u/TheresNoSecondBest

The White House is on the verge of a formal announcement on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — and the official leading the charge says the hard part is done.

Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, told an interviewer this week that the administration has cleared a major legal hurdle in standing up the reserve.

“We’ll have an announcement,” Witt said. “I wish I could say more… It’s a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets.”

The signal follows a similar declaration Witt made at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, where he told the crowd an update was coming within weeks.

President Trump signed the executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on March 6, 2025. Since then, Witt says his deputy Harry John has driven the interagency process: identifying what legal authorities exist, commissioning the necessary legal memos, and building a custody and reporting infrastructure across federal agencies that were designed for gold, not private keys.

The reserve holds an estimated 328,372 BTC — roughly 1.6% of total global supply — accumulated through law enforcement seizures, including the Silk Road takedown, the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery, and years of criminal forfeitures.

The executive order bars the Treasury from selling a single coin.

Witt pointed to a breach at the U.S. Marshals Service as proof that the reserve’s security mandate is urgent. A government contractor named John Daghita allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from USMS custody accounts in late 2025, and the FBI arrested him in March 2026. A separate $24 million theft was traced to October 2024.

“It’s a case in point for why it was so necessary that the president established the SBR,” Witt said.

An executive order dies the moment a new president takes office. That vulnerability is the core argument for two bills now moving through Congress. Rep. Nick Begich recently rebranded the BITCOIN Act as the American Reserves Modernization Act (ARMA), which would authorize the U.S. Treasury to purchase up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years — with holdings locked for a minimum of 20 years. Senator Cynthia Lummis has put Congress on a deadline, pushing for a vote before the summer recess as midterm campaigning begins to consume floor time.

If the BITCOIN Act passes, the Treasury’s first open-market Bitcoin purchase is projected for Q4 2026 — making the U.S. the first sovereign nation to actively accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

WE ARE NOT THE SAME!

As of 5/17/2026, they hodl 843,738 BTC acquired for ~$63.87 billion at ~$75,700 per bitcoin

#A security researcher says Microsoft secretly built a backdoor into BitLocker, releases an exploit to prove it

#YellowKey exploit bypasses BitLocker full volume encryption via USB stick and WinRE

A researcher known as "Nightmare-Eclipse" recently released YellowKey, a security vulnerability that allegedly enables a full bypass of BitLocker's full-volume encryption. The researcher described YellowKey as one of the most "insane" flaws they have ever encountered and has also accused Microsoft of potentially embedding a legitimate backdoor in BitLocker's data protection system.

According to the researcher, YellowKey appears unusual for a previously unknown security bug. Nightmare-Eclipse explained that the flaw can be reproduced by copying an attached "FsTx" folder to a USB drive formatted with a Windows-compatible file system such as NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT.

The vulnerability may also work without a USB drive if the FsTx files are copied to the Windows EFI partition and the encrypted disk is temporarily disconnected from the system. After placing the FsTx folder, an attacker would need to reboot a BitLocker-protected machine, enter the Windows Recovery Environment, and follow a specific sequence of inputs.

If the procedure is completed correctly, a command shell reportedly appears, granting unrestricted access to BitLocker-protected volumes. No passwords are required, and the encrypted data may become fully accessible for browsing, copying, and other file operations.

Nightmare-Eclipse believes that YellowKey's vulnerability could reasonably be considered a backdoor intentionally introduced into BitLocker by Microsoft. Their reasoning is that the component triggering the issue can only be found in the official WinRE image. The same component is also present in standard Windows installation images, but it does not exhibit the BitLocker-bypassing behavior observed on live systems.

The researcher explained that they "just can't come up with an explanation beside the fact that this was intentional. Also for whatever reason, only windows 11 (+Server 2022/2025) are affect, windows 10 is not."

// Related Stories Apple is rolling out end-to-end encryption for iPhone to Android RCS messages Hackers used Daemon Tools' own website to silently install backdoors on thousands of PCs for nearly a month Third-party researchers have reportedly confirmed that YellowKey behaves as described by Nightmare-Eclipse in public GitHub materials. In addition, the researcher released a second exploit, GreenPlasma, which is said to enable privilege escalation. They did not publish full proof-of-concept code for achieving SYSTEM-level access, instead suggesting they may disclose further details ahead of next month's Patch Tuesday.

Nightmare-Eclipse is known for targeting Microsoft and the company's alleged hostility toward external security researchers. Previously operating under the alias "Chaotic Eclipse," they released Red Sun and other vulnerabilities with public proof-of-concept code, while accusing Microsoft of damaging their career and reputation.

