🟠 BTC vs Gold

First time reading? I’m Jordan, and this is The Bitcoin Minimalist. Every Tuesday & Thursday, we scour 100s of sources to bring you need-to-know Bitcoin insights.

Good morning — Jordan here.

Happy Tuesday to the 19,650 Minimalist members reading today. 👋 

Today we’re covering:

• $330M Bitcoin stolen in social hack

• Lutnick says Bitcoin is commodity, not currency

• Morgan Stanley and Schwab planning Bitcoin integration

• And everything else you need to know.

Estimated read time: 2 minutes and 59 seconds

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

🏅 Commerce Secretary says Bitcoin should be treated like gold. Howard Lutnick reaffirmed Bitcoin's status as a commodity and suggested including it in national economic metrics. A new investment accelerator also aims to help U.S. miners cut energy costs and build infrastructure near gas fields.

🏦 Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab plan to launch spot Bitcoin trading amid eased U.S. regulations. The SEC and Federal Reserve have rolled back key restrictions, prompting both firms to accelerate Bitcoin integration, with Morgan Stanley targeting E*Trade and Schwab aiming for rollout within 12 months.

📊 Bitwise projects Bitcoin hitting $1M by 2029, driven by ETF inflows and potential U.S. government demand. Research head André Dragosch sets a $200K base case for 2025, rising to $500K with sovereign adoption, as institutional interest continues reshaping Bitcoin’s market cycle.

🇺🇸 Brian Morgenstern reveals U.S. plans for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve are accelerating. On TFTC, he outlines how Trump’s administration reversed anti-Bitcoin policies, is exploring bit bonds, seized assets, and federal land leases to accumulate BTC, and aims to embed Bitcoin so deeply it becomes politically untouchable.

⚙️ Peter Todd’s proposal to lift Bitcoin's OP_RETURN data limit sparks major backlash. While developers argue it improves efficiency for sidechains and bridges, critics fear it dilutes Bitcoin's monetary focus and opens the door to altcoin-like bloat, reviving debates on decentralization and core protocol values.

📊 Bitcoin surged 50–84% during three past periods when low leverage, strong retail sales, and hawkish Fed signals aligned. Key rallies occurred in 2021, 2023, and early 2024, with gains triggered by surprising economic data and tight monetary policy indications from Fed Chair Powell.

💸 An elderly U.S. citizen lost $330M in Bitcoin in a social engineering heist on April 28, 2025. The stolen 3,520 BTC was laundered via over 300 wallets and 20+ exchanges, then partially converted to Monero, making recovery nearly impossible, investigators said.

🎬 Lebul acquires exclusive rights to James Howells' $800M lost Bitcoin story. The media firm will produce a docuseries, podcast, and social content chronicling Howells’ 12-year quest to recover a hard drive buried in a Welsh landfill since 2013, blending tech drama with environmental and legal themes.

IN THE LOOP

• A Bitcoin price model suggests BTC could reach $351,046 in 2025 if its historical 6x rally per 40% network age increase holds.

• Coinbase urged the Supreme Court to block the IRS’s bulk crypto data collection, calling it an unconstitutional overreach violating user privacy.

• Semler Scientific bought 165 Bitcoin for $15.7 million, raising its total holdings to 3,467 BTC valued at $330 million.

• Bitcoin’s next major adoption wave may come from AI agents needing scalable, credit-risk-free micropayments, best enabled by the Lightning Network.

• Metaplanet will launch a Florida subsidiary and raise $250 million to double its Bitcoin holdings to 10,000 BTC, following a Strategy-like treasury model.

The most clicked link in our last newsletter was Arizona passing two bills allowing up to 10% of public funds to be invested in Bitcoin and crypto.

MACRO & INDUSTRY

• Bunq, Europe’s second largest bank, has launched a Bitcoin investment feature.

• Grayscale launched a new ETF, BCOR, to track companies using Bitcoin in their treasuries, amid rising corporate crypto adoption in 2025.

POLL

TUESDAY’S POLL RESULTS

What’s your take on the U.S. controlling 75% of global Bitcoin hashrate?

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏗️ Strategic advantage for Bitcoin’s future (38%)

🟨🟨⬜️️⬜️️⬜️ 🧨 Too much power in one place (31%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌎 Other countries need to catch up (22%)

🟥⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷‍♀️ Doesn’t really matter (9%)

🏗️ Strategic advantage for Bitcoin’s future: “Complete dominance.” — Benjamin

🏗️ Strategic advantage for Bitcoin’s future: “Bitcoin should be a big part of the US financial system.” — Chris

🧨 Too much power in one place: “It's a risk. Geo centralization diminishes the power of compute decentralization. Should anything happen to the US power grid (like it has to Texas) the hashing power and hashing cost, thus the transaction cost, could be the thing that goes to the moon instead of the BTC value.” — Dave

🌎 Other countries need to catch up: “More mining the better for everyone.” — Liz

🤷‍♀️ Doesn’t really matter: “Nation states will catch up. The USG would have a hard time destabilizing the network through miner capture.” — Avery

CHARTS & DATA

Ascending Triangle - Bitcoin has now broken out of an ascending triangle pattern on shorter time frames.

Cycle Low Multiple - Bitcoin is lagging above past eras. The price is now 6.15x higher than its low before the halving. The last two cycles before this one were at 17.36x and 11.60x this many days after the halving.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

MORE FROM BITBO

The Bitcoin Minimalist is run by Bitbo. Browse our most popular pages across our sites:

Bitbo Pro: Analytics & intelligence to supercharge your Bitcoin investing & trading.

Bitbo Charts: Useful Bitcoin charts, featuring on-chain metrics and other Bitcoin analysis.

Bitbo Store: Shirts, hats, hoodies, mugs, and other merch for Bitcoiners.

Bitbo Dashboard: View live price action, monitor on-chain data, and track key economic indicators - all for free.