BITCOIN BOX SCORE

Exchange Rate: $63,340
Market Capitalization: $1.27T
Hash Rate (90 days): 1,024.4 EH/s
Transactions (30 days): 12,424,222
Network Fees (economy): 1 sat/vB
Bitcoin Dominance: 58.55%

What do these numbers mean?

"My personal philosophy re Bitcoin is to hold (HODL). I firmly believe in the future. You need to do your own research and make your own decisions,” posted Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons.

This week, bitcoin dropped below $62,000 in a brutal selloff, down over 50% from its all-time high above $126,000 set in October. There are many theories as to what happened, and it is impossible to pinpoint a single factor. However, one clear factor is the broad risk-off wave across global markets, and bitcoin, as one of the most liquid instruments on Earth, is the first thing institutional tourists reach for when they need cash or have to top up collateral. The very ETFs that fueled billions in inflows have introduced weaker hands who treat bitcoin as a trade rather than what it is: the greatest store of value ever engineered.

But one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. The supply has not changed, and the network keeps producing one block every 10 minutes. The monetary properties of bitcoin remain the same as ever. If you are holding spot bitcoin without leverage, this is not a crisis. It is a sale for those with fiat they are looking to trade for harder money.

As Balaji Srinivasan put it: "The rules-based order is collapsing and the code-based order is rising. So the short term price does not matter. States will fail, and the network will take their place."

The fiat system remains broken. Bitcoin remains the fix. Bear or bull:

Bitcoin treasury copycats face activist pressure to liquidate as bitcoin treasury premiums collapse into discounts

Empery Digital, which pivoted from electric vehicles to bitcoin accumulation just last year, is now selling bitcoin to fund share repurchases after its stock fell to 82% of net asset value – and has adopted a poison pill to fend off activists demanding full liquidation. Investor Tice Brown, who owns 9% of Empery, sent a scathing letter calling for the CEO's resignation and immediate sale of all bitcoin, writing: "This entity has one real asset, and it can be instantaneously liquidated and returned to shareholders with the push of a button."

The arbitrage reverses (for some)

The 2025 fad of shoehorning bitcoin into a public company and selling $1 of BTC for $2 worth of common stock, is now running backwards. DAT shares are trading at persistent discounts that invite closed-end fund activism. Strategy maintains an mNAV above one at 1.09, but smaller imitators who lack its scale, unsecured debt structure, and years-long runway now face a stark choice: sell bitcoin to buy back shares, or watch activists do it for them.

Important point:

New York may soon have a pro-bitcoin Attorney General committed to ending BitLicense

Republican AG candidate Khurram Dara has made eliminating New York's notorious BitLicense a centerpiece of his campaign, arguing the years-long approval process and millions in fees make the state hostile to bitcoin innovation. Dara also believes the Bank Secrecy Act is unconstitutional and has publicly supported the imprisoned Samourai Wallet developers.

Regulatory competition comes to the Empire State

New York's BitLicense has become so burdensome that many platforms list the state alongside Cuba, Iran, and Syria as restricted jurisdictions – an embarrassment for America's supposed financial capital. And, Mr. Dara is correct that the BSA is unconstitutional garbage and a centerpiece of the surveillance state. A bitcoin-friendly, anti-BSA AG could transform New York from a regulatory pariah to a competitive jurisdiction.

Tether releases open-source MiningOS, invests $100 million in Anchorage Digital as USDt hits $187 billion market cap

Tether unveiled MiningOS at El Salvador's Plan ₿ Forum – a fully open-source, peer-to-peer operating system that unifies machine monitoring, energy tracking, and site management for bitcoin miners of any scale. The stablecoin giant also invested $100 million in federally chartered Anchorage Digital while USDt expanded to a record $187.3 billion market cap in Q4, adding $12.4 billion even as competitors retreated.

Tether becomes bitcoin infrastructure

With MiningOS released under Apache 2.0 licensing and zero central dependencies, Tether is actively lowering barriers that have kept smaller miners from competing with industrial operations. The company's simultaneous expansion into mining software, regulated banking partnerships, and $141.6 billion in U.S. Treasury holdings demonstrates how bitcoin-adjacent businesses can build resilient, diversified infrastructure that strengthens the entire ecosystem.

Secure Digital Markets executes first-ever $1 million Lightning Network payment to Kraken in institutional pilot

Secure Digital Markets completed a $1 million bitcoin transaction over the Lightning Network in a pilot settlement with Kraken, marking the largest publicly reported Lightning payment to date. The transaction, facilitated by enterprise infrastructure provider Voltage, settled nearly instantly with minimal fees, demonstrating Lightning's viability for high-value institutional transfers between regulated counterparties.

Lightning graduates from coffee purchases to institutional settlement

"We have moved past the era of questioning bitcoin's institutional capacity," said SDM co-founder Mostafa Al-Mashita. For years, critics dismissed Lightning as a toy for buying coffee. A $1 million instant settlement between an institutional trading desk and a major exchange proves that bitcoin's payment rails are not just competitive with legacy finance, they are superior.

