BITCOIN BOX SCORE

Exchange Rate: $62,200

Market Capitalization: $1.221T

Hash Rate (90 days): 533.1 EH/s

Transactions (30 days): 10,649,768

Network Fees (day): 11 sat/vB

Bitcoin Dominance: 54.49%

What do these numbers mean?

Bitcoin just rocketed past $60,000.

Up almost 20% in five days, it makes every prior prediction look conservative. Will traditional finance finally capitulate and incorporate bitcoin into their worldview?

MicroStrategy's 613% surge post-bitcoin adoption is a wake-up call to every Fortune 500 leader: adapt or become irrelevant. 

Meanwhile, U.S. public debt balloons and is now higher than 9.24% annually. Politicians and elites are blatantly looting your future, just as Alexander Fraser Tytler predicted almost 250 years ago:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”

Bitcoin offers a way to end this madness.

Spot bitcoin ETFs ore not the best way to own bitcoin, but they are shattering records, trading over $6 billion in a day. This looks less like normal growth, and more like a paradigm shift in the markets. With the bank term funding program (BTFP) set to expire in just a few days, the halving to take place a month later, and heightened stress throughout the banking and real estate markets all converging, there's a chance bitcoin will become understood as a key tool for wealth preservation.

And it is already the 5th largest base money in the world.

Get ready for a relentless push as the tide goes out, and those who didn't accumulate bitcoin are left standing naked.

With that, let's dive into the news.

NEWS

📧 New Satoshi emails discovered

Martii 'Sirius' Malmi, an early collaborator with Satoshi Nakamoto, released a full email exchange between the two, offering new insights into bitcoin's creation amidst the COPA trial occurring in the U.K. The emails include Satoshi's thoughts on scalability, energy consumption, time-stamping capabilities, and comparisons with DigiCash. 

Nothing groundbreaking, though fascinating.

Satoshi expressed concern about explicitly promoting bitcoin as an investment. He also seemed to experience burnout, and was cautious about protecting his anonymity. The correspondence also includes a window into Satoshi's dedication to the project, as he apparently worked through the Christmas holiday in his final messages.

This release provides a nuanced view of Satoshi's perspectives and interactions in bitcoin's early days, though it doesn't introduce groundbreaking information. Fans and enthusiasts will enjoy combing through the correspondences.

Bitcoin touches $64,000

Bitcoin’s exchange rate rose to over $64,000 for the first time since November 2021 amidst a significant rally and large inflows into bitcoin spot ETFs offered by U.S. based brokers, who added over 22,000 bitcoin in two days. 

The exchange rate surge occurred before the anticipated bitcoin halving in April, an event historically associated with positive price pressure due to the reduced rate of new bitcoin issuance. The price jump from below $51,000 to over $63,000 within a week marks a notable acceleration in bitcoin's months-long rally. Many are now eyeing the all-time high of $69,045 set in November 2021.

🤦‍♂️Coinbase missteps amidst bitcoin’s surge

This past Tuesday, when bitcoin's dollar exchange rate was increasing rapidly, Coinbase experienced a critical service interruption and inadvertently zeroed out customer balances, causing panic among users. The failure occurred during a significant influx of inflows into bitcoin ETFs and general excitement associated with the rise in bitcoin’s price.

As our VP of Product Dave Birnbaum correctly noted, Coinbase's focus on "crypto" technologies at the expense of strengthening its bitcoin infrastructure led to a missed opportunity and may have deterred newcomers. 

On the other hand, Coinbase has a history of letting this happen whenever bitcoin’s exchange rate shoots up:

👨‍⚖️ Gemini commits to paying Earn users in-kind

Gemini Earn customers, who have had their bitcoin locked up in a legal battle for over a year, are set to receive 100% of their assets, amounting to over $1.1 billion, following a settlement after Genesis Global Capital's bankruptcy filing in January 2023. In addition to a $40 million contribution to Genesis's bankruptcy proceedings, Gemini will pay $37 million to the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and has pledged to secure $1.1 billion for Earn customers' recovery, pending court approval. The move comes after NYDFS accused Gemini of inadequate due diligence on Genesis, leading to substantial financial harm to approximately 200,000 customers.

A cautionary tale.

Unlike Celsius, FTX, BlockFi, Voyager, and the other crypto exchanges that offered yield on altcoins and bitcoin, Gemini is one of the only major crypto platforms from the previous "era" to be left standing. As this bull cycle ramps up, it is important to be mindful of programs offering yield even if it is yield on bitcoin.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

Morgan Stanley is considering offering spot bitcoin ETFs to its brokerage clients as it sees growing institutional interest in bitcoin investments following SEC approval.

Strike expands its bitcoin services to several African countries to tackle financial challenges like inflation and costly remittances, promising to empower individuals and businesses with efficient, secure financial solutions.

Plebwork launches a marketplace for freelancers to earn bitcoin, connecting them with bitcoin companies seeking part-time employees and fostering collaboration within the community.

Braiins introduces the first Lightning Network payouts in the bitcoin mining industry to improve transaction efficiency and promote broader Lightning adoption.

Carson Group, an RIA with $30 billion on its platform, approves four spot bitcoin ETFs for advisors to offer clients.

AMBOSS launches Reflex to help Lightning Network businesses operationalize, addressing critical challenges like product launches and bank setups, aiming to boost their success and manage regulatory risk.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

Bitcoin is not an app

Financial commentator Jason Zweig has an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal where he posits bitcoin might be "digital pearls" instead of "digital gold," implying that it could lose value after being replaced by something else – which is exactly what happened to natural pearls (once more valuable than gold or diamonds due to their scarcity) when entrepreneurs discovered how to mass produce them.

Zweig's argument is similar to those that claim bitcoin could be the “Myspace of crypto.” It goes like this: Something else comes along much "better" than bitcoin, a code change wrecks the system, or some other game-changing issue emerges, and suddenly bitcoin holders are left with a worthless bag. This way of thinking has been commonplace since at least 2013, when Forbes ran an article titled "10 Reasons Bitcoin Is The MySpace Of Money And What Might Save It."

Zweig is correct in the abstract, but his scenario is very, very unlikely. 

Bitcoin has had thousands of imitators since its inception. Each has never had a meaningful shot at displacing it. And bitcoin has been called dead in mainstream publications 476 times as of this writing.

Unlike the transition from Myspace to Facebook, where users could effortlessly maintain accounts on both platforms without cost, the economic principles guiding money necessitate a choice. This choice, underpinned by the desire to hold the most liquid, scarce, and universally accepted form of money, naturally gravitates toward one form of money. Bitcoin has already achieved runaway network effects that make it the clear winner.

Moreover, the narrative that a newer, ostensibly superior technology could dethrone bitcoin misunderstands what it is – a protocol. Bitcoin isn’t equivalent to MySpace or Facebook –  it’s more like the Internet itself. Bitcoin has no marketing team and no figurehead. It is just a global network of millions of people who voluntarily choose to run open-source code.

The odds are overwhelming that bitcoin is it here to stay. Ultimately, its success and longevity depends on the consensus of its users, which do not seem to be going anywhere.

The Bitcoin Adviser simplifies the process of moving your coins off exchanges safely and securely. Get one month free when you sign up with this link!

COIN CHECK

How many countries has bitcoin recently hit an all-time high, measured in local currency?

1. 20

2. 2

3. 30

4. 10

Check your answer at the end of the page.

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ANSWER

3. 30. Per Balaji Srinivasan, bitcoin has passed all-time highs in 30+ countries, including China and India.

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