Hey all,

I’m Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian. For more than a decade, I’ve been documenting Bitcoin’s evolution — the people, ideas, companies, and moments that shaped it.

I spend every day tracking what’s shaping Bitcoin.

This week: ⚡SpaceX just disclosed $1.4 billion in Bitcoin ⚡Congress moves to lock 1 million BTC for 20 years ⚡ and Bitcoin Pizza Day isn't the story you think it is.

James Lavish, co-managing partner at Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and board member of Strive, came on the show with a framework most people aren't ready to hear: the U.S. sovereign debt crisis isn't coming, it's already here. His argument is built around what he calls the four-door problem. Raise taxes, cut spending, default, or debase the currency. Every door has consequences.

On Bitcoin's role in all of it, Lavish isn't a hyper-bitcoinization maximalist in the short term… that said, he sees Bitcoin heading much higher by year end.

Check out the full conversation for his breakdown on stablecoins, how Chokepoint 2.0 nearly killed his fund, and why the next big print — and not rate cuts — is what actually triggers the Bitcoin supercycle.

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CONGRESS JUST INTRODUCED A BILL TO LOCK 1 MILLION BITCOIN FOR 20 YEARS — AND TRUMP SIGNED A NEW CRYPTO EO

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Representative Nick Begich formally introduced the American Reserves Modernization Act yesterday, alongside Democratic co-lead Jared Golden, making it bipartisan from day one. The bill would direct the Treasury to acquire up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years, targeting 5% of the total supply.

The day before, Trump signed an executive order directing the Fed and regulators to review whether crypto and fintech firms should have direct access to U.S. payment rails and master accounts.

Neither is law yet. But the U.S. is now moving on two fronts simultaneously: locking supply at the national level and dismantling the banking system's grip on BTC.

PRO-BITCOIN KEVIN WARSH IS BEING SWORN IN AS FED CHAIR TODAY

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Kevin Warsh is being sworn in at the White House today, officially becoming the 11th Federal Reserve chair of the modern era. He's the most crypto-friendly person to ever hold the seat, famously calling Bitcoin "the new gold for anyone under 40" in 2021.

Warsh inherits 3.8% inflation and a Fed that's held rates at 3.5-3.75% all year. Some economists think he'll cut aggressively to prove the "regime change" he's promised.

SPACEX DISCLOSES 18,712 BITCOIN ON ITS BALANCE SHEET

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SpaceX filed its S-1 with the SEC this week, targeting a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. The filing disclosed 18,712 BTC on the balance sheet as of March 31 — worth about $1.4 billion and more than double what trackers had estimated. That makes SpaceX the 7th largest corporate holder in the world.

The most valued private company in history was quietly stacking Bitcoin before anyone knew how much. Millions of investors who would never buy Bitcoin directly are now buying into a company with $1.4 billion of it on the balance sheet.

A word from Trezor. Most people know they should have a hardware wallet. Most people don't have one. An exchange goes down, an account gets frozen, a platform changes its terms, and suddenly it matters. Don't wait for the reason.

Backup your backup with solid metal. Use code RIZZO for 5% off.

Like many OGs Laszlo is out there lurking, living a comfortable life after holding BTC through thick and thin for decades. The question I get asked most, though, is still, why did he spend the BTC on pizza exactly? This came up yesterday in the Pizza Day giveaway I hosted with Binance.

There’s no 100% answer, but I have my suspicions. If you go back to the original Bitcoin.org website — the only place you could learn about Bitcoin at the time — there's an FAQ describing what makes Bitcoin money.

Written by Satoshi and Marty Malmi (Sirius), the example they used in the FAQ was a pizza purchase. Someone pays their hairdresser in Bitcoin, the hairdresser spends it on pizza. That's the circular economy.

So, when Satoshi nudged Laszlo to do something with his mining rewards, Laszlo went back to the source material and made it real. My belief is he was executing on what Satoshi had already written down as his vision. Remember, by the time he posted, he had mined an enormous amount of Bitcoin — possibly 80,000 BTC, at rates of around 700 BTC a day at peak. He wasn't spending coins he'd scraped together. He was giving back, intentionally, because Satoshi asked him to.

Still, there is a slight drawback to the pizza story, as it seems to make the story a bit less serious these days.

After all this is a transaction hat had never happened before in human history. Someone in Florida posted on a forum. A person thousands of miles away received Bitcoin, called a local pizza place, paid in dollars, and Laszlo got two pizzas. Trustless, international, irreversible. Bitcoin was just a string of numbers and letters and it got someone to perform a real-world action for a stranger on the internet.

The rest of the early history follows the same pattern. New Liberty Standard calculated the first Bitcoin price from his electricity bill. Marty Malmi did the first dollar transaction — 5,000 BTC for around $10. None of them were in it for the money.

They were trying to get Bitcoin from zero to one, and Satoshi had to push each of them. He couldn't just publish a whitepaper and disappear. He had to build the community, encourage the contributors, and get his creation out the door.

Sixteen years later, there's a bill in Congress targeting 5% of the total Bitcoin supply, Michael Saylor is spending billions of dollars on Bitcoin a day. It all goes back to Laszlo.

What Laszlo proved with two pizzas is now the premise that sovereign governments and the most sophisticated funds in the world are betting on. For that, I think we owe him his own thanks. It’s his tremendous contributions that we should remember most on Bitcoin Pizza day.

Strive rang the opening bell at Nasdaq last week and has been buying Bitcoin consistently throughout May, cementing its position as one of the top 10 public corporate Bitcoin holders in the world. The mechanism funding it is SATA, a preferred stock instrument that mirrors the capital structure Saylor built at Strategy.

Since January, Strive has grown its treasury by more than 2,200 BTC. The Saylor playbook now has another company running it successfully, and at scale.

Every move in the accumulation race is tracked in real time on BitcoinTreasuries.net — the only destination built to cover exactly how fast institutional adoption is moving. It remains the best publication in the world working at the nexus of Wall Street and BTC. Make sure you have it bookmarked today.

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