Web traffic to the top 100 US news sites has fallen 28% in two years. Down from ~66 million monthly visits to 47.6 million.

The legacy media business model was already on life support. Advertising revenue was cratering. Subscriptions were plateauing. Now the audience is physically leaving.

People aren't consuming less information. They're getting it from podcasts, newsletters, group chats, and social feeds run by individuals they actually trust. The institutional brand means less every year.

The news industry spent two decades trading credibility for clicks. Now they're losing both.

Data: Similarweb via Axios

The ECB and all 27 EU central banks want to scrap MiCA's rule requiring major stablecoin issuers to hold 60% of reserves in bank deposits.

Their reasoning? Stablecoin flows are too volatile and could expose banks to sudden deposit withdrawals.

The central banks aren't worried about protecting stablecoin holders. They're worried about protecting banks FROM stablecoin holders.

The proposed fix: issuers hold reserves in "highly liquid assets" maturing in 1 to 5 days instead of parking them at banks.

Translation: stablecoins got big enough that their deposit requirements became a systemic risk to the very banking system they were forced to integrate with.

The regulated structure created the fragility. This is what happens when you try to shoehorn new money into old pipes.

Full Sec Scott Bessent interview on Jacqueline Corba today.

TFTC 794 w/ Gary Brode: "People still believe the Federal Reserve has control. It doesn't. The bond market doesn't care what Warsh is doing, nothing stops this train."

We discuss:
⚡ Why the Fed lost control
⚡ The AI bubble & OpenAI
⚡ Bitcoin in El Salvador

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFZykZuRc0Y

If AI companies really think they're going to destroy humanity, why don't they just stop?

Big AI wants regulation for the same reason Amazon wanted sales taxes.

Gary Brode explains why AI safety talk is really about killing competition.

The policies sold as fixing wealth inequality are the ones causing it.

If you own a home, Bitcoin, or gold, inflation is making you richer. Everyone else is paying for it.

Gary Brode explains the economic illiteracy behind today's policy debate.

Someone tell bitcoin it's not mainstream yet.

China is rapidly scaling its AI infrastructure as global data center capex projections nearly double since January 2026, now expected to top $3 trillion by 2030.

xAI just dropped Grok 4.7.

Christine Lagarde personally blocked Binance from operating in the EU, per the WSJ.

Binance was on the cusp of getting licensed under MiCA, the EU's crypto regulatory framework, when Lagarde stepped in and killed it. She wanted "the controversial crypto exchange" kept out entirely.

The stated reason? Binance pleaded guilty to AML violations in the US and paid a $4.3B fine. But the real tell is buried deeper in the report: Lagarde was worried Binance would embed dollar-denominated stablecoin dominance across Europe instead of encouraging euro alternatives.

The head of the ECB isn't protecting consumers. She's protecting the euro's market share.

This is the same woman who called bitcoin "a highly speculative asset used for money laundering" in 2021. The same one who swears central banks will never hold bitcoin. The same one who launched "Pontes" today, a platform to settle tokenized assets in central bank money, while pushing a consumer-facing digital euro by 2027.

The pattern is clear: ban the competition, build the surveillance tool, call it innovation.

Lagarde doesn't fear crypto crime. She fears losing monetary control. A world where Europeans freely trade dollar stablecoins on Binance is a world where the ECB becomes irrelevant. So she's kicking out the exchange and fast-tracking a programmable euro she controls.

Binance withdrew its MiCA application in Greece in June and says it's pursuing authorization in another EU member state. But the message to every crypto company is loud: you're welcome in Europe only if you serve Europe's central bank agenda.

The US banned CBDCs by executive order. Europe is sprinting to build one while locking out the alternatives. Two very different visions for the future of money playing out in real time.

The ECB launched "Pontes" to settle tokenized assets in central bank money.

They're not adopting bitcoin's innovation, they're co-opting "tokenization" to tighten the grip.

The free world doesn't need a central bank's permission to transact.

Housing affordability has hit an all-time low as the income needed to buy a median-priced home far outpaces median household earnings.