NEW: "Bitcoin is a relatively small and controllable market, whereas gold stands alone. There is only one gold. Ultimately, gold is more widely held, deeply established, and still plays a central role in the global system," says Ray Dalio.

NEW: 🇧🇹 Bhutan offloads another 100 BTC ($8.1M).

NEW: Block and Spiral have launched “Loupe,” an AI-powered vulnerability scanner for open-source Bitcoin projects designed to detect flaws before attackers do. The free “scanning-as-a-service” tool analyzes Bitcoin codebases for vulnerabilities across millions of lines of code securing billions in value. Block and Spiral say automated security scanning is becoming “mission-critical” for the Bitcoin ecosystem as open-source developers face growing pressure to secure critical infrastructure.

🇪🇸 SPAIN GOES BIG ON BLOCKCHAIN SURVEILLANCE Spain’s Ministry of the Interior has launched its first-ever International Course on the Traceability and Seizure of Digital Assets, training elite agents from Spain, Portugal, and Andorra on crypto tracking techniques. The program, organized by Spain’s Intelligence Center Against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), aims to strengthen law enforcement capabilities against money laundering, organized crime, terrorism financing, and tax fraud tied to digital assets. Secretary of State for Security Aina Calvo led the opening ceremony for the course, which includes around 30 high-level agents specializing in organized crime and financial investigations. Officials say participants will receive “the most advanced resources and knowledge” related to cryptocurrencies, blockchain analysis, transaction tracing, and advanced digital asset seizure techniques. The move signals a growing push across Europe to expand state-level blockchain surveillance and crypto tracing capabilities.

NEW: The Senate has voted 49-44 to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for a 14-year term beginning February 1. The vote was bipartisan as Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and John Fetterman (D-PA) joined all Republicans in voting yes.

MSTR is on it's 6th straight weekly green candle. The stock is up over 60% off the early April lows.

For years, Michael Saylor's pitch was reducible to three words: never sell Bitcoin. It was clean, viral, and became the operating philosophy for the largest corporate Bitcoin holder on Earth. This week, that slogan got altered in a way that’s considerably less memetic. On Strategy's earnings call, Saylor and Phong Le repeatedly emphasized that the company is willing to sell Bitcoin if doing so increases Bitcoin per share for shareholders. The new framing has gone from "never sell" to "never become a net seller." That sounds like a major philosophical pivot, but for Strategy it is probably better understood as a sign of maturity. The company is no longer just a buy-and-hold vehicle born in an era before spot Bitcoin ETFs. It's a capital markets machine with preferred shares, dividends, cash obligations, and much loftier shareholder expectations. At that scale, active treasury management becomes the strategy itself. As Samson Mow put it, a firm with real optionality, whether to sell, hedge, issue, or buy, is hard to pin down. A company that publicly vows to only buy and never sell hands short sellers and arbitrageurs a roadmap for how to attack it. Many Bitcoin haters said that as soon as Saylor even hinted at selling a single Bitcoin, the entire apparatus would come crashing down as investors lost faith and rushed for the exits. Instead, the market barely flinched. Bitcoin reclaimed $80,000 for the first time since January even after Strategy disclosed no Bitcoin purchases ahead of earnings and openly acknowledged it may sell Bitcoin in the future. But while Saylor's memetic message evolves, something else is now forming around Strategy’s preferred shares. Over $425M in TVL is now routing STRC into looping DeFi strategies, with some advertising an insane 50 to 60% APY. As Pledditor pointed out, Saylor now refers to STRC as “the money,” describes its dividend as “risk-free,” and regularly retweets Ethereum and Solana-based yield products to his audience. That is a difficult image to reconcile with the man who popularized the phrase “there is no second best.” Especially when Bitcoin itself still lacks widespread support for many privacy, payments, and Lightning projects that could benefit enormously from his endorsement. And it is not just the usual critics raising concerns. Both Cory Klippsten and Lyn Alden have warned that a leveraged DeFi ecosystem forming on top of STRC could become the next major blow-up in the space. Anyone who has spent years in this industry understands how the chase for yield usually ends. “Never sell your Bitcoin” became timeless advice, way before Saylor even bought his first Bitcoin, for a reason.

