Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to issue #50 of the Bitcoin Breakdown, where we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Genesis Block. 🥳 

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Happy readings! 👽️

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🏆 FEATURE STORIES

• Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinal Theory and Inscriptions, argues in a blogpost that Bitcoin Maximalists’ excessive ‘pearl clutching and engagement farming’ over inscriptions are making them look weak and causing needless drama (Dec 30 | 5 min read).

• Southern Hands dissects Rodarmor’s chastising of inscription critics as ideologues, and shows how his arguments are rather uncompelling (Dec 30 | 8 min read).

• Thomas Fahrer, co-founder of Apollo, weighs in by steel-manning both sides of the Ordinals debate and looking at the philosophical, technical, and moral arguments shaping the ordinals use case (Dec 27 | 7 min read).

• Ross Stevens, CEO and Founder of Stone Ridge, in his annual investor letter powerfully argues that Bitcoin, unlike fiat currency, represents a stable, principle-based financial system that is resilient against government control and manipulation (Dec 30 | 5 min read).

• @davidw, writing on Stacker News, explores the implications and personal preparedness for a scenario where the Internet becomes globally inaccessible for extended periods, highlighting our heavy reliance on it for cognitive functions, decision-making, work, and lifestyle (Dec 26 | 8 min read).

• Scholars Andrea Carotti, Cosimo Sguanci and Anastasios Sidiropoulos wrote a paper on the economics of the Lightning Network and found a worrying tendency of centralization around certain well funded nodes as on-chain fees decrease (Dec 27 | 25 min read).

• Parker Lewis argues in a new piece that human progress should be measured by the pursuit of abundance versus scarcity, and unpacks the contradiction of scarcity driving value in a world increasingly dominated by abundance (Dec 31 | 8 min read).

• Shyfire discusses the private use of Bitcoin ATMs, highlighting their convenience, anonymity, and the potential they hold for shaping the future of private transactions (Dec 27 | 5 min read).

• ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ in his Substack extracts all the best parts from Lyn Alden's new book, Broken Money, in which she analyses the dysfunctions in the current monetary system and suggests Bitcoin as a potential solution for these underlying issues (Dec 27 | 1h23min read).

⚡️ QUICK BITS

• Goldman Sachs to become authorized participant for the proposed spot Bitcoin ETFs that BlackRock and Grayscale hope to launch.

• Aqua Wallet by JAN3 launches, combining the Liquid and Lightning Network in the same wallet.

• Anser launches, which in conjunction with the Alby browser extension, provides a user-friendly interface to the Liquid Network directly from your browser.

• Homegrown, a new game by ZBD, is like FarmVille, but with bitcoin.

• Aaron van Wirdum of Bitcoin Magazine releases his first book, The Genesis Book (book content freely available in link).

• Security app De.Fi reports that nearly $2B were lost to scams, hacks, and rug pulls in 2023, with Ethereum experiencing the brunt of the losses.

• BTC already surpassed its 2021 all time high in countries with the combined population of approximately 831.2 million people.

• OKX to delist privacy coins Monero, Zcash, and Dash.

• Wasabi Wallet's CTO leaves to focus on 'next-gen Bitcoin anonymity technology'.

• Whirlpool’s (Samourai Wallet’s zerolink coinjoin implementation) unspent capacity surpasses 10000 BTC.

• BSV scammers doctor BlackRock press release to make it seem like BlackRock is considering a BSV ETF.

• SuperTestnet releases Loan shark: a non custodial, bitcoin only borrow and loan tool.

• Mutiny Wallet launches experimental support for its Fedimint integration, enabling improved Lightning UX while offering better privacy and security than standard custodial experiences.

• New IRS rules take effect requiring reporting data for every $10K+ crypto transaction.

• Michael Saylor to sell $216M of MicroStrategy shares in order to buy more bitcoin.

• Fidelity sets Bitcoin ETF fee at 0.39 percent.

• Bitcoin worth $1B leaves exchanges in largest single-day outflow in 12 months as investors look to hodl long-term.

• The Meter Box measure your power usage in real time as the electricity flows through your mining rig.

• Elon Musk criticizes NFTs while again giving nod to inscriptions.

• Indonesian police shut down ten Bitcoin mining operations.

• BitCluster is creating a 120MW Bitcoin mine in Ethiopia powered solely by renewable energy from Africa's largest hydropower project.

• Toxic Maxi DarthCoin quits Stacker News.

OTHER NEWSLETTERS TO CHECK OUT

• AI Tool Report will teach you how to save time and earn more with AI. Join 220,000+ free daily readers for trending tools, productivity-boosting prompts, the latest news, and more.

• The Marketing Letter by Indexsy keeps you in the loop.

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• Get The Rundown on the latest developments in AI before everyone else.

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📽️ QUICK BITS MEDIA

• Hashdex releases its second Bitcoin ETF commercial which is much better than the first (0:29 min watch).

• Start9 releases video promoting StartOS and Start9 personal servers as an alternative to cloud-based hosting (0:45 min watch).

• Joe Nakamoto shows how easy it is to ‘[B]uy an E-Sim on BitRefill while boarding a plane’ (1:43 min watch).

• Richard releases remix ‘Toxic ft Orange Pill Jam, Man Like Kweks’ (2:20 min watch).

• Bit Intelligence releases ‘A Rigged Economy: Why Gen Z and Millennials are Struggling’ (12:49 min watch).

• Matthew Kratter of Bitcoin University provides a basic introduction to mempool dot space, how Bitcoin mempools work, and how transaction fees are set by the market (15:37 min watch).

• Ian Major of All Things Bitcoin discusses if Covenants will lead to the next Bitcoin soft fork (22:59 min watch).

• Bitcoin and Friends premieres Episode 1 of Season 1, ‘A Coin Is Born’ (30:31 min watch).

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Thank you for reading!

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Until our next transmission,

Naiw

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