Pete Rizzo

David Canellis

Join Rizzo, The Bitcoin Historian, as we detail Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.

Supply Shock

In this episode, Alex B from Ark Labs joins the show to discuss how Arkade, a new Bitcoin scaling protocol, enables off-chain programmability without bridges, preserves self-custody, and avoids global state constraints. He discusses complementarity with Lightning, unlocking Bitcoin-native capital markets, programmable contracts, synthetic assets, and how Arkade could transform Bitcoin financial infrastructure – and more. Enjoy!
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—
Ledn is the leading platform for Bitcoin-backed loans, offering a secure and transparent way to unlock liquidity without selling your Bitcoin. Ledn has issued over $9 billion in loans since 2018 and has never lost a single satoshi of client assets, earning a reputation as the name you can trust in the crypto space.
Visit https://www.ledn.io/ to learn more. 
—
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:37) What is Arkade?
(06:17) Ledn Ad
(06:59) Programmability &amp; Scripting
(12:32) Comparing Arkade with Other Solutions
(33:01) Future of Bitcoin Financialization
(33:49) Ledn Ad
(34:35) Future of Bitcoin Financialization
(48:46) Final Thoughts
—
Disclaimer: Nothing said on Supply Shock is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
 
#Bitcoin #Crypto #SupplyShock

Bitcoin’s Battle For Programmable Money | Alex B

In this episode, CEO of Swan Cory Klippsten discusses Swan Bitcoin’s Series C raise and its partnership with a French semiconductor company pivoting into Bitcoin treasury accumulation. He explains the rise of leveraged Bitcoin equities, how these companies use debt markets to acquire Bitcoin, and the potential influx of institutional fixed income into Bitcoin. Cory breaks down risks, opportunities, and why he believes Bitcoin-focused financial institutions are inevitable – touching on market cycles, treasury company models, and strategic corporate adoption. Enjoy!
—
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—
Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors Supply Shock. As Bitcoin adoption grows, Ledger celebrates 10 years of securing over 20% of the world’s crypto. Buy a LEDGER™ device now for true self-custody and peace of mind in securing your Bitcoin. Devices are also available in Bitcoin orange. For every device ordered in BTC Orange, we’ll donate $5 to brink.dev. Buy now at https://Ledger.com. 
—
Timestamps:
00:00 Swan-Sequans Treasury Partnership
2:45 Bitcoin Treasury Endgame
4:59 Leveraged Bitcoin Equities
6:30 Breaking Down the Strategy
7:30 Ads (Ledger)
8:14 Breaking Down the Strategy
12:07 Unique Arbitrage Opportunities
15:35 Differentiating Good vs Bad Actors
17:55 Fixed Income Opportunity
19:36 When do the Floodgates Open?
22:53 Ads (Ledger)
23:38 When do the Floodgates Open?
25:06 Swan’s Goals
28:33 Crypto Treasury Companies
30:44 Is this Bull Market Different?
32:44 Bitcoin Treasury Doomsday
36:00 Moving Toward Hyperbitcoinization
38:40 Final Thoughts
—
Disclaimer: Nothing said on Supply Shock is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
 
#Bitcoin #Crypto #SupplyShock

Bitcoin Treasuries: We're Just Getting Started | Cory Klippsten

In this episode, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd discusses the rise of Bitcoin Knots, censorship debates, op_return limits, miner incentives, the challenges of blocking ordinals and inscriptions, scaling via Lightning, the future of Bitcoin development, and more. Enjoy!
—
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—
Ledn is the leading platform for Bitcoin-backed loans, offering a secure and transparent way to unlock liquidity without selling your Bitcoin. Ledn has issued over $9 billion in loans since 2018 and has never lost a single satoshi of client assets, earning a reputation as the name you can trust in the crypto space.
Visit https://www.ledn.io/ to learn more. 
—
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:24) Bitcoin's Firestorm
(02:07) Ledn Title Ad
(02:28) Bitcoin's Firestorm
(06:27) Satoshi Dice
(08:50) Censoring Transactions
(13:34) Ability to Dissent
(16:45) Ledn Ad
(17:22) Is Bitcoin Knots A Threat?
(20:16) The Knots Critique of Bitcoin
(27:52) Making A Moral Argument
(28:46) Ledn Ad
(29:32) Making A Moral Argument
(32:03) Responsibility of Miners
(35:54) Filtering is Pointless
(37:33) “Shoulds” vs Reality
(41:56) Development &amp; Price
(44:56) Multiple Bitcoin Soft Forks
(47:19) Bitcoin Dream Development
(49:53) Alternative Financial System
(53:22) Innovations in Crypto
—
Disclaimer: Nothing said on Supply Shock is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
 
#Bitcoin #Crypto #SupplyShock

Bitcoin Core vs. The World: Why It Can’t Be Shut Down | Peter Todd

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Adoption does not follow a straight line.



At least, not at the local level. But definitely, if you <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ict-adoption">amalgamate</a> the world’s adoption rate for mobile phone subscriptions and the internet, the line will indeed go straight up.&nbsp;



Zoom into individual countries, though, and you’ll soon see that the road to widespread usage can be rocky — but the result is still the same.



