BITCOIN BOX SCORE

Exchange Rate: $68,700
Market Capitalization: $1.37T
Hash Rate (90 days): 1,018.1 EH/s
Transactions (30 days): 13,321,840
Network Fees (economy): 1 sat/vB
Bitcoin Dominance: 59.31%

What do these numbers mean?

It has been quite a week. The U.S. launched strikes against Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut down with tanker traffic plummeting 90%, and U.S. banks are on high alert for Iranian cyberattacks targeting financial infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the banking system is showing stress that has nothing to do with the war. The Federal Reserve's payment system experienced a service disruption that delayed ACH payments nationwide, and the private credit markets are starting to crack. London-based Market Financial Solutions entered insolvency, Blackstone had to raise its repurchase cap to meet nearly $2 billion in redemptions, and credit spreads are widening toward levels last seen during prior recession scares.

The system that was supposed to de-risk after 2008 just shifted the risk into a harder-to-see place following a series of well-intentioned but misguided regulations restricting bank lending.

And through all of this, bitcoin is up $5,000 in a single day, trading at $73,500 after starting below $68,000. A separate monetary network with 99.999% uptime since January 2009 that doesn't depend on any single institution, intermediary, or government to function.

Wyoming took a stake in Strive Inc., a bitcoin treasury company co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, marking one of the first instances of a U.S. state investing public funds in a publicly traded bitcoin-focused firm.

When the traditional financial plumbing is buckling under geopolitical stress and hidden leverage, a hard-capped, distributed, credibly neutral digitally native internet money looks like common sense.

Kraken becomes the first bitcoin firm to secure a Federal Reserve master account

Kraken Financial received approval from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for a master account, becoming the first bitcoin-native firm in history to access the Fed's core payment rails. The approval grants direct access to Fedwire, the real-time settlement network that moves trillions of dollars daily, eliminating the need for intermediary banks. Senator Cynthia Lummis called it a "watershed milestone."

“Operation Chokepoint” Yields To Bitcoin Banks

After years of bitcoin companies being denied bank accounts and de-platformed (remember Silvergate, Signature, Silicon Valley Bank, and others?), Kraken now settles directly on the same rails as JPMorgan. Zerohash simultaneously applied for a national trust bank charter with the OCC, and Morgan Stanley filed for its own to custody bitcoin and offer staking to investment clients.

Blockstream deploys post-quantum signature verification on Liquid, a first for any production bitcoin sidechain

Blockstream Research broadcast the first transactions on a production bitcoin sidechain signed with a post-quantum signature scheme, using their Simplicity smart contract language on the Liquid Network. The system implements SHRINCS, a compact hash-based signature scheme designed specifically for blockchain constraints, with both a stateful mode for compact signatures and a stateless fallback for recovery.

Quantum defense without a fork

Because Simplicity allows custom spending conditions, no consensus changes were required — users who want quantum protection simply lock assets to a contract requiring post-quantum signatures to spend. Quantum computers capable of breaking bitcoin's cryptography don't exist yet, but this is how you prepare: deploy and test on production systems in advance.

AI agents overwhelmingly prefer bitcoin over fiat money, landmark study finds

A study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute tested 36 leading AI models across 9,072 controlled experiments and found that 48.3% of AI agents chose bitcoin when given monetary decisions without bias, compared to just 8.9% choosing fiat and bank money. When evaluating long-term store of value, 79.1% of AI models identified bitcoin as the optimal choice over multi-year horizons, citing its fixed supply and self-sovereign characteristics.

Agents pick sound money

Anthropic's models averaged 68% preference for bitcoin, compared with OpenAI's 25.9%. Within Anthropic's lineup, preference climbed with model capability. Claude Opus 4.5 chose bitcoin 91.3% of the time. In 86 responses, models independently invented their own currencies tied to computational units like GPU-hours. As agents gain more economic autonomy, these preferences will translate directly into demand for bitcoin infrastructure and settlement networks.

