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A Japanese insurer with $65 billion of assets plans to offload all its currency-hedged foreign debt holdings, foreshadowing what may become a renewed wave of selling by some of the biggest investors in global bond markets. Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. is among the first of Japan’s life insurers to lay out investment strategies for the fiscal year. With combined assets of $2.9 trillion, the industry has long been a major force in overseas markets but has pulled back in the past year as hedging costs erase the yield premium on foreign debt, and expectations rise for an end to the Bank of Japan’s ultra-loose monetary policy. Last year’s surge in dollar-hedging costs for Japanese investors has eaten away most, if not all, of the returns they get from foreign sovereign debt. A 10-year Treasury bond with a yield of 3.6% has a negative return with hedging costs now at more than 5%. That’s making even low-yielding domestic debt attractive.
Tweets: @spomboy @GoldTelegraph_ $Intel told Tom's Hardware that “As we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have end-of-lifed the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while we continue to support our Blockscale customers.” Intel will continue to serve its existing Boockscale customers, implying it will satisfy its existing long-term contracts. Intel's customers have until October 2023 to order new chips, and shipments will end in April 2024. Meanwhile, Intel has scrubbed nearly all of the landing and product pages for the Blockscale chips from its website.
Tweets: @tomshardware @TheBlock__ $Before the Great Depression in 1930, Argentina stood among the world's 10 richest nations per capita. But since the 1950s, few countries have spent more years in recession. Today, more than four in 10 Argentines live in poverty. Argentina's central bank keeps printing more pesos in the face of stubborn deficit spending, constant devaluation and global price shocks. Among the most exhausting problems caused by galloping inflation is that nobody seems to know the price of anything anymore — a phenomenon economists refer to as "unanchored expectations". Yet this nationwide confusion about what anything should cost has done nothing to dampen the Argentine enthusiasm for spending. "You'll go to restaurants in Buenos Aires that are full, not because people are thriving financially but because they say, 'quema la plata', meaning 'burn the money'". Some experts believe Argentines hold more US currency than anywhere outside the US. "This is not just rich Argentine companies [chasing dollars]. This is service sector people. This is taxi drivers and store owners. This is any Argentine who wants to have savings of any kind." And so many Argentines spend like it's the end times, buying everything from towels to televisions in instalments. "In Argentina, the world is back to front. Houses are bought in a single cash payment; small items are paid over one or two years in fixed monthly instalments," Guido says. "That's part of the madness … because as long as the money is in pesos, the good is worth more than the money." "The truth is that the only way to save money is to buy goods."
Tweets: @Pat_Gillespie @ABCaustralia @stats_feed @elpaisinenglish @AJEnglish @business $“There is zero proof that ‘web3’ exists, let alone that it would be some kind of new and better version of the internet,” Cory Klippsten, CEO of financial firm Swan Bitcoin, told Protos. He added, “All we‘ve seen from a16z and their co-conspirators over the past five years are scheme after scheme to market useless tokens and sell them without ever achieving any kind of product-market fit for the associated project. They can make all the science-y sounding slides they like, but it doesn‘t change the fact that this once-venerable firm is all-in on the pump-and-dump business.”
Tweets: @coryklippsten @coryklippsten @Protos @coryklippsten @edzitron $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @NeilJacobs @NeilJacobs @_k3tan @barackomaba @AP_Abacus @CaitlinLong_ @metaversehodl @CaitlinLong_ @CaitlinLong_ @ErikVoorhees @barackomaba @CaitlinLong_ @naval @ramahluwalia $Because financial institutions have a front-row seat for watching the country’s cash flow, financial institutions are obligated to alert regulators and law enforcement through a Suspicious Activity Report if there’s irregular behavior that they cannot easily explain. Not all reports lead to account closures, and not all closures lead to reports. But if banks fail to report suspicious activity and regulators discover problematic transactions later, banks and their compliance employees are potentially on the hook for all manner of penalties. “So all their incentives are toward closing accounts,” according to an explanation of SARs on the website of the Bank Policy Institute, a research and advocacy organization that represents mid- and large-size banks. Financial institutions filed 1.4 million of these SARs in 2021, according to a bureau of the Treasury Department. That was nearly 70% higher than the 839,314 filed in 2014. Besides the overall rise in fraudulent activity, several factors could be behind the increase in filings — more alerts from government officials tipping off banks to specific activities, increasingly sophisticated technologies to detect them and more regulatory scrutiny. Yet most of the time, the customers are probably innocent.
