SEC Commissioner Peirce Calls for Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Replace Data-Heavy KYC/AML Practices SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the agency’s Innovation Exemption provides a temporary pathway for tokenized securities to trade through AMMs, helping prevent overseas markets from monopolizing tokenized exposure to U.S. equities while serving as a bridge to longer-term rules. She also criticized the current KYC/AML model for creating ever-larger “data haystacks” with limited effectiveness while turning the financial system into a “panopticon,” and called for zero-knowledge proofs and attribute-based credentials to verify compliance without collecting or repeatedly storing users’ sensitive personal data.

Ursula von der Leyen announced this week that everyone in the EU must use the official EU age verification app to verify their age before they can log into or post on social media and other digital services. As an expert in online child safety, I'm here to expose the disinformation in each von der Leyen's statements. See below. 🇪🇺 The EU Kids Act is a pretext designed to enforce mandatory digital identity verification on everyone in Europe. The proposed legislation applies to any digital service featuring feeds, user generated content, or messaging: Social media networks, video platforms, online gaming services, AI tools, and media streaming apps like Spotify. (@TimSweeneyEpic) Under the proposal, digital services must enforce age restrictions across strict tiers. Tech companies must mandate age verification across all accounts to enforce these tiers legally. When Australia introduced its social media ban, the government conceded it failed because platform level age checks weren’t reliable. They now reject age estimation as inadequate and shifted to demanding "robust" age checking. 💡 If you eliminate every unproven estimation method, you’re left with exactly 1 functional mechanism: identity verification. There's not other way to ensure age checking is "robust". No government wants to admit citizens must prove their real identity just to access apps and basic streaming services like Spotify, so they hide behind the ambiguous phrase "robust age checking". This language is now used across Australia, the US, and Ireland to mandate identity checks while avoiding the public backlash of calling it what it is. I will research to see where else it’s being used. Below is what Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg along with my analsyis: 🇪🇺 "Today, much of this power has been taken out of the hands of parents... What our children need is time... But when a child has a smartphone, all of this is taken away." 💡 This framing falsely presents smartphones as uncontrollable. Apple and Google built free OS controls into iOS and Android settings, covering virtually every smartphone on the market. These controls achieve every legitimate safety objective without collecting personal data or processing state credentials. 💡 Millions of parents use these parental controls to enforce screen time curfews, block app installations, and restrict communication. 💡 These settings operate at the device level. Teens can't bypass them when protected with a passcode. To bypass this technical reality, the European Commission uses public grief to shut down logical analysis: 🇪🇺 "Day and night, parents see the costs, loss of sleep, anxiety, even self-harm, and in a growing number of cases, even fatal tragedies… a 14-year-old girl living in Belgium who took her life exactly one month ago, victim of bullying online... Honourable members, enough is enough." 💡 Citing personal tragedies replaces software engineering facts with emotional rhetoric. State laws and age gates don’t alter human behaviour or prevent online harassment. Regulators exploit grief to pass surveillance legislation without explaining how the underlying software mechanisms operate. The Commission outlines specific age tiers to restrict access: 🇪🇺 "In sum, no social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15. That means from 13 to under 15, only mini accounts set up and supervised by parents or guardians with limited features and time restriction to one hour a day. And between 15 and 18, safe design will be an obligation for the platforms." 💡 Enforcing age tiers forces tech companies and service providers to rebuild their architecture around total access control. The must disable self-service account creation, purge unverified accounts, build supervised parental workflows, strip algorithmic feeds, and enforce strict session cutoffs. 💡 Social networks operate on open interaction algorithms that inherently expose people to unvetted content. Because software can’t dynamically filter these risks for minors, tech companies must block access for everyone until a person proves their real identity. 💡 It’s not just about social networks. They want the same bans for almost everything, including games and stream services. Even Spotify because it’s possible for customers to message people. The Commission claims its proposed zero knowledge proof app protects personal privacy: 🇪🇺 "Age will be verified using EU certified tools like our age verification app. This app is built on zero knowledge proof. That means that the platform only learns one single thing, and that's whether you're old enough to allow access or not." 💡 This framing describes what an app or service receives while hiding what everyone must give up. A zero knowledge proof provides a mathematical confirmation, but that confirmation requires an authoritative issuer. Before the app generates a proof, a state approved entity must verify the person's real identity. The Commission frames this shift as a victory against tech corporations: 🇪🇺 "I am aware that many perceive the power of Big Tech as overwhelming and impossible to roll back. I disagree... So we do not accept this. We are reversing the burden of proof. Now platforms will have to prove to us that they are safe. Because this is not about our minors accessing social media. It is about when and how we allow social media to access our minors." 💡 Social networks don’t access children; parents hand smartphones to children. Reversing the burden of proof forces everyone to verify their identity. The European Commission confirmed the broader scope of this mandate: 🇪🇺 "We also know that not only minors are at risk. Addictive design, for example, are harming everyone. This is why we need a wider framework too, the Digital Fairness Act that we will propose in autumn." 🚨 Child safety is merely the initial wedge. The Digital Fairness Act expands state mandated identity verification to adults across all online services. Binding real identities to online activity permanently eliminates pseudonymous access, private communication, and democratic accountability. 🚨 Senior state officials and regulators know their demands have nothing to do with child safety. They work closely with tech companies and understand that iOS and Android already provide complete authority to restrict devices locally without collecting personal data. State officials deliberately ignore well established parental controls because they keep internet access under family control. Child safety is a public pretext. 🚨 Governments and regulators use child safety to establish mandatory identity verification across every app and digital service, eliminating online anonymity. When tech companies and state agencies link every social media post, private message, search term, geographic location, and financial transaction to a verified identity, they create a permanent digital dossier on every citizen with a global social graph that makes Cambridge Analytica look like a 2nd grade school science project. 💡 Binding people’s identity to daily activity enables predictive behavioural modelling too. By feeding identity data into automated predictive AI, governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and tech companies move beyond surveillance past behaviour. They can map political affiliations, predict individual actions, flag dissent before it occurs, and control public opinion at scale. Eliminating online anonymity ends free speech, private communication, and democratic accountability. As Larry Ellison stated at Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting in 2024: "Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on". 🙏🏻 Share this to expose how governments use child safety as a false pretext to force mandatory digital identity verification on everyone. paulfwalsh.substack.com/p/th…

