How I got started building on Bitcoin.

Strong Q3 progress for STX. As the incoming CEO of Stacks Labs, I’ll start sharing frequent updates and hosting quarterly update calls. Quick summary typed here as we release a detailed Q3 blog later (speed matters). - There has been a 72.15% increase in BTC yield over the last 4 cycles. This is a result of SIP-45 activation that attracted more miners, increased mining efficiency, and strengthened STX/BTC ratio. - Locked STX increased from 392M (at the time of the Satoshi One upgrade) to 448M over 4 cycles. The 20M jump right before Bitcoin Bond 1 went live was especially interesting as it shows the economic loop working. - Anchorage announced support for Bitcoin Bonds, along with Fireblocks and Fordefi. Distribution to institutional clients through custody providers they already use is key. - Bond 1 sold out for capacity, with large institutions like 21Shares, UTXO Management, HashKey, etc. participating. - New signers like Ankr, The Tie, and HashKey Cloud came online — institutional infra providers for institutional-grade Bitcoin capital markets. - Satoshi One upgrade was successfully live. With 99.98% uptime. One small network delay as signers upgraded, but the best-executed network upgrade yet. The economic loop in (1) and (2) is especially interesting. BTC yield is increasing while bitcoin staking capacity demand (STX needed) is going up as well. As more BTC gets deployed in upcoming bonds, things could get really interesting. A lot more happened in Q3, but these were some highlights for me. We’ll release a detailed Q3 update blog soon. My focus is on capital flows, growth, and execution speed. Forward! (Typed with two thumbs on a Sat in Korea.) — Muneeb

Stacks team in Seoul 🇰🇷

Stacks Labs has a new CEO blockstack:native

Muneeb was one of the first people I followed on CT 10 years ago. He was compelling enough that I participated in the Stacks Reg A+ offering too Couldn’t think of a more positive outcome for Stacks. Welcome back @muneeb!

Some news: I’m coming in as the new CEO of Stacks Labs. - I co-founded Stacks in 2017; we’ve been live for 5+ years and have gone through various chapters of decentralization. - I’m more bullish on $STX than ever before. After the successful launch of Bitcoin staking, it’s time to double down on the growth of Bitcoin capital markets. - After ecosystem restructuring last year, Stacks Labs has emerged as the operational hub. Taking on a day-to-day operational role there lets me put rocket fuel on the institutional BD work I was already doing. - Stacks is pushing the frontier of Bitcoin. The tech is stellar. More BTC capital flows and widespread marketing of Stacks are what’s needed now. That’ll be my focus. - @alexlmiller has done a tremendous job over the last year as interim CEO, put us on solid operational foundations, and pushed the core staking product live. Huge kudos to Alex for all his contributions! - Satoshi upgrades 1 delivered self-custodial staking. We’re working on other frontier Bitcoin challenges like 100x capacity, institutional-grade privacy, and post-quantum. I look forward to working with our fearless CTO, @AdrianoDiLuzio, and the rockstar team on this exciting roadmap. Start of a new chapter for Stacks and me. It’s time to light up some fires and push the frontier of Bitcoin. Forward!

This post by Avichal has two implications: (1) If BTC reaches $30 trillion (current gold market cap) then you’ll likely see other store-of-value digital assets. Like gold had silver, you might see a Zcash or others. (2) If BTC reaches $30 trillion, that capital is likely not just sitting there idle, so you’ll see Bitcoin capital markets form somewhere. Huge prizes are still up for grabs.

On a plane to Korea, the largest retail market for us. No WiFi for 15 hours. Rawdog it is. 서울에서 스택스 커뮤니티 여러분과 투자자분들을 만나 뵙기를 기대합니다.

Thoughts on the Shielded Bitcoin work: - It’s more than a proof of concept. The @allocinitxyz team has done a clever job of designing this system — kudos! - There are valid concerns from people like @robin_linus that the cryptography needed for this is still experimental at best. Further, the consensus rules aren't enforced by L1 (an outside layer reads Bitcoin L1 to construct 2nd-layer consensus, much like our work on virtualchains back in 2017). - The Bitcoin community tends to support such “Bitcoin extension” projects which require no change to Bitcoin. However, having support from Bitcoin L1 for covenants can make life so much easier for shielded BTC. - L2s, like Stacks, can implement full privacy easily because hardforks are practical and the norm. The key bottleneck for shielded BTC on an L2 is the trust-minimized bridge. Covenants help with that as well. This is an encouraging step, and I’m sure the authors will address current concerns. We’ll likely see more privacy work around Bitcoin like @Glass_Coins and L2 shielded addresses (Stacks Satoshi Upgrade 3). If there is one takeaway, it’s this: if you support private Bitcoin, you should support covenants on Bitcoin. They’ll help both L1 BTC privacy and L2 BTC privacy a ton. Let’s expand the frontier of Bitcoin. Forward!

