Greetings Bitcoiner,

Welcome to Issue #149 of Bitcoin Breakdown, where every Tuesday and Thursday, we provide you with the latest must-read Bitcoin thought leadership articles and the newest tools and projects you should know about.

But first, today’s Top Stories:

• 🚀 BlackRock: Bitcoin Adoption Smoking Internet & Mobile Phone Growth

• 🇮🇹 Italy's Largest Banking Group Buys $1M in Bitcoin

• 🇸🇻 Tether Shifts HQ to El Salvador

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TODAY’S TOP STORIES

🚀 BlackRock: Bitcoin Adoption Smoking Internet & Mobile Phone Growth

A new report by BlackRock shows Bitcoin's adoption rate is leaving both the internet and mobile phones in the dust since its 2009 launch. The asset management giant points to digital-native youngsters, economic uncertainties, and evolving financial infrastructure as key drivers of this explosive growth. Meanwhile, BlackRock's IBIT spot ETF has already attracted a whopping $38B in inflows, making it 2024's largest ETF launch. BitHub News

🇮🇹 Italy's Largest Banking Group Buys $1M in Bitcoin

Italy’s largest banking group, Intesa Sanpaolo, just bought 11 BTC for about $1M, becoming the first Italian bank to do so. While the bank declined to share more comments, it move follows growing institutional interest in Bitcoin, especially with Trump’s pro-Bitcoin stance. It’s a big win for Bitcoin adoption in Italy and beyond. Decrypt

🇸🇻 Tether Shifts HQ to El Salvador

Now the biggest stablecoin is setting up its first physical HQ, riding El Salvador's pro-BTC wave. CEO and cofounders are relocating from the British Virgin Islands, flexing Tether's two-thirds share of the 212B stablecoin market. This move aligns with El Salvador's ambitious vision to establish itself as a global Bitcoin and crypto hub. Reuters

POLL

OPINION & ANALYSIS

• Jon Charbonneau, co-founder of investment firm DBA, argues for the transformative potential of Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions like Alpen Labs' Strata to scale BTC's functionality, privacy, and programmability securely, unlocking unprecedented market opportunities and ensuring Bitcoin's dominance in a decentralized future (Jan 9 | 17 min read).

• John Mac Ghlionn, contributor at The Hill, warns that Donald Trump's enthusiastic embrace of Bitcoin could paradoxically undermine its decentralized, anti-establishment nature through government control, institutional adoption, and regulatory oversight, potentially transforming it from a revolutionary tool into a state-controlled asset (Jan 12 | 4 min read).

• Neil Patel of The Motley Fool argues that Bitcoin represents a superior investment choice over gold in 2025 and beyond, citing its fixed supply cap, digital accessibility, historical returns of 1,060% over five years, and growing appeal among younger investors (Jan 11 | 4 min read).

• Bitcoin Mechanic, co-founder of Ocean Mining, highlights how OCEAN mining pools outperform standard FPPS pools by over 20%, emphasizing that miner decisions benefiting Bitcoin's network integrity outweigh minor fee impacts, debunking selective criticism from detractors focused on negligible revenue percentages (Jan 12 | 1 min read).

• Saifedean Ammous, economist and author of 'The Bitcoin Standard', critiques Javier Milei's economic policies, highlighting unprecedented money supply growth, rising public debt, increased taxes, and departing from libertarian principles, positioning him as a populist inflationist perpetuating Argentina's fiscal crises and monetary instability (Jan 10 | 5 min read).

• Marie Poteriaieva, co-founder of D.Center, explains that Bitcoin enters 2025 as an established form of money, propelled by a 126% price surge, spot ETF approval, growing adoption as a store of value and means of payment, and advancements like the Lightning Network, reshaping the global monetary system (Jan 13 | 5 min read).

• Natalie Smolenski, founder and executive director of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation, draws powerful parallels between Poland's 1980s Solidarity movement that overthrew communism and Bitcoin's modern grassroots revolution against government monetary control, highlighting how both movements unite diverse groups in pursuit of economic freedom (Jan 14 | 9 min read).

• L0la L33tz, journalist and privacy advocate, highlights Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers’ Bitcoin Freedom Act and how it enables Bitcoin payments for state employees, merchants, and vendors while protecting non-custodial software developers and decentralized exchanges, setting a precedent for privacy-focused, future-forward Bitcoin legislation at the state level (Jan 13 | 2 min read).

• Nunya Bidness, host of the 'Bitcoin And...' podcast, proposes the ‘Forest Walker’, a Bitcoin-mining robot, to autonomously manage forest fuel loads, generate income through data collection and carbon credits, and improve forest health by gasification and biochar production (Jan 14 | 21 min read).

• Derek Ross, a Nostr developer, presents Notedeck, an innovative Nostr browser developed by Will Casarin, which revolutionizes the Nostr ecosystem by functioning as an operating system with micro-apps, offering local-first data storage, multicast capabilities, and extensive customization options for seamless content integration and user experience (Jan 13 | 3 min read).

