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On January 10th, 2009, a single tweet changed the internet.

Hal Finney posted two words, “Running Bitcoin,” and Bitcoin Twitter was born.

Seventeen years later, that same social graph has helped onboard millions of people into Bitcoin.
It has watched an asset go from zero to over two trillion dollars.

It has helped shape the political and cultural currents that put a sitting U.S. president back in office in 2024. 

Over the years Bitcoin Twitter had become a living network of education, memes, debate, and coordination. 

Now, for the first time since the authoritarian censorship of the COVID era, it feels under threat.
For months, the Bitcoin community felt the walls closing in.

Engagement was cratering and reach was vanishing.

The list of accounts you spent years curating to get the best Bitcoin content simply stopped appearing in your feed. 

If you engage with For You rage bait, your timeline fills with slop.

If you post too often, your reach evaporates. 

If you stay inside your niche, the very communities that made this platform valuable, you slowly disappear from your own social graph.

On the anniversary of Hal’s famous tweet, the Head of Product at X, Nikita Bier, finally gave us the "why." 
He claimed the community is "dying from suicide." 

The product team at X is optimizing for "unregretted user minutes" by shoving generic political rage bait and MAGA-glazing in front of everyone while shadow-banning the niche communities that built this platform. 

They have replaced the organic "simcluster,” where 90% of your feed came from people you actually chose to follow, with a homogenous soup of the lowest common denominator.

Nikita informed us that by replying "gm" or engaging too much in threads, users are hitting an invisible "reach meter" that exhausts their impressions for the day. 

In other words, if you interact with your community, the algorithm will hide your posts. 
That explanation detonated the timeline. 

The backlash to Nikita’s post was so violent that the tweets were deleted within hours.
The fallout even forced Elon Musk’s hand.

Over the weekend, Elon announced that the entire X algorithm, including all code used to determine organic and advertising recommendations, will be open-sourced in 7 days. 

This will be repeated every 4 weeks with comprehensive developer notes. 

They are even bending over backwards to appease the “crypto” community. 

Nikita announced "Smart Cashtags" that allow users to track real-time Bitcoin and crypto prices directly from the timeline. 

They went so far as to hint at in-app crypto trading.

Bitcoiners were some of the first to build decentralized alternatives like Nostr to escape the algorithm. 
But X remains the world’s town square. 

It is where Bitcoiners can directly tell central bankers to have fun staying poor. 

The algo may try to optimize us out of the front page, but Bitcoiners are used to having to fight to be heard. 

17 years later, we’re still posting every day. 

We are still running Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Twitter is Dead. Long Live Bitcoin Twitter.

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The fog of the Maduro extraction is clearing, and the "why" beyond the Trump pressers is coming into focus.

Despite the Don repeatedly saying Venezuela stole our oil, the Pentagon didn’t move on Caracas for crude.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but the quality of that oil is very low.

It is a heavy, sour crude that is high in sulphur content which only a handful of refineries worldwide can process.

In fact, by some estimates it would cost $1 trillion to upgrade the Venezuelan infrastructure just to have the country surpass Canada’s exports of 3 million barrels a day.

So, while Trump uses oil as a way to make the American people feel like they will directly benefit from the excursion, the real reason they moved was because of a convergence of three existential threats:

- Chinese control of AI-critical minerals.

- Iranian drone manufacturing on Western soil.

- Russian military integration in the Caribbean.

If Washington cared about restoring democracy, why wait 13 years into Maduro’s reign?

The military brass felt a growing strategic vulnerability less than 3 hours from Miami and felt they needed to act immediately.

But while the media focuses on rare earth elements and degraded oil infrastructure, the real prize might be sitting on a hardware wallet in Caracas.

For eight years, the Maduro regime operated a shadow financial engine designed to be unfreezable. 

Since 2018, they’ve been liquidating gold from the Orinoco Mining Arc and "washing" oil proceeds through USDT into Bitcoin.

The scale is staggering.

Intelligence reports by Whale Hunting now point to a "Shadow Reserve" of roughly 600,000 to 660,000 Bitcoin.

To put that in perspective: that is twice the size of the US government’s entire Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

It rivals the holdings of MSTR and BlackRock.

If these numbers are accurate, Maduro and his cronies have been sitting on a $60 billion life raft that will play as a lynchpin in how the negotiations play out.

Washington likely knew about this secret stash since its very inception.

Court documents now reveal that Alex Saab, the Venezuelan businessman who was the architect of this Bitcoin accumulation scheme, had been a DEA informant since 2016.

