WEDNESDAY, APR29
1. Block: Bitkey screen + Cash App bitcoin, 2. Samourai pardon stalled, 3. HRF AI for dissidents, 4. Tennessee nuclear energy push
From Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. block
Block, the payments and hardware company behind Cash App, Square, Proto, and Bitkey, announced a coordinated expansion of its bitcoin ecosystem at Bitcoin Las Vegas 2026. According to Block’s newsroom, the rollout includes a new Bitkey hardware wallet featuring a secure touchscreen that lets users verify and authorize “every security-critical operation in the wallet,” closing a structural gap where prior hardware wallets secured the signature but handed security settings back to users. The device ships soon and is available for preorder now. On the Cash App side, eligible customers can automatically convert incoming peer-to-peer payments into bitcoin, earn 5% back in bitcoin at Square merchants through a new Bitcoin Back program, and access withdrawal limits raised to $10,000 per day and $25,000 per week. Fees and spreads are eliminated on purchases over $2,000. Block also launched Proof of Reserves across its corporate treasury, Cash App, and Square customer holdings, allowing anyone to independently verify holdings using on-chain signatures. An NFC tap-to-pay demo with Square rounds out a push to make bitcoin spendable at the point of sale as easily as any contactless card.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. samourai
Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, the co-founders of bitcoin privacy wallet Samourai, have been incarcerated at FPC Morgantown since January 2026, serving five- and four-year sentences respectively for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The #pardonsamourai campaign, which drove a 100,000-signature petition and earned a public "I'll look at it" from President Trump in December, has yet to produce a pardon four months on. The situation carries a recognized legal contradiction: FinCEN's own internal analysis, which surfaced during litigation, concluded that Samourai's non-custodial architecture did not constitute money transmission under the Bank Secrecy Act — yet the prosecution proceeded and secured convictions anyway. The Bitcoin Policy Institute argues the case "treated developers as if they were responsible for the independent actions of users, even though they had no role in executing, intermediating, or approving any transaction." Adding pressure to the broader privacy-tool debate, the DOJ issued a statement just yesterday signaling reassurance to developers amid ongoing Tornado Cash litigation — a sign the administration is at minimum aware of the chilling effect these prosecutions have on U.S.-based open-source development. With Trump having already pardoned Ross Ulbricht and Changpeng Zhao, the two Samourai founders remain the most prominent unresolved clemency ask in bitcoin.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. hrf
The Human Rights Foundation's ninth AI for Individual Rights newsletter opens in Russia, where the Ministry for Digital Development has proposed laws that would restrict or ban foreign AI models — blocking tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini from operating unless they run on state-controlled infrastructure and keep user data inside the country. Open-weight models from China, including Qwen and DeepSeek, would be permitted so long as they operate under Russian state supervision. HRF frames the proposal as a textbook authoritarian playbook: cut citizens off from outside tools, keep their data within reach of the state, and expand capacity for surveillance and suppression. Against that backdrop, the newsletter highlights open-source developments that move in the opposite direction. Google's Gemma 4 suite of open-weight models can run locally on phones and laptops, giving activists private, offline AI access without depending on any centralized provider. Hermes, an emerging open-source AI agent that grew from 22,000 to more than 120,000 GitHub endorsements in a single month, lets users automate workflows and build applications through plain-language prompts via Telegram or WhatsApp. HRF put these tools to work directly: on April 14–15, it hosted an AI Camp where HRF leadership, major supporters, and frontline human rights defenders built websites, automated workflows, and deployed personal AI agents over two days. Coming up next: HRF's second AI Hack for Freedom is scheduled for May 9–10 in Nashville, connecting nine dissidents from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Hong Kong, and Nicaragua with open-source developers to build censorship-bypassing tools — with a $50,000 bitcoin prize pool. Read the full newsletter here.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. nuclear
The Beacon Center of Tennessee has released a new report making the case that the Volunteer State should position itself as America’s energy leader by removing regulatory barriers to nuclear expansion. According to the report, titled “From Atoms to Algorithms,” authored by Senior Fellow Taylor Barkley, Tennessee consumes about four times as much energy as it generates, a gap driven by rapid population growth and a wave of energy-hungry digital infrastructure including the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, xAI’s Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, and Oracle’s plans to make Nashville a hub of AI innovation. Tennessee already has deep nuclear roots, from Manhattan Project breakthroughs to hosting the nation’s first approval for a next-generation small modular reactor, and Governor Bill Lee established the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council in 2023 to identify regulatory hurdles blocking expansion. The Beacon Center argues that recommendations without follow-through are insufficient. Its report calls for the state to streamline occupational licensing for nuclear workers, update regulations to match new technology rather than legacy assumptions, create a one-stop permit shop with the Tennessee Valley Authority, establish full reciprocity for out-of-state nuclear certifications, and advocate for federal nuclear policy reform. The report frames this as a model other states could follow for delivering affordable, reliable energy at scale.
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