Coin Market

Is Bitcoin’s future in circular economies or national reserves?

Published

6 days ago

March 27, 2025

Bitcoin is seeing unprecedented adoption with the US establishing a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” but some prominent Bitcoin advocates believe the project is getting away from its roots.

Earlier this year, Jack Dorsey, a Bitcoin proponent and founder of Twitter, said that he believed if Bitcoin becomes just a form of “digital gold” then the project has failed. He said that a national Bitcoin reserve may be “good for the nation-state, but I don’t necessarily know if it’s good for Bitcoin.”

Dorsey contended that Bitcoin needs to return to the white paper and work on becoming a form of peer-to-peer cash that can be transacted globally if it wants to become a success.

Around the world, a number of “circular Bitcoin economies” have been working at just that — developing local economies that use Bitcoin as currency in an attempt to showcase its viability and what the future of BTC can look like.

The Bitcoin white paper put forward a cash system. Source: Bitcoin.org

Bitcoin circular economies and Wall Street

The Bitcoin Federation calls a Bitcoin circular economy a “local economic ecosystem where Bitcoin (BTC) is used increasingly as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.” That is, a place where Bitcoin fulfills the three roles of currency, as it is understood.

There are diverse Bitcoin communities and circular economies all over the world, but their goal is similar in that they all believe that Bitcoin is the superior form of money and that it should be used “as a means of payment for goods and services and for settlement of other financial obligations.”

This approach of using Bitcoin as a currency diverges from the prevailing attitude in the United States, where crypto advocates view it as a reserve asset to be hoarded — akin to digital gold. President Donald Trump told the Nashville Bitcoin conference in July 2024, “Never sell your Bitcoin.”

In a March 17 lecture at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Strategy CEO and Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor likened the digital currency to an investment asset. A significant stake, per Saylor, would allow the holder — such as the United States government — to exert control over the digital economy in another iteration of “manifest destiny.”

When asked whether mass adoption by a nation like the US takes Bitcoin away from its founding principles, Isa Santos, founder of the Bitcoin Isla project in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, said:

“Yes, but that’s the beauty of Bitcoin. It’s for your enemies too.”

Stelios Rammos, the founder of Bitcoin crowdfunding project Geyserfund, said that good or bad, adoption by governments was “inevitable.”

“Bitcoin is for everyone, and its truest founding principle is being permission-less money. The adoption of Bitcoin by governments was inevitable, and if there was a button we could press to say ‘governments are banned from Bitcoin,’ then it wouldn’t be Bitcoin anymore,” he told Cointelegraph.

Still, he believes that the Bitcoin community has a core set of values that promotes grassroots adoption of Bitcoin over government welfare, adding that Bitcoin is at a stage where Bitcoiners should be more concerned about how it’s adopted rather than whether it’s adopted.

“Circular economies will have a huge role to play in bringing about a future where Bitcoin is held and used by everyday people, and not just held as a pure asset within digital vaults at large banks and governments,” said Rammos.

Still, both said that there were tangible benefits to government Bitcoin adoption. Santos said that adoption from a large country like the US could still be a positive in that many look to the US as a leader in the financial world.

Rammos said that the US adopting Bitcoin will raise awareness about the seminal cryptocurrency, which benefits the entire network and has knock-on effects for circular economies worldwide.

What does Bitcoin do for these communities?

Bitcoin circular economies are present all over the world. They have gained particular ground in developing economies where the local currency is unreliable as a store of value.

In Cuba, where inflation is runaway and salaries are at unlivable lows, Bitcoin and Bitcoin circular economies have allowed locals to protect their savings.

In rural Peru, where most people are unbanked i.e. do not have a bank account or access to financial services, Bitcoin has provided a way for locals to save their money and pay for school and everyday expenses.

There are challenges, however. Namely, Bitcoin’s notorious volatility makes it difficult to sell as an instrument for savings to rural communities, according to Valentin Popescu, co-founder of Motiv — a Bitcoin education and advocacy group in Peru.

Bitcoin communities also face challenges of growing outside the group of Bitcoin expats and enthusiasts who are already present. Bitcoin advocates flocked to El Salvador, where Bitcoin Beach provided the first prototype for a Bitcoin circular economy. However, this did not translate into locals actually using Bitcoin.

Bitcoin circular economies proliferate worldwide. Source: Geyser Fund

Aside from the victories and challenges facing these communities, many of them also offer financial education programming and community-building initiatives.

Santos said that “each circular economy has its own unique features. They have to cater to the needs of the communities that make them.” She said that one common factor among such communities is volunteering.

Bitcoin Ekasi, a Bitcoin circular economy in South Africa, supports the local Surfer Kids community project by paying coaches’ salaries in Bitcoin while simultaneously onboarding local shops and vendors to accept Bitcoin payments.

Rammos said that these communities can put lesser-known locations on the map, attracting tourism through “Bitcoin expats” who want to come to spend their Bitcoin and grow the local economy.

“Ultimately, the local populations gain from being a Bitcoin circular economy as much as the Bitcoin network benefits from having them, it’s a true symbiosis,” said Rammos.

Whether it is Wall Street or Main Street that drives Bitcoin adoption, the end goal for the organizers running these communities is to have Bitcoin fully integrated into the financial world.

Rammos concluded, “There will be a point in the hopefully not-so-distant future, where we won’t need the term circular economies anymore, it will just be the Bitcoin economy, or just, the economy.”

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Coin Market

Pump.fun launches lending platform to finance memecoin buys

Published

9 minutes ago

April 2, 2025

Pump.fun is launching a lending platform to enable users to buy memecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with borrowed cryptocurrency, the Solana-based memecoin launchpad said.

