Iran just told the world it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, but only if the cargo is paid for in Chinese yuan. Not dollars.

This is the clearest signal yet that the petrodollar system is fracturing, and that bitcoin's value proposition as neutral, non-sovereign money has never been stronger.

20% of the world's oil flows through Hormuz. That's 21 million barrels per day. And now a major oil chokepoint is being used to force a currency switch away from the dollar.

1. Iran is blocking most tanker traffic through Hormuz amid the conflict with the US and Israel

2. China is already Iran's largest oil buyer, a ready-made counterparty for yuan settlement

3. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil have all been settling energy trades outside the dollar over the past two years

The petrodollar isn't dying in one dramatic moment. It's being chipped away, one bilateral deal at a time, by countries that want out of a currency controlled by Washington.

But running from the dollar to the yuan is just switching one master for another. The only money no government can weaponize, freeze, or inflate away is bitcoin.

21 million. No borders. No sanctions. No strings.

Meta spent $26.3 million lobbying for "age verification" bills in 45 states. But the bills don't regulate social media. They regulate your operating system.

Someone traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records. Here's what they found:

1. Meta's lobbyist wrote Louisiana's age verification law. The sponsor confirmed it. It forces OS-level surveillance. Meta's platforms? Zero new requirements.

2. Meta covertly funded an astroturf "child safety" group to push these bills nationally. It has no EIN, no incorporation records. It doesn't legally exist.

3. $70M+ into state super PACs, deliberately fragmented across databases to dodge centralized tracking.

4. On every social media bill, Meta fights. On the one bill regulating operating systems, Meta just "monitors."

5. The EU solved this with zero-knowledge proofs. No biometrics. US bills mandate vendors that send your face to third-party clouds.

Meta profits from harvesting data. They wrote laws forcing every device to broadcast your identity through a system-level API. They built the surveillance. They wrote the mandate. They exempted themselves.

Every claim sourced from IRS filings, Senate disclosures, and state lobbying records.

Kalshi traders boosted Rep. Thomas Massie's odds in KY-04 GOP primary to ~65-67% following President Trump's rally endorsing challenger Ed Gallrein.

Stanley Druckenmiller just told Morgan Stanley that stablecoins will power the entire global payment system within 15 years. He also said Bitcoin "wasn't needed" as a store of value.

He's half right and completely wrong at the same time.

Stablecoins ARE more efficient than legacy payment rails. The market crossed $315 billion, up $180B since early 2024. Bessent projects $3 trillion by 2030. No debate there.

But calling stablecoins the future while dismissing Bitcoin misses the point entirely.

Stablecoins are tokenized fiat. They make the dollar faster, not better. They still inflate. They still get debased. They still depend on the same central banks that destroyed 99% of the dollar's purchasing power since 1913.

Making a broken currency more efficient doesn't fix the currency. It just helps you lose purchasing power faster.

Bitcoin fixes the money itself. 21 million. No CEO. No reserve requirements. No government that can print more when spending gets out of control.

Druckenmiller bought BTC around $15,000 in 2020. It's $71,000 today. Nearly 5x on an asset he says "wasn't needed."

The payments system needs fixing. But the money needs fixing more.

X is clawing back $335,000 in payouts from accounts banned for undisclosed AI-generated war footage.

Eric Trump: "I've got more conviction in cryptocurrency right now than ever before."

"Volatility is our friend."

Bitcoin has a history of outperforming the S&P 500 and gold during major geopolitical events.

h/t Sam Wouters

Boris Johnson just wrote that Pokemon cards are a better investment than Bitcoin. This is not satire. This is a real column in the Daily Mail.

His evidence? An elderly man from his village gave £500 to a stranger in a pub who promised to double it. After 3.5 years and £20,000 in "fees," the money is gone. Boris concludes: Bitcoin is a Ponzi.

Bitcoin didn't steal this man's money. A con artist did. That's like calling the dollar a scam because someone got robbed at an ATM.

What Boris left out:

1. Bitcoin is a $1.42 trillion asset with $62 billion in daily volume

2. It runs on a fully transparent public blockchain anyone can audit

3. It has outperformed every fiat currency on Earth over any 4+ year window

4. The British pound has lost over 99% of its purchasing power since the Bank of England was founded

Boris argued that money needs "Caesar's image" on it to have value. He used a Bible parable to defend central banking.

The former PM of a country that saw 11% inflation, a gilt market crisis, and a currency that buys less every year is calling the hardest money ever created a Ponzi. While comparing it unfavorably to Pikachu.

You can't make this up.

Strait of Hormuz still shut.

Tanker traffic at near-zero. Insurance pulled. Biggest energy disruption in modern history?

US trade deficit plunges 25% to $54.5B in January, lowest since October.

Exports +6% (gold, computers, aircraft), imports -1%. Deficit down 60% since March 2025.

Claude just ate the competition's lunch on long context.

Opus 4.6 hits 78.3% recall on MRCR v2 at 1M tokens. GPT-5.4 Pro at 36.6%, Gemini 3.1 Pro at 25.9%.

WTI crude surges past $99/barrel, up nearly 10% this week as Middle East tensions escalate.