Happy Friday, In A Nutshell this week:

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🚀⏰ Today’s news should be a ~4.49-minute read (730 words).

🧠 Quote Of The Week

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

— Richard Feynman

A new five-month forensic investigation re-examines Bitcoin's first 170 blocks and overturns a favourite origin story: that Hal Finney was the second person ever to run the network.

Drawing on Hal's recovered debug.log, his private emails with Satoshi, and the blockchain itself, it shows Hal missed the launch, only joined around Block 49, and that Bitcoin halted eight times in its first 170 blocks. The author pegs Hal as likely the third node, then reinstates him to second, suspecting the mystery Tor node was also Satoshi.

A reminder of how fragile those early days were. Bitcoin was not inevitable. A few people chose to take an anonymous stranger's code seriously, and that is the reason any of this exists.

With full MiCA enforcement starting on 1 July, Binance is days from losing its licence to operate across the EU.

Every platform serving EU clients now needs formal CASP authorisation, and Binance's current permissions expire on 30 June. A rejection of its application would legally force the exchange to halt services for millions of European users. Binance says it intends to stay in the bloc and will launch a fresh regulatory push regardless.

A licence that can be switched off is a permission, not a property right. It is the clearest possible case for holding Bitcoin you actually control, on a network no regulator can revoke.

The US Senate has passed a bill that bans the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail digital dollar through 2030.

The provision, folded into the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, would stop the Fed from issuing or facilitating a retail CBDC directly or indirectly, while leaving room for open, permissionless private dollar stablecoins. President Trump then cancelled the planned signing ceremony, saying he will not sign until Congress passes a separate bill first.

Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, less than two years after a landslide election win.

Following heavy local-election losses and a wave of cabinet resignations, Starmer will stay on until Labour selects a successor, with Andy Burnham the clear frontrunner. He becomes the sixth UK Prime Minister to resign in seven years.

Governments and leaders change on a timetable nobody can predict. The money you hold should not depend on who happens to be standing outside Number 10. That permanence, indifferent to politics, is exactly what Bitcoin was built to offer.

A new thought experiment flips the FCA's crypto knowledge test back onto fiat, asking what opening a bank account would look like if savers first had to prove they understood the pound.

Before buying Bitcoin in the UK, the FCA requires a risk warning and an "appropriateness assessment." The piece imagines the same gate for a current account: a fiat risk warning, then a quiz on custody, fractional reserves, deposit-protection limits, and how fast the currency is designed to devalue.

1. Bitcoin fell below $60,000 for the first time since 2024, ahead of a $10.5bn options expiry

2. Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped 10% in the second week of June

3. Close to 100 Catholic bishops wrote to the Senate opposing the CLARITY Act

4. The ECB is still pressing ahead with a digital euro, with a pilot due next year

5. The DOJ seized infrastructure tied to Huione in a crypto-laundering crackdown

6. Perception exited beta as a narrative intelligence layer for Bitcoin, with BitGo, Swan, Relai and Bitcoin Well having integrated it.

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