Issue #2 of the Bitcoin Builders Renaissance Newsletter

Welcome to the home of the shadowy super coders! Basically, this is a newsletter started in honor of Elizabeth Warren, who coined the term! 😂🙏🏻 Kidding aside, here, we firmly believe that Bitcoin not only is a new base money for the digital age, but a revolutionary force shaking up the entire financial landscape! 🌪️ As Super Coder Vigilantes, we see Bitcoin evolving into a multi-layered financial powerhouse, anchored by the soundest money ever known.

💻Let us tell you, dear reader: Building and developing on Bitcoin is a thing. Well, it is not only a thing, it's the thing developers worldwide are gravitating towards! After all, Bitcoin is the most exciting things happening in our world today! 🌍 As of December 2023, a whopping 1,071 active developers are passionately supporting Bitcoin every month. 📈 40% of the entire Bitcoin open-source developer community is fervently focused on Bitcoin L2 and scaling solutions in 2023. And because Bitcoin is the chain that most likely has a bright future, developers that build only on Bitcoin are more likely to stay compared to devs on other chains. ⚡💪

Navigating this dynamic realm requires more than just keeping pace—it demands staying ahead! This is why we want to join the Bitcoin Builders Renaissance newsletter, where the Super Coder Vigilantes are your guiding light in this sweeping cosmos. 🌌 You will most likely recognize quite a few of them along the way.🔬

In this fast-paced industry, we are your compass, decoding the intricate world of Bitcoin Finance and gathering the alpha you crave. 📈💡Subscribe now, and embark on a journey where staying informed is your superpower! 🚀🔍 Become a Super Coder Vigilante yourself and let's ride the wave of the emerging finance on Bitcoin ecosystem together! 🌊👨‍💻

Table of Contents

• Bitcoin and Macro

• Bitcoin Finance News: Moving at Full Speed

• New Kids on the Bitcoin Block

• Bitcoin Builder Ecosystem Deep Dive

• Do it Yourself: Using Bitcoin Finance

• Bitcoin Talks You don’t Want to Miss

• Bitcoin Things that Get You Thinking

• Upcoming Bitcoin Events/Programs

Bitcoin and Macro

-At March 1, Bitcoin Spot ETFs have had net inflows of over $7 billion! 🤯Here’s your daily flows chart. And the crazy part? BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF is abut to hit $10 billion in just 7 weeks. The first gold ETF took more than two years to accumulate $10 billion.💣

-🚨 On the gold versus Bitcoin comparison: Bitcoin ETFs are almost at 50% the size of Gold ETFs. Bitcoin ETFs launched last month. Gold ETFs launched in 2004. Allocate accordingly.

-By the way, another great dashboard to look at is this one here.👈 It tracks flows since the start, current on-chain holdings, current percentage of BTC supply held by ETFs and way more.ℹ️

-And here’s your quick back-of-the-envelope calculation on the Bitcoin multiplier effect from ETF inflows. 🔄️️

-After all, this seems to be the new Bitcoin flywheel going forward, pushing the price: Buy Bitcoin ETF → Buy Bitcoin → Bitcoin NGU (price up) → Asset Managers Buy Bitcoin → ….💡

-On a different note, you must have heard about ECB's recent Bitcoin critique. There are many great rebuttals but this is one of the best 💯. Definitely worth checking out and a greate piece to send to all your fiat believer friends. 💖

-Referring to on of EBC’s flawed arguments about Bitcoin’s scalability and speed, we can just add: Bitcoin is already as scalable as the dollar. The world just hasn't discovered it. 🔥🔥

-And also something for the ECB (and other central banks) to keep in mind. 🤯 They will keep on pumping Bitcoin indefintely through their debt monetization. 💲💲 Here’s a thread laying out the way in a concise manner. 💡

-To that point: Bank of America recently pointed out that the US national debt has grown by $1 trillion in just 100 days.💲This is almost the entire current market cap of Bitcoin. Bank of America also said assets like #Bitcoin and gold would benefit...🪙

