Good for Bitcoin

Out of left field: 140+ companies — Visa, Mastercard, Google, Samsung, PayPal, BlackRock, Coinbase, Stripe and more — announced Open USD, one shared stablecoin where the partners keep the reserve earnings. Then came the backlash: firms saying they never signed on, and Circle's CEO firing back. Meanwhile Strategy published a real plan for STRC (including permission to sell some Bitcoin), whales scooped up ~$16.7B, and Robinhood went full crypto. No one told the builders it's a bear market.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• The bombshell: Open Standard announced Open USD, a stablecoin with 140+ partners — Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, Google, Samsung, PayPal, BlackRock, Coinbase, Stripe and more — where partners keep the reserve earnings. Then the backlash: firms saying they never signed on, and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire firing back — 'integrity matters.' A consortium-sized shot at USDC.
• Strategy skipped the weekly buy and published its Digital Credit Capital Framework instead: USD reserve raised to $2.55B (17.4 months of STRC dividend coverage), STRC dividend up 50 bps to 12%, a $99–$100 target band, and a BTC monetization program allowing up to $1.25B of Bitcoin sales. Markets liked seeing a plan — MSTR up ~20%, STRC back near $87. Also: Saylor's Channel 4 walk-off — 'let me finish.'
• No one told the builders it's a bear market. OG whales bought an estimated ~$16.7B of Bitcoin in the last two weeks — classic late-bear accumulation. Metaplanet added 2,823 BTC to reach an even 43,000, and Galaxy Digital joined the Russell 1000.
• Robinhood's 'World Is Flat' event: launching in Canada with zero trading fees for 90 days, Robinhood Earn (lend USDG on-chain from a self-custody wallet at 7% APY), and Robinhood Chain — an AI-native L1 for financial services and real-world assets.
• Quick hits: Binance will stop serving UK clients after missing the MiCA licensing deadline; Trump disclosed $50M+ of Bitcoin held in cold storage (JD Vance under $500K); SPI Holdings is shutting its mining pool July 31 — ~2% of global hashrate — pivoting to exchange, stablecoin, and AI plays.
• Pain and hopium to close: the average IBIT investor is now down ~40% as spot ETFs logged $1.79B of weekly outflows — their second-worst week ever. But Bitcoin just printed its third straight red quarterly candle, historically a bottom marker.
• Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Bitcoin slipped under $60K and the timeline filled with obituaries — people who bought the $120K top now calling it dead. Brandon and Kate place it right where the four-year cycle predicts: deep in the trenches, with maybe nine more boring months to go. Yet nobody up top is actually capitulating — Strategy bought the dip again, STRC keeps cratering, Wall Street quietly shipped its first Bitcoin depositary receipt, and Schwab went native. A quiet week with more under the surface than the doom posts suggest.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• They say Bitcoin is dead — again. With BTC under $60K and obituaries everywhere, Brandon and Kate place it where the four-year cycle predicts: in the trenches, ~9 months from a better year. Bitcoin draws down ~80% a cycle — by that math, we may not have bottomed.
• Nobody up top is selling, though. Strategy bought another ~520 BTC (avg ~$67K) to reach 847,363 and grew its USD reserve to $1.4B to keep funding STRC dividends — even as STRC sank to ~$75 and the timeline begged Saylor to sell. Brandon's counter-bet: he bought STRC at $82. Strive added 759 BTC for 19,864 and OranjeBTC 19 for 3,822.
• Wall Street's plumbing keeps getting built. UTXO Management initiated the first Bitcoin depositary receipt to trade through a prime broker (Clear Street) and settle through the DTC — 100% BTC-backed, custodied at Anchorage Digital, convertible in-kind to real Bitcoin. An explain-like-I'm-five on how traditional finance will soon hold BTC like any other stock.
• More on-ramps: Charles Schwab rolled out native BTC trading in its app (following Fidelity), and Congress set a July 17 field hearing on the CLARITY Act — so maybe, finally, some clarity on clarity.
• David Bailey's Nakamoto finished its strange path to public markets: merging into health-care firm KindlyMD, renaming to Nakamoto, winding the clinic down, and folding in UTXO Management and Bitcoin Magazine. The hosts' recurring lesson — a treasury company still has to be a real business.
• Quick hits: Base briefly halted and needed node restarts before recovering, and Alberta's AIMCo surfaced in the MSTR-buying chatter. Could a Bitcoin-staking depositary receipt be next?
• Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Strategy's 'Stretch' — the STRC preferred stock built to trade near $100 — cratered to an all-time low of $82.53 this week, and the timeline declared it the next Ponzi. Brandon and Kate dig into whether Stretch is being stretched to its limit, plus a quiet week of buys, Illinois's punishing new crypto tax, Stacks landing on Fireblocks, BlackRock's new yield ETF, and the stat that Elon is now worth more than all of Bitcoin.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• 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's note 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 Fireblocks, opening Bitcoin DeFi to 2,400+ institutions through custody they already trust — sBTC, dual stacking for BTC yield, and lending via Hermetica 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 Elon Musk's net worth (~$1.4T after SpaceX's surge) now tops Bitcoin's entire market cap.
• Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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A week after Strategy quietly sold 32 BTC, Saylor tweeted he's 'never sold a single sat.' Brandon and Kate call out the goalpost-moving, react to a Saylor clip, then run the tape: Strategy buys 1,550 BTC, Strive needles back, Botanix shuts down its whole network, Coinbase hands AI agents your account, SBF begs for a pardon, and a classic bottom signal flashes.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• Saylor watch: a week after 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.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Kate's out sick, so Brandon flies solo. The headline: a researcher used Claude Opus 4.8 to find a counterfeiting bug in Zcash's shielded pool that could've minted unlimited coins undetectably — ZEC fell 30%. Plus a Bitcoin selloff below $60K, Strategy's quiet sale, and Lava's Bitcoin-back card.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• 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).
• 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 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 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.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Someone moved 107 Bitcoin — nearly $8 million — out of ten-year-old, Mt. Gox-era addresses and torched it in a single burst of transactions on Monday. No note, no explanation. Brandon and Kate run the theories, then work through a packed week of treasury moves, Kraken's "native Bitcoin" yield product, and Stacks finally winning over Bitcoin Magazine.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• Quick recap of Wednesday's Hermetica episode: the hBTC cap went from 50 → 75 BTC and filled in under 24 hours — again. Go watch it if you missed it.
• Treasury watch: Strive adds 1,109 BTC to reach 16,500 BTC, edging past Coinbase's holdings by 8 BTC; DDC Enterprise adds 131 BTC for 2,714 total.
• Strategy buys back $1.5B of its 2029 convertible bonds at ~92 cents on the dollar — trimming total debt from $8.2B to $6.7B, with $871M still reserved to fund STRC payments.
• 🔥 The mystery: someone emptied five reused, Mt. Gox-era addresses (originally funded with 136 BTC back in April 2014) and sent ~107 BTC — almost $8M — to a provably-unspendable burn address, all in the same minute. Theories range from tax-loss harvesting to a vow of poverty to an AI agent gone rogue.
• A New York case tries to claw back Bitcoin losses on state grounds — Brandon and Kate think it gets tossed, since Bitcoin isn't a New York-only network.
• Kraken launches "Bitcoin Vaults," marketed as Bitcoin in, Bitcoin out — but under the hood it's KBTC wrapped onto the Ink network, routed through Veda vaults and Aave/Morpho strategies managed by Santora. It's CeFi yield; just be honest about the trust assumptions.
• Stacks lands its biggest validation yet: UTXO Management — David Bailey's asset arm, now folded into Nakamoto, parent of Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference — becomes the inaugural participant in stacking on Stacks. Notable given Bitcoin Magazine once made Stacks ineligible for coverage over the STX token.
• Quick hits: Coinbase brings back direct deposit so you can get paid in Bitcoin; SoFi becomes the first US national bank to launch its own stablecoin (SoFi USD); Cash App wires stablecoins into existing balances, so your balance can send and receive USDC across Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
• Follow the show's new handle on X — @goodforbtc — and find everything at goodforbitcoin.com.

