§ Newsletter · Issue #1 · May 6, 2026

Issue #1 · The rebound — Bitcoin after $126K, ETFs back, Ledger drama

Bitcoin weekly digest issue #1 — price recovers from drawdown, ETF inflows positive 60 days running, hashrate ATH 944 EH/s, fake Ledger Live app drains $9.5M, Thailand tax rules

Issue #1 — kickoff. This newsletter summarises Bitcoin every week the way Glassnode / Checkonchain do in English — but written from primary data, not paraphrased from someone else’s chart. No price predictions, no shilling, no AI slop. Free, sent Mondays. Subscribe at /newsletter.

TL;DR — three sentences if you have 30 seconds

Macro snapshot

BTC spot:           ~$70,000 (range $66-74K)
12-mo high:         $126,540 (Oct 2025)
12-mo low:          $58,200  (Mar 2026)
12-mo return:       roughly flat
Drawdown from ATH:  -45%
Gold spot:          ~$3,400/oz (ATH)
12-mo gold return:  +78% USD
DXY:                ~102 (range-bound)
US 10Y yield:       ~4.3%

The macro picture right now isn’t kind to Bitcoin maximalists. Gold has outperformed BTC handily over the past year despite a macro environment (sticky inflation, geopolitical fragmentation, record central-bank gold purchases) that should theoretically favour Bitcoin’s monetary thesis.

Why? Because the market still treats BTC as a high-beta tech proxy more than a monetary asset. Liquidity tightens, BTC sells off first. Gold, by contrast, has 5,000 years of being priced as a monetary asset — the market doesn’t have to re-price it during stress.

This isn’t permanent — it’s a phase of the cycle. If you believe the multi-decade thesis, an 18-month underperformance window doesn’t change the conclusion.

📖 Full comparison in Bitcoin vs Gold 2026

ETF flows — the hope is alive

ETFs (BlackRock IBIT, Fidelity FBTC, Bitwise BITB, et al.) remain the single largest channel for new dollars into BTC:

What to watch: ETF flows can flip in 24 hours when sentiment shifts. If a liquidity event hits (war, banking stress, regulatory shock) ETFs outflow first — and the BTC the ETFs hold is the same BTC.

My signal of choice: I don’t watch daily ETF flow (too noisy). The 30-day moving average is the cleaner read — currently $1.8B/30d versus a 12-month average of $2.1B/30d (slightly down but still positive).

Network health

hashrate (24h avg):    944 EH/s        🆙 ATH
hashrate 12mo ago:     ~620 EH/s
hashrate change:       +52% YoY
average block time:    ~10.6 min       🟡 slightly slow
mempool size:          ~30 MB · 30K tx 🟢 quiet
recommended fees:      1-3 sat/vB      🟢 calm
difficulty:            next +1.4%      (~12 days)
tip:                   #947,773

944 EH/s hashrate ATH is the datapoint I’d flag for cycle-watchers. Miners are still investing and still running rigs despite a 45% drawdown from the price ATH. That’s a commitment signal that doesn’t get enough airtime on Twitter.

What it means: hashrate + difficulty climbing together = miners are not capitulating. In past cycles, before the bottom you’d see hashrate drop as inefficient ASICs powered down. We’re not seeing that yet — which either means this isn’t the cycle bottom, or this cycle’s bottom doesn’t have a capitulation phase like prior ones (because ASIC efficiency has plateaued).

Mempool at 1 sat/vB during off-peak hours means anyone doing on-chain right now is paying coffee-money fees. The rule I follow: send transactions between midnight and 8am Bangkok time (which lines up with off-peak US hours).

Drama of the week — fake Ledger Live

What happened: April 14, 2026, a counterfeit “Ledger Live” app appeared on the Apple App Store. Same logo, same UI, polished onboarding. Anyone who installed it and entered a seed phrase had their seed exfiltrated to attacker servers. By the time Apple removed it, the fake had drained roughly $9.5M.

What we did:

  1. Shipped a SHA-256 download verifier — drag your installer, the page hashes it in your browser, you compare against what the vendor published. Under one minute end-to-end.
  2. Wrote up the breach in detail — what to do if you might have downloaded the fake.
  3. Added Ledger entries to the new exchange / wallet legitimacy database.

The lesson: app stores are not a trustless supply chain. Apple has waved through fake Ledger; Google Play has waved through fake MetaMask. Every time you download Ledger Live / Trezor Suite / Sparrow / Specter / Coldcard firmware — verify the checksum against the vendor’s published hash.

If you have friends still using Ledger, send them /tools/wallet-verify. Free, browser-only, the file never leaves their device.

Thailand-specific — the 2025-2029 tax exemption is still active

Reminder: Thailand’s exemption of capital-gains tax on crypto trades through SEC-TH licensed exchanges is in force from January 2025 through December 2029.

Verify it for yourself: the SEC license requirement is the lever — any trade routed through a non-SEC-licensed venue (peer-to-peer, foreign exchange without a Thai license) falls outside the exemption and back into the progressive bracket. Four real scenarios — Bitkub trade, Binance.com trade, paid in BTC, mining rewards — each lands on a different side of this line; the rule of thumb is was the counter-party Thai-SEC-licensed at the moment of the trade.

What to watch — week of May 5-12

  1. FOMC minutes (May 7) — market is pricing 1-2 rate cuts by year-end → if the Fed reads dovish, BTC should test $74K resistance.
  2. CPI release (May 14) — if CPI prints above expectation, BTC likely tags $66K again.
  3. Difficulty adjustment in ~12 days, projected +1.4% — affects ASIC operator ROI.
  4. OP_CAT / Covenants — Bitcoin Optech tracks BIP 347. Worth watching; we’ll have a deeper article when activation looks imminent.
  5. ETF flow Wednesday — Asia-close to NY-close net flow on IBIT + FBTC is the cleanest read on institutional sentiment for the week.

My positioning

I don’t trade. I DCA spot from regular income → withdraw to Coldcard immediately. No futures (paid the funding-rate education tax once, lesson learned). No altcoins. No leverage.

For those curious: I add to position on 45-day drawdowns of -10% from local high. Cash on the sidelines is sized + ready. If price goes to $58K, I buy more. If price goes to $90K, I do nothing (don’t sell, don’t add).

This is my personal strategy — not investment advice.

Tools used to write this issue

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