-On a different note, 📝here’s an interesting recent study on how much does it cost to 51% attack Bitcoin and Ethereum? 🤔There’s definitely some interesting findings and this paper puts a concrete number out there of how costly and thus difficult it really is to successfully attack Bitcoin.ℹ️

Bitcoin Finance News: Moving at Full Speed

-Botanix Labs is partnering with the XLink.btc to integrate essential infrastructure that helps self-sovereign financial applications on Bitcoin scale to support billions of new users. 🔥

-Bitcoin block space demand is at its peak 📈. Bitcoin needs to be scaled to serve the future demand. And 20+ teams are building different Bitcoin scaling solutions. Here’s a quick thread on them.👈

-For all the visual people, here's a graphic showing all the projects.👈

-And there is this list by DWF Ventures. As they show, the BTC Layer-2 scene is on the rise! Despite Ethereum championing Layer 2 for three years with 38 L2s (according to l2beat), the number of Bitcoin L2s has surged to 25 in less than a year.📅

-With this growth in Layer-2s, Pantera Capital’s words seem as obvious but still impressive. 🔥They are considering the Bitcoin ecosystem to be $500 billion opportunity. 💲

-Need proof? 👀The largest Bitcoin block was recently minted and it contained a 3.97 MB Runestone which is the largest Ordinal inscription ever. Block 832849 (3.99 MB) was achieved in collaboration with Ordinals Bot and Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital. 💡

-Funding round closed at Citrea, the project focused on Bitcoin’s first ZK rollup. ℹ️ You can check the roadmap here.

-Bitcoin Layer-2s fundamentally change the relationship between Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto industry. 🪙We shift from zero-sum to a positive-sum dynamic because of Bitcoin L2s. 👏

-Even Binance is talking about Bitcoin Layer-2s. 👏👏

New Kids on the Bitcoin Block

-Not new but this caught our eye: ZeroSync is building zk-proofs for Bitcoin, and they are also constructing a trust-minimized bridge between Bitcoin and its L2s. 🔥

-Not yet launched but should be coming: Even Justin Sun, founder of Tron Blockchain is thinking about brining a Bitcoin Layer-2. And self-described Bitcoin Layer-2 protocol Merlin chain has announced a strategic partnershipwith Tron. 😲

-Babylon Chain has 100,000 pioneers that interacted with their testnet. ⛓️Another project that is building restaking infrastructure for Bitcoin is BounceBit. The project’s BTC restaking solution introduces the concept of Shared Security Clients (SSC) that leverages aggregated security by integrating restaked assets into their validation semantics. ℹ️

-This paper was recently shared on X as well. It’s about Generalized, Unboundedly Scalable Computation on Bitcoin 📃. If you don’t understand a word, we feel it. Here’s an explanation that explains it to you as if you had and .eth handle. Some more context is given here. The TLD;R: while powerful, there’s limit. If you are interested in following the discussion in real-time join the Bitcoin DLC Telegram group. ✉️

-Wrapped Bitcoin is getting a facelift. Check out dlcBTC, a safer wrapped Bitcoin. DlcBTC is minted directly from self-custody, without any bridges or intermediaries. Differences to wBTC are explained in this article. 📃

-Rootstock has delivered a freshly looking blockchain explorer. Looking neat.💯

-Orange, a self-described operating system for the Bitcoin ecosystem has launched Orange Marketcap in beta 🟠. Orange Marketcap is not just a tool; it is supposed to be a gateway to the pulse of Bitcoin's emerging ecosystem. Whether you're deep into BRC20, Stacks, or Ordinals NFTs, they’ve got you covered. ⚙️

-Arkadiko Testnet v2.0 is finally here. You can test it already. 🧪

-And have you heard of Bitscape yet, your front row seat to the future of building on Bitcoin? We are not sure what it is but is seem like a project worth following.💯

-Also, you should be looking at LumiBit. It’s a Bitcoin rollup solution that is integrated by the OKX exchange and they integrate it with their wallet 👜. Here’s a great medium article on how it works. 📃

-And yet another solution is planning to bring smart contracts & tokens for Bitcoin Layer-1 and Layer-2s or any other UTXO blockchain: It’s called Dark Fusion Tech. And they want to bring native BTC. 🪙

