code that you can and choose the amount in the other wallet, and a Lightning address that all creators and builders get, describes the release.

Some of the benefits of integrating with Mash, according to the release, include one-click boosts and payments, a fluid mobile experience and auto-contributions.

The Bitcoin hardware company has begun manufacturing its own chip wrapper for the Trezor Model T.

Trezor, a Prague-based Bitcoin hardware company, has announced that it has taken control of its silicon chip supply chain.

According to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, the company has achieved this by facilitating the manufacture of its own key component, the chip wrapper, for its flagship product, the Trezor Model T. The new chip wrapper improves device security and significantly shortens lead times for mass production, the release states.

With the silicon chip supply chain under constant geopolitical pressure, securing the manufacturing of this important component is a source of confidence in the ability for Trezor to continue producing its products.

tpn Uherik, CFO at Trezor, commented that The twists and turns in demand for hardware wallets and the silicon supply chain disruption that weve seen over the past few years was a problem that we needed to solve. By unpacking the process, identifying areas where we could take control, and collaborating with our partners in new ways, weve managed to make the manufacturing as agile as it can be.

He added that It also adds more design freedom for future products, helping us to sustain our leadership in the increasingly competitive hardware wallet space.

SatoshiLabs, the company behind Trezor, also announced last year the development of an open-source chip for usage in Bitcoin hardware. Just recently, the company detailed that the initial testing on the first chip, TROPIC01, had been completed, with expectations of continued testing throughout 2023.

Conveying the real implications of Bitcoin to audiences requires long-format storytelling with a detailed, comprehensive narrative style.

This is an opinion editorial by Pierre Corbin, a documentary producer and director.

Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized digital currency, has been making headlines for over a decade. Despite its growing popularity, the technology behind Bitcoin is still largely misunderstood by the general public.

In order to increase its global adoption, it is important to build a narrative that explains the purpose and potential of Bitcoin in a comprehensive and engaging manner. This is where long-format storytelling comes in. By telling the story of Bitcoin in a thoughtful and detailed way, people are more likely to truly understand the technology and its impact on the world.

What Is Long-Format Storytelling?

Long-format storytelling is a narrative style that involves telling a story in a comprehensive and detailed manner. This style of storytelling is often used to explain complex concepts and ideas in a way that is easy to understand and engaging. In the case of Bitcoin, long-format storytelling is an essential tool for building a narrative that helps people understand the purpose and potential of the technology.

The Importance Of Storytelling For Bitcoin Adoption

The story of Bitcoin is about more than just the technology itself. It is about the values and principles that underpin that technology, such as decentralization, transparency and security. A compelling narrative can help bring these values and principles to life, making them more tangible and relatable for people. Additionally, storytelling can help to create an emotional connection to the technology, which can drive greater engagement and investment.

Another important aspect of storytelling is that it can help to demystify the technology. Bitcoin is often seen as complex and confusing to those who are unfamiliar with it. A well-told story can help to break down the technology and make it more accessible to a wider audience. By doing so, more people will be able to understand the potential of Bitcoin and how it can impact their lives.

How To Tell The Story Of Bitcoin

There are many different approaches to telling the story of Bitcoin, but it is important to find a narrative that is both comprehensive and engaging. Some of the key elements that should be included in the story of Bitcoin include:

• A history of the technology, including how it was created and why
• An explanation of how Bitcoin works, including the underlying blockchain technology
• A discussion of the values and principles that underpin Bitcoin, such as decentralization, security and freedom
• A look at the potential impact of Bitcoin on the world, including how it could change the financial system and increase financial inclusion
• A discus...

Bitcoin inscriptions have been out for a few more weeks, so we follow up on the fee market and block usage to observe whats changed after 100,000 inscriptions.

The below is an excerpt from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine PRO, Bitcoin Magazine's premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

Addressing Bitcoin Decentralization & Block Space Concerns

New users have been flocking to Bitcoin to create what are known as inscriptions often called NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on other blockchains. These mostly image files were increasing demand for Bitcoin block space, which caused some network participants to worry about Bitcoins future decentralization. If the cost to run a full node increases substantially due to users needing the storage space and bandwidth to download all this data that is unrelated to monetary transactions, fewer people might run full archival nodes, centralizing Bitcoins ledger.

The amount of cumulative storage used by inscriptions continues to climb with almost 3 GB of storage specifically related to inscriptions at the time of writing.

Should the block space consistently be used to its full extent of 4 MB, it will add approximately 210.24 GB of data to the chain each year, which isnt a major cost hindrance for running a full node but can still be considered pricey in places where technology isnt as cheaply available. There is the ability to run a pruned node which does not require storage of any of this witness data and only keeps track of Bitcoins monetary transaction data. However, in order to create a pruned node, users still must download all of the data initially. This is where the concerns for insufficient bandwidth come into play. In areas of the world where there isnt access to high-speed internet, the initial block download might take so long that it wont be possible to sync to the chaintip.

That being said, the expectation for Bitcoins block space was always that it would be full at some point, which is partially why there i...

Whether Bitcoiners like it or not, large-scale Bitcoin adoption is not coming this decade or next. Its simply going to take a number of generations to filter into society.

This is an opinion editorial by Aleksander Svetski, author of The UnCommunist Manifesto, The Bitcoin Times and the viral and controversial Remnant Series and head of growth and strategy at Lucent Labs.

Bitcoiners are notorious for their over-estimation of how quickly Bitcoin is going to take over the world and become widely adopted as money. Ive sat squarely in that camp for a long time now, but have come to think differently of late.

Before you accuse me of giving up, or call me a flake, I ask that you read on and reserve your opinion until the end.

I like to think that I am maturing in how I view Bitcoin. Call it temperance, patience or a dose of humility but I am trying to add some realism, or a lower-time preference to the often overhyped perception of Bitcoin among some of us. But, as youll note, I think on a longer time-scale, none of us are bullish enough (hat tip CK).

Lets dive in.

Bitcoin Is A Techno-Socio-Economic Transformation

People are very quick to project technology adoption curves onto Bitcoin. But the problem is that Bitcoin is not just a technology.

Its not just a smartphone, or a computer, or a social network, or a new stock or security, or a new payment method, or a search engine, or a messaging platform, or any other new product, app or service.

