8-5-2025
A Trump order could crack down on ideological debanking. UK cops cashed in on seized Bitcoin. Hester Peirce defends privacy as Tornado Cash hangs in the balance. Corporate treasuries are now stacking shitcoins. And Clanker, an AI bot, is mass-producing tokens on autopilot.
I’ve seen some strange moves in the Bitcoin space, but this week packed in a different kind of chaos. We’ve got the White House prepping an executive order to go after ideological debanking—yeah, that’s what they’re calling it now. Supposedly, the order would stop banks from closing accounts just because they don't like your beliefs. But here’s the thing: what exactly counts as a belief? Is running a gun shop a belief? Owning a Bitcoin node? Selling burritos? Until we define the terms, this whole thing's a Rorschach test for regulators. Still, something needs to be done. We’ve seen too many people cut off from their own money just because they’re Bitcoin adjacent. And if Trump’s people are even thinking about putting a stop to it, I’ll take it. Carefully.
Across the pond, the UK police just set a terrifying precedent. They seized some Bitcoin tied to a theft back in 2017. Cool, whatever. But they reimbursed the victim in full and then kept the extra value that had appreciated over time. That's right—they held it long enough to watch it pump and then pocketed the profit. Now they’re calling it a “windfall” and tossing it into a crime-fighting fund. What’s next? Cops trading on CoinGecko to pad their budgets? If you don’t think that incentivizes more aggressive asset seizures, you’re not paying attention.
https://decrypt.co/333550/uk-police-force-gets-665k-bitcoin-windfall-from-seizures
Hester Peirce showed up and said something. She stood up for privacy—transactional privacy, open-source development, self-custody—the whole deal. She reminded everyone how important cryptography was to the early internet and why we should protect it now. Tornado Cash is still on trial. Roman Storm’s fate hangs in the balance, and we’ve got to remember: if they can jail a dev for writing code, they can jail anyone. The jury's still out—literally—but at least someone inside the SEC hasn’t lost their damn mind.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hester-peirce-defends-crypto-privacy-tornado-cash-trial
On the corporate side, MEI Pharma just bought $100 million worth of Litecoin for their treasury, and Sharplink stacked $265 million of Ethereum. That’s not bullish. That’s institutional-scale shitcoinery. Charlie Lee is back from the dead, apparently. And Joe Lubin? He’s on the board of Sharplink. The guy co-created Ethereum and is now using public companies to buy his own bags. It’s the same scam we’ve seen a thousand times—only now it’s dressed in a blazer and filed with the SEC.
https://www.theblock.co/post/365645/mei-pharma-litecoin-treasury-strategy-charlie-lee-gsr
But the worst part? It’s automated now. A bot named Clanker has created 355,000 meme tokens—no human hands required. It deploys them, launches liquidity, and takes a cut on every swap. People are actually using this thing. It’s not a joke. The grift is now fully on autopilot, and retail is walking straight into the blades. This is what happens when you combine greed, AI, and zero critical thinking. And if you’re not careful, the signal gets buried in the sludge. Protect your stack. Warn your people. It’s open season out there.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/clanker-ai-memecoin-fees-355k-tokens
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