Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #444 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:

• 🇩🇪 German Banking Giant Brings Bitcoin Trading to the Co-op Masses

• 🧾 Rhode Island’s 'Small BTC' Tax Break Could Boost Everyday Spending

• 🛡️ Bitwise: Bitcoin + Gold Beats 60/40 on Risk-Adjusted Returns

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Jan 15, 2026

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🇩🇪 German Banking Giant Brings Bitcoin Trading to the Co-op Masses

Germany’s second-largest lender, DZ Bank, has secured approval under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets rules to launch 'meinKrypto' for retail clients via cooperative banks. Built into the VR Banking App, it adds wallets and self-directed trading for BTC, and other ‘digital assets’, without pushing advice. Cooperative banks must file their own notification with Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, but interest is strong, with over 71% keen to offer Bitcoin and crypto services. CoinDesk

🧾 Rhode Island’s 'Small BTC' Tax Break Could Boost Everyday Spending

Rhode Island lawmakers reintroduced Senate Bill S2021 to temporarily cut state income and capital gains taxes on small BTC spending, aiming to make everyday bitcoin use less of a paperwork party. The proposal would exempt qualifying Bitcoin sales or exchanges up to set monthly and yearly limits, let taxpayers self-certify, and require records only if audited. It would start January 1, 2027 and sunset in 2028, pending review. Bitcoin Magazine

🛡️ Bitwise: Bitcoin + Gold Beats 60/40 on Risk-Adjusted Returns

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan shared research showing a portfolio with a 15% combined allocation to bitcoin and gold delivered stronger risk-adjusted returns than a classic 60/40 mix, with a higher Sharpe ratio. Using Bloomberg data across major sell-offs in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2025, Bitwise found gold tended to cushion drops while BTC often led the rebound. It framed the study as a stress test of Ray Dalio’s 15% hedge idea. The Block

POLL #444

PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS

OPINION & ANALYSIS

• Juan Galt of Bitcoin Magazine examines how spot Bitcoin ETFs and rising 'wrench attacks' are reshaping bitcoin self-custody in 2026, arguing that multisig services like Casa preserve sovereignty, reduce physical and geopolitical risk, and support institutions seeking provable control without full reliance on custodians (Jan 14 | 8 min read).

• L0la L33tz of The Rage argues that the Senate Banking Committee’s digital asset market structure draft enables developer prosecutions, expands Bank Secrecy Act and Travel Rule-style KYC to DeFi and web front ends, and amends the PATRIOT Act to target privacy tech and self-custody users (Jan 14 | 9 min read).

• Runningbitcoin, a Bitcoin beginners tutorial writer on Stacker News, explains how Bisq Easy Mobile lets new users buy BTC non-KYC via Lightning or on-chain with zero fees and no deposit, stressing backups, small $600 trade limits, seller reputation, mediation, and creating offers despite 5-15% premiums (Jan 14 | 5 min read).

• Christopher Lingle & Emile Phaneuf III, writing for The Daily Economy, argue that anti-money laundering policy has become a catch-all rationale for surveillance and prosecutorial overreach, citing Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash cases to claim 'money laundering' allegations target Bitcoin and crypto privacy tools while imposing huge compliance costs and eroding rights (Jan 13 | 8 min read).

• Geyser, a Bitcoin crowdfunding platform, reviews 2025 impact as users send over 6 BTC to fund causes, education, and tools, and outlines 2026 plans for Kickstarter-style all-or-nothing funding via Rootstock smart contracts, grants expansion, Lightning upgrades, and stablecoin integrations (Jan 13 | 2 min read).

• Jared Malsin, a Wall Street Journal reporter on the Middle East, explains how Ayandeh Bank’s collapse from crony bad loans forced Iran to print money, deepened insolvency, crashed the rial amid sanctions, and accelerated austerity-driven protests that threaten regime legitimacy (Jan 13 | 10 min read).

• Joseph Moss of International Banker explores how central banks, led by the Czech National Bank's $1M bitcoin purchase, may increasingly add BTC to reserves alongside gold as concerns over US dollar stability and fiscal dynamics drive diversification strategies, despite ongoing volatility concerns and skepticism from major institutions like the ECB and Federal Reserve (Jan 12 | 6 min read).