Greece in July 2015 was in the midst of an all-out banking crisis.



The European Central Bank had declined to further prop up Greek banks with emergency debt. By this point, Greece was only just <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/greece-meets-imf-payment-deadline/a-18371436">scraping</a> together repayments for a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) loan from the IMF which had fallen into arrears at the end of June.



Greece’s government scrambled to secure alternative financing but failed. Having judged the terms of the ECB’s deal as politically <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31055069">toxic</a>, the then-prime minister instead called a snap referendum over whether to accept.



Initial deal <a href="https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/draft16h.pdf">terms</a> ranged from indefinite austerity to further cuts to pensions to forced pre-approval of domestic laws to the placing of 50 billion euro ($58.5 billion) in national assets into a fund supervised by EU representatives.



Greeks <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/third-greek-atms-empty-saturday-tsipras-declares-referendum">rushed</a> to ATMs to withdraw cash as soon as the referendum was called, resulting in an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33305019">emergency</a> bank holiday and capital controls. Withdrawals were restricted to just 60 euros ($70) per day, international transfers were mostly barred and the local stock exchange was closed.



Three days later, Greece became the first developed country to ever default on an IMF loan obligation. This effectively isolated Greece financially until votes were counted.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Greece almost left the euro at 6am this morning <a href="http://t.co/xDCYXouFaZ">http://t.co/xDCYXouFaZ</a> <a href="http://t.co/BiQsArYs1d">pic.twitter.com/BiQsArYs1d</a>&mdash; Matt O&#39;Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) <a href="https://twitter.com/ObsoleteDogma/status/620565071039627264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 13, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Citizens <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/05/greek-referendum-no-vote-signals-huge-challenge-to-eurozone-leaders">voted</a> against the deal (61.3%), plunging the Eurozone into another two weeks of deliberations, which almost resulted in Greece leaving the eurozone altogether, as shown above. The government eventually approved austerity measures later in July. The situation would continue to play out for the rest of the year.



When we talk of Bitcoin’s true value proposition — the one underneath the price talk and financial tinkering — it’s hard to find one better than this precise example: Banks and the stock market have effectively locked you out of your value, and even when they can access it, you can only ever get less than $100 cash at a time.



Bitcoin obviously fixes this. If Satoshi had launched Bitcoin in 2015 instead of 2009, perhaps they would’ve buried a headline about the Greek debt crisis in the genesis block instead of one about the UK.



And certainly, people in Greece did turn to Bitcoin. One exchange <a href="https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/198934/fearing-return-to-drachma-some-greeks-use-bitcoin-to-dodge-capital-controls/#:~:text=New%20customers%20depositing%20at%20least,quadrupled%20to%20around%20700%20euros">reported</a> thousands of new users and locals shared tips on how to buy bitcoin on Reddit and the Greek-language <a href="https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/bitcoin-in-greece#:~:text=Nevertheless%2C%20signs%20of%20Bitcoin%20adoption,lately%2C%20coinciding%20with%20recent%20events">version</a> of Bitcointalk.&nbsp;



Their efforts were frustratingly hamstrung by capital controls — banks blocked most transfers, including potential deposits to crypto exchanges for buying bitcoin.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Nothing like capital controls to focus the mind! First Bitcoin Meetup in Greece <a href="https://t.co/fFiYKxpFtR">https://t.co/fFiYKxpFtR</a> v/<a href="https://twitter.com/RedditBTC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RedditBTC</a> <a href="http://t.co/ly3aRQJfnX">pic.twitter.com/ly3aRQJfnX</a>&mdash; Jon Matonis (@jonmatonis) <a href="https://twitter.com/jonmatonis/status/621346504280829952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“If Greeks already have cash in hand, bitcoin is unnecessary. If they don’t, then bitcoin is unattainable. It’s a bank liquidity crisis,” Andreas Antonopoulos <a href="https://x.com/aantonop/status/615571506630905856">tweeted</a> as local banks were closing.



Still, the price of bitcoin did rise somewhat during the ordeal, but it would only really start to take off toward the end of the year, when the worst of it was over.



The Greek debt crisis showed the world what happens when the fiat system fails a population. But when push comes to shove, it’s clear that Bitcoin as a safety net works best when you’ve planned ahead.



After all, it’s tough to build a doomsday bunker on the day after doomsday.



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</ul>

Euro

What the Greek debt crisis taught us about Bitcoin, 10 years on

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The Mount Rushmore of Bitcoin. Who’s on it?



Definitely Hal Finney. Jack Dorsey, probably. Adam Back? Maybe Tim Draper, or Ross Ulbricht.



Whoever you choose, there had better be room for Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.



For the real Mount Rushmore, each of the four presidential heads is meant to represent one of the following: the founding of the US, its expansion, its development, and its preservation.



The Winklevoss twins would best fit into the second slot of the Bitcoin version. Expansion.



Whereas Thomas Jefferson <a href="https://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/expansion/">brokered</a> the Westward Expansion — buying the Louisiana Territory from France for a cool $15 million, instantly doubling the size of the country — the Winklevoss twins sought to rapidly broaden Bitcoin’s influence with its first ETF.



