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What is up you beautiful people!

Time for another edition of This Week in Bitcoin. Bitcoin mainchain news was sparse last week, Thats changed for this one.
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But first.
Shoutout to The Stacks Foundation for sponsoring this podcast.
If you want to get started building on Stacks and push the mission forward of a user-owned internet with Bitcoin as the base layer.
Check the links below.
Learn Clarity: https://start.stacks.org/
Learn more about Stacks: https://stacks.co/
Apply for a grant: https://stacks.org/grants​

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Lets jump in and get updated on the latest. Starting with...
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Bitcoin

Bitcoin mainchain is somewhat hard to follow because the main updates come from either highly technical and in the weeds topics, like how Bitcoin transactions are sorted. Or are large narratives changes, like a few new countries considering adopting it.
But here's what I saw.

• The Bitcoin network celebrated 5000 days of uptime. An insane statistic for any protocol, none the less one that is as leaderless and decentralized as Bitcoin is. Props to all the core devs that have helped maintain this unstoppable behemoth.
• Charles Schwab, Citadel and Fidelity have partnered to launch a new crypto exchange. Called EDX Markets.
  This isn't THAT interesting by itself. The good part is between them they have almost $20 Trillion (Yes, with a T) of assets under management. We saw this with Blackrock as well, Bigger institutions are being pressured by their customers to offer digital assets. Next bull run might be absolutely nuts, But i'm just a podcaster. NFA
• Bitcoin hits a new all-time-high hashrate. This is pretty wild at a time when Bitcoin is down, the future is uncertain, and energy prices are volatile around the world. I guess Bitcoin really is the apex predator? Tweet​
• Russia is actively considering using Bitcoin for international trade. Article​

Stacks

• Quicknode now supports Stacks. Quicknode is an API and node infrastructure company. They make it dead simple for developers to have access to a node to pull information directly from the blockchain. Super useful nerdy stuff you can read about here.
• Magic Protocol is live on mainnet! Magic is a protocol for atomic swaps between BTC and xBTC on @Stacks.
  This means you can swap mainchain BTC directly for xBTC with no custodian or third-party, just code in the middle. And it's atomic so there's no escrow, The transaction completes as intented or it fails and reverts.
  Wrapped Bitcoin certainly isnt the holy grail here, But this tech opens many doors for the future of BTC to flow into Stacks and be put to use. Tweet​
• Hiro Wallet now supports topping up your wallet with STX directly from Coinbase Pay. Making things easier and easier for users the next bull run.
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Bonus tweet thread from Trevor Owens for your reading pleasure. Enjoy​

Lightning

• Lightning-infused gaming company Zebedee has partnered with Slice, A browser extension that pays you as you view ads across the web. I don't know much about the appeal of Slice, Doesn't sound like something for me.
  But this is one of Lightning's biggest value-adds. The low cost and instant nature of payments makes it so you can pay people in a currency they actually want (No loyalty point BS or minimums) with more ease then ever before. Article​
• Also with Zebedee, The CTO dropped some gems on how super low cost and instant Lightning payments can completely change gamers and fans can interact with each other. Really watch this video and think of the implications.
  Hunger games is only the tip of the iceberg.

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RSK

• Sovryn's latest product, Zero, hit a new all-time-high TVL of $5 million in RBTC.
  For an offering that's only a few months old and currently still in a invite only beta.
  Pretty impressive.

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Liquid

• Blockstream's blockchain hits a blockheight of 2 million. Big milestone :)
• An update was released for Blockstream Green (Their software wallet). You can now use their Jade hardware wallet to create 2FA codes for more security.

That's it for this week's edition.

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Peace!
-Jake

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