We just shipped something I've been wanting to build for a while. The Oshi newsletter now pays subscribers real Bitcoin for engaging with every email. Here's how it works: you get a newsletter, you answer a quick poll, you earn sats. That's it. Every email is an earning opportunity. As far as I know, no other newsletter does this. The first question people always ask is "what about bots?" Fair. Here's how we handle it: your sats accumulate in your rewards portal, but to unlock them, you need to make a qualifying purchase at a business in the Oshi network. A real purchase, at a real business, by a real person. No bot army can fake that. But here's the part I actually like. It's not just an anti-abuse mechanism. If you play your cards right, it effectively works out to an additional 10% back on your purchases. You're earning sats passively by reading a newsletter, discovering high-quality, independently owned businesses offering Bitcoin rewards, and then when you find one you love (and you will, because these are genuinely great businesses), your newsletter sats unlock on top of whatever that merchant already offers. The flywheel: you engage with the newsletter, you earn sats, you discover a business, you shop, your sats unlock, the merchant gets a new customer, you get rewarded for all of it. Everyone wins. We're just getting started with this. More frequent sends, merchant spotlights, and more.

RIP Las Vegas @jack mallers

Square auto-enabling Bitcoin payments and effectively solving merchant distribution is a huge deal. But it doesn’t solve the hardest problem. Supply ≠ demand. Merchants accepting BTC is step one. Getting people to actually use it is step two. The closest comparison is Apple Pay. It launched in 2014 and even after more than a decade, tap-to-pay in the U.S. is still only a portion of overall payments. Something objectively better than cards took years to change behavior, and is used less than cards today. Apple Pay did not change the money. Same cards. Same dollars. Most people already had smartphones and cards on file. And even then, it took years to gain real usage. Bitcoin is different. You are asking people to -use a different currency -change how they pay (QR code) -rethink what money is -overcome any negative perceptions That is a much bigger behavioral leap than tapping a phone. So even if every merchant accepts Bitcoin, most people still will not use it without a reason to switch. The most reliable pattern we have seen is earn Bitcoin → learn → then eventually spend it Starting with incentives works. Starting with payments alone usually does not. This is not to say Bitcoin payments are doomed. Far from it. This is the exact problem we have been focused on at Oshi since 2020. After onboarding 100+ merchants, we have spent years trying to understand what actually drives real usage. What we have found is that adoption does not start with payments. It starts by giving people a low-friction way to interact with Bitcoin. The businesses that work best act as a modern day Bitcoin faucet. When that happens, customers engage more and are far more likely to eventually spend it. That is what turns acceptance into actual usage. You can learn more about what we're doing to help Square merchants along here:

Oshi Rewards

Bitcoin Rewards for Your Square Business

Add a Bitcoin rewards program to your Square POS. Restaurants, cafes, and retailers use Oshi to boost repeat visits and customer loyalty. Connect i...

Gold and silver pump when the world looks backward. Bitcoin pumps when the world looks forward. Let them have rocks.

For those still trying to understand why Bitcoin ≠ crypto: Gold ≠ metals But at least metals are useful enough to have a place on the periodic table of elements for all of eternity. 99.9% of crypto doesn’t have a place at your top shitcoin exchange for more than a year.

I don't exactly know what works. I'm not even sure if I know what doesn't work. But I do know that if I keep building I'll eventually find something that works better than I could have ever imagined.

It’s 2025 and most people are still inserting their NFC capable card to pay. Technology moves fast, humans usually don’t. Stay bullish about bitcoin payments, stay constructive, keep building, promoting, and pushing the envelope. But also taper expectations. Stay humble out there.

Just called my dentist and an AI receptionist answered. It was 10x better than talking to a human. Watch out, receptionists.

Every token has a company. Every company has an end. Bitcoin has neither.