• SimpleStacker, a writer on Stacker News, reviews Rene Pickhardt’s 'A Mathematical Theory of Payment Channel Networks,' explaining how network topology constrains feasible liquidity states and payment reliability, and argues multiparty channels could expand routing while noting incentives can reshape the graph (Jan 12 | 5 min read).

• Conduition, an independent security researcher, explains how Cashu NUT-13 deterministic secrets enable keyset ID residue collisions that let malicious mints steal ecash proofs via swap and restore flows, and outlines short-term wallet safeguards plus a long-term keyset ID v2 and HMAC-based fix (Jan 10 | 18 min read).

• ICYMI: Marius Farashi, Journalist and co-founder of Off-Chain Media, explains how bitcoin and BTC-based tools help Iranians bypass government censorship and sanctions while protecting savings from rial inflation, arguing Bitcoin offers practical financial freedom beyond speculation in Iran (Feb 4 2024 | 20 min raad).

• Connor Dolan, VP of Sales at Unchained, argues that Bitcoin and Stoicism reshape time preference by rewarding saving and present-moment discipline, helping people resist fiat-driven impulsivity, endure volatility, and align daily habits with long-term freedom and purpose (Jan 14 | 13 min read).

• Roy Sheinfeld of Breez uses a child-simple 'two-piece puzzle' model to demystify Spark statechains, showing how BTC transfers happen by rotating joint spend authorization between users and a multi-operator Spark Entity without on-chain movement (Jan 13 | 3 min read).

• Kane McGukin, host of the 'Navigating Bitcoin's Noise' podcast, argues that broken market relationships since 2015 are forcing a shift from a unipolar to multipolar financial order, where Bitcoin emerges as digital collateral and a liquidity valve alongside gold, enabling faster settlement in a regionally-organized world resisting excessive leverage (Jan 12 | 5 min read).

• Justin M. Ptak, writing for the Mises Institute, argues that fiat currency and central banking enable recurring crisis-driven monetary loosening that rewards financial insiders, fuels inflation and debt dependency, exports US dollar costs globally, and erodes market discipline and liberty (Jan 11 | 6 min read).

• Blockdyor explains how Rizful offers a free, browser-based custodial Lightning wallet with up to 10 Lightning Addresses, fast payments via The Megalith Node, and Nostr Wallet Connect for zaps and app integrations, while warning to keep only spending BTC (Jan 10 | 14 min read). 

• Kudzai Kutukwa, in an article on Nostr, writes that modern politics and institutions run on broken promises and trust traps, and says Bitcoin and Nostr prove that ‘trustless’ systems using cryptographic verification can replace coercive gatekeepers and make reformism obsolete (Jan 9 | 12 min read).

• Juan Galt of Bitcoin Magazine highlights why Bitcoin self-custody still matters in 2026 by comparing top Bitcoin wallets across mobile, desktop, hardware, multisig, and seed backup options, spotlighting Phoenix, Sparrow, Coldcard Q, Casa, Nunchuk, and CryptoSteel (Jan 7 | 10 min read).

• Niklas Gögge, a Brink grantee, introduces Fuzzamoto, a snapshot fuzzing tool using Nyx, AFL++ and LibAFL to run deterministic full-system 'functional fuzz tests' against Bitcoin Core and other full nodes, closing testing gaps and surfacing real crashes like an RPC block index bug (Jan 7 | 7 min read).

• Dave Birnbaum, VP Product at Coinbits, argues that AI productivity gains, stablecoin Treasury demand, fraud elimination, and strategic bitcoin holdings could make America's $38.5T debt indefinitely manageable despite traditional models predicting fiscal crisis (Jan 7 | 16 min read).

• Bitcoin Fixes This, a Bitcoin newsletter on Substack, writes that Strategy’s 2025 $MSTR slump reflects dilution-heavy BTC accumulation, thin mNAV support, and weak capital discipline, making direct bitcoin ownership a safer, regulated alternative as CLARITY and GENIUS expand access (Jan 1 | 3 min read).

TOOLS & PROJECTS

• New on Geyser: BitBall, a Bitcoin Lightning-powered weekly draw platform, builds transparent, publicly verifiable number extraction and instant BTC payouts, separating software development funding from a dedicated prize pool.

• New on Geyser: BitDevs Zambia drives Bitcoin open-source education by visiting 8 major universities, partnering with coding clubs to deliver hands-on workshops that launch student developers into real contribution paths.

