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Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #490 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:
⛏️ Bitcoin Hits 20 Million Mined -- One Million Remains
🌐 Seven Cables Cut, Bitcoin Barely Noticed -- But Cloud Hosts Are a Real Risk
🏛️ 29 Lawmakers Demand a Permanent CBDC Ban -- No Sunset Clauses
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⛏️ Bitcoin Hits 20 Million Mined -- One Million Remains
Foundry USA mined block 939,999 on March 9, pushing Bitcoin's circulating supply past 20 million coins -- 95.2% of the fixed 21 million cap. The block reward now sits at 3.125 BTC after last April's halving, and the final satoshi won't arrive until approximately 2140.
Why it matters: With zettahashes per second competing for a shrinking subsidy, every new block is live proof that the protocol does exactly what it promised: fixed supply, no exceptions, no institution with the power to extend the cap. Read more→
Meanwhile...
🌐 Seven Cables Cut, Bitcoin Barely Noticed -- But Cloud Hosts Are a Real Risk
A Cambridge study covering 11 years and 68 submarine cable faults found 87% of failures caused less than 5% node disruption in the Bitcoin network. The real vulnerability: coordinated action against Hetzner, OVHcloud, AWS, or Google Cloud can trigger fragmentation at just 5% capacity removal. Tor node adoption has climbed from 23% to 63% since China's 2021 mining ban.
Why it matters: Bitcoin is more censorship-resistant than cable-cutting headlines suggest, but concentrated cloud hosting is a live attack surface. Running a node outside major providers is not idealism -- it is a direct contribution to the network's resilience floor. Read more→
On the regulatory front...
🏛️ 29 Lawmakers Demand a Permanent CBDC Ban -- No Sunset Clauses
Rep. Ralph Norman led 29 House members in a letter to Speaker Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Thune demanding permanent prohibition on a US CBDC. The target: a housing bill that restricts CBDCs only until 2030. The lawmakers want the sunset replaced with language from the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which the House passed in July 2025.
Why it matters: The US has abolished its central bank twice before -- the only country to have done so. Several countries launched CBDCs and quietly discontinued them. These 29 legislators may not know it, but they are making the Bitcoin argument. Read more→
Kudzai Kutukwa, author of the 'Exit The Matrix' newsletter, writes that BlackRock's $1.2B withdrawal gate on its private credit fund exposes modern finance as a counterparty stack designed to trap retail investors, while Bitcoin's trustless architecture offers the only genuine alternative to inflation-driven dependency on fee-extracting institutions (Mar 10 | 10 min read).
Juan Galt of Bitcoin Magazine argues that public US Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI datacenter infrastructure while dumping over 15,000 BTC to fund transitions and signing multi-hundred-MW hyperscaler leases will end up repeating the historic mistakes of railroad and dot-com fiber builders, who built the future but rarely captured its profits (Mar 9 | 10 min read).
Matt Corallo, a Bitcoin developer, argues that the rapid rise of AI agents creates a unique, zero-sum opportunity for Bitcoin to dominate agentic payments before corporate-controlled stablecoins and fiat rails lock in their dominance over future commerce (Mar 9 | 4 min read).
Atlas21, a Bitcoin publication, outlines a step-by-step configuration guide for the open-source Bitaxe Gamma home Bitcoin miner, covering setup, Wi-Fi and mining pool configuration, firmware updates, and overclocking tips for the BM1370-powered device (Mar 9 | 4 min read).
Marco Argentieri, Co-founder and CEO of Ark Labs, argues that stablecoins don't need new payment blockchains, but rather Bitcoin's neutral settlement layer and UTXO model to deliver programmable, conditional money without ceding control to any single platform or validator set (Mar 9 | 5 min read).
Shawn Yeager, host of the Trust Revolution podcast, compares x402 and L402, two competing HTTP 402 payment protocols for AI agents, highlighting their opposite approaches - x402 relying on Coinbase's Facilitator for USDC settlements on Base, while L402 enables fully permissionless, intermediary-free Bitcoin Lightning payments verified locally via SHA256 preimage matching (Mar 8 | 2 min read).
