Prime Trust's bankruptcy estate has filed a 94-page complaint against Swan Bitcoin seeking to recover roughly $970 million in assets that Swan allegedly withdrew in the 90 days before Prime Trust's August 2023 bankruptcy filing. According to the complaint, Swan withdrew 11,994.08 BTC (worth $938 million at current prices), $24.66 million in cash, roughly $5 million in stablecoins, and 91,144 XRP from Prime Trust during that window. The most striking allegation involves how Swan reportedly learned of Prime Trust's distress. The complaint claims a senior executive at Prime Trust who was also a paid advisor to Swan contacted Swan CEO Cory Klippsten four days before Prime Trust's meeting with Nevada regulators. The executive allegedly initiated a chat on an encrypted messaging platform and immediately set messages to auto-delete after 24 hours. The next available notification between the two was from May 27, 2023, the day after the Nevada regulator meeting and the same day Swan transferred 10,080 BTC off Prime Trust. That notification shows the executive turned off the auto-delete feature. The complaint also disputes Swan's claim that customer assets were held in individually owned trust accounts. It alleges that the governing agreements between Swan and Prime Trust expressly disclaimed any fiduciary relationship, and that Prime Trust created a "PT FBO Swan Customers" internal ledger designation on May 25, 2023, one day before meeting with Nevada regulators, to give the false appearance that Swan's assets had always been held for the benefit of Swan's customers. Swan disputes the claims. A representative told Blockspace: "Prime Trust held customer property in individually-owned trust accounts. The bankruptcy estate is now trying to take assets it held in trust as custodian, from a party that never received them. Customer assets held by a trust company are not available to general unsecured creditors, and we expect the courts to say so." Prime Trust's estate has filed similar clawback suits against Strike, Compass Mining, Fold, Galaxy Digital, and other firms. Swan has not yet filed a response. The case is assigned to Judge J. Kate Stickles in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

A federal jury unanimously ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The jury found that Musk filed the case too late, missing the statute of limitations, and cleared Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI of all claims. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit and donated $38 million to the organization. His lawsuit accused Altman and Brockman of betraying that mission by building a for-profit arm and partnering with Microsoft, effectively using his charitable contributions to enrich themselves. OpenAI argued Musk was trying to hobble a competitor. They presented evidence that Musk understood early on that partnering with a major tech company would be necessary to raise the capital required for AI development. The jury agreed the claims were brought too late. The ruling eliminates what could have been a forced unwinding of OpenAI's for-profit structure. The judge said she accepted the jury's findings and would not overrule them.

The CLARITY Act passed out of Senate Banking last week, but as @L0la L33tz points out, there's a meaningful ambiguity in the bill that could affect how developer protections actually play out. The act relies heavily on the concept of "common control" (updated to "coordinated control" in recent drafts) to determine whether a protocol is truly decentralized. If it's not under coordinated control, it gets safer harbor protections. If it is, it could fall under SEC jurisdiction as a securities intermediary. The term appears throughout the bill and is central to how DeFi protocols, DAOs, and non-custodial software will be treated. The bill doesn't define the term in statute. Instead, it delegates the specifics to SEC rulemaking under §104(b). There are some guardrails. DAOs are explicitly not treated as a single "person or group under coordinated control," and routine governance actions don't automatically trigger control findings. But the core determination still depends on future SEC interpretation. We've already seen how this kind of ambiguity plays out in court. The judge presiding over the Tornado Cash case allowed arguments that the protocol is not decentralized, while the same judge threw out a case against Uniswap, accepting that it was decentralized. From a technical standpoint, these protocols are built on similar non-custodial architecture. The legal outcomes were opposite. Without a clear definition of "common control," developers are left guessing where the line is. The bill was supposed to end regulation by prosecution. This ambiguity risks preserving it.

"Not de-dollarization. De-treasurization. For the first time in 27 years, global central bank gold holdings surpassed US Treasury holdings." @Peruvian Bull says the Treasury bond losing its reserve asset status is already underway and could play out within the next decade.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis on the CLARITY Act: “nobody is popping the champagne quite yet... There’s still a lot of work to do.” “I would love to have this bill on the floor in June. That’s probably pretty optimistic.”

The creator of OpenClaw spent $1.3 million in AI tokens in a single month. His employer, OpenAI, foots the bill. (steipete) says most of the spending goes toward developing OpenClaw. His daily spend was nearly $20,000. "How would we build software in the future if tokens don't matter?"

"Every yen that Japan has, it needs to buy energy. And that energy is priced in USD." - @Peruvian Bull Japan imports 87% of its energy. The 90-day correlation between oil prices and the yen is 0.75. The carry trade plus the Iran war is a double crisis.

.Patrick Witt on bank resistance to the CLARITY Act: "It raises the question, do they just want to fight a bill overall?" He says the bank trade groups are loud but individual banks tell a different story.

White House adviser Patrick Witt claims major progress on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR): "We'll have an announcement... It's a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets."

