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| | | | | Greetings Bitcoiner, | Welcome to Issue #448 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. | Now for today’s Top Stories: | 🦈 Sharks Go on a Bitcoin Feeding Frenzy 🥷 Bitcoin Core Privacy Upgrade Wrecks Chain Surveillance 🦕 NYSE Finally Embraces 24/7 Onchain Trading
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| | | | | | TODAY’S TOP STORIES | 🦈 Sharks Go on a Bitcoin Feeding Frenzy | Bitcoin accumulation is skyrocketing to levels not seen in three years, proving that conviction is stronger than ever. Data shows that medium investors, known as the 'Fish-to-Shark' group, added a massive 111,000 BTC recently. Even the smallest holders, or 'Shrimps', are stacking sats at the fastest rate since late 2023. While regulators and traditional banks continue to drag their feet on US legislation, the market is sending a clear signal that demand for sound money is unstoppable. CoinDesk | 🥷 Bitcoin Core Privacy Upgrade Wrecks Chain Surveillance | After nearly two years and 827 review comments, Vasil Dimov's Bitcoin Core privacy improvement has been merged. The update stops nodes from broadcasting transactions to all connected peers, which previously allowed chain anal firms to triangulate broadcasters. Instead, nodes create temporary private connections to single new peers, broadcast only to them, then disconnect. This simple yet powerful change breaks the broadcaster-equals-sender heuristic used for surveillance. The feature requires an upcoming Bitcoin Core version, but existing nodes already support relaying these private broadcasts. 𝕏 | 🦕 NYSE Finally Embraces 24/7 Onchain Trading | The New York Stock Exchange woke up to the reality that money never sleeps, announcing a platform for 24/7 trading of ‘tokenized’ US equities and exchange-traded funds. This initiative by parent company Intercontinental Exchange aims to use ‘blockchain technology’ for immediate settlement and stablecoin funding, mirroring the superior efficiency of the Bitcoin market. It is amusing to see traditional finance scrambling to copy the always-on model that Bitcoiners have enjoyed for over a decade. The Block |
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| | | | | | POLL #448 | Fish-to-Shark entities just bought 111k BTC. Who is actually behind these wallets? | |  | | PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS | |
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| | | | | | OPINION & ANALYSIS | Area Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education site, explores how Silent Payments (BIP 352) enables Bitcoin users to share a single reusable address for receiving payments without compromising privacy, overcoming limitations of earlier stealth address proposals while requiring recipients to scan Taproot transactions to detect incoming funds (Jan 19 | 9 min read). Protos, a Bitcoin and crypto publication, critically examines Michael Saylor's claim that BTC isn't digital money but 'digital capital,' arguing his distinction serves primarily as an elaborate sales pitch for Strategy's STRC product while relying on selective interpretation of Hal Finney's 2009 predictions about BTC-backed banking (Jan 19 | 3 min read). Juraj Bednar, author of 'Cryptocurrencies - Hack your way to a better life', introduces open-source bridge firmware connecting Bitchat's Bluetooth mesh networks with MeshCore's long-range LoRa infrastructure, enabling resilient decentralized communication across kilometers during disasters or internet shutdowns using smartphones and inexpensive hardware costing $15-$40 (Jan 18 | 6 min read). George F. Smith, author of 'The Flight of the Barbarous Relic', writing for the Mises Institute, argues that inflation functions as a stealth tax enabling government to confiscate wealth from citizens through the Federal Reserve's monetary expansion, distorting markets, discouraging savings, and transferring resources to politically connected elites while obscuring government's role in economic destruction (Jan 18 | 6 min read). Anon on Stacker News argues that Samourai Wallet developers were either state-infiltrated provocateurs or useful idiots whose reckless 'fed-baiting' marketing and subsequent guilty pleas gave US authorities the legal precedent needed to criminalize Bitcoin self-custody and privacy tools (Jan 18 | 4 min read). Matt Howard from Solo Satoshi guides readers through choosing the best mini bitcoin miner for 2026, comparing affordable open-source options like Bitaxe and NerdQaxe with plug-and-play devices, emphasizing that home mining offers educational value and the thrilling possibility of solo mining success despite long odds (Jan 17 | 8 min read). Kudzai Kutukwa, author of the 'Exit The Matrix' newsletter, argues that Scott Ritter's debanking by Citizens Bank exposes how fiat banking enables state control over dissidents, and advocates for Bitcoin adoption as the only viable path to financial sovereignty and voluntary debanking before the system forces exclusion (Jan 16 | 6 min read). Max Hillebrand, a privacy advocate, argues that money represents stored productive value and human freedom, while those who condemn it are typically non-producers seeking unearned wealth through force rather than voluntary exchange, ultimately threatening civilization's foundation (Jan 16 | 7 min read). Blockspace Media highlights how Bitcoin developer Mark 'Murch' Erhardt finalized BIP 3, a major process overhaul that streamlines proposal statuses and editor duties to eliminate bureaucratic friction in the Bitcoin development ecosystem (Jan 15 | 5 min read). Alex B of Ark Labs argues that the era of 'Bitcoin company' as a distinct identity is over because Bitcoin has achieved mainstream legitimacy, and successful firms now build multi-asset financial products that serve actual user needs rather than ideological purity (Jan 15 | 4 min read).
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| | | | | | TOOLS & PROJECTS | New on Geyser: Wesatoshis, a Bitcoin-focused hardware project and the first using Geyser's new All-or-Nothing funding feature, enables sovereign payments without mobile apps or intermediaries, allowing users to spend BTC, swap tokens, and zap Nostr friends while maintaining self-custody through a standalone terminal device. New on Geyser: Learning Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2024, expands hands-on Bitcoin education in 2026 with global conference partnerships, self-custody workshops, and open-source privacy and human rights modules. Road21BTC, a new free web application, gamifies the process of stacking 1 full BTC by allowing users to track sats and project accumulation timelines. Nostr-mail is a cross-platform encrypted email client that bridges Nostr key discovery with SMTP and IMAP, delivering end-to-end secure messaging, contacts, profiles, and attachments. Pathos, a censorship-resistant activist platform built on Nostr and Bitcoin, connects global organizers with location-based feeds, BTC bounties, Lightning zaps, Bluetooth mesh chat, and AI planning. The Bitcoin Collective launches the Bitcoin Business Network, a private UK membership community helping business leaders learn bitcoin, build resilience, and connect through events, briefings, directories, and trusted introductions. Kompaktor, an open-source Bitcoin payment compaction protocol, uses WabiSabi-style anonymous credentials and round-based coordination to compress 50+ BTC payments from many senders into fewer on-chain outputs. Bitcoin Majlis hosts the 2nd Annual Muslim Bitcoin Summit in Dallas, TX, April 17-19, 2026, exploring Bitcoin and Islamic finance, self-custody strategies, privacy tools, and community networking. BankToBTC, a bank-to-exchange funding compatibility database, shows whether your bank blocks Bitcoin and crypto, the fastest deposit rails, and which regulated exchanges accept BTC-friendly deposits. Hornet UTXO(1), a constant-time, lock-free UTXO database for Bitcoin consensus validation, boosts parallel initial block download revalidation performance on mainnet from 167 minutes to 15.
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| | | | Thank you for reading! | |
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