Happy Friday, In A Nutshell this week:

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🚀⏰ Today’s news should be a ~4.52-minute read (729 words).

🧠 Quote Of The Week

“Fortune favours the bold.”

— Virgil

Vanguard, the world's second-largest asset manager and Bitcoin's most stubborn holdout, is hiring its first-ever Head of Digital Assets.

The $10 trillion firm spent years calling Bitcoin an "immature asset class" unsuited to long-term investors, and refused to offer Bitcoin ETFs to its clients even as BlackRock and Fidelity built theirs.

Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas called the hire a win in itself: simply creating a role with "digital assets" in the title is vindication for the industry, in his view, since Vanguard was basically the last domino left standing.

Vanguard isn't launching a Bitcoin fund tomorrow. But the last major sceptic just admitted the debate is over.

Bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin is asking France's highest administrative court to strike down a new crypto surveillance decree, arguing it endangers holders' physical safety.

The rule, implementing the EU's DAC8 directive, would link real identities to permanent Bitcoin address histories and hand the data to tax authorities across all 27 member states.

Bull Bitcoin points to a 75% surge in "wrench attacks" on crypto holders last year, with France recording the most incidents. Journalist Joe Nakamoto has traced the wave back to leaked KYC records. Click here to watch Joe’s full investigation

A centralised database of who owns what is exactly the target list attackers need.

SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 this week, carrying 18,712 Bitcoin on its balance sheet, worth around $1.2 billion.

Passive funds tracking the index must buy SpaceX shares in proportion to its weighting, to an estimated $4.3 billion in demand for a company holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Three Nasdaq-100 companies now carry Bitcoin exposure, whether tracker fund holders asked for it or not.

Polymarket switched on instant Bitcoin deposits over the Lightning Network this week, cutting the deposit wait time to under a second.

The integration, built on payments firm Spark, is self-custodial throughout: each deposit wallet ties to the user's own keys, not Polymarket's. It gives the prediction market a near-instant on-ramp that traditional bank transfers simply can't match.

Faster, cheaper funding lowers the barrier to actually using Bitcoin over other alternatives. That's real-world utility the traditional financial system still can't offer.

Alfa-Bank, Russia's largest private lender, says it plans to offer Bitcoin trading and custody once the country's crypto law takes effect.

The bank wants to build its own "digital depository" for storing and tracking Bitcoin, joining state-owned Sberbank and VTB in a queue of Russian banks preparing for legal crypto trading, expected to begin in late 2026 or 2027.

Executive Dmitry Vitman said Russia needs its own crypto infrastructure, "otherwise we'll have nothing to offer."

New Hampshire's Executive Council voted down a $100 million Bitcoin-backed municipal bond this week, in a tight 3-2 decision.

The bond would have used $175 million of Bitcoin posted by mining firm CleanSpark as collateral, with no state funds or taxpayer money at risk. Moody's had already rated it Ba2, and Governor Kelly Ayotte backed the plan as a way to make New Hampshire "a leader in digital finance."

Councillors said they weren't against Bitcoin itself, just wary of lending the state's name to something this new. "I find myself in a state of ambivalence," said one.

1. Garys Economics gets a lesson in… Economics

2. Strike launched Bitcoin-backed loans that can't be liquidated by volatility

3. President Trump said Bitcoin could eventually be added to the new Trump Accounts

4. Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin, its largest disposal ever

5. The SEC committed to letting Bitcoin trade on the same licensed platforms as stocks

6. The White House says a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve stalls as Treasury and Commerce keep fighting over control

7. BitGo adds quantum-risk controls to Bitcoin custody

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