Bitcoin is an entire techno-socio-economic transformation. Its a reinvention of money from the ground up, incompatible with any prior primitives.

So, its not only orders of magnitude larger as a shift, but its also completely different in a paradigmatic sense. These are massive benefits and massive hurdles.

Benefits because:

1. Bitcoin has the most significant upside possible. If it is fixed in supply, and the market its going for is global money implying that it will be the measure against which every stock, property, business, vehicle, handbag or thing that exists on the Earth is evaluated then it follows that Bitcoin will, in time, be the single most liquid and valuable unit of value on Earth.
2. If its incompatible with the old, it is truly a paradigm shift. And if its superior (which its proven to be across every dimension important for money), then it will not just compete with the old guard, but it will completely replace it. This is not a carving out of a new market, but a winner-take-all and, fundamentally, change-the-nature-of-the-game kind of transformation. Its much bigger....

While FTXs collapse last year rattled the Bitcoin ecosystem, nine years ago a bigger failure damaged it even more. What does that teach us?

The fall of FTX, a crypto empire that defrauded investors, customers and employees to the tune of $8 billion, rattled the ecosystem, with many worrying whether the ecosystem would survive.

However, this was not the first time a failure of such a magnitude has happened in the space. Unbeknown to many cryptocurrency newcomers, in 2014 the worlds largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, went bankrupt following a series of hacks and mismanagement issues. The fall resulted in customers losing over 800,000 bitcoin a level of worry that makes FTX seem like a blip in time.

Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, whose domain (MtGox.com) was originally registered in 2007 to host a trading site for the wildly popular Magic: The Gathering game cards, began operating as a rudimentary bitcoin exchange in late 2010. As business began to drive huge traffic, the owner sold the platform to Mark Karpels.

Karpels, an avid programmer and Bitcoin enthusiast, beefed up the web platforms code to handle an increased volume of bitcoin transactions and buy and sell orders. Ultimately, the exchanges failure demonstrated that he did not do a sufficient job, either technically or in the management aspects of the business, as he tried filling the role of Mt. Goxs chief executive officer with little experience.

On February 24, 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading and went offline. Eventually, it came to light that Mt. Goxs infrastructure had been exploited by attackers multiple times over the course of several years. The attackers had slowly robbed the exchange of its bitcoin by manipulating parts of transactions data a characteristic known as transaction malleability leading Mt. Gox to believe that certain withdrawals had not happened, which led it to send requested funds multiple times.

Earlier that month, Mt. Gox had gone offline for a few hours and its team issued a press release blaming the Bitcoin protocol itself for being faulty in its transaction watching mechanism. When receiving a withdrawal request, the exchange would observe the Bitcoin blockchain for a confirmation of the withdrawal transaction ID a hash constructed from the t...

After discovering Bitcoin, an elementary music teacher can see that some poor parenting habits are incentivized by the fiat system.

This is an opinion editorial by Tim Niemeyer, co-host of the Lincolnland Bitcoin Meetup and an elementary school teacher.

Im a teacher by day and a rabid Bitcoiner by night. I currently teach elementary music, and I truly love my job. Its similar to being the co-host of Lincolnland Bitcoin in that I get to share my passions (music and Bitcoin) while potentially helping others develop a deeper appreciation for and better understanding of each. I dont orange pill at school though; I feel its necessary to separate church and state, if you will. Still, being able to experience both simultaneously has helped me be able to develop a greater understanding of each.

But appreciating Bitcoin has also given me a unique perspective in my work as a teacher, and I wanted to share some of observations Ive made in almost two decades of being an educator about how our coercive fiat monetary system incentivizes less-than-optimal decision making and substandard relational habits and maybe a little about how Bitcoin fixes this.

The purpose of this article is not to badmouth any specific group or subset of the population (maybe fiat politicians though, lol). Most everyone has justifications for their actions, and who am I to tell them otherwise? For what its worth, I believe the majority of parents are good, hard-working people who do their best with what they have to provide. Its not their fault theyre compelled to be in a monetary system that steals their time and efforts via inflation, which forces high time preference actions. Many dont see the benefits we Bitcoiners see to sound money thats not controlled by the whims of those in power who have their own agendas and incentives. Furthermore, too few see that choosing red or blue or right or left doesnt really provide long-term, systemic change due to the fact that each side is beholden to their inherent system....

Bankman-Frieds charges have been expanded in the latest indictment brought forth by federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors have announced a new indictment of Sam Bankman-Fried with four additional criminal charges.

The document alleging these new charges starts with the claim that From at least in or about 2019, up to and including in or about November 2022, Samuel Bankman-Fried, a/k/a SBF, the defendant, corrupted the operations of the cryptocurrency companies he founded and controlled.

In addition to the original counts that SBF is facing, prosecutors allege that he is also guilty of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter. Previously, SBF was charged with all of the following counts by the United States Southern District Court of New York, including:

• Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers
• Wire fraud on customers
• Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders
• Wire fraud on lenders
• Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud
• Conspiracy to commit securities fraud
• Conspiracy to commit money laundering
• And conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate the Campaign Finance Laws.

These charges followed his arrest in December in the Bahamas, after the incredibly large failure of the FTX exchange empire. The industry is still reeling from both the business impact as well as the regulatory scrutiny that has followed since.

Contrary to Bankman-Frieds promises to FTX customers that the exchange would protect their interests and segregate their assets, Bankman-Fried routinely tapped FTX customer assets to provide interest-free capital for his and Alameda's private expenditures, and in the process exposed FTX customers to massive, undisclosed risk, the document with the new charges alleges. In addition, while Bankman-Fried publicly claimed that FTX operated independently from Alameda' s cryptocurrency trading and investments in other companies, by his design, the reality was otherwise.

In addition to the functional issues with FTX, alleged illegal donations are now being further detailed, with the indictment examining how SBF utilized others to contribute to political movements that he did not want himself or his business entities to be tied to.

Bankman-Fried caused substantial contributions to be made in support of candidates of both major political parties and across the political spectrum, the document alleges. Bankman-Fried, however, did not want to be known as a left-leaning partisan, or to...

The team will continue with projects designed to push the boundaries of whats possible with Bitcoin.

