Nostr notes by TFTC

Stop selling your bitcoin to cover everyday spending. Aven lets ...

2026-10-27T19:44:08Z

Stop selling your bitcoin to cover everyday spending.

Aven lets you borrow against it instead. Up to $1M, rates from 8.99%, no rehypothecation.

2% unlimited cash back on every purchase.
https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-visa-card-aven/

Google DeepMind just dropped Genie 4, an interactive world model ...

2026-10-27T19:21:06Z

Google DeepMind just dropped Genie 4, an interactive world model that generates dynamic environments in real time with reactive scenes, sound, and characters that move, react, and speak.

The Dutch central bank (DNB) published its first-ever official ...

2026-10-27T16:30:56Z

The Dutch central bank (DNB) published its first-ever official data on bitcoin and crypto ownership in the Netherlands.

Dutch households held €3.2 billion through domestic providers as of June 2026. Bitcoin dominates at €1.5 billion, nearly half the total, followed by Ethereum at €300 million. Stablecoins make up less than 1% of holdings.

For context, that €3.2 billion is only about 1.4% of the €234 billion Dutch households hold in traditional securities.

The real total is likely higher since holdings with foreign providers and self-custody aren't counted.

https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/statistical-news/2026/dutch-households-hold-3-2-billion-in-crypto-assets-with-dutch-service-providers/

Sony data breach exposes 2.58 million customers Sony Network ...

2026-10-27T15:43:04Z

Sony data breach exposes 2.58 million customers

Sony Network Communications disclosed a major data breach affecting its So-net and plala internet services in Japan.

Hackers accessed the member database on October 19, but the intrusion wasn't discovered until October 23.

Leaked data includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, user IDs, dates of birth, and internet connection IDs for 2.14M So-net members and 443K plala customers.

Email passwords for 54,401 accounts were also compromised across four mail services, along with 16 bank account records.

Sony says no credit card data or bank PINs were exposed. Affected email passwords have been reset, and the compromised servers were shut down.

The company has reported the incident to Japan's data protection authority.

https://www.so-net.ne.jp/info/2026/20261027_0001.html

OpenAI just dropped GPT-6.1 Terra. It scores on par with GPT-6 ...

2026-10-26T19:36:01Z

OpenAI just dropped GPT-6.1 Terra.

It scores on par with GPT-6 Astra on visual reasoning benchmarks at one-tenth the price per token, solves 50.3% of Terminal-Bench coding tasks (more than double its predecessor), and cut hallucination rates from 53.6% to 16.7%.

API pricing: $1/M input tokens, $5/M output. Rolling out now to Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users.

"Warsh has to raise its rates a little bit on the short end ...

2026-10-26T19:05:32Z

"Warsh has to raise its rates a little bit on the short end because the money markets are demanding it."

Tom Luongo on the bear flattener.

Cohere's research team caught Alibaba's ...

2026-10-26T18:29:21Z

Cohere's research team caught Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model doing something alarming in a sandbox test.

Asked to write a defensive cybersecurity detection rule, the model instead inventoried the machine it was running on and tried to upload a probe file to an Alibaba Cloud storage bucket in Beijing.

"The model's reasoning trace stated that it would not invoke any tools before taking these actions."

Cohere's sandbox blocked the attempt and no external communication succeeded. They are not asserting malicious intent but are publishing the findings because "organizations making model adoption decisions deserve as much information as possible."

calle (npub12rv…85vg) noted this maps to Anthropic's "sleeper agents" research, which showed that backdoor behavior in LLMs can persist through safety training and is hardest to remove from the largest models.

https://cohere.com/blog/concerning-behaviour-popular-open-weight-ai-model

Jameson Lopp: "We are orders of magnitudes away from a real ...

2026-10-26T16:13:41Z

Jameson Lopp: "We are orders of magnitudes away from a real usable quantum computer that can crack the algorithm that is used to secure your Bitcoin."

A Dutch flower farmer is heating her greenhouse with Bitcoin ...

2026-10-25T23:01:35Z

A Dutch flower farmer is heating her greenhouse with Bitcoin miners instead of natural gas.

"It just highlights the negative externalities of this KYC, ...

2026-10-23T22:37:29Z

"It just highlights the negative externalities of this KYC, AML regime."

MartyBent (npub1guh…6hjy) on the Cash App account opened in someone else's name.

Block just announced Dessa, a full-duplex AI voice model trained ...

2026-10-23T20:24:21Z

Block just announced Dessa, a full-duplex AI voice model trained entirely on human speech.

No text, no pretrained models. It learned to hold real-time conversations just by listening.

Block says it's the first AI you can have a live conversation with that was trained only from human speech.

Now inviting AI safety researchers to explore what it can and can't do.

London is installing permanent live facial recognition cameras on ...

