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š§ El Salvador did a total 180Ā°
Therapy Recap: El Salvador after 2 years on bitcoin, 3 bull market catalysts and Coinbase adding Lightning
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GM.
Welcome to Bitcoin Therapy. The newsletter thatās like your friend whispering sweet Bitcoin knowledge into your ear. The best kind of ASMR.
First, happy and relaxing Sunday to 2,411 patients reading today. š
Just came back from a 5-day vacation in Mauritius. Just in time to send this banger to you guys. Enjoy!
Hereās what I got for you this week:
El Salvador after 2 years on Bitcoin: success story or total failure?
3 catalysts that will trigger the 2024 bull run
Coinbase finally adds Lightning. But why 5 years late?
Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 34 seconds
Before we begin, a big thank you to Stamp Seed for sponsoring this weekās email. ā¤ļø
EL SALVADORāS BITCOIN LAW: 2 YEARS LATER
Time flies so fast (especially in Bitcoin land)!
Itās been 2 years since El Salvador adopted Bitcoin.
Hereās a TLDR of how it went down:
On June 9, 2021, El Salvadorās parliament approved the āBitcoin Law,ā making the orange coin an officially recognized legal tender.
And by doing this, all eyes turned to the small Latin American country that was previously known for its worldās highest crime rate.
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Since then, El Salvador has achieved the following:
82.8% increase in tourism in 2022, making it one of the countries with the highest tourism recovery rate
El Salvadorās āvolcano bondsā are 90% this year (making them best performing in the world)
Launched country-wide Bitcoin education effort (+300,000 Salvadorians have received a Bitcoin diploma)
Increased its international credit rating from CC ā> CCC+
Removed ALL taxes on bitcoin and technology innovations
The last one is huge. Hereās what Milena Mayorga, El Salvadorsā US ambassador, had to say about it:
āEvery day, companies are calling us here at the embassy to ask us how they can transfer their operations.ā
So yeah, adopting Bitcoin worked out pretty well for El Salvador. The Latin nation went from the class clown to straight Aās student
Whatās happening in El Salvador hasnāt gone unnoticed. Other nations are following Bukeleās example:
Bhutan š§š¹
Indonesia š®š©
The Philippines šµš
Honduras šš³
But make no mistake: the global elites will resist this.
El Salvador is making people at the IMF and WEF very nervous.
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DONāT WRITE YOUR SEED PHRASE ON PAPER
I stand by the title. Why? Because securing your generational Bitcoin wealth on a piece of paper isā¦ letās just say, not very smart.
This is why I use Stamp Seed - a titanium seed storage solution.
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PS: You get 15% off your purchase with the code āTherapy15' š
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3 BULL MARKET CATALYSTS
I have no memory of what I was doing 1 year ago. But I remember exactly what our boy Big Mike Saylor said a year ago.
Saylor predicted that Bitcoin would reach $5 million per coin IF these 3 catalysts are reached:
1. Spot ETF approval ā
Big TradFI players are lining up to file for Bitcoin ETFs.
In fact, there are more ETF applicants than there were people queueing for Yeezys when they dropped the first time.
Hereās a list of current Bitcoin ETF applications:
BlackRock - $9T AUM
Fidelity - $4.5T AUM
Franklin Templeton - $1.4T AUM (the newest entrant)
Invesco - $1.5T AUM
WisdomTree - $87B AUM
VanEck - $77.8B AUM
ProShares - $65B AUM
GlobalX - $51B AUM
Grayscale - $50B AUM
Roundhill - $1B AUM
Bitwise - $1B AUM
Are you old enough to remember when these same guys were shitting on bitcoin just a few years ago? I rememba.
So what will happen to Bitcoin once ETF goes live?
Well, letās take a look at what happened to Gold when an ETF when it was introduced in 2004:
Saw $1B in inflows within the first few days
Surpassed the S&P500 Trust ETF as the worldās biggest ETF
Gold hit an ATH 8 years late
So yeahā¦a Bitcoin ETF will be pumpy.
