Three low-profile PRs merged in February 2026 strengthen Lightning tooling, transaction privacy, and eclipse attack resistance in Bitcoin Core 31.0.
Lightning was supposed to decentralize Bitcoin payments, but routing analysis shows LSPs and mega-nodes create censorship chokepoints. What decentralization actually looks like at the routing layer.
Both major Lightning Network implementations released important bug fix versions in February 2026. LND v0.20.1-beta addresses upgrade compatibility issues and LSP probing, while Core Lightning v25.12.1 fixes critical signing bugs affecting newer nodes.
April 2024's halving was supposed to trigger a bull run by now. We're approaching the 2-year mark and the pattern looks nothing like 2017 or 2021. Why the 4-year cycle might be dead.
A newly standardized format for timelock-recovery plans lets Bitcoin users create pre-signed inheritance transactions with cancellation windows. Works with standard wallets today, no covenant soft forks required.
MEV (miner extractable value) was supposed to be Ethereum's problem. But with Ordinals, inscriptions, and Bitcoin Layer 2s, complex transaction ordering is coming to Bitcoin — and not everyone's ready.
27 countries now hold Bitcoin as strategic treasury assets. What changed between 'only El Salvador' and one in seven nations stacking sats?
How USDT and USDC flows are replacing traditional remittance rails in key corridors, with hard data on volume, cost savings, and regulatory shifts
Running a Lightning routing node for profit sounds great until you see the data. Most operators lose money on rebalancing costs, but Block just announced 9.7% annual returns. What's the difference?
Mining chip improvements are slowing to a crawl as manufacturers hit physical limits. Profitability now depends on electricity costs and scale, not just newer rigs.
Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade promised privacy and efficiency, but adoption has collapsed from 42% in 2024 to just 20% in 2025. Quantum fears and the Ordinals hangover are driving users back to older formats.
Trump's crypto bill splits Bitcoin and Ethereum oversight from altcoins. The winners and losers are already clear, but the gray zone is huge.