The Golden Age of Bitcoin is Nigh

Welcome to BitcoinFi Weekly. We cover where people use their BTC and what is changing in the Bitcoin world.

Nobody saw it coming, not really. The same people who'd spent years declaring Bitcoin dead or dismissing it as nothing more than digital gold had missed the perfect storm brewing just beneath the surface.

It wasn't just that crypto-friendly politicians had swept into Congress, or that the old guard of regulatory antagonists had been shown the door.

No, what made 2024 different was how the pieces had quietly fallen into place: breakthrough innovations in Bitcoin programming and a new generation of builders who'd figured out how to make the world's most secure network as nimble as its competitors. The same Bitcoin that had spent fifteen years being derided as too slow, too rigid, and too resistant to change was about to prove itself more adaptable than anyone had imagined.

Let’s get into this special Election Edition.

Here’s this week’s rundown:

🇺🇸 Feature Piece: What the Election Results Mean for Bitcoin

🎙️ BitcoinFi Podcast Recap: Farmer Joe and Ordinals

📈 Bitcoin Hashrate Hits ATH

💰 Earn 30% APY with Bitcoin.com’s New tBTC Rewards Program

🛡️ Magic Eden Launches Mempool Protection

Feature Piece: What the Election Results Mean for Bitcoin

The 2024 election represents a watershed moment for Bitcoin in American politics. Finally, the industry is beginning to transform from a fringe movement to a mainstream political force. The results paint a clear picture: crypto has become a serious player in Washington.

The numbers tell the story. In the House, 257 pro-crypto candidates secured victories, creating the most crypto-friendly Congress in history. One of the election’s standout stories is in Ohio, where Bernie Moreno, backed strongly by crypto advocates, unseated Sherrod Brown, a staunch crypto opponent. This victory marks a sharp turn in Ohio’s stance on digital assets, effectively dismantling one of the Senate’s most vocal barriers to onchain development. The symbolism here goes beyond Ohio’s state lines. It's a clear rebuke to the anti-crypto sentiment among certain political figures and is one of the clearest signals yet that crypto’s support is no longer limited to niche internet communities but resonates powerfully across a broader base.

The election results deliver several clear messages to Washington.

• Voters decisively rejected the aggressive regulatory approach championed by Senator Warren and SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
• Americans are increasingly skeptical of heavy-handed government intervention in financial markets.
• The electorate appears to embrace a vision of economic freedom that aligns naturally with crypto's core principles.

Looking ahead, the industry stands poised to capitalize on this momentum. With Coinbase and a16z committing additional funding to Fairshake PAC, bringing their war chest to $78 million for the 2026 midterms, and #StandWithCrypto targeting 4 million holders, the movement shows no signs of slowing. The focus now shifts to crafting sensible legislation that can protect consumers while allowing innovation to flourish. The implications extend beyond U.S. borders. As the industry looks to expand its influence across the G20 and beyond, America's regulatory approach will likely set the tone for global adoption.

What’s next on the agenda? Policies to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, protect self-custody rights, turn America into a Bitcoin mining hub, and remove adversarial regulators. In this post-election landscape, one truth is evident: crypto is here to stay, and its proponents are more galvanized than ever.

BitcoinFi Updates

BitcoinFi Podcast Recap: Farmer Joe and Ordinals

In this week's BitcoinFi podcast, hosts Yan and Yogi sat down with Farmer Joe. The conversation opened amid the excitement of Bitcoin testing ATHs, but quickly dove into Joe's fascinating journey from Ethereum scaling solutions to becoming a key player in Bitcoin's transformation. Joe shared how a single message in an alpha group about Ordinals in early 2023 sparked his transition, leading him to dive deep into Bitcoin's emerging NFT scene, starting with inscription #126 of Punks on Bitcoin.

The discussion traced how Joe's early conviction in Bitcoin's potential led him from Ordinals to the creation of PUPS, one of the most successful Bitcoin meme tokens. What started as a community experiment with a 7.77 million supply tied to the original 777 Opium collection eventually reached nearly a billion-dollar market cap after bridging to Solana. Joe candidly shared the initial "flop" of PUPS and how an innovative airdrop strategy to 2,000 wallets helped catalyze its organic growth.

