Good morning readers,
In Russia, physical bank branches are closing down at a record pace. The closures are placing renewed pressure on Russians living in rural areas and those contending with frequent Internet disruptions as a result of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. For many Russians, in-person branches remain a vital means of resolving account issues and accessing cash that digital services cannot easily address.
A new Bitcoin tool called BitZed enables Zambians to buy and spend bitcoin using mobile money services. BitZed’s goal is to increase Bitcoin’s accessibility and viability as day-to-day money in a country contending with a weak currency and financial controls.
We include a recent essay by economist Tyler Cowen, which argues that a country’s currency can serve as a real-time signal of political and economic health, pointing to Iran’s collapsing rial as a market verdict on regime credibility.
Now, onto this week’s news.
GLOBAL NEWS
Russia | Physical Bank Branches Close at Record Pace
Physical bank branches are shutting down at a record pace in Russia. In 2025, 1,700 branches closed across the country — a more than threefold increase from the previous year. The total number of bank branches in the country now stands at 22,300, down from about 30,000 in the last seven years. According to the central bank, the closures aim to shift Russians to online services while improving bank profitability. However, this shift may pose challenges for some communities, particularly residents of small towns or rural areas, where the regime’s connectivity restrictions, enacted as security measures amid its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hamper people’s access to online banking services.
In context: Physical bank branches have become especially important for accessing cash, receiving physical bank cards, and restoring access to mobile banking apps, as many in Russia increasingly face account restrictions that can only be resolved through in-person visits. Some analysts expect the number of physical banks could decline even further in the coming years as Russian officials push their digital ruble central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Malawi | Central Bank Digital Currency Under Development
Malawi’s central bank selected eCurrency, a private technology provider that enables central banks to issue, distribute, and manage CBDCs, to develop the country’s sovereign digital currency. While officials frame the project as an exploration of modern digital payment infrastructure, Malawi’s governance record raises red flags. Human rights organizations have documented corruption, intimidation of civil society figures, and unlawful state surveillance, including arrests tied to private communications. In such environments, a CBDC risks becoming a tool of financial control by placing citizens’ money directly within state-controlled systems. This would, in turn, expand the capacity for both surveillance and financial repression. eCurrency is a global player in the expansion of CBDCs that is also helping develop and deploy similar initiatives in Jamaica and Madagascar.
Thailand | Surveillance of Cash Transactions Increases
Thailand’s central bank is increasing surveillance and control over cash transactions after flagging two large cash withdrawals of more than $6 million each. The transactions came days before national elections on Feb. 8, as the country’s electoral commission examines allegations of vote buying. The central bank plans to introduce new rules requiring banks to conduct enhanced due diligence and report cash withdrawals above a proposed threshold of three to five million baht (roughly $100,000). Officials also commented that large purchases should be handled via electronic transfers or checks, not cash, as transactions in the banking system make it easier for them to track monetary flows. The central bank is also tightening oversight of gold trading, including caps on online gold transactions and new reporting requirements.
China | Push for Yuan as Global Reserve Currency
China has reiterated its ambition for the yuan to attain global reserve currency status. In remarks recently published by Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship journal used to convey policy intentions, Xi Jinping called for a “powerful currency” widely used in international trade, investment, and foreign-exchange markets. What's new about these remarks is not their intended ambition, but rather how clearly those ambitions are stated to the public. Xi paired this plan with calls for a stronger central bank, globally competitive financial institutions, and tighter control of systemic financial risks.
In context: The prospect of an authoritarian state issuing a global reserve currency carries serious implications for financial freedom and human rights, as monetary dominance could enable repressive regimes to more easily scale capital controls, financial surveillance, and political enforcement.
North Korea | Digital Asset Phishing on the Rise
North Korean actors are increasingly carrying out sophisticated phishing operations and have stolen more than $300 million in digital assets using a recent exploit. Hackers first compromise the Telegram accounts of a target's contacts, then impersonate those trusted contacts to invite targets to fake video calls. The links appear legitimate and often feature real video footage sourced from prior hacks or public appearances. If victims engage, hackers steal their credentials, wallets, or accounts, which are then used to target additional contacts, allowing the scheme to propagate through professional and social networks.
RECOMMENDED CONTENT
“Is a Country Rising or Falling? Watch Its Currency.” By Tyler Cowen
In this piece, economist Tyler Cowen claims that a country’s currency is one of the fastest, clearest signals of its underlying political and economic health. Exchange rates aggregate expectations about a country’s future, including regime stability, fiscal solvency, and governance. Cowen focuses on Iran, where the rial collapsed amid historic protests. He notes that while the rial still circulates domestically, it is increasingly treated as unusable internationally, which reflects not just high inflation but deep uncertainty about Iran’s political future, state finances, and the likelihood of further monetary debasement. Under Cowen’s framing, the rial’s collapse is a market verdict on regime credibility.
