GM

It’s Arsen, bringing you the 11th edition of TLDR - the newsletter that keeps you informed AND entertained.

First, happy Sunday to 1,346 of you reading today. I appreciate every single one of you. Even you, the weird guy in the back, even you.

My back is killing me today. I must’ve slept in a bad position. Send advice pls.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Here’s what I got for you this week:

• Bitcoin massacred the bears in Q1

• The U.S. Dollar has new competition in town: BRICS-bucks

• Easter Egg: Bitcoin Whitepaper on every Mac computer

Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 38 seconds

BITCOIN Q1: BULLS ARE IN CONTROL

It looks like the bears are hibernating. In fact, it looks like they’re in a coma because Q1 was pure rocket fuel for Bitcoin.

And I’m not talking about price only - the fundamentals are as strong as ever. Here’s why you should be bullish:

1. Bitcoin is up ∼70% since the beginning of the year. Even Goldman Sachs highlighted it as the best-performing asset of the year.

2. The Lightning Network growth is exploding. The total public channel capacity is ∼3,500 BTC. To give some perspective, a popular LN wallet, ‘Wallet of Satoshi,’ is currently processing over 28,000 daily payments. Yes, that’s DAILY

3. Hash. No, not the kind you smoke. The kind that keeps your sats secure. As I’m writing this looking for the perfect meme, the Bitcoin hashrate has hit another ATH at 250 EH/s (FYI: that’s a lot of hashes)

4. The number of addresses with a non-zero balance recently reached an ATH of ∼ 44,232,000. This means people are flocking to Bitcoin and stacking like no tomorrow.

5. The whales are confident. Saylor bought $150 million worth of Bitcoin. This means he now owns almost 1% of the total supply.

So yeah, you should be bullish.

Let us pray for bears.

THE SLOW COLLAPSE OF THE U.S. DOLLAR

Ladies and gentleplebs, meet BRICS.

This cute boyband-looking crew are the leaders of the biggest emerging economies.

BRICS is an acronym for five leading emerging economies: Brazil 🤝 Russia 🤝 India 🤝 China 🤝 South Africa. There are other countries too, but we don’t talk about them. Just like no one talks about background dancers.

It was founded way back in 2009 to counterbalance the U.S. global hegemony. So, why are we talking about it now?

When the Ukraine war started, the U.S. cut off Russia from global trade and seized its foreign assets. This spooked a lot of nations and got them asking: why hold USD-denominated assets if the U.S. can just take them by force?

The Dollar is the U.S.'s most powerful weapon, but the BRICS are finally stepping up to Uncle Sam with a big ‘NAH BRO.’ Last week, Brazil and China agreed to settle bilateral trade in their own currencies. Bye Dollar!

But it doesn’t end there. Saudi Arabia (shoutout to my two Saudi readers), the biggest oil exporter in the world, wants to join our new favorite boy band. And yes, you guessed it: the middle eastern country won’t be doing their oil trade in the petrodollar.

But most importantly, it looks like the BRICS nations are cooking up their own currency: BRICKbucks.

Okay, maybe they won’t call it that, but I heard Matt and Marty say this on Rabbit Hole Recap and liked how it sounded. They plan to back their new currency with gold and other commodities. This isn't good for the U.S. dollar, backed solely by central bankers’ tears.

Let me drive the point further: the BRICS contribute over 31% of global GDP, while the G7 (the rival boyband from the West) share has fallen to 30%. Uh-oh.

We’re not talking about some minor league player here - BRICS is a significant threat to the U.S. hegemony.

But which one is better: BRICS’s Cuckbucks 2.0 or U.S.’s Cuckbucks Classic?

Well, that’s like choosing between diarrhea and solid poop: both are sh*t

Anyways, I’m grateful I have Bitcoin. The world needs a counterbalance to the current financial surveillance panopticon.

Sorry to interrupt your reading. I have something you don’t want to miss.

I've written a ‘Bitcoin as Money’ research paper for my university. I’ve only shared it with my professor and kept it private until now.

Share TLDR with 1 person, and I will send you the research paper.

IS TIM COOK SATOSHI?

What’s a better way to celebrate Easter than hunting for some Bitcoin Easter eggs? Overeating chocolate is a close second, though.

Here’s an Easter egg: every new Apple Mac computer running macOS Catalina or newer comes with a copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper.

And no, I don’t mean a physical copy inside the box. It’s deep in the system files.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

1. Open the Terminal

2. Paste open/System/Library/Image\Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

3. Get yo mind blown

Crazy, I know. It’s been there since 2018. It took us five years to notice this. 🤡

I showed this magic trick to a few normie friends. They were not impressed. Oh well.

So how did the whitepaper end up on every Mac?

Allegedly, someone at Apple found this “bug” and filed it as an issue to be fixed. Little did they know, they assigned it to the same developer who put it there in the first place. And what did he do? Nothing. Nada. Niente.

This discovery is even weirder because the whitepaper was discovered on April 5th, Satoshi’s birthday. If you didn’t believe in fate….well, now you do.

Remember guys: bitcoiners are everywhere, even inside multi-billion companies like Apple (inb4 rumors that Tim Cook is Satoshi).

And to the plebchad who pulled this off (I know you're reading this), I salute and respect you. 🫡

I used to be an Apple hater, but now I’ve changed. Here’s my new OS ranking:

Windows: ⭐

Mac: ⭐⭐

Dogsh*t: ⭐⭐⭐

Linux:⭐⭐⭐⭐

This week in a meme

Choose wisely, anon.

Credit: @TheBTCTherapist

Job of the week

MyPrimerBitcoin (‘My First Bitcoin’ in Inglese), a Bitcoin education NGO based in El Salvador, is seeking a Country Manager.

This is one of those jobs where you can ACTUALLY say that you’re changing the world for the better. No, Becky, you doing social media for eco-friendly dog collars doesn’t matter.

¿Hablas español? Well, this might be your future job.

From the archive

As I mentioned above, April 5th was Satoshi’s Birthday. Make no mistake; Satoshi didn’t choose this date randomly.

On April 5th, 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which made it illegal for American citizens to own gold.

Satoshi knew precisely what he was doing.

Fiat currencies are dying. ☠️

Your purchasing power is melting away like an ice cube. 🧊

Bitcoin fixes this. But you already knew that.

That’s why I DCA into Bitcoin with Relai - THE best place to stack sats. Yes, I said it. Fight me. Here’s why I think it’s the best (in a meme, of course):

But I work there, so I’m biased. Try it out for yourself by clicking relai.me/baggins.

Use the code BAGGINS to get 0.5% off your fees on ALL purchases forever.

And if you find a better app, let me know.

That’s it for this one.

If you like what you read, please do “add to address book” or reply to this to this email (it helps with email deliverability). If you don’t, you can unsubscribe below.

See you next Sunday,

Arsen

PS: Enjoy the newsletter? Please forward it to bitcoiner. It only takes 5 seconds. Writing it takes me 5 hours.