Last week’s most memorable moments

Greetings, Bitcoin History subscriber!

We’re back with another collection of cool Bitcoin stuff from all corners of the internet. 

First, a quick reminder that Bitcoin History is evolving. It’s now the Supply Shock newsletter, part of the brand-new brand hosted by Pete Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian, and powered by Blockworks.

Join Rizzo twice a week as he explores the latest in Bitcoin with a historical twist, featuring interviews with the most important developers and investors in the space today. Read more about the Supply Shock vision.

Now, onto the roundup!

P.S. Be sure to whitelist supplyshock@blockworks.com to save us from your spam folder moving forward.

A presidential first

It’s hard to beat this: the first sitting US president to ever address a bitcoin and crypto conference.

“A very big hello to everyone at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, it’s an honor to speak with you about how the United States is going to dominate crypto and the next generation of financial technologies,” Trump told the DAS crowd in New York last Thursday, in a pre-recorded message.

Trump re-upped his pledge to make the US an “undisputed Bitcoin superpower,” and end the Biden administration’s “regulatory war” on Bitcoin. That includes the “lawless Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” which has seen US-based bitcoin companies struggle to maintain banking partners.

“It was a form of lawfare through government weaponization. Frankly, it was a disgrace,” Trump said.

Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor then appeared on stage shortly after the Trump address to present his 21 truths of Bitcoin, followed by a sit-down interview with Rizzo for Supply Shock. 

Name a more iconic trio.

Working as intended

It was five years ago on Saturday that Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said the quiet part out loud.

The world was gripped by the first act of the coronavirus pandemic at the time: closures of schools, cinemas, gyms, restaurants, shelter-in-place orders and worldwide market crashes.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley had asked Kashkari what he’d say to someone who’s worried about the collapse of the US banking system — and may be headed to an ATM to withdraw $3,000.

Kashkari reassured them that they don’t need to withdraw the cash. The ATM and the banks were safe.

“And there's an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure that there's enough cash in the banking system,” Kashkari said.

What better advertisement for Bitcoin than that. The price of bitcoin has appreciated by 1,300% since the 60 Minutes spot, while the US dollar has lost 24% of its value due to inflation. 

Who could’ve possibly predicted this.

Moby Degen

This past week, a spiritual sequel to 2014’s story of the BearWhale played out on Hyperliquid with a tokenized version of bitcoin. Only the bulls weren’t so lucky this time around.

One trader — who ZachXBT later linked to a string of allegedly dodgy behavior — had opened a short position with 40x leverage reportedly worth as much as $449 million. 

The whale would profit if bitcoin stayed under $83,923 and be liquidated if it exceeded $85,940, which would’ve led to forced buying of bitcoin to cover the short, and potentially additional short squeezes to boot.

So, some traders tried to band together to liquidate the whale. Only the whale took evasive maneuvers: They added margin, momentarily controlled order books with huge buy and sell walls and scaled back their shorts slowly. 

They even attempted to FUD stablecoin Tether.

In the end, the whale was calculated to have closed their short with a $9 million profit. “We lost the war but it's been a long time since we had this much fun on the internet,” tweeted trader CBB. 

“Gg to the shorter for the win 🫡”

Bitcoin eclipse

Bitcoin, at least at its lowest level, is pure math and logic.

Luckily, we humans don’t share that affliction — so we can enjoy silly numerological events like the 888,888th Bitcoin block, which was mined in the very early hours of Saturday morning.

There’s nothing particularly special about the block. AntPool mined it, as it does for about 20% of all blocks right now. It was 2.6 MB large, somewhat above the 1.65 MB average in the past year, and contained both standard BTC transactions and inscriptions.

Still, some would consider 888,888 a stupidly lucky number. Eight by itself is already a symbol of prosperity and wealth in many cultures, so just imagine six in a row.

By that reasoning, Bitcoin won’t see a luckier number for another 152 years, in 2177, when block #8,888,888 is expected to be mined. 

Bitcoin had risen 4% since block 888,888 at the time of writing this email. Maybe it's better not to question it.

Proof of proof-of-work

The ETH/BTC ratio has collapsed by nearly two-thirds since Ethereum moved away from proof-of-work in September 2022. 

Coincidence? Probably not. But in any case, the raw hashing power of proof-of-work is still firmly on display in this Bitfarms video.

Check it out for a first-person view of flying through what appears to be its 70 MW mining facility in Paraguay (not Panama, as stated in the tweet below), which runs entirely on hydroelectric power.

Bitfarms recently sold a separate 200 MW mining site in Paraguay to HIVE for $85 million. 

The Toronto firm is currently focusing on building up operations in North America as part of a “transition from an international Bitcoin miner to a North American energy and compute infrastructure company.”

Regardless, if you’re someone who’s recently picked up a solo mining rig — perhaps in light of the recent solo-mined blocks — then behold, this is your competition.

Godspeed!

— David Canellis