This is Nick Szabo.

He’s a cryptocurrency legend who some people believe is Satoshi Nakamoto.

But I'd never heard of him until he broke a 5 year Twitter silence last month. So I spent hours digging into his incredible story.

Here's 7 reasons he’s a bitcoin legend: 1. He invented Bit Gold in 1998 (One of bitcoin's direct predecessors)

It used proof-of-work puzzles, timestamping, Byzantine fault tolerance, and a growing chain of cryptographic challenges.

Many of the things bitcoin uses today originated in his design 10 years earlier.

Bitcoin just hit a historic milestone.

The network's difficulty rose to levels that are the equivalent of 1 zettahash of hashrate for the first time.

Here's how you can reverse engineer hashrate from any difficulty level (most bitcoiners don’t know this) 🧵👇 There are multiple ways to measure bitcoin's hashrate, each with different time windows.

You’ll often see hashrate estimated using an average of different sets of block times, like:
- 144 blocks (~24 hours)
- 1,008 blocks (~7 days)

and even 4,320 blocks (~30 days).

Strategy's Q2 earnings just answered the biggest question on Wall Street: are they finally eligible to enter the S&P 500?

And when will they get into the index?

🧵👇 The biggest hurdle for Strategy's inclusion into the S&P500 has been FASB accounting rules which did not allow for bitcoin to be marked at fair value and for the subsequent gains to be accounted for in GAAP income.

But that all changed on January 1st 2025 with new rules.

Are you confused about all the different MSTR preferred shares?

You're not alone.

They just announced a 4th preferred stock (STRC) that's different from all the others, and it’s the largest US IPO of 2025!

I'll explain all 4 and what makes STRC unique 🧵👇 First, what are preferred shares?

Think of them as stocks that act more like bonds. You get regular cash payments (dividends) and if the company goes bankrupt, you get paid before regular stockholders.

But you usually don't get voting rights.

MSTY is a fund that markets a 89% yield by selling options on MSTR stock.

You will never find a clearer example of financial engineering fooling people.

This thread is going to piss a lot of people off (but it's true)

🧵👇 MSTY uses a three-pronged synthetic strategy to generate income:

- Synthetic long exposure (long call + short put)
- Short-dated call selling (0–15% out-of-the-money, 1-month or shorter expirations)
- Holds US treasuries

But here’s what's hidden in the small print...

I'm a bitcoin bull, but I have to be honest:

History shows a surprising pattern of price action after major psychological levels.

$10→$100→$1K→$10K→$100K

I analyzed what bitcoin did after hitting each of these, so you can prepare for what might come after $100k 👇🧵 My methodology was simple, so anyone can follow along:

1. Mark first time BTC reaches a milestone price
2. Record last time BTC was at that price
3. Track lowest/highest prices from the milestone price
4. Calculate max % gains and drawdowns from the milestone price

My wife would have no idea how to access our BTC if something happened to me.

This inheritance problem alone challenges the self-custody purist position.

Here's a different approach to custody that accounts for human and systemic risks that everyone should at least consider: 2/9 Even I, deeply embedded in the bitcoin industry, find long-term self-custody daunting.

I have calendar reminders every quarter to check my seed backups.

The mental overhead is not that significant, but the stress from being a single point of failure for the family is.

In 1953, the Czechoslovak government legally stole the life savings of its citizens overnight.

My grandfather was 20 when it happened and it impacted him so much that he would still talk to me about it 50 years later.

Here's how it all went down:🧵👇 The Czechoslovak government faced tough economic challenges after World War II.

High inflation and an imbalance between consumer demand and supply, caused by the continuation of the rationing system from WWII, were creating major economic problems.