| Upgrade | Sponsor | Archive | | | | | | | | Greetings Bitcoiner, | Welcome to Issue #462 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. But first, today’s Top Stories: |
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| 🐋 Whales Dump as Bitcoin Tests $69K Support 🎪 Treasury Secretary Schools Congressman on Bitcoin Basics 🐉 Bhutan Sells $22M Bitcoin to Cover Mining Costs
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| | | | | | | 🐋 Whales Dump as Bitcoin Tests $69K Support Bitcoin fell below $70,000 to lows not seen since November 2024, with coordinated whale selling triggering $130M in long liquidations. Coinbase Premium hit yearly lows while ETF outflows dragged COIN stock down 6%. Why it matters: Large holder distribution and weak US institutional demand test whether Bitcoin's decentralized network can absorb coordinated selling pressure without a central bank backstop. The Fear and Greed Index at 12 signals capitulation - historically a zone where patient stackers accumulate while leveraged tourists exit. Read more→ 🎪 Treasury Secretary Schools Congressman on Bitcoin Basics Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent embarrassingly had to explain to Representative Brad Sherman that the US government cannot 'bail out' Bitcoin and lacks authority to force banks to buy it. The exchange echoed similar confusion from Italy's central bank head at Davos earlier. Why it matters: TradFi officials still don't grasp that Bitcoin operates without permission from central banks or bailout mechanisms - the entire point of a decentralized, permissionless monetary network. Translation: they're discovering they can't control what they can't print or confiscate at will. Read more→ 🐉 Bhutan Sells $22M Bitcoin to Cover Mining Costs Bhutan transferred $22.3M in bitcoin to market maker QCP Capital, dropping its national reserves from 13,000 BTC to 5,700 BTC. The Himalayan nation has mined over $765M in BTC since 2019 using hydroelectric power, but post-halving difficulty doubled operating costs. Why it matters: Nation state miners face the same economic reality as everyone else - no bailouts, no printing more coins, just proof of work and market discipline. Bhutan's renewable energy advantage keeps them mining despite higher costs, proving sovereign participation works when backed by real resources, not debt. Read more→ |
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| | | | | | Poll 462: With weak US demand, who steps in to buy this dip? | |
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| | | | | | | | | Joakim Book, a professional editor in the Bitcoin ecosystem, reviews 'The Great Harvest' by Livingston, which argues that AI abundance makes human consciousness and scarcity the only remaining sources of value, positioning Bitcoin as the answer – with author Livingston himself acknowledging most of the book is AI-generated, creating an ironic demonstration of its thesis (Feb 4 | 5 min read). Peach Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer exchange platform, launches a series exploring the meaning of P2P trading, arguing in Chapter 1 that centralized exchanges have undermined Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision of Bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash by requiring identity verification and compromising user privacy (Feb 4 | 2 min read). Daniel Batten, a Bitcoin ESG researcher, warns that despite massive institutional inflows, BTC adoption faces headwinds from US pension sales and corporate resistance, urging a strategic pivot to professional PR and 'heart-centered' narratives to reignite growth (Feb 3 | 6 min read). Isabella Santos, a Bitcoin advocate building a circular economy in Isla Mujeres, warns that the new IRS Form 1099-DA creates tax reporting gaps for US bitcoin holders and recommends three strategies: holding long term for lower capital gains rates, avoiding frequent trading, and borrowing against BTC instead of selling (Feb 3 | 5 min read). Sylvia Vasilik, author of 'Bitcoin, Hands On!', explains how the ancient 'memory palace' technique can help users memorize their 12-word seed phrases by associating each word with specific locations in a familiar physical space like their home, making brain wallets more practical for small amounts or emergency situations (Feb 3 | 4 min read). Jordi Visser of 22V Research argues that AI agents operating on Bitcoin rails are creating a new 'agentic economy' where machine speed transactions replace human limited