As for YellowKey's alleged backdoor behavior, mitigation is relatively straightforward. Security professionals generally recommend avoiding reliance on any single encryption system and instead evaluating well-reviewed full-disk encryption alternatives such as VeraCrypt.

A Bitcoin holder has gone viral after claiming he recovered around $400,000 in BTC from a wallet that had been locked for more than a decade, with help from Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude.

The user, known as Cprkrn on X, shared the wild crypto recovery story on May 13, saying Claude helped him regain access to 5 Bitcoin after years of failed attempts.

“Holy f**king sht omg Claude just cracked this sht,” he wrote in the viral post, thanking Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $79,600, putting the 5 BTC recovery at roughly $398,000.

According to the thread, the wallet had been locked since the user’s college days. He said he originally bought the crypto when it was worth around $250 per coin, before losing access after changing the wallet password while high.

The password, as later revealed in the post, was: “lol420fuckthePOLICE!*:)”

The user said he had tried for years to recover the funds, claiming he ran through trillions of possible password combinations. However, the breakthrough reportedly came when he uploaded files from his old college computer into Claude.

Rather than simply guessing the password, Claude helped dig through the old files and identify an older wallet.dat file that appeared to predate the password change. The user also reportedly had an old mnemonic phrase, which helped unlock the wallet once the correct file was found.

BTCRecover, a known wallet recovery tool, is designed for cases where users already know most of a wallet password or seed but need help testing variations. Its documentation says it supports Bitcoin Core wallet recovery, among several other wallet types.

The story quickly spread across crypto and AI circles, with many pointing out that Claude did not “break” Bitcoin’s security. Instead, it helped the user sort through old files, understand what had gone wrong, and recover access using valid wallet data.

Still, for anyone with old hard drives lying around, it is also a brutal reminder: your forgotten files could be worth more than you think.

Cprkrn even said he plans on naming his child after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which seems like a fair deal considering he’s now around $400,000 richer.

Block Inc.’s (XYZ) Square has crossed a threshold of roughly 1 million merchants now enabled to accept Bitcoin payments.

The figure, cited by a member of Block’s team, reflects a wave of auto-enrollment that began March 30, when Square automatically switched on BTC payments by default for eligible U.S. sellers.

At its peak pace, a new business was activating the feature every eight seconds. The rollout is powered by the Lightning Network, enabling near-instant settlement while merchants receive U.S. dollars by default, removing currency risk from the equation.

In other words, customers can pay in Bitcoin via Lightning while merchants still receive USD settlements, with the system handling conversion in the background and allowing sellers to opt out if needed.

At the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Block outlined an expanded push to make bitcoin usable as everyday money rather than simply a long-term investment. Speaking on the Nakamoto Stage, Bitcoin Product Lead Miles Suter said BTC “must circulate, not just sit still,” arguing that the cryptocurrency loses its transformational value if it does not function as peer-to-peer cash.

Suter highlighted Block’s growing adoption metrics, revealing at the time that there were more than 800,000 Square merchants who now have BTC payments auto-enrollment enabled. This number seems to be above According to Suter, a new business activates the feature every eight seconds. The company is also rolling out a tap-to-pay BTC feature using NFC hardware and the Lightning Network, eliminating QR codes and offering zero processing fees through 2026.

The company’s broader strategy centers on integrating bitcoin across its ecosystem. Cash App users can now automatically convert peer-to-peer payments into BTC, earn 5% Bitcoin Back rewards at Square merchants, and withdraw up to $10,000 per day and $25,000 per week.

Block also introduced an updated Bitkey hardware wallet featuring a touchscreen and 2-of-3 multisig security model designed to simplify self-custody.

Alongside the product announcements, Block released its Q1 2026 proof-of-reserves report showing holdings of 28,355.05 BTC worth roughly $2.2 billion.

Jameson Lopp warns of a potential Sybil attack against Bitcoin after a sudden surge of 200,000 fake P2P addresses.

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/2053449976320061460

https://nitter.net/lopp/status/2053449976320061460

https://www.dsn.kastel.kit.edu/bitcoin/

Tagging u/Statoshi

A large-scale infrastructure anomaly has been detected in Bitcoin's P2P network, potentially representing hidden preparation for a technical attack. Starting on April 9, 2026, the chart tracking unsolicited network messages (ADDR) showed a vertical spike: the number of fake and unreachable node addresses surged from a baseline of 50,000 to more than 250,000 per day.

