🇫🇷☢️📞🇪🇺 — French President Emmanuel Macron:

I am ready to open the debate on a Pan-European Defense Pact that will include nuclear weapons.

🇫🇷❌🇺🇸 — French President Emmanuel Macron:

“We need to make sure that we can build partnerships with third countries — that is to say, building a Europe that can show that it’s never going to be, let’s say, the lap dog of the United States"

🇪🇺⚰️❗️ — 🇫🇷French President Emmanuel Macron:

‘We must clearly realize that our Europe today is mortal.

It can die.
Europe can die, and it depends only on our choice. But this choice must be made now.
Because today the question of peace and war on our continent and whether we can guarantee our security is at stake.

We are at a turning point

Because of the attacks against Liberal-democracy, against our values, against, I say, in this place of knowledge, which is the very substrate of European Civilization, a certain relationship with liberty, justice, knowledge is at stake and not.
Yes, we are a moment of change."

🔗 Source

‼️The Rise Of Crypto’s Billion Dollar Zombies

With bitcoin soaring once again, blockchains are suddenly much more valuable. More than 50 of them are now worth over $1 billion—despite many having few users.

In order to read the full article, copy the forbes link below into here: https://12ft.io/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2024/03/27/the-rise-of-cryptos-billion-dollar-zombies

🇨🇳❌🇺🇸🔽📉 China's U.S. Treasury holdings have fallen to their lowest level in 15 years

busy week in legal / regulatory for crypto. check out this list of headlines since monday:

📌 DOJ arrests Samourai Wallet founders

📌 FBI publishes warning against using non-MSB crypto

📌 Warren sends letter re: crypto & CSAM

📌 DOJ files opposition to Tornado Cash MTD

📌 Phoenix Wallet announces exit from US

📌 zkSNACKS (Wasabi) announces exit from US

📌 Blockchain Assoc. sues SEC over “dealer” definition

📌 Consensys says received Wells Notice, sues SEC

📌 DTCC puts 100% haircut on crypto-linked securities (doesn’t affect brokerage margin)

📌 Two SEC lawyers involved in DebtBox case resign after sanctions by federal court

📌 SEC delays decision on BTC ETF options

📌 PA bank put into FDIC receivership

📌 Custodia files appeal in case denying it a master account at Fed

📌 New UK crypto-seizure rules take effect

📌 EU parliament adopts new AML rules that include crypto

📌 DOJ seeks 3+ year prison term for Binance’s CZ

📌 Tether will freeze wallets that evade sanctions against Venezuela

📌 SEC seeks $5.3bn fine from Terraform Labs & Do Kwon

📌 Ripple seeks $10m penalty, says SEC’s $1.95bn fine is too much

https://twitter.com/intangiblecoins/status/1784235523931787364

🇺🇸❌💰 They won't stop with "mixers," they're coming for self-custody too ‼️

While this government response is not yet enshrined in law or precedent, it paints a much clearer picture of how the state views not only the place of privacy tools, but even that of self-custodial wallet providers moving forward.

Let's walk step-by-step through this response from the DOJ together and see why in a thread.

🔴FinCEN's guidance is worthless

While we have spent so much time wondering how the FinCEN guidance from 2019 on VASPs, mixers, and wallet providers should be viewed, the government didn't mince words

All that worrying was pointless, as even the government considers it useless in a court of law. Much of my previous writing hinged on that FinCEN guidance being somewhat authorative, but clearly the government doesn't view their own guidance as valuable.

🔴Client-side private keys don't matter

Potentially the most shocking piece of the entire response is that the DOJ views any wallet that could possibly be made to log or transmit private keys should be treated as custodial, even if it does not do these things.

The Tornado Cash web UI was open source, and as such anyone could verify that it did not store or transmit secret notes to the developers. But even open-source verifiability isn't enough in the eyes of the DOJ.

🔴Custodial vs self-custodial doesn't matter, legally

The DOJ also makes it crystal clear that a service does not have to be custodial in any way to be considered a money transmitter, and thus required to implement KYC/AML, register with FinCEN, etc.

If this definition of a money transmitter holds up in court, it would be trivial for the DOJ to then argue that any of the following are money transmitting businesses:

- Wallet developers who host node infrastructure
- Publicly accessible and widely used nodes
- Block explorers that allow transaction publishing via hex etc.
- Lightning routing nodes
- LSPs
- etc.

This would extend the MSB laws to encompass practically everything in the cryptocurrency space outside of a user who runs their own node (although even that could still be considered money transmission for the wallet dev by this insane definition). If no control is required for money transmission, than anything that makes it easier to use Bitcoin could fall into this overbroad definition.

🔴Any and all means

The DOJ also makes it explicitly clear that they consider anyone who helps someone transfer value, even without giving up custody, as a money transmitter under the "any and all means" working in Section 1960.

If illicit money flows through a tool, even if never touched in any way by a service provider, they are required to implement KYC/AML etc.

🔴Direct profit from transactions is not required to be an MSB

An often discussed aspect of Bitcoin mixers or privacy tools is that a fee for their usage is directly paid in the transaction where privacy is gained. But Tornado Cash did not operate this way, and no direct fee was paid by a user in their transaction to the Tornado Cash founders.

But the DOJ makes it clear here that direct profit from transactions is not a requirement for being considered a money transmitter.

🔴Positive: publishing code is still considered protected

In one of the few bright spots, the DOJ makes it clear that the issue for Tornado Cash was not publishing the smart contracts, but rather building a profitable business around them.

(My reading of this may be too generous, but at least they distinguish between code creation + publishing vs running a profitable business)

https://twitter.com/sethforprivacy/status/1784298349522292980

🔴Conclusion: the DOJ wants to be able to make it drastically harder to use cryptocurrency

It seems clear to me in reading through this that the DOJ seeks to widen the net on what can be considered an MSB, allowing them to apply the subsequent regulations (and potential prosecution) to apply to anyone who makes it easier to use cryptocurrency, especially if any level of privacy is involved.

The biggest practical takeaway I have is that the only true protection against this is:

1️⃣ Create privacy tools that operate purely as a part of the core protocol, and do not rely on any central entity, website, or fee collection.
2️⃣ Get everyone and their sister to start running their own nodes at home.