This week Washington kept moving while Congress stayed stuck. New rules, new fights, new deadlines, and most Bitcoiners will only hear about them when it is too late to care. In today's The Bitcoin Act: ⚖️ Expert opinion and analysis on every Bitcoin legal and regulatory story of the week, US and worldwide 📊 The Numbers of the Week 📅 Every legal and regulatory event coming next week, before it happens Who ends up writing Bitcoin's rules. Congress, or the agencies?

They all lead to Bitcoin. Different paths, same destination.

Your advisor says diversify. Bitcoin says focus. Who was right?

This was the most productive month I've had building The Bitcoin Act. Here's what actually happened. I built a small swipe game. You get a Bitcoin law headline, you guess if it's real or fake. I thought it would be quick. It wasn't. The design went through six versions before it felt right. And the part I underestimated completely was the fact-checking. 100 cards, every real one traced back to a primary source. I caught two of my own mistakes doing it. That was humbling. Then the bigger one. A free legal library for bitcoiners. I gave myself one rule: nothing on it can go out of date. No numbers, no deadlines, no thresholds that change next year. That rule sounds simple. It's not. A lot of what feels urgent in Bitcoin law turns out to be temporary. What's left is slower, drier, and probably more useful. I don't know yet how much any of this will get used. That's fine. What I learned is that I like building things that stay put. A newsletter issue is gone from the inbox in a week. A page that still works in five years is a different kind of satisfying. Honestly, I'm proud of this month.

Everyone knows the phrase. Way fewer people actually live by it!

Fairshake committed $30 million against Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
The crypto PAC, a group that pools money to influence elections, moved just days after the Senate failed to pass sweeping digital asset legislation. 
The bill was the Clarity Act, which would have set a regulatory framework for the digital asset industry at the federal level.
The Senate failed to pass it last week in a procedural vote, the first test of whether a bill even gets a full debate. 
Senate Democrats said they could not vote for a bill that would allow President Donald Trump to profit personally from the crypto industry, given his millions of dollars in income from multiple digital asset forays. 
A Fairshake spokesperson confirmed the $30 million figure.
The group expects to announce more midterm spend decisions in the coming days and weeks.
The New York Times called this its most aggressive move yet ahead of the November midterms. 
In 2024 Fairshake spent $12 million in Ohio to back Bernie Moreno, who defeated Brown.
Brown previously chaired the Senate Banking Committee, the panel that plays a major role in advancing crypto legislation. 
As chair Brown called for a crackdown on the use of cryptocurrency to fund terrorism and evade sanctions.
Starting in April crypto money began flowing to Republican Senator Jon Husted, a vocal supporter of crypto innovation who faces Brown in November. 
Stand With Crypto rates Husted as strongly supports crypto, and he backed the GENIUS Act.
Fairshake also backed Ruben Gallego and Elissa Slotkin, who voted against the Clarity Act last week.
Who should write the next digital asset rules, Brown or Husted? 👇 
The Bitcoin Act is a weekly newsletter that explains legal news to Bitcoiners in plain English.
You get the bills and votes that touch your coins, without the jargon.


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The Bitcoin Act is the first newsletter covering Bitcoin regulation, sovereignty, and legal developments. Subscribe free.

Am I the only one who still believes Bitcoin's power IS that it doesn't need permission?

Congress never gave Bitcoin a law. So a federal regulator started writing the rules on its own. Its draft went to the White House last week. Nobody outside can read it yet. Issue #83 of The Bitcoin Act covers where this is heading, and answers the question everyone keeps asking: without the CLARITY Act, what actually changes for your self-custody? It also covers every legal and regulatory move on Bitcoin this week, in the US and worldwide. One Senate race just drew a $30 million bet. In one European country, crypto holders are now being kidnapped every week. Better for Bitcoin: a law from Congress, or rules written by regulators?

Regulations come and go. Bitcoin is forever. First time?

Governments write regulations. Bitcoin writes history…

The president of the ECB reportedly intervened to delay an exchange's EU license, and the reported reason was the digital euro. Christine Lagarde pressed Greece to stall Binance's MiCA permit out of concern that dollar stablecoins would undercut the euro's own digital project, according to the WSJ. A licensing regime that was sold as neutral rules, applied by someone with a competing product to protect. That story opens issue #82 of The Bitcoin Act, out now. Two more inside: ⚖️ SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce argues securities law was written for trusted intermediaries, not software, so permissionless smart contracts need no exemption from anyone 🧾 A House committee backed the first federal Bitcoin tax rules. Fees of $10 or less would go untaxed New this week: the first 10 readers to open the issue get 210 sats. Not a raffle, not a points system. Open it early, claim it, done. Link is in the first reply. The poll running inside, put to you here: self custody bans, aggressive taxation, mandatory wallet surveillance, or expanded seizure powers. Which one lands first?

The first 10 readers to open The Bitcoin Act win 210 sats each. Before, only one reader won 2,100 sats. The first one to open it. But readers kept messaging me the same thing: one winner is too hard to beat. Spread it out. So I did. Same 2,100 sats. 10 winners instead of 1. Sent over Lightning, straight to your wallet. Twice a week. Tuesday and Sunday. Stack sats by reading about the laws coming for your sats. Are you in the race today? 👇

Your dollars lose 97% of their value. Bitcoin gains adoption every year. Which wealth strategy are you choosing?

The CLARITY Act is stuck in the Senate, probably until next year. So what does that change for Bitcoin and for you? Tomorrow in The Bitcoin Act: ⚖️ What the experts say the failed CLARITY Act vote means for Bitcoin 🌍 Expert analysis on every legal story of the week, in the US and worldwide 📊 The Numbers of the Week 📅 Every legal and regulatory event happening next week

Explaining to regulators why you can't ban a network with no central point of failure. Will they ever get it?

Half the Bitcoin law headlines you see are fake. Most bitcoiners can't tell which half. So I built a game to fix that. One headline at a time. Swipe right if it really happened. Swipe left if it's fake. You get the verdict instantly, plus the reason and the source, so you walk away knowing the rule instead of guessing it. 100 cards: seizures, court rulings, state reserve laws, tax rules, the things that decide what you can do with your sats. One of the real ones involves a popcorn tin. One of the fakes fools almost everyone. Call your score out of 10 before you play, then post the number. I'll tell you which card usually breaks the streak.

They've been chaotically throwing regulations at it for 17 years. It just keeps mining a block every 10 minutes. How many "Bitcoin killer" laws have you personally lost count of?

I'm killing a section of my newsletter. "Sovereignty Move of the Week" is done. Not because it failed. Because you outgrew it. Every week, your questions land in my inbox. And they go way beyond one practical move. Taxes. New bills. Self-custody rights. Who is really writing the rules for Bitcoin. Those questions deserve more space. So from now on, the section has a new name: "Ask Satoshi's Lawyer" You ask. I dig through the bills, the rulings and the politics. You get a straight answer. I'll be honest, it's the part of the newsletter I love writing most. Hours of research to find one clear answer, then sharing it with bitcoiners. Your turn. What should I answer next? 👇

Every regulation just adds another step. But we keep climbing.

I built a free legal library for bitcoiners. Here is why. You run your own node. You verify every block. Never trust, always verify. Then you die without instructions, and a probate court, a bank, and a relative who has never heard of a seed phrase decide what happens to your coins. Cryptography protects you from attackers. It does not protect you from a court, a compliance department, or a document you signed without reading. That gap had no good free resource. Now it does. What is on it: ▸ 33 lessons on how law actually works. Where rules come from, how they rank, how a judge reads a statute, how to check whether a rule is even in force ▸ 25 contract templates. P2P sale, escrow, power of attorney, corporate custody policy, source of funds declaration, proof of control ▸ 300+ terms in plain language. Legal and technical vocabulary in one glossary, because they turn up in the same disputes ▸ Guides on inheritance, executors, frozen exchange accounts, what KYC actually collects, the travel rule, and what a compliance department is before one contacts you What is not on it: ▸ No signup. No email capture. No ads. No affiliates. No sponsors. No paywall. Nothing to buy, now or ever. ▸ It recommends no exchange, no wallet, no service and no publication. The moment it does, it stops being a reference and becomes an advert. Copy it, translate it. If it ever disappears, anyone can put it back up. Every page explains how the machinery works instead of what this year's numbers are. So it does not expire, and it works in whatever jurisdiction you are in. Much more is coming. Bookmark it. You will not need it today. You will need it the day something goes wrong, and that is the worst possible day to start learning. Then tell me: what legal question about Bitcoin have you never been able to get a straight answer on? I will write the page. Link below. 👇