THE PLEBS ALREADY OWN BITCOIN.

Dear sovereign renaissance,

Six weeks out. This week we published two Substack pieces that name where Bitcoin is drifting and what to do about it, released a new podcast episode with one of the most rigorous fine artists working in the Bitcoin space today, and opened the last window for Q3 grant submissions. A lot to share. Let's get to it.

◆ New on the BFTA Substack

Hodlers are not enough.

BIP-110 stalled. Adam Back explained why. Both raise concerns worth taking seriously. The deeper truth is that the plebs already own the majority of Bitcoin. They just do not use it.

Over the weekend, a coalition of sound-money Bitcoiners tried to activate BIP-110. The chain mined two blocks and stalled. The next morning, Adam Back, one of the small handful of people whose original work directly informed the Bitcoin whitepaper, posted a single sentence on X: “the economic users control the protocol, via the market. 1000s of nodes with no economic use have no influence.”

This piece takes both sides seriously. BIP-110's concerns about spam, block-space bloat, and rising node cost are real and BFTA shares them. Adam's observation about how governance actually resolves is empirically true. But underneath both sits something more uncomfortable. Individual holders already own roughly eighty percent of the effectively circulating supply of Bitcoin. The institutions that dominate its governance own less than twenty. The problem is not weight. The problem is that the plebs, holding the majority of the world's hardest money, refuse to conduct their economic lives in it.

The fix does not require anyone to buy more Bitcoin. It requires the people who already hold Bitcoin to begin transacting with it, in the ordinary rhythms of their economic lives. Every artist selling a print for sats is an economic user. Every family paying tuition, every merchant taking Lightning, every writer accepting a zap. Change the composition of the economic majority, and everything downstream, including protocol politics, changes with it.

Read the article →

◆ Also on the BFTA Substack

Bitcoin was never supposed to be an investment.

The word “investment” is doing all the damage. Here is how to think about Bitcoin as money, why we still cannot, and why every artist should learn to.

The companion piece to this week's article. Bitcoin was not designed as a share certificate or a stock ticker or a hedge fund product. It was designed as money. The whitepaper says so. Every metaphor that treats Bitcoin as an investment quietly imports the language of the very system Bitcoin was built to make optional, and the more the language wins, the more the technology loses.

Together, these two pieces form a two-part frame BFTA will keep returning to. The first argues Bitcoin's purpose. The second argues Bitcoin's citizenship. Read them in either order.

Read the article →

◆ Share Your Bitcoin Journey · Episode 13

Anik Malcolm.

Depicting Bitcoin · The Whole Entire Universe, 900 hours, 21 million beads · The mountains of central Italy

Classically trained in London, disillusioned in Reykjavik, and now living with his wife and children in the mountains of central Italy, Anik Malcolm is producing some of the most rigorous fine art anywhere in the Bitcoin space today. His practice carries a two-word tagline: Depicting Bitcoin. His most consequential work is a monumental oil painting titled The Whole Entire Universe, which debuted at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas and took over 900 hours to complete.

Twenty-one million beads. A cube of 276 by 276 by 276. Each face gives up exactly 4,096 squares, which turn out to be 64 by 64. The halving pattern of 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 appears in the image itself. And this only works cleanly at 21 million. Anik walks through the whole discovery on camera, and the episode closes with his own five-minute animation video of the painting, included with permission. Do not skip the outro.

Watch the full episode →

Prefer audio? Share Your Bitcoin Journey is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and rss.com. Episode 13 arrives on the audio feed shortly after publication.

◆ Bitcoin Arts Park at the Midwest Bitcoin Summit

Six weeks out.

Programming is set. Ainsley Costello anchors Wednesday, September 23. Andy Burghardt anchors Thursday, September 24. Short North Stage brings an excerpt from Sweeney Todd and its high school internship performers across both days. Shipwreck Shawn's paintings hang in the gallery. Proof of Print's mining printer runs live on the monitor. Lindey Magee reads Bitcoin: A Treasury to HODL to Columbus-area homeschool families on Thursday.

What we still need in these final weeks: sponsors and volunteers.

Deadline: September 1.

The third-quarter grant window is open. Working artists across every discipline can apply for a Bitcoin micro-grant from $500 to $2,000, paid entirely in sats, to fund a specific project, a new body of work, a piece of equipment, or the time it takes to make something serious. There is no application fee. Grants are reviewed quarterly by the BFTA board.

Submissions close on September 1, 2026. If you are working on something and the money is what stands between you and finishing it, apply. If you know a working artist for whom that sentence is true, forward this email.

Apply for a Q3 grant →

The Throughline This Week

Own it. Use it. Make with it.

This week's Substack pieces argue that Bitcoin's future is not decided by who buys it. It is decided by who uses it. Anik Malcolm shows what four figures of oil-painting hours look like on canvas. The Q3 grant window opens the door for another artist to take Bitcoin from held to made-with.

Own it. Use it. Make with it. That is the shape of a renaissance.

Until next time.

Bitcoin for the Arts

Where to Start

Apply for a Q3 Grant →

Sponsor Midwest →

Sovereign Circle →

Read the Substack →

Patronage is Contagious

Forward this to someone who supports the arts.

Subscribe →

Bitcoin for the Arts · 501(c)(3)