• Scoresby, a Stacker News user, explains how running a Bitcoin node becomes an economic node by verifying payments, enforcing consensus rules, and valuing Bitcoin during forks, emphasizing the importance of using nodes for transactions to influence Bitcoin's future (Jan 8 | 12 min read).

• Che Kohler of The Bitcoin Manual explores Bitcoin's potential to reach zero value, analyzing technical risks like quantum computing and protocol vulnerabilities alongside regulatory actions, market competition, and economic factors, concluding that while theoretical risks exist, complete collapse is unlikely due to Bitcoin's decentralized nature and growing adoption (Jan 10 | 11 min read).

• Kaká Furlan, founder of Area Bitcoin, explores Wei Dai, a pioneering Chinese computer scientist and cryptographer who significantly influenced Bitcoin's creation with his B-Money proposal, introducing foundational concepts like decentralization, Proof of Work (PoW), and distributed ledgers, which Satoshi Nakamoto later cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper (Jan 8 | 6 min read).

• Darthcoin, a Bitcoin educator active on Stacker News, explains how to create a private Lightning Network for secure, peer-to-peer BTC transactions within closed communities by setting up unannounced channels between trusted nodes, minimizing reliance on public networks, and enhancing privacy (Jan 9 | 3 min read).

• Mike Hobart, communications manager at Great American Mining, explains how Bitcoin's deflationary nature offers a superior alternative to the current inflationary monetary system, arguing that its fixed supply and decentralized structure enable wealth preservation through saving while eliminating the need for debt-based economics (Jan 12 | 8 min read).

• Alex Gaynor, a software resilience engineer, explores the challenges of funding open-source projects, citing difficulties articulating funding value, maintainers' preference for autonomy, and the mismatch between funding levels and project needs (Jan 13 | 4 min read). 

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TOOLS & PROJECTS

• Solo Satoshi releases the world’s first open-source touch screen Bitcoin miner built on top of Bitaxe and AxeOS, marking another chapter in the open-source Bitcoin Mining Revolution.

• Africa Free Routing, in collaboration with Opensats, Tether, and African Bitcoiners, hosts a 3-day Bitcoin Lightning Developer Bootcamp in Cape Town, 30th Jan - 1st Feb, 2025, to advance innovation and skills in South Africa’s Bitcoin ecosystem.

• Awesome Privacy helps you find and compare privacy-respecting alternatives to popular software and services.

• Bitcoin Boma launches a free Bitcoin education course in Malawi through a partnership with Mi Primer Bitcoin to empower local communities.

• Kanbanstr adds zap support to cards, enhancing its Nostr-based kanban board functionality for seamless task management and decentralized collaboration.

• Bitcoin Money for Young Minds introduces children in Zimbabwe to financial literacy and Bitcoin fundamentals through the donation of educational books.

• Operation Bitcoin launches Bitcoin Diploma for veterans, offering a 10-week course to master Bitcoin fundamentals—enroll by January 20 for the January cohort.

• Summer of Bitcoin 2025 invites university students to apply starting February 1 for a global Bitcoin development and design internship.

• Anil Patel removes the paywall on his non-technical Bitcoin course, Exploring Networks & Money, with short videos and optional readings suitable for beginners to experts.

• Stacker News announces its self-custodial Lightning update with a new credits system, dust limit settings, and enhanced wallet functionality for easier micropayments.

• LumiLumi is a lightweight, web-based client for the Nostr protocol that enhances the Nostr web client experience with advanced mute options, custom emojis, reduced data usage, and easy integration of essential NIP features.

• Dojo Bay offers a comprehensive directory of Dojo nodes, enabling users to select by reputation and location for both Mainnet and Testnet.

• Undermine 2025 is a Heatpunk Summit in Denver's Bitcoin hub known as 'The Space', spotlighting hashrate heating breakthroughs from February 21 to February 22, 2025.

• TimechainIndex.com, a platform that monitors Bitcoin holdings across exchanges, funds, ETFs, and companies, providing real-time data and insights, is shutting down on January 10, 2025.

• Wasabi Wallet v2.4.0 introduces Silent Payment support, a donation button, TestNet 4 transition, and in-app release notes for improved Bitcoin privacy.

• SignPath Foundation provides you with a code signing certificate that provides a clear link between your repository and the published binary.

• Mi Primer Bitcoin (My First Bitcoin) announces their new 2025 Bitcoin Diploma edition, providing free, high-quality Bitcoin education for all.

• Coinswap v0.1.0 marks its first public beta on Testnet4 as a decentralized, Sybil-resistant protocol for trustless Bitcoin UTXO swaps.

• Ditto delivers a decentralized, self-hosted social media experience with built-in Nostr relay and full Mastodon compatibility, empowering open-source community building.

• BitKeeper delivers secure, scalable, and user-friendly version control for large projects, merging seamlessly with distributed teams and massive binary assets.

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