2021W46 - WTF has happened in bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin gives people hope and dreams.
TLDR: Bitcoin giving hope to the community, First Bitcoin Bond, Buying the dip, Sports team adopting the bitcoin standard, and more.
Hey there niblings, it’s uncle Bam again, with a summary of the most insightful events in the Bitcoin space. Back at it again digesting all the important news for you.
This week I stumbled upon this video from Borderless Bitcoin Travel Show where they show a glimpse of the evolution of The Bitcoin Beach project, a vision started a couple of years ago of helping the beach town of El Zonte, in El Salvador, to become productive and independent from only remittances, through bulding a local economie based on bitcoin. The project is the fundament and inspiration for what it later became the Bitcoin Law in the country, where there are now interoperable USD-Bitcoin wallets which allow their citizens to transact on the currency of their choosing, while the counter-party receives the currency of choice.
In the video, we can hear Jorge, speaking how he got involved in the project as a young teenager, and his experience of growing up in a fisherman town with little to no opportunities, but one day it all changed, when people started to move into their community and started to believe in them, gave them hope.
The project allowed people to receive bitcoin while doing their chores, such as homework, or attending to courses. It teach the community about what money is and to manage their financial situations by incentivizing savings.
During the pandemic the project was “supercharged”. The whole country shut down and people didn’t have any savings or more than food for a couple of days, so the project started a sort of Universal Basic Income (UBI) by giving around 500 families in El Zonte about $40 dollars worth of bitcoin per month, which allowed them to finance their basic food needs.
In other words, bitcoin not only gave hope, but allowed families to have dreams again. They realized that there is an alternative to banks and to USD, which exists in the digital world and do not require them to have a bank account (which many can’t have). Additionally, many of them saw their savings appreciate, while all over the world have seen their currencies lose purchasing power.
And this is how the week started.
0. El Salvador issues $1 billion in a tokenized bond the Liquid network, through a partnership with Blockstream with the objective of buying Bitcoin and bitcoin mining infrastructure for their new volcano facility.
Additionally Nayib Bukele announced Bitcoin City, where bitcoin will be the legal tender, and there will be 0% on income, capital gains, property, payroll, municipal taxes and CO2 emissions. Making it an attractive place for many bitcoiners who feel limited by the rules of their local jurisdictions around the globe.
1. El Salvador’s Minister of Economy Maria Luisa Hayem, mentioned that the government is committed to innovating and is very proud to have adopted bitcoin.
2. AMC Theaters announced via Twitter that the chain now accepts Bitcoin for online payment.
3. The Perth Heat, the Australian Baseball League's most successful club, is officially the first sports league to embark on a bitcoin standard. The Heat will fully integrate Bitcoin and the Lightning Network into its operations to accept bitcoin payments, pay salaries to players and staff and even hold bitcoin on its balance sheet.
4. NBA Team Houston Rockets, has partnered with NYDIG in a sponsorship deal paid in bitcoin. The team will provide Bitcoin education programs for the community and bitcoin rewards and payment options for fans.
5. Marathon Digital Holdings announced a proposed convertible senior notes offering. The offering amounts to $500 million with the intention of purchasing bitcoin and bitcoin miners, and a due date of 2026.
6. Compass Mining is launching a sales platform for individual miners where anyone can register as a vendor to buy and sell used ASICs.
7. Local Bitcoins, the peer-to-peer trading platform, launched an iOS version of its mobile app three weeks after launching on Android.
8. Synonym Software, a company dedicated to bringing new utility and user experiences to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, has officially launched. The company is focused on bringing bitcoin a step closer to "hyperbitcoinization."
9. A bipartisan team of US senators is introducing a bill to clarify what entities should report cryptocurrency transactions to the IRS.
10. Cash App’s users will be able to send bitcoin to Taproot-enabled wallets by December 1, 2021.
11. Human Trafficking Institute will accept bitcoin donations both on-chain and through the Lightning Network leveraging OpenNode.
12. Fidelity was approved by Canadian regulators to launch a bitcoin custody and trading platform catered for institutional investors.
13. Bitrefill announces a new service allowing El Salvadorans to pay for their bills in BTC.
14. Jordan Peterson buys more bitcoin after a talk with Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin standard.
“Inflation be damned” - Jordan Peterson
15. ZEBEDEE, a fintech company focused on enabling Bitcoin services for the gaming industry, has partnered with gaming studio Viker, to bring play-to-earn bitcoin gaming to mobile users worldwide.
FUNDAMENTALS
Willy Woo shares with us his chart with the message: “Buying the dip”. In essence there doesn’t seem to be long term investors getting rid of their positions, rather the opposite, there is indication that long term investors are buying this dip.
As a summary note..
The price has swing hard reaching a low point of $55,000 after having touched $69,000 in just a matter of days. It is true that volatility could be painful, but it is the price to pay for an appreciating asset with a compound annual grow rate over 100%.
On these moments the buying pressure seems to get heated, with inflation running high and bitcoin education improving day by day, it is natural that more people reach the bitcoin rabbit hole.
Some will enter through the altcoin casino, gambling their life savings while attempting to find the “new bitcoin”. But there is another group of people, that with our help (bitcoiners), will find their sovereignty through savings, by simply accumulating the soundest money ever existed up to date.
Just as in this chart, where we can see how people are taking their savings day by day out of the custodial exchanges, and exercising their sovereignty by claiming their keys.
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
How to buy bitcoin? (With Relai through Revolut)
If you are in Europe, I made a pretty simple guide with 3 steps, which avoids you having to set up an account on an exchange, give them all of your personal information, plus custody of your funds.
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Great compilation...thanks!
Nice. I feel like stacking having read it, so, I will.