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| | | | | Greetings Bitcoiner, | Welcome to Issue #450 of the daily Bitcoin Breakdown, where we have some excellent Opinion & Analysis pieces and Tools & Projects for you today! | But first, today’s Top Stories: | 🥊 Trump Vows to Beat China in Strategic ‘Crypto’ Race 🌷 Netherlands to Tax Unrealized Bitcoin Gains 🇮🇷 Iran’s Central Bank Caught Stacking Crypto
| Estimated reading time: 6 min |
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| | | | | | TODAY’S TOP STORIES | 🥊 Trump Vows to Beat China in Strategic ‘Crypto’ Race | President Donald Trump told an (entertained) Davos crowd he is securing the US as the 'crypto capital of the world' to ensure China does not control the digital asset future. He pointed to the GENIUS Act as a foundational step toward unlocking ‘financial freedom’ for all Americans. However, the main driver is strategic dominance, with Trump comparing the race for Bitcoin and crypto market share to the battle for AI supremacy, promising huge market structure laws soon. CoinDesk | 🤡 Netherlands to Tax Unrealized Bitcoin Gains | Da Dutch are preparing to tax unrealized capital gains on bitcoin starting in 2028, shaking up the traditional tax landscape. Under the new ‘Box 3’ reform, investors must pay taxes on the annual increase in their asset value, even if they have not sold anything (sic). Critics argue this creates major liquidity issues, forcing holders to cough up cash for paper gains. This idiotic move targets long-term savers by taxing volatility instead of actual, real profit. NL Times | 🇮🇷 Iran’s Central Bank Caught Stacking Crypto | A report by Elliptic shows that the Central Bank of Iran secretly accumulated over 507M USD in Tether to prop up its struggling rial and evade international banking sanctions. Using a complex network of exchanges and bridges, the regime treated these stablecoins as 'digital off-book accounts' to settle trade. However, the transparency of the blockchain allowed investigators to track the funds, leading Tether to freeze 37M USD. This yet again underscores the censorship risks of centralized tokens compared to the immutability of Bitcoin. Elliptic |
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| | | | | | POLL #450 | Is taxing unrealized gains on Bitcoin, like the Dutch want to do, ‘theft’? | |  | | PREVIOUS POLL RESULTS | |
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| | | | | | OPINION & ANALYSIS* | Epoch Management, a Bitcoin-focused venture capital firm, in the 2nd edition of their comprehensive report overviewing the Bitcoin ecosystem, argues that the quantum threat is overblown and that Bitcoin is entering a 'gradually then suddenly' adoption phase driven by declining volatility, institutional acceptance, and massive potential inflows from gold rotation, ETFs, inheritance transfers, and nation-state reserves despite regulatory capture risks (Jan 21 | 194 min read). Yashraj, writing for Bitcoin++ Insider Edition, argues that existing on-chain transaction flows are inefficient and cumbersome, while silent payments can simplify Bitcoin to email-like usability and payjoin's privacy features require entirely new user interfaces rather than forcing them into outdated send/receive patterns (Jan 21 | 5 min read). Thomas Templeton of Block's Bitcoin mining arm, Proto, argues that bitcoin mining can monetize California's 3M megawatt hours of wasted solar energy annually, incentivize clean energy expansion, and stabilize the grid by converting excess power into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC (Jan 20 | 5 min read). Brian Cubellis of Bitcoin financial services firm Onramp argues that 2025's price disappointment masked fundamental progress as Bitcoin gained deeper institutional integration, regulatory clarity, and banking adoption while speculative Digital Asset Treasury companies collapsed, validating direct sovereign ownership over leveraged proxies (Jan 20 | 7 min read). Hashlabs, a Bitcoin mining intelligence company, argues that Bitcoin mining is transitioning from a market-driven tech activity into a geopolitically strategic industry, warning miners to prepare for government regulation resembling energy policy as states increasingly control electricity access, hashrate production, and capital flows through infrastructure oversight and compliance requirements (Jan 20 | 5 min read). Alexander S. Blume, founder and CEO of Two Prime, in an article for Forbes, argues that true BTC yield does not exist in the traditional risk-free sense, warning investors that corporate treasury strategies, hedge fund products, and DeFi offerings all carry significant hidden risks despite marketing claims (Jan 19 | 5 min read). Isabella Santos of BTC Isla argues that Bitcoin mining faces existential threats from centralization as Chinese ASIC manufacturers and major pools consolidate control, but highlights four open-source projects (Bitaxe, Proto, 256 Foundation, and OCEAN) fighting to restore decentralization and preserve Bitcoin's founding principles (Jan 18 | 8 min read). Maryland HODL argues that Strategy's STRC instrument is not merely a yield product but a structural mechanism to convert the failing fiat financial system by monetizing Bitcoin's growth to provide real yield and realign capital markets around absolute scarcity (Jan 18 | 6 min read). Joe Burnett, VP of Bitcoin Strategy at Strive, argues that the technological singularity began with Bitcoin's 2009 launch, as collapsing intelligence costs through AI create abundance that requires perfect digital scarcity to preserve wealth across time (Jan 17 | 5 min read). Jordi Visser of 22V Research argues that autonomous AI agents require programmable stablecoins rather than legacy banking infrastructure to enable continuous, low-cost micropayments at machine speed, creating a $33T settlement infrastructure that positions Bitcoin as 2026's best-performing asset as digital commerce scales (Jan 15 | 9 min read).
| *See more Opinion & Analysis in the online version here. |
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| | | | | | TOOLS & PROJECTS* | New on Geyser: Boreal Labs, a grassroots tech collective in Nicaragua, empowers students and self-taught coders through Bitcoin-funded workshops, infrastructure, and hardware access to overcome power outages and banking barriers. New on Geyser: BTC Proof of Play is an indie Bitcoin-themed multiplayer strategic card game with native Lightning integration, funding physical card manufacturing while expanding its playable digital alpha, rewards, trading, and lane-based battles. Swan, a Bitcoin financial services company, launches Vault Plus with mandatory live video verification for withdrawals, adding human security experts as a final checkpoint before BTC leaves collaborative self-custody wallets. Onramp unveils accessible multi-institution custody for individuals, featuring flat pricing and inheritance tools to ensure secure long-term BTC wealth stewardship. Calle, a developer working on decentralized mesh messenger Bitchat, builds a physics-based simulator that models Bluetooth signal propagation through real-world environments using OpenStreetMaps data to test message routing with up to 140 virtual users. Braiins, a bitcoin mining infrastructure company, launches Hashpower, enabling users to buy bitcoin hashrate on demand without owning hardware, hosting contracts, or operations. Bithoven is a formally verified smart contract language for Bitcoin that uses C-like imperative syntax with if/else statements and explicit variables, compiling to optimized Bitcoin Script with proven safety properties and support for legacy, segwit, and taproot targets. Wild Explorer, a Bitcoin block explorer built on Supertestnet's node_faker project, queries random Electrum servers instead of a single node to retrieve blockchain data in a decentralized manner. Bitzed, a Zambian Lightning Network service, enables users to buy and spend BTC using mobile money. SigningRoom dot io, an open-source Bitcoin multisig coordinator, enables real-time PSBT collaboration through end-to-end encrypted ephemeral rooms, eliminating manual file merging while maintaining zero-knowledge privacy and non-custodial security for organizational treasury management.
| *See more Tools & Projects in the online version here. |
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| | | | Thank you for reading! | |
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