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Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #575 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:
🧾 Illinois Turns Digital Asset Movement Into A Toll
🇴🇲 Omanhash Makes Mining A Permissioned Pool
🇲🇽 Salinas Turns Fiat Trauma Into Bitcoin Conviction
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🧾 Illinois Turns Digital Asset Movement Into A Toll
Illinois has signed a 0.2% digital asset tax that applies to exchange, transfer, custody and wallet-service activity involving Illinois customers from January 1, 2027. This is not a normal profit tax, because the taxable trigger is the act of moving or using digital property rather than realizing a gain. Brokers, custodians, wallet providers and money transmitters are pushed into the collection role, with registration, monthly reporting and customer line-item duties. The crypto-specific estimate is roughly $60 million annually, while the larger state revenue package is much broader.
Why it matters: A transaction tax cannot be enforced without transaction visibility, so the tax creates the excuse to record the behavior it wants to tax. For Bitcoin users, that makes self-custody and financial privacy practical defenses against a policy mechanism that turns payment activity into state-readable data. Read more→
That surveillance instinct reaches the mining stack...
🇴🇲 Omanhash Makes Mining A Permissioned Pool
Oman has launched Omanhash as its official national mining pool, built with Enegix and Frontier Technologies under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology. The pool is described as mandatory for licensed cryptocurrency mining companies operating inside Oman's approved framework. Enegix says the first phase can consolidate roughly 10 EH/s, while Oman's Salalah mining buildout has attracted more than $700 million since 2022. The pitch is sovereign visibility, but the trade-off is miner exit rights.
Why it matters: Competitive pools normally earn hashrate through fees, uptime and payout quality, while a mandatory pool receives captive flow. Bitcoin mining capital is mobile, so a small Omanhash performance gap can push the next expansion to Texas, Paraguay or any jurisdiction where the spreadsheet works better. Read more→
Control loses power when conviction can exit...
🇲🇽 Salinas Turns Fiat Trauma Into Bitcoin Conviction
Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the third richest person in Mexico and Banco Azteca owner says Bitcoin now represents about 70% of his investment or liquid portfolio, up from a much smaller allocation in 2020. The remaining 30% sits in gold and gold mining stocks, which makes the whole liquid posture a hard-money bet. His family background helps explain the conviction, because the Salinas family were gold and silver miners who discussed Nixon's 1971 break with dollar-gold convertibility at home. He also tried to bring Bitcoin to Banco Azteca in 2021, but Mexican regulators stalled the effort.
Why it matters: Salinas is treating fiat debasement as the risk and scarce assets as the escape route, with billionaire-scale capital and a mass-market banking empire behind the view. If Banco Azteca ever gets Bitcoin access past regulators, that conviction could move from elite portfolio construction to one of Latin America's largest retail on-ramps. Read more→
Nicholas Anthony of the Cato Institute, in an article for The Rage, argues that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is defying Trump's executive order banning CBDC development by actively participating in the BIS's Project Agorá, which tokenizes central bank reserves in what critics call a wholesale CBDC by another name (Jun 18 | 3 min read).
Leo Weese, Technical Content Lead at Lightning Labs, in an interview with Lightning News, recounts the history of Hong Kong's Bitcoin Meetup, from its 2012 founding through political and regulatory shifts, highlighting how the community evolved from a thriving Bitcoin hub to a quieter but resilient social network (Jun 17 | 4 min read).
Michael Saylor outlines a five-layer 'Digital Asset Stack' built on BTC as base collateral, arguing that capital markets can transform Bitcoin's volatility into Digital Credit, Digital Money, Digital Yield, and Digital Equity without altering Bitcoin's core protocol (Jun 16 | 14 min read).
VanEck's research team outlines a valuation framework for bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure, arguing that energized power is the cleanest near-term metric, execution risk is underpriced, and a ~$50B funding gap separates pipeline ambitions from delivery reality (Jun 16 | 22 min read).
Jaimes of Lightning News argues that a 4 TH/s solo miner making 144 daily block attempts achieves annualized win odds of roughly 1 in 4,750, outperforming every national lottery across 33 countries (Jun 15 | 5 min read).
Hodlonaut, in part Three of Four in his article series on Citadel21, presents a detailed investigative account alleging that a small, institutionally concentrated network of funded developers systematically shaped Bitcoin Core's OP_RETURN uncap decision, claiming that it marginalized community opposition and served corporate interests over Bitcoin's monetary mission (Jun 15 | 71 min read).
Kyrian Alex of Cointelegraph kicks off a multi-part series examining Bitcoin covenants, a long-discussed feature enabling complex spending restrictions, exploring twelve competing soft fork proposals, their potential to unlock trustless Layer-2s and non-custodial vaults, and the governance challenges slowing implementation on the Bitcoin network (Jun 15 | 4 min read).
Frank Shostak, Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute, writes that raising interest rates fails to counter true inflation - defined as money supply expansion - and that only curbing monetary growth can remove bubble activities and strengthen wealth producers without prolonging economic downturns (Jun 15 | 5 min read).
Scoresby, in a post on Stacker News, chronicles Bitcoin podcasting's rich 15-year history, from Atlas' 2011 'Bitcoin Forum Podcast' through bear-market explosions, variety show eras, and today's corporate-sponsored landscape, arguing that podcasting is integral to Bitcoin's story (Jun 11 | 12 min read).
Kirubai of Lightning News profiles Kilian Rausch, CEO of Boltz, who explains how running one of Bitcoin's oldest and largest Lightning nodes shaped his non-custodial swap infrastructure, why regulatory clarity and AI-driven efficiency give lean teams an asymmetric edge in critical payment operations (Jun 17 | 6 min read).
