SUNDAY, JUN21
1. Illinois taxes every transfer, 2. Open-source home mining, 3. Data custody as self-custody, 4. Free Samourai
From Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. taxed
Illinois has signed the Digital Asset Tax Act, becoming the first US state to impose a transaction-level tax on bitcoin, with a 0.2% levy on the gross value of digital assets exchanged, transferred, or stored for customers beginning January 1, 2027. The tax falls on digital asset brokers, a category that covers exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers, and it applies regardless of profit. As the commentator TFTC framed it, no profit and no capital gain is required because simply moving a digital asset triggers the tax. The structure singles out bitcoin rails: moving one million dollars by bank wire or brokerage incurs nothing, while the same sum moved as a digital asset costs two thousand dollars. The custody clause is the sharp edge for self-sovereign tooling, since collaborative custody and vault providers serving Illinois clients appear to fall inside the storage definition. Out-of-state brokers are pulled in once Illinois receipts reach one hundred thousand dollars, and unregistered firms face felony charges.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. bitaxe
The open-source Bitaxe project has released version 2.14.1 of its ESP-Miner firmware, the software that runs the popular do-it-yourself bitcoin mining devices built around inexpensive, widely available chips. The update, announced by contributors including wantclue, delivers minor fixes and improvements to the firmware that powers these small solo-mining units. While a point release sounds routine, the significance lies in what Bitaxe represents: fully open hardware and software that lets individuals mine bitcoin at home without buying industrial machines or trusting a manufacturer’s closed firmware. Solo and hobbyist mining contributes a small share of total hashrate, but it matters for decentralization, keeping block production from concentrating entirely among a handful of large operators. Steady maintenance of open mining firmware is the unglamorous work that keeps that option alive. For a freedom-tech audience, accessible mining tools are part of the same sovereignty stack as self-custody wallets and personal nodes.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. selfcustody
A pointed reminder circulating among bitcoin advocates renewed the case against handing sensitive personal and financial data to intermediaries, echoing a privacy argument that runs to the core of the self-custody ethos. The commentary, shared by economist Saifedean Ammous, criticized the routine collection and sharing of people’s financial information by institutions and platforms. The critique connects to a broader principle that animates freedom-tech: every piece of identifying data surrendered to a third party becomes a liability that can be breached, subpoenaed, or sold. Bitcoin’s promise of self-custody extends naturally to data custody, the idea that individuals should control their own information rather than scatter it across services they cannot audit. While the post is rhetorical rather than reported news, it reflects a hardening conviction in the community that financial privacy and data privacy are inseparable. For practitioners, the reminder reinforces that operational security depends as much on what data you never share as on how you store your keys.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. free-samourai
HODL Tarantula amplified a call from ODELL that the Samourai Wallet case remains unfinished business, adding a blunt endorsement and a link to a campaign site supporting the defendants. The case concerns Samourai Wallet founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, who continue to face federal charges tied to their privacy-focused bitcoin software. The freedom-tech stakes remain live, because prosecuting wallet developers for writing code that enables self-custody and privacy treats open-source tooling as if it were a criminal enterprise. The signal boost keeps the case visible inside bitcoin-native circles at a moment when institutional adoption headlines dominate the conversation. Sovereign payments and sovereign software share the same regulatory perimeter, and how courts treat the people who write privacy code shapes what builders elsewhere are willing to ship. For a freedom-tech audience, the prosecution is a reminder that the right to run and write privacy-preserving software is not settled law.
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