Never cared about being diplomatic. Coinbase has done more for crypto than any org. Great company. Never sold any of my shares. Critique is in past 5 years there's been a lack of a user mindset in the construction of the core product and new product launches. And there seems to be an overall risk aversion or lack of skill in making new bets, taking stances that aren't consensus within crypto, and bridging culture in new ways to grow the pie. Specific advice: 1) Simplify core product, way too much going on and hard to use for normies 2) Figure out stock coins ASAP and ramp up TVL 3) Take time to understand trenches so Base doesn't get blown out of the water by green chain 4) Don't waste cash on acquisitions to try to gain favor on CT and play perception games that don't bring in new users. Invest in bridging crypto and culture in creative ways instead 5) Stand on Ethereum. Stack ETH. Tell the story of what the difference between a credibly neutral store of value and a company coin

Very disappointing to see Circle take this approach in their GTM plan. You can clearly see a lot of their team fundamentally misunderstands meme culture, and I think they made a mistake abandoning their initial vision of Arc as a stablecoin chain. Now it's stuck in this weird middle ground where nobody really knows whether it's supposed to be a meme chain or a corporate stablecoin chain. They really messed up their positioning with memes, and this is going to be very difficult to recover from. I suspect some key decision maker internally just said, “look at robinhood, we should do the same,” without actually understanding why it works for them. There's a good chance Arc gets shut down within a year. The launch landed in no man's land, and the market is already competitive enough as it is. For a public company, it'll be hard to justify continuing to throw money at it if it doesn't start showing meaningful traction and a path to becoming a real business. I expected a competent team like Circle to do a lot better. But let's see if they can recover from it.

Ms von der Leyen, there is no greater racist against Europeans than you! #EU

State of the Union by European Commission President @vonderleyen: „We will“ - 56 times „We need to“ - 18 times „We must“ - 10 times „We should“ - 4 times Implementing - Zero times Doing - 4 times Achieved - Zero times Two summits & a new European security strategy announced.

This afternoon, Senate Democrats proved they were never truly serious about protecting consumers and preserving American leadership. I sat at the table with Senate Democrats working in good faith to get this done while they played games. For over a year, they presented demands and the second we met them, they made new demands and moved the goal posts. Today they voted against real limitations on politicians’ personal crypto investments. They voted against protecting American consumers from the scammers and fraudsters this bill would have shut down. They voted against American leadership, and handed China and every one of our foreign competitors exactly what they wanted. Democrats chose politics over the American people—again. That’s not leadership on their part, that’s surrender to their radical, socialist base. The once-proud Democratic party is anti-consumer and pro-illicit finance, anti-ethics, anti-free enterprise, anti-worker, anti-livable wage jobs, and pro-socialism. The Democrats are now anti-American. Sad!

The Revolut story (thanks @zachxbt for bringing us to our attention) is a good time to bring back zkKYC. Prove what’s required without exposing a passport, selfie and home address every time. Zero-knowledge should mean less personal data to collect, retain and hand over. Who’s building this at scale today? I remember working on it. > @KeyringNetwork > @zkme_ > @zkPass > @PrivadoID > @GalacticaNet What’s the current state of play and why those players are not getting adoption during those years?