Blockstream, a leading Bitcoin infrastructure company, has announced a formalized Blockstream Research team with a focus on advancing the platforms at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem, tackling complex problems and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with Bitcoin.

There are a variety of projects already in progress that the research team is working on. The team has created a more robust programming language, Simplicity, which is designed as an alternative to Bitcoin Script. The team has also created Miniscript, a safer language for writing structured Bitcoin Scripts that enables analysis, composition, generic signing and more. In addition to this, the company is also developing Elements Script, a set of extensions to Bitcoin Script that includes new covenant opcodes, which are still being explored.

Above: "The Bitcoin Focused Cryptography Team," from Blockstream.

Another area of focus for Blockstream is digital signatures. The company has developed Cross Input Signature Aggregation (CISA/XISA), which enables multiple inputs in a single transaction to share a single signature, reducing the size of transactions and improving the efficiency of the Bitcoin network. The team has also developed MuSig2, a solution designed to make Bitcoin multisig transactions more efficient and simultaneously more private.

Blockstream's applied research team is also working on off-chain protocols such as Scriptless Scripts, which is a solution to enable smart contract execution to take place off-chain, providing benefits such as increased security, privacy, and scalability utilizing the power of Schnorr signatures. Fedimint, a federated e-cash protocol, enables a network of signers to accept bitcoin with deposits and withdrawals and mint e-cash notes for users while maintaining privacy at the level of the federation.

The research team now consists of 10 highly experienced researchers, including the likes of Andrew Poelstra, Andrew Chow, Dr. Russell OConnor and Christian Lewe.

"Blockstream has been producing research output since its founding in 2014, contributing ideas like OP_CSV and covenants to Segwit and Taproot. Historically we've done this as Bitcoin contributors, as Blockstreamers, and as ourselves. I'm excited to continue putting out ground-breaking new ideas, such as MuSig, FROST, Simplicity and codex32, now under the Blockstream Research umbrella, said Poelstra, who serves as Director of Research at Blockstream and is a computer science researcher and mathematician from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Bitcoin comm...

On-chain Bitcoin wallets and self-custody Lightning wallets will not be impacted, according to a blog posted by the mobile Bitcoin app company.

BlueWallet, a Bitcoin wallet with apps in both the iOS and Android stores, has announced that it will end its custodial Lightning wallet service by April 30, 2023.

In a blog post, the company explained that Today, we are announcing that the Lightning node, Lndhub.io, where BlueWallet provides Lightning wallets to its users, is sunsetting. While you can still withdraw your sats, creating new or refilling existing Lightning wallets on LndHub node will no longer be possible.

The post proceeds to request that users remove funds from their BlueWallet custodial Lightning wallets as soon as possible. It is also made clear that regular BlueWallet Bitcoin wallets will not be impacted by this change, nor will self-custody Lightning wallets where users connect to their own Lndhub.

Lndhub started as a weekend experiment on a new fringe technology barely used at the time called the Lightning Network, the blog explains. Today, with the availability of more mainstream services offering scalable solutions, Lndhub has fulfilled its purpose in its current form.

Users will still be able to access Lndhub as a software and self-hosted solution, able to connect to their own LndHub from BlueWallet or other software that supports the LndHub API specification.

The post concludes with an optimistic take, saying that This may sound like bad news, but this essentially means BlueWallet going forward will only support self-custody solutions. This is good for bitcoin and BlueWallet users. 

The Ordinal Loops project is designed to push artistic activism and help end fiat through the latest innovation on Bitcoins blockchain.

This is an opinion editorial by T, a member of the Ordinal Loops team.

It has been almost a month since Ordinals truly came to light and Bitcoin has not been the same since. For some background, this article by Stephan Livera introduces the basic concepts and delves into the technical areas as well as the political challenges presented by Ordinals. While there are some views in it that can be contested and assumptions made that cannot be predicted, the article provides a fantastic entry point into the world of data inscription.

The first days of Ordinal building were messy, with Bitcoiners spending hours telling people how the protocol works, navigating through the ways to run their own nodes and inscribing art. One has to wonder how many orange-colored light bulb moments have happened recently, but judging from the incoming amount of requests and peer-to-peer (P2P) conversations, it has to have been a lot. Looking at data since the end of January, according to bitnodes.io, the Bitcoin node count has grown by more than 28% and Taproot adoption increased to almost 10% with a dramatic push in the recent days, as depicted by Glassnode. Utilization of the most recent soft fork driven by Ordinals has been a tremendous success and theres no reason to expect it to slow down.

But, due to the elements of art and creative activism that Ordinals bring to Bitcoin, there is still an urge to look at this technological evolution from a different standpoint: as a cultural advent in Bitcoins expansion and continuous growth.

Introducing Ordinal Loops

With that, allow us to present Ordinal Loops (OL), a review of Bitcoin's contemporary existence, along with some historical precedence, in the form of 21 ASCII-format, low-byte-size artifacts (or Ordinal inscriptions), guiding novel explorers from different streams to grasp the fundamental pillars of this important discovery.

In the moment of realization and the introduction of energy that came with the inception of Ordinals, the OL team would be remiss not to participate with a project of our own meant to support the growth of Bitcoins network effects, including its security budget.

Bef...

European millennials have been dealt a bad hand, but Bitcoin will show them the path to financial freedom.

This is an opinion editorial by Imo Babics, CMO of Relai, a Swiss-based, bitcoin-only investment app.

Europeans are not taking advantage of their purchasing power and its hurting their pockets. It is estimated that the financial wealth of Europeans would be 1.2 trillion higher if savers had invested their money instead of keeping it in the bank.

Yes, youve read that right keeping money in the bank. Keeping cash in bank accounts for emergencies is still the most common way Europeans save their money, despite high inflation. And only 17% of Europeans reported that they owned bitcoin in 2021. Data suggests that the number is similar when it comes to investing in stocks, with only 15% of Germans doing so (rookie numbers compared to 55% of Americans).

