Rabbit Hole Recap: Bitcoin Week of 2021.07.19
7/23/2021 · 165 min · transcript via mlx
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Key topics
— Regulatory pressure escalating: The EU is implementing travel rules targeting Bitcoin exchanges and custodial wallets, with General Bytes proposing a BIP to embed user identification data in QR codes—an example of governments attempting to reshape Bitcoin through incremental regulatory nudges.
— Central bank digital currencies advancing: Multiple central bankers and the New York Times are openly advocating for CBDCs with negative interest rates, surveillance, and forced consumption timelines; these "surveillance coins" will eliminate financial privacy and enable granular control over transactions.
— Brink grants funding Bitcoin developers: Larry Ruane and Sebastian Falbasoner received grants to focus on Bitcoin Core code review—a critical need as the protocol faces mounting external attacks on privacy and sovereignty.
— Lightning Network maturation accelerating: Blockstream's Greenlight and Spectre Desktop API updates improve accessibility and third-party integration; Lightning enables far more than payments—communication, routing, and network use cases remain underexplored.
— Blind multisig privacy innovation: Michael Flaxman's blind extended public key derivation allows collaborative custody providers to remain blinded to client holdings, eliminating privacy honeypots that governments could subpoena.
— Saquon Barkley commits $10M+ in Bitcoin: The NFL running back announced all marketing dollars will stack sats via Strike, signaling mainstream athlete adoption of Bitcoin as a store of value.
Market & price signals
— Bitcoin is trading at $32,330 (3,093 sats per dollar). Market cap is at $606.6 billion. The next difficulty adjustment is estimated for July 31st (nine days out) with a projected +2.1% upward adjustment. Blocks average 9 minutes 48 seconds following the prior −4.8% downward adjustment. Mempool is light; single sat-per-byte transactions confirm easily. Samourai Whirlpool capacity stands at 3,535 BTC ($114M unspent), continuing to rise as privacy demand remains strong in low-fee environments.
Actionable insights
— Assume privacy will be criminalized: Financial surveillance is accelerating at every layer—travel rules, CBDCs, and exchange subpoenas. Educate yourself on collaborative custody, blind multisig, and Lightning Privacy now before regulatory walls close in completely.
— Test blind multisig for inheritance planning: If you use Unchained, Casa, or similar providers, experiment with blind derivation paths to prevent custodians from knowing your balance; store the derivation path separately from seeds and redeem scripts.
— Lightning is far more than payments: Move beyond viewing Lightning as a transaction layer; explore its network and communication capabilities via projects like Impervious and Sphinx to understand emerging use cases.
Episode sponsorships
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