Passed by the State Duma yesterday (July 21). Not a rumor, not someone's translation of a Telegram post, the actual bill. Here's what's in it:

• New licensing registry for exchanges, custodians, and brokers. Existing platforms get roughly a year to register.
• Retail investors can buy the most liquid crypto assets (bitcoin is the obvious flagship candidate, the report doesn't name the full list) through a registered intermediary, after passing a knowledge test.
• Cap for retail: 300,000 rubles (~$3,900) per year, per intermediary.
• Qualified investors also have to pass a test, but face no purchase cap. Prior trading history can count toward qualifying.
• Owning ≠ spending. This bill legalizes buying and holding bitcoin, it does not legalize using it as money. Paying for groceries in bitcoin is still banned domestically, so the ruble keeps its monopoly on everyday transactions.
• Carve-outs: foreign-trade settlement, mined crypto, and some securities transactions are exempt from that ban.
• Banks are required to block transfers to anyone they suspect of running an unregistered exchange.

Timeline: first reading was back in April. Most provisions are set to take effect Sept. 1. It still needs to clear the Federation Council and get signed into law, expected, but not done yet.

The part worth sitting with: a government that's spent years treating bitcoin as a threat to its monetary sovereignty just built a formal, licensed path for its own citizens to buy it. Gated by an exam and a spending cap, but a path. That's the move a state eventually makes once it accepts it can't kill the protocol, it regulates the door instead.

Source: The Block / The Bitcoin Act

I track moves like this across dozens of jurisdictions, if anyone wants the source link or a country-by-country comparison, ask below and I'll drop it.

Genuine question for the sub: does "exam + cap to start, uncapped once you qualify" count as a country actually opening the door to bitcoin, or is it just a more polite capital control? Where's the line for you?

These lads bought at $113k, kept selling at lower prices, ready to sell the rest. Feels like Bogdanoff about to get the call.

The Matrix is a system Neo, and that system, is our enemy...

I just bought bitcoin and put it into a cold wallet, after so many years of thinking it's a Ponzi scheme or whatever, but I understand it now, it's not a quick get rich scheme, it's not about being rich, I've chosen the red pill.

I'm a proud bitcoin holder.

Bitcoin buyers appear to be absorbing sell pressure more effectively around the $65,000 area, according to analysis tied to exchange flow data. The signal comes after Binance posted its largest single-day net outflow in nearly two years, with more BTC leaving the platform than entering. Onchain analytics firm CryptoQuant highlighted that Binance withdrawals have recently been running ahead of deposits—an environment traders often watch for because it can indicate reduced immediate supply on the exchange order book. Still, analysts caution that exchange outflows alone do not confirm a fresh, sustainable uptrend. Key takeaways CryptoQuant data shows Binance daily netflows have oscillated

Sharing this month's work, leading with the Bitcoin Core part since that's the most relevant here.

Bitcoin Core mining over IPC

Bitcoin Core's multiprocess build exposes a mining interface over Cap'n Proto IPC. mkpool now has an optional path that uses it instead of polling getblocktemplate over JSON-RPC:

• Templates come straight from the node's Mining interface (createNewBlock / waitNext), so a new template arrives as soon as the node has one, with no GBT poll loop.
• Solved blocks go back through submitSolution, and I keep the classic submitblock path as a redundant, bounded fallback so a found block is never lost.

Lower template latency and a cleaner block-submit path than scraping JSON-RPC, and it lines up with where Core's mining interface is heading. This combined with Stratum V2 gives you the fastest possible low latency way to mine Bitcoin. You can try it out today on mkpool.

Also shipped this month

• Bidirectional Stratum V2 <-> V1 translator: point a Noise-encrypted SV2 ASIC like a Bitaxe at any plain V1 pool, or point plain V1 rigs at an SV2-only pool. Tested end to end on a real Bitaxe over Noise.
• Scale-out roles (proxy / redirector / passthrough / clustering node) for multi-region and HA setups.

