Founder @Stacks, building bitcoin capital markets. Previously, Princeton PhD in distributed systems.
Joined March 2008
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The BSC comms here will not have the desired effect, unfortunately.
Minimizing quantum risk falls flat on its face. The market is already concerned. What the markets need to hear is, “We acknowledge the quantum risk to BTC; it is real. Here is a concrete, credible path forward.”
Bitcoin puts a ceiling on the entire industry.
AI assisted threats to Bitcoin or BTC quantum fears put a ceiling on all of us.
We are in this together and will figure it out!
"A bug in Bitcoin would wipe out the entire industry."
Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali says Bitcoin Core's review by Mythos came out clean, but as AI advances, the community needs a new way to protect the code
"I was one of the people who was raising the alarm that an advanced model can actually find a bug in Bitcoin Core."
"Bitcoin is very decentralized, but sometimes it's hard to get organized in a decentralized system like Bitcoin. I was noticing that no one was really stepping up to talk to Anthropic or OpenAI, mostly Anthropic at the time, because Mythos was coming out."
"So me, along with some other people, actually had an initiative to get Bitcoin Core reviewed by Mythos before Mythos came out. And until that was done, I honestly couldn't really sleep at night, because a bug in Bitcoin would wipe out the entire industry. Nothing else survives."
"Bitcoin actually came out clean, which was a great sign, and it just shows how hardened Bitcoin Core is, after more than a decade of work on it. But I do think the world has changed, where we need to start rethinking how the Bitcoin community is organized and how we're protecting the codebase."
Muneeb retweeted
Bitcoin's Biggest "Bond" Yet Just Sold Out - What Do Institutions Know? | @muneeb
00:00 Binance Hack, AI-Assisted Attacks and Crypto Security
02:08 Why Open-Source Systems Could Become More Secure
03:41 Could AI Find a Critical Bug in Bitcoin?
05:28 The Quantum Threat to Bitcoin
08:53 Why Muneeb Is Returning to Lead Stacks
10:39 From Early Bitcoin to Building Stacks
11:55 Turning Bitcoin Into a Productive Asset
14:27 Institutional Bitcoin Yield and the New Bitcoin Bonds
15:09 Bullish Joins the 1,000 BTC Stacks Bond
18:02 Why Most Bitcoin Still Sits Idle
20:11 How Bitcoin Yield Could Drive Value to STX
22:06 Is Bitcoin's Four-Year Cycle Still Alive?
23:17 Could Productive Bitcoin Reprice BTC?
24:04 Solving Bitcoin's Quantum and Scalability Problem
26:55 Bringing Privacy to Bitcoin
28:10 Final Thoughts
Ethereum is pivoting to SoV (again).
From a game theory perspective, it makes sense. SoV is the much bigger market.
When you are #2, the only growth path is to try to become #1—hence the past “flippening” attempts.
ETH’s earlier attempt at SoV didn’t pan out. ETH will likely face similar challenges again. SoV needs durability and simplicity (like Bitcoin). However, certain aspects of ETH are interesting:
(a) A native yield with staking. An income-generating asset is more useful as SoV.
(b) A healthy on-chain ecosystem. You want the SoV to be used as collateral.
(c) A credible path to quantum risks.
For Bitcoin, (c) is the biggest challenge. (a) and (b) are accelerators, not core to BTC thriving as the largest SoV.
At Stacks, we’re working on all three for Bitcoin. In this increasingly competitive SoV landscape, Stacks is Bitcoin’s best ally.
Expanding on why I believe "ETH as store of value (SoV)" makes much more sense to focus on than "ETH as fee-burning token".
Three primary reasons:
1. ETH as fee-burning token never was as strong as it seemed
2. Optimizing for ETH as fee-burning token would demand Ethereum and ETH function in ways that are very hard to make compatible with decentralization and capture resistance.
3. Meanwhile, optimizing for ETH as SoV is aligned with Ethereum focusing on its unique strengths (decentralization and CROPS)
EIP-1559 (including its burn) is fine and good, we should keep them. But we should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere.
The core idea: the big thing that people appreciate about Ethereum is decentralization and CROPS. The main pragmatic benefit that these things translate into is stability. SoV is the category where that is not an unneeded extra we merely put effort into for ideological reasons, but rather a pragmatic strength from the perspective of people putting in their assets. And in the era of AI disruption, stability will be highly valued.
Just recorded a pod with @scottmelker. It was hard to fit in all the fire updates.
A deeper dive into bond dynamics.
We have about 2 billion in Bitcoin capacity that we can deploy in coming months.
The rough math is that we can sustain 3x the market cap of STX for BTC deployed.
So far we’ve used very little capacity, like < 1,000 BTC. Why?
Because we’re in the bootstrapping stage, what matters in these early days is (a) institutional custody integrations, (b) onboarding large institutional clients, but not deploying too much of their capital. For now.
