This Week in Bitcoin (February 3rd, 2023)

It's Bitcoin NFT week.

What is up you beautiful people!

This week the biggest topic of discussion has been Bitcoin NFTs. It's been a divisive topic. So I got some resources related to that for you. In addition, some goodies from Lightning and Stacks in the mix. Let's go!

But first. Shoutout to The Stacks Foundation for sponsoring this podcast. If you want to get started building on Stacks and push the mission forward of a user-owned internet with Bitcoin as the base layer. Check the links below. Learn Clarity: https://start.stacks.org/  Learn more about Stacks: https://stacks.co/  Apply for a grant: https://stacks.org/grants

Now lets jump in and get updated on the latest. Starting with Bitcoin mainchain.Catch the podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or Fountain,

Bitcoin

True Bitcoin NFT's are the hot topic.

  • An Arizona Senator has put forward a bill to make Bitcoin Legal Tender. Theres now at least a handful of states making the consideration. Fortune favors the bold.

  • El Salvador pays off its debt.

  • Bitcoin settles its 800 millionth transaction. Let that sink in.

  • Bitcoin hashrate hits another ATH. Also crazy.

  • Biggest news of the week is Ordinals though, by far. A crafty Bitcoin developer has found a way to utilize the taproot upgrade from late 2021 and inscribe data into a single satoshi. This new "feature" lets you store data directly on the blockchain up to the max size of a taproot block, which is just under 4mb. Check out Ordinals.com and this great podcast episode with the creator, Casey Rodarmor.

I'm curious. What's your take on Ordinals and Bitcoin NFTs directly on the blockchain? Reply to this email with your thoughts.

Stacks

It's eerily quiet over on Stacks. At least in public view, but I got some scoops.

  • Sigle celebrated it's 4th anniversary. The decentralized blogging application has been building since before mainnet went live. Back when Stacks was Blockstack. Congrats to the team for continuing to build!

  • Trust Machines has hired 6 new blockchain engineers to work on the core infrastructure of Stacks and Bitcoin.

  • Curious about sBTC? Igor Sylvester is working closely on the project from within Trust machines and recently sat down for an interview to discuss it. Watch here.

A lot of work is going on in this bear market behind the scenes. I'm putting together multiple videos on sBTC and a State of the Union-style video with updates from entities around the ecosystem. Be on the lookout!

Lightning

Adoption, Adoption, Adoption.

  • Strike makes two big announcements related to Lighting. First, They announced global payments to the Philippines. Big unlock for a country with over 100 million people. Second, They announced a partnership with Clover. Clover is one of the biggest providers of point-of-sale terminals to small businesses. If you've seen a snazzy white card reader system at your local restaurant or small business, It's likely a Clover machine.

  • Over 11,000 podcasts now support Lightning payments through the podcasting 2.0 movement! With 457,115 Podcasting 2.0 payments in January alone.

  • Stacker News hit a new milestone with over 1,000 users tipping sats on the platform.

  • Damus, The Twitter clone built entirely on Nostr was accepted into the Apple App Store.

Very good signs for the Lightning network.

RSK

The peg is back!

  • That's right! After a couple of months of being down, the peg-out functionality from the core RSK blockchain is back and working. You can check out the final incident report here.

Blockstream

Blockstream raises a big round to expand mining operations.

  • Blockstream has raised another $125 million to expand its Bitcoin mining operations. The money will go to support their institutional hosting services which are seeing high demand. Some of the money will also go into researching and building its own Bitcoin mining hardware. Announcement

That's it for this week's edition.Don't forget to hug a Bitcoiner.-Jake

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