Bitcoin news April 2023: The good, the bad, and the HODL

Welcome to the 6th edition of our monthly Bitcoin news wrap-up.

Last month was all about surging adoption and regulatory changes.

Keep reading to see what happened in the bitcoin industry during April 2023.

Top Events

• The European Union became the first major jurisdiction to pass comprehensive crypto laws. The new crypto licensing regime called Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) will come into effect from mid-2024.

• The Ethereum ‘Shanghai’ upgrade introduced the ability of validators to withdraw their stake. Previously it was locked in the Beacon Chain.

• Global crypto exchange traffic is down 25% globally since August 2022, reflective of a retail exodus from the sector. It declined 33% in the US. India is an outlier, growing by 28% since August. The complete lack of retail interest makes this year’s price movement even more impressive.

Lightning Network Updates

• Former President of PayPal and Head of Facebook Payments, David Marcus, launched the Lightspark Platform, a payment gateway for bitcoin payments on the Lightning Network. Now businesses can send and receive payments, build novel payment experiences and create new business models.

• Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong commits to integrating the Bitcoin Lightning Network into Coinbase.

• Strike CEO Jack Mallers presented at the Bitcoin Policy Summit, a conference exploring Bitcoin as a strategic opportunity for the United States

Bitcoin Mining

• Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) released a viral response video to the NY Times ‘hit piece’ on bitcoin mining.

• Russia has overtaken Kazakhstan to become the second-largest cryptocurrency mining country in the world with 1 gigawatt of mining capacity.

• Texas Senate committee moves forward on bill removing incentives for crypto miners. The State has become one of the biggest bitcoin mining regions globally due to a bunch of friendly policies in the past. That may soon change.

• Sweden, the last remaining stronghold of bitcoin miners in Europe, is abolishing tax incentives for data centers in July – essentially killing the bitcoin mining industry in the region.

• The Kingdom of Bhutan has confirmed it has been quietly mining bitcoin for years. This makes Bhutan one of the only countries in the world to publicly run a state-owned bitcoin mine along with El Salvador. The exact scale of Bhutan’s crypto mining operation still hasn’t been disclosed but import records show something very unusual - in a normal year the country’s inbound trade is dominated by gasoline, steel, and rice. Now, "processing units" (chips) are its most valuable import.

Best Articles

• The Last Money is perhaps not a video for beginners but if you do know a bit about bitcoin you might enjoy it. Suffice to say, it's a little bit out there but I’m finding it hard to say anything in it is wrong.

• The ‘Introduction to blockchain addresses’ is a nice intro to some of the more technical aspects of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. If you’ve ever wondered about blockchain addresses, public-private keys, EOA’s, smart contracts, or the ever ubiquitous phrase, “not your keys, not your crypto,” then this report is for you.

• A (free) report from author Tuur Demester about the state of bitcoin in the second quarter of 2023, including a good section on how to build a position in Bitcoin.

Macro and Politics

• The travails of the United Kingdom continued in April when their inflation print came in over 10%, again. The big contributors were energy and food.

• The top 1,000 US stocks are up 6.2% in 2023. All of these gains came from the 7 platform stocks: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Tesla.

• Crypto adoption tends to be higher in countries with a) capital restrictions, b) financial instability, and c) political instability. In Turkey and Argentina, the two countries topping the crypto adoption list, the annual inflation rate in 2022 was 64.2% and 94.8%, respectively. Interestingly, adoption in Australia was above the global average.

Meme of the month