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  • Trump’s Ross Promise Stalls 🤨, Trump’s ‘America First’ Omits Bitcoin Strategy 🤡, Rumble’s BTC Spree Kicks Off 🎬

Trump’s Ross Promise Stalls 🤨, Trump’s ‘America First’ Omits Bitcoin Strategy 🤡, Rumble’s BTC Spree Kicks Off 🎬

Read issue #155 of the Bitcoin-only daily newsletter with the highest signal-to-noise ratio in the industry.

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Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #155 of Bitcoin Breakdown, where every Tuesday and Thursday, we bring you the latest must-read Bitcoin thought leadership articles and the newest tools and projects you should know about.

But first, today’s Top Stories:

  • 🤨 Trump's 'Day One' Falters on Ross Ulbricht Promise

  • 🦅Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Promise Missing from 'America First' Agenda

  • 🎬 Rumble’s BTC Power Play

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TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🤨 Trump's 'Day One' Falters on Ross Ulbricht Promise

Despite Trump’s 2024 pledge to commute on day one Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road darknet market serving a life since 2015, nothing has landed yet. Elon Musk and Libertarian National Committee chair Angela McArdle both, however, tweeted apparent inside knowledge of an imminent announcement regarding Ulbricht. Meanwhile, Trump's administration has picked pro-Bitcoin and crypto figures Mark Uyeda and Caroline Pham to head the SEC and CFTC, respectively. Forbes

 🤡 Trump's Bitcoin Reserve Promise Missing from 'America First' Agenda

Despite Trump's pro-Bitcoin and crypto campaign rhetoric, his newly released 'America First Priorities' completely ghost Bitcoin and his promised strategic reserve plans. Betting markets still give the Bitcoin reserve idea decent odds, with Kalshi showing a 60% chance of it happening this year. Trump's recent launch of a Solana-based TRUMP memecoin sent markets into a frenzy, hitting an $11B market cap and driving BTC above $109K briefly. The wild 72-hour crypto rollercoaster highlights the market's intense speculation around Trump's potential Bitcoin and crypto policies, even as his official priorities remain focused on traditional issues like energy and public safety. Cointelegraph

🎬 Rumble’s BTC Power Play

Pro-Trump video platform Rumble kicked off its promised $20M BTC buying spree on inauguration day, marking its first-ever BTC purchase. The move follows a massive $775M investment from Tether in December that sent RUM stock soaring 80%. The right-leaning streaming platform, which boasts 70M monthly active users, is cozying up to Bitcoin-friendly El Salvador through a new cloud services deal. Rumble's Bitcoin play aligns perfectly with Trump's incoming administration. The Block

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OPINION & ANALYSIS

  • Susie Violet Ward, Bitcoin journalist and financial analyst based in London, argues that Donald Trump's plan to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, while potentially boosting the US's economic and geopolitical standing, threatens Bitcoin's decentralized nature and ‘freedom money’ ethos due to increased regulatory control and institutionalization (Jan 20 | 7 min read).

  • Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason, argues that Donald Trump should fulfill his promise to commute Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht because he received a disproportionate life sentence for operating a safer online drug marketplace, despite never being convicted of violent crimes (Jan 20 | 7 min read).

  • Daniel Prince, host of the Once Bitten Podcast, alleges conflict of interest, insider trading, and nepotism surrounding the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin on the Solana blockchain, citing connections between David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Lyndon Rive (Jan 19 | 5 min read).

  • The Bullish Bitcoiner, in a comprehensive tutorial, explains how Bitcoin miners can set up Lightning Network payouts through OCEAN mining pool using Coinos' BOLT12 offers, enabling decentralized mining rewards without requiring a dedicated Lightning node or expensive channel setup (Jan 18 | 3 min read).

  • Trey Walsh, executive director of The Progressive Bitcoiner, argues that Donald Trump's foray into crypto with $TRUMP coin, built on Solana, is another self-enrichment scheme exploiting the crypto ecosystem, prioritizing personal gain over Bitcoin's potential as a tool for financial freedom (Jan 19 | 4 min read).

  • Steven Boykey Sidley, Professor of Practice at the Johannesburg Business School, highlights the 2025 Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report showing only 0.14% of Bitcoin and crypto transactions are illicit, significantly lower than traditional finance's 5% crime rate, challenging widespread perceptions of Bitcoin and crypto markets as hotbeds of criminal activity (Jan 20 | 5 min read).

  • Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO at Coinbase, advocates for global economic freedom through Bitcoin and crypto adoption, arguing that free-market capitalism and technological innovation, particularly Bitcoin and crypto technologies, are crucial for prosperity while warning against the dangers of Marxism and socialist policies in modern economies (Jan 19 | 6 min read).

  • Rare Passenger, a Bitcoin educator, in a thought-provoking analysis, explores the distinction between true sovereignty and achievable autonomy, arguing that while individuals cannot attain absolute sovereign power like nations or states, they can pursue meaningful self-governance within established societal frameworks and legal boundaries (Jan 18 | 5 min read).

  • Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CSO at Casa, briefly outlines crucial social engineering prevention strategies, emphasizing the importance of treating unsolicited communications with extreme caution, avoiding fear-based urgent requests, ignoring unexpected security-related calls, and seeking trusted second opinions before taking action (Jan 17 | 1 min read).

