GM.

Welcome to Bitcoin Therapy. We’re like the Swiss train of Bitcoin newsletters - reliable and always on time.

First, happy and relaxing Sunday to 1,811 of you reading today.

There are fewer readers than last week because I deleted people who don’t open my emails (if you don’t open them, I assume you consider them spam).

Unfortunately, some email providers don’t tell me if you open my emails, so please reply to this email to let me know if you want to keep receiving my emails.

Alright, here’s what we got for you this week:

• The SEC pressures Coinbase to delist all sh*tcoins

• This crypto company is a literal money printer

• MicroStrategy sells $750M to buy Bitcoin

Estimated read time: 2 minutes and 54 seconds

THE REGULATORS WANT COINBASE TO GO BITCOIN ONLY

BREAKING: THE SEC ARE BITCOIN MAXIMALISTS!!!1

Well, not quite. But they did ask Coinbase to delist ALL sh*tcoins, which essentially means going Bitcoin-only.

Coinbase said ‘no.’

So the SEC sued them.

Here’s how it went down behind the scenes:

But why are Gary and the crew so against Coinbase trading sh*tcoins?

Well, they believe every altcoin except bitcoin is security (I wrote about it here).

And now Coinbase is fighting the SEC harder than an 11-year-old whose Play Station 5 is being taken away by their mom.

Two reasons why:

1/ Coinbase directly invests in assets listed on their platform

There’s a little know fact that Coinbase also has an investment arm ‘Coinbase Ventures.’

A Twitter (not calling it X) user ‘Pledditor’ found a clip of Brian Armstrong visibly squirming when asked if Coinbase Ventures invests in projects they also list for trading for retail users.

Pledditor then reviewed Coinbase Ventures’ entire portfolio and found 30 projects that are both in their investment portfolio and listed on Coinbase. Oopsie.

Not a good look, Brian.

2/ Coinbase makes $$$ off people gambling on speculative assets

Here’s Coinbase’s trading volume for Q2 2023

1. Bitcoin: 40%

2. Ethereum: 23%

3. Other crypto assets: 38%

Now, I am no mathematician, but it looks like most of the trading on CB is altcoins.

Of course, Coinbase would fight back. No sh*tcoin trading = no business

Anyways, this is what you get when you play with unregistered securities.

Remember: Bitcoin, not crapto

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THIS CRYPTO COMPANY IS SWIMMING IN CASH

There’s one crypto company that will make other companies look like cute hobbies.

I’m talking about Tether - the company behind the controversial stablecoin USDT.

The stablecoin provider came in swinging their big cojones and released their Q2 attestation this week. Turns out it’s an absolute money printer.

Here’s everything you need to know:

1. Profits were $1 billion for Q2. Compare this with Goldman Sachs (a legacy bank with 150-year history), which made $1.2 billion in Q2

2. Tether pulled a move straight outta MicroStrategy's playbook and bought 2,310 BTC, increasing their total stack size to 55,008 BTC ($1.67bn)

3. 85% of its reserves are “liquid” and ready to be deployed to stack more sats

The crazy part? They’re doing this with just 52 employees (source: LinkedIn). For comparison, Goldman Sachs has 48,000 employees.

So how does Tether make so much money?

Their business model is simple. It consists of 2 steps:

1. People who use UST are essentially loaning Tether US Dollars at 0%

2. Take this money and earn a juicy 5% yield on US Treasuries, which they hold a bunch of

This model didn’t work when interest rates were low. The Fed has to pay up now that the rates have increased significantly.

And Tether is deep into US Treasuries. Like balls deep. 

In fact, they hold more U.S. Treasuries than Australia, the UAE, and Spain. Tether went from an "unbacked ponzi" to a hyper-profitable business overnight.

I guess operating as a shady pseudo-central bank worked out well for them.

^{IMPROVE YOUR SH*TCOIN DUNKING SKILLS}

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As you know, there’s a lot of shit-slinging happening in both camps. But not Phil. Phil is built different - he dives deep (and I mean DEEP) into the following questions:

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MICROSTRATEGY NOW OWNS 52,800 BTC

“Analytics? F*ck that. Let’s buy a sh*tton of Bitcoin and become an ETF!”

This is probably the conversation that happened at the MicroStrategy HQ in 2020 when they first decided to buy Bitcoin.

And that’s still the plan, as the company bought Bitcoin for the 2943rd time, according to their Q2 earnings call.

Here are the deets:

• Bought 12,333 BTC in Q2. And then an additional 467 BTC after Q2 ended (because why not)

• Revealed a $24.1M loss in Q2 from Bitcoin holdings (FYI, this is down from a $917.8M loss in Q2 of 2022)

• Total Bitcoin stack: 52,800 BTC (~$4.52B)

But that’s not all.

MicroChadegy also announced they plan to sell $750M of their stock to buy more Bitcoin.

Again, I am no mathematician, but that's a lot of sats.

And here I am with my 0.1 BTC 🥲

THIS WEEK IN A MEME 📅

Mike, pls.

FROM THE ARCHIVE 📁

Are you having fun, Joe?

PATIENT REVIEW 🧠

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See you next Sunday,

Bitcoin Therapy Team

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