Good For Bitcoin

Why does Stacks landing on Fireblocks actually matter? 2,400+ institutions custody with @FireblocksHQ — and can now tap Bitcoin DeFi on @Stacks without moving funds out. It just opened the playing field for a whole new wave of capital.

One man is now worth more than all of Bitcoin. After @SpaceX's IPO surge, @elonmusk's net worth — roughly $1.4 trillion — blew past Bitcoin's entire market cap. We couldn't believe it either.

Illinois's new 0.2% tax hits every crypto move — even wallet to wallet. The perverse part? It punishes self-custody. Taxing a transfer you make no money on just pushes people to leave their coins on an exchange. Exactly backwards.

What is STRC, really? Think of it like an LP token built to hold ~$100. You hand @strategy money, they hand you STRC — and when it trades over par, they skim the top to buy more Bitcoin. Your cut for the risk: ~11.5% a year.

Is STRC a Ponzi? The next FTX? No — no fraud, no stolen funds; you know exactly what you're buying. But @strategy's pitch of '32 years of dividend coverage'? That only holds if Bitcoin never falls. Force them to sell and the math breaks.

Here's what @marshallmixing and @katemparkman talk about this week: • Is Stretch stretched to its limit? STRC — @strategy's 'Stretch' preferred — hit an all-time low of $82.53 Thursday, ~11% below the $100 it's built to hold. We unpack the deleveraging cascade, why it's not the Ponzi or 'next FTX' the timeline claims, and @strive CEO Matt Cole (@ColeMacro) on how leverage feeds on itself. Brandon's take: it's like an LP token meant to hover near $100 at ~11.5% monthly — and he almost bought the dip. • Nobody sold this week. @strategy added 1,587 BTC — its second-smallest buy of 2026 — to reach 846,842 (~4% of all Bitcoin), and @strive picked up 73 more for 19,105. Quiet, but no public seller in sight after last week's drama. • @Square now lets merchants accept Bitcoin over Lightning with one tap — auto-converting to dollars unless they opt to keep BTC. Lower friction, but spending Bitcoin is still a taxable event. • Illinois became the first state to tax crypto at the transaction level: Gov. Pritzker's Digital Asset Tax Act puts a 0.2% levy on transfers, custody, even wallet-to-wallet moves, starting January 2027. Critics call it the most punitive digital asset tax in the country; a legal challenge looks likely. • @Stacks went live on @FireblocksHQ, opening Bitcoin DeFi to 2,400+ institutions through custody they already trust — sBTC, dual stacking for BTC yield, and lending via @HermeticaFi and more — removing a major institutional deal-breaker. • Quick hits: BlackRock launched BITA, a covered-call 'Bitcoin Premium Income' ETF targeting 15–25% yield while keeping most of BTC's upside — beating Goldman to market. And @elonmusk's net worth (~$1.4T after @SpaceX's surge) now tops Bitcoin's entire market cap. • Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

Strategy's 'Stretch' (STRC) just hit an all-time low of $82.53 — 11% below par. Is it stretched to its limit? We dig into the deleveraging, the not-a-Ponzi case, Illinois's brutal new crypto tax, and Elon now worth more than all of Bitcoin ↓ youtube.com/watch?v=qRAgHH…

Is the bottom in? More than half of every Bitcoin in circulation is now sitting at an unrealized loss. That signal has lined up with every major bear-market bottom in history. Make of that what you will.

Would you give an AI agent the keys to your exchange account? The new @coinbase Agents tool lets a bot trade and move funds on your behalf, 24/7. One prompt injection and it sells your stack — with no undo. Hard pass for us.

What happens to your Bitcoin when an L2 just... shuts down? @botanix is winding down its entire network. Bridged BTC peaked near 450 in late 2025 — now it's 47. Holders get ~30 days to pull that 47 out. Miss the window and it's not yours anymore.

So did Saylor sell, or not? Saylor's defense: he only told YOU never to sell — @strategy can sell anytime. Then @saylor tweets he's 'never sold a single sat,' days after selling 32 BTC. The goalposts keep moving.

