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 special interview live from Permissionless IV, Rizzo sits down with Bitcoin OG &amp; Core developer Jeff Garzik to reflect on Bitcoin’s early days, the culture shift from experimentation to ossification, and his belief that Bitcoin’s social and monetary network would have emerged regardless of specific developers. Garzik critiques Lightning as a failed detour, champions Layer 2s like Hemi for bringing programmability to Bitcoin, and stresses that Ethereum remains vital due to its developer traction and audit maturity. 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) Introduction
(01:47) Building the Bitcoin Market
(08:16) Ledger Ad
(09:42) Bitcoin Then vs Today
(11:55) Bitcoin Ossification
(13:39) Was Bitcoin Inevitable?
(18:38) Who Controls Bitcoin?
(21:37) Bitcoin Forks &amp; Lightning Network
(25:01) Crypto is the Beta Test for Bitcoin
(25:34) Ledger Ad
(26:19) Crypto is the Beta Test for Bitcoin
(31:08) What Did Ethereum Achieve?
(36:46) EVMs, BitVM &amp; L2s
(41:24) Unleashing Bitcoin Upgrades
(49:25) Identifying the Problems
(57:46) Why Work on Bitcoin Today?
—
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

50 Bitcoin for $0.50 | Wild Tales of Early Bitcoin Trading

In this special bonus episode, we dive into the takeaways from Permissionless IV, unpacking the biggest industry narratives and themes shaping crypto today. We discuss the future of stablecoins, give a candid macro outlook, and explore how Big Tech is positioning itself as the next crypto overlord. Finally, we reflect on some predictions we got wrong – and what we learned from them. Enjoy!
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Supply Shock Newsletter: <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock</a> 
Supply Shock Survey: <a href="https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/forms/979475d9-fb4b-4c13-99af-5037dd5718c6">https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/forms/979475d9-fb4b-4c13-99af-5037dd5718c6</a> 
—
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:57) Permissionless IV Takeaways
(07:00) Biggest Industry Narratives
(12:00) Future of Stablecoins
(17:44) Macro Outlook
(20:47) Big Tech Overlords
(28:38) Predictions We Got Wrong
—
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

Industry Narratives, Future of Stablecoins & Big Tech Is Coming | Permissionless IV Recap (edited)

In this special episode of Supply Shock live from Permissionless IV, Pete Rizzo hosts a panel of top builders pushing the frontier of Bitcoin development: Jeff Garzik (Hemi), Muneeb Ali (Stacks), Eli Ben-Sasson (StarkWare), and Hong Kim (Core). They debate where to build in the Bitcoin ecosystem, the evolving use cases for Bitcoin L2s, and how to make BTC productive through lending, yield, and interoperability. The panel also explores the path to mass adoption, the limits of Bitcoin's base layer, and whether mainstream apps like Polymarket can thrive on Bitcoin. Enjoy!
—
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Supply Shock Telegram: https://t.me/+SpmLg6P_QcgxNDcx 
Supply Shock Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock 
Supply Shock Survey: https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/forms/979475d9-fb4b-4c13-99af-5037dd5718c6 
—
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
(02:53) Challenges and Opportunities in Bitcoin
(06:26) Ledn Ad
(07:07) Challenges and Opportunities in Bitcoin
(08:26) Use Cases and Innovations
(14:20) Mainstream Adoption and Success Metrics
(18:30) Ledn Ad
(19:17) Mainstream Adoption and Success Metrics
(24:52) Technical Barriers and Solutions
(36:03) Corporate Treasury and Yield
(40:15) 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

Where To Build In The Bitcoin Network

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>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Bitcoin

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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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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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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If companies, countries and ETFs are buying bitcoin — who’s selling?

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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Just one coin has ever come close to flipping bitcoin, around this time, eight years ago.



In June 2017, bitcoin was in the final stages of warming up for a historic push to nearly $20,000 by Christmas.



Altcoin prices were <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20170612/">wacky</a>. Bitcoin would be flat one week, while coins like BitShares would jump massively, by 250%. Others, like Stratis and DigiByte, were down up to 50% in the same period.



Ethereum, meanwhile, was poised for an explosion in token projects. One <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-ico-boom-history-crypto">study</a> calculated that $7 billion flowed into ICOs throughout 2017, practically all of it going to Ethereum-based projects. That was supposedly 4x more than the equity investments into crypto companies across the same period.



The price of ETH rose as investors piled into coin offerings through Ethereum’s native token. And on June 12, the market cap of ETH came within 17% of surpassing bitcoin’s: $36.8 billion to $44.3 billion.



Had bitcoin stayed flat, ETH would’ve only needed to jump from $400 to $470 to slide into the No. 1 spot. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcFOWSH_PJ_7fr_LdiZAkcB84ThHr2Oh5U-3OOjH_fxa5BDF9rgkV7eOaH87xa0tubyKuWNvQtyNM3O8MNEOk6mgex8qlZE4ao09nu_jFmjQMon9Osudrk2bLaYtjg3bb1xvDdvIw?key=jS_4PelAAmFF3xIXRPdgkw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This banger from the New York Time was published days earlier.</figcaption></figure>



But it would never be: BTC and ETH both fell by 60% over the next month, preceding a 10x pump through the end of the bull market for BTC — but only a 9x for ETH. Ether never made the ground back.



Still, ether came much closer than the other two primary hopefuls ever did. Litecoin made it to 10% of bitcoin’s market cap in late November 2013, $11.8 million to $1.18 billion, while XRP reached more than half in May 2017, about a month before ether’s attempt.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdvu6L6WDTkbxkMimY7B74ybyCvYx8P6XSv0DBETjUOVpaZNl0a-e7ESmLoQ18cV7oZMXkM3FKX7MKFLwGS9T657fR0Gq19Zz8uuCYz6hGV6Dqkfs4kXqL7rsG_41k9LlIpUOVa?key=jS_4PelAAmFF3xIXRPdgkw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">By late June 2017, it was becoming clear the Flippening was no longer realistic.</figcaption></figure>



These days, ETH sits at around 13% of bitcoin’s market value, with bitcoin <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTC.D/?timeframe=60M">dominance</a> currently at almost two-thirds — its highest point since January 2021.&nbsp;



If there’s a status quo in crypto, it’s bitcoin.



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Ethereum was close to flipping Bitcoin in 2017 — then never again

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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Everybody knows the symbol for the almighty dollar. But no one knows exactly where it came from.&nbsp;



Our best guess for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/next-global-money-crypto-reserve-currency">origin</a> of “$” is that it’s a relic of the Spanish colonial peso, or the Spanish dollar. These large silver coins were widely used across the Americas in the 18th century, long before the US created its own dollar currency.



Early Americans had used a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/dollar-sign">shorthanded “Ps”</a> to represent the Spanish peso in text. Those two letters would merge, placing the “P” on top of the “s,” eventually morphing into something that resembles the modern-day dollar symbol.



Luckily, we know exactly where Bitcoin’s Unicode symbol came from — and it became officially usable around the world eight years ago today.



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">On This Day</h1>



Unicode 10.0.0 was <a href="https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/">released</a> on June 20, 2017, ferrying in 8,518 new characters to the universal typeset and bringing its total to 136,690.



Bitcoin’s symbol was finally among them. Unicode listed ₿ as an “important symbol addition” alongside 56 new emoji characters and a set of religious Typicon marks.



“It is described as ‘a capital letter B with two vertical lines going through’’ it, though the lines are only visible at the top and bottom,” the <a href="https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15229-bitcoin-sign.pdf">proposal</a> reads.



