Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to issue #57 of the Bitcoin Breakdown, where we believe that truly free, unashamed men cannot be ruled.

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🏆 FEATURE STORIES

• Dave Birnbaum of Coinbits analyzes for Forbes competing theories that best explain the price of Bitcoin, showing how the subjective theory of value of the Austrian School fits the bill best (Feb 19 | 4 min read).

• Bitcoin News explores the growing influence of the philosophy of stoicism among Bitcoin enthusiasts, highlighting a shared emphasis on independence, self-governance, and resilience amid variable market conditions (Feb 21 | 7 min read).

• George 203 summarizes Bitcoin’s scaling challenges, succinctly analyzing and comparing the Lightning Network, Federations, eCash Mints and Merge Mined Sidechains, and finally advocating for OP_CTV ‘as a very safe first step to allow for greater flexibility and improved scaling’ (Feb 20 | 7 min read).

• Shinobi explores Matt Corallo’s recent BIP which resolves human readable names into payment info, using DNS to streamline Bitcoin payments by enabling cryptographic address coordination, thereby further enhancing security and usability (Feb 20 | 6 min read).

• Luis David Esparragoza and Fernando Nikolić of Bitcoin Perception reports on the El Salvadoran media's response to Bitcoin as legal tender by analyzing 1,440 articles, revealing a focus on price volatility and political polarization which overshadowed Bitcoin's benefits (Feb 20 | 10 min read).

• Coin Metrics researchers Lucas Nuzzi, Kyle Waters and Matias Andrade use a new metric called the Total Cost to Attack model to assess the feasibility of 51% attacks on Bitcoin and find that the security mechanisms in place make these attacks economically impractical and no longer possible for nation-state attackers if their goal was to destroy the timechain (Feb 15 | 60 min read).

• Aleksandar Svetski releases The Bitcoin Times: Energy Edition magazine ready for download featuring articles by Svetski, Parker Lewis, Gideon Powell, Andrew Myers, Drew Armstrong, Marty Bent and Brian Gitt (Edition 06 | 1h 50 min read).

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⚡️ QUICK BITS

• Marathon Digital drinks the Ordinals Pill by announcing ‘Slipstream’, a tool for submitting ‘large or non-standard transactions to Marathon for mining on the Bitcoin network.’

• Bitcoin mining difficulty reaches an all-time high by surpassing 80T in anticipation of the halving event.

• European Central Bank gets ratio-ed and community noted AF for releasing ridiculous hit piece on Bitcoin on the same day that the bank reports record losses for 2023.

• Cryptosteel now offers free shipping within the USA, EU, and UK.

• Craig Wright's sister cites in court that seeing him dressed like a ninja and working in a room full of computers are evidence that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.

• Braiins working with Voltage to become the first mining pool to enable Lightning payouts

• Africa Free Routing opens applications for its 5-day deep dive into Bitcoin Lightning Development in Lagos, Nigeria, in partnership with IBEX, Bitnob, Btrust, Fedi, Blink, Base58 and African Bitcoiners.

• Bitcoin Magazine publishes a note on its editorial policy concerning coverage of Layer 2 protocols built on the Bitcoin network after community backlash accusing them of peddling ‘spam’.

• Honduras’ banking regulator announces immediate ban prohibiting institutions from trading crypto in an attempt to evade the Financial Action Task Force’s naughty list.

• Argentina prepares to regulate exchanges through an executive order in an attempt to also evade the FATF’s naughty list.

• Mash drops new rewards features to hack social media growth and engagement with Bitcoin Reward Pages.

• House of Chimera releases curated and updated spreadsheet of Bitcoin Layer 2s.

• Ed Snowden labels Bitcoin as the most significant monetary advance since the creation of coinage.

• Major US banks and financial institutions plead with the SEC in a letter to allow them to hold Bitcoin for their customers.

• PostFinance, the 5th largest bank in Switzerland launches Bitcoin trading and custody services.

• German MP Joana Cotar wants to make Bitcoin legal tender in Germany, introduces draft bill for tax payments in BTC and Bitcoin mining integration into the energy grid.

• Npub.cash is powered by eCash and Nostr and enables you to claim a specific username instead of using a long npub string.

• Blitz is a new self-custodial open source Lightning wallet that lets you send and receive on-chain (both Bitcoin and Liquid) through Boltz swaps.

• PlebDashboard is a Lightning Network dashboard featuring visualizations making Lightning data more intuitive and accessible.