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Brandon sits down with Jakob Schillinger, founder and CEO of Hermetica, on the day they raise the hBTC cap from 50 to 75 BTC — and unpack how Michael Saylor's STRC quietly became a yield engine for Bitcoin-backed dollars.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Jakob discuss:

• Jakob's origin: from running an eyeglasses business in sub-Saharan Africa to building on Bitcoin in 2016 — and why most of the world doesn't have reliable money or property rights to it.
• USDh, plainly: a synthetic dollar backed by spot Bitcoin paired with a 1x futures short. ~10% historical yield, sourced from funding rates on Bybit, OKX, Bitget, and Binance via Copper and Sefu custody.
• The new integration: Strategy's STRC preferred equity now flows into USDh as a second yield source alongside the basis trade.
• Saylor's "financial distillation" framing: 50-vol Bitcoin → 2-vol STRC → 0-vol stablecoin — productized as USDh.
• hBTC, the Bitcoin carry trade: post BTC as collateral on Zest, borrow stables at ~3-5%, deploy into USDh at 8-10%, harvest the delta, swap back into Bitcoin. ~3% net yield in pure BTC terms, on-chain verifiable.
• Why a long-only Bitcoiner might pick hBTC over a stablecoin yield: cold storage stays cold storage; the unit of account never leaves Bitcoin.
• The property analogy: Saylor's optionality to sell some BTC isn't a thesis change — it's the same logic as selling a 10x'd house to buy more property. Strategy stays a net buyer.
• Saylor cosigned hBTC on stage at Bitcoin Vegas — unplanned. "X doing its magic," per Jakob.
• 📈 The news: Hermetica just raised the hBTC cap from 50 → 75 BTC. The last cap filled in under 24 hours. Borrow-side capacity is the only constraint on opening it wider.