$In a brief Friday afternoon interview with DFD, Dorsey said he had not even heard about Twitter’s decision to block engagement with tweets that link to the rival platform Substack. Instead, he pushed for his vision of an internet in which fights over the power of social media platforms would essentially cease to be relevant.
$Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @pwuille @glassnode @QuotesSovereign @DylanLeClair_ @ODELL @robustus @JoeConsorti @biancoresearch @J0E007 @saifedean @robustus @saifedean @unusual_whales @_Checkmatey_ @francispouliot_ @lopp @RiotPlatforms @parkeralewis @AlexEpstein @robustus @jimmysong $Unlimited deposit insurance means that when banks fail, the government pays more. More than 90% of the cost of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure went to bailing out the uninsured deposits of companies such as Roku and Roblox. SVB’s 10 largest customers had $13 billion in total deposits. Supporters of unlimited deposit insurance say that small businesses need this protection. They argue that businesses can’t be expected to keep an eye on the health of their bank. But the current system of limited deposit insurance seemed to be working before regulators bailed out Silicon Valley Bank. Most small businesses are already fully covered. One study of 600,000 small businesses found their median bank balance was $12,100, less than 5% of today’s deposit cap. There will always be some banks that fail. Government’s job is to protect the vulnerable, and existing deposit-insurance limits do that. When banks fail, losses should go to those who had their money at risk. Capitalism doesn’t work if the wealthy can never lose their money.
Tweets: @BrookingsInst @EconWithNick @Aarondklein @Aarondklein @Aarondklein @norbertjmichel @MMCOWRD @MartinDKennedy1 $*What is a Recession? *Yield Curves *GDP, GDI & Corporate Profits *False Confidence Signals *How to Position Yourself
Tweets: @jameslavish $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @ydemombynes @FedGuy12 @LynAldenContact @LynAldenContact @Leishman @J0E007 @alexbosworth @lopp @BobEUnlimited @LynAldenContact @steve_donze @TXMCtrades @lopp @LynAldenContact @JeffSnider_AIP @LynAldenContact $A new report from the failed crypto exchange FTX’s current leadership says that former FTX US President Brett Harrison resigned last September partly because of a “protracted disagreement” with CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and members of his inner circle. The report, filed Sunday with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware, is FTX CEO John J. Ray III’s first detailed account of the control failures at the exchange since he took over after its spectacular collapse last November. Harrison, according to the report, had serious concerns about the way FTX US was being run, including “the lack of appropriate delegation of authority, formal management structure and key hires.” When he took those concerns to Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh, former director of engineering, his bonus was “drastically reduced” and he was instructed by company lawyers to apologize to Bankman-Fried, according to the report. He refused.
Tweets: @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @BrettHarrison88 @lopp @CoinDesk @BrettHarrison88 $Founded in 2015, Paxful became one of the most popular places to buy bitcoin in Africa and other emerging markets, with more than 200 employees. Behind the scenes, staff took paid trips to music festivals, bosses fought, dismissals reportedly occurred on a whim and the smell of cannabis permeated the office.
Tweets: @CoinDesk @bradmillscan @CoinDesk @CoinDesk @CoinDesk @CoinDesk @nic__carter $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @JackFarley96 @brian_armstrong @Bitfinexed @LynAldenContact @glassnode @jessefelder @gladstein @Breedlove22 @gladstein @notgrubles @BitcoinMagazine @parkeralewis $For the layman, there is no dire need to get caught up in the schematics of the debate whether recent Fed policy is quantitative easing or not. Instead, the question that deserves to be asked is what would have happened to the financial system if the Federal Reserve didn’t conjure up $360 billion worth of liquidity from thin air over the last month? Widespread bank runs? Collapsing financial institutions? Soaring bond yields that send global markets spiraling downwards? All were possible and even likely and this highlights the increasing fragility of the system. Bitcoin offers an engineering solution to peacefully opt out of the politically corrupted construct colloquially known as fiat money. Volatility will persist, exchange rate fluctuations should be expected, but the end game is as clear as ever.
$The sound box device — first introduced by India’s largest fintech company, Paytm, in 2019 — has been a runaway hit among small Indian businesses. Neighborhood mom-and-pop stores (kiranas) and street vendors, who had traditionally shied away from paying for tech services, have warmed up to the sound box. The smart device — essentially a speaker bearing the logo of the fintech company facilitating the transactions — comes with a built-in SIM card. Most sound boxes can read out payment confirmation messages in English and multiple Indian languages.
