The concept of "Summer Doldrums" does not exist in bitcoin. Bitcoin trades 24/7/365. Individuals, companies and nation states alike are coming to their own conclusions about what bitcoin is and how it fits into their portfolio. And companies are pushing products at times when most people in the West take their Summer vacations. This week is a prime example of "bitcoin never sleeps". There have been a number of developments happening, both good and bad (depending on your own particular view on bitcoin), that you should all be aware of.

Unfortunately for the German people, their government is making what will come to be recognized as one of the biggest bag fumbles in human history. Since June 17th the German government has been selling off blocks of bitcoin that it previously seized with a bulk of the selling coming in the last week alone. At the beginning of their selling spree they held close to 50,000 bitcoin and, as it stands today, they currently have a little over 18,100 left in their possession.

This is a move only matched by the US government, which has auctioned off almost 200,000 bitcoin since 2014 (including some earlier this year). These are the type of moves that make one think that these governments have a.) no idea what they're doing and b.) don't understand how transformative bitcoin could be for their treasuries over the long-term. Again, epic bag fumbles that will be laughed at in history. The German government is selling bitcoin at a time when it is becoming abundantly clear that the Eurozone economy is weak, getting weaker, and dragging the euro down with it. They are selling the best money humans have ever come into contact with for a steaming pile of shit. Bold strategy.

Meanwhile...

Investors in the US have been piling into the bitcoin ETFs. Presumably to take advantage of the price dip, which may or may not be attributed to the German government's unloading of bitcoin over the past week. Here's a crazy stat that highlights just how "in demand" bitcoin exposure is compared to other assets in the TradFi world at the moment.

It seems like this week is proving that the smart money and people exist outside of the governments that think they know what's best for all of their subjects. If your government is selling bitcoin and forsaking the future of your country by giving up a once-in-humanity opportunity to secure a material portion of the bitcoin supply it would be a wise decision to not depend on them and work hard to secure a better future for yourself by buying and holding bitcoin in cold storage for you and your family.

Lastly, there was some major news out of the bitcoin mining sector earlier this morning. Block announced their first customer of their bitcoin mining ASIC chips, Core Scientific.

Block will be supplying Core Scientific with ~15 EH/s of new 3 nanometer ASIC mining chips. Core Sci is the first company to publicly partner with Block to get these ASICs to market. A project that has been years in the making. This is a MASSIVE deal because the market for ASICs is currently hyper centralized with Bitmain owning a lion's share of the market and MicroBT in a distant second place. The market has been desperate for some competition at the ASIC layer and Block's entry is extremely welcome. Especially considering the fact that they will be open-sourcing a lot of their products, which should make it considerably easier for miners to create environment-specific set ups. Meaning they will be able to modify their operations to easily adapt to their specific environment, whether that environment be predominately driven by the local climate, the particular type of power deal they are engaged in, or a combination of the two.

From what I understand, Core Scientific has been testing the chips in retrofitted form factors put out by other manufactures. The word on the street is that they will eventually design and create new form factors that are specific to the Block 3nm chip.

As with anything new in the world of bitcoin mining hardware, we are cautiously optimistic that this could be a very positive catalyst for the mining sector to help drive competition, decentralization, and more transparency, which are all desperately needed. We'll only find out once these things are plugged in and hashing for a considerable period of time.

It's a great week to be a bitcoiner and a terrible week to be a nation state dumping bitcoin.

Final thought...

Time for the boys to hang out with their great grandmother.