Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #358 of the daily Bitcoin Breakdown, where we have some excellent Opinion & Analysis pieces and Tools & Projects for you today!

But first, today’s Top Stories:

• 🎢 Fed Rate Cuts Set Stage for Bitcoin Q4 Ride

• 🏛️ Golden Trump Bitcoin Statue Sparks Capitol Controversy

• 🥨 Santander Helps Germans Stack Sats

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Sep 18, 2025

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🎢 Fed Rate Cuts Set Stage for Bitcoin Q4 Ride

The Federal Reserve cut rates 25 basis points with two more cuts potentially coming, pushing $7.4T from money market funds toward hard assets like Bitcoin. Historical patterns suggest Bitcoin could peak around December 2025, roughly 20 months post-halving. Chair Jerome Powell faces intense political pressure from President Trump, who demands rates as low as 1% and has attempted to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The move highlights growing concerns about the central bank's independence as Trump pushes for more aggressive monetary easing. Bitbo

🏛️ Golden Trump Bitcoin Statue Sparks Capitol Controversy

A 12-foot golden statue of President Trump holding Bitcoin appeared outside the US Capitol, funded by crypto enthusiasts, ostensibly to spark debate about digital currency's future. The temporary installation coincided with the Federal Reserve's 25 basis points interest rate cut, symbolizing the intersection of politics and financial innovation. The stunt was however criticized as it coincided with the launch of a degenerate memecoin. Cointelegraph

🥨 Santander's Openbank Helps Zee Germans Stack Sats

Spanish banking giant Banco Santander is rolling out Bitcoin and crypto trading via Openbank, starting in Germany, and expanding to Spain next. Backed by Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets rules, the bank joins the first wave of majors offering services, charging a 1.49% fee per trade (1 euro minimum) and waiving custody fees. Direct conversions are coming. The move courts younger, clients and tests demand in Europe’s largest economy while keeping sats inside the Santander ecosystem. Atlas21

POLL #358

PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS

OPINION & ANALYSIS

• Chris Guida, a Bitcoin developer, challenges Pieter Wuille's recently published defense for raising Bitcoin Core's default OP_RETURN limit from 80 bytes to 100,000 bytes, arguing mempool filters protect bitcoin’s payments use, curb spam like brc20/runes, and avert mining centralization (Sep 17 | 17 min read).

• Roy Sheinfeld of Breez Wallet argues that Ark and Spark represent the long-awaited evolution of Lightning Network channel factories, using shared UTXOs to dramatically reduce on-chain transactions while maintaining interoperability and trust-minimized designs for Bitcoin's layer-2 future (Sep 17 | 8 min read).

• White Noise, a privacy-focused Nostr-based messaging app, argues that the EU's proposed 'Chat Control' legislation undermines fundamental human rights by requiring mass surveillance of private communications under the guise of child protection, advocating instead for targeted law enforcement and privacy-preserving technologies (Sep 17 | 2 min read).

• Kudzai Kutukwa of Looking Glass argues that fiat currency systematically steals generational wealth through inflation and central banking, making Bitcoin the only inheritance that preserves accumulated time and labor across generations without government debasement (Sep 17 | 7 min read).

• Joakim Book, Managing Editor for Bitcoin Magazine, dismisses economists Matt Sekerke and Steve Hanke's 'Making Money Work' after just 33 pages because they flippantly reject Bitcoin in a single sentence, arguing their narrow vision makes the book irrelevant for anyone building a better monetary future (Sep 16 | 2 min read).

• Emile Jellinek, writing for Atlas21, argues that Bitcoin and AI create powerful synergies by combining digital scarcity with productive abundance, enabling machine-to-machine payments, decentralized AI development, and economic transformation while preserving individual sovereignty (Sep 16 | 5 min read).

• Naomi Brockwell of NBTV Media argues that internet surveillance enables unprecedented manipulation by allowing platforms and governments to exploit personal data to trigger outrage, drive polarization, and influence behavior through targeted content designed to serve hidden agendas rather than user interests (Sep 16 | 8 min read).

• Hunter Beast, a Bitcoin quantum resistance researcher, reports the first BIP 360 transaction on Signet while warning that over 6M bitcoin remain vulnerable as quantum computing advances accelerate through new IBM-AMD partnerships and algorithmic breakthroughs (Sep 16 | 6 min read).

