Today the FCA raided eight London sites in its first ever coordinated crackdown on peer to peer crypto trading. Enforcement has now moved onto ordinary individuals operating outside the regulated system.

The UK is trying to position itself as a global centre for digital assets centred around stablecoins, tokenisation and institutional adoption.

At the same time, the most direct form of decentralised exchange is being pushed into a legal grey area. Individuals trading with one another can find everyday activity interpreted as unlawful once it reaches meaningful scale.

There are effectively no P2P traders registered under current AML rules. This creates a tension in UK policy where:

- privacy is treated as opacity
- self custody is viewed as risk
- decentralised systems are judged against rules designed for intermediaries.

When there is no realistic route to compliance, enforcement dictates behaviour by default, not by design.

These same regulatory and data collection approaches are creating real physical security risks by linking identities to holdings and turning oversight into surveillance.

The implications for safety, privacy and surveillance are unprecedented. These regulators will also have to live in the world they create...

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/uk-targets-illegal-crypto-trading-120738842.html

Ed Miliband’s red tape and grid bureaucracy has actually done something right. He has made it easier, faster and make more business sense to mine Bitcoin rather than connect to the grid.

A Yorkshire gas field that could supply over 10% of Britain’s annual demand is being positioned for early Bitcoin mining rather than immediate supply to the national grid.

Reabold Resources plans a small on site gas fired power station using private gas to mine Bitcoin, generate early revenue and help fund further development of the field.

Connecting to the grid is slow, costly and tied up in years of approvals, infrastructure build out and negotiations. Using the gas on site allows immediate monetisation from existing wells and creates early cash flow without waiting for the wider system to catch up.

When the fastest and most viable route for a domestic energy resource is private on site use rather than supplying the grid, it becomes clear that Bitcoin isn’t the problem.

This neatly exposes how misaligned UK energy policy, infrastructure and incentives have become.

It’s amazing what businesses can do to stay profitable, even when the government tries to make it almost impossible.

Full article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f18a6bf325db078e

Centralising justice is bad enough, now Labour is pushing plans to take greater control over private pension pots and dictate where that capital flows.

We need to separate money and state and seriously rethink the size and reach of government.

History keeps showing what happens when politicians steer financial decisions for everyone else.

- They incentivised diesel cars then pivoted and left owners exposed.

- They launched Help to Buy and distorted the housing market.

- They pushed green home insulation schemes then scrapped them after botched installations left homeowners with poor quality work and extra costs.

- They also hike interest rates to control inflation which crushes demand and leaves families facing higher borrowing costs and real financial misery.

Policy is made, policy reverses and individuals absorb the losses. More rules get layered on to fix the damage they caused.

This latest move on pensions is not new, governments have been trying to direct capital for years. Now it is about funnelling pension money into UK infrastructure, private companies and growth projects. All framed as being in the national interest.

The idea of pushing people into investments the government deems suitable is concerning, especially while UK retail remains restricted from easy access to a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Every day brings another example of overreach or poor judgment.

Moments like this make the case for Bitcoin even stronger.

Full article:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/news/labour-force-through-plan-dictate-pension-investments/

Great chat on @Bitcoin Archive with Archie. Always love hanging out.

A good friend of mine once said to me, “how do you operate in an adult world, you are so small?”

…well, here’s the answer.

Thanks to Charlie for finding me a footstool, aka a box.

On LBC last night with James Hanson we discussed the Lib Dems calling for an FCA inquiry into Farage’s involvement in Kwasi Kwarteng’s company Stack.

We covered potential market abuse, bitcoin treasury companies, the different risk profiles between these firms, bitcoin and crypto, and why businesses should hold bitcoin on their balance sheets.

We also discussed how little UK regulators and MPs understand bitcoin or the opportunity, and how the UK is falling behind as a result ... which is a much bigger risk!!

Audio here discussing the story.

And the article we discussed:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9vgw2g3w2o

Labour’s plan to axe jury trials for half of all cases (up to 3 years prison and for 'complex' fraud etc) is a direct attack on Britain’s freedoms.

They are dismantling the last decentralised check on state power, while pushing surveillance, digital IDs & programmable payments via regulated stablecoins.

Centralise justice and you centralise control over everything!

Full Telegraph article:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/13/labour-plan-scrap-jury-trials-threat-britain-freedoms/

The UK has some of the highest energy costs in the world and part of the reason is this:

In 2025, *£1.46 billion was spent switching off wind turbines and managing the system, often requiring gas plants to switch on, with those costs ultimately passed through to bill payers.

Yesterday alone £2.7 million was wasted ... that's enough clean energy to power Scotland for a day.

Why?

When it’s very windy, the grid becomes congested and electricity can’t get to where it’s needed. As a result, we pay to switch off wind generation while simultaneously paying gas plants to switch on elsewhere.

In effect, we are paying twice for the same electricity, once to turn it off, and again to replace it.

This is exactly the kind of problem Bitcoin’s flexible demand response is designed to solve. It can absorb excess energy at the source and turn what is currently wasted into revenue instead of loss.

We don’t lack energy, we lack the ability to use it efficiently.

Check it out for yourself, this is now my new favourite website:

https://wastedwind.energy/

* This could have bought nearly 19,000 Bitcoin during the bull run. At today's prices that same money would have secured over 27,500 Bitcoin.

Saturday Night Movie Recommendation: ‘Biggest Heist Ever’ on Netflix.

Meet Heather Morgan aka Razzlekhan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, better known as Bitcoin Bonnie and Crypto Clyde.

They were involved in one of the largest Bitcoin heists in history. He carried out the hack, she helped launder the funds. What followed was years spent trying to wash billions through thousands of transactions, convinced they were genius criminals staying one step ahead, while leaving a perfectly traceable trail.

Some say they were masterminds, others say a lot did not quite stack up.

After their New York apartment was raided, investigators seized their electronic equipment along with a bag of burner phones helpfully labelled “burner phones”, plus stacks of cash and foreign currency. Despite having access to other passports, they stayed in New York and kept posting increasingly bizarre videos online until their arrest a month later.

One investigator said he couldn’t tell if watching those videos was the best or worst part of his day.

Coffeezilla pretty much nailed it:

“Heather Morgan should be incarcerated for at least 25 years, purely on the basis of being unbearably cringe.”

They tried to outsmart an immutable public ledger, and this story makes clear why Bitcoin is not good for criminals.

If you watch one documentary this year, make it this one. It’s equally informative, hilarious, jaw dropping and the videos are so bad they’re good....

Watch it here: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81600031