El Salvador Moves Bitcoin Reserves to Cold Storage Vault

On March 14, 2024, El Salvador’s president-elect, Nayib Bukele, unveiled a historic bold maneuver that echoed across the Bitcoin world: El Salvador confirmed the transfer of a substantial portion of its Bitcoin holdings into cold storage, securely kept within a vault in its national borders. This strategic decision marks a pivotal juncture in El Salvador’s Bitcoin journey since the introduction of the Bitcoin Law, which has drawn both admiration and skepticism worldwide. Amidst a cacophony of critiques ranging from allegations of human rights violations to inadequate modern infrastructure, El Salvador…

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Mercury Layer’s Lightning Latch Swap Protocol

Commerceblock has released a new atomic swap protocol for use with statechains on their Mercury Layer protocol. The HSM server has introduced functionality to support atomically swapping two statechains, as well as enforcing an atomic exchange of a statechain for a Lightning payment. This is the first example of concretely defined and built interactions between statechains and the Lightning Network. Synergy between both protocols has been postulated since the concept of a statechain was originally proposed by Ruben Somsen, specifically as a way to solve the limitation of having to…

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$150,000: Standard Chartered Bank Raises Bitcoin Price Forecast for 2024

Global banking giant Standard Chartered has upped its bitcoin price prediction for the end of 2024 to $150,000, a significant increase from its previous forecast of $100,000. In a new report, Standard Chartered analysts cited strong inflows into recently launched spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. as a primary driver of their bullish outlook. The bank believes these “sticky” institutional flows will continue propelling Bitcoin’s price. Standard Chartered has emerged as one of the more Bitcoin-friendly legacy banks, with an active research team covering Bitcoin. Previously, the bank’s analysts had…

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Craig Wright’s Long-Running Satoshi Claim, Analyzed and Debunked

The below is an excerpt from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine Pro, Bitcoin Magazine’s premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now. After a lengthy legal dispute, London’s High Court of Justice has formally determined that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. One of the great mysteries of the Bitcoin community since its inception has been quite related to the inception itself: who is Satoshi…

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Four Case Studies: Should You Hold Bitcoin In A Roth IRA?

Whether you’re young, mid-career, or playing the back nine, Roth IRAs can be an important tool for your financial goals. Four case studies below will illustrate how by combining Roth IRAs with bitcoin, you can save for retirement, optimize for your personal tax situation during retirement, and leave your bitcoin for the next generation. These are hypothetical case studies based on our experiences, not real people. They’re intended to help you better understand how bitcoin Roth IRAs can fit into many types of retirement plans. Hence, they’re for educational purposes—you…

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Multisig, Shamir’s secret sharing, & MPC compared

For anyone with substantial bitcoin holdings, a custody structure that includes a single point of failure should be seen as unacceptable. If a wallet has a single component that—when lost or stolen—can lead to a permanent loss of funds, then it’s simply too dangerous to consider. Nobody wants to keep significant wealth teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Individual bitcoin holders have numerous tools available that can help reduce the risk of loss or theft. In a previous article, we covered some of these tools, highlighting modifications commonly applied to…

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How Miners Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the JPEG

This article is featured in Bitcoin Magazine’s “The Inscription Issue”. Click here to get your Annual Bitcoin Magazine Subscription. Click here to download a PDF of this article. Ordinals have been a polarizing phenomenon for most every subcommunity in Bitcoin — except for miners. The meteoric rise of the new Bitcoin-native NFT standard dominated discourse for months as Ordinals flooded blockspace and buoyed transaction fees to multiyear highs. According to critics, these transactions are, at worst, an attack on Bitcoin that tainted the sanctity of scarce blockspace; at best, they…

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MicroStrategy Increases Convertible Loan to $525 Million to Buy More Bitcoin

The Michael Saylor-led software company MicroStrategy has upsized its planned convertible senior notes offering from $500 million to $525 million. The company intends to use the proceeds to acquire more Bitcoin, as per their recent press release, following a strategy it has pursued since 2020. MicroStrategy announced it had priced the 0.875% convertible senior notes due 2031 in a private offering to qualified institutional buyers. The notes will be sold at 100% of the principal amount with an annual interest rate of 0.875%, payable semiannually.  After March 2028, the company…

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Your financial plan may be riskier without bitcoin

This article originally appeared in the Sound Advisory blog. Sound Advisory provide financial advisory services and are specialize in educating and guiding clients to thrive financially in a bitcoin-powered world. Click here to learn more. “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.” – Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal only lived to age…

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Stabilizing Forces: How Bitcoin ETF Inflows Counter Price Volatility

Eleven approved Bitcoin ETFs have painted the pioneering cryptocurrency with a fresh coat of legitimacy. By receiving an official blessing from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an institutional investing barrier has been lifted. With this barrier gone, financial advisors, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies and retail investors can now receive Bitcoin exposure without hassling with direct custodianship. More importantly, a taint has been scrubbed off from Bitcoin, previously likened to “tulip mania”, “rat poison”, or “index of money laundering”. Following the unprecedented domino of crypto bankruptcies throughout 2022,…

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