I am looking for crypto policy people to help with government awareness of ZK tech. Data leaks have gone too far, the tech to avoid it exists, and we just need to convince regulators to allow it. Let’s save lives. Proofs over Passports.

Imma say this once: if I see you get behind and peddle this Laptop shit, I’m gonna never take you seriously ever again. Block and move on. And @inkonchain already deleted their post. You have a fucking voice people. Make it heard. And for you guys @base: you are a disgrace. Is this your idea of a comeback? An extractive event with litterally no possible good coming from it. Do better. You’re still in time. Oh and in terms of where it launches, no surprise there. But we’ve already seen pons prevail on uni “but it’s not possible” and Hyperliquid slowly eat everyone’s lunch “but it’s not possible” you too will be a relic of the past soon enough. Fucking shout and call it out people, instead of protecting your crusty deals. Make this place better. Message is align or die for all. We have options now, and we are finding our voice✊

Here’s how I unpack something that @VitalikButerin says, but in non-tech terms for greater mass understanding. EIP-8141 makes ETH better money while making it less necessary as user-facing gas money. This makes holding and using ETH itself substantially more practical as money. But, the larger implication than gas abstraction is that EIP-8141 moves Ethereum toward an account model in which the account is no longer synonymous with one private key signing one transaction and paying its own gas. The account can define how it authorizes actions, who pays, which actions are bundled, and eventually which cryptography secures it. That opens a much broader application design space: subscription payments, spending allowances, corporate treasury policies, family accounts, inheritance/recovery, AI agents with bounded spending authority, merchant-sponsored transactions, stablecoin-only consumer wallets, multi-party approvals, automated payroll, etc. In other words, wallets start behaving less like crypto wallets and more like programmable financial accounts. Sum of it: More Apps and more use case scenarios for Ethereum AND ETH deployments. More growth all-around.

"Frame Transactions mean nobody needs ETH" is the same Account Abstraction FUD we've had since 2016. EIP-8141 means every token on Ethereum becomes a way to purchase ETH while doing the one thing every Ethereum user does: buying blockspace. The hardest part of onboarding (needing ETH to spend USDC) goes away This expands Ethereum utility, and every unit of that utility is denominated in ETH. This is 'ETH is Money', and it is strictly bullish. More Ethereum commerce → higher Ethereum dominance → more ETH bought and burnt

eth mainnet need fun dapps too. soon

Bitcoin had the Nakamoto Card Ethereum has the Buterin Card.

L2s are not true Ethereum "customers" until Stage 2 atp it's more like they are running a cheap pilot program we couldn't really charge them significantly more if we wanted to, they would just stop the pilot and go in another direction completely imo so far almost no L2s have decided to graduate from pilot to actual customer, which means the service is not that valuable right now in itself & we can't charge more it will become more valuable if regulatory enforcement gets stricter in the absence of true rollup status or if users of the chain otherwise demand the level of trust reduction that a Stage 2 rollup provides meanwhile, attention is best spent on scaling L1, we gave enough benefits to L2s...

Branding&marketing experts should study Robinhood and Coinbase stories History: Coinbase: one of the first and most impactful crypto exchanges, one of the biggest advocates of crypto in US, tried lot of things early with Base chain and never pivoted out of crypto through thick and thin Robinhood: TradFi incumbent, selling order flow to market makers, they rug their users during GME short squeeze, their first foray into crypto ended up with them delisting SOL and rugging SOL holders at the stone cold bottom Public perception on CT: Coinbase: Lame, forced narrative peddlers, VC-chain corposuits Robinhood: Cool, user aligned, retail champions (Note: this is a take about the crowds perception , not judgement of the business quality, arguably pound for pound HOOD is better business than COIN, currently we hold $HOOD but no $COIN)

Coinbase: refuses to mention Ethereum Robinhood: mentions Ethereum It's really that simple.

Instead of losing money on another day trade, send $1,000 to help people in Nepal whose entire lives were just destroyed by a different type of liquidity crisis himalayan-foundation.org/don…

With staked $ETH backed mortgages you wouldn’t even have a monthly payment Time to upgrade from the outdated $BTC system, Brian

we will look back on the (mostly) graceful wind down of EF preeminence as a key turning point for Ethereum and ETH a massive change which only a few will understand the significance of not because it was a bad institution, but because it was simply TOO preeminent and it inadvertently promoted a monoculture in R&D which focused too much on theory instead of users and the market what is happening now is actual, REAL subtraction. a real and healthy abdication of formal & informal authority which will enhance the decentralization of the Ethereum ecosystem thanks for those who worked at the EF over the years to help Ethereum, and to all of those who keep working on it both there and elsewhere but we are officially exiting the cathedral and entering the bazaar and what i believe will be the most exciting and eventful epoch in Ethereum's history