Bitcoin-backed borrowing shifts from short-term liquidity to long-term financial planning

Xapo Bank's 2025 Digital Wealth Report reveals that 52% of bitcoin-backed loans carried 365-day terms, with borrowers keeping loans open even as new issuance slowed. This implies these loans are being used deliberately and for the long-term rather than for short-term emergencies. Europe and Latin America accounted for 85% of loan volume as high-net-worth individuals turn to bitcoin as productive collateral within regulated banking rails.

Bitcoin becomes generational collateral

Long-term holders are finally comfortable accessing liquidity without selling – a behavioral shift from speculation to "private-bank-style financial behaviour," as Xapo's CEO describes it. When bitcoiners borrow against their holdings for years rather than weeks, it demonstrates growing conviction that bitcoin's purchasing power will appreciate faster than loan interest accrues.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

ELLIPAL is partnering with Visa to enable spending from air-gapped hardware wallets, aiming to make self-custody feel as normal as tapping a debit card.

Summer of Bitcoin opened applications for its 2026 cohort, offering university students worldwide mentorship and ~$6,600 bitcoin stipends to contribute to open-source projects like Bitcoin Core, Fedimint, and Zeus.

Bitcoin's daily RSI hit 17 – the third most oversold reading in its history – a level exceeded only by the 2018 bear market bottom and 2020 COVID crash, both of which preceded multi-bagger rallies.

Nasdaq-listed Chinese insurance brokerage Tian Ruixiang announced a deal in which an unidentified investor would contribute 15,000 bitcoins in exchange for an equity stake, making it the eighth-largest public bitcoin treasury company.

Binance moved 1,315 bitcoins worth about $100 millioninto its Secure Asset Fund for Users as part of a 30-day plan to re-denominate its user protection reserve in bitcoin.

AI data center company Hyperscale Data reported holding 560 bitcoins worth $48.5 million, reaffirming its $100 million bitcoin treasury goal despite recent price volatility.

Rhode Island reintroduced a bill to study bitcoin and separately advanced legislation to exempt bitcoin transactions under $5,000 per month from state capital gains taxes starting in 2027.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

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

Bitcoin and the Sovereign Individual Thesis

With a resurgence of interest in physical commodities like gold and silver, it is worth re-examining why individuals should care about digital hard money, i.e., bitcoin. A compelling vision of the future, much of which has already come true, can be found in the 1997 classic book The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg.

The book predicted that cryptography would fundamentally shift the balance of power from states to individuals. The core insight Davison and Rees-Mogg is that throughout history, whoever controls the technology of violence controls society. But when wealth can be protected by mathematics rather than armies, the logic of power inverts.

The authors foresaw "cybercash" – encrypted sequences of prime numbers, anonymous and verifiable, tradable at a keystroke in markets without borders. Bitcoin fulfilled this prediction with uncanny precision.

The thesis rests on a simple observation: taking has always been easier than making. States emerged as "stationary bandits," extracting taxes in exchange for protecting property rights. But this protection required trust in institutions that could inflate currencies, freeze accounts, or confiscate assets at will.

Bitcoin eliminates this dependency. Property rights rest on encryption rather than enforcement. Wealth stored with secrets rather than vaults cannot be seized by any army, regardless of size. As cryptographer Jacob Appelbaum noted, "No amount of violence will ever solve a math problem."

In the post-war international order, it was assumed that institutions would uphold universal human values, including property rights. However, as these institutions were hollowed out by socialism and climate doomerism, they became both ideologically and physically unable to carry out their original missions. Bitcoin offers an alternative to trusted, corruptible institutions: decentralized rule of code rather than centralized rule of law. The protocol treats all participants identically – no exemptions for superpowers, and no sanctions that can be circumvented by the privileged.

As remote work creates a global talent market and jurisdictions compete for online labor, individuals gain leverage once reserved for corporations and states. Network proximity rivals physical geography. The question shifts from "where do you live?" to "which networks do you belong to?"

Bitcoin is the monetary layer for this emerging order – a neutral protocol for storing and transferring value that requires no trusted third party, respects no border, and serves anyone with internet access. The sovereign individual needs sovereign money.

COIN CHECK

In bitcoin's governance structure, who ultimately enforces the protocol's consensus rules?

A. Funders of core developers
B. Mining pools with the most hashrate
C. Node operators who independently validate transactions
D. The largest institutional holders and exchanges

Check your answer at the end of the page.

FROM THE MEME POOL

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ANSWER

Answer: C.

Developers write bitcoin's code and miners propose new blocks, but neither group controls the protocol. Tens of thousands of nodes running in over 150 different countries are the ultimate enforcers. Each node independently validates every transaction against the consensus rules. When the largest mining companies and exchanges backed SegWit2x in 2017, the proposal still failed because node operators rejected it. Anyone can run a node for under $200, making bitcoin's ruleset truly permissionless to verify and impossible to change without overwhelming consensus.

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