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Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #478 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.
But first, today’s Top Stories:
⚡ Engie Assesses Bitcoin Mining at Its 895-MW Brazil Solar Plant
📉 Bitcoin Dips Below $63K as Polymarket Prices 72% Odds on $55K
🏦 Crypto dot com Gets Federal Bank Charter After Eight-Figure MAGA Spend
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⚡ Engie Assesses Bitcoin Mining at Its 895-MW Brazil Solar Plant
French utility Engie is evaluating bitcoin mining at its 895-MW Assu Sol solar plant in Brazil to monetize power lost to grid curtailment. Brazil zeroed import duties on high-efficiency mining hardware in February 2026.
Why it matters: The world's #1 corporate renewable energy dealer -- 23.64% owned by the French state -- is running the numbers on turning curtailed solar into bitcoin. The incentive structure, not ideology, is doing the work. Read more→
Meanwhile,
📉 Bitcoin Dips Below $63K as Polymarket Prices 72% Odds on $55K
Bitcoin dipped below $63,000 for the fourth consecutive session Monday, down 25% year-to-date from January's ~$90,000. Trump tariff fears and AI jitters drove $240 million in leveraged long liquidations, with ETF outflows accelerating.
Why it matters: Polymarket prices 72% odds on bitcoin falling below $55,000 -- CryptoQuant's projected bottom -- with Standard Chartered flagging $50,000 as a possible floor. The 58k entry levels are now firmly in the conversation. Read more→
On the regulatory front,
🏦 Crypto dot com Gets Federal Bank Charter After Eight-Figure MAGA Spend
Crypto dot com secured conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter, joining Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, and Bridge. CEO Kris Marszalek contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund and eight-figure sums to MAGA Inc., $5 million of it in January 2026.
Why it matters: The charter authorizes federal custody -- genuinely useful for institutions. Writing eight-figure political checks to secure it is a faster compliance path than a decade of advocacy. Read more→
Poll #478: Crypto.com donated 8 figures to MAGA Inc. and got a federal bank charter. The quiet part:
Jameson Lopp of Casa argues that BIP-110 is a reckless soft fork proposal that threatens Bitcoin's censorship resistance and unity by attempting to limit arbitrary data through subjective rules, risking chain splits, and lacking miner or economic support needed for activation (Feb 23 | 20 min read).
Conner Brown, Head of Strategy at Bitcoin Policy Institute, argues that Basel's 1,250% risk weight for bitcoin is a category error that treats a transparent, zero-counterparty-risk asset like an opaque securitization tranche, artificially constraining US banks from serving a $78B corporate treasury market while pushing activity into less-regulated channels (Feb 23 | 20 min read).
Juan Galt of Bitcoin Magazine explores how Bitcoin Indonesia has built one of the world's most active Bitcoin communities with 55,000 members and 40 monthly meetups by leveraging a legal loophole to circumvent the government's 2018 Bitcoin and crypto payment ban through 'closed loop' redemption systems (Feb 23 | 7 min read).
Matt Howard from Solo Satoshi compares the three leading Bitcoin solo mining pools in 2026 - CKPool, Public Pool, and AtlasPool - helping miners choose based on fees, latency, sovereignty, and infrastructure reliability (Feb 22 | 18 min read).
Joakim Book, author and editor in the Bitcoin ecosystem, argues that Lightning Network purists demanding non-custodial setups for every microtransaction on Stacker News miss the point, as using custodial wallets for small payments and bundling transactions via cowboy credits is economically rational and doesn't compromise Bitcoin's broader custody flexibility (Feb 22 | 5 min read).
Andrea Carnimeo from blockdyor reviews the COLDCARD Q hardware wallet, awarding it 97/100 and praising its full QWERTY keyboard, dual secure elements, air-gapped security, and battery power as significant upgrades over the MK4, making it ideal for serious self-custodial users of Bitcoin (Feb 21 | 28 min read).