HenrikJannsen of Bisq outlines the DAO's recovery plan following the May 1, 2026 security incident, detailing victim reimbursement of 10.98 BTC, a phased Refund Angels settlement model, proposed fee adjustments, and the continued prioritization of Bisq MuSig development (Jun 16 | 16 min read).
Alexander Salter, Senior Fellow at the Sound Money Project, in an article on AIER's Daily Economy, writes that Federal Reserve independence in the US lacks constitutional grounding and empirical support, calling for presidential accountability over Fed officials, a single price-stability mandate, and rule-based monetary policy to replace unchecked technocratic discretion (Jun 14 | 4 min read).
Marius, Head of Marketing at Satora, in an interview with Lightning News, explains how the platform leverages the Lightning Network to bridge BTC and stablecoins in a fully non-custodial framework, eliminating intermediaries while enabling easier cross-asset transactions (Jun 12 | 14 min read).
Alekos, CEO and Head of Engineering at Enclavia, explains how secure enclaves - isolated environments that protect bitcoin and sensitive data even from the cloud provider hosting them - can now be deployed as easily as a Docker container, solving six critical trust and security challenges out of the box (Jun 11 | 8 min read).
Researchers at East Texas A&M University build LNTest, the first platform for studying Lightning Network-based botnets, finding that real-world botnet deployments are more fragile and slower than theorized, giving defenders clearer strategies to shut them down (Jun 11 | 41 min read).
Ryan McMaken, editor-in-chief at the Mises Institute, writes that April's money supply growth hitting a 49-month high of 7.01% exposes the Fed's 'restrictive policy' claims as fiction, with CPI surging to 4.3% while real wages fall, benefiting wealthy asset holders at the expense of ordinary Americans (Jun 12 | 6 min read).
ICYMI: Edilson Osorio Jr, a Bitcoin privacy advocate, details how a $15 RISC-V device named Mecha Gerard built its own Lightning wallet in pure Python - zero native dependencies - and autonomously paid for internet APIs using HTTP 402 protocols L402 and x402 via Nostr Wallet Connect (May 9 | 10 min read).
ICYMI: Randy Naar of Blockstream delivers a comprehensive privacy breakdown of Bark, the Ark implementation, examining how onboards, transfers, balance checking, offboards, and unilateral exits balance user privacy against ASP visibility within the protocol's normal operating model (Apr 19 | 10 min read).
Peach Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading app, launches Peach Web, letting users trade directly in any desktop browser while keeping private keys secure on their phone.
Nunchuk, a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, launches Phased Rollout, letting users split Bitcoin inheritance across multiple heirs with custom payout schedules over time.
Grubles of Second builds a privacy-preserving, client-side HTML tool to inspect Bark virtual transaction outputs (VTXOs), letting users decode offchain Bitcoin data locally without sending information to any server.
Mostro, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading protocol built on the Nostr network, introduces an anti-abuse bond system that automatically penalizes traders who fail to complete transactions.
Cashu, an open-source Chaumian ecash protocol built on Bitcoin, launches a WooCommerce plugin in the official WordPress store, enabling an estimated 3M online shops to accept Bitcoin Lightning and privacy-preserving ecash payments.
The Bitcoin Scholars Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, launches a state participation tracker urging governors to opt in to a federal scholarship tax credit allowing taxpayers to redirect up to $1,700 to education scholarships.
Lexe, a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet app, partners with Cash App to let users buy bitcoin instantly via the Lightning Network with fees under 1%.
Stacker News user Scoresby compiles a chronological list of over 100 English-language Bitcoin podcasts spanning 2011 to 2026, noting the list remains incomplete.
Bitcoin developer Sjors Provoost opens a pull request adding MuSig2 multi-signature support with BIP388 wallet policy standards to Bitcoin Core's wallet software.
Zapclub(dot)io is a music streaming platform built on Nostr and Bitcoin Lightning, enabling collaborative listening rooms with bitcoin tipping.
Blitz Wallet launches 'Spend and Replace' to auto-refill spent bitcoin, alongside a unified deposit page, rebuilt receive flow, and Zambia phone number payments.
Strike, a Bitcoin-focused payments app, integrates with Plaid, a financial data network connecting apps to bank accounts, enabling users to link Strike with Venmo, PayPal, and Robinhood for easier bitcoin-backed transfers
OpenAuspex is an open-source tool that ties warrant canaries to Bitcoin, making it impossible for a seized or coerced operator to fake, pre-sign, or quietly erase a 'we are safe' statement.
Nostrify is an open-source framework simplifying Nostr protocol app development with built-in key management, event signing, and relay connections.
XYZVault, a new privacy-focused multisig vault platform, launches with client-side encryption ensuring sensitive wallet data like extended public keys (xpubs) and addresses never reach its servers in plaintext.
Slot Miner is a Python-based Bitcoin mining simulator that visualizes the near-impossible odds of solo mining, currently set at 1 in 2^76.
Marmot maintainers announce v2 specs via their 'darkmatter' repository, introducing deterministic group consensus and transport-agnostic design to improve reliability.
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal gets drafted for Testnet5, a new test network designed to fix Testnet4 usability issues and serve as a miner playground for BIP54.
Learn FIPS is a free, open-source educational site that teaches users how to build and navigate FIPS, a self-organizing encrypted internet mesh network.
Off-Chain Media, an independent media project, publishes a map of Bitcoin and its scaling layers.
Calle, Cashu developer, introduces Nutdrop, a feature bringing ecash payments to Bitchat's Bluetooth mesh network, enabling fully offline, private bitcoin transactions without QR codes or internet.
Bitblik, a free open-source peer-to-peer app, lets Polish bitcoin holders spend BTC anywhere BLIK mobile payments are accepted, settling via Lightning Network in minutes with no KYC.
