Two reads worth your time this week, and what they mean for
@LQWDTech
1. Is the Bitcoin bear market over?
@APompliano makes the case: BTC took a Fed hike, a failed Clarity Act vote and $100 oil in one week and still printed an eight-month high (~$84.5k as I write this). Timmer, Willy Woo and the 50-week average all point to a cycle low. My read: the worst is likely behind us, the path will not be straight, and I would rather own the rails than trade the chop.
2.
@BlackRock’s new paper, The Machine-Native Economy: "AI represents machine-native intelligence, while digital assets represent machine-native money." Their words. Agents transacting around the clock in sub-cent amounts need rails built for machines; cards and ACH are not it. The paper never mentions Lightning or L402. It leans on stablecoins and x402. But its own cited research finds AI models prefer stablecoins for spending and bitcoin for holding and let’s not forget yesterday’s announcement of Lightning being merger for x402 (link below in comments). That is the opening: Lightning is the one rail where the money agents want to hold is the money they settle in and can now traverse in x402 and L402.
3.
$LQWD: ~267 BTC unencumbered, no debt, roughly US$22.5M at today's price. Market cap at C$0.85 is roughly US$19M. Zero value for 18 routing nodes, 3.04M payments and 3,188 BTC routed (live:
lqwdtech.com/lightning-nodes…), and zero value for LQWD AI and the agent endpoints. Five years of building, not a pivot. Not advice. Do your own work but I like the blue sky ahead…
Paper:
blackrock.com/us/individual/…
Pomp:
pomp.substack.com/p/is-the-b…