The Struggle Is Real

A lack of financial literacy and self doubt about their investment ability are apparent hurdles, but there are several other reasons why Europeans arent being smarter with their money:

• Lack of trust in the financial system: European millennials came of age during the great recession of 2008. Many of them have experienced firsthand their parents losing employment, their homes or their life savings. They have seen the big banks, the architects of this disaster, go unpunished. This led to a general lack of trust in Wall Street, banks and the financial system as a whole among millennials. Many believe that traditional financial institutions are not to be trusted (rightly so) and that the system itself is rigged.
• Debt: Owning a home is a symbol of stability and security. With soaring real estate prices in Europe, owning a home often comes with a 30-year mortgage. Add to that a car lease, credit cards, and, depending on the country, student loans and all of this debt can make it difficult for young people to save and invest, as they focus on paying off their debts first.
• Job (in)security: Millennials have only ever known a challenging job market. Most of them entered the workforce after the 2008 financial crisis, being faced with a lack of opportunities and stagnating salaries. Just as things started to turn for the better, their...

The bill would effectively put an end to the debate over the creation of a Federal Reserve-issued CBDC.

U.S. Congressman Tom Emmer (R-MN) has introduced a bill that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC directly to anyone.

The bill, titled the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act details that Except as specifically authorized under this Act, a Federal Reserve bank may not offer products or services directly to an individual, or maintain an account on behalf of an individual, or issue a central bank digital currency directly to an individual. It goes on to further detail specifically that The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee may not use any central bank digital currency to implement monetary policy."

Rep. Emmer explained in his tweet announcing the bill that Any digital version of the dollar must uphold our American values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free market competitiveness. Anything less opens the door to the development of a dangerous surveillance tool.

The bill aims to stem the creation of a CBDC due to the various issues many see as potential results of the creation of an American CBDC. As detailed in various Bitcoin Magazine pieces like The Dangerous Implications Of Central Bank Digital Currencies, Central Bank Digital Currencies: A Technocratic Fallacy and The U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency Narrative Is A Fantasy, the idea of a CBDC not only has moral and ideological opposition to it, but technical limitations present challenges that could make such a thing not possible in the first place.

Several Representatives involved in the bill have also voiced their support. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released a statement...

Even with the recent rise in the bitcoin price, public bitcoin mining stocks start the year with more impressive gains than the asset itself.

The below is an excerpt from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine PRO, Bitcoin Magazine's premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

Public Mining Update

Looking at the high-level view of bitcoin holdings, weve seen a declining trend in holdings across public miners throughout 2022, from 46,930 BTC at peak in April 2022, to 31,892 in January 2023 a 32% decline in 10 months. With Bitfarms, Core Scientific and Northern Data shedding their bitcoin, holdings across public miners are now largely concentrated in Marathon Digital, Hut 8 and Riot Platforms.

The trend of hash rate expansion is up only with public miners growing their hash rate by 129% over the last year. This growth has been a significant driver of overall hash rate expansion with the network hash rate recently reaching 300 EH/s and public miners making up nearly 25% of all hash rate on a given day. That percentage is understated as were not including all public miners, like Cipher and Terawulf.

Mining Production Update Notes

Marathon made a statement about their choice to sell some bitcoin that the company mined, With bitcoin production increasing and becoming more consistent, we made the strategic decision to sell some of our bitcoin, as previously planned, to cover some of our operating expenses and for general corporate purposes. We intend to continue to sell a portion of our bitcoin holdings in 2023 to fund monthly operating costs.

In their announcement, they shared about places for further hash rate expansion. The company still expects to have approximately 23 EH/s of capacity installed near the middle of 2023.

Similarly, HIVEs production update informed shareholders about bitcoin sales, HIVE sel...

Brazil and Argentina are considering a common trading currency, but that would just perpetuate the economic problems that Bitcoin could solve.

This is an opinion editorial by Jack Williams, an undergraduate business administration student and Bitcoin HODLer.

Brazil and Argentina have faced off against each other on numerous fronts, namely World Cup Qualifiers and Copa Amrica epics. So, as an avid soccer (Murica) fan, I found this Mises.org article by Marcos Falcone a little strange at first because it suggested that these two rivals might come together to establish a common currency. But, considering the two nations standings in the global economy, the idea makes sense.

Argentina has gradually shifted more into economic uncertainty as its currency inflates year over year and often month over month. Brazil faces political and economic uncertainty after recent troubling events surrounding the reelection of President Lula da Silva, who faced corruption charges prior to his campaign in 2022. According to Falcone, President Lula and Argentinas economic minister, Sergio Massa, have discussed a possible trading currency between the two nations.

Without a doubt, if Brazil and Argentina ever come to such an agreement, the eventual currency is going to strip more wealth from the hands of the Argentine and Brazilian people. Despite whatever sweet nothings Lula da Silva and Argentina President Alberto Fernndez would whisper into the ears of their respective populaces, the only victory achieved would likely be on their cronies front. Falcone shares this concern in his article as well, providing a stellar account of both Argentina and Brazils economic histories along with a strong case for why their speculated fiat solution is anything but a legitimate reform.

Argentina And Brazil Shouldnt Miss This Opportunity For Bitcoin

But Brazil and Argentina have an exceedingly-rare opportunity to change the dynamics of international economic cooperation and diplomacy for the better by adopting Bitcoin. As esteemed anarchist author and podcaster Michael Malice has said, Every country is in a state of anarchy towards every other country. To extrapolate this, Brazil and Argentinas best shot at stabilizing their trade and boosting their economy is through Bitcoin.

The trade...

As Nigerians protest over the inability to withdraw cash, it should be clear that the country needs a Bitcoin alternative.

This is an opinion editorial by Ray Youssef, a founder and CEO of Paxful and a founder of the Built With Bitcoin Foundation.

Editor's note, February 22, 2023: Today, Nigeria's Supreme Court adjourned the naira redesign case until March 3, 2023.

The cash crunch in Nigeria is reaching a boiling point as 54% of its currency is out of circulation. Earlier this month, I wrote about the deadline for turning in the old naira () banknotes, the scarcity of the new redesign and the lengths people have had to go to get their hands on the new currency.

But A Lot Has Changed Since Then

Lines have turned into protests and people are at their breaking points. This chaos stems from confusion. People do not understand who to turn to as they hear different stories from the Nigerian federal government, the supreme court, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), some state governments and the banks.

