32,000 Ugandans Downloaded This App Last Week

Good morning Bitcoiners, Hector here with the first Roundup of 2026!

New year, new Bitcoin.

There's a thread running through this week's biggest stories: real use cases win in the long run. We’ve got:

• Peer-to-peer technology in Uganda is becoming a lifeline against government censorship.

• Patient capital is accumulating on chain while everyone else panics.

• Another crypto castle built on sand is crumbling in real time.

Let's dig in.

1. Uganda's Quiet Revolution

On Bitcoin twitter, everyone's talking about Venezuela this week. But there's another epic story flying under the radar that better illustrates why decentralization matters. (H/t @callebtc for surfacing this.)

Uganda holds general elections in less than two weeks on January 14th. And if history is any guide, the government will likely shut down the internet (again) - just like they did in 2016 and 2021, when President Museveni blocked access for four to five days straight.

This time, the opposition is ready.

Bobi Wine, Uganda's leading opposition figure, is urging supporters to download Bitchat - the decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app launched by Jack Dorsey last July. The app uses Bluetooth mesh networking to send messages device-to-device. No internet required. No phone numbers. No central servers.

"The regime is plotting an internet shutdown in the coming days, like they have done in all previous elections," Wine posted on X. "They switch off the internet to block communication and ensure citizens do not organize, verify their election results, or demand accountability."

The response has been immediate. Google Trends shows "Bitchat" searches in Uganda spiked from 0 to 100 in a single day. Chrome-Stats reports over 32,000 new downloads in the past week alone, bringing total downloads to almost 1,000,000 since launch.

The Ugandan government has even restricted imports of Starlink equipment ahead of the vote!

This is what censorship resistance looks like in practice as a lifeline to (particularly) all non-US citizens. Not as a talking point, but real utility.

The same principles that make Bitcoin valuable - decentralization, permissionlessness, resistance to state control - are proving their worth for basic communication. When governments can shut down your money and your speech with a flip of a switch, tools that route around that power become essential.

Peer-to-peer networks are back (and they’re not just for early adopters or ‘cypherpunks’ anymore).

2. Patient Capital Returns

While Uganda demonstrates why decentralization matters, the Bitcoin network is showing who actually believes in it.

According to Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, long-term Bitcoin holders have shifted from net selling to net accumulation over the past 30 days. This comes after what Sigel called their "biggest selling spree since 2019".

That's a significant flip. Long-term holders - wallets that have held BTC for 155+ days - are the patient capital. When they sell, it signals distribution. When they accumulate, it signals conviction.

Congratulations if you held firm and stacked more during the December drawdown. You're in good company. Want to add further to your stack? Get the lowest fees when you buy your Bitcoin through Rhino.

Meanwhile, those whale accumulation headlines you've seen on Twitter? Mostly noise. CryptoQuant's head of research Julio Moreno warned that much of the visible "whale buying" is actually exchange wallet consolidation - internal bookkeeping that gets misread as accumulation.

"Not every large transfer equals a whale buying Bitcoin," Moreno noted. "Sometimes it's just infrastructure doing housekeeping". The below image shows the latest “peak” was in November of last year (4th largest on record).

When you filter out exchange-related distortions, the real picture emerges, showing that whales holding 100-1,000 BTC are in fact still distributing.

But long-term holders (i.e. the true believers who've weathered multiple bitcoin cycles) are accumulating yet again.

The market structure hasn't changed overnight. But the cohort that matters most just shifted their behavior. They've seen this movie before. And they're buying the fear yet again.

3. Meanwhile, in Altcoin Land

While long-term Bitcoin holders accumulate with conviction, altcoin projects are learning hard lessons about building their foundations on shaky ground.

Exhibit A this week: Infinex.

Kain Warwick's DeFi "SuperApp" raised ~$70 million last year through Patron NFTs, with some buyers paying over $100,000 each at an implied $400 million valuation. The pitch? Early access to the next big thing in crypto. Get in before TGE and ride the wave.

Then reality hit earlier the week when their token sale went badly wrong.

When Infinex tried to launch at a $300 million FDV, the market pushed back. Hard. "Pricing too high" was the feedback they apparently received.

So Warwick slashed the valuation to $99.99 million - a 67% haircut from the original implied terms (trying to scrape in the valuation just below the $100M psychological mark).

The Patron NFT floor dropped on the news. Early believers who paid six figures are watching their implied value erode before the token even launches.

"An ICO should be attractive" Warwick explained on X to their followers (who clearly failed to believe him). "If the price feels too high or the terms don't align with the community, it triggers negative sentiment."

Translation: even the insiders couldn't stomach the valuation they'd been sold.

This is the altcoin playbook playing out in real time. Insiders with large followings get in early at high valuations, then retail gets offered "discounted" terms that still leave early backers underwater. Rinse and repeat and hopefully the market won’t notice.

As we all know by now, Bitcoin doesn't work this way

It has no pre-mines and no insider allocations. No VCs dumping on retail at TGE. No "early unlock mechanisms" that benefit founders over users. Just 21 million coins, issued on a fixed schedule, available to anyone willing to mine or buy them.

Hard money with a real use case - like helping Ugandans communicate during an internet blackout - will always outperform short-term hype and financial engineering.

Sometimes the best feature is what's missing.

The Final Word

In Uganda, peer-to-peer technology is proving its worth as a tool for human rights and freedom - not just a talking point. On-chain, long-term holders have ended their biggest selling spree since 2019 and returned to accumulation. And in crypto land, another castle built on insider allocations is crumbling yet again (no surprises there).

The pattern keeps repeating. Real use cases. Patient capital. Hard money.

That's what survives. That's what compounds. That's what wins.

2026 is just getting started.

Chat next week,

- Hector