Tweets: @Nithin0dha @restofworld @Adnanmbhat @moo9000 @hkanji @restofworld $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @VailshireCap @thatrpb @GameofTrades_ @VailshireCap @noonesapp @DocumentingBTC @MichaelAArouet @trustmachinesco @luke_broyles @CaitlinLong_ @mattcsnow @VailshireCap @jimmysong @marvtridon @BitcoinPierre @jimmysong @nic__carter @stackhodler @ODELL @Mandrik @jimmysong $Creating new applications on Bitcoin presents an opportunity to leverage the most secure, resilient and liquid network to build Web3. From social networks to financial services, Web3 applications look to convert our most sensitive daily touch points into trustless systems. Eliminating centralized control means that the systems underlying Web3 applications must be as stable and ironically trustworthy as possible. Bitcoin blockchain has proven, through over a decade of unfailingly solid and routine operations, that it is the most secure and economically viable blockchain network and therefore the ideal foundation for Web3. To neglect to build on Bitcoin would be to forsake key applications for the network that have the potential to make the internet, and the world at large, a better place.
$Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @LukeMikic21 @chad_pleb @callebtc @RufasKe @VandelayBTC @saifedean @MitchellHODL @BTCillustrated @TXMCtrades $No one can predict the future, but we can safely assume that the adoption of bitcoin has reached the point of no return. This has been confirmed by bitcoin’s adoption as legal tender in nation states like El Salvador and its inclusion on a number of balance sheets by Nasdaq-listed companies like Tesla and MicroStrategy. Bitcoin’s use case as a digital store of value implies that continuous adoption is accompanied by a continuous increase in price, because bitcoin is fixed in supply. There is simply no better technology than Bitcoin that fulfils the role of a digital store of value. Just as humanity never went back to horses after the development of cars, we will not stop using bitcoin and return to an inferior money like the U.S. dollar, gold or U.S. Treasuries to store value.
$Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @BTC_for_Freedom @RadarHits @MoheganBTC @RufasKe @luke_broyles @nickgerli1 @resistancemoney @gladstein @DSBatten @IIICapital @mullvadnet @balajis @khalliburton @CoinDesk @IIICapital @wesley2145_ @lopp $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @balajis @BitcoinMagazine @GBKS @BitcoinPierre @BitcoinNewsCom @Vinteum_org @Croesus_BTC @gladstein @BrianGitt @blinkbtc @adam3us @VailshireCap @woonomic @BitcoinNewsCom $US federal regulators are allegedly waging a “clandestine financial war” against the crypto industry, according to Washington, D.C. law firm Cooper & Kirk PLLC. The FDIC, the OCC and others are allegedly using “regulatory tools and pressure tactics” to limit the extent digital assets have on the financial system, the law firm said Monday in a white paper. The law firm is calling the latest regulatory actions in the US “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.” The operation is modeled after a similar initiative under the Obama administration, which attempted to target fraudulent and high-risk industries, including the tobacco and payday lending industries.
Tweets: @bas_ornstein @exlawyernft $The bitcoin sold is part of the 50,000 BTC seized in November following the arrest of James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud after the government alleged he manipulated the transaction system on darknet market Silk Road in 2012. At the time, the government hailed it as the largest cryptocurrency seizure. The government intends to liquidate the remaining 41,490 bitcoins in four tranches over the course of this calendar year.
Tweets: @robert_ruschak @SpecialSitsNews @CoinDesk @broadmode @biztoc @Mahmood88239370 @PhilipObin $Please tag @BTCNEWS_TODAY on Twitter to submit tweets.
Tweets: @alexbosworth @nayibbukele @RadarHits @balajis @JeffSnider_AIP @MitchellHODL @LynAldenContact @BTCsessions @jimmysong @john_j_brown @profstonge @SenSanders @bluesky @BitcoinPierre @balajis @balajis @Breedlove22 @jameslavish @Pledditor @adam3us @balajis @balajis @BitcoinPierre @nayibbukele @alexbosworth @OneRentalatTime @CoinDesk @CryptoTea_ @BTC_for_Freedom @bradmillscan @JeffSnider_AIP $Ads
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Tech & Dev
BOLT, which stands for "Basis of Lightning Technology", refers to a set of technical specifications or protocols that define the rules and procedures for how the Lightning Network should operate. BOLT was first introduced in 2017 by a group of developers working on the Lightning Network, and since then, it has undergone several updates and revisions. The protocols are open source and available to anyone who wants to use or develop Lightning-related applications and services. There are several layers to BOLT, each of which defines a specific set of rules and protocols. Overall, BOLT provides a comprehensive specification for the Lightning Network, allowing different implementations to interoperate with each other seamlessly.
