BTC VI: Dubai Dreams + Vegas Visions

In this weekly Bitcoin Builders newsletter, we update you on the latest ways to do and earn more with your Bitcoin. Read more for the latest news from the Bitcoin universe and Arch community.

Roadmap

1. This Week's Headlines
2. One Big Thought
3. Arch Updates
4. Quick Hits: Watch, Read, Listen.

💰 Wall Street Gears up for Bitcoin boom. Bitcoin price has been on a steady climb back to near six-figures, and leaks reported by Bloomberg and Forbes suggest that Wall Street firms are gearing up for a Trump-fueled price surge. The news came as BTC price remained steady amidst China-US tariff talks, with Binance co-founder CZ predicting it could rise to between 500K and 1 million if the US creates a national strategic reserve.

💽 OP-Return limit to be removed. After heated debate that erupted from private chatter to public X threads in recent weeks, Bitcoin Core developers decided to remove a data limit that could lead to more efficient transactions on the base layer. The proposal was created by Peter Todd, CoinTelegraph reported.

The power of crypto lies in community.

At Dubai, our community showed out in force, making Arch House a resounding success with hundreds of attendees and dozens of Bitcoin projects building together throughout the week.

This was the first chance for many of our core developers and project founders to get together for ...

• Interactive technical deep-dives, that often went all-day long and deep into the night, as our engineers worked to solve some of the most fascinating challenges in Bitcoin cryptography
• Investor pitches, with first checks being written for a number of our top builders, as well as personal feedback on how others could improve to receive future funding.
• Strategic collaborations, between the core team and, especially, between our DeFi apps, which found new ways to connect liquidity and community between them.

There was fun, of course — from morning shisha sessions, sauna chats, cold plunges, and massages to late nights spent talking about life and crypto.

But through it all, there was also an unmistakable feeling of something major brewing for the entire Bitcoin space.

Lasting friendships, and tech, were being built.

Many of you saw and felt it firsthand.

If you missed out, then make sure to join us next at Bitcoin Vegas — we'll be hosting a series of must-see panels with top speakers on May 28 at the Illuminarium, plus happy hours throughout the week.

More details to come about Vegas. Email nick@arch.network with any questions — and if you're interested in staying with us, we do have a discounted room block at the Cosmopolitan.

Product Updates:

• Improved account and transaction management: Added new commands and better error handling for account creation, transaction execution, and UTXO management, making it easier and safer to manage funds and accounts.

• Increased network stability: Fixed issues that could cause validator nodes to disconnect or crash, including better handling of invalid public keys and improved node connection logic for a more reliable network.

• Expanded token and staking features: Added and tested new capabilities for token transfers, approvals, and staking, plus improved reporting and resource tracking for voting and staking activities.

• Streamlined developer and testing experience: Refactored code to reduce panics and improve error messages, expanded automated test coverage, and unified the local development setup for smoother onboarding and testing.

Join 104K+ Bitcoin builders in the Arch Discord

📖 Read

Our recent $13M raise from Pantera was published in more than 30 major news outlets, including Fortune, CoinDesk, Blockworks, Yahoo Finance!

Arch Labs Raises $13M in Funding for $BTC-Based Smart Contracts

The funding round, which valued Arch Labs at $200 million, was led by Pantera Capital

CoinDeskJamie Crawley

🎧 Listen

📺 Watch