Financial Freedom Report #124

Welcome to this week’s Financial Freedom Report.

In Kenya, the government is proposing a new marketplace to sell datasets collected through state-run platforms like eCitizen, the country’s main portal for digital government services. Officials say personal data will not be sold, but the plan still raises concerns about government surveillance and the monetization of public digital infrastructure.

In Bitcoin news, software developer Burak introduced a new Bitcoin application layer called Cube. It is designed to make Bitcoin more programmable for payments without changing the core operational realities of Bitcoin itself. Cube is still experimental, but it could prove to be a new layer for Bitcoin activity that expands what freedom money can do.

We end with the livestream recording of HRF’s Freedom Tech track at the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum. This year’s program explored how Bitcoin, open-source AI, Nostr, and Bitchat help dissidents, journalists, and civil society transact, communicate, and resist as dictatorships expand surveillance and financial control as modern forms of repression.

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GLOBAL NEWS

Kenya | Government Plans to Monetize Public Data

Kenya is proposing a new data marketplace to sell data from state-run platforms such as eCitizen, the country’s main portal for digital government services. The plan would create a new national council to aggregate data from state institutions with a goal of making at least 1,000 datasets available for purchase over five years. Officials say personal information like names, phone numbers, ID numbers, emails, and images would not be sold. Rather, the marketplace would focus on anonymized and aggregated data such as business registrations, passport application volumes, land transactions, vehicle registrations, crop production, and traffic patterns. Nonetheless, the proposal raises serious privacy and financial freedom concerns for Kenyans.

Why this matters: As more public services move through state-controlled digital platforms like eCitizen, Kenyans are increasingly required to generate data or create accounts to access benefits. If the Kenyan government decides to turn that data into a revenue source, it effectively turns government infrastructure into a means of ongoing profit, extraction, and surveillance of its populace — without their permission.

Iran | Inflation Hits WWII-Era Levels as Internet Blackout Passes 2,000 Hours

Iranians are being squeezed from every direction. Prices for daily necessities like medicine, transportation, and communication have more than doubled. Officially, inflation has reached 77.2% year-over-year, a level not seen since World War II. This follows the rial's 98% depreciation over the last decade, from roughly 32,000 per dollar in 2015 to more than 1.7 million today. And while the official 77% figure is alarming, it should be treated with caution, given that it comes from a central bank operating under one of the world’s most corrupt and repressive regimes. The real pressure on families and individuals may be even worse.

In context: Iranians are not just being crushed economically. In January, the clerical regime suppressed pro-democracy protests against the rial’s collapse, killing more than 30,000 people and arresting 42,000. Making matters worse, the country has been under a near-total internet blackout for more than 2,000 hours, further limiting financial access and worsening an already devastating human rights crisis.

India | International CBDC Pilots Launched

India plans to launch retail and wholesale cross-border pilots for its digital rupee CBDC. The announcement follows India’s use of programmable digital rupees in state welfare schemes, where benefits could only be spent on approved goods at designated merchants. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) says it will test bilateral and multilateral CBDC pilots in 2026-27. This means direct trials with other central banks and broader international projects. RBI has discussed cross-border pilots with the hybrid-authoritarian and fully authoritarian governments of Singapore and the UAE. They are also participating in projects focused on CBDC payment standards with the Bank for International Settlements.

Why this matters: CBDCs are programmable money issued by central banks. In the hands of a hybrid-authoritarian government, that programmability can become a tool for surveillance and control. A welfare payment that only works at approved merchants today could become a cross-border payment that only works for approved people, purchases, or purposes tomorrow.

Sudan | Currency Replacement Scheme Dampens Financial Access

Sudan’s central bank launched the second phase of a banknote replacement scheme across three states in April, requiring citizens to exchange old 500- and 1,000-pound notes at commercial banks and official exchange points. The rollout is exposing how fragile Sudan’s financial infrastructure has become after years of civil war, monetary collapse, and humanitarian crisis. Bank branches remain sparse outside major cities, ATMs are limited, and most transactions are still cash-based. Rural communities, displaced families, and the unbanked face the greatest risk: anyone unable to reach a branch before the deadline could be left holding worthless paper. Instead of restoring confidence, the scheme may shift losses onto the poorest and least connected.**

RECOMMENDED CONTENT

2026 Oslo Freedom Forum Freedom Tech track Livestream

On June 2nd, HRF hosted its Freedom Tech track at the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway. The program covered how Bitcoin, Nostr, and open-source tools help activists, journalists, and civil society groups transact and organize under repression as dictators deploy and weaponize new technologies for monitoring and financial control. This year continues the OFF tradition of documenting financial and digital repression as a human rights issue and showcasing the freedom tools people use to resist it. Watch the full livestream recording or the individual talks.

BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS

Cube | New Bitcoin Layer 2

Bitcoin developer and Ark inventor Burak recently introduced Cube, a new Bitcoin Layer 2 designed to make Bitcoin payments more programmable without changing Bitcoin itself. Today, Bitcoin is excellent for holding and sending value, but it is harder to build more complex financial tools directly on top of it. Cube tries to address that by letting people use Bitcoin in more advanced applications while still keeping a path to withdraw back to Bitcoin if something goes wrong. It uses several experimental Bitcoin technologies, including BitVM, timeout trees, and a custom system called CubeVM, to test whether more complex applications can be built without relying on custodians.

Why this matters: Cube is trying to expand what people can do with Bitcoin while preserving what makes it valuable: self-custody, censorship resistance, and the ability to use money without permission. For activists and nonprofits facing financial repression, the key question is whether new Bitcoin layers can add useful functionality without recreating the same trusted intermediaries Bitcoin was built to avoid.

Cashu | Non-Custodial Mint Developments

Cashu creator and freedom tech developer Calle shared updates on early testing of a Cashu mint running inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a secure, hardware-isolated area within a computer processor. Cashu is a Bitcoin ecash protocol that enables private, low-cost payments for Bitcoin, but users must still trust mint operators (ecash banks) not to misuse the Bitcoin reserves backing issued ecash. This new design runs the mint inside a TEE, where private keys are generated and stored in a hardware enclave inaccessible even to the operator. In theory, this reduces the risk of operators inflating the ecash supply or accessing reserves.

Why this matters: If successful, this could reduce Cashu’s custody risk while preserving its privacy benefits. For dissidents and human rights defenders under tyranny, it makes ecash closer to cash-like digital payments that are harder for a dictator to monitor, censor, or confiscate.

Bull Bitcoin | New Languages and Improved Privacy

Bull Wallet, an open-source and non-custodial Bitcoin wallet, released a new version with expanded language support. The app can now be used in Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Brazilian Portuguese, Thai, and Turkish, bringing the total to over 20 languages. The update also improves PayJoin privacy and integrates new hardware wallet support. Expanding into languages spoken predominantly in authoritarian and hybrid-authoritarian countries is significant — it means more people in Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and elsewhere have a practical path to Bitcoin.

bitcoin++ | Kenya Edition in Collaboration With HRF

HRF is supporting the first-ever bitcoin++ developer conference in Nairobi, Kenya, taking place June 17–19, 2026. The theme, “bitcoin++ Works in Public,” will spotlight open-source Bitcoin builders from Africa and around the world, with sessions focused on working in public, contributing to open protocols, and strengthening the global Bitcoin developer ecosystem in a transparent way.

Aqua | Custom Lightning Addresses Added

Aqua, an open-source and self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, released version 0.5.0, adding Lightning Addresses. Activists or nonprofits using Aqua can create custom addresses to share for donations. This makes receiving Bitcoin easier by replacing invoices or long strings of characters with a simple, reusable address. Users no longer have to set payment amounts and can now receive Lightning payments while offline.

Node NBO | New Bitcoin Hub in Nairobi

Node NBO is a new physical hub for Bitcoin, freedom tech, energy, and AI that opened in Nairobi, Kenya. The space will host local developers and dissidents, as well as teams from organizations including Fedi, Gridless, BTrust, Minmo, and HRF. The space includes an open-source energy lab, an open-source Bitcoin mining lab, an AI compute lab, and an event space for local meetups like BitDevs Nairobi. Node NBO gives Africa’s Bitcoin and freedom tech communities a shared place to build together.

BITCOIN RECOMMENDED CONTENT

How Freedom Tech Is Pushing Back Against Digital Authoritarianism by Susie Violet Ward

In Forbes, journalist Susie Violet Ward profiles HRF’s Freedom Tech track at the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum and the growing movement building tools against digital authoritarianism. The piece argues that as governments and corporations expand surveillance, digital ID, KYC databases, spyware, internet shutdowns, and financial censorship, activists need technologies that let them communicate, transact, and organize without permission. Freedom Tech is human rights defenders' immune response to dictators’ evolving digital repression.

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