Square's big release, Insatiable energy demand, Update from Berlin Conference

— Steve Lee presented on Spark protocol at BTC++ in Berlin, culminating months of research on this Bitcoin payments solution that uses payment trees as a fundamental building block.

— ARK and Spark are complementary protocols addressing Bitcoin scaling limitations; a promising new design combines ARK with Lightning channels at payment tree leaves to solve onboarding and payment volume scaling together.

— Max Webster visited the Santa Fe Institute to orange-pill complexity scientists on Bitcoin, focusing on the difficulty adjustment as a cybernetic feedback loop and Bitcoin as "digital ATP."

— Square launched Bitcoin acceptance on merchant terminals with zero processing fees through end of 2026, plus a Bitcoin conversion feature for merchants to accumulate Bitcoin from sales.

— Chat Control, an EU initiative, threatens end-to-end encryption in messaging apps; Germany's historical privacy stance currently blocks it, but future political shifts pose ongoing risk.

— Type 1 Summit on energy and grid infrastructure is oversubscribed and expanding in scope to address how terawatt-scale grids can meet AI and data center demand.

— Engage merchants directly—especially at farmer's markets and places you frequent regularly—by asking if they accept Bitcoin; this demand signal plants seeds for adoption and is more effective than top-down sales pitches.

— Monitor developments in ARK+Lightning hybrid designs and Second.Tech's implementation; if Spiral collaborates on these, it signals a major step toward solving Lightning's fundamental scaling limits for new user onboarding.

— Stay informed on Chat Control and similar privacy-eroding legislation in the EU and beyond; advocate for open-source, non-compliant tools like Signal and consider decentralized alternatives like Nostr to preserve end-to-end encryption.