Sup, nerds!

Here’s what you’re getting in today’s edition:

• 💅 This is cool: Bitcoin enters a $5T market

• 🔎 This seems important: The Bad News Sandwich

• 🤝 Partner: Ready to get hands-on with AI?

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: What’s up with these weird names for runes?

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ask Web(GPT)3!):

💅 This is cool:

Bitcoin Enters US Physical Retail (a $5 Trillion Market)

In one sentence: Square payments will soon allow stores to automatically convert a portion of retail sales into BTC (and US physical retail pulls $5.79T in yearly sales).

There’s a reason we all watch more television and order more take out now, than ever before.

It’s thanks to the likes of Netflix and DoorDash — they make accessing content and food delivery ridiculously easy.

And the easier something is to do, the more we tend to do it.

This new announcement from Square payments aims to do something similar for Bitcoin.

In case you’ve been living under a rock — Square’s payment systems are the terminal of choice for just about every retail store you walk into these days, owning close to 30% of the US point-of-sale-systems market.

…and it just so happens that their CEO (and former Twitter CEO) Jack Dorsey is a kind of obsessed with Bitcoin.

The current manifestation of that obsession is taking the form of a simple toggle that will soon roll out to all Square payment terminals.

When flipped, this toggle will automatically convert a portion of a store’s daily sales into Bitcoin.

Which seems a little gimmicky at first glance…but remember:

Physical retail sales in the US were…let’s see here…that can’t be right.

Nope. That’s (somehow) correct: ~$5.79 Trillion.

Syphoning off just a percentage of a percentage of that revenue and converting it into Bitcoin could do massive things for the crypto market!

(For context, the investments into the BTC ETFs that helped pump Bitcoin to new all time highs in the first quarter of this year? They totaled ~$12B).

Very cool!

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

The Bad News Sandwich (One Piece of Bad News, Stuffed Between Two Pieces of Good News)

In one sentence: Australia just joined the 1,000+ Bitcoin ATM club alongside the US and Canada, The DOJ wants 3 years for CZ, Bitcoin’s inflation rate is now lower than Gold’s.

You know that trick you use to get your dog to eat his heart worm medication?

(Sandwich it between two pieces of steak and hope he doesn’t notice).

This is like the news version of that:

1. Australia just joined the 1,000+ Bitcoin ATM club alongside the US and Canada.
   
   (The easier something is to do, the more we tend to do it...)
    

2. The DOJ wants three years of jail time for Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao (former CEO of Binance and recently charged felon).
   
   Which, on its own, is more than ok (you do the crime, you do the time).
   
   The reason we’re filing this one as ‘bad news’ is that the founder/CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange might be going to jail for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at his company.
   
   It ain’t a good look — especially when certain members of congress are trying to paint crypto as the ‘currency of choice’ for criminals.
    

3. Bitcoin’s inflation rate is now lower than Gold’s.
   
   (Thank you Bitcoin halving, and our condolences to Peter Schiff).

Alright, that’s it — that’s the sandwich.

Not too bad, right?

🤝 Partner:

Ready to get hands-on with AI?

No, no – not that kind of AI.

The friendly kind! 

Well, good news! 

Brilliant has courses in AI and programming, data analysis, computer science (and a whole bunch of other really important technologies).

Letting you master concepts in just 15 minutes a day!

Join 10 million people around the world and start your 30-day free trial today. 

Plus, the good people at Brilliant have offered 20% off a premium annual subscription specifically for Web3 Daily readers.

🔪 Let's dissect this:

What’s Up With These Weird Names for Runes?

In one sentence: The team behind Runes built in a way to programmatically reduce the minimum required number of letters by one character every 17,500 blocks, to prevent name squatting.

Is Runes the most interesting and well thought out innovation since the creation of Bitcoin itself?

It just might well be!

We’ve already written about the Rune protocol here and here - and today we’re back to explain why so many of the names of Runes projects are so long and weird.

A quick scroll through Runes on Magic Eden shows names like: DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•FEHU•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z and even, ALL•YOUR•TICKERS•SUCK.

So why the long names? Why not something simple like ‘jack’?

The reason is that a minimum name length has been built into the Rune protocol to prevent ‘name squatting.’

(i.e. Using a name that is typically recognized as a brand or trademark with the plan to sell it almost at ransom in the future to that brand at a profit).

Name squatting waves have happened during the .com boom, and pretty much every time a new social platform gains some sort of traction.

To prevent this, the team behind Runes built in a way to programmatically reduce the minimum required number of letters by one character every 17,500 blocks.

This way, if Runes really takes off, by the time ‘Nike’ is available, they will be ready to create a project with that name immediately.

(And if they never take off to the extent that warrants Nike getting involved, well, it doesn’t really matter either way).

Smart system!

Work with some of the largest newsletter publishers on the internet [partner]

Are you interested in selling out advertisements for some of the internet's largest media publications? Newsletter Sales (our agency partner) is looking for a hungry sales-partnerships lead to help sell sponsorships for newsletters like us, Web3 Daily.

If you're interested, please fill in this form

Rune Protocol Explained