Musk Fumbles BTC Economics 🤡, SEC Champions Self-Custody 🗝️, Strategy Pinky-Swears Diamond Hands 💎

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Now for today’s Top Stories:

• 🤡 Elon Musk Akwardly Commits Fundamental Bitcoin Category Error

• 🗝️ SEC Commissioner Backs Self-Custody As ETFs Tempt BTC Offchain

• 📊 Strategy Promises to Hodl BTC Until Wall Street Forces Its Hand

TOGETHER WITH THE ROUNDUP

While crypto Twitter chases Zcash's 12x pump, few are asking the most important question: Why is it still down 99.92% when priced in Bitcoin?

This is the analysis you get from The Roundup - where 15,000+ investors get institutional-grade Bitcoin analysis every Tuesday at 8 AM ET.

COO Hector Alvero cuts through the noise with real math (no altcoin distractions or moonboy predictions).

"My new favorite account on Twitter. No propaganda, just numbers" - @eemi666 on 𝕏

Dec 1, 2025

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🤡 Elon Musk Awkwardly Commits Fundamental Bitcoin Category Error

Elon Musk turned some heads at a recent forum when he correctly linked Bitcoin’s value to the energy required to secure its network but then, however, reached for Iain M. Banks’ Culture series (a favourite Silicon Valley reference point for a post-scarcity, AI-run civilization where formal money largely disappears, work is optional, and superintelligent AIs coordinate everything) to claim that ‘money will become irrelevant’. Bitcoiners were quick to point out his category error in confusing ever-cheaper physical consumer goods with the deeper scarcities that money actually coordinates, such as energy, blockspace, land, and human attention. The reality is that any touted UHI-centric post-scarcity utopia is economically naïve and politically dangerous if it isn’t anchored to a credibly neutral, non-state monetary base. Thank God for Bitcoin. U.Today

🗝️ SEC Commissioner Backs Self-Custody As ETFs Tempt BTC Offchain

SEC commissioner Hester Peirce doubled down on self-custody and financial privacy as fundamental rights, blasting the idea that Americans should be forced to park assets with intermediaries. While she champions Bitcoin’s self-sovereign ethos, big BTC holders are increasingly shifting into in-kind exchange-traded funds for tax perks and convenience, triggering the first major drop in self-custodied BTC. Some critics warn that the ‘not your keys, not your coins’ retreat risks dulling Bitcoin’s original cypherpunk edge. Cointelegraph

📊 Strategy Promises to Hodl BTC Until Wall Street Forces Its Hand

Strategy CEO Phong Le says the firm will only tap its 649,870 BTC as a last resort if its stock falls below net asset value and fresh capital dries up, making a sale mathematically necessary to protect ‘Bitcoin yield per share.’ Meanwhile, Michael Saylor on 𝕏 teased a switch to green dots (from his customary weekly orange dots), which the market is reading as a possible signal of a shift, even if nobody knows which way yet. CoinDesk

POLL #418

PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS

QUICK BITS

• Kazakhstan’s central bank allocates up to 300M USD from its gold reserves to buy high-tech stocks and financial instruments linked to Bitcoin and ‘digital assets’.

• Japanese bond yields surge, hitting levels unseen since 2008, potentially unwinding the yen carry trade.

• Bitcoin dips 5%, triggering a surge in liquidations as over 180,000 traders facing $539M in liquidations, marking its worst November since 2018.

• S&P Dow Jones Indices again declines to add Strategy to its S&P 500 index despite meeting the technical criteria.

• China reaffirms its 2021 Bitcoin ban due to ‘resurfaced speculation’ and vowing to crack down on stablecoins which it claims are being used for crime.

• DMND launches its Stratum V2 mining pool with SOC 2 compliance, enhancing Bitcoin's censorship resistance and decentralization in the mining ecosystem.

• Mining difficulty forecasted to rise in December, as the hash price, a metric measuring miner profitability per unit of computing power, sits near record lows.

• UK aims to require Bitcoin and crypto platforms to report all activity from domestic users starting in 2026, expanding the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF) and tightening tax compliance.

• Spot Bitcoin ETFs see $70M in weekly inflows, ending four-week outflow streak.

• Bitcoin's 2025 performance eerily mirrors the 2022 bear market, with correlations reaching 98%, according to network economist Timothy Peterson.

QUICK MEDIA

• Saifedean Ammous questions the necessity of privacy-focused sh!tcoins like Zcash versus Bitcoin, emphasizing hard money's importance for economic growth and dismissing privacy as overblown marketing (Nov 27 | 8:05 min watch).

• Walker of THE Bitcoin podcast, says that regardless of how much you own, Bitcoin is fck you money because it is the first form of money that cannot be fcked with, owing to its characteristic of being resistant to debasement and censorship, in addition to giving people more control over their time, making even a little bit of it more valuable than a giant stack of fiat (Nov 30 | 0:54 min watch). 

• James Check, an on-chain analyst, in an appearance on BTC Sessions' podcast, says that the gap between Bitcoin and crypto is massive now, while explaining how new entrants in the market like institutions are more sophisticated and FOMO-resistant than those who came in during previous cycles (Nov 27 | 1:38 min watch). 

• Simply Bitcoin dissects the alleged coordinated Wall Street plot to undermine Strategy's Bitcoin strategy through media attacks, margin requirement hikes, and the launch of competing leveraged Bitcoin products, while Michael Saylor promotes Bitcoin-backed financial instruments as a new form of collateral (Dec 1 | 12:25 min watch). 

• Adam Livingston, author of 'The Great Harvest', explores a hypothetical scenario where a second Trump administration leverages Bitcoin through a strategic reserve, dollar stablecoins, US hash rate dominance, and the World Liberty Financial platform to maintain American power in a world challenged by BRICS de-dollarization and geopolitical competition in digital currency (Nov 28 | 22:04 min watch). 

• Nathan and Gary of BTC Sessions dissects Maryland HODL’s piece alleging a 'secret war' between the US Treasury (supported by Bitcoin and Strategy) and the Federal Reserve/JP Morgan for control of the monetary system, with potential implications for Bitcoin's role in a Bretton Woods 2.0 scenario and JP Morgan's alleged attempts to undermine Strategy (Nov 29 | 19:05 min watch).

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