Guest:

• Jakob Schillinger — Founder & CEO, Hermetica — @jakob_btc
• Hermetica — @HermeticaFi — hermetica.fi

Host:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing

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A bipartisan duo just introduced a bill to codify a 1M-BTC Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law — with a mandatory 20-year holding period and self-custody protections for everyday Americans.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• 🍕 Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day — 16 years since Laszlo's 10,000 BTC for two pizzas.
• Strategy adds 24,869 BTC and now sits on 843,738 BTC — roughly 4% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist.
• SpaceX's IPO filing reveals 18,712 BTC on the balance sheet — more than Coinbase, Strive, and even Tesla.
• Tether buys SoftBank out of Twenty One (Jack Mallers' Strike-adjacent treasury vehicle) for ~$780M.
• Nakamoto runs a 40-for-1 reverse split to dodge a Nasdaq delisting — Brandon exits both Nakamoto and 21 and goes Bitcoin-only.
• The American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA): bipartisan support, up to 200,000 BTC acquired per year over five years, budget-neutral, 20-year lockup, quarterly proof-of-reserves, and a self-custody guarantee.
• Prime Trust's bankruptcy estate sues Swan ($970M) and Strike ($150M) for clawbacks — part of 99 lawsuits aimed at the broader industry.
• Glassnode: 30.2% of all Bitcoin sits in addresses with exposed public keys — mostly from address reuse.
• Iran launches "Hormuz Safe," a Bitcoin-backed insurance product for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
• Galaxy Digital scores a NY BitLicense, and Minnesota authorizes banks and credit unions to offer Bitcoin custody.
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Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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A guy who lost access to ~5 BTC for 11 years used Claude Code to recover it — and the crypto internet lost its mind. But did Claude actually break Bitcoin? Brandon and Kate unpack what really happened.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• Saylor and Strategy float the idea of selling some Bitcoin — and Bitcoiners are mad
• Bitcoin earnings season: MARA dumps 3,386 BTC, Block adds 34, Bitfarms rebrands to Keel Infrastructure, Fold sells 1 BTC (why?)
• Trump's Q1 filings reveal Coinbase, MARA, and Strategy on the buy list
• Brandon launches VibeWatch (vibewatch.io) — the social listening tool he wished existed for crypto
• The Bitcoin Staking white paper drops: keep your BTC on L1, earn native Bitcoin yield, no slashing, exit anytime
• Did Claude actually crack a Bitcoin wallet? Inside the 11-year recovery story tearing through X
• Bitcoin mining is bleeding — ~20% of miners are unprofitable and MARA posts a $1B Q1 loss
• Stratum V2: seven pools controlling 75% of hashrate commit to handing block-building back to individual miners
• The CLARITY Act clears the Senate Banking Committee — what got compromised, what got fixed
• Jane Street dumps 78% of MSTR + $1B of BTC ETFs, Charles Schwab rolls out crypto trading (no withdrawals), and Drake asks for an SBF pardon on his new track

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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Paul Sztorc is hard forking Bitcoin — and the plan involves reassigning Satoshi's coins. Brandon and Kate break down the most chaotic week of news in months.

In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss:

• Public companies stack: Strategy adds 3,273 BTC (now 818,334 total), Strive +798, Block +114, Capital B +6, Smarter Web +28
• Nakamoto launches a BTC derivatives strategy with Kraken and Bitwise — covered calls, protective puts, and yield from Bitcoin's volatility
• Paul Sztorc announces a Bitcoin hard fork called eCash — drivechains by force, plus a controversial plan to reassign Satoshi's coins to investors of the new project
• Bitcoin Vegas takeaways: SEC chair Paul Atkins debuts Project Crypto, AG Todd Blanche and FBI's Kash Patel say "code is free speech," and Senator Lummis says the CLARITY Act gets marked up in May
• White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt teases a "major announcement" on the Bitcoin Reserve in the coming weeks
• Tether proposes merging 21, Strike, and Electron Mining into one Bitcoin powerhouse — Brandon and Kate called it a year ago
• Litecoin hit with a 51% attack — a 13-block reorg over three hours and double-spends across cross-chain swap protocols
• April was the worst month ever for DeFi exploits: $635M lost across 28 incidents in 30 days
• Wall Street Journal: World Liberty Financial partnered with a venture run by men sanctioned in the Prince Group scam crackdown — for a blockchain-themed resort in East Timor
• Bitkey unveils a new model with a screen, Alberta's pension fund discloses a $219M stake in Strategy, and ord.net is now the place for Ordinals trading

Hosts:

• Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing
• Kate Parkman — @katemparkman

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