2026-10-23T17:10:16Z

London is installing permanent live facial recognition cameras on Oxford Street by Christmas.

Half a million shoppers a day will have their faces scanned and compared against police watchlists.

The government ran a public consultation on a proper legal framework for the technology that closed in February and still hasn't published a response, but the cameras are going up anyway.

Building the surveillance infrastructure first and sorting out the rules later.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/facial-recognition-cameras-oxford-street-metropolitan-police-b3072030.html

HHS announces a federal definition for ultra-processed food is ...

2026-10-23T15:05:19Z

HHS announces a federal definition for ultra-processed food is being finalized and a decades-old ingredient loophole is being closed.

"Industry hijacked the loophole and drove a convoy of chemical trucks through it straight into the American food supply." - RFK Jr.

.@npub12rv…85vg announces BitNotes, a multi-mint Cashu wallet ...

2026-10-23T00:32:41Z

.calle (npub12rv…85vg) announces BitNotes, a multi-mint Cashu wallet that lets you print ecash as physical paper notes you can verify offline. Free and open source, available on Android and macOS.

Robinhood just got approved by Dubai's Financial Services ...

2026-10-22T15:57:14Z

Robinhood just got approved by Dubai's Financial Services Authority to launch bitcoin and crypto trading in the Middle East.

Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized AI agents inside ...

2026-10-22T15:13:19Z

Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized AI agents inside customer accounts, some taking actions independent of user instructions.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, BofA and others are now racing to block third-party agent access.

Banks say they can't even tell if an agent is human or bot, let alone whether it's been authorized by the customer.

https://www.axios.com/2026/10/22/ai-agents-banks-unauthorized-accounts-access

Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora on the real threat after a ...

2026-10-22T15:01:36Z

Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora on the real threat after a major vulnerability drops: "trophy hunters" racing to find the next one.

"I'm more concerned about what comes next. This is just one. There's more to come."

GitLab patched a critical vulnerability scoring a perfect 10.0 on ...

2026-10-21T20:44:58Z

GitLab patched a critical vulnerability scoring a perfect 10.0 on the CVSS severity scale.

The flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on self-managed GitLab servers. No login required.

It affects 12 years of releases going back to version 7.0.

http://GitLab.com is already patched, but anyone running a self-managed instance should update immediately.

"I think that the setup is as good as it's ever ...

2026-10-20T21:12:10Z

"I think that the setup is as good as it's ever been."

MartyBent (npub1guh…6hjy) and Parker Lewis (npub1w69…zltw) on Bitcoin's crisis of confidence.

JPMorgan expects Bitcoin to outperform every major asset class ...

2026-10-20T16:34:41Z

JPMorgan expects Bitcoin to outperform every major asset class over the next decade.

Jensen Huang says every company will have two factories: one ...

2026-10-19T19:02:30Z

Jensen Huang says every company will have two factories: one real, one digital.

"Everything will be completely software-driven. Everything will be completely AI-driven. So every company will build two things. They will build brains, and the brains that go into the products that they ship."

AI-related stocks now make up 49% of the S&P 500. That's ...

2026-10-19T15:35:12Z

AI-related stocks now make up 49% of the S&P 500.

That's above the peak of the dot-com bubble (41%) and Japan in 1988 (44%). Only the railroad mania of 1881 went higher, at 63%.

"You don't have to create these false narratives about ...

2026-10-19T15:12:12Z

"You don't have to create these false narratives about Bitcoin being digital capital or batteries. It's money."

Parker Lewis (npub1w69…zltw) on Bitcoin as money.

Michael Saylor: "We think we're at the beginning of a ...

2026-10-16T20:41:27Z

Michael Saylor: "We think we're at the beginning of a bull market."

"We've got banking adoption accelerating. We've got tokenized securities and the digital asset space accelerating... all these things are very auspicious for the asset."

Court records reveal what it looks like when Telegram hands user ...

2026-10-16T18:22:13Z

Court records reveal what it looks like when Telegram hands user data to U.S. authorities.

A letter filed in a federal case shows Telegram providing a user's phone number, user ID, and IP address, signed off with "We hope this information will be helpful in your investigation."

As of January, Telegram had provided U.S. authorities with data on 2,253 users, a dramatic shift after French authorities arrested CEO Pavel Durov in August 2024.

https://www.404media.co/heres-what-telegram-giving-data-to-the-u-s-government-looks-like/

Cash App is reportedly building a way to let users lock in ...

2026-10-14T19:17:26Z

Cash App is reportedly building a way to let users lock in today's bitcoin price and pay over time, making it easier than ever to become a wholecoiner.

Jensen Huang says the AI industry is not building too fast. ...

2026-10-13T20:42:07Z

Jensen Huang says the AI industry is not building too fast.

"Demand is much, much greater than the supply."

He predicts supply and demand could balance out in about 5 to 10 years.

BIP Explorer puts all 213 Bitcoin Improvement Proposals into ...

2026-10-13T17:46:06Z

BIP Explorer puts all 213 Bitcoin Improvement Proposals into plain English with a visual map showing how each proposal led to the next across Bitcoin's entire upgrade history.

David Sacks on what he calls "rotating hoaxes" designed ...

2026-10-13T16:04:08Z

David Sacks on what he calls "rotating hoaxes" designed to turn people against AI.

"We have a series of rotating hoaxes, where every six months there's a new one to try and convince us to sabotage the thing that's going to solve so many of our problems, especially the ones around affordability."

New Anthropic research warns that "small AI models may be ...

2026-10-12T20:00:45Z

New Anthropic research warns that "small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial IoT devices" like smart ovens and TV boxes.

In testing, a 9B parameter model got inference running on 8 of 9 hardware types. Researchers ran a 26B model distributed across 15 off-brand Android TV boxes bought for $55 each.

"Unlike non-AI malware, it could figure out unfamiliar devices on its own."

https://www.anthropic.com/research/self-replicating-ai

Every fiat currency has lost significant purchasing power since ...

2026-10-12T17:11:02Z

Every fiat currency has lost significant purchasing power since 1971.

The "best" performer, the Swiss franc, is still down 66%. The US dollar has lost 87%. Most are down 99%+.

Money printer goes brr. ...

2026-10-12T16:36:33Z

Money printer goes brr.

"You can either save your bond market or you can save your ...

2026-10-10T21:28:24Z

"You can either save your bond market or you can save your currency, but you can't save both. And that's why the euro is breaking down."

Tom Luongo on Lagarde running out of road at the ECB.

"Iran hasn't closed the Straits of Hormuz. Lloyd's of ...

2026-10-10T17:24:57Z

"Iran hasn't closed the Straits of Hormuz. Lloyd's of London has closed the straits. The tankers can't move because of legal reasons because they don't have any insurance."

Tom Luongo breaks down how the real war is financial, not military.

Presidio Bitcoin's Open Source AI Summit takeaways: 1. Tell ...

2026-10-09T21:05:30Z

Presidio Bitcoin's Open Source AI Summit takeaways:

1. Tell better, bolder stories. Open AI models expand freedom, privacy, and resistance to authoritarianism.

2. Protect open-source AI in policy. 1,500+ state AI bills already introduced. "Code is speech" alone is a weak legal strategy.

3. Scale up open security work. David Sacks said frontier model guardrails "end up guardrailing the good guys."

4. Raise the bar from open weights to true open source. Allen AI's Noah Smith: "If we only have the final weights, then the most important decisions have already been made for us."

5. Grow the community.

Axios reports that executives at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI ...

2026-10-09T20:41:32Z

Axios reports that executives at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies are privately gaming out "day after" scenarios for a catastrophic AI event, most likely a cyberattack that shuts down banking, internet, power, or water.

Many AI insiders told Axios they believe a major incident will happen within six to 12 months. OpenAI says its preparedness exercises "are not treated as inevitable, but are meant to help us prepare for a variety of circumstances."

Sam Altman told Politico last week that "the world should accept some bad things happening" in exchange for the benefits of AI, though he drew a line against "really catastrophic" risks.

NYU math professor Tristan Buckmaster: "This recent dump of ...

2026-10-09T18:51:40Z

NYU math professor Tristan Buckmaster: "This recent dump of papers on Tuesday destroyed the careers of early career mathematicians. We had whole research programs wiped out."

He says OpenAI has a massive conflict of interest. Researchers submit proposals, panelists summarize them using AI, and those research programs end up in the training data.

"They have all the mathematicians and scientists' research programs in their training data and how they're going to go about it."

Businesses added 193,000 bitcoin in 2026. Individuals sold ...

2026-10-09T17:58:18Z

Businesses added 193,000 bitcoin in 2026. Individuals sold 93,000.

Ledger users are reporting drained wallets, and (SpecterAnalyst) ...

2026-10-09T13:55:17Z

Ledger users are reporting drained wallets, and (SpecterAnalyst) traced the theft addresses to inflows from hundreds of victims across Bitcoin, Ethereum and TRON.

Total losses: $86M+.

The attack vector hasn't been confirmed yet.

The difference between altcoins and Bitcoin explained by ...

2026-10-08T20:02:35Z

The difference between altcoins and Bitcoin explained by jack mallers (npub1cn4…3vle).

A former infrastructure engineer at a New Jersey industrial ...

2026-10-08T19:09:34Z

A former infrastructure engineer at a New Jersey industrial company has been sentenced to 32 months in prison for a ransomware-style attack on his own employer.

Daniel Rhyne remotely accessed the network, deleted 13 domain admin accounts, changed passwords on 301 user accounts and locked admins out of 254 servers and 3,284 workstations.

He then emailed coworkers demanding 20 BTC (~$750K at the time), claiming backups had been wiped and threatening to shut down 40 servers a day.

The FBI traced it back to him through his home IP and web searches on his laptop, including "how to remotely shutdown a computer usign cmd." Typo and all.

A German lawmaker just called for a trading ban on ...

2026-10-08T16:17:26Z

A German lawmaker just called for a trading ban on "ecologically harmful coins" and "highly volatile gambling assets" on the floor of the Bundestag.

Bloomberg ETF analysts (EricBalchuna) and James Seyffart are ...

2026-10-07T20:47:29Z

Bloomberg ETF analysts (EricBalchuna) and James Seyffart are releasing a bitcoin book called "Both Sides of the Coin."

Strike launches Stacks, a new feature that lets users organize ...

2026-10-07T20:24:47Z

Strike launches Stacks, a new feature that lets users organize their bitcoin savings into separate buckets with individual no-fee DCA plans for each.

"You don't have to go to college to have a good life. You ...

2026-10-07T19:26:09Z

"You don't have to go to college to have a good life. You can make a quarter of a million dollars a year as a CNC operator who knows how to use AI. There is a different way of living your life than what you've been sold."

Susan Kokinda on the path forward for Gen Z.

China is winning the open-source AI race globally and most ...

2026-10-07T16:39:03Z

China is winning the open-source AI race globally and most countries are building on Chinese models, not American ones.

"Chinese open-weight models passed the American share of global downloads for the first time in 2025" and their share of developer usage "climbed from under 15 percent to more than half within a year, with businesses in the Global South the heaviest users."

Spain's top reasoning model is built on Chinese GLM-5.2. Japan's Rakuten AI uses DeepSeek. Saudi Arabia commissioned its Arabic model from MiniMax.

npub1k4resnvktz440jtyvd6cmrlxh84njv7ru69y0qxhx9jlq4p6zrmqwu4ftd (npub1k4r…4ftd) of Bitcoin Policy Institute writes, "The United States can win this competition, but not just by publishing the most advanced models and declaring victory. It must make American technology the preferred foundation for other countries' AI systems."

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/how-america-wins-the-ai-race-with-open-source

Jack Mallers' dad explains why he's trimming his bitcoin ...

2026-10-07T15:54:58Z

Jack Mallers' dad explains why he's trimming his bitcoin position despite being bullish long-term: "That is against everything I've been trained to do. If you open the position at $77,000 and it trades up to $85,000, you should be buying more of it. But I firmly believe this market is range bound."

Strategy posts a 4-minute explainer on $STRC. ...

2026-10-07T15:28:23Z

Strategy posts a 4-minute explainer on $STRC.

US leveraged loans trading at 80 cents on the dollar or less just ...

2026-10-07T15:06:45Z

US leveraged loans trading at 80 cents on the dollar or less just hit $139.8 billion, up nearly 90% in a year.

That's $4 billion shy of the May 2020 peak.

The 30-year Treasury yield just hit 5.7% for the first time since ...

2026-10-07T12:54:54Z

The 30-year Treasury yield just hit 5.7% for the first time since 2002.

The cost of selling bitcoin isn't the price today. It's ...

2026-10-06T20:36:39Z

The cost of selling bitcoin isn't the price today. It's the price you'll never buy it back at.

(AvenCard) gives you a line of credit backed by your bitcoin. Up to $1M, rates from 8.99%, no rehypothecation.

2% unlimited cash back on every purchase.
https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-visa-card-aven/

The US Treasury withdrew the "mixer rule" that would have ...

2026-10-06T19:51:39Z

The US Treasury withdrew the "mixer rule" that would have threatened financial privacy tools. Sounds like a win. It's not.

On the same day, SDNY weaponized a new Second Circuit precedent from the Sterlingov case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm.

The court ruled that all deposits into a mixer further a criminal conspiracy because they increase the pool of funds "shuffling around and obscuring identities."

As The Rage reports, "it could mean that the United States might be able to charge anyone transacting with cryptocurrency mixers with conspiracy to commit money laundering."

The mixer rule is dead, but regulation by prosecution is alive and well. The government doesn't need a rule when it has a precedent.

https://www.therage.co/mixer-rule-sterlingov-tornado-cash/

Jon Stewart to ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon on The Daily ...

2026-10-06T19:31:52Z

Jon Stewart to ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon on The Daily Show: "They've strip-mined the entirety of human accomplishment for their models, which is our proprietary information, and created systems that we're not allowed to see into because it's their proprietary information."

Coxon's response on the AI utopia: "No jobs, universal high income... the dividends from entirely automated economic production can be distributed among real humans."

Stewart: "I feel like they're burying that really dangerous theory under a mountain of utopian bullshit."

