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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.

*What is a Recession? *Yield Curves *GDP, GDI & Corporate Profits *False Confidence Signals *How to Position Yourself

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Output descriptors provide a simple and effective solution to the problem of recovering keys from an extended public or private key in a Bitcoin wallet. With output descriptors, users can easily recover their bitcoins and previous transaction history by describing the derivation path and range of keys with the UTXOs and transactions. By using output descriptors, users can import their receiving and change scriptPubKeys during a wallet import, making it easier to recover their Bitcoin wallet. With the support of output descriptors and miniscript in Bitcoin Core, users can enjoy a more efficient and secure Bitcoin wallet experience.

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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.

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.

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When off-grid mining is factored in, we get a full picture of the Bitcoin network. The major energy source is hydro (23% of all Bitcoin mining). Ongrid, 15.8% of power is hydro (source: Our World in Data), however more than half of all sustainable off-grid mining is hydro-powered. Sustainable mining companies such as OceanFalls, Blockfusion, Hut8, Iris, Sato, Terawulf, Statar/Lake Parime, Gridshare and HPG are examples of companies that are either 100% powered by hydro or majority-hydro powered. The next highest sustainable energy source is Wind, now representing almost 14% of all bitcoin mining power. Companies such as Marathon, with 14 EH of hashrate, the heavy component of which is behind-the-meter wind farms, contribute to this strong showing.

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China has just completed its first trade of liquefied natural gas (LNG) settled in yuan, the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange said on Tuesday. The trade involved around 65,000 tons of LNG imported from the United Arab Emirates. The French supermajor, one of the world’s top LNG traders, confirmed to Reuters that the trade involved LNG imported from the UAE, but declined to comment further on the deal.

For a fourth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors received a survey to surface priorities and ensure that people feel that they can contribute effectively. This blog post is a summary of the results in a format similar to last year’s survey.

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