WTFBitcoin Week 8-9, 2023
Nostr is going parabolic.
TLDR: HRF grants 20 bitcoin, Jack Dorsey ups his bounty to 10 bitcoin. Nostr protocol is rippin’ with amount of users and amount of zaps. Blocks new wallet looking slick!
Hey there niblings, it’s uncle Bam again! I know I know.. its been a short break, but I am back! I decided to take a chill pill and completely enjoy some long due, rock climbing, vacations and not think much about Bitcoin or its price, and just when I was heading back home… BANG! We got some crazy red candle making people scared again.. But don’t you worry, lets sit together and digest all the important news from these last 2 weeks..
I am sure that this issue will ease your thoughts of any doom and demise views you could be having right now. As humans, we tend to have short memories, and easily fall into catastrophic views. Bear markets take a toll on us. Psychologically it is hard to get used to them, and especially now as it may feel as never ending bear market, with war and a recession going on. After so long, even when one knows sats are fixed in supply, and there is a desire of accumulating the most amounts as possible from the scarcest asset, one can only wish to see some positive returns.
There comes a point where "you want to feel that bitcoin is giving you back a little something”, after a resilient couple of months or even years of diligently stacking, and postponing immediate gratification for a prosperous future.
Even though it could not feel like it, there will be better times.. And this is precisely why I bring up to you, this high dose of good things happening in the space. Because its easier to look for the price, but the signal is often hidden through the noise.
Let’s unpack the signal together🔥
THE NEWS
1. Human Rights Foundation has granted 2 billion satoshis, approximately $475,000, from the Bitcoin Development Fund to 10 global projects.
"Bitcoin is a powerful tool for human rights defenders around the world.. financial freedom is a human right” – Alex Gladstein
2. Tropic Square, a startup backed by SatoshiLabs, the company behind Trezor, has been testing their new TROPIC01 chip, with the objective of creating an open source security chip for usage in Bitcoin hardware.
3. Trezor, a Prague-based Bitcoin hardware company, has announced that it has taken control of its silicon chip supply chain.
4. Mi Primer Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education program based in El Salvador, has announced a new and improved diploma program in English.
5. BitPolito launched BitGeneration, a project that aims to bring Bitcoin education to Italian high schools.
Lessons taught cover various aspects of Bitcoin, from financial inclusion, economics and structures of society to computer science and game theory. Also practical lessons focusing on showing the ease of using Bitcoin, from creating a seed phrase and a wallet, to downloading and managing a full-node, and even time chain analysis and mining.
6. Blockstream, has announced a formalized Blockstream Research team with a focus on advancing the platforms at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
7. Bitcoin payment processing software BTCPay Server has added a Wasabi’s CoinJoin plugin for its merchants, allowing them to retain privacy while managing their stores.
8. Jack Dorsey’s Block has released an update on the development of its self-custody Bitcoin wallet, designed to empower the next 100 million people. The wallet will work with global and local partnerships with exchanges to provide optionality and a smooth and transparent buy and sell experience to its users.
9. Mash, a monetization service powered by Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, has announced that people will no longer have to create an account on the service in order to utilize it.
10. TBD, a Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s Block, has announced a new Lightning Network business called c=. The objective of C= is to provide infrastructure using bitcoin from Block’s treasury to make bitcoin’s Lightning Network more usable and reliable for developers, businesses, and those businesses' end consumers.
11. Xapo Bank has partnered with Lightspark 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 makes Xapo Bank the first fully licensed private bank to offer Lightning payments.
12. Binance announces support for new African currencies without third parties. Users in Liberia, Sierra Leone and more can now directly utilize their local currencies to buy and sell bitcoin through Binance P2P.
13. 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 essence, if you have bitcoin on Blue Wallet Lightning (yep, the yellow module in the app), send them to another wallet.
14. Geyser Grants Round 2 winners have been selected. With 90 applicants and 30 winners, 100M Sats were distributed!
NOSTR CONTINUES ITS PARABOLIC RISE
15. The number of accounts in Nostr has grown by more than 5x by the end of February with more than 625k profiles.
16. The number of “Zaps”, or a like version of Nostr protocol which it’s a bitcoin lightning donation directly to an author of a “tweet” (for lack of better word) has grown in an exponential manner.
17. The number lightning transactions for tools like @LightningTipBot, has also grown exponentially, as the “Zap” functionallity was added on Nostr.
18. Jack Dorsey increases his bounty from 1.2 bitcoin to 10 bitcoin on the development of a credible permissionless alternative to Github based on Nostr, one that bitcoin-core and all nostr developers would trust.
FUNDAMENTALS
Now I know the price got a little setback with Silvergate news (Yep, not directly bitcoin related or bullish, so not sharing here) but lets have a refresh of all the right questions we should be asking ourselves instead of the most famous one we normally ask.
Instead of asking ourselves:
Why the bitcoin price dumped and its back to $22,000? Will it go lower?
Ask yourself:
Why is has more than 67.6% of all bitcoin have not moved in over a year? Is there that much conviction?
Why has at the same time, the hash rate continue to go up and hitting new all time highs? Are they getting new ways of having cheaper energy? Is mining incentivising new energy production? Are these miners investing in a long term prosperity future for bitcoin?
How can the total number of bitcoins not move, but at the same time, more and more value is being transferred through the bitcoin lightning network? How does lightning continues increasing its capacity?
And how come does less bitcoin lives in the hand of exchanges? Is people beginning to recognise the power of a peer-to-peer, censorship resistance and digitally scarce kind of money?
And lastly, how come the amount of unique addresses continues to increase, specially in the smaller subsets, is it that “plebs” are finding value on it as a savings technology? How come bitcoin still exists even after 14 years?
Now the most important question:
After seeing all of these positive metrics of adoption..
Are you stacking enough?
Its nice to be back!
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
Buy Uncle Bam a cup of coffee ☕ or a nice ribeye 🥩 <3
Lightning Address: rustybeam47@walletofsatoshi.com
Lightning URL: LNURL1DP68GURN8GHJ7AMPD3KX2AR0VEEKZAR0WD5XJTNRDAKJ7TNHV4KXCTTTDEHHWM30D3H82UNVWQHHYATNW3UKYETPD56RWT9G2XF