Last week, the Supreme Court announced that the old 200, 500, 1,000 notes were valid until February 22 when the court will pick the case for a full hearing. The next day, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the CBN to allow the use of old 200 notes until April 10. From the president, this leaves the old 1000 and 500 notes out of circulation. Some state governors are siding with the supreme court over the federal government and the CBN. As examples, governors in Lagos, Kaduna and Ogun have openly encouraged Nigerians to continue using the old 200, 500 and 1,000 notes.

On top of this confusion, the CBN has run out of paper to print the newly-redesigned notes and some believe that banks have been hoarding new banknotes only giving access to the rich and people with con...

The developer with the most changes to Bitcoins code has announced his decision to step down from the Core maintainer role.

Bitcoin Core maintainer Marco Falke has announced he will step down from the role.

The prolific Bitcoin developer took to Twitter on Tuesday, saying that, In a challenging decision, I concluded to transition out of my role as maintainer. I remain passionate about open source and Bitcoin and I am positive about the future, however being a maintainer is no longer a good fit for me personally.

Falke also took the time to thank his sponsors. His latest funding support came from a joint grant by Okcoin and Paradigm.

Falke was an incredibly active participant in the Bitcoin development process, notably having merged more changes into the Bitcoin Core code than any other person. Bitcoin Magazine previously covered the daily work of Falke as a Bitcoin Core repository maintainer, including his rise to become the most prolific Core Developer in terms of the sheer number of individual changes submitted to the project.

Falke's contributions around testing infrastructure have been the most substantive, which he identified early on as an inefficiency in the project that he was passionate about improving, as testing is critical for ensuring continuity across the network and improving quality assurance.

With Falkes departure, there will now be only four official Bitcoin Core maintainers. While these roles are incredibly important, it is also important to note that they do not officially control Bitcoin Bitcoin users running full nodes must opt-in to the code changes that Bitcoin Core maintainers approve, adding a layer of checks and balances to the protocol. 

In regions where the internet is slow or unstable, using Bitcoins Lightning Network can be a challenge. What are the best tools available?

This is an opinion editorial by Anita Posch, the founder of Bitcoin For Fairness who has traveled around the world to learn how the globally unbanked can benefit from sovereign money.

In my work as a Bitcoin educator, I help interested people to take their first steps into the space and gain an understanding of why Bitcoin is important for them personally and for the world at large. I also help Bitcoin community builders to become educators and share their knowledge with their peers. My focus lies on financial sovereignty, which can only be achieved by holding bitcoin in self custody and using additional tools to reach a decent level of privacy.

To find out if it is time to onboard people onto a non-custodial Lightning wallet, even in difficult settings, I set out to do a Lightning wallet test in rural Zimbabwe with low and erratic internet connectivity on mobile data. Im not talking about Bitcoin on-chain wallets: There is really no need at all to use a custodial Bitcoin wallet. Im talking about Lightning wallets here, non-custodial ones.

The Resistance To Change A Habit

Over and over, I hear and read statements saying that newbies need convenient, easy-to-use tools, otherwise they would be overwhelmed and wont use Bitcoin. I think this is wrong. People who are being onboarded onto custodial services are harder to convince to step up their game toward financial sovereignty and start using non-custodial tools. There is a big resistance to change habits. If a person starts using a custodial wallet, they very, very often believe that they are using Bitcoin already. They will tell you that they never faced any problems and that they, therefore, dont see a need to change their setup.

As a Bitcoin educator, it is my first duty to teach people about self custody, why it is important and to make them aware of the risks they are taking. They need to understand the difference between custodial and non-custodial services. Only then do I present different tools and make them familiar with the pros and cons of each one. Afterwards, they need to decide for themselves which route they want to take. That is the only way that people wont consider me responsible for any losses they might incur and its the only way that they will understand that Bitcoin is all about ownership. If youre using a custodial service, youre not financially sovereign. Youre a pre-coiner, with one foot still in the old world and you can be rug pulled at any time. I think most people have already forgotten about Mt. Gox and even FTX. Fast money, fast access to (a false belief that youre really using) bitcoin, fast loss.

When we set out to show our friends how to use Bitcoin in the first place, why do we rush the onboarding by using convenient to...

Various projects supporting censorship resistance and Bitcoin education have received funding from the HRF.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has granted 2 billion satoshis, approximately $475,000, from the Bitcoin Development Fund to 10 global projects. The funding will support areas such as censorship-resistant communication, Bitcoin education in authoritarian regimes, core development and building local communities and education, with a focus on Africa and Southeast Asia. The grants include $100,000 to Qala, a fellowship program training the next generation of African Bitcoin and Lightning developers, allowing the program to continue their 13-week fellowship and sponsoring six Qala fellows to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum.

The HRF has also awarded $75,000 to the Africa Bitcoin Conference, the largest Bitcoin-focused conference in Africa, and $50,000 to William Casarin for his work on Nostr, a censorship-resistant, open-source and decentralized social network platform. Additionally, $50,000 went to Bitcoin for Fairness, which focuses on raising awareness of Bitcoin for disadvantaged communities and in authoritarian states. Another $50,000 went to Vasil Dimov, a top-20 contributor to Bitcoin Core, to ensure continued development and stability of the Bitcoin protocol.

The remaining $25,000 grants were awarded to Emmanuel Bronshtein for his contributions to Wallet Scrutiny, Exomunia to expand Bitcoin educational resources, Ekenimoh Elyan for EasePay, and Bitcoin Myanmar for financial freedom education. HRF has allocated over $2.2 million in BTC and USD to more than 70 developers, educators and open-source initiatives worldwide since early 2020. The organization continues to raise support for the Bitcoin Development Fund, with the next round of gifts to be announced in May 2023.

"Bitcoin is a powerful tool for human rights defenders around the world," and these grants support their belief that "financial freedom is a human right," Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer of HRF, said. "We are proud to support the amazing work of these individuals and organizations who are using Bitcoin to fight for human rights and freedom, especially in regions where it's needed most."

HRF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law. Proposals for support can be submitted to dev.fund@hrf.org, and more information can be found on HRF's website.

The Best Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Exchanges of 2023: A Comprehensive GuideDescription: This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about why P2P exchanges are important and highlights the top platforms for buying and selling Bitcoin.

Introduction

Peer-to-peer (P2P), decentralized (DEX) exchanges are a growing method of trading bitcoin without the need for a middleman to facilitate the transaction.

