Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #317 of Bitcoin Breakdown, where we’re bringing you your end-of-week Bitcoin Digest featuring all the need-to-know Quick Bits snippets and Quick Media.

But first, today’s Top Stories:

• 🤡 White House Calls Financial Privacy a 'Primary Money Laundering Concern'

• 🚀 (Micro)Strategy’s Q2 Bitcoin Profits Triple Goldman Sachs

• 🔧 Blockstream Launches Simplicity to Make Bitcoin Programmable

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Aug 1, 2025

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🤡 White House Calls Financial Privacy a 'Primary Money Laundering Concern'

The Rage highlights that the newly released White House Digital Assets Report urges the Treasury to finalize a rule criminalizing any transaction that obfuscates fund sources, effectively ending Bitcoin privacy. The report recommends expanding the PATRIOT Act to target decentralized finance services and implementing digital identities that would transform Bitcoin from permissionless to permissioned. Despite promises to protect self-custody, the administration pushes surveillance measures that contradict its pro-Bitcoin rhetoric. The Rage

🚀 (Micro)Strategy’s Q2 Bitcoin Profits Triple Goldman Sachs

Bitcoin-focused firm (Micro)Strategy reported a record $10B in net income for the second quarter of 2025, surpassing both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America in profitability despite a narrower business model. Their stated mission is to stack more BTC per share than any company in history. Michael Saylor is building a full Bitcoin yield curve, complete with credit ratings and open-source treasury playbooks, and he just rolled out STRC preferred equity, a monthly-paying, short-duration, high-yield product that could support 30-50% leverage while wooing normie investors. (Micro)Strategy

🔧 Blockstream Launches Simplicity to Make Bitcoin Programmable

Blockstream just made altcoins even more redundant by officially launching Simplicity, a new smart contract language designed to transform Bitcoin from a simple store of value into a programmable financial platform. Unlike Ethereum's Solidity, Simplicity prioritizes security through formal verification and deterministic execution, avoiding unbounded loops. The language supports DeFi applications like vaults and derivatives while running on Blockstream's Liquid sidechain, potentially revolutionizing institutional Bitcoin adoption. Decrypt

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QUICK BITS

• IMF gets ratioed for criticizing Bitcoin energy consumption, comparing it to Argentina's electricity usage while claiming that it does not contribute to GDP.

• New SEC Chairman Paul Atkins unveils 'Project Crypto,' a complete reversal from Gary Gensler's enforcement-heavy approach.

• Bo Hines, White House digital assets chief, confirms that the Trump administration plans to build strategic Bitcoin reserve infrastructure 'in short order' despite only a brief mention of it in the recent policy report.

• Tether reports a record $4.9B Q2 profit, with $2.6B driven by its Bitcoin and gold holdings.

• Phoenix Group, an Abu Dhabi-based Bitcoin miner, launches a $150M Bitcoin and crypto treasury, holding 514 BTC and the rest in sh*tcoins, becoming the first ADX-listed company to have a Bitcoin reserve.

• Kentucky man walks free on a $1M bond after alleged kidnapping and torture of Italian millionaire to steal his bitcoin which involved electric shocks and beatings.

• Maine Bitcoin LLC, a Bitcoin and crypto kiosk operator serving Maine and New Hampshire since 2016, shuts down after new state law caps transaction fees at 3% and imposes licensing requirements.

• Moldova's President claims that Russia is planning on spending €100M in crypto to interfere in September elections through vote-buying schemes and electoral corruption.

• Central Bank of Bolivia partners with El Salvador’s digital asset regulator to develop regulatory frameworks for Bitcoin and crypto.

• Canaan Inc., a Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer, adopts a 'bitcoin holding policy' and makes bitcoin its primary long-term reserve asset, with 1,484 BTC in total holdings.

• Analysts from Merkle Tree Capital and ZX Squared Capital argue that OG Bitcoin whales rotating out to new institutional buyers signals healthy market maturity and Bitcoin's integration with traditional finance.

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QUICK MEDIA

• Mark Moss, a financial educator, argues that Trump's $3.7T stablecoin bill will mathematically necessitate Bitcoin's significant price increase as the government uses it as a liquidity sponge to manage unsustainable debt levels and inflation while growing GDP (Jul 29 | 22:50 min watch). 

• Jack Mallers explains how the US government will strategically debase the dollar against Bitcoin and gold to manage unsustainable debt levels while using stablecoin growth to finance government operations (Jul 31 | 4:55 min watch).

• Adam Livingston, author of 'The Great Harvest', argues that Bitcoin serves as humanity's essential financial lifeline against AI-driven job displacement and economic obsolescence, positioning it as the only uncorruptible store of value in an era where artificial intelligence can replicate everything except true scarcity (Jul 31 | 20:40 min watch). 

• Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, shares a short video claiming that the Trump administration has kept all the promises that were made to the Bitcoin and crypto industry during the election campaign (Jul 31 | 0:38 min watch). 

• Craig Raw, developer of Sparrow Wallet, in an interview with Niftynei of Bitcoin++, talks about Sparrow Wallet's development philosophy, while exploring its feature-rich setup and hardware wallet integrations while discussing why layer 1 bitcoin wallets remain essential for securing UTXOs despite emerging layer 2 protocols (Jul 31 | 15:36 min watch). 

• BTC Sessions, a Bitcoin educator, demonstrates advanced Sparrow Bitcoin wallet features including UTXO management, batch sends, message signing, fee optimization, PayNyms for privacy, hardware wallet integration, and wallet security tools to give users greater control over their Bitcoin transactions (Jul 28 | 68:29 min watch).

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