Startups (1)

• Allbirds, a struggling shoe company, announced a pivot to AI computing infrastructure, rebranding as Newbird AI, after its stock tumbled 99% from its 2021 IPO. The company aims to provide GPU-as-a-service and AI-native cloud solutions.

Big Tech (1)

• Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed concern to Elon Musk about X Money, citing potential risks to consumers, national security, and financial stability. Warren highlighted X's operational track record and X Money's offer of up to 6% APY, surpassing the federal funds rate.

Adoption (1)

• Pakistan's State Bank lifted a seven-year ban on banking access for crypto firms, effective immediately, allowing licensed Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to open accounts. This follows the passage of the Virtual Asset Act of 2026, establishing the PVARA regulatory body.

Protocol (5)

• Jameson Lopp and co-authors proposed BIP 361, a three-phase plan to freeze quantum-vulnerable Bitcoin on the network, including Satoshi's estimated 1.7 million BTC stash. This aims to prevent theft if quantum computers advance sufficiently, building on BIP 360's quantum-resistant addresses.
• David Bennett questions the philosophical premise of BIP 361, arguing it makes unproven assumptions about quantum computing and falsely claims developers are doing nothing to address quantum resistance. He notes the proposal's existence disproves the latter point.
• A new class of crypto treasury companies and DeFi protocols are forming around MicroStrategy's STRC stock, seeking Bitcoin exposure and its 11.5% monthly cash dividend. Firms like Saturn Credit and Apics are accumulating STRC, with nearly $200 million in tokenized STRC existing on Ethereum.
• The Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial (WLFI) proposed unlocking 62.3 billion WLFI governance tokens, previously locked indefinitely and without transferability. This move follows a controversy where WLFI used 5 billion of its tokens as collateral to borrow $75 million USD.
• David Bennett maintains a personal stance of not owning Monero or Zcash, despite acknowledging them as the only other crypto assets he would consider besides Bitcoin. He declines to elaborate on his technical reasons.

AI & Tech (1)

• Jacky Wrong developed 'Jim Opus,' a Claude Opus-style fine-tune built on Google's open-source Gemma 4, designed for local AI reasoning on consumer hardware. The larger variant, Jim Opus 4.26B, uses a mixture of experts architecture, activating only 4 billion parameters from a total of 26 billion for efficient local performance.

Startups (2)

• Steve announces Presidio Bitcoin will host a hub for hack-nation.ai, a global hackathon in April, where Spiral is sponsoring a challenge focused on AI agents earning money via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
• The hackathon specifically targets non-Bitcoiners, presenting a challenge for Spiral to attract participants to Bitcoin-related projects and educate a broader tech audience.

Nation-State (2)

• Reports suggest Iran is demanding Bitcoin, Chinese yuan, or stablecoins as a toll for ships passing through its national waters in the Strait of Hormuz, though the truth of these claims remains unclear.
• Bitcoin's perceived use case in Iran highlights its role in circumventing sanctions and its significant liquidity and network effects, enabling transactions for nation-states under economic duress.

Big Tech (1)

• Max notes that Anthropic's revenue growth is substantial, potentially outpacing Google and the U.S. federal government, raising questions about the future power dynamics between AI companies and nation-states.

Protocol (6)

• The sovereign individual thesis, advocating for individual power through technology like cryptography, faces a challenge if advanced AI centralizes capabilities, especially around violence and cyberattacks.
• Presidio Bitcoin released its Quantum Readiness Report, an open-source, living document on GitHub designed to provide a balanced, comprehensive, and investor-friendly overview of quantum computing threats to Bitcoin.
• The report outlines various scenarios for quantum threat timelines, ranging from two years to never, and proposes a plan for Bitcoin's resilience, including the potential to move 80-20% of vulnerable coins in a day.
• Lalu prototyped a quantum-safe transaction method for Bitcoin that does not require consensus changes, utilizing a hashing algorithm to protect coins, though it incurs a cost of approximately $150 per UTXO.
• This prototype results in non-standard transactions that are not automatically relayed by the Bitcoin network, requiring centralized services or direct miner agreements for inclusion.
• Daniel Burr proposed a method using Taproot's script scheme to signal quantum proofing, potentially allowing users to opt-in for future quantum-resistant upgrades to their Taproot-based coin spending paths.

AI & Tech (3)

• DK highlights that Anthropic recently 'nerfed' its public models, causing user dissatisfaction and questioning whether its lead over competitors like Google and OpenAI is sustainable or due to unsustainable margins.
• Max and DK discuss the emerging risk for companies that become dependent on a single AI model provider, facing potential feature reductions or price hikes without control, emphasizing the need for multi-model strategies.
• Google's recent paper suggesting quantum computing can accelerate AI is seen as a significant development, potentially increasing investment and compressing the timeline for viable quantum computers.

War (1)

• Mallers cites analyst Rory to frame the real metric of the conflict: whether ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz. A real reopening would relieve supply-parched markets, while a fake announcement delays adjustment to ongoing oil shortages.

Protocol (6)

• Mallers argues Bitcoin is uniquely both a monetary asset and a monetary network, enabling trustless finality over the internet. Gold is only an asset, requiring trusted custodians for global settlement, which is its fatal flaw.
• Bitcoin's current market cap is $1.49 trillion, making it smaller than many large tech firms. Mallers notes it is not yet large enough to absorb major sovereign flows, like China's trade surplus, without extreme price appreciation.
• He argues monetary authorities face a suicide choice: cut rates into an inflationary oil shock or hike rates into a deflationary AI and credit crisis. His conclusion is the dollar must be devalued, benefiting neutral assets like Bitcoin and gold.
• His personal strategy is to stay humble, stack sats via DCA, and be a net producer while living cautiously. He believes the total addressable market for money is $400-$500 trillion, leaving Bitcoin with massive potential upside from its $1.5 trillion base.
• Mallers claims high taxes are theft that sidelined society's greatest producers from building public infrastructure. He points to El Salvador's zero-tax approach for firms like Tether, which then voluntarily invest in national infrastructure like airports, as a superior model.
• He endorses Nayib Bukele's view that taxes uphold the illusion of funding a government actually financed by money printing. This debasement means citizens are stolen from twice: via direct taxation and via inflation.

Big Tech (1)

• A Bloomberg headline claimed Powell and Yellen met bank CEOs due to an Anthropic AI model, but Mallers interprets this as a cover for discussing a brewing private credit crisis. He points to Fed queries on bank exposure to the $1.8 trillion private credit industry and funds facing large withdrawal requests.

AI & Tech (1)

• Mallers cites Arthur Hayes's 'deflation in what you want, inflation in what you need' framework. AI is causing deflation in office real estate and consumer goods while layoffs raise delinquencies, but the energy shock creates inflation in essential commodities like oil.