2. Fair value accounting rules from FASB ā
And no, it doesnāt stand for āFetal Alcohol Syndromeā.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) unanimously voted to use āfair valueā accounting to report crypto assets.
āBro, who cares??ā
Hold on. This might not seem as sexy as Bitcoin ETF, but make no mistake, this is yuuge. Why? Because this will make holding Bitcoin much easier for companies.
Hereās how it worked before FASB and now:
Before: Companies were required to report bitcoin as an intangible asset on their balance sheet.
This meant that it had to be recorded and kept at the purchase price, EVEN if it went up or down. This also meant that companies had to take a loss on their books even if they didnāt sell.
Now: Companies can record their crypto assets at a fair value.
Letās look at MicroStrategy Q1 2022 as an example:
Without FASB: $131M net LOSS
With FASB: $39M net PROFIT
TLDR: it used to be a pain in the butt for companies to hold bitcoin. Now itās much easier for massive companies like Amazon and Apple to hold bitcoin
Check out https://bitcointreasuries.net/ to see in real time which public companies hold Bitcoin today.
3. Traditional bank custody of BTC ā (partially)
I say partially because most banks still donāt offer crypto custody for their clients. And those that do only offer it to āsophisticatedā institutional clients.
For example, earlier this week, 1.3Tā¬ Deutsche Bank announced they would allow clients to hold crypto at the bank.
As you can see, 1.5/3 of Saylorās bull market catalysts are already reached. It will take some time for the market to price in a Bitcoin ETF, FASB, and banks offering Bitcoin custody.
BTW, donāt let banks (or anyone else) hold your bitcoin. Hold your own keys and use an indestructible product like Stamp Seed to control your financial future.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/446258f6-0bb8-4d71-b44b-0af8a8653ca0/F6EBgd6XIAAdhsj.jpg)
COINBASE TO FINALLY ADD LIGHTNING
Coinbase officially adds Lightning! ā”ā”ā”
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Hereās what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Tweeted earlier this week:
The team did a great job digging into this, and we've made the decision to integrate Lightning. Bitcoin is the most important asset in crypto and we're excited to do our part to enable faster/cheaper Bitcoin transactions. Will take some time to integrate so please be patient.
ā Brian Armstrong š”ļø (@brian_armstrong)
3:55 AM ā¢ Sep 13, 2023
I donāt think I need to say it out loud, but this is obviously very bullish for Bitcoin. This would give Coinbaseās 100 million users an on-ramp to faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions.
More LN usage will drive more capital, developers, and entrepreneurs to build on the payment layer. And this is good because it pumps my bags (and yours too š¤).
But why is Coinbase doing this now, 5 years after LN was launched? Surely they had the resources to implement it earlierā¦
3 reasons why Coinbase is doing this now:
Brian genuinely thinks Bitcoin is the most important asset in crypto and believes in LN
They realize theyāre in the depths of the Bitcoin bear market and know they need Bitcoin to survive
Brian saw the former president of PayPal, David Marcus, on CNBC last week saying how awesome Lightning is and got FOMO
I think itās number 2 and 3. Coinbase doesnāt do anything unless it makes them money directly (like adding new dog coins).
Psstā¦Brian. Want some advice? While you guys add LN, please remove all the sh*tcoins. Their narratives will be destroyed by LN anyway. Thanks!
Anyways, congratz to Brian and Coinbase for finally capitulating and adding something that has actual real-world use cases.
RABBIT HOLE READS š³ļøā¦ā¦š
Binance.USā CEO, Head of Legal, and Chief Risk Officer have all quit within 2 weeks. I told you something shady is going on in that amateur bucket shopā¦
The CEO of Thodex (a Turkish crypto exchange) was found guilty of fraud and was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison. Lol.
Vitalik Buterinās Twitter was hacked, and $690K was stolen from his followers via an NFT phishing link. And people trust this guy with their money š¤”
THIS WEEK IN A MEME š
Mauritius was fun. Back to monk life.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE š
This legend is smiling on his yacht.
PATIENT REVIEW š§
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See you next Sunday,
Bitcoin Therapy Team
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