Exactly 12 years ago today, the brothers <a href="https://www.wired.com/2013/07/winkelvoss-bitcoin/">filed</a> for what they called the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust — a first-of-its-kind exchange-traded fund sponsored by the twins’ firm, Math-Based Asset Services, to the tune of $20 million in bitcoin (200,000 BTC).



One percent of BTC was about $11 million in July 2013, when each coin was worth $120, putting the Winklevoss’ unit count at around 100,000 BTC ($10.65 billion today).



The brothers had, three months earlier, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/first-name-in-the-first-fund-for-bitcoins-winklevoss/">disclosed</a> that they’d quietly accumulated 1% of bitcoin’s circulating supply via their family office, Winklevoss Capital.&nbsp;



“We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error,” Tyler told the New York Times. Initially, each share would be worth 0.20 BTC, worth about $24 at the time and $21,000 currently.



Under the surface, the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would’ve mirrored SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), with in-kind redemption, fees paid in BTC, and private keys to the Trust’s coins held under physical custody in bank vaults.&nbsp;



The bitcoins were to be managed by a unit of Delaware Trust Company before the Winklevoss’ own Gemini was named in later filings.&nbsp;



It was a bold first attempt at bringing bitcoin out of the more obscure financial fringes of the internet and into everyday brokerage accounts, or as the <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/000119312513279830/d562329ds1.htm">prospectus</a> dryly put it: “The Shares are designed for investors seeking a cost-effective and convenient means to gain exposure to Bitcoins with minimal credit risk.”



The SEC took four years to formally <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/03/10/sec-rejects-winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-sending-price-tumbling/">reject</a> the Winklevoss proposal. Any exchange offering bitcoin ETFs would need “surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated,” the SEC said in March 2017. The move sunk the price of bitcoin by 18% at worst, but it quickly recovered and then some.



Bitcoin-backed ETFs would only <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-1b-inflows">arrive</a> on US exchanges seven years later, in January 2024, almost eleven years after the original Winklevoss proposal.



A long time, to be sure, but it’s still three years faster than it took to sculpt Mount Rushmore nearly a century prior.&nbsp;



And while the Winklevoss brothers never ended up launching their own ETF, Gemini is the <a href="https://www.gemini.com/blog/gemini-named-as-custodian-on-vanecks-newly-launched-spot-bitcoin-etf">custodian</a> for VanEck’s bitcoin ETF, HODL, and has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gemini-files-confidential-s1-with-sec">recently</a> confidentially filed for an IPO.



All good news for the Winklevosses. Now, all we need is to bring back “Math-Based Asset Services” — easily the coolest name for a Bitcoin company we’ve ever known.



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Bitcoin

Why the Winklevoss bros should be on Bitcoin’s Mt. Rushmore

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Time to check in on the bull market.



There are no formal definitions for when bitcoin “bull markets” start and end. The <a href="https://fund-docs.vanguard.com/AU-Vanguard_A_timeline_of_bull_and_bear_markets.pdf">old-world says</a> that a “bull run” begins once an asset has risen at least 20% from the local trough, and ends when it’s retraced by the same amount from a recent peak.



It goes without saying, but those are rookie numbers. Let’s just start “bull markets” from the bottom of the previous bear cycle and go from there.



In that case, bitcoin has now been in a bull market for 952 days, starting on November 21, 2022, when BTC/USD hit a low of $15,504.&nbsp;



At $107,500, bitcoin has rallied by 590% over the bull market to date.



Does it compare to prior bull markets? Yes and no. Ignoring the initial price discovery that ran from the genesis block until mid-2011, the first bull market from late 2011 onwards topped out at 620x, sometime around day 750.



The second bull market, from late 2015, managed over 100x in less than 850 days.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeF0bq45R_vYT_Mdhk9yuCEKqzIYQGK4Xt7D-hqdJeQFErhEKPtin71EBjyBssJUwAG0XhP3gehYjWnz_win0mvJfPimlMpu1CoSx0RnShMSHNYGO1QmVnULVjJ_CRUxIFbw3-p9w?key=PR0IWCKSZ3cOysrYEzK3wA" alt=""/></figure>



It took around 1,060 days, close to three years, for bitcoin to pop nearly 22x in its third up cycle between late 2018 and 2022.&nbsp;



This time around, bitcoin has reached 6.2x at most, which is more-or-less in line with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-cycle-returns">historical rate of diminishing returns</a> of bull cycles. You can see that on the log scale chart above. Notice that the distances between the lines are relatively constant.



If we’re indeed looking at a similar bull market to the last one — a big if as three bull markets are not enough for any legitimate trends to emerge — then we would have another 110 days or so before bitcoin reaches its cycle peak.&nbsp;



Awkwardly, the US dollar has lost about 10% of its value since November 2022, at least using the DXY index as a proxy. Which means that bitcoin’s price right now, in November 2022 dollars, is actually closer to $97,700.



Nevermind that. We can instead definitely say that bitcoin is on track for its second-longest bull market so far.&nbsp;



And if bitcoin peaks sometime after mid-October, then this one will officially be an all-timer, at least in terms of duration.



