In partnership with
Greetings Bitcoiner,
Welcome to Issue #669 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:
The CFTC opened an advance notice on leveraged retail Bitcoin and crypto trading, built on existing authority after the Clarity Act failed. FinCEN withdrew its unhosted wallet and mixing proposals, though Bank Secrecy Act duties stay. And Bringin opened an invite-only beta of euro business accounts that let companies hold and pay in Bitcoin.
Where Quantitative Thinkers Compete, Learn and Grow
The International Quant Championship (IQC) is one of the world's largest quantitative research competitions, bringing together 156,000+ participants globally.
Participants have the opportunity to develop quantitative research skills, challenge themselves alongside peers from around the world and connect with a global community of quantitative thinkers.
🏦 CFTC Opens Advance Notice on Retail Crypto Trading
The CFTC released an advance notice of proposed rule-making on Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM. It would create a federal pathway for exchanges offering leveraged, margined or financed retail Bitcoin and crypto trading, with public comment open for 60 days after Federal Register publication.
Why it matters: Chairman Mike Selig built this on existing CFTC authority, which means the next administration or a judge can potentially rewrite it. Leveraged trading venues may get a federal permission slip from the CFTC, but Bitcoin held in your own keys never needed one. Read more→
From one agency's opening move to another's retreat...
🔓 FinCEN Drops Mixing and Unhosted Wallet Proposals
FinCEN is withdrawing its December 2020 unhosted wallet proposal and its October 2023 CVC mixing proposal. FinCEN said the broad mixing definition could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity and place a large reporting burden on covered financial institutions.
Why it matters: Treating every private transaction as suspect was always the wrong default, and FinCEN now concedes the cost. Bank Secrecy Act duties on exchanges stay, and the drafts could return, so privacy still starts with your own keys. Read more→
Meanwhile in Tallinn, Bitcoin companies get a euro account...
🌍 Bringin Opens Euro Business Accounts for Bitcoin
Bringin opened an invite-only beta of euro business accounts that, per Bringin, let companies hold, accept and pay in Bitcoin and run SEPA payments from a vIBAN in their own name. Bringin says the accounts are available across 30 European countries and already serve 15 businesses.
Why it matters: European Bitcoin companies keep hitting bank account restrictions and blocked transfers, Bringin says. A euro rail that leaves the keys with the company routes around the bank gatekeepers, if Bringin's self-custody claim holds up once outsiders can check it. Read more→
ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain investigator and Paradigm advisor, details how he posed as a client to infiltrate a Chinese laundering syndicate that moved over $1B for North Korea's Lazarus Group, gathering intel that helped freeze Bybit exploit funds and attribute illicit activity (Oct 5 | 4 min read).
m0wer, a privacy-focused developer, in a post on Stacker News, argues that stablecoins are beating bitcoin in everyday payments, so builders should listen to the market and use Lightning with Taproot Assets to offer dollar payments with lower costs, better privacy and freedom of choice (Oct 5 | 5 min read).
Frank Shostak, an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute, writes that savings-backed lending builds wealth, while central bank money creation drains real resources and triggers economic slumps, and refutes Irving Fisher's claim that debt repayment causes deflation (Oct 5 | 5 min read).
Mr Hodl, a Bitcoin commentator, argues that EntropyLab, an offline HTML tool, makes trust unnecessary by deriving wallet material from user-supplied entropy that independent implementations like Bitcoin Core can reproduce and verify (Oct 5 | 5 min read).
Che Kohler of The Bitcoin Manual examines ArkPool, an experimental mainnet alpha mining pool that pays Bitaxe hobbyists one-sat Ark payouts hourly over Tor, while warning of its operator trust, tiny earnings and limited track record (Oct 2 | 7 min read).
Luke de Wolf, co-founder of the BTCHEL conference, reflects on BIP-110's failure, drops his fight against arbitrary data spam, and recommits to separating money from state, Bitcoin adoption, AI, politics and local Finnish engagement (Oct 2 | 5 min read).
Allard Peng of Bitcoin for Corporations argues that daily dividends on instruments like Strive's SATA and Strategy's STRC mainly boost retail appeal, on-chain composability and options pricing, while annual economics stay unchanged, making the feature a digital credit category standard (Oct 2 | 4 min read).
Brandon Black, a Bitcoin developer, in a piece on Bitcoin Magazine's Print Issue, argues that quantum computing remains unproven FUD with no evidence of a cryptographically relevant machine yet, yet urges Bitcoin developers to keep advancing post-quantum cryptography as a safeguard (Oct 1 | 6 min read).
Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town, a Bitcoin-only annual conference organizer, argues that South Africa's draft Capital Flow Management regulations and Crypto Asset Manual trap founders between custodial compliance and self-custody, treating withdrawals to personal wallets as capital exports, and urges the public to submit comments (Sep 30 | 2 min read).
Kudzai Kutukwa, a Bitcoin writer and commentator, argues that putting USDT and other stablecoins on Bitcoin rails like Lightning and RGB contradicts Bitcoin's purpose as an alternative to fiat, since dollar liabilities keep centralized issuers, regulators and the Federal Reserve in control (Sep 27 | 4 min read).
Portal, a unified OpenSwap app built by open-source developer group Citadel FOSS, lets users make Coinswap-style Bitcoin swaps, manage liquidity, run multiple routers, and earn sats on mainnet.
Clams, a Bitcoin accounting and reporting software company, releases v1.2.0, making the platform free to use with no license, profile capacity limits, or workspace caps, and requires all clients to update.
Manna Bitcoin, a self-custodial wallet, goes open source and moves from the Liquid sidechain to Spark after Boltz and Liquid outages.
NiceHash, a Swiss-regulated hashrate marketplace, launches Virtual Machine Mining, letting businesses rent SHA256 mining capacity with USDT, without owning hardware, and earn bitcoin paid every four hours through its pool or their own.
Bull Bitcoin, a Canadian self-custodial bitcoin exchange, launches Confidential SEPA, giving European users a personal virtual IBAN in their own name so banks stop blocking euro transfers to exchanges.
Zaps(dot)bio is a link-in-bio platform for Bitcoiners that gives creators a profile page with a built-in Lightning Address, so anyone can send them zaps, from any wallet.
Sazmining, a Bitcoin mining as a service firm founded in 2020, launches the Wild Sats Club, a four-tier loyalty program that cuts management fees for customers as their hashrate under management grows.
EntropyLab, a Bitcoin key and wallet calculator in one HTML file, releases its first candidate, v1.0.0rc1, letting users supply their own entropy and run seed, address, and multisig math fully offline.
ArkPool, an alpha Bitcoin mining pool, buys hashpower from home miners like Bitaxe devices over Tor and pays hourly sats via Second's Ark, currently averaging 2.35 TH/s across 2 miners.
Thank you for reading!