NEWS: Anchorage is enabling institutional bitcoin staking with Stacks.

I’m surprised hotels haven't started installing 8sleep or similar. Noticeable difference when you sleep on a non-cooling bed.

Humans will forever remember San Francisco as the birthplace of machine intelligence.

In the Bay Area, catching up with @bznotes— one of Stacks’ early investors.

Dear Stacks community, I want to share how I plan to use X/Twitter and Telegram, and I'd love your feedback. - It’s clear that X is the public town square of crypto, and our community is most active here. X will be my primary channel for announcements, project updates, and community engagement. Replies/comments work better for me than DMs. - On Telegram, I’m active in the Korea group. Korea is a large market for Stacks, especially on the retail side. However, I want to engage with other regions as well. Let’s narrow down which TG groups you need me in. - Stacks currently has an institutional focus with Bitcoin Bonds launch. I might temporarily remove .btc from my X (which can come across as too crypto-cultish) and use my full name. I’m a cypherpunk at heart, but sometimes when going to formal events you need to wear a suit. I’ll suit up, so you don’t have to. I love .btc and will promote it wherever I can, including in tweets. - I’m setting up a better video recording setup and hope to have a weekly (potentially live) video stream for general industry thoughts and Bitcoin/Stacks updates. It’s an experiment I’m trying and need your input! Connecting the same setup to YouTube is also on the table (while keeping X as the main platform). In the coming months, our goal should be to expand the audience of Stacks and reach a much broader audience. Let me know if you have any suggestions or tweaks to this plan. I want to maximize the ROI of my time spent on X and Telegram. Two outcomes that matter to me are (a) growth of Stacks through this time spent and (b) health of community engagement. Buckle up for the next chapter. Forward!

AI productivity bottleneck has already shifted to our ability to use existing AI. Frontier science and specific domains can benefit from better models, sure. But for most knowledge workers, the constraint is already integration, not more intelligence.

Stacks is the frontier of Bitcoin. Bitcoin staking shipped. 100x capacity, privacy for BTC and post-quantum next.

This is an important post from Tushar. It highlights upcoming challenges for Bitcoin: privacy, quantum, and scalability. (2) and (3) are related because when Bitcoin gets a quantum upgrade, the effective bandwidth will be reduced by 50-97%. In other words, once post-quantum signatures go live, Bitcoin must have a scalability solution/layer ready to handle the bulk of Bitcoin traffic. The quantum upgrade must happen at L1, but privacy likely wouldn’t. Shielded addresses on (trustless) L2s can provide practical privacy benefits and clean the previous chain history of your L1 BTC. Bitcoin needs a credible quantum upgrade path. Progress is early, and more work is needed. You can read this post as a “why Zcash” post, but you can also read it as a “what should be the Bitcoin roadmap” post. The project that delivers privacy and post-quantum scalability to Bitcoin will have a lot of impact. At Stacks, we’ve been focused on these fundamental problems for years. Stacks Satoshi Upgrades bring: ✅ Self-custodial BTC staking (already live) 🛠️ 100x capacity increase (Satoshi II) 🛠️ Privacy & post-quantum (Satoshi III) In my view, Bitcoin and Zcash can coexist and provide different benefits. The frontier of Bitcoin development (and higher returns potential) moves up a layer.

Automated weekly yield from our bitcoin bonds went out today. No human in the loop.

Fundamental ideas resurface. They keep getting rediscovered until the market is ready. Case in point: privacy & Zcash.

So the Clarity Act didn’t pass. Plan B is for SEC & CFTC to put a framework forward. The administrative version of market structure can deliver most of the benefits. We’ll need to codify it later with Congress. We’ve taken harder punches. Onwards!

21Shares is uniquely positioned to deploy bitcoin into our bitcoin bonds: they already offer the 21Shares Stacks ETP (ASTX). With ASTX, they can easily scale the 5% STX side as their Bitcoin ETFs scale their deployments into our bonds. Institutional rails for BTC yield.