- Zymergen IPO’d at a $3 B valuation while Ginkgo Bioworks reached a $15 B valuation via SPAC, highlighting the rapid commercial ascent of synthetic-biology platforms.  
- El Salvador announced it will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender; channel participants debated whether this reduces USD-denominated “tax” to the U.S., the practicality of on-chain fees, and the risk of government-controlled keys or mandated third-party custodians.  
- Lightning Network (LN) was cited as a viable layer-2 solution for everyday, non-anonymous Bitcoin transactions once on-chain congestion returns.  
- A 24,000-year-old bdelloid rotifer was revived from Arctic permafrost, underscoring extreme cryptobiosis and the longevity of microscopic life (Current Biology paper shared).  
- Intel x86 processors contain undocumented “hidden instructions,” a security-relevant discovery discussed via an InfoQ article.  
- PicoCAD—a minimalist, voxel-based 3-D modeling tool—was linked; participants compared its ease-of-use to the hypothetical limits of NES/SNES-era hardware for real-time low-poly rendering.