The capture of Maduro has now triggered a high-stakes interrogation with the recovery of seed phrases likely playing a critical part.

As news of this reported 600,000 BTC stockpile begins to spread, the market is currently pricing this as a massive "supply lock-up."

Bitcoin is up over $5,000 since the abduction of Maduro went down.

Under the Trump administration, the probability of a "fire sale" is near zero.

Trump campaigned on the promise of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. 

Getting Maduro to fork over the seed phrase would be an easy, budget-neutral way to triple its size overnight.

Maduro’s "unfreezable" asset could become the cornerstone of the American balance sheet with the only stack larger being Satoshi’s.

Bitcoin has always lived outside the logic of violence. 

But as Maduro is finding out, that only holds true as long as you can keep the keys in your head.

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For years, the Venezuelan regime allegedly siphoned billions in oil revenue, gold reserves, and state assets into a "shadow reserve" of Bitcoin and Tether.

New intelligence reports from HUMINT and Whale Hunting sources suggest Caracas may be sitting on a BTC stash that rivals MSTR.

Starting in 2018, the regime began an aggressive liquidation of gold from the Orinoco Mining Arc. 

Sources indicate they converted roughly $2B in gold into Bitcoin at an average price of $5,000, accumulating approximately 400,000 BTC.

At today’s prices (~$90k), that single tranche is worth $36 Billion.

The USDT Pivot As the "Petro" experiment collapsed, Caracas pivoted to USDT as a proxy for crude sales to evade sanctions. 

To avoid the risk of Tether address freezes, they "washed" those proceeds back into Bitcoin.

The Estimated Breakdown:

Gold Swaps (2018–2020): ~$45B–$50B

Oil Settlements (2023–2025): ~$10B–$15B

Mining Seizures (2023–2024): ~$500M

Total Estimated Holdings: 600,000 – 660,000+ BTC ($56B - $67B)

In an interesting twist? Court documents reveal that Alex Saab, the man who built this BTC accumulation engine, had been a DEA informant since 2016. 

Washington was watching the architecture being built in real-time.

With Nicolás Maduro now captured, the Bitcoin is not yet secured. The coming days will be a high-stakes race to locate the private keys.

Does the U.S. gain access to the hoard and add it to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, or do Maduro's cronies run away with it?

THE $60 BILLION SHADOW RESERVE: Does Venezuela Have a Secret Bitcoin Hoard? 🇻🇪

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Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Donroe Doctrine.

Under the cover of night, US Delta Force entered Venezuela, raided President Nicolas Maduro’s safehouse, and extracted both the leader and his wife. 

They are already in US custody, have landed in New York, and are preparing to face trial. 
We’re talking about a flawless execution; the CIA had an inside man and Maduro’s movements down to a tee.

Delta Force had even been training on an exact replica of that safehouse for weeks to ensure the operation was perfect.

The Message 

The US has officially signaled that it views the entirety of the Americas as its own, and it is willing to strike unilaterally to maintain that dominance. 

The United States doesn’t need a declaration of war or multinational authorization when it comes to Latin America. 

This is the backyard, and the rules are whatever Washington says they are. 

Central and South America had already been undergoing a sharp rightward shift and realignment toward the United States over the past few years. 

Now, countries like Brazil, Cuba, and Colombia are being forced to reprice political and security risk overnight.

The "Why" 

Look at the timing.
 Just hours before his capture, Maduro was photographed meeting with high-ranking Chinese diplomats who were caught completely off-guard by the raid. 

Why did this visit particularly piss off the White House?

Since 2018, Venezuela has been selling oil directly to China, bypassing the dollar, and building payment channels outside of SWIFT. 

Venezuela sits on 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves worth roughly $17 trillion. That is the largest reserve on Earth, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. 

It’s 20% of the world’s oil, and Maduro was actively using it to fund the dismantling of the petrodollar by accepting payment in yuan.

The Strategy 

Losing the petrodollar is an existential threat to the United States and the functioning of its economy. 

But by cutting off Venezuela’s ability to sell crude in currencies outside the dollar, the entire calculus changes.

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has already warned that by securing Venezuela, on top of the recent move into Guyana, Washington could soon oversee more than half of the world’s oil reserves. 

This gives the US the power to pin oil at $50 a barrel and effectively bankrupts adversaries like Russia that relie on high energy prices to survive.

The New Reality 

This is the Monroe Doctrine on steroids. 

International law be damned, the US is using kinetic force to enforce a geographic ringfence.

If the world is fragmenting into rival blocs, the Western Hemisphere is being claimed by the bald eagle.

