E ⛏️

Building things

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[Easy @NotSoEasyMoney]

HOW IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS!?!?!?!?

THEY PRINTED 5 BILLION OF THEIR OWN TOKENS
THEN WITHDREW IT AS USDC!?!?!?!??!

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@ianwaldron_ @rohanpaul_ai Especially exciting in these risky applications. Treework coming soon

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@michaelxbloch Glad to see this version - frankly I think this is largely a lot more realistic than the Citrini piece. Except for the visa bit, those guys are cooked.

[sysls @systematicls]

https://t.co/FQe5bCBqW1

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@RTDurac @SolBeachBum “Spending sol to maybe get a chance of getting ore is not mining” … ok then swap in USD and BTC in this statement and see if it’s still true

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@neil_shahani Small UX tweak: if most use auto, should it be the default? Also, when I tried auto, there wasn’t any feedback from the moment the transaction signed to when the blocks were automatically selected (on mobile). Would add more confidence for newbies to have some UX feedback there.

[toly 🇺🇸 @toly]

Rev chain

[ORE @ORE]

Re-introducing: ORE

Today, ORE returns with a brand new mining protocol, redesigned from the ground up to accrue protocol revenue, achieve sustainable tokenomics, and accelerate our mission of creating a Solana-native store of value.

🧵

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@solana @helio_pay Definitely thankful to see the development, and team should be rewarded! But compared to txn cost on solana, it seems high

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@solana @helio_pay Love to see the progress, but 75bp transaction fee kinda feels like a new - more reasonable - middleman.

“Enjoy low fees of 0.75%”

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@CA_EDD completely unacceptable quality of service since you changed to money network. The app doesn’t work. The website doesn’t work.

You’re holding taxpaying Californian’s money hostage by working with this negligent and completely amateur company.

Fix it now

[SolMail @SolMailOfficial]

This is why SolMail is imp.

[E ⛏️ @cryptoeb]

@SolMailOfficial @solcard Excited for a world where every checkout is one-click, since your email, your money, your everything is just in your wallet (and not on stripe or Shopify’s servers for link or shop pay)

[Patrick Scott @patfscott]

Over the past 24 hours, Solana DEX volume has been higher than Ethereum mainnet and all Ethereum L2s combined. Wow.

[Chase Oliver @ChaseForLiberty]

I said it before I was a candidate, when I was a candidate, and now that I am no longer a candidate

We need #RankedChoiceVoting passed in the next legislative session.

[Chase Oliver @ChaseForLiberty]

Pass Ranked Choice Voting in the next legislative session and we never worry about runoff costs again.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

Lindsey Graham: A president who doesn't comply with Congressional requests for information is subject to impeachment.

[Major League Soccer @MLS]

For every RETWEET OF THIS TWEET we will donate $1 to
@COGorg.

Today is the last day to help us #KickChildhoodCancer. GO GO GO! 💛

[Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen]

This is Trump condemning nonexistent illegal voting for Democrats in California... at a rally for a special election in North Carolina that was called because of proven REPUBLICAN ELECTION FRAUD.