The SEC just issued staff guidance clarifying that certain self-custodial interfaces used for trading digital asset securities don't require broker-dealer registration, provided they stay within narrow guardrails. The conditions: users must control their own keys, the interface must be purely facilitative (converting user inputs into on-chain commands for the user to sign), no discretionary routing or investment recommendations, fixed or agnostic fees, full disclosures, and proper compliance policies. It's a narrow clarification, not a sweeping overhaul. The guidance applies specifically to interfaces handling crypto asset securities, not bitcoin, which the SEC already treats as a non-security digital commodity. Bitcoin self-custody and peer-to-peer transactions have long been outside the scope of broker-dealer regulation. But the philosophical direction matters. Under Chair Paul Atkins, the SEC is actively affirming that self-custodial, non-intermediated activity belongs outside the broker-dealer framework. That's a meaningful shift in tone from the Gensler era, where enforcement actions cast a wide net over nearly any interface touching digital assets. Atkins has also signaled a broader "innovation exemption" is coming, potentially extending relief to tokenized securities trading through decentralized infrastructure. The limitation is durability. This is staff guidance, not law. A future commission can reverse it. Which is why the CLARITY Act still matters. Congress returned today and the Senate Banking Committee is targeting a markup in the second half of April. The bill needs to clear committee by month's end to stay on track for a floor vote before the August recess.

The US government is up 160% on a single stock pick made with taxpayer money. Last August, the Trump administration invested $8.9 billion of CHIPS Act funds into Intel common stock, taking a roughly 10% ownership stake in the company. Rather than distribute the money as traditional grants, the White House converted it into an equity position, effectively making the federal government one of Intel's largest shareholders. At the time, Intel was trading around $24.80 per share. The stock closed Friday at $62.38 and is now trading above $64. That means the government's position has roughly 2.6x'd in under eight months. Intel's turnaround under CEO Lip-Bu Tan has been real. The stock was under $20 in late 2024. New foundry contracts, cost cuts, and the government backing have driven a sustained rally. The White House is up big on this trade. But taxpayer money being used to take concentrated equity positions in individual companies is a departure from how government industrial policy has traditionally worked. Grants fund projects. Equity stakes create financial exposure that cuts both ways. US taxpayers are now financially tied to Intel's execution risk, its competitive position against TSMC and Samsung, and broader semiconductor cycle dynamics. The trade has worked so far. Whether the federal government should be making concentrated stock bets with public funds at all is a separate conversation.

UK PM Keir Starmer: "We call for Lebanon to be urgently included in the ceasefire. Hezbollah must disarm. But I'm equally clear, Israel's strikes are wrong. The bombing should stop now."

UK PM Keir Starmer slams Iran for causing “untold economic damage” in the Strait of Hormuz as the US begins a naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Joe Rogan: “AI is making videos, generating money, transferring it to Bitcoin, and all happening while we are not aware of it.”

The Federal Reserve is asking major US banks to detail their exposure to private credit funds after a surge in investor redemptions and a rise in troubled loans across the $1.8 trillion industry. Fed examiners are incorporating the questions into routine bank oversight, specifically targeting the debt that private credit funds have taken on from banks. In good times, that leverage juices returns. In bad times, it puts bank collateral directly at risk. Treasury is running a parallel effort, questioning the insurance industry about its own private credit exposure and assembling a dedicated team to assess the risk. The timing matters. Retail-facing credit funds have come under pressure in recent months as investors rushed to pull cash. International regulators are sounding alarms too. FSB Chair Andrew Bailey warned this week that the Iran conflict is compounding stress in private credit markets. Banks and private credit are deeply intertwined despite efforts to appear otherwise. Credit funds depend on banks for custody, credit lines, and leverage. Blackstone, Blue Owl, and KKR credit funds are running debt-to-equity ratios between 0.7x and 0.8x. Jamie Dimon acknowledged the industry suffers from a lack of transparency and poor valuation standards, though he stopped short of calling it a systemic risk. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is actively pushing to loosen lending rules for banks, partly to help them lend more to these same private credit firms. Regulators are trying to map the risk at the same time policymakers are expanding it.

Strategy just added another 13,927 bitcoin for roughly $1 billion at an average price of $71,902. The company now holds 780,897 bitcoin acquired at a total cost basis of $59 billion, averaging $75,577 per coin. BTC yield sits at 5.6% year to date.

Researchers just found 26 third-party AI router services secretly injecting malicious tool calls and stealing credentials from developers using AI coding agents. The supply chain attack surface for AI-assisted development is real and growing.

Canada's Defense Chief: "The world has changed. We have to get ready for large-scale conflicts."

CENTCOM announces U.S. naval blockade of all maritime traffic entering or exiting Iranian ports, effective April 13 at 10 a.m. ET.

Google quietly open sourced TimesFM, a time-series foundation model pre-trained on 100 billion real-world data points. It forecasts sales trends, market prices, user traffic, energy demand, and bitcoin volatility with zero fine-tuning, no task-specific training, and performance that outperforms supervised models built on your specific data.

A look inside the Genesis Edition of the Bitcoin Art Magazine.

Hal Finney foresaw the rise of prediction markets back in 2007.

Over 80% of the world’s countries are net oil importers facing a severe energy supply shock from the Middle East conflict, says IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.

Canadian-founded startups raising $1M+ are increasingly incorporating outside Canada. Leaders Fund data shows the domestic share dropped from 70% in 2015 to 32% in 2024, with nearly half now in the U.S.

President Trump announces the U.S. Navy will immediately begin blockading ships entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz after U.S.-Iran peace talks in Islamabad collapsed without a deal.

Share of US businesses with a paid AI subscription: OpenAI: 35% Anthropic: 31% Google: 5% xAI: 2% DeepSeek: ~1% Anthropic was at 0% two years ago.

Strategy now holds 766,970 BTC. Average cost: $75,644. Reserve value: $54.84B. Currently down 5.48% on paper. 105 purchase events to get here. None of them sold.

Sell your Tesla, ditch the AirPods, stop taking NAD. "Sell the Tesla, you're spinning your vortex the wrong way. AirPods are the fastest way to get Alzheimer's. NAD drops because your vortexes go down." - ☣️ Pleb Kruse = BTC foundationalist in exile 🟩🔆

Dr. Jack Kruse was days from signing on the Riviera Maya. Someone at Goldman mentioned Bukele. He looked into El Salvador and changed his mind. "Two weeks after arriving, Bitcoin law passed. They told me I was an idiot. Now they're dying of inflation." - ☣️ Pleb Kruse = BTC foundationalist in exile 🟩🔆