US Govt. Bitcoin Mining Operation Uncovered during #Area51storm
Newsletter #14: 20190913 - 20190920
Highlight
Not actually… but what if ?
Anyways, here’s your weekly reminder of (1) how small a $200b market cap is, (2) the value of soft money (ie. toilet paper), and (3) the power of the Fed’s printing press - they’re not even a part of the federal government! I guess this kind of behavior is to be expected when storing your wealth in the shitcoin, the USD.
Bitcoin Tech
(1) Carl Dong (Chaincode) announced the GoodFirstIssues bot, for developers who are interested in beginning to contribute to Bitcoin Core.
(2) Pieter Wuille (Blockstream) published some example policies in his policy-to-Miniscript compiler.
(3) Bitcoin Optech #64 highlights Bitcoin Edge Dev++ talks, Scaling Bitcoin’s TxProbe, and other notable changes to Bitcoin Core, LND, and more.
Lightning Network
(1) Chaincode open-sourced their Lightning Curriculum. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend going through their Bitcoin Curriculum and Study Groups.
Bitcoin Products
Hardware
(1) Learn how to run a Samourai Dojo on a Raspberry Pi.
(2) Learn how to connect your Casa Node to your Wasabi Wallet.
Finance
(3) VanEck + SolidX, who recently launched their Grayscale-like trust for institutions, withdrew their ETF proposal. Keep scrolling for more ETF news…
(4) Derivatives marketplace CME Group will launch bitcoin options contracts in Q1 2020.
(5) Cryptocurrency exchanges hold nearly 5% of the entire crypto market cap. Not your keys, not your coins.
(6) Genesis Global Trading (crypto OTC) acquires Qu Capital, a New York-based quantitative trading and research firm, to strengthen its trading technology including improved order routing and advanced execution tools.
(7) Binance launched a ton of products this week, including more lending products (including BTC at 3% APR), its US Exchange, and its Futures platform.
(8) “What if you could go from fiat in your bank account to non-custodial Lightning payments in seconds? What does onboarding the masses look like?”
Jack Mallers (Zap) announces Olympus: Lightning-enabled fiat ramps by Zap. Listen to the podcast for more details, read more on how it works, and sign up for the beta.
(9) Additionally, Sparkswap announced their desktop application where users can sell USD for Lightning BTC:
Merchants
(10) Having partnered with local payments company ECPAY, Abra will enable cash to crypto outlets at all Philippines 7-Eleven’s.
(11) BTCPay Server just announced their foundation and received their first grant from Square Crypto.
(12) Tor now accepts Bitcoin donations via BTCPay Server.
(13) Anyone else reminded of the Wikileaks payments freeze in 2010?
Other
(14) Valentine Wallace (Lightning Labs), Jeffrey Czyz (Google), and Arik Sosman (Libra) will be joining Matt Corallo and Steve Lee at Square Crypto to contribute to the free open-source bitcoin developer base. Square Crypto is looking to hire a senior designer and requesting input from the community on what their first product should be.
(15) Electrum merged multisig support for their Coldcard plugin; power users rejoice.
Bitcoin Markets / Stats
(1) Fiat Market Cap
Bitcoin ranks #35 compared to all fiat currencies, placed between the New Zealand Dollar (NZD) and the Colombian Peso (COP).
(2) Government Debt Clock
(3) Crypto Market Cap Dominance: Bitcoin represents 71.15% of the total crypto market cap (changed the source to Messari from Coinmarketcap)
(4) Approximating Bitcoin Security: Hash Rate + Difficulty
The two metrics keep hitting ATHs, now at ~91.68 EH/s and ~11.89 T respectively, according to BTC.com.
Matteo Leibowitz recommends the Fee Ratio Multiple when evaluating a blockchain network’s security
(5) Supply + Halvening News
~237 days until the next halvening, where the issuance rate of new bitcoins will decrease from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoins per new block mined. Bitcoin inflation will decrease to 1.8%, rivaling the US inflation rate.
We’ve mined >85% of the 21,000,000 bitcoins that will ever exist, in the past ~10 years. To mine the remaining 15% will take ~120 years.
(6) Google Search Trends
(7) SegWit usage (Bitcoin’s biggest protocol upgrade back in Q3 of 2017) broke 50% of Bitcoin payments this week.
