And we’re back after a proper vacation bout with covid. Wasn’t fun folks — I was feeling invincible after 2 shots and a boost but I couldn’t fade the vid at a Raptors game the other week.
Before I get into the happenings over the last couple of weeks, I thought I’d take a minute to give a shout out to Peter Holland who joined our sales team last month. The Toronto Star dropped a story on Friday that covered Pete’s recent transition from professional hockey to a new career as a Business Development Executive with Satstreet.
The TLDR is that Pete came to us as a client early this year while he was playing in Sweden. We hit it off and I let him know that if he was ever thinking of hanging up the skates I’d be happy to discuss a role at Satstreet. A couple of weeks later he rang me up and let me know that he was done with hockey, and ready to return to Toronto with his young family to pursue a career in Bitcoin. After a few rounds of interviews we made the unanimous decision to bring him on to our sales team where he’s been crushing it so far.
I’m sure some of you have already spoken or met with Peter — and if you haven’t I’m sure that you will one day soon. When you do, I encourage you to ask about his story and how he came to Bitcoin in the first place.
We haven’t missed too too much since the beginning of April. Our team was well represented at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami a few weeks ago which was the largest Bitcoin event in history and there were some interesting announcements.
Strike CEO Jack Mallers announced that the company has partnered with three of the world’s largest payments providers, Shopify, NCR and Blackhawk Network to enable bitcoin payments at stores throughout the US.
Samson Mow, the former chief strategy officer of Blockstream who stepped down in March to focus on nation-state Bitcoin adoption (think El Salvador) brought leaders from around the world on stage to announce progress being made in their respective jurisdictions.
Joel Bomgar, the President of Próspera, an “economic development hub” located in Honduras, said that bitcoin acts as legal tender there
The president of Portugal’s Madeira region, announced that bitcoin investors will pay no personal income taxes.
Indira Kempis, a senator in Mexico, announced that she plans to propose regulation there to recognize bitcoin as legal tender.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.
On another note, US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, who has been critical of Bitcoin over the years seems to have shifted her tone as she recently praised Satoshi for solving the double-spend problem and paving the way for digital asset innovation.
She’s come a long way from this:
The King of Michael’s and resident bitcoin spokesperson, Saylor nabs 1 million views in less than a week on the Lex Fridman podcast - highly recommend watching/listening.
Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST is still buying up hundreds of millions of dollars of BTC on a regular basis and has been awarded a position in the top 3 stablecoins behind USDT and USDC after surpassing Binance's BUSD in total market cap.
Morgan Stanley released a report on Thursday focusing on the Lightning Network and how Bitcoin could become more widely used as a currency. Alex Gladstein does a great job summing it up in this tweet thread below:
What we saw at the desk — Dan Wright
Three weeks into the new quarter we continue to see the same volatility as we did to start the year. We watch with horror as the war in Ukraine ravages on, adding to supply chain shortages and rampant inflation across the world. Growth and tech stocks are still selling off with 50 and 75 basis point interest rate hikes on the table.
Where does that leave Bitcoin? Mostly holding its own! Even with all the negative news we are encouraged by the higher highs and higher lows of the current uptrend. $40k seems to be the line in the sand for now with steady buying on any dips below and selling into strength on green days. We are trading within a long term range with support at the bottom of the channel. Large cap alts — ETH, SOL and LUNA are all following a similar pattern.
Have a great week!