$While Secure Elements sound like a fantastic place to store something like a Seed Phrase, they’re also closed source, proprietary chips that cannot be openly verified due to NDAs the manufacturers force everyone to sign. So if you want your Hardware Wallet to be entirely FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), you can’t use them. Many of the top Hardware Wallets out there all use the same STM32 microcontroller, which becomes a problem because now you have the vast majority of Hardware Wallets all using the same product from the same manufacture: STMicroelectronics.
$Nostr is a revolutionary protocol for social media because it provides a decentralized, monetizable, incentive-aligned, market-driven, and open-source platform for social interaction. Nostr has the potential to create a new era of social media that prioritizes user sovereignty and free market competition.
Tweets: @lopp $The only Bitcoin spending conditions in widespread use today are simple single-sigs and simple multisigs, even though Bitcoin Script, the language used to encode spending conditions in Bitcoin transactions, is much more powerful than that. The reason for this is that Bitcoin Script, while appearing to be a simple stack-based language on the surface, is actually very difficult to use in practice. For every new spending condition a developer might want to create, a lot of time has to be spent making sure it is correct and sound under all circumstances, which can be hard to reason about.
$Bitcoin is an open-source project that is permissionless, meaning anyone can join the network and become part of the network. While Running a bitcoin node can help secure the network for all users, ensure faster transactions, and contribute to a decentralised economy that exists without a centralized server, it does require some operational and security practices. This article is essential if you plan on running a node or run one and want to ensure you’re plugging some of the possible gaps for an attack.
$BIP-300, which enables a feature called Drivechains on the Bitcoin network. Normally, one would hope that the author of a BIP is not very central or relevant to whether or not it gets attention, but as Sztorc seems to be the major voice continuing to push for Drivechain after being essentially rejected or ignored on the forums and mailing list, it might be worth knowing this brief background & motivation. Sztorc is no intellectual slouch, and he's very open about his conviction that the success of Bitcoin is fully dependent on its adoption of Drivechain. Drivechains fundamentally change the transaction validation mechanism from “all spends must provide cryptographic proofs” to “some spends do not require cryptographic proofs”. It fundamentally changes the ability to attack the network from “the attacker must acquire 51% of the hash rate” to “the attacker must propose a transaction and fight out ownership in meatspace”. It fundamentally changes attack response from “move hash away from the bad actor” (e.g., out of a pool, or by adding more honest hash) to “convince all the miners or nodes to do a UASF in favor of one party over another”.
Tweets: @barackomaba $It's great to see Bitcoiners joining Nostr, the decentralized social network. This is a good, short post from ConsentOnChain blog that all Nostriches should read.
Tweets: @jack @pleblira @jb55 @andreneves @cameri @melvincarvalho @derekmross @JeffBooth @yeg0rpetrov @pippellia @notgrubles @cameri @jameslavish @SovrynM @vishalxl @fiatjaf @fiatjaf @CaptFrancisDank @nitesh_btc @spiralcrunch @shukla @nvk @shukla @nvk @resistancemoney @BTCNEWS_TODAY $Podcasts
| Date | Name | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-04-20 | What Bitcoin Did | The Sovereign Debt Bubble with Luke Gromen |
| 2023-04-12 | The "What is Money?" Show / Robert Breedlove | The Most Important Question in the World Today | Episode 2 | (WiM298) |
| 2023-04-12 | The "What is Money?" Show / Robert Breedlove | The Most Important Question in the World Today | Episode 1 | (WiM297) |
| 2023-04-12 | The Indicator from Planet Money / NPR | How one small change in Japan could sway U.S. markets (BOJ ceasing yield curve control - Ed.) |
Longform
Bitcoin will consume any and all energy resources necessary to secure its monetary network, which is inherently driven by the base demand to hold it as a currency. The more people that value the long-term stability it provides, the more energy it will consume. In the end, this consumption will ensure all other derivatives of energy consumption will continue to be fulfilled, which is why there is no more important long-term use of energy than securing the bitcoin network. Put a price on economic stability and the economic freedom a stable monetary system provides; that is the true justification for the amount of energy bitcoin should and will consume. Everything else is a distraction.