• P2PCoins’ beta release is now available on the BTC testnet, enabling users to explore and experience the platform firsthand just before their stage one launch.

• Avalon Nano 3 is a portable small heater with a minimalist design by Canaan that can mine BTC.

• Flash is a payment gateway allowing you to accept BTC on your store, platform or for any of your content.

• Riot Platforms starts construction of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining facility in Texas.

• John Deaton, a cryptocurrency advocate, attorney and marine veteran, launches senate bid to unseat Elizabeth Warren.

Click here for the web version of this issue which contains ample more Quick Bits snippets that didn’t make it this week due to Google’s stupid email size limitations.

⚡️ WEB VERSION ONLY QUICK BITS

• SEC sued by Texas-based crypto firm Lejilex and lobby group Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas, accusing it of overstepping its authority in regulating digital assets.

• Tunestr is a cross platform for value for value live music.

• South Korea’s ruling party considers allowing spot Bitcoin ETFs in election pledges in an effort to attract young voters.

• GoFundMe shuts down legal defense fundraiser for Tornado Cash, leading to full refunds for donors.

• Signal will soon let you share a username instead of your phone number.

• Radentor publishes updated directory of mobile Bitcoin wallets.

• Farside Investors releases a neat Bitcoin ETF Flows Dashboard.

• Chainalysis annual report shows crypto money laundering dropped 30% last year.

• Compliance is a LNbits extension that features locally updated docs on compliance for accepting BTC payments or running a Bitcoin custodial service in your country.

• Exodus Lightning wallet shuts down operations in the US due to regulatory reasons.

• Citrea, a Bitcoin-based zero-knowledge rollup project, raises $27M in seed funding towards advancing their goal of enhancing Bitcoin's scalability and privacy.

• Coinbase donates $3.6M in BTC to Brink, supporting the funding of Bitcoin development and independent developers worldwide.

• Coinbase’s payments platform for merchants discontinues support for BTC payments and other UTXO coins unless customers have an existing account with the exchange.

• Coinbase’s BTC holdings reach lowest levels since 2015 as whales withdraw $1B BTC.

• Jack Dorsey’s Bitkey shares the code that powers their new hardware device, mobile app, server, as well as hardware electrical designs.

• Nigeria bans crypto platforms in attempt to stabilize its local currency amid currency crisis.

• Michael Saylor says ‘Bitcoin is the exit strategy’, and he is ‘never selling’ in Bloomberg TV interview.

• Justin Sun announces plan for Layer 2 solution to place his and other sh!tcoins on Bitcoin.

• Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission accuses federal police officer for allegedly wiping a Trezor hardware wallet containing 81.62 BTC at a crime scene.

• BTC order book depth nears $540M, most liquid since October, indicating how easy it is to buy and sell large quantities at stable prices.

• Spaces Protocol is a scalable and permissionless naming protocol that leverages the existing infrastructure and security of Bitcoin without requiring a new blockchain or any modifications to Bitcoin itself. 

• Spirit of Satoshi, the Bitcoin-centric language model, launches on Geyser.

• UK regulators send emails requesting ‘up-to-date information’ regarding the activity of self-custody wallets.

• UK and Germany become the 3rd and 4th largest nation-state holders of BTC after recent criminal seizures.

📽️ QUICK BITS MEDIA

• Jordan Belfort, known for the real-life story behind the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ defends Bitcoin in an interview with Piers Morgan (Feb 10 | 1:43 min watch).

• Tom Lee, Fundstrat Global Advisors managing partner and head of research, says in a CNBC interview that Bitcoin could get as high as $150k this year (5:42 min watch).

• John Stossel releases video with privacy advocate Naomi Brockwell where they comb through Stossel's phone and talk about which apps he should get rid of (10:18 min watch).

• Brian Harrington releases three short videos on why owning just 0.21 BTC is a big deal (<30 min watch).

💥 MEME BREAK

CLASSIFIEDS & AFFILIATES

• Embrace freedom & self-sovereign travel with VilliersJets.com, a private jet charter for Bitcoiners enabling you to fly unscheduled.

• Australia's premier Bitcoin only experience, Bitcoin Alive, is back on March 23 in Sydney, Australia (the code BTCBREAKDOWN gives you 10% off of single tickets for both fiat and BTC payments).

• You also don’t want to miss BitBlockBoom, April 11th-14th 2024 in Dallas, Texas (get 10% off of tickets if you use code btcbreakdown).

Thank you for reading!

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Until our next transmission,

Naiw

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