We may be in the middle of a Bitcoin winter, but the builders never left. River just released its latest Lightning report, and the network looks stronger than ever. Bitcoin is steadily becoming everyday money, whether the critics admit it or not.
Other top stories from the week include:
White House seizes control of the CLARITY Act with a March 1 deadline.
Ledn launches the first Bitcoin-backed asset-backed security.
Bitdeer dumps its entire Bitcoin treasury to fund an AI pivot.
Latest News
Adoption
Lightning Network surpasses $1.17B in estimated monthly volume and 5.22M monthly transactions in 2025, as more than 217 companies and projects actively build across the ecosystem.
Voltage launches Voltage Credit, a revolving line of credit that enables businesses to send instant Lightning payments using Bitcoin infrastructure while repaying balances in U.S. dollars.
Deblock, the European neobank, integrates Breez SDK’s Spark implementation, bringing self custody Bitcoin and Lightning speed payments to 300K users, with near instant transfers and low fees.
Regulation
Dutch voters gather more than 44,000 signatures opposing the Netherlands’ 36% unrealized gains tax, triggering a formal obligation for lawmakers to review and debate the proposal in parliament.
White House takes control of CLARITY Act stablecoin negotiations, as hopes for yield on idle balances appear off the table, narrowing discussions to activity-based rewards ahead of the March 1 deadline.
OpenClaw founder bans a contributor for mentioning “Bitcoin” on the project’s server, even though the reference was to Bitcoin’s block height as a clock rather than for transactions.
Markets
Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, reports that it owns 12.7 million IBIT shares valued at $630.6M as of December 31st, a 46% increase from the 8.7M shares reported on September 30th.
Firefish partners with the London Stock Exchange Group to provide Bitcoin-backed credit rates to 400,000 financial professionals via LSEG Workspace.
LEDN issues first investment-grade Bitcoin-backed ABS, with senior notes rated BBB- by S&P and 2x oversubscribed demand exceeding the $188M offering.
Treasury
Nakamoto signs and completes a definitive all-stock agreement to acquire BTC Inc, parent company of Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference, along with UTXO Management.
Metaplanet CEO, Simon Gerovich, pushes back on critics: “Our strategy is unchanged. We exist to accumulate Bitcoin and grow Bitcoin per share, up over 500% in 2025. We will never sell.”
Goldman Sachs discloses roughly $1.1B in Bitcoin ETF holdings within a $2.36B digital asset portfolio, as CEO David Solomon reveals he personally owns Bitcoin during remarks at Mar-a-Lago.
Mining
Paradigm publishes a report in defense of Bitcoin mining, stating that mining stabilizes power grids as flexible demand, shuts down during price spikes, and helps to reduce blackout risks in Texas.
Solo miner operating a self-hosted Umbrel node discovers a full Bitcoin block, earning over $212,000 in block rewards and transaction fees.
Bitdeer liquidates entire BTC treasury, selling 943 BTC from reserves and 189 newly mined coins, reducing holdings to zero as capital shifts toward data center expansion and AI cloud infrastructure growth.
Politics
John Deaton, former US Senate candidate, blasts Sam Bankman-Fried’s reported pardon push, calling him a crook and thief who stole life savings to fund political influence and branding efforts.
President Trump raises global tariffs to 15% a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 that he exceeded his authority by imposing sweeping import taxes without congressional approval.
Bet on the Biggest Issues in Bitcoin
One of the hottest debates in Bitcoin right now is over governance.
On one side, Core supporters who want Bitcoin to remain neutral and open. On the other, Knots users are backing BIP-110, a proposal to temporarily restrict junk data and JPEGs at the consensus level.
Instead of yelling on X, put skin in the game.
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Right now, you can wager on whether BIP-110 will activate by September 1, 2026.
Think Knots supporters will gain momentum? Bet yes.
Think nothing ever happens? Bet no.
Put your money where your mouth is.
Bam’s 2 Sats
Bitcoin Ownership Is Rotating, Not Disappearing
This week, River published its annual 2025 Lightning data report, and the outlook paints a largely optimistic picture. Bullish Lightning, as always. I won’t recap the highlights here, but I’ll link the full report. It’s worth reading.
What caught my attention most was their update on Bitcoin’s ownership shifts in 2025, which repeats the same breakdown they shared in the 2024 report.
The Rotation Narrative
That’s where it gets interesting. Every time these charts circulate, the same reactions appear: “Bitcoin isn’t for plebs anymore.” “How are people selling everything to institutions?”
My take probably isn’t the mainstream one. This pattern begins the moment ETFs enter the market. Some argue retail loses interest, that the hype fades, that people sell just as politics warms up and banks step in. If that’s true, I’ll take the other side of that trade every time.
We keep hearing that Bitcoin is in its IPO moment. That OGs are dumping. That early believers are cashing out.
It feels like a strange coincidence that the most convicted holders would suddenly exit the hardest money ever created… just as fiat continues inflating with no end in sight.
More likely? Some of these OGs are the very ones fueling institutions’ headfirst dive into Bitcoin. Maybe they took some chips off the table, but they stayed in the game through ETFs and treasury companies. Capital is reshuffling under a different wrapper.
But the idea that “everyone is selling” while institutions and even nation states are accumulating?
That sounds like lazy analysis to me.
Zooming In on the Data
If you actually zoom in on addresses holding 0.1 BTC or more, the picture becomes a lot more nuanced.
Retail is still here. The “plebs” are still here.
Maybe our pockets aren’t as deep as the institutions now entering the arena. But let’s be honest, many OGs were already holding bags that looked institutional.
What we’re likely seeing is rotation.
The DCA army stacking every week or month simply hasn’t had enough time to match the scale of early whales who rotated over the past two years.
That doesn’t mean they’re gone, it just means size takes time.
And let’s not forget, institutional pockets aren’t infinite either.
As the number of Bitcoiners continues to grow, it’s ultimately just a matter of time.
- Bam