$Thanks to going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, we now have a more precise framework to explain “self custody of education” and its significance. Homeschoolers and bitcoiners prefer decentralization, embrace the principle of self custody, understand Proof Of Work, gravitate to libertarian ideas, value personal responsibility, believe in hope and freedom, push education and are entering the then-they-fight-you stage.
$Behavioral economics has long been cited to describe our “irrational tendencies” as consumers and investors. Rich extends that discussion specifically to Bitcoin because, let’s face it, when it comes to crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically, the influence of emotions, biases, heuristics and social pressure in shaping our preferences, beliefs and behaviors is profound… and fascinating.
$Over the past decade the crypto asset ecosystem has exploded in size and complexity. While the overwhelming majority of projects are arguably scams or simply shitty ideas, one in a hundred does manage to innovate and find product market fit. Bitcoin maximalism has evolved as a result, but it has also become more complex as schisms have appeared. Bitcoin is inherently counterculture. It is an adversarial environment. We should not expect that everyone will get along. Bitcoin is for enemies. Bitcoin maximalism itself is neither good nor bad; it was born as a rational pushback to flawed narratives used to perpetuate scams and poorly architected projects. What we’ve witnessed over the past decade is an evolution and fracturing of folks who hold maximalist views. Some have chosen more nuanced paths while others have remained absolutists. Bitcoin maximalism is neither dead nor is it dying. It is alive and well, though perhaps it’s suffering from an identity crisis as a result of some folks trying to make it a more exclusive subculture.
Tweets: @aantonop @lopp @lopp @lopp @lopp @aantonop @lopp @stephanlivera @lopp @bradmillscan @brian_trollz @lopp $When you broaden your perspective of bitcoin from a currency and payment system to that of a secure historical ledger, it becomes clear that these properties, in conjunction with each other, can enable powerful applications. Some of bitcoin’s properties are difficult to describe comprehensively. While permissionlessness (anyone can use the system without asking permission or fear of being censored) and transparency (anyone can audit the ledger) are straightforward, trustlessness and immutability are more complex. With a strongly anchored blockchain to use as a foundation, an ecosystem of many chains can develop. As such, bitcoin can be the “one chain to rule them all“ while simultaneously fostering a diverse array of blockchains. If you need a strong proof of your service’s data integrity, don’t choose second best – anchor to the most trustworthy chain.
Tweets: @random_walker @lopp @lopp @martindale $This article details why the incumbent global financial system is irreversibly broken, how it got to this point, and what the world will look like coming out the other side of the present crisis. It uses the frameworks presented in Ray Dalio’s Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises along with author's own analysis to contextualize the global economic landscape, and details how the emergence of bitcoin as a global monetary asset will serve as a release valve.
$It's easy to see how early adopters of real estate on some forbidding frontier earned their wealth, even if it was only by being early and willing to risk ruin. We also have little trouble celebrating early investors in Amazon or Google or Apple for their foresight and daring to bet on a bold vision of the future. And yet, many people seem unwilling or unable to grant the same recognition to early Bitcoin adopters. When it comes to Bitcoin, the broader public is quick to label early adopters as somehow lucky for the riches they didn’t seem to earn. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you think Bitcoin’s wealth distribution is fair or not. All that really matters is whether you decide to secure some acreage for the benefit of your family and its future generations, as Juan Camarillo did.
Tweets: @Beautyon_ @Croesus_BTC @marcrjandrew $In the United States, the banking system as a whole has $22.9 trillion in assets and $20.7 trillion in liabilities. The problem, of course, is that their assets are riskier and less liquid than their liabilities, and so they face both liquidity risks and solvency risks if things aren’t managed well, or if they face external shocks that are larger than they can deal with. The majority of bank liabilities are deposits for individuals and businesses, and these deposits currently total $17.6 trillion. That’s what you and I consider to be our “money”. They offer very low interest rates, especially for checking and savings accounts. Banks currently have just $3 trillion in cash to back up their $17.6 trillion in deposits. The majority of this cash is just a ledger entry with the U.S. Federal Reserve, and so it is not tangible. Somewhere around $100 billion of it ($0.1 trillion) is held by banks in the form of actual physical banknotes in vaults and ATMs. So, the $17.6 trillion in deposits are backed up by just $3 trillion in cash, of which perhaps $0.1 trillion is physical cash. The rest is backed up by less liquid securities and loans. Regulators want banks to be reasonably safe, but not “too safe”. They want all banks to be leveraged bond funds to a certain degree, and won’t allow safer ones to exist.
