LATEST ARTICLES

In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Five years on, the balance sheet is contradictory: real security gains, an IMF deal that walked back the experiment, and a sovereignty narrative far simpler than the reality.

E-Cash is making a comeback in the Bitcoin ecosystem through protocols like Cashu and Fedimint. At its core lies an older idea: enabling digital payments that are as private as physical cash, without exposing every transaction to a public ledger or a centralized intermediary.

While Bitcoin still concentrates most of the liquidity in the crypto market, its use remains largely limited to value transfer and long-term holding. This contrasts with other ecosystems where on-chain financial applications have expanded significantly. It is within this context that Citrea emerges, aiming to make Bitcoin programmable without modifying its base protocol.

Bitcoin was designed as a monetary system, not as a programmable platform. Yet over the past few years, several solutions have attempted to extend its capabilities without modifying its core protocol. Rootstock fits into this trend: a sidechain aiming to bring smart contracts to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Bitcoin was designed as a robust monetary system, but with intentionally limited capacity. To address these constraints, several solutions have emerged to improve its usability. Among them, the Liquid Network takes a different approach: a sidechain focused on speed, privacy, and asset issuance.

Since 2023, a new practice has emerged on Bitcoin: inscriptions. Images, text, tokens, and various files can now be recorded directly on the blockchain. Behind this shift, several protocols, Ordinals, BRC-20, and later Runes, have emerged in succession. Their appearance has expanded Bitcoin's possible use cases while reigniting a long-standing debate about the network's purpose.

Since its inception, Bitcoin has been designed as a simple, robust monetary system with intentionally limited programmability. Unlike blockchains such as Ethereum, it does not natively support complex smart contracts. Yet, the demand for more advanced applications on Bitcoin continues to grow, pushing developers to explore new approaches. This is where BitVM comes in.

Spark is a Bitcoin Layer 2 based on statechains and shared signing. It gives wallets a way to offer a Lightning-like payment experience without taking direct custody, but its self-custody guarantees are weaker than holding bitcoin directly on L1.

Bitcoin is often described as a store of value, a form of “digital gold” meant to be held rather than spent. Yet, to function as a true monetary system, it must also enable payments that are fast, simple, and accessible. While solutions like the Lightning Network have significantly improved this aspect, they still introduce a level of complexity that limits adoption. It is in this context that the Ark protocol emerges.

Bitcoin is often treated as a speculative asset, but its purpose is more structural: to offer a scarce, verifiable digital currency without a central issuer. Here's how it works, what problem it solves, and why it matters beyond ETFs and exchanges.

In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to grant Bitcoin the status of legal tender. Four years later, the decision remains one of the most debated in the ecosystem. To understand the reality on the ground, Off-Chain Media went to the country to find out for itself.

At Baltic HoneyBadger 2025 in Riga, Arkade completed its first live demonstration on the Bitcoin mainnet. As the first implementation of the Ark protocol, this second-layer infrastructure aims to make Bitcoin programmable without touching its protocol or relying on the wrapped tokens that have long undermined competing solutions.

Is settling for being a “store of value” like digital gold enough to ensure Bitcoin’s survival? In this article, we take a deep dive into the risks of centralization and the social fracture that BTC can cause.

Often labeled as “digital gold” or dismissed as a speculative asset, Bitcoin (BTC) is already used by many as a tool for payments, saving, and protection against inflation. But does that make it real money?

Preserving privacy while accessing Bitcoin-collateralized loans is vital for digital sovereignty. This guide offers practical steps to use Lendasat privately, protecting identity, transaction history and on-chain activity.

Nostr is a truly decentralized protocol that serves as the foundation for a new kind of social network. Thanks to an innovative architecture, this protocol allows users to control their data and resist censorship, without relying on centralized servers. What Web3 promised but didn’t deliver, Nostr achieves. Discover how it works.

The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's payment layer, enabling instant, low-cost transactions without compromising decentralization. Discover why it exists, how it solves Bitcoin's scaling limits, and whether it is a viable long-term solution or just an intermediate step in Bitcoin's evolving monetary infrastructure.

Taproot Assets Protocol represents a major opportunity to enhance Bitcoin (BTC) through decentralized features and compatibility with the Lightning Network. Discover how this protocol opens up new perspectives for the Bitcoin blockchain.

Drivechains have sparked great interest within the Bitcoin (BTC) community. Are they the ultimate innovation that Bitcoin has been waiting for, or just a new disappointment? Dive into the heart of this debate that animates Bitcoin developers and form an informed opinion on the matter.

The L402 protocol represents a major technological breakthrough aimed at integrating Bitcoin into the core of the Internet economy. By adopting this protocol, Lightning Labs opens up a field of possibilities for online transactions, allowing for instant and almost invisible payments for the user. Discover how the L402 protocol aspires to transform Bitcoin into the universal currency of the Internet, facilitating a new era of decentralized and universal micropayments.

Bitcoin is gearing up for a new evolution with the potential introduction of covenants through opcodes like OP_CAT and OP_CTV. This update could profoundly change Bitcoin’s programming capabilities. Discover the implications of this innovation for Bitcoin and BTC.

Bitcoin was designed as a robust and decentralized monetary system, but its architecture naturally limits the complexity of applications built directly on its blockchain. For several years, different solutions have attempted to extend its capabilities without modifying its core rules. The RGB protocol follows this approach, with a radically different design: moving contract execution off-chain while preserving Bitcoin's security.

This report aims to assess the environmental impact of Bitcoin objectively. While mainstream media often portrays Bitcoin as a threat to the environment, we’ll examine the facts to better understand its effects on our planet. Despite my personal support for Bitcoin, I’d to remain neutral, providing sources for all data presented.

In this report, I explore the increasing use of Bitcoin by Iranians, a population facing economic challenges as well as censorship from their government and foreign powers. My goal is to depict how Bitcoin serves as a tool for protecting freedoms and preserving value in a complex economic and political context.