Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #442 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.

Now for today’s Top Stories:

• 🇮🇷 Iran’s Blackout Meets Bitcoin-Born Mesh Messaging

• 🇻🇪 SEC Chair Shrugs at Venezuela’s Rumored BTC ‘Shadow Reserve’

• 🛒 Strategy Scoops Biggest Bitcoin Buy Since July

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Jan 13, 2026

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🇮🇷 Iran’s Blackout Meets Bitcoin-Born Mesh Messaging

Iran’s rial has slid to 1.4M per US dollar and inflation above 42% are fueling protests and a crackdown that includes telecom blackouts and even Starlink blocks. Citizens are turning to offline mesh messengers like Bitchat and its fork Noghteha to stay connected without the internet. With savings melting, more Iranians are eyeing BTC as an escape hatch; crypto flows tied to Iranian entities hit $3.7B in early 2025 despite tighter rules. Atlas21

🇻🇪 SEC Chair Shrugs at Venezuela’s Rumored BTC ‘Shadow Reserve’

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins says the fate of a rumored Venezuela-linked Bitcoin hoard, pegged by chatter at roughly $60B, ‘remains to be seen’ and is being handled elsewhere in the administration. He stressed the agency is not focused on confiscation, noting there is still no verifiable on-chain proof. Atkins instead spotlighted Congress pushing the CLARITY Act to split oversight with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, plus the Genius Act’s stablecoin groundwork. Bitcoin Magazine

🛒 Strategy Scoops Biggest Bitcoin Buy Since July

Michael Saylor’s Strategy just bought about $1.25B of BTC, its biggest haul since July, adding 13,627 BTC between Jan 5 and Jan 11 via sales of Class A common stock. The buy lands after the firm flagged a $17.44B fourth-quarter unrealized hit under fair-value accounting as bitcoin slid. The move landed after MSCI decided not to immediately eject digital-asset treasury firms from key indexes, easing near-term pressure even as Strategy trades below its bitcoin net asset value. Bloomberg

POLL #442

PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS

OPINION & ANALYSIS

• Che Kohler of The Bitcoin Manual argues that Iran's rial collapse to 1.4M per dollar demonstrates how hyperinflation destroys traditional hedges like stocks, real estate, and local businesses, making Bitcoin the only viable lifeboat for preserving wealth and enabling economic survival during currency death spirals (Jan 13 | 19 min read).

• David Krause, an emeritus associate professor of finance at Marquette University, argues that Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy amplify Bitcoin's volatility by nearly 2x through hidden leverage, exposing US public pension funds to risks 244 times greater than Treasury bills and violating fiduciary duties requiring prudent investment management (Jan 13 | 6 min read).

• Steven Biebel, a Pentagon mission engineering lead and Navy Reserve officer, argues that Bitcoin mining strengthens US national security by optimizing baseload nuclear power, countering BRICS+ energy and grid threats, keeping Bitcoin hashrate domestic, and funding a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve via a BTC 'sat tax' (Jan 12 | 5 min read).

• Max Musumeci, a Lightning Network researcher, outlines 12 essential Bitcoin self-custody privacy practices, emphasizing that avoiding KYC exchanges, never reusing addresses, running a full node over Tor, and using Lightning Network are critical steps to protect users from surveillance by governments, corporations, and other adversaries (Jan 11 | 4 min read).

• Juan Galt of Bitcoin Magazine profiles Vexl, a non-profit peer-to-peer Bitcoin app that enables KYC-free trades within users' social networks through a web-of-trust model, emphasizing privacy and non-custodial exchanges while navigating regulatory challenges facing privacy-focused Bitcoin services (Jan 9 | 4 min read).

• Rene Pickhardt, a Lightning Network researcher, introduces a geometric theory proving that payment channel networks face fundamental scaling limits due to infeasible payments, showing multi-party channels significantly expand feasible wealth distributions while linear fees cause channel depletion even in circular economies (Jan 9 | 81 min read).

• Daniel Batten, a climate tech investor and Bitcoin climate FUD buster, argues that Bitcoin mining has become a critical catalyst for climate action by accelerating renewable energy deployment, replacing fossil fuel heating, reducing methane emissions, and enabling grid stability through flexible demand response at measurable scale (Jan 9 | 25 min read).

• Nikki McPherson, Head of Business Development at Amboss Technologies, predicts that Bitcoin will become a major stablecoin settlement layer in 2026 as Tron, Solana, and Ethereum L2 reliability issues mount, while Lightning Network and Taproot Assets enable low-fee, high-finality stablecoin routing on Bitcoin rails (Jan 8 | 4 min read). 

• Jordi Visser, a macro analyst, argues that Q3 2025 data revealing 4.3% GDP growth alongside rising unemployment marks capitalism's breaking point, as AI-driven productivity severs the 10,000-year labor-capital pact, making Bitcoin the only credible store of value in a post-labor economy where digital competitors render human workers obsolete (Jan 7 | 13 min read).

• Matthew Ferranti, senior fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, publishes a new paper arguing that Bitcoin hedges against weakening Federal Reserve independence, showing bitcoin rises after Polymarket odds of Jerome Powell’s firing jump while the US dollar dips, implying fiscal dominance fears erode trust quickly and rebuild slowly (Jan 6 | 8 min read).

TOOLS & PROJECTS

• New on Geyser: Nostr Components, an open-source web integration library, launches fundraiser to build embeddable zap buttons, live chat, comments, and streaming components for Nostr functionality on any website.

• New on Geyser: Amantikir School, a Brazilian financial education and personal development institute, seeks funding to construct nature-integrated headquarters featuring classrooms, dormitories, and communal spaces for youth immersion programs focused on Bitcoin education.

• 𝕏 reveals Smart Cashtags, letting users tag specific assets like Bitcoin, tap to view real-time prices and mentions, and signaling potential in-app trading with self-custodial wallets.

• SatoshiSend, an open-source file sharing platform, enables zero-knowledge encryption and Bitcoin Lightning payments for private, pay-per-file hosting without accounts.

• Solo Block Tracker monitors Bitcoin blocks mined by individual miners since January 2023, revealing 22 blocks found in 12 months with 69.35 BTC in rewards.

• Yam, a new open-source Zig-based CLI tool by Alexander Leishman of River, enables lightweight Bitcoin P2P network analysis, node connections, mempool observation, and experimental transaction broadcasting.

• Sats Tracker, an open-source offline expense tracking app built for Bitcoin users, enables transaction management across on-chain and Lightning wallets with category-based budgeting features.

• xNostr, a Nostr-based 𝕏 auto-posting tool, adds Primal and Amber remote signer support, Nostr Connected login, multiple 𝕏 accounts, plus updated branding and new plans.

• Bitcoin Design Community, an open-source initiative shaping Bitcoin UX standards, unveils 18 design initiatives for 2026 including reference wallets, human-readable addresses, privacy advocacy, and vibe coding resources.

• Bitcoin Lockboxes is an experimental demo service that enables users to gift bitcoin with timelocks, requiring recipients to hold funds for a set duration before accessing via seed phrase.

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