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Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #525 of the Bitcoin Breakdown daily newsletter, where we’re rounding up the most talked-about developments in the Bitcoin-only space from the past weekend with our Quick Bits and Quick Media sections.
But first, today’s Top Stories:
⛏️ Parasite Pool's 2nd Block Proves Plebs Can Win
🇬🇧 Liz Truss Backs Bitcoin, Cites UK Debasement
📉 Bitcoin's 2024 Halving Cycle Is Weakest on Record
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⛏️ Parasite Pool's 2nd Block Proves Plebs Can Win
Parasite Pool mined block 945,601 on April 18, its second block in 14 months. Forty-eight days after the first find, the hybrid model paid 1 bitcoin to the finder and split the rest proportionally among participants.
Why it matters: Traditional pools flatten the upside. Solo mining kills hope. Parasite's hybrid preserves the finder's lottery while proportional payouts keep miners solvent. Two live blocks in 14 months suggest the design holds. Read more→
Not every diagnoser of fiat failure comes from outside the machine...
🇬🇧 Liz Truss Backs Bitcoin, Cites UK Debasement
At the CPAC UK launch on April 18, former prime minister Liz Truss backed Bitcoin and attributed Britain's stagnation to decades of currency debasement. She served 45 days as PM in 2022 before bond markets ended her program.
Why it matters: Truss ran the seventh-largest economy and watched bond markets cancel her program. When someone with that record backs Bitcoin, the sound money case stops being a fringe argument. Read more→
And while political figures debate fiat's future, the market debates Bitcoin's trajectory...
📉 Bitcoin's 2024 Halving Cycle Is Weakest on Record
Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn reports the 2024 halving cycle returned only 97% from the halving price, versus 761% in 2020. Bitcoin's 30-day volatility index sits at 1.75%, down from a 9.64% peak in 2020.
Why it matters: Bitcoin hit an all-time high before the April 2024 halving, driven by spot ETF approvals, distorting the baseline. Four-year cycles are a heuristic, not a law. Stay humble and stack sats. Read more→
Poll #525: Peak BTC price this halving cycle?
Bitcoin ETFs pull in nearly $1B in weekly inflows, their strongest week in over three months.
Sam Lyman, head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, says Iran views BTC as a strategic asset due to its censorship resistance but US dollar stablecoins dominate its crypto transactions.
Ledger Nano S Plus (counterfeited) devices found on a Chinese marketplace with embedded WiFi and modified firmware designed to steal users' seed phrases.
Mining difficulty drops 1.1% to 135.59T as public miners sell record BTC to cover costs, with up to 20% of miners now unprofitable amid falling prices and rising energy expenses.
JoinMarket, a Bitcoin coinjoin privacy protocol, faces an active denial-of-service attack targeting makers, with a community patch now available to block connection flooding before it crashes yield generators.
Arkham, a blockchain intelligence platform, identifies on-chain wallets tied to Morgan Stanley's new spot Bitcoin ETF.
Strategy acquires 34,164 BTC for ~$2.54B, bringing its total holdings to 815,061 BTC worth ~$61.56B.
Michael Saylor says Strategy's Bitcoin-backed credit instruments can fix money for a billion people by enabling bank accounts that pay 8% annually, offsetting currency debasement.
South Carolina Representative Sheri Biggs discloses a purchase of up to $250,000 in bitcoin via BlackRock's ETF.
US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, requests updates from the DOJ and FinCEN on whether Binance is honoring its 2023 plea deal amid reports of $1.7B in Bitcoin and crypto flows linked to Iranian actors.
Kraken's parent company Payward acquires Bitnomial, the first US crypto-native platform with full derivatives licensing, for up to $550M in cash and stock.
Ryan McMaken, a senior editor at the Mises Institute, reports that the US money supply surpassed $20.4T in February 2026, reaching its fastest growth rate in 44 months amid renewed Federal Reserve quantitative easing.
Scott Marmoll of Capital B Advisory, in an interview with Marty Bent of TFTC, argues that Bitcoiners make the best business owners because their contrarian nature and humility in recognizing Bitcoin's value translate directly into disciplined, capital-efficient business management (Apr 18 | 1:19 min watch).
The Sat Stacker Show systematically dismantles 'Professor Jiang's' viral CIA-created-Bitcoin conspiracy theory, exposing his factual errors, logical contradictions, and fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin's decentralized architecture and origins (Apr 17 | 19:16 min watch).
Matthew Kratter of Bitcoin University argues that BIP-361, co-authored by Jameson Lopp, is a confiscatory soft fork proposal that would freeze legacy Bitcoin addresses including Satoshi's ~1M BTC under the guise of quantum threat protection, calling it hypocritical and harmful to Bitcoin's core principles (Apr 18 | 9:09 min watch).
ForrestHODL argues that Strategy's proposed change to $STRC's dividend schedule (shifting from monthly to semi-monthly payments) will reduce post-ex-dividend volatility, improve liquidity, and strengthen STRC as a capital-raising tool to accelerate Bitcoin accumulation (Apr 18 | 13:29 min watch).
Dante Cook of Simply Bitcoin argues that converging signals (politicians and billionaires stacking BTC, negative real yields, Wall Street adoption, and Bitcoin's perfect post-100-day moving average recovery record) point to an imminent major Bitcoin price surge (Apr 20 | 11:59 min watch).
Bitcoin Straight Up argues that Peter Schiff unknowingly delivered the strongest case for Bitcoin while promoting Tether Gold, exposing that only Bitcoin's decentralized proof-of-work actually solves the double-spend problem without a trusted middleman (Apr 16 | 12:12 min watch).
Thank you for reading!