The graphical spike was highlighted by well-known developer and Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp, who suggested that someone may be intentionally flooding communication channels with false coordinates as part of preparations for a Sybil attack. Signs of a stealth sybil attack against Bitcoin The attacker appears to have chosen a silent strategy. Instead of directly attacking block validation or transaction processing, unknown actors are attempting to rewrite Bitcoin's "phone book" - nodes exchange each other's addresses through ADDR commands so that new participants can quickly discover peers for synchronization.

By flooding the network with hundreds of thousands of fake IP addresses, the attacker is probably attempting to ensure that newly launched or restarted nodes connect exclusively to nonexistent or attacker-controlled "ghost nodes".

In theory, such a tactic could lead to an Eclipse attack, where a legitimate node becomes trapped in an informational vacuum and only sees the version of the blockchain presented by the attacker. However, in order to remain secure and receive accurate blockchain data, a node only needs to establish a connection with at least one honest participant in the network.

Bitcoin's client software also automatically distributes connections across different subnets, making it difficult for an attacker to monopolize all connection slots from a single IP address pool. At the moment, the anomaly appears to create more parasitic bandwidth load than a direct threat to consensus itself.

• Since the start of the 2026 Iran war, Bitcoin has outpaced gold by about 35–36% on a relative basis, as the BTC/gold ratio surged.

• BTC is up roughly 7–10% over the conflict period, while gold has been flat to down, a sharp reversal of the traditional “gold as safe haven” pattern.

• Analysts say ETF inflows, the “digital gold” narrative, and macro positioning helped Bitcoin behave more like a risk‑sensitive alternative store of value than a classic crisis hedge.

The Stratum v2 Working Group announces today that ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation, and DMND have joined the working group to advance the adoption of the Stratum v2 protocol.

The working group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral to develop and maintain the Stratum v2 protocol as an open and vendor-neutral specification usable by the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The protocol is an upgrade to the original Stratum mining protocol, bringing massive efficiency gains, privacy, security, and functionality that can be used to improve overall mining decentralization.

The onboarding of the new members, all substantial players in the mining ecosystem, represents a big leap forward for the working group’s progress in ensuring proper functioning and compatibility across real-world mining operations at scale. It also shows a growing consensus in the mining ecosystem that Stratum v2 is the direction to take going into the future.

“We’re proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2. Aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization,” said Andy Zhou, CEO of ANTPOOL.

Stratum v2 supports mechanisms for more efficient management of large fleets of miners, is end-to-end encrypted, and allows individual miners to produce their own block templates with supporting pools (among other features).

Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool had this to say: “Decentralization is core to our mission. Stratum V2 supports this by enabling miner-constructed templates, while also improving efficiency, especially for miners in bandwidth-constrained environments.”

Morgan Stanley holds $269.9 million in Spot Bitcoin ETF positions, with the bulk of that exposure sitting in GBTC – the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust – according to recent 13F filings submitted to the SEC.

The bank’s own Spot Bitcoin ETF, trading under the ticker MSBT, pulled in over $200 million in assets within weeks of its May 2026 launch, placing it ahead of most traditional ETF debuts by any measure.

Here is the detail that reframes the entire story: Morgan Stanley’s 15,000-plus financial advisors were not cleared to recommend these products. Every dollar that came in during those first weeks arrived because clients asked for it themselves.

That is not a distribution success story. That is a demand signal, and it raises a structural question worth sitting with: what does it mean when high-net-worth clients are pulling toward Bitcoin before advisors are permitted to push it?

In the broker-dealer world, ‘unsolicited’ has a specific regulatory meaning. Think of it like a restaurant where the waiter is not allowed to recommend the steak, but you can still order it if you ask. FINRA’s suitability rules require advisors to have formal internal approval before proactively pitching any investment product to clients. Without that approval, the product sits on the menu with no one allowed to describe it.

Morgan Stanley’s advisors are currently in that position with Spot Bitcoin ETFs. They cannot bring up MSBT or GBTC in a client meeting unprompted. But if a client walks in and says, ‘I want Bitcoin exposure through a regulated product,’ the advisor can execute that trade – and it gets logged as an unsolicited order.

That is precisely what happened during MSBT’s first two weeks. Amy Oldenburg, head of digital assets at Morgan Stanley, confirmed it directly at the Consensus conference in Miami Beach: ‘Almost all of that first week or two of activity was self-directed. It was not our advisors that were selling this.’

GBTC, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust that forms the core of Morgan Stanley’s $269.9 million position, has historically been the vehicle institutional-grade investors reached for when they wanted regulated Bitcoin exposure before newer Spot Bitcoin ETF structures became available. Morgan Stanley clients seeking that exposure were not waiting for permission – they were finding the path themselves.

The $269.9 million position disclosed in Morgan Stanley’s 13F filings is concentrated heavily in GBTC, making the firm one of the largest institutional holders of that fund.

Layered on top of that existing position, the newly launched MSBT gathered $200 million in assets under management within its opening weeks, a pace that puts it in rare company among ETF launches across any asset class.

To calibrate the scale: total Spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management across all U.S.-listed products have grown significantly since the January 2024 approval wave, with cumulative net inflows reaching $59.6 billion as Wall Street’s institutional appetite has proven more durable than many skeptics expected. Morgan Stanley’s combined position remains a fraction of that total – but the structural significance is not the dollar size. It is who is holding it and under what conditions.

MSBT launched with a 0.14% sponsor fee, the lowest among Bitcoin ETPs at launch – a deliberate pricing move that signals Morgan Stanley is competing for long-term market share, not simply checking a product box. Custody sits with Coinbase for Bitcoin cold storage and BNY Mellon for cash administration, a dual-custody model that the bank has positioned as a security differentiator. BlackRock’s IBIT remains the dominant fund by assets, but the institutional permission dynamic that drove IBIT’s early growth is now playing out in parallel at Morgan Stanley – with one key difference: this time, the bank controls the product directly.

The tension at the center of this story is structural. Morgan Stanley is simultaneously a holder of Bitcoin ETF positions, an issuer of a Bitcoin ETF product, and a firm whose advisor network is currently restricted from actively marketing that product.

That is not a contradiction; it is a sequencing strategy, and it is how large institutions have historically managed regulatory exposure when entering new asset classes.

The institutional adoption pattern here mirrors what played out with BlackRock and Fidelity’s ETF launches in 2024: proprietary and client positions accumulate quietly through unsolicited channels while the compliance and internal approval infrastructure catches up.

Advisor channel dynamics have consistently lagged institutional positioning across the ETF landscape, Morgan Stanley is not an outlier; it is following the same playbook at larger scale.

Oldenburg framed the longer arc clearly: ‘We’ll live in a hybrid world for quite some time.’ The bank is simultaneously building out spot crypto trading through its E*TRADE platform – expected to launch in the first half of 2026 with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana – while studying tokenized financial instruments as a decade-long infrastructure project. That is not a firm hedging its bets. That is a firm building a vertically integrated crypto stack.

The Colombian president pointed to the impact Bitcoin mining has had in Paraguay, which is now the fourth-largest country by Bitcoin mining hashrate.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the nation’s Caribbean coast has the potential to become a Bitcoin mining hub, leveraging its surplus renewable energy to attract foreign investment and spur economic development.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Petro said the Caribbean cities of Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Riohacha could host Bitcoin (BTC) mining facilities and tap the country’s clean energy sources, following a similar path to Venezuela and Paraguay in recent years.

“It’s an immense boost to the development of the Caribbean,” Petro said, proposing that the Wayúu community — Colombia’s largest Indigenous community, which mainly resides on the Caribbean coast — could be co-owners of the project.

Bitcoin mining analysts such as Hashlabs managing partner Jaran Mellerud have said the industry can have a sizable economic impact on emerging countries looking to convert otherwise unused electricity into cash flow.

There’s also an opening for countries with low electricity costs to capture a larger share of the Bitcoin network hashrate as US commercial miners continue expanding into AI and high-performance computing in pursuit of higher-margin opportunities.

Petro’s remarks were made in response to a post from Luxor Technology’s Alessandro Cecere, who noted that Paraguay’s share of Bitcoin hashrate has risen to 4.3% since tapping into hydroelectric energy at its Itaipu dam.

The small, landlocked South American country is now the fourth-largest Bitcoin miner behind the US, Russia and China.

A World Bank report published in April 2024 found that Colombia generates as much as 75% of its electricity from renewable energy — more than twice the global average.

Tapping these renewable sources would mitigate concerns flagged by Petro that Bitcoin mined with fossil fuels contributes to global warming and potential “climate collapse.”

Petro has served as Colombia’s president since August 2022 and has adopted a relatively neutral stance on Bitcoin and the crypto industry.

Petro would only have another three months to lead the Bitcoin mining initiative as his presidential term comes to an end in August.

He is not running in Colombia’s upcoming presidential election on May 31 due to constitutional limits.