Perhaps most insightfully, the conversation explored the current state of Bitcoin's financial ecosystem. With only $425 million of Bitcoin currently active in ecosystem applications, Joe and the hosts discussed the massive growth potential ahead.  Uniquely, Joe explains how even Solana can be viewed as a "Bitcoin L2" in terms of providing faster trading for Bitcoin assets. The podcast concluded with a broader discussion of how traditional L1 platforms are now actively seeking Bitcoin integration, marking a significant shift from previous cycles. This "perfect storm" of institutional adoption through ETFs, growing retail interest, and expanding developer infrastructure suggests Bitcoin's evolution from a pure store of value to the foundation of a new financial ecosystem is well underway. As Farmer Joe noted, the next 12-18 months could see the Bitcoin ecosystem's TVL grow by orders of magnitude as these various elements align.

For more on BitcoinFi, subscribe to the full podcast here.

Bitcoin Hashrate Hits ATH

Bitcoin’s hashrate recently hit a new peak, averaging 741 EH/s, marking yet another all-time high despite low profitability in mining. The United States maintains its dominance, with public companies alone controlling 29% of global hashrate, driven by next-generation ASICs like the S21 and M60 series. These companies expanded their collective hashrate by 19% (158 EH/s to 189 EH/s) from July to September. Meanwhile, Russia and China are increasing their shares, despite China’s mining restrictions and rising energy costs in Russia. Emerging markets, especially in Africa, show potential for mining expansion, with Ethiopia making strides thanks to its hydropower capacity. However, countries like Paraguay are seeing slowed growth due to regulatory challenges, while Argentina is benefiting from new pro-business policies.

Earn 30% APY with Bitcoin.com’s New tBTC Rewards Program

Bitcoin.com has unveiled a new Bitcoin rewards program offering up to 30% APY on tBTC. Users earn rewards in tBTC by staking VERSE, Bitcoin.com's rewards token, on its decentralized exchange, Verse DEX, or via the Bitcoin.com Wallet. Unlike centralized wrapped Bitcoin solutions, tBTC uses Threshold Network's threshold cryptography, making it the most decentralized version of tokenized or wrapped BTC. This provides users with faster transactions, lower fees, and access to yield opportunities across DeFi, from lending to liquidity provision.

Magic Eden Launches Mempool Protection

Magic Eden has introduced a solution to one of Bitcoin's most pressing UX challenges: mempool sniping. This innovative "Full Mempool Protection" system fundamentally changes how Ordinals and Runes trading works on Bitcoin, addressing the frustrating issue where buyers' transactions could be hijacked through Replace-By-Fee (RBF) mechanics.

The solution leverages newly introduced upgrades to Bitcoin - Tapscript, Schnorr signatures, and PSBTs - to create a secure trading environment. Protected listings are marked with a shield icon (🛡️), and their eligibility depends on two key factors: the user's Taproot wallet creation date and when the item was listed. What makes this particularly significant is Magic Eden's market dominance - with nearly 100% of Ordinals and Runes listings, this protection system effectively becomes the new standard for secure Bitcoin asset trading. Sellers need only sign once when listing, while buyers get guaranteed transaction completion without fear of sniping.

While not a perfect solution, this development is a significant step toward making Bitcoin more user-friendly and addressing one of the main barriers to wider adoption of Bitcoin-based digital assets.

Closing Thoughts

And so, dear reader, we find ourselves at the threshold of this brave new epoch, one that stirs both terror and ecstasy in the human soul. The forces that brought us here—the hunger for autonomy, the revolt against all things confined, regulated, bound—urge us to reach yet further. The path ahead beckons with both promise and peril – the establishment of a strategic Bitcoin reserve (ah, what sweet vindication!), the sacred protection of self-custody rights (for is not a man's wallet as intimate as his soul?), the transformation of our great nation into a beacon of mining prosperity, and yes, the removal of those bureaucratic chains that have for so long strangled the spirit of innovation.

But let us not be so naive as to think this victory final, for in every triumph lies the seed of new struggle. Yet in this moment, in this glorious dawn of possibility, we can glimpse what our tormented Satoshi could only dream of: a world where money serves man, rather than man serving money. And is this not, my friends, worth all our suffering?

Thank you for tuning in to this week’s BitcoinFi Weekly. See you next week.

If there's a topic you’d like us to cover or have questions, reach out at [email protected].

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