The Bitcoin Network was never designed to replace credit card systems like Visa or Mastercard, or settlement rails like SWIFT. It was built as a medium of exchange free of centralized authority—a network of the people.
Think of Layer 1 as the underlying barter system: final, scarce, and settlement-grade. Layer 2 networks are the commerce and e-commerce layers built on top of it, just as Visa, Mastercard, and SWIFT ride atop the fiat base layer of central bank money and correspondent banking. And as a network of the people, we are fully capable of constructing those higher-layer systems ourselves. That Bitcoin is a Layer 1 protocol does not mean we cannot spend it effectively on a Layer 2 network.
BlackRock wants to sell you Bitcoin with a safety net.
It filed today for the iShares Bitcoin Managed Protection ETF, ticker PBIT. It buys and sells call options on IBIT in three overlapping monthly tranches, each with a cap on the upside and roughly a 10% loss limit on the downside.
The fee and the exchange are still blank, the caps get set tranche by tranche, and it isn't effective yet.
The guy running the @PalantirTech fellowship says they want it copied. Colleges should take that seriously since 9.3 million federal student loan borrowers were in default as of June on $234 billion.
Starting this Thursday, I'm launching the Lux Wire Company Spotlight, a deep dive into the companies putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets.
Each one covers the people running it, how it got here, every preferred it has issued, and what it's getting right for Bitcoin.
No. 1 is Strategy this Thursday. Others will follow later.
Metaplanet is handing a tiny Nasdaq ad company 2,100 Bitcoin and taking control of it in return. Five year lockup on every share. Superplanet looks like the US version of what they built in Tokyo.
Super League stockholders have approved every proposal at last week's annual meeting, including:
✅ Issuance of common stock and warrants to Metaplanet
✅ Name change to Superplanet, Inc. ($SLE -> $SUPA)
✅ Increase in authorized preferred shares from 10m to 100m
At closing, Metaplanet will contribute 2,100 BTC + $2.5m USD in exchange for 44.86m common shares, 100 shares of Strategic Alliance Preferred Stock, and common stock warrants representing up to ~$3.4b of potential equity capital.
Based on the ~3.0m Super League shares outstanding as of September 29, Metaplanet would own ~93.7% of Superplanet's common stock at closing. All shares to be held by Metaplanet are subject to a five-year lock-up.
The Strategic Alliance Preferred carries no preferred dividend or liquidation preference; its purpose is governance. While Metaplanet holds it, Metaplanet's consent is required for charter amendments, mergers or changes of control, and designation of a board majority.
As outlined in the proxy, Superplanet intends to grow BTC per share primarily by issuing senior, non-convertible perpetual preferred stock rather than debt.
Metaplanet will also hold a 24-month right to subscribe for up to $210m of unlisted Junior Liquidity Support Preferred Stock. If issued, it would pay SOFR + 4.00% and rank junior to any senior preferred Superplanet may issue, allowing Metaplanet to provide subordinated capital in support of the balance sheet.
A new chapter begins soon. 🇺🇸🪐
A richer premium can pay you less. That's my subscriber One Shot on MSTR vs ASST covered calls, out Tuesday, Oct 20 at 1:00 PM ET. I go through the two chains, who is actually trading the far strikes, and the gap between the premium on the screen and what lands in your account. ASST also has adjusted contracts, ASST1 and ASST2, that deliver 106 shares and 5 shares instead of 100. Neither company pays a dividend on its common stock, so for a covered call seller the premium is the only cash coming in along the way.
Bitcoin has one feature I wish more people understood before they panic about miners: the difficulty adjustment.
When miners pile in after a price run, blocks start arriving faster, so the network raises the bar until the pace settles back to normal. When miners switch off machines after a crash, the bar drops and the miners still running keep blocks on schedule. Nobody votes on it and nobody announces it.
That is why a hashrate drop after a selloff never worries me much. The next adjustment absorbs it, and every machine still running earns a bigger share of each block than it did before the drop.
Bitcoin Fact #14: Bitcoin resets its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, but an off-by-one quirk in Satoshi's original code only measures 2,015 of the gaps between those blocks. The quirk has never been fixed, so blocks actually aim for a hair over 10 minutes on average, about 10 minutes and 0.3 seconds. #BitcoinFactOfTheDay
Bitcoin Fact #13: Bitcoin's original addresses use an alphabet called Base58 that leaves out 0, O, I and lowercase l, so look-alike characters can't be mixed up. A built-in checksum also means a single typo almost always makes an address invalid instead of sending coins to the wrong place. #BitcoinFactOfTheDay
Strive bought another 1,223 Bitcoin from Oct 14 to Oct 16 at about $81,734 each. That brings its week from Oct 12 to Oct 16 to 4,045 BTC, and holdings to 36,818 as of Oct 16.
Source: Strive Form 8-K, Oct 19, 2026 sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
Strategy bought 267 BTC from Oct 12 to Oct 18 for $22.1M at an average of $82,900, taking holdings to 848,517. It funded the buy with $22.0M from selling MSTR stock and $0.1M of cash. In the same week it spent $193.1M buying back STRC preferred, about 9x the Bitcoin spend, and raised its buyback program to $3.0 billion.
Source: Strategy Form 8-K, Oct 19, 2026 sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
The buybacks will continue.
Strategy has repurchased $193M of $STRC and acquired 267 $BTC. As of 10/18/26, we hold 848,517 BTC and $5.3B of USD Assets. We have also increased the size of our Digital Credit Securities Repurchase Program from $2.0B to $3.0B. $MSTR strategy.com/press/strategy-…
Get ready for fireworks!
米国のスーパーリーグ（Super League Enterprise, Inc.、Nasdaq: SLE）の株主総会において、当社との本件取引が承認されたことをお知らせいたします。これは、当社がビットコイン・トレジャリー企業からグローバルなビットコイン・ネイティブ金融プラットフォームへと変革するうえで、重要な一歩となります。
クロージング後、スーパープラネット（Superplanet）は、当社の米国上場ビットコイン・トレジャリー・プラットフォームとして、米国資本市場への直接的なアクセスと、機動的かつ柔軟な資金調達を可能にします。
日本国内のメタプラネット証券と合わせ、世界で最も重要な二大資本市場において相互補完的なプラットフォームを有することとなり、国際的な資金調達および資本配分を可能にするとともに、ビットコイン・トレジャリー、ファイナンス、金融商品、アセットマネジメントの各分野における取り組みを推進してまいります。
当社の長期的な成長に向けた新たなマイルストーンとなります。クロージングに向けた進捗につきましては、引き続きお知らせしてまいります。