This milestone had been a long time in the making. Infamous hardware hacker Ken Shirriff had submitted his formal proposal almost two years prior in October 2015.&nbsp;



It was Shirriff’s second such submission after a proposal for a group mark symbol earlier that year, which was also included in Unicode 10.0.&nbsp;



Shirriff is Bitcoin Legend material in his own right, having mined bitcoin with a <a href="https://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html">pencil and paper</a>, as well as on a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-guy-rigged-an-apollo-guidance-computer-to-mine-bitcoin/">52-year-old machine</a> that helped guide the Apollo spaceship to the moon.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXejxg8fh9Y28y0jTSp5V0_uEpubr26VEbBh-in1nRwUSRba7douZrywKiWbT5-7ontdZSHRDwQOUVA0034ffOfO9SRUQgurFSG_MqRSSpX8Uehv9K0pGqbQd0q46V3rrjBnfJEmnw?key=MWyn2Ub5f1NHq_Bo_aL4Kg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">₿ was already found in Wikipedia and Wired magazine years before the 2015 proposal, and was community used in bitcoin wallet and payment apps.</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoiners had organized to push for an official symbol in June 2014, when the Bitcoin Foundation formed a volunteer Standards Committee to decide how it should look. Informal discussions had started in 2013, but the currency symbol had been a <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=369.0">recurring</a> topic since as <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=41.0">early</a> as February 2010.



Shirriff’s proposal had support of the Bitcoin Foundation and its Standards Committee, as well as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/peter-todd-legend-bitcoin-brain-wallet/">Peter Todd</a>, Eric Martindale, Justin Drake, Theo Chino, Michael Marquart (under theymos) and a string of early Bitcoin startups.&nbsp;



Unicode accepted the pitch after only one month, in November 2015, leaving the Bitcoin community to wait for half a halving epoch to really celebrate. It was the first new currency symbol in 24 years, since the Korean won (₩) was included in Unicode 1.1, released in June 1993.



<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">The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> sign is accepted by Unicode. My second addition to Unicode, probably more useful than the group mark. <a href="https://t.co/ZOoBGGMmX3">https://t.co/ZOoBGGMmX3</a>&mdash; Ken Shirriff (@kenshirriff) <a href="https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/661396468796817408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Before all this, the community was somewhat split over how they should represent bitcoin. The Thai baht (฿) was a common suggestion, but didn’t go down well with everybody. “You cannot and should not just steal [a] symbol from [an] existing official currency of [an] independent country,” one Bitcointalk user wrote. Ƀ was another.&nbsp;



However, ₿ is the closest to resembling the symbol that Satoshi had designed as the icon for their original Bitcoin client, making it the obvious choice once the proposal was finalized.&nbsp;



₿ represents a whole bitcoin, with the symbol for an individual satoshi still up for debate (as is the term “satoshi” every now and then.)



While Unicode may recognize bitcoin, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) doesn’t.&nbsp;



The organization is yet to include BTC or XBT in its ISO 4217 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217">list</a> of active currency codes. Bitcoin’s official code cannot start with a “B” because it clashes with Bhutan’s country code, BT.&nbsp;



A Bitcoin Foundation working group had been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141008092159/http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-foundation-standardise-bitcoin-symbol-code-next-year/">tasked</a> with applying for ISO approval in October 2014, but apparently never succeeded.&nbsp;



No better time to revive those efforts than now.



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Happy ₿-Day: Bitcoin’s official Unicode symbol turns 8

“The scenario of bitcoin going to zero does not exist anymore. BTC is playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking.”



You’ve probably come across that exact post on X, shared by a scambot posing as a reply-guy — bait that leads to some fraudster posing as an analyst.



Still, it’s true. The scenario of bitcoin going to zero really does not exist anymore.&nbsp;



Obviously, I don’t need to convince you of that. But it wasn’t always this way. Bitcoin actually did go to zero on this day, 14 years ago, localized entirely on Mt. Gox, of course.



Stacked against the swathes of scandals that plagued Mt. Gox, this particular incident seems small, with only 2,000 BTC reported lost (under $30,000 at the time).



The significance was in the spectacle. Practically all bitcoin trading <a href="https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/all?c=e&amp;t=b">volume</a> occurred on Mt. Gox before mid-2011, making it the one and only venue for bitcoin price discovery.&nbsp;



Bitcoin had peaked at more than $26 in the first two weeks of June — an all-time high that would stand for close to two years. Prices were now on their way down, but at least one YouTuber noticed they were correcting a little too quickly.