Shinobi of Bitcoin Magazine explains how Cluster Mempool - a complete rearchitecting of Bitcoin Core's transaction organization merged in November 2025 - simplifies mempool management by grouping related transactions into sortable chunks, aligning miner incentives with network behavior while improving second-layer protocol security and mining decentralization (Feb 20 | 7 min read).
Milad, a Lightning Network node operator, shares how he transformed his unprofitable node into a net positive by strategically leasing liquidity, implementing dynamic fee adjustments based on channel balance, and leveraging Nostr integration to attract reliable peers over a 90-day experiment (Feb 20 | 5 min read).
Lightning News, a Bitcoin-only publication covering developments on the Lightning Network, reports on a 16-year empirical study revealing that Bitcoin Core's top 3 maintainers control 81.1% of merges across 528K GitHub items, while zero-review merges dropped from 30.2% to 3.4%, exposing governance centralization despite decentralization claims (Feb 20 | 2 min read).
Murch, a Bitcoin core contributor, argues through a detailed mathematical scenario that a soft fork starting with minority hashrate (20% example) cannot succeed, as the non-forking chain maintains economic and security advantages that discourage miner defection (Feb 19 | 4 min read).
Che Kohler of The Bitcoin Manual warns hardware wallet owners about sophisticated physical mail scams where criminals use stolen customer data from Ledger and Trezor breaches to send fraudulent letters requesting seed phrases, resulting in irreversible theft of bitcoin (Feb 20 | 10 min read).
Ben Jealous, former NAACP president and University of Pennsylvania professor, argues that Bitcoin provides essential economic freedom for people facing government repression, hyperinflation, and institutional collapse, distinguishing it from speculative cryptocurrencies as a tool for preserving agency when traditional systems fail (Feb 17 | 4 min read).
New on Geyser: Geyser now enables all projects to accept fiat payments via card, bank transfer, or Apple Pay and receive 100% BTC with no creator KYC or setup required.
New on Geyser: BitcoinHer hosts hands-on luncheon workshops across six Indian cities to empower women with Bitcoin education, targeting 25 participants per workshop alongside community sessions for women founders and college students.
Lightning Bets is a peer-to-peer prediction market that enables users to bet on BTC, stocks, gold, oil, and currencies with Lightning Network settlement in sats, featuring weekly pools and custom bet options.
Moneydevkit enables developers to gate API routes behind Lightning Network payments using the L402 protocol, allowing pay-per-call access without accounts or subscriptions through instant bitcoin micropayments.
Nostr-core, a lightweight JavaScript/TypeScript Nostr Wallet Connect client, delivers full Lightning Network payment support for web and server applications with 82% fewer dependencies than traditional SDKs, eliminating vendor lock-in.
Sigil-Web, a new privacy-focused Bitcoin hardware wallet using NXP SE050 secure element, offers air-gapped signing, Tor integration, built-in tumbler for transaction obfuscation, and multi-slot support for DIY Bitcoin security enthusiasts.
Satring launches as a searchable directory of 70+ live Lightning-paywalled L402 APIs across 9 categories, offering free browsing and paid submissions to solve discovery problems for AI agents and developers building permissionless micropayment services.
Hashtree, a Nostr-based content-addressed storage system using merkle trees, enables peer-to-peer file sharing with encryption, decentralized CDN delivery, and git repository syncing without centralized servers or gatekeepers.
Niklas Gögge, a Bitcoin developer, builds a comprehensive GitHub statistics dashboard tracking contributor activity, merge times, and review patterns on the Bitcoin Core repository.
Blockstream unveils Jade Plus hardware wallet in three premium metal finishes - Rose Gold, Stealth Black, and Sovereign Green.
Deblock, a European neobank founded in 2024 by former Revolut and Ledger executives, integrates Breez SDK to offer 300K users Bitcoin self-custody with instant transfers, minimal fees, and offline payments.
L402 Apps, a Lightning Network-powered directory, showcases apps and APIs using the L402 payment protocol for instant bitcoin micropayments, enabling AI agents and developers to access paywalled services with per-request pricing.