Data from prediction market Kalshi suggests that left-leaning Senator Iván Cepeda Castro and Abelardo de la Espriella, a conservative lawyer and free-market advocate, are the clear front-runners to replace Petro.

Neither candidate has made significant public comments on Bitcoin or digital assets to date.

Adrian’s traded in the bright lights of Hollywood for Kintsugi Ranch, a 46-acre sustainable farm and wildlife sanctuary in Bastrop, Texas.

The 49-year-old now focuses on regenerative agriculture and sustainability as well as eco-conscious living.

The green move came after the pandemic where he expressed a desire to get back to basics and appreciate nature’s offering.

He describes his ranch as a ‘mini-community’ with a hippy holistic attitude where people are invited to come build and live there, and grow and share food together.

While stepping away from the big screen, he remains on camera on Earth Speed, founded in 2021 – a regenerative lifestyle platform and docuseries where Adrien advocates for regenerative farming, permaculture workshops and conducts interviews with environmental leaders.

But there’s a controversial element to his wholesome new existence in the way it is funded.

Adrien is a vocal Bitcoin advocate and is exploring using cryptocurrency to run his farming community.

“I like the technology – the decentralization of bitcoin, which gives more access to more people,” he told CNBC previously.

“I’m also spending it and trying to use it in the real world,” he said. “Right now, bitcoin is so volatile because it’s new, and people are looking at it as a trade…Eventually, it’s going to settle down and it’s going to be the currency that we use.”

Bitcoin critics often push back against the wealth disparity and the great deal of power that is used in creating new coins, in a process called ‘mining’, which involves a global network of computers working together to make them.

But Bitcoin process ‘mining’ – which uses a global network of computers to create new coins – unsurprisingly carries a large carbon footprint too that arguably contrasts Adrien’s green beliefs.

“Bitcoin does definitely have an environmental footprint,” he says. “But let’s not pooh-pooh efforts to try and make a technology that’s actually going to give a lot of empowerment to people around the world.”

During his days in the spotlight, Adrien was known for being a bit of a playboy and dated many famous women including Australian star Isabel Lucas, Sabrina The Teenage Witch actress Melissa Joan Hart and Twilight’s Ashley Greene.

He was also linked with Paris Hilton, The Bachelor winner Courtney Robertson and actress Cameron Richardson.

Adrien told Fox News in 2024 that he was poly amorous and had a bit of an ‘ego’.

He explained: “Growing up in New York, there’s a little bit of nihilism, Godless[ness], you know. And this was now the overlay of my ego, which was, ‘See? You know, I am the man, I, you know, I got the part.’ And people are, you know, approving of me.

“I didn’t believe in God…I was open and poly and, you know, liberal and I thought I was a good person, I really did.”

“It wasn’t until I was in my 40s and the love of my life who I was dating at the time, she dumped me and she, in no uncertain terms, said, ‘You’re the worst.’”

The woman in question who he credits for his lifestyle transformation is his wife, Jordan Roemelle, with their relationship being the catalyst for him leaving Hollywood behind.

Speaking on the Make Yourself at Home podcast, Adrian explained: “She was the first woman I perceive, that I was able to witness, as wanting more from me.

“She didn’t just allow the worst parts of me, she challenged me in a powerful, powerful way, as a strong woman that she is, to be more than what I am.

“I wasn’t able to do that and when I failed, she left me.”

He revealed that she ended their relationship in 2020 as he was still too caught up in the “Hollywood” mindset.

The “ego-shattering” moment forced him to re-evaluate his life and what was important to him.

After doing significant inner work, the pair reconciled with a shared vision of a simpler life.

They went on to elope in Morrocco in 2022 and now have two children, Seiko and Evren.

“I told her I wanted to buy land and do nature, she sent me a picture she did an exercise where she was drawing a picture of what she wanted to manifest.

“It was land and community and family and home, so it was fated,” he expressed.

As for his former Hollywood life, The Devil Wears Prada 2 director David Frankel recently revealed he had planned to bring back Adrian for the sequel but timing wasn’t on his side.

He told Entertainment Weekly: “I had an idea about sneaking him into a cameo, and, in the end, it was just too late in our production schedule to make it happen.”

Adrian told Page Six last month that he was “disappointed” not to have been asked back.

The environmentalist said: “We’re all fans of the movie, whether or not we’re in it.

“Obviously, it was a disappointment that I didn’t get the call to be in the sequel, but I also understand there’s some backlash with Nate, the character, so that might have something to do with it. But I think that just leaves room for a spinoff.”

Nate was considered a divisive character because he wasn’t supportive of Andy’s demanding career at Runway magazine.