Eduardo Prospero of Blink wallet details how MoneyBadger and Blink developers achieved Lightning wallet integration in South Africa using a minimal 3-line open-source solution that converts proprietary merchant QR codes into Lightning addresses without third-party API dependencies (Mar 7 | 6 min read).
Santosh V of Student of Bitcoin explains why he launched a 12-week accelerator program in India, documenting his experience of witnessing raw but unpolished Bitcoin developer talent at Bitcoin developer education initiative Bitshala's pitch competition and recognizing a critical gap in business-readiness support for early-stage builders (Mar 6 | 3 min read).
Kareem Ghazal of BTCBitByBit explains how the app's self-custodial wallet unifies Lightning, Liquid, and on-chain Bitcoin into a single balance using Breez SDK's nodeless architecture, making genuine BTC ownership accessible to families and first-time users alike (Mar 6 | 9 min read).
Antoine Poinsot, a Bitcoin developer, explains how the Consensus Cleanup soft fork proposal addresses four long-standing Bitcoin vulnerabilities including the Timewarp attack, slow block validation, forged SPV proofs, and duplicate transactions, urging users to consider its adoption (Mar 5 | 8 min read).
Ruben Somsen, a Bitcoin developer, presents a balanced breakdown of the Ordinals BIP rejection, outlining key arguments for and against the decision while urging the Bitcoin community to respect differing opinions and avoid divisive narratives (Mar 5 | 2 min read).
Nick Anthony, policy analyst in the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, warns that the Clarity Act expands financial surveillance by adding Bitcoin and crypto exchanges, ATMs, and PATRIOT Act 'special measures' to the Bank Secrecy Act, arguing Congress must reject this 55-year trend and champion financial privacy across all markets (Mar 2 | 4 min read).
New on Geyser: Ricochet is a web app that lets Nostr users promote content by paying sat rewards to others who engage with it meaningfully, using NWC to automate instant bitcoin payouts.
New on Geyser: BitTerra, a solo-developed protocol by a Brazilian coder, anchors documents immutably on Bitcoin using OpenTimestamps and BIP-322 authentication.
The Africa Bitcoin Conference, an annual event promoting Bitcoin adoption across Africa, announces that its 5th edition will be held in Blantyre, Malawi, from December 2 to 5, 2026.
Coconut Wallet, an open-source watch-only Bitcoin wallet for iOS and Android, enables air-gapped transaction signing by pairing with an offline device, keeping private keys off the internet.
Blitz Wallet launches Payment Pools, a feature letting groups collectively fundraise in bitcoin via a shareable link, with real-time contribution tracking.
Alby, a Bitcoin payments infrastructure company, launches an AI agent skill enabling developers to build and test Lightning payment flows end-to-end using throwaway wallets via Nostr Wallet Connect.
Solo Satoshi, a Houston-based open-source mining hardware company, launches the Bitaxe Turbo Touch, a fully open-source touchscreen Bitcoin miner producing 2.15 TH/s using dual BM1370 chips.
Coldcard, a leading air-gapped Bitcoin hardware wallet maker, releases firmware updates adding BIP-322 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) Proof-of-Reserves signing, WIF private key imports, and enhanced transaction tools.
Nutcpp is an open source library that implements the Cashu protocol on C++.
Bitflation is a web tool that adjusts Bitcoin's price for inflation using CPI, M2 money supply, gold, and DXY metrics to show BTC's real purchasing power over time.
GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused Android operating system, announces a long-term partnership with Motorola to develop officially supported flagship devices running GrapheneOS by 2027.
White Noise releases version 2026.3.5 with external signer support via Amber, message delivery confirmation, group chat reliability fixes, encrypted image sharing, and new CLI and terminal clients.