Dubbed Pump.Fi, the onchain lending protocol provides “immediate… financing for [any] digital asset,” Pump.fun said in an April 1 X post.

According to Pump.fun, borrowers pay one-third up front and the rest over 60 days. In addition, Pump.Fi will create a marketplace for lenders to buy debt. The protocol did not specify how Pump.Fi — which doesn’t do credit checks — plans to ensure repayment of undercollateralized onchain loans.

Pump.Fi will let users borrow to buy memecoins. Source: Pump.fun

Competitive market

Pump.fun has been grappling with a sharp drawdown in memecoin trading activity on Solana after several high-profile scandals — such as the LIBRA token’s disastrous launch — soured sentiment on memecoins among retail traders.

Adding onchain lending has the potential to draw more liquidity into the space, which has seen trading volumes stabilize in recent weeks, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Pump.fun has also been expanding its offerings to stay ahead of mounting competition from rival platforms.

Raydium, Solana’s largest decentralized exchange (DEX) by volume, plans to roll out its own memecoin launchpad, LaunchLab.

Other rival protocols — including Daos.fun, GoFundMeme, and Pumpkin — are also vying for a share of Solana’s memecoin market.

Number of tokens successfully “bonding” on Pump.fun each day. Source: Dune Analytics

On March 20, Pump.fun launched its own DEX — known as PumpSwap — to replace Raydium as the final home for tokens that successfully bootstrap liquidity on Pump.fun.

Switching to PumpSwap has streamlined PumpFun’s process for listing new tokens and cut costs for users, it said.

PumpSwap also plans to start distributing a portion of trading fees to coin creators, according to Pump.fun co-founder Alon.

The newly launched DEX has already captured a more than 10% share of Solana’s trading volumes and even overtaken Raydium — along with every other Solana app — in 24-hour fees, according to data from Dune Analytics and DefiLlama. On April 1, PumpSwap generated nearly $4 million in fees.

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Coin Market

Bitcoin miner Bitfarms secures up to $300M loan from Macquarie

Published

1 hour ago

April 2, 2025

Bitfarms, a global computer infrastructure company known for its Bitcoin mining operations, has entered into a $300 million loan agreement with Macquarie Group to finance the development of its high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.

According to an April 2 announcement, Macquarie’s private debt facility will provide $50 million in initial funding for Bitfarms’ Panther Creek data center project in Pennsylvania.

The remaining $250 million will be released once Bitfarms achieves “specific development milestones at its Panther Creek location,” the announcement said.

Once developed, Panther Creek will have a nearly 500-megawatt capacity fueled by several power sources.

Panther Creek “will be sought after by HPC tenants once construction of the project is underway,” said Joshua Stevens, an associate director at Macquarie Group.

Source: Bitfarms

The project is being delivered at a time when AI applications are fueling growing demand for new sources of computational power and data storage capacity. Bitcoin miners are rushing to fill the void — and to secure reliable revenue streams for themselves in a post-halving environment.

However, Bitfarms disclosed in its recent quarterly report that it continues to face “regulatory challenges in expanding its energy capacity,” with the approval timeline ranging from 12 to 36 months.

In the meantime, Bitfarms expects its $125 million acquisition of Stronghold Digital Mining to do much of the heavy lifting in providing additional capacity, CEO Ben Gagnon told investors.

Amid industry pressure, miners are HODLing

Bitfarms mined 654 Bitcoin (BTC) in the final quarter of 2024 at an average all-in cash cost of $60,800.

Like other miners, Bitfarms has elected to retain a significant portion of its mined Bitcoin. Industry data shows it currently holds 1,152 BTC on its books, placing it among the top 25 publicly traded Bitcoin investors.

Miners like Hive Digital have doubled down on their long-term Bitcoin “hodl” strategy as a way to bolster their balance sheet. The company’s Bitcoin holdings have swelled to 2,620 BTC.

Meanwhile, MARA Holdings has accumulated 46,374 BTC and has announced plans for a $2 billion stock offering to acquire more Bitcoin.

Source: Frank Holmes

Like Bitfarms, Hive Digital, Core Scientific, Hut8 and Bit Digital have also made a strategic pivot toward AI and HPC.

Hive executives told Cointelegraph that the company has repurposed a portion of its Nvidia GPUs for such tasks. They said AI applications can generate more than $2.00 per hour in revenue, compared to just $0.12 per hour for crypto mining activities.

Coin Market

Most opportune time to buy Bitcoin? Now — Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan explains why

Published

1 hour ago

April 2, 2025

If you’ve ever wondered when is the right time to invest in Bitcoin (BTC), you won’t want to miss our latest interview with Matt Hougan. As the chief investment officer at Bitwise, Hougan provides an in-depth analysis, explaining why, from a risk-adjusted perspective, there has never been a more opportune time to buy Bitcoin.

In our discussion, Hougan lays out a compelling argument: Bitcoin’s early days were filled with uncertainty — technology risks, regulatory threats, trading inefficiencies, and reputational concerns. Fast forward to today, and those risks have significantly diminished. The launch of Bitcoin ETFs, adoption by major institutional investors, and even the US government’s strategic Bitcoin reserve have all cemented its place in the global financial ecosystem.

“Bitcoin is only 10% of gold. So just to match gold, which I think is just a stopping point on its long-term journey, it has to ten-x from here,” he said.

But that’s just the beginning. Hougan also touches on Bitcoin’s long-term price potential, why institutional adoption is about to accelerate, and how market fundamentals could push Bitcoin to new heights.

“There’s just too much structural long-term demand that has to come into this market against a severely limited new supply,” he said.

Watch the full interview now on our YouTube channel, and don’t forget to subscribe!