Bitcoin Talks / Theses
(1) Baltic Honeybadger 2019 Day 1 Livestream
01:09:52 Opening words | Max Keidun & Roman Snitko
1:14:18 PANEL • Unpopular opinions in Bitcoin | Eric Voskuil, Oleg Andreev, Jimmy Song, Samson Mow. HOST: WhalePanda
1:47:36 All cryptography is bad and you should feel sad | Oleg Andreev
2:10:43 How Bitcoin Changes Incentives | Jimmy Song
2:50:01 Strange Theories of Money and Credit | Eric Voskuil
3:44:21 Bitcoin as Base Money | Matthew Mežinskis
4:29:10 Opening up | Roman Snitko
4:46:50 1on1 • OTC trading | Max Keidun & Yuri de Gaia. HOST: Fernando Ulricht
5:17:02 PANEL • Physical security in Bitcoin | Florian Maier, Rigel Walshe, Jameson Lopp, Rodolfo Novak. HOST: Peter McCormack
6:35:48 Designing a Hardware Wallet | Rodolfo Novak
7:07:20 Privacy Visions | Ádám Ficsór
7:29:42 A Story of Music on the Silk Road | Tatiana Moroz
8:04:13 50 Positive Catalysts on Bitcoin's Horizon | Murad Mahmudov
8:43:38 1on1 • Payment processing | Nicolas Dorier, Rui Gomes. HOST: Roman Snitko
9:17:30 Lessons from the Trenches: using Bitcoin & Lightning in commerce | Sergej Kotliar
9:37:02 CLOSING PANEL | Oleg Andreev, Eric Voskuil, Peter Todd, Eric Lombrozo, Samson Mow.
(2) Baltic Honeybadger 2019 Day 2 Livestream
18:22 Opening words | Giacomo Zucco
32:45 13 Threats to Your Bitcoin | Jeremy Welch
58:30 PANEL • P2P exchanges | Roman Snitko, Ray Youssef, Bernard Labno, Jonathan Leong. HOST: Ambroid
1:30:36 Bitcoin as a benchmark | Michiel Lescrauwaet
1:45:26 Open-source upgrade to the BTC mining stack | Jan Čapek
2:00:46 PANEL • REKT: how to survive the bear market | WhalePanda, Ambroid, Tone Vays, Florian Maier. HOST: Matt Odell
2:53:00 Bitcoin as a practical tool for individual freedom | Rigel Walshe
3:18:10 LNP/BP Macroeconomic Data, Theories, and Intuitions | Pierre Rochard
3:52:48 PANEL • Wallets | Ádám Ficsór, Konstantin Gladych, Rodolfo Novak HOST: Alena Vranova
4:30:22 Running bitcoin in production environments | Ketominer
4:46:26 The Information Theory of Money | Dan Held
5:44:27 How to really kill bitcoin | Saifedean Ammous
6:19:22 PANEL • Education in Bitcoin | Sam Wouters, Pavel Kravchenko, Jimmy Song HOST: Stacey Herbert
6:53:43 Lowering Chain Fees and Improving Privacy with HyperLoop | Alex Bosworth
7:13:38 Yellow Rock Bad, Orange Coin Good: Environmental & Social Impacts of Gold & Bitcoin | Hass McCook
7:32:35 PANEL • Lightning Network | Samson Mow, Alex Bosworth, Max Keidun, Alex Petrov. HOST: Stephan Livera
8:13:17 Scalable computing in LNP/BP: Prometheus protocol | Maxim Orlovsky
8:32:42 1on1 • Reflecting on scaling, 5 years on | Adam Back, Giacomo Zucco. HOST: Alexandra Moxin
8:58:45 CLOSING PANEL | Tone Vays, Saifedean Ammous, Pierre Rochard, Francis Pouliot HOST: Max Keiser
(3) BTCPay Day Livestream & Recap
(4) Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group says “I don’t have much interest in [Bitcoin] because it’s hard for me to understand.” He believes cryptocurrencies encourage criminal activities, whereas government-issued currencies “control bad behavior.”
(5) Raoul Pal of Real Vision chats on TFTC about:
Repo ops
State of the global financial system; Bitcoin as an alternative system
and more
(6) Giacomo Zucco begins producing a seven-part series for Discovering Bitcoin: A Brief Overview From Cavemen to the Lightning Network.
Bitcoin Regulations
(1) SEC chairman Jay Clayton says that Bitcoin trading needs better regulations before it is listed on major exchanges like the NYSE. He cites immature custody solutions and wash trading / fake volumes as the primary sources of ineffective price discovery.
Bitwise, on the other hand, believes the world is ready for a Bitcoin ETF, citing three reasons why:
(2) South Korean exchange OKEx delists all privacy coins including Monero, Zcash, and Dash, citing violations of the FATF travel rule.
(3) Iranian government proposes an annual license for bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin Calendar
(1) Bakkt Physical Futures Launch | Sept 23
(2) Bitcoin Optech Schnorr & Taproot Seminar #3 | San Francisco | Sept 24
(3) CME 3mo Expiration | Sept 27
(4) Bitcoin Optech Schnorr & Taproot Seminar #4 | New York | Sept 27
(5) Wilshire Phoenix ETF Decision | Sept 29
(6) CME Doubling of Open Positions | Sept 30
(7) Bitwise ETF Decision | Oct 13
(8) Lightning Conference | Berlin | Oct 19 - 20
(9) CME 3mo Expiration | Oct 25
(10) Square Earnings Call | Nov 6
(11) The Capital | Singapore | Nov 12 - 13
(12) CME 6mo Expiration | Dec 27
Tweet at me if I’ve missed anything or if you’ve got feedback, questions, and comments.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research.
Newsletter #1 was published on 20190621. Stats:
XBT = ~$10,218.87
Hashrate = ~60 EH/s
Difficulty = ~7.93 T
Dominance = ~61.6%