-Zest Protocol is an on-chain lending protocol, built for Bitcoin on Stacks. It just launched and is already pulling in TVL. There might be an airdrop, so you might want to interact with it… 🔥🔥

DNS powers the internet, yet it has no direct connectivity to Bitcoin. That changes now.In partnership with HiroSystems and Tucows, a project called Orange Domains was announced. 🟠Orange Domains connects the Domain Name Service (DNS) to the Bitcoin Name Service (BNS), bridging Web2 & Web3 together. 🤝

Last but not least, have you heard of Winternitz signatures. These are more compact Lamport signatures and can cut the transaction fees for BitVM by more than 50%. 💡BitVM is the scaling solution everyone from Nic Carter, Muneeb Ali or David Seroy is talking about. And it is Robin Linus and them that want to deliver on it. 🔥

Bitcoin Builder Ecosystem Deep Dive

-Messari, the crypto rearche company, has recently published their State of Stacks Q4 2023 report. The full report can be found here.👈

-And this is your deep dive thread on the Bitcoin ecosystem: Here's everything you need to understand. 😎

-Don’t miss it when Bitcoin Benobi is analysis Bitcoin Layer-2 solutions in depth. 🪖Here’s his research on Rootstock. A lot more assessements of other L2s can be found on his X feed.✔️

-Bitcoin rollups really are a thing and there is more research coming out on them with every day that passes. 🪙This thread explores the challenges with Bitcoin rollups, the Dark side of rollups. There is another 42 minutes video, the Bitcoin rollups whiteboard session with David Seroy 📹. Great resources to delve deeper. Last but not least, we want to share some thoughts on the all important rollup terminology here.👈

-The most popular smart contract programming language still is Solidity.💯 Bitcoin Layer-2 Stacks is built on Clarity. It’s touted to be a safer, decidable language. Here’s a comparision chart. 📊

-You are wondering: We keep on talking about Stacks here. How is this protocol even beneficial for Bitcoin you ask? Here's a co-founder laying out the arguments.🗣️ And here is a great overview on why Bitcoin and Stacks mining (yes, you can mine Stacks through the Proof of Transfer consens mechanism) are simiiar.✔️

-Have you head of tBTC? 🤔It’s a decentralized protocol giving rise to wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum. Said differently: It is a bridge that has been savely bridging BTC to Ethereum, Solana and Arbitrum.🔥

-You want to understand what the SOV (Sovryn) Token does? Read this.👈

Do it Yourself: Using Bitcoin Finance

-Interested in the crossection of Bitcoin and Ai? Join the working group now. They even have a new website. 💻

-Here’s a cool new application for content creators📽️. Flash. Accept payments in Bitcoin on your store, platform or for any of your content. Receive payments instantly, without the need to request any payout. There’s also the possibility to create paywalls.💳

-Velar, a Bitcoin DeFi protocol on Stacks, is planing its launch. Here is how to prepare.📦

-Another Bitcoin DeFi protocol on Stacks, Bitflow, is already live on mainnet. Check it out here.👈

-You want to learn about the technical aspects of Bitcoin, then check out this newly launched channel.👈

-This is a great find, and you defintely want to check this out: Theya is the simplest multisig self-custody platform bar none. They just shipped a major update.😲

-There’s also Banco, a Bitcoin trading protocol that facilitates non-interactive swaps. Try here.👈

-If you are a developer, please also check out BitScript, a browser-based Bitcoin script integrated development environment. 📜

-Nostr lovers, here’s your Nostr native Lightning Address.⚡

-Curious about Bitcoin lending on Sovryn? Here’s your thread.👈

-Have you heard of Firefish? This application helps you to borrow against your Bitcoin, so you don’t need to sell it. 💵💵

-You want to build on Bitcoin but you are no coder?🧑‍💻 No problem. NoCodeClarity is finally life and you can get your life time pass now. 🔥

-Back to Stacks. 🔙End of April, Stacks is most undergoing a major upgrade to move the sidechain closer to Bitcoin. To make sure this happens you can influence the course of things by voting on Stacks. Here's how you can still do it until March 10th.💡

