SUNDAY, JUN28
1. Cuba's fake opening, 2. Dashjr defends BIP-110, 3. Mallers' conviction, 4. Satoshi miner thesis
From Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. cuba
Cuba’s communist government has approved more than 175 economic reforms that would permit, in varying degrees, private banks, larger private businesses, foreign investment, and direct imports and exports, according to HRF’s Financial Freedom Report citing Reuters. Local economists warn the changes should not be mistaken for genuine financial freedom. They have scrutinized Clause 17, which allows state enterprises to convert into shareholding companies, cautioning that without independent courts, transparent markets, or political reform the move could resemble Russia’s post-Soviet oligarch era, in which politically connected insiders seized formerly state-owned assets. The reforms arrive amid acute crisis: rolling blackouts, empty shelves, mass emigration, and a currency in freefall, with the peso losing more than 17 percent of its value against the dollar in the first seventeen days of June alone. For a freedom-tech audience, Cuba illustrates how a regime can manufacture the appearance of economic opening while quietly redistributing wealth to those closest to power, leaving ordinary people no closer to controlling their own money.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. bip110-rebuttal
Bitcoin Core contributor Luke Dashjr posted a six-point rebuttal to critics of BIP-110, the proposed soft fork that would restrict certain data-carrying transactions, in a post on X. He argued BIP-110 merely restores protocol rules from a year ago, does not censor data but removes support for functionality added by a fringe minority, and that soft forks do not cause chain splits, a direct response to Adam Back and others warning of fork risk. He called the temporary activation window upfront in code, not a vague promise, and noted Bitcoin soft forks have worked for 16 years. For a protocol-minded audience, the thread is a primary-source articulation of why some Core contributors view BIP-110 as routine maintenance rather than emergency surgery. Whether you agree or not, the debate is now playing out between the people who actually ship node software, not just the influencers summarizing it.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. heroes-journey
Strike founder Jack Mallers published a long conviction post addressed to Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, arguing that crypto is going to zero while bitcoin is headed to a million dollars and beyond, in a thread on X. Mallers walked through every bitcoin is dead narrative since 2013, from Silk Road, Mt. Gox, government bans, and altcoin competition to FTX, and pointed out bitcoin is now a one trillion dollar asset anyway. His framing is deliberately harsh: bitcoin does not need your permission, conviction is earned not given, and those who believe in government money should sell while believers should have guts. The post resonated widely because it reframes the current drawdown not as failure but as the recurring emotional bottom of a four-year cycle. For a Bitcoin Park audience, it is a builder-founder making the time-preference case in raw terms rather than macro charts.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. satoshi-miner
BitMEX Research flagged new analysis that may challenge the dominant Patoshi miner thesis, the long-running claim that a single entity mined nearly one million bitcoin in 2009, in a post on X. The team pointed to a paragraph in a new paper from researcher raw_avocado that, if accurate, could refute key evidence for the one-miner theory. That matters beyond historical curiosity, because the Patoshi pattern has shaped years of chain-analysis assumptions about early supply concentration and Satoshi’s stack. For a data-literate bitcoin audience, primary-source research that revises early-mining attribution is exactly the kind of open forensic work permissionless ledgers enable, and the kind that custodial narratives cannot replicate. Getting the genesis-era economics right informs how we think about dormant supply, founder risk, and the transparency bitcoin provides versus every other monetary system. The episode is also a reminder that even bitcoin’s earliest history remains open to revision when the underlying data is public and anyone can re-examine it.
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