The "DragonBear" alliance of Russia and China is being cut out of Latin American resources in real-time.

While the jury is still out on theories of a pre brokered deal, with some suggesting the US traded Venezuela for a walk away in Ukraine or Taiwan, what is undeniable is that this move places America’s vassals on a much shorter leash.

The European Enclosure 

With the Nord Stream pipeline gone, Europe became dependent on US LNG. 

But the US couldn't be self-sufficient and fully supply the EU at the same time until now. 

By seizing the world’s largest oil reserves, the US has completed the three pillar enclosure of Europe: military through NATO, trade through new EU US mandates, and now energy through Caracas.

This amounts to full control of Europe by its actual sovereign, as European leaders issue statements expressing discomfort with how international law was bypassed, while welcoming Maduro’s removal and promising only to “monitor the situation.”

The Bitcoin Angle 

So, where does Bitcoin fit?

The price barely moved on the news, but Bitcoin proved a point on the 17th anniversary of its launch. 

When kinetic action heats up, the "sovereign property" argument grows stronger.

If a sitting head of state can be removed from his home overnight, what is truly safe? 

Gold in a vault can be seized and reserves can be frozen with a single phone call. 

But Bitcoin is different. It is uncensorable and non-sovereign. 

In a world where the US is redrawing the map with Delta Force, Bitcoin remains the only asset that lives outside the logic of violence.

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In less than 30 days, silver has added roughly $1.3 trillion in nominal value.

On Friday alone, we witnessed a massive 10% jump, a rare 4-5 sigma event, that propelled silver past NVIDIA on Sunday night to become the world’s 2nd largest asset, with a market cap exceeding $4.65T.

Beyond the eye-popping move in a multi-trillion dollar asset, we are witnessing the cracking of a decades-old narrative. 

The belief that the fiat experiment could run unabated and that the world would indefinitely accept pieces of paper for real-world goods is dissolving.

Silver gave the world a massive warning on Friday: the status quo of the last 50 years, the petrodollar standard, is ending. 

The power players may try to hide it behind headlines, but they are now openly vying for control using realpolitik.

The Return of the Monroe Doctrine

In the last two months, we’ve watched the Trump administration pivot from bombing narco-speedboats in the Caribbean to launching a full-scale embargo of Venezuela. 

Trump didn’t campaign on a "hot war" in Latin America, but if you read the latest strategy papers coming out of the Pentagon, a new Monroe Doctrine is clearly in play.

The haphazard plan that began with April’s tariffs has crystallized into a subversive, strategic decoupling from China and a pursuit of complete resource control over the Americas. 

If Washington intends to weaken China while shoring up its own hemisphere, it must sever the Middle Kingdom’s access to its new favorite extraction point: Latin America.

The Metals War

China’s domestic silver mining is declining, making their reliance on Latin American silver concentrate a critical vulnerability. 

They sense what Trump is up to and have been buying everything, from iron ore to oil to silver, in order to stockpile against the threat of a full-blown trade war.

Meanwhile, the US officially designated silver as a critical mineral in September. 

This was a formal recognition of silver’s irreplaceable role in electronics, defense, and the energy transition.

That brings us back to Venezuela. 

The US has already seized two Venezuelan oil tankers and is pursuing a third. 

The initial excuse of targeting sanctioned vessels is giving way to a new reality: any Venezuelan ship may now be seized by force.

Washington launched this embargo because for years Caracas has been selling oil directly to China, bypassing the petrodollar system. 

Simultaneously, Beijing is preparing its own countermeasures: a plan to restrict silver exports starting in 2026. 

Even Elon Musk recently weighed in, tweeting his concern over silver prices; he knows he needs the metal for Tesla’s batteries, Starlink satellites, and SpaceX hardware.

A Monetary Regime Change

We are unraveling globalism in real-time. Trade is bifurcating into "Access vs. Allies."

We face a binary choice: maintain the post-1971 USD reserve structure, or devalue the currency against commodities to ensure we have the raw materials to actually build things in America again.

We cannot have both. 

If we choose to build, a neutral reserve asset like gold or Bitcoin must replace US Treasuries as the primary global reserve. 

The market is already voting: gold, silver and bitcoin are saying, "We choose building; reserve status be damned."

This is a monetary regime change. The Austrian framework of scarcity, sound money, and real price discovery is exposing the fraud of the prevailing model.

Silver is the old-world stress test. Bitcoin is the new-world one. 

As the system's fever breaks, the question for every Bitcoiner remains: when the next fracture hits, do you want exposure through paper wrappers... or do you want the thing itself?


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