-Last but not least: Here's another newsletter, website covering all things Bitcoin tech that you don't want to be missing. Always important to shill your companion’s work!📰

Bitcoin Talks You don’t Want to Miss

-Great video on the newly surfaced Satoshi Emails: Who Created #Bitcoin?❓ They discuss: Why we have access to these communications for the first time? What we can conclude about Satoshi's identity? And powerful evidence Satoshi was a single person. 🧑

-Curious about what's happening in Rootstock ecosystem?🤔 If so, then this is your interview talk.👈

-The What Bitcoin Did podcast with another banger episode on how and why to scale Bitcoin. One thing that stood out from this episode: “"If we stop changing Bitcoin right now, there is no way that even 1% of 1% of the planet will be able to afford to actually hold their own keys." -> Holding on-chain BTC won't be cost effective, this we need to keep in mind! 💡💡

-In this talk, Nic Carter gives his honest and informed opinion about: the latest big picture views on bitcoin, a realistic assessment of lightning, thoughts on bitvm and optimistic rollups, bitcoin monetarism vs bitcoin expressivity and a lot more. 💻

-Newly emerged Bitcoin researcher David Seroy we have already mentioned. Here’s is his explanation of Bitcoin scaling with rollups.👈 In his view, Bitcoin L2 Renaissance is early and experimental, but it is real! 💯

-Not heard enough of David? He’s recently on fire putting out more alpha content. 🔥In this whiteboard session, he lays out the reason why he believe a Bitcoin standard would fail and go bust from shadow-banking if it were not for ZK rollups to scale Bitcoin past the shadow-banking problem.🏦

-Here’s an overview talk on all the Best Bitcoin DeFi protocols that exist today. Many more to come though!📺

-Tuur Demeester did another amazing interview. 📹As always: He is being asked questions and he delivers. Tuur talks about Bitcoin from a high-level perspective and what Bitcoin’s future role will be in an ever changing world. Definitely worth listening.👂

Bitcoin Things that Get You Thinking

-Bitcoin Magazine has published its stance on Bitcoin layer-2s (needed but also controversial). It's all about the question: What really is a genuine Bitcoin Layer-2 and what is not. ❓While some call this a necessary step, other laugh it off as a sort of purity test no one in Bitcoin is able to ordain.📜

-Here’s a great article that is relevant to the discussion above. It is laying out the trade-offs that come with BTC scaling. 📰And this is an astute observation: "Even if Bitcoin could verify validity proofs and we had recursive covenants and you built a true trustless L2 on Bitcoin using Bitcoin as a full DA and inherited the FULL security and decentralization of Bitcoin, if you have a token, you are a parasite chain [and Bitcoin Magazine will not allow anyone to write about it]. 📔

-Here’s even more information/thoughts on this debate.👈

-Here's what Satoshi said himself on this topic of Bicoin Layer-2s.👆 An interesting fact: As pretty much everything, he did foresee the huge swath of scams that call themselves Bitcoin Layer-2 and still will.✔️

-And bear in mind: As Andreas Antonopoulos said way back in the days: “There is no "should" in Bitcoin”. Or in other words: There is no authority in Bitcoin to decide what is going to happen. Well there is no spam transaction.🔃

-Here is Dovey, one of the smartest woman in Bitcoin/crypto, explaning why Bitcoin Layer-2s are needed. 🔥

Upcoming Bitcoin Events/Programs

-With the Nakamoto Update coming up on Stacks, there will be Nakamoto launch events all over the world. Check your location. 🛖And if there is no event, help organize!🤝

-Ready, Layer-2: Here's your Bitcoin Builders' competition, a hackathon.👈

-BOB, another Bitcoin Layer-2 called Built on Bitcoin, is planing to go live at the Bitcoin Halving. 🪙🪙More precisely, BOB is a one of the first hybrid L2 combining BTC and ETH security and liquidity. This thread explains all that should be possible with Bob. Furthermore, the project has just announced that they wan to partner up with Sovryn. There is currently a community proposal running to get Sovryn integrated into Bob.🥈

-SatoshiVM is planed to hit alpha mainnet on March 15th. 🗓️