BTC MD

[Steve Hanke @steve_hanke]

The Pentagon has raised Israel’s counterintelligence threat level from high to critical.

ISRAEL SPIES ON THE UNITED STATES. NOTHING NEW.

[Haaretz.com @haaretzcom]

Father of Palestinian baby shot dead by IDF: I stopped, then they opened fire https://t.co/lNF5qKm7tk

[Handre @Handre]

Milton Friedman's greatest regret.

The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.

Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.

Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.

This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.

Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.

[Kalshi @Kalshi]

JUST IN: Pentagon fears Israel is trying to spy on administration officials

[Matthew R. Kratter #BIP-110 @mattkratter]

Not all people can handle the volatility of $STRC, so I’m grateful that we have Bitcoin for risk averse investors like myself

[Simon Dixon @SimonDixonTwitt]

Yes.

You are missing something.

He froze Stablecoins.

He could not freeze the Bitcoin.

You are confusing “crypto” with Bitcoin.

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Capital markets are funding the AI buildout at historic scale: ~$400B over 6 months. Bitcoin ETFs have seen ~$4B of outflows since May 14, pressuring $BTC. This is a capital rotation, not a Bitcoin impairment. Volatility creates opportunity.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Oil Prices Fall As White House Signals Will Maintain A Ceasefire With Iran Unless American Troops Are Killed https://t.co/NxD5LKaw1Y

[Platnium Patriarch @platinumpapas]

New @Tesla FSD update….needs some work. I was super excited after seeing all the posts about how awesome and less annoying it was. Learned the hard way today. Model Y missed the massive red DO NOT ENTER barrier and kept accelerating 😭

[Jim | RDTS | Bitcoin, not jpegs @venorusprime]

IMO, there is a reason @adam3us and @saylor invited @mattkratter to rub elbows with the high priests of Bitcoin.

They wanted to make sure he was going to toe the line.

They wanted to be able to put social pressure on him to ensure, when the time came, he was going to parrot the talking points just like every other captured influencer.

Fortunately for bitcoiners, Matt is made of stronger stuff.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

BREAKING:

Keir Starmer says he won’t remove the exemption which allows Sikhs to carry large ceremonial knives on them.

Meanwhile, English women are being prosecuted for carrying regular pepper spray on them when out on the streets at night

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 BREAKING: Slain 18YO white male Henry Nowak's father just WENT OFF, saying the killer stabbed his son and police did NOTHING despite his imminent death

"Henry told officers he could not breathe **9 times**." 😢

He says the police FAILED and refused to believe him. The killer is now jailed.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?! BARBARIAN.

"Henry was pulled across the gravel his hands forced behind his back and he was placed in handcuffs. Instead of being treated as a dying victim the police formally arrested Henry for assault and read in his rights. That was the last thing he heard."

"Henry had been stabbed multiple times and as his chest filled with blood he tried to escape. He was chased, abused and filmed...when police arrived Henry was lying on the floor fairly able to sit up and plainly in severe medical distress. With his final words he told officers that he could not breathe. He told them he had been stabbed."

"The police have said they were misled by the murderers and that the scene when they arrived was complex."

"Unfortunately it seems to us the truth is much simpler. The police were told by our son himself and by a member of the public...but the police did not believe that."

"As a family we will not let this go. No other family should experience the heartbreak and horror of losing a child to knife crime."

"Finally, I want Henry to know. We are so proud of him and we love him." 🙏🏻

[BTC MD @CryptoATLEP]

@btcnewsalerts Strategy has become a noise in the bitcoin world. I think with their credit business they are doing more harm to BTC than good! BTC was made for a higher purpose

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

In his final moments, Henry Nowak told police officers nine times “I can’t breathe” and four times that he had been stabbed.

In response police officer dragged him across the gravel, handcuffed and read him his rights.

It was the last thing Henry heard before he died.

[Simon Dixon @SimonDixonTwitt]

The $MSTR mission creep I always said would come.

Even though Strategy doesn’t need the money, it is conditioning investors to believe that selling Bitcoin to fund dividends and yield is a normal part of the new Strategy playbook.

The result is a structure that normalizes Bitcoin distribution back into the market whenever cash flow is needed to support dividends and yield.

In effect, they’re building the infrastructure for short-term Bitcoin price management while training investors to view it as prudent capital allocation.

A gift to the Financial Industrial Complex.

Bitcoin was designed to separate money from the financial system.

The FIC wants Bitcoin integrated into the same system of custodians, leverage, yield products, and paper claims that dominate traditional finance.

Strategy accelerates that transition by making Bitcoin sales, dividend policies, and yield engineering part of the accepted model.

It is what it is.

Bitcoin can be used by anybody.

But Bitcoin in self-custody is the resistance.

In the long run, the FIC doesn’t want you to own Bitcoin. It wants to custody your Bitcoin, tokenize your Bitcoin, lend your Bitcoin, and issue paper claims against your Bitcoin.

The goal is simple: keep you a paper-Bitcoin slave while they accumulate the real asset instead of you.

Not your keys.

Not your Bitcoin.

[BTC MD @CryptoATLEP]

@TedPillows Incorrect. Paris was super hot last night and these people are wearing winter jackets! Fake info

[Steve Hanke @steve_hanke]

AS USUAL, THE ISRAEL LOBBY IS AS BUSY AS LITTLE BEES.
https://t.co/nYzZUWly7Y

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

Here's all the published data on GLP-1 micro-dosing

[Adam Livingston @AdamBLiv]

BREAKING: JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S BANKER FURIOUS THAT CONSENTING ADULTS CAN LEAVE THE DEBT CASINO

[BTC MD @CryptoATLEP]

@TheBTCTherapist No glory in THEFT!