  • John Arnold of Ten31 analyzes the unlikely threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin, highlighting Bitcoin’s existing defenses, upgrade paths to quantum-resistant cryptography, and the significantly greater risk quantum computing poses to legacy financial systems (Jan 14 | 19 min read).

  • Dave Birnhaum, VP of product at Coinbits, analyzes how Bitcoin's institutional adoption is evolving beyond simple treasury holdings into sophisticated financial products, including multi-jurisdictional custody, ETPs, trusts, bonds, and mortgages, reshaping traditional finance in 2025 (Jan 16 | 6 min read).

  • Abubakar Nur Khalil, board member and CEO of Btrust, reports on its significant milestones in its 2024 review, including expanded developer grants across Africa, LATAM, and India, successful education programs, and enhanced support structures aimed at decentralizing Bitcoin development in the Global South (Jan 18 | 12 min read).

  • Korok Ray, PhD economist/professor who researches/teaches Bitcoin, explains how Bitcoin's architecture can adapt to quantum computing threats through quantum-resistant signatures and hash functions, addressing concerns about Google's Willow chip while emphasizing its resilience to future technological challenges (Jan 17 | 4 min read).

  • Conor Chepenik, contributor to Bitcoin News, interviews CleanSpark’s VP of Strategy, Harry Sudock, who discusses the company's Bitcoin mining approach, emphasizing operational excellence, community partnerships, and sustainable growth within the Bitcoin mining sector (Jan 20 | 4 min read).

  • Gigi, author of '21 Lessons', reports on the OpenSats Foundation’s remarkable growth in 2024, allocating over $21M in grants to support Bitcoin Core development, Lightning Network improvements, nostr protocol advancement, privacy initiatives, and educational projects while receiving substantial donations from major institutional supporters (Dec 30| 13 min read).

  • Joakim Book, Bitcoin editor and author, shares his detailed experience setting up and using the Trezor Keep Metal device, a steel backup solution for securing Bitcoin seed phrases, highlighting its user-friendly design, durability features, and practical implementation process for long-term storage safety (Jan 18 | 2 min read).

  • Che Kohler of The Bitcoin Manual explains Bitcoin block weight, a system implemented with SegWit to measure Bitcoin block data capacity in weight units, addressing scalability, malleability, and transaction fees by assigning different weights to transaction data components (Jan 15 | 5 min read).

  • SimpleX, a privacy-focused messaging platform, details its plan for privacy-preserving content moderation in large groups, outlining new features like super-peers, reporting, and client-side restrictions to combat abuse while maintaining end-to-end encryption and user privacy (Jan 14 | 8 min read).

  • ICYMI: Tom Trevethan, CTO at CommerceBlock, explains the fundamental differences between CoinJoin and CoinSwap technologies, two distinct methods for enhancing transaction anonymity on the Bitcoin network by obscuring the transaction graph and preventing blockchain surveillance tracking (Dec 11, 2021 | 4 min read).

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OTHER NEWSLETTERS TO CHECK OUT*

  • The Early Bird delivers essential news at 7:00 AM to level your information playing field. (link)

  • The Rundown helps 650,000+ professionals learn AI in 5 minutes a day—apply the latest news at work. (link)

  • For The Interested helps you get more clients from your content with simple, proven ways to boost revenue and attention. (link)

  • How to earn $10k from your first book (with Nathan Barry) shows you why you don't need to be famous or have a huge following. (link)

  • The Neuron keeps 400,000+ professionals ahead with 3-minute AI updates impacting you. (link)

  • Refind curates the best articles from thousands daily, tailored to your interests. (link)

*You can find more here.

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TOOLS & PROJECTS

  • Alby introduces ZapPlanner in Alby Hub's Store, enabling Lightning users to effortlessly set up recurring payments for donations, subscriptions, and more.

  • Eggstr enables the deployment of Nostr and Bitcoin applications, including LNBits, Alby Hub, and Nostr Address, using your own domain.

  • Nomad Summit starts on January 23 and unites digital nomads, techies, indie hackers, and creators in a collaborative space to build meaningful ventures, skills, and connections.

  • Bull Bitcoin expands to Europe, empowering Europeans to buy, sell, and pay bank accounts with bitcoin.

  • NODEYEZ generates customizable display panels for Bitcoin nodes, viewable on attached screens or remotely via a website dashboard.

  • Neutronpay enables Aliniex, one of the largest exchanges in Southeast Asia, to provide Lightning Network services to its customers.

  • PullThatUpJamie v0.1 (beta) debuts podcast search, delivering high-signal Bitcoin insights from over 100k clips.

  • Corny Chat is an open-source audio space built on Jam that integrates Nostr and Lightning.

  • Bitcoin Fee Indicator displays current Bitcoin transaction fees on Linux with GTK 3 and AppIndicator, offering a simple, real-time solution.

  • Predyx introduces set markets for trading multiple options in one market, offering dynamic payout structures to enhance user engagement and flexibility.

  • pWallet is a lightweight UI for Phoenix Server that can be set up and run entirely using Docker.

  • Breez SDK now enables users to pay to BIP353 addresses in their new 0.6.2 release, along with other updates like real-time sync, BTC address receiving, and enhanced payment expiration for streamlined transactions.

  • Scott Powell unveils MeshCore, a hybrid mesh protocol with open-source tools, encryption, and scalable routing for secure, large-scale communication.

  • Bitaxe Worldwide is an 𝕏 community where Bitaxe users can show off their devices and ask technical questions that will be answered by some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry.

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