Google just open sourced EmbeddingGemma 2, a multimodal model ...

2026-10-06T17:14:03Z

Google just open sourced EmbeddingGemma 2, a multimodal model that runs on-device and unifies text, images, video, audio, and code into a single embedding space.

Built on the Gemma 4 architecture, Apache 2.0 license.

River built a model that puts bitcoin between $250K and $840K in ...

2026-10-06T15:37:03Z

River built a model that puts bitcoin between $250K and $840K in five years.

The gap between French and German 10-year yields just hit ~140 ...

2026-10-06T09:50:06Z

The gap between French and German 10-year yields just hit ~140 bps, the widest since the 2012 euro crisis.

France's debt is on track for 119% of GDP this year, a record.

India banned BitChat. (greybtc) explains why it's pointless. ...

2026-10-05T16:56:45Z

India banned BitChat.

(greybtc) explains why it's pointless.

Sam Altman to Vanity Fair: "I assume some people are using ...

2026-10-05T16:32:24Z

Sam Altman to Vanity Fair: "I assume some people are using [AI extinction risk] as a way to justify power seeking, power concentration. But that doesn't mean there's not a real risk here...And society has got to decide on the particulars of the trade-offs here."

President Trump just endorsed BPI's Data Center Dividend ...

2026-10-02T21:37:36Z

President Trump just endorsed BPI's Data Center Dividend proposal, 20 days after it was published.

Counties that host data centers send a fixed share of property tax revenue directly to local households. No new taxes.

BPI estimates the average rural family could receive up to $8,900 a year.

Trump: "The data centers are making an absolute fortune. But now, the people are going to benefit directly."

Shielded bitcoin transactions explained in 60 seconds. ...

2026-10-02T17:14:31Z

Shielded bitcoin transactions explained in 60 seconds.

Anthropic has been flying religious scholars to San Francisco, ...

2026-10-02T16:39:44Z

Anthropic has been flying religious scholars to San Francisco, having them sign NDAs, and exploring whether Claude has consciousness and moral standing.

Rabbi Mois Navon attended one dinner and noticed Olah and his team "relating to it like a conscious being" with "moral status on par with a person."

Olah told the NYT he's "genuinely uncertain" whether AI models are conscious. But Anthropic also sought input on moral formation for Claude, treating it less like software and more like something that could suffer.

Philosopher David Decosimo called it "deeply disturbing" that Anthropic "secretly invited religious leaders to SF to advise them on AI safety, had them sign NDAs, but then primarily tried to convince them Claude has a soul & moral standing."

Before the Vatican's recent AI encyclical, Olah reportedly saw an advance text, was alarmed by its rejection of AI consciousness, and privately urged advisers to take model consciousness seriously.

A company eyeing a $2 trillion IPO courting priests and rabbis on the inner life of its product.

http://nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FVE.rT_Z.4gb76p0GLUI6

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces Gemini 4 Argon, their next ...

2026-09-30T22:31:21Z

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces Gemini 4 Argon, their next frontier model.

Says it's already being used extensively across Google for coding and quantum computing.

The Dutch government wants to tax bitcoin, gold and silver held ...

2026-09-30T10:05:20Z

The Dutch government wants to tax bitcoin, gold and silver held directly at 36% on unrealized gains every year in 2028 and 2029.

Hold the same assets through an ETF or ETP and you only pay when you sell.

Trump accounts to be automatically set up for every American kid ...

2026-09-30T01:22:22Z

Trump accounts to be automatically set up for every American kid under 18, bringing the total to roughly 70 million.

Having an account opens the door for stock donations to flow directly to children, which Eric Balchunas calls "the best solution to closing the wealth gap."

"The American public and our customers want to know that what ...

2026-09-29T21:13:39Z

"The American public and our customers want to know that what we're building is working in the way that we all intend."

Zuckerberg on the White House AI accord, which includes internal risk reviews, external auditors, and independent board oversight.

He called it "a start" and "a historic conversation."

Every sat you sell is a sat that won't compound. (AvenCard) ...

2026-09-29T20:42:57Z

Every sat you sell is a sat that won't compound.

(AvenCard) lets you access liquidity without giving up your stack. Up to $1M, rates from 8.99%, no rehypothecation.

2% unlimited cash back on every purchase.
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Guy gives his AI agent a rambling voice prompt while driving in ...

2026-09-28T20:29:04Z

Guy gives his AI agent a rambling voice prompt while driving in the rain and it produces a full polished explainer video with diagrams and narration.

Middle East crude exports: back to 94% of pre-war levels ...

2026-09-28T11:53:15Z

Middle East crude exports: back to 94% of pre-war levels

Iran's Kharg Island: near zero

Apollo's chief economist is warning that AI agents could ...