Here's what @marshallmixing and @katemparkman talk about this week: • Saylor watch: a week after @saylor's Strategy quietly sold 32 BTC (~0.004% of its stack), Saylor tweeted he's 'never sold a single sat.' We react to his clip and the goalpost-moving — then Strategy bought 1,550 BTC, pushing holdings to 845,256. STRC monthly dividends start July 15. • Strive fired back, buying exactly 32 BTC after Strategy sold 32 — now at 19,032 BTC. It's using sale proceeds to pay down debt and buy back shares, and regained Nasdaq compliance after its reverse split. Orange BTC added 41 (now 3,803). • SpaceX looks like a Tesla-style buy-and-hold, so don't expect weekly buys. Brandon snagged 10 pre-allocated SpaceX IPO shares through Fidelity. • Botanix is shutting down its entire network. Bridged BTC peaked near 450 in Sept 2025 and sits under 50 today — holders have ~30 days to unilaterally exit the remaining 47 BTC. A reminder why unilateral exit matters; ~4 years in, it couldn't ride the cycle. • Coinbase for Agents lets your AI agent trade, pay, and run workflows on your Coinbase account via MCP or CLI (x402 next). Good for round-the-clock, data-informed trades — but prompt-injection risk makes us wary of handing over the keys. • Quick hits: SBF filed for a presidential pardon on his 25-year FTX fraud sentence (we doubt it lands); @tether briefly flipped Ethereum for the #2 market-cap spot. • Bullish close: more than half of all circulating BTC is now held at an unrealized loss — a signal that's marked every major bear-market bottom. • Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

'Never sold a single sat,' says @saylor — a week after @strategy quietly sold 32 BTC. We unpack the goalpost-moving, the 1,550 BTC buy, @botanix shutting down, @coinbase for Agents, SBF's pardon bid, and a bottom signal flashing ↓ youtube.com/watch?v=jaj4AX…

A Zcash bug could have minted unlimited counterfeit coins, undetectably. How was it caught? Researcher @DefuseSec pointed Claude Opus 4.8 at the code and it found the flaw ~25% of the time. ZEC fell 30% and @zooko says a network upgrade can prove the supply is intact.

Did @saylor crash Bitcoin? Strategy sold 32 BTC and the timeline melted down. But that's 0.004% of their stack, and they'd bought nearly 25,000 BTC just two weeks earlier. The blame-Saylor story falls apart 🤷

This week, @marshallmixing flies solo to cover: • Kate's out sick, so it's a short, solo, rapid-fire show this week. • Market check: Bitcoin slid below $60K, down 21%+ on the week, with Fear & Greed in extreme fear. • Treasury watch (busier than usual): buys from Strive (+2,500 to ~19,000 BTC), Orange BTC, Capital B, Smarter Web and DDC; sells from ProCap (-52) and Canada's Bitcoin Treasury Corp (-3.64). • The elephant in the room: @saylor's Strategy sold 32 BTC (~$2.5M) — just 0.004% of its stack — yet got blamed for the selloff, even though it bought ~25,000 BTC two weeks ago. The frustrating part: Saylor stayed silent. With an avg cost near $75K, MSTR and STRC both dipped. • Lava (@lava_xyz) launched a Bitcoin-back Visa: up to 5% back in BTC at partners, 3% in the US, 1% abroad, no annual or FX fees. It's a secured hybrid funded by your Lava balance — top up via bank transfer, stablecoins, or a Bitcoin-backed loan. • The big one: researcher Taylor Hornby (@DefuseSec) found a critical counterfeiting bug in Zcash's Orchard pool that could've undetectably minted unlimited ZEC — and its privacy means no one can prove if it was exploited. Arthur Hayes dumped his stack. The kicker: Hornby found it using Claude Opus 4.8, which surfaced it ~25% of the time. ZEC fell 30%, with @zooko pointing to a network upgrade to restore trust. • Quick hits: the US Treasury froze Iranian leaders' accounts and seized $1B+ in stablecoins (easy to seize — unlike Bitcoin); the first Coinbase x Fannie Mae crypto-backed mortgage funded; and a crypto-tax hearing next week with seven House bills on stablecoins, mining, double-taxation, and a possible de minimis exemption. • Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

A security researcher used Claude Opus 4.8 to find a bug that could mint unlimited counterfeit Zcash — undetectably. ZEC dropped 30%. Brandon flies solo through that, a brutal Bitcoin selloff, and Saylor's quiet sale ↓ youtube.com/watch?v=3zZq2c…

Is @saylor about to sell all his BTC? x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Why would someone burn $8 million in Bitcoin? Last Monday, five decade-old, Mt. Gox-era wallets were emptied into an unspendable burn address — 107 BTC, gone on purpose. No note, no explanation. Tax loss? A vow of poverty? An AI gone rogue? Brandon runs the theories.