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Bitcoin bull market on track to be second longest on record

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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It’s satisfying to think that Bitcoin has won. After all, the sitting US President himself is a big fan.&nbsp;



Regulators are, meanwhile, paying it little mind, at least publicly, while many of Wall Street’s largest operators support bitcoin trading and even offer ETFs directly to their customer base.



The US strategic reserve is the ultimate cherry: Bitcoin — both the asset and the underlying blockchain — are now formally intertwined with the health of federal finances, even if that’s only marginally so compared to gold.



Sounds bullish. But it’s enough to make any card-carrying cypherpunk a little nervous.



There&#8217;s a lot of precedent for the government wanting to monitor crypto and personal data. 



Thirty years ago, activists were gearing up to rally against a new Senate bill that would’ve made encryption tools, as we know them today, outright illegal.



On June 27, 1995, Senator Chuck Grassley introduced the so-called “<a href="https://archive.epic.org/crypto/ban/grassley.html">Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act</a>.” Grassley was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on administrative oversight at the time.&nbsp;



Today, he’s President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the third in line for succession of the Presidency behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House.



Grassley sought to crystallize an existing drive from the Clinton administration to ensure the government could decrypt any and all encrypted communications, indefinitely, under the guise of protecting society from criminals and other baddies who might want to hide their wrongdoing from authorities.



At the time, the administration was pushing for a government-backed hardware encryption system known as the <a href="https://www.wired.com/1994/06/nsa-clipper/">Clipper Chip</a>, which used a classified encryption algorithm known as Skipjack.&nbsp;



Such an implementation would require two US government agencies to keep copies of all encryption keys related to Skipjack in escrow. This was meant to be a national standard for secure voice and data communications, but the public itself was not to be mandated to use Skipjack.



Grassley’s bill took it one step further by criminalizing the use of computers to facilitate racketeering, particularly through the lens of encryption. The most offensive provision was for a “universal decoding device” for any encryption method that would need to be shared with the Justice Department — meaning the only legal forms of encryption were those that could be easily decrypted by the US government.



The proposed law would’ve also made it a crime to distribute encryption software that didn’t have a backdoor over any network accessible to foreign nationals, which of course, included the internet.&nbsp;



US authorities were mulling whether to prosecute legendary cypherpunk <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zimmermann-cypherpunk-bitcoin">Phil Zimmermann</a> over his creation and dissemination of the source code to Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first-ever encryption tools available to the public.&nbsp;



PGP’s source code had been uploaded online and printed in book form to sidestep US export restrictions that were central to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cypherpunk-movement-history-wired-1993">Crypto Wars</a> of the ‘90s. After years of probes, no charges were ever brought against Zimmermann.



Grassley’s bill never made it off the ground, thanks in no small part to the barrage of denouncements from tech professionals, scholars and activist groups — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among others.



Obviously, Bitcoin could never exist if the US government had a secret backdoor to everyone’s private keys. It’s not unimaginable that at some point in the past decade and a half of discourse, officials might have hoped that a backdoor would be possible.



The conversation around encryption has clearly evolved since 1995. The same can be said of Bitcoin over the past five years.&nbsp;



But in a world where Bitcoin is on par with gold or oil for strategic and economic importance to the most powerful governments on the planet, would those governments be inclined to stay hands off?&nbsp;



Perhaps Bitcoin is impervious to that level of influence. 



But odds are that it won’t go without saying — as was the case with Grassley’s bill.



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Why the fight for Bitcoin to exist might not be over yet

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Bitcoin is full of catchphrases.



“BTC is a store of value” just means that you can buy it, and if the price remains steady, you wouldn’t have lost any money.



That Bitcoin protects against “currency devaluation” is only a brainy way of saying that it might go up, while the foreign exchange rate for whatever fiat currency you use in everyday life could go down.



My favorite of all is that bitcoin is a &#8220;hedge against global instability.”



So how does that play out in real life?



Around this time in 2016, the UK was reeling: the people had just voted to leave the European Union. Brexit was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-36620375">happening</a>.



The British pound had been trending down against the US dollar since mid-2014, but this was different. On Friday, June 24 — the day after referendum day — GBP fell more than 8% to a 31-year low.&nbsp;



It was the pound&#8217;s largest one-day fall in history, per <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/23/british-pound-given-boost-by-projected-remain-win-in-eu-referendum">the Guardian</a>, which was extended by another 3% on the following Monday.



Meanwhile, bitcoin’s price against the dollar was on the up, rising 70% between the last week of May and the week before the Brexit vote, from about $440 to nearly $760.



BTC briefly corrected by 20% in the days leading up to the referendum. But once it was done, bitcoin continued to grind higher as the pound sunk deeper over the following months.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcJxrsABoMtQJEQqUIPn2EuiUMyapyNiKE1S0HkXzCotFm71_NuLEmtLvRS28zdMQGTlaOIFYRILmztfjLPYeBKgiw8Rdi6Uj5pjcCPtkVkGb7fI9UmGqnYfXxBVI5teo6JU2kIiA?key=ymCxxPMjKOBJWuNIbHpTuw" alt=""/></figure>



It’s always difficult to directly prove that bitcoin going up has anything to do with macro events like Brexit.&nbsp;



Looking back and zooming out, BTC/USD was clearly in an uptrend that started almost 18 months before the Brexit vote.&nbsp;



That uptrend, while not a straight line, went on for another year and a half, culminating in the December 2017 all-time high close to $20,000. The devil’s advocate might say it was a coincidental correlation.



