We’re fresh off the Bitcoin conference there’s a lot to go over!

Jack Mallers, the CEO of Strike, made a big announcement at the Bitcoin conference again this year. You may remember he was paramount in helping connect the dots for El Salvador and getting them onboard to The Bitcoin Standard to make BTC Legal tender in that country. So there was a lot of hype and I think what he has done will be really exciting to watch play out.

Jack Announced that Shopify has integrated Strike and the Bitcoin Lightning network. Which means, any retailer that uses Shopify could implement the ability to accept Bitcoin as payment or allow consumers to pay with bitcoin and have that converted to dollars so the business doesn’t have to even touch bitcoin if they don’t want to.

They have also partnered with NCR which is the biggest point of sale supplier and The Blackhawk payment network. Those payment terminals are in places you’ve definitely heard of like McDonalds and Starbucks.

Now, there could be some tax problems that come up with selling bitcoin to buy something, but that’s why Jack said he’s working with Wyoming U.S. Senator, Cynthia Lummis, to help adjust and shape future laws and regulations.

We didn’t get any Big Nation State adoption news out of the bitcoin conference this year but we did get some small wins. Honduras has announced a special economic zone of the country where Bitcoin will be accepted as legal tender aptly named Prospera.

Also out of the Bitcoin Conference Robinhood, an app used for buying and selling Stocks and Crypto has announced they will be releasing a Software Hot Wallet and plans to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Elsewhere, Jack Dorsey’s company, Block, formally known as Square, has broken ground on a solar powered Bitcoin Mine. It’ll be located in West Texas and use Solar panels and battery storage tech from Tesla. Tesla, just had the grand opening of their latest GigaFactory also in Texas. I think this is really important because there’s always a ton of FUD about how dirty Bitcoin mining is, but this is a clear shift and a sign that the industry is moving towards renewable and re-usable forms of energy for mining bitcoin and verifying transactions on the network.

The Luna Foundation continues to Buy Bitcoin as Collateral for their UST StableCoin. As of April 10th, 2022 their Bitcoin Wallet Balance is just under 40,000 Bitcoins and a current value around 1.7 Billion Dollars. You may remember Do Kwon announcing plans to buy around 10 Billion worth of BTC, I’ve also heard they are looking at other tokens as Collateral as well and recently purchased 100M Dollars worth of the Avalanche or AVAX Protocol.

And finally, Bank of America released a warning to investors that a Recession Show is coming. With the Us Federal reserve looking to cut its balance sheet and raise interest rates it could increase near term volatility and see Commodities and Crypto outperform Bonds and Stocks.

Just a quick note that this Week in Bitcoin on the Hot Wallet Podcast is taking a 2 week hiatus. We’re going to Hawaii for our first family vacation in years. So until next time, please hit subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you on the path to financial freedom.

-Scott