The Breakdown First Five - Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. SEC Gone Fishing

Another September day, another SEC enforcement action. This time the regulator has settled with Sushi restaurant the Flyfish club for selling $14.8M worth of NFT memberships. The fine was a relatively modest $750,000. Unlike many NFT projects, the restaurant actually got built and is set to launch later this week in downtown Manhattan. Hester’s Perice’s dissent was perfectly cooked, stating the SEC should “change its menu to include a healthy serving of guidance.”

4. Microstrategy Rolling

Microstrategy has announced another $700M issuance of convertible notes, but this time the proceeds won’t be used to purchase Bitcoin. The company plans to retire $500M worth of previously issued debt set to mature in 2028. Maturities will remain the same, but this refinancing will buy Microstrategy 6 months interest free and potentially a lower interest rate compared to the 6.125% they were paying.

3. No More Cathedra

Cathedra Bitcoin has thrown in the towel, giving up on mining to become a data center operator. With mining profitability hitting all time lows, the company said they would pivot to building out and leasing data centers and use the profits to purchase Bitcoin from the open market. They reiterated that their only goal is to increase Bitcoin per share, and the Microstrategy plan seems much better than slogging it out in the highly competitive mining industry. 

2. Bitcoin Kingdom

The Kingdom of Bhutan has pulled ahead of El Salvador to become the fourth largest nation state Bitcoin holder. Unlike the US, the UK and China, Bhutan didn’t seize their stack from criminals. They have now obtained over $780M worth of Bitcoin from their mining operation and open market purchases. Bhutan’s mining is based on abundant hydro resources in the foothills of the himalayan region. Their Bitcoin stack is now 25% of the nation’s GDP, staggering in scale. 

1. Trump-fi Officially Announced

Donald Trump took to Twitter spaces to discuss his family’s DeFi project over a sprawling 2 hour interview. Very little information was revealed about the platform, but Don Jr promises it will be "the start of a financial revolution." Interestingly, tokenomics seem to have changed since the whitepaper was leaked last week, with 63% allocated to a public sale limited to accredited investors. The token will not be tradable at first, likely to avoid regulatory scrutiny.