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Happy New Year! 🎉
And welcome to Issue #436 of the Bitcoin Breakdown daily newsletter, where we’re rounding up the most talked-about developments in the Bitcoin-only space from the past weekend with our Quick Bits and Quick Media sections.
Our new website is not quite ready yet so we’re postponing full rebranding until everything is in order.
Now for today’s Top Stories:
🇻🇪 Venezuela's $60B Bitcoin Mystery: Who Holds the Keys?
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Opens Its Doors to Bitcoin Mining
🪦 Bitcoin's 4-Year Cycle: Dead or Just Growing Up?
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Jan 5, 2026
TODAY’S TOP STORIES
🇻🇪 Venezuela's $60B Bitcoin Mystery: Who Holds the Keys?
Following Nicolás Maduro's dramatic capture by US forces, intelligence circles are scrambling to locate what sources estimate could be $60B in Bitcoin allegedly controlled by the regime. Alex Saab, Maduro's former financial architect and secret DEA informant, reportedly built a shadow bitcoin empire by converting Venezuelan gold into BTC through Turkish and Emirati intermediaries. With Maduro now in custody, Saab and courier David Rubio Gonzalez may be the only ones who know how to access the cold wallets holding this massive fortune. Whale Hunting
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan Opens Its Doors to Bitcoin Mining
Turkmenistan officially legalizes Bitcoin mining and exchanges under its new Law on Virtual Assets. The gas-dependent nation hopes to diversify its economy and attract foreign investment while keeping a tight leash on the industry. All miners and exchanges must obtain licenses from the central bank, and BTC is classified as property rather than money, meaning no everyday payments allowed. Anonymous wallets are banned, and strict anti-money laundering rules apply. Baby steps, but progress nonetheless. CoinDesk
🪦 Bitcoin's 4-Year Cycle: Dead or Just Growing Up?
Bitcoin closed 2025 with a 6% decline, marking the first-ever negative post-halving year and sparking debate about whether the legendary 4-year cycle is kaput. Analysts, however, say this isn't a funeral, it's a glow-up. Spot exchange-traded fund inflows tied BTC closer to traditional markets, while institutional dominance and macro headwinds muted the halving's supply shock magic. The network's hash rate still grew, and adoption increased. The cycle isn't dead; it's just maturing into longer, less volatile patterns aligned with macro trends. CCN
POLL #436
Where is the missing $60B Venezuelan Bitcoin stash actually hiding?
PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS
QUICK BITS
Iran announces readiness to accept Bitcoin payments for ballistic missiles and warships to circumvent Western sanctions.
Bitcoin Core development rebounds in 2025 with 135 contributors, 60% more mailing list activity, and 285K lines of code changed.
Bank of Japan signals continued rate hikes after raising benchmark to 0.75%, sparking
concerns ofhopes for BTC dips as yen carry trade unwinds drain global liquidity.Tether buys 8888 BTC to expand its holdings past 96,000 through a 15% profit allocation policy that transforms Treasury bill yields into systematic Bitcoin demand.
FBI reports that Bitcoin ATM fraud surged to $333M in 2025, affecting over 10,000 victims through scams where criminals impersonate banks and direct people to deposit funds into ATMs.
Ilya Lichtenstein, the hacker behind the infamous 2016 Bitfinex breach involving 120,000 BTC, walks free after serving just over a year of his five-year sentence under Trump's First Step Act criminal justice reform law.
Strategy posts its first 6-month losing streak since adopting a Bitcoin treasury in 2020, underperforming bitcoin and Nasdaq 100 despite continued BTC accumulation.
Bitfarms, a Toronto-based publicly traded Bitcoin miner, sells its 70 MW Paraguay site for $30M to fully pivot toward AI and high-performance computing in North America.
Daniel Batten, an ESG researcher, challenges 9 myths regarding Bitcoin energy use, arguing that mining stabilizes grids and supports renewable energy expansion.
Caroline Crenshaw, the SEC commissioner known for her anti-Bitcoin stance and vote against spot BTC ETFs, officially departs from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Russia's Ministry of Justice proposes fines up to 2.5M rubles and prison sentences of up to 5 years for unregistered miners, as only 30% have joined the federal tax register.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index reaches 40 and flips to 'neutral' for the first time since October's BTC crash amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.
QUICK MEDIA
Peter Todd, a Bitcoin developer rumored to be Satoshi Nakamoto, in an appearance on the All In Bitcoin podcast, argues that the Bitcoin network truly launched on Jan 9, 2009, with the public code release rather than the Jan 3 Genesis block, noting the first block was likely mined by a random user, not Satoshi (Jan 5 | 1:19 min watch).
Hurley of Swan Bitcoin argues that 2025's 'boring' redistribution and fading OG selling pressure have primed BTC for a violent 2026 expansion as the US fiat system's extractive nature drives investors toward the scarce asset (Dec 31 2025 | 14:37 min watch).
Adam Livingston argues that 2026 offers a historic 'bullish setup' for BTC, citing supply shocks, US regulatory clarity, and institutional adoption by BlackRock as catalysts driving prices beyond $125k as banks embrace the asset (Dec 29 | 16:58 min watch).
Mark Moss explains why households should adopt Strategy's 'treasury strategy' by shifting from budgeting to balance sheet management, leveraging debt to acquire assets like BTC that outperform structural inflation (Dec 31 2025 | 26:22 min watch).
Jonas Nick of Blockstream, co-author of a recent paper proposing hash-based signatures as a post-quantum solution for Bitcoin, in an interview with Marty Bent of TFTC, expresses skepticism toward claims that cryptographically relevant quantum computers lack a clear development path, warning one could emerge 'anytime' (Jan 1 | 1:36 min watch).
The Shitcoin Insider, in an interview with Guy Swann of Bitcoin Audible, highlights that over 51.8M Ordinals image trackers now occupy nearly 40% of Bitcoin's UTXO set, raising concerns about NFT data bloating the network's live state (Jan 1 | 0:40 min watch).
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