This morning we posted Dr. Jeff Ross on why bitcoin exists: whoever controls the money controls your purchasing power. Yesterday the Bank of Russia described what its newly registered custodians do. They "grant clients access to address identifiers where such assets are recorded." In plain English: the bank holds the coins. You get a login. The bank is Sberbank, majority-owned by the Russian state and under Western sanctions since 2022. A bitcoin balance there is a claim on Sberbank, and a claim on Sberbank is a claim on the state. Every custodial balance is a claim on someone. Most people never look up who. The whitepaper's first sentence was about money that moves without going through a financial institution. Russia's first regulated step was to put one back.

Bitcoin in Your IRA?!? Here's What Wall Street Doesn't Want You to Know

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Bitcoin Well

Bitcoin in Your IRA?!? Here's What Wall Street Doesn't Want You to Know

Canada's financial intelligence agency is the one your bank and your exchange report to. Over the last five years, it wiped the supplier names off 100 of its own contracts, worth more than $26.7 million. The Hill Times says it's the only government agency to do that without giving a reason. One of those lines: $1,576,009.59 for "data and database access services." Vendor: REDACTED. Privacy for the watcher. Transparency for the watched.

On Friday, authorities cut the internet around a protest site in New Delhi for 12 hours. By Saturday, Bitchat, the messaging app that works without the internet, was gone from the App Store and Google Play in India. India had already told GitHub why it wanted the app gone. Its design made it hard for police to intercept messages or trace users. And it kept working during internet shutdowns. That's not a charge sheet. That's the feature list. Bitcoin exists for the same reason. Money that works without anyone's permission, even when the people in charge would rather it didn't. When the state tells you exactly why a tool scares them, believe them.

How much bitcoin you think you could get for these two vintage Pokémon card boxes? Asking for a friend 👀

FinCEN filed this morning to withdraw the 2020 rule that would have put a record on every transfer over $3,000 to a wallet you control. "FinCEN will not take any further action on this NPRM." Good news. Your wallet never needed their permission anyway.

Why Are Banks Disappearing? Too Big to Fail Is Failing the Free Market

Your dollars can be used to pay off the government's debt. Your bitcoin can't. This week the President told TIME: "certain levels of inflation will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly." He's right about the arithmetic. Inflation doesn't pay a debt. It moves the bill. Every dollar Washington owes gets cheaper to repay because every dollar you hold buys less. Nobody votes on it and nobody sends you an invoice. The day the 2008 bank bailout became law, Treasury's own ledger showed $10.19 trillion of public debt. On Wednesday it showed $40.17 trillion. Both parties built that number. Mises called inflation a policy, not an accident. This week it was described as one, out loud. A money with a fixed supply can't be quietly volunteered to pay the tab.

Who (or what) finally convenced you to buy your first sats?

Bitcoin has a birth certificate, and it's a bailout. Eighteen years ago today, on October 3, 2008, Public Law 110-343 gave the Treasury Secretary authority to buy up to $700 billion of troubled assets from banks, "on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary." That's the clause. Not Congress. Not you. The Secretary. The House had voted it down four days earlier. It passed anyway, and your taxes stood behind it. 28 days later, Satoshi published the white paper. 92 days later, block 0 locked a newspaper headline into the chain forever: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." The rescues never really stopped. They just stopped making headlines. Bitcoin is the money whose terms no Secretary gets to determine.

Your dollars can be used to pay off the government's debt. Your bitcoin can't. This week the President told TIME: "certain levels of inflation will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly." He's right about the arithmetic. Inflation doesn't pay a debt. It moves the bill. Every dollar Washington owes gets cheaper to repay because every dollar you hold buys less. Nobody votes on it and nobody sends you an invoice. The day the 2008 bank bailout became law, Treasury's own ledger showed $10.19 trillion of public debt. On Wednesday it showed $40.17 trillion. Both parties built that number. Mises called inflation a policy, not an accident. This week it was described as one, out loud. A money with a fixed supply can't be quietly volunteered to pay the tab.

Your dollars can be used to pay off the government's debt. Your bitcoin can't. This week the President told TIME: "certain levels of inflation will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly." He's right about the arithmetic. Inflation doesn't pay a debt. It moves the bill. Every dollar Washington owes gets cheaper to repay because every dollar you hold buys less. Nobody votes on it and nobody sends you an invoice. The day the 2008 bank bailout became law, Treasury's own ledger showed $10.19 trillion of public debt. On Wednesday it showed $40.17 trillion. Both parties built that number. Mises called inflation a policy, not an accident. This week it was described as one, out loud. A money with a fixed supply can't be quietly volunteered to pay the tab.

Who (or what) finally convenced you to buy your first sats?

Who (or what) finally convenced you to buy your first sats?

A new NBER paper found that when World Bank aid lands, new bitcoin wallets light up. Two to six cents of every aid dollar. The crowd's conclusion: bitcoin is how they steal aid. Except the World Bank's own researchers found the same pattern back in 2020, in offshore bank accounts in places like Zurich. Around 7.5% of aid to the most aid-dependent countries. The thieves didn't change. The vault did. And this vault keeps a public receipt. The line nobody's quoting is from the paper itself: "Capture carries no funding penalty." The sectors where they caught it still got half of the next round of World Bank money. The leak isn't the scandal. The refill is.

Bitcoin has a birth certificate, and it's a bailout. Eighteen years ago today, on October 3, 2008, Public Law 110-343 gave the Treasury Secretary authority to buy up to $700 billion of troubled assets from banks, "on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary." That's the clause. Not Congress. Not you. The Secretary. The House had voted it down four days earlier. It passed anyway, and your taxes stood behind it. 28 days later, Satoshi published the white paper. 92 days later, block 0 locked a newspaper headline into the chain forever: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." The rescues never really stopped. They just stopped making headlines. Bitcoin is the money whose terms no Secretary gets to determine.

HODL Got Us Here, Now It's Holding Us Back w/ Kyle Huber

X (formerly Twitter)

Bitcoin Well

HODL Got Us Here, Now It's Holding Us Back w/ Kyle Huber

A new NBER paper found that when World Bank aid lands, new bitcoin wallets light up. Two to six cents of every aid dollar. The crowd's conclusion: bitcoin is how they steal aid. Except the World Bank's own researchers found the same pattern back in 2020, in offshore bank accounts in places like Zurich. Around 7.5% of aid to the most aid-dependent countries. The thieves didn't change. The vault did. And this vault keeps a public receipt. The line nobody's quoting is from the paper itself: "Capture carries no funding penalty." The sectors where they caught it still got half of the next round of World Bank money. The leak isn't the scandal. The refill is.

HODL Got Us Here, Now It's Holding Us Back w/ Kyle Huber

X (formerly Twitter)

Bitcoin Well

HODL Got Us Here, Now It's Holding Us Back w/ Kyle Huber

Hmmm. Let's see... @grok Create a pie chart of what our X content consists of, but deliver it in the form of a video of a cabaret dance staring our CEO @adamobrien and make the pie chart in the video using our company's branding colors and style.