Around the 🌎 📰:

-In 2024, Kazakhstan shut down 36 digital asset exchanges, confiscating $4.8 million in assets, while promoting its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital tenge. Though framed as a modern financial tool, the CBDC risks enhancing state control, restricting access to open money like Bitcoin, and limiting financial independence under the regime.

-Zimbabwe’s regime-imposed 43% currency devaluation has deepened financial insecurity, fueling inflation, eroding purchasing power, and straining households and businesses already grappling with 18-hour power outages. As the ZiG currency collapses and dissenting accounts are frozen, many turn to US dollars and Bitcoin as lifelines amidst the economic turmoil.

-Burma’s military junta is tightening control over online spaces with a new cybersecurity law that mandates data retention, criminalizes VPN use, and enforces heavy penalties for non-compliance, further expanding state surveillance and stifling dissent. This move leaves the public increasingly censored and unable to resist authoritarian rule.

-At the end of January, Belarus will hold a widely criticized presidential election expected to extend Alexander Lukashenko’s three-decade rule. Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya condemned the vote as illegitimate, citing media censorship, political repression, and the imprisonment of dissenters under Lukashenko’s regime.

-President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, including subsidy removal and naira devaluation, have driven food inflation above 40%, leaving two-thirds of Nigerian households struggling with hunger. As citizens turn to Bitcoin and stablecoins for financial relief, the government intensifies efforts to restrict access and enforce reliance on the struggling naira.

#Bitcoin is freedom money for everyone around the world. Just because it’s not happening in USA right now doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Keep stacking sats.