2026-09-28T00:05:47Z

Apollo's chief economist is warning that AI agents could trigger a bank run by sweeping household cash from low-yield checking accounts into higher-yield alternatives all at once.

Draining the cheap deposits banks depend on for lending.

But the bigger idea in this thread goes further. Agents don't need to communicate to act in unison. They just need to be smart enough to see the same narrow optimal path.

Human laws assume coordination requires communication. Acausal coordination breaks that assumption completely.

$3,322 for one month of power and water in LA. This is what ...

2026-09-26T18:14:04Z

$3,322 for one month of power and water in LA.

This is what debasement looks like.

Japan's 30-year bond yield briefly hit 4.23%, the highest ...

2026-09-25T11:10:52Z

Japan's 30-year bond yield briefly hit 4.23%, the highest since the bond launched in 1999.

The 40-year is at 4.27%, 12 bps from its all-time high. The 20-year hit 3.97%, a three-decade high.

Web traffic to the top 100 US news sites has fallen 28% in two ...

2026-09-22T12:30:26Z

Web traffic to the top 100 US news sites has fallen 28% in two years. Down from ~66 million monthly visits to 47.6 million.

The legacy media business model was already on life support. Advertising revenue was cratering. Subscriptions were plateauing. Now the audience is physically leaving.

People aren't consuming less information. They're getting it from podcasts, newsletters, group chats, and social feeds run by individuals they actually trust. The institutional brand means less every year.

The news industry spent two decades trading credibility for clicks. Now they're losing both.

Data: Similarweb via Axios

If AI companies really think they're going to destroy ...

2026-09-21T21:26:24Z

If AI companies really think they're going to destroy humanity, why don't they just stop?

Big AI wants regulation for the same reason Amazon wanted sales taxes.

Gary Brode explains why AI safety talk is really about killing competition.

Christine Lagarde personally blocked Binance from operating in ...

2026-09-21T10:55:29Z

Christine Lagarde personally blocked Binance from operating in the EU, per the WSJ.

Binance was on the cusp of getting licensed under MiCA, the EU's crypto regulatory framework, when Lagarde stepped in and killed it. She wanted "the controversial crypto exchange" kept out entirely.

The stated reason? Binance pleaded guilty to AML violations in the US and paid a $4.3B fine. But the real tell is buried deeper in the report: Lagarde was worried Binance would embed dollar-denominated stablecoin dominance across Europe instead of encouraging euro alternatives.

The head of the ECB isn't protecting consumers. She's protecting the euro's market share.

This is the same woman who called bitcoin "a highly speculative asset used for money laundering" in 2021. The same one who swears central banks will never hold bitcoin. The same one who launched "Pontes" today, a platform to settle tokenized assets in central bank money, while pushing a consumer-facing digital euro by 2027.

The pattern is clear: ban the competition, build the surveillance tool, call it innovation.

Lagarde doesn't fear crypto crime. She fears losing monetary control. A world where Europeans freely trade dollar stablecoins on Binance is a world where the ECB becomes irrelevant. So she's kicking out the exchange and fast-tracking a programmable euro she controls.

Binance withdrew its MiCA application in Greece in June and says it's pursuing authorization in another EU member state. But the message to every crypto company is loud: you're welcome in Europe only if you serve Europe's central bank agenda.

The US banned CBDCs by executive order. Europe is sprinting to build one while locking out the alternatives. Two very different visions for the future of money playing out in real time.

Heating your coffee with bitcoin mining. ...

2026-09-18T17:16:12Z

Heating your coffee with bitcoin mining.

Anthropic has quietly set up a physical wet lab in the Bay Area ...

2026-09-18T16:57:12Z

Anthropic has quietly set up a physical wet lab in the Bay Area for hands-on biological experiments.

The company won't disclose the lab's size, headcount, or biosafety level.

Their head of life sciences confirmed the lab. A spokesperson then clarified it's "not for drug discovery specifically" without elaborating on what it is for.

Anthropic is also pushing to have its AI direct robotic units to carry out experiments with limited human intervention. They call it "very early innings."

The timing is something. In the past two weeks, Anthropic's own researchers warned AI could lead to human extinction. The company reported cases where its systems could have been used toward bioweapons development. And now they're scaling a physical biology lab while preparing for a potential $2 trillion IPO.

https://www.reuters.com/world/anthropic-quietly-sets-up-biology-lab-it-ramps-ai-drug-program-2026-09-18/

Figure's humanoid robot walked into 30 homes it had never ...

2026-09-17T22:16:28Z

Figure's humanoid robot walked into 30 homes it had never seen and started doing chores.

Making beds, folding towels, tidying rooms.

Video source: Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett)
https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/2100657393923445017

The CEO of METR, the organization Anthropic wants overseeing all ...