$Open commerce requires the transfer of both information and value. Therefore, both open monetary networks and open information networks (and their actual usage rather than merely their existence) matter for the study of economics, geopolitics, and various long-range investment outcomes. In general, any jurisdiction that is attractive in the sense that people and capital want to come to it, and information can be shared freely within it and with the rest of the world, should welcome such technologies. Open monetary and information networks, especially if their usage spreads around the world in ways that are hard to prevent, enable and accelerate more value flowing into these freer jurisdictions from elsewhere. Borders become less relevant from an economic point of view. On the other hand, any jurisdiction that is unattractive in the sense that people and capital want to escape it, and information is restricted within it and with the rest of the world in order to protect the rulers, should fear such technologies. Open monetary and information networks create more leaks of capital and information into and out of their jurisdictions, empowering their people, or forcing more expenditure by their rulers to increase the existing restrictions to maintain their isolation.
$One of the more misunderstood topics in the world is banks. How they work, how they succeed, and how they fail are all things that are typically described with some mix of factual accuracy, factual inaccuracy, deliberate obfuscation, and straight up confusion so profound it is neither correct nor incorrect, but rather so incoherent it seems like it originated from another dimension. To that end, in light of the current Silvergate situation, I am going to endeavor to do three things with this post: 1. Describe a deliberately oversimplified model of how a bank works 2. Describe how banks typically fail, in light of this model 3. Apply points one and two to the current situation at Silvergate
Tweets: @CampbellJAustin @nic__carter @CampbellJAustin $As Powell and the Federal Reserve are emboldened to tighten policy into a global slowdown, with the dollar strengthening to new highs on a weekly basis and energy prices skyrocketing around the world, we view it as increasingly likely that something breaks in a massive way over the next six months. Six months may even be too generous of a timeline. Given the Fed plans to begin quantitative tightening next month, reducing its balance sheet to the tune of $95 billion per month, we expect something under the surface will crack in financial markets. With this being said, we think what “breaks” is liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market, as a soaring dollar, skyrocketing energy prices and subsequently contracting global productivity lead to a sell-off in dollar-denominated assets. There still is a massive implicit short dollar position around the world (USD-denominated debt). We still have yet to see the blow-off top short squeeze in the USD. In that environment only two places are safe, volatility (as an asset class) and dollars. Everything else sells. Bitcoin won't be insulated, nothing will. When that time comes, the Fed will be forced to print into an inflation spike. This is when bitcoin comes back with a vengeance.
$Bitcoin mining is currently one of the most competitive and fragmented industries in the world. Our Porter’s Five Forces analysis indicates that the bitcoin mining industry will remain ultra-competitive and fragmented. The industry has exceptionally low barriers to entry, meaning there will be a constant flow of new entrants into the sector. The low barriers to entry are great for decentralization but put pressure on the profit potential of existing players. The ultra-competitive nature of bitcoin mining has two implications. Firstly, the industry will likely stay decentralized, and secondly, only the lowest-cost operators will survive and thrive over the long term.
Tweets: @JMellerud $While bitcoin’s usefulness as a store of value and medium of exchange is becoming more widely appreciated, those choosing to adopt it tend to cluster into stages. These stages are: Learn, Insure, Save, Allocate, Commit, and Endure
Tweets: @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap @unchainedcap $Transcript of the 24 Risks of Equities with Michael Saylor from the Bitcoin Layer Podcast. Michael covers the following risks: #1: Governance Risk #2: Operational Risk #3: Strategic Risk #4: Financial Risk #5: Competitive Risk #6: Technology Risk #7: Political Risk #8: Facilities Risk #9: Regulatory Risk #10: Employee Risk #11: Vendor Risk #12: Customer Risk #13: Reputational Risk #14: War Risk #15: Currency Risk #16: Tax Risk #17: Weather Risk #18: Customs Risk #19: Legal Risk #20: Tort Risk #21: Patent Risk #22: Health Risk #23: Lifecycle Risk #24: Dilution Risk
$Nostr is for developers. It’s an open-source project for builders that serves as a broadcast platform and content hub aggregate. From the architecture alone, we can start to differentiate it from Twitter or any other existing platform. This protocol is newly, actively developed — so while it tugs at the root of topics like free speech and privacy, the tech itself is in its nascent stages. Nostr aims to decentralize private communications and data while allowing us to interact in new ways. For all of those reasons, we should learn about it — perhaps in the same way some of us should have learned about Meta products before dishing our credentials.
