Square Just Killed the Myth That Bitcoin Isn’t For Buying Coffee

Happy Monday Bitcoiners - it’s Bam with another weekly update!

Each week, we condense the most impactful news releases into a concise, easy-to-read update so you’re always in the know!

Notable events this week include 👇

• China accuses the United States of stealing more than $12B in Bitcoin.

• A European central bank breaks from Lagarde and adds BTC to its reserves.

• Latest emails show Jeffrey Epstein anonymously funded Bitcoin development.

Let’s dive in ⚡

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Latest News 📰

🙌 Adoption

• Square activates Bitcoin payments for more than 4 million US merchants as Cash App rolls out a feature that lets users pay over Bitcoin rails using only their USD balance, allowing even non-Bitcoin holders to pay in BTC.

• Hesperides University has launched the world’s first fully online, English-taught 60-ECTS Bitcoin Master’s program, opening in Jan 2026 with courses spanning cryptography, mining, energy, and public policy.

• The Czech central bank bought $1 million in Bitcoin and other digital assets to run a multi-year pilot testing how central banks can acquire, hold, and manage crypto.

⚖️ Legal

• China’s CVERC claims the US government hacked and controlled LuBian’s 127,000 stolen Bitcoin long before the 2025 seizure announcement, contradicting the DOJ’s assertions of a lawful operation.

• Senate Ag Committee releases its bipartisan crypto market structure draft, which explicitly protects Americans’ right to self-custody Bitcoin and to transact peer-to-peer using hardware or software wallets.

• Jeffrey Epstein, according to newly released emails, helped fund the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, with part of his donations going directly to early Bitcoin Core development.

📈 Markets

• Former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler resigned after disclosures revealed that she and her husband repeatedly violated Fed trading rules by buying and selling individual stocks, including during FOMC blackout periods.

• Harvard University increases its IBIT holdings by 257 percent in Q3 to $442.8 million, making it Harvard’s largest new position at about 1 percent of its endowment, a strong sign of validation for the Bitcoin ETF.

• Cantor Fitzgerald is down 38% on its $1+ billion MSTR position after cutting its stake by 406,238 shares to 4,009,492.

🏦 Treasury

• The Tokyo Stock Exchange is considering tougher backdoor-listing enforcement and fresh audits for firms pursuing crypto-treasury strategies, leading at least three companies to pause their accumulation plans.

• Strive Asset Management raises $160 million from the oversubscribed IPO of its first perpetual preferred stock, SATA, which pays a 12 percent monthly dividend.

• Strategy’s market cap is currently trading below the value of its Bitcoin holdings.

⛏️ Mining

• NiceHash launches Hashrate TradeView, giving traders and buyers real-time pricing and FPPS comparisons as hashrate trading moves closer to a transparent, commodity-like market.

• Bitfarms' stock drops 18% on announcement of winding down entire Bitcoin mining operations over 2026–2027 and converting sites to AI-based computing infrastructure.

• American Bitcoin, the Trump-family-owned miner, reported Q3 2025 revenue of $64.2M, with net income of $3.5M reversing a $0.6M loss.

🗳️ Politics

• Simple Proof is partnering with El Salvador’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to timestamp public records on the Bitcoin blockchain, making government documents tamper-proof and permanently verifiable.

• White House says the shutdown may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October jobs and CPI reports likely never to be released, leaving the Federal Reserve “flying blind.”

• Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan is urging the government to add Bitcoin to its $602B strategic reserves as it weighs a pilot program using seized BTC, citing rising U.S. dollar reliance and growing geopolitical risks.

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🧠 Bitcoin Trivia 🧠

Bam’s 2 Sats 🧢

Bitcoin’s Sly Roundabout Way to Hyperbitcoinization

This week may well go down as one to remember. It’s the moment the old line that “Bitcoin isn’t money, nobody uses it to pay for anything” finally died, as Square switched on Bitcoin payments for its 4 million merchants.

Last Monday, November 10th, Square announced Bitcoin payment capability for all sellers, giving merchants overnight access to Bitcoin payments, automatic conversions, and built-in wallets inside the same dashboard they already use for daily operations.

The day had been quietly anticipated by many Bitcoiners who had noticed their favorite shops using Square terminals and were waiting for the chance to finally pay in Bitcoin without needing to orange pill the staff or require the merchant to hold BTC at all.

Soon the fun started. Bitcoiners shared pictures and videos paying with Lightning in shops around the world. Payments went through in Hawaii, Miami, Oregon, Washington D.C., Colorado, from both custodial and self-custodial wallets, all while settling instantly.

Square noticed the momentum quickly. BTC Map began exploding with new entries, at one point showing more than fifty pages of Square merchants waiting to be added. That’s when Square decided to roll out its own in-app indicator showing which merchants had activated Bitcoin payments.

Merchants began posting as well, surprised by how smooth the process was, and many quickly noticed the key advantage: Lightning payments were faster than Visa or Mastercard and didn’t carry the usual 3.5 percent fee that often wipes out the profit on small card transactions.

What’s even more impressive is that customers can now “pay in Bitcoin without paying in Bitcoin.” Cash App or Strike users can pay Lightning invoices straight from their USD balance using Bitcoin rails, letting merchants who want Bitcoin receive it from customers who have never held a single sat in their lives.

Suddenly, merchants have a real incentive to ask for Bitcoin-rail payments because they avoid card fees entirely, and with Square fully leaning in, sellers can choose to keep anywhere from 0-100% of incoming payments in dollars with zero conversion costs. Using Bitcoin as the payment rail simply requires the two parties to be connected to the network, instead of relying on the traditional system’s maze of intermediaries.

This is the start of a new paradigm. What was once dismissed as a volatile asset became a long-term store-of-value narrative, and now it is becoming something simpler: just better money.

Bitcoin used to require understanding the problems of an inflationary monetary system, and if that didn’t interest someone, it could be ignored. From here on, the incentive may be as simple as keeping more of the profit from what you sell.

And once the step into this new form of money becomes frictionless, the next step, holding some “just in case it catches on,” becomes almost inevitable.

Stay safe and keep on stacking!
-Bam

Weekly Live Stream 🚨

Join Rob Wallace live with Michelle Weekley, Director of Product at Byte Federal, as they break down the biggest headlines from the newsletter and discuss just how far down the Jeffrey Epstein/Bitcoin Core rabbit hole goes.