🍕 Happy pizza day!

I attended yet another industry networking event hosted by one of the world's largest custodian banks. They are a major player in asset management and securities services. Among other topics, they identified key trends in modern finance: - Instant payments - Digital transformation - Resilience in market turbulence Bitcoin wasn't mentioned. I spoke with their treasury lead in Europe and their global collateral head. They wanted to talk about tokenization and digital assets. Although some banks are becoming more accepting of Bitcoin, I still find that many are far behind. I don't oppose it at all. For nearly all people in finance, it signifies a complete paradigm shift. Bitcoin is the only trend in finance/economics, and in this firm's case, aligns with all their identified trends.

Have you seen the recent Financial Times film about Saylor and Strategy? I would cautiously describe it as a neutral piece.. We know that legacy (financial) media has been criticizing Bitcoin ever since. In my perception, it has improved slightly, perhaps due to the bull market phenomenon. This includes the FT. Still, they admit that they have no idea about Bitcoin (Cudos!) and think that it has no obvious use case and is therefore an inherently speculative bet. They don't understand the scarcity aspect of Bitcoin. They cannot see why Bitcoin won't forever "go up" in fiat terms. Unless they can separate Bitcoin from "crypto," I have little hope that they will realize the key innovations brought forth with Bitcoin. They will surely come around at some point, as some individual commentators already have. As for MSTR, they still describe it as a meme stock. I'm not sure one can fully understand Saylor's financial engineering without having a solid understanding of Bitcoin. Time will tell how MSTR and its other financial products will hold up during upcoming bear markets, and it remains to be seen how other companies will implement this playbook. This is where I see the risk arising. Bandwagoners jumping on something they don't understand or cannot make work. The FT would be best advised to finally study Bitcoin in depth. Can't wait for them to announce their Bitcoin Strategy.

Why are there180 different currencies in the world?

Gotta love the compliance team! For a workshop on a regulatory regime and the client's existing internal status quo, they bring a spreadsheet that, if printed on paper, would span the length and width of the conference room where the workshop is being held. Wish I could share this spreadsheet here for your amusement.

share this with your favorite “Bitcoin is too volatile” skeptic cc @Nik Bhatia

How is MSTR investing top Bitcoin news? @Bitcoin Magazine 🧐

Banks and other financial institutions will have a BCM - a Bitcoin Capital Markets - team