• African Bitcoiners, a Bitcoin community focused on bringing financial freedom to Africa, presents a manifesto arguing that African businesses need Bitcoin reserves to preserve value and lead the continent's financial future amid global corporate treasury adoption (Sep 12 | 4 min read).

• Hugo, Founder of Nunchuk, argues that Proof-of-Work is the only objective mechanism for filtering blockchain spam and that current mempool filter debates are misguided since economic reality will naturally eliminate low-value data transactions (Sep 10 | 4 min read).

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TOOLS & PROJECTS

• New on Geyser: Guadalupe Foundation, a Paraguay-based children's home operating since 1986, empowers vulnerable youth through Bitcoin education while seeking renovation funds to meet safety standards for 80+ beneficiaries.

• New on Geyser: Kinderhilfswerk Eine Welt, a German children's rights organization operating since 1975, seeks 50M sats to fund operational foundations supporting school, health and children's rights projects across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

• Anil Patel releases 'The Treasury of Michael Saylor,' a curated book of Saylor’s impactful speeches and interviews on Bitcoin, with a free digital version available.

• NewHedge launches a comprehensive Bitcoin resource and tools library featuring wallets, exchanges, podcasts, data platforms, tax tools, and key industry figures for free access.

• TrustMeBro is a mini ZK-ready Bitcoin explorer that enables instant, trustless transactions and block verification in browsers using STARKs technology for accessible Bitcoin validation.

• Predyx, a prediction market platform with Lightning Network integration, announces users can now create custom markets through its new Creator Dashboard feature.

• Fedimint developers release v0.1.0 of E-Cash App, a Bitcoin wallet enabling on-chain, Lightning Network, and Chaumian e-cash payments through federated community custody solutions.

• Peach Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, launches version 69 featuring two-sided trading where users can both buy and sell BTC without KYC requirements.

• PlebLab announces the return of the Startup Day event to Mérida, Yucatán this October, featuring three days of payments workshops, startup pitches, and beach excursions from October 9-11, 2025.

• Bitcoin TLDR v2 launches as a comprehensive summary platform for bitcoin-dev, lightning-dev, and Delving Bitcoin mailing lists, addressing searchability challenges across 20,000+ archived posts dating back to 2011.

• THNDR partners with Sparket, a 'Bet on Anything' platform and Startup of the Year nominee, to integrate PvP skill games into Sparket's community for continuous competition.

• Satsback offers up to 1.5% BTC rewards for online Walmart purchases.

• Piggy powers seamless Bitcoin tipping with Lightning Network-enabled devices for businesses, charities, and individuals, enabling instant, low-fee microtransactions.

• Ants, a tool developed by Gigi, offers advanced Nostr text search capabilities with profile lookups, media filtering, and site-specific searches through a clean, minimal interface.

• Zapstore, a Nostr-based app store, launches enhanced web version featuring individual app pages and functional deep links for simplified sharing.

• Coco-cashu is a modular TypeScript-first toolkit for building Cashu wallets and applications with storage-agnostic core, ready-to-use adapters, and React wrapper integration.

• Next-L402 enables Next.js developers to implement Lightning Network HTTP 402 Payment Required protocol for securing API routes with micropayments.

• Bittrailer finds UTXO trails across Sparrow wallet label exports using BIP 329 standard, generating JSON and flow charts for privacy-focused Bitcoin transaction history tracking offline.

• Lang.relays.land introduces language-specific Nostr relays that accepts notes only in designated languages, offering multilingual speakers a curated communication environment.

• Lightning Bounties, a platform that enables instant Bitcoin payments for Github code solutions, partners with Branta to secure BOLT-11 deposits and prevent client-side tampering.

• SpecFive unveils the Strike, a compact Raspberry Pi CM4-powered handheld Linux workstation featuring Meshtastic LoRa mesh networking capabilities, alongside an upgraded Nomad 2 with Pi 4 or Pi 5 options.

• Ecash Hackday V3 brings developers together in Berlin on October 1st, 2025 to hack on ecash solutions the day before BTC++ conference.

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