Saylor broke some brains this week by adding nuance to the mantra. But does “never be a net seller” carry the same memetic force as “never sell”? Sign up below for tomorrow’s newsletter, then join Jim C and Rob Wallace live at 12:30pm ET as we break it all down.

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Do you trust a Sunday night pump?

Bitcoin’s weekly candle is on pace to close back above the November 2025 lows 👀

We've entered the 'deranged levels of mania' stage of the global bubble. Infra joins to break down: - How markets keep ripping through a major oil shock - His Bitcoin outlook - Why Treasuries might be the better short-term play. YouTube:

The S&P 500 is up over 17% from the March 30 lows. That has added more than $10 TRILLION in market cap. That’s equivalent to adding roughly 6.25 entire Bitcoin market caps in just over a month. When Bitcoin runs, it will melt faces.

SAMSON MOW: "The more tools Strategy holds, the fewer angles its adversaries have. A firm with real optionality is hard to game: it might sell, hedge, issue, or buy. A company that has publicly vowed to only ever do one thing has handed a map to short sellers and arbitrageurs."

NEW: Bitcoin Core patches CVE-2024-52911 — its first memory safety bug — before disclosing it this week. The vulnerability, affecting versions 0.14.0 through 28.x, let miners remotely crash nodes with invalid blocks. Roughly 43% of active nodes were still vulnerable before 29.0.

GERMAN LEFT PARTY PUSHES BITCOIN CRACKDOWN, EXIT TAX, AND POSSIBLE EU TRADING BAN A new motion submitted by Germany’s Left Party is being described as one of the most aggressive anti-Bitcoin proposals yet seen in Europe. @blocktrainer reports the proposal calls on the German government to dramatically tighten taxation, surveillance, and regulation of Bitcoin and crypto. Among the proposals: • Abolish Germany’s current 1 year holding rule that allows tax free Bitcoin gains for long term holders • Tax Bitcoin profits like stock market gains under capital asset rules • Introduce an “exit tax” on unrealized crypto gains for people leaving Germany • Expand blockchain surveillance and tax enforcement powers • Push for mandatory identity verification even for self hosted wallets interacting with regulated services • Create a centralized EU crypto supervisory authority • Consider EU wide trading bans on cryptocurrencies deemed environmentally harmful or systemically risky The proposal specifically targets proof of work assets like Bitcoin, citing energy consumption comparisons to countries such as Thailand and calling for possible trading restrictions at the EU level. The Left Party claims billions in untaxed crypto profits are being lost due to Germany’s current holding period exemption, though critics point to countries like Austria, which abolished similar rules and reportedly generated far less tax revenue than expected.

BITCOIN SOLD IN GERMANY COULD BE TAXED OVER 50% Under the Green Party's proposed law, if sold within a year, Bitcoin gains would be taxed as regular income at progressive rates up to 45%, plus the 5.5% solidarity surcharge.

WINTERMUTE: "The store of value narrative took a hit earlier this year when Bitcoin sold off alongside everything else, and that correlation has not been broken."

Politicians to visit PubKey NYC: Trump, Lummis, and now Massie

NOW: MSTR CEO Phong Le said at least five times during today’s earnings call that the company is open to selling Bitcoin if it benefits the business, such as for tax advantages or to increase Bitcoin per share.

NEW: 🇨🇴 President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, warns that Bitcoin mining powered by fossil fuels could accelerate climate collapse, but says regions with abundant clean energy like Venezuela and Paraguay are attracting investment. He points to Colombia’s Caribbean coast as a potential hub, calling it “an immense boost to the development of the Caribbean,” and urges dialogue with the Wayúu community so they can become co-owners of future mining projects. Petro has made climate policy central to his agenda, pushing for a transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy