Inside Hermetica's hBTC — with Jakob Schillinger

Claude Found a Zcash Counterfeiting Bug

Kate's out sick, so Brandon flies solo. The headline: a researcher used Claude Opus 4.8 to find a counterfeiting bug in Zcash's shielded pool that could've minted unlimited coins undetectably — ZEC fell 30%. Plus a Bitcoin selloff below $60K, Strategy's quiet sale, and Lava's Bitcoin-back card. In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss: * Kate's out sick, so it's a short, solo, rapid-fire show this week. * Market check: Bitcoin slid below $60K, down 21%+ on the week, with Fear & Greed in extreme fear. * Treasury watch (busier than usual): buys from Strive (+2,500 to ~19,000 BTC), Orange BTC, Capital B, Smarter Web and DDC; sells from ProCap (-52) and Canada's Bitcoin Treasury Corp (-3.64). * Strategy sold 32 BTC (~$2.5M) — just 0.004% of its stack — yet got blamed for the selloff, even though it bought ~25,000 BTC two weeks ago. The frustrating part: Saylor stayed silent. With an avg cost near $75K, MSTR and STRC both dipped. * Lava launched a Bitcoin-back Visa: up to 5% back in BTC at partners, 3% in the US, 1% abroad, no annual or FX fees. It's a secured hybrid funded by your Lava balance — top up via bank transfer, stablecoins, or a Bitcoin-backed loan. * The big one: researcher Taylor Hornby found a critical counterfeiting bug in Zcash's Orchard pool that could've undetectably minted unlimited ZEC — and its privacy means no one can prove if it was exploited. Arthur Hayes dumped his stack. The kicker: Hornby found it using Claude Opus 4.8, which surfaced it ~25% of the time. ZEC fell 30%, with Zooko pointing to a network upgrade to restore trust. * Quick hits: the US Treasury froze Iranian leaders' accounts and seized $1B+ in stablecoins (easy to seize — unlike Bitcoin); the first Coinbase x Fannie Mae crypto-backed mortgage funded; and a crypto-tax hearing next week with seven House bills on stablecoins, mining, double-taxation, and a possible de minimis exemption. * Follow the show on X — @goodforbtc. Hosts: * Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing [https://x.com/marshallmixing] * Kate Parkman — @katemparkman [https://x.com/katemparkman] Subscribe & Follow: * goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com] * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@GoodForBitcoin] * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5U1THeUKH0kCnUHXwCm76o] * Amazon Music [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/da978fdc-d1e9-4df7-acd0-922f254184c5/good-for-bitcoin] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-for-bitcoin/id1777877674] * Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/2jjlopxd] * RSS [https://anchor.fm/s/f9f164f0/podcast/rss]

Someone Burned 107 Bitcoin

Someone moved 107 Bitcoin — nearly $8 million — out of ten-year-old, Mt. Gox-era addresses and torched it in a single burst of transactions on Monday. No note, no explanation. Brandon and Kate run the theories, then work through a packed week of treasury moves, Kraken's "native Bitcoin" yield product, and Stacks finally winning over Bitcoin Magazine. In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss: * Quick recap of Wednesday's Hermetica episode: the hBTC cap went from 50 → 75 BTC and filled in under 24 hours — again. Go watch it if you missed it. * Treasury watch: Strive adds 1,109 BTC to reach 16,500 BTC, edging past Coinbase's holdings by 8 BTC; DDC Enterprise adds 131 BTC for 2,714 total. * Strategy buys back $1.5B of its 2029 convertible bonds at ~92 cents on the dollar — trimming total debt from $8.2B to $6.7B, with $871M still reserved to fund STRC payments. * 🔥 The mystery: someone emptied five reused, Mt. Gox-era addresses (originally funded with 136 BTC back in April 2014) and sent ~107 BTC — almost $8M — to a provably-unspendable burn address, all in the same minute. Theories range from tax-loss harvesting to a vow of poverty to an AI agent gone rogue. * A New York case tries to claw back Bitcoin losses on state grounds — Brandon and Kate think it gets tossed, since Bitcoin isn't a New York-only network. * Kraken launches "Bitcoin Vaults," marketed as Bitcoin in, Bitcoin out — but under the hood it's KBTC wrapped onto the Ink network, routed through Veda vaults and Aave/Morpho strategies managed by Santora. It's CeFi yield; just be honest about the trust assumptions. * Stacks lands its biggest validation yet: UTXO Management — David Bailey's asset arm, now folded into Nakamoto, parent of Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference — becomes the inaugural participant in stacking on Stacks. Notable given Bitcoin Magazine once made Stacks ineligible for coverage over the STX token. * Quick hits: Coinbase brings back direct deposit so you can get paid in Bitcoin; SoFi becomes the first US national bank to launch its own stablecoin (SoFi USD); Cash App wires stablecoins into existing balances, so your balance can send and receive USDC across Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. * Follow the show's new handle on X — @goodforbtc — and find everything at goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com]. Hosts: * Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing [https://x.com/marshallmixing] * Kate Parkman — @katemparkman [https://x.com/katemparkman] Subscribe & Follow: * goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com] * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@GoodForBitcoin] * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5U1THeUKH0kCnUHXwCm76o] * Amazon Music [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/da978fdc-d1e9-4df7-acd0-922f254184c5/good-for-bitcoin] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-for-bitcoin/id1777877674] * Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/2jjlopxd] * RSS [https://anchor.fm/s/f9f164f0/podcast/rss]

Inside Hermetica's hBTC — with Jakob Schillinger

Brandon sits down with Jakob Schillinger, founder and CEO of Hermetica [https://hermetica.fi], on the day they raise the hBTC cap from 50 to 75 BTC — and unpack how Michael Saylor's STRC quietly became a yield engine for Bitcoin-backed dollars. In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Jakob discuss: * Jakob's origin: from running an eyeglasses business in sub-Saharan Africa to building on Bitcoin in 2016 — and why most of the world doesn't have reliable money or property rights to it. * USDh, plainly: a synthetic dollar backed by spot Bitcoin paired with a 1x futures short. ~10% historical yield, sourced from funding rates on Bybit, OKX, Bitget, and Binance via Copper and Sefu custody. * The new integration: Strategy's STRC preferred equity now flows into USDh as a second yield source alongside the basis trade. * Saylor's "financial distillation" framing: 50-vol Bitcoin → 2-vol STRC → 0-vol stablecoin — productized as USDh. * hBTC, the Bitcoin carry trade: post BTC as collateral on Zest, borrow stables at ~3-5%, deploy into USDh at 8-10%, harvest the delta, swap back into Bitcoin. ~3% net yield in pure BTC terms, on-chain verifiable. * Why a long-only Bitcoiner might pick hBTC over a stablecoin yield: cold storage stays cold storage; the unit of account never leaves Bitcoin. * The property analogy: Saylor's optionality to sell some BTC isn't a thesis change — it's the same logic as selling a 10x'd house to buy more property. Strategy stays a net buyer. * Saylor cosigned hBTC on stage at Bitcoin Vegas — unplanned. "X doing its magic," per Jakob. * 📈 The news: Hermetica just raised the hBTC cap from 50 → 75 BTC. The last cap filled in under 24 hours. Borrow-side capacity is the only constraint on opening it wider. Guest: * Jakob Schillinger — Founder & CEO, Hermetica — @jakob_btc [https://x.com/jakob_btc] * Hermetica — @HermeticaFi [https://x.com/HermeticaFi] — hermetica.fi [http://hermetica.fi] Host: * Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing [https://x.com/marshallmixing] Subscribe & Follow: * goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com] * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@GoodForBitcoin] * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5U1THeUKH0kCnUHXwCm76o] * Amazon Music [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/da978fdc-d1e9-4df7-acd0-922f254184c5/good-for-bitcoin] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-for-bitcoin/id1777877674] * Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/2jjlopxd] * RSS [https://anchor.fm/s/f9f164f0/podcast/rss]

The Feds Want 1 Million Bitcoin

A bipartisan duo just introduced a bill to codify a 1M-BTC Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law — with a mandatory 20-year holding period and self-custody protections for everyday Americans. In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss: * 🍕 Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day — 16 years since Laszlo's 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. * Strategy adds 24,869 BTC and now sits on 843,738 BTC — roughly 4% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist. * SpaceX's IPO filing reveals 18,712 BTC on the balance sheet — more than Coinbase, Strive, and even Tesla. * Tether buys SoftBank out of Twenty One (Jack Mallers' Strike-adjacent treasury vehicle) for ~$780M. * Nakamoto runs a 40-for-1 reverse split to dodge a Nasdaq delisting — Brandon exits both Nakamoto and 21 and goes Bitcoin-only. * The American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA): bipartisan support, up to 200,000 BTC acquired per year over five years, budget-neutral, 20-year lockup, quarterly proof-of-reserves, and a self-custody guarantee. * Prime Trust's bankruptcy estate sues Swan ($970M) and Strike ($150M) for clawbacks — part of 99 lawsuits aimed at the broader industry. * Glassnode: 30.2% of all Bitcoin sits in addresses with exposed public keys — mostly from address reuse. * Iran launches "Hormuz Safe," a Bitcoin-backed insurance product for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. * Galaxy Digital scores a NY BitLicense, and Minnesota authorizes banks and credit unions to offer Bitcoin custody. * We secured @goodforbtc on X — go follow and help us get verified. Hosts: * Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing [https://x.com/marshallmixing] * Kate Parkman — @katemparkman [https://x.com/katemparkman] Subscribe & Follow: * goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com] * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@GoodForBitcoin] * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5U1THeUKH0kCnUHXwCm76o] * Amazon Music [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/da978fdc-d1e9-4df7-acd0-922f254184c5/good-for-bitcoin] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-for-bitcoin/id1777877674] * Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/2jjlopxd] * RSS [https://anchor.fm/s/f9f164f0/podcast/rss]

Claude Cracked a Bitcoin Wallet

A guy who lost access to ~5 BTC for 11 years used Claude Code to recover it — and the crypto internet lost its mind. But did Claude actually break Bitcoin? Brandon and Kate unpack what really happened. In this episode of Good For Bitcoin, Brandon and Kate discuss: * Saylor and Strategy float the idea of selling some Bitcoin — and Bitcoiners are mad * Bitcoin earnings season: MARA dumps 3,386 BTC, Block adds 34, Bitfarms rebrands to Keel Infrastructure, Fold sells 1 BTC (why?) * Trump's Q1 filings reveal Coinbase, MARA, and Strategy on the buy list * Brandon launches VibeWatch (vibewatch.io [http://vibewatch.io]) — the social listening tool he wished existed for crypto * The Bitcoin Staking white paper drops: keep your BTC on L1, earn native Bitcoin yield, no slashing, exit anytime * Did Claude actually crack a Bitcoin wallet? Inside the 11-year recovery story tearing through X * Bitcoin mining is bleeding — ~20% of miners are unprofitable and MARA posts a $1B Q1 loss * Stratum V2: seven pools controlling 75% of hashrate commit to handing block-building back to individual miners * The CLARITY Act clears the Senate Banking Committee — what got compromised, what got fixed * Jane Street dumps 78% of MSTR + $1B of BTC ETFs, Charles Schwab rolls out crypto trading (no withdrawals), and Drake asks for an SBF pardon on his new track Hosts: * Brandon Marshall — @marshallmixing [https://x.com/marshallmixing] * Kate Parkman — @katemparkman [https://x.com/katemparkman] Subscribe & Follow: * goodforbitcoin.com [http://goodforbitcoin.com] * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@GoodForBitcoin] * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5U1THeUKH0kCnUHXwCm76o] * Amazon Music [https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/da978fdc-d1e9-4df7-acd0-922f254184c5/good-for-bitcoin] * Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-for-bitcoin/id1777877674] * Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/2jjlopxd] * RSS [https://anchor.fm/s/f9f164f0/podcast/rss]