$436M China Mystery 🏦, Lightning Breaks $1B ⚡, UAE Sits on $344M 🏗️

🏦 Hong Kong Firm Gives Chinese Capital a $436M Bitcoin Backdoor

⚡ Lightning Network Cracks $1 Billion in Monthly Volume

🏗️ UAE Sits on $344M in Unrealized Bitcoin Mining Profits

Voltage, a Bitcoin infrastructure company, launches USD-settled revolving credit line enabling businesses to make instant Lightning Network payments while repaying in dollars, eliminating the need to hold BTC on corporate balance sheets.

Mining difficulty surges 15% to 144.4T in largest jump since 2021, driven by hashrate recovery to 1 ZH/s after US winter storm disruptions, as well-capitalized miners with low-cost energy continue aggressive operations.

CME Group, the world's largest derivatives marketplace, expands its Bitcoin and crypto futures and options to 24/7 trading from May 29, aligning regulated products with spot market schedules activity amid record $3T in notional volume.

PREDYX prediction market for BIP 110 crosses 11M sats in trading volume as odds now show 10% probability of activation and enforcement by September 1.

Bitdeer, a Singapore-based Bitcoin mining company, surpasses MARA with 63.2 EH/s self-mining hash rate after deploying proprietary SEALMINER rigs and mining 668 BTC in January, a 430% year-over-year increase.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon discloses his personal bitcoin holdings while speaking at Trump-backed World Liberty Financial Forum.

Ledn Inc raises $188M in the first-ever bond sale backed by bitcoin loans, earning investment-grade ratings despite recent price drops in BTC.

Milo, a Miami-based Bitcoin and crypto lender, surpasses $100M in bitcoin-backed mortgage originations, including a record $12M loan, as institutional and high-net-worth clients increasingly use BTC as collateral for home financing.

Treasury bill issuance has an 80% correlation with BTC prices since 2021, leading price movements by eight months, according to investment firm and market maker Keyrock.

Giorgi Bachiashvili, a Georgian-Russian investment fund manager, walks free after a plea deal despite embezzling $40M in BTC from former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, receiving a suspended sentence and $19K fine.

South Korean prosecutors recover $21.4M in bitcoin after hacker returns 320.8 BTC stolen from authorities' custody, following transaction blocks on centralized exchanges that prevented liquidation.

Glassnode's onchain analysis reveals that Bitcoin holders, primarily retail-linked and long-term accumulation wallets now holding over 4M BTC, are defending the $60K-$69K demand zone formed in 2024 despite weakening liquidity.

Wellington-Altus Chief Market Strategist James Thorne frames BTC as a wager on Trump's economic reforms succeeding while gold reflects bets on dollar debasement, with both assets at critical technical junctures that will validate one thesis over the next two years.

Donald Trump Jr, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, calls traditional banking a 'Ponzi scheme' that pushed the family into adopting Bitcoin and crypto, claiming banks closed hundreds of family accounts after Jan 6 2021.

Wicked, a Bitcoin analyst, explains how BIP-110's proposed soft fork to temporarily halve non-witness data limits faces likely failure due to insufficient miner support at 3%, exposing deep community divisions over backward-compatible upgrades versus contentious hard forks that risk chain splits (Feb 18 | 23:19 min watch).

Giacomo Zucco of Plan B Network argues that government-mandated KYC creates dangerous 'systems of control' by transforming compliance databases into target lists for criminals, as evidenced by IDMerit's February 2026 breach exposing over 1B records and 309 physical Bitcoin and crypto attacks since 2014 (Feb 17 | 0:44 min watch).

Daniel Batten, a Bitcoin mining FUD debunker, presents an evidence-based framework for dismantling FUD by challenging misleading metrics and emphasizing Bitcoin mining's benefits in grid stabilization and renewable energy integration through peer-reviewed studies (Feb 17 | 6:47 min watch).

Hurley of Swan Bitcoin examines whether quantum computing poses a genuine threat to Bitcoin's cryptographic security or represents exaggerated fear, concluding that while the concern merits long-term preparation through post-quantum upgrades, current quantum capabilities remain five orders of magnitude away from breaking Bitcoin's elliptic curve cryptography and the threat timeline of 2028 lacks empirical support (Feb 20 | 25:58 min watch).

Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike and co-founder of 21, in an interview with Nico of Simply Bitcoin at the Plan B Forum in El Salvador, argues that Bitcoin's decentralized distribution makes it impossible for institutions like BlackRock to corner the market, emphasizing that neutral money must serve everyone while governments that print currency are the true losers in Bitcoin's success (Feb 20 | 13:17 min watch).

Mark Moss, a financial educator and wealth strategist, warns that the Netherlands' new 36% tax on unrealized gains could trigger a liquidation contagion in stocks like ASML, potentially crashing portfolios globally even for investors who don't live in the Netherlands or pay the tax (Feb 20 | 16:14 min watch).

The Bitcoin Experience breaks down Michael Saylor's 21 Bitcoin Rules, exploring how they reveal psychological patterns in Bitcoin adoption - from initial rejection and skepticism to eventual understanding - while examining themes of monetary debasement, volatility, ownership, and why chaos strengthens hard money systems in an unstable global economy (Feb 12 | 9:08 min watch).