"Whatever happens in Japan matters for the rest of the world. They're the largest creditor globally and the largest holder of US treasuries." @Peruvian Bull on why the BOJ's failing interventions are a warning signal for every market on the planet.

Trump: "If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone... their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped... waving the representative White Flag... The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal (WSJ!), Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN... will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America, it wasn’t even close."

The AI boom is about to hit a wall made of physics. The S&P 500 just posted a 27% earnings surge. Macro strategist Jordi Visser says it was the peak. The signal nobody's watching: DRAM prices just turned negative on a 6-month rate of change for the first time since the 2023 trough. Historically, that leads a collapse in semiconductor stocks vs. the Nasdaq. The Hormuz closure has choked off chemicals, specialty gases, and helium that semiconductor fabs need to operate. Exxon and Shell have told suppliers to prepare for empty motor oil shelves within weeks. Sulfur shortages forced Mosaic to curtail fertilizer production. A Supreme Court ruling in April removed liability shields for freight brokers, potentially wiping out 30-50% of them. The earnings surge was front-loaded. Hyperscalers panic-hoarded. Bonus depreciation from the "one big beautiful bill" pulled capex forward. Agentic AI demand spiked faster than anyone modeled. None of those repeat. Visser's call: a "speed crash." Not a slow deflation. A violent repricing when supply chains physically can't deliver and earnings momentum vanishes overnight. The bottleneck is atoms. You can't print helium. You can't legislate sulfur into existence. And you can't ship chemicals through a closed strait. h/t Jordi Visser

TFTC 747 w/ @Peruvian Bull: "They've blown $60 billion in just the last two weeks on these interventions and the effectiveness is not there. They're already back almost at 160 again." We discuss: ⚡ Japan's currency crisis ⚡ Gold and silver ⚡ AI's impact on jobs

Congress has ordered the GAO to investigate whether the US military weaponized ticks during the Cold War and whether any were released outside of laboratories. The amendment was included in the FY2026 NDAA signed by Trump in December 2025, inspired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and backed by RFK Jr. Starting in the 1950s, the Pentagon ran an entomological bioweapons program at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Declassified documents confirm the US military researched using ticks and other arthropods as vectors for pathogens including Q fever, tularemia, and encephalitis. Swiss scientist Willy Burgdorfer was recruited to the Rocky Mountain Laboratory to conduct feasibility studies and worked alongside former Nazi scientists brought in through Operation Paperclip. The program was described as nearly as large and secretive as the Manhattan Project. Burgdorfer later discovered the bacterium that causes Lyme disease in 1981. The first major outbreak occurred in the 1970s near Lyme, Connecticut, across the water from Plum Island, a facility with bioweapons-era history. The proximity has fueled questions for decades. Museum tick specimens show B. burgdorferi existed in US ticks as far back as the 1940s. Lyme disease is now the most common vector-borne disease in the US with approximately 476,000 cases diagnosed annually according to the CDC. The GAO investigation is underway.

Americans would rather have a nuclear power plant built near their home than an AI data center. New Gallup data: 71% of Americans oppose AI data center construction in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed. Only 25% are in favor. In the same survey, only 53% oppose nuclear plants in their area, nearly 20 points less. In over two decades of Gallup polling on nuclear power, opposition has never exceeded 63%. Data centers are less popular than nuclear reactors. The top concern among opponents is excessive resource consumption: 18% cite water use, 18% cite energy use, and 16% cite pollution including noise, air, and water. About one in five mention quality of life impacts like traffic and population increases. A similar share cite economic negatives including higher utility bills and cost-of-living increases. Opposition is broad. Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents all oppose local data center construction. The Midwest (76%) and South (75%) are more opposed than the West (63%) and East (68%). There are no meaningful differences by age, race, education, income, or whether people live in urban or rural areas. Over 300 local bills targeting data center development have been filed across the country. The AI buildout requires massive new infrastructure, but public opposition at this scale is a significant obstacle.

Saylor just bought another 24,869 BTC for $2.01 billion at ~$80,985 per coin. Strategy now holds 843,738 BTC acquired at an average cost of ~$75,700.

China's large-scale data centers are joining electricity spot trading as virtual power plants for the first time, buying power when it's cheap and curtailing when it's expensive. Bitcoin miners pioneered this model years ago. China is now applying the same logic to its AI buildout.

Over 92,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2026. It's only May. The total since 2020 is approaching 900,000. Meta is cutting 8,000 jobs starting May 20. Microsoft offered employee buyouts for the first time in its 51-year history, covering roughly 8,750 positions. Both companies are pouring tens of billions into AI infrastructure the same quarter they're cutting headcount. The workers aren't being replaced by other workers. They're being replaced by systems. One executive coach called it "a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction."

Strategy now holds 818,869 BTC across 109 purchases at an average cost of $75,540. The position is worth $64.23 billion, up $2.37 billion or 3.84%.

Meta is ranking employees on leaderboards by AI usage. Workers are asking the chatbot fake questions to pad their numbers because low usage is a risk signal for layoffs. 22,000 roles cut or cancelled for 2026.