First, you establish the distribution network and then scale it out. Let the market absorb the information that BTC native yield is real.
Capacity grows with Stacks' growth. Two years ago, at the height of interest in BTC DeFi, we could support 15 billion in BTC deployed. We’ll get back there and more.
I see this as a 100 billion-plus market that we’re slowly unlocking. That’d be just ~6.4% of BTC deployed. Ethereum has 36% staked. So these numbers are conservative.
What I’m most excited about is that, when this plays out as designed, it finally opens on-chain flows for BTC. We fulfill the decades-old dream of bitcoin culture: to make BTC more than just a store of value. BTC starts moving for trading, lending, yield, etc., on-chain on the Bitcoin execution layer.
A circular BTC economy with gas fee revenue starts to emerge.
People forget how large BTC already is. When it moves, it moves in size. Then we focus on privacy and post-quantum and overcome the upcoming BTC challenges.
That’s the long-term open secret plan.
For now, the first dominoes are the Bitcoin bonds and how we launch them.
Back to the 2 billion capacity: we will be releasing some of it soon in bond 3. Every bond results in STX being purchased and locked on-chain as a capacity limiter for BTC staking yield.
As this dynamic plays out, the world starts to notice our work. Doubts about the feasibility of bitcoin capital markets start to fade. The machine starts humming.
Forward!
A master class in communication by CZ.
As @lulumeservey preaches: go direct. People want to hear from the founder—a human voice in a time of crisis.
Calm tone. Fast response. Starts with the most important line: user funds are safe.
Acknowledges the hack. Direct line about the remedy (funds frozen).
This single tweet saved the industry from needless panic that was quickly brewing.
Jason is smart. His points about Bitcoin need a detailed response:
- Other investment opportunities: I agree with Jason that, compared to 2020 or even 2023, there are more investment opportunities outside of Bitcoin now. Earlier, Bitcoin felt like the only/main frontier opportunity. Now AI, and even robotics, have changed that. However, not everyone can get involved with AI & robotics companies at seed or series A stages, where most of the early value is. Bitcoin is still in its “pre-IPO” days with open access for everyone.
- Offers nothing beyond a store of value: BTC very recently got self-custodial yield. Like ETH and SOL, BTC is a productive asset that can generate yield. BTC just got native yield. That takes BTC beyond a store of value and makes it work like a productive asset. Onchain Bitcoin capital markets are already here. This will reprice the asset.
- Bitcoin as a consensus trade: Bitcoin did get adoption from institutions, but it’s far from a consensus trade. Large asset managers still hold it as a risk-on asset in a small percentage of portfolios. AI has redirected a lot of liquidity and attention away from Bitcoin, which makes it an even more non-consensus trade now.
- AI vs Bitcoin: I don’t view things as AI vs Bitcoin. There might be some attention/liquidity competition, but these are two separate segments, each adding its own value and impact. It’s not zero-sum. Your gold savings serve a very different purpose than your stock portfolio.
Jason is a master at driving engagement (good for him!), but these topics are worth discussing anyway. Namely:
- How has the world changed because of AI, and should you reconsider how much stock you own vs. how much BTC/gold?
- Within the stock portfolio, how much is a bet on AI vs. other sectors?
- Are there Bitcoin-adjacent opportunities that have higher risk but higher returns?
- Are there ways to get involved in earlier-stage tech opportunities? (hard for most)
Personally, I’m long Bitcoin as I believe it should be 150K-200K+ by the end of 2028. More importantly, BTC is becoming a productive asset, and Bitcoin-adjacent opportunities are closer to seed/series-A returns, yet are publicly available.
AI will continue to have a massive impact, but it's not zero-sum against BTC for me.
A brutal year for Bitcoin is just getting started.
Give me three minutes to explain why you should dump it now.
Outflows from ETFs are signal and will continue.
We will test the 57k low again in the next 12 months.
Why?
Because there are far too many dynamic places to put your money that are creating MUCH more value.
Why put your resources into a dead network that offers nothing beyond a store of value?
What's the point of place the BTC be if Bitcoin's Ponzi-scheme nature has gone away!?!
The viral nature of bitcoin was it's power... if you didn't own you were MOCKED!
Now? Completely reasonable, heck, SMARTER, to ignore bitcoin and place other bets!
No one is trying to convince people to buy Bitcoin anymore... the memes and NFTs are gone.
No one is saying $ BTC can change the world, because it won't — and BECAUSE AI HAS!
Just sell and shift from Bitcoin to Super Intelligence because one provides little to no value, and the other provides unlimited upside for humanity.
This should be obvious to everyone right now.
Bitcoin will never break its all-time high again.
Muneeb retweeted
🎙️ Stacks (@stacks.btc) founder Muneeb Ali (@muneeb) answers the tough question: Where will Bitcoin's price end up by the end of 2026. #CHAINREACTION