2022W23 - WTF happened in Bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin is adopted through education.
TLDR: 8.6% CPI makes 40 year record high, Lightning Capacity reaches 4,000 bitcoin, Companys accepting Bitcoin, Future generations must be taught.
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.
Another week and reported inflation, or CPI, for the U.S. was 8.6%, the highest it has been in the last 40 years. As the news came out, the bitcoin price immediately started to plunge, as people speculate potential lower prices feel the need to reduce exposure, or even attempt to beat the game intending to “buy back at lower prices”, often a dangerous decision, which doesn’t play as one expects.
Interestingly, the number reported is meaningless, as inflation is composed of a basket of goods, but often my inflation in terms of consumption might be different than yours. One thing we can all agree with is the cost of living, meaning rent & food.
According to Charlie Bilello, shelter is the biggest component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and they are being underrepresented when we have the price of rents gone up 15.4% and home prices 20.6% over the last year.
This was even empirically measured and shared by Lyn Alden, who reported how prices in her area are up over 25% during the past 2.5 years. Is this all of it? Apparently not, we all know energy prices have recently skyrocketted through the roof, but food has also increased gradually, and often going unnoticed as it distributes itself on multiple products and it becomes harder to track it indipendently from human experience, but eating food at home has increased 11.9%, way over the reported CPI.
A big question comes into mind is, are they lying to us?
And why would they under report?
The truth is I don’t know, but assuming they don’t have nefarious intent, it is possible that the way of calculating it, is just wrong. And while we have the only asset that its supply isn’t manipulated and could serve as the only solution for perpetual cycle of monetary debasement and wealth syphoning from the have nots to the haves; WallStreet, who many of us wanted them to adopt it for its price appreciation, might be just in fact trading it against us. Shorting it and treating it as a risk asset, attempting to hedge cover their other longs.
Yes, I am talking about bitcoin here.
THE NEWS!
1. PayPal has enabled customers to now send, receive and transfer bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies between wallets and exchanges.
2. 3iQ’s fund released a bitcoin ETF on Australia’s CBOE Exchange, it operates as a mutual underlying fund of bitcoin holdings valued by the weighted average price of BTC without taking direct custody of any bitcoin.
3. Octagon Networks has converted its entire balance sheet into bitcoin and will begin accepting payments in BTC for all services.
4. Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z announce the Bitcoin Academy, to help those in financial hardship with free courses, devices and data plans.
5. Mash, a Bitcoin Lightning Network infrastructure provider, closed a $6 million seed round to build out its usage-based revenue model for content creators.
6. An entrepreneur from Ohio paid Everbowl franchise fees in bitcoin for two new locations following the company’s adoption of a Bitcoin standard.
7. GEM Mining increased total miners and hash rate, but increasing difficulty and a lower average BTC price drove metrics down for the month of May.
The company has produced 239 BTC in May
Totals about 1,160 bitcoin year to date production
With 19,000 mining machines in their fleet.
8. Edge released the first confidential bitcoin MasterCard. The new card will not collect KYC data used to determine a person’s identity giving complete privacy and instant transfers with no fees.
“There is no name or address associated with your Edge Mastercard, making for completely private transactions when your card is used” - Edge Website
9. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, a bipartisan bill for regulatory clarity for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Find out all you need to know about it here.
10. The St. Louis Federal Reserve released a blog post with customizable graphs to allow anyone to measure the price of commodities against the bitcoin price.
We are becoming so relevant boys & girls.. Of course they didn’t zoom out on their blog post.
FUNDAMENTALS
Growth & Adoption is what really matters, and despite the price of bitcoin oscillating and having a temporal downturn, yes I said it temporal.. Development and adoption seem to get stronger. For instance:
Lightning has just surpassed 4,000 bitcoin in capacity. Even Deloitte has mentioned that 93% of the businesses accepting Bitcoin have seen revenue growth and their brand perception improved.
And adoption is also growing, as the number of Addresses with non-zero balance, continues to display new All-Time-Highs (ATH).
As a summary note..
Ive said it before, and Ill repeat again:
Do not ask what bitcoin can do for you? But.. what can you do for bitcoin? - Popular bitcoin proverb.
Money is a network effect, and bitcoin’s good properties are clearly being noticed and from its long-term value appreciation and opportunity for self sovereignty, it attracts people as they found it fit as a good long term store of value. It is true though, that the entry barrier is often difficult, as seeing it as “magic internet money” and not backed by government could make people feel like there is some sort of ponzi-scheme which others want to profit on their expense.
Precisely having non government money which can’t be debased, confiscated and can be digitally transported through space & time is the beauty of it.
Naturally, it doesn’t come by itself, Bitcoin is a human movement, and we, the people are the ones who need to help our friends, relatives & specially the new generations to understand this paradigm shift, this new technology that could make our future more prosperous.
Maybe we can learn something from this german school teaching 10th graders about money as a tool for freedom and human rights, and why bitcoin matters.
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
Supported by:
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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Lightning Address:
cherryskate01@walletofsatoshi.com