"Every time the CIA's involved in something, things get very confused. Their role is to conflate and confuse and cause chaos." Jessica Rose on Ian Lipkin, the CIA-linked author the other Proximal Origin writers never wanted on the paper.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute just published an open letter asking AI labs to give open-source bitcoin and digital asset defenders access to their strongest cybersecurity models. The problem: "Open-source defenders today occupy the least privileged position in the AI security landscape." Bitcoin secures over a trillion dollars in value, but the developers maintaining wallets, cryptographic libraries, and node software are getting blocked by guardrails when they try to use frontier AI for legitimate security work. The letter warns that "nation-state adversaries, criminal syndicates, and sophisticated hackers will not wait for permission to deploy AI against critical open-source infrastructure." Defenders are stuck using weaker open-weight alternatives while attackers face no such constraints. BPI is asking for early access to the best cyber models, compute budgets for real security reviews, and secure environments for sensitive code analysis. The coalition is massive: Coinbase, Block, Strategy, MARA, Blockstream, Chaincode, Brink, Ten31, Unchained, Trezor, Casa, Strike, River, OpenSats, and dozens more. "Frontier AI could become one of the most powerful defensive technologies ever developed, but only if defenders get fair access."

Defenders Need the Frontier

An open letter to frontier AI labs: the defenders of open-source financial infrastructure need the frontier too, before attackers do.

"I hope you feel like my foot is on your neck right now to get this done." Fauci to a Moderna trial researcher. Jessica Rose breaks down the email and the new mRNA flu vaccine the FDA just approved with no real placebo group.

OpenAI is hiring a "Power Trading Lead" to run hedging strategies for power and gas across their data centers. They're not just buying electricity anymore, they're trading it. The AI buildout is turning these companies into energy companies whether they like it or not.

Chinese researchers just built "Light Society," a simulation that runs 1 billion AI characters at once, each one modeled after a real person's demographic profile pulled from a massive global survey. These AI agents negotiate, form opinions, argue, trust or distrust each other, and make irrational decisions just like real people do. They'll turn down a good deal out of spite. They get persuaded by popular voices in their network. They change their minds slowly, then all at once when enough of their peers flip. The real story isn't the "are they conscious?" speculation floating around. It's that this is a sandbox for testing how to move public opinion at a planetary scale. You can dial up certain influencers, change how the message is framed, and watch a billion simulated people react. Built by a state-funded research institute in Beijing using real global demographic data. Draw your own conclusions. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.12078

Saudi crude exports dropped 460K barrels/day in July to 4.19M bpd. Houthi threats are now targeting Yanbu, the backup port Saudi built specifically to bypass Strait of Hormuz chokepoint risk. Tankers are going dark on transponders. Global energy supply chains remain incredibly fragile.

Strategy now holds 840,447 bitcoin and just bumped its USD reserve to $4.65B while buying back $109M of $STRC.

China added 20 tonnes of gold in July, their largest monthly purchase since October 2023. That's 21 consecutive months of buying. 2,366 tonnes total and climbing. They're also moving reserves from London to Hong Kong to build their own trading hub.

Strategy now holds 842,138 bitcoin worth $54.66 billion at an average cost of $75,653. Down 14% on their position.

The BIP-110 chain found its second block but is 7 blocks behind the main chain.

.(simpleminingio) mined block 961,634 using Luke Dashjr’s DATUM protocol. This block extended the bitcoin main chain as it did not signal support for BIP 110 consensus rules. While many members of Ocean’s team support BIP 110, they created a protocol to let their customers decide what they think is best. This should be lauded.

BIP-110 hit its mandatory signaling period today at block 961,632. When Ocean mined a non-signaling block, BIP-110 nodes rejected it and forked off the main chain. With less than 3% miner support, the BIP-110 chain now trails the canonical chain with virtually no hashrate behind it.

BIP-110 nodes just forked off the main chain after rejecting a non-signaling block at height 961,632.

25 blocks until BIP-110 mandatory signaling.

33 blocks away from BIP-110 mandatory signaling.

Bitcoin ETFs just had their best week of inflows (~$1B) since April. IBIT, FBTC, and others saw inflows every single day this week.

.Jessica Rose analyzed the FDA's briefing document for Moderna's mRNA-1010 flu injectable (mFlusiva) and found there was no saline placebo group in the trial. The comparator group got an existing flu vaccine instead. Deaths looked comparable at ~0.3% in both groups, but the mRNA-1010 group actually had 2.6x more deaths than the comparator. The FDA calls this a "numerical imbalance." Compared to a hypothetical saline placebo, "the likelihood of dying in either vaccine group would be approximately 30 times higher than in the saline placebo group." "You cannot compare an existing potentially problematic vaccine to a novel one and call the former a placebo. You mask the harms, which appears to be the intention, by doing so." "We're talking about death here, people. You can't recover from that. You can recover from flu, however."

Corporate America is on pace for the biggest earnings beat EVER recorded. S&P 500 companies are beating EPS estimates by +29.2%. The 5-year average is +7.0%. That's 4.2x the historical norm. Blended net margin hit 16.9%. All time high. Strip out Alphabet's $98B unrealized equity gain and Amazon's $53B Anthropic gain and earnings growth is STILL +32.0% YoY. We are in the middle of the largest investment boom in history. And it's just getting started.

A firmware flaw in one of Bitcoin's most popular hardware wallets just led to $130M+ in stolen BTC. 210,000+ BTC moved out of long-term holder wallets. Spot ETFs have seen inflows every single day. Price has not made a new low.