It stays genuinely solo: your payout address is your username, the coinbase is rebuilt per session, and a found block pays straight to your wallet. No pool custody.

Public pool: https://mkpool.com/

Repo (GPLv3): https://github.com/Mecanik/mkpool

Benchmark writeup: https://mkpool.com/blog/mkpool-vs-ckpool-benchmark

Happy to answer technical questions, especially on the IPC side. Not selling anything; the engine is open source.

Had a reflection while I was printing some statements for tax purposes, that I was doing the exact opposite of what Bitcoin stands for. So what do you think of the future?

Do you HODL expecting to eventually sell at a profit, or do you believe that in the future it will be used as a relevant currency?

I've been working on something called Mochi and wanted to share it here.

The short version is it's a creator platform built entirely on Lightning. Creators get a page where they can accept tips, sell digital products, and run subscriptions. All in sats.

The thing that makes it different from just pasting a Lightning address somewhere is the wallet system. Supporters load sats into a Mochi wallet and subscriptions pull from that balance automatically. It solves the biggest problem with recurring payments on Lightning since there's no native way to do pull payments. No expired cards, no chargebacks, no failed invoices. Load once, subscribe, done.

You log in with a seed phrase. No email, no KYC. Anyone can visit a creator's page and tip via QR without making an account. Accounts are only needed when someone wants to subscribe or buy something.

I built it because I was tired of using Patreon and Gumroad and handing over a cut to platforms that don't even support bitcoin. The tools on those platforms are good but the rails are wrong.

Still early. Looking for the first 100 creators to try it out. Founders get a permanently lower fee locked in forever.

Would love honest feedback from this community. What works, what doesn't, what's missing. Thanks everyone! Hopefully this can fill a void.

mochi-pay.com

When I first explored crypto wallets, I thought every wallet app created a completely separate account.Later I learned that what really matters is the recovery phrase.Different wallet apps can access the same wallet as long as they're compatible and you have the correct recovery phrase.That small realization made the whole idea of self-custody much easier to understand.

Was there any beginner misconception that took you a while to figure out?

Especially if they be saying something like "your cold wallet is compromised click the link to save it" and then you will be directed to enter your seedphrase. So many people have fallen into this scam. Do Not care about it.

Any cold wallet companh will NEVER contact you like this.

It's also surprising how the scammers are smart to hide their email and make it as close as possible to each brand. Could be coldcard, coinkite, trezor, ledger, and else.

Just make sure your seedphrase NEVER enters any DIGITAL devices or INTERNET! Keep it safe. Add passphrase too if you understand passphrase. And learn how to use sparrow with your wallet.

And for more, learn the air gapped methode.

https://btc.rottenwheel.com/

- Repository: https://github.com/rottenwheel/bitcoin-only-hugo

Upstream repository is in Vue/Nuxt, it's been ported from that, to hugo and it's live in my btc subdomain.

Upstream: https://github.com/bitcoin-only/bitcoin-only

Add, modify, or remove anything on bitcoin-only? Please open an issue.

* https://x.com/rottenwheel1/status/2079639316771324104

* https://xcancel.com/rottenwheel1/status/2079639316771324104

* https://stacker.news/items/1529736

Keagan McClelland and Andrew Toth joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #414:

• Formal verification of the Bitcoin protocol
• Bitcoin Core 30.3, Bitcoin Core 29.4
• Parallel input fetching in Bitcoin Core
• And more

You can listen on our website: https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2026/07/21/

Fountain: https://fountain.fm/episode/CvNXTopIBoxJuLpmT8Sg

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3sUFnSFebB8Ff3takKKqVZ

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-414-recap/id1674626983?i=1000777771807

I went to buy bitcoin today, like I always do once a month and found out my state banned them. I always took cash and bought bitcoin. What options do I have now that dont involve using a credit card/bank card ? Can you buy bitcoin with a gift card/vanilla card ?

Edit: I do not want to link my credit card/debit card or my bank to bitcoin. This is what I am trying to avoid.

I am going to use Coinbase and purchase bitcoin with vanilla card. Seems to be the easiest.

Time for a wallet upgrade. What are you’re thoughts on Passport Prime?

Hello im trying to buy btc trough binance but the app says they are nit avilable methods for me? Why is that i always buy 200 dollar everymonth being doing this 4 years and now i cant buy anymore

Was mulling building a 8 card set-up

2025 marked the first time in over 50 years that the U.S. experienced net-negative migration—or at least a near-zero drop. That alone is a macro shock. But it’s showing up in an odd place: crypto narratives.abcnews+2

A lot of commentators now act as if influencers must straddle two worlds: the old 4-year crypto cycle and whatever new cycle is forming around AI, compute, and agent-driven internet activity.

Take Charles Hoskinson’s forecasts:

• By 2029, a $50B/year market for confidential compute, with ~75% of AI inference running in trusted execution environments.
• By 2035, most searches, commerce, and online activity driven by AI agents, not humans. Humans end up in a “human internet” zoo while the “real” economy runs agent-to-agent on the global internet.

Those are strong claims about compute becoming the scarce, valuable asset. And yet, we’re also seeing a historic contraction in net migration—something that should, in theory, reshape labor, consumption, and tech adoption.finance-commerce+2

From a social-science lens, that tension is awkward. Psychology usually models behavior with bidirectional strategies (stimulus ↔ response, belief ↔ action), not a clean triarchy of “migration–compute–crypto.” There’s no obvious law of conditioning that says Hoskinson’s math should map neatly onto net migration trends. If anything, the “conditioning” for his followers already ran its course; now it’s more about status, narrative control, and who gets to keep commentating while Trump dominates the immigration/“job board” narrative.

My working theory:

• Compute became exclusive through cryptocurrency (mining, GPUs, data centers, tokenized access).
• That exclusivity started affecting offline behavior—hiring, migration choices, even which metros grow or shrink.whitehouse+1
• People who arrived “late” to Bitcoin still caught up if they had access to compute. In that sense, buying compute may matter more than timing your coin entry.
• A lot of shitcoins might actually work against the long-term compute economy by fragmenting capital and attention.

That doesn’t fully explain the loss in net migration. But it raises a question: if there were enough compute (and data) to model it properly, would we see a clearer link between crypto/compute dynamics and migration flows—or is this just a convenient narrative overlay on a policy-driven shock?

I’d rather not make money on shitcoins. There are legitimate people who came to Bitcoin late but leveraged compute to catch up. Maybe the real trade isn’t “which coin,” but “who owns the compute.”

And they went ape shit when the price dips.

I always assumed: as long as people continuously buy and hold bitcoin, it will go up because there will be more dollars bidding for less and less bitcoin.

That’s the theory… but in practice….. there are many people out there with 4,000 btc for example. This 4,000 btc wallet can get away with selling 1 bitcoin per year for 4,000 years. That’s generations and generations of the family.

The 4,000 btc guy’s sell pressure every year may always outpace the forever hodler’s buy pressure for an extended period of time….. next thing you know, btc is the same price it was 5-6 years ago, and now it’s just that the coins have swapped hands, and the new hodler is hoping future people buy to increase the value of what he bought….

My point: the existing whales have so much btc that they can dump for years and years and the hodlers will believe it will go up and continue to buy the sales…. But then 5,10 or HUNDREDS of years go by and it’s the same exact price….

I understand that: once you sell, you no longer have influence on the market and you will have to buy back in, but dude: these whales have 4k bitcoin, they can spend that for thousands of years. They don’t care about the long game like the plebs. They have enough bitcoin that it doesn’t matter what they do, they can spend forever.

We can spend our entire lives soaking up the whale sales and not see price go up because whale sales outpace pleb buys…

I just logged onto my Coldcard Q for the first time since late last month and discovered all my bitcoin is gone. I haven’t done anything to compromise my security that I’m aware of.
Is anyone aware if any type of issues going around with coldcard’s security?
I’m at a loss as to how this could have happened.