S&P Rates Strategy As Stable 🏦, Fed Chair Finalists All Orange-Pilled 🍊, Standard Chartered Calls $100K Forever 📊

Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #391 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:

• 😲 S&P Global Gives Strategy a B- (Stable) Rating

• 🏦 Fed Chair Race Turns Orange-Pilled

• 📊 BTC To ‘Never Again Fall Below $100K’: Standard Chartered

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• How rolling an old 401(k) into a bitcoin IRA could offer tax advantages and help build generational wealth

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Oct 28, 2025

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

😲 S&P Global Gives Strategy a B- (Stable) Rating

S&P Global Ratings just assigned Strategy Inc (MSTR) a ‘B-’ rating with a Stable outlook, making it the first-ever rated bitcoin-backed credit issuer. Despite asset concentration risks, S&P praised Strategy’s debt management and capital market access. Strategy continues to fund debt and preferred dividends through equity and debt issuance, keeping its $70B BTC stash largely untouched as it bets on long-term orange-pill gains. The move could spark wider institutional adoption, pushing Bitcoin deeper into the plumbing of global capital markets. S&P Global 

🏦 Fed Chair Race Turns Orange-Pilled

Jerome Powell’s exit is set to usher in a Bitcoin-friendly era at the Federal Reserve, with all 5 finalists openly supportive of Bitcoin and digital assets. Candidates range from Christopher Waller, who calls BTC ‘electronic gold,’ to BlackRock’s Rick Rieder, a vocal Bitcoin ETF backer. Even the most cautious contender supports some form of Bitcoin and crypto integration. With Trump seeking aggressive rate cuts, cheaper money could add rocket fuel to Bitcoin’s bullish trajectory. Cryptonews

📊 BTC To ‘Never Again Fall Below $100K’: Standard Chartered

Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick says easing US-China trade tensions could lock BTC above $100K forever if this week delivers. The bitcoin-gold ratio is rebounding, ETF inflows are expected, and Wall Street is bracing for the Federal Reserve to halt its $6.6T balance sheet shrink, a move expected to unleash liquidity into risk assets. A fresh all-time high would bury the halving-cycle theory, putting ETF flows in the driver’s seat. With tech giants reporting and sentiment improving, Kendrick sees conditions aligning for Bitcoin to cement a new permanent floor. The Block

POLL #391

PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS

OPINION & ANALYSIS

• Giuseppe Ciccomascolo, writing for CCN, analyzes the intense controversy surrounding Luke Dashjr's BIP 444 proposal, which aims to restrict transaction data sizes through a temporary soft fork but faces fierce criticism from Bitcoin developers who view its 'moral and legal impediment' language as coercive censorship threatening Bitcoin's neutrality (Oct 28 | 9 min read). 

• Atlas21 recaps the 4th Plan ₿ Forum 2025 conference from last week that drew over 4,000 attendees to discuss Bitcoin's future, from OP_RETURN debates to African mining opportunities and privacy solutions (Oct 27 | 3 min read).

• Expatriotic, a Bitcoin technical guide and author, provides a comprehensive step-by-step tutorial for installing and configuring a Bitcoin Core node on bare-metal Ubuntu server hardware, covering OS setup, cryptographic verification, configuration optimization, and transitioning from initial sync to systemd service management (Oct 26 | 4 min read).

• Matt Crosby from Bitcoin Magazine analyzes how Bitcoin's current cycle has exceeded historical 4 year patterns, arguing that global liquidity cycles and dollar strength now drive BTC price movements more than halving events as the market matures (Oct 24 | 4 min read).

• Mat Balez and Conor Okus of Spiral argue that the Bitcoin Design Community must expand beyond product design to culture-building and branding to attract world-class designers and counter bitcoin's negative stereotypes while creating innovative user experiences for the next billion users (Oct 23 | 7 min read).

• Fabian Dori, Chief Investment Officer at Sygnum Bank, argues that Digital Asset Treasuries represent bitcoin's evolution from static reserve to productive capital, as companies like Metaplanet and Twenty One Capital pioneer using BTC for loans, convertible debt, and yield generation within corporate finance structures (Oct 23 | 5 min read).

• Seth For Privacy, privacy advocate and Cake wallet contributor, examines Spark and Ark as promising new Bitcoin layer-two solutions that offer simpler Lightning implementation for developers while providing expanded functionality beyond traditional payment networks (Oct 23 | 15 min read).

• Richard Greaser, that satirist guy from The Bugle, argues that 'pleb slop' (low-effort content targeting Bitcoin enthusiasts) manipulates masses through emotional appeals and vague statements like 'this is good for Bitcoin' to profit from their confirmation bias and tribal mentalities (Oct 22 | 7 min read).