But there are hints that the connection ran deeper, regardless of how short-lived. Fintech payments app TransferWise (now Wise) <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/23/bitcoin-surges-past-650-as-brexit-result-sends-uk-pound-tumbling-to-30-year-low/">warned</a> users of volatility for the pound around the Brexit vote, and even cancelled all GBP transfers that weren’t fully processed by 8pm UK time on referendum day.



Those moves are in and of themselves perfect advertisements for Bitcoin.&nbsp;



Before Brexit, the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus had shown there was an appetite to hedge against instability by escaping into BTC. The price of bitcoin rose almost 350% in two months as local banks <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/bitcoin-hits-record-exchange-values-with-cyprus-banking-crisis/">teetered</a> on collapse.



It happened again two years later, in 2015, when bitcoin jumped 10% to break out of middling price action as the broader Greek debt crisis spiralled. But it was <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/29/greek-crisis-stokes-bitcoin-prices-higher.html">never</a> really clear just how much of that could be attributed to Greeks dumping euros for bitcoins.



Ten years later, the situation feels different. The US dollar reached three-year lows this morning as bitcoin continues to trend more-or-less sideways, as it’s done the past month and a half, sans some brief volatility around the renewed Israel-Iran conflict.



One read would be that bitcoin’s price is holding strong because US dollars are currently worth less. Another would be that Bitcoin’s hedge-case is clearly intact. Both are good for Bitcoin.



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Bitcoin’s best slogan: It’s a ‘hedge against instability’

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Bitcoin is everything, everywhere, all at once.



Yes, Bitcoin has reshaped the financial order. It has also altered the way money and value move in developing economies, either directly or indirectly. But Bitcoin is also pragmatic in its simplicity, compared to other blockchain networks and the projects built on top of them. 



Those hardboiled sensibilities are at odds with what could be Bitcoin’s endgame — a global, trustless settlement layer and eventually, hyperbitcoinization. 



At Permissionless IV in Brooklyn, Pete Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian, sat down with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/peter-todd-legend-bitcoin-brain-wallet/">Peter Todd</a> to hear how he squares these dynamics and more.



Todd is a veteran Bitcoin developer, having worked on Bitcoin Core on and off since as early as 2011, still the Satoshi era.&nbsp;



He’s also played key roles in RGB (a tokenization protocol built on top of Bitcoin), Zcash and enterprise blockchain platform R3. Todd founded <a href="https://opentimestamps.org/">OpenTimestamps</a>, a leading example of a non-financial use case for Bitcoin.&nbsp;



So who better to contextualize innovation within the Bitcoin and blockchain space?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Polymarket success</h2>



Todd pointed to Polymarket as one example of a successful crypto app outside of Bitcoin. “Well, it&#8217;s a successful application because they managed to use things about blockchain tech to navigate the regulatory arbitrage necessary to stay in business. And I don&#8217;t think you can deny that Polymarket as a business is successful.”&nbsp;



“Now, you know, did they go build on Bitcoin? No, but I&#8217;m still not likely to say it&#8217;s not a success. I mean, the amount of money bet on Trump is an example.”



Todd highlighted that this does come with downsides. Polymarket is not as actually as decentralized and self-custodial it could be. But in assessing those characteristics, it’s important to look at it from Polymarket’s perspective.



“They&#8217;re trying to run a business that does something specific. Because they&#8217;re running a betting market, a lot of that is very inherently centralized, because in reality all the bets go through a relatively small number of people in a relatively centralized way.



“Now they may disagree with me, but, you know, that&#8217;s kind of the truth of how this really works. And their client-side software, the way you get it, is relatively insecure. It&#8217;d be very cool to build all this in Bitcoin, but it requires so much more engineering effort to do well.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://t.co/Me91Ms0smZ">https://t.co/Me91Ms0smZ</a>&mdash; Blockworks (@Blockworks_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1937493411025588366?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rizzo and Todd’s chat starts at around 1:15:00 into this video.</figcaption></figure>



In terms of Bitcoin’s primary utility — peer-to-peer payments — Todd sees Lightning as the default mode to achieve that, rather than direct onchain transactions. “Matter of fact, I just had a talk two days ago by someone from Costa Rica talking about their main point-of-sale payment solution — basically, they’re just dropping onchain Bitcoin support because it’s pointless. Everyone uses Lightning, end of story. There’s just no reason to do anything else.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Global Tether</h2>



But stablecoins on other more centralized networks have grown to be more ubiquitous in many places, particularly tether.



“I think Bitcoiners often underestimate how popular USDT is…A couple of years back I was in Macedonia, the capital, just visiting, and sure enough, every single currency exchange booth, they accept USDT or similar things,” Todd said. “And I actually wound up sitting down at one of them for a good half hour, because the guy behind the booth was new at his job and just interested in how Lightning worked and we struck up a conversation. And sure enough, every five minutes he had another person coming in, either selling cash or buying cash. And most of them were just using Binance.”



Rizzo asked: “But that’s competitive against Bitcoin, right? These are transactions that could otherwise have been in bitcoin.”



“Well, but the point is: All these people, they don&#8217;t care about Bitcoin — they care about moving value around. And what they care about is that they&#8217;re moving something that’s fairly stable,” Todd replied.



“Another more recent example is Kiev. Someone I know was buying a new laptop, and it just happened [that] the easiest way for them to buy a laptop was to give USDT to the laptop store — which is actually a very standard thing these days in that part of the world. And I&#8217;m sure the laptop store turned around and sent the USDT straight off to one of their suppliers the next day. You know, could they have done that with Bitcoin? Yeah, sure. But right now USDT is a more stable currency with regard to laptop prices.”



You can play back the rest of the chat, which covers the development arc of Bitcoin layer-2s, DeFi and more, via the <a href="https://x.com/Blockworks_/status/1937493411025588366">Permissionless IV day one livestream</a> on X.



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Peter Todd tells Permissionless why people don’t care about Bitcoin

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Who’s selling bitcoin?



It’s a question that’s popping up routinely. The wonder is somewhat justified: Strategy alone is buying up billions in bitcoin every other week — so there must be an equivalent force dumping coins at the same time.



For more context, public stocks like Strategy, Metaplanet, Semler, Coinbase and two dozen others have scooped up about 251,700 BTC since the start of the year, a sum currently valued at $26.51 billion. 



That’s more than 3x the number of fresh coins that were mined in the same period. And that’s not counting the 20,800 BTC ($2.2 billion) collected by private companies like Tether and countries such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bhutan-btc-mining-operations">Bhutan</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/president-nayib-bukele-bitcoin-maxi">El Salvador</a>.



ETFs from around the world have bought an additional 149,100 BTC ($15.7 billion) on behalf of shareholders — predominantly BlackRock’s IBIT, which is holding 130,850 ($13.8 billion) more coins than it was on Jan. 1.



All told, going by the latest available disclosures, more than 400,800 BTC has been stashed away by governments, private and public companies and ETFs this year — equal to 2% of the circulating supply.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdSvl7nW-M8nOa1YV3DfaU0xAxY9CVeZjqEd9725lGkPL3iQiKCvxAQG70iSJ4zokUjaIJGRCYlOwxhbo2xjBAoCkBCS02Dqr_WwShJwxRJMSDPsP8YPpIU7SXzVQF3D9osYIWpjA?key=H_vVFm07tgzAgZ5vSoF73w" alt="" style="width:619px;height:auto"/></figure>



But that’s only counting companies that have increased their holdings.&nbsp;



As for who is actively selling, on the surface level, there doesn’t appear to be one major cohort that’s the culprit.



Still, miners have been slowly offloading their stock. CryptoQuant <a href="https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/miner-flows/miner-reserve">data</a> shows miner balances overall are down about 2,000 BTC since the start of the year while retaining an eye-watering 1.8 million BTC ($191.4 billion, over 9% of the circulating supply). The US dollar value of collective miner holdings is, however, at an all-time high.



Otherwise, more than half of all ETFs have been selling the pico top. Fidelity’s FBTC has shed over 6,500 BTC this year while Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust has sold more than 20,000 BTC, with its mini-trust making up only a fraction of the difference. Many other funds have released thousands of coins in the first six months of this year.



It may not be a perfect counterbalance to Strategy, the Saylor clones, and the ETFs that are buying, but it’s clearly adding up.



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If companies, countries and ETFs are buying bitcoin — who’s selling?

Fundamental insights and behind the scenes perspectives from the industry’s key operators and innovators

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The Breakdown

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Fifteen years ago exactly, Satoshi released Bitcoin v0.3. Well, it was really yesterday, but it was in the evening, so it counts.



The version was Satoshi’s sixth going by <a href="https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/emails/bitcoin-list/">this archive</a> of the official bitcoin mailing list. It was bundled with a Mac OS X version built by <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/3-piping-hot-pizza-day-facts-for-bitcoin-connoisseurs">Laszlo Hanycez</a> and extra features including control of the nodes via the command line and a “hashmeter” performance display for mining, which was still being done with CPUs across the board.



The update notably came with 20% faster hashing. But whatever competitive edge was quickly dulled by the arrival of the first GPU miners on the network less than two weeks later.&nbsp;



GPUs were capable of much more than 20% — but that’s for another time.



In any case, you could tell Satoshi was excited. Their announcement <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238.0">post</a> had two exclamation points, and there was even an extra one in the title: “Bitcoin 0.3 released!” It also featured arguably the most appealing tagline in Bitcoin history:



“Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies!”