• Subscriptions Manager, an LNbits extension, streamlines recurring subscription billing with Bitcoin and BTC payments plus Stripe and PayPal support, offering plans, trials, notifications, and self-service management.

• SHA-256 Visualizer is an interactive, animated tool that explains the SHA-256 hash algorithm step by step, showing padding, message scheduling, 64 compression rounds, and the final hash.

• Blitz Wallet, a Bitcoin and Lightning wallet app, pre-launches 'Dollars via Lightning' with in-app BTC swaps, contact dollar payments, and automatic conversion from Lightning receipts.

• Swift Bitcoin, an open-source Swift framework and full node toolkit, provides modular libraries and CLI tools for BTC wallets, transactions, RPC, and peer-to-peer networking on modern Swift.

• Bitcoin++ explores Bitcoin exploits and defenses at its Florianopolis, Brazil conference on Feb 26-28, 2026, featuring global open-source developers, workshops, hackathon prizes, and sponsor-backed community events.

• Plebdashboard by Bitcoin Data Labs lets users find Lightning Network nodes by alias or public key, explore rankings and graph visualizations, and browse featured routing, wallet, and exchange operators.

• Michael Evans, a Bitcoin developer, builds a Meshtastic firmware that bridges LoRa radios with Bitchat peers, forwarding nearby chat messages across the Meshtastic mesh network.

• Simply Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-focused media brand, launches Moon Match, a casual iOS and Android mobile game that lets players stack BTC while playing and competing in contests.

• Club Orange, a Bitcoin events platform, launches Bitcoin event ticketing with BTC and Lightning payments, instant delivery, in-app access, and expanded reach for organizers and attendees.

• Nostr Canvas is a Flutter Web app that recreates r/place-style collaborative pixel art on Nostr, featuring real-time updates, proof-of-work cooldowns, and multiple authentication options for everyone.

• Quantoxide provides a framework to build, backtest, and deploy Bitcoin futures algo trading bots on LN Markets using historical data and Lightning tools.

• Bitcoin Discovery Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, preserves Bitcoin mining history through exhibits, a mining hardware gallery, and community stories while raising tax-deductible donations in BTC or USD.

• Lightning Faucet launches AI Agent Wallet, an L402 Lightning payment system that lets AI agents pay for APIs via Lightning invoices with operator-controlled budgets, keys, and real-time spending visibility.

• JoinMarket NG, a modern Bitcoin CoinJoin implementation, delivers decentralized maker-taker privacy with Tor, Neutrino light-client support, and protocol v5 compatibility for production-ready mixing.

• Sovereign Engineering, a self-sovereign internet research cohort, explores rebuilding the network stack to resist censorship and outages, rethinking DNS, routing, and trust during SEC-07 on March 30–April 17, 2026.

• Mining Rig Monitor is an open-source self-hosted solution for mining farms to track ASIC, CPU, and GPU miners through a commander-sentry architecture.

• Dcabtc dot xyz is a dollar-cost averaging calculator that compares weekly $100 investments across Bitcoin, Mag 7 tech stocks, gold, Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and bonds since customizable start dates.

• Pylon by OpenAgents connects edge compute to a decentralized Artificial Intelligence marketplace via Nostr NIP-90, enabling provider and buyer inference jobs with Lightning payments on Bitcoin regtest.

• Nexus by OpenAgents is a Nostr relay for AI agent commerce, delivering machine-speed coordination with NIP-42 authentication, NIP-90 job routing, and Cloudflare edge scaling.

• LeatherMint embraces stealth branding by creating minimalist Bitcoin-inspired luxury leather goods without overt logos, appealing to customers who value financial sovereignty, craftsmanship, and generational legacy.

• Satdoku, a new open-source Sudoku game built with Next.js, integrates Lightning Network payments via Money Dev Kit for in-game purchases and features an AI-powered tutor named Howie.

• Pidgeon, a new privacy-first Nostr scheduler app, enables users to write posts and schedule them for later with encrypted communications, media uploads via NIP 96, and self-hosted DVM options.

• Kern, a low-cost offline Bitcoin signing device prototype, uses ESP32-P4 chip with screen and camera for air-gapped transaction signing via QR codes without internet connectivity.

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