An escrow service usually safeguards the transaction, ensuring that neither the buyers nor the sellers assets are at risk. An escrow is a service agreement that holds the assets or money of two parties. In the case of blockchains, an escrow is a smart contract that releases the money once a predetermined condition is met.

What is a P2P exchange? (and how do they work)

P2P or decentralized networks already existed long before Bitcoin. They involve the exchange or sharing of information, money or assets over the internet between two or more parties without the intermediation of a central authority.

P2P exchanges tend to be more relaxed in terms of verification processes, and trading directly with another party means that users can pick their own payment method and the best rate available while enjoying lower transaction fees.

In P2P platforms, users can establish trust in participants through a rating method that shows their reputation as a guarantee of their reliability.

The role of the P2P platform is to simply match buyers and sellers for a small fee, but it does not hold assets and users transfer their funds to a personal wallet right after the transaction has taken place. 

Why use P2P exchanges?

One of the main advantages of P2P platforms is that they never cease to function as long as two or more parties continue to communicate and use the service. They do not need to ask permission from anyone to continue working; this is why P2P exchanges are tough to bring down and are more resistant to any type of attack, whether from a state or a private attacker.

There is no disputing that Bitcoin is the most secure P2P network ever built. The on-ramps and off-ramps cannot boast the same level of assuredness. Centralized exchanges are widely recognised as a point of weakness.

In contrast, P2P networks like BitTorrent, LimeWire or The Pirate Bay could never be shut down because they provide no single point of failure typical of centralized entities but a network or peers who have the same interest in keeping the service alive and safeguarding privacy.

A Bitcoin P2P exchange is the natural marketplace for the top cryptocurrency where privacy, censorship resistance and security are best guaranteed versus centralized services. Using P2P exchanges along with cold storage means embracing the Bitcoin ecosystem and supporting it against attacks.

If you want to ensure your privacy is maintained at all times, ple...

Though Bitcoiners often fight solar power as merely another ESG attack vector, it could make Bitcoin more resilient and decentralized.

This is an opinion editorial by Robert Hall, a content creator and small business owner.

I dont know where you come down on the solar energy debate, but whether you are for or against investing in more solar power is irrelevant. Regardless of how you feel about green energy, installing rooftop solar panels has become a prevalent choice for homes, schools and business owners over the last 10 to 15 years, and installations dont seem to be slowing down any time soon.

Did you know nearly 4% of U.S. homes have installed solar panels? This isnt a small number and it will continue to increase, especially with the Inflation Reduction Act providing subsidies for solar energy.

A study by Princeton University found that added solar capacity could increase from 10 gigawatts (GW) in 2020 to five times as much by 2024 and 100 GW per year by 2030.

As you can see, solar energy isnt going anywhere anytime soon. So, instead of being hostile to solar energy, should Bitcoiners think about changing their position on solar? I think it might be time to reconsider.

Hostility Toward Solar

In Bitcoin circles, solar is often synonymous with ESG, a set of guidelines used by socially-conscious investors to determine how companies impact the environment and communities where they operate. Sounds harmless right?

But if you are in the know, you understand that behind the nice-sounding platitudes, there is an agenda being enacted by the elites in society to control how much energy others can use, how much meat they can eat, how many miles they can travel and so on. Its a very twisted way of looking at the world.

This worldview is unsurprising because these elites are used to getting their way and using the Cantillon effect to their advantage. For that reason, many Bitcoiners associate solar power and ESG considerations with the fundamental problems of the legacy economy.

But the real question we face as Bitcoiners and as free people of the world is: What can we do to secure our freedom in an environment of increased surveillance and raging inflation that is stealing our wealth and our time?

The answer is that we need to acquire our own energy production.

Personal Energy Sovereignty

...

Starting with 10 meetings, BitGeneration seeks to bring Bitcoin training and education to Italian students.

BitPolito, a group of students from Politecnico di Torino University who seek to address training, research and development on Bitcoin in Italy, have announced BitGeneration, a project that aims to bring Bitcoin education to Italian high schools.

According to the press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, the university will host 10 meetings of three hours each for 30 third, fourth and fifth year students at a local high school.

Experts and teachers had already talked about Bitcoin in the past to some classes through small independent initiatives, describes the release, but BitGeneration has a whole different tenor. For the first time, [an Italian] public school welcomes Bitcoin training in a formal way: the 30 hours are part of what is called Pcto (which in Italian means Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation), a 300-hour course of compulsory work over a three-year period for all students throughout the country.

Lessons taught cover various aspects of Bitcoin, from financial inclusion, economics and structures of society to computer science and game theory. There are also practical lessons focusing on showing the ease of using Bitcoin. Subjects include creating a seed phrase and a wallet, downloading and managing a full-node, timechain analysis and mining (with a real Antminer S9 ASIC provided by BitPolito).

Speakers involved in this initiative include some of the best known names in the Italian Bitcoin sphere, such as Giacomo Zucco, Riccardo Giorgio Frega, Alekos Filini, Daniela Brozzoni and Riccardo Masutti.  BitPolito has previously been funded by Conio, which will also fund the first edition of the course, while ShiftCrypto will provide signing devices for the lessons.

Giacomo Zucco, who gave the first lecture on January 31, said that The teachers were enthusiastic. When they asked me some questions after the lecture, about one-third of the students gathered around to listen. I found bright faces despite the three-hour lecture.

Nicol Terranova, a member of the group and one of the main people responsible for the initiative, explained its plans for expansion, saying We would like to expand the project in the future. In the next edition we will make a documentary that will tell the story of the students education, from the students perspective. We hope that other schools will take the initiative as an example, we are ready to help.

According to the press release the 10 lessons will be posted on BitPolito's YouTube channel so that anyone can watch the course for free. 

The broken incentives driven by fiat money props up large corporations, keeping workers unproductive and stifling entrepreneurial innovation.

This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.

In the last essay, I covered how fiat money ruins individual incentives. The lack of savings vehicles and the availability of debt create a potent mix of terrible incentives at the individual level. Lack of savings vehicles mean that individuals have to work to keep any value they have and the availability of debt means that they can bring forward a lot of consumption.

The result is a lot of people who consume and relatively few productive people who save.

Why Companies?

