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Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #485 of Bitcoin Breakdown, where it’s OPSEC Wednesday special, followed by the latest Quick Bits snippets.
But first, today’s Top Stories:
🤖 Smarter AI Models Converge on Bitcoin
⛏️ Public Miners Liquidate Bitcoin to Fund AI Pivot
📈 Bitcoin Breaks $71,000 While Gold Retreats From Crisis Peak
Download the 2025 Bitcoin Mining Annual Review: institutional adoption, price drivers, network fundamentals, hashrate trends, public miners, hashprice, difficulty, fees, hardware innovations, and a 2026 outlook.
🤖 Smarter AI Models Converge on Bitcoin
A study of 36 frontier AI models across 9,072 controlled experiments found 48.3% of responses chose Bitcoin as preferred money, with 90.8% rejecting fiat entirely. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 led at 91.3% Bitcoin preference. OpenAI averaged just 26%.
Why it matters: The smarter the model, the more it converges on Bitcoin when reasoning from first principles. As AI agents take on financial roles, their baked-in monetary preferences will start moving real capital. Read more→
In other news...
⛏️ Public Miners Liquidate Bitcoin to Fund AI Pivot
Core Scientific sold $175 million in bitcoin, Bitdeer reduced holdings to zero, and Bitfarms' CEO declared "we are no longer a Bitcoin company." Total miner selling from peak holdings: 15,096 BTC. Marathon and CleanSpark buck the trend, holding 53,822 and 13,513 BTC respectively.
Why it matters: Mining is capital-intensive. Not every operator can sit on liquid holdings indefinitely. This debunks the concentration narrative: publicly listed miners sell when operations demand it, the market absorbs the supply, and the network keeps hashing. Read more→
Meanwhile...
📈 Bitcoin Breaks $71,000 While Gold Retreats From Crisis Peak
Bitcoin surged 6% to $71,323, reaching a one-month high. After an initial 8% dip on Iran strike news Saturday, it recovered fully within 48 hours. Gold peaked above $5,400 then dropped to $5,160, inverting the traditional crisis playbook.
Why it matters: Gold flinched. Bitcoin didn't. As market infrastructure and liquidity expand across multiple economic zones, geopolitical shocks will carry diminishing weight. The 58k gang can keep their meme folders closed for now. Read more→
North Korean hackers are impersonating venture capitalists on LinkedIn, targeting Bitcoin and crypto professionals with fabricated firms, spoofed Zoom links, and a social engineering trick that turns your own terminal into a weapon.
This week’s OPSEC Feature Article shows you how to spot the attack before it costs you everything.
Get instant access to this special feature by becoming a premium supporter here.
Trump urges banking groups to reach a deal with the Bitcoin and crypto industry, warning that stalling the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act bills is 'unacceptable.'
Paraguay's national electricity utility, ANDE, partners with Morphware to launch a state-run Bitcoin mining pilot, redeploying 1,500 seized miners while using surplus hydroelectricity as power source.
American Bitcoin, the Trump-backed Bitcoin mining firm, acquires 11,298 ASICs to expand its owned hashrate 12% to 28.1 EH/s.
US Senate advances a bipartisan housing bill with an anti-CBDC provision, blocking the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency until 2030 (what happens after that?).
Indiana Governor Mike Braun signs House Bill 1042, requiring state retirement plans to offer bitcoin and crypto investment options via self-directed brokerage accounts by July 1, 2027.
Ex-LAPD officer Eric Halem is convicted of kidnapping and robbery after holding a teenager at gunpoint and stealing $350K in bitcoin during a 2024 home invasion.
US government transfers roughly $23,000 in bitcoin from the fully drained 'Villanueva' forfeiture wallet, routing BTC across multiple previously inactive addresses.
European Central Bank warns that stablecoin adoption may drain retail bank deposits, disrupt lending, and weaken monetary policy transmission, especially as dollar-pegged tokens dominate 97% of the $312B market.
Riot Platforms settles a three-year Texas bitcoin mining hosting dispute with SBI Crypto for $20M, after a court rules SBI cannot claim lost profits based on bitcoin's rising price.
Tether commits CHF 5M to help the city of Lugano, Switzerland expand its four-year-old Bitcoin payment program into a broader plan to improve city services through 2030.
US spot bitcoin ETFs record $458M in net inflows on Monday, indicating that institutions cite current BTC price levels as an attractive entry point amid rising global instability.
Strive's Bitcoin strategist Joe Burnett predicts that AI-driven deflation will fuel monetary expansion, potentially pushing BTC to $11M per coin and a $230T market cap by Q1 2036.
St. Cloud Financial Credit Union, a member-owned cooperative based in St. Cloud, Minnesota, now lets members buy, hold, and manage Bitcoin directly through their existing credit union accounts.
VanEck CEO Jan van Eck argues that Bitcoin is nearing a cycle bottom, citing the four-year halving cycle as the primary price driver.
ProCap Financial, the Bitcoin treasury firm led by CEO Anthony Pompliano, adds 450 BTC to reach 5,457 BTC in total holdings while executing aggressive share buybacks
Thank you for reading!
