A Country Now Owns $20M in Bitcoin

September 7, 2021 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

Bitcoin broke above $52K, Solana hit a new ATH at $166, while THETA, FTM, and FTT each shot up 15%+ yesterday.
Bitfinex Securities, a new exchange, will allow trading of tokenized equities and bonds of private companies looking to go public through tokenized issuance.
FTX launched an NFT minting platform.
Moody’s Investors Service, a credit rating company, is looking to hire crypto analysts.
Huobi Ventures and the Chainsmokers backed a new $25M fund investing in the metaverse.
Union Investment, a German asset manager, revealed plans to include BTC in a handful of investment funds.
Bitcoin miners and oil/gas execs mingled at a secretive meeting in Houston.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law went into effect today, September 7th, making Bitcoin legal tender within the country. In conjunction with the law, the government will begin sending $30 in BTC to citizens who download Chivo, a digital wallet, and verify their identity.

Yesterday, on the eve of Bitcoin becoming legal tender in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele announced two purchases of 200 bitcoins each by the Central American nation.

With Bitcoin sitting over $50,000, El Salvador currently holds approximately $20M in the digital currency.

In anticipation of today, users on Twitter and Reddit have been sharing plans to purchase $30 worth of Bitcoin in celebration of the first nation accepting Bitcoin. Notably, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, whose company has purchased billions of BTC for its balance sheet, offered a Twitter poll asking who will be joining the clan of cyber hornets stacking $30 worth of sats. At publishing time last night, roughly 56,000 members voted yes, which would amount to a $1.7M in BTC purchasing power.

Similarly, r/Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-focused subreddit with over 3,000,000 members, has been flooded with posts urging members to join the movement. If all 3M redditors joined in, about $100M in BTC could end up being purchased.

With the passage of Bitcoin Law into action, Bitcoin is now on par with the US dollar in terms of legitimacy, with prices across the country expressed in BTC and merchants mandated to accept the cryptocurrency.

On The Pod…

How Crypto Streaming Service Audius Hit Six Million Monthly Active Users

Audius, a blockchain native music streaming platform, hit six million monthly active users in August and announced a partnership with TikTok. Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO of Audius, talks about how Audius works, AUDIO tokenomics, the give and take of decentralization, and more. Show highlights:

what problems Audius is solving for creators
how artists are utilizing crypto to connect with fans
how the crypto components of Audius fit together
what three utilities AUDIO, the native token of Audius, offers holders
why Audius requires over $500K in AUDIO tokens to run a node
why AUDIO’s inflation rate is higher than other popular tokens like Ethereum or Bitcoin
which portions of Audius are centralized versus decentralized
where the majority of Audius’s listens come from (hint: it’s not the app)
how Audius has created a “password” system to make blockchain technology easier to use for non-crypto natives
why Audius uses both Solana and Ethereum
how big-name artists like Diplo found their way onto Audius
how Audius makes it easier to upload music to TikTok
what’s next for Audius

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Jan. 18. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians