Tucker Carlson suggests the CIA created Bitcoin, still calls it “the future”

During a Turning Point USA talk, Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency is the most likely creator of Bitcoin, declaring “obviously it was the CIA, we all know that.” He nonetheless argued that Bitcoin’s potential for financial sovereignty remains undiminished and said he’d invest heavily if adoption and privacy hurdles were cleared. - link

OUR TAKE: Could the super shadowy coders that run Bitcoin actually be the CIA? 

Popular conspiracies suggest perhaps the NSA created Bitcoin 16 years ago, but here’s why the theory persists:

In 1996 the National Security Agency (NSA) published a paper titled “How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash” which describes a form of anonymous digital cash.

That report shows that state cryptographers were thinking about electronic cash decades before Bitcoin’s 2008 whitepaper.

But the contents of the paper make a big difference: the systems discussed were clearly centralized (involving a “bank” or trusted mint) and lacked the trustless, decentralized ledger architecture that Bitcoin introduced.

Castle Island Ventures Founding Partner Nic Carter posits that Bitcoin could have been born from these efforts – that one of the researchers went rogue with what they learned, solved the centralization issue with proof-of-work, and launched Bitcoin. 

He calls this the “Lab Leak Hypothesis.”

 “I think it was a shuttered internal R&D project which one researcher thought was too good to lay fallow on the shelf and chose to secretly release,” Carter argues.

Here are some of the reasons I remain skeptical:

• No credible whistle-blowers or leaked internal memos pointing to direct CIA/NSA development of Bitcoin. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

• The NSA paper lacks the proof-of-work, peer-to-peer propagation, and longest-chain consensus.

• If a CIA/NSA project of that magnitude existed, the massive scale of Bitcoin’s adoption, the billions of dollars of capital and infrastructure built on it, and the global surveillance focus on the network make a total cover-up very unlikely.
  

That said, the theory is not completely worthless. It serves as a useful reminder that, while the genesis of Bitcoin remains opaque, the ability to audit the code is what allows us to trust Bitcoin.

That doesn’t mean the state can’t capture Bitcoin after the fact, but that’s for another newsletter.

-CBS

New report shows that increased data center loads improved state power costs

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reveals U.S. states that added more MW load between 2019 and 2024 saw power prices drop on an inflation-adjusted basis. These states also saw the least dramatic increases to power prices over the period on a nominal basis. - link

OUR TAKE: Bitcoin miners vindicated once again.

As if the incessant squawking about bitcoin boiling oceans wasn’t enough, Bitcoiners have fielded ignorant takes about bitcoin mines hiking energy rates, particularly in the U.S. once the mining industry took center stage here after the China ban.

Miners and their allies have long argued that miners contribute to grid and price stability, both by powering down during supply crunches and by providing energy / grid operators a steady, mass buyer of electrons. 

When these big buyers enter power markets, they allow power producers to monetize more megawatts, which drives down costs and ensures more stable price levels for the rest of the market.

This is clear in states like North Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas, the report notes, which have seen spectacular load growth from bitcoin mining and data centers since 2019 but which have all seen lower inflation-adjusted power prices. 

Now, as some commentators have noted, when even more load goes to AI data centers – which are much less price sensitive than bitcoin miners and likely won’t curtail as readily – this trend may falter.

There’s an argument to be made that these data centers could arguably add more price stability since they will be even better buyers of energy than miners – but they are also willing to bid more than anyone else on the market, so prices could rise accordingly. 

At the very least, if AI data centers do raise prices, miners have a U.S. Department of Energy research paper that they can point to and say, “look pal, it’s not our fault.”

-CMH

Monthly Lookback Series: September 2025

This month’s report breaks down hashrate and hashprice trends, forward market participation, trading activity and contract performance.

→ Read the full report

Google Claims Quantum Breakthrough

Google announced that it’s Quantum AI team has executed a verifiable quantum algorithm outperforming the world’s fastest supercomputers by 13,000x. The company says this achievement builds on it’s 2019 “quantum supremacy” result, although critics say that there should be question over the purpose-made algorithm which benchmarks the test. - link

Analysis reveals North Korea has already stolen over $2 billion in crypto in 2025

Elliptic reports that hackers linked to North Korea have already filched over $2 billion in crypto-assets in 2025, marking a new annual record and pushing the regime’s cumulative crypto thefts beyond $6 billion. Much of the illicit activity reportedly uses advanced laundering techniques: cross-chain bridges, mixing services, and obscure blockchains. - link

Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao

President Donald Trump has unconditionally pardoned Binance Founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. CZ was previously sentenced to 4 months in US prison for money-laundering violations. - link

Jane Street discloses 5.4% ownership in Bitfarms and 5% ownership in Cipher

Jane Street filed two Schedule 13G’s on October 23, revealing sizable positions in bothBitfarms (BITF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR). The Bitfarms filing showed 29,920,704 shares of BITF, representing 5.4% of the company’s outstanding stock. Jane Street also disclosed a 5.0% stake in CIFR, totaling 19,682,871 shares - link