Saifedean Ammous argues mining has stopped growing for good. This desk checked his four load-bearing figures against the sources he names. The difficulty stretch is longer than he says — 324 days now, against his 305. The epoch subsidy multiple is 21 percent, not 28. But the peak he nominates as the empirical test is not where Cambridge’s own series puts it: the high was 227 TWh in October 2025, not 190 in December, and December was already the decline.
Since June, the Treasury says, Iran’s mandatory “insurance” for ships crossing the Strait has been paid partly in bitcoin and routed through a Tehran exchange to the Revolutionary Guards. Wednesday’s designation names a street address, two websites, a developer and three men — and, across four OFAC actions against this network, not one bitcoin address. A sanction reaches what has an address. The chain does not, and the Treasury does not pretend it does.
The Federal Reserve raised rates on Wednesday for the first time since July 2023, twelve to nothing, undoing its December cut; the Bank of Japan followed a day and a half later, and both named the Middle East. A coin held in your own keys has no coupon and no creditor. Strategy’s own filing puts its expected preferred dividends and interest at $1.76 billion a year — about $2,083 for each of its 845,050 coins — paid by selling stock, at a rate its board reviews monthly against “market yields.” That is the bill a rate rise arrives at.
Filed at block 967,605
Bitcoin data snapshots
Saved observations, not live readings. Each dataset has its own date and scope.
of issued bitcoin: the sum of each holder’s latest disclosure, dated –
Public companies: 11 selected
5.19%
Spot ETFs: iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF only
3.65%
Governments: El Salvador National Bitcoin Office only
0.03%
Unclassified in this dataset
91.11%
Parts are cut separately and sum to less than the total.
Holders that disclose nothing are left out; one that sold since its disclosure could hold less. The unclassified remainder is not evidence of self-custody.
Calculation: Observed · Issued supply at block 969,248
Cloture failed 49 to 50 — eleven votes short of the sixty required, not one. The final text everyone argued about was never before the Senate; by its sponsors' own terms it would only have been offered if that vote had carried. What goes unsettled is a question worth naming plainly: who is allowed to earn on money they hold.
The recent security incidents did not demonstrate a break in Bitcoin’s rules. They exposed the promises surrounding them: that a wallet would generate sound keys, a provider would protect your records, and a claim on bitcoin could be redeemed. Self-sovereignty begins by separating those promises from Bitcoin itself.
Costed from the Census count and read against the Treasury's own ledger: the tariffs meant to pay for it have run negative since May, the ten-month deficit already beats last year's, the pledge would use every dollar of room under the debt limit, and the newest lender to this company is the stablecoin in your phone.
Attackers used a newsletter provider’s access to send convincing wallet warnings. The failure was outside the hardware wallet—but the message tried to get inside it.
Filed at block 966,708
Bitcoin calculators & explainers
Choose a question to explore. No account or wallet needed. Diagrams explain the tools; they are not live readings.
This week’s Brief follows the trust we place in Bitcoin businesses and a president’s promise of $5,000, asking what we can verify before depending on either.
Finding excerptThe Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index did not peak in December 2025. In the index's own published daily series the best-guess annualised estimate reached its maximum of 227.43 TWh on 18 October 2025. December 2025 ranged from 189.56 to 211.75 TWh — between 7 and 17 percent below the October maximum — so the month named as the peak was already part of the decline, and the figure named for it is the bottom of that month's range rather than a peak. Whether Bitcoin's actual electricity consumption peaked is a separate question this verdict does not reach: the index is a model, and what is established here is what the index published.Read full finding +Close full finding −
The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index did not peak in December 2025. In the index's own published daily series the best-guess annualised estimate reached its maximum of 227.43 TWh on 18 October 2025. December 2025 ranged from 189.56 to 211.75 TWh — between 7 and 17 percent below the October maximum — so the month named as the peak was already part of the decline, and the figure named for it is the bottom of that month's range rather than a peak. Whether Bitcoin's actual electricity consumption peaked is a separate question this verdict does not reach: the index is a model, and what is established here is what the index published.
Finding excerptTrue, with one qualification the claim does not state. Difficulty last set an all-time high of 1.5597 x 10^14 at the adjustment at height 921,312, timestamped 29 October 2025, and had not exceeded it 324 days later on 19 September 2026. Measured between successive all-time highs, the only longer completed stretch caused by a decline is the 364 days from 1 August 2011 to 30 July 2012. There is, however, a longer interval still: the 360 days from the genesis block to the first adjustment on 30 December 2009, during which difficulty sat at its floor of 1 because there was not yet enough hashrate to raise it. Ranking the current stretch second therefore requires excluding that period, which is defensible — it was a starting condition, not a decline — but it is an exclusion and it is unstated. The current stretch passes the 1 August 2011 record on 28 October 2026 and completes a full year on 29 October 2026.Read full finding +Close full finding −
True, with one qualification the claim does not state. Difficulty last set an all-time high of 1.5597 x 10^14 at the adjustment at height 921,312, timestamped 29 October 2025, and had not exceeded it 324 days later on 19 September 2026. Measured between successive all-time highs, the only longer completed stretch caused by a decline is the 364 days from 1 August 2011 to 30 July 2012. There is, however, a longer interval still: the 360 days from the genesis block to the first adjustment on 30 December 2009, during which difficulty sat at its floor of 1 because there was not yet enough hashrate to raise it. Ranking the current stretch second therefore requires excluding that period, which is defensible — it was a starting condition, not a decline — but it is an exclusion and it is unstated. The current stretch passes the 1 August 2011 record on 28 October 2026 and completes a full year on 29 October 2026.
Difficulty series, adjustment at height 921,312, 29 Oct 2025, 10:14 UTC: difficulty 155,973,032,196,071.9375 as Bitcoin Core computes it in floating point from the header's bits 0x1701cdfb (385994235); the series and bitcoin-cli print it as 155973032196071.9
Finding excerptBitcoin defines ownership as control of a key. A coin is a chain of digital signatures, and it moves when the party controlling it signs. A customer whose custodian holds the keys therefore does not hold bitcoin in the protocol's sense: they hold a contractual claim against the custodian, which the custodian settles from keys it controls. Deutsche Bank's September 16, 2026 announcement describes exactly that arrangement in its own words. Custody can be prudent, insured, and for some institutions the only lawful option. It is a different relationship to the asset, not the same one.Read full finding +Close full finding −
Bitcoin defines ownership as control of a key. A coin is a chain of digital signatures, and it moves when the party controlling it signs. A customer whose custodian holds the keys therefore does not hold bitcoin in the protocol's sense: they hold a contractual claim against the custodian, which the custodian settles from keys it controls. Deutsche Bank's September 16, 2026 announcement describes exactly that arrangement in its own words. Custody can be prudent, insured, and for some institutions the only lawful option. It is a different relationship to the asset, not the same one.
Fee rates are now read from mempool.space’s precise estimate and printed to two decimals under 10 sat/vB, so the economy fee that read 1 reads 0.20. mempool.space’s whole-number recommendation is no longer shown.
Pool attribution shows a coordination surface, the pools that assemble block templates. It does not show that miners coordinate, or who owns them, as the Story's chart caption and its sixth paragraph say.
Bitcoin's automatic recalibration, every 2,016 blocks, of how hard a block is to find, so blocks keep arriving about every ten minutes whatever the hashrate does.