Still, there wasn’t much initial fanfare. The Bitcointalk thread only received four replies, the same amount seen on the Bitcoin.org <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110522084201/http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=1.1800">forum</a> (that version of the thread gathered about 500 views in total).&nbsp;



We can infer from the post below that Satoshi intended v0.3 to be Bitcoin’s first official version, under v1.0. Early adopter <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/happy-bitcoin-mmo-day-tale-in-the-desert">Andrew “teppy” Tepper</a> had crowdsourced feedback on his proposed <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234">submission</a> to Slashdot in the days leading up to the version’s release, but Satoshi walked back Bitcoin’s graduation from beta status in a reply:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdJfcVL13YUn_nnIb7GdKDpaJI7FxMWC2WklBqSN-aP0lwQm1q8jOck8sqgQnAQwB81uxEKn7fvXcGUTBhHjAd8Wv88O12Ha8fHtIByqd7qg1q9KUbQ52J4PsKi79eZqzexKUsH?key=qEqpfBJAQzbDA0OyTOO60w" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Satoshi wasn’t a big fan of teppy’s first draft</figcaption></figure>



It worked. Slashdot featured teppy’s submission on its front page on July 11, 2010 — widely regarded as the first instance of a major media platform publicizing Bitcoin (it’s even in Slashdot’s Wiki entry). Bitcoins were trading for about $0.05 at the time.



&#8220;How&#8217;s this for a disruptive technology? <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a> is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network.”&nbsp;



“Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government.&#8221;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdcY7HE43F1qGY7_nX7Ga_UCZrBke2l0Ns5-WEWCNi73wK-nJnThxAlt__noPF1zrafqGXzSNDxo0HlMbKiaLQDmZaKnyoQloknLIqnp-1m9Q-aUVkB29YV4dnw236qGJ8Km-9cPA?key=qEqpfBJAQzbDA0OyTOO60w" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This was Bitcoin’s equivalent of Nirvana releasing Nevermind in 1991, feat. Smells Like Teen Spirit. It would quickly make the band a household name.</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoin’s price began its first major bull run about three months following the Slashdot post, in October 2010, and would reach dollar parity by February 2011. 



Slashdot also celebrated that milestone with another front-page <a href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/189246/online-only-currency-bitcoin-reaches-dollar-parity">feature</a>, which when played back-to-back showed just how important Bitcoin’s first few fans really were.



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Bitcoin’s journey to the mainstream started 15 years ago

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You might know that the US dollar has been pummeled this year.&nbsp;



The DXY index — which prices the greenback against a basket of currencies — is down 12% since mid-January, practically erasing all of its gains over the past five years.



Granted, DXY has its <a href="https://www.euromoney.com/article/27bjsstsqxhkmh0p48qj1/foreign-exchange/dxy-index-is-flawed-measure-of-us-dollar-strength-research-shows/">problems</a>. It’s heavily skewed toward the dollar’s exchange rate in Europe, with more than half of its weight assigned to the euro, as well as 20% or so spread unevenly across the British pound, Swedish krona and Swiss franc.&nbsp;



The Japanese yen is the only featured currency from Asia, with about 14%. The renminbi is excluded altogether, and the US dollar is down only about 2.5% against the yuan since mid-January.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcGbG1DfoYf_-pSf-gayNuis61QqeDEraXqIHEPcjQMSw-pdHqIVG5DrL057f7u5pQxcwrVOba5y2B7tWiDSPJ9hI-bHYP5n5voeP-ytKEGW9E1U-iwvrdDS1MKQVWC29pPWPIb4Q?key=387mJDC11feaOriI2otZEg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The orange line is BTC/USD, the purple line is BTC/USD adjusted for DXY’s volatility starting one year ago, and the blue line is DXY.</figcaption></figure>



As you can see, this quickly gets messy. Bitcoin is up almost 12% in the past six months, while the DXY is down by almost the same percentage. Does that mean bitcoin is about even?



Well, whether it’s over five years, three or one, BTC/USD is vastly outperforming major assets and benchmarks.&nbsp;



Bitcoin (priced in US dollars) is beating crude oil, gold, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq 100.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcUc88vgBJcOm8KhEnTEX_HaLvKce5SKk0Ieu-nT9-ZkRBFo0qRqcDm2GUlJH4CGNGwRgBvKnZzXh4q1td5dI5fz-KYQpP0dpXpuXOBCkcG9JctNDcISDoPD3uFUrJBPjgcQUjapA?key=387mJDC11feaOriI2otZEg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Not shown: bitcoin trailing Nvidia stock over the three-year and five-year horizons.</figcaption></figure>



Let’s instead see the price of bitcoin, denominated in each of those majors. It’s similar to how we’d measure the price of ETH in BTC terms with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sol-speedrunning-eth-btc-ratio">ETH/BTC ratio</a>.



Bitcoin’s ratio with the S&amp;P 500, Nasdaq 100 and crude oil topped out in late May, and we’re still just shy of all three.



That’s in line with bitcoin’s current standing against the US dollar (in raw dollar terms, not DXY), only 2% short of a new price record.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe1WoFSy6MY1kuWe5jKDU-7ELXNCtHvUQQTyoHO_hwvVHgjSLyHoazo7UiFNKDE8T_QgaeXqEzrMUEMmadQGtEsv8nnN1MDd1B55SYG4KF1uP6iwV89zhzAqSAyUR0pbscnIGeXJQ?key=387mJDC11feaOriI2otZEg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Luckily, there are many different kinds of all-time highs.</figcaption></figure>



The gold/bitcoin ratio, however, is almost 20% below its all-time high from a week before Christmas 2024.



