Welcome to issue #29 of The Bitcoin Act, where every Tuesday and Sunday we track the legal and regulatory moves that actually shape Bitcoin, cutting through noise, narratives, and theater.

Now for today’s top stories:

🏦 SEC Peirce Slams Rule Overreach
Commissioner Hester Peirce backs limiting Rule 15c2-11 to equity only, blasting past misapplication that hurt markets with zero fraud benefit.

🔒 BlockFills Files Bankruptcy
Bitcoin liquidity firm BlockFills halted withdrawals, filed Chapter 11, and had 70.5 BTC frozen.

🛡️ Operation Atlantic vs Phishing
US, UK, Canada launch joint op to stop approval-phishing scams that trick users into granting wallet permissions.

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SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce announced support for amendments to Rule 15c2-11 that limit the rule to equity securities only. She criticized the years-long mess after the 2020 changes wrongly tried applying it to fixed-income markets, ignoring that the original rule was designed for OTC equity quotations and caused real harm without stopping fraud.

For everyday Bitcoiners, this is a clear signal the SEC is finally walking back overreach. Your peer-to-peer sats trades and self-custody quotes stay outside their heavy-handed rules, meaning less legal risk when you buy, sell, or move your stack without extra paperwork or fear of sudden enforcement.

SEC

BlockFills, an institutional Bitcoin trading and liquidity provider, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware after halting all withdrawals. A New York court froze 70.5 BTC worth $4.8 million following a lawsuit accusing the firm of commingling client sats with company funds, creating a $77 million shortfall used for mining, loans, and expenses.

For Bitcoin holders, this is the same old lesson in hard money: when you leave your sats with a third party, you become an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy and can lose everything. Your keys, your coins, never trust custodians with your stack if you want to sleep at night and keep full control over your hard-earned Bitcoin.

Decrypt

The US, UK, and Canada launched Operation Atlantic to disrupt approval-phishing attacks. Scammers send fake pop-ups or alerts that trick you into granting wallet permissions, letting them drain your Bitcoin in irreversible blockchain transfers, building on earlier operations that already froze millions in stolen funds.

For you as a Bitcoiner, the real takeaway is simple: never click or approve suspicious wallet permissions. Always review and revoke them in your wallet settings, use hardware wallets for anything serious, and treat every pop-up as a potential fiat scammer. This one habit keeps your sats safe from the daily phishing that can wipe out a stack in seconds.

CoinDesk

🇬🇭 Ghana Launches Virtual Asset Licensing Sandbox
Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission launched a regulatory sandbox under the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act to create a structured licensing pathway for the Bitcoin sector.

🇨🇭 Swissborg Obtains MiCA License in France
Swissborg secured full regulatory approval from France’s AMF under MiCA, allowing the platform to expand regulated Bitcoin services across the entire European Union.

🇰🇷 South Korea Fines Bithumb $27 Million
South Korea fined Bithumb ₩36.8 billion ($27 million) and imposed a 6-month partial business suspension over serious AML violations.

🇦🇺 Australia Endorses Crypto Regulation Framework
Australian Senate Economics Legislation Committee backed the proposed legislation to modernize the Bitcoin regulatory framework.

🇦🇷 Milei Linked to $5 Million Libra Promotion Deal
Argentine investigators uncovered a document detailing a $5 million payment structure tied to President Javier Milei’s promotion of the Libra token.

🇷🇺 Russia Tests Sovereign Internet Shutdown
Russia shut off mobile internet in Moscow as part of nationwide tests for a censorship system designed to control information during unrest or crises.

🇨🇳 China Caps Daily Retail Gold Purchases
China’s largest state banks imposed nationwide daily quotas on retail gold purchases amid surging demand, extending delivery times and tightening controls. Bitcoin fixes this…

🇨🇭 Bitcoin Policy Institute Fights Basel Rules
The Bitcoin Policy Institute announced it will submit public comments to the Federal Reserve to oppose the Basel framework’s harsh risk weighting for Bitcoin.

🇰🇷 South Korea Deploys AI for Bitcoin Tax Enforcement
South Korea’s National Tax Service launched a tender for an AI platform to monitor Bitcoin transactions and detect tax evasion ahead of the 2027 tax rollout.

🇬🇧 UK Court Case: Wife Accused of Stealing $172M Bitcoin
A UK High Court allowed a lawsuit to proceed in which a man accuses his estranged wife of using home CCTV to steal his hardware wallet seed phrase and drain 2,323 Bitcoin worth $172 million.

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"Under the Rule of Law... the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts." — Friedrich Hayek

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