Pouliot fights EU surveillance rules, citing kidnapping risks

Protocol (8)

• BIP-110 is a proposal to temporarily cap data transactions on Bitcoin to limit Ordinals inscriptions for one year. It requires 55% miner support to activate, but current signaling stands at zero.
• Strategy sold $467M worth of MSTR shares but did not buy or sell Bitcoin. The firm's USD cash reserve increased by $450M to $3B, while its Bitcoin holdings remained at 843,775 BTC.
• Strategy's Bitcoin holdings represent about 4% of the total supply, purchased at an average cost of $75,476 per coin. The current paper loss on that position is roughly $10.7B.
• David Bennett notes Ordinals inscriptions have dropped to under 10,000 per day recently, down from a peak of over 400,000 in August 2023.
• The Bank of Thailand is auditing high-volume USDT transactions to crack down on money laundering and gray money. The move expands bank compliance duties to cash networks, gold trading, and stablecoin flows.
• Chinese prosecutors proposed treating use of crypto mixers or privacy coins as presumptive evidence of money laundering intent. Over 3,000 people were charged with crypto-related money laundering in China in 2024.
• SBI VC Trade in Japan launched a lending service for its yen stablecoin (JPY SC) offering a 3% annualized yield. David Bennett warns this smells like a scam, stressing the critical question is what generates the yield.
• David Bennett promotes OshiGood's huddle butter, a pecan-based spread, as a Circle P product where Bitcoiners can support each other in a circular economy outside the fiat system.

Protocol (10)

• Bull Bitcoin filed a legal challenge in France to annul the DAC8 directive, arguing it creates a massive surveillance grid that institutions cannot secure, putting crypto users at risk of kidnapping.
• France has the second-highest rate of physical attacks on crypto users after the United States, according to GART. High-profile industry figures like Binance France CEO David Princ and Ledger co-founder David Ballant have been targeted.
• Jamison Law at Casa maintains a wrench attack database on GitHub showing an accelerating trend of these violent incidents. Bull Bitcoin argues DAC8's data consolidation will worsen this problem.
• Bull Bitcoin claims DAC8 will incentivize users to move off-grid via peer-to-peer exchanges, home mining, or offshore alternatives, making tax collection harder. Francis Pouliot argues DAC8 turns ‘know your customer’ into ‘kill your customer.’
• Major French government data breaches illustrate the security risk. France's ANTS breach in April 2026 exposed up to 19 million accounts, and the national bank account registry hack exposed 1.2 million accounts.
• Fidelity Digital Assets analyst Zach Wainwright notes that measuring a US house price in Bitcoin shows a 90% decline since 2020, revealing dollar debasement rather than real appreciation.
• The host argues Bitcoin's value is most clearly reflected when compared to a stable asset like arable land, as both have fixed, unexpandable supplies.
• Total stablecoin supply grew by over 50% in 2025, reaching about $317 billion by April according to the Federal Reserve. EU officials worry about dollar tokens flooding Europe.
• Sony Bank received conditional OCC approval to establish a US national trust bank subsidiary capitalized at $40 million, aiming to issue a dollar stablecoin for games and anime payments.
• Kraken's parent company won $22 million in arbitration against auditor Mazars USA, which abandoned a nearly finished audit during Operation Choke Point 2.0, causing reputational damage.

AI & Tech (1)

• A crypto user lost $1 million to an Ethereum phishing token approval scam. Scam Sniffer reports phishing losses totaled $723 million across 248 incidents in 2025 alone.

Protocol (6)

• Strike launches volatility-proof Bitcoin loans without margin calls; price drops do not trigger liquidation.
• Polymarket integrates instant Bitcoin Lightning deposits via Spark, shifting Bitcoin from a poor to a preferred deposit option.
• Cake Wallet team forks Signal to create Radar.chat, a private messaging app with self-custodial Bitcoin Lightning wallet.
• Ocean Mining will default miners to signaling BIP-110 preparedness on July 15th, a move Matt sees as presumptuous.
• Bangladesh mandates Bangla QR for all merchant payments starting July 1st to increase digital transaction records and tax collection.
• Clark Moody dashboard shows Bitcoin at $62,910, mempool with 697 transactions, and a -4.1% difficulty adjustment pending Saturday.

AI Infrastructure (1)

• Giga Energy launches Gigabase modular AI data centers deployable in nine months, contrasting with traditional 18-month build times.

Protocol (6)

• The FATF's travel rule and AML guidelines pressure nations through blacklists, but Pouliot argues chain analysis is an industry-mandated scam riddled with false positives used for warrants.
• Pouliot estimates only about 260 crypto companies obtained MiCA licenses in Europe from roughly 4,000 applicants, illustrating a massive regulatory moat.
• Pouliot says Bull Bitcoin’s MiCA license cost nearly $1 million, a barrier that makes starting a compliant exchange today impossible without early success.
• PayJoin adoption is low but growing, with Bull Bitcoin, Cake Wallet, Sparrow, and Wasabi working on compatible versions; Pouliot sees it as key to breaking chain analysis's common input ownership heuristic.
• Bull Bitcoin integrates Silent Payments to combat address reuse and quantum risk, having opened a pull request for it in their wallet and exchange.
• He contends that self-custody is foundational to Bitcoin's value propositions, and solving inheritance is the next major hurdle for sovereign ownership.

AI & Tech (1)

• Pouliot argues AI-driven vibe coding reduces the power asymmetry between state surveillance and individuals, accelerating cypherpunk tool development like self-custody and privacy software.