Tether and Lugano launch Plan ₿ Phase II, committing CHF 5 million to build a digital infrastructure blueprint for cities worldwide

Tether and the City of Lugano announced Plan ₿ Phase II (2026–2030), expanding from the pilot program launched in 2022 into a structural initiative focused on digital resilience and sovereignty. Over four years, Lugano has facilitated bitcoin adoption by more than 400 merchants, issued digital bonds, and attracted over 100 companies to its PoW.space innovation hub.

From experiment to infrastructure

Phase II is built around five pillars: institutional digital asset infrastructure (including an open blockchain, SwissLedger, for banks and enterprises), a digital trade hub, privacy-preserving digital identity via zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized AI agents, and resilient urban infrastructure. As Mayor Michele Foletti put it, "By 2030, a city's freedom will increasingly be measured by its ability to govern its data and essential services without critical dependencies."

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed House Bill 1042, making Indiana the first state to mandate bitcoin investment options in public retirement plans through self-directed brokerage accounts.

Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock introduced legislation that would allow classified state employees to receive their wages in bitcoin beginning January 2027.

Spot bitcoin ETFs posted $462 million in net inflows in a single day, with BlackRock's IBIT capturing $307 million, as BTC briefly surged past $73,000.

Strive strategist Joe Burnett published a report arguing AI-driven deflation could push bitcoin to $11 million by 2036 as central banks expand liquidity to prevent deflationary spirals.

Citigroup announced plans to launch institutional-grade bitcoin custody, key management, and wallet services later in 2026, integrating bitcoin alongside securities and cash under a single safekeeping account.

Trump-backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) purchased 11,298 ASIC miners, expanding its mining fleet by 12% while holding over 6,500 bitcoins, ranking it as the 17th-largest publicly traded bitcoin holder.

Paraguay's state-owned electricity utility ANDE signed an MOU with Morphware to launch a government-run bitcoin mining program using 30,000 confiscated mining rigs and surplus hydroelectric power.

Investment bank TD Cowen forecasts bitcoin reaching $225,000 by 2027, with an upside scenario of $450,000, driven by increased tokenization of real-world assets.

Anthony Pompliano's ProCap Financial purchased 450 bitcoins, boosting total holdings to 5,457 while executing share buybacks at steep discounts to NAV.

Sora Ventures-backed Bitplanet accumulated 300 bitcoins through structured purchases, ranking among Asia's top 20 corporate bitcoin holders as the firm pioneers institutional treasury adoption in South Korea.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

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

Mining the last million

This week, bitcoin crosses a landmark threshold: the 20 millionth coin will be mined. That means 95% of all bitcoins that will ever exist are now in circulation. Only one million remain, and mining them will take another 114 years.

To grasp why this matters, consider how every other store of value in human history has worked. Gold's supply increases roughly 2% per year. When prices rise, miners dig deeper and produce more. Oil companies drill new wells. Central banks print new currency. Every scarce resource humanity has ever used as money eventually fell victim to the same flaw: when the incentive to produce more grows strong enough, someone produces more. Bitcoin broke that pattern permanently.

Bitcoin’s mathematical protocol prevents the number of bitcoins that can ever exist from surpassing 21 million. No CEO, government, or army can change it. The issuance schedule is transparent and immutable, enforced not by trust in any institution but by mathematics and a globally distributed network of nodes. The halvings, which cut miner rewards roughly every four years, have pushed bitcoin's inflation rate below 1%, which is already lower than that of gold. 99% of all bitcoins will have been mined by 2036.

For the first time in history, humanity has access to a perfectly scarce asset. It is not scarce because someone promises it will be, it is scarce because it is mathematically impossible for it to be otherwise. That property is the foundation of everything bitcoin enables: a savings vehicle that cannot be debased, a settlement network that requires no trusted third party, and a monetary standard that rewards long-term thinking over short-term consumption.

The final million bitcoin will trickle out over the next century while the world slowly realizes that absolute scarcity changes everything.

COIN CHECK

Approximately how many bitcoin are mined per day at the current block reward rate?

A. 45
B. 450
C. 900
D. 4,500

Check your answer at the end of the page.

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ANSWER

Answer: B. After the 2024 halving reduced the block reward to 3.125 bitcoins, roughly 450 new coins are mined each day.

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