• ICYMI: Micah Warren, author of 'Bitcoin: A Game-Theoretic Analysis', explores whether ideological mining pools could use game theory to prevent child pornography from being stored on the Bitcoin blockchain by restricting OP_RETURN payload sizes through strategic soft fork implementation (Sep 25 | 6 min read).

• Rob Warren of Bitcoin Park analyzes Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 prediction about Bitcoin's 'Long Tail' distribution, demonstrating how current mining data validates that even massive public mining companies collectively control less than 30% of the network hashrate, proving decentralization remains intact despite large mining farm operators (Oct 23 | 2 min read).

• Researchers at Masaryk University, Czechia, analyze Bitcoin coinjoin transactions, revealing 10-50% average anonymity set decreases in major protocols while demonstrating that correctly attributing coins to owners remains very difficult despite improved analysis algorithms (Oct 20 | 37 min read).

• Carla Kirk-Cohen of Chaincode Labs presents simulation results showing their updated outgoing reputation algorithm successfully protects against resource and sink attacks on the Lightning Network while compensating targeted nodes and quickly cutting off malicious actors (Oct 17 | 3 min read).

• Muyao Shen, Reporter at Bloomberg, examines how Hyperliquid, a 'decentralized' crypto exchange built by just 15 engineers, has rapidly captured billions in trading volume and heavyweight investor backing while raising concerns about its concentrated power structure and regulatory oversight (Oct 16 | 8 min read).

• Olaoluwa Osuntokun, aka Roasbeef, of Lightning Labs, explains how Secure Fountain Codes could revolutionize pruned nodes by enabling 1000x storage reduction while still allowing nodes to help newcomers sync the blockchain, using erasure coding techniques that require sampling from roughly 1000 nodes instead of current pruning limitations (Oct 3 | 4 min read).

TOOLS & PROJECTS

• New on Geyser: Bitcoin District, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US, aims to help 100 Washington DC businesses understand, accept and hold bitcoin by 2026, building a thriving circular economy in America's capital city.

• New on Geyser: HC Erlangen Women's Handball team in Germany seeks Bitcoin sponsorship to display BTC logo on jerseys across multiple leagues including 3. Liga Süd and Jugendbundesliga while promoting Bitcoin adoption among female athletes.

• Bitkey proposes Chain Code Delegation, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that enables collaborative multisig wallets without exposing user transaction history or balances to third-party cosigners.

• Ledger, a leading hardware wallet company, unveils its Nano Gen5 signer featuring AI-driven digital identity protection, FIDO2 Passkeys support, and advanced security capabilities.

• Natalie Brunell, Bitcoin podcast host and author, announces her upcoming book 'Bitcoin is for Everyone' launching November 2025, offering accessible explanations for how Bitcoin provides hope amid economic challenges.

• BitcoinTutorials dot org compiles 774 step-by-step video tutorials covering Bitcoin wallets, nodes, mining, and privacy tools from trusted creators worldwide.

• Sygnum Bank, a Swiss digital asset bank, partners with bitcoin lending startup Debifi to launch MultiSYG, a bank-backed loan platform allowing borrowers to retain partial control of their BTC through multi-signature wallets.

• Hoseki enables visible, verifiable ownership statements generated directly from users' wallets without compromising control.

• Fountain, a bitcoin-powered podcast platform, launches a comprehensive hosting service for podcasters seeking monetization beyond traditional advertising models through Lightning payments, Nostr integration, and subscriber-focused features.

• 21 Cigar Co. sells premium hand-rolled cigars crafted in Little Havana for Bitcoin enthusiasts, featuring three collections with Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos while accepting BTC payments.

• DNN introduces a decentralized, Bitcoin-anchored naming system that enables human-readable names for nostr and web browsing, replacing centralized DNS with spam-resistant registration and peer-to-peer resolution.

• Ryan, an active Nostr user, shares a list of video compression tools that can help users of the Nostr protocol optimize their content for better streaming and smaller file sizes.

• BTCPay Server announces BrantaOps plugin listing in its Plugin Directory, enabling customers to verify payment destinations in checkouts belong to intended businesses.

• Bitcoin refinancing calculator models multi-year loan strategies to generate income while keeping BTC holdings, allowing sustainable withdrawals based on appreciation without selling.

• Umbrel, a Bitcoin node and self-hosting service provider, introduces version control for the Bitcoin Node app, allowing users to automatically update to latest Bitcoin Core versions or stick with specific versions.

• Minibits wallet launches on iOS App Store after passing full App Store review on first attempt.

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