Laws move slower than markets. But they hit harder. This is issue #63 of The Bitcoin Act — your Tuesday and Sunday briefing on the legal and regulatory moves that actually shape Bitcoin.

Now for today’s top stories:

🏛️ CBDC Ban Now Federal Law
A housing bill became law July 11 without Trump's signature, barring the Fed from issuing a digital dollar through 2030.

🏧 Alaska ID-Gates Bitcoin ATMs
SB 249 takes effect October 1: government ID, name, address, phone, email for every kiosk buy.

⏳ CLARITY Act's Three-Week Window
The Senate has until August recess to pass the bill declaring Bitcoin a commodity and protecting self-custody.

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The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law July 11 without Trump's signature. If a president ignores a bill for ten days (Sundays excepted) while Congress is in session, it becomes law automatically. Buried inside: the Federal Reserve is banned from issuing a CBDC, a government-run digital dollar, through December 31, 2030.

Statute beats executive order; no future president undoes this with a pen. But the ban expires end of 2030, and nobody knows what comes after. Self-custody your Bitcoin and don't trust the fiat circus. Keys in cold storage, not promises in Washington.

The Block

Alaska's SB 249 became law without the governor's signature, effective October 1, 2026. Bitcoin ATM operators must hold money-transmitter licenses, run blockchain-tracing software, block flagged wallets, and report transaction data, including Bitcoin addresses used, to state regulators quarterly.

Concretely, from October 1: every Alaska kiosk purchase requires government ID plus name, address, phone, and email. Limits hit $1,000 daily and $10,000 per 30 days; fees capped at 3%. Your identity enters another breachable database — a wrench-attack target list. Buy elsewhere.

Legiscan

The Senate returned July 13 with roughly 25 days before the August recess to pass the CLARITY Act — the bill declaring Bitcoin a commodity, protecting self-custody and developers. Trump urged passage honoring the late Sen. Lindsey Graham; a House field hearing lands in New York July 17.

Patrick Witt, the White House's top Bitcoin-policy adviser, leaves his post July 24 for months of Army National Guard legal training, just as the Senate enters its toughest stretch on the bill — a 60-vote threshold and an unresolved ethics fight over Trump's crypto income. That's less firepower pushing self-custody protections through. If you want that language to survive, call your senators this week.

The Block

⚠️ Thailand Audits Stablecoin Flows
The Bank of Thailand and Thai SEC began auditing high-volume USDT transactions using data analytics, targeting illicit finance. Preliminary reviews already flagged transfers designed to evade disclosure rules, alongside stricter cash and gold controls.

🕌 Pakistan Fatwa Hits Framework
A June 10 fatwa from scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani declared cryptocurrency purchases invalid under Islamic law. Pakistan's regulator PVARA, whose licensing framework requires Sharia compliance, now urges assessing each product separately after meeting him.

⚖️ São Paulo state court Rules Against Coinbase
A São Paulo court ordered Coinbase to repay roughly $100,000 drained from a user's self-custody wallet, ruling Brazil's Consumer Protection Code puts the burden of proof on the software provider, not the user.

🇯🇵 Japan Backs Startups, Tax Reform
Prime Minister Takaichi renewed startup and Web3 support at WebX Tokyo, targeting 10 trillion yen in annual investment by 2027. A separate bill advancing a flat 20% tax on gains could start in 2028.

🔑 Binance EU Exodus Went to Self-Custody
After Binance halted EU services July 1 under MiCA licensing rules, co-CEO Richard Teng said 70% of withdrawn user funds moved to self-hosted wallets; only 30% reached licensed platforms. Figures are Binance's own.

🇨🇳 China Targets Privacy Tools
China's Supreme People's Procuratorate published a paper urging proactive prosecution of virtual-currency laundering, arguing that using mixers or privacy coins should be treated as presumed evidence of money-laundering intent, alongside large fast anonymous transfers.

🗣️ Activists Warn on Stablecoin Risk
At Oslo Freedom Forum and BTC Prague, activists described surveillance, debanking, and financial exclusion. Speaker Decentra Suze argued CBDCs may arrive in unexpected forms and that stablecoins carry many of the same switch-off risks.

🇬🇧 UK Defers Tax on Lending
The UK published draft legislation adopting a "no gain, no loss" rule: lending cryptoassets, including Bitcoin, or adding them to liquidity pools won't trigger capital gains tax until actual sale, effective April 6, 2027.

🇬🇧 UK Publishes Tokenization Roadmap
The UK released a roadmap for tokenizing wholesale financial markets, projecting up to £33 billion in annual output by 2035. It calls for the first tokenized government bond issuance by Q1 2027.

🇫🇷 France Closes National Registry
France's AMF automatically deregistered all remaining nationally-registered providers on July 2 as MiCA's transition period ended. Firms holding MiCA licenses were struck off earlier; those without — including Bitcoin-only StackinSat — lost French registration entirely.

Every week I drop one concrete, actionable answer to a legal or political question that actually affects your life as a Bitcoiner, focused on a specific, real-world action you can take. No theory. No fluff. Just the move.

This week: What law enforcement can — and cannot — do to your self-custodied Bitcoin in the US, UK, France, India, and Indonesia

Here's the universal truth first: no government on Earth can move Bitcoin off a hardware wallet without the seed phrase or private key. Almost every real-world seizure happens one of two ways: through an exchange or custodian that holds keys for you, or by physically obtaining your seed. Where you live determines how hard they can press. 

1.     United States — they need your keys, and you may not have to give them. Police can get a warrant to seize your hardware wallet and search your home for seed backups, and can subpoena any exchange for your records and custodied coins. But the Fifth Amendment — your right against self-incrimination — may protect you from being forced to reveal a passphrase; courts are split.

2.     United Kingdom — silence is a crime, but coins stay put. Under RIPA Section 49, police can serve a formal notice compelling you to disclose your key or password. Refusing is a separate offense: up to two years in prison, five in national-security cases. They can jail you for non-compliance — they still cannot move your sats without the seed.

3.     France — refusing to decrypt costs three years. Article 434-15-2 of the penal code makes refusing to hand over a decryption key punishable by up to three years and a €270,000 fine, and French courts have treated device codes as keys. Police seize devices physically; regulated platforms hand over custodied coins on request.

4.     India — decryption orders with real teeth. Section 69 of the IT Act lets authorities order you to assist with decryption; refusal carries up to seven years. The Enforcement Directorate routinely freezes and seizes coins — but through exchanges, under money-laundering law. Self-custodied coins without a recovered seed remain out of reach.

5.     Indonesia — the exchange is the chokepoint. There's no established law compelling you to reveal keys. Enforcement runs through OJK-regulated exchanges — account freezes, forfeiture orders — and physical device seizure. Same pattern, weaker legal tools against self-custody. Wherever you are, the lesson is identical — coins on exchanges are seizable by paperwork; coins behind a memorized passphrase require your cooperation.

Got a legal or regulatory question you want answered next Tuesday? Hit reply and send it.

📊 CLARITY Act signed into law in 2026? — 33% Polymarket

📊 Who will Trump pardon before 2027? Keonne Rodriguez — 11% Polymarket

📊 Trump eliminates capital gains tax on crypto by Jan 1, 2027? — 3% Polymarket

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