This isn’t hard: If you’re telling the truth you’re lying If you’re lying your patriotic Everyone is accountable for all transgressions large or small Except that, If you’re in power you’re accountable to no one and everyone is accountable for you

Many have reached out, many wanting us to keep going. We didn’t realize to what extent. Due to this vibe shift, we are actively exploring sustainable funding to reconsider and massively scale up. If you’d like to be a part/donate email hello@progressivebitcoiner.org

Typecasting. 📸: @thestablecon

People keep saying Trump term II is the most corrupt administration ever, so I built a model to find out if it was true. I took the UN's definition of corruption, turned it into eight criteria and 100 points, and scored the leaders history remembers for looting their countries: Marcos, Suharto, Mobutu, Abacha, Obiang, Putin. Then I put every president since Eisenhower on the same scale, both parties, with every exoneration counted right alongside the convictions. Nixon scored 41 and no other American President scored over a 25. Trump's second term scored a 91, which ties him with Suharto and Mobutu and puts him above Marcos and Abacha. So he is not only the most corrupt president in American history. At this pace he finishes his term level with the most corrupt rulers of the last hundred years. PSA: don't come in my comments arguing about the results if you haven't read the full article, because ignorance is a choice. Full article is up now on my Substack (link in bio) and it's free.

"Absence of Clarity is absence of good regulation." - @xethalis 🎧: Full episode at link in comments

"I don't think most Americans care about the ethics provision." - @KarenUbell on the latest Form & Structure episode by @Surus_io Host: @virtuallylaw Guests: @KarenUbell & @xethalis 🎧: full episode links in comments

"It's Schrödinger's legislation. You only know if it's alive or dead when you observe the vote." - @xethalis on CLARITY Act New Form & Structure episode from @Surus_io with @KarenUbell & @xethalis

@virtuallylaw on whether vault curators should be held to a fiduciary standard at @rwasummit.

We’re proud to welcome @Surus_io as a founding member of the Utila Licensed Partner Network. We recently launched an industry-first program that connects fintechs with licensed partners, giving them a path to launch regulated stablecoin products while building on Utila’s infrastructure. Through its North Carolina-chartered trust company, Surus provides regulated services including qualified custody, tokenization, fund administration, and corporate trust services for institutions and fintechs. This partnership gives US fintechs a faster path to market while preserving flexibility over the infrastructure and providers they use as their stablecoin operations evolve. Learn more: utila.io/blog/utila-licensed…

After nearly a decade in crypto law, I am confident in saying we have learned lessons (too many to count!) that are critical for lawyers entering the AI space to keep top of mind. I set out 3 of them in @Law360: law360.com/technology/articl… (DM me for a full copy beyond the paywall)

@Surus_io is now a licensed partner in @utila_io's Licensed Partner Network. One integration and US fintechs and institutions can access qualified custody, reserve management, collateral agent, and corporate trust services under our NC trust charter.

Licensing has been the missing layer in a modular stablecoin infrastructure model. ⛓️‍💥 📣 Today, we’re launching the industry-first solution to this problem: the Utila Licensed Partner Network with @FiptoHQ, @CoinGatecom, @balance_canada, and @Surus_io as founding partners. Launch through licensed partners. Build on a modular infrastructure you can keep. 💥 utila.io/blog/utila-licensed…

Tomorrow. 11:20am at @rwasummit, @virtuallylaw will be speaking on "Vaults : The New Fund Managers?"  Vault structures, ownership, curator accountability and what the vault category looks like 5 years from now will be some of the topics covered during the panel. Say hi if you are in town.

Introducing @EthenaPay: the internet money neobank. →Card spend cashback at 5.0% →Best-in-class 6.0% dollar savings rate →Borderless, free, instant global money transfers →Free global onramps in USD, GBP, EUR and local FX →Multi-currency high-rewards savings accounts in local FX →Unified fiat IBAN integration with self-custodial stablecoin accounts →Buy Now Pay Never where your savings rewards covers daily expenses Not coming soon™️. Live now to download on iOS.

An unfortunate trend in crypto is the return of convoluted legal structures being pushed by the same advisors that set up things like FTX's chart below (and later got sued for millions) These structures are not aimed at making a project more compliant, but rather at making it more obscure and harder to sue. This is not a super clever loophole, it's an attempt at regulatory arbitrage that will get unraveled with one supoena and centralizes control with paid intermediaries At a time when US regulators are making a concerted effort to reshore crypto to America, teams should think twice before signing up for this morass and build here, with their head held up high

One thing before I start: everything in this post is public information from my own docket. None of it is new, and I'm not revealing anything you can't already find in the court filings yourself. The retrial just got pushed to April 26, 2027. The order came down today (Dkt. 300). My acquittal motion is still sitting there, undecided. I honestly don't know when this ends. Prosecutors are supposed to protect American interests and go after people who broke the law. A jury deadlocked on the two most serious counts against me. And still SDNY won't stop, because this case was never just about me. It's about setting an example. Don't take my word for it. Tara La Morte, the chief of SDNY's Illicit Finance and Money Laundering Unit, said it herself at a New York City Bar Association event (Law360, Feb. 23, 2024; filed on my docket as Doc. 25-2): "We want the industry to take notice." "What we're trying to do is sort of bring the industry into compliance, and I think Tornado Cash is an example of that." An example. Out of a developer who wrote code. At that same event, her deputy praised the government's blockchain-tracing partner, Chainalysis. Here is what they didn't tell the audience. All of it is from the public docket in my case. According to the trial transcripts, Chainalysis was running its OWN Tornado Cash relayer, and earning fees on the transactions flowing through it. - Chainalysis's own lawyers admitted to "a relayer node that Chainalysis operated"; my subpoena sought documents on Tornado Cash relayer(s) "used from March to August 2022." (Dkt. 211) - In open court, the prosecutor said it plainly: "I think the parties agree as to that part of the testimony, that the Chainalysis relayer earned fees." Same hearing: "there's zero evidence that the defendant was in any way aware that Chainalysis was running a relayer." (Dkt. 259, July 25, 2025) So the company that helped trace my "criminal" transactions was itself profiting from Tornado Cash transactions, while I was prosecuted over software I helped create. And when my lawyers subpoenaed them to testify? - Chainalysis moved to quash. (Dkt. 211) - The government backed them: "Your Honor, we agree with the position outlined in the motion." (Dkt. 255) - The night before, prosecutors called Chainalysis's counsel. The judge asked point-blank: "Did you let them know that they were potentially subject to investigation or prosecution?" The answer: "We have discussed at a high level some of the issues surrounding the relayer with Chainalysis." (Dkt. 259) - The Chainalysis witness took the Fifth. My lawyers learned about that call only afterward, from Chainalysis's own lawyer. (Dkt. 263) The jury never heard any of it. This spring, at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, something happened that I still can't quite believe. The Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and the FBI Director, Kash Patel, sat on a panel called "Code is Free Speech." Think about that. The two top law enforcement officials in the country. Blanche told thousands of developers: if you're a coder and you're not the one committing the crime, "you are not going to be investigated and not going to be charged." He said the last administration's crypto cases were "outrageous attacks on the industry." Patel praised "the Chainalysises of the world" as FBI partners. And when the moderator pointed at the elephant in the room, my case, Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, the Acting Attorney General called it a "lingering case" they are "continuing to deal with." So here is my hypothetical question. If code is free speech, why am I still being prosecuted for writing it? And if the Chainalysises of the world are the partners, the same Chainalysis that ran its own Tornado Cash relayer and earned fees from Tornado Cash users, while I never did, why is it off the hook? They made an example out of a developer for writing code. Their own vendor ran the same infrastructure, pocketed the fees, and got a phone call instead of a prosecution. Sources 👇👇👇

The huge unlock for RWAs will be when RWA issuers drive capital formation, not just merely tokenizing existing capital assets. Once TradFi realizes that DeFi is a better place to raise new capital than within TradFi, RWAs will truly take off

@virtuallylaw will be speaking at @rwasummit next month on "Vaults: The new fund managers?". The session will cover shareholder rights, regulatory treatment, and solvency. Find us there.

My understanding of the Clarity act failing is that they put together this broad encompassing bill for 2 years and then the last part was that the president and elected officials had to stop scamming people and they were like no we can’t agree to that, that’s an outrageous demand

People got this weird idea after segwit that a “UASF” is this magic thing where a bunch of people on social media get together and start making threats and suddenly Bitcoin’s consensus rules will change. That’s nonsense. I’m sorry if you were told that the thing that activated Segwit was a UASF and nothing else but you were lied to.

One day, if there’s ever a postmortem done on this era, it’ll be fascinating to see who was paying for all the bots defending the president on social media sites like this. It’s propaganda tools that earlier authoritarian wanna-be lying regimes could only dream of.