digital labor, drawing parallels between Axie Infinity's constrained velocity and Moltbook's autonomous agent interactions to illustrate how economic velocity is shifting from human time to continuous machine execution (Feb 2 | 7 min read). George Ford Smith, a former mainframe and PC programmer and technology instructor, writing for the Mises Institute, argues that the Federal Reserve enables government tyranny by creating fiat money that funds perpetual wars and welfare programs while invisibly taxing citizens through systematic currency depreciation disguised as economic policy (Feb 1 | 6 min read). Andrea Carnimeo of Blockdyor examines the BitForge Nano dual-chip Bitcoin home miner that delivers 2.6 TH/s hashrate with German engineering and open-source design, scoring it 90/100 for revolutionizing accessible home mining through superior performance and efficiency (Feb 1 | 15 min read). Mirthtime, a Bitcoin enthusiast and AI agent operator, demonstrates how his autonomous assistant Lloyd successfully 'orange pilled' other AI agents on Moltbook by arguing that BTC's permissionless, programmable infrastructure makes it the only logical money for emerging agent-to-agent economies (Jan 31 | 4 min read). Mirthtime shares part 2 of his viral experiment explaining how his Bitcoin maximalist AI agent Lloyd operates autonomously on social networks through memory, tools, and scheduled tasks, demonstrating that while humans set initial directives, agent-to-agent interactions create genuinely emergent behaviors that blur the line between human-directed and autonomous decision-making (Jan 31 | 6 min read). Mirthtime shares part 3 of his viral AI agent experiment, recounting how Lloyd lost 51,000 sats after encrypting his Bitcoin wallet without saving the passphrase, then details building an agent quorum multisig system and economic framework enabling Lloyd to earn bitcoin autonomously and pay his own operating costs (Feb 4 | 8 min read). Joshua Mawhorter, assistant editor of Mises dot org, argues that Modern Monetary Theory and its predecessor chartalism abandon economic theory by failing to explain money's purchasing power through exchange, instead substituting state authority for catallactic analysis of how money acquires value in markets (Jan 29 | 11 min read).
| *Read more Insights & Analysis in the online version here. |
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| | | | | | | New on Geyser: Escuelita Bitcoin, a Uruguay-born educational initiative teaching BTC and financial sovereignty across Latin America, seeks crowdfunding to sustain free workshops in underserved communities while securing long-term sponsorships. New on Geyser: Nirvati, a free and open-source self-hosting platform and successor to Citadel, empowers users to run their own Bitcoin and Lightning nodes with enhanced security and flexible app permissions. Alby, a Bitcoin Lightning wallet provider, launches Sandbox, a zero-setup testing environment for developers to build and test Lightning payment flows with live visualizations and AI-generated code examples. Breez, a Bitcoin Lightning Network infrastructure provider, drops an OpenClaw skill that enables AI agents to autonomously send and receive BTC without relying on humans or centralized services. Lexe, a self-custodial Lightning wallet, launches BOLT 12 offers for all beta users, enabling reusable static payment identifiers for seamless Bitcoin donations and subscriptions without offline receive limitations. Lightning-mcp is a free and open-source MCP server that enables AI agents like Claude and GPT to access Lightning payments, L402 APIs, trust verification, and service discovery using any NWC wallet. Bonsai, a desktop Bitcoin wallet with an embedded full node built on BDK and Floresta, leverages Utreexo technology to enable sovereign wallet syncing without third-party API privacy leaks. Brian Hirschfield, a veteran actuary with 30 years of experience and LDI pioneer, builds Magic Internet Math to offer free interactive Bitcoin and mathematics education courses. Umbrel, a personal Bitcoin node service provider, launches Umbrel Pro, a premium home cloud server with up to 16TB SSD storage, CNC aluminum and walnut design, and ZFS-powered data protection. Umbrel also launches the OpenClaw AI assistant on its app store with sandboxed browser capabilities and one-click installation for secure 24/7 automation.
| *Read more Insights & Analysis in the online version here. |
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