You can also stay up to date by following us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!
In our Friday articles, we take a deep dive into the current state of Bitcoin. Every Friday we will continue to publish brief State of Bitcoin newsletters to keep subscribers up to date on news from the Bitcoin industry. For full disclosure, Brandon is a strong believer in Bitcoin and has allocated portions of his portfolios to BTC (HODL baby).
Top stories from the week:
Oslo Freedom Forum: Bitcoin is Freedom: Last week I wrote about the Freedom Forum as well, but this week more details of the meeting have come out. The meeting is organized by the Human Rights Foundation whos CSO is Alex Gladstein a very well known Bitcoiner. The Forum had a stream specifically for Financial Freedom which had 13 different talks and here’s a few of the titles: “Can Bitcoin Reach a Billion People”, “Check Your Financial Privilege”, and “Bitcoin, the Environment, and Human Rights.” This event was live streamed and had a guest list that included some big name Bitcoiners. Last week I wrote how Jack Mallers potentially orange pilled the Norwegian government, but it seems like that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Block Inc survey addresses misconceptions about Bitcoin: Block partnered with Wakefield Research to survey people about the knowledge gaps in Bitcoin and what strengthens the network. The first question was “Why should someone buy Bitcoin?” and the most common answer “people with below-average income frequently note using bitcoin as a way to send money and buy goods and services than people with above-average incomes. The other staggering stat was that 40% of people surveyed believe they have a “fair to expert knowledge” of Bitcoin, while 51% said they would not buy Bitcoin because they do not know enough about it. My favorite statistic was that 88% of people knew of Bitcoin while the next closest is 43% of people who had heard of Ethereum. These stats show that although Bitcoin is new, it is far from uncommon. Some may be interested in learning and especially if things move forward and more people jump on board.
Oman backs U.S. firm mining crypto to cut gas flaring: The country of Oman’s sovereign wealth fund has taken a stake in a U. S. firm using the flare gas from fossil-fuel producers to mine Bitcoin. The fund was apart of the $350 million equity round that Crusoe Energy Systems Inc raised but the terms have yet to be released. Another country contributing to the Bitcoin ecosystem is amazing but I think the bigger part of this story is the continued effort to use flare gas to mine Bitcoin. The more companies that find ways to use their lost and wasted energy the better and capturing gas that was otherwise wasted.
Former Head of Product for OpenSea indicted after insider trading: Former Head of Product of OpenSea, or as I like to call it OpenSeized, Nathaniel Chastain was arrested on Wednesday. Chastain was previously under some hot water after being accused of using Ethereum wallets to purchase NFTs based on some back-end confidential information of what was going to be put on OpenSea’s homepage. Every time OpenSea is in the news it seems like it is another story along these lines. NFTs and other shitcoins seem to show scammers true colors. There are some use cases for blockchains outside of Bitcoin, but I have yet to find a great reason to use a blockchain other than Bitcoin because it is meant to be inefficient, but that's a rant for another time.
Verifone and Lavu enable Bitcoin payments for their customers: Verifone and Lavu have partnered up to allow card, cardless, peer-to-peer, and mobile payment features so customers can now pay in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at restaurants. This now adds to Strike partnering with Shopify to allow merchants to accept payments over the Lightning network and now Block is partnering with Apple to work with their touch-to-pay feature (which I will dive into more next week). It seems like more and more payment rails are becoming Bitcoin friendly and I see this trend continuing.
Bitcoin decoupling shitcoins: Shitcoins have been dying. Luna died and is now attempting to be resurrected with Luna 2.0 and most recently Solona’s blockchain has paused showing that these “decentralized” shitcoins are not so decentralized. Bear markets are tough for people, but Bitcoiners see it as a buying opportunity and shitcoiners panic. Bear markets kill shitcoins and Bitcoin survives another day. The one positive of bear markets is Bitcoin continues to decouple from shitcoins.
Quick word about stacking tax-advantaged sats!
Do you want to HODL BTC in a tax-advantaged retirement account? Check out Choice by Kingdom Trust! Click this LINK to find out more!
A quick look on chain:
Current price: $29,432
Market Cap: $560.4B
Spent Output Profit Ratio: 0.9995
Current block height: 738192
Mean block interval: 10min. 25sec.
Meme of the Week
What would the BTC community do without memes? Every week on State of Bitcoin, we feature our favorite meme of the previous week. If you create or see a meme that you like and want us to consider featuring it, tag us on Twitter or instagram (both @Greencandleit)! This week we’re featuring a meme we came across on the @r0ckstardev page:
Video Version!
For our complete rip, check us out on the pod (there was two this week!):
Stay up to date on Green Candle news by following us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!
Happy Friday everyone - get after it this weekend!
Brandon
Disclosure: The authors of this writing hold positions in cryptocurrency mentioned in this article. That cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. The article was written by Brandon Keys and occasionally a guest writer; it expresses the author's own opinions. They are not receiving compensation for it. The information presented in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way should be construed as financial advice or recommendation to buy or sell any stock or cryptocurrency. None of the authors of this article are financial advisors. I encourage all readers to do further research and do your own due diligence before making any investments.