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 is the 8th largest public Bitcoin holder ⚡ Congress just held its first real hearing on taxing your Bitcoin coffee ⚡ The one question Rizzo would ask Satoshi

Mike Flaum aka Grain of Salt, author of The Rise, Fall, and Reemergence of Bitcoin Treasury Companies, tells Rizzo that everyone panicking over Strategy's 32 BTC sale missed the real headline. Strategy is on pace to cross 1 million Bitcoin by September 2026, and rising Bitcoin prices accelerate that timeline instead of slowing it down.

In the full conversation, Flaum breaks down why the 32 BTC sale was actually the most sophisticated tax-loss play in Bitcoin, why Q1 2026 was Strategy's second-best quarter ever, and lays out why Strive is on pace to become the #2 Bitcoin treasury company by year-end.

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SPACEX JUST BECAME THE 8TH LARGEST PUBLIC BITCOIN HOLDER

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SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX last fiday, pricing its IPO at $135 a share and raising $75 billion at a valuation near $1.75 trillion, the largest IPO in history. Elon Musk rang the opening bell remotely from Starbase while the stock opened around $175, about 30% above the offering price. Buried in the S-1 was a treasury disclosure: SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC, worth roughly $1.3 billion at the time of listing, up from the 8,285 BTC the company disclosed in an earlier filing back in March.

Every SPCX shareholder, whether they wanted it or not, now carries indirect exposure to one of the largest corporate Bitcoin treasuries on the planet.

THE HOUSE HELD ITS FIRST REAL HEARING ON A BITCOIN DE MINIMIS TAX EXEMPTION

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This week, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on seven discussion-draft bills covering digital asset taxation, the most direct attempt at crypto tax reform since the IRS first classified Bitcoin as property back in 2014. C

Coinbase's tax VP Lawrence Zlatkin argued for a broad exemption, telling the committee that Americans shouldn't need an accountant to buy a pair of jeans. Hopefully, Congress will get the message and act.

Most people expect identity. “Who are you? Where did you go? Are you still out there?” Those are the questions that drive the documentaries, and I get why.

The one I keep coming back to is different. Why four years?

It came up on the show a few weeks back. Lyn Alden mentioned something in passing that I haven't been able to shake since: every Bitcoin halving since the first one in 2012 has landed in a US presidential election year, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, four for four since inception.

The four-year interval itself is arithmetic. Block time is fixed at roughly ten minutes, and every 210,000 blocks the issuance gets cut in half. Ten minutes times 210,000 blocks gets you to about four years. That part isn't a mystery.

What is a mystery is that Satoshi had to choose that number. Nothing about Bitcoin's design required four years specifically. Other early cryptocurrencies experimented with wildly different issuance schedules, some spreading things out over decades or longer. The interval was a variable, and Satoshi set it to four on purpose.

Four years is also the US presidential cycle. It's the Olympic cycle. It's roughly the longest stretch democratic societies have settled on between major collective reckonings, long enough for things to develop, short enough that nothing goes unchecked forever. I doubt Satoshi was thinking about the election calendar specifically (he was probably long gone before anyone noticed the overlap), but the question that actually interests me is whether he was thinking about something next to it: how long people can hold a belief, or sustain greed and fear, before sentiment turns.

That question isn't academic right now. Michael Terpin's four-year cycle framework has been calling for Bitcoin to grind toward a bottom near $60,000 sometime in the back half of this year. (He’s coming on the podcast again this week).

Bitwise's Matt Hougan argued the opposite, that 2026 was the year Bitcoin finally broke the four-year pattern and pushed to new highs without a cyclical bottom first. As of this week, with BTC sitting in the high $50s and low $60s after the SpaceX IPO pulled liquidity out of the market, Terpin's framework is looking a lot closer to right, and earlier than even he expected.

If the four-year rhythm really is a function of how long people can sustain a story before they need a reset, that's not something an ETF or a corporate balance sheet changes. Bitcoin is just transparent enough that you can watch it happen in real time, every four years, on a schedule one person picked on purpose.

Did Satoshi know what he was building when he picked four? I don't think we'll ever know. But I'd still ask.

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PROOF OF TALK | PARIS, FRANCE

Two weeks ago, I got to be an MC inside the actual Louvre Palace for Proof of Talk 2026. There I got to hang out with Bitcoin History channel sponsors OPNET, see the real-live Mona Lisa and have dinner with the great Dr. Adam Back.

Together, we were there to ensure the ‘Davos of Web3’ had a lot of dialogue about Bitcoin. Book your tickets for 2027.

THE BITCOIN TREASURIES CONFERENCE | SEPTEMBER 2026

This conference is one you won’t want to miss. I’m working closely on assembling an epic lineup of the most impactful CEOs in the Bitcoin treasury movement (stay tuned for the formal announcement next week).

I’ve been saying it for months, the institutional arm of the Bitcoin movement is where all the action on mainstream adoption really is. This event will prove it. Get your tickets before prices increase.

In a move that will have massive implications, MSTR and STRC shareholders approved a shift to semi-monthly dividend payments, with the first record date landing June 30 and the first payment July 15.

Elsewhere, Metaplanet ( MPJPY) announced it will acquire Siiibo Securities, a licensed Japanese brokerage, to start building Bitcoin-backed yield products for Japanese investors.

If you’re not following the Bitcoin capitalists, you should be. Every move in the accumulation race (and the occasional sell) is tracked in real time on BitcoinTreasuries.net.

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