Today’s letter will be shorter because I’m traveling to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, for arguably the largest and most based Bitcoin Conference in Europe.
Speaking of being based, the Czech Republic has a central bank that holds its own spot bitcoin, owning $1 million as a test amount. At the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Aleš Michl announced that they aspire to hold 1% to 5% in bitcoin. That would equate to $2 to $10 billion. The Czech government exempted capital gains on bitcoin if you hold it longer than 3 years, but capped the exemption at a maximum of $2 million in capital gains per year. They actually still have their own currency, the Czech koruna, which is why they are free from the socialist shackles of the ECB and the European Union.
The capital gains exemption is one of the most bullish policies a government can implement. It’s meant to help the middle class. It’s meant to let you save your wealth in a neutral asset and protect the fruits of your labor from dilution or outright confiscation. And the bitcoiner in me would say: keep it only for spot bitcoin. Don’t let it count for spot ETFs or other wrappers like MSTR. If this is about making your country less dependent on the European Union or American Big Tech, encourage your citizens to hold real bitcoin and leverage the censorship-resistant capabilities of this technology through self-custody. You might end up being able to buy some cheap energy from the Persian Gulf with it, which also improves the independence of the country and its citizens.
By the way, this is the right time to curate your X timeline. My timeline last Friday was absolute carnage. But what was most striking to me was the amount of cannibalism: ‘bitcoiners’ turning on each other. I have to dig deep in my memory to find similar periods. Normally, there is a shared enemy, like ‘End the Fed’ or altcoins and crypto more broadly. But with most altcoins currently lying in the ICU, it now looks like it’s time to attack other people working in or with bitcoin.
The level of fearmongering was also astonishing. It felt like most people, not just some, had an incentive to amplify fear instead of helping people control their emotions. There were opportunists who shared old charts of trendlines breaking or moving averages crossing, things that happened in the past, and used them as if they were happening right now, stoking the fear of bitcoin selling off even more, purely for engagement farming.
Now this is nothing new, of course, but please be aware of this fact. At least take a second to check the dates on the charts, the timeframes, the scales, and the like. And always feel free to reach out to us if you need someone to spar with or for a sanity check. That’s what we’re here for, especially in times like these.
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