BITCOIN AND FREEDOM TECH NEWS
Bitcoin Core | New Maintainer Announced
Bitcoin Core has appointed a new maintainer, sedited. Bitcoin Core maintainers are responsible for managing the project’s codebase, including merging reviewed contributions, maintaining the repository, and supporting the project’s ongoing development processes. With this addition, Bitcoin Core now has six maintainers. sedited has contributed extensively to libbitcoinkernel, an ongoing effort to separate Bitcoin’s consensus rules — the logic used to validate transactions and blocks — from the rest of the Bitcoin Core software.
Why this matters: Efforts to modularize and isolate consensus code may make it easier for developers to build alternative Bitcoin clients (software that connects to the Bitcoin network) while maintaining compatibility with the broader network. This could reduce reliance on any one implementation and support a more diverse development ecosystem, which is relevant for users who rely on Bitcoin in restrictive or unstable financial environments.
BitZed | Bitcoin Connects to Mobile Money in Zambia
BitZed is a new Bitcoin app in Zambia that connects Bitcoin to mobile money services like Airtel, MTN, and Zamtel. The app allows users to buy bitcoin with mobile money and convert bitcoin back into mobile money using the Lightning Network, an application layer for fast and low-cost bitcoin payments. BitZed makes Bitcoin practical for small, day-to-day transactions in a country where mobile money is more accessible and common than bank accounts and where the use of foreign currency is severely restricted amid double-digit inflation rates. Machankura, an offline Lightning wallet accessible in ten African countries and a BDF grantee, recently added support for BitZed, making offline Bitcoin more accessible to Zambians.
Cashu | BOLT 12 Integration Planned
Cashu, an open-source ecash protocol, is planning to integrate BOLT 12 into its infrastructure. BOLT 12 is an upgrade to the Lightning Network that will allow Cashu users to send and receive payments with a static and reusable QR code instead of individual invoices. It improves the privacy and censorship-resistance of payments. With BOLT 12, dissidents will soon be able to accept discreet ecash donations beyond the surveillance of autocratic regimes.
Cove Wallet | Now Available on Android
Cove, an open-source and self-custodial Bitcoin wallet, is now available on Android. Cove users can connect their own hardware wallet to manage Bitcoin offline or use Cove as a hot wallet to manage Bitcoin online. Cove also allows users to create multiple wallets from the app itself and includes coin control, which allows users to pick which coins to spend in a transaction for better payment privacy. While still in beta and only suitable for test funds, Cove has potential as a tool for dissidents who need privacy features and self-custody of their funds. As a first step, expanding to Android will create greater accessibility for activists who may benefit from early tools like this.
bitcoin++ | Exploited Edition in Brazil Announced
bitcoin++, a Bitcoin developer conference series, is heading back to South America for its next conference in Florianópolis, Brazil, from Feb. 26–28, 2026. The event focuses on Bitcoin’s real-world security history. Developers and attendees can discuss past failures, known vulnerabilities, lost coins, and protocol edge cases, alongside research and engineering work designed to prevent future exploits. It's a chance to think adversarially to keep the Bitcoin system robust and open for civil society and freedom fighters and a great chance to include more participants from authoritarian states in Latin America in the Bitcoin development conversation.
OpenSats | $32 Million Granted to Open-Source Projects and Software in 2025
OpenSats, a nonprofit supporting open-source software and projects, granted $32,434,939 in bitcoin to 371 contributors and projects across 40 countries (including many autocracies) in 2025. This amounts to more than $1 million in monthly grant payouts to freedom tech projects. Grantees include initiatives that can benefit the efforts of civil society, like the Bitcoin-native payment processor BTCPay Server for donations, as well as new mining protocols like Stratum V2 that help keep Bitcoin transactions free from censorship. OpenSats has led the broader ecosystem in ensuring that freedom technologies remain transparent, resilient, and accessible for people living under authoritarian regimes.
BITCOIN RECOMMENDED CONTENT
The Tyranny of Permissionlessness in Bitcoin with Amiti Uttarwar
In this episode of What Bitcoin Did, Amiti Uttarwar, a former Bitcoin Core developer, explores a tension at the heart of Bitcoin’s development: while Bitcoin is permissionless at the protocol level, meaningful participation in its long-term development is often constrained by social and financial realities. Uttarwar argues that “permissionless” does not mean frictionless and that contributing to Bitcoin at a high level requires time, mentorship, reputation, and financial stability — resources that are unevenly distributed.
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