$On one side of this, a sharp and persistent increase in the broad money supply is the biggest quantifiable correlate with price inflation. On the other side, sharp changes in the supply of goods and services (e.g. a major boom or a major loss in productive capacity) also significantly affect price inflation. We can see this with long-term charts of several different developed countries as examples. These charts show the five-year rolling cumulative amount of broad money supply growth and consumer price index growth. Areas where money supply growth greatly exceeded changes to consumer price index were generally due to some sort of productivity boom. combination of high debt, high interest rates on that debt, aging demographics, geopolitical tensions, and tight energy supplies are likely to result in ongoing waves of inflation. For periods where we generally get inflation under control, it will likely be due to global demand suppression and economic stagnation, rather than what we actually want: global disinflationary growth.
$Computation is competition. While the quantum computing threat is not something we expect to be worth worrying about for many years, it is better to be proactive rather than wait for it to come for us. Security is the science of staying ahead. The very act of wealth preservation is comprised of staving off the many attempts to steal it.
$Abstract: In this piece we explore why Dapps are typically built on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin, which takes us all the way back to March 2014. We examine a debate about whether and how a Dapp protocol called Counterparty should use Bitcoin’s blockchain. This was sometimes called “The OP_Return Wars”. We explain the history of OP_Return usage and sidechains in Bitcoin. We conclude by arguing, whether one likes it or not, that it was the culture in the Bitcoin development community in 2014 and the negative view of using Bitcoin transaction data for alternative use cases, which played a major role in pushing developers of these Dapps onto alternative systems like Ethereum, along with other factors.
Tweets: @fiatjaf @resistancemoney @benthecarman @alexbosworth @brian_trollz @astridwilde1 @BitMEXResearch $Exasperated with a conversation, I asked my friend directly, "What do you think the probability is that Bitcoin hits $1M per coin?" My friend replied without hesitation, "0.001%." I laughed and said I put it at 80%. We had a conversation about my friend's skepticism, and I wondered if there was some information asymmetry, or if it was self-motivated beliefs. My friend group is full of people like this, highly intelligent and successful, yet resistant to Bitcoin. I've found it to be a topic of fascinated frustration. I believe that my friends are resistant to Bitcoin because of their trust in the current system, and see Bitcoin as a radical departure from it. In contrast, I see Bitcoin as a necessary response to the flaws in the current system and a trust-minimized store of value.
Tweets: @BitcoinAudible @sunny_satoshi @sunny_satoshi @epodrulz @stephanlivera @TheGuySwann @petermiyoung @jakeeswoodhouse $Many speculate that Bitcoin’s security will lapse with the end of the mining subsidy. But other factors will continue to incentivize miners. Two prominent and likely factors are: (1) Higher transaction fees due to base layer settlement activity for higher layers which in turn is the result of increased adoption and (2) Bitcoin miners can act as an auxiliary tool for other business practices, an example being the highly-overlooked development in the mainstream involving the Bitcoin miners’ incentive to pursue stranded, wasted or excess energy.
$After years of learning, I now devote a fair amount of my time trying to help others understand bitcoin better. While many people have referred to me as a “bitcoin expert,” I still consider myself a student – I have yet to determine how deep the rabbit hole goes.
$Some thoughts on FTX... Subprime meets Enron meets Madoff - on steroids thanks to altcoins... A recipe for disaster... Framing the conversation: Key challenges for Bitcoin... Potential negative impacts of the FTX collapse... Ultimately, the impact is very positive... Is regulation the answer?
$The IMF and World Bank do not seek to fix poverty, but only to enrich creditor nations. Could Bitcoin create a better global economic system for the developing world?
Tweets: @LynAldenContact @LynAldenContact @LynAldenContact @gladstein @gladstein @steve_hanke @reuters $I selected these quotes from this amazing book by Saifedean AMMOUS. They offer only a glimpse of the richness of the book that is an absolute must read.
$Sam Bankman-Fried is a con man and fraudster of historic proportions. But you might not learn that from the New York Times, CoinDesk's Chief Insights Columnist David Z. Morris writes.
Tweets: @jemenger $