Announcements

• Respect people’s privacy
• Interaction and asking questions are encouraged
• Chatham House Rules
• Pushed discussion on Special Purpose Digital Currency Licensure Bill to next month
• Apply for a Bitcoin job
• Join our telegram group

Geopolitics

• Tom Emmer introduced a bill prohibiting the Fed from issuing a central bank digital currency directly to individuals
• Congress announces hearing on Bitcoin energy use
  • Prompted by a letter sent to the House in October by a cohort of national and international climate organizations that argued against the energy usage of Bitcoin and its Proof of Work (PoW) system
  • Rebuttal from the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI)
• Arkansas Launches $10k in Bitcoin relocation bonus
• Rio De Janeiro to Allocate 1% of Treasury Reserves to Bitcoin (maybe crypto?)
  • Plans to apply discounts to tax payments made with bitcoin
• $87 billion Italian bank to add Bitcoin trading
• Strike Launches in Argentina
  • Uses USDT because BTC isn’t legal tender

Funding/Bounties

• Jack Dorsey launches Bitcoin legal defense fund
• HRF Gifts 4.25 BTC to Bitcoin projects
  • A full bitcoin will be awarded to Jarol Rodriguez, a Bitcoin Core developer working on a new graphical user interface (GUI) for Bitcoin’s main software client
  • Four recipients will each receive 50 million satoshis: Togolese human rights advocate Farida Nabourema, Afghan entrepreneur and Bitcoin educator Roya Mahboob, Sparrow Wallet, and Bitcoin educator and author Anita Posch.
  • Five other grantees will each receive 25 million satoshis, including Boltz Exchange, Summer of Bitcoin, Exonumia, Blockchain Commons, and Meron Estefanos
• 1 BTC grant from Wasabi Wallet for a privacy-focused Lightning wallet
• ~4 BTC crowd-sourced bug bounty for a show-stopping flaw in OP_CTV

Tech

• Bitcoin OpTech 2021 year in review
  • Great overview of technical updates last year
• NFC-based signing devices
  • Coldcard Mk4
  • SatsCard and TapSigner
• New RoninDojo node presale
• Moxie’s thoughts on Web3
• OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (BIP-119)
  • What does OP_CTV mean for me?
  • Jeremy Rubin hosting BIP-119 deployment and review workshops
• Learn more about OP_CTV: utxos.org
• MuSig2: Multisig with Schnorr
• Experimental Musig2 implementation in Python

Mining

• New Bitcoin hashrate all-time high
  • ~207 exahash/second
• Bitcoin miners produced more USD revenue in 2021 than they did in 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined
  • Full Hashrate Index report
• Impact of Kazakhstan internet outage on Bitcoin mining
  • Incumbent government leaders shut down internet in attempt to quell protest/dissent
  • Many estimate that the country is home to ~18% of the hashrate dedicated to the Bitcoin network
• Block commits to building open Bitcoin mining system (based on October announcement)
• Two different solo miners discover blocks within a couple days of one another

Economics/Finance

• Headline CPI for December came in at just over 7%, a 40-year high
• Bitcoin is half of Bill Miller’s portfolio
• Fidelity adds Bitcoin exposure to traditional ETFs
• NASDAQ-listed blockchain firm BTCS will pay dividend in Bitcoin (a first for US markets)
• San Diego State University is now openly accepting bitcoin donations
  • Only 1% of the donations will be employed each quarter to explore Bitcoin opportunities for SDSU

Other

• Bitcoin’s 13th Anniversary and Infamous Tweets
  • Genesis Block - Jan 3rd
  • Running bitcoin - Jan 11th

Submitted Meme of the Week

• From @Gregzaj1