Aaron Ingalls (1986-2026)

Aaron Ingalls, known to many of you as BTCAaron or "Double A," passed away this weekend after a battle with brain cancer. He was surrounded by his loved ones. He leaves behind his wife and three young children.

I met Aaron at the Bitcoin Classic in Tennessee back in 2023. We hung out on the golf course, and even having just met the guy, it was immediately obvious what kind of person he was. Extremely kind, extremely humble, and an absolute pro with a club in his hand. He was out there playing with a bunch of hacks at a Bitcoin golf tournament and couldn't have been more gracious about it. Just a really, really good dude.

Aaron was a devoted family man and a Bitcoiner to his core. When he was diagnosed with brain cancer, he fought vigorously, doing everything in his power to make sure he could still be there for his family. He and his family founded The Aaron Ingalls Foundation to support other families impacted by brain tumors.

We pray for Aaron's wife, his three children, and everyone who loved him.

For the rest of us, a reminder: time is the most scarce asset any of us will ever hold. There is no portfolio allocation, no trade, no amount of bitcoin that competes with the hours you spend with the people who matter. Tend to your families. Better yourself. Call the person you've been meaning to call. Life is shorter than any of us want to believe, and the only way to honor guys like Aaron is to live well: with conviction, with love, and with your priorities in the right order.

Rest easy, Double A. ⚡

Hormuz Blockade Day 1: Tankers Already Testing the Line

Why it matters: 20% of the world's oil transits through a strait that is now a naval standoff zone.

The first full day of Trump's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is already being tested. A third Iran-linked tanker entered the Gulf via the Strait on Tuesday, with a US-sanctioned tanker linked to Chinese ownership sailing out into the Gulf of Oman. 230 loaded oil tankers remain queued inside the Gulf. Oil is above $105. Iran is floating a five-year nuclear suspension as a possible off-ramp, but the military posture says otherwise. This is the kind of geopolitical disruption where bitcoin's properties, no counterparty risk, neutral settlement, permissionless transfer, stop being theoretical and start being practical. As we covered in yesterday's Brief, this is the macro story to watch.

Tether Goes Direct-to-Consumer With Self-Custodial Bitcoin Wallet

Why it matters: 570 million people already use Tether's infrastructure. Now they can hold their own Bitcoin keys.

Tether launched tether.wallet today, a self-custodial mobile wallet with support for Bitcoin and Lightning alongside its stablecoin and gold products. The standout feature is human-readable @tether.me usernames that replace the usual long address strings. Self-custodial, keys on-device, direct-to-consumer. Good to see Tether putting Bitcoin front and center and bringing that to 160+ countries. One important caveat for the freaks: Bitcoin is the only true bearer asset in that wallet. USDT, USAT, and Tether Gold are all centrally issued tokens that can be frozen or clawed back. Hold your bitcoin, use the stablecoins as needed, but know the difference. Check it out at wallet.tether.io.

Rethinking CAGR: Why Bitcoin's Most Popular Metric Is Misleading

Why it matters: The way most people measure Bitcoin's growth potential is fundamentally flawed.

James Check (Checkmatey) from Checkonchain published a deep dive on why CAGR is a busted metric for evaluating Bitcoin. The bears use declining CAGR to declare the asset dead. The bulls use it to project moon-math price targets. Both are wrong. CAGR is extremely sensitive to your start and end dates, which means it tells you more about when you bought than about Bitcoin's actual trajectory. James reframes how to think about future growth potential in a more grounded way. If you're not subscribed to Checkonchain, fix that. Some of the best on-chain analysis in the space.

Google Ships Gemma 4: Open Source AI Hits a New Ceiling

Why it matters: Frontier-grade AI is going open source, and that changes the power dynamics of the entire industry.

Google DeepMind released Gemma 4, a family of open-weight models built from Gemini 3 research. The 31B parameter model currently ranks as the #3 open model in the world on the Arena AI leaderboard. The smaller variants run on personal computers and even mobile devices, with 256K context windows, support for 140 languages, and native function calling for agentic workflows. The 26B model scores 89% on AIME 2026 math and 80% on competitive coding benchmarks. When frontier intelligence runs locally on your hardware with no API calls, no data leaving your device, and no permission required, the centralized AI gatekeeping model starts to break down. Open source AI is Bitcoin-adjacent in spirit: permissionless, censorship-resistant, and decentralized by design.

Nearly 40% of Americans Have Less Than $500 in Cash Savings

Why it matters: The American consumer is tapped out, and nobody's talking about it.

Nearly 40% of Americans report having less than $500 in cash savings. Let that sink in. One car repair, one medical bill, one missed paycheck away from crisis. This is the reality behind the "strong consumer" narrative. Combine this with the PPI data below and you get the full picture: prices are rising on energy while the average American has no cushion. This is exactly the environment where bitcoin's value proposition as a savings technology becomes most urgent. You can't save in a currency that loses purchasing power when you have nothing to spare.

PPI: Energy Prices Jumped 8.5% in March

Why it matters: Producer inflation is being driven almost entirely by energy, and the Hormuz blockade hasn't even hit the data yet.

March PPI showed final demand energy prices surging 8.5%, driving most of the headline advance. Core goods (ex-food, ex-energy) rose just 0.2%, and food prices actually declined 0.3%. This is a pure energy inflation story. And here's the kicker: this data is from March, before the Hormuz blockade. With oil above $105 and 230 tankers stuck in the Gulf, the April numbers are going to be ugly. The Fed is trapped. Cut rates and energy inflation accelerates. Hold rates and the consumer (see above) breaks. Bitcoin doesn't care about the Fed's dilemma.

Bank Lobby Fires Back on Stablecoin Yields: "Wrong Question"

Why it matters: Banks are openly admitting that stablecoins threaten their deposit base.

The American Bankers Association fired back at the White House after the Council of Economic Advisers published a study showing that banning stablecoin yields would barely help bank lending (just $2.1B on a $12T loan book) while costing consumers $800M in foregone returns. The ABA says the CEA "studied the wrong question," warning that a $1-2T stablecoin market paying competitive yields would drain deposits from community banks. Translation: the banks are scared. When the lobby's argument is "please don't let consumers earn better returns than we offer," you know the competitive moat is crumbling.