Bitcoin Roundup: April
I’m starting a new series in which I’ll collate some of my thoughts and some of the most interesting tweets from the month in an easy to read digest. If you find this useful, please leave a comment!
April Fool’s day was a fun day on Bitcoin Twitter, but my favorite tweet was unintentionally funny:
Here we have the founder of one “decentralized” system, making fun of another founder of another “decentralized” system. I’m not sure if Vitalik saw the irony in this, but if your system has a known founder who takes an active role in its development, it’s not actually decentralized enough to be money. Whether it’s something else, that’s a question for a different day.
The same day, Coinbase launched “free payments” using XRP which makes absolutely no sense since all payments between two Coinbase accounts shoudl be free regardless of which currency is used, if they are performed off chain.
Some very good writing from a friend who continues to impress with great insights. Recommended for a mainstream audience:
More and more articles coming out to normalize negative interest rates. This is when you put money in the bank and then you have less of it, just by keeping it there. Not a good look.
Willy Woo with always impressive analysis. The bottom is in. Maybe.
China tried to ban mining for the third or fourth time. We’ve all lost count by now. If they do succeed in banning it, it would be amazingly bullish as it would get rid of one commonly criticized point about Bitcoin mining being supposedly centralized in China. People acted like it means something to Bitcoin but it means absolutely nothing. Mining is like water, it will flow around any rock and find the cheapest energy available all over the world in any jurisdiction.
Lightning network continued strong growth trajectory.
Parker Lewis had an amazing episode on Tales from the Crypt with Marty Bent where he discussed the history of Quantitative Easing since 2008. Follow this guy, seriously.
An guy named Craig Wright, founder of a coin called BSV, tried to sue a bunch of people for claiming he was not Satoshi (even though he himself cannot prove it). It didn’t go well.
Following Craig’s bad behavior, his coin got delisted from Binance and Kraken and a whole bunch of other exchanges. Coins getting delisted because of one guy — not decentralized.
Misir has been putting out very strong memes. Time is the only scarce resource we have. Why do we trade it for a non-scarce resource (fiat money)? Trade it for Bitcoin instead.
Some people tried to get Twitter to ban the “@Bitcoin” account which has been shilling Bitcoin Cash. Other people cried foul.
The IMF put out a paper literally describing how banks could steal money from their customers to force them to spend it like a hot potato in case of a recession. This is seriously being proposed as a thing.
Excellent modeling of Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio as compared to silver and gold by the planB account. Follow him and listen to his podcast with Stephan Livera.
Upstream Data continues its mission to turn stranded gas, which is usually flared off to cause more pollution, into Bitcoin.
Not completely Bitcoin related, but shared by some Bitcoiners, this podcast that explains how USD are actually created in huge numbers outside of the Fed’s purview and potentially was one of the causes of 2008. Check it out:
Matt Odell launched a service that will protect you in case of untimely death. A little morbid but cool.
Very cool propaganda posters. Meme away.
This site tells you how thermodynamically secure your favorite coin is. Surprise: they’re not.
Interesting polling on millenial attitudes toward Bitcoin. Unsurprisingly, we somewhat get it, and older folks have a harder time with it. I’ve previously written how it will take a generation for Bitcoin to actually take hold due to this effect.
Square Cash is quietly growing their Bitcoin onramp at a steady pace, meanwhile Coinbase is adding coins nobody wants and confusing their message. My prediction is that more people will onboard into BTC over the next five years through Square Cash than Coinbase.
That’s all folks. Stay tuned next month.
Yan Pritzker is the co-founder and CTO of swanbitcoin.com, the best place to buy bitcoin with your bank account using automated savings plans.
