Financial Freedom Report #134

Welcome to this week’s Financial Freedom Report.

In Russia, Binance gave officials the identity and transaction history of a user who donated more than $700 in cryptocurrency to Ukrainian causes. The Kremlin later used this information to charge him with financing terrorism. The case shows how custodial exchanges can become points of surveillance and repression, even for users who turn to digital assets seeking greater control over their money.

In Bitcoin coverage, Payjoin Dev Kit released its first stable version after three years of development. The privacy tool helps break the common-input-ownership heuristic, a key assumption used in blockchain surveillance to track financial activity. The result is better financial privacy for dissidents, more easily integrated into wallets.

We feature a new tutorial from Bitcoin educator Ben Perrin (BTC Sessions), showing users how to generate and verify recovery phrases using physical dice rolls and the open-source SeedSigner hardware wallet. In the wake of the Coldcard incident, the tutorial offers practical guidance for activists using Bitcoin to add independent, verifiable randomness to their wallets.

SUBSCRIBE HERE

GLOBAL NEWS

Binance | Client Data Shared with Russian Officials to Prosecute Ukraine Donor

Global digital asset exchange Binance provided Russian officials with the identity and transaction history of a user who donated more than $700 in cryptocurrency to Ukrainian causes. The data surrendered — including his passport, address, phone number, and Bulgarian residency permit — was later used as evidence to charge Russian IT specialist Yuri Belenkiy with financing terrorism. Belenkiy is now jailed and awaiting trial in Russia. The case is especially notable because Binance announced in 2023 that it had fully exited Russia, yet documents reviewed by Reuters show that Russian investigators were still able to request and receive detailed client information from the exchange. This is not the first time Binance’s relationship with Russian officials has drawn scrutiny. In 2021, Binance’s regional chief met with Russia’s financial monitoring agency after officials sought help identifying individuals who donated bitcoin to opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Why this matters: Digital assets may allow people to move money outside the banking system, but custodial exchanges like Binance can recreate the same risks and points of control. A user may believe they are transacting on their own terms, but the exchange still holds the identity and transaction data that can later be used to turn a financial transaction into a criminal case.

North Korea | Families Lose Half Their Remittances to Crackdown

North Korea’s intensifying crackdown on informal remittances has pushed broker fees above 50% (up from roughly 30% before the pandemic). For families receiving money from abroad, that often means relying on unofficial brokers who use illicit Chinese mobile phones to communicate across the border and arrange transfers inside North Korea. Officials have intensified efforts to detect these communications and punish those involved, including threats of forced labor or even prison camps. With these risks metastasizing, many brokers refuse transfers below 5,000 yuan ($740) and require payment up front, causing families to lose more than half of desperately needed funds just to move money across the border.

Iran | Cost of Living Crisis

For one Iranian mother, the war and humanitarian crisis have unfolded as a series of substitutions as the cost of living continues to rise. When certain meats became too expensive, her family switched to chicken. When fruit prices rose, they bought less. Then milk, yogurt, bread, and medicine all became more expensive at once. Now, every trip to the supermarket begins with a calculation. And when her children ask for something that used to be ordinary, she often has to say no. “We are practically hungry,” she says, “and we no longer have the strength to continue.”

In context: This family’s experience reflects a much wider collapse in purchasing power. Food prices in Iran were 128.1% higher in July than a year earlier, while the minimum monthly wage is roughly 22 million tomans ($160). For millions of Iranians, the economic crisis is about deciding which necessity — food, medicine, or housing — they can afford to go without.

Russia | Central Bank Proposes Restrictions on Bitcoin Trading

Russia’s Central Bank has proposed allowing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether to be traded on official Russian exchanges beginning September 1. Retail and professional investors would both be required to pass an eligibility test before gaining access. Retail investors would be limited to purchasing 300,000 rubles (about $3,690) in digital assets per year through each regulated intermediary. Notably, digital assets will remain banned for domestic payments.

Why this matters: Actions like this show the Kremlin’s growing willingness to use open monetary networks internationally while keeping tight control over how Russians use them at home. As the Binance case above also shows, the main concern here is not whether Russians can access digital assets, but how their activity can later be traced and used against them if they choose to do so.

Pakistan | Regime Restricts International Media

Pakistani officials have imposed sweeping new restrictions on international media. They now require journalists to obtain government permission before reporting anywhere outside Islamabad, Karachi, or Lahore. The rules were introduced shortly after overseas outlets reported that police had allegedly killed dozens of protesters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Under the new restrictions, international journalists must now register with the government. If not, they lose accreditation for vaguely defined offenses against Pakistan’s “ideology, sovereignty, security, or public order.” Following the imposition of restrictions, Al Jazeera’s website became inaccessible in Pakistan without a VPN due to its coverage of the protests and election boycotts.

Why this matters: International outlets were among the few reporting on the alleged killings in Kashmir. Limiting where those journalists can work gives Pakistani officials more control over what gets documented and reduces accountability for a regime that is violently cracking down on dissent.

RECOMMENDED CONTENT

The Rise of Transnational Financial Repression by Jorge Jraissati and Lyudmyla Kozlovska

In this piece, Venezuelan economist and Economic Inclusion Group President Jorge Jraissati and Open Dialogue Foundation President Lyudmyla Kozlovska examine how authoritarian governments are using financial repression outside their borders. They illustrate how regimes can exploit anti-money-laundering rules, financial intelligence systems, and international cooperation to obtain sensitive information, freeze assets, and pressure institutions to cut ties with dissidents abroad. The authors warn that without stronger safeguards, democracies risk allowing their own financial systems to be weaponized against those seeking refuge from authoritarian repression.

BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS

Payjoin | Payjoin Dev Kit 1.0 Released

After three years of development, Payjoin Dev Kit has released its first stable version, giving Bitcoin wallets and services a stable core library they can build on for integrating Payjoin. The library supports BIP 77 and BIP 78 to solve two of Payjoin’s biggest historical adoption problems: The receiver no longer needs to run a public server, and the sender and receiver no longer need to be online simultaneously. These updates make Payjoin substantially more realistic for mobile wallets to implement and for normal users to actually use.

Why this matters: Payjoin undermines the common-input-ownership heuristic — the assumption that all inputs in a Bitcoin transaction belong to the same person — which blockchain surveillance firms use to trace financial activity on Bitcoin. If enough wallets adopt Payjoin, this type of surveillance becomes less reliable, helping strengthen privacy for dissidents and everyday users alike.

Radar | Private Messaging and Bitcoin App Launches on Android

The team behind Cake Wallet has officially launched Radar on Android. Radar is an app that combines encrypted messaging with a Bitcoin wallet. To do so, it uses the same protocol as Signal and integrates Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, a secondary payment layer for fast, low-cost Bitcoin payments. With Radar, activists can communicate privately and send or receive bitcoin, all while staying in control. Its launch on Android brings this new piece of Freedom Tech to the largest mobile operating system in the world.

Why this matters: The ability to communicate and transact freely underpins nearly every form of peaceful organizing. Radar combines both in one app. It gives activists and others in adverse environments a simpler way to coordinate, request support, and move funds without relying on intermediaries that can turn into points of failure or censorship.

Breez | Open-Source Bitcoin App Launches “Glow” Template

Breez, a Bitcoin payments infrastructure company, launched Glow, an open-source Bitcoin wallet that also serves as a customizable template for developers building their own Bitcoin apps. It lets users send and receive Bitcoin over Lightning, receive payments while offline, hold a dollar-denominated balance, and send stablecoins. Developers can then copy, customize, and rebrand the app using the Breez Software Development Kit (SDK) without having to build or operate their own Lightning infrastructure. Learn more about Glow in this podcast with Breez CEO Roy Sheinfeld.

Why this matters: Glow gives software developers everywhere a shortcut to building financial tools that preserve user control. Using the Breez SDK, small teams, nonprofits, and activists could adapt it for local needs. That could mean adding Bitcoin payments to an existing service, creating a community wallet, or bridging between Bitcoin and stablecoins without starting from scratch or becoming custodians of user funds.

Wallet of Satoshi | Wallet Shifts to Custody on Spark

The popular Lightning wallet Wallet of Satoshi is transitioning from a custodial model to self-custody using Spark, giving users control of their own Bitcoin and private keys. The upgraded wallet supports Lightning and on-chain payments worldwide, while removing Wallet of Satoshi’s ability to access or freeze user funds. Existing custodial wallets will be phased out by June 2027. Users are encouraged to migrate and securely back up a new 12-word recovery phrase. Previously, self-custody was only an optional mode; now it is being pushed to all users. The shift brings one of Lightning’s simplest wallets closer to Bitcoin’s core promise — money that only its owner can control.

Marmot | Version 2 Upgrade Hardens Messaging Protocol

Marmot, a private messaging protocol built on Nostr and Messaging Layer Security, has officially upgraded to version 2. The new version is designed to make group chats more stable by improving how messages are ordered, how users are added or removed, and how all participants reach the same shared state. Marmot V2 is also designed to work across different transport layers to make it less dependent on any single method for transmitting messages. Integration into private messaging app White Noise will be an important next step for bringing these improvements to activists and dissidents.

bitcoin++ | Payments Edition in Berlin

bitcoin++, a bitcoin developer conference series, will host its payments edition in Berlin from October 1–3. As always, it will bring together Bitcoin builders, researchers, dissidents, and protocol contributors for three days of talks, workshops, and hackathons. Supported by HRF, the event will focus on Bitcoin payments and feature speakers and projects developing tools such as ecash, Lightning wallets, website payment gateways, and other freedom tech infrastructure. The goal is to push Bitcoin beyond savings and into other everyday use cases that benefit dissidents under tyranny.

BITCOIN RECOMMENDED CONTENT

Your Bitcoin Wallet May Not Be Truly Random with BTC Sessions

In this tutorial, Bitcoin educator Ben Perrin (BTC Sessions) shows how Bitcoin users can generate their own recovery phrases using physical dice rolls and the open-source SeedSigner hardware wallet. The Coldcard incident showed why users should not blindly assume every device creates secure randomness correctly. Dice-generated recovery phrases give users a way to add independent randomness they can see, record, and verify themselves.

If this email was forwarded to you and you enjoyed reading it, please consider subscribing to the Financial Freedom Report here.

Support the newsletter by donating Bitcoin to HRF’s Financial Freedom program via BTCPay.

Want to contribute to the newsletter? Submit tips, stories, news, and ideas by emailing ffreport @ hrf.org.

The Bitcoin Development Fund is accepting grant proposals on an ongoing basis. The Bitcoin Development Fund is looking to support Bitcoin developers, community builders, and educators. Submit proposals here.

Subscribe to newsletter

Apply for a grant

Support our work

Visit our website