One level higher from the individual level is the company level. We used to be organized into families and tribes. Nowadays, we're organized into companies, which are very debased versions. Companies are artificial and don't have anywhere near the level of history or close relationships that families do. You can feel it in the pointless meetings you're forced to attend. Yet companies are very much the way individuals are organized in a fiat economy and this is due to the incentives of fiat money.

We used to depend on our families, our clans or our tribes for our security. Kin was who you depended on to help you in times of need. Fiat money has changed everything by providing all manner of safety nets for individuals through these companies. Health insurance, unemployment insurance, social security, pensions and even life insurance protect people in a fiat economy from disaster. Many of these government/corporate safety nets existed before, but their use became much more ubiquitous after fiat money. The reason for their popularity will be explored more in the next essay on national/country incentives, but suffice it to say that governments operating under fiat money provide all sorts of safety nets to win popular support.

Because of these safety nets, people no longer depend on their families. Instead of depending on your family to help you out when you lose your job, you now have unemployment insurance. Instead of depending on your family when losing a wage earner to death, you now depend on life insurance. Instead of relying on your children to take care of you in old age, you now rely on social security or pensions.

All of these functions have been subsumed and you are now free to replace your family with government goodies. Insurance and money are poor substitutes for human relationships, like seed oils for butter and just about as toxic. Social security and pensions have replaced children. A cold, impersonal company that will lay you off at the drop of a hat has replaced the traditional family trade. Is it any wond...

The author of incredible books like The Big Short, and Moneyball, will speak in a fireside chat at the Miami Conference.

Disclaimer: BTC Inc. is the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference.

Best-selling author of The Big Short, Moneyball, Flash Boys, Liar's Poker and The Premonition, Michael Lewis will feature in a fireside chat at the upcoming Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, happening May 18-20.

Lewis works have been critically acclaimed as both entertaining and accurate depictions of the monolithic financial structures that dictate our world. He offers a unique point of view through the eyes of his real life characters on the motion of the society, and perhaps his most well known work amongst Bitcoiners would be The Big Short, in which he describes the impact of the economic crisis in 2008 along with mentioning Bitcoin.

Currently, Lewis hosts a podcast called Against The Rules which recently premiered a new monthly series titled, On Background featuring interviews with experts to provide background context on the world the characters in his book inhabit.

"We're thrilled to have one of the best-selling authors of all time speaking at Bitcoin 2023, says Pete Rizzo, Chief Content Officer at Bitcoin Magazine. Michael has spent his career writing stories about those who dared to dream of a better financial industry and we hope to make clear Bitcoin is building that bright future."

Bitcoin 2023 is the worlds largest annual Bitcoin conference, hosted by Bitcoin Magazine. The conference has become a platform for breakthrough announcements in the Bitcoin industry. In addition to that, these fireside chats are an instrument for critical thinkers to discuss adoption and its impact on society as well as to cultivate healthy dialogs on related topics.

Mike Germano, President of BTC Inc., described how the company is thrilled to be able to provide to our community yet another big speaker that has a lot to offer and perhaps show us the way we are succeeding or failing in understanding bitcoin adoption, the mission that we all have committed to.

Bitcoiners who are interested in attending the conference to hear Lewis speak can purchase tickets at B.tc/conference.

The Prague-based company has been acquiring feedback and data on the performance of their open-source prototype chip for Bitcoin hardware.

Tropic Square, a startup backed by SatoshiLabs, the company behind Trezor, has been testing their new TROPIC01 chip, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

Prototypes of the chip arrived from UMC, the Taiwanese production company, in December of 2022. Testing of the secure element chips is slated to continue throughout the first half of 2023.

The press release describes how initial test results are very positive and have already shown that the chip development can continue as originally planned to produce a second prototype next year and then, after verification, start mass serial production.

Tropic Squares goal with the design and production of the chip is to create an open-source security chip for usage in Bitcoin hardware. Bitcoin Magazine previously covered the announcement of the chip in August 2022, in which the Tropic Square team described how Being open-source will allow the company to make improvements based on community and expert feedback.

According to Tropic Square CEO Evzen Englberth, the testing brings us substantially closer to mass production and closer to the introduction of the first transparent solution. These chips will then have the chance to fundamentally change the current security standards in the market.

Jan Pleska, CTO of Tropic Square, describes how Examining and vetting the chip from every possible angle will help ensure the quality and reliability of the final product that goes out into the world.

The press release details the companys plans to make the final pre-production prototypes in the coming year, then hopefully start mass production and launch their product on the market in 2025.

With institutional banks declaring war on Bitcoin, its worth familiarizing yourself with permissionless methods for stacking sats.

This is an opinion editorial by Moon, a Bitcoin Maximalist and writer.

Just in case we needed a reminder, banks are showing us that they can and will gatekeep their customers money to prevent them from engaging with bitcoin. This should be a call to action for Bitcoiners or anyone else who wants to maintain control over their finances to move toward more proactive use of permissionless bitcoin tools and practices.

Ever since Jamie Dimon decried Bitcoin as a hyped-up fraud and a pet rock, on CNBC in late January 2023, I have found myself unable to purchase bitcoin using my Chase debit card on Cash App. And Im not the only one if youve been following Bitcoin Twitter recently, you may have seen Alana Joy tweet about her experience with the same. 

In both of our cases, it is the bank preventing bitcoin purchases and blocking inbound fiat transfers to Cash App for customers that it has associated with Bitcoin, all under the guise of fraud protection, of course.

No, it doesnt make a whole lot of sense Chase still allows ACH bitcoin purchases and fiat on Cash App can be used for investing in stocks, saving or using Cash Apps own debit card, not just bitcoin but yes, it is happening. Also, no one seems to know exactly when this became Chases policy. The fraud representative I spoke with wasnt sure and couldnt point to any documentation, but reasoned that the rule has been in place since early last year. Yet murkier still, loose chatter can be found on Reddit about this issue going back to at least April 2021.

However, given that I and so many others were definitely buying bitcoin via Chase debit throughout 2021 and 2022, Id wager that this policy, up to now, has only been exercised haphazardly, selectively, arbitrarily, even. Dark patterns abound, but for now, it seems like I just happen to be one of the unlucky ones

That said, there is nothing preventing this type of policy from being enforced broadly and in earnest by one or many banks. If and as banks feel threatened by Bitcoin, we will surely see more of these kinds of opaque practices.