But what would this newsletter be without something to celebrate?



When bitcoin hit $110,500 earlier this morning, on Coinbase, that was actually an all-time high against DXY — 1139.58 — around 2% higher than the previous peak in late May.&nbsp;



A minor victory, considering the DXY’s flaws. But a win is a win.



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Bitcoin already sets all-time high against the US dollar index

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Satoshi stood on the shoulders of giants when they built Bitcoin.



Bitcoin could’ve only arrived in 2009 after the World Wide Web came along in 1989, which was only so accessible due to the advent of the microprocessor in the early 1970s.&nbsp;



All three innovations are echoes of the telegraph.



I’m here to tell you that Sony’s Walkman may have been just as important.



The release of the first Sony Walkman wasn’t exactly on this day. It was yesterday, in 1979, that Sony began selling the <a href="https://www.walkman-archive.com/gadgets/walkman_sony_01_tps-l2_eng_v3.htm">TPS-L2</a> in Japan — a blue, pocket-sized portable cassette player that became a worldwide cultural phenomenon within just two years.



Legend has it that Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka had tasked Sony’s tape-recorder department with designing a device for listening to the opera on a long-haul flight.



A skunkworks team of crack engineers got to work. They pulled apart the Sony <a href="https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/design/gallery/TCM-100B/">TCM-100B</a>, or the Pressman, a portable cassette recorder that could be used with one hand, released only a year earlier.&nbsp;



The Pressman was already popular with journalists and businesspeople for taking voice memos and could playback recordings from an in-built speaker at 1.5x speed.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehImt5pmONL6NF2gde9qosPYaD7LpfOy-bxUCRY92rCSQA0d0PKlnvTGsOdKi4u9N78M3J5FTa1zJZa-ZbXHrvAui0iqxwKpVGLlm3fm0TdL5Pa7Ci3AJtF-4VRZa6meza_vND?key=vFmYwKltMbW3vTYoNHfUyw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bank of America’s innovation chart pinpoints where certain inventions are located on the history of human population. The chart puts Bitcoin on par with the polio vaccine and DVDs, but the Walkman isn&#8217;t on it.</figcaption></figure>



Within four months and led by engineer Kozo Ohsone, Sony’s team replaced the Pressman’s speaker and record circuits with a stereo amp, producing a prototype in the same chassis. A portable, stereo cassette player, paired with a lightweight set of headphones.&nbsp;



Despite internal protests from non-believers at Sony, it took only eight weeks for the first batch of 30,000 Walkmans to sell out in Japan, and by the end of 1980, two million units had been shipped worldwide.



While there had been earlier iterations of portable music players, Sony’s Walkman quickly became a must-have across all walks of life. The New Yorker, in September 1981, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/09/21/the-walkman">described</a> seeing “seeing diplomats in Washington, stewardesses in Chicago, a cable-car conductor in San Francisco, and a toddler in Seattle, all of whom were wearing Walkman recorders or facsimiles thereof.”&nbsp;



Common Cog <a href="https://commoncog.com/c/cases/sony-walkman/?from_concept=technological-windows">writes</a> about the Walkman: “To put things into context: the possibility of having a personal soundscape that one could walk around with did not exist in the 1970s. Building a device capable of this was not a hugely complicated technical challenge…but there was simply no proven market for it.”



Sound familiar? Before the Walkman, it was simply not feasible to be your own DJ, at least outside of the home and away from a stereo. The Walkman changed social behavior, with people isolating themselves with headphones in public spaces, on trains, buses and planes, for the first time ever.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe6QAa7hiV71KqSpBT3HJTfZ-GJbayRvwP5b97pId4wZLJ2RWoCo-aAmiG15DBbjHav5q23efUgHZtLckFKRVourkDwwkwCvG5yJaAZVKSO2P-EgVsVOvRLy-wxFPV3lDCkw0SH?key=vFmYwKltMbW3vTYoNHfUyw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The real questions, via Reddit.</figcaption></figure>



It’s an older <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoins-brexit-hedge-against-instability">slogan</a>, but Bitcoin similarly made it possible to be your own bank, at least outside of hoarding cash under mattresses or in walls. Bitcoin has changed how people behave economically, having provided an alternative to a financial system that has never worked for everyone.&nbsp;



Both the Walkman and Bitcoin faced pushback from society, with critics <a href="https://books.google.nl/books/about/Personal_Stereo.html?id=3dUsDwAAQBAJ&amp;redir_esc=y">labeling</a> the personal stereo as self-indulgent and anti-social, an accessory for the “me” generation. Bitcoin has otherwise only barely shaken its cultural connotations with criminals and fraudsters, however unwarranted.



Through a certain lens, the Walkman may have primed the culture for the arrival of Bitcoin, 30 years later, having warmed us up to the idea that we can be our own anything, no matter where we are.



But here’s how Bitcoin beat the Walkman: It took nine whole years for the Oxford English dictionary to include “Walkman” as a mainstream English term. Bitcoin made it in half that time, alongside “twerk” and “emoji.”



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