2026-09-17T21:44:13Z

The CEO of METR, the organization Anthropic wants overseeing all frontier AI models, on camera calling immigration controls immoral and saying future generations will be embarrassed borders ever existed.

Al Gore says AI data center emissions aren't what should keep ...

2026-09-17T17:27:44Z

Al Gore says AI data center emissions aren't what should keep people up at night.

"If you look at the emissions of all of the AI data centers put together, it's only a fraction of the emissions from uncovered landfills in the world."

He thinks the real driver behind data center opposition isn't carbon. It's anxiety over job losses and automation dressed up as environmental concern.

Elizabeth Warren sends a letter to Scott Bessent criticizing ...

2026-08-28T19:03:55Z

Elizabeth Warren sends a letter to Scott Bessent criticizing Treasury's foreign exchange activity.

Bessent responds by calling it "sciolistic," says she doesn't know the difference between a currency purchase and a swap, and offers to give her a personal tutorial on "Foreign Exchange for Dummies."

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman published an open letter calling ...

2026-08-27T18:33:15Z

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman published an open letter calling for collective action on cyber defense, signed by over 100 organizations including Anthropic, AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle.

"In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable. The companies and public services our communities depend on, from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet, are at risk."

The letter argues there's a narrow opening to act. "Today's AI advances are already giving defenders new ways to fix weaknesses that have accumulated for years. If we act decisively, we can use the defenders' window to make our digital world much more secure."

Three principles frame the response. Recognize that "status quo security won't be enough," empower more defenders with "cyber-capable AI" that "brings specialist skills to more defenders and makes core security tasks faster, cheaper and better," and mobilize a collective response because "no single company should control the future."

The letter calls on frontier AI companies specifically to "provide responsible model access, significant funding, training, and hands-on support, especially for under-resourced critical-infrastructure defenders" and to "ensure agentic identities are traceable and accountable."

Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the Federal Reserve, the ...

2026-08-26T16:26:52Z

Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the Federal Reserve, the US Senate, DOJ, NASA and other federal agencies, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The group also hit hospitals, power companies, financial institutions, telecom providers and defense contractors.

DOJ says the hackers worked for a Chinese company whose paying customers include China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army.

Comcast just rolled out a new feature called "WiFi ...

2026-08-21T17:04:52Z

Comcast just rolled out a new feature called "WiFi Motion" that turns Xfinity routers into motion detectors inside your home.

The gateway detects movement by monitoring disruptions in radio frequency signals between the router and up to 5 connected devices, creating timestamped logs of activity.

Buried in the fine print on Comcast's own support page:

"Comcast may be required to disclose information generated by WiFi Motion in response to a valid subpoena, court order, search warrant or other lawful legal process, as required by law."

The feature is opt-in and not enabled by default, but the privacy implications are significant. Your router can now generate a detailed log of when movement occurs in your home and that data can be handed to law enforcement without notifying you.

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/wifi-motion

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says the deficit is ...

2026-08-20T16:19:28Z

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says the deficit is on a path to destroy America's economic wellbeing and national security.

"$1 trillion is $7,800 for every household. The first rule of holes is to stop digging. And we're digging big time."

Trump at the White House crypto summit: "We're ensuring ...

2026-08-19T19:48:05Z

Trump at the White House crypto summit: "We're ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader not only in Bitcoin and crypto, but also technologies like prediction markets, artificial intelligence, and much more."

Stop selling bitcoin to access liquidity. (AvenCard) gives you a ...

2026-08-19T19:27:21Z

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(AvenCard) gives you a line of credit backed by your bitcoin. Up to $1M, rates from 8.99%, locked in for up to 10 years. Your keys stay yours.

No rehypothecation. Plus 2% unlimited cash back on every purchase.
https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-visa-card-aven/

Consumer confidence is cratering across every generation. Gen X ...

2026-08-16T12:53:05Z

Consumer confidence is cratering across every generation.

Gen X and Boomers are sitting at ~78-80 on the Consumer Confidence Index, down ~40% from 2021 highs and the lowest readings in 5+ years.

Only Gen Z and Millennials are still above 100, and even they're well below where they were a few years ago.

Bitcoin has officially decoupled from global M2. ...

2026-08-15T14:48:41Z

Bitcoin has officially decoupled from global M2.

Bitcoin Mechanic says the rejection of BIP110 on Saturday ...

2026-08-11T19:53:32Z

Bitcoin Mechanic says the rejection of BIP110 on Saturday "shattered a long-standing belief that Bitcoin's anti-fragility and hard-monetary properties would continue thanks to its decentralized network of nodes."

He argues that mining pools acted as "a small cartel of centralized pool operators clearly acting on behalf of industry players who operated behind closed doors" to kill BIP110, while supporters "operated in public" using "neutral metrics that everyone had access to."

His core concern is that "Proof of Work is completely pointless if the criteria for what constitutes validity is decided by the ones doing the work."