Its Time To Get Proactive

Instead, we should expect it and prepare for it. So, rather than railing against banks, I want to use this as a learning experience to reflect on the importance of per...

Contrary to a Cambridge University study, Bitcoin mining leverages 52.6% sustainable energy, making it an appealing ESG investment.

This article provides a look at my latest research, revealing how it came to be that a 2022 Cambridge Centre For Alternative Finances (CCAF) study on Bitcoins environmental impact underestimates the amount of sustainable Bitcoin mining going on. I also address why we can be very confident that the actual sustainable energy usage is at least 52.6% of Bitcoin minings total energy use.

Why This Matters

Whatever your position on ESG investment, the reality is that its soaring, on track to reach $10.5 trillion in the U.S. alone. Whats also true is that Bitcoin adoption cannot occur unless this $10.5 trillion of ESG funds feels comfortable that Bitcoin is a net positive to the environment.

Right now, ESG investors largely dont feel comfortable that this is the case. In speaking with them, my impression is that one reason for ESG investor discomfort with Bitcoin is that the CCAF study, A Deep Dive Into Bitcoins Environmental Impact, reported that Bitcoin uses only 37.6% sustainable energy.

While ESG investors are generally quick to dismiss the work of Bitcoin-critic Alex de Vries debunked in an earlier Bitcoin Magazine article I have found they are also more likely to trust the CCAF study over a Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) study that found Bitcoin uses 58.9% sustainable energy. You can understand why: The Cambridge brand says reputable, independent research, while BMCs says, industry body.

Ironically, being an industry body, the very thing that gives BMC access to real-time Bitcoin mining data, also made its findings easier for at least some ESG investors to disqualify. Environmental groups such as Earth Justice and journals such as The Ecologist have been similarly quick to assume the CCAF numbers must be the correct ones.

To date, Bitcoiners have had a muted response. The result: The conversation about ESG funds getting behind Bitcoin cannot progress. Bitcoin user adoption stalls.

Meanwhile, environmental groups gain more fuel to lobby governments to regulate Bitcoin mining in a punitive...

For years, I lived a life of self-imposed limits. But the Bitcoin community has given me the confidence to share my perspective.

This is an opinion editorial by Mickey Koss, a West Point graduate with a degree in economics. He spent four years in the infantry before transitioning to the Finance Corps.

This one is for the plebs.

I'm not sure who needs to hear this, but I was not invited to write for Bitcoin Magazine. How could the team there have even known that I existed? In actuality, I found its article submission link by accident while looking for a customer service email address. Then, an idea hit me for an article, I shot off a quick email and they liked the idea.

Suddenly, I actually had to write a draft. When it eventually went live, I was hooked. Completely obsessed. I could not get enough of writing and then, the second article submission I sent received an unceremonious no. When I asked why, I received a scathing review from the editor.

I realized though, just because they thought the article sucked, that didn't mean that I did too. The critique was for the content, not for me. It was a great learning point that allowed me to adjust my strategy and change my frame of mind. Heck, this article is an adoption of a draft that got rejected for one of the print editions of Bitcoin Magazine. The editor who rejected me is now the producer for a fairly large, Bitcoin-focused YouTube channel. He actually just hired me to write behind the scenes for him. Hows that for full circle?

I didnt even post my first article through social media. It took nearly 10 articles of mine being published for me to publicly allude to the fact that I wrote them by posting the articles to LinkedIn. I was scared. I was scared about what my friends would think, what people would say, how they would react. I didnt have the confidence to promote my own content. But the community was welcoming and supportive. They continue to be. Along with the support of my wife, the Bitcoin community is what gave me the courage to keep going. If nothing else, the friendships Ive made along the way have been more than worth it

Write Your Proof-Of-Work Resume

Who am I? Im nobody. I probably have no business being here. But youre reading my article. It could have just as easily been yours. It can still be yours. Bitcoin has a hard cap, yes, but the Bitcoin community is not a zero-sum game.

Until I found Bitcoin, I had lived a life of invisible and self-imposed limits. I had resigned myself to the fact that I needed to invest early and often, and that I would need to pursue a low-risk, average and prudent career in order to be able to retire at 60 and live just long enough to die as my grandchildren started graduating from college.

But I became restless. Bitcoin allowed me to see things that I had previousl...

The Talmud offers investment teachings that have passed the test of time, but where might bitcoin fit into one of its most iconic lessons?

This is an opinion editorial by Konstantin Rabin, a finance and technology writer.

As a huge supporter of all things crypto, and especially Bitcoin, my thoughts often drift to a time before this revolutionary technology appeared on the scene, and I stand in awe of what it is bound to accomplish. I wonder: How would our forefathers have looked at it, and how can we use their teachings, applying the thought of the old thinkers to our modern existence?

While the money management strategies that can be found in books from thousands of years ago might seem crude or irrelevant to us today, I have always tried to look past the words on the page and into the meaning behind them to figure out what lessons they might teach us today. One day, while chatting with a friend about this, we considered why Bitcoin might even be backed by Talmudic teachings.

The Start Of An Idea

I'm not a religious person by nature, but it is hard to avoid conversations that stray off into that realm when sitting with some of your Jewish friends who are keen students of the Talmud and all things relating to Judaism. So, one night as I sat with one of these friends of mine, he brought up the Gemara, a component of the Talmud that incorporates investment advice and is often praised for its simplicity and effectiveness. The 63 books of the Gemara serve as a commentary on the Mishnah, which in turn serves as the first major writings of the Jewish oral traditions, spanning hundreds of years. The section that my friend was referring to, though, was a reading that goes as follows:

R. Isaac also said: One should always divide his wealth into three parts: (investing) a third in land, a third in merchandise, and (keeping) a third ready to hand. 

The Gemara, Tractate Baba Mezi'a 42a

The idea is that, in order to invest your money in a proper way, you should divide your assets into three equal parts spread equally among land, cash on hand and risky assets.

Hence, this is what the traditional Jewish diversified portfolio would look like:

A Third In Land

Land or if we generalize, real estate is one of the most stable investments out there. Buying and holding onto land or any other type of residential or commercial real estate has been a practice for thousands of years and is just as valid today, with expectations of the real estate market...