“Who Is Gaining Control Of Britain’s Digital State?“ Forbes, 20 August 2026

Britain wants to become a digital state. Increasingly, some of the technology needed to make that ambition possible is being supplied by a relatively small group of private companies.

In June, Parliament’s cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology Committee warned that the UK’s growing reliance on major technology providers including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Palantir had created a vulnerability. Palantir received particular attention, with MPs describing its expanding presence in the public sector as an “unacceptable point of weakness” and warning that dependence on a small number of US suppliers could leave Britain exposed to foreign actors.

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The issue is how much control Britain still has over the technology it increasingly relies on. Governments have always bought products and services from private companies, but digital infrastructure is different. Complex public services, data systems and operational processes can become difficult and expensive to move once they are built around a particular platform.

Britain therefore needs to retain practical control over the systems on which it increasingly depends.

Palantir Across Government

Palantir is now involved in some of the most sensitive areas of the UK government, with contracts or projects spanning health, defence and financial regulation.

In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir Technologies UK the contract for its Federated Data Platform, designed to bring together information used to manage and plan health services.

The contract is often described as being worth £330 million, although the procurement documents give a more precise picture. The awarded value was £182.24 million, while NHS England said expenditure could eventually rise to a forecast £330 million depending on consumption. The procurement notice states that the higher figure is not a committed amount. Seven tenders were received through a competitive dialogue process.

Palantir’s relationship with the Ministry of Defence is much larger. A three year enterprise agreement signed in December 2025 is worth £240.6 million and runs from April 2026 until March 2029. The procurement notice says the technology supports data analytics used for strategic, tactical and live operational decision-making across security classifications and interoperates with systems used by NATO and allied nations.

The contract is part of Palantir’s growing role across the UK government. In September 2025, the government announced a strategic partnership with Palantir under which the company said it would invest up to £1.5 billion in the UK, establish Britain as the European base for its defence business and work with the military on AI-enabled capabilities covering areas including data analysis, intelligence, decision support and targeting. The government also said Palantir would continue supporting implementation of the Ministry of Defence’s Digital and Data Strategy.

The Ministry of Defence told Forbes that all data used and developed in Palantir software deployed across the department remains sovereign and under MoD ownership. It said contractual controls ensure the MoD retains control of the data systems on which Palantir software operates and that no changes can be made without its consent. The department added that the platforms support human decision making rather than replace it.

The MoD did not directly address questions about what alternatives would be available if it chose to move away from Palantir, how easily systems and data could be transferred to another provider, or whether it retains sufficient internal technical capability to replace or rebuild those systems.

The company has also moved into financial regulation. In January 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority awarded Palantir a £375,001 proof-of-concept contract to test enterprise search across structured, semi-structured and unstructured FCA data.

The FCA told Forbes that the 12-week trial is still running and that no decision has been made about any longer-term use of Palantir. It described the project as an evaluation rather than a commitment to a particular supplier or solution.

According to the regulator, it was the highest scoring bidder following a competitive procurement process. During the trial, the company acts as a data processor rather than a controller, while the FCA retains control of the encryption keys. The data is hosted in the UK, cannot be used by Palantir to train its own products and will be deleted when the pilot ends.

These are separate contracts with different organisations, but they show how far Palantir’s role now extends across the UK government.

Its appeal lies in the ability to bring complex datasets together and support decision making across sensitive and operationally important environments.

Palantir rejected the suggestion that its growing role creates a point of weakness for the UK public sector. A Palantir spokesperson told Forbes that organisations working with the company remain in full control of their data, with the company acting as a data processor rather than a controller. The company said customers determine how their data is used and who can access it.

The company also disputed concerns about vendor lock-in, saying interoperability is built into its software and that code can be exported to other platforms with only minor changes. It pointed to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office as examples of departments that had moved away from its software and taken their data and intellectual property elsewhere “without difficulty”.

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Inside the NHS Data Layer

The NHS contract shows how closely Palantir is involved in the operation of the platform.

NHS England remains responsible for the data processed through the Federated Data Platform and says Palantir acts as a processor under its instructions. Its published privacy information says supplier access is controlled, monitored, role-based and limited to the purposes required to operate the system.

In 2026, NHS England disclosed that a small number of Palantir staff have administrative access to the National Data Integration Tenant, which forms part of the Federated Data Platform. NDIT processes a wide range of national health datasets, including Hospital Episode Statistics, emergency care information, diagnostic imaging data, medicines data and information from the Personal Demographics Service.

NHS England says the Palantir staff with administrative access manage the platform’s settings, security and configuration, while other Palantir engineers and third-party suppliers have more limited access to specific projects and datasets. Access is subject to NHS instructions, security clearance, contractual controls and monitoring.

Palantir said this type of administrative access is normal for government technology suppliers and that its access is limited to what the NHS authorises. It said the platform has granular access controls and full auditability, with every access logged.

The company does not own NHS patient data, and its employees are not free to use the information for their own purposes. However, some Palantir engineers require privileged access to keep parts of the infrastructure operating, showing how dependent the system has become on an external supplier. This is the kind of dependency Parliament is now questioning.

The Risk of Vendor Lock-In

The Metropolitan Police offers another example. Earlier this year, the Met sought approval for a proposed £50 million contract to automate parts of intelligence analysis used in criminal investigations. The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime refused to approve the award.

City Hall said there were “serious concerns” about how the procurement had been handled and described a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules because Palantir was the only supplier seriously considered. It also said the Met had failed to demonstrate value for money.

The Met told Forbes that Palantir has been awarded a 12 month contract following a procurement process. It said it is also working with MOPAC on a longer term procurement strategy that will “evaluate the marketplace for these types of technologies” before a supplier is appointed. A Met spokesperson said a “swift resolution to this dispute” would allow the force to “move forward to procure the technology we need”.

The Met said it would not comment on the specific allegations while court proceedings are ongoing. It did not address why Palantir was the only supplier seriously considered in the earlier procurement or whether it accepts MOPAC’s concerns about the process and value for money.

Public bodies need effective competition when buying systems that may become central to their operations. They also need a realistic ability to change suppliers if circumstances change.

Parliament has raised the same concern. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said vendor lock-in should not be accepted as inevitable and called on the government to reduce its reliance on a small number of foreign technology suppliers, diversify procurement and develop domestic alternatives in strategically important areas.

On the NHS contract, the committee urged the government to consider using the 2027 break clause and either develop an alternative capability internally or find another UK provider.

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The test is whether the government could replace an important supplier without disrupting the service built around its technology. If replacing a platform becomes prohibitively difficult, legal ownership of the underlying data does not necessarily mean the government holds the leverage.

NHS England did not respond to a request for comment.

The Revolving Door

People and expertise also move between the public sector and the technology companies supplying it.

Damian Parmenter, formerly Director General for AUKUS at the Ministry of Defence, left government in July 2025 and took up a role as Senior Counsellor at Palantir. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments reviewed the overlap between his former responsibilities and Palantir’s work and imposed restrictions on the appointment.

Laurence Lee, a former Foreign Office Director General and Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, also joined Palantir as a geostrategic adviser to its chief executive.

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The committee said Lee had overseen digital transformation across defence, security and resilience, had met Palantir while in public service and had been involved in work connected to a Ministry of Defence contract with the company. It identified a perceived risk that his appointment might be associated with decisions taken while he was in public service, while also recording the department’s reasons for rejecting that interpretation.

Officials with specialist knowledge are naturally attractive to companies working in the same field. Technical knowledge, procurement experience and an understanding of public systems are valuable to both sides.

As more technology is bought from external suppliers, dependence can extend beyond software to the expertise needed to understand and manage it.

Who Holds the Leverage?

UK policy has placed growing emphasis on sovereign technological capability. Its Digital and Technologies Sector Plansays changing geopolitical conditions have increased the importance of strategic capabilities, including sovereign AI, cyber security, semiconductors and advanced connectivity. Its Digital Standards Strategy also links AI, cyber security and advanced connectivity to UK security and sovereignty.

Technological sovereignty does not require the government to develop every database, cloud service or analytical tool in-house. Private companies often have technology and expertise that would take the public sector considerable time and money to recreate. Using an American supplier does not necessarily mean Britain has lost control of its systems.

The UK needs enough technical understanding of the technology it relies on to set the rules around its use, move its data safely, maintain credible alternatives and replace a supplier when circumstances change.

Parliament’s warning suggests those safeguards are not strong enough. Palantir is the most visible example because of the scale and sensitivity of the systems it supports, but the committee also raised concerns about reliance on Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology did not respond to questions about supplier dependence, vendor lock-in and how the government defines technological sovereignty in practice.

As Britain becomes more digital, its reliance on these suppliers will become harder to ignore. The government’s technology strategy supports working with business while building more strategic capability in the UK.

Britain’s digital infrastructure should not become dependent on a handful of private suppliers. That means maintaining competitive procurement, credible alternatives and enough technical expertise to change providers when needed.

If public bodies cannot realistically switch suppliers, dependence stops being a procurement problem and becomes a question of control.

In the space of a week, a flaw in a leading bitcoin hardware wallet left users’ funds vulnerable and Russia moved against the founder of a messenger marketed on privacy. The two events share an uncomfortable lesson about how much of our digital safety is assumed rather than verified.

Two events in the final week of July 2026, unrelated on the surface, point to the same weakness in how digital security is judged. One was a theft and the other was a criminal case brought by a state. Together they show how often the safety of a tool is inferred from its reputation rather than confirmed by evidence.

When Security Fails

On 31 July, researchers linked the theft of roughly 594 bitcoin, worth about $38 million, from around 500 wallets to a flaw in Coldcard’s seed-generation process.

The cause was a firmware fault introduced in March 2021. On Coldcard Mk3 devices running version 4.0.1 or later, a faulty check caused the wallet to bypass its hardware random number generator and rely on a weaker software source, reducing the effective strength of the keys from an intended 128 bits to about 40 bits. Seeds generated on later models (Mk4, Q and Mk5) before the fixed firmware were also weakened, to roughly 72 bits.

The keys were therefore far more predictable than users believed. The manufacturer, Coinkite has suggested that the attacker may have used artificial intelligence to identify the flaw in its published source code.

Bitcoin transactions are public, so the coins moved in the sweep can be traced on-chain, but Coinkite has described its analysis as preliminary, and the full number of affected wallets and the total eventually lost may still change.

The significance lies less in the sum stolen than in the nature of the failure. Coldcard is regarded as one of the more security conscious products in the sector, and the defect remained undetected in open code for more than four years. A device designed to protect private keys became the mechanism through which they were exposed.

A second development in the same week illustrates the same principle in the field of privacy rather than security. On 29 July, Russia’s Federal Security Service charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and placed him on an international wanted list. The following day, the state added him to its official register of terrorists and extremists, a designation that obliges Russian banks to freeze his assets. Durov is believed to be living in Dubai and holds Russian, French and UAE citizenship. He rejected the accusation and described it as a pretext to justify restricting Telegram inside Russia. There are reasonable grounds to read the charge as politically motivated.

Privacy, Metadata And Trust

The bigger question is what the Russian state may already be able to observe. In 2025, the investigative outlets IStories and OCCRP reported a structural weakness in Telegram. Every message begins with a fixed identifier that is transmitted without encryption. It remains stable when a user changes networks or IP addresses, potentially allowing a device to be followed across locations and over time.

In May 2026, the security firm Symbolic Software, led by the cryptographer Nadim Kobeissi, tested the claim and found it accurate and reproducible, noting that Telegram’s desktop client sends data over the port normally reserved for encrypted traffic without applying encryption.

The weakness does not expose the contents of messages but it enables something more dangerous: the persistent identification of a device and by extension its user, at the level of the network.

The same investigation identified the engineer who ran much of Telegram’s backend infrastructure as Vladimir Vedeneev. He held a financial role at the company, had authority to sign on Durov’s behalf, and his firms had carried out work for the FSB.

In the reporting, Vedeneev described responding to FSB requests to identify the user behind a given IP address. Telegram denies any connection to the FSB, and Vedeneev denies supplying user data. Those denials are on the record, but what is established is that vulnerability is real and the infrastructure was operated by a person whose firms had documented ties to the security service.

The link between a multimillion dollar theft and a Russian arrest warrant is a shared assumption. In each case users relied on a product’s reputation, Coldcard for security and Telegram for privacy. In each case the guarantee proved weaker than the marketing, with the defect present for years before it was exploited.

Telegram’s exposure is the less understood of the two. Its ordinary chats are not encrypted end to end by default, and because the identifier leaks beneath the encryption layer, it is unaffected by whether a given chat is secret. The content of a message may be protected while the metadata surrounding it, who is communicating, from where, and with whom, remains observable. In practice, that metadata is often more revealing than the content.

Whether Telegram’s design is negligent or deliberate cannot be established from the available evidence. The company has been criticised by cryptographers for a decade for building its own protocol and for weaker default protections, and the flaw is consistent with that record. It is also consistent with a less benign reading, given the ties of the person who operated the infrastructure.

The conclusion holds regardless of intent. Telegram is marketed on privacy and its founder presents himself as a privacy advocate. Either he was unaware of the persistent tracking vulnerability, or he knew about it.

What Transparency Can Protect

A further theme connects the two cases. Advanced AI models are now being used to examine public code and protocols and are surfacing flaws that had gone unnoticed for years. The effect runs in both directions, accelerating independent auditing while lowering the cost of finding vulnerabilities to exploit.

The mitigating factor is transparency, because a weakness can only be assessed if it can be examined. The Coldcard flaw was identifiable because its code is public, and the Telegram vulnerability could be independently confirmed because its network behaviour can be observed. Systems whose workings are closed offer the least basis for that scrutiny.

The implications extend beyond Russia and bitcoin. Governments across democratic states, including the United Kingdom, continue to advocate measures that would weaken encryption in the name of public safety.

The Durov case illustrates the flaw in that reasoning. The surveillance that reaches ordinary users is rarely a conspicuous backdoor. More often it is an unexamined identifier or an unaudited design choice, deployed by a provider that assured its users there was nothing to be concerned about. Weakening the tools people depend on tends to produce more exposure.

The two failures are not equivalent. One resulted in stolen funds, the other in the potential exposure of communications data. They point, however, to the same conclusion, which reflects the principle on which bitcoin was designed.

Security and privacy should be verifiable, not taken on trust. For users, that means treating a product’s assurances as a claim to be tested rather than a fact to be accepted. For policymakers, it means recognising that safety is not achieved by requiring the tools people rely on to be less secure.

When Sami Jamal Al-Shannat raised more than £55,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help his family escape the war in Gaza, it felt as though the hard part was over.

GoFundMe deducted 3.9% in fees, totaling £2,176.02, but does not support payouts in Gaza. The remaining funds had to be paid to a nominated beneficiary living in a supported country, who was then expected to pass the money on.

The arrangement met the platform’s payout requirements, but it left the final transfer dependent on trust between individuals. Sami says that arrangement with his brother-in-law, who acted as the beneficiary, later collapsed. He has not received the full amount raised for his family and the dispute remains unresolved. He describes it as more than a financial dispute, saying the loss has left his wife and children in a state of extreme vulnerability.

“The problem wasn’t raising the money,” he told me from a displacement camp in Gaza. “The problem started when we had to rely on someone else to receive it for us.”

Sami says his priority is to recover the funds and hold those responsible accountable. He is trying to find a lawyer but says he lacks the money and connections needed to secure legal support from Gaza. He also hopes to continue raising support for his family as wartime inflation drives up the cost of food and other essentials.

GoFundMe did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent to its corporate press and media channels. Direct inquiries sent to Chief Executive Tim Cadogan and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Margaret Richardson via LinkedIn were similarly unanswered before publication, while the platform’s automated customer support channels did not provide a way to reach its media relations team.

The Compliance Trap

His experience exposes a problem in humanitarian crowdfunding. Platforms must operate within banking rules, sanctions regimes and anti-money laundering requirements that limit where they can send funds.

GoFundMe officially attributes these operational barriers to compliance pressures, stating in its public policies that it must comply with international laws and the strict requirements of its payment processors.

When people in crisis cannot receive money directly, it may have to pass through an intermediary, moving responsibility onto individuals and potentially leaving intended recipients without the support raised for them.

This compliance bottleneck can also paralyze global human rights groups. Lyudmyla Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, says her organisation experienced this when platforms like PayPal, GoFundMe and Wise blocked their fundraising appeals for Ukraine during the critical first months of the 2022 Russian invasion. Using bitcoin, the foundation was able to bypass these traditional delays and deliver emergency humanitarian aid on the second day of the war.

Charities, aid organisations and technology companies have wrestled with the problem of reaching people who cannot access the financial system for years. A growing number of developers argue that the existing model relies on too many intermediaries, particularly when funds must cross borders or reach people in restricted jurisdictions.

Redesigning the Architecture of Trust

Michele Morucci, co-founder of Geyser, a crowdfunding platform built on bitcoin said trust sits at the heart of the problem.

“People think the biggest challenge is moving money,” he told me. “It isn’t. The biggest challenge is deciding who to trust.”

Donors rarely know the people they are supporting. They rely on platforms, charities, journalists and community leaders to help them judge whether a campaign is genuine. Removing one intermediary only creates value if something equally trustworthy replaces it.

Geyser reviews projects before they launch and asks creators to provide evidence of their work, details of their teams and, where necessary, additional documentation. Projects that fail to demonstrate sufficient credibility are not approved.

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More than 100 Geyser Field Partners help identify and support projects in communities they know firsthand, creating what Michele describes as a trust chain between local communities and global donors. The aim is to make trust more transparent and easier to evaluate.

Michele said those community partners have already helped direct 12 million satoshis, worth approximately £5,600 at the time of publication, to projects in their own communities. That is equivalent to 0.12 bitcoin, since 100 million satoshis make up one bitcoin. He acknowledged that the model is still new and the available data remains limited.

A Problem Bigger Than One Fundraiser

The weakness Sami’s case exposes is not unique. Crowdfunding platforms can raise money for families facing war, disaster or repression within hours but getting it safely to the intended recipient can be far more complicated.

GoFundMe is not alone in restricting where funds can be paid. Major crowdfunding platforms depend on banks and payment providers and must comply with jurisdiction specific sanctions, identity checks and anti-money laundering rules.

Where direct payouts are not supported, organizers may have to nominate a beneficiary in another jurisdiction to receive the funds on their behalf. That system may satisfy the platform’s legal and banking requirements, but it also shifts responsibility onto the person trusted to receive and pass on the money.

Once the funds reach the nominated beneficiary, the platform may have completed its role, even though the money has not reached the person the campaign was created to help. If the relationship later breaks down, the intended recipient may have limited recourse through the platform.

Campaign records and communications shared and reviewed document multiple attempted transfers, reconciliations and exchanges with GoFundMe support over several months. Bitcoin based crowdfunding projects are experimenting with different ways to handle the same trust and payment challenges.

Moving Trust to the Verifier

Agora approaches that same trust problem differently. The platform allows funds to move directly between donors and recipients, while verification comes from organizations and individuals with first hand knowledge of the campaign.

Mary Kate, co-founder of Soapbox, the team behind Agora explained that donors may not know the person asking for help, but they may recognize and trust the organization that has verified them.

“It allows us to move your trust from the campaign to the verifier,” Mary Kate said. “You might not know the person asking for help, but you may know and trust the organisation that verified them.”

The model leaves the final decision with the donor. A campaign can remain visible even if no verifier supports it, while trusted organizations can add context and credibility without becoming the sole gatekeeper.

“You can still create a campaign even if you don’t have anyone to verify you,” Mary Kate said. “The verifiers add that extra trust level where it is really needed.”

Agora also removes the crowdfunding platform from the payment flow. Donations are sent directly to a wallet controlled by the recipient, which reduces the risk of funds being held by a platform or passed through another person before reaching the family.

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Bitcoin allows funds to move across borders without a platform holding them or a beneficiary passing them on. Risks around wallet security, access and exchange rates remain.

For Mary Kate, that control has significance beyond the movement of money.

“We can’t take your account from you. We can’t shut down your campaign. We can’t take your money,” she said. “For people dealing with trauma and a lack of control over their lives, that can be a huge moment of empowerment.”

Direct payments do not solve every problem. Campaigns still need to be checked, donors still need enough information to make informed decisions, and recipients may still misuse funds. Agora is trying to make those risks easier to see while giving recipients greater control over the money raised in their name.

The Unintended Consequences of Financial Sanctions

Sami’s experience is not unique because the underlying problem is not unique. Around the world, activists, journalists and humanitarian organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to move legitimate funds across borders as financial regulation becomes more complex and sanctions affect entire jurisdictions rather than the governments they were designed to target.

Femi Longe, Global Freedom Tech Strategy Lead at the Human Rights Foundation, believes those restrictions often create unintended consequences for the very people humanitarian funding is supposed to help.

“Traditional crowdfunding platforms are regulated and because they move money across borders they have to comply with anti-money laundering rules and sanctions,” he explained. “The problem is that those rules often end up affecting legitimate opposition groups, legitimate non-profits and ordinary people, rather than only the governments they were intended to target.”

Femi describes organizations working lawfully in sanctioned countries that still struggle to receive donations. Visible financial links can expose supporters or their relatives back home to retaliation.

“There are lots of legitimate reasons why someone may want anonymity in their financial flows and in their donations,” he said. “The current system for fundraising doesn’t properly cater for that.”

Lyudmyla warns that this issue extends beyond administrative friction to active “transnational financial repression,” where regimes weaponize global AML/CFT rules to strip dissidents of banking access, even in Western countries.

She referenced a landmark July 2026 resolution by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly that recognised transnational financial repression as a systemic threat and called for greater protection of donor privacy and privacy preserving digital tools. Lyudmyla told me that bitcoin payment tools are becoming a necessary lifeline for targeted donors and activists.

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Political opposition groups, independent journalists and civil society organizations often rely on international donations to continue operating. When those donations become harder to send, or easier to monitor, financial infrastructure can become another form of pressure.

That does not mean regulation should disappear. Public fundraising depends on accountability, transparency and safeguards that protect donors from fraud. Those interviewed recognized that challenge and accepted there is no perfect solution.

Femi believes the goal should be to remove unnecessary intermediaries without removing accountability.

“If they make it so the people running the campaign can directly control the wallets the funds are going into, then I think that’s an improvement on what we have currently,” he said, adding that verification and oversight remain essential parts of any system handling public donations.

The case highlights a fundamental weakness in the architecture of humanitarian finance. Systems built around banks, payment processors and jurisdictional boundaries can struggle to move money to people living through war, political repression or humanitarian crises. None of the people I spoke to suggested technology alone could solve humanitarian fundraising.

Sending money directly to a recipient removes one layer of risk. It does not guarantee that the campaign is genuine, that the organizer is acting honestly or that donations will ultimately be used for the purpose described.

“I don’t believe bitcoin solves everything,” Femi said. “There still needs to be a system that verifies the person setting up the campaign. There still needs to be accountability around how funds are used. Those challenges don’t disappear because the payment becomes direct.”

Michele makes a similar point. Geyser reviews campaigns before they go live, encourages creators to provide evidence and relies on trusted members of the community to build reputation over time. Agora also places verification at the center of its model, allowing recognized organizations and individuals to publicly verify campaigns without becoming custodians of the money.

They don’t claim to have eliminated trust, but each is trying to redesign where trust sits.

Bitcoin as the Base Protocol

The next generation of humanitarian crowdfunding represents more than a temporary patch for a broken legacy model because it is a system transition. Open payment networks can give recipients direct control of the money raised in their names, while decentralized trust networks help donors decide whom to support.

While judgment, verification, and accountability remain essential, this open architecture is bypassing the legacy financial constraints and regulatory barriers that prevent traditional platforms from reaching those in the greatest need.

The United Kingdom has assumed the Presidency of the Financial Action Task Force, with UK official Giles Thomson placing fraud at the center of the two year agenda.

Thomson has framed fraud as a threat to national security and financial stability. He points to its estimated $500 billion annual scale and its links to organized crime, including human trafficking and forced labor in scam compounds.

The proposed response suggests greater use of large datasets and real-time information sharing. This will include signals from technology and telecommunications companies alongside financial sector data, as well as faster asset recovery, freezing of fraud proceeds, and stronger international cooperation.

On paper, the mission is difficult to oppose. Fraud, scams and scam compounds are real, with victims on both sides of the screen. The roadmap rests on a dangerous assumption that more data collection will automatically make people safer.

The risk with the proposal is that it leans too heavily on data collection, even though decades of experience in traditional finance suggest the problem is not a lack of information. Banks, exchanges and payment firms already collect vast amounts of identity and transaction data, while the underlying problems of fraud, money laundering and sanctions evasion have not disappeared.

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The Traditional Finance Problem FATF Has Not Solved

FATF was created in 1989 by the G7, at a time when governments were trying to build a coordinated response to money laundering through the banking system. Its mandate later expanded to terrorist financing after 9/11, and its recommendations have since become the global template for anti-money laundering rules, payment transparency and virtual asset regulation. The same framework built for banks is now being extended to bitcoin, where the privacy and security risks are structurally different.

The distinction between bitcoin and crypto is important because not all digital assets share the same structure or risk profile. Many crypto projects depend on companies, foundations, insiders or centralized infrastructure, while bitcoin operates as an open, decentralized monetary network with no issuer and a public ledger.

When regulation treats them all as interchangeable, identity linked data can be attached to visible stores of value in ways that create risks not faced by traditional finance.

For decades, banks have operated under anti-money laundering rules, customer due diligence requirements, suspicious activity reporting, sanctions screening and payment transparency obligations. These systems have built one of the world’s largest compliance machines.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime still estimates that 2 to 5% of global GDP is laundered each year, a range that has been cited for decades despite the growth of the global compliance industry.

Major traditional financial institutions have repeatedly been fined or investigated for anti-money laundering and sanctions failures, while the FinCEN Files revealed banks moving vast sums in payments they themselves had flagged as suspicious.

That does not mean compliance achieves nothing; it means the model has limits.

FATF’s approach to fraud follows the same logic on a larger and faster scale, drawing more sectors, bigger datasets and tighter connections between technology platforms, telecoms and financial institutions into the financial intelligence system.

For ordinary users, this means more personal information is collected, passed through more systems and retained in more databases, all in the name of preventing crime.

The same approach becomes more dangerous when applied to bitcoin because bank records, however invasive, are not normally available on a public ledger. Bitcoin’s ledger is open and public, which means that once a regulated exchange connects a real-world identity to a wallet address, the danger is not limited to that one transfer. That address can become the starting point for a map of ownership, with future movements analyzed, clustered and interpreted by exchanges, analytics firms and law enforcement agencies.

Australia has recently provided a live example. On 1 July 2026, AUSTRAC’s Travel Rule for virtual assets came into force. Even small transfers through regulated exchanges can trigger checks that require firms to collect and share identifying information about the parties to the transfer. Users sending funds to personal wallets may also be required to complete additional declarations or verification steps before withdrawals are allowed. That is where ordinary wallet activity begins to be pulled into a regulated identity layer.

Supporters will argue that criminals should not be able to hide behind wallets. The harder question is why every ordinary user should be pushed into systems that link identity, transaction history and asset ownership when the same compliance logic has not eliminated laundering inside the traditional banking system.

There is also a basic technical problem. Criminals who understand digital assets already have options designed to frustrate tracing. The people most likely to be caught are often the most ordinary users, the person withdrawing from an exchange to long-term storage, the person trying to avoid custodial risk, the person who bought bitcoin legally and now has to create another identity trail to move it. That trail can cause real and sometimes physical harm.

France has already shown why this is a concern. A series of violent kidnappings and attempted kidnappings has targeted crypto executives and their families, including the abduction of Ledger co-founder David Balland and his partner, and the attempted kidnapping of the daughter of Paymium CEO Pierre Noizat. Not every attack can be traced to a single leak or regulatory database, but it does demonstrate that when identity, location, wealth signals and crypto ownership become easier to connect, the threat model changes.

Data that appears to be compliance information to a regulator can appear to be a target list to a criminal.

Measuring Success

A serious fraud strategy should be judged by whether it reduces harm, not by how much information it gathers.

The Presidency should be judged by outcomes, not by the expansion of the compliance machine. If fraud losses remain high while more firms, platforms, and sectors are drawn into real-time data sharing, the roadmap may succeed as an implementation project but fail as a fraud strategy.

FATF typically measures progress through its mutual evaluation process, looking at whether countries have implemented its standards, improved risk based supervision and made tangible reforms. That is useful for assessing compliance with FATF rules, but it does not necessarily answer the more important question for the public. Have fraud losses fallen, have victims been protected, and have criminal networks been disrupted?

If the answer to failure is always more data collection, the system can expand even when the underlying problem remains.

The Erosion Of Financial Privacy

Financial privacy erodes gradually through risk assessments, compliance obligations, information sharing partnerships and international standards presented as technical rather than political. Each new threat becomes a reason to collect more information from people who have done nothing wrong.

Self-custody gives people control over their money outside centralized custodians, but it is not a complete privacy shield. Bitcoin withdrawn from a KYC exchange can still be analyzed on the public ledger. Non-custodial tools reduce reliance on exchanges that collect identity data, though they do not eliminate every risk.

Giles Thomson is right that fraud is a serious threat. He is also right that organized crime moves quickly and exploits technology. Speed and scale in enforcement cannot become an excuse to build permanent financial surveillance around everyone else.

If FATF wants an effective approach in digital assets, it needs to understand the difference between a bank ledger and bitcoin’s open public ledger. The same identity collection that may be intrusive in traditional finance can become dangerous in bitcoin, because it can attach named individuals to visible stores of value.

More data does not automatically mean more safety. The evidence suggests it can also mean more risk, more targets and more power handed to systems that have failed to stop financial crime in the first place.

Einstein showed that space and time are not as fixed as they appear. Quantum mechanics went further, suggesting that reality at its smallest scales is probabilistic, relational and shaped by interaction and measurement.

What if reality is not continuously fixed in the form we experience, but becomes definite through interaction and measurement?

Human beings experience the world as solid, continuous and settled, while modern physics suggests it may be far stranger beneath the surface.

Quantum mechanics does not prove that consciousness shapes reality. It does show that interaction, measurement and the limits of observation matter to how reality is described.

This does not prove that consciousness exists outside the brain, but it does challenge the assumption that reality must conform to what our senses perceive or our instruments can measure.

Science can increasingly map what happens in the brain, but we still do not know how those physical processes produce the subjective experience of being conscious.

The dominant assumption is that the brain creates consciousness, but what if it does not?

A radio does not create the music it plays, but receives a signal from elsewhere. This proves nothing about the brain, but it offers another possibility. What if the brain does not generate consciousness so much as receive, filter or organise it?

Perhaps consciousness is not a by-product of matter, but something more fundamental, with matter itself forming part of the experience.

Science rightly demands evidence, but the problem begins when the scientific method is presented as the only rational means of securing knowledge.

That claim cannot be established through the scientific method without first assuming the method’s authority, which makes the reasoning circular.

Science may be our most powerful tool for studying the physical world, but that does not prove it is capable of detecting every aspect of reality.

A deeper understanding of consciousness, matter or aspects of reality we cannot currently perceive could transform medicine, communication, energy and technology in ways that now seem impossible.

Perhaps there are dimensions of reality that our senses were never designed to perceive.

An advanced civilization’s greatest breakthrough may be access to aspects of reality that we cannot see or measure.

Its technology might appear impossible because it uses parts of nature we have not yet discovered, rather than because it breaks the laws of nature.

We have seen what happens when economic theories become entrenched as unquestionable truths. Entire systems are built around them, even when they repeatedly fail large parts of the population.

What if science is vulnerable to the same mistake, not through its methods, but through assumptions that become so embedded they are no longer recognised as assumptions?

These ideas should not be accepted blindly, but neither should they be dismissed because they fall outside the current model.

The real limitation may not be science, but the materialist assumptions we place around it.

When method becomes ideology, we risk confusing the limits of our tools with the limits of existence.

Hollywood loves a whistleblower story once the danger has passed. Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man arrives while the danger is still attached.

The film, directed by Jarecki, premiered at Cannes and follows Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, state power and the price of truth. During the festival, he received the inaugural Golden Globe Prize for Documentary.

The director says the response from major platforms was admiration without appetite. Executives praised the film in private, called it important and then declined to give it a platform.

“They tell me what an important film I’ve made,” he said. “And then, no, thank you.”

He says it contains “extremely explosive material” that the public has not seen, including evidence of “the lengths to which the United States would go to block the public from knowing the truth of its activities.”

The film is now heading directly to the bitcoin community with Jack Dorsey’s backing. On June 27, 2026, it will hold a global online screening, with access paid for in bitcoin and distributed through Nostr.

A story about censorship, money and state power is being released through the tools built to route around institutional control.

Speaking to Forbes at BTC Prague, Jarecki tied the film’s release strategy to questions of money, media and power.

Tweet

“Financial sovereignty moves hand in hand with freedom of information,” he said at BTC Prague. “The same gatekeepers who do not want the public to have financial sovereignty are the same gatekeepers who do not want the public to have the right to information.”

Assange remains one of the most divisive figures of the digital age. To supporters, WikiLeaks exposed war crimes, state secrecy and abuses of power that the public had a right to know.

To critics, the organization was reckless, politically compromised and dangerous in the way it handled sensitive material. Jarecki’s film walks straight into that fight, but its release now raises a question beyond Assange himself, who controls whether a difficult story reaches the public?

A Film Too Risky For The Platforms

Jarecki argues the problem begins with who controls access to audiences.

“When was the last time you saw a film on a major network or streamer that truly questions state power?” he asked. “Or truly questions the concentrated, organized relationship between states and corporations? It doesn’t happen.”

The modern media economy has room for scandal, spectacle and safe outrage. It has far less room for work that asks audiences to examine what governments, intelligence agencies, corporations and financial institutions do behind closed doors.

“They only care that it might rock the boat,” Jarecki said of the intermediaries, “and they’re not in the rock the boat business. They’re in the ‘keep the boat moving’ business.”

This is how censorship can operate in a modern media economy. A film does not need to be banned to be contained. It can win awards, attract praise and still become commercially difficult to place, with legal risk, political pressure, commercial caution, reputation management and internal bureaucracy limiting the route between the work and its audience.

While the film has secured conventional distribution, including North American rights with Watermelon Pictures and a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland, the online screening offers something different, a direct route outside the usual distribution channels.

The bitcoin connection began with WikiLeaks’ own battle over money and access.

In 2011, after Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and other payment processors stopped handling donations to WikiLeaks, the organization began accepting bitcoin. For many bitcoiners, that moment remains one of the earliest proofs that a neutral monetary network could keep operating when legacy financial rails were closed under political pressure.

“The origin story of WikiLeaks is linked to the origin story of bitcoin,” Jarecki said. WikiLeaks, he argued, was “the first major organization in the world to accept bitcoin,” a move that both helped keep WikiLeaks alive and showed bitcoin could support freedom rather than speculation alone.

Now Jarecki is asking the same community to prove the point again.

“My movie is going to get buried in a world of gatekeeper control,” he told Dorsey. “I need help.”

Jarecki said Dorsey saw a natural audience in bitcoiners, a community already familiar with payment censorship and institutional pressure points. The answer, as Jarecki recalls it, was to bypass the traditional distributors and take the film straight to that audience.

“The spirit of the movie is where the spirit of bitcoin and the spirit of WikiLeaks intersect,” Jarecki said. “It is a commitment to freedom and at whatever cost.”

This release model turns the audience into part of the distribution system. Viewers are being invited to play a role in the release. Early supporters paying 0.01 BTC (roughly $600 - $760 depending on the exchange rate) can become credited producers, fund the film, spread the word and help bring it to more people.

That makes the release more than a screening. It is a test of whether a decentralized audience can finance, carry and defend a politically sensitive film without waiting for permission.

The Route Around Control

Bitcoin handles the payment, while Nostr provides the routing and publishing layer through front ends like Primal, reducing reliance on platforms controlled by a single company.

The protocol allows users to publish through relays rather than depending on one company’s platform, moderation policy or algorithmic feed, giving viewers a way into a system that would otherwise feel technical.

The trade off is fewer guarantees of mainstream reach, but less dependence on the companies and platforms that decide when a story is deemed too risky to distribute.

Control over journalism no longer sits only with editors, publishers and newsroom owners. Payment systems, hosting providers, app stores, social platforms, search visibility, distribution deals and reputation campaigns can all affect whether a story reaches the public. A film can be slowed, buried, demonetized or made commercially difficult long before anyone tries to ban it.

The earlier WikiLeaks fight over funding had already shown how those pressures worked in practice.

One example was the anonymous digital dropbox, which gave whistleblowers a safer way to submit material outside the usual channels. “If Julian Assange were gone tomorrow, he already changed the world,” Jarecki said, arguing that secure submission systems are now standard in newsrooms around the world.

That account complicates the idea that WikiLeaks operated as a rogue publisher. It worked with major newspapers including The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País. Jarecki argues that collaboration brought redaction, context and editorial standards into the process, while the publisher retained enough independence to stop stories being watered down or buried.

“WikiLeaks ended up being, in effect, an ombudsman,” he said.

Many journalists will reject parts of that argument. The debates around Assange, harm, national security, public interest and the ethics of publication remain fierce. That friction is part of the film’s charge. The Six Billion Dollar Man is landing in a media economy where trust in institutions has collapsed, but the need for serious reporting has not gone away.

For bitcoiners, the connection is obvious. Bitcoin was built for a world where trust in monetary institutions had broken down. Jarecki is now asking whether the same logic can support speech, publishing and culture.

Neutral infrastructure will not solve journalism’s hardest problems. It will not decide what is true, what is ethical, what is responsible or what deserves attention. It can carry serious reporting, but it can also carry propaganda and noise. The question is whether the public should have a way to support difficult work without handing total control to banks, streamers, payment processors, platforms and political insiders.

For Jarecki, the problem comes back to the economics of truth. “There’s six billion in non truth and zero for truth,” he said. “In a world where money’s everything, money is everything. That’s the problem.”

This captures the economics behind the film. Truth may be noble, but distribution costs money. Serious journalism may serve the public, but it still has to move through systems driven by financial and political incentives. When those incentives make a story too risky, the public needs another route.

Its release will not settle the argument over Assange. It will not prove that every controversial film is suppressed truth. It will not turn Bitcoin and Nostr into replacements for Hollywood, Netflix or legacy news, but it offers an early test of whether decentralized tools can help controversial work reach audiences when traditional channels close.

Bitcoin routed around financial blockades. Nostr routes around platform control. Jarecki’s film is now testing whether these same tools can open another path for politically sensitive culture.

If this works, The Six Billion Dollar Man may become more than a film about Julian Assange. It could become an early case study in how controversial journalism survives when banks, platforms and distributors decide a story is deemed too risky.

The story began with a fight over whether difficult information could reach the public when powerful interests wanted it contained. WikiLeaks turned to bitcoin after the financial rails closed. Now a film about Assange is testing whether the same route can carry the story when the usual doors close.

A hearing took place on 18 June 2026 in the County Court in Central London on whether a court can order someone to pay a debt in bitcoin.

The question arose in Hussain v Fix, a claim brought by British businessman Hamze Haji Hussain against Markus Harald Fix, a German bitcoin investor who, according to the Particulars of Claim, previously worked at Lightning Labs.

Hussain alleges that he and Fix were in business together between 2021 and 2023. They first considered an over the counter bitcoin trading and payments settlement platform focused on Africa and the Gulf region, before expanding into Dubai based companies and gold trading.

At the center of the dispute is an alleged expenses agreement. Hussain says he paid business expenses in fiat currency on the basis that Fix would reimburse half of those expenses in bitcoin. The claim seeks payment of BTC 7.806501396 and the economics change depending on whether the debt is treated as fixed in bitcoin or fixed in sterling. Bitcoin moves against sterling but sterling also loses purchasing power over time.

Bitcoin As Payment

The hearing on 18 June 2026 concerned Hussain’s application for summary judgment under CPR 24. Fix did not attend the hearing and had not served a defence. That left the court to consider whether he had any real prospect of successfully defending the claim and whether there was any other compelling reason for the case to proceed to trial.

The claimant’s position was that Fix had failed to engage with the proceedings and had not put forward evidence capable of defeating the claim. According to notes from the hearing, the court appeared to accept that there was no meaningful defence before it.

The more difficult issue was whether relief could be awarded in bitcoin rather than sterling.

The Law Commission has argued that the common law is sufficiently flexible to recognise a distinct category of personal property capable of accommodating crypto-tokens and other digital assets and has recommended legislation to remove any uncertainty.

The judge indicated that he was happy to embrace novel developments in the law, but did not think this was the right forum. He was also unsure, despite what the Law Commission had said, whether he actually had the power to make such an order. He was willing to engage with the bitcoin element of the claim, but said any award amount would need to be converted to sterling at the time of the hearing.

The court was not being asked whether bitcoin is money. It was being asked a more practical question of what the actual contractual entitlement was.

Was Hussain entitled to bitcoin? Was the obligation denominated in bitcoin? Or was the claim for reimbursement of fiat expenses, with bitcoin used as the payment mechanism?

Those questions carry financial weight because bitcoin’s price can move between the date an expense is incurred, the date payment is requested, the date proceedings are issued and the date judgment is entered.

The court also considered whether awarding today’s value of bitcoin would compensate Hussain or provide a windfall, given the movement in bitcoin’s price.

The case is based on bitcoin being part of the deal. On that view, the loss was the bitcoin that should have been transferred, rather than the sterling value of unpaid expenses. Changes in bitcoin’s value were part of the deal, not an accidental feature of it.

The other view is that the underlying expenses were paid in fiat, so any award should be paid in pounds. On that basis, bitcoin may have been the agreed payment rail, but not necessarily the thing owed.

Bitcoin As Property

For years, courts and lawmakers have had to deal with bitcoin and other crypto tokens not fitting neatly into old legal boxes. Traditionally, English law divided personal property into two categories. There were things in possession, such as a car, a house, or a gold coin and things in action, such as debts or contractual rights.

Bitcoin does not fit comfortably into either category. You cannot hold it in your hand, but it is not a claim against another person either. That left courts trying to apply legal concepts developed long before digital assets existed.

The Law Commission concluded that the common law was flexible enough to recognise a distinct category of personal property capable of accommodating crypto tokens and other digital assets. That work fed into the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which confirmed that a thing is not prevented from being property simply because it is neither a thing in possession nor a thing in action.

That reform confirmed that bitcoin is capable of attracting property rights under English law. Hussain v Fix raised the harder question of whether a court can award bitcoin when it is the asset a party says it was owed.

Older law gives part of the route, though not the whole answer. In Miliangos v George Frank (Textiles) Ltd [1976] AC 443, the House of Lords recognised that English courts could give judgment in the foreign currency of the underlying obligation, rather than forcing every claim back into sterling.

Bitcoin is not a foreign currency, so Miliangos does not directly answer the bitcoin question. It does show that English law has adapted before when a sterling only approach failed to reflect commercial reality.

The Law Commission’s Digital Assets final report brought the issue into the present. It noted that crypto tokens are unlikely, at least for now, to be treated as money under English law. It also raised the possibility that a court could, in some circumstances, give an award in crypto tokens where that better reflects the claimant’s loss.

Hussain v Fix appears to sit in the gap between recognising bitcoin as property and deciding how a bitcoin linked obligation should be enforced.

For bitcoin users, the answer may seem simple. If parties agree to settle in bitcoin, the court should enforce that. Price movements are part of the deal. A party who agrees to deliver bitcoin assumes the risk that bitcoin may rise before payment is made, just as the recipient assumes the risk that it may fall.

For courts, the position is more difficult. Judges must identify the legal obligation before deciding the remedy. If the contract creates a debt in pounds, bitcoin may be the payment method. If the contract creates an obligation to transfer bitcoin, the court may need to consider whether relief should follow the asset.

The Business Risk

Hussain says he paid business expenses in pounds and dollars, but that Fix agreed to reimburse his half share in bitcoin at the spot rate applicable when the expenses were paid. The claim says Fix later confirmed through Signal messages that he would pay in bitcoin, including one reply in which he allegedly said the answer was “YES” and that it had “never been in doubt.” Partial bitcoin payments were later made, but the claimant says a balance of BTC 7.806501396 remains outstanding.

The dispute also crosses borders, with a British claimant based in Dubai, a German defendant based in France, companies incorporated in Dubai, business plans connected to England, Africa and the Gulf and an alleged repayment obligation that was meant to be settled in bitcoin.

Those details make the case more than a private falling out between former business partners. They show the kind of dispute that may become more common as bitcoin is used in business arrangements rather than only held as an investment.

Many of the well known bitcoin and crypto cases have involved fraud, theft, freezing orders or the recovery of misappropriated assets. Hussain v Fix is different because it comes from the ordinary machinery of business: expenses, reimbursement and an alleged agreement to pay in bitcoin.

As bitcoin becomes more involved in private contracts, treasury strategies, cross border settlement and business arrangements, disputes will not always arrive in court as dramatic stories about hacks or scams. They may arrive as commercial claims about repayment, valuation and the legal consequences of not keeping an agreement.

If a business agrees to accept bitcoin, it is because it wants bitcoin. The contract should make that clear. If courts convert every bitcoin obligation back into local currency, they risk stripping the feature that made it distinct. If they award bitcoin too readily, they risk giving claimants exposure to price movements that may not have formed part of the contractual entitlement.

Hussain v Fix did not produce an order requiring payment in bitcoin. Its significance lies in the question it exposed. English courts are beginning to confront the consequences of bitcoin being used in real commercial agreements.

English law now recognizes bitcoin as property, but Hussain v Fix suggests that courts may still be cautious about awarding bitcoin when a claim can instead be expressed in pounds.

This question will return, and the next case may give the courts another opportunity to decide whether a bitcoin obligation should remain a bitcoin obligation all the way through to judgment.

Hollywood loves a whistleblower story once the danger has passed. Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man arrives while the danger is still attached.

The film, directed by Jarecki, premiered at Cannes and follows Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, state power and the price of truth. During the festival, he received the inaugural Golden Globe Prize for Documentary.

The director says the response from major platforms was admiration without appetite. Executives praised the film in private, called it important and then declined to give it a platform.

“They tell me what an important film I’ve made,” he said. “And then, no, thank you.”

He says it contains “extremely explosive material” that the public has not seen, including evidence of “the lengths to which the United States would go to block the public from knowing the truth of its activities.”

The film is now heading directly to the bitcoin community with Jack Dorsey’s backing. On June 27, 2026, it will hold a global online screening, with access paid for in bitcoin and distributed through Nostr.

A story about censorship, money and state power is being released through the tools built to route around institutional control.

Speaking to Forbes at BTC Prague, Jarecki tied the film’s release strategy to questions of money, media and power.

Tweet

“Financial sovereignty moves hand in hand with freedom of information,” he said at BTC Prague. “The same gatekeepers who do not want the public to have financial sovereignty are the same gatekeepers who do not want the public to have the right to information.”

Assange remains one of the most divisive figures of the digital age. To supporters, WikiLeaks exposed war crimes, state secrecy and abuses of power that the public had a right to know.

To critics, the organization was reckless, politically compromised and dangerous in the way it handled sensitive material. Jarecki’s film walks straight into that fight, but its release now raises a question beyond Assange himself, who controls whether a difficult story reaches the public?

A Film Too Risky For The Platforms

Jarecki argues the problem begins with who controls access to audiences.

“When was the last time you saw a film on a major network or streamer that truly questions state power?” he asked. “Or truly questions the concentrated, organized relationship between states and corporations? It doesn’t happen.”

The modern media economy has room for scandal, spectacle and safe outrage. It has far less room for work that asks audiences to examine what governments, intelligence agencies, corporations and financial institutions do behind closed doors.

“They only care that it might rock the boat,” Jarecki said of the intermediaries, “and they’re not in the rock the boat business. They’re in the ‘keep the boat moving’ business.”

This is how censorship can operate in a modern media economy. A film does not need to be banned to be contained. It can win awards, attract praise and still become commercially difficult to place, with legal risk, political pressure, commercial caution, reputation management and internal bureaucracy limiting the route between the work and its audience.

While the film has secured conventional distribution, including North American rights with Watermelon Pictures and a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland, the online screening offers something different, a direct route outside the usual distribution channels.

The bitcoin connection began with WikiLeaks’ own battle over money and access.

In 2011, after Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and other payment processors stopped handling donations to WikiLeaks, the organization began accepting bitcoin. For many bitcoiners, that moment remains one of the earliest proofs that a neutral monetary network could keep operating when legacy financial rails were closed under political pressure.

“The origin story of WikiLeaks is linked to the origin story of bitcoin,” Jarecki said. WikiLeaks, he argued, was “the first major organization in the world to accept bitcoin,” a move that both helped keep WikiLeaks alive and showed bitcoin could support freedom rather than speculation alone.

Now Jarecki is asking the same community to prove the point again.

“My movie is going to get buried in a world of gatekeeper control,” he told Dorsey. “I need help.”

Jarecki said Dorsey saw a natural audience in bitcoiners, a community already familiar with payment censorship and institutional pressure points. The answer, as Jarecki recalls it, was to bypass the traditional distributors and take the film straight to that audience.

“The spirit of the movie is where the spirit of bitcoin and the spirit of WikiLeaks intersect,” Jarecki said. “It is a commitment to freedom and at whatever cost.”

This release model turns the audience into part of the distribution system. Viewers are being invited to play a role in the release. Early supporters paying 0.01 BTC (roughly $600 - $760 depending on the exchange rate) can become credited producers, fund the film, spread the word and help bring it to more people.

That makes the release more than a screening. It is a test of whether a decentralized audience can finance, carry and defend a politically sensitive film without waiting for permission.

The Route Around Control

Bitcoin handles the payment, while Nostr provides the routing and publishing layer through front ends like Primal, reducing reliance on platforms controlled by a single company.

The protocol allows users to publish through relays rather than depending on one company’s platform, moderation policy or algorithmic feed, giving viewers a way into a system that would otherwise feel technical.

The trade off is fewer guarantees of mainstream reach, but less dependence on the companies and platforms that decide when a story is deemed too risky to distribute.

Control over journalism no longer sits only with editors, publishers and newsroom owners. Payment systems, hosting providers, app stores, social platforms, search visibility, distribution deals and reputation campaigns can all affect whether a story reaches the public. A film can be slowed, buried, demonetized or made commercially difficult long before anyone tries to ban it.

The earlier WikiLeaks fight over funding had already shown how those pressures worked in practice.

One example was the anonymous digital dropbox, which gave whistleblowers a safer way to submit material outside the usual channels. “If Julian Assange were gone tomorrow, he already changed the world,” Jarecki said, arguing that secure submission systems are now standard in newsrooms around the world.

That account complicates the idea that WikiLeaks operated as a rogue publisher. It worked with major newspapers including The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País. Jarecki argues that collaboration brought redaction, context and editorial standards into the process, while the publisher retained enough independence to stop stories being watered down or buried.

“WikiLeaks ended up being, in effect, an ombudsman,” he said.

Many journalists will reject parts of that argument. The debates around Assange, harm, national security, public interest and the ethics of publication remain fierce. That friction is part of the film’s charge. The Six Billion Dollar Man is landing in a media economy where trust in institutions has collapsed, but the need for serious reporting has not gone away.

For bitcoiners, the connection is obvious. Bitcoin was built for a world where trust in monetary institutions had broken down. Jarecki is now asking whether the same logic can support speech, publishing and culture.

Neutral infrastructure will not solve journalism’s hardest problems. It will not decide what is true, what is ethical, what is responsible or what deserves attention. It can carry serious reporting, but it can also carry propaganda and noise. The question is whether the public should have a way to support difficult work without handing total control to banks, streamers, payment processors, platforms and political insiders.

For Jarecki, the problem comes back to the economics of truth. “There’s six billion in non truth and zero for truth,” he said. “In a world where money’s everything, money is everything. That’s the problem.”

This captures the economics behind the film. Truth may be noble, but distribution costs money. Serious journalism may serve the public, but it still has to move through systems driven by financial and political incentives. When those incentives make a story too risky, the public needs another route.

Its release will not settle the argument over Assange. It will not prove that every controversial film is suppressed truth. It will not turn Bitcoin and Nostr into replacements for Hollywood, Netflix or legacy news, but it offers an early test of whether decentralized tools can help controversial work reach audiences when traditional channels close.

Bitcoin routed around financial blockades. Nostr routes around platform control. Jarecki’s film is now testing whether these same tools can open another path for politically sensitive culture.

If this works, The Six Billion Dollar Man may become more than a film about Julian Assange. It could become an early case study in how controversial journalism survives when banks, platforms and distributors decide a story is deemed too risky.

The story began with a fight over whether difficult information could reach the public when powerful interests wanted it contained. WikiLeaks turned to bitcoin after the financial rails closed. Now a film about Assange is testing whether the same route can carry the story when the usual doors close.

The UK government has announced a ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer framing it as a way to give children their childhood back. While some child protection groups welcomed the move, the method of enforcement raises serious concerns.

Joe Ryrie, co-founder of Smartphone Free Childhood, called it a “hugely significant moment,” while Chris Sherwood, CEO of the NSPCC, described it as “a win for children and parents.” The government’s plan to use highly effective age verification has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups who warn it risks expanding surveillance and digital identity systems beyond children.

The central issue is whether a blanket ban enforced through age verification will address the real harms children face online, or create a new layer of digital control around internet access.

Even among child protection groups there is concern that a ban merely covers up the symptoms without curing the disease. Leanda Barrington-Leach, Executive Director of 5Rights Foundation, told Forbes that while they do not oppose a ban, it must only be treated as an initial step toward confronting corporate business models.

“A ban or curfew may change who comes through the front door, but it does not change what is waiting for children inside,” Barrington-Leach warned. “The Government should make clear that this is an emergency measure, not a long term solution and that all companies exploiting children are in their sights.”

She emphasized that the true measure of success is whether the policy forces tech firms to build fundamentally safe products and whether existing rules under the Online Safety Act are actually enforced to protect children, rather than simply pushing them out of the digital world.

The policy risks targeting the wrong problem. Instead of forcing platforms to fix their addictive design, the government is focusing on restricting access while building new surveillance tools.

Broadcaster Bev Turner was more direct in her criticism. She argued that the real problem lies in “the addictive nature of an algorithm.” The government has instead chosen to focus on restricting access rather than confronting the platforms’ design. Turner said the policy reduces a complex structural issue to one of basic access, when what’s needed is for leaders to call out the tech companies and investigate predatory practices such as targeted advertising aimed at vulnerable children.

Rather than solving the problem, the policy risks pushing children into less visible online spaces while expanding identity checks and surveillance for everyone else.

Underground Migration

Derek Ross, a developer at Soapbox who works on decentralised social protocols, argued that the ban would fail to protect children in any meaningful way. Instead of reducing children’s exposure to harmful content, the policy creates a surveillance layer across the entire population, using child safety as justification for unprecedented levels of control.

Similar challenges have already emerged elsewhere. Australia’s under 16 ban demonstrated enforcement hurdles, with children quickly learning how to evade controls rather than becoming meaningfully safer. Even proponents of the legislation acknowledge these limitations. Chris Sherwood of the NSPCC cautioned that “Australia has shown that bans alone don’t keep all children safe, some young people will always slip through the net”.

This is backed up by recent behavioral data. Research conducted by Internet Matters reveals that a third of children have already successfully circumvented existing age checks on the very platforms targeted by the new ban. A top down ban risks formalising a system that tech literate minors routinely bypass.

Ross explained that determined teens have always found workarounds while the people who actually comply are the ones who were not the problem to begin with.

Critics warn that cutting off access to mainstream, moderated platforms is pushing children onto Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, fake accounts, encrypted group chats and offshore, unregulated applications. In these less visible environments, corporate content moderation does not exist, leaving families with far less visibility and control than they had before.

Jeffrey Demarco, Senior Adviser at Save the Children UK, also warned against creating a moral panic around children’s online lives, arguing that context matters when assessing digital harm. He said bans may have unintended consequences if children continue using platforms secretly and then feel unable to seek help when something goes wrong.

The government itself has acknowledged the limitations of any ban. In its June progress statement to Ofcom, Science Secretary Liz Kendall wrote: “No ban can ever be entirely watertight. Some children will inevitably seek to circumvent age restrictions.”

The mechanism intended to enforce this ban is what the government calls Highly Effective Age Assurance. Science, Innovation, and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has tasked the regulator Ofcom, led by Dame Melanie Dawes, to assess appropriate age verification methods. She said the government is learning from Australia’s experience, arguing that “Tech companies have had countless opportunities to keep children safe, yet they have failed to act. That is why we are taking power away from the tech giants and putting it back in parents’ hands.”

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive, has said the regulator will assess options for “highly effective age assurance” that must be “technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair.”

This approach effectively requires people to prove their identity to participate in large parts of online life. It represents a big shift toward greater state and corporate control over digital access.

Bev Turner warned that a total ban inevitably triggers “facial scanning for all of us,” pointing out the flaw in the state’s plan, “You cannot decide whether it’s a 13 year old watching TikTok unless you have to also prove that it’s a 30 year old watching TikTok.” She cautioned that rather than a meaningful victory for families, “this decision today is the creaking of a digital cage door dressed up as a welcoming velvet rope,” potentially altering the relationship between the individual, the internet and the government.

Concerns Over Centralized Identity Systems

Civil liberties groups have raised concerns that forcing citizens to upload ID documents to private platforms creates serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Emerging verification tools have already raised concerns about how age assurance could expand beyond children’s access controls.

These centralized repositories of identity data would become attractive targets for hackers and state actors. A single breach could expose the personal data of millions of people, turning a policy sold as child protection into a serious privacy and security liability.

Derek Ross added that building an ID checkpoint at the door of the old, broken platforms does not make children safer.

This approach has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups, who argue it conflicts with public concerns over digital ID. A parliamentary petition demanding the halt of digital ID implementation amassed nearly three million signatures, triggering a four hour debate in Westminster where MPs across the political spectrum condemned the plans as authoritarian.

The risks of linking identity verification to access have been well documented. Civil liberties groups warned that digital ID systems risk excluding the most vulnerable while creating new forms of state and corporate surveillance.

Despite cross party concerns and strong public opposition, others have pointed to ongoing efforts by various institutions, including the Tony Blair Institute, to advance digital identity systems through other policy channels.

Decentralized Alternatives And Parental Sovereignty

Supporters of open source protocols argue that instead of handing power to state regulators or Silicon Valley, protocols like Nostr strip away corporate data tracking and predatory algorithms entirely. On a decentralized architecture, families can subscribe to customized, moderated relays or use cryptographic keys to co-manage accounts without relying on third party digital identity. Nostr projects like Kubo and active applications like Ditto prove that transparent, non-predatory social spaces are already viable.

On centralized platforms, parents have limited control against shifting corporate algorithms and government mandates. On decentralized protocols, families possess the tools to become the platform operators for their own households.

The Government has indicated it will move forward with secondary legislation before Christmas, with the ban expected to take effect in early 2027. This timeline sets up an immediate operational conflict between top down regulatory enforcement and bottom up technological workaround patterns.

As policymakers move to establish age assurance, the test will be whether the ban actually protects children. If it instead builds a permanent identity layer around the internet, it risks leaving the underlying harms intact and potentially making them worse.

Around the world, governments and corporations are expanding tools of digital control, from facial recognition and biometric surveillance to mandatory digital IDs and debanking.

Law and policy are normalizing more of this infrastructure. In the UK, that includes the Online Safety Act and age verification rules. Elsewhere, it includes social media age restrictions in Australia and Malaysia, Europe’s digital identity wallet, India’s Aadhaar system and preparations for central bank digital currencies.

Under the banner of regulatory safety, institutions demand Know Your Customer or KYC compliance, forcing citizens to surrender personal data to centralized databases. These databases are routinely breached, with customer data leaked, traded or sold on the dark web. Once identity, location and financial data are exposed, people can be profiled, extorted or physically targeted.

In France, attacks targeting crypto executives, entrepreneurs and their families have shown how quickly personal data and public visibility can become a security risk. Once identity, location and financial information are exposed, people can be profiled, pressured or physically targeted.

How do people communicate, organize, move and receive money when states, institutions or platforms can monitor, restrict or cut them off?

Resilient Communication Under Authoritarian Rule

Farida Nabourema’s experience demonstrates why resilient communication is vital under authoritarian rule. The Togolese activist began organizing as a teenager after her father was arrested and tortured, and later helped lead protests against a dictatorship that responded with arrests, exile, intimidation and internet shutdowns.

During uprisings in Togo, she said authorities shut down the internet, phone networks and even electricity. “You have no idea how traumatizing it is when you are in the middle of a protest and they shut down the internet,” she said. “You can’t call anyone. You can’t talk to anyone. You can’t communicate with anyone.”

Bitchat offers one answer to that problem by using Bluetooth mesh networking, allowing nearby phones to pass messages between one another without internet, mobile service, phone numbers, accounts or central servers. Farida described it as one of the most important freedom tech tools for the cause she has been fighting for, because it helps people stay connected when a government tries to cut them off. “It’s very useful in such situations where our government thinks they can just shut down the connection and automatically you are blacked out,” she said. “It’s a game changer.”

Citizen Lab’s work shows how digital surveillance turns personal devices into tools of political control. Its researchers investigate spyware, phishing and digital attacks used against journalists, activists, dissidents and civil society.

Siena Anstis, senior legal advisor and co-lead on transnational repression at Citizen Lab, warned that legal safeguards have not caught up with the technology. Spyware goes far beyond a wiretap, giving access to a phone’s activity, history and surrounding network.

Pegasus is one of the most notorious examples. Developed by Israel’s NSO Group, it can turn a phone into a surveillance device. John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab, described it as “a weapon with infinite range,” allowing states to export fear across borders without sending agents into another country. He also warned that “companies’ incentives, for the most part, misalign with your personal privacy.”

Citizen Lab turns that research into practical steps. High risk Apple users should consider Lockdown Mode, while Security Planner gives free, personalized advice based on a person’s devices and risks. John also pointed activists, dissidents and journalists to cybersecurity helplines such as Access Now, warning that people facing serious digital threats should not navigate them alone.

Financial Privacy And Unstoppable Funding

The developer behind Cashu, known publicly as Calle, is working on the financial privacy layer of freedom tech. His work focuses on a basic problem with the modern internet. Without a proper micropayments system, online business models became dependent on advertising, and advertising became dependent on tracking.

“Most surveillance systems that people are subject to today are there to sell you better advertisements,” he said. “The reason why advertisement was necessary from the 1990s on was because of the lack of a proper micropayment system on the internet.”

Cashu brings older cypherpunk ideas around Chaumian ecash back to bitcoin. The aim is to support digital bearer money that can move online instantly, with almost no fees and privacy closer to that of physical cash. For Calle, this is part of a fundamental question about whether the internet remains a place where people can transact freely, or becomes an environment of total digital control.

Without privacy preserving tools, Calle warned, “you do not need a very strong imagination to see what a world of total digital control over information, communication and finances would look like.”

Calle’s work aims to make digital cash more private and less dependent on trusted intermediaries.

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Leopoldo López focuses on one of the hardest problems facing dissidents and humanitarian movements, getting resources to the people who need them. The Venezuelan opposition leader and co-founder of World Liberty Congress spent years as a political prisoner before going into exile, and said regimes often control civil society by weaponizing bank accounts, donors and recipients.

“In my home country, Venezuela, we have been banned from the financial system for years,” Leopoldo said. “Regimes taking control of the financial system, to take control of civil society.”

His answer is Agora, a peer to peer donation protocol designed to connect donors directly with activists, political prisoners, humanitarian projects and grassroots movements. Leopoldo described it as “GoFundMe without borders,” built to reduce intermediaries, fees and gatekeepers.

The design applies Bitcoin’s open source, peer to peer ethos to humanitarian funding. Agora runs on Nostr, giving it a decentralized communications layer, while Bitcoin allows value to move directly between donor and recipient. Leopoldo said the aim is to create “unstoppable funding,” connecting people to projects without relying on the financial systems authoritarian regimes can block.

Anna Chekhovich, who works with Alexei Navalny’s Anti Corruption Foundation and leads Bitcoin education at the Human Rights Foundation, sees freedom tech through the reality of financial repression. Navalny’s message of “don’t be afraid” remains central to her work.

In Russia, Anna said the banking system is fully controlled by the state and used to punish donors, activists and opposition movements. Many people in the West, she said, still do not understand “the concept that money is a weapon.”

Anna teaches activists how to use Bitcoin safely, emphasising privacy, self custody and non KYC tools, including peer to peer options such as Hodl Hodl. Tools alone are not enough, because activists also need practical education on custody, seed phrases, wallets, scams and how to avoid exposing the people they are trying to help.

Together, these tools point to the same conclusion. Freedom technology is becoming a practical response to systems that can monitor speech, restrict movement, freeze money, expose identity and cut communication.

Bitchat helps people communicate when the internet is shut down. Citizen Lab helps people understand and reduce the risks of spyware. Cashu gives private digital payments and Agora shows how open source, peer to peer infrastructure can move resources around institutional gatekeepers.

Anna’s work adds the final piece. Tools only protect people when they know how to use them safely. In a world moving toward digital control, the ability to communicate, transact and organize without permission may become the difference between resistance and silence.

According to the Freedom Tech track at the Oslo Freedom Forum, more than 6.2 billion people today live under authoritarian rule. In the West, the cost of digital control has not yet been felt in the same way, which may be why the need for these tools is still underestimated. The direction of travel is harder to ignore. If governments and institutions keep building systems that monitor, restrict, expose and control, grassroots solutions like these will become a lifeline.

In January 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot bitcoin ETFs. Millions of retail investors gained regulated, direct exposure to bitcoin for the first time.

In that same period, the UK moved in the opposite direction. Despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to make Britain a global crypto hub and a place for innovation and growth, the UK took a different approach. It tightened restrictions that kept retail investors locked out of similar products.

Two years on, the reality for UK investors is very different. Despite recent regulatory changes, access to bitcoin is still fragmented, constrained and often hard to obtain. This is leading to worse outcomes for the consumers the FCA is meant to protect.

Different Assets, Same Rules

The Financial Conduct Authority is the UK’s independent regulator, overseeing more than 40,000 firms with a mandate to protect consumers, ensure market integrity and promote competition and economic growth.

In its approach to cryptoassets, it applies a “same risk, same regulation” principle, grouping bitcoin with speculative assets such as meme coins due to their volatility and potential for harm - arguably misunderstanding the differing risk profiles of these very different assets. This led to the 2021 ban on retail sales of crypto derivatives and exchange traded notes, known as ETNs, with the FCA citing widespread losses and unreliable valuations.

This framing overlooks key differences. Bitcoin is a decentralised monetary network with a fixed supply, global liquidity, and a 15 year track record. Treating it as equivalent to speculative tokens under a “same risk, same regulation” framework ignores key differences. It places very different risk profiles into a single category. This can lead to counterproductive policy outcomes.

“Good regulation should bring investors into safer environments, not push them out of them,” says Ray Dillet, Head of Financial Institutions Europe at Bitwise Asset Management. “The FCA’s ‘same risk, same regulation’ principle is directionally right, but in crypto it is being applied too bluntly. Bitcoin is fundamentally different to most other cryptoassets. It’s a neutral asset, has no issuer and behaves more like a digital commodity than a speculative tech asset.

By failing to reflect that distinction, the UK risks driving investors away from regulated products and into offshore venues with significantly higher risk. That is the opposite of consumer protection.”

The FCA has begun to adjust its position. Following consultation, it lifted the ban on crypto ETNs listed on recognised UK exchanges, effective October 8, 2025. As the FCA stated in February 2026 correspondence to a Member of Parliament:

“In June 2025, the FCA launched a consultation on proposals to lift the ban on retail access to certain cETNs, which demonstrated our commitment to supporting the growth and competitiveness of the UK’s crypto industry, rebalancing our approach to risk by allowing consumers to make a choice on whether such a high-risk investment is right for them.”

The change allows retail access within a regulated framework, subject to restrictions. These include classification as a Restricted Mass Market Investments, which mandate risk warnings, appropriateness tests and cooling off periods for consumers who try to buy them.

On paper this seemed like progress, but in practice it fell short.

Access In Theory, Friction In Reality

While the FCA reopened the door to bitcoin products, practical barriers remained. Banking restrictions are among the most significant. Major banks, including HSBC, Barclays and NatWest, impose limits on transfers to cryptoasset exchanges. Others, such as Chase UK, Metro Bank, Starling and TSB, restrict or block them, citing fraud and consumer protection. In some cases, these restrictions affect lawful transactions to regulated platforms, and block what customers choose to do with their own money.

Industry reports suggest a large proportion of transactions are delayed or declined, with exchanges reporting rising onboarding friction. Within regulated products, investors face additional checks and disclosures not seen in comparable asset classes.

The result is not reduced risk but displaced risk. Users are pushed toward offshore platforms, informal markets, or unregulated proxies where protections are weaker or do not exist.

Jamie Nuttall, director of crypto tax at Myna L2, says “The FCA’s approach to bitcoin does not reduce risk. It simply moves it offshore and, in many cases, makes it invisible. With a plethora of options available globally, retail investors will always find a way to sidestep regulation when it comes to decentralised assets in order to remain exposed.”

This creates a contradiction at the heart of the FCA’s approach. Measures meant to reduce harm instead change where and how risk is taken, and potentially has the unintended consequence of actually increasing that risk. Much of the risk then moves beyond the reach of the protections they are meant to enforce.

Nuttall adds, “This is likely to create a far bigger problem, exposing investors to platforms with fewer restrictions, less oversight, and significantly higher risk. All for simply wanting to access a globally available asset class. The FCA’s consumer protection mandate is ultimately undermined by the very enforcement restrictions designed to uphold it.”

The FCA emphasises these measures as necessary:

“The classification of cryptoassets as Restricted Mass Market Investments (RMMIs) under our financial promotions rules means that these safeguarding marketing frictions, such as risk warnings, are necessary... With cryptoassets treated as RMMIs, our rules ensure that promotions of cryptoassets are fair, clear and not misleading.”

Additionally, the FCA makes it clear that “there won’t be coverage from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).”

From early 2016 to March 2026, Bitcoin delivered cumulative returns of approximately 16,300%, outperforming the S&P 500’s ~300% total return and gold’s ~300% gain over the same period. The divergence raises questions about whether UK investors are being protected from risk or from opportunity.

Tax Efficient Access

The situation worsens with upcoming tax changes. From April 6, 2026, crypto ETNs remain outside mainstream ISA wrappers. They are limited to niche options such as Innovative Finance ISAs, or IFISAs. These are typically offered in relation to peer to peer lending and crowdfunding, have limited platform support, and offer no Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection.

Unlike traditional Stocks and Shares ISAs, IFISAs make tax efficient holding harder. Existing holdings may require transfer or restructuring, new purchases within wrappers become limited. Some investors may face forced sales, taxable accounts or market timing risks.

The effect is as regulated access tightens, some turn to offshore or unregulated platforms, where protections are weaker and risks higher.

Rather than improving access within a regulated environment, the changes may narrow it further. They make tax efficient investment harder while leaving unregulated alternatives easier to access.

Protection or Restriction?

The FCA’s consumer protection mandate is necessary, but the framework raises a key question. At what point does protection become restriction?

The regulator says it will continue to monitor market developments and consider its approach to high risk investments. It adds that any changes to RMMI classification will be reviewed as part of broader crypto regime work.

By keeping access difficult, limiting availability, and adding structural barriers, the UK risks pushing investors toward less regulated environments. This is the outcome the policy aims to prevent.

As recent changes take effect, UK retail access to bitcoin remains constrained, inconsistent and in many cases out of reach.

The FCA’s mandate is to protect consumers and ensure market integrity. When regulation restricts access to one of the best performing assets of the decade while pushing investors toward opaque or unregulated alternatives, it undermines both. If the UK is serious about financial innovation, it must confront a growing contradiction. A framework designed to reduce harm may be creating it.

The term “bitcoin treasury company” has become one of this cycle’s defining phenomena, but the label now covers a wide range of very different business models. As of March 2026, public companies collectively hold more than 1.13 million BTC, roughly 5.4% of the total supply, valued at about $84 billion at current prices of around $74,000 per bitcoin.

Firms grouped under this term often follow very different financial strategies. The label is increasingly misleading, as Jeff Walton, Chief Risk Officer at Strive, says “They are just companies that hold bitcoin, they all do different things.”

Some simply hold bitcoin as a reserve asset, while others are beginning to explore capital markets strategies, issuing equity or debt to increase bitcoin exposure per share. Cory Klippsten, CEO of financial technology company Swan Bitcoin said: “If you don’t have leverage, you aren’t in the game.”

Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, dominates the sector with about 761,068 BTC, though the model has already shown strain. Bitcoin’s pullback from its 2025 highs pushed many firms into NAV discounts, with mNAV multiples falling below 1x as market values slipped below the value of their bitcoin holdings. Smaller treasury companies have traded between 10% and 75% below the bitcoin on their balance sheets. When bitcoin briefly fell below $65,000 in February 2026, billions in paper value vanished and vulnerabilities in some of these models began to show.

Not all companies approach capital structure and risk in the same way, however. As Roy Kashi, CEO of FalconEdge, a capital markets advisory firm, said “We are highly disciplined in how we approach capital formation, with a clear focus on long term shareholder value per share rather than maximising balance sheet size.”

How The Bitcoin Treasury Model Began

Strategy’s approach began simply, as the company used spare cash to buy bitcoin instead of holding dollars. Investors who bought the shares gained exposure to bitcoin through the company’s balance sheet. As bitcoin became the best performing asset of the decade and institutional adoption accelerated, allocating spare corporate cash to it began to look less like speculation and more like a treasury decision.

As the idea gained attention, other companies began adopting variations on these treasury strategies. In some cases the concept moved beyond simply holding bitcoin on the balance sheet. Companies began raising additional capital through new shares, debt and other financial instruments in order to acquire more bitcoin. Some treasuries add further leverage by using bitcoin holdings as collateral for loans or credit facilities, to access cash without selling assets, though this heightens liquidation risks in downturns.

Supporters of these models argue that the structure itself is designed to reshape risk exposure. As Walton described it, “Preferred perpetual equity is the product, we are trading a low volatility product for the market.”

The result is a form of financial engineering designed to amplify bitcoin exposure. In a rising market this can magnify returns, but it also adds layers of complexity and risk that ordinary investors may not immediately see. At its core, the model is a question of risk. As Walton noted, “Sizing risk is the biggest decision in financial markets.”

In these structures, risk extends beyond bitcoin’s price to how capital is raised, structured and deployed.

Understanding Direct Bitcoin Exposure

The simplest thing someone can do is own bitcoin directly. You buy it, hold it and your exposure is simply the price of bitcoin rising or falling.

The next layer involves owning shares in a company that holds bitcoin on its balance sheet. In that case investors gain exposure to bitcoin through the company’s treasury, but their investment is now influenced by more than the price of bitcoin alone. Shareholders are also exposed to management decisions, capital allocation choices and the financial structure of the company itself.

When Capital Structures Enter The Equation

Things become more complex when companies begin raising additional capital specifically to acquire more bitcoin. Rather than relying solely on operating profits, these companies raise funds through equity issuance, debt or structured instruments in order to expand their bitcoin holdings. Advocates argue that, if executed well, this can increase the amount of bitcoin backing each share, but the outcome depends heavily on capital markets conditions and how the strategy is managed.

At its simplest, the model can function as a financial flywheel:

• The company raises capital from investors
• That capital is used to purchase bitcoin
• If markets are supportive, the share price may trade at a premium to the value of the bitcoin held on the balance sheet
• That premium allows the company to raise additional capital and purchase more bitcoin

As long as that premium persists, the cycle can continue. If it disappears, the dynamic changes significantly. Issuing new shares becomes dilutive, raising capital becomes more expensive and the ability to continue expanding the balance sheet slows.

Preferred Shares And Structural Tensions

Another layer of complexity comes when companies begin issuing preferred shares or other structured instruments designed to raise additional capital. Preferred shares typically attract investors because they promise a dividend, but in most jurisdictions dividends cannot simply be paid from investor capital. In England & Wales, for example, dividends can only be funded from realised profits available for distribution. This requirement makes it much harder for UK incorporated companies to follow Strategy’s lead in pursuing the issuance of perpetual preferred shares.

For traditional operating businesses this is straightforward, revenue is generated, profits are realised and dividends can be paid. For companies primarily accumulating bitcoin, the situation is very different, as profits may only exist if bitcoin is sold.

That creates a structural tension for pure treasury companies. The strategy depends on holding and accumulating bitcoin, while the income mechanism for preferred shareholders ultimately depends on selling it.

Until profits are realised, any dividend remains uncertain rather than dependable. Selling bitcoin at a loss may create liquidity, but it does not generate the profit required to support a dividend and may make the problem worse.

These strategies also depend heavily on continued access to capital markets. Many treasury companies rely on their shares trading at a premium to the value of the bitcoin they hold. When that premium exists, new shares can be issued with limited immediate dilution and the proceeds used to purchase additional bitcoin. If the premium disappears, dilution increases and the ability to raise capital slows.

Some companies introduce another layer of risk by operating with minimal underlying business activity. In these cases the company functions less like a traditional operating business and more like a vehicle designed primarily to raise capital and convert that capital into bitcoin exposure. When this occurs, executive salaries and corporate expenses may be funded largely from investor capital rather than from productive business activity.

Bitcoin treasuries differ from direct ownership, combine bitcoin exposure with corporate and capital structure risk. Investors must distinguish profitable firms holding BTC reserves from capital vehicles and understand the structured risks to avoid hype pitfalls.

In some cases the underlying operating business is relatively small compared with the scale of the capital being raised for treasury activity, meaning the company begins to resemble a capital vehicle built around bitcoin rather than a traditional operating business that happens to hold it.

None of this necessarily means the model is unsound. Financial engineering can amplify returns in rising markets and some companies may execute these strategies successfully. What matters is that investors understand the distinction between the asset and the structures built around it, and the different laws of various jurisdictions which may support or prevent the issue of instruments with guaranteed rights to payouts.

Bitcoin Versus Corporate Bitcoin Exposure

Owning shares in a bitcoin treasury company introduces additional layers of corporate governance, leverage, dilution risk, capital markets dependence and management execution. These structures may provide exposure to bitcoin, but they are not the same thing as bitcoin itself.

None of this means the risks described here are inherently problematic or that companies should avoid holding bitcoin on their balance sheets. For many firms with profitable operating businesses and surplus cash reserves, allocating a portion of treasury assets to bitcoin may be a rational decision given the asset’s performance over the past decade and growing institutional adoption. The key question is how that exposure is structured and whether investors understand the financial mechanisms behind it.

A profitable company that holds bitcoin as a reserve asset is fundamentally different from one whose primary activity revolves around raising capital and issuing financial instruments to expand a bitcoin treasury. In the U.S., Strategy and Strive are well known examples of leveraged Bitcoin equities, where the model centres on raising capital through financial instruments to maximise bitcoin per share, setting them apart from miners or firms with incidental BTC holdings.

Both approaches may exist legitimately within capital markets, but they represent very different forms of exposure and risk.

For that reason, the term “bitcoin treasury company” may be one of the most misleading elements of the current narrative. It is increasingly used to describe strategies that share little beyond the presence of bitcoin on the balance sheet, grouping fundamentally different business models under a single label.

The ambiguity becomes clear when pushed to its logical conclusion. If a small business began accepting bitcoin for payments and retained those holdings, would that also qualify? If so, the term risks becoming so broad that it loses meaning entirely.

Bitcoin is a single asset with fixed supply and transparent rules. The corporate structures built around it are not, and the risks they introduce can differ significantly from owning bitcoin itself.

For investors, it’s not the label, it’s the structure that matters.

When Cuba’s electrical grid collapsed in early March, millions of people were suddenly left without power. Homes lost refrigeration, water pumps stopped working, and large parts of Havana went dark. The outage was triggered by a shutdown at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, one of the country’s largest power stations, after a boiler malfunction forced it offline.

The blackout affected large parts of the island, stretching from Pinar del Río in the west to Camagüey in the centre, leaving millions without electricity. At its peak, the failure removed more than half of the island’s generation capacity, leaving much of the country without power for hours.

For many Cubans, the consequences were immediate and physical. Food spoiled, public transport stalled, and hospitals relied on backup generators. The blackout reveals a deeper structural problem, that when energy systems are centralized, a single technical failure can cascade across an entire country. The blackout raises an important question for energy systems worldwide about how infrastructure can remain stable when individual components fail.

The Structural Risk Of Centralized Energy

Cuba’s energy crisis has been building for years. Much of the country’s power infrastructure dates back decades, and fuel shortages have repeatedly pushed the grid close to failure. These vulnerabilities have been worsened by US sanctions and restrictions on oil supplies, particularly the recent curtailment of shipments from Venezuela and threats of tariffs on other suppliers. This has tightened fuel availability and pushed the grid closer to repeated failure.

At the same time, the island has long relied on imported oil to keep its thermoelectric plants running. When fuel supplies tighten or infrastructure breaks down, there are few alternative sources of power to keep the system stable.

That vulnerability is a common feature of centralized energy systems. When electricity generation is concentrated in a small number of large plants connected to a single national grid, technical failures can ripple through the entire network.

In Cuba’s case outages have become increasingly frequent, with a series of blackouts since 2024 which affected large parts of the country. Demonstrating the fragility of the system and the difficulty of maintaining aging infrastructure under economic pressure.

Reports indicate Cuba experienced at least five major nationwide blackouts in 2024 and three more in 2025, leading to the March 2026 outage that left millions without power. World Bank data shows Cuba’s electric power consumption per capita has declined from 1,450 kWh in 2019 to 1,102 kWh in 2022 (latest available), far below the global average of approximately 3,670 kWh. This reflects the infrastructure strain during these disruptions.

Why Distributed Energy Changes The Equation

The real solution lies in building a different energy architecture. Distributed energy systems, particularly local microgrids powered by solar, wind or hydro can operate independently when the main grid fails. Instead of relying on a single national system, communities can generate and manage their own electricity locally.

Janet Maingi, Chief Operating Officer at Gridless, a company building renewable powered bitcoin mining microgrids in Africa, says the lesson from Cuba’s blackout is clear.

“Resilient energy systems need both distributed renewables and flexible demand. Models like Gridless can help balance supply and demand in real time, reducing the risk of widespread grid failures.”

Miners consume large amounts of electricity, but they also have one unusual characteristic. They can switch off almost instantly without damaging equipment or disrupting other systems. Flexible loads help stabilize grids by absorbing excess electricity when supply is high and reducing consumption when demand rises.

Maingi adds, “When a single plant failure can take down a national grid, it highlights how fragile centralized systems are. Pairing distributed renewables like solar with flexible demand can help stabilize supply and make energy systems far more resilient.”

In practical terms, miners can help stabilize grids powered by intermittent renewable energy, particularly solar and wind.

Mining As A Buyer Of Last Resort

For developing economies, the most important role mining can play is economic. Renewable energy projects often struggle financially when there is no immediate demand for the electricity they produce. Solar farms, for example, may generate excess power during the day that cannot be stored or sold.

Bitcoin mining creates a buyer of last resort for that electricity. When demand is low, miners can consume excess energy that would otherwise go to waste. When demand rises, they can shut down and release power back to the grid.

Real world examples already show how this model can work in practice. In rural Zambia, Gridless operates renewable powered microgrids where bitcoin mining monetizes surplus hydropower. This helps bring affordable electricity to remote communities that previously had none. The same model appears at larger scale in Texas, where mining operations absorb excess wind and solar power, helping balance the ERCOT grid and reduce energy curtailment.

Bitcoin mining can turn stranded or intermittent energy into an economic asset, accelerating the rollout of distributed systems even in resource constrained environments. Challenges can include upfront costs, but initiatives like Caribbean resilience programs offer funding paths.

This economic floor can make small scale renewable projects financially viable in places where traditional grid infrastructure is weak or unreliable. In other words, energy production no longer has to depend entirely on a central grid.

Infrastructure And Sovereignty

The blackout in Cuba shows how energy infrastructure shapes national resilience, affecting economic stability, political independence and everyday life. When power generation depends on centralized systems, the consequences of failure spread quickly and widely. When energy systems are distributed and locally controlled, communities gain more resilience and more autonomy.

Rachel Geyer, Chair of the European Bitcoin Energy Association, says the shift toward renewable energy is forcing grids to become more flexible. She told Forbes, “Europe’s goal of reaching at least 42.5% renewable energy by 2030 will only be achievable if energy systems become far more flexible. Bitcoin miners that can ramp their electricity use up when renewable power is abundant and power down when the grid is tight can act as a powerful demand side tool to help balance Europe’s clean energy future.”

Whether the challenge appears in Central America, Africa, the United States or Europe, the underlying issue is the same. Energy systems must become more flexible, more distributed and less dependent on single points of failure.

The same principle increasingly applies to money and information. Systems built on decentralized protocols, whether energy networks, digital verification systems or monetary networks like Bitcoin, reduce reliance on a single authority by replacing trust with open, verifiable infrastructure that anyone can access.

In a world where grids fail, institutions falter and trust in information is under pressure, that architectural shift may matter more than ever. Energy resilience and monetary resilience may increasingly rely on the same principle, building systems that do not depend on a single point of failure.

Bitcoin transactions are transparent by design, operating under pseudonymity where activity is visible but identity is not inherently revealed. However, the growing accumulation of identity linked data around users is increasingly turning that transparency into a personal security risk.

Data Exposure

A combination of regulatory data collection, KYC requirements, repeated large data breaches, and social engineering is contributing to a rise in physical attacks against crypto holders. Often described as “wrench attacks,” these incidents involve coercion through threats or physical violence to obtain private keys or force transactions. This trend is exposing a vulnerability in how the industry is regulated, with France emerging as a focal point.

A recent February 2026 analysis by GART Research examining 309 publicly documented crypto targeted physical attacks between 2014 and February 2026 shows a sharp escalation. In 2025 alone, 76 attacks were recorded globally, a 77% increase over 2024. At least 47.2% of cases involved confirmed torture or physical violence, and 51.5% involved weapons, making coercion the norm rather than the exception. Nineteen incidents were fatal, accounting for 24 deaths across the dataset and an overall fatality rate of 6.2%. By documented case count, 2025 was the most violent year on record, with researchers cautioning that the true number of incidents is likely higher due to underreporting.

All figures reflect publicly documented cases available at the time of reporting.

Bitcoin holders face a uniquely severe risk profile. Once private keys are surrendered under duress, transactions are irreversible. There are no chargebacks, account freezes, or institutional recovery mechanisms. This finality, which is a celebrated feature of the protocol, becomes a liability when combined with real world coercion.

France as an Early Warning Signal

France illustrates how quickly this risk can escalate. Twenty bitcoin related physical attacks were recorded in France in 2025, compared to just four total between 2017 and 2024 combined. By early February 2026, eight additional cases had already been documented, suggesting the increase is continuing rather than stabilising. Europe’s share of global incidents rose to roughly 40%, up from around 22% in 2024.

Several cases were particularly brutal, including the January 2025 kidnapping of Ledger co-founder David Balland and his wife, during which attackers reportedly cut off a finger to extract a ransom. Other incidents involved partners, parents, and elderly relatives being targeted instead of the primary holder. Although no single data source was identified, the case reflects how attackers can assemble targeting intelligence from multiple points of personal exposure.

Family Targeting

Kevin Loaec, co-founder of Wizardsardine, who personally knows several of the victims, told Forbes:

“These attacks are not opportunistic. The victims are not chosen at random, and in multiple cases the perpetrators appeared to have access to personal information they should not have had, even if some of it was outdated or incorrect. We know that some sensitive information has been sold by corrupt officials, and at the same time databases are leaking in France while authorities continue to request more data. Founders and their families are frightened because even relatively low profile individuals are being targeted, and abductions often extend to family members or colleagues, which makes defence extremely difficult. This is organized crime.”

The Ghalia C case in France intensified scrutiny following allegations that an official accessed and sold sensitive personal data, reinforcing concerns that centralized identity and financial datasets may introduce insider threats rather than mitigate risk.

Analysts have observed a correlation between bitcoin price appreciation and the frequency of physical attacks, as rising valuations increase the payoff for criminals. In 2025, an estimated $40 million was lost across verified cases globally. Organized groups increasingly rely on intelligence rather than opportunistic violence, often targeting individuals connected to the holder to maximize leverage.

Early 2026 data shows 12 documented cases in the first six weeks alone, despite a significant price correction from 2025 highs. Security researchers say the persistence of attacks despite price correction suggests that crypto targeted physical crime may be moving into a criminal pattern rather than remaining price dependent.

In a separate case involving a low profile entrepreneur, attackers used publicly accessible and leaked data to target family members when the intended victim was absent. A source familiar with the case, who requested anonymity due to ongoing criminal proceedings and security concerns, said:

“The intended target was not at home when the kidnappers arrived, so they forced entry and abducted his partner and the partner’s mother instead. They photographed them and used the images to demand ransom, holding them for nearly 30 hours while attempting to pressure and intimidate. The information they relied on appeared to come from cross referenced public records and leaked databases, but much of it was outdated or inaccurate. Even individuals with limited public visibility are now being targeted, which has heightened fear.”

The case illustrates how imperfect or outdated data can still enable violent targeting, demonstrating how data collection becomes central to the threat model.

Data as Intelligence

The January 2026 breach of French crypto tax platform Waltio exposed personal and financial data from tens of thousands of users, including email addresses and tax records. French authorities warned that such leaks could facilitate impersonation, extortion, and physical targeting by providing attackers with consolidated identity and wealth information.

Around the same period, dark web marketplaces were reported to be offering datasets allegedly linked to thousands of French crypto holders, reinforcing concerns raised in cases such as Ghalia C that sensitive information can circulate beyond authorized channels.

These incidents are not isolated and similar breaches at large platforms have combined real world identity documents with blockchain linked financial activity. Once such datasets circulate, they function as targeting lists.

Regulatory and Risk

Regulatory frameworks risk amplifying this problem. The OECD’s Crypto Asset Reporting Framework requires service providers across dozens of jurisdictions to report user transactions, balances, and identifying information to tax authorities.

Recent discussions among policymakers and industry specialists in the UK reflect a growing emphasis on stronger identity verification, expanded KYC frameworks, and greater cross border coordination to combat fraud. At the same time, recovery practitioners highlighted persistent jurisdictional limits and the difficulty victims face even when transactions are traceable. This contrast illustrates a central tension. Measures intended to improve oversight and recovery may also increase the volume of sensitive data that can be exposed, aggregated, or misused. This concentrates highly sensitive data and creates risk profiles that extend beyond tax enforcement.

As previously discussed in Forbes, industry participants have warned that mandatory reporting of irreversible, permissionless assets creates a mismatch between regulatory intent and user safety. Partial or inaccurate data can still trigger scrutiny, while full datasets present a single point of failure.

Personal Security

Gart Research describes this as a distinct physical security threat model. Across the full dataset, at least 58.4% of documented cases involved confirmed detention, meaning victims were restrained, confined, or prevented from leaving. Many incidents classified as ‘home invasion’ or ‘social engineering’ are, in operational terms, kidnapping scenarios. The scenario labels describe how the attack begins, not its legal or functional character. Unlike traditional finance, where fraud protection and account recovery exist, bitcoin places ultimate responsibility on the individual. This risk differs across custody models. Custodial holdings may introduce institutional counterparty risk but can include fraud protections and recovery mechanisms, while self-custodied bitcoin removes intermediaries and concentrates both control and coercion risk at the individual level.

Social engineering compounds the risk. Many attacks rely on deception before violence, using fake trades, urgent messages, or trusted intermediaries. Law enforcement reporting and community analysis suggest that younger individuals are often recruited for compartmentalised roles through mainstream messaging platforms, lowering barriers to entry for organized crime. While precise recruitment mechanisms vary, the pattern aligns with European trends in digitally coordinated criminal activity.

For bitcoin holders, mitigation increasingly depends on operational security rather than legal protections. This includes minimizing data exposure, avoiding unnecessary disclosure of holdings, and understanding how on-chain transparency interacts with off-chain identity. Hardware wallets and self custody remain essential, but they are not sufficient on their own without disciplined privacy practices.

The Personal Cost

At the policy level, the lesson is uncomfortable but clear. Treating bitcoin as a data rich financial product without accounting for its bearer asset properties creates unintended consequences. Centralizing sensitive information around irreversible assets does not eliminate risk but redistributes it from institutions to individuals, a shift reflected in the rise of coercive physical attacks. If privacy continues to be eroded in the name of oversight, the cost will increasingly be paid in personal safety rather than regulatory efficiency.

Regulatory frameworks continue to treat bitcoin and other cryptoassets as a single category, a decision that has shaped how digital asset policy is written, enforced, and interpreted across multiple jurisdictions. As regulatory approaches develop, the debate increasingly centers on regulatory design: how well existing frameworks map onto systems that differ fundamentally in structure, governance, and risk.

The persistence of a unified “cryptoasset” classification reflects how regulation often develops in response to emerging technologies. Early policy responses tend to prioritize speed, consistency, and administrative clarity, particularly when markets evolve faster than formal rule making processes. In the case of digital assets, surface level similarities such as the use of cryptography, digital wallets, and online platforms made broad categorization a practical starting point.

However, as regulatory frameworks mature and move from high level principles toward detailed operational rules, the limitations of this approach become more apparent.

Bitcoin has now operated as a decentralized network for over 15 years, without an issuing entity, central governance structure, or discretionary monetary authority. Many other cryptoassets, by contrast, rely on identifiable development teams, ongoing issuance decisions, and intermediated systems for operation and access.

In the United States, think tanks such as the Bitcoin Policy Institute have developed detailed frameworks outlining bitcoin’s unique attributes, including its decentralized design and monetary characteristics to help inform policy and regulatory approaches distinct from other digital assets.

One practical consequence of regulating under a single umbrella is that it can flatten risk distinctions that regulators themselves are trying to communicate to consumers. In the UK, consultation responses have pointed to situations where the regulatory framing treats a decentralized monetary network and a highly speculative token as though they sit in the same risk bucket, despite their very different characteristics, levels of issuer control, and maturity. Even when the intention is caution, the effect can be consumer confusion, because the framework implicitly suggests that “cryptoassets” are interchangeable from a risk perspective, when in practice they are not.

These differences are structural and not philosophical. Modern financial regulation is built around assumptions of accountability, control, and organizational responsibility. Disclosure regimes typically presume the existence of an entity capable of providing information, making representations, and being held responsible for outcomes. Supervisory frameworks often depend on intermediaries that can be licensed, monitored, and sanctioned where necessary. When these assumptions are applied to a decentralized network with no central operator, the fit is not always straightforward.

This tension becomes most visible when rules designed for issuer led assets are applied uniformly across all digital assets. Requirements related to disclosures, governance, and ongoing compliance may be well suited to tokens issued by companies or foundations, but they can be difficult to interpret or implement in the context of a permissionless network. The result is regulatory friction where rules struggle to map cleanly onto the systems they are intended to govern.

Cryptoasset lending and borrowing is a useful case study for how that friction appears in implementation. Traditional consumer credit rules are designed around unsecured borrowing, affordability assessments, arrears, and forbearance, with the aim of reducing default risk and protecting borrowers from unaffordable debt. By contrast, many bitcoin backed lending models are structured around collateralisation, short durations, and automatic liquidation when loan to value thresholds are breached. In that context, a framework built for missed repayments and payment plans can struggle to map neatly onto a product where the core consumer risk is often collateral liquidation during market moves rather than the inability to repay a debt in the traditional sense.

Recent policy consultations illustrate this challenge. Responses from industry participants and policy groups have increasingly focused on classification and function rather than market behaviour. These submissions do not argue for the absence of regulation, but for greater precision in how different digital asset systems are defined and assessed. The emphasis is on aligning regulatory obligations with observable risk characteristics, governance models, and modes of operation, rather than applying uniform requirements.

Su Carpenter, Executive Director at CryptoUK, told Forbes “As the UK develops its cryptoasset regulatory framework, it is increasingly clear that not all cryptoassets present the same risks or operate in the same way. Differences in issuance, functionality and use cases are not always reflected in the current approach, which risks imposing a one size fits all regime. A proportionate, ‘same risk, same regulation framework depends on regulators recognising these distinctions if the UK is to remain a competitive and credible jurisdiction.”

Several reponses argue that a more risk aligned approach would distinguish between the asset being used and the activity being offered, rather than applying restrictions across an entire category.

The issue also extends beyond disclosure and supervision. Surveillance frameworks, reporting obligations, and compliance regimes are often designed around account based systems and intermediated financial relationships. Applying these models to bearer style assets or peer to peer networks can raise practical questions about feasibility, proportionality, and effectiveness. These questions are increasingly relevant as regulators seek to balance consumer protection, market integrity, and financial stability objectives.

Another recurring point in consultation feedback is that restrictions placed on regulated domestic firms do not necessarily reduce activity; they often change where that activity takes place. When onshore providers face tighter prohibitions or disproportionate compliance burdens, consumers who still want access to certain products may migrate to offshore venues or decentralized protocols that sit outside the regulator’s direct reach. In practice, this can weaken consumer protection by shifting usage away from supervised firms and toward environments with less transparency, fewer safeguards, and limited recourse in the event of failure.

At the same time, there are signs that regulatory thinking is beginning to differentiate more clearly between digital asset types. Discussions around custody standards, settlement processes, and energy usage increasingly treat bitcoin as distinct from other cryptoassets. In some cases, regulatory documents now reference differing risk profiles and operational characteristics, even where formal frameworks remain generally scoped. This shift is incremental rather than comprehensive, but it reflects growing recognition that a single category may not adequately capture the diversity of systems now operating under the “crypto” umbrella.

Importantly, this is not a debate about innovation versus regulation, nor about the merits of one asset over another, it is a question of regulatory design. Effective regulation depends on accurate classification, particularly when rules become more granular and enforcement more active. Where classifications obscure meaningful differences, the risk is that regulation becomes either overinclusive or ineffective, imposing burdens that do not address actual risks while failing to account for those that do.

The consequences of this approach are already visible in the UK. Freddie New, Chief Policy Officer at Bitcoin Policy UK said “At present in the UK, consumers new to the space are presented with a universe of thousands of coins, all of which - so the regulator tells them - are equally worthless. This includes both Bitcoin and every meme coin in existence, and the message the FCA sends to consumers arguably puts them at great risk of harm were they to invest in a worthless meme coin rather than the digital asset equivalent of a blue chip company.”

As governments and regulators continue to refine their approaches to digital assets, the challenge may be less about how quickly frameworks are implemented and more about how precisely they reflect the systems they seek to regulate. As digital asset systems continue to diverge, whether the “cryptoasset” category remains fit for purpose has become a question of regulatory effectiveness, not ideology.

As 2026 begins, bitcoin is entering a more mature phase of its market cycle. In 2025, prices reached new highs but ended the year below the peak. Analysts are now focused on how macro conditions, institutional flows, and market structure may shape bitcoin’s price in the year ahead.

This cycle looks different from earlier ones. Retail speculation has faded and spot bitcoin ETFs in the US have become a steady channel for institutional capital. At the same time, post halving supply growth has slowed. Tighter financial conditions and uneven risk appetite added some volatility, leaving bitcoin below its highs despite continued long term demand.

Many institutional analysts now outline mid to upper six figure scenarios under assumptions of steady adoption and stable macro conditions. For most, 2026 looks less like a speculative surge and more like a year of consolidation and price discovery.

Price Targets And Market Ranges

Publicly available forecasts for bitcoin’s price in 2026 have a wide range, with several analysts and market commentators outlining mid to upper six figure scenarios under differing assumptions:

• Tom Lee of Fundstrat has suggested bitcoin could reach a new all time high before January 2026, implying continued upward potential into the year.

• Analysts at Standard Chartered and Bernstein have said bitcoin could reach around $150,000 by the end of 2026, even after revising earlier targets in response to macroeconomic conditions and market volatility.

• A Yahoo Finance aggregation of analyst estimates similarly lists projections near $170,000 for 2026, contingent on macroeconomic conditions and adoption trends.

Sentiment And Indicators

Beyond headline price targets, indicators and market commentary point to a varied distribution of potential outcomes:

• TradingView commentary says that sentiment from downside scenarios near $65,000 to upside projections approaching $250,000, with indicators such as the Fear & Greed Index remaining relatively subdued.

• Industry forecasts summarized by Quartz emphasize the continued influence of ETFs and stablecoin growth on the crypto sector, factors many analysts incorporate into valuation frameworks.

• A Bitget analysis shows a shift in market narrative entering 2026, with conversations increasingly focused on fundamentals and sector performance rather than speculation.

• Analysis published by CCN outlines expert views on whether bitcoin can reclaim key levels such as $120,000, a threshold incorporated into many 2026 projections.

These sources suggest that while professional forecasts for 2026 are in the mid to upper six figure range, both more bearish and more optimistic outcomes remain plausible as market conditions change.

Market Structure And Key Drivers

Several structural themes recur across published forecasts:

Institutional Adoption: Continued capital inflows via spot bitcoin ETFs and sustained interest from traditional financial institutions are cited as a source of medium term price support.

Supply Dynamics: Post halving supply constraints remain a core input in valuation models, with limited new issuance intersecting with longer term demand.

Macro Conditions: Interest rate policy, liquidity conditions and risk asset correlations continue to influence how analysts frame bitcoin’s near and medium term price trajectory.

Cycle Models

Some market analysts reference on chain and cycle based frameworks to contextualize bitcoin’s recent price behavior. Analyst Rational Root has described 2025 as a distribution phase following bitcoin’s move above the $100,000 psychological level, drawing comparisons to the consolidation that followed the break above $10,000 in 2019.

THE RATIONAL ROOT

In both periods, prices moved sideways as liquidity deepened and long term holders took profits without disrupting the market. This helps explain why consolidation can persist after major thresholds are reached, even as long term adoption trends remain intact, rather than serving as a basis for price targets.

Forecast Consensus Range

Expectations for bitcoin by the end of 2026 generally fall into three broad categories:

Bearish Scenarios: Some technical and sentiment based analyses point to downside risk in the event of a sustained risk off environment.

Mid Range Forecasts: Several institutional and macro analysts suggest bitcoin could trade roughly between $120,000 and $170,000 by late 2026 under conditions of steady adoption and demand.

Bullish Scenarios: Other projections highlight potential upside toward $250,000 or higher should macro tailwinds strengthen and institutional participation accelerate.

Outlook

As 2026 begins, bitcoin’s price trajectory is less likely to be shaped by speculative momentum and more by macroeconomic conditions, institutional inflows and regulatory clarity. A working paper by finance researchers documents a structural break in bitcoin’s return dynamics after the January 2024 spot ETF approvals, suggesting the asset has become more integrated with core financial market factors rather than moving independently as in earlier cycles.

While no single target has emerged, the concentration of forecasts around the $120,000 to $170,000 range shows how bitcoin’s price discovery is increasingly driven by these structural factors. Any volatility over the year ahead is expected to come mostly from institutional behavior and financial products built around bitcoin, including ETF flows and the growing use of bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset, which have been shown to influence market liquidity, price discovery and risk exposures in some corporate treasury strategies.

As bitcoin moves deeper into institutional markets, the key question for 2026 is how those institutions choose to deploy capital, rather than whether the asset itself continues to gain adoption.

During a keynote at the Bitcoin MENA conference in Abu Dhabi, Michael Saylor described a financial design that moves beyond MicroStrategy’s well known bitcoin strategy. He outlined a three layer system built on bitcoin as a reserve asset, a corporate credit layer created by his company, and a final layer of digital money that banks or exchanges could issue on top of it. The structure resembles a private monetary stack rather than a simple treasury position, and a shift from the cypherpunk themes that shaped Saylor’s early framing of bitcoin.

Saylor began by describing bitcoin as digital property and as the foundation for an entire credit system. He explained that his company now holds about 660,000 bitcoin and told the audience they are currently acquiring between $500 million and $1 billion of bitcoin each week.

“We can buy more Bitcoin than the sellers can sell. We are going to take it all. We are going to take it out of circulation.”

The next step in the structure is the creation of corporate credit instruments backed by bitcoin. The aim is to transform bitcoin’s volatility into predictable cash flows that institutions can use. Saylor said “If you have a long time horizon, you should take the 30% annual appreciation in bitcoin, but most people do not want 30% with thirty volatility. They want 10% with ten volatility.”

The credit layer therefore acts as a bridge between bitcoin’s long term performance and institutional demand for stable yields. In traditional finance this type of bridge is created by banks and bond markets. In Saylor’s design it is created by a corporate balance sheet that holds bitcoin as its reserve.

The final component of the system is the creation of what he called digital money. Saylor described how a one dollar instrument can be constructed using the company’s short duration credit product, currency equivalents, and a cash reserve that ensures the value remains constant. He told the audience that such a product would “trade like a stablecoin” and could offer “an 8% tax deferred yield.” As he told the audience, ‘the biggest idea is to create digital money.’

Although Saylor never used the word stablecoin, the structure he outlined mirrors one in every functional respect. He described a $1 unit whose value is held steady through daily adjustments to a reserve composed of short duration bitcoin backed credit, currency equivalents and cash. He told the audience it would “trade like a stablecoin,” which places it in the category of synthetic dollar instruments used in digital finance. The distinction lies in the collateral, instead of short term government securities, the reserve would be built on corporate credit instruments backed by bitcoin.

Banks, asset managers, and exchanges could then offer deposit accounts using this instrument. In his words, “Satoshi created the capital. The treasury company creates the credit. The bank or crypto exchange creates the money.”

This architecture marks a clear departure from the cypherpunk narrative that shaped Saylor’s early public advocacy. In the first years after MicroStrategy adopted bitcoin in 2020, he described bitcoin as a form of digital property that strengthened individual sovereignty, protected private ownership, and empowered people through self custody.

His more recent language positions bitcoin as the raw material for a layered financial system built by a single corporate issuer. It is a move from the decentralised ethos of early bitcoin to the language of structured credit, yield engineering, and monetary design more commonly associated with traditional finance.

This type of instrument would not fit within the new U.S. stablecoin framework. Under the recently enacted GENIUS Act, only insured depository institutions or permitted payment stablecoin issuers can create dollar stablecoins, and they must be fully backed with cash or short term government securities. The law also bars issuers from paying interest or yield to holders solely for keeping a payment stablecoin on deposit. A synthetic $1 product built on corporate bitcoin backed credit and promising an 8% return would fall outside that model, making it unlikely that such a product could be issued from the United States.

History provides examples of private actors who accumulated such large reserves of a monetary resource that they moved into roles resembling monetary authorities. The British East India Company began as a trading enterprise but eventually controlled taxation, military operations, and money issuance in parts of India. Courts of the era treated it as a sovereign power because its economic weight gave it sovereign-like influence.

An earlier case comes from West Africa in the fourteenth century. Mansa Musa controlled gold mines and trade routes across the Mali Empire. When he travelled through Cairo, the volume of gold he distributed increased the money supply so rapidly that local prices shifted for years. Neither actor set out to become a central monetary force, both shaped financial systems because they controlled the underlying resource.

This context gives new weight to how Saylor introduced his keynote. He described travelling through Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi and meeting regulators, sovereign funds, banks and family offices. He said he wanted to present “what we are proposing to the sovereign wealth fund, the hedge funds, the investment funds, the family offices, the banks, the traders and those running the government.” For a product that cannot be issued in the United States, a region that is actively positioning itself as a global hub for digital assets becomes a natural locus for the type of monetary infrastructure he outlined.

These examples show how centralisation of a monetary base can alter the structure of a market even without explicit political authority and they also highlight a pattern. Systems become more fragile when they centralise reserves, credit creation, and liquidity in a single balance sheet. Diversified systems distribute risk, centralised systems concentrate it.

Bitcoin was engineered to avoid this problem, its issuance is fixed and its network is decentralized. Its value is verified by thousands of independent nodes. The credit formation that grows above it is meant to be competitive and distributed and Saylor’s design operates differently. It uses bitcoin as the foundation for a corporate version of a central bank. The company holds the reserves, issues the credit, and articulates a blueprint for money instruments that others may distribute. This does not change the Bitcoin protocol, but it creates a centralized financial layer on top of a decentralized base.

Saylor’s engineering is sophisticated and ambitious. It mirrors features of traditional central banking, but without the formal authority of a state. It merges bitcoin with structured credit and proposes a synthetic form of digital money backed by corporate assets rather than government bonds. It is a vision of bitcoin that is less about peer to peer monetary autonomy and more about institutional liquidity, yield curves, and the construction of a new financial center.

Whether this structure becomes part of a future global financial system will depend on regulatory environments and the willingness of institutions to rely on a single issuer for their monetary instruments.

In Abu Dhabi his message departed from the individual sovereignty and self custody focus that shaped his early advocacy. Bitcoin was presented as the reserve asset for a corporate credit engine capable of issuing its own forms of money. It is an evolution from cypherpunk principles toward a traditional financial architecture built on top of bitcoin rather than alongside it.

As bitcoin integrates with mainstream finance, will the systems that grow on top of it reflect its decentralized origins, or will they recreate the forms of centralisation that bitcoin was originally built to challenge?

The African Bitcoin Conference in Mauritius began with an undeniable truth. For generations Africa has been boxed out, priced out and pushed aside by global financial systems. Cross border payments remain slow and punishingly expensive, made even harder by the dozens of national currencies that complicate trade between neighbouring countries.

Inflation and currency failure continue to erode savings. Infrastructure gaps cut millions out of basic economic participation. The same forces that have held the continent back are now driving a surge of locally led innovation.

ABC brought together builders and educators designing tools that match the real challenges people face across the continent and working to solve problems governments and banks have failed to fix.

The World Bank reports that sub-Saharan Africa has the highest remittance costs in the world, typically between 7% and 12%, with some rising above 15%. Hyperinflation continues to weaken purchasing power. Millions remain unbanked. In several regions trust in financial systems has been damaged by corruption or unstable currencies. Anise Kanimba of the African Bitcoin Institute explained. “We need to create financial access while not creating harm.”

Representatives from across the continent shared the same view. A neutral and permissionless form of money that moves instantly and at almost no cost has profound potential for a region defined by high remittance fees and limited banking access. Bitcoin connects countries that have often struggled to move money between one another. The result is a sense of unity built on shared problems and a growing belief that technology can deliver practical solutions.

Okin, founder of Easy Sats, a bitcoin education initiative, and founder of Bitcoin Mining Namibia, a small scale mining project, talked of the human impact of bitcoin.

“Namibia is a country with three million people with high unemployment especially among young people. Bitcoin has given these people opportunities. It saved my life and I want to translate that to help others.”

The conference also acknowledged that bitcoin’s early presence in Africa was complicated. “When bitcoin came to Africa it came via scams” said Lorraine Marcel, CEO and founder of Bitcoin Dada, an education initiative for African women. Rebuilding trust has become a major part of the education effort. Marcel explained that “Bitcoin opens you up to the world. It’s more than a technology. It is changing people’s lives.”

A major theme was building for African realities rather than assuming Western infrastructure. Designer Mark Kamau, known for his work with BRCK and for founding Africa’s first UX Lab at iHub, explained that constraints such as limited data, limited storage, intermittent electricity and the lack of smartphones must shape product development. “Africa finds the paradigms of what bitcoin was meant to do.” Services like Machankura which allow people to use bitcoin without the internet demonstrate how powerful local problem solving can be.

Circular bitcoin economies also featured prominently. These community based systems allow people to save and trade in bitcoin inside their own towns and villages. For regions facing inflation or currency controls these circular networks protect value and support local trade.

Energy innovation played a central role. More than six hundred million Africans still lack electricity. Erik Hersman, CEO of Gridless, showed how bitcoin mining can stabilise microgrids and finance rural power installations. The Green African Mining Alliance known as GAMA demonstrated hardware that turns surplus energy into revenue. The message was clear, that innovation can come from Africa.

Privacy and data protection were major themes. Lea Petrasova, founder of Vexl, a peer-to-peer bitcoin app that avoids KYC data collection, warned that “Your data is out in the wild forever.” She stressed the importance of peer to peer payments that do not rely on third party intermediaries. Max Hillebrand from White Noise, a project focused on privacy preserving communication and financial tools, expanded on the risks of centralised communication and financial systems. His keynote concluded with “This is how we end slavery in our lifetime and we have a decent shot at doing it.”

Former Bitcoin Core developer Amiti Uttarwar discussed the importance of building bitcoin with care and long term sustainability.

Policy discussions examined how academic work and practical research can inform future regulatory approaches. While the conference was underway, the United Kingdom introduced a significant legal change that recognises bitcoin as a third category of property under its new digital assets framework. This development offers a useful case study for African researchers and advocacy groups working toward clearer rules and safeguards in their own jurisdictions.

In South Africa, the central bank has signalled interest in bringing self custody bitcoin under exchange control rules by classifying it as a foreign asset. A recent High Court ruling found that cryptocurrencies do not fall within the current definitions of capital or foreign currency. This has placed renewed attention on the central bank’s interest in digital assets and raised questions about how future changes could affect financial access and user privacy for people in South Africa.

Africa’s adoption of bitcoin is rooted in lived experience. Colonial era financial structures, hyperinflation, currency instability and expensive remittances have shaped daily life for decades. These pressures created the conditions that allow new technology to emerge. Femi Longe from the Human Rights Foundation summarised the conference’s spirit. “Community over individualism.”

What stood out most was the sense that Africa is not waiting for direction from elsewhere. Solutions are being built that reflect their own realities and hopes. Their work offers a reminder to the world that Africa is not following, it’s leading.

The UK government is the third largest sovereign holder of bitcoin, with approximately 61,250 coins under its control. Last week Southwark Crown Court confirmed the seizure of bitcoin linked to a Chinese fraud, now worth more than £5 billion, after defendant Zhimin Qian, pleaded guilty to possessing and transferring criminal property.

Despite this situation, government officials have so far resisted calls to examine bitcoin’s potential strategic role. In May 2025 Emma Reynolds, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said that creating a national bitcoin reserve was ‘not appropriate’ for the UK market. Instead of discussing bitcoin’s role, the recent Labour Party conference in Liverpool had a focus on digital identity, where Visa’s Mandy Lamb remarked: “the trick is how do you link payments with IDs?”

Digital ID did not feature in the Prime Minister’s keynote speech. Observers suggested that the omission reflected political sensitivity. A public petition opposing digital ID cards has now gathered more than 2.7 million signatures, making it one of the largest petitions in parliamentary history. The government, however, continues to frame digital identity as a tool of economic inclusion and growth. Officials have said it could deliver a £4.3 billion boost to the economy and the Tony Blair Institute has argued that the public supports a modern identity system that would provide fairness, control and convenience.

Civil liberties groups have challenged the government’s framing of digital identity as inclusion. Big Brother Watch’s report Checkpoint Britain warns that such systems are likely to exclude rather than include, citing Britain’s poor record on major data breaches and polling that shows 63 per cent of the public do not trust the government to safeguard a universal identity database. The report also highlights the risk of mission creep, where IDs first required for public services could become mandatory for work, housing, benefits, voting and even everyday spending. Liberty has raised similar concerns, warning that digital ID systems can impose barriers for marginal communities. International examples show that schemes introduced in the name of access can end up driving exclusion.

James Dewar, an accountant and Partner at Bridge to Bitcoin, when asked about Visa’s vision of linking digital IDs to payment argued that another major concern is the concentration of power. He said, “We need to call out the unholy alliance of mega corporations and consultancy firms cosying up to governments to sell them their advice services and help build technological, legal and regulatory moats jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Whether this is in the realm of CBDCs, AI or Digital IDs. They are conspiring to aggregate power in their interests instead of innovating their products and services to benefit customers using open technologies in a free and competitive environment. Profiting from the latter may be harder work, but it is important to understand that in the digital world this is the only route through which 8 billion people will gain and retain their liberty”.

The Labour Party conference illustrated how closely government and financial incumbents are aligned on identity and payment systems. Lucy Rigby MP, now the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, described digital assets and identity as part of the UK’s strategic infrastructure. Speakers stressed interoperability and verification as foundations of the next stage of financial services.

The question of whether the Treasury should consider a strategic Bitcoin reserve to strengthen the UK’s economic position was put directly to Lucy Rigby, but went unanswered.

Peter Kyle MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, said that Britain should aim to build the first trillion pound business in the UK. His remark overlooked the fact that Bitcoin already exists at that scale as a global asset class. The contrast highlights the policy gap. While some ministers focus on digital identity tied to payments as a framework of control and verification, Bitcoin operates outside that framework, open to anyone with a device and an internet connection.

International examples show how far different countries are already leaning into Bitcoin. In the U.S., President Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, the plan is to treat bitcoin held by the government as reserve assets, not simply liquidate them. Congress has since introduced the BITCOIN Act of 2025 to formalise and expand those policies, including potential acquisition of up to one million BTC over five years. El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and continues to hold it as a reserve asset.

These cases offer policy paths the UK could study, not necessarily to copy, but to see how sovereign Bitcoin exposure might be used strategically to aid growth and innovation.

Ben Cousens, founder of Antidote, the UK’s first Bitcoin incubator and accelerator for startups, says “Policy can be a lot more than just “buy bitcoin”. The UK government has repeatedly referenced its own mandate for national renewal and growth—messages we can surely all get behind. The trick is in how to facilitate and drive that growth, where establishing a productive and favourable regulatory regime for business alongside sensible guidelines for consumers should play a major role. Growth comes from enabling and empowering those who create economic value, and Bitcoin has a 15-year track record of enormous value creation that the UK should participate in whole-heartedly.”

Britain, with some of the highest electricity costs in Europe and billions of pounds in sovereign bitcoin holdings, faces both challenges and opportunities. Energy prices shape its prospects in energy-intensive sectors from AI to bitcoin mining, areas that governments worldwide are tying to future growth. While the Labour Party conference was underway, a representative of the Tony Blair Institute was asked how the UK could reconcile ambitions to be an AI and digital superpower with such high energy costs. The reply was that this remained ‘aspirational,’ a reminder that political ambitions are often not matched by practical delivery.

The same gap between promise and reality is evident in financial policy. On one side, digital ID is promoted as inclusion, even as civil liberties groups warn of exclusion. On the other is bitcoin, with billions of pounds now in government custody, permissionless and global. The petition against digital ID shows the strength of public concern, while the court case confirms that bitcoin is already a state controlled asset worth billions.

Whether Britain recognises it or not, these holdings place it in the global race to define the future of money, a race in which identity linked systems and permissionless networks are pulling in very different directions. The outcome will shape economic sovereignty for decades to come.

The UK has a proud history of excellence and innovation in both financial services and in computer science. But its regulatory approach to bitcoin, which sits at the intersection between these disciplines, is undermining that position. The Financial Conduct Authority has created uncertainty, driven businesses offshore, and is damaging the UK’s competitiveness in digital finance.

Regulatory uncertainty, restrictive policies, and a risk-averse approach have put the UK at a disadvantage as institutions elsewhere move forward. While other jurisdictions recognize Bitcoin’s role in institutional finance, UK regulators have created an environment that stifles progress.

The Bitcoin for Institutions event, held recently in London at The Law Society, brought together investors, policymakers, and industry leaders to assess bitcoin’s growing significance. The consensus? The rest of the world is advancing while the UK remains stuck in bureaucratic inaction.

Allen Farrington, co-founder of Axiom, a bitcoin-native investment firm focused on capital deployment in the bitcoin economy, captured the shift in institutional thinking. He described bitcoin as “forming the basis of a viable institutional asset class.”

However, despite bitcoin being the best-performing asset of the decade, UK institutions remain hesitant. The FCA, tasked with ensuring financial stability, has instead become a barrier to innovation, and the result is that businesses have been driven out of the UK, driven out by regulatory hostility or simply deciding that the cost of compliance with poorly thought-out regulation is too high.

Institutional Hesitation

While the UK stalls, the U.S. moves fast. One message was repeated throughout the event. Ignoring bitcoin is now seen as a career risk.

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In the U.S., pension funds, corporate treasuries, and asset managers are integrating bitcoin into their portfolios. In recent months, the largest buyers of bitcoin have not been retail investors or hedge funds, but institutional funds.

Andrew Hohns, founder and CEO of Newmarket Investment Management, described the contrast, “Many U.S. companies have started incorporating bitcoin into their financial planning, and many others are well down the road. In the UK, institutional awareness of the benefits of bitcoin is more nascent, but the topic will move closer to center stage as corporate and sovereign game theory quickly take hold."

Dominic Frisby summed up the cost of inaction: "Given the potential of bitcoin, and its record, the risk is not so much owning bitcoin as not owning it."

In dialogue with Izabella Kaminska, Steve Baker, who served as Minister of State in the Cabinet Office until July 2024, commented on U.S. policymakers’ proactive stance, stating, “It’s great that the US is governed by a group of people who understand this.”

In contrast, jurisdictions like the U.S., UAE, and Singapore are attracting capital by implementing frameworks that distinguish between bitcoin and speculative cryptoassets. The FCA has created a framework that treats bitcoin the same as speculative crypto tokens, ignoring its distinct characteristics as a decentralized monetary network.

Adrian Cannon from Musqet pointed out this fundamental mismatch, "Bitcoin is revolutionary in ideas and concepts and that doesn’t fit within regulation and banking."

The Bureaucratic Maze Blocks Innovation

Beyond the FCA’s misclassification of bitcoin, the UK’s broader regulatory structure is also a barrier to institutional adoption. Baroness Claire Fox, who sits in the House of Lords, told the audience about a recent government initiative called the Regulatory Innovation Office, which was implemented with the intention of reining in regulators. However, the reality is a system of self-replicating bureaucracy, as she described a quango of regulators where no one has accountability.

This structure discourages innovation, shields regulators from scrutiny, and blocks new market entrants, creating a system that protects incumbents while deterring progress. While regulators insist their approach is about protecting investors, the reality is that businesses are being forced offshore, limiting choice and harming competitiveness.

Environmental And Social Impacts

Beyond regulatory concerns, institutional adoption has also been slowed by misconceptions about bitcoin’s environmental impact. Discussions at the event highlighted how bitcoin is being used to stabilize energy grids, reduce waste, and improve sustainability.

One panel on social benefits discussed bitcoin’s growing role in advancing financial inclusion and human rights - and the fintech products being built to enable this. In regions affected by financial repression, bitcoin is being used to bypass restrictions, support activist movements, and provide stable value transfer in fragile economies. In areas with poor access to banking, whether in sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, or refugee communities, bitcoin offers a way to receive donations, store value, and operate independently from centralised financial institutions.

Recent data indicates that over 50% of bitcoin mining is now powered by renewable energy sources. Miners are increasingly co-locating with wind, solar, and hydro projects, acting as flexible demand-response partners and absorbing excess energy when supply outpaces demand and powering down during peak consumption to relieve pressure on the grid.

In the UK, this model could deliver substantial savings, especially given that electricity prices here are among the highest in the world. Reducing energy costs could offer a vital boost to both households and businesses facing mounting bills. According to the National Grid ESO, curtailment of wind power alone cost British consumers over £800 million in 2023, as renewable generators were paid to shut down during periods of oversupply, with the tab being picked up by households.

If this curtailed energy were redirected to bitcoin mining, an approach already implemented in parts of the U.S., Scandinavia, and Africa, it would reduce these costs and provide an additional revenue stream for renewable operators. Instead of paying producers to switch off, excess energy could be monetised in real-time, and customers would see immediate savings on their bills.

Bitcoin mining is also being used to capture vented methane from oil fields and repurpose landfill gas into electricity, turning environmental liabilities into economic opportunities. These developments challenge legacy thinking and position bitcoin as an energy solution.

The UK’s Window For Adoption Is Closing

The discussion repeatedly returned to one key issue, namely that the UK is falling behind.

While British firms continue debating whether bitcoin should be included in institutional portfolios, U.S. asset managers and corporate treasurers are already executing their bitcoin strategies. Dominic Frisby captured the financial risk of inaction, "The risk is not owning it."

At the same time, institutional investors in the U.S. and elsewhere are increasing their exposure. In recent months, institutional funds have been the largest single buyer of bitcoin. This shift was largely due to BlackRock and Fidelity launching U.S.-approved bitcoin ETFs in early 2024, an institutional milestone that the UK has yet to match. What’s more, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in early March 2025 to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, positioning bitcoin as a strategic asset within the U.S. financial system. ​

The tension between legacy finance and emerging alternatives was clear throughout the event, which was described as a clash between Wall Street and Main Street. The real risk for the UK is not that bitcoin will fail but that it will succeed elsewhere and leave the UK institutions scrambling to catch up. If the UK wants to remain a serious player in global finance, it needs to adapt before the next wave of innovation settles elsewhere.

Baroness Claire Fox offered a blunt assessment of the current state of affairs and the path to change, “Rebellion is the way forward.”

From Caution To Urgency

The Bitcoin for Institutions event clearly demonstrated an unavoidable truth: that UK institutions must act.

Regulatory paralysis is not stopping bitcoin’s adoption. It is simply pushing progress elsewhere. While the U.S., UAE, and Singapore create supportive policies, the UK remains locked in bureaucratic complexity. Without a course correction, UK financial firms will be left behind in the next phase of institutional finance.

Bitcoin is no longer an emerging trend, it is a financial transformation already in motion. And transformations do not wait for governments and regulators to catch up.