"I've traced the entire history of Epstein's interaction with different developers and compromised networks that he tried to infiltrate with Peter Thiel in 2011 and beyond to try to pull Bitcoin back into the fold." - Simon Dixon "Brock Pierce was Epstein's guy in the digital currency space." "He tried to persuade me that Satoshi Nakamoto was Dr Craig Wright. He ended up being an essential part of creating an alternative version of Bitcoin." "Brock Pierce also was the co-founder of a stablecoin called Tether. Tether was the gateway drug for central bank digital currencies."

BlackRock is filing for a new actively managed robotics and AI ETF through iShares. No ticker or fee disclosed yet.

Putin warns that AI will make "whole professions go extinct" and the process is "irreversible and inevitable." Says AI is already replacing junior specialists in automation, document analysis, and code writing, and is on track to replace mid-level workers next.

St. Louis Fed President Musalem says the probability of a rate hike "has to be greater than zero."

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem says AI can't be counted on to fix inflation.

"I think the story of Satoshi, I do think it actually came from intelligence. But something didn't go as it was meant to go." - Simon Dixon "The one that wrote the white paper was Len Sassaman is my opinion. The first person that did the first Bitcoin transaction was Hal Finney. Now today both are dead."

Europa is a new decentralized VPN marketplace built on Nostr and paid exclusively with Bitcoin. It launched this week from @calle, the developer behind the Cashu ecash protocol. The concept is simple but the implications are significant. Instead of trusting a single VPN company with a global server fleet, one privacy policy, and one monthly subscription, Europa lets independent VPN operators list their servers on an open directory. Each operator runs their own infrastructure in their own jurisdiction, writes their own no-log policy, and sets their own price. Users browse the directory, pick an operator, and pay them directly over Lightning or Cashu ecash. The marketplace never touches the money and takes no cut. After payment, the operator delivers a standard WireGuard or OpenVPN config file. No proprietary app, no custom client. Users import it into the same open-source VPN software they would use anywhere else and connect. When the bundle runs out, the tunnel goes quiet. No auto-renewal, no card on file, no surprise charges. The reputation system runs on Nostr. Instead of editorial ratings or paid placements, recommendations and complaints come from people in your social graph. Sign in with a Nostr identity and the directory weights endorsements from accounts you already follow. If Nostr is not your thing, ignore the feature entirely and start with the smallest bundle from an unfamiliar operator to limit your risk. The entire protocol is built on public Nostr events. Operator listings, reputation data, and payment coordination all live on the Nostr network. The Europa website is just one viewer of that data, not the source. Other directories can exist. If Europa makes bad editorial choices, users can leave without losing access to the underlying marketplace. The protocol spec is CC0 (public domain) and the code is MIT licensed. What makes this meaningful is the architecture. Traditional VPN providers consolidate trust into one company in one jurisdiction. If that company gets acquired, served with a warrant, or breached, every customer is exposed at once. Europa distributes that trust across independent operators. Users can spread their traffic across multiple operators they actually chose rather than trusting a single brand to make every decision for them. Anyone with a server can become an operator. Anyone with a Lightning wallet can become a customer. No accounts required for either side.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rules out U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency. "There will be no Central Bank Digital Currency. That would be the first step toward tracking. We took that off the table. We passed stablecoin legislation... and the Clarity Act has bipartisan support." "Digital assets... the nonsense is the wild, wild west. We need to bring it onshore. I'd encourage the House and Senate to get CLARITY done."

Sec. Scott Bessent: "Trump Accounts, I believe, are the most important benefit for young people since the GI Bill."

In its latest report, Fidelity Digital Assets highlighted Iran accepting Bitcoin-linked payments for tanker tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as evidence that alternative settlement systems are emerging outside traditional dollar rails.

JD Vance: "I've watched graduation speeches where corporate leaders will discuss AI and be met with boos. You can't boo me! I'm the Vice President of the United States!" "The thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare."

Sen. Cynthia Lummis: "Without the Clarity Act, if a digital asset exchange goes bankrupt, customers have no guaranteed right to their own assets."

Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.8, an upgrade to its flagship AI model. The company says it scores higher across coding, reasoning, and agentic benchmarks, and is roughly four times less likely to let flawed code pass without flagging it. New features include an effort control slider and "dynamic workflows" that can run hundreds of parallel subagents for large-scale coding tasks. Anthropic also previewed a higher-capability model class called Mythos, currently in limited cybersecurity preview under Project Glasswing, with broader release expected in the coming weeks.

VanEck CEO says the Bitcoin adoption story hasn't changed in 2 years. "Central banks haven't come on board. Corporations haven't come on board. It's basically been some financial investors through the ETFs but not many institutions." "Why would you expect some big change in the price of Bitcoin when nothing has happened?"

Every financial crisis in US history has come out of the banking system. The government has always marched up and bailed out an industry or Wall Street. "Who's gonna bail out the Fed? When our 10-year rates go up, it'll be a new thing for everybody." - Jan van Eck

VanEck CEO says they are spending $750,000 a year on on Claude.

Mamdani: "We will leverage city-owned land to build 100% affordable and mixed income housing."

Hyperscalers are spending hundreds of billions on AI with negative implied returns through 2030. Amazon is the only one projected to break even at 7.2%. Meta: -28.8%. Oracle: -35.6%. Microsoft: -9.2%. Alphabet: -15.7%.

A pseudonymous plaintiff is suing for legal ownership of 3.8 million BTC worth $293.5 billion, including roughly 1.1 million coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. Galaxy Research has now published a full breakdown of the case. The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, targets 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses. Galaxy confirms it is the culmination of the 2025 "dusting" campaign, when a client of "Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors" sent OP_RETURN messages to thousands of dormant addresses claiming constructive possession. The claimed addresses include 21,923 Satoshi-era "Patoshi" pattern wallets holding $84.7 billion, the Mt. Gox hacker address holding 79,957 stolen BTC, and the Counterparty burn address, which is provably unspendable. The legal theory rests on New York's lost-and-found property law. An unnamed expert valued each address at under $10, triggering the statute's fastest track for title transfer. OP_RETURN notices, a press release, and a 90-day claim window were designed to satisfy the requirements. Even a full victory would not give the plaintiffs any private keys or the ability to move a single coin. But Galaxy warns a court judgment could function as a "cloud on title" if any of these coins ever surfaced at a regulated venue.

Trump Accounts mobile app launches today. Parents can manage child savings accounts backed by a $1,000 Treasury seed deposit and invested in index funds.