“You are watching a crash in real time. We are down to 4.8 [dollars], 4.6, 4.5, 4.4. I’ve been watching this since about 17. I’ve not seen a single uptick in this market. It’s going straight down. I would be fascinated to know what news is associated with this. I’m sure we’re going to find out. Three and a half, 3.3, 3.2&#8230; and 3.1,” BitcoinChannel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1X6qQt9ONg">commentated</a> over the Mt. Gox’s price feed.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Bitcoin Report Volume 8 - (FLASHCRASH)" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T1X6qQt9ONg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



“Well, I’m all broken up about my $99. The main thing I’m broken up about is I could have had 33 bitcoins [$560 then, $3.5 million now]. So we’re going to see how low this thing goes.”



Within three minutes, the price of bitcoin on the exchange had flatlined at $0.01, with not a single positive tick observed on the way down.&nbsp;



BitcoinChannel was right: there was some news about Mt. Gox. It had been hacked.



Two days earlier, a pseudonymous hacker under ~cRazIeStinGeR~ had offered for sale Mt. Gox’s entire database of user accounts for sale on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110619054549/http://pastebin.com/xhnNdvte">Pastebin</a>. The next day, then-new owner Mark Karpelès <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110621070512/http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18858.0">warned</a> of an increase in thefts from user accounts, but appeared to blame the victims themselves.



“So far I have 10 known cases of people whose coins were stolen (someone logged in on the account using their password, traded USD for BTC, withdrew all the BTC). Considering we have now over 60000 accounts (2 months ago we had 10 times less), this seems to be a problem coming mainly from users.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="973" height="194" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104152" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=973 973w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-19-at-14.33.24.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 973px) 100vw, 973px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The pastebin that sent bitcoin to zero</figcaption></figure>



As it turned out, ~cRazIeStinGeR~ may have told the truth. Preceding the crash, an unidentified user on the long-gone InsidePro password recovery forums, “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110622172449/http://forum.insidepro.com/search.php?search_author=georgeclooney">georgeclooney</a>,” asked for help in cracking hashed passwords from the stolen database.



A number of the hashes were weak and were quickly brute-forced, according to a <a href="https://blog.zorinaq.com/major-attack-on-the-worlds-largest-bitcoin-exchange/">timeline</a> of events pieced together by investor Marc Bevand. “Some users discovering the leak have run password brute-forcers themselves against the hash list and easily broke hundreds of them. Contrary to previous claims from the MtGox owner, this indicates that many accounts had been compromised for at least days, if not weeks, before today&#8217;s attack.”



And considering georgeclooney knew about the hashes before the database was leaked online, Bevand concluded that they were likely the same person who sent bitcoin spiraling.



At exactly 36 seconds past 5:15pm, UTC, on June 19, 2011, that person placed a number of orders to sell hundreds of thousands of bitcoins at once. Bevand reported that it took 30 minutes for Mt. Gox to process those orders and had been totally unresponsive during that time, as is reflected in BitcoinChannel’s video.



In total, the hacker had traded more than $1.5 million BTC out of a total daily volume of $1.8 million. They then appeared to attempt to buy bitcoin back on the way up for more profits, as did other users, driving bitcoin’s price back up to a few dollars.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="979" height="574" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104151" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=979 979w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=445 445w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=374 374w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/feed-chart.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 979px) 100vw, 979px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The price of bitcoin on Mt. Gox during the crash (<a href="https://blog.bitmex.com/the-june-2011-bitcoin-flash-crash/">source: BitMEX</a>).</figcaption></figure>



One user in particular, “Kevin,” <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20207.0;all">claimed</a> to have bought 259,684 BTC for $3,000 ($0.016 on average) but was only able to withdraw 643 BTC before Karpelès took Mt. Gox offline to sort through the mess.



In the end, Mt. Gox was saved due to its $1,000 withdrawal limits for both US dollars and bitcoins (the latter of which was unknown to the public until this event). These limits contained most of the damage to the platform&#8217;s internal, offchain order books.&nbsp;



Karpelès opted to roll back the trading engine to before the compromised accounts began their coordinated dumps, a move which faced controversy at the time. It’s believed up to around 900 accounts may have been affected, and the platform would stay closed until August.



It could be that the hacker knew about the withdrawal limits, and chose to crash the price of bitcoin, perhaps as part of a plot to siphon up to 100,000 BTC, if they were priced at $0.01 apiece, thereby skirting the $1,000 cap.&nbsp;



“Or perhaps, as it is sometimes the case, the attacker&#8217;s purpose was simply to cause mayhem for fun (think a script kiddie doing random things). Not all attackers are like the well-prepared robbers in Ocean&#8217;s 11, with a precise plan of action. This is probably the simplest explanation,” Bevand wrote.



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When ‘George Clooney’ crashed bitcoin to below $0.01

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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I subscribe to the multiverse theory.



So, drifting in an endless sea of cosmic baubles beyond the borders of our universe, is a world where Ross Ulbricht has more bitcoin than any other person on Earth.



Unfortunately, the following happened in our shared reality.



It was around this time in 2014 that the US government, through the Marshals Service, was preparing its first ever bitcoin auction: almost 30,000 BTC seized from the Silk Road master wallet.



The coins would’ve technically been worth around $18 million back then, the equivalent of nearly 20% of the average daily BTC trading volume, per <a href="https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/all?c=e&amp;t=b">Bitcoinity</a> data. Currently, they’d fetch $3.3 billion.



Ross was arrested eight months earlier and had been held at MDC Brooklyn as he awaited trial, which wouldn’t start for another half a year.



On this day, 11 years ago, the US Marshals goofed: The agency <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/bitcoin-auction">accidentally reply-alled</a> to an emailed question from a prospective buyer, revealing the names and/or email addresses of all 40 bidders on the auction list.



US Marshal auctions are meant to be anonymous, so it was clearly a SNAFU.&nbsp;



CoinDesk <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140621151239/https://www.coindesk.com/list-possible-silk-road-bitcoin-bidders-allegedly-leaked-us-marshals">identified</a> 17 individuals as a result of the incident — all executives from in and outside crypto — including Barry Silbert, Fred Ehrsam and Michael Moro. A USMS spokesperson quickly apologized.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXemZjGVOrcpshaofyezXvl9tIvz-CkLTKlna2foRtQK2NgOxe-k6rEGx97M80XaAllR0mt6XOKgsQlrQXFW4vS9NEpN8vlimLXmf_LKiKapOR5UYmVEr52-NxxZlzVB2nuYrM1_2g?key=6zkWL3W4GGEb-b_k0QyAmQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A copy of the email with names and emails redacted (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/bitcoin-auction">source</a>).</figcaption></figure>



In the end, someone who wasn’t identified ended up <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/venture-capitalist-tim-draper-wins-bitcoin-auction/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0">winning</a> the whole stash of coins: legendary VC Tim Draper, who paid about $19 million. Draper said he would use the coins as liquidity to back an institutional-grade Bitcoin exchange and financial services platform, Vaurum, which was later <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2014/11/12/tim-draper-backed-bitcoin-exchange-vaurum-rebrands-as-mirror">rebranded</a> to Mirror.



Mirror never made it out of its invite-only phase. After a series of pivots, the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161006203229/https://mirror.co/#section_welcomehttps://web.archive.org/web/20161006203229/https://mirror.co/#section_welcome">platform</a> quietly went <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181119010251/https://mirror.co/">defunct</a> in late 2018.



As for the rest of Ulbricht’s coins, authorities seized 144,336  BTC personally belonging to Ross shortly after his arrest.&nbsp;



Ross initially fought to block the sale of those coins but was unsuccessful, with the government <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-says-its-seized-20-million-in-bitcoins-from-ross-ulbricht-alleged-owner-of-silk-road/">making</a> only $48 million at auction. Their current value would be in excess of $15 billion.



A combined 120,045 BTC was later seized from two individuals who had hacked Silk Road’s operational wallets on separate occasions.



In that alternate universe, where Ross still controls all of Silk Road’s bitcoin as they were in 2013, and his personal stash, his total balance would be 294,045 BTC ($30.7 billion) — about half Strategy’s current BTC treasury.



If pooled into one address, it would be the largest bitcoin balance on the entire <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html">network</a>. Of course, Ross could’ve done anything with those coins between then and now, in that other universe.



At least in this one, Ross still got his freedom.



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History

How Ross Ulbricht could’ve been the richest Bitcoiner on Earth

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Last week, we <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-faucet">covered a story</a> that might’ve made you feel impossibly late to Bitcoin.



Let’s undo that feeling.&nbsp;



I’m not here to make the case that nation states and multibillion-dollar companies buying bitcoin is not a big deal.



El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender will go down in history as one of the most significant events in finance, modern or otherwise, regardless of how it ended. Bhutan’s harnessing of its bountiful hydropower capacity to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bhutan-btc-mining-operations">mine bitcoin</a> is equally momentous.&nbsp;



So is Michael Saylor and (Micro)Strategy’s toppling of the first corporate domino, when it bought $250 million bitcoin in 2020. Square (now Block) and Tesla quickly followed, then a few firms across Asia, and then a few more in the US. Now, companies are announcing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-treasury-companies-alt-season">new treasury strategies</a> every other day.



Almost half a decade later, one portal <a href="https://bitbo.io/treasuries/">counts</a> 74 public stocks with at least some bitcoin on their balance sheets, totaling 764,070 BTC ($86.1 billion), or almost 4% of the circulating supply. (Strategy makes up over three quarters of the whole.)



And then there’s the two-and-a-half dozen ETFs and other funds with 1.39 million BTC ($148.7 billion), or over 6.6% of the coins in existence, most of it belonging to BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale.&nbsp;



Obviously, the price of bitcoin has jumped alongside each leap of adoption in the past five years: major corporations, sovereigns, asset managers and then back to corporations of all sizes, including SPACs.



Bitcoin is up almost 10x since Strategy’s first buy, 3x since Nayib Bukele announced the Bitcoin Law, and nearly 2.5x since the SEC approved ETFs for trading.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfOiN6nQrDvOI1Ii7Numjb7G17I49pICdmwOuxOTcLjY44cCdVjoEModDz82cOlu6AKyLBvYAYq7nWSAvi1ETAc7fHbXLoZF9cfmxbxG7E4YGhPVqPWxGufPchsiqdvJvZGney1Qw?key=bpLdakvHr3aDuf5I1h5bXg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">MetaPlanet has only 1.5% of Strategy&#8217;s stash, but the impact is still clear.</figcaption></figure>



At this point, and however unintuitive, the supply of bitcoin could be more decentralized than it has ever been, even if more of it is owned by centralized entities than ever before.



Wasn’t this meant to make you feel early to Bitcoin?&nbsp;



There are plenty of reasons to be confident about the price of bitcoin. I’ll leave it to others to amplify them, but if your yardstick for “earliness” is based on your entry point to BTC, then I’m afraid it’s all relative. You’re always earlier than some but later than others.



Here’s an alternative view: We’re all early to Bitcoin until the novelty wears off.



First, it was crime. The media loved crypto crime stories — because these soaked up traffic. But on a long enough timeline, all crime <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-fraud-financial-scam">will be “crypto crime</a>,” and related headlines have been passé for years already.



News of corporate bitcoin treasuries is destined to go the same way. As will word of sovereign funds, governments, <a href="https://x.com/cardano_5pc/status/1932445329074655563">altcoins</a> and pensions buying bitcoin. Maybe religious institutions will come next, or Ivy League universities. Record labels and movie studios, public and private. Elementary schools and mom and pops.



As Bitcoin eats the world, each wave of adoption will feel like a novelty, until it isn’t. Only then will I happily agree that we’re no longer early.



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You’ll know Bitcoin has won when it’s suddenly boring

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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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

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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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