WEDNESDAY, MAR25
1. Cape and BIP 39, 2. Core Scientific $1 Billion, 3. Conservative client, 4. Moonpay standard
From Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. bip
Cape, a privacy-focused mobile carrier, is building telecom infrastructure from the ground up to close what it calls the last major gap in personal security: the cellular network layer. According to Ruddy Wang, Cape's Head of Customer Growth, speaking in Lightning News, the company owns its own mobile core, the software that controls call routing, data collection, and retention. That separates Cape from light MVNOs like Mint or Boost that reskin major carrier infrastructure. Cape rotates subscriber identifiers daily, making persistent tracking harder, and protects phone numbers with a BIP 39 seed phrase, the same standard used by Bitcoin hardware wallets. "Nobody can change your SIM to any other phone without that seed phrase," Wang noted, adding that no Cape employee can override the protection. The company has also built a proprietary firewall against SS7 signaling attacks, a network-level exploit that operates beneath any VPN. With $99/month plans, nationwide 5G coverage across 50-plus countries, a Proton partnership for encrypted email and storage, and free service for domestic violence survivors, Cape is positioning network-layer privacy as a mainstream product.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. billion
Core Scientific has doubled its short-term credit facility to $1 billion after securing a $500 million commitment from JPMorgan Chase, according to TheEnergyMag. The new financing uses the accordion feature on the Austin-based company's existing 364-day facility and follows a $500 million initial close with Morgan Stanley earlier this month. Borrowings carry an interest rate of SOFR plus 250 basis points, translating to an effective annual rate around 6.1% to 6.2% at current benchmarks. CEO Adam Sullivan said the company now has "$1 billion of financing capacity available to support infrastructure delivery" amid strong demand. Proceeds are earmarked for data center development, including equipment, real estate, pre-development spending, and securing additional power. The back-to-back commitments from two major banks signal how aggressively Core Scientific is leaning on institutional debt to fund its pivot toward high-density colocation and broader digital infrastructure, moving well beyond its origins in bitcoin mining economics.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. conservative
Educator Jimmy Song announced ProductionReady, a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit funding a third Bitcoin node implementation built on the Bitcoin Core codebase. According to Song, the client will share Core's consensus code but differentiate on development process, merge policy, and governance, offering node operators a conservative alternative with a higher bar for protocol changes. "When you're securing trillions of dollars for millions of people, the burden of proof should be on the change," Song wrote, framing the project around preserving Bitcoin's monetary properties: fixed supply, censorship resistance, and permissionless access. The announcement arrives against a backdrop of real demand for implementation diversity. When Core v30 removed the OP_RETURN data limit, the share of Knots nodes jumped from 2% to over 15% in weeks as operators sought alternatives. ProductionReady aims to accelerate Bitcoin's path toward protocol ossification, the point where the base layer becomes effectively unchangeable, by proving that a well-maintained client can hold a conservative posture without stagnating. The nonprofit says it will fund development independently and transparently, with no strings attached.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. standard
MoonPay has released an open-source wallet standard designed to give AI agents the ability to manage funds and execute transactions across multiple blockchains. Micah Zimmerman notes that the standard addresses a core problem in autonomous software, each AI agent typically manages its own keys and maintains separate balances, creating fragmented infrastructure and heightened security exposure. MoonPay's framework introduces unified fund access from a centralized pool, encrypted local key storage with signing isolated from the agent's runtime, and configurable policy controls like spending limits. The standard uses a modular, open-source architecture that developers can adapt across different chains and use cases. "More than a dozen companies" contributed to the effort, including PayPal, OKX, and Circle, signaling broad industry alignment on the need for standardized AI-to-blockchain tooling. The release points to a growing consensus that as AI agents take on more economic activity, the plumbing beneath them needs to be interoperable, auditable, and secure by default rather than bolted on after the fact.
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