WTFBitcoin Week 15, 2023
Bitcoin is the fastest horse.
TLDR: Bitcoin has the best performance in Q123, CleanSpark purchases 45,000 Antminers, Strike allows cheap money transfers from US to several African Countries. Arkansas passed a “Right to Mine” bitcoin bill.
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.
Not so long ago, bitcoin was classified as the fastest horse by the hedge fund billionare Paul Tudor Jones. As the governments fail to get ahold of the economy and famous levers for manipulating rates stop working as intended, they are left with the ultimate tool they always come back on to: PRINTING MORE MONEY.
The money has to end up somewhere right? And as people lose confidence in the depreciative value of the USD or any other of the failing currencies around the world, well there is one digital and transportable scarce asset that anyone could have access to from anywhere in the world, Bitcoin.
If we take a look to the first quarter of this year, it has indeed lived up to the name of the fastest horse. The best performing asset of 1Q2023 is bitcoin, beating all other commodities, securities, indexes and bonds.
But let’s not get hooked on the short term. If we take a look at the last 10 years, which asset would you assume is the best appreciating one? You’ve got it, it’s once again bitcoin.
Ultimately, it is fundamentals what are of utmost importance, and the fundamental difference of Bitcoin’s design versus the dollar relies on its programmed & unchangeable issuance schedule (21 million only). Owning a bitcoin unit represents a percentage ownership of the total network, whereas owning dollars, well in this scenario you own a piece of a never ending and unknown issuance schedule dictated by the “mighty” Jerome Powell.
In other words, while Bitcoin is fundamentally designed to appreciate for ever, the dollar is specifically design to silently siphon out your wealth.
When looking at it on the short term, the dollar seems to be stable and bitcoin volatile and risky, but the long term reality is the dollar is losing purchasing power in a non volatile and stable manner, while Bitcoin is a stable network undergoing a volatile appreciation as it becomes sovereign & freedom money.
But well, let’s now go on and enjoy more of these bitcoin bullish news 🗞️🗞️!
THE NEWS
1. CleanSpark, the public mining company, has purchased 45,000 Antminer S19 XP miners in line with its goal of reaching 16 EH/s (or double their hashrate) by end of year.
2. A new Stratum v2 reference implementation (SRI) update is out, allowing miners to select transactions via job negotiator sub-protocol and their bitcoin node.
3. Pocket Bitcoin announces acquisition of Bitcoin Wallet App Bitkipi. Users will now be able to use in-house wallet app for when buying bitcoin using the service.
4. Strike expands its “Send Globally” feature, enabling lightning-fast and cheap money transfers from the United States to Senegal, Benin, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, and Togo.
“Open networks win.” – Strike
5. Lightspark the first enterprise-grade entry point to the Lightning Network, was released this week. With it, businesses can send and receive payments, build novel payment experiences and create new business models.
6. Block's TBD partners with Yellow Card to enable global payments in 16 African countries, via bitcoin rails.
7. Onramp Bitcoin has launched the first-ever spot bitcoin trust product that employs multi-party custody. This product is tailored to high-net-worth individuals, corporations and institutions seeking to gain exposure to bitcoin
8. The State of Arkansas has passed the ‘Right to Mine’ Bitcoin bill in the House & Senate. The bill is now poised to be signed by the Governor.
“For every "NY moratorium" style bill there will be 3 states who pass pro-BTC mining policy.” – Dennis Porter
9. Switzerland's City of Lugano partners with Swiss universities "to bring Bitcoin education to the masses”
10. Bitcoin Policy UK has launched with the stated aim of unlocking the potential of Bitcoin for the UK economy. The group is also launching two projects on the rapidly growing, UK-founded Bitcoin fundraising platform, Geyser. Learn more and contribute to the projects at Geyser.
11. London Stock Exchange Group will offer clearing services for cash-settled Bitcoin index futures and options.
12. Progress continues in the Scalability and Privacy side of Bitcoin, as the Cashu protocol cracks significant nuts:
- Programmable ecash a la P2SH
- Lightning fee returns - Ecash backups a la BIP32
- DLEQ proofs for client-side validation
- Promising proof of liabilities scheme
Oh the beauty of open source & freedom protocols such as Bitcoin.
13. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s Co-founder & CEO, seemed to be enthusiastic about lightning, and mentioned there are intentions to integrate it.
Only later to fail send $100 dollars as an award for a video of Africa using Bitcoin. Word in the street, was that he though what he received was an email address of a Coinbase account, and not a lightning address.
Not to worry, a good samaritan stepped in and saved the day by donating the same amount to Joe. That awkward moment when the CEO of the biggest exchange doesn’t seem to ever have tried lightning.. Right?
FUNDAMENTALS
Wallet of Satoshi is on pace for another record month of Lightning payments as they average 31,500 lightning payments per day in April 2023.
Illiquid Supply, or entities that hold over 75% of the bitcoin they take in, reaches an 8 year high.
After enduring a prolonged and challenging bear market, the bitcoin community has strongly held onto their sats and is now optimistic about brighter days ahead. Despite the difficult times, the community remains steadfast, and as the realization sinks in that only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist, the network continues issuing block by block, just as it is programmed to do so.
Stay humble & stack sats.
With love, Uncle Bam
Help Uncle Bam with a cup of coffee ☕ or a nice ribeye 🥩 <3
Lightning Address: rustybeam47@walletofsatoshi.com
Lightning URL: LNURL1DP68GURN8GHJ7AMPD3KX2AR0VEEKZAR0WD5XJTNRDAKJ7TNHV4KXCTTTDEHHWM30D3H82UNVWQHHYATNW3UKYETPD56RWT9G2XF
Nice, concise, high S/N, bulleted, weekly summary. Good work Uncle BAM!