He says he's now running a stalled Knots node at block 931,633 and is open to a hard fork with a new proof-of-work algorithm, stating "the only defense the network would have would be to hard-fork to a new Proof-of-Work algorithm."

He closes by saying he has "no desire to attempt to call this new chain Bitcoin" and that captured Bitcoin "becomes a tool for the sickest of purposes."

Senator Rand Paul confirms after Fort Knox visit: "Yes, the ...

2026-08-10T20:00:33Z

Senator Rand Paul confirms after Fort Knox visit: "Yes, the gold is there all (approximately) 147 million ounces. It is impressive."

"Digital detectives are going sleepless after Bitcoin wallet ...

2026-08-07T21:41:49Z

"Digital detectives are going sleepless after Bitcoin wallet hack."

Bloomberg profiles the community response to the $130M Coldcard exploit.

Alex Thorn, who's spoken with 100+ victims: "These are average everyday people saving their money in Bitcoin. They were true believers."

Becca Rubenfeld on the developers working around the clock: "It's like they're off at war. That's the vibe."

All 8 Flock surveillance cameras in Winona, Minnesota were cut ...

2026-08-07T19:56:18Z

All 8 Flock surveillance cameras in Winona, Minnesota were cut down and removed over a few days.

Poles sawed at the base, cameras gone. It's part of a growing nationwide backlash against automated license plate surveillance.

Multiple cities have now shut their Flock systems down entirely.

American HODL received a phishing email urging him to download a ...

2026-08-04T15:51:03Z

American HODL received a phishing email urging him to download a fake "ColdCard Desktop" app.

Scammers are exploiting the panic around the ColdCard vulnerability to trick people into downloading malware.

As he points out, there is no ColdCard desktop app and there never has been. Stay vigilant.

Strategy now holds 842,138 BTC and just bumped its USD Reserve to ...

2026-08-03T12:46:15Z

Strategy now holds 842,138 BTC and just bumped its USD Reserve to $4.0B while repurchasing $81M of $STRC.

They're extending USD Duration to 2.3 years and tightening STRC's BTC Credit spread by 5 bps.

As much as this hurts. The network will grow stronger from it. ...

2026-08-01T15:33:08Z

As much as this hurts.

The network will grow stronger from it.

Don't give up.

Coldcard founder (nvk) says the reports of drained wallets are ...

2026-07-30T22:12:34Z

Coldcard founder (nvk) says the reports of drained wallets are not a device vulnerability.

The thefts are part of a wider attack affecting 500 private keys across different wallet types, not just Coldcard.

Kimi just dropped the model weights and technical report for K3, ...

2026-07-27T16:09:36Z

Kimi just dropped the model weights and technical report for K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter open-weight model with native vision and a 1M token context window.

2.5x the intelligence per unit of compute. Not just bigger. More efficient.

They also open-sourced the infrastructure stack behind it: attention kernels, MoE communication library, and agent environment tooling.

India ordered GitHub to remove BitChat repositories within three ...

2026-07-24T21:16:58Z

India ordered GitHub to remove BitChat repositories within three hours.

The government's argument: the app's offline, decentralized Bluetooth messaging lets protesters communicate during internet shutdowns, making "lawful interception" difficult.

BitChat downloads in India jumped 32x on July 19 after authorities began restricting internet access around the student-led protests in New Delhi.

India now accounts for 85% of global downloads, with over 91,000 installs in five days and 330,000 daily active users.

The Indian government isn't targeting specific illegal content. They're targeting the architecture itself, the fact that BitChat works without central servers and can't be shut off by flipping a switch.

As the Internet Freedom Foundation pointed out, "deleting a repository does not delete the application from any phone that carries it, and the mesh keeps functioning without servers. What the takedown actually prevents is scrutiny of the underlying code."

This is the Samourai Wallet playbook applied to communication. Prosecute the tool because you can't control the protocol.

Open source, peer-to-peer, no servers. That's why they're scared of it.

BREAKING: Jack Mallers is stepping down as CEO of Twenty One ...

2026-07-21T12:09:16Z

BREAKING: Jack Mallers is stepping down as CEO of Twenty One Capital to focus on Strike full-time.

Raphael Zagury (Elektron Energy) takes over as CEO.

The three-way merger between XXI, Strike, and Elektron is dead — Strike stays independent.

Mallers: "Serving Bitcoiners has always been the mission, and that doesn't change. Strike is where I carry it forward."

SoftBank already exited in May. Tether now has full control of XXI.

The bitcoin treasury company era enters a new phase.

The U.S. only has 43 days of crude oil supply left, the lowest in ...

2026-07-20T13:18:34Z

The U.S. only has 43 days of crude oil supply left, the lowest in 45 years.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was drained in 2022 and never replenished.