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⌐◪-◪ → The US government has declared its intention to sell approximately $117M BTC, which was confiscated from individuals involved in the Silk Road dark web drug operation.

This includes the assets of Ryan Farace, known as "Xanaxman," who was charged in 2018 and convicted of selling Xanax online in exchange for Bitcoin. He, along with his father Joseph Farace, was recently sentenced for money laundering conspiracy.

The seized Bitcoin, totaling nearly 2,875 from Ryan Farace and Sean Bridges and an additional 59 from Farace alone, was valued at around $133 million at the time of the filing. Farace, who admitted to using Silk Road for his drug dealings, forfeited 4,000 Bitcoin in 2018, valued at $16 million then but significantly more today.

This development follows a history of the U.S. government selling BTC seized from criminal activities, including a previous major seizure of $3.36 billion in BTC from hacker James Zhong in November 2021.

⌐◪-◪ → Michael Saylor is the greatest Bitcoin bull of all time. On X Spaces yesterday, he predicted a Bitcoin price of $5M, citing 3 key catalysts.

1. Spot ETF’s making crypto accessible

2. Bank custody crypto and lending against it

3. Fair value accounting — like treasury bonds

Michael’s thesis is based around these three prongs and believes that Bitcoin will not only displace the market cap of gold ($13.5T), but blow past it by a factor of 10x.

For context, Bitcoin’s market cap is currently $812B, so on the conservative side if it simply displaces gold it still has a 16.6X left in it.

⌐◪-◪ → The Solana Labs CEO just teased the possibility of a third mobile device.

I genuinely don’t understand why people are buying this phone other than the possibility of 1) selling it at a higher price; or 2) the potential for airdrops (like BONK).

For context: last month, Solana’s Saga smartphone sold over 40,000 pre-orders in less than a week. After the sell-out, Solana felt there was an opportunity to do a second version of the phone, so they did.

Now, if the second device is a success, they are seriously considering a third phone.

Am I just missing the legitimacy/importance of web3 smartphones as a category/product, or is this just some bullshit marketing hype?

I genuinely do not know — let me know what you think in Specs Chat.