MONDAY, MAR09
1. Bitwise donations, 2. Satlantis integrates stripe, 3. 'Policy Trap' vulnerability, 4. Howard Marks on AI hurtling
Supported by Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. donations
Bitwise Asset Management has made its second annual donation to Bitcoin open-source development, distributing $233,000 across Brink, OpenSats, and the Human Rights Foundation's Bitcoin Development Fund as part of a standing commitment to allocate 10% of gross profits from its Bitcoin ETF, BITB, to the developer ecosystem. Bitwise co-founder and CTO Hong Kim said, "Developers are the unsung heroes of the Bitcoin network. No matter where we are in the market cycle, developers continue to build and maintain." BITB has accumulated more than $2.5 billion in net inflows since launching in January 2024, and Bitwise has indicated that future annual contributions will scale alongside the fund's growth. The three recipient organizations were selected for their track records funding protocol development, security work, and freedom-oriented Bitcoin infrastructure. The structure is notable because it ties institutional ETF revenue directly to the open-source labor that secures the underlying asset, creating a feedback loop between product growth and developer funding that does not depend on market conditions or discretionary budgeting. Bitwise manages more than $15 billion in client assets across more than 40 investment products.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. integrates
Satlantis, the Bitcoin-native events platform built on Lightning, has integrated Stripe for fiat payments, a move that expands its addressable market from bitcoiners to any event organizer whose attendees have never touched a Satoshi. The core architecture stays intact: every event automatically generates a dedicated Lightning wallet, ticket sales settle instantly with no merchant accounts or geographic restrictions, and organizers can choose to accept bitcoin only, fiat only, or both. The onboarding mechanic is the notable design choice. A first-time attendee pays by credit card, gets into the event, and the organizer can then send sats directly inside the app, making the event itself the entry point into Bitcoin. Satlantis pitches directly against Luma, Eventbrite, and Meetup, claiming fees up to 80% lower than incumbents and a full event stack covering tiered pricing, coupons, and attendee management. Early traction includes more than 15,000 registered attendees, over 700 events created in the past three months, and 2,000 app downloads, with growth driven primarily by Bitcoin conferences and meetups. Mi Primer Bitcoin in El Salvador and The Core Africa have already migrated from Luma.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. trap
Developers building tooling around the Ark protocol have identified a critical exit-path vulnerability they are calling the "Policy Trap," where a Virtual Transaction Output can be consensus-valid on-chain yet completely unrelayable due to Bitcoin mempool policy constraints. In a public forum thread, contributor instagibbs flagged that BIP-431 (TRUC) limits mempool packages to a depth of two, meaning an Ark tree constructed 20 levels deep passes consensus checks but gets pinned at broadcast. Developer jgmcalpine, who is updating verification logic to enforce full Taproot tree reconstruction, described the stakes, "a user receiving a VTXO Map from an ASP shouldn't have to blindly trust that the off-chain state was constructed such that it will actually translate into strictly compliant mempool packages." The proposed fix is a Policy Auditor module inside a library called vpack, which would give clients an automated, independent way to mathematically verify exit validity before they need it. The broader pattern is notable: as second-layer Bitcoin protocols mature, the gap between what is technically valid and what is practically spendable becomes its own attack surface, and the ecosystem is beginning to build the verification tooling to close it.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. hurtling
Oaktree Capital co-chairman Howard Marks published a follow-up memo on artificial intelligence arguing that the technology has crossed a threshold that reframes it as labor replacement rather than labor assistance. Marks draws on a nine-module tutorial he commissioned from Anthropic's Claude to structure his analysis around a three-level capability framework: Chat AI in 2023, tool-using AI in 2024, and autonomous agents now. The distinction matters economically. As Claude framed it in the memo, "Level 3 agents are the automobile. They don't make the work faster. They do the work." Marks cites Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's claim that AI now writes much of the code at his company and that the feedback loop between current and next-generation AI is accelerating. On the bubble question, Marks holds his December position: the technology is real and probably underestimated, but asset prices are a separate question. His sharpest concern is speed. Unlike prior labor disruptions from mechanization